BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: beardedbruce
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 03:00 PM

praying mantises

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: jack halyard
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 04:47 PM

Firstly, The horror of the experience for the individual victim must be unimaginable. The shock experienced by loved ones deep and unbearable. Whatever may be my values regarding this needless and messy war, My heart goes out to those who suffer first and worst.

It is difficult to understand the motivations of those who cold-bloodedly inflict horror. To become hardened to the act of inflicting such experiences face to face with the victim raises serious questios about beliefs and life experience. What has happened to these men that such brutality comes easily?

I am reminded that tens of thousands of black Americans are still waiting on Death Row for courts to determine their fate. Maybe the injection is less nasty than the Electric chair, shooting or the gas chamber, but years of imprisonment and active imagination must be a similar acute horror and dread.

Those of us non-Americans who watch the US gun-culture at its murderous work, with children butchering each other at school, worry that the world's policeman is becoming as dehumanised as many of those they police in their overseas wars.

War dehumanises its practitioners. Abu Ghraib, The twin Towers, Hioshima and Nagasaki, and this string of brutal executions all tell the same story.

                                  Jack Halyard

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Nerd
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 07:02 PM

Good one, BeardedBruce! ;-)

Now name a MAMMAL species of which members semi-regularly decapitate other members.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 12:58 PM

Now name a MAMMAL species of which members semi-regularly decapitate other members.

There is none, not even homo sapiens does it "semi-regularly".

Two decades ago, or a bit longer, some people even tried to defend the notion that only humans kill their own species. The reason for that wrong notion was that killing other humans is luckily a rare behaviour. That is a foreign astronaut watching our behaviour would have to wait for a very long time before seeing a killing. We only consider it frequent because when there is a killing somewhere we are likely to hear or read about it.

Animal watching at those times was usually done over a fairly short time compared to the frequency of same species killings. Longer observations have shown that nearly all predators do the occasional same species killing, even our next in kin (chimps). Some species kill and even eat the same species fairly regularly (lions, polar bears). And among those eating patterns there are some cruel looking details.

Among humans killing humans which is rare to start with, decapitations are rare again which makes any decapitation an extremely rare behaviour which normally no one observes, except that this extremely rare behaviour makes it to the media.

The observation periods for to be able to see one animal decapitation under the assumption that it occurs about as often as among humans are not yet long enough to be able to tell that they only happen in the human species. They may happen with the same frequency as in humans or they may not happen at all. We just don't know yet.

Your question implicitely does not compare similarly long periods of observation. With humans, we know it happens, with other mammals we have not sufficient data. From the present absence of evidence one should not infer the evidence of absence.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Nerd
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 03:05 PM

I can't believe you revived this thread for this issue, Wolfgang! But since you did, here is my response.

I disagree with Wolfgang because, taking a historical position, there have been times and places when decapitation was much more common. Paris in 1799, for example, and other times when it was a recognized form of execution. Therefore our hypothetical foreign astronaut, if he were also a time-traveler, could look at various historical documents and find out exactly where to go if he wanted to observe large numbers of humans being decapitated by other humans. If you tried to do this with lions you would fail, because there is no such time or place.

I agree that it is rare. So is the juggling of bowling balls. But we would not say "juggling bowling balls is inhuman." And I WOULD venture to say that humankind "semi-regularly" engages in the juggling of bowling balls; that is, it is not unbelievably anomalous, just a relative rarity.

My point is this: to say "this behavior is inhuman" merely enables us to sweep it aside and not bother to try to understand it so that we can combat it. It's like the people who say "the terrorists bomb us because they hate freedom." It's essentially meaningless.

The behavior was human, because humans did it. Moreover, humans perform this particular kind of behavior (decapitation) more than most other species (except some insects and arachnids, as Beardedbruce points out). I don't want to suggest that other animals wouldn't if they could; chimpanzees have been observed "at war," for example, but you can't decapitate someone with a stick.

Decapitation of a member of one's own species is something that few other species have the wherewithal or the occasion to do. Humans do it far more often. Thus if we need to decide if it is "human" or "inhuman," an emprical, rational, historical approach would make it necessary for us to conclude that it is more human than inhuman.

Like juggling bowling balls, this does not mean it is very common, or acceptable, or morally good. But if we want to stop it, it's better to look for its causes in human psychology than to claim it's so alien we can't possibly understand it.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Metchosin
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 03:25 PM

The Very Human History of the Guillotine

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Nerd
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 03:44 PM

Thank you, Metchosin.

Exactly my point was made in Metchosin's link: beheading was popular until modern times in Germany, Sweden, France and other countries. The last time a person was beheaded by the government of France was not 1777 or even 1877, but 1977.

It's easy to say "these terrorists are inhuman." Would we say the same about European culture in the 1970s? (Some of us might, but the rest of us would see this as mere partisanship).

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Metchosin
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 04:32 PM

What I did find in my search of which I was not aware, is that "the term capital comes from the Indo-European kaput, meaning "head". Thus, capital punishment is the penalty for a crime so severe that it deserves decapitation (losing one's head).

Also somethings of which I was also unaware, 90% of world's state sanctioned capital punishment occurs in four countries. The People's Republic of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States and surprizingly, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles, has been signed by all countries except the USA and Somalia.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 05:51 PM

Yes. We not only favor capital punishment for minors in this country, we also have used capital punishment on people who were mentally retarded.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Nerd
Date: 29 Jun 04 - 01:27 AM

I'm also not sure where Wolfgang lives, but I grew up in a city that registered almost three homicides a day in the year I was born.

That's just one city.

