16 September 2011

Tankies giving a new job to the Green Helmet?

Hmm... how do I get through the untangling of that opaque headline? OK, let me try:

Tankies:  the moniker for some (or all for all I know) of the British Trotskyists. While the blog discussed here is not necessarily owned by or is identified with Trots, I would use that moniker for brevity. And other, more personal, reasons.

Green Helmet: If you remember Salam Daher, one of the much sung heroes of Lebanon war of 2006, you may skip this part. If not: Salam Daher was the Lebanese guy who made a unique contribution to visual propaganda by inventing a reusable child corpse. In short, he carried the same dead kid around the bombing sites, presenting it (and himself, of course) to any willing photographer. Of course, there were quite a few willing ones, and the pictures coming from different agencies were compared only later. Meanwhile, everything went quite swimmingly, even a photo like this one, where Mr Daher (probably being tired) forget to be solemn and grieving as appropriate for the moment and, somewhat revoltingly, produced a wide smile:


But all good things come to an end, and people have started to notice the proliferation of Green Helmet appearing in all nooks and crannies of Lebanese city of Qana, carrying that same dead baby. Which fact caused some stains on his otherwise impeccable record and some (minor) heartburn to AP and other agencies who enthusiastically published his photographs. Up to a point.

Five years passed since then. And, lo and behold, I am reading a post in a Tank the Tories blog (you can guess the leaning of that one, I suppose, without my nudging). Anyway, in a "groundbreaking" post Israel and Bloody Sunday the author uses a bold brush to draw a parallel between the Irish Bloody Sunday and what he/she calls "the situation in Israel now". I wouldn't go into arguing with the esteemed Tankie. Suffice to mention that, unlike in the statement "Israel’s behaviour led directly to planes hitting the Twin Towers...", the mastermind behind the 9/11 (out fishing now) didn't mention Israel/Palestine as part of his "grievances" for at least one year after 9/11, and even then only in passing. But to know this requires a bit more interest in facts, which the esteemed Tankie doesn't really possess, as I shall demonstrate presently.

Now to the demonstration: first check out the photograph that concludes the Tankie's post linked above. Do you see the helmeted face behind the figure in the foreground? Now look up at the (revoltingly smiling, I know) face in the photograph above in this here post. Do you need a nudge to recognize the G.H.? No, I thought so. But, you may want to say, Tankie is going on about Gaza, not about Lebanese war. Precisely.

Now to the second part of the demonstration: move your mouse (trackpad, whatever you use) to make the cursor hover above the picture in the Tankie's post. What do you see under the cursor now? "Gaza", I assume...

So, as you can see, Salam Daher aka Green Helmet is alive and kicking - this time kicking around Gaza. I only wonder whether the corpse is still the same one... after all, the time tested tools of trade are usually the best ones.

P.S. Just to be on the safe side and for posterity sake: in case the Tankie in question decides to replace the photograph with another one or to remove that "Gaza" telltale mark (although why would he/she do do? - the post is about Gaza anyway), here is the photo in its virginal beauty:


I am grateful to Pisa for the tip.

8 comments:

Dick Stanley said...

Pali PR. They know their buds will never question it, and everyone else? Big deal.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Everyone else will absorb the photo and move on. So it's still important to get the truth out.

Pisa said...

Isn't recycling great?

Really, if there's a prize for recycling, pro-palestinians should get it. They're awfully good at it, they recycle everything from blood libels to flotillas. Just watch the following photo and video (from minute 3)

http://www.think-israel.org/mcleod.greenhelmetguy.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_KcrMNCa6c

I'm all for saving the planet, so here's my advice on how those brave people could help to further reduce the human-made global warming:



Please note that the video is named "AHMED HAMDY SINGING FOR GHAZAH ".

Pisa said...

Why isn't there an Edit Post button? It's all mixed up, grrrrrr.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Editing is for the owner of that blog... and for contributors (hint).

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I got the message, nothing mixed up in it.

jams o donnell said...

An old trick. Find of more rather, create a piece of high impact propaganda then repeat  in a slightly different format. It gets the blood boiling among the supporters and they won't remember that they were shown much the same thing last year...

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Yeah, stink as it may, its' quite effective, I agree.