Kocer wins ESPY Award
Spoiler Alert! The ESPY Awards, ESPN's version of the Oscars, Emmys or whatever, were taped on Wednesday with Justin Timberlake as the host. This is why I don't watch this type of thing. Bill Murray was the best host the ESPY's ever had. Anyway, Ryan Kocer, a three-time South Dakota State Champion who lost his leg last year in an accident on his farm, was nominated for Best Male Athlete with a Disability. He didn't win a fourth title this year, but he managed a fourth-place finish and came back to wrestle in January at The Clash. He's the second wrestler in recent memory to win the award -- Kyle Maynard was the other. For the local story, click here. To check out the ESPY's ... (at your own risk), watch Sunday on ESPN.

Congrats to Ryan and the wrestling community for supporting him in the vote!

Former wrestler killed in Afghanistan
Former Campbell University wrestler Pruitt Rainey was killed on Sunday July 13 in Afghanistan. The Haw River, N.C. native was on the Camels wrestling team during the 2004-05 season. While his collegiate career wasn't as successful as his high school one was at Graham High School, Campbell coach Billy Greene said: "Pruitt was a peacemaker and a very caring, loyal spirit, and that came out in his actions." For the full details on Rainey, click here.

Team Takedown taking WEC by storm
Several stories have come out in the past two days about the trio of fighters from Team Takedown who have signed on with World Extreme Cagefighting. The WEC, another Zuffa promotion like the UFC, has been picking up momentum and has been finding many of its rising stars via wrestling. Urijah Faber and Frankie Edgar are two who have come through the WEC. Faber's the face of the organization right now, but you can now add Johny Hendricks, Jake Rosholt and Shane Roller -- all former Oklahoma State All-Americans -- to the mix. Here's Sherdog.com's Jordan Breen's take on the deal.

Research Project
Folks, I'm still going to be working on this research project in identifying when all the dropped programs were cut. Right now, it's about 200 teams I have found dates for, but I'm still 400 short. Here's the list: http://www.intermatwrestle.com/college/dropped_project.htm click on the "dropped" tab. If you know when any of the dates in yellow were cut, drop me a line at jason@bryantwrestling.com (yes, I've got a wrestling domain, Why? I dunno).

Seks anholdt for attentatplaner mod Bush
Skriver politiken.dk.

En rigtig røverhistorie, hvor spørgsmålet "cui bono" sprøjter ud af alle bevis- og efterforskningshullerne.

Bloggen (klik fx. på "Ældre indlæg" neden under Blåtand) kommenterer mere eller mindre satirisk aktuelle nyheder fra Politiken, Berlingske Tidende etc.

Websitet (klik på de øverste menupunkter -- under sider) handler især om Danmarks Radio & Co.

Og om hvordan statsradiofoniens arvtagere specielt ved deres valg og vinkling af nyheder
(Børn&Bananas, Danske Danskere, JanteFjante, Myter&Traditioner, TumpeTV, Varmvind&Lunluft)
er med til at gøde jorden for Fogh, Pia den fromme K. og andre mere eller mindre fordækte nationalister
samt Sand&Salighedsmonopolister med en mission om at Danmark skal frelse verden
-- og så også lige (med den anden hånd) knække The Axis of Evil.

DR&Co.s udanske dansktone sigter efter at producere konsensus om Danmarks og danske danskeres overlegenhed.
Sammen med det der trives i et sådant klima kan den meget vel være en medårsag til den senere tids voldsomme sammenstød (ReligionsRabalder, KulturKamp). Ikke kun på religiøse og etniske fronter, men også mellem kreative unge og etablerede magtstrukturer samt magthavere, som tror, de kan gå på vandet.

English abstract
This blog/site is about the connection between Danish media and nationalism, xenophobia and especially islamophobia in Denmark. As the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said in its Third Report on Denmark:
...
Climate of opinion
...
104. ECRI notes with deep concern that, as indicated above, the climate in Denmark has worsened since its second report and that there is a pervasive atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia against refugees, asylum seekers, as well as minority groups in general and Muslims in particular. The media, together with politicians play a major role in creating this atmosphere.

We are all Africans -- thanks to Mama Africa!

Blåtand, ej blåøjet

Title

...it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant people that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last... This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.

The second novel by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns is both complimentary and contrasting to The Kite Runner. The first novel, masculine and brutal, while the second feminine with the underlining current of endurance and sacrifice. Both books are about Kabul, Afghanistan, where Hosseini is from, and both books are tales of survival. While The Kite Runner is a book about a family who left Afghanistan after the soviet invasion and takeover, A Thousand Splendid Suns is about a family who stayed in Kabul throughout nearly all the almost thirty years of the city's turbulence and war. Both have messages of love and sacrifice.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is an emotional story of two women, Mariam and Laila, who are married to a violent and malicious man. Their husband, Rasheed, reminded me of a concept I had read in Harlan Coben's Hold Tight: Evil people are always evil, and when they are given the approval to be cruel they will do so with great relish. Rasheed had been a wicked, controlling violent man before the Taliban, but with the absolute freedom of men to do whatever they want to their female family members, Rasheed's true abusive nature becomes his unabashed identity. He can do whatever, whenever, he wants to the women, and no police will save them because it's a family matter, no court would believe them because he's a man and they are women, a class of people who are "only slightly less contemptable than a communist."

...you'll learn nothing of value in those schools. There is only one... skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don't teach it in school... Only one skill. And it's this: tahamul. Endure.

This book is a beautiful story of a deep love and companionship of two women, of their ability to endure beyond their imaginations, of survival, and of the ultimate sacrifice love can make: The laying down of one's life for another. It is the story of redemption and reunion, Mariam's illegitimate and loveless life being redeem by the love Laila, Aziza, and Zalmai give her and the reunion of the star-crossed lovers.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a visceral account of life in a war zone, the horror, the sounds and the bodies. It is beautiful at times with poetic passages and loving moments between characters, while revealing the life of oppression women were forced to endure during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. It is haunting, depressing, joyful, and hopeful.

... like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her.

For me, whenever the events were stamped with the date, winter of 1993, Summer of 1994, Fall of 1999, etc, I thought of what was going on in my life at the same time, birth of my daughters in clean hospitals, having water that poured from my tap, using an indoor flushing toilet and bathroom with a shower. Not to mention I could walk my kids to the park and not worry about them getting killed by sniper fire and taking it for granted my daughter wouldn't be raped by soldiers passing by. Never once fearing we'd take a trip out of town and returned to find our house now the possession of the government.

Because this book is graphic and shows the reality of war and domestic violence, this book is not for people who are sensitive to such things. There are several passages that will rip your heart out, and several that makes your stomach sink with dread and worry for Mariam and Laila. I am sure there are people who find the story too depressing to finish.

I didn't think it was possible that I could like this better than The Kite Runner, but I do. The focus on the women, their struggles, their endurance, their support of one another, and their ability to dream and hope for escape and freedom despite all they go through is humbling and encouraging. I feel a sense of kinship to them, a sense of shared suffering and not giving up, fighting back in the face of hopeless odds. It has a softer and steadier voice than The Kite Runner, as if told by a female narrator instead of a man. It is an incredible journey of forgiveness and redemption.

It's summer and gassing up your car is like emptying your wallet directly into that fuel pump. So you think you have it bad? You think you're feeling the pain? Well, stop your whining! Other oil "addicts" have it so much worse! Have you no pity? Take an obvious example -- the Pentagon. Once upon a time, powering your way to a little oil war was essentially a freebie. Lately, though, all you have to do is roll that Humvee off base, send that jet down the nearest runway, or launch that Hellfire missile-armed Predator drone over Afghanistan -- let's not even consider moving a whole carrier task force into the Arabian Sea -- and, let's face it, you're talking an arm and a leg.

Why, the cost of refined fuel for troop use is officially about to leap from $127.68 a barrel to $170.94. That's a 34% rise in the last six months, sucker! Feeling a little less sorry for yourself now? According to Time, "Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Brian Maka said Friday that the price hike is needed to cover an anticipated $1.2 billion rise in fuel costs in the next three months." Add that to the nearly $12 billion a month being spent for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and, come on, it puts your own problems at the pump in perspective, doesn't it? Even if it is your very own tax dollars the Pentagon's spending to fuel its wars. So, peace may be hell, but war? It's murder!

