Fan Mail

Michael Innes has written a glowing review of Elected Swineherd at Complex Terrain Lab. Referring to me among others as a "gent" (seemingly Mike has intel as to my gender! OMG, our cover is blown! oh, never mind, he refers to Cleitus the Black as a 'gent' as well...), he commands his readers to immediately subscribe to our blog, a sentiment with which we heartily concur. [Click the button at four o'clock to comply.]

Actually, this is high praise coming from CT Lab, one of the best post-9/11 security blogs out there and one of my regular reads. Innes leads a community of scholars, commentators and bloggers who reflect upon and post about "the transformation, newness, or changing character of war, simultaneously striving to identify elements of continuity and change, and to redress emergent practical and conceptual imbalances in the way war is governed." Their emphasis on the intersection of international law, security policy and social science will be of particular interest to ES readers: in fact the blog is an outgrowth of an important project begun at the Maxwell School at Syracuse to reconsider the laws of war in the face of asymmetric conflicts:

Conflicting political and security metaphors of spatial knowledge, simulation and control - "failed states", "human terrain", "terrorist sanctuaries" - have revealed deep divisions over the perception and management of threat... [and] challeng[ed] social scientists to investigate and illuminate the textures, nuances, implications and consequences of variable geometries of violence.

Besides being already chock full of substantive and witty observations (check out the latest post on the whereabouts of Ratko Mladic), Innes has issued an open invitation to ES bloggers to contribute from time to time at CTLab, so look for an occasional post by Cleitus, Empedocles or myself over there.