ISSN 2562-9948
Note: Contrary to this site’s policy of not republishing work from other sites, which has been in effect for several years, this exception is a must. It is almost impossible for me to find something with which I agree so thoroughly, and what follows is the rarest of exceptions. It consists of exactly what I […]
Read More…First, let’s start with what should be the starting point, not someone’s preferred interpretation, not a gloss, not a twist, nor an inventive rewording or taking of words out of context–but the actual spoken statement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the 65th session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2010, with particular attention to […]
Read More…EE: Report #1, 03—11 September 2010 Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period, which can usually be glimpsed in raw form at zero.collected. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism […]
Read More…Some Background for Those Not Familiar with Twitter It’s not a few times that Twitter has been accused of engaging in censorship-like practices, or in caving in to governmental and political interests. In the narrow range of subjects which I follow via Twitter, we saw incidences of this concerning with the so-called Twitter Revolution in […]
Read More…I accidentally came across this piece by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, a Norwegian anthropologist, titled “The Paranoid Phase of Globalisation.” It was published in openDemocracy just a little over a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington D.C., and it was interesting to note Eriksen’s predictions at the time: Imagine this […]
Read More…“We can’t have effective strategy without cultural knowledge. If you look at the problems we’ve had — in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Somalia — they’ve been based on flawed assumptions about who those people are.” — Montgomery McFate, senior social scientist, Human Terrain System, quoted in Wired. “In the current climate, there is broad agreement […]
Read More…Note: This is still the most memorable, most prominent, and arguably most important essay on 11 September 2001 written by any American intellectual. It was monumental primarily for being reasonable and fair, two qualities absent from the mainstream, authorized discussions about American imperialism abroad, and at home. The honesty, clarity, and lucidity of this piece […]
Read More…Two radio programs are the focus of this post, and you can listen to both below. Both deal, in very different ways, with the significance of the jury’s verdict in Ward Churchill’s wrongful termination suit against the University of Colorado. The first one is an interview with Ward Churchill that took place earlier this morning […]
Read More……will consist of, first, the closing arguments for both sides of Ward Churchill’s wrongful termination suit, and second, the jury’s verdict. The trial was supposed to have ended yesterday (Friday, 27 March, 2009), on the 15th day of hearings. However, given bad weather, and some overtime, closing arguments are not likely to be heard until […]
Read More…“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., April 1967, Riverside, California. While I am not prepared to predict the outcome of […]
Read More…Still, as you walk past those patches of darkness, a thought almost can’t help but form. For the last seven years, we’ve been waiting for 9/11, The Sequel, to arrive from Afghanistan or some similar place. The media has regularly featured fantasy scenarios in which Islamic terrorists sneak atomic bombs or “dirty bombs” into cities […]
Read More…This year seems to have ended on a very different set of notes than how it began, and the theme might be that “two terrors are better than one.” The first terror, the one we have known since this new imperial rampage poorly/ironically named the “global war of terror” began in 2001, accompanied by neoliberal […]
Read More…In spite of the few articles that raise any kinds of questions or criticisms about the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), such as the latest by John Stanton, and to a lesser extent the article in Nature News by Sharon Weinberger, the past month has seen a few pieces in the media that distinguish […]
Read More…Orange has become America’s new national colour. Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight […]
Read More…
ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 