The Headscarf clue in the Berg video

[spooked]

Nick E. Berg the Perfect Patsy

Edited to fix link. Story with above name can be found here:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/


"Many are talking about the whiteness of the murderers' hands, the stance , the couch-potato girth, Berg's orange jumpsuit, the lack of blood splattered, the English words heard in the tape background, the Berg's family company being on a freeper hitlist and Berg travelling using the company name, and more. Here's another observation:

I know a Lebanese man whose visual acumen is absolutely unparallelled. The only reason he survived a childhood in Beirut, unlike 99% of his peers...

We were watching the news of "the beheading" when it broke, and he IMMEDIATELY said, "those are Americans, not Arabs." He noticed everything that we've seen mentioned, so far. But one thing we haven't.

The scarves worn, AND the manner in which they are tied, are ALWAYS related to region and "family". Each pattern, tuck, and fold is precise, and tells other Arabs where the wearer was born/raised.

My friend insists that the scarves worn in the video were donned and tied by people who have no clue. By people who believe Arabs just toss any old thing on their heads and tie it however they can get it to stay secure. And the only people he's ever seen do that were American soldiers in Beirut, and American actors in movies."

[NMDemDist2]

1. OMG but how the heck do we prove it? eom

[Tansy_Gold]

4. Here's how you test it -- one suggestion

And I'm not saying it would be easy, and maybe someone will come up with a different idea.

1. Find several "experts" on the tribal/ethnic wearing of headscarves by Arabs. At least two or three, more if possible.

2. Show them photos of Arab men in headscarves who have previously been identified as being from specific tribes/ethnic groups.

3. Ask the "experts" to identify the men's tribes/ethnic groups on the basis of head scarves.

4. If they can do it, they qualify. If they can't. . . . . .

[spooked]

8. If we could find a photo of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi

wearing a scarf...since they claim he was in the video. I haven't been able to find one...only the photo of him wearing a cap.

[Must_B_Free]

80. here's a genuine scarf tie

put "120Mdf12843.jpg" into google image search.

These aren't really arab scarves these are head covers intended to conceal the face, nothing else.

[henslee]

follow the scarves...... eom

[boobooday]

2. That's a very interesting detail

The whole thing seems off, like everything else that happens under the watch of the Bush Crime Family.



http://www.wgoeshome.com

[mopaul]

10. that's a funny picture

that parrot....made me laugh....

[Cleita]

3. Apparently, God really is in the details. n/t

[patrice]

5. So I guess that rules out Mossad then?

Since the CIA bailed out at some point, I was wondering about Mossad doing Bill Kristol et al a favor.

[papau]

13. Pentagon intel folks? I find this hard to accept as even possible

I do not mean that a killing is something our gov would not do - indeed they have done so many times.

But someone somewhere believed a given killing helped the US maintain its freedoms.

This if true is a CYA beheading/killing - again not unknown as a way to protect the greater good of a plan - that had no purpose beyond saving Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield.

sick - very sick -

not CIA as those folks would expose any fool that ordered this kind of crap. Not Mossad as both higher ethics and greater knowledge would so as to not have made errors.

My conclusion is that as much as I hate Bush and his friends, this does not touch them. Slavic body types from Chetnya (Chechnya) are the most likely given the decision to speak Russian on camera - as they try to put blame on the Russians while they kill a fellow working with the US invader.

[tom_paine]

59. Oh, it touches them allright

Who hired Comrade Putin's Boys to do their dirty work.

Perhaps Comrade Putin's "Soulmate"? (we can now see THAT was sure true!)

[drkedjr]

6. Most Interesting.

And, I've just realized that I have not really seen anything relating to the Berg execution (other than
here) for several days. Nothing has been mentioned on the evening news or our local papers. Is this
another rightwingnut horror that just gets swept.......

[gasperc]

7. what happened to the four fucks arrested today

and ironicly Zarqwari wasn't one of them? Of the gang he was the only one "smart" enough to escape capture. I saw the report at lunch on CNN.
to me, the whole story stenches of the anthrax situation

[stickdog]

46. The story was a load of bs.

Suh-prise, suh-prise, suh-prise.

