The Apocalyptic Style of Geopolitics

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Jungian Perspectives on Terrorism

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 11:01:48 GMT

I've narrowed down my PhD topics to three choices: one will become the dissertation, the other two will become other projects (books or multimedia projects). The first concerns the 'relational' turn in Counterterrorism Studies, and the implications for the psychology of suicide bombers, terrorists, and networks. Carl Jung's Aion (1954) has been helpful, although the War on Terror has a more complex cultural matrix than Classical Greek and early Judeo-Christian sources. Monash's David Wright-Neville commented to me recently that Jungian scholars have done some of the most interesting work on the post-September 11 'politics of fear'. A couple of quick Web links:

∙ 'On the Apollo vs Dionysian Conflict' (Malcolm Wm Timbers): Timbers notes the 'messianic' nature of religions and how charismatic individuals can 'awaken' archetypes in followers. "A terrorist is an individual who is in a state of possession by an unconscious factor that is reacting negatively against something that provoked it," he observes, a description which parallels Charles T. Tart's description of dreaming you are awake. "A possessed terrorist sincerely believes that his evil deeds, if not in service to the highest good, represent a necessary sacrifice against a greater evil": Timbers' comment echoes how recent terrorists---Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, Mohammed Atta---have framed their actions in opposition to an Other which threatens to engulf the individual's identity: Great Power politics, environmental catastrophe, 'decline' narratives of Islam. "In order to understand the psychology of terrorism one must understand that the terrorist believes that his belief system represents the One and Absolute good": failure to comprehend Plato's Agathon.

∙ 'Focusing on Shadow Theory/Causes of Terrorism' (JoAnn Murphy): Murphy suggests the Western media's depiction of terrorists is partly rooted in a Shadow dynamic; that Cold War 'triumphalism' was a case of Shadow blindness, which September 11 remanifested; and that we need to collectively stop projecting and 'own' our Shadow.

∙ 'Terrorism: A Jungian View' (John Van Eenwyk): Eenwyk defines terrorism as the fusion of post-traumatic stress syndrome and the eruption of the Jungian Shadow. This definition has implications for Schema Therapy and newer, still controversial treatment modalities like Eye Movement Desensitization Routine. Eenwyk's analysis of images parallels Andrew Silke's insight on how 'contagion' violence may influence potential terrorists. Randal Marlin and Jacques Ellul have further insights on sociological propaganda as a motivational force. Finally, Eenwyk closes with advice on four strategies of dealing with the Shadow (engagement; incubating the opposites; encouraging transcendence; monitoring the unconscious for behaviours, dreams, and fate) that are worth further investigation.

Leaderless Resistance and Terror Networks: Further Sources

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 08:21:15 GMT

I quickly assembled the following reading list for a class (21 March 2005) on ‘leaderless resistance’ and ‘terror networks’ as part of Monash University’s Masters of Counter-Terrorism. The readings included selections from John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt’s Networks and Netwars anthology; Louis Beam’s classic on Leaderless Resistance; Simon Garfinkel’s analysis Leaderless Resistance Today; Maura Conway’s study Reality Bytes (on ‘terrorist use of the Internet’); and Beverly Hill and George E. Marsh II’s study Recruitment by Extremist Groups on the Internet. Three resources not on the list are Gabriel Weisman’s www.terror.net and Cyberterrorism reports; and the PBS Frontline episode CyberWar!. This list was assembled and presented before the Red Lake High School shooting incident later that same day. Hill and Marsh II’s study foresaw why shooter Jeff Weise visited Nazi.org a year before the shooting took place (Weise’s postings, writings and animated film).

Terror Networks

Terror networks have become a major theme in post-September 11 counterterrorism literature. However, as the following books show, the ‘terror network’ has several definitions and is applied by counterterrorism personnel in different ways.

Burke, Jason (2004). Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror. IB Taurus, London. Burke provides a heterodox view to Gunaratna: Al Qaeda exists largely as a radical Islamist ideology and a network based on ‘weak ties’ rather than Osama bin Laden’s charismatic leadership. Burke suggests the FBI created the orthodox interpretation to prosecute Al Qaeda members under racketeering laws that require a criminal organization. A challenging book that, like Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris (2004), warns that counter-terrorism models can lead to disastrous policy outcomes.

Curtis, Adam (2004). The Power of Nightmares. BBC, London. Curtis contrasts the rise of neoconservative strategists in the United States with radical Islamists in Algeria, Afghanistan and Egypt. This three-part BBC documentary was so controversial that copies are only available to-date via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer sharing services. Curtis includes interviews with Jason Burke and Gilles Kepel, and debunks Claire Sterling’s ‘terror network’ thesis as CIA black propaganda.

Gibson, James William (1994). Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America. Hill & Wang, New York. Gibson ventures into the US militia and patriot communities to understand their ethos. Warrior Dreams features an anthropological section that provides a snapshot of this movement just before the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVeigh.

Gunaratna, Rohan (2003). Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. Scribe Publications, Melbourne. Gunaratna presents the orthodox interpretation of Al Qaeda as a global franchise led nominally by Osama bin Laden. This reflects the definition adopted by the FBI during its prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers and Gunaratna’s experience with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Australian edition emphasizes Southeast Asia as a ‘second front’.

Napoleoni, Loretta (2003). Terror Inc: Tracking the Money Behind Global Terror. Penguin Books, London. Napoleoni shatters the popular myth that terror networks are isolated and shadowy. Her analysis of Al Qaeda, the IRA, ETA and other groups reveals how they are embedded in wider communities of concern, and have legitimate business fronts as well as smuggling operations in conflict diamonds, drugs and weapons. Napoleoni suggests the ‘new economy of terror’ has been integrated into neo-liberal globalization and that the underground is used by business leaders and politicians for their own purposes.

Nordstrom, Carolyn (2004). Shadows of War. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Nordstrom is part of a scholarly group that examines the economics of ‘new wars’ and extra-state violence. Shadows of War probes how criminal and terrorist networks use the ‘fog of war’ to mount operations in Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia and South America. These shadow wars compromise non-government organizations, activist movements and media coverage. Along with Loretta Napoleoni, Nordstrom places the ‘terror network’ idea in a broader context.

Ronson, Jon (2001). Them: Adventures with Extremists. Picador, London. Ronson’s ‘gonzo’-style reports include a visit to Randy Weaver’s family, a debate at the Finsbury Park Mosque, conspiracy theorist David Icke’s speaking tour, and covertly monitoring the ‘New World Order’ rites at Bohemian Grove. Ronson’s humour reveals the ‘reality gap’ between counterterrorist profiles and the self-perceptions of fringe political groups.

Sageman, Mark (2004). Understanding Terror Networks. University of Pennsylvania Press. Sageman’s book is an important study that highlights how kinship and social bonds are integral to terror networks. Understanding Terror Networks explains why Afghan mujahideen evolved into violent Jihadists, using publicly available research. Sageman’s insights parallel similar findings by Andrew Silke on why alienation is an existential trigger in the radicalization of terrorists.

Sterling, Claire (1982). The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Sterling’s thesis that the Soviet Union was lurking behind the PLO, the Red Army Faction and other ‘Old Terrorist’ groups was a cause celebre in the early 1980s. Sterling’s worldview supported the Reagan Administration’s description of the USSR as an ‘evil empire’, and in turn was championed by neoconservatives like Michael Ledeen. East Germany’s Stasi police files did support some of these connections but Sterling’s thesis has been largely rebutted by subsequent scholarship. An important reminder of how counter-terrorist literature can become politically expedient.

Stern, Jessica (2003). Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. Ecco, New York. Stern breaks new ground through anthropological fieldwork and direct interviews with various terrorists and groups. Amongst the insights in Terror in the Name of God are the vengeful motivations for ‘leaderless resistance’ terrorists, how networks and franchises can evolve from earlier organizations, and how the errors of Israeli and Pakistani counter-terrorists have spawned groups that run amok.

Swarming and Social Networks

Artificial Life and Synthetic Ecology provide untapped tools to examine the dynamics of ‘New Terrorist’ networks. The US-based Arlington Institute and Santa Fe Institute have conducted preliminary research for the banking and technology sectors.

