September 23, 2004

• I would have thought just knowing abuot it was enough. I don't have to see someone beheaded to know that the guys doing it are, as you say, ruthless and implacable. Furthermore, I think it's kind of ghoulish to seek out these videos and watch them, even under the auspices of facing unpleasant truths. Are we so desensitized that it takes SEEING a murder to make us feel? Not me. At least, not yet. And before anybody pulls out the Holocaust card, I would point out that there was ignorance and denial of what was going on there, and the pictures were proof. In this case, I don't think anybody's disputing what's going on. My 2
• I really don't see any value in watching those videos, honestly. I talked about this a while back, explaining my own experience with gruesome videos and trying to figure it out why people would be eager to show or see these videos.
• thanks for the link. it's good for people to have the choice as to whether to watch the videos. i haven't watched them. i don't know if i will. just having the link raises all kinds of questions: * do we owe it to these hostages to witness their suffering? * is simply knowing these crimes occurred somehow "enough"? if more americans watched and were outraged by the videos, might that outrage prompt a policy change? * is watching the videos doing exactly what the terrorists want? obviously, they created the videos to shock and disturb us. i'll take the discussion a bit further: should these videos be televised? just as vietnam combat news brought the gore into american living rooms, perhaps bringing about an earlier end to the war, could forcing us to face this have any positive effect? as a journalist i'm dedicated to giving everyone as much information as possible, and letting individuals decide what to take in, and process the information in their own way. so, tenacious, i guess that's the use in this.
• That's as may be, side. I've said my piece. Incidentally, anybody want to start a pool on how long before the CIA tracks this link back? I've got 8 hours and 45 mins.
• I won't watch them, for the same reason I didn't watch the first one - because I can't un-watch it afterwards. I've never watched a person die before (for real, not in movies), and I like the smidgen of innocence that goes with that. The same with guns - I've never even handled one, much less fired one. And no, I don't think I have to experience those things to understand just how gruesome war can be.
• I'd rather have free access to those videos over none. And while I know some people honestly don't need to see them to understand the horror, there are certainly those who do because it's abstract to them otherwise. And there is a third sort of reason for looking, too. There are those who look not to "validate" the horror, but because they feel some obligation to face it. To look at evil, if you will. To refuse to flinch away. And that is probably the best reason for looking. Me, I think I am somewhere between not needing to see it and wanting to face it anyway.
• I'm with Tenacious on this. Too ghoulish. However you try to justify it, this is execution as entertainment. It does a disservice to the dead, and to anybody that cared about them.
• A little more info on the FPP would have been nice.
• I haven't watched them, but only because I'm in work. I think we need to be able to see these things, just like we need to see wounded US & UK troops, maimed children and car bombs in residential streets. It's easy to hear about casualties (of all kinds), but a whole lot different to see them. Re the holocaust - I would never deny it, but to see images from that time (say at the Imperial war Museum, London) helps strengthen my disgust at the people who carried out such evil actions. The people who did (and taped) this may be trying to make one point, but by showing off their medieval actions to the world, I think they've perhaps just proved an all together different one - what barbarians they are. There are wrongs going off all over Iraq, but this is a pretty big one...
• I don't need to see a video of anyone being killed, in any fashion, for having an imagination, I am perfectly capable of envisioning what happens from just a few words' description. Didn't use to, but now I agree with the ancient Greek notion that people witnessing violence are adversely affected by it -- these days I suppose we could say 'desensitized'.
• Do you need to see child pornography to truly understand it?
• I'm passing. I've watched one or two of these beheading videos. Gruesome and distrubing. I choose not to participate in any more of these. I guess it's your right to do so if you choose, but really other than for some kind of vicarious thrill, why? What's the point? What good does it do?
• interesting question, rocket. after 9/11, i read everything i could get my hands on just to try to wrap my brain around what had happened, the immenseness of the thing. like everyone else, i was shocked and saddened and moved and changed. i also went to the smithsonian to see its exhibit of artifacts from ground zero, called bearing witness to history. there, i had a much, MUCH more visceral reaction. to read words is one thing. yes, we learn what happened. but to SEE the actual objects... wow. frankly, i couldn't make it through the exhibit. i had to leave and sit down and rest before i could return to see everything. and even then it was incredibly difficult. but, again, i felt as if i somehow owed it to those who died, to bear witness to their anguish. maybe there are levels of knowledge: knowing at the logical level, knowing at the emotional level, knowing at the gut level. these videos would certainly be the latter.
