Thursday 30 August 2007

غضب من لعبة تدعو لقتل قيادت الاكثرية البرلمانية في لبنان






أثار موقع ألعاب "الكترونية" على الانترنت غضب الكثير من الأوساط اللبنانية بسبب وجود لعبة تدعو إلى قتل قيادات الاكثرية البرلمانية (تحالف قوى 14 آذار)، وتبدأ فكرة اللعبة بقتل عناصر القوى الأمنية المتمركزة حول القصر الحكومي "السرايا" والتي تعتبر بحسب الموقع مجرد "ميلشيات عسكرية"، ثم يتم اقتحام القصر لإبادة جميع الوزراء الموجودين فيه.

وذكرت صحيفة "المستقبل" اللبنانية الخميس30-8-2007 أن الشتائم والتعابير المتعلقة بالخونة والعملاء واللصوص هي أول ما يراه الداخل إلى الموقع الألكتروني، بالإضافة إلى تركيب صور للوزراء بشكل وصفته بـ"المهين" تتضمن اتهامات بالعمالة لقيادات 14 آذار وتعاونهم مع اسرائيل وخضوعهم لوزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية كونداليز رايس.

ونقلت الصحيفة عن صاحب الموقع دون الكشف عن هويته قوله إن فكرة اقتحام القصر الحكومي السرايا وقتل الموجودين بداخله تدور في بال عدد من المعارضين للحكومة، وأن الكثيرين منهم جاهروا بها علناً. وذلك بحسب ما قال في احد المقابلات الصحفية.

عودة للأعلى

مصمم اللعبة "لايعترف" بالحكومة

وقالت الصحيفة إن مصمم اللعبة لا يعترف بالحكومة اللبنانية كما غيره من المعارضين، "فهو يساوي نفسه مع الوزير السابق المعارض وئام وهاب وكل قيادات المعارضة، وهو لا مانع لديه من قتل رجال الدولة اللبنانية وتدمير المؤسسات بقوة السلاح".

وأشارت الصحيفة إلى أن "(البطل) الذي يدير عمليات تحرير السرايا من الخونة والعملاء هو كبطل أفلام الأكشن الأميركية (جان كلود ان دام) أو حتى (رامبو). يسير خلال عملية تحرير السرايا بهدوء ويطلق الرصاص على من يصادف من (خونة وعملاء) ببرودة أعصاب ليسيطر في النهاية على (وكر) تابع للسفارة الأميركية".

واعتبر وزير الشباب والرياضة احمد فتفت اعتبر ان الموقع وما يحويه "تهديد واضح ورسالة لا تحيد عن طريقها". وقال إن "الحديث عن مشهد انتهاء اللعبة بالقضاء على ساكني السرايا يعطي انطباعاً واضحاً عن الأفكار التي ترمى بين الناس لإثارتهم نحو العنف".

عودة للأعلى

"إرهاب سياسي"

وشبّه فتفت هذا العمل بـ"الإرهاب السياسي الذي يؤدي دوراً في هذا الهجوم على الحكومة". واستغرب أن يقال "إن العاملين بهذه اللعبة ليسوا طرفاً سياسياً لأن ما قدّم حتى الآن هو جزء مما قيل في الخطابات السياسية المتطرفة خلال مهاجمة الحكومة. وليس نتيجة لخطابات السياسيين كما يحاولون الإيحاء بل هو جزء من المعركة". ورأى أن ما مرّ يعتبر "حقد يتجاوز الاختلافات والمعارك السياسية التي نعيشها دائماً في لبنان".

أما النائب السابق فارس سعيد فيرى ان "ترويج هذه اللعبة وإظهارها في الوقت الحالي يأتي لبناء حالة من التهويل لردع قوى14 اذار من القيام بانتخاب رئيس للجمهورية"، لافتاً الى ان هذه اللعبة "لا تؤخذ على محمل الجد بقدر ما توصف بأنها جزء من الحملة على قوى 14آذار لمنعهم من إكمال مسيرة الانتفاضة وبناء الدولة".

