Just after Christmas my uncle, a stirrer of the finest order, sent me an email titled "Nearly 200,000 books in Egypt reduced to ashes at the hands of Islamic supremacists".

Written by Ryan Jones of Israel Today Magazine on the 27th December 2011 it went on to detail "Earlier this month, in a development nearly two weeks old (as of this writing), approximately 192,000 rare books and manuscripts belonging to the Institute of Egypt in Cairo went up in flames, destroyed by rampaging Muslim mob."
http://israeltoday.co.il/News/tabid/178/nid/23061/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Ryan manages to use the gamut of pushbutton words in the short piece; Hitler, Muslim Brotherhood, Christians, medieval, Ayatollah Khomeini, Yasser Arafat, Hamas, Sharia Law, and for good measure Iran.

A quick fact checking showed that the building was one of a number that caught fire during the latest violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Tahrir Square. 

A report can be found here;
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/violence-rocks-cairo-for-third-day-20111218-1p0eq.html?skin=text-only

What is interesting is not the fact that such a biased article was written but rather the speed with which it has been propagated around the web. I have watched with a morbid fascination the Google hits explode as site after site has run with the piece. Now it ranks before virtually all the news reports of the incident.

The question is are we seeing agenda driven ideologues spreading their warped version of reality or something more sinister? Is it in the 'black op' league? Is this a shining example of the deliberate dissemination of disinformation?

Anyone up for a little sleuthing? UOG this should be right up your alley.

An interesting thread CSteele, but I think it is hard to see what is or isn't true about the book-burning incident. I would be skeptical about the account from such a biased site as 'Israel Today' though.

I was looking up the history of book-burning as a matter of interest, and came across several sites stating that it was a well known practice of some Christian groups in the past (?present) too, especially the following site:

"Book Burning: A True Christian Tradition"
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1002/bookburning.html

I don't think that either religious group can say they haven't been involved in this sort of activity.

Good morning csteele, this is the point you will say I am sweating and heated.
That my anger over rules thoughts, not true quite calm, but understand it helps you handle the fact we oppose one another on such subjects.
Lies are currency in all groups in the middle east.
And your relatives have a holly book that says it is not just ok but good/required to lie to us.
Well worth noting the little boy who cried wolf here.
I have recently seen a list of dreadful crimes said to be perpetrated by America, on folk from this part of the world.
Including, no joke, mens penis falling of after drinking Coke Cola!

oh dear im getting typecast
but my search reveals it didnt rate any mention
http://whatreallyhappened.com/

no doudt frank will be looking into this
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-world-today-radio-podcasts.html

israel should be for israelies
not zion...

ditto palistein/iran..etc
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/12/20/romney-obama-agree-on-iran-keep-up-aggression-impede-peace/

[so we expect spin]..like the book burning to be propagated
[pre their intended attack on iran]...babies from incubaters..etc

anything but peace tal-king

anything to get the maccabees..[and the chinees]
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2012/01/invading-iran-is-invading-russia-china.html

the 911
injury toll continues
http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/01/01/all-american-muslim-9-11/

The true number of military personnel..injured over the course of our nine-year-long fiasco in Iraq is in the hundreds of thousands -- maybe even more than half a million --

if you take into account..all the men and women who returned from their deployments with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress, depression, hearing loss,..breathing disorders,..diseases, and other long-term health problems.
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-many-us-soldiers-were-wounded-in.html

absolute power corrupts absolutly
http://rt.com/news/obama-torture-change-killing-103/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMOp1tk5Z5o

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=17142
http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9lp0YFqVC1E#!

depleted uranium makes birth defects
so too white phospher..and cluster bombs
[noted in the prison camp known as palistein]
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/gaza-the-3-week-nightmare-that-has-lasted-for-3-years/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kPe5zcTjH4
http://lewrockwell.com/scheuer/scheuer12.1.html
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/01/02/lessons-in-american-history-scapegoating/

the war mongering leech
has sukked its own people dry
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Formerly_Great_Cities_All_Over_America_Are_Turning_Into_Open%2C_Festering_Sores_/17251/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Dear Suseonline,

Thanks for the reply.

The facts are that on the day there were dramatic clashes between protesters and security forces, remember this was when the footage was captured of the woman being stripped half naked and beaten and kicked while she lay unconscious on the ground.

Footage of protesters using fire-bombs to dislodge security snipers from rooftop positions has been shown time and time again from Egypt.

