Video and computer games are no longer a nascent entertainment technology just for kids. It’s a $7 billion industry aimed at an average player who is 33 years old. In fact 69% of players are older than 18. So it should come as no surprise that an industry born to entertain is now reaching maturity. Violent video games have existed since the beginning. But innovation in gaming is allowing a wider range of viewpoints to use video games to reflect their own reality, recruit people to their causes, and even to mix foreign policy with virtual reality.

Early video games such as fighter jet flight simulators were developed in the private sector. Some simulators such as F-16 Fighting Falcon were so realistic, that the Air Force classified aspects of the game and started using them for training their own pilots.

The U.S. Department of Defense has used several video games over the years to train and recruit new soldiers. The line between government and commercial games is increasingly blurred. The Army game, America’s Army was first developed with U.S. government dollars. Now it’s available for Xbox. More recently, the government has flipped the investment equation, using venture capital money to fund video games, hoping that commercial sales will subsidize the classified versions of their strategy and war games.

But such public-private partnerships are a thin line to walk. Pandemic Studios, the creator of Mercenaries 2, has previously developed training aids for the US Army. Their most recent commercial release of the video game Mercenaries 2 features a presumably fictitious storyline about a group of ragtag mercenaries on their way to Venezuela to oust Hugo Chavez. Apparently this hit a little too close to home and there are accusations from the Venezuelan government that the game is propaganda from the U.S. Intelligence Community. Dreamy rockstar/activist, Bono, an investor in a parent company was even swept up in the controversy.

Resistance and terrorist organizations have also developed video games that tell their side of the story. Special Force is Hezbollah’s response to American video games that portray all Arabs as terrorists. In another video game, Under Siege, players violently fight the Israeli army in game apparently based on a true story of Palestinian repression and resistance.

And finally, domestic extremists have utilized video game technology to extol their own twisted values. The game Border Patrol has a deceptively innocent, cartoon-like interface. The object of the game is anything but innocent: gun down families crossing border between Mexico and the U.S. An even more technologically complex and disturbingly sinister game is blatantly named Ethnic Cleansing. The neo-Nazi goal is to wipe out all non-whites.

For the baby boom generation it is easy to ignore video games as child’s play. They are not. As you can see from the screenshots below, video games are effective tools of resistance, terror, war and death. But as much as gaming reflects the dark side of humanity, they are also showing signs of redemption, peace, and diplomacy. Stay tuned.
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Commercial War Games

Real War: Rogue States

About: A commercial release where a player can choose between two player profiles: the United States and the Independence Liberation Army, an amalgam of terrorist groups with access to heavy weaponry. Based on the game Real War, an official Joint Chiefs training game, all jets, ships, and ground vehicles are taken directly from today’s military - with a few special items right off the Pentagon’s drawing boards.

Developer: Rival Interactive

Price: $9.95

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Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

About: Players drop into Venezuela to help settle an oil dispute, take on “a power hungry tyrant,” and blow up lots and lots of stuff. Though Mercenaries 2 is based on a fictional scenario, the plot is “realistic enough to believe that it could actually happen,” a Pandemic rep told the AP.

Supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of American policy, are not amused. “[Mercenaries 2] sends a message to Americans: You have a danger next door, here in Latin America, and action must be taken,” said lawmaker Gabriela Ramirez. “It’s a justification for an imperialist aggression.” Ramirez also said that Mercenaries 2 could be banned from the country by laws intended to protect children from violent games….

“I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later,” said Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia. - Source: gamespot.com
Developer: Pandemic Studios

Price: TBA

Web Site: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/proj_mercs2.php

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Government War Games

F2C2 (Future Force Company Commander)

About: The Army’s war game and recruiting tool for Future Combat Systems (FCS).

From army.mil: “F2C2 is a real-time tactical strategy game that allows you to learn about the Army’s FCS program by giving you command of a Mounted Company Team in the year 2015. Through gameplay, F2C2 shows how FCS is designed to give the 21st Century Soldier unprecedented situational awareness and the ability to see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively.”

