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Philosophy of Haj based on global government - Ahmadinejad Greetings, future dhimmis "If we would delete the ultimate objective of establishing a global system from the Haj rituals, the remainder would be deeds devoid of a soul." He said it. From IRNA (thanks to Sr. Soph): IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Wednesday on Al-Adha Eid Day in Saudi Arabia philosophy of Haj can be defined merely through considering Islam's aim at establishment...

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS by Clement Clarke Moore 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled down for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was...

Pilgrims pack Mecca ahead of annual haj By Jonathan Wright Fri Dec 14, 10:11 AM ET MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - About 1 million Muslim pilgrims from across the world packed the mosque and streets around the Kaaba shrine in the holy city of Mecca for the last Friday prayers before the annual haj pilgrimage. Pilgrims trekked to the mosque hours in advance to reserve a space for their prayer mats as close as possible to the Kaaba, a cubic stone structure which Muslims regard as the centre of an ancestral monotheistic cult established by the prophet Ibrahim, known to...

NEW DELHI: India yesterday dismissed allegations of recklessness after Indonesia said one of its passenger jets was forced to turn around in mid-air due to a ballistic missile test. The Garuda Indonesia plane, full of Muslim pilgrims en route to Saudi Arabia, had reached Indian airspace when the nuclear-capable missile flew through the sky. The incident on Thursday has triggered a diplomatic row between the two countries, with Indonesia's foreign ministry demanding an explanation as to why no warning was given. But New Delhi said this was not the case. "A notice was sent a week before the test by...

As the Bush administration squanders a trust, Democrats prepare a new “Sister Souljah Moment.” By Andrew C. McCarthy On a weekend when the Bush administration achieved a new CAIR-friendly low, a prominent Democrat, following the lead of other prominent Democrats, distanced herself very publicly from the unsavory Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Transportation Security Administration is the executive agency created after 9/11 to protect American travelers. Yet, Americans viewing its website this weekend could not have felt very protected. Aghast, instead, would have been the proper response to this posting. As if snuggling up to CAIR, coercing our law-enforcement and...

MENA, Saudi Arabia, Dec 31 (Reuters) - More than 2.5 million Muslim haj pilgrims performed devil-stoning rites on Sunday, amid tight security to prevent overcrowding and protests following the execution of Saddam Hussein. The 5-day haj, marred by deadly stampedes in recent years, was overshadowed by the hanging on Saturday of the former Iraqi leader, a hero to some Sunni Arabs because of his anti-U.S. stance, but hated by many Shi'ites. "The number one Satan is America," said Iraqi pilgrim Suleiman Awadallah, who described himself as "a resistance fighter", after performing the stoning ritual. "The prayers of all Muslims when...

IT'S bad enough that friends of Hezbollah terrorists could trick so many journalists with just a tall story and a rusty Lebanese ambulance. Worse is that some of those journalists seemed so eager to believe this ambulance was indeed wickedly blown up by an Israeli missile fired straight through the big red cross on its roof -- leaving not even a scorch mark. But worst is that even now that this hoax has been exposed, none of the countless writers and commentators who fell for it have admitted to passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists. It is this...

The media war against Israel Early in the recent Lebanon war, the blogosphere revealed the fabrication of images by Reuters, whose reputation is now in shreds among those dwindling numbers in the western mainstream media who still acknowledge there is such a thing as the truth. Since then, the nature and scale of the various frauds perpetrated by the media during that war put those doctored Reuters pictures into the shade. The western media are no longer merely producing questionable professional practices in reporting a war. They are now active participants in it — and on the wrong side of...

International journalists discuss Lebanon war coverage; NYT bureau chief: Israel 'not interested in Lebanese deaths' A number of journalists claimed during a convention in Jerusalem Monday evening that Israel and the IDF were mostly to blame for the way the foreign media covered the Lebanon war. The panel of journalists, largely from the international media, convened to discuss their coverage of the war, at a conference arranged by the Media Line agency's Mideast Press Club. "Journalists' access to the battlefield is controlled exclusively by the IDF," said Simon McGregor-Wood, Chairman of the Foreign Press Association, and Bureau Chief of ABC...

Fauxtography Defender's Faux News Turns out that Greg Mitchell, the Editor & Publisher editor who has been attacking the blogosphere like a rabid ferret for pointing out the bogus news from the Middle East, has first-hand experience with staging news. (Hat tip: Confederate Yankee.) Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts,...

All Your Fakes Are Belong to Us A jawa video spoof on Beirut Fauxtography.

Amid the controversy over certain pictures from Lebanon, a longtime student of war photography asks, "I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both." By David D. Perlmutter (August 18, 2006) -- The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks...

It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations, and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) calls it "fauxtography." Reuters on Sunday withdrew an image of smoke rising from burning buildings after an Israeli air strike on the suburbs of Beirut on...

