NATO's War Machine Caught Lying Again: Media Publish Photoshop Image Forgery Of War in Syria

[stockholmer]

http://gizmodo.com/5929952/newspaper-uses-photoshop-to-make-syria-even-worse-somehow

The Kronen Zeitung is Austria's largest newspaper, with a daily readership of around three million people. Yesterday, those readers were treated to the image on the left of war-torn Aleppo, bombed out and desperate. Except, as one sharp-eyed Redditor points out, that wasn't the scene at all. It was just another Photoshop job.

Just to be clear, the family in the photograph is, in fact, in Syria; the original photo (on the right) came from the European Pressphoto Agency. But merely fleeing a city ravaged by guns and mortars apparently isn't quite dramatic enough on its own. The editors of the Krone—as it's commonly called—needed this baby to sing.

Using Photoshop to make actresses and models look unrealistically attractive is bad enough. Using it to make a part of the world that has enough problems as it is look even more apocalyptic? That's just disgraceful.





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flashbacks to similar propaganda/psy-ops methods:

(Tom MacMaster, the fake 'Gay Girl in Damascus' blogger's wife is Britta Froelicher, an activist with the American Friends Service Committee, an organization linked to the US intelligence community since the Cold War)

'A Gay Girl in Damascus': how the hoax unfolded

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8572884/A-Gay-Girl-in-Damascus-how-the-hoax-unfolded.html

Here were examine how events unfolded which led to the diary being exposed as the work of the a married American man studying at the University of Edinburgh:


February 19, 2011: MacMaster posts the first item on the blog, pretending to be Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari. The first posts introduce the author as a lesbian of American and Syrian parents, born in the US and now living in Damascus.
February to April, 2011: MacMaster gives sporadic updates from his character, ranging from political analysis and hard news accounts of the brutal repression of the country’s pro-democracy movement to love poetry and Mills and Boon-esque homosexual memoirs.


May 7, 2011: Western media start to take notice of the blog. In Britain, The Guardian leads the coverage, reporting: “She is perhaps an unlikely hero of revolt in a conservative country. Female, gay and half-American, Amina Abdullah is capturing the imagination of the Syrian opposition with a blog that has shot to prominence as the protest movement struggles in the face of a brutal government crackdown. Her blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, is brutally honest, poking at subjects long considered taboo in Arab culture.” The story is accompanied by a photograph purporting to be of Amina. In reality, the image is of Jelena Lecic, a Londoner, and has been lifted off Facebook.


May 2011: As the blog gathers pace and followers, The Guardian arranges a sit down interview with Amina at a café in Damascus but she fails to show up, later claiming that harassment from secret police prevented the meeting. CNN also publishes an email interview with Amina, in which the character was quoted as saying: "A whole lot of long time changes are coming suddenly bubbling to the surface and views towards women, gay people and minorities are rapidly changing,"

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The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, 'mass rape' in Libya, and press credulity
Have our propaganda detectors been dulled?

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0613/The-Gay-Girl-in-Damascus-hoax-mass-rape-in-Libya-and-press-credulity


The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, 'mass rape' in Libya, and press credulity
Have our propaganda detectors been dulled?

If you don't follow NPR's Andy Carvin on Twitter, let me be the first to tell you that The Gay Girl in Damascus is actually a 40-year-old American guy with a beard.

Through the efforts of Mr. Carvin, Ali Abunimah, and a few others, Thomas MacMaster was unveiled as the hoaxster. Mr. MacMaster said today that his wife, Britta Froelicher – an American listed as an associate fellow at St. Andrew's Center for Syrian Studies – was involved as a consultant. One of the better roundups on how MacMaster was forced into admitting his lies is on Ali Abunimah's Electronic Intifada blog.

But while MacMaster appears to be a garden-variety Internet troll, the Amina persona was boosted by the willingness of the conventional press (The Guardian, CNN, New York Times) and bloggers with major followings, like Andrew Sullivan, to accept what they were being told at face value.

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Yet another American military operative outed as fake (Paula Brooks, aka 58-year-old former Air Force pilot David Graber)


http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/06/more-revelations-straight-males-posing-lesbian-bloggers/38796/

Only days after we learned that the author behind A Gay Girl in Damascus was a straight man from Georgia, The Washington Post is reporting http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/paula-brooks-editor-of-lez-get-real-also-a-man/2011/06/13/AGld2ZTH_blog.html#pagebreak that the purported DC-based lesbian mother who edited the lesbian news site Lez Get Real ("A Gay Girl's View on the World", which re-published Gay Girl in Damascus posts and helped the blog get started, is actually a 58-year-old former Air Force pilot and construction worker from Ohio named Bill Graber (pictured at right).

During interviews about the Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, "Paula Brooks" (Garber's wife's name), claiming she was deaf, initially spoke to Post reporters on the phone through her "father," who finally, after numerous conversations, admitted, "I am Paula Brooks." In perhaps the most surreal part of the story, the Post adds that Garber often flirted online with Gay Girl in Damascus author Tom MacMaster without either man realizing that the other was pretending to be a lesbian. Garber has turned over the site's management to Linda Carbonell, who writes under her maiden name but, we're pretty sure, is a woman. As of this writing, the site appears to be down.

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The Syrian Danny hoax

Advocating intervention, “Syrian Danny” was caught faking gun fire on CNN in order to portray heavy fighting that wasn’t really going on in the background while he literally begged for Western-backed forces to enter Syria and overthrow Assad. While waiting to be connected, Danny says, “Well, let the gunfire sound then,” before subsequently asking someone off camera, “Did you tell him to get the gunfire ready?” An explosion is heard soon after, but Danny doesn’t even flinch. The following video demonstrates this sham:

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BBC News uses 'Iraq photo to illustrate Syrian massacre' The BBC is facing criticism after it accidentally used a picture taken in Iraq in 2003 to illustrate the senseless massacre of children in Syria.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9293620/BBC-News-uses-Iraq-photo-to-illustrate-Syrian-massacre.html


Photographer Marco di Lauro said he nearly “fell off his chair” when he saw the image being used, and said he was “astonished” at the failure of the corporation to check their sources.

The picture, which was actually taken on March 27, 2003, shows a young Iraqi child jumping over dozens of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad.

It was posted on the BBC news website today under the heading “Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows”.

The caption states the photograph was provided by an activist and cannot be independently verified, but says it is “believed to show the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial.



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[BlueToTheBone]

1. Every day I'm glad for the internet.

It is the only way to find out about the distortions. It's harder to lie now without being caught.

[hack89]

2. Too bad Austria is not a NATO member. nt

[TreasonousBastard]

3. I caught the linking of Froelicher with the AFSC and...

I find it incredulous that the AFSC is linked to the CIA, etc. As a supporter of the AFSC I would be extremely troubled if this were true.

The American Friends Service Committee is the Quaker service organization of conscientious objectors who drove ambulences in WWII, helped draft resistors during Viet Nam and today still promotes peace, nonviolence, and maintains a number of worldwide charitable enterprises.

Now, you may have been thinking about "3D0X3 Cyber Surety AFSC" which is an Air Force computer security program, in which case it seems not only the press should check its sources and info.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

4. Good to know nothing bad is happening in Aleppo.