On his second day in office, Obama made said there is no time to lose in closing Guantanamo Camp X-Ray prison.

“The United States can fight terrorism without sacrificing our values and our ideals,” he said in January 2009. “I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture. Second, we will close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there.”

While the prison is smaller than any time since 2002, delays in Obama’s plan to replace the site with a maximum-security prison in Illinois mean the original Jan. 22 deadline to close the site will not be met. Funds to refurbish the prison with proposed security repairs have not yet been secured.

The first 20 detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay on January 11, 2002, and activist group Witness Against Torture used the anniversary to protest the delayed objective. Dressed as hooded detainees in orange jumpsuits, the group marched outside the White House on Jan 11, 2010.

“The law needs our president as an authentic advocate-not just in words but in deeds-when times are ‘hard’ and war rages,” wrote organizer Frida Berrigan in a groups press release that day. “This is the case right now. To do anything else is to condemn this nation to a free fall into the “dark side” where Dick Cheney seems so comfortable.”

Yet in the wake of the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day, public opinion seems to have become more in line with advocating rigid security and indefinite detention.

A nationwide poll conducted by CBS between Jan. 6 and Jan. 10 indicated that 55 percent of Americans wanted to keep Guantanamo Camp X-Ray open for detainees. Only 32 percent said they wanted it closed and 13 percent said they don’t know.

In contrast, 46 percent of Americans thought the prison should remain open in February 2009.

Since the attempted bombing appears to have been masterminded in Yemen, Obama has suspended the release of detainees who are natives of that country for fear that they will join terrorist groups there. Nearly half of the 198 terror suspect detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay were slated to return to Yemen.

Part of the pressure for that decision came from Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., when they drafted a letter to President Obama on Dec. 29.

“Given the security situation in Yemen and the failure of the Yemeni government to secure high-value prisoners in the past, we believe that any such transfers would be highly unwise and ill-considered,” the letter read.

While the Obama administration maintains it will close Gunatanamo, other government detention facilities continue to operate, such as Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Kabul, Afghanistan. A BBC investigative report from June included interviews with former detainees who accuse them of physical and mental abuse.

“They poured cold water on you in winter and hot water in summer,” said an inmate who identified himself as Dr. Khandan. “They used dogs against us. They put a pistol or a gun to your head and threatened you with death. They put some kind of medicine in the juice or water to make you sleepless and then they would interrogate you.”

When the findings were shown to the Pentagon, the Lt. Col Mark Wright, the US Secretary of Defense’s spokesman, responded that conditions at Bagram “meet international standards for care and custody”.

While our generation the first to be raised on the Internet, the concept of addiction to electronics has been growing more accepted among doctors since the early 1990s, and is being added to the American Medical Association’s records.

One of the first advocates of the condition, Dr. Kimberly Young, who founded the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in 1995, was inspired to research it when her friends started to get hooked in early America Online chat rooms.

“If anything middle-aged people get hooked online since they have time on their hands,” said Young. “The big distraction really becomes something different every few years. When the Internet first went mainstream around 1994 it was chat rooms, then pornography. Then the big distraction was day trading during the tech bubble of the late ‘90s. Around 2000 it was it eBay, in the mid 2000s it became online gaming and today it’s social networking sites like Facebook.”

Internet addiction is like an umbrella term involving social media, video games and various time-wasting Web sites. People often joke about gamers glued to World of Warcraft, and sure enough, Young deals with video game addiction and had spoken to someone about an addiction to Call of Duty the day of this interview.

“What tends to happen is you have people with low self esteem who rise to great levels in the game,” she said. “Usually you need to have a good evaluation of what s going on. Twice as many Internet addicts come form single-family homes where the computer acts as an electronic babysitter. We should be talking how they can balance computing with other activities in their life.”

While America invented the Internet, treatment of Internet addiction has taken root far deeper in Asia countries like China or South Korea, the latter of which is the most wired nation on the planet per capita. Highlighting the cultural differences between China and America, China has 400 Internet addiction clinics, where some patients have been reportedly been subjected to shock therapy.

“The Internet has only been mainstream there since about 2000, and their response is culturally different since their biggest concern in China is high academic standards,” said Young. “In this country we’re kind of more willing to let young people fail in school and just say American children aren’t excelling at school without blaming other factors like the Internet or video games. China does not want to blame their school system, so they have mandated Internet addiction into their health care system.”

The growing study of Internet addiction as a condition has reflected other desires to more deeply understand the sociology of computer-use. Hackers, for instance, were long stereotyped as being more comfortable relating with machines, when in fact they work in groups, according to a report in the 2008 Sociological Review.

