back to article Chavez decries evils of PlayStation

The evils of decadent Western technology have been highlighted by a brace of enlightened regimes, just days after China warned only compliant firms need bother trying to operate on its cyber turf. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has railed against the Sony PlayStation in his latest missive to the people "Those games they …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. TeeCee Gold badge
    Joke

    Bloody XBOX fanbois......

    'nuff said.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    riiiiiiiight

    "violent games were designed to seed the market for later weapons sales by capitalist countries."

    It all makes sense now. Computer games don't depict gun battles because they are almost universally accepted amongst the male population as being terrific fun. They depict gun battles as part of a shady plot to promote guns for sale at indeterminate points in the future.

    And people will buy those guns, not to protect themselves against a perceived or real threat that exists as a result of various political or environmental circumstances, but because a computer game told them to (at some point in the past).

    Even if computer games did promote guns, it takes a big leap to go from buying a gun, to pointing it at someone and pulling the trigger. I don't believe any computer game is compelling enough to condition a person to do that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Tosh

      What a load of tosh.

      "it takes a big leap to go from buying a gun, to pointing it at someone and pulling the trigger."

      virtual reality is increasingly realistic and lots of research has shown a strong link between video game violence and real violence. Kids especially become insensitive to violence and may no think twice before dishing it our for real without understanding or caring for the real consequences.

      Chavez may generally be a dick but he is closer to the truth on this point than you are!

      1. steve 44
        Troll

        Edjit

        It's no wonder you posted anonymously.

        There is NO research to show a strong link between game violence and real violence. Point me to one NON-GOVERNMENT research paper that points in that direction.

        You may be right however, because everytime someone says something this rediculous i want to bash their heads in with a shovel.

      2. Dr. Mouse

        Here's the rub...

        "Kids especially become insensitive to violence"

        I disagree with your logic. I have been playing such games since I was in my early teens and I personally would "think twice before dishing it our for real".

        If kids are playing the games earlier than this (personally I would say that pre-teens should not, but thats just my opinion), then it is the parents who are at fault, not the game. There is nothing wrong with an adult taking out his frustration on a bunch of pixels in the comfort of his own home. In fact, I remember hearing of studies which showed that simulated or organised violent activity (whether computer games, paintballing, laser quest, martial arts etc...) REDUCED the likelihood of the person committing violent crime.

      3. Richard 39
        FAIL

        Pfft

        If you REALLY believed what you wrote you wouldn't hide behind the Anonymous Coward name!

    2. TimNevins

      Two words...

      America's Army.

      If video games had no real influence on violent tendencies why did the Pentagon pay millions of dollars to develop America's Army? (A game built on the Unreal3 Engine).

      The Pentagram also metioned they would be increasing spend on simulators both militarily and for the domestic/entertainment industry.

      Its called Systematic Desensitization to give it the correct industry name.

    3. stupiddairyfarmer
      Happy

      The danger of games and cratoons

      When I was a kid I used to watch Bugs Bunney and Road Runner. When i was sixteen i went to juvie for dropping an anvil on a friend from the rook of my house. It was supposed to make a loud noise and he was ssupposed to laugh and walk away./ How did I know it would farcture his skull. I also made a pipe bmob out of poweder i got by brealking open a bunch of firecrackers. It blinded another friend. None of this would have happened if I had watched family-friendly stuff like Bardy Bunch and Davey and goliath when i was a kid. Violent cartoons ruined my life. Well, it ruined my life until I turned eihgtteen.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I've been playing violent games for years ...

      ... so I'd only partially agree.

      I stick to caving kitten's heads in with rocks and beating OAPs as they'll die soon anyway.

      It's all Grand Theft Auto and Going Postal 2's fault

  3. Jimmy Floyd
    Heart

    Love it

    '"Some games teach you to kill...." the one-time paratrooper declared.'

    Classic.

  4. John Savard

    Unusual Filtering System?

    In Malaysia, while non-Muslims are permitted to consume beverage alcohol, Muslims face criminal penalties if they do so.

    Will Malaysians be required to identify their religious affiliation so that one of three alternate filtering strategies - one for Muslims, another for Christians, and yet another for Buddhists - will apply to their Internet traffic?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Unusual Filtering System?

      @John Savard

      Nah, they'll just apply the Muslim filter to everyone, given the constitutional 'supremacy' of the Malay (irrevocably Muslim by default) people.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Big Brother

      Probably not

      As it stands, pornography is a crime for all in Malaysia, if memory serves. However given the rampant corruption in the police force there it's not unlikely that should you be caught, a couple of hundred ringgit will see you good.

