Silk purses from sows' ears? Don't know what else to call this:
A SCOTTISH firm is set to make millions from a computer game based on Guantanamo Bay.
And they have brought in Moazzam Begg – one of nine British Muslims held in the jail before being released in 2005 – to help them get it right. The Glasgow firm T-Enterprise hopes to make £3 million pounds from Rendition: Guantanamo where gamers play terrorist suspects trying to escape from the prison.
Begg, 41, has been helping them get the details right, and will even have a staring role in the game...
"We have had a lot of hate mail about this, mainly from America, saying things like, "Don’t dare put out a game that shows them killing our soldiers. But no US or British soldiers get killed in it. The only ones being killed are mercenaries..."
...Begg, who has a financial stake in the game, is now not allowed to leave the UK and spends his time campaigning for the remaining prisoners to be freed. He said: "The only thing I am concerned about it making sure the game does not misrepresent the prisoners.
"This will not demean the reality of Guantanamo but it could bring those issues to people who would not usually think about it."
Talk about conflicting incentives...if America doesn't close Guantanamo, sales will potentially be higher, but Mr Begg's former co-detainees stay in America's tortured legal limbo in Cuba.
I hear that, like Guiness Stout, there are multiple versions of the game. Well, two, actually. One for the American market, where you get points for torturing inmates in more and more creative ways, with extra credit given for being faithful to the Korean War-era Communist China torture manual (with double points for extracting false confessions).
In the other version, for the rest of the world, one gets points for aiding, in various ways, the decommissioning of America's illegal prison and torture facility.
Word has it that while the silk purse passes Islamic muster, the sows' ears are clearly not halal.