MP blasts 'ineffective' games regulation Violent videogames opponent and Labour MP Keith Vaz has once again asked Parliament to tighten videogames regulation, this time following Anders Breivik's admission that he used a popular first-person shooter to prepare for his murderous rampage in Norway. This is the fifth time 'Vendetta Vaz' has tabled an early day motion …
MP - "Lets ban video games because Breivik used them to learn how to shoot"
Nevermind the fact that he actually needed to get his hands on a gun in order to physically shoot those people, and tightening up the loopholes that allowed him to get one would be a much better way to stop it happening again.
Alas no, we have net censorship and now increased video games censorship.
MPs are morons.
Actually you are wrong. I used to play a LOT of Counterstrike and Quake in my free time and I used to have LOTS of free time. Over the course of my training I acquired a keen sense of tactical decision making, such as when to reload and when to reload weapons, how to approach the target, etc. Also spacial and time awareness.
Fortunately I never had time to commit a terrorist atrocity as I was too busy honing my skills rather than putting them to real world use.
But the proof is in the pudding that I once got high score at my local Laser Quest even though it was just my first visit. Half the skill is just being aggressive. Take no prisoners. One of the parents had a go at me afterwards but I just pointed out that age has nothing to do with it. When I was 11 I was already more than capable thanks to games like Doom II and Quake.
I don't think it was the mechanics of operating the rifle that the video game helped Breivik with, but rather situational awareness. I don't know why Keith Vaz has to cite that Norwegian twat when he could have pointed at the US Department of Defence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army
[A FPS based on Unreal, developed and distributed by the US DOD. Whilst originally a PR exercise, it has been extended to military training applications]
What kind of society lets MPs to operate without consideration for Violent Video Games?
The type of society that can easily forget about him making a false allegation against a former policewoman in 2002 for which he was suspended from his job.
Some would say he is still making up false allegations given the known moral oversights he has been documented in partaking in. But thats lawyer education for you perhaps.
Personaly I treat this person as a hostile untrustworthy witness without anything to add to the subject of a factual basis. I'm sure in many area's he has done good work, but on this matter is is basing his entire stance on a knee jerk reaction from parents who's 14 year old son died and blamed a videogame called manhunt. A claim that the police investigating the case dismissed as only the victim had played the game. Do videogames make you a victim more than not is the question perhaps!
In summary for those using Windows 8 metro - Oi Vaz No
I think Mr Vaz needs to take a long hard think about what it is he is trying to get across.
Would tighter regulation prevented Breivik from committing his crimes? I dont think so. There doesnt seem to be a precedent that the medium of entertainment has unduly influenced acts of terror in the past. If you go back as far as Guy Fawkes (whether he was the person who did or not put to one side) he planned and tried to commit his crimes with no external source of training other than an ideal.
If someone has an idea moving them to such great lengths, they will use what ever they can to facilitate their plan. Would stronger regulation of games like MW3 have prevented Breivik from carrying out his actions? Probably not. Would stricter controls on guns etc. had an effect? Possibly, but again, if someone is driven to achieve a goal they will find a way.
Should MP's continue to debate the affect of violent or realistic games in parliament? I cant say, but personally I dont think it would prevent atrocities like this in the future.
"Would tighter regulation prevented Breivik from committing his crimes?"
Indeed not. In fact, if we for a second assume the unlikely fact that video games cause violence, an easy-to-use violence classification system may have helped him commit his crimes as he would have been able to better choose the game that could supposedly best hone his skills by looking at the most violent ones.
Actually it might have helped. One of the things Breivik would have learned from FPS is lag compensation when firing. There isn't much lag in real life but it's still a factor. If he wasn't familiar with lag then who knows he might have missed more shots before running out of ammo.
Then again I heard he played World of Warcraft. WTF that game can't teach you a THING about combat. Not unless you are fighting some dragon BS.
Vaz always seems to be trying to splatter his face all over the media every opportunity that the ambulance-chasing politician can get.
If he wants to get on (yet another) bandwagon, here's one:
Do you realise that Breivik was complaining about politicians not representing his views? And most terrrrrrrrist atrocities I can think of in recent years (from Oklahoma bombing, the IRA campaign, Osama Bin Liner etc.), ALL were caused by politicans not representing people in the way they wanted. So it's obvious - ban politicians as they are obviously the cause of all the problems!
