Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/01/03/saddam_letters/
Happy Beavers, Dead Saddam
... Offended Readers
Posted in Bootnotes, 3rd January 2007 15:29 GMT
Letters Re:
Whilst I enjoyed reading your articles and generally find myself sharing your opinion, I was rather disappointed today.
Not with the article itself, but with your choice to display a rather gruesome image of an execution without warning.
The Register is usually very careful to mark articles as 'Not safe for work', but has most definitely failed in this case.
(name withheld on request)
Putting a photo of saddam dead, right in the middle of your article, and without warning, is pretty fucking tasteless.
Alvaro
Reading your article "Saddam's YouTube smash", it was disturbing to see an image of Saddam dead with the noose still around his neck. Whether you or I agree with Capital Punishment, surely it is in the realms of editorial "good taste" to warn your readers that you are including images that may be disturbing.
I believe your article to have a good intent in highlighting the role "User Generated (video or still) Content", has established over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, your article for me lost its impact in including an image clearly intended to shock or titillate without any warning. Your readers should be more than capable of accessing YouTube and searching for the video without The Register having to host and include a screenshot of YouTube showing images of Saddam's actual death.
There is such a thing as “too much information”…
Andy
"Thanks, Web 2.0 - but there is such a thing as "too much information".
Indeed - which is exactly what I felt, along with sickness and revulsion, at the embedded image of saddam hanging in the middle of the article.
Whatever the politics of the situation there's absolutely no way you can justify putting that image on the first page of text of the article and with absolutely no warning whatsoever.
I am disgusted. The Register just lost a loyal reader.
Regards
Duncan
I find your use of an image of Saddam hanging offensive . I do not seek to argue about if I should or should not find it offensive or to discuss the reasons why I find it so . I see no defence in the argument that I could see it elsewhere, I can see child porn elsewhere should I choose , I choose not to .
It fails to live up to the normal standards I expect from The Register where you provide a link to certain images should anyone want to go there. By viewing your article I risked getting sacked since I am fairly sure that watching people die , be it in video or a still , probably breaches my companies internet useage policy . Should I get sacked I will seek redress from you and your employers.
Andrew
Mr. Orlowski,
Well said.
(name withheld on request)
Err...
Since when do w***ers on the American government's payroll manage to get this right? That has never happened so far. This is something they fail year after year, conflict after conflict and their puppet masters never learn to manage their puppets right (possibly comes to the selection of wrong puppets in the first place).
Opinions about Salvador Allende may differ, but he died with an AK47 in his hand and the microphone of Radio Magallanes in his other. And his last words are all over the web, the media and will be remembered for a very long time. That is just one example how a bunch of puppets on american payroll botch the job. Plenty of lesser examples from other places around the world. Every single one of them not dissimilar from Saddam.
Nothing really new and surprising actually. The masters have once again chosen a lame puppet, have failed to guide it properly and just to add insult to injury, the puppet is starting to exibit a bit too much selfconciousness for everyone's liking.
Anton
"The footage records a preternaturally calm dictator facing a braying mob of hooded executioners - proof enough that in Iraqi, a police or army uniform is daywear for sectarian militias."
That's not the video I saw. But there again I am comparing it with the truly horrific videos that were doing the rounds in Iraq just after the liberation. You must have missed them. The ones showing Saddams sons, cronies and goons torturing and executing men, women and children in cold blood and showing deep sadistic pleasure in the suffering they were causing.
Or maybe you missed the videos of Saddams Baathist "insurgents" torturing and murdering Shia civilians and Sunni "collaborators". Lots of those beheading videos doing the rounds at the moment.
I saw nothing too shocking in the Saddam hanging video. But there again I do not depend on the Guardian for my Arabic translations of what was actually said in the execution chamber. Or I do not depend on one of the chattering classes from Islington (or is it Hoxton) to interpret for me the true meaning of the events shown in the video.
I saw a vicious bully shitting bricks in the chamber, trying desperately hard not to show how terrified he was by hurling insults at all those around him. Pretty much par for the course for a vicious torturer and mass-murderer.
J.McConnell
