i swore i wouldn’t watch it. the moment i heard it happened, i swore i didn’t want to see. it was linked from a friend’s site. “not safe for work, life, humans” is all it said, and curiosity clicked. when the media player stalled at the opening, i knew immediately this is it but only accidentally, i can still stop my ceasing, i can. …but i didn’t. and once it started, i couldn’t stop.
i am no longer the child who should be protected from this horror head-holding why have you done this up to the camera we’re all witnesses now, in the know and in the now, amateur citizens armed with the methodologies of making history < clipboard voter registrations at grocery stores, door to doors > as digital cameras serve up flat-screen monitored screams.
alone in my bedroom in the dark, i watched the future of terror, of making demands and changing minds from the lens of the enemy. the evil. the haters of my way of life, high-speed connected to informing the worst is yet to come.
the american sits like a buddha. the five behind him pose like suspects, lined up shifting weight and adjusting their weapons. riveted through the cage of my hands, quaking at the language i didn’t understand, when you know what happens even if you haven’t seen it, you think you can change it. erase it. maybe this time, things will be different. maybe this time it’ll be as they told him list their names for identification, look serene but not too drugged. hostilage. you’re going home when they see this. they will want you back for sure.
i can’t imagine they didn’t lie. that if they’d told him he was about to die, he’d sit at the feet of god and time without fear, no matter the poor resolution that makes the dark shapes look sinister and alien—the scariest dream with the perfect othering—the strangest goddamn thing you’ve seen since the man on the box with the hood and the wires bowed before the world.
disconnected from the sound, the video lagged by three or four seconds, so when he started to scream, he remained motionless. the captors stood still. and for a moment i thought i succeeded. my witnessing saved him. at least and praised be ’cause i knew i couldn’t handle it, i was saved from it, an edited version still-framed with only the audio to suggest this is horrible. this murder is really happening this is prophecy and maybe i’m responsible. the american is my brother as i pointed and laughed, smiled and held the leash.
everything caught up, though, fell into motion, i shrieking at the slaying, turning away and it took so long. it took so fucking long, and with the lifeless face before me the video paused too many downloads, video buffering and i cried to have to look enough to kill the application. covering my eyes i bawled for twenty minutes and shook another ten. cold awareness realized, i don’t want revenge. at all. no more threats or promises of cowboy retribution, i can’t swallow my hurt is stopping the forward march of freedom, the presupposed progress we determine because we think we have it. we think we can bestow it like parents to children or take it away from the misbehaved.
what if my younger brothers see the video and demand an explanation. what if they see it and aren’t affected at all. i evoke their youth afraid they will share my nightmares at barely teenaged; i’m afraid with my knowing i will never again be consoled. i am no longer a child founded dumb by adults and their destructive ideologies, trusting they know what’s going on and will figure it out and do the right thing. i am becoming the one who leaves this behind. “this” the reasoning ’cause i don’t want to make sense of that emotion i don’t want to feel anything after that the mess for the future ’cause i don’t know how to clean up a stain that spans continents and cultures, a sea of blood soaking up interests and convictions, neither of which i hold or understand.
for the first time my humanness stopped me completely, no longer angry that those with so-called authority perpetuate this blame, forcing onto my generation the fiscal responsibility, the moral culpability, and the fucking pain of body counts that don’t count, of billions of dollars that don’t exist, and of no possibility of an end given the arrogance we insist is our manifest mandate, our business noble and true. the rage has been disfigured by helplessness—by the images of war cutting through the figures of statistics we don’t see anyway, and i think and feel the gauntlet of horror, of fury, of exasperation and indignation but finally settle on grief. i’m sad. i’m so fucking sad and sick I can’t stand sharing a species with those who give the orders, read the statements, pull the triggers, take the pictures and cut off the heads of other humans beings.
dckr
May 16, 2004 at 5:30 ami hear you.
i recently posted some somewhat similar rantings to all the places that make up my internet home…
what, REALLY, can one say?
…
megh
May 16, 2004 at 2:22 pmi’m just now stumbling upon several sites/blogs claiming the video is a hoax. nick berg is definitely dead but it wasn’t “terrorists” who did it/arranged for it.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/bgwin77/49253.html
http://www.angryfinger.org/archives/000232.html
fuuuuuuuuuuuck. don’t know what to think. don’t even want to think.
dckr
May 17, 2004 at 12:02 ambah. for real. bah!
ive been paying a good amount of attention to this since it first surfaced. ive read up a little even on the manner in which the terrorists spoke and how the dialect, or whatever you want to call it, is definitely legit. of course, theres going to be the same number of sources claiming that it, as well as any number of things in regards to this, are not. but, i mean… well, fuck, i dont know what i mean. in the end, for me, it all comes down to the fact that the guy was fucking beheaded. period. does it really matter after that? not to me. someone was fucking murdered in an extremely grisly manner. thats all i need to hear to be disgusted by whats going on in the middle east, and the world as a whole.
