In Africa cannibalism is random. Six men in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were arrested for cannibalism; the men dug up graves, ate human flesh, and made shoes out of human skin. A Nigerian man confessed to chopping up his boss after a payment dispute and making her into pepper soup. A German cannibal named Armin Meiwes said he was sorry for killing and eating another man, who supposedly agreed to be eaten and shared a meal of his own penis with his killer. Prosecutors charged Meiwes with "murder for sexual satisfaction," because cannibalism is not a crime in Germany.
Just to get this right, does "cannibalism" mean literally eating another hb or it encompasses sinister behavior and action on the part of the perpetrator that causes another hb to die (that's to say figuratively eating someone)?
Anyway, what I really feel is anger toward myself (I'll get to that) but especially toward the school. After being shown the door I had nothing but time to do a bit of research and came to realize that my fourth-tier law school had a bit of a ponsi scheme going on .. What I suspect is that lower tier schools accept people who don't necessarily demonstrate true aptitude for legal study, nor passage of the bar, in the interest of generating revenue. That revenue is then used toward rank-improving initiatives, such as a new coat of paint, the odd computer, rat-traps or a halfway decent booze-cruise.
Quote from: stunningrevelations on September 24, 2006, 12:25:17 AMOn a grimmer note, we have learned in recent decades that nation-states no longer enjoy monopolies in their conduct of wars: guerilla tactics, suicide attacks, and insurgencies have turned war, itself, into a decentralized undertaking. What makes so-called "terrorist" groups so difficult to identify and deal with is their decentralized, non-hierarchical form of organization. Recall how 19 men, armed only with box-cutter knives, were able to attack the World Trade Center buildings and precipitate the insanity the United States now wages against innocent people. "Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy," by John Arquilla and David F. Ronfeldt examines the new spectrum of conflict emerging in the wake of the information revolution. Netwar includes conflicts waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals, gangs, and ethnic extremists; and by civil-society activists (such as cyber activists or WTO protestors) on the other. What distinguishes netwar is the networked organizational structure of its practitioners -- with many groups actually being leaderless -- and their quickness in coming together in swarming attacks. Completed shortly before terrorists attacked New York and Washington, the volume includes an Afterword analyzing the Attack on America. The events of September 11, 2001, tragically reinforced Arquilla and Ronfeldt's conclusion that in order to confront this new type of conflict, it is crucial for governments, military, and law enforcement to begin networking themselves."Just as a half century ago, researchers at RAND sought to understand the profound changes in strategy brought about by nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles," says Brian Michael Jenkins, one of the world's foremost experts on terrorism and crime, "Arquilla and Ronfeldt explore the strategic implications of new information technologies in the latest installment of their seminal work ... Networks and Netwars obliges us to think in new ways." In Networks and Netwars, the editors and their colleagues examine the major instances of netwar that have occurred over the past several years -- from Osama bin Laden's networked terrorists to the Battle of Seattle's social activists -- and find, among other things, that netwars have generally been successful from the protagonists' perspective. The authors also find that, despite their diversity, all networks built for waging netwar may be analyzed in terms of a common analytic framework. There are 5 critical levels of theory and practice: the technological, social, narrative, organizational, and doctrinal levels. A netwar actor must get all 5 right to be fully effective. The most potent netwarriors will not only be highly networked and have the capacity for mounting "swarming" attacks, they will also be held together by strong social ties, have secure communications technologies, and project a common "story" about why they are together and what they need to do. Like Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda, these are the most serious adversaries. But even those networks that are weak on some levels may pose stiff challenges to their nation-state adversaries."A particular challenge for the cumbersome American bureaucracy will be to encourage deep, all-channel networking among the military, law enforcement, and intelligence elements whose collaboration is crucial for achieving success," Arquilla and Ronfeldt explain in the Afterword. "U.S. agencies have been headed in this direction for years-in the areas of counter-narcotics as well as counterterrorism -- but interagency rivalries and distrust have too often slowed progress." Writers who focus on the technological aspects of netwar often miss the point. As the editors point out, "At its heart, Netwar is far more about organization and doctrine than it is about technology. The outcomes of current and future netwars are bound to confirm this." Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, and author of The Changing Global Order, says "Arquilla and Ronfeldt are a rare breed: strategic thinkers of the information age. In Networks and Netwars they grasp an emerging reality still lost on those preoccupied with the geostrategic balance of power: War in the future will be waged by leaderless networks that can come together quickly out of cyberspace to 'swarm' an opponent. Like few others, they recognize that the flipside of the celebrated global civil society born of the Internet is the 'uncivil society' of terrorists and criminals who will use the same means to spread havoc and instability.""Rushing into an increasingly complex world, we need ways to probe the road ahead, to find the quicksand and pitfalls before falling in," says David Brin, author of "The Postman, Earth, and The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?" "Arquilla and Ronfeldt have taken on this hard task, searching for technological threats to a society that has grown reliant on data-based infrastructure ... In this collection of cogent articles, by experts in the field of netwar, they clarify some of the dangers that await us-and reveal possible ways to avoid them. It's obviously an important and seminal work. I especially like their analysis of the key features that enable groups to be effective in this new arena of conflict."
On a grimmer note, we have learned in recent decades that nation-states no longer enjoy monopolies in their conduct of wars: guerilla tactics, suicide attacks, and insurgencies have turned war, itself, into a decentralized undertaking. What makes so-called "terrorist" groups so difficult to identify and deal with is their decentralized, non-hierarchical form of organization. Recall how 19 men, armed only with box-cutter knives, were able to attack the World Trade Center buildings and precipitate the insanity the United States now wages against innocent people.
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