US Military cognitive dissonance hits a new low

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech () cryptorights org>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 16:24:55 -0800
To: dave () farber net
Subject: <[For IP?]> US Military cognitive dissonance hits a new low

So here I am thinking, "Hmm, I wonder whether or not all this War on
Terrorism (TM) business has affected our national DEFCON?" (DEFense
CONdition; in peacetime it is usually stable at 5; as war becomes more
imminent the number decreases, with DEFCON 1 being "at war with nukes",
as I understand it anyway.)  This seems to me to be a pretty reasonable
question/concern for any American citizen (or any foreign one for that
matter, given that we have the most powerful military in the world and
are sitting on the hugest stockpile of bombs and other ordnance and
weapons in human history.  Not to mention there's something
suspiciously similar to a war going on right this moment.)

Google reveals nothing useful, even with searches like "NORAD DoD
DEFCON current status".  All I get is stuff about hacker conventions
and video games, and a few bits about what the DEFCON was at some
former point in time.  Ask.com, when fed the simple question, "What is
the current DEFCON status?" yields similar results.  The only way this
can happen is if the US government simply doesn't provide any
easy-to-find information about this.

So I try a second tactic.  I head over to www.af.mil (the US Air Force,
which controls NORAD, which controls the status of the DEFCON.)  They
even have a big, long index page of all Air Force websites.  Is NORAD
listed?  Nope.  What about a DEFCON page?  Nope.  Shees, even "No Such
Agency" has a pretty elaborate website these days; why doesn't NORAD?

As if this "uninformation" situation were not bad enough, the real
cognitive dissonance slammed home actually as soon as I got to the Air
Force home page.
The top news item on it is a *chow line in a mess hall*.  I'm couldn't
make this up, go look for yourself.  What about WHAT AND WHO THE HELL
ARE WE BOMBING TODAY?  This is beyond disinformation and propaganda;
it's more like an utter disconnect from reality and our citizenry's
urgent concerns regarding that reality.  If I were a more Zen person
I'd probably find this funny.

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________
  Stanton McCandlish                     chief communications officer
  +1.415.334.5533 #1                  CryptoRights Foundation (501c3)
  https://www.cryptorights.org/       Securing Human Rights Worldwide


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