When Wolfgang says "we only consider it frequent because when there is a killing somewhere we are likely to hear or read about it," I can't agree. There are about two killings a day in New York City, and the same in Chicago, and here in Philadelphia I don't hear about any of them. I only hear about the two a day that happen here.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: DougR
Date: 29 Jun 04 - 01:35 AM

Geeze, Nerd, maybe you should live in Germany! That's where Wolfgang lives.

I think our argument got tied up in semantics. You think it is wrong for someone to behead someone but see it as a practice that is common among humans. I agree that it is done by humans but is a subhuman practice. None of the terrorists will be invited to MY tea party.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Nerd
Date: 29 Jun 04 - 02:29 AM

I agree DougR. We just meant different things by "human" vs. "subhuman." I meant it empirically, you meant it morally.

But we both agree the beheading sucked, and that we will not have terrorists to tea!

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Wolfgang
Date: 29 Jun 04 - 11:27 AM

Nerd,

I'm of course in agreement with many of your arguments in your response, but then I never had an issue with them before. In particular, I have no issue with you about the word 'inhuman'. My only minor point was this:

I consider your implicit argument Now name a MAMMAL species of which members semi-regularly decapitate other members wrong for it equates lack of knowledge with lack of existence.

That was my only point and not all the other things you have addressed. And whether the frequency of a behaviour is called "a relative rarity" or whatever doesn't really interest me. Numbers do, not verbal labels.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Wolfgang
Date: 29 Jun 04 - 11:41 AM

Metchosin,

if you refind the site with this explanation for 'capital' I'd be interested to see it.

I have learned it differently (which doesn't mean it's right): 'Kaput' was 'main' and only one later meaning was head.

That makes more sense to me in the context of the several other meanings of the word capital.

BTW, I live in a town in which three murders per year are considered unacceptably high.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Nerd
Date: 29 Jun 04 - 11:44 AM

Thanks, I see what you meant, Wolfgang.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Once Famous
Date: 29 Jun 04 - 09:44 PM

Actually, the only humans who seem to be doing this in the 21st century are these fucking Islamic extremists who hate just about everything the western world represents.

Are there any other humans beheading people currently and chanting praises to their god while doing it?

We're not just talking any mammal now.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: polaitaly
Date: 30 Jun 04 - 08:38 AM

Wolfgang, I think Metchosin is right on the explanation for "capital". In latin, for what I know, the first meaning of "caput" is "head" ,and "capitalis" is " regarding the head " also metaphorically speaking, the first thing, the most important. Sometimes in ancient italian chronicles you could find the death penalty called "la pena del capo", the punishment of the head, even if the way of execution was not the beheading.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Metchosin
Date: 30 Jun 04 - 11:03 AM

thanks polaitaly, I think I got the definition specifically from this site, Wolfgang.

Capital Punishment

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: M.Ted
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 03:36 PM

Though it gives me no pleasure to point this out, Martin, you are off the mark again--this news item has been in the minds of people in the Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia for the last month:

Baltimore Sun > news

>3 children slain in apartment

>Police describe 'gruesome' scene in N.W. Baltimore; victims ages 9 and 10





>Originally published May 28, 2004

>The bodies of three young children - one decapitated, two partially beheaded - were found in an >apartment in a quiet Northwest Baltimore neighborhood yesterday, and detectives were questioning >a man about the murders.

>The mothers of the children discovered the bodies hours after the youngsters had returned from >elementary school. It was a scene that would later stun even veteran city police officers.

For the full story, check:
Gruesome Murders Shock Quiet Baltimore Neighborhood

Follow-up stories, including the arrest of two suspects, are also available at the sight--what is not available is any kind of reason or motive--

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 04:08 PM

Is it perfectly clear that it was Iraqis who did this terrible thing? I thought that Al Quaeda were outsiders.

There is no justification for this act of barbarism. But is it a reaction that needs to be explained? People don't do hideous things like this without some kind of agenda that needs to be understood. To dismiss this horrible act as being that of a sub-human or evil person is missing the point and begging the question.
Why? Don't we need to be asking this? This was not an act by a hungry tiger.

How did this branch of psuedo-Islam become so distorted?

For that matter, why are there madrasas popping up all over the place?

Is this to be interpreted as a "holy war"? Who are the real combatants, here?

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Once Famous
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 05:45 PM

Mted, I heard that story. were the ones responsible wearing hoods and praising Allah? did they videotape for all to see. what a crock of shit to bring that up!

Mted. go look at an apple and an orange. Duh. They're different!

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 05:51 PM

So it's ok to behead people if you're not wearing a hood or praising Allah when you do it, and if you do it privately or in secret. Ok. Got that.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Nerd
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 01:04 AM

Actually, what MG objects to isn't so much the beheading people as the praising of Allah. Islam really gets his goat...

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Once Famous
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 02:59 PM

No, Nerd part right. The only real reasons to have a problem with Islams is that right now, there isn't that much terrorism being done being done while chanting any other diety.

Although Islam doesn't do much for me, it's the ACT of praising one's god while committing attrocities. I would think the same if they were fundamentalist Christians praising Jesus. Hmmmm, didn't that happen during the Crusades?

And no CarolC., it's not OK in any shape or form. But you're always looking for a way to deflect any blame on any Arabs, aren't you? Makes you wonder who YOU know or connected to in the Middle East.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 03:07 PM

I'm not a big fan of "blame" no matter who it's directed against, Martin. There are so many more productive ways of addressing problems than flinging blame around. And blame is often used as a way for people to avoid acknowleging their own culpability anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: Once Famous
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 04:12 PM

Bullshit.

women are to be blamed for not leaving the toilet seat up.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 04:25 PM

Bullshit.

women are to be blamed for not leaving the toilet seat up.

Ok. I'll give you that. But in my case it's probably better that I put the seat down. If I leave it up, I accidently drop things in the toilet.