Bloom, Howard. Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Bloom applied his research about the psychology of mass behaviour for high-profile music clients in the late 1970s and 1980s. Global Brain outlines 3.5 billion years of group evolution, with crucial sections on the inter-group conflict between subcultures and how culture influences individual perceptions of reality. See especially the chapter ‘Kidnap of the Mass Mind: Fundamentalism, Spartanism and the Games Subcultures Play‘.

Crumlish, Christian (2004). The Power of Many: How the Living Web is Transforming Politics, Business and Everyday Life. Sybex, San Francisco. Crumlish examines how groups are using swarming, social networks and other insights to create robust communities that have ‘virtual’ and ‘face-to-face’ links. The Power of Many features interviews with over 50 analysts and experts on how social networks are being applied to political activism and knowledge management. An accessible update on Rheingold’s work but without the scientific emphasis of Bloom and Kelly.

De Landa, Manuel (1997). A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History. Zone Books, New York. De Landa uses insights from Gilles Deleuze, Fernand Braudel and Felix Guattari to examine the evolution of ecosystems, human societies and language over a long period. A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History‘s dense prose conveys the nuances of non-linear thinking about complex adaptive systems. A possible way to rethink completely the ‘Old’/’New’ periodization of terrorism trends by Walter Laqueur and others.

Kelly, Kevin (1994). Out of Control: The Rise of the Neo-biological Civlization. Addison-Wesley, Reading MA. Kelly’s influential book catapulted synthetic ecology and artificial life into the scientific mainstream. Out of Control popularized the language of ‘hive-mind’, ‘swarming’ and ‘coevolutionary life’. A primer for Bloom, Rheingold and others.

Rheingold, Howard (2002). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Basic Books, New York. Rheingold examines how scientific research into social networks and mobile technologies are changing social activism, subcultures and Internet communities. Smart Mobs features many examples of how wearable computing and the wireless Internet are becoming embedded within society. The section on reputation systems has implications for the hawala Muslim banking network.

Urry, John (2003). Global Complexity. Polity Press, London. Urry provides a complexity model of how globalization flows and processes are restructuring the international order. A central insight from this book is how ‘new war’ flashpoints and regions in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere are ‘strange attractors’ for criminal and terror networks. You won’t look at Kashmir the same way again.

Hacktivism

Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s work was influenced by their study of the anti-globalization movement and hacktivism—socially conscious hacking usually against governments and trans-national corporations.

Jordan, Tim and Paul A. Taylor (2004). Hacktivism and Cyberwars: Rebels With a Cause? Routledge, New York. Jordan and Taylor provide a critical history of hacktivism as one strategy of ‘virtual politics’ in a climate of uncertainty. They distinguish between mass action hacktivism (the anti-globalization movement) and digitally correct hacktivism (concerned with intellectual property rights). A theoretically-aware critique that challenges Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s earlier depiction.

Lovink, Geert (2002). Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia. MIT Press, Boston MA. Lovink is a Dutch critical theorist whose interviews and profiles capture the diversity of online social networks and subcultures. Uncanny Networks surveys Japanese techno tribes, the Zapatista movement in Mexico, digital archivists, culture jammers, and humanitarian interventions by non-government organizations. Also see the chapters ‘Network Fears and Desires’, ‘Information Warfare: From Propaganda Critique to Culture Jamming’ and ‘Kosovo: War in the Age of Internet’ in Lovink’s companion book Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture (MIT Press, Boston MA, 2002).

Stephenson, Neal (1992). Snow Crash. Roc Books, London. Stephenson’s novel experiments with an ‘immersive’ online virtual world that is under siege from a religious fundamentalist sect. Snow Crash depicts a cyberterrorism scenario that combines an online virus and real-world attacks. Stephenson explores similar themes about nanotechnology and Cold War hacktivism in The Diamond Age (Bantam Spectra, New York, 1999) and Cryptonomicon (Eos Books, New York, 1999).

Terrorism Futures Market

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) proposed its own network to predict future terrorist attacks. The ‘Terrorism Futures Market’ was discontinued after the details were leaked and a public outcry followed.

Bazerman, Max and Michael Watkins (2005). Predictable Surprises. Harvard Business School Press, Boston MA. Bazerman and Watkins probe why decision-makers failed to act on ‘early warning’ signals of the September 11 attacks and Enron’s high-profile collapse. They conclude this is because of human biases, institutional failures, and the damaging influence of special interest groups. Offers one model to understand why the FBI failed to listen to John O’Neill.

Morgan, Richard (2005). Market Forces. Ballantine Books, New York. Morgan’s science fiction novel depicts a near-future Earth dominated by ‘conflict investment’ firms that speculate on extra-territorial wars, banana republics and terrorist networks. An anti-globalization critique that takes DARPA’s ‘terrorism futures market’ to its logical Hobbesian conclusion.

Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, Boston MA. On one level Rules of Play is a dense textbook on the fundamentals of game design from a user-centred perspective. On another it summarizes the contributions of Games Studies theorists to rules, subcultures and interactivity. The transition from ‘Old’ to ‘New’ terrorism is a shift of rules, games and contexts. Al Qaeda’s enigmatic status is partly because Western intelligence agencies have yet to learn the new ‘rules of the game’ and how terror networks are adaptive learning organizations.

Schachtman, Noah (2003). ‘The Case for Terrorism Futures Market‘, Wired News, 30 July. Wired‘s Noah Schachtman profiles the furore over DARPA’s Terrorism Futures Market project and explains how the underlying principles have been applied in other cases.

Sunstein, Cass (2003). Why Societies Need Dissent. Harvard University Press, Boston MA. Sunstein presents a compelling case for the role that intelligent dissent can play in decision-making processes. Sunstein’s analysis of how ‘informational influences’ can warp judgments is an alternative to Irving Janis’ ‘groupthink’. The section on why ‘information cascades’ often lead to decision-making errors aptly describes the post-Cold War problems faced by Western intelligence agencies.

Weiss, Murray (2003). The Man Who Warned America. HarperCollins, New York. Weiss’ book is the most in-depth biography of FBI agent John O’Neill, who foresaw Al Qaeda’s rise in the 1990s and became a Cassandra-like figure when the FBI failed to take action on his warnings after the USS Cole bombing in 2000. O’Neill failed due to institutional blind-spots and political infighting rather than ‘a failure of imagination’. The PBS Frontline documentary The Man Who Knew (2003) covers O’Neill’s story from another angle and reveals he used Social Network Analysis maps to track the Al Qaeda network.

Network Science

In the mid-1990s counterterrorism experts seized on ‘network theory’ to explain the organizational structures of ‘New Terrorism’ groups. Many counterterrorism books are guilty of using ‘network’ metaphors without explaining the science or underlying thinking.

Barabasi, Alberto-Laszlo (2003). Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else. Plume Books, New York. Linked provides a ‘network theory’ overview of Milgram, Watts, Buchanan and Barabasi’s research contributions. The opening chapters synthesize the major experiments and theories. Barabasi contends the Internet’s disorganized growth reflects its network infrastructure rather than a hacker-driven ‘darknet’. Linked also has speculations on Al-Qaeda as a terror network and implications for policymaking.

Buchanan, Mark (2002). Small Worlds. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London. Buchanan explains what ‘small worlds’ are, and why ‘weak ties’ and ‘tipping points’ are important. An introduction to pattern recognition that emphasizes different facets to Barabasi, Johnson and Watts. Buchanan also considers the implications of ‘network theory’ for biological warfare and cyberterrorism.

Buchanan, Mark (2000). Ubiquity. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London. Buchanan’s analysis of ‘power laws’ provides an alternate model to understand the transition from ‘Old Terrorist’ to ‘New Terrorist’ groups. Outbreaks of violence can be mapped in different ways and new patterns can emerge. One implication is that counter-terrorists are drawn into an interdependent relationship with the terrorist networks they are tracking.

Johnson, Steven (2002). Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. Scribner, New York. Johnson surveys how emergence and novelty occur in complex adaptive systems. His examples highlight how the interactions of several different events may create new events that are unforeseen. Emergence is a readable introduction to complex adaptive systems and complexity models with insights into their social effects.

