N-Philes :: Forums - Are EA Games and the creators of South Park secretly recruiting members for al-Qaeda?

05-15-2006, 03:01 PM

Caster13

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Are EA Games and the creators of South Park secretly recruiting members for al-Qaeda?

From GamePolitics.com:

Quote:

Was Congress Misled by "Terrorist" Game Video? We Talk to Gamer Who Created the Footage

Was an elite congressional intelligence committee shown video footage from an off-the-shelf retail game and told by the Pentagon and a highly-paid defense contractor that it was a jihadist creation designed to recruit and indoctrinate terrorists?

It's looking more and more like that is the case.

The bizarre story began to unfold last week when Reuters reported that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was shown video footage of combat action which was represented as a user-modified version (or "mod") of Electronic Art's best-selling Battlefield 2, a modern-day military which features combat between U.S. forces and those of the fictitious Middle East Coalition (MEC) as well as the People's Republic of China.

Reuters quoted a Pentagon official, Dan Devlin, as saying, "What we have seen is that any video game that comes out... (al Qaeda will) modify it and change the game for their needs."

The influential committee, chaired by Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), watched footage of animated combat in which characters depicted as Islamic insurgents killed U.S. troops in battle. The video began with the voice of a male narrator saying, "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters..."

Several GP readers immediately noticed that the voice-over was actually lifted from Team America: World Police, an outrageous 2004 satirical film produced by the creators of the popular South Park comedy series. At about the same time, gamers involved in the online Battlefield 2 community were pointing out the video footage shown to Congress was not a mod of BF2 at all, but standard game footage from EA's Special Forces BF2 add-on module, a retail product widely available in the United States and elsewhere.

GamePolitics has been seeking comment on the video from the Pentagon and Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), a defense contractor based in San Diego. Committee chair Hoekstra's office referred GP back to the committee for comment. A call there had not been returned by press time.

According to Reuters, the U.S. government is paying SAIC $7 million to monitor Islamist web sites, which is where they apparently discovered a copy of the footage. However, the video can also readily be accessed via links found in the user forums of the popular Planet Battlefield site, operated by IGN Entertainment of Brisbane, California.

It is unclear whether SAIC vetted the origin of the video before showing it to key members of Congress and representing it as a terrorist recruiting tool.

I cut the rest of the article for size and convenience sake. Included in the article is an interview with 'Sonic Jihad', the person who put together the Battlefield 2 footage with the Team America: World Police voice-overs.

Also of interest, a response from Trey Parker:

Quote:

There's a story going around about a video game being modified by al-jazera and used as propaganda. Actually it was just some guys promoting their video game team.

(...)

From the news story ""I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Black hawk helicopters," a narrator's voice said"
Sounds familiar I bet, I can not believe CIA or whoever didn't realize this was a joke. Its got the entire voice over from world police in it, goats and all. I kind of hope this makes tv news just to show how retarded the US intelligence community is.

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05-15-2006, 03:38 PM	#2
SilvaHalo Make me smile.. Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Vantucky Posts: 10,159	lol....Thanks for posting that. I lolled when I read the original reuters report cause I thought how can we get all pissy because "The terrorists" are modifying video games to make us out to be the bad guys? Havent we been doing that for years now??

05-16-2006, 03:18 AM	#3
Game Guru Golden f*cking Sun! Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: L.A., Tuskegee, AL or Albany, GA depending on time of year. Posts: 6,453	__________________ Investors Business Daily on Obama "death panel": "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." Needless to say, Hawking, who is recognized as one of the great theoretical physicists of the 20th and 21st century, was born in the UK and has lived his entire life there.

05-16-2006, 07:07 AM	#4
Pandas_UNITE Positive Panda Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: I live in your heart ;) Posts: 18,246	The bear killing a monkey certainly is certainly al qaeda training material. __________________