South Park Creators Given Signed Photo of Saddam Hussein 1297
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, were given a very special gift by US marines: a signed photo of Saddam Hussein. During his captivity, the marines forced Saddam to repeatedly watch the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut, which shows him as the boyfriend of Satan. Stone said, "We're very proud of our signed Saddam picture and what it means. It's one of our biggest highlights."
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Who gave them the photo? (Score:4, Interesting)
Stone, 37, said both he and Parker, 39, were most proud of the signed Saddam photo, given to them by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division.
But then again it states in the summary of the article that they recieved the photo from the Marines. So which is it?
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, regarding approximately 30% of the population (which is the Republican approval rating's floor), the answer is "yes". For some people, the craving for an authoritarian father figure, religious zeal, or susceptibility to propaganda supplant reason and lead people to vote against their own interests. The same forces affect (or afflict) every society, but ours has been made particularly vulnerable by media consolidation, poor education, and a history of religious conservatism.
As with many problems, the solution begins with a little political bravery and continues with massive, sustained investment in education and critical thinking.
Re:hilarious (Score:4, Interesting)
Political activists say one thing, eye witnesses say another. http://www.indict.org.uk/witnessdetails.php?target=Qusay [indict.org.uk]
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
You have no idea how true that is [mypolls.us].
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate replying to myself, but I couldn't give up a chance to show the change in inequality [blogspot.com] too.
Re:South Park Movie Officially Torture.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? The second musical number is Terrence & Phillip in "Uncle Fucker." This granny STAYED through that? I always thought that little ditty was Matt & Trey's way of clearing the theater of anybody who was likely to be offended so they wouldn't explode when things got REALLY got bad later on. I mean later on you get that great Disneyesque musical number with His Infernal Majesty that is in really poor taste, Satan & Saddam doing the nasty, plus Saddam gets his own musical number. Then there is The Mole and his continual blasphemy just to cheese off the fundies. (Of course The Mole does get killed.)
The South Park guys can't handle being let off the TV leash. Yea SP:BLU was making a useful point about censorship but they just went totally over the top. And just to prove it wasn't a one off they later did Team America. Again, dead on with the point but just they just don't know where to stop.
probably not a bad way to die (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose if the shredder was really really slow, and you put a guy in feet first, it could be kind of bad. A decently fast shredder is no big deal.
Compare with burning at the stake. Compare with crucifixion. Compare with stoning. Compare with dunking. Compare with the necklace, which FYI was a burning gasoline-filled tire around the neck (hands tied or hacked off) that Nelson Mandela liked to use. Compare with what Vlad the Impaler used to do, driving greased poles into the torso via the anus. Compare with pressing.
Heck, compare with how most of us die in modern hospitals. We end up with chemotherapy, choking on fluid, with tubes rammed into every natural oriface and a few unnatural orifaces. We often suffer in agony for months.
Getting dropped into a shredder looks downright peaceful and kind by comparison, no?
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, I believe the US chose to have him tried by Iraqis precisely because they could have him convicted and executed for more expediently there than in the US.
It wasn't a US trial they were most fearful of, it was a UN trial. The case against Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia was comparatively more clean-cut than the one against Saddam, yet, Milosevic put up an extremely good defence. Had he not died while on trial, there's every chance he would have either left the court a free man or found guilty on only relatively minor charges.
In addition to that, Saddam knew where all the American bones were buried: It was the US who sold him those WMD in the 1980s, and he was hand-shaking chums with Rumsfeld and other bigwigs at the time. All of this would have been thrown into the open in a fair trial and made George W Bush's top brass directly complicit to the commission of war crimes were he found guilty. Far better for the US to have Saddam's trial over and done quickly with a kangaroo court.
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be so great if you are locked in a brightly lit cell/chair and you have a movie with loud sound playing in a loop for days? And then your guard comes after a few days, changes the movie and you don't see him for another few days... Or maybe you prefer naked human pyramids or exploration of dog-human relations? I heard those are fun too!
