: )
Actually it's a far more radical.
I'm talking about non-ideological individuals each of whom is simply playing out a game, in the real world, en-masse. It doesn't take much imagination to see what kind of a tool that might be.
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by Harvey » Sun May 22, 2011 8:22 am
by elfismiles » Sun May 22, 2011 10:10 am
JackRiddler wrote:.
Pentagon Looking to Lucrative Post-Imperial Future As Gaming Service
Navy calling on gamers to help with security
By David Nakamura, Sunday, May 15, 7:05 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/nav ... story.html
Correction:
An earlier version of this report incorrectly stated that the Institute for the Future is programming the software for the Navy’s MMOWGLI online war game. The Naval Postgraduate School is programming the game; Institute for the Future is the game designer, responsible for the videos, graphics and user experience. The report below has been updated.
© The Washington Post Company
It's cheaper than paying for academics. Or learning Somali.
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by elfismiles » Sun May 22, 2011 10:15 am
Harvey wrote:"Navy calling on gamers to help with security"
Hi, Jack.
Just reading this thread and I too was immediately reminded of Enders Game, but also more recently of Charles Stross' Halting State.
In it, a small throw away element of the story involves gamers playing a multiplayer espionage fantasy which takes place across all media and which involves real world role playing, surveillance etc. Unbeknownst to the gamers, they are engaged in cheap labour for various intelligence agencies, and the game is real. I've been developing/discussing just such a game for years with a colleague, a game with real world elements, multi-media, etc. We're both too busy with other things but I don't doubt it will happen.
It occurs to me that as well entertainment, in the future small unaffiliated groups might seek to use crowd sourcing techniques like those in your article above, but for more subversive ends, under the guise of entertainment. We're all familiar with botnets, but what if you could harness a 'peoplenet' with equal ease?
Shudder
by JackRiddler » Tue May 31, 2011 7:42 pm
sunny wrote:House Passes Bill Authorizing Worldwide War As Momentum Builds Against It
May 26, 2011
WASHINGTON – The House today passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains a dangerous provision that authorizes a worldwide war against terrorism suspects and against nations suspected of supporting them. The bill includes several additional troubling provisions, including one that would needlessly delay the implementation of the repeal of the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and another blocking all federal criminal trials of suspected terrorists who are not U.S. citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union strongly opposes the authorization for worldwide war and many other provisions in the bill.
Earlier this week, President Obama threatened to veto the legislation, citing concerns with the worldwide war provision and provisions limiting the executive branch’s authority to transfer terrorism suspects to the United States for prosecution or for release to other countries. An amendment to strike the worldwide war provision failed despite a strong bipartisan vote.
“The tide has begun to turn against the worldwide war proposal,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Two weeks ago, very few people even knew this dangerous worldwide war provision was being considered. Yet today, a bipartisan group of 187 members voted to try to block its passage and the president has issued a veto threat against it. The Senate should now build on today’s momentum and kill off this dangerous unlimited war proposal. A new authorization of worldwide war will mean unrestricted powers to use the military at home and abroad at a time when the majority of Americans want limits on U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts. Not only will this authority make America less safe, it is unnecessary and will undermine our values and change us as a nation.”
The worldwide war provision was added to the bill by the committee's chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), and goes much further than the current authorization of war. The new authorization would last as long as there are terrorism suspects anywhere in the world and would allow a president to use military force in any country around the world where there are terrorism suspects, even when there is no connection to the 9/11 attacks or any other specific harm or threat to the United States.
The NDAA’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” provisions would delay repeal implementation by expanding the repeal law’s certification requirements to include each service chief for each branch of the armed forces and deny lesbian and gay service members equal access to federal facilities on the basis of their sexual orientation.
“Trying to throw a roadblock up to derail ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal at this point is a desperate attempt to postpone the inevitable,” said Murphy. “For nearly 20 years, lesbian, gay and bisexual service members have been forced to hide who they are and who they love in order to serve their country. It was with the will of the president, the uniformed and civilian leadership of the military and Congress itself that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was repealed and its implementation will continue to move forward successfully despite the attempts by some House members to disrupt it.”
