Earlier this week, a hot mic caught this exchange between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev:
O: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.
M: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
O: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
M: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
Last week, a spokesman for Mitt Romney was asked if it was a problem that his battle with Gingrich and Santorum has forced him to "tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election." This is how he responded:
"Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again."
Democrats and Republicans were quick to jump onto these gaffes and attack their respective enemies, but nobody seems to be talking about an important fact that everyone already knows: all politicians practice these tactics, and base their entire campaigns around them. So Barack Obama is deciding to put shit off because he wants to get elected again. No shit? Mitt Romney spent months pandering to the Republican base, since they're the ones who decide primaries. And now he's going to change his personality again to pander to independents, who decide the general election? You don't say?
Guess what? We are currently fighting the longest war in the history of the god damn country. 17 innocent Afghans were just murdered in their homes, mostly children, and there was probably a coverup to have it all fall on one person. Our drones are shooting missiles at rescue workers and funerals. Barack Obama assassinated a 16-year-old kid who was born in Denver, and the FBI refuses to answer a simple question on whether they have the authority to assassinate Americans on American soil. Guantanamo Bay is still open, and we still refuse to release over 80 innocents there who have been cleared. We are the richest nation on the planet and our education, prison, and immigration systems are in shambles, while the military continues to receive over half of the entire budget. Chris Hedges is suing the American government over the NDAA and indefinite detention, and Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the Pentagon papers) are scheduled to testify. Tomorrow.
This is important shit. And the only things we can fucking talk about are campaign tactics. Watching the prime time political drivel, it's as if none of these issues actually have real world consequences for people. Sure, ending the Afghanistan war immediately and unconditionally might save tens of thousands of innocent lives, but that would just be political suicide! America has the most expensive health care in the industrialized world and tens of thousands of people are dying every year for lack of medical coverage? You don't understand, Obama had to drop the public option with hardly a whimper. He had to shove in the mandate forcing people to buy coverage they can't afford, it was the only way he could get support from the health care lobbyists he was sucking off. Republicans are race-baiting and gay-bashing? Let's not discuss these issues, let's just talk about how much it helped them with the base!THE BASE.
Obama and Romney both support the war in Afghanistan. They both supported Iraq to the bitter, pointless end. They both support Guantanamo Bay. They both support drone strikes and assassinations of American citizens. They both support the NDAA. They both support the Patriot Act. They both excuse war criminals and torturers. Both mindlessly support Israel in their racist apartheid against the Palestinians, and their warmongering bullshit against Iran. The reason why the only issues that fucking matter never get any air time is because the American people would realize just how little difference there is between their candidates if they ever started talking about them.
You don't get a fucking choice. This election is a reality TV show. The contestants are all picked for you at the start, and then they're slowly eliminated in the primaries one by one. We phone in based on personalities. America is slaughtering thousands and our civil liberties are becoming nonexistent, but TELL ME WHO I WOULD RATHER HAVE A FUCKING BEER WITH.
Authorities have interviewed at least 13 people since 2005 with ties to Iran's government who were seen taking pictures of New York City landmarks, a senior New York Police Department official said Wednesday.
Police consider these instances to be pre-operational surveillance, bolstering their concerns that Iran or its proxy terrorist group could be prepared to strike inside the United States, if provoked by escalating tensions between the two countries.
Mitchell Silber, the NYPD's director of intelligence analysis, told Congress that New York's international significance as a terror target and its large Jewish population make the city a likely place for Iran and Hezbollah to strike. Silber testified before the House Homeland Security about the potential threat. Much of what Silber said echoed his previous statements on the potential threat, but he offered new details Wednesday about past activities in New York.
In May 2005, Silber said, tips led the NYPD to six people on a sight-seeing cruise who were taking pictures and movies of city landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge. In September 2008, police interviewed three people taking pictures of railroad tracks. And in September 2010, federal air marshals saw four people taking pictures and videos at a New York heliport. Interviews with law enforcement revealed that all were associated with the Iranian government, but they were ultimately released and never charged, Silber said.
U.S. officials long have worried that Iran would use Hezbollah to carry out attacks inside the United States. And Iran was previously accused in a disrupted plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. here last year, a plan interpreted in the U.S. intelligence community as a clear message that Iran is not afraid to carry out an attack inside this country.
In January, James Clapper, the top U.S. intelligence official, said some Iranian officials are probably "more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime."
But government officials have said there are no known or specific threats indicating Iranian plans to attack inside the U.S.
Does anyone else feel like this is complete and utter bullshit?