I had some respect for the authors of the South Park as normal, rational men. But accepting this gift is cruel, unmoral and despicable. Just like torture I mentioned before.
Re:Huh. (Score:2, Interesting)
hanging is a perfectly reasonable form of execution. it's probably easier to get right than lethal injection or electrocution, given some of the horror stories we've all heard. if the rope is long enough and positioned properly, death is instantaneous from a broken neck.
bull
My understanding of hanging using the short/long drop method
is if the persons lucky there neck is broken and they lose conscious and die a few seconds later.
I have read about botched hangings and they can be pretty horrific.
Lethal injection at least it seems like a painless death.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
The categorical imperative [wikipedia.org] is useful, especially in this instance.
Also, don't be so quick to dismiss our conscience: it's the distillation of millions of years of evolution.
You quote Kant's categorical imperative but then fail to distinguish between 'is' and 'ought' (a difference Kant made clear). Even if you're right that evolution fashioned our "conscience"--if there is even such a thing--a certain way, it doesn't mean we SHOULD act accordingly. If evolution fashioned us in such a way as to still feel the drive to be swinging from the trees, hurling our feces at each other, does it follow that it's what we should be doing?
The parent post was right-on in warning about the conceptual link between a "conscience" and some form of relativism.
Re:Huh. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think some people need to read the OP again. He didn't describe being forced to watch the film as torture; he said that "if this is the sort of thing [marines] do behind closed doors - in fact they do worse (torture....)".
Not to say that being forced to watch a film over and over again couldn't be torture - a TV with the volume turned up to maximum, outside the cell but pointing in, playing the same film on repeat 24 hours a day for example. Not that I'm saying that necessarily happened here, although I think we can assume from the word "forced" that he didn't have the TV and remote in the cell with him.
Yeah, the guy was an asshole of epic proportions. But that doesn't make this right.
"We're very proud of our signed photo of Saddam and what it means", say Stone and Parker. Really? What, exactly, *does* it mean? Because AFAICS it just shows that some old man (albeit an epic asshole of an old man) was forced to do things against his will for the amusement of some bored soldiers who knew there was little chance of any comeback. And maybe it's just me, but I don't think that's something to be really proud of.
Re:hilarious (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fucking Americans (Score:5, Interesting)
Too right.
There are an increasing number of cultural messages, and messengers, in US media the subtext of which is "it is OK and even desirable to act like you are ten years old all of the time", the framing of Howard Stern as a folk hero being the canonical example.
I don't think anyone faults the fans of South Park, Howard Stern, etc. for finding them amusing. The problem is that immaturity is increasingly finding a place in public life. Apparently these soldiers think it's OK to act like ten year olds while acting in an official capacity, such that they don't see anything wrong with bragging about it to the media. It will be interesting to see whether their superiors think so too.
And, while this particular incident hardly qualifies as "torture", there does seem to be an immaturity continuum on the part of US actors and decision makers in the Iraq war that starts here, runs through Abu Ghraib, and all the way up to the White House, where apparently torture was not only planned and condoned, but micromanaged, with high level participants apparently doing so at least in part to gain personal satisfaction from the act. There's no credible evidence that any of it was effective, and plenty of evidence that it was counterproductive, but apparently, in times of crisis, the appropriate response is not to act like adults and address the problem effectively, but to act like ten year olds and pull the wings off of flies because we can.
And, while there has certainly been a fair bit of outrage over all of this (underreported) in the US, there are plenty of people who thinks that it is all right and good. It would be interesting to know the correlation between South Park/shock jock/reality show fandom and the condoning of torture among the American public.
But don't get too cocky in your own country. One of America's biggest exports is its media. It's like I tell my kids: what we are, you will be.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Huh. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
...They made him watch a TV show that makes fun of him. It's a little childish, but I really don't see what's so reprehensible about that.
Guessing that you have never seen the movie! :P
Seriously, if I had to watch it over and over again at high volume it would probably get to me after the 40th or 50th showing but I am one of those nerds that goes to conventions and such.
