Little Green Footballs

Thursday, November 23, 2006

The plot thickens



The company behind GIYUS, a piece of software that 'pushes' Israeli PR to web users in order to get them to lobby mainstream media and politicians on the country's behalf, explicitly uses Charles Johnson's "fauxtography" incident as an example of successful use of the software.

Remember, the fauxtography 'scandal' centres around a picture of Beirut under fire which the wingnuts claim was an anti-Israeli propaganda attempt on the part of a major news organization. In fact, it was one photographer's badly touched up image which added nothing whatsoever to the horrors of the war. The incident was nothing but a smokescreen (no pun intended) to distract from pictures of dead and dying civilians that were causing immense damage to Israel's information control policy.

Expect to see this propaganda tool used a lot more in future, and Charles Johnson to be at the forefront of disseminating the 'news and views' coming out of Tel Aviv.

6 comments:

Richard said...

Just thought I'd let you know that "GIYUS" the name of the software means "draft" in Hebrew, as in "military draft." It has the connotation of compelling someone to serve. In this case, these folks believe they're drafting the world media on behalf of Israel's cause. More PR flim flam flackery-puffery.

TimmyD said...

Sorry that this doesn't have anything to do with GIYUS in particular, just LGF in general: but I can't believe that Volvo, Netflix, the Daily Telegraph, Gametap and William-Hill are happy to advertise there. I mean sure, it gets lots of traffic, but can that be the brand they want to associate with? Yeesh.

Nuclear Cop said...

Have a look at LGF's coverage of the PSG - Hapoel Tel Aviv incident, particularly the moron comments such as:

#12 crash_test_dhimmi 11/24/2006 08:54AM PST

the Jews are the canary in the mine in eurabia. how many of the mob were of "north african" decent? was this a friday night attack? after mosque let out?


Given the pro-Le Pen chants, none. I also like how crash_test_dhimmi doesn't know what day it is. Says it all.

#38 jimmyk 11/24/2006 09:07AM PST

Hmm, any chance the rioters might have been, um, you know, people of a religion and ethnicity that may not be named in newspaper reports?

(For what it's worth, I believe Marseille has a lot of "immigrants" of the above unmentionable ethnicity and religion.)


If this guy read said newspaper reports, you'd know there was no chance.

P.S., Paris Saint Germain play their games 500 miles away from Marseille. A long way to travel for even the most dedicated Jaw-bashed Mohammedan. It would be a touching nationalist gesture for Marseille fans to travel all the way to Paris in order to assault opposing fans of their rival team, PSG, during a European fixture.

LGF readers are kept very well informed by senior European affairs analyst Charles Johnson.

Nuclear Cop said...

Addendum: the Pew Research Center has an interesting factual analysis which goes far beyond the NY Sun-based understandings of French Muslim culture offered by #148 popskull in the comments.


It's also fascinating that the Lizards once again call upon the ghost of Mark Twain to support their bigotry (comment #28).

Loved WriterMom's comment (#104), too: "Is Quemener a Muslim surname?" Sounds pretty damn foreign to me, WriterMom.

Still, it's good to see LGF supporting the shooting of fascist thugs, if only when they attack Israelis and not Muslims. Somehow, somewhere, though, there's just gotta be that Muslim angle!

And whisper it quietly, but Hapoel Tel Aviv are a socialist team. Don't let the lizards know, or their heads will explode.

Nuclear Cop said...

(Should have noted that the hammer and sickle are part of Hapoel Tel Aviv's club crest, for Christ's sakes!)

There's also a (now) ironic page on a Hapoel fan site, appealing for a stop to police brutality.

Anonymous said...

*Sigh*

The "fauxtography scandal" wasn't merely a matter of a "badly touched up [sic]" image. The image wasn't just touched up, it was deliberately altered. And yes, the alteration was unnecessary, which just added to the mystery of it all. However, that one photo led to a discovery of all sorts of deceptive and badly manipulated images. To wit:

* The Israeli fighter dropping flares which was claimed to be firing missles.

* A photo of a supposedly downed, burning Israeli fighter which closer inspection showed to be a tire fire.

* Supposed missile strikes on ambulances which amazingly formed perfect circles right where the ventilation domes should have been.

* A despondent woman in a burqa who showed up in front of three destroyed houses -- or maybe it was two, one photo got recycled with a different date.

* A "dead body"--free of visible wounds and perfectly clean--being lifted out of debris, who in the rest of the photo series could be seen helping with the clean up.

In other words, the badly altered photo which CJ discovered pulled the floorboards back on a rat's nest of cheap propaganda. It put all the reports coming out of southern Lebanon under immediate suspicion.

Obviously Reuters didn't think this sort of deception quite so much the mere "smokescreen" you consider it. They dismissed the photographer whose work touched off the controversy.

Quit with the untempered hatred of Charles Johnson. It's made you stupid with rage.