Bill at INDCJournal stopped by the ANSWER protest in DC this weekend, and was able to get an interveiw with Nick Berg’s father. Michael Berg fits himself for a tin foil hat quite nicely with is own tape recorded words.
“My son was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, yes he was, my son David, not my son Nick, my older son David. I supported his efforts working with the Socialist Workers’ Party, and I went with him to the headquarters in NY and I attended the rallies and I supported his trips to Cuba and… I don
I think we should cut the guy some slack, who knows how any of us would react if our kid had a staring role in a snuff film. I agree (even as someone who does not support Bush), that he is a little out there, and has been even before his kid was killed, but damn, as a father I have sympathy for him…
I think the guy needs some serious grief counseling… or a muzzle.
Just curious how long we are supposed to cut this guy some slack for his outlandish views of who is responsible for his son’s death? I sympathize for the guy because I have never experienced anything close to what he must be going through, but everytime he opens his mouth he is using his son’s death to further his own belief.
At what point do we start to say this man is just hell bent on furthering ANSWER’s cause and will use anything, including his son’s death, to obtain that goal.
I agree Mike, but everytime it is covered here and elsewhere, it just gives him a forum, dontcha think?
I tend to give people slack until they start hanging out with Stalinists…but that’s just me…
No, you cut him some slack because he is an inconsequential looney who is only being heard — to his own detriment — because his son was publicly murdered.
To wit — you let him go quietly into the good night, and you don’t pile on, because you, yourself, are a decent person.
Pity is a long lost art. Let’s bring it back.
hi
THE WORLD SITUATION
There are many inaccuracies in this “letter to my sons.” I also sniff out that there is no such author. I’d like to know who the retired attorney father of these 4 sons is.
The 400,000 “chemically killed” is a lie. For an attorney to defend our abrogation of rules of the Geneva Convention is very troubling. The most grievous error is the statement that we were attacked without provocation. We have provoked the Muslim world for over 35 years by our unwavering support for their mortal enemy, Israel. There has never been a UN vote when we didn’t back Israel. When a UN proclamation ordered Israel to move back to their ’67 borders, Israel ignored the UN and we backed them. For 35 years over 3 million Palestinians have lived in refugee camps. Israel settlements have been continually expanded so that now 400,000 Israelis live now on what was Arab land. They have run completely run roughshod over them. Palestinians living in contested territories can’t drive on the same roads, must have different license plates, must undergo daily humiliations as they try to live their lives. One of the basic blocks of the UN charter states that land gained through armed conflict must be returned. Israel has always defied it.
The US each year gives 3 billion dollars in aid to Israel, the most of any country. Do you think Israel is poverty stricken? Not by a long shot. When they attack a refugee camp with helicopters and missiles, who do you think supplies the military hardware? The current leader, Sharon, is a butcher, infamous for massacres of Palestinians in Lebanon in 1975. In addition to the outright grant of $3 billion, we regularly guarantee loans which every member of Congress know will never be repaid.
How does Israel get so much of our tax dollars without even a congressional debate about it? Through their lobbying of congressmen. They intensely lobby the House Appropriations Committee and support through contributions the 12 members so that annually they just rubber-stamp approving the money for Israel. I find it galling that agents of a foreign government can influence how we spend our money.
Congressmen who don’t go along with the Israel lobby encounter fierce opposition when they come up for re-election. Paul Findlay was a representative for Illinois for 22 years. After he dared to speak out in opposition against our unfair, unbalanced, one-sided support of Israel, he faced an opponent in the next election who had enormous financial backing by Israeli lobbying groups and was ousted from Congress. Similar assaults have occurred against Senator Pete McCloskey (California) and at least 4 others. The current situation is that our Congressman are afraid to take the Palestinian side in Congress.
Some are not afraid. Senators Byrd (W.Va) and Hollings (SC) are two such. In May, Hollings made a speech in Congress in which his words were “Every Senator and Representative knows why we went to war in Iraq; it was to secure Israel.”
Foreign affairs in this administration have been taken over by neo-conservatives whose leaders in 1996 put together their “Plan for a New American Century.” The linch-pin of the plan was to establish a big US presence in the Middle East, and specifically, Iraq.
The neo-conservative architects? Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom have had and in Wolfowitz’s case still have, high positions in our government. But guess what? These 2 guys were also, in the 90’s, paid consultants to the Israel Likud party.
The 9/11 attack gave them the perfect opportunity to fulfill the plan they had developed. Blame it on Iraq and shove it down gullible American throats; cloak it in patriotism. So we’ve been fed a pack of lies and dumb, ambitious Georgie W. has been chosen to run with it. While we and the world are so taken up with Iraq, Sharon is acting more vicious than ever because we’re all to busy.
Nobody in government will make the case I just laid out. The first thing would be charges of anti-Semitism.
Joe MacDougall