As for Saddam, I think he deserved what he got in the end. However, I was sickened by the example of the new Iraqi rule of law as practiced under supposed guidance of American law.
As we all know it was not a pretty image.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
It was not only about the oil.
It was also very much about the fact that Saddam was the first leader of a major oil exporting country who wanted to accept Euros as well as Dollars for payment in the last few decades. Read up on the oil standard and realize what huge backing the whole world is giving the USA, more or less for free. Then think about what would happen to all that money they churn out if that money was not based on the single most important non-commodity resource (i.e. air, soil, water, etc) we have today, any more.
You volunteered? (Score:2, Interesting)
No? You didn't serve your country yet live with in its borders defended by the egotistical macho jackoffs you so despise?
It is odd isn't it, that those who decry how others do their job the most would never do that job themselves or indeed work for the wages associated with those jobs.
The US gets the army that it is willing to pay for. Not its defence budget, but what it pays the soldiers. If that pay only attracts people with no other choices, then you get an army that resulted not just in the Iraq war, but vietnam and korea and all the small conflicts in between.
In WW2, US soldiers where volunteers from all walks of live and they were heroes. Post WW2 only the poor serve on the frontline because that is the only choice they got, often told to either serve or end up in jail in the days of vietnam. Little wonder that given guns and no control they went out of control.
Oddly enough, there was a time when only the best of a nation could serve. There was a spot for rifraf in the abslotute lowest rank, but anything from a sergeant up either quality before they went in, or shaped by the army.
There are many things wrong with the current US system, but it all started when the fast majority are not willing to serve anymore yet vote for politics that lead to war.
Re:See: Michael Portillo (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus however long the condemned can hold his breath.
Still, that's about the only drawback. Otherwise, it's safe for whomever is administering it, not too harsh on the audience (there may be some struggling, but there's no blood or worse), allows an open-casket funeral, and leaves the organs available for transplantation.
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the most ironic thing is that watching Saddam's hanging gave you respect for the man. The shiit thugs killing him were shouting and making fun of a man that was about to die, but Saddam answered them calmly and with more courage than I expect Bush or any of the other people behind the Iraq war would have knowing they are about to die in a minute.
(I remember watching Wolfowitz [wikipedia.org] scared shitless trying to keep it together in front of the cameras after his hotel had been hit by mortar fire in Baghdad. What contrast to the arrogant self-assurance Wolfy had when orchestring a war on false pretenses, a war that he should have known would cause thousand of innocent people and US soldiers to die.)
Then Saddam is hanged before he is able to finish his last prayer to God, a perfect ending to an execution that encouraged Saddam loyalist and ensured that the brutal dictator was transformed into an Iraqi martyr. And again, the beautiful irony that Saddam finally manages to create a picture of himself as a religious leader, after having problems saying the muslem prayers correctly in propaganda shots earlier in his career. Even Saddam's mortal enemy bin Laden must have been proud of the propaganda value of that last prayer cut short.
The thing many people in the US have a problem to understand is the shear stupidity that lies at the bottom of many of the Bush gangs decitions. Bush supporters think "Saddam hanged, yeah!" and consider it done in a manly way. But the fact is because of the incompetence shown in how the trial is performed and how Saddam's life is ended (like so many of the other "manly" things Bush wanted to do) US is instead shown as weak and the opposite message and result of what was wished for is achieved.
Re:Huh. (Score:4, Interesting)
Getting a bullet through the head does NOT mean you die. Stop watching Hollywood films. You have a not-so-small chance to survive the bullet through your head and then you simply die of cerebral haemorrhage.
Maybe blowing the sentenced up with explosives? A small lead container with walls strong enough to be reusable and enough explosives to annihilate the human?
Re:Huh. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
if the rope is too short, the executee will end up being strangled.
if the rope is too long, the head of the executee will pop off like the head of a champagne bottle.
as someone mentions below this post, popping the head off and breaking the spinal cord essentially leads to death in the same way (oxygenated blood cannot reach the brain / heart stops beating).
hanging is easier on the eyes, but imho decapitation by guillotine might be a better way, as hanging can be botched up easily.
fun fact:
it can take up to a minute to lose consciousness after the brain isn't supplied with oxygenated blood anymore, although somewhere around 5-20 seconds is more common. so if you ever get your block chopped off, take a minute to savour the view.
after that, brain death takes around 6 minutes.