“Our research shows that hacking cannot be clearly grasped unless such fears are put aside to try and understand the community of hackers, the digital underground,” said Tim Jordan, a professor at the University of East London who contributed the report. “From within this community, hackers begin to lose their pathological features in favor of collective principles, allegiances and identities.”

The legitimacy of the condition has taken its way into the courtroom too, where addiction counselors have testified in support of wrongful termination in the work place cases. Young sees her main role as speaking with addiction specialists, including at the Betty Ford Clinic, California’s rehab for the rich and famous.

“You don’t need a separate Internet addiction clinic, people just need to add that training,” said Young. “Alcoholism doesn’t change from year to year, but the computing world is constantly evolving.”

President Obama has initiated numerous efforts to reset cooperation with Russia, but at the time of his Moscow summit in July, Russian polls conducted by the Levada Company gave Obama one of his lowest opinion rankings worldwide.

Only 23 percent of Russians had confidence in Obama to do the right thing in international affairs, while 55 percent say they were not confident. Only 12 percent said the U.S. treats Russia fairly, while 75 percent said that the US abuses its power.

At the July summit in Moscow, Obama asserted that the old hardliners like Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin be more open with social reform and civil rights, but conveyed trust in the handpicked successor of the former President and one time KGB officer.

“I think it’s important, even as we move forward with President [Dmitry] Medvedev, that Putin understand that the old cold war approach to US-Russian relations is outdated … I think Medvedev understands that,” Obama told the press at the July summit.

Americans polled in that Levada survey expressed much the same cautious opinion of Russia’s leaders, as only 27 percent of Americans expressed confidence in Russian Prime Minister Putin, while 69 percent did not.

Vadim Niktin, a research fellow with the Foreign Policy Association in Washington, D.C., was raised in Russia and believes Obama must match words with deeds to win over the cynical Russian people.

“Under Putin, favorable polls for America fluctuated, and Russians are even more cynical about Western politicians than they are of their own politicians,” Niktin told Scoop Daily. “Russia has been in a position to react to events and still cannot dictate events. Events like Obama removing radar and anti-aircraft in Poland was looked on favorably but they didn’t think it was good enough. Some think this is only a temporary shuffle of policy in America and that they’ll do something different later.”

Along with loosening military equipment in Eastern Europe, Obama has reached out for cooperation on Afghanistan and on nuclear proliferation to try to find a solution to deal with Iran and North Korea. President Dmitry Medvedev has allowed American planes to fly through Russian airspace en route to Afghanistan and Iraq, supplying these planes with midair refueling.

Niktin believes Russia’s proximity to Afghanistan and trade history with Iran makes Russia a ready and valuable partner.

“American engagement [in Afghanistan] is a common ground thing that Russia could benefit from,” according to Niktin. “Russia doesn’t want Iran to get angry and they don’t want a nuclear Iran since it’s right next door. They have traded a lot with Middle Eastern countries like Iran and Iraq. They lost millions in trade investments when Americans invaded Iraq, but I think Russia has been playing a very constructive role and can be a good Middle East mediator. America recognizes this and it’s the only reason it has kept Russia around in such negotiations.”

Aside from the foreign policy cooperation with Russia, Obama has a fairly conservative chief Russian advisor in Michael McFaul, who is pressuring change for Russia’s domestic affairs. McFaul also criticized NATO for not going along with the Bush administration’s plan to expand NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia, something that would be seen in Moscow as tightening the noose around Russia.

“Michael McFaul is really not a qualified advisor since he doesn’t recognize the special kind of democracy,” believes Niktin. “Nothing Medvedev is doing right now is without Putin’s permission, but it’s not as though Putin is pulling Medvedev’s strings. I don’t think Putin really represented the big opposition to American-Russian relations. A lot of the liberal figures have been allowed to speak against the government. I think if Putin were to return to power Obama would not pay that much attention to internal Russian affairs anymore, since on Afghanistan he made clear it’s not about politics.”

Niktin is suspicious of McFaul because of his complicity with efforts by Clinton administration economists to encourage an economic oligarchy to re-elect former President Boris Yeltsin – efforts Putin successfully used to turn Russians against Yeltsin. Yet Niktin believes such lingering paranoia among politicians does not resonate as heavily among the Millennial generation of Russian immigrants raised in America.

“I think an interesting development is the Russian Jewish aspect in America has become much more engaged with Russia,” said Niktin. “I think it used to be much more insular and nostalgic. Writers have begun spending summers in Russia, lost their accents, gone more by their Russian names and changed some political views. These people were culturally Russian, but kind of played into the kind of politicized negative political role. They had been out of touch but are no longer as divided into two camps and have questioned some of the anti-Soviet baggage their parents had when they came to America.”