Strogatz, Steven (2003). Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. Penguin Books, London. Strogatz uses mathematics and quantum physics to explain how self-organization can lead to new patterns of order that spontaneously emerge from chaos and noise. Strogratz’ research into synchrony has implications for how counter-terrorists model terror networks and the variances of sporadic violence. The recognition of new patterns may lead to different policymaking strategies. For more background read Stuart Kauffman’s At Home In the Universe (Oxford University Press, New York, 1996).

Watts, Duncan (2003). Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. W.W. Norton & Co., New York. Watts is one of the pioneers of ‘network theory’. Six Degrees examines the implications of Stanley Milgram’s ‘six degrees of separation’ experiment and explains the concepts of small worlds, scale-free networks and information cascades. Watts’ examples include disease epidemics, stock-market bubbles and innovation strategies. His framework has implications for modelling terror networks beyond Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s taxonomy.

Tools

Counter-terrorism experts have tapped into various tools to monitor, profile and track ‘New Terrorist’ groups. These include values systems psychology, systems thinking and social network analysis.

Beck, Don Edward and Christopher C. Cowan (1996). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. Blackwell Business Publishers, Malden MA. Beck and Cowan outline a synthesis of Clare W. Graves’ values psychology, organizational change models, complexity theory and cultural evolution. Spiral Dynamics features some useful tools for understanding patterns of change and human emergence. Beck applied Graves’ model during South Africa’s post-apartheid transition.

Cross, Rob and Andrew Parker (2004). The Hidden Power of Social Networks. Harvard Business School Press, Boston MA. In the 1970s and 1980s the IRA and British Army conducted Social Network Analyses on each-other to uncover the influential individuals and ‘weak ties’. This book is a primer on how to conduct an SNA, within an organization, and guidelines on how to interpret the results. Are you a ‘central connector’, ‘boundary spanner’ or ‘information broker’?

O’Connor, Joseph and Ian McDermott (1997). The Art of Systems Thinking. Thorsons, London. A readable introduction to Systems Thinking for creativity and problem-solving. O’Connor and McDermott explain causal effect loops, how to draw a causal loop diagram, and what critical questions to ask during the mapping process.

Sherwood, Dennis (2002). Seeing The Forest for the Trees. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London. A more in-depth volume than O’Connor and McDermott’s, with expanded sections on systems thinking, causal loop diagrams, and applications on strategic outcomes, business growth and policymaking.

Debating 'World War IV': Part 1

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 11:10:15 GMT

I started Monash's Masters of Counter-Terrorism Studies several weeks ago. The early classes have covered definitions of terrorism, terrorist profiling, the constructivist school of international relations and norms.

One of the highlights for me was a debate on Ehud Sprinzak's analysis of the Weather Underground, which has been critiqued by Bill Siegel and Sam Green's documentary The Weather Underground (2002) and Jeremy Varon's historical study Bringing The War Home (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004). Sprinzak has a pretty sensationalist view of how the Weather Underground members became radicalized and broke free of conventional moral codes. He also emphasizes their hyper-violence rather than the sociopolitical context (the Vietnam War, 1960s student movement protests and the murder of Black Power activist Fred Hampton) and the tactical nature of their attacks (on symbolic targets rather than people). The difference between Sprinzak and Varon also suggests a 'critical turn' in counter-terrorism scholarship: Varon includes historical material, interviews, and contrasts the Weather Underground with Germany's Red Army Faction (aka Baader-Meinhoff Gang) in a two country comparison study.

The other major insight is a shift in the first chapter for an unfolding PhD. Ziauddin Sardar suggested to me in 2003 to analyze the Project for a New American Century's rhetoric. I also wrote a Media/Culture article on September 11's aftershocks for journalism. Norman Podhoretz's Commentary articles 'World War IV' (September 2004) and his rejoinder 'The War Against World War IV' (February 2005) widened my focus to how various intellectual philosophers have constructed several competing visions for the post-September 11 world. Tom Engelhardt has similar thoughts on the genealogy---from the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault---on how 'World War IV' replicates a Cold War frame. Here are some early and provisional thoughts on the first 16 pages of Podhoretz's 'World War IV' (Commentary, September 2004, pp. 17-33):

∙ 'My hope is that telling the story from this perspective in these ways will demonstrate that the road we have taken since 9/11 is te only safe course for us to follow' (Podhoretz, 2004, p. 17). Podhoretz is concerned here with justification and policy legitimation rather than critical analysis. Story for 'who'? And 'who' is 'us'?

∙ September 11 is presented as an 'out of the blue' wild card (a 'low probability high impact' event) despite Brian M. Jenkins warning that planes could be flown into strategic targets, and futurist Peter Schwartz predicting an event months before the attacks (Podhoretz, Ibid, pp. 18-19).

∙ Podhoretz's 'World War IV' functions as a cognitive frame (George Lakoff) that imposes specific meanings, orders and interpretations on September 11, the Bush Administration's 'War on Terror' and the Coalition's subsequent incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq. A frame that impossible any discussion of the possible 'alternate futures' that may have evolved if the Bush Administration had embraced different policy options in the three weeks after the September 11 attacks (international coalitions, soft power, more broader definitions of terrorism that included sanctions against state terrorism).

∙ 'World War IV' suggests historical continuity with the 20th Century's World War I and II, and the Cold War (Podhoretz's undeclared 'World War III') and inevitability.

∙ Podhoretz's moral call to arms against the specter of radical Islamists is very similar to New Republic's Peter Beinart's demand for centrist liberals to embrace a 'Fighting Faith'. Both positions remind me of Jacques Ellul's sociological propaganda mode (which integrates individuals back into the host society). This morality underpins the possible intergenerational nature of the 'War on Terror' (Podhoretz, Ibid, p. 18).

∙ Podhoretz's narrative arc escalates: the Iranian revolution (1979), Hizbullah suicide bomb attacks (1983), the Achille Lauro hijack (1985), the first World Trade Center bombing (1993), the Khobar Towers attack (1996), and the USS Cole bombing (2000) before segueing into September 11. Middle East Forum's David Horowitz and staff at National Review and The Weekly Standard have made similar claims. The narrative arc is as much about how conservative counterterrorism experts have explained these events as their empirical reality. Rather, an airbrushed history, as Podhoretz does not mention counter-arguments like the 'October Surprise' that would problematise his view (Podhoretz, Ibid, pp. 20-22).

∙ Podhoretz likens the Bush Administration's 'War on Terror' to both the Truman Doctrine and George Kennan's 'X' memo, 'The Sources of Soviet Conduct' (1946). Both doctrines are Dualist-Manichean in structure ('Us' versus 'Them'), attempt to probe the 'foreign thoughtworlds' of Western foes. Rather than analyze the criticisms made of the Bush Administration's National Security Statement, Podhoretz evokes Kennan to justify Preemption to his readers Podhoretz, Ibid, pp. 25-26). The same follows for Podhoretz's earlier comparison of Usama bin Laden to Hitler and Stalin (Podhoretz, Ibid, pp. 22-25).

∙ 'World War IV', like the Truman Doctrine, has a long-term vision that verges on being totalistic and all-encompassing. Podhoretz can ignore solid critiques by moderate Republicans [Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke (America Alone (2004)] and counterterrorism experts [Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies (2004) and Michael Scheuer's Imperial Hubris]. My left-leaning activist friends will find no World Social Forum view that 'another world is possible' here!

∙ Podhoretz presents the Bush Administration's decision to use military force as the last resort, and the Afghanistan campaign as successful (Podhoretz, Ibid, pp. 29-30). He ignores September 11's symbolic impact and the narrow debate that left out alternate policymaking choices [Sandra Silberstein's War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11 (2002)] or suggested that neoconservatives had already influenced Bush's decision to invade Afghanistan [Bob Woodward's Bush At War (2003) and Plan Of Attack (2004)]. Nor does he mention the constructivist debate about intervention norms [Martha Finnemore's Purpose of Intervention (2004)] or the neorealist debate on force [Robert J. Art and Kenneth Waltz's Use of Force (2003)]. Nor that the decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq both closely fit the historical pattern of American interventions rather than being anomalies [William Blum's interventions timeline in Killing Hope (2003)].

