So I travled to Berkeley yesterday. Two reasons... one... danny and top dog... and 2... there was a high profile middle east corrispondent giving a speech and promoting a book named Robert Fisk.

Fisk is a top notch guy, knows his stuff. To give you an idea of how acomplished he actually is, he had meetings with Osama Bin Ladin 3 times before the 9/11 attacks. So that got my attention.

Fisk, from Britian, makes no secrate of his personal feelings. He repedidly said how Prime Minster Blair's policies have baffled him for years, and he is not to fond of President Bush.

The crowd questios did not help that, cause, being in berkeley, which the master of ceremony called, "The home of free speech" and I call, "Nuts" the crowd wanted confirmation to every single one of thier conspiricy theories. Fisk, greatly to his credit, deflected most questions, saying how, when he looked into them, it's not what these people were saying.

At this point I'd like to say: "I know a guy who knows someone who..." or "my brother worked with someone who.." are NOT crediable sources. You're playing telephone. Your brother probably is painting a much more eleborate picture than what's going on, and you in turn are doing the same. You're not an acrediteed journalist, 99/100 your conspiricy theory's are dead wrong.

I digress, Fisk made some remarkable points that i truely found fascinating. He's been covering the middle east for decades and told stories that didn ring true and these are a few lines i found insightfull:

"The People of the middle east know their history. Nopealn came in 1790's, claimd that he was "there to liberate them from opression. The English arrived and told everyone, "they were there to liberate them"...so you tell me why the people there a bit skeptical."

"I attended a funeral of an Iraqi doctor. At the ceramonial funeral banquett, his brother sat next to me. And like the good, 'New York Times Style Journalist' I asked him, "so are you afraid of a civil war?" He stared ad me and shook his head, "what is it with you westerners and civil wars? We've never had a civil war, we don't want to have a civil war, I am a Shi'a and my wife is a Sunni, you want me to kill my wife?"

"The fear really is in Kurdistan, the area in northern Iraq. for every pourpose but border it is an indipendinet country. The people speak Kurdish, everything is writtne in Kurdish, it just so happins they are half in Iraq half in Turkey. If US forces leave, there is more a fear of Turkish attack than anything."

"I met a boy who I asked if he was going to join the resistince. He told me if he joind the resistince, he would be affraid us forces would leave and Saddam would come back. As soon as Saddam was captured, i learned he joind the resistince."

"The Iraq of equation is this: We need to go. We Will Go. We Can't Go."

"When you read a paper look at the LA time or new york times. You'll notice a trend on thier war corrispondnce sources" ::he opens the LA times from the day before and reads:: "US sources say, US officers say, US authorites say, US personal say, US sources...etc" he rambled off a about 25 of these throuh one article and said, "I'm not claiming cover ups or anything of the source, but this is really not journalism, you're getting one side of a story second hand."

"I stood next to the smoking crater of a roadside bomb an interviewd a witness. A few seconds later the earth litteraly shook, and a military convoy approached and passed us. It took 4 and a half hours to go from begining to end, we just sat and watched. When of them men i was with asked me, "how come, the americans are everywhere? Iceland, england, germany, italy, greece, turkey, uzbekestan, afghanistan, israel, iraq, yamen, Saudi Arabia, pakistan, india, oman, indonisea, australlia, and Japan." Besides my astonishment of a man whos geography was better than my own, I had no answer for him."

"We as journalists have a responsibility to ask, who, where, how, and why? After 9/11 we knew the who. Al Queda. We knew where, DC, New York, and pennsylvania. We knew how, hijacking planes. But we seemed to not be allowed to ask why? Why did these men fly planes into buldings and murder thousands? When it was sugested that our policy in the middle east might not be the most favorable in the region, we are labled as anti-american with the opposition saying "they attack us because they are affraid of us, they hate us for our freedoms and our democracy." Make of that answer, what you will."

He had one profound point that rang very clear"

"Networks will show bodies if the poor soul happind to die in a particular pose. But You will not see the things i see. Babies shot in the face, jackels tearing bodies to pieces in the sun. Corpses in pieces, all on fire. Networks won't air this because it's in bad taste, it's "too much" its unnessicary. The public knows war is bad we don't need to drive it home. I prepose the the fallowing argument.

Do you remeber in Algery, the FLN, had a suicide bomber every month and that was HUGE news. Then, in Lebbenon it was one every couple of weeks, and that was big news. Then a couple years ago, one or two or even three a week in Israel was front page all the time. Now, you have 3 or 4 a day, and it's page three news. "Two suicide bombers in mosul and 2 in bahgdad killed a total of 80 people." If you really want to know how this is going, I went to a morge in bahgdad, where they let me view the death records. In July of this year 1,500 hundred Iraqis had died violent deaths. That's not from heart attacks, or starvation or suicude... that's from murder, and that's in one city. If you do the math, the estiments that range in the hundreds of thousands, are probably not too far off.

What are most people focusing on... polls. I'm from an old school of journalism, where, what we right, is suposed to prevoke a response. You're suposed to be outraged, cause it gets people to talk, and that leads to action."

I'm not sure if I agree with what to show what not to show, but i do agree with the argument of we are desinsitized. And the story of suicide bombings are true as well. I do remeber when one was in israel it was huge. Now one a day is no longer news.

All in all, it was a pretty interesting night.

-Marteney