This was the headline in the Evening Standard, right of centre London paper.
It made me think of the sales patter to the punters and made me quite sad that this three word headline would be the choice of words to sell papers
fresh new pictures
see sweat and anguish
see the blood and pain
view the humiliation
etc
Why is it appropriate to sell papers on the basis of there being pictures of injured and near-dead (in this case) people being depicted within. If the pictures were of British or American troops the headlines would be marketed differently.
This leads me on to an disturbing observation of the Today programme this morning, why did they decide that it was appropriate to play the soundtrack of the Iraqi police beating to death Iraqi civilians, whilst they plead for mercy. At this time of the morning, given the younger audience listening it was an odd choice of background audio.
Military personnel killing civilians is not something that should be trumpeted, playing the audio of the torture or crying exclusive pictures of the pain and misery takes us back to the amphitheatres of Roman times when the lives of hundreds, if not thousands depended on the whims of one man, maybe things haven't changed that much. If this much is true then I am ashamed to be linked with the British army and by association connected to the American army. Both should have learnt how to control troops from the many conflicts they have been involved in over the past fifty odd years, prisoners of war are not a new thing, even if one bends laws to disguise them.
Building Social Web Applications by Gavin Bell.
I couldn't agree more Gavin.
Indeed I recently wrote to complain when BBCi used the image of a hostage with a gun being held to his head, presumably just before being killed, to support a story about what was, or wasn't, appropriate in terms of media depiction of horror.
iI thought the person who done sicking act should be punish for what they done my god what is this world coming toits only making worse to have peace
in this world we live in today
I couldn't agree more too..
Luckly, I'm not American nor British (I'm from "the 3rd world", I'm Argentinean), but I'm human and... aren't we supposed to be the same?
"The 3rd world" seems to have no voice, so please, you people from "the 1st world" shout out as loud as you can to make this misserable things not to happen.
Today is Irak, Tomorrow?
The proper punishment for the perpetrators of these crimes would be to have exactly the same thing done to them so they could see how it feels.
That would be justice, but don't expect the US to do one fucking thing to their Hitleresque employees.
Dear Westerners,
Before you worry about teh so -called feelings of the public when seeing pictures of torture, you shoudl worry about the increasing feelings of hatred of the Muslims and Arabs in particular towards the west in general, I have live din USA for almost 8 years and when I came back here to Jordan les sthan a year ago, I was just surprised by the amount of anger and hatred by all of the Arabs and muslims I have met, thos epictures of torture rais ethe questions:
1-Why do you treat us like dogs, in other words, were those in the pictures being trotured youngmen from Birmngham, it could have started World War II.
2-WEhy cannot you just leave us alone, Islam is a religion of peace, you choose to treat it otherwise, and thus young Muslims, angered by the actions of the west in general, could refugee to the fundamentalists.
3-After all of my years of gradute and PhD education in your part of the world, I am just amazed by the amount of arrogance, ignorance, and indifference you treat all of our issues and our very own existance with,
4-I highly believe that it is time for the the US and The Europeans in general to make up with the Muslim world, while there is still time.
OH, and please e-mail me if you would have a comment mudar_zaharn@yahoo.com