About the Berg video

2Green · Post by **2Green** » Tue May 18, 2004 2:35 am

Haven't seen it, don't want to, ain't gonna.
Not all of us who inhabit the Earth today live in the same century.
This, with all its ramifications, creates huge problems.
Peace to all.

NM

Oldfist · Post by **Oldfist** » Tue May 18, 2004 2:54 pm

2Green wrote:Haven't seen it, don't want to, ain't gonna.
Not all of us who inhabit the Earth today live in the same century.
This, with all its ramifications, creates huge problems.
Peace to all.

NM

NM, thanks for your post--I'm with you.

Peace,

John

Ryokan · Post by **Ryokan** » Tue May 18, 2004 4:22 pm

As I watched the people on the news debate the issue of whether such footage should be aired, my thought was this:

We should see the pictures from Abu Ghraib so we all understand what monsters we are capable of being, that some Americans are the same as our enemies.

We don't need to see the Berg footage. We automatically understand the horror of it; it happened to "us" and not to someone else across the globe.

As Americans, we like to think we are better and more enlightened than everyone else. Pride is fine; there are many things in the American system to be proud of. But we also need to learn humility and be willing to consider that we don't have all the answers.

HALFORD E. JONES · Post by **HALFORD E. JONES** » Tue May 18, 2004 9:14 pm

Few people can look at things dispassionately,objectively, or even humourously since the brain acts in a binary manner usually.Lighten up a bit on this stuff! Handwringing and cringing and shedding crocodile tears over all this will do little and since the majority of mankind is powerless to do anything about any of this,well, it's time wasted. The place to start is with ourselves and our personal world and the larger world will,as it has for centuries, take care of itself......until it is destroyed???? You have only to look at the barbaric behaviour reported in our daily newspapers across the country about events in this country by Americans and you will see that we have our own particular and peculiar problems that the world abhors. Anyway, keep in mind that man still reverts to his primal nature in many instances. Also, most governments, if not all,are to blame for the world's sorry state of affairs and for all these things. Your tax dollars are at work.

IJ · Post by IJ » Tue May 18, 2004 9:41 pm

HJ: not crying, but not laughing either. Mostly just sympathizing with the Bergs.

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Wed May 19, 2004 2:15 pm

Excellent post, Ryokan.

- Bill

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Wed May 19, 2004 2:43 pm

I am thankful everyone feels free to express their opinions on this subject, and appreciate the civility displayed.

Excellent editorial here by Steve Winn of the San Francisco Chronicle

Photos that will haunt us more than words ever could

***

Not since Vietnam have widely publicized images registered in such an intimately disturbing way. By depicting the smiling, relaxed faces of soldiers in command of naked, huddled and often faceless figures, the photographs bypass our socialized filters and strike to some appalled and agitated place in all of us.

At once casual and formally contrived, static and sadistic, the Abu Ghraib photographs are, in some way, horribly compelling. Like Goya's pitiless etchings of "The Disasters of War" (1809-14) or Picasso's lurid "Guernica" (1937), they send a peering light into the darkest, most perverse scripts of power and submission that play out in the human subconscious.

"Narratives make us understand," writes critic Susan Sontag in "Regarding the Pain of Others," her 2003 study of war and other violent images. "Photographs do something else. They haunt us."

***

There's an obscenity to the Abu Ghraib catalog that goes beyond the content of the images themselves. Their mere existence and wide-scale distribution cast an implicating stain. Writing of a very different kind of photographed violence, Sontag notes, "Intrinsic to the perpetration of this evil is the shamelessness of photographing it."

Sontag's subject here is a 2000 touring exhibition of American lynching photographs from 1890 to 1930. What happened at Abu Ghraib cannot be compared to the lawless murder of black men over all those decades. No moral equivalence is intended or should be drawn. But our experience through photographs of the prison abuse is uncomfortably familiar. The shameless dash and carefree bravado of these images are intrinsic to the sense of evil unleashed.