من جانبه نوه المحامي فؤاد شبقلو إلى أن هذه اللعبة "دعوة علنية إلى القتل. وهي تحمل ترويجاً للإجرام ونشر الفوضى وإلغاء المؤسسات. إضافة إلى كونها تساهم في اضمحلال الوزارات والاعتداء والتدخل في جرائم الاعتداء على أمن الدولة والسلم الأهلي. بما في ذلك من تخريب للممتلكات العامة والحكومية وقتل المسؤولين".

وأوضح أن "الترويج لها ونشرها وتعميمها أكان لعبة أو فكرة أو اختراع أو أثر فني من شأنه إثارة البلبلة والذعر بين الناس والتحريض على قتل قيادات سياسية ووزراء ونواب من اتجاه محدد".

وأكد شبقلو وجوب "تحرك النيابة العامة التمييزية بسبب هذا الخبر وجلب القائمين على اللعبة لأنه جرم جزائي معنوي ومادي". ورأى "إنها دعوة عامة علنية تحريضية لقتل المسؤولين والاشتراك والتدخل في أعمال جرمية. لا سيما نعت رئيس الوزراء بالخيانة والعمالة". وأن ما ورد في هذه اللعبة "يشدد عزيمة المجرم ويدعوه إلى المباشرة والاشتراك في جرائم القتل". واعتبر أن "هذا الموضوع برسم النيابة العامة التمييزية"

Tuesday 21 August 2007

Faithful build a Second Life for religion online


Now is the holy season for the world's Christians and Jews — on Earth and in the parallel cyberuniverse, Second Life.

In the real world, Palm Sunday began the Christian holy week that leads believers into the Easter story of salvation through Christ.

Monday night, Jews celebrate Passover's ceremonial Seder meal, retelling the story of God freeing the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.

Meanwhile, in Second Life, avatars (animated characters that serve as users' "in-world" identities) will join in online prayer and praise.

Second Life was created by Linden Lab in San Francisco in 2003; its founders imagined a social platform for an idealized online society. Membership has soared to 5 million; it has established a thriving economy and become a popular venue for politics and education.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Christians | Second Life | Passover | Seder | Worship

Wherever the human imagination goes, so goes the spirit. Second Life is now also opening windows on religious and spiritual expression. Theologians and philosophers may debate the authenticity of religious life online, but out on the Internet faith frontier, believers are too busy to listen.

This week, Second Life will feature Easter events and Passover celebrations, as well as the usual meditation meet-ups, Muslim prayers and legions of gatherings for spiritual freelancers.

Evangelists will preach the Gospel, secure in their belief that sin is sin, by persons or by pixels, and that Jesus saves online as well as anywhere.

"Worship is always between you and God, wherever you are," says Ben Faust, 34, of Harrisonburg, Va., founder of Abundant Living Ministries, known as the ALM Cyber Church in Second Life.

It's one of seven churches and Bible study groups that will feature Easter messages, a Passion play and enactments of scenes from the life of Christ as part of a "Redemption Week 2007" tour, complete with virtual T-shirt souvenirs.

Graphic artist Beth Brown, 33, of Dallas, who created one of Second Life's first synagogues, Temple Beth Israel, will present four "seder-ettes" — her name for online mini-Seders that hit the holiday highlights while teaching Second Life skills like flying around while hunting hidden pieces of matzo, unleavened bread eaten during Passover.

And any day, any hour, anywhere on the globe, believers and seekers of all stripes will congregate. Some spiritual sites have coded in "pray-ables," animated spots that will pop an avatar into proper prayer position, whether bowing on a carpet, kneeling in a cathedral or landing in the lotus position in a Buddhist spiritual center.

"I put my avatar in praying position and I pray at the same time. My prayer in my room is valid and my prayer online is symbolic," says Sten Muhammed Yussif Widhe, 63, of Fagersta, Sweden.

An officer in Second Life's Islamic Society, Widhe says his online prayer community, which prays in a replica of a 10th-century mosque in Cordoba, Spain, is bigger than the one in his small hometown two hours from Stockholm.

Statistically, denominational religion is still a speck in Second Life. In a typical week in late March, 451,000 avatars, nearly 9% of all registered users, visited Second Life. Leaders of Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites estimate about 1,000 avatars teleport into churches, synagogues or mosques on a regular basis. Hundreds more list themselves with Buddhist, pagan, Wiccan and other groups.