• from the site: Since we originally aired the video of the beheading of US citizen Nicholas Berg, we have received nearly 1,100 individual e-mail messages from site visitors throughout the world. Of that number, an overwhelming majority (almost 90%) requested that we continue to provide the videos in their entirety to show the world the vile and despicable nature of the terrorists and the evil they purvey. Most have expressed that the free people of the world need to see what is otherwise unavailable through major media outlets or otherwise sanitized through selective reporting. Although we are not a news service or media outlet, we do act as an interface to the public that reports news, images and videos related to terrorism that is not made available though other sources. It is for those reasons that we will continue to provide these videos to our site visitors.
• I'm mostly a lurker--I guess one could say I'm really shy and virtually shy--but I feel I have to post concerning this stuff. When I was 11 or 12, I had the misfortune of being a member of a group that visited a slaughterhouse. To this day, the memories of the sights and sounds of that trip can make me flinch and cringe. There are some things you don't want setting up residence in your head, and I strongly suspect the images on this website are among them. Please think long and hard before you decide to watch. Does it offer you anything of value? On the plus side, my nasty little childhood trip turned me into a vegetarian.
• I think it's fine to post (some may want to watch it -- I don't, and don't get it, but I'll grant that), but "Link [more inside]" is not how you do it. We need full disclosure on the front page.
• hi pug! that's something very positive that came out of your slaughterhouse experience. perhaps people viewing these videos might be moved to become activists, against the war or against terrorism. in that way, their lives, too, might be changed for the better. again, not that i'm saying that i will be watching them. but i do strongly feel that they be available so that everyone can make their own personal decision.
• Where does censorship start? Surely in a mature democracy there's no question that it's fine to post and the adult consenting members of MeFi can choose whether they click on the link. Me: no way, I'm not going there ... I'd never broadcast them on the TV though ...
• I agree, but they need more info on the front page than "Link" so they can make that choice. I hit the [more inside] first because I wasn't sure that it wasn't a reference to chains/fences/Zelda, but under different circumstances I might have just clicked the link. Then I'd start posting potentially NSFW comments to this thread.
• erm. i can live without the beheading videos. see, terrorists in my opinion are like bullies and obnoxious five-year-olds. the more attention you pay to them, the more out of line they get. watching and discussing and talking about it all day, 24-7, is what they really want us to do. i felt much the same way after 9-11: we spent so much time in horror, we had such a huge, visceral reaction to it, (and such an amazing governmental overreaction, in terms of the measures taken to restrict personal freedom within the US) that we most likely ensured that it will be tried again - 'cause it worked. i'm not saying i want to live in a world where a guy can be beheaded, or a plane can be flown into a building, and nobody has any kind of empathy. that would be another kind of hell altogether. i don't know how to solve the terrorist problem (hell, if i did, i'd be trying it right now), but i'm not sure that intentionally spreading their message of hate for them is the best way to stop them. we already know they suck and they have no regard for human life. maybe we need to start asking ourselves what we might have done to get them this angry at us, and what we can do to get them to talk about what they want rather than kill to force us into giving it to them. rationally, we all know that you don't get mad enough to behead a stranger unless you honestly feel that something really bad has been done to you. we are all most likely aware that the US government has a history of stepping on people, putting business profits before the rights of those trampled underfoot in our mad dash towards global hegemony. we can't keep deluding ourselves by pretending that the ones mad at us are all sociopathic crazies. sociopaths by definition don't work in groups. we tend to forget that last little bit. it doesn't fit in with the rhetoric.
• that's something very positive that came out of your slaughterhouse experience. Being haunted by the screams and visions of the horrors of a slaughterhouse is "very positive"? I'm not an advocate of censorship at all, in fact quite the opposite. However, there are some things where it's much better to keep looking at the shadows in the cave rather than the outside world.
