Marking Anniversary of Iraq War

Protests scheduled Thursday through Sunday nationwide.

Visit http://www.PentagonMarch.org for more info
As a socially conscious primate I'm committed to creating a better world than the one we have. We're now into year six of the Iraq war and year seven of the war in Afghanistan. Organizations and community members nationwide will be taking to the streets from Thursday, March 19 - Sunday, March 22 to insist that the occupations end and that no more service members or civilians be killed in this campaign.

Find an event in your city for the anniversary on March 19 and check your local Indymedia for a march this weekend.

While the Obama administration has announced the withdrawal of all combat troops by 2010, in reality it is following a preexisting Pentagon plan to shift some combat forces to Afghanistan (which is now rocking out of control) and renaming the existing combat brigades "training and assistance brigades". These troops would then continue to carry out missions in Iraq in much the same way that the "military advisers" did in Vietnam. The Pentagon has been authorized to have as many as 50,000 such troops in Iraq until long after the deadline. We're not out of this yet.

Click on the image below to download a copy of the flyer for your own community event (just cover up the top and bottom portions with your own info):

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Lancet: Palestinian Health Declines

New report by England's premier medical journal paints stark picture.

Children are hardest hit by occupation, according to report.Image: AP / Charles Dharapak
The Lancet’s report, Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, presents a devastating picture of the impact that war and occupation have had on the Palestinian people. Infant mortality alone, between 2000 and 2006, is seven times higher for a Palestinian child than an Israeli (27 per 1,000 compared to 3.9) even though both are separated by only a few miles.

The Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, introduced the report:

"Since 2000, the occupied Palestinian territory has experienced increasing human insecurity, with the erosion and reversal of many health gains made in earlier years... These setbacks, together with the latest Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza, have plunged the region into a humanitarian crisis.”

The report argues that "hope for improving the health and quality of life of Palestinians will exist only once people recognize that the structural and political conditions that they endure in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are the key determinants of population health".

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Congressional Report Back from Gaza

Congressmen Baird and Ellison take photos of the rubble at the American International school in Beit Lahiya, Gaza.
Image: Adel Hana, Associated Press
Brian Baird (D-WA-03) and Keith Ellison (D-MN-05) just issued the first official report from their tour of the Gaza Strip following Israel's 22-day assault that ended in January.

“The stories about the children affected me the most,” said Ellison. “No parent, or anyone who cares for kids, can remain unmoved by what Brian and I saw here.”

“The amount of physical destruction and the depth of human suffering here is staggering” said Baird, “Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, schools completely leveled, fundamental water, sewer, and electricity facilities hit and relief agencies heavily damaged. The personal stories of children being killed in their homes or schools, entire families wiped out, and relief workers prevented from evacuating the wounded are heart wrenching – what went on here, and what is continuing to go on, is shocking and troubling beyond words.”

Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the targeting of civilian property, except where such destruction is rendered "absolutely necessary by military operations." For that alone, Israel could be charged with war crimes under international law. Furthermore, when Israel invaded Gaza (on December 27, while the US and EU governments were still at home with their families and unable to respond) they claimed it was because Hamas had broken the six-month ceasefire by firing Katyusha rockets into Israeli territory. In reality, Israel had already broken the ceasefire by entering Gaza and assassinating six Hamas members. The US media generally accepted Israel's distortion of the situation.


Data from The Lancet highlighting the rise in civilian deaths as Israeli assault continued.
Image: The Economist
The 22-day Israeli assault resulted in at least 1300 deaths with thousands more wounded. A team of British surgeons reported to The Lancet that Israel used illegal weapons such as white phosphorus and an experimental weapon known as DIME (dense inert material explosives) that resulted in limbs "cut off in guillotine fashion." Israel also bombed four UN-run schools after the UN explicitly gave Israel the coordinates of these facilities. A report from Gaza by the National Lawyers Guild stated that Israeli soldiers intentionally targeted civilians, including children, during the invasion.

Resident Khaled Abed Rabbo told delegates Huwaida Arraf and Radhika Sainath how he witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2 year-old and 7 year-old daughters, on a sunny afternoon outside his house there. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. “I will never eat chocolate again,” said Abed Rabbo, who was formerly employed by the Fateh-led Palestinian authority. His third daughter, Samar, was also shot and paralyzed by the same Israeli soldier. Samar, 4 years old, is currently hospitalized for treatment in Belgium.

In what is now generally recognized as a situation worse than apartheid, it is the responsibility of US and Israeli citizens to vocally oppose the crimes that are being carried out in their name. We need many more victories such as that which took place at Hampshire College this week.

“If this had happened in our own country, there would be national outrage and an appeal for urgent assistance. . . People, innocent children, women and non-combatants, are going without water, food and sanitation, while the things they so desperately need are sitting in trucks at the border, being denied permission to go in” said Baird and Ellison.

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Karl Rove Arrested at Duke University

Bush's Brain removed from ivy league school "dialogue"

Image: Daniel Kurtzman

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't imagined it myself. Karl Rove, the Turd Blossom of Bush's Brain, forcibly removed from stage at the Page Auditorium. It went down like this. I was excitedly decked out in my Sunday best (I have more than one pair) for today's "Dialogue with Karl Rove." After about an hour of leisurely, Special Olympic softball questions from political science professor (and former Bush administration strategist) Peter Feaver, I was feeling calm and relaxed about the present state of political affairs. Rove explained how Republicans were "the party of the middle class." Conservatives just need to get the message out on "urban radio" in order to see a rise in African-American and Latino votes. No Child Left Behind has been "the most successful education policy in 27 years." All was right in the world.

Then the forum was opened for questions. This was a mistake. Predictably, the liberals in attendance had to ruin the pleasant event with references to important issues that affect the real world (as if Feaver's questions about whether or not Tom Daschle did or did not suggest a vote on the Iraq War in 2002 isn't foremost on people's minds). But, alas, a young rabble rouser -- almost certainly brainwashed by Abbie Hoffman and Karl Marx from her political science classes -- had to insist on asking about Rove’s involvement in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Mr. Rove. On April 26, 1999 President George H.W. Bush addressed the CIA and stated, “I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.” When are you going to stand trial as a traitor for outing a covert agent?

What an outrage! Just because something is true it doesn’t mean you have to go out and, well, say it. Rove was totally justified in ignoring her question and getting steamed. It was a beautiful sight to see. His face tensed, he squared his legs and sat up firmly in his chair, his hands gripping his knees tightly like a Japanese warrior in a Kurosawa film (although in Rove’s case it looked a bit like he was taking a dump). He strenuously denied any role in that affair in a lie so bold that, despite all the evidence, I’m willing to believe him simply out of respect for such pure audacity. Then he ridiculed Valerie Plame’s civil lawsuit against him. And good for him too. Just because she was an undercover agent working to prevent WMDs from ending up in the hands of terrorists is no reason to go soft. We’re at war.

