Sick shit
I'm getting a lot of hits from people who are looking for the Paul Johnson beheading pictures, just as I got a lot of hits from people who were looking for the Nicholas Berg beheading video. FYI: There are no Berg beheading photos, just the video, although I have seen stills from the video; and so far, no Johnson beheading video is widely available, to my knowledge, only a few photos.
I'm relating this because clearly there is a demand for this stuff. I'm undecided as to whether this demand is a normal human reaction in a society that makes sex and death, and images of sex and death, taboo -- which causes people to have an appetite for them that they wouldn't have if these things weren't taboo -- or whether there are just a lot of sick people out there.
I look at these images because I want to know the realities of the world, the ugly as well as the beautiful, and because they are part of the collective consciousness, I feel compelled to write about them, and I can't write about them without having seen them. I can't imagine anyone enjoying them, as some form of entertainment, and I hope that no one does.
I know from my hits that, whatever their motivations, people want to see this stuff. A Web site that has it, up to the minute, is ogrish.com, which has the Berg video, the Johnson pictures and lots of other sick pictures and videos of maimings, messy deaths, medical oddities, gross diseases, roadkill, etc. (Ogrish.com daringly asks, "Can you handle life?")
What's scarier than that people want to see this shit is that beheadings -- and the images of them on the Internet to follow -- seem to be becoming regularly scheduled events.
As I write this sentence, Reuters is reporting that
Islamic militants in Iraq threatened to behead a South Korean hostage unless his country scrapped plans to deploy more troops -- a demand rejected by Seoul -- but a deadline passed without any news of his fate.
Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been accused by Washington of links to al-Qaeda, set a Monday night deadline when 33-year-old Kim Sun-il was shown pleading for his life in a video tape on Al Jazeera.
By early on Tuesday, there was no information from any authoritative source on Kim's fate.
South Korea said after an emergency meeting of President Roh Moo-hyun's National Security Council that it would go ahead with its plan to send 3,000 troops to northern Iraq, and U.S.-led occupation authorities vowed to do all they could to rescue Kim.
"Please get out of here," Kim begged in the video, referring to South Korean troops already in Iraq. "I don't want to die."
Kim, an Arabic speaker and evangelical Christian who has worked in Iraq for a year as a translator for a Korean firm supplying goods to the U.S. military, was seized on June 17 in Falluja, west of Baghdad.
It's Monday evening here in California as I write this and is Tuesday, apparently, in Iraq. I don't know if Kim Sun-il is alive or dead. I am assuming that he is dead, because these extremist Muslim beheaders seem to mean business.
Ogrish.com is all over it and is ready to post any Kim Sun-il beheading images that might become available on the Internet, even though we don't know whether he is alive or dead. Here is a copy-and-paste from ogrish.com's home page as it looks right now, as I type this sentence (warning: the links work!):
NOTE: Please read the Terms & Conditions before clicking any links. If you don't agree, please leave.
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LATEST 6/20/2004- Kim Sun-il Beheading Video Coming Up?
6/18/2004: Paul Johnson beheaded
The Paul Johnson images can be found here: #1 #2 #3 #4
Dead Images Of Killer Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin #1 #2 #3
If you have the Paul Johnson beheading video, please send it here
| (New!) Download the Korean, Kim Sun-il, Hostage video Here |
Download the Paul Johnson Hostage Video Here |
| (New!) Torture/beheading video from Iraq Here |
| (New!) Other Brutal Torture Video From Iraq Here |
Killing video of Robert Jacob Here |
| Kim Song-il Beheading video coming? |
Nick Berg execution Video Here |
WANTED: Exclusive videos or images on war - , crime - , forensic - and bizzare scenes, please send them to contact@ogrish.com.
INTERACTIVE CONTENT ARCHIVE HERE
Finally, here is a recent Associated Press story on the history and psychology of beheading that I found interesting:
It's a medieval way of dealing death, put before the world's eyes by a 21st century medium.
Beheadings like that of American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr. in Saudi Arabia add a new layer of horror to militant attacks, and al-Qaeda-linked groups have turned to the tactic to drive away Westerners -- and bring glory to themselves among supporters.
And it's simple to carry out. A victim is snatched, shown bound and menaced by masked gunmen, then days later is killed and beheaded. The bloody images are videotaped, photographed and posted on the Internet.
