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Sat Aug 12 -

THE QANA PHENOMENON:
Concepts and Dirty Hands -

This latest episode started for me this morning when I was scanning the latest world news stories and spotted a Kathy Gannon piece, a soft feature story backgrounding "Green Helmet." Needless to say, I groaned and clicked away, knowing full well this would start another cycle of hermeneutic Agony Aunt hand-wringing in the Blog World.

And it didn't take long. If you Google around or check Technorati maybe, you should be able to find: everybody's got an opinion. Already.

Gannon's piece is practically a paean to the Green Helmet, whose name turns out to be Salam Daher. She gives some biographical information and depicts him in a noble and altruistic light.

Richard North, on the other hand, reacted to Gannon's hagiography quite critically.

And, it turns out, the deeply undercover agent who's been following this issue is Russian, probably retired or former Soviet Intelligence. "Boris" must have a lot of time on his hands these days and has decided to devote some of it to: deconstructing this phenomenon. His basic position is that everyone involved in the Qana Media Entity has dirty hands and that they are all tinkering around with it. Boris agrees with the general consensus that there is very little doubt by now about a staging, but he says he is not going to just play "Gotcha!" What's the catch, then? Boris seems to believe that if he peels the layers and layers of media onion away, he will eventually get to a burning core of truth, the real facts. The rest, he contends, is just words.

I disagree. The Qana Media Entity today is not just words; it is a contest of dueling or conflicting Concepts. As far as there being a burning core of facts at the center: maybe or maybe not. Whatever small receptacle of facts there may be, disputed or otherwise, Qana is now mostly an Intellectual Construct. And, I suspect, it will continue to be the focus of endless exegesis, arguments, and discussions for a long time to come, because they are essentially arguing over its meaning.
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