Tag: military industrial complex

Do These Documents Prove That Call Of Duty Is A Government PsyOp?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has been available for less than three weeks, but it is already making waves. Breaking records, within ten days, the first-person military shooter video game earned more than $1 billion in revenue. Yet it has also been shrouded in controversy, not least because missions include assassinating an Iranian general clearly based on Qassem Soleimani, a statesman and military leader slain by the Trump administration in 2020, and a level where players must shoot “drug traffickers” attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry, behind titles games as the Guitar Hero, Warcraft, Starcraft, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Crash Bandicoot and Candy Crush Saga series.

Yet a closer inspection of Activision Blizzard’s key staff and their connections to state power, as well as details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state.

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US Empire Views Ukrainians And Russians As Lab Rats For Weapons Testing

A surprisingly frank article by The New York Times titled “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the US proxy war to test its weapons for future use.

“Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come,” write’s NYT’s Lara Jakes.

Jakes writes that “new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight.” These new technological advancements include an information system known as Delta, as well as “remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.”

A former Lithuanian president is quoted as saying, “We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” adding, “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

Yeah, no shit.

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The Military-UFO Complex

Let’s say you’re interested in UFOs. It’s a fun hobby, but you’d like to monetize your efforts. What do you do?

Historically, your avenues were limited. There was entertainment—science fiction movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) or E.T. (1982), purportedly nonfiction books like Chariots of the Gods? (1968) or The Mothman Prophecies (1975). There was journalism, sometimes serious but mostly sensationalist. There were conferences and festivals where you could make money with attendance fees and UFO-themed merchandise.

The final and far less common route was to get someone, preferably someone with a lot of money, to pay you to study the subject.

In 1995 that someone was the Nevada businessman Robert Bigelow. He had already been funding various individual UFO researchers, but that year he decided to set up his own research organization, the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). He invited several luminaries of UFO research to participate, including Hal Puthoff, Jacques Vallée, and John Mack. Not simply a UFO organization, NIDS also probed the question of whether there is life after death. Its hotline (and later website) would take your reports of mysterious black flying triangles, but it also solicited reports of cattle mutilations and visits from “entities”—essentially ghosts.

In a rather odd government decision, the Federal Aviation Administration told pilots who wanted to report a UFO sighting that they should direct it to NIDS.

In 1996, NIDS started focusing on a place called Skinwalker Ranch. A nondescript cattle operation in northeastern Utah, the property was owned by the Sherman family, who for a year had been telling amazing tales of UFO sightings, cattle mutilations, and visits from mysterious entities. It was the trifecta, and so Bigelow bought the ranch and installed a full-time team of NIDS researchers.

For a year, they observed nothing. Accounts vary as to what transpired after that, but it apparently was enough to interest a U.S. senator.

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Ukrainian Army Spotted Using Israeli-Made Armored Vehicles

The Ukrainian Army was spotted using several Israeli-made armored vehicles for the first time in the newly-liberated city of Kherson.

A Twitter account that tracks weapons and equipment supplied to Ukraine showed photos of the Gaia Amir Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles used in the invasion.

They were parked along residential buildings in an unspecified village in the Kherson region and are believed to have taken a large part in Ukraine’s retaking of the city.

While there is no information on how these vehicles appeared in the war-torn nation, Israel has made it clear that it would not supply military aid to Kyiv.

The Middle Eastern country only agreed to send humanitarian aid and early warning systems due to “operational restrictions.”

Meanwhile, a video released by a Russian Telegram channel showed a Gaia Amir MRAP vehicle targeted and destroyed by a Lancet suicide missile.

This fueled speculation that the unreported delivery of Israeli-made armored vehicles to Ukraine has been going on for a while.

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Palmer Luckey Made a VR Headset That Kills the User If They Die in the Game

Palmer Luckey, defense contractor and the father of modern virtual reality, has created a VR headset that will kill the user if they die in the game they’re playing. He did this to commemorate the anime, Sword Art Online. Luckey is the founder of Oculus, a company he sold to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. This is the technology that Mark Zuckerberg rebranded as the foundation for Meta. 

Luckey’s killer headset looks like a Meta Quest Pro hooked up with three explosive charge modules that sit above the screen. The charges are aimed directly at the user’s forebrain and, should they go off, would obliterate the head of the user.

“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me—you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it,” Luckey wrote in a blog post explaining the project. “Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game.”

According to Luckey, the anime and light novel series Sword Art Online made people interested in virtual reality, especially in Japan. In SAO, players put on a NeveGear virtual reality headset and log into a new game called Sword Art Online only to discover a mad scientist has trapped them in a virtual world. The players have to fight their way through a 100 floor dungeon to escape. If they die in the game, they die in real life. Luckey published his post about the killer headset on November 6, the day that Sword Art Online went live in the world of the game’s fiction. 

“The good news is that we are halfway to making a true NerveGear. The bad news is that so far, I have only figured out the half that kills you,” Luckey said. In SAO, the NerveGear kills players with a microwave emitter. According to Luckey, the device’s creator  “was able to hide from his employees, regulators, and contract manufacturing partners. I am a pretty smart guy, but I couldn’t come up with any way to make anything like this work, not without attaching the headset to gigantic pieces of equipment.”

