NICK BERG

you motherfuckers need to shutup about how u think we need to bomb the shit outta iraq for this! read this fucking article my friend wrote for his website (his site is linked in my signature!):

As I'm sure you all know by now, American Nicholas Berg was kidnapped in Iraq and beheaded by Al-Qaeda extremists on video. That was the big story.

Kudos to Nick Berg's father Michael for having the courage to use this tragic occasion to talk about not just the effect, but the cause as well. And shame on the mainstream media for not covering it. However, I'll be fair here. My local NBC news affiliate had a short blurb on this story, and of course NPR had a little coverage, but it has been wholly inadequate.

First, perhaps I should explain that Michael Berg is staunchly anti-war. The quote aired on NBC was something along the lines of (paraphrasing): Everyone is born with good intentions. Unfortunately, the people who killed his son were forced into such drastic circumstances due to the environment in which they live.

It's (I feel) a wonderfully optimistic thing to say— that the killers of his son have some redeeming good— and I would hope that, under similar circumstances, I would be able to understand and even sympathize with my son's killer. And I would hope that I would have the courage to stand up to the Bush administration in such a courageous way, to use those fifteen minutes of fame in a positive manner instead of just asking the country for pity.

And let me say it again: shame on the mainstream media for refusing to cover the story of this man— a man uniquely qualified to comment on the war (more so than perhaps even the president of the United States, considering Mr. Bush has not lost a family member to civil unrest in 'post-war' Iraq). The media did not show this kind of journalistic restraint when airing the blindly nationalistic and ultimately simplistic views of the family of Mark Hamill, kidnapped truck driver for Halliburton.

I can come nowhere near to imagining the amount of grief this man is feeling, and the disappointment of being subjugated by the mainstream media when his message becomes even the slightest bit controversial is even worse.

It all goes to show that the media has no interest in presenting alternative viewpoints (although the antiwar movement is hardly 'alternative'— more like a 50/50 split). Why? because alternative viewpoints don't sell. People want explosions and cheerleading and defined categories of 'good' and 'evil,' and that's just not the way it works. Of course, farther-left networks like NPR are better, but only by a small margin. What's the solution? I don't know. Any truly responsible network that aired truly 'Fair and Balanced™' news would be vastly unpopular.

I don't know. I never said I had all the answers.


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COMMON SENSE

my mom doesn't know the difference from a computer and a toaster so I thought we would get her a computer that is a little more like a toaster!
we got her a macintosh