Not a pretty sight

Another, hitherto unseen photograph of last year's Qana tragedy has emerged, courtesy of Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, attracting from him the label "media swarm".

The photograph is taken by Jeroen Oerlemans, The Netherlands, Panos Pictures, and the caption reads: "Paramedics show the dead body of a baby to the press after Israeli bombing of Qana, Lebanon, 30 July."

At first sight, it appears to be the reverse view of the now infamous dead baby shots (see below right), where the eponymous "Green Helmet" lifts the baby for the world to see, immortalised by Associated Press's Cathy Gannon, who described the scene:

After hours of digging in the blistering heat, Salam Daher emerged from the wreckage with the body of a 9-month-old baby, a blue pacifier still pinned to its nightshirt. He held the infant up and, click, an Associated Press photographer snapped another picture of Daher, in his trademark green helmet, displaying a civilian victim of Israeli bombs for the world to see.

However, on close scrutiny, this cannot be the original "dead baby" staging. That was set up immediately outside the basement. There is only a narrow strip of ground there, before the land falls away in a precipitous cliff. Yet the background in this new photograph is flat – you can see two figures in the distance.

The real giveaway is the cast of characters. The baby is being held by a man we call the "senior Red Cross worker". We see him many times in the Qana shots, but he is not in the original "dead baby" scenes, where the baby is held aloft for the cameras.

We do have "senior Red Cross worker" in another scene though. But this is round the corner from the basement opening, to the front of the house, where "Green Helmet" and sundry others pose with the baby, before its body is put on a stretcher for another pose and camera shot.

From the look of it, therefore, this shot, where the baby is held aloft, is an entirely new sequence which we have not seen before. That none of the shots seem to have been used seems unsurprising. The photographers are crowded in so tightly, they are spoiling the shot.

Charles Johnson offers an explanation as to why they could not be used. "Because," he says, "it really wrecks the suspension of disbelief that actors need to convince the audience. It's like seeing the scaffolds and lights and fake landscapes behind the scenes at a theater, in the middle of a performance."

With these, there must be hundreds if not thousands of unused shots, the sum of which would readily confirm that which we have long argued, with the limited, poor quality material available to us. But it is highly significant that, through the height of the controversy and subsequently, not one of the photographers who had been at Qana on 30 July – or any of their editors – broke ranks.

Bearing in mind that more material could only have strengthened our thesis - so strong is the evidence already gathered - the silence tells its own story. This is the omerta of the media mafia. As Charles wrote:

The Qana photographs are some of the most gut-wrenching, heart-breaking images you could ever imagine. And that's why it's important to recognize that there are people with souls so dead and intentions so evil that they will cynically use these photographs to manipulate your feelings.

And the oh sooooo responsible media not only went along with it but denied it had happened, and their role in it. The photograph we show today provides a tiny window into their dark world, and it is not a pretty sight.

COMMENT THREAD

It was bound to happen

See here. Despite this this, why do I think we aren't even laying a glove on them?

COMMENT THREAD

Picking at a sore

As Michelle Malkin continues charting the Jamil Hussein saga, as the latest step in AP's journey to perdition, she draws attention to a piece in The New York Post. This has Robert Bateman, an author, historian and Army infantry officer, recounting AP's fabricated reporting of the No Gun Ri incident during the Korean War.

Fabrications, of course, are as old as war reporting itself, and the photograph here is a classic example. Purporting to show Australian infantry attacking during the second battle of Alamein in 1942, it was entirely staged. To get the dramatic effect, the Aussies blew up their own cookhouse and then advanced into the smoke, the photographer Len Chetwyn recording the epic action for prosperity.

This type of photography is relatively benign, representing that which took place anyway but it was still staged – it represented the truth but it was not itself, literally the truth. Where thus lie the equally staged scenes at Qana, earlier this year?

We are reminded of that incident by several of our readers, who have rushed to tell us that AP has produced a slideshow, eulogising the role of Salam Daher (aka Green Helmet) in the tragedy. With the title, "A gruelling task in Lebanon", the voiceover is provided by Lauren Frayer, a lady with a second name remarkably similar to that of Kevin Frayer, AP's star snapper who was at the scene, lapping up the gory details.

Perhaps the quintessential differences between the Alamein and the Qana was this. In the former, the photograph was quite obviously for propaganda purposes, taken by an obviously partisan source to project a specific message. In the latter, the pictures were taken by news agencies purporting to convey the objective truth. And it is that lie which offends.

But, despite the whole conduct of the Qana shoot running totally contrary to AP's own editorial guidelines, we have seen not a hint of remorse or apology from the organisation. Instead, we see the tawdry slideshow which cements the lie into place – not lies by the subjects photographed but by the agencies. The simple fact is that the photographs were staged and the agencies will not admit this. Rather than do that, like a tortured soul in a padded cell, they pick at the wound, over and over, until it bleeds.

And they continue to do it. Published by the agency this week are two photographs of Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, on a visit to Qana. In one (above left) she is seen posing in front of a Hezbollah flag while, in the other (right), she talks to a member of the Chalhoub family, with a montage of photographs of the incident, "Green Helmet" prominent amongst them.

The Lebanon Daily Star has it that Khan said, "The truth about those massacres must be revealed," wiping tears from her eyes after meeting a few survivors of the strike. She is cited as saying that all investigations conducted by the group held clear evidence that what happened in Qana, "where civilians were slain while seeking shelter, and where the victims were mostly children," was an "obvious" violation of human-rights conventions. There's objective reporting for you.

One wonders whether Mz Khan would be so keen to pose in front of an Israeli flag, whether she would shed a tear or two over the Israelis who have been killed or whether AP's Mohammed Zaatari would be there to record that event. One also wonders whether AP, which is so keen to represent Hezbollah as victims, have noted this.

COMMENT THREAD

He doesn't use the internet

Lebanese president Emile Lahoud photographed using a photograph from Qana to illustrate a point in his address to the 61st session of the General Assembly at UN headquarters. You might recognise Green Helmet in a classic pose.

Snapped Shot has the story and lots more pics. AP, Reuters and others - they're all there, photographing a staged pic in another er... staged pic.

COMMENT THREAD

Drawing a line

For those of you who might have thought that the unusual lack of posts in the blog has meant I've been taking time off – you were mistaken. I decided I must absolutely focus on finishing the definitive version of "The Corruption of the Media", otherwise it would never get done.