Apparently his answer didn’t satisfy everyone because, without warning, two anarchist bomb-throwers rushed the stage armed with tweed jacket, hushpuppies and a banner that read, “Arrest him.” And that’s just what happened. I couldn’t believe it. The conservatives have been right all along and now the PC police have instituted martial law. Obeying their orders the campus authorities grabbed Rove by the neck, pulled his arms behind his back and led him from the stage in disgrace. I rushed from my seat to document this tragic affair so that at least one person could bear witness to the collapse of our Republic. One can only hope that he’ll be sent to Guantanamo where the luxurious accommodations that we offer to the enemies of liberty won’t go to waste (free Korans and waterboarding, with a beautiful view of the sea).

But I suppose you have to expect such treatment of our revered statesmen in these troubled times. As Prof. Feaver stated in his interview for the North Carolina Independent Weekly as to why he wanted to bring Rove to campus,

From an educational standpoint, it’s useful to bring people in touch with a human being people might only know from the blogosphere or newspaper accounts, which are often critical.

This is exactly what I’ve been saying for years. You can’t trust what you read on the internets. It is the most free and democratic form of media ever devised. Such a format is bound to be abused by people that have no financial or career incentives for holding the correct political viewpoint. By supporting the blogosphere you are perpetuating this rampant liberalism that has no basis except in reality. Shame on you. Shame on all of you. A nearly free and clear vigilante now has to face justice because of this.

We’ll miss you Turd Blossom. Please take care. Political attack ads won't be the same without your sleazy, underhanded disregard for basic decency.

And, just in case you were wondering, this was all true. Except maybe for that part about Rove being arrested, I sort of exaggerated that bit. And the photo is a fake, I found it on the internet (just like the evidence that Saddam was stockpiling WMDs).

But I did have a nice lady with some fabulous accessorizing, including pearls and a fake fur, tell me that waterboarding didn’t hurt. She also said that no one had ever died in US custody in Iraq. I asked her if she’d gotten high before the talk.

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You Groom My Back, I’ll Groom Yours

Tit-for-tat a common pattern across primate species

Grooming reciprocity common in our evolutionary cousins.

Image: Unattribated
It is one of the oldest questions of philosophy: why are people good and why should we be kind to each other. Research with nonhuman primates is beginning to bring an answer to this age-old question: return benefits.

Thirty years ago Robert Trivers developed the framework of reciprocal altruism. His hypothesis predicted that social organisms would benefit others if the cost to themselves was less than what the expected returns were likely to be. This hypothesis has been successfully tested for species ranging from ants to lions, and now a new analysis can confidently add primates to this list.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, Gabriele Schino and Filippo Aureli report that across 22 different species and 12 genera of primates females will preferentially groom others that preferentially groom them. Previous studies have suggested that primates will direct their grooming up the hierarchy, in the nonhuman version of social networking. However these studies suggest that a trusted grooming companion was more important in the decision of whom to groom in return than was rank or relationship.

Imagine that? Fairness and gratitude as a common tactic in nonhuman primates? Meanwhile our country is vetoing health care for poor kids because we’d prefer that every family of four dole out $20,000 per year for our war in Iraq (roughly $800,000,000 total). It appears we’re lacking the basic decency found in our primate relatives. We’d better find a way to get it back and construct a more cooperative society, otherwise you may find yourself one day with no one willing to come to your aid during a time of need.

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Mountain Gorillas Left Unprotected

Park guards flee Virunga National Park amidst hostility

Congolese government troops captured by rebel soldiers
Image: Riccardo Gangale/AP
Earlier I linked to the news that rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo had taken over the gorilla's protected zone in the east of the country. Today it’s being reported that park guards were forced to leave the area as the result of heavy fighting between the factions.

As National Geographic reported:

Today the fighting between rebels and the Congolese army heated up near Bukima, the park's main gorilla monitoring station.

Rangers could also hear the exchange of heavy gunfire near park headquarters at Rumangabo, according to Norbert Mushenzi, director of Virunga's gorilla sector for the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN).

"Rangers and local inhabitants are fleeing from all around the park, and the mountain gorillas are totally unprotected," Mushenzi said.

With less than 700 mountain gorillas alive in the wild (half of which live in the Virunga National Park) the situation is dire. The fighting between the rebel factions is a continuation of the Hutu/Tutsi conflict that resulted in the Rwandan genocide of the mid-90s. The fear is that, in addition to rebel groups killing the gorillas for food, illegal charcoal traders may take advantage of the guards' absence to burn the forest.

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Anthropology Goes to War, Part 3

Anthropology and counterinsurgency in Thailand


Water torture (or water boarding) as directed by US military personnel in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand

This is the third part in a three part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Petition for anthropologist's non-participation in counterinsurgency

The secondary thrust of the United States’ containment policy in South East Asia (the primary being direct invasion) was to undermine communist influence through “development.” Walt Whitman Rostow, esteemed Kennedy/Johnson liberal and influential policy advisor, wrote in his Stages of Economic Growth,

“We must demonstrate that the underdeveloped nations---now the main focus of Communist hopes---can move successfully through the preconditions into a well established take-off within the orbit of the democratic world, resisting the blandishments and temptations of Communism. This is, I believe, the most important single item on the Western agenda.” 29

The importance of anthropology’s role in this regard was emphasized in the official Counterinsurgency in Thailand report.

“The social scientist can make significant contributions to . . . designing programs to win or strengthen public support [for the Thai government]. . . What kinds of economic, social, and political action are most effective in building national unity and in reducing vulnerability to insurgent appeal?” 30

To that end the Thailand effort involved “157 anthropologists, engineers, ordnance specialists and other researchers [as] part of Project Agile, the Pentagon’s worldwide counterinsurgency research program.”31 The Thailand project was largely assembled and funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), one of the primary multilateral investment institutions, under the auspices of the Department of Defense. 32 There was never any doubt about the project’s intentions. USAID, in their letter to University of California Regents about their need for social scientists, stated that the project was geared towards “dealing with development and counterinsurgency problems, issues and activities, including research, relating to AID activity in Thailand.” 33

One of those involved in this development program, anthropologist Michael Moerman, remembered the project was

“initially described to me as devoted to developing techniques by which the Thai government could evaluate the success of its own programs. By the second meeting it became clear that some leading members . . . were seriously attempting a counterinsurgency justification for their work.” 34

This was acknowledged by USAID before a Congressional hearing in 1969.

