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Battlefield 4 Banned In China
hypnosec writes "The Chinese government has officially banned Battlefield 4, stating that Electronic Arts has developed a game that not only threatens national security of the country, but is also a form of cultural invasion. The country's Ministry of Culture has issued a notice banning all material retailed to the game in any form, including the game itself, related downloads, demos, patches and even news reports. According to PCGames.com.cn [Chinese language], Battlefield 4 has been characterized as illegal game on the grounds that the game endangers national security and cultural aggression."
Bang!
Boo hoo, who shall we now single out as evil enemies, deserving of mindless wholesale slaughter? Poor entertainment industry!
What are they, French?
Someone needs to tell these idiots that 1984 wasn't meant to be a manual.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
It'll be interesting to see if anyone traveling, who is employed by, or associated with this game, is able to pass through China.
You'd think they would have banned it elsewhere until it was at least finished!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
slashdot posting a 3week old story! Not good
The country's Ministry of Culture has issued a notice banning all material retailed to the game in any form
yea, that sounds like it was written by a chinese person
They also banned Reisure Suit Rarry
Imagine what would happen if there was a GTA Shanghai edition... WW3.
Well they certainly wouldn't want to endanger cultural aggression.
Banning it will only make it the #1 pirated game in china Tomorrow.,
It's a populist screed about how America is going to help the first influential person with "dreams of democracy" make a coup d'etat against the government of China. In the game's defense it does show China's military kicking the collective ass of the US Navy and the Marines up one side and down the other.
It looks like Russia and the U.S. are also in the game, and you can play as any of them, so will it also be banned in the U.S. and Russia? Nope? Didn't think so.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
It's ok China, you can ban the game just keep in mind that millions of BF 4 players are enjoying the game on Chinese manufactured equipment.
Irony anyone?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
China SHOULD ban it, but they should have banned it because of its frequent glitches and crashing. China had a chance to be funny about this and I think they just missed it. Maybe Australia can pick up the pieces of this comedy gold.
The U.S. surrendered in an another country after a long war. The French surrendered immediately when they were invaded. Hardly the same thing.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Immediately? They fought the French Indonchina war from 1946 until 1954 when they withdrew and they were smart to do so. Unlike the US who continued to fight a losing war for two decades wasting tons of money and wasting lots of lives.
We stopped the communist threat
In what way? The entire country of Vietnam became communist after the end of the war.
I agree, freedom and democracy are a virus on humanity that should be stamped out of existence.
By "communist forces" do you by any chance mean people defending their own country, first from the French, then from the U.S.? That is a pretty honorable thing to do unlike, for example, invading a country and killing people that were no threat to you, any of your friends or anyone else in your country.
As for 'stopped the communist threat', you do know we lost, right? Perhaps not.
I won't defend such actions, but I can in some way understand that creating of a "USA vs *insert any other non western nation not being pro USA* game" might be perceived as glorifying "political" tension, with an emphasis on charicatured violence added to it in the form of computer gaming. I have nothing nice to say about the state of China though.
I think DICE would be so much more classy working with historical content, fictionalized or not, instead of creating some kind of fantasy revolving around a future war involving parties that already today is fueling tension so to speak.
As a person not residing in, nor being a citizen of USA, I want to say that I used to think it was fun watching CNN show the US military bomb Iraqi military forces in the 90's, but then I grew up and today consider lots of USA's actions to be akin to state terrorism. Battlefield 3 and 4 just isn't making a positive impression on me, but I guess those games might for others be thought of as having some kind of value for propaganda purposes. *shrugs*
One might imagine how a story in the the two games (the single player mode) as a product of narration, could perhaps be a satire or a parody (I don't know what is in the SP campaign), however one sort of still end up with a fairly clear notion of "USA" fighting "some other nation" I think.
Americans surrendered in Vietnam
Actually no. The US left as part of a peace agreement which the North Vietnamese violated by invading and conquering South Vietnam with tanks and infantry divisions. Just another case of communist aggression and lying.
Interestingly China invaded Vietnam several years after North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam. It wasn't a pleasant experience for them.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
what china thinks.
North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam before the US ever got there -- not at all unlike how North Korea's invasion of the South started that war.
Don't know about BF4 in particular, but they sure are right about "cultural aggression". The most successful invasion the USA is continually running on the rest of the world isn't military.
I live in Europe. Most of the Americans view us as socialists, mostly because there used to be a cultural difference between Europe and the USA. Where in the US the basic concept is "everyone makes his own luck", Europe has a bigger focus on the social units you belong to - the family at the lowest level, the nation at the highest. That's why we have healthcare and unemployment benefits and all that, because we care for each other in addition to ourselves.
Both models have advantages and disadvantages. In the US, you can make it, there are more options for venture capital or starting your own company in general, and less obstacles. At the same time, the path is smaller and more dangerous. And if you fall, you fall alone.
But things change. With the constant battering from Hollywood, music, comics and other cultural exports, Europe is in crisis primarily because old and new social concepts are clashing, and we are the battlefield.
