Iraq – KOZ

Saddam to die by hanging

UPDATE : December 30th 2006 : He’s dead. He was hanged at 6am local time.
He certainly did bad things and was responsible for many atrocities against mankind. But I feel slightly uncomfortable with the FACT that the equipment to create nuclear weapons was apparently sold to Iraq by the USA and the chemicals for nerve agents was apparently sold to Iraq by the UK. I think those responsible for those transations should also face questioning. IMHO.

I am not the most religious person. These ‘books’ seem to cause more harm than good. Especially when people ‘take sides’. I understand that all the religious ‘stories/fables’ appear to carry a similar message, and are indeed branches of the same tree. None of them condone killing another. That power is supposedly left up to ‘God’ – whoever or whatever he or she may be, to you.

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Wow. So they have sentenced Saddam to death.

I live in a country where we don’t legally kill people any more (UK). It’s an odd feeling thinking about someone’s death by the hand of the law. He certainly deserves to be punished for his crimes. In his country, they kill people for crimes such as his. They do in America too. I don’t know if I agree with it. If there is a God, then I doubt he or she would either.

Gandhi said “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind” – I tend to agree. Jesus told people to turn the other cheek.

Would it be enough to let him rot in jail? I don’t think so. But hanging? It’s so barbaric. Why not poison gas or injection? I don’t know. He made so many people suffer that he surely deserves what he gets. But suddenly it doesn’t feel like 2006 any more.

Disturbed and confused. But strangely pleased this farcical trial is now over.

Now let’s see what happens. I’m sure it won’t all be good.

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Shooting ITN’s Terry Lloyd

Posted on October 13, 2006 by kosso

I remember when this happened, while I was working at BBC News. I thought it was terrible that a journalist should get killed, and even be in harms way to such an extent to deliver a story. I was even asked if I minded the vast amount of hours I was putting in, to prepare our systems for war – I said ‘Look, some journos are sat in the back of a tank on their way to the front-line – of course I don’t mind!!’

But there was something different about this particular news of another casualty of war, when viewed from within a news organisation: the footage we see, compared to what is broadcast.

I heard the evening after they found out that Terry had been shot from a friend who worked at ITN at the time, how they learned of his death.

In global TV newsrooms, you tend to find a TV on every desk, plumbed into a huge network of AV feeds, with split-sceen, direct acess, all-sorts of video feeds from studios, camera teams, edit suites all over the organisation (I actually watch the live feed to White House and saw a soldier standing in for Bush to get the lighting right, before GW sat down, had his hear combed and informed the world that war had broken out in Bagdhad)

Here are some pics I took with my cameraphone at the time:

Apparently, at ITN one day, they were looking at a live unbroadcasted video feed coming from a camera team in Iraq. The camera had panned across a pile of dead Iraqi bodies that they had found. While panning around the bodies, apparently one of the people in the newsroom at ITN said “That’s Terry!” – His body was found with the Iraqis. To me, this could only mean one thing – that he had been killed by ‘our’ guys and they had piled him in with the rest of them. Awful. This is (apparently) how they learned of Terry’s death.

The stories on CNN, The Times and BBC that I have seen so far, seem to say there is potentially edited footage related to this incident. I’d have to say that it wouldn’t surprise me.

BBC, News