Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Apr 3, 2011, 9:16 pm
It’s time for a break: I planned to announce this at the end of May, when my sabbatical begins, a sabbatical in which I have committed myself to an astounding amount of work (I blame it on a workaholic binge that caused blood poisoning). Instead, it seems right to extend the break a bit further, s...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 31, 2011, 1:32 pm
"The London Conference on Libya" (29 March 2011) -- No Libyans invited From UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s opening speech at the London Conference on Libya, 29 March 2011: “Today is about a new beginning for Libya – a future in which the people of Libya can determine their own destiny, fr...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 27, 2011, 11:17 am
A video that in many ways corresponds with what I argued in “America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution,” the video below in part shows how the use of social media to make falsified versions of Libyan reality can go viral–radioactive–(re)producing an intellectually toxic swarm of passive repeate...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 26, 2011, 8:11 pm
Encircling Empire: Report #15—The Humanitarian-Militarist Project and the Production Empire in Libya Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 18, 2011, 10:15 am
The “Arab Spring” was a short one; what follows, another NATO Summer, will last much longer. If you do not think about it, there is a lot to cheer about the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, against what this time has been a mountain of advice, questions, and critiques from all im...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 17, 2011, 8:38 pm
Encircling Empire: Report #14—Foreign Military Intervention in Libya: A Report on Neo-colonial dependency and humanitarian imperialism Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 12, 2011, 1:55 pm
The Israelites Leaving Egypt, David Roberts, 1828 Exodus: Movement of the People Thinking still of Gastón Cordillo’s essays on resonance—“Resonance and the Egyptian Revolution” and “The Speed of Revolutionary Resonance,” and others writing about “The Phenomenology of the Resonance-Re...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 8, 2011, 3:40 pm
Whose Responsibility? Beginning with a personal note, as any act of personal interpretation ought to begin: Like many others, when I read reports of how the Gaddafi regime was brutally suppressing nonviolent protests, I wanted to see action to stop the regime. I still want to see Gaddafi face justic...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Mar 7, 2011, 2:09 am
Encircling Empire: Report #13—Revolution, Intervention, Anthropology Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● p...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 28, 2011, 6:33 am
Violins at the ready. Bernie Madoff has wailed in a weepy confessional to New York Magazine that he’s not such a bad egg after all. “I’m not the kind of person I’m being portrayed as,” he told Steve Fishman. “I’m a good person.” Bernie is one of a bold band of browbeaten brigadiers ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 23, 2011, 2:58 pm
WARNING: Contains satire, mockery and travesty. Suitable for mature audiences only. Reported events in Libya are very intriguing, to some extent. While one hopes that the following statements do not go too far over the top, we might say that unconfirmed allegations of loss of life may give one reas...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 21, 2011, 1:18 am
In “The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race and Gender,” by Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins (reprinted in The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, 2002, pps. 92-116), we encounter this very illuminating passage dealing with the figure of the veiled, non-Western woman, photogra...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 19, 2011, 11:44 am
[First, many thanks to John Stanton for notifying us of the release of the report discussed below, available here, and for his article. Here I take a somewhat different approach in describing and interpreting the contents of the report, and the conclusions it draws. In addition, or as an aside, read...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 16, 2011, 9:26 pm
The Center for Naval Analyses report (CNAR) on the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS) is available on our site (31 Mb, PDF).  The report acknowledges that there were a number of success stories within HTS but that institutional and management woes crippled the program. The authors of the CNAR d...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 11, 2011, 8:45 pm
President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza) “The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt. We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary and asked for to pursue a c...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 10, 2011, 10:55 am
“I recognize that this two year project, which overtly maps rural communities, trade connections and key local stakeholders with pastoralists around Hargesisa and Berbera, could be used as a resource for building Human Terrain Maps of this critical region of the Horn of Africa. We would be happy t...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 10, 2011, 10:33 am
By JOHN ALLISON The attack on Guernica by Nazi Condor Legion fighters and bombers in full coordination with and bombing instructions from Spain’s Nationalist dictator, Generalissimo Franco, was carried out on April 26, 1937, 36 hours after my birth on the west coast of North America. This was the ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 5, 2011, 11:46 pm
