Facebook: Friend or Foe?

Available from The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.

From the executive summary:

Any strategy that hopes to counter online radicalisation must aim to create an environment in which the production and consumption of such materials become not just more difficult in a technical sense but unacceptable as well as less desirable.

Elements of this strategy include:

• Deterring the producers of extremist materials
• Empowering online communities to self-regulate
• Reducing the appeal of extremist messages
• Promoting positive messages

The report thus develops concrete proposals for action within each of the four strands:

• Deterring producers
The selective use of takedowns in conjunction with prosecutions would signal that individuals engaged in online extremism are not beyond the law.

• Empowering online communities
The creation of an Internet Users Panel in order to strengthen reporting mechanisms and complaints procedures would allow users to make their voices heard.

• Reducing the appeal
More attention must be paid to media literacy, and a comprehensive approach in this area is badly needed.

• Promoting positive messages
The establishment of an independent start-up fund would provide seed money for grassroots online projects aimed at countering extremism.

Efforts to counter online radicalisation must view new technologies and modes of interaction not as a threat but as an opportunity. Relying on government alone is not sufficient. It is vital to capitalise upon the potential contributions of all stakeholders, including internet companies and internet users.

The following constitutes the last few slides of Naveh's 2007 presentation at Fort Leavenworth.

Strategic Epistemology – Operational Heuristics
• Humberto R. Maturana & Francisco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Boston, 1998, pp. 33-54 (“The Organization of Living Things”), 73-92 (“The Life of Metacellulars”).
• David Bohm, and F. David Peat, Science, Order, And Creativity, London, 2000, pp. 15-62 (“Revolutions, Theories, and Creativity in Science”), 151-91 (“The Generative Order and the Implicate Order”).
• Gerald Edelman, Bright Air Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind, New York, 1992, pp. 42-51(“Morphology and mind: Completing Darwin’s Program”), 99-110 (Memory and Concepts: Building a Bridge to Consciousness”), 188-96 (Is it Possible to Construct a Conscious Artifact”).
• Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 15-34 (“What is a Concept”).
• Gregory Bateson, Sacred Unity – Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York, 1991, pp. 161-74 (“Mind/Environment”).
• Margaret A. Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, Bungay, Suffolk, 2004, pp. 54-87 (“Maps of the Mind”).
• Niklas Luhman, Theories of Distinction – Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity, Stanford University Press, 2002, 94-112 (“Deconstruction as Second-Order Observing”).

Between Subversion and Discourse: Critical Thinking and Autopoietic Systems
• Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London, 1988, pp. 351-423 (“Treatise on Nomadology – The War Machine”).
• Jean Francois Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 3-6, 14-18, 27-36, 53-60.
• David Bohm, On Dialogue, Bungay, Suffolk, 2006.

Operational Art: The Discipline of Martial Architects
• G.S. Isserson, (Tr. Bruce Menning), The Evolution of Operational Art, Fort Leavenworth, 2005, pp. 1-82.
• Francois Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy – Between Western and Chinese Thinking, Hawai’i University Press, 2004.
• T.E. Lawrence, “Science of Guerrilla Warfare”, Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th Edition, 1929.
• Sun Tzu, (Translation and introduction Roger Ames), The Art of Warfare, New York, 1993, pp. 39-96 (“Analysis of Sun Tzu).

Operational Commander as System Designer
• Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Life of Nelson – The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain, Naval Institute Press, 2001, pp. 229-36 (“The Battle of St. Vincent”), 293-305 (“The Battle of the Nile”),694-96 (“Plan of Attack, May 1805”), 696-99 (“Memorandum, 9 October 1805).
• Bruce Condell and David T. Zabecki, (translation and editing),Truppenfuhrung, Boulder, Colorado, 2001, pp. 22-38 (“Command”).
• Ralph D. Sawyer, (translation), The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, pp. 60-75 (“The Dragon Secret Teaching”), 292-300 (“Superior Strategy”).
• Frank O. Gehry, “Reflections on Designing and Architectural Practice”, In Richard J. Boland, and Fred Collopy, (eds.), Managing as Designing, Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 19-35.
• Barbara Czarniawska, “Management as the Designing of an Action Net”, in Richard J. Boland, and Fred Collopy, (eds.), Managing as Designing, Stanford University Press, 2004, pp.102-05.

