Ah, but it gets better…Later on Peretz writes ” But this Human Rights Watch libel has utterly destroyed its credibility, at least for me.” Because, you know, we’re concerned about who has credibility in the eyes of the publisher of the magazine that has given us Andrew Sullivan, Steven Glass, and Peter Beinart.

These wingnuts view HRW in the same way the Bushevik State Dept views Amnesty International. When they say bad stuff about “our enemies”, AI is the bestest in the world and when they say bad stuff about “us”, AI are sinners for a thousand generations.

Gee, it couldn’t have anything to do with offering a better contrast for the photo when it is printed in black and white.

Look, it’s fake smoke which makes the destruction of Lebanon look slightly more apocalyptic. Which means that it’s possible that Qana was faked and those Druze and Christian Areas of Lebanon that are being bombed are really training grounds for terrorists. Don’t you get it? Israel can’t do anything wrong, anymore than America can! It all has to be a homexlaminufascist conspiracy to make US* look bad because we can’t lose a war unless we** are stabbed in the back via a propaganda war enabled by the terrorist loving liberal media elites.

*The Good Guys: The US and Israel plus anyone who agrees 100% with everything they do.

**I use the term we like Adam Yoshida because, well, I am also insane and frequently use we to refer to countries that I don’t live in that are pursuing foreign policies that I like.

OK – It’s on topic so I’m re-posting from the thread below.

“Before and after” satellite shots of Southern Beirut taken on August 4th.

Animated photos, so take a few seconds to watch the whole thing.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5400.shtml

Doctored photos…whatthef***ever!

One more…maps of the bridges and roads in Lebanon destroyed by Israel.

Now there is no way out.

http://maps.samidoun.org/

(click on the pdf of “Transport and Vital Sites Bombed”.

Are RW shills making a big deal of this? Yes.
Does any of it imply that Qana was “Staged” or a complete fabrication? No.

Does it imply that, when the source of the news comes from paid “contractors” with loyalties to a party in the conflict they are covering, one should be skeptical? Yes.

Does it imply that Propaganda is part fo war and obviously used by BOTH sides? DUH

I believe these photos (and this side story) tell the story very very well.

XipeTotec, *shrug* your point is stating the obvious.

Of course everyone uses propaganda to advance their aims, although more civilized politicians call it spin.

However even if this photograph was edited for malicious purposes (and not being a photoshop expert/psychic I can’t confirm that) at worse it is an attempt to portray the damage of Beruit Burning as Beruit Burning slightly more so. In the end it don’t change the fact that Israel is bombing the shit out of Lebanon, which btw has had a nice effect of making pretty much 90% of Lebanese support Hezbollah.

Should one be skeptical, sure. But in this case what am I supposed to be skeptical of? That the damage isn’t quite so prolific because a Lebanese sympathizer perhaps slightly exagerated the damage of Beruit? I don’t quite understand your point. Ok a guy maybe lied, quite possibly out of anger, and quite possibly because he’s a cynical manipulater of public opinion. In the end it don’t amount to a hill of beans because hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, hundreds killed and for what? I can’t think of any rational justification.

And sorry, it was Malkin who was claiming that Qana was faked, as if collateral damange was something that doesn’t happen to forces of good such as Israel and the United States. Fog of war and all that. nice stuff.

This is what Democratic triangulation has achieved: unhinged fascist loonies now share equal billaring (heh, new word!) with “leftists” like Hillary. Those to the left of Hillary (aka normal people) are now considered the looney fringe.

Hey, how about we take our country back?

Of course everyone uses propaganda to advance their aims, although more civilized politicians call it spin….I don’t quite understand your point. Ok a guy maybe lied, quite possibly out of anger, and quite possibly because he’s a cynical manipulater of public opinion. In the end it don’t amount to a hill of beans

My point is…

1) that most of the “anomolies” cited by these RW conspiracies can be more plausibly explained by mundane factors than by the conspiracy theories
.. however ….
2) rather than simply point out these things and explain why they make the conspiracy angle unlikely, the standard reaction of those who identify as “against” the RW blogosphere, has been to simply brush aside the idea as inherently “whacky” and mock anyone who thinks that Hezbollah may occasionaly manage to get the MSM to report anything other than gospel truth.
….Which shows me that regardless of it’s truth or falsehood…
3) The reaction is determined more by an emotional desire to oppose the LGFs and MMalkins, than out of an intelligent assesment of the facts
..and in this way ..
4) the reaction is indistinguishable from the reaction of the RW shills to, for example, the charges against the Marines in Haditha – Deny, or if thats not possible, bellittle the significance of any fact which may aid the political opposition.

Its bullshit when they do it and its bullshit when “we” do it. I dont find ANY moral virtue in being a yes-man to arguments based on sloppy thinking and knee-jerk emotional reactions. I would feel the same way if I was surrounded by anti-ID people who, instead of presenting the ABUNDANT evidence in favor of evolution, decided to resort to calling creationsists “stupid”.