...twat off, Vaz. This is the same "Think of the children!" knee-jerk bullshit that brought us the IWF (easy to by-ass, penchant fir censoring Wikipedia), block of TPB (easy to by-pass) and now the "I' am a dirty, porn-loving deviant list".
AIUI there is not one shred of evidence that games increase levels violence.
And even if there was, that could be a matter for the parents of that child to do their job and not let little Timmy play "Ultra-Kill 9" or whatever.
FFS, Breivik will have used maps. BAN THEM!
Probably drank coffee. BAN THE BEAN!
Even took a dump. ANALLY RETENT TO SAVE YOUR KID!
Well...
Considering statements like
"We wish to create a European version of Al-Queda for Christian nationalists"
"And these chapters of the manifesto are a comparable initiative to take the initiative for a debate which could result in a foundation, creating the base for a Christian version of The Muslim Brotherhood and similar revolutionary organisations"
"It is a desire to start a debate which might help build the foundation for Christian and nationalistic resistance"
"We wish to maintain [...] European countries as Christian nations. We wish to ensure the Christian cultural framework in all countries"
All these statements are translated from his testimony.
Now granted the last statement does speak of cultural framework - however searching through the testimony thus far, I have not found anywhere that he says something to the effect of not believing in God.
Explain to me how much more is needed, before we can call him a Christian terrorist. Or is it simply that some people don't want him to be a Christian terrorist...?
"As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings. ... Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I'm not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe."
"As this is a cultural war, our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus."
"Being a Christian can mean many things; That you believe in and want to protect Europe's Christian cultural heritage. ... It is not required that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. ... It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)). The PCCTS, Knights Templar is therefore not a religious organisation [sic] but rather a Christian 'culturalist' military order."
See, generally speaking, when... say, an islamist goes off in a crowded town centre he's made a video telling everyone how what he's doing is for God and Islam and all that. Hell even those abortion doctor killers over in the states are usually clear about their justification for it. They say "God told me to do it" though, on the face of it, they're ignoring a few commandments to get to that point. It's hard to deny what they themselves claim to be, though I don't think they'd use terrorist as a self-descriptor.
Breivik did not do that. He explicitly pointed out that he is not religious, that he values science above religion and that he is "culturally" christian. He isn't proclaiming that he is doing God's will, he's talking about how he wants to do his will and reach his goals. He went to great lengths to make it clear that any religious belief is not his motivator and even points out in his manifesto that he believes religious belief, specifically protestant christianity, has been a detriment to his idealised Europe in recent times.
If anyone wants him to be anything it's the media looking for an equivalent to islamist walking bomb in Europe. He isn't a christian terrorist. It would make as much sense to say he's a darwinian terrorist, or a moderate centrist terrorist, or... well the list goes on really.
Warning: This post is a rant and is structured as such....
All this fuss about censoring porn, blocking websites in the interest of corporates whining about losing profit, and this suggests the authorities in this country have nothing better to do.
While he's at it, by the way, why don't they ban paintball, and water pistols, you have to aim those at things too. In fact, let's just go ahead ban all forms of outdoor and indoor activity, just incase you offend someone, infringe someones IP, or otherwise offend someone. That should solve everything, shouldn't it?
Or, leave the internet and games alone, let us have our freedom and get on with our lives as we see fit, encourage and support good parenting, and concentrate on the important stuff like, oh I don't know, unemployment, recession, resolving any foreign conflicts/tensions we're involved in... important stuff, and not just these frivolous agendas bought into the spotlight on the whims these Daily Mail types.
"We should restrict the sale of computer games to children in the UK because an adult in another country who says he played one went on a rampage." Hmm. Correlation is not causation, and in the Breivik case I think it's pretty obvious he had serious issues that had nothing to do with computer games.
He keeps trying to do this. He tried to get Manhunt banned, when it was incriminated in a murder investigation. Unfortuanatly it was the victum that had a copy, and not the murderer.
Mans a fool.
Plus he keeps getting caught in "conflict of intrest" issues. So he is incompetant and corrupt as well.
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Many years ago, Private Eye printed a spotlight piece on Keith Vaz. The general gist was that he was a fairly ordinary, talentless, arse-licking, party machine toady, who'd sell his own grandmother for a favourable couple of column inches in the press.
I have not seen anything since to suggest that they may have been in any way incorrect in their assessment.
