Helpful Aaron

Aaron likes to help his grandma while she's musing on the computer. He's very amusing.

Just for Fun

My son-in-law, champion of all things weird AND cool, found this, as have thousands of others. If you've already seen this then you know I am not among the prematurely cool. I love You Tube!

Why Right People Don't Trust Journalists

Mary Katharine Ham has an excellent article up at Townhall.com titled, "Why We Don't Believe You." Ham correctly chides the mainstream media for being defensive and attacking "right-wing bloggers" instead of self-correcting.

Rightwing bloggers are predisposed to distrust the media, as are most conservatives. The fauxtographers and defenders like Mitchell are giving us no reason to be encouraged. The mainstream press’ stock is in credibility. The right course is to answer, quickly and thoroughly, any credible charges against them, so as to preserve that stock.

Instead, with the notable exceptions of David Perlmutter and Jim Pinkerton, the mainstream media seems content to blame it all on the Grassy Knoll while half of its readers find news coverage is greener on the other side.

This is why we don’t believe you.

There's a simple reason why this doesn't happen. Would you, assuming you have children or understand what it's like to have a child, let your child have any indication from you that something you think is wrong is OK or worth considering? Probably not. Most journalists I know are certain they're in the parental position over the Joe-six-pack kids populating the rest of the world outside the newsroom. "Mommy knows you really want to see evidence that Hezbollah is evil but I don't want your worldview to be different than mine and watch you grow up to vote Republican."

Obedience Over Appetite

Wouldn't it be nice if we all had this much control over our appetites in the face of imminent temptation? Note the pool of drool on the floor under Chance's mouth. He held this pose for about three minutes before I released him to eat the cookie.

Deterring Iran

Chris Muir's Day by Day cartoons are insightful, funny and occasionally too true. Today's is no exception.



Click the image to see the whole cartoon. I recommend checking his work daily.

UN, Far Worse Than Useless, Again

If an article by Lori Lowenthal Marcus in the upcoming Weekly Standard is correct, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) not only didn't do it's job of maintaining peace and neutrality along the Leganese/Israeli border (USELESS), they actively helped Hezbollah in the month-long war with Israel.

. . . throughout the recent war, it (UNIFIL) posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

OK, so maybe UNIFIL handles neutrality by giving important tactical intelligence to both sides?

No.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

Well, at least Israel got some information, "So, that's where those rockets are coming from! Thanks, UNIFIL!"

Marcus goes on to point out the naked hypocrisy of UNIFIL. This isn't the first time Israel's been on the short end of UNIFIL's dirty stick. On October 7, 2000, three Israeli soldiers, Adi Avitan, Binyamin Avraham, and Omar Souad, were kidnapped by Hezbollah. Gee, that sounds familiar. Israel asked for the UN's help, specifically for videotapes UNIFIL made near the time of the abduction. UNIFIL refused saying that its force was required:

"to ensure that military and other sensitive information remains in their domain and is not passed to parties to a conflict."

So, how did that one turn out? Israel swapped 429 Arab prisoners, including some convicted terrorists, for the bodies of the three Israeli soldiers who by the time of the swap had been killed.

So, who's side is UNIFIL and the UN on? Do you really have to ask?

More Yearning for Freedom

I don't think these Iranians look like crazy Islamofascists. They look like teens and genXers all over the world. They just want to be free to look forward to a productive life and have fun. Gateway Pundit posted a link to the photos.

These young people are the best hope for a good outcome regarding Iran's mad mullahs. I don't want their oil, their death or even their obedience. I just want them to have the same thing I want my children to have, freedom. But if their leaders continue to threaten others and achieve their nuclear weapon ambitions I fear greatly for these young people. They will never be free or productive and their lives will be in great peril.

Speaking of Posterity

The previous post mentioned preserving the right to Life and Liberty for my posterity. Here's some fresh posterity. They're why I care and why I blog about events seemingly so far from our shores. So many others have cared so much more, even unto the laying down of their own lives, to preserve Life and Liberty for me and you. If you or someone you know doesn't care about the direction this country takes, share my reasons for caring.

Where We Go From Here

Well, that's up to all of us, you know, "We, the People." A representative democracy's pivotal decisions come down to who people vote for and support. Sure, once someone lies their way into elected office there's little, short of their commission of a legal or impeachable offense, the People can do to remove them. But every elected official counts on support from other elected officials, fund raisers, journalists, etc. who still derive some significant measure of their support from the People. It's that whole thing about People Power from that other foundation document, the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, . . .

Tony Blankely, one of my favorite comumnists, puts the options in perspective regarding events that are quickly coming to a head. Imagine a mushroom, a big cloudy mushroom.

