The "Re-Branding" Of Uncle Mahmoud

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Coming from a background in advertising and marketing, I pay close attention to the way that words and images are used to depict political, philosophical and economic ideas.

Which is part of the reason why I was so horrified by the ease with which the Clintonistas, with their Hollywood enablers, could convince the American people of the merits in their socialistic ideas, during their "two-for-the-price-of-one" reign.

In advertising, there is a concept called "re-branding" - which essentially means that when one brand (e.g. Coke, Skechers, etc.) gets into trouble for any reason, then it's time for a massive image adjustment, if not a complete re-launch, under a similar or different brand name.

The Iranian madman, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has apparently been paying close attention to America's and the world's mainstream media, and general advertising strategies.

Ahmedinejad's hat-trick with CBS's Mike Wallace via his "60 Minutes" interview was merely his first "shot across the bow" to demonstrate how well he has learned how to play the modern media game. It also demonstrated how gullible the MSM has become, to let him get away with his "re-branding" of himself as a benevolent "peace" activist.

According to Ahmedinejad, here is a visual summary of his new stance on geopolitical relations (click to enlarge):

In reality --- the reality that the MSM keeps trying to deny, or pretend he cannot possibly mean --- is depicted below (click to enlarge):

The MSM would much rather focus its resources, and the precious air-time and space in their newspapers and magazines, on really important stories ---- like the JonBonet Ramsey investigation, celebrity gossip, whether Katie Couric will be happy at the CBS Nightly News anchor desk, fluctuating gas prices, political horse-races, etc.

(For more background, check out this story I posted here on this blog --- my very first conspiracy theory!!!)

Until we wake up and realize that there is only ONE Iranian madman, that he is SERIOUS about what he says (re threats), the sooner we will forge a realistic and effective means of protecting America, and dealing with this menace, once and for all.



© Copyright 2006 by Jon Quixote. All rights reserved. Qualified media representatives interested in publishing this item may contact jonquix@hotmail.com for information.

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Must-Read Michelle Malkin: "The Photo Shop Of Horrors"

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The fantastic Michelle Malkin hits another home-run with this article, posted here.

Key excerpts below.

(Also see HotAir, Michelle's videoblog, left)

Last week, Middle East-based photographer Bryan Denton, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, revealed on the professional photography website Light Stalkers (www.lightstalkers.org) that he had observed routine staging of photos --- and even corpse-digging — by Lebanese stringers:

"I have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in people[']s arms." Denton noted that he had witnessed the photo choreography at numerous protests and evacuations, as well as at an Israeli airstrike location in Chiyeh, Lebanon. Denton followed up with a second post reporting that respected photographer friends of his Lebanon informed him that "this was not an isolated incident" and that "this has been something [I]'ve noticed happening here, more than any other place [I]ve worked previously."

Isolated incidents? In a rare moment of candor, CNN's Anderson Cooper revealed the routine mechanics of Hezbollywood propaganda tours last week: "I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah-controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed..they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their - what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drivers. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them."

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The Must-Have Gift For Jihadist-Appeasers: Terror-Tubbies!!!

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The folks at THE PEOPLE'S CUBE have hit it out of the park, once again, with their new "Terror-Tubbies!!!" It's THE must-have gift for jihadist-appeasers!!!

According to the site:

"In an effort to finalize the portrayal of Hezbollah as a benevolent band of misunderstood peasant warriors, and to foster acceptance of other cultures, the BBC retooled its cutest Teletubby character named Laa-laa into Hezbo-Laa-Laa. Sporting a characteristic martyr bandana with the motto 'From cradle to grave' written in Arabic, and a suicide belt filled nails and rat poison, this cute and cuddly Terrortubby is intended to show European and American kids that beyond its desire to exterminate the Jew, Hezbollah is, in fact, a caring playmate that will tend to your social needs through a strong presence in the big, generous government!"

Read more here.

For other gems from The People's Cube, also see:

Martyr Toys For Jewish Kids Set To Win Media Sympathies (featuring "Kaboom Dreidels!!!")

