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Blame it on the USA.

Don’t blame it on the muslims.

Gearing up for the 9/11 anniversary, I suppose.

This is no invitation to vent, though constructive rants are always welcome. The vast majority of commenters I trust to observe this; those in doubt should read the sidebar guidance. I think that the greatest disservice a journalist can do is to depart from the relevant facts. Coincidentally I just got back from watching Flight 93 at the cinema. Remarkable film.

UK media, including the BBC, seem to have moved on from the ambulance attack story. Not so in Australia, where foreign minister Alexander Downer’s description of the story as ‘a hoax‘, citing the evidence also linked to by Biased BBC, has kept it very much alive.

Oz blogger Tim Blair rounds up the contradictions in the various descriptions of the ‘attack’. And a story in Australian newspaper The Age, titled “Ambulance attack evidence stands the test”, claims that the ambulance in which Mr Fawaz allegedly lost a leg was not the one shown on the BBC website (picture 7), but was the one shown below. Unfortunately, the Age seem to be coy about giving the public any more photographs – and this one is not on their website, but scanned from the print edition.

Compared with the ‘original’ ambulance (below), the ambulance above looks even older and rustier, and the red cross is very faded, even given that the colour balance may not be the same in the photos (compare the orange suits of the paramedics).

I just don’t like inauthenticity. That’s where it begins. I was dutifully reading the latest BBC report from the frontlines of the battle for gay rights when I noticed something not-quite-right about their article.

There was a picture of two black “men holding hands”- as the photo was labelled- above a caption mentioning that “Homosexuality is illegal in Ghana”, and I thought, so what? Doesn’t mean they’re gay or anything.

No, but it means they are gay to us, that is to say, us Westerners.

I knew from experience of Kenya that men there often hold hands and are just being friendly and respectful. I wondered if it was different in Ghana. It isn’t. It’s also the case in South Africa.

So the picture is meaningless in the Ghanaian context, and meaningless to Southern Africa generally. It’s actually being culturally insulting; after all, as the last link points out, “Confident of who they are, and caring deeply about the people who are around them, African men use their bodies, nonsexually, to express closeness and joy. I must admit that as I walked through the township with my hand being held by a male elder, surprisingly I did not feel foreign.” (yes, I know- how twee)

I have to say that I know there is another side to this “joy” of masculinity, which is that if a man holds hand with a woman she is generally deemed a prostitute.

But still, the BBC misrepresent wilfully a basic cultural fact- for effect, it would seem. I say wilful, because as John Simpson has recently boasted, “Nowadays the BBC is the world’s biggest international broadcaster, leaving rivals like CNN, Fox or Al-Jazeera behind, both in terms of its bureaux and correspondents and its vast worldwide audiences.”

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

If anyone wants some food for thought, this from James Lewis should provoke offer some.

Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

Without a clue, that is, offered as to the story underlying the reconstruction of S. Lebanon.

Like many internet oriented folk I expect, I’ve come across numerous stories of how Hizbullah is patching up its fiefdom- that is, South Lebanon. Take a look at this one. Not to your taste? How about this.

As The Guardian reports,

“As refugees flood back to their war-ravaged villages, Hizbullah has flung itself to the front of the burgeoning reconstruction effort in southern Lebanon, funded with a deluge of petro-dollars from neighbouring Iran.”

All of which makes the BBC’s latest, and prolonged, frontpage offensive look like nothing short of misleading advertising pleading for international donors. They seem to be saying something like “come and get your free headline billing here- just give your hard-taxed dollars/yen/pounds/Euros to Hizbollah/Iran Lebanon and your slot is guaranteed”.

I link two articles from the BBC above. In neither is Iran given even a mention (I have saved a copy of each should the stealth edit arise). In one of them Syria appears just once, a vanishingly brief mention in connection with Kofi paying them a visit to discuss their support for Hizbullah*.

This is not journalism. It is anti-journalism. It suppresses the reality that Hizbullah has its own plans for reconstruction largely separate from any that the Lebanese government, in as far as it may act without Hizbullah’s consent, may have. The ‘international community’ will just provide the icing, the morale booster.

Of course this is vital information for the public to make sense of Israel’s problems with Lebanon, and any of its actions subsequent to the ceasefire.

(*By the way, I notice that the BBC talks of “Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrillas.” What on earth does this mean, really? Hizbullah is a political party in Lebanon, with many seats in Parliament owing to electoral success in the South of the country.)

ps.- an instructive comparison:

“The Lebanese government has previously put the cost of damage at $3.6bn. It says 15,000 homes were damaged in the conflict and has appealed for $75m for temporary housing and $30m to repair major roads and put up bridges.” (the BBC)

“The housing scheme will benefit 15,000 families, Mr Nasrallah said, and will cost up to $150m, according to one estimate. Funding will come from oil-rich Iran, which until now has mostly supplied Hizbullah with thousands of missiles used against Israel.” (The Guardian)

This time on journalists.

Israeli rocket hits Reuters car

The air strike was one of several in Gaza on Saturday night An Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City during a security operation has injured a Reuters news agency cameraman and a local journalist. At least one rocket hit the car as the cameraman was filming, knocking him unconscious, while the second man received serious leg wounds. The Reuters car was clearly marked all over as a media vehicle.

The Power Line blog (of Dan Rather fame) raises a question or two. In the interests of balance, Hot Air considers a missile attack possible.

Ambulance Update – as Melanie Phillips reports, the Lebanese Red Cross, whose high resolution photo of the ambulance has been used as evidence against the missile attack claim, have removed the image from their website. (I don’t agree with her btw that the affair demonstrates “unprecedented proportions” of hatred. It demonstrates a journalistic mindset, part bias, part laziness, that takes as gospel every story it’s fed by one side, without ever asking of its sources the famous Paxman question.)

