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  #176  
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Old Aug 10th, 2006, 11:47 AM       
Wouldn't be a proper "Peace in the Middle East" rally without a cop killer giving a speach and some anti-semetic ramblings, would it?
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Old Aug 10th, 2006, 07:53 PM       
New black panther leader shouts racial slurs against Jews like Mel Gibson during happy hour.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...-in-black.html

Iranian Revolutionary gaurd among the dead Hezballah combatents

http://reuters.myway.com/article/200...ANIANS-DC.html

Ambulences are the new Hummers. Hezballah and palestineuses them for troop transport. (vids)
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/200...h-suicide.html

Photo Op - Medics take injured backa out and pause for good photos. What kind of doctor?
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/200...lah-video.html

BBC says Lebanese PM retracts his statement that 40 died saying that onlt one died.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/5252842.stm
Rueters still wont change their old article
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...1-ArticlePage3

British muslims 25% say the 7/7 bombings were justified and 9/11 was a jewish conspiracey.
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1145782006

A Saudi charity funded the Bali bombings that killed 92 aussies
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...7-2702,00.html

Palestinians kill snitches
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...286331,00.html
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Old Aug 11th, 2006, 07:46 PM       
Olmert is a schizophrenic. That is all.
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Old Aug 11th, 2006, 09:48 PM       
Quote:
Originally Posted by Abcdxxxx
Olmert is a schizophrenic. That is all.
Is this about yhe ceasefire?

http://newsnow.co.uk/cgi/NGoto/155527408?-16529
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 01:32 AM       
The ceasefire is just the most glaring example of his inability to make a decision. The guy is all talk no action, and even his own party, and leftist Haaretz crowd are even in agreement on that one. People are not happy about how this war is being faught.

Who switches generals and readies ground troops for a premature ceasefire? Who asks an army to fight their asses off with a huge push, then 2 and a half hours later agrees to sign a ceasefire? THEN he tells them to keep fighting anyway till he signs the thing with some dopey plan to get a buncha troops to the Litani Riverin time for Israel to claim some symbolic victory. Meanwhile nobody in their right mind thinks any of this will stick. We know there will be fighting Monday.

Who takes massive military retaliation because 1,000,000 people are under rocket attack, and then suspends military action while the rockets are still coming down? Who announces their strategy on an hourly basis, complete with cabinet votes, troop deployments, and hourly goals with the route they're taking? All the military analysis keep wondering what the fuck Israel is doing, thinking there's some clever manuvering here, but nope, just a schizo PM who can sound like a Hawk at breakfast, and turn into a whimpering leftist by dinnertime. Israel keeps taking responsibility for events like Qana they don't even believe they're responsible for - not to mention bending over backwards to world opinion which is largely shaped by propaganda, and the UN's obsession with Israel. But the WORST is he want's to start more WB evictions in the middle of this.
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 07:17 AM       
good points. He is trying so hard to get international approval he is ignoring the main goals. But i do agree the "keep fighting till i sign it" thing. he needs to do all he can until he shoots himself in the leg.

But on the plus side if he changes his mind (lol, i said "if" as if it was in question), it's just the UN it's not like they have real power or authority.
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 11:48 AM       
WHY, WHY, WHY!?

Why does every story I read on this UN resolution have a title like "Hezbollah chief backs U.N. peace deal, with conditions"!!?

Does Lebanon even have an elected government, or do radical thugs normally broker treaties and cease fires for them....? Why is ANYONE other than the Lebanese government even TALKING to Hezbollah!!? The only necessary communication should be "when are you disarming?"

More blue hats with no authority at all on the border. I'll give this cease fire maybe a year before Hezbollah can reload and route through the peace keepers. This will start all over again, and I'm guessing those abducted prisoners are as good as dead.
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 11:54 AM       
The whole anti-Israel bunch shut the fuck up it seems in this debate. ha
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 12:15 PM       
Here's the full text of the resolution.....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/...aft/index.html

The draft resolution presented at the U.N.

