Post by Lani on Aug 19, 2004 3:02:17 GMT -5
On TV tonight there was a one hour movie documentary "Soundtrack to War"
www.abc.net.au/rn/history/streets/stories/s1144377.htm
The focus of the report linked above wasn't about how the music was used as a background for slaughter but rather "Iraq has seen an extraordinary outpouring of musical talent from within the ranks of the military."
I'm afraid I can't get past this part of it:
"As the US tanks rolled into Baghdad last April, not only were guns blazing, but music was blaring through internal sound systems and the headphones of the soldiers. The heavy metal guitar sounds of Guns ?n? Roses and Slayer, the angry hip hop lyrics of Eminem and the smooth sounds of Tupac Shakur set the tone for the fall of Baghdad and for the occupation of Iraq."
I wrote the following several months ago and what I'd noticed then was disturbing enough .
---------------------------------------------------------------------
May 15, 2004
What are we creating when we train our military with video 'games'?
A couple of years ago, in the Monterey area, two marines at the Defense Language Institute, meticulously documented their plans to stalk and kill a civilian to see what it was like to kill.
They carried out their plan and stabbed a young woman, repeatedly, then slashed her throat and left her to die. She survived and they've both been tried, convicted and sentenced.
Something that came out during the investigation and trial, and was reported in the local paper, was a 'game' called 'black ops' that the young military men and women play at night, where they go out, armed, and pretend that the civilians they see on the streets and walking on the 'rec trail' that goes from Monterey along the coast to Pacific Grove, are the enemy, and they pretend to 'take them out'.
This practice is apparently not officially 'authorized' nor 'condoned' but it is done regularly and apparently with no real effective efforts by the commanding officers to stop it.
The next piece of information that I stumbled across was that combat situations are programmed into video training 'games'. The 'enemy' is nothing more than an image on a monitor and they play the games by killing as many of these enemies as possible.
As I understand it, one of the characteristics of sociopaths or psychopaths, is that they do not perceive other people, or animals, as being 'real'. Other people don't have feelings, they are not real so it doesn't matter what is done to them.
When that horrific video of marines, in a helicopter, firing at Iraqi farmers plowing a field (one appeared to be a women) was shown , it was very obvious that these marines were acting as if they were playing a video game, they seemed to have no awareness of the reality of their 'targets' as human beings and they even laughed and cheered when they 'took them out'.
By training our military using video game images to represent real people as nothing but targets to be taken out, are we creating hundreds of thousands of sociopaths?
The recent revelations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners would tend to support this possibility.
Add to all that, what Mike Ferner reported in his May 13th CommonDreams.org article about so-called 'basic training'
www.commondreams.org/views04/0513-10.htm
we have the stuff that nightmares are made of.
I know it scares the hell out of me.
___________________________________
And now it comes out that it's all done with a sound track which makes the whole thing even more like playing video war games and further removes our military personnel from being aware that they are killing and maiming real people who had nothing to do with 9 11.
www.abc.net.au/rn/history/streets/stories/s1144377.htm
The focus of the report linked above wasn't about how the music was used as a background for slaughter but rather "Iraq has seen an extraordinary outpouring of musical talent from within the ranks of the military."
I'm afraid I can't get past this part of it:
"As the US tanks rolled into Baghdad last April, not only were guns blazing, but music was blaring through internal sound systems and the headphones of the soldiers. The heavy metal guitar sounds of Guns ?n? Roses and Slayer, the angry hip hop lyrics of Eminem and the smooth sounds of Tupac Shakur set the tone for the fall of Baghdad and for the occupation of Iraq."
I wrote the following several months ago and what I'd noticed then was disturbing enough .
---------------------------------------------------------------------
May 15, 2004
What are we creating when we train our military with video 'games'?
A couple of years ago, in the Monterey area, two marines at the Defense Language Institute, meticulously documented their plans to stalk and kill a civilian to see what it was like to kill.
They carried out their plan and stabbed a young woman, repeatedly, then slashed her throat and left her to die. She survived and they've both been tried, convicted and sentenced.
Something that came out during the investigation and trial, and was reported in the local paper, was a 'game' called 'black ops' that the young military men and women play at night, where they go out, armed, and pretend that the civilians they see on the streets and walking on the 'rec trail' that goes from Monterey along the coast to Pacific Grove, are the enemy, and they pretend to 'take them out'.
This practice is apparently not officially 'authorized' nor 'condoned' but it is done regularly and apparently with no real effective efforts by the commanding officers to stop it.
The next piece of information that I stumbled across was that combat situations are programmed into video training 'games'. The 'enemy' is nothing more than an image on a monitor and they play the games by killing as many of these enemies as possible.
As I understand it, one of the characteristics of sociopaths or psychopaths, is that they do not perceive other people, or animals, as being 'real'. Other people don't have feelings, they are not real so it doesn't matter what is done to them.
When that horrific video of marines, in a helicopter, firing at Iraqi farmers plowing a field (one appeared to be a women) was shown , it was very obvious that these marines were acting as if they were playing a video game, they seemed to have no awareness of the reality of their 'targets' as human beings and they even laughed and cheered when they 'took them out'.
By training our military using video game images to represent real people as nothing but targets to be taken out, are we creating hundreds of thousands of sociopaths?
The recent revelations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners would tend to support this possibility.
Add to all that, what Mike Ferner reported in his May 13th CommonDreams.org article about so-called 'basic training'
www.commondreams.org/views04/0513-10.htm
we have the stuff that nightmares are made of.
I know it scares the hell out of me.
___________________________________
And now it comes out that it's all done with a sound track which makes the whole thing even more like playing video war games and further removes our military personnel from being aware that they are killing and maiming real people who had nothing to do with 9 11.
