Month: February 2005

Check out this excellent website devoted to international arms control (Not gun control).

“Waging war isn’t about fun and games. Or is it? A visit to one of the world’s biggest conventions for military training technology reveals that today’s armed forces are taking cues from video games, theme parks and Hollywood.”

“Now, you can also use this to enhance the experience,” the VirTra rep continues, fastening a thick, black device around his waist. The “threat-fire belt,” he explains, issues an electric shock to the trainee if he or she is hit by the imaginary bullet of a virtual assailant, who might appear anywhere on the semicircular screen. “If you get hit in the back, trust me, you’ll remember it. This one will bring you to your knees. The whole idea is to fight through the pain, and keep on going, just the way that you’ve been trained.”

Saturday, between 4 and 6PM ET, Scott Horton will be interviewing Carl Webb, who’s heroically protesting the US government’s attempts to send him back to Iraq through the so-called “Stop Loss Program” and Michael Scheuer, former CIA analyst and author of “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.”
Listen live on the Republic Broadcasting Network.

Space war game improves joint warfighting capability

“The phrase “space war game” lends a notion that the game is focused on a
military fight in space, but that is not the case, game officials said.

“Our focus is how best to use space assets to coordinate the joint
terrestrial fight,” General Darnell said.

The war game aims to ensure the United States maintains its ultimate
high ground — space superiority, officials said.”

The heroic city of Portland, Oregon may drop out of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. They’re “worried that the task force could lead to illicit surveillance of local citizens”, as NPR puts it.

Also, check any of these stories. They’re definitely not on board the Bush bandwagon up in Portland. What can they possibly be thinking?

Knight Ridder’s Tom Lasseter reports some Iraqi election returns:

In final results released Friday for local elections in Baghdad, a city with large Sunni neighborhoods, Shiite cleric-led parties posted large numbers and Sunni tickets gathered relatively few votes.

The local ticket backed by the Shiite Dawa party got 694,800 votes; the ticket backed by the Shiite Supreme Council for Revolution in Iraq got 264,130 votes; and another Shiite group received 156,229 votes.

The slate headed by elder Sunni statesman Adnan Pachachi received just 22,170 votes; and the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni party in Iraq, got 17,558.

That would mean that in a city of approximately 5 million, 1,154,887 voted. If we assume 2.5 million were eligible to vote, that would mean the turnout in Baghdad was less than 50%.