muammar gaddafi rip

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/56179000/jpg/_56179981_56179138.jpg

its a shame he was a tyrant

http://www.treacheryisafoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/simpsons.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqgQGZysFDc

This hasn't been a good year for background players from Carlos.

so apparently he was shot by a guy wearing a yankees hat and a t-shirt that says I love you

no wiggywoo no credibiility

http://www.aaanything.net/wp-content/gallery/best-photos-of-the-week-34-2011/muammar_gadaffi_fun_made_out_of_pure_gold_and_has_name_wrtitten_on_it.jpg

rip his best work was ahead of him imo

He probably couldn't get it assembled in time...
http://www.007museum.com/goldenguncolibri.jpg

RIP COLONELL YOUR WITH THE ANGLES NOW

we hated ya cept when we could use ya, bloody man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWwy47e4G6A

How long until that picture at the top of the thread is photoshopped into the cover of a mixtape?

He had such great plans for a Condoleeza Rice fanclub, now what are we going to do?

Glad he went before mcguinness got it that could've been awkward

rest in peace the great, great man colonel qaddafi

http://i.imgur.com/shTuL.png

somewhat surprised ilx users aren't really bothered about his death

it's like he meant nothing to them

It's really sad, his name wasn't Moammar Lohan

bothered? it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that this is how he was gonna go out

was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oEA6zK_8u8

^2:30

I haven't been this happy since Michael Jackson died.

the middle east needed a power vacuum

http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/pooch-power-vacuum-shovel.jpeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o62MU1q-U1k

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Vladimir_Putin_with_Muammar_Gaddafi-2.jpg

friends of mine:

http://twitter.com/#!/garyandphil/status/127061281608962048/

xp "Oh no, someone's taking a picture of me standing next to a despotic dictator." thinks Gadgafi

or Gaddafi, even

Gadgafi is in fact the Middle East's premier Gaddafi tribute act.

Also GADGAF is an open tuning popular with experimental musicians.

All Hell Gangdalf, Lord of the Horrorbitz

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/301224_237530426304400_199177476806362_706669_1935466627_n.jpg?kkk=1319121526

lol

http://twitter.com/#!/iamcolinquinn

this is the greatest day of colin quinn's life

I know the man is dead and all, but did anyone read that when the guy got hair implants or plastic surgery or both or whatever, he refused to be put under or take any drugs that would put him out of it? That's hardcore Bond villain stuff.

http://twitpic.com/738ynq

^ Grizzly cover of tomorrow's Sun. FFS.

twitter's perfect for Colin Quinn, he doesn't have to worry about actually saying his jokes correctly

"jokes"

from my friend's fbook:

This is why I hate people...the conversation of the people behind me on the walk home
Man 1 (reading sign): "Who's Cad Faddy?"
Man 2: "He was the guy who wore those shirts with Africa on them. He must have been the president of Africa."
Man 1 "Oh, that makes sense"

THAT MAKES SENSE

guys i know you're having fun and all but there are plenty of threads where you can get cheap lols at gadaffi's expense. this thread is actually a funeral.

even i was like, "who IS cad faddy?" and now i can't stop laughing thinking of these guys w/ thick brooklyn accents saying that shit.

caught in drain: pages 4 & 5 he begged for life: pages 6 & 7 rot in hell: pages 8 & 9

mad beautiful nihilistic japanese poetry of the sun's front page index FTW

hell of a skipping tune

caught in drain: pages 4 & 5 he begged for life: pages 6 & 7 rot in hell: pages 8 & 9

lewis and nicole hit the skids: page 11

Chapter One we didn't really get along
Chapter Two I think I fell in love with you
You said you'd stand by me in the middle of Chapter Three
But you were up to your old tricks in Chapters Four, Five and Six

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABuWphlnZ1A

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/assets_c/2011/10/Qaddafi-McCain-Tweet-cropped-proto-custom_28.jpg

@SenJohnMcCain <- THIS IS WHERE TERRORISING RAT LIVES

"ranch"

from the mass US p.o.v., he really peaked around 1985-86 when Reaganco made him #1 International Supervillain.

jani lane, gaddafi, rip 80s

https://twitter.com/#!/hollypickett/status/127078287125131264

Holly Pickett
@hollypickett Holly Pickett
From the side door, I could see a bare chest with bullet wound and a bloody hand. He was wearing gold-colored pants. #Gaddafi #Libya

He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.
He was wearing gold-colored pants.

How long until that picture at the top of the thread is photoshopped into the cover of a mixtape?

― triple black belt in ILX-fu (snoball), Thursday, October 20, 2011 12:18 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

just when make sure this gets recorded for posterity because

http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/10/muammar-al-gaddafi-is-alive.html

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rJI0MC5ZH8Q/TqCGd6IcOvI/AAAAAAAAC-0/6fv8CRyi1HA/s400/capture-d_c3a9cran-2011-10-20-c3a0-21-29-52.png

how are beyonce and nelly furtado taking the news?

gaddafi in "looks like himself" shocker

i know y'all are just having fun and shit but the way he died was really horrific. i know i shouldn't feel sympathy for him given all he did but nobody should die like that.

i assume you've all seen the videos where he is being pushed around like a rag doll while still alive and begging for mercy, then somebody apparently comes up to him and shoots him in the head several times, point blank, whereupon people spend a few more hours roughing up his corpse.

Yeah I just watched one of those. It was grim.

http://img3.allvoices.com/thumbs/image/609/480/73718214-muammar-gaddafi.jpg

yeah there is nothing to be happy about re: this

quick samples from https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Muammar_Gaddafi

Libya's society became increasingly Islamic during Gaddafi's rule. His "purification laws" were put into effect in 1994, punishing theft by the amputation of limbs, and fornication and adultery by flogging.[82]

Gaddafi had a close relationship with Idi Amin, whom he sponsored and gave some of the key ideas, such as expulsions of Indian-Ugandans.[125] When Amin's government began to crumble, Gaddafi sent troops to fight against Tanzania on behalf of Amin and 600 Libyan soldiers lost their lives.[126] Gaddafi also financed Mengistu Haile Mariam's military junta in Ethiopia, which was later convicted of one of the deadliest genocides in modern history.[127]

hey keep yr bleeding heart sympathy off my rip thread

*shoots into the air and tapdances on his ugly face*

i assume you've all seen the videos where he is being pushed around like a rag doll while still alive and begging for mercy, then somebody apparently comes up to him and shoots him in the head several times, point blank, whereupon people spend a few more hours roughing up his corpse.

he deserved it.

if someone told me i could walk through a door and ball out on wild oil cash at the expense of an entire nation for over 40 years, rock golden robes and shades at the au, and hang with nefarious diplomats, but after fighting a civil war my jeep would get bombed & i'd have to lay in a ditch all bloody for a few hours before being shot in the brains... not so sure i would pass that up

Gaddafi may have been the world's most evil, but I'm still not in favour of lynchings.

fuck feeling sorry for this guy
― Autumn Almanac (Schlafsack), Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:04 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno you don't have like a visceral revulsion to something like that? i mean, whatever else he was, gadaffi was a human being who was afraid of pain and suffering and feared his own death (like most of us, i'd say all of us) and look how he ended up. i'm not saying he didn't "deserve" it (whatever that means) but that the existential horror of his death is, like, a fact to be set aside the fact of all his horrible misdeeds, not necessarily weighed against it.

this is the greatest day of colin quinn's life

that is literally the funniest thing Colin Quinn has ever done

some pretty tight competition for the worlds most evil

no one deserves to die like that

unlike lots of dictators at the end of their reign, he'd be alive right now if he had decided to make a deal.

and - if he had made that decision a bunch of other people would also be alive. this was suicide.

also reviewing those gadaffi photo timelines... dude was a handsome guy in his youth. like movie-star handsome. at some point in the mid-1980s he probably started to be paranoid about aging and went apeshit with the plastic surgery to the point where he didn't resemble his young self at all.

iatee otm

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday expressed anger over the death of Muammar Qaddafi, calling it an “outrage” and saying the ousted Libyan strongman was a “martyr.”

“Sadly the death of Qaddafi has been confirmed,” said Chavez, who had just returned to Venezuela from cancer treatment in Cuba.

“They assassinated him. It is another outrage,” the Venezuelan leader told reporters in the town of La Grita.

“We shall remember Qaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr,” he said.

Chavez had defended Qaddafi since the start of the uprising against the Libyan leader’s regime in February, and accused NATO of using the conflict to gain control over Libya’s oil.

“The saddest thing is that in its quest to dominate the world, the empire and its allies are setting it on fire,” Chavez said, referring to the United States by his preferred nickname.

Chavez has refused to recognize the new Libyan regime, and has ridiculed Libya’s new U.N. representative as a “puppet” and a “dummy.”

In 2004, Chavez was awarded the Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, a prize granted by the Libyan leader. Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega have also won the award.

amateurist, I'm not knocking your feeling toward this bloke's treatment in death (and I do see your point about visceral revulsion) but I can't view his death separately from his actions over the past half-century, I just can't.

wau that Sun cover picture is disgusting

There are some people whose portfolio of atrocious acts are so phenomenal that in my eyes they cease to resemble human beings xp

i think w/r/t dictators, years of yes-men agreeing with you and telling you how great you are and how everyone fears you (not to mention access to women, money, whatever you want), not to mention the fact that most of them have little resistance during their dictatorships, makes them completely removed from the reality that when the day does comes the people who have cowed before you are going to show you no mercy at all.

unlike lots of dictators at the end of their reign, he'd be alive right now if he had decided to make a deal.

and - if he had made that decision a bunch of other people would also be alive. this was suicide.

― iatee, Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:10 PM (51 seconds ago) Bookmark

it was desperate, stupid, misguided -- but suicide? you did see him begging for his life, disoriented, terrified -- right?

i feel like people are trying to rationalize the horror of his death away, and for me anyway there's no way to do that.

XPOST

p.s. mandela repeatedly embracing gadaffi is definitely a chink in former's armor, huh?

Gaddafi may have been the world's most evil, but I'm still not in favour of lynchings.

I don't think he is "the world's most evil" but I do think his manner of death was appropriate.

hussein would be on an island right now living it up in exile if he wasn't deluded.

I didn't watch the video and prob won't xp

p.s. mandela repeatedly embracing gadaffi is definitely a chink in former's armor, huh?

what does this have to do with anything

i feel like people are trying to rationalize the horror of his death away, and for me anyway there's no way to do that.

you're only horrified bc you watched a video of it though (i imagine)?

you did see him begging for his life, disoriented, terrified -- right?

post the video? none of the videos i've seen show him talking, hes pretty much dead already and being propped up like weekend at bernie's

There are some people whose portfolio of atrocious acts are so phenomenal that in my eyes they cease to resemble human beings xp

― Autumn Almanac (Schlafsack), Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:15 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

he is the same bundle of flesh, nerve endings, neurons, grey matter, blood that you and i are. he feels (felt) pain, terror, uncertainty. i know this can be hard to believe, or want to believe. but it's true.

i always have this reaction: i feel bad for the murderer who is sentenced to death, or even a life in prison. the horror of a person's misdeeds don't change the existential horror of what awaits them. which is similar to the horror we must all experience sooner or later.