An important reproductive rights amendment, however, was not even considered for debate. The amendment, offered by Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) and five other co-sponsors, would have ended the current unconscionable ban on insurance coverage of abortion care for servicewomen and dependents in cases of rape and incest.
“It is indefensible that the House would decide against voting on an amendment to benefit our women in uniform who become pregnant as a result of rape. Women who join the military face shocking levels of sexual assault and this current ban on abortion coverage is both unfair and disgraceful,” said Murphy.
An amendment to create a new, costly school voucher program was defeated. The ACLU opposes school vouchers because they allow taxpayer dollars to go to religious schools and undermine the separation of church and state. The defeated amendment would have forced students who used the vouchers to forfeit many of the protections guaranteed to them in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
by Aldebaran » Tue May 31, 2011 10:51 pm
Harvey wrote:: )
Actually it's a far more radical.
I'm talking about non-ideological individuals each of whom is simply playing out a game, in the real world, en-masse. It doesn't take much imagination to see what kind of a tool that might be.
by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:30 pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/gat ... print.html
Gates rebukes European allies in farewell speech
By Michael Birnbaum, Updated: Friday, June 10, 9:53 AM
BERLIN — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates rebuked some of America’s staunchest allies Friday, saying the United States has a “dwindling appetite” to serve as the heavyweight partner in the military order that has underpinned the U.S. relationship with Europe since the end of World War II.
In an unusually stinging speech, made on his valedictory visit to Europe before he retires at the end of the month, Gates condemned European defense cuts and said the United States is tired of engaging in combat missions for those who “don’t want to share the risks and the costs.”
“The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress,
and in the American body politic writ large, to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources ... to be serious and capable partners in their own defense,” he said in an address to a think tank in Brussels.
The speech comes as the United States prepares to begin withdrawing some of its forces from Afghanistan this summer and as it and other NATO powers engage in an air campaign against the forces of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. In both cases, Gates said, budget cuts and sheer reluctance among European partners to fight have made the missions significantly more difficult and shifted the burden onto the United States.
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany was still analyzing the speech and would have no immediate comment. Merkel was feted Tuesday at a state dinner at the White House, where President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In Libya, Gates said, “the mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference.”
Gates and other U.S. officials have criticized Europe in the past, saying it is failing to hold up its end of the bargain. But his harsh language Friday in the speech to the Security and Defense Agenda think tank — delivered after a NATO defense ministers’ summit in which NATO and American top brass tried but largely failed to secure additional resources for the Libyan campaign — was a sign of just how tenuous the military relationships have become.
“Future U.S. political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost,” he said.
Gates said he has “worried openly” in the past “about NATO turning into a two-tiered alliance between members who specialize in ‘soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and talking tasks and those conducting the ‘hard’ combat missions — between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership ... but don’t want to share the risks and the costs.”
“This is no longer a hypothetical worry,” Gates said. “We are there today. And it is unacceptable.”
Gates expressed alarm about “the real possibility for a dim, if not dismal, future for the transatlantic alliance.” He added: “Such a future is possible, but not inevitable. The good news is that the members of NATO — individually and collectively — have it well within their means to halt and reverse these trends and instead produce a very different future.”
Gates is stepping down as defense secretary on June 30 after more than four years in office. Obama has nominated CIA Director Leon E. Panetta to succeed him. Panetta’s Senate confirmation process started Thursday with testimony before the Armed Services Committee.
The global financial crisis has stretched the budgets of countries around the world, and even the U.S. defense budget, long immune to cuts, has seen its projections trimmed.
But many countries in Europe have been quicker to reduce their forces. Last fall, Britain and France agreed to share an aircraft carrier. This spring, Germany eliminated its draft and slimmed the size of its ground forces. Smaller countries have made big cuts to forces that were never particularly large.
