Ustwo

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...26655958371305

I'd recommend watching the whole video. I've seen this sort of thing before, and its been shown that many of the Israeli atrocities have been faked in the past, but I haven't seen it put together in this kind of format until today.

So for those of you who put equal weight on the Israeli's, or out right blame them for the problems in the region, what do you make of the video?

Do you trust the casualty numbers given by the Palestinian authority?
Do you trust the numbers from major news organizations?
What do you attribute the apparent acceptance at face value of these Palestinian faked incidents?

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stevo

how do we know that googlevideo isn't digitally modified to make the palestinian videos look staged?

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

Ustwo

Those sneaky Jews.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

stevo

a headline from today
and a correction

I guess i'll start...

no. nor do I trust the casualty numbers given by hamas, hezbolla, amnesty international, or the international red cross.

no, they get their figures from the same sources above.

anti-israeli feelings. we'll call it, "mel syndrome" that all the wars are started by the jews, that the middle east would be perfect if it weren't for the state of israel's existence. That and an attempt at moral equivalence.

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

Ustwo

About those 28 (from 52) you mentioned stevo...

I saddly don't have the source for this right now, but I'm sure its part of the Jew controlled media.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

reconmike

Interesting piece, But it must be an inflamitory one, because The New York Times said that 3 were killed on the day of filming, and if they report it as true then it is gospel.

Is it any wonder that the anti-israeli/ anti bush crowd believes everything they see and hear that comes from the Arab news sources.

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Ustwo

Maybe one of the dead was the "wounded" guy they accidentally headbutted into the ambulance

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

filtherton

Wait, so you can't trust hezbollah or any other source besides the IDF, and anyone who doubts the inherent justness of israel's actions is an anti-semite?



Brilliant!!

Ustwo

So did you watch the video?

I'm guessing no, so give it a go.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Kadath

Why is the Israel/Hezbollah war a right/left issue? It baffles me.

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it's quiet in here

filtherton

I doubt you'd do the same for me if i posted a 20 minute video, so i'll just wait for the summary to appear.

Ustwo

I see so you just basically trolled?


Brilliant!

Dunno Israel has womens and gay rights, a democracy, freedom of the press and the left supports the terrorists and tries to equate them with the US revolutionaries. Only the left can answer that question.

So have you watched the video?

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

filtherton

You are the authority on drive-by trolling. How do you think i did? Too much substance?

If it makes you feel any better, pretend that i'm ignoring something that host posted. It seems to be standard practice 'round these parts. If someone posts something and you find that you don't feel like actually trying to understand what they posted you just ignore it.


As far as relevant comments go: I don't think that much credibility should be given to any country or organization that is currently actively engaging in armed conflict. I don't trust hezbollah any more than i trust the idf because they're both fighting p.r. campaigns in addition to the more conventional military campaigns.

Do you trust the idf ustwo? Why?

roachboy

my back button is getting tons of work in these convos on lebanon.

let's assume for a moment that there is something of substance to this thread.
what argument(s) are there that link the material discussed in the foxnews style documentary to anything more general?

all the filmakers seem to want to do is to enable people who are predisposed to be unable to cope with the realities on the ground in gaza and the west bank to discount any information that they do not like.

the way the fine folk at secondraft.org (the source of the film) frame what they do slots directly into that peculiar know-nothing wing of likud cheerleading that is only possible at thousands of miles remove from what is happening, within a discursive framework that equates any critique of israel--ANY critique at all--with anti-semitism. (ustwo--using his finely honed trolling style--has been implying this last argument both here and in the tedious melgibson thread in gd.)

what a fine reflection of democratic debate that is.

