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Video Games As Propaganda
SharkLaser writes "A video game developer working for Kuma Reality Games has admitted that the company has been receiving money from the CIA to design and freely distribute special movies and games with the aim of manipulating public opinion in the Middle East. Amir Mizra Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, moved to work for Kuma after working for DARPA and has said the goal of the company was to convince people that whatever the U.S. does in other countries is a good measure. Kuma officials have declined to comment, while Hekmati himself is locked in Iran. The United States government has demanded the release of Hekmati, but Iran has sentenced him to death for spying, which he confessed to."
Well... at first I saw the story of this guy and thought "Maybe he is a spy? If he is, then guess what, we kill spies too"....
Now I see, he is not a spie, he is a PR guy..... death is way too good for such a man.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
If they kill an American, we should kill an Iranian.
The pirate party
Seriously, all of the "evidence" in this case comes from the man's forced confession. Given Iran's record on human rights, he was most likely tortured into confessing. Why on Earth is this being reported as fact?
Not surprised to see games with propaganda. Hollywood is doing this successfully for years, albeit (probably) without US Government asking for it.
In fact, in my opinion, Hollywood is the most successful PR machine the US has ever created. It's cultural impact on other countries and cultures is massive. People may politically dislike the US/US government/US military - but at the same time, a lot of them want to mimic The American as defined by Hollywood blockbusters.
It's a different discussion if this is good or bad, but it's certainly working for the US.
I am not surprised gaming industry is following it up - with active support from the government.
This guy is in prison in Iran. This would not be the first time that a regime has coerced people to say things that aren't true and to sign false confessions. The US has in the last decade done it also. In the US, even when there is no torture, false confessions can be extracted even in murder cases- http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this sort of program really did exist, but the fact that someone in Iranian custody confessed to it isn't good evidence for the claim.
"Mr. Hekmati’s family in the United States told American news media that he had traveled to Iran to visit his grandmothers and was not a spy."
What kind of idiot American actually travels to Iran anymore?
They actually discussed this on NPR earlier. When applying to enter the country, he told them about his military history and asked if it would be ok. Telling Iran that you were formerly in the US army is not the kind of thing you would do if you were an actual spy.
Not to say entering Iran and telling them you used to be in the military is a good idea.
Hekmati "admitted" this while he was in Iranian custody - as reported by the Tehran Times. Given the history of the Iranian regime (they seem to arrest people for spying for Israel or the US every couple of weeks) I think we should take this with a grain of salt. Considering that making video games and infiltrating a foreign country require completely different skill sets, I find it hard to believe that the CIA would send their video game developer deep into Iranian territory. (According to the NY Times, he was visiting his Iranian grandparents.)
... company has been receiving money from the CIA to design and freely distribute special movies and games with the aim of manipulating public opinion ...
The CIA also financed the 1954 Animal Farm movie (especially the end of the story is different from the book).
I'm pretty sure making pro-American video games is better than invading and occupying countries for decades at a time. I am 100% in favor of military-sponsored video games replacing our current military strategies.
Shouldn't the text be something along the lines of "An American that was visiting his family in Iran who has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for spying on behalf of the CIA has also claimed in the same prepared statement that he was a video game developer who made games for the CIA, even though there don't seem to be more than a single game that would align itself with Western interests." I mean, let's face it. Trusting Fars (a semi-official Iranian news agency)...these guys have backed their President's view that the Holocaust didn't happen, for Christ's sake...is NOT exactly relying on an unbiased source. For Fars to complain about propaganda is like the pot calling kettle black.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
North America is best America!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I think the fact that this guy is in the custody of the Iranian "Revolutionary Court" should have been mentioned in the summary. The brutal treatment handed out by the Iranian "justice" system is not a secret (think Abu Ghraib but still ongoing), and it makes any statements this guy may have made highly suspect. The story here is not that the Americans are trying to do P.R. with games (nothing wrong with that, though concealing it is not good) but rather that the Iranian government is going to murder someone over it.
