The Media Responds (More precisely: the MSM attempts to rehabilitate their photo fraud with more of the same): Attempted Refutations of This Essay by Journalists
Zombietime.com
Despite the massive and widespread publicity this essay has received, few of the media outlets that originally reported the incident have even acknowledged the criticism surrounding their claims, and none (so far at least) have retracted their stories.
A handful of journalists, however, have attempted to defend the reality of the attack and to question the evidence presented above. We'll look at each of their articles individually.
Greg Mitchell, Editor and Publisher, August 24, 2006
In an editorial defending war journalism in general, Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor and Publisher magazine, had this to say:
<<< Since my first column, the same blogs are in a tizzy over the "Zombietime" site proving that the July 23 incident, in which two Red Cross ambulances were hit from the air by the Israelis, never happened. Needless to say, there is no such proof, and my favorite line comes near the end when the writer observes "Israel already admitted to carrying out the attack," adding dryly that this is "an interesting point."
Does this stop her? Alas, no. She goes on to assert that "all signs" point to a "clumsy hoax," complete with ambulances towed from a junk yard and "Red Cross workers feigning minor injuries." Perhaps the Israeli missiles were fired from the Grassy Knoll. >>>
I'd like to address the points raised by Mitchell in his piece -- but there are no real points to address. He provides no additional evidence, challenges none of the evidence presented here, and amuses himself with a flippant dismissal of this entire essay, as if it was nothing but a baseless conspiracy theory. Most tellingly, Mitchell purposely does not provide a link to zombietime, so that his readers would be unable to judge for themselves whether or not the entire incident was indeed a "clumsy hoax." This enables him to lazily rely on one of the debunked putative rebuttals cited above ("The Israeli Admission") without mentioning to his readers any of the points which negate the rebuttal. Isn't Mitchell capable of generating his own challenge to the evidence, aside from rehashing a challenge that I myself had already raised solely for the purpose of debunking it? Apparently not. Flatly stating, as Mitchell does, that "there is no such proof" without anything to back up the statement only further confirms that he has no answer at all to the evidence presented here.
Martin Chulov, The Australian, August 31, 2006
On August 28, the Foreign Minister of Australia Alexander Downer caused in international uproar when he cited the zombietime report in claiming that the Red Cross Ambulance Incident appeared to be a hoax. The Australian newspaper, stung by the accusation that it had not reported the truth about the incident a month earlier, dispatched reporter Martin Chulov to Tyre to reconfirm the story. Chulov's story was published on August 31, and strongly rebuked zombietime for questioning the truth of the original account:
<<< In a speech to Australian newspaper publishers this week, he accused us all of willingly falling for a Hezbollah-contrived conspiracy, our eagerness to do so being dishonest and irresponsible and, according to Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt, fuelled by an anti-Israeli bias.
"What concerns me greatly is the evidence of dishonesty in the reporting out of Lebanon," Downer said, adding later that "it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax".
The source of his findings was a right-wing Florida-based website, zombietime.com, which had devoted 28 pages to discredit the story and lambasted the world's media for covering it.
Downer finds the blog to be a compelling condemnation of the foreign media's competence and ideological stance in Lebanon. Key planks of zombietime.com's allegations are that a missile would not cause the type of damage done to Ambulance 782; rust around the damaged roof showed the damage was done some time prior; neither driver was seriously injured; Shalin's injuries seemed to heal miraculously; and the Israeli apology was merely a matter of course.
I was in Tyre on the night of the attack and investigated the incident closely the next day. >>>
Chulov then goes on to state in no uncertain terms that the incident was most definitely not a hoax, and that Downer was a fool to believe an untrustworthy blog.
Unfortunately for Chulov, in his zeal to doubly affirm the validity of the story, he digs his hole even deeper by producing an entirely new version of what happened, that simultaneously contradicts his earlier report yet also remains completely unverifiable. His only "evidence," yet again, is the testimony of the people who claim to have been attacked. And though he informs his readers that he went back to "inspect the damaged ambulances" he took no pictures to either validate his claims or to challenge the evidence here.
