Visualisation of Drone strikes in Pakistan

An excerpt from UNSEEN WAR, a documentary on drones usage in the last decade of warfare in Pakistan. Part of a project called Exposing the Invisible:

'Through a series of short films, Exposing the Invisible tells the personal stories of those working at the new frontiers of investigation. We explore their tools and methods and learn how they manage the risks of information activism.'

Guy Debord: The Game of War (Situationist Cinema)

Class Wargames presents: Guy Debord's 'The Game of War'. For Debord, The Game of War wasn't just a game - it was a guide to how people should live their lives within Fordist society. By playing, revolutionary activists could learn how to fight and win against the oppressors of spectacular society. Find out more: classwargames.net/

Deleuze & Fascism : Security: War: Aesthetics - Edited by Brad Evans and Julian Reid @ Routledge, Uk, 20th May 2013

Deleuze & Fascism

Security: War: Aesthetics

Edited by Brad Evans, Julian Reid

Read more @ Routledge website

This edited volume deploys Deleuzian thinking to re-theorize fascism as a mutable problem in changing orders of power relations dependent on hitherto misunderstood social and political conditions of formation. The book provides a theoretically distinct approach to the problem of fascism and its relations with liberalism and modernity in both historical and contemporary contexts. It serves as a seminal intervention into the debate over the causes and consequences of contemporary wars and global political conflicts as well as functioning as an accessible guide to the theoretical utilities of Deleuzian thought for International Relations (IR) in a manner that is very much lacking in current debates about IR.

Covering a wide array of topics, this volume will provide a set of original contributions focussed in particular upon the contemporary nature of war; the increased priorities afforded to the security imperative; the changing designs of bio-political regimes, fascist aesthetics; nihilistic tendencies and the modernist logic of finitude; the politics of suicide; the specific desires upon which fascism draws and, of course, the recurring pursuit of power.

An important contribution to the field, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, fascism and international relations theory.

Introduction: 

Fascism in All its Forms Brad Evans & Julian Reid 

1. Desire and Ideology in Fascism Todd May 

2. Anti-Fascist Aesthetics Michael J. Shapiro 

3. Oppression Desired: Fascism & the Security Imperative Brad Evans 

4. Movement and Human Logistics: Pre-emption, Technology and Fascism Geoffrey Whitehall 

5. A People of Seers: The Political Aesthetics of Postwar Cinema Revisited Julian Reid 

6. Waltzing the Limit Erin Manning 

7. Politics on the Line Leonie Ansems de Vries

8. Fascist lines of the tokkotai Nicholas Michelsen

9. Fascism, France and Film: Inside-Out -Territorializing Aesthetics in The Raven (Le Corbeau) and Hidden (Cache) Ruth Kitchen

Brad Evans is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, the University of Bristol.
Julian Reid is Professor of International Relations at the University of Lapland, Finland.

"The editors of this superb volume tell us that 'We are all, always,fascists, of multiple kinds'; the fascism that they speak of, via Deleuze,is not limited to the exploits of Hitler and Nazism. This is the fascismof our own time, a fascism that has deepened and extended even since thetime that Deleuze and Guattari penned. This is the fascism of liberalism itself, the fascism of Kant, of humanism; it is a fascism of desire turned against itself, of the most basic aspects of power and authority. The authors of this volume, extend upon, argue with, probe, and

complicate Deleuze's insights about pervasive fascism; through engagements with western philosophy, science fiction, cinema, Marxism, Foucault, and many other sources, these authors seek to reproblematize and reschematize a fascism that we all partake in, a tendency that, in some sense, we can never fully escape or leave behind. The beauty of this volume is that it explicitly politicizes an endemic crisis, allowing very diverse frames of

reference (historical, aesthetic, theoretical) to mutually engage and contest what must be the greatest challenge of the 21st century." James Martel, San Francisco State University, USA

