Vultures, Microsoft Murder Games and Gore

April 25 (EIRNS)-- We recently reported the case of 18-year-old suspected car thief Devin Moore, who shot three policemen to death. He was a player of the video game "Grand Theft Auto" in which the player shoots, burns and decapitates policemen.

The publisher, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., has sold $2 billion worth of the game "Grand Theft Auto."

An investor group led by two "vulture" funds, Oppenheimer Funds and D.E. Shaw, have a controlling interest in Take Two. At the company's March 29, 2007 annual meeting, the vulture funds ran a coup to install new top management at Take Two.

D.E. Shaw hedge fund was the top contributor to Al Gore in the 1998 period when D.E. Shaw was trying to recoup its massive losses from Russian bond speculation and Gore was trying to help out. Oppenheimer Funds, a big player in Brazil and elsewhere, was founded by Mont Pelerin big shot Charles Brunie.

The video game lobby group, Entertainment Software Association (ESA), announced December 19, 2006 that its longtime president, Doug Lowenstein, was resigning. Lowenstein's new post: president of the newly formed Private Equity Council, mouthpiece for such vulture funds as Apollo Management, The Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

In a recent symposium, Lowenstein complained that the private equity funds are "a juicy target for the media" -- they have "weathered an uproar in Europe"; he compared their "skewed image" to the misconception that all video games are violent.

MICROSOFT executive Robert Bach is chairman of the video game lobby group ESA, which is now searching for a replacement for Lowenstein. Robert Bach heads Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, including the Xbox business, distributor of the Counterstrike game, reportedly the favorite murder-trainer of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui.