OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY

I meant to mention previously that we can observe, after a decline and almost dismissal of ideas of imperialism, dependency, and colonialism in the 1990s academic and anthropological literature to be specific, one can see a return of the terms “imperialism,” “empire,” and “colonialism” in the titles of mainstream journal articles. It’s nice to see reality being welcomed back into the discussion. In some parts of the world, colonialist reality was never marginalized. Here are some links and quotes to current newspaper debates concerning colonialism and tradition in contemporary Africa:

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The rebirth of Africa means discarding foreign religions
by Sentletse Diakanyo
Mail & Guardian (South Africa), July 20, 2008

The traditional religions of most Africans altered significantly as a result of colonial rule. Colonial rulers interfered with the African way of worship. Where the modes of worship conflicted with those of the colonialists, restrictions were placed on religious practice. African cultures were seen as primitive and were gradually impoverished through neglect and suppression by colonial hooligans.

The rebirth of Africa has become even more urgent under growing recolonialisation of Africa under the false guise of globalisation. Africans need to reclaim their religion and culture, and discard many of those which were imposed on them, by embracing Afrocentricism as the essential element of the African renaissance as popularised by President Thabo Mbeki in recent times.

See the tremendous debate that follows beneath the article, almost every imaginable position is voiced, and few appear to be in favour of the argument above. The author of the piece is himself a Formula One race car driver, and that too became the subject of some comments.

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African traditions corrupted
by Keith Ross
IOL (South Africa), July 21, 2008

African traditions have been corrupted over many years by the influence of Western values, with its emphasis on materialism.

The corruption is particularly marked in the urban areas of South Africa, where there has also been a breakdown of the family as the vehicle of traditional values.

This was one of the conclusions drawn in SAfm Radio’s After Eight Debate on the topic: “Are African cultures being corrupted?”

The debating panel felt traditional culture would have to be restored by a conscious and broad-based effort, through the family and all levels of education.

‘To be poor in the world is to be the doormats of people’

“We should accept that the culture of any people is dynamic and we should not be afraid of its dynamism,” said Dr Mongane Serote, executive chairperson of the Freedom Park Trust.

“But Africans as a whole on the continent went through what was almost like nuclear war on us in terms of ideas,” he said.

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Mugabe, Britain and the abuses of anti-colonialism (version 1)
by Priyamvada Gopal
ZNet, June 29, 2008

Somehow, this version seems to have more balanced criticism of British political and media hypocrisy in their war against Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, than does the version (below) published by The Guardian in the UK. I wonder if that was the point in publishing “the longer version” at another source? Given that bias, underplayed by The Guardian, I am emphasizing the comments here that are critical of Britain’s stance:

Were the BBC and Channel 4 to show as many close-ups of injured and dead Iraqis as they do of Mugabe’s maimed victims, criticism of violence against innocents might be somewhat more evenly distributed than it currently is. The British government turns accusatory fingers in Zimbabwe’s direction while Mugabe shouts back anti-colonial slogans. It is a perfect symbiosis, a mutually convenient embrace of denunciation, with each party laying claim to the higher moral ground. The only innocents, however, are ordinary Zimbabweans. …

Britain’s persistent refusal to acknowledge its own colonial legacies is contradictory. It reneged on its commitments to the land reform programme claiming, in Claire Short’s words, that there were no ‘links to former colonial interests’ while nevertheless concerning itself with the fate of the white farmers who represent these interests. Alongside an extremely selective use of human rights discourse, such contradictions mean that Mugabe’s denunciations have some truth to them even if their main purpose is to detract from the ruling elite’s own depravities. While Africa is ostensibly central to Britain’s international development agenda, the emphasis has always been on the paternalism of aid rather than acknowledging and making reparations for the economic devastation wrought by colonialism. Rarely do condemnations of land seizure, violence and intimidation extend back to the time Matabeleland came under British rule. This too was accompanied by the seizure of vast swathes of fertile land by a handful of British farmers while large numbers of Ndebele and Shona people were killed or forced into labour. Brutal modern regimes in that part of the globe didn’t begin with Mugabe.

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Mugabe has recolonised his people (version 2)
We should recognise that Zimbabwe was brutalised by colonisation. But Mugabe liberated his country only to install another tyranny

by Priyamvada Gopal
The Guardian (UK), Friday, June 27, 2008

Mugabe and fellow African liberationists should reacquaint themselves with the real meaning of anti-colonialism. Having resisted the anti-poor agendas of international monetary institutions and initiated necessary land reforms, Mugabe has also refused all responsibility for those many failures of his rule not reducible to the colonial past.

A party of freedom fighters has degenerated into thugs brandishing liberationist sticks to starve and brutalise an entire population. Real anti-colonialists like Gandhi and Fanon always insisted that freedom was not about replacing the white tyrant with the black one, whereas Mugabe has essentially recolonised his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression and intimidation deployed by the Zimbabwean leader, a knight of the British Empire until Wednesday, were taught him by the colonial masters he professes to despise. Quick to claim credit for spreading parliamentary democracy, Britain is less forthcoming about acknowledging the legacy of authoritarian rule also left behind by its empire.

I must say that I like Gopal’s analytical approach, embracing both Fanon and Gandhi, and not aiming for “balance” as much as an anti-colonial perspective that is directed at both external and internal neo-colonialists. Because she is equally critical of Robert Mugabe and Gordon Brown, some might mistake that as a middling position, which in that very limited sense it is.

What I also appreciate about Gopal’s approach is that she reminds us of the legacy of British authoritarian rule. One must recall in the Caribbean context how Britain’s colonies were directly administered from Britain, hence their designation as Crown Colonies, without any effort, any pretense, to allow locals to practice democracy. Token opposition in local legislative assemblies was usually opposition for the sake of opposition, there was no need to be responsible to an electorate, and no role to be played in governance. The colonial governors themselves were not slow to exact merciless physical punishment against their non-white critics. From that, a rapid transition to “self-rule,” with a colonial historical context and cultural repertoire of power exercised through beatings. Why massacres of political opponents are not the norm is incredible testimony to the power of the “formerly” colonized to escape the cultural bindings of the recent past.

