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Put A Red Cross PSA In Front Of the ISIS Beheading Video
This Slate article by Lily Hay Newman summarizes the pros and cons of Twitter's and Youtube's decision to remove the footage. (Interestingly, note that the quotes in favor of censoring the images all came from average users, while the arguments against censoring the content, were quotations from respected journalism experts.) In addition to agreeing more with the anti-censorship arguments, I've also felt that for a news organization to tell their readers, "We have elected not to publish the link," smacks of elitism -- because certainly they feel that they are entitled to view the video in the course of their research. If a group of journalists in a news office were working together to find the video online, and one of them announced to the room, "Well, I've found the link, but I've made a decision not to share it with the rest of you," they would rightly be fired. But when the same journalists announce they're not going to share the link with the rest of us, that's considered an ethics call.
But that's in a simple binary choice between publishing and not publishing the content. Suppose you had the option of posting the video, preceded by a (non-skippable) message exhorting users to donate to the Red Cross, or some other organization that was either fighting ISIS directly, or mitigating the damage they're doing? (And then if users post links to the video at any other source, then rather than suspending those users' accounts or removing the content outright, Twitter and Youtube could mandate that users link instead to the PSA-prepended version.)
If this sounds idiotic at first, I'm not suggesting just taking the average banal Red Cross PSA and splicing it in at the beginning, followed by the execution video. The Red Cross could (hastily) record an announcement specifically addressing the situation, reminding people of the similar brutalities that are being committed every day, and the need for support and help. Attempting to secure permission from the victim's family would be a good idea too. To avoid accusations that the Red Cross was attempting to "profit" from the tragedy, any funds raised via a direct prompt in the ad (such as as 5-digit number that you can text to make a donation) would have to go into an account earmarked strictly to be used only for aid to victims, not for Red Cross employees' salaries or for any other purpose whatsoever.
Of course, no matter how many times you emphasize that funds being raised are absolutely being used only to help victims, some viewers will react with disgust at the idea of the video pre-mercial being used for "fundraising". But while it would be very tricky to get the message right in practice, I don't think I would object in principle to a pre-pended message in front of the video, that either raised funds for humanitarian aid, or otherwise counteracted the goals of the terrorists.
So if Youtube allows the video to be posted along with a pre-pended PSA, this trivially achieves the goal of "making the information available to the public"; does it also prevent the dissemination of the video from helping ISIS, and does it reduce the incentive for terrorists to release similar videos in the future? Or to put it precisely, (1) does releasing the video this way, sufficiently undermine the goals of ISIS? and (2) would ISIS perceive that their goals are undermined if we release the video this way?
Unfortunately, when the goal of an organization is to spread terror, then humanitarian aid to their victims may not undermine their goal as much as we might hope, because the point of launching a newsworthy terror attack is usually not to harm the victims directly but to terrorize the rest of the population. If the original victims are rescued and nursed back to health after the cameras have stopped rolling, that doesn't neutralize the intimidating effect on everyone else.
But perhaps that just means that the Red Cross is not the right organization to benefit from a PSA posted at the beginning of the video. If we want to make sure ISIS is harmed every time someone watches the video -- and more importantly, that ISIS knows it is being harmed every time someone watches the video -- then maybe it should be pre-pended with a message exhorting people to sign up for training with the armed services, to help wipe ISIS off the face of the Earth.
Yes, that would elicit howls of protest from some people who might not have objected to the Red Cross PSA, but the goal should not be to favor some cuddly organization that is the least controversial to everybody. The goal should be to punish ISIS to the maximum extent with every additional viewing of the video, in order to reduce the chances that ISIS, or anyone else, would release a video like that again. What is the one thing that ISIS would least want people to see before watching their gruesome propaganda clip? If the answer is, "A message urging people to join the military and fight against ISIS," then that's what should be put in front of the video.
It all still sounds like quite a bizarre idea, to me as well, but the fact remains that if we're going to support making the video available at all, this seems like the way to do it that would harm ISIS instead of benefiting them. Perhaps someone else can think of a better way. (On the other hand, to people who think the video should be suppressed, it's all a moot point anyway.)
Why does this belong on Slashdot?
As far as I am concerned, no one should comment on it unless they've seen it. The arm chair quarterbacks who are removed from the issue and not exposed to it should shut the hell up.