The Security Council;

PP1. Recalling all its previous resolutions on Lebanon, in particular resolutions 425 (1978), 426 (1978), 520 (1982), 1559 (2004), 1655 (2006) 1680 (2006) and 1697 (2006), as well as the statements of its President on the situation in Lebanon, in particular the statements of 18 June 2000 (S/PRST/2000/21), of 19 October 2004 (S/PRST/2004/36), of 4 May 2005 (S/PRST/2005/17) of 23 January 2006 (S/PRST/2006/3) and of 30 July 2006 (S/PRST/2006/35),

PP2. Expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hizbollah's attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons,

PP3. Emphasizing the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasizing the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including by the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers,

PP4: Mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encouraging the efforts aimed at urgently settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel,

PP5. Welcoming the efforts of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the commitment of the government of Lebanon, in its seven-point plan, to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon, welcoming also its commitment to a UN force that is supplemented and enhanced in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operation, and bearing in mind its request in this plan for an immediate withdrawal of the Israeli forces from Southern Lebanon,

PP6. Determined to act for this withdrawal to happen at the earliest,

PP7. Taking due note of the proposals made in the seven-point plan regarding the Shebaa farms area,

PP8. Welcoming the unanimous decision by the government of Lebanon on 7 August 2006 to deploy a Lebanese armed force of 15,000 troops in South Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws behind the Blue Line and to request the assistance of additional forces from UNIFIL as needed, to facilitate the entry of the Lebanese armed forces into the region and to restate its intention to strengthen the Lebanese armed forces with material as needed to enable it to perform its duties,

PP9. Aware of its responsibilities to help secure a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict,

PP10. Determining that the situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to international peace and security,

OP1. Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

OP2. Upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL as authorized by paragraph 11 to deploy their forces together throughout the South and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from Southern Lebanon in parallel;

OP3. Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon;

OP4. Reiterates its strong support for full respect for the Blue Line;

OP5. Also reiterates its strong support, as recalled in all its previous relevant resolutions, for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized borders, as contemplated by the Israeli-Lebanese General Armistice Agreement of 23 March 1949;

OP6. Calls on the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and, under the authority of the Government of Lebanon, reopening airports and harbours, consistent with paragraphs 14 and 15, and calls on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon;

OP7. Affirms that all parties are responsible for ensuring that no action is taken contrary to paragraph 1 that might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution, humanitarian access to civilian populations, including safe passage for humanitarian convoys, or the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons, and calls on all parties to comply with this responsibility and to cooperate with the Security Council;

OP8. Calls for Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution based on the following principles and elements:

- full respect for the Blue Line by both parties,

- security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11, deployed in this area,

- full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state,

- no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government,

- no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government,

- provision to the United Nations of all remaining maps of land mines in Lebanon in Israel's possession;

OP9. Invites the Secretary-General to support efforts to secure as soon as possible agreements in principle from the Government of Lebanon and the Government of Israel to the principles and elements for a long-term solution as set forth in paragraph 8, and expresses its intention to be actively involved;

OP10. Requests the Secretary-General to develop, in liaison with relevant international actors and the concerned parties, proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament, and for delineation of the international borders of Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa farms area, and to present to the Security Council those proposals within thirty days;

OP11. Decides, in order to supplement and enhance the force in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operations, to authorize an increase in the force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of 15,000 troops, and that the force shall, in addition to carrying out its mandate under resolutions 425 and 426 (1978):

a. Monitor the cessation of hostilities;

b. Accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the South, including along the Blue Line, as Israel withdraws its armed forces from Lebanon as provided in paragraph 2;

c. Coordinate its activities related to paragraph 11 (b) with the Government of Lebanon and the Government of Israel;

d. Extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons;

e. Assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area as referred to in paragraph 8;

f. Assist the government of Lebanon, at its request, to implement paragraph 14;

OP12. Acting in support of a request from the government of Lebanon to deploy an international force to assist it to exercise its authority throughout the territory, authorizes UNIFIL to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council, and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers, and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence;

OP13. Requests the Secretary-General urgently to put in place measures to ensure UNIFIL is able to carry out the functions envisaged in this resolution, urges Member States to consider making appropriate contributions to UNIFIL and to respond positively to requests for assistance from the Force, and expresses its strong appreciation to those who have contributed to UNIFIL in the past;