Reports state that part of the reason the army went in so hard this time was the absence of the more religious elements at the square because of how well those elements had done in the elections.

However none of this was mentioned in Ryan's article. One can see it as just disingenuous or a calculated manipulation of the facts. The following from the website gives us the answer.
“Israel is at the centre of a media war, and you can help tip the scales in her favor. The recent events in Egypt once again demonstrate how powerfully the media can influence realities on the ground by manipulating the perception the world has of what is happening in the Middle East. The media is a full-fledged actor in the battle facing Israel. And Israel is losing the media war.”

The logo for Israel Today is two Jewish symbols over a Christian one.

What is interesting is that Ryan is a 'gentile'. A search for 'Ryan Jones Israel' gets us his Linkedin profile. We see he was educated at Baker University in Kansas, currently a Reporter/Editor/News Writer at Israel Today Magazine. Past employment was as “Freelance Reporter at Cybercast News Service”, “Middle East Correspondent at All Headline News”, Writer/Webmaster at International Christian Zionist Center. He has an open Google profile complete with family photo albums, which is strange for someone who is obviously computer savvy.

A search for 'Ryan Jones Israel Wikipedia' gets us a page on the Israel Insider, “daily online publication that provides news and commentary about Israel, including security and diplomatic issues, politics, culture, and global Jewish concerns, in particular anti-Semitism.” whose other contributors include Benjamin Netanyahu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelinsider

Cont

Cont.

“The publication's revenue model is based primarily on reader contributions, advertising, and the licensing of Israel and Jewish history maps.”. The last part threw me a little, until I found out that the chief customer for those maps appears to be the Israeli Military. What a great way to create a seemingly legit money trail, or am I being a little cynical?

However the link back to our Mr Jones is obviously tenuous. The question is whether he is being funded in part or wholly by the Israeli government? Or does he do this purely from a deeply held religious conviction? Certainly the reach of his articles throughout the blog-o-sphere puts our David Singer to shame but leaves us with suspicions rather than answers.

Dear UOG,

Needed a touch more focus but thank you for trying.

Dear Belly,

My self-imposed ban on our engaging is reinstated because I do not want to put your blood pressure at risk nor be diverted on this thread. Thank you.

To all,

The reason for the thread is the need I have to understand how things work. I'm not keen to pass judgement since all sides engage in disinformation, but it have witnessed this instance occurring in real time has been intriguing to say the least. So is Mr Jones.

This is fun.

The Israel Today site is of course hosted in Israel. Ryan Jones is not the person who owns the domain name but one Rafael Danon of 9 Otniel Street Jeruselem. Israel Today has over 500 sites linked to it.

As an aside according to Alexa.com, based on internet averages, israeltoday.co.il is visited more frequently by males who are in the age range 55-64 and received some college education.  (Interestingly OLO “ is visited more frequently by users who are over 65 years old, have no children and are graduate school educated.”).

:)

A search on Linkedin for our Mr Rafael Danon returns 'owner ARAD' but little else. Googling ARAD and Israel returns the ARAD Group, a public company with branches around the world selling water measuring devices. In fact it is not very hard to imagine Rafael Danon to be ficticious since the cupboard is pretty well bare on him. Let us further imagine someone from the ARAD Group was sitting down to make up this ficticious name. What might be their prompts? Rafael might well have come from Raphael Valves Industries Ltd an old established Israeli company and Danon from the Danone Group with significant interests in Israel, both companies are heavily involved in the Israeli water industry.

Okay a wee flight of fancy, but who knows.

Let's try another tack, at number 5 Otniel Street lies the Bat Kol institute – “Jewish studies for Christians in a Jewish Milieu”. This sounds far more up Ryan Jones' alley. Is he being funded by the American Christian Right?

As they say in the classics follow the money trail to find the answers.

Back to the grindstone tomorrow so will play some more tonight if I can.

Most called the Wikileaks farce, news. There's our shining example of misinformation from our end. How about statistics on illegal immigrants versus asylum seekers. Why won't our media put THE FACTS on the table versus the rubbish that all come from boats. They barely register a blip on the illegal immigrant numbers.

EVERYWHERE media are lazy.

This article below is an interesting look at how twitter messages are propagated. It looks at the news of the death of OBL.

http://blog.socialflow.com/post/5246404319/breaking-bin-laden-visualizing-the-power-of-a-single

"The rate at which Keith’s message spread was staggering. Within a minute, more than 80 people had already reposted the message, including the NYTimes reporterBrian Stelter. Within two minutes, over 300 reactions to the original post were spreading through the network."