Unable to make the perfect recreation, Luckey opted for explosive modular charges. He tied them to a narrow-band photo sensor that detects the headset views a specific red screen that flashes at a specific frequency. “When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user,” Luckey said. 

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US Space Plane Orbits Earth For 900 Consecutive Days With Mysterious Payloads

U.S. Space Force’s robotic X-37B space plane keeps extending its flight-duration record, orbiting around the Earth for 900 days, according to Space.com. 

The reusable space plane designed and built by Boeing is flying its sixth mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 or OTV-6, which was initially launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on May 17, 2020. It remains unclear when the top-secret mission will end. 

On Jul. 7, Boeing Space tweeted the X-37 “has set another endurance record — as it has on every mission since it first launched in 2010.” 

Many of OTV-6’s experiments and activities are classified. But some experimental payloads have been made public, such as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module, a small device that converts solar power into radio frequency microwave energy. 

Space.com expands more on the non-classified experiments and technologies being tested:

“Technologies being tested in the X-37B program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing.”

The X-37B is similar to the retired space shuttle, although the space plane is a fraction of the size, coming in at 29 feet in length and 9.5 feet high, with a wingspan of 15 feet. 

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Kiev slated to receive drone-killing VAMPIREs

Ukraine is expected to soon receive a number of so-called VAMPIRE counter-drone systems, according to Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder, who confirmed Washington’s commitment to supply Kiev with air defense capabilities. The statement came amid Russia’s continued strikes targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. 

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Ryder said the US government has yet to secure a contract for the laser-guided missile launchers but expects one to be reached within the next few months. “Right now we’re anticipating delivery to be mid-2023,” he explained, noting that “air defense continues to be a priority.”  

The VAMPIRE, or Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment, can be installed on the cargo bed of almost any civilian truck and uses laser-guided munitions capable of hitting both ground and airborne targets, including unmanned aerial vehicles. Although it is not explicitly advertised as an anti-drone weapon, systems similar to the VAMPIRE have been used extensively in Ukraine for that purpose.   

These systems are part of a $3 billion arms package for Ukraine announced by the Pentagon back in August. This also includes the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, which Washington also says will be arriving in Ukraine “in the very near future.” 

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The Military-Industrial Media Complex Strikes Again

Tens of thousands protested against the skyrocketing cost of living and against Macron in France October 16, led by left-wing politician Jean Luc Melenchon, but there were few front page or top-of-the hour headlines in the U.S. Huge protests occurred in Rome the same day to demand an end to Italy’s involvement in NATO, but no coverage on the west side of the Atlantic. Thousands protesting in Paris October 22 against NATO, but little notice in North America. Massive protests against NATO and inflation due to sanctions on Russian energy in France, Germany and Austria in September, but little news of it here in the heart of the empire. German police beat citizens protesting energy shortages and record-high inflation, both due to Russia sanctions, the week of October 17, but that was not covered in the USA. Seventy thousand Czechs protested in Prague September 3 against NATO involvement in Ukraine, demanding gas from Russia (before some mysterious imperial somebody with means and motive blew up Nordstream 1 and 2, probably to nip the political effects of those protests in the bud) and ending the war, but that got little coverage in U.S. corporate media.

Ever get the sense there are things our media hides from us? Hmm. Ever wonder why enormous protests against the policies of the Exceptional Empire and its attack dog, NATO, seem, um, to be downplayed? Ever think our corporate news outlets behave more like the propaganda arm of our neoconservative state department and military than a free press? Well, if so, you may be onto something.

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Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now

Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination.

The latest example of this trend is an article titled “Could America Win a New World War? — What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia” published by Foreign Affairs, a magazine that is owned and operated by the supremely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

“The United States and its allies must plan for how to simultaneously win wars in Asia and Europe, as unpalatable as the prospect may seem,” writes the article’s author Thomas G Mahnken, adding that in some ways “the United States and its allies will have an advantage in any simultaneous war” in those two continents.

But Mahnken doesn’t claim a world war against Russia and China would be a walk in the park; he also argues that in order to win such a war the US will need to — you guessed it — drastically increase its military spending.

“The United States clearly needs to increase its defense manufacturing capacity and speed,” Mahnken writes. “In the short term, that involves adding shifts to existing factories. With more time, it involves expanding factories and opening new production lines. To do both, Congress will have to act now to allocate more money to increase manufacturing.”

But exploding US weapons spending is still inadequate, Mahnken argues, saying that “the United States should work with its allies to increase their military production and the size of their weapons and munitions stockpiles” as well.

Mahnken says this world war could be sparked “if China initiated a military operation to take Taiwan, forcing the United States and its allies to respond,” as though there would be no other options on the table besides launching into nuclear age World War Three to defend an island next to the Chinese mainland that calls itself the Republic of China. He writes that “Moscow, meanwhile, could decide that with the United States bogged down in the western Pacific, it could get away with invading more of Europe,” demonstrating the bizarre Schrödinger’s cat western propaganda paradox that Putin is always simultaneously (A) getting destroyed and humiliated in Ukraine and (B) on the cusp of waging hot war with NATO.

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