[OLPC-Games] Violent games on the OLPC Activities page

[Antoine van Gelder]

Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Hi Antoine,
> 
> On 17.01.2008 21:53, Antoine van Gelder wrote:
>> Also Noah - could you please try and show some empathy for the
>> backgrounds of the people you talk to? Do you understand that large
>> parts of the rest of the world have not enjoyed the same levels of
>> stability and safety that your country has ?
>> [...]
>> Many of us in the other countries have been shot at, had bombs going off
>> next to us and been brutalized by people with  guns that were loaded
>> with real bullets made of lead that, should you be shot with them, would
>> blow your head clean off.
>>   
> 
> Unfortunately I lack information about your backgrund, which results in
> the following question:
> You use the word "us" very often. Please tell the list members which
> country you have lived in where bombs went off next to you.
> I'm trying to understand you better.



Hi Carl,

I'm also trying to understand me (and us) better, so good luck in that 
project!

*grin*

I grew up (and still live) in South Africa.

Apart from the intense levels of violence we continue to experience [1] 
South Africa was a country which had _real_ problems with freedom of 
speech and expression in that if one wanted to say or do something which 
certain folk disagreed with then you couldn't simply surf over to 
another website in order to say or do it!

  - antoine

[1] Our family has a very dear friend who runs a tyre shop in Cape Town. 
In the week before Christmas a group of armed thugs robbed her shop, 
pistol whipped her face and head into a pulp, beat another employee so 
hard that her eardrum burst and just before they left they pointed a 
pistol in her face and pulled the trigger. We will never know if the gun 
malfunctioned or the robber had simply forgotten to cock it.

In South Africa most families have a story to tell like this and, 
frankly, she got off relatively lightly.