Max Forte's Public Library

29 Nov 09

GENEVA – Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.
The nationalist Swiss People's Party describes minarets, the distinctive spires used in most countries for calls to prayer, as symbols of rising Muslim political and religious power that could eventually turn Switzerland into an Islamic nation.
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- Muslims make up about 6 percent of Switzerland's 7.5 million people. Many Swiss Muslims are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Fewer than 13 percent practice their religion, the government says, and Swiss mosques do not broadcast the call to prayer outside their buildings.
- The move by the People's Party, the country's largest party in terms of popular support and membership in parliament, is part of a broader European backlash against a growing Muslim population. It has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and vacation in Switzerland.
- Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Zurich, said, "The initiators have achieved something everyone wanted to prevent, and that is to influence and change the relations to Muslims and their social integration in a negative way."
- Hatipoglu said if in the long term the anti-Islam atmosphere continues, "Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore."
- The People's Party has campaigned mainly unsuccessfully in previous years against immigrants with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.
- Geneva's main mosque was vandalized Thursday when someone threw a pot of pink paint at the entrance. Earlier this month, a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating a muezzin's call to prayer, and vandals damaged a mosaic when they threw cobblestones at the building.

CBC News - World - Kandahar governor unhurt in assassination attempt

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Afghanistan Canada Kandahar Governor Wesa

Friday, November 27, 2009
The Afghan-Canadian governor of Kandahar province in the volatile south of Afghanistan survived an assassination attempt Friday, a local official said.
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- Gov. Tooryalai Wesa was on his way to a mosque in Kandahar city for prayers to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
- A remote-control roadside bomb detonated as the governor's three-car convoy passed by in the centre of the city, said Zelmai Ayubi, a spokesman for Wesa.
- Ayubi said the governor was unhurt, but his vehicle was damaged and one policeman was wounded.
- Most of the roughly 2,800 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are stationed at Kandahar Airfield on the outskirts of the city.
- Wesa grew up near Kandahar city. He served as Kandahar University's first president until he left the country in 1991 with his wife. He then served as an agricultural expert at the University of British Columbia. The couple have three children and lived in Coquitlam, B.C., for 13 years.
- In December 2008, Wesa accepted Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offer to become governor of Kandahar.
- The assassination attempt on Wesa came on the same day that Karzai called on militants and extremists to give up violence.

Obama Never Considered Diplomacy In Afghanistan :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-1]

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Afghanistan occupation diplomacy negotiations oil

Why it's impossible to support the war in Afghanistan - Surge Editorials

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What has also been lost is any government inquiry whatsoever into the accuracy of the "smoking gun" evidence that the Bush Administration presented as the final justification for invading Afghanistan - the peculiar "Osama bin Laden confession video".
Released on December 13, 2001, the videotape of bin Laden and associates taking pleasure in the 9/11 attack was seen around the world - over and over again. I remember the 24 hour news channels playing the same scenes practically non-stop while the talking heads told their audiences that this was absolute proof that the United States invasion of Afghanistan a few months earlier on October 7, 2001 was the right action.
9 more annotations...
- The corporate media, liberal and conservative, failed to question the Department of Defense Press Release 630-01 that accompanied the video release. No so-called professional journalist found the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the video unusual.
- he corporate types just accepted at face value that the videotape was discovered by U.S. forces in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
- The names of the troops that discovered the video, the name of the unit, the circumstances as to how the video was actually discovered, and what prompted the troops to look at the video in the first place was never asked by the White House Press Corps or any other corporate media type.
- How U.S. troops discovered the video and what prompted the troops to explore the content of the video remains a mystery.
- A few years ago when I was writing the Muckraker Report, I used Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in an attempt to discover some facts surrounding the discovery of the video.
- On February 26, 2007 CENTCOM received my FOIA request. In the request I wrote:
  