XXxPOST

p.s. mandela repeatedly embracing gadaffi is definitely a chink in former's armor, huh?

what does this have to do with anything

― do not wake the dragon (DJP), Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i thought of it in re. the chavez quotes above. a lot of world leaders seemed to support this dude when they should have known better.

This is the one I watched:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFZalQsaUmA

Mandela was another recipient of the prestigious Gaddafi Human Rights Prize!
http://www.gaddafiprize.org/WhoEn.htm

The Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights was an annual prize founded by Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1988.

Gaddafi made an initial grant of ten million US$[citation needed] to the Swiss-based foundation North-South which later administered the prize. The sum of the prize money was US$250,000 (in case of several recipients the prize money was shared).

The prize attracted controversy over some of its selections (such as Roger Garaudy).
Contents
List of recipients
Year Recipient(s)
1989 Nelson Mandela[2]
1990 "The children of Palestine"
1991 The indigenous peoples of the Americas
1992 The African Centre for Combating AIDS
1993 "The children of Bosnia and Herzegovina"
1994 The Union of Human Rights Societies and Peoples in Africa
1995 Ahmed Ben Bella, Francisco da Costa Gomes
1996 Louis Farrakhan
1997 Gracelyn Smallwood, Melchior Ndadaye, Melba Hernandez, Manal Younes Abdul-Razzak, Doreen McNally
1998 Fidel Castro
1999 "The children of Iraq"
2000 Souha Bechara, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Evo Morales, the Movement of September, the Third World Center
2002 Mamado Diaye, Roger Garaudy, Ibrahim Alkonie, Jean Ziegler (who turned the award down), Nadeem Albetar,Ali M. Almosrati, Khaifa M. Attelisie,Mohamed A. Alsherif, Ali Fahmi Khshiem, Rajab Muftah Abodabos, Mohamed Moftah Elfitori, Ali Sodgy Abdulgader, Ahmed Ibrahim Elfagieh
2003 Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria
2004 Hugo Chávez
2005 Mahathir bin Mohamad
2006 Evo Morales
2007 Libraries of Timbuktu
2008 Dom Mintoff
2009 Daniel Ortega
2010 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

2008 Dom Passantino

honestly fuck you if you can watch a wounded, defenseless human being beg for his life and be exectuted without feeling sympathy for him. wtg liberals usa usa

Here's another video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIyxVMG-L6M

he is the same bundle of flesh, nerve endings, neurons, grey matter, blood that you and i are

No he wasn't. He was Mommar Qadaffi. You are amateurist. I am DJP. We are all different people with different personalities, values, and lives. Belonging to the same species does not make us all the same person. Also, being a human being does not guarantee any of us a pain-free, dignified death. Maybe we all want that, but not all of us are going to get that. A horrible death is one of the risks we take by being alive.

he "deserved it", in other words

DJP, i'm just saying that we can empathize because gadaffi is horrified and terrorized and in pain in exactly the same way you or i might be in such a situation.

in a similar fashion, i can empathize with a wounded or dying animal even though animals in effect exist outside human morality and generally cannot be said to be "evil" or to have committed misdeeds in the way we would describe gadaffi.

thought experiment:

No he wasn't. He was Daniel Pearl. You are amateurist. I am DJP. We are all different people with different personalities, values, and lives. Belonging to the same species does not make us all the same person. Also, being a human being does not guarantee any of us a pain-free, dignified death. Maybe we all want that, but not all of us are going to get that. A horrible death is one of the risks we take by being alive.

amateurist otm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannicide

he "deserved it", in other words

Don't put words in my mouth, asshole.

well you wrote like 3 lines of pseudo-academic nonsense i was trying to make life easier for future ilx users

(__!__)==333

amateurist:

he is the same bundle of flesh, nerve endings, neurons, grey matter, blood that you and i are. he feels (felt) pain, terror, uncertainty. i know this can be hard to believe, or want to believe. but it's true.

i always have this reaction: i feel bad for the murderer who is sentenced to death, or even a life in prison. the horror of a person's misdeeds don't change the existential horror of what awaits them. which is similar to the horror we must all experience sooner or later.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a freakin' pop star btw

muam0nar

i assume you've all seen the videos where he is being pushed around like a rag doll while still alive and begging for mercy, then somebody apparently comes up to him and shoots him in the head several times, point blank, whereupon people spend a few more hours roughing up his corpse.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have been studiously avoiding them!

Amateurist and k3vin OTM. I'm against inflicting vile horrible deaths on anyone, even evil scumbags. He should have been put on trial, but I guess given the chaos that was never going to happen.

i should be more direct. the daniel pearl remix was meant to make this point:

the differences between you and i and gadaffi are many fewer than the similarities -- and insofar as those similarities allow me to imagine his feelings at the time of his capture and murder, they allow me to feel empathy for him. i find it hard to imagine that most other people on this thread don't feel similarly.

allahu akbuzzar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgRJ81hTFG0

Am I am kind of surprised you even watched that video (esp considering your reaction). I would never.

feel like its kind of interesting or the ultimate insult or whatever that this guy because hes famous and horrible gets to star in these terribly immediate videos and have us discuss the worth of his life while his victims remain anonymous and vague

We want victim videos

like i kind of doubt it but if i were more personally affected by his crimes i might be joyously jumping on his head too

Am I am kind of surprised you even watched that video (esp considering your reaction). I would never.

― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:36 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i am drawn to watch things like that sometimes. (in this case though i wasn't sure what i was going to see.)

i see this as being tied to the same impulse lots of people have to seek out art that simulates or inspires painful emotions (e.g. melodramas, sad music) --a phenomenon that philosophers and psychologists have had a hard time explaining (it's something i read about). one theory is that we are consciously or unconsciously testing the sensitivity and fitness of our capacity for feeling.

like i kind of doubt it but if i were more personally affected by his crimes i might be joyously jumping on his head too

― ice cr?m, Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is another truth to be set alongside the existential horror of his death, not to be weighed against it.

sorry i feel like i'm writing in zen koans or something, don't mean to sound that way.

thought experiment: the videos are fake, the pics are photoshopped, gaddafi is alive

my favorite part is where amateurist compared daniel pearl to muammar gaddafi

No Am I understand the impulse completely. It is probably the same as our desire for horror/revulsion in entertainment. I find "real life" videos of that kind just so so upsetting

this is another truth to be set alongside the existential horror of his death, not to be weighed against it.

sorry i feel like i'm writing in zen koans or something, don't mean to sound that way.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, October 21, 2011 12:44 AM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

naw i basically agree, just think its sort of unfair that he continues to be even in death more privileged than those he abused and oppressed

imho its totally fine and reasonable to feel sympathy for him, he was a confused miserable motherfucker who lead completely degraded life that ended in his humiliation and murder - and more basically he was a person, and when we see people suffer we feel for them

still not gonna watch that video tho!

my favorite part is where amateurist compared daniel pearl to muammar gaddafi
― wrestlingisreal420 (crüt), Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:46 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm trying not to get frustrated, but did you read my post that explained the point of that experiment? my point is simply that what all of us--gadaffi, pearl, you, me--have in common (which is a hell of a lot) is what creates the strong possibility of empathy. what we don't have in common (namely that gadaffi was a dictator who ordered many deaths) doesn't really prevent that, at least not when confronted with the horror of the man's death in all its visceral immediacy. that's not to say that the extra amount i have in common (or like to think i have in common) w/ daniel pearl (american, jew, "innocent") doesn't heighten the horror in that instance.

XPOST

ice cr?am has made my point much more clearly and simply than i could have. thank you.

like i kind of doubt it but if i were more personally affected by his crimes i might be joyously jumping on his head too

― ice cr?m, Friday, October 21, 2011 12:42 AM (6 minutes ago)

well yeah i mean look at the death penalty it's a similar issue - i don't hate family members/victims who advocate for it but it doesnt mean it's any less wrong

its just kind of mind blowingly awful that a person can have that effect on an entire country

xxp crut is trolling

its just kind of mind blowingly awful that a person can have that effect on an entire country

― ice cr?m, Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:54 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

agreed, that is unfathomable, esp. considering how inconsequential most human lives are.

this thread is a downer.

i mean look i don't hate the ppl in that video for killing gadaffi like they did - as barabric and wrong and inhumane as it was - unlike us safely here in america their lives have been most likely p shitty thanks to that dude and they have been fighting for the last several months with the goal of overthrowing him - but to sit here on our laptops and like, idk cheer his death the way it was or to imply that he 'deserved' to die the way he did, that's pretty fucked up

thought experiment: the videos are fake, the pics are photoshopped, gaddafi is alive

― am0n, Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this would be like the r. kelly defense attorney who claimed that someone had CGI'd his face on the body of some dude pissing on a naked 12-year-old girl. who knew that seamless CGI was so democratized?

reposting buzza

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rJI0MC5ZH8Q/TqCGd6IcOvI/AAAAAAAAC-0/6fv8CRyi1HA/s400/capture-d_c3a9cran-2011-10-20-c3a0-21-29-52.png

but to sit here on our laptops and like, idk cheer his death the way it was or to imply that he 'deserved' to die the way he did, that's pretty fucked up

whatever dude. I'm generally anti-lynching and anti-death penalty, but there are definitely things a person can do to exempt them from any of my sympathy in this sort of situation.

and you can say I'm "trolling" but I honestly do think saying Muammar Gaddafi deserves the same amount of sympathy as Daniel Pearl is fucked up.

RIP TO THE GOAT

i'll always remember the gaddafi zapruder film, seeing as its given me vertigo

(nb I do understand what amateurist means wrt feeling sympathy on a human level but this is a fucking murderous dictator who has done far worse to his people and bringing up an innocent dude like Daniel Pearl for comparison irks me to no end)

*sits on laptop*

but to sit here on our laptops and like, idk cheer his death the way it was or to imply that he 'deserved' to die the way he did, that's pretty fucked up

pro tip: you might wanna avoid the "RIP Thatcher" thread when it happens

I'm reading that during the fighting in Sirte that Gaddafi may have ordered the execution of 50+ prisoners as the city was falling.

can't believe I'm saying this, but meh, Gaddafi got what he put out there.

really can't expect people to have behaved any differently after all he had put them through. and I'll save my sympathy for the families of the people he massacred and tortured

kill me on youtube

do any of you seriously care if people die I am asking this as a serious question

You're internet people though so it probably doesn't matter. Don't post. I'm sorry I posted

I was at the gym on a treadmill when the video above and another one came on CNN and I got choked up. He was a human, confused, and terrified in the last moments of the life. That kind of chaotic, brutal, incomprehensible end is still sickening and loathsome, even more so because it is the end of a life used to spread horror to so many other people. The horror of his last moments reified for me the suffering, death, and grief he caused so many other people.