OP14. Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel and requests UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11 to assist the Government of Lebanon at its request;

OP15. Decides further that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft,

(a) the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories, and

(b) the provision to any entity or individual in Lebanon of any technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in subparagraph (a) above, except that these prohibitions shall not apply to arms, related material, training or assistance authorized by the Government of Lebanon or by UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11;

OP16. Decides to extend the mandate of UNIFIL until 31 August 2007, and expresses its intention to consider in a later resolution further enhancements to the mandate and other steps to contribute to the implementation of a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution;

OP17. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council within one week on the implementation of this resolution and subsequently on a regular basis;

OP18. Stresses the importance of, and the need to achieve, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on all its relevant resolutions including its resolutions 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 and 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973;

OP19. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 02:40 PM       
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ant10708
The whole anti-Israel bunch shut the fuck up it seems in this debate. ha
who's that?
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 04:57 PM       
You and Geggy?
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 09:45 PM       
not bad, free the kidnapped soldiers unconditionally, hezballah must immediatly and permanently stop attacks, lebanon must put 15,000 troops in the south to keep hezballah down. I'm not sure where the blue line is as borders go is it the curent border or a new one?

Now if only Hezballah ever kept their word or the UN ever had any real power at all this could work.

they're screwed.
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Old Aug 12th, 2006, 09:56 PM       
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/200...-civilian.html

CNN has proof of hezballah faking photos, BBC however seems content to air video that has already been debunked as staged on their evening news.

I'm seriously considering boycotting BBC on news in the muslim world. They are even wrose about tell half truths in pakistan. If you ask me a half truth is worse then a whole lie.
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Old Aug 13th, 2006, 02:29 AM       
So um yeah, um...

http://www.zombietime.com/stop_the_u...war_8_12_2006/

kevin, does freedom of speech extend to groups on our terror list, we're at war with? you're a by the books kind of guy. i mean - seeing a hamas flag hanging across from city hall , with those security guys in bullet proof vests seems like it's got to be a breach of something. what's your take?

there's nothing gratifying to see the crazy shit i always warned could happen, actually happening.

coward - i'm guessing you've seen there's video of the qana incident as well?
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Old Aug 13th, 2006, 02:50 AM       
That's a tough call for me. I feel like if people wish to be ignorant and hateful in a free society, well than good for them. It just places the onus on folks like the woman who runs zombie time to expose these clowns, make them look like the asses they are, and hope you can winth public debate. It's what separates us from them, imo.

Edit:

"Gandhi and Nasrallah, together at last."

dude, San Fran is messed up.
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Old Aug 13th, 2006, 07:22 AM       
I think my discomfort from this is the feeling that it's not an isolated example of nutty protest. I'm great at making crazed predictions, but it's not gratifying to see them come true. Where three years ago, If I said I had a fear of a USA Intifada, I would know how batshit crazy it sounded, now we see the imagery evoked symbolically. There's a scary climate developing, and it appears our country has lost the power to fight subversion. If we look at the situation in Israel, and the whole sham of a peace process, there have been no surprises. Yet Israel plays along despite knowing how things will end up, poorly. These acts of faith are supposed to prove a point, but the end means never outweight the consequences. If there's no fear of the long arm of Israel - then what?

The ISM and PLO have already joined forces in Gaza twisting the concept of fighting for peace, and here in the US we now see mainstream "peace organizations" alligned with hate speech, turning a blind eye to it. Someone I wish I could write off, like Debbie Schlussel with her conspiracy theories starts to sound like they might be right. http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ We know Bin Laden is very open with his intentions on what he plans to do - and he made it clear that he would set off a civil war in the USA. Dearborn, Michigan isn't a random spot on the map in that case. Does this mean Jews will need to radicalize too? Rabbi Meyer Kahane's seperatist and extremist views never took off with the JDL, aside from the clever "every Jew a .22" tshirts.... but it's getting harder to write him off now. Al Qaeda's first attack in the US is said to have been his assassination.