i would imagine that this film has been getting chatted up on the planet limbaugh as a way of helping poor beleagured conservatives find new and improved ways to--um--streamline their information, erase what bothers them about that pesky reality (you remember that? reality is that set of factors that includes the ongoing brutalization of palestinians under direct military occupation--as with gaza--and a more diffuse violence deployed via the settlement programs in the west bank--a de facto apartheid system--the criticism of which is fairly routine in actually existing israel, where there are no attempts to equate judaism as a whole with the views of likud and parties to the right of likud like what you find in its shallow american copy--etc etc etc)....erasing significant elements of reality would enable folk to imagine that bush policies toward israel now are sane, that the massacre of civilians in lebanon does not matter--and to imply that saying otherwise is antisemitic.

if you want to make actual arguments in support of the israeli actions in lebanon, try taking account of the actual facts of the matter rather than relying on some cheap sub-fox documentary that you treat as unproblematically accurate to which you append a series of totally unfounded generalizations.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Charlatan

__________________
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Ustwo

So you are saying its a fake documentary of the Pallistinians faking a deadly attack?

And what does this have to do with Bush per say? I was unaware that Bush was responsible for all violence in Israel.

No one on the left seems to want to look at this, I wonder why?

This sort of behavior by the Pallistinians has been long talked about by anyone who really looked at the situation there. There has got to be one member of the tilted left thats willing to say 'Yea ok they do exaggerate the situation and sometimes will fake a story and feed it to a hungry press.' I mean some of you already said its OK for them to hide in civilian areas, why is this so hard to admit to?

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

ASU2003

Because Washington DC would implode if both sides agreed on an issue. Their bases hate the other side so much that they would get pissed if they found out that they had the same ideas on what to do as the other side. It would be a sign of weakness for the the people agreeing with the opposite side as well.

They would probably argue over the fact that the sky is blue. Or that room-temperature water is wet.

uncle phil

and, as an "outside" observer, does anyone really believe this crap, as put out by the propaganda arms...

i'm sorry, but there is always more to what's going on than we are fed by whatever media we choose to believe...

case in point, any viet nam vets out there?

__________________
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
-----------------------------------------
"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
-----------------------------------------
never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

Ustwo

So what did you find int he video that didn't ring true? Its just crap afterall so you must have an example.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

uncle phil

"pallywood"

according to palestinian sources...

at 7:50 pm EST...

andy rooney's time...

someones jerkin' your chain, ustwo...

__________________
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
-----------------------------------------
"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
-----------------------------------------
never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

roachboy

if you had framed the thread along the relatively banal lines of:
there is an information war going on alongside the war in lebanon

and then made an argument for the relevance of this film clip to that information war--then perhaps this would have been interesting. but you didnt. instead, you have what is here.

i am not interested in persuing a debate framed in this manner.
back to using the back button.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Elphaba

There are several vn vets at TFP, but you don't see many of them here. For good reason, imo.

As an ex-wife of a vn vet, he wouldn't be too keen about the armchair warriors here. While Freddy was boots on the ground, I was watching the evening news that was focused on the daily death count. "A brazillian VC were killed today; our brave soldiers had three woundings." An exaggeration of course, but pretty much what the American public was spoon fed to stay in support of the war.

Ustwo

Ummm ok......

Later Though I view the lefts refusal to even discuss the concept proof to me that they don't care about the truth in this matter, only their oddly selected support for a 8th century agenda.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

filtherton

Isn't the existence of israel essentially part of a several thousand year old biblical agenda? How odd you'd select such a cause, being an athiest from illinois.

I can't speak for anyone else on the left(not that anyone can speak for the left as a whole), but i don't want to argue with you because you've vastly and smugly oversimplified the issue and can't seem to be bothered with any sort of nuance. You can't seem to understand that your initial focus is an irrelevant one. So what if some palestinians have what amounts to a p.r. machine? That doesn't automatically prove that they don't have legitimate gripes with israel. America is one of the best liars in the world, as someone who was alive during the run up to the invasion of iraq i'm sure you're well aware of this. That doesn't mean that our justifications for doing the things we do are automatically invalid, even though much of the time they are for other reasons.

roachboy

ok, i'll debate this one with you, ustwo.
we need to play nice though.