Last week, Nick Turse offered some tips to mainstream reporters who finally -- only five years late -- made it to the Bush administration's role in Iraq's oil story. Now, in part two of his series on what the mainstream media misses when it comes to our oil wars and the energy story, he turns to Washington and that gas guzzler par excellence, the Pentagon. The ties that the Complex -- the term Turse gives the old military-industrial complex in his superb book on how our everyday lives have been militarized -- has developed with an allied petro-industrial complex are so taken for granted that mainstream reporters seldom think they add up to a story. It's like being on the science beat and filing stories about how we breathe. As a war-making society, though, our breathing's been a little labored lately and Turse suggests that perhaps it's time to take another look at everyday energy activities in the Pentagon. Tom

Putting some red herrings to rest, in a pan with hot oil

Re-reading some of David Price's online articles about the militarization of social science research has been rewarding for the important insights and questions he raises (see Counterpunch 2005/05/12, 2005/05/22, 2008/06/24). Anyone who doubts that there is a "national security state" at work in bending social science to meet imperial objectives is of course free to dispute the details of the information provided by Price, and there have been a few, slim attempts. Price takes us through various programs, including the National Security Education Program (NSEP), the Intelligence Community Scholars Program (ICSP), the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), the Minerva Consortia, and of course this builds on discussions of the Human Terrain System (HTS). It is difficult to get a sense from Price's articles about the total amount of money that has been dedicated to all of these programs, together, but my own rough estimate based on the figures provided is that it is not less than $150 million US.

That is quite a few programs and a good sum of funds, at a relatively early stage in some of these programs, added to grudging acceptance by various professional bodies, and more enthusiastic support from university presidents, in a climate where "national security" is pumped up as something that all Americans (and even Canadians) need to be worried about. For anyone to think that anthropologists and other social scientists who wish to embed themselves in counterinsurgency or otherwise aid the military that they are being somehow stopped from joining by critics of these programs is simply false. Nobody is stopping them, they are being funded to the hilt, and getting a lot of job opportunities. So we can at least dismiss this first red herring.

However, why was the red herring raised to begin with? Like many other red herrings, this one can be useful for distracting and deflecting attention. The objective is to target the critics as the problem, as the oppressor, who somehow have the power to persecute their militarist colleagues, when the militarists are getting the funding and institutional support. The only real aim of such discourse is to try to mute dissent and criticism. That's all. The militarists are doing what they want to do already, and get all the support that counts, but they would prefer to do so either with silence or applause from the audience. If there is one lesson for all parties to be learned from this clash, a clash that will likely become a defining feature of academic social science for many years to come, is that nobody will get everything they want (and some of us get close to nothing we want).

The second red herring has to do with what we see on some of these surrounding blog discussions, the idea that criticism is problematic because it is not objective and scientific, it is does not do enough to waffle itself into an obscure middling position where it could remain as good as silent for being incomprehensible and ambiguous. One argument has thus involved caricaturing criticism of academic support for the military and intelligence arms of the state as being "rhetorical," while those upholding such engagement do so instead as a result of their embrace/ownership of "reasoned discourse." The appeal to ownership of reasoned discourse, while tossing every imaginable definition of "rhetoric" at one's critics (in the hope that one will stick), is of course a rhetorical strategy in itself. That is why the more productive strategy is not to rehash antiquated notions of rhetoric and reason, but to examine these discussions as producing and reinforcing particular discourses.

For example, the discursive strategy of claiming to be reasonable, yet unleashing the dogs of war. One of the best groups of writers to understand this, and to spoof this logic, was of course Monty Python:

It's all very well to laugh at the Military, but, when one considers the meaning of life, it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself, and without the ability to defend one's own viewpoint against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies, then reasonableness and moderation could, quite simply, disappear.

What remains unanswered, because it is not meant to be answered, is: How should one understand the retreat to intellectual ambivalence and rhetorical obscurantism, in the face of documented violations of human rights of the most severe kind, as a result of an unprovoked invasion and a war of occupation?

What I want to draw attention to below is in line with the way Price begins one of his articles, with a quote from Robertson Davies: "In Paracelsus's time the energy of universities resided in the conflict between humanism and theology; the energy of the modern university lives in the love-affair between government and science, and sometimes the two are so close it makes you shudder."

What follows is for the scrapbook of this blog, a selection of what I think are key quotes from some of Price's articles. The headings are mine.

•••••••

June 24, 2008
Inside the Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness

Sovietizing the social sciences

The demands of conforming scientific knowledge with the ideological positions of a powerful state stunted the development of Soviet biology for decades...American social science faces new forms of ideologically controlled funding that stand to transform our universities' production of knowledge in ways reminiscent of the Soviet Union's ideological control over scientific interpretations...

...the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, the National Security Education Program, Intelligence Community Scholars Program...leave our universities increasingly ready to produce knowledge and scholars aligned with the ideological assumptions of the Defense Department.

...ideological narrowness of the Defense Department's approach to and presuppositions of these topics [in the Minerva program] will necessarily warp project outcomes...

Broken institutions can't repair themselves, and agencies bound to neo-imperial desires of occupation and subjugation will not be receptive to scholarly work seeking to correct this national blunder.

Because of the narrowness of scope and assumptions about the causes of problems facing America, Gates' Minerva plan will harm America's strategic capabilities as it will inevitably fund scholars willing to think in the narrow ways already acceptable to the Defense Department.

Remembering that anthropology was and is imperial

In...anthropology, there is an overwhelming disciplinary amnesia of the extent to which research has been directed by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies in the past....there has been a broad spectrum of overt and covert control over this funding control, with the full range running from the rampant secret directing of funding of unwitting scholars doing research of interest to the CIA and others, to the open, massive funding of a full spectrum of social science and language projects through agencies like the NSF or Fulbright Programs.

Cultural knowledge as a weapon

The Bush Doctrine's proximity to Minerva suggests a program designed to give the tools of culture to those in the military who will be told where to invade and occupy, not to those who might be asked of the wisdom of such actions.

Minerva seeks to increase the efficiency of implementing the Bush Doctrine, not the questioning of it.

Minerva doesn't appear to be funding projects designed to tell Defense why the US shouldn't invade and occupy other countries; its programs are more concerned with the nuts and bolts of counterinsurgency, and answering specific questions related to the occupation and streamlining the problems of empire. This sort of Soviet model of directed social science funding will make America's critical perspective more narrow precisely at an historical moment when we need a new breadth of knowledge and perspective.

•••••••

March 12 / 13, 2005
Exposing the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program: The CIA's Campus Spies

Classroom spies

The secrecy surrounding the current use of university classrooms as covert training grounds for the CIA and other agencies now threatens the fundamental principles of academic openness as well as the integrity of a wide array of academic disciplines.

Silence

...there has been no public reaction to an even more troubling post-9/11 funding program which upgrades the existing American intelligence-university-interface. With little notice Congress approved section 318 of the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act which appropriated four million dollars to fund a pilot program known as the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP). Named after Senator Pat Roberts (R. Kansas, Chair, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence)...

Beyond a few articles in a Kansas newspaper praising Senator Roberts, as well as University of Kansas anthropologist Felix Moos' role in lobbying for the PRISP, there has been a general media silence regarding the program.

The cultures and places that matter

PRISP recruits scholars with "advanced area expertise in China, Middle East, Korea, Central Asia, the Caucasus," with a special emphasis given to scholars with previous linguistic expertise in "Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashtun, Dari, Korean, or a Central Asian or Caucasian language such as Georgian, Turkmen, Tajik, or Uzbek." PRISP also funds Islamic studies scholars and scientists with expertise in bioterrorism, counterterrorism, chemistry, physics, computer science and engineering.

Felix Moos: Imperial anthropologist

PRISP is largely the brainchild of University of Kansas anthropologist Felix Moos-a longtime advocate of anthropological contacts with military and intelligence agencies. During the Vietnam War Moos worked in Laos and Thailand on World Bank-financed projects and over the years he has worked in various military advisory positions. He worked on the Pentagon's ARPA Project Themis, and has been as an instructor at the Naval War College and at the U.S. Staff and Command College at Fort Leavenworth. For years Moos has taught courses on "Violence and Terrorism" at the University of Kansas. In the months after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon Moos elicited the support of his friend, former CIA DCI, Stansfield Turner to curry support in the senate and CIA to fund his vision of a merger between anthropology, academia, intelligence analysis and espionage training...