∙ Podhoretz emphasizes the Bush Administration's embrace of Preemption, a decision that has been critiqued by many analysts across the political spectrum (Podhoretz, Ibid, pp. 30-33). Few have looked beyond this to the temporal foundations of Preemption:

(a) a static snapshot of probable futures;
(b) based on forecasts, scenarios and projections;
(c) of other strategic actors;
(d) likely outcomes;
(e) and, therefore, decision-making choices by policy elites and networks;
(f) that are then enacted; and
(g) that may change the situation to equilibria, disequilibria, or lead to little observable change at all.

The temporal foundations affect what conditions Preemption is used under, and how decision-makers decide. All of the examples the Bush Administration and Howard Government mention rely on perfect knowledge of other strategic actors, their intentions, a Manichean moral clarity, and decision-makers' rationality. This suggests both administrations are relying on Rational Choice Theory to justify Preemption rather than the decision-making difficulties of dealing with 'clear and present dangers'.

∙ Podhoretz attacks the critics of neoconservatives for engaging in a 'pernicious' form of Jewish cabal conspiracy theories (Podhoretz, Ibid, pp. 32-33). Pat Buchanan's paranoid Spenglerian fears can be quickly dismissed. Podhoretz's 'conspiracy' label, however, airbrushes over the complex relationship between Israel's Likud Party and the GOP, and the possible influence of Israeli millenarian beliefs on American evangelical Christians. Podhoretz ignores the Machiavellian War Behind Closed Doors between the neoconservatives and US State Department liberal internationalists. Finally, by summing up a multi-faceted debate as being driven primarily by 'Jewish cabal' theorists, Podhoretz plays into his readers' fears and biases. This makes arguing against Podhoretz's 'World War IV' stance difficult. An alternative viewpoint would be to study the neoconservatives as a self-reinforcing policy/social network that reinforced its normative goals and visions during the post-September 11 crisis of geopolitical visioning. Another would be to show that blind-spots, groupthink, institutional lock-in, echo chambers and ideological indoctrination are more complex and nuanced than Podhoretz depicts.

Reality Tunnel: Middle East Forum

Thu, 25 Nov 2004 23:31:52 GMT

Current Reading: Johan Galtung's Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 1996).

I'm exploring another reality tunnel: the Middle East Forum's perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iraq War and Islamist terrorism. Amongst the fiery rhetoric and group beliefs (on the US-Israel relationship) are some useful insights. I'm also struck by how MEF, like any group, begins each meeting with a plea for its own survival. MEF also cites a Boston Globe commentary that founder Daniel Pipes gave an 'early warning' on Islamist terrorism that if heeded would have prevented the September 11 terrorist attacks. This has become the norm in conservative American politics.

The Power Of Nightmares

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 08:52:52 GMT

From a note to Sohail Inayatullah's Macrohistory course:

The BBC recently screened Adam Curtis' controversial three-part documentary series The Power of Nightmares, a genealogy of how the Political Islamist (Sayyed Qutb) and American Neoconservative (Leo Strauss) worldviews have informed the War on Terror. Curtis created debate.

∙ Part 1: Baby It's Cold Outside video stream
∙ Part 2: The Phantom Victory video stream
∙ Part 3: The Shadows In The Cave video stream

Curtis posits this as an 'intergroup conflict' (Howard Bloom) between two elite groups of Vipra (intellectuals) whose nightmarish visions reshape the political landscape. Pareto and Mosca's point about elites is an undercurrent to episode one. This is a good example of the Critical layer in Causal Layered Analysis (applied to the Western security discourse of counterterrorism) with satirical imagery and editing. Curtis' thesis has been rejected by some American conservatives.

A central point in episode 2 is that the West's understanding of Al Qaeda came from the FBI's 1998 case into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Under US laws the FBI needed to posit a criminal organization (a la the Mafia) to try Bin Laden. Curtis interviews author Jason Burke, who argues that Al Qaeda must be understood as a loose network underpinned by an idea, rather than a hierarchical organization with bin Laden as leader.

Curtis highlights Sarkar's point that Vipra may end up controlling Ksattriyans (warriors) via ideologies. The 'current of transmission' from Sayyed Qutb to Ayman Al-Zawahiri is documented. Curtis doesn't mention Fred Polak's important work on social imaging; he does observe that both groups had success because of their dystopian future visions---and that they gained currency when the general public became skeptical of linear visions (particularly the Comtean 'faith' in science and progress). Near the third episode's end some of Curtis' interviewees talk about the shift from Positivist 'evidence-based' science to 'What If?' speculation---the latter is not explored, and would have been if Curtis had been aware of Futures Studies and Counterfactual History.

Arafat

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 09:02:49 GMT

I've started another blog at Loudwire that deals with Disinformation editorial issues and digital reportage.

Slate has two great 'backgrounder' pieces on PLO chairman Yasser Arafat: Survivor Palestine by William Bass, and Arafat's Legacy by David Kenner. The latter has links to further articles by Richard Falk and Robert Wright.

The other highlight of today's research was ASIO's Annual Report for 2003-04 (PDF), which I'm reading through now. The format suggests that Australia's domestic intelligence agency has adopted Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard for reporting purposes. The report style suggests the Minto Pyramid Principle (used by McKinsey and other blue-chip consulting firms).

Documenting The Politics Of Fear

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 04:41:49 GMT

British documentary film-maker Adam Curtis has caused a furore in Britain, claiming in his three-part series The Power of Nightmares that Al Qaeda has been used to create a climate of fear in Western nation-states after the September 11 attacks.

This suggests the potential for a Foucaultian or Nietzschean genealogy of how the 'terror network' meme arose, how it was perceived by different governments as a threat, and how it has shaped counterterrorism discourse. For scholars Gavin Kendall and Gary Wickham, 'Foucaultian research requires: (a) a 'how' question, (b) a decision about an appropriate archive for investigation; (c) a preference for programmatic texts, and (d) the commitment to keep digging until one finds the relative beginnings of a practice.' (Kendall and Wickham, 'The Foucaultian framework' in Clive Seale, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber F. Gubrium and David Silverman's Qualitative Research Practice, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks CA, 2004, p. 144).

Kendall and Wickham's criteria sets some useful research limits. The 'how' question is the most interesting. The 'appropriate archive' would have to be 'open source' material---propaganda, security communiques, press coverage, government statements---and rapidly changing Web sites. The 'programmatic texts' would be provided by Osama Bin Laden's fatwas, Sayyid Qutb's philosophy texts (and other religiopolitical theorists), and Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri [see The Road To Al-Qaeda]. Where to locate 'the relative beginnings of a practice' is a difficult one, and depends on the timeframe.

The Sociology Of Evil

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 06:49:52 GMT

Thomas Cushman's essay The Sociology of Evil and the Destruction of Bosnia landed in my e-mail box this morning. It's not an easy read but a rewarding one. Amongst the insights is Cushman's observation on how the pattern of in-migrating Albanians and out-migrating Serbians affected the conflict, how Milosevic 'inserted himself into history', the link between autonomous agency and evil, and how the mythic past is used as a political symbol to rewrite the present and to create a future vision. Here's a key quote:

'In terms of the temporal plane of history, what distinguishes so much of the social action in the Balkans is the way in which history resides so close to the surface, always ready to be taken into consideration as the justification for this or that act in the present.'

Many of Cushman's insights have been echoed by others, notably Saskia Sassen in Guests and Aliens (New York: The New Press, 1999) and Michael Ignatieff's Blood and Belonging (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994). Without mentioning it Cushman is using the Futures Triangle to describe his past-present-future relationship.

Literature Review: Graham Fuller (Islamists) + Mary Habeck (Jihadists)

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 04:03:41 GMT

Current Reading: Mark Wilson and Kenneth Corey's Information Tectonics: Space, Place and Technology in an Electronic Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000).

I'm gathering materials for a future thesis on counter-terrorism and futures studies. I'll be posting some quick comments on articles, books and interviews I come across.

∙ Graham Fuller has written a monograph, 'Islamists in the Arab World: The Dance Around Democracy' (abstract and PDF) that is a model of clarity in describing complex social phenomena, and placing them in a cultural and historical context. I've browsed my copy of Fuller's The Future Of Islam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), and will hopefully get time to read it over the Australian summer.

