I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 this holiday weekend, and overall I was fairly impressed. I've maintained a mild dislike of Michael Moore ever since I had the misfortune of seeing his piece-of-shit-Bowling movie, so needless to say, I had low expectations of Moore as a filmmaker. I can say, however, that I was hyped about seeing this flick, so that balanced things out. Like I said, overall, I was fairly impressed.
Of course, this movie has gotten people up-in-arms raving about how the movie is nothing more than a pack of lies. I've seen a lot of goofy "criticism" of Moore and his latest artistic endeavor. Don't believe everything negative you hear about this movie. However, that being said, don't believe everything you see in F911 either. For some balanced criticism of Moore's conspiracy theories, check out Brendan Nyhan's article on the topic at Spinsantiy. Rather than screaming about how Moore is a dirty liar, Nyhan does a decent job of pointing out some parts of F911 where Moore strings mostly accurate things together to give a potentially misleading impression. Good reading.
And even better, for your linking pleasure, check out an unofficial transcript of the first 43 minutes of Fahrenheit 9/11. I can't vouch for the accuracy of this transcript.
Another quick news item from Les today... Prayer will not help you conceive in-vitro. The study that claimed to prove so turns out to probably be a complete fraud. Let's hope this gets some media attention.
The more I've thought about the gaps in timestamps in the Nick Berg movie, the more I think two cameras must have been involved. The timestamps from the video are as follows.
Why the 11 hour difference? Some, seemingly discounting the shot of Nick in the chair at 13:26:24, believe Nick was already dead when the majority of beheading was shown, which falls in the 13:45-and-on range. They suggest the terrorists started cutting at 2:44 and picked up taping again at 13:45, trying to make it look as if Nick was still alive.
There is at least some small reason to think this might be the case, as I imagine it can't be easy to cut off someone's head. It must take time to get through the spine and remove the whole head.
What caught my eye, however, was the similar length of gaps between the two 2am scenes and the two 1pm scenes. Nick starts in the chair at 2:18 and the beheading begins at 2:44, 26 minutes later. Nick also starts in the chair at 13:26, and the beheading is in progress at 13:45, 19 minutes later. If people are wrong in the hypothesis that Nick was already almost 11 hours dead when the 13:45 scene started, then a new explanation might be possible—perhaps two cameras were involved, with times set in different timezones.
If the difference in real time is small between when the beheading seems to start at 2:44 and when the beheading picks up at 13:45, and the difference in timestamp is due to two cameras set in different timezones, then we may hypothesize that Nick was truly beheaded on tape and quickly. This helps explain the fact that Nick began in the chair at 2:18, the beheading begins once at 2:44, then Nick is back in the chair at 13:26, and the beheading then continues at 13:45? (Obviously, there could be other explanations, such as having multiple victims, etc.)
Furthermore, if the difference in real time between 2:44 and 13:45 is very small, say on the order of 1 or 2 minutes, that puts the two cameras at almost exactly 11 hours difference. Strangely enough, this is the difference in time between the timezone of Baghdad and Pacific US time, according to a quick calculation from times at timeanddate.com. Perhaps one camera was set in Pacific time and the other was set in the Baghdad time zone. That just strikes me as strange.
Thoughts anyone?
K5 has a good writeup of supposed discrepancies in the Nick Berg video and circumstances. Here are some that caught my eye for further research.
27) Scream dubbed in: Screaming starts while Berg is not moving and before he is touched Whatever the mismatch in the speaker and video (next point), videotape cognoscenti have said the scream was amateurishly dubbed into the tape. The writer of this K5 article reviewed this issue closely: The screaming starts (at 4:31 - on the copy I viewed, not the time stamp) about 5 to 6 seconds before Berg is touched (at 4:36) and he is moved to his side. He is just sitting there like a lump.
28) Handling of papers on video "Terrorist" reader flips through pages of 'statement' at one point. He keeps ending up on the same page for awhile. As noted below, this would very likely produce a gap in speech, which is out of sync with the smooth timing of the spoken statement.
29) Audio is dubbed: Tape of speaker and video are out of sync Audio experts note the tape is clearly dubbed. The speaker recording is different from executioner video recording, due to lag between audio and video.
Personally, I'm still wondering why the events, when ordered by the timestamp on the video, seem to progress like the following.
Strange stuff.
Corrected last timestap. Sorry for the typo.