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed (July 22, 2008), has produced a great piece titled, “Torture and the Research Star.” Now the American Psychological Association (APA) is entering the debate on the role of academics in supporting the military establishment, especially when the result is the commission of violations against human rights. At the centre of this latest controversy is Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, past president of the APA, whose work on “learned helplessness” was, allegedly, reverse engineered by the CIA, whom he addressed in a three hour lecture where they learned of psychological torture techniques he outlined for them, supposedly to aid American troops who might be subjected to such torture. Seligman protests innocence, and at least some find this remarkably naive.

The APA is about to have voting in a referendum on the banning of participation by psychologists in activities and work that contravenes international human rights charters. See the petition here.

The APA Council has also called on the U.S. government to stop engaging in “unethical interrogation techniques.” See that press release here.

Much of the information and debate surrounding Seligman’s role comes as a new book by Jane Mayer which speaks of the matter and seems to have broken the news to the public. See the interview with Mayer here.

In “shifting to the center,” Barack Obama has now established himself as the other war candidate — pity those of us who maintained some glimmer of hope that this man’s touting of hope itself, and change, would have meant some conclusion to this latest round of imperial expansion. Pity those of us who thought that because Hillary Clinton made him look good, that he was good. While Obama can profess that the seas will stop rising because he, Obama, is the presumptive nominee (and this election for Obama is all about Obama), he cannot break with nearly 200 years of uninterrupted American war, nor will he be second to Gerald Ford in being the only other president in a century not to have ordered troops to war. Not even this man, god-like messiah of his own audacious subtext, can stop war…but he can stop seas from rising. I do not think this is the “audacity of hope,” nor even the “audacity of vanity;” it looks like just sheer audacity.

Barack Obama has asserted recently that the war in Afghanistan is one that “America” has to “win.” For determined opponents of U.S. power, this is a kind of “good news,” since this further steeping of a declining hegemon in a war-without-end will surely speed its geopolitical decline. And look at where Obama is choosing to concentrate: Afghanistan — the unconquerable Afghanistan. This Afghanistan, now at the center of the epic struggle of world imperialism, can look forward to chalking up another superpower to its name, yet again. Yet another superpower will be leaving its helmeted skull in Afghan sand, and one can almost hear Russian war veterans laughing in disbelief at the sight of history repeating itself as farce. And note how many “jihadists” from across Asia seem to have heard Obama’s message and have realigned and reoriented their energies in a shifting focus to Afghanistan, having had invaluable live-fire training in Iraq, and note how the violence always escalates in Afghanistan, even to the point where the U.S. has to abandon one of its forward camps, while the international media broadcast footage of an American solider being shot to pieces and rolling lifelessly down the hillside.

While Afghanistan serves as the black hole of imperialism, imagine being one of those American troops left in the last brigade to leave Iraq, as part of a “phased withdrawal,” outmanned, outgunned, hated, removing itself under the eyes of those who wish to inflict a final humiliation. In fact, there may not even be any such withdrawal if you listen to Obama, who has adopted some doublespeak of his own: he will withdraw “combat troops” from Iraq, he acknowledges that Iraqis do not want an open-ended U.S. presence … and in almost the same breath says U.S. troops will remain in Iraq to protect “diplomatic” and “humanitarian” missions (which in U.S. doublespeak can mean just about anything), to train Iraqi forces, and to conduct counter terrorism. Not “open ended,” he says. Suddenly, the other war candidate has become the two war candidate. The question Obama needs to answer is the one John Kerry failed to: if Americans want a war making right winger for a president, why would they not vote for the one person who is honestly just that?

[Update: This is what "withdrawal of the troops from Iraq" looks like in Obama's world: a news story just released quotes his campaign advisers as saying that 50,000 troops would remain in Iraq. In George Orwell's 1984, "2+2=5" at least seemed more plausible than 0 = 50,000. Also, keep in mind that the figure of 50,000 troops in Iraq, beyond 2009, was part of a plan first offered by the Bush administration.]

As if challenging the incredulous to climb to greater heights of disbelief, Obama threatens to widen the war into Pakistan as well, a nuclear power. This is the height of audacity, and maybe only in “America” could one make a promise like this:

“The greatest threat to that security lies in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where terrorists train and insurgents strike into Afghanistan. We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I won’t. We need a stronger and sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO to secure the border, to take out terrorist camps and to crack down on cross-border insurgents. We need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones in the Afghan border region. And we must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.”–Barack Obama.

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Dave Sirota, July 18, 2008
‘CENTRISTS’ ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM
AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/91931/

Washington’s pundits and politicians have waged an ongoing propaganda campaign to pass off crazy, fringe politics as reasonable and mainstream.

In the asylum that is American politics, beware a candidate like Barack Obama when he is lauded for moving to “the center” — because usually that means he is drifting away from it.

Over the last month, the Democratic presidential nominee has backed a measure to permit warrantless wiretapping and protect telecom companies when they violate customers’ privacy; sent conflicting signals about whether he will reform the NAFTA trade model; and threatened to revise his timetable for ending the war in Iraq. Universally, reporters have billed this dance as a move to the middle. As the Associated Press claimed in a typical description, Obama’s shifts are designed “to appeal to the center of the electorate.”

However, empirical data proves “the center of the electorate” is exactly the opposite …continue

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Mike Whitney, July 21, 2008
THE DEMOCRATS ARE THE REAL PROBLEM
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07212008.html

Obama’s candidacy is over; kaput. He’s already stated that he has no intention of stopping the war, so he has disqualified himself. That’s his prerogative; no one put a gun to his head. His op-ed in Monday’s New York Times just removes any lingering doubt about the matter. What Obama proposes is moving the central theater of operation from Iraq to Afghanistan. Big deal. Why is it more acceptable to kill a man who is fighting for his country in Afghanistan than in Iraq?