And sorry, it was Malkin who was claiming that Qana was faked, as if collateral damange was something that doesn’t happen to forces of good such as Israel and the United States. Fog of war and all that. nice stuff.

Yes and, loser that I am, I have taken flak from others for pointing out that a public denial of responsibility by the IDF does NOT prove that they were not responsible – for this or anything else.

God, wingnuts sure are tedious motherfuckers. You gotta give it to ’em, they’re persistent bastards. They’re not too smart, but you have to be impressed with their tenacity. It takes an awfully big set of brass balls to claim liberal media bias in this day and age.

Adding or exaggerating smoke in photos of something done by the IDF = bad.
When Mike DeWine completely fakes smoke in a “9/11” photo of the WTC = being creative!
OK, got it.

Why do they run with it? Because they don’t have anything better right now. Like pointed out here earlier, the origional was smokey, but TEH OUTRAGE OF FAKE SMOKE!!!11!

It is a way to just change the focus off of distruction to something else they like, bashing the liberal media. Don’t look at the man behind the curtain!!!

Maybe the color of the smoke means they elected a new Pope.

I mean, it could happen, I’m just saying…

Alert Dan Brown!

Seems pretty obvious to me that the entire photograph was darkened up to allow for better prints in B/W papers. Everything has a much sharper contrast.
Except for the middle-school grade photoshopping of billows at the top. That was unethical. But, inconsequentially so.
If this is the best the Right can muster, if this is all they can conjure, then I think we can stop worrying about November.

We don’t have to worry about November because we know that the American people will choose to keep the extraordinary Republican congress in order to finish the job in the War on Terror. The people know that the Democrats will surrender in the War on Terror.

Democrats don’t think that the War on Terror is a real war and they think that we’ll win the War on Terror by giving Osama bin Laden chocolate and kisses.

Tell you what. I’ll let the Repubs finish the job once they actually start it.
Incidently, who would America surrender TOO, per se?
Hehe. “The People” Further on, comrade!

XipeTotec, why people stopped bothering to actually point things like “darkening the clouds and increasing the contrast makes the photo show up better in black and white”?

BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MAKE A FUCKING DENT!

Its like reasoning with a stack of Bricks.

Not to mention the ENDLESS hypocrisy…

http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2006/08/where-theres-smoke.html

If they’re the two photograph prints that I’ve seen, they were at two different magnifications (the one with darker smoke was the greater magnification) and at two different contrast levels. Greater magnification and higher contrast in the print would tend to make at least some portions of the smoke darker.

Peretz is an idiot.

Brad, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this comparison, but I’m still pissed that I followed the link to that site.

I’m off to take a shower now, I figure it’ll probably take about an hour before I feel clean again.

In case Bob Harris visits here courtesy of mdhatters link, he may be interested to know that the Guardian ran the two satellite photos as a double page spread. They didn’t source it (which is very unusual for the Grauniad, who are usually much more scrupulous about images than other British papers), but if you ring up their picture desk they should be able to tell you.

but I’m still pissed that I followed the link to that site.

Yeah, ditto.

Look, can someone just fire the dipshit who did this so we can get on with our lives? Do I actually care if some desk jockey decided to make a photo more dramatic? Not really. Personally, I think, you know, bombed out fucking buildings and corpses are pretty goddamned dramatic. But I’m aware that in the current political climate, they’re not so much, depending on which buildings and whose corpses.

But someone just kick the little fuckwit out, and tell him to go take a goddamned Photoshop class, so we can be spared the next round of sanctimonious bullshit from the wingnuts, every man jack of whom would most likely photoshop his mother into a torrid naked embrace with Hillary Clinton if the dear soul told them she was voting democrat now.

Okay?

Okay, yes, I see the idiot has already been fired. Dandy. Can we expect the wingnuts to shut up anytime soon?

I’m guessing the insurance company will have reauthorized my migraine meds long before we’ve heard the last of the conspiracy theories over this. These people make my head hurt *worse*.

And, okay, I apologize for putting that Lucienne image in anyone’s head. Probably uncalled-for.

Carry on.

Quite clearly, this extremely poor Photoshopping of the smoke proves beyond any doubt that Israel NEVER killed even a single civilian, in much the same way that Dan Rather’s poorly-forged National Guard memos proved, using geometric logic, that Bush never missed a day of service in the Texas Air National Guard!

Oh, you wacky, wacky moonbats. Don’t you understand that when the Right manages to suss out a forgery or a photoshop job via their super-amazing detective skills, it COMPLETELY invalidates any prior criticism of them whatsoever?! This faux-smoke means GAME, SET, and MATCH for the Right!

By the way… worst. photoshopping. ever. Sheesh. Apparently, Israel really DID bomb Lebanon back to the stone age – I could do better with MSPaint.

