"The killing game" by Gary Webb.... RIP

[Tinoire]

Chilling. Wish I hadn't had to snip this. The whole article is worth reading.

"Teach your children well..."


October 2004 Cover Story

"The killing game"

For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That’s why the Army’s spent $10 million making one of its own. But there’s a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.

By Gary Webb

(snip)


Clan warfare: LANatomas guns down members of a Seattle clan during a round of league play. Carson Loane, foreground, patrols the left flank while clan leader Jeff Muramoto, center, calls out strategies to his squad.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but among young males it’s far and away the most popular genre of computer game. Some psychologists and parents worry that such games are desensitizing a large, impressionable segment of the population to violence and teaching them the wrong things. But that depends on your point of view. If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there’s no better way of finding them. It’s why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit. For anyone who thinks kids aren’t learning playing shooter games, read on.

(snip)

In late 1999, after missing their recruiting goals that year, Army officials got together with the civilian directors of a Navy think tank at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey to discuss ways of luring computer gamers into the military.

(snip)

An experimental psychologist from the Navy helped tweak the game’s sound effects to produce heightened blood pressure, body temperature and heart rate. It was released in digital double surround sound, which few games are. In terms of game play, it was designed as a “tactical” shooter, slower-paced, more deliberate, but with Counter-Strike’s demanding squad tactics and communications--a “serious” game for kids who took their war gaming seriously.

After two years of development, America’s Army was released to the public on the first Fourth of July after 9/11. The gaming world gasped and then cheered. Contrary to expectations, the government-made shooter was every bit as good a $50 retail shooter and, in some ways, better. Plus, it was free--downloadable from the Internet at www.americasarmy.com. That, too, was a calculation--one the Army hoped would weed out people who didn’t know much about computers. The game and its distribution system were difficult by design, Zyda said.

(snip)

The game does a good job separating the wheat from the chaff. Before you’re allowed to join an online game, you must undergo weapons training and send your firing range scores to the Army. If you’re a lousy shot, you can’t play. Once inside the game, it gets no easier. The virtual battlefield is enormous, and your enemy is often hidden under cover of darkness. “Newbies” are quickly cut to pieces. Unlike Counter-Strike, America’s Army players aren’t allowed to be on the terrorists’ side. Your team always looks like American soldiers, and the other team always looks like terrorists (or “OPFORs” in Army lingo, meaning “opposing forces.”)

(snip)


Very creepy. The article goes on about how the army tracks and collects everything so that when they get their hands on these kids recruiters can look up their statistics and how "the gamers’ brains had the same reaction to computerized violence as they would to real violence".


(snip)

As the man blasted his way through Tactical Ops, the MRI scanner mapped his brain activities with such precision that the researchers could determine what it was doing at any given point in the game, frame by frame. The scientists focused their attention on a sliver called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a beehive of emotional and problem-solving activity. Feelings such as fear, sadness and aggression originate here and send out marching orders to other parts of the brain. One study, for example, revealed that when Vietnam vets with post-traumatic stress disorder are shown words like “bodybag” and “firefight,” their ACCs react far more aggressively than normal.


http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-10-14/cover.asp

[Doctor Panacea]

1. The Callus Gang

Oh my God, the military is so desperate that it is courting overweight, geeky wankers who spend half their time playing games and the other half jerking off. The most sickening thing is that the military takes this crap seriously. We are in trouble.

[Tinoire]

2. The worst for me is that they are grooming them

and that by the time the recuiters get their hands on these kids, they will know exactly where to place them and their minds desensitized to violence.

Weber said it appears clear that the gamers’ brains had the same reaction to computerized violence as they would to real violence. Aggressive brain activity was “quite remarkable ... the results were consistent in nine of the 12 subjects,” he said.

You see there's a problem with many of the shooters we currently have in Iraq- they feel remorse.

We need kids who won't feel remorse and we need to know who they are.

There are 7 more countries on the war list after all.

[Nordic]

3. wow, that's a great article

thanks for posting that

[ghost_of_thoreau]

4. bah

computer games have a minimal impact on tendencies of violence. The majority of people who play violent video games have a clear and distinct line that bridges the game vs reality. The ones who dont were psychos before they even started playing violent games. (just like the D&D scares of the 80s)

playing a video game will not make u want to join the Army.

now, what does make a young impressionable kid want to join the Army?? I'll tell you....

The poisonous lies of religion, nationalism, family tradition combined with primitive hunter-gatherer instincts drilled into your head by popular culture from ages 2 till 18.

[Tinoire]

5. Did you read the article? Or just post to defend video games?

This is more than just about video games. As a matter of fact, the author barely addresses your point. This is about designing games that are deliberately designed to encourage a certain behavior and insensitivity and allowing the Army to track these kids so that they can more easily identify them.

Oh what fun they'll have with this when they kick in the draft!

[Nordic]

11. You conradict yourself, sir

"primitive hunter-gatherer instincts drilled into your head by popular culture"

And by the way, the article isn't so much about videogames as it is about the Army watching who is playing them, then going after them.

That's the scary part.