We are all aware of the dangerous Middle East conditions the United States faces today after five and a half years of President Bush's leadership. So let's consider what the world might well look like if, in his remaining two and a half years, he were to follow the recommendations of his critics.

Hitory teaches that the alternative to facing problems and tyrants now is facing a bigger problem or tyrant later. I want my government to preserve those "unalienable Rights," especially the right to Life and Liberty, for myself and my posterity.

As Iran and the Islamic Fundamentalists/Islamofascists/Throat Slitters (choose the term you're most comfortable with) gain power, others, including Israel and other non-Shia populations, will be compelled to take action. Sure, we could just sit back and wait for them to handle the problem, but at a severe cost that might include a nuclear exchange. There's also the future price of a barrel of oil to consider, as Blankely postulates in his closing sentence.

Price of a barrel of crude oil on Election Day 2008 — $250.

I don't know about you but, even if the nuclear immolation doesn't reach our shores through some Iranian-backed terrorist plot, I'm not going anywhere at $250 a barrel.

Be Afraid

Iran and it's wacky president, Ahmadinejad, have been the subject of previous posts here.

What I said in those posts are still true and echoed by this piece in London's Daily Mail appropriately headlined, "Why this man should give us all nightmares." The author has as little regard for Iran's leadership as I do.

The mullah-mafia lied through their teeth for 18 years, denying they had a nuclear programme, despite their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And all the evidence shows that they are lying now when they say they only want nuclear power for 'peaceful energy purposes', despite sitting on some of the largest oil reserves in the world.

But, alas, there's nothing which we would recognise as 'reasonable' about President Ahmadinejad, the small, bearded blacksmith's son from the slums of Tehran - who denies the existence of the Holocaust, promises to 'wipe Israel off the map' and who, moreover, urges Iranians to 'prepare to take over the world'.

What I do respect is the desire of the Iranian masses to live a productive and happy life. For two years I saw and worked around many Iranian flight students in Pensacola, Florida. I found them to be mostly decent, if cocky (a required trait for jet fighter pilots), deeply nationalistic and very afraid of the mullahs. Many of them went home to face execution or worse after the fall of the Shah and the rise of Khomeini's nightmare. The Daily Mail's Ann Leslie finds similar traits in Iranians today.

Of course ordinary Iranians are not, on the whole, apocalyptic types: they are warm, welcoming to 'infidels' like me and, frankly, deeply fed up.

They don't obsess about the return of the Mahdi, they don't want nuclear weapons, and they certainly don't want an apocalyptic world war.

As one young Tehrani told me: 'I don't know why we are spending so much time antagonising the West. We're just getting more and more isolated, and our economy is in a complete mess.'

The young are not even that interested in religion: a recent poll of young Iranians showed that only 5 per cent watched religious programmes, and only 6 per cent said that they were interested in religion at all.

Seventy per cent of Iranians are under the age of 30, and what they want is to be able to have fun, to travel and, above all, to have jobs.

Unfortunately, for all the "infidels" (that includes all Jews, Christians and anyone else who won't "Bow down to Iran") we have to be very aware of Ahmadinejad's rhetoric and the reality of his intent. Again from the Daily Mail:

As one Iranian exile told me yesterday: 'The trouble with you secular people is that you don't realise how firmly Ahmadinejad believes - literally - in things like the winged horse. By choosing this date for his decision, he is telling his followers that he is going to obey his religious duty.

'And he believes that his religious duty is to create chaos and bloodshed in the "infidel" world, in order to hasten the return of the Mahdi - the Hidden Imam. So don't expect him to behave, in your eyes, "reasonably".'

So who is this Hidden Imam? He was a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed who, at the age of five, disappeared down a well around AD940. He will only return after a period of utter chaos and bloodshed, whereupon peace, justice and Islam will reign worldwide.

When I was in Tehran, Ahmadinejad was its mayor, and an Iranian friend with links to the city council told me: 'He's instructed the council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi's return.

'I wouldn't mind that, because our roads are rotten - it's just that the motivation for this expensive avenue strikes me as completely crazy.'

On coming to power, in order to hasten the return of the Hidden Imam, the Iranian President allocated the equivalent of £10m for the building of a blue-tiled mosque at Jamkaran, south of the capital, where the five-year-old Hidden Imam was said to have disappeared down the well.

All this calls for the most careful diplomacy aimed not necessarily at the leadership of Iran but in concert with the people of Iran. As I said in a previous post:

The people of Iran have a tradition of democracy, though it's been trampled by the current regime. It's sad to see a people with so much to offer the world and so much to leave for their children used by a tyrant like Ahmadinejad.

You can keep up with current events and perspectives in Iran here.