I hope the horror of his last moments reified for him the suffering, death, and grief he caused so many other people.

I wonder how it feels to die, does it feel different if you're killed

does it matter how you feel before you die if you end up dying, I mean think about it

Either you think that lynching is a bad idea on principle, or you don't. If you do, then that applies even to the lowest of the low, like Gaddafi. If you don't, where are you going to draw the line and who gets to draw the line?

fuck off

Would we even be having this conversation if cameras hadn't been involved? If there wasn't footage to remind everyone that he was a human being?

ZZ makes a good point. What was awful about the video is that it was that it symbolized a continuation of the chaos and brutality that he spread.

Not sure if I connected that statement to what ZZ said or if I can say what I'm trying to.

Plainly put, his death video just showed more horror in an already horrible world.

no disagreement there.

basically, Gaddafi got what he put out there sums up what I'm trying to say. it's possible to be against lynching in the general sense that it is usually used against the powerless and innocent but to still believe that unrepentant the leader of a violent, murderous regime deserved to be consumed by the culture of brutality he helped maintain.

*the unrepentant leader

If no one ever deserves to be murdered, then Gaddafi did not deserve to be murdered. But if ANYONE does, he did.

dude needs some vevo intros

QaddafiVEVO

Hi, this is John Maus. Watch Qaddafi's death videos on Spotify.

would anyone read my tumblr of people being killed on youtube

I remember when I was in college when that one american dude was beheaded we all gathered around a laptop and made a big thing about it, it probably brought us all together

this thread should be for celebrating his life you fuckers

but to sit here on our laptops and like, idk cheer his death the way it was or to imply that he 'deserved' to die the way he did, that's pretty fucked up

pro tip: you might wanna avoid the "RIP Thatcher" thread when it happens

― Two Noble Klinsmenn (Noodle Vague), Friday, 21 October 2011 06:57 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I doubt anyone will be saying 'she deserved/s to die' but they will be saying "she deserves no celebration", that's the point.

lots of people will be saying she deserved to die, and not in her dotage.

We'll see.

amateurist way otm on this thread. it's frustrating to see the thought experiment re: Pearl criticised because its entire purpose was to put aside the differences between them and illustrate the similarities - "how can you compare them" misses the point, or ignores that they are being compared based exclusively on their myriad similarities, accepting that life is multifaceted & there's just a difference between 'what a person has done', 'what a person is like now', 'what a person feels', etc and the fact that we are human animals who irrespective of context respond in certain ways, can be reduced to a similar core, and maybe should not have those key characteristics of ourselves revoked (which I guess is the anti-death penalty argument, that we own them no matter what). no-one is pushing for an easy reading of gadaffi, here, just an understanding that the last five minutes of his life and the ways they could have gone differently might inspire some pretty visceral responses. i'm reminded slightly of the weird fall-out from ted kennedy's death, in which people were trying to find a one-word compatible verdict on whether the guy was good or bad, whether the good mitigated the bad, unable to accept that, you know, complicated, both at once, we are so many different people and fragments in one lifetime. & while that isn't a debate here - you know, not a whole bunch in the 'good' column, shout-outs to the children of iraq aside - i still feel like we are confronting a much "realer", difficult fact about MG/"life" than we're comfortable with, which is that he is a human guy, that deeds are different from physicality, that it's pretty hard to rack up, weigh out and balance 'deeds' against other elements of a life like it's judgement day. while I think iirc Iatee's point about it being suicide - if he had acted differently, even recently, this eventuality could have been avoided, so it's on him, kinda (sorry if paraphrasing) - is persuasive, the situation at the end of his life still feels separate, and still, you would hope, could have presented its own divergent choices and gone in a different direction.

basically, Gaddafi got what he put out there sums up what I'm trying to say.

another frustrating thing about viewing MG's death in the context of the pain he has caused is that there is obviously mad catharsis for some, but it also eliminates the possibility of him being put on trial, held to account, etc, which you could argue would make for a better response to his crimes than slaughter would. like after Osama was killed; people said look at the Nureumburg trials - if those guys were called to account, why wasn't this guy? none of this is blame at Libya bc I can understand emotively or just in re: the confusion of the situation how the guy ended up dying, p uncontroversially, but wishing it hadn't happened is valid. we can still hold on to 'fuck this guy' in circumstances other than him being whatever it was, slowly killed by a crowd or shot up in crossfire - who he "was" and that he was a dude on the bonnet of a care are different I think.

it's possible to be against lynching in the general sense that it is usually used against the powerless and innocent but to still believe that unrepentant the leader of a violent, murderous regime deserved to be consumed by the culture of brutality he helped maintain.

i think that's possible because they're two different things; being against lynching when used against the powerless and innocent isn't being against lynching; it's against mis-directed lynching & the various scenarios its been used in, also finding it particularly torturous to contemplate. being against lynching is being against it full stop, surely. "play with fire and you're gonna get burned" is true, but the part where a guy gets lynched and you viscerally respond against that particular moment, irrespective of where it fits into a narrative, is the feeling people are communicating itt, i think.

Either you think that lynching is a bad idea on principle, or you don't. If you do, then that applies even to the lowest of the low, like Gaddafi. If you don't, where are you going to draw the line and who gets to draw the line?

― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 21 October 2011 08:26 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fuck off

― wrestlingisreal420 (crüt), Friday, 21 October 2011 08:27 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, I'm glad we've sorted that out.

Death comes wildly. For all we know, our friend Moammer was sitting in his spider-hole, rocking some good grub that loyailsts brought him.

Suddenly, events took a turn for the worst.

The very real man who wanted Condy Rice in the worst way, needed to flee.

Kid rocking an NYY cap cold capped his ass

Immediate internet superstar

Meanwhile, idiot murderers dead body gets paraded around by exuberant Libyans. And what a fantastic looking lifeless body it is! Evil incarnate

back to work tomorrow for this tired kid. happy for Libya

there's been 'fuck you' and 'fuck off' on either side throughout, tbf.

Schlump's post was great, though i disagree with a lot of it.

in other words, he was a clown and brutal dictator

Death = nice. Works as more ammunition against the pathetic repub field in 2012 (will need it!)

Schlump's post was great, though i disagree with a lot of it.

otm

ha

he is the same bundle of flesh, nerve endings, neurons, grey matter, blood that you and i are. he was a gurgling baby once, helpless and crapping his pants. thank god amateurist and kevin k. were there to think of the children.

anyway, this would have been a good season for him if he hadn't been such a bastard that he got his country taken away from him:

http://www.glamour.com/fashion/2011/02/fall-2011s-most-wearable-trends#slide=4

it's frustrating to see the thought experiment re: Pearl criticised because its entire purpose was to put aside the differences between them and illustrate the similarities

see I still don't get why the fuck you would even want to do this in the first place

great thought experiment guys

to me even on a visceral level the lynching of someone like Gaddafi is not the same as the execution of someone like Daniel Pearl. he is inseparable from his actions as a dictator & I watched the video of his death with absolutely no emotion or sympathy for anyone but his past victims. sorry if that makes me inhuman.

There is just enough Christ in me
To make me feel almost guilty
Is that why God made us bleed
To make us see we're Humans Being?

You break this, I'll break all that
You break my balls with all your crap
Spread your disease like lemmings breeding
That's what makes us Humans Being

Shine on, shine on
Shine on, shine on

(Guitar Solo)

Yeah! Some low life flat head scum infects
The sickness in his eyes reflects
You wonder why your life is screaming
Wonder why we're Humans Being

Shine on, shine on
Shine on, shine on

(Guitar Solo)

Humans, Humans Being
We're just Humans (That's what makes us)
Humans Being (That's what makes us)
We're just humans (That's what makes us)
Humans Being (That's what makes us) We're just humans (That's what makes us)
Humans Being (That's what makes us)
Humans Being!
We're just humans (That's what makes us)
Humans Being (That's what makes us)
Humans Being!

guys srsly this thread is for his fans and the people whose lives he touched can we take this somewhere else

crut otm btw

amateurist otm, smh at anyone who ISNT sad that a man dragged out of a hole in the ground who begged not to be killed was murdered by western-backed neoliberal rebels. just smh.

a RICH man killed by POOR rebels

No war but a class war imo

assume the people a-ok with the brutal way he died are similarly cool with the torture and summary executions of less-famous prisoners of war

tamtam otm

assume the people a-ok with the brutal way he died are similarly cool with the torture and summary executions of less-famous prisoners of war

obviously depends on how many people the POWs undeniably tortured and executed

I know you're not that obtuse, k3vin

like if Hitler had been lynched by the people he oppressed and whose families had been murdered under his regime I would've been all about that, I wouldn't be wringing my hands over his humanity

soo happy he is dead... hope he rots in hell for eternity.... dont know who he thinks he is having a statue of his fist with an Amercian fighet jet in the palm.... love UK and US having a strong relationship. wooop wooop.

- jackie..., London, 21/10/2011 13:22

The Wooop Wooop Song (It's In His Fist)

nice

crut, sure, but what happens if the bad guys win, and they capture OUR leader? Bringing Hitler into it conveniently allows you to use one of the few examples everyone can agree on. Usually things have more than one side. Setting a precedent of "If you win, you get to murder your enemies in the most barbaric way possible" isn't a great way to carry on.

i agree with that, but also pretty sure everyone agrees on gaddafi being 'one of those guys'

^ yes

Right. But then where do you stop? I mean, there are two things at play here: what personally gives you pleasure, and what sort of justice ought to be generally applicable. In revolutions and civil wars the first thing always seems to win, probably because the emotions run so high and because of the lawless feel of things (cf the long chapter in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" about what the socialist revolutionaries do to the clergy and bourgeois in one little town), but it would be better if we could look more toward the second thing. I mean it's the golden rule innit.

if "our" leader ever starts executing political dissenters in his own country then we can talk

you guys are really being thick with the whole "where do you draw the line?" thing

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/El_presidente_del_Gobierno_asiste_a_la_III_Cumbre_UE_-_%C3%81frica.jpg/800px-El_presidente_del_Gobierno_asiste_a_la_III_Cumbre_UE_-_%C3%81frica.jpg

there comes a point when an argument loses any sort of respect, sometimes it gets so played out that really there is no choice but to drag it into the desert and summarily terminate its existence

is this 'one of those arguments'?

this and gerrard vs lampard

lol @ darragh's last ten ~for the fans~ posts itt btw, bringing the lols/goodnight sweet prince

see I still don't get why the fuck you would even want to do this in the first place

