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Times Watch for May 20, 2003
Likes Long Walks,
Sunsets, Dancing On Mass Graves
Patrick Tyler’s Monday profile of Hameed Othman makes an odd attempt to humanize its subject, the former leader of Iraq’s police force. It ends up sounding like a personal ad for Othman, a Hussein supporter who ran an arm of Hussein’s dictatorial reign.
“Maj. Gen. Hameed Othman, a man who loves poetry and landscape painting, ran the national police force in Iraq from 1997 to 2001.” Four sentences later, Tyler writes: “Of the mass graves being unearthed around the country, [Othman] says they are the inevitable result of the ‘purification’ campaign mounted by the Iraqi military to put down a rebellion against the legitimate authority in the country.” So much for Othman’s sensitive side.
For the rest of Patrick Tyler’s story on poetry-loving Othman, click here.
A Video Game
Platform…for Terrorism?
Daniel Wakin’s Sunday story from Beirut gives some free publicity to a video game issued by the terrorist group Hezbollah. The object of the game? Killing as many Jews as possible, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Wakin’s ambivalent attitude toward this terrorist video game shoot’em up can be rated P--for peculiar.
“The introduction is an exploding Israeli tank. A row of burning Israeli flags marks time while the computer loads a ‘training session’ in which shooting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's electronic forehead on a target is worth 10 points,” Wakin explains.
Wakin notes it’s getting raves in
Beirut: “‘Victory comes from no one but Allah,’ exhorts the screen before the
mission begins. The hottest video game for the teenagers of Beirut's southern
Shiite neighborhoods is ‘Special Force,’ a creation of Hezbollah, the strongly
anti-Israel militant organization that is on the United States' terror list.”
The description of Hezbollah as a “strongly anti-Israel militant organization”
is rather weak, considering Hezbollah is responsible for the U.S. Marine
barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, not to mention the deaths of scores of
Jewish civilians and soldiers in terrorist attacks.
Wakin’s story comes close to
publicity for the game—the Times web page even has a picture of a game poster
outside a Beirut shop. Here he describes the game’s success: “‘Special Force,’
with its simulated attacks on the Israeli military, was released in February,
quickly took off and is to be followed later this month by a more
sophisticated version that can link multiple players on a network. While not
the first politically oriented video game to enter Middle Eastern cyberspace,
‘Special Force’ is a sign of Hezbollah's elaborate propaganda efforts. Its
popularity is also an indication of Hezbollah's success in permeating popular
consciousness in Lebanon and in gaining political legitimacy here.”
A “politically oriented video game?” Again, Wakin’s description rather
understates the case.
Next, he describes the actual game play: “In one game situation, the player fires simulated pistols and Kalashnikov rifles, seeking to infiltrate an Israeli military position. The opportunities for martyrdom, from exploding land mines and snipers, are rife. ‘You must oppose, confront and destroy the machines of the Zionist enemy and remind them that entering Lebanese villages is not a stroll,’ the text reads. The session ends with a medal awarded by the leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. The packaging says the game seeks to show ‘the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by the heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.’”
It sounds like Wakin actually played “Special Force.” That could be a sign of hands-on reporting, but I rather doubt a Times reporter would bother to play a game issued by, say, white supremacists.
He gives the Hezbollah terrorists more free media: “[Game design team member Bilal Zain] said about 10,000 copies of ‘Special Force’ had been sold in Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Germany and Australia. It can be played in English, French, Arabic and Farsi. The game is often played at places like the Champions Internet Cafe in the Haret Hreik neighborhood in south Beirut, a predominantly Shiite area of rundown buildings where several computer stores said ‘Special Force’ had sold out.”
Wakin concludes with a profile of a 14-year-old boy who “liked the game's realism. ‘Shooting at Sharon—it was nice to shoot at his head,’ [Ibrahim Tohmaz] said. ‘He's a bad person.’”
Ah, those kids today!
The Times in the past has taken a properly condemnatory attitude toward white supremacist culture, as in a Feb.18, 2002, Julie Salamon story, accusing the white supremacist rock trend of appealing to “the vilest sentiments.” Salamon also mentions a white supremacist video game called “Ethnic Cleaning.” But unlike Wakin, she doesn’t engage in puffery concerning this particular terrorist game. She simply notes bluntly: “The player runs through a cyberghetto and kills blacks, Hispanics and Jews.” Neither did she quote skinhead kids on the joys of shooting on-screen blacks, Hispanics and Jews, and no potentially enticing details of game play are included.
For more on Daniel Wakin’s story on Hezbollah’s video game, click here.
“A Falling Dollar: Some Lose, Some Win, Some Break Even”—Headline of Business Day section story.
by Daniel Altman and Sherri Day, May 20E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org