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 | 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 | 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 [...]
Marc | October 7, 2009
A couple of articles on the HASC assessment of the HTS have appeared. First, Max Forte has collected some of the key background documents relating to John Stantons’ original article. Second, John has a new article out at Counterpunch that is worth a look. Finally, last week I posted a longer look at the review [...]
Marc | September 29, 2009
In the US House Report 111-166 – NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010, there is a very interesting set of requirements regarding a direction to implement an independent assessment of the Human Terrain System (major hat tip to John Stanton for letting me know – his own article on it is available here).
Marc | May 19, 2009
The University of Chicago has posted the audio of presentations at their 2008 conference on Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency (hat tip to Savage Minds). I hope that any recordings (audio, video, whatever) from this years CASCA conference will be available sooner. It is hard to have an open, public discussion about issues when large amounts [...]
Marc | February 24, 2009
One of the more frustrating (for me) so-called “contributions” to the discussion of the Human Terrain System (HTS) is coming out of the Robert Young Pelton article – Afghanistan: The New War for Hearts and Minds – over at Men’s Journal. In particular, it appears as if Pelton – RYP to his friends, many other [...]
Marc | February 21, 2009
Last Thursday (Feb. 19th, 2009), Inside Higher Ed published an article by Dr. Adam Silverman called The Why and How of Human Terrain Teams. This piece, which is well worth reading, is one of the few that has come out by an HTT member describing their actions in the field – it also “enjoys” comments [...]
Marc | February 15, 2009
Well, Wired has picked up on the shift of the HTS from contractors at BAE to temp Gov’t employees. Noah’s article, ‘Human Terrain’ Contractors’ Pay Suddenly Slashed, doesn’t really have much more detail that John Stanton’s original post on the subject, although it does have a few new quotes, one of which echos a concern [...]
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