[Tinoire]

6. Anytime... I'm very interested in what else Gary Webb was working on

before "getting suicided".

[Blue_Tires]

7. and to think I was thinking about playing it

I'm a still occasional CS player, and I actually heard some good reviews about AA from other gamers....never did take the plunge

[Tinoire]

8. That was kind of my thought... As a video game lover, I'm sure it's

a thrilling, well-designed game.

The sad thing is that many of the army's weapons are designed like video games now... The transition is/will be so... smooth :(

[Blue_Tires]

9. and that's been their plan for YEARS

hell, I read stories about the Army using DOOM to desensitize new recruits to killing, and DOOM came out in '94....

[Tinoire]

10. This of course contributes to what Michael Moore showed

"burn motherfucker burn

we don't need no water,
let the motherfucker burn".

Fun and games for all when some of these warped kids come home.

[psychopomp]

12. The Gary Webb who broke the SJ Mercury News story?

Good article. When AA came out the Army made no secret that the game was a recruiting tool.

[deutsey]

14. Yes. Good segment on him on Democracy Now this morning

www.kpfa.org at 9 ET and noon ET.

[Cuban_Liberal]

13. I'm likely wasting my breath by even asking, but....

What tangible evidence do you have, phsyical, documentary or otherwise, that supports th conclusion that Mr. Webb was murdered, rather than a suicide?

[InvisibleBallots]

15. an interesting Gary Webb interview from 1999

http://www.parascope.com/mx/articles/garywebb/garyWebbSpeaks.htm

One of the things which these newspapers who dissed my story were saying was, we can't believe that the CIA would know about drug trafficking and let it happen. That this idea that this agency which gets $27 billion a year to tell us what's going on, and which was so intimately involved with the contras they were writing their press releases for them, they wouldn't know about this drug trafficking going on under their noses. But the Times and the Post all uncritically reported their claims that the CIA didn't know what was going on, and that it would never permit its hirelings to do anything like that, as unseemly as drug trafficking. You know, assassinations and bombings and that sort of thing, yeah, they'll admit to right up front, but drug dealing, no, no, they don't do that kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, though, it was true, and what has happened since my series came out is that the CIA was forced to do an internal review, the DEA and Justice Department were forced to do internal reviews, and these agencies that released these reports, you probably didn't read about them, because they contradicted everything else these other newspapers had been writing for the last couple of years, but let me just read you this one excerpt. This is from a 1987 DEA report. And this is about this drug ring in Los Angeles that I wrote about. In 1987, the DEA sent undercover informants inside this drug operation, and they interviewed one of the principals of this organization, namely Ivan Torres. And this is what he said. He told the informant:

"The CIA wants to know about drug trafficking, but only for their own purposes, and not necessarily for the use of law enforcement agencies. Torres told DEA Confidential Informant 1 that CIA representatives are aware of his drug-related activities, and that they don't mind. He said they had gone so far as to encourage cocaine trafficking by members of the contras, because they know it's a good source of income. Some of this money has gone into numbered accounts in Europe and Panama, as does the money that goes to Managua from cocaine trafficking. Torres told the informant about receiving counterintelligence training from the CIA, and had avowed that the CIA looks the other way and in essence allows them to engage in narcotics trafficking."

This is a DEA report that was written in 1987, when this operation was still going on. Another member of this organization who was affiliated with the San Francisco end of it, said that in 1985 -- and this was to the CIA -- "Cabezas claimed that the contra cocaine enterprise operated with the knowledge of, and under the supervision of, the CIA. Cabezas claimed that this drug enterprise was run with the knowledge of CIA agent Ivan Gómez."

[Minstrel Boy]

16. Cryptogon: "Clearly, this game is the front end of a something that makes

the original MKULTRA programs seem innocuous by comparison."


This is another recent Gary Webb article. This one describes disturbing aspects of a video game designed jointly by the U.S. Army and Navy called America's Army. Clearly, this game is the front end of a something that makes the original MKULTRA programs seem innocuous by comparison. I wonder what close analysis of the sound and graphics used in this game would reveal... Are any "extra" image frames inserted into the gameplay? Just what exactly is contained on the audio tracks?

Are you confused? Are you wondering where I'm going with this? Too lazy to read the books, the declassified documents, the victim accounts? Then watch the 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate again and pay close attention to the scenes where the troops are being modified. Note the video displays. Oh sure, that's just a movie. It's all made up.... Well, how about the 18,000 pages of recently released information related to CIA mind control experiments in the 1950s and 1960s. That's right. The documents describe the creation of information couriers and unsuspecting assassins in the 1950s and 1960s. But all of that research and development ended, you tell yourself, because the government realized how evil all of that stuff was and quit working on it.

Yep. Everything is A-Ok.

Oh yeah, by the way, make sure your children download the latest free first-person-shooter games from the U.S. military, and that they "play" for several hours per day. What's that? The guy who wrote this article is dead of multiple, self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head. Nevermind all of that. Supersize your freedom fries... One last thing. How many of the kids playing this game are taking psychiatric medications? Ahhh, I'd say .mil has a steady stream of choice MK candidates lined up:
http://www.cryptogon.com/