Turkish Ministry Recommends Banning Minecraft -- Over Violence 91
An anonymous reader writes: Minecraft is known for a lot of things. It's a fantastic creative outlet and the digital sandbox of youngsters' dreams, for instance. The game has also been known to raise the ire of unrelated companies who somehow think all that creativity by gamers is something that can be sued over. It's known for amazing user-generated content, including games within games and replicas of entire cities. The nation of Turkey is known for very different things. It's a country that absolutely loves to censor stuff, for instance. And, thanks to recent developments, Turkey is also known as a great place to get a front-row look at the incredible violence done by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. But the Turkish government has a plan to keep its youngsters from witnessing too much violence: it is calling to ban Minecraft.
Let's ban Minecraft! (Score:1)
My kids will just play Call of Duty instead!
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In Turkey that might constitute non-fictional training.
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I don't think that's a sign of how much Turkey loves ISIS so much as a sign of how much they hate the kurds. Turkey has a large kurdish minority that wants their own state, and has been vocal about it. And they've explored all options: political action, non violent protest, and terrorism.
The turks know that the kurds aren't going away, but ISIS's days are numbered. As long as they're around, they want the kurds as bloodied as possible. It's kind of like Alien vs Predator, where you know once the predator ha
Re:Let's ban Minecraft! (Score:5, Interesting)
Adults tend to get nervous about insanely popular trends or hobbies with kids that they don't exactly understand. They're banning it because it's so stupidly popular with kids, not because it's violent. The problem is that it's such an inherently non-violent game that they end up looking rather silly describing it as such, essentially proving the point that they have no idea what the game actually plays like.
Of course, they'd look even more foolish if they told the truth, which is "We don't know exactly what this Minecraft thing is that our kids are spending all day playing. So, we decided to ban it just to be safe."
Re:Let's ban Minecraft! (Score:5, Interesting)
This.
If the backwards Turkish government has proven one thing time and again then that it has not the slightest clue about technology and makes even look US senators like the next gen legislator from the future.
Seriously, any time you're embarrassed about how little your legislator knows about technology and how to use it, just look towards Turkey and you instantly feel better.
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That doesn't make me feel better; it makes me feel worse. It's like when my neighbor let his dog run rampant over my lawn for a few months; the fact that there was a major oil-spill destroying thousands of square miles in the Gulf at the time in no way made me appreciate the "good fortune" of having dozens of dog turds scattered about my property.
Rather than take hidden pleasure in somebody else's misfortune, I'd rather we just get rid of the dog turds in our own government. *That* would make me feel better
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I think the main reason Minecraft is so popular with kids is exactly because it's a game that most parents are okay with.
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I think the main reason Minecraft is so popular with kids is exactly because it's a game that most parents don't understand.
FTFY
Re:Let's ban Minecraft! (Score:5, Informative)
I think the main reason Minecraft is so popular with kids is exactly because it's a game that most parents can play with them.
FTFY - I play Minecraft with my teenage son all the time.
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Actually, there can be violence in Minecraft. My 6 and 7 year old sons love spawning animals in the game just so they can beat up and kill the animals. They do it frequently enough that it has disturbed me in the past.
Um, I have some bad news for you.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Soccer involves kicking a round spherical ball.
I'm afraid that children will confuse these balls for people's heads and then go around kicking people's heads in.
How do you think the game started?
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Soccer involves kicking a round spherical ball.
As opposed to a non-round spherical ball...?
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So why not just say "spherical"? Round is redundant...
back in my day (Score:1)
Back in my day we didn't have this internet or these downloadable games. We had a copy of basic and that was it. If we wanted games we wrote our own games in basic and we liked it that way. Kids these days are so spoiled they don't even have to think for themselves. They just download prepared thoughts from web sites. It's shameful I tell you what.
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Whassat sonny? can't hear you over the clack of the beads in my abacus.
You flash git.
We had to use our fingers, only the rich kids could afford abacuses. Or food.
How about parliament? (Score:1)
They should ban televising their parliament then if they don't want to expose people to violence.
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Yeah ... I don't think Minecraft is the worst of their problems:
Amnesty International record of Turkey [amnesty.org]
And while they're at it, Turkey should stop buying oil from ISIS. There's a reason ISIS is the best-funded terror group on the planet ... a handful of countries continue to buy oil from them, which ISIS extracts from fields they took over.
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Executions (Score:5, Funny)
Of course Minecraft is violent. Do you have any idea how many innocent instructions get executed to make it run?
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Reminds me of this really great post [blogspot.com.ar]
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Superb. Thank you Michael, that has made my day. Every day should start with a great actual LOL. Today it has for me. (big cheesy grin)
Good step forward for Turkey (Score:2)
That will certainly help reduce the skyrocketing reports of domestic violence that current takes place in the country. (sarcasm)
Confusion (Score:1)
If Turkish kids confuse minecraft animals with real animals, then their problem is with a lack of education, not with Minecraft.
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Creepers and Skeletons aren't really animals. They're pure monster.
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There are also cows, pigs, horses, and chickens.
a "COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stuff"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you sure, it's the COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stuff - and not its (elected) government?
Turkey is a large and very diverse nation - been there twice so far and absolutely loved the parts around Istanbul we visited and the people we met. I just don't think it does the normal people there any justice to leave statements like "their country loves censoring" unchallenged.
While here in Europe there were some long post 9/11 discussions on whether muslim headscarves should be banned - at the same time in (muslim) Turkey, there were demonstrations against the government, because their government wanted to LIFT a headscarf ban at Turkish universities.