Conflict in The Middle East: Progressive Solutions

Conflict in The Middle East: A Progressive History

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Q) When Can A 12-Year-Old Outsmart The UN, The State Department And Europe?

A) When he pays attention, and deals with reality.

A friend of mine has what I judge to be an exceptionally bright 12-year-old. When we visited inbetween his summer trips, we discussed the proposed "cease fire" between Hezbollah and Israel, that the UN, the US and Europe were pushing for.

Apparently he'd done quite a bit of research (thanks to computer "hot spots" almost everywhere these days), and he came to the same conclusion I did -- that the "peace" that the aforementioned bodies, and particularly Hezbollah, and the "peace activists" (including the mainstream media) were so virulent for, was going to be nothing of the sort; that Hezbollah would agree to practically any "peace" agreement so it could rest, re-arm and re-supply, then instigate another war against Israel.

Well, in the immortal words of Gomer Pyle, USMC, "Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!!!"

Guess what is happening, less than 72 hours after the "peace" broke out? You got it - Lebanon and Hezbollah are refusing to comply with foundational criteria of U.N. Resolution 1701 - while Israel is being compelled to comply with both the letter and intent of it:

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U.S.: Iran Suspected of Attempts to Rearm Hezbollah Since Cease-Fire
Thursday , August 17, 2006

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON -- Iran has been attempting to rearm the Lebanon-based terror network Hezbollah since the U.N.-backed cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel took hold earlier this week, two U.S. officials told FOX News on Thursday. A U.S. arms control official said it appears that Iran is using Syrian channels in its effort to give Hezbollah weapons it has used in the past, including Chinese-built C-802 radar-guided anti-ship missiles.

Military observers said a C-802 was used successfully on an Israeli naval vessel off the coast of Tyre on July 14. The arms control officer and a senior American counterterrorism officer both said the U.S. government is "very concerned" about the "ongoing" effort.

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UK Guardian: "Stand Alongside Hezbollah," Lebanese Army Tells Troops

August 18, 2006

An internal Lebanese army statement, circulated among forces in the past week, has called for troops to stand "alongside your resistance and your people who astonished the world with its steadfastness and destroyed the prestige of the so-called invincible army after it was defeated". The circular has alarmed ministers in the Lebanese cabinet who had been calling for the army to disarm Hizbullah.

It will also fuel the concerns of Israel, the US and the UN security council that the Lebanese army is incapable of securing the south of the country, adding increased urgency to the calls for a multinational force to be swiftly deployed.

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New York Times 1: Hezbollah Disarmament "Not Open To Debate"

August 17, 2006

Excerpt:

Hezbollah fighters were not expected to resist the soldiers, nor to hand over their weapons. Instead, they probably would simply put their weapons into hiding and melt away into the civilian population.

The top Hezbollah field commander in the south, Sheik Nabil Qaouk, said as much on Wednesday.
“Just like in the past, Hezbollah had no visible military presence and there will not be any presence now,” Sheik Qaouk told reporters in the hard-hit port city of Tyre. He praised the army’s deployment, but said Hezbollah would maintain its presence without displaying its arms. He added that since Israeli tanks were still in Lebanon, the guerrillas reserved the right to respond accordingly. A Hezbollah representative in Parliament, Hassan Fadlallah, was equally insistent, telling Al Jazeera television that his organization would not pull back over the Litani, that the fate of its arsenal was not open to public debate and that the army deployment had nothing to do with its presence.

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New York Times 2: Lebanese To Allow Hezbollah To Keep Its Weapons

August 17, 2006

Excerpt:

The Lebanese Army’s move into the separate southern fief that Hezbollah ran for nearly two decades was the potential beginning of a diplomatic way out of the bitter monthlong battle with Israel, whose vaunted army bogged down against a smaller force of skilled and entrenched guerrillas.

But while Israel and the United States have said that the Lebanese Army is supposed to disarm Hezbollah under the terms of a United Nations Security Council resolution, the reality on the ground is a kind of murky backroom deal in which Hezbollah takes its weapons off the street and the army will not look too hard for them, if at all.