― wrestlingisreal420 (crüt), Friday, 21 October 2011 13:21 (49 minutes ago) Bookmark

idk man just because the point we are discussing here is 'what is up with feeling empathy for gadaffi in his last moments' and this illustrates why for some at least it is a thing, that part of that response is not an ad-hom but a instinctive reaction.

would you all be okay with gadaffi being tortured, upon capture, ~forever~; like being electrocuted ten times an hour for the next ten years? maybe!, and if so i still think he'd make out okay versus the grand total of torture he ordered and misery he inflicted, still get out of the game with a net plus. but if at some point there might be a "jeez this might be a little much"/"something else would be better" response then it suggests that our idea of 'deserving of punishment' isn't binary but is on a scale, and that for some the scale stops short of this guy being killed on the street. i think i'm creating a straw person here, slightly, because i don't know if anyone's said "i'm glad this happened" so much as "i don't give a shit", but i feel like arguing "brutal murder is sad" is a reasonable thing to rep for.

i think you just have awesome perspective if you can watch the videos and contextualise it rather than see it as what's, immediately, going on, you're not necessarily ~inhumane~ or w/e

idk if the point is 'what is up for feeling empathy for gaddaffi watching the video' so much as 'if you don't feel such empathy, or are able to compartmentalise it in view of his actions over many years, there's something wrong with you'

And maybe that's a strawman i'm making there and everyone is just at cross-purposes here

ps you know my stuff is comedy gold schlump don't even

no for real i love it, 'class war' was killing me, also MG

i can understand not feeling empathy, sure - I saw it more as 'why would you feel empathy', which I think that in spite of everything there are good reasons for. but i think like in a bunch of other debates, osama, death penalty, the idea that it's positive to overcome the understandable emotive human reaction to things - as we would in understanding but not especially heeding victims' families' feelings when it comes to death penalty sentencing, &c - is something to strive for as a greater good.

fuck this guy proving to truly be one of humanity's oldest feelings to be grappled with over the centuries

nb I don't think anyone is "wrong" for empathizing w/someone getting brutally murdered - I just stand by my beliefs that Gaddafi was 100% reaping what he sowed, that he doesn't deserve the same level of sympathy as someone who was not a murderous dictator, and that it is A-OK to me that he died this way.

I haven't watched the video because I think it will make me give a shit and I don't want to give a shit about this guy. Is that bad? If any of us had the power no doubt we'd favour an arrest, a fair trial etc etc but when you've dominated and brutalised people for many years and they finally get their hands on you, then this kind of thing is going to happen sometimes. We're not talking anbout the death penalty here but heat-of-the-moment stuff. How sad was it when Mussolini was lynched or Ceausescu was shot? So many dictators end their lives in luxurious exile without ever facing justice so I just can't feel sad about it. Possibly compassion failure on my part but there you go.

Also lol at darraghmac's bit about fans

sure, & i hope i didn't straw man you too much earlier for making out that you were high-fiving the tv set or w/e about it.

xp i think it's def weird that this *is* drawn out by seeing it on video. like gadaffi was pretty old, it made me think a lot about every like 21 year old university student in geography that you heard had taken up arms and been killed, which is similarly brutal to contemplate

I had the same mix of revulsion and relief when Saddam was executed.

deciding what would have been a "fair trial" is kind of a sticky situation considering there were several nations (including Gaddafi's own)/international entities out for Gaddafi's blood

look

this doesn't compare to capital punishment, which is The State executing one of its citizens - this is the oppressed & tortured & imprisoned & deprived rising up against the source of their degradation. so it's a little different, though it's still REVENGE, which is kinda one of the more grotesque human impulses and is always ugly. I don't for a second fault any genuinely oppressed people for going completely monster on a guy who's been holding them down for decades, but it weirds me out a little when people whose skin in the game is strictly common-sense-of-humanity stuff get all "yah! get him in the fuckin' eye!" or whatever.

as your resident grandmother catechist also I want to say that while I totally understand the urge to watch this video or others like it, I kinda don't get following through on that urge; lots of desensitization is inevitable, just on the information we're going to take in over a lifetime, but participating in one's own desensitization seems like self-mutilation without the associated endorphin rush or gnarly lookin scars.

its not 'A-OK' that he died this way - at the hands of nato-backed thugs - because it's a tragedy for libya, not because anyone's crying their eyes out for the colonel (though it was a ghastly way to die)

Yeah, huge tragedy for Libya. That's why everyone's so sad over there today. They're only cheering to hide the tears.

tamtam otm again

They're fucked without him to lead them and torture them, is what they're all realizing.

I mean, they're probably really fucked.

the empathetic response is deeper than the intelectual fuck this guy or killing is always wrong which arrives a moment later and is laid on top in order to make sense of things - its nbd theyre both fine imho let yrself feel what you feel and you can have ideas abt it

not saying that Libya isn't fucked, or that this was the ideal way for Gaddafi to die. but he had it coming, full stop.

imho let yrself feel what you feel and you can have ideas abt it

^^^ that

situations like this point up the very abstract end of morality i think. morality is in yr head and reality is angry people with weapons, mostly.

it's maybe good to have a pre-thought opinion about how we shd treat mass-murderers and tyrants if we ever run into one, but i can't help thinking events will be events whatever yr Golden Rules are

man sadam n kadaffi both dead after being offered ways out, and osama couldnt even hide forever in the lawless border lands - were i a local strongman id be thinking hard abt taking a buyout were one proffered

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Bashar_al-Assad_%28cropped%29.jpg/220px-Bashar_al-Assad_%28cropped%29.jpg
hmm saudi arabia is nice this time of year

how long until something like this happens to Joseph Kony, do you think

amen

Also moriantur tyranni obvs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppylnvv2RwM

on that note, who are the remaining BIG FOUR dictators?, atm. i don't know enough about the different power structures to know who earns the title. 1. zimbabwe, right? & what about ostensible but flawed democracy, cf maybe in iran?

spent lunch discussing whether or not we'd drive up and down o'connell st shooting into the air if b aherne got taken out by a street gang in clondalkin

complex moral issues imo

kim jong-il/jong-un

ice cr?m OTM about difference between gut response and intellectual one

Taoiseach sounds so spiritual.

Berlusconi

http://i.imgur.com/qh7ZW.jpg
been thinking abt retirement anyway tbqh

http://topnews.in/law/files/than-shwe11_0.jpg

This guy probably doesn't get enough recognition.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Abdullah_of_Saudi_Arabia.jpg
all this paperwork who needs it

I recommend this book BTW - encounters with seven ex-dictators, none of whom express an ounce of regret, and some of whom enjoyed a fine old age.

http://www.riccardoorizio.com/talkofthedevil/index.html

these guys id guess are universally sociopaths

pronounced 'tao is each' it's basically buddhist mantra aiui

what's the setup in syria? How many ppl you gotta take out to behead the hydra there?

the weird thing is that we're approaching this as a kind of world-historical event when it's clear that what happened is that one of his captors just decided "fuck this" and shot and killed him as he was being led around, bloodied and confused. or maybe it's simultaneously a world-historical event and the split decision of a single actor.

anyway i think my d. pearl example continues to be misconstrued. it was a specific response to dan perry's comment about how he and i had nothing to do w/ gadaffi ... i was simply pointing out that in a very real sense we share nearly all of our humanity with him and that this enables empathy. i didn't say he "deserved" empathy nor that he "deserved" less empathy than pearl. i was trying to explain my own reaction to his capture and death. i hope my comment doesn't continue to be misconstrued in this way.

i do think the point about how if you're against lynching you're against lynching _of anyone_ is very apposite, though. hollywood often makes this mistake; they make strident "anti-lynching"/"anti-discrimination" movies but stack the deck by making the victim honorable/innocent/etc. which means that the audience hasn't been made to grasp the real moral argument.

i wouldn't make a hard and fast distinction between "gut" and "intellectual" reactions. i agree that this does a reasonable job of modeling a certain variation in the nature of our reactions, but they don't happen sequential and one is not necessarily layered "on top" of the other. they alternately inform and superseded one another. I think a "gut" empathy is an important component, ultimately, of our intellectual response. at least for me.

xp If they weren't sociopaths to begin with then their roles made them into ones. I think there's something in human nature that makes it virtually psychologically impossible to admit responsibility for thousands of deaths. The magnitude of the crime obviates guilt.

hollywood often makes this mistake; they make strident "anti-lynching"/"anti-discrimination" movies but stack the deck by making the victim honorable/innocent/etc. which means that the audience hasn't been made to grasp the real moral argument.

well exactly -- that's why Welles' Touch of Evil (SPOILER AHEAD) has a nice fillip at the end when you find out that the Mexican youth framed by Quinlan turns out to be guilty. Of course, the cop has been doing this for decades, but he still gets some sympathy for having become a degraded mess of a human being.

i dunno if sociopath is useful there. tyranny is a half-yearning in a lot of people's psyches, the firm smack of government and the trains running on time and none of this wishy-washy human rights shit for obvious villains and deviants. dictatorship represents an enactment of a sizeable political desire/fantasy i think. all bureaucracies and machineries of power tend to distance decision-makers from the consequences of their decisions, too.

xp If they weren't sociopaths to begin with then their roles made them into ones. I think there's something in human nature that makes it virtually psychologically impossible to admit responsibility for thousands of deaths. The magnitude of the crime obviates guilt.

― Science, you guys. Science. (DL), Friday, October 21, 2011 9:09 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno how this works i practice -- macnamara simultaneously couldn't fully entertain his role in vietnam (or his own ability to have made different choices) while still acknowledging the death toll and accepting some kind of responsibility. this seems like a thread-killing tangent though.

Nobody becomes a dictator by himself, same as amassing wealth.

xxp to myself

or to put it another way, i think most dictators start their careers with a sincere desire to make their country a better place, and a sincere belief that you can only do that thru tough action. and not only dictators say things like this.

the cliché that everyone is the protagonist in their own life is relevant here

(i.e. not the antagonist)

A lot of get-behind-our-president Americans seem to unconsciously favor "benign" dictatorship.

i wouldn't make a hard and fast distinction between "gut" and "intellectual" reactions. i agree that this does a reasonable job of modeling a certain variation in the nature of our reactions, but they don't happen sequential and one is not necessarily layered "on top" of the other. they alternately inform and superseded one another. I think a "gut" empathy is an important component, ultimately, of our intellectual response. at least for me.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, October 21, 2011 10:07 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

layering and timing of the gut v intellectual response is somewhat of a construct to explain that basically imho the ~thinking abt it~ aspect is attempting to make sense of what were feeling - i think thats a natural process which sometimes gets distorted when people deny what theyre feeling or try to suppress or marginalize it - you could point to kaddaffis life and speculate that prob at some point early in his career he felt some pangs of guilt over murdering innocents but then he said to himself 'i must do this for the good of the country' and became wildly unbalanced to the point where his intellectual understanding of his role in the world completely blotted out any ability to appreciate any wholesome feelings of empathy and caring that might arise within

Morbius I share a lot of your politics but that's not really true at all

anyway i think my d. pearl example continues to be misconstrued. it was a specific response to dan perry's comment about how he and i had nothing to do w/ gadaffi ... i was simply pointing out that in a very real sense we share nearly all of our humanity with him and that this enables empathy. i didn't say he "deserved" empathy nor that he "deserved" less empathy than pearl. i was trying to explain my own reaction to his capture and death. i hope my comment doesn't continue to be misconstrued in this way.