Barring any typos that are brought to my attention, the work is now finished and I will not be making any further corrections or additions to it. Now standing at 104 pages when printed out (up from 85) with 204 illustrations – plus links to others – this is the best I can do. I must now draw a line and move on.

That does not mean to say the issue is finished with – far from it. One reason for getting the report done (and for the substantial element of re-writing) was to be able to submit it with a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission. I formally lodged a complaint today, via the online system, citing The Daily Telegraph and enjoining the Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Mail.

Any developments on this, or on the "Qanagate" saga, I will post separately as and when, rather than add to the report.

One reason for focusing on The Daily Telegraph is the discovery that its web entry for the Qana story of 31 July now sports a picture of the "dead baby", taken by none other than Reuters' own Adnan Hajj, he of photoshopping fame (see top illustration - double-click to enlarge).

This comes after web editor Shane Richmond wrote a self-regarding post on 2 August, explaining how he had personally decided not to use that particular picture because it would be "exploitative and gratuitous" (see extract, right).

Richmond originally posted a picture of "White Tee-shirt", so his replacing it with this one, after he was soundly trashed on his own blog – seems to his rather sick way of getting in the last word. Interestingly, the picture he has chosen is the only one which Deborah Howell of The Washington Post - in an article of 13 August - was prepared to admit was staged.

Well, we shall see what the Press Complaints Commission thinks of Richmond's sick little game. However, this is a notoriously weak watchdog and it has complete discretion as to whether it entertains a complaint, but it is worth a try.

In the meantime, I will be closing down the existing thread on the forum headed "Green Helmet/AP", and opening up a new one linked specifically to this post and the report.

Normal service will be resumed in the morning, and this time I mean it.

COMMENT THREAD

Wishful thinking

The Sunday Times today carries a leader headed, "Life in the old dog yet", extolling the virtues of the "dead tree sellers", as we call the print newspapers.

"The death of newspapers has long been predicted," the piece opens, but, says The Sunday Times, "newspapers are investing heavily in websites where they can continue to deliver reliable news and comment." After a discussion on how its product can be delivered, the paper continues:

Some titles may close, as they have in the past, but the ones that will survive in print and online will be those that invest in journalism and innovation. In such a rapidly changing world, the demands for good reporting and analysis will be at an even higher premium, whether it is delivered through the letter box or down a phone line.

This is from a newspaper which, today, devotes a significant amount of space in its magazine – and its whole front cover (illustrated) – to a faux story about photographer Jill Greenberg, who made children cry by confiscating their sweets, then photographed their reactions. "Did she go too far in the name of art?", asks Christopher Goodwin. See pages 28, 29, 30, 31... with full-page, lurid pictures of crying babies.

This is the same newspaper which, two weeks ago, quite gratuitously chose to use this picture from Qana (right), showing "Green Helmet" parading dead baby Hashem to illustrate a comment article on the war in Lebanon.

Yet, despite the issues raised by this treatment of death as a commodity, with four weeks having elapsed since the Qana incident, mainstream British newspapers have been silent on its implications. Furthermore, they have no intention of confronting this issue. They can happily prattle on about someone taking sweets from babies, but they simply cannot handle a debate about the use of images of dead babies as a propaganda tool, in which they themselves had a part to play.

Significantly, though, during the week following our first post on the issue, the weekly circulation of this blog exceeded that of The Sunday Telegraph, formerly the second-largest quality Sunday in the UK.

A similar phenomenon was seen during the Danish cartoons affair, about which the British media were cravenly silent. That time, it was the online Brussels Journal that made the running and, at the height of the crisis, its daily hit rate was running at over 200,000.

Its circulation has declined since – as indeed will ours – but the point is that, in recent times, when contentious issues have arisen, the traditional media has shown extreme reluctance to take them on. The "blogosphere" has made the running. And, if the media continue to show their same cowardice, that is how it is going to be in the future. Ours and others' experience has shown that there is a real thirst for information on key issues and the MSM is simply not delivering the goods – whether physically or electronically.

Furthermore, it is not just on these highly contentious issues, but in the coverage generally that the MSM is lacking. This week, The Sunday Times offers a leaden piece headed , "Humbling of the supertroops shatters Israeli army morale", its analysis of the Israeli Army in the wake of the Lebanon War.

This subject, though, has been running on the "blogosphere" for weeks, and even we did it last week. And frankly, The Sunday Times did not tell me anything I didn't already know and I have seen far better analyses on any number of blogs and websites.

For the paper, though, this is a nice "safe" (and cheap) issue – it's open season on knocking the IDF and, as we know, the MSM prefers to hunt in a pack. But, while the Lebanon war was and is important, at least it was a drawn match - at the very worst.

What could be far more important, in the longer term, is the effective surrender of British forces in Iraq's Al Amarah last week to Islamic extremists – on which we reported yesterday. This represents a humiliating surrender, without even giving battle.

The name Al Amarah seems to be unlucky for the British Army. On 29 April 1916 – 90 years ago - it suffered what was described then as "the greatest humiliation to have befallen the British army in its history". This was at the siege of Kut al-Amarah. For the Turks - and for Germany - it proved a significant morale booster, and undoubtedly weakened British influence in the Middle East.

Now, history doth repeat itself, in part. In 1917, the British Army was allowed to redeem itself, with its capture of Baghdad. This time the Army is being forced to slink back into its barracks, pending a complete withdrawal, while our government is pretending it has won a victory.

How useful and interesting it would have been for The Sunday Times – or any quality newspaper – to have discussed this issue. But you will not find any of them taking it on.

Interestingly, it is not only the MSM which is deserting the field. Our regular readers will have noticed – "Qanagate" apart – how little we are writing on the affairs of our domestic politicians. This is not accidental. They have become so irrelevant to our concerns – especially the not-the-Conservative Party – that they have simply written themselves out of the script. As so often, The Business puts it admirably:

The collapse of trust in political parties is now all but complete. The information revolution – from 24-hour news to the internet – has allowed the electorate a clearer view than ever of politicians who purport to represent them; the reaction is one of informed, rational and heartfelt contempt.

This is not altogether irrelevant to the plight of the MSM – which in all sectors apart from magazines is suffering continued decline in circulation. For most of its history, it has relied on its close relationship with politicians to provide its content but, as politicians become increasingly irrelevant, so too does the MSM.

