Ben Curtis alludes that fake MSM photos were the Neo Cons fault

so it’s the perception that caused you to exploit the viewer with posed and digitally edited photographs? a Fool Born Every Minute:

BEN CURTIS: Maybe it always was. I myself get all my news from the Internet — primarily the AP wire. I don’t watch much TV, I don’t have access to a wide range of English language papers, so I get most of my news from the Internet. Now, when you get news from the Internet, and especially if you’re getting it from blogs, you can really fine-tune the range of opinions that you receive on a daily basis, and you can fine-tune it to just those opinions that conform to your opinion.

so it’s OK for Ben to use the internet to communicate with his radical element, but he is threatened by those Neo-Con blogs

BEN CURTIS: And when you understand how people who work for the media work and the difficulties they have there is a lot of mundane reasons why things happen — light, dust, cameras, trying to compress everything into one image. If the public understood more about the process, then perhaps there’d be less suspicion of it, although I suspect that’s probably not the case.

but when people do try to understand the process (like on blogs) then you are suspect of that? don’t you think that statement is a bit arrogant Ben? Assuming that it isn’t your fault that your media is abused in the media it is presented in, it is irresponsible and exploitative to not present the context or to make motions to clarify. Ben would have his audience believe the photographer has no intent in taking a picture of a toy in the scene of destruction. Then why was the technique used repeatedly?

via opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

It’s important to understand that there is not just a single fraudulent Reuters photograph, nor even only one kind of fraudulent photograph. There are in fact dozens of photographs whose authenticity has been questioned, and they fall into four distinct categories.

The four types of photographic fraud perpetrated by Reuters photographers and editors are:

1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.

2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.

3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.

4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.

via zombietime.com

Hariri is no Saint

the State of Lebanon is in conflict with UN Resolution 1701, have let Hezbollah into their government and have become a vassal of Syria

Although the Obama administration has hesitated before rushing headlong into renewing relations with Damascus, it has undertaken a series of gestures that have demonstrated that any real policy of isolation is over. This goes hand in hand with the broader regional stance of the administration of attempting “engagement” with the Iranian regime.

Far from signaling to Middle Eastern powers that a new world of cooperation is about to commence, what this US stance conveys to friends and foes in the region is that Washington no longer has the stomach for holding fast against the bid by Iran and its allies for regional hegemony.

The clients, and the clients of the clients, therefore move to make their accommodation with the changed reality.

via jpost.com

they can’t control themselves from murdering people? Do you have any idea how much money these people in power in the Middle East have? every criminal organization has conflicting parties that people might have empathy for. Every great dramatic villain has a sob story. That is the nature of evil. Were not the Germans themselves victims of harsh punitive actions from WWI?

In Washington, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman failed to persuadePresident Barack Obama to drop objections to Hizbullah’s rearming, and instead “exert further pressure” on Israel to withdraw from disputed areas along its border with Lebanon. Suleiman acted “more like the Syrian ambassador than the Lebanese president,” observed Farid Ghadry, the Washington-based head of the Reform Party of Syria.

Obama publicly told Suleiman he should enforce UN Resolution 1701 by disarming Hizbullah and halting its “extensive” arms smuggling, which poses “a threat to Israel.” Suleiman disagreed, insisting that part of the resolution no longer applies to the militant group because it is a legitimate political party and part of Lebanon’s government, which has authorized it to retain its weapons. The real threat, he told Obama, is from Israel.

via jpost.com

The argument you have is they can’t help but send missiles? If my neighbor next door were launching missiles to the next town and I knew that there would be missiles back… I’d do everything I could to get those missiles out of a residential area. These people are responsible and it is the population that will suffer. Their country is culpable and they will suffer casualties. I’m not going to let my family get killed because other people don’t have the chutzpah to contain the hate in their neighborhood. If these people do not follow the terms agreed… the only situation is to kill back… and this is not said lightly because the missile capability is three times what it was in 2006. I suspect you have some kind of orchestrated bias against Jewish people living if you feel otherwise. Keep in mind that Hariri is backed by the Sauds. He has all the money in the world. if he wanted to he could buy soldiers with loyalty. he is meeting with Syria because he benefits double. don’t believe that sob story about his dad for a second. these guys kill each other all the time and for all we know Assad had nothing to do with the death of his father. It might of been some fringe Shia group. Hariri is picking his allies. don’t pity him. he isn’t caught between anything. don’t worry about these murderers. Hariri can afford a miliary. He chooses Syria because he is united in hate against Israel. if Sunni Hamas can take money from Iran… so can Hariri

original post 12/27/09

Last week’s visit by Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri to Damascus is the latest marker in the return of the coercive Syrian presence in Lebanon. It is also an indication of Syria’s successful defiance of the west.

