More Photoshop Phun
From some bloggy New York Times site: In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many.
Here’s the first version (which apparently was pulled by those stalwart defenders of copyright, the mainstream media, from the web site of “Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards”). This photo ran on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and the Chicago Tribune, as well as on the web sites of BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, and NYTimes.com. None of these top-notch media outlets noticed (or at least, none of them cared) that one of the four missiles is a fairly obvious photoshop clone:
Today the following image was posted to the Sepah News site. Presumably this is the original from which the other one was made:
It’s kind of fun to figure out how little effort was required to alter the image, and what a big psychological difference is achieved by the alteration. (And again, what a gullible bunch of n00bs the MSM editors were to run it without comment.)
July 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Heh, yeah I was chuckling at that earlier today. I think the cleverest part is the removal of the launch truck, which removes all sense of scale… makes the missiles look like they could be ICBMs.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
ymatt – yea, I thought the launch truck looked silly too.
My gut reaction to the four missile picture was that the missiles all had a purpose, a fury, and were heading in the same direction. My gut reaction to the three missile picture was that they were all out of kilter, wobbly and unpredictable. Ironically (or is it Iranically?) an enemy who is off kilter and unpredictable is harder to deal with than one whose purpose is directed and predictable.
Iranian missile testing is not a particularly threatening show of force. It’s as if they are saying to us, “Looky here, this is how we will respond to your attack if you don’t wipe us out first, scary huh?” By highlighting that hand, they actually provide their enemy with a sense of security (sitting behind Patriot defensive missile batteries.) The really scary iranical stuff lurks in the shadows of suitcases in little tiny glass vials that can be broken in the enemy’s public places, shipping containers, swarms of high speed pleasure craft, etc.
Last observation: the pictures warped my thinking into terms of “us” (who are we, the G8?) vs. “them” (Iran); and using the word “enemy”. I am smarter than that, as I know the Iranian people are not enemies for us. It is the extremists in both Iran and America (and Israeli extremists?) who are the true enemies of a more enlightened future for our world. Sigh… such is the power of pictures (and iranical photoshops) to influence thoughts at, or almost at, a sub-conscious level.
So does the war start before or after the November elections?
July 11th, 2008 at 4:47 am
What makes you guys think this wasn’t just two different firings? The plumes of smoke aren’t the same in the two pictures. The dust clouds are more similar than the smoke. And really what would the press have to gain by adding one fired rocket while removing one unfired rocket.
Especially since the press isn’t all that onboard with this war anyway. My example; Canada is now the proud owner of the raw material of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. Kind of ironic for Knarly and NL.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107ap_iraq_yellowcake_mission.html
So let’s see, 550 metric tons equals 1.2 million pounds, at 40,000 pounds per that would be a few wheelbarrows over 30 semi truck loads. Now the real numbers, from past research I remember 50 tons is enough to produce 1 to 6 nuclear bombs the size of Hiroshima depending on the purity of the uranium. So that is somewhere between 11 and 66 bombs. Maybe ole Joe Wilson was right, looks like Sadam didn’t need more yellow cake :)
But the real story is in the way the media handled this. Now this kind of exonerates the beleaguered Bush administration, and being fair minded journalists you would think they would want to give both sides of the story, especially since this would bring credibility to not only the administration but the US as a whole. Now all the news organizations used basically the same story by the AP as John explains in the topic above this. The Washington post had it on page A-13 and the New York Times on A-6. The Times added it’s own anti administration spin. According to Brent Bozell’s group not a single over the air television news program mentioned it. Sigh.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:15 am
you just don’t get it wwnj
the Iranians doctored this pic not th librl media (snarl!spit!slander!)
wow, their longest range and least accurate missile can almost hit Romania!
They pshopd that image because they couldn’t get 4 missiles to all go up at once (they fired that next missile the next day – ooooooh scary!)
And the uranium you are so worried about wasn’t weaponized (it wasn’t even enriched for energy research, it was just raw feedstock), and was under seal by the IAEA. But just keep up the mishmash of lies and falsehoods that sustain you wwnjs.
Money quote:
So, it wasn’t even of a concentration to be used in a power research reactor, and orders of magnitude too weak for nookular weapons… how exactly is this a great victory for shrubco again?
Also I hate for reality to intrude again, but the US has over 6000 thermonuclear fusion weapons (I imagine a number of them are smaller fission weapons – no I don’t have the google on the numbers). 6000 ready to launch – right – now. And another 6000 on ice without the triggers. I wish the rest of the world would demand we disarm.
Oh and where is the wwnj who was sending anthrax to D pols? Is he dead or alive? When does he get his Pretzelnitwit medal for FREEDUMB!®™?
