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A Gaming War Between Islam and the West?
The Washington Post has up an article looking at a burgeoning venue for political expression: gaming. Between 'The Quest for Bush', Counter-Strike mods, and more serious titles with a political slant, the political arena is quickly claiming gamers for their own. It's not just politics either; there are some excellent titles being released that attempt some truly insightful social commentary. From the article: "'UnderAsh,' released by Afkar Media in 2002, views the first intifada from the eyes of Ahmad, a Palestinian teenager resisting the Israeli occupation. Last year a sequel was released. A teaser to 'UnderSiege,' which tells the stories of five Palestinian families during the second intifada, shows a Palestinian teenager being shot on the street; an Israeli soldier appears to pound him with a concrete block seconds later. 'Our games are not propaganda,' Kasmiya says. 'Our games are a reflection of our history -- past or present. The fact is, most movies, most TV shows, most video games put Muslims in a bad light, so we have to try to tell our side of the story.'" Commentary from GamePolitics is also available.
" 'Our games are not propaganda,' Kasmiya says. 'Our games are a reflection of our history -- past or present."
This coming from the guys whose history includes the "fact" that the Holocaust did not happen.
Where were you when the voynix came?
The fact is, most movies, most TV shows, most video games put Muslims in a bad light, so we have to try to tell our side of the story.
Someone needs to explain to these people (and Fox News, while you're at it) that trying to cancel out a raving lunatic by adding a raving lunatic from the "other side" does not "balance out", you just have two raving lunatics.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
"'Our games are a reflection of our history -- past or present. The fact is, most movies, most TV shows, most video games put Muslims in a bad light, so we have to try to tell our side of the story.'"
Here is one example of how they do this: "Armed with a rifle, a shotgun or a grenade launcher, players navigate various missions that include "Jihad Growing Up," "Americans' Hell" and "Bush Hunted Like a Rat." In the final stage, you fight Bush.". So tell me, does this defy stereotypes at all? How is it a "good light" to make games in which Muslims are presented as violent commandos... the only difference being that they are the "first person" in the shooter and not the armed enemies for once? Or the other game in which "The goal is to kill"?
The game creators seem to think that it is a positive portrayal of Muslims to change them from being terrorists who are shot at to terrorists who are shooting.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Our games are not propaganda"
Right up there with the other great lies.
"I am not a crook!"
"I did not have sex with that woman."
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
If ya have to say "Our games are not propaganda" odds are it IS propaganda. From the description it certainly sounds like a recruiting tool for the terrorists.
Yes, ye unwashed hordes of pro PLO slashdot kids, the terrorists. Islamic terrorists. Doesn't make s damned bit of difference if they are 'Palestinian' Islamic terrorists from either Fatah or Hamas, Lebanese Hezbolah Islamic terrorists, straight up Iranian Islamic terrorists, AlQaeda Islamic terrorists, etc. Those who use terror against civilian populations must be hunted down and exterminated, period full stop. And since the end of IRA[1] terrorism, just about all terrorism these days is Islamic terrorism.
[1] Which ended with a few years of the end of the Cold War. But those who said most of it was Soviet agitataion to destabilise the West were tinfoil hat types seeing a Red under every bed. And of course we should also forget who originally taught Arafat his trade in death and who he served.
And back on topic, we of course know a pro terrorist game would never be banned. Nay, it will probably be widely available. "Kill all the eeevil joooos!" is free speech and any attempt to censor it would just not be permitted. Now imagine the politically correct howls if a 'kill all the diaper heads' game were created. Seems some censorship is more permissable than others.
Democrat delenda est
Which is why I favor a strong Israeli military. BTW just so you know, Israel has *200* UN resolutions against them.
I don't favor Israel or Palestine; both sides are going over the top and while Israel is making necessary concessions, they have brutalized Palestinian civilians before. I don't feel the Muslims should be pissed on for making a mean ol' video game that's no worse than what we make about them.
There are Palestinians and Israelis working together; I wish they were running the show.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Israel just wants to be left alone.
Israel wants to be racially and religiously pure.