The first Photoshop war Lebanon war's doctored photos could be harbinger of photojournalism crisis Gal Mor The photo of an apparently new Mickey Mouse doll, resting on a ruined street in the Lebanese town of Tyre following an Israeli Air Force attack, took me back to a British TV show called "Drop the Dead Monkey," which aired in Israel about 15 years ago. One of the journalists in Channel 4's satirical show used to hang around battle zones with a teddy bear in his trunk and place it at disaster zones a short time before cameras began shooting, in order...

Many of the mainstream media apologists have conceded – and they had little choice but to do so – that many of the photographs of the Israelis’ response to Hez b’Allah’s act of war, were staged. The evidence of staging and Photoshopping is too public. The media allowed itself to be used to defame Israel, stir up sympathy for Lebanon and halt the advance into Lebanon. But the concessions of wrongdoing stop short with digital alterations. Media spokesmen are still in denial about the biggest media fraud of all: the dramatic dead baby display at Qana. EUreferendum has not given...

When Reuters was forced to sever ties with free-lance photographer Adnan Hajj and remove more than 900 of his photos from its database earlier this month, long-whispered questions about the reliability of Arab stringers and freelancers came to the forefront. But while the widespread use of Arab locals in covering the Middle East raises many legitimate concerns, the Palestinian propaganda machine has enjoyed tremendous success over the years hoodwinking supposedly sophisticated Western journalists. And Hezbollah appears to have done the same over the past month. In short, almost nothing that is purported to happen in the Arab world can automatically...

Thanks to some intrepid digging from commenters Lancelot and Harris at EU Referendum, another video of the events at Qana has been found. This is one that I have never seen before and really shows what was going on that day. It is truly a must see for anyone that believes that the photos at Qana were staged. It completely debunks the "our photographers do not set up photos" and "the rescuers were not holding up the children for photos" claims. Believe it or not, it is a link from Wikipedia of all places. Here's the direct link to the...

Lebanese rescuer 'Green Helmet' injured A civil defense worker who has drawn controversy for holding up the bodies of children killed in Lebanon said Tuesday he was lightly injured fighting a weekend fire sparked by an Israeli bomb. Salam Daher, dubbed the Green Helmet for the color of his civil defense headgear, said he was hit by debris Sunday when a bomb or missile fell on a building while he was helping to battle a fire at a gas station in the port city of Tyre. "I fell over when the bomb hit, and I got some scratches from debris...

Ray Robison has yet another example of staged photojournalism from Lebanon, a car with verses from the Koran strategically placed for propaganda effect: Al-AP at it again with staged photos. Ray comments: Notice this car has a wall-hanging positioned on the door. An Arabic reader tells me this board has verses from the Koran on it. Because Islam does not allow for images of the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims use verses to adorn their homes the same way some Christians use paintings of Jesus. If you want to make the argument that this wall-hanging got where it is by chance, then...

Fox is now showing the German TV video of Qana showing Green Helmet Guy posing a dead child Click here to watch the Fox News video Here is the original FR post Here is the original video on YouTube: Green Helmet the movie director [Germany's NDR busts him in the act]

The recent discovery that a Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated pictures he took for Reuters has raised questions about the standards of photojournalism at a time of widespread digital photography. The case also increased pressure on news photo editors, who select and edit thousands of photographs under deadline pressure each day, to detect digital alterations. "The Soviets had to have a whole department to doctor pictures," said David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair and a former director of photography for Life magazine. "Now all it takes is a swipe of a mouse, and the kid down the...

AP Circles the Wagons Around Green Helmet Guy It’s utterly surreal. The Associated Press does a full court press, supporting the man they now call Salam Daher with a multimedia presentation packed full of distortions and outright lies: A Grueling Task in Lebanon. Watch the AP presentation here: A Grueling Task in Lebanon

Kopel: Were front-page photos staged? Images from Qana raise issue of whether media were manipulated. If you see a news photograph of the war in Lebanon, shot from within Hezbollah territory, can you be confident the picture and caption are accurate? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Earlier this week, Reuters fired photographer Adnan Hajj and withdrew his portfolio of 920 pictures after Little Green Footballs, The Jawa Report, and many other weblogs provided evidence that Hajj had used digital editing and other techniques to fake numerous photos of the Lebanon war. On July 31, the News and Post ran the...

DAY 2 - THIS IS OUR 'TOP' POST UNTIL WE GET A RESPONSE FROM AP Page views since posting: 10,411 - First posted: 7.25 PM 10 August 2006. New post underneath this one. They hunt in packs, they film in packs and they lie in packs. And their bosses, sitting in their air-conditioned offices, thousands of miles from the action, back up their lies. And the liar-in-chief is Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor for Associated Press. Unlike Reuters' who have at least admitted their photo-fraud and started their own internal investigation, Carroll's hastily-produced "rebuttal" of the staged...