watch this film first:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...23714384920696


i did you the courtesy of watching the film you posted, so think quid pro quo or that you could be seen, in an abstract kinda way, to owe me at least 18:10 of your time, which you should spend watching.
(the whole thing is an hour and ten minutes long.)

we might consider the type of information presented in each film, the information provided in each that let you make generalizations based on the specific cases presented, the types of argument....that kind of thing...then at least you'd see why i have a problem with the film you linked.


i'm going back to watching pee wee's playhouse.
it is fucking brilliant.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

host

ustwo, the source of the "pallywood" video, is Harvard professor, Richard Landes, and the domain registration of the website where it originates, is
http://reports.internic.net/cgi/whoi...rg&type=domain
Richard Landes....

You touched on the key question in your comments in your thread's OP....where do you get your information....your sources for news? What sources do you trust to shape your opinions? The sources that we trust to influence our individual opinions result in some of us predicting consequences and outcomes of political policies, instead of finding ourselves blindsided as events overcome inaccurate perceptions. The position that the Bush administration now finds itself in, with regard to the "success" of it's mid-east, foreign relations, fiscal, and domestic policies, today, vs. in March, 2003, being a case in point. What did Richard Landes "get right" in his 2003 rant?

Reading Richard Landes's "rant" on Chirac, and his opinions of Chirac's constituency in France, written a week before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the seconddraft.org, "About Us" description of Landes, et al, trigger a reaction in my brain that sez, <b>this is not an unbiased, or an evenhanded, observer/chronicler/analyst of events/history.</b>

It was quicker and easier to research Landes's reputation for accuracy and evenhandedness, than it would be to watch his video. I have to "consider the source". In regard to Landes's blind support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and his smear of the French and support of Mr. Bush, I have only to ask the question, "what have professor Landes and the folks who think similarly to the way that he does, been correct about, in their support for mr. Bush and his war in Iraq?" The obvious answer is "not much". If Landes's "pallywood" video represents a new departure from Landes's recent dismal track record in "picking sides" in the politics and justifications of war, I'm sure I'll read about it in the Times or in the Post......

stevo

Is it shocking that no one on the left seems to want to talk directly about this video? i guess not. I thought the response would be different, but I don't know what I expected. I doubt more than a couple of you even watched it.

Why does this video need a "frame of discussion?" I think it perfectly frames itself. Palistinians stage violence for the cameras to make israel look bad. When, in reality, nothing is going on we see on the news crowds of palistinians running, shooting, getting carried off in ambulances while the headlines scream "violence. israeli soldiers kill 4 and injure 12 in clashes between palestinian protesters"

You (the left) believe it because you want to believe israel is wrong and its their fault. You want to believe it so the "victims" are morally justified.

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

Ustwo

Whats funny is that its not really something that could be faked the way its laid out, yet thats basically what they want to claim it is, some without even looking at it. Though stevo are you really shocked?

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

stevo

not really.

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

roachboy

nice lads....why not try playing the little debate game i proposed above? we could even talk about the various problems with the film itself that ustwo linked.
it could even be interesting--but you'd have to play first.

the game of ignoring offers for a discussion and them complaining about not being offered a discussion seems tedious, dont you think?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

stevo

why is it so difficult to discuss the video ustwo posted, alone? I watched the first few minutes of the video you posted and turned it off when they started claiming the number of palestinian casualties. a point of ustwo's video is that you can't believe the numbers you hear about the palestinian casualties. While any number of the scenes in your video might as well have been another one of those staged scenes. What I saw was a series of snips - a few seconds here, a shot over there - strung together with commentary from "experts" in between. The whole thing nothing more than a sham to portray israel as an aggressive occupier with no regard for life. I heard a lady talking about how bad israel's occupation of the west bank and gaza is, about the demolishing of homes but not one word about palestinian terrorism. Okay....

