Beheading

"They're horrible here with their obsession for beheading. I'm surprised anyone's survived."
--Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique

"A young German-Catholic woman said in 1993: 'The dream of the individual is to be two, the dream of the State is to be one'. They cut off her head."
--Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique

"The other argument often used to suppress pictures cites the rights of relatives. When a weekly newspaper in Boston briefly posted online a propaganda video made in Pakistan that showed the 'confession' (that he was Jewish) and subsequent ritual slaughter of the kidnapped American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi in early 2002, a vehement debate took place in which the right of Pearl's widow to be spared more pain was pitted against the newspaper's right to print and post what it saw fit and the public's right to see. The video was quickly taken offline. Notably, both sides treated the three and a half minutes of horror as a snuff film. Nobody could have learned from the debate that the video had other footage, a montage of stock accusations (for instance, images of Ariel Sharon sitting with George W. Bush at the White House, Palestinian children in Israeli attacks), that it was a political diatribe and ended with dire threats and a list of specific demands--all of which might suggest that it was worth suffering through (if you could bear it) to confront better the particular viciousness and intransigence of the forces that murdered Pearl. It is easier to think of the enemy as just a savage who kills, then holds up the head of his prey for all to see."
--Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others