James Foley "beheading" video. For real ...??

[82_28]

What is "ragtag" about them is that we are to believe that this is all happening in a vacuum. I once drove across Death Valley when my AC went out. LA couldn't come soon enough. I think when I passed Baker the thermometer there said 114. AC was and is essential if you're going to run around clad in black, let alone not clad in black. I dunno, I could be totally wrong and am prepared to be. My point is just that the photos and footage of ISIS seem to be photo-ops and not the way they are "portrayed" for media use. I don't think that a human could withstand day after day in that heat wearing the ISIS costume of choice perpetually. Where are they getting their water and who is doing their laundry? Someone brought up river water. Fine -- river water it is. But the masks and shit seem to be all for show. As they are only useful for narrative purposes not for day to day use.

[82_28]

Pepe Escobar wrote:

How convenient that the mighty Orwellian/Panopticon complex satellite maze could not identify a long convoy of gleaming white Toyotas crossing the desert towards their summer conquests. And how convenient that a Briton beheading an American - what a "special relationship" plot twist! - fully sanctions the Return of Iraq Bombing ("for months", in Obama's words); more strikes; more drones; perhaps more boots on the ground; perhaps, in the near future, a Syria extension.

THIS!

[8bitagent]

Pepe Escobar wrote:

How convenient that the mighty Orwellian/Panopticon complex satellite maze could not identify a long convoy of gleaming white Toyotas crossing the desert towards their summer conquests. And how convenient that a Briton beheading an American - what a "special relationship" plot twist! - fully sanctions the Return of Iraq Bombing ("for months", in Obama's words); more strikes; more drones; perhaps more boots on the ground; perhaps, in the near future, a Syria extension.

THIS!

I've seen even pseudo mainstream commentators mention that the Obama administration and intelligence networks didn't care at all about ISIS til they got close to CIA city Erbil. The plight of the Yazidis, however unfortunate, was just an easy pretext. On the more fringe side, commentators who say that the US, once ISIS backers Saudis and Israel all are secretly loving what ISIS is doing.

Which brings me to this little nugget from CNN tonight

Until the sudden capture of Mosul in June, ISIS was of concern to Western governments but not a pressing priority. Since then, the threat to Baghdad, the plight of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, direct threats to U.S. interests and citizens and now the gruesome execution of American journalist James Foley have galvanized an unlikely coalition.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Jabhat al Nusrah, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria: all have the same adversary.

Maybe on paper. Sure, the "US teaming up with Iran to take on ISIS" sounds like an interesting WWF wrestling soap opera plot twist...but how likely is that, even with cooled talks and a more moderate Iranian leader. Make no mistake, Iran and Shia influence/interests are not so coincidentally prime directive #1 for both ISIS, Saudi Arabia and Israel. It seems ONLY when ISIS over steps its boundaries("know your role!") does the US step in or "Saudi leaders begin to worry about ISIS". Again not saying ISIS is some direct US black ops creation or that Obama or the neocons are directly championing this...but lets remember:
Balkanization of Iraq and taking down Iran/Iran sphere of influence is something the think tanks and Saudi pals have wanted for some time.

As far as being in the desert with all that stuff; I don't even know how white hipsters and hippies survive at burning man for a whole week in the Nevada desert. I guess a mix of religious obsession/being used to the desert heat?

[Nordic]

So my curiosity got the better of me and I watched the clip. I'm convinced it's real. I think they edited out the actual beheading because it must have been a mess, done standing up like that with a short-bladed knife. The idea was to show that they'd killed Foley, and they did. It also makes the video relatively tolerable to watch, so probably more likely to be watched widely. The wind business - maybe they switched off or removed the jihadist's mic between the last shot of him talking and the shot where he steps up to kill him. There's also no wind (either on the sound or on Foley's shirt) in the first shots, where Foley is talking, and the light's different. So the whole thing clearly took some time. But to think that it was faked and that the dead body at the end is a rubber prop or something is a real stretch.

A rubber prop? You seem to be back in the 1970's. Digital technology can now make anything look real. Including removing a head from a body, and placing another head onto someone's chest, just like in the photo.