I was getting really upset that every time I went on a show, all you would see is “Crisis in Cairo,” “Unrest in Egypt.” And they were totally missing the historical significance of what was happening. My country, you know, my people, these incredibly courageous people in Egypt, were standing...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 5, 2011, 10:29 pm
“The challenge for anthropologists is to discover without killing.” “With notebooks and pens we will end suicide bombings and gore. Sensitivity to backward culture will help us to control the horror. They’ll learn love for American freedom through stories they’ll come to adore.” “Ant...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 4, 2011, 9:49 am
MSM, Social Media and the Egyptian Revolution--Graffiti on one of the buildings in Tahrir Square: Twitter, Al-Jazeera, Facebook. Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy Americans remain largely ambivalent to the tectonic shifts taking place in Egypt, Jordan, Albania, Lebanon and Tunisia. What’s worse is that...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 4, 2011, 9:35 am
The fall of the killer سقوط السفاح Protester carrying anti-Mubarak poster in Tahrir Square. Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy Originally published by CounterPunch, and reproduced with permission of the author. By DAVID H. PRICE Anyone who has lived in Egypt for an extended period of time or h...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Feb 3, 2011, 4:10 pm
Photo from Tahrir Square by Hossam el-Hamalawy EE: Report #12, FOCUS ON EGYPT: Revolution and Counter-Revolution Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contempora...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 30, 2011, 7:50 pm
Protest at Egyptian Embassy in London, 29 January 2011 The United States, whose hallowed creation myth styles America as the quintessential child of revolution, has for decades navigated the insupportable irony of denying others their own political parturition through the ideological conflation of ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 30, 2011, 7:48 pm
I commented some years ago on the troubles that Egypt and related tyrant-run countries faced in the coming years. Saudi Arabia will not be far behind and the word will be better off when the House of Saud is toppled. I lost sleep over the efforts of the people of Egypt becoming at once very emotio...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 29, 2011, 7:06 pm
The down fall of Hosni Mobarak, the “blessed amicable”, will have profound consequences for the corrupting American presence in the region. The expulsion of Hosni will mean one less major obstacle to peace and justice in the Middle East. Egypt under Mobarak and Saudi Arabia are the two most corr...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 29, 2011, 6:56 pm
The military and civilian forces of the United States should leave Afghanistan. The American government has morally and politically disqualified itself from involvement in Afghanistan (and every other place in the world). This freaked out and dark minded killing machine has no business in the affair...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 29, 2011, 1:18 am
EE: Report #11, FOCUSING ON EGYPT Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism a...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 28, 2011, 9:19 am
On 20 January 2009, this is what an instrument of American pacification stated on his entry into office: To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to uncle...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 23, 2011, 9:13 pm
What if Wikileaks, from the start, had announced itself as an anonymous group of hackers whose work aimed at producing an open access archive of leaked, stolen, and otherwise illegally obtained and illegally reproduced documents? Chances are that in a conflict with the U.S. or any other government, ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 18, 2011, 10:30 pm
ZALMAY KHALIZAD The occupation of Afghanistan by the United States is not only based on misguided policies, denials of truth and glaring political realities, it is also guided by ignorance and profoundly distorted understandings of the cultural and social complexities of this devastated country. A ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 18, 2011, 1:29 pm
EE: Report #10, 07—18 January 2011 Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 17, 2011, 8:57 am
By Rev. Martin Luther King 4 April 1967 Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join wit...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 16, 2011, 6:09 am
01.29.11 London Demo, Photo by Author “Move along folks, you’re blocking a cash point.” This pithy synopsis of the neoliberal logic driving the policing of student protest was delivered unironically by one of London Met’s Finest to the milling crowd at a recent demonstration at the Departme...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 15, 2011, 7:52 am
An establishment anthropologist, and a renegade–Hortense Powdermaker (bio1, bio2, bio3, bio4, bio5) worked on some unique projects that differed from the anthropological standard of her time (especially given her training by Malinowski, and the dominant influences of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Prit...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 14, 2011, 1:39 pm