July 11th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Enk,
Sometimes I think shcb is trying to be an idiot. His last post must set a new record for mistakes. Thank for covering most of them off. He’s right though that ole Joe Wilson was right. We knew that all along anyway. After all, Joe Wilson the diplomat (frmr. Ambassador?) had a first person account of the investigation. All his Rovian opposers had was their wrong wing nut job spin on his report and accusations pulled out of thin air that ole Joe was lying to the media and in his book about what he reported to them.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Ok, I saw an article on these pictures where they drew little boxes around the areas that have been copied, I need little boxes sometimes, I’m slow and not very bright as you all have so lovingly pointed out on oh so many occasions. it does look like the picture was doctored for the reason Enky so pleasantly pointed out. Thanks guys.
July 12th, 2008 at 1:27 am
shcb,
Thanks, you didn’t have to write that but it was nice that you did. I sense the sarcasm in your note; I think it is warranted. For my part, when I reflect on everything that you’ve written in the past few months, most of which I disagree with, I realize that I do not really believe you are as big an idiot as I sometimes think that you are.
No-one answered my question though. Does the war with Iran officially start before or after the election? (I added “officially” because it has been made cleat that the US has been supporting terrorist opposition groups in Iran for some time now.) Or does anyone think that the war will be averted (if so how and by whom?)
July 12th, 2008 at 1:41 am
by the way shcb, my comments about your intelligence are based on similar reasons as this writer’s objections to Nathan Lee:
http://www.911blogger.com/node/16607
July 12th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Thanks Knarly, I don’t mind being wrong. I have found it just saves time and credibility to admit you’re wrong as soon as it is obvious you are. Good questions on Iran. I didn’t read much of link, if there is something that relates to your questions of Iran give me an idea of how far down the page it is and I will read it.
Iran
That is a tough question, this is a chess match with 6 players. My gut feeling is we won’t be at full scale war with Iran before the election. Iran is just testing the perimeter at this point and we are setting the rules of engagement. One of the problems with our current situation is that we have shown a couple possible moves by virtue of our political system. Iran knows when our election is going to be held and they know who the president will be between two men. In this case Obama and McCain are so different in their perceived approach to defense that what we are seeing with these war games and missile firings and threats is laying the groundwork and gathering intelligence for the Obama presidency and exploiting this lame duck period. It is presumed the policy won’t change under McCain and not much under Hillary. Now no one knows how Obama will govern so all this is speculation on Iran’s part. All they and we have to go on is what he has said to date.
Of course Obama isn’t in power now but his perceived stance on defense is so different from the current administration’s there may be a window of opportunity for the Arabs here. I use the word Arabs advisedly here; OPEC was making veiled threats this week that they won’t be able to make up the lost oil production of Iran if we attack Iran. The window of opportunity is that the State Department and the defense department can’t engage in anything very aggressive until the elections are held. Most of the people in State and DOD are career politicians. They don’t want to be in the middle of an aggressive posture if Obama is going to pull the rug out from under them when elected. They also don’t want to take a too pacifistic stance in case McCain is elected. This window of opportunity of indecision is only until November, add to it the confusion of the Olympics, the conventions and the election and they have a brief time frame to at least rattle their sabers for the benefit of their Arab constituents.
But no, not until after the elections.
I think there is a better than 50-50 chance the war with Iran will be averted.
Tony Snow died, he was one of the good guys.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
shcb,
Interesting. 50-50 sounds about right to me, It’d actually be worrisome if you thought the probability of averting war was a lot lower.
As for the link, it does not mention Iran specifically, but the last three paragraphs could just as well be talking about the media’s presentation of the Iranian demons. (It’s also a good fit with this thread on photo-shopping war.) That wasn’t why I posted it though, the reason was that Nathan Lee seemed to put forth disinformation in a similar manner as you do. The link describes each disinfo. / smear attempt succinctly.
Re- your other Iran comments… I don’t understand how sabre rattling accomplishes anything when facing off against America’s military, unless perhaps you are a China or can explode noooklar warhheads like N. Korea; because everything else looks like fly swatters next to America’s sledgehammers; besides the Iranians know they are dealing with the world’s best poker players (Americans) so any insights gained into possible presidential candidate responses are likely to be highly misleading anyway. Maybe I don’t know enough about the subject, but I don’t care to learn more.
Only thing I really took issue with your post is that I doubt OPEC’s statements were “threats”, veiled or otherwise. OPEC IS ust acting in their individual interests. Whether or not they could make up the lost production from Iranian oil production cuts is beside the point, they’re salivating at the prospect of $400 / bbl oil as much as Bush’s big oil friends, associates and allies.
Sorry to hear about Tony Snow, I might not agree that he was one of the good guys (not familiar enough with his positions) but I can say that he seemed to be one of the most competent of them all.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Here is what I know.
