It is Day 2 after the Paris attacks and one would expect more substantive images and quality videos from the millions of residents there. After scanning through thousands of media quality Google images and other sources, I found next to nothing substantive that couldn’t be stagecraft. I am shocked at how few quality eyewitness social media videos are on Live Leaks.
There is also nonsense out there that people were too busy fleeing and hiding to take high-impact images. (Reality check: See Station night club fire in comments). True, no one would necessarily expect to see images looking down the barrel of a gun. But imagine the commercial value of such a photo or video. And how about a few taken by a local of a dead terrorist after the hide-your-women-and-children suicide packs went off in six different locations? Again, images like that have excellent commercial value, so there is a real incentive to take them. Hundreds of casualties and nothing but covered forms on the ground. Very staged looking.
This curious instagram video emerges of the scene inside the Bataclan theater. (See original Instagram and note reporters attempting to follow up.) At last, this video is the proper quality for modern recording devices. It lasts 13 seconds, with the last 2 seconds consisting of firecracker-like reports. Per usual, in these events once it gets interesting the camera is turned off. Notice all the cell phone filming in the foreground. The second video demonstrates a test firing of a AK-47 with and without a muzzle. The sound is completely different.
This dark, grainy, rather absurd imagery emerged using technology from about 1852. Did they use an old timey wet plate collodion tintype process here? Even if real, it begs the question about gate crashing and security. Terrorists mounted with suicide packs and AK-47 assault rifles are allowed to enter a theater wily-nilly? Highly unlikely.
Some wags have attempted to explain away the locust plague of horrible video quality as an issue of night lighting. Here are night video tests on the older generation 2012 iPhone 4s and Galaxy s3 cameras. The quality is not even remotely as problematic or as poor as what we are getting from Paris. The second video is the current generation iPhone 6s taken at a dark night club. First class technology, better than my old eyesight.
This is video showing a forensic investigator having a smoke at the crime scene. This is a total violation of protocol, which should lead to speculation that these men are props and actors.
Taken from NIJ crime investigation manual page 17: “Persons should NOT smoke, chew tobacco within the established boundaries of the scene.”
This video shows three body-armored police carrying somebody off. Not sure what to make of it except to ask if the injured might be better off left in place for medical personnel as the location seems secured?
Yet another blurry photo that doesn’t quite add up. Notice the guys “running for their lives” while the older gentlemen just sit there calmly at their sidewalk tables. One would think they might have a good observation point or some clue about what’s going on?


