Marines heading for Chicago -- for urban warfare planning Date: 98-05-26 14:10:05 EDT Marines heading for Chicago -- for urban warfare planning AP 1.51 p.m. ET (1752 GMT) May 1, 1998 WASHINGTON (AP) Eighty camouflage-dressed Marines are planning an invasion of Chicago next week not to fight but to start learning how to wage war in an area cluttered with skyscrapers, sewers, rail tunnels and lots of people. It's part of a two-year experiment in big-city warfare to prepare the Marines for some of the dangers of the new century. "Our tactics, doctrine and technology have not kept up with urbanization,'' Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the Corps' commandant, told the Armed Forces Journal. "In future conflicts, our enemies will lure us into the cities in an attempt to mitigate our capabilities and make us fight where we are the least effective.'' The program, begun last summer, has included training in a four-block model town at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and it envisions later practice war games in Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla. It is to culminate in a mock battle fought on the streets of an as-yet-unidentified West Coast city. The Chicago phase doesn't promise to be too action-packed. Officers from Camp Lejeune's 1st Battalion, 8th Marines; from the Corp's Quantico, Va.-based Warfighting Laboratory and from the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force (Experimental) will get a 2 1/2-day lesson in what makes a city tick. They'll tour a gas company, water filtration plant, some bridges, underground tunnels, the police and fire departments and other sites, said Lt. Col. Jenny Holbert, a spokeswoman for the 3-year-old warfighting lab. Chicago was chosen largely because it has most of the features typical of the complicated, large cities U.S. forces may find someday themselves fighting in: a river, shore access, subways, even a drawbridge. Cities are considered likely scenes of future strife because 70 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2020 and because they tend to have such classic ingredients of conflict as poverty and cultural, religious and social tensions. Krulak established the warfighting lab in 1995, and it has a budget of $32.5 million this year. The Marines want to learn how to maneuver around city infrastructure, communicate while in close quarters with an enemy, minimize the impact on civilians and care for casualties when medical facilities may be offshore. In return for Chicago's playing host, the Pentagon will share some of its communications and other technologies that could help during a civilian disaster such as a major storm or water supply cutoff. In a city of nearly 3 million people, most residents may not even be aware of anything all that unusual next week. "It probably won't even be noticed,'' said Sarah Pang, Mayor Richard M. Daley's deputy chief of staff. "It's not real sexy stuff, but for us it's really interesting.'' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6 February 1998: Add link to Bibliography (85K); zipped version (32K) 4 February 1998 Source: Hardcopy from STOA, Luxembourg DIRECT LINK AT APFN CONTENTS http://www.esotericworldnews.com/apfncont.htm Thanks to Axel Horns, Ulf Möller and STOA EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT _________________________________________ SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIONS ASSESSMENT STOA AN APPRAISAL OF TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL Working document (Consultation version) Luxembourg, 6 January 1998 PE 166 499 Directorate General for Research ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cataloguing data:Title:An appraisal of technologies for political control Publisher:European Parliament Directorate General for Research Directorate B The STOA ProgrammeAuthor:Mr. Steve Wright - Omega Foundation - Manchester Editor:Mr. Dick Holdsworth Head of STOA UnitDate:6 January 1998PE Number:PE 166 499This document is a working document. The current version is being circulated for consultation. It is not an official publication of STOA or of the European Parliament.This document does not necessarily represent the views of the European Parliament. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGY OF POLITICAL CONTROL ABSTRACT The objectives of this report are fourfold: (i) to provide Members of the European Parliament with a guide to recent advances in the technology of political control; (ii) to identify, analyse and describe the current state of the art of the most salient developments; (iii) to present members with an account of current trends, both in Europe and Worldwide; and (iv) to develop policy recommendations covering regulatory strategies for their management and future control. The report contains seven substantive sections which cover respectively: (i) The role and function of the technology of political control; (ii) Recent trends and innovations (including the implications of globalisation, militarisation of police equipment, convergence of control systems deployed worldwide and the implications of increasing technology and decision drift); (iii) Developments in surveillance technology (including the emergence of new forms of local, national and international communications interceptions networks and the creation of human recognition and tracking devices); (iv) Innovations in crowd control weapons (including the evolution of a 2nd. generation of so called 'less-lethal weapons' from nuclear labs in the USA). (v) The emergence of prisoner control as a privatised industry, whilst state prisons face increasing pressure to substitute technology for staff in cost cutting exercises and the social and political implications of replacing policies of rehabilitation with strategies of human warehousing. (v) The use of science and technology to devise new efficient mark-free interrogation and torture technologies and their proliferation from the US & Europe. (vi) The implications of vertical and horizontal proliferation of this technology and the need for an adequate political response by the EU, to ensure it neither threatens civil liberties in Europe, nor reaches the hands of tyrants. The report makes a series of policy recommendations including the need for appropriate codes of practice. It ends by proposing specific areas where further research is needed to make such regulatory controls effective. The report includes a comprehensive bibliographical survey of some of the most relevant literature. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGY OF POLITICAL CONTROL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The objectives of this report are fourfold: (i) to provide Members of the European Parliament with a guide to recent advances in the technology of political control; (ii) to identify. analyze and describe the current state of the art of the most salient developments; (iii) to present members with an account of current trends, both in Europe and Worldwide; and (iv) to develop policy recommendations covering regulatory strategies for their management and future control. The report includes a large selection of illustrations to provide Members of Parliament with a good idea of the scope of current technology together with a representative flavour of what lies on the horizon. The report contains seven substantive sections, which can be summarised as follows: THE ROLE & FUNCTION OF POLITICAL CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES This section takes into account the multi-functionality of much of this technology and its role in yielding an extension of the scope, efficiency and growth of policing power. It identifies the continuum of control which stretches from modem law enforcement to advanced state suppression, the difference being the level of democratic accountability in the manner in which such technologies are applied. Forward via: APFN@netbox.com - ICQ@ 10811517 Direct link: Political Control Technologies: APFN URL: http://www.esotericworldnews.com/apfncont.htm