Slashdot Mirror
Reuters Admits, Pulls Doctored Photos
fragmentate points to a post on PopPhoto which says "Reuters pulled a photograph of burning buildings in Beirut yesterday after a post on the Little Green Footballs blog outed it as digitally manipulated. The photo, filed on Saturday by freelance photographer Adnan Hajj, ran with the caption "Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs."
Fragmentate adds "Another image from the same photographer was found to have been doctored.
Whether you're a CNN fan, or a FoxNEWS fan, you have to wonder how much of what we see is fake, or exaggerated."
Virtually EVERY news report from ANY source is either exaggerated (to reflect the reporters bias) or softened (to likewise reflect the reporters bias). Add to this equation the pressure for ratings and simple stories can quickly and easily become "sensational".
True 'unbiased' reporting is a myth.
If you want an idea of whats going on, read/view as much as you can -- from as many sources as you can. From Fox to CNN, from the far left Pacifica to convervative talk radio. From The Standard to the NY Times. From LGF to DailyKos. My limited experience has suggested to me that the 'real story' is usually somewhere in the middle.
That said, I'd like to address this statement from TFA:(sneeze)BULLSHIT(/sneeze)
Bad lighting conditions? Remove dust? Come on. Last I checked CRT and LCDs glow... unless he was working from memory alone without the aid of a monitor, he's a flipping liar.
Beruit is not being bombed!
Sure, this photographer is at fault, and you can make assumptions about his political motives for photoshopping this image. But what's worse is how did Reuters let such a piece of crap into the system? The guys on SomethingAwful or Worth 1000 all do a much better job, and that's just for the glory of the contest. They're not trying to pass their stuff off as "news." Even the guys at Fark aren't this bad (not even Heamer :-) No, this photoshop was of "The Daily Show" quality -- comically bad.
The only conclusion I can come up with is that Reuters isn't actually looking at the images that come in the door. Even if someone at Reuters had the same political agenda as the photographer, he should have had the good sense to deny that picture because the photoshopping was so obvious. Actually, neither conclusion is good news for Reuters at all.
John
If it's posted on Slashdot, then it must be true. :P
"Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs."
Not unlike the smoke that now billows from the LGF webserver...
From the synopsis to Max Headroom, Episode 15, "War", ca. 1987.
... welcome our new al-Reuters image manipulating overlords!
You use reporters with a political agenda, shared by the editors, it should come as no surprise that this is what you get. The international press does not like Israel. They especially seem offended that the country hasn't just given up and died yet.
This is no way confined to Reuters. Here is an excerpt from yesterdays reliable sources between howard kurtz and Thomas ricks of the washington post.
Reliable sources
THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon. KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here? RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me. KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here. RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.
This fellow Ricks is willing to spout crap like the above on national television. The Khmer Rougue could make a convincing case for the moral high ground against Hezbollah. Israel a country that goes to the trouble of trying to get civilians away from targets before they are hit does not.
As peple have been pouring through recent Reuters photographs, a number of other discrepencies have arisen: Here's one http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extre me-makeover-beirut-edition.html from Drinking From Home.
2 separate photographers sent in captioned photographs of a woman who's house "had just been destroyed". The only problem is, it the same woman and same house but the claimed airstrikes were 2 weeks apart.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
Here's the trick. Don't trust any single news source, read a few that report the same thing, Some will say one thing, others, something slightly or even radically different. The truth is probably somewhere inbetween. You only have to compare and contrast what's going on over in Lebanon right now to see this in action. If you compare Fox or the BBCs coverage of the same event, you'd think they were two different stories.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
These days pros shoot digital. I am a pro, I shoot digital. Somehow people have this impression that only what comes "out of the camera" is "real," but a digital photo is just an A-D conversion with a given set of parameters. I can significantly change the look of a scene just by changing the settings of the camera.
More to the point, I often shoot RAW, which REQUIRES "development" in order to be shown online or printed, since as a file it's just an uncalibrated sensor dump, meaningless data, not an image at all. But the look of a RAW image can change DRASTICALLY when converted to JPG based on the choices I make when selecting things like white balance, exposure, sharpness, contrast, etc. (and these have to be manually selected--i.e. the choices must be made by me in order to get an image file out the other end, there is no "real" initial image).