For Valor and Victory

Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who made the famous photo of the flag raising on Iwo Jima February 23, 1945, died yesterday at the age of 94. Powerline reader William Katz noted the poignant timing of Rosenthal's death.

If ever a death symbolized the fading of an era, it's this one.

It's poignant that Rosenthal's passing comes at a time when the integrity of photojournalism is being questioned as never before. Rosenthal himself, as the story reports, lived with whispers that he'd posed the flagraising.

Of course, he hadn't. As he commented, if he'd posed the picture, he would've ruined it. And a film of the moment proves the photo's authenticity.

That one photo, perhaps more than any other taken during World War II or any war, symbolized the essence of American valor and victory.

There were two flag raisings on Iwo Jima that day. The first flag was smaller, too small to be easily seen by Sailors and Marines still coming ashore. So a second, larger flag was raised. Rosenthal barely caught the image as he had been piling rocks to stand on for a better vantage point.

Notice the background of the photo Rosenthal made from that small pile of rocks. There are amphibious landing craft unloading Marines and Sailors to the beach to the right. There are miles of unconquored island visible to the left. The famous photo taken on Suribachi, like the flag in the photo, served to buoy up a nation at war and urge them on to victory.

Where are it's contemporaries today? Where are the photos of American servicemembers facing their fears to challenge and defeat the tyrants of today? The deeds are certainly being done but American media is not presenting the images or the stories of their valor and victories.

Will the men and women who have died thus far in Iraq be remembered like the men who raised that Iwo Jima flag? Three of the six flag-raisers; Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Michael Strank, did not survive the battle for Iwo Jima. A total of 6,821 Americans died in that one battle to secure a speck of land on the way to complete victory over Japan.

Our soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen and civilian contract workers who have fought and died in Iraq gave their all to help raise the flag of freedom over Iraq. They did this to help preserve the freedoms so many others died to win and preserve for the United States. Just like the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima and never left that island, our Iraq War dead deserve to be remembered in victory. Today our great nation deserves to know the valor of its patriots and the cause they stand, fight and die for.

Understanding the Nature of Our Enemy

Captain Ed has an excellent post this morning on what may be Germany's wakeup call to the terrorist threat that faces all free people. German security forces are now looking for a second plotter after arresting a Lebanese student suspected of planting a bomb in a German railway station.

Free societies cannot possibly apply the kinds of security procedures that would make mass transit completely safe, not if they want to remain free societies.

The only way to effectively fight terrorism is to fight it somewhere else. The Germans have consistently failed to grasp this, but that may come from a lack of attacks on their own assets. This plot has awaken some to the danger of the strict law-enforcement model. If every counterterrorism strategy relies on waiting until the terrorists have come to the Western nations they target, then this war is lost.

The ultimate reality in this war is that people filled with bigotry and hatred want to kill not just Americans. Ed understands this too.

Radical Islamists do not just hate America -- they hate Western culture and its freedoms. They hate sexual expression, voting, secular humanism, modern art, pork, the exposure of skin on women, and the economic success of others. Any nation which exhibits these characteristics will find themselves in the crosshairs of al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups. Appeasement works just as well as it did in the 1930s, a lesson the Germans should understand better than almost anyone.

Maybe the Germans will start taking seriously this war and the forward strategy of the US to engage and kill terrorists where they live rather than where we live.

Ed's right to give the U.S. credit for taking a forward strategy and facing up to the nature of the problem, well, at least our president gets it. I'm not so sure about most of the "leading" Democrats and waffling Republicans. Bush had this to say at Fort Bragg on June 28, 2005.

The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001. The terrorists who attacked us -- and the terrorists we face -- murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent. Their aim is to remake the Middle East in their own grim image of tyranny and oppression -- by toppling governments, by driving us out of the region, and by exporting terror.

To achieve these aims, they have continued to kill -- in Madrid, Istanbul, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Bali, and elsewhere. The terrorists believe that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent, and with a few hard blows they can force us to retreat. They are mistaken. After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy.

Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington, and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.

Happy Faces

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
- James M. Barrie


A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
- Carl Sandburg

Photojournalism in Crisis

Photojournalism has a unique role in our media landscape. Photos of news events and life's other happenings can freeze a moment in time to allow viewers to study and understand the reality and emotions of the scene. To achieve this lofty goal the photographer and editors must hold sacrosanct the highest ethical standards. To do otherwise cheapens all photojournalism.

Powerline hilights an article in Editor & Publisher by David Perlmutter, a professor and associate dean for graduate studies and research at the University of Kansas School of Journalism & Mass Communications. The overline on the E&P story:

I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both.

