12.17.2003
Senators Told Iraqi Weapons Could Strike East Coast Cities
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.
Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force.
12/17/2003
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The Internet as We Know it- Threatened
Over at thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse, one of my daily blog reads I linked to this piece in Newsweek "A Net of Control
Unthinkable: How the Internet could become a tool of corporate and government power, based on updates now in the works" by Steven Levy. It paints a picture of a totally controlled digital future, sold to us as a remedy for spam, viruses, credit card fraud and the like.
I'm Big Brother and I'm here to help you.
I'm already uncomfortable with the fact that Yahoo.com owns my e-mail because it is situated on their server. I suppose you get what you pay for. I seem to remember Pentium P3 chips were manufactured to send out a unique identifier- until consumers rejected the concept. I hate cookies. I go to fellow bloggers sites and get cookies thrown at me, Amazon, sitemeters, eesh. Bloggers yet. I throw my hands up in disbelief... I need nothing to help me shop on the internet.
Put some time into reading "The Digital Imprimatur: How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle" By John Walker. You really need to become familiar with the material offered if you enjoy the freedom of commerce of thought more than commerce itself.
I have slow-ass dialup service because information over telephone lines is treated differently by law than cable. I want to support my dial-up company, I don't want to contributr to its extinction allowing multi-tier cable internet to dictate just what sites I can see under my payment plan... I gave you a link to each Project Censored story months ago so I'm guessing you already know this. In case you missed it explore # 6 Closing Access to Information Technology.
If you enjoy spreading the truth and pointing out that the miserable failure is unelectable you need to now just what is going on with the internet. Activism in behalf of this amazing activists tool, this free medium to get and share information, may be crucial.
Because you know all this freedom of information, this uncensored bringing truth to light pisses "them" off. And has the greedheads scurrying to find a way to make a buck from us. Napster was the first assault.
Check out the Electronic Freedom Foundation. They also cover the black box voting assault on Democracy.
As an aside, Bev Harris' book, Black Box voting is available on my sidebar in .pdf. Buy the book. I only have up to chapter 11 posted there, I'll get the other 3 chapters up pronto. Crucial information...
Scroll down sidebar, they are up now.
Buy the book!
12/17/2003
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Who's Who in Occupied Iraq - A Limited Tool
The BBC gives a thumbnail sketch of the various factions and personalities, groups religious, ethnic and political vying for power in Occupied Iraq. I offer it as a tool for further research in understanding the complexity of forces moving to govern a democratic Iraq.
12/17/2003
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Prisoner Saddam
Could it be possible that Saddam Hussein was not hiding, that in fact he was being held prisoner?
After his last audiotaped message was delivered and aired over al Arabiya TV on Sunday November 16, on the occasion of Ramadan, Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25 m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead. The negotiations were mediated by Jalal Talabani’s Kurdish PUK militia.
"Indications Saddam Was Not in Hiding But a Captive" An interesting and thought provoking read from The DEBKAfile.
12/17/2003
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Military/Entertainment Nexus
Talk about disturbing. Videogame Developers and the US military are teaming up to make videogames. What a great adjucnt to the crumbling educational system the budget cuts offer our nation, as well as the 3 million jobs this administration has seen go offshore. Plenty of disaffected unemployed youth to fill the ranks of the miltary. The draft as employment.
Give "The Pentagon Invades Your Xbox: New and Powerful Form of Propaganda Aims to Indoctrinate Young Video Gamers" by Nick Turse at Dissident Voice your attention.
A few thoughts:
Anyone who has watched the news during the Iraq war could note that what we the viewer was exposed to was much like a videogame, scenes through nightvision goggles of weapons doing "their stuff", graphics around the edge of the screen bespeaking the power and range of the ordinance in question....
The essence of what war is, killing, made somewhat surreal and nicely sanitized. Game like. To be more specific, videogame-like. Remember the protests that went up when Al- Jazeera broadcast images of the reality of war? The photo of the innocent child's head blown in half; that is what war is. A neat and clean camera shot from a cruise missile and then the resultant explosion seen from a distance is not. War is the dealing of death, the side with the less death wins... It is easy to support a concept like a war of aggression if one conveniently ignores looking into the facts very deeply. The mechanics of war are much the same. Decent and good people, the majority that make up America, have trouble looking at death. This is much more the case when facts erase the efforts of an individual to believe contradictory and ever shifting "reasons" for war. The capture of Saddam has to be a great tension release for those who supported the war against all truth. The noble cause emerged again after being revealed for the sham it was. It just takes a quick shift of thought to feel better...
The militarization of our popular culture should set off some warning bells. Maybe it is too late, an audience that has traded a good chunk of it's life (and the active living, being, experiencing being that entails) for time spent watching the made up antics and the new "reality-based" inanities might be too far down the road to even see a problem. A majority of television and film content concerns killing. Think about it. If a majority of programming concerned drug use or homosexuality there would be an uproar. The shows would "advocate" something. Shows that demonstrate the effectiveness of weapons and violence, that illustrate how good the force applied by authority is are as American as apple pie. They are just entertainment. They through their content advocate nothing on an overt or subtextual level.
It doesn't make sense to me.
A war/entertainment industry to me is obscene; handing the minds of the next generation over to the US military machine says a great deal about our society. Just taking the "No Child Left Behind Act" one step further, not only giving their contact information unwittingly kids will be giving their worldview away. Young people pre-conditioned by videogames to be desensitized killers now are marketable.
Research on the violent videogame/violent movie connection is mixed. I ask you to consider how you feel watching a movie, did you ever find yourself saying "He's behind the door, idiot" even just in your mind? Or get an adrenaline rush playing a videogame? There is a somatic factor to these sorts of entertainment. Some studies suggest that there is a greater effect on later aggressiveness the more one identifies with the game character, the more immersed one finds oneself in the mediated environment of the game. This is heightened by identifying with the character in the game.
"Kuma: War," developed by newcomer Kuma Reality Games in cooperation with the Department of Defense and slated for general release next year, is being billed as the first shooter game that will allow players to re-create actual military missions, such as the raid that killed Saddam Hussein's two sons. Each combat assignment will be introduced by television footage and a cable news-style anchor. Kuma boasts a team of military veteran advisors, who " … make sure the missions … are as realistic as possible." A retired Marine Corps major general leads the company's military advisory board.
Sounds like the player who has chosen this game will identify with it easily. Will readily immerse into it, like being in a tv show, or on the news. A war hero.
The news releases from Iraq while the US initially persecuted it's war show how effective the military/entertainment angle can be, even to adults. People overall are none too critical while watch "movies" or "tv shows", we all have been trained throughout our lives to suspend disbelief while watching "entertainment"...
TV, the plug in drug.
12/17/2003
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