The point is that the camera is only, and has always only been, a tool for realizing the vision of the photographer. It is not "objective" in any sense (and wasn't in the film days either, even film had to be "developed" and this process could vary an image quite a bit). Photoshop/GIMP/Silkypix/any other image processor is no different, and represents just an extension of the photography/development process.
If a JPEG image comes out of the camera with very low contrast, why is that the "real" scene and not an incorrect camera setting (contrast turned too low)? And if I then take a low contrast image in GIMP and adjust the contrast for better clarity, why is that a "fake" scene and not the "real" scene that I saw?
The logical extreme of such arguments is that the only "real" images in the digital age are taken with black-box cameras with all settings on "auto" and nothing adjusted afterward. Only people forget that digital cameras are just glorified A-D converters and that all of the "auto" settings are calibrated and coded by programmers who are also making decisions about how images will look (high contrast vs. low contrast, expose for shadows vs. expose for highlights, compensate for differences between human lens and camera lens or don't, etc.)
Every step of the photo process, from selecting the camera + lens in the first place all the way to selecting the compression level of the file after all else is said and done, is "editing." All photography is propaganda by the photographer and anyone that doesn't realize this is both naive and missing a great deal of the appreciable "art" involved in the process.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
In addition to the photos, there are many fake news stories out there. Like the one the photo was supposed to accompany said the photo was of a jet firing three missiles was actually the jet firing one flare. The report that a particular Israeli strike in Lebanon killed 40 civilians. There was only one casualty in that strike.
The fact that Reuters didn't even look at the photos before publishing is just laughable. Anyone with an ounce of experience in photography could tell they were fake. Either Reuters is so inept you can't trust them to know the truth from lies or they don't care to tell the difference. Heck, a death threat to "Zionist pigs" was traced to a Reuters IP. Sure, I'll believe anything they say.
Either way, as a previous poster said, read from a wide variety of news sources and figure it out for yourself.
But why is the rum gone?
Are you telling me that a this Reuters professional photographer has "Photoshop" skills so poor as to try and pawn off this VERY poor photo edit as the real thing? My God, he took the same puff of smoke and simply stamped it an extra 25 times on the photo. Absolutely unbelievable that anyone is that stupid, much less a professional.
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts", Earl Weaver - Legendary Coach of the Baltimore Orioles
LGF's extreme anti-Muslim stance is often disturbing, but this is the second time that they've made a major contribution by outing negligent reporting by the mainstream media--they were also the first to identify the fraudulent "Bush memos" as crude forgeries.
These photos are the latest chapter in a long-running problem of the press... and I think it's time for the American press to finally come out and say what it is - biased. ALL press is biased, period. But only here in the U.S. do we all happily assume that, somehow, our press holds itself to its lofty goals.
Almost all of the European press is up front about its bias - left, right, or otherwise. It's liberating, it's informing, it's better for consumers. If I want to read the French press and see what's going on in the right, I read Liberation, the far-left (communist), L'Humanite, the right, Le Figaro, a center-left, Le Monde. By reading articles from each newspaper on a subject, you can hear what all sides are saying quickly and get much more information.
But here in the U.S., such a bias is reviled. Fox News, for example, is looked down on for its conservative bias. I look down on them as well - not because they have a bias, at least they're more open about it - but because they try to conform to the American press ideal of supposedly unbiased reporting by claiming they're "fair and balanced". Just come out and say it!
I don't care if the NY Times is left-leaning, either. That's fine. But they should at least ADMIT it.
Americans, journalists in particular, need to embrace their biases. Let us know where you're coming from so we CAN get the message from both sides, not some filtered down, biased report passing itself off as "both" sides of the story.
After browsing through a number of blogs, the two photos mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg. Reuters has distributed many other photographs from Adnan Hajj that are fake or questionable. With his talents, maybe Hajj can get a job with the Weekly World News.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I am not exactly sure what the "political agenda" you are suggesting Reuters has is. In what way is a "political agenda" served by leading people to believe they are looking at a photo of a building in Beirut burning? Are you suggesting that buildings in Beirut are not burning, and some sort of agenda is being served by leading people to believe buildings are burning in Beirut?
Perhaps a simpler explanation is that these doctored photos are simple fraud by a photographer trying to make the photos he is taking look exciting because he is being paid to take exciting-looking photos.
I'm a Playboy fan, because nothing in that magazine is fake or exaggerated.
