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,