product:f16

New Book: Bulldozer Politics – The Palestinian Ruin as an Israeli Architectural Project | THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE

▻http://thefunambulist.net/2016/04/18/new-book-bulldozer-politics-the-palestinian-ruin-as-an-israeli-archi

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The Palestinian Ruin as an Israeli Architectural Project ///

In his book The Drone Easts with Me: Diaries from a City under Fire, Palestinian author Atef Abu Saif recounts the punctuation of his daily life by the systematic bombings of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army during the dreadful siege of the 2014 summer that killed 2,220 Palestinians and displaced more than 500,000.[1] Abu Saif describes how he and his relatives could not bring themselves to tell his 19-months old daughter, Jaffa, that the loud noises she was keeping hearing were, in fact, deadly bombs. Instead, they told her that the loud noises she could hear was her big brother Naem slamming the door, hence her scream each time an explosion occurs nearby: “the doooooooor!” In a city under siege, sound becomes the predominant relation to the outside reality. Abu Saif recounts how everyone in Gaza can now make the difference between the noise of a missile launched from a tank, a ship, a drone, an aircraft, or a helicopter. To the noise of the bombs, we need to add the voluntarily terrorizing noise of F16 aircrafts reaching the wall of sound, as well as the continuous droning of the Zannate (drones) and, of course, there is the sound of buildings collapsing, dreadfully crushing the totality of its objects and bodies that they contain.

The 51 days of war undertaken by the Israeli army against Gaza and its inhabitants in July and August 2014 constitute one of the most recent occurrences of a process of ruination of the Palestinian conditions of life that started in the late 1940s. This text is a fragment of a broader research about this historical process of ruination of Palestinian homes understood in a paradoxical constructivist architectural manner. By constructivist, I mean that we should distinguish a precise order behind the chaos of the ruins’ rubbles, an architectural process in which the ruin is understood as the final product of a cautiously design strategy.

#israël #palestine #démolition #architecture #occupation #colonisation

The real reason for Turkey’s shoot-down of the Russian jet | Middle East Eye
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/real-turkeys-shoot-down-russian-jet-1615790737#sthash.HHeLMcP1.dpuf

http://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/column-image/RussianPlane_AA_0.jpg

The data supports Putin’s assertion that the shoot-down was prepared in advance due to Russian bombing of Turkey-linked rebels in Syria

The United States and its NATO allies offered a ritual of NATO unity after Turkish officials presented their case that the shoot-down of a Russian jet occurred after two planes had penetrated Turkish airspace.

The Turkish representive reportedly played a recording of a series warning the Turkish F16 pilots had issued to the Russian jets without a Russian response, and US and other NATO member states endorsed Turkey’s right to defend its airspace.

En 2005, le gouvernement thaïlandais proposer de payer des F16 en devises exotiques : en poulets congelés.

Special report : Weapons and the art of diplomacy | Reuters
►http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/04/us-wiki-diplomacy-business-idUSTRE72335820110304?pageNumber=2

In 2005, the Thai government started shopping for new military fighter jets among Lockheed Martin, Russia’s Sukhoi and Sweden’s Saab. It made clear up front that any deal it signed had to include “countertrade” worth at least 50 percent of the deal’s value — we buy X and you help us sell Y.

For the embassy in Bangkok, winning achieved two goals: helping Lockheed and keeping the Russians from selling planes. There was, however, a small complication with the terms — the Thai government didn’t want to pay cash. Instead, it proposed trading 80,000 stockpiled tons of frozen chicken.

“Embassy contacts said that until Lockheed Martin offered a proposal to sell F-16s that included countertrade, the (Thai government) could not seriously consider its offer. Contacts also suggested that an offer that included an agreement to buy Thai chicken would be especially welcome,” the embassy said in a March 2005 cable setting the scene for the competition.

A May 2005 cable indicates Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra personally raised the bird barter issue with Admiral William Fallon, then-head of the U.S. Pacific Command. Days later, word got to Thaksin that Lockheed was willing to play ball.

“It was a negotiating tactic by Thaksin. But until relatively late in the game, Lockheed was reticent to engage. They finally agreed to talk ... but it was too late,” the former U.S. diplomat in Asia said, terming the whole episode “comical” in a way.

Things didn’t quite work out, though. After a military coup the new Thai government ended up buying Swedish jets, fearing it wouldn’t be allowed to buy the Lockheed planes because of post-coup sanctions. (The embassy contacted the government to disabuse them of the notion, to no avail).

L’armée ayant pris le pouvoir, le deal ne s’est pas fait. Je suppose que maintenant, à la place, ils se sont équipés de canons à poulets surgelés.

#cablegate