Post by Origanalist on Jul 29, 2014 21:45:01 GMT -8
[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Wendy McElroy]
The social sciences in America have been militarized to produce tools that assist the government in understanding and suppressing dissent. Anthropology, linguistic analysis and sociology now serve the police state.
One program is called the Minerva Initiative after the Roman goddess of war. A June 12th article in the Guardian explained, “A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies.” [Note: Minerva funding is typically channeled through less controversial agencies such as the National Institutes of Health.] Established in 2008, Minerva was budgeted to fund approximately $75 million worth of behavioral research over a five year period. It is now six years later. In 2014 to date, Minerva has distributed approximately $17.8 million.
A typical project: over the next three years, Cornell University will model "the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions." The university will locate the tipping point in uprisings such as the revolution in Egypt of 2011. Then the data can be extrapolated to make observations about uprisings in general. The Minerva site states,
The Department of Defense is interested in better understanding what drives individuals and groups to mobilize to institute change. In particular, models that explain and explore factors that motivate or inhibit groups to adopt political violence as a tactic will help inform understanding of where organized violence is likely to erupt, what factors might explain its contagion, and how one might circumvent its spread.
In practice, Minerva makes little distinction between violent and non-violent dissent. In 2013, one of funded projects asked and answered the question “Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?” The primary researcher, Prof Maria Rasmussen of the US Naval Postgraduate School, described the project's mission, “In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence."
In other words, a person who is sympathetic to the justice of a violent group's goals is an integral part of terrorism even if he is a pacifist. A belief, not an action, is what makes him a terrorist supporter. For example, a weaponless writer could sympathize with gun owners who defend the second amendment by drawing weapons on their own property. A commentator might argue for the release of free speech activists who are imprisoned for resisting arrest. To sympathize with dissent and to argue against authority suddenly becomes part of political violence.
continued at...dollarvigilante.com/blog/2014/7/29/the-nsa-nation-moves-to-the-next-level.html#6458
The social sciences in America have been militarized to produce tools that assist the government in understanding and suppressing dissent. Anthropology, linguistic analysis and sociology now serve the police state.
One program is called the Minerva Initiative after the Roman goddess of war. A June 12th article in the Guardian explained, “A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies.” [Note: Minerva funding is typically channeled through less controversial agencies such as the National Institutes of Health.] Established in 2008, Minerva was budgeted to fund approximately $75 million worth of behavioral research over a five year period. It is now six years later. In 2014 to date, Minerva has distributed approximately $17.8 million.
A typical project: over the next three years, Cornell University will model "the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions." The university will locate the tipping point in uprisings such as the revolution in Egypt of 2011. Then the data can be extrapolated to make observations about uprisings in general. The Minerva site states,
The Department of Defense is interested in better understanding what drives individuals and groups to mobilize to institute change. In particular, models that explain and explore factors that motivate or inhibit groups to adopt political violence as a tactic will help inform understanding of where organized violence is likely to erupt, what factors might explain its contagion, and how one might circumvent its spread.
In practice, Minerva makes little distinction between violent and non-violent dissent. In 2013, one of funded projects asked and answered the question “Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?” The primary researcher, Prof Maria Rasmussen of the US Naval Postgraduate School, described the project's mission, “In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence."
In other words, a person who is sympathetic to the justice of a violent group's goals is an integral part of terrorism even if he is a pacifist. A belief, not an action, is what makes him a terrorist supporter. For example, a weaponless writer could sympathize with gun owners who defend the second amendment by drawing weapons on their own property. A commentator might argue for the release of free speech activists who are imprisoned for resisting arrest. To sympathize with dissent and to argue against authority suddenly becomes part of political violence.
continued at...dollarvigilante.com/blog/2014/7/29/the-nsa-nation-moves-to-the-next-level.html#6458