Perlmutter's worries come from the large number of suspect images sold by wire services as legitimate photojournalism but unmasked by bloggers as "fauxtography." He goes on to say:

In each case, these bloggers have engaged in the kind of probing, contextual, fact-based (if occasionally speculative) media criticism I have always asked of my students. And the results have been devastating: news photos and video shown to be miscaptioned, radically altered, or staged (and worse, re-staged) for the camera. Surely “green helmet guy,” “double smoke,” “the missiles that were actually flares,” “the wedding mannequin from nowhere,” the “magical burning Koran,” the “little girl who actually fell off a swing” and “keep filming!” will now enter the pantheon of shame of photojournalism.

To the bloggers' credit, they have engaged in the kind of critical review of mainstream media outlets which seem unable to police themselves. That doubles the shame.

Perlmutter points to the root causes of the problem. . .

A few photo-illusions are probably due to the lust for the most sensational or striking-looking image—that is, more aesthetic bias than political prejudice. Also, many photographers know that war victims are money shots and some will break the rules of the profession to cash in. But true as well is that local stringers and visiting anchors alike seem to have succumbed either to lens-enabled Stockholm syndrome or accepted being the uncredited Hezbollah staff photographer so as to be able to file stories and images in militia-controlled areas.

. . . and two divergent options for handling it.

News picture-making media organizations have two paths of possible response to this unnerving new situation. First, they can stonewall, deny, delete, dismiss, counter-slur, or ignore the problem. To some extent, this is what is happening now and, ethical consideration aside, such a strategy is the practical equivalent of taking extra photos of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The second, much more painful option, is to implement your ideals, the ones we still teach in journalism school. Admit mistakes right away. Correct them with as much fanfare and surface area as you devoted to the original image. Create task forces and investigating panels. Don’t delete archives but publish them along with detailed descriptions of what went wrong. Attend to your critics and diversify the sources of imagery, or better yet be brave enough to refuse to show any images of scenes in which you are being told what to show. I would even love to see special inserts or mini-documentaries on how to spot photo bias or photo fakery—in other words, be as transparent, unarrogant, and responsive as you expect those you cover to be.

As mentioned in previous posts here, here , here and here, there is ample reason to be suspicious of photos proffered by local stringers in countries which do not have the tradition of journalism ethics shared by most western countries. By blindly accepting questionable photos wire services and the newspapers who use them corrupt that tradition and the power of photojournalism. I couldn't agree more with Perlmutter's conclusion.

The stakes are high. Democracy is based on the premise that it is acceptable for people to believe that some politicians or news media are lying to them; democracy collapses when the public believes that everybody in government and the press is lying to them.

Wakey Wakey America

Bill Bennett, as is his usual on "Morning in America," has a wake-up call for America. He calls what happened in Lebanon what it is, a failure. It's been hard for me to look past my hopes for Israel's venture against Hezbollah and admit that the world, including too many in the U.S. and even the leadership of Israel, are not yet ready to confront the growing evil that is the fascism of radical Islam.

Listen to Bennett here. He makes great sense and he's easy on the ears.

Hooray for Hollywood!

Well, some of the folks in Hollywood who seem to actually get it, deserve some credit and support. Powerline notes a Boston Herald story on a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times, which evidently couldn't even find a pro-war-on-terror story in its own paper.

Hollywood heavyweights Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Rupert Murdoch and more than 80 other stars played against type and entered stage right yesterday with an ad condemning Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and terrorists everywhere.

“We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” the full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times reads.
Whatever will the crowd at Spago think?

Others who signed include actors Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt.Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed along with Sumner Redstone, the chairman of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul Haim Saban.

So, what's a patriotic moviegoer to to? Well, since I won't do to movies, or even rent movies, by the likes of Barbara Streisand, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Susan Sarandon or others who are more interested in latte than liberty, I have time to watch movies by the patriots who took out the ad.

IMBD, the internet movie database, has filmographies for each of the patriotic stars. I'm actually looking forward to more movies from Kidman. Her acting, and her intelligence, seems to have improved since she parted company with Tom Cruise.

Babies Grow Up

Readers of this blog, both of you, know that my family is the center of what I do. We typically gather together Sunday afternoon — after church and a good nap. It's the only way to keep track as children and grandchildren grow up.


Aaron loves to laugh and his grandmother loves to tickle his feet.

Our other baby, the four-footed one, is growing up too.


I hope some day he grows out of the Bozo-the-Clown ears.

Journalistic Restraint

Don Surber, another military veteran turned journalist, thanks the Times of London for their restraint in reporting on the capture of the head of al-Qaida in their country.

At any rate, the leading newspaper in the world just informed the world of an important event without tipping the bad guys.

I thank reporter David Leppard and his editors.

He also points out how the British government seems to be more willing and able to go after terrorists in ways not permitted by politics in the U.S.