∙ The Heritage Foundation, the leading US-based conservative think tank, has some interesting talks on national security issues (however, the really interesting ones on intelligence reform are never placed online). Dr. Mary Habeck's talk 'Following the Method of Mohammad: Jihadist Strategies in the War on Terror' (12 August 2004; abstract and video stream) is a case in point. Habeck is at her best when she explains how counterterrorism scholars analyze New Terrorism groups. She is on more shaky ground, evident in the Q&A session, when trying to mobilize moderate Muslims to act on her behalf: academic scholars still have to get their facts right, and acknowledge frames of interpretation, lest they stray into agitative propaganda (some of her audience objected to how the lecture title misrepresents the global majority of peaceful Muslims). The controversy over Yale denying Habeck tenure went unmentioned. Lawrence Auster's article 'The Key to Jihadist Ideology and Strategy' summarizes Habeck's major point that Jihadist actions must be understood as rational (for instance the Madrid bombings as a symbolic attack against a near enemy that has occupied Muslim lands, the Jihadists believe, for centuries).

One of Dr. Habeck's best observations is this: 'To understand each attack, you have to get into the mindset of the group that carried out that attack, and not try to make broad generalizations about Jihadis or extremists or fundamentalists. These are very different people, very different groups, with very different arguments about how they should be carrying out their warfare. Understanding their arguments, in fact, means you have to understand their ideology, and, in some cases, understand the theological arguments they are having with the rest of the Islamic world.' (9:24-9:43 minutes). Dr. Habeck makes a clear case for values systems analysis, and then talks about how long-term vision informs Al Qaeda's grand strategy (but without being aware, perhaps, of recent work on macrohistory).

Her analysis echoes Evan F. Kohlmann's new book Al-Qaida's Jihad In Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network (New York: Berg Publishers, 2004) on how contemporary groups use Muhammed's Hijra (flight from enemies and formation of a clandestine vanguard/religious elite) as a model for situational learning and inculcation of how to use Hazard. Kohlmann's book analyzes how Al Qaeda used the Balkans conflict 'to establish a European domestic infrastructure'. This ties with John Urry's description in Global Complexity (London: Polity Press, 2003), of how Bosnia and Kashmir, as conflict zones, draw in potential recruits and become territories for arms dealers. Kohlmann's thoughts on Al-Qaeda infighting also echoes Alan Collison's article 'Inside Al-Qaeda's Hard Drive' (Atlantic Monthly, September 2004, pp. 55-70), which features Al-Qaeda internal documents found on a laptop.

The introduction by Jim Phillips, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, is also revealing.

'Some of the madrassahs were virtually 'jihad factories' that generated a steady stream of radicalized young males to flock to fight Jihad, or Holy War, in Afghanistan', Phillips notes (3:40-3:50 minutes). The industrial-era metaphor of 'jihad factories' evokes the specter of dehumanization. Yet it also fails (perhaps due to the short time) to explain the important role that madrassahs play in development politics, nor how Jihad is inculcated as a religious goal.

'But we need to also remember we are in a war of ideas, for Binladenism will survive Bin Laden, and will survive long after he is captured or killed. It's important to remember that Bin Laden is not just a nihilistic terrorist, but he's an Islamic revolutionary who seeks to hijack Islam, and impose his totalitarian Islamic ideology on Muslims throughout the world' (4:11-4:40 minutes). Whilst he realizes the psychopolitical power of ideas, Phillips does not explain, as Jason Burke does in Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror (London: IB Taurus, 2003) that Al-Qaeda is a network of 'loose ties' held together by an underlying belief system (an all-controlling and centralized organization is a 'comforting myth', Burke claims). Graham Fuller's analysis, cited above, suggests that this will adapt as an Islamist-nationalist nexus forms in the Middle East, cross-bonded by anti-American rhetoric. The line 'Islamic revolutionary' may be a nod to Michael Scheuer's Through Our Enemies' Eyes (Brassey's Inc., 2003), whilst 'totalitarian Islamic ideology' alludes to Paul Berman's Terror And Liberalism (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003). Berman's work has been influential on policymakers, just as Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts ((New York: Vintage Books USA, 1994) was on the Clinton Administration (the 'ancient ethnic hatred' thesis critiqued by Michael Ignatieff and others).

Another of Phillips' quotes stood out: 'To win this war ultimately we must convince Muslims, through reasoning or the use of force, that totalitarian Islamic ideas have bad consequences---not just for us, but for them. To win this war of ideas we must first understand the ideas and strategy of the enemy (5:30-5:50 minutes). On the one hand, Phillips quotes Sun Tzu's Art of War. On the other, a US over-reaction to 'bad consequences' may create the 'slippery slope' to a dystopian future---exactly what I want to avoid.

On a side note, after watching about 100 hours of lectures, Heritage's John Hilbodt could probably do the introductions in his sleep (he does them so much). Someone ought to sample it (I can hear Cobain-style grunge distortion already . . .)

First Timer

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:40:59 GMT

your_munchkin is on the SBS program Insight (Tuesday, 28 September, 8pm Australian Eastern Standard Time), episode 'First Timers':

'Young people are often criticised by their elders for not caring about social and political issues. In turn, young people criticise politicians about not caring for youth needs. This week, INSIGHT will come to you live from Brisbane, bringing together first time voters and first time candidates. Join Jenny Brockie as she talks to university, TAFE, and school students, workers and farmers about the issues that matter to them.'

After the episode screens in Australia you'll be able to watch a RealPlayer stream and browse a transcript.

Back In Black

Sat, 25 Sep 2004 08:25:03 GMT

Current Reading: Patrick Dunleavy's Authoring a PhD (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Research activities at the Smart Internet Technology CRC and the continuing rise of Disinformation have kept me away. Here's what's been happening:

∙ I'm sharing a house in the Melbourne suburb of West Brunswick with your_munchkin, silent_partner and cry_foryou. It's like The Young Ones except that I'm 31 and the household is emo.

∙ I'm writing my final AFI Master's essay on The Balanced Scorecard, CRC research and the sustainability outlook. The essay spans from a User Environment workshop in July to the CRC's annual conference in Sydney, earlier this week.

∙ Have been very lucky to get some cool people, like Mark Pesce, for the National Student Media Conference in Newcastle, which runs from 29 September to 3 October. I'll be up over the weekend to chair sessions on the Iraq War and political documentaries, and to show Robert Greenwald's films Outfoxed and Unconstitutional. The latter may well be the Australian premiere.

∙ I've interviewed some neat people recently, from author Irshad Manji to game designer Eric Zimmerman.

∙ I'd deferred postgrad studies at Monash in counter-terrorism studies until 2005. Meanwhile the books and journal articles pile up; the latest is Jeremy Varon's Bringing The War Home (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004). See his Nation article on The Weather Underground. Meanwhile, research questions and linkages are forming . . .

Raptis on 'Spooks' DVDs

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 16:42:40 GMT

Current Reading: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Linked: The New Science of Networks (Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002).

Melbourne designer John Raptis has written a great review of the BBC series Spooks, which I've been raving about for months, after being tipped off by a colleague at ABIX. I was writing an essay on counterterrorism and post-September 11 geopolitics for the Australian Foresight Institute when the first series screened, and saw how the scriptwriters integrated parts of known incidents into the scenarios and stories.

Congrats to Chris Stewart for launching the new Foresight consultancy Humanagon and landing a contract gig with the Victoria's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Internet.au: 'Google Zeitgeist' Hits The Newstands

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 07:28:01 GMT

Australian readers can check out my analysis of Google's looming Initial Public Offering (IPO) in internet.au (April 2004, pp. 30-34), on newstands now. Thanks to editor Karen Stuart and her Next Media team for a stellar job. Here's a key paragraph as a taster:

'For Stephen Johnson, author of Mind Wide Open (2004), Emergence (2001) and Interface Culture (1997), the Internet 'has created a veritable Cambrian explosion of diversity, funneled directly to your home – social, political, sexual, ethical, you name it.' What the Internet needs are interface tools to manage this complexity and diversity—which reflects human psychological experience—not shut it out. Australian telecommunications expert Trevor Barr reached a similar conclusion about ideological diversity in his book Newmedia.com.au (2000). Barr tells internet.au that what Internet users 'are really hoping for is when Google generates the intelligent, proactive and ubiquitous search engine that does not require them to execute commands for every single search. That's its goldmine for the future.' Could content deals with Nokia, Palm, Sony or Telstra be in the works?'