However, implicit in The Sunday Times editorial is the expectation that it will survive. That may be the case, but I wouldn't bank on it. Judging from its lacklustre content and its craven attitude to contentious issues – in common with the rest – that expectation may be more wishful thinking than a reasoned prediction.

Perversely, what may save them is - as my colleague often remarks – that while we may get our news and comment from the internet, the cats still need something to shit on. Which makes a change from them shitting on us – the MSM, that is.

COMMENT THREAD

Our hidden government

In The Daily Telegraph today, there is a strident editorial castigating the Post Office for introducing complex and unnecessary changes to the postal system on Monday, whereby mail is now charged not only by weight but also by size.

What the paper failed to note was that which had been pointed out by Christopher Booker last Sunday – the Post Office had no choice – it had to impose the changes to comply with an directive on opening up European postal services to competition.

An essential part of that is harmonising the basis of the charging regime and, as always, since we operate a different – and simpler – system, it is us that have to come into line. Never mind that we had a postal service before most of our European neighbours had countries.

Why the newspaper should have failed to mention the EU dimension is incomprehensible, but it is typical of a media which consistently avoids referring to what we so often call "the elephant in the room".

And, strangely, this failing has a great deal in common with the media coverage of the "Qana" incident. On this, we have complained about lies and distortions, but this is more of the same – albeit in a different league.

Being brought up as a good Catholic boy - by Jesuits, no less - I committed to memory the then version of the Catechism, and recall to this day the definition of a lie. It could be, said the book of words, an act, default or omission. Failing to point out something which is relevant to an issue and vital to the correct understanding of it – to the extent that false understanding arises as a result – is as much a lie as telling a direct untruth.

In that context, today's editorial is a lie. Worse still, it is part of a bigger and continued lie – the refusal of our media to inform us of the extent to which we are ruled by an alien government, based in Brussels. In its own way, that is every bit as important as the lies and distortions coming out of the Middle East and – in all probability – stems from the same wellspring of mendacity, sloath and lack of professionalism.

Either which way you cut it though, through the complicity of the media, we have a hidden government. And the worst of it all it that no one (and especially the media) seems particularly to care. I wonder how Americans would react if their government had moved offshore, say to Havana?

COMMENT THREAD

Faking it!

After much labour, Part 6 of our report, "The Corruption of the Media" is now finished. Each part more or less stands on its own, and this one contains considerable new material.

Amongst the gems we found was this (left), a photograph from Nicolas Asfouri (AFP/Getty Images) from Khurabah/Qana, showing the eponymous "Green Helmet Guy" helping a stretcher party negotiate some wreckage.

But, as always with the pictures coming out of this incident, nothing is what it seems. Asfouri's caption reads:

Rescuers carry a wounded man out of the rubble of a house after Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese village of Qana 30 July 2006…

However, our analysis shows that the scene is at the bottom and the right of the road we call "Stretcher Alley". The stretcher party is some 400 yards from the wrecked house, at the point marked by the red arrow.

Furthermore, they have come from around the corner to the left, from just beyond the mosque in the picture. If, like all the rest coming from the wrecked house, they had followed the road round (see below left), they would have found the going easy. But, under the guidance of "Green Helmet", they have swung wide onto a field of debris left from a previously bombed house, to make the shot look more dramatic.

Once again, "Green Helmet" is faking it. And that is a fact that must have been obvious to AFP's Nicolas Asfouri who not only went along with it but wrote up a false caption to cover his tracks.

Can I just remind you of what Kathleen Carroll, AP's senior vice president and executive editor, said on behalf of her agency, AFP and Reuters? It went something like, "Photographers are experienced in recognizing when someone is trying to stage something for their benefit". Patrick Baz, Mideast photo director for AFP, however, was "totally stunned" at the idea that any of his photographers might be taking shots of staged scenes.

Yeah… right!

Comments - use Green Helmet/AP thread

Sorted!

We do listen! For our core readers, and our very welcome newcomers, we have reorganised the site, putting in a permanent link on the sidebar for the Qana material. New material, on a daily basis, will be built into our report - accessible on the sidebar link - which is growing daily.

The change will allow us to post our core material, on the European Union and our relationship with the wider world, without it being swamped by the developments on the "Green Helmet" saga.

I have also re-organised the Qana report and we have considerable unused material to go in, which will strengthen the case even further.

It looks like, now, we're in for the long haul. There is so much additional material that, realistically, it is going to take another week or so to complete the report - or even longer. Thus, in order to keep the blog going with its core material, I will be splitting my available time fairly evenly between keeping the blog going and working on the Qana report, with my co-editor pitching in as and when the day job allows.

We hope this works.

COMMENT THREAD

Why the Left is worried

Belatedly, the Left is beginning to wake up to the danger of "Qanagate". But they're too late. They haven't even begun to realise how much evidence we already have, and how much more we have stashed away, ready to publish.

So far, the issue has been mainly the province of what are termed "right-wing" bloggers – such as our very own Little Green Footballs. And, to date, the stridency from the Left (not least in the hate-mail I have been receiving) has been focused on our critique as an example of pro-Israeli bias.

Only now that the cease-fire is in place in Lebanon (sort of) have they understood the real target – the liberal (not) media and its constant diet of lies and distortions in support of its favoured causes.

Thus, into the fray comes Huffington Post, with writer Michael Shaw declaring: "Qana was not staged", mounting what he thinks is a spirited defence of his beloved media.

To do so, he calls in aid free-lace photographer Tim Fadek, winner of the NPPA award for best still photography in International News in 2005 – who seems to specialise in faux art pictures from war zones – like the one above from Qana – which, of course, are not staged.

Tim, writes Shaw, "is recognised as one of the most respected photojournalists in his field" and, along with many of his colleagues covering the war in Lebanon, have become increasingly concerned over allegations fomenting in the States (particularly in the right wing 'sphere) about war photos being staged or "stage managed".

What we don't understand, you see – as opposed to those that were there like Fadek - is that "much is culturally lost - not to mention, politically filtered - in transit from East to West". Thus does Tim communicate this statement written by fellow photojournalist, Thorne Anderson on "how to understand the Qana photos". He writes:

Much of the debate about "staging" in Qana can be deflated a good deal by an appreciation of cultural differences. Among many Middle Eastern Muslims the display of the dead is very much a ritual part of dealing with death. Palestinian funeral parades, with or without media present, are a demonstration of this. While the display of the dead may appear callous and disrespectful to many western eyes, it is likely interpreted as a form of honor among those who actually display the dead - an attempt to give meaning to something senseless.

