Cynical Nation

Ace is GREAT!

So is LGF and My Pet Jawa on this, BUT Reuters is in crisis right now and not just because of these photo-shopped pictures by Adnan Hajj, with the strong possibility that he also sent in a number of photos staged by Hezbollah, but for things like THIS;
Reuters Employee Issues 'Zionist Pig' Death Threat

Worker suspended after telling American blogger: 'I look forward to day when you pigs get your throats cut'

by Yaakov Lappin
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3256534,00.html

A Reuters employee has been suspended after sending a death threat to an American blogger.

The message, sent from a Reuters internet account, read: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut."

It was sent to Charles Johnson, owner of the Little Green Footballs (LGF) weblog, a popular site which often backs Israel and highlights jihadist terrorist activities.

In the threat, the Reuters staff member, who has not been named, left his email address as "zionistpig" at hotmail.com.

Reporting the message to his readers, Johnson wrote on his website: "This particular death threat is a bit different from the run of the mill hate mail we get around here, because an IP lookup on the sender reveals that he/she/it was using an account at none other than Reuters News."

Speaking to Ynetnews, Johnson said: "I was surprised to receive a threat from a Reuters IP, but only because it was so careless of this person to use a traceable work account to do it."

He added: "I think it's more than fair to say that Reuters has a big problem."

'Employee suspended'

After bringing the threat to the attention of Reuters, Johnson was told by the news organization's Global Head of Communications, Ed Williams: "I can confirm that an employee has been suspended pending further investigation. The individual was not an employee of Reuters' news division."

In an additional twist, Johnson traced the movements of the sender of the threat, and found direct parallels between the internet locations of the sender and Inayat Bunglawala, Media Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Bunglawala, who contributed an editorial to the Guardian website, has attracted negative attention in the past after making anti-Semitic outbursts, and has declared that the British media was "Zionist-controlled.”

In the comment section of the Guardian, underneath his own editorial, Bunglawala denied sending the threat, blaming "Zionists" instead.

"That was not me! Methinks some Zionists are up to mischief," he wrote.

"There is strong circumstantial evidence connecting Bunglawala to the threat, but there is no way for me to verify this for certain. Only a Reuters network administrator would have access to the necessary records," Johnson said.

It kind of puts those photo-shopped pix in a whole new perspective.

while i agree Hizbo is obsessed with massaging and manipulating the media, i can't understand why this Hajj guy was such a shitty retoucher. The 'smoke' picture is so unbelievably ham-handed... and i mean, the smoke was already there..WTF kind of shitty propaganda is this? Is it really "deliberately calculated to inflame passions" when the retouch isn't really any worse than the original?

It makes me wonder...was he asking to get busted?

Meanwhile, nuclear scientists are hard at work in Iran.

The problem isn't really the poor photo-shopping, or even the strong possibility of staged photos...hell, not even Reuters having a radical Muslim on its payroll (Inayat Bunglawala, Media Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain) who made threats ("I look forward to day when you pigs get your throats cut")...it's that all of that is indicative of much of the West's media being complicit with the enemies of the West (that's not merely "radicalized" Islam, but ANYONE who adheres to and espouses traditional Sharia Law).

If much of the Western mainstream media is going to insist on taking what they eroneously call a "neutral position," giving the pan-Islamicists a faux moral equivalence with the modern West, they will continue to meke the West's WoT a much more uphill struggle.

There are dopes in the MSM and many Westerners who don't see the dire threat of a nuclear Iran.

Gee, I wonder how al Jazeera reported on this!

I don't see any grand sweeping movements here, just some badly doctored photos that nobody bothered to follow up on. The kind of sloppiness when you have so many news outlets tripping over themselves to try and keep peoples' undivided attention.

The smoke in that first one is awful. I could do a better job. Without a mouse.

Never credit conspiracy with what you can chalk up to simple stupidity.

> The smoke in that first one is awful.