“Except for a modest amount of technical assistance projects, most of which we are gradually phasing out, our assistance in Thailand is concentrated on counterinsurgency activities; approximately 75% of our total effort is in this field.” 35

Most anthropologists joined the counterinsurgency project out of both professional interest and a desire to help the Thai villagers. In Moerman’s case, “It seemed clear that the US and Thai government would harm villagers less if they knew more about them.” 36 For Cornell anthropologist Lauriston Sharp, career motives played a role as well, stating, “It [was] also important to keep the growth of the discipline moving.” 37 Anthropologist Herbert Phillips (who participated in the development of a paramilitary “village defense corps” 38 in violation of the Geneva Conventions 39) had overlapping interests. “In my own case curiosity, both professional and personal, about how the U.S. Government actually functioned in Thailand was at first as strong a motive as the possibility that I might be of assistance to Thai villagers” 40 and “I [wanted] to work on some problems if I could get an unclassified paper out of it.” 41

Those being researched, however, had different concerns:

“What is your purpose in coming here, and what kinds of questions are you going to ask us? . . . You are not going to take the names of villagers and tell the police that we are communists, are you? We would die if you did . . . If they come to take us away, in that manner, it will surely kill us, because we are opposed to communists here.” 42

In a detailed account of one counterinsurgency effort, migrating Hmong villagers were viewed to be “potential” insurgents (using USAID research techniques) and were forced to resettle to less fertile farmlands. The Hmong “were forced to steal food rather than starve,” which then developed into a “full-scale rebellion” once the Thai Border Patrol Police “responded.” The Thai government “deployed troops and helicopters and finally resorted to heavy bombing and napalm” to battle these “communists.” 43

When the Thailand activities became public knowledge (after student anti-war activists secretly copied Moerman’s files) any justifications anthropologists had for their activities were shrouded in the dubious nature of the entire project. In the language of the AAA Mead Committee report investigating this controversy:

“It is clear that anthropologists now have to face the possibility that a publication of routine socio-cultural data about identified village communities . . . might be used for the annihilation by bombing or other forms of warfare of whole communities . .” 44

Others understood, correctly, that this was not a new development.

“The Thailand episode is only the latest violation of the conscience of anthropology; in retrospect we see that anthropological projects calculated to interfere in the affairs of others have a long, and not entirely visible, genealogy.” 45

In the end, the AAA censored only two anthropologists: Eric Wolf and Joseph Jorgensen of the AAA Committee on Ethics, for blowing the whistle. 46

“[T]heir public denunciations, thus involving the Association . . . their use of unethically procured documents without public denunciation of the sources of such materials [and the] accusations of colleagues . . . has endangered research access for all anthropologists in Thailand and probably elsewhere as well.” 47

Years later, anthropologist George Foster, who was a member of the AAA Board during the controversy, stated,

“after the 1971 bloodletting, the whole thing disappeared as an issue. I don’t believe that three-quarters of the anthropologists practicing today know about it . . . There are more anthropologists working for the government---ten times more---than before.” 48

In light of this history I believe two conclusions can be made. First, the current use of anthropologists for counterinsurgency operations is by no means a new development, but this fact should give us pause rather than justify our existing policy. Second, anthropologists have been complicit in the domination and expropriation of non-Western societies for more than a century.

This history can be altered if we have the collective will to do so. It will not be easy and the stakes are high. As anthropologists Eric Wolf and Joseph Jorgensen alerted us in 1970:

“It is reasonable to anticipate an accelerating effort to centralize power and control resources on a global scale by the US government, and by the multi-national corporations based in the US. Accordingly, we can expect that as people in the poorest and most dependent areas multiply, and as their living conditions worsen, the men at the center of power will demand to know ever more about the deprived, "under-developed," and oppressed, as groups and as individuals. As the Thailand papers show, the government is less interested in the economic, social, or political causes of discontent than in techniques of neutralizing individual or collective protest.” 49

We are currently in a military adventure that Alan Greenspan has admitted is “largely about oil” 50, a fact that was obvious all along but was too “politically inconvenient” to mention in polite company. The discipline of anthropology has made progress over the years and there is a great deal that we can be proud of. However, if we believe in the integrity of our discipline and the pursuit of freedom for all peoples then the price is eternal vigilance. The choice, as always, is our own.

References:

[29] Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1971, p. 134
[30] AIR, Counterinsurgency in Thailand, p. 1; cited in Wakin, p. 96
[31] Peter Braestrup, “Researchers aid Thai rebel fight: US defense unit develops anti-guerrilla device,” The New York Times, March 20, 1967
[32] Wakin, pp. 119-20
[33] Agency for International Development, “Amendment No. 3 to the Contract Between the United States of America and the Regents of the University of California,” 1 September 1968, 4.; cited in Wakin, p. 6 & 128
[34] Michael Moerman, letter to the editor, AAA Newsletter, 12:1, Jan., 1971, 9-11; cited in Wakin, p. 105
[35] Testimony of Robert H. Nooter, Acting Assistant AID Administrator for East Asia, and Frederick Simmons, Director, Office of Southeast Asia Affairs, Southeast Asia Bureau (U.S. Congress. Committee on Government Operations. Foreign Operations and Government Information Subcommittee, Hearing on Thailand and the Philippines, June 16, 1969, p. 3; cited in Wakin, p. 119
[36] Moerman; cited in Wakin, p. 136
[37] IDA, “Thailand Study Group,” 4 July, 1967, 6; cited in Wakin, p. 59
[38] Excusing it because he was involved in already existing policy; Wakin, p. 121
[39] United Nations, Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Article 11:7 & Article 51:1
[40] Herbert Phillips, Between the Tiger and the Crocodile, p. 38 (note 13); cited in Wakin, p. 122
[41] IDA, “Thailand Study Group,” 5 July, 1967, 3; cited in Wakin, p. 62
[42] USOM/Thailand, Research Division, Village Changes and Problems: Meeting with Village Leaders and Residents of Ban Don-Du, Tambon Khwao, Amphur Muang, Mahasarakam Province, February 10, 1967 (Bangkok: USOM/Thailand, Research Division, July 1967); cited in Wakin, p. 139
[43] Alfred W. McCoy, “Subcontracting Counterinsurgency,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (Special Issue: Vietnam Center at S.I.U., December 1970), pp. 56-70; from Wakin, p. 141
[44] Davenport, et. al., “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee to Evaluate the Controversy Concerning Anthropological Activities in Thailand,” 27 September 1971, p. 4; published in full from Wakin, p. 290
[45] Eric R. Wolf and Joseph G. Jorgensen, “A Special Supplement: Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand,” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 15, No. 9, 1970, p. 11
[46] Margaret Mead would later show her personal anger by spitting on Jorgensen at a Chicago meeting.
[47] Davenport, et. al., p. 4; cited in Wakin, p. 206
[48] Interview, May 30, 1991; cited in Wakin, p. 234
[49] Wolf and Jorgensen, p. 15
[50] Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters, "Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m", The Guardian, September 16, 2007

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Anthropology Goes to War, Part 2

Anthropology, colonialism and covert operations


Recent march to remember the "disappeared," tortured and murdered after the
US-supported coup in Guatemala in 1954

This is the second part in a three part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Petition for anthropologist's non-participation in counterinsurgency


If Thomas Jefferson was indeed "a friend to the Indian" then the indigenous peoples certainly didn't need any more enemies.