It’s not; which is why Obama must be defeated and the equivocating Democratic Party must be jettisoned altogether. The Democrats are a party of blood just like the Republicans, they’re just more discreet about it. That’s why people who are serious about ending the war have to support candidates outside the two-party charade. The Democrat/Republican duopoly will not deliver the goods; it’s as simple as that. The point is to stop the killing, not to provide blind support for smooth-talking politicos who try to mask their real intentions. Obama made his choice, now he can suffer the consequences. …continue

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Ron Jacobs, July 20, 2008
The Adventures of the Parasite Army: WHY AFGHANISTAN IS NOT THE GOOD WAR
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs07192008.html

It’s the perennial thorn in the colonialist’s side. It’s the war that won’t go away. It’s a wasp sting that swells, slowly choking the life out of the sting’s recipient. It is the nearly seven-year old occupation of Afghanistan by the United States and various NATO allies. Nearly forgotten by most Americans, the situation in that country has taken headlines away from the occupation of Iraq because of the resurgence of the anti-occupation forces. …continue

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Corey D.B. Walker, July 18, 2008
Getting Beyond the Either/Or Choice: A KINDER, GENTLER IMPERIALISM?
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/walker07182008.html

Both major party presidential candidates have been sparring over the focus, scope, and reach of the Bush Administration’s self-proclaimed “War on Terrorism.” Each, in their own way, look to tweak the grand designs of imperial power to properly and correctly align it with their particular ideological proclivities and vision of American global hegemony.

Whether it is Senator McCain’s continuation of the war in Iraq or Senator Obama’s intense focus on the theatre of conflict in Afghanistan (and extending into Pakistan), both candidates have chosen not to challenge the underlying foundational assumptions that have informed American foreign policy and national security policy since the events of 11 September 2001.

Both candidates agree with the deeply flawed language and logic that our nation is at “war.” As military historian Sir Michael Howard opined almost seven years ago, “[T]o use, or rather to misuse the term ‘war’ is not simply a matter of legality, or pedantic semantics. It has deeper and more dangerous consequences. To declare that one is ‘at war’ is immediately to create a war psychosis that may be totally counter-productive for the objective that we seek. It will arouse an immediate expectation, and demand, for spectacular military action against some easily identifiable adversary, preferably a hostile state; action leading to decisive results.” In this respect, Senator McCain will have us “win” in Iraq and Senator Obama will have us “win” in Afghanistan. …

In several significant ways, the foreign policy differences between the two candidates can best be understood as two competing visions for the enhancement and perpetuation of American imperialism. …continue

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Great news from How the university works that Ward Churchill’s very good case against the University of Colorado will go to court in early 2009, challenging the right wing witch hunt that unfairly targeted him and that stalks the 65% of faculty in the U.S. who are not tenured, or are not tenure-track. As laid out on that blog, and in many other writings, the charges against Churchill were nothing short of ludicrous and defamatory, and neither the investigating nor the appeal committees of UC felt that the extraordinarily minor items in question in Churchill’s writing merited dismissal. Hopefully this suit will teach the totalitarian hacks in charge of the University of Colorado a much needed lesson, not to mention the petty, pseudo-scholars that have tried to build their reputations by destroying Churchill’s. I encourage readers to visit the site of the Ward Churchill Solidarity Network as well, and to read the testimonies of the many internationally prominent scholars who have written in Churchill’s defense. To think that all of this began because of a mass mediated holy war in the U.S., fueled by outrage over Churchill’s piece, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens – still one of the most sober, best pieces of writing on “9/11″ to have been written by an American author. Unfortunately for Churchill, at that time any public writing that did not toe the line of authorized sanctimony and repeat the third-grade sentimentality of so many public commentaries would necessarily turn Churchill into a target. What few cared to understand was the way that Churchill turned U.S. military and nationalist logic on its head, so that in their outrage Americans could begin to sense a little of what it felt like to be on the receiving end for a change. The only other “public” figure to have gained such notoriety because of remarks about the attacks was Obama’s Rev. Wright, for making the same argument using the same metaphor, which Malcolm X used to frame the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Churchill, Wright, and Malcolm X were all, of course, disowned and ostracized in the land that speaks of “freedom” as if it had invented the idea and had special rights to its meanings. (Luckily for Oprah Winfrey, few remember that almost immediately after “9/11″ one of her shows was devoted to “root causes” and why the U.S. had provoked these attacks.)

One useful online resource, germane to some aspects of current discussions on anthropology and counterinsurgency, following from the previous post, is:

Jorgensen, Joseph G., and Wolf, Eric R. (1970). Anthropology on the warpath in Thailand (a special supplement). The New York Review of Books, 15 (9), November 19.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10763

In that article, which provoked lengthy and critical responses, the two authors reflect on the significance, back then, of what they learned of the role of anthropologists in gathering information to facilitate counterinsurgency activities. The problem, as they state, is one that has,

dogged anthropologists from the inception of the discipline. European conquest and colonialism had, after all, provided the field for anthropology’s operations and, especially in the nineteenth century, its intellectual ethic of “scientific objectivity.” But “scientific objectivity,” we believe, implies the estrangement of the anthropologist from the people among whom he works.

Here the authors place scientific objectivity within the framework of building empire. They refer to Claude Lévi-Strauss for further defining this issue:

Anthropology is not a dispassionate science like astronomy, which springs from the contemplation of things at a distance. 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. Its capacity to assess more objectively the facts pertaining to the human condition reflects, on the epistemological level, a state of affairs in which one part of mankind treats the other as an object. (Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Anthropology: Its Achievement and Future,” Current Anthropology, vol. 7, 1966, p. 126.)

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Jorgensen and Wolf reflect on their colleagues’ engagements with counterinsurgency, in light of the history of anthropology. As they put it,

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.

The advent of World War II, in the words of the outgoing president of the American Anthropological Association, “[provided] anthropologists [with] an unprecedented opportunity to play a variety of applied roles in government.” There was, for instance, an opportunity to aid in the forcible relocation of 100,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry to places east of the Sierras. There was the opportunity to analyze Japanese culture through the analysis of secondary sources and interviews with Japanese in the United States, under the auspices of the Foreign Morale Analysis Division, Office of War Information. There was, further, the chance to write war background studies of individual countries, such as “Siam—Land of Free Men,” under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Finally, anthropologists shouldered the White Man’s Burden in Micronesia, serving as administrators to local populations under the auspices of the Navy.