Developer: SAIC

Price: Free

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First to Fight

About: First to Fight is a tactical first-person shooter in which you lead a four-man fire team in close-quarters urban combat in the streets and buildings of Beirut. It was created with the help of more than 40 active-duty U.S. Marines fresh from firefights in the Middle East and will be used by the United States Marine Corps for training.

Developer: Destineer & U.S. Marines. In-Q-Tel has invested in Destineer to develop additional training and simulation games for the intelligence community.

Funding: Private

Price: $29.99

Web site: http://www.firsttofight.com/html/

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America’s Army

About: America’s Army is a tactical multiplayer first-person shooter owned by the U.S. government and released as a global public relations initiative to present an image of the current U.S. Army and help with U.S. Army recruitment. A different version of the game for Xbox and PlayStation 2, America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier, is being developed by Ubisoft in collaboration with the U.S. Army. The Xbox version was released in November, 2005.

Developer: MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School was contracted by the U.S. Army to create the game
Funding: U.S. Department of Defense

Commercial Developer: Ubisoft

Funding: U.S. Government - three years and $7.5 million

Reach: 5 million registered users as of May, 2006

Price: Army version is free; XBox version America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier is $19.99

Web site: http://www.americasarmy.com/

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Resistance War Games

Hezbollah’s Special Force

About: Special Force is a first-person shooter military video game, published by the militant Islamic organisation Hezbollah. Special Force allows the player to take the part of an armed member of the Islamic Resistance to the Israeli invasions of Lebanon and to attack Israeli positions and Israeli politicians.

It carries a deliberate and specific political message, that is pro-Islamic and anti-Israel. On the cover of the game’s box, a message to users says “the designers of Special Force are very proud to provide you with this special product, which embodies objectively the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.” It adds: “Be a partner in the victory. Fight, resist and destroy your enemy in the game of force and victory.” - Source: Wikipedia

Reach: game sold out of first run of 100,000 copies

Web site: Official website in English (Inactive as at 20 July 2006)

Video of game being played: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvmj7wj1UOw

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Under Siege

About: Under Siege is a sequel to the video game Under Ash. It is a first-person shooter, with the option of playing the game as a third-person shooter. The game focuses on the lives of a Palestinian family between 1999 and 2002 during the second Intifada. The player shoots at Israeli Defense Force soldiers throughout most of the game. However, shooting at civilians or otherwise hurting them ends the game. The game has been described as a docugame, since all the game levels are based on on the lives of 5 Palestinian family members during the second Intifada 1999-2002. - Source: Wikipedia

Developer: Afkar Media in Damascus, Syria

Cost: About $100,000

Price: $10

Web Site: http://www.underash.net/en_download.htm

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Hate Video Games

Border Patrol

About: Credited to the bigoted neo-Nazi Tom Metzger, puts you in the role of a hunter/murderer who patrols the southern border with Mexico. Your objective: “Keep them out…at any cost!” “Them,” by the game’s definition, are the “wetbacks” trying to cross the border from Mexico.

Developer: Tom Metzger

Funding: Private

Cost: Free

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Ethnic Cleansing

About: Created by the fringe neo-Nazi organization National Alliance, this elaborate and incredibly offensive video game seeks to extend the reach one of the most extreme viewpoints in American culture.

A description from the Anti-Defamation League: “The player roams the streets and subways murdering ‘predatory sub-humans’ and their Jewish ‘masters’ thereby ‘saving’ the white world…. The game has a high level of background detail and various National Alliance signs and posters appear throughout while racist rock blares on the soundtrack.”

From the resistance.com: “The most politically incorrect video game ever made. Run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics in an attempt to gain entrance to the subway system, where the jews have hidden to avoid the carnage. Then, if YOU’RE lucky…. you can blow away jews as they scream “Oy Vey!”, on your way to their command center.”