[cosmicdot]

9. have frames 9306 thru 9368 already been mentioned? (fwiw)

from CLG News:

The controversial website "La Voz de Aztlan" did probably find yet another "smoking gun" in the final frames of the Berg Video: "At frames 9306 through 9368, a person with a US military cap temporarily pokes about a quarter of his left head into the video."

http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=227

heed warnings posted at sites re further links

[lastknowngood]

11. Yea after close examination it is a finger not a hat

n/t

[Minstrel Boy]

14. It's a finger, not an ear,

and there's an object above it which to me resembles a cap brim.

[spooked]

15. It's a video camera...

If we could just identify the model...I have a hunch it's a military-issue...it's green

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread51203/pg1

That means there were two videos taken of Berg's death.

[pocoloco]

16. finger and a cap

[ElementaryPenguin]

73. Finger and a cap - in 2 altogether different places

Once you see the face of the military figure move in and out of view - you can spot it with great ease.

[Must_B_Free]

77. it had a fingernail

there was no ear there. The lighter tone of the fingernail is clearly visible at the tip of the finger and I held a camera in my left hand and found that my index finger takes the same shape. WHen you grip with your middle finger and thumb, the index finger raises and curves.

[Tinoire]

12. More confirmation. Excellent! n/t

[KoKo]

17. Thanks for the info. That pix of those folks looked so hokey that I

was hoping someone would come up with more detail. Some DU'ers said they looked dressed for Halloween...and they did. Your comments make it even more real. "Characters playing a part" like kids at Halloween, where they get most of it right, but it's done for "dress up" and isn't accurate.

Head scarves are tribe based, but not knowing the culture they can pass the photo's of Halloween Characters all over the Net and on the Cables and who would think anything but "Scary Dudes!"

[Tansy_Gold]

18. Although, one would think, to take the blame off any

"Arabs," some real Arabs/Iraqis/Jordanians, etc., would have come forward and blown the cover (pun intended) when the video first came out.

:shrug:

[spooked]

19. that's true...

this question needs to be asked of Arabs...Perhaps there is a place out there to post this question..

[KoKo]

24. Who would report it though? Maybe Juan Cole? But, who else wouldn't

be afraid of being targeted by Patriot Act at this point. Al Jazeera or any Islamic spokesperson could do it, but would anyone take them seriously?

I don't know. But, you do make a good point. Where is the outrage from the Arab Community who must have looked at these photos and if there is a flaw they would be first to notice it just as we would if it was a photo of an American group who seemed to have pieces of their clothing so out of place that a photo would raise alarms.

[Tansy_Gold]

34. I'm always finding anomalies in films, tv, etc.

and pointing them out. Remember the brouhaha a few years ago over Ken Burns' PBS series on Baseball, and all the errors (pun intended) he had? I remember one in particular related to a photo of a building, a courthouse I think it was, that he cited as the place where the Black Sox trial was held. But I had just researched a paper on Chicago and I knew that courthouse building had been torn down years before the Black Sox scandal! I mentioned it to my husband while we were watching the program and he pooh-poohed me. The next day, of course, it was all over the papers.

The thing is, with this headscarf issue, we do have plenty of Arab/Muslim press, and we certainly have the Internet. If this wer a major issue, if the "fake" Arabs in the video had really blundered that bad in their costumes, it seems reasonable to expect that someone would have noticed it and posted it somewhere.

Am I suggesting that the lack of such a report is proof of anything? No, only proof that no one has yet said anything for any major print media. AFter all, there are Arab scholars out there. . . . . .

Tansy Gold, waiting and seeing

[Tansy_Gold]

27. I did a quick google on several related words

such as Arab headscarf tradition tribal, etc., in various combinations, and got nothing that even remotely referenced tribal differences in head coverings, so if there is any research, it's not out there in easy reach.

Which is not to say it isn't there. When I had access to university data bases, I could find TONS of stuff not normally available. But I don't have that access any more. And this is likely to be something that would involve academic research.

But I do think that if the headscarf thing were an important distinction, other Arabs/Muslims/Iraqis/etc. would have pointed it out.

Of course, I could be wrong.

[stickdog]

47. "Come forward" how?

Western (or western-ized) media would have to report these Arabs who "came forward" for us to find about them?

They'd be written off as American hating "conspiracy theorists" and you know it.

[Tansy_Gold]

51. Not if they were academics who had already published

legitimate cultural research on this subject.

Academics study all kinds of weird things that practically no one else is interested in.

If anyone has access to a university database system, it would be a very simple task to see if there have been any theses or dissertations or other scholarly articles written on this subject. If so, any one of those academics could probably be called upon to speak out, either in person or through citing her/his work.