The conclusion? 

"Keith Urbahn wasn’t the first to speculate Bin Laden’s death, but he was the one who gained the most trust from the network. And with that, the perfect situation unfolded, where timing, the right social-professional networked audience, along with a critically relevant piece of information led to an explosion of public affirmation of his trustworthiness."

I wager if Ryan Jones had been blogging out of some Christian organization in the US he would have had markedly less traction. The use of the world Israel and a confirming URL ratchets up the "trustworthiness" considerably.

As yet I haven't seen his take on the story being quoted by the mainstream media, but one senses it can't be far away.

in feel the 3889 re-tweets ensure
the media will in time again catch up

of course with the 24 hour news cycle
on a half hour replay..[of the same news]
its unlikely more than the set adgendas get heard

anyhow

the pictures and the graph's werre most enlightening
even if the topic was boring..as to why the killing murder orded by the president..on another states ciitizen...[well lets not go there]

i think its more about making our minds woooly..enough
so the wool eventually blocks the ears

good commie party loyalists

I have had a reply to my email addressed to Ryan Jones querying his term "Islamists mob" being responsible for the burning of the Egyptian Institute.

Part of it read;

"A researcher with the Foreign Policy Research Institute who was stationed in Cairo until being deported by Mubarak in late 2010 combed through Egyptian reports after the fire and shared this:

"...an Egyptian newspaper published a picture on its website of protesters allegedly expressing their joy at the sight of the venerable old establishment as it burst into flames..."

Many other protesters did try to help put out the flames. But for the fire to start in the first place required someone hurling a molotav cocktail through what were relatively high windows. Hardly an accident."

It gave me a chance to track down the article that inspired Ryan's piece. This is what it said about the incident;

"Reportedly, a Molotov cocktail (one of many thrown at security forces in the last week of renewed demonstrations around Tahrir) landed within the two-story, Belle Epoque structure, setting it alight. While it is unclear if the fire was deliberate, an Egyptian newspaper published a picture on its website of protesters allegedly expressing their joy at the sight of the venerable old establishment as it burst into flames, and the military has produced another showing a protester attempting to incinerate a parliament building. Yet many demonstrators rallied to battle the blaze until fire trucks arrived, once again displaying what many have praised as the "Spirit of Tahrir""
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2011/201112.stock.houseofdust.html

This hardly justifies the use of the term "Islamist mob" and the Molotov Cocktail was certainly consistent with protestors trying to remove rooftop security forces as has occurred throughout.

It would seem this group is largely supported by messianic jews and Christians rather than more 'black op' forces but then it wouldn't be very good black ops if one could uncover them by google alone. It also appears that  the editor Aviel Schneider may have relations to a network of over 1200 sites. This would certainly explain the ability to get such a strong google ranking on issues.

Below is my reply to Ryan.

Dear Ryan,

Thank you for your considered reply.

I started looking into some of the points you had raised and found them to be somewhat lacking. For instance you flagged the involvement of Al-Nour at the burning of the Institute but from all reports they very purposely stayed completely away. One official, Sheikh Maher, explained;

“Al-Nour didn’t go to Tahrir Square in December to protest against their crimes because we know that the Army is waiting for us to slip up so they can put us all in jail,” he says. “But once we get in parliament, justice will be served.”.

It is hard to ignore the probability that you used Raymond Stock's article as the basis of your own but hyped it considerably by using the term 'Islamist mob' and purposefully neglecting the clashes with security forces on the night.

I have had a chance to examine the background of yourself and the providence of your site. It certainly helped me understand the inflammatory nature of your articles. I have a fundamentalist Christian father-in-law so I do understand the mindset yet I am sure he would be a little more circumspect than your good self.

I understand the art of journalism is not your highest priority but would ask you to reflect on the probability that the nature of your work can only serve to increase divisions and hatreds in this world, something that should be an anathema to any true follower of the 'Prince of Peace'.

Instead of such poison may your pen in future strive to be filled from the well of truth.

All the best.

Regards,

Dear csteele,

I've just come across the following site that may
be of interest:

http://www.care2.com/causes/rare-books-burn-in-egypt.html

I like the last statement:

"The continued loss of life due to civil unrest in Egypt
is truly heartbreaking. And the latest news of all the
historical treasures that have been lost adds to the
country's grief."