The video is horrifying and Youtube and other services removing it is an injustice to humanity. People should see this and remember it. Just as people should see the horrors of the holocaust and remember. All removing the content does is ensure people are ignorant to the truth. Look how well banning Nazi memorabilia has worked out in France where they now have a HUGE uptick in the amount of anti-semitism.
Hiding the unpleasantness in life does not make it go away.
I have no opinion on the video, but these posts of Bennett's are too heinous to be redeemed by support of any good cause.
Snuff films don't educate. We're all becoming a bit more desensitized to this kind of thing thanks to the internet, but there isn't actually anything to be learned from watching a man die.
It's against youtube's TOS(because they run a content censored site) and so they take it down. I don't tend to endorse censorship, but classes of censorship that the distributor is reasonably upfront about, and has a reasonable basis, I just can't muster that righteous anger the summary is exhorting.
I kind of doubt that the Red Cross wants their brand slapped on a video that is going to be associated with feelings of rage and extreme negativity by every single viewer. No matter how it was spun, "Act now to prevent..." would come off as a thousand times worse than the very worst of those "show you pictures of starving kids in Africa before hitting you up for a donation" Sally Struthers commercials.
The Red Cross is non-political for a reason.
If they pick a side they will endanger countless of workers from the Red Cross. The goal of the Red Cross is to provide humanitarian aid and emergency relief.
ISIS may be a bunch of evil maniacs, but let the judging be done by other organisations that don't have to help civilians in the frontlines.
How about post a PSA in it's place, and just not include the snuff films?
I was thinking from the title it would be more about how Journalists who get killed gets so much more attention and call to action from both sides of the political spectrum, then say a Red Cross worker or the countless other civilian groups who are facing danger on a daily bases from these people.
If it were a religious (Say a Christian charity) group who had one of its members kills the right will be all angry about it, but the left would be mediocre. However if it was an organized non-religious not for profit group then the Left would raise the flag, while the right would just let it slide.
However when it is a Journalist, the side that no one really wants to piss off, then we get a strong call to action. It is really sad that there is so much disparity between people trying to do the right thing, and how much value they are to the public.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
A) What information does it supposedly reduce? I'm pretty sure you can tell me that something happened without showing me a video. Did you know that there was a 3 car pileup on route 3? Why no I don't because I haven't seen a video of it!
B) Removing the video caused the information to proliferate more due to the Streisand Effect. I literally hadn't heard about the incident until all the fuss was raised about the removal of the video.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There are plenty of angry young idiots who will exult in it - let's not give them the pleasure.
We just need a way to make the internet indelible. Censorship is always evil. And I will continue to use the word "censorship" because I don't care who does it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
of course they should show it. banning events from your service just means that the people who want to see it will seek it out elsewhere.
I myself have no desire to watch it or Faces of Death or the snuffing of human life in 40's WWII newsreels. Man is a terrible creature.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
It's not like You-tube is the only place to obtain it anyway.
Disclaimer: I have not watched it though I have seen similar or worse elsewhere. I'm sure it's grisly enough.
Or videos of disasters that affected hundreds if not thousands of people.
Or videos of killings in civil (and other) wars.
Or videos of plane crashes.
And list goes on and on and on.
But hey - make sure noone sees the video of beheading done by very same people US government has been supporting.
Because that could make US government look more bad (as if it's even possible anymore).
I don't want to see it, I wouldn't want any kid of mine to see it, and the thought of gore groupies getting a kick out of it sickens me. Also, if it was a family member of mine who was beheaded, I'd be furious at anyone who posted the video.
I know what the word beheaded means, I don't need to see it.
Is Bennett really any worse than Jon Katz was when he wrote a column for Slashdot?
I suspect Youtube and Twitters removal of the material had less to do with politics, terrorism or anything else you mentioned and had more to do with the video being about the most disgusting thing you could possibly imagine being hosted on their site. This is a breach of their terms of service, plain and simple. The political and social ramifications aside, there is no way either site would ever allow this sort of thing on their site. The first time some soccer mom stumbles across this youtubes getting banned in her house and they sure as heck dont want that.
