Heh....In all seriousness this is a troubling (though not suprising) story.
There has been much ado about this over the last several years though such blatant (and crappy) photoshops are rather new. Reuters has a generally anti-western bias in a lot of its reporting, though it is likely this is just Bo-Bo provincialism at work rather than (as some hotheads imply ) being on the jihadists payroll.
However, over at the always eclectic, and generally thoughtful Ghost Blog, Memewarrior Matoko seems upset with the attention being given to this by the right:
......Personally, i think the wedding dress and toys posed poignanatly in front of the rubble of lebabnon merely represent "art shots", a sort of conceptual art designed for visual impact. Not really a faithful visual recording of something that randomly occurred. Adnan Hajj's Beirut photoshop enhanced the visuals to portray the destruction of south beirut more dramatically. These pictures are for sale in a competitive market.......
Which is all well and good for ART or even editorials, but this is being presented as news. Yes, the pictures are for sale in competitive markets and one of those is the market of ideas in a war of ideas. I am not seeing a similar number of mistakes and 'artsy visual impact enhancements' that put the Jews in a similarly sympathetic light, so getting upset about this is not hysterical as is suggested in the above linked post.
The Palastinians and Hezbollah have a long history of this sort of thing.
So being suspicious is not hysterical.
Photoshopping the Beirut skyline to make the devastation look far worse when Israel is making considerable efforts to be as prescise as possible in their bombing is not art, it is dishonest yellow journalism and is playing directly into the hands of the Jihadists.
......Just as jihadwatch sees "dhimmitude" in the bend of a blade of grass, the rightside blogverse is seeing hizb' propaganda and info war covert ops in every image......
The enemies we (and Israel) are fighting depend on, thrive on, indeed, grow on this sort of propaganda. It doesn't really matter if this in no way done by Hezbollah, it serves their purposes and they can use it. Hezbollah is very good at this sort of thing, it is what they do. It is how a group of antisemitic thugs, murderers and terrorists who hide amongst children, draw fire upon families and in fact started this current conflict can have support rom the very people they have brought hell upon. They are masters of using this and to call attention to misrepresentations that play into the hands of those same murdering thugs is neither paranoid nor delusional.
To underestimate ones enemy, however, is.
Sometimes a picture is just a picture
A picture is indeed often just a picture, but a picture tells a thousand words and when pictures lie the truth often drowns.
More on this here, here, here, here, and a very link rich roundup here.
Oh and Major, I particularly want you to click HERE .
Because I'm just such a sad, petty, digital cracker. ;)
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