Posted on 06/27/2004 8:50:33 AM PDT by Hildy
Scenes in Fahrenheit 911 of U.S. soldiers taunting and sexually humiliating Iraqi civilians following the successful invasion were shot by Urban Hamid, an embedded Swedish-Iraqi journalist who is presently a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado, the university's student newspaper Camera disclosed today (Tuesday). Moore has declined to respond to questions from interviewers about whether he resorted to subterfuge in order to embed photographers among U.S. forces and has been criticized for not showing footage of the abuses to U.S. military authorities earlier. But Camera reported that the controversial footage by Hamid was actually shown at a theater in Boulder as long ago as March 1 and was subsequently brought to Moore's attention. Hamid, who has lived in the U.S. for the past 12 years, told the newspaper that he has returned to Iraq three times in the past year, presumably to continue to document the course of the war. "Every time I go back, it seems it's gotten worse ... When I last went back, people were so tired and exhausted and had lost hope. It's extremely sad to see."
I'm glad you saw this thread. I popped over to the research thread to get an excerpt of one of Nick Berg's emails and saw your name and calcowgirl and meant to ping you both over here.
So we have "independent journalist" Urban Hamid revealed as one contributor to Moore's movie. Urban Hamid recently of Boulder,Colorado.
The two men cited to have last seen Berg at his hotel were Andrew Duke, businessman from Boulder, Colorado, and Hugo Infante, also an "independent journalist".
When we add in that Michael Moore "just happened" to have an interview on tape of one of his producers and Nick Berg....well, it's a small world, but it does raise some legitimate questions.
Was that supposed to throw us off your trail?.....;)
Great, thanks.......I haven't emailed anyone else, but if you have their contact info., do it!! I really think the more people that we can pass this along to, the more informative (one way or the other) it will become - kind of like the old advertisement "you tell two friends, they tell two friends" and on and on and on!! Even if Sean is off this week, and Col. North has other things scheduled, I think if some of these TV and radio research depts. want to do any investigation of this "cameraman" we will have, at least, given them a starting point. And who knows, they have bigger budgets and employees devoted just to these tasks so they may well go far beyond the information we are able to poke around at here!!!
Urban Hamid is a Swedish/French national who works as a freelancer for a number of publications worldwide. Currently in Baghdad, he is one of the independent journalists covering the war in Iraq. Hamid is also co-founder of "Great Angular, a network of freelance photographers and journalists specialising in producing features for the written and audio-visual press. He spent twelve years in the United States and now resides in Cairo.
(snip)
http://www.wan-press.org/article1018.html
For the record, I am not the first one to suspect that Berg was Moore's undercover cameraman. Here's a post discussing the issue and pointing out that before Berg's death, Moore claimed that he had two undercover cameramen:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1144239/posts
Legitimate questions such as...Urban Hamid is in possession of what are potentially explosive, certainly very damaging photographs of prison 'abuse' photographs, but does he draw the attention of the whole world to this?
No, he shows this supremely valuable documentation at a small theatre (?) in Boulder Colorado.
Good heavens, even I would know better! I could have held an auction. The world Press would be falling all over itself for this material.
Instead, Hamid waits - until the material 'comes to Michael Moore's 'attention' ...
Michael Moore; look out of the window - a flock of pigs are sitting on your fence.
Where did I read it that Michael Moore is HEAVILY involved with Indymedia???? Somehow..some way and I just can't recall it now..........can anyone help?????? This could become another "piece" of this huge puzzle!!!
If I would get some work done over the summer, I would write a story on them for the college paper this fall. But, I just can't motivate myself to do more than the college classes I am already taking. A survey of Iraqi blogs would be a kick-butt story though.
And at Cannes he said he had THREE...
(see my post early on this thread...post #25, I think)
Moore on 9/11: "We sold out in Army-base towns.This is a red state movie."
Hogwash. Freepers expose more moore lies in minutes. The movie is a flop. Showing where? In tiny art-house theatres.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1161314/posts
If you want I can nag you about it.:-)
How would you research whether Berg was on his payroll? Did Berg have an email account that might disclose communications with Moore? Guess we'll never know.
Just wanted to drop a note to say the latest online edition of Rolling Stone I've been able to find is the June issue. I can't find the July 9 one yet. I wonder if it hits the stands first, then gets posted at a later date?
I would be very interested in reading the article when it is posted.
Looks like a possible "insurgent" sympathizer is working with Moore to damage the American war effort. Of course, this can only mean one thing-- Micahel Moore is a bigger "patriot" than even we realized.
Try here for the page translated (a bit poorly) to English:
http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpub.alxnet.com%2Fguestbook%3Fid%3D2531790%26pa%3D7&type=text&text=&from=swe&to=eng
Here is a link to everything I could find on Andrew Duke.
Here is a snip from the Chicago Tribune* that includes Hamid:
Muslim anger toward U.S. intensifies in post-9/11 era: [North Sports Final Edition]*Source of Chicago Tribune article is public library, online. Therefore, I can't provide link.
Tom Hundley, Tribune foreign correspondent.
Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Sep 13, 2002. pg. 16
More than a million Muslims live in Brazil, but Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana beach feels a world apart from the battlefields of Afghanistan. Riduan and Muhammad, two Syrian brothers who run a bar near the beach, were having a lighthearted conversation until the subject of the U.S. war on terrorism was mentioned.
