What Else Those Who Don’t Want To Hear About Burning Kittens, Don’t Want To Hear About?
A video was linked on Facebook, supposedly showing a burning kitten. Some have clamored for Facebook to withdraw the video. That’s pusillanimous.
For evil to triumph, all what has to happen is for good people not to want to know about it.
What’s next, pusillanimous people? Are you going to censor the expert goring of a lion by a buffalo?
Horn Thru Belly Puts Lion In Orbit
Shall we censor too, this gory violence against big kitty? He was just kindly eating the grounded fellow’s big rump.
(Contrarily to some PC description of that incident had it, there is no way the lion survived: the horn was only stopped by the tough hide after going nearly all the way through the kitty’s belly).
I am afraid all the people who ask for censorship are friends of Big Brother. What’s next, indeed? Each time a monk sets himself on fire, you will censor? What about respecting him enough to hear the case he is trying to make? Yes, showing the act is different from just entering that it happened, as a data point. More emotional content.
If one had shown people being gazed at Auschwitz, should people of upright character have asked Facebook to withdraw the video?
Well, I have news for you: that’s basically what Hitler’s Germans did: they censored everything. Hitler’s Germans did not want to see, they thought it would be immoral to see what was going on, they viewed as immoral those who wanted to show the immoralities.
If the Germans had seen the video of Auschwitz, there would have been no Auschwitz, and no Nazi regime, in a matter of weeks (this means the Allies were derelict in no advertising the extermination camps… But, of course, they had not seen the video, either. The democratic leaders knew the Nazis were evil, but did not guess that they were that evil… they did not want to know, either, as many of the leaders of the West had been accomplices of Nazism, prior).
I would personally love it that all crimes be made into videos, and put on Facebook. Start with the banksters.
For all the naïve, or ill informed, out there, burning a kitten is actually a crime, a prosecuted activity, by law. (Don’t try this at home, you would end in the slammer.)
I do not know where the kitten torture happened, but if the perpetrator could be identified, then he could be prosecuted (say as he crosses a border). Certainly in many EU countries, and in the USA, he could be prosecuted. (Cats and dogs are protected by special laws: however, torturing a mouse or a mole is perfectly legal.)
More than 3,000 people have died from ebola exponentiating: time for adult subjects, people. There is more serious stuff out there than perforated lions and burning kittens.u
Meanwhile Daesh (the so called, self-declared “Caliphate”, also known as ISIS; “Daesh” sounds in Arabic like “crushing under foot” and a period of trouble, so it’s a strongly pejorative propaganda trick which I recommend) has killed thousands of innocents.
Yet some selfish “pacifists” demonstrated in Washington when the top generals of the USA testified in Congress that they may advise the president to send ground troops in Iraq, if the situation changes (the French Republic has already troops on the ground in Kurdistan, fighting Daesh… while keeping a low profile).
Withdrawing that burning kitten video from the Internet will just allow the perpetrator to escape justice more easily. And it would set a very bad precedent.
Namely the precedent that, if it’s criminal, it should be hidden.
I am of the opposite persuasion: no information, no moralization.
BTW, I am also all for full beheading videos of journalists, and good Samaritans, to be shown (after appropriate and strong warnings). It puts the factual, thus correct, light on some religious philosophies.
I am not an ostrich. My ancestors actually ate ostriches. And I cannot understand why ostriches would ask for ever more sand in their eyes. But then again, higher understanding determines who eats what. Or whom.
Patrice Ayme’
Tags: Auschwitz, Burning kitten, Facebook, Information, Moralization, Nazis, Video
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
September 18, 2014 at 7:02 am |
Should a screaming baby being raped be shown on the internet? Censorship, if you want to call it that, has its place. There is a difference between what I see as raw nature where crows ripped a screaming starling to pieces for food and a Facebook video showing human sadistic delight at the denigration and suffering of animals being tortured.
Should we all burn rubber tyres in the road, cut a few trees
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September 18, 2014 at 2:11 pm |
Dear Alex: Should a screaming baby…? Well, I do agree that such a video ought not to be accessible to non-adults. Or to adults who do not want to see them. I would even agree that a registry could be made by authorities of adults who, after fair and extensive warnings, view such videos.