...Moos is a bright man, but his writings echo the musty tone and sentiments found in the limited bedside readings of Tom-Clancy-literate-colonials, as he prefers to quote from the wisdom of Sun Tzu and Samuel Huntington over anthropologists like Franz Boas or Laura Nader.

It is tempting to describe Moos as an anachronistic anthropologist out of sync with his discipline's mainstream, but while many anthropologists express concerns about disciplinary ties to military and intelligence organizations, contemporary anthropology has no core with which to either sync or collide and there are others in the field who openly (and quietly) support such developments.

Covert campus

Of course I would be remiss to not mention that students are the only ones sneaking the CIA onto our campuses. There are also unknown thousands of university professors who periodically work with and for the CIA--in 1988 CIA spokeswoman Sharon Foster bragged that the CIA then secretly employed enough university professors "to staff a large university." Most experts estimate that this presence has grown since 2001.

The quiet rise of programs like PRISP should not surprise anyone given the steady cuts in federal funding for higher education, and the resulting pressures for more mercenary roles for the academy.

the current shift now finds a visible increase in students whose studies are driven by the market forces of Bush's War on Terrorism.

If the CIA can use PRISP to indenture students in the early days of their graduate training-supplemented with mandated summer camp internships immersed in the workplace ethos of CIA-the company can mold their ideological inclinations even before their grasp of cultural history is shaped in the relatively open environment of their university. As these PRISP graduates enter the CIA's institutional environment of self-reinforcing Group Think they will present a reduced risk of creating cognitive dissonance by bringing new views that threaten the agency's narrow view of the world.

The self-censoring campus

Though no scholar can control the uses of information they make public, there does need to be an awareness of how any knowledge can be abused by others--and as awareness of the presence of PRISP spreads, many scholars may find themselves engaging in new forms of self-censorship and doublethink.

Healthy academic environments need openness because they (unlike the CIA) are nourished by the self-corrective features of open disagreement, dissent, and synthetic-reformulation.

The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program infects all of academia with a germ of dishonesty and distrust as participant scholars cloak their intentions and their ties to the cloaked masters they serve.

•••••••

May 21 / 22, 2005
CIA Skullduggery in Academia: Carry On Spying (or Pay Us Back at the Rate of 2,400 Per Cent)

Damaging Trust

Roberts and sources at CIA did not dispute the likelihood that having undisclosed CIA operatives amongst the ranks of academics could seriously damage the credibility of American academics conducting domestic and foreign research. This blasé attitude concerning the collateral damage of hapless academic bystanders will win Roberts no friends in the academy as the damage from such actions can be widespread.

NACHoS

many institutions are cultivating closer relations with intelligence agencies. New campus intelligence consortia are forming. Most of these are organizations like the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security...which aligns research and teaching at member institutions with the requirements of Bush's war on terror. But NACHoS is more of a programmatic loyalty marker than it is a key to inner sanctum funding. Member institutions range from Clackamas Community College to MIT. Interestingly, some of the universities that one might suspect would be NACHoS apex institutions (Harvard, Yale, Chicago etc.) are missing from the rolls.

The 251 universities in the consortium (www.homelandsecurity.osu.edu) have firmly declared their vague commitment to studying national security issues, antiterrorism, developing new Homeland Security technologies and to "educate and train the people required by governmental and non-governmental organizations, to effectively accomplish international and homeland security roles and responsibilities".

•••••••

Closing remarks

As these discussions have grown and spread across the Internet, it is surprising to see any anthropologist not fully considering, nor wishing to understand, the consequences for establishing rapport and relations of trust with "informants" where one does one's "fieldwork." Without the trust needed to gain intimate access to people's everyday lives, expressed thoughts, and behaviour, any claims to knowledge gained are, to say the least, suspect.

The notion that there is little consequence for anthropologists' reputations is one that I can counter with some personal experience doing research in a country that is (not far) removed from the swirl of developments surrounding the foolishly named "Global War on Terror." This year marks the 20th anniversary of my first going to Trinidad & Tobago. In the passage of those 20 years, I have spent seven in Trinidad, and have kept up to date with the majority of media reports that were published in that time, and trying my best to keep up at a distance by reading Trinidadian news reports online. In all of that time, I have never seen an article in a Trinidadian newspaper devoted exclusively to anthropology, that is, until recently -- with this one:

Henry Charles
ANTHROPOLOGISTS ON FRONT LINES
Monday, 26 November, 2007
TRINIDAD GUARDIAN

IN September this year, Robert M Gates, the US Secretary of Defence, authorised a considerable expansion in a novel Pentagon programme called "human terrain," which embedded anthropologists in each of the combat brigades in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As the strategy became known, it quickly became polarising. Military personnel and anthropologists in the programme could see only positives in the move. Anthropologists on the outside gave it a failing grade.

Martin Schweitzer, a commander of an airborne division unit working with the new arrivals in Afghanistan, for instance, said that his unit's combat operations had been reduced by 60 per cent since they came, and soldiers were able to focus more on improving security, healthcare and education for the population. [MF: Note, and this one statistic, this one report, never independently verified, would be repeated countless times for months afterwards.]

"We're looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist's perspective," he said. "We're not focused on the enemy. We're focused on bringing governance down to the people."

"Call it what you want," said his colleague, Col David Woods, "it works. It works in helping you define the problems, not just the symptoms."

The academic anthropological community, on the other hand, remains either uncomplimentary or hostile. Some of the members speak of "mercenary anthropology," "armed social work," or the exploitation of social science for military gain. They fear that whatever the successes or failures of the group, the overall impact will be that anthropologists abroad will be viewed as intelligence gatherers for the US military.

Hugh Gusterson, an anthropology professor at George Mason University and ten others are thus circulating an online pledge calling on colleagues to boycott the combat team, especially in Iraq. The pledge denounces involvement there as aiding and abetting the war and being guilty by association of its terrible tragedies:

"Anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theatres in the ‘war on terror.' While often presented by its proponents as work that builds a more secure world, at base it contributes instead to a brutal war of occupation which has entailed massive casualties."

Gates expanded the "human terrain" initiative a few months ago, as I said, but the need for something like it was identified since 2003. Army officers in Iraq had complained that they had little or no information on the local population. In fact, prospective planning for Iraq after the anticipated "cakewalk" of an invasion was practically nil. Ignorance of the people and the culture was just one of the many resulting areas of strategic blindness.

The Pentagon contacted Montgomery McFate, a Yale-educated cultural anthropologist working for the navy. She advocated using social science to improve military operations and strategy.

McFate sees anthropology as a "crucial new weapon" in the war on terror, Author of a new counter-insurgency manual, she vigorously defends "human terrain," and dismisses its critics.

"I'm frequently accused of militarising anthropology," she says. "But we're really anthropologising the military."

McFate's critics, on the other hand, dispute that what she does actually counts as anthropology. She is in large part, they say, just a tour guide accompanying the military on non-lethal missions.

The news reports themselves provide no account detailed enough to suggest what the programme looks like in totality across the theatres of war. What is suggested is a combination of social work, Emily Post, and useful advice on how to approach issues of an alien culture.

Ms McFate, for instance, describes her front-line colleagues as anthropological "angels on the shoulder," offering advice to soldiers negotiating a poorly understood environment, telling them when not to cross their legs at meetings, how to show respect to leaders, and how to be ethnocentrically neutral.

She herself wears a military uniform and carries a gun during her sensitivity missions. In the words of Richard A Shweder, anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, and a participant at one of her explanatory sessions, "(it) brought to my increasingly sceptical mind the unfortunate image of an angelic anthropologist perched on the shoulder of a member of an American counter-insurgency unit who is kicking in the door of someone's home in Iraq, while exclaiming, ‘Hi, we're from the government; we're here to understand you.'"

I couldn't help thinking as I read various accounts of this new drive in counter-insurgency, what a totally different approach is suggested by the Peace Corps, still at work in over 70 countries of the world, and doing a great deal more to bring "governance down to the people," in areas that include education, health, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment.

Initiatives like "human terrain" unintentionally underline the need to expand the corps, revisit its mission and equip it with the means to transform it into a 21st-century engine for peace.

