In the film Enemy of the State, Will Smith’s character is handed some sensitive information. He spends the rest of the movie being bugged, chased and set-up. Wikileak’s Julian Assange won’t be so lucky. He’s currently starring in Enemy of the States. Nation States. Plural.

Assange’s small not-for-profit has exposed the inner dialogue of the world’s only superpower. By doing so, he has unleashed the narcissistic rage of the USA and its friends, and its enemies. The CableGate leaks are a threat to several nation states – perhaps all major players. It is a shitstorm. No doubt about that.

The question that intrigues me though is whether he has done anything wrong. Will history remember him as a sinner or a saint? Does he have any defence to the criticism?

The founder of the EFF reckons that the ‘first serious infowar has begun’. If so, it consists of a superpower attempting to fight Truth. The USA is not being slandered. It is being outed.

The response to CableGate highlights one of the best kept secrets of international politics: it is a perpetual battlefield of various means. Guns are rarely drawen. Body counts are only seen when all else has failed. Like the toughest guy in the room, the USA isn’t too concerned about body counts. It understands that in a fist fight, you rarely walk away unscathed. However, there are two types of injury in every war.

Sometimes the injuries are physical (e.g. broken nose, downed apache in Basra). Physical injuries include physical pain and financial loss (which i’ll come to later). Physical injuries can be prevented by training and equipment, and soothed by the knowledge that the other guy came off much worse – winning mitigates physical loss.

As a superpower, the USA walks into a fight knowing that it will inflict far more physical injury than it will receive. In all military engagements during the 21^st century the mismatch in physical power between the US and its opponents has been like watching a belt-wielding father beat his young daughter. Regardless of what she did, the result is not in doubt, so long as the father’s will holds out. Which brings me to the next class of war wound.

Sometimes the injuries affect the ego – these are moral/psychological/philosophical (e.g. arrest, killing civilians). Moral/psychological injuries can be prevented by vilification and information control, and soothed by propaganda and plausible deniability. The USA walks into a fight knowing that the people who wave placards in protest at fresh moral/psychological injury will get bored, apathetic or simply forget. Due to vilification, the public can be motivated to hate the enemy. Due to information control, the vast majority will remain oblivious to what’s really going on. Due to propaganda a moral outrage can be hidden in plain view – poison can be dispensed as medicine. Due to plausible deniability, nobody is held responsible and criticism is pointless – leading to the apathy and boredom of most protestors. Nonetheless, moral/psychological injuries are usually saved for after the physical stuff is done. The guy who batters the other to a pulp wins the fight and can pontificate about whether he punched too hard as his knuckles heal.

Alpha males prioritise the physical; hence the USA is very strong physically. No-one attempts to beat them using force alone. In a straight fist fight, everybody is clear on the fact that the USA will fuck them up, in style and to a shock-and-awe soundtrack. Problem is, an infowar primarily causes psychological and philosophical injuries.

Forget what you’ve seen on your screen. This century is not about fist fights. In the 21^st century, open and democratic nation states have been faced with a problem: suicidal non-state actors with the ability and desire to cause psychological damage to the toughest guys in the room. This problem began starkly on 9/11 and hasn’t gone away. The problem was defined at first as the War on Terror – a poor term. In truth, it is a war against damaging ideas, held and disseminated via the unpoliceable internet. While governments fought Al Qaeda, the media industry fought information spreaders. The dangerous information spreaders have now begun to target governments.

The first problem Bin Laden posed for the nation states was that as a lone actor, with suicidal beliefs he couldn’t really be harmed philosophically. His attitude was – and if he’s still alive, is – fuck you; come and get me, there are thousands more where i come from; you cannot kill my idea. The criticism of him was vilification. It was justified, but clearly impotent against his beliefs. The USA was forced to go after other people to satiate their anger. Their actions have undoubtedly created more opponents, and the cost is unbearable; the objective unreachable.

Meanwhile, Napster, Audiogalaxy, Kazaa, PirateBay and several others posed the same problem for the media industry. They harmed the RIAA and MPAA physically and philosophically, and there was nothing much that could be done to prevent the injury or dissuade the perpetrators. The industry successes were met with ingenious workarounds that affronted the industry like a proudly-held middle-finger to their face. The criticism of the pirates was vilification. It was justified, but clearly impotent against their beliefs. The industry was forced to go after other people to satiate their anger. Their actions have undoubtedly created more opponents, and the cost was unbearable; the objective unattainable.

Julian Assange and his band of merry men is the latest incarnation of the dangerous information spreaders. The irony is that he was only able to undertake CableGate because of the USA’s reaction to 9/11. Folllowing the attacks, the government combined several agencies, to increase information-sharing. This led to over 2.5 million people having access to the diplomatic cables that are currently being leaked. Winston Churchill once said that during war, the truth is so precious that it should be protected with a bodyguard of lies. A bodyguard of 2.5m people is just asking for trouble.

Assange is being hemmed in from all sides. Amazon, PayPal, Interpol, Sweden and even a Swiss Bank (a Swiss fucking bank!) have put up cordons. He’s been denied bail and faces extradition. He’s got 99 problems – full stop!

