Military

Paul Virilio, on possession and movement

In Military, War on 20 September 2008 with no comments

Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.
—Paul Virilio (2000)

Military applications of civilian technology?

In Military, Research, Technology on 18 September 2008 with no comments

Has there been any discussion of the military’s growing reliance on “civilian” research and development, when for at least the past half-century it seems to have been the other way around? I’m thinking of video games, in particular, but I’m sure one could dredge up an abundance of other examples. And I’m not referring to [...]

Stop-Loss and authenticity in a time of war

In Film & Television, Military on 18 October 2007 with no comments

I guess one upside to the war in Iraq is that, the more movies that are made about it, the more authentic they seem. This trailer for Stop-Loss indicates an attention to detail I haven’t seen in previous films; note the intentional disregard for uniform uniformity during the “you’re going back to Iraq” scene (at [...]

“The cities are the problem.”

In Military, Security, Surveillance on 12 October 2007 with no comments

In Nick Turse’s “Slum Fights”, Mother Jones covers the future of urban warfare:
Duane Schattle doesn’t mince words. “The cities are the problem,” he says. A retired Marine infantry lieutenant colonel who worked on urban warfare issues at the Pentagon in the late 1990s, he now serves as director of the Joint Urban Operations Office [...]