"The woman traveler stops by the security checkpoint. After placing her luggage on the screening machine, the airport employee checks her baggage. The traveler hands her spare change and watch to the security guard and proceeds through the metal detector. With no time to spare, she picks up her luggage and hurries to board her flight!" Boy, do I miss Playmobil. [at the border...]

(via)

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BORDER CONTEXTS

Performing the Border A videotape by Ursula Biemann.
"A video essay set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas, this imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area. Looking at the border as both a discursive and material space, the video explores the sexualization of the border region through labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere."

Border Patrol's Yuma station busiest in U.S.: "We used to make about 60 to 80 apprehensions a day at the Yuma station; now it's like 300 to 500. So these agents have to learn quick" Drop busts have become utterly common at places like the pink house on 7th Street, essentially a training facility for the U.S. Border Patrol.

Protests delay start of civilian border patrols

Mexico's 'Shangri-La' Is A Secret No More : Locals are worried that the town of Álamos, long known to only a few, will lose its native charm to the surging American population.

'Invisibles' mar California democracy: When President Bush talks of spreading democracy and freedom across the world, is Californian-style democracy what he has in mind?

US backs Pakistani-Afghan border fence 1,500-mile barrier meant to stop insurgents: Washington is backing a plan to build a 1,500-mile fence along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan to prevent Islamic insurgents and drug smugglers slipping between the two countries.

ISRPAL

A short history of post-Gaza pullout:
Israel’s Supreme Court authorized the demolition of Gaza Synagogues, but the Gazans ended up burning them instead. Then, the Palestinians pretty much pillaged some vital urban resources, just as the UNRWA (UN Relief and Work Agency) was set to expand operations in Gaza. But, quickly the Egypt-Gaza border got closed. And Jordan warned: Gaza would become a prison unless crossing points were reopened. Sure enough, anarchy. And Hamas went and blew a hole in the Gaza border barricades. Then, suddenly the Palestinians claimed to 'end' the anarchy. But, not for long. As usual, it's all about 'Real estate and dignity'. And how many times do the Courts Need toTell Israel to Reroute Parts of West Bank Barrier?

Well, check out this cool project anyway: 'Three Cities Against The Wall' connects artists across borders. Exhibitions to open simultaneously in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and New York


'DE FACTO URBANISM' in the context of Empire

Speaking about Hamas blasting through-spaces, apparently the UK used tanks to jail break two undercover British soldiers in a major shoot out in Basra.

Or did you hear how Army Recruiters Set Their Sights On Hurricane Victims, preying on their helpnessness to coax them to go to Iraq? Well, that's because if we need disaster relief, we just call in the Marines, and will soon be able to have them deployed anywhere on the planet in just two hours in one of these. Or maybe some of these Private Military Companies, like this bunch of mercs in New Orleans. (via)

LONG TAIL COUNTER-INSURGENCY: The complexity of the threat posed by open source warfare in Iraq has accelerated the US military's use of outsourcing. The growing trend towards outsourcing military operations has created a new variant on the term, "a long tail." Traditionally, this term has been used to describe the number of support personnel (the tail) required to support combat troops (the tooth). Tooth-to-tail ratios have grown over the years as the complexity and resource intensity of modern combat has increased. In essence, modern warfare requires a loooong tail of support troops. The US military's tooth-to-tail ratio is approximately 1 to 10 (or more).

So, while Iran fights for a right to develop civil nuclear power and NK perhaps agrees to stop pursuing nuclear weapons under US/China pressure, the Pentagon revises a pre-emptive nuclear strike policy, very scary doctrine here.

The SF Gate recently ran this 3 part series on rebuilding in Afghanistan under Taliban fire.

War on terror 'causing US deaths': The US government's focus on the war on terror has diverted funds from healthcare, leading to many deaths, a leading health expert claims.

Court rules against terror suspect U.S. can continue to detain citizen without charging him with a crime: Ruling in the case of Jose Padilla, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., said Congress, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks four years ago, gave President Bush broad powers to classify citizens as well as noncitizens as "enemy combatants'' and confine them in military jails without charges.

Giorgio Agamben: The State of Emergency: In his Political Theology (1922), Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) established the essential proximity between the state of emergency and sovereignty. But although his famous definition of the sovereign as "the one who can proclaim a state of emergency" has been commented on many times, we still lack a genuine theory of the state of emergency within public law. For legal theorists as well as legal historians it seems as if the problem would be more of a factual question than an authentic legal question.

Mexican private security firms questioned in bloody week: "The defenselessness of society in the face of crime is explained by the proliferation of these types of companies, and the murder of the two women that exhibits a total lack of regulation," contended Andres de Anda, coordinator of the National Action Party fraction of the Juarez City Council. Thought to number more than 100, the private security agencies could employ close to 6,000 people, or about three times the number of personnel currently in uniform with the Ciudad Juarez municipal police.