Yes it is, but I also thought that photo was one of the most benign alterations, the shitty Photoshop skills notwithstanding. As ortho pointed out, it's not like there was appreciably *more* smoke in the doctored photo, it just looked fucked up.

If you observe the photo of the Israeli warplane dropping multiple "bombs," however, I think it's fairly clear there's an agenda at work here.

That Hajj dude is so Mossad!

just kidding. You're probably right Roger, that it probably isn't a conspiracy to discredit media coverage in the Middle East because they've been doing it themselves just fine all along. From Jenin to the Al-Dourah boy, Palliwood is happenin and what am i supposed to believe?

Even at Qana,... it's messed up when no one will let people see the scene or the victims to verify what happened. Body counts are all over the place, journalists are threatened, etc.

Not to mention the crapfest that is UNFIL. A lot of good they've done. Now the world leaders want more UN.

What is the proper definition of insanity again?

sorry, but i've been lookin around the web tonight and the 'blogosphere' is TEEMING with a metric f*ckload of staged photos from Lebanon. Little toys in the rubble, guy shooting at a tire fire, bodies found in rubble 'already wrapped in blankets', mysteriously low impact bombing of cars, grieving mothers with several homes, ETC.

What in the world is happening here?

I'd say the terrorists have become quite adept at gaming the Western media.

Hmmmm, I'd say the Western media is complicit, that is, I believe they want to be "gamed," Barry.

They're practically rooting for Hezbollah, just as they breathlessly rooted on the "Iraqi insurgency."

That's right, the truth is that Israel is only dropping lollipops out of their war planes and no innocent people have been killed.

That's right people, go back to sleep, just listen to your government and everything will be all right.

International Law dictates that when an enemy is embedded in a civilian population that leafleting that area prior to bombing is all that is required.

Makes perfect sesne to me.

Israel CANNOT allow the Hez to fire rockets from civilian population centers within Lebanon.

End of story.

Israel has a right to exist and Israel has a right to its ancestral homeland, which is located right where they are right now.

The Arab World simply must accept that and get used to it.

The Arabs didn't vote for Israel to exist, and since Israel is on Arab land, I would imagine they will never stop trying to eliminate them.

Let's relocate them to Cuba. Much nicer place. The Cubans can join the rest of the Latino world here in America.

The Arabs sided with the Kaiser back in WW I...and afterwards the Mid-East was partitioned - there's a price to be paid for losing BH.

Among other things, Iraq was formed at that time (1919).

Then they followed up that by promptly siding with Hitler. In fact, both Saddam Hussein's and the late Yasser Arafat's mentor was a man named El Al Husseiny, who led a pro-Nazi rebellion that forced the British out of that area in 1940.

The Baath Party was the Mid-East's Nazi Party.

All THAT turned out to be too much of a good thing, because for those sins, and for being world-class losers (get it, two straight losses in two World Wars) they were punished again post-WW II and one of the things they were forced to accept as part of that post-WW II peace was the UN's formation of Israel...in the Israeli's ancestral homeland.

For some strange and inscrutable reason, it seems the Arab world needs to get its collective ass kicked every thirty years or so...otherwise, "They ain't feelin' no love."

Their saving grace is that they tend to take beatings like a pinata...with a certain amount of grace and aplomb and candy (and by candy, I mean oil) for everyone afterwards.

Jews worked for Russia against the United States, so I guess we should condemn Israel.

SOME Jews DID support Communism and the USSR...SOME Americans supported the KKK, the Black Panthers, the Skinheads and the Nation of Islam....but Israel DID NOT support the USSR over the U.S., the way the Arab world supported and allied themselves with the Nazis of WW II.

Just as America itself DID NOT support the KKK, Black Panthers, etc. it has nothing to atone for, as those who did support those groups, thankfully did not make U.S. policy.
Same with Israel - never alligned itself against the U.S. or "American interests."

See the difference?

Its the differnce between the actions of nations and those of some individuals?

Yeah, it's sort of a huge, obvious difference.