Now imagine Asia, where the social groups are even more important than the individual. What kind of havoc a US-spirit can wreck there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Well put.
What the hell are you harping on about? This is all about the Communist Party banning a video game which casts them in a bad light (in this case, in a state of internal turmoil, with the entire country plunged into civil war). It's a move to preserve the public image of the party as something invulnerable and all-knowing.
The voracious supporters of democracy and freedom in the West are more radical and virulent than 20th century International Communists when it comes to spreading their ideology. China has every right to to be concerned, especially when bringing "democracy" and "freedom" to the rest of the world means bombing campaigns, land invasions, and subservience to Western central banks.
Wow, for a brief moment there, I thought that you weren't condoning censorship. Good use of the halo-effect/devil-effect in making the East's censorship look justified by calling out the West's evils. Uncensored corruption is of course bad, but censorship doesn't suddenly make the censors' intentions or methods a good thing. Let me simplify: Censorship = still bad.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Americans surrendered in Vietnam
Actually no. The US left as part of a peace agreement which the North Vietnamese violated by invading and conquering South Vietnam with tanks and infantry divisions. Just another case of communist aggression and lying.
Indeed... because communist aggression and lying looks so different from capitalist aggression and lying....
Really; your argument doesn't hold together. It's just another case of aggression and lying -- governing style doesn't even have to come into it.
fuck you ea games
And nothing of value was lost.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Just another case of communist aggression and lying.
Sort of like how Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tomkin incident?
In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded[7] that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese Naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated regarding August 2:
At 1500G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, the Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first.[7]
Regarding August 4:
It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.[8]
In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there." [40]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
... the game endangers national security and cultural aggression....
Any game that endangers cultural aggression is bound to be a problem. Just think what would happen if American aggression was endangered....
A peace agreement that everyone, including Kissinger, knew was a joke.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
America had promised, as part of that agreement, that we'd bring air support to Saigon if the North did invade. They did, and we didn't.
Politicians lie, intentionally or not, regardless of what party they associate with.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Battlefield 4's storyline includes a Chinese admiral attempting to overthrow the Chinese government. You're not allowed to suggest those sorts of things.
...I guess it won't be long before the UK bans first person shooters, then.
We stopped the communist threat
In what way? The entire country of Vietnam became communist after the end of the war.
The communist effort was ground to a halt, instead of sweeping over all of Asia.
oodaloop was comparing America's surrender in Vietnam -- after a long hard war far away from home -- to French surrender of their homes promptly upon invasion. Read carefully, try to keep up...
The voracious supporters of democracy and freedom in the West are more radical and virulent than 20th century International Communists when it comes to spreading their ideology. China has every right to to be concerned, especially when bringing "democracy" and "freedom" to the rest of the world means bombing campaigns, land invasions, and subservience to Western central banks.
Only on Slashdot does this get +5 insightful... If this were the USA doing the censorship instead of China, the slashdot commenters would be screaming of tyranny. When China does it, censorship is cheered on as fighting the encroachment of the USA and western influence.
There was a very significant indigenous resistance force in South Vietnam in the '50s and '60s. That was not true in Korea in the '50s.
Besides, why wouldn't the North want to reunify the country after partition had been forced on them by the imperialist French and their allies.
The Vietnam War was STUPID.
The U.S. had hundreds of soldiers in the South by 1955, and thousands by 1960. The French, of course, had hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the South in the early 1950s, until a string of military defeats forced them to withdraw. It's not like the West was just minding its own business when North Vietnam suddenly invaded a previously-entirely-independent South, forcing the West to respond. The West was already there with a large military presence since the '40s, supporting a series of corrupt (not to mention incompetent and murderous) colonial-lackey dictators, from Bao Dai up through Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Would that be the French army that held the Germans back allowing the British Expeditionary Force run away at Dunkirk?
That "peace agreement" was an instrument of surrender in all but name, and everyone on all sides knew it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The French have more victories than the US.
If you're refering to WW2, they didn't surrender immediately. They were one of the first to declare war on Germany after the unprovoked German invasion of Poland. True, their government surrended soon after - but even then much of the french military defied the order and continued fighting, simply joining forces with whichever local allied power would accept their aid. Their civilian resistance effort also went down in legend - a campaign of intelligence gathering, covert communication and outright sabotage that significently hindered German efforts to transport troops and material through the country and brought vital information to the allies.
Their surrender, though quick, was not given easily: It was only forced by a series of catastropic strategic defeats. It was only when the German army was standing at the fringe of a defenceless Paris that the surrender was hastily given, with government leaders fearful of the immense loss of civilian lives (Not to mention their own) should the capital be attacked.
Communists have the unique distinction of killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last century. Revolution, class warfare, and the extermination of class and state enemies are a pattern repeatedly demonstrated in communist rule, often followed by attempts to export the revolution to other places. It is built into the ideology.