Also worth noting is that the Human Resource Area Files (HRAF) emerged from Yale’s Cross-Cultural Survey, which had the purpose of providing the military with information on world areas that were deemed critical. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and CIA each contributed $50,000 annually to help support the development of the HRAF.

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At the time at which they wrote there had already been several meetings between government officials, military representatives, and academics from the SS (the social science community). Participants were aware of several problems that would place obstacles in the way of acceptance of their research plans, including widespread opposition to war in southeast Asia. As the minutes of one conference made clear, Jorgensen and Wolf explain,

there are devices for getting around these difficulties: increased salaries, congenial companionship, “interesting problems like existence of Thai communists”; professional opportunities and prestige; support of military officials at universities; closer ties of government with universities; greater support for RAND and Army think tanks; the hiring of top professionals at high costs to enlist and serve as a model for others; the development of administrative anthropologists who, on the British and French design, would become advisers to Empire.

Like much of the rest of the article, it often reads like an exposé of the Human Terrain System and the Minerva Research Initiative, only with different actors and acronyms. With some remarkable resemblance to what is contained in the call for Minerva grant applications Jorgensen and Wolf state: “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.” Little has changed.

It’s also interesting to note how the payment of high salaries is meant as more than just “compensation,” but as a lure in attracting SS recruits. Interesting to note as well the presence of RAND, now as then. The infusion of government and military money had a definite impact, Jorgensen and Wolf note:

Nearly everywhere, anthropologists were drawn into the network of information gathering and processing; the demand was for their data, not for their values. The anthropologist was supposed to bring in the “behavioral” information; others would use that information to formulate and execute public policy. Thus the curious quid pro quo which provides current working conditions for a great many anthropologists was established. The researcher would get the chance to carry on field work with a heady sense of engagement in a global welfare operation, punctuated by occasional participation in an international meeting, followed by a dry martini at the airport bar in Bangkok or Dar es Salaam. In exchange, others received the right to play with his data. Many signed their contracts, unwittingly or otherwise, in return for fellowships, research grants, and jobs.

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Throughout the article the authors are highly critical of secret research, noting how much damage it can do not just to anthropology’s credibility and future, but especially to the people studied by the anthropologist:

Obviously, such techniques and goals are anathema to the anthropologist who is dedicated to open and free inquiry, and who feels an obligation to the people among whom he performs his work, people whom he can no longer regard as objects of the goal of “scientific objectivity.” Indeed, the anthropologist’s traditional obligation to the people among whom he works is the critical issue. In order for the anthropologist to work at all, he must learn to trust them and they him. He must learn to depend upon them, and in return, he promises that he will not betray their personal confidences, or permit his findings to be used without their knowledge for political purposes. Furthermore, many anthropologists feel that they should obtain their subjects’ consent to collect and disseminate information, and that, moreover, having received such consent on one topic, the researcher is not free to collect and use information on other topics.

Jorgensen and Wolf do not stop there. They argue that a naive anthropology can serve in the role of “informer” to the powerful and aid the purposes of imperial domination:

The days of naïve anthropology are over. It is no longer adequate to collect information about little known and powerless people; one needs to know also the uses to which that knowledge can be put. Behind an appeal for pure research, a research grant, a consultant’s fee, an appeal to personal vanity or to patriotism, is a government that may well use the knowledge gained to damage the subjects among whom it was gathered. Perhaps this is the grimmest lesson of all the events of the past years: many a naïve anthropologist has become, wittingly or unwittingly, an informer.

I was similarly concerned about this in an earlier post about “exposing the network.”

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Jorgensen and Wolf essentially call for the decolonization of anthropology as a means of countering the cooptation of anthropology in building empire:

Admittedly, anthropology was ambiguously conceived. Now, in our view, it must disengage itself from its connection with colonial aims or it will become intellectually trivial. The future of anthropology, its credibility, depends upon sustaining the dialectic between knowledge and experience. Anthropologists must be willing to testify in behalf of the oppressed peoples of the world, including those whom we professionally define as primitives and peasants

Now, as then, the decolonization of anthropology remains to be achieved, and it will now be harder than ever. It’s best not to set any limits to either the nature or the extent of opposition to the recolonization of anthropology that is necessary.

Putting some red herrings to rest, in a pan with hot oil

Re-reading some of David Price’s online articles about the militarization of social science research has been rewarding for the important insights and questions he raises (see Counterpunch 2005/05/12, 2005/05/22, 2008/06/24). Anyone who doubts that there is a “national security state” at work in bending social science to meet imperial objectives is of course free to dispute the details of the information provided by Price, and there have been a few, slim attempts. Price takes us through various programs, including the National Security Education Program (NSEP), the Intelligence Community Scholars Program (ICSP), the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), the Minerva Consortia, and of course this builds on discussions of the Human Terrain System (HTS). It is difficult to get a sense from Price’s articles about the total amount of money that has been dedicated to all of these programs, together, but my own rough estimate based on the figures provided is that it is not less than $150 million US.

That is quite a few programs and a good sum of funds, at a relatively early stage in some of these programs, added to grudging acceptance by various professional bodies, and more enthusiastic support from university presidents, in a climate where “national security” is pumped up as something that all Americans (and even Canadians) need to be worried about. The notion that anthropologists and other social scientists who wish to embed themselves in counterinsurgency or otherwise aid the military are somehow being stopped from joining by critics of these programs is simply false. Nobody is stopping them, they are being funded to the hilt, and getting a lot of job opportunities. So we can at least dismiss this first red herring.

However, why was the red herring raised to begin with? Like many other red herrings, this one can be useful for distracting and deflecting attention. The objective is to target the critics as the problem, as the oppressor, who somehow have the power to persecute their militarist colleagues, when the militarists are getting the funding and institutional support. The only real aim of such discourse is to try to mute dissent and criticism. That’s all. The militarists are doing what they want to do already, and get all the support that counts, but they would prefer to do so either with silence or applause from the audience. If there is one lesson for all parties to be learned from this clash, a clash that will likely become a defining feature of academic social science for many years to come, is that nobody will get everything they want (and some of us get close to nothing we want).