However, later liberals were somewhat more conciliatory. According to Francis Edgar Williams, Oxford-trained Rhodes scholar and 17-year government anthropologist for Papua New Guinea, the role of applied anthropology in 1933 was one of “tidying-up, purging, reconciling, blending, and developing” those primitive cultures that were “more backward [and] more restricted than others.” 11 While, he says, anthropologists might be tempted to allow indigenous societies the freedom to manage their own affairs, this was simply not possible.

“His [the indigenous person’s] way of life must somehow enter into relation with the affairs of the world. It is hoped that we may leave him his fair share of freedom; but to leave him entirely to himself would be to funk the issue and neglect our duty.” 12

This duty that anthropologists had towards indigenous societies was emphasized at a 1936 conference, praised by anthropologist Felix Keesing, concerning the cultural education of Pacific colonial dependencies.

“[I]t is the responsibility of the governing people, through schools and other means, to make available to the native an adequate understanding of non-native systems of life.”13

This “understanding” would then allow the native groups to make an informed choice about the kind of society they wanted to live in. The fallacy of course is that, time and again, indigenous peoples would make their choice obvious by avoiding the colonizers, running away when captured, or resorting to violence when pushed too far.

This is easily seen in Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro’s 14 statement that “in order to pacify these groups the Indian Protection Service has had to face trials of every sort,” 15 such as having “more than a dozen IPS workers fell pierced by arrows as they went about their work of pacification.” 16 However, the indigenous Brazilians eventually came to understand, “descending to conditions of utter destitution and losing their happiness with their independence.” 17 Unfortunately, despite their high ideals, the

“heroic effort to bring peace to further tribal groups, [was] a source of frustration to its very authors . . . for the Indians have not even been assured possession of the land and peaceful co-existence has brought them hunger, disease and disappointment.” 18

World War II and the resulting Cold War (although frequently hot, being referred to as World War III by such divergent political figures as Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army 19 and Clinton CIA Director James Woolsey 20) changed the form of Western colonial policy but not the substance. American anthropologists were acutely eager to participate in these policies directed towards the defeat of fascism and, what was called, communism. During the war this participation was so great that

“Over one half of the professional anthropologists in this country [were] directly concerned in the war effort, and most of the rest [were] doing part-time war work.” 21

At least twenty anthropologists were also involved in clandestine activities for the OSS. 22 This level of commitment continued after the war with the American Anthropological Association (AAA) making a secret arrangement with the CIA in 1951, in which a cross-listed directory of AAA members was created demonstrating geographic and linguistic expertise. 23 Presumably, this database was desired in order to quickly locate a researcher with the appropriate skills. AAA President William Howells wrote,

“The CIA proposal is ideal. We should go along with it. . . If a reasonable questionnaire, suitable to both parties, can be worked out, we will both get what we want.” 24

The deal went through. Three years later, when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala 25, it was an anthropologist who contacted the State Department concerning the political affiliations of prisoners taken during the coup. 26

In fact, the Church Hearings of the early 1960s found that

“CIA funding was involved in nearly half the grants [excluding the “Big Three” Rockefeller, Ford & Carnegie foundations] during this period in the field of international activities [and] more than one-third of the grants awarded by non-“Big Three” in the physical, life and social sciences.” 27

It is unknown how many anthropologists knew where their funding had come from or that their research had caught the interest of the State Department. However, anthropologists were also directly involved in covert operations in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and in counterinsurgency across the globe. 28 This set the stage for the largest controversy and best documented account of anthropologists involved in clandestine research as a "crucial new weapon": counterinsurgency in Thailand between 1964 and 1970.

Click here for Part 3

References:

[11] Francis Edgar Williams, “The Vailala Madness” and Other Essays, University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1977, pp. 409-10
[12] Ibid., p. 417
[13] Felix M. Keesing, The South Seas in the Modern World. Institute of Pacific Relations International Research Series, John Day, New York, 1941, p. 84
[14] Ribeiro would later sign the Declaration of Barbados in 1971, proclaiming support for Indian self-determination
[15] Darcy Ribeiro, “The Social Integration of Indigenous Populations in Brazil,” International Labour Review, 85, 1962; cited in Bodley, Tribal Peoples & Development Issues; p. 53
[16] Ibid., p. 57
[17] Ibid., p. 58
[18] Ibid.
[19] Subcomandante Marcos, "The Fourth World War Has Begun", in Tom Hayden, ed., The Zapatista Reader, Avalon Publishing, 2000, p. 270.
[20] CNN.com, 04/03/03
[21] Fred Eggan, The American Anthropological Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science Bulletin 2(5), 1943, p. 38; cited in David Price, “Lessons From Second World War Anthropology,” Anthropology Today, 18:3, 2002, p. 16;
[22] E. Wyllys Andrews IV, William Bascom, Gregory Bateson, Lloyd Cabot Briggs, Carleton Coon, Cora Dubois, Anne Fuller, Nelson Glueck, Gordon Hewes, Frederick Hulse, Felix Keesing, Alexander Lesser, Edwin Loeb, Alfred Metraux, George Murdock, David Rodrick, Morris Siegel, Richard Starr, David Stout and Morris Swadesh; Ibid., p. 17
[23] David Price, “Anthropologists as Spies,” The Nation, Nov. 2, 2000b, p. 2;
[24] David Price, "A Private Face of Anthropology: The CIA, The AAA & The Comprehensive Roster of 1952", paper presented at a special Presidential Panel of the Annual Business Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco on November 16, 2000a;
[25] Gerald K. Haines, "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952-1954", CIA History Staff Analysis, 1995, National Security Archive;
[26] Price, 2000b, p. 2
[27] Church Committee Reports, Book 1.X. The Domestic Impact of Foreign Clandestine Operations: The CIA and Academic Institutions, The Media, And Religious Institutions, p. 182
[28] Chris Bunting, “I Spy with My Science Eye,” Times Higher Education Supplement, April 12, 2002

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Religion of Peace Death Match

Your Sunday Skepticomic from Joe Heller.



To view last week's comic click here.

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Anthropology Goes to War, Part 1

Anthropologists in the war effort from "savages" to "terrorists"



This is the first part in a three part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Petition for anthropologist's non-participation in counterinsurgency

The New York Times reported yesterday on the military's use of cultural anthropologists in the war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq in what they refer to as a "crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations."

