Daily chart: disease. You are more likely to be killed by a non-communicable disease, like cancer or heart disease, than anything else. In 2008 they accounted for 63% of the 56m deaths worldwide.
Early this month, Derek Henry Flood posted on the common use of Kalashnikovs in public murals, leading to a riff on the mixed origins of such treatments and the mixed messages they tend to send.
This afternoon I was looking through a folder of photographs from Libya, for art for a post in works on the NYT’s At War blog, and came upon this one. It’s from Kikla, and was on the walls of a building used as a mountain base by anti-Qaddafi fighters. It mixes messages and origins about as well as any image of the Avtomat Kalashnikova ever could.
My new book, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 is finally available today. Co-written with Tom Engelhardt, it also launches a new publishing venture of mine — Dispatch Books. For years, Tom (who brought the world Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, Eduardo Galeano’s beautiful Memory of Fire trilogy and about 1000 other books by everyone from Noam Chomsky to Rebecca Solnit) and I have talked about starting up a small press. Now we’ve finally done it.
With Terminator Planet, we’ve carefully put together the best of our joint work on the subject of American robotic warfare, shaped and edited, and added a powerful new conclusion. The result is the first comprehensive history of drone warfare (with a preview of the drone’s possible future as well).
From the opening missile salvo in the skies over Afghanistan in 2001 to a secret strike in the Philippines early this year, or a future in which drones dogfight off the coast of Africa, Terminator Planet takes you to the front lines of combat, Washington war rooms, and beyond. Drawing on several years of research — including official documents, open-source intelligence, and interviews with military officers and Pentagon officials, we offer up a sobering, factual account of robot warfare combined with critical analyses you’re likely to find nowhere else.
Packed with rarely seen Pentagon photos, Terminator Planet provides a rich history of the last decade of drone warfare, a clear-eyed look at its present, and a far-reaching guide to its future. You used to have to watch science fiction movies to imagine where that future was headed, now you can read Terminator Planet — and know.
I hope you’ll take a look and perhaps download it as an ebook or purchase an old-fashioned hard copy.
“As the endlessly plummeting opinion polls indicate, the Afghan War is one Americans would clearly prefer to forget — yesterday, not tomorrow. It was, in fact, regularly classified as “the forgotten war” almost from the moment that the Bush administration turned its attention to the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and so declared its urge to create a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East. Despite the massive “surge” of troops, special operations forces, CIA agents, and civilian personnel sent to Afghanistan by President Obama in 2009-2010, and the ending of the military part of the Iraq debacle in 2011, the Afghan War has never made it out of the grave of forgetfulness to which it was so early consigned.” — Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Road to Amnesia | TomDispatch
“
How much are we spending on national security these days? With major wars winding down, has Washington already cut such spending so close to the bone that further reductions would be perilous to our safety?
In fact, with projected cuts added in, the national security budget in fiscal 2013 will be nearly $1 trillion — a staggering enough sum that it’s worth taking a walk through the maze of the national security budget to see just where that money’s lodged.
” — Tomgram: Hellman and Kramer, How Much Does Washington Spend on “Defense”? | TomDispatch
Barcelona, Spain. 22nd May 2012 — Students scream during the march against the budget cuts in public education in Barcelona. — More than 150,000 people protest against the budget cuts in public education in Barcelona. Teachers and students held a massive country-wide strike as well.
© Pau Barrena/Demotix/Corbis
“
… in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
” — Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age? | TomDispatch
Barcelona, Spain. 22nd May 2012 — Teachers protest during the march against the budget cuts in public education in Barcelona. — More than 150,000 people protest against the budget cuts in public education in Barcelona. Teachers and students held a massive country-wide strike as well.
© Pau Barrena/Demotix/Corbis
Important story on massacre, memory, and justice in Guatemala.
Via ProPublica & This American Life
My new book, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 is finally available today. Co-written with Tom Engelhardt, it also launches a new publishing venture of mine — Dispatch Books. For years, Tom (who brought the world Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, Eduardo Galeano’s beautiful Memory of Fire trilogy and about 1000 other books by everyone from Noam Chomsky to Rebecca Solnit) and I have talked about starting up a small press. Now we’ve finally done it.
With Terminator Planet, we’ve carefully put together the best of our joint work on the subject of American robotic warfare, shaped and edited, and added a powerful new conclusion. The result is the first comprehensive history of drone warfare (with a preview of the drone’s possible future as well).
From the opening missile salvo in the skies over Afghanistan in 2001 to a secret strike in the Philippines early this year, or a future in which drones dogfight off the coast of Africa, Terminator Planet takes you to the front lines of combat, Washington war rooms, and beyond. Drawing on several years of research — including official documents, open-source intelligence, and interviews with military officers and Pentagon officials, we offer up a sobering, factual account of robot warfare combined with critical analyses you’re likely to find nowhere else.
Packed with rarely seen Pentagon photos, Terminator Planet provides a rich history of the last decade of drone warfare, a clear-eyed look at its present, and a far-reaching guide to its future. You used to have to watch science fiction movies to imagine where that future was headed, now you can read Terminator Planet — and know.
I hope you’ll take a look and perhaps download it as an ebook or purchase an old-fashioned hard copy.
(Source: nickturse)