"Would it be ethical to make the content available, if it was preceded by an advertisement for a cause that runs counter to everything ISIS stands for?" NO
Put a text label next to the guy on the left reading "hero". Explain why: A man facing his death like Foley did; I don't think I could have handled it like that.
Put a text label to the guy on the right reading "nutcase who believes in nonsense, I'll explain why now".
- Explain that the sun is 150 million kilometers from the sun, and that the sun doesn't sink in a mud pool.
- Explain that the earth rotates about the sun, how this causes the sun to rise at some place on earth at any time. So, there is no deity that tells the sun when to rise.
Point out the surahs in the koran where the two stupid assertions are made.
Then point out that the guy who wrote surahs in the koran wasn't aware of this knowledge, so the koran is not the word of god (and no, it is not misinterpretation. The koran itself says it is clear and unambiguous).
I don't think IS would like to see Foley labeled as hero and explained why the anonymous coward (why hide your face if you believe you're doing something noble?) is nuts in an easy to understand and verify manner.
Bert
As a bonus, you could point out that the knife did what you expect from a knife handled that way. Personally I'd be impressed if he'd prayed him to death. They don't try that. Doesn't work. The deity doesn't exist.
"The internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it"
On a technical level, the video is now out there on the internet and once out you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Islamic State is a new "empire" currently conducting a war of expansion, much like many of the Western European powers did during the last millennium. The Geneva conventions are in essence a gentleman's agreement between the members of the "nation-state" club as to how to conduct war in a "civilized" manner. Islamic State rejects the fundamental notion that it needs to be bound by the rules and traditions of "western civilization".
In essence what they have done is to publicly execute a hostage for non-payment of ransom, a common practice several centuries ago.
The more political issue is censorship and properganda warfare, who gets to control which information we see. Censorship or adding a non-skippable PSA is all about attempting to control the message, that the little people must not be allowed to think the wrong things, doubly so in a democracy. The war against communism followed a similar pattern of attempting to censor "subversive" ideas, such that Western Civilization isn't the only way to run things.
No, no, hell no. There's nothing ethical about using the beheading of a person as a fund raising tool. What the hell is wrong with you...
I agree with the general concept you're espousing, twice over in fact. Certainly, one should be wary of commenting about issues they know nothing about, and some things you can't really understand based on a bit of reading. I'm pretty sure I can understand what happened in that video without actually seeing it, though. I'm reminded of the axiom "what has been seen cannot be unseen".
Certainly, one should be wary of commenting about issues they know nothing about. "Gun control" regulation in the US is an example of how that ends up. Something like 40% of the country supported the 1994 ban on "assault weapons", and 95% of those supporters have absolutely no idea whatsoever what "assault weapon" means. You ask them "what IS an 'assault weapon' anyway?" and they have no response at all. So we ended up with a ban on scary LOOKING rifles. The people wanting a ban were happy when they saw pictures of all the scary looking guns that were banned, while the people who own and understand guns weren't TOO bothered - functionally similar items were still legal, they just looked slightly different.
Sometimes, seeing an event really deepens understanding. For a lot of people, virtually watching the torture and murder of Jesus of Nazareth in The Passion of the Christ changed their understanding in a fundamental way. So much so that it pierced through the conscious cognitive layer to the subconscious psychological layer, and even below that, to the layer beneath the psychological (what some call the spiritual layer). Of course, some of those people probably just didn't know what scourging was until they saw it. Reading a detailed textual description may have given a similar understanding.
You mentioned the holocaust (1 point for Godwin). I've spoken one-on-one with two holocaust survivors at school and read another's book, partially written while in a concentration camp. I think I understand it as much as I will. I don't think watching a video of it would further my understanding. Certainly, experiencing something similar myself would deepen my understanding, but I don't think anything on youtube would help.
You are unfairly forcing others to operate by the same faith in information sources that you have.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
i think it is important that we remember that this is what Islam stands for. Not extremist Islam or a fringe, but exactly what the warlord Muhammad taught. read the Qur'an and you will see many explicit instructions to behead "enemies of Islam" and take women as sex slaves. All Muslims are instructed to subdue non muslims, and give them the choice of living as second class citizens and paying a punitive tax, converting to islam, or being killed.
[..]Point out the surahs in the koran where the two stupid assertions are made.