I fundamentally disagree with your viewpoint. I don't think mere existence is enough to engender empathy; I literally cannot imagine the events that would have to happen in my life for me to end up in a spot remotely like where Gadaffi's life led him, whereas it is very easy for me to imagine being Daniel Pearl had I had slightly different interests and some lucky breaks. People are more than simply their biology; they are also their actions and their ideas, and I think you do individuals a disservice when you separate the two.

There are a number of reasons why I think summary execution in the street was a terrible end for Mommar Gadaffi. His personal suffering is very, very far down the list.

what if it had been a summery execution in the street

what if Qaddafi had been on his way to the beach

there's a blood stains and white linen gag that doesn't need to be made here

Gadaffi in a sun dress, catching bullets

a sad, poignant image

aero, how so? The Bill of Rights seem somewhat unpopular in opinion polls when they're not labeled.

I've probably recommended this before as a study of the banality of dictatorship:

http://www.criterion.com/films/545-general-idi-amin-dada

http://jameskillough.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/gaddafi2.jpg?w=500&h=546

chillin' in his muu-muu on the way to Santa Monica

I am certain either Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston wore that exact same outfit

and the libyan girls with the way they kiss, the men who ruled them die like dogs

i def feel empathy for kaddafi just based on his humaness, its nbd its not like theres a finite amount and if he gets some some innocent child will go without, but also i feel for him because he lead a horrible life that profoundly contributed to the suffering of millions, he completely cut himself off from his humanity, and thats the worst type of existence

what, were all three dipped in milk chocolate and dried with the heat of a thousand Saharan suns?

xxxp

not sure Aretha isn't in that one he's wearing, somewhere

xxxpost

dan, it is not a "viewpoint." it is an explanation of why i felt empathy watching gadaffi captured and killed. there is little to "disagree" with.

I am certain either Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston wore that exact same outfit

oh man you can just see it bringing down the house, whitney walks back on for an encore, stage left, first libya show, dusk, "and now a special guest", spotlight stage right, "a good friend of mine", enter muammar, same outfit, long strides, they embrace midstage

then they both join Aretha to sing "A Rose is Still a Rose."

some folx (Lionel Richie?) got in trouble for doing shows for Muammar, no? Or was that some other miscreant?

well, Sean Penn pals around with Hugo Chavez all the time; and for quite a few years Hollywood stars adored hangin' out with Fidel.

which means that the audience hasn't been made to grasp the real moral argument.

The real moral argument is that while we can all shrug at a narcissist sociopath getting offed by a kid in a Yankees hat, it does not bode well for Libya in the long run.

It's not hard to say, "meh, Louis XVI and kin, fuckin' let 'em get their heads cut off," but you still have the Terror and almost two decaes of Napoleon and Fouché and then the Restoration. Same w/killing Charles I, 'that man of blood."

I get and cannot entirely condemn the desire to just off the fucker but such exuberance rarely ends well.

xp Fair point - Macnamara's an unusual case

Romania did OK after Ceausescu - it doesn't have to be the Terror, though there's always that risk.

There's a scene in if... when Malcolm MacDowell is about the bayonet the chaplain, who's squirming around on the ground in incoherent terror. The film has set him up as a sadistic perve and a blodthirsty hypocrite, as well as an officer of the regime, and everything in the film has set you to side with the revolutionaries. Lindsay Anderson keeps the camera on the wriggling for what seems like an age: first of all we see the chaplain-as-person as deserving villain and whoop along (he's getting his!), and then we see him as a terrified person, a doomed meat object, the naked lunch more or less on the fork, and then we see him as an actor being directed, and holding the pose too long, actorly business revealing itself, and then we connect the actor-as-person with the chaplain-as-person...

or actually this flickering of levels of response, empathetic vs intellectual, ideological vs gut, probably cycle along in a different order for different viewers, and become grisly and unwatchable and embarrassing at different moments also, for different reasons

xp fouché is the key name here actually

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/10/21/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Syria.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

"Gadhafi is gone, your turn is coming, Bashar," protesters shouted on Friday in the central city of Hama, long a hotbed of resistance to the regime.

that's a nice way to get your town razed :(

i def feel empathy for kaddafi just based on his humaness, its nbd its not like theres a finite amount and if he gets some some innocent child will go without, but also i feel for him because he lead a horrible life that profoundly contributed to the suffering of millions, he completely cut himself off from his humanity, and thats the worst type of existence

I'm not saying empathy is finite, I'm saying empathy is partially based on recognizing yourself in the subject you are empathizing with. I do not recognize myself in Mommar Gadaffi, so I find it difficult to empathize with him at any stage in his life (let alone his death).

dan, it is not a "viewpoint." it is an explanation of why i felt empathy watching gadaffi captured and killed. there is little to "disagree" with.

Oh come on. You're playing semantics now so that you don't have to engage with what I'm saying. Would it be better if I'd written "I don't feel that way," as my first sentence, because that is how it should be taken.

yes that would be different actually.

I do not recognize myself in Mommar Gadaffi,

i find this bewildering, in honesty. kind of shocking even. he has the same capacity for pain and horror and fear that you and i do. you really don't think you have a lot in common? i feel like there's a willful denial here. this is going to make you mad, and i'm sorry for that. but it does seem very odd to me.

some good discussion in this thread. intellectually i agree that rejoicing in the circumstances of gaddafi's death is perhaps not the finest of human behaviour. then i think about how MG handed out viagra and condoms to his troops to facilitate mass rape of the opposition and i'm like, why am i wringing my hands over the method of this fucker's demise.

as ice cr?m said... it's ok to feel more than one thing about this

put less aggressively: do you ever feel empathy for a suffering animal? if so, why -- what characteristics of that animal conspire to produce that empathy? real question.

xpost

amateurist, I don't get why DJP or anyone should be obliged to feel empathy for someone who has inflicted as much suffering as Gaddafi has. Great if you do but it's not weird to feel an immense, unbridgable difference.

There's a part of me that thinks it slightly unseemly to be squeamish about Gadhafi being shot by a mob when there are Syrains, largely uncovered (and uncoverable) by any real media presence who are going out and getting shot and tortured every day. Like, bottom-line, sure I deplore the lack of basic decency (a decency he surely lacked) and circumspection but c'mon there is a scale of deserved concern and the ppl in Hama probably deserve it more than Muammar.

http://chetanabangladesh.org/image/flash/Candle.jpg

I had a dream that Anna Wintour hired the killer - teh fashion police could only hold out so long before they had to kill this guy. Did you see his pistol?! It was bling and that's just not a good look in personal weaponry.

put less aggressively: do you ever feel empathy for a suffering animal? if so, why -- what characteristics of that animal conspire to produce that empathy? real question.

xpost

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, October 21, 2011 10:37 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

innocence.

empathy is partially based on recognizing yourself in the subject you are empathizing with

i took amateurist to be saying that empathy was partially based in something more basic than this though, the shared body (muscle nerve etc): like when you wince as you watch someone sharply bang their head (i got a twinge just writing that, and no subsequent knowledge of this "someone's" misdeeds could make me untwinge, esp. as he's made up, by me, as an example!)

anyway these two "partially"s are not muutally exclusive -- but they do pull against one another

xxxp empathy in amt's isn't something you're "obliged" to feel; it happens anyway

this is maybe beside the point but there isnt really a gaddafi snuff film is there? i think theres just a video of him being grabbed and roughly pushed around toward a truck as everyone around cheers--and then video/pictures of his dead body.

not sure if it makes a difference, and not that i want to see him actually get shot. but i thought the whole "thing" here is while the TNC is claiming he died of wounds sustained in the airstrike, theres no proof he didnt just get executed in the back of a truck. and on the other hand theres no proof he did, either.

or maybe im just behind and havent heard the latest

anyway id prefer that people treated all prisoners of war w/ civility and kindness even if just to demonstrate their moral righteousness, but theres a difference between being rough w/ a wounded dictator and actually just cold capping him in the chest isnt there? maybe not

Strange how those who are so exceptionally compassionate that they're able to empathise, with ease, with the pain of sadistic murdering psychopaths, rarely seem similarly inclined to empathise with mere critics of said psychopaths.

put less aggressively: do you ever feel empathy for a suffering animal? if so, why -- what characteristics of that animal conspire to produce that empathy? real question.

How did the animal get to the point where is suffering? Was it mistreated by a person? Did it injure itself? Is it being attacked by a predator? "An animal is suffering" is a meaningless, abstract statement to me without context.

i took amateurist to be saying that empathy was partially based in something more basic than this though, the shared body (muscle nerve etc): like when you wince as you watch someone sharply bang their head (i got a twinge just writing that, and no subsequent knowledge of this "someone's" misdeeds could make me untwinge, esp. as he's made up, by me, as an example!)

That is a deeper, subconscious level of empathy than I thought we were discussing. Involuntary empathic reactions, such as the revulsion from seeing Gadaffi's bloody misshapen face, do not automatically engender compassion, which is what what I thought we were actually discussing.

Yesterday, in the other Libya thread, I linked to this photo

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/11/03/article-1325902-0BDF9FFE000005DC-125_634x422_popup.jpg

and noted the similarity in the mouse's eyes and Khaddafi's in the big photo that was going around of him. I recognize that Khaddafi is going through a moment of panic or terror or dread or heartbreak or something there. But there's a wall inside that prevents me from sharing that terror with him while my heart does break just a little bit for the mouse.

Strange how those who are so exceptionally compassionate that they're able to empathise, with ease, with the pain of sadistic murdering psychopaths, rarely seem similarly inclined to empathise with mere critics of said psychopaths.

― scruton, Friday, October 21, 2011 10:48 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is such bullshit

This one:

http://www.coastweek.com/3442_gaddafi_01.JPG

well, Sean Penn pals around with Hugo Chavez all the time

Who has Chavez killed?

How did the animal get to the point where is suffering? Was it mistreated by a person? Did it injure itself? Is it being attacked by a predator?

It got shot in the face by a 7-11 clerk in a botched robbery.

shot by police in ohio

I think to truly empathize w/Gadhafi we must also remain tethered to our own decency. Did he consider that his life's work was perhaps flawed? Did he have a moment's regret for his misdeeds? I know it would be impractical to turn himself into the NTC but he could have done so to a third party. I recognize the animal panic but I empathize a bit more with human reason and anybody, including the man, himself, who didn't see this coming is a tad deluded.

