[ by Charles Cameron -- cross-posted from Sembl ] . You don’t have to be playing a Sembl or Hipbone game to make a great Sembl move — you just have to see a rich semblance between two concepts in (previously) widely separated fields of thought. Thus Pierre Deligne of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, [...] Read more »
A Sustainable National Security Posture?
[ by Charles Cameron -- and what about climate change, Mike Mazarr? ] . Is there even a Cheney-esque one-percent possibility that 97% of climate scientists (NASA’s estimate) are right? . . ** I just opened up Michael Mazarr‘s NDU Strategy Study Group report, Discriminate Power: A Strategy for a Sustainable National Security Posture. It’s [...] Read more »
Great question!
[ by Charles Cameron -- from Paradise Regained: Overcoming Terrorism in Star Trek Into Darkness ] . . Matt Ford, guest-blogging at Grand Blog Tarkin [includes spoilers] asks: How many young Americans learned Arabic and Pashto or studied counterterrorism and international relations because nineteen men flew three planes into a building and one into the [...] Read more »
Jottings 9: Boko / Beaucoup Haram
[ by Charles Cameron -- who just can't resist a skilled bilingual pun, and is also curious these days about terrorist logos & branding ] . ** I found my delicious multilingual pun in a comment from April 2012 on an RFI post titled Boko Haram en renfort des islamistes armés dans le nord du [...] Read more »
Words, words — what’s a bunch of Wordsworth?
[ by Charles Cameron -- bemused again, "jihad" (the word) in the news, "big data" too, plus Google expecting Mahdi ] . I suppose I should be glad — or should I? — that the word jihad is now in the news. It’s about time. Jihad (the word, the concept, the interpretations) should have been [...] Read more »
On eating one’s enemy
[ by Charles Cameron -- not good branding, not Islamic, dumbstruck? -- not a whole lot else to say ] . Let’s take the bald facts first: Commander Abu Sakkar of the Farouq Brigades, Free Syrian Army, had himself videotaped this month cutting open and seeming to eat the flesh of a just-killed Syrian soldier [...] Read more »
Of Alice, Angels and Apsaras
[ by Charles Cameron -- squeezed between the space of astronomers and the paradise of the believers, is there yet room for the dancing play of poetry, music and imagination? ] . My first question for you today would be — do you believe in Alice? And further to that, do you believe in the [...] Read more »
A flock, a gaggle of tweeters?
[ by Charles Cameron -- a testament to bewilderment ] . It is pretty clear, I think, that Craig Little (upper panel) is not a mujahid from Daphne, Alabama, now living or dead in Somalia. He first tweeted on 22 March, 2009, however, and hasn’t tweeted since 29 July, 2010. Which gives him the name [...] Read more »
Sisyphus on the treadmill of memes
[ by Charles Cameron -- Khorasan, black banners, the Ghazwa-e-Hind -- when will the updating ever stop? ] . ** It looks as though I first realized that “the black banners of Khorasan” was a meme I should be “eyes out” for was in July 2007, when John Robb pointed us to a piece by [...] Read more »
If I could slip a couple of quotes into the water supply
[ by Charles Cameron -- pretty much just thinking out loud about mental processes ] . The thing is, changing minds is a delicate business, pushing too hard can be counter-productive, and all the more so when the conclusion you want to bring about is clean contrary to the ethos of those you would far [...] Read more »