BBC is usually pretty even handed. But not, for some reason, when it comes to Israel related news. http://home.comcast.net/~jat.action/BBC_bias.htm It's surprisingly blatant, especially coming from commentators and reporters on BBC International.
The bad photoshop work isn't really the story here. It's just what got him fired from Reuters. In one example and yet another, this photographer is acting more as a Hezbollah propaganda operative than a news photographer. He was responsible for one of the most used photos from Qana with the dead child being held up, and as recently as yesterday had a picture on Page 1 of the NYT of an injured Lebonese civilian. He's basically the Peter Parker of Lebanon. It's wouldn't be hard to get the best photos if you were working with the terrorists who control the region!
Those are REALLY badly doctored photos - easy to spot. I think quite a few amateur GIMP/Photoshop users could have done a much better job (I know I can).
If such obviously doctored photos are making it past the editors - who knows what more subtly done stuff has escaped detection.
www.sjbaker.org
For that reason, there are "forensic cameras" available that have a digital signature algorithm built in that sign the images. Any tampering results in an invalid signature. Perhaps news photographers are going to have to go that route next?
Well this brings up the point that all photographs are manipulated. The only question is degree. And the secondary question in the case of news is "what degree of manipulation is acceptable?"
People need to get it through their heads that just as a news report can never be truly unbiased, a photograph can never be a true representation of reality. In the old days, different film stocks rendered colors differently, and today different sensors do the same. Contrast, brightness, tonal range are never captured precisely or processed perfectly in the camera (or in photo processing software). The data needs to be manipulated to create a decent approximation, but it can only ever be that. Images obviously need to be resized to print on the web, and detail is lost. They need to be cropped to focus the eye on the important part of the image. Is this not acceptable? Presumably much of the rest of Beirut was *not* on fire when the photo in question here was taken - what if the photographer had simply cropped all of that out of the photo? Is that "over-dramatizing" the story or is that simply illustrating what the story is? After all, the story is that part of Beirut was bombed, not that most of it wasn't. (But the reality, of course, is the opposite.)
If you're talking about a digital "signature" that makes any change to an image impossible, then a) you are fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose and capabilities of photography in general, and b) you are disallowing benign and even beneficial "manipulations" like resizing and cropping.
I think the bottom line is a human being needs to sit there and look at these photos and judge each one individually. It's not a question of whether the image is an exact representation of reality (which is impossible) or whether it's the exact image out of the camera (which, for both web and print publishing, is impractical). It's a question of when manipulation crosses an editorial line and starts having a point of view of its own. And that's what editors are supposed to be there to judge; that's why they call them "editors".
This photo was so blatantly over-manipulated that I have a hard time believing an editor ever saw it before it was published.
It was done so badly that I could tell it was clone tooled by looking at the thumbnail of the picture.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I have a friend who's a sound engineer and he says he always hears library sounds on news reports. e.g. A report from Iraq may have some standard AK47 shots dubbed on to make it sound more interesting.
You use reporters with a political agenda, shared by the editors, it should come as no surprise that this is what you get. The international press does not like Israel. They especially seem offended that the country hasn't just given up and died yet.
Oh, really? I mean, does someone from USA or Israel listen to the international opinion? I mean, the War on Oil^H^H^H^HTerror and this yet another international military conflict american style?
This is no way confined to Reuters. Here is an excerpt from yesterdays reliable sources between howard kurtz and Thomas ricks of the washington post.
Reliable sources [cnn.com]
THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon. KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here? RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me. KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here. RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.
*cough* Luisitania *cough* PearlHarbour *cough* WTC *cough*cough*, man, I have a very baad flu.
This fellow Ricks is willing to spout crap like the above on national television. The Khmer Rougue could make a convincing case for the moral high ground against Hezbollah. Israel a country that goes to the trouble of trying to get civilians away from targets before they are hit does not.
Maybe because without the approval of USA this kind of sh*t would not happen, and the rest of the americans should get involved into it.
Are you going to be happy if Cuba launches missiles at USA because they *know* there are suspected anti-communist elements in USA? Well, if not why are you in support of such butchery of innocent civilians? You know, if the Israel army is so great-and-humane, maybe they should go for every house, and not try to destroy the whole country *including* the infrastructure. Yes, the Home-Of-The-Even-Braver indeed!!! The poor israeli are going to get in so much trouble for this war... like, you know, the thousands americans veterans of the Vietnam war. People NEVER learn anything.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Would you be happy if Cuba launches missiles at the USA because confirmed anti-communist elements in the USA kidnap three Cuban soldiers, kill 7 other Cuban soldiers and escape into the American borders not to even be glimpsed at by the American government?