He knew things that people didn't want to hear (Score:2, Interesting)
Hangings still happen [wikipedia.org] in a few states. Agreed with your comment, however, it was distasteful and unnecessary what we did to Saddam.
It was necessary to silence him as fast as possible: He knew too much.
The US, especially with the likes of Rumsfeld in power, could not allow him to go into a tribunal and answer questions such as "where did you get the chemical weapons that killed as those people? The telemetry to aim those weapons?" because the answers would have undone the careful story that the administration had been constructing about him, and especially the story they have built about themselves.
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they're the "borrow and spend" party. Because borrowing is so much nicer. "Don't take all that money from me, take it from my kids, their kids, their kids kids, etc".
Soldiers or Marines? (Score:2, Interesting)
Who gave them the photo? Soldiers from the US Army's 4th Infantry Division or US Marines? The article states both.
Let's Be Clear Here (Score:2, Interesting)
There are ten trillion things worse one can do to someone than forcing them to watch a movie insulting to them multiple times. Really, there are.
And if the situation had been reversed and George Bush had been captured by Saddam, you can sure as hell bet George would have been treated ten trillion times worse than Saddam was by the US. I believe that without a doubt in my mind. So paint it as you will, the treatment of Saddam wasn't handled by prim and proper Catholic schoolboys....but I'm sure it was several orders of magnitude better than what the Republican Guard would have done to Bush (now there's a somewhat ironic statement).
I expect much protestation and 'but we have to be nice to everyone' type of responses. You know what? No, we don't, and no, we weren't. It's called war for a reason, ladies and gentlemen....just or unjust, it was war. Last I checked, nice things don't happen in a war.
Re:Huh. (Score:2, Interesting)
WTF is wrong with you Americans? Have you been SO blinded by the media and patriotism and hatred that you actually believe this?
Where do you live? I'd like to point out the flaws and controversies within your country.
It's easy to say "you Americans" when the reality is, "Us" Americans really don't give a damn about the rest of the world.
It would not bother me one bit if the US pulled out of every port and base in every country in the world.
Misguided politicians set the US on a course for global good cop/bad cop. Well, that isn't working. So the world can go back to policing their own shit. You guys can take care of Africa, the Middle East, former Soviet states. We'll be over here, repairing our fucked economy and completely ignoring the rest of you.
(that would be sweet)
Re:See: Michael Portillo (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup. From YFA:
Re:Huh. (Score:1, Interesting)
Um, I'm pretty sure the Palin crowd is NOT ashamed of anything Palin said or did.
I've yet to see or hear anyone state what Palin did that can be claimed as "wackjob" other than a few gaffs online the campaign trail. Besides the fact that most people I meet think she said half the shit SNL made up for their skits like "I can see Russia from my house!" is an SNL quote, not a Palin quote.
Of course, compared to the gaffs Obama and Biden did, I'd have to say the Republicans had a slightly better non-gaff advantage during primary. Except, conservatives tend to be far more understandable for gaffs and don't make SNL skits about Obama's 57 states. Or Binden's assistance of when TV's where invented or who was president during the Great Depression.
The media would rather hound her DAUGHTER (yeah, how do you think it would have went if it was the media hounding Obama's daughters?) and try to make some sort of story out of her daughters hard times. While Democratic bloggers run ape-shit spreading stories about the baby really being Sarah Palin's and what not?
Of course the Palin crowd had nothing to be ashamed of because there wasn't any TO be ashamed of, except, perhaps this firing of the policeman controversy, which I can't tell here or there because of the political spin involved in the whole thing.
