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Thread: Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

  1. #501
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    Default An Historian's Perspective

    You might want to check out Brian Glyn Williams' post at the Complex Terrain Lab. He's been directly involved with the HTT program. As an historian AND one who's subject matter expertise is actually relevant to the work, he offers some interesting observations.
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  2. #502
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Innes View Post
    You might want to check out Brian Glyn Williams' post at the Complex Terrain Lab. He's been directly involved with the HTT program. As an historian AND one who's subject matter expertise is actually relevant to the work, he offers some interesting observations.
    I'll second that . Interesting page all told, although I can hardly read the publications age because the type is so small in my browser (Firefox, 2.0.0.14).
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
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    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
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    Default

    Roger that - thanks for the input. Still ironing out wrinkles and smoothing rough patches on the site.
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  4. #504
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Innes View Post
    Roger that - thanks for the input. Still ironing out wrinkles and smoothing rough patches on the site.
    No worries . I suspect it's a glitch in you css - probably an em set a <.71 (that's a common problem with Firefox).
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  5. #505
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    Default

    Fixed
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  6. #506
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    Default Bravo ! Well Done !!!

    Hey Mike,

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Innes View Post
    You might want to check out Brian Glyn Williams' post at the Complex Terrain Lab. He's been directly involved with the HTT program. As an historian AND one who's subject matter expertise is actually relevant to the work, he offers some interesting observations.
    Great stuff and in layman's terms to boot Please pass on my thanks to Brian for a Job Well Done !

    Anthropologists who feel that their noble profession is being used for nefarious purposes should see their job as one that can allow 19 year olds from Kansas understand their frightening environment. At the end of the day, anthropologists in Afghanistan are not working on the Manhattan project, they are helping to interpret other worlds to those whose lives literally depends upon such things as knowing a simple Muslim greeting, understanding which hand is unclean, knowing the real distinction between a mosque and a madrassa, and knowing how to deal witih namuz (pride in protecting one’s womenfolk, home place and faith).
    Regards, Stan
    If you want to blend in, take the bus

  7. #507
    Council Member Ron Humphrey's Avatar
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    Talking Agreed that it's a nice piece

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Innes View Post
    You might want to check out Brian Glyn Williams' post at the Complex Terrain Lab. He's been directly involved with the HTT program. As an historian AND one who's subject matter expertise is actually relevant to the work, he offers some interesting observations.
    would like to know if he has written in more detail some of his experiences and the way he approaches the relationship between the HTT and their military teammates?
    Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours

    Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur

  8. #508
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    Default Brian Williams

    Brian's one of those rare creatures. He's a scholar, tenured, etc. - and also spends extensive time on the ground, so he knows whereof he speaks. He's also got an online portfolio site, at http://www.brianglynwilliams.com/, where you can reference his writings for yourself.

    His writing is also genius in that he doesn't just write for the three other scholars in the field who might understand him in those terms. He writes with great great style, and communicates his findings in such an engaging way, that it's always a pleasure to read. The best part is that a lot of is contemporary and experiential - he writes from the ground, and places you in the scene.
    Last edited by Mike Innes; 04-20-2008 at 02:59 PM.
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    Current Intelligence Magazine

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stan View Post
    Hey Mike,



    Great stuff and in layman's terms to boot Please pass on my thanks to Brian for a Job Well Done !



    Regards, Stan
    Cheers
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    Michael A. Innes, Editor & Publisher
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  10. #510
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
    There's also an update at Wired on this.
    Marc, thanks for the post and link !
    I fully enjoy Sharon's articles and her overall style. She draws intriguing and valid questions regarding the HTT program.

    However, I didn't get the warm fuzzies with this article's comments by Derek Gregory. It's fairly easy to pick an individual's journal apart and comment on those areas that seem controversial or contradictory, leaving out all the other significant findings. I'd have taken Derek's comments far more seriously if his site wasn't like a gigantic Newsweek and CNN advertisement and his statement about General Petraeus being little more than an iconic figure

    What I wouldn't give to know his language skills

    Regards, Stan
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  11. #511
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Default A few more follow-ups..