Don't fall for the notion that just because something can't be done one way, it can't be done at all.

And don't fall for the notion that "could be" means "must be."

[stickdog]

75. Find me all the academics who question the OBL did 9/111?

Surely, that can't all believe the USA sans evidence ...

My point is that our ignorance of respected Muslim doubters doesn't mean they don't exist.

[Tansy_Gold]

83. I've been very patient, but. . .

I'm sorry, Stickdog, this is not meant as an attack, but I'm afraid your post made NO SENSE whatsoever.

I originally suggested, at the beginning of this thread, that if someone wanted to test the theory that some Arabs/Muslims tied their headscarves in ethnically unique ways, all one had to do was set up previously identified photos of Muslims in tribally-unique headscarves, ask "experts" to identify the tribes based on the scarves, and thus certify the experts, then have them attempt to identify the tribal origins of the Berg killers based on their headscarves.

I then suggested -- upon my own further reflection -- that there probably would be some kind of research along those lines, since there are academic types who will study just about any kind of esoterica you might imagine. (Except Roma and Sinti; there's very little research on them, but that's another subject altogether.)

I thirdly suggested -- and again, upon my own further reflection, but which was corroborated by someone else in this thread who posted about an hour later than I did -- that if the uniqueness and significance of the headscarves was important, and if the killers had in fact violated any tribal/ethnic traditions or mores in such a way that clearly marked them as non-Arabs, that someone in the Arab world would surely in the past week have come forward and said, "Hey, dudes, them scarves ain't tied right, duh." /mild sarcasm and weak attempt at humor off/

You then asked (and I'm paraphrasing rather than attempting to access your other post) why would any Arab step forward with such a claim and risk being labelled an American hater? I replied that if they were an academic who had published scholarly work on the subject prior to the Berg killing, indeed even prior to 9/11, there would be no reason to suspect their sincerity. And besides, I'm not so completely paranoid that I believe. . . .well, let's not go there right now. Let's stick with the subject.

Now you're asking me to find academics who question that Osama bin Laden "did" 9/11, WHEN THAT WAS NEVER PART OF THE EQUATION.

All I'm addressing is the issue of the headscarves, and the viability of someone who studies such things as Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern culture stepping forward and saying something like, "Excuse me, Mr. Rather, but in my book, published in 1999, I describe the styles of headwear indigenous to the peoples of Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The very tying of the knot is of extreme religious significance; the knots shown in the killer's headscarves violate the basic tenets of Islam because. . . yada yada yada."

Why you felt it necessary to go way off in far left field with this "name one academic who doubts OBL did 9/11" is completely beyond me. But then again, you have more followers than I, so I'm sure that entitles you to claim that your truth is bigger and better than mine. /sarcasm never on/

And, as a matter of fact, there are academic studies of Arab costume. Being familiar with the library catalogue at Arizona State University, where I obtained my degrees (and yes, I make no apologies for being a fancy pants elitist), I did a quick search there. ASU is not noted as an Arab culture research center, so my quick search turned up only one volume, but I believe the existence of at least one such work strongly suggests that there are others.

Author Stillman, Yedida Kalfon, 1946-
Title Arab dress : a short history : from the dawn of Islam to modern times / by Yedida Kalfon Stillman ; and edited by Norman A. Stillman.
Publisher Leiden Boston : Brill, 2000.
Bibliog. Includes bibliographical references (p. <196>-214) and index.

Does this volume contain details on head scarf styles? I don't know. Maybe it doesn't, maybe it does. Another poster has already cited reference material that indicates kaffiyehs are styled differently in different regions, so I'm sure it is very possible that headscarves also have ethnic and tribal eccentricities, some of which may be readily identifiable. Certainly a check of other academic libraries might turn up other works, as would a search of various academic journals, dissertations abstracts, etc.

I'm not sure what your agenda is, Stickdog, and maybe you'll turn me in to the mods claiming that this is a personal attack, but all I'm really trying to do is point out that there are ways of resolving the issue of the head scarves without leaping to the conclusion that since one person's best friend's husband claims "only americans trying to look like arabs would ever wear a head scarf like that," it must be true.

If you can find reputable experts -- not uncredentialed forensic pathologists on anti-semitic hate sites -- who can point to creditable research that documents ethnic distinctions in Arab men's headscarves, and how that research proves that the killers of Nick Berg could not possibly have been "real" Arabs, please do so.

If you can't, please don't use completely tangential outrage -- and a complete lack of evidence -- to discredit other people's suggestions.