  Please provide documents related to the discovery of the December 13, 2001 released Osama bin Laden video. Documents include action reports, logbook entries, e-mails, and transcripts, etc., which the U.S. forces that reportedly found the video would have recorded upon "discovering" the video. I am trying to identify the - who, what, when, where, and why of how this video dubbed the "confession video" by the corporate media, was actually discovered.
- To my amazement, nearly three years later, I finally received a response from CENTCOM. What didn't surprise me is that CENTCOM found "no records" related to the discovery of the video. CENTCOM wrote:
- "Pursuant to procedures established in 5 U.S.C. 552, Freedom of Information Act and DOD 5400.7-R, Department of Defense FOIA Program, our search included all existing records in USCENTCOM. Despite our extensive search for documents pertaining to your request, we were unable to locate responsive documents."
- The lack of any documentation supporting the government's claim that the video was discovered by U.S.troops in Jalalabad adds fuel to this belief.

US soldiers: Afghan war more challenging than Iraq - AP

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Afghanistan development COIN isolation illiteracy insurgency evolutionism

DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHANK, Afghanistan – Veterans of Iraq recall rolling to war along asphalted highways, sweltering in flat scrublands and chatting with city-wise university graduates connected to the wider world.
16 more annotations...
- Now fighting in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers invariably encounter illiterate farmers who may never have talked to an American as they slog into remote villages on dirt tracks through bitterly cold, snow-streaked mountains.
- the conflict in Afghanistan is one they think may prove harder and longer to win
- Soldiers and officers involved in combat operations all cite the more punishing geography and climate, those focused on development the bare-bones infrastructure, and intelligence specialists the even greater difficulties in identifying the insurgents as among the many sharp contrasts between Afghanistan and Iraq
- "The sheer terrain of Afghanistan is much more challenging: the mountains, the altitudes, severity of weather, the distances. That wears on an army," says Maj. Joseph Matthews, a battalion operations officer in the 10th Mountain Division. "You can flood Baghdad with soldiers but if you want to flood the mountains you are going to need huge numbers and logistics."
- In Afghanistan, troops routinely cross passes 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) and higher, descending into valleys where they say villagers "hibernate like bears" for up to five winter months, cut off from the outside world by the snows.
  - "Hibernate like bears" -- these are animals, in the dehumanizing rhetoric of the occupier. - about 15 hours ago
  Add Sticky Note
- This almost medieval isolation makes it far more difficult for the Afghan government and coalition forces to spread the aid and information needed to counter the Taliban push while the villagers — mostly illiterate and with little access to radios, never mind television — rely on religious leaders at Friday mosque prayers, or the insurgents, to shape their world view.
  - "Medieval" isolation -- with frustration comes the old resort to antiquated ideas of cultural evolution. - about 15 hours ago
  Add Sticky Note
- "When you have a society that can't read for itself and religious leaders are trusted, they can say whatever they like and people will believe them. It's hard for the U.S. to penetrate and influence this. In Iraq there are other ways to get the message across," says Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Weiermann, Jr., an intelligence specialist.
- "This is not an interconnected society. There is a complete separation of ideas from Pul-i-Alam and Kharwar," notes Matthews, of Vero Beach, Fla., of the provincial capital and a district just 23 miles (37 kilometers) away. "The difference between a village and a city in this country is about 200 years," says the officer, who served for more than three years in Iraq and is on his second Afghanistan tour.
  - Again, Eurocentric cultural evolutionism, expressing difference in terms of time. - about 15 hours ago
  Add Sticky Note
- Although tribalism plays a major role in Iraq, U.S. troops find it even stronger in the predominantly rural Afghan society, making the forging of vital bonds between people and government harder.
- Development — which absorbs the U.S. military more than combat and is regarded as key to victory — is also far tougher than in Iraq
- In Afghanistan at best a quarter of the population can read, compared to more than 75 percent in Iraq, which had functioning banking, medical and other systems, however imperfect, through which aid could be channeled.
- "Iraq already had the foundation. They just needed the governance piece that would support not just the elite few. In Afghanistan, you are starting at the very beginning. It's like trying to take the American Indians in their purest form and put them into today's New York City. It's not going to happen," says Weiermann, of Ft. Hood, Texas.
- "I worked with folks who had been to Oxford and been on projects in multiple other countries. There were homegrown NGOs and highly qualified women — all lacking in Afghanistan," says Les Garrison, a retired U.S. Marine officer from Arlington, Va., who serves as Logar's U.S. State Department adviser.
- "Osama bin Laden could walk right up to me and I wouldn't have a clue to who he was. The enemy cannot be identified at first sight. The enemy blends in easily with the population. That is the same for both places but drastically harder in Afghanistan," Weiermann says.
- The Baghdad government has managed polls and censuses, compiling a data base on the populace which includes fingerprints and domiciles down to apartment numbers. In Afghanistan, such information often exists only at the tribal level, tracking the movement of individuals and entire communities like the migratory Kuchi next to impossible, Weiermann says.
- Thus far, the level of intense combat and violence has proved lower in Afghanistan. In Iraq, soldiers say it was a 24/7, 365-day war while most insurgents in Afghanistan take a break during the winters and are so far less skilled in mounting complex operations against U.S. and coalition troops.