"When Foucault described Anti-Oedipus as a book for combating the inner fascist in us all his statement was taken at face value and never questioned or investigated. Deleuze and Fascism changes that: it turns Foucault’s claim into a question and problematic and pursues the various lines of flight it opens for us. This is a richly interesting collection of essays with a very serious purpose."-
- Ian Buchanan, Editor Deleuze Studies

Picblog: Francis Bacon's painting

Amy Chua - Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall (Anchor, Usa, 2009)

In this sweeping history, bestselling author Amy Chua explains how globally dominant empires—or hyperpowers—rise and why they fall. In a series of brilliant chapter-length studies, she examines the most powerful cultures in history—from the ancient empires of Persia and China to the recent global empires of England and the United States—and reveals the reasons behind their success, as well as the roots of their ultimate demise.Chua's analysis uncovers a fascinating historical pattern: while policies of tolerance and assimilation toward conquered peoples are essential for an empire to succeed, the multicultural society that results introduces new tensions and instabilities, threatening to pull the empire apart from within. What this means for the United States' uncertain future is the subject of Chua's provocative and surprising conclusion.

Amy Chua is the John Duff Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is the author of World on Fire and is a noted expert in the fields of international business, ethnic conflict, and globalization. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband and two daughters.
Read more on Random House website

Friedrich Georg Jünger, Ernst Jünger - GUERRA E GUERRIERI DISCORSO DI VERDUN (Mimesis, Ita, 2012)

«La guerra è l’evento che ha dato la fisionomia al volto del nostro tempo». Così scriveva Friedrich Georg Jünger nel 1930 nello scritto Guerra e guerrieri, un breve saggio che è diventato fondamentale nel dibattito filosofico e politico novecentesco. In questo scritto l’autore tedesco tenta di mettere a fuoco il senso della guerra senza confini che era esplosa nel corso della Primo conflitto mondiale, ma che avrebbe sempre più dato forma alla esistenza degli uomini anche nei decenni a venire. Ancora oggi Guerra e guerrieri, oltre che una eccezionale testimonianza della mutazione dello natura della guerra avvenuta nel corso della Prima guerra mondiale, ci pone dinanzi all’immagine della violenza senza forma che caratterizza la vita contemporanea. A Guerra e guerrieri segue il discorso che Ernst Jünger pronunciò nel 1979 nella città di Verdun per sancire una nuova amicizia tra la Francia e la Germania: il grande scrittore e filosofo, nonché eroe della Prima guerra mondiale, in poche righe ripensa alla sua vita in guerra e alla pace planetaria a cui oggi l’uomo deve aspirare come sua unica salvezza: «Guardando retrospettivamente i fronti si fondono – gli avversari appaiono accerchiati da pericoli comuni che sono ancora più forti della volontà dei generali e del coraggio del singolo: ciò che è materiale diventa strapotente, la terra stessa si fa vulcanica e il fuoco non minaccia più di annientare questo o quello, bensì tanto l’amico quanto il nemico. Allora, quando ci stringevamo nei crateri prodotti dalle bombe, credevamo ancora che l’uomo fosse più forte di ciò che è materiale. Questo si è dimostrato un errore».

Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977) è stato un interprete fondamentale della cultura tedesca del XX secolo. Ha partecipato alla Prima guerra mondiale, durante la quale venne ferito gravemente. Legato ai movimenti nazionalistici tra le due guerre, dopo la fine della Seconda guerra si è dedicato soprattutto alla letteratura e alla mitologia. Tra i suoi volumi più importanti ricordiamo Die Perfektion der Technik (1946), Griechische Mythen (1947), Nietzsche (1949), Die Spiele (1953). 

Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) fratello maggiore di Friedrich ha scritto opere filosofiche e letterarie che sono punti di riferimento nella cultura europea contemporanea. Le sue opere principali sono state tradotte in italiano e tra queste ricordiamo Nelle tempeste d’acciaio, L’Operaio. Dominio e forma, Oltre la linea, Il libro dell’orologio a polvere, Al muro del tempo, Avvicinamenti. Droghe ed ebbrezza. Per i nostri tipi è stato pubblicato l’atlante fotografico Il mondo mutato. Sillabario per immagini del nostro tempo.

read more on Mimesis

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism - Stephen Graham (Verso, Uk, 2011)

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism

by Stephen Graham

A powerful exposé of how political violence operates through the spaces of urban life.