The Soviet Story is informative. - Excerpts
When a kinder, gentler communism arises, a "socialism with a human face," the brotherly "socialist," i.e. communist, nations invade to set things straight.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And in effect surrendered to the Chinese who were supporting the Viet Cong and forcing communism on the entire country.
There were probably times during the war when Chinese soldiers were fighting directly with US troops.
The European cradle-to-grave welfare state is an unsustainable boondoggle that's bankrupting the continent through deficit spending. Those deficits will never be paid back short of hyperinflation because Europe has declining birth rates that will make it impossible maintain the current welfare state.
If you want to know what the future of Europe looks like, look at Greece.
Sort of like how Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tomkin incident?
Not quite. They key part is here: "....it concluded[7] that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2 ..."
There clearly was a meaningful naval engagement on one day, but they were mistaken about events on the second day. Calk it up to the fog of war, it happens. There are many unknowns, uncertainties, and mistakes that occur in warfare. You don't have perfect knowledge, and the enemy tries to fool you. Electronic equipment is not infallible and is subject to miscalibration, spoofing, and other faults. The interpretation of results is not immune to mistakes of many kinds, including faulty judgment.
Actions in the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964
On the afternoon of 2 August 1964, while steaming well offshore in international waters, Maddox was attacked by three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats. The destroyer maneuvered to avoid torpedoes and used her guns against her fast-moving opponents, hitting them all. In turn, she was struck in the after gun director by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. Maddox called for air support from the carrier Ticonderoga, whose planes strafed the three boats, leaving one dead in the water and burning. Both sides then separated. ... more
You can't just wipe that away by claiming the mistakes that followed on another day mean it didn't happen.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
EA should have worked with the Chinese government to produce a version where you can invade Taiwan, Japan, and if you do really well, North Korea,,,
That is exactly what your communists did, invading the South. And don't say it was Vietnamese stopping US imperialism, because the fight was US vs. Soviet imperialism.
Gee, just because they've been around for almost 5 times as long?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
In 1973 the US did aid South Vietnam. In 1975 the Democrats in congress sold American allies down the river, banning even medical supplies for them. They almost did it again in Iraq in 2007. The Democratic party earned the mistrust of the American people on national security matters for a reason.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
...that I'm really surprised, but I'm not. Anything that looks like it might be a critical of china's government is always met with an over-reaction.
"Released in October, Battlefield 4 is available in North America, Europe, Jana, Australia, and New Zealand, and was not officially launched in China."
What is this Jana they speak of?
Assuming that it would ever have done so in the first place...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The Battlefield series is developed by DICE, a Swedish studio owned by EA. It's a Swedish game, not a US game.
You can't just wipe that away by claiming the mistakes that followed on another day mean it didn't happen.
Considering the events of what happened were lied about, you clearly can.
It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.[8]
In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there." [40]
As for 'stopped the communist threat', you do know we lost, right?
We did?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It was "peace with honor," honor that was discarded within a few years by Congress. If the US had continued to back South Vietnam in the face of North Vietnamese aggression as it did in 1973 it might have worked out and stabilized into a situation similar to North & South Korea. Unfortunately the Democrats in Congress threw that away in 1975.
As a practical matter there is a lot to what you state.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
China is smart to do this. People are far too shut-in these days. Look how much entertainment has expanded and filtered in the niches of everyone's lives. It does not always have a positive effect on individuals (does the news even bother to cover stories of MMORPG recluses any more or is it now to be taken for granted?) and therefore nor does it always have a positive effect on populations.
Consider the effect that a film like "V for Vendetta" has had on activism itself. The iconic Guy Fawkes mask and the anonymized approach to public activism leaked directly from the film into peoples' lives, who took it seriously and decided to implement it in a fashion.
Consider the effect that video games have on what you decide to talk about with people when you're out shopping, or at work, or at school, just "hanging out", and so on. For many people, about the only people they wouldn't talk about their video games with would be their parents, who would grow weary of the subject and try to divert them to something "more productive". And that HAS to be a dwindling case, considering how many life long gamer are now parents of kids old enough to game passionately.
People fall in love with "weighted companion cubes" (despite the dead bodies inside). People spend a great deal of time meditating on whether the cake is a lie or whether there is no spoon.
When you add in a dimension of possible political opinion and conflict to an immersive game, it also adds those political opinions and conflicts to the discussion. With things in China as bad as they are right now, in many districts, it would be a bad idea to entertain people with some game depicting "the day after tomorrow" sort of mayhem that no doubt many of them wish was real today.
Because that is what they would be talking about around the water cooler, or out shopping, or while stocking the coal cellar, or while cooking, or at school. Especially the at school part, that's sort of what China's mostly concerned about. Remember it was students who were active in Tiananmen Square.
Every day, in the United States, I shake my head in shame at how many people are operating in their daily lives on a level of cinema fantasy running through their heads. It's not that they watch too many movies or that the content of the movies is wrong somehow, it's that they take what they've watched far too seriously and for whatever reason they've also adapted it to fit their self image and their perception of what their life actually is.