28 Nov 09

Open Letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Israel

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Canada Harper Tories anti-Semitism Liberals Israel

PM's Jewish pitch hits a new low, critics say - thestar.com

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Canada Harper Tories anti-Semitism Liberals Israel

Thu Nov 19 2009
OTTAWA–Angry Liberals Wednesday accused the Conservative government of reaching a new political low by circulating flyers characterizing the Liberals as anti-Semitic.
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- The flyers, which feature a photo of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, target ridings with large Jewish communities.
- "It is the lowest that I have seen in all of my experience on Parliament Hill. ... Nobody could have ever imagined that the Prime Minister of Canada and a Conservative party could stoop this low. It's the worst of the worst," Toronto Liberal MP Joe Volpe (Eglinton-Lawrence) told reporters.
- Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who is Jewish, was visibly shaken by the flyer, which went to his Mount Royal riding as well as Volpe's riding, Liberal MP Anita Neville's Winnipeg South Centre riding, Liberal MP Bernard Patry's Pierrefonds-Dollard riding and New Democrat Thomas Mulcair's Montreal riding of Outremont.
- "This is totally misleading, it's false ... and it basically seeks to associate the Liberal party with anti-Semitism. This is shocking ... this has no place in Canadian politics," Cotler said.
- The former Liberal justice minister noted it was a Liberal government that banned financial support to Hamas and Hezbollah.
- "Let the facts show ... that it was the Liberal party in 2002 (that) listed Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. This notion that we somehow sought the delisting of Hezbollah or somehow (we are) indulging terrorism is a scandalous misrepresentation," Cotler said.
- The reference to Durban, the controversial UN World Conference against Racism held Aug. 31 to Sept. 8, 2001, which provided a platform for anti-Israeli sentiment, is also misleading, the Liberals said.
  Cotler said he went to Durban as an observer and he noted the Israeli government of the day specifically asked Canada to remain at the conference "and make its voice felt and bear witness to what was happening."
- New Democrat and Bloc Québécois MPs agreed the pamphlets represented a new low in the partisan use of "10-per-center" mailings.
  Mulcair, the NDP's deputy leader, called for "an examination of conscience as to how much taxpayers' money we're spending on these very partisan attacks."

Bagram: A living hell / Features / Home - Morning Star

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Bagram BAF torture abuse detainees Guantanamo