Maybe more U.S. journalists could take a clue from the Times of London and be Americans first, journalists second too.

Editing Fauxtography

The mainstream media has to take the next step in the Fauxtography mess. And I don't mean just the N.Y. TImes, AP, Reuters, etc. Every paper, TV station, etc. has to take responsibility for what it publishes. Would any media outlet publish an unedited press release by a company or organization seeking to sway public opinion in their favor and expect to keep its credibility? Yet that's pretty much what's coming out of Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon.

Hezbollah intimidates western journalists by seizing their passports and reminding them that, "We know where you live." A poster on Lightstalkers who disputes claims of scene manipulation at Qana even admits he personally was taken captive by Hezbollah guerrillas . . .

. . . whose stronghold is southern Lebanon. They are recognizable because they're young and bearded and have walkie-talkies — and don't want to be photographed. He said they intentionally are not armed when photographers are around. He was detained by several one day and then released."

Would anyone not be intimidated by this kind of treatment?

I've called for closer scrutiny of wire service material where I work for years. Occasionally an editor will alert a wire bureau to some concern but the overwhelming impression I come away with most days is that the wire offerings fit most journalist's templates and are thus verified and published.

Photos or stories from journalists embedded with U.S. military units are identified as having been screened by the military, as I wrote about here. Why don't editors feel obliged to handle material coming out of Hezbollywood with at least as much skepticism?

Photographers on Fauxtography

UPDATE: The thread at Lightstalkers has grown quite a bit and the site is now not responding. That seems normal but for the also strange disappearance of some posts, including one referencing Little Green Footballs and neocons.

Little Green Footballs is still at it finding and exposing fake photos coming out of Lebanon. This time he quotes freelance photographer Bryan Denton who witnessed Lebanese photographers setting up scenes. Denton writes about it on Lightstalkers, a bulletin board for professional photographers.

i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms.

Denton's post has stimulated quite a bit of discussion with some photographers demanding Denton verify his information with his own photos, names, places, dates. Here's part of Denton's reply which seems to have satisfied his naysayers.

i have also heard from friends of mine in lebanon, respected photographers, that this was not an isolated incident.

A famous photo from Vietnam of a girl running down the road after a Napalm drop was mentioned by another poster. The photo was one that helped turn the tide against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. A reply to that post provides some historical hindsight.

That napalmed girl was a metaphor for all the napalmed victims in Vietnam. A valid metaphor.

Funny you should mention it…

The current controversy which now includes not only photoedited images, but also inaccurate and misleading captions, the same building alleged to have been destroyed on three different dates, the same woman complaining about her wrecked apartment on different dates with different buildings, toys in the wreckage that another photographer shot being taken, clean, from a duffel bag, a child hurt in a playground accident described as a victim of an Israeli attack, not to mention Green Helmet Guy who the same reporter (Kathy Gannon of the AP) has identified as both civil defense worker Salam Daher, and Tyre mortician Abu Shadi Jradi – and these are just off the top of my head.

So I started researching some iconic war photographs including Nick Ut’s famous shot of Kim Phuc running naked from a napalm attack and Eddie Adams’ “Saigon Execution”.

You say the shot was a “valid metaphor” for “all” napalm victims in Vietnam. Valid? The photograph galavanized opposition in the US to the war when it was published in June 1972. Do you know how many Americans were involved in the incident? Zero. By June of 1972 there were hardly any US ground troops doing the fighting, ARVN having taken most of that load. The napalm in that incident was the result of an ARVN unit calling for air support by South Vietnamese pilots flying South Vietnamese planes. Nick Ut defends the photograph as accurate, always getting his left-of-center credentials out by repeating the story of how Richard Nixon said Ut’s photo was faked. The photo wasn’t faked, but the way the image was used, to question US military involvement in southeast Asia, was at the least dissembling.

The other iconic image I researched was Eddie Adams’ famous “Saigon Execution”, of ARVN Gen. Loan’s summary execution of a Vietcong officer with a revolver in a Saigon street. Adams deeply regretted how the photo slurred Gen. Loan.

From Wikipedia: “The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths...What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?’” “How do you know you wouldn’t have pulled the trigger yourself?” Adams asked.

Eddie Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen and his family for the damage it did to his reputation. When General Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a hero of a just cause:

"The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him."

Eddie Adams, whose photojournalism credentials probably exceed that of all you shutterbugs combined, knew that his own images could mislead. The fact that so many of you refuse to admit how journalists and photographers are complicit in Hezb-allah propaganda and continue to make excuses shows that you have learned nothing from Adams.