Now imagine I tell you these anti-communist elements have attacked Cuba for a few decades now, and have kidnapped and killed other Cuban soldiers and civilians - all of this after Cuba retreated from the conquered American soil to prevent such attrocities. What do you think now?
That may be, but representing photoshop-retouched pictures as images of actual reality is more along the lines of fraud, although it might perhaps be motivated by bias.
How about this for bias: He's doing it because he has an arab-sounding name, therefore he's a hezbollah or lebanese sympathiser, which is what I see between the lines in some of the posts.
What, me prejudiced?
Some may feel uncomfortable being confronted with this thought, but that doesn't mean they weren't thinking it. More likely the photographer has no agenda, but doctored the photos simply to make a buck. He's freelance, after all and the better his pics the more he sells. Take it from a former freelance photographer.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Before you start implying that someone is paranoid, you may want to do a little fact checking. Going over the grandparent post line by line:
- Would it surprise you to learn that these doctored photos were placed by someone on the far Right trying to discredit the centrist media?
- Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.
- The goons on the Right in this country are playing a very deep game.
- They're sophisticated enough to data mine,
- and they're morally deformed enough to try to smear the patriotism of a triple amputee war hero.
- It's just fascinating that the paste-eaters at LGF are always the ones who find these doctored photos,
- but never say a word about the ones on GOP web sites that show too much smoke on the destroyed World Trade Center.
- With a news media that's run by press agents,
- and a government run by lobbyists,
- you should just be prepared to only believe your own experience, and the media that you absolutely trust.
- Other than that, expect it to be lies.
- Then, get ready for the struggle to save our freedom that is inevitable.
-- MarkusQNote that he's not saying that it's true, just suggesting that it might be. And, given that this is a well known technique in spin control / psyops, it isn't an unreasonable questions.
Well, he's certainly not alone in this theory, and it is consistent with what Rove is known to have done to Alan Dixon, John McCain, and many others.
Goons is subjective, and pejorative, but the rest of this point is darned hard to argue with. When a party rises from the mat to take control of all three branches of the federal Government, is a coordinated effort lasting decades, you'd be hard pressed to call it luck.
Widely known
His name was Max Clealand, and they did just what he said.
"Always" is an exaduration, and "paste-eaters" is (probably) unjustified, but other than that it is an interesting point. They certainly have found a number of them, and always leaning to the right.
This did happen, and so far as I know none of them raised a stink, so he's spot on.
Also well known.
Well, they write the laws, and
If you want to, go ahead and argue that you should believe sources you don't trust.
Thing that aren't true, are...lies. Again, pretty hard to argue with.
Everyone from Ben "A Republic, if you can keep it" Franklin has agreed with this.
(I'd be much obliged if someone could tell me where that quote came from.)'
'In war, truth is the first casualty.' Aeschylus
'All warfare is based on deception.' Sun Tzu
'Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.' Samuel Johnson
'The first casualty when war comes is truth.' Hiram Johnson (US Senator)
... and others
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
The Khmer Rougue could make a convincing case for the moral high ground against Hezbollah.
Anyone who thinks they could place the Khmer Rouge on higher moral ground than Hezbollah has no business criticising others for having agendas.
You'd have to be a grandmaster of spin to credibly equate a terrorist group that has killed fewer than a thousand people in its 20+ year existence with a regime that executed hundreds of thousands of its own people (and caused the deaths hundreds of thousands more) in the space of a few years, and not have any regard for the disservice such an odious comparison does to the memory of those who died in the Cambodian genocide.
I tend to agree (90%+?) with your reaction to the parent comment, but I think you go too far in defining bias. "Water is wet" is not biased. But it's about something trivial enough that no sane person would disagree, unless it's a class on epistemological deconstruction or some bullshit like that.
... anything? OK, maybe that's too strong, but this definitely hurts its credibility in general, and not just on this narrow "conflict".
