WAR PORN
WAR PORN SWAP SCHEME
I was recently apprised by someone from Belgium of a bizarre and disturbing internet porn-swap. A porn site that is registered in Florida has offered US troops in Iraq free access to sexual pornography (ostensibly pictures of “real wives and girlfriends” a la Hustler’s “Beaver Shots”) in exchange for the more necrophilic brand of pornography — grotesque pictures of war dead, often collected as photographic “trophies” by troops in combat.
Once again, we can see how the commodification of titillation, whether that is through the powerful patriarchal constructions of sexual desire associated with objectification and humiliation or the extreme objectification of killing, creates an escalation dynamic. As the consumer becomes more and more jaded by the content of this material, capitalist competition among the producers of the material are driven to ever more extreme depictions to overcome these new threshholds of consumer habituation… it takes more and more to get that buzz.
This porn site is registered in Florida but operated in Amsterdam. It is called “Now that’s fucked up.”
Here is the link but be forewarned… the title of the web site is more than appropriate. This is some twisted stuff.
At last count, over 100 US troops were participating in this swap. Even more interesting is the fact that the Belgians who discovered this have repreatedly tried to get the US media to pick this story up, but to no avail.
In one example, a solider sent in a picture of an Iraqi woman who had suffered a traumatic amputation of her leg. The photograph, taken in a hospital, exposed the woman’s genitals. The soldier who sent in the pciture added the comment, “nice puss, bad foot,” and asked the web moderator if this picture qualified him to receive the free pornography.
Here is an excerpt from the site:
“The Rules For This Section
“If you are a U.S. Soldier stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other combat area and would like free SUPPORTER access for the site, you can post real pictures you or your buddies have taken while you have been deployed.
“The pictures can be of anything over there, the only rule is that they are yours and taken by you or your friends. I do not want already published pictures that were taken by news people. This is supposed to be an area where we can see pictures posted by the solders themselves.
“Just post your pics like you normally would and when I see them I will approve you for free access to the wife and g/f area. There have only been a few people cheat from this but I do now know what kind of pics to expect from the guys over there. So please do not waste my time if you are not a military person by just posting iraq pics you found on CNN or something.” ‘
There you have it. If you find this as messed up as I do, I suggest you resend this post as widely as possible. The news media is not going to get this story out. Nothing is more disruptive, it seems, than pointing out how our idealized military masculinity is in fact a racist, patriarchal death-cult.
peggy:
About six hours ago I looked at a few pictures on this site. Thought about them for a while, and about what they mean. Tried to return to the site just now to see the rest of the pictures, and found that the site was down. Don’t know if this is a coincidence or not.
What the pictures portray is horrendous. That is what war looks like. When I returned to the site, I was wondering whether there were similar pictures of the mutilated bodies of US soldiers. But, as I said, when I returned, the site was inaccessible. Perhaps you could tell us whether there are pictures of “our own” guys or girls with their heads blown off, their guts spilling out, their genitals exposed or blasted away altogether. Because, as you know, some of “our own” will have ended up just like that.
The site is ambiguous. For some, perhaps, it is “titillating.” But my thought as I viewed the pictures was, _of course_ the kids who took those pictures are fucked up. They are fucked up by the war. The war itself is fucked up. And that to me is the main message of the site. And that is why the US Gov would not want such pictures shown - not because they expose the military to be racist and patriarchal. Who doesn’t know that already? Those very traits are what attract certain kinds of kids to the military in the first place. But once they see the reality, they may realize that it is not so fun and glorious after all.
1 September 2005, 11:42 pmthecutter:
I wouldn’t go to the site to see the pictures, but did look at the rules link. The comments included someone protesting that it wouldn’t be so great if we thought that something of the sort might happen to GIs. Someone of course corrected him and told him that the site moderator was really great and made sure it was only the “enemy” who had the picture of his or her mutiliation. Someone else even said, “Hey, when I’m dead you can put my picture up” as some kind of justification.