It's easy to defend these people as "needing heroes", and "needing to be heroes", and so on. But it's not easy to defend people who aren't aware of their surroundings and who aren't concerned with real events and real consequences in real life, no in any sense of the word "defend". And plenty of people -- who don't have self-image and self-esteem issues, or who aren't trying to take reality escapism to a whole different level -- enjoy their hero sagas and their epic struggles as things separate from real life. It's not those people that draw my concern, it's the growing number of others who get completely absorbed and proceed to live in a psychological bubble composed of entertainment imagery.
Case in point, "thug life", which is a cultural mainstream even in neighborhoods where there's no threat of actual gang activity and where there are plenty of opportunities for a better life. It's even a mainstream with little white upper class girls in grade school who obviously aren't going to cap anybody and if they wanted to count stacks they could learn accounting and investment from their millionaire parents. There's something lacking in someone's life besides monetary value and secure social networks, when they emulate being a thug ostensibly in pursuit of money and social standing, even when they have ready access to plenty of both.
It's expensive to get a rich man's money, but, it's cheap to fill a poor man's pockets.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
All Wars are STUPID
There! FIFY
There is always one side that think it is better, it is correct, it have some kind of right. Worst wars happen when both sides think that. Then there is all the lies, illusions and blindness that fuel some kind of hate that didn't existed in the past. Everyone have reasons to both LOVE and HATE the next guy, just press the right buttons to increase one over the other.
Higuita
In 1975 the Democrats in congress sold American allies down the river, banning even medical supplies for them.
[Citation needed]
Peace agreement?
The message: a peace settlement under a Nixon presidency would be more favorable to the South Vietnamese.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
hey lets make a game about the al qiuda destroying U.S. im sure everyone likes that
I don't think that nonviolence would have worked against Hitler. I think that war was the only option once he declared war on us. So, I don't think I can agree with you that "all wars are stupid."
What can be expected of a people so different from the West that they cannot even properly metabolize alcohol.
There never was a "communist threat." The only threat was the two sides goading each other during the cold war and risking doing something stupid. The Eastern Bloc was too busy fucking itself up to be a threat to anyone. It crumbled because it was not stable.
soylentnews.org
Even up front, though, the peace agreement was much different than the one in Korea. The one in Korea demarcated an armistice line, but crucially, the U.S. neither promised nor carried out a troop pullout, but rather maintained a huge troop presence in South Korea to enforce the armistice line.
The reason I see what Nixon signed as a capitulation even from the start is that he agreed to a total troop pullout within 60 days. That left no U.S. force in the country, and very little credible U.S. enforcement of the North-South border agreement. Yes, there was a promise that we'd bomb if the North ever invaded, but we pulled out all the ground troops, which made it a fairly weak promise (it's not even clear that a U.S. bombing campaign would've saved Saigon in 1975).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
By "communist forces" do you by any chance mean people defending their own country,
I think by "communist forces" he means women, children and old-people who coud not protect them selfs places like My Lai
Communists have the unique distinction of killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last century.
Quoting "The black book of communism"? Really? That books is considered a joke by many scholars, lets say that it is at least controversial. Even if you argue 100mil victims of communist regimes, you can hardly say that it is a "unique distinction". Capitalism has killed much more, fasism has had its share too. It is a mute arguement. If you want to argue against communism/capitalism/fasism, etc, at least do it with some serious arguments like the economics, liberties, their feasibility, which system is more just, etc.
in this case the bombs are imaginary... censorship is still censorship.
Communist ideology, built on the backs and necks of their own citizens is not Chinese ideology.
That's not what the poster you replied to is saying. He's saying, I believe, that many of our governments in the West are now so powerful and complicated that elections are becoming a progressively less powerful means of keeping our leaders in check. Most of the political parties are the same, and the vast and powerful civil service machinery stays more or less unchanged no matter who is in power. If they want to go to war and kill thousands of innocent people, then we have no say in the matter.
In our democracy we put our trust in those in power to run the country for us and we usually have no direct say in what actually happens. It's supposed to work like that, but a lot of people don't seem to realise this. It's true that it's much easier for an individual to enter government in a Western democracy than in China, but overall I think our governments have more in common with the Chinese government than a lot of us are willing to admit.
soylentnews.org
Except this has nothing to do with American ideology. It's all about the negative depiction of the Chinese Communist party in BF4.
cold fjord: you realize that with a few word substitutions, you're talking about capitalist states, right?
This isn't an ideological issue -- it's a human issue. Look at the last century: Germany (not communist) doing an ethnic cleansing... Italy (fascist) joining in... Rwanda (definitely capitalist, to their detriment) involved in ethnic cleansing, the Congo, Somalia, Croatia, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and more.
And then we move on to the ones that were due to American interference in the past century: Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Laos, various conflicts in the mid-east, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada (US invading gentler communism), Panama, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba (pre-communism), Honduras, Puerto Rico, Egypt (Suez crisis), Lebanon, Indonesia (over 1,000,000 killed due to US-assisted millitary coup), Chile, Angola, Sudan, Colombia.
