When professional skeptics get it wrong

When the Afghanistan government collapsed, people were looking at the image that portrayed the old regime fall. People were trying to find the photo of the helicopter on the rooftop. One of the most popular photos was of a crowded plane full or refugees trying to flee the country.

There was a similar photo that was also distributed:

 

 

But this photo had been taken in the Philippines in 2013, and was quickly identified as a fake but many fact-checking sites.

Unexpectedly (or not?), as reported by Jordi Llàtzer in his podcast Espurna, some people began to tag the first photo, the real photo, as a fake, supposedly confusing the two photos. Was this accidental? It would be a very smart move to publish a similar fake photo, to create disinformation, if you don't want the legit one to be distributed.

Another example of what we could call failed skepticism is the recurrent debate around the novel (and movie) "Picnic at Hanging Rock". 

 

Being a fan of the movie myself, I had researched the web to find out if the novel and film were based on true events or not. It turned out that they were not. The verdict was that the story was fiction, because no newspaper of the time referred to it. But what if the skeptics had looked in the wrong place? An investigation by Janelle McCulloch, author of "Beyond The Rock: The Life Of Joan Lindsay And The Mystery Of Picnic At Hanging Rock", discovered evidences that the story could have been inspired by a real event:

"McCulloch then turned to online archives and found a document distributed to Victorian police stations at the time. This police gazette detailed that a couple of girls had disappeared in the late 1800s – their ages and descriptions matching that of the novel."

Hillary Clinton admits (the obvious): the USA created Al-Qaeda

"Because when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan we had this brilliant idea we were going to come to Pakistan and create a force of mujahedeen and equip them with stinger missiles and everything else to go after the Soviets inside Afghanistan.

And we were successful. The Soviets left Afghanistan, and then we said great, good-bye, leaving these trained people, who were fanatical, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, leaving them well-armed, creating a mess, frankly, that at the time we didn't really recognize, we were just so happy to see the Soviet Union fall and we thought fine we are OK now everything is going to be so much better.

Now you look back. The people we are fighting today, we were supporting in the fight the soviets." Hillary Clinton, in Fox News.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

RAWA is the oldest political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan since 1977.

CIA created Osama Bin Laden

"Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm, train, and finance the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups that were favored by neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet intervention. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken; funding began with $20–30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987.

The U.S. government has been criticized for allowing Pakistan to channel a disproportionate amount of its funding to controversial Afghan resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,[38] who Pakistani officials believed was "their man".[39] Hekmatyar has been criticized for killing other mujahideen and attacking civilian populations, including shelling Kabul with American-supplied weapons, causing 2,000 casualties. Hekmatyar was said to be friendly with Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, who was running an operation for assisting "Afghan Arab" volunteers fighting in Afghanistan, called Maktab al-Khadamat." [Wikipedia]

"Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997–2001, and Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council from 2001-2003, believed the CIA had provided arms to the Arab Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden, writing, "Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan."" [Wikipedia]

Afghanistan. Country in the shadows

Afghanistan's recent history has been covered with neverending tragedy and suffering. But the series of war that has led to the present situation didn't begun with the soviet invasion of the country, but with Mohammed Daoud Khan's coud d'etat in 1973.

In 1979 the Soviet Union decides to invade Afghanistan, with support of the the Parcham, one of the factions of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

In the following years, the soviets faced the opposition of the mujahideens (supported by the USA) and others groups (such as the Northern Alliance).

In 1989 the soviets left Afghanistan. President Burhanuddin Rabbani faced then another threat: the talibans, backed by the mujahideens, establishing in 1996 the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and controling the 95% of the country.

During the talibane seven-year-rule Afghanistan went back to the middle ages in almost all aspects of life and freedom, unde the sharia (islamic law) inforced by them.

But there are two stories that I find really interesting from this period. The first is how many teachers risked their lives to teach girls, which was totally forbidden by talibans. People who defied the official prohibition of teaching girls, and took part in secret schools to continue their education. One example, Mohammed Halim, disembowelled and murdered for teaching girls [*] or Suraya Pakzad [*]. In fact, it seems that a whole secret conspiracy survied to provide this girls of education [*].

The other story is the life and death of Ahmad Shah Massoud (or Masud), aka the Lion of Panjshir. Engineering student in the Kabul University, he became leader of the resistance against the soviet invasion. After the withdrawal of the soviet army, Massoud became the Defense Minister in 1992 under the government of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani. When the talibans arrived to Kabul, he came back to the north as the leader of the Northern Alliance. He was supported by his former enemy, Russia, and by China and India, while the talibans had the approval of the USA.

But just two days before September 11th, 2001, Massoud was to give an interview, but the two supposed journalists, Dahmane Abd el-Sattar and Bouraoui el-Ouaer, where suicide terrorists from Al Qaeda. They carried a bomb that killed Massoud.

Many speculations have been made why Al Qaeda killed Massoud; one is that they wanted to kill the head of the opposition to the taliban regime before the ofensive that they expected after the coming September 11th bombing. But this seems highly hipothetical. It is more likely, like it has been proposed too, that this killing was in gratitude to the protection given by the talibans to Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.