To mark one hundred years of aerial bombing, we publish this detailed account of the path that led us from bombing cities, forests and target boxes to putting 'warheads on foreheads' in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Derek Gregory argues that our understanding of bombing has been dominated by political
The city of Kobe died twice: once through being bombed in 1945, and subsequently by earthquake in 1995. As a result of both this and the hasty ‘restoration’ process, you can only see in a few bullet marks on one pier of the Owada Bridge, crossing over Hyogo Canal in downtown Kobe, the real legacy
Bomber County—The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War is the title of the first book by Daniel Swift, assistant professor of English at Skidmore College. Part memoir (Swift's grandfather was a British bomber in WWII) and part literary criticism, the book is an investigation into the poetry and bombing ca
‘Signature targets’ are ghostly traces of the ‘target signatures’ that once animated the electronic battlefield. Commentators have often drawn comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, but if Vietnam was a ‘quagmire’ then the air wars over Afghanistan-Pakistan threaten to create
November 2011 marks the centenary of a world-historic event. An Italian pilot, Guilio Cavotti dropped the first bombs from an aeroplane on to the oasis of Tagiura outside Tripoli. The development of aerial bombardment was more than just a military revolution. It changed both war and peace. openDem
In part two of our coverage of the Paul Hirst Memorial Lecture, 2010 , Eyal Weizman, in conversation with openDemocracy editor, Rosemary Bechler, discusses the challenge of how to use international humanitarian law to permit the articulation of progressive political demands, and why this involves
