FBI – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Americans Can Do Two Things at the Same Time

Surely we have heard and seen enough by now that any lingering “optimism” about Trump governing as an anti-interventionist in foreign affairs has totally evaporated. What Trump promised in foreign policy terms in 2016, and what he instead delivered, are two radically different things—the same could be said of Obama, the so-called peace candidate of […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

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 […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Journalist, Hacker, Spy, Racketeer

What if Wikileaks, from the start, had announced itself as an anonymous group of hackers whose work aimed at producing an open access archive of leaked, stolen, and otherwise illegally obtained and illegally reproduced documents? Chances are that in a conflict with the U.S. or any other government, Wikileaks’ activists would have found themselves in […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Encircling Empire: Report #6, 09-16 October 2010

EE: Report #6, 09—16 October 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 […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Cross-Cultural Understanding for Peace: So why does HTS go to Afghanistan?

“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 […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

David Price: Anthropologists as Spies

The following is a selection of passages that I have marked out for special attention from David Price’s 2000 article in The Nation: On December 20, 1919, under the heading “Scientists as Spies,” The Nation published a letter by Franz Boas, the father of academic anthropology in America. Boas charged that four American anthropologists, whom […]