Now we go back to an act of civil disobediance, in loony SanFrancisco, hanging the flag of a terrorist group across from a City Hall. Arab supremacists doing Arab pride chants covering their faces makes me very uncomfortable, but factor in the amount of Holocaust turnspeak, conspiracies, replacement history, and now media manipulation and it's seriously concerning. Much of it seems coordinated. The dates of events are not random - the Israeli soldiers were kidnapped on the anniversary of Entebbe, just before the Jewish period of Tish B'av which also marks a year after the Gaza pullout - the UN deadline for Iran is the day Muslims mark Muhammeds flight to the cosmos from the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

So I have to wonder, at what point does hanging the flag of an illegal terror organization that bombed our Embassy and targeted our citizens cross the line?
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Old Aug 13th, 2006, 07:32 AM       
Iran says disarming the genocidal, war inciting, iranian backed Hezballah organization is illogical and the UN should punish Israel.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...290540,00.html

there's a big surprise, next thing you'll see is a "boris yeltsin likeed booze" article
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Old Aug 13th, 2006, 01:32 PM       
Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore
You and Geggy?
you seriously think i'm anti-Isreal just cuz I balk at the thought of giving them carte blanche in the name of defense?
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Old Aug 14th, 2006, 12:46 PM       
well not nessacarily carte blanche but considering hezballah is an iranian founded political organization that is banned in sexeral countries due to it's terrorist acts and that they attack EXCLUSIVELY civilian targets it's almost like the the US vs. aliban war in afgahnistan. It's hard to think of any measure to strong to take them out.

We are worried for true civilian casualties but this is overshadowed by the faked ones and the awful reprecussions for people of all countires if hezballah is allowed to continue to exist.

If this truce holds up, considering all the interesting conversation this is bringing up would anyone else be interested in a palestine/israel thread?
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Old Aug 14th, 2006, 04:27 PM       
I believe it's all the same conflict, there's no real reason to seperate them.
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Old Aug 14th, 2006, 05:29 PM       
Quote:
Originally Posted by Courage the Cowardly Dog
It's hard to think of any measure to strong to take them out.
I can think of several. Pretty much any action that fits the bill of "cures the disease and kills the patient".

Please note that I have not stated any belief that I've seen evidence of any of our guys taking this route, though I think we are (perhaps quite necessarily) very close to that line in this conflict.

Any action that results in a net increase in the number of people who believe "asymmetric warfare" is a viable or necessary course of action is, quite simply, a failure.
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Old Aug 15th, 2006, 12:56 PM       
It's funny how people being used as human shields seem to blame the people shooting their attackers. Asymetric warfare is, like it or not, very effective. It's kept the Sri Lankan rebels at it for 20 years. Sadly this method is almost certainly worse then the disease itself.

If they don't fight terrorists, even with their human shields, they will continue to kill civilians. Besides I'd like to see a real number put on the civilian casualties in lebanon, cause seriously most of these people are supporting, harboring, and helping the terrorists. Most of these terrorists operate out of their homes with their wives and kids lending a hand.
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Old Aug 15th, 2006, 01:28 PM       
http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp
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mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?

How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!
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Old Aug 15th, 2006, 07:45 PM       
I bet you won't read this.

Quote:
August 15, 2006
Digitally Erasing a Massacre
Why Hezbollywood Was Born

By ANDREW FORD LYONS

If a regular old picture is worth a thousand words, how much does a digitally altered image fetch on the international market today? I ask because a lot of words have been spilled over one digitally altered photograph in particular.

I've spent a great deal of time as of late poring over a pair of images, both allegedly derived from a single click of the shutter by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj on August 5. Both depict a Beirut skyline filled with black smoke after an Israeli bombardment. The one cited as the original unedited version shows a jet blue sky over white, sun-soaked buildings from which inky smoke plumes rise. In the obviously altered second photo, the sky is washed out and pale, the skyline is noticeable higher in the frame, the buildings are darker and have strangely sharpened edges, and the cloud plumes have been digitally cloned with no dramatic or even realistic effect. Smoke just doesn't look like that.

Because of this and one other photo attributed to Hajj - one containing a suspected alteration to the weapons being fired by an Israeli jet - he no longer works for Reuters, and the news agency has pulled from circulation 920 other photos he has taken for for the agency, though it said there is no indication those were tampered with.