Reuters Update – the Confederate Yankee blog had the bright idea of asking some armoured van manufacturers for their views. In their opinion, probably not a missile.

In creating the post on the amazing ambulance attack fraud, I inadvertantly overwrote the post on Saturday’s edition of Radio Four’s “Excess Baggage”, the comments of which are now on the ambulance post.

If anyone has the cached text of the post, could they add it to the comments so that I can recreate it ? Ta.

In his August 10 despatch from Tyre, Jim Muir described “Walking in fear in Lebanon’s no-drive zone”. Even ambulances, he said, were in danger of Israeli air attack.

Ambulances in danger

Around the corner is the Lebanese Red Cross. Lots of ambulances outside, immobile. Then the sound of an engine, and one moves.

“Don’t worry, I’m just parking!” shouts the driver. He is Kassem Shaalan. He knows what it is like to be hit by a rocket.

Red Cross vehicles face destroyed roads as well as direct hits

On the evening of 23 July, he and two other medics answered a call to rendezvous with an ambulance from Tibnin, in the hills to the east, to relay three civilian patients down to Tyre.

Both ambulances were struck precisely by separate rockets as they were stopped at the roadside near Qana for the transfer.

It was 2230 at night. There was nothing else on the road. They were clearly marked, and lit up with flashing blue lights and illuminated Red Cross flags.

Kassem, his two colleagues, the three medics in the other ambulance, and the three Lebanese patients, were all injured.

One of the patients, 38-year-old Ahmad Fawwaz, lost his leg in the ambulance. His mother Jamileh, 58, and son Ahmad, 8, were both seriously injured.

We get many calls from villages saying they have injured people, but there is no permission to go Kassem Shaalan Lebanese Red Cross

But they all survived. And Kassem is back at work.

“Until now, we don’t understand why they did it,” he says now. “It has confused us. But it will not stop us. I’m still wearing the Red Cross uniform, and if they tell me to go, I’ll go and help.

“Because of the Israeli warning, every movement we do goes through the International Red Cross,” he says.

“They ask Israel for permission. If we have it, we go. If we don’t, we can’t. We get many calls from villages saying they have injured people, but there is no permission to go. Yes, people could be dying because we can’t get to them in time. If you don’t get treated within one hour, you are much more likely to die.”

A sad state of affairs indeed, reinforced by the BBC’s picture (picture 7) of the damaged ambulance, complete with “in this incident one patient lost a leg“.

Unfortunately the story appears to be complete nagombi from beginning to end, from the precisely targeted ambulance, through the drivers injuries, to the mysterious missing leg.

Zombietime has details which comprehensively demolish the BBC version (one example – the hole in the ambulance roof is by strange chance exactly the right size to take the red domed vent cover fitted to Lebanese ambulances. Even the BBC photo shows the screw holes).

Now I’m sure Jim Muir doesn’t go out to concoct a story which will put Israel in a bad light. But such a story, presented to him by Lebanese sources, has two characteristics which appear to have resulted in an absence of even the most basic fact-checking, such as “is this what a vehicle hit by an Israeli missile looks like ?“

One – it fits the BBC worldview.

Two – it’s just such a good story. Why ruin it by fact-checking ?

More kudos to the B-BBC commentariat coming up. When they smell a rat there usually is a rat.

John’s comment is a classic, retrospectively:

“I just caught Ola Guerin’s report on Kofi Anan’s visit to Beirut, it was very different from the one I saw beforehand on Sky. She depicted Kofi like a frightened rabbit, with Hezbollah supporters, especially screaming fanatical women, almost about to lynch him in Beirut, and gave the impression that if it wasn’t for his security it would have happened.

The sky report just mentioned his visit, it was devoid of showing a Hezbollah threat or that he was threatened. There must be a BBC agenda here“

Well, indeed (highlight mine).

And Archduke said:

“classic Orla Guerin tonight on the 6 o clock news.

bwaaaaaaahhh…

Both comments top and tail this instance of Orlaesque reporting, as seen from “our side”, the viewing side.

But the suspicions highlighted here are amply confirmed in this post from the Counterterrorism blog, a “multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues”, whose correspondent in Beirut describes unauthorised media footage of the arrival of Annan in Beirut:

“Lebanese Army officers and Hezbollah were seen smiling at each other and coordinating the staged demonstration. A camera linked to an international media agency was broadcasting live from behind the Hezbollah’s security lines. It captured the details of the “show.” A group of women and girls, in traditional Muslim dresses and scarves were gathered by Hezbollah bearded security some 15 minutes before the motorcade arrives. The gathering was at about 30 feet away from where Annan’s car was supposed to stop. This indicates that the motorcade security and the Hezbollah operatives knew ahead of time where the spot would be and had the women standing and waiting. Posters of Hassan Nasrallah were then distributed to the women….

As the UN delegation approached the group walking, the women screamed the name of Nasrallah and behind them couple men screamed “down, down, USA” (especially when the international media appeared). As soon as the officials walked farther, and as in a choreographed play, the women dispersed themselves opening the path for the militiamen looking males to rush behind the delegation walking through the ruins. Responding to orders barked form inside the group, the mens’ “demo” got loud and slogans were shouted with greater energy and menace. Interestingly, and since the camera was filming live from behind and feeding it to satellite around the world, observers were able to “see” the whole operation to its most detailed developments”

Now then, a question for the commentariat. Orla- corrupt or incompetent? I know which one I would go for, and it doesn’t begin with ‘i’. Also, if someone can track down this latest Orlrage in the form of a clip, I’d be only too delighted to link to it.