NewsBusters Archive

It seems that the Lebanese army is starting to inspect and neutralize all of the unexploded artillery and other ordinance that Shamnesty is so worried about. This photograph is rather odd, though. It's extremely grainy, due to high levels of jpeg compression, but it purports to be two members of the Lebanese Army inspecting an unexploded missile. What's odd is that the object they're studying doesn't readily appear to be a missile to me—Could it be an external fuel tank? Some other piece of artillery? Humpback whale? Beats me. As usual, if you have exceptional eyesight and vast stores of military knowledge, be sure to chime in and let me know what you think. I'm also looking to analyze some of the other pictures as well, so if you're up on your weapons identification skills, be sure to check it out!

A group of Israeli filmmakers were dropped from the schedule of the Documentary Film Festival in the French town of Lussas last week with their films replaced by movies by Palestinian and Lebanese filmmakers.

The directors received a letter from the directors of the festival explaining that they were dropped because of the latest Middle East crisis.

In what appears to be the latest in a long list of cultural boycotts against Israeli artists, the letter informed the Israelis that their films would be replaced.

Lack of detachment

According to Ynet News, the letter, signed by the festival’s director, artistic director, and program director, claimed that “it is difficult to look at films from the countries involved in the current war with the same degree of detachment.”

(Correction) While the speech appeared on the web the morning of the 22nd, it was apparently given the prior week. - Dan

When Iran met its self-imposed deadline of responding to a UN Resolution by August 22nd, much of the MSM coverage reported Iran's claim that it was ready for serious talks. That's exemplified by an AP article linked at bottom. But the MSM failed to tell the whole story of Ahmadinejad's day.

While some outlets did balance that with punditry suggesting it was mainly a ploy to buy more time, no MSM outlets reported how Ahmadinejad actually started the day. He gave a political speech calling for England and America to bow and surrender.

On the August 22 edition of "NBC Nightly News," host Brian Williams described a gas station in Illinois that accidentally sold unleaded fuel for 30 cents. He sarcastically recounted the story this way:

"The pumps were quickly shut down amid fears that oil company profits might plummet. But for one brief, shining moment, we the consumers won. It was like the old days before you needed to refinance your home to refill your tank."

It should be noted, according to New York magazine, that Brian Williams makes $4 million a year. Sounding a bit like a radio DJ dedicating a song, the "Nightly News" anchor also announced that the story was "for all those who quietly suffer at the gas pump every day across this country, watching those numbers fly by."

Rusty and Allah are all over this example of just how lazy Hezbollah has become in their efforts to provide fake news. The official Hezbollah web site (with an appropriate Iranian URL) is showing a picture of a ship being ripped apart in an explosion. Hezbollah claims that the ship was an Israeli ship hit by a Hezbollah missile.

The top picture below is the photo as shown on Hezbollah's site.

And Hezbollah did hit an Israel ship, the INS Hanit, a Saar 5 class missile boat, most likely with an Iranian-made C-701 "Kosar" type missile, on July 14, 2006.

The bottom picture is the INS Hanit (photo credit: Sweetness & Light):

Note the damage (most noticeably the scorch marks) near the waterline directly under the Hanit's helicopter hanger, roughly three-quarters of the way to the stern. Note also that while the ship was reported to have serious internal damage and four Israeli sailors died in the attack, the ship is largely intact, the keel unbroken, and the ship otherwise, from this view, externally undamaged, where the ship in the Hezbollah photo to has literally been broken by the blast, the aft half of the ship behind the explosion several degrees out of alignment with the fore.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is featured in a flattering black-and-white photo on the cover of Time magazine this week -- the 10th cover story for Hillary Clinton since she appeared on the national scene hitched to Bill Clinton's wagon in 1992. That's got to be a record of sorts. But one thing was very different this time. The headline featured a poll question with two little boxes to check: "LOVE HER" or "HATE HER."

What? Someone might not love her? This must be the handiwork of Time's new Managing Editor, Richard Stengel. He’s made a public fuss about his desire to see Time be a major player in the shaping of America's opinions.

This newest cover story is a departure from the norm, the royal covers she's so often received, with titles like "Ascent of a Woman," "Turning Fifty," "Hillary In Her Own Words," and the late-Lewinsky-scandal classic, "'It's Nobody's Business But Ours.'" The normal Time magazine Hillary cover could be mistaken for the cover of Ladies' Home Journal. (There was one exception. One cover in 1996 carried the caption "The Truth About Whitewater" and featured a harshly spotlighted Hillary, but it wasn't advertising a Time article inside, but a book excerpt from James Stewart's "Blood Sport.")

Continuing with the misleading headline theme, an AP wire story running in the Kansas City Star was entitled "British gen. says Iraq mini "civil war."

That sounds suspiciously like the prevailing conventional mainstream media wisdom. If you read the article, however, you'll find that the general actually stated several times that this was really not the correct terminology to be describing the situation in Iraq, and stressed it repeatedly. No matter - statistics and studies have shown that few people read much farther than the headers and the first paragraph of any given news story, and the point is to implant in the reader's brain a framework before they even read the story. Mission accomplished. Click read more for the context the header doesn't provide.

Has Tucker Carlson ever heard of the Marshall Plan? Seriously. The question arises in light of Carlson's show-closing diatribe this afternoon. Tucker was irate that, "now that Israel is done pummeling Lebanon, Uncle Sam wants to help clean up the mess. Your hard-earned tax dollars will include $42 million to help Lebanon's military prepare for deployment in the southern part of the country, rebuild schools and help mop up an oil spill off the Lebanese coast."

He continued: "Here's the question - if the United States was so opposed to the physical destruction of Lebanon, so opposed that we would pay for the reconstruction of Lebanon, why did we allow Israel - and we did allow Israel - to use American arms to pummel Lebanon. Maybe it was a good idea, maybe it wasn't. But the fact that we are paying for the clean-up suggests we were against it in the first place. And if we were against it in the first place, why didn't we do something about it? Good question!" [If Carlson did say so himself].