A case in point was one of the WHO’s two main characters. He was sexually abused as a child, so he made, he said, research on child porno pics. He was then prosecuted (I think in the UK). I disapprove (he was later let go).
There is a fine line here. Representing slavery is legal. Enslaving someone is not. It’s the difference between Mens Rea and Actus Reus. In most legal condemnation, both have to be present (if I crush a child with my car, I am not culprit, if he ran out between 2 cars on the right before I could stop).
The connection between both is what I call thought crime (which goes beyond the aiding and abetting a la Charlie Manson).
For example I disapprove of many beheadings… but not all. I should have the right to evaluate the pro and cons of beheading.
Crimes against children are of a different nature from any other crimes. Indeed. Yet that does not mean they ought not to be looked at. Quite the opposite. If one forbids child rape representation, I am sorry to say there are way worse crimes that are committed against children. Censoring the former would lead naturally to censor the latter, and thus tolerating horrible child crime.
We are brains, we need to know (Mens Rea) before we can act (Actus Reus).
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September 18, 2014 at 5:35 pm |
Hi Patrice, I have written a blog post in reply to yours, which I will publish Saturday.
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September 18, 2014 at 6:08 pm |
Thanks Alex for your cooperation, I look forward to it. I don’t claim to have all the answers, so a debate is precious. However I think the difference between Mens Rea and Actus Reus is more important than ever. Yet, paradoxically, the notion of thought-crime ought now to become paramount. Is just looking a thought-crime? I don’t think so.
Mis-programming the young is the worst thought-crime. But it goes beyond adults looking at some crimes, but into showing partial and biased material.
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September 18, 2014 at 7:06 am |
…continued… down, use coal in our power stations again? If we disagree with such actions, refuse to do it, or associate with those that do or promote such activities, are we then indulging in censorship?
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September 18, 2014 at 4:49 pm |
Alex: I don’t understand what you say. What do trees have to do with it?
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September 18, 2014 at 5:41 pm |
What I mean (and my comment was confusing) is that individuals expressing choice to act or associate themselves with beneficial rather than harmful activities express liberty and not censorship. I have a blog post written and ready for posting Saturday on this subject.
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September 19, 2014 at 3:46 pm |
Someone’s benefit is often someone’s else harm
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September 19, 2014 at 5:20 pm
It is a social Darwinist viewpoint which is the dominant mentality of the current economic paradigm, this will have to change if humanity wishes to survive.
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September 19, 2014 at 7:46 pm
Alex: I don’t think that GMax meant it was a good thing. Or a “viewpoint”. I agree it’s just a fact. Indeed, much existing law is already meant to prevent run-away exploitationism. But new forms of exploitation (say the modern financial system) have risen, in areas not anticipated by the law.
I agree it has to change big time. Yet, “climate change” is a dream come true for many. Although it will harm most.
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September 18, 2014 at 10:16 am |
I grew up in a harsh way and feel surrounded by people who have known NO hardship. They stare at their small screens and have plugs in their ears and pay ZERO attention to their surroundings they care for nothing until it effects them directly.Not just the young but the retirees are even worse in that they care nothing for their own grandchildren and the are the largest voting block. sad.
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September 18, 2014 at 1:54 pm |
Yes. Some people even deny that there are hardships inflicted by people, because people could not possibly that bad. Seeing kittens on fire may help some of them to focus on reality.
Sir Mick Jagger suffers only when he sees the UK threatening to split in two, probably because he fears the same odious fate awaits the dozens of fiscal paradise under UK umbrella, in which he has squirreled away giant amounts of money (and I love Mick).
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September 18, 2014 at 11:18 am |
The basic rule of military warfare is to deny the enemy its objectives. The careful staging and filming of Jihadist assassinations is part of Daesh’s communication strategy; this is reason enough to deny them the benefit of that strategy, whatever it may be.
I can never stress enough that wars of extermination are very few and far between. Armed conflict usually is a contest of will and perception, where each party tries and CONVINCE the other it has lost and must fold. Some combatants prove very hard of hearing, like the Nazis in 1945, and need a lot of convincing, yet in the end the notion went through.