But to return to the present context, it seems to me that the issue for anthropologists is not whether the military should be better informed about foreign cultures and customs. It obviously should be. The real issue is the level at which anthropology becomes part of the fabric of foreign policy planning and determination.

Just by way of illustrating this point, I checked the index of Fiasco, Thomas E Ricks' famous critique of the devolution of the Iraq war from executive decision to military execution. It contains not a single reference in any form to anthropology or anthropologists.

Scholars like McFate are obviously well-intentioned, but it's unfortunate that at this point, late in the day of this war, people like her should become armed angels riding the shoulders of an uncertain American military.

She has an affinity for the nation in spite of its outrageous extremes. She told the Atlantic Monthly:

I felt a perplexing sense of ease in this harsh, impoverished, chauvinistic, explosively independent land.

I personally would be hard pressed to explain to anyone the differences between Al Qaeda and the Taliban, so the rich amount of detail and history in this book made for challenging reading for me. I also struggle with the syntax of Arab names. Having said that, this book is well worth the effort.

The book is not only an incredible personal adventure story, it also reveals much about the complexity of Afghanistan, its relationship with the treacherous Pakistan, and the clumsy and violent efforts of the United States to try to manage both countries to our own advantage.

Ms. chayes tells a story about the highway to Kabul. She summarizes a vivid description by saying,

It invariably took me two days to recover from the drive to Kabul. For me, it ws a bruising inconvenience. For Kandahar merchants, it was crippling.

The United States, she argues, could have made many friends and opened a major distribution channel for business by improving this highway. In her words, "no program would have had a more positive impact on the Afghan south, and indeed on the country as a whole, than rebuilding that road."  The work was started in a case of too little, too late, she says. Lessons like this are priceless for peace makers and nation builders.

The road story is not the heart of the book. The heart of the book is about the incredible struggle for justice, decency, and safety in that country and the forces that continually work to prevent those achievements. They are powerful indeed, and it is good for us to know what they are.

My rating: An enthusiastic √√√√√ five checks out of five. You don't have to stop at the end of the book. I encourage you to read the other materials about her that are linked to in this report.

 A forty-four minute interview with the author is available on the NPR web site, and a fascinating article about her soap business is published in the December 2007 online version of the Atlantic Monthly.

There are helpful reviews on Amazon, particularly the one by Ronald Scheer.

You can visit her soap company's website, Arghand. She does not sell products direct to consumers, but a list of her retail outlets is available on her web site.

Today, I calling for all mental health professionals across the country to volunteer services to one veteran and his or her family. Make it more than more than one if you can. But if every psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, marriage and family therapist, pastoral counselor and other groups volunteers services for one family, we can make a huge difference.

Being for or against this war is irrelevant here. One thing all Americans can be proud of is that we have learned to cherish and honor our veterans for their service regardless of our opinions of the decisions made by policy makers. In this spirit, I offer my own services to a veteran who needs them. My office is in Lafayette, California (30 minutes from San Francisco). If the veteran you want to refer is paralyzed or unable to drive, I will go to them.

I would love to hear from other psychologists like myself, and from any mental health professional. Help me in the planning and execution of this idea. We can make a difference!

Blessings to you dear visitor on this one and only day of its kind in your life!

  Obama 's planned trip to Israel and the West Bank has raised security concerns to levels not seen since the Illinois senator began his presidential bid.

Coming just weeks after shots were fired at Israel's Tel Aviv airport during a farewell ceremony for France's Sarkozy, from an apparent suicide of a security guard, Obama's trek to the region has become a serious logistical and safety challenge.

"I would prefer if he did not make the trip to Ramallah," a concerned government official explained Thursday night from Washington. "And he must use extreme caution throughout Israel at this time, in my opinion, especially Jerusalem."

A planned foot tour of Jerusalem's Old City has been called off, a senior source reveals.

Senator Obama's exact itinerary is not being made public but campaign officials have announced stops in Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England.

Yet, Obama hasn't been to Iraq since January 2006 and has never visited the "real war" in Afghanistan, so all Big Three anchors will follow their clinically narcissistic and vain Good Shepherd around Europe and the Mideast, drooling, fawning, basking.  I guess that it should be big news that Obama was guilted and cornered into taking this trip... by John McCain of all people!  No mention of that in front of the Savior.  In fact, some in the MSM are blaming the McCain camp for making this a bigger story than it otherwise would have been!  So, McCain controls the media now?  Hmm.

This trip will strain one's objective credulity worse than Greta Van Susteran's hanging out in Aruba for months looking for Natalee Holloway -- what a hard assignment that must have been: very few breaks in the story but lots and lots of sunshine!  It'll be like watching the Big Three have spontaneous orgasms every night on TV, as they swoon over their chosen savior.  Get your V-Chips ready!  Good thing I don't watch those networks.  I honestly don't know anyone under 50 who does watch them more than once a week.  I'll hear what's going on when Brit Hume lets me know. 

What makes this whole affair worse is that Obama's trip to Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan will probably be paid for by the taxpayers since the trip is being billed as a "fact-finding mission."  Belonging to a Union I know what it feels like to have your money going to a campaign of someone you do not like and would never vote for.  I hope people take notice of this:  that, in the words of Rush fill-in Jed Babbin, the MSM has become a very large and very powerful "527" in Obama's favor.

In his book, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq, Michael Scheuer, a gentleman who worked both at the CIA and the Counterterrorism Center, points out that we are harming our military when we demand impossible actions. Our leaders in Washington, Democrats and Republicans alike, politicize an organization that should not be politicized. In a fantastic article, The Nation points out the results of this political tight wire the military must perform in the Middle East, and how even those in the know are being used as sound bytes rather than counsel. Granted, the military should not ever act independently- no government entity should. But the military knows its job and understands war like no other. We demand that all wars be like the Gulf War in the 90s. We want phenomenal force, expedited action and virtually no civilian casualties. This is not what is happening in Iraq or Afghanistan in most people's eyes. Reuters reports today that a battle in Afghanistan led to the killing of possibly an entire family of eight. A tragic waste of life, to say the very least.

War is indeed hell. I agree with former President Jimmy Carter when he states that at times war may be necessary but never just. How is this possible? Because a people has the right to protect themselves from harm, and when that happens, there will be casualties. War is war! We have to accept the fact that when we mobilize individuals with guns, tanks, warships and technology to harm and, yes, kill the enemy, killing is what will happen. It is ridiculous to think that people will not be killed. And yes, I thank the heavens that Americans do not have a taste for blood. But we do have a taste for security and we are fighting an enemy that exists to destroy that security. How can we possibly have no harm?

Pundits point to Vietnam as the example of a military exercise gone wrong. Countless civilians were killed. We forget that the same occurred during World War II. Of course, we won WWII. I am fascinated at our hubris. We can ignore, even forgive the killings of WWII, a war where we could claim victory, but not Vietnam, a war we were forced to flee.

This is why we should demand that any military conflict we engage we should be VERY sure of our mission and our goal. Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have little to none of either of these measures. Americans wouldn't be so polarized if we knew the why so that the military could follow through with the how. If people don't like civilians being killed, which they shouldn't, then lets make very sure that our leaders think before they act, gather people around them they trust and our knowledgeable, and most importantly, take counsel from those they disagree with. Putting people in harms way demands we be rational and honest. Our next president ought to be sure of the necessities of war before tying the hands of those who will fight that war.

Let's see, now.  McCain and others gather their extended entourage, hop aboard a chartered flight, swoop into Iraq or Afghanistan or who knows where we might invade again, spend a few hours on the ground, chat up a few soldiers, hop aboard the luxury liner, and wing their way home.  Why, yes.  That sure sounds just like an important thing to do--important if one thinks that photo opportunities fool Americans into translating those photo ops as anything else.

Come on, now.  Does that sort of thing do anything more than impress the lowest intellectual denominator in society?  Must one visit a war zone to know that our leaders led us their through lies and deception?  Must someone waste taxpayer or contributor dollars in order to say, "See?  I'm here.  Now I can critique it!" Balderdash!

Unfortunately, most of us want more show than we want substance.  John McCain is baiting Obama into showing the pretty and disregarding the important.  Obama probably can't withstand the challenge because of America's lowest intellectual denominator, because they vote, too.  Still, we can hope that even as Obama travels to all the places that we're attempting to force our hegemony that he will remind all of us that one mustn't see bad policy first-hand to know bad policy.

