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

[stefano]

I'm just shooting the shit here but I don't think its an accident that it's called ISIS.

The original name was an Arabic one: Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, so in Arabic media they got called Da'esh, an acronym from the Arabic initials. Someone in the English media translated Al-Sham as 'Greater Syria' for some reason, and that's where ISIS came from. A better translation is 'Levant', hence ISIL. In French media they are EIIL. More recently the group said it was now only IS (partly because Da'esh became shorthand in the Arab world for barbarian lunatics), but I think ISIS stuck in English at least to some degree for SEO purposes. You can't Google 'is' and expect to find anything useful. IS still uses ISIS on social media I think.

Might be something to the mythological connection but it definitely wouldn't come from IS, which has been working hard to destroy absolutely all history and culture in the places it controls. Isn't there a way of finding the first use through Google?

Does anyone have a link to the actual video? I'd like to study it and see if it seems as fake as the Foley one. Although it seems like they very likely shot these all at once. After all, renting that video equipment is expensive.

Here, from a link Hunter posted upthread. I'd like to hear what you think. Very similar, you don't see the knife cut skin, and the last shot of the beheaded body is very short and doesn't show the neck. Nothing to my eye, though, that makes me think Sotloff wasn't killed before the last shot, or that the dead body is CGI.

Perhaps someone has commented on this before. Foley and Sotloff seemed so calm. Like they were selling an old truck. Maybe their captors show them people they have tortured and tell them how lucky they are that is not going to happen to them. Maybe they make them watch. Maybe like all those other Isis victims you just lay there and wait for them to come shoot you in the back of the head. Maybe, as a civilization, that is all we are doing. Waiting for the elite pigs to come blow our sleeping brains out.

People have commented on that in this thread, and it isn't weird. It seems weird when you or I imagine being threatened with death, but it is entirely in line with what other men in such situations have done. God knows we've killed enough of each other to know what normal behaviour is for a condemned man in the minutes before his execution: normal procedure is to keep your chin up and to try going out with dignity. "Pray, Sir, see me safe up; and as to my coming down, let me shift for myself," were Thomas More's immortal words just before they brutally cut his head off for political and religious reasons back in the day.

[The Consul]

Not me...I will not go gentle onto that good knife.

[MacCruiskeen]

Perhaps someone has commented on this before. Foley and Sotloff seemed so calm. Like they were selling an old truck. Maybe their captors show them people they have tortured and tell them how lucky they are that is not going to happen to them. Maybe they make them watch. Maybe like all those other Isis victims you just lay there and wait for them to come shoot you in the back of the head. Maybe, as a civilization, that is all we are doing. Waiting for the elite pigs to come blow our sleeping brains out.

People have commented on that in this thread, and it isn't weird. It seems weird when you or I imagine being threatened with death, but it is entirely in line with what other men in such situations have done. God knows we've killed enough of each other to know what normal behaviour is for a condemned man in the minutes before his execution: normal procedure is to keep your chin up and to try going out with dignity. "Pray, Sir, see me safe up; and as to my coming down, let me shift for myself," were Thomas More's immortal words just before they brutally cut his head off for political and religious reasons back in the day.

Stefano, the comparison is absurd. Sir Thomas More was not a normal or average human being. He was the top prelate in his nation and he underwent a very prominent trial. What's more, he composed his own parting words, and they were plausible last words -- as opposed to, say, "Well, that ship has sailed" (ffs...who on earth speaks like this, under any circumstances? No one. Except on TV.).

And I bet Thomas More didn't sound exactly like a run-of-the-mill tv soap actor while delivering those lines.

Plus, there is not the slightest doubt that More was beheaded, and that he was beheaded on the day, in the place, and at the hour we're told he was beheaded. Why is there no doubt? Because he was beheaded live, in meatworld, in front of a "large crowd that had gathered to watch".

The most strikingly obvious thing about those two "beheading videos" is that they do not show beheadings. One would have thought that showing a beheading was a prerequisite for a beheading video. But apparently nowadays all you have to do is say "beheading video" often enough and nearly everyone will believe they have actually seen a beheading in that video, as opposed to some laughable amateur dramatics. ("Jihadi John" should not give up his day job, which is presumably behind a desk at GCHQ.)