Watch Game of Thrones and get back to me.

Or do you think all the violence in that show is real?

It's just silly how they edited that thing. And, BTW, it works like this. You TELL somebody that something they are about to see is real, and it's HORRIFYING and it's SCARY and OMG they probably don't want to see it ...

And then when they DO see it, by god they see something that scares them. They were conditioned ahead of time to see something scary, and all you have to do is hit a certain threshold and they think they've seen it. You don't have to actually deliver the goods.

That's how "The Blair Witch" movie worked. There was absolutely nothing in that movie whatsoever except people acting scared with snot running down their face from crying with fear, but a great many people who saw the movie were scared to death because they were TOLD it was scary before it started.

It's a damn parlor trick.

Really.

And in this case, most people (including a hell of a lot of people here) are going "I don't even want to WATCH that damn thing!" Which just plays into the whole trick rather beautifully.

There is zero evidence in that video that the man they say is Foley actually had his head cut off. Zero.

[stefano]

Where are they getting their water and who is doing their laundry?

Where do your preconceptions about Iraq come from? There's plenty of water in Iraq, it's a country of 30 million people. It doesn't rain much, that's why much of the land looks the way it does, but there are two major rivers coming down from the Anatolian highlands, and lots of irrigated farmland. Iraq is where canals were invented. They have functional utilities, depending on how they're doing with various invasions of course, but in most places you turn on a tap and water comes out. I saw a video the other day (now taken down) of a bunch of IS beardies having fun in a pool. Does that surprise you, that there are swimming pools in Iraq? And laundry, for God's sake, they put their clothes in washing machines and switch them on. They have 50,000 men - the laundry and the cooking and the vehicle maintenance get done.

But the masks and shit seem to be all for show. As they are only useful for narrative purposes not for day to day use

Yes exactly. They wear masks because that's been part of the jihadist aesthetic since the 1970s, and also so that these videos can't later be used as evidence of crimes. They don't wear them all the time or even in all the videos.

There is zero evidence in that video that the man they say is Foley actually had his head cut off. Zero.

Well, I'm convinced that dude in the video is the one lying on the ground later. This feels a bit like arguments about crisis actors in Boston or something - these are homicidal maniacs, who've been happy to commit atrocities on video for months, including beheadings. Now they kill a Yank and suddenly it must have been staged.

[justdrew]

vast billions a year for our all-seeing-eye intelligence system, but we never saw em coming.

It looks like another intelligence failure

[82_28]

Sure, Stefano. But it makes no functional sense. There just is no way to pull it off given the environment and time of year. I don't care who you might be. A human cannot withstand that kind of heat in the desert without something else helping to withstand it while waging a war with burning hot weapons.

[semper occultus]

Well, I'm convinced that dude in the video is the one lying on the ground later. This feels a bit like arguments about crisis actors in Boston or something - these are homicidal maniacs, who've been happy to commit atrocities on video for months, including beheadings. Now they kill a Yank and suddenly it must have been staged.

....interesting how people's reactions reflect alot of chatter over the Woolwich murder of Lee Rigby being hoaxed...( ...and someone got hauled in by police blogging about that...)

...that it all looked "unreal"....there wasn't "enough" blood, passers-by weren't acting like they "should" be acting..

...how do we know what something should look like …? What bench-mark are we using…......I mean we’re basically doing a compare & contrast to the film Seven….its the visual language we all use & understand....gangsters and cartel members have been copying Hollywood films like Scarface forever...

..there's probably some Baudriallardian style point to be made about how we've internalised 000's of violent deaths from the entertainment media & Schwarzenneger films over the years and absorbed some collective ideas of how a dramatic incident should play out and if what we see doesn’t match then it somehow doesn't look "right"...

....if we are now at the stage of generating photo-realistic artificiality from a kid’s laptop then we really are through the looking-glass because then the fact that fake looks “real” means that anything that looks real could be taken as prima facie evidence that it isn’t and round and round we go......next stop we all live in a computer simulation anyway.......despite being R rated for television news is there any chance the "British" Jihadist wasn't actually doing the cutting so was only being edited in to the opening shots for the propaganda lulz...?