Good reference for American interventions (both defense and pro-active intervention): http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
As you can see, people are violent, and incite violence in others. More powerful governments tend to want to export their culture to the rest of the world, and use force when that export is rejected. While political communism is obviously a failed method of governance, none of the others have fared much better, when you take into account the physical and mental health and prosperity of the average citizen.
In those cases the wars are civil. The US involvement is just a proxy war with Russia and China.
And the U.S. is leading the charge.
Well, cruise missile democracy should indeed be stamped out of existence.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The capitalists dont tend to leave tens of millions dead of starvation in their wake. Lets please not gloss that over, its sort of a big deal.
The US military, and propaganda departments of the US government, have massive input into the current AAA military games available for PCs and consoles. It does not matter whether the game is developed in the USA, or one of the tame European nations. Actually it does. American law is STRICTER over this kind of interference, so it is far easier, for instance for US war propaganda operations to influence games made in the UK (Codemasters with their mega-flop UK in-house Operation Flashpoint 2), Canada (COD series) or Scandinavia (BattleField, by far the worst example of neo-fascist warmongering propaganda sold to children as a 'game').
It gets worse. In the UK or much of Europe, it is actually a criminal offence (described in law as terrorist activity) to make a game where the 'good' guys are the victims of US and NATO aggression. Indeed it is now actual possible to arrest Muslims in the UK if they participate regularly in a team that purposely plays the 'Muslim' side of a commercial team based multi=player military shooter. This is deemed 'intent' under recent anti-terror laws introduced in the UK- and YES, people go to jail for this.
China is between a rock and a hard place by clever intent. If they don't ban an obscenity like BF4, they allow UK and US military planners to laugh in their face, as Chinese youth willingly participate in scenarios crafted to demonise the Chinese people, culture and government. If they 'ban' BF4, they look like the same old authoritarian communist thugs of old.
However, if a Chinese game was made reversing the moral position in the story, showing NATO and the USA as the mass murdering warmongers they really are, the game would be banned in the UK, most of Europe, Canada and Australia. It might even be banned in Obama's USA, because despite the Constitutional protections, Obama regularly imprisons US Muslims for watching or making available "BANNED" mainstream Muslim satellite services. It is a small leap from Obama's ban on specific TV services to a ban on specific games, using the same "terrorist" excuse.
COD reaches millions of young (and not so young) minds. So does BF4. And unlike most games, these are truly popular and enduring, as their multiplayer slurps up vastly more hours use than any average AAA computer game. However, in truth, few players respond to the vile propaganda in the single player 'story' campaign. But they ARE 'groomed' to see urban destruction and warfare as 'normal' by the scenarios depicted in the multi-player maps. And they ARE encouraged to see as 'fun' the use of modern weapons of mass murder deployed in the civilian cities of Humanity across the planet.
That the French surrendered immediately is the largest bs imaginable.
They asked for an armistice the much larger Germany after over a month of brutal fighting, after they lost 360 000 soldiers (excluding prisoners) and over 2000 planes (although some of them were British).
After their army had been destroyed (for various reasons but cowardice wasn't one of them), after their logistics had been damaged beyond repair.
In that one month almost as many French soldiers were killed or wounded as the Americans during the entire ww2.
Those soldiers didn't die because of wine overdose. Those planes didn't rust on the ground.
They killed or wounded over 150000 Germans, destroyed over 1000 German planes. Just in that one month. Not bad for the first years of the WW2. They certainly were better and more effective fighters than the Soviet soldiers in the first months of Barbarossa.
During the Great War they almost single handedly hold up the Germans for years for the price of millions killed or maimed.
Please don't spread that bs, it was the staple of the Nazi propaganda in the occupied territories, and later of the Soviet propaganda in the Warsaw pact countries.
In the 1940 France was fighting as courageously as any other nation. The later defeat looked as bad as any defeat: in Philippines, at Smolensk or Stalingrad - because it was a defeat, not because they were Frenchmen.
And I'm not a Frenchman, never even been there too.
Yea! Remember that time when democracy starved 40 million people? And when Freedom did a mass genocide in Cambodia?
After China helped Vietnam, Vietnam invaded Cambodia as a result of a pact with the Soviet Union to encircle China from the south. China didn't like this so they invaded. Though they couldn't exactly be said to have won the war, they sufficiently dissuaded the Soviet Union from further encroachment. Read all about it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
We lost the war, we won the peace. Too bad we went through the war part.
In theory, except the freedom has to be aproved under dubious claims of "public safety" (protests).
As for the supposed democracy, seems very ill, subverted and controlled by said central banks and their investments, be it corporative or plain legislative/political through said corporate "donations".
You might change your mind if you weren't trying to see the whole picture through the keyhole of a door. Start with the Viet Minh trying to free their country from the colonial French.
You have a very odd way of spelling, "inspired tactical withdrawal".
Anyway, we came back. We didn't have to, y'know.