However, when something becomes important enough, we have to choose between terms like "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" to describe the same people, depending on our biases. I agree that good journalism, or good discussion in general, needs to recognize bias and identify it wherever possible. For example, in discussing the current conflict (is that a biased word?) in Lebanon and Israel, it seems unbiased to report something like "Hezbollah launched 160 missiles aimed at Israel yesterday" or "the Israeli army attacked several Hezbollah bases in villages in southern Lebanon yesterday". It does get difficult after that (like "bases in villages", for example). For myself, I try to delineate where my personal biases lie, and I find that I can have reasonable discussions with others who do the same, regardless of whether or not I agree with them. BTW, identifying all those biases is difficult, and I value discussions with others of opposing viewpoints for calling me out on them from time to time.
That said, I guess I wouldn't bother to have a discussion with Reuters about
First, let's get this out of the way: taking a picture always entails a reduction. Any picture is a two dimensional projection of one brief moment in four-dimensional space-time. So there is, necessarily, no objective reproduction of the observed reality. Whis is fine, as long as the image does not convey a grossly inaccurate view of reality, whether on purpose or not. That said, there's plenty of room for creating misleading depictions without resorting to post-processing (nowadays done mostly digitally, but the fine art of analog retouching has been practiced for more than a century by glamor photographers).
Now suppose there's one burning building in a city. There are many different ways to depict the situation. An aerial shot will show an isolated fire, without showing any details of the damage to the burning building. A photo taken at street level will show one or two sides of the building, probably focusing on the more heavily damaged sides. People may or may not be included in the picture. If they are, does it show terrified residents running away from the building? (Shock and awe.) Onlookers standing around? (Entertainment.) Firefighters doing their job? (Situation under control.) Did the photographer go directly for the jugular (weeping mother holding her infant)? Depending on what is shown, the composition, the exact moment, etc. one can convey vastly different messages, not all of which accurately reflect the situation.
If you look at award-winning photojournalism, it's the drama-queens that win: the typical scenes are usually boring, and the unusual photos take on an iconic status. The Vietnamese girl running crying down the street, the raising of the flag over the Berlin Reichstag or on Iwojima all range from unusual to unique. They are powerful symbols, but not necessarily an accurate depiction of what goes on most of the time during a war, crisis, natural disaster, etc. (namely, not a whole lot).
Hezbollah didn't start firing rockets a few weeks ago. They've been launching rockets into Israel for years. Until this most recent set of events, Israel would respond with an occasional air
So, how long does Israel just sit there and let rockets fall on civilians before they can respond in such a manner that will stop it once and for all?
Hezbolla is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the US, and Canada. But the Islamic countries consider it a resistance movement, as do a number of other countries worldwide. It is not just a military organization (though it has a military wing) but also a poltical party.
Military organizations and resistance movements target the enemy's military organization and protect civilians. Terrorists target civilians and hide among them as cover. Which one is Hezbolla doing?
Political parties are not armed. Governments, and terrorists organizations are. If Hezbolla is not a terrorist organization, tell me where I can find the country of Hezbol.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
* -- Joke
/T\
/\
O -- your head
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The parent post suggests..."the only solution is to avoid allowing muslim/arab reporters from submitting GWOT stories"...and then has a sig that says "Stop censorship, blah, blah, blah".
The entire post is little more than propoganda and should have been rated "-1 incitefull" or at best "-1 hypocritical".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Terrorists kill without the laws of war- blowing up random people, sometimes their own (like in Bali) and sometimes no one. The intent is to bring about political change, from the eyes of the terrorists.
Problem is, after 50+ years, the tactic is getting nowhere.
And exactly why is is that, every time Israel kills a kid, it's news. Evertime a terrorist kills 30 kids, it's not just as big a deal? The only time terrorists DON'T kill civilians is by accident. Why is Israel held to a different standard?
(kill 50 people a year in Israel on busses, it's no big story; when they retaliate for it, a single dead child makes the phones ring at the UN.)
It's my suspicion that Greater Arabia has serious money problems; their per-capita income over the last 25 years or so has plummeted from $20K to $7K. It's my hunch that the last 30 years has been more about keeping the "Arab Street" distracted from rebellion, more than protecting their "bretheren"...their "bretheren" are still sitting in refugee camps for the last 50 years...tents and other miserable surroundings. Bretheren? Doesn't seem like it.
But back to the media; why is it we never hear *anything* in America about the day-to-day Arab activities- marriages between important people, when certain "celebs" go see a movie, etc? Surely things of importance happen in a place that throttles our world's most precious resource. We never hear a peep.