2nd Order Cybernetics: Systems of Observation, Systems of Inquiry, Systems of Learning
• Peter Checkland, Systems Thinking – Systems Practice, New York, 2004, pp. 125-48 (“Hard Systems Thinking – The Engineers’ Contribution”), 149-91 (“The Development of Soft Systems Thinking”), 192-240 (“T he Systems Methodology in Action”).
• Stafford Beer, Diagnosing the System for Organizations, New York, 2003, pp. 1-134.
• Gordon Pak, The Cybernetics of Human Learning and Performance, London, 1975, pp. 258-99 (“Learning Strategies, Teaching Strategies, Matching and Mismatching”).
• Ervin Laszlo, The Systems View of the World, Broadway, NJ, 1996, pp. 59-94 (“The Systems View of Ourselves”).
• George Klir, Facets of Systems Science, New York, 2001, pp. 24-7 (“Classification of Systems”), 37-46 (“Systems Thinking”), 63-87 (“Epistemological Categories of Systems”), 123-32 (“Systems Knowledge”), 154-70 (“Simplification Strategies”).
• Alicia Juarrero, Dynamics in Action, MIT Press, 1999, pp. 151-62 (“Dynamical Constraints as Landscape: Meaning and Behavior as Topology”), 215-44 (“Explaining Human Action: Why Dynamics Tells Us That Stories are Necessary?”).
• John Mingers, Realizing Systems Thinking – Knowledge and Action in Management Science, New York, 2006, pp. 33-61 (“Living Systems – Autopoiesis”), 65-99 (“Observing Systems: The Question of Boundaries”), 103-27 (“Cognizing Systems”), 167-92 (“Social Systems”), 217-53 (“The Process of Multi-Methodology”).
• Tony Clementson, Strategy and Uncertainty: A Guide to Practical Systems Thinking, Amsterdam, 1988, pp. 10-36 (“Defining the System”, “Operations”), 167-92 (“On the Assessment of Systems”, “Strategy and Change”).

Design: Problematization of a Complementing Methodology
• Richard Buchanan, “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking”, in Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan, (eds.), The Idea of Design – A Design Issues Reader, MIT Press, 1995, pp. 3-20.
• Klaus Krippendorff, “On the Essential Contexts of Artifacts or on the Proposition that ‘Design is Making Sense (of Things)’ “in Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan, (eds.), The Idea of Design – A Design Issues Reader, MIT Press, 1995, pp. 156-86.
• Victor Margolin, “The Product Milieu and Social Action”, in Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, (eds.), Discovering Design – Explorations in Design Studies, Chicago University Press, 1995, pp. 121-45.
• Carl Mitchman, “Ethics into Design”, in Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, (eds.), Discovering Design – Explorations in Design Studies, Chicago University Press, 1995, pp. 173-89.
• Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Chicago, 2000, pp. 151-85 (“Rebel with a Cause: Invention and Innovation”).
• Howard Margolis, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition – A Theory of Judgment, Chicago University Press, 1987, pp. 169-87 (“Cognitive Dynamics: Paradigm Shifts”).
• Herbert A. Simon, The Science of the Artificial, MIT Press, 1996, pp. 111-38 (“The Science of Design: Creating the Artificial”).
• John Thackara, In the Bubble – Designing in a Complex World, MIT Press, 2005, pp. 135-60 (“Learning”).

Design: Setting The Boundaries for the Operator’s Praxis
• Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press, 1999, pp. 101-20 (“Architecture and Limits”), 191-206 (“Abstract Mediation and Strategy”).
• Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 55-74 (“Patterns of Events”), 75-100 (“Patterns of Space”), 167-210 (“Our Patterns of Language”).
• Peter G. Rowe, Design Thinking, MIT Press, 1998, pp. 39-114 (“Aspects of Design Thinking”).
• Donald A. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner – How Professionals Think in Action, New York, 1983, pp. 76-104 (“Design as Reflective Conversation with the Situation”), 128-67 (“The Structure of Reflection in Action”).
• Brian Lawson, How Designers Think – The Design Process Demystified, Architectural Press, 2005, pp. 29-50 (“Route Maps of the Design Process”), 51-61 (“The Components of Design Problems”), 113-30 (“Problems, Solutions and the Design Process”), 185-204 (“Design Strategies”).
• John Chris Jones, Design Methods, New York, 1992, pp. 45-60 (“The New Methods Reviewed”), 272-92 (“Methods for Searching for Ideas”).

• "Shema Yisrael", Aaron Weisburd, 04 October 2008

• Differential Jihadization, Tim Stevens, 30 September 2008
    • Osama's Boyz, Weisburd, A. (2008) [I hope to publish an HTML version of this, soon...]

• Regarding "online recruitment" for jihad, Aaron Weisburd, 29 September 2008

• Mixed Results, Marisa Urgo - 28 September 2008

• Waves of Terror?, Tim Stevens - 28 September 2008
    • Inside a Wave of Terrorism: The Dynamic Relation Between Terrorism and the Factors Leading to Terrorism, Harrow, M. (2008)
    • The Global Jihad Network: Why and How al–Qaeda Uses Computer Technology to Wage Jihad, Saltman, S. (2008)

• How Online Recruitment Works, Will McCants, 18 September (2008)

• We've come not far from Milton, and surely we are near'r to Hell, Aaron Weisburd, 17 September 2008

• Tripping, Deathtripping in Cyberspace, Tim Stevens, 16 September 2008

• Regarding "Anatomy of a Modern Homegrown Terror Cell: Aabid Khan et al.", Aaron Weisburd, 06 September 2008
    • Anatomy of a Modern Homegrown Terror Cell: Aabid Khan et al., Kohlmann, E. (2008)

• "The death of cyberspace? More likely: the death of reality.", Aaron Weisburd, 06 September 2008

• Death of the City, Death of Cyberspace II, Tim Stevens, 30 August 2008

When engaging in PSYOP and other IO (Information Operations), there is no need to reinvent the wheel. The following is a large collection of declassified OSS documents:

Browse the OSS document collection