The second red herring has to do with what we see on some of these surrounding blog discussions, the idea that criticism is problematic because it is not objective and scientific, it is does not do enough to waffle itself into an obscure middling position where it could remain as good as silent for being incomprehensible and ambiguous. One argument has thus involved caricaturing criticism of academic support for the military and intelligence arms of the state as being “rhetorical,” while those upholding such engagement do so instead as a result of their embrace/ownership of “reasoned discourse.” The appeal to ownership of reasoned discourse, while tossing every imaginable definition of “rhetoric” at one’s critics (in the hope that one will stick), is of course a rhetorical strategy in itself. That is why the more productive strategy is not to rehash antiquated notions of rhetoric and reason, but to examine these discussions as producing and reinforcing particular discourses.

For example, the discursive strategy of claiming to be reasonable, yet unleashing the dogs of war. One of the best groups of writers to understand this, and to spoof this logic, was of course Monty Python:

It’s all very well to laugh at the Military, but, when one considers the meaning of life, it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself, and without the ability to defend one’s own viewpoint against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies, then reasonableness and moderation could, quite simply, disappear.

What remains unanswered, because it is not meant to be answered, is: How should one understand the retreat to intellectual ambivalence and rhetorical obscurantism, in the face of documented violations of human rights of the most severe kind, as a result of an unprovoked invasion and a war of occupation?

What I want to draw attention to below is in line with the way Price begins one of his articles, with a quote from Robertson Davies: “In Paracelsus’s time the energy of universities resided in the conflict between humanism and theology; the energy of the modern university lives in the love-affair between government and science, and sometimes the two are so close it makes you shudder.”

What follows is for the scrapbook of this blog, a selection of what I think are key quotes from some of Price’s articles. The headings are mine.

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June 24, 2008
Inside the Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness

Sovietizing the social sciences

The demands of conforming scientific knowledge with the ideological positions of a powerful state stunted the development of Soviet biology for decades…American social science faces new forms of ideologically controlled funding that stand to transform our universities’ production of knowledge in ways reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s ideological control over scientific interpretations…

…the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, the National Security Education Program, Intelligence Community Scholars Program…leave our universities increasingly ready to produce knowledge and scholars aligned with the ideological assumptions of the Defense Department.

…ideological narrowness of the Defense Department’s approach to and presuppositions of these topics [in the Minerva program] will necessarily warp project outcomes…

Broken institutions can’t repair themselves, and agencies bound to neo-imperial desires of occupation and subjugation will not be receptive to scholarly work seeking to correct this national blunder.

Because of the narrowness of scope and assumptions about the causes of problems facing America, Gates’ Minerva plan will harm America’s strategic capabilities as it will inevitably fund scholars willing to think in the narrow ways already acceptable to the Defense Department.

Remembering that anthropology was and is imperial

In…anthropology, there is an overwhelming disciplinary amnesia of the extent to which research has been directed by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies in the past….there has been a broad spectrum of overt and covert control over this funding control, with the full range running from the rampant secret directing of funding of unwitting scholars doing research of interest to the CIA and others, to the open, massive funding of a full spectrum of social science and language projects through agencies like the NSF or Fulbright Programs.

Cultural knowledge as a weapon

The Bush Doctrine’s proximity to Minerva suggests a program designed to give the tools of culture to those in the military who will be told where to invade and occupy, not to those who might be asked of the wisdom of such actions.

Minerva seeks to increase the efficiency of implementing the Bush Doctrine, not the questioning of it.

Minerva doesn’t appear to be funding projects designed to tell Defense why the US shouldn’t invade and occupy other countries; its programs are more concerned with the nuts and bolts of counterinsurgency, and answering specific questions related to the occupation and streamlining the problems of empire. This sort of Soviet model of directed social science funding will make America’s critical perspective more narrow precisely at an historical moment when we need a new breadth of knowledge and perspective.

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March 12 / 13, 2005
Exposing the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program: The CIA’s Campus Spies

Classroom spies

The secrecy surrounding the current use of university classrooms as covert training grounds for the CIA and other agencies now threatens the fundamental principles of academic openness as well as the integrity of a wide array of academic disciplines.

Silence

…there has been no public reaction to an even more troubling post-9/11 funding program which upgrades the existing American intelligence-university-interface. With little notice Congress approved section 318 of the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act which appropriated four million dollars to fund a pilot program known as the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP). Named after Senator Pat Roberts (R. Kansas, Chair, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence)…

Beyond a few articles in a Kansas newspaper praising Senator Roberts, as well as University of Kansas anthropologist Felix Moos’ role in lobbying for the PRISP, there has been a general media silence regarding the program.

The cultures and places that matter

PRISP recruits scholars with “advanced area expertise in China, Middle East, Korea, Central Asia, the Caucasus,” with a special emphasis given to scholars with previous linguistic expertise in “Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashtun, Dari, Korean, or a Central Asian or Caucasian language such as Georgian, Turkmen, Tajik, or Uzbek.” PRISP also funds Islamic studies scholars and scientists with expertise in bioterrorism, counterterrorism, chemistry, physics, computer science and engineering.

Felix Moos: Imperial anthropologist

PRISP is largely the brainchild of University of Kansas anthropologist Felix Moos-a longtime advocate of anthropological contacts with military and intelligence agencies. During the Vietnam War Moos worked in Laos and Thailand on World Bank-financed projects and over the years he has worked in various military advisory positions. He worked on the Pentagon’s ARPA Project Themis, and has been as an instructor at the Naval War College and at the U.S. Staff and Command College at Fort Leavenworth. For years Moos has taught courses on “Violence and Terrorism” at the University of Kansas. In the months after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon Moos elicited the support of his friend, former CIA DCI, Stansfield Turner to curry support in the senate and CIA to fund his vision of a merger between anthropology, academia, intelligence analysis and espionage training…

…Moos is a bright man, but his writings echo the musty tone and sentiments found in the limited bedside readings of Tom-Clancy-literate-colonials, as he prefers to quote from the wisdom of Sun Tzu and Samuel Huntington over anthropologists like Franz Boas or Laura Nader.

