Rockets land in Syria

Its either:

1) Untrue - blame the Jerusalem post if so.
2) An attempt by Hezbollah to drag Syria into the war.
3) A mistake by Hezbollah (again).
4) An Israeli plot to drag Syria into the war (why ?)

We may find out which soon.

Update: No one's declared war on anyone else yet - so no one cares or it isn't true. Either way is good at the moment.

Would the BBC dare put out a program about who Mohammed was presented by a Christian ?

Just seen the advert on TV for a program on Sunday by Rageh Omaar titled The Miracles of Jesus Sun 6 Aug, 6:35 pm - 7:35 pm - if you want to see it and you're in the UK.

Rageh Omaar presents a series which uses drama, special photography and computer generated images to bring the miracles of Jesus to life and tries to decipher their meaning. Here, he looks closely at four famous miracles - the feeding of the five thousand, the raising of the widow's son, the walking on water and the changing of water into wine at the marriage of Cana - and finds that each one provoked a radically different perception of Jesus.

Mr Omaar is most famous for his brave and pointed reporting from Baghdad during the last Gulf War for the BBC, though he's held a number of other posts in his time. He recently produced a documentary called An Islamic History of Europe.

In this 90-minute documentary Rageh Omaar uncovers the hidden story of Europe's Islamic past and looks back to a golden age when European civilisation was enriched by Islamic learning.
Rageh travels across medieval Muslim Europe to reveal the vibrant civilisation that Muslims brought to the West.
This evocative film brings to life a time when emirs and caliphs dominated Spain and Sicily and Islamic scholarship swept into the major cities of Europe.
His journey reveals the debt owed to Islam for its vital contribution to the European Renaissance.

Wikipedia reports that Mr Omaar is a Muslim born in Mogadishu in Somalia .

I'm looking forward to the time that a Christian gets to present on simulated pictures of Mohammed on the BBC - surely the infamous unbiased attitude of the BBC will have that scheduled next week ? However I don't think Rageh wrote the material, I believe he is just presenting - see link to book here. I do hope he does a good job of presenting it. But the BBC really does need to treat different faiths in the same way.

My initial reaction when I first started writing this entry was anger (you can see that in the title), but I hope that was wrong to start like that. We are perhaps all too touchy these days. Debate, as long as it is fair and open should be encouraged.

See comment on this issue on Times Online,
Xt3 seem to have more knowledge of the content of the program and have a description here.

BBC Newsnight misses some of the points on Qana

BBC's Newsnight covered this tonight - there web site is here .. but you need to see their report available for 24hrs in the UK at least here to see what they are saying - at least the link works right now, can't say for how much longer. Its about 34 minutes in if you don't have time to watch the whole thing. EU Referendum blog gets on screen but no mention of their argument - but not credit or mention of Blogs ( its referred to as internet rumour - sore point eh ? ).

The changes in Israeli timing are contrasted with a human rights NGO type. The BBC also admits that the number of dead are about half originally reported. However one of the key points on the rescue event being staged and the strange activities of the Green Helmet guy is missed. Its not like they were unaware of the argument as they have a screen shot of the EU referendum blog that makes the case, ( See EU referendum for the story here ).

Maybe Newsnight don't like taking their direction from 'the internet' (is the word blogs banned on Newsnight now ? David Mason does invite local (to rockets and bombs that is) bloggers to contact him here ). But there is a real question an moral issue of media cooperating in manipulation and propaganda with terrorists and BBC's Newsnight fluffed it totally on Wednesday night.

In fairness to them their discussion with a panel of muslims was much more interesting - "where is the moderate muslim voice" asked a number of times, but never answered to any satisfaction - quite. ( BBC Panorama last Sunday was more of a revelation on this - more on that latter. )

The manipulation of the MSM by Hezbollah

Take a look at this .... Now I know I'm going on about this, but it really is shocking (at least to me). We are being fed what Hezbollah wants us to see..