Say what you will about the doctored photos; the whole wahabi movement seems only intended to maintain the thrones, for the mere price of endless Palestinian AND Israeli suffering.
Can anyone source me confirmation on these hunches?
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Yes, the two hours I spent at Toul Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh was one of the few times I've ever felt ashamed to be human. I'm not Cambodian, and in no way can appreciate the Khmer Rouge's violent ideology, but just the sheer thought that someone could come up with such a human depravity gives me the shivers even now.
This isn't a see-my-baddies-are-worse-than-yours pissing contest. Hezbollah could be evil incarnate for as far as I care, I really have no insight into their methods or aims, but let's not bring in comparisons with the Khmer Rouge here. Let's just say that those two years of Khmer Rouge rule should count as the lowest point in the history of our species and leave it at that.
More than mere navel gazing.
I'm assuming that (since you only objected to one point), that you agree with the rest and will focus on the one you singled out:
It certainly is possible to fact check a bald assertion. Of all the things you might want to fact check, a bald assertion is perhaps the easiest. If I say something like "The bulk of Portugal lies to the west of Spain" you will find it much easier to fact check than if I say something like "How like a flower my true love blooms."
Of course, this doesn't always mean that we have the resources to do it. Claims like "The far side of Jupiter is about -170 degrees Celsius" or "Arnold Schwarzenegger wears pink thong underwear" can be hard (expensive, risky, time consuming) to verify. So instead you can do the next best thing, and sanity check the assertion, from multiple directions.
Yes. Everyone agrees that the documents exist, and no one has proven them to be authentic.
Yes.
No, not really. The other proposed explanations (e.g. Terry McCallef(sp) did it) are even weaker.
No, not at all. In fact, the two prime reasons for suspecting Rove are 1) that it's very similar to things he's been known to do in the past (e.g. spreading negative information against his own candidate, such as he did for Harold See, forging documents as he did against Alan Dixon), and 2) it accomplished exactly what he would have wanted
Not really. Nothing in the memos was contested, and all of it had been previously reported (e.g. by the BBC). Bush never even attempted to deny any of it. The people who would know even stated that the information in the memos was essentially correct. So it wouldn't have helped Kerry's team much at all to have the documents, even if they had been legitimate.
You can go on and on like this, but I don't see how you can make it a "tin foil hat" theory, even if it can't be proved. And bear in mind here that the burden of proof at this point is on you; the original poster asked a (possibly rhetorical) question and you attacked without (so far as I can see) much ground to stand on.
--MarkusQ
Yes, the forty years of Democratic rule in the House of Representatives was very well coordinated... oh wait! You were talking about the Republicans in congress over the last 13 years. Yes, I suppose since it has been over 10 years that the Republicans have held congress it can technically be considered decades. However, for six of those years, there was a Democrat in the White House (you do remember Clinton don't you?). Hmm, decades is starting to sound like an exaggeration, and so far, I am only talking about two branches of the federal government. "Control" over the three branches did not occur until the past year.
There is enough division in the United States without adding bald-faced lies and distortions to make the divisions even stronger. You want a conspiracy? Then tell me why there seems to be a concerted effort to alienate and divide practically every segment of the American society. You know, one of the best ways to defeat someone is to divide and conquer....
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
I wanted to put in my two cents here and say that I agree.
Part of the problem seems to be that we've taken to using the word "terrorist" so broadly, and with such a stigma attached to it, that we've forgotten what it actually means. A terrorist is a person who intentionally attacks a civilian population, usually with the immediate goal of causing mass casualties, with the ultimate goal of accomplishing a political end by causing terror and fear in said civilian population.
To say "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" is a lie; at the very least, it assumes that one man is either deluded, or misunderstanding the nature of terrorism. (At the very least it is simplistic: a person could be both a freedom fighter and a terrorist, or neither, or either one singly.)
To be a "terrorist" doesn't imply any particular political ideology. You could be a "Zionist" terrorist as easily as you could be an "Islamo-facist" one. Being a terrorist also doesn't require that someone be disconnected from a government, either; I think you could make a fairly convincing argument that a lot of warfare and accepted strategy in World War Two falls squarely into the realm of terrorism: bombing a city for its "morale effect" is simply terrorism by another name. (It's worth pointing out that most countries have rejected these tactics, and at the same time the word 'terrorist' has become more stigmatized as it becomes a less tolerated practice.)