    From Savage Minds.

    A response to the Newsweek story by Montgomery McFate published, in full at Wired.

    Having long been an admirer of Newsweek, I found your failure to fact check the story by Dan Ephron & Silvia Springs entitled "A gun in one hand, a pen in the other" (21 April issue) completely shocking. One naturally expects more from Newsweek than such sloppy journalism.
    The latest version of her responses can be found in the attachment.

    [edit] See later post
    Marc
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by marct; 04-29-2008 at 08:22 PM.
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  12. #512
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Default The latest from SM

    As always, Savage Minds comes up with some of the most interesting () questions...

    Montgomery’s Minerva?

    Pure speculation. Does Montgomery McFate have the ear of Robert Gates, US Secretary of Defense? I was jumping around some sites related to the HTS discussion when I noticed the following quotes from a summary of a presentation that McFate gave {in May 2007} on ‘The Cultural Knowledge Gap and Its Consequences for National Security.

    More...
    Given the comments, I suspect that Mongomery is getting heartily sick and tired of all the fooforah. As Oneman noted in his comment (), "anthropology has managed a lot of amazing things in the last 40 years, without military help" and this is quite true, it has. Of course, getting rid of the four square model that used to dominate the field, making the discipline increasingly irrelevant to lived reality, and driving away potential students are not things I would want to brag about .
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  13. #513
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Talking I love satire

    From Philip Carl Salzman on the Middle East Strategy at Harvard blog

    Uncle Sam Wants You
    From Philip Carl Salzman

    “He must be a spy,” said the visiting Baluch, bearded, turbaned, and baggy in long shirt and trousers. My fellow camp mates of the Dadolzai shrugged. They had accepted me and were past wondering exactly how I got there. “Sure,” I replied; “the government”—whether Iranian or American was left unspecified, “they are paying me big bucks to tell them how many rocks”—I point at rocks on the ground—”there are in Baluchistan. And they are very interested in how many of these”—goat turds—”there are in Baluchistan.” Camp mates shrug; visitor is now bored with the subject.

    New locale: Rajasthan. The Brahman veterinarian from the Sheep and Wool Service who served as my guide, local expert, and traveling companion, assured me that everyone knew that so-called tourists who went to Jaisalmer, up near the Pakistan border, to ride the camel safaris in the sand dunes were really spies. “Why,” he said, “they went missing for days at a time, and we know what they are spying.” His trump argument: “No well-to-do, educated people would ever do anything so dumb as to want to ride camels in the desert, for fun.”

    It is very common for anthropologists, and foreigners in general, to be regarded as spies, agents, dubious, and perhaps dangerous. So the oft-heard plea of researchers—”We can’t ever work for government or people will think all of us all the time are spies and agents”—seems at the very least naive, and, one cannot help thinking, disingenuous.

    More...
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  14. #514
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    Default Nuclear reaction?

    Williams' remark "anthropologists in Afghanistan are not working on the Manhattan project" might also have included "nor the Phoenix Program."
    "What is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."

  15. #515
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    Quote Originally Posted by Umar Al-Mokhtār View Post
    Williams' remark "anthropologists in Afghanistan are not working on the Manhattan project" might also have included "nor the Phoenix Program."
    LOLOL. I mean, seriously (quoth he with tongue planted firmly in cheek), all reall Anthropologists are already involved with the Post-Colonial version of the Phoenix Program - figuring out who is sympathetic to the military and conducting targeted character assassinations on them .