In Michigan there is a unit pricing law. Retail stores must tag items accurately in accordance with the price posted on the shelf and the UPC bar code must trigger the same price. The Attorney General’s office sometimes takes action against stores that mismark prices. How do they know when to take action? When there is a consistent pattern of the “mistakes” favoring the store. True mistakes would be random, sometimes overpricing an item, sometimes underpricing it. Likewise with the images from Lebanon. All of these “mistakes” seem to be on the side of making Israel look bad.

What more can I say.

On Target Video

Here's some video from an Israeli Air Force plane watching a Hezbollah rocket launcher at work. You'll probably really like the ending.

Making "News" in Lebanon

Green Helmet Guy is a regular fixture when it comes to recovering civilian casualties in Lebanon, expecially around Tyre. Here's a German video that gives a bit more of a clue as to his real role. Caution, the video shows bodies -- as props.



So, do you really think you can trust the "news" coming out of Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon?

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has more, including a switch to a new Blue helmet.

Here's another video showcasing the efforts of Green Helmet Guy and others. Caution, more bodies as props.

About That "Domestic Spying Program"

There's been a runnign discussion where I work about the validity of calling the NSA wiretap program a "domestic spying program" as the wire services call it in articles generally citing Democrats claiming it's illegal. Yesterday's capture of 20+ Brits of Pakistani heritage should spark a new series of articles looking at the program and it's successes.

The Wall Street Journal has this to say:

British antiterrorism chief Peter Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."

Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the New York Times to report how the NSA program helped prevent the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent Americans.

Read the entire article. It also includes some of the Democrat's denunciations of Bush by Kennedy and Reid.

And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one more opportunity to insist that "the Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists."

Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot? And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?

Big Terror Plot Thwarted, U.S. Connections?

There are too many terrorist related events happening today and the FBI and I don't believe in coincidences.

Great Britain raised its terror alert to the highest level at about 2 a.m. London time today after uncovering a plot to blow up about a 20 planes on the way to the U.S. About 20 British-born men of Asian descent were arrested and officials say the plan included using liquid explosives which would have been easier to pass through security checks according to Sky News.

Sky News' Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said he had been told the threat was imminent and those arrested were mainly young, British-born Asian men.

He said the plan allegedly involved people boarding flights and detonating explosives on planes over UK and US cities.

From an AP report:

British authorities thwarted a terrorist plot to blow up several aircraft in flight between the United States and the United Kingdom using explosives smuggled in hand luggage, officials said Thursday.

Britain's Home Secretary John Reid said the alleged plot was significant and that terrorists aimed to "bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life."

Police arrested a number of people in London after a major covert counterterrorism operation that had lasted several months, but did not immediately say how many.

The U.S. government responded by raising its threat assessment to the highest level for commercial flights from Britain to the United States early Thursday.

"We believe that these arrests (in London) have significantly disrupted the threat, but we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted," said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Security Watchtower has more on how ripe the UK is for terrorists operations and how hard security forces there are working.

MI5 believes there are between 400 and 600 al Qaeda operatives in the United Kingdom, and as many as 3,000 British-born or British-based people that went through al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

I wonder if this story, also from today, is related:

Investigators in southeast Ohio said they were working to unravel how two Michigan men charged with supporting terrorism came to have airplane passenger lists and airport security information.

Osama Sabhi Abulhassan, 20, and Ali Houssaiky, 20, both of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, were being held at the Washington County jail on $200,000 bond each, which could be raised at a Thursday afternoon court hearing. Each was charged Wednesday with money laundering in support of terrorism.

Deputies stopped the two on a traffic violation Tuesday and found the flight documents along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones in their car, Sheriff Larry Mincks said.

This is about more than a few phones. Note the number of phones and the origin of the two guys.

Abulhassan and Houssaiky admitted buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio, said sheriff's Maj. John Winstanley. They sold the phones to someone in Dearborn, Winstanley said.

Michelle Malkin has more background on the use of this type of phone and Dearborn here. She reminds readers about events back in January.

The phones -- which do not require purchasers to sign a contract or have a credit card -- have many legitimate uses, and are popular with people who have bad credit or for use as emergency phones tucked away in glove compartments or tackle boxes. But since they can be difficult or impossible to track, law enforcement officials say the phones are widely used by criminal gangs and terrorists.

...Law enforcement officials say the phones were used to detonate the bombs terrorists used in the Madrid train attacks in March 2004.

...The FBI is closely monitoring the potentially dangerous development, which came to light following recent large-quantity purchases in California and Texas, officials confirmed.

In one New Year's Eve transaction at a Target store in Hemet, Calif., 150 disposable tracfones were purchased. Suspicious store employees notified police, who called in the FBI, law enforcement sources said.