Photographing the display is not necessarily deceiptful (sic), but rather an honest record of the extraordinary ways people react in these terrible circumstances. And a rescueworker displaying a body does not a Media Mogul the rescue worker make. He/She is still a rescue worker. Though the caption for pictures from that portion of the event should read "Rescue workers display the body of..." rather than "Rescue workers remove the body of..."

Furthermore, the sporadic display of bodies at a scene like that shouldn't allow us to dismiss the event as merely a salvo in the "media war" being waged by "Hizbollah and their jihadi friends" in the "mainstream apologist media." And none of this changes the essential, and most important fact that a group of photographers put themselves at great risk to show the result of an Israeli air strike on an apartment building that left 28 people - among them 16 children - dead.

He adds:

I took a gut wrenching tour of LGF [Little Green Footballs] and a couple of other blogs that are super-hyping the "staging" issue to an audience of hundreds of thousands in what is a transparent and in some cases explicit attempt to deny the simple fact that an Israeli airstrike killed 16 children in Qana. That assault on the essential truth is a far more reprehensible act of overt media warfare (if there is such a thing) than any angry display of a dead body in the immediate aftermath of an airstrike. Reminds me of those who deny the Holocaust for political purposes.

So, it seems, in questioning the Qana photographs, we are akin to Holocaust deniers. And, to reinforce the point, Shaw devotes a post on his own blog, where he claims that the "firestorm" coming from "the Rathergate crowd", and doubts now spreading from the left wing (which rather unsettles him) "can start to feel like all reason is being subsumed by political hysteria."

But never mind. This time, Fadek explains it all.

When there is senseless death in this part of the world, it is completely normal to display the bodies. Whether in plastic or on blankets, it's done whether there are photographers there or not. The idea is to ready the public for what has happened - and also say, look what our enemies have done to us.

Regarding some of the images cited as evidence of manipulation, Fadek said: "a finer distinction is being lost in the West":

In Qana, rescue workers did not hold up a baby to set up a shot. They were not displaying them to the media, per se. Yes, it was not lost on these men that the cameras presented a window on the world. But these people were doing wrenching rescue work and are human beings. They were shaking and sweating. These instances [of holding up babies] were mostly spontaneous and momentary expressions of anger.

Fadek elaborates on the situation in terms of his own images, such as the "tasteful" one here (right), that he also took at Qana – which certainly, most definitely and absolutely was not staged. Although he felt the photo was more powerful depicted this way, he explained that a rescue worker did set down the body, briefly uncovering it for photographers to document.

For those inclined to consider the depictions as manipulated, Fadek also tells us:

Once removed from the collapsed building, these bodies were set on the ground to be taken down a hill. From this spot to the waiting ambulances was at least a four-minute walk. In this case, the two children were placed on this blanket where photographers had 1½ to 2 seconds to document them. Given the distance and the available manpower, the two bodies were placed on the same blanket to save effort.

In each case, we are told, Fadek's "understanding" was that the rescuers were doing something respectful, showing the victims in a manner reflecting a normal attitude toward the dead. "It's not a manipulation, it's a cultural distinction," claims Fadek. "It's the same as at a martyrs funeral, where faces are exposed, and the bodies marched through the streets. It's been done for years, media or otherwise."

Interestingly, that is exactly the line rehearsed by the egregious Kathy Gannon last Saturday, while Stern magazine last week also recruited Tim Fadek, who then told the magazine that he did not see evidence for a staging. He said:

Everybody was upset, it was quite chaotic. When they carried the bodies out of the basement, the workers themselves were finished. When they held a body to the cameras, it was nothing of a pose, but sheer distress and anger: look what they did to our children!

I don't know if Fadek actually believes this tosh but there is a common thread here, trying to pass off the "dead baby" incident (for that is what, obliquely, he is referring to) as a spontaneous display of "sheer distress and anger".

But what we already know – and have now documented - is that before the calculated posing to the camera with the dead baby, "Green Helmet" had already taken part in a carefully staged photo-shoot inside the wrecked basement. Furthermore, after the photo-shoot outside the wreckage, he went on to take part in two more, in different locations for two different photographers.

Then, in his artful description of the casualty evacuation process, Fadek tells us that photographers only had "1½ to 2 seconds" to document the dead children as they were laid in the assembly area, pending transport to the ambulances. But, if it was all so very tasteful and cultural, how does he explain the photo on the left or these?

What is more disingenuous (to be polite) is Fadek's failure to mention the staging area, the full role of which we ourselves have only recently understood (but, since we weren't there, we had to work it out).

Using the evidence we and our readers have gathered, and our collective analyses, we have learnt that, at the assembly area, there was a macabre selection process going on. "Normal" or unsightly corpses were marked up for despatch straight to the waiting ambulances. Those which were especially photogenic or with dramatic potential were sent to this "staging area". From there, the media circus was organised, and the "props" issued to the actors, for the displays of theatre that we have already recorded (and have more to come).

By the time we have finished collecting and collating the evidence, and produced our full analysis, we will have a dossier which so damns the media that not any amount of Huffington and Puffington will be able to counter. Nevertheless, not a few of our regular and faithful readers have written to us asking when we are going to get back to the issues for which this blog was set up. But, as my colleague points out, we never left them.

The point is that, while we all fight our separate battles, we all have a common enemy that protects our individual enemies – a lying, corrupt, wholly inadequate media. It does not just lie on the Middle East. It lies about affairs on the Beltway, in Whitehall and Brussels, and everywhere else that its malign presence is felt. So, when we see a weakness in the fortress walls, we should not go on hacking at our own little bit. We should all pile in and put our efforts into creating a breach. That's why we, with many others, "piled in" to Qanagate.

And that's why the Left is worried.

COMMENT THREAD

Speak loudly and carry a very small stick

Clearly much time and space had to be devoted to the unfolding of the Qana story. To those who think this has destroyed the blog and lost us most of our readers, we should like to point out that while the Qana story unfolded our daily hit rate went up tenfold as a minimum.