Then the lines in Riduan's face hardened. He said he did not want to talk about Sept. 11. What really angered him, he said, was the way U.S. officials tossed around the word "terrorism" as if the U.S. government itself had not committed acts of terrorism in the last year.
"I think Americans are the real terrorists in the world," he said. "Americans are the ones that pollute the planet, attack Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, Vietnam and Japan. They are the most aggressive nation in the world, keeping peace inside their border and doing war outside."
Riduan, 25, did not want his last name published. "I am getting scared," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "If you take a picture of me and print my whole name, Americans will be able to localize me, and I am not sure what could happen to me."
Urban Hamid, a University of Colorado doctoral candidate, has a Swedish mother, an Iraqi father and a U.S. passport. He lives in Cairo but has spent much of the last year traveling throughout the Islamic world. Most people took him to be an American. The experience gave him a firsthand taste of the growing animosity toward the U.S.
"In Cairo, especially with Egypt so closely linked to Israel, I felt resentment I had never felt before. I was exposed to incidents where people openly showed their sentiments. Some people were extremely hostile, saying things like: `What are you doing here? Go home. We all know what you're here for,'" said Hamid, 25.
The next morning, Mr. Berg described F.B.I. agents’ questioning as amicable, but pointed. Among the questions asked, he wrote, were: “Why was I in Iraq? Did I ever make a pipe bomb? Why was I in Iran?”The website of Urban Hamid at urbanhamid.com links to Pacifica Radio, an entity long alleged to have communist affiliations. (As a reminder, Pacifica Radio is also linked to Prometheus Radio Project and George Soros.)He conjectured that their questions arose from some Farsi literature and a book about Iran that he had. Mr. Berg wrote that after four days he was transferred to a cellblock that included prisoners charged with petty offenses and suspected “war criminals.”
“Word had spread due to the presence of certain items amongst my stuff that I was Israeli,” Mr. Berg wrote. “So I felt a bit like Arlo Guthrie walking into a jail full of mother rapers and father stabbers as an accused litterbug.”
The American military police, in fact, “were pretty stand-up,” he wrote. “They heard the chants of Yehudien, Israelein, and told the I.P. prison staff to put me in my own cell.”
“I did get on much friendlier terms with the other prisoners after they discovered I could speak a little Arabic and verified I didn’t have horns or anything,” Mr. Berg said.
He described the conditions for other prisoners and their treatment, depending sometimes on nationality. The others, he wrote, were behind closed cell doors and had no time outdoors. Some prisoners, considered political or suspected war criminals from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran “had been in custody for 40 days without a single interpreter interrogation, just waiting as they still do today, and the Iraqi guards treat these poor fellows — especially the Hindis among them — as real dogs.’
Mr. Berg was released on April 6, a day after his family filed a suit against the United States government seeking to have him freed.
I found a webpage at kpftradio.com that provides a timeline and key events of affiliated stations. (I have included more items than relevant to give everyone an idea of the kind of things these affiliates were broadcasting).
Note that in the leftist radio business, Arlo Guthrie and his song Alice's Restaurant marks a significant event in time.
1962 Citing FBI concerns about "communist affiliations" at Pacifica, the FCC withholds the license renewals of KPFA, KPFB, and KPFK for 3 years. Neither the FBI nor FCC ultimately cites anyone at Pacifica with any violations.During the early 60’s, programmer Bob Fass at WBAI introduced Free Form Radio. His relaxed format, mixing interviews, music, and theatre, is the precursor of the on-air style of everyone from Howard Stern to (gulp) Rush Limbaugh.
1965: Vietnam Day in April on KPFA, WBAI & KPFK in Los Angeles provides an early national forum for protests against the war. KPFA’s Chris Koch is the first regular radio commentator reporting from Vietnam.
Throughout the 1960’s, Pacifica Radio provided one of the only venues for the works of avant garde composers like Edgard Varèse & John Cage (not all of his pieces were silent, doncha know).
1967 KPFA broadcasts a live interview with Che Guevara months before he is killed in Bolivia. During this period, Pacifica Radio was the lone radio voice for progressives such as I.F. Stone, Bertrand Russell, Malcolm X and Daniel Ellsberg.
The 70’s saw growth in the Pacifica network of stations with the addition of KPFT in Houston & WPFW in Washington, D.C.
1970: Arlo Guthrie’s interminable "Alice’s Restaurant" was playing when KPFT was blown off the air by a dynamite attack on their transmitter…..the first station to be so targeted in the history of broadcast radio. A second attack soon followed; federal agents ultimately arrested a Ku Klux Klansman for the bombings.
WBAI in NYC broadcasted comedian George Carlin’s "Seven Dirty Words" uncensored in 1973 and triggered a ground-breaking Supreme Court battle on obscenity rules for open-air broadcasters.
1973 Pacifica provides gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings.
The Symbionese Liberation Army delivered the Patty Hearst tapes to KPFA/Berkeley and KPFK/Los Angeles in October, 1973. KPFK manager Will Lewis is jailed for refusing to turn the tapes over and a police search of the station is broadcast live for 8 hours.
My question is similar to many posed by Miss Marple relative to another Berg e-mail: Was Berg sending coded messages to family and friends?
Thanks for letting me know. Rolling Stone is such a waste of paper but somehow it seems I have a lifetime subscription. Anyway, the article is entitled, Baghdad Follies. I really didn't read it carefully, the paragraph referencing Berg just caught my attention.
HHHhhhmmmm....very interesting.
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