“There will be no confrontation between the army and the brothers in Hezbollah,” Ghazi Aridi, (Lebanon's) information minister, said. “They are not going to chase or, God forbid, exert revenge.” Israeli officials were not quite so tolerant, at least in public. The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said that “the resolution clearly calls for the creation of a Hezbollah-free zone south of the Litani River and anything less would mean the resolution is not being implemented.”

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The article I recently posted by Thomas Sowell is exactly correct: the main fruit that will be bore by the those who advocated "peace" between Israel and Hezbollah (and viewed them as being morally almost indistinguishable), will be more bloodshed, more loss of civilian lives, more terror, more destruction.

Had Israel simply finished the job it started -- to rout Hezbollah to the greatest extent possible, seized its weaponry, and if necessary, re-occupy southern Lebanon until its government could exert dominion over every square inch of that nation -- we would be neither in this mess, nor in the one that is surely to follow, in days, weeks or months. But no. It buckled to "world opinion," and the pressure from "world leaders" and their minions, all of whom screamed collectively for "peace."

Today's youth are routinely dismissed as being uninformed, unsophisticated and lazy. At least in this particular case, one bright young man proved to me that at some pivotal moments, the supposed "leaders" of the world cannot see what is right before their eyes, with the clarity of a child.

© Copyright 2006 by Jon Quixote. All rights reserved. Qualified media representatives interested in publishing this item may contact jonquix@hotmail.com for information.

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MSM: What Betrayal By Hezbollah, Condi Rice, The UN And Lebanon??? The Ramsey Case Is Solved!!!

SEE UPDATE BELOW

"Yes, I am MUCH more important than any news out of the Middle East. The mainstream press says so - and who are you to argue? Now, I'm just waiting for a book deal, and a slot on the Oprah Show."

August 16: This morning, Americans got another object lesson in just how out-of-whack the American MSM's priorities are, and how willing it is to capitulate to whatever the world's most notorious jihadists and their enablers say, to focus instead on satiating their fetish for gossip of no consequence.

The news out of the Middle East (here, and see below) --- that in violation of U.N. Resolution 1701, Hezbollah is now refusing to disarm or leave southern Lebanon, that neither the U.N. nor the Lebanese government are going to do anything about it, and that the "peacekeeping" force being assembled will not confront Hezbollah --- well, gee, that's so... BOOOORRRRIIINNNNGGGGG... that it only deserved about a 45-second spot, 15 minutes into the morning network news programs.

No, what's REALLY important, what REALLY stands to have an impact on Americans, Israelis, and anyone hoping and working for peace in the Middle East, is this:

That an American nutjob in Thailand has now admitted to murdering JonBonet Ramsey nearly 10 years ago.

And that's why it dominated the entire first fifteen minute segments on all the big network morning news programs.

Then, of course, they threw in a very brief, little obligatory blurb about how the entire basis for Israel's withdrawl is coming apart faster than Bill Clinton's zipper would at a sorority house kegger party.

Nice to see how wrong we all were in criticizing the blow-dry, Democrat- and UN-worshipping nitwits in the MSM for being "out of touch" with Americans, if not actively working against our interests.

For those ordinary Americans and hard-news seeking journalists, however, chew on this:

RESOLVE IS ERODING IN FACE OF CALL TO DISARM HEZBOLLAH
New York Sun, August 17, 2006

UNITED NATIONS — As all sides prepare for Lebanese and international troops to replace the Israeli army in Lebanon in as early as 10 days, officials in Europe, America, and Lebanon have made clear that the resolve to confront and disarm Hezbollah in the aftermath of the war is fast eroding.

After meeting Secretary-General Annan yesterday, Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, hailed the security council resolution that ended the fighting Monday morning, calling it a beginning of a "process" in which "the international community" is expected to end the presence of Hezbollah as an armed force.

Israel has to be convinced, she said, that provisions such as an embargo by the Lebanese army and the multinational force to prevent the rearming of Hezbollah are implemented. The United Nations, however, demands that the current Israeli-imposed blockade is removed even before such a mechanism is in place.

U.N. officials say that within 10 days to two weeks, 3,500 troops will join the 2,000-troop UNIFIL stationed in southern Lebanon since 1978, to aid the Lebanese army that yesterday started deploying south of the Litani River.