A few things. First of all, the only source for this is the god damn NYPD. They were just exposed for conducting illegal surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods, in which they found absolutely no links to terrorism whatsoever. And the entirety of counterterrorism on U.S. soil is nothing but entrapment. Their excuse of New York having a "large Jewish population" should also raise alarm bells. Iran has a pretty decent-sized Jewish population, and they get along just fine. The supposed criminals in this are "people on a sight-seeing cruise who were taking pictures and movies of city landmarks" which is not a crime as long as you're white. And they supposedly have "ties" to the Iranian government, "but they were ultimately released and never charged." Unless people are guilty until proven innocent now, then not a single person was fucking tied to the Iranian government. Nearly all of the innocent people we've released from Guantanamo had "ties" to terrorism, until we actually investigated and found out they were just normal people who we kidnapped.
Does the media actually investigate this? Do they ever question what the government tells them to report? Of course not. They go about acting like news is a business activity, never presuming that our government is in a position to benefit from stories like this. That's almost worse than a state-sanctioned media, since people actually think there's a free press. We certainly have some nerve, accusing Iran of spying on us, possessing "proxy terrorist groups," as we fly drones over their country and commit actual terrorist attacks on their soil. The Iranian military is structured entirely for defense, and they're not going to invade Israel because they know they'd be wiped off the map. This is nothing but propaganda.
There's a great moment in Christopher Hitchens' autobiography when he describes the first time he got the chance to interview an actual political leader, someone who has real power. That's when you know you've finally made it. His entire world perception comes crashing down when he realizes that he's actually a lot more knowledgeable than the person he's interviewing, and these people don't have a god damn clue what they're doing. The first time someone realizes this, it's almost a religious experience. After you get over your panic mode, you develop a sense of responsibility to gain more knowledge about the world, since the people who actually have the control are completely lacking it. Then you become the annoying kid in the back of the classroom who throws things at the teacher whenever he turns his back.
That is the mindset we need to have towards all positions of power. The problem isn't that power corrupts; it's that positions of power are natural magnets for the corruptible. Someone is going to benefit from these political campaigns, and it isn't going to be you.
There is going to be a war in Iran. It may not be a ground war, it may not even be very huge, but it is going to happen. It probably won't be very soon either. America is pretty war weary from Iraq and Afghanistan, and we're not very enthusiastic about another war right now -- but a few years down the road we're all going to forget and forgive, and the lust for death will once again entrap us all. What people don't seem to understand is that war propaganda has been hammered down to a science. When psychology was first starting to take off in the last century, professors would write quite candidly about controlling the opinions of the masses. America is a semi-democratic country, so those in power can't just smash contrary opinion and sweep people away into secret prisons. That would destroy the illusion of democracy. What they need is media control -- control the spectrum of the debate. The propaganda system is to a democratic society what the boot is to a totalitarian one.
Marx divided the world into the bourgeois and proletariat -- those who have the power, and those who do the powerful's bidding. It could be argued that this view of the world is a little too simplistic, but everyone understands it to an extent, whether they realize it or not (Occupy Wall Street's "99%" vs. "1%" terminology). This class awareness is absolutely essential if you want to understand and fight back against the lies and bullshit of world politics. And we're seeing that happening right now.
An Israeli graphic designer just started a campaign telling the Iranian people that Israelis don't actually want to destroy them. And Iranian citizens responded in kind. This video is pretty beautiful.
Here are a couple comments from the video
I'm an American and I second this message. We too, are sick and tired of war (even if our government is not). Just because our various countries are run by power-hungry sociopaths doesn't mean we (all people of the world) have to follow their examples. And if they don't care about fostering world peace, maybe it's time the people take the initiative first. Let me pledge that I am at peace with all humanity, and I refuse to recognize any human as being my "enemy", whether I am told to or not.
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Im iranian and to be honist this mahmoud ahmadi nijat guy just gets in my nerves i cant hate any one more than him , He Gives us iranians a really bad look, He makes hate between us and other countries for no reason , I think we need to show love to each other and only hate the people that try to make us hate each other .
Mass Effect 3 just came out. It was the last of a trilogy. I beat it this weekend. And now my life feels empty.
I'm pretty sure that there's no other franchise, even among television, that I've ever become more emotionally invested in than Mass Effect. Maybe Song of Ice and Fire. Gaming can get really damn time consuming, not to mention expensive, and those things scare a lot of people off from it. There are others who are still stuck in a mindset that gaming is only for children, unaware of just how many video games have been tailored specifically for adults. It makes me sad that those people will never be able to experience what these games are.
In terms of actual gameplay, it's really nothing special. I don't think Mass Effect 1 aged very well and it's hard for me to go back to it (some disagree); it's like it was in some limbo where it couldn't decide if it wanted to be an RPG or a shooter. This combo can definitely be pulled off (Borderlands), but the combat itself just wasn't anything special. But it steadily improves throughout the series, in my opinion. The third game finally brings it about on par with your standard cover-shooter.
