May 12, 2004
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Who was Nick Berg and what really happened to him?
There is probably a valid connection between Abu Ghraib prison abuses by
military police and the beheading of American civilian Nick Berg, but
beyond that my news search has turned up so many contradictions and
questions that I’m baffled. I want to know more and at the same
time I wish I’d never come across this news story. I have one
thing I can feel good about in all this: after I impulsively
clicked on the Arab website to see the video, it timed out.
Apparently the site can’t handle all the traffic, or it has been jammed
deliberately. That gave me time to ask myself: do I really
want to see what some journalists have described as a
“torture/murder”.This story is so much bigger than my personal issues, but the
only perspective I have on anything is my own. I’m
disturbed… seriously disturbed. The words of the NA
boilerplate I read at most meetings is running through my mind:
“One is too many and a thousand never enough.” Damn my
addictions! …all my addictions, but right now mostly the
information addiction. It was far easier to kick meth and opiates
than it is to get the compulsion to follow the news out of my
system. I’m off to the PS
2 now, to substitute one addiction for another.
Comments (5)
…to the limit of my understanding (and like you I try hard to avoid “news”), Nick Berg was an entrepreneur trying to cash in on the “big bucks” to be had, preying on the inhabitants of a country under fire, a country at war. If he had signed on with a larger entity with networking connections with the U.S. government there would have been a modicum of protection and process, and he, most likely, would have been shipped out for his own safety due to the deteriorating conditions and divisive factions becoming more active. He took his chances in a risky business venture, did not take the advice given by his own people, and entered a fanatical landscape on his own. My take? Governmental responsibility=none, personal foolhardiness=total. He could have come home with a buttload of money, but he didn’t…
Drowning not waving has a great peice about this with some great links. The whole thing (not just this but everything) makes my heart break. So many lives broken…
Good question.
I’m so not a tv person……..I think I may have to pay attention a bit to current events now. I boycotted the news in 1992 and have never taken it back up and since I do not watch television, I am ignorant other than the rare moments that I listen to the radio in the car which is just local crap.
I guess that after I boycotted it, I figured that anything all that important I would learn at work……which I did……..I was on call for the ice storm so I learned about that……I was on call for the Quebec summit so I turned on the tv one night to find out what I was actually supposed to be doing.
When the twin towers fell, I turned on the tv for the first time in 6 months. And then my kids came home and my son was excited about the explosions because he’s like that…………BUT they were not excited about mommy being gone all the time on 18 hr shifts for 5 mos…. esp back when they were only away from me for 24 hrs per week… I did try to explain to them what it was all about………but, my son, being the son of a soldier and also mainly a generally angry and violent human being………HE thinks that “let’s just go out and kill them all”……..which is nothing like I’d say….ahhh well………what can I do but carry on. If I hadn’t have gotten sick……….the sick sperm donor of my kids wouldn’t be here to spread his poison.
I wish I had lived in the far north at that time.