I tend to think that the thing they are forgetting is that it is unfathomable for Iraqis to do such a thing, yet the Americans feel morally superior.
Thanks for this article Stan. (forwarded from Uruknet). Keep up your great work.
2 September 2005, 3:09 amAlycia A. Barr:
Could only make it through 1/2 doz.files on that site, then got physically ill. This is what our “best of the best” are resorting to for entertainment…or maybe that should be reduced to. The disrespected engaged in overseas will eventually be brought back home in one form or another, we’re already seeing it.
2 September 2005, 5:20 amBy the way, excellent breakdown on the “Exit Strategy” being used by the Congressmen as a diversion, and division in the peace community.
In Peace and Humanity
Lawrence:
Thank you for bringing this out. War is horrible as it is, we don’t need this dirty trade added to it.
2 September 2005, 8:59 amEven though I understand that it must be somehow a coping strategy for the soldiers, there must be better ways do deal with war trauma or with what they saw in Iraq.
nuttymango:
I’m so tired of fighting a world that seems hell-bent on normalizing the worst aspects of human nature. But at least I’m not alone thanks to blogs like this one.
The latest assault on my peace of mind? Pat Robertson supports a “born again Christian” jihad against women in Guatamala. You folks probably know all about it but I just learned of it over at http://www.warandpiece.com. Here’s the link:
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002426.html
4 September 2005, 9:40 amJosh:
I saw the exact picture Goff describes in his article. Some of the other pics are more gruesome, but the picture of the woman’s leg struck is what struck me and left me feeling truely cold. I don’t know why, maybe just the sheer absurdity or juxtaposition of the grievous wound next to the vagina, litteraly “war-porn”, but it just left my mind blank…
I hope some soldiers heed Goff’s call to not lose their humanity; a couple have, at least.
11 September 2005, 2:55 amJosiah:
Sorry to resurrect this unsavory topic, but people need to see this. I just found a web site where soldiers in Iraq are posting videos they have made of killing Iraqi civilians. This is one of them, and it’s called “Fallujah, Iraq: 2004″:
http://video.freevideoblog.com/Player.aspx?fileid=A04259D0-6891-43F1-91F5-7BD4A6214F88&kw=81&p=0
Talk about a “patriarchal death cult”. This film cross-cuts images of U.S. soldiers bombarding houses and buildings in Fallujah in 2004 with images of Iraqi corpses (all male), set to some kind of satanic rock-rap soundtrack. It’s supposed to be entertaining, I guess. I did some digging and found out that this film is posted on a web site funded (indirectly, at the very least) by the department of defense.
It’s available on the “Free Video Blog†as the first of twenty videos on the “Iraq War†channel. This channel is sandwiched between the “Funny†channel and the “Kids†channel, along with eighteen others constituting a bizarre mixture of the innocuous (“Soccer,†“Catsâ€) and the crude (“Drunk People,†“Fightsâ€). The Free Video Blog is part of the Vidiac Network, which is “one of the many successful companies to grow out of Georgia Tech.†(http://www.vidiac.com/about.htm) Anybody here from Atlanta might know that the Georgia Institute of Technology is a major hub of military research, and in 2000 was ranked fourteenth among American universities in Department of Defense funding. (http://www.utwatch.org/war/)
This video is clearly not some anonymous, amateur production, but direct outgrowths of the U.S. military budget. According to the credits, “Fallujah, Iraq: 2004″ was not directed by some low-ranking soldier, but by “Lieutenant Colonel Alanoâ€. So here we have a case where a mid-ranking officer is filming his troops killing Iraqi men, women and children, tweaking the footage to make it seem like some kind of adrenaline-pumping, hateful music video, and posting it on a pentagon-funded web site. Last I checked, nearly 8,000 people had downloaded it. The first comment is, “very good man very good! this video is a must! ”
This is what neo-colonial reality TV looks like.
20 December 2005, 12:03 am