Sramana Majumdar "Violence, Identity and Self-determination:
Narratives of conflict from the Kashmir Valley"
4:15 PM, Monday 18 Nov
Room 239, BYC
Bryn Mawr College
Exposure Index Tired of paper and pencil questionnaires about integration and intergroup contact? Try the new and improved EXPOSURE INDEX (click tab above on this page).
|
While drones may be exploding onto the world consciousness at the present time, the idea is surprisingly old, with autonomous torpedos, mobile anti-tank mines, and also these jet-powered surveillance drones from the 1970s. Unable to land properly, the Tu-141 carries a parachute system instead. It does, however, manage to have a top speed more than […]
Both Assad’s forces and the rebels have been using small, often commercial, drones for battlefield intelligence. Even in a war torn and now heavily isolated country, innovation continues.
This commentary attempts to look at drones in the context of nuclear proliferation. While drones certainly are more focused than a nuclear bomb, they are also far cheaper to obtain. While the fears stated may be exaggerated, privacy and proliferation will continue to be major concerns. The Asch Center also agrees with the author that […]
China has been working towards this project since at least 2006, when the ‘Dark Sword’ project became public knowledge. The ‘Sharp Sword’ drone mentioned in this article appears designed as a mid- to long-range unmanned stealth bomber. Unlike the U.S. Reapers and Predators, the Sharp Sword is clearly designed for symmetric conflict.
Despite interest, the United States and Israel remain the dominant manufacturers of drones. Some of Europe’s problems seem to originate from bad management – see the part about their being more requested variants of a drone than countries offering to buy it. Others come down to bad PR management – namely Germany’s EuroDrone project, killed […]
Egypt denied any cooperation with Israel on the strike, and even denied that a strike had taken place. This conflict between a government desiring drone strikes and a populace that sees them as signs of western imperialism and civilian casualties is familiar from Pakistan.
A tense border and a paranoid view of Chinese military developments conspired to produce this absurdity.
An interesting facet of this case is that the RAF base did not launch drones – it merely held the facilities that remotely controlled them. This part of the war can be managed from thousands of miles away. Distinctions between deployed abroad and at home may well be blurring.
While Israel may be the first to reach this level of drone saturation, it is unlikely to be the last.
Originally published in German tabloid Bild here.
Posted in English at UAS Vision.
March 2010: one of Germany’s three Israeli-leased Heron drones crashed into another airplane on the ground of an airport in Afghanistan. Accident was clearly operator error, but comes shortly after anger over another until-recently classified accident and related cancellation of the EuroHawk […]
|
New book by Asch Associate Director for Conflict and Visual Culture Jonathan Hyman: “The Landscapes of 9/11: A photographer’s Journey” Published by the University of Texas Press the book features 100 of Hyman's photographs and six critical essays that depict and discuss the emotional aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks -- a time when people from all walks of life created and encountered memorials to those who were murdered. Vernacular art appeared almost everywhere—on walls, trees, playgrounds, vehicles, houses, tombstones, and even on bodies. This outpouring of grief and other acts of remembrance impelled photographer Jonathan Hyman to document and preserve these largely impermanent, spontaneous expressions. This book, a unique archive of 9/11 public memory, is the result of his compiling a collection of 20,000 photographs, along with field notes and personal interviews. For more information about the book or to purchase it, visit the book's page at Amazon or Facebook.
|