CNN's Anderson Cooper Exposes Hezbollah's Media Manipulations

Also see

Lifting the Cover of the Hezbollah PR Effort

Hezbollah more likely to kill Arabs than Jews in North Israel

The BBC headline just now is :

Israel hit by Hezbollah barrage

Hezbollah fighters have launched more than 230 rockets from Lebanon, the biggest single-day barrage since the conflict began, Israeli officials say.

One person was killed and dozens injured as some rockets landed up to 70km inside Israel, the deepest so far.

Now I hadn't realised that about 50% of the population in Northern Israel are Arab. Listening to a report on BBC Radio 4 this afternoon from an Arab in Northern Israel he said that they could only sometimes hear the warning siren in the neighboring Jewish town and most of the Arabs had stayed in the area, unlike the Jewish population that had moved further south.

So the most likely victim, or most plentiful target, of the 230 Hezbollah rockets today are Arab Muslims. ( Most of the Christian Arab population has emigrated some years ago ).

But the Arab world doesn't seem to care as far as I can see. ( If you know better post links in the comments section please. )

Update: See the Big Pharaoh here and a cartoon from his web site and I guess www.drybonesblog.com.

The Qana 'story' continues to evolve - but not for the MSM

FrontPage magazine has a interesting summary here ...

There is a real story here - you'd think the MSM could clear this up, unless they created the mess in the first place.

Update: More reporting on Hezbollah manipulating the MSM here ...

Update: Looks like BBC's Newsnight covered this tonight - there web site is here .. but you need to see their report available for 24hrs in the UK at least here to see what they are saying - at least the link works right now, can't say for how much longer. Its about 34 minutes in if you don't have time to watch the whole thing. EU Referendum blog gets on screen but no mention of their argument - but not credit or mention of Blogs ( its refered to as internet rumour - sore point eh ? ). Just watched it - not very edifying I'm afraid. They didn't address the point on the staging of the event. Missed the point guys.

Was Qana staged ?

Was Qana staged by Hezbollah ? ( Will the BBC bother to investigate ? Will it get on Newsnight ? ) This is a question being asked on the internet right now - see Michelle Malkin here ....

People who have no problem aiming rockets at innocent people presumably don't find lying with the media hard either.

Update: EU Referendum has a great piece of journalism which the BBC and liberal media will like to ignore as inconvenient for their message here....Really you should read it !

Also see the words of Dr Mounir Herzallah here... as he explains how Hezbollah have built schools on top of rocket bunkers.

Further update: See Symbel's take on this here - its an atmospheric blog worth looking at anyway !

More Updating:
AP have issued a rebuttal on the Qana photos here - against the British Web site EU Referendum ( being British presumably has the same impact in France as saying right wing in the UK - ie ignore what they say ).
EU Referendum issues their response here .....
For my money the photos are obviously to some degree staged. How likely would AP be admit a bit of over enthusiasm if it existed - very unlikely as it would destroy their credibility. Still here a real story for real journalists.
Also see a previous example of manipulated images from the press corps here ...

Update: More reporting on Hezbollah manipulating the MSM here ...

Hoon wants EU indoctrination in schools

Geoff Hoon apparently wants schools to teach about the benefits of EU membership in schools - along with the other citizenship agenda. The problem with this is the EU is a political body - many disagree with it and don't want their children being brainwashed on the subject.

My little girl (5) already comes home to denounce the hole in the ozone layer. And I know inoculating her against state socialism is going to be a real parental challenge. I don't want to add the EU to the list of things I have to keep her mind open on.

A lady speaks her mind

I assume this was on Aljazeera. She seems very brave or desperate. As often seems to be the case in the middle east she slightly over plays her hand at the end by accusing Islam of being the only religion to attack other religions forcefully. Unfortunately historically I can think of lots of examples that don't include Islam at all.

However, its encouraging that this sort of open debate goes on in the Arab media.

I shoudl add that this clip comes from MemriTV - which is I think an Israeli outfit.