That in itself is not an argument for continuing the story for the time being. It is true that our blog is called EUReferendum and is, therefore, primarily concerned with matters to do with the European project. However, we pointed out some time ago in our manifesto that we do not consider freedom to be something that can be chopped up into pieces.

The enemies of freedom include anti-democratic transnational organizations, of whom the EU is the one attempt at a state; terrorists, often supported by the former; and the less than totally honest media. Somewhat belatedly the MSM and a number of left-wing blogs in the United States have rushed in to praise and defend Green Helmet and to assure the world that, despite all evidence, those pictures in Qana were not staged. They understand the importance of the story, though, thanks to my colleague’s vigilance and the work done by so many people, those sobbing paeans of praise to the wonderful civil defence/Red Cross worker have come a little too late.

One of the continuing themes of this blog has been the indolence and dishonesty of much of the MSM, whether on matters to do with the EU, where journalists show themselves to be incapable of finding out the most basic facts; or the mindless praise given to that nest of tyrants and kleptocrats, the UN; or the ease with which journalists have, at the very least, allowed themselves to become propaganda tools for terrorist organizations in the Middle East and, often, the Gulf.

Many of these themes have come together in the Qana story, which is intimately related to the other big news item of the last week: the supposed discovery of a huge plot to blow up a number of aeroplanes that were supposed to fly out of Britain to the United States.

Obviously, one needs to be cautious about the allegations as these have not yet been proven in a court of law. But, cautiously, we have to say that there seem to be reasonable grounds for believing them not least because the arrests in this country were followed by wide-ranging ones in a number of others.

The stunning part of the supposed plot has once again been the aspect that is unique to Britain: all the alleged participants are British-born and British bred; some converts, many descendants of Pakistani immigrants. Note, please, that none of them have the slightest connection with the Middle East or the Gulf. Even the madrassahs they attended and the training they are supposed to have received was in Pakistan.

The time has come, surely, to address this problem that is peculiarly British. As I said in a previous posting, it is preposterous to postulate that the way to address it is by changing the government’s foreign policy. Whether one agrees with Blair’s supposed mission in the Middle East or not – and he has not been particularly involved in the discussions about Lebanon, beyond pointing to the real initiators of the war, the terrorist Hezbollah – the idea that foreign policy should be dictated by supposedly “frustrated” and “disenchanted” Muslim young men, who threaten violence if their “demands”, ill-phrased and woolly-minded are not met.

In any case, as Farrukh Dhondy points out in today’s Wall Street Journal Europe, these arguments

“ignore the fact that 9/11 preceded Iraq, and that other unemployed communities haven’t resorted to mass murder. No, something else is happening. It is significant that 22 universities have been named as epicentres of jihadist recruitment. The leader of the latest terror attempt is alleged to be a biochemistry student. These educated young men have ventured the farthest from the enclosures of their communities: The well-fed bite the hand that feeds.”

A similar pattern can be seen with the leaders and many of the members of terrorist organizations in the Middle East and the Gulf, particularly those of them that direct their fury at the West. These people take it upon themselves to speak or to kill on behalf of the “wretched of the earth” while doing nothing to ensure that the latter climb out of their wretchedness.

Think of the amount of money, energy and human blood that has been wasted on the fruitless confrontation with Israel and the West. One quarter of it, properly directed, would have put many of the Arab countries on track to freedom and economic development. No-one who has actually looked at the map of the Middle East could possible argue that the possession of the small territory that is Israel would solve all the problems that cannot be solved by the possession of all the rest of it.

The closest parallel I can think of to this is the group of permanent student nihilists, radicals and terrorists that operated in Russia and abroad in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They, too, spoke and killed on behalf of the peasants or the “dark people” who were, as it happens, immensely ungrateful to the people they saw as barchuki (little lords). The enemy was more clearly defined but the destruction of the whole society, their own society was the same.

Well, to quote one of those destructive radicals, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, “What is to be done?”. For, in some ways, the British aspect of it is a problem we have created. No, we cannot hand over the running of the British foreign policy to a bunch of dysfunctional youngsters. No, we cannot appease the so-called Muslim community (which does not exist, in any case) or its leaders by further segregation in education, business, let alone legality. Too much of that has happened already and must be reversed.

It is, however, clear and we wrote about it last July after the London bombs that one reason these groups are formed and the hate-preaching imams, who do come from the Middle East quite often, have such an easy time with the youngsters, is the lack of an alternative identity they can aspire to.

Some, as Farrukh Dhondy, try to emphasise the other non-Wahhabi aspects of Islam. Others, like Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester in today’s Daily Telegraph, rightly castigate multiculturalism that has effectively created whole ghettoes of young men, unable and unwilling to work, live and develop within our society.

Oddly enough, and it goes against the grain to say so, it was Tony Blair who came reasonably close to saying something important on the subject in his speech on August 1 in California. You have to hand it to Tony Blair – his speeches are such a pot-pourri that they appeal to everyone.

Much of the speech is the usual kind of “let’s please everyone” waffle with unnecessary references to Kyoto and it is obvious that he finds it hard to define what he means by “our values” that we need to emphasise in order to win the world-wide struggle. But, at least, he seems to have realized that this struggle exists and it is to be fought in the minds of the people as well as on the battlefields.

The problem is that the speech produced the nebulous concept of values and these are hard to define. The need for definitions is becoming more urgent, not only in the Middle East, but in Britain.

Last week an Israeli Arab journalist, Riad Ali, called on his compatriots to make a choice. For the sake of their future and their children’s future, he said, they must become first and foremost Israeli. While there are always problems with Israeli governments and many of the people, the Arabs of the country (who do not, incidentally, want to live in Palestine, should that ever be set up) must realize that hating a whole people is wrong and counter-productive. They must look at what Israel is like – a democracy with a reasonably free and developed economy – and become whole-heartedly part of it. The alternative was a dead end.

I have no idea whether those words will have any effect at all. The likelihood is that not for a long time as other Arab journalists, who had been too scared to say anything while the fighting went on, "celebrate" Israel's defeat by the cease-fire agreement. We have been here before and shall be here again.

But I do think that similar words must be spoken here and spoken loudly and urgently. The trouble is that while Israel for various reasons has developed a national identity (often at odds with itself but that is true for most countries), European countries and Britain, in particular, have been discarding theirs. In this they have been urged on by the European Union who has pronounced that nationalism was a bad thing and should be superseded by Europeanism. As in most cases, the EU is part of the problem and definitely not part of the solution.

