Fifth Way
Jedi Council Member
Garry Webb brought us "Dark Alience" uncovering how the CIA started the 80s crack epidemic in California by flying in cocaine from Middle America with army cargo planes and Green Barrettes protection. They thought this was a good way to raise money (Iran-Conta).
Webb was recently suicided with two revolver shots in the head. COINTELPRO-pro agent Michael Ruppert even went to his family personaly in the attempt to debunk the murder.
Anyway - This was his last story. The original (with photos) is here:
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=oid:32361
The Killing Game
For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That's why the Army spent $10 million developing its own. But there's a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.
By Gary Webb
Clan warfare: LANatomas guns down members of a Seattle clan during a round of league play. Carson Loane, foreground, patrols the left flank while clan leader Jeff Muramoto, center, calls out strategies to his squad.
Photo By Larry Dalton
www.counter-strike.net/
It's Tuesday, practice night for the LANatomas Counter-Strike clan. Five young men wearing headphones are sitting side by side before a bank of computer monitors, fingers flickering over keyboards, mouses clicking, yelling out warnings to each other. The room, a narrow computer-gaming center in a suburban strip mall, is pleasantly dim, lit with black light and neon. Blue Oyster Cult thrums through the sound system, but not loudly.
On-screen, the clan creeps quietly down a dark hallway of an oil pumping station in Russia, assault rifles and flash-bang grenades in hand, looking to kill five terrorists who were attempting to dynamite the complex. They think their enemies are hiding somewhere in ambush, hoping to draw LANatomas into a trap, and they're right.
"They're in CT spawn!" one of the clan shouts suddenly. "Left side!"
"I see them!" his neighbor yells back. "They're stacked!"
"Don't peek," their clan leader warns. "I'll get them." Before he can move, he is riddled with terrorist bullets and slumps to the ground. The rest of the clan quickly meets the same bloody fate, and the message "terrorists win" flashes on the screen. The game resets, and they begin another round.
LANatomas is an hour into its twice-weekly practice, getting ready for its season opener Sunday night against res.ilience, a clan from the Seattle area. In preseason standings, LANatomas is the top-ranked team in the Pacific Conference of the Cyberathlete Amateur League's Main Division, and the members hope to claw their way into the Premier Division this season, one step from the big time. But at the moment, the Premier Division clan they're practicing against--Eminence, from Dallas--is mowing them down.
"Dude, we are getting raped," clan leader Jeff Muramoto mutters.
Looking over their shoulders is Craig Wentworth, a slight, pale, blond man wearing narrow glasses and a red T-shirt. Wentworth, 20, is the clan's veteran and has been playing Counter-Strike fanatically for five years. A junior at California State University, Sacramento, he decided recently to step back, citing the time required to remain competitive in league play. Now he just drops by to watch and advise.
"We were playing seven days a week, hours and hours a day, and I just got burned out," he says. Playing under the name Las1K, Wentworth says he won about $2,000 in cash and another $2,000 in computer parts in Counter-Strike tournaments. "Not bad for a hobby. I was one of the more famous players around here. A lot of people knew me."
Muramoto, 21, looks up at Wentworth with a grin of affirmation. "Dude. You were own-ness."
But Las1K hasn't laid down his weapons for good and he knows it. "You always come back," he says quietly, watching his friends blast their way through a phalanx of terrorists. "You get pissed, take off for a few months, but you always come back to it."
For anyone who hasn't seen one of these games--known as first-person shooters--here's the gist of them. You're placed in a combat zone, armed with a weapon of your choice and sent out to find and kill other players. Knife them, club them, blow them apart with a shotgun, set them afire, vaporize them with a shoulder-launched missile, drill them through the head with a sniper rifle--the choice is yours.
Depending on the game, blood will spray, mist or spout. Sometimes your kills collapse in crumpled heaps, clutching their throats and twitching convincingly. Sometimes they cry in pain with human voices. Their bodies lie there for a while, so you can feed off them if necessary, restoring your own health. Then you can grab their weapons and set off to find another victim, assuming you don't get killed first.
It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but among young men it's far and away the most popular genre of computer game. Some psychologists and parents worry that such games are desensitizing a large, impressionable segment of the population to violence and teaching them the wrong things. But that depends on your point of view. If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there's no better way of finding them.
It's why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit. For anyone who thinks kids aren't learning playing shooter games, read on.
