Have We Been Hoaxed?
All right, it's off-topic, but I'm getting pretty freaked out by the amount of speculation, accompanied by detailed video analysis, that the Nick Berg decapitation video was a fake. At first I thought I had stumbled onto a whacko conspiracy web page (not that I mind, I've rarely heard a conspiracy theory I couldn't believe), but then I Googled the subject, and there seems to be a rapidly growing chorus of doubters. Main points:
1. The editing is sloppy, with unexplainable time lapses.
2. One of the "Arabs" is wearing a gold ring, contrary to religious practice; another is wearing American running shoes.
3. The terrorist who reads the paper has been identified as Musab Al-Zarqawi. But Zarqawi is known to have a prosthetic leg, which the terrorist in the video doesn't; and besides, Zarqawi was announced as having been killed in April, 2003.
4. At one point the ear and apparent military cap of a white man comes slightly into camera view, only visible when the tape is slowed down.
5. Berg is sitting in the same kind of chair visible in Abu Ghraib photos, wearing the same kind of orange prison outfit worn by Abu Ghraib prisoners. The wall is the same color as Abu Ghraib's walls, and Berg's last known job was working on the tower at Abu Ghraib.
6. The famous scream appears to be a woman's voice and is not accurately cued to the video.
7. Medical experts attest (excuse me for saying it) that much more blood would come from a beheaded man than appears in the video, suggesting that Berg, if it is indeed he, was already dead.
Of course, the video softened the public response that was calling for Rumsfeld's resignation after Abu Ghraib, and for some people (not myself) made the Abu Ghraib torture seem tame by comparison - and it appeared oh so conveniently after the Abu Ghraib photos were released, though the beheading supposedly had taken place weeks earlier. I haven't even begun to touch on all the inconsistencies. A few of the many, many web pages are here, by people ranging from liberals to libertarians to "patriotic" Republicans to anti-government survivalists to Arabs to Europeans to Chinese:
Asia Times
www.vanallens.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4157
Al-Jazeera
globalresearch.ca/articles/HAV405A.html
globalresearch.ca/articles/CAR405A.html
globalresearch.ca/articles/SAT405A.html
www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/5/15/22827/0477
genmay.com/showthread.php?t=354134
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1137968/posts
www.libertyforum.org
Believe it, don't believe it, but it proves beyond doubt how malleable video reality is.
UPDATE: I guess I no longer read my own newspaper religiously enough. It took Jan Herman to point out to me that this week's Village Voice has its own article on the speculations about the Nick Berg video.
FURTHER UPDATE: Harry Shearer discussed the possibility of the Berg video being fake on his NPR news program Le Show on WAMC radio, May 30, the soundfile of which you can find at harryshearer.com. Under an administration as secretive as Bush/Cheney, conspiracy theories will no longer be limited to the lunatic fringe.
Categories:
Sites To See
American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)
Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects
Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station
New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking
The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross
William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer
Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation
Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer
Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings
Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site
The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer
Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues
AJ Ads
AJ Arts Blog Ads
Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.
Advertise Here
AJ Blogs
AJBlogCentral | rssculture
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
rock culture approximately
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Richard Kessler on arts education
Douglas McLennan's blog
Art from the American Outback
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
No genre is the new genre
John Rockwell on the arts
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
media
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Martha Bayles on Film...
classical music
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
publishing
Jerome Weeks on Books
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
theatre
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
Elizabeth Zimmer on time-based art forms
visual
Public Art, Public Space
John Perreault's art diary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