If this were the USA doing the censorship instead of China, the slashdot commenters would be screaming of tyranny. When China does it, censorship is cheered on as fighting the encroachment of the USA and western influence.
So there are a bunch of us nihilistic fuckers on Slashdot? Who knew?
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
So BF4 is about how the chinese allied with the french to resist the American/Nazi forces during a civilian resistance of tactical espionage!?
But what of the sneaky canadians??? I heard that DLC was a hit in tokyo!
I want my children to live in a better world than the one that I grew up in and I don't see it happening today. [...] Candidly, I think the world is a more violent, aggressive and dangerous place to live in today than it has been in the past.
You realize this is a factual claim, not an opinion, right? Shouldn't you make a basic effort to know whether it's true or not before posting it?
Since you're talking about your own children, I'll assume you grew up in the 80s to early 90s. And since your comment focused on US culture, I'll use US crime rates since then to illustrate my point, which is that children today will grow up in a world about half as violent what you grew up with:
Violent crime, 1993-2012
Violent crime, 1973-2003
Homicide
Property crime (theft)
Even non-crime dangers are way down:
Fire deaths since 1918
Traffic deaths since 1900
Bear in mind that I'm not commenting on the rest of your post, just that one claim I quoted above. But if you care about truth more than truthiness, you should really change your tune about the violence and danger in today's (US) society.
This story reminds of the game Mercenaries 2: World in Flames which takes place in Venezuela. The game was promptly banned a it was believed to be propaganda against Hugo Chavez, the president at the time. That was in 2006. Venezuela since banned all violent video games in 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Here's a brief overview of the last 10 year just in 1 country - almost 2.5 million in iraq alone.
I hate dumb motherfuckers such as yourself who paint the west and capitalism as not as bad as communism. Has Communism killed 2.5 million people in the last 10 years in 1 country?
The kinder gentler communism you wish for was supposed to happen in iraq, instead 2.5 million people died.
I have a secret for you: Communists and Capitalists are the same thing - in the end it's whatever the bankers can play the people off each other to believe and then psy-op that concept to control people and enslave them.
You have a lot of learning to do about the nature of reality.
Well, both were political decisions and nothing wrong with them.
The US left Vietnam because the fight there was more and more pointless. But certainly it wasn't a sign of weakness. After all the American intercontinental missiles were as deadly and accurate as ever.
They lost a battle but the simultaneous detente with China showed the Soviets their place.
A battle was lost but shortly afterward the Soviets were losing one political battle after another anyway.
France still existed after the armistice, and both the UK and the US were maintaining friendly relations with her.
There is nothing wrong with admitting defeat after a good fight. France asked for an armistice after the best French armies were destroyed, after the fight had become pointless, after the defence of her territory and the civilian population wasn't possible anymore.
Exactly as the American soldiers during the battle of Chosin Reservoir.
Maybe it was a mistake but it was their mistake.
But the small France (in comparison with Germany) and millions of her fallen soldiers in both wars don't deserve the "one french rifle never fired, only dropped once" treatment.
The destroyed German planes weren't available over London a few months later.
The first class, prewar trained German soldiers, the destroyed - by the French or simply by wear and tear equipment weren't available in Russia.
Among them the thirteen most modern German Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs, destroyed in minutes during the battle of Stonne by a single French tank commanded by captain Pierre Billotte - despite being hit by 140 antitank rounds.
>the much larger Germany
stopped reading there. pure propaganda.
>considered a joke by many scholars
a joke to communist scholars
>Capitalism has killed much more
and that makes it ok for communism to kill people?
Gotta say, I am not impressed by mods, loading this comment poorly, whenever an article about China's politics comes up.
China/CCP has occupied Tibet and because of cheap consumer products and cheaper ethics, many ignore the human rights abuses, including the UN....
Wither the artists against Apartheid, that helped Free South Africa? Small chance of a boycott against China :-/
Fundamentals need to be reassessed. The UNHDR of 1948, is a excellent starting point.
China/CCP is such a switched on place, the Dalia Lama is labelled as a terrorist. Still, so was Steve Biko & Nelson Mandala.
Free Tibet Forever!
I think it is not quite right. Paris was declared an open city because its defence wasn't possible. The French government relocated to Bordeaux and continued the fight from there.
Germans were assisted in those catastrophic strategic defeats by lots of luck.
There were moments all the nazi nonsense could have been sent straight to hell. But the luck was with them.
He is, the Chinese can pronounce the 'L'. It's the Japanese and Koreans who can't
I would pay to play this.
I guess it's good that the serious threat of International Communism is so far off you can make that statement, and concentrate on fixing the flaws in International Capitalism...
Indeed, “legend” is the correct term. Many of the most active members of the French Resistance were Jewish, who therefore had little to lose. Their names were changed from obviously-Jewish ones to more French ones, when the history was later written.
Militarism propaganda violence shit.