• Of course it's fine to post it -- just as it's fine not to follow the link. Some will find it useful to watch, others won't. Choice of what to watch/not watch is an individual thing, hopefully. The continual bombardment of images of one or another death/disaster/sadness eventually affects a viewer, I think -- just as I think that, whether wittingly or unwittingly, television media collectively give rise to an odd kind of propaganda or propaganda-like effect on viewers by running the more sensational and therefore eye-grabbing stuff non-stop. So I find it seriously out-of-balance. I chose to opt of the television-viewer-system over a decade ago, since I don't care to support a paranoid, distorted vision of humanity. In truth, there are people -- the majority of us, in fact -- who go about out daily affairs and never once behead our fellows, or even spit at them, but that isn't very exciting to witness, and doesn't get shown, let alone shown non-stop. Television as a news medium is putrid -- because the aim always is to get the biggest audience, present the most dramatic situation. Or at least in most of North America this seems to be the case. /text-freak
• One could be against something on principle, and/or emotionally against something. I am against beheading and murders by principle. As such, I can take reasonable and responsible action against them if given the opportunity. But, having never watched an actual murder (or video of one), and not personally knowing the victim of one, I am not emotionally against it. People who are emotionally against things can, in some cases, be irrational and irresponsible when driven by their emotions to act against them. My point is, no one has to watch these videos to be against murdering terrorist kidnappers. Watching them may make you feel fear and rage and hate, all of which are completely unnecessary, destructive emotions, but they're not going to make you any more against murdering terrorist kidnappers.
• I watched the Berg video for the same reasons I looked at concentration camp pictures (thank god they were in black and white) and photographs of civilian casualties in Iraq. I'm not gonna look at any more. I get it. The only thing that's missing is the smell. And I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I think its cleaner to kill a man with a knife than to drop bombs from the sky.
• patB- not cleaner, but more human. if you have to get close enough to knife someone, you have a much harder time dehumanizing your victim. as weapons increasingly distance the killer from the killee, the ease of killing increases. less connection with the victim = less guilt at killing. (woo. my undergrad psychology classes just kicked in.)
• Exactly, smallish bear. What can constructively be brought out of all of this rage, fear, and hate?
• Being haunted by the screams and visions of the horrors of a slaughterhouse is "very positive"? I'm inclined to think that everyone who eats meat should visit a slaughterhouse. I think one of our social problems, in the US, at any rate, is that we are so distanced from the sources of our sustenance that most of us cannot even see a direct connection between the plastic wrapped steak at the grocery store and a living breathing animal that has to die to feed us. As such, we've allowed an industry to grow and thrive that performs what most of us would find unconscionable acts of cruelty many thousands of times per day . If more people bore witness to what their consumer dollars were funding, I believe that most would choose to support industries more in line with their personal morality, such as "cruelty-free" ranches, or adopt a vegetarian life style. I also have similar feelings about war footage. If more americans could see the killing, cruetly and horror of a war being waged in their names, I believe that we would have an entirely different perspective on sending our soldiers into that particular hell. As such, those images should not just be available, but actively disseminated, because that is what war is and any attempt to hide this fact does all of humanity a disservice. However, I have mixed feelings regarding the beheading videos. Yes, they should be available for those who wish to view them. But I'm not sure what value there is in watching them. They strike me as cruel acts perpetrated by desperate people. Their complaints may be legitimate, but their acts are certainly not.
• There is no excuse for what the hostage-takers are doing. But if people are going to watch this, they should also watch footage of Iraqi civilians being blown to pieces by bombs. In this war people seem to be in genuine denial that people are getting killed in gruesome ways, as they have in wars since the beginning of time. yes, what happens in these videos is horrible. But it's a WAR. As I write this, I realize I am somewhat repeating what NickD. said above., but I think it bears repeating.
• Since my previous question was largely ignored, let me ask this: How does seeing the beheading affect anyone's opinion on the matter? Are there people who aren't sure whether they're for or against pointless brutal murder, and need to see for themselves before they make a decision? It's snuff masquerading as news. And vegetarian evangelists are annoying.
• Their complaints may be legitimate, but their acts are certainly not. NickDanger, can you think of what might be a legitimate response to their complaints? I'm stumped, myself.
• Before he answers that, PatB, it's important to make sure you have perspective.
• To be honest, my problem with this isn't that they're showing the videos, but the selectivity of the whole thing. In particular, Bush refuses to allow photographs of bodies of dead soldiers being brought home, but we're allowed to see terrorists brutally behead someone. To address Rocket88s point, think about the effect of being allowed to see these videos but NOT the violence directed against our soldiers or, perhaps more pertinantly, the women and children killed by our "precision" bombing. We can then have a visceral reaction against terrorists, but the people on our side who put our soldiers and civilians into this kind of danger? I guess not. in some ways I'm making the same point as nickd and drjimmy11, but the spin placed on this is kind of ridiculous. We've got to allow all images through or we created a skewed emotional response that i think has been coopted for politcal gains.
• I'm so glad you linked the piece by Informed Comment, shawnj. It's a perspective I think we seldom imagine.