via jpost.com

Assad’s regime assassinated Saad Hariri’s father, Rafik, in 2005 for just gingerly opposing Syria’s occupation of Lebanon. There is no alternate universe where Saad Hariri is OK with this or where his generically “positive” statements at a press conference were anything other than forced.

via commentarymagazine.com

The pro-western and pro-Saudi March 14 movement, led by Hariri, achieved a modest victory in elections in June. This victory was effectively nullified in the lengthy coalition “negotiations” that followed. The new government as finally announced in November represented the unusual spectacle of a wholesale capitulation of the electoral victors before the vanquished.

The Hizbullah-led opposition kept their effective veto power in the Cabinet. The government’s founding statement included an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of Hizbullah’s continued armed presence.

via

jpost.com

Now, with Hezbollah playing a more active role in the Lebanese government, Lebanon could be held more responsible for Hezbollah actions against Israel, Israeli security officials and experts say.

via nytimes.com

Lebanon has to decide which side it’s on. Either it can stand up to Hezbullah the way the Iranian people are now standing up to the mullahs or it can bear the consequences when Hezbullah uses their infrastructure to fire cannon fodder at Israel. While I feel sorry for those Lebanese who don’t support Hezbullah and want to live in peace with us, I feel more sorry for the Israelis who are likely to be under fire by Hezbullah in the next war.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

I was invited to dinner at Hariri’s house earlier this year and had a long and frank discussion about politics with him and some colleagues. I can’t quote him because the meeting was off the record, but trust me: the man is no friend of the Syrian government or Hezbollah, and it’s not just because someone in that crowd killed his father. His political party, the Future Movement, champions liberalism and capitalism, the very antithesis of what is imposed in Syria by Assad’s Arab Socialist Baath party regime and the totalitarian Velayat-e Faqih ideology enforced by the Khomeinists in Iran and in the Hezbollah-occupied regions of Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its sponsors in Tehran and Damascus have forced Hariri to do a number of things lately — to give it veto power in his government’s cabinet and to surrender to its continuing existence as a warmongering militia that threatens to blow up the country again by picking fights with the Israelis.

Hariri and his allies in parliament resisted an extraordinary amount of pressure on these points for months before caving in, but cave in they did. They didn’t have much choice. The national army isn’t strong enough to disarm Hezbollah,

and unlike Iran’s tyrant Ali Khamenei, Hariri doesn’t have his own private army. Hezbollah militiamen surrounded his house last year and firebombed his TV station when the government shut down its illegal surveillance system at the airport. At the end of the day, Hariri has to do what Hezbollah and its friends say unless someone with a bigger stick covers his back when push comes to shove.

No one has Hariri’s or Lebanon’s back, not anymore. He and his allies in the “March 14″ coalition have sensed this for some time, which is why Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has grudgingly softened his opposition to Assad and Hezbollah lately. When Hariri went to Damascus, everyone in the country, aside from useless newswire reporters, understood it meant Syria has re-emerged as the strong horse in Lebanon.

Walid Jumblatt is another member of what David Schenker calls the Murdered Fathers Club. Assad’s ruthless late father, Hafez Assad, put Jumblatt through a similarly gruesome experience back in the 70s during the civil war. First Assad murdered Walid’s father, Kamal, then summoned the surviving Jumblatt to Damascus and forced him to shake hands and pledge his allegiance. Who can even imagine what that must have felt like? Hariri knows now, and Jumblatt still tells everyone he meets all about it.

Hariri generally doesn’t like having long conversations with journalists on the record because he doesn’t want to calculate how everything he says will be simultaneously interpreted in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Israel, the United States, France, and Saudi Arabia. I can’t say I blame him. He lives under virtual house arrest as it is, with barely more freedom of movement than Hassan Nasrallah. Here is something he said, though, back when it was safer for him to do so: “Action must be taken against Syria, like isolation, to make the Syrians understand that killing members of [Lebanon's] parliament will have consequences.”