The future of oil | Environment | guardian.co.uk

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oil energy IEA US peak_oil

New market dynamics created by climate change, geological and geopolitical pressures will transform our hydrocarbon economies, write John Elkington and Gary Kendall.
John Elkington and Gary Kendall
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- guardian.co.uk,
  Wednesday 11 November 2009
- The race for the world's remaining oil reserves could get very nasty. Recently, Nigerian militants announced their determination to oppose the efforts of a major Chinese energy group to secure six billion barrels of crude reserves, comparing the potential new investors to "locusts". The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told journalists that the record of Chinese companies in other African nations suggested "an entry into the oil industry in Nigeria will be a disaster for the oil-bearing communities".
- Whatever the facts, the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century is likely to be seen by future historians as the beginning of the final chapter of a unique, unrepeatable period in human development.
- Even oil companies now see the Age of Oil in irreversible decline – even if that decline spans decades. International oil companies (IOCs) increasingly accept that they must transform themselves completely – or expire – by mid-century.
- Superficially, the so-called "super majors" appear to be in good health. Fortune's Global 500 list places the "big six" – Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Total, and ConocoPhillips – among the seven largest corporations in the world, as measured by 2008 revenues. In third place, Wal-Mart stands alone as the only top seven company not dedicated to finding, extracting, processing, distributing and selling the liquid transportation fuels that drive the global economy, although few business models are as dependent on the ready availability of relatively cheap oil.
- The oil question is now, more than ever, a transport question. Cheap and reliable supplies of transportation fuel are the very lifeblood of our globalised economy. So it matters profoundly that we are entering an era in which oil supplies will be neither cheap nor reliable.
- The basic principle is uncontroversial: production of a finite non-renewable resource cannot expand endlessly, and this has been demonstrated in practice at national level all over the world. The heated debate centres on the point at which the peak in global oil production is likely to be reached.

Peak oil: Terry Macalister on what the data says | News | guardian.co.uk

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oil energy IEA US peak_oil

The question is not if the world is running out of oil, it's when. There are finite quantities of crude even if the oil companies get the chance to dig up the Arctic as they are desperate to do.
But academics from Uppsala University in Sweden and Liverpool University in Britain believe the figure is more likely to be 75m.
While you can argue that these are just different "scenarios" with no certainty to any of them, Uppsala and others firmly believe the IEA numbers are massaged upwards purposefully to avoid any "panic" and extreme escalation in oil prices. The IEA says claims of "politicising" the numbers are groundless, pointing out its figures are checked by 200 independent experts.

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower | Environment | The Guardian

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IEA energy oil US peak_oil

Exclusive: Watchdog's estimates of reserves inflated says top official
Terry Macalister
12 more annotations...
- guardian.co.uk,
  Monday 9 November 2009 21.30 GMT
- The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.
- The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.
- In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.
- Now the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.
- "Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," he added.
  - This is in fact the key point, that U.S. supremacy is tied to its control over access to oil reserves, and that means increasingly it controls access to less and less of value. - on 2009-11-28
  Add Sticky Note
- a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added.
- John Hemming, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, said the revelations confirmed his suspicions that the IEA underplayed how quickly the world was running out and this had profound implications for British government energy policy.
- He said he had also been contacted by some IEA officials unhappy with its lack of independent scepticism over predictions.
- The World Energy Outlook is produced annually under the control of the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, who has defended the projections from earlier outside attack. Peak oil critics have often questioned the IEA figures.
- But now IEA sources who have contacted the Guardian say that Birol has increasingly been facing questions about the figures inside the organisation.

Chat with the 17 year old hacker who hacked my blog

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27 Nov 09

Tribal Analysis Center - TAC Completed Research

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Tribal_Analysis_Center anthropology culture COIN

Hindustani Fanatics
Mad Mullahs, Opportunists, and Family Connections: The Violent Pashtun Cycle

Interdisciplinary Hype - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Homeland_Security Pennsylvania

A recent example from Pennsylvania State University is instructive. Penn State has promoted research on homeland security, but the pursuit of that worthy goal has resulted in the proliferation rather than the consolidation of specialized units: no fewer than 21 research centers on various aspects of homeland security. They include units on terrorism, computer security, crisis management, infectious diseases, and nonlethal defense technologies. Each of the centers may represent a noble undertaking, but their proliferation underscores the fact that there are many aspects of complex issues, and that interdisciplinary efforts can lead just as easily to the multiplication of academic units as to their consolidation.