Readers interested in the film break-out box should check out an excerpt from my essay on Film Scanning (PDF). We're already at work on the next internet.au piece . . .

CFoF Session: Preempting The Entrepreneurial Terrorist

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 06:13:45 GMT

Critical Friends of Foresight is a student/alumni group linked to Swinburne University's Australian Foresight Institute, which features free lectures and workshops on Foresight methods and issues. This session was announced several weeks before the Madrid bombings in Spain (on 11 March 2004) and have taken on a new relevance. Interested members of the public are welcome to attend; please e-mail me beforehand so I can organize another room booking if the session fills up.

Session Background

The Cold War's end (1989) unleashed new geopolitical problems for strategic analysts. Ethnic conflicts, nationalist movements and separatists, transitional economies and viral pandemics captured the media's gaze throughout the 1990s. The September 11 and Bali attacks catapulted the 'New Terrorism' (Harvey Kushner and Walter Laqueur) to global attention. Freelancers and trans-national networks embody the new generation of terrorists: they use global communications, financial and technology; may be religious-based; do not claim credit; and engage in acts of greater violence that kill more people. New terrorists will target the vulnerabilities of contemporary urban and technological societies.

Entrepreneurship and Organizational Dynamics research is providing new insights for counter-terrorists. This presentation will provide an overview of field research by Jessica Stern, Rohan Gunaratna, Bruce Hoffman and others. Al Qaeda is now recognized, for example, as a 'network of networks' embedded in a deeper worldview. These writers portray Osama bin Laden as a venture financier against neo-liberal globalization. The presentation draws on insights from the Strategic Foresight and MBA first stage programs at Swinburne University. Attendees will learn about new options to counter the 'New Terrorism' (PDF), and a summary of recent CIA, DIA and FBI testimony on the global outlook for terrorism.

Key Topics

Topics to be covered will include:

· An overview of the driving forces behind the 'New Terrorism'
· Organizational/Team Dynamics insights on Al Qaeda 2.0
· How terrorists use Opportunity Evaluation to select 'soft' targets
· Why 'staged commitments' are used to recruit suicide bombers
· The current debate on Exit Strategies for former terrorists

Time/Location Details

Time: 6:30pm—9pm, 24 March 2004
Place: AGSE301 (boardroom), AGSE Building, Hawthorn (PDF campus map)
Cost: Free
RSVP: Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com)

About The Speaker

Alex Burns is a researcher with the Smart Internet CRC, and editor of Disinformation, a US-based site that has tracked emerging threats, subcultures and the intelligence community since 1996. Burns is completing an MSc in Strategic Foresight at the Australian Foresight Institute; his research interests include counter-terrorism, risk societies and global media vectors.

Gallinus Hennus/Deja Vu

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 03:45:17 GMT

After 18 months of requests gallinahen has relented and begun her own blog.

This morning when the train arrived at Parliament station, in Melbourne's underground loop, I had a flash of deja vu. The same angle and lighting had popped up in a dream I had when I was 14. Maybe it was a pseudo-memory, as many deja vu experiences are. It certainly wasn't of an important moment, like many self-reported experiences claim to be.

Iago v Bolt

Wed, 18 Feb 2004 02:04:49 GMT

Melbourne Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt may be comparable to FOX News pundit Bill O'Reilly in his avowed patriotism, little tolerance of fools, and use of stereotypes for mass appeal in Australia. In 2003 Bolt was critiqued by ABC Media Watch's David Marr for leaking pre-war intelligence on Iraq, and criticizing writer and diplomat Alison Broinowski for accepting grant monies. Bolt then took Marr to task for his left-wing imprimatur on what should have been an 'objective' program.

Bolt is in the news again. This time, author Iain Iago analyzes Bolt's post-9/11 columns. For Iago, these are tabloid missives that misquote sources and malign moderate Muslims. Bolt counter-argues that Iago has left out some crucial material. Here's my reply to both:

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Karim H. Karim's The Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence (Black Rose Books, 2001) uses the author's Jihad model ("a field of meaning that holds Islam to be a primary Other and a religion that promotes the use of violence") to examine how Islam is portrayed in the Western media. The book was written by Karim before the September 11 attacks. Karim is Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

If Bolt and his colleagues really want to isolate militant Islamists from moderate Australian Muslims, then he should look at social judgment psychologist Muzafer Sherif's work on cultural norms and inter-group conflict. Sherif is most famous for the Robber's Cave experiment (1954). Bolt and anyone else who wants to write journalism relevant in the 21st century should also heed Alfred Korzybski's message, in Science and Sanity (1936), about the 'error of is-ness' ('X is Y'), summed up as 'the [linguistic] map is not the territory'. Details of Sherif and Korzybski's works, which analyze common errors in communication (biases, inferences, 'languaging' and stereotypes), can be found online. L. Michael Hall's online essays on Korzybski are an excellent introduction to filters, frames, pattern recognition and systems thinking. Precise use of language would enable Bolt to clarify his moral worldview for others rather than continue to get caught in ideological flame-wars.

Finally, in reply to Bolt's final line about Iago's postgraduate work and universities: let's wait to see Iago's book in full. Things have been much worse. In 1989 Musu Abu Marzuk became founding president of the United Association of Studies and Research (UASR), described by Steven Emerson as 'a self-described Islamic "think tank" that in reality served as a covert branch for planning Hamas operations and for disseminating Hamas propaganda.'

UASR affiliated with the University of South Florida (Tampa) in the early 1990s. UASR sponsored a conference in June 1991 that railed against 'American-Crusader imperialism', and which included members of 'Islamic Jihad,Hizba Tahir, Hezbollah, Al-Jihad and Jamat Muslimeen'. ('Threat of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism' in Harvey Kushner's anthology The Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium, Sage Publications, London, 1998, p. 44). The University ignored warnings from professors in 1991, the American PBS documentary 'Jihad in America' (1994), and investigative reportage by journalist Michael Fechtor in 1996 (Kushner, ibid, p. 54). No-one in Australia has made the mistake that University administrators did. As Emerson noted, it was vigilant professors who raised the alarm about UASR's overseas funding sources, in the first place.</blockquote>

(My implied point to Bolt is that such 'vigilant professors' don't exist in his stereotypical academia).

Anticipation: The End Is Where We Start From

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 07:07:59 GMT

Digital Journalism promises to monitor events in real-time. Journalists need to be aware of how they construct meanings and interpret situations. This shift suggests a post-positivist outlook, rather than the positivist viewpoint of traditional media (where the journalist strives for scientific objectivity by reporting both sides). A key for journalists is the ability to anticipate circumstances and situations.

Mihai Nadin's Anticipation: The End Is Where We Start From (Lars Muller Publishers, 2003) is an extended essay on the role of Anticipation and its impact on the new sciences. The accompanying DVD splices together textual fragments and vivid imagery: a way to communicate the Foresight Principle (PDF) to a wider audience.

Here are some key quotes from Nadin's book:

The Retro-Causality Of Anticipation

'Or, as the cybernetician Heinz von Foerster once put it, 'The cause lies in the future.' (p. 10).

On The Era Of 'Big Science'

'In our days, we witness the glory of the space exploration programs (NASA, DASA and the efforts of China and Japan), as well as in the exploration of the depths of matter (CERN, European Laboratory for Particle Physics, Switzerland; Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, California; Fermi Laboratory, Chicago; Kamioka Laboratory, Japan).' (p. 15).

Anticipation As Our Sixth Sense

'Everything we eventually do is spelled out through a number of conflicting models for future action. They are context sensitive. This is why I defined anticipation as our sixth sense - the sense of context - a definition with an anthropocentric flavor since the five known senses are related to human beings.' (p 27).

On Anticipation And Information Theory

'In Newton's world, a force must exlplain the process. In our anticipatory model, it is information in the form of knowledge and its contextual organization that affects the successful catch.' (p. 35).

12 Definitions Of Anticipation

Definition 1. 'An anticipatory system is a system whose current state is determined by a future state.' (p. 53).