      Malaysia has much greater censorship of the media than anywhere else I've lived and I've lived in China. It's always been that way, but frankly it's never really affected me in either China or Malaysia, they are pretty ineffectual.

      AC because I'm heading back to Malaysia soonish.

  5. AListair 6

    And of course

    Austrailia

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh no....

    Oh no, they're nationalising Bon Marche. What's a discerning shopper looking for a half decent bottle of table wine to do?

  7. Si 1

    Which game was Chavez in?

    I'd like to buy it.

  8. Neal 5

    @ John Savard

    Experience tells me that where these religions mix, then what is morally acceptable is what is usually decreed to be the norm/filter. Of course the %mix plays a big part of what is decided to be morally correct, in Malaysia, this may have a stronger Muslim influence, in Thailand, a stronger Buddhist influence. The point being though, and it generally seems to work, that the religious majority has the greates influence of the morallity and ethics of the population, in those areas.

    It's only in the West that these religious conflicts are allowed to escalate to such large scale crisis's. That's western freedom of speech for you.

    1. Bumpy Cat
      Stop

      Still worse in Malaysia ...

      You won't find yourself demoted to a second-class (non-Bumiputra) citizen if you convert from Christianity in UK or Buddhism in Thailand ...

  9. Throatwobbler Mangrove

    so...

    when you say "It's only in the West that these religious conflicts are allowed to escalate to such large scale crisis's. That's western freedom of speech for you", you've not been following the Christian-Muslim violence in recent weeks resulting from a culture conflict over the appropriate word for God in non-Islamic faiths in Indonesia, then?

  10. Chad H.
    Joke

    An offer to Mr Chavez

    I have an offer for Mr Chavez,

    I note with interest that you've rolled out the "violent video games teach you to kill" line. Well Mr Chavez, I've recently been putting a lot of time into "trauma hospital" on the Wii. If for some reason you need a surgon, I'm happy to do it. I've not been playing on the hard level, so there's no charge for my services.

    Jack Thompson, if you're out there, the offer applies to you too.

  11. Charlie Oscar
    Thumb Down

    Am I the only person to see

    That he called the consoles games?

    "Those games they call 'PlayStation' '

    if he is going to bitch about it he should at least learn what they are

  12. LinkOfHyrule
    Joke

    "Those games they call 'PlayStation' are poison"

    Well, to be blunt, eating Playstation DVD game discs will be a bit poisonous yes, as they do contain like chemicals and plastic and stuffs!

    Someone buy this geezer a PS3 so he can actually play the games and a kebab so he doesn't have to eat them!

  13. SimpleUser
    Megaphone

    Oh well

    that Malayan official who stated

    ("We are not saying they cannot use Facebook or Twitter, but when using such facilities, they must upkeep the values taught by Islam, Buddhism or Christianity to maintain our culture,")

    isn't too far off, in my book at least, here some insiders information on Facebook (at least it's being presented as such) :

    http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/

  14. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    WTF?

    So what happens when Chav runs out of nasty Werstern businesses?

    Can Chav even spell hypocrite? After squandering millions of Venezuala's oil revenue (which won't last for ever) on arms from Iran, China and Russia, and exporting arms to local revolutionary terrorists like FARC, he is the last person to be judging violent games! Has Microsoft actually got a factory Chav can "nationalise" in Venezuala? And what have the Fwenchies done to upset him?

    Ignoring the allegations that every business Chavez has "nationalised" so far seems to have just been used to make his buddies richer without benefitting the average Venezualan one iota, you have to wonder what happens when Chav runs out of "nasty Imperialist running dog lackey" companies in Venezuala to pick on. Once he's scared off all the foreign investment, and run all the businesses into the ground (becasue Venezuala actually doesn't have the people resources to successfully run many nationalised businesses), how's he going to run it all? Import Chinese or Iranians to do it for them? That just sounds like swapping one set of foreigners for another. The oil money will only last so long, then Venezuala will have to start being nice to the nasty, rich Westerners. Or maybe Chav is just hoping he can keep his presidency long enough he dies before all the chickens come home to roost. Chav is just another Mugabe but with oil and "better" friends (like Danny Glover, who makes violent action films.....).

    1. AlistairJ
      Grenade

      Have you ever been to Venezuela?

      Matt your incoherent rant sounds like that of an American right-wing talk radio shock jock.

