Good Thing/Bad Thing

"Nick Berg beheading video" is the most popular search term on the net this week. Network news has driven millions of people to the Internet for news. This is a good thing.

"Nick Berg beheading video" is a "video" of the "beheading" of "Nick Berg." It is a snuff film. This is a bad thing.

Just as all journalists dreaded having to explain Clinton's zipper problem to a family audience when the only thing to quote was a report that was 100% about sex, so all journalists today have got to face a video that they've reported but not shown out of respect for our delicate sensibilities. As the proud recipient of their reportage, I am supposed to presume that the reporter himself knows what he's talking about and has actually seen the evidence in question but, EEEEW, nobody wants to look at a graphic video of an American beheading, and if they do, they're not going to study it and run it over and over, because if they do they'll start to notice things, things that aren't quite right, like the chair is the same chair in the photos of Iraqi pyramids in prison, that the executioners are white, things that make the official explanation of the source of the tape look like ridiculous lies, things you would only notice if you actually watched the fucking tape.

After slamming Private Jessica down our throats as a manufactured piece of reality TV masquerading as news, you'd have thought the government would have had enough of humiliation, but no, according to many viewers they went and manufactured another piece of anti-terrorist propaganda that's so shoddily produced it would make Ed Wood proud.

I used to be a film martyr, subjecting myself to endless screenings of loathsome crap just to protect the public from plunking down their bucks just to be miserable. Lately, I've been a news martyr, subjecting myself to endless e-mails of loathsome crap just to protect the public from believing what they're told. 

But this goes too far. If they had somehow supplied videotapes of Clinton's actual indiscretions, I wouldn't have watched, and I'm not watching this. I know how I obsess on things. I haven't been able to get "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" out of my head for the past week. The last thing I need is a graphic image of a decapitation floating around my brain. It'll never leave. It'll always be there for me to think about and I don't need it. My internal storage device has already fulfilled its quota of graphic images of man's inhumanity to man. Who could forget...

Sorry, I've got other images to dwell on, and so my devotion to my sanity supercedes my devotion to journalism. I won't watch the Berg beheading. You can't make me. I don't feel like barfing today.

But thank God for those who went ahead and barfed because it's the head with the potential to bring down the Bush Administration. Combined with the fact that the Red Cross says that 70-90% of all Iraqi prisoners are guilty of nothing more than being Iraqis, and that Bush ran the Texas prison system pretty much the same way he runs the Iraqi prison system, we could be seeing some repeat headlines...

1998: "Clinton Brought Down by Head"
2004: "Bush Brought Down by Head"

These people have stronger stomachs than I. Marc Perkel in particular has assembled an amazing page full of pix and an animated discussion of what happened. He is your film martyr of the week. I remain a mere messenger at the mercy of my faith in his honest descriptions of what he saw. Here's the Disinfotainment Today condensed version of stuff I was sent. You think you were confused before...

From Michael Thomas:

"Hey, I've done the research. The guys executing the poor dude are not Arab!! When executing, they don't cover their faces or anything else on their body. They expose everything when beheading someone. I don't know who the guys are, but they're not Arab."

 From Who dun it? The mysterious case of Nicholas Berg by Jane Stillwater:

    Was it even actually Nicholas Berg? Can a big man lose that much weight in just two weeks? Maybe his prison guards should open a health spa or write a book. "The South Baghdad Diet." We don't even know if the body belonged to Nicholas Berg.
    What was the motive?" Assuming it was Berg, why was he killed? Was it in order to take our minds off of Abu Ghraib? Mission accomplished. Further, Berg's father was on a right-wing hit list. The Bushies obviously didn't like him.     Who had the opportunity? Who had custody of Berg? The FBI? That's discouraging. Sidebar: What was the FEDERAL Bureau of Investigation doing in Iraq? Aren't they supposed to be here at home chasing bad guys?
    What question would Hercule Peroit ask? "What shape was the body in when they found it?" This is an interesting question. "Was it decomposed?" After three weeks, it should have been. If it wasn't, then the culprits probably used that old murder mystery trick of storing the body in the freezer. Who, in Iraq, had a freezer? It wasn't the terrorists! Half the time, they don't even have electricity in Baghdad.
    If the body was discovered the day of the beheading (what WAS the day of the beheading? I'm all confused), how was it found so soon? What with all the other bodies stacked like cordwood in Iraq, how did they even know it was Berg?
    Where was the blood? Have you watched the video? They hold up the head. No blood comes out. That's weird. That's really weird.
    If the rebels did it, why would they even release such a film?" Surely they knew it would hurt their cause.
    More clues. What was that plastic chair doing in the picture? That was an American chair. I have one just like it in my back yard. Does that mean I am a suspect? And who were all those fat guys standing around -- especially if one of those fat guys was what-his-name, the terrorist with his leg blown off. He could stand around that long? The fat guys all looked like those pictures of the "contractors" who guard Paul Bremer. I have one word for them. "Weightwatchers." If you're gonna star in a terrorist flick, you gotta look the part. And check out the flack jacket pictures at http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000233.html (courtesy of Detective Maggie at "I Want My Country Back")
    And what about those terrible yellow Abu-Ghraib-colored walls in the background? Lula would have been revolted! "Damn skippy I would." Guys, get yourself a decorator.
    In which Middle Eastern country do they behead people? Not in Iraq. That is a technique most favored by George Bush's pals in Arabia -- the same country that gave us the people who allegedly highjacked the 9-11 planes (and left their passports for evidence too -- but that's another mystery, another book).

 From Marc Perkel:

    The masked man in the beheading video claims to be the infamous terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Initially CNN said that the voice doesn't match him. They said he didn't even have a Jordanian accent. However the CIA confirms that it is him. But - are they correct?
    While everyone is listening to the voice they are ignoring a bigger clue - the legs. Two years ago Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had one of his legs amputated. Since then he's never adapted to a prosthetic leg. The terrorist who did the killing had two legs and as rather nimble on them. The terrorist has the wrong number of legs. So - in the debate about the identity of the killer - I'd say the CIA doesn't have a leg to stand on.

From anonymous e-mail

1. Both Drudge and Aljazeera report that "A body found on Monday by US military patrol along a roadside over the weekend was identified as Berg's."

Note the confused reporting in this direct quote, "on Monday", "over the weekend", by US military patrol. Was it found on Monday or over the weekend--which one? Does this make sense to anyone? Or was someone scrambling a press release (in panic) of wording that was hastily contrived, and uncertain themselves about how the facts would compare to the report?

Secondly, how was the body identified as "Berg's" if it was headless? Or was it? How do you quickly identify a body without a head? 
Third, WHO were the U.S. forces that found it? Were they the same ones involved in his illegal detention? 

2. If the body was found on Monday (May 10th), or previously "over the weekend" (prior), how could the execution and video be taped on May 11th, as is reported? "The statement in the video was signed off with Zarqawi's name and dated 11 May" (Drudge and Aljazeerah). An Arab magic trick indeed...to be able to execute a man on video tape ("May 11"), AFTER HIS BODY IS FOUND BY US FORCES, on "May 10th"!!!!! 

3. The video was dated May 11th, typical Judeo-Masonic (CIA/MOSSAD) signature and M.O., like 9/11, and the recent 3/11 in Spain. Sorry, there is an M.O. to this "terrorism" that matches that of government psy-ops! Funny how they never mention the obvious pattern of dating isn't it? And the "terroists" signed his name to the video, though they wore hoods and masks! (Why?)

4. Berg's father filed law suit against the illegal detention of their son....and, bingo, he was released the next day (but not very popular we can be certain)! "His father, Nick, filed a lawsuit on 5 April stating Berg was being held illegally by the US military in Iraq. The next day Berg was released." (Aljazeera and Drudge, the new partners from hell)

5. The Guatanamo Bay type US issue prison suit is very suspicious! Either he was handed over to the alleged "terrorists" in it--meaning US forces complicity to rid them of an American "dissident"--or the executions are Government--i.e. CIA (well-fed, lily white hands, hooded...but leaving the name of the executioner?)!

6. According to the video clock notations in the film, the "execution" took place between 13:46 and 13:47....apparently around 1:46 to 1:47 pm. Why is the video time not in Arabic? Do Arabs use military time? Drudge 

7. "God is great".....typical propaganda to libel militant Muslim jihaders with the crime, while they have lily white hands, their victim in US issue prison clothes, and video time in US military English!