Sincerely,

the DUer known usually (butnot always) as

Tansy Gold

[MightHeDuck]

20. You can't compare these five terrorists to any normal Arabs or humans

Normal, religious and/or people with family don't butcher innocents. These animals are trash and the only habit one could possibly pin on them is their thirst for blood, murder and terror.

[salvorhardin]

22. Exactly!

However, I will ask an older friend of mine who worked for the CIA in the late 50s in Pakistan if this is true (about the scarves).

[KoKo]

25. There's too much that's odd about the Berg story for us to accept this as

an act of five terrorists. Check out all the DU links of the oddness and you will surely have questions.

[Tansy_Gold]

37. A tale of Sept. 11, 2001

I had class that morning, at Arizona State University West, and of course the sole topic of discussion was the morning's events in New York, Washington, and PA. Class met from 10 a.m. to 11:45 MST, so by then the towers had collapsed but very little else was yet known.

Everyone in the class believed the acts were committed by a carefully planned large conspiracy. Well, everyone but me. Everyone said, "But they had to have trained pilots!" I said, "No, they only needed to know how to steer the planes. Someone else was going to take off, and they had no intention of landing." While everyone else was coming up with wild theories about Russians who were bitter about the end of the Cold War, I insisted it could all have been done by three or four or five people per plane, and only one on each plane even needed to know what the other planes were going to do.

I was shouted down and summarily dismissed. The consensus was that there had to be a government behind this, or some similarly large organization.

Am I saying that because my theories proved more correct than the others' on 9/11 that my theories are any more correct on the Berg case? No. But what I am pointing out is that very small groups can do very big things. Sometimes they just get lucky, sometimes they are very very smart. Many times, too, they probably fail and we never hear about the failures.

Nick Berg was a solitary American wandering around a dangerous country. He didn't know the language -- there's a reference in one fo the reports to his struggles to learn Arabic from the uncle-in-law or whoever it was -- and he was a Jew in an Islamic culture. He did not enjoy the protection of a corporation security team. In essence, he was probably a sitting duck for anyone who went looking for a hostage. It may very well be true that these guys grabbed a likely looking subject to be used in negotiations to get some of their own out of jail. And maybe Berg just happened to be the unlucky one out of thirty or forty missing civilians whose captors went over the edge at the release of the Abu Ghraib abuse photos.

That seems the simplest answer. Does it account for all the "anomalies" in the video? No, probably not. But maybe the anomalies are only in our perception of things. Maybe the walls aren't exactly the same shade of yellow as the walls in Abu Ghraib, and maybe that isn't a military cap in frames XXXXX to YYYYY. And maybe it isn't an orange jumpsuit but a red one. And maybe the two cameras were on tripods. These all seem to me to be logical rational explanations. I'm sure they don't satisfy everyone, but until someone comes up with a more satisfactory story, I'll trust this one.

NOT because it's what has been told to me by the lying corrupt boosh government, but because it's the simplest one that fits the facts as I know them. And even so, I remain open to other theories, so long as they comfortably fit the facts, not just speculations that have to be twisted nine degrees to Saturday to fit.

[TrogL]

82. logical fallacy

Many people believing a stupid thing still makes it a stupid thing.

[Tansy_Gold]

86. Brevity and concision are nice, but

could you elaborate on that, Trog?

I just want to know if you're criticizing me or someone else.

Tansy Gold

[Beam Me Up]

36. You assume they are Arabs. Why? Because we are told they are?

You are right, people with integrity don't do this sort of thing. So one thing we can gather is that whoever these people are, they are without any integrity what so ever. All the more reason to doubt they are who they say they are.

This video is supposed to be shocking. It is, of course, but it could have been MUCH MORE shocking. Rather than pushing Berg to the floor, they could have slit his throat full face to camera--which would have been a very gory mess--and then decapitated him. But they didn't do that. Why not?

[Tansy_Gold]

38. One possible explanation for the position in which Berg was

killed. (And disclaimer here -- I have not seen the video and won't.)

Another poster in another thread wrote that blood is considered unclean in Islam and there may have been an attempt to avoid the dramatic spraying of blood so they themselves wouldn't be contaminated with it.

Just offering this as a devil's advocate type suggestion, not an absolute refutation.

[PsychoDad]

48. Blood is haram, or unlawful to eat...

While bloodletting, as in the case of slaughtering an animal for food, or bleeding from a wound or monthly peroid only requires ghusal, or a ritual bath to cleanse oneself.