This was not always so. The single most watched television show of all time is still M*A*S*H, and its satire about Army surgeons during the Korean War – a thinly veiled parody of Vietnam while the war was still going on.

The show’s writer Larry Gelbart passed away recently. One of its stars, Mike Farrell, who played Capt. B.J. Hunnicutt, does not expect television to tackle more substantive topics since few writers with Gelbart’s skill have the support of networks or movie studios.

“Larry had this frantic capacity to turn words in a way that allowed emotions to be there,” Farrell told Scoop Daily. “When I was doing M*A*S*H, people were keenly aware that while we were talking about Korea we were analogizing the situation in Vietnam, so that stimulated a lot of interesting discussions. You’re not going to see something like that on TV anytime soon since it has become so corrupted and compromised. “

During the height of the Vietnam War in 1970, the movie “M*A*S*H” turned the Korean War into “Animal House,” before the invention of the college humor movie. Incidentally, Donald Southerland was a star in both movies. “M*A*S*H” became a hit, featuring a raunchy camp of Army surgeons drinking, screwing, joking and golfing until helicopters brought in the wounded- an unmistakable reference to the helicopter visuals of Vietnam.

Picking up the popularity of the movie, a new writer (Gelbart) was commissioned in 1972 to write a TV series with a new cast, including Alan Alda taking Southerland’s star role of Capt. “Hawkeye” Pierce. Farrell became the yin to Alda’s yang in the third season as the lead comedic duo of soldiers survived the madness of war by rebelling against backwards officers, staging pranks and slicing golf balls into mine fields.

More than 106 million people tuned in for the final episode in 1983 – a sitcom record still held today.

Believing that network television has increasingly found easy money in reality television and celebrity news, Farrell also thinks American media is reeling from the status quo safe topic matter of the Bush years.

“I think the Bush administration and its bully pulpit about 9/11 turned people away from being critical analysts they should have been after Vietnam,” said Farrell. “The only overtly political show I can think of that is successful is Fox’s ‘24’. I understand that the guy they gave the show to is a big proponent of torture. [Kiefer Southerland’s] politics are very good but he’s making himself rich trying to convince himself his character is pretend and it isn’t fascist propaganda.”

While movies offer more chances for diverse topics, movies about the Iraq War have not done well. Most recently, George Clooney produced and Jeff Bridges starred in “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” which parodies the war in Iraq and the Army officer corps. The film grossed approximately $31 million worldwide and was soon pulled from theaters to make way for holiday films. This is a small profit given the movie cost $25 million to make, according to www.boxofficemojo.com.

“God bless Jeff and George Clooney, because if those movies aren’t financially successful then it hurts their careers and the likelihood of making another war movie,” said Farrell. “Television especially is run by suits with no conscience, since they’re interesting in selling soap without controversy and they hope Tiger Woods will get them attention. The area of indie films is where we’re going to see the most innovation.
For instance, I thought the ‘The Hurt Locker’ was a shocking portrayal of war’s brutality.”

While “The Hurt Locker” won the Best Film Award at the 2009 Venice Film Festival among numerous other awards, it earned only $13 million. It might earn more money when the DVD is released on Jan. 12, 2010. The top box office smash of the 2009 was “Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen,” starring Megan Fox, at approximately $402 million.

According to www.Hollywood.com, box office sales increased 4.5 percent from last year’s attendance, so rather than blaming disinterest on high ticket costs, recent war movies may have done poorly because people feel little attachment on the topics in their everyday lives. Joe Davis, spokesman for the advocacy group Veterans of Foreign Wars, remembers how M*A*S*H resonated with Americans but thinks that kind of satire can’t capture the same audience it used to.

“M*A*S*H accurately portrayed camp life and the lunacy that sometimes occurs from higher command,” said Davis. “But the size of the U.S. population today (300 million) compared to World War II (133 million), and the size of the military today (2.2 million) compared to WWII (16 million), creates a huge disconnect between the military and the general public. The public can’t relate because they never served. A TV show has to connect with its audience to be successful.”

As a long-time activist, Farrell marched with the civil rights movement in the ‘60s, campaigned for George McGovern in hopes of ending the Vietnam War in 1972, and recently supported Barack Obama in 2008. He believes if American culture portrayed the realities of war more often then people would more opposed to Obama’s recent decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

“I’m shocked by how Obama is unwilling to act on the promises he made for the war,” Farrell told Scoop Daily. “I’m hesitant to speak out vociferously against him since he seems a significant turn as to how this country is run. But the changes I had hoped would go on in this new Administration have not been delivered.”