Of course, altering the content of an image meant to depict actual events is unethical. And until people hear from this particular photographer himself, we won't know the full story. My own attempts to gain further information for the Reuters news agency were met without response. In the meantime, the rampant speculation about staged and altered photographs in Lebanon has its poster child. Bloggers on conservative, pro-war websites like Little Green Footballs, IsraPundit, The Jawa Report and others had already been floating test conspiracies about the aftermath of a July 30 Israeli air raid on a Qana apartment building being staged. Hajj had taken photos there as well. When Reuters issued a "Photo Kill" announcement for that one Beirut skyline shot, these and other pajama pundits seized on it. Not only did they suggest that Hajj's Qana photos might also be false, but that other photographers' work also was suspect, and well, maybe there was no massacre of civilians at all.


PIXEL BY PIXEL

As someone who has worked as a photojournalist and editor, and who once outed another photographer for altering a photo (though not one of nearly such a dramatic subject as a Beirut missile attack), I wondered why Hajj would ruin an entirely useable, clean image in such a crude and obvious fashion. This faked image just didn't jive with those of his earlier work, which is replete with crisp, clean photos, their details sharp, darks and lights in high contrast and colors brilliant. Of the two Beirut photos in question, the first more closely matches his resumé. The edited one is muddy in places and washed out as well as blatantly faked. Some speculate that the extra smoke was added for dramatic effect. It didn't add any. Aside from the artificiality, it also lacked the more marketable composition of the so-called original. Not only was it a forgery, it was just a bad photo.

According to a published statement by Reuters public relations person Moira Whittle, Hajj denied he attempted to manipulate his images. He did say he had used software to remove dust marks from the lens, a standard practice among photographers that still would not produce the image Reuters had initially released, then retracted. Interestingly, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, photographers for Reuters are seldom the last to have control over their images. The article says "all photographs taken for Reuters around the world are sent to Singapore, where they undergo certain editorial processes before being distributed to the agency's many clients."

If true, one wonders if the "dust marks" comment had been made by a photographer who had even seen the heavily altered image in question.

The Beirut photo fiasco opened the floodgates for all coverage to be lambasted by those who believe one side, the Israeli one in this instance, is more justified in it's bloodletting than the other. But if it's unethical to add puffs of black smoke to a Beirut scene, for whatever reason, what are the ethics of using said puffs as an equally artificial smokescreen to justify the attempted whitewashing of an entire war zone, denying that innocent civilians are suffering, and holding up their killers as blameless victims?

There are things we don't know and things we do. What is not known is how the digitally falsified image of Beirut came about. We do know that on June 30, 2006, an Israeli airstrike on the nearby southern Lebanese town of Qana destroyed an apartment building and killed many of those inside. The photos from that single attack gushed like blood from a shrapnel wound, and that seems to be what's really bothering the folks who spend their hours studying every photo out of Lebanon pixel by pixel.

Qana was too real, too immediate. It's difficult to position an argument on the need for wholesale carnage when it could be printed in text wrapped around images of young corpses in the next day's morning edition. Much better to simply attack the images themselves. Out of the thousands of pictures that have come out of Lebanon, these people found one to hang their helmets on. Conservative bloggers began to analyze photo time stamps from the Qana coverage, suggesting without proof or merit that they indicated a lapse between the incident and the coverage for a set to be designed and used for a fake news story. They suggested it proved that missile attack hadn't destroyed the building, that it somehow proved that aid workers brought in already dead bodies to parade in front of cameras. Everything was game.

The Lebanese Red Cross uncovered 27 bodies amid the rubble of the Qana building. About 17 of them were children. Area residents and some local officials initially said that about 60 people were unaccounted for. Some days later, the organization Human Rights Watch was able to estimate the civilian deaths from the missile attack on that particular building to be what the Red Cross had reported.

But as the New York Times article that appeared later that day said, "Whatever the actual toll, the deaths in Qana set off a chain reaction." The story goes on to cite protests in Beirut against the U.S., Israel and the United Nations, as well as the litany of predictable statements to from Hamas and Hezbollah, which was still allegedly holding two Israeli soldiers hostage.