Many other blogs have already torn Chulov's new account to shreds. Here's a small sampling of the many devastating counter-rebuttals:
Australian blogger Tim Blair details point by point how Martin Chulov repeatedly contradicted himself by relying on the ever-shifting testimony of the ambulance drivers:
<<< ...A complete picture of the Red Cross ambulance attack may only be achieved by combining Martin Chulov's two reports:
* The "first ambulance", no. 782, was speeding in a convoy AND stationary;
* The six people on board the convoy were all severely injured except Shalin the driver AND only two were severely injured;
* Shalin was protected by the driver's canopy AND by the vehicle's rear ramp;
* The ambulance/convoy was struck by a rocket/s AND missile/s fired by an Apache helicopter that was also a drone;
* The missile pierced the centre of the red cross on ambulance 782 AND "an explosion thundered" into the ambulance;
* Shalin "remembers nothing" after the flash-bang-crunch of the crash AND he remembers that "then there was a battle for the next hour" and "we hid in a building convinced we were going to die".
The Australian's readers aren't impressed:
>>>Chulov stands by his original story? Then why did he change all of his original details?<<<
Readers of this site are also sceptical. ... Francis H.:
>>>Could Chulov be so clueless not to notice that the story had changed so completely, and precisely in a way to explain the doubts raised by the blogs?<<<
And Currency Lad:
>>>... this hilarious attempt to argue that the people who told Chulov a pack of lies must now be believed because he checked with the liars a second time.<<< >>>
Read the rest of Blair's posts -- and the reader comments -- for further details (links below)
Andrew Bolt, another Australian columnist, also takes Chulov to task simply by reiterating the wide variety of photographic evidence that Chulov chose to ignore, and then again by consulting with a munitions expert who explains in detail how the ambulance simply could not have ben struck by a missile, fired by a drone or anything else.
Chulov dimisses the rust evidence with these lines:
<<< I was in Tyre on the night of the attack and investigated the incident closely the next day.... We inspected both ambulances, whose mangled roofs were not rusting at the time. By the time the photos used on the blog site were taken, rust had appeared. But this is entirely normal in Lebanon's sultry summer climate, where humidity on the coast does not drop below 70 per cent. >>>
Again, we are expected to take Chulov at his word. But a cursory investigation tells a different story.
Rust only forms in the presence of moisture. But weather reports (and a great number of testimonials from residents of Northern Israel who emailed me) show that it did not rain in that region during the last week of July, and that the total precipitation in the area was zero.
Furthermore, and most importantly, no dew formed during that period as well, as revealed in weather reports for July 24 for the three nearest cities to Tyre with weather stations (and Tel Aviv and Beirut are both coastal, like Tyre, and have essentially identical weather).
As long as the air temperature remains above the "dew point temperature" (the temperature below which precipitation forms and remains), then no dew, mist, fog or other moisture forms. As the links below all show, at no point on July 24th or any time during the succeeding week in any similar nearby city did the air temperature fall below the dew point temperature, even at night, meaning that any exposed surfaces would have remained dry.
And many commenters on various blogs have pointed out that "70% humidity" does not mean damp, or even muggy, and that 70% humidity is average and typical for climate all over the world.
This comment from "Whale Spinor" on Tim Blair's blog is standard:
<<< Chulov explains the rusting in part by "where (Lebanon's) humidity on the coast does not drop below 70per cent." If you ever want a fine example of a non-sequitur this is it.
Humidity in Lebanon is currently at 75%. Over next 5 days projections are around 50%.