      Hugo Chavez is popular in his own country precisely because he has spent some of his countries vast oil wealth on his own people. He is facing an increasingly hostile superpower to his north and the sheer size of the countries oil reserves means he would be a making a strategic blunder not to invest in his armed forces.

      The fact that he can be relied upon to make apparently non-sensical and borderline nutcase statements like this only serves to spice up his otherwise interminably boring public addresses which can go on for many many hours by all accounts.

      1. David Evans

        Re: Have you ever been to Venezuela?

        Actually, I have, and I ran into an awful lot of nervous middle class people who were heading for the exit; mainly to Panama. I met one girl who worked for a (at the time) recently nationalised telco; who basically told me they were doomed, and the only people who were looking forward to nationalisation were all the Chinese contractors they were bringing in.

        As for Chavez spending money on weapons systems; what's the point? Certainly not to defend against the US, who'd be slowed down by any arms buys Venezuela could make for about 30 seconds.

      2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        RE: Have you ever been to Venezuela?

        Yeah, old Chav is just so popular he has to shore up his electoral chances by axing any TV channel that doesn't submit to broadcasting his propaganda:

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8477428.stm

  15. Alec Harkness
    Grenade

    "developing a country level net filter to block unwanted web sites"

    "Other countries to have warned their citizens about the evils of Western IT recently include China and Iran."

    .. and Australia of course...

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      And the UK...

      Let's not forget the Internet Watch Foundation... not state-controlled, which makes it arguably worst.

  16. JaitcH
    Thumb Down

    Malaysia: Another China in disguise

    The recently retired Mad Hatter proclaimed that Malaysia would be the regional technological leader including the use of the InterNet.

    Now, his handpicked picked protege, cut from similar cloth, has decided that they can't stand criticism thrown at it by Malaysians using overseas servers.

    The next door dictatorship, Singapore, screens all domestic users. They, too, have their critics: < http://www.temasekreview.com/ >, and < http://www.talkingcock.com/ > (a Singaporean expression).

    Long live LEE, Kwan-Yew - who showed how you can be a dictator and be accepted by the West.

  17. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    FAIL

    RE: Have you ever been to Venezuela?

    Actually, no, I haven't. But I can read and obviously do so more widely than yourself.

    "Matt your incoherent rant sounds like that of an American right-wing talk radio shock jock...." Hmmm, I'm guessing you label anyone right of your POV as incoherent and ranting. And the radio shock jock angle is so Noughties, haven't you got a hip and new abusive tag thought up for you yet? Aren't you all supposed to be accusing anyone right of Stalin of working for Fox News?

    "....Hugo Chavez is popular in his own country precisely because he has spent some of his countries vast oil wealth on his own people...." Debateable. His programs have shown little effect on the levels of literacy and actual healthcare for the poorest, but he has made himself and his friends very rich and comfortable. He came to power by the usual popularist policy of promising the land of milk and honey to the poor and promising to duff up the rich, a tactic that hasn't changed since Lenin's day. That was after he'd tried and failed several military coups, the first as long ago as 1992. Since gaining office he has done everything he can to make sure there couldn't be a fair and democratic election, to such an extent that the opposition parties boycotted the 2005 elections. Instead of declaring the result void as it so obviously was, Chav simply claimed victory in all the parliamentary seats and dissolved all his allied parties, forming one new party under his rule with all 167 seats in the National Assembly. Since he has effectively run a one-party state, using his pet Assembly to re-order the judiciary so he can use it for further attacks on his opponents and cut and change the constitution to suit his purposes. That's called a dictatorship, not democracy.

    ".....He is facing an increasingly hostile superpower to his north...." Historically, Venezuala has enjoyed very good relations with the US in the last century. The recent decline was most marked after the 2002 coup attempt and Chav's policy of painting the US as some bogeyman in an attempt to appeal to anti-US sentiment in such countries as Cuba. Chav didn't like the idea that Venezualans actually might not want him and so blamed the 2002 coup on the CIA. But long before 2002 he was happilly courting such nice people as Saddam Hussein and Castro, and making ludicrous anti-US statements. He even accused the US of killing his friend Raul Reyes, the FARC leader killed by Colombian jets in Ecuadorian territory, live on his TV show. Now, you surely can't be so naive as not to know what kind of people FARC are?

    "....The fact that he can be relied upon to make apparently non-sensical and borderline nutcase statements like this only serves to spice up his otherwise interminably boring public addresses which can go on for many many hours by all accounts." Yes, he actually has given himself his own weekly TV show, "Alo Presidente", during which Chav gets to broadcast whatever he likes for often up to five hours. Of course, he offers the same facilities to his political opponents - not! Maybe you should skip a trip to Venezuala and go down your local library, you have some history reading to catch up on.

