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?
HHHhhhmmmm....very interesting.
Was Berg sending coded messages? Yes. The e-mails seem to be full of double-speak and inuendo only close acquaintances would understand. Like 'dividends for shareholders' - sounds like results for his supporters - and Alice's Restaurant/Arlo Guthrie, well, why even bring that into it? It seems so out of place. He was arrested and released. What has that reference to do with the time he spent in jail? He was 26. That song was playing in 1970!
It's hard to tell or make much sense out of the e-mails. He sounds as if he isn't 'all there' several comments have been made that Berg sounds as if he's a 'flake' - could that be because his e-mails aren't meant to make sense...unless you know the code?
Read carefully post 162 from piasa. Ties in with what happened to Nick.
Remember Nick rang Aziz and said - I have met some nice people who have offered me a lift - (paraphrase) and that was the last time anyone heard from him. Hamid, what are you?
Hamid was 'captured for an hour' and let go when he explained he was half Iraqi. He says he was 'reunited with his driver'
I bet that's the only time a taxi waited around after his fare was taken by a bunch of terrorists!
I'm much impressed by the details you have set out. It's really incredible, this octupus has so many long tentacles. If anyones till believes that Nick only went to Iraq to climb towers/find work and do good deeds...you know what 'they' say...I have a perfectly good bridge to sell.
Dynamite attack on their transmitter whilst "Alice's Restaurant" was playing.
Interesting.
Well, well, well. It appears that Nick Berg was well-acquainted with the significance of "Alice's Restaurant" to left-wing liberals, wasn't he? What ordinary 26-yr-old guy would know about a long-forgotten 1966 rock-&-roll song that was associated with pirate low power FM radio (LPFM) stations? Unless he was a part of the LPFM pirate movement himself, that is. Thanks for figuring it out for us!
REVIEW for newcomers:
Berg's e-mail to the "shareholders:"
"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."
Actual lyrics from the Arlo Guthrie song:
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml
History of Alice's Restaurant pirate radio station:
Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio
Europe's favourite album stationPerhaps the most well known rock station and one of the longest lived pirates, was Alice's Restaurant - who could forget a name like that? Founded by Dave Lane, and kept afloat by 'the team', Alices was described as a "rock giant" in newspaper columns, and you can still see the famous Alice's skull n' crossed guitars logo on remarkably hardy T-shirts today. www.freewebs.com/rockradioeurope/londonrockradiohistory.htm
The LPFM / Alice's Restaurant connection appears to be well-known. This generated 406 hits:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=%2Bpirate+%2Bradio+%2B%22alice%27s+restaurant
%22&btnG=Search
I am now going back to read this whole thread. Thanks for the ping!