Disappearing in Iran (or Wherever)

Darth Vader helmets and all.



"Tehran 21 Jun 09. Man filming is cursing the basijis quietly."

While You Were Out . . .

. . . a few headline stories:

B*sh Admin Recently Discussed Killing U.S. Sailors to Create Pretext to Attack Iran, per Pullitzer-winning Seymour Hersh, as reported by Think Progress.

B*sh Plans to Redefine Abortion to Include Contraception, as reported by the Tucson Citizen.

Blackwater Mercenaries Used in Medical MJ Bust? As reported by Salem-News.com; see also The LA Times.

And some interesting stats here . . . certain interests would like us to believe the election could be close, for more than one reason. Please help make this the biggest landslide ever.

They Can't Do It All for All the Rest of Us.

"March Of The Dead" demonstration in Washington, D.C. on March 19, 2008.

A New Game for Middle Eastern Markets & the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

I came across a new computer game, Arabian Lords, "inspired by the rise of Islam during the 7th – 13th centuries" and "targeted at Middle Eastern markets," which at first struck me as unintentionally hilarious (e.g., that demented gleam in the Arabian Lord's eye! {click on the image to enlarge}). As I dug for amusing details, things got curiouser and curiouser – the maker of the game seems to have done most of its work for the U.S. gummint or RW constituencies.

From the Arabian Lords site:

Rule a Powerful Empire in the Ancient Middle East!

Travel back in time and become an enterprising merchant lord during the Rise of Islam. Start with one palace and expand to rule an entire city! But beware the perils of power – as you gain prestige you must outmaneuver and defeat other rival factions. . . .

Craft your beautiful Middle Eastern city!
Send Beggars, Thieves and Vandals to sabotage your opponent!
Hire Musicians, Poets and Bards to keep your markets thriving!

Here’s the first round of hints and tips from the AL development team!

Residential Districts are very important to control. Taking control of Residential Districts is the quickest way to increase your population capacity (in addition to expanding and upgrading stalls within a Residential District). And if you suddenly lose control of a District, it’s the quickest way to throw your entire mercantile empire into chaos. . . .

While the overuse of personal security forces can drive down your popularity with the people, it’s important to use Bodyguards to patrol and protect your Districts. The City Guard is reliable, but not good enough. Maintaining your own defense force can be a big help, especially in Residential Districts.

(Would the desaturated guys be the Bodyguards?)

Arabian Lords is a creation of BreakAway Games. Wikipedia says , BreakAway is one of the largest developers of serious games, having developed several high-profile serious games for the U.S. military and the U.S. Department of Justice . . . . The company has strategic relationships with AAI, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, GMA Industries, and General Dynamics, among others. The company's ability to form such relationships is the direct result of many years of experience developing military models and operational PC-based warfare simulations for the military. The United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense Net Assessment (OSD), the Army War College, the Navy War College, the National Defense University, the Joint Forces Command Joint Experimentation Directorate and many other governmental and military organizations have also used BreakAway-developed software.

BreakAway's site says, Our 100+ employees have collectively shipped hundreds of titles in strategy, action/stealth, and sports games—and developed a core competency in creating tools for modeling, simulation, and visualization. This technology has become the mōsbē™ desktop development studio, a strategy-based platform designed to enable military, homeland security, medical, and corporate customers solve real-world problems with the situational realism and experiential engagement of game-based simulation.

Our Clients Include:

• Microsoft
• The Walt Disney Companies
• DARPA
• Joint Forces Command
• Office of the Secretary of Defense – Net Assessment
• NETC
• United States Air Force
• Institute for Defense Analysis
• Department of Justice / National Institute of Justice
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• SAIC
• Rockwell Collins
• Northrop Grumman
• Boeing
• General Dynamics
• Lockheed Martin
• Booz Allen & Hamilton
• International Center for Non-Violent Conflict
• Believe in Tomorrow Children’s Foundation [among others.]

