Horrors of War: All-negative Pic Thread

[Joe]

Bahrain, eh...my old boss is stationed there right now (reserves), I think.

[Master of Ossus]

Ok, you raised some interesting points that I want to counter. So I retract my last statement of my last post.

What a shocker.

LOL. Which is more indicative of the actual intent of someone? The first sentence, or another sentence he said WELL after the original one, and AFTER people had attacked what they perceived as his motivations for that first sentence?

I'd go by what he said more frequently in explaination of that first sentence. I'd go by what he said after he had a chance to think about it for a bit. I'd go with the MOST RECENT statement that he said in explaination of his original intent. I'd go by the statement that he's beaten us over the head with. That's what I'D go with. But we differ there. Agree to disagree.

In other words, you're willing to go with someone's statement WELL after the fact, and take that as being more accurate than the ones he made while the actual event was going on? Not only does this lead to inaccuracies in memory, but it also introduces the potential of altering something after the fact.

In other words, the media is apolitical, so it's okay to DELIBERATELY TAKE only SOME of the images that the media is showing by introducing a biasing filter, and then pass those SELECTED IMAGES as being non-biased because they came from an unbiased source? That's the biggest load of crap I've ever read.

No no no. We're displaying the images that the media DOESN'T show: the images that are CAUGHT in that filter (not of bias, but of decency). And they're not politically motivated. We've shown dead soldiers from BOTH sides. That ELIMINATES bias. Contrastingly, the original thread shows mostly pro-American images, showing a great bias.

Bullshit. You haven't posted ANYTHING from the "other side" here. You're not creating balance, you're putting ALL of the emphasis in this thread on ONE SIDE. In fact, the frickin' title of this thread proudly displays your deliberate attempts to create a bias by exploiting the deaths of Iraqi civilians and soldiers from both sides in the war. That does not eliminate bias, that merely creates a SECOND bias. It would have balanced the original thread to depict those images THERE. Instead, you created a SECOND bias by moving this to a separate thread, CLEARLY and INTENTIONALLY biasing the images that are shown here, and then calling the board "balanced." You then have the audacity to claim that balance is created by having two completely separate threads, which BOTH house biased sets of images and neither of which presents both sides. In short, you accuse the media of "bias" by posting only one kind of image, then do the same yourself and claim to be creating "balance." That's self-contradictory. Nice try, Queeb, but creating a second bias does nothing to eliminate the first. Your excuse is just an after-the-fact attempt to explain away atrocious behavior, and SHOCKING disregard for the deaths and suffering of the various people depicted in this thread.

Whenever you go about picking and choosing what to pass on on the basis of a particular desire to portray something a certain way, you create a bias. Obviously, in this case, that bias was deliberately created for the purpose of making a political statement.

Well fine, but if you're going to say that, then you have to say the same for the other thread. After all, that's using imagery to support a political bias as well, isn't it? It's just that the bias fits YOUR political agenda, so it's not so bad. The coin has two sides.

No. The other thread was established to depict IMAGES OF THE WAR. It was not set up to exclude one portion of the war. It was an ALL-INCLUSIVE thread. The fact that Stas then cowardly moved his political pandering to another thread does nothing to remove the fact that these images would have been acceptable over there in an effort to "balance" the original. That he neglected to do this and created his own intentionally biased thread, when no deliberate bias on the original thread existed, shows the lengths he will go to to exploit the deaths and suffering of peoples in order to explain his political position.

Sure. So it's better to balance a particular thread's perspective not by posting on THAT thread, but by starting a completely separate one? The original one was supposed to regard images from the war. Last time I checked, these are images from the war. I don't know what happened to your other thread, but I don't think that you can properly defend this thread's existence as a separate entity simply by explaining that it was trying to balance another pre-existing thread that could easily have accomodated everything that now appears in this one.

