Beheading Stories Unraveling, U.S. Propaganda Ops Exposed

An article posted this evening on Surfing The Apocolypse offers the first chance to listen to a few snippets of Reversed Speech from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the murderer of Nick Berg, and Iraq's leading boogey-man. Unfortunately, it appears that the formidable Zarkawi is a Sergeant in our military intelligence unit in Baghdad.

Regardless of the true meaning of any single speech reversal, the fact that Berg's killer is unconsciously emoting in a near continuous stream of plain English is enough to establish that he is a native English speaker.

Link to the article:
REVERSED SPEECH PROVES BERG KILLED BY AMERICANS-AL ZARKAWI A MYTH

Unfortunately the brief sound clips are .wma files for Win Media Player. This may lock some users out. Perhaps they will be made available elsewhere.

Well I will not discount the story, but I have issues with what I am hearing.

Where are the forward versions of those clips? We would need the original sounds along with the reversal. Still with that, I don't think would prove anything.

Just look back at the Judas Priest trial. The prosecution said the lyrics played backwards caused a boy to commit suicide or murder or something like that. But it was shown that other things were also heard, such as "mom, my rocking chair is broken".

To me, for this to be proved, we would need the whole 5 minutes of talking before the actual event, and the whole 5 minutes in reverse. Then we could dissect it with our own software. Its too easy to create sounds like that.

Need more.

* If I could just learn to spell

[edit on 6/25/04 by crayon]

Hee Hee, I can't believe you're actually using Surfing the Apocolypse as a source. Good entertainment, but are you really serious? Are you sure you didn't read it in the Enquirer, or the Globe?

Apparently it is not that easy to find a site willing to host audio files, because of the potential cost of excessive bandwidth usage. I'm sure that that these files will be made more available at some point. As for now, the STA site is not the source, it is simply a site that volunteered some bandwidth. Consider that Above Top Secret is an excellent forum and strongly dedicated to finding truth, there is no way the owners would consider hosting those files here.


[edit on 25-6-2004 by Strider]

First off you would have to show that there was any validity to reverse speech. The sounds or "words" heard say more about the person listening than the person that is talking. This does not expose anything other than the desire to hear something that is not really there.

i hear if you play Led Zeplin's "Whole lotta love" backwards it says

"terrorists are the bad guys....."

a little later on it says

"Bush Bush Bush"

I use these examples to show how humorous someone trying to analize a copy of a broadcast copy of already poorly shot videotape audio, playing it backwards, in order to support an anti USA stance....

Man, the lenght some will go to to over analyze a guy getting his head cut off by TERRORISTS.

BUT for kicks here on a conspiracy site
lets say you could actually hear clearly someone muttering backwards
"im a US spy" or "this is a psy op"

how would you prove this without having the original tape?

Oh come on, this really strains credability....

Its good to have an open mind, but no so open your brains fall out....

Interesting that you guys finally get something that really is above top secret and you don't want to deal with it.

For those seeking info on Reverse Speech, I recommend:

www.reversespeech.com

For those who become uncomfortable at the thought that reality might differ from what they see on their television sets, I can only offer sympathy.

For active minds, I will point out that the info in the STA article is just the tip of the iceburg, and that RS results are quite reproducible. In other words, you can do it yourself with the application of some time and effort. Audio captured by digital or analog video recording is actually quite good, and an excellent source to work with - although it can be difficult when there is extraneous noise at the original scene. The CSPAN video archives are an excellent source of practice material, and are sometimes quite revealing.



[edit on 25-6-2004 by Strider]

Once upon a time, I did a Psyche experiment in college on back-mastering... the art of encoding backwards messages into regular recordings. We set up a triple blind study utilizing Led Zepplin's Stairway to Heaven. The control group heard snippets of the song played regularly (Forward) and then backward. They were then asked to comment on what they thought they had heard when played backwards. The second group heard it forward and were asked to comment on what they thought it might say backward. They then heard it played backward and were asked to comment yet again on what they thought it might be saying backwards. Finally, the third group heard it played forward then were told what it was saying when played backward. Then it was played backward and they were asked to confirm or deny what we told them it was saying when played backward. The results were completely predictable and fit right inside of our hypothesis.

The control group heard nothing or came up with some pretty bizarre interpretations of what they thought they had heard. The second group was equally as predictable as over 90% of the respondents thought they heard backward what they expected to hear backwards with less than 10% changing their minds and claiming to hear something different. And the third group, well you could call them sheep. 99% of them claimed to heave heard EXACTLY what we had indicated that they would hear when played backwards. The results confirmed the power of suggestion.

This backwards recording of the Berg beheading is no different than my study in college. Although, a number of the recordings sounded NOTHING like what I was expecting to hear based on the suggestion provided. In short, there is nothing to this. Whereas I agree that the Berg video was hoaxed... or at the very least, staged by the CIA and Mossad, I would not, could not, use this backwards recording as evidence to support my claim.

The BS meter needs to be pegging in the red on this one. "Unconsciously Emoting english?" /sigh

I know when I ws a kid we played the timeless classic, "Another One Bites the Dust" backwards and it sounded like it said "Its fun to smoke marijuana." Hard to do that now with CD's.