Humidity at the Australian Antar[c]tic Division Weather station at Casey (66 Degrees South - perched on the edge of the Antartic Ice cap) is currently 82%. Phew, must be pretty tropical and humid down there eh? Far worse than the paltry 70% Chulov quotes. Here's an image of it. Note all the beach umbrellas and palm trees....A high relative humidity does not imply what people refer to as "high humidity" atmospheric conditions. And vice versa. But then again, not much in his story is correct, so I shouldn't expect him to bother too much about the atmospherics. >>>
"Dusty" emailed to say, "I quickly skimmed the weather data for Beirut, Damascus and Tel Aviv (those were the closest locations with available data and served to enclose the subject area.) I checked the dates for all three cities from July 24 to August 1. The results: Temps are in the range of high 80's to lows around 70 (F); hotter and drier in Damascus. Humidities range from 40's to 60's with dew point temps lower than low temps. No rain recorded in any city and no indication of even a trace. So you are right about the weather for the period of time discussed in your story."
As with just about everything in his story, we only have Chulov's word to confirm any of his allegations. As soon as any evidence is consulted, it contradicts his claims.
Riehl World View points out another ludicrous contradiction in the August 31 article, in which Chulov reports:
<<< We also visited Ahmed Mohammed Fawaz, whose lower left leg had been amputated and whose severe burns ironically had saved his life by sealing blood vessels and arteries. >>>
And yet the ITV video taken just hours after the attack shows the now-famous man whose leg was sheared off by the missile -- and as the screenshot above reveals, it was his right leg that appeared to be cut in half, while his left leg seems to be all there.
Were there two men in the ambulance, one of whom lost his left leg while the other lost his right? Are the Lebanese Red Cross workers having a bit of fun with the gullible Western reporters, switching them back and forth at random? Or did the tale-tellers simply not bother to keep track which leg was supposed to be missing, and led Chulov to the nearest one-legged man for an interview? Or can Chulov simply not discern left from right?
Speaking of left and right: The Western Journalists in Support of Palestine site has an approving link to a Chulov article, while another blog pointed out that Chulov has been overly forgiving of Hamas at times.
And finally: Michelle Malkin and the TacticalMiddleEast blog also have roundups of the various Chulov debunkings (links below).
Oh, and one last point: The thrust of Chulov's article basically boils down to the claim that, as a "journalist," he is inherently more accurate and trustworthy than a mere "blogger." And yet he demonstrates his factual accuracy by getting every single point about zombietime completely wrong.
He refers to zombietime as a "right-wing Florida-based website," says I devoted "28 pages" to the story, and the sub-headline refers zombietime as a "callous blog."
For the record:
a. Zombietime is not based in Florida -- it is based in California, as a cursory inspection of the site would have revealed.
b. I am not "right-wing," despite what zombietime's detractors may want to think. If exposing extremism and political bias makes me a "right-winger," then the term has lost all meaning. I support progressive liberal democracy; if anything, groups like Hezbollah should be considered "right-wing" according to the traditional meaning of the term.
c. A trivial detail, but I did not devote "28 pages" to the report. When Chulov printed out the essay it may have taken 28 pieces of paper in his printer, but any single Web page online technically speaking counts as a single "page" in Internet terms -- a long page to be sure, but just one. Web pages are not measured by how many pieces of paper they occupy when printed out on this or that printer.
d. Zombietime is not a blog. It is simply a Web site. Blogs have a specific format, created with blogging software and templates, that usually allow for quick and easily daily posts, with automated reader comment sections, timestamped postings, columns on the side for links and ads, and so on. Zombietime has none of these features; it is a simple Web site using basic html, and no blogging software.
If Chulov can't even get the basics right about the topic of his article, what does that say about the rest of his facts?
Sarah Smiles, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, September 2, 2006
Australia's The Age sent its reporter Sarah Smiles to follow in Martin Chulov's footsteps by re-interviewing the same victims and drivers yet again. Her story was published in The Age -- along with a slightly abbreviated version in the The Sydney Morning Herald -- on September 2.