Perjalanannya dimulai dari Stasiun Kereta Api Beijing, China pada tanggal 31 Juli 2005. Dari negeri tirai bambu itu ia naik ke atap dunia Tibet, menyeberang ke Nepal, turun ke India, kemudian menembus ke barat, masuk ke Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, berputar lagi ke Asia Tengah, diawali Tajikistan, kemudian Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, hingga Uzbekistan dan Turkmenistan. Ribuan kilometer yang dilaluinya ia tempuh dengan berbaga macam alat transportasi seperti kereta api, bus, truk, hingga kuda, keledai dan tak ketinggalan jalan kaki.

Agus adalah seorang petualang, pengembara, musafir, seorang backpaker sejati. Bagi banyak orang, aktivitas travelling murah sebagai seorang bakckpaker adalah hobi. Bagi Agus menjadi backpaker adalah hidupnya, napasnya setiap hari.

Ia memulai perjalanannya dengan bekal 2.000 dolar AS hasil tabungannya selama kuliah di Universitas Tshinghua, Beijing, Cina. Ketika duitnya habis ia akan menetap sementara di suatu tempat, bekerja serabutan guna mengumpulkan duit lagi dan kembali melanjutkan perjalanan.

Tulisan-tulisannya di Kompas menarik perhatian banyak pembaca dan menginspirasi mereka untuk mengikuti jejaknya keliling dunia. Sejak tanggal 6 Maret - 18 Juli, tercatat 96 tulisan petualangannya, ditambah profil dan catatan redaksi. Saia tertarik untuk mengkliping dan membentuknya dalam sebuah file PDF dengan menyertakan sumber, gambar dan tanpa edit apapun kecuali tata letak. Pembaca dapat menikmatinya dalam lima edisi, yaitu perjalanan Agus di Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, dan Turkmenistan.

Disclaimer: Ebook ini dibuat tidak untuk tujuan komersial dan tidak untuk merugikan pemegang hak cipta. Bila pemegang hak cipta merasa keberatan, kami dapat mempertimbangkan untuk menghapusnya. Terima kasih.

Kunjungi pula situs Agustinus Wibowo disini.

So now there is a growing murmur in the media about the renewed violence in Afghanistan and growing rumblings that the improved situation in Iraq means we should redeploy our troops to Afghanistan. I support that ideal, with one caveat: we have to go in to Pakistan.

It is my opinion that when any country is either unable or unwilling to control vast portions of its territory and that territory is used as a base for deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers, we have both the right and the obligation to ignore international borders and get the job done. Pakistan has been a lukewarm ally at best in the war on terrorism. Many U.S. and allied soldiers have died because of Pakistan's reluctance to control their own territory. This is unacceptable.

We have more than enough clout with Pakistan's government. Yes, most of that clout comes at the point of a sword, but that is what war is about. We must use any threats necessary to force Pakistan to allow U.S. troops to operate in their country. And this we only do as a way of helping Musharraf save face and stay in power. If he doesn't agree, we simply ignore him and send in our troops in the way we should have done in 2001.

I hope our leadership is willing to make the tough choice to open a second front in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater. It seems to be the only way we can win this portion of the war. It has to be done, it must be done.

Neither candidate has thus far shown any understanding of the social, cultural and geopolitical realities of the battlefields of Afghanistan and its neighbours. Neither seems to acknowledge that their foe — and ours — is not terrorism but what causes it: poverty, crime, inequality, oppression, mismanagement, greed, corruption, and hunger.

As it turns out, there's a reason for this. According to the New York Times, Obama's foreign policy team, "a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy", is run not by fresh hands but by the same people who conducted Bill Clinton's lacklustre foreign policy. Instead of taking potshots at Obama's voting record and national security credentials, the McCain campaign should ask this: does the junior senator seriously think that Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher are the right people to have around when trying to tackle the enormous and complicated challenges the U.S. now faces?

Im Herbst stimmen die Abgeordneten im Deutschen Bundestag über die Verlängerung und Aufstockung des Bundeswehreinsatzes in Afghanistan ab. DIE LINKE lehnt die Verlängerung und Erweiterung der Bundeswehrmandate in Afghanistan ab und fordert den sofortigen und unbedingten Abzug der deutschen Streitkräfte aus Afghanistan. DIE LINKE unterstützt die Petition der Friedensbewegung "Dem Frieden eine Chance – Truppen raus aus Afghanistan" und die geplante Demonstration anlässlich der Mandatsverlängerung am 20. September 2008.

Demonstration in Stuttgart:

• Auftakt: 12 Uhr in der Lautenschlagerstraße (gegenüber Hauptbahnhof)
• Demozug durch die Stuttgarter Innenstadt
• ca. 13.30 Uhr Abschlusskundgebung auf dem Schloßplatz

Weitere Informationen:

• Unterschriftenaktion
• Website zur Demonstration am 20. September 2008 - Aufruf
• LINKE Aktionswebsite: Bundeswehr raus aus Afghanistan

The military has created a wall of silence around its frequent resort to barbaric practices, including torture, and goes out of its way to avoid legal scrutiny.

Five photographs together break a silence. The first is of a former Gurkha regimental sergeant major, Tul Bahadur Pun, aged 87. He sits in a wheelchair outside 10 Downing Street. He holds a board full of medals, including the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, which he won serving in the British army.

He has been refused entry to Britain and treatment for a serious heart ailment by the National Health Service: outrages rescinded only after a public campaign. On 25 June, he came to Downing Street to hand his Victoria Cross back to the Prime Minister, but Gordon Brown refused to see him.

The second photograph is of a 12-year-old boy, one of three children. They are Kuchis, nomads of Afghanistan. They have been hit by Nato bombs, American or British, and nurses are trying to peel away their roasted skin with tweezers. On the night of 10 June, NATO planes struck again, killing at least 30 civilians in a single village: children, women, schoolteachers, students. On 4 July, another 22 civilians died like this. All, including the roasted children, are described as “militants” or “suspected Taliban”. The Defence Secretary, Des Browne, says the invasion of Afghanistan is “the noble cause of the 21st century”.

The third photograph is of a computer-generated aircraft carrier not yet built, one of two of the biggest ships ever ordered for the Royal Navy. The £4bn contract is shared by BAE Systems, whose sale of 72 fighter jets to the corrupt tyranny in Saudi Arabia has made Britain the biggest arms merchant on earth, selling mostly to oppressive regimes in poor countries. At a time of economic crisis, Browne describes the carriers as “an affordable expenditure”.

The fourth photograph is of a young British soldier, Gavin Williams, who was “beasted” to death by three non-commissioned officers. This “informal summary punishment”, which sent his body temperature to more than 41 degrees, was intended to “humiliate, push to the limit and hurt”. The torture was described in court as a fact of army life.

The final photograph is of an Iraqi man, Baha Mousa, who was tortured to death by British soldiers. Taken during his post-mortem, it shows some of the 93 horrific injuries he suffered at the hands of men of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment who beat and abused him for 36 hours, including double-hooding him with hessian sacks in stifling heat. He was a hotel receptionist. Although his murder took place almost five years ago, it was only in May this year that the Ministry of Defence responded to the courts and agreed to an independent inquiry. A judge has described this as a “wall of silence.”

A court martial convicted just one soldier of Mousa’s “inhumane treatment”, and he has since been quietly released. Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, representing the families of Iraqis who have died in British custody, says the evidence is clear — abuse and torture by the British army is systemic.

Shiner and his colleagues have witness statements and corroborations of prima facie crimes of an especially atrocious kind usually associated with the Americans. “The more cases I am dealing with, the worse it gets,” he says. These include an “incident” near the town of Majar al-Kabir in 2004, when British soldiers executed as many as 20 Iraqi prisoners after mutilating them. The latest is that of a 14-year-old boy who was forced to simulate anal and oral sex over a prolonged period.

“At the heart of the US and UK project,” says Shiner, “is a desire to avoid accountability for what they want to do. Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary renditions are part of the same struggle to avoid accountability through jurisdiction.” British soldiers, he says, use the same torture techniques as the Americans and deny that the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on Torture apply to them. And British torture is “commonplace”: so much so, that “the routine nature of this ill-treatment helps to explain why, despite the abuse of the soldiers and cries of the detainees being clearly audible, nobody, particularly in authority, took any notice.”