At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media. Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web site www.LittleGreenFootballs.com is credited with first revealing the scandal, which has been dubbed Reutersgate, but the affair has spread far wider than the Reuters News Agency and into several of...

ATTENTION EDITORS - CAPTION CORRECTION FOR SJS01 - 05 WHICH WERE TRANSMITTED AT APPROXIMATELY 1725 GMT ON AUGUST 9, 2006. THE CAPTION INCORRECTLY STATES THE CAUSE OF DEATH. CORRECTED VERSIONS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOW THIS ADVISORY. WE ARE SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED. REUTERS. A Palestinian man carries the body of three year-old Raja Abu Shaban, in Gaza August 9, 2006. The three-year-old girl who had been reported killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Wednesday actually died of an accident, Palestinian medical workers said on Thursday. Workers at Gaza's Shifa hospital said on August 10, 2006 that the...

-Snip- As we said about the Reuters incident, media bias is a consensus, not a conspiracy. Consensus is what this apparent rash of unprofessional photography appears to be, which should remind U.S. policy-makers that active public diplomacy is indispensable as long as there are journalists who find war stories too good to check. -Snip-These new instances appear to be shoddy journalism, not propagandizing, and so their bias is inadvertent but nevertheless revealing. -Snip- Once the facts emerge in such cases, the full weight of the government's communications efforts should be made to ensure that the correct information is distributed broadly...

Warning Graphic Content Germany`s NDR presents unpublished video footage from the qana events, demasking "Green Helmet" as a cynical movie director, staging photographs with a liitle boys body. ... (more) Watch the video here Warning: It's graphic.

LGF: “Fauxtography” is born Slublog: Toys in all the right places Extreme Makeover Beirut Edition Allah Pundit * Lebanese pieta * Gway Pundit Ynetnews on AP photos Watch the Video

Media Bias: Need a little anti-war, anti-Semitic buck-up? Try some Reuters coverage. The British news outlet will be only too happy to oblige. Over the weekend, a Reuters photographer was caught trying to make one of Israel's defensive attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon look much more devastating than it was. The photo was eventually withdrawn and the photographer ostensibly fired. The photo, an image of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, had apparently been altered to give the effect that the smoke was thicker and the damage worse than it was. The doctored version, credited to Adnan Hajj,...

The Passion of the Toys In Platoon, Oliver Stone said the first casualty of war is innocence. He was wrong. As the photos here show, the first casualties of war are...the symbols of innocence. And photographers from Reuters and the AP just happened upon many of these perfectly placed symbols of war's horrors. Ben Curtis, AP Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Issam Kobeisi, Reuters Mohamed Azakir, Reuters This last one is the only one that seems...untouched. Feel the pathos. Mourn for these oh-so-photogenic and suspiciously dust-free trinkets of childhood. Just don't ask any questions about their...

Michelle recaps the Hajj/Reuters affair along with great examples of the doctored and staged photos. A must see. Click here to watch the videoA must watch

The interesting thing about the scandal surrounding the use of fake photoshopped pictures from the fighting in Lebanon is that it is BIG NEWS everywhere EXCEPT in the Lamestream Media where there is barely a mention of it. On the Web, TECHNORATI shows "Reuters" as the #1 search item, "Lebanon" as #2, and Reuters fake photo photographer, "Adnan Hajj" at #3. So why the disconnect? One might as well ask why newspaper circulation is plummeting or why Network News viewership is steadily declining. In fact, this fake photo story probably wouldn't have even become big news had it not...

LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah. Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work. "There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image," Szlukovenyi said in a statement. "Reuters...

Fox News just reported that Reuters admits second photo was doctored. Here's the image:

Another photo by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj has been shown to be doctored. The photo, which proports to be of an Israeli F-16 firing missiles on Lebanon has been doctored to make the photo seem more sensational. Here is the original Reuters photo along with its caption.

LONDON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Reuters, the global news and information agency, told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut. The photograph by Adnan Hajj, which was published on news Web sites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shi'ite Islamic group Hizbollah, now in its fourth week. Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered...

MENA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - The death toll could rise to 300 in Saudi Arabia where Muslim pilgrims were crushed to death on Thursday during a stoning ritual on the last day of the haj, medical sources said. "It's likely to be around 300 in the end," said a medic in Mena. Medical sources earlier said more than 100 people died. The Saudi Interior Ministry said earlier in a statement that an unknown number of people had been killed in the crush at the eastern entrance of Mena's Jamarat Bridge after pilgrims jostled to perform the stoning ritual between noon...