Sporting the emphatically unambiguous headline "Ambulance attack evidence stands the test," the Smiles article descends into farce as the victims -- apparently unaware that people around the world are actually keeping track of what they're saying -- spin the most elaborate version of events yet, with a panoply of new details which totally contradict all previous articles on the incident. Here is the heart of Smiles' account:
<<< However, Red Cross volunteers manning the ambulances and Mr Fawaz insist the hit was caused by small weapons fired from unmanned drones that they heard circling above after the attack.
The Age visited the yard where the bombed out ambulances are now parked. This reporter saw the ambulance that Mr Fawaz was in. It appeared to have been hit by a weapon that punctured a huge hole through the back. The zombietime.com only shows the picture of the second ambulance that had a smaller puncture through the top where there was a pre-existing vent in the centre of the vehicle.
The holes in the ambulances, parked in the coastal town of Tyre on the Mediterranean, are now covered in rust.
Based on photos of the ambulance's exterior that do not reveal any blood, the site suggests that Mr Fawaz incurred his injury elsewhere and was "paraded before the cameras as a victim of an Israeli missile".
While the interior of the ambulance has been gutted, a Red Cross volunteer who was in the same ambulance as Mr Fawaz said he did bleed onto his stretcher, but not excessively as his leg had been cauterised.
...
Mohammed Hassan, 35, a Red Cross Cross volunteer in the ambulance with Mr Fawaz when it was hit, said three volunteers fled to a nearby building after the attack.
Mr Fawaz's elderly mother Jamila crawled out of the vehicle while the volunteers carried Mohammed, Ahmed's son, who was unconscious. They could not reach Mr Fawaz with rockets from drones hitting around the ambulance and the building they were in.
"If (Alexander Downer) thinks it was a hoax, he should come and see the ambulances himself," said Sami Yazbek, the head of the Lebanese Red Cross in Tyre.
"What, he thinks we lied?" said Mr Hassan in disbelief. He said he was saved by a helmet and bulletproof armour he was wearing that was strafed at the back. He said his helmet is pocked where shrapnel hit.
...
Lebanese Red Cross volunteers are certain the weapons were fired from a drone.
Mr Fawaz, who slipped in and out of consciousness after the blast, remembers hearing the sound of a drone whirring above him when he came to. "It sounds like a motorcycle."
Soon after, through the door of the ambulance that had been blasted open, he recalls seeing a second strike on the ground.
"It was a drone because if it was a warplane we wouldn't be alive," he said.
When he came to after the blast, he remembers reaching for his glasses that were knocked to the back of his head, adjusting them and then feeling a sense of malaise. "I put my hand on my leg and I couldn't feel it," he said. "I tried to take the cord of the IV drip to tie up my leg to stop it bleeding, but I couldn't manage it." >>>
Every section highlighted (underlined) above contradicts the original accounts of the incident. Originally the attack came from a jet, then from a helicopter, then a month later from a single drone, and now, according to Smiles' version, from multiple drones. What was originally one missile became two missiles and now Smiles tells us that there were uncountably many "rockets from drones hitting around the ambulance." These super-drones not only could launch missiles and rockets, but also have "small weapons" that fire bullets that "strafed" the ambulance and its driver, who was only saved by bulletproof armor that he somehow never managed to mention the first hundred times he recounted his story.
It's fairly obvious that the ambulance drivers are just improvising as they go along, inventing new embellishments in each interview, and responding to doubts not by toning down the exaggerations but rather by amplifying the scenario wildly until it no longer even vaguely resembles the story they originally told. And Smiles, obligingly, scribbles it all down for our benefit, unintentionally proving the main point of this essay -- that the story as originally recounted in the media is false.
Among the hundreds of Web sites and blogs that dissected every aspect of the Smiles' article, Andrew Bolt had the most thorough dismantling:
<<< Now The Age tries to defend the missile-through-the-red-cross ambulance hoax.
It starts with a bold claim, announcing in the headline:
<< "Ambulance attack evidence stands the test" >>
It does?