Developer: National Alliance

Funding: Private

Cost: $14.88

With crude oil prices hovering around $75 per barrel, big oil companies once again announced record profits yesterday. Congressional inquiries into price fixing went nowhere, primarily because oil companies don’t need to fix prices. They have a U.S. population addicted to driving (never mind what makes the car go), high switching costs, and fuel standards that make China look progressive.

How did this happen? After the record oil prices in the late 1970s - prices that produced the 1981 U.S. historical high of $3.01 per gallon (in 2006 dollars) - Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were made more stringent. From 1978 to 1981, U.S. car and truck fuel efficiency standards rose by 24%.

Then came the cheap oil of the 1990s and the SUV revolution. As a percentage of income, the average American was able to buy three times more gas in 1998 than they could in 1980. Fuel standards reflected the cheaper oil. CAFE standards in 1983 were 24.8; in 2004 the average was 24.7 miles per gallon (MPG). The U.S. has long lagged behind Europe in fuel efficiency standards, but more surprisingly, even the developing world makes us look bad.

China’s red-hot economy has meant a rapid shift from bicycles to cars, and the government is taking stern measures to increase fuel efficiency. One major difference with the U.S. CAFE standards is that Chinese standards are based on weight rather than class of vehicles. The lightest vehicles in China were required to get 38 MPG in 2005, increasing to 43 MPG by 2008. Contrast that with the U.S. CAFE standard of 27.5 MPG for cars.

The United States fuel efficiency peaked nearly two decades ago, and today the oil companies are posting record profits. But don’t blame the oil companies. They’re just small-brained, carnivorous, profit-making sharks that swim and devour money. It’s the bloated American, SUV-loving consumer that we should blame for willingly wading into these shark-infested waters. Chomp!

Notes & Sources: # Historical Real GDP per capita is in 2006 dollars. 2006 GDP estimated by statastic.com using latest Economist forecasts. Gas prices are the annual average gas price and were adjusted to 2006 dollars.
^CAFE fleet standards for cars and trucks. 2005 and 2006 data unavailable, so 2004 standards of 24.7 MPG were used.

As U.S. casualties continue to mount in Iraq, there are increasing calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Democrats remain divided on withdrawal as a viable strategy for the midterm election. Our involvement in Iraq is a political issue in Washington to be sure, but not for the right reasons.

Even if you support troops and want to prevent the further loss of American lives, it’s imperative to look beyond our own losses. Iraqi civilians are dying at the rate of 100 per day according to the United Nations. In June alone, more than 50 Iraqi civilians died for every one of our soldiers. And their deaths are increasingly cruel.

These questions might help frame the debate over a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq:

1. Are our troops exacerbating the problem or are they preventing further violence in Iraq? An Army commander in the documentary “Operation: Dreamland” commented that (paraphrased), “At this point, we are here to protect one thing: ourselves.”

2. Will the withdrawal of American troops increase the bloodletting in Iraq and lead to a full-scale civil war? If so, our current investment of troops and money might look like child’s play compared to our later involvement in a civil, or even a regional war.

3. If we left Iraq immediately and it turned into a flourishing democracy and ally, would our military credibility still be permanently weakened? Withdrawal also writes a recipe for how to engage our military in asymmetric tactics such as the use of IEDs. Iraqi insurgents have clearly learned that we didn’t stay the course in Somalia in 1994 after our troops were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Unfortunately, our involvement in Iraq is more likely to be determined by domestic politics rather than by considering the hard questions.

If we divide the U.S. into Bush states and Kerry states based on the 2004 election, we can gain some insight into how troop casualties might affect the elections. Of the 11 states that were competitive in the 2004 presidential election (less than 5% difference between winner and loser), all but two states have higher troop losses per capita than the average of the states that Kerry carried.

With support for the war in Iraq slipping and the plummet of Bush’s approval rating, those red swing states with higher-than-average fatalities are unlikely to have the stomach for U.S. troop losses that they did two years ago.

Consider this: on a per capita basis, 585 times more Iraqi civilians than U.S. troops were killed in the month of June. Redeployment is more complicated than short-term domestic politics. Let’s hope the politicians realize that by considering how our policy will affect troop losses well beyond the midterm elections.