....I think 82 is making a more than semi-good point about acclimatisation of these Western kids into this environment - there's not much 120 degree heat in Bradford.....but then the Western forces seem to have lived with it and ISIS actually look alot better equipped than the British Army....

[8bitagent]

Pentagon chiefs saying ISIS is "beyond anything we have seen", saying that the US is now faced with "looking at all options" and almost hinting the US might now have to not just fully commit
to Iraq...but also go into Syria. http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/21/world/mea ... ?hpt=hp_t1

Here's to me what's interesting. The narrative of apparent "moderate" rebels and every day people we're told in Syria were begging the US for arms and support, as was congress and many top Obama
aids. But Obama and others were reluctant, and the secondary narrative with how we saw the Saudis and others fund and arm what turned out to be ISIS and al Nursa. We now have approaching 200,000 deaths in Syria in just
3 years, which is insane. And we all remember the constant "Bashir is evil, we must stop the government of Syria at all costs". CFR even saying hey maybe al Qaeda isnt so bad if they
are fighting to take out Syria's leadership, and so on. http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/22/world/mea ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Now today we have the top senior Pentagon officials go on tv before the cameras with this sombre heavy heart, shaking their heads and saying that this ISIS is beyond anything we've
seen".

"...This is beyond anything we have seen, and we must prepare for everything. And the only way you do that is that you take a cold, steely hard look at it and get ready."

"Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no," Dempsey said during the briefing at the Pentagon.

Repeatedly pushed by reporters about whether that meant operations against ISIS in Syria, Hagel said, "We're looking at all options."

Now 90 US airstrikes later, apparently retaking the Mosul damn and "saving" the Yazidis and Kurds and Iraqi forces are gaining ground we're told...yet in the last
two days we're now hearing both US and military officials as well as both sides of the talking head cable news channels give this foreboding "isis is the greatest threat
ever in the history of ever" message. Did one slickly produced movie like beheading video change everything? Or is this some sort of foreshadowing?

[Nordic]

Where are they getting their water and who is doing their laundry?

Where do your preconceptions about Iraq come from? There's plenty of water in Iraq, it's a country of 30 million people. It doesn't rain much, that's why much of the land looks the way it does, but there are two major rivers coming down from the Anatolian highlands, and lots of irrigated farmland. Iraq is where canals were invented. They have functional utilities, depending on how they're doing with various invasions of course, but in most places you turn on a tap and water comes out. I saw a video the other day (now taken down) of a bunch of IS beardies having fun in a pool. Does that surprise you, that there are swimming pools in Iraq? And laundry, for God's sake, they put their clothes in washing machines and switch them on. They have 50,000 men - the laundry and the cooking and the vehicle maintenance get done.

But the masks and shit seem to be all for show. As they are only useful for narrative purposes not for day to day use

Yes exactly. They wear masks because that's been part of the jihadist aesthetic since the 1970s, and also so that these videos can't later be used as evidence of crimes. They don't wear them all the time or even in all the videos.

There is zero evidence in that video that the man they say is Foley actually had his head cut off. Zero.

Well, I'm convinced that dude in the video is the one lying on the ground later. This feels a bit like arguments about crisis actors in Boston or something - these are homicidal maniacs, who've been happy to commit atrocities on video for months, including beheadings. Now they kill a Yank and suddenly it must have been staged.

You're sort of making my point. You "are convinced". From what though? Do you know how easy it would be to fake that last shot of the body? My point: where do you see the guy lose his head in the video? You don't. You never see it. You don't even see his throat get cut. Why would they NOT show that? To spare our feelings? How do we know the guy in black is even with ISIS? Because his voice says he is? His mouth is covered. You cannot see his lips move. They could dub in anyone's voice saying anything.

Again tell me where you see that guys head get chopped off.

