Fake Muslim atrocity?

Questions, speculations & updates on the techniques and nature of media fakery
fbenario
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Fake Muslim atrocity?

Unread post by fbenario »

The current cover of Time Magazine (dated August 9, 2010) shows an Afghan girl whose nose was hacked off with a machete as some form of Muslim retribution. It seems fake to me, but my technical skills aren't good enough to prove it. She looks too composed, too peaceful, and it seems unlikely that the rest of her face would have been left untouched, if such an attack had actually occurred.

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We know that the perps need to keep some minimal level of public support going for all the wars, and since overall support seems to be lessening just slightly, it wouldn't be surprising for them to remind America of why we all should hate/fear Muslims.

The picture also seemed reminiscent of something, and it finally dawned on me that it looks modeled on a very famous 1985 cover of National Geographic - same peacefulness, same composure, similar shawl/robe, posture, indistinct background, etc.

Image

Can we prove either picture is fake?
hoi.polloi
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Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Most of these magazines have similar corporate and political origins and came about during the explosion of printing technologies that gradually improved printing quality over the last decades and therefore offered the propaganda machine more striking psyop weapons: convincingly bright, hypnotizing pictures.

The fact that both of these are obviously depictions of a woman in a shooting session (whether simulated, fake, in a studio or "on location") and that the money for such a session would come from the host of propaganda rags in question (National Geographic, Time, Rothschild, Rockefeller, etc.) should tell you everything you need to know about their intent.

As for "proving" they are fake - you set up a false onus. You can see the entire thing is carefully constructed and designed. What parts are real and what parts are fake make "proving" fakery less important than noticing simply that this is an artificial, artistic depiction and therefore there is no way of drawing from it true or false information about reality. It is artwork.

Only the text accompanying the first picture tells you anything about the intent of the presentation.

Given the magazines they are from, one might presume a more important question would be: "Why are we being shown these images?"
unrestrained
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Unread post by unrestrained »

I guess if they leave Afghanistan the Taliban will hack everyone's noses off... I get the same feeling when seeing pictures like this as I did while reading Brave New World. How they try to portray the "uncivilized" part of the world as primitive and harsh outside our safe bubble here in the west. How they are in need of our "help" and assistance.
Dcopymope
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Unread post by Dcopymope »

Time magazine chose Adolf Hitler as man of the year in 1938. And we're supposed to take anything they say about mans inhumanity to man seriously?
fbenario
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Unread post by fbenario »

I don't imagine anyone here is surprised to read this about the fake image on the Time cover.

With Its Horrifying Cover Story, Time Gave the War a Boost. Did Its Reporter Profit?

The piece lacked a crucial personal disclosure on [reporter Aryn] Baker's part: Her husband, Tamim Samee, an Afghan-American IT entrepreneur, is a board member of an Afghan government minister's 100 million project advocating foreign investment in Afghanistan, and has run two companies, Digistan and Ora-Tech, that have solicited and won development contracts with the assistance of the international military, including private sector infrastructure projects favored by U.S.-backed leader Hamid Karzai.

In other words, the Time reporter who wrote a story bolstering the case for war appears to have benefited materially from the NATO invasion. Reached by The Observer, a Time spokesperson revealed that the magazine has just reassigned Baker to a new country as part of a normal rotation, though he declined to say where.

http://www.observer.com/2010/media/its- ... fit?page=0

The only three pictures I could find of Aryn Baker are all indistinct, including this posed shot in front of the expected indistinct background. The shadow across her face seems inconsistent with the light shining on the background:

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She's the person on the left here:

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?????. I don't know why this one won't open - maybe one of you will have better luck with it:

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:m3xM ... dc6AEn&t=1
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