Definition 2. 'Anticipation is the generation of a multitude of dynamic models of human actions in a given practical situation and the resolution, through a reward or punishment mechanism, of their conflict in an action. The source of anticipation is the interaction of minds, in particular through directly or indirectly shared experiences.' (p. 56). 'This definition suggests that actions are not predefined through one possible scenario, but through several. Anticipation is thus 1) the continuous generation of models of action and 2) selection, from among the models, of the model that is deemed better suited to obtaining the desired outcome.' (p. 58).

Definition 3. 'An anticipatory system is a system containing a predictive model of itself, and/or of its environment, which allows it to change state at an instant in accord with the model's predictions pertaining to a later instant.' (p. 60).

Definition 4. 'Anticipation is the result of a correlation process. Correlations explain the functioning of so-called auto-associative memory. This allows an organism to anticipate sensory data or, more precisely, to act even when data are only scarcely provided.' (p. 64).

Definition 5. 'Anticipation is an expression of the connectedness of the world, in particular of the quantum non-locality characteristic of many phenomena.' (p. 70).

Definition 6. 'Anticipation is the expression of natural entailment.' (p. 73).

Definition 7. Anticipation is a mechanism of syncrhonization and integration.' (p. 78).

Definition 8. 'Anticipation is an attractor within dynamic systems.' (p. 81).

Definition 9. 'Anticipation is a recursive process described through the functioning of a system whose past, present, and future states allow it to evolve from an initial to a final state that is implicitly embedded in it. To an observer from outside the system, this particular way of functioning appears as an evolution in which the system knows its own future.' (p. 85).

Definition 10. 'Anticipation is a realization within the domain of possibilities. The experiments mentioned above anticipate such a possible realization. But more modest applications are also possible.' (p. 89).

Definition 11. 'Feedback is a mechanism of anticipation.' (p. 92).

Definition 12. 'Power laws are helpful in describing interactions between systems whose components are correlated. In nonextensive situations, correlations do not decrease exponentially with distance, as they do in extensive cases. Described in terms of nonextensive thermodynamics, long-range interactions correspond to particular description of entropy.' (p. 92).

On Information and Anticipation:

'Information is the ultimate substratum of anticipatory processes. Anticipatory systems are systems of information, themselves subject to interaction with other systems.' (p. 100).

On Ethnic Profiling

'Instinct is yet another expression of anticipation; so are intuitions and the human propensity towards stereotyping and prejudice. Ethnic profiling, which has come into fashion since the end of September 2001, is intended to be an anticipatory defense mechanism. In reality it has been practiced for a long time, consciously or not. It has so much in common with stereotyping, and like stereotyping, it can lead to faulty anticipation. These and other mechanisms of the same nature allow us to rapidly anticipate in great detail and based on a minimum of information. But they can also result in mistaken reactions. We see here again the complementary nature of reaction - based on sense data - and anticipation - based on experience, i.e. mind interaction. As a matter of fact, anticipation is a process through which individuals are taken hostage by themselves. Our hypotheses - from very simple to very complex scientific assumptions - anticipate our results. This applies to politics, religion, and ethics as well. Not unlike science and the arts, the moral code is an anticipation and also an interpretation of what it means to operate within the anticipation. It regulates and simultaneously co-creates relations among people. Science is as difficult as any other human activity that starts from a hypothesis. We seem to be destined to circularity, and it takes a major effort to avoid it, or at least to become aware of it.' (p. 106).

On The 'Intelligence Failure' Of 9/11

'If we take only the most recent tragic episode of terrorism (i.e. the hijacking of four passenger airplanes in the USA and their being piloted into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001) as an example - not just because its shock value makes it a convenient example - we could start out with the observation that a friend of mine, a mathematician, made to me: "Anticipation failed!" Were this declaration related only to the work of intelligence gathering, or of architects and urban planners, or of airlines, or of any other physics-based activity, it would mean nothing. In the never-ending conflict between people upholding values (in no matter what paradoxical fashion) and those set on destroying them (regardless of the proclaimed justification) there will always be a lapse, a moment of failure in a response based on reaction. Anticipation alteres the picture fundamentally. It ascretains the need to consider entailment mechanisms and thus makes us aware of the open world of infinite possibilities, of the infinite correlations, and of the limitless strivings of human beings.' (p. 115).

On The Recruitment Of Suicide Bombers

'However, anticipation did indeed succeed in respect to the orchestrators of the attack. The monster behind the anticipatory staging of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the other targets made his formula public: Take the societal pyramid and find out which group is prone to committing suicide. As far-fetched as this statement might sound, the numbers describe anticipations (attractors, in this case) known all over the world. To "fish out" those "predestined," i.e. inclined (due to their particular cognitive and psychological characteristics) to commit suicide, and to connect their predisposition to a cause (documented or not by a religious text or some other cultural reference) as part of a strategy that is not exclusively of Middle Eastern or Islamic extraction. Suicide candidates, and suicideal actions, in Japan and Korea, even in European countries, are well documented. And recruitment for current terrorist acts extended to likely candidates from these countries. Not to have succeeded in dying (and the so-called martyrdom attached to it) marks one for life as a failure! In the western part of the world today, we do exactly the opposite. We "fish out" our own predestined suicide candidates and offer them alternatives - join a sports team, get psychological counselling, attend group meetings, partake in community events - in order to consolidate a sense of self-worth. I give this example - connected to horrible events we never anticipated - only to suggest that a possibilistic (i.e. anticipatory) approach, in contrast to a (p. 116) probabilistic procedure, is bound to change our view of what prevention is, especially in a world that reached the stage of global economy. Do not read into this example the comprehensive answer to the problems of terrorism, or to all forms of prevention, because there is no one and only answer. But there is one candidate - reaction - that will certainly not make terrorism disappear and will not help society in advancing prevention, in medicine, politics, social welfare, and many other areas. The prevalent reaction mechanism for dealing with the issues of extreme importance to humankind has to be complemented by proactive measures, by anticipation.' (p. 117).

On Revolutions (Scientific And Otherwise)

'Revolutions are not declared; they take place as a fundamental change becomes not only possible, but necessary.' (p. 119).

Fowl Play

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 06:58:06 GMT

My hens are oblivious to Asia's avian flu crisis: they are more worried about the Australian summer heat and the 'clear and present danger' posed by a local fox. Matthew Sweet profiles the hen's impact on spirituality, literature, fast food outlets and celebrities. Fears of a human pandemic fit Susan Moeller's model of 'killer virus' reporting in the SARS outbreak of 2003 (PDF).

I Shot The Sherriff . . .

Sat, 14 Feb 2004 11:31:22 GMT

Stephen Mayne's Crikey, Australia's leading independent news and gossip site, recently published an article on the fate of Melbourne University's student union. One name stood out, so I wrote Mayne the following letter:

Intra campus smear campaign
Arthur the Undergrad's article 'The death of a $12m Student Union' (11 February 2004) brings back distant memories: I spent several months in a La Trobe University share flat in late 1993 with Dean Sherriff [Grimshaw Ward, Banyule], and future LTU SRC president and Glencairn Ward [Moreland] councillor Robert Larocca. The 1993 editors of LTU student newspaper 'Rabelais' had published a 'Ballad of Dean Sherriff' that pilloried his political scheming and quasi-grifter style. The smear campaign against Graham Cornish is reminiscent of the tactics that hardline right politicians used on LTU's campus in the early 1990s (Sherriff had a 1902 message service for the 1993 election). Finally, it's not surprising that Sherriff left MUSU with his files: he was just as cautious in his flat, always keeping his room and filing cabinet locked. His easygoing flat-mates thought this was over-paranoid, so one evening they broke into his room and trashed it.
Alex Burns

Most people at LTU 'loved to hate' Sherriff by late 1993, whereas Larocca was the more Machiavellian politician. Larocca and I were fans of Tim Robbins' brilliant political satire Bob Roberts (1992). Larocca would play Frank Sinatra and Sydney's mod rockers You Am I on the flat's stereo. He once gave me a brilliant overview of how Joy Division became New Order. Larocca's continued success in politics was assured, given his strategic abilities to build alliances and limit disruptive student politicians. In some ways the fate of Larocca and Sherriff offer a perverse example of James Hillman's 'acorn theory' in The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (New York: Warner Books, 1997). Hillman observes how aspects of the soul can be discerned over a life's unfolding, as deep archetypal themes will emerge. Larocca and Sherriff had different experiences, respectively, as councillors in the Moreland and Banyule local councils in Melbourne, Australia.