But read on and you will find that reporter Sarah Smiles, who lived as a student in Beirut for four years, doesn't confirm the evidence but change it:
* The missile through the Red Cross painted on the roof of one ambulance becomes a possible missile through the back of the other of the two that were attacked.
* The first ambulance that was hit by a missile is now hit instead by "small weapons".
* A man who had his leg blasted off in the ambulance with the hole through the Red Cross now has it blasted off in the ambulance with the bigger hole in the back.
* A medic explains the strange absence of blood in that ambulance by saying the injured man's leg was "cauterised".
* An attack launched by Apache helicopters is now launched by drones.
* A driver who was first reported to have been knocked unconscious in the attack this time fails to mention that, claiming only that shrapnel-pocked helmet saved him.
* Curiously, all three Red Cross workers who were there and were interviewed after the alleged incident, claim they were saved by a shrapnel-pocked helmet. None were actually wounded with all this shrapnel flying about.
No explicit acknowledgement is made of what seems even from this story to be conceded: that The Age's initial claim that a missile was fired through the Red Cross symbol of ambulance was false.
Nor does it admit what it also seems to concede: That the ambulance first pictured as "proof" of that missile strike was not hit by a missile at all.
Nor is any explanation is offered for the following:
Why we are only now shown a picture of the alleged ambulance that Smiles says was damaged worst -- and presumably this time by a missile? Why did the media ignore this more dramatic picture that would have better proved their claims of an Israeli atrocity?
Why is an ambulance hit by a missile still largely intact? Don't Israeli missiles work?
Why did a missile attack on ambulances not only fail to destroy them, but fail to kill any of the people inside?
Why did The Age initially report both ambulances were in fact hit by missiles, when it now seems to concede that -- at best (or really worst) just one was?
Why has an attack that one medic first said occurred as he was driving now changed to an attack as he was transferring patients?
Why was an ambulance hit by something that caused a huge "explosion" and "fire" show no scorch marks at all, and have a window caved inwards, not outwards?
Why did an ambulance allegedly attacked by Israel have the torn metal covered in rust in an initial Age picture take just one or two days later?
Why did a medic shown in hospital covered in bandages appear in pictures just days later with not a scar or scratch on his skin?
All strange questons needing answers which Smiles fails to provide. >>>
The Mark in Mexico blog also points out a variety of irreconcilable contradictions in the media accounts -- thereby rendering them all unreliable:
<<< From Australia's "The Age", written by one Sarah Smiles:
>>>While the interior of the ambulance has been gutted, a Red Cross volunteer who was in the same ambulance as Mr Fawaz said he did bleed onto his stretcher, but not excessively as his leg had been cauterised.<<<
From Time Magazine, written by one Nicholas Blanford:
>>>The father's leg was severed by the exploding missile and he was losing blood fast.<<<
From The Age, again, now quoting Ahmed Fawaz, the man who lost his leg:
>>>When he came to after the blast, he remembers reaching for his glasses that were knocked to the back of his head, adjusting them and then feeling a sense of malaise. "I put my hand on my leg and I couldn't feel it," he said. "I tried to take the cord of the IV drip to tie up my leg to stop it bleeding, but I couldn't manage it."<<<
The Boston Globe, written by one Thanassis Cambanis:
>>>An elderly woman patient was relatively unscathed, but Mohammed Mustafa Fawaz, 46, was in the intensive care unit, the stump where his right leg used to be swollen and bleeding.<<<
The Age and Sarah Smiles:
>>>However, Red Cross volunteers manning the ambulances and Mr Fawaz insist the hit was caused by small weapons fired from unmanned drones that they heard circling above after the attack.<<<
The Boston Globe and Thanassis Cambanis:
>>>Shaalan said he was swinging the back door shut when everything around him was engulfed in a flash of light. "A big fire came toward me, like in a dream. I thought I was dying, at first," Shaalan said. "Then I opened my eyes, and I could see. I thought everyone in the ambulance was dead." A rocket or missile had made a direct hit through the roof, Shaalan said, severing one patient's right leg. Shaalan took cover in a nearby building.(no mention of drones or of hearing drones prior to the attack)<<<
