Dictionary of War, Novi Sad Edition
international |
arts and media |
opinion/analysis 
Saturday February 02, 2008 11:38
by C Murray
Take a Look at how People Engage with War on a Polemical Level
'Dictionary of War is a Collaborative Platform for creating 100 concepts on the Issue of War
to be invented and arranged by scientists, artists, theorists and activists at four public
two day events in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin.'
The Novi Sad edition/collaboration took place on the 25th and 26th of January.
http://dictionaryofwar.org
The concept of a Dictionary of war should be enticing to many Irish activists who have dealt
with the issue at Shannon and of course all of us, who every day in our Newspapers for
close on seven years have been confronted with the bastardisation and twisting of words
to 'fit' with what was happening with the Bush regime.
Coalition of the Willing.
Blood-oath.
Shock and Awe.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/79748
The site discusses the new wordings thrown up and out by an increasingly
obtuse media and how language of war conceals 'Power-relations'.
This discussion;- http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/idea/
http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/novisad
The results of previous collaborations and ongoing projects are on the right hand column:
titles such as;- Conditional Surrender to The City of Gardens
Helikopter.
Amphetamine
Kosovo and Corruption
Some projects that have developed on a collaborative level out of this include the Crash Test
Dummy site:- http://www.crashtestdummy.net/index2.html
The previous editions and the Navigation are on the left hand column.
Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4All the encoding, decoding and distribution of the films has been done on open source
software , so that it can be widely accessed and understood.
some of the titles mentioned in the above links are available @
http://v2v.cc
The link explaining the material and tech is @
http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/videohowto
http://v2v.cc/node/21
I don’t find this very convincing. The term “shock and awe” accurately reflects a psychological technique of demonstrating superiority to affect the morale of the opposing regime and its military. It is a not a new concept, merely a new term and is not a distortion of language. The idea is fully apparent in accounts of wars from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. “Coalition of the willing” is merely another way of describing a voluntary alliance such as that between the US, UK, Spain, Italy, Qatar and Kuwait which overthrew the Baathist regime in Iraq.
Arguably the 1960s Pentagon speak did give rise to sanitised new terms in the Vietnam era such as “friendly fire” and “collateral damage” and “war of attrition” but again the concepts were not new and if you take any field of study such as management you would find a host of new terms coined since 1945. More than a quarter of all US causalities in the first three days of the battle of Okinawa were caused by friendly fire though the term was not invented then. Also terms like “hawks and doves” and “hearts and minds” were coined in the 1960s.
Closer to home in terms of sanitising language SF/IRA were more impressive masters than the Pentagon. Hence a rather dirty guerrilla type terrorist campaign became “the armed struggle”. People like prison officers and those working for building contractors became “legitimate targets” and so on. The USSR had their own terms such as describing any opponent of the regime as an “anti revolutionary” which meant “liquidation” in short order. Their surrogates and imitators throughout the soviet block including Cuba followed suit as did communist China and the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.
http://www.v2v.cc/node/21
has the info regarding the fileshare and free-open software.
as to Skeptic's 'unconvincing polemic', well, anyone who has read a bit wd know that polemicism
is a style-it deliberately provokes engagement with issues. i had thought Skeptic's endless
insubstantial trolling and lack of article writing was also a 'style' but it seems more an attempt to
de-rail threads and utilise language to obfuscate issues. the documentaries are available through
a free open software system, much like the ones being used here and devloped in Europe.
http://www.dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/videohowto
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