It's amazing. Even when the spooks admit, via the corporate media, that the video is an embarrassing fake, people (many of whom should know better*) still rush to insist that the spooks' Version B ("ah, y'see, they musta killed him later") must be true. Cos anything else would be a "conspiracy theory", right? And hey presto, you have liberal and pseudleft pundits everywhere hurrying to support the latest US "intervention". White man's burden, innit.

*The archives of this board alone are a bulging storehouse of media disinformation and plain lies, most blatantly concocted whenever some kind of casus belli is required, or desired. As precisely in this case.

[stefano]

Stefano, the comparison is absurd. Sir Thomas More was not a normal or average human being.

It's not absurd - I'm comparing the behaviour of men who allegedly had their heads cut off to the behaviour of a man who really had his head cut off. That's a lot less absurd than comparing the behaviour of men who allegedly had their heads cut off to how I imagine I would behave just before I had my head cut off, based on nothing more than my self-image and the many movies I've seen (many more than I've seen footage of actual beheadings) in which the hero makes a last-ditch run for it and gets away. Or the ones in which a guy blubs and begs for his life just before being killed, which have equally little basis in the facts available from thousands of actual beheadings. Sure More was exceptional (he just sprang to mind because of his terrific last words), but his behaviour on the scaffold was not unusual. I can't think of any actual execution where the victim made a futile last dash from the chopping block with his hands tied behind his back. Can you? I tend to suspect that you won't find one if you went looking. Nor do you have to go back a long way - in other recent beheading videos the victims meet their end in the same resigned way.

Plus, there is not the slightest doubt that More was beheaded

Now you aren't talking about exactly the same thing anymore. There are reasons to doubt those two men were beheaded. But 'they don't act like I reckon I'd act in that situation' isn't one of them.

My comment was about more than this video - it was about a strange and irritating tendency for news skeptics (if you don't like the term 'conspiracy theorists') to prefer conditional tenses and extrapolation from our imaginations (as deeply influenced as they are by fictional audiovisual material) to the data available from history. It's like thinking there were actors at the Boston marathon bombing because the people there on the day didn't behave the way we imagine they would in a bombing - disregarding how people actually have behaved in bombings. Or 82_28 thinking there can't be an insurrection in Iraq because it's really hot out, and he doesn't imagine men could fight a war in that heat - disregarding the fact that wars have been fought in similar conditions throughout history.

It's a Baudrillard thing, as semper said last week, and maybe my irritation at that is deluding me about the video thing. But I tend to think that Foley and Sotloff were killed and that I saw their bodies on video. Not least because I can't think why the people behind those videos would refrain from killing them. This doesn't mean I don't think there's something weird (especially in light of Foley's CV) - I'm perfectly willing to entertain the idea that US intelligence elements allowed or encouraged or directed the videos to be made. I just tend to think that if they did, and did so through IS, there's no reason why they would have gone about it in any other way than by cutting their heads off.

[MacCruiskeen]

But I tend to think that Foley and Sotloff were killed

Why do you tend to think that?

and that I saw their bodies on video.

In just exactly the same way as I saw a man with an extra talking face on the back of his head (in a Harry Potter film). In just exactly the same way as I saw a man who was in fact an android speaking at length after being decapitated (in Alien). In just exactly the same way as we have all seen dinosaurs walk the earth.

Not least because I can't think why the people behind those videos would refrain from killing them.

Lots of reasons come to mind. For example:

1. Because both Foley and Sotloff worked for the filmmakers?

2. Because "the people behind those videos", being Americans, felt squeamish about actually killing Americans?

3. Because actually killing them would get the filmmakers into even bigger trouble if it ever came out?

4. Because the filmmakers' employers didn't want them to waste valuable intelligence resources?

5. Because they had a gentleman's agreement?

6. Because the families might have objected noisily to a real beheading, as opposed to a faked one?

Et cetera.