So, who is lying, Smiles or Blanford, Fawaz or the unnamed Red Cross volunteer? >>>
The online version of the Smiles article had no accompanying illustrations, but the print version of the story did -- showing a rusted old ambulance in a salvage yard that was displayed to Smiles as "the" ambulance. Luckily, a reader of Tim Blair's blog named "David P." scanned the photo for Blair to post online. Here it is:
This is basically an attempt to dredge up "Claim #6" from above -- that we're all analyzing the wrong ambulance. But as has already been pointed out -- Ambulance #782 was specifically identified as "the" ambulance where the main strike took place; which had its roof pierced by a missile; in which the passenger had his leg amputated, and so on. It was Ambulance #782 that was photographed repeatedly, which was displayed in front of the Red Cross office in Tyre afterwards, which the driver posed in front of and pointed to as evidence, and so on. And after all that, we are told by Smiles and her handlers: Wait! That's not the right ambulance! There's a different ambulance that you've never seen before, and that's the one that was hit on the roof by an Israeli missile which sheared off a man's leg. Here it is, over a month after the fact, rusting away in a junkyard! Sorry -- we forgot to mention it earlier. And no one ever bothered to take a picture of it before. Forget about that silly old Ambulance #782!
The picture pretty much debunks itself. Riehl World View was convinced that the Age photo might very well show the actual second ambulance, but Power Line isn't buying Smiles' account or Riehl's doubts (read them at links below).
But the blog Dogfight at Bankstown provides the most convincing debunking of Smiles' Age photo with two freezeframes from the ITV video which show that the roof of the second ambulance -- seen here in the background (behind Ambulance #782), photographed just 12 hours after the attack -- does NOT appear to have a Red Cross on its roof, as the junkyard ambulance in the Age photo does. (The green arrows have been added to indicate the white areas on the second ambulance's roof that should reveal the Red Cross, if it was there.)
Hence the ambulance shown in the Age photo is not the same vehicle that up until now has been identified as the second ambulance. It is most likely a random old junked ambulance unrelated to this entire incident. This is confirmed by the way the red paint on the roof is pale, faded, and peeling off, showing it has been abandoned in the sun for a long time. Compare the condition of the red paint on the Smiles' ambulance with the red paint on every other ambulance depicted on the page. The Age ambulance is old and decrepit. (Not to mention the extensive rust, of course.)
Also, notice, as an aside, that the Age photo shows a vent cover in place on top of the vehicle's Red Cross, proving once and for all that the "missile hole" in Ambulance #782 was actually a pre-existing part of the vehicle's design.
Did Smiles naively swallow a tall tale without even slightly investigating the claims? Or is she sympathetic to Hezbollah? We may never know.
Jo Chandler, The Age, September 2, 2006
As a companion piece to the Sarah Smiles article, The Age published a juvenile ad hominem attack on me personally. This was an essential component of their attempt to resuscitate their ambulance story: first reiterate their claim of infallibility, and then attack the credibility of the "person" they perceive is challenging them. None of this behavior in any way debunks the evidence given here, but it is a commonplace technique for dishonest debaters on the losing side of an argument.
Unlike The Age I am perfectly happy to let the readers see all sides of the argument, including those of people who disagree with me. So here is Chandler's "profile" of me in full:
<<< Right-wing 'Zombie' taunts foes on the web
WHO is the Zombie behind zombietime.com?
He claims to be a "photoblogger" who lives in San Francisco. For fun, he attends protests by people of opposite political inclinations to his own -- the extreme left. He turns their placards against them, takes photographs and posts the images on his site.
In this vein, his happy snaps of the 2006 World Naked Bike Ride are well worth a look. But recently he has turned investigator, challenging photo agencies such as Reuters over the alleged manipulation of images and -- infamously -- arguing that the bombing of an ambulance in Lebanon was a hoax.
Last month, another right-wing blogger ("Blonde Sagacity, the conservative that liberals hate to love"), claimed a rare interview with the Zombie, in which he chatted about his anonymity, his tricks to obtain pictures (sometimes the camera is hidden, sometimes he plays tourist), and his motivations.
"The anti-war movement is really an anti-American movement," he told Blonde.
"The media (try) to demoralise the country by portraying the anti-war movement as reasonable, widespread, and destined for victory. But in fact it is a hate-fuelled fringe movement that only maintains even a hint of credibility due to media misrepresentation. That's something I'm trying to correct."
Just how successful the Zombie has been in spreading the message is not clear. The site technorati.com -- which measures the connections and mentions that build credibility in the web -- show it as a low-wattage player.
Yesterday it had 955 blog posts, while Melbourne conservative Andrew Bolt had 4260, and the influential US Drudge Report more than 41,000. >>>
Though none of this is relevant to the issue of the ambulance, I will address some of the points in the article, since The Age seems to think that my identity and personality -- as opposed to the evidence I have pointed out -- has some bearing on the incident.
Virtually every "fact" or claim in Chandler's story is either inaccurate, irrelevant, or just plain wrong. (If you're not interested in this issue, feel free to skip to the next section.) Here's a quick assessment of the story:
* I am not "right-wing." Far from it. As mentioned above, I believe in progressive liberal democracy. If one still accepts the cogency of the now-outdated and politically irrelevant left/right dichotomy (which I don't), then if anything it is the people who consider me their foe who ought to be considered "right-wing," by its traditional definition. I am pro-freedom, and have a distaste for totalitarianism and theocracy. "Left" or "right" have nothing to do with it.
* I try not to "taunt" anybody. I just try to present or analyze photographic evidence. Nor do I consider anyone my "foe." If people out there don't like the evidence I present, then it is they who feel taunted and who define me as their foe.
* "He"? Where did they get that? I have never stated my gender. Jumping to conclusions.
* I have never claimed to be a "photoblogger." In fact, I've never used that term at all. Others may have used it to describe me, but that's as far as it goes.
* I have never said where I live, either. Yes, I take photographs in San Francisco frequently, but that does not mean I necessarily live there. Again, jumping to conclusions.
* I take my pictures "for fun"? Quite the contrary -- it is hard work, and decidedly unpleasant. I do it because it is necessary, not because it is fun. Of course, saying that I do what I do "for fun" is nothing more than a heavy-handed attempt to brand me as an untrained amateur whose opinions are therefore marginalized. In fact, the entire article is nothing more than that: a petty ad hominem attack to undermine my credibility, as if that somehow would prop up their arguments. This is a logical fallacy used by debaters who have run out of valid arguments.
* "Infamously." Classic. This counts as journalism?
* If I'm such a low-wattage player, then why am I being profiled in The Age? Anyway, I've never claimed to be "high-wattage," nor does my wattage have any bearing on the evidence presented here.
* Chandler completely misapprehends the Technorati statistics. The number "955 blog posts" she refers to is not the number of posts I have made, but rather the number of blogs that currently have a posting that mentions the word "zombietime." Comparing my mentions to those of a columnist in a mainstream high-circulation newspaper (Andrew Bolt), and to the most popular independent news site on the entire Internet (Drudge) is a conscious attempt to make my influence seem puny. Since few people actually use the word "zombietime" in their postings, preferring instead to just call me "zombie" or to link to my reports without mentioning me at all, a more accurate Technorati search can be made by searching for any blog posts that link to my site, which gives (at the time of this writing) 6,349 links -- while Andrew Bolt gets 379 links (many of which are about my report anyway) while Drudge has 24,000. If being one-fourth as bright as the most powerful light on the Internet (Drudge) makes me low-wattage, then low-wattage I shall be.
Tim Blair jumps to my defense with a humorous rebuttal of Chandler's hit piece (and of Smiles' article as well - link below).
zombietime.com
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