Readings of Note

...featured content

- Autonomous Weapons and Asymmetric Conflict
  
  Charli Carpenter (UMass â€“ Amherst) engages with law professor Kenneth Andersonâ€™s arguments on the ethics of autonomous weapons.
- Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Franchisees
  
  Christian Bleuer (Australian National University) looks to historical precedent to assess whether tribal Lashkars can help turn the tide in Afghanistan.
- Spatial Syntax of Insurgency in Iraq
  
  Michael A. Innes (University College London) reviews recent criminological research on quantifcation of the "Space Time Dynamics of Insurgent Activity in Iraq".
- From the Lake of Fire: Responsible Technology
  
  Tim Stevens (CTlab/King's College London) on cyberspace, cyberrealities, and the end (or beginning) of it all...
- Legitimacy as a Battlespace
  
  Marc Tyrrell (University of Ottawa) discusses the legitimacy thresholds that govern legal and informational regimes in global counterinsurgency.
- Making the Landscape
  
  John Matthew Barlow (CTlab/Concordia University) on manipulating the battlespace, nationalist terraforming, and the global ethics of golf course construction.
- Adaptive Argumentation for Mediated Publics
  
  Craig Hayden (American University) on a recent Pew Study of American news consumption habits, and leveraging media ecologies for strategic communication and public diplomacy.
- Media Power and Terrorists
  
  Brigitte L. Nacos (Columbia University) explains how proprietary media capabilities enable terrorist organizations.
- The State of State Failure
  
  Stephen D.K. Ellis (University of Leiden) puts problems of sovereignty and state failure in context.
- Human Terrain Mapping: An Historian's Perspective
  
  Brian Glyn Williams (UMass - Dartmouth) addresses the academic debate over the U.S. Army's Human Terrain System.

reviews...

October 2008
- UK Premiere of Bad Voodoo's War
  
  On Friday 10th October, the Frontline Club hosted the UK premiere of Bad Voodooâ€™s War by American director Deborah Scranton, followed by a Q&A chaired by BBC Middle East correspondent Paul Wood. Read the full review.
- BBC's David Loyn on Intervention in Afghanistan
  
  On Thursday, 9 October, BBC reporter David Loyn with Saul David, discussing Loyn's new book, Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan. Read the full review.
June 2008
- Media Talk on Assassination & Insurgency
  
  On Wednesday 11 June 08, a discussion evening on Afghanistan moderated by Nazanine Moshiri of Al Jazeera, bringing together Alastair Leithead, James Fergusson, James Appathurai, John D. McHugh, and Mawlavi Abdulsalam Zaeef. Read the full review.
- Joseph Stiglitz on the Three Trillion Dollar War
  
  On Friday 13 June, Nobel Prize winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz in conversation with Stephanie Flanders, Economics Editor of the BBC. Read the full review.
- Mahmoud al-Massad's documentary film Recycle
  
  In Recycle, winner of the World Cinema Cinematography Award for documentary at the Sundance Festival 08, Mahmoud al-Massad returned to his hometown of Zarqa in northern Jordan - birthplace of the late terrrorist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Read the full review.

QUICK LINKS

- Information Landscapes and the Feral City
  
  Ubiwar
- Conflict Signatures & Nomadic Light
  
  Subtopia
- State Department Digital Debaters = Trolls?
  
  COMOPS Journal
- East: Near, Middle, Far
  
  Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH)
- Nadir Plays the Americans
  
  Ghosts of Alexander
- Russia Calls for "New Security Norms"
  
  Elected Swineherd
- DNI OSINT Conference Notes
  
  Haft of the Spear
- Future Slum
  
  BLDGBLOG
- A Global Narrative for Public Diplomacy
  
  Intermap
- Write on International Law? You Don't Count
  
  Opinio Juris

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Mike Innes

I don't normally do this, but it's been a slow week here, and these are exceptionally relevant pieces. I started off the morning coffee-reading with Cass Sunstein's review of Marc Sageman's latest book in The New Republic. I only recently began paying attention to Sunstein - since he stole my woman married Samantha Power - but he's got a few interesting observations to make, so worth noting even without the celebrity-intellectual-coupling angle. So go take a look at that. More substantially, find listed below some of the latest refereed journal articles that I think address some important questions.

Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Calvert Jones, "Assessing the Dangers of Illicit Networks: Why al-Qaida May be Less Dangerous Than Many Think, " International Security 33:2 (Fall 2008): 7-44.
Brynjar Lia, "Doctrines for Jihadi Terrorist Training, " Terrorism and Political Violence 20:4(October 2008): 518-542.
Truls Hallberg Tnnessen, "Training on a Battlefield: Iraq as a Training Ground for Global Jihadis," Terrorism and Political Violence 20:4(October 2008): 543-562.

Lia and Tnnessen are both with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, and its output is always worth reading. Its members have the linguistic skills to go directly to source, which results in some of the best available analysis of primary materials on the subject. The insights they've been pulling out, notably in Lia's latest book on Abu Mus'ab Al Suri ("Architect of Jihad"), confirm some of my own findings on sanctuary in jihadi thought and practice, so I'm looking forward to what they have to say in these latest two articles.

Another, courtesy of Tim, on military geology and the geomorphology of battlefield terrain:

Marko Zecevic and Enio Jungwirth, "The Influence of Geology on Battlefield Terrain and It's Affects on Military Operations in Mountains and Karst Regions: Examples From WWI and Afghanistan." Rudarsko-geoloÅ¡ko-naftni zbornik Vol 19 (2007): 56-67.

There are a few other works in this area, but basically the geomorphology of battefield terrain - in its terrestrial sense, which almost (note, I do not fully concede) precludes discussion of battlespace - is something I'm new to. Obviously, it's not a field to be neglected, so I'll discuss it once I've done my homework in this area.

Oct 18, 2008 at 8:07 |

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