Medea Benjamin: Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, afghanistan, drones, military, war
Weeks after the 2002 American invasion of Afghanistan, Medea Benjamin visited that country. There, on the ground, talking with victims of the strikes, she learned the reality behind the “precision bombs” on which U.S. forces were becoming increasingly reliant. Now, with the use of drones escalating at a meteoric pace, Benjamin has written this book as a call to action: “It is meant to wake a sleeping public,” she writes, “lulled into thinking that drones are good, that targeted killings are making us safer.”
Drone Warfare is a comprehensive look at the growing menace of robotic warfare, with an extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who “pilots” these unmanned planes, who are the victims and what are the legal and moral implications. In vivid, readable style, the book also looks at what activists, lawyers and scientists are doing to ground the drones, and ways to move forward.
In reality, writes Benjamin, the assassinations we are carrying out via drones will come back to haunt us when others start doing the same thing—to us.
Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher OR Books, New York/London, May 2012
ISBN 1935928813, 9781935928812
262 pages
author’s talk (August 2012)
Comment (0)Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007/2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · afghanistan, iraq, military, politics, united states, war on terror
On September 16, 2007, machine gun fire erupted in Baghdad’s Nisour Square leaving seventeen Iraqi civilians dead, among them women and children. The shooting spree, labeled “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday,” was neither the work of Iraqi insurgents nor U.S. soldiers. The shooters were private forces working for the secretive mercenary company, Blackwater Worldwide.
This is the explosive story of a company that rose a decade ago from Moyock, North Carolina, to become one of the most powerful players in the “War on Terror.” In his gripping bestseller, award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill takes us from the bloodied streets of Iraq to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to the chambers of power in Washington, to expose Blackwater as the frightening new face of the U.S. war machine.
First published in 2007
Revised and updated edition
Publisher Nation Books, 2008
ISBN 156858394X, 9781568583945
550 pages
interview with the author (WeAreChange.org, 14 November 2012)
interview with the author (Democracy Now!, 2009)
Scahill’s speech at the Miami Book Fair (2008)
interview with the author (PBS, 2007)
interview with the author (Democracy Now!, 2007)
Amy Sun: Jalalabad Fab Lab, Afghanistan: Annual Report (2009)
Filed under report | Tags: · afghanistan, community, digital fabrication, engineering, fab lab, wireless networks
In May 2008 a Fab Lab was installed in the village of Bagrami near Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province, in eastern Afghanistan with funding from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) program. This fab lab is a continuation of a program started in 2002 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). Currently there are nearly 40 such labs in 11 countries interconnected by internet and broadband videoconference.
The goal of the Jalalabad Fab Lab was to investigate post-war and disaster recovery applications of digital fabrication to see how communities might benefit from access to on-demand, local, custom production capabilities rather than relying on long, slow, and expensive supply chains. The Jalalabad lab anticipated special emphasis on health care needs that require on-site customization for individuals.
We have established a fab lab that has become a community resource. After 8 months this resource show positive signs of becoming self-sustaining. There are community members that are learning basic economic and business principles by creating product in the lab for sale in local markets. In this informal setting, through hands-on projects and peer-to-peer learning structure, people are gaining technical knowledge and experience using state-of-the-art digital fabrication tools. This experience stimulates motivation to learn more deeply about science, math and engineering and develop skills that are valued around the world. Additionally we have established educational infrastructure that extend learning beyond what a fab lab can teach. We have also created a wireless network throughout the community that gives access to the internet, for free, opening up the vast knowldege resources that the internet offers, and providing a gateway to the rest of the world.
Fielding a fab lab in Jalalabad has shown that prototyping tools for digital fabrication can function in a post-war, community-stressed setting like Afghanistan and have significant, immediate applications. We’ve identified applications in Information Communications Technology (ICT), civil engineering, and first line health care that can benefit enormously from the capabilities in a fab lab.
Report written for National Science Foundation, April 2009
Center for Bits and Atoms, Massachusetts Institute of Technology