Many of our readers will joyfully rush in here and utter loud hurrahs as well as loud condemnations. Instead of that, I suggest they think of how to define Britain’s national identity and how to convey it to all. (And please don’t tell me that being British is being kind and open-minded. That’s just plain silly as well as unattractive.)

What this rather long posting promises is another thread to be pursued over the next few days. At least, it will make a change from Green Helmet and White Tee-shirt.

We've found it

Many readers have been asking us to put up a map or satellite picture of Qana showing the location of the wrecked building and the other important landmarks. This has proved difficult, not least because the site is not actually in Qana. It is in fact the hamlet of Khuraybah, one mile to the north of Qana.

Anyhow, I've posted up a first, rather amateur version, showing some of the landmarks. We hope to improve on it in due course. At last, however, we have a clear idea of the route taken.

Comments - use the "Green Helmet/AP" thread

Planted?

Blink and you miss it... the very first frame (black arrow indicates the time) of a video report by Mazen Ibrahim on the Aljazeera channel, commenting on the coverage of the Qana "massacre" in western media. But it is quite definitely there and, equally definitely it is the body of a baby.

This is in the first stages of the rescue/recovery operation at Qana and, if there is one thing all the media reports agree on, it is that there was only one body of a baby recovered - and here is the recovery, by Red Cross workers.

The baby, as far as we know, is Abbas Ahmad Hashim, 9 months old, and the video record certainly meshes with the account by Tim Butcher in The Daily Telegraph of 31 July. He writes:

When ambulance crews arrived from Tyre, bravely covering roads on which they have been attacked in recent days, they began the grimmest search and rescue task, but without any real chance of rescue.

They found limbs sticking from a muddle of broken concrete and mattresses soaked with blood attracting the busy attention of swarming flies. For a few hours the more wreckage they moved the more bodies they found.

In one section they found 12 small corpses, all children, among them tiny Abbas.

Their bodies showed few cuts or scratches. It was as if they had simply drowned in a wave of soil and cement dust that overwhelmed them in an instant.

Yet, late in the afternoon (we know it is afternoon because UN troops are on site, and they did not get there until late), this photograph is taken. It is shot by Reuters' famous Adnan Hajj, the man who subsequently was found out doctoring photographs of the Beruit bombing and the F-16.

There was always something deeply suspicious about this picture - it looks obviously posed, and then there is the curious, even consistency of the dust in which it it buried, with no rubble and large pieces of debris around it. There is also the mystery of the apparently clean "pacifier" and, even more remarkable is the way, when Green Helmet takes the body out to parade it to the media, the dust shakes off the body (see here). Initially covered in dust, by the end, it is almost clean. Surely, some should have adhered to a live, sweating baby, buried by such an avalanche, and remained on the body after death.

But most curious of all is the positioning of Green Helmet's "discovery". As far as I can make out, cross-referencing Hajj's photograph with other frames and video footage, the location is roughly where indicated by the arrow in the frame (left). This area is trampled over by inumerable workers, cameramen and others, yet no one noticed a buried body until the afternoon?

So, was the body planted, ready for Hajj to come in and photograph it for the world? Would he do a thing like that?

Well, as we know from photographer Bryan Denton:

...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 peoples arms.

A man like Adnan Hajj who so carelessly doctors photographs would, it seems, hardly demur at a minor misdemeanor of photographing a staged scene like this.

Methinks Reuters have still got some explaining to do, as have the other agencies who are trying to bury this issue (no pun intended). The evidence is here for all to see and, at the very least, there are good grounds for suspicion that the "dead baby" was "planted" as a precursor to the grotesque photo-shoot that followed its supposed discovery.

Comments - use the "Green Helmet/AP" thread

The Corruption of the Media

As of 28 August, this is our definitive report on the media coverage of the "Qana" incident on 30 July 2006. This incorporates all changes and corrections since first publication on 23 August, including the addition of two new appendices. Please see links below for access to the parts.

An edited version of this report is also available in .pdf format (75 pages). It can be downloaded from here.

Part 1 - Introduction.
Part 2 - The "set".
Part 3 - Act 1: The dead baby.
Part 4 - Act 2: The Red Cross workers.
Part 5 - Act 3: The camera runs - Scene 1.
Part 6 - Act 3: The camera runs - Scene 2.
Part 7 - Act 4: Caught in the act!
Part 8 - Discussion and conclusions.

Appendix 1 - The "Stretcher Alley" mystery.
Appendix 2 - The "reburying" controversy.

COMMENT THREAD

Part 1 - Introduction

On 30 July 2006, at a time variously reported between 1 and 1.30 in the morning, an Israeli air strike (or strikes), launched on the southern Lebanese village of Qana, it was claimed, caused the partial collapse of a three storey residential building. In the basement were found the bodies of a large number of women and children and first reports from the scene indicated a death toll of sixty or more - many of them children. That figure was later drastically revised downwards to 28.

The name "Qana" had special significance as the village had been the location of a disaster in April 1996, ten years previously. Then, during an Israeli operation code-named "Grapes of Wrath", a UN-supervised building in the centre of the village had been shelled. This resulted in over 100 civilian deaths - an incident that was instrumental in precipitating the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. Now, it looked as if history was repeating.

Curiously, though, despite the reports, the 2006 incident did not occur at Qana at all, but in a hamlet approximately a mile to the north of the village, called Khuraybah (also known as Al-Khariba). Nevertheless, it became "Qana" in most contemporary accounts. Hezbolla and its allies were quick to draw the historical parallels.

Addressing the account of events as dispassionately as possible, it is fair to say that no one can precisely determine what exactly transpired on and immediately before the raid, or in the hours immediately afterwards. There is no dispute that the hamlet was and is a Hezbolla stronghold (as indeed was Qana), and that the incident occurred at the height of hostilities between Israel and Hezbolla, effectively making the village part of a war zone. Since then, there has been no independent - or any - inquiry. There has been no forensic examination of the building to determine the cause of collapse, no post-mortems - that we know of - on the deceased, who have now been buried, and nothing like a judicial examination of evidence and witnesses that would draw out a proper and trustworthy account of events.