But that's really not the reason why most people play. The big thing about Mass Effect is its sci-fi opera story. And it comes with a hook -- choice. You choose your character's gender, appearance, race, and by your decisions throughout the game, his or her personality. The savior of your universe be a gay black woman, if you wanted. In a genre usually dominated by straight white male protagonists, the choice for a player to change things up a bit is a pretty huge step, if you ask me. You choose what dialogue to say, you choose what decisions to make, and it all has a huge impact on the universe around you. It's obvious that a huge amount of effort went into developing the characters you meet and fight with. Sometimes your choices end in their deaths; sometimes they don't die, and they're able to continue the story with you. And you are able to import your saves from previous games, so your personal story carries over. You get pretty emotionally invested in something that is designed to feel so intensely personal.
Here are screenshots of my two Shepards. I've been playing both since ME1. They're fucking badasses.
Just about everything extraordinary about sci-fi is jammed into the plot. You got your moral questions on whether advanced AI is actually "alive." You got your magical "force"-like essence that allows people to manipulate space-time. You got your massive wars and your interstellar politics and your different races trying to get along with each other. It's your plot, and it can change drastically from player to player. Example:
There are a number of characters you can fall in love with. A big favorite among the guys is a quarian named Tali, because she's just such a damn sweetheart (Tali <3). A few centuries ago, the quarians were kicked off their homeworld of Rannoch by advanced AI they had built called the Geth. The quarians became a race a spacefarers, with no world to return to. Their entire species was confined to live in their fleet. This demolished the quarians' immune systems, and they're now forced to wear suits to fight off disease.
[ME3 QUARIAN MISSIONS SPOILERS, SCROLL DOWN IF YOU WANT TO SKIP]
In Mass Effect 3, you finally make it back to the homeworld of Rannoch. The quarians have finally launched their war against the Geth to retake it. The point where I've embedded in this video was one of my absolute favorite moments in the entire game. It turns out, there was a reaper lying in wait on Rannoch (super advanced organic-synthetic hybrid machines from another dimension, bent on destroying/harvesting all organic life; completely separate from the geth). What Tali said to me right before I went out to fight it just melted my heart: "I love you." A video game should not be allowed to have this much of an impact on me, but it did. Tali loves me. And if Tali wants a homeworld, that's what she's going to fucking get.
Immediately after this fight, I managed to convince the quarian fleet to stand down in their war against the geth. Both the geth and the quarians then allied with the fleet I was building to take on the reapers. Tali hugged me. It was perfect.
I got lucky. Turns out, it's actually pretty difficult to get that outcome. Just to present an example of how horribly wrong these situations can go, go ahead and watch this next video. This is what happened to my brother when he got to this part. He was also romancing Tali. He told me he had tears in his eyes, and his girlfriend made fun of him.
YEAH. FUCKING CHRIST. Not to mention, she told him she loved him five minutes before this happened. I don't know how I could've gone on.
[/END OF SPOILERS]
Tali was who I was romancing, but Garrus was my fucking bro (he's a romance option for female players). This right here was probably my favorite moment in the entire game. It doesn't even have anything to do with the plot, it's just Shepard and Garrus hanging out. You just start thinking about how much you guys have been through, and how this might be your last chance to do something like this together, and I seriously nearly got choked up watching it.
The ending of the game has 90% of the fans pissed off out of their minds. When I reached it, it initially seemed beautifully sad and bittersweet to me. I didn't really feel anger, or sadness. I was just numb. I didn't quite know what to think. But the more I thought about it, I slowly began to realize just how much of a huge letdown it was. I have no problem with how everything turned out in the end. My problem is that it just wasn't executed very well. It was emotionally unsatisfying, and it didn't give you a lot of answers. In comparison to how the fanbase has been reacting, this is a very mild criticism. The fanbase is fucking livid. I have a friend who is obsessed with these games. She helps keep a blog on tumblr about Bioware (the game company), and she very nearly got a job running their twitter account (had a Skype interview with them and everything). She's usually the first to defend everything this company does, but she couldn't be more angry about what happened. She just won't accept it. The first thing she did after beating the game, she tells me, is start brainstorming ideas for a fanfic so she can "fix" it.
And it's terrible that it had to end up like this. Mass Effect 3 was a fantastic game, one the best I've played in the last few years. Taken all together, this trilogy has been the most epic gaming experience of my life. That's what everyone needs be talking about, but the last ten minutes just has everyone so drained and empty that it's all they can think about. Mass Effect threads all across the internet have been derailed into nothing but talk about that damn ending. I've seen people in forums saying they lost sleep over this. Some people have said they have cried over how utterly terrible and unsatisfying it was. Found this in the Mass Effect subreddit.