    I think my favorite line in the entire piece was
    It is not that anthropologists believe any more in neutrality, objectivity, or truth. These ideas are largely deceased among social and cultural anthropologists (excepting behavioral/evolutionary ecologists). On the contrary, subjectivity is now explicitly paired with political commitment as the twin pillars of anthropology. As there is no point seeking “truth,” the only purpose of the field is advancing the interests of the subaltern: people of color, women, gays, workers, the third world, and so on. Thus the call from the most famous of contemporary anthropologists, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, for “revolutionary anthropology.” This is a “postcolonial” extension of the Marxism that was so popular in anthropology for the decades prior to the fall of the Soviet Union.
    What really gets me about this is that they haven't followed their own logic: since the military is obviously being oppressed by incompetent (and incoherent) politicians, attacked by almost every academic discipline, and the subject of extensive media spin, obviously they need Anthropologists to speak for them !
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  16. #516
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    Default then again...

    ...one of the advance/ground team for the July 2002 assassination in Gaza of Hamas military commander Salah Shehadeh was allegedly posing as a Canadian sociologist, and Palestinian counterintelligence services had suspicions that one of the advance/ground team for the 1988 Tunis assassination of Fateh military commander Khalil al-Wazir was posing as a Western graduate student. Whether either claim is true I don't know, although the former was substantive enough for Ottawa to pursue the issue with the Israeli government.

    As for myself, while doing my own PhD research I was once accused of being an spy while in a safe house full of armed men belonging to one of the designated foreign terrorist organizations. My unfeigned outrage won me laughter, several cups of Turkish coffee, and a very good interview. (My interview subject was later assassinated in 2001.)

    As to Phil Salzman's broader point on MESH, he's correct that scholars (and especially anthropologists) are very wary of excessively close connection with the government/military for both ideological and scholarly reasons.

    Regarding the latter, I'm struck by the extent to which--despite all the hot debate on HTTs, Project Minerva, and so forth--there has been very little substantive analysis of the pluses and minuses of the relationship, how to address the ethical issues involved, and other practical issues. (SWJ and Savage Minds being, in general, relatively rare exceptions to this pattern.)

    Instead, much of the commentary and discussion remains far too polemical to be useful.

  17. #517
    Council Member Ron Humphrey's Avatar
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    Thumbs up

    Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
    As always, Savage Minds comes up with some of the most interesting () questions...



    Given the comments, I suspect that Mongomery is getting heartily sick and tired of all the fooforah. As Oneman noted in his comment (), "anthropology has managed a lot of amazing things in the last 40 years, without military help" and this is quite true, it has. Of course, getting rid of the four square model that used to dominate the field, making the discipline increasingly irrelevant to lived reality, and driving away potential students are not things I would want to brag about .
    I suspect that MR Gates ears have been trained on a lot more than people may realize. From everything I've seen and heard he really believes that listening is the best way to learn whats really going on and I'd bet he probably does exactly that a lot more than most think.
    Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours

    Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur

  18. #518
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    Default

    "It is not that anthropologists believe any more in neutrality, objectivity, or truth."

    Sounds like they're just like journalists!
    "What is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."

  19. #519
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    Default The funny thing is that

    Quote Originally Posted by Umar Al-Mokhtār View Post
    Williams' remark "anthropologists in Afghanistan are not working on the Manhattan project" might also have included "nor the Phoenix Program."
    Phoenix worked. It wasn't very nice but then war isn't nice.

    The 'principles' of 'fighting cleanly' and minimal force have always intrigued me. Both those efforts can only prolong a war and thus produce more widespread suffering. Beautiful example of cutting off one's nose...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
    Regarding the latter, I'm struck by the extent to which--despite all the hot debate on HTTs, Project Minerva, and so forth--there has been very little substantive analysis of the pluses and minuses of the relationship, how to address the ethical issues involved, and other practical issues. (SWJ and Savage Minds being, in general, relatively rare exceptions to this pattern.)

    Instead, much of the commentary and discussion remains far too polemical to be useful.
    Hear hear!
    --
    Michael A. Innes, Editor & Publisher
    Current Intelligence Magazine

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