Just because a word is used politically doesn't immediately strip it of all factual meaning; if that were the case, we wouldn't have any language left.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
But there are people who are using this to try and prove that using these photos.
Take a look at giyus.org. They basically have software which they are using to astro-turf/spam thier agenda as they find it. The Israeli foriegn office have hired over 5,000 trainee diplomats as well to run the software.
This is one such story that appeared a few hours back and I am seeing it spammed elsewhere. Even money said that a giyus user spammed slashdot with this story.
The fake photos doesn't detract from the fact that there are over 900 civilians dead, over 30% are children and over 800,000 people displaced from thier homes.
The general public in Lebanon is to blame.
Lots of them actually support taking shots at Israel. The people who don't support that have still allowed it to occur.
I know, it's easy for me to say that the people in Lebanon should have put Hezbolla in jail or executed the whole lot of them. There isn't a one politician over there who dares to take a strong stand against the bastards.
But yet... a nation is responsible for keeping such things in check. Each and every person has a duty to keep the gangs under control. When this is not done, somebody else will come in and do the job.
If you let the criminals operate out of your house, don't complain when you get raided.
This is second one from Lebanon admitted to be faked. Ynet reports. Interesting times.
Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
Not about the image that the original post is about, but about what happens after something like this gets out. Read this blog post:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014929.php
A fine example of a blogger making a fool of themself, doing the exact same thing they are accusing Reuters of doing. Read my response to it:
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The only photograph that strikes me as somewhat odd is the bottom image http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj4567.jpg.
The other 4 images are clearly photographs of the same scene. Let me give you my view on the positioning of the photographers in each.
#1 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj1234.jpg
This picture was taken with a regular angle lens, say somthing like 35mm, towards a building, across the bridge that is out. The photographer was standing close to the right side of the road (when viewed in this direction). The car in the next picture is out of the frame, to the left of the photographer. The photographer is too far from the actual damage to get a good shot of it. The actual damage is close to the right shoulder of the man in the center of the image, off to the left.
#2 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj1245.jpg
This picture has been taken from the opposite side of the road from #1, i.e. the left, shooting in the same direction. The photographer will have used a telelens, say 200mm. This pulls in the distant background and seems to place the pilons in the center of the road closer together. Note the tree white and red pilons, with the overturned fourth. Now look at #1 again, you will notice the same three pilons with the overturned one pointing towards the photographer. Also not that the two palms and the car on the right side of the road are visible in #1 as well, off in the distance.
Again, this picture has been shot across the destroyed bridge, which is now partly obscured by the car and the man. But you can make out the concrete mesh fragments sticking off the right shoulder of the man, to the right.
#3 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj2345.jpg
In #3, the photopgrapher has arrived at the collapsed bridge. From this angle, the photographer, shooting with something like the 35mm again, can shoot into the gap, clearly showing the damage. The photographer is now well past the car in #2, but the other car is still visible across the gap. The car in #3 is actually visible in all of the images, as is the building in the background, though very poorly in #1.
#4 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj3456.jpg
In #4, the photographer has moved back beyond the overturned car. Or, about as likely, #4 was actually taken before #1. The photographer is now so far back and to the left, that the small watchtower is also in the frame.
The allegations in the piece are sensationalist and don't stand up to scrutiny. The author (and powerlineblog) are doing exactly what they are accusing Reuters of doing: posting material without a critical and sceptical review. If the bottom photo (#5, http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj4567.jpg) was published as a photo of the same incident, that's not right But some of the comments on the other 4 are simply wrong.
I've included a schematic drawing of the scene as I think it was, for your reference. Note that I was there no more than the author was and that errors in my reasoning or schematics should in no way impact what Reuters and Hajj have to say for themselves.
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The schematic I'm talking about: http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k88/Grismar75/i
So we are seeing a shift. If you cannot stand up to the enemy you must find another way to fight back. The geneva convention has rules about were you are supposed to fight. You are not allowed to use for instance civilians as a human shield, neither are civilians allowed to provide a shield or even assistence.
Terrorists do not obey the geneva rules. So they "can" use civilians as a shield, that is their great power. They can mingle between them, attack from within them, get support from them, and then just become them when they want to flee/hide. In fact, they are civilians. They do not wear a proper uniform for one or carry papers to identify them as soldiers of an army.