The hypocrisy is what got me (Score:5, Interesting)
Bush: "I find it very interesting that when the heat got on, you dug yourself a hole, and you crawled in it." [usatoday.com]
A couple years earlier, a small group of murderers with a handful of commercial jets had managed to immediately drive Cheney into a hole^H^H^H^H^H undisclosed location and Bush into underground shelter. A couple years later, it just took a single report of an off-course plane to send Bush underground again [cbsnews.com]. Was it so tactically unreasonable to expect Saddam to hide from a hundred thousand men armed with the best military technology in the world?
Even if this was propaganda for the Iraqis' benefit, it seems like condescending propaganda. Go for the root of the problem, and persuade people that a strongman ruler is illegitimate if he isn't democratically supported and/or if he violates human rights. Don't just cop out and try to paint yourself as the stronger man.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
You keep using the word "you" and implying that it refers to the same group of people in each instance.
I'm not sure that it really does.
I think it reads better as
Some person or group in power created The WMDs case to convince the American people to invade Iraq. And when that person/group ran out of ideas on how to prove the existence of the said WMDs, somehow the reason turned to "democracy"
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow.... I'm going to karma hell for this but... WTF is wrong with you Americans? Have you been SO blinded by the media and patriotism and hatred that you actually believe this? Don't be conned. The US could have stopped the trial at any point.
That's like saying "Hey! I didn't kill him, I just locked him into a small room with a bunch of people who hate them and gave them all guns. Don't look at me". Don't be a fool.
Try not to extend this sort of blindness to all Americans. Just like in Europe, we have a large fraction of idiots who support stupid ideas. I think that Europe has an advantage in that parliamentary systems are more conducive to (at least the full visibility of) multiple viewpoints and less so to a single party taking a radical idea and running with it. It's obviously not a perfect system, though, or Europe wouldn't be rapidly giving up personal liberties because heads of state are owned by the entertainment lobbies. I think you're a bit of America on that front, for now.
Re:Propaganda reached a new low (Score:3, Interesting)
1. He was hung by a proxy government. Do you really think, if the US wanted him alive, it would have required more than a "gimme that"? The US installed the former enemies of Saddam as the new government, the people he forced to flee, what do you think the US had in mind when doing so?
2. I make no assumptions about war cartoons having any influence on war outcomes. I state that they are a propaganda tool to keep the own moral up, to depict the enemy as something worth being fought against and to put them in a bad light. And that they were supposed to be shown to the own population, not as a tool of shaming the enemy. Nothing else. As a side remark, I had to get YouTube to finally see Der Fuehrer's Face and other "propaganda" cartoons, since they were never shown in Europe (to my knowledge). You can also afaik not get the "Disney War box" DVDs here.
3. I assume you mean Wilson's note about the self-determination right of the peoples. It was not heeded, and set the stage for WW2, as you say. This was, to say the least, very short sighted, and in this you are right. I don't say that European countries did not make any mistakes the last century. Making mistakes is one thing.
Not learning from them is another. The US have the chance to see, looking back at the Versailles Treaties, where a browbeat-peace based on revenge with the goal to keep the enemy under the thumb leads. They knew exactly that it won't be a good idea to cripple Germany yet again after WW2, why did they 'forget' this about 60 years later?
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Saddam likes Cheetos and Doritos - every release of information about him was carefully controlled to discredit him as a strongman.
HA!
It's funny that you should mention it in this light, because I distinctly remember the strongest criticism of this kind of leaked information about Saddam came from the very people who wanted to demonize him.
The argument was that the left-wing press was making him look much more innocent and human by showing the human side of him.
The military wanted him dead. They can't justify killing him if nobody is focusing on the genocide and war crimes...
Personally I don't care either way. But I thought it was funny that you are making the same complaint that right-wing saddam bashers seemed to be making, but for slightly different reasons.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Inequality is not an evil
It is when CEO's make 500 times as much as his average worker yet doesn't do 500 times as much work.
