Zombietime

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Zombietime is an online photo archive dedicated to documenting the far-left, antisemitic, and anti-American views expressed by some protestors at political demonstrations. The archive covers anti-war, anti-Israel, anti-American, pro-Israel, and anti-abortion rallies, cultural events, and offers commentary on the mainstream media. It is maintained by zombie, a pseudonymous photographer who is based in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.^[1]

Original photographs, on-site reports, and commentary posted on zombietime have been cited as source material by the mainstream media,^[2] and linked to by several blogs, including Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin, The Jawa Report, and Instapundit.

Contents 1 Reports 2 The identity of "zombie" 3 Motivation 4 Awards and publications 5 Controversies 5.1 The Flight 93 National Memorial 5.2 The Mohammed Image Archive 5.3 The Red Cross ambulance incident 6 Media references to zombietime