I figured that out a long time ago. It seems that a lot of modern games and movies that are aimed at potential solders, seems to include a lot about American armies and how bad ass they are. If you've seen the Transformer movies, they were able to somehow involve the US army. As if that's the only army in the world.
Forget it, I'm playing Skyrim.
During Viet Nam the CIA conducted war in Laos, placed sensors which looked like a turd on the Ho Chi Minh trail, and
generally wasted a lot of time and money. It didn't change the outcome of the Viet Nam war on damned bit.
None of their tricky methods are going to work now, either.
The waste of money is bad, the waste of lives is worse. It will all be a huge waste, that's obvious to anyone with a brain,
regardless of where that person lives.
I just have one thing left to say : Ron Paul 2012
What, God can't defend himself?
I'll never understand fundies. In one breath they'll say "God is great and all-powerful" and in the next they they freak out claiming that a pitiful human is "waging war" on him.
Apparently, not only did he work for the CIA and, according to this summary, as a video game developer, but his family has also said that he owns a linguistics company (as reported by CNN). Remember, Iran loves to arrest Americans and charge them with espionage, even if they are just a few naive hikers who got lost.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I love how the original post assumes that what the U.S. does isn't for the best.
What, you never considered that the U.S.'s actions are for the best? We have a word for that here. It's called biased.
The U.S. wins conflicts and then gives back the country to their people, going back decades. What part of 'evil empire' is 'give it back', anyhow? Just curious. 'Empire' and 'return' seem pretty mutually exclusive.
...as sympathetic as I am to the guy, since he was there to see his grandmother, he's going to have a hell of a time persuading anyone he was not working for the CIA if indeed the CIA was funding the company he worked for, and that he was aware the company was involved in psy ops*. Doesn't matter if the company wasn't part of the CIA, we know the CIA runs companies as fronts (from previous CIA scandals) and since the CIA would have to be incredibly stupid to reveal all the companies that were fronts.
Iran, therefore, is in a difficult position. The guy is essentially being paid CIA money for carrying out CIA-commissioned tasks, which is not going to go down well there no matter what. Psy ops also require some form of feedback - you can't manipulate in a vaccuum, which is a major factor in North Korea's isolation - and that means feet on the ground at some point. It must have been obvious to everyone involved (except for the poor guy involved) as to what would happen next.
I honestly doubt he really is a spy, they're generally not stupid enough to be that obvious, but I do believe he's "collateral damage" that the US considers wholly acceptable for intelligence-gathering purposes.**
*Manipulating the perception of another, rather than giving them information and free choice, is a "psychological operation" of the kind believed to be used in covert ops. Doesn't matter if it's merely the opinion of a boss or the opinion of a sponsor that's being expressed, with no military or intelligence involvement at all, it is still a psy op because it is still about manipulation and not choice. Had I not put in an explanation, but relied entirely on emotive description, that would also be psy op/manipulation. Because I am stating what is meant and why the choice of words, there is information and therefore freedom of choice and therefore it is not manipulative.
**Intelligence gathering will always involve collateral damage. You can't avoid it. Totally innocent people will inevitably be sacrificed, which is why this idea that you control your destiny is such a laugh. All nations gather intelligence from all nations (themselves as much as anyone else), all nations need to at this point in history, and therefore all nations will have wholly innocent victims. The British have been investigating a whole host of scandals and "collateral damage" from internal investigation by the police recently, after a couple of undercover operatives defected to the organizations they were spying on and blew the lid on some very shady dealings.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
his work history he was a fool to visit iran
The CIA is supposed to be monitoring events and gathering intelligence to support our administration's decision making process. Ideally, it should be a neutral observer, reporting facts discovered in various nations be they good, bad or whatever. Asking the CIA to effect changes in governments or foreign groups and then asking them to report the outcome is just plain bad management. Now they'll be motivated to bias the data to make their missions appear successful. And to hide their mistakes, right up to the point at which we trigger a revolution or terrorism in response to our meddling.
Its even worse when they have to convince the public at large that their missions are needed and productive. If the CIA wants to be in the active intervention and propaganda business, then we're going to need an entire department of Bradley Mannings to report back the truth about their performance.
