This is just downright bizarre. Spencer Ackerman has this to say, in his latest swipe at pubescent but powerful D.C. think tank, the Centre For a New American Security:

Army special-forces veteran and CNAS senior fellow Roger Carstens — a great guy to have a beer with, it must be noted — is going to be on an NBC reality show called ‘The Wanted‘, which apparently tracks a team hunting the ex-leader of the Kurdish terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, an individual named Mullah Krekar, who lives in Oslo and looks like he should be living under a bridge extorting money from goats. I’m not sure what to make of hunting accused terrorists on television, but this is great-if-bewildering news for Roger. CNAS’ next foray obviously has to be into the music industry, where its experts can contend that the only way to truly kill Autotune is to protect rappers from the pitch-correction software‘s merciless ravages.

There’s more. The cast, according to NBC:

The faces of “The Wanted” include Roger Carstens who is recognized as one of the world’s preeminent authorities on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency; former Navy Seal Scott Tyler, an expert in urban reconnaissance and unconventional warfare; David Crane a decorated former US intelligence official and the first American to serve as Chief Prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal since Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg; and Emmy award-winning investigative journalist Adam Ciralsky. Ciralsky also serves as co-executive producer of “The Wanted” with documentary filmmaker Charlie Ebersol.

I know David Crane. I’ve met him, been on a panel with him, and hold him in high regard. I have no idea what to think of this, beyond my already low opinion of reality television.

H/t Tom Ricks.

More good news, from Foreign Policy:

It is a sobering time for the world’s most fragile countries—virulent economic crisis, countless natural disasters, and government collapse. This year, we delve deeper than ever into just what went wrong—and who is to blame.

Yemen may not yet be front-page news, but it’s being watched intently these days in capitals worldwide. A perfect storm of state failure is now brewing there: disappearing oil and water reserves; a mob of migrants, some allegedly with al Qaeda ties, flooding in from Somalia, the failed state next door; and a weak government increasingly unable to keep things running. Many worry Yemen is the next Afghanistan: a global problem wrapped in a failed state.

It’s not just Yemen. The financial crisis was a near-death experience for insurgency-plagued Pakistan, which remains on imf life support. Cameroon has been rocked by economic contagion, which sparked riots, violence, and instability. Other countries dependent on the import and export of commodities—from Nigeria to Equatorial Guinea to Bangladesh—had a similarly rough go of it last year, suffering what economist Homi Kharas calls a “whiplash effect” as prices spiked sharply and then plummeted. All indications are that 2009 will bring little to no reprieve.

Read the full article.

From The Atlantic: Darwinism, redux, redux, redux…

Pandemics. Global warming. Food shortages. No more fossil fuels. What are humans to do? The same thing the species has done before: evolve to meet the challenge. But this time we don’t have to rely on natural evolution to make us smart enough to survive. We can do it ourselves, right now, by harnessing technology and pharmacology to boost our intelligence. Is Google actually making us smarter?

This discussion’s been going on for a while. Make sure to check out the reader comments on the THES site.

Times Higher Education Supplement

READING LISTS INSPECTED FOR CAPACITY TO INCITE VIOLENCE

by Melanie Newman | 25 July 09

The reading lists of lecturers at the University of Nottingham’s School of Politics and International Relations are being scrutinised for material that is illegal or could incite violence.

The institution has set up a “module review committee”, made up of teaching-group heads, to advise on academics’ teaching material.

A document about the process explains that the reviews’ purpose is to provide feedback to staff on a range of issues, including the topics covered, the assessment methods used and “whether any material on reading lists could be illegal or might be deemed to incite people to use violence”.

The review process has already begun, with reading lists used in the current academic year being checked retrospectively.

The committee was set up after an MA student in Nottingham’s politics department, Rizwaan Sabir, and a clerical assistant, Hicham Yezza, were arrested under anti-terrorism laws last year. Staff called the police after they discovered a copy of the Al-Qaeda Training Manual on Mr Yezza’s computer.

Mr Sabir, who was studying Islamic terrorism for his dissertation, had downloaded the manual from the internet and sent it to his friend, Mr Yezza, for printing. Both men were released without charge, although Mr Yezza was subsequently jailed for immigration offences.

The arrests provoked outrage from scholars, who claimed that they amounted to an attack on academic freedom, a claim that was strongly denied by Nottingham.

David Miller, professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde and the convenor of Teaching About Terrorism, a study group that has members drawn from 30 universities, said Nottingham’s review policy represented a “fundamental attack on academic freedom”.

“The module review committee is a censorship committee: it can’t operate as anything else,” he said. “The university is acting as the police, one step removed.”

Senior academics at Nottingham have stressed that the committee acts only in an advisory capacity and that its operation was agreed by staff.

Steve Fielding, professor of political history at Nottingham, said: “The policy was agreed in principle at a full meeting of staff, and a working group whose membership was open to all interested staff was set up to refine the details.

“We collectively agreed the policy at a further full meeting of staff. The policy is there to protect staff from the accusation of promoting illegal acts: it is not an attempt to undermine academic freedom.”

A Nottingham spokesman said: “In total, the school teaches almost 100 modules, with reading lists comprising thousands of books and other materials. All of them have been reviewed under the process and not one has caused concern.”

Professor Miller said he was not aware of any other university that was reviewing reading lists.

Alia Brahimi, a research associate at the University of Oxford’s department of politics, specialises in al-Qaeda ideology and strategy and teaches a course on Islam in international relations, both of which require her to consult jihadi tracts.

“As far as I am aware, neither the university nor my department has seriously considered auditing or interfering with the recommended reading on my syllabus,” she said.

Priceless:

GUWAHATI, India–Security forces are planning to mix one of the world’s hottest chili powders in hand grenades to control riots and during insurgency operations in the remote northeast, a defence official said yesterday.

India’s defence scientists say they will replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chili to immobilize a person without killing him.

H/t Tom Ricks.