It is tempting to describe Moos as an anachronistic anthropologist out of sync with his discipline’s mainstream, but while many anthropologists express concerns about disciplinary ties to military and intelligence organizations, contemporary anthropology has no core with which to either sync or collide and there are others in the field who openly (and quietly) support such developments.

Covert campus

Of course I would be remiss to not mention that students are the only ones sneaking the CIA onto our campuses. There are also unknown thousands of university professors who periodically work with and for the CIA–in 1988 CIA spokeswoman Sharon Foster bragged that the CIA then secretly employed enough university professors “to staff a large university.” Most experts estimate that this presence has grown since 2001.

The quiet rise of programs like PRISP should not surprise anyone given the steady cuts in federal funding for higher education, and the resulting pressures for more mercenary roles for the academy.

the current shift now finds a visible increase in students whose studies are driven by the market forces of Bush’s War on Terrorism.

If the CIA can use PRISP to indenture students in the early days of their graduate training-supplemented with mandated summer camp internships immersed in the workplace ethos of CIA-the company can mold their ideological inclinations even before their grasp of cultural history is shaped in the relatively open environment of their university. As these PRISP graduates enter the CIA’s institutional environment of self-reinforcing Group Think they will present a reduced risk of creating cognitive dissonance by bringing new views that threaten the agency’s narrow view of the world.

The self-censoring campus

Though no scholar can control the uses of information they make public, there does need to be an awareness of how any knowledge can be abused by others–and as awareness of the presence of PRISP spreads, many scholars may find themselves engaging in new forms of self-censorship and doublethink.

Healthy academic environments need openness because they (unlike the CIA) are nourished by the self-corrective features of open disagreement, dissent, and synthetic-reformulation.

The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program infects all of academia with a germ of dishonesty and distrust as participant scholars cloak their intentions and their ties to the cloaked masters they serve.

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May 21 / 22, 2005
CIA Skullduggery in Academia: Carry On Spying (or Pay Us Back at the Rate of 2,400 Per Cent)

Damaging Trust

Roberts and sources at CIA did not dispute the likelihood that having undisclosed CIA operatives amongst the ranks of academics could seriously damage the credibility of American academics conducting domestic and foreign research. This blasé attitude concerning the collateral damage of hapless academic bystanders will win Roberts no friends in the academy as the damage from such actions can be widespread.

NACHoS

many institutions are cultivating closer relations with intelligence agencies. New campus intelligence consortia are forming. Most of these are organizations like the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security…which aligns research and teaching at member institutions with the requirements of Bush’s war on terror. But NACHoS is more of a programmatic loyalty marker than it is a key to inner sanctum funding. Member institutions range from Clackamas Community College to MIT. Interestingly, some of the universities that one might suspect would be NACHoS apex institutions (Harvard, Yale, Chicago etc.) are missing from the rolls.

The 251 universities in the consortium (www.homelandsecurity.osu.edu) have firmly declared their vague commitment to studying national security issues, antiterrorism, developing new Homeland Security technologies and to “educate and train the people required by governmental and non-governmental organizations, to effectively accomplish international and homeland security roles and responsibilities”.

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Closing remarks

As these discussions have grown and spread across the Internet, it is surprising to see any anthropologist not fully considering, nor wishing to understand, the consequences for establishing rapport and relations of trust with “informants” where one does one’s “fieldwork.” Without the trust needed to gain intimate access to people’s everyday lives, expressed thoughts, and behaviour, any claims to knowledge gained are, to say the least, suspect.

The notion that there is little consequence for anthropologists’ reputations is one that I can counter with some personal experience doing research in a country that is (not far) removed from the swirl of developments surrounding the foolishly named “Global War on Terror.” This year marks the 20th anniversary of my first going to Trinidad & Tobago. In the passage of those 20 years, I have spent seven in Trinidad, and have kept up to date with the majority of media reports that were published in that time, and trying my best to keep up at a distance by reading Trinidadian news reports online. In all of that time, I have never seen an article in a Trinidadian newspaper devoted exclusively to anthropology, that is, until recently — with this one:

Henry Charles
ANTHROPOLOGISTS ON FRONT LINES
Monday, 26 November, 2007
TRINIDAD GUARDIAN

IN September this year, Robert M Gates, the US Secretary of Defence, authorised a considerable expansion in a novel Pentagon programme called “human terrain,” which embedded anthropologists in each of the combat brigades in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As the strategy became known, it quickly became polarising. Military personnel and anthropologists in the programme could see only positives in the move. Anthropologists on the outside gave it a failing grade.

Martin Schweitzer, a commander of an airborne division unit working with the new arrivals in Afghanistan, for instance, said that his unit’s combat operations had been reduced by 60 per cent since they came, and soldiers were able to focus more on improving security, healthcare and education for the population. [MF: Note, and this one statistic, this one report, never independently verified, would be repeated countless times for months afterwards.]

“We’re looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist’s perspective,” he said. “We’re not focused on the enemy. We’re focused on bringing governance down to the people.”

“Call it what you want,” said his colleague, Col David Woods, “it works. It works in helping you define the problems, not just the symptoms.”

The academic anthropological community, on the other hand, remains either uncomplimentary or hostile. Some of the members speak of “mercenary anthropology,” “armed social work,” or the exploitation of social science for military gain. They fear that whatever the successes or failures of the group, the overall impact will be that anthropologists abroad will be viewed as intelligence gatherers for the US military.

Hugh Gusterson, an anthropology professor at George Mason University and ten others are thus circulating an online pledge calling on colleagues to boycott the combat team, especially in Iraq. The pledge denounces involvement there as aiding and abetting the war and being guilty by association of its terrible tragedies:

“Anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theatres in the ‘war on terror.’ While often presented by its proponents as work that builds a more secure world, at base it contributes instead to a brutal war of occupation which has entailed massive casualties.”