Mexican mercenaries expand base into U.S.: A renegade band of Mexican military deserters, offering $50,000 bounties for the assassination of U.S. law-enforcement officers, has expanded its base of operations into the United States to protect loads of cocaine and marijuana being brought into America by Mexican smugglers, authorities said. The deserters, known as the "Zetas," trained in the United States as an elite force of anti-drug commandos, but have since signed on as mercenaries for Mexican narcotics traffickers and have recruited an army of followers, many of whom are believed to be operating in Texas, Arizona, California and Florida.

State's war on pot getting more violent The race is on between Mexican drug cartels and narcotics agents to see who will harvest California's multibillion-dollar pot crop before the season peaks at September's end. And both are armed to the max.

State of the Art War blogs change face of war: It is a different era, and most journalists have never served in the military and have only a passing acquaintance with the worlds that most soldiers come from. But for readers who want a taste of the soldier’s life, a modern-day Ernie Pyle is no longer necessary; soldiers themselves are blogging their experiences from the front lines.

And guess who couldn't keep out of the action, Yahoo, this time hiring journalist Kevin Sites to Report on the world' s war-torn landscapes for a new web broadcast Hotzone. "Yahoo is building a large beachhead in Santa Monica to establish relations with Hollywood, both to buy content from others and to produce its own. One of its motivations is to tap into the rapidly growing demand for video advertising on the Internet." More from Wired

Hebron Settlers Plant Home-made Landmines
Bomb-Busting Buffalo


SURVEILLATECH

Governor Mitt Romney raised the prospect of wiretapping mosques in the U.S. and conducting surveillance of foreign students in Massachusetts, as he issued a broad call yesterday for the federal government to devote far more money and attention to domestic intelligence gathering.

Screening machines see through clothes but not private parts

"It's Our Destiny" Bush Seeks Military Control of Space By BRUCE GAGNON

Boeing May Lose Part of $4 billion Spy Satellite Pact

Spy Blimps are being tested in India to watch traffic and disaster

Wanna Bet on Terror? Where-Next.com is an exciting gambling game. The most accurate prediction on where terrorists will attack next, wins. The definition of terrorist attack stands here for a war action aimed at any civil target on any location that’s not already involved in any kind of "official" war or so intetend by U.S. administration. Thus comnsider a peaceful territory where there could be at least 10 random civil victims within 48hrs (missing people will not be included).

Launch Your Own Satellite into Space: The CubeSat program, developed at Stanford University and California Polytechnic State University, aims to give universities and high schools a chance to launch their own satellite into low Earth orbit (240-360 miles above). There will be 9 Cubesats in orbit by Sept.27th 2005 with numerous institutes all around the world working on their own Cubesats. For $40,000 to build and $40,000 to launch, you too could have your own satellite network.


THE HOMOGENIZATION OF POVERTY


Is a Wealthy Country One With the Most Rich People or the Fewest Poor People?

Tsunami victims still on the streets

An American refugee crisis | The Great Katrina Migration | ePodunk is a map based on more than 40,000 postings on Internet "safe lists" by Katrina survivors. ePodunk analyzed messages containing both the person's hometown and the location after fleeing the storm. Black lines indicate paths of migration, not the numbers of people migrating. Safe lists were examined on Sept. 12-13, 2005. | Mississippi readies trailer cities for homeless | FEMA's City of Anxiety in Florida. Endemic to trailer park refugee urbanism after Hurricane Charlie.

Poverty and the World Summit | U.N. Scales Back Plan of Action | Have we made poverty history? The UN summit has disappointed poverty campaigners. But concrete results depend on two crucial meetings yet to come. |Speakers touch on issues of poverty, religion at Clinton Global Initiative. more.....

World Faces Prospect of Teeming Mega-Slums | Himanshu Parikh: On Slum Networking, where eingeineering can transform slums from liabilities into catalysts for social change. | Half World's People To Live In Cities By 2007: UN

Why Aid Doesn't Work: The tragedy of aid, as been shown in numerous evaluations and by World Bank research, is that donors are part of the problem of corruption; aid often underpins corruption, and higher aid levels tend to erode the governance structure of poor countries. In other words, donors have failed to follow the chief principle of the Hippocratic oath: do no harm! However, the major reason for the low effect of aid has been policies detrimental to economic growth in the recipient countries.

France’s incendiary crisis: The fires consuming the lives of poor African immigrants in Paris expose the intimate link between social justice and global security, says Patrice de Beer.

Plans Still On to Give Squatters Idle Land in Nairobi

Sweatshops at Sea

US jobless claims at 10-year high