First-person shooters originally were designed as contests between man and machine, but, as with many things, the advent of high-speed Internet connections changed that. Now, from the privacy of your home, you can take on players the world over. Best of all, it costs nothing to play other than the initial price of the game. (Playing from an Internet caf
Webb was recently suicided with two revolver shots in the head. COINTELPRO-pro agent Michael Ruppert even went to his family personaly in the attempt to debunk the murder.
Anyway - This was his last story. The original (with photos) is here:
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=oid:32361
The Killing Game
For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That's why the Army spent $10 million developing its own. But there's a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.
By Gary Webb
Clan warfare: LANatomas guns down members of a Seattle clan during a round of league play. Carson Loane, foreground, patrols the left flank while clan leader Jeff Muramoto, center, calls out strategies to his squad.
Photo By Larry Dalton
www.counter-strike.net/
It's Tuesday, practice night for the LANatomas Counter-Strike clan. Five young men wearing headphones are sitting side by side before a bank of computer monitors, fingers flickering over keyboards, mouses clicking, yelling out warnings to each other. The room, a narrow computer-gaming center in a suburban strip mall, is pleasantly dim, lit with black light and neon. Blue Oyster Cult thrums through the sound system, but not loudly.
On-screen, the clan creeps quietly down a dark hallway of an oil pumping station in Russia, assault rifles and flash-bang grenades in hand, looking to kill five terrorists who were attempting to dynamite the complex. They think their enemies are hiding somewhere in ambush, hoping to draw LANatomas into a trap, and they're right.
"They're in CT spawn!" one of the clan shouts suddenly. "Left side!"
"I see them!" his neighbor yells back. "They're stacked!"
"Don't peek," their clan leader warns. "I'll get them." Before he can move, he is riddled with terrorist bullets and slumps to the ground. The rest of the clan quickly meets the same bloody fate, and the message "terrorists win" flashes on the screen. The game resets, and they begin another round.
LANatomas is an hour into its twice-weekly practice, getting ready for its season opener Sunday night against res.ilience, a clan from the Seattle area. In preseason standings, LANatomas is the top-ranked team in the Pacific Conference of the Cyberathlete Amateur League's Main Division, and the members hope to claw their way into the Premier Division this season, one step from the big time. But at the moment, the Premier Division clan they're practicing against--Eminence, from Dallas--is mowing them down.
"Dude, we are getting raped," clan leader Jeff Muramoto mutters.
Looking over their shoulders is Craig Wentworth, a slight, pale, blond man wearing narrow glasses and a red T-shirt. Wentworth, 20, is the clan's veteran and has been playing Counter-Strike fanatically for five years. A junior at California State University, Sacramento, he decided recently to step back, citing the time required to remain competitive in league play. Now he just drops by to watch and advise.
"We were playing seven days a week, hours and hours a day, and I just got burned out," he says. Playing under the name Las1K, Wentworth says he won about $2,000 in cash and another $2,000 in computer parts in Counter-Strike tournaments. "Not bad for a hobby. I was one of the more famous players around here. A lot of people knew me."
Muramoto, 21, looks up at Wentworth with a grin of affirmation. "Dude. You were own-ness."
But Las1K hasn't laid down his weapons for good and he knows it. "You always come back," he says quietly, watching his friends blast their way through a phalanx of terrorists. "You get pissed, take off for a few months, but you always come back to it."
For anyone who hasn't seen one of these games--known as first-person shooters--here's the gist of them. You're placed in a combat zone, armed with a weapon of your choice and sent out to find and kill other players. Knife them, club them, blow them apart with a shotgun, set them afire, vaporize them with a shoulder-launched missile, drill them through the head with a sniper rifle--the choice is yours.
Depending on the game, blood will spray, mist or spout. Sometimes your kills collapse in crumpled heaps, clutching their throats and twitching convincingly. Sometimes they cry in pain with human voices. Their bodies lie there for a while, so you can feed off them if necessary, restoring your own health. Then you can grab their weapons and set off to find another victim, assuming you don't get killed first.
It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but among young men it's far and away the most popular genre of computer game. Some psychologists and parents worry that such games are desensitizing a large, impressionable segment of the population to violence and teaching them the wrong things. But that depends on your point of view. If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there's no better way of finding them.
It's why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit. For anyone who thinks kids aren't learning playing shooter games, read on.
First-person shooters originally were designed as contests between man and machine, but, as with many things, the advent of high-speed Internet connections changed that. Now, from the privacy of your home, you can take on players the world over. Best of all, it costs nothing to play other than the initial price of the game. (Playing from an Internet caf
