(The blog formerly known as) All Things Counter Terrorism

It’s been so long since I’ve blogged I spent the better part of a few hours tonight remembering how to use this site. Hence my grand plans to finish a longer return post discussing the issue of generational change in the militant milieu and targeted killing of terrorist leaders went a little pear shaped. I will get to it this week, however, alongside a longer update as to what I’ve been doing over the past few years, my book (which I still don’t have a confirmed release date for sorry to those of you who are asking; I’m asking too!) and my roamings around the world. It’s been an amazing and in many respects life changing journey. And it’s been deeply humbling. I got to meet a few tweeps I have interacted with over the years, which was a fantastic experience and I’m hoping to meet more in my travels later this year. I also totally lost control of my inbox so my sincere apologies to those of you who contacted me but who may not have received a reply. Several computers and email archives died in the course of my wanderings…Anyway, I digress.

The point of this little update is more about my indecisiveness about whether to continue this blog.  As you can tell I all but stopped some time ago. I was very burned out and disenchanted after a dreadful PhD experience with Monash, who even managed to be rude to my examiners. And beyond that I started to get disenchanted with the increasing competitiveness within the field. More specifically with the p*ssing contests and general huffy puffy going on (and while I was away I took a good hard look back at my own behaviour too).  I must say I’m not quite past either of these things. But withdrawing and staying silent on the latter issue doesn’t seem to me to be the answer either.

I’ve recently returned to teaching after a long break and I was disenchanted by the reluctance of some of my students to speak up, their lack of confidence in expressing their thoughts and ideas, and in particular how women, who are still so outnumbered in this field of study, often get marginalised. So, I figure I should get over myself and at least try to set a better example for my students and get back into the fray instead of withdrawing back when the huffy puffy begins, and to do so with a humility I feel that in my earlier years on the internets I was often lacking. Sometimes you have to fight so hard to get your voice heard or get equal footing that you don’t realise you are being equally aggressive. It’s a lesson I’ve learned over recent years and with the help and advice of some amazing colleagues and mentors I’ve learned other ways of dealing with these issues. In part a reason I am returning to blogging and writing is that I often feel like I let down those who went out of their way to support and encourage me, from thesis examiners through to tweeps I’ve engaged with over the years and the many people who have mentored me on my journey so far. Anyway, I’m hoping now having nearly climbed over the mountain of backlogged things I accumulated that I can push out some of my research in the coming months and do some writing, both here and in other publications.

Speaking of writing, I’m also setting up another blog which will go live soon. It’s on security issues more generally and is called Securified, a bit of a tongue in cheek reference to how everything is a scary existential threat and how we also invent such a wide array of fancy words in academia to describe and conceptualise security issues. The twitter account is already live, although I’m still tweaking how I will work that as it will be a more high volume feed of links. The primary purpose of both the blog and the twitter account is for my students but I figure a few other people might be interested. Anyway, there’ll be more about that and the other things I’ve got on the boil or have been up to recently in my longer update post which is next up to finish this week.

In the meantime, below is a link to a translated article written by Yassin Musharbash (@abususu) on his thoughts about covering terrorism related issues. It stemmed in part from an interview Yassin did with Mustafa Hamid and I in Alexandria last year.  The article originally featured in Zeit Magazin.

http://abususu.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/ambiguity-truth-and-covering-terrorism.html

Wishing you all a lovely weekend.

L