posted
Like King Theoden in The Two Towers, I have to ask 'How did it come to this?'. In the past week I have seen images of human beings pissing on each other, setting dogs on each other, and now a man is beheaded and filmed to be shown on the internet. What the fuck is that all about? I look outside my window and I see life going past pretty much as it did one, two, three years ago but somewhere out there the world is going insane. Is it going to get worse, because if it is, I don't even want to think what that would be like.
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posted
Yes, it has, and every time it looks as if we've had enough of it bang!, the human race is at it again, repeating the cycle of hate and breeding new conflicts for the future. I just wish that we could seperate all of these war-loving shit heads from everyone else and let them kill each other in the name of whatever bullshit ideology/religion is flavour of that era.
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posted
To be honest, I've been looking for the link to see the poor bugger cop it, but I can't find it anywhere, so my whole peacenik credentials are looking a bit shaky.
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quote:Originally posted by Vanilla Online Persona: hasn't it always been thus ?
Yes, but in the olden days you'd take a picnic down to the Place de la Bastille for an afternoon of civilised turnip cropping. Now modern technology allows us to watch in our front rooms whilst eating pizza, and with no chance of getting splattered if you're sitting in the wrong place. Except by pizza sauce.
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posted
Seriously, don't watch it. I saw it at work last night. It's fucking grim. It's no "chop", it takes about a minute to carve his head off.
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quote:Originally posted by fish: It's no "chop", it takes about a minute to carve his head off.
I did wonder about that. The clip they showed on the news has a guy reading a statement, then he passes the bit of paper to his mate and pulls out some sort of carving knife or something. I thought to myself, that's not going to take his head off in any sort of traditional samurai sword/executioner's axe/guillotine fashion, is it. I think that's put me off watching even more than I was put off anyway.
How many people have seen this footage? Yuck.
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posted
Fish is right, probably best not to watch it. I was in two minds about posting it, but I thought if people want to see it they should have the opportunity.
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posted
I watched it using the link here. In a way I'm grateful for minj giving me the opportunity to watch it but after I saw it I really did feel sick. I really wish now I had never seen it
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posted
dude, its video of a man getting his head chopped off and youre saying yeah, its best not to watch it but if you want the opportunity to do so, shrug. what is fucking wrong with us? his parents said they did not want the footage widely seen, and now with a click of a link people around the world are watching their son have his head removed with a carving knife like it was the trailer for the new battle royale flick or something. im sorry if im being moralistic but this is really wrong.
posted
DeeDee's right. We spend our lives avoiding this sort of horror. Condemning it. Just because it's on grainy video doesn't absolve us from complicity.
[ 13.05.2004, 01:22: Message edited by: Black Mask ]
quote:Originally posted by discodamage: dude, its video of a man getting his head chopped off and youre saying yeah, its best not to watch it but if you want the opportunity to do so, shrug. what is fucking wrong with us? his parents said they did not want the footage widely seen, and now with a click of a link people around the world are watching their son have his head removed with a carving knife like it was the trailer for the new battle royale flick or something. im sorry if im being moralistic but this is really wrong.
I half agree with you Disco, I was reluctant to post it, but then again...free speech. I don't know if it really applies to things like this, but I'd rather have no censorship than too much.
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posted
But isn't it more a kind of compulsion human beings have to watch and look at things they know will be horrific or disturbing? People slow down to look at car crashes on the motorway, people stand and watch fights without attempting to break it up. We know it's wrong, but we still do it.
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posted
that excuse is used to absolve yourself of responsibility, though. its in human nature, i cant help it. you can, you know. dont watch. especially in the case of this video: dont make the active decision to watch. there are plenty of things we can and should deny about our inbuilt natures, and the desire to see people being gruesomely murdered in real life footage is one of them, in my view.
note to self: do not get involved in arguments about the morality of death as spectacle two minutes before leaving for an eleven hour split shift at work.
It is an extreme example, but yes, there is still a compulsion to watch something as brutal and disturbing as that. However, I would say this seems only to apply to a certain kind of violence and injury.
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posted
I see where you are coming from Deedee. I deliberated long and hard about whether to watch the video, or not. It would be very easy to dismiss this decision as an opportunity for a bit of cheap voyeurism, but for me this is not the case. The last thing I want to see is a fellow human being reduced to so much meat. I'm still trying to answer the question of what made me watch this, and although I haven't yet answered this to my own satisfaction, it has something to do with bearing witness, I think.
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posted
On a seperate point, I've been surprised with how little sympathy there is here in my work place for the guy. The general opinion is that whilst it is horrendous for his family and friends, the Americans shouldn't be there and this is simply blowback, as the CIA like to call it. And most of them read the daily mail, if that means anything.
