A.LOEWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

Thank you Ubisoft for backing Colombo’s war crimes

 17 Aug 2010

When do computer game companies enjoy being co-opted by the state (especially police states) to earn profits?

While the war in Sri Lanka is over fighting the LTTE is not, at least on a new video game to be launched this November by French gaming company Ubisoft. In the game to be titled Ghost Recon Predator, players are tasked with an elite squad on the hunt for terrorists in Sri Lanka.

The video trailer of the game shows the players in the jungles of Sri Lanka going behind the LTTE. The trailer shows messages appearing on the top of the screen saying the players are after the terrorists “who thinks nothing of hiding among innocent civilians, of using people as a shield for their illegal and immoral campaign”.

The LTTE was defeated by the Sri Lankan military last year and one of the allegations raised by the government and human rights groups was that the LTTE had used civilians as human shields during the war.

According to Ubisoft Entertainment the game will feature multiplayer options with up to three players and features include character swapping, third-person cover and tons of customizable weapons and high-tech gadgets. The game is intended to deliver classic Ghost Recon action.

“Since your enemy has the terrain advantage, more allies, and knows where to attack, you’ll rely on technology and training to overcome the terrorists,” Ubisoft said.

 17 Aug 2010

Moderate Islam is still a problem for Muslim haters (and here’s looking at you, radical Zionists):

In March 2003, federal officials were being criticized for disrespecting the rights of Arab-Americans in their efforts to crack down on domestic security threats in the post-9/11 environment. Hoping to calm the growing tempers, FBI officials in New York hosted a forum on ways to deal with Muslim and Arab-Americans without exacerbating social tensions. The bureau wanted to provide agents with “a clear picture,” said Kevin Donovan, director of the FBI’s New York office.

Brought in to speak that morning — at the office building located just blocks from Ground Zero — was one of the city’s most respected Muslim voices: Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. The imam offered what was for him a familiar sermon to those in attendance. “Islamic extremism for the majority of Muslims is an oxymoron,” he said. “It is a fundamental contradiction in terms.”

It was, by contemporaneous news accounts, a successful lecture.

Flash forward six-and-a-half years, and Feisal Abdul Rauf occupies a far different place in the political consciousness. The imam behind a controversial proposal to build an Islamic cultural center near those same FBI offices has been called “a radical Muslim,” a “militant Islamist” and, simply, the “enemy” by conservative critics. His Cordoba House project, meanwhile, has been framed as a conduit for Hamas to funnel money to domestic terrorist operations.

Young IDF soldier simply does what comes naturally

17 Aug 2010

What’s wrong with taking photos of imprisoned Palestinians and showing the moral degradation of the Israeli occupation?