We need your voice... please sign this petition on community radio in
India... From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Nettime Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 23:54:25 +0530 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dear friends at Nettime: We need your help! An online signature from you will go a long way... The current "Community Radio Policy" of India is discriminatory towards communities as it bars community members, community-based organizations, non-government organizations and other civil society groups from applying for licenses to operate low power community radio stations. The policy holds that only "well established educational institutions/organizations" can apply for a community radio license. So, what we have in the name of Community Radio is in reality Campus Radio. Several organizations, academicians and individuals have been actively campaigning for communities' right to access the airwaves for the last seven years. They have made innumerable representations to the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and to the Broadcast Regulator (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India-TRAI). They have also written and submitted several drafts to reform the existing Community Radio Policy so as to include community rights in it. In spite of these efforts the government continues to be non-committal and discriminatory. We urge you join hands with us to mount adequate pressure on the government to end this discrimination against the largely rural and poor communities. Please express your solidarity by signing the Urging The Inclusion Of The Right Of The Communities Within The Community Radio Policy petition at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/comradio/petition.html Sincerely, Stalin K.DRISHTI MEDIA COLLECTIVE, Ahmedabad Preeti Soni KUTCH MAHILA VIKAS SANGATHAN, Kutch Ashish Sen VOICES, Bangalore Arun Mehta RADIOPHONY, New Delhi Vinod Pavarala UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD Vickram Crishna RADIOPHONY, Mumbai B P Sanjay UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD Frederick NoronhaINDEPENDENT JOURNALIST, Goa Basheerhamad ShadrachONE WORLD SOUTH ASIA, New Delhi - 1995-2005: Ten years of waiting for community radio in India! To know more: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/cr-india # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
A miniature city waiting for attack (military urbanism)
"Tucked away in the hills north of San Luis Obispo is a miniature city waiting for attack. Concrete buildings with courtyards hug the grassy slopes, yards away from a 40-foot sniper tower and shooting ranges. They're part of the newly renovated urban assault training complex at Camp San Luis Obispo, which prepares California National Guard members for fighting in close quarters overseas." <1> This specific "urban assault training complex" is not at all unique, however, as a recent post on BLDGBLOG has already explored. <2> What's interesting, however, is the way in which these particular buildings are *designed* and *cinematized*: "Three small buildings at the complex are modeled after traditional Middle Eastern homes, complete with walled courtyards" or architectural ornament as target criteria. Within this artificial Marrakech, or Baghdad 2.0 or a kind of Mini Me, Tehran-style "[s]oldiers practice storming the buildings and shooting short-range plastic bullets at mechanized decoys as their commanding officers record the attack with video cameras." Media, here, is but an extension of the architectural war environment. Heavily-armed urban film production units temporarily inhabiting simulated cities: it's all in a day's work if you're discussing what's known as MOUT. "Urban areas are expected to be the future battlefield," according to globalsecurity.org, "and combat in urban areas cannot be avoided. The acronym MOUT (Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain) is defined as all military actions that are planned and conducted on a terrain complex where man-made construction affects the tactical options available to the commander." These are "the advantages and disadvantages urbanization offers". <3> War, urban design, and "terrain complexes": it adds up to armed men running through abstract environments. As Mike Davis writes, MOUT is key to "Washington's ability to dominate what Pentagon planners consider the 'key battlespace of the future' the Third World city." Rather than learn lessons of pedestrianization, in other words, or how to control sprawl, or even what radically mixed-use zoning really looks like even perhaps the dire need for stricter environmental safety regulations the "Third World city" apparently offers only one true lesson: how to attack. <4> The First World military, Davis continues, is "unprepared for protracted combat in the near impassable, maze-like streets of the poverty-stricken cities of the Third World. As a result, the four armed services, coordinated by the Joint Staff Urban Working Group, launched crash programs to master street-fighting under realistic third-world conditions." Producing so-called "realistic third-world conditions," of course, requires constructing decoy villages on rural U.S. military bases, as well as urban assault training complexes complete with Middle Eastern ornaments in the hills outside San Luis Obispo. Call it the new International Style, or perhaps Military Arabesque. Or just call it "miniature cities waiting for attack." As the *Stars & Stripes* itself declares, the world's largest military is now running "various scenarios in 'Combat Town' as part of a Training in an Urban Environment (TRUE) exercise". <5> The terminology here astounds: "various scenarios in 'Combat Town'" could surely be the title of a new short story collection by Don DeLillo, even as "Training in an Urban Environment (TRUE)" could be a new moniker for a Nike fitness campaign yet they're both part of the US military's rhetorical framing of our combat-prone, global future. Cities, as they exist in First World military simulations, are virtualized even further through inclusion in Department of Defense video games. <6> See, for instance, *Urban Resolve*: "Developed by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, or JFCom, a division of the Department of Defense, the $195,000 program is a combat simulation on a massive scale. (...) In other words, it's one