8. The TIMING of this event being reported to the American public, on May 11th evening (note how quickly this went to full-blown news coverage by 6:30pm EDT on the very day of the execution...... fast...... and conveniently. Even MORE remarkable is how this was reported to Congress (not sure when) during WORK HOURS IN SESSION, precisely as the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, etc., were being grilled, and Senators were investigation the horrific prisoner abuse, and who was behind it! TALK ABOUT WELL-COORDINATED AND EXPEDITED 1) EXECUTION 2) BODY FOUND, IDENTIFIED, 3)NOTIFICATION OF KIN, 4) REPORTED TO CONGRESS...5) RELEASE IN FULL DETAIL WITH VIDEO TO NETWORK NEWS..........ALL IN ONE AMAZING DAY!!!!! Is that a credible timetable WITHOUT government involvement? The 9/11 "hijackers" were not even identified for a couple days....but this one is instantly solved, and we are expected to swallow it whole without
choking!

From a Saudi press release:

 
Speaking to the media in Saudi Arabia, Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan condemned the decapitation of American Nicholas Berg in Iraq as "criminal and inhuman” and called the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. military personnel "despicable and criminal."

From Doctor Raul Castro Guevara:

There is no way that the individual in the video was alive and his heart pumping while his neck was being cut. In these cases, while the heart is pumping, cutting a person artery in the neck, would cause copious amounts of blood to spurt all over the immediate environment. In my opinion the video is a fraud.

 From a reporter on the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, May 12th:

"...the CIA did it to take the heat off the Pentagon."

Gay Marriage Legalized in Iraq

Hmmms of the Week

Pick a liquid, any liquid, and check it out in this eye-opening graph of The Price of a Gallon. Did you know you're paying $2,701.52 a gallon for the ink in your printer? Makes gasoline look cheap. Jeez, it's basically just coloring added to isopropyl alcohol, an oil-based product. Hmmm. Bill Gates in league with your government. Hmmm.

Gardening Trumps 1st Amendment

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is blocking a major anti-war, social justice demonstration in Central Park put together by United for Peace because the lawn was just replanted.

Plug of the Week

In gratitude towards the television media for sending so many people to their competitor, the Internet, the Internet hereby attempts to send Internet readers to the television media by mentioning the most relevent thing on TV right now, Strip Search on HBO, which was finished before the whole Iraqi prison disaster. 

Brilliantly written by Tom Fontana of Oz and directed by Sidney Lumet, Strip Search starts with an anonymous white woman in an anonymous oriental country who is grabbed from her life by government henchmen and brought in for questioning. The questioning goes on for ten mysterious minutes as the interrigator refuses to get to the point, then it cuts to an anonymous Arab man in what is certainly America who has been pulled from his life by henchment and brought in for questioning. It's the diametric opposite of the preceding scene, a white woman with total power over an ethnic man vs. an ethnic man with total power over a white woman, except for one thing. The dialogue in both scenes, the words coming out of their mouths, is verbatim. Same script, different location, different actors. Once you're in on the gimmick, we watch in awe as the editing gets masterful, sometimes repeating scenes, sometimes cutting back and forth within a scene, all creating a delerious sense of expectation. The strip search itself is horrifying under both circumstances, with exactly the sort of graphic detail you'd expect from the producer of Oz. It asks WAY more questions than it gives answers, making it one of the most thought provoking pieces I've ever seen. 

Walk away from your computer. It's on your television. If you don't get HBO, steal it. If you don't know someone with HBO, get over to their house and demand they get it so you can watch Strip Search on their dime.

"I'm what you might call old school. To stop crime, you threaten criminals with physical punishment, imprisonment, death. But these suicide bombers and such, they've already chosen to die, they're not afraid of prosecution, so we have to stop them before they act, we have to keep them alive. That's their punishment. Make the bastards wish they were dead. Humiliate them. Make them aware that if they die in here, alone, that their deaths will have no meaning, no resonance, no effect on anyone whatsoever."
- both interrogators in Strip Search -

Training U.S. Forces Guarding Iraqi Prisoners Did Not Receive

1. Do not beat the prisoners. 
2. Do not strip the prisoners and force them to lie on top of each other in a pile. 
3. Do not put leashes around their necks, or force male prisoners to wear women's underwear on their heads, even if it seems like it would be a fun thing to do. 
4. Do not force prisoners to perform sex acts of any kind on each other. 
5. Do not set dogs on the prisoners. 
6. Do not rape the prisoners. 
7. Do not kill the prisoners. 

