04:27:10PM, 25/11/10 AEST-04:46:20PM, 25/11/10 AEST
As I am typing this post, I am also looking at this article (http://www.news.com.au/technology/gaming/call-of-duty-black-ops-attempt-on-castros-life-is-perverse-says-cuba/story-e6frfrt9-1225951908748) on http://www.news.com.au and I don't want to take any credit for something I didn't do (that's just how I roll). However, I do provide commentary and express my opinion.
CUBAN authorities say Americans are living out their Fidel Castro assassination fantasies through video games. Ouch Cuba, I bet that hurt!
"What the United States couldn't accomplish in more than 50 years, they are now trying to do virtually," said an article posted on Cubadebate, a state-run news website.
The brouhaha surrounds highly anticipated game Call of Duty: Black Ops, which went on sale on Tuesday.
The game takes players on secret missions to American Cold War enemies such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos.
The Cuban operation is one of the first challenges players face. Well one of them have to come first!
The mission takes place with John F. Kennedy in the White House in the months leading up to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
Players must shoot their way through the colonial streets of Havana on a mission to assassinate Castro, then a young revolutionary who had recently overthrown dictator Fulgencio Batista.
In a twist, they end up killing a body-double and are sent to prison in Siberia.
Cuba said the game attempts to legitimise murder and assassination in the name of entertainment
"This new video game is doubly perverse," the Cubadebate article said.
"On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader ... and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."
Hey, I'm an adolescent and I'm not adversely affected by playing COD 4, COD 6 and COD 7 (maybe it's because I suck at them-well only on PC. Even though I do love the PC as a gaming platform).
Messages left by The Associated Press with Activision were not immediately returned.
The article said psychological studies show that violent video games can produce anti-social behaviour in the young because players must take an active part in the bloodletting in order to win.
Let me get one thing straight, bloodletting is a far, far obsolete medical practice, used thousands of years ago by Chinese doctors and other cultures. I don't think they would do that at all!
Watching violent movies, by contrast, is a more passive pursuit and thus less likely to produce copycat behavior.
Christopher J. Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M International University who studies video game violence, said such studies were off-base.
Frankly, I agree with him, not only as a COD-lover, but as a scientifically minded person.
"There is really a lot of, obviously, rhetoric and politics going on," he told the AP.
Which the Cubans said themselves with their remarks on the Americans reliving their assassination
fantasies virtually.
"At this point, there is no evidence that video games, violent or otherwise, cause harm to minors."
Prof Ferguson said youth violence in the United States "is at its lowest level in 40 years", yet studies show that as many as 95 percent of young men have played violent video games at some point in their lives.
Cuba says Castro has survived more than 600 attempts on his life. He must be prestige or something...I wonder if that is on COD 7, COD 6, COD 4 or some other one?
Others count the number of serious plots in the dozens, including CIA attempts to poison his pen and his trademark cigars; as well as efforts to recruit a former young German lover and to hide a gun in a TV camera.
American intelligence agents once allegedly hired a hotel worker to slip a fatal pill into Castro's milkshake.
Like all the others, the plot was unsuccessful.
"I think I hold the dubious record of having been the target of more assassination attempts than any politician, in any country, in any era," Castro said in a July 1998 speech, drawing laughter from the crowd.
"The day I die, nobody will believe it." I will...we all die at some point.
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