Hacking into someone's neck would have caused a dramatic spray of blood... If they were alive. Watching the video, and noting that there was no attempt to struggle, not even a reflexive one it would appear that he was not. The blood should been on Mr Berg, his orange jumpsuit, his attackers, and yes, even possibly the walls. The pool of what appears to be blood on the floor is most likley from post- mortem draining after the head was removed.

While I am not an expert, It would be interesting to hear from someone in the forensic field.

[daleo]

42. Police arrest murderers every day

Based on comparisons with the actions of normal human beings. It would be essentially impossible to catch murderers otherwise. So, your statement doesn't really make sense.

[RapidCreek]

66. Does your theory apply to americans as well?

Just curious. For that matter...how do you know they are not Americans? Got some proof?

RC

[Eloriel]

21. No, story with above name can NOT be found there --

And I just wasted a lot of time trying to find it.

It's here, with the headline "Nick E. Berg the Perfect Patsy," toward the bottom of the entry:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/archives/2004_05.html

Aaaargh.

[spooked]

23. It moved down to the 14th link now

for some resaon the direct link wouldn't work.

"Nick E. Berg The Perfect Patsy"

[EV1Ltimm]

26. it came from the internet, it must be true.

any sentence that start with "i know a man..." should be treated with some skepticism.

[no_arbusto]

28. Finally, a legitimate argument.

I got so tired of the "fat, white, gold wearing, American slob" threads. Last summer, I had an Iraqi professor who was fat, wore gold, and was "white". He actually looked like he could have been on the Sopranos. I thought he was Greek with a Muslim name until he told us he was from Baghdad.

[spooked]

31. Found something!

"The kaffiyeh is not technically a turban. It is really a rectangular piece of cloth, folded diagonally and then draped over the head — not wound like a turban. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has made the kaffiyeh famous in recent times. However, the kaffiyeh is not solely Palestinian. Men in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Persian Gulf states wear kaffiyehs in colors and styles that are particular to their region. Jordanians, for example, wear a red and white kaffiyeh, while Palestinians wear a black and white one. And a man from Saudi Arabia would likely drape his kaffiyeh differently than a man from Jordan."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/lifestyles/links/turbans_27.html

[donco6]

29. I've scoffed at all the other posts on this, but . . .

. . . I'm beginning to wonder now. The scarves are odd, I must say.

Does the video actually show the - ulp - beheading itself?

[alittlelark]

30. My best friend is Iranian - she asked me to find the Berg vid for her

(I had refused to watch) but she NEEDED to see it. Shifteh was horrified. She told me that that is the way cattle are butchered, and that humans were never allowed to be killed in such a way.

Her American name is Cheri, and her father sent her over before the overthrow of the Shah. Her family owns a large chunk of Iran. She has given me a great deal of insight (good and bad) into the Arab world.

When it comes to headscarves.....she is an expert. She was horrified by the video (and still freaks out), but told me that 'those men are monsters, not arabs'.

She has been back to Iran 3 times, and hates it.

[IranianDemocrat]

32. Interesting.

I don't blame her for hating the current Iran...

[spooked]

33. Does she believe that the men in the video

are Al Queda?

[Tansy_Gold]

39. Just because someone calls them "monsters" doesn't change

their ethnicity.

The booshies are monsters, too, but they are also still (gag, gag, gag, but I'll spit it out eventually) Americans, too.

Many of the booshies also claim to be christians. . . . . .

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

35. I find it fucking hard to believe...

...that this is not complete and total bullshit, given that the ENTIRE ARAB WORLD has known about and probably seen most of this video for close to a week now, and the first mention of this anywhere in the world is from "somebody's friend" on a conspiracy theory website.
You'd think that maybe more than one arab might have noticed this. Or maybe a few scholars of this sort of thing in our country. You'd think maybe some of the less reputable arab news services (you know, the ones who think the jews are responsible for 9/11) might not have picked this up. I mean, c'mon guys. Really.

[Stuckinthebush]

40. Good point (n/t)

[stickdog]

45. WTF kind of argument is this? The entire Arab world also knows about 9/11.

So find me all the easily googable links of reputable Arabs sources saying the fact that Bin Laden was behind 9/11 is bullshit.

I'm waiting.

[HFishbine]

52. Bif ol' filet of Red Herring

One has nothing to do with the other.