Then point out that the guy who wrote surahs in the koran wasn't aware of this knowledge, so the koran is not the word of god
So you just need to point out flaws in the Koran and all the Islamic militants will give up their faith? Why did nobody think of this before?
Murder is a bad thing (let's at least agree on that). So why is the beheading of one person so drastically more awful than the deliberate killing (usually with a gun) of thousands of people whose only crime was not practising the exact same brand of Islam as ISIS? Does nobody here, or at YouFaceTubeBook, care that ISIS is deliberately killing whole villages?
Would it have been OK to kill a kidnapped journalist with a Kevorkian cocktail?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Maybe you should start following some proper news outlets, including some run by traditional news organisations, you know, the ones that search for news and publish it. Go out of your basement and buy a newspaper or so. Or if that's too much, try the online BBC news.
If you only found out about this by reading about the removal of the video, you're really looking in the wrong places for your news.
But if there was some PSA at the beginning of the video, wouldn't people simply edit it to chop that off, then redistribute it?
Then it would accomplish little.
That's what puzzles me to no end. Why would they want to show us how they behead someone?
To make use hate them? Our media accomplish that easily already, but thanks for the aid.
To make us fear them? Why should I fear a bunch of religious lunatics somewhere off in lalaland? Hell, I'm more afraid of the religious loonies in the Bible belt!
To show us they can do it? Any idiot can kill someone who can't defend himself, no big deal about that.
So, what should that accomplish? I'm sitting here, puzzled, shrugging my shoulders with a "meh".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No you are not helping by watching this at all.
And how are you restricting information from the public? You know that the journalist was beheaded so what information is restricted?
Also you can find the video if you want, believe it or not Twitter and Youtube are not the only websites on the internet.
Censorship is when you are forbidden from transmitting information by any means.
Editorial control is when a channel decides that information is not appropriate for that channel for example you do not see restaurant reviews often on Slashdot.
Civilisation is society judging you for what you say, act, write, advocate, or do.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Can we stop with the screaming of censorship every time a website run by private individuals decides what is or is not appropriate for their website? YouTube and Twitter run their own networks and are free to implement whatever policies they want regarding what videos or other media is served from their site. Of course, they may suffer in the marketplace based on their policy decisions, but sometimes even the right decision has negative consequences.
Personally, if I ran YouTube or Twitter I would have made the exact same decision. However, even I disagreed with their decision in this instance, I would still defend their right to implement whatever policies they desire. Banning the video on their own service is not censorship, it's their right.
The real question is why do we live in a society that thinks they need actually see this as opposed to reading. I didn't need to to go search out the video to understand the significance of what happened. I think the fact we live in a society that seems to "need" to see such is very telling. Whether you've seen it or not changes none of the facts, and in no way should influence how you feel about such matters.
It's hard to take seriously any idiot who argues for his right to watch a gruesome beheading, and more specifically, that a company has an obligation to host said video.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That's impossible! Haven't you heard? Nobody knows about it. They have been denied that information!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
So... we should be putting military recruiting videos from the US and Israel in front of these things? Because I'm sorry, but the Red Cross isn't "fighting" ISIS. They're providing a very small band-aid to help lessen the symptoms of ISIS - at best.
If you want to stop ISIS, you drop a whole lot of marines and soldiers in there, and you tell them "make this problem stop by any and all means necessary." Then you support them with ships, planes, drones and every goddamned cruise missile in our arsenal, and if you have to depopulate the region to 'pacify' it... well... so be it.
Sometimes, the appropriate answer to violence is more violence, directed at the people intent on killing people in the name of their ancient dead guy - they are behaving like rabid animals, and you don't reason with rabid animals, you put them down. And the Middle East will continue to be a genocidal pressure cooker until we understand this.
Why? What would be the benefit? In my observation I hear about anything that directly affects me from others, with the sole exception of tech news.
Why am I going to watch the news to get answers to questions like: What house burned down today? What idiot tried to rob what store today? What criminal with a badge shot somebody because they didn't like them today? What atrocities happened overseas today?
The news is the same every day. It doesn't change. Why should I waste my time focusing on it when I could be spending my time either doing something productive or posting on Slashdot?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It's hard to take seriously anyone who uses both ad hominem and strawman in the same comment.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
> In that light, I also believe video evidence of US military atrocities against innocent civilians should be published as well.