What began as a gruesome form of bloodshed in war zones like Kashmir, Chechnya and the southern Philippines has moved to the Middle East, with at least two Americans decapitated in just over a month in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
“It's a political, psychological ploy to show the enemy is merciless, vengeful and will stop at nothing,” Richard Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told The Associated Press. Militants know “what will cause maximum shock in the Western public and particularly the American public.”
Johnson was killed Friday, nearly a week after he was abducted in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Photos of his bloodied, severed head appeared on a Web forum used by Islamic radicals.
The photos come on the heels of other graphic images, such as the videotaped last moments of Nicholas Berg, kidnapped in Iraq and decapitated in front of the camera in early May.
Another video showed American Robert Jacobs being shot to death outside his Riyadh home June 8. His killers then kneel over his body, their backs to the camera, and appear to cut off his head -- though the decapitation is not seen and was never confirmed.
The first beheading touted by Islamic militants was that of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, slain in Pakistan in 2002.
The latest beheadings have occurred in the two countries where Americans and other Westerners have the greatest presence in the Middle East.
“Beheadings are done to try to show that no Westerners are safe,” Rachel Bronson, the Director of Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It has a chilling effect on Westerners in Saudi Arabia.”
The Saudi government executes murderers, drug dealers and other criminals by beheading under its strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
Decapitation rarely occurred in past militant attacks in the Middle East, where terror tactics have included hijackings, suicide bombings or gun attacks. Hostages were often taken and killed in Lebanon's civil war, but victims were rarely if ever beheaded.
Al-Qaeda militants may be using the technique to misleadingly give the killings an Islamic veneer, Murphy said.
“It's not (Islamic),” he said. “To have a Quranic capital punishment, you have to have a legal procedure with strict standards.”
Instead, the practice may find its roots in more distant, brutal battlefields. The long civil war in Algeria, the war in Chechnya and the anti-India insurgency in Kashmir have all seen beheadings of local residents or troops. Foreign fighters in Bosnia also were accused of at least one beheading during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Westerners caught in those conflicts also fell victim. In 1998, three Britons and a New Zealander were abducted and beheaded by Chechen militants.
In May 2001, members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines kidnapped 17 Filipinos and three Americans and decapitated several of the hostages, including American Guillermo Sobero.
Radicals from all those conflicts have been involved in al-Qaeda cells or groups linked to Osama bin Laden's terror network.
But Pearl's killing brought the use of decapitation most directly into the al-Qaeda network. Some U.S. officials have said they believe al-Qaeda's No. 3 figure, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, now in U.S. detention, may have been involved in the killing.
Note that I plan to continue to show images that show the consequences of "President" George W. Bush's and his regime's "war on terror." It's cowardly and irresponsible -- and perhaps ultimately dangerous -- to turn a blind eye to the consequences of what your government is doing in your name.
Update (Tuesday, June 22, 2004):
Ogrish.com will have to sit tight. The media are reporting that Kim Sun-il's captors have extended their deadline. Reports Reuters:
BAGHDAD -- Militants threatening to behead a South Korean hostage in Iraq unless Seoul pulls troops out of the country have agreed to give more time for talks on his fate, an Iraqi mediator told Reuters [today].
Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who has been accused by Washington of links to al-Qaeda, initially set a Monday night deadline when Kim Sun-il was shown pleading for his life in a video tape on Al Jazeera.
But Mohammed al-Obeidi, an Iraqi working for South Korean security firm NKTS in Baghdad, said Iraqi clerics who were in talks with the captors of the 33-year-old had told him the deadline for talks had been extended. Seoul has rejected the demand to pull troops out and scrap plans to send more.
"The kidnappers have said they are willing to negotiate as long as the Korean government stops making provocative remarks and softens its tone on troop deployment," Obeidi said.
South Korea said [today] it did not know for certain Kim was alive. The U.S.-led occupation authority vowed to do all it could to rescue Kim, an Arabic speaker and evangelical Christian who has worked in Iraq for a year as a translator for a Korean firm supplying goods to the U.S. army.
He was seized on June 17 in Falluja, a flashpoint city in the anti-U.S. insurgency 32 miles west of Baghdad.
"We have been asking for cooperation and received information through various channels," Seoul's chief foreign ministry spokesman said. A Seoul commerce ministry spokeswoman said all South Koreans working for firms in Iraq were likely to leave the country by early next month.
Since early April, dozens of foreign hostages have been seized in Iraq, many around Falluja. Most have been freed but at least three have been killed by their captors, including U.S. entrepreneur Nicholas Berg who was beheaded by Zarqawi's group. U.S. officials say Zarqawi himself wielded the knife.