[stickdog]

76. Surely you don't believe that all Muslims believe OBL did it sans evidence

My point is simply that our ignorance of Muslim skepticism OBVIOUSLY doesn't imply that Muslim skepticism doesn't exist.

So please explain how this is a red herring.

[Tansy_Gold]

88. Muslim skepticism does exist, and it's quoted on DU

from the current DU GD thread re Arabs don't believe Berg video (or something like that; I'm not all that competent with multiple DU windows open. . . . .)

This link in that thread http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=2785 takes you to an article that details doubts about the veracity of the Berg video and the entire Berg story, and even suggests that the CIA killed him.

From their "about us" page:

<snip>
Kavkaz-Center (www.kavkazcenter.com) - is Chechen independent international Islamic Internet agency. Our agency was founded in March of 1999 in the city of Jokhar (Grozny). The founder is the National Center for Strategic Research and Political Technologies, which was in turn registered, with the Ministry of Justice of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in October of 1998 (N 1377/A-17).
<end snip>

In amongst all the comments used to discredit the video, the article does not once mention head scarves.

Tansy Gold, who doesn't always connect all the dots right away, even when they're right in front of her on DU

[9215]

60. Nice one stick, hee, hee.

Methinks the freeps are trying to sidetrack this little bit of info.

Which means it may be important.

Good seeing you again.

[Tansy_Gold]

87. Excuse me, 9215,

but who are you calling "freeps"?

I believe it is against the DU rules to accuse posters of being freeps.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

49. I do too.

Who's a patsy?

[fishnfla]

55. I was wondering too

if they wore the scarfs to conceal their identity, would they not alter the knots and patterns to conceal their tribal/family identity as well?

[9215]

61. Not if they were a bunch of bumbling hitmen trying to hustle

through the program. Details like this can prove a helluva lot. It now looks like we may have similar knot tying techniques going on in Somalia. See post #57.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

64. Am I to take it...

that you are an expert in these matters? Please, share your wisdom.

[9215]

68. Well, I thought I already had shared my wisdom.

:evilgrin:

One does not have to be an expert in Arab scarf tying to study its implications on this case. What one needs to be able to do is follow up a possible lead in a rational manner by soliciting the input of those who are experts. In this case the next step is to determine whether in fact various knots are indeed a cultural or tribal tradition and then compare the knot tying of those on the vid with the suspect group.

Now, if the knots do not match any group and appear to be sloppily done, as I suggest is a possibility, then it makes the videos authenticity suspect.


The problem with fisnfla and your response to his post is that you assume the Bushies are circumspect enough to know these kinds of details. I wouldn't make such an assumption.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

69. unless they were intentionally misstied and misknotted

so as to confound the world of sleuths.

[9215]

71. hee, hee. I don't think the Bushies even considered the knot

tying. They were just happy to get the video camera working. :evilgrin:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

63. Of course they would.

But we can't have any of that logical thinking here, can we?

[Must_B_Free]

78. well why put your name on the tape for that matter?

If you're going to hide your face, why put your name in the title of the tape?

[John_H]

41. The ethnic stereotyping of some of these conspiracy threads is horrifying

As if Arab society is a huge monolith populated by paper dolls, not worthy of diversity in cultural symbols, body language, dialects, or even waist size that white people have achieved.

Do a quick search of the berg conspiracy threads. You'll see that nose-wiping is a "very non-islamic thing to do." You'll see that "That's a mighty white ear under that hat," as if Arabs are all one shade. You'll see that gold rings are not allowed, even though the most famous picture of the world's most famous muslim purist shows him wearing a gold ring. A seiko-like watch is too technologically advanced for, get this, "desert dwellers."

Why are there no fat muslims? Because they don't put bacon or on their cheesburgers, I suppose. They are incapable of multiple camera operating or rudimentary digital editing. They pass around the same mass produced patio furnature. Now they all tie their scarves the same way, according to a friend of a friend from Lebanon. 'Cause, you know, those muslims all tie their scarves the same way, no matter what country they're from.

It gets me kind of spooked that J.D. Heyworth's view of islam is apparently more nuanced than some DUers'.

[dpibel]

44. Yeah! Check out this freakin' bigot.

Also, the way the men were standing, and their size, as a person experienced in the Middle East, most Arabs don't stand that way and most Iraqis are not that tall - the men stand more like Westerners of some sort, or even Israelis, but not like Arabs or Iraqis.

. . .