Thank you for this. It's refreshing to see a comment that's based on, you know, actual knowledge of history rather than on somebody else's uninformed opinion.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Erm? You know the difference between invaded and conquered, do you?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That is the most uncorrected, disrespectful nonsense I ever have seen on /.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We succeeded in invading PRC using a computer game ? Cool.
What we now call capitalism started perhaps roughly around 1800. Perhaps a bit later like 1850. ... from starving people where "the society" could not cope with the industrialization to slaves dying on the fields or during transportation ... ...
And yes it left dozens of millions people dead in its wake
Btw, as china shows capitalism and communism don't contradict each other
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They took a page out of Infinity's book on this one. Too bad it cost them billions in potential revenue.
Again with ignorant tripe being moderated informative.
The US was involved before the partition. Vietnam never would have been split except because of US interference.
Wow not a good day for cold fjord.
Getting ass raped despite valiant effort at distorting facts and selective outrage.
And if he thought figurative ass rapage was painful, wait till he has to answer to his State Department review gang, sorry I mean team.
Yes your version is true about the facts.
But
You have to give credit to their education system and "where number 1" mentality when even dropout in another country woiuld know better.
You seem to have an active fantasy life enhanced by stunning ignorance of history.
US lost, full stop.
Just like in Iraq, Afghanistan etc
Let us know when all your shiny toys can win one.
No, but that wasn't the point of contention. You see the word GGP used, "unique distinction"?
Democracy is for the people; you only vote once per season and we'll do the rest of the work for you don't have to.
Your history is a bit off. Iraq is a clear win, the US was out of Vietnam with a treaty, and the Taliban bolstered by al Qaida no longer rules Afghanistan. If you're bitter about that I suggest buying a beer to catch your tears.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You have been suckered by Cold War propaganda. The figures for "Communist megadeaths" derive from a single source: "The Black Book of Communism". It has been debunked, yet its spurious figures are endlessly quoted.
The old adage holds: repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
You've certainly been suckered in by something. The massive death tolls by murder, oppression, and forced starvation in Russia, China, Cambodia, and other places is well known. If you think that the Black Book of Communism is the only source for that you are sadly mistaken. I suggest watching the Soviet Story to get a taste of it. Then maybe read The Great Terror, by Robert Conquest. Someone seems to have planted the lie in your mind that Communist rule wasn't responsible for mass murder in many countries.
Their surrender, though quick, was not given easily: It was only forced by a series of catastropic strategic defeats. It was only when the German army was standing at the fringe of a defenceless Paris that the surrender was hastily given, with government leaders fearful of the immense loss of civilian lives (Not to mention their own) should the capital be attacked.
In other words, they refused to pay the price that was necessary for victory, letting someone else carry the burden. Same as every single other European country (except for Yugoslavia, but they had no chance to win or even hold back, even disregarding the losses). It's quite fortunate for all of us that there was a country that could and did pay the price of victory in Europe; otherwise all the wise ones who surrendered to save the lives of their civilians, would be under Nazi yoke for decades to come (and, of course, have their Jewish compatriots slaughtered wholesale anyway).
The way this 100 million figure is computed is basically by taking every single violent death or death of starvation in any country declaring itself communist, and claiming that all such deaths are "because of communism". Of course, by the same methodology, we should count all genocides of native people of various colonies of European capitalist states as "victims of capitalism" - that would give 5 to 10 million in Congo Free State alone, for example.
Oh, and the reason why Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia? Very little to do with ideology, actually. Rather, it was because it was a buffer state, bordering Austria. The whole point of Warsaw Pact was to basically set up a bunch of buffer states in Europe between NATO countries and the USSR, so that if a conventional war were to break out, it would not be again waged on Soviet territory as happened in WW2, with all the associated devastation.
Ideologically, Prague Spring was actually very much counter to Soviet ideology. It is rather telling that neither Romania nor Albania, for example, agreed to take part, and Albania in fact left the Pact over it. Even in USSR itself, the invasion was a subject of a bitter dispute in the Politburo, which the hawks eventually won (a little known fact was that Brezhnev himself was against it - but people pushing for it were, collectively, at least as powerful).
Iraq is a clear win
Which part of it? The one where Kurdistan is all but separated (and may possibly end up in an armed conflict with Turkey eventually), and the remainder of the country is the arena for a civil war between Sunni and Shia who are massacring each other in an endless cycle of revenge attacks for revenge attacks for the last several years? The one where Iran is actively strengthening ties with the Shia-dominated government, vying for the takeover, and likely to eventually clash with Saudis and their allies over it?
and the Taliban bolstered by al Qaida no longer rules Afghanistan.
Well, Karzai has openly stated that Taliban will be invited to "negotiate" (really, to grovel before, since once Western troops leave, Taliban will be the only well-organized armed faction in the country that enjoys considerable popular support) in short order, so things are getting back to where they were.
In the meantime, what had the US-installed puppet administration achieved in Afghanistan in all these years? Well, they have put in place a new constitution, which officially declares Afghanistan an Islamic Republic where no laws can go contrary to Sharia (and people have been convicted to death for "apostasy", i.e. converting from Islam to Christianity, under this article of the constitution). They have also let the poppy industry do whatever the hell it wants (because most of the government is personally invested into it), and now Afghanistan is back to the top of the charts as the biggest supplier of raw ingredients for heroin.