You're funny. You speak of providing more information to help develop a more realistic perspective yet you parrot propaganda that itself is the product of an unrealistic perspective.
War is a nasty business. It is chaos and destruction. It's not surgical demolition. People other than combatants are harmed even when they aren't the intended target.
This is something that people selectively forget when they want to demonize the nation of their choice.
Executing a civilian journalist is an act with the intent of ignoring the Articles of War. Attacking a military barracks, or military headquarters, or a mortar position, or a rocket position, or even an arms factory are not.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Hiding the truth is not the solution -- it is the _problem_.
Many geeks care about censorship.
A beheading? Really? You think that's gruesome? There's probably footage from the evening news from the Vietnam era that's more disturbing. If you widen the scope to historical documentation in general, things get even far more disturbing.
The Nazis were proud of what they did. They were also highly organized and highly diligent. They documented their own atrocities.
Stuff they produced makes an execution look positively tame.
Suppressing or hiding from information in a free society is really not a productive or healthy thing. This includes things that will scar you for the rest of your life (and I am not talking about some mere execution video).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Slashdot falls for yet another CIA psy op.
the cia created, funds, and completely controlls ISIS
Very good. You can regurgitate the phrases you have seen others use on Slashdot. The real question is, can you think for yourself and come to an intelligent conclusion? Perhaps you can, but to date I have seen no evidence of it.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No. I think it's childrens' entertainment. Moron.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It makes a mockery of the idea of journalistic integrity. The beheading video is billed as an ISIS propaganda piece, so does anyone actually think that adding more propaganda would legitimize it? Methinks not.
There is simply no good from adding corporate enforced! bias, for funding or whatever. The objectionable parts are not the news, nor a beheading. The objectionable part is the context, which includes things like trolls or even auto-starting videos on facebook. I've dropped people for less, for sharing auto-starting gore videos.
Consumers should have a choice to watch or not, Editors should use discretion, Newscasters should add context and background for proper interpretation.
But for all that is holy and truthful, forcing propaganda into news just to be broadcast is the worst idea I've ever heard.
It's a matter of choosing my battles. I don't make it a point to explain myself to people who willfully misunderstand me. I think there's some instagrammed stock photobullshit that probably has those words in front of it in cursive on a tumblr somewhere...
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
A) Don't even pretend that your response to seeing a beheading, and just hearing about it would be anywhere near the same. As the phrase goes, a picture's worth a thousand words, and this is a video.
I'm sure you're right about that.
Some time ago this same debate came up on Slashdot about another beheading video. Someone who had seen the video replied "you don't understand, this wasn't just a simple beheading where, like a guillotine, a blade comes down and then the guy simply no longer has a head." He then went on to describe what was in the video in a fair amount of detail. I don't think he used a thousand words, maybe somewhere between 200 and 400, but he definitely painted a picture. At the end he said "sometimes you just wish you could unsee something." ...and I believed him, because after reading his description, I wished I could unread it. Just his description of the video was far worse than anything I might have imagined being in the video, so I can only guess what actually watching it might have been like.
There's a huge difference between hearing that these people have cut someone's head off and realizing just how sick someone has to be to do something like that. I mean, in the description I read of that other video, there were so many aspects to it that, if I were the one cutting someone's head off, would have triggered my "jesus fucking christ what the hell am I doing" sense and forced me to stop. ...but they didn't stop, they kept right on doing it, and knowing that forces you to realize just how completely fucking insane these people are. Even in war, people take issue with killing the enemy when they find them defenseless, preferring to take them prisoner instead, and in that case you're talking about someone who was quite likely actively trying to kill you not too long ago. It's a whole different thing to pick a particularly painful method of execution for someone you know is innocent and then not even think twice about it as the reality of actually doing it gives you so many cues that it's just so wrong.
However, in this particular video, from what I hear, some people suspect the beheading occurred before the video was recorded, and the video just fakes it. Just judging from what I've heard people say is in this video vs. what I heard was in the other, I have to agree with that hypothesis, as it sounds like one of those quick and clean executions people tend to expect, like what they might see in a movie. Of course, if I've heard wrong, then that's more proof that just reading about it isn't the same thing as seeing it. Indeed, other than the one person's description of that older video that I read, I don't think anyone talked about what happened in the video any more than to say "cut his head off" and so I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that this video is actually much worse than what I've read about it so far.