Gates expanded the “human terrain” initiative a few months ago, as I said, but the need for something like it was identified since 2003. Army officers in Iraq had complained that they had little or no information on the local population. In fact, prospective planning for Iraq after the anticipated “cakewalk” of an invasion was practically nil. Ignorance of the people and the culture was just one of the many resulting areas of strategic blindness.

The Pentagon contacted Montgomery McFate, a Yale-educated cultural anthropologist working for the navy. She advocated using social science to improve military operations and strategy.

McFate sees anthropology as a “crucial new weapon” in the war on terror, Author of a new counter-insurgency manual, she vigorously defends “human terrain,” and dismisses its critics.

“I’m frequently accused of militarising anthropology,” she says. “But we’re really anthropologising the military.”

McFate’s critics, on the other hand, dispute that what she does actually counts as anthropology. She is in large part, they say, just a tour guide accompanying the military on non-lethal missions.

The news reports themselves provide no account detailed enough to suggest what the programme looks like in totality across the theatres of war. What is suggested is a combination of social work, Emily Post, and useful advice on how to approach issues of an alien culture.

Ms McFate, for instance, describes her front-line colleagues as anthropological “angels on the shoulder,” offering advice to soldiers negotiating a poorly understood environment, telling them when not to cross their legs at meetings, how to show respect to leaders, and how to be ethnocentrically neutral.

She herself wears a military uniform and carries a gun during her sensitivity missions. In the words of Richard A Shweder, anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, and a participant at one of her explanatory sessions, “(it) brought to my increasingly sceptical mind the unfortunate image of an angelic anthropologist perched on the shoulder of a member of an American counter-insurgency unit who is kicking in the door of someone’s home in Iraq, while exclaiming, ‘Hi, we’re from the government; we’re here to understand you.’”

I couldn’t help thinking as I read various accounts of this new drive in counter-insurgency, what a totally different approach is suggested by the Peace Corps, still at work in over 70 countries of the world, and doing a great deal more to bring “governance down to the people,” in areas that include education, health, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment.

Initiatives like “human terrain” unintentionally underline the need to expand the corps, revisit its mission and equip it with the means to transform it into a 21st-century engine for peace.

But to return to the present context, it seems to me that the issue for anthropologists is not whether the military should be better informed about foreign cultures and customs. It obviously should be. The real issue is the level at which anthropology becomes part of the fabric of foreign policy planning and determination.

Just by way of illustrating this point, I checked the index of Fiasco, Thomas E Ricks’ famous critique of the devolution of the Iraq war from executive decision to military execution. It contains not a single reference in any form to anthropology or anthropologists.

Scholars like McFate are obviously well-intentioned, but it’s unfortunate that at this point, late in the day of this war, people like her should become armed angels riding the shoulders of an uncertain American military.

David Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 30, 2008
Minerva Takes Flesh: Pentagon and Science Foundation Sign Social-Science Deal

In a memorandum of understanding that was signed today, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation agreed to work cooperatively to support social-science research on topics of interest to the Pentagon.

As widely expected, the NSF has agreed to help review proposals submitted to the Pentagon’s Minerva Research Initiative, a fledgling program that will offer grants to university-based scholars to study the Chinese military, the records of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and other specific topics.

The two agencies will soon - possibly within a week - release a joint request for Minerva-related proposals. Those proposals will be judged by the NSF’s typical merit-review panels, though both the science foundation and the Pentagon will have the right to nominate experts to serve on those panels. (The Pentagon is also accepting Minerva proposals through a separate pathway known as a broad agency announcement. Proposals that are submitted via this second track will reviewed through the Defense Department’s usual processes, not by NSF panels.)

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American Anthropological Association, Public Affairs Blog:
Minerva & NSF
July 10, 2008

The Pentagon has launched a program called the Minerva Research Initiative that would fund university-based social scientists to study topics of interest to the Department of Defense, such as the Chinese military and religious fundamentalism. The AAA expressed its concerns about Minerva in a letter to Washington, and urged the Pentagon to coordinate with the National Science Foundation and other agencies that have extensive experience in peer-review and are familiar with the ethical standards and concerns of our discipline. The Pentagon was apparently listening. Pentagon officials signed an agreement with NSF last week enabling the two agencies to collaborate on approving Minerva-funded social science research. Still, there are concerns within the discipline that research will only be used when it supports the Pentagon’s agenda.

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American Anthropological Association: Conference Call

Click here for more details from Culture Matters.

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David H. Price
Inside the Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness
Counterpunch, June 24, 2008

Minerva doesn’t appear to be funding projects designed to tell Defense why the US shouldn’t invade and occupy other countries; its programs are more concerned with the nuts and bolts of counterinsurgency, and answering specific questions related to the occupation and streamlining the problems of empire. This sort of Soviet model of directed social science funding will make America’s critical perspective more narrow precisely at an historical moment when we need a new breadth of knowledge and perspective.

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The U.S. military’s quest to weaponize culture
By Hugh Gusterson | 20 June 2008

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Kintisch, Eli. (2008). Defense, NSF team up on national security research. Science, 11 July, 321 (5886): 186-187.

The program will have two arms of equal size. One will be managed by Defense officials and the other by NSF, with some Pentagon input on the selection of reviewers. “There are several topics of mutual interest” within the Minerva areas, says David Lightfoot, who heads NSF’s social sciences directorate. “Securing the national defense was part of our charter in 1950,” he adds.

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Nature. (2008). Editorial: A social contract — Efforts to inform U.S. policy with insights from the social sciences could be a win-win approach. Nature, 10 July, 454: 138.

Social scientists, meanwhile, should embrace the opportunities that the AAA pointed out last November in a report on engagement with the military. These include studying military and intelligence organizations from the inside and educating the military about other cultures and societies. Outrage at the current administration should not derail efforts that have potential to be a win-win for all concerned - including, most especially, the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and regions of future conflict.

