American Madness

Who remembers the movie Short Circuit? You know, the one about the robot with a shoulder-mounted laser who gets zapped by lightening and becomes a sentient catch-phrase-spewing robot with a shoulder-mounted laser who moves in with Steve Guttenberg and produced a number of (mostly straight-to-video) sequels.

Well, the army was inspired and produced 3 of their own robots, which have recently been deployed in Iraq. The 3 “special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system[s],” affectionately referred to as SWORDS (by those who clearly have trouble with proper acronyms), aren’t armed with lasers, but rather M249 machine guns, capable of firing up to 850 rounds per minute (though these are probably only capable of something closer to 85 rounds a minute).

For now, the SWORDS are patrolling the streets in Iraq and have not yet fired their guns. For those of you worrying about them getting struck by lightening and searching out Steve Guttenberg, the program manager for the SWORDS Project, Michael Zecca, assures us: “the machines now come with kill switches, in case there’s any odd behavior. ‘So now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy.’” I know I feel safer now.

Also, fortunately, the SWORDS are not autonomous sentient units, they are all radio controlled and need someone at the remote controls to fire their weapons (though for a while they did have a tendency to spin out of control when they were out of radio range). To get a glimpse of these modern day Johnny 5’s in action, check out the the video they have of them over on Wired’s Danger Room blog.

“British forces have denied rumors that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra. UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”

Don’t be coy with us Major Shearer. We at AM have long known about “Project Badger,” a joint collaboration between DARPA and the British military.

You can’t make this up!

The NYTimes reports on the large peaceful uprising in Najaf.

The story includes this photo caption:

Col. Steven Boylan, an American military spokesman and aide to the commander of all American forces in Iraq, praised the peaceful nature of the demonstration, saying Iraqis “could not have done this four years ago,” the A.P. reported.

So…the peaceful nature of the protest is…wait for it!….wait for it!…evidence that our occupation has been fruitful! I love it!

I guess if the Iraqi rebellion were to build an atomic weapon and detonate it on a major U.S. city, the Bush administration would praise it as a sign of increasing Iraqi technological sophistication under our occupation! “It’s a clear sign that we’ve made inroads in improving the educational system,” says Col. Ima Flunky.

Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hunger.html?hp

Torture continues. Say what you want about the Khmer Rouge, the Hutu/Tootsie massacres, even the Stalinist purges, at least many of these atrocities were carried out in hot blood. Not so the current U.S. policy for Guantanamo detainees, which reminds me of a line from the movie Payback: “I’ll make this last 3 weeks,” says a mafia boss to a man from whom he is trying to beat information. “I’ll give you a blood transfusion to keep you alive.”

Even as detainees attempt to protest their horrendous, inhumane, sadistic treatment with hunger strikes, as they perhaps attempt to end their lives, our government does not allow that to happen. While not bringing charges against these men, they instead strap them into full body restraint chairs and force feed tubes down their nostrils. Does anyone doubt that this is yet another form of torture?

You know what? If this is what we’ve sunk to, if this is the state of our democracy, maybe we deserve what we get.

Take a look at the vlog Alive in Baghdad. It is much more interesting than the standard news coverage. Some videos are hard to take. (iTunes feed, RSS video feed).