'Mapping the discontinuous spatiality of the contemporary nation-state through the publication of the secret government memo listing 259 facilities around the world considered crucial to everyday life in the US' by Geoff Manaugh at domus
'World Drug Report 2011' by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at unodc.org
'Local Government Association Urges the Public Sector to Ditch Jargon to Help People During the Recession' at lga.gov.uk (not sure how this will help people through the recession but the list reads like glossary of the most annoying terms that appear in university strategic plans...)
'American Militarism is Not a Fairy Tale' by William Astore at tomdispatch.com
'The Coalition of the Cruel: A Tale of Felonious Deliquency and Virtuous Mutiny for the Modern Age' at coalitionofthecruel (a political satire of the ConDem coalition being serialized via twitter)
'Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive' at opendesignnow.org
'The Harper Doctrine: Conservative Foreign Policy in Black and White' by John Ibbitson at theglobeandmail.com
'The Secret History of Iraq's Invisible War' by Noah Shachtman at the dangerroomblog
The above CCTV footage of a severely intoxicated man, proudly procured by the UK tabloid The Sun, has been making the rounds on the internet to great merriment and mirth.
But this video raises some questions beyond the immediate mystery of how someone this inebriated was able to escape serious injury?
An operator was obviously following this guy using various CCTV cameras from within a control room. It's clear that he is a danger to himself and potentially to others. Why weren't the police or paramedics called to the scene? Or was the operator more interested in ensuring that every single pratfall was captured on tape for the future amusement of others?
Moreover, did The Sun pay for this footage? If so, does this practice not create competing interests that could divide the attention of CCTV operators in situations where initiating an intervention might take away a market opportunity?
In the end, whether one is for or against the proliferation of CCTV cameras, their purpose surely shouldn't be to contribute to the human bear-baiting that is a hallmark of the Murdoch press?
The NEMO (Northern European Migration Organization) Project is a web-based conceptual art piece that plays with the political and aesthetic sensibilities underpinning contemporary understandings of migration.
The project portrays itself as 'an enterprise that enables people to illegally migrate to the United Kingdom' using the 'architectural vocabulary of the WWII bunker to camouflage the real function of the secret base.'
Two things strike me as interesting about the piece. First, NEMO adopts the style and aesthetics of SPECTRE from James Bond. Second, former military installations that were once a means to fortify the borders of sovereign territories are reconfigured by NEMO to subvert them.
But, NEMO raises some concerns for me too. Primarily, I am unsure of the political effects of representing itself as a SPECTRE-like entity. Two issues stand out for me. First, does this piece simply feed into existing popular anxieties about the scope of human trafficking where undocumented migrants are perceived as a 'threat'? Second, by adopting an aesthetic sensibility of 'brutalist chic', does this piece trivialize the passage of undocumented persons over national borders and all of the accompanying hardships and dangers that being undocumented entails?