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

roachboy

well gee, stevo, do ya think you might be able to draw SOME kind of cause-effect link between the occupation, how it has been handled, the settlement programs and "terrorism"?
or would you prefer to simply think of palestinians as less than quite human?

problem no. 1 with ustwo's video: no meaningful context.
problem no. 2: the assumption that saying that the cameramen were palestinian in the clips showed necessarily equals some kind of problem. do you think that all palestinians are of one mind politically?
why would you think that?
the clip offers no proof that there is any such problem: it simply states it and leaves it to you, the audience, to generalize.
that is a shabby argument.
landes is a historian and should know better.
btu it does serve to chump the credulous...

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Kadath

I still don't have an answer to my question. ASU2003 went with the standard (albeit humorous) "They'll fight about anything!" answer, and Ustwo blamed it on "the left." This is not something I would think would break on party lines. Are we being manipulated by the pundits and the politicians into taking sides? Is the country so polarized that you actually do have to fight with "the enemy" about anything, even if you secretly agree with them? Is this war anything but a tragedy of escalating resentment and intolerance?

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it's quiet in here

cyrnel

This is content-free. UStwo, I believe everyone has acknowledged the use of information warfare. Those in conflicts will use the weapons available, and some of them will be used by very twisted individuals. Everyone does it. That includes Palestinians, Israelies, and every other organized political body I've ever heard about certainly including our own. Does anyone not believe this? Does your example say anything surprising or remarkable?

What are we to discuss? Motivations? Continuity? General production values? Seems like time better spent discussing who's pushing our buttons. But that's my thread, not yours.

Please let us in on where you're going with this.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Elphaba

I watched both videos, beginning to end. I can easily see why Ustwo and stevo would be reluctant to engage in roachboy's offer of a true debate.

filtherton

Classic. Ustwo calls out the people on the left for being unwilling to engage in a debate and then when they do he ignores them.

Willravel

(Watching the Palestinian man being shot in the leg, and the ambulance pulling up)
Well they're not in suburbia, for one. When under fire, an ambulance is never meant to be used as a shield. The ambulance probably was moved close enough to get the man loaded, but not so close that it could get fired upon. An ambulance full of holes isn't much use to anyone, after all. Why drag the man? Well that's pretty simple. Why not move an injured man from an area of more danger to an area of less danger as quickly as possible? Had they patiently picked up the man and slowly moved him, he was likely to be hit again. They dragged the man to safety.
The man was apparently hit in the right leg. I can clearly see blood on his left leg (probably splattered from the initianl impact), and some blood on his right leg. The video is very lowe quality, so I can't see if there is or isn't blood on his hands or on the ground. As for being loaded on the injured area, again this is a situation where they are under fire. Even thought the video is obviousloy slowed down, it is easy to see that the medical workers are moving frantically, so as to get the man out of there as soon as possible. Having been shot in the leg myself, I can tell you that I lost all feeling around the wound very quickly, leading me to think that the lack of protest from the man is due to the severety of the wound, not a lack there of.
Anything is possible, but I see no evidence that it was staged. All I see is really poor guesswork and innuendo. When you use words like 'supposedly', 'aparently' and 'presumabally' enough, I guess anything can look staged. Still, this is making for a very weak introduction.
I see no evidence of that. I'll bet an ambulance was called immediatally as soon as firhgting broke out.
...beacuse there is no evidence that it is fake, yes. I'm starting to wonder if I'll be wasing my next 18 minutes on propoganda.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! So because this narrator interprets target practice as being intended to show some sort of exchange of gunfire, it's a massive conspiracy to fool the rest of the world? Wow. Just, wow.
1) This is not one long role of film. We do not know the date and time of the footage, nor do we know the timeline.
2) The narrator incorrectly labels the scene a 'gun fight' in the beginning of the monologue, in order to establish some sort of intention on the part of the camera men. The narrator has never met any of the people on or making this video, so how can he possilby speak to the nature of their intent? Why would we assume he's firing at Israelis? Are there Israelis in the video? No.