But the entire idea of innocent civilians who shouldn't be a target in war is a myth. A candyfloss coating we hope can reduce the horror of war. In reality pretty much every war has always targetted the civilian population. Even in the medieval wars were armies would do their fighting in the countryside properly lined up the winning army would usually go on a rampage through the opponents cities.
It is just the way things were/are. You are at war with the enemy and that means its leaders, its armies and its citizens.
Only recently have some of use become unable to accept this and it ain't working. Look at the recent Hiroshima remebrance. Did these same people mourn the countless deaths of japanese bombings? Offcourse not. Hiroshima was not a simple tit for tat, an way of ending a brutal war started by the japanese, supported by the japanese and carried out by the japanese. When you see a war victim of the atom bomb that is not a child, ask yourselve if they cheered when they read about their brave country men bombing undefended cities.
Offcourse they did.
The real problem with the innocent civilian attitude is that it tries to make war less horrible. I think the bombing on gana (or however you spell it) is too little. Go for an allout middle eastern war. Fullscale bombing with casualties in their millions. Perhaps then just like we had to learn in europe these people will have to learn that war is to costly an option.
But by keeping the casualties as low as they are now (just compare them to traffic accident victims) war keeps being an option. Syria still is spouting war because they never truly felt the horror off full out open war with Israel, just limited military casualties, the lebanese haven't done shit to respect the Israeli withdrawal and curb Hezbollah still thinking that they can exist in peace when its neighbour cannot and the Israeli's think they can just go to war and win easily anytime it is needed rather then make sure peace exist for all.
If you walk across one of the western european war grave sites and you see nothing more white markers across the horizon you can feel nothing but the need to stop war forever.
If you see a single kid dead on the street you want revenge. To make the enemy hurt. In this conflict both sides are seeing single deaths asking for revenge. Let it escalate so both sides, all sides must accept that revenge just leads to more revenge and that in the end both sides need to make up.
The only other option is for a solution like that wich happened in south africa. There all sides agreed that there were just two options, a peacefull, non-revengefull end to apartheid or civil war. That this was achieved is a true miracle and speak very highly of south africas people. Sadly this doesn't look likely in the middle east.
I see no end to the conflict unless they either go the south african way OR all sides accept that war just no longer is an option. And it takes all sides. So far none of the sides are willing to wage peace. Not the Israeli, not hezbollah/syria and not the l
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
# Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.
Well, he's certainly not alone in this theory, and it is consistent with what Rove is known to have done to Alan Dixon, John McCain, and many others.
Well, I can't say with 100% certainty that this didn't happen, but the problem I have with this is that it relies totally on CBS to "do the right thing". Suppose CBS decided they didn't like President Bush and facts be damned, he had to go. Next they steadfastly insist that the documents are authentic and trump out some paid off "experts" to validate them, leaving the Republicans to argue that the docs are made up. It then gets into a "he said/she said" thing where Bush and his staffers can't totally disprove that the docs aren't made up without admitting that they placed them to begin with, so they have to waste precious time and resources defending against a lie they started secretly. I'm just not sure I can go down this path with you on this one.
# and they're morally deformed enough to try to smear the patriotism of a triple amputee war hero.
His name was Max Clealand, and they did just what he said.
I actually live in the state of Georgia, so I can comment on this one. The Washington Post is known for it's left leaning views, so I'm not sure I would bring this out as an "unbiased" source. Cleland was his own worst enemy. Actually this vote, stupid as it was, was not what did him in. Cleland was beaten because of his slavish devotion to the Democratic Party. The Dems opposed a bill creating the Department of Homeland Security because it contained provisions that weakened job protections (think "unions") in the new department. Since the Dems are the party that backs labor unions, opposing such language in the bill was consistent with their viewpoint. Fellow Georgia Democratic Senator Zell Miller has stated that he told Cleland repeatedly that if he voted against the bill, it would cost him the election in the fall. Cleland, always a true soldier of the Democratic Party and never one to differ from the party line, told Miller that he didn't know what he was talking about. So Cleland voted against the bill, just as the Democratic Party told him to do. Much ado was made about this in the fall campaign and it basically became impossible for Cleland to justify why he was "against America's security", so he lost. Cleland was not a particularly good senator and he paid the price for putting the party first above all. Like it or not, Miller was right and this was simply not a bill you could justify voting against and Cleland paid the price. The article link in the Washington Post refers to another incident that while it did not help Cleland, was not directly responsible for his loss.