Boston Pheonix has a link to it on their site here.
I haven’t watched it yet, particularly because I’m at work, but I’m not sure I want to see it anyway. I’m not usually all that squeamish, but this is different. This is real.
I’ve been reading people’s opinions on the video, specifically on its newsworthiness. Is this important news and history? Or mere sensationalism?
Most of the few articles I’ve read about it maintain that it’s important for us to see the video so we can see just how evil these terrorists are. I’m still not sure how I feel about it yet.
Yeah, I’ve seen it. Unfortunately, being the sick bastard that I am, I’ve seen worse. I just feel bad for his family, and hope they never have to see it.
I had clinked on the link to it from one of the blogs I read. The video loaded up, and I watched about two seconds, and stopped it. I decided then and there that I had no desire to see this man murdered and mutilated and subjected to that kind of indignity. I’m perfectly capable of understanding the level of evil involved without seeing a person subjected to that.
I’ve seen the Bud Dwyer video, and I can handle gore and violence, but this just seemed to me to be too voyeuristic.
Well, yesterday I requested that no one post direct links to the video, or pictures taken from it. This link does have a photo, but it’s not too gruesome - if you haven’t seen the video yet. If you have seen it, then you immediately know what you’re looking at, unfortunately.
I was debating watching the video yesterday, mostly because I wanted to know how bad it was. I can’t really tell people a link is too gory if I don’t know what it contains, right?
So I watched it.
Does the video have news value? None whatsoever.
I don’t really know if we should take the link out of the OP or not. Let me get back to you on that one.
I’m not sure how to judge if something has “news value”. Coldfire, how did you determine it doesn’t? I’m not disagreeing with you, I really can’t think of a useful criteria.
I just watched it. I think it does have new value.
I don’t think it could be stranger if it were alien monsters we were fighting. The tape seems a blatant effort to manipulate, but with such a poor understanding of human thought and emotion.
Are we supposed to be struck by the pictures of the weeping Muslim women and hospitalized children, and not for the beheading of Daniel Pearl?
When they have him talk, it seems that they can appeal to compassion, that they understand atrocity. It’s a deliberate thing. They want to show us that they understand, but they’ll do these things anyway.
I can’t imagine what they were thinking when they put the video together. It’s not going to help them in any way, and it simply seems like an act of bragodoccio.
The other thing I noticed was that it looked like he was already dead when they beheaded him. It doesn’t look like he was shot or beaten.
I wonder if he was deliberately killed. I doubt they were treating him well, and it seems to me that he was worth more alive than dead.
I wonder if he succumbed to something: neglect, lack of water, maybe an infection, or internal damage from a beating, and when he died from it they did the grisly deed to try to salvage some PR value.
I though of that, but isn’t that true for possibly every single news footage you have ever seen? It never adds new information that couldn’t be described by a newscaster or written in a newspaper.
I suspect the concept of “newsworthiness” really doesn’t exist at all for video.
I guess I have similar views to Scylla. Putting aside the horrid humanitarian issues, I don’t know who this is aimed at and what purpose it’s supposed to serve. Perhaps that’s just an indication of how far removed from the mind-set of these radicals I am. Or they are from the mainstream.
I think by the conventional constraints of any culture, these guys are way out there and they either don’t know it or don’t care.
I for one found myself more angry about the things they were making him say - professing his Jewishness - than the beheading.
Like he was giving a litany of his crimes, making him worthy of such a punishment.
He was a journalist, you numbingly evil and stupid fucks. If you wanted to make your worldview known, he would have given you an interview. He was pursuing such interviews when he was kidnapped.
At least the video may keep people from going too far over into the “but we’ve got to try to understaaaaaaaand” crowd. Yes, we need to understand. We also have to remember the animalistic ruthlessness and lack of compassion of those who seek to do us harm. If you doubt or dispute my characterization of them, feel free to watch the video.
Well, the reason I watched the video was because I like to expose myself to the ‘badder’ elements of this world, because it helps me develop a clearer and more thorough understanding of this planet we live on. It also allows me to appreciate the finer things in life a lot more, and I take some satisfaction in knowing that I don’t blind myself to the harsh realities that exist here.
If you like, it makes me more ‘worldly’.
On a completely unrelated matter, this thread is number 120,000 on the SDMB.