Virtual Guantánamo

I was able to login to Second Life and made it farther than I had before.  The last time I earnestly attempted to enter Second Life, in 2007, I don't think I was able to find clothes, or if I was dressed, I didn't realize it.  This time I knew that I was wearing clothes and what they looked like.  I didn't really enjoy it.  I went to a CNN news media news destination and it had a bunch of cars looking at a screen like a drive-in, it said to watch click on the screen.  When I did that it brought up a regular html page in my browser, which seemed a little silly.

I did do searches on "political documentaries" and "Sundance Films," and other seemingly relevant terms but to no avail.  Mostly I got text advertising.  The atmosphere was appropriately Haloweeny but I found the virtual rats scurrying about a little upsetting.  I could tell that some people were talking to me just in a basic flirty type of way which made me uncomfortable.  And it seemed like I was privvy to other people's conversations, which didn't really make much sense.

In May I saw the film Life 2.0 and wrote a review for The Guardsman.

I watched the description of the Guantánamo "game" in 2.0 and have absolutely no desire to experience it.  I feel like that kind of replication is preaching to the choir.  People who would find themselves in the position of exploring how horrible the prison is probably already know it's horrible.  I think it's more important to provide people with some sort of action they can take to help positive outcomes result. 

The horror of the situation is easy to parlay and the movie did say something that I must have heard before but that never resonated and would probably resonate with people who are more conservative than I am and that is that allowing violations on treatment of prisoners of war gives permission to other countries to treat our people negatively. 

I believe the film said a lot of important things but it was frustrating to me because I felt it focused on too many topics.  It's hard to realize how important each individual story is when it is juxtaposed with about ten other situations which are equally egregious.   I feel like treatment of the prisoners and going deeper into the identities of those people who are in the prison would have been helpful because some of them are bad people but not necessarily all of them.

The story of the family that was taken as prisoners was equally compelling and represented a different experience that needed to be addressed.  I would have liked to have known more about them, where did the younger children go, what made the government suspicious (if anything).  

The interview of you at BAVC was also interesting, but It seems like having it be virtual in Second Life didn't necessarily add anything to it.  Couldn't it have been a regular video?