Hillman's viewpoint is relevant because Sherriff, Larocca and I all faced ethical challenges during our involvement in university student politics [Sherriff was dismissed in August 1993 from his $A103,000 job as MUSU's director of commercial services]. For myself, the moment came during the 1994 elections, when I was on a broad coalition of students who ranged from center left to pragmatic right. We were aware that Liberal Party student politicians had tried to shutdown a West Australian paper. Something was looming.

The moment came during a backroom meeting with a supporter of Australian politician and moral crusader Fred Nile. If his Christian faction supported our ticket, he told me, then we had to make him look good in 1995 and not pry. I told him that news editorial needed to be separate from student politics. My preferred model was the United States one, where campus newspapers were connected with a journalism faculty or run as an independent business, rather than the Australian model of being an outlet for politicians' rhetoric.

We had problems on the Tuesday of the week-long election, and our opponents, who I knew, ran a scare campaign and won. They became infamous for the Rabelais Four incident in 1995, which tested state censorship laws. The week of the election I interviewed author JG Ballard for West Australia's REVelation Magazine ('JG Ballard: The Personal Mythologist'). I decided that student journalism was worthwhile, but that student politics was really an easy job and 'selection pressure' for screening future politicians. So I got out, while Larocca and Sherriff went on to their respective political destinies.

Ten years on I'm working with the National Student Media Conference and UNESCO to deal with the conflicts of interest that student newspaper editors face, and the status of journalists in the post-September 11 world.

We hope to get it right this time.

Evaluating Opportunities

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 11:06:35 GMT

The last three days have been a blur of meetings, pitches and last-minute report writing for the Team Dynamics and Opportunity Evaluation subjects. Anyone contemplating an MBA that has significant group or syndicate work should expect to add 400% to class contact times. It's been a rewarding experience, but an exhausting one.

The other exciting news was a series of intensive meetings this week for the 2004 Student Media Conference in Australia. I'm writing a 'Current Issues' briefing paper for UNESCO on digital journalism in the post September 11 world. Hopefully our insights will be scalable to other countries and media outlets. The 'Share' editorial and my essay 'Worldflash of a Coming Future' may offer some hints of what is to come.

For those who have just logged on: No, I'm not Alex Burns, the actor who recently attended the Sundance Film Festival, nor the British football player, nor the Australian blues and roots guitarist (though we chatted by phone once in 1994), nor my doppelganger Axel Bruns. Still, it's nice to hear of the football player's dates with high-profile actresses, or the actor's new productions. Maybe I should have followed that acting career and sent in that NIDA application in late 1991. That opportunity was missed but others have arisen. As the Australian Foresight Institute lecturers say, 'trust emergence'.

Counterfactual Histories of the Tavistock Method

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 11:51:49 GMT

Current Reading: Omer Bartov's insightful New Republic article on Adolf Hitler's second book.

This morning was the final session of a three-week exploration of the Tavistock method of group psychodynamics (Primer PDF and Paradigm PDF). Wilfrid Bion's work has been extremely useful: I've been able to observe how an effective 'work group' operates, and how we can collectively slip into basic assumption patterns. A very different experience to the multitude of conspiracy writings on the Internet about Tavistock, notably Dr. John Coleman's 'Conspirators Hierarchy: The Committee of 300'. Some of the more insightful critiques include John Taylor Gatto's chapter on HG Wells' 'Open Conspiracy'. The conspiracy theorists evidently have not experienced the Tavistock Method, but only written about it second-hand. Their 'institutional analysis' is also flawed.

Thwarting Total Eclipse

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 10:10:45 GMT

Monash University made me an offer, so now I'm enrolled for 2004 in their new Masters of Counter-Terrorism degree. Now all I have to do is find a way to fit the class contact hours around my Smart Internet CRC research schedule, and the final two subjects of my Masters of Strategic Foresight degree.

'Why would anyone do two Masters degrees?' you probably ask.

First, I'd have to cover much of this material in the 'literature review' phase of a planned doctoral dissertation. Second, the Monash course has a world class team, including Dr. David Wright-Neville, Dr. Pete Lentini and Dr. Shahram Akbarzadeh. Third, there's a natural mesh between counterterrorism and foresight that goes beyond the debate about strategic pre-emption, the US National Security Strategy and the outlook of the Project for the New American Century. Fourth, I have the 'anxious foresight' that the global trends and wild cards which John Shirley describes in his Song Called Youth trilogy (1985-1990) may be unfolding.

Here's a draft excerpt on Shirley's scenario from a personal biography that I'm contributing to the 2004 update of Richard Slaughter's Knowledge Base of Futures Studies (PDF):

The most dystopian current that resonates with me is Total Eclipse, a social engineering project reminiscent of a long-term War on Terror, described by John Shirley in his 'Song Called Youth' trilogy (1985—1990). Shirley asks: Anticipatory management and pre-emption are often touted as useful tools, but to what ends? Who tracks the third and fourth-order effects? How do we prevent reification? Few practitioners have dealt with the maleficent implications of Shirley’s scenario, which comes about when security forces adopt a top-down model of world government (instead of many-to-many global governance).
Over the past decade I have scouted many different forces and trends—from the 'new' terrorism and transitional economies to the social justice movement and the sustainability outlook. Shirley’s scenario combines elements from many of these forces and trends. However many activists, from my experience, have an over-idealistic view of human nature. They 'espouse' one set of social values while in-authentically living another. Or they get trapped in diversions and debates of little long-term significance.
Nor are aesthetics, inter-subjective ethics and psychological maturity often considered. Shirley's scenario noted how, sooner or later, societies would face the threat of hyper-intelligent terrorists who have access to 'disruptive' technologies. How many can differentiate, for example, between charity and fundraising organizations, and the global terror networks that may stealthily parasitize them? Hence if Shirley's scenario were unfolding, and some early indicators are perceptible, then activists and change agents might not have the political will or the social capacity to thwart it.

'Scoping' Internet Futures

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:40:03 GMT

Steven Johnson's new book Mind Wide Open (New York: Scribner, 2004) looks to be a great read. His previous books Interface Culture (1999) and Emergence (2002) are both highly recommended.

The day unfolded over a series of meetings and pitch sessions.

A morning 'scoping' session on the year-long Smart Internet CRC moved from conceptual foundations (dealing with change, time and identity) to the preferred outcomes of multiple stakeholders. Thankfully, I've been re-reading Peter Block's book Flawless Consulting (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), so the mind-shift from 'pure' research to applied consulting is not difficult. Some of the early questions, which are necessary to establish the foundations, will be demoted later in the research design. The team's intranet is now up and running.

The afternoon centered on a 'test' pitch session for a Foresight project aimed at corporate consultants (as part of an Opportunity Evaluation subject). I'm borrowing the term 'corporate foresight' from Louise Hogan, who wrote a useful essay on how new methods can enhance strategic planning (PDF). The pitch was a major improvement on a change management effort, as the language and structure fell into place. Opp Eval is primarily about process, not ideas. The project is commercially viable, given some further proposal work, and if I have the time and inclination to pursue it.

Ideas Are Legion, Execution Is Everything

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:06:25 GMT

I have newfound respect for Dow Chemical's Andy Hines, a graduate of the MS Studies of the Future program at University of Houston (Clear-Lake) and co-founder of the Association of Professional Futurists. Andy once told me a consulting formula (70 per-cent execution, 20 per-cent conceptualizing, 10 per-cent envisioning) that is the reversal of how I have usually worked. And his insight is relevant to my new research gig.

Although the team has just formed, we have several major projects, deadlines looming, and stakeholders to consider. The project brief has been dissected, questions formulated and tested, and the consultation phase is being developed. Everything comes down to three things: the conceptual framework we use to discuss the issues; the methods and tools used to collect and interpret the data; and the context that our findings will be applied in.