Again, there is absolutely no evidence of a fake battle. What strikes me the most is that Ustwo, a pecimist of the 9/11 conspiracy theory because (according to him) the evidence doesn't stand up to scruteny, is so quick to accept the unsupported word of a narrator. This video is a sham. There is NO evidence of a coverup whatsoever. And yet here we are, saying that Israel is a massive victim and that Palestine is an evil conspirator with our news organizations out to fool the world!!



Bottom line: this video is obviously poorly researched, and done by those who already knew what they wanted to find long before they started looking. It has no credibility, the conclusions are absurd, and there is no context to the footage besides a partison narrator who doesn't seem to know his ars from his elbow. Have we found...the anti-Michael Moore?

ubertuber

Well, the video could be interesting, but you have to take it on face value. I think that's why this discussion isn't really going anywhere - Ustwo and Stevo are willing to take it at face value, and their proposed opponents are not...

I think the Palestinians are smart to be able to influence opinion, even if it takes a PR machine. And if they aren't, they ought to start - after all, we are clearly primed to soak up media images. As far as the film goes, I think it might have made more impact for me if I'd seen the "news" report that supposedly claimed all these awful things. Since I haven't seen that, I don't know to what extent this video is actually debunking anything. Similarly, the whole bit with the lady in the hospital didn't mean too much to me. It's a tough story and all, but I don't speak Arabic, so I'm stuck relying on the given subtitles for an understanding of the situation. Also, the different points made had varying degrees of logical soundness. On the one hand, I do think it is strange that some people are getting shot in this video while others are standing around apparently unconcerned. On the other, I don't see anything unusual about an ambulance roling up so quickly. Hell, you could see the paramedic stading there jsut before the guy got shot!

So, the arguments presented in this video are on my radar, but I'm skeptical. I know I'll remember it as I read the newspaper, but I also don't believe for a second that all of the things that are reported are made up. As usual, the truth probably lies in the middle.

__________________
Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

Elphaba

Roachboy, would you consider beginning a new topic with this video as the basis of discussion? I have seen other media topics on tfp, but none this specific to the presentation of the Israli/Palestinian conflict in the US media. I could see evidence of most of the seven PR strategies in today's paper and I confess that I was completely naive, willfully so I fear, to any of this prior to viewing the video. I would also be interested in speculation concerning what has transpired since the video was made in 2003, specifically Sharon's pullout from Gaza.

Of course, anyone wanting to participate in that topic would need to invest the hour and 20 minutes needed to view the video. That may prove to be a very small discussion group.

Charlatan

Will... that was my gut reaction to the film as well.

That aside... why would anyone be surprised *IF* something were being staged. For crying out loud, the US staged the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch, they staged the press conference in Gulf War I where the Kuwaiti minister's daughter claimed Iraqi soldiers were killing babies in a hospital...

My point here isn't to point a finger at the US. Rather it is to underscore the importance of Information in conflict. To be clear we should trust nothing we see in the media. Nothing.

Do you trust the casualty numbers given by the Palestinian authority? No. But here's the thing... I have no idea how far off they are...

Do you trust the numbers from major news organizations? I trust most of them to do their best to collect information in an unbiased manner. I can only trust that when (and if) they find out that they have been duped, they will come out with an explaination or apology.

What do you attribute the apparent acceptance at face value of these Palestinian faked incidents? As I see it, there were a number of camera crews on the ground. I don't know (because the film is vague on this) if there were any western reporters on the ground. Local corespondents and/or stringers would be looking for a news story to report to HQ. If they were on the scene and saw it being staged I would say they were corrupt and should be fired. However, if they were given footage from a "trusted" source and filed the story they are either lazy or too trusting.

The fact is many reporters won't go into area where there is likely to be fighting. They don't want to be shot.

You also have to add into this factors such as: deadline, slow news day, appetite for destruction and mayhem (if it bleeds it leads), etc.

New outlets are not purposeful in their spread of propaganda (from either side). They are now 24 hour machines that require immediate content. It is hardly surprising that these outlets, in an attempt to boost ratings and "get the scoop" on their competition are fed false information that makes it to air.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke