Overnight Open Thread
Open | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 11:09:30 pm PST
Ruler: What plan will you follow now?
Eros: Plan 9. It’s been absolutely impossible to work through these Earth creatures. Their soul is too controlled.
Ruler: Plan 9...ah yes. Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long-distance electrodes shot into the pinion pituitary glands of recent dead. Have you attempted any of this plan as yet?
Eros: Yes Excellency.
Ruler: How successful has it been?
Eros: We have risen two so far. We shall be just as successful on more.
Ruler: The living...they have no suspicion of your movements?
Eros: We had to dispose of one policeman. However, none of those risen have been seen. At least, not by anyone who still remains alive.
Ruler: It’s too bad it must be handled this way. However it must. Those who take from the grave will lead the way for our other operations.
Eros: Yes, Excellency.
— Plan 9 from Outer Space
Gazacam Reprise
Middle East | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 6:01:00 pm PST
Here’s the latest live video stream from Gaza (no guarantees on whether it will work with your browser):
UPDATE at 1/12/09 6:08:47 pm:
A few minutes ago there was a very loud explosion, and the video stream went blank...
UPDATE at 1/12/09 6:20:46 pm:
It’s back, but intermittent.
Joe the Plumber Makes Waves
Media | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:47:52 pm PST
Not everyone is impressed with Joe Wurzelbacher’s debut as a correspondent, and Pajamas Media deserves credit for posting a view from a critic: Pajamas Media » No-Joe: Wurzelbacher Is Not Edward R. Murrow.
Ed Morrissey is also unenthusiastic.
Hamas Ready for a Deal?
Middle East | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:21:58 pm PST
Is Hamas starting to get cold feet for their jihad? Haniyeh: We’ll deal positively with any cease-fire initiative.
As diplomats scrambled across the Middle East trying to put together a Gaza cease-fire, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh indicated Monday night that he was willing to discuss a truce.
In a televised speech from his hideout, the Hamas leader said, “we will deal positively with any initiative which stops the aggression against our people” and leads to Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Nevertheless, he stressed that while efforts continue toward a cease-fire agreement, Hamas would continue to fight.
Haniyeh said most of those killed in the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead had been women and children, but stressed that “despite this, we knew that victory is the lot of the believers and those who perform Allah’s commandments.”
Their idea of a ceasefire, as we’ve seen repeatedly, is a pause to rearm, recuperate, and retrain.
Monday Afternoon Open
Open | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 3:08:09 pm PST
Appearing by popular demand, this afternoon only, the professional repertory Open Thread...
Zombie: Anti-Israel Rally in San Francisco
US News | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:15:56 pm PST
Zombie was at this weekend’s anti-Israel (actually... openly antisemitic) protest in San Francisco: Gaza War Protest.
Featuring the “boneheaded hatred” photo of the day:
Video: Hamas Rockets Fired from Schoolyard During 'Humanitarian Cease Fire'
Video | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 11:47:53 am PST
During the January 8th “cease fire” to allow humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza:
Strange Bedfellows: New York Times and Creationist Museum
Media | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 11:22:42 am PST
Irony alert: on the page for the New York Times Art and Leisure Week “Special Cultural Offerings” promotion, choose “Kentucky” (KY) and “Museum” from the dropdown menus and click Submit, and you’ll discover that last weekend the Times was pushing a package deal that included a visit to Ken Ham’s absurd Creation Museum. Wonder if they knew?
Museum listings for KY
Buy one admission and receive a second one of the same value free at most
museums from January 8 to 11, 2009, unless otherwise specified.Creation Museum
2800 Bullittsburg Church Rd.
Petersburg
(888) 582-____
CreationMuseum.org
For more on this 60,000 square foot animatronic advertisement for young earth creationism: LGF search: Creation Museum.
New York Times Claims Credit for LGF Story
Media | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:32:30 am PST
In his latest excuse for the New York Times’ biased coverage, “public editor” Clark Hoyt casually claims that a Times reporter unmasked a fake Iranian missile photo.
Witty and his colleagues are frustrated because Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza, and although The Times has two photographers in the region ready to go, it must rely on pictures taken by Palestinian photographers. “When I can’t have my own person there, I have to question every picture that comes in — to an obsessive degree,” he said. Last summer, Witty unmasked as a fake a photo of an Iranian missile test that ran on many other front pages.
Uh, no. We’ve been through this before, and the New York Times did not break this story. We did.
See:
A Memo to Fox News and the New York Times.
Iran’s Photoshopped Missile Launch.
UPDATE at 1/12/09 3:58:05 pm:
A couple of readers forwarded a response:
Thank you for writing and for calling to my attention the claim by the Little Green Footballs blog that it was the first to discover that the photo of the Iranian missile test had been faked.
I inquired further into this matter, and here is what I found: According to Patrick Witty, the photo editor I quoted in Sunday’s public editor column, the photo in question came into the system at The Times at 12:01:29 p.m. on July 9. It was subsequently published on the newspaper’s Web site, and Witty said he planned to use it in the next morning’s printed newspaper. But he said that something struck him as unusual about the picture — it was just too perfect — so he opened it in Photoshop and determined that it was a fake. He said he notified the Web photo editor at about 4 p.m. to take the picture down immediately and then went into the news meeting, in progress, to tell the photo director that the picture was a fraud and shouldn’t be used in the next day’s paper.
Witty said he called AFP at about 6 p.m. to tell them the picture was not genuine, but the wire service refused to send out a correction. The Times published a story about the fake the next morning.
Looking at screen grabs from nytimes.com, my assistant determined that the photo and an accompanying story were posted on the site at 3:13 p.m. on July 9. By 4:31 p.m., the photo was gone. According to the Little Green Footballs site, its story about the fake photo was posted at 6:13:47 PDT on July 9, which would be 9:13 p.m., New York time, or not quite five hours after the photo had been removed from The Times’s site. Witty said he was not aware of the posting by Little Green Footballs, and the time stamps verify his statement.
I’ve encountered a number of these claims before by bloggers. As you know, the Web is a huge universe that is virtually impossible for any single news organization to monitor. Sometimes stories break in more than one place at a time, and one originating site is not aware that information it has published has appeared elsewhere at roughly the same time. In this case, I think it is pretty clear that The Times took corrective action on the photo, based on its own independent analysis, long before Little Green Footballs published its account.
I hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Clark Hoyt
Public Editor
The New York Times
Mr. Hoyt is moving the goalposts. The claim was that LGF broke the story, not that we were the first in the world, chronologically, to notice the fakery. They may have noticed the fraud and removed the photo from their site, but Hoyt himself says the Times didn’t publish about it until the next morning. The original article said Witty had “unmasked” the fake photo, but since LGF was first to publish, that claim is not correct.
Publish or perish. Our point stands.
Joe the Plumber Witnesses Rocket Attack in Israel
Middle East | Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 8:41:07 am PST
Joe Wurzelbacher is in Israel; in this extended report he visits a house destroyed by a Hamas rocket, confronts a group of Reuters journalists, then comes under rocket attack while doing an interview and has to go into a shelter: Pajamas TV - Joe Wurzelbacher Comes Under Attack in Southern Israel.