That the release of these deeply unsettling photographs was followed by the grisly videotaped murder of Nicholas Berg seems dreadfully fateful, regardless of the actual motive of that killing. None of this will -- or should -- fade from our consciousness soon. These photographs will be an American family album of our haunted memories.

- Bill

Mary S · Post by **Mary S** » Wed May 19, 2004 3:15 pm

I watched "Love Actually" over the weekend and the first part of that movie drove it home to me .... and although I don't remember the quote verbatim, it went something like:

"I'm sure the folks in those two towers who got a chance to get a message out before the towers fell to the ground didn't send out messages of hate...they sent out messages of love..."

I never thought of 9/11 in that perspective before. What last messages were, who they were to, how they were expressed in that moment - does anyone remember the guy who appeared on tv from Cantor Fitzgerald? I cried more tears with and for that man for those he had lost....and he was just one person....

I don't want to see these (or any other) images of hate anymore....

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Wed May 19, 2004 8:12 pm

Mary

Your post conjures up a timeless classic from Charles Dickens.

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

- Bill

Mary S · Post by **Mary S** » Wed May 19, 2004 9:53 pm

Just a question on the photographs of the mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners...

Does anyone else see the irony of the fact that the pictures themselves are "fit to print" in the news, on tv and all over the net and yet the genital areas are blurred? Gimme a break!!!

What kind of a message is that? It's fine to show pictures of abuse as long as they are "censored" so they don't offend? Er....should we re-evaluate censorship????

I'd be interested in peoples' viewpoint on this...

Stryke · Post by **Stryke** » Thu May 20, 2004 1:46 am

Does anyone else see the irony of the fact that the pictures themselves are "fit to print" in the news, on tv and all over the net and yet the genital areas are blurred? Gimme a break!!!

The publishing of such pictures is a disgrace , how would you feel if that was a stack of americans , would you support them being put everwhere .

It seems there are many things these days out of control .

Does the US no longer support the geneva convention ? , has it decided that it`s no longer relevant ?

It seems morality and dignity are yet another cost of this war .

once again very dissapointed .

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Thu May 20, 2004 3:14 am

Exactly! That's the point.

BTW, there are such pictures of American soldiers and American civilians as "casualties" of war and the Geneva convention being shown. That in itself is newsworthy.

It's worth noting that there are political agendas in the press. Images sent home to TV sets during the Vietnam War were very powerful, and affected the outcome. There are volumes of material out there.

War reporting, BTW, is not a violation of the Geneva convention. The press is entitled. If a reporter photographs a crowd of residents in Mogadishu dragging a dead U.S. soldier through the streets, well I don't think the Geneva convention would suggest that cound not be published. I may be wrong on that one, but I think not. Same goes for the U.S. civilians mutilated in Fallujah by residents and/or insurgents. If my son were violated like that, I would want the world to know.

Good taste? That went out the window a long time ago...

The military may not photograph prisoners and release them to the press, or invite such photographs to be taken.

- Bill

P.S. The opinion of legal experts here would be welcomed.

Stryke · Post by **Stryke** » Thu May 20, 2004 4:09 am

Your probably right on the legalitys Bill , I guess ....

It`s all to much to be honest ... weres the hope

Mary S · Post by **Mary S** » Thu May 20, 2004 1:39 pm

The publishing of such pictures is a disgrace , how would you feel if that was a stack of americans , would you support them being put everwhere .

American, Canadian, Iraqi, Chinese, Russian, Pakistani, British - pick a nationality - does nationality matter? We're all human and as such should treat each other with respect and dignity.

I don't support them being anywhere...and yes, it is a disgrace.

And yes, it appears that I have been emotionally hi-jacked. But is that such a bad thing? Maybe it's time more of us were emotionally hi-jacked and then perhaps attrosities like this wouldn't happen....

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Thu May 20, 2004 2:05 pm

Your amygdala is there for a reason, Mary. Glad you have one.

Emotional maturity means understanding the feelings, where they come from, and acting appropriately on them. In the words of Aristotle,

Anyone can become angry -- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way -- this is not easy.

BTW, I appreciate your global view of the issue.

- Bill

About the Berg video

Awful is a relative term, try AWE-FULL!