Those reactions weren't particularly interesting or unpredictable. I was far more intrigued by the response here in the United States, especially among the media, pundits, lobbyists and various wonks employed by some Christian, conservative and pro-Israeli special interest groups. Ostensibly, Israeli forces were blowing the hell out of southern Lebanon in order to free those two Israeli soldiers who were seized by Hezbollah fighters on July 12. Israel was also pounding the Gaza Strip, supposedly over the abduction of a soldier there as well. On June 25, the day after the army entered Gaza in an operation that included the seizing of a pair of alleged Palestinian fighters, a group of actual confirmed fighters used a secret tunnel to take an Israeli soldier to barter for the release of those two and other political prisoners held in Israel.

As the civilian death toll in Gaza topped 100, the relentless pounding in Lebanon had killed between 600 and 900 people. Either end of that estimation should provide for more than enough outrage, but Qana got the attention, perhaps because Qana is special: On April 18, 1996, Israeli howitzers fired on the United Nation's Fijian battalion headquarters where nearly 800 Lebanese civilians had taken refuge from "Operation Grapes of Wrath." More than 100 of civilians in that compound were killed. Outcry was international, and suddenly there were witnesses, mediators and media involved. It changed the course of the rest of the operation there.

But while that decade-old massacre remains an open, raw wound for the people of Lebanon, here in what Noam Chomsky refers to as "The United States of Amnesia," there is no recollection of it having taken place. No one recalls what happened in Qana in 1996. Most people in the U.S. likely didn't know what was going on in Qana in 1996 while it was going on. Most people in this country don't know Qana exists. A lot of them might know the story about Jesus turning water into wine, but they don't know he supposedly pulled off that stunt in Qana. It's just another khaki place on the TV screen that bombs run into.

This time around, with the downpour of news detailing the carnage in Lebanon, I wondered why so many talking heads and bloggers were taking so much time to argue the Israeli case for blowing up this one apartment building and challenging the death toll of doing so. As horrible as the killing of those 27 civilians was, why did that need so much more slick PR than the rest of the bloodshed?

Why, for example, was Paula Zahn using unsubstantiated, grainy black-and-white arial photos on CNN that were provided by the Israeli military itself as proof positive that the building had to be attacked? From the looks of them, those could have been just as fake as the Beirut skyline photo. On the July 31 performance of the show Paula Zahn Now, she used the photos to castigate Mohammed El-Harake, the consul general of Lebanon. Here's a snippet:

EL-HARAKE: I have witnessed 600 civilians killed, my city completely destroyed, wounded by thousands. And now you're asking me if these people who killed all these people are capable of killing civilians? Yes, they are capable of killing civilians.

ZAHN: Are you defending Hezbollah and their tactics, their tactics of moving freely among the civilian population your people? Do you defend what they're doing?


HEZBOLLYWOOD

Much of the spin was hitting the internet, radio and TV on August 4. While perusing the various articles and back-and-forth reader commentary on websites and blogs, I came across something new: "Hezbollywood." The mutt offspring of Hezbollah and Bollywood threw me a bit. Who came up with it? A Google search produced more than 120,000 hits. That's a lot, most of them in near-identical posts in comment areas on various websites. None of them seemed much older than late July.

To the best of my searching, it appears as though the right-wing website Israel Insider coined the word. It's snappy, though, and essentially punctuates any argument that claims the Israel military is not killing civilians in Lebanon, at least to the extent being reported. Rather, the Hezbollywood thesis rests on the notion that Hezbollah itself is employing tactics reminiscent from the 1997 Dustin Hoffman film Wag the Dog, in which Hollywood types team up with shady U.S. government officials to manufacture a fake TV war to distract the voting public from a White House scandal with pedophiliac overtones. The movie's premise was fairly ridiculous. As anyone who lived through the Clinton administration knows, people are far more willing to follow the delicious details of of an Oval Office sex scandal than spend time thinking about how many bombs the U.S. is dropping on foreigners or selling to foreigners to drop on other foreigners.

