Comments on: Time Line and FAQ for the Human Terrain System and Responses by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and the American Anthropological Association http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/ Turning and turning in the widening gyre | The falcon cannot hear the falconer | Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold | Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world | The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere | The ceremony of innocence is drowned | The best lack all conviction, while the worst | Are full of passionate intensity. -- W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming Sat, 03 Sep 2011 17:31:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Archive Fever | Blog | Academia, Anthropology, and HTS: Two Recent Posts Worth Reading http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-13891 Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:20:51 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-13891 [...] read through this post over at Savage Minds. Be sure to read the comments as well. Then, go read this post over at Zero Anthropology. What is HTS? How should anthropologists deal with the ethical and political issues that arise with [...]

]]> By: Maximilian Forte http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10967 Sat, 29 May 2010 22:35:26 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10967 I see what happened now…I read the comments in the editor’s dashboard, where they are one stream…rather than in the flow on the blog where it is clearer who is referring to what. Sorry, the mistake was mine.

]]> By: Marc Tyrrell http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10966 Sat, 29 May 2010 22:25:09 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10966 Quite right, Jeremy. Sorry, Max, I should have been clearer and not relied on the implication. On your article, it looks like a good timeline to me, although it would be nice to know what what going on in 2004-5 or so.

]]> By: Jérémy http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10957 Sat, 29 May 2010 18:41:30 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10957 Marc was certainly commenting on the BBC blog post by Adam Curtis. :)

]]> By: Maximilian Forte http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10951 Sat, 29 May 2010 16:26:14 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10951 Marc, on which article did you intend to comment? Boas is not mentioned anywhere in this one, nor are strategic hamlets. I don’t argue Boas was a founder of anthropology, but a founder of a discipline, which means it has been institutionalized in order to be a discipline. Elsewhere I frequently refer to him as the founder of university anthropology.

I don’t think there is any post where I imply that “strategic hamlets” are new–indeed, there is one where I argue that Catholic mission villages in the early colonials West Indies were just that.

See:
http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/09/iraq-1492/

If and when you get a chance, could you also look at and maybe comment on the latest post here:
http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/29/the-u-s-army%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cother%E2%80%9D-human-terrain-system/

]]> By: Marc Tyrrell http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10949 Sat, 29 May 2010 16:15:17 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10949 Thanks for the link Max. I haven’t gone through the entire thing yet, but there are some rather glaring errors in it, mainly centered around a rather extreme American ethnocentrism. For example, Boaz was not the “founding father of Anthropology”, he was the founding father of professional Anthropology in the US. Another example is implying that the Strategic Hamlet idea was “new”; the villages themselves were, but the program had been used in the 1950′s during the Malaysian Insurgency and the Vietnamese program was modeled on the British one.

]]> By: Maximilian Forte http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10917 Sat, 29 May 2010 00:45:01 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10917 A BBC blog has a giant post on HTS:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/05/kabul_city_number_one_part_9.html

]]> By: Maximilian Forte http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10903 Fri, 28 May 2010 15:22:41 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10903 Oh no, but wait Hugh–HTS does not need to defend itself ethically, because it serves the same role as doctors, nurses, peacekeepers, (and Santa’s merry little elves?)–so we just accept that they do good (and that doctors don’t need to follow any ethical guidelines, it seems). Astonishing that those who offer such characterizations–not the one about elves–complain about knee jerk reactions, when they are buying straight into official propaganda sold by the army in various compliant media.

I think that what I resent most about those on the sidelines who proffer such loving, symbolically rich, characterizations, and complain about the evil critics who are likely to fly planes into the sides of buildings (and yes, this is said, check the Small Minds using Savage Minds)…is that I wish they would for once do some research of their own, like those who have spent years examining HTS, reading thousands of pages of its documents and media PR, and corresponding with dozens of its practitioners, instead of the facile, vapid, and spiteful commentary.

]]> By: Hugh Gusterson http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10898 Fri, 28 May 2010 14:25:50 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10898 Thanks to Max for this encyclopedic retrospective.

A clarification and a comment.

The clarification: September 15, 2007, is the date NCA was publicly launched, via the distribution of its pledge. But Roberto Gonzalez and Greg Feldman are right that this was preceded by a month of intense email debate about the wording of the pledge and the strategy for the launch.

A comment: I don’t understand the argument that anthropologists sould have waited to see how HTS played out in practice before opposing it. The grounds of the critique were (largely) ethical, and it is a well established principle in academia that it is often possible to see ahead of time that a project runs the risk of crossing ethical lines and should therefore not be allowed. This is the whole premise on which IRBs operate. Take the infamous example of Laud Humphrey’s research on gay sex in which he identified gay men by illegal means without their knowledge and interviewed them under false pretenses. I think it would have been possible to take one look at the research program ahead of time and say the project should not go forward. Do the defenders of HTS disagree? Do they think he should have been allowed to do the research on the grounds that you had to be absolutely sure it would be unethical before condemning it?