Unbelievably, says Shiner, the Ministry of Defence under Tony Blair decided that the 1972 Heath government’s ban on certain torture techniques applied only in the UK and Northern Ireland. Consequently, “many Iraqis were killed and tortured in UK detention facilities”. Shiner is working on 46 horrific cases.

A wall of silence has always surrounded the British military, its arcane rituals, rites and practices and, above all, its contempt for the law and natural justice in its various imperial pursuits. For 80 years, the Ministry of Defence and compliant ministers refused to countenance posthumous pardons for terrified boys shot at dawn during the slaughter of the First World War. British soldiers used as guinea pigs during the testing of nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean were abandoned, as were many others who suffered the toxic effects of the 1991 Gulf War. The treatment of Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun is typical. Having been sent back to Nepal, many of these “soldiers of the Queen” have no pension, are deeply impoverished and are refused residence or medical help in the country for which they fought and for which 43,000 of them have died or been injured. The Gurkhas have won no fewer than 26 Victoria Crosses, yet Browne’s “affordable expenditure” excludes them.

An even more imposing wall of silence ensures that the British public remains largely unaware of the industrial killing of civilians in Britain’s modern colonial wars. In his landmark work Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, the historian Mark Curtis uses three main categories: direct responsibility, indirect responsibility and active inaction.

“The overall figure [since 1945] is between 8.6 and 13.5 million,” Curtis writes, “Of these, Britain bears direct responsibility for between four million and six million deaths. This figure is, if anything, likely to be an underestimate. Not all British interventions have been included, because of lack of data.” Since his study was published, the Iraq death toll has reached, by reliable measure, a million men, women and children.

The spiraling rise of militarism within Britain is rarely acknowledged, even by those alerting the public to legislation attacking basic civil liberties, such as the recently drafted Data Communications Bill, which will give the government powers to keep records of all electronic communication. Like the plans for identity cards, this is in keeping what the Americans call “the national security state”, which seeks the control of domestic dissent while pursuing military aggression abroad. The £4bn aircraft carriers are to have a “global role”. For global read colonial. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office follow Washington’s line almost to the letter, as in Browne’s preposterous description of Afghanistan as a noble cause. In reality, the US-inspired NATO invasion has had two effects: the killing and dispossession of large numbers of Afghans, and the return of the opium trade, which the Taliban had banned. According to Hamid Karzai, the west’s puppet leader, Britain’s role in Helmand Province has led directly to the return of the Taliban.

The militarizing of how the British state perceives and treats other societies is vividly demonstrated in Africa, where ten out of 14 of the most impoverished and conflict-ridden countries are seduced into buying British arms and military equipment with “soft loans.” Like the British royal family, the British Prime Minister simply follows the money. Having ritually condemned a despot in Zimbabwe for “human rights abuses” — in truth, for no longer serving as the west’s business agent - and having obeyed the latest US dictum on Iran and Iraq, Brown set off recently for Saudi Arabia, exporter of Wahhabi fundamentalism and wheeler of fabulous arms deals.

To complement this, the Brown government is spending £11bn of taxpayers’ money on a huge, privatized military academy in Wales, which will train foreign soldiers and mercenaries recruited to the bogus “war on terror”. With arms companies such as Raytheon profiting, this will become Britain’s “School of the Americas,” a center for counter-insurgency (terrorist) training and the design of future colonial adventures.

It has had almost no publicity.

Of course, the image of militarist Britain clashes with a benign national regard formed, wrote Tolstoy, “from infancy, by every possible means — class books, church services, sermons, speeches, books, papers, songs, poetry, monuments [leading to] people stupefied in the one direction”. Much has changed since he wrote that. Or has it? The shabby, destructive colonial war in Afghanistan is now reported almost entirely through the British army, with squaddies always doing their Kipling best, and with the Afghan resistance routinely dismissed as “outsiders” and “invaders”. Pictures of nomadic boys with NATO-roasted skin almost never appear in the press or on television, nor the after-effects of British thermobaric weapons, or “vacuum bombs,” designed to suck the air out of human lungs. Instead, whole pages mourn a British military intelligence agent in Afghanis tan, because she happens to have been a 26-year-old woman, the first to die in active service since the 2001 invasion.

Baha Mousa, tortured to death by British soldiers, was also 26 years old. But he was different. His father, Daoud, says that the way the Ministry of Defence has behaved over his son’s death convinces him that the British government regards the lives of others as “cheap”. And he is right.

The relative calm is apparent in Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood, patrolled by troops stationed at Maverick from the 1st Squadron, 75th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.

Instead of facing gunfire and roadside bombs, the soldiers' armored Humvees are chased by waving children as they weave through streets crowded with pedestrians out to shop or just to stroll.

Some of Maverick's troops saw combat a few months ago when they helped the Iraqi army take over the Ghazaliyah office of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in a battle complete with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades.

But their days in Ghazaliyah have mostly been filled with routine patrols. The soldiers' job is to serve as a critical presence that helps keep violence down in the mixed Sunni and Shiite neighborhood.

"Ninety-five percent of the time it is perfectly quiet in Ghazaliyah now," said 1st Lt. Shane Smith, who leads one of the three platoons at Maverick.

Quiet can mean boredom, as Gebhart and a colleague turn in another four-hour shift in one of Maverick's guard towers, looking over a landscape of two-story concrete buildings and green fields dotted with a few cows and goats.

To while away the time, the young soldier from Omaha, Nebraska, talks of his brother, who is fighting the Taliban in the mountains outside Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan.

"He spends 20 days at a time camped out in the mountains, and the Taliban come engage them in serious firefights," said Gebhart. "At least it sounds exciting."

Whodathunkit?

In a memorandum of understanding that was signed today, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation agreed to work cooperatively to support social-science research on topics of interest to the Pentagon.

As widely expected, the NSF has agreed to help review proposals submitted to the Pentagon's Minerva Research Initiative, a fledgling program that will offer grants to university-based scholars to study the Chinese military, the records of Saddam Hussein's regime, and other specific topics.

The two agencies will soon - possibly within a week - release a joint request for Minerva-related proposals. Those proposals will be judged by the NSF's typical merit-review panels, though both the science foundation and the Pentagon will have the right to nominate experts to serve on those panels. (The Pentagon is also accepting Minerva proposals through a separate pathway known as a broad agency announcement. Proposals that are submitted via this second track will reviewed through the Defense Department's usual processes, not by NSF panels.)

•••••••

American Anthropological Association, Public Affairs Blog:
Minerva & NSF
July 10, 2008

The Pentagon has launched a program called the Minerva Research Initiative that would fund university-based social scientists to study topics of interest to the Department of Defense, such as the Chinese military and religious fundamentalism. The AAA expressed its concerns about Minerva in a letter to Washington, and urged the Pentagon to coordinate with the National Science Foundation and other agencies that have extensive experience in peer-review and are familiar with the ethical standards and concerns of our discipline. The Pentagon was apparently listening. Pentagon officials signed an agreement with NSF last week enabling the two agencies to collaborate on approving Minerva-funded social science research. Still, there are concerns within the discipline that research will only be used when it supports the Pentagon's agenda.

•••••••

American Anthropological Association: Conference Call

Click here for more details from Culture Matters.

•••••••

David H. Price
Inside the Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness
Counterpunch, June 24, 2008

Minerva doesn't appear to be funding projects designed to tell Defense why the US shouldn't invade and occupy other countries; its programs are more concerned with the nuts and bolts of counterinsurgency, and answering specific questions related to the occupation and streamlining the problems of empire. This sort of Soviet model of directed social science funding will make America's critical perspective more narrow precisely at an historical moment when we need a new breadth of knowledge and perspective.

•••••••

Kintisch, Eli. (2008). Defense, NSF team up on national security research. Science, 11 July, 321 (5886): 186-187.

The program will have two arms of equal size. One will be managed by Defense officials and the other by NSF, with some Pentagon input on the selection of reviewers. "There are several topics of mutual interest" within the Minerva areas, says David Lightfoot, who heads NSF's social sciences directorate. "Securing the national defense was part of our charter in 1950," he adds.

•••••••

Nature. (2008). Editorial: A social contract — Efforts to inform U.S. policy with insights from the social sciences could be a win-win approach. Nature, 10 July, 454: 138.

