research for d&ad armyjobs brief

The idea came up upon first looking at the d&ad briefs (see previous post). After taking part last year, then seeing the final winner,

it became very difficult for me wanting to participate this year. The fact that I promised myself after finishing my business course that I would never again take part in the advertising or marketing industry, makes it a bit harder. This year the briefs are all relate to the advertising industry, apart from the Bob Dylan brief, that I won't even start on discussing. Peter and I decided on doing the armyjobs brief. It is a difficult task as we want to make a statement against the army and war, yet keepi

ng with the objectives set. Up until yesterday we didn't even know whether we could 'get away' with it. But thanks to Micheal's support

we're diving head first into it. Yes some of you share a different opinion on the army, and that would be perfectly coherent and understandable in the 1800's. Not in 2008. If a person tries running through a wall and gets a bump on the head every time, after a couple of times, the learning part of the brain triggers the result

'you cannot go through a wall'. The same can be applied to a variety of situations.

A bit of brainstorming in class, led to us having countless concepts and issues wanting to bring up. Some of the 'evils' that come up are lack of compensations for families who have lost a loved one at war. Lack of compensation for injured soldiers. Mental problems, rehabilitation, nightmares, panic attacks and general post-dramatic stress disorder. Furthermore, the excessive spending in the war machine, leads to lower funding for education. Peter suggested we narrow down these concepts to three ideas or else we'd go on

forever in research. We ended up with the following three concepts:

• Surveillance/hacking/web tracking. Showing the more advanced side of the army, which requires more qualifications and so on. Even though the soldiers will be spending time archiving people with beards and the name Mohammed into databases.
• Money spent on the army means no support for returning soldiers since the funds have already been spent on machinery, bombs and so on.
• An antithesis between the life a person could leave outside the army in comparison with being in the army. Outside the army one can shoot bearded, inaudibly speaking pixels in front of a screen holding an xbox 360 controller. In the army one can use that same 360 xbox controller to kill real human beings, sometimes women and children, or red cross buildings.

With that in mind we begun researching on different antiwar websites, online newspapers to backup o

ur argument. One needs not look far to start uncovering the pile of infectious, unpunished crimes the army is responsible for. Even though 174 UK soldiers have died in Iraq since the operation 'liberate iraq' (hehe), the newspaper independent says there is a total of 6,700 ca

sualties including injuries (if you wanna make an omelet you gotta break some eggs). Naturally there will be casualties. Naturally, the government and army promised that there will be compensation

for injured soldiers who pledged themselves in defending the

ir nation (not attacking an invisible enemy). Naturally, though, history taught as that governments and the army tend to lie a lot. How can they pay for compensation and support when the UK government has spent over £3.1 billion in Iraq. That's not so bad as the US who spent $596.1 billion. No wonder, returning soldiers are kicked out of their homes and blow their heads off. The army says 'we take care of our own', and a classic example would be that of Steve Baldwin who suffering post-traumatic stress from a bomb attack that killed three of his friends got fired from the army (clever way to avoid paying anything) on the terms of temperamental unsuitability. Riiight. Many soldiers are also suffering from headaches and other diseases caused from the US *not* using chemical weapons in Iraq. As they didn't use them in the Gulf war. And all this to support a Nazi

supporter's complex syndrome. At the same time, the system is stinking from the inside, with the military spreading its tentacles within education by funding military projects. All of this is happening not to liberate Iraq, nor to arrest and kill the arch enemy of the world, be it Osama or Sadam,

but, and apologies for breaking that little bubble for some, *drum roll*, oil. Yes, oil.

For oil, we have about 100.000 US soldiers injured, over 3000 killed and over 1 million Iraqis dead. But this is not considered genocide like Rwanda or Armenia. Nope. This is freedom, democracy and protection. It's all good and arguable if you're looking out the other side of the bulletproof glass, but if it was your families, your wives, your children dying...it would be quite different wouldn't it?