Imagine my surprise that your post is about how you think there might be something else you saw on the internet that you could regurgitate, but you aren't smart enough to remember what it was.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Imagine my surprise where you continue your ad hominem tactics, and pretend like remembering instagram motivators is a measure of intelligence.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
There are lots of shit like that in the Judeo-Chrisitan bible:
"Deuteronomy 20:10-15 – When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. " or
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 – "If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard." Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid."
... a red cross to inform people not to waste their time! I have seen the video and it is absolutely fake. I think that is probably the main reason why it is being censored. 100% Propaganda.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
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No. I was pointing out that not being able to think for yourself is an indicator of a lack thereof.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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More ad hominem bullshit from the pro-censor bootlicker. (I waited this long. May as well join you in hell.)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Personally, I elect not to watch it so as not to encourage more of it; and I do welcome YouTube et al removing the video, etc on the same grounds.
Now, if you want to make an argument for putting a PSA in front of the video, then you don't do it with a charity like the Red Cross. You do with several PSAs - one for the UN, and one for the viewer's country's Military enrollment, and across the world one for enrollment in the US Armed Forces. And you make sure all the PSAs are at least equal in length to the video with a big message of "hey, this is what the world will come to if you don't defend your freedoms".
This avoids the whole "profit" motive, etc that you would have with a charity as well. (And make no mistake, the Red Cross is a charity; a non-profit NGO.)
American of me? Yes. But in this kind of war, that kind of message will be the only way to really fight back - make it against their interest to post the videos to start with but providing more advertising for their enemy than for them, which is what the video is really about (a call to arms for the extremous).
But, as I said - personally I would just take it all down. But if you're going to do it, do it right.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
It's a matter of choosing my battles. I don't make it a point to explain myself to people who willfully misunderstand me. I think there's some instagrammed stock photobullshit that probably has those words in front of it in cursive on a tumblr somewhere...
Um... I'm pretty sure that's exactly what you're doing here. If this is the kind of battle you choose, I'm not sure what ones you don't choose.
By connotation, I was talking about the battle I thought I'd been invited to -- that of reasoned debate, where I have to actually use my brain a bit.
Those cycles are lost on him. But sure, I'll move my fingers some.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Respect for the dead starts with not spreading their demise to every curious onlooker.
Thank you... That's spot on...
And for all those using the "you-can't-control-the-internet" argument, you're right we can't... But I respect google for trying to control their portion of it (ie. youtube).
Why does this belong on Slashdot?
because tech exists within a larger social context, the geek doesn't always have the final say on how it will be used or abused. it doesn't help matters any that he is fundamentally a binary thinker, it's all or nothing, black or white.
The Red Cross is the international organization responsible for monitoring conduct of belligerents, documenting ,and reporting war crimes and atrocities. The ICRC ought to be publizing this far and wide as an example of the shameful savagery it is.
From Wikipedia: "The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland and a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signatories) to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 (Protocol I, Protocol II) and 2005 have given the ICRC a mandate to protect victims of international and internal armed conflicts. Such victims include war wounded, prisoners, refugees, civilians, and other non-combatants."
That's what puzzles me to no end. Why would they want to show us how they behead someone?
To make use hate them? Our media accomplish that easily already, but thanks for the aid.
To make us fear them? Why should I fear a bunch of religious lunatics somewhere off in lalaland? Hell, I'm more afraid of the religious loonies in the Bible belt!
To show us they can do it? Any idiot can kill someone who can't defend himself, no big deal about that.
So, what should that accomplish? I'm sitting here, puzzled, shrugging my shoulders with a "meh".
The video wasn't aimed at you, it was aimed at other muslims in order to get them on their side. Millitant Islamic groups are full of factions and always fighting each other. Attacking a common enemy is a well-worn method of creating some level of unity. The biggest threat to IS comes from within, not from the US.
We find the video abhorrent, but some muslims will not, and they are the ones that IS are targetting with this video.
The Islamist nutties have no military to speak of. Their success is best described as "in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed is king". The beheading doesn't really scare me in any way. They are limited in their ability to act. They lack any kind of weaponry that reaches beyond the immediate area and they cannot spread their area of influence much more.