I can't believe some of you actually take time out of your day to explain why this is bunk....God bless your souls.

So what would be the purpose of our side doing the beheadings? To justify our stay in Iraq? It seems like that would do the opposite. Just another conspiracy theory.

An excellent point, Mad Man. I certainly have more important things to do as well.

For those who seem to feel that ATS members must be encouraged to avoid looking into this, I think you have your logic on backwards.

Regarding an RS audience, the appropriate test would be to see how many could be made to hear something that really wasn't there. Since reversals usually sound pretty strange it would be a fun exercise. However you would have to factor out a normal distribution for suggestibility, before you could make any conclusions about the medium itself. Even then you would not be getting data of much value.

The percentage of those with an unpracticed ear who can still quickly recognize the odd-sounding audio product is simply not relevent. Can you think of any other skill where we would require that non-practictioners get the same result as those who actually work in the field? The only way to determine the value of RS is to evaluate the data it supplies when appropriate standards and guidelines are followed. Is it useful and is it correct? In Forensic RS, the data is used as a stepping stone for further, traditional forms of investigation.

In this particular case, the material contains information about Berg already confirmed by other sources, includes a reference to EDI which none of the RS people recognized, and it includes NAMES. The validity of this particular exercise depends, then, on whether or not a military intelligence unit in Baghdad had these names on its roster during the time in question. Apparently there are even MORE names available. Could any investigator seriously working on the Berg killing hope for more? It would be like a gift from Heaven!

Rather than debate the medium, shouldn'e we be discussing the implications of the message?

Well, we still do not have the forward samples of what is on the website. How are we to know that these samples come from the Berg video? Also, we would have to get other audio samples from other speakers that we know are real and test them backwards as well.

Just saying, "these audio clips are true" does not make them so.

Things like this need to be reverified, just like any other scientific explanation. If you prove something in a lab, and I am able to reproduce the results, we are able to lean more towards the proof being correct. If I am unable to reproduce the results, it does not make your claim false, but does not convince anybody.

Don't forget the motto of ATS: Deny Ignorance.

If we were to just take these audio clips at face value, we would not be denying ignorance, we would be promoting it.

All I ask is for a reverification of the audio from the video, as well as samples from others that have released radio or video messages.

[edit on 6/25/04 by crayon]

Originally posted by Strider
Rather than debate the medium, shouldn'e we be discussing the implications of the message?

No.
We should determine if the medium is valid before we start trying to discuss any implications of a message that probably isn't there to begin with.
Do you have any unbiased proof that RS is anything more than the interpretations of a fanciful imagination?

Trying to "prove that the medium is valid" on a bulletin board would be like trying to persuade someone in a letter that radio really works while they refuse to go turn one on. The simple fact is that people can easily verify RS themselves, simply by slowing and reversing their own speech or that of a friend. If you start that way, you are way ahead of the game because you can ask the speaker what they were thinking about. Learning which reversals can be interpreted in a straightforward manner, and which must be held for verification will then come naturally.

If you don't want to do it, then you don't want to do it. No problem.

On the other hand, Crayon is asking good questions, and at least seems to understand the basic concept.

Crayon, if you have a sound editor such as GoldWave or my favorite, Sound Forge (Lite is OK - think it is stilled called SF Studio - now from SONY) then I think you are in business. One of the RS group that worked on the Berg material is willing to e-mail you a SHORT audio file, or snail mail the whole shooting match on CD-ROM.

Don't forget, if you want to be really sure, then you'll have to hunt up the original video somewhere, and record the audio while the video plays. That way you will be able to tell that we are all talking about the same file. If you want to work on the original, though, you'll need to apply sound reduction filtering first, which is not easy for beginners.

Even easier, the first clip on that STA article is the first few seconds of arabic from the video. If you record it, reverse it, and try different degrees of slowing centered around half speed, you will find at the beginning (now the end!), "I am David Mortha". I give you the last name as I hear it, and I don't know if it is complete or not. Common words are easily identifiable, but many names are just "sounds".

I'm going out on a limb on this one, because I really don't know how much of the original you can bring back from the heavy compression that was used to get those sound clips down to an acceptable size for posting. That one went from 727K as a .wav file down to 27K as a low-res .wma file. As I said, though, the original is available to you. If you want to take a shot at it, just say so.

Reverse speech..

One of the earlier proponents of this medium turned out to be a scam Artist

He went ballistic when he was asked to play the audio cuts, without telling the audience what they were supposed to be hearing. In other words (no pun intended), he told the audience WHAT TO HEAR..

David John Oates is his name, he claims to be the discoverer of the phenomenon. Google that name, you might find some other things related to this.

I've been pretty skeptical of this from day one..

That's pretty funny -- what a stretch.

Originally posted by Q
Hee Hee, I can't believe you're actually using Surfing the Apocolypse as a source. Good entertainment, but are you really serious? Are you sure you didn't read it in the Enquirer, or the Globe?

exactly what i was thinking. why do some people believe everything they read on the internet.

Am I missing something here? Strider, are you suggesting that Army Intelligence killed this guy for the propaganda value and then deliberately implanted a reverse voice message on the tape to give themselves away?

Or are you saying that the speaker was unconsciously speaking reverse english while reading out loud in Arabic?