As to the relief efforts, details are still confused. According to documents released by the UN, the Lebanese Red Cross (LRC) received reports of the incident at 7 am local time and ambulances were despatched immediately. They tried to reach the location of the building "via several access roads" but were unsuccessful "because of the mass of rubble... and the intensity of the bombardment". They stopped approximately 600 metres from the building and the relief workers proceeded on foot.

UNIFIL claims to have been informed of the incident at 8.15 and despatched two medical teams to the site at 9.45, which arrived respectively at 10.15 and 11 am. An engineering team arrived later, possibly around 2 pm. UNIFIL also reports that Lebanese police, civil defence and Army elements arrived at the site at 7 am but were unable to commence operations until 9 am "because of the ongoing aerial shelling". By happy coincidence, that appears to have been the time when the media started arriving.

In the hands of the media, the events were often described in highly lurid terms, most often conveying condemnation of Israel. However, in such incidents as major air crashes, we often hear caution expressed that we should wait for the outcomes of the investigations become coming to conclusions. Yet, in this analogous situation, in a context where Hezbolla have been known to exploit and even magnify incidents for propaganda purposes, the media were - just a few hours after the event - presenting their accounts as definitive statements of fact.

In being the custodian of the record, the media - especially in democratic countries which profess to have freedom of speech - have a special responsibility to report accurately, to which effect they rely on the professionalism and integrity of the journalists in the field who provide the words and images. In this instance - by comparison with the reporting of other incidents in less fevered atmospheres - the dogmatism and unwarranted certainty was jarring.

Furthermore, the images being presented by the media did not look right. At the time, this was no more than an impression, triggered by the frequent appearance of an image of one particular figure, characterised by his green helmet and orange high-visibility jacket. For obvious reasons, he was dubbed "Green Helmet".

On further investigation, "Green Helmet" appeared rather more often than was typical of any one figure in normal disaster reporting. Not only that, he appeared in a wide variety of poses, most often bearing dead children and not uncommonly displaying considerable emotion. To the jaundiced eye of this observer, they looked staged. If that was the case, then this was a very serious issue. It had to mean that the media, on which we rely so much, was presenting us - wittingly or unwittingly - with false images. And, as I wrote at the time, if you cannot trust the images, how can you trust the words?

As we looked further, another character came to prominence, a man clad in white tee-shirt and jeans. Again for obvious reasons - since his name was not revealed in any of the reports - he was dubbed "White Tee-shirt". His images too were prominent amongst those presented, usually portraying a man emoting strongly, while bearing a dead child. These too looked staged - the emotion was evident in such a variety of locations and circumstances that we had difficulty in believing it was spontaneous.

Accordingly, we decided to carry out an investigation - not into the events at Qana pertaining to the air raid. We have no view on these. Our investigation is exclusively confined to the events during the relief effort, to determine whether some had been staged for the benefit of the media (and for the propaganda purposes of Hezbolla). Also, we sought to determine whether the media had been complicit in any staging.

After three weeks of intensive work, with the active assistance and co-operation of the internet community - often called the "blogosphere" - we now believe we have enough evidence confidently to assert that many of the incidents recorded in visual form by the media were indeed staged. In fact, we feel we can go further. In our view, the bulk of the relief effort at Khuraybah on 30 July was turned into a perverted propaganda exercise. The site, in effect, became one vast, grotesque film-set on which a macabre drama was played out to a willing and complicit media, which actively co-operated in the production and exploited the results.

Within the overall conduct of the operations, there were many examples of this ghastly play-acting but, for convenience, we focused on four main groups of examples. Reflecting the dramatic intent of the progenitors, we have ordered them into "acts", with the divisions labelled as "scenes". The first of the four Acts records the actions of one of the central figures, "Green Helmet", parading the body of a dead baby. The second deals with secondary but nevertheless important characters, Red Cross workers. The record shows that they actively participated in the drama. The third identifies what became the major theatrical production of the day, displaying the thespian talents of both "Green Helmet" and "White Tee-shirt" in what we call the "camera runs". The fourth and final Act now comprises two parts. The first, courtesy of the German television station NDR, shows "Green Helmet" in the act of giving stage directions in another of his perverted productions. The second portrays the showman again setting up a camera scene.

If this is worrying enough, of greater concern has been the response of the media and, in particular, the news agencies which employed many of the photographers at Qana. Fronted initially by the Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of Associated Press, they issued an early denial without addressing any of the substantive issues we raised. Other media outlets have since joined the fray, including The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, through its web site editor, and the Washington Post.

Their tactics have been both predictable and wearyingly familiar. Instead of addressing our substantive points, they have concentrated on details, picking on our errors and false starts, arguing that such flaws irredeemably damage our case. Others have branded us "right-wing", "pro-Israeli" or simply "conspiracy theorists", as if that could explain away the evidence we have gathered.

Then, after we had assembled so much evidence that our case was becoming unarguable, Associated Press mounted a defensive propaganda campaign, issuing a release attempting to make out that "Green Helmet" was some kind of latter-day saint, the hero of Qana. Inexplicably, for photographs accompanying the release, AP chose to dress their hero in blue helmet and garb, which could only serve to confuse readers who were unfamiliar with the issue.

In response, we decided to draw together the totality of our evidence, which hitherto had been scattered throughout this site, and assemble it in one report, updating, expanding and clarifying our findings. We enlisted the assistance of the "blogosphere" and received an extraordinary level of support. This report, therefore, is as much the work of the internet community as it is of this author.

Our purpose in producing it is to provide evidence which will enable us to force the news agencies, and the media which rely on them, to recognise that the media conduct at Qana was unacceptable. And, inasmuch as this is an example of a much wider problem affecting the way the whole of the media operates, we wish to see them address the issues we raise and to reform their operations. Without that, we feel, there can be no trust in the accuracy, impartiality or professionalism of any of their output. This is not only a major inconvenience, but threatens the very health of our democracy. For, without objective reporting, there is only propaganda.

To draw attention to this, we have entitled our report, "The corruption of the media". Inevitably, given the continued cover-up by the media, it will also be known as "Qanagate".

back to the contents page

COMMENT THREAD

Part 2 - The "set"

Even now, it seems bizarre labelling the scene of what is variously described as a "disaster" and a "massacre" as a "set", borrowing the language of the theatre and film-making. But, since it is our contention that the site was turned into precisely that, a film-set for the benefit of both Hezbolla and the media - in the finest tradition of "Pallywood" - we will keep to this description.