But Hezbollywood was something new. The war was real enough. The attempt now was to come up with a fake story about the real story - the massacre at Qana- being faked. While someone at Israel Insider may be clamoring for a bonus for thinking up "Hezbollywood," the idea that all these civilian casualties were somehow forged was making the rounds elsewhere as well. It seemed as though neo-con bloggers and right-wing pundits had all received their talking points and were on message.

Conservative British blogger Richard North, who runs a blogspot site called "EU Referendum" - popular amongst the armchair general set - spared no bandwidth to critique nearly every photo resulting from the Qana bombing. In one of his longer posts, North concludes all the photos taken in Qana were "staged for effect, exploiting the victims in an unwholesome manner. In so doing, they are no longer news photographs - they are propaganda."

It was an interesting screed, especially the part about "exploiting the victims." In other posts, North denies the existence of civilian victims, claiming that the events were staged. Not long after North's posting, and similar ones aping it elsewhere on the internet, disgraced right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh became one more talking head in a growing cacophony: "These photographers are obviously willing to participate in propaganda. They know exactly what's being done, all these photos, bringing the bodies out of the rubble, posing them for the cameras, it's all staged. Every bit of it is staged and the still photographers know it."

Other conspiracy theorists took things further, doubting that the apartment building in Qana was targeted by Israeli air raids (in spite of Israeli statements saying it had been and providing their own photos as proof), and alleging that the bodies were brought in from nearby morgues, or were the remains of people forced to stay in the building by Hezbollah.

All of a sudden, every right-wing blogger and broadcaster was a character in the television show CSI. They all analyzed photos and footage, offering commentary on structural integrity, wounds on bodies, the amount of time it reportedly took for emergency workers and the press to arrive and so forth.

My favorite theories incorporated elements, sometimes contradictory, from other theories. The website PipeLineNews.org, for example, says that the "The Israeli Air Force was not responsible for the collapse of the building in question" and that Hezbollah was using it to fire rockets from "at the time of the IDF air strike." The same article alleges that those civilians in the building "were not permitted to leave" by Hezbollah, and thus were killed as "human shields" in the attack, but that the corpses brought out of the wreckage looked as though "they died much earlier and under different circumstances."

No one who actually witnessed the attack was saying these things. The accusations come from those pecking at computer keyboards or speaking from radio studios far from the scene. So it was weird that the conspiracy theorists gained enough traction to spur the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse to make public statements on August 1 in defense of their work.

"Do you really think these people would risk their lives under Israeli shelling to set up a digging ceremony for dead Lebanese kids?" Patrick Baz, Mideast photo director for AFP, was quoted as saying in a story about the controversy. "I'm totally stunned by first the question, and I can't imagine that somebody would think something like that would have happened."

Immediately after the news agencies' statements, North and others declared their victory in spite of the fact that the photojournalists stood by their work. By making the actual news folks pay attention to them, North and company decided they had won. "The news agencies that stitched up the photos at the Qana site have all huddled together" gushed North in one particularly self-congratulatory posting, "and got AP staff writer David Bauder to issue a story rebutting lil ol' EU Referendum. And the imaginative title? 'News agencies stand by Lebanon photos'." Elsewhere on his site, North enthuses: "We have helped to plant seeds of doubt in some and strengthened doubts in others about the MSM (mainstream media) reporting of the Middle Eastern conflict, in particular of the war in the Lebanon."

Maybe they did win. While the bombardment of Lebanon has claimed hundreds of lives, the controversy over a single demolished apartment building kept the media spotlight on Qana. The argument here in the United States shifted away from the brutality of Israel's actions and U.S. culpability for it, and became entrenched in whether casualties on the ground took place at all. Debate about the morality or reasons behind the death, destruction went up in a cloud of digitally manufactured smoke.

There's a fair chance it won't return. Like the Qana attack in 1996, like the rape and murders carried out by U.S. soldiers in Haditha, the Qana attack of July '06 will vanish from American memory before long. The game plan is simple: Question it for a week or two and people will get bored and want to talk about Mel Gibson. While Hezbollywood may be interesting for a week, Hollywood will always come up with something better.

