Red Cross Investigating Virtual War Crimes

[Xan Krieger]

I wiped out the natives in North America in Empire Total War last night, did not violate the geneva convention as it didn't exist at the time. Red Cross, come at me bro!

 

[MeTheMe]

Silly people! Real life rules don't apply in imagination lands!

 

[Robert Sanders]

Red cross moved next door to PETA and asked if they could borrow a cup of bat-shit crazy.

 

[chadachada123]

I can cite a few if you'd like

Please do

Sadly, the Times has moved to a freaking payed site, so I can't link the 8+ different articles they had where Israel bombed, shot, or otherwise murdered not only innocent civilians in Gaza but also GODDAMNED UN PEACE WORKERS AND RED CROSS AID WORKERS. They also prevented other workers from entering areas with wounded civilians, causing the death of at least several people. I'll find other sources, but they were my primary. Source for some of those: [link]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/08/un-israel-kills-driver-on_n_156168.html[/link]

There was an incident where the Israeli army ordered 100 civies into a house and then bombed it less than a day later, killing 24 of them. [link]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4206913/Israel-bombed-Gaza-safe-house-full-off-evacuees-says-UN.html[/link]

Here's a DIFFERENT story of Israel bombing UN-owned SCHOOLS owned by civies: [link]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-obama[/link]

An incident where the Israeli army forced at gunpoint an 11 year old child to act as a human shield in front of gunfire from Hamas. Here's the follow-up, they were convicted, but an Israeli judge essentially gave them no punishment. Three months probation and a reduced rank from Staff Sargent to Sargent: [link]http://rt.com/news/israeli-soldiers-child-free/[/link]

As stated, incidents involving shooting UN workers.

An incident where a sergeant ordered a sniper to the roof of a building to assassinate an elderly woman walking down the street despite not being even suspicious. (Found this one: [link]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1163259/Israeli-troops-admit-killed-innocent-civilians-Gaza-war.html[/link] )

Israel using white phosphorous on civilian targets, a violation of the Geneva convention: [link]http://www.vtjp.org/background/gazaweapons.php[/link]

Here's the search for the Times articles, but the full text can't be read without a login. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?querystring=human+rights+gaza&p=tto&pf=all&bl=on

The fact that an entire country can OPENLY slaughter people and get nothing but a "UN condemnation" (despite shooting UN workers) is disgusting enough, and this doesn't include any behind-the-scenes things that Israel and other countries are doing (justified or not, they violate IHL, which is the discussion here).

 

[Robert Sanders]

I think this is a great idea (No sarcasm). If People want to play realistic war games then following the real-life rules of war should add another demension to the game play. Prestige lvl 10 reset to zero after a warcrime=Awesome.

Let's also address the rampant animal abuse in such glorified cockfighting games as Pokemon. The GTA games, they teach cival disobedience among a host of felonious crimes. I also believe atleast some of the mushrooms Mario ate were narcotic in nature.

 

[Superior Mind]

So dumb.

How about ensuring that real life armed forces comply with the Geneva Convention before you start looking at how digital characters are treated in a video game.

 

[Darkmantle]

my take on it. The first time i dropped a soldier in MW and realized he wasn't dead, I walked passed him. He then pulled a pistol and shot me. so I shot him back. Obv the wounded in that game just don't give a fuck.

 

[skullduggery]

Wow guys, chill out. Just because the IRC established *one* subcommittee that was probably set up by a younger staff member to take a look at video games (which constantly display the graphic use of more or less indiscriminate violence), and how the medium could educate gamers on how international war conventions work. I think it'd be interesting to put that into effect.

TL;DR: Stop screaming "LEAVE GAMES ALOOOOOOOONE!" every time someone brings up actually relating games to real life.

 

[A Gent of Villainous Intent]

Is teabagging considered a war crime?


Please oh god let it be a warcrime.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Dear Red Cross.

If an enemy soldier surrenders to you in a CoD game, you should always shoot him, 'cos it's a trap.
The law of the universe in Call of Duty states very clearly that dying = respawn within seconds, so empirically surrender benefits no one on either side unless it is a trap.

 

[Notsomuch]

Wow guys, chill out. Just because the IRC established *one* subcommittee that was probably set up by a younger staff member to take a look at video games (which constantly display the graphic use of more or less indiscriminate violence), and how the medium could educate gamers on how international war conventions work. I think it'd be interesting to put that into effect.