]]> By: Maximilian Forte http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10891 Fri, 28 May 2010 10:33:19 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10891 Thumbs up to all three of you, not just for the contents of your comments, but because it’s been a while since I saw comments appear in such quick succession, within about an hour of the post going online.

Rebecca, sorry, I didn’t know if I had your permission to name you. Yes, your initial notes were on the right track, and thanks for drawing my attention to the comments at Savage Minds. I have to say, however, that they are going far off course and I cannot summon up the interest to read through all of them. The “Rick” you mentioned is none other than Rick Holden, author of some 30+ comments/diatribes on this blog (which he remembers as 5), one who boasts–and he really shouldn’t–of working in PsyOps. The problem is not Rick Holden, as I said in my email to you, but that his assertions have been routinely made by others before him and elsewhere, and some response was necessary to correct what are either erroneous assumptions or just simply lies.

Donald: thank you, as always. That is all! ;-)

Ishtar: welcome back, a great pleasure to hear from you again. As I mentioned in Twitter, you mentioned something that provoked another lingering thought I had, but did not write in the post above. Indeed, one possible reason why the militarists did not counter-organize, counter-petition, and counter-anything within the AAA, is that they were too busy scrambling for cash, and getting a place at the HTS table. They felt like they had it made: they had the attention of generals, the applause of the automated “Thank you for your service!” crowd, and the support of the media. What more could they want? Even counter-blogging is a very late phenomenon amongst them. There is no cash in activism, and hence there were no pro-HTS activists.

Again, and only when it may be too late, they decided they wanted TOTAL victory. The cash, the pats on the back from military officers, the warm and fuzzy media “reports”, are not enough. THERE CAN BE NO CRITIC ANYWHERE, the acclamation must be universal. Rebecca, I agree with you, and for my part I have never seen a bigger collection of megalomaniacs posing as academics.

]]> By: ishtar http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10890 Fri, 28 May 2010 10:03:06 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10890 Talking about “moral” issues is no longer relevant. Iraq has become the senseless “gold
rush”. Every body, whether an academic or a gangster, wants disparately and blindly a
piece of the bloody cake as if it was the last morsel in the whole universe.

Recently, I have disgustingly, and sarcastically translated and published a Statement of Word – found on the internet – for a US military in Iraq contract of $7 millions for contractors to monitor western and Arab media, control coverage, among other espionage tasks. The contract was asking for “creative experts etc.”

The title of my article was “US army seeks $7 millions mercenaries experienced in orderly
lies”, referring to the Iraqi saying “an orderly lie is better than disorderly truth”. At the end of the article I mentioned that a copy of the contract, for verifying purposes, was available in pdf version to be sent via e-mail.

I did not anticipate the number of Iraqi people who e-mailed me asking for the pdf contract, starting their messages to me “In reference to “the US army seeks mercenaries …” could you send me the contract…”

One of the people e-mailing me was one who said ” I worked as a translator in the espionage section – in the US army- I assure you that, we monitored, aside from the Arabic media, the Iranian media as well. Could you pls. send me the contract.”

I think, people, in this feverish gold rush, do not care if they are called spies or mercenaries as long as they get that morsel before anyone else does.

]]> By: Donald S. http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10889 Fri, 28 May 2010 09:57:29 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10889 Max: they’re licking their wounds, that’s all.
Anyhow, I’ll be honest and admit that the whole progression of things was one big cloud for me. This timeline is an excellent research resource along with your Bibliography and other essays here. If people are smart and can read it objectively, your advice section is what I always hoped to say. Whether you’re an insider or outsider, regardless, that is good advice. Will they learn? Ha!
Bring on ANTHROPOLOGISTS FOR INJUSTICE AND WAR! I’ve got a classic pic of a skull with a Nazi helmet they can use for a logo!

]]> By: Rebecca Strauss http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/05/28/time-line-and-faq-for-the-human-terrain-system-and-responses-by-the-network-of-concerned-anthropologists-and-the-american-anthropological-association/#comment-10887 Fri, 28 May 2010 09:16:40 +0000 http://zeroanthropology.net/?p=9007#comment-10887 Fabulous! This is what I was getting at in my Email to you earlier and I only just saw your response and finished reading this excellent piece. I don’t mind people knowing I am the unnamed colleague above. I gave up on trying to post more on Savage Minds – something is not working.

There was a lot of passive-aggressive commentary on their HTS piece, going from angry defenses of work for the military, then retreating, then saying we shouldn’t judge, then calling critics assholes, know it alls, manipulated fools, ignorant, you name it. The worst of the lot is some apprentice called ‘Rick’ and his father-figure, John McCreery. My “passive-aggressive” line is a joking take on the Dr. Phil in that forum, Bradley, who shares his psycho babble insights when not putting words into other people’s mouths. Truthfully, I have never seen such an incompetent and malformed range of criticisms. They are not really criticisms anyway, more like a mix of pouting, sulking, and seething spite.

Thanks for your great website. I won’t comment more, I like Email for that, but I’ll keep reading your articles even more now than before. Thanks for fact checking my notes.

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