As the Times reports:

In September, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates authorized a $40 million expansion of the program, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since early September, five new teams have been deployed in the Baghdad area, bringing the total to six.

Before turning to evolutionary research I was a burgeoning cultural anthropologist myself (and even did preliminary work with the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico) so I'm familiar with both the history of anthropology and the ethical problems involved when anthropologists use their training to aid military maneuvers. It's a complex issue that, on one hand, helps to minimize misunderstandings between soldiers and the local population. However, if anthropologists are using their cultural knowledge to allow the military to better manipulate or exploit local people in an illegal military occupation then there are significant concerns.

So I disagree with my friends at Anthropology.net who state that

anthropology can help the war effort. I’m glad the head honchos have considered experimenting with social science to deal with problems that would never be solved by gunfights and military might.

This uncritical enthusiasm is troubling since it shouldn't be forgotten that anthropology has long had a connection with militaristic expansion. As Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss notes:

“It is the outcome of an historical process, which has made the larger part of mankind subservient to the other, and during which millions of innocent human beings have had their resources plundered, their institutions and beliefs destroyed while they themselves were ruthlessly killed, thrown into bondage, and contaminated by diseases they were unable to resist. Anthropology is the daughter to this era of violence.” 1

The history of anthropology is usually taught with the more enlightened emphasis of cultural theory, however anthropology’s primary role throughout history has been the observation and administration of colonial policies in Western imperialism. 2

Throughout most of the nineteenth century government policy had little need of attaining specific knowledge of the societies that were being transformed or eradicated. Gradually, however, it became clear that the task of administration would be easier and more efficient if means were found to “pacify” the indigenous populations. 3 Training programs in anthropology were an integral component of colonial administration from the discipline’s inception until World War II, and were taught by such notable theorists as Raymond Firth, Meyer Fortes, Lucy Mair, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski. 4 This was justified, according to the latter, because:

“The Native still needs help . . . Shall we therefore mix politics with science? In one way, decidedly, ‘yes,’ because if knowledge gives foresight and foresight means power, it is a universal stultification of scientific results to insist that they can never be useful or used by those who have influence. . . The truth is that science begins with applications.” 5

If one goes back far enough even the liberal view is indistinguishable from that of the racist imperialist. President Thomas Jefferson, father of American anthropology and "friend to the Indian," came to support and continue the genocidal policies begun by George “Town Destroyer”6 Washington who famously ordered

"the immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more." 7

According to Jefferson,

“[t]his unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.” 8

Furthermore, in a letter to his Secretary of War, Jefferson ordered

“if we are ever constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi.” 9

Jefferson later explained that this was “necessary to secure ourselves against the future effects of their savage and ruthless warfare” since all “benevolent” efforts at development had failed. 10

Click here for Part 2

References:

[1] Claude Lévi-Strauss, "Anthropology: Its Achievement and Future," Current Anthropology, vol. 7, 1966, p. 126
[2] Eric Wakin, Anthropology Goes to War, University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Number 7, 1992, p. 20
[3] John H. Bodley, Victims of Progress, 2nd ed., Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co., California, 1982, p. 80
[4] Wakin, p. 21
[5] Bronislaw Malinowski, Dynamics of Culture Change, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945, pp. 4-5
[6] As the Iroquois came to know him.
[7] David E. Stannard, American Holocaust, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 118-121
[8] Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee, New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 308
[9] Andrew Lipscomb and Albert Bergh, ed, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Definitive Edition, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, Washington, 1905, Vol. 11, p. 345: August 28, 1807; see also: Jefferson’s letter to John Adams
[10] Ibid. p. 24: Jefferson’s December 6, 1813, letter to Baron von Humboldt

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Climate Change and the Causes of War

New study makes Pentagon report all the more alarming.


Periods of warfare in ancient China peaked during climate crises (in grey).

A fascinating article in the latest edition of Discover magazine discusses a study in the journal Human Ecology. Earth scientist David Zhang and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong used high-resolution palaeo-temperature reconstructions and compared that to the complete historical record of warfare in eastern China.

As Zhang et al. state in their study (subscription required):

There is no academic consensus on the causes of historic cycles of war and peace. Historians cite government mismanagement and concomitant social turmoil; military scientists and politicians emphasize power imbalances among competing groups or entities; psychologists and biologists relate warfare to innate human aggressiveness; while the Marxists hold that warfare is the unavoidable consequence of class struggle. However, none of these explanations adequately accounts for war–peace cycles from a macro-historical perspective.

Instead what the researchers find is that warfare is better explained as “an adaptive ecological choice under circumstances of population growth and resource limitation.”

Over the past millennium, eastern China suffered from periodic ecological stress and a significantly reduced anthropocentric carrying capacity during climatic cooling. Since the expanded population encouraged by the previous warm phase could not be sustained, famine and nationwide uprisings, predominantly mobilized by peasants, were seemingly fueled during cold phases. Such domestic chaos weakened state power, which in turn invited northern nomadic invasions.

This study further supports the thesis that Jared Diamond promoted in Collapse, that the leading factor in the demise of past societies has been an inability to cope under ecological crises. When such calamity strikes and governments can't provide for their needs, the population revolts or governments push into neighboring territories to access essential resources.

This should raise a large warning flag for our own society as several recent crises are largely due to natural calamities (think Katrina) or resource shortages (think Iraq). Human caused global climate change is expected to cause great fluctuations in seasonal temperatures and areas that have formerly been the “bread baskets” of the world could one day (perhaps relatively soon) be unable to support agriculture.

In the 2003 Pentagon report on global warming entitled An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security the authors had an eerily similar conclusion for our own society to that which Zhang and colleagues found about ancient China.

“As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to the abrupt climate change, many countries’ needs will exceed their carrying capacity. This will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression in order to reclaim balance.”

“The United States and Australia are likely to build defensive fortresses around their countries . . . to hold back unwanted starving immigrants.”

I don't think this requires any further commentary from me.

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The Dangers of Technological Adolescence

A brief history of scientific "progress" in human experimentation.

A diorama showing Japanese researchers testing biological weapons on villagers
in Ping Fan, China during the 1930s.
*This post has also been picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Join the debate at their blog or in the comments below.

Perhaps it’s because today is overcast or perhaps it’s due to the generalized sense of self-reflection I feel on this morose day. But as we champion “economic progress” beyond all other concerns (including the integrity of our ecosystem) it’s only appropriate that I take a good, long look in the mirror at the ugly history behind “scientific progress”. The legacy of cruel experimentation on primates is well documented and ongoing. But the history of scientific experimentation on unwilling human subjects should warn all wide-eyed science enthusiasts about the costs of placing progress above all other concerns.