part *Risk*, one part *The Sims* and one part raw supercomputing power. It's also the tool that could one day give the U.S. military the upper hand in urban conflicts akin to the ones currently taking place in Iraq." "[U]sing concepts borrowed from artificial intelligence research," *Urban Resolve* functions somewhere between high-tech city planning assistant and future warfare prediction device. It is, in fact, now vital for "helping military leaders determine which types of sensors CIA agents, spy planes, listening devices and so on are best for tracking enemy forces that are hiding in a modern city." Or, surveilling those city-dwellers virtually and in advance, using AI so that you can cut off their power and kill them. Such computer simulations are increasingly the norm "in a growing number of defense exercises. With ever-more-sophisticated simulation and modeling technology, the military today can mix and match real tanks, planes and ships with forces that exist only on computers and tho
Utah : letter of protest
-- as this has seen some passage on Nettime, here is some action being done about the Utah situation. Also a number of academics on DanceCult-L are looking into the Czech situation, especially in regards to EU status (a recent bust in Czech that was *extraordinarily* violent). All of this pales with the situation in Iraq and devastation worldwide, but one fights where one can. "Technendocolonization," anyone ? best, tobias - dear colleagues: Please find below a letter of protest concerning the Utah events, which if you haven't seen, may be viewed and read here : http://www.music-versus-guns.org http://prisonplanet.com/video/230805fascism.mov [video] The letter is being written and signed by members of the academic electronic dance music culture email list, DanceCult-L. It will be circulated to the press on Monday. We are gathering signatures; please feel free to append yours and please reply directly to me [ tobias.c.vanveen @ mail . mcgill . ca ]. Please also feel free to forward this email to whom you see fit. best, tobias c. van Veen Ph.D Candidate, Communication Studies and Philosophy McGill University tobias c. van Veen --- http://www.quadrantcrossing.org -- http://www.thisistheonlyart.com -- McGill Communication + Philosophy ICQ: 18766209 | AIM: thesaibot +++ == Sir-, We wish to deplore and condemn the violent, abusive and uncalled for actions by a militarized task force of Utah police raiding an electronic dance music event on August 20th, 2005. The use of armed force to subdue so-called undesirable elements of society has a long history: the Civil Rights movement, anti-war demonstrations, and Women's Equality have all witnessed the blunt end of a system of law that has been later, and justly, found in the wrong. For the past twenty years, this systematic use of militarized force has been directed against electronic dance music cultures, not only in the United States but throughout the world, and often under the supposed reasoning of the War on Drugs, as well as due to mostly inaccurate perceptions of electronic dance music culture as violent, drug-ridden, and sexually irresponsible. As educators, academics, artists and researchers of electronic dance music culture, we wish to dispel these all-too prevalent myths that raves--the primary form of experience and expression of this multifaceted, global and diverse culture--are the dens of illegality they are made out to be. Raves and other electronic dance culture events are, on the whole, a far safer and more affirmative experience than most bars, hockey rinks and football games; certainly they warrant no special attention among the fundamental rights of humans to appreciate, gather and express their freedoms. At their best, raves exhibit the positive characteristics that electronic dance music culture cherishes and cultivates: a sense of peace and respect shared through the common love of dance, art and music. They are today's carnivals and fairs, the folk gatherings that humanity has enjoyed for millenia. We feel that electronic dance music culture has been unduly marked by a far more dangerous and violent sector, in short, a State bent on the militarization of society. We ask of the public to celebrate and protect their rights and freedoms in the face of ever-increasing limitations and pressures. Without the ability to express the freedoms every human cherishes, the ubiquitous rhetoric that necessitates their defense with force rings all the more hollow. Yours sincerely, == ___ Dancecult-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/dancecult-l_listcultures.org No commercial use without permission # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: A miniature city waiting for attack (military urbanism)
On Aug 26, 2005, at 4:52 PM, Geoff Manaugh wrote: > - Fast set-up and disassembly... > - Various building sites configurations... > [and] > - Changeable interior room configurations" "Many people find the subject of animal slaughter to be very unpleasant and prefer not to know the details of what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. In their turn, most slaughterhouses are secretive to avoid controversy. As such, in the West, the connection between packaged meat products in the supermarket and the live animals they are derived from is obscured. Nevertheless, the majority of people in the West eat meat every day, so slaughterhouses are required to efficiently provide meat products on an industrial scale. At the same time, most countries have laws and regulations that control the slaughter of animals, both for human consumption and for other purposes. Therefore, the operation of slaughterhouses is usually independently monitored by government agencies, most especially to ensure that standards of hygiene are maintained. Animal rights groups and some vegetarians prefer to highlight the practices inside a slaughterhouse - in part to expose and correct allegedly inhumane treatment of animals where it occurs, but also to encourage people to face the reality of meat production, which may lead to more people's choosing a meat-free or reduced-meat diet. Some animal-rights advocates regard the activities performed in slaughterhouses as cruel or unconscionable." -Wikipediia --- Andrew Bucksbarg Assistant Professor of Telecommunications [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organicode.net # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
