Based on what I’ve been reading on world system as dissipative structure it’s impossible to know if the decline of the state as permanent.

Dissipative structures theory says that nonlinear fluctuations caused by positive feedback loops will lead the system towards a bifurcation point that forces the system to reorganise to a higher level of complexity or disintegrate into chaos.

But, it is not possible to determine in advance the direction of the system change.

I would describe the bailout/nationalization of the financial sector as a bear market rally in the decline of the state. Like all bear market rallies, they peter out and than the markets fall to a lower low.

To continue the stock market analogy, eventually stocks will become cheap, the economic system will transition from recession to recovery and a new bull market will begin. I’m not really sure how applicable how the idea of a bull market for the nation state is. I guess you would have to look for evidence the nation state is learning/evolving through a OODA loop process.

Ahh yes, strong central state power, yeah.

*”Every day, and in every way we are getting better and better.”

*Herbert Lom (Dec) in the hollywood masterpeice comedic farse,
“Return Of The Pink Panther.”

M

http://tinyurl.com/9knmkz

“After meeting with his economic team earlier today, President-elect Barak Obama predicted this afternoon that the United States would have trillion-dollar budget deficits “for years to come.”

Obama said that Peter Orszag, Obama’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget, forcasted that the United States would have a budget deficit of $1 trillion “even before we start the next budget.”

“We have already, that we are already looking, at a trillion dollar budget deficit or close to a trillion dollar budget deficit,” Obama said. “And that potentially we’ve got trillion dollar deficits for years to come even with the economic recovery that we are working on at this point.”

SNIP

“The national debt — which now stands at $10.6 trillion — is the sum of all federal deficits since the founding of the United States.”

“Currently, it is about 73 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, not an overly worrisome figure, most economists agree.”

“But some, such as former U.S. comptroller David Walker, have argued that without significant reform of Social Security and medical entitlement programs as the Baby Boomers move on to the federal dole, the national debt could be as much as 200 times GDP in a matter of years, which many say could lead to political instability.”

The Israeli criminal gangs have potential as an effective paramilitary force to turn loose on the Palestinians. They would not have their hands tied by restrictive rules of engagement like the IDF does. They could funtion in a manner similar to right-wing death squads in Colombia and other parts of Latin America.

According to the LA Times

An over-the-top gang war between Israeli crime families, complete with daylight bombings, bystander deaths and the occasional rocket attack, has laid bare the shortcomings of the country’s formidable security apparatus.

“In many respects we are losing the battle,” said Menachem Amir, a criminology professor at Hebrew University.

Organized crime blossomed here in the 1980s and ’90s while security forces were focused on Palestinian terrorist threats. By the time Israeli authorities truly began to grapple with the problem a few years ago, they faced a sophisticated global network of gambling, prostitution and drug trafficking, with Los Angeles as one of its hubs.

Actually, for reasons that should not be as mysterious to readers of this blog as to most people generally, I view this Israeli organized crime development as a fundamentally positive development because, for once, things within Israel, according to its own dynamic, are moving on the right side of history. Yes, these organized crime gangs in and of themselves are bad, but they evidence an ability of Israeli society itself to evolve beyond the nation-state.

And I think readers of this blog can at least grasp my point when I state that any real solution to the Arab Israeli solution must be neither a one state nor a two state but rather a no state solution. Yes, we will continue to have lots of Jews and Arabs who do not like each other running around the geographic Palestine region; but the westernizing nation-state of Israel won’t be there with all of its neoimperialist connotations, while new dynamics with new potentialities will emerge.

I recently received this from someone who thinks about these things, albeit with a very dark outlook:
===
Seismic Changes In Power Structure In Middle East As Turkey Withdraws Support From Israel

This Turkish move has grave geopolitical portents, not only as it constitutes a threat to the route constituting the most important United States supply line into Iraq, and which could have functioned as with Xenophon as the exit route for United States forces if the Straits of Hormuz are cut.

Turkey also shields the rear of Syria and Hizbollah’s sponsor Iran. If Syria had attacked Israel with an enemy like Turkey at their back, they would have been outflanked. Now, Syria could launch their forces against Israel with their back secure. Hizbollah need not fear Turkey, nor Iran fear Turkey. This ends Israel’s long and heretofore successful courtship of Turkey under its US-aligned Kemalist party.

This sea change may upset U.S. grand strategy in the region. The power balance in the Middle East has turned. Turkey may want from Iran the cooperation to destroy Kurdish forces in Iraq, where Turkey wishes to seize Kurdistan with its oil. Iran may desire the rest of Iraq; at least it should be quite pleased with a far better ally than Iraq could have been with the US/Israel-aligned Kurdistan “autonomous region” as a counterweight to Shia domination of the polity.

The economic pressure of the crushing of the oil price, which one school of thought holds was contingent on, and the purpose behind, the bankrupting of Lehman Brothers, is putting severe economic pressure on Iran, and hence Gaza, Hizbollah, and Syria. They either face economic catastrophe, or launch a war under the flag of Palestinian rescue immediately to divert attention from the gravity of their economic situation. If the very purpose of destroying Lehman to crush the oil price was to weaken Iran, Syria, Russia, and Venezuela, it could be backfiring if it leads to a real war in the Middle East that cuts off the oil flows and balloons the crude price again.

“With all due respects, this really isn’t very difficult.”

I agree with DK’s concise analysis.

Moreover we’ve seen this time and time again out of the current
status quo and regiem, in trying to paint what has traspired to the benefit of a select few, but what is actually continual abject compounded failure on the public’s backs.

zanegreyon 06 Jan 2009 at 10:13 am 6

“Thank you, all. For the record, I am conflating nothing,”

To be honest I have little time for such arguments, being prefaced on half truths and out right lies from the get go.

Be reminded one and all, a tenant of 4gw that goes something
like this, “weakness can be turned into strength, and strength into weakness.”

M

http://tinyurl.com/7nexjh

http://tinyurl.com/7o2trn

You asked “Is the global financial crisis a “bear market rally” in the decline of the State, or its resurgence?”

What I was attempting to say (and did so poorly) was that these events are on a different scale (much smaller) than the “decline of the State”, and that their relationship to this larger trend is difficult to discern at this time.

Evolution from “democratic capitalism” to “socialist capitalism” can occur easily within the State framework, and might just be another cycle during the larger “Era of the Nation-State” — as have similar transitions during the past 4 centuries.

As actors ourselves, we need to understand this new landscape better so we can observe, orient, decide, and act. The dogs in the yard don’t serve themselves best by just watching the elephants dance.