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 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 | January 28, 2010
In a recently released article in prospect magazine, Edward Luttwak argues that the US should adopt a “Byzantine” strategy in dealing with the Taliban. His suggestion is simple
With Afghanistan, the west faces a simple strategic calculus: too costly to stay in, too risky to leave. A Byzantine response would be, first to withdraw the west’s [...]
Marc | January 25, 2010
My friend and fellow SWC denizen Mark Safranski (aka Zenpundit) has an excellent post today entitled The post-COIN Era is Here. It is, IMHO, an excellent post on the (supposed) “COINdinista vs. Big War” debate; a “debate” that exists more in the minds of the policy crowd that the actual debaters. Mark makes some really [...]
Marc | January 24, 2010
A new briefing on how the Human Terrain System has surfaced in a story by John Stanton over at Cryptome (thanks for sending me the note, John!). As any of my students know, I dislike large powerpoint presentations and can spend hours talking about a single slide. This presentation, at 133 slides, is, IMO, somewhat [...]
Marc | January 15, 2010
A very interesting discussion is starting to heat up over at the Small Wars Council over a paper written by Matt Lauder called Religion and Resistance: Examining the Role of Religion in Irregular Warfare (March 2009, DRDC Toronto TN 2009-049; NB: originally posted by milNews.ca over at army.ca forums). I expect the discussion to expand [...]
Marc | January 10, 2010
NPR just carried a nice story about Dr. Paula Holmes-Eber on teaching culture at the Marine Corps University (hat tip to Kerry Fosher who sent out the link over MilAnthNet). I’ve had several chances to talk with Paula about her teaching there, and I have been quite impressed with both what they are teaching and [...]
Marc | November 27, 2009
Max Forte has just produced another posting on the historical relation of Anthropology and Science entitled The Social Production of Science and Anthropology as Knowledge for Domination. Don’t let the title put you off, it is well worth reading and, having studied the period under question myself, I can also say that it is, in [...]
john on Some more (!) HTS news…
Marc on 
Johnny on Johnny on Marc on