Marc | February 15, 2012
It is now no longer an open secret that some members of the Canadian Forces (CF) are considering adopting the Human Terrain System for the CF – the information has been released by COL Sharon Hamilton, HTS program manager (see here and here). But does the CF actually need something like the HTS?
Marc | April 13, 2010
For several years, now, I have been complaining that there is very little publicly available on what and how the Human Terrain System (HTS) does while in the field. As a result of this lack, all of us who are following the system have had to deal with various and sundry news reports only. The [...]
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 [...]
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