At the same time, American private companies have prospered by investigating and tacitly supporting the newly revived (previously suppressed by Taliban) local customs, such as the institution of "beardless boy" companions for homosexual pedophilia, widespread among prominent figures in the Afghan community. I wonder if you have your panties in a twist over Manning leaking that bit, on the basis of "damage to diplomacy" that you had claimed for Snowden's leaks?
So yeah... epic win all around! Good job, guys!
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc.
Like any other ideology, communism has been abused by psychotic oligarchs. That it was particularly effectively used to such ends has no impacts on it's merits or flaws. If your intention was to argue that certain aspects of it better give themselves to such abuse, then you will need better arguments than that.
At any rate, I am hard pressed to blame most 20th century communist state atrocities to communism itself. The ideology itself doesn't advocate anything particularly strongly related to any of those things.
Can everyone stop referencing Wikipedia... You are trying to be intelligent but Wikipedia citations are not accepted in the world of academia! Both sides of the argument that cite need to have some solid references or don't bother :D
I've seen translated versions of both Animal Farm and 1984 on the shelves of local bookstores the last time I visited China.
Go figure.
Banging your head against a stone wall for a long time until you're bleeding from every hole in your body does not make you brave, or a hero. Just very very stupid.
Stop being insightful. Just brainlessly bash the French like any American Patriot should do.
French? We don'need no stinkin French around here!
You forgot all the Klingons and Vulcans.
I'm British. We *invented* bashing the French.
We still won't shut up about their quite humiliating defeat at Agincourt, and that was six hundred years ago. They outnumbered us substantially, and we were fighting on their own ground with an army exausted and cut off from supplies - and still managed to slaughter nine thousand of so of their soldiers, while losing little more than a hundred of our own.
And you also evacuated your Army that was stationed in France to protect them from the Nazi invasion that was coming without actually even attempting to defend France.
A evacuation which would have resulted in annihilation of the British Army in Europe had the French Army not hold a defensive line until the evacuation could be completed against the Germans.
Which part of it? The one where Kurdistan is all but separated
That is a win, for people who have been opressed for centuries by the Arabs and Turkish.
Bush did the right thing by giving the Kurds a bit of space to be comfortable in without the centuries of prosecution following them.
North Vietnam didn't exist until they managed to liberate the North of their countries from French rule in the First Indochina War.
The Viet Minh were allies with the Americans and the Nationalist Republic of China in the war against Japan. When their country was going to be forcefully reoccupied by France after the war, they turned their attention to keep the French out of it.
There was no "South Vietnam" to invade, there was just a French Puppet government.
Hitler alone could not do anything...he needed the people support.
German people fall in to the nazi hate talk due to the instability of world crisis and specially by the huge and stupid "war compensation" from WW1. Crisis make people to want to believe on new solutions, specially if the current available ones don't really solve anything... just look at Greece economical crisis and how a both a fascist party and a alternative popular party gained popularity in last elections. Extended crisis and greed are the seeds for wars. Mutual help, support and sharing helps avoid wars. It's up to the people to decide what path they want to follow (what that could do to others).
Higuita
It would be a win if that independent Kurdistan was actually separated and recognized as such. As it is, it just sets up the way for another future conflict. For example, if Iraq does become Iran's puppet, they might decide to reconsider the arrangement, prompting Kurds to push back - and Iran has some experience "dealing" with that kind of thing the hard way. Or, say, if Iraq just falls apart due to Sunni-Shia conflict, Kurds might be forced into declaring formal independence, which will likely not be tolerated by Turkey.
I also have the impression that GP thinks of "win" solely in terms of "what good is this to US", not in terms of freedom and such for other people. In that sense, given that Turkey is a prominent NATO member and a consistent ally for many decades, and that the main Kurdish resistance organization is called Kurdistan' Workers Party and officially espouses Marxist ideology, I don't think he'd consider that a win.
to French surrender of their homes promptly upon invasion.
Let's put that "promptly" into context. Here are the times it took for Germany to occupy the following countries:
China may have had their own Stangelovian incident.
From Page 5, "The Move from Qinghai to Taibai", http://www.project2049.net/documents/chinas_nuclear_warhead_storage_and_handling_system.pdf
"Another security consideration may have led to the move. During 1967, the nuclear weapons program in Qinghai became subject to Cultural Revolution strife, including attempts by rival factions to seize nuclear-related facilities in both Qinghai and Xinjiang. On March 5, 1967, Premier Zhou Enlai, at the urging of CMC Vice Chairman Gen Nie Rongzhen, declared martial law and placed Jia Qianrui in charge of enforcement. Along with Hong Youdao, Jia oversaw the relocation from Qinghai to Taibai County in 1969 and 22 Base operations until the unit’s subordination to Second Artillery in January 1979."
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