circular webs: bert & osama in undoctored photo

[Dynamite Bob]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,36218,00.html

					NEW YORK  Do
                                     the global terror links
                                     reach even as far as
              Sesame Street? Is Bert the Muppet a henchman
              of terrorist mastermind Usama bin Laden?

              The answer is clearly no, but puzzled newspaper
              readers are still wondering how the Sesame Street
              icon ended up in a news service photograph of a
              pro-bin Laden protest in Bangladesh. The pictures
              clearly showed demonstrators holding up a large
              poster in which bin Laden and Bert are standing next
              to each other.

              The picture quickly began making the e-mail rounds
              Wednesday morning, astonishing and provoking
              laughter from Los Angeles to Switzerland to South
              Korea.

              The poster is a collage of pictures of bin Laden in
              white robes, camouflage fatigues and lecturing with a
              microphone in his hand, all ringing a large portrait of
              the bearded Saudi exile. Along the bottom is printed
              "Usama." On the right side of the picture, just past
              the right shoulder of the large portrait, is irascible
              Bert, bosom buddy of Ernie.

              The photographs do not appear to have been
              doctored. They were taken by news photographers
              covering at least two different demonstrations from
              different angles on at least two separate days.

              The first known Bert-bin Laden posters appeared on
              Oct. 5 in Dhaka, and photographs of them were
              printed by the Dutch news service Algemeen
              Nederlands Persbureau and the Associated Press and
              Reuters news services. At least one other photograph
              including the posters was taken by Reuters
              photographer Rafiqur Rahman in Jakarta on Oct. 9.

              Reuters spokeswoman Felicia Cosby said the photos
              were authentic.

              "We've just noticed it
              ourselves, since you
              queried, that there is
              Bert on that poster," she
              said. "I don't know if
              they're mass-producing
              these posters, but what I
              can say is that it is
              definitely our policy not
              to doctor photographs."

              Associated Press
              spokesman Jack Stokes said the AP photographs
              were also untouched.

              "We haven't changed the photo at all," he said. "We
              have very strict editing guidelines."

              The AP photographs were taken by Pavel Rahman.
              Stokes said he did not know if Rahman was another
              name for, or related to, Rafiqur Rahman.

              Cosby said Rafiqur Rahman, a native Bangladeshi,
              did not know that he was photographing a Muppet
              when he covered a prayer demonstration for bin
              Laden's health Oct. 9.

              "The photographer is as bemused as we are," she
              said. "He didn't know what that furry creature was."

              Rahman is going to a local marketplace to hunt down
              more Bert-bin Laden posters Wednesday, Cosby
              said. 

              The creator of a parody Web site dedicated to "Evil
              Bert" said he had a theory about how an associate of
              Kermit the Frog, Big Bird and Snuffleupagus had
              been recruited into the Al Qaeda cause. 

              For several years, Dino Ignacio, 27, a San Francisco
              3-D animator, had been maintaining a humor Web
              site that purported to "prove" that the bad-tempered,
              banana-shaped Jim Henson creation was connected
              to evil causes from Hitler and the JFK assassination
              to the stolen Pamela Anderson sex tapes and Kevin
              Costner movies. But he stopped maintaining the site
              when he lost interest in 1998.

              A week after the World Trade Center and Pentagon
              attacks, someone e-mailed him an altered picture of
              bin Laden standing next to Bert wearing a trenchcoat
              and looking very angry. Ignacio didn't post the
              picture on his site out of respect for victims of the
              terror attack, but the picture began showing up on
              Bert fan sites and in other odd corners of the Internet.

              "What I'm thinking is that [someone there] has access
              to the Internet, got this picture to pop up off of Alta
              Vista or Google and put together this collage," he
              said. 

              Of course, the other explanation might be that Bert
              has finally ditched Ernie, canceled his account at Mr.
              Hooper's shop and taken his Kalashnikov to the other
              side of the war. 

              Sesame Workshop issued a statement saying it was
              very unhappy with the sudden connection between a
              lovable character with a penchant for penguins and
              bottlecaps and the most wanted man in the world.

              "Sesame Street has always stood for mutual respect
              and understanding," a spokeswoman said. "Were
              outraged that our characters would be used in this
              unfortunate and distasteful manner. This is not at all
              humorous.The people responsible for this should be
              ashamed of themselves. We are exploring all legal
              options to stop this abuse and any similar abuses in
              the future."

              When asked about Bert's current whereabouts,
              however, the spokeswoman replied: "No comment."

              Regardless of the explanation, Ignacio said he
              doesn't find his "Evil Bert" idea very funny right
              now.

              "It's weirding me out," he said. "It's like reality
              imitating the Web, but it's taking something that I did
              so much further. I don't want to get into this one
              because it's too real."

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