This doesn't mean I don't think there's something weird (especially in light of Foley's CV) - I'm perfectly willing to entertain the idea that US intelligence elements allowed or encouraged or directed the videos to be made.

Why not that they actually made them themselves? Why is this such a stretch?

I just tend to

Again - why the tendency?

I just tend to think that if they did, and did so through IS, there's no reason why they would have gone about it in any other way than by cutting their heads off.

Again, plenty of perfectly plausible reasons come very easily to mind. They wouldn't want to waste resources, just for a start. See above.

It's amazing what set designers and prop makers can do, these days. It was already amazing 35 years ago.



Remarkably real-looking, although primitive by today's high standards. Nothing whatever obliges us to tend to forget that fact.

[Hunter]

Okay, I spent a good chunk of today, when I could, looking for this new video. And I couldn't find it. There were a zillion videos of "news" stories about it, but finding the actual video proved impossible. There was one that stopped immediately after they showed that other guy (the guy we'll see next getting supposedly beheaded).

Does anyone have a link to the actual video? I'd like to study it and see if it seems as fake as the Foley one. Although it seems like they very likely shot these all at once. After all, renting that video equipment is expensive.

I posted a link to the video in my first post about it.

[Hunter]

Another one today, same thing, this is Steven Sotloff, the other American Journalist shown in the Foley video.

http://nieuws.thepostonline.nl/2014/09/ ... n-sotloff/

The link is the actual video so be warned.

The video is right here posted the morning it was released.

http://nieuws.thepostonline.nl/2014/09/ ... n-sotloff/

[MacCruiskeen]

Personally, I tend to distrust and in fact disbelieve everything presented to us as news about official enemies (especially in images) unless it is also confirmed by plausible independent witnesses.

It seems to me that this is the only rational position to take, most especially when that news and those images are used to justify imperialist "intervention", as precisely now. Yet again.

Why on earth would anyone remotely well-informed tend to believe the CIA and the US Govt.? Why, half a century after JFK? Why, 30 years after "we" armed the brave "Mujaheddin"? Why, 13 years after 9/11? Why, more than a decade after the Dodgy Dossier and "Saddam's WMD"? Why, in the era of Hope & Change™?


OMG ISIS R EVEN WORSE THAN AL QAEDA OMG THEY BEHEAD PEOPLE THIS TIME ITS FOR REAL OMG

[stefano]

Why not that they actually made them themselves? Why is this such a stretch?

These are good questions, thanks. The explanation that the videos are fake seems to me to belong to a family of explanations about the world according to which a very small number of people do everything and the rest of us are passive reagents. The explanation that the videos are real (i.e. the two journos were actually killed) fits into a different and messier picture, in which various groups are manipulated to a large degree by the same people, but maintain agency and act on genuinely held motivations, and for that reason are not subject to predictable control. That's more how I believe the world works. It's roulette, not chess.

Most of the debate in this thread has been about preferring one or the other explanation, and not so much about the videos as such. Some of it has been based, as I said above, on nothing more than speculation, and some has been uninformed ('where do they get HD cameras? And water?'). On the videos themselves, as you've pointed out, it is impossible in 2014 to decide conclusively whether video is real on the basis of how real it looks. So we end up picking possibly trivial elements from the videos to substantiate opinions that we formed before we even started watching the videos (if we watched them at all - I thought it was funny how many posters made up their minds sight unseen).

[8bitagent]

OMG ISIS R EVEN WORSE THAN AL QAEDA OMG THEY BEHEAD PEOPLE THIS TIME ITS FOR REAL OMG

Oh it's working. I now am seeing online so many of even the critical Obama left leaners say we need to go in there fully to Iraq and Syria and take out this ISIS.
Obama is getting criticized from his own constituents for seeming weak on foreign policy. Wait, weren't these the same people criticizing him
for upping the ante in Afghanistan and the endless drone campaigns?

