arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

The difference of the two pictures is striking. "The difference of the noses already speaks volumes." "B.L. is a narrow-shouldered type and not an athletic one like this person presented to us as B.L. His kind of smiling is also not identical with the very characteristic cognitive facial expression of Ben Laden." "You should send these two pictures to Otto Schily (the German Minister of Internal Affairs) and let him test his new biometric methods on this object." These were some of the first reactions, when we presented these pictures side by side in order to compare them.

The first picture above was taken on 24 December 1998 by the AP photographer Rahimullah Yousafzai during a conversation with a group of reporters in Afghanistan. The second picture is a detail from the video tape published by the Pentagon and sent around the world on 13 December 2001 in order to prove the guilt of Ben Laden and to construct a retrospective legitimation of the war. It is part of a take where the inserted text contains an alleged statement of Ben Laden saying, that the time difference between the first and the second plane hitting the towers was twenty minutes.

The physiognomical difference is, in fact, not thus striking in all parts of the video. A close-up of the head in a corresponding position like the above is seldom to be found but just this rare case brings out this revealing result. Assuming that the video tape was completely produced by computer, the algorithm for generating the video frames may have resulted in a physiognomy that is not constant.

On our request to initiate an inquiry into the authenticity of the video, the media expert of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the German Parliament, Jörg Tauss, answered, "I do not intend to take any steps. In case of Ben Laden's apprehension, the assessment of the video tape will be done by a court of (martial) law."

On Thursday, 20 December 2001, the German TV magazine "Monitor" also dealt with the video tape and proved, that the translation of the Arabic spoken text is wrong in some critical points.

So, through this video tape which is very dubious in many respects (pictures, sound, origin) we are proudly presented with a living phantom like the ghost of Canterbury. Ben Laden, the perfect concept of an enemy is a lucky chance for psychological warfare. The day after the Pentagon's publishing of the video, the filthy Cologne popular daily "Express" pushed a big-sized cover photo of an almost unidentifiable Ben Laden portrait from the video tape, entitled with "the cold-blooded mass murderer, laughing, bragging, confessing and sneering at his victims". All this happens in a way suited to the media and in the best manner of public relations strategies like those of Hill & Knowlton or Ruder Finn: first spread the news, provoke a storm of indignation - later denials will be without any effect.

As Jamie Shea, the NATO press officer in the so-called Kosovo conflict, said: "Journalists are soldiers." And this is exactly how most of the media are acting, when spreading this video fake in an absolutely uncritical way. But media reality is not necessarily reality. Presentation in the media is not synonymous with representation of reality, how many people wrongly think. Media reality means that the subject presented gains a status of reality through its very representation. Hence, this kind of reality only exists within the media but nowhere else.

"I see" - in English, these words have a double meaning: to see and to understand. It's a fake, of course. While at the same time, we are spared the facts and the pictures of the victims of this dirty war.

More detailed material on "the enemy Ben Laden in the media" is to be found at the web site: http://www.arbeiterfotografie.com/galerie/kein-krieg/hintergrund/index-feind-1.html