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Steven R. Corman
Minerva Followup
COMOPS Journal, July 11, 2008

I think what’s really going on here is that that the anthropologists, who have an NSF division of their own, want to be sure they have control over the money (isn’t that a conflict of interest?). Also many of their members are squeamish about taking money from the Big Bad DoD, and somehow the same money will be purified if it is routed through NSF.

In a press release yesterday, the AAA bragged that “the Pentagon was apparently listening” because they signed a Memo of Understanding (MOU) with the NSF. Well, not exactly. The MOU is about future NSF programs. The original Minerva program is going ahead as planned, with DoD organizing the reviews.

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Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg
Pentagon Funds National Security Research
American Forces Press Service, July 14, 2008

The Defense Department is continuing its efforts to finance university research on national security-related issues, a senior Pentagon official said.

The Minerva Initiative is an effort to build the Defense Department’s capacity to reach out to the academic community for research in social science topics of interest to national security both present and future, Thomas Mahnken, deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning, said in a teleconference with online journalists and bloggers July 10.

Mahnken said the project has multiple strands, such as an agreement with the National Science Foundation and “broad agency announcements that seek research proposals in specific areas of study.

A memorandum of understanding recently signed between DoD and that the National Science Foundation allows researchers to apply for grants to study subjects that may be of interest to U.S. national security. Officials anticipate the agreement will fund work leading to new knowledge about topics such as religious fundamentalism, terrorism and cultural change.

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NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Press Release 08-114
NSF Signs Memorandum of Understanding with Department of Defense for National Security Research

“To secure the national defense was one of the original missions we were given when we were chartered in 1950,” said David Lightfoot, assistant director of NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic (SBE) Sciences Directorate. “We’ve always believed that sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and other social scientists, through basic social and behavioral science research, could benefit our national security. In fact, we’ve always done so through various research projects. The MOU gives us another tool and more resources to do what we’ve always done well.”

According to the MOU, funding for research projects will be determined on a case-by-case basis. DoD will consider supporting proposals submitted to regular NSF programs managed by SBE. In return, DoD will get the gold standard for the U.S. peer review process ensuring the research meets specific criteria for intellectual merit and broader impact.

Grant proposals will be evaluated by SBE’s normal merit-review panels, though Pentagon officials will have some input into who sits on the panels. The research will not be classified and there will be no constraints on the researchers’ ability to publish their results.

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Related to one of the earliest posts on this blog, it was very exciting to see an announcement on the AAA Human Rights Blog, “Great Apes Receive Human Rights,” that speaks of some very interesting news of the extension of human rights legislation to cover gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. The BBC in “Should apes have human rights?” speaks of the growing international movement to grant personhood to animals. (Talk about the “monkey smashing heaven.”)

In addition, the environment committee of the Spanish parliament voted to extend human rights to great apes. According to Donald McNeil in The New York Times, “When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans:”

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the [United Nations'] Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.

Also of especial interest in the NYT piece is the following extract on changing definitions of “human,” supremacy and colonialism:

Ten years ago, I stood in a clearing in the Cameroonian jungle, asking a hunter to hold up for my camera half the baby gorilla he had split and butterflied for smoking.

My distress — partly faked, since I was also feeling triumphant, having come this far hoping to find exactly such a scene — struck him as funny. “A gorilla is still meat,” said my guide, a former gorilla hunter himself. “It has no soul.”

So he agrees with Spain’s bishops. But it was an interesting observation for a West African to make. He looked much like the guy on the famous engraving adopted as a coat of arms by British abolitionists: a slave in shackles, kneeling to either beg or pray. Below it the motto: Am I Not a Man, and a Brother?

Whether or not Africans had souls — whether they were human in God’s eyes, capable of salvation — underlay much of the colonial debate about slavery. They were granted human rights on a sliding scale: as slaves, they were property; in the United States Constitution a slave counted as only three-fifths of a person.

The BBC (same link above) also lists what its sources consider to be the key features of the great apes that make them eligible for benefiting from some human rights (such as the freedom from murder and torture):

News of a link, kindly sent to me by a commenter, relating to a previous post here on Caribbean responses to events in Zimbabwe. I have forgotten to link to the overall site before, www.raceandhistory.com, a Trinidadian umbrella for a mass of websites, and certainly one of the best developed websites in Trinidad, in terms of depth of interesting content and scope.

Zimbabwe Watch is a part of that site that is worth seeing, for alternative views on what has been happening in Zimbabwe.

The last video in this series, “Why can’t we shoot these kids?” upset some people, in different ways, some against what they witnessed, and some trying to understand the troops, and some against me for what was perceived as unfair commentary on the troops. I am not aiming for a rerun, but I do think these actions need to be seen — so when one dispassionately and accurately speaks of cluster bombing, depleted uranium, torture at Abu Ghraib, and laying siege to civilian population centres, the response is not that it is just “rhetoric.” If it is rhetoric, then please do look at the “rhetoric” below. For those of us who are not, and have not been in Iraq, this is one of the few ways we have of “seeing” events on the ground.

This is a group of British soldiers — when and where in Iraq is not specified — and it seems that they are responding to some protesters. A group of young boys is dragged into what appears to be a base, and then pummeled. A large group of fellow troops return from the streets and walk past, and nobody interferes. It may not meet some definitions of “savage brutality” (in which case, pardon me for saying this, but someone needs to get their nuts kicked by an army boot) but I doubt this will “win hearts and minds.” For a young boy, one can imagine that this experience will leave a lasting impression. We also do not know what happens after the video ends, whether the boys are released, or further detained, etc.

Unlike the last related post, I should not neglect to mention that there is little someone like myself can do to verify this video, to contextualize it, to interview the troops, and to figure out if the cruel narrative of a man who seems to be having an orgasm at the sight of vanquished boys was added after the video was made by someone who was not present. Personally, I have been given no reason to doubt its authenticity, but one can never be absolutely certain with materials posted on YouTube. Having said that, I thank RAIM for bringing my attention to this video.

And in Canada today, the release of the Guantanamo interrogation tapes of Omar Khadr, captured as a young boy in Afghanistan and abused. This is Canada’s continuing scandal of neglect and participation in the violation of the same international laws it claims to hold sacred.