Yeah, and niggers are good at basketball, Jews carry a bag of gold around their neck everywhere they go, and all Germans are Nazis.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Israel is one country. Europe is a few countries.
"The Ummah" comprises dozens of shitty little tin-pot dictatorships and wannabe caliphates.
That's how you get 200 UN resolutions: one democracy which respects the rights of its citizens and the human right to have and change religion if you so choose, one shitty tin-pot dictatorship where the worship of anything but a pagan moon-god cult gets your head chopped off, the same voting power to each.
That's a great list of, to put very lightly, embarassments of US involvement in Iraq. What's it got to do with the current discussion? The point was that a positive portrayal of Muslims in media doesn't start with Bush as an end-boss. I missed the game from the West where you're challenged to build the highest "butt pyramid".
Having said that... your other off-topic points...
Good idea. However, very Western. Such behavior would simply fan the flames of the fundimentalists who would see this kind of thing as further proof of Western ideals eroding their culture. Which in turn becomes part of the reason to fight the west. And the next piece of recruitment propoganda.
Agreed. Even if we're not required to follow the Geneva Convention in these cases... it would be the right thing to do. A pity that proper behavior is overshadowed by cases of savagery. We might as well hand over propoganda to the fundimentalists.
Again - the right thing to do. Whether it really gets the US any milage or not would be debatable. The US is involved with a lot of humanitarian efforts. Yet it constantly gets shot at. Kind deeds only go so far.
The USSR crumbled not because of propoganda but because of economics. Yeah - I agree that freedom is a good thing. We should try to convince that part of the world this. But this is too easily wrapped up in the "West destroys our culture" meme.
That would be very cool. I would completely agree with this. And... in this day and age where survival may be linked to oil... one could justify the expense of removing ourselves from oil dependancy.
Thanks, Dr. Godwin. The last one brings us back on topic, to a nation where a majority of the people insist as an important goal the extermination of another nation. By coincidence, the reason for the wanted extermination is because the targettted people happen to be Jewish.
Of course wanting to slaughter your enemies because they have been beating the ever living shit out of you for decades now has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You forget the fact that this mostly one-way rabid hatred of Jewish people goes back to before Israel, before the Zionist movement.
Please provide a respectable citation for your claim that, "mostly one-way rabid hatred of Jewish people goes back to before Israel."
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The problem is that the Palestinians don't accept that.
Do you have sources for this? It's a rhetorical question, of course, because how could you have reliable sources for something you just made up? The fact is, Palestinians (regardless of their party) have always wanted back that which was taken from them. It's neither an unreasonable nor extreme request.
There is a saying that goes "to the victor go the spoils." And that is exactly what happened in Palestine after WWII. The Jews transformed American and British sympathy after the Holocaust into a greedy land grab. They didn't ask for part of the land that is holy to three different major religions. They didn't ask for sanctuary in a land that is holy to three different major religions. No, they took it all and displaced the native people who had been living there.
No matter how hard you try, you can't unmake history and injustice with rhetoric. In case the history of the last century escapes you, there once was a sovereign nation called Palestine. Then the U.N. passed a resolution, and Palestine was magically turned into Israel. And all the people who once lived there were herded up and sent to slums and refugee camps, where they have remained for three generations and counting--their land, their homes, and their property all stolen from them, their situation grim.
And you have the balls to label these people "extremists"?
That's a bit of a cheat. Hamas, horrible though they are, oppose (to various degrees) the existence of Israel, not the existence of Israelis - in short, they oppose the existence of a state including Jerusalem under an exclusively Jewish religion. It's a harsh position, but falls way short of gas chambers.
That doesn't include barbaric assholes who aren't part of a military, don't wear arms openly, don't wear uniforms, and take hostages and behead them for fun while making snuff films of it so the muslims in the other parts of "The Ummah" and "Dar Al-Harb" can jerk off to watching the infidel get beheaded.
Correct. Those people are called "criminals" - specifically "terrorists" and "murderers". They should be brought before the courts, tried for their crimes with due process, and, if found guilty by a jury of their peers, given an appropriate sentence (i.e. death, in most cases), in accordance with the basic principles of law on which freedom and democracy are founded.