Social scientists, meanwhile, should embrace the opportunities that the AAA pointed out last November in a report on engagement with the military. These include studying military and intelligence organizations from the inside and educating the military about other cultures and societies. Outrage at the current administration should not derail efforts that have potential to be a win-win for all concerned - including, most especially, the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and regions of future conflict.

•••••••

Steven R. Corman
Minerva Followup
COMOPS Journal, July 11, 2008

I think what's really going on here is that that the anthropologists, who have an NSF division of their own, want to be sure they have control over the money (isn't that a conflict of interest?). Also many of their members are squeamish about taking money from the Big Bad DoD, and somehow the same money will be purified if it is routed through NSF.

In a press release yesterday, the AAA bragged that "the Pentagon was apparently listening" because they signed a Memo of Understanding (MOU) with the NSF. Well, not exactly. The MOU is about future NSF programs. The original Minerva program is going ahead as planned, with DoD organizing the reviews.

•••••••

Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg
Pentagon Funds National Security Research
American Forces Press Service, July 14, 2008

The Defense Department is continuing its efforts to finance university research on national security-related issues, a senior Pentagon official said.

The Minerva Initiative is an effort to build the Defense Department's capacity to reach out to the academic community for research in social science topics of interest to national security both present and future, Thomas Mahnken, deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning, said in a teleconference with online journalists and bloggers July 10.

Mahnken said the project has multiple strands, such as an agreement with the National Science Foundation and "broad agency announcements that seek research proposals in specific areas of study.

A memorandum of understanding recently signed between DoD and that the National Science Foundation allows researchers to apply for grants to study subjects that may be of interest to U.S. national security. Officials anticipate the agreement will fund work leading to new knowledge about topics such as religious fundamentalism, terrorism and cultural change.

•••••••

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Press Release 08-114
NSF Signs Memorandum of Understanding with Department of Defense for National Security Research

"To secure the national defense was one of the original missions we were given when we were chartered in 1950," said David Lightfoot, assistant director of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic (SBE) Sciences Directorate. "We've always believed that sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and other social scientists, through basic social and behavioral science research, could benefit our national security. In fact, we've always done so through various research projects. The MOU gives us another tool and more resources to do what we've always done well."

According to the MOU, funding for research projects will be determined on a case-by-case basis. DoD will consider supporting proposals submitted to regular NSF programs managed by SBE. In return, DoD will get the gold standard for the U.S. peer review process ensuring the research meets specific criteria for intellectual merit and broader impact.

Grant proposals will be evaluated by SBE's normal merit-review panels, though Pentagon officials will have some input into who sits on the panels. The research will not be classified and there will be no constraints on the researchers' ability to publish their results.

•••••••

Wow! Another major flip flop by Johnny McTeleprompter! He knows not what he says because he knows not (and can't remember!) what he says.

Johnny & Joe Lieberman appeared on Meet the Press back in 2001 (around the time the anthrax attacks were happening) and gave a very intriguing interview. Here's what Johnny 'McCain' McTeleprompter said that day on Meet the Press about Afghanistan (emphasis mine):

RUSSERT: Would you have any problem expanding President Bush's orders to the CIA to go after Osama bin Laden to include Saddam Hussein?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I leave that to the president. But as a matter of principle and morality, of course not.

RUSSERT: Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: I think Joe's right.

And I would just like to add one additional point. I believe that we will succeed. We will endure in Afghanistan. We will take out bin Laden, and we will take out the Taliban. And then we've got a major challenge of a stable government, but...

RUSSERT: How long will that take?

MCCAIN: I think the longer we give the impression that we're there for, the shorter it'll be. Because, as you quoted from articles earlier, they think they can outlast us. I don't think they can this time.

RUSSERT: Do you believe the American people will continue to stay with that campaign?

MCCAIN: Absolutely, and I think the president is doing a great job in leading America and making us aware of the challenge we face.

But I think the real crunch is going to come after Afghanistan is settled and then we have to address the other countries, including Iraq. That's where the coalition may not be so strong. That's where people like the Saudis and the French and many others may have real reservations.

Seems to me ole Johnny McTeleprompter had a clear head back then. He realized Afghanistan had to be settled (kill Osama, stabilize Afghanistan) before even thinking of going after Saddam Hussein in Iraq. What happened? Oh that's right. Mr. Flip Flop signed on to illegally invading Iraq and all the reasons given to invade Iraq were lies coming out of the White House. Ole Johnny trusted the liars...and still does.

What else is so interesting about this interview is both McTeleprompter & Lieberman agree that the Saudis are the protecters of the Muslims and pose a threat to our country. Geeeeeee....ya think? What's going on right now? Who is benefiting from 9/11 along with the Bush Regime? Oh that's right....the Saudi royals are! We should have sent the CIA in there to take out the royals, but as we all know, George Bush, his family, and friends are all good buddies with the Saudi royals! Spit.

(We should have stayed focused on Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as far as I'm concerned.)

McTeleprompter & Lieberman's discussion on the anthrax attacks was also interesting. I personally believe the weapons-grade anthrax that was sent out to DEMOCRATS & LIBERALS of America was sent from the military under George Bush. Yep, I believe our own government attacked our citizens to give the impression to the knuckleheads in America that the "terrorists" are attacking us because of the dems & libs of our country. Just a bunch of homegrown fear! Spit. Assholes. Anyways...

Here's Johnny & Joe kind of ducking around the issue of where the anthrax is coming from (again, emphasis mine):

Senator McCain, is our government leveling with us as to the potency and the origination of the anthrax that is sweeping our country?

MCCAIN: I know that Tom Ridge is one of the most honest men that I have ever known, and I believe that he's telling the truth as he knows it. He would never deceive the American people.

You're going to have a guest on here pretty soon that's going to be much more knowledgeable than I am. But there is one point here, and I don't know exactly what grade it is, but it is 100 percent treatable. Everyone agrees on that. It is 100 percent treatable. And I'm afraid that a lot of Americans are not really aware of that.

Recently, in Rio, I believe, an envelope was received, which gives me the idea that perhaps this is an international organization and not one within the United States of America.

RUSSERT: Shouldn't we be told exactly how serious this threat is and where it's coming from?

LIEBERMAN: Yes, absolutely, Tim. There was some confusion this week, and it wasn't just you who are being given confusing or inconsistent information. It was members of Congress.

I think there's just a multiplicity of voices here. And the most important thing that can happen quickly is that we centralize who's speaking, and I think it ought to be Tom Ridge. There have been too many voices. Tom Ridge has been appointed to head the Office of Homeland Security. As you know, I think he ought to be given more powers than the president has given him yet, so he can tell people exactly what to do and not have to argue with bureaucrats. But...

RUSSERT: Are you being told what kind of quality it is?

LIEBERMAN: I've gotten mixed reports, but I'll tell you what I've concluded. And this is consistent with every report I've been given. The stuff that is being sent out, most of it, including the stuff that went to Tom Daschle's office, is significantly refined anthrax. In other words, when we hear the stories that there is anthrax in labs all over this country, that's basically bacteria in a lab tube. Dr. Fauci can tell you more detail on that.

To take it from that, to make it into the stuff that's being sent in envelopes, that requires a real effort and, frankly, more than a couple of guys in somebody's kitchen stirring things up.

So it says to me that there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program.

And it's, you know, thank God, as John says, this is treatable. It takes a lot of it to be infected. And we've controlled it. But it should remind all of us that these opponents of ours are serious and they've got some stuff behind them.

RUSSERT: In fact, Senator McCain, Dick Cheney at the Al Smith Dinner in New York said there will be more attacks, and we should be aware that we will probably suffer more casualties here at home than our troops overseas.

Yep. Dick Cheney said there would be more attacks and Johnny & Joey didn't pick up on that! Cheney had his neocons in the military send out the anthrax. The truth was right there in front of Johnny & Joey and neither one of them got it. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this because both of them are jackboot lickers to the Bush Regime now. They believe the liars while the rest of our country continues not to.

Why am I scared of Joe Lieberman & Johnny McTeleprompter? Is it because they're warmongering liars as George Bush & Dick Cheney are? Yep.

(hat tip to Clif for sending me the link to this 2001 interview) ;-)

CA-News reported referring to its sources inside Tajikistan's power structures that units of the Taliban have crossed the border of Tajikistan and attacked the border guard outpost. The Mujahideen have entered a Tajik village and have been retaining the village under their power for over several hours.

