US army enlists anthropologists

[TechBear_Seattle]

US army enlists anthropologists

...

The US military has developed a new programme known as the Human Terrain System (HTS) to study social groups in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The HTS depends heavily on the co-operation of anthropologists, with their expertise in the study of human beings and their societies.

...

But very few anthropologists in the US are willing to wear a uniform and receive the mandatory weapons training.

In fact, a group known as the Network of Concerned Anthropologists has already circulated a pledge of non-participation in the Pentagon's counter-insurgency efforts.

The complete article can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7042090.stm

[Sneaky Sailor]

1. They have been asking for this type of expertise on the ground

For years.

[Squatch]

2. All part of the IPB, a critical part of the MDMP

Sounds like a great program.

[NYVet]

3. And a group of scientists would rather we just kill the population

rather than give us the tools and knowledge to work with that group.

[leveymg]

4. "Human terrain" - isn't that something to roll over with a tank?

Actually, reminds me of the CIA's "human ecology" research of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Search for the Manchurian Candidate - Chapter 9
By investing up to $400000 a year into the early, innovative work of men like Carl Rogers, Charles Osgood, and Martin Orne, the CIA's Human Ecology Society ...

www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/lsd/marks9.htm - 60k - Similar pages

http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/lsd/marks9.htm
On the take and loving it - Wikileaks
The article details how during the 1960s the CIA used the Human Ecology Fund to push a covert research agenda into torture and interrogation techniques. ...

www.wikileaks.org/wiki/On_the_take_and_loving_it - 34k - Similar pages

http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/On_the_take_and_loving_it
MASA - Article
This CIA memorandum on Orne's Institute for Experimental Psychiatry discussed the flow of grant funds through an intermediary, Human Ecology, ...

www.againstsexualabuse.org/docs/Manchurian.asp - 15k - Similar pages

[Peace Patriot]

5. I listened to BBC interviews on this a couple of days ago, and the main point of

the many anthropologists who oppose the program is that the Pentagon uses these contract anthropologists to SPY ON and ASSASSINATE those who oppose U.S. interests. They said that anthropologists typically live with the people they are are studying, and develop friendships and trust with them. When that trust is broken, it violates the anthropologists' code of ethics, and hampers good anthropological work.

Question: What goddamned business is it of the Pentagon to be "studying" tribal groups in Iraq and Afghanistan? We have no right to be in those countries. We have tortured and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people there, who committed no offense against us. The people who live there are not our guinea pigs, and they have a right to security in their homes and their political views. For the Pentagon to sneak its way into their lives, by FALSE USE of anthropology as a front for war plans, is just one more violation of their rights, and it presents similar ethical and professional--not to mention just plain human--issues as doctors being involved in torture and executions. What is anthropology FOR? It is for understanding human beings, not for making war on them.

Whatever LEGITIMATE purposes the Pentagon and our secret government may have in understanding other people--and there might be some, although I would question every purpose, their record of illegal and inhumane actions is so bad--they can use normal channels, skills and existing procedures to obtain. This is largely a DIPLOMATIC matter--to be handled by translators, by the foreign service, by talking to people and reading publications, and through agencies such as embassies and the United Nations--where there is some accountability to civilian authorities, and where RESPECT FOR people in foreign lands is the first requirement. The Pentagon is lacking in information about human beings primarily because the Bushites and Rumsfeld and his Office of Special Plans attacked and gutted the CIA, which traditionally sends agents into the field to gather information, but which, on the basis of the information it had, OPPOSED the Bushite war plans against Iraq. The Bushites also fired and demoted anyone who spoke Arabic or Farsi, on suspicion that they were not ideological Neo-Cons. And, as a result of the horrendous and illegal actions of the Bush Junta, NOBODY IN THE WORLD trusts us any more. THAT is why the Pentagon now thinks that it needs anthropologists--to regain peoples' trust, in order to fuck them over some more.