Notes: U.S. troop losses as of 7.26.06

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Coalition Casualty Count; USA Today; U.S. Census

Bush announced that he would be sending more troops to Baghdad at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bush commented that “Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible, and therefore there needs to be more troops.”

This comes on the heels of the United Nations reporting that Iraq averaged more than 100 civilian deaths per day in June. The UN report was surprisingly precise in its numbers which were based on data provided by the Iraq Ministry of Health and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad.

The UN report included grim, yet matter-of fact, examples of the violence: “On 10 June, 7 bodies were found in the river ‘Malih,’ in Wasit Governorate. The victims wore civilian clothes; some were handcuffed, tortured and shot in the head. Dead bodies are regularly found in the same river.”

At Iraq Body Count (IBC), academics and peace activists have been keeping a separate record of civilian deaths based on news reports from at least two media sources. This tally includes detail that was noticeably absent from the UN report: Iraqi violence seems to be increasingly cruel. According to statastic.com analysis of IBC data, 1.4% of deaths of deaths in April, 2006 involved beheading or decapitation. This rose to 3.5% in May, and 4.4% in June.

These grim excerpts help reveal the scope of the brutality in June alone:

• June 29: Two decapitated bodies found in Kirkuk
• June 10: Severed heads of two brothers kidnapped in Baquba found
• June 10: Seven bodies found beheaded, tortured in Al-Maleh river
• June 6: Nine severed heads found in Hadid
• June 3: Eight severed heads of a Sheik and cousins who were construction workers in Hadid, (found) near Baquba
• June 1: Four men, some of whom detained by police in north Baghdad, found beheaded in Hibhib, near Baquba

It’s impossible for us to imagine death by decapitation. Such a murder would make the U.S. national news, talk shows and media swirl for days, if not weeks. But in Iraq this summer, an average of one civilian is beheaded every day .

Notes: The IBC Web site states that it underestimates the true number of casualties, although they do attempt to incorporate aggregated data from morgues that was not accounted for in media reports. IBC reports minimum and maximum civilian deaths, both are determined by discrepancies in media reports about the same event. The chart above uses the minimum monthly toll.

Because IBC data relies on media reports, any difference in reporting will naturally affect the nature of the data. For example, increased violence may inhibit journalists from reporting some civilian deaths. If violence reduces mobility of journalists, they minght inadvertently over-report especially brutal civilian deaths, thereby increasing the percentage of reported deaths that involve torture or decapitation.

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Body Count Database; United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)

Every so often, Jeffrey Sachs tries to humiliate the U.S. into increasing its foreign aid. It’s true: While we give away about $19 billion annually in foreign aid, it’s not much relative to our Gross National Income. The Dutch give away about 5 times more, and we’re usually toward the bottom of the rankings for industrialized nations.

But even our Official Development Assistance - grants that promote economic development in low income countries - doesn’t really get to the poorest countries on earth. The United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) helps quantify a country’s progress in areas such as health, education, and general economic welfare. One might think that this would be a pretty good guide to foreign aid benefiaries. But the five most under-developed countries on earth only receive $186 million in aid from the U.S., about 7% of what Israel receives annually.

At more than $10 billion in 2005, Iraq alone accounts for 45% of our total foreign aid. So the U.S. is spending about half of its development assistance solving a problem that we helped create. Actually, if you look at the top 4 countries that we give assistance to, it reads like a who’s who of failed U.S. foreign policies: Iraq is devolving into civil war, Israel has lost our roadmap to peace, Afghanistan cultivates poppies and terrorists, and we have outsourced Sudan’s genocide.

The bottom ten countries on the HDI index are miserable, conflict ridden places. But are they better off with or without our so-called aid?

Sources: Statastic, Wikipedia, United Nations Human Development Report

Notes: The “least developed countries on earth” is based on the 2003 United Nation’s Human Development Index.  Several countries that might have appeared near the bottom of the HDI were not ranked in 2003, many because of recent conflicts.  Statastico would like to give proper credit to the abject underdevelopment of the following countries that may have made the top 10 most miserable places to be a citizen, had they been ranked: Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Monaco.  Ok, maybe not Monaco.

