Hot on the heels of the Qana photo-staging controversy comes this — also involving Adnan Hajj, one of the photographers at Qana. Hajj took the top shot posted here.
Charles at LGF has the whole story — and there is much more to it. He first noted the recurring patterns in the smoke, strongly suggesting — since smoke doesn’t work that way — that the smoke in the image was cloned so as to make the destruction in Beirut look more extensive. Later he found the second image here, which seems to be the source. Look closely at the two (and Charles has overlays at LGF): you’ll see that the top image has more buildings, and that they too seem to be cloned in the process of creating more smoke. Says Charles: “Notice the lower right area of this photo, and compare to lower left of the doctored photo. Notice how all the buildings line up perfectly, including the oddly shaped building on the horizon.”
About Qana I wrote: “Americans and Westerners are not used to dealing with carefully orchestrated and large-scale deception of this kind. It is time that it be recognized as a weapon of warfare, and an extremely potent one at that.”
Has Reuters now fully committed itself to being an arm of the Hizballah propaganda machine?