Some are parodies and pranks, such as the Church of Burgertime, based on an old video game called Burgertime, the Church of Elvis, or a Ten Commandments stone tablet mock-up chiseled with "Thou shalt not take us seriously."

Others are purely architectural exercises. Patrick Rutledge, 37, of Rockville, Md., a computer science graduate student at the University of Maryland, copied a chapel of the medieval Church of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, France, "for the intellectual challenge," he says, and set it on his private parcel.

Other Second Life sites spin from spiritual ideas. Avatars of Change, for example, claims about 180 members from Christians to Jedi to Rastafarians, and is styled like a monastic order that functions to gather donations for charity and promotes interfaith discussion.

But a growing number are traditional, if virtual, places of prayer, study, support and counseling.

Faust, an ordained evangelical minister, had no desire to pastor a real-world church or give up his day job programming websites. Instead, he spent about the cost of a Starbucks mocha latte to buy a Second Life island for the non-denominational evangelical ALM Cyber Church. It looks like a contemporary church, complete with a drum set, Bible studies, a concert hall and a recreation center.

In Harrisonburg, Faust belongs to the Potter's House Worship Center, where he works with the children's ministry and the food pantry — programs that can't be replicated in Second Life, where children age 12 and younger can't be members and there are no hungry avatars.

Larry Transue, pastor of the site's non-denominational Northbound Community Church, sees Second Life as a mission field.

Transue, 43, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., who works in the biotech industry, is involved in evangelism and outreach at his real-world Northbound Church, and he replicated it online to "practice what I preach no matter where I am."

Second Life, like the physical world, is riddled by "sin in thought, word and deed. People think what they do in a virtual world is OK, because it's not real. But it is real, because your thoughts are real. Who you truly are will shine through eventually," says Transue.

George Byrd, 37, a Columbus, Ohio, real estate broker, built the lavishly landscaped First Unitarian Universalist Church of Second Life, and organized weekly services that now draw more than 40 people.

To Byrd, virtual services here are as authentic as those in the physical-world church he attends in Columbus. "The spiritual connection is in your brain and in your soul. It's the same either way," Byrd says.

Not exactly, says Francis Maier, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, who has written for Catholic magazines about the Internet, video gaming and online role-playing games.

He says Second Life spirituality, however inventive, perpetuates the blasphemous idea that people control creation.




"We aren't the ones in charge. God is in charge. I'm Catholic because I believe the Catholic Church teaches the truth. It's not just going through mumbo-jumbo and dressing up," says Maier. True religion means submitting to "beliefs and practices revealed by God and passed down by generations of believers. You can't phone that in."

Second Life imports much of the idealism — and the ugliness — human nature can conjure. There are fundraisers for philanthropy, intellectual forums, support groups and affinity clubs — as well as casinos, flashing billboards of rampant commercialism and porn, porn, porn.

The synagogues and mosques have been sabotaged by "griefers" — slang for aggressive troublemakers who script architectural destruction, text abusive language or send naked avatars streaking through church services.

Second Life might have been intended as a new-and-improved society, but "the new Arcadia is so much more like real life now, not a little cyber Utopia," says Martin Hiddink, 42, of Barcelona.

A Catholic, he created a version of the Great Mosque of Cordoba with its arches and domes. "I wanted something beautiful, light-filled and emotional." After it was damaged by griefers, he rebuilt it and donated it to the Islamic Society. He also built a Gothic cathedral with a rose window, bell tower, mosaics and an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe. "Every time you consider something beautiful or you are touched by love or beauty, you see God," he says.

Indeed, says Internet expert Julian Dibbell, "virtual reality is in some ways an essentially spiritual experience." Dibbell, of South Bend, Ind., has written about online society for 15 years and served as a consultant to Linden Lab.

"You see signs and signals but you give them meaning. Even the rites of the Catholic Church are an interaction of signs, tokens and material symbols of faith, given their meaning by what is happening in the mind and soul of the believer."

