From the ABC
Reuters drops freelance Lebanese photographer over image
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 websites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shiite Islamic group Hezbollah, now in its fourth week.

ABC News Online did publish the manipulated picture but has since replaced it with the unaltered image.

Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke.

Reuters says it has strict standards of accuracy that bar the manipulation of images in ways that mislead the viewer.

"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.

"This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him," she said in a statement issued in London.

Mr Hajj worked for Reuters as a non-staff freelance, or contributing photographer, from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005.

He was among several photographers from the main international news agencies whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in the village of Qana, south Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike on July 30 have been challenged by blogs critical of the mainstream media's coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Reuters and other news organisations reviewed those images and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged.

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Gus:
The adulteration of war pictures is not new... Even some of our most celebrated photographers in the first world war, often superimposed plates, used masks and various tricks to conjure the event with whatever emotion required. These days news agencies only accept pictures that have been politically manipulated BEFORE they have been taken...

Gus ALWAYS manipulates his cartoons before publication...

From the ABC

Bush hails 'defeat' of Hezbollah

United States President George W Bush is putting [http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200608/s1714924.htm|his own interpretation] on the cease-fire in Lebanon, saying Hezbollah has suffered a defeat.
While both Israel and Hezbollah are claiming victory, Mr Bush says it is clearly Hezbollah which has suffered the defeat.
He has again blamed Hezbollah for starting the month-long conflict and has praised the United Nations Security Council resolution, which has brought about a cease-fire.
"We certainly hope the cease-fire holds, because it is step one of making sure that Lebanon's democracy is strengthened," he said.

read more at the ABC
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Gus: When is this midget of a president going to realise that the only way to minimise conflict in that region is to recognise everyone's rights? Even Hizbollah's? And work hard at diplomatically reduce the tension to even create a proper relationship that can only happen if one stops blaming one of the parties involved? When he or someone else in that administration of gangsters is going to stop playing the stupid superior blame game and stop adjudicate victory to his friends who have been way offside all the time?
The issues are serious, yes. By his overt support for Israel, leading to a hardening of resolve on the other side, he is alienating everyone with any sense of justice or diplomacy. This moron is taking on board all the hardballs that even Nazis would reject and he uses the word "democracy" as if it was holly water.
When will this moron put a sock in brains and a dummy in his mouth? and go play with his marbles? By himself...
Soon I hope... see cartoon at top...

Last column of Chris Floyd at the Moscow Times

From the Moscow Times...

... All this was evident -- just from reading the mainstream press -- in the first few weeks after Sept. 11, so I wrote about it. I didn't think it was particularly controversial. Yet in those palmy days of the Bush ascendancy, The Moscow Times was one of the few mainstream, for-profit media outlets in the world publishing this kind of criticism. The paper was flooded with hate mail for printing such "traitorous filth," such "lunatic ravings." But the editors never asked me to change a single word, never censored anything. Nowadays, of course, the column's view of Howdy Dubya -- a crook, a killer, a liar, a tyrant, a mean-spirited, incompetent goon -- is practically conventional wisdom. You'll even hear it from stalwart Republicans of the old school. But The Moscow Times was on the case from the beginning. They could have easily washed their hands of this lunatic raver and saved themselves a lot of grief. But they didn't, and for that I'm [http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/08/11/120.html|eternally grateful].

The dogs bark, the caravan moves on; such is life. Yet as Lincoln once said, in a wildly dissimilar context, I am loath to close. My final word here severs my last real link to the city I've loved above all others. The echoes from the future that I first heard in this room will now be a whisper from the past. Yet to have known Moscow, to have called it home, even for a season, is surely privilege enough for anyone. Why ask for more? Let the circle come to a close, here where it began. Do svidaniya

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Gus: we will miss you there but we will follow you at the Burlesque... Good luck.

Bush is crap, says Prescott

Deputy PM criticises US handling of Middle East, condemning 'cowboy' President at private meeting

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 17 August 2006

John Prescott has given vent to his private feelings about the Bush presidency, summing up George Bush's administration in a single word: [http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1219716.ece|crap].

Read more overthere...

and you may vist this [http://www.thehollywoodliberal.com/bush_blair_london_terrorism.htm|item]

Robert Fisk: In the face of Bush's lies, it's left to Assad to tell the truth

Published: 16 August 2006

In the sparse Baathist drawing rooms of Damascus, reality often seems a long way away. But it was a sign of the times that President Bashar al-Assad was able to bring the great and the good of Damascus to their feet by the simple token of telling the truth - which no other Arab leader has chosen to do these past five weeks: that the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla army has, in effect, won this round of their war with Israel.

There was plenty of hyperbole in the Assad speech. A conflict that has cost 1,000 Lebanese civilian lives can hardly be called a "glorious battle" but he did at least reflect more reality than his opposite number in Washington who, [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1219457.ece|driven by self-delusion] or his love of Israel, claimed that Hizbollah had been defeated in Lebanon.

from Comedy Zone
Wednesday, August 16, 2006 11:43:00 AM
NEWS
Is George W. Bush An Idiot?

Finally the mainstream media are running clips that have been appearing on the Internets ever since George W. Bush became a familiar name on the public stage.

Last night Joe Scarborough, not a liberal by any stretch of the imagination, ran a segment in which he posed the question: [http://www.satiresearch.com/go.asp?sid=49097|"Is Bush an idiot?"]

Frankly we here [Comedy Zone] at this sorry excuse for a publication are fearful that if the mainstream media begin to question the mental capacity of our commander in chief then they may also begin to start to poke fun of him. If they start to poke fun of him then it will place hundreds of so-called online satire writers with far too much time on their hands out of business. Thereby forcing us out of the basement of our mothers apartment and into the real world where we may have to find a job.

Gus: Watch the mainstream media on line... from YouTube...

Yes Gus & it seems deputy UK PM, John Prescott, agrees ....

‘John Prescott has given vent to his private feelings about the Bush presidency, summing up George Bush's administration in a single word: crap.

The Deputy Prime Minister's condemnation of President Bush and his approach to the Middle East could cause a diplomatic row but it will please Labour MPs who are furious about Tony Blair's backing of the United States over the bombing of Lebanon.

The remark is said to have been made at a private meeting in Mr Prescott's Whitehall office on Tuesday with Muslim MPs and other Labour MPs with constituencies representing large Muslim communities. Muslim MPs wanted to press home their objections to British foreign policy and discuss ways of improving relations with the Muslim communities.’

Bush Is Crap, Says Prescott

GOD is not a team player. Even when He was a team, God the Father refused to intervene when His only son, Jesus Christ, was for the high jump on the cross at Calvary. God the Holy Ghost just flew overhead, getting the best view.

God is also a merry prankster with an exquisite sense of timing. Just as Tony Abbott is about to scream uncle to Julia Gillard and Bob Brown's administration of Chinese burns to his forearms on the issue of a carbon tax, the Puyehue volcano in the Andes mountains of southern Chile blows up. It poses the question, whatever carbon tax we impose on industry in Australia - on businesses who pump carbon into air as a waste product - how are we going to fine the Andes mountains or the real culprit, Puyehue, for spewing all that carbon dust into the air as if it were a giant candle on Guy Fawkes night?

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-dummy-spit-by-god-20110625-1gke1.html#ixzz1QMosu8Uo