• I've changed the text of the main link to make it clearer.
• Civilians' body parts strewn about the streets, people's heads being sawn off, shock and awe, none of it can be un-watched. It wasn't a fucking fireworks display. It's not a pig, it's a man. Draw your own parallels. Meat is meat, sure enough, doesn't matter whether it's a random bunch of people being minced by a 'smart bomb' in a marketplace, in a 'battlefield', or just an unbelievably unfortunate guy having his head sawn off by some very angry people. It's all slaughter. We like to think of ourselves as being 'advanced' and 'modern' but this is history repeating itself, war is always like this, always has been. The modus operandi does not change. The only difference is, that this time, we all get to see it. Hopefully this will persuade just a few people to wake the fuck up, just a little bit, and act to work against the very worst part of human nature, to mitigate, to ameliorate, and maybe one day, to stop war altogether. Here's hoping.
• I think it's much healthier to be "emotionally against" the distribution of material like this then it is to be "conceptually for" it, which is what I'm seeing above. As I continue to study Zen, it forces me to ask questions like, "What stake do you have in conceptualizing these images?" What is to be gained? I don't believe in anyone's right to information because an information-recording device happened to be pointed in the right direction. Nor do I believe that "forgetting history" happens because we don't have the source records--it happens because of attitudes and convenience. A straightforward response, free of illusory abstractions about the "informational value" of the record of suffering, is to clear your mind, realize the terror of these images, and give them a wide berth--not propogate them. That this doesn't occur is, frankly, one of the really fucking odd things about the culture we live in. Nothing is being confronted by distributing these depictions - only abstracted - and all that does is fuel ideology. I could care less about their contribution to some abstract, armchair belief in the value of information. I do care about piling more suffering on top of existing suffering. (And rocket88's point is excellent.)
• umm, I feel like GWB... I meant, of course, "I do care about not piling more suffering on top of existing suffering."
• Outrigger, in order to feel like GWB, you need someone to steal your frankfurters.
• I watched the video. As soon as I saw blood, I quickly closed the window. Blood has never really bothered me before (from a cut or in a movie), but even now I still have an ache in my gut. I watched somebody die. Somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's father, die.
• I cannot figure out why *all* beheading videos from Iraq, at least the ones that I have seen, have that strange edit as they cut to the close up. As I recall the "Berg" video had one as well.
  
  On a side note, Bush is wrong, the insurgency is gaining ground, if the quality of their video presentations is any indication...these people are dedicated to their audio/visual presentations.
  
  This style of presentation is tantamount to slickest of propaganda...I am curious as to what is being said and how the video must appear to someone who speaks Arabic or for that matter, someone who lives in Iraq.
  
  war is fucking insane
• I thought that it is important that people know where to get these videos so that everyone has more of an idea about the ruthlessness and implacability of the hostage taker/murderers. If you need to watch a video to understand that beheading an innocent person is wrong then you need a reality check. I wrote an old post about Jeff Jacoby telling people they need to watch the Daniel Pearl video to understand how terrible his murder was. If that was the case then terrorism would stop in the Middle East with all the horrible images that are seen on tv over there on a daily basis.
• Excellent points, Chrid, and I'd like to augment them with something we all know: these people would not have been killed had the U.S. not invaded a sovereign nation for absolutely no good reason. The people killing U.S. (and the dwindling coalition's) soldiers are defending their homeland, and lumping them in with all the other people we label as 'terrorists' is misleading. That sort of propaganda will only lead to more warmongering and more deaths for all involved. Is that something we should be working toward? Regarding ruthlessness: what's more ruthless, beheading an enemy soldier who's invaded your country and trying to use the video to discourage the rest of the invaders, or torturing, raping, maiming and killing the non-combatant civilian population of a country you illegally and immorally invaded?
• From that blog post, Sully: The films the Nazis made in the concentration camps are disturbing, but necessary for future generations to see. That's the thing, see. That's why I felt I had to watch the Berg video. I'm not a future generation, but I felt I had a duty to watch it. And, like you, I felt dirty afterwards. And sick. The same way I feel when I see pictures of pieces of Iraqis. (I've had enough of that. I turn images off when I surf graphic sites.)
• coppermac, what point is there in trying to determine which one is worse than the other? They're both horrible, both do immense amounts of damage, and they both have no rational justification. How would determining which one is worse change the situation, heal the wounds caused by these things, or end the further use of either of them?