Thus the enemy’s communication strategies have to be analyzed and countered in earnest, not out of squeamishness but as a tool of war. Is that censorship? Alex Jones has a point: the free diffusion of Youtube vids of raped babies would contribute nothing to the states’ condemnation and pursuit of such crimes’ perpetrators.
In France, early Jihadist recruitment sites were kept open, on the logical assumption that this would allow detection and monitoring of the people who logged on. Now however,the number of these sick fvcks has grown to such an extent that these sites are routinely shut off, period.
Vids of Nature at work are another issue entirely. To vids of gored lions (and buffalo eaten alive, starting with the balls) I would add vids of male American buffaloes humping each other, of male chimps eating their mate’s offspring, of female rabbits eating their own litter, of sheep eating gull chicks, and other examples of Nature’s basic nastiness and rejection of family values, The Disneyesque view of wild life is a life-threatening stupidity.
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September 18, 2014 at 1:50 pm |
Dominique: I agree with all your points. Yet, I have other points. I long felt that the main weapon of Wahhabist Islam (and even much of Suni and Shia Islam… there are another 100 variants of Islam, although less known) was the assertion that it was a religion of peace.
It’s not: the Qur’an is much more gory than Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”. (That the sick Bible is also that way is both explanation, cause and no excuse.)
Each video of beheading of innocent people in the name of Islam helps to orient the vast public to question what it is in the basic teaching of Wahhabist Islam that brings perpetrators so readily to this state of mind.
And thus too for all and any act of violence.
I am always satisfied when I see rows of planes from the USA vomiting oceans of agent orange over Vietnam. Not that I particularly love to see Vietnamese being inflicted pain and suffering for generations to come, but because it helps me make some points I view as important.
OK, more later, let me see what Alex says.
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September 18, 2014 at 4:33 pm |
They want censorship, because they are like little children, afraid of the dark and scary.
Where is that dark, scary evil?
As Sir Mick Jagger sang:
“I looked inside myself and see my heart is black…”
(Paint It Black, 1966)
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September 18, 2014 at 5:54 pm |
His heart is blacker than ever… 😉
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September 18, 2014 at 7:23 pm |
Patrice, I think you miss the point and that it is the inconsistencies of FB’s actions that are at the heart of so many complaints. If FB said that nothing would removed, that the most terrible events could be posted, then FB users would know where they stand.
I am free to chose not to watch the video and to cancel my FB account.
Paul Handover
September 18, 2014 at 05:09
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September 18, 2014 at 7:24 pm |
OK. So your point is that Facebook censors some things, and not others, and thus uses control about what they view as moral, and what not?
Fine. It’s indeed intolerable. Yet, I have seen the New York Times do this since 2002. At least.
I do agree that censorship policies ought to be public, and precise. Let me suggest this:
Say a media is Christian, and announce they will censor anything that they view as NON Christian. Fine. But it should be made public that this particular media is biased. Also they would expose themselves to lawsuits for not respecting their mandate.
Similarly, a media declared free of censorship ought to stick to that under the threat of criminal pursuit.
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September 19, 2014 at 5:37 am |
I feel much more comfortable with that!
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September 19, 2014 at 5:40 am |
Then that’s what needs to be done. Legislate on the nature of media.
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September 19, 2014 at 3:55 pm |
FB can’t show illegal content, like pedophilia. Or incitement to terrorism, now illegal in the UK, France. So what’s the heck? Why should a video Alex and Paul want removed be removed, just because they can’t?
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September 19, 2014 at 3:59 pm |
FB cancelled some accounts, just because they were anti-Christian. Is that what you are thinking of?
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September 20, 2014 at 7:37 am |
[…] why in his own article, suggesting readers might consider doing the same thing. Patrice Ayme in his WordPress article condemned me and Paul Handover as supporting censorship by closing our accounts with Facebook, […]
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September 20, 2014 at 6:28 pm |
[…] why in his own article, suggesting readers might consider doing the same thing. Patrice Ayme in his WordPress article condemned me and Paul Handover as supporting censorship by closing our accounts with Facebook, […]
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