CIA goes hiring in heart of Arab America - Reuters

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culture strategic CIA Dearborn Michigan Arabs Arabic language

In dire need of agents fluent in Arabic, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has made an unusual public show of its recruiting effort in Dearborn -- a city of 100,000 with the densest Arab population in the United States.
The agency has bought full-page ads in Arabic-language newspapers and it is rolling out TV ads aimed at luring Arab-Americans and Iranian-Americans to spycraft.
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- But despite a weak economy and high unemployment, the CIA will find it hard to hire here, residents say. Many see U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East as misguided and anger over the perceived mistreatment of Arab-Americans runs deep.
- It won't be easy to win hearts and minds here, they say.
- CIA recruiters said the agency sorely needs speakers of Arabic and other languages due to the intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan and the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq.
- "Obviously, with the wars going on in the Middle East, that's really on America's radar," said Henry Medina, who is in charge of CIA recruiting in the Midwest.
- "We're going to recruit that knowledge, that language, the linguistics, the cultural nuances that are critical to fully understand the foes and enemies," said Medina during a briefing for reporters who were shown the agency's new ads.
- One TV spot showed a dinner party at an Arab-American home, with a narrator intoning, "Your nation, your world. They're worth protecting. Careers in the CIA." The camera zooms out to show the party taking place in a modern high-rise building, then a view of the United States from outer space.
- A second spot introduces five Arab-American professionals in turn -- an engineer, a scientist, an economist, a lawyer, and an academic -- then shows them together announcing, "We work for the CIA."
- The CIA declined to disclose the cost of the ad campaign or detail the number of Arab-American recruits it wants to hire.
- But they said people have grown wary of the government's use of wiretaps and informants in the Arab-American community.
- Strict enforcement of immigration laws and delays at airports and border crossings for Arab-Americans have also created a backlash, they said.
- Siblani, whose newspaper runs CIA recruiting ads, met CIA Director Leon Panetta during a September visit to Dearborn. "I said, treat us like Americans," he said. "We love America but does America love us?"
- Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, agreed that many Arab-Americans were torn between feelings of patriotism and resentment of U.S. government policy at home and abroad.
- On Warren Avenue, where signs in Arabic outnumber those in English, other residents said they doubted the CIA would find many willing recruits in Dearborn.
- "It's not lack of patriotism. It's questioning of wrong policy," said Mohammed, a 24-year-old graduate student of Libyan descent who asked not to use his last name.
- Inside Tuhama's, Chehade said he would warn his adult sons to consider the consequences of signing on with the CIA.
  
  "People are going to hate you," he said.

“Bridging Cultures” (20 November 2009)

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culture strategic NEH

“Bridging Cultures”

National Press Club

Washington, D.C.

November 20, 2009

(As delivered)
As Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities I speak today to underscore the importance of the humanities at a time when the world is in flux and the judgment of its leading democracy is in question.
7 more annotations...
- The United States is currently engaged in military conflict in two countries more than a third of the way around the world, each with a unique set of problems.
- But how does a society translate scholarship into public policy?
- Likewise, thoughtful scholarship that is available but not pondered by policy-makers who might have limited interests or ideological biases is a prescription for social error with many costly dimensions.
- Military Science 101: Military strategy in the last generation has become increasingly sophisticated with considerations of questions ranging from overwhelming force doctrine to end-game strategies to concern for the sustainability of American public support for policy initiatives. But left out of in-depth consideration have been cultural ramifications: Cultural Factors that go far beyond protection of heritage sites and respect for “mannerly” traditions. The lesson of our times is that military strategy must include consideration of unintended consequences, particularly the after-affects of intervention from the perspective of the society most affected and those in the world that share similar cultural traditions. At issue is not simply whether democracy is better than other methodologies of social organization and whether it can be readily imposed from the outside, or whether it is justifiable to seek to advance an individual rights ethic that increases opportunity for women and minority groups.
- At issue also is the sobering question of whether good intentions can be counter-productive and lead to greater internal conflict, social disruption, and potentially increased radicalization, and whether progressive transformation of any society is more likely to be achieved through other means than military intervention.
- Culture is more powerful than politics and surprisingly capable of withstanding change wrought disproportionately by force of arms. So there is no misunder-standing, what I’m suggesting is that strategic thinking that lacks a cultural component is inadequate for the times.
- Civilization requires civility. Words matter. Just as polarizing attitudes can jeopardize social cohesion and even public safety, healing approaches such as Lincoln’s call for a new direction “with malice toward none” can uplift and help bring society and the world closer together.
  