This is the first time that I am writing about a subject that has occupied my thoughts numerous times over many years. I have talked with a doctoral student (a filmmaker with years of experience following the lives of “homeless” persons in Toronto) about maybe teaming up to capture bleakness on ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 14, 2011, 12:08 am
The world as "downrange" for Gabrielle Giffords There is Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in photos on this page, enjoying the fruit of shock and awe, definitely a representative. Of what? That’s one question. What are not the questions worth any/further debate are whether or not Sarah Palin ma...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 8, 2011, 12:45 pm
If you were asked which regime is described by the following actions and characteristics, what would you answer? A regime that produces a death list of citizens abroad to be executed by its secret intelligence service, without arrest, without trial by a jury. A regime that conducts surveillance at ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 7, 2011, 2:14 pm
EE: Report #9, 01—07 January 2011 Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 4, 2011, 3:02 am
“In the time of Xerxes, it is documented that the King took advice from his Queen which significantly impacted a political issue and prevented mass genocide. We are still in Persia. Conversations still go on between men and women behind closed doors. To understand those conversations and more impo...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Jan 4, 2011, 2:29 am
SPEAKING NOTES: OPTION 1 Good Morning Sir, It’s not who I am but what I am that brings me here today. I am a soldier with an identifier that enables me to garner information and build relationships with the population that is not accessible by some others – that identifier is my gender. But i...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 30, 2010, 1:30 pm
2010 has been a great year for Zero Anthropology, with so much to celebrate that it’s difficult to know where to begin (and when to stop). From July onward we witnessed a steep comeback in terms of the number of our on-site readers, eventually breaking all of our records to the extent that now for...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 28, 2010, 11:19 am
A few months back, Jamil Hanifi and I coauthored a widely circulated critique of a slanderous piece of war propaganda put out by “journalist” Joel Brinkley, who relied in part on Anna Maria Cardinalli, a “social scientist” with the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (see “The ‘Dirty Secr...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 25, 2010, 2:07 am
Many thanks to John Postill for directing my attention to this video. But perhaps you don’t care for Christmas songs, not even satirical ones. Perhaps samba is more to your liking? Not samba? How about straight up rap (news)? This is one of Juice Media’s best, preceded by other great ones on Wi...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 24, 2010, 9:24 pm
“I,______, in the Presence of the Mighty Ones, do of my own free will and accord most solemnly swear that I will ever keep secret and never reveal the secrets of the Art…. And may my weapons turn against me if I break this my solemn oath.” –Initiation oath in modern witchcraft, from The Witc...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 21, 2010, 10:08 pm
An excellent little video that neatly summarizes, in the appropriately burlesque fashion, the situation of unqualified anthropologists who join the Human Terrain System, and the desperate and deceitful nature of the sales pitch that they get from recruiters. Just my overblown misinterpretation? Not...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 18, 2010, 9:28 pm
[This is the second in a series of three articles I am writing about Wikileaks. The first was “The Wikileaks Revolution” that led to a parallel article published in CounterPunch. The third one will focus on anthropology and secrecy. Before going any further, I must say that an article by a socio...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 18, 2010, 12:27 pm
People just joining this debate will have some homework to do first, to better understand what follows below. Here is some of the history of the discussion. We began focusing attention on a debate between Australian anthropologists around the state’s intervention in Aboriginal communities in the N...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 14, 2010, 11:03 am
On this site “The Wikileaks Revolution” (the first article in an ongoing series of three) provided a survey of opinions on what kind of turning point Wikileaks represents. At the same time I worked on a related article, with a nearly identical title, for CounterPunch, which was published today: ...
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 13, 2010, 5:30 pm
Thanks to the careful assistance of Owen Wiltshire, Zero Anthropology is now a Wikileaks mirror. We are proud to join this effort. See us at wikileaks.openanthropology.org. Filed under: COLLABORATION, WIKILEAKS Tagged: Cabelgate, I am Wikileaks, Mirror, Wikileaks
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Maximilian Forte posted an article on ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - Dec 13, 2010, 2:19 pm
For those who are interested, this is just a brief note of two relevant items posted on the website of Anthropologists for Justice and Peace. One, building on what John Stanton has provided in the previous post, focuses on the continuation and expansion of the Human Terrain System, with yet another ...
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