(According to Pentagon officials our forces are now receiving this important training.)

- Ironic Times -

Award Winner of the Week

Paul Krassner and Barry Crimmins
Krassner, along with others, including Amy Goodman, Greg Palast and Al Giordano (publisher of Narco News)
- received the Uppie (for Upton Sinclair) Award for freedom of expression 
at the Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro

Mr. Conspiracy Says...

Game of the Week

You're a Yeti and you've got to springboard the penguins to the gulls. Don't ask.

Song of the Week

Al Franken
Sung to the tune of "Tomorrow" from the Broadway show "Annie"

Al Franken
Al Franken
I luv's yuh
Al Franken
You're only a dream away

Don't Take My Word For It

"In U.S. intelligence, there was no prohibition of hiring anyone in the Gestapo and SS."
- Timothy Naftali -

"Chaos is the order that lives on, so it must be pure, and that is why it is the opposite of haste."
- Why Proofread? A Gallery of Bad Sentences by Real Students -

"I read where you were shot five times in the tabloids."
- Nora Charles -

"It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."
- Nick Charles -

"While the Abu Ghraib crisis has left administration officials falling over themselves with protestations of compassion, it's worth remembering that the Bush White House has fought hard against the International Convention Against Torture, especially a proposal to establish voluntary inspections of prisons and detention centers in signatory countries, such as the United States."
- Heather Wokusch: From Texas to Abu Ghraib: The Bush Legacy of Prisoner Abuse -

"Arrests as described in these allegations tended to follow a pattern. Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members  into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property. They arrested suspects, tying their hands in the back with flexi-cuffs, hooding them and  taking them away. Sometime they arrested all adult males present in a house including elderly, handicapped  or sick people. Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching  and kicking and striking with rifles. Individuals were often led away in whatever they happened to be wearing at the time of arrest -- sometime in pyjamas or underwear -- and were denied the opportunity to gather a few  essential belongings, such as clothing, hygiene items, medicine or eyeglasses." 
- Red Cross report on US abuses in Iraq -

"Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable. But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons. ... On the battlefield, Myers and Rumsfelds errors would be called a lack of situational awareness a failure that amounts to professional negligence. This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war."
- The Army Times -

"If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army."
- Frederick the Great -

"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity."
- Harlan Ellison -

"Kyle's mom's a bitch, she's a big fat bitch, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world. She's a stupid bitch, if there ever was a bitch, she's a bitch to all the boys and girls."
- Cartman: South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut -

"Although the GOP has tried to speciously tar John Kerry as a political chameleon who will change his stand on any issue at the drop of a hat, this may be a refreshing change after experiencing four years of a president who won't change his position even in the shadow of a bank safe dropped from a fourth-floor window."
- R.S. Janes (who also supplied many of the quotes this week. Thanks dude) -

"The United States has permitted American companies to ship electric-shock weapons and mechanical restraints to 39 countries accused of torturing dissidents and detainees, according to a U.S. News review of export documents and State Department reports. The inquiry established that in the past two years, for instance, stun batons, stun guns, and similar devices were shipped to Haiti, India, Lebanon, and Turkey; the State Department has cited authorities in those countries for torturing prisoners with electric shock devices. Some companies have even found ways to ship their products overseas without seeking a government license, the inquiry found."
- U.S. News & World Report -

"On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq -- troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani -- Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world."
- Fareed Zakaria -

"Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth."
- Mahatma Gandhi -

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying...that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
- Alexander Pope -

"If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out."
- Rabindranath Tagore -

"The world, as addicted as it is to putting everyone on a shelf with a price tag, persists in creating unique and extraordinary individuals, capable of thinking for themselves; exactly how this happens is a mystery, because they are rarely encouraged or praised at the outset of their iconoclasm, but without them them we'd all be shivering in dark caves trying to figure out how to attach a sharp piece of stone to a stick so that we can kill something for dinner."
- Dr. Jess Richana -