In an earlier incident, at a Wal-mart store in Midland, Texas, on December 18, six individuals attempted to buy about 60 of the phones until store clerks became suspicious and notified the police. A Wal-mart spokesperson confirmed the incident.

And could this be related too? My natural reactions do not favor coincidence where Islamic terror might be involved. When 11 20-year-old Egyptian schoolboys don't make it to their supposed destination of higher learning in Montana the FBI gets nervous. When it coincides with these other goings-on I get nervous.

Stay tuned to the usual blog sources.

Why Israel Fights

Thanks to Powerline for this short and to-the-point video.



Some Hezzbollah supporters, including some on the left side of U.S. politics, are claiming Israel is fighting a proxy war for the U.S. Actually, we're fighting the same war against Islamic totalitarianism.

Fauxtography and the Media

While papers and broadcasters run stories about extremely low approval ratings for members of congress a less-reported fact is that the news media ranks even lower.

Some recent posts and stories point to possible reasons:

A quick review by Michelle Malkin of the unfolding fabrications and misrepresentations of some of the mainstream media. It isn't just Reuters who's being caught now.

And a look at why coverage from Lebanon is inaccurate and slanted –– from veteran Mideast correspondent Ike Seamans.

Austin Bay points out that The Washington Post comes five days late to the fake photo story by acknowledging a blogger's role in uncovering Reuters fauxtography AND his role in unseating Dan Rather.

And this post by PowerLine, one of the blogs responsible for bringing down Dan Rather, points to other examples of photo fakery. You'll note it also does some up-front self correction that wasn't evident in the Rather and Reuters cases.

Then there's this, also from Powerline, on reporting of progress in Iraq.

You'd think those layers of professional editors and fact-checkers would do something about this.

Perspective on Hezbollah

Cox & Forkum produce some of the best editorial cartoons out there. Heres one of my recent favorites.


Cox & Forkum have other illustrations that do what only a great editorial cartoon can do to show:
The role of diplomacy in the fight against terrorism.
The innocent children at Qana.
Hezbollah's arsenal.

Optimism on Israel vs Hezbollah

Apropos of Nothing blog has nine reasons to be positive about the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. I'll add one more. The media's fakery and use of stringers who favor and lie for the terrorists is becoming exposed. Perhaps this recent episode will even lead to further exposure of the media complicity with defeatists in Iraq.

Somebody Gets It

The Democracy Project in U.S. Newspapers Cure Reuters, or Are Complicit says in depth what I called for in a post yesterday. Newspapers provide Reuters the funds to do what they do and must hold Reuters and other wire services accountable or withdraw their business. Readers need to put the pressure on their local papers to hold them accountable for the accuracy and bias in what they print no matter what the source.

Democracy Project suggests you send this letter to your local paper or whoever uses Reuters photos.

I depend upon your newspaper for reliable information. Your use of Reuters’ reports and photos on the current Israel-Hezbollah war, which have been proven false and irresponsible, undermines my confidence. These are not exceptions for Reuters but part of a longstanding bias, as documented for example by CAMERA. Please convey to Reuters your requirement that Reuters publicly investigate the current failures of journalistic standards, reveal the results and its specific personnel and reporting procedures reforms. Please also convey to Reuters that your newspapers’ continued clientage is dependent upon the open thoroughness of this minimal responsibility to be depended upon by you. I will be watching to see whether I can depend upon you to deliver quality journalism by demanding this of your newswires.

Step One Taken, Reuters Fires Hajj

SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST

The Jawa Report has the scoop. Reuters has fired Ann-on Hajj, the photographer who faked the photo of smoke over Beirut, among others.

Next step is for Reuters and other wire services to take a close look at the circumstances of their other sensational photos coming from inside Hezbollah-controlled territory.

And the step after that is for concerned bloggers and other citizens to contact their local media to express their concern. After all, we're a target of these deceptions. Our public opinion is what shapes national policy in a democracy. Speak out or start buying burkas or saving to pay that jizya tax.

UPDATE
Reuters has also removed Hajj's other photos from their archive. Unfortunately it's too late to remove the photos' impressions from the minds and perceptions of people who already viewed them.

A Must See Speech

Blackfive has what must be one of the best speeches I've heard in a long time, just the cure for the MSM idocy I've recently commented on.



Click on the play arrow in the center of the image above to play the video. It's long but worth your time. Or you can read the transcript at Blackfive.