Recently the abused orphans of the University of Iowa “Monster Study” were granted a $925,000 payment from the state. In an experiment by a psychology graduate student, six otherwise normal children were subjected to psychological cruelty in order to find out if stuttering could be induced. All of them experienced lifelong emotional distress and social anxiety, and none of them became a stutterer.

This is an issue that is as old as experimental science, and has frequently ended much worse for the, usually poor, victims. In the 1570s a battle was being waged between the Paracelsians and the Galenists about which theorist had the best understanding of medicine. German born alchemist and anatomist Paracelsus outraged many of his 16th century contemporaries by criticizing the, then, 1,700 year-old writings of the Greek physician Galen. His followers were adamant to prove their master’s techniques and sought a test for their “chemical medicines” derived from lethal poisons. As Allen G. Debus writes in Man and Nature in the Renaissance:

“In the mid-seventeenth century it was suggested that several hundred sick poor people be taken from the hospitals and the military camps. They were to be divided into two groups, one to be treated by the Galenists, the other by the chemists. The number of funerals would determine whether the chemical or the traditional medicine had triumphed.” (p. 31).

In the early period of American medicine doctors would perform experiments on their socially “less valuable” patients. As Susan Lederer writes in Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War:

“Before the discovery that monkeys could be infected with syphili and gonorrhea, the search for microbes of venereal disease prompted more than forty reports of experiments in which individuals were inoculated with the suspected germs of gonorrhea and syphilis. In 1895 New York pediatrician Henry Heiman . . . described the successful gonorrheal infection of a 4-year-old boy (“an idiot with chronic epilepsy”), a 16-year-old boy (an “idiot”) and a 26-year-old man in the final stages of tuberculosis.”

Even after the atrocities of Dr. Mengele and the Nazi experimenters were exposed (and human experimentation was condemned as part of the Nuremburg Tribunal) patients continued to be subject to life threatening experiments without their consent. In Eileen Welsome's book, The Plutonium Files, it documents how human radiation experiments were performed between 1951 and 1962 by injecting various concentrations of plutonium into unknowing patients in the United States:

“Physcians performed experiments on healthy people and sick patients without informing them of what was going on or getting their consent. Sick patients were preyed on most frequently. They were convenient, plentiful, and vulnerable, since nontherapeutic procedures could be administered easily under the guise of medical treatment. . . Terminally ill patients were perhaps the most vulnerable group of all. . . Women, children, unborn fetuses, minorities, the mentally retarded, schizophrenics, prisoners, alcoholics, and poor people of all ages and ethnic groups were targets.” (p. 214-215).

The 1994 Rockefeller Senate Report Examining Biological Experimentation on U.S. Military found that for fifty years the Department of Defense had intentionally exposed military personnel to dangerous substances without their knowledge or consent including mustard gas, radiation, and hallucinogenic drugs.

I shudder to think what has gone on today under the unprecedented secrecy of the current administration. But if our leaders are willing to use illegal chemical and experimental weapons on civilians in Iraq, I wouldn’t remain optimistic.

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity,” stated Albert Einstein at the tipping point of the nuclear age. We have much progress to achieve if we wish to close the gap before this imbalance teeters out of control. As I began this morning's post with a quote from one of this generation's greatest advocates for both science and humanity (as well as one of my personal heroes), I see it as only fitting that I should close tonight's in the same fashion.

[I]t is possible to avoid the dangers of the period of technological adolescence we are now passing through. There are some who look on our global problems here on Earth - at our vast national antagonisms, our nuclear arsenals, our growing populations, the disparity between the poor and the affluent, shortages of food and resources, and our inadvertent alterations of the natural environment of our planet - and conclude that we live in a system which has suddenly become unstable, a system which is destined soon to collapse. There are others who believe that our problems are soluble, that humanity is still in its childhood, that one day soon we will grow up.

- Carl Sagan, The Quest for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1978)

References:

Debus, Allen G. (1978). Man and Nature in the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, London.

Lederer, Susan. (1997). Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War. John Hopkins University Press, Maryland.

Welsome, Eileen (2000). The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. Delta, New York.

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Twin Towers on a Pale Blue Dot

Reflections on 9-11 amidst a world gone mad.


Earth photographed from the edge of our solar system, 3.7 billion miles away.

“It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than the distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

- Carl Sagan, commencement address delivered May 11, 1996

If we continue along our present course future generations may well look back on our time (if they look back) and condemn us for our monumental stupidity. What did we do with the natural resources while there was still an abundance? Where were our priorities when there was still time to avert climate calamity? When a great crime was committed that exposed the seething anger from other lands did we recognize our role in their rage and avert a crisis? 3,000 murdered and the mothers of Fallujah understand how we feel. Their grief mingles with our grief, like smoke rising from crushed towers or the burning corpse of a mosque.

Research in evolutionary biology offers the comfort of vast expanses of time. 250 million years ago and 96% of all marine species were dead. But then the Triassic announced its arrival with great fanfare and a new era of life’s flourishing diversity. Come the Cretaceous-Paleogene and half of all life vanished in a geologic instant, now captured in glorious Technicolor quality limestone snapshots from 65 million years ago. Then there was the Holocene extinction. Up to 140,000 species went extinct every year. Towards the end a third of all species on land, sea and air vanished within just one generation of the species that caused their demise. Half of all life was expected to disappear in their lifetimes and the Dow reached a high of 13,000.

“What is this quintessence of dust? Life delights not me,” the Danish prince might well have said and we are proof of Hamlet’s lament. Our tinpot despot with his costumed and wigged flatterers of the court rattle their ceremonial sabers and offer their sacrifice on the altars of commerce. While in Chile this morning mothers cry for their disappeared children and Henry Kissinger ignores his extradition for a few extra minutes of slumber. And somewhere in a cave, or is it a studio in Karachi, the bearded boogeyman frightens the children in their sleep. Both use each other to prop up a waning authority: the behemoth and the phantom, ensnared in their own fairy tale of good versus evil while the rest of us sit in the audience as collateral damage.

If evolution teaches one thing it is that species adapt or they perish. We are no different. If we are to survive this nightmare it will not be thanks to Obama or Giuliani. They are the products of a world that brought us to where we are. A river alters its course not with a single stone but with a great multitude. Thousands of infants will take their first breath this morning. They can continue where we leave off.

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On Deception: Cheney, Chomsky & Trivers

How politicians deceive the country and themselves

First, consider what then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney thought about invading Baghdad in 1994:



Um . . . huh?

Robert Trivers is a renowned anthropologist and biologist most famous for his theories of parent-offspring conflict and reciprocal altruism. His most recent book is Genes in Conflict. Noam Chomsky is the MIT professor of linguistics who has a dual career as a political analyst and activist. His most recent book Failed States follows up on his bestseller Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

The following dialogue was just posted on YouTube courtesy of the SEED network (which also hosts the wonderful ScienceBlogs.com). The video has been edited to six minutes but the full dialogue can be viewed here and the transcript here.