Ignore anything he says. Everyone else does.
So he blames a video game for real world violence, but doesn't bat an eyelid in voting for a war of aggression, that's resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dead, the photographic evidence of which has been largely self-censored by our media, as likely to be too upsetting for our delicate stomachs.
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpid=40358&dmp=1049
And he then went on to resolutely oppose a thorough investigation into the Blair governments probable criminal actions:
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpid=40358&dmp=975
Truly yesterday's 'gone tomorrow' politician, still struggle for some delusional self-importance.
He shot a bunch of blue-eyed blonde scandanavians - right?
So all we have to do is to ensure that the victims are never portraide like this in violent video games.
Perhaps we could suggest that the baddies are always shown as darker skinned, bearded headress wearing foreign types?
He's known as Bandwagon Vaz in his constituency, and indeed thoughout Leicester.
He's an attention-seeking media whore who only gets voted back in because he comes from India, as do most of his constituents (the ones who fill in the postal voting forms for their families).
When the first-generation immigrants die then he might get voted out, until then the best hope is that he fills his pockets with taxpayers/donors money again and gets jailed.
So important "the ones who fill in the postal voting forms for their families" - yet, nothing has been done about it. It's criminal and happens a lot in ethnic communities (be they Indian, Pakastani, Bangladeshi, Polish, Somali)... especially many women get their forms filled in for them...
Snakes and ladders: a particularly sickening game in which players, who may be as young as 4, are made to slide down "snakes".
Scrabble: encourages and even rewards the mindless construction of violent words.
Monopoly: players are trained not to question false imprisonment as they lay waste to a dystopian london in a capitalist orgy of greed.
Connect four: encourages the depletion of resources and has fascist connotations.
Hungry Hippos: fosters an association between animal cruelty and fun in young minds.
0s and Xs: Hateful and extremist
Didn't the 9/11 terrorists hone their skills by using Microsoft Flight Simulator? If so why isn't Vaz demanding that flight sims can only be used by licenced, authorised airline pilots.
What about those terrible racing games? Shouldn't those be banned too? I mean they make people think they can drive like lunatics .. someone will get killed by one of them soon mark my words.
Vaz is a publicity whore who will do or say anything to get his name in the papers.
why not ban all films as well? John Hinckley watched taxi driver 15 times in a row, then set out to assasinate a presidential candidate. In fact let's structure society exactly to these lone nut jobs. We'll all sleep a lot easier when we live like the Amish do.
(Actually the thought of GTA Amish style made me giggle a bit)
I'm embarrassed on behalf of Labour that they let this fool remain a member of the party, much less a sitting MP.
Surely, at a minimum, our elected representatives need a brain to do their job properly? Vaz is wrong on so many counts that I can't understand where he must be getting his information from.
Mr Vaz - please, for the sake of your constituents, stop jumping on the bandwagon with issues like this and back your opinions up with both facts and measured consideration about what's really best for the country? The Tories seem to be the party for censorship, maybe you should jump ship?
I couldn't be bothered to write anything more constructive than to paraphrase - and use a less offensive term than frequently used - several contributors to a similar discussion happening on guardian.co.uk......
Vaz is a expenses thieving prick who should learn when to shut the **** up, as trying this at least 5 times without any progress would tell even a semi-intelligent person that no-one cares about your dumb campaign.
And my indpendent contribution is that the day this waste of oxygen gets voted out, or contracts something fatal, can't arrive early enough.
has no problems about eviscerating funding for mental health provisions and the NHS. If you believe that the real world is an extension of video games rather than the other way round then you fall into the very definition of crazy. Video games are not the cause of atrocity... a warped viewpoint is.
Try pushing cures for the cause, rather than chasing the political unicorn that is media freedom.
Oh wait... that doesn't get you on TV.
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along with Henry VIII, Ghengis Khan, Julius Caesar , Napolean ...(etc.. pick your nutter from pre 1970s history here, before when video games existed )
I mean otherwise how would have they become violent meglomaniac psychopaths without video games ?
well i have played cod from mw to black ops some where OK but when they started putting disturbing scenes in weather its the Russia level airport where you open fire on civilians or the London truck exploding next to a women and child I think cod should be removed as these are down right offensive to me some violence and gore I can take but when it almost replicates real life um sorry but no its wrong. its now got to a point where cod is simply get ten pathetic pointless because there a company wanting more money greed.
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