What makes people rebel against the status quo?

Every time time the feds hire another rude, obnoxious TSA agent, or the city hires another jackass clerk or the state hires another pricky, menacing road reaver, a potential insurgent is created. That's what Steven Metz's study published at the Small Wars Journal seems to say.

"Insurgency arises from a combination of two conditions:", says Metz, "significant unmet psychological needs, and the feasibility of violence (via both attitudes receptive to it and the actual tools of armed action).  To grapple with this, a psychological conceptualization of insurgency would be more powerful and useful than a political one."

So I gather the boiling frog scenario doesn't always work after all.

Ideologues are a humorless lot

People' Liberation Army hottie!

"Satire must never be directed against the class whose aspirations you share - only against the enemy." - Chairman Mao criticizing La Chinoise, a film by Jean-Luc Godard in the novel The Adventures of Mao on the Long March.

Empathy for others is not a major factor amongst the revolutionary types. Good tactical advice though.

Qadaffi dead: Libyan dictator goes out Mussolini-style

BBC news story with video from Al-Jazeera link here. A captured and wounded Qaddafi was beaten and then shot to death. His corpse was dragged through the streets behind a truck.

Bottom line: Those who make peaceful change impossible make violence charge inevitable. Dictators of all stripes please note.

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weblog - June 09, 2011

The food crisis of 2011 (Addison Wiggin, Forbes)
All it's gonna take (says Wiggin) is one big crop failure somewhere and they'll be food riots or worse.  People aren't gonna sit still and watch their children starve. As the saying goes "no society is more than three meals away from revolution."

Mid-Michigan farmers playing catch-up after massive rains in May (Lisa Allmendinger, annarbor.com)
As one farmer put it: Things were better for farmers when, "they didn’t depend on just corn or soybeans to pay the bills. Instead, they planted other crops and had sheep, pigs, chickens and horses." But you have to nowadays. They don't call 'em "cash crops" for nothing, eh?

A grunt's view of the Afghan war: "Afghanistan is a waste of our time." (Chuck Spinney, Battleland blog)
Let's GTF out of there before we lose any more killed and wounded. Who has the most credibility here? The Washington think-tankers or the grunts on the front lines? Do you have to ask?

Sign of the times...

Marilyn Buck, 62, Dies - Imprisoned for Brink’s Holdup - NY Times.com

Buck was a committed communist revolutionary who engaged the system head-on. She fought the battle and paid the price. Unlike blowhards like ex-weatherman and Obama mentor Billy Ayers and etc. Buck walked the walk, did the crime and did the time. Contrast and compare, eh? R.I.P.

weblog

NFL athletes really are modern day gladiators - CNN
Especially looking at the brain and nerve damage they suffer. They'd be better off fighting with swords.
Virg Bernero picks up another endorsements from one of the usual suspects - Detroit News
But the outspoken ex-State Rep and current Lansing mayor strikes me as a Geoffrey Fieger-type but with slightly better manners. And we all remember how Fieger's 1998 run ended, eh? The Democrats really aren't offering us much to chose from this year. (Not that they truly ever do.)
How to overthrow the government: tips from 10 scifi revolutionaries - io9
Hmm...maybe.