Cities are the new battleground of our increasingly urban world. From the slums of the global South to the wealthy financial centers of the West, Cities Under Siege traces the spread of political violence through the sites, spaces, infrastructure and symbols of the world’s rapidly expanding metropolitan areas. 

Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies. Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned and controlled. Graham examines the transformation of Western armies into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces. He looks at the militarization and surveillance of international borders, the use of ‘security’ concerns to suppress democratic dissent, and the enacting of legislation to suspend civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism.’

The new urban militarism of law enforcement: interview with Stephen Graham

Last week, Stephen Graham sat down with WBEZ 91.5 in Chicago to talk about the new and increasingly militarized forms of law enforcement that are fast becoming the norm throughout the West. Drawing from his new book on the topic, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism, he addresses this rapid transformation and critically examines both the subtler and more familiarly overt modes of social control and surveillance that are being put to use in troubling ways. In the interview, Graham touches on these new modes of enforcement and considers how they are used to subdue dissent and criminalize behaviour, among other things. With new technologies and invocations of “security concerns,” these are now becoming a part of our urban landscape and are being used in everything from the increased policing of borders and crowds to the surveillance of public space and police crackdowns. As Graham suggests, it is part of larger, discomforting trends that are changing the way people live and move within cities. 

Please visit WBEZ to listen to the interview in full.

• “Cities Under Siege is a detailed and intense forensics of new urban frontiers, laboratories of the extreme where experiments with new urban conditions are currently being undertaken. In this fascinating new work Steven Graham has created a novel concept of the city, looking at war as the limit condition of urbanity and calling for an alternative urban life yet to come.”
  – Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land
• “Roll over Jane Jacobs: here’s urban geography as it looks like through the eye of a Predator at 25,000 feet. A fundamental and very scary report from the global red zone.”
  – Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
• “A brilliant critique of the deadly embrace of military violence and contemporary urbanism. Steve Graham writes with immense power and lucidity, layering detail over detail and image over image to expose the shadows that are falling across cities around the world. This is not a dystopian future but the present, and Graham compels us to open our eyes to the dangers military urbanism poses to contemporary democracy.”
  – Derek Gregory, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia and author of The Colonial Present
  Read more on Verso website

Of war, media and sound by Francesco Tacchini (UEL, London, 2012)

Of war, media and sound

To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. —Sun Tzu, The Art of War


During the second half of the twentieth century a number of studies relating to the use of “non-lethal” sonic weaponry began taking place.1 Such weapons aim to control and alter the psyche, therefore the body equilibrium of an individual by using apparently nonviolent methods. Analyzed from a military perspective, the ear is an easy target: like our brain it has no protection nor can it select which sounds to hear; as a matter of fact it acts as a direct channel to our brain. If in the twenty-first century control is crucial to military and police forces at a surprising level, the use of sound as a weapon presents great advantages in terms of how a certain authority can exert it: a form of dissimulated and apparently nonviolent “white torture” that discards criticisms and confuses the public debate. In fact the fast rise of researches on the “non-lethality” topic within the military field and the continuous emergence and use of sonic weapons reflect the concern of potent authorities towards the public opinion. Nowadays the engagement of news media in war reportage is extremely high. They are perceived as a crucial element of war itself, or at least of the representation of it: the so-called “CNN factor” that is the dissemination through the media2, must be taken into account when conducting a war or, in the case of police forces, containing a demonstration, controlling a crowd, etc. It is in this frame that sonic and ultrasonic weapons are presented to the public. Since their violent effects are apparently invisible they become media-friendly: legitimate from a sociopolitical perspective, effective from a military one and justified, when questioned, because “preferable to real bombs”3.