I'm far below the poverty level, making only a few thousand a year, and rent blah blah elitist bullshit blather blather take your bootstraps and like it blah blah
Using arguments that work (Score:5, Interesting)
Go for the root of the problem, and persuade people that a strongman ruler is illegitimate if he isn't democratically supported and/or if he violates human rights. Don't just cop out and try to paint yourself as the stronger man.
You mean, use arguments that work in the west, based on western culture, to convince Iraqis it is a bad idea to back Saddam and his Baath party?
In Arab culture a ruler is not rendered legitimate by being elected, but by being so strong nobody could topple him. To tell Iraqis that Saddam is an unelected strongman would be as effective as telling people in the US that they should no longer listen to President Obama because he lost the Mandate of Heaven [wikipedia.org].
Showing that the US is stronger than Saddam was a necessary first step in giving the democratically elected government the legitimacy it needs to rule. The second was handing Saddam over to an Iraqi court to be tried under Iraqi law and be executed by an Iraqi executioner.
Re:Matt & Trey Advocating Torture? Yeah. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true. In fact, Matt and Trey are on the record as saying (I'm just paraphrasing here from memory) - "we don't like extreme right-wingers, but we really fucking hate extreme left-wingers."
Re:Saddams' dead Iraqis vs US/UK dead Iraquis. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who has been in solitary confinement for 30 days before, I'm not sure how I feel about the article. I think a blanket statement that everyone would come out damaged might be stretching it. Granted, there is a big difference between 1 month and 6 months, but I was very happy to be in solitary as general population would have been much scarier to me.
By nature, I tend to be a fairly solitary person. As long as there are books, or I have something to do (I read a lot, and did things like figuring out 2^100 on paper) I'm generally good to go. Of course, I was also in a brig, and got occasional phone calls, etc.
The only real psychological effect that I noticed after getting out was a bit of agoraphobia. The world is much bigger than a 6x9 cell. Having people able to walk up behind you is a bit freaky at first.
So anyway, I'm just saying that they might need a bigger sample. Not all people need that much human interaction. In prison you usually get a minimum of 1hr a day outside the solitary confinement cell. That would be enough for at least some people--like me.
Re:Lost respect for marines? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait a minute, this is Saddam we're talking about. I HIGHLY doubt that "a few immature soldiers" were even allowed near him. You can bet that EVERY ACTION said or done to him or around him was carefully orchestrated, if it wasn't, that would be a HUGE failour of our military. This wasn't a "prank", this was militarilly condoned humilliation. There was no logical reason for doing this, it was simple done for pleasure and specticle, which is incredibly evil, in my mind. They were basically "fucking around" with one of the most dangerous and powerful men in the middle east for some shits and giggles. If you don't find that disturbing, I don't know what to say.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe the first historic story on the matter I read was about a scientist who was fascinated by the guillotine during or after the french revolution. he asked a prisoner sentenced to death, to help him with his studies.
once his head was chopped off, the scientist called the prisoner's name. The prisoner's eyes opened and he looked at the scientist. The scientist managed to repeat this 2-3 times within 30 seconds.
for the love of me, I can't remember the name of the scientist, nor the prisoner.
anyhow, it is my understanding that in a life and death situation, the body won't succumb to such "trivialities" like losing blood pressure. My point being, a human would be so fired up on adrenaline and, through the decapitation, shock, that the body would make the very most of the reserves it still has (as Ron Wright puts it: "After your head is cut off by a guillotine, you have 13 seconds of consciousness (+/- 1 or 2). [...] The 13 seconds is the amount of high energy phosphates that the cytochromes in the brain have to keep going without new oxygen and glucose.").
Life wants to live.
I guess the real question is, whether the person is still conscious or not. I guess the prisoner from my former example who reacted to the scientist calling his name could be seen as consciousness. But maybe the scientist had to bark his name loudly and it was just some reflex.
truth be told, I don't really know. Can we get some test-subjects here, please?
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/17/dery-on-decapitation.html [boingboing.net]
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/thefrenchrevolution/a/dyk10.htm [about.com]
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Dr.+Ron+Wright+guillotine&btnG=Search [google.com]
Re:Huh. (Score:2, Interesting)