• NickDanger, can you think of what might be a legitimate response to their complaints? I'm stumped, myself. PatB Hmm... This kind of killing supersedes tit-for-tat. In the same way that the torture at Abu Ghraib is not justified by any previous actions of the opposing side, so the beheadings of these hostages are not justified by U.S. actions, no matter how wrong or horrific those actions may be. That being said, the act is criminal, but what they are fighting for may be legitimate. I suppose the best thing is to simply do "what is right," regardless of the horrific actions of these organizations. It would simply be wrong for us to ignore the issues that they are addressing. In much the same way, I can support (many of) the ideals and goals of the Weather Underground, but still feel that some of their actions were criminal and should be condemned. I don't know... that's a really tough question.
• fap fap fap
• What does that mean, ActuallySettle?
• Actually, shawnj, it was a rhetorical question. The actions of the U.S. government and military are much worse. Decrying people for fighting back against their attackers is senseless. Almost any of us in the same position would be reacting with violence to the violence being perpetrated against us. That the images are strong and the acts extreme does not mean they are not understandable. "How would determining which one is worse change the situation, heal the wounds caused by these things, or end the further use of either of them?" I guarantee you that none of the beheadings would have occured without the initial invasion of Iraq. What the U.S. is doing there is only going to encourage more retribution, so to end the beheadings and kidnappings, etc., requires that the U.S. exit Iraq.
• Which would them send the messag that terrorism is effective in getting your goals accomplished. It's a win-win either way.
• This topic was much discussed in my circle after the Nick Berg execution. I felt compelled to watch that damned thing - although I was actually more disturbed by another such video of a hostage being first shot then decapitated outdoors somewhere. There was an element of casual sadism about that one which wasn't present in the Berg execution (that seemed more about grim, heartless fanaticism.) I think those who claim that they don't need to see this stuff to feel repulsed by it are either missing something or being a little disingenuous, because I can guarantee they'll feel more repulsed if they do actually see it, and that is relevant. From reading other people's attitudes to brutality, war, torture and so on I know that I'm perhaps a shade more empathetic than some, because I do get fiercely saddened/enraged/frustrated by these terrible human actions. But I also know that when I actually see them rather than just reading about them, it's even worse. I felt nauseous after the shooting one, and not because of physical squeamishness - it was grainy, you couldn't see much gore - but because of the awful, in-my-face reality of it. Seeing is more than believing, it's also experiencing more fully. Actually seeing this stuff is more intense for me than just knowing about it. So long as there's that discrepancy between intellectually knowing something and viscerally feeling it I feel some sort of bleak moral obligation to make sure I don't shrink from it, because if I do shrink from it, how will I know just how great the discrepancy is? How will I know if I'm missing enough feeling to allow myself to dismiss or play down something that a viewing would not allow me to do? The person who described how a visit to a slaughterhouse affected him illustrates this very well. In forcing yourself to confront a horror you may trigger a beneficial effect that merely reading about it would not: motivation to action. Motivation to caring far more than you otherwise would have done. Yes, it's upsetting to do this to ourselves: that's the point. I believe that facing the horrors and the reality of this world is a moral obligation, of sorts: especially for those who would pass comment or adopt a position on them. And that's most of us.
• I guess you can label these acts as 'terrorism', shawnj, but I don't really see the point of such dismissive fearmongering. Seeing those who have committed the beheadings as terrorists dehumanizes them, and is imprecise in that they are now linked, in the public's mind, to the perpetrators of 911, which is pretty ridiculous (and exactly what many of us have been fighting since the invasion was first hinted at). At worst, they're murderers, but I'd question that label too. Really, they're people defending their homeland from foreign invaders, and as I pointed out upthread, we'd all be doing the same were our countries invaded.
• I gotta disagree, coppermac. If you want to see them as a resistance army fighting invaders, that's fine. But once they capture a prisoner, he's no longer a threat...and to kill him in cold blood is murder. To videotape it is worse. And keep in mind that many of the beheading victims aren't invading soldiers. They're civilian workers.
• we'd all be doing the same were our countries invaded. Maybe you would. I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't cut the heads off of civilians who are trying to help, let alone try to fight a battle against an army that outgunned the resistance.
• I think whether something is terrorism or not depends on the intent of the perpetrators. Murdering someone is an awful thing, but filming the murder, especially where the victim's throat is slit and head cut off, and having the tape broadcast seems to me to reveal the determination to "terrorize." That's a lot different from burying the body in the woods.