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posted
Isn't the term 'U.S. citizen' now generally recognised (rightly or wrongly) to be a euphemism for ex-Special Forces mercenary, in the Iraqi context?
posted
I've got to say, it made me cry. I'm a sensitive soul at the best of times, and I left the newsagents emptyhanded and in tears yesterday morning.
Its been said already here. Barbarity has been a feature of war since time began. What's different now is the publication of graphic images on the internet, so that the act can be witnessed several days or weeks after it happens, by people thousands of miles away. I'm rather too emotional about it to come up with an insightful or considered response. Words like "voyeurism" and "complicity" are coming to mind though. My initial response when I saw the headline was "What have you done? [Tony Blair and George Bush]"
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quote:Originally posted by ally: My initial response when I saw the headline was "What have you done? [Tony Blair and George Bush]"
Tony held the guy down while George did the sawing - both were wearing clown outfits.
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scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
posted
It's a mess.
The whole thing is just one big fucking mess. There was (shock horror) a letter in Metro this morning about the cycle of revenge, and how this tit-for-tat retaliation has created a chain of atrocities that will escalate to the same level of on-going bloody pettiness (or petty bloodiness) seen in the Israel-Palestine conflict for hundreds of years. If every barbaric act generates another one in the name of revenge, where does it stop? It makes an absolute mockery of Bush and Blair's 'civilising' mission of regime change. I am so sad and angry, I might even vote conservative.
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posted
This is what the Bush administration have being praying for, something to show people how 'justified' their war is and how 'right' they were about the extremists. This poor sod is now a martyr to their oil war, another life lost to the barbarity of the Islamics. They'll probably name a missile after him.
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posted
I think that's a bit unbalanced. There are plenty of things that can pinned on Bush and co without trying to dump everything, done anywhere, done by anyone onto his charge sheet. For a start: taking the supposed "motives" at face value isn't terribly wise.
It isn't as if the killers are people who would have been gentle and law-abiding but for those prison photos - the prisoner abuse scandal is just a pretext, I'd guess, for an act they would have committed anyway... they had their man sitting there, it was simply a question of the right news event coming along for them to "react" to. I imagine the killing of Sadr might well have provided a similar "trigger" - if not, they maybe would have waited until the eve of the handover of sovereignty.
It wasn't "revenge" it was a media event - and shame on you for providing them with a perfect audience... pliant and receptive to their spin on the world.
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posted
IF YOU WATCHED THAT VIDEO BY CHOICE YOU ARE SICK FUCK ABSOLUTELY AND WITH NO GET-OUT CLAUSE.
lol "it had something to do with bearing witness". Absolute bollocks. Charrudeboi, you deserve to feel sick. I hope the image haunts you.
MNIJ, you should take that link down. If people want to find it, it should be made as difficult as possible. You putting that link there is wrong. Fuck your censorious outrage argument. It's crap. This isn't a question of censorship, it's a question of morals. Plain and simple. Would you like to watch a man being killed barbarically? Yes or no? Where's the censorship? We know the film exists. We know there are no bleeped comedy swears or pixellated faces. There is no censorship issue.
Have some respect. And no, I don't care how this reads.
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quote:Originally posted by scrawny: I am so sad and angry, I might even vote conservative.
This is the true horror of the situation, isn't it? We have no one to vote for.
The Tories are truly hideous scum, trying to find ways of digging at a government which is doing almost exactly what they would have done themselves, following the same policies at home and abroad. They've got clowns like Boris Johnson as MPs, bumbling around saying "Saddam was worse" and that kind of shite.
The Lib Dems, though they have a general policy of opposing a lot of things like the War in Iraq and ID cards and being the only large party with a supposedly pro-Europe stance, have a way of flailing around in the dark which doesn't endear them to anyone. They're also trying to propose a populist local income tax to replace the rates, a strange concept where you pay a higher rate of tax if you earn more, regardless of the size of your property. Next they'll want us to pay for our groceries on a sliding scale according to what we earn, I guess. It's only fair, after all.
I have no idea who to vote for this time. I want to protest against Blair and Blunkett, but I don't want to waste my vote.
As for the circle of violence, God I wish we could rewind to 12 September 2001 when the Americans had a pure moral high ground which they could have used to massive effect. Instead... REVENGE. Now, fractionally, they could have a tiny opportunity to take that high ground again - a beheaded civilian aid worker against some degraded terror suspects - just about an opportunity. But we've already had... REVENGE stated as their intention. It's too sad.
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