No, you're not LISTENING. The thread was moved for DECENCY'S sake, not because of a grand political motivation. The thread's LOCATION has nothing to do with balance. It just keeps little kids and sensitive posters from stumbling across imagery they didn't know was there. The only thing that has to do with balance is the motivation behind posting those pictures ANYwhere. The media refrains from showing these images, so we show them instead. It's not political bias, it's picking up the scraps that the media leaves behind.

Is that what he said in the opening post? No, of course not. These images would have fit with the thread designed to house IMAGES OF WAR. Are these images? Yes. Are they from the war? Yes. That was the appropriate place for them. Stas then cowardly ran over here, intentionally biased this thread, excused his atrocious behavior as an attempt to inform (in short, taking the position that he should be treated as a member of the press by doing so), and ignored the fact that he could have posted these on the original thread. Would it have been just as easy for him to make another post on the ORIGINAL thread that said "Click this link at your own risk, the image is graphic?" Would it have been just as easy for him to say, "To try to balance the perspective, I've decided to post these gruesome images in an effort to remind people that others are dying in Iraq as a result of the military actions going on there?" Of course. Would either have prevented "children" from accidentally "stumbling onto" these images? Yes. These actions would have been easier, but they would not have fulfilled Stas' true intentions of exploiting the pain and deaths of people in Iraq, so he instead decided to begin his own thread. That he failed MISERABLY at taking the least drastic means not only displays his dastardly motivations, but also shows off his ignorance of basic human principle.

This isn't just splitting hairs. This is an important distinction. In my line of work, people have been fired over MUCH less than this. If SD.net were actually a press agency, the lawsuits would be piling up because Stas clearly did NOT create an apolitical climate, nor did he appear interested in reporting a balanced set of facts. Instead, he INTENTIONALLY reported from only one side of the issue. Should FOX be allowed to say "it's okay we portray democrats as being gay, because CNN always portrays them as being straight?" Of course not. The same thing's going on here. Even if there is an existing bias, you cannot combat that by creating another bias to "counter" the original. You're still supposed to show both sides of an issue. In this case, Stas clearly intended to ignore this principal in his use of the images of dead humans to further his political agenda, in a gross crime against morality and ethics.

Again, by the same logic, the original thread refused to show the gruesomness of war and therefore was not showing both sides. So the creators of both threads are to blame. That's logical, is it not?

Bullshit. The creator of the other thread did not intentionally bias the images there. He created a thread in which people could depict images of what's going on in the war. Stas Bush then took this a step further by EXCLUDING an entire "side" of the war, displaying only images that he wished to exploit to further his own political agenda. That's bullshit. His actions speak of an astonishing lack of morality and ethics, and his explanations after the fact do NOT explain away his actions. Instead, his actions may ONLY be described as political pandering, using images of those who have suffered and died during the conflict. You cannot blame someone for starting a thread, and then having the entire thread go one way. Is it Mike Wong's fault that there are very few people on this board that believe Trek would defeat Wars? Mike was willing to listen to arguments from the other side, provided that they were strong and scientifically founded. You cannot blame someone for starting a thread if it does not go in the direction they had wanted it to go in. I'm sorry, but the user who established the original, unbiased thread, is not responsible for EITHER Stas Bush's cowardly and opportunistic actions or his utter lack of morals. The fact that Stas Bush would attempt to create "balance" by artificially biasing another thread, instead of posting on the already existing one that was CREATED FOR THAT PURPOSE demonstrates clearly Stas' true intentions, in spite of his later lies.

[Queeb Salaron]

I'm not going to debate this anymore. We're going in circles, and apparently we keep missing the other one's point. So I'll concede to that point for the sake of decency. Fine. I'm using this thread as a tool to further my own political agenda. But I have that right as does every member of this forum.

That being said, http://download.consumptionjunction.com ... _19291.jpg

[Dalton]

I'm not going to debate this anymore. We're going in circles, and apparently we keep missing the other one's point. So I'll concede to that point for the sake of decency. Fine. I'm using this thread as a tool to further my own political agenda. But I have that right as does every member of this forum.

Oh really.

Bye-bye.

LOCKED.