A reader also pointed out that the misguided molotov cocktail that
started the fire was thrown by an army officer. They apparently
have photographs of the event.

Dear Lexi,

Thanks for your post. The burning of the Institute was certainly a loss not only to the Egyptian people but to the rest of the world and indeen we should not forget that 14 Egyptians lost their lives on that day in a struggle for freedoms and democracy that we take for granted.

However I would not be true to the sentiment of this thread if I didn't point out the fact that in your post you quoted an anonymous poster on an agenda driven site, even though the agendas mentioned do resonate with me. There is numerous footage of security forces and regime supporters both sniping and throwing fire bombs onto the protestors during the unrest, and also of those same protestors using firebombs to attempt to dislodge them. Unless we have strong evidence to the contrary the laws of physics dictate that it was probably one of the latter that caused the inferno. What we can be sure of is that it wasn't an Islamic Mob!

It is something innate in all of us including myself and it is perfectly understandable to champion our causes, trusting and disseminating far more the supporting information than negative. 

However while our missives have little impact those purely agenda driven organizations who have the resources can often step in front of the news and grab our attention. 

It is for this reason the demise of traditional news gathering is so worrying. Less trained reporters on the ground means less depth of reporting and therefore more gaps where opinion and manipulation can proliferate. Imagine if Chris Masters had given us an eyewitness account.

There are some very worrying agents trying to fill those gaps. Israel Today is just one example. We will need to be vigilant.

Dear csteele,

I agree. That is why it is important to do
one's research from as many sources as possible.
Especially from more reliable sources such as -
the Lowy Institute, Reuters, NY Post, New York Times,
to quote just a few. Instead of Israel Today - have you
read what the more moderate Tel Aviv newspaper, "Haaretz"
had to say?

Dear Lexi,

I possibly needed to be clearer. My issue isn't so much that Israel Today wrote such a biased, factually incorrect, piece, rather that when I typed "egyptian institute book burn" into google it was the first cab off the rank. It's position has since slid to sixth but it is still on the first page. Actually at forth is a site that quotes the Israel Today piece but attributes Jihad Watch, so therefore second hand. This is how pervasive disinformation can be.

It is the usurping of accounts from more trusted sources that is the worrying aspect.

Haaretz which you mentioned, was not as bad but hardly good. Zvi Bar'el's piece said "The loss of historical manuscripts in a Cairo research institute, amid clashes between Egypt's military and revolutionaries, is reminiscent of the looting of Baghdad's national museum after U.S. troops entered the city in 2003."

No it isn't, not even close, and it is a perversion of the available facts to have said so.

But what is very interesting is I think the article has been altered in the last few days. When I first read it I could have sworn it blamed the inferno on a deliberate arson attack.

It now reads "The research institute, which was founded by Napoleon in 1798, was not torched in a deliberate arson attack on government offices perpetrated by opponents of the old regime. The fire resulted from a loss of control, mixed with feelings of frustration and rage, especially against the army."

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/even-the-military-can-t-protect-egypt-s-historical-treasures-1.402204

Lol!

I think dear Ziv may have been scolded and his defense was 'Oh I had meant to put "not" in there, sorry.' Ziv my friend, I'm afraid it reads ludicrously when taken with the rest of your piece.

Well hats off to the editor.

I wish to withdraw the accusation that Zvi Bar'el added the word 'not' to his article. I have found a copy of the piece I had taken when I first read it and the word was included.

Further, on closer reading, I think the passage works, though possibly clumsily.

I stand by my judgement on its merits.

"... it is perfectly understandable to champion our causes, trusting and disseminating far more the supporting information than negative."

This is known as "confirmation bias" - a recognised psychological condition. Those who fall within this state only recognise "facts" that support their particular prejudice.

Lexi is absolutely correct. If one is really interested in the truth of an issue one has to make the effort of verifying it, and not just from one source - and hopefully, proven impartial sources.

Perhaps a series of references in footnotes would be appropriate.

Unfortunately, one must be also cautious of photographs. All journalists know that these can be cropped to present an entirely different "reality" ... and then we have photographs dredged up from media morgues which have absolutely no relationship to the news issue in question. A couple of years ago Reuters was in the unenviable position of having to admit (after investigation on their part) that a number of photographs released had in fact been doctored.

I recall journalists coming to Malaya during the Emergency and "choreographing" images to send back home. A picture may be "worth more than a thousand words" but unfortunately, may have little or no truth to it.

The above comments are Journalism 10