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      Matt, Matt, Matt...

      The relationship between the US and Venezuela went sour when the Venezuelians elected someone who was _not_ lackey of the US -for once. It really went right down the crapper when the oil and gaz (courteously handed freely to american-owned companies until then) was nationalized. Then there was this coup -in which the CIA was certainly not involved, I mean, that's not something they would do, right? Especially not for oil. Right?

      Agreed, the guy is kind of a bore to listen to. The rest of your rant is just uninformed BS.

      Also, "long before 2002", the whole western world (and first of all, the US) was "happily courting such nice people as Saddam Hussein" -the US pushed the guy in place to begin with and armed him, and reinstated him again after the first Gulf war- as well as half the dictators on the planet.

      1. fandom

        Something repeated three times

        Venezuela sells the USA all the oil the want to buy, why would the USA risk disrupting that supply by invading the country? So they can pay more for their oil?

    2. AlistairJ
      Grenade

      Re: Incoherent rant 2.0

      In my attempts to catch on my reading of history, via your excessively long diatribe (are you and Hugo related by any chance?) I detected that you are a Castro hater. And it seems that Chavez merely took a few pages from the Bush family cookbook. Enough said.

  18. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    Well to be honest...

    ... I don't see the White House reacting particularly well to a game where you'd have to find and kill the US president

    A game aimed at killing UK's PM would probably get some flak too. Ooooh, shameless link to The Sun (warning, broken English ahoi!):

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article64175.ece

    And you cannot deny that a lot of games available for these game systems carry a strong (event violent) political message, and every single one is tailored to suit the American (US) way of life, which can be irritating (and menacing) for people with a different culture.

    As for Barbie, it would seem that Mr Chavez just agrees with "Western" psychologists.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hitman Blood Money

      The US didn't ban that, though strictly speaking it was the Vice President you killed in the Whitehouse.

  19. Frumious Bandersnatch

    the values taught by ... Buddhism

    That would probably be to live a life "without too much attachment and too much aversion". I think that all this suspicion of technology probably counts as "too much aversion"

  20. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    But...

    ...isn't FaceFail a religion in some countries?

    Like the UK?

  21. Tony Paulazzo
    Alien

    ...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

    >alternative to "Barbie, that have nothing to do with our culture."<

    The west, where they have made an eating disorder desirable, violence is preferable to sexuality, and the innocence of childhood has been sacrificed on the altar of perversity.

    Man, we are so blameless.

    A friend of mine lives in London and a group of cheeky chavies kicked his head in whilst filming it on their mobiles - he didn't call it happy slapping, he did end up in hospital, and with all those big brother cameras they never got caught.

    Entertainers (footballers, film and music stars and their pimps etc) live in mansions away from the realities of day to day life or fair tax payments, yet feel the need for government intervention (who are only to happy to comply), when their third or fourth Bugatti is threatened by filthy pirates (I see the Beckhams flew a pooch halfway across the world in a private chartered jet).

    Oil in Iraq and Afghanistan, none in Tibet or Haiti. Doesn't it cost 14p a litre for petrol in Venezuela for the local citizens, or was that propaganda? In fact, can anyone tell the difference between real news and propaganda anywhere anymore?

    One fact I know: I am opposed to censorship and oppression in any form.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Double Talk

    So the Malaysian government say they will not censor the internet, and yet they're developing a firewall of their own?

    Sounds like they're starting to forget what happened the last time an election was held...

  23. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    FAIL

    RE: Have you ever been to Venezuela?

    Or maybe you'd like to consider the recent rantings from El Chav on how the US casued the Haiti earthquake as a practice run for attacking Iran:

    http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518904

    Don't let the comparison between how the nasty imperialist, yanky dogs of the dastardly US delievered real aid and the empty promises and popularist soundbites of El Chav colour your judgement in any way. I wouldn't want mere facts to get in the way of your fashionable delusions.

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      Matt, are you for real?

      "hnnp://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518904"

      I mean, seriously?

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        RE: Matt, are you for real?

        I'm guessing that complete non-argument is about the limits of your capability to debate the point. Are you complaining over the content of the article I linked to, maybe you want to disagree and present counters, some deep insight into how it's just all Yankee trickery and Chav has actually been secretly fulfilling all his promises?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like