Norway & violent-games

It has come to my attention that the horrendous acts last week in Norway have in some way been blamed on gaming...

Now before I start I wish to send my troughs out to everyone involved and my well wishes to the people that where there and to the family's that have lost someone to what boils down to a nutjob. People like this have no connection to the real world and its hard to think of anything that could give this man the pain that he has giving to many 100s of people.

I dont believe that this mans name should be put in any post or newspaper... The best that we could do is to not put him in the history books, to forget his name. Make sure that his forgotten in less then a generation. And to make sure that he knows that will happen.

Now to the point of this blog.

It has come out that "HE WHO I WILL NOT NAME" said that "call of duty is a good training simulation." he also recommended using World of War Craft as a cover for others similarly inclined to do the same as he has.

If any of you hear about the violent/video games argument, making all our kids killers, you know its all rubbish BUT we do know that people that are already messed up in the head are going to be fans of the military-FPS genre as well as others like Man Hunt.

Just like Punk and rock&roll music had to deal with back in there day, Gamers are having to deal with now. Dig a little deeper into this mans life and ask yourself again if you would blame games for his actions...

He is believed to be a Christian Fundamentalist with sympathies to Norway's right-wing political fringe and gun-culture, his also belived to be the author of a lengthy manifesto which calls for armed action against enemies including Islam, multiculturalism and "cultural Marxism" in his country.

This is more of a reason to blame his actions on than any video game that he has played and I'm sure that "most" smart people will know better then to blame COD for something as real as this.

Anyone who saw the news on 20 April 1999will know, Columbine is something that is in everyone memory and one of the 1st things that comes up after talking about it was DOOM. Yes both the kids that carryed out this terrable attack had Doom on there home computers,(as did many other kids, myself included) but you never hear about the boys themselves. Both were bullied and alienated from the people around them, they stuck together and went mad... No one could have seen it coming but the people all around them, I am not at all justerfining these kids but the system let them down so much that they went on a killing spree.

With Norway its harder to say, I have never been myself but I have met some people from there and I have lived in Sweden where they kinda have a sim way of living. The system tens to work there and the young are helped a lot more then you would ever get in the US or even London to come to it. Both Norway and Sweden are small county that have a lot to do in everyone else's lives, People talk to each other and everyone knows one and other.

I once told my girlfriend that I dont understand Hitler, I just could not get my head around why you could hate a people, a rase or everything so much that you would want to wipe it from the face of the planet. After this event in Norway I have come back to trying to understand racists and nationalist.

The fact is I still cant, and in many ways it makes me happy knowing this.