Clusty-ing the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict:

In a report about Bush's Freedom House speech, the Financial Times (March 30, 2006) reported that [Freedom House] had received U.S. government funding to undertake clandestine activities in Iran. Reported the newspaper: "Few in the Washington audience on Wednesday realized that Freedom House . . . is one of several organizations selected by the State Department to receive funding for clandestine activities inside Iran. Peter Ackerman, chairman of the board of trustees, who introduced Mr. Bush, is also the founder of a separate organization that promotes non-violent, civic disobedience as a form of resistance to repressive regimes. His International Center for Non-Violent Conflict has organized discreet 'workshops' in the Gulf emirate of Dubai to teach Iranians the lessons learned from east European movements. . . . Mr. Ackerman, who is very wealthy from an earlier career as a financier, says he does not accept government money. Questioned by the FT, Freedom House confirmed it had received funding from the State Department for activities in Iran. It declined to give details but said it was not involved in Mr. Ackerman's work in Dubai.

Hmmm.

On Iraq, the Patraeus Report, and the 2008 Elections: Three Things to Remember

One. How our Congressional reps. voted on the resolution giving Bush authority to invade Iraq is likely to come up (as it should) during the run-up to the next elections. When your candidates try to justify their vote by saying, "everyone thought Hussein had WMD's," please point out: that wasn't the issue (though it turned out he didn't have them). The issue was, was the threat that he'd use them against us not only so real but also so imminent that we could not afford even to let the U.N. inspectors complete their work? I mean, like, Hussein had to have had the ability and desire to drop a major WMD on us within months, not years.

Whatever the evidence of WMD's (and plenty of us recognized it as tenuous at best), no one ever presented credible evidence that Hussein would have the capability, let alone the desire, to deliver that kind of attack any time soon.

I supported Kerry in the last election, but since then I've realized, it simply is not plausible that he or other Dem leaders were actually hoodwinked by the Bush Admin. I don't know what they thought they were doing, but they failed in what may have been the most important decision of their career.

So for me, it's a litmus test: any candidate who voted for the authorization should be fired, and certainly should not be promoted. This alone disqualifies Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards.

Two. We will soon have General Patraeus's report on the results of the surge. No one expects the Admin. to admit it's not working. The alleged "success," such as it is, will be attributed in part to Petraeus's new strategy of trying to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis by showing them that we are there only to protect them from the insurgents (such insurgents being described by the General, as quoted in The New York Post, as "foreign" and "al Qaeda"). While this approach has to be better than what came before, I wonder how effective the implementation will be so long as we insist on controlling Iraqi oil.

A new Iraqi law being pushed through notwithstanding opposition from the majority of Iraqis "would transform Iraq's oil system from [the existing] nationalized model [, which is] all-but-closed to U.S. oil companies, to a commercialized model, all-but-fully privatized and opened to U.S. corporate control. . . . As a result of the invasion, . . . U.S. oil companies will emerge as the corporate front-runners in line for contracts giving them control over the vast majority of Iraq's oil under some of the most corporate-friendly terms in the world for twenty to thirty-five years" (per HuffPo).

Not to mention that under our watch, by the most conservative U.S. estimate as reported on May 12, 2007 in The New York Times, at least 146,000,000 barrels worth at least $7,300,000,000 have simply vanished, without any benefit to the Iraqis (not to mention the U.S. taxpayers, despite Bush Admin. suggestions that Iraqi oil would pay for this war).

Three. Whatever the report says, it'll also have to support the argument that we can't leave any time soon. But the fact is, we have no hope of "winning" in even the most limited sense unless we stay there at least ten more years. And by all accounts, our supply of soldiers is too broken to continue the job past this spring. Will they reinstitute the draft? They won't talk about any of that any sooner than we force them to.

Some say "the campaign to keep us in Iraq is . . . linked to the campaign to justify a war with Iran . . ."