The Slime Among Us

I got this bit of commentary from Indymedia, a lefty "alternative" media organization. It's by a "King Daevid MacKenzie, for IndyMedia Radio, from America's Heartland".

Quick: Spot the bizarre priorities!

There are a few facts about the terrorist murder-on-video of Pennsylvania businessman Nick Berg that raise the darkest, most disturbing issues of recent memory.

What would those darkest, most disturbing issues be?

Islamofascism?

The sort of moral relativism that says blowing up innocent people is valid political criticism?

Maybe the struggle between Democracy and tyranny?

What are those dark, disturbing issues?

First off, Berg, who ran a small telecommunications firm in a Philadelphia suburb, was in Iraq for the second time this year, looking for work. With all possible respect to this man and sympathy to his loved ones, one has to start with the question, wasn't that in itself a particularly stupid thing to do -- seeking monetary gain in a war zone in a nation and culture increasingly hostile to his own?

Looking for business is a dark, disturbing issue?

And from a different angle: when told Tuesday afternoon that there was a video of Nick Berg's murder released to the Internet, his family collapsed in tears on their front lawn. Michael Berg indicated that he knew his son had been decapitated, but that he hoped the manner of his son's murder would not have been publicised. Within two hours, ABC Radio and Fox News Channel talk show host Sean Hannity put links on his web site -- a site hosted by ABC's own servers -- directing his audience to videos of both Berg's beheading and that of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Hannity then plugged the links on his site throughout his entire radio show Tuesday afternoon. Not only had they specifically done what the Berg family had expressed they did not want done, Hannity and ABC began using the Berg murder to attract an audience, generating sponsorship money and uttering anti-Muslim rants along the way.

Did "King Daevid Mackenzie" whizzle and moan like this when the networks publicized images of the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib? It's a fair bet they (who still live) and their families (ditto, no thanks to the likes of "King Daevid Mackenzie) didn't want them publicized, either.

But no, they went out to a billion or more people. And we all know the "anti-Bush rants" they inspired. Where was "King Daevid Mackenzie"'s outrage?

Different story?

It is not far afield from what Josef Goebbels and Fritz Hippler were doing with their hate cinema of 1930s Nazi Germany.

Yes, it is. Because unlike the fictional perpetrators and caricaturish Jews of the Nazi propaganda films, Nick Berg was murdered, and Islamic thugs did the killing. It's an objective fact, and it's news.

It should also be noted that ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, which is currently doing its best to suppress Michael Moore's latest film, FAHRENHEIT 911, which is critical of the Bush regime's conduct in Iraq.

If you're a rational person, you realize here what a defective personality you're dealing with.

Disney is refusing to distribute F911 - not "suppressing" it. The flap will (as Moore himself noted) bring massive publicity to Moore's movie - some suppression.

On the other hand, the American media - and pseudomedia, like Indymedia - does suppress photos and video showing the depravity of the Islamofascists; try to find footage of the planes ramming the towers, the people jumping their deaths, the blood and tissue scattered about pizzerias and bus stops in Israel, the deaths of Dan Pearl and Nick Berg, American Jews - or, for that matter, footage from the 75% of Iraq where the liberation is going swimmingly.

THAT, "King Daevid", is suppression.

Perhaps the most tragic element of all this is that Michael Berg is strongly against the war on Iraq, while the murdered man, his son Nick, was a strong supporter of both George W. Bush and the war. If nothing else, this whole shocking episode illustrates how deadly dangerous it is to believe what George W. Bush says.

Ah. So that's the tragedy.

It's said this upcoming election will be between the adults and the children in our society. This editorial (which is available in audio as well) shows that some of the children, tragically, ride the short bus.

Sorry, "King Daevid". The real tragedy of Nick Berg is that he's not alive to kick your effete ass for hijacking his name for...

...wait for it...

...your own gain.

Y'know. Just like the eeevul Hannity.

Posted by Mitch at May 13, 2004 05:20 AM