Have gnu, will travel.
We all know President Obama always tells the absolute truth, and is always fighting to improve rights and oppose the rich. He would never stoop to propaganda.
After all, the fact that he has a gun to his head, a gov. appointed lawyer (in spite of the family hiring a private one), and most likely loads of torture, has ZERO bearings on his saying these things.
Lets get it over with and just bomb Iran. All of this foreplay gets SO old. Heck, if we must, lets move an old carrier into position and allow Iran to take it out and then we cans send in loads of bombs there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
After some of the info that has come out about US methods...
We have no more moral high ground on which to stand and denounce any other country for anything. Including torture.
It's impossible to even pretend we are the 'good guys' anymore. And if we don't have that image to deal with now..
We might as well be the best bad guys we can be.
Lets go all out. Nuke the middle east. Big smoking craters all over. Fuckem. Give them something to really hate.
Enough of this 'winning the hearts and minds' crap. Lets win the destroyed ruins.
(i can't even tell if im being scarcastic anymore. my country is no better than the barbaric assholes we're fighting. All of us disgust me.)
we see how well it is working for israel. if not for the inordinate amounts of american taxpayers' money they have been gulping since their founding, they would have been overrun by 10-12 nations decades ago.
stupidity. priceless.
Read radical news here
Who was honestly hoping the videogame in question might be one we'd heard of? I was hoping the real news item would be about blowing open an intelligence body manipulating game developers covertly. Not so. This is their site:
http://www.kumawar.com/
"Kuma War is a series of playable recreations of real events in the War on Terror. Nearly 100 playable missions bring our soldiers' heroic stories to life, and you can get them all right now, for free. Stop watching the news and get in the game!"
Free games that are openly biased towards the US campaign, all the while encouraging you to not watch the news. CIA-funded? Wait, REALLY?! Gasp.
They rescue your fishermen from pirates, you execute one of their "spies". That's the Iranian way.
Who plays America's Army!? http://www.americasarmy.com/
If he's the kind of spy who is paid by the CIA to create and distribute propaganda material (in this case, video games) to subvert a country's government, that might be exactly the kind of spy who doesn't get much interrogation training.
Is the person stationed at a US Embassy abroad who goes to all the elite social dinners with various parties of state and covertly sends intel reports back to the CIA a spy? Most would say yes.
Is the Iranian former-marine helping develop propaganda for Iranian consumption under contract with the CIA a spy?
I don't think you'd say he's definitely NOT a spy...
Death seems a bit extreme however. Deportation would seem more appropriate. And hopefully this is all just a bunch of diplomatic posturing and deportation in exchange for some other consideration is what this comes out to.
paintball
That's interrogation. There isn't a stark line between the two, but one of the points of interrogation is to make the subject uncomfortable/stressed, with the idea that even a stressed individual won't have difficulty recalling the truth, while it's more difficult for a stressed individual to maintain a false story.
Obviously you wouldn't want to spend your Saturdays being interrogated, but I'm willing to accept contributing the occasional few hours answering some questions as part of the process.
Anyway, merely being made uncomfortable is not torture.
paintball
As a fan of propaganda videogames, this is relevant to my interests.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
what is the difference between propaganda and marketing?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Torture does NOT get "intel".
Torture gets CONFESSIONS.
This guy confessed to being a CIA spy working in Iran. By your "logic", they "confirmed" the "intel" they had on him.
The same as our people did with the people we tortured.
Which is the reason why we should NEVER use torture. It does NOT work in gathering accurate information and it DOES cloud the issue of who actually did what, when, where and why.
Confessions are ONLY useful in propaganda.
No. Once you resort to torture you have given up on getting accurate information and you're just looking for a confession or revenge.
Bullshit.
Option 3 - pointing out that the same people who claimed that "enhanced interrogation" was necessary when we did it will now claim that such a confession was "tortured" out of an "innocent" man by the "evil" Iranians.
Even if those people were NOT "Policy makers".
"which he confessed to"
Did he give the confession freely or was it beaten out of him for political reasons to make the US look bad?