    "The video of the beheading [of Nicholas Berg] leads one to believe that Abu Musab Zarqawi, a man wanted by Iraqi and U.S. authorities for having ties with Al-Qaeda and considered behind most attacks on civilians in Iraq, personally performed the beheading... Really? Why wear a mask if you are announcing to the world that you did it?...
   "However, it must be said that the beheading of Berg is the most despicable, most dishonorable, and most vile result of the war. An overwhelming majority of Iraqis I have spoken with couldn't agree more. I watched the video footage twice and saw the grimace, the shock, and the horror of Arab journalists and bystanders."
- Firas Al-Atraqchi, Zarqawi Be Damned -

"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld."
- Michael Berg: Nicholas Berg's father as quoted on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, May 12, 2004 - 

"I think it's still in question whether Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and, quite frankly, General Myers can command the respect and the trust and the confidence of the military and the American people to lead this country. Aside from the fact we're losing the Iraqi people, we're losing the Muslim, Arab world, and we're losing the support of our allies."
- Sen. Chuck Hagel (R.-NE) as quoted by the Associated Press, May 9, 2004 -

"It was reported that CACI International, the company that employs one of the accused Abu Ghraib torturers, also sells the Bush Administration ethics training tapes."
- Roger D. Hodge, Harper's Weekly Review, May 11, 2004 -

"Before the Abu Ghraib torture became public, perhaps 1 in 5 Iraqis were extremely against the Americans. Now, that is reversed; 4 out of 5 have been radicalized by the abuse of the prisoners."
- Anonymous -

"In short, Bush -- the same guy who infuriated the Islamic world when he used the term 'crusade' to define his initial anti-terrorist policy -- has become the best recruiter for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And, most importantly in terms of domestic American security, Bush has become the best recruiter for Al Qaida."
- Bernard Weiner: Horrid Thoughts About Horrid Leaders -

"I don't need to hear how they were just following orders, because if even one American soldier gets off with that defense, we have just validated the Third Reich, and the Holocaust. ...Take those [Americans] that are guilty, and give them to the Iraqi provisional government as war criminals. I can't think the walls of Abu Ghraib are going to look the same to them from [the] other side of the bars."
- Tim Steil: Here at the Western World -

"I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation. I mean, this is a lesson, ...on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious."
- Ann Coulter making a "joke" on Fox News about the torture at Abu Ghraib prison -

"[T]he presence of women in the unit actually encouraged more misbehavior, especially of the sexual nature that the pictures reveal."
- Linda Chavez apparently drinking from the same vat of stupidity as Coulter -

"If you look at these pictures, you cannot deny that there are elements of homoeroticism. I've seen things like this on American websites. You can find these if you have the passwords to these various porn sites, you can see things like this."
- Rush Limbaugh trying to connect the Abu Ghraib torture to pornography and inadvertently letting his listeners know how he spends his spare time - 

"I have studied foreign relations nearly my entire life, and I have never seen a situation as terrible as this one."
- Madeleine Albright: former Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration -

"If the intensity of damage-control efforts is any gauge of the concern inside the White House about the scandal over mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, President Bush and his advisers are very worried."
- Judy Keen: USA Today, May 5, 2004 -

"They wanted to provide Iraq with a smooth transition to democracy. We couldn't just plunge them into a non-torture-based society with no time to adjust."
- Donald Stiles: Systems Analyst -

"Who would've ever thought that more nude pictures would have come out under Bush than under Clinton?"
- Jay Leno -

"For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused. So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."
- Nick Berg's executioner -

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
- Winston Churchill -

"Beware of the words 'internal security,' for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor." 
- Voltaire -

"Every man goes down to his death bearing in his hands only that which he has given away."
- Persian Proverb -

"A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes." 
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing -

"We the People are the rightful master of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the constitution." 
- Abraham Lincoln -

"All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them." 
- Emma Goldman -

"Sit quietly for a few moments and visualize God's energy coursing through your entire body. When you allow your entire being to become still in its own subtle vibration, you can experience God's power. It is shri. It is filled with auspiciousness, beauty, sacredness, abundance, nobility, dignity, and good fortune. Know that all this exists within yourself."
- Gurumayi Chidvilasananda -

"Where there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate."
- George Will -