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Is there anyway to get this crap off the list. The anti-semitic, 
anti-Jewish stereotypic wisecrack is especially objectionable.

Robert J. Palmer Jr. wrote:
> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
> Glad to hear that there is not the ghost of a chance that the Iraqis 
> or the Americans don't "Reuter" things themselves (which in the Urban 
> Dictionary is also defined as being "jewed" out of something - I guess 
> that's using one urban term to define another).  I think the fact that 
> Colin Powell  reportedly felt pretty dirty about the UN thing says a 
> lot - biowarfare was only part of his guilt.  Maybe he was feeling 
> like he was involved in something like the story on your 
> "Fauxtography" link about the Israeli chemical weapons.  Also glad to 
> hear we were prepared for anything from this dastardly enemy about to 
> wipe US off the face of the earth using technology we supplied. 
> Especially when we're the ones who will get blasted during our 
> inevitable attack.  Ye gads - this must now a possibility anywhere so 
> one might be prudent and invest at least as much in defensive chemical 
> and biological mitigators as one does in offensive delivery technology 
> (General Dynamics may have to branch out a bit).    I do however agree 
> that politics has reached the limit in this thread so this is my last 
> salvo on the monster I created. Maybe I should start blogging.
>
>> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
>> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>>
>> On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Michael Cammer wrote:
>>
>>> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
>>> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>>>
>>>> Not sure if one can view this Washington Post web page without
>>>> creating a free user account, but give it a shot (pardon the pun).
>>>>
>>>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/10/AR2008071002709.html 
>>>>
>>>
>>> So now the Iranians know that the West has sophisticated image decoding
>>> technologies.  This was just a first test of many.
>>
>> Hah.  Well no, it wasn't "sophisticated image decoding technologies."
>> It was Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, who does it mostly by
>> inspection.  See:
>>
>> http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30602_Reality_vs._Photoshop
>>
>> See also:
>>
>> http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30606_New_York_Times_Belatedly_Credits_LGF 
>>
>>
>>
>> Further, it's not the first test of many.  It's one of a gazillion 
>> that's come out of the region.  For one list from 2006, see:
>>
>> http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22391_Fauxtography_Updates&only 
>>
>>
>> This has become sort of a hobby for folk who hold AFP, Reuters, NYT, 
>> et al in contempt because they are so willing to play useful idiots 
>> for these guys -- when 13-year-olds are capable of seeing some of the 
>> errors, but Reuters can't.
>>
>>
>> The most amusing was when the AP published a story of a US soldier 
>> being held hostage (see:
>> http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1333909 -- the 
>> original AP story is no longer easily available ).
>>
>> It turned out to be an action figure:
>>
>> http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1703
>>
>> It's gotten so bad that "Reutered" is now part of the Urban Dictionary:
>>
>> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Reutered
>>
>>
>> When I worked for the military, this kind of thing was a repeated 
>> problem.  Al Quaeda and its affiliates regularly provided falsified 
>> imagery as propaganda.  More irritatingly, they kept providing videos 
>> of *real* beheadings claiming they were killing American captives -- 
>> but they were actually beheadings of Russian captives from Chechnya.
>>
>> There are, in fact, some new methods in development for this kind of 
>> stuff, but they are mostly of ancillary value.  The work by Harin 
>> Farid at Dartmouth is particularly intriguing.  See:
>>
>> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/publications/
>>
>>>
>>> Somebody should do analysis like this on the pictures Colin Powell 
>>> showed
>>> the UN arguing that Iraq had WMD.
>>
>>
>> Actually, though I don't know why you want to play these political 
>> games in a scientific forum, our data were pretty good.  The claim 
>> that we knowingly projected wrong data is simply untrue, however 
>> personally satisfying you find it to inject your perspective into 
>> this forum.
>>
>> I was involved in planning for biological/chemical fatalities in the 
>> invasion of Iraq.  We were scared to death -- and planning for up to 
>> 30,000 biological/chemical casualties.  The biggest fear we had 
>> involved smallpox, anthrax and persistent chem weapons.  Smallpox 
>> remains viable for as much as 13 years in cadavers, for instance, and 
>> we simply could not return contaminated bodies back to the US until 
>> they had been decontaminated.  That is a nontrivial thing to do when 
>> there are thousands of casualties. This wasn't a trivial political 
>> game, no matter how much you try to reduce it to that.  I won't bore 
>> you with what we planned, but dealing with a few tens of thousands of 
>> infectious bodies is a nontrivial task. You can't burn the bodies, 
>> for instance, without aersolizing the agents. You can't fly the 
>> bodies back in cargo holds because the change in pressure may cause 
>> outgassing and contamination of the airplane.
>>
>> The bottom line, however, is if you look at the interrogation records 
>> of Saddam after his capture made by George Piro, Saddam knowingly 
>> mislead the US into thinking there were WMDs because he fundamentally 
>> didn't think that Bush would invade.
>>
>> Oh, I know, it doesn't serve your taste to differentiate between 
>> being fooled by another intelligence agency and "lying," but in most 
>> of the rest of the world, folk can comprehend it.
>>
>>>
>>> Furthermore, perhaps the gov't should release all the raw data so 
>>> that we
>>> may have the opportunity to reanalyze them using our favorite tools.
>>>
>>> Why stop at imaging in scientific research?
>>
>>
>> In fact, that's done all the time.
>>
>>
>> billo
>> http://www.billoblog.com/billoblog
>
>

-- 
John J. Lemasters, MD, PhD
Professor and South Carolina COEE Endowed Chair
Director, Center for Cell Death, Injury and Regeneration
Departments of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Medical University of South Carolina
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