As Steve Goodman puts it (2010, p. 5), our century began with “[...] a bang, setting the resonant frequency of fear at which the planet has been vibrating, trembling, ever since”.4 Sound itself acquired a new dimension of threat and audio signals like, for instance, Bin Laden’s audiotapes gained greater importance and played a crucial role within the hierarchy of the ecology of fear. What is a sonic warfare? Or better what are its modalities? For Goodman, it is the “deployment of sound systems in the modulation of affect, from sensations to moods to movement behaviors”.5 In other words, the production and transmission of bad vibes. Sonic warfare’s tactics are part of the everyday and its potent tools are essential for the control systems of an authority, a city, a nation.


Although only five decades have passed from the first experiments within the field, significant progresses have been achieved. At an early stage, both scientists and military researchers focused on infrasounds, in other words sub-bass frequencies that are lower than 20 Hertz. If very intense, such sound waves can vibrate along with the human body resonant frequency; that means our ear would not be able to hear them while our body would feel them, in terms of tactility or organ vibration. On the one hand, the implications of successfully employing infrasonic machines are terrifying and, particularly in the United States, triggered an “infrasonic euphoria” leading to a number of military and industrial research programs. 
On the other hand, almost fifty years of studies have proven that the real influence infrasound weapons have on human body is limited to tremors, because of the difficulty of producing sub- bass frequencies that are intense enough. Much easier to target are high-frequency weapons on which military and industrial studies focused in the early twenty-first century. 

Two of the most used and known technologies today are the Mosquito and the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device).6 e latter in particular described by the builder as “hailing and warning, directed acoustic device”, but sonic weapon de facto, is used as a crowd control device, a kind of acoustic repellent: an LRAD “produces the equivalent of an instant migraine” according to its inventor, Elwood Norris.7 The circular device is formed by multiple small speakers that emit sound in phase, creating a high-frequency wave of 153 dB at one meter that can penetrate up to 3000 meters of distance.8 e risk of deafness is therefore a real one: the weapon’s operators rely on the fact that no one would consciously want to stay in the sound transmission beam, without any concern about those who might not be conscious or able to move, for instance disabled, old or injured people.

The sonic weapon is also effective on a multiplicity of levels, especially when its image is shaped and re-proposed by the media. It becomes as luminous a triumph of modern technology, legitimately dislocating protesters by firing (harmful) sound waves at a long distance, as sinister a warning for the collectivity: the clear message of the power in control is “stay home.” The crowd control becomes total, for different “crowds” are regulated, intimidated, manipulated in different space-times. The representation of power is therefore deepen by the perception of the system being in full control.


It can be argued that the relation between war machines and sound machines is a crucial one. A media theorist who sustained the argument of an interconnection between sound, media and military is Friedrich Kittler. In his Grammophon, Film, Typewriter, (1986) the German philosopher wrote that military development somehow contaminates mass popular culture with a technological contagion.9 As a result the entertainment industry uses the arsenal of the arms industry. In his view war acts as a catalyzer for new media: military technologies used as data storage devices during the American Civil War such as the gramophone, the film and the typewriter became media technologies. e same happened for the radio which was just “the military radio system of the First World War minus the talkback-capability”10 or the television, result of studies on the electric transmission of data. At last the Computer, emerging during World War II as the Turing machine, is the medium of modern society and allows an electronic transmission of data, a constant and pervasive digital processing. e conclusion is quite frightening: innovation in mass media is only driven by the technological evolution of war.

Kittler’s theory on the military nature of media adapts well to theories developed during the last century that argue the centrality of war in modern and contemporary society.11 e concept of war becomes ambiguous: it is not just a battle between factions anymore but a condition of militarization of the everyday. War is omnipresent because so is the inter- and hyper-connected militarized media environment; the only response to the ubiquity of such environment is abusing the militarized media. Paraphrasing Kittler, fighting the power which exerts control or, borrowing an engineering term, “negative feedback” necessitates the wild reappropriation of its artifacts, the remix of its media.12 By recycling and reutilizing the array of militarized technologies and practices the negative output can be reversed to an opposite, positive output.