Putting them in a concentration camp and trying to give them show trials in which they don't even get to find out the evidence against them is not the right way to go about things. Even the Nazis at Nuremburg got due process and fair trials.
Why is Bush so reluctant to permit these terrorists the justice that was granted even to evil Nazis who had committed acts of genocide far beyond Osama bin Laden's wildest dreams?
"Palestinians as a whole want to wipe Israel off the map and make no secret of it."
You mean, kinda like Israel wiped Palestine off the map about 60 years ago?
We quickly forget that a great injustice was met against the palestinians by the US and UK in order to pacify a group of people that had just been terrorized by a country out to destroy these people. One injustice doesn't make another injustice correct.
All in all, the Jews left Israel a thousand years ago. They left. Someone else took over. Unless you are a religious wacko, there is no right to return. Many lifetimes later, the Palestinians firmly owned the land and it was not anyone elses to give it away.
Don't get me wrong...I loves the Jews. They are some good people. I just don't like the country. (Sorta like Europeans LOVE Americans -- at least every one I've ever me -- but hate America the country. We are not all idiots...just 51% of us).
Posting anonymous because I work in a gov't setting where any public argument against Israel would be considered AntiSemitic and I want all the opportunities to be invited back to the synagog where I can meet some more hot jewesses.
Again, many of these people had nothing stolen from them. Those born in refugee camps or in other countries never lived in the land being contested, so how could it belong to them? It belonged to their grandfathers, that's all. My great-great-great grandfathers lost the Confederacy, does that mean I can grab a gun and start shooting Yanks?
According to this, Palestine existed as a nation governed by the British for decades.
Also? Fuck the Native Americans in the U.S. They didn't live in a "real" country, so Americans were perfectly justified to take their land.
I'll go and force you to give me a room in your house with the help of some strong fellas down the street. and then I'll just want to be left alone, that's all. will you let me?
Actually, not having citizenship in a certain country because one doesn't belong to the dominant ethnicity there is fairly common. The U.S. is rare in giving citizenship to everyone born there. The Palestinians aren't in any more an unfair situation than, say, Koreans in Japan.
You have it backwards- the Muslim world was kinder to the Jews than the Christian world. In the Ottoman empire, we had to pay taxes. In the Christian countries, we got tortured (Inquistition), kicked out (Diaspora), or just repeatedly slaughtered (pogroms). This continued into this century. Its only been in the past 50-75 years that the situation has reversed.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
but that doesn't extinguish the right the Palestinians had to the land, and more importantly to their culture and way of life--both of which have been dramatically changed now that the last three generations of Palestinians have grown up in refugee camps in Israel, Lebanon, and other places.
That's an unfortunate situation, I do agree. What happened to cause all this?
Oh yeah.. The attacking Arab nations asked the Arab residents to get out of the way so they could sweep in, destroy the "Zionist uprising", and end this silly matter once and for all. That failed miserably. The Arab-created refugees were still without their homes as the nations around them were still promising violence and still promising victory. And all the while, those nations who displaced the refugees refused to accept them into their borders.
So, let's stop this from happening. Let's go back in time, and tell the Arab nations to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, not to attack them, and not to displace the Arab residents creating refugees.
That sounds like what was intended anyway. Good idea!
In the camps, they are afforded no political rights (can't become citizens, can't own land, etc.) and very few human rights. It's an untenable situation, and one that the U.N., the U.S., and Israel must answer for.
Don't forget Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and any other Arab nation who refused to allow entry to those refugees who desired to immigrate. Surely they should answer for their cries as well. Or is this just a "bash Israel and anyone who acknowledges their existence" sub-thread?
Actually, UN is NOT a pure democracy because of veto-wielding countries.
As a matter of interest, do you also believe that European galleries and museums should give the families of holocaust victims the brush-off with regard to the ownership of art looted by the Nazis, on the basis that "it belonged to their grandfathers, that's all"?
Hollywood, the US games industry and unfortunately, even your head of state, have been using the "raghead==evil" formula for years now and suddenly when the positions are reversed, you feel agrieved? Give me a break. You do EXACTLY the same things. Utter hypocracy.