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American soldiers in Iraq are trading pictures of horribly maimed and dead Iraqis against free porn. :shocked2:
Check it out for yourselves: http://www.nowthats****edup.com/bbs/forum23.html
You have been warned, this is gruesome. And the idea alone, of trading human misery against porn.... where is this going to??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1579864,00.html
The new pornography of war
Andrew Brown
Wednesday September 28, 2005
The Guardian
"Nowthats****edup.com" is the most horror-filled website I have ever seen; and if you are reading this at breakfast, or anywhere near a child, you should stop right now. It is a site for trophy pictures, originally a place where men could trade pornographic pictures of women they knew. But in wartime the definition of trophy changes, so when you look at the forum now you are likely to see something such as this:
A burnt and crumpled Arab face rests in a blue kitchen bowl. It doesn't look as if the back of the head is there, but it's impossible to be sure because everything behind the eyes is hidden in a pool of blood and everything below the jaw is missing. Underneath the picture are two discreet text ads for "Free amateur teen pictures" and "Mother and Daughter omfg! They are whores lol!"
There are several hundred such pictures on the site, all apparently submitted by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The deal offered by the site's owner, Chris Wilson, is that serving soldiers get free access if they can prove they are abroad. He did this from a patriotic impulse: it was difficult for soldiers to make credit card payments from Afghanistan. So he decided to accept evidence of life abroad instead. This doesn't have to be a picture of a mutilated corpse, but those will do nicely. The site now has more than 160,000 members.
The scandal at Abu Ghraib showed that modern armies are full of people with digital cameras who will document everything they see, no matter how shaming it might be in the outside world. Some of these pictures are far worse than anything that came out of the prison but they show the same tangle of lust for flesh, power and killing.
There's some dispute about whether all of the pictures are real but it seems beyond doubt that most of the posters claiming to be soldiers actually are, not least because the American Army tries to stop its soldiers accessing the site and posting captions like this: "Iraqi driver tried to run a checkpoint ... this is an Iraqi driver and passenger that tried to run a checkpoint during the first part of OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom]. The bad thing about shooting them is that we have to clean it up. The car was shot at with 5.56mm and 7.62 mm rounds. The 7.62 did his head" - but the viewer must take on trust that the head existed.
The soldier, signing himself "vagetarian", who posted the picture comments: "These are things that we have to do. Some of us dont like it but it must be done to protect ourselfs and our way of life. These are here to show we dont take anything lightly."
News of the site has been circulating outside the army for about a month, since Helena Cobban, a Quaker blogger and journalist, found a reference to it in an Italian report. "It underlines the deeply exploitative nature of most pornography," she says.
Wilson, the owner of the site, is proud of displaying the photographs. He popped up himself in the discussions on Cobban's blog to say: "I think everyone should see them. This is a side of the war that is shown from the soldiers THEMSELVES. Where else can you go see that?"
He is proud of free expression as a mark of civilisation (though, for legal reasons, the site is hosted in the Netherlands, and not Florida where he lives). At the head of each column of pictures is an uplifting paragraph denouncing censorship, which starts: "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship."
"It is", says Cobban, "like finding Mistah Kurtz, sitting in the middle of the black jungle, surrounded by heads on stakes"
====================
AND AMERICANS WONDER WHY THE WORLD HATES THEM! :roll:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...headlines-world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Stor...1579864,00.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...s.xml&items=150
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/I...1238168-ap.html
Check it out for yourselves: http://www.nowthats****edup.com/bbs/forum23.html
You have been warned, this is gruesome. And the idea alone, of trading human misery against porn.... where is this going to??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1579864,00.html
The new pornography of war
Andrew Brown
Wednesday September 28, 2005
The Guardian
"Nowthats****edup.com" is the most horror-filled website I have ever seen; and if you are reading this at breakfast, or anywhere near a child, you should stop right now. It is a site for trophy pictures, originally a place where men could trade pornographic pictures of women they knew. But in wartime the definition of trophy changes, so when you look at the forum now you are likely to see something such as this:
A burnt and crumpled Arab face rests in a blue kitchen bowl. It doesn't look as if the back of the head is there, but it's impossible to be sure because everything behind the eyes is hidden in a pool of blood and everything below the jaw is missing. Underneath the picture are two discreet text ads for "Free amateur teen pictures" and "Mother and Daughter omfg! They are whores lol!"
There are several hundred such pictures on the site, all apparently submitted by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The deal offered by the site's owner, Chris Wilson, is that serving soldiers get free access if they can prove they are abroad. He did this from a patriotic impulse: it was difficult for soldiers to make credit card payments from Afghanistan. So he decided to accept evidence of life abroad instead. This doesn't have to be a picture of a mutilated corpse, but those will do nicely. The site now has more than 160,000 members.
The scandal at Abu Ghraib showed that modern armies are full of people with digital cameras who will document everything they see, no matter how shaming it might be in the outside world. Some of these pictures are far worse than anything that came out of the prison but they show the same tangle of lust for flesh, power and killing.
There's some dispute about whether all of the pictures are real but it seems beyond doubt that most of the posters claiming to be soldiers actually are, not least because the American Army tries to stop its soldiers accessing the site and posting captions like this: "Iraqi driver tried to run a checkpoint ... this is an Iraqi driver and passenger that tried to run a checkpoint during the first part of OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom]. The bad thing about shooting them is that we have to clean it up. The car was shot at with 5.56mm and 7.62 mm rounds. The 7.62 did his head" - but the viewer must take on trust that the head existed.
The soldier, signing himself "vagetarian", who posted the picture comments: "These are things that we have to do. Some of us dont like it but it must be done to protect ourselfs and our way of life. These are here to show we dont take anything lightly."
News of the site has been circulating outside the army for about a month, since Helena Cobban, a Quaker blogger and journalist, found a reference to it in an Italian report. "It underlines the deeply exploitative nature of most pornography," she says.
Wilson, the owner of the site, is proud of displaying the photographs. He popped up himself in the discussions on Cobban's blog to say: "I think everyone should see them. This is a side of the war that is shown from the soldiers THEMSELVES. Where else can you go see that?"
He is proud of free expression as a mark of civilisation (though, for legal reasons, the site is hosted in the Netherlands, and not Florida where he lives). At the head of each column of pictures is an uplifting paragraph denouncing censorship, which starts: "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship."
"It is", says Cobban, "like finding Mistah Kurtz, sitting in the middle of the black jungle, surrounded by heads on stakes"
====================
AND AMERICANS WONDER WHY THE WORLD HATES THEM! :roll:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...headlines-world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Stor...1579864,00.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...s.xml&items=150
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/I...1238168-ap.html