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Censorship, HA! There's a little thing in polite society known as "tact". While I do feel for your situation to deny your inherent identity, you happened to go to a land where non-heterosexuality is considered a problem. Maybe you feel that Turkey's culture is barbaric but there are times and places to pick your fights, and it's obvious your friend was not prepared to fight for social justice in that instance. The expedient thing in that situation is simply to deny yourself, what you would call censorship.
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Turkey is a basket case. The current leadership is introducing medieval Islam in what was technically a secular country. They have little choice.
On its boarders the region run by the Islamic State death cult who have co-opted the Islamic religion to indoctrinate their cannon fodder. The point about Muslim religious authority is that it belongs to whoever declares that they own it. The point about a religion is that it replaces the moral judgement of individuals with the rules as given by the earthly religio
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I suspect to many Muslim youth ISIL looks very little different to the way the left in the Spanish civil war looked to young Europeans last century. Many many Europeans went to fight the dictator Franco and died. Fortunately they did not in the main bring their bombs and guns back with them, we certainly did not put them all in prison as we do returnees from Syria and Iraq.
There is no church hierarchy in Islam that we could expect to make a statement on behalf of the faith, its not so easy to denounce your
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You do realize that the Westboro BAPTIST church is not Catholic right? Why would the pope have anything to say about them?
Also, every time you talk about Iraq WMD, you sound more and more like an idiot. There was intel about WMD, Saddam had used them to attack the Kurds before, and was threatening Iran again and preventing weapons inspectors from accessing known weapons plants. At the time the intel looked good, and Saddam himself was saying that he had them. This wasn't a convenient lie used to attack
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At the time the intel looked good
Uh, no. Saddam's son, who had been in charge of the program to destroy the WMD, defected to the west, bringing 11 filing cabinets of documentation with him. The US/UK knew very clearly that they had been destroyed, and in fact 10 Downing Street was complaining internally that "the evidence is being fixed" to falsify the reasons to invade. Iraq was allowing the inspectors free rein by then, even allowing them to search his private rooms in the various presidential palace
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Ignoring the personal insult for a moment. Who says no nation willingly accepts regression? Have you looked at Russia and its gangster leader recently?
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What regression are you talking about? Compared to Yeltsin even Putin looks good.
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I was with a Turkish friend and he forced me to LIE about my sexual orientation to meet his friends and their families.
Yes, that is rude. He should have allowed you to just not even bring it up at all, which would have been more appropriate in Turkey or any other country.
Re: a "COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stu (Score:2)
Really sad situation there. I visited last year and three years before then. It has changed a lot and it looks almost inevitable now that the secular state will be rolled back. Syria also used to be a tolerant multicultural country that tourist would visit.
Personally I just find the problem to be religion in general. Most religions eventually degrade from you and 'God' to you and a leader guy who apparently has a special hotline to 'God'. This creates an unaccountable power position, made worse by the leade
Re: a "COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stu (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:a "COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stuf (Score:5, Insightful)
The elected government is a result of the people. Turkey is a mostly functioning democracy and they have voted Erdogan into power twice now (well, he wasn't voted for rpime minister but his party was, and later he was elected presisent despite his actions as prime minister). Now, as someone who used to date a secular liberal Turkish woman (who at the time lived in Turkey) a few years back, trust me, I'm more than aware that not all of Turkey or its people support such policies, but unfortunately at this point it seems that most, even the majority does (although in fairness sake, he won the presidential elections with a very narrow margin, just over 51 % if the votes, so the country was/is split on the middle
Erdogan has gained popularity because he has done some good to the Turkish economy and improved general infrastructure etc. This is all fine and well. Unfortunately the man is also religious bigot and a conservative who's doing his best to slowly dismantle the secular basis which Turkey has maintained ever since Ataturk. There was recently a case of a woman being jailed for having the audacity to stand on a quran. A guy was jailed and is facing charges for (literally) "insulting the president".... Not to mention he handled the riots, the attempted banning of youtube etc etc.... He's an authoritarian through and through when it comes to social issues and rights.
So either the majority of Turks living in their native country do not realize this, do not care about this, or are actively in favor of it (and outside the larger cities there are still large areas were this sort of conservative islamic rhetoric is popular as hell). Either way the populace is not entirely to blame for his actions, but when you have over half the people voting in favor of a guy who has a track record of favoring banning things he does not agree with, well the country is not exactly blameless either.
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As the other commenter indicated, the president doesn't declare war. Congress declares war.
So why would you bring Obama up anyways?
Obama after all doubled the national debt, he started many wars (http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/272471/fact-checking-the-war-comparisons-between-obama-and-bush/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/... [cnn.com]) though two is kind of limiting it a bit, and was elected twice.
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Oh come on. It's a synecdoche. Are you... not a frequent user of human language?
Obviously the calls for censorship are not coming from the unanimous entirety of the population, nor from Turkey's inanimate infrastructure and buildings, nor from Turkey's actual soil and rocks and trees.
When the news reports that the White House said such-and-such, do you express surprise that a 200 year old edifice has achieved sentience and begun meddling in politics?
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Are you sure, it's the COUNTRY that absolutely loves to censor stuff - and not its (elected) government?
If you don't stop your government from doing evil, you are complicit, just like if the brain and heart don't stop the hands from doing evil, you are guilty.
Yes, that implies some dark things about Americans, of which I am one.
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Pious hickville won the last round at the polls, which is why the current government alternates between highly controversial 'development' projects practically designed to rub the uppity urbanites' noses in it and pandering to
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elected hahahah.
well, perhaps it was elected. IT CAN'T FUCKING BE UNELECTED though and investigators trying to bring up the corruption are fired.
I guess they found out that minecraft has a chat option.
at least Erdogan is doing everything he possibly can to keep Turkey out of meeting EU requirements.
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