Andrew Ford Lyons is an English teacher,writer and activist with the International Solidarity Movement from Olympia, WA. He can be reached at drew@riseup.net
skip this too:

Quote:
Reuters' Altered Photos: Overhyped? Dangerous? Both
Every time a straight-news journalist alters a fact — even something as picayune as the color of a bomb blast — it convinces people that the media must lie about big things as well
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
TIME

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 09, 2006
When I saw the doctored Reuters photograph of smoke rising over Beirut, side by side with the unaltered version of the same scene, the first thing I thought was: which is supposed to be the scary one? If I saw either cloud of smoke rising from a bomb blast in my own city, I wouldn't be worried much about where it fell on the Pantone color wheel. (More-elaborate comparisons of the two altered photos, which led Reuters to pull over 900 pictures by photographer Adnan Hajj, have been springing up on YouTube; best to search on "Reuters," perhaps because the video makers have had a hard time spelling "Adnan Hajj.")

The story of the photos was first broken on the blog Little Green Footballs and has become a cause celebre, especially among conservative and pro-Israel bloggers, who see evidence of anti-Israel bias in the media. They have a point — well, half a point, anyway. The principle of not faking anything in the news is absolute. But the effects of particular fakeries are relative. It was much more pernicious — if we're to be totally honest here — when a TIME cover of O.J. Simpson after his arrest was doctored to make his skin look darker. The manipulation made an accused man seem more sinister before he had gone to trial, and it did so by playing off the language of racial stereotype. Hajj's manipulations are gratuitous and almost pointless: whichever side you take in the war, the devastation in Lebanon and Israel is real and well-documented, faked photos or not. A bomb leaves you just as dead, however dark a cloud it kicks up over your remains.

That said, the gratuitousness of the altered Reuters photos just makes them that much worse. Mainstream media will do itself no favors by downplaying this as a controversy hyped up by opinionated bloggers. It is a controversy hyped up by opinionated bloggers, of course, but so what? That's the world we live in, and in many ways it's a good thing: whatever their motives, partisan bloggers have kept the media honest, even if after the fact.

And every time a straight-news journalist alters a fact — even something as picayune as the color of a bomb blast or the number of flares fired from a plane — it convinces people that the media must lie about big things as well. All facts become suspect, all information becomes relative, and you might as well believe whatever your gut tells you, because the news is invariably driven by its own bias, which is, invariably, against you. We become a nation of Stephen Colberts, believing that facts are sketchy and overrated and should never be allowed to get in the way of what we want to believe.

We can argue till we pass out over Adnan Hajj's motives — politics? drama? careerism? — and those of the bloggers who pounced on the photos. In the end, they don't matter. What does matter is that every time something like this happens, the winners are the people of every political stripe who believe it's their calling to, to paraphrase another war, destroy the truth in order to save it.
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Old Aug 15th, 2006, 08:28 PM       
First of all, it isn't just two pics in question. The website that first caught the Reuters scam Has exposed a few, and not just from Reuters but the AP as well.

Zombie Time put together a good little piece on it. For example, you have frantic and distraught Lebanese woman here, after having her house destroyed on 7/22:



But odly enough, in a sick tiwist of fate, her house was destroyed again TWO WEEKS LATER!:



Omg! Those fucking Zionists are after her!

Also, at one point in the article, the guy asks why we should believe Israeli pics over those presented from Hezbollah, or Lebanese sources. Good question. Maybe th answer has something to do with one side's tendency to avoid civilian loss of life through precision bombs, phone calls prior to bombing (!), as well as leaflet drops and news reports...?

How does the other side perceive life, Ziggy? Why don't we ask green helmet guy, who admitted to parading a child's corpse around in order to make a point. And hey, who would assume that Hezbollah and radical muslims would hold such a low regard for life in the first place? Check out what happened to a villager who supposedly snitched info to the Zionists. My favorite part is the cell phones:



Those are an awful lot of *muslims, Ziggy! After they shot him, they decided to kick his dead body around for fun. Even mom got in on the action!

Is it sooo unthinkable that the same type of people who could do the above might also falsify a bombed location, or doctor a photo...?
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