From Volume 6, Issue 47 of EIR Online, Published Nov. 20, 2007

United States News Digest

New Study: Violent Video Games Cause Aggression

Nov. 15 (EIRNS)—The media is lying when it reports that there is "no proof that video games cause violence." Two professors at Iowa State University will shortly publish a study which found that elementary school students who played multiple violent video games were 263% more at risk to become aggressive than those who played only non-violent games. The study looked at the behavior of 430 elementary school students, 607 middle school students, and 1,441 teenagers. The study, by Douglas Gentile, who is a professor of psychology, and his father, a retired educational psychology professor, will be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence according to CBC News.

The professors said, "We were able to show that students who play multiple violent games actually changed to have a greater hostile attribution bias, which also increased their aggressive behaviors over prior levels."

Blogs Dehumanize People

Nov. 14 (EIRNS)—An article in today's Washington Post "Style" section, entitled, "When blogs bite, they hurt! The Dark Side of Cyberspace," laments the tendency of blogs to bring out the "nasty" in people. Picking up on how even the slightest of foibles in people can become the subject of "unending gossip," the article notes that this tendency was known from day one of computer communications. "The cloaking anonymity of the internet provides a safe place for unleashing the id," the article says. Former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perrymore Barlow, now head of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that Cyberspace "has a way of making us feel like other people are informational artifacts. If you cut data it doesn't bleed."

The origin and development of computer networking, understood in these circles as computer "communication," was done under the protective wing of the U.S. Department of Defense, as part of the Cold War-era DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) program. IPTO, or Information Processing Techniques Office, the division dealing with computer networking, was directed, not by an engineer, but by a behavioral psychiatrist, J.C.R. Licklider. The Post quotes one of his many biographers, Mitch Waldrop, who notes that, "Bad behavior online goes back to at least the 1960s [sic]. As soon as possible, people were doing it," a fact that could not have escaped the peering presence of Licklider and his pioneering psychos.

This information fed directly into the thinking behind the creation of the "Revolution in Military Affairs," aspects of which can be seen today, all the way from Baghdad to the "spontaneous" eruption of "video-game" killers.

Hoyer: No More Legislation This Year

Nov. 13, (EIRNS)—According to the Congressional newspaper, The Hill, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has decided that "there would be no initiated legislation out of the House after the 16th of November." His announcement amounts to shutting down the 110th Congress for the rest of the year. "What I've told the committee chairmen," Hoyer said, "is that the only business that I will schedule time for, will be the finishing of business that we've already initiated, and that we are getting back from the Senate, whether it's appropriations bills or other conference reports on authorization bills, energy being one."

Indoctrinating Americans in Roman Imperial Policy

Nov. 13 (EIRNS)—The Army counterinsurgency manual, written under the direction of Gen. David Petraeus, has been published as a mass circulation paperback by the University of Chicago Press. It is available for $15 from your local bookstore.

As was made clear at an event on the manual, sponsored by the Center for a New American Security in Washington this morning, the intention behind the mass publication of the manual goes beyond the reshaping of the Army, which is already happening. It is to reshape the strategic outlook of the nation as a whole. The object of the counterinsurgency campaign is no longer just the subject population, such as the population of Iraq, but now, it is also the American population, as well.

Sarah Sewall, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and a participant in the process that produced the manual, writes in the introduction that "Iraq has bred a familiar cynicism that risks disengaging Americans from their government and from the rest of the world. This field manual directly addresses this phenomenon."

The object is an imperial policy modelled on the Roman Empire, which is a complete break with the U.S. Constitution and history. "This is what the Nazis would have done if they had not been defeated," says Lyndon LaRouche.

Will George Soros Follow Jack Abramoff to Prison?

Nov. 13 (EIRNS)—George Soros and Los Angeles film-maker Rob Reiner are involved in a new "non-profit" group called Democracy Alliance. According to coverage in today's Los Angeles Times, this group of "investors," which includes Taco Bell heir Rob McKay, were recently in Washington, D.C., for a strategy session. The Democracy Alliance (DA) will fund a host of additional non-profits, through which (presumably Democratic Party) campaign money can be channeled, but not traced. There are no limits on contributions from "charities," and they don't have to list their donors with the Federal Election Commission. The law allows non-profits to be "very aggressive politically, while shielding donors from disclosure," notes former Federal Elections Commission chairman Michael E. Toner. "That is a very attractive combination."

The Democracy Alliance was started in August 2005, where "at least" 80 millionaires pledged $1 million apiece, according to the Washington Post. A more recent article in Salon.com reveals that additional members include Soros's son Jonathan, "former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley, San Francisco Bay Area donors Susie Tompkins Buell and Mark Buell ... as well as New York financiers like Steven Gluckstern."

The office of the DA is in the building of the Tides Foundation in San Francisco. A look into the networked charities connected with the Alliance reveals that this is the "civil activist" wing of the Democratic Party, the generational heirs of the '68er Students for a Democratic Society.

Although the article makes no mention of it, this is the exact formula pioneered by (now imprisoned) Republican "lobbyist" Jack Abramoff.

California Lawmaker Warns Against Border Mercenaries

Nov. 12 (EIRNS)—California Democratic Congressman Bob Filner is warning that if the Blackwater USA mercenary outfit is permitted to build an 824-acre military-style training facility in the town of Potrero, east of San Diego, and eight miles from the Mexican border, this will have dangerous implications for democracy in the United States.

Echoing warnings also made by LaRouche PAC, in the context of Felix Rohatyn's "Revolution in Military Affairs," Filner told a protest gathering last April, on the sidelines of the California Democratic Party Convention, that Blackwater's plans were "a dangerous development.... For a democracy to have mercenaries ... if the country wants to do a job, we should do it as citizens." The government "can't get enough people to go to Iraq for this horrible war, so they hire them. That's the first stage of moving toward a dictatorship."

"This is not just paranoid thinking," Filner warned. "We've seen this in history. We've seen democracies fall when mercenaries are involved. We can go back to the Praetorian Guard, or the Hessians.... This is a very dangerous development."

The Congressman told Salon.com in October that the complex that will be known as "Blackwater West" is an ominous sign of plans to, minimally, privatize border security. He noted that the Minutemen vigilante group is already present on the border, and if Blackwater moves in with its operations—which could extend far beyond border security—it will make things even worse. "You don't want armies around who will sell out to the highest bidder.... The border is a very sensitive area, and if Blackwater operates the way they do in Iraq—shoot first and ask questions later—my constituents are at risk."

Filner told constituents back in April that "we have to say ... we're not only not going to allow this to happen in our backyard ... it's not going to happen anywhere." Blackwater isn't subject to military or civilian law, he said. They've been investigated for lack of accountability. "This is disgraceful. No mercenaries for America!"

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