So basically, there has been more outrage directed at a photographer who did something to enhance the smokiness of the smoke clouds towering over the image of a city, than there has been directed at the air force that created the actual smoke clouds towering above an actual city. Magical thinking? Is that the phrase I’m looking for? In fact the phrase I’m after is much stronger and less civil, but I can’t think of anything adequate, so ‘magical thinking’ will have to do.

I question your use of the phrase “GAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!11!”-fest, btw.
I think the evidence is quite clear it’s a case of Bwa-haa-haa-ing.

If it’s not, I’ll photoshop some up. I know how to use the “blur” filter, dammit.

It’s just like what they did to O.J. Simpson on the cover of one of the newsweeklies! I thought he was innocent until they did that!

Oops, I mentioned O.J. That won’t bring around that crazy guy from the Patterico thread, will it? Sorry ’bout that.

Democrats don’t think that the War on Terror is a real war and they think that we’ll win the War on Terror by giving Osama bin Laden chocolate and kisses.

You’re right of course; it was those dastardly Democrats who let OBL get away at Tora Bora, and it was those dastardly Democrats who said they weren’t concerned about finding OBL only six months after 9/11.

Oh wait…

the wingnuts have learned well from Rove; this is just an extension of the ‘smear the messenger’ tactic. Find a small example of wrongdoing and use it to invalidate the entire argument of your opponent.

Look at the faux ‘sock puppet’ “controversy” over at Unclaimed Territory; because Glenn’s housemate apparently engaged in some sock puppet posting…. uh, what? Bush really hasn’t been wiping his ass with the Constitution? Arlen Specter isn’t determined to enable Bush’s power grab?

Because Dan Rather used some questionable documents in a story, Bush really did complete his Alabama NG service?

If Kos’ former business partner got into a little SEC trouble, that means… what? Everything that Kos says is a lie?

These people are just fucking retarded, and they are convinced they are geniuses.

Marty Marty
I feel your pain man.
You know a lot of expatriate Germans felt the same way in the 40s.
It just couldn’t be true.
Our noble upright men of civilization are incapable of such deeds.
It is bolshivick english imperialist propaganda designed to bring down the German people.
Stand with me Marty.
Be with the fatherland in its time of need.
Hug me Marty
Hug me.

Could be worse – Reuters could have taken a picture of a totally different country and claimed it represented the conditions in Beruit.

That would be WRONG, after all.

We don’t have to worry about November because we know that the American people will choose to keep the extraordinary Republican congress in order to finish the job in the War on Terror. The people know that the Democrats will surrender in the War on Terror.

Is it just me, or has Gary finally tipped his hand here by explicitly stating that the GWOT is actually being waged against democrats by republicans?

Kikes kiking is beyond liberal or conservative, left or right. But the basis of everything political. Kikes (foreign as ever) must be allowed to kike it up, else Europeankind reverts to a time 2000 years ago. Mentioning the kike and his kiking ways throws a monkey wrench into the debate, because both mainstream liberals, and conservatives would NEVER cross the kike, or bar him from kikery.

Bradrocket adds: You’re an idiot.

I’m not sure what Beeritus was trying to say, but I sure do feel stupider for having read it.

That’s the beeritus talking.

Jeez this is stupid. Changing the subject much?

Man, wen the news is all bad, they’ll grab at anything so they have something to screech about.

Can we go back to arguing with Patterico? That was tedious and pointless as well, but at least the language was foul.

XipeTotec, why people stopped bothering to actually point things like “darkening the clouds and increasing the contrast makes the photo show up better in black and white�?

I was referring to the the “details” about Qana .. because thats what this is about.

While I’m no fan of the RWIS (RightWingIdiotSquad) I am not on board with this reality-denial. While there is NO conspiracy of the MSM with Hezbollah, and Qana was NOT “staged” (innocent people really did die there), the VAST MAJORITY of Middle Eastern news comes from “freelance’ journalists hired to cover a specific story – NOT by full-time employees. Hezbollah and the Palestinians are slick enough to take advantage of this and get their people (members or just sympathizers) hired as freelance reporters by major western news outlets who then submit “doctored” news stories (propaganda) to their editors for publishing. This is as much a fact as the stories about the WH doing the same damn thing over here (paying for positive editorials for their programs without disclosing it).

Its childishly simple…

1) The RWIS are saying that Qana was staged and the MSM was in on it – both wrong.
…then…
2) A picture, unrelated to the Qana incident, turns out to have been doctored by free-lance Middle Eastern “journalist” hired by reuters – which reminds people that the news IS a battleground in this war and that BOTH sides attempt to fuck with it and are occasionally successful.
… so….
3) Scared that this fact will be made to play to the advantage of the RWIS and their conspiracy theories about Qana, their “opponents” go into “spin mode” and deny, not only any significance to this photo, but also try to mock the basic underlying FACT that Israels opponents actually have slick media and propaganda machines that ARE able to get their members hired as “Freelance reporters” and who DO send back “reports” that are, at the least selectively edited and at worst largely proaganda.