But as Ms. Livni called implementation of resolution 1701 "a test" for the United Nations, Secretary of State Rice was quoted as saying the multinational force envisioned in the resolution is not expected to disarm Hezbollah, which she said should be done "voluntarily."

Announcing that the Lebanese army will deploy troops in the south, officials of Prime Minister Siniora's government yesterday left vague the question of Hezbollah's disarmament. Lebanon's army will allow no troops other than its own and those in the multinational force to carry weapons, they said, leaving open the possibility that Hezbollah will still maintain huge concealed arms caches.

Paris yesterday again sidestepped an announcement about the size and scope of the French contribution for the multinational force. Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said France was ready to lead the force but complained that its mandate remained "fuzzy."

Ms. Livni told Turtle Bay reporters that Israel will insist that Lebanon's army, with the help of the proposed multinational force, will enforce a border embargo "so Syria and Iran are prevented from rearming Hezbollah."

But Washington yesterday sounded less than resolute on the disarming of Hezbollah. "I don't think there is an expectation that this force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah," Ms. Rice told USA Today, according to a transcript of an interview published on the newspaper's Web site. "I think it's a little bit of a misreading of how you disarm a militia," she said. "You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of a militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily."

In Beirut, the pro-Syrian Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, said, "It is disgraceful to demand the disarmament of the national resistance while the blood of martyrs is still warm." He added, "How can they ask us to disarm the only force in the Arab world who stood up to Israel?"

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UPDATE, AUGUST 17-18: JONBONET MANIA CONTINUES APACE

After the oceans of ink and airtime that the mainstream media devoted to pure, unadulterated speculation over the course of 10 years to examine ever nuanced aspect of the tragic murder of JonBonet Ramsey, this trend continued in earnest all day. They even went so far as to, on occasion, explain that "we are just responding to the ongoing fascination with this case."

Oh, really? WHOSE fascination? WHO has been driivng this fact-deficient mania? Oh, right... the media's fascination.

The JonBonet tragedy doesn't rank in the top 25,000 list of concerns of the American people. It never has.

But hey, so long as it drives ratings, then the MSM can pretty much do whatever it wants... as it has the right to, in a free society like ours. But what they CAN'T do, at least since the emergence of "pajama bloggers," is claim that they can simultaneously act like freak-show promoters for part of the time they spend on the airwaves --- and as serious, responsible journalists for the rest of the time.

Thus, true to form, scant attention was paid to that other thing... what was it again?

Oh, right: the fact that Hezbollah is now confidently flipping the bird at the world - a world that insisted upon "peace" at any price - and says it is not going to disarm, nor is it going to withdraw north of the Litania River, as agreed to in U.N. Resolution 1701. And as a result, as has been predicted repeatedly by clear-thinking people over age 10 around the world, this act alone can set the stage for round II of the war between Hezbollah and Israel.

And if Hezbollah forces Israel into that round, the Israeli Defense Force will not stop when the world falls for the Hezbollah-MSM-produced propaganda, and once again demands "peace" at any price.

No, in the next round, Israel will have no choice but to fight Hezbollah and all its supporters, enablers, protectors and funders, until they surrender --- or are destroyed.

But HEY!!! So long as we can all be distracted by the JonBonet Ramsey non-story, and the MSM's ratings will soar just in time for third-quarter sweeps, what's the problem!?!?

Uh-huh.

© Copyright 2006 by Jon Quixote. All rights reserved. Qualified media representatives interested in publishing this item may contact jonquix@hotmail.com for information.

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Jihad-Appeasement Case Study: Jimmy Carter

Andy Warhol "Jimmy Carter I 1976"

Jimmy Carter: Israeli Attacks on Lebanon "Unjustified"

Speigel Online (Germany) August 15, 2006

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SPIEGEL: You... mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this circumstance, does it come as any surprise that Washington's call for democracy in the Middle East has been discredited

CARTER: No, as a matter of fact, the concerns I exposed have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon.

SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?

CARTER: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

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Are such grievous jihadist-appeasing distortions, denials and equivocations the result of willful subversion - or a brain malfuction?

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