Here's just a taste (sorry about the all caps, it's from the transcript):

DON'T LET THE PESSIMISTIC TELEVISION TALKING HEADS, HIGH BROWED NEWSPAPER WRITERS, HOLLYWOOD IDIOTS, OR ANY OTHER FACTION OF THE “BLAME AMERICA FIRST” CROWD GET YOU DOWN! …. I'M SPEAKING OF THE “LATTE BISCOTTI CROWD”. THEY ARE SIMPLE BACKGROUND CHATTER MEN....AND WILL ALWAYS EXISTS ON THE PERIPHERY OF ANY ENDEAVOR THAT REQUIRES SELFLESS SERVICE OR LOYALTY. THEY ARE NOT WORTHY OF YOUR CONCERN AND TRUTH BE TOLD – IN THE PIT OF THEIR COWARDLY HEARTS – THEY WISH THEY COULD BE LIKE YOU.

Al Reuters at it Again

UPDATE: Reuters pulled the photo. Ynet credits Little Green Footballs.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

UPDATE 2: Reuters suspended the photographer. See LGF for updates, including this very lame excuse from Reuters.

UPDATE 3: My Pet Jawa and many other bloggers are showing encreasing evidence of more photoshop doctoring seems evident in other photos by the same photographer.


Reuters needs to get some new photo editors. Here's the note I just sent them.

I'm the night photo and graphics editor at a large newspaper in the U.S. We don't take Reuters photos now and, if I have any input, we won't in the near future either. Do your photo editors recognize amateur Photoshop cloning manipulation? Obviously not from this photo.
It looks like one of the weblogs that helped uncover Dan Rather's deceit also caught your Adnan Hajj, and by extension all of Reuters.
Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs blog explains cloning if your editors aren't aware of what it looks like when done very badly.
Tell me how this sustains high photojournalistic standards? Tell me how this doesn't hurt photojournalists everywhere? Tell me why I can trust Reuters photos? I'd love to read your response.

Media: Some deaths matter less

Media bias is no new subject on this blog, or thousands of others for that matter. Nor is the bias evident in coverage of the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Have you heard of 60-year-old Fadia Jumaa and her two daughters, Samira, 31, and Sultana, 33? Probably not. Their deaths were very inconvenient for the media. You see, they were killed by a Hezbillah rocket that landed in Israel. That's the kind of thing that can cause severe cognitive dissonance in the mainstream media because, you know, Hezbollah isn't known for indiscriminately killing innocent civilians.

There are lots of other inconvenient facts that don't fit the mainstream media template of "Israel bad, misunderstoon Hezbollah good" in this article at YNet News.

And if you think all Muslims and Arabs support Hezbollah don't read this article at the Jerusalem Post. You might have a hard time aligning your favorite broadcast news or daily newspaper with reality.

Who Would You Save?

Hugh Hewitt on Townhall.com asks an interesting question:

If you could save the victims of one of the following four events, which group would you save?

1. The victims of Fidel Castro's "revolution?"

2. The victims of Hezbollah's ambushes, rockets and missiles over the past three weeks?

3. The victims of the Seattle attack on the Jewish federation?

4. The victims of Mel Gibson's repulsive outburst of anti-Semitic venom?

The rest of his column examines how mainstream media treated these recent stories. It's another example of the dissonance between journalism's proclamations of helping the downtrodden and the reality of what they publish.

Castro has killed tens of thousands of his own people and put nearly all the rest in deep poverty but is lionized as having outlasted at least eight U.S. presidents. (Never mind that U.S. presidents have term limits and elections.)

Hezbollah continues to call for and try to accomplish the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people by launching rockets at civilian population centers. But according to many in the media they're holding out against the IDF, a modern reversal of David and Goliath.

Mr. Haq took a 13-year-old girl hostage to gain entry into a Seattle Jewish community center where he deliberately took aim at the stomachs of six women. He killed one, left the other five wounded and declared it was because he was upset about Lebanon and Iraq and blamed it all on the Jooos. But according to mainstream media coverage, if you count the occasional mention in a Nation Briefs column, he has a mental disorder. "No terrorism here. Move along."

But Mel Gibson, whose first published offense was driving under the influence, just like so many others in the entertainment/political industry, got top billing — top of page one, top of the newscast. Revelations about his antisemitic tirade has kept him at the top since then.

Gibson is apologetic, though that may not be enough to salvage his credibility. Gibson's words hurt feelings. The others have killed. Snuffed out life.

Why does the mainstream media give Castro, Hezbollah and Haq a pass while piling on Gibson? What IS that about? Who do they REALLY want to serve and protect — or should I say attack?

In Case You've Not Been Listening

Iranian leaders Khamenei and Ahmadinejad gave speeches in the past few days. Their words that aren't getting much attention in the west but should.

Khamenei on Aug.2, 2006

How long should the Islamic world tolerate existence of the scheming and evil Zionist regime? How long should the Islamic government allow aggressive and arrogant America to have a free hand in this sensitive part of the world? ....
The aggressive behavior of American and Israel will revitalize more than ever the spirit of resistance in th