The nation states are more worried than he is though. He expected this. He’s the father of a very dangerous idea. He is – like so many other dangerous information spreaders – prepared to be a martyr. He knows that he worse he is treated, the more philosophical and psychological injury is caused to his opponents. Because in truth, he is a nobody. He is small fry. The real opponent of the USA, its allies and its enemies, who are currently being damaged by his small organisation is not him, or his small organisation, but the idea driving it all: fuck you and everything you stand for; you are not as strong as you think you are, and we are not as weak.

I’ll tackle the rights and wrongs in the Part Two.

It’s easy to talk about staying calm. Especially from a position of hindsight or a comfy chair. Which is why sports fans across the world are slow to forgive the missed buzzer beater or crucial penalty.

To stay calm under pressure, you must train yourself, under pressure, to be calm. Anything short of that and it’s hard to predict how you’ll react to a highly pressurised situation. The reason is simple: under intense pressure performance slips. Players who swish jump shots in training, throw bricks at the buzzer, because the adrenalin rushing through their body essentially makes them malfunction.

Allen Iverson famously derided practice, but for most people practice makes all the difference. It’s impossible to completely simulate a high-pressure situation, but good practice makes certain actions and reactions automatic, which reduces errors come game time.

What does this mean for us mere mortals?

• Do what you can to create situations in which you must perform to a high standard to achieve a specific goal
• Meditate – it will help you recognise what calm feels like, and train your mind to control itself
• Detach yourself from your fears and stay focused on your goal. If you find yourself losing your cool during an argument, remember that putting your point across simply and clearly is your goal
• Don’t pay too much attention to the crowd. Whether they are for you or against you, they are usually not as calm as you should be. You can react however you want once you see the net ripple

ps: Calm doesn’t mean comatose. Don’t confuse avoidance with peace. Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand, and neither should we.

Sometimes i wonder about humanity. Other times, i just sit in awe, getting all warm and fuzzy as my brain goes to sleep and something else wakes from a slumber.

Everything we get, outside the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for.

- Henry Hazlitt

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

- Frederick Douglass

While at a house party a few months back, a girl cornered me with a nice bottle of wine, and started telling me about ‘The Secret’ – a bestselling book and film . I sat and listened, sipping my wine, as the well-educated City financier explained the principles of universal attraction, without any sense of irony .

It was a treat. A true dissertation on the worst kind of magical thinking . Essentially, this chick (and many of her friends) believe that they are telekinetic, and can receive whatever they want just by hoping for it. Needless to say, i re-filled my glass and excused myself. I’d heard about voodoo before.

This ‘universal attraction’  idea is at the core of many belief systems and comforts people who feel powerless. Religion has made a business out of it. But in practice, it does not work.

If you’re falling out of an airplane, the law of gravity trumps the law of attraction.

- Vinny Verelli

In truth, the real goal of positive thinking is positive thinking. However, at some point, it always becomes clear that thinking alone is futile. In response, weak-willed people then say something like: ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

One of the most famous legends around this relates to Muhammed, the founder of Islam, who replied to being asked to give proof of his teachings by ordering Mount Safa to come to him. When the mountain did not comply, Muhammed raised his hands toward heaven and said, ‘God is merciful. Had it obeyed my words, it would have fallen on us to our destruction. I will therefore go to the mountain and thank God that he has had mercy on a stiff-necked generation.’

If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad will go to the mountain.

- Francis Bacon

Such is life. The universe does not act on your behalf, and never will. You must take action, and be prepared for the pitfalls and opportunities that your positive thinking may have missed. To do this, your imagination must be informed, and your thoughts must consider alternative scenarios. In that way, you are aware of what is improbable. And you do not waste time and energy on the impossible. Ambition alone does not create success. This is the real secret.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

- Carl Sagan

ps: If the legend is true, I suspect that from the moment that Muhammed knew that the mountain would not come to him, he used the remaining time spent looking skywards trying to figure out how he would achieve his real objective: retaining power. Western nations are doing the same thing right now, as they attempt to resuscitate the economy.

credit: kimonomania

@mparks says 48 Laws of Power  = YUCK

Can’t say that i haven’t heard that reaction before. People tend to assume that any interest in human nature, strategy or power, is nefarious in some way. But these same people complain about the way that politicians manipulate and the media ‘controls’ us. They identify the symptoms, but are unwilling to understand the problem.

Some people like watching the magic trick. So do i. But i also like to understand how the trick was done. Not necessarily because i want to perform the trick, but because i’m curious.

Anyhow, so long as the Godfather is still voted the No.1 film of all-time, i don’t believe that people aren’t interested in the concepts of strategy and power. They are. They just don’t want to delve too deeply into the mind of a Don. Or a Pope. Or a President-Elect. It could shatter some of their dearly held illusions.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

- Carl Sagan

I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man’s court, Ray had told me, by the white man’s rules. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.

In fact, you couldn’t even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self – the humour, the song, the behind-the-back pass – had been freely chosen by you. At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap.

Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.

- Barack Obama (from "Dreams From My Father")