Most blogs posting about the Nick Berg execution video have gotten their share of hits from people searching for the grisly footage, and farkleberries is no exception. Frankly, it's a startling number: a look through my stats showed that over three-fourths of the hits since Wednesday afternoon have come through some permutation of the search terms "Nick+Berg+execution+beheading+live+video." These visitors don't stay long, because I don't actually have the Nick Berg execution video for their perusal. C'est la vie.

A Daily Kos May 11th posting (mysteriously fallen off the radar) included a link to a website offering the full online video of Nick Berg's execution and had a similar effect – the author mentions that the average number of hits at Daily Kos skyrocketed from 6,000 a day to 15,000. One person (of dozens) commenting on that post stated something to the effect of - and this is not an exact quote, because I can't find the page today - "I won't dignify this kind of pornography [the execution video] that's out there for the pleasure of the sickos in our society."

Before clicking the fated link, I thought for a long while. I will not post the address of the link here - because, sadly, the site it was hosted on is – literally - pornographic. It's one of those hardcore fetish sites, and it disturbs me that whoever owns this site felt compelled to include Nick Berg's excruciating last moments along with video of "extreme kink," which while abhorrent to many, is still for the most part made by willing partcipants, and intended to provide pleasure in its own way. Alongside the scatological videos the abovementioned site offers, the Berg footage is an anomaly - or an acid test. Anyone who actually finds pleasure in seeing real footage of a manacled man having his head cut off with a knife isn't a mere S&M fan - they're a psychopath, in my book.

The decision to watch, or not to watch reminded me of Morpheus' proffering of the "blue pill" and the "red pill" to Neo in The Matrix – you make a choice, and your awareness of reality will change from that point onward. "What will it be? Blue? Or Red?" An awareness one gains with time is that sights can not be un-seen, sounds never un-heard; the luxury of casual forgetfulness doesn't apply when seeing the world’s first globally-distributed snuff film. Clicking the link would be a pill I couldn't un-swallow.

I wouldn’t call myself a sicko, and probably neither would most people seeking to watch the video. Although this is the worst kind of 'must-see TV,' human nature and curiosity compels us to watch it. Biblical scripture says doubting Thomas had to touch Christ's bleeding side to see if the spear wound was real. In the end, I decided to click.

The video is no work of art. Jumping and lurching wildly like a leering fanatic at times, the camera's video stream froze fortuitously as it zoomed in on Nick's face, just as his throat was about to be cut. The worst part was Nick's screaming.

I didn't click again to restart the video stream.

For several hours afterward, I felt a lingering sense of sadness I couldn't quite place my finger on. Later, it dawned on me that I had just witnessed one of those ugly history-making moments that define an era. Some nations did actually air every bloody moment of Nick Berg's slaughter on their news programming, but this event marks the first time that easy access to high-speed Internet transmission of digitized video has allowed this type of content to transcend borders and spread across the globe like a virus in a matter of hours.

Revolution often comes unbidden and bloody, and almost always from outside official channels.

It also occurred to me that on September 11th, 2001, millions had watched a snuff film over and over again on television screens…we just didn't think of it as such at the time. What else can we call footage of thousands of human beings crushed to death in thundering twin cascades of concrete and steel? I suppose if the death is filmed by an uninvolved party, it’s "news footage" – however, if the party that records the event is involved in its execution, it's "snuff."

Clearly, I'm not looking forward to the next step in this "revolutionary" brinksmanship. Answering outrage with outrage, and atrocity with atrocity isn't a path, it's a trap - because a spiral only goes 'round and round, and further down. This horror will be likely be 2004's standout event, but unfortunately the year is still young.

I've written more on the media implications of this incident at Mutinous Winds.

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