It was also reported that the village is located in Shuroabad District of Hatlon Province.

According to the report, 1 Tajik soldier from the so-called "State Committee of National Security of Tajikistan" was killed and several wounded. No casualties among the Taliban have been reported.

This demonstrative attack by the Taliban on a base of the border guards in neighboring Tajikistan has occurred right in the middle of the increase of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan.

Western media reported that US troops have left the territories in North Eastern Afghanistan, where 24 US servicemen were killed and wounded three days ago.

Even though the US has been trying to play down the importance of the retreat, the commentators point out at the obvious successes of the Taliban, under whose attacks the US troops withdrew from the region.

Meanwhile the Taliban has liberated four districts in the Province of Kunar. According to Jalalluddin Jalal, an official of Karzai regime, the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have total control over the districts of Bargi Matal, Ghaziabad, Langham and Chappa Dara.

According to Karzai regime, the Taliban launched their attacks on July 8. Local Karzai formations were unable to oppose them. They reported to Kabul about Taliban attacks and requested backup, yet they did not receive any response, as puppet officials said. Karzai gangs had to flee.

In the neighboring province of Nuristan clashes between Karzai gangs and the Taliban have been going on for five days. According to the reports, Mum District has also been liberated by the Mujahideen.

Late at night on July 13 to early morning of July 14 the Taliban Mujahideen attacked the US military base in Nuristan Province, northeastern Afghanistan, using "surface-to-surface" rockets. As a result, according to the official reports by the spokesmen of NATO occupation command, nine American soldiers were killed and another fifteen were wounded.

Earlier, in one of the central provinces of Afghanistan a powerful explosion occurred killing dozens of people.

Situation in the Province of Helmand is getting more and more aggravated. According to Karzai puppets, well-armed Taliban fighters have been arriving to the area recently.

Karzai officials are concerned that the Taliban are virtually in the immediate vicinity of the Afghan capital. Kabul might be surrounded, as NATO officials as well as Afghan puppets have to admit.

According to the reports, groups of Mujahideen have been moving around unimpeded near Kabul as well as in the provinces of Loghar, Maidan Wardak, Kapisa, Parwan and Laghman.

Local commentators indicate that the ranks of the Mujahideen have been continuously increasing. In eastern provinces of the country two new formations have already appeared and joined the Taliban: "Jamaatul-dawa-al-suna" and "Ahadis". The groups consist mainly of Uzbeks and Arabs. Karzai puppets believe that the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yuldashev is the one behind these groups.

Kavkaz Center

“Lasciatemi proseguire con qualcosa che potete trovare completamente sorprendente, soprattutto provenendo da me: voi che siete diplomatici, giornalisti, parlamentari, giuristi internazionali e uomini d'affari di domani, spero che riterrete che la vostra prima responsabilità, oltre a costruire una Gran Bretagna e una NATO le più solide possibili, consista nel rafforzare e costruire le capacità dell'Unione Europea. Troverete strano ed anche un po' strabico che sia l'ambasciatore americano alla NATO a tenere questo discorso davanti voi e a preconizzare, per i dirigenti britannici ed internazionali di domani, la costruzione di un'UE più forte. Perché dunque faccio un tale discorso?
Se noi abbiamo appreso una cosa dall'11 settembre 2001, o anche, in questo caso, da sessanta o cento anni a questa parte, è che gli Stati Uniti ed il Regno Unito non hanno soltanto bisogno uno dell'altro, ma hanno bisogno di un'Europa forte. Negli Stati Uniti, abbiamo bisogno di un'Europa che sia il più possibile unita, pronta a fare tutta la sua parte per difendere la nostra sicurezza comune e promuovere i nostri valori condivisi. Ed i britannici, come tutti gli europei, hanno bisogno di un'America che sia impegnata, che consulti l'Europa e che cooperi con essa allo scopo di trovare soluzioni comuni a sfide comuni (...).
Oggi, le sfide che dobbiamo superare insieme vanno dal terrorismo, dall'estremismo violento e dalle armi di distruzione di massa fino alla necessità di ridurre la nostra dipendenza verso l'energia fossile, reagire alla povertà, alle malattie ed alla fame che toccano ancora troppa gente nel mondo. Insieme, dobbiamo ricomporre i rapporti con il Cremlino che ha fermamente rafforzato il suo potere statale, che si è ritirato dal Trattato sulle armi convenzionali in Europa e che minaccia di puntare i suoi missili contro i suoi vicini, anche se lavoriamo insieme alla Russia sull'Iran, la Corea del Nord e su altri interessi comuni di primaria importanza. Dobbiamo mantenere verso l'Iran la giusta proporzione di diplomazia, di aperture politiche ed economiche, e di pressione perché ricominci a cooperare con il Consiglio di Sicurezza, affinché abbandoni ogni idea terroristica e dia al suo popolo il futuro che esso merita. E dobbiamo incoraggiare la Cina ad utilizzare la sua crescente potenza in direzione della stabilità e della pace, presso i suoi vicini o negli affari del mondo. In breve, viviamo in un mondo complicato e pericoloso che richiede da parte di quelli che hanno la possibilità di vivere in società libere di riunire le loro forze per proteggere ciò che abbiamo e per consolidare ed allargare la Comunità democratica.
(…)
Quando noi, gli Stati Uniti, cerchiamo nel mondo i partner che possono rispondere a queste sfide, guardiamo certamente ai nostri alleati dell'Asia e alle altre potenti democrazie a sud ed a est; ma spesso, ci arrestiamo alla sola UE. Noi consulteremo sempre Londra per prima, come le altre capitali, ma sempre più spesso ci volteremo anche verso le istituzioni europee. Con quindici missioni su tre continenti, l'UE ha provato la sua capacità di costituire un insieme più grande della somma delle sue parti. Oggi, l'UE fornisce aiuti allo sviluppo, ai diritti umani, ai programmi anticorruzione, agli istruttori di polizia, alle facoltà d'inquadramento e, più importante, alla capacità di riunire tutte queste cose nella proporzione giusta per far fronte al problema della fase.
La Gran Bretagna è stata nazione pilota per la costruzione di queste capacità nell'UE ed esse sono proficue: a prova di ciò, la missione civile-militare dell'UE in Bosnia, le missioni di polizia a Timor Est ed a Rafah, e gli sforzi di mantenimento della pace in Ciad. Sosteniamo la direzione europea in ciascuno di questi casi. Ma mentre la capacità europea di condurre azioni comuni in materia di potenza "morbida" (soft power) è aumentata, il nostro impegno transatlantico in materia di potenza “forte” (hard power) è diminuito. (...) già, in Ciad, le nazioni europee che partecipano alla missione scoprono che anche per organizzare un'operazione modesta di sostegno della pace, occorrono elicotteri di manovra, aerei da trasporto a lungo raggio d'azione; mezzi sofisticati di informazioni, di sorveglianza e di riconoscimento; mezzi di comunicazione moderni ed interoperabili. Tutto l'aiuto allo sviluppo del mondo, tutto il sostegno alla buona gestione e tutti gli addestramenti di polizia del mondo non servono a nulla se inizialmente non potete fornire la sicurezza alle persone che cercate di aiutare.
(…)
L'organizzazione che servo, la NATO, trae gli stessi insegnamenti in Afghanistan. È per questo che sono a Londra oggi per dire che gli Stati Uniti, che il Regno Unito, che la NATO ed il mondo democratico hanno bisogno di una capacità di difesa europea più forte e più potente. Una Politica Europea di Sicurezza e di Difesa (PESD) che usa soltanto il soft power non basta. Ciò impone che la Gran Bretagna utilizzi con determinazione la sua direzione in Europa perché le spese europee di difesa aumentino nuovamente: occorre migliorare i mezzi militari europei collocati in settori trascurati come quelli degli elicotteri, i droni, le forze speciali; disporre di comunicazioni interoperabili e di soldati addestrati alla lotta antiribellione. È nostro interesse comune perché gli americani ed i britannici non possono continuare a portare tale parte della responsabilità globale senza ulteriore aiuto dei nostri alleati ed amici. (...) questo ci riporta alla mia idea prima: abbiamo bisogno di un'UE più forte, abbiamo bisogno di una NATO più forte, e se l'Afghanistan ci ha fatto apprendere una cosa, è che abbiamo bisogno di relazioni più prossime e affidabili tra loro. Andr