4 things I've come to realize since I began this thread:

1. For all intents of purposes they are ISIS. Islamic State, Islamic State of Iraq and "al-Sham/levant", ISIL, D'aesh, etc. It's an effective chilling name giving them the extra mythical status all the sudden
the powers that be want. They're charter may be to erase and destroy all religious symbolism while raising the spectre of ancient Islam; but the Egyptian God ISIS works perfect for whatever
it is that is feeding them along.

2. I think the more we want to believe this time "it's real blowback!", the more we will see that this will turn out to be the ultimate intended frankenstein for a very special purpose.

3. Right when we're busy arguing over these beheading videos, some new crazy event blamed on ISIS will happen. And then an even crazier event. Then shit Tom Clancy couldn't have thought up.
Til everyone's running around pulling hair out of their head going "OMG I CANT TAKE IT ANYMORE". Or they will start getting pushed back by FSA, Kurd and Iraqi forces, crumble and be a mere footnote in a year's time.

4. ALL these events....be it the bin Laden tapes, Nick Berg video, Bin Laden assassination and the ISIS beheading videos I think are intentionally meant to leave doubt and weird oddities.

But I definitely believe they are serving a purpose...and again this is coming from someone still not convinced the Boston Bombing, Sandy Hook or Batman Massacre was a "black op".
(Again tho if I have to theorize, Ive long felt there are more international shadowy players than everything being some sort of CIA/Pentagon psyop)

[Nordic]

Personally, I tend to distrust and in fact disbelieve everything presented to us as news about official enemies (especially in images) unless it is also confirmed by plausible independent witnesses.

It seems to me that this is the only rational position to take, most especially when that news and those images are used to justify imperialist "intervention", as precisely now. Yet again.

Why on earth would anyone remotely well-informed tend to believe the CIA and the US Govt.? Why, half a century after JFK? Why, 30 years after "we" armed the brave "Mujaheddin"? Why, 13 years after 9/11? Why, more than a decade after the Dodgy Dossier and "Saddam's WMD"? Why, in the era of Hope & Change™?


OMG ISIS R EVEN WORSE THAN AL QAEDA OMG THEY BEHEAD PEOPLE THIS TIME ITS FOR REAL OMG

Yes. This exactly. And the longer I am without TV the more obvious it is that all of it is nothing but "production" and professional noise making, propaganda, and Psyops.

My window to the world currently consists of zero of their noise, so my objectivity gets more and more clear.

We have reached "Peak Lie". To me it is most apparent in the Ukraine.

[coffin_dodger]

There must be a name for the mind state that can be described as -

"an increasing disbelief in the external reality experienced, directly at odds with the internal-self's concept of reality"

I think I have it, whatever it's called.

[Nordic]

Another one today, same thing, this is Steven Sotloff, the other American Journalist shown in the Foley video.

http://nieuws.thepostonline.nl/2014/09/ ... n-sotloff/

The link is the actual video so be warned.

The video is right here posted the morning it was released.

http://nieuws.thepostonline.nl/2014/09/ ... n-sotloff/

Thanks Hunter, I missed this somehow.

Been a little spacey lately.

[Hunter]

No problem! Glad you found it! Looks about the same as the first one, same set up, black out etc huh?

[82_28]

What's a cool little feature about this game, and it is a game, is that it is no longer racist or nationalist, it's just what has to be done. I will fully admit that given the yarn, I sorta sway to the side of bombing the fuck out of them. But, I don't believe the story. I'm left wondering, all people of conscience are wondering WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY WANT US TO BELIEVE? And therein is the question. What is the greater "picture"?

ISIS or whatever the fuck they're called, don't have a "message" if in fact they are real -- they're playing the parts of fuckers you see in fucking Call of Duty video entertaiment. The message they do have is that they are tech savvy and that if they killed a shit ton of Iraqis but the only ones that mean anything are two fucking American reporters is that this whole thing is bunk. Not saying the dudes didn't die (RIP). Millions of entities have been extinguished by our noble forces of freedom for at least as of the prior reset, going on two decades. The reset and updates have gone smooth. But we know the REBOOT is going to be killer!

Maybe we'll have to get a whole new computer.