US Anthropology: Political, Professional, Personal, Imperial
Part One of: “Canadian Anthropology or Cultural Imperialism?” Recent events have called into question how a discipline can be commanded on an international plane, and represented in a…
Author: Maximilian Forte
2015: Just Another Year for Empire
This year saw so little published on this site, that presenting our “top 10 articles” would nearly exhaust everything we produced. Instead, we decided to produce a list…
Debating the End of the Human Terrain System, Part 2
US Army caption: “Fist bump–A group of local Afghan children bump fists with U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to the 1775th Military Police Company during a mission to Kuchi…
Debating the End of the Human Terrain System, Part 1
The US Army’s official caption: “Survey strategy–Human Terrain Analysis Team, Iraqi Police, and U.S. Soldiers with 354th Military Police Company in support of 1st Battalion, 68th Arm…
Bagram Santa
Easily lending themselves to multiple forms of misunderstanding, the Pentagon nevertheless regularly produces images of military personnel dressed as Santa Claus. This too is a pattern, minor in…
The Babysitter
Big Chief, Big Daddy, Big Babysitter to the World If “winning hearts and minds” is at the top of your global campaign agenda for strategic communication, then you…
Bare Feet
Encoding Poverty, Backwardness, and Dependency in US Military Imagery Bare feet. Ever since I was a small child, I have been made aware of how not wearing…
Encircling Empire: Report #26 — Reviewing Force Multipliers
This and previous issues have been archived on a dedicated site—please see: ENCIRCLING EMPIRE. For frequent updates, please “like” our Facebook page and/or follow on Twitter. Over the…
BDS, the AAA, and Academic Imperialism
We Disagree to Agree Support for a particular cause can come from numerous sources and points of view, each representing different interests. Similarly, people can arrive at the…
Force Multipliers and 21st Century Imperial Warfare: Practice and Propaganda
If the present provides a hint of what it is to come, the nastiest, ugliest, and bloodiest wars to be fought this century will be between states opposed…
The Dismal “Physics” of Blowback and Overstretch
Countering Scientism with Scientism Another sort of “physics” has emerged, right from within the same establishment of military and political institutions that produced “force multipliers…
Military Capitalism
Security for US Capitalists: The State Department and its Global Partners Very much in line in with the idea of “connected capitalism,” the US State Department created the…
Connected Capitalism?
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that…
Empire’s “Mimic Men”
Imperialism by Invitation or Imitation? US efforts in remaking the international system according to an image reflecting the US are not usually in complete vain since the track…
Force Multipliers and Stealth Imperialism
The force multiplier mechanism is not just something envisioned in military writing, but is instead a cornerstone of US intervention, both overt and covert. The CIA uses the…
Force Multipliers and Cuba
Much of what appears as “novel” thinking in US imperial strategies, masks deeper historical foundations. Numerous authors have already explained how Latin America and the Caribbean, from the…
The “Science” of Global Domination
While it is an odd mix of physics, biology, and geometry that has captured the communications strategy of military planners, the messages themselves are very telling about how…
Scientific Imperialism
“A fundamental law of Netwonian physics applies also to military maneuver: one can achieve overwhelming force by substituting velocity for mass”. (Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, 2003) “Are…
Instrumental Partners: An Imperial Science of Agency
For an empire whose imperialism is still denied by many, a striking number of terms and concepts have been generated by US leaders that nonetheless are premised on…
Eight Questions and Seven Theses about Force Multipliers
“Force multipliers: Machines which allow a small effort to move a larger load are called force multipliers. Some examples of force multipliers include: a crowbar, wheelbarrow, nutcracker, and…
(New Book) Force Multipliers: The Instrumentalities of Imperialism
From ALERT PRESS: Click here to order a printed copy, or, Click here for the free e-book (pdf) Friends and allies, partners and protégés, extensions and proxies—the vocabulary…
The Libyan Disaster: This Time Imperialism Pretends Anti-Interventionism
When it was still called the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Al-Jamahiriya al-arabiya al-Libiya al-sha’abiya al-ishtirakiya), and Col. Muammar Gaddafi was still the de facto head of state,…
Encircling Empire: Report #25 — Remembering Panama
This and previous issues have been archived on a dedicated site—please see: ENCIRCLING EMPIRE. For frequent updates, please “like” our Facebook page and/or follow on Twitter. “Operation Just…
Our Report for 2014
This year has seen an almost frenzied escalation of US intervention around the globe, ranging from the determined provocations and threats against Russia and backing a coup in…