A famous contemporary example of the practice could be KRS-One’s tune “Sound of da police”.13 The rapper from Brooklyn transferred the sound of a police siren to his beat: the alarm is as much of an echo and an allusion as a symbol to whom greater importance and new meanings have been given. Both loud noise making device and symbol of power willing to enforce control, the high-frequency sound remixed by KRS could have been the much louder one of an LRAD, but the “feedback” would still be positive.


Dealing with another medium, an example is found in Samuel L. Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. One of the central episode of this second movie of the epic trilogy is the battle of “Helm's Deep”14 fought between the Uruk-Hai and the humans lead by Aragorn. Moments before the conflict starts, the two factions are facing each others: the orcs’ army then begins hitting the ground with their spears and shields, thus creating a loud intimidating sound. e connection is easily drawn: the practice is in fact common among riot police, the special police force who are equipped and deployed to confront crowds. Before charging, riot police signal their move forward by hitting their shields with batons.
On 19th December 2010 a protest took place in Minsk against Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader who has been in charge for two decades. On the occasion riot police affronted the pacific crowd in a particular violent way.15


“22:30 - Out of the Government House come out a lot of riot police units with batons. There is tough resistance on the steps of the Government House. Some people are severely beaten, they lie on the ground. Riot police makes noise with shields and batons to intimidate people.”16


On 10 November 2011 thousands of Canadian student striking against education cuts in Montreal experienced the same fear when riot police started charging.


“They hit their shields with batons, producing an intimidating sound. is sound was repeated over the next several minutes, each time warning that the squad was moving forward.”17


Transferred to the equally frightening Uruk-Hai, the intimidating practice, which might be defined as negative output from a Kittlerian perspective, is reversed to a positive one.
At the dawn of the millennium the intersection of the machines of war, the machines of noise and the machines of entertainment is tight at an unprecedented level. Whether sound is employed as a weapon, or media are; whether militarized media become part of the entertainment network, or get abused by generating frequencies that echo urban and war experiences, a sonic war exists. As Deleuze (1995) would remind us, “ere is no need to fear or hope, but only to . . . [listen] . . . for new weapons.”18

NOTES
1. Altmann, J. (1999), Acoustic weapons. A prospective assessment: sources, propagation and effects of strong sound, Occasional Paper, n. 22, Cornell University Peace Study Programs.

2. Major Thomas, M.R. (2008), Non-lethal weaponry: a framework for future integration, Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, p. 12-13.
   
3. McGeal C. (2005) "Sonic Boom Raids Cause Fear, Trauma," Guardian, 3 November 2005. [Online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/03/israel (Accessed: 11 April 2012).
   
4. Goodman S. (2009) Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, Cambridge: MIT Press.
   
5. Ibid., Glossary.
   
6. Volcler J. (2012) Il suono come arma. Gli usi militari e polizieschi dell' ambiente sonoro, trans. Roberta Cristofani, Rome: DeriveApprodi.
   
7. Arkin, W.M. (2004) “The Pentagon's Secret Scream: Sonic devices that can inflict pain - or even permanent deafness - are being deployed,” Los Angeles Times, 7 March. [Online] Available at: http://articles.latimes.com/2004/mar/07/opinion/op-arkin7 (Accessed: 11 April 2012).
   
8. See the LRAD product overview, [online] available at: http://www.lradx.com/site/content/ view/15/110/ (Accessed: 11 April 2012).
   