It didn’t come from Mike Savage or Macho Mike Rosen or Rust Dimbulb. Instead it came from someone who used to work in the White House (under Bush no less). He used to work in counter-terrorism (I can’t be any more specific than that to protect my source and his sources). His company deals in the same field and he talks regularly with people in the WH and cabinet. I spent a few days up in xxxxx as a guest of my VC buddy and x and x are friends from their college days. He and his kids were up there for the whole time we were, so I had several opportunities to chat about current events.
His take?
We are setting up to bomb the crap out of Iran to eliminate their nuclear program. When I asked what the casus belli would be, his reply was “we’ll just run a destroyer into a cruise missile” (not a far cry from my boat full of explosives and dead A-rabs ramming a US warship, I’m sure we’d find everyone’s passport and Iranian Quds Force ID cards floating conveniently nearby…) btw – wwnj you obviously don’t know the difference between Arabs and Persians… or the difference between Sunni and Shia… please look it up (I suggest either google or wikipedia)
The WH thinking is that Bush will be vindicated by history for blasting as much of the trrrrst stuff as they possibly can while in office. The next president can do all the healing (McSame would probably bomb the wrong country)
I asked “why don’t we get the crazy Israelis to do it?” His response “they don’t have enough airpower” (I am sure we could help them covertly, with remarked bombers, airtankers and airspace to get to Iran). The nuclear centrifuges and other parts of their alleged a-bomb program are all buried too deep.
and now for the cherry on to of this shit sundae:
He then stated that we will use tactical nookular weapons to get at these hardened sites… to which I replied “that is absolutely insane”
Just to be clear: if the US uses nukes on Iran for a suspected a-bomb program (didn’t we kind of already cry wolf once too often in Iraq? nope, no need to look at the past, no need to check the assumptions against reality), then we are opening the floodgates to a hell of a lot of pain. We will find ourselves attacked with nuclear weapons in return (probably smuggled out of Pakistan, our great and glorious ally). First strike with nukes should never be US policy. Never. US policy should be to eliminate these weapons worldwide and destroy the knowledge as much as possible (sow the field with salt [disinformation]).
But hell, why listen to someone who works every day on counter terrorism and counter proliferation! Right? You wwnjs have all the answers and faith in those answers that simply transcends reality. AM radio rules your tiny world of xenophobia and hatred for the Other.
My only hope is that the Iranians realize that shrubco is aching for any provocation at all and they simply don’t provide it. Then we are looking at a false flag attack on American or western assets in the Gulf.
July 12th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Enk,
Interesting. Of course, your repeating this here will enrage shcb and the others back at disinformation central. Remember, they are from the “loose lips sink ships” culture. shcb might say he thinks you made it up. The response could be like: “come on man, a counterterrorism “expert” hobnobbing with your friend and you? Someone was bragging over a few beers and someone was gullible enough to believe him.” Seeds of doubt. That’s all that wwnj’s need to do here. And I just did it for them. Not really, there has been so much scuttlebutt and rumours and more substantial statements about this Whitehouse targetting Iran that there is no doubt left.
There will be no need to cruise missile a destroyer nor for any sizable false flag attack. Didn’t the UN or your Congress recently approve a virtual blockade of Iran by giving themselves the authority to inspect every shipment of anything going into Iran? That could become a lot like the US blockade of Japan prior to Pearl Harbour, but I don’t think that is enough to provoke them into reatliating / resisting , but perhaps we’ll see a repeat of the Iranians capturing foreigners – like the small group of British sailors that were captured earlier this year or last year by the Iranians then released – this time a group of container inspectors somewhere on the Iranian border… The trick will be for US to be able to spin that into a reason to noook their not-yet-nooook facilities. (shcb – before you jump all over that, be aware I am not saying it is the same thing. There are significant differences. You might be surprised to learn that Japan is a nation of islands but Iran is bordered by a half dozen other countries. ;-)
Whatever happened to man’s fear of radiation? It’s like no-one cares anymore that cancer and birth defects and all kinds of other gross and painful things linger and spread from radioactive sites like a, well like a poison, which it is, a persistent poison that lasts for 1000’s of times longer than human beings have had civilization…
Also Enk, good point about differentiating between Arabs and Persians. However, the falling bombs don’t make such differentiations – that’s all that matters to the ignorant wwnj chickenhawk war cheerleaders.
Didya see the Freeway blogger’s sign: “Bush deserves a fair trial.” ?
July 13th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Let me get your last two posts out of the way. We are “targeting” Iran because they are the enemy, and they are an enemy of nation state status. I can’t imagine a scenario where we would purposely kill our own people to justify killing them. We simply don’t need to, they are the enemy, no other justification is needed.
