Marc | February 22, 2010
For the past 4 days, I have been involved in a rather intense discussion over at the Small Wars Council on “What is education?”. One of the truly nice things about the discussion is that it immediately started off at a fairly “high” level – i.e. talking about philosophy and effects of differing systems of [...]
Marc | February 17, 2010
The people in the past used to worship the idols which they used to make with their hands. Nowadays, people worship idols which are more intellectual – like democracy, liberalism, freedom, and so on. So these need to be destroyed as well, and replaced with worshipping and obeying Allah. (source: Anjem Choudary) I rarely write [...]
Marc | February 15, 2010
John Stanton has posted a follow-up piece noting that the kidnapped social scientist, Issa Salomi, was living off base at the time of his abduction. According to John’s sources, this is not unique, and non-approved absences from base are, in some areas, “normal”. While John’s piece gives us more details, a much more damning piece [...]
Marc | February 9, 2010
The February, 2010 issue of Proceedings (USNI) has a wonderful article in it by MG Robert H. Scales entitled Too Busy to Learn. His basic thesis is that the American military, like its British counterparts during the 19th century, are focused too heavily on the “doing” of professional military practice at the expense of actually [...]
Marc | February 7, 2010
John Stanton has just released a story at Cryptome that Issa T. Salome, a 60 year old HTT member, was kidnapped in Iraq by insurgents in January. John argues that this shows that the HTS is failing to find qualified candidates, train them properly and, then, guard them. Personally, I am not so sure about [...]
Marc | February 4, 2010
It’s been a busy, but stimulating, week so far. I just got back from a presentations on Canada’s Evolving Mission in Afghanistan, and I’m preparing to head down to Quantico on Sunday for an interesting workshop next week. This week and, to a lessor degree last week, have been quite synergistic in terms of my [...]
Marc | February 1, 2010
A week ago, I posted about the medium is the message vs. massage and used a couple of YouTube Videos from the Ottawa Back Choir as example. On Saturday, I was over for dinner at an old friend’s house and he showed me one of his favourite YouTube recording artists: Pamplamoose Music. As he showed [...]
Marc on Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 1Marc on Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 1
In Harmonium » Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 3 on Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 2
MM on Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 1
Backwards Observer on Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 2