Given the choice, Statastico would rather read expertise than opinion. Recent polls concentrate on the latter. More interesting, however, is the wide gap between the public’s opinion and the opinion of experts. So why the obsession with public opinion polling?

The media use polling data not only to guide their own stories and advertising, but often as the basis for stories. So reporting what people think to the people who are thinking it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

And then there are the politicians. They guide their district gerrymandering, their campaign messages and financing with public opinion polls. And of course politicians themselves also guide public opinion. Just look at how many times the phrase “addicted to oil” has appeared in the media, and you’ll understand why the public suddenly has a passion for energy independence.

But experts are polled less often. The Atlantic Monthly often polls its foreign policy experts, and Foreign Policy recently released polling data highlighting the divide between the experts and the public. These types of polls are crucial to moving debates forward.

So what informs public opinion? The average American is not devouring policy blogs, obsessing over exit strategies in Iraq, evaluating the efficiency of turning corn into ethanol; they’re not even reading newspapers. They’re thinking about what to have for dinner, searching for low airfares, and keeping up with the latest news about Brangelina.

The public is also increasingly fragmented. The Internet facilitates specialization of interests and opinion, so Americans who do pay attention to the news are more likely to get it from a partisan source. Public opinion polls supposedly help us understand the political climate, but politics are shaping that opinion. Polling the public on important issues is no more than politicians’ PR departments checking to see whether their messaging sticks.

So please poll the experts. Statastico doesn’t care what the American public thinks about pulling out of Iraq. We should care about what Iraqis think. We should care about what experts in the State Department think. Instead of obscuring scientific consensus as the Bush administration has done with global warming, help us understand possible solutions. Scientists and experts are not always right, of course. But politicians’ job is to listen to the experts and help the public understand real options for hard problems.

Sources:

1: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm#earth

2: http://web1.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2006/TI-index/thepopularfront.html

3: http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/1009a1GlobalWarming.pdf

4: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The polling data about scientific consensus and global warming is based on a scientific review of 928 scientific papers related to global warming. None of the papers reviewed, “disagreed with the consensus position.” Several scientists do disagree with different aspects of global warming. Here is a list of scientists who disagree with the global warming consensus.

Yesterday marked the first-ever launch of the Space Shuttle on Independence Day.  NASA’s manned space program continues to slowly emerge from the shadow of the Columbia disaster.  While newspaper headlines focused somewhat warily on the Shuttle launch, the $700 million Mission to Mars program was under attack by cost-cutting democrats in Congress. The measure failed by a wide margin, but it highlights the constantly-embattled NASA budget.

Although NASA’s recent manned space missions lack the scientific rigor of their unmanned deep space research, manned space flight captures the public’s imagination – and political support for NASA.  The NASA budget is surprisingly small – only $16.7 billion in 2006 – paltry by Pentagon standards. In real terms, NASA’s budget has been declining since 1991, and that’s likely to continue in the near future.

Less that half of NASA’s 2006 budget (about $7 billion) is applied for space operations such as the Shuttle and the International Space Station. The rest goes toward earth science, deep space exploration, research and development.  To give a point of comparison, the annual budget for NASA is about the same as the cost of 2 months of Iraqi occupation, 167 brand new F-22s, 2 more years of failed research for missile defense systems, or about 2 quarts of Tang for every person on earth.

¹$100 million per fighter
²Based on Cost of Estate Tax repeal of 2007-2016 is $369 billion
³2001-2006 Missile Defense spending was $43 billion
⁴Based on 2006 Budget of $101.8 billion
⁵ Only $4.19 for enough Tang to make 4 quarts
⁶http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/28/AR2006062800247.html
⁷Based on 2006 Peace Corps Budget of $317,440,000
⁸http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadcasting
⁹Based on 2006 EPA Budget