TL;DR: Stop screaming "LEAVE GAMES ALOOOOOOOONE!" every time someone brings up actually relating games to real life.

It's up to the creators to decide whether they want to insert that subject matter into their game. It's not their job educate gamers. Also, you don't have to "TL;DR" something that's only 3 sentences long. You could've just added the last bit onto the end and made your post a full paragraph.

 

[Gnarynhar]

Wow, to have eliminated all real-life war crimes so that now in the absence of them, all they have to do with their time is focus on the fictional word of video games. You think such a huge achievement would have been such major news that even I would have heard about it. Yet there hasn't been a peep. Wow, we must deal be dealing with some seriously modest people here!

Please, somebody sit down with these idiots, remind them that war-crimes are happening in the real world that they need to deal with, and in any case, collections of pixels are not alive and are not actually being mistreated in any way. Slap them if you have to. (better yet, sit them down in front of war-crime victims so they can explain why something that's happening in a fictional situation is more important than they are)

 

[conflictofinterests]

It's like this, I think the Red Cross is trying to hold out until the last second on board a sinking ship. While this goes much deeper than the intent of this article reality is like this:

In a REAL war, the biggest bastards win. There are no good guys, or bad guys, only a winner and a loser. If your considering morality in any way, shape, or form, then it's not a real war. If one side is playing by rules of engagement and the other isn't they had best be sure to have them outgunned to a massive degree or they are going to lose... period. It's been so long since powerful nations like the US have been in a real war that we've lost sight of this for a long time, but I think we're starting to regain our understanding of this through both the media (like video games) and observation of world events. Video games showing what a real war is like if your going to win through the brutality involved are basically under criticism for putting reality before political principle.

This was covered in the book "Starship Troopers" and at the very beginning of the movie version to some extent. Personally I prefer to use my own examples in pointing fingers towards Chivalry and Bushido both of which were codes of military conduct and honorable battle. They were great until in the case of Chivalry the side that should have lost decided they didn't want to lose and be conquered and decided to massacre the opposing force with long bows when they took the "field of honor". The Samurai aristocracy got taken down by revolting peasants, in part due to their codes of engagement. A lot of early Japanese martial arts could be summarized as "how to fight dirty against a guy with a sword using modified farm tools".

Right now the world is heading towards one big doozy of a war, indeed if the world ends on 12/21/12 it will probably be due to a war. This was is over economics and trade, not quite the massive battle against an evil empire people like to think of when it comes to war. To put it simply things are coming to a head with China, China has been running a robber economy where it has been violating patents from the first world to produce knockoff goods in sweatshops which it then resells for a fraction of the price. This has lead to China becoming a huge economic power. Rather than increasing the standard of living for it's people however it's been building up it's military and becoming increasingly belligerant. The US cut a deal with China to "borrow" money (to offset what it was losing in taxes) in exchange for not taking direct action hoping that the success in China would have filtered down and changed it's social order. Without going into more details, with the economic state of the US, the issue with it's credit score, and how this affects a lot of nations who have been being similarly screwed (even if a lot of the people there are cheering for the US taking a few lumps, the US isn't the only country losing quadrillions to parent and copyright violations) it's to the point where either China knocks it off and pays repairations, or the rest of the globe eventually collapses and China basically takes over. The thing is though that since China innovates very little (which is not to say nothing at all) that if it DOES knock it off it's going to wind up dropping itself back down into an entirely impoverished hellhole. We're at kind of an impasse, and China has been building up a substantial military to fight with.

I think a lot of people see this coming, some have been talking about the inevitability of an East Vs. West war for decades now as it's creeped closer and closer and the west decided to morally blindfold itself. I think The Red Cross, and various "peace at any price" movements are becoming increasingly freaked out over increasingly trivial things like games as a reaction to it. Especially seeing as anyone with half a brain knows this is going to be about who controls the world, and cultural/societal elimination, as opposed to these glorified police actions we've been calling wars after WW II ended.

Or in short, I think The Red Cross realizes it's moral relevence is slipping and is involved in a bit of QQing as the sad state of reality slips in, and we're seeing that to an extent in media like war games that have beein getting into a "this is how it is" including the brutality, torture, and collateral damage, as opposed to being presented in the antiseptic fashion of a 4-color comic book where the good guys manage to save the day while remaining untouched paragons of left wing virtue.