in lighter topics of discussion: nice picture at the top of your page. for a couple of reasons. firstly, because its graffiti and i love the graffiti. secondly, because its a piece from nims/nimz/nymz/etc, who is undoubtedly one of the most talented and hardest working names in midwestern graffiti. hott!
megh
May 17, 2004 at 5:08 pm“in the end, for me, it all comes down to the fact that the guy was fucking beheaded. period. does it really matter after that?”
my sentiments exactly. people can play their investigative internet games all day, and both sides can tell me a). i’m a fucking idiot for thinking it’s a conspiracty and b). i’m a fucking idiot for thinking it’s legit when hey guess what, c). some guy got his head chopped off. people are dying on both sides (all sides) every day and enough is enough is enough.
it’s strange because as a liberal thinker i think i’m expected to believe it was a US directive, or that i’d even want/hope for it to be. i admit not thinking the prison abuse a matter of “bad apples” and miscommunication–yes, i *want,* i *demand* accountability from a higher level of authority/leadership. …but this? i do not want it told that america murdered nick berg to sway public opinion//for political purposes. such a revelation is not an ace for democrats, an in-your-face Bushies, we got you now–it’s unimaginably fucked and beyond comprehension.
re: heaven wants nymz
i took that picture on a train bridge crossing 1-94 near my home. i dahn know much about writin or anything about nims/nimz/nymz 😛 i just thought it appropriate for this news item because when i read it, i saw “heaven wants names.” (which i like… and it’s odd… because i don’t believe in god but i tend to invoke the language when confronted with horrible shit.)
thanks for the insight, dckr. here’s the full piece (or the rest of the silver/purple).
full
i found the bridge a few weeks ago and went back sunday morning to take pictures of these:
razorbear
deathgirl
wingedskull
they appear to be stenciled, very intricate and fragile; they intrigue the hell out of me. ever see stuff like it? (oh ye master of guerilla art)
Bree
May 18, 2004 at 12:17 amI watched because I didn’t feel sorry for him. I didn’t feel sorry for a HUMAN BEING WHO GOT HIS HEAD CHOPPED OFF BY OTHER HUMANS. I didn’t feel like he deserved it, but I felt like he hadn’t taken proper precautions, like he shouldn’t have been over there, like he shouldn’t have supported the war, like he shouldn’t have been walking around as a civilian in a war zone…
…even though were I there, I probably would have been equally as flaunting, in hopes that humans are better than they are.
So I watched. And he was serene. And it took so…fucking…long…to cut his head off. Did they do it slowly to make it more painful for him? Were they inexperienced in beheading? Did something go wrong?
I felt sorry for him. Hopeless for him. Hands on the screen and I couldn’t stop the knife from coming out and the poor guy…
Even the thought of the conspiracy coalition of distraction makes me shrivel inside…humanity is fucked.
dckr
May 18, 2004 at 12:33 amre:graffiti
those are totally stencils. and while ive seen a good amount of stenciled street art in my day, those are abfabsolutely incredible. im in awe. never seen anything quite along those lines or quite that detailed, in terms of street stencils… wow. where abouts were these taken? can you take more pics of the surrounding area/wall? if its not too much trouble, that is.
re: berg and shit
man, meg and bree… you both are hitting some serious nails squarely on their head. not necessarily things ive thought ot not thought, just the wording of the thought(s). eloquence is a gift bestowed upon the lucky. and youre both lucky. but, yeah… consipiracy? noconspiracy? im confused, utterly confused. for the first time in a long time. and not because i dont understand something. generally, when i dont understand things i attempt, the best i can, to figure them. if i cannot, i move on and figure i know someone who can figure them out for me. but, this shit… its beyond figuring. for me, anyhow. and all the wrenches being thrown in, on both sides, makes it all the ore baffling to me. i can barely comprehend the fact that a guy got his head ever so slowly sepereated from his body and that its on video for the whole world to see and that a good portion of the hotwired world has, indeed, seen it. young, old, rich, poor, democrat, republican… the means to this end are confusing. the end fo the means, are not.
megh
May 18, 2004 at 7:46 pm“conspiracy” or not, i’m convinced berg was dead before they beheaded him. i only *barely* watched and even i noticed the curious absense of blood and convulsions (plus there’s the time difference on the shots [about ten hours apart?? or so i’ve heard]). i refuse to watch it again to pick it apart further… he’s still dead.
why this should affect me horrendously so when people are getting exploded and shot up every day, i don’t know. it just does. :\
jawsh: i slapdash quicklike threw together this page for your pleasure. those are all pictures i took that day. didn’t get too into it as you can see (i mostly just wanted to catch the stencil work). but there’s a few closer ups.
dckr
May 19, 2004 at 3:57 ami cant decide for sure if i want to watch it again to decide for myself which side of the fence i stand on……
hott!! thanks for the pics!! thats not far from where i once lived… the equally loved and loathed “east side crack shack”. 😛