Islamic pilgrims shout hateful slogans, hear speech on 'satanic policies of Zionism' Yaniv Berman As two million Muslim pilgrims flooded Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage, a speech said to have been written by Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah 'Ali Khamanai was delivered by his representative for Hajj affairs, Muhammad Muhammadi Reyshahri. The speech - one of the Hajj’s first events - spoke of "the mercenary government of Israel" and the "satanic policies of international Zionism," as well as targeting the United States. Typical was an attack on the "colonial methods" used by the "Great Satan." During the speech, many members...

Several Palestinian militiamen who tried to cross the Rafah border on Sunday on their way to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca [haj] were turned back by Palestinian Authority policemen and European monitors. This is the first time that such people are banned from leaving the Gaza Strip since Israel relinquished control over the Rafah border crossing last summer. One of those who were turned back was Jamal Abu Samhadanah, the overall commander of the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip. The group consists of gunmen from various Palestinian factions and has been responsible for many attacks on IDF soldiers...

SAUDI Arabia has said more than half a million Muslims had arrived for next month's haj pilgrimage to Mecca and had been checked for disease, amid fears about the global spread of bird flu. State news agency SPA quoted Health Minister Hamad al-Manei as saying the 622,000 pilgrims who had arrived up to now for the rites, due to begin in the second week of January, were "clear of any virus or illness". "Anyone found to have an illness is sent back to his country immediately," he said, adding the kingdom had beefed up health checks at arrival points around...

As this year’s Haj winds down into the final moments, it has been gratifying to note that there have been hardly any accidents or incidents to mar this period of worship. It was also heartwarming to note that the messages emanating from the three million pilgrims from around the world who had gathered in Makkah and who had labored these last few days were one for a hope for peace. A peace not only for themselves, but also for all of humanity, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine, or any of the other hotspots around the world. There...

ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia (AFP) - The annual hajj pilgrimage culminated with the converging of some two million pilgrims from around the world on Mount Arafat, a revered place in Islam near Mecca. From sunrise, convoys of more than 20,000 buses carried the pilgrims from Mina valley where they spent the night in a city of tents. The faithful -- men clad in a two-piece seamless white cloth, the women covered except for the hands and face -- spend the day praying for forgiveness and beseeching God for success in a symbolic enactment of the Final Judgement at the scene of...

MOSCOW, January 8 (Itar-Tass) - A total of 332 Chechen hajjis are going to Saudi Arabia for the 2005 hajj, said the Deputy Mufti of the Chechen Republic, Mohmad Dadayev. “All of them will get the visas and necessary documents and will fly to Saudi Arabia by two jets from Makhachkala [capital of Russia’s North-Caucasian territory of Dagestan – Itar-Tass],” he said. Each hajji paid his own money for the trip – about 1,300 U.S. dollars per person, Dadayev said. About a thousand people wanted to go to Mecca, but problems with obtaining Russian foreign travel passports did not let...

JEDDAH, 16 December 2004 — The sacrificial sheep coupon, which is part of the Project for the Utilization of Sacrificial Animals During Haj managed by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), will cost SR75 more this year than last. This year’s coupon, available at Al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corp., will cost SR450 compared to SR375 last year. Dr. Ahmad Ali, president of the IDB, emphasized that the bank made every effort to keep the price down but that the increase reflected market conditions. As for camels, the market is open and pilgrims can negotiate a price including all services from slaughter...

The New York Times broke the media silence on the cause of Arafat's death Friday by suggesting the terrorist leader may have died from AIDS. In an article entitled "Secrecy by Aides and Silence by Doctors Persists, and What Killed Arafat Is Still a Mystery" the paper chronicled Arafat's rapid health decline and the mystery shrouding his illness. Two days before his death, aides revealed that Arafat was in a coma after having a brain hemorrhage. But the Times doubts this stroke was likely not the cause of Arafat's death. Another clue: "At the time of his medical evacuation to...

...Bangladesh has a reputation for moderate Islam, for democracy, and for promoting the rights of women. Indeed, women lead both major political parties, the governing Bangladesh National Party of prime minister Khaleda Zia and the opposition Awami League. Mainstream parties accept that they can only assume power through elections. Bangladesh is home to the Grameen Bank, cited as a model of development for the way that it empowers poor women through small scale loans, or "micro-credit." But the Islamist current, once marginal, appears to be growing. In 1998, when Osama bin Laden declared "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," few took...

I would like to thank Dr. Laila Al-Ahdab from the bottom of my heart. I am grateful for her article which appeared in Al-Watan, "Which Is Right to Follow: Tradition or Religion?" It was an eye-opener for every Saudi male or female who wants to know the truth about how the current situation in the Kingdom regarding women has everything to do with our customs and traditions but very little with our religion. In the article, Dr. Laila gave examples from Al-Bukhari and Muslim (the two most reliable sources of Hadith) of how there was no segregation between men and...

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