Prof. Sam Hamod is the former Director of The Islamic Centre of Washington, DC; editor of 3rd World News (DC); he was born and raised in Gary, Indiana

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=16197&mode=&order=0&thold=0

[John_H]

50. You got that right.

I get the eight-grade some-of-my-best-friends-are-a-rabs implication--that Indianan Sam is somehow incapable of stereotyping to advance his agenda. Take another look at the construction of sam's sentence (which, as you don't bother to tell us, is a Pravda piece opining that Jews killed Berg): He thinks westerners (and, natch, Israelis) all stand the same, non-Muslim way. Right, Sam. I don't think even Garyians all stand the same way.

Sam may be a bit of a loon (you know that you're over the top when the American Vanguard thinks you're over the top, as they do http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=1304 ), but even he concedes that Muslims may have done it.

He also doesn't mention the nose wiping, the scarves, the non-desert-dwelling watch, the editing, the Mighty-White(tm) ear, and all the other condescending, stereotypical crap DUs tinfoilers are throwing around.

[dpibel]

62. You're joking, right?

I thought about including the information that the piece was printed in Pravda, but I thought it was common knowledge that we weren't fighting the commies any more, and that Pravda actually publishes work that gets reprinted on such far-out sites as smirkingchimp.com, and even some that get discussed seriously here.

Your statement that Hamod opines that "Jews killed Berg" is, as you know, disingenuous at best. He says: "With all these possibilities, and with the dirty politics and lies that have been told by so many in the world, the Americans, the Israelis, Al Qa'ida, angry Iraqis, just who did this is unclear." He says, "If it was Muslims in Iraq, or wherever, because we actually don't know if he was beheaded in Iraq or elsewhere, we as Muslims condemn such behaviour by whoever did it." He mentions a list of possible suspects, including the USofA. I guess, now I think about it, your statement is just a plain fib.

Finally, do you assume that nobody but you clicks on links? You think that people will just take it at your word that The American Vanguard sounds pretty straight up, so we should take their word for it? You mean The American Vanguard, where the directors say:

"We want every member to feel he or she is an important part of our organization, and we hope that every member can find his or her niche in helping us build a White future."

and

""We'd like to have a country with a government that's responsible to White people. It was that way until the 60s, but now we have a government that's pushing the Third World on us."

and

"where I don't have to watch what I say, I don't have to worry, you know, about shocked looks when I say something about Israel, or Black IQs, or whatever. They take place in an atmosphere of camaraderie and brotherhood; we have just one class of people there and that's just White men and Women."

and

"In many ways, the browning of the White world -- from Britain and France to Russia and America -- is engineered and financed by a huge criminal complex, which ranges from the counting houses of Manhattan to the movie houses of Hollywood to the whorehouses of Tel Aviv -- and to the gang-infested streets of your town, too."

I should take these people's word for it because...ummm...why? Because they support your opinion?

And what, after all, brings you to familiarity with a white supremacist website?

[9215]

58. Nice try at sidetracking/disrupting a discussion

Well written too, but lacking substance. You know as well as I that false leads, red herrings, not very well thought hypothesis and other obstructions accompany any investigation and analysis. But we wouldn't want to throw the whole line of inquiry out now would we??

Or would we? :eyes:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

65. It isn't a red herring.

It's an extremely valid point. A lot of what's been posted on here lately demonstrates willful ignorance of arab culture and islam. He pointed out some examples.

[9215]

67. Yea, but this one, the knots issue, isn't one of

them yet.

What is this "willful ignorance" crap. You are prejudging this topic by some maybe off the wall claims by others. People who try to pin the label of conspiracy theorist have been known to use this tactic from time to time. I haven't seen one thing in response to the main topic here that refutes it's claims. Do you have anything?

[TrogL]

84. It's beyond willful ignorance

It's racism pure and simple.

[zimtran7]

43. Perfectly True

True

[Gordon25]

53. Just one simple question

If Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi wanted the credit for the beheading (which one must assume he did since he identified himself verbally on the video) why was he wearing a scarf covering his face?

In the answer to that question you will find the "truth" about this event.

Gordon25

[Tansy_Gold]

54. Just one simple answer

(sarcasm on, because neither the question nor the answer is simple)

(now sarcasm off)

Why would "al-Zarqawi" cover his face and then tell the world who he is? Is that your question? And if I supply a possible answer, what will that do? Tell us who really killed Nick Berg? Will it pin the blame squarely on the CIA, the FBI, the WTO, and/or the NBA?

