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[- Playing Stud on the Cultural Frontlines
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By MartinLucas, Section review-a-rama
Posted on Tue Jun 10th, 2003 at 07:28:20 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
The US Defence Intelligence Agency starts a national fad with a new deck of cards "Iraqi Most Wanted', while Ruckus responds with its own set of "War Profiteers"

 

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Playing Cards in general and poker specifically have become key metaphorical tropes as the struggle over popular cultural high points and the significance of US foreign policy continues today on a playing field dear to Discordia website participants, the card table.

It was only in April that the DOD announced the release of their deck, "Iraqi Most Wanted," elegant with camouflage backs and a pair of jokers. The NYT business section of June 9th reports that sales are brisk as some one million decks were sold online by 1500 companies, beating even the `pet rock' craze. A visit to the www.GreatUSAFlags.com website gives you the skinny:

Now you can own the one true collector's item from Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is the same 55-card deck given to Coalition soldiers featuring Iraq's 52 "Most-Wanted" leaders.

The Times article by Saul Hansell also quotes Dan Head, the VP for e-commerce of the company Sportsline in a notion that Paul Virilio fans will want to ponder: "This fad was related to a war that was going to be so short that it would be difficult for a Target or a Kmart to buy the product and get it into 2,000 stores before the war was over."

Meanwhile on the progressive side, web browsers can find www.warprofiteer.org . Here The Ruckus Society has created a handsome deck of its own. The motives are not overtly commercial. The $10 is a donation, and the quantities are not in the millions.

Having said that the cards are downloadable as a PDF from the website, as is appropriate for cards designed more for the activist than the collector. In fact, I first ran across them reprinted on flyer-sized sheets and dotted around the halls of Manhattan's Hunter College. And while in some cases the cards may be said to evince the lack of humor said to characterize left cultural output, they are informative, certainly rather more so than the "Iraq's Most Wanted" cards, which were designed by the Defence Intelligence Agency.

Visitors to www.ruckus.org will learn that:

The WarProfiteers deck exposes some of the real war criminals in the US's endless War of Terror. This is no Sunday bridge club. These are individuals and institutions that stack the deck against democracy in the rigged game of global power. Exposing their place in the house of cards illuminates the links among corporations, institutions, and government officials that profit from endless war.

See You and Raise You...

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Playing Stud on the Cultural Frontlines | 1 comments
[new] some other jokers (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#1)
by Anonymous Stranger on Fri Jun 20th, 2003 at 01:12:14 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME

The Trade Regulation Organization - former WTO, aka "the Yes Men" - has released its own deck as well, dealing out more doubt as to who the real criminals of the Iraq war are. See http://gatt.org/regime





 
Playing Stud on the Cultural Frontlines | 1 comments
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