Toluu : Subtopia

Subtopia

A Field Guide to Military Urbanism.

A Few Reads on GazaYesterday: [Image: The aftermath of an airstrike in the Rafah refugee camp on Wednesday. The rising civilian death toll in crowded Gaza heightened international urgency to end the combat. Israel has said repeatedly that it will not end the operation in Gaza until it has crushed Hamas's ability to fire rockets into its civilian areas. Photo: Khaled Omar/Associated Press.]

Israeli Professor Under Hamas Rocket Fire, Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza / Democracy Now
Molten Lead in Gaza, By Uri Avnery
Gaza: the logic of colonial power, by Nir Rosen
Israel Is Foolishly Breeding the Next Generation of Islamic Militants in Gaza, By Chris Hedges
The New York Times and Gaza: Justifying genocide, By Bill Van Auken
The Spatial Instrumentality of Torture: An Interview with Tom HildeDecember 20 2008: [Image: Segregation cells, Camp Remembrance, Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq, Photo bt Richard Ross.]

It’s no secret Subtopia is greatly concerned with the issue of torture and the movements towards its abolition, but not just the idea of torture or even its practice, but specifically the spatial production of it. If torture exists as a space, then what space, and why? How do these spaces come to exist and consort with the politics of secrecy that shield and justify torture, and how do those same legal qualifications seek out space, or provide a means for space to constitute itself whereby torture can perform its function? What are the functions of torture anyway, and how have they changed over time, for what purposes? Which comes first today, the legal arguments which help to justify torture, or the furtive spaces that allow torture to persist despite its illegality? More importantly, what does torture space mean for the landscape of neoliberal Empire and how can a deeper spatial examination of
Peripheral Milit_Urb 27December 17 2008: [Image: Jewish settlers rampaged on Palestinian homes, burning residents' laundry on clotheslines and damaging a garden as settlers from Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron, watched from the wall above. Jewish settlers took revenge on Palestinians after Israeli troops forcibly evicted 200 Jewish settlers from a contested home in Hebron. Photo: Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times.]

MILIT_URB

Manuel DeLanda, ‘Democracy, Economics and the Military’ : Saskia Sassen: The New Wars and Cities: Something Is Changing : One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex - Series : War crime tribunals facing crisis as staff quit : The Scientific Way of Warfare :
The Killer Drone's Afghani HiveNovember 29 2008: [Image: From the BBC, Inside an Afghan US air operations base, 2008.]

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the US has been awfully busy slaughtering innocent civilians with routine aerial attacks meant for the Taliban in Pakistan’s autonomous tribal belt, thanks to the drone. Citing figures compiled by Pakistan’s interior ministry this media source reports that 301 civilians have been killed so far in 2008 while more than 240 others have been wounded.

“The News daily said most of those killed in 32 recorded incidents of missile strikes, drone attacks and one ground raid by the US forces were civilians.

According to the report, only eight US strikes hit the targets, killing 36 Al Qaeda and Taliban militants, while the remaining 24 strikes killed 301 civilians and 18 Pakistani security personnel.

Most of the attacks were said to go wrong because of the faulty intelligence provided by US local
LadderNovember 28 2008: [Image: Via the New York Times. Photo: Fadi Arouri/Reuters.]