9. Kittler, F. A. (1986) Grammophon, Film, Typewriter, Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose.
   

10. Ibid.
11. Goodman S. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, p. 33. 12. Kittler, Grammophon, Film, Typewriter.
13. Video and song [online] available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRZq3J0uz4 (Accessed: 12 April 2012).
14. 10 minutes clip [online] available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvcNid87ONA (Accessed: 12 April 2012).
15. 3 minutes clip [online] available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrM8pdXeO68 (Accessed: 12 April 2012).
16. Solidarity with Belarus’ Information Office (2010) “19 December 2010. Chronology of event.” [Online] available at: http://solidarityby.eu/cat/chronology_of_events (Accessed: 12 April 2012).
17. Jutras D. (2011), Report of the Internal Investigation into the Events of November 10, 2011, Montreal, 15 December. [Online] available at: https://secureweb.mcgill.ca/dean-jutras-report/ sites/mcgill.ca.dean-jutras-report/files/investigation_report_final_version.pdf (Accessed: 12 April 2012).
18. Deleuze G. (1995) "Postscript on the societies of control," in Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Columbia University Press, cited in Goodman, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, p. 194.


Post Codex: 1) pic Alex Webb Magnum Photos: The Invasion of Haiti 1994
2) Media-fiendly bombs
3) pic LRAD sonic weapon
4) The Israeli Defense Ministry has contracted for the production of sonic-boom stun-guns called "Thunder Generator cannons," which they hope to use in crowd-control situations
5) The Turing Machine

Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved online Rise of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure on both sides of Atlantic calls for creation of cyberweapons and new rules for use @ The Guardian 16 April 2012

Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved online.

Rise of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure on both sides of Atlantic calls for creation of cyberweapons and new rules for use

Jonathan Millican is a first-year university student from Harrogate in North Yorkshire. He says he doesn't think of himself as a "stereotypical geek", but having been crowned champion in Britain's Cyber Security Challenge, the 19-year-old is bound to take some stick from his undergraduate friends at Cambridge.

The competition is not well known, but it is well contested. About 4,000 people applied to take part this year, hundreds were seen by judges, and 30 were selected for the final in Bristol on 10 March.

After a day of fighting off hackers and identifying viruses in a series of simulations, Millican triumphed, giving him legitimate claim to be the brightest young computer whiz in the UK.

And though he may not recognise it yet, Millican has become a small player in a global game. There is a dotted line that links him to an ideological battle over the future of the internet, and the ways states will use it to prosecute conflicts in the 21st century.

The remaining cold war superpower, the United States, is slowly squaring up to the emerging behemoth, China, in a sphere in which Beijing has a distinct advantage: cyberspace.

Experts estimate China has as many "cyber jedis" as the US has engineers, and some of them, with backing from the state, have beensystematically hacking into and stealing from governments and companies in the west, taking defence secrets, compromising computer systems, and scanning energy and water plants for potential vulnerabilities.

The scale of what has been going on is only now being recognised, and with a discernible sense of panic, the US and the UK are trying to make up lost ground.

One important way of shoring up the west's defences involves recruiting a rival army of computer specialists to defend the systems being attacked.

This is why the UK began the Cyber Security Challenge in 2011, and why Millican and otherparticipants have been discreetly courted by GCHQ, the government's electronic eavesdropping centre, which is on the frontline of this new power struggle.

The explosion in internet use, and the almost complete reliance on computer systems to run and record our daily lives, has opened up endless opportunities for thieves, spies and vandals to exploit the platform.

Though it is still evolving, the push-back has started. The Guardian has spoken to senior officials in the US and UK government, as well as specialists and independent thinktanks in London, Washington and San Francisco, who agree that the west is galvanising itself to adopt a far more aggressive approach to a problem for which there is no precedent. The stakes have suddenly become very high.

Over the past 18 months, there has been a concerted effort to highlight the relentless nature of day-to-day attacks on businesses and government departments. The Obama administration estimates that 60% of small firms that are hacked go broke, and billions of dollars worth of intellectual property have been stolen from industry, including military blueprints from leading defence contractors.

And in the political shadows in Westminster and Washington, they have moved to put cyberspace more formally into the military sphere, so that those responsible for the attacks understand that retaliation is now part of the game.

Read more