Here's one possible reason why a man calling himself "al-Zarqawi" would cover his face.

What if there are more than one "al-Zarqawi"s? This would mean the voices wouldn't match. And no one would know what the "real" one looks like.

For those of you who remember the movie "The Princess Bride," the "Dread Pirate Roberts" was a fiction, not an individual person but an image into which a series of people had stepped upon the previous "Dread Pirate Roberts"'s retirement. Yes, yes, yes, I know, it's a movie, it's fantasy, it's silly -- but the concept is the same. So instead of a novel/movie, you have a terrorist organization who's charismatic leader is incapacitated or maybe even dead. We don't know for sure about the amputation, we don't know for sure about his death, either. So it would actually be quite easy for his group -- however large or small it may be -- to set up numerous "al-Zarqawis".

Does it mean that the person who killed Nick Berg isn't "the real" al-Zarqawi? No, because in fact there may not even be a "real" one.

And if he isn't the "real" one, does that tell us who he really is? Nope. Does it prove he's CIA or Mossad or Black Ops or a LizardMan from Alpha Centauri 9? Nope. It just means we don't know who he is and we don't have him in custody.

Just because there's a white plastic chair in the Berg video and a white plastic chair in the Abu Ghraib photos DOESN'T MEAN THERE'S A CONNECTION. "Could be" doesn't mean "must be." When you start with a "could be" and start building a theory based on a chain of more and more "could bes" on top of it, you've got a really, really, really shaky foundation.

It's been my experience that investigations generally start from something that is KNOWN and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I haven't seen any of the conspiracy theories on the Berg murder taken an inch beyond "what if. . . . " Find some proof that the pile of orange-looking fabric in the prison photos is even a jumpsuit before you leap to the conclusion that it is the exact same jumpsuit Nick Berg was wearing when he was killed -- if it was even a jumpsuit and orange and . . ..

I think too many people here are trying to get from Point B to Point X in one easy leap, and they haven't even made sure of Point A.

Do I think there are unanswered questions about Nick Berg's murder? Sure I do. Do I think the fact that there are unanswered questions means the CIA, MI, or NFL was responsible? Not yet. . . . .

[fedsron2us]

72. Some people are probably more than happy...

at all the time and effort spent fruitlessly discussing theories about Nick Berg's murder. It diverts attention away from all the other atrocities going on in Iraq.

[Tansy_Gold]

74. Perhaps, and then again perhaps not

Some of us might just be trying to instill a few critical thinking skills in those we feel lack them, in the hopes that they will then apply those skills in other areas.

There are still people on DU who believe there is real significance to the white chair, who believe the presence of ONE white chair in photos of Abu Ghraib and ONE white chair in the video of Nick Berg's death -- chairs that could only be in Iraq thanks to the U.S. occupation -- creates an incontrovertible link between the prison and the murder. If I believe it's important to point out that these chairs have been around Iraq for years and are not artifacts of the invasion, should I not have the right to point that out and inform my fellow DUers of the facts?

Of course, I'm sure you would prefer that none of us have any time off for entertainment, that we spend all of our days contemplating the atrocities in Iraq, the poverty in the Mississippi delta, the lack of health care for the poor. . . . .

We do what we can, where we can.

Tansy Gold, maybe

[stickdog]

79. Yes, you are obviously a devotee of Occam's Razor.

Far more people are murdered by "Dread Pitate Roberts"-type multiple identity terrorist mastermind personas than by their criminal, gangster-connected business partners.

Sarcasm off.

[9215]

56. Excellent post!!!

This could be dissected and blow the whole Berg story!!


Great work!!

[Loonman]

57. Huh.....I never even knew about that

I asked my Somalian friend and he said the same thing, almost.

[geek tragedy]

70. Directly sourcing that website

tells us nothing. When a credible source says that the scarves matter, I'll buy it.

Edited to add: My bad--it's only banned in the Israel/Palestine forum.

Still a bunch of whack jobs, though.

[TrogL]

81. Horseshit (sorry mods)

(spelling)

I just checked with my Middle East expert, who's lived there for over 10 years.

How it's worn and tied has absolutely nothing to do with it. The only regional difference is colour and pattern (eg. checks or no checks).

Those look more like hoods.

[Must_B_Free]

85. I challenge that

Saudi Style


Palestinia Style


Jordanain


Syrian


Iraqi