Medea "Suzie" Benjamin apparantly met with Ubisoft and then spoke to the crowd of the great unwashed.
Posted on 08/07/2008 7:47:56 PM PDT by Syncro
Help Stop the Army’s Child Recruitment Program
“America’s Army” Videogame Targets Children as Young as 13
South Park Game Companies Profit from Illegal Recruitment Program
Rally and Direct Action, Noon, Aug. 6th
South Park, (btw 2nd/3rd, Bryant/Brannan) San Francisco
Tell the companies “Break contract with the Army, No more child recruitment”
“America’s Army” is a game developed by the U.S. military to instruct players in “Army values,” portray the army in a positive light, and increase potential recruits. The “game” is the property and brainchild of the US Army, which admit freely, and with pride, that it is one of their principal recruitment tools.
America’s Army has been available since 2002 as a free download or as a CD available in recruiting stations. It is published and distributed by Ubisoft right here in South Park. Ubisoft is not the only South Park neighbor engaged in the development of the game, Gameloft is working on the cell phone application and Secret Level was a designer on the 2005 Xbox version. The game has been granted a “teen” rating, allowing 13 year olds to play.
The military recruitment of children under the age of 17, however, is a clear violation of international law (the U.N. Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict). No attempt to recruit children 13-16 is allowed in the United States, pursuant to treaty. In May, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report that found the armed services regularly target children under 17 for military recruitment. The report highlighted the role of “America’s Army,” saying the Army uses the game to “attract young potential recruits . . . train them to use weapons, and engage in virtual combat and other military missions”, adding that the game “explicitly targets boys 13 and older.”
It is also important to consider the effects of the game within the context of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Undoubtedly, soldiers now recruited through “America’s Army” will serve in these wars. The invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are violations of international law, and
contributing to their continuation through the propagation of the game is, if not a criminal violation, a moral outrage.
The game is having an effect. An informal study showed that 4 out of 100 new recruits in Ft. Benning, Georgia credit America’s Army as the primary factor in convincing them to join the military. 60% of those recruits said they played the game more than five times a week. And a 2004 Army survey found that nearly a third of young Americans ages 16 to 24 had some contact with the game in the previous six months.
This August 6, on the 63rd Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, come out and ask the Producers and developers of America’s Army to stop helping the Army recruit children.
We are asking you to consider three steps:
1. Support for our campaign against America’s Army
2. Sign our letter and endorse this campaign.
3. Participate in our upcoming event on Hiroshima Day (Wed., Aug. 6), at noon, in South Park (btw 2nd/3rd, Bryant/Brannan), asking these companies to either withdraw from their Army contracts or provide a warning label: “This game is designed to recruit children in violation of international law. Military service can be hazardous to your health.”
Medea "Suzie" Benjamin apparantly met with Ubisoft and then spoke to the crowd of the great unwashed.
Ok guys, do what you can against the Army which keeps you safe to try to make the Military go away.We are asking you to consider three steps:
1. Support for our campaign against America’s Army
It didn't work with the Marines in Berkeley, recruitment is going just fine there.
The “children” as they call them have more brains than any one of code pink or all of them put together.
Do they have a Linux version of the game?
Recruiters used to go to video arcades to find those kids 18 yrs old or so to see who were good at the games. Now they have a much broader base what with X-Box, Play Station and other means to play these games.
Somebody needs to educate these HOs that living in a country without an Army can also “be hazardous to your health.”
Three links say it all...
1) http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=5&Itemid=5
2) http://rwor.org/a/rwlink/links.htm
3) http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7213
Hey, Medea: Go to the Congo, where they REALY recruit kids for the military, if you are serious.
Let us know the menu for the prison food if you ever get out.
I left a “comment” after the article suggesting they grow up and try to remember that it’s the US military which protects their freedom to act like morons in public, and got back a notice: “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” Yeah, it wasn’t very moderate at all. BWAHAHAHA
Why is it I wonder that every picture of some Code Pinkest Fem, the person is ........uh......mmmm.....trying to put this as pleasantly as I can, so bear with please....
Well I cannot think of a nice way to say it, so here I’ll just say it. Why are the Pinko’s all so damned ugly?
Because their outward ugliness is a manifestation of the inward ugliness of their souls.
“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Luke 6:45
“Because their outward ugliness is a manifestation of the inward ugliness of their souls.”
Precisely.
It's one of those things that gives me faith in the current generation - we are in a shooting war to which people who join up will be sent and in which some will be killed. The military is volunteer-only. And they're turning people away. God bless every one of 'em!
Suck it up, Medea darling. Your outlook is as antiquated as your idiotic 70's slogans. You remember those old cranks who held up the flags from their wheelchairs as you streamed by in peace beads and an unassailable sense of moral righteousness? They were right and you were wrong. And you still are.
***instruct players in “Army values,”***
I wonder if she knows what the Army values are:
Loyalty
Duty
Respect
Selfless Service
Honor
Integrity
Personal Courage
Clearly something that group would not understand.
Should have pinged you to 15
No comments have been posted, so you probably failed their stacked test.
My own comment that I just posted:
The children under seventeen who play these games are not actually being recruited and serving in the military, they are simply being shown what to expect if they are considering it as a future career. You guys seriously need to wake up from your paranoia and start using your brains.
It's always a stacked deck on those sites, they mostly only let through the comments that agree with their politics.
I think Amazon deleted over 200 negative comments about Pelosi’s “worst” seller new book.
Heroes of WWll, Little Boy and Fat Man.
When evil won’t quit, it becomes necessary to show it why it must.
The enemy decided to use it’s own citizens as fodder for their dreams of taking over the world.
Wrong decision.
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