What is the psychology of deception and self-deception in our political leaders? How can citizens anticipate such abuse of power and work to counter it in these circumstances? Two of America's intellectual treasures discuss these vital issues that affect all of us today.

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Why Chimpanzees Make Bad Suicide Bombers

The Evolution of Spite is the Evil Twin of Altruism

Someone walks into a crowded restaurant, looks about the diners calmly, and blows themselves up as well as everyone nearby. Why? This is a scenario that forces us to explain the dark side of human nature. Why do humans have a capacity for such hate that they’ll take their own lives in order to destroy others?

A study in the current issue of PNAS on chimpanzee behavior suggests that humans may be alone in this way: a dubious distinction to say the least. In a review published yesterday in the Chicago Tribune the researchers suggest:

"Spitefulness may be a peculiarly human trait," said Keith Jensen, a Canadian evolutionary biologist who has been looking to see whether human concepts like fairness and punishment are present in the social organization of another highly socialized species.

In biological terms spite is the flip side to altruism and both have posed a thorny issue for evolutionary biologists. While an altruistic act is one where the actor takes a hit in order to help someone else, a spiteful act is one where that same actor seeks to hurt someone else at a cost to themselves.

"Spite is kind of interesting, because it is altruism's evil twin," Jensen said. "Humans can care about making somebody feel better, but we also have the darker side of sometimes wanting to make somebody feel worse."

W.D. Hamilton, the British evolutionary biologist most famous for kin selection theory, proposed how altruism could evolve in a population composed of close relations. If the cost to the actor is less than the benefit to the recipient times their coefficient of genetic relatedness (0.5 for full siblings, 0.25 for nephews) than the altruistic act improves their inclusive fitness and the trait will perpetuate.

Hamilton also wrote on altruism’s evil twin in his classic 1970 Nature paper “Selfish and Spiteful Behaviour in an Evolutionary Model”. Hamilton suggested that the evolution of spiteful behavior could be selected for in cases where the recipient of the spite was less likely to be related than an average member of their population. This is because, if a spiteful organism goes out of their way to hurt someone related to them, those spiteful genes would be less likely to be passed on by both the individual and the recipient of the spite. However, if that same organism were to sacrifice themselves to hurt someone less related than the rest of the population it could benefit their inclusive fitness.

In a 2004 article in The Scientist (which is an excellent review and has been reproduced in full at The Primate Appendices) researchers have done studies with bacteria which suggest that, not only are spite and altruism related, they often rely on each other.

Many bacteria manufacture toxins called bacteriocins, which they release explosively, killing both themselves and sensitive competitors, but sparing clonal relatives that possess a resistance gene. Gardner says the spiteful credentials of such bacterial suicide bombings are reinforced by the presence of an equivalent altruistic trait, siderophore production. Siderophores are compounds that scavenge iron from the environment for absorption.

"You do better as a bacterium if you don't produce the proteins and just mop up those produced by others. So, production of the proteins is altruistic," says Gardner. In line with predictions, West's team, in collaboration with Angus Buckling at Oxford University, has shown that bacteriocin production is increasingly favored by selection, as competition between bacterial strains becomes more local, whereas siderophore output declines.

This suggests that suicide bombers could be motivated, at least in part, by inclusive fitness. The tactic of suicide bombing only exists because of a perceived threat to the bomber’s family and community (sometimes extended more widely to their "family" of faith). By targeting populations that are outside this group they aim to benefit their community and, by consequence, their inclusive fitness by hurting other, unrelated, individuals. This interpretation has recently been explored in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology.

While chimpanzees have yet to show evidence of spiteful behavior (a distinction that we should remember when holding ourselves above “mere animals”) they have been shown to be capable of altruism. Perhaps the rainforest equivalent of an Israeli restaurant is at this moment quietly munching figs as a solitary individual from a distant troop creeps through the underbrush, canines at the ready. But this is probably unlikely for one very important reason: chimps aren't religious.

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Gorilla Massacre in Perspective

Deaths Are Equivalent to the Entire Population of England



The shocking news that four more critically endangered mountain gorillas were killed last week should make all primates of good conscience wince. Furthermore, one of the females was pregnant and another was nursing a five month old infant who is not expected to live.

According to the World Wildlife Foundation, there are an estimated 700 mountain gorillas alive in the wild. The loss of these six gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo represents 0.86% of the total population. This would be the equivalent of slaughtering 5,910 endangered African elephants or 60 million human beings in a single week. In human terms this is the death of every man, woman and child in England (and nearly as many as the population of Congo).

While it's unknown who is responsible for the killings one of two possibilities is the most likely: they were killed by supporters of rebel leader Gen. Laurent Nkunda who were also responsible for killing two gorillas earlier this year, or they were killed by traders who cut down trees to be sold as charcoal in Rwanda. According to the UK Telegraph:

"Virunga has been under enormous pressure from the exploitation of timber for the charcoal trade," said Mr de Merode.

"There's a very real possibility that this is an act of sabotage against the national park because it represents an opposition to the charcoal trade."

This latter cause is the result of extreme poverty in the region that will push desperate people to enter the National Reserves to earn a living. The Global Policy Forum has an excellent article illustrating the critical conditions in the region.



Pictured above are Safari, who was killed in the shooting, and her daughter Ndeze, who is thought unlikely to live. The other victims were named Neeza and Mburanumwe, and the male, Rugendo.

To help, visit the WWF website here.

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Noble Victims

Western rhetoric and reality in liberal intervention

As highlighted in my Nov/Dec 2005 article in Wildlife Conservation magazine, the Democratic Republic of Congo remains the only refuge for the critically endangered bonobo. The specicide being carried out against our evolutionary cousins (which share with humans between 98.6% and 99.4% of our DNA) threatens to extinguish all traces of the population within our lifetimes.

As I reviewed in that article:

Referred to as Africa’s World War by the United Nations, the Congolese civil conflict directly involved eight African countries in a complex campaign over regional geopolitics and Congo’s vast mineral wealth. The war began on August 2, 1998 when President Laurent Kabila tried to expel the Rwandan military forces that had helped him overthrow the brutal dictator, and former US ally, Mobutu Sese Seko. The governments of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, who viewed the troops as vital to their protection, sponsored different rebel groups (the Rally for Congolese Democracy in the east and the MLC in the north) in an attempt to overthrow Kabila. In response, Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad and Namibia deployed their own troops to join forces with the Congolese army.

The result has been a “humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and shocking proportions,” says the International Rescue Committee aid agency, with estimates of 3.3 million people killed and many millions more displaced by the warring factions.

Now, according to a recent article in the UK Guardian, Western disregard for the suffering of the region and the potential extinction of the bonobos comes down to two basic lessons of Western geopolitics: 1) reserve your moral outrage for groups that have oil and 2) humanitarian concern will only be for those victimized by our official enemy.

