LGF Is On Freakin' Fire

LA Times' knee-jerk lefty Tim Rutten actually asks hard questions about the media's complicity in Hezbollah propaganda, and suggests a systematic, thorough reexamination of reliance on foreign stringers -- either cowed by, or active supports of, Hezbollah -- must be undertaken.

Some of the West's generous donations to Pakistan's quake victims wound up in the hands of "Muslim charities," which then wired that money to the UK for use in the Sky Bombing Terror Plot.

Not another dime. Not another dime.

Yet another Muslim "moderate" makes veiled threats, yet again using the opportunity of Muslim terrorism (this time thwarted) to demand the west give in to the terrorists' demands-- or else, he promises, there will be a lot more terrorism.

Reading into this too much? Well, consider the source-- it's the same guy who used a Reuters computer (when he was a Retuers "moderate Muslim" columnist) to write to Johnson, "I can't wait until all you Zionist pigs have your throats cut."

So he's not above a threat now, is he?

CAIR perhaps taught Adnan Hajj the ropes in the Fauxtography game, crudely photoshopping a head-scarf on to a Muslim woman at a press conference last year who dared to go without out. Check it out-- it's laughably crude. Adnan Hajj seems to have learned much; CAIR makes Adnan Hajj look like the Michaelangelo of doctored photos.

And the AP spins wildly for Mr. Green Helmet, asking, basically, "What's so wrong about the Lebanese wanting the world to see the victims of Israeli aggression?"

Ummm... there's nothing wrong with the Lebanese wanting that. There is somnething seriously wrong with supposedly objective Western news agencies being willling participants in a propaganda campaign.

And, you'll not be shocked to know -- no mention of the smoking-gun video of Mr. Green Helmet giving directorial orders to the "independent media" videotaping and photographing the Qana Corpse Cavalcade.

Follow up by Dan Riehl -- if Mr. Green Helmet is not a Hezbollah propagandist, why did he claim there were so many more bodies recovered from the wreckage than there actually were?

He was there. Supposedly "digging" the bodies out, in between blocking dramatic shots for the "independent media." Shouldn't he have known how many bodies were actually removed?

Why was he so far off?

And why does the media continue to uncritically parrot Lebanese officials' claims of "15 dead" or "40 dead" when they now have an official Lebanese Civil Defense official/budding amateur filmmaker caught so wildly overestimating the number of dead in a recovery operation he personally oversaw?

If he inflates body counts by 50 to 100%, what on earth is the media doing reporting the claims of local Lebanese police uncritically, without any fact-checking?

Correction: Allah, who knows all, informs me that that LGF headscarf photo is a flashback from last year, not a new pic. I have rewritten to correctly report this.

Despite this correction, and the fact that the one item is "old," LGF currently remains on f'n fire. There will be no retraction on that score.

Clarification: Allah also says it was never proven that Bunglawala was actually behind the message. Well, I take it as being more or less proved. But in the interests of fairness, you be the judge:

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 contirbuted 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.

Him? Or not him?

No one's saying so for sure.

Eh. Maybe he's right. Maybe it was just some "Zionists... up to mischief."

It should be also be noted the "Zionist michief" comment was left in a thread devoted to attacking Bunglawala's idiotic Guardian column.

I suppose, like Glenn Greenwald, he just has a troupe of cabana boys living with him, and working out of his office, who sometimes post impassioned defenses of him on rightwing websites.

posted by Ace at 04:56 PM

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