At a defense conference in Munich in February, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made an impassioned plea for smarter spending, and more of it. Europe’s patchwork of small countries leads to a jumble of small military forces that are not particularly effective if they actually need to go to war, critics say.
Gates repeated the criticism on Friday, saying that the $300 billion that non-U.S. NATO members spend annually on defense “could buy a significant amount of usable military capability. Instead, the results are significantly less than the sum of the parts.”
He said that the best hope for NATO was for European leaders to push harder to protect their budgets from further cuts, and he urged them to work together to coordinate their military capabilities.
“It is not too late for Europe to get its defense institutions and security relationships on track,” Gates said.
© The Washington Post Company
by StarmanSkye » Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:56 pm
by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 10, 2011 3:29 pm
StarmanSkye wrote:If I wasn't so jaded and cynical, I would be flumoxed by such an outrageous, disingenuous sermon spouted by such an post-Coldwar fanatic Idealogue Misery-Kinder, FAR more a radical fundamentalist than the most extremist Islamic terrormonger....
Whatta Godawful Bloody singleminded scam-racketeering way to conduct politics by a supposedly 'civilzed' species.
by hanshan » Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:17 pm
JackRiddler wrote:StarmanSkye wrote:If I wasn't so jaded and cynical, I would be flumoxed by such an outrageous, disingenuous sermon spouted by such an post-Coldwar fanatic Idealogue Misery-Kinder, FAR more a radical fundamentalist than the most extremist Islamic terrormonger....
Whatta Godawful Bloody singleminded scam-racketeering way to conduct politics by a supposedly 'civilzed' species.
And what motivates the fucker to work at this for 45 years straight?
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by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 10, 2011 8:26 pm
hanshan wrote:JackRiddler wrote:StarmanSkye wrote:If I wasn't so jaded and cynical, I would be flumoxed by such an outrageous, disingenuous sermon spouted by such an post-Coldwar fanatic Idealogue Misery-Kinder, FAR more a radical fundamentalist than the most extremist Islamic terrormonger....
Whatta Godawful Bloody singleminded scam-racketeering way to conduct politics by a supposedly 'civilzed' species.
And what motivates the fucker to work at this for 45 years straight?
.
blood money; war be good bidness
( OT - asked barra to merge the threads; haven't heard back)
...
by Joe Hillshoist » Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:33 pm
by The Consul » Sat Jun 11, 2011 1:11 am
by Joe Hillshoist » Sat Jun 11, 2011 12:36 pm
by hanshan » Sun Jun 12, 2011 5:25 am
JackRiddler wrote:hanshan wrote:JackRiddler wrote:StarmanSkye wrote:If I wasn't so jaded and cynical, I would be flumoxed by such an outrageous, disingenuous sermon spouted by such an post-Coldwar fanatic Idealogue Misery-Kinder, FAR more a radical fundamentalist than the most extremist Islamic terrormonger....
Whatta Godawful Bloody singleminded scam-racketeering way to conduct politics by a supposedly 'civilzed' species.
And what motivates the fucker to work at this for 45 years straight?
.
blood money; war be good bidness
( OT - asked barra to merge the threads; haven't heard back)
...
Yeah, but he accumulated his fortune long ago. If that's all it's about, odds are he'd be making more if he'd retired 15 years ago and managed his own estate. This guy's outta here, 940 years old or something, and still seeing fit to fuck things even worse at the end, with conviction! This is a faith, a religion of sorts. It requires blindness to pretty much everything around him, paradoxically while being required to see exactly what he is doing (or it wouldn't work). Or Medieval concepts of evil, I'll have to allow. Hence RI: the parapolitical pretty much hard-left board where there's room for demons and black magic.
By the way, what threads? My feeling is that it's probably a good idea, whatever threads they are. Too damn many.
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Joe Hillshoist wrote:the more threads the better the weave apparantly.
by eyeno » Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:53 pm
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