[seemslikeadream]

The U.S. has boots on the ground in Syria now and Foley is the given reason for that

[semper occultus]

...the boot that hasn't dropped yet is the Sunni Awakening movement...that is to say whatever the indigenous Sunni's own "peshmerga" can bring to the party by way of boots on the ground......and it IS their ground, where their wives & kids are......unlike this Jihadi foreign-legion that's blown in via Syria....( alot from Belgium....weirdly )

...seems like they're content to kick back and watch the chaos unfold for the time being, destroy the credibilty of the Shi'te politicians in Baghdad before they call time on the party....at which time ISIS get caught between Iraq and a hardplace....the Kurds & the Sunnis.....

..... then they all come home & start detonating themselves on the public transport network...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Sure, Stefano. But it makes no functional sense. There just is no way to pull it off given the environment and time of year. I don't care who you might be. A human cannot withstand that kind of heat in the desert without something else helping to withstand it while waging a war with burning hot weapons.

This is a courtesy reminder from the front desk that you're talking about people you don't know in a country you've never been to.

[stefano]

..there's probably some Baudriallardian style point to be made about how we've internalised 000's of violent deaths from the entertainment media & Schwarzenneger films over the years and absorbed some collective ideas of how a dramatic incident should play out and if what we see doesn’t match then it somehow doesn't look "right"...

....if we are now at the stage of generating photo-realistic artificiality from a kid’s laptop then we really are through the looking-glass because then the fact that fake looks “real” means that anything that looks real could be taken as prima facie evidence that it isn’t and round and round we go......next stop we all live in a computer simulation anyway......

Yeah, that's where we are. The video looks like Game of Thrones - a big-budget production in which millions of dollars and dozens of top technicians were employed to make the special effects seem real. So, if it looks like that, is it convincing or unconvincing? Same with lots of things in the conspiracy milieu. The media coverage of the MH17 disaster didn't feel right, not what you would normally expect after a passenger plane with 300 people on board gets blown out of the sky above a geopolitical hot spot. What? How do you even have an expectation for an unprecedented event, for what is normal in a totally abnormal situation? How does that work?

Pride is a big ingredient in that psychological dynamic: all of us here are conscious of having seen through at least a few layers of official deception, and constantly on the lookout for fresh attempts to manipulate us. As it's a little victory when you do spot such an attempt, well, obviously there is a tendency to see attempts where there aren't any or at least where you can't make a call one way or the other using available evidence.

.despite being R rated for television news is there any chance the "British" Jihadist wasn't actually doing the cutting so was only being edited in to the opening shots for the propaganda lulz...?

Yes, might well be. There's a cut in the clip between when he stops speaking and where he steps up to cut Foley's throat, that's where the sound changes. It might very well be someone else dressed the same.

....I think 82 is making a more than semi-good point about acclimatisation of these Western kids into this environment - there's not much 120 degree heat in Bradford.....but then the Western forces seem to have lived with it and ISIS actually look alot better equipped than the British Army....

I don't think so. Armies fight wars in those conditions quite regularly. I was just reading yesterday about the Toyota War in Chad in 1987, quite a bit of that went down in summer, and the Sahara's a much harder place (ito heat and drought) than Iraq. That war was fought along much the same lines, as far as weapons and tactics go, as the IS offensive in Iraq. Libya's a good comparison too - it's extremely hot at this time of year but there's fighting daily. Or is there?



And people from northern latitudes have been able to fight in such places before - the Brits and Germans had an epic go at El Alamein in July 1942, before aircon. I don't think the shorts made a huge difference.

[82_28]

They're all wearing shorts! The front desk notwithstanding and all, I still just feel that what I brought up (indeed simple speculation) is something for consideration. Sure, I've never been to Iraq, but I have been to the desert. My brother lives in Phoenix and this time of year he says, nobody really goes outside unless they have to. The other day he told me it had "cooled down" to a high of 99. Yet approaching 120 seems to me to be impossible.

I am not saying it is "impossible", Just that it defies human limits dressed as they are in such heat. I don't care who you are. 120 dressed in black is lethal and no way to conduct an "effective" incursion.