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).
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The origin of military UAVs is in remotely guided or self-guiding missiles. Many modern examples (such as the Israeli Harpy & Harop) are quite large and designed to wait for hours for the opportune moment, but the technology has matured to the point where person carried versions are practical.
College campuses have long been centers of unmanned vehicles development and testing, making the sight of such things less surprising than elsewhere. Between that and the weekly pulse of inebriated students wandering around at night it’s easy to see why campus police would be interested in trying out something new.
Part of the problem with the secrecy is that most of the laws and court decisions regulating the use of drones are also classified. It’s hard for citizens to trust when it’s impossible to verify – or to even know what standards drone use is supposed to be tested against.
One of Premier-elect Nawaz Sharif’s main campaign planks was stopping the U.S. drone strikes, which are overwhelmingly hated by the people of Pakistan. It has also been argued that the drone strikes play into the hands of Taliban propaganda by making it easy to portray the U.S. as a faceless, distant, and uncaring imperial power.
As drone pilots are never personally at risk and are often thousands of miles away it is easy to forget that they can still suffer psychological damage. Their very safety – the inequality/”unfairness” of their position versus their targets’ – could even make the stress greater.
In combination with developments such as the Argus Camera, the author’s privacy fears of surveillance blimps are not baseless. Note also the negative connotations in the title’s use of the word “drone.”
With privacy concerns mounting as domestic drones become reality, North Carolina took pre-emptive steps to prevent public outcry. Depending on how drones are used, this could be seen as either anachronistic or prescient.
This is yet another piece of information on the use of drones that is classified. It is known that there are documents on the subject, which implies the answer to be ‘yes’, however.
The use of drone strikes is public known, extensively documented, and – bizarrely – still classified and officially secret.
In today’s puzzle, 45 Across: “Spying Aircraft”, for which the solution is “drone”.
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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.
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