THE US Marines are to take a blogger to Iraq. Bill Roggio, 35, a computer programmer who reports on the region in his spare time, has been invited to the country by the 2nd Marine Division and plans to spend a month in Anbar province.

The invitation “presents an opportunity for me to provide first-hand reporting from Iraq”, he said on his Fourth Rail site.

Roggio, who will post reports on the ThreatsWatch.Org site while in Iraq, believes that he will be the first bona-fide Western blogger to work from the country. He concedes that his invitation could have him labelled “pro-army” but points out that he has been critical of the US military in the past and that he will “be treated just like any other embedded journalist” in “the theatre”.

www.billroggio.com

www.threatswatch.org

Mind control

Do internet companies want to hot-wire your brain and plug it straight into the web? According to IEEE Spectrum, an IT publication, “polymer nanowires threaded through the bloodstream may be a practical way to enter the cranium”. Dow Jones said that the ultimate goal “is to have a direct wire into our brains to have complete knowledge of who we are and what makes us tick . . . And to think Microsoft once thought that owning our desktop was enough to know us.”

www.dowjones.com

www.ieeexplore.ieee.org

Swipe back

As Iran’s President sparked a political firestorm by demanding that Israel be “wiped off the map”, Tehran managed to reserve some spleen to vent at an American video game.

Reuters reported how US Attacks Iran, which depicts “Special forces . . . gunning down hapless Iranians”, has angered the country’s media. “We must make the Americans understand that Iran is different from Iraq and Afghanistan, where they just did what they wanted,” PersianPetition, a forum for Farsi speakers, said.

www.PersianPetition.com

www.kumawar.com

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