As we noted in the introduction, though, the "set" is in the hamlet of Khuraybah, roughly one mile north of the village of Qana and about eight miles south-east of the port town of Tyre on the Lebanese coast. The above is a satellite image marked with some of the key areas that played an important part of the staged drama (double-click the image to enlarge).

Apart from aiding the narrative and the understanding of the reader, one of the reasons why it is so necessary to describe this "set" in some detail is to counter the wholly misleading information conveyed by the published photographs and their captions. Typifying the problem is this picture which appeared on the front page of The Daily Telegraph on the morning of 31 July. It shows the iconic figure of "White Tee-shirt" and the caption reads:

A rescue worker carries the body of a young girl from the ruins of the basement shelter where at least 57 Lebanese civilians, mostly children, were killed by an Israeli air strike on the village of Qana yesterday.

It is ironic that the web news editor of this newspaper has been amongst the most voluble critics of the claimed failures of this blog to carry out "fact-checking", yet much of the confusion in the early stages arose from demonstrably false statements such as this, in his own newspaper.

Any ordinary person unfamiliar with the details of the site would assume that the "rescue worker" had just emerged from the wreck of the basement shelter, and that the debris in the background was part of the wreckage. Only later did we fully realise that the "White Tee-shirt" is some 400 yards away and that the wreckage in the background is from a completely different building, destroyed in a previous air strike.

Once we realised this, the pieces started to fall into shape. With the additional detail that we have been able to find (and have been sent) we have been able to put together an analyses of how this and the equally iconic "Green Helmet" scenes were staged. The crucial points are the wrecked house itself, the assembly area for the bodies, outside the house, the "staging area" about 100 yards or so from it, and then the most important part of the "set", the piece of road we call "Stretcher Alley". In the following sections, we have a look at each.

The wrecked house

Curiously, for an incident that was so intensively photographed, there have been few clear pictures of the wrecked house actually published. Where shots have been taken, it seems that most of the photographers could not resist posing one or other figures in front of the building, presumably to give their creations a human dimension. Perhaps the best image comes from AFP, which, if we have located it correctly, seems to show the south-west face of the partially collapsed building, the opposite site from where the casualties were extracted.

From the satellite image, the main entrance to house itself, and therefore the front, seems to be orientated roughly south-west. This image (right) shows that face, the remains of what we are told was a three storey house, the three floors presumably including the so-called basement. The entrance and exit to the basement, used by the rescuers, is round the corner to the left in this view, on the north-west face, at which a UN excavator can be seen working.

In this frame, a video grab from the Channel 4 News footage, we see the upper part of the north-west face of the building, below which is the main entrance and exit to the basement area, just visible at the lower part of the picture. The top floor structure looks largely intact, with the central section walls having collapsed, dropping the top section onto the basement structure.

This is the lower part of the north-west face, showing the entrance and exit to the basement area where most of the bodies were found. The canted, fractured beam at the front is the edge of the floor slab to the upper floor, which is restricting access to the room. There is an un-made road in front of this and (behind the viewer, unseen) is a steep drop, much of the higher part being littered with wreckage.

Entering the basement, this is a view from right to left (with the entrance to the rear), showing the debris in the room. As can be seen, the structure is largely intact, but for the collapse of the left-hand wall (which is to the rear of the house), giving rise to a landslide effect. The debris is said to have smothered casualties rather than crushed them, which explains their lack of visible injury.

This view of the same room gives a better view of the structural condition and the scale of the debris slide - although some debris has probably been removed by the time this photograph was taken. Curiously, in the early frames of the rescue, many of the bodies are seen in the area where the group of men is standing, on top of the debris.

And this is a rare shot of the right-hand wall of the room, showing something that is hinted at in the previous frame by a glimmer of light in the general location. This is the second entrance to the room - possibly a doorway - which leads out to the front of the house (although the opening is not visible in the shot showing that face). Whether this opening played any function in the rescue/recovery is not known.

Continuing the "virtual tour" of the exterior, this looks to be the north-east face of the building, the side where the basement wall collapse and from which the debris slide entered the room.

This, therefore, is - presumably - the face exposed to the blast which precipitated the collapse, which presents something of a mystery. The figure to the right is standing with a group of others (unseen) on the veranda of a neighbouring house, the structure of which looks largely intact, although glazing seems to be absent. The veranda and that house is better seen in the next frame (below).

This frame shows the eastern quadrant of the south-east face, revealing the extensive partial collapse of the roof and the almost complete collapse of the middle floor structure. To the right is the veranda referred to in the previous frame, and the almost intact adjoining building. To the left, out of shot, is the front of the house, shown in the second frame of this sequence. This completes the "tour".

The assembly area

The next key area is the assembly area. This is the ground to the right of the main basement entrance/exit (as you face it), where bodies extracted from the wreckage were first laid out. At times - as in this frame - they were covered - at other times they were not. Throughout the period of recovery, a variety of people were photographed against this backcloth, this frame showing a character in a pale green shirt, described as a "local resident". He appears in many more frames.

According to one witness, from here the bodies were transported directly to the waiting ambulances. But this was not always the case. We aver that the assembly area served another function, that of a selection area. Bodies (and survivors) with the potential to use for staged photo-opportunities, were chosen here and sent to an intermediate "staging area", about 100 yards or so from the wrecked building. There, they were held as "props" while photo-shoots were organised.

The staging area

This, then, is the "staging area" seen in a still photograph from Getty Images, taken by Anwar Amro. It has a veranda structure in front of what appears on the satellite photograph to be a substantial building, the function of which is unknown. The view in this frame is in the direction of the route to the wrecked building. Much of the action takes place in the further end of the veranda, where the vegetation can be seen.

This is the same area, but taken in the opposite direction, towards "Stretcher Alley". The same box-like structure can be seen, this time in the centre foreground, with a stretcher party just embarking on its journey to the waiting ambulances. The figure under the veranda, just to the right of centre in the frame, is evidently giving directions to the party.

This is an external view of the same building, again looking in the general direction of the wrecked building. This particular scene shows "White Tee-shirt" setting off on his "camera run", of which we will see more in Part 6.

Evident from this view is the considerable size of the building, suggesting industrial usage or warehousing.

Stretcher Alley

From the "staging area" the next significant location is "Stretcher Alley", some 200 or so yards further one. It is approached via a convoluted route, the final phase of which culminates in a s