Hezbollah brings Israel war to computer screen

By Tom Perry

BEIRUT, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Raid Israel to capture soldiers, battle tanks in the valleys of south Lebanon and launch Katyusha rockets at Israeli towns -- a new Hezbollah computer game puts players on the frontline of war with the Jewish state. "Special Force 2" is based on last year's 34-day conflict between the Lebanese guerrilla group and Israel. "This game presents the culture of the resistance to children: that occupation must be resisted and that land and the nation must be guarded," Hezbollah media official Sheikh Ali Daher said.

Designed by Hezbollah computer experts, players of "Special Force 2" take the role of a Hezbollah fighter, or Mujahid. Weapons and points are accumulated by killing Israeli soldiers.

The game, launched on Thursday, recreates key phases of the conflict, which was triggered when Hezbollah raided northern Israel and captured two soldiers, saying they wanted to negotiate a prisoner swap.

Hezbollah takes huge pride in its military performance in the war, which killed 158 Israelis, mainly soldiers. Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Lebanon.

Israel says Hezbollah was weakened in the conflict, in which the group was forced out of its strongholds along the Israeli border and an expanded international peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon under a U.N.-brokered ceasefire.

A Shi'ite Muslim group backed by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah declared the outcome of the conflict as a "divine victory".

"Through this game the child can build an idea of some of ... the most prominent battles and the idea that this enemy can be defeated," Daher said.

Retailing at around $10 in Lebanon and produced by volunteers, Hezbollah is expecting strong demand for the game at home and abroad. Hundreds of copies have been reserved in advance in Lebanon.

The 3-D game forces players to think and use their resources wisely, reflecting the way Hezbollah fights, Daher said.

"The features which are the secret of resistance's victory in the south, have moved to this game so that the child can understand that fighting the enemy does not only require the gun.

"It requires readiness, supplies, armament, attentiveness, tactics."

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GamePolitics




Where Politics and Video Games collide

Monday 20 August 2007

Cybersociology Magazine


Nottingham Trent University's



Youth Gambling Research Centre in Montreal

University of Sydney Gambling Research Unit

Australian Centre for Gambling Research (ACGR)

The Centre for Gambling Studies New Zealand

Alberta Gaming Research Institute

University of Nevada Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming

Centre for Research into the Social Impact of Gambling (UK)

Wynne Resources

Wynne Resources (Canada)

Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre

Auckland University of Technology Gambling Research Centre (New Zealand)

GAMBLING ORGANISATIONS

GamCare (UK)

The Society for the Study of Gambling

National Center for Responsible Gaming (USA)

European Association for the Study of Gambling

National Council on Problem Gambling (USA)

British Gaming Board

National Association for Gambling Studies (Australia)

Responsible Gambling Council (Canada)

Institute for Problem Gambling (IPG) (USA)

GAMBLING PERIODICALS

International Gambling Studies

The Brief Addiction Science Information Source

Gaming Floor - Casino and Internet gaming news

Responsible Gambling Council (Ontario) - Latest Newslink

Electronic Journal of Gambling Issues

Rolling Good Times

PROBLEM GAMBLING TREATMENT RESOURCES

GamCare (UK)

Gordon House Treatment Centre (UK)

Online Counselling Service (UK based)

Online Gambling Therapy Discussion Forum (UK Based)

Gamblers Anonymous (International)

Gamblers Anonymous (UK)

Gam-Anon: The UK fellowship for those affected by compulsive gambling

Kaiser Foundation: Information on problem gambling and resources

Caritas AG Counselling centre (Hong Kong)

GAMBLING INDUSTRY

The National Lottery (UK)

The Responsibility in Gambling (RIGT) (UK)

Association of European Lotteries

The Gala Group (UK)

REGULATORY BODIES & REPORTS

National Lottery Commission (UK)

The Budd Report (UK)

Gambling Review Body (UK)

COMPUTER GAME & INTERNET PERIODICALS

Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Games Research

The Journal of Online Behavior

WomenGamers.Com For Gamers, By Gamers

Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine

Cybersociology.com

Contact Consortium

IGDA - International Game Developers Association

CYBER RESEARCH

Resource Centre for Cyberculture Studies

Cyber Psychology by John Suler

Digital Games Research Association

Association of Internet Researchers

Prof. Azy Barak

Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies

The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold