Tuk Lai: A Wargame

Tuk Lai is a documentary about some friends playing a double-blind wargame - a semi-fictional military scenario set in Vietnam, 1967.

Filmed in 1997, it's one part realistic operational simulation, one part silly toy soldier fun... with a generous dose of black humour added... and a new rock and roll soundtrack, guys!

Watch as Steve and Peter, the Viet Cong players, attempt to infiltrate and destroy an American firebase, commanded by Orion and Jon, while I (Tim "XFunc" Carter) pull gamemaster duty.

On The Assassination of Nemtsov, Russian Opposition Leader

Stalin got into power by a fluke of events... He was only included in Lenin's inner circle because Lenin figured they needed one of the prole's... After all, it was a "worker's revolution", but the leaders were all intellectuals. So Stalin, a token yob, but also a petty burglar, was included.

Problem is, the Bolsheviks wrote a slapdash constitution which emphasized putting control into the hands of one guy. Not a lot of thinking went into this. It was a system which, as is the achilles heal of communism, was susceptible to the cult-of-personality.

Then Lenin died unexpectedly of a stroke. And somehow things just gravitated to Stalin. Stalin, having more streetsmarts than the rest of the booksmart inner circle, knew how to manipulate things at the personal level. He was a good liar and not hesitant to knock off anyone who got in his way.

We then see the various purges and so forth, and we all know Stalin's rule was marked by unbelieveable atrocities, incomptence and terror.

There begins also a long chain of power passing from one hand to the next.

With Stalin's death in the 50s, all who were left were incompetent yes-men. So began the "crapulent" phase of Communism... shortages, economic stagnation, etc... leading all the way to Glasnost and the collapse of communism.

Putin got in essentially by proving himself as a yes-man for Yeltsin, and guaranteeing his (Yeltsin's) safety.

But we see today the shadow of those past mistakes, echoing again in what's going on now in Russia. Rule via the cult-of-personality continues. Putin's expression of condolence following Nemtsov's assassination is particularly chilling.

The problem is, nobody is guaranteeing Putin safety. And he knows that. As soon as he's out of power he'll probably be arrested.

And this is why we are here now.

--- 27 February 2015

Red Flags: 2015

Here's an interesting, to-the-point infographic on hypothetical future flashpoint scenarios...

Red flags, all of them.

To this list, I would add the following:

The threat of ebola becoming an endemic world disease. (And I don't care that it hasn't emerged as such... yet.... My articles on ebola were hit many times, and if they helped stop ebola from reaching this point, then that's a good thing! And by the way... I can pretty much assure you that there is a defacto world travel ban to the ebola-stricken West African nations... They won't call it a "travel ban", for political reasons, but getting out of there is extremely difficult now...)

The threat of economic and legal collapse in the United States:

• Legal collapse driven by many young useful idiots, who have grown up with the narcissitic self-delusion of a world controlled by smartphones and depicted in the fantasy of unrealistic videogames. These people are magical thinkers who fundamentally don't understand how the legal system works. It's not perfect, but it works better than any other way the human race has yet created... And in their quest to create some magical, perfect legal system... where police are psychic and know when someone is armed or not in the first 30 seconds... they'll do the evil that Voltaire noted: "Perfection is the enemy of the good." (Though I will say that using a chokehold on a surrendering person is pretty stupid. I was trained by a cop in chokeholds, including having been put into one. They're pretty terrifying.)
• Economic collapse simply because the US dollar, the world's international currency, is riding on fumes now. (And yet the US still has a magical aura when it comes to economic growth. Which is probably its only saving grace.)

Friction: Clausewitz, the military-thinker, gives us a term for this build up of red flags (albeit he was speaking in a context of warfare). "Friction." It's the general pile-up of unforeseen events (and even foreseen ones), which can cause unexpected, catastrophic failures.

The world is full of friction now.

If a wider war comes to us, I suppose the Western militaries can point to a failure of civilian leadership. It will be either because of the hawkish shortsightedness of the right (if you talk war so much, guess what you'll get?...) or the negligent stupidity of the left (if you ignore conflict red flags, or implement arbitrary and destabilizing policies - such as withdrawal dates that have no basis in reality - guess what you'll get?...).

My Situation Report To The President On Crimea

Mr President, as your trusted advisor, I have the following comments to make on the situation in Crimea...