Wearing a large tool belt and using metal grippers and rope, Berg began climbing transmission towers, taking photographs of structural damage that he would later show to prospective clients [for his services in installing, inspecting and repairing telecommunications and utility towers]. The work, which was itself dangerous, took him to hostile areas.
Once, he climbed a tower in Abu Ghraib, an impoverished western suburb of Baghdad infamous as the site of Iraq's largest prison. A local farmer became enraged, thinking that Berg was trying to steal parts of the already damaged structure.
What could you see from that tower?
There are mysteries aplenty. From a reader's email:
I am starting to think Berg was a Mossad agent. Let's see, you're a 26 year old Jewish guy and you show up in a country whose inhabitants hate Jews. You are there completely alone with no safety net and no one watching your back? Makes sense to me. Could he have been installing listening devices in those radio towers he was working on. There is a whole prison full of Iraqis being broken while while waiting to be interrogated and the FBI is questioning a Jewish guy from Philadelphia? Why is his body coming home though Dover, the place reserved for military bodies? Will his coffin be draped in an American flag? Will the press be allowed to photograph his coffin? It doesn't conform with the DOD restrictions for that sort of thing.
But there are several other details that simply don't jive with the official story. Why was Berg in a US Guantanamo-style orange jumpsuit? Why are the five masked men so fat, when all the naked Iraqis we've seen recently are so thin? Why are their hands so darn white?
It's obvious that the story has tremendous pro-Bush regime propaganda value. That's why it's looking more and more like a fraud, a distraction, and a lie.
Enron workers who saw their stock-based retirement plans vaporize in the wake of the company's collapse could recoup some of their losses with the partial settlement of two lawsuits announced Wednesday.
The lawsuits stem from complaints that Enron executives and others breached their duty owed to employees under pension laws.
Should U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon give her blessing to the deals, current and former employees would receive $69.2 million of the $86.5 million settlement sometime in the late summer or fall.
Wow! $69.2 million! That sounds great!
Except for the problem of dividing it among 20,000 employees, which parcels out to $3,450 each.
When you consider that the average account balance in a 401(k) plan in 2002 was $39,885, and there is no reason to think that Enron's 401(k) plan was anything less than average, then each employee's settlement would effectively provide them with a return on their life savings of – 91 percent. Yes, that's a negative number. Nine cents on the dollar is all they will get of their own money. All thanks to Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, and their beneficiaries in the White House whose campaign was partially funded with Enron's skimmed and imaginary profits.
The employees of Enron are a symbol of what has happened to Americans since the turn of the millennium. From surplus to deficit, from plus to minus, from productive to disgraced. All because of the consistent incompetence or outright fraudulence of those running the show.
Nine cents on the dollar is what's left after you pay for the crimes of management, as we will see again when the crimes of Kenny Boy's friends at George & Co. are finally tallied long after they're gone.
The most frequently used words to describe the Democratic nominee are the lukewarm terms "good," "hopeful," "okay," and "better than Bush." The top negative term applied to Kerry is "liar," and is mentioned far more often than it was three months ago. Perhaps more directly showing the impact of the campaign on the candidates image, a number of respondents described Kerry as "indecisive" "wishy-washy" "undecided" and "uncertain," terms that went virtually unmentioned three months ago.
But no single word has come to dominate the public's perception of John Kerry as "boring" did with Al Gore four years ago. Across multiple surveys during the early election season, this word was associated with the former vice president more than any other, often by large margins.
While the balance of positive and negative responses about George W. Bush have remained largely the same, the negative terms Bush's critics use to describe the president negatively have shifted. Three months ago, "liar" was the most often used negative word used to describe the president, mentioned twice as often as terms like "incompetent" or "stupid."
Today, the order of these phrases has reversed, with "incompetent" most frequently mentioned by Bush's critics, far more often than references to the president's dishonesty. One criticism of the president that has remained consistently high over the past year is "arrogance," which has been the first or second most used word by Bush opponents in three consecutive surveys.
Bush's supporters continue to describe the president as "honest," "leader," "strong,"and cite his "integrity." Mentions of Bush's faith also arise frequently: many of his supporters describe Bush as "Christian."
When the most powerful position in the world is decided by the contest of individual words that spring into the minds of voters in a dozen-odd swing states, we all deserve the shit that occupies the White House.
It's difficult to distinguish which is the greater travesty: the democracy we supposedly aim to export through our military invasions, or the democracy we undermine at home with our American Idol market research idiocy.
...democracy doesn't easily lend itself to evangelism; it requires more than faith. It requires a solid, educated middle class and a sophisticated understanding of law, transparency and minority rights. It certainly can't be imposed by outsiders, not in a fractious region where outsiders are considered infidels. This is not rocket science. It is conventional wisdom among democracy and human-rights activists—and yet the Administration allowed itself to be blinded by righteousness. Why? Because moral pomposity is almost always a camouflage for baser fears and desires. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives share a primal belief in the use of military power to intimidate enemies. If the U.S. didn't strike back "big time," it would be perceived as weak. (Crushing the peripheral Taliban and staying focused on rooting out al-Qaeda cells wasn't "big" enough.) The President may have had some personal motives—doing to Saddam Hussein what his father didn't; filling out Karl Rove's prescription of a strong leader; making the world safe for his friends in the energy industry. The neoconservatives had ulterior motives too: almost all were fervent believers in the state of Israel and, as a prominent Turkish official told me last week, "they didn't want Saddam's rockets falling on Tel Aviv." At the very least, they were hoping to intimidate the Palestinians into accepting Ariel Sharon's vision of a "state" without sovereignty.
Abu Ghraib made a mockery of American idealism. It made all the baser motives—oil, dad, Israel—more believable. And it represents all the moral complexities this President has chosen to ignore—all the perverse consequences of an occupation.
The believability of the baser motives, moral complexities, and perverse consequences of this president and his invasion of Iraq have been actively discussed throughout this entire fiasco, starting shortly after 9-11-01, but you had to read the fringe media and blogs to see it.
The mainstream media are only now getting even the remotest clue as to what has been going on in our names around the world — because they did not have enough faith in context, perspective, facts, noncommercial principles, or their readers. They refused to dig, to question, to verify, to challenge.
They had faith without doubt in the president who sold them the idea of faith without doubt.
The truth has been waiting there, in plain view, all along. But the media's sense of outrage suddenly comes out of hiding now, all because of a few fucking pictures.
