YouTube Bad for Israel

First there was footage of the flotilla on YouTube, now it's individual soldiers.  There have been several YouTube videos lately, by Israeli soldiers, that have embarrassed Israel.  Several have mocked Arab prisoners, although it is not known if all of them are real.  But it is a problem.

Even if faked, it highlights the extent to which some Israeli soldiers have dehumanized their Palestinian foes, said Dana Zimmerman of Yesh Din. [Israeli rights group]

"Whether it's real or not — once it seems OK or cool or funny to have detained human beings with their eyes blindfolded in degrading positions — it says a really bad thing about our society," Zimmerman said.

New YouTube Iraq

There's a new YouTube section set up for the Mulitnational Forces in Iraq. It's www.youtube.com/MNFIraq. There you can watch actual combat movies, edited for security and offensiveness of course. I'm really not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it will allow ordinary people to see what the troops over there are seeing. But on the other hand, it could go the way of Reality TV and you could get people cheering for other people to die because they just can't grasp that this isn't a reality show, it IS reality. I'm reminded of Max Headroom. I guess I'm showing my age there too. In the 1980s, Max Headroom was a TV show (among other things) and it's vision of the future was several hundred TV channels and people were just glued to the TV and TV shows were everything. I feel like our society has started down that slope already.

Update: What a Turkey! Redux

I lost the link, but I did see an article about Turkey and YouTube. Apparently the offending clip has been taken down, so Turkey is now allowing people to access YouTube again.

What a Turkey! Redux

Yet more Turkey information. Now they've banned YouTube! Apparently there are clips on YouTube that insult Ataturk, the result of fighting between Greeks & Turks. Hey - at least the fighting is digital, not physical. So Turkey has gotten YouTube access blocked in Turkey. That'll get them into the European Union!