But there's a theory. And I'm inclined to believe that it's true. I won't go into a lot of detail about it here because I know I have a couple friends who read this blog who haven't beaten ME3 yet. If this theory is true, then everything can be redeemed. What we saw at the end of the game might not be the actual ending. There are little hints here and there that leave things open for future downloadable content. EA bought Bioware a few years ago. They are a morally desolate game company, and many feared (including myself) that this meant the death of everything we love about Bioware. This would not be something beyond EA -- emotionally demolish thousands of loyal fans into an incomplete ending, and make them purchase downloadable content with the "real" ending a short while down the road. And there's actually a lot of plausible speculation that this may be the case. For those of you who have beaten ME3, here's a great video summing up what this theory is all about (massive spoilers, obviously). And here's a forum post breaking down the ending in further detail, moment by moment. And tweets from yesterday are almost close to a confirmation.
If this is true, it would simultaneously be the worst and the greatest moment in the history of video games. Because it would just be such a massive mindfuck for the actual plot. It would be so fucking brilliant. But it would also mean that we have reached the point in video games where you can't even complete the god damn game without paying for "extra" content to see its ending. After I get done celebrating and beating it and bawling my eyes out over the sheer epicness, I will vow to never buy a Bioware game ever again.
And even if it isn't true, I'm going to pretend it is just to make myself feel better. Because that ending was shit.
This is confusing the hell out of me because everyone who's talking about it feels it necessary to sneak in their own opinions, and it's difficult to tell what's fact and what's interpretation. I just want to hear from some fucking law experts who actually know what they're talking about. God damn internet.
r/Politics has been debating this and it's just a god damn clusterfuck, don't even go in there. Jesus. I finally hunted down a good source. This site offers "legal analysis and commentary," which is still over my head a bit, but it's better than nothing. Obama apparently issued a waiver that will effectively end military detentions for non-citizen terrorism suspects. From what I can tell, it's really no different from the statement he issued soon after he signed the NDAA, promising to never follow through with the worst interpretations with its worst provisions. That's sort of irrelevant to me though, because I trusted him enough that he wouldn't pull that shit extensively anyway. That was never the issue for me. The issue is that once he leaves office, these laws will still be on the books. And doesn't look like that's changed.
One problem with a presidential directive is, of course, that it can be rescinded by a future president. And while the new directive represents a laudable effort to narrow some of the NDAA’s most objectionable provisions, it leaves section 1021 of the law untouched.
A much better, if more long-term, approach to remedying the law’s problems would be to repeal or amend it. The hearings held this morning by the Senate Judiciary Committee are a step in that direction.
Considering that Obama's signing of NDAA led to a hysterical exodus of low-info Democratic and Independent support that probably measurably lowered his approval ratings, and could threaten his re-election...
Holy fuck. Just because someone disagrees with your interpretation of what the NDAA does doesn't mean they're "low-info." Fucking jackass. I'm still trying to make sense of what Obama did just now, but it is a fact that the NDAA allowed him to indefinitely detain Americans before he did it, and both he and Bush have been doing these things illegally for the past decade before the bill was even signed. But if we decide to react once they make it legal, we're suddenly "hysterical." Go fuck yourself.
I don't think I hate Obama as a person. For all I know, he's aware of what's at stake and he's trying to fix things a little. But this is all avoiding the key issue: we have allowed things to get so bad that we are debating this. For the sake of argument, let's just say that indefinite detention of American citizens is no longer legal. That still leaves the assassination of American citizens. That leaves the indefinite detention of non-American citizens. That leaves the Patriot Act. Law enforcement is about to get drones. The CIA is probably infiltrating Occupy Wall Street. The internet is being censored, and the FBI now officially considers hacktivists to be more dangerous to America than terrorists. Congress just passed an authoritarian anti-protest law that neuters the first amendment. Not a single Democrat voted against it. Obama supports all of it. The political center has been moved somewhere in between Richard Nixon and Francisco Franco. Whatever Obama just did doesn't change anything, because the culture that allowed it to arise still exists. At best, he is only a flimsy, cracked wall holding back the floodgates. The next time a charismatic tyrant gets into office, it's all over. That could be Obama's second term, for all we know. The most important thing of all is that the system is set up perfectly for a tyrannical government to just snap its jaws around us whenever it wants. I'm fucking paranoid about this, and you should be too. Fascism is a modern phenomenon. It is not a historical fairy tale that's restricted to words on a page.