I don't think the economics of patent violations are what is keeping the economy as bad as it is or that those same economics are what's going to lead into a global war. While it may be true that China is building up a larger military base (I haven't researched it, so I'll go under that assumption for now) it's simply not true that standards of living in China are not rising due to foreign trade. Trade is what's making China what it is today, and if we're going under the assumption, as we normally are in international affairs, that the country is acting, as a whole, in it's own best interests, it's not going to just sever trading ties with practically its entire consumer base. Yeah, patent violations are a problem here, but unless they're a big enough problem to warrant economic sanctions (and I guarantee you, they are not. Whomever is innovating, they don't have enough sway to outvote both the people who don't want to go to war with China AND Walmart.) everyone's going to stay at peace, because they don't want to fuck up a good thing.

If anyone's QQ'ing, it's the people who's copyrights and patents are being violated in China, because tough luck getting any headway.

Also, you might be a very verbose troll, in which case, this secondary wall of text is both unnecessary and hurtful to our lovely threads. For this I apologize, denizens of the Escapist. I note the possibility of you being a troll because of the mention of the 2012 apocalypse. Come on. Every prediction of an apocalypse before has failed, and I'm pretty sure if the world DOES ever end, no one's going to fucking care who predicted it.

 

[conflictofinterests]

So dumb.

How about ensuring that real life armed forces comply with the Geneva Convention before you start looking at how digital characters are treated in a video game.

Well, this subcommittee would be looking into accomplishing the former through the latter. They're essentially saying that "Hey, we see you're studying if videogames increase the likelihood of people violating our spiffy conventions. We'll put money towards that sort of research."

 

[conflictofinterests]

I can cite a few if you'd like

Please do

Sadly, the Times has moved to a freaking payed site, so I can't link the 8+ different articles they had where Israel bombed, shot, or otherwise murdered not only innocent civilians in Gaza but also GODDAMNED UN PEACE WORKERS AND RED CROSS AID WORKERS. They also prevented other workers from entering areas with wounded civilians, causing the death of at least several people. I'll find other sources, but they were my primary. Source for some of those: [link]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/08/un-israel-kills-driver-on_n_156168.html[/link]

There was an incident where the Israeli army ordered 100 civies into a house and then bombed it less than a day later, killing 24 of them. [link]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4206913/Israel-bombed-Gaza-safe-house-full-off-evacuees-says-UN.html[/link]

Here's a DIFFERENT story of Israel bombing UN-owned SCHOOLS owned by civies: [link]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-obama[/link]

An incident where the Israeli army forced at gunpoint an 11 year old child to act as a human shield in front of gunfire from Hamas. Here's the follow-up, they were convicted, but an Israeli judge essentially gave them no punishment. Three months probation and a reduced rank from Staff Sargent to Sargent: [link]http://rt.com/news/israeli-soldiers-child-free/[/link]

As stated, incidents involving shooting UN workers.

An incident where a sergeant ordered a sniper to the roof of a building to assassinate an elderly woman walking down the street despite not being even suspicious. (Found this one: [link]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1163259/Israeli-troops-admit-killed-innocent-civilians-Gaza-war.html[/link] )

Israel using white phosphorous on civilian targets, a violation of the Geneva convention: [link]http://www.vtjp.org/background/gazaweapons.php[/link]

Here's the search for the Times articles, but the full text can't be read without a login. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?querystring=human+rights+gaza&p=tto&pf=all&bl=on

The fact that an entire country can OPENLY slaughter people and get nothing but a "UN condemnation" (despite shooting UN workers) is disgusting enough, and this doesn't include any behind-the-scenes things that Israel and other countries are doing (justified or not, they violate IHL, which is the discussion here).

You forget that the UN is the United Nations, and most of the people there have a "You're either with us or you're against us" mentality concerning the feuding between Israel and Palestine. Plenty of countries are going to back their combatant no matter what atrocities they commit, because they feel a sense of comradeship with the one and/or a sense of antagonism with the other. Israel should be brought into line, but with a combination of their own nukes (They've all but admitted to having) and their patrons on the security council, they aren't likely to get more than a slap on the wrist, as you've noted.