The key difference between the two situations lies in the racial and ethnic composition of the perceived victims and perpetrators. In Congo, black Africans are killing other black Africans in a way that is difficult for outsiders to identify with. The turmoil there can in that sense be regarded as a narrowly African affair.

In Darfur the fighting is portrayed as a war between black Africans, rightly or wrongly regarded as the victims, and "Arabs", widely regarded as the perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is through such a prism that the conflict is generally viewed.

It is not hard to imagine why some in the west have found this perception so alluring, for there are numerous people who want to portray "the Arabs" in these terms.

. . .

Humanitarian concern among policymakers in Washington is ultimately self-interested. The United States is willing to impose new sanctions on the Sudan government if the latter refuses to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force, but it is no coincidence that Sudan, unlike Congo, has oil - lots of it - and strong links with China, a country the US regards as a strategic rival in the struggle for Africa's natural resources.

Let me say upfront that anyone who disputes that genocide is occurring in Darfur is guilty of despicable ignorance and that I have personally taken action to bring attention to this crisis. This doesn't mean that I fail to recognize the hypocrisy of Western liberals in their choice of humanitarian intervention and how these choices fit so neatly into categories approved by official policy.

As I argued in an earlier post, anti-Arab/anti-Muslim bias ignores the Western role in provoking and sustaining bitter antagonism for it's own geopolitical ends. British imperialist policy in Ireland (including military occupation of civilian populations, unlawful detentions and assassination of suspected terrorists) prolonged the terror tactics employed by some factions of the Irish Republican Army by increasing local support for such militancy against their British oppressors.

In the same way, American imperialist policy is now answering the jihadi's most fervent wish by declaring a war -- or rather, in our President's fateful words, a "crusade" -- against a population who have resisted Western expansion for 2,000 years (Roman emperors frequently reopened "the Persian campaign" whenever tensions were getting a little too high within their conquered territories). Those resisting Western expansion into Arab lands are not all extremists, terrorists or Islamic fascists, though a small minority are (mostly from Saudi Arabia, ironically, the closest US ally in the region).

Liberal critics have claimed that this is "excusing terror" (and yet somehow are able to reconcile their liberalism with such vulgar statements as "Muslims love oppression and iniquity and hate justice"). What this assessment dares to do is remove the cultural blinders of Western exceptionalism. We are a species with hierarchical and territorial tendencies who can easily be whipped into obedient lockstep to the cultural, political and/or religious dictates of authority.

This is apparent, not only in the Christian and Muslim religious dogma for which I have complete disdain, but also in the choices where liberal intervention is called for to help specific "noble victims". While 200,000 civilian victims of Arab violence justify our moral outrage, the millions of civilian victims from African violence do not. Also illuminating is that the desperate calls to help the women of Afghanistan were strangely silent prior to September 11th. Western policy -- whether supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan or offering military support to the very Sudanese despots we now decry -- is an exciting trip down the memory hole.

Meanwhile our closest evolutionary relatives are about to be wiped off the face of the Earth. While clearly the victims of genocide in Darfur need our help, perhaps we could also transcend the narrow confines of official outrage to help the suffering in Congo for which the United States (and Pat Robertson) bear some responsibility. In the process maybe we can also prevent the decimation of an entire species.

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Independence from Reason

In Thomas Friedman's July 4th editorial the economic flat-earther demonstrates that his understanding of the complex issue of Islamic militancy is equally myopic. I agree that the tactic of suicide bombing is specific to Muslim fanatics (not counting Kamikaze pilots of WWII) and that the ideology of political Islam is as absurd and dangerous as political Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. However Friedman's assertion that Islamic militancy is merely due to "humiliation" because they're angry other nations have advanced while Islamic states have stagnated is wrong, simplistic and patently offensive to thinking people. The individuals who choose to martyr themselves (which is how they view it) often do so for real grievances that we in the West would be wise to acknowledge. The three primary grievances that these suicide murderers believe they're fighting for include:

1. Western expansion into Arab territories for geopolitical influence and control of vital resources.

2. Western support for corrupt and brutal Arab regimes ranging from the family dictatorship of Saudi Arabia (the "good Taliban") to the secular dictatorships of Jordan and Pakistan and the dictatorship in all but name in Egypt.

3. Perhaps most importantly, the political and economic support for the apartheid conditions in Palestine and the brutal Israeli occupation that has resulted in 750,000 refugees, tens of thousands killed and thousands more arrested without charge.

These three factors are then mixed with extreme religiosity that purports Islam to be the most perfect and true belief system and a conviction that these killers will be rewarded in the afterlife. This should not be viewed as "excusing terror" but rather understanding the context in which such terror occurs in order to better eradicate it. It should also not be viewed as the ONLY reasons Islamic fundamentalists target the West (insert any number of perceived cultural violations from Salman Rushdie's freedom of expression to Ellen DeGeneres' freedom of personal dignity to Christopher Hitchen's freedom to appear shitfaced on Fox News). However these three factors are the primary political motivations that push Muslim fundamentalists to take action. Without these motivations it's likely they'd continue to bemoan women's equality and the like, but it's unlikely that this would be as powerful a drive as is seeing bloody corpses televised live from Iraq and Palestine.

We need to be not only more nuanced in our understanding of suicide attacks, but more tactical in our approach. The best way to combat these individuals on the ground is, not through military force, but through police action. There is no central hierarchy that can be dismantled because the individuals only share common motivations but no shared infrastructure. However, police tactics will ultimately fail as "new recruits just keep sprouting" if we don't address the larger motivations. If we're serious about stopping terrorism the best way to go about it is to eliminate the base of support for terrorists.
Obviously addressing these concerns will do little to reduce the civil war in Iraq with Sunni and Shia antagonism so firmly entrenched (and exaggerated as the result of colonial policies and Sunni brutality under Saddam Hussein's regime). But if we seriously engage these political grievances we will, not only support Western rhetoric of justice and fairness, we will undermine many of the reasons people see suicide bombing as the only solution.

For more information about these issues I'd recommend Robert Fisk's reporting in the London Independent, Norman Finkelstein's Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Noam Chomsky's Middle East Illusions.

For an example of the sort of thing that could motivate such action consider the following:


(Please note that this author does not endorse the views expressed.)

Or consider this:



Wouldn't it be wiser if Western actions matched our rhetoric? Wouldn't we be more likely to reduce violent retaliation if we could confidently claim the higher moral ground? Whether it's Friedman's ignorance or total disregard of how Western policies could ignite such violence doesn't ultimately matter. As the spokesman for American expansion he takes on the role as an apologist for state power, like the British apologists for their own colonial policies who are his forebears. Happy Independence Day.

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