  Little is more important for the world’s leading democracy in this change-intensive century than establishing an ethos of thoughtfulness and decency of expression in the public square.
  
  If we don’t try to understand and respect others, how can we expect them to respect us, our values and our way of life?

Red Coat, Green Machine - Continuum

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Charles_Kirke Kirke military_anthropology

Red Coat, Green Machine Continuity in Change in the British Army 1700 to 2000

by Charles Kirke
This book is about the people in the Army, and the very human interactions between them in their daily lives. It marries the disciplines of Social Anthropology and Military History to provide a novel way of looking at the anatomy of the British Army at unit level from an entirely human perspective. Concentrating on the attitudes, expectations, and concerns expressed by the people involved, it sets out a set of simple models of life at regimental duty that can be used to describe, analyze and explain their behaviour over the past 300 years.

The book is grounded on what soldiers of all ranks have said, using the author’s research interview material for the modern witnesses, and memoirs, diaries, and letters (published and unpublished) for earlier ones.
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- Author(s)
  
  Charles Kirke, Charles Kirke is Lecturer in Military Anthropology and Human Factors at Cranfield University. He was educated at Wellington College, Cambridge University, The Royal Military College of Science, the Staff College, and Cranfield University where he was awarded a PhD. He was a career soldier in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, leaving the Army in 2004 after thirty-six years service in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and is one of a handful of British military anthropologists. Further information may found at the website of the Cranfield Centre for Human Systems, http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/cds/staff/kirkecharles.jsp

Tribal Analysis Center - TAC Products and Services

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Our services involve research into most of the tribes and ethnic groups living in conflict areas into which access is denied to anthropologists.

Tribal Analysis University

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Knowledge through Cultural Understanding
TRIBAL ANALYSIS UNIVERSITY

A man’s mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower.

Rudyard Kipling
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- The Tribal Analysis University is a new form of Distance Learning combining self-study and self-assessment with seminars conducted by highly experienced instructors. Seminars are offered both as local sessions normally conducted at the work site where the students are employed and through the internet when students are unable to participate in standard seminars. The participants in this educational program include civilian and military analysts, non-governmental organization (NGO) personnel, missionaries, corporate contractors preparing for work in tribal areas, and university students. The course instructors are drawn from a group of skilled individuals with both university training and direct experience living and working within tribal societies.

TAC Board of Editors

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Tribal_Analysis_Center TAC anthropology culture tribe COIN Arturo_Munoz

Arturo G. Munoz: B.A in History and Spanish Literature, Loyola University; M.A. in Anthropology and Ph.D. in Latin American History, Stanford University; ABD in Anthropology, UCLA.
As an analyst, he applied anthropology to intelligence analysis and wrote intelligence assessments on various Latin American issues.
2 more annotations...
- At the other end of the spectrum, as a certified case officer overseas, he conducted counterterrorism, counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations in diverse countries.
- In February of 2009, Munoz joined the RAND Corporation as a Senior Political Scientist. Working out of the Washington Office, he specializes in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism issues, focusing currently on Afghanistan.

Max Forte's Public Library

Projection: Swiss vote to ban new minarets - AP

CBC News - World - Kandahar governor unhurt in assassination attempt

Obama Never Considered Diplomacy In Afghanistan :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-1]

Why it's impossible to support the war in Afghanistan - Surge Editorials

US soldiers: Afghan war more challenging than Iraq - AP

Open Letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Israel

PM's Jewish pitch hits a new low, critics say - thestar.com

Bagram: A living hell / Features / Home - Morning Star

The future of oil | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Peak oil: Terry Macalister on what the data says | News | guardian.co.uk

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower | Environment | The Guardian

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Interdisciplinary Hype - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

CIA goes hiring in heart of Arab America - Reuters

“Bridging Cultures” (20 November 2009)

Red Coat, Green Machine - Continuum

Red Coat, Green Machine Continuity in Change in the British Army 1700 to 2000

by Charles Kirke

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Red Coat, Green Machine Continuity in Change in the British Army 1700 to 2000

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