It's no secret that Iran hates their guts.
If you ask me he was working on propaganda games. Have you checked the place where he worked? I am not saying that he was actually spying, that would be rather stupid given his profile that could easily attract attention.
check these 'games': http://www.kumawar.com/
I have no sympathy for this guy... Trying to spread US propaganda.
The US government is the world's largest terrorist organization. They started two wars that have killed over a hundred thousand civilians each, they don't respect human rights, they spy on and lie to their "allies", etc. Anybody fighting for the US government or helping them in any way, such as spreading propaganda, is an enemy of the world and of humanity. I don't wish the guy to be killed, but whatever happens to him won't stop me from sleeping at night.
Bradley Manning allegedly leaked STATE DEPARTMENT information; the level of the leaked information was LOW security information.
We've not had any significant CIA leaks ... ever? Former people disclosing stuff in various ways without any evidence; but I can't think of any actual CIA document leaks can you?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
That is correct. It is your comments that make you a troll.
This is Slashdot. You're looking for Wikipedia.
Really? Is that the best you have? You're going to completely skip over all the non-governmental people in the media who kept claiming that "enhanced interrogation" was necessary and claim that I was talking about some monolithic government?
I don't have a "thin skin".
What do you think that stupid flash game about occupation and islamic terrorists was? It was propaganda. Complaining about propaganda games now is just hypocrisy in action.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Imagine my surprise that there was no mention of Al Gore "challenging companies to create new games that address the same issues facing his Climate Reality Project". http://www.scpr.org/blogs/environment/2012/01/06/4192/al-gore-looking-few-good-sustainable-games/
1. There is no such thing as "former" Marine.
2. No matter how dire consequence there may be, a death penalty doesn't help either party, US or Iran, especially Iran.
3. Forget the sanction talk for now and go back to negotiation. Econ. sanction didn't work and doesn't work without stepping on our own foot anyway. There is no gain here, so use it for our advantage on negotiation table.
4. Iranian gov't taking political hostages isn't new, but this is an enormous precedence in pushing toward future Iranian nuclear disarmament. US might be out of Iraq, but US just delivered F-15s to Saudi.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
What a load of bullshit, now if you excuse me, im going to have some fun playing my exciting new game, Call of Duty:Propaganda. I heard it has some really good action story filled with deep subliminal messages eerr plots.
I don't doubt that the US military spent a lot of money trying to convince people they're the good guys, why not through video games? We're building schools, handing out food, helping communities, even soldiers giving candy to children around the destruction and fighting that's happening. Ultimately we're trying to make peace with these people, which means convincing them we're about more than invading, and that we actually want to help them out and want to establish peace.
Confessed. Right. Poor bastard... I wonder how much torture he endured before he "confessed."
or only "enhanced interrogation."
Because if it was torture, then we should all be rightfully outraged at this evil act.
But if it was merely "enhanced interrogation", then his confession must be true. We know this because this works for us.
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I mean, look , torture was refined and intel gotten in the middle age, they even had a lot of forged instrument SPECIFICALLY for torture, and a whole book as "how to torture for dummy". And they found witch aplenty. That alone should tell you a LOT about torture. I assume you might be american and holding tightly onto the impression that torture is Ok in some case, otherwise you would have to admit that your country is indeed as bad as some of the less enlightened one.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Embarassed n running away when APK kicked ur ass here http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550 are we? LMAO!
Embarassed n' running away when APK kicked ur ass here http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550 are we? LMAO!
Embarassed n' running away when APK kicked ur ass here http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550 are we? LMAO!
What'd u want of "couchdouche the cowardly troll"? It's what he does (troll n run), hahahaha.
Peter, APK, my love, come back to bed ...
Daddy
LMAO -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2613584&cid=38653296
You say that as if "manipulating public opinion in the Middle East" is something bad. Of course, we have to "manipulate public opinion", otherwise, how are we going to get peace?
What would you prefer? Leave them to the manipulations of religious extremists? Just bomb them outright?
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How very unsurprising.
I am not devoid of humor.