Tony Snow. You wouldn’t have approved of many of his views, but he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. I think it was the senior Bush who used the Churchill quote “I like a man that fights with a smile on his face”. Tony was a fierce debater, but he didn’t belittle people who were asking responsible questions (he didn’t have much patience with Helen Thomas). Just because you don’t agree with someone’s point of view doesn’t mean they are beneath you, they may just be wrong, or you may just be wrong. I have always had the same kind of respect for Juan Williams. I rarely agree with his opinions but I appreciate his honest and civil discourse.
Back to Iran.
The saber rattling isn’t to scare us, although it will have that effect on some folks, that is the purpose of terrorism after all, the main purpose of the saber rattling is to give the troops some hope. I remember being in football games where the game was clearly lost at half time, but the coach had to rally his men even if the cause was lost because there would be a game next week and giving up this week would carry over to the next game more than the loss.
OPEC, this is of course a multi layered subject. They need to sell oil, they have nothing else, they want to sell oil at the highest prices, they have competitors all over the world, they have a finite amount of oil that needs to last for some time, they are ideologically tied to our enemies (that is as pleasant as I can make it) and they don’t want to piss off their customers too much on one hand but they also don’t want democracies and western societies to grow in their neck of the woods, they won’t have the power over their people as they do now if it does. I don’t know if you want to get into something this heady. As I said this is a multi player chess game with many different agendas some separate some overlapping, and every move one player makes changes every other player’s strategy.
July 13th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
A response to your last post, item by item but reverse order…
yea, I get OPEC far more than you give me credit for. No need to get into it further here, we seem to agree.
Sabre rattling – rallying the troops (or the populace) makes sense. Hadn’t thought of that. In hindsight it is obvious, but I missed it and thank you for pointing it out.
Tony Snow – sounds like a guy who deserves respect.
Targetting Iran “because the are the enemy” is pretty simplistic, but i guess it applies in the wwnj world view. God save us from that. You and I agree that a false flag event is not necessary (for justificatioon to embark on an “Iranic”, counter-productive war that will be immensely profitable for the military industrial complex and anyone with significant oil industry stock holdings and very expensive for the rest of us.)
Nice being civil with you shcb, Tony Snow may be guiding us?
July 14th, 2008 at 5:05 am
If Tony is he probably won’t take credit for it.
On the OPEC issue, I didn’t mean you weren’t capable of understanding, I try and not underestimate people’s intelligence, all though there was a guy in Lowe’s yesterday… I just meant what I said, do you want to get into that level of discussion here? I slide a fast one in under the radar every now and then but for the most part I mean what I say. You have politely opted out of a few discussions lately, no problem, it’s summer, we’re all busy. That was all I was asking. A subject this involved is also hard to discuss in this format where it can be many hours or days between responses. No insult intended. When I insult you, you’ll know it :)
July 21st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
It sounds like SHCB recently impersonated a Brit and called Jack Galloway on his radio program. Predictably, shcb gets his reality-phobic brain and war-philic ass kicked across the pond.
Enjoy. http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/375.html
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:01 pm
What this makes me think of, is someone who is my Iranian counterpart, working for whatever ministry put this out because that’s the only job they could get, getting this assignment and going ‘For this I went to art school for 4 years…’
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:02 am
I thought Galloway made some excellent points and the caller wasn’t very good, but after listening to talk radio for a couple decades (I doubt Jayson is even that old) I have found callers rarely are, myself included. I think Galloway is dangerously underestimating the Iranians but he is right that we will need to make a decision to either go into Iran with full force or stay out because nipping at the edges will justifiably piss them off. What Galloway doesn’t do is look at the flip side of the coin, if we attack Iran will subways in his district explode? Maybe. The flip side to that of course is if we don’t attack will subways explode? Same answer. Will they explode with nuclear force? Maybe not now but maybe later? Tough questions, but the caller had more simplistic answers than Galloway, advantage liberal in this debate.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Jayson – LOL. Exactly! Hmmmm, if it was your work wouldn’t there be a little Bart Simpson hidden in a corner somewhere, holding a pack of matches?
shcb,
I don’t agree fully (especially about nuclear bombs in subways!) but your assessment is fair.
There is a very good background piece about Iran in the August 2008 Nat. Geog., many insights into the people and rulers that, for me, raised my respect for Iranian’s another notch and put Galloway’s comments into a more understandable perspective. Highly recommended: http://www.ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/iran-archaeology/del-giudice-text
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Link doesn’t work. Instead of the “www.” it should have been “http://” but this site does not allow me to post the link that way. Weird. Anyway, look for it on the NGM site, or go to Rense.com and click on the link “Persia: Ancient Soul of Iran” which is the second story above the one labelled “Astronaut Ed Mitchell Says ET Contact Already Exists”. (Way-to-go keeping the media’s attention, Ed!!!)