These "Islamist nutties" are an offshoot of the organisation that killed thousands of people in the US on 9/11
The publicity is everything to the terrorists. Censorship is, in some ways, even better for them, as rumours (which they can start) can make unseen footage far worse than reality and the Streisand Effect works just fine, bringing people into discussions.
No, this isn't something you can fix in the middle. You have to fix the users, instead. You have to damp down emotional responses and increase rational duscussion. There is no terrorism without fear, there are no causes without fear.
Eliminating the instinct (it's not an emotion, it's baser than that) of fear us impossible - and probably unwise if possible. But damping it, and raising calm rationality, is possible.
And it will not only make video nasties unimportant, it will make the terrorists who make them an endangered species.
You can't fight terror with blinkers or peril-sensitive sunglasses, or even with weapins. Because terror is in the mind, be it their mind or yours. And to fight in your mind the ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night, a warplane is a very messy, expensive and stupid solution. You can only fight mind with mind.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
or mitigating the damage they're doing?
Really? They now put severed heads back on?
It may be your favorite charity, but frankly speaking, if you are looking for organisations that are opposing ISIS, the Iranian Army is a closer call than the Red Cross.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A) What information does it supposedly reduce? I'm pretty sure you can tell me that something happened without showing me a video. Did you know that there was a 3 car pileup on route 3? Why no I don't because I haven't seen a video of it!
It's a video. It's a lot harder to lie or twist or exaggerate an event that is on video, so it is of value as trustworthy information.
(Not to be confused with how it is much easier to lie or confuse with in-person, video, or audio, than with text)
B) Removing the video caused the information to proliferate more due to the Streisand Effect. I literally hadn't heard about the incident until all the fuss was raised about the removal of the video.
Each time censorship happens, less and less fuss will be made about it. How many billions of headlines per day do you hear about censorship in China?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
People other than combatants are harmed even when they aren't the intended target.
Shining light on the true horrors should then be a good thing. By not showing the true face of war, the populace cannot make an informed decision about whether to support such actions. If the "war" shown on MSNBCNN looks like a video game with the gore settings turned down to 0, it's much easier to persuade the people to back the true destruction that is happening, but is not being reported.
file:
Great point. The next time someone gets arrested for having sex with a minor and taping it, they better post the video on youtube or it didn't happen. Hopefully you get the point. If we have to choose between doubting someone was beheaded or everybody watching it on video, then let people doubt it. There is a difference between insisting on the posting of the video of a congretional hearing and the video of child molestation or beheading. The difference is that people who wan to see the latter are mentally deranged.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You're part of the problem. Again, I'll ask you -- How many billions of headlines per day do you hear about censorship in China? The Streisand Effect will not protect your rights after you give them up.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If the problem is that you don't get to get your kicks watching beheadings on youtube, then yes, you are correct. I'm part of the problem you have with not being able to wallow in your mental illness and watch beheadings and kiddie porn.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
How many billions of headlines per day do you hear about censorship in China?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Zero billions.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It is morbidly disturbing just how many posters here seem to need to see the video to experience emotion or empathy for what happened. Just being told it happened is enough to wrench my stomach....I really don't need to view this in order to experience empathy...at worst watching it might lead to depression and despair.
Well for one thing you are conflating two very different groups of activities commited by two very different groups of people. You are conflating the actions of soldiers with the abuses committed by spies.
As far as "destroying all the surrounding stuff", that's just basic warfare. Whatever propaganda you've been feeding yourself has got you convinced that there's such a thing as "surgical military action".
Combat is not surgery. Never was.
This is something that I addressed in my original post and something that you chose to ignore and remove.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...here we come. Just because it's distasteful (although likely faked anyways) whether it's posted shouldn't be decided by a "central comittee", such as in China. There's no difference between a "central comittee" and a "central board" such as Google has. What else will be pulled or held back? And will they tell us every time they restrict acess? If they don't we won't even know what's being blocked. How is this different than the Chinese "great firewall", except in amount of results being blocked? And if they do it here, what's to say they won't do it more and more? It's only a few executives at the top making all the decisions.. I think this is the thin end of a very wide wedge...