The U.S. and France did effectively isolate Assad with Saudi assistance when George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac were in charge, but presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy think they can save the Middle East by “engaging” its most toxic leaders. Syria, therefore, is no longer isolated. Lebanon’s little anti-Syrian government doesn’t stand a chance under these circumstances, especially not when Hezbollah is the dominant military power in the country.

“It’s a dangerous game these people are playing,” Lebanese activist and political analyst Eli Khoury said last time I spoke with him in Beirut, “but I think it’s only a matter of time until the newcomers burn their fingers with the same realities that we’ve seen over and over again. I’ve seen every strategy: Kissinger’s step-by-step approach, full engagement — which means sleeping with the enemy, basically — and the solid stand as with the Bush Administration. I’ve seen them all. The only one that works so far in my opinion, aside from some real stupid and dumb mistakes, is the severing of relationships. It made the Syrians behave.”

It did make the Syrians behave a bit for a while, but now the U.S., France, and Saudi Arabia are bringing Assad in from the cold and giving him cocoa. His influence, naturally, is rising again, in Lebanon and everywhere else. That’s good news for Hezbollah, of course, which means it’s also good news for Iran. It’s bad news for the Lebanese, the Americans, the French, the Saudis, and the Israelis. None of this was inevitable, but — in Lebanon, at least — it was predictable.

via commentarymagazine.com

Hariri is no Saint

In Washington, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman failed to persuadePresident Barack Obama to drop objections to Hizbullah’s rearming, and instead “exert further pressure” on Israel to withdraw from disputed areas along its border with Lebanon. Suleiman acted “more like the Syrian ambassador than the Lebanese president,” observed Farid Ghadry, the Washington-based head of the Reform Party of Syria.

Obama publicly told Suleiman he should enforce UN Resolution 1701 by disarming Hizbullah and halting its “extensive” arms smuggling, which poses “a threat to Israel.” Suleiman disagreed, insisting that part of the resolution no longer applies to the militant group because it is a legitimate political party and part of Lebanon’s government, which has authorized it to retain its weapons. The real threat, he told Obama, is from Israel.

via jpost.com

Lebanon in violation of UN 1701

Click to Play

no targets are off limits. Hizzbollah has joined the government and thus Lebanon is open to full responsibility. http://noahdavidsimon.blogspot.com/2009/12/lebanese-government-lets-hizbullah-keep.html six times as many missiles are being put in civilian locations. do something about it before Israel has to defend itself from rocket fire

no targets are off limits. Lebanon in violation of UN 1701

and of course this will be all Israel’s fault when it attempts to take out missiles launched at it’s civilians….

Lebanon’s new government Wednesday endorsed Hizbullah’s right to keep its weapons, the latest sign that the group has no intention of meeting a UN resolution calling for it to disarm.

Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is seen speaking via a video link as journalists listen to him during a press conference in Beirut on Monday.

Lebanon’s government is a shaky coalition of Western-backed factions and Hizbullah, which has virtual veto power over the government. The group is said to have thousands of rockets and missiles hidden in basements and bunkers throughout Shi’ite Muslim areas of the country.

A United Nations resolution that ended the Second Lebanon War calls on the group to disarm.

Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said recently that his group has replenished its weapons stock since 2006 and now has more than 30,000 rockets, which he said can strike virtually anywhere in Israel.

via jpost.com

This now means that in the next war no targets are off limits to Israeli forces. Hizzbollah has joined the government and thus Lebanon is open to full responsibility. Note also that Hizzbollah has now also placed Lebanon, as a country, in violation of UN 1701. Finally Hizzbollah has threatened Israel again and indicated that Israel is occupying Arab lands. Iran is the patron of these developments-this story continues to emerge.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 is a resolution that was intended to resolve the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.

It was unanimously approved by the United Nations Security Council on 11 August 2006. The Lebanese cabinet, which includes two members of Hezbollah, unanimously approved the resolution on 12 August 2006. On the same day, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that his militia would honor the call for a ceasefire. He also said that once the Israeli offensive stops, Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel would stop. On 13 August the Israeli Cabinet voted 24-0 in favor of the resolution, with one abstention. The ceasefire began on Monday, 14 August 2006 at 8 AM local time, after increased attacks by both sides.

via en.wikipedia.org