Who has Chavez killed?

This does not mean he's not an asshole, morbz, a military dictator w/a bespoke ideology and a complete lack of humility who is destabilizing his country's already precarious attachement to democracy.

chavez has killed people fer sure

martinmcguinness.jpg

chavez has killed people fer sure

Just like...

there is a video where you see a bloodied, confused m.g. roughed up by his captors. as he's dragged around, the frame is momentarily obstructed by a person. you hear shots ring out, and when the cameramen gets another view of gaddafi his face is contorted and bloodied and he is lying prostrate. between the two views he has been shot in the face and been killed.

washington

I think I'm probably making an unsustainable distinction between "empathise" and "sympathise" (which is in turn tempered by the fact that I'm a professional sub-editor and required to make a sharper distinction between two words most people happily use interchangeably).

Empathy for me is the one that happens whether you will it or not (the body's acknowledgment that we're all embodied and can suffer physical pain); the will -- based on further knowledge, sense of morality, political allegiance, etc -- is what converts (or not) this to sympathy, which is voluntary, a willed act of identification, withheld in (moral-cultural) recognition of enacted inhumanity. Something like that. Compassion -- which entails decisive further acts to mitigate a situation -- comes even further along this line.

So on my reading, "pure" empathy doesn't automatically get you to compassion. But this is all finicky semantics.

Just like...

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Friday, October 21, 2011 11:09 AM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im just sayin

then i think about how MG handed out viagra and condoms to his troops to facilitate mass rape of the opposition

yeah thats probably not true

I think I'm probably making an unsustainable distinction between "empathise" and "sympathise" (which is in turn tempered by the fact that I'm a professional sub-editor and required to make a sharper distinction between two words most people happily use interchangeably).

Empathy for me is the one that happens whether you will it or not (the body's acknowledgment that we're all embodied and can suffer physical pain); the will -- based on further knowledge, sense of morality, political allegiance, etc -- is what converts (or not) this to sympathy, which is voluntary, a willed act of identification, withheld in (moral-cultural) recognition of enacted inhumanity. Something like that. Compassion -- which entails decisive further acts to mitigate a situation -- comes even further along this line.

So on my reading, "pure" empathy doesn't automatically get you to compassion. But this is all finicky semantics.

OTM finicky semantics, though.

ya it seemed a little fishy tbh but i couldnt get it out of my head. so bad on me xp

I already miss his Amazonian Guard :-(

whoa he made time's toppled dictator of the year

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2097426_2097427_2097445,00.html

there is a video where you see a bloodied, confused m.g. roughed up by his captors. as he's dragged around, the frame is momentarily obstructed by a person. you hear shots ring out, and when the cameramen gets another view of gaddafi his face is contorted and bloodied and he is lying prostrate. between the two views he has been shot in the face and been killed.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, October 21, 2011 11:10 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this the video you mean amateurist?

im not sure its that clear-cut, what happens. in the end it seems increasingly likely that he was executed by his captors, but theres no proof--if theres video that definitively shows him getting shot, it would huge news.

if "our" leader ever starts executing political dissenters in his own country then we can talk

― wrestlingisreal420 (crüt), Friday, October 21, 2011 9:12 AM (2 hours ago)

lol, anwar al-awlaki rip

huh, I don't know much about Cuban or Paraguayan history apparently (although Batista started triggering some memories as I read his blurb)

I do not recognize myself in Mommar Gadaffi,

i find this bewildering, in honesty. kind of shocking even. he has the same capacity for pain and horror and fear that you and i do. you really don't think you have a lot in common? i feel like there's a willful denial here. this is going to make you mad, and i'm sorry for that. but it does seem very odd to me.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, October 21, 2011 10:36 AM (49 minutes ago)

really well said.

agree with ice cram's comments as well

lol, anwar al-awlaki rip

lol, you are out of your mind.

lol @ calling al-awlaki a "dissenter"

xp

was Timothy McVeigh a dissenter too

mcveigh actually killed people and was tried for his crimes. anyway this isn't the thread for this

Ah, beaten to it by Shakey and rustic - if you're going to do the moral equivalence thing k3vin you'll have to try a bit harder than that.

http://i54.tinypic.com/2ytqydy.jpg

free lybia

I don't feel any sympathy for Q. I'm not "sad" that he was murdered really, but I would have preferred him to be captured, tried, and imprisoned and I don't revel in anyone's actual death at the hands of an angry mob, just on principle (occasional inflammatory rhetoric I post around here aside, which is mostly just joking/venting)

xp

free labia

put less aggressively: do you ever feel empathy for a suffering animal? if so, why -- what characteristics of that animal conspire to produce that empathy? real question.

-amateurist

How did the animal get to the point where is suffering? Was it mistreated by a person? Did it injure itself? Is it being attacked by a predator? "An animal is suffering" is a meaningless, abstract statement to me without context.

-DJP

so when you see a wounded or dying animal your first thought is not "it must be in a lot of pain, that's sad" but instead you can feel nothing because you don't know how it got that point? ooook......

Ah, beaten to it by Shakey and rustic - if you're going to do the moral equivalence thing k3vin you'll have to try a bit harder than that.

― Science, you guys. Science. (DL), Friday, October 21, 2011 11:37 AM (4 minutes ago)

well i was half-joking in fairness

i wdn't attribute human emotions or motivations to an animal tbh

When I see a wounded animal, it is not an abstract, empty rhetorical statement. Try thinking.

Despite the fact that I feel no empathy at all for Gaddafi I simultaneously 1) Think he should have been kept alive and 2) have a morbid desire to read a long, well-written, fictionalized account of his last 48 hours on earth. Hiding, plotting, drinking himself to sleep, ambushed in his convoy, thrown to ground, crawling wounded to shelter in a culvert, no water, thinking grimly over his life, knowing he will either be killed or die of dehydration, settling old scores in his head, blaming everyone but himself

i wdn't attribute human emotions or motivations to an animal tbh

^^^^

can't be said enough

animals live rough lives that are full of suffering and sickness and violence. you can't go around feeling bad for them all the time just because a duck is cute or whatever.

Sorry, k3vin - hard to tell itt.

BTW Hitchens is pro-arrest-and-trial too. I don't think many people would have actively chosen this outcome.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/muammar_qaddafi_should_not_have_been_killed_but_sent_to_stand_tr.html

have a morbid desire to read a long, well-written, fictionalized account of his last 48 hours on earth. Hiding, plotting, drinking himself to sleep, ambushed in his convoy, thrown to ground, crawling wounded to shelter in a culvert, no water, thinking grimly over his life, knowing he will either be killed or die of dehydration, settling old scores in his head, blaming everyone but himself

I will totally watch this TV movie, hopefully starring Wilmer Valderrama as Qaddafy

When I see a wounded animal, it is not an abstract, empty rhetorical statement. Try thinking.

― do not wake the dragon (DJP), Friday, October 21, 2011 11:43 AM (0 seconds ago)

i just...

have you ever seen one before? think about that time, and answer his question

i wdn't attribute human emotions or motivations to an animal tbh

^^^^

can't be said enough

― unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, October 21, 2011 11:44 AM (3 minutes ago)

no one is - pain, physical suffering, etc are not exclusive to humans

but yeah what gaddafi was likely going through - regret, thinking about his family, probably begging for mercy, sadness - those are more human

pain and suffering are universal and are parcelled out at random, in general it has no moral element. morality is a human construction, animals do not operate within it.

lol more accurate to say "OTHER animals do not operate within it" lol

Except wasps

i just...

have you ever seen one before? think about that time, and answer his question

Which time? Depending on which story I go back to, I will have a different reaction, because each one was a specific set of circumstances that had me at a closer or further remove to the animal's suffering and informed the amount of compassion for it. Which I already said; the answer to the question is "it depends".

frankly bringing animals into this equation is wrong and misguided imho. people relate to people differently than people relate to other animals, for all kinds of reasons.

I guess I'd say you can feel empathy for animals -- we're animals too, we all feel pain -- but not sympathy, because morality is a human world (cf laborious and largely ignored definitions about).

xp So I don't think it's totally unuseful: because it helps mark out the dividing line between empathy and sympathy.

I love that picture upthread - literally demonizing his enemies

I can sympahtize w/animals

Because sympathy is a willed and subjective empathy

lost in the fog of conceptuality / looking for kadaffi / to execute him

bambi's mum vs mufasa vs gaddaffi ts

sympathy implies a fellow feeling which is misplaced in re: animals but this shd definitely be in a spin-off thread

lost in the frog of conceptuality, imo

Point of capturing and putting him on trial, surely, is to get to the heart of who else would have been implicated.

Not now, though.

Still feel sad about the mouse.

i think the guys who are implicated are pretty well known on account of how they were in the Qadaffy gov

i mean i'm all for trying to track this one back to NewsCorp but i don't think it'll fly

I was just reflecting yesterday on how abjectly awful the children of dictators are

i dunno, i think kids do well with strong role models in the family

frankly bringing animals into this equation is wrong and misguided imho. people relate to people differently than people relate to other animals, for all kinds of reasons.

― unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, October 21, 2011 11:57 AM (1 minute ago)

true - we've veered away from the point a bit now, though

dan said he could not empathize with gaddafi because he couldn't see himself in gaddafi - he would never do the awful things gaddafi did and would not be in his situation. amaterist's point, i think, and what i agree with, was that it doesn't really matter why someone is being brutalized? you and i and everyone in this thread (except mods ;]) aren't tyrants and don't have thousands of people seeking bloody revenge upon us. but we do share the same capacity for pain, fear, and emotional and physical torture. the reason that people are against torture is because it is cruel and dehumanizing - it should be done to no one, there is never justification for it. gaddafi likely did much worse to many more people, but no one deserves to die like that, and sadness is the only visceral reaction i can have to watching/hearing about that happen to anybody

anyway jesus had some thoughts about seeing yourself in others

he had some thoughts about a lot of shit

we all share gaddaffi's capacity for a lot of things, i personally managed to hold off on the murder, pillage and torture this past week so i'm happy enough to consider myself different enough in this case

i've played a lot of GTA so i sort of half empathise with him

another middle-aged liberal draws the link btwn video games and violence

"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto"

xp

get it straight, i'm a commie not a liberal

he has the same capacity for pain and horror and fear that you and i do.

pretty sure his capacity for horror was a lot different from mine considering the atrocities he committed

who you calling puto

excellent point, crut

get it straight, i'm a commie not a liberal

I hate when that happens too

who you calling puto

Oddly enough, I was googling for the full quote and I had to remove 'homo' and 'puto' for my work's webfilter not to block the results for profanity.

we all share gaddaffi's capacity for a lot of things, i personally managed to hold off on the murder, pillage and torture this past week so i'm happy enough to consider myself different enough in this case

― stop muammar time (darraghmac), Friday, October 21, 2011 12:17 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh mr i didnt murder anyone this week judging us from his high horse

lol

who did darraghmac murder last week, I wonder

that's me

this has gone completely off-topic

good night sweet prince

u lived in a tent guarded by babes w/guns rip

I think I'm probably making an unsustainable distinction between "empathise" and "sympathise"

this is a distinction philosophers and psychologists make all the time, though in fairness they don't all agree on where the line is drawn. but i do think they are different concepts worth parsing.

i feel like i've been a jerk to dan on this thread, and i admit that mark's post better enables me to make the distinction between what i think he's talking about -- which is a higher-order "sympathy" rather than a possibly more immediate "empathy" -- and what i'm talking about.

i do find it surprising that the images of gadaffi being wounded, humiliated, then killed by his captors doesn't inspire in everyone a kind of brute empathy, just as an image or description of a dying bird might inspire a similar fount of feeling. i do think these things are pre-rational and pre-moral, but even so i suppose i feel that they ought to inform higher-order sensitivities, which is one reason i find myself opposing lynchings and capital punishment.

that said i admit there's a way our reaction to a suffering animal can be informed by the moral calculus that humans impose upon other creatures. e.g. our cultural may assign alligators to a morally debased category while small birds, for being fragile and small, are more ready objects of "sympathy". i don't think this sort of thing is so far removed, in the end, from the way we assign gadaffi and/or daniel pearl to similar categories, but i recognize i'm heading down a very relativist path with that argument.

btw have y'all seen those sokurov films about hitler, lenin, and hirohito? they are in many ways aesthetically and politically dubious but i suppose i respect them just as attempts to imagine these folks as human beings in particularly vulnerable/confused moments.

Am, I don't think you were a jerk to me so don't sweat it! Likewise I hope you don't feel like I was being a jerk towards you.

well i wouldn't go that far

weird to use lenin instead of stalin there
xxxp

j/k

aero, how so?

because we don't have anything remotely resembling a dictator in this country.even the least brutal dictator makes the excesses of Nixon, Reagan, Bush et al look like small potatoes. don't get me wrong the president sucks but to bust out "dictator" is absurd. I'm not going to be tortured by his high school buddies who've now been appointed generals in his army, which serves at his personal command, but if he were a dictator, that would be an actual concern.

It also makes me uneasy to be ruled by a President who meets, broadly smiles and shakes a national leader's hand in 2009 and facilitates his ultimate bloody removal (after surrender) in the streets of Sirte less than two years later. The despot was evil, but his Chicago-style murder feels unclean.

Serious question: do presidents rule or govern?

lol "chicago-style murder" been reading drudge lately al

Serious question: do presidents rule or govern?

if they are awesome presidents they fucken rule, otherwise they just govern

I think you're overthinking that, Alfred. Heads of State have to shake hands with assholes and rougues and despots all the time and ultimately the ppl responsible for getting rid of them are the citizens themselves. NATO may have helped, even been crucial, but they certainly didn't do it alone.

we did nothing to stop this shameful attack.

We all facilitated it

If Pink Floyd was president, they would rule.

Wouldn't describe Obama's smile as "broad" here, either. More obligatory and political than that.

http://i1.tribune.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/qaddafi-obama-REUTERS-640x480.jpg

a President who meets, broadly smiles and shakes a national leader's hand in 2009

why aren't we seeing this photo like the Rummy-Saddam one? xp

Heads of State have to shake hands with assholes and rougues and despots all the time

except for Fidel Castro or anyone who likes him, eh

His eyes aren't smiling. Then he transitions to this:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2011/3/10/1299778098240/File-photo-of-Obama-and-G-007.jpg

again, I am certain that I've seen Aretha in that outfit

"Heads of State have to shake hands with assholes and rogues and despots all the time"

somehow ties in with America and The Godfather yet again

My post was from a Corner commenter.

Aretha would never wear that necktie.

Anyway, I've read this whole thread and still can't find the link for those muammar gaddafi rips. smdh

somehow ties in with America and The Godfather yet again

what are you talking about?

if I knew I wd tell ya

My post was from a Corner commenter.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 21, 2011 2:17 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

Who's got the look? xp

I will say it strikes me as low-level ironic that we as a nation are currently applauding the death of someone who crushed political dissent while our police forces attempt to kick out people expressing political dissent across the country.

"I will say"

yeah I don't know why I left that there

Jay : 10/21/11 11:54

Rich very smartly points out that in the end leftists of whatever stripe are really only good at killing people. Their policy, governing, and diplomacy are all inept messes full of meaningless talk, but when it gets down to bricks, bombs, bullets, and bayonets, they're good to go and very efficient.
Watch out, Wall Street!

lol sorry, Dan – I thought you were quoting a commenter too.

No, I was just pondering my mostly non-reaction to G's death and wondering why I didn't feel much one way or the other, and then I saw the post about police moving in on Occupy Oakland, which in the context of these Corner comments was... interesting

(more interesting to me than the death of Qadaffy, anyway)
(I love that you can basically spell dude's name any old way you want to and they're all correct.)

RIP momo quayle

Despite the fact that I feel no empathy at all for Gaddafi I simultaneously 1) Think he should have been kept alive and 2) have a morbid desire to read a long, well-written, fictionalized account of his last 48 hours on earth. Hiding, plotting, drinking himself to sleep, ambushed in his convoy, thrown to ground, crawling wounded to shelter in a culvert, no water, thinking grimly over his life, knowing he will either be killed or die of dehydration, settling old scores in his head, blaming everyone but himself

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, October 21, 2011 11:44 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

you can just read this, from suetonius 12 caesars, about nero, which i've been thinking about all day:

XLVIII. But this furious impulse subsiding, he wished for some place of privacy, where he might collect his thoughts; and his freedman Phaon offering him his country-house, between the Salarian [626] and Nomentan [627] roads, about four miles from the city, he mounted a horse, barefoot as he was, and in his tunic, only slipping over it an old soiled cloak; with his head muffled up, and an handkerchief before his face, and four persons only to attend him, of whom Sporus was one. He was suddenly struck with horror by an earthquake, and by a flash of lightning which darted full in his face, and heard from the neighbouring camp [628] the shouts of the soldiers, wishing his destruction, and prosperity to Galba. He also heard a traveller they met on the road, say, "They are (377) in pursuit of Nero:" and another ask, "Is there any news in the city about Nero?" Uncovering his face when his horse was started by the scent of a carcase which lay in the road, he was recognized and saluted by an old soldier who had been discharged from the guards. When they came to the lane which turned up to the house, they quitted their horses, and with much difficulty he wound among bushes, and briars, and along a track through a bed of rushes, over which they spread their cloaks for him to walk on. Having reached a wall at the back of the villa, Phaon advised him to hide himself awhile in a sand-pit; when he replied, "I will not go under-ground alive." Staying there some little time, while preparations were made for bringing him privately into the villa, he took up some water out of a neighbouring tank in his hand, to drink, saying, "This is Nero's distilled water." [629] Then his cloak having been torn by the brambles, he pulled out the thorns which stuck in it. At last, being admitted, creeping upon his hands and knees, through a hole made for him in the wall, he lay down in the first closet he came to, upon a miserable pallet, with an old coverlet thrown over it; and being both hungry and thirsty, though he refused some coarse bread that was brought him, he drank a little warm water.

XLIX. All who surrounded him now pressing him to save himself from the indignities which were ready to befall him, he ordered a pit to be sunk before his eyes, of the size of his body, and the bottom to be covered with pieces of marble put together, if any could be found about the house; and water and wood [630], to be got ready for immediate use about his corpse; weeping at every thing that was done, and frequently saying, "What an artist is now about to perish!" Meanwhile, letters being brought in by a servant belonging to Phaon, he snatched them out of his hand, and there read, "That he had been declared an enemy by the senate, and that search was making for him, that he might be punished according to the ancient custom of the Romans." He then inquired what kind of punishment that was; and being told, that the (378) practice was to strip the criminal naked, and scourge him to death, while his neck was fastened within a forked stake, he was so terrified that he took up two daggers which he had brought with him, and after feeling the points of both, put them up again, saying, "The fatal hour is not yet come." One while, he begged of Sporus to begin to wail and lament; another while, he entreated that one of them would set him an example by killing himself; and then again, he condemned his own want of resolution in these words: "I yet live to my shame and disgrace: this is not becoming for Nero: it is not becoming. Thou oughtest in such circumstances to have a good heart: Come, then: courage, man!" [631] The horsemen who had received orders to bring him away alive, were now approaching the house. As soon as he heard them coming, he uttered with a trembling voice the following verse,

Hippon m' okupodon amphi ktupos ouata ballei; [632] The noise of swift-heel'd steeds assails my ears;

he drove a dagger into his throat, being assisted in the act by Epaphroditus, his secretary. A centurion bursting in just as he was half-dead, and applying his cloak to the wound, pretending that he was come to his assistance, he made no other reply but this, "'Tis too late;" and "Is this your loyalty?" Immediately after pronouncing these words, he expired, with his eyes fixed and starting out of his head, to the terror of all who beheld him. He had requested of his attendants, as the most essential favour, that they would let no one have his head, but that by all means his body might be burnt entire. And this, Icelus, Galba's freedman, granted.

Suetonius is always A++ reading

I will say it strikes me as low-level ironic that we as a nation are currently applauding the death of someone who crushed political dissent while our police forces attempt to kick out people expressing political dissent across the country.

Parallels our high dudgeon about the Iranians daring to maybe kinda kill one of their enemies on OUR SOIL! Who is they, US?

weird to use lenin instead of stalin there
xxxp

― unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, October 21, 2011 12:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there's already an amazing film about the last days of stalin, it's called "khroustaliov, my car!" (=stalin's last words!) directed by aleksei german. worth searching out.

khroustaliov, where's my car??

sounds fun!

I just think it's weird to lump Hitler, Hirohito and then ... Lenin together. Like, one of these things is not like the others, you know?

http://www.videodetective.com/photos/427/017965_12.jpg
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, October 21, 2011 6:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

khroustaliov, where's my car??

something went wrong with that post

yes

I'm sure I will be taken out and shot for it tomorrow morning

I just think it's weird to lump Hitler, Hirohito and then ... Lenin together. Like, one of these things is not like the others, you know?

― unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, October 21, 2011 1:50 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

well sokurov is a serious conservative in the sense of abhorring the soviet regime and having dubious nostalgia for pre-soviet soviet empire (i assume his actual worldview is more complex than this, but this is how it often comes across) so you can see why he'd put lenin alongside those other folks in that lenin is one of the main responsibles for bolshevik revolution.

and let's be honest lenin did some awful shit.

haha i mean pre-soviet RUSSIAN empire

Lenin did do some terrible shit & basically sabotaged/co-opted the revolution right from the start

it's just weird cuz the other two are WWII-contemporaries, and Stalin was WAYYYYY worse than Lenin imho

*WAYYYYY better & cooler

well ask sokurov buddy

that's my usual answer to just about any question btw

papa stalin... please give me the strength to deal with these bakas!!!!

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/jon-stewart-to-gop-on-qaddafi-death-what-is-wrong-with-you-people-video.php?ref=fpb

laughter after "don't shoot, don't shoot" here kind of reprehensible IMO

If you can't mock the pleas of repressive megalomaniac terrorist dictators, who can you mock?

lol

"Don't shoot, don't shoot! Let me adjust my glasses and hair first. Ok. Now you can shoot."

"I'm ready for my close-up (gunshots), now."

you cut ups!

All that plastic surgery to end up looking like Fred Armisen.

Overheard couple guys at a bar last night talking about how "cool" and "awesome" the videos of Gadaffi's last moments are. I think they're incredibly disturbing to watch. I'm not sorry he's dead and believe that he created his own fate, and that it is, in a way, appropriate, at very least inevitible. But to watch the video and get off on it is its own form of sociopathy.

snuff fans will always be with us

especially from a bunch of dudes who probably only heard about him a month ago and are at a safe remove from anything he's done

unless these dudes were libyan exiles

Hah. I don't think they were; they seemed like your typical high-fivin' white guys. Blue oxford button-downs, khakis and all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=add4mYVag3o

But to watch the video and get off on it is its own form of sociopathy.

Why watch the video at all? You really think watching the video in and of itself is not disturbing or disgusting? I've found it pretty easy thus far to avoid all these internet beheadings and whatnot.

I really don't get the pro-lynching sentiment on this thread. Even the Nazis got trials. Obviously the situation was chaotic with emotions running high etc. and the outcome was inevitable/understandable, but in ideal circumstances he should have had to face trial and not be killed extra-judicially.

the thing is, i doubt this was a planned thing. it's just that the rebels-now-ostensible-government don't really have an army so to speak, just a motley crew of righteously angry folks in various mostly-ethnically-homogenuous bands. so the group that caught up with gadaffi happened to include some guy who decided to shoot the guy. again, i doubt there was some directive from someone "in power" (who?) to kill the guy. it's more a testament to the chaos of this particular civil war.

chaos = incoherence of chain of command, in this case (i suspect)

is a long trial + sitting in a prison cell waiting for death really 'a better way to go' than getting roughed up a little and then shot?

i'm pro-lynching, along with many others in this thread

i'm pro-lynching Gadaffi, along with many others in this thread

more 'oh, ok' tbh

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/20/article-2051361-0E768B8100000578-630_634x537.jpg

i doubt there was some directive from someone "in power" (who?) to kill the guy.

predator drones aren't for taking prisoners iirc

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/gaddafis-libya-reminds-us-it-issued-the-first-bin-laden-arrest-warrant/2011/05/04/AFLEJJqF_story.html

Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril had said Thursday that Gaddafi was uninjured when he was captured but was fatally shot in the head in “crossfire” between revolutionaries and loyalist forces as he was driven away in a truck.

http://www.trailershut.com/movie-posters/Caught-in-the-Crossfire-Movie-Poster.jpg

lets see, who would not want this guy to go on trial hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2011/09/eighty-nine-questions-what-did-libya-do-for-the-cia.html

haven't read that yet but just want to take another opportunity to say i looooooooove amy davidson, she's so good

another reason against "extrajudicial" execution - why would you want to even provide an inkling of sympathy for this human stain?

Memories...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dqn9Hwf-H0

Why watch the video at all? You really think watching the video in and of itself is not disturbing or disgusting? I've found it pretty easy thus far to avoid all these internet beheadings and whatnot.

You mean it hasn't been shown endlessly from every angle and at every speed on the hour every hour like it has been on British TV?

I don't have cable?

I heard some disgruntled man on the street on the radio (where they don't play beheadings, either) who was all "First the US killed Saddam! Then they killed Osama! Now they killed Qaddafi!" And I was all, wait a minute, champ. Osama was going down, sure, but that shocked no one. But the US didn't kill Saddam. He totally got a show trial first, before the Iraqis inevitably killed him themselves. And Qaddafi, he was killed by his own people, too. Now, I'm as wary of the motives of the US gov as anyone, but while I'm sure Osama was a marked man - fine by me - I'm also pretty sure the US wouldn't have given a shit if Saddam and Qaddafi were sitting in prison rather than pushing up daisies.

Anyway, I think if you're an oppressive, insane, megalomaniac dictator of historic proportions, all bets are off, and you really don't deserve a fraction of the rights you forbade your entire country for decades.

i think us intelligence services are probably happier w/ qaddafi dead than alive

not cause hed have any real world-historical revelations but im sure he could embarrass the cia

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/world/africa/03libya.html

not cause hed have any real world-historical revelations but im sure he could embarrass the cia

Yeah, like that takes some work.

You mean it hasn't been shown endlessly from every angle and at every speed on the hour every hour like it has been on British TV?

i haven't seen it. i'm gonna try v. hard not to see it. fuck the guy, but snuff vids are pretty easy to avoid imo

Whatever. What's with the holier-than-thou attitude about not watching the vids? Wow, I applaud you, you are so moral.

wasn't saying that at all, just that they're pretty easy to avoid. morality is bollocks, but dancing in dogshit and then complaining that yr shoes smell is stupid

sorry if i made you feel bad tho. your display name reminds me of tony blair so i guess we're even.

You didn't make me feel bad, just slightly annoyed. I think it's important to see the vids so one can be better informed as to what went down. So I pat you on the back. Good for you for not watching them.

oh well if it's my duty to watch them i'll get cueing

i watched them to inform myself what went down, got a badge and two bumper stickers

it's important to inform yrself what went down at first hand in case you have to sit on the inquest jury

I don't know what the hell's going on when a guy saying that he doesn't want to watch footage of a human being being brutally murdered gets a sarcastic "good for you, Mother Theresa."

If you want to watch it, fine, it's up to you, but the impulse to avoid seeing it is the most basic human revulsion to death and suffering, not a holier-than-thou affectation.

More like Father Tiresias imho

I only brought it up because someone upthread was mocking some dudes laughing at the vids as being all ugh, when my thought is, geez, who wants to watch this shit, period? Because I'm sorry, there's nothing to be gained from watching Qaddafi get shot except seeing Qaddafi get shot. And if someone needs to see a barbaric beheading video to truly understand how barbaric beheadings are, then that's fucked up.

Michael are you implying i've got moobs?

I saw the video and it was kinda hard to tell what was going on mostly

wait for the director's cut maybe

I saw the video and it was kinda hard to tell what was going on mostly

Qaddafi gets killed, apparently.

SPOILER!

it would probably a lot more harrowing if I understood what was being said.

most of what is being said is cries of "god is great!" the rest is pretty unintelligible.

lol, joke's on them

god is great
he brings us the chocolate cake

i don't doubt that these dudes actually think god is great, whatever that might mean, but it's also true that the phrase "god is great" is pretty boilerplate "hells yeah!" rallying cry in the muslim world.

it's also true that the phrase "god is great" is pretty boilerplate "hells yeah!" rallying cry in the muslim world.

Indeed, but change the fucking record can't youse? Also, I wish they'd interview people in Arabic and translate it rather than expecting people to who can't speak very good Engish to be able to express themselves adequately.

british reporters?

Really clear video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy1dsO-jKd0

Maybe they were trying to remember the middle-8 of Sheryl Crow's "One of us"

Michael are you implying i've got moobs?

Bad pastiche pun based on Theresa and not seeing.

Really clear video:

― thirdalternative, Sunday, October 23, 2011 11:20 AM

Youtube... children won't never see a breast here, but this is kind of video is ok...
McPhran 9 minutes ago

Bodies of Gaddafi supporters 'found executed' in Sirte

I mean I'm sure they were all horrible people but c'mon, get a grip transitional authority.

timing is everything

get a grip transitional authority.

'Cause that would be so easy?

No, of course not. I was being flip in the face of depressing and wholly predictable news, sorry.

the only context under which I can even begin to understand the mindset behind the "stop whining" argument of ppl like the 53% tumblr* is when I read stuff like this; things are fucked up here and some changes are in order but I'm very, very happy we don't have roving mobs killing our leaders and their supporters in the streets (and hotels)

* the ones that aren't bad photoshops, anyway

xp Although I would like to hear some condemnation from the interim gov instead of platitudes and "hey men you can now marry as many women as you like". But I'm willing to give them a day or two to catch up.

that's #occupy stage three

Also, nice try here by the interim leadership.

Abdul-Jalil raised a new possibility on Monday, suggesting that Gadhafi could have been killed by his own supporters to prevent him from implicating them in past misdeeds under his regime.

"Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Gadhafi will not be tried. Libyans want to try him for what he did to them, with executions, imprisonment and corruption," he said. "Free Libyans wanted to keep Gadhafi in prison and humiliate him as long as possible. Those who wanted him killed were those who were loyal to him or had played a role under him, his death was in their benefit."

So you see it's not only NV who hasn't watched the video.

way to get a good start on this whole democracy thing libya.

this is definitely the clearest video that i've seen so far, also w/ some subtitles

http://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0

lol i have NO IDEA how that link happened

anyway

http://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0

i'm surprised that rick astley was even in libya let alone had anything to do with gadaffi's death. way to get yourself back in the news cycle.

way to ruin the roll

It gets worse

How far the internet has come in 10 years that videos like that are now in newspapers and not just on Ogrish.com.

The Daily Star went back to it's glory days with "Gaddafi found to be a woman" story the other day. Apparently, one of his aides was quoted as saying "whadda calamity! I could have hadda da sex with her!"

See, to me this highlights the major failing with the press: If the story published is blatant lies, the only way a complaint can be raised is by the people affected, and they have to prove some sort of loss (of face, of money, of whatever). Whereas, if the story affects nobody directly apart from a lot of people believe what they were told, nothing needs to be done.

(I think the paper is back to the usual "girl ties her shoelaces" front pages)

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/gaddafi-wrote-song-for-rice-black-flower-in-the-white-house.php

"What was going through my head was 'How long do I have to sit here and how quickly can I get out of here?' You know, it was funny because when he said, 'I have a video for you,' I thought, 'Oh my goodness, what is this going to be?' But it was actually just a bunch of pictures of me with Vladimir Putin, me with Hu Jintao," Rice tells ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in an interview planned for next week. "And then he said, 'I have Libya's best composer, most famous composer write this song for you,' and it was called 'Black Flower in the White House.'"

I have an idea for the next ILX song project.

why would you use "gaddafi" in the URL and "qaddafi" in the body of the article? that's what's really creepy about this story

outrageous: http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-204564-2012-09-30.html