Encircling Empire: Report #21—Search and Distort Missions

Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period, providing links and representative extracts or key passages from each resource, usually focusing on certain countries/continents and/or processes in each report. The focus of the reports ranges from imperialism discussed in broad strokes, to specific facets of […]

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The Ant Problem and Zoosemiotics

I’ve got ants in my kitchen. Now, one cannot allow ants in one’s kitchen. It’s similar to the idea of “national security”: one has to control and keep safe all that is within one’s purview. The kitchen belongs to me; I need it for my “lifestyle”. The ants do too; just like Libyans need Libya, […]

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The State Department’s “Report” on the Attack in Benghazi, Libya: The Effects of Diplomacy as Subversion

Originally published on CounterPunch on December 20, 2012. Almost immediately after the armed attack in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, which resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, along with Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty, added to the destruction and looting of the U.S. facility in Benghazi, various columnists immediately took […]

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The Other Moral Squalor of U.S. Militarism

With at least five top U.S. generals currently in the media spotlight for corruption, abuse of power, sexual assault, and now the adultery commotion around General David Petraeus, now ex-CIA director, it is a relief to see militainment go in reverse. Now all of the media entertainment involving the icons of the media-military complex is […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #16—War, Hegemony, Ideology, and Resistance

Encircling Empire: Report #16—War, Hegemony, Ideology, and Resistance Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period, providing links and representative extracts or key passages from each resource, usually focusing on certain countries/continents and/or processes in each report. The focus of the reports ranges from imperialism […]

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Peace Corps and Afghanistan

The information and discussion about the activities of and the accumulation of various forms of capital by some Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs)—all in South America—is interesting (Anthropology News, December 2011, March 2012). President John Kennedy adapted the blast “ask not what this country can do for you, ask what you can do for this country” […]

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Libya: What Revolution? Whose Revolution?

If David Cameron had been known for modeling his speeches on old Monty Python films, then he might be praised for his witty and clever genius in devising such a politically and morally fraudulent speech such as the one above. He opens with gushing sentiment about a “new beginning for Libya,” hailing freedom from violence even as his jets pound Libyan targets. As always before, the British love to set an example on how politics are to be done, and it was usually with a good whipping followed by tutorials on how to best mimic the master, with powdered wigs, robes, and a broken sense of self….

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Encircling Empire: Report #4, 23-30 September 2010

EE: Report #4, 23—30 September 2010 Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism and imperial decline ● militarism/militarization ● the political economy of […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #1, 03-11 September 2010

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 […]

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Human Experimentation for CIA Torture: Physicians for Human Rights Videos, Petition, Write to Obama

In connection with our last report, “Physicians for Human Rights to File Federal Complaint: On CIA-led Human Experimentation and Research to Design Torture Techniques Used against Detainees,” please consider signing a petition effort mounted by Physicians for Human Rights, “Office of Human Research Protections Complaint: Join Us in Demanding an Investigation into Evidence of Illegal […]

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Physicians for Human Rights to File Federal Complaint: On CIA-led Human Experimentation and Research to Design Torture Techniques Used against Detainees

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) this week released a shocking and damning report (Experiments in Torture) that implicates psychologists and medical practitioners in human experimentation, under CIA leadership, to calibrate and design torture techniques applied to detainees held by the U.S. as part of its so-called “war on terror.” This is illegal activity that violates […]

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Anthropology and the Representation of Migrations from Afghanistan

[This is a paper that was originally published under the title of “Anthropology and the Representation of Recent Migrations from Afghanistan,” as it appeared in Rethinking Refuge and Displacement: Selected Papers on Refugees and Immigrants, Volume VIII, 2000. Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association. Eds. E. M. Godziak and D. J. Shandy. Pp. 291-321. Given the […]

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Information, Communications, and Targeted Killing

Two previous articles on this site (Innocently Informing State Terrorism: Journalism, Knowledge, and Counterinsurgency, and Human Terrain System Under Investigation: HTS Link to JIEDDO & US Death Squads) dealt with the figure of Michael Furlong and what some claim was a “rogue” program of extrajudicial execution. Here, Ishtar Enana, an Iraqi writer (blog: غار عشتار, […]

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