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Videogames Used to Train Terrorists?
kalpatin writes "Reuters reports that videogames are being used to train terrorists. The title Counter-Strike is apparently being used as a tool to prepare individuals for a mission: blowing up an oil tanker. The ultimate goal is to 'make the strait of Hormuz impassable, the Jomhouri-ye Eslami daily reported. About two-fifths of globally traded oil passes through the channel. The game illustrates a warning by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said in June that oil exports in the Gulf region could be seriously endangered if the United States made a wrong move on Iran.'"
And yet we focus on video games?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I've heard that America's Army is useful for understanding the American military mindset. Maybe it should be reclassified as a state secret...
This guy's the limit!
They are. It goes both ways I think: http://www.americasarmy.com/
The thought of highly trained terrorists running around shouting 'BOOOOM Headshot' whilst shooting or stabbing randomly at the scenery or team mates, does not fill me with fear.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm.
very true, although I could use something like this to plan a mission I would die immidiately if my gun didn't act exactly like it does in the game, people have better than average AI, I actually die when I get shot once (and a medi-pack couldn't stop the blood and make me ready for action again).
I would also need to be able to find guns lying around...
Other than that it would be exactly like the game and I'd be an ace terrorist.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
And here I thought that CounterStrike would only train terrorists to lay on the ground, half-dead, shouting "OMG WTF AWP CAMPING FAG!1!1!!". Advanced CounterStrike classes involve running around vandalizing walls with pr0n.
That green slime had it coming.
All you learn is how to move a mouse/controller.
I think that we should support any terrorist who wants to use a video game as "training". It will make them that much easier to capture.
It's designed to inflame Muslim passion against the United States and the Western world. The Iranian government in particular wants to distract its population from the failing economy. The radical president of Iran was elected to fix economic woes, but he has been sidetracked by international conflict. It's also meant as a threat: bomb Iran and we will cut off your oil supply. Only in the mind of Jack Thompson do video games train people to become professional killers.
I strongly doubt that the Iranians would not use Iranian special forces to accomplish such a mission and instead use a 15 year old kid who played the game two times. Instead they want the kid to join the Iranian military or just shut up about the poor Iranian economy.
It's a friggin' game. A lot of US-made games show conflicts in areas in the Middle East. Oooh. Terrorist training!
Gentlemen, it's time we declared a war on food.
For far too long, food has been aiding and abeting terrorists all over the world. It makes them stronger and healthier, keeping them in a dangerously potent condition. Studies conducted throughout history show that as stockpiles of food decrease, the morale and will of an enemy grows lower. We cannot afford to lose this vital tool in the war for freedom.
I hereby ask all Americans to voluntarily discard any food they are in possession of before it falls into the hands of the terrorists. Food has betrayed us by helping our enemies, and we can show no quarter. Remember, if it's not with us, it's with the terrorists.
The US have plenty of "antiterrorist" video games.
The US have plenty of nukular weapons.
Why are the yankees allowed to have video games and not the iranians?
Why are the yankees allowed to have nukular weapons and not the iranians?
Nope. They won't learn anything more about tactics than they would reading a book.
To train tactics, you have to practice the tactics with your team. Video game characters all have the same characteristics. People do not. The biggest differences are speed and grace/clumsiness.
And that doesn't even address the issue that most terrorist's "tactics" at the moment are "strap on the bomb, walk to the target and detonate yourself". If you're in a CS-type firefight, you've already fucked up the mission.
For the record, Under Siege (and Under Ash, the other game by the same people) don't condone terrorist actions, focusing instead on attacks on the Israeli IDF, which is illegally occupying several other countries. (Attacking on-duty soldiers is warfare, not terrorism, by most definitions of the word).
In fact, killing civilians ends the game instantly; the game is far MORE sensitive to charges of terrorism than many pro-American so-called anti-terrorist tactical FPSes.
Well that's one way of looking at it. At the risk of godwinning myself, that condemns the US colonists, the French, Yugoslav and Soviet resistance to Nazi occupation and various other good guys to the criminal bin. In any case, resistance of this sort is NOT terrorism - terrorism is force against civilians for political purposes. In fact,the UN, in a general assembly resolution on terrorism, still affirmed the right of peoples to use force to resist racist, colonial and imperialist regimes.
Personally I'm of the opinion that if you are in someone else's country illegally as a member of an occupying army, then it's right, proper and decent of the local population to take potshots at you for any reason they so desire, but this is heading down the road of offtopic flamebait so I'll stop here.
Why are people in such an uproar about this acting as if Iranians can't play Counter Strike? There's a lot of clueless folks commenting on this...
As for a potential cultural aspect of this? I'm sure some Islamic groups make an uproar anytime Muslims are shown as "terrorists" in popular western games. It happens on both sides, just because you only see one side of it doesn't mean that the other side is sitting still.
For God's sake, these are the same people who burn churches and embasseys when a cartoon comes out of their main prophet, do you really think CS missions like Arab Streets simply go by unnoticed in their culture.
The bottom line is that no one is banning a single thing (that takes care of about 20% of the posts I've read so far), no one is doing anything different today than they have in the past and...
VIDEO GAMES STILL SUCK FOR LEARNING HOW TO USE FIREARMS!!
Let's not take this too seriously. There's nothing substantial to see here aside from people who are making this into something that it simply isn't.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
As for terrorist groups, the tactical mission of closing the Strait of Hormuz is completely out of reach, and even if it weren't, how's Counterstrike going to help them plan? I imagine that sea-borne terrorists would use light boats or diving gear and place improvised mines into the narrow shipping lanes. So how do you propose they use Counterstrike to plan their mission?
Right, you have no idea. That's because this story, like many others, gets written before anybody thinks about it. This is written simply because it fits the convenient script according to which "They're evil and they're plotting" - which is scare tactic that's supposed to make it easier for us to abandon our freedoms and turn them over to the government.
Basically, it looks as though Reuters have simply translated an article from another language, tried to understand what the hell it was going on about, and printed the results. They've missed that the game isn't a new Iranian game called Counterstrike, but (presumably) a mod for the existing game of that name.
But it's the third to last paragraph that really shines for me...
A popular U.S. game, called "U.S. attacks Iran" or "Assault on Iran" and made by Kuma Reality games, revolved around a special forces mission to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.
Err... couldn't decide how to tranlate the name back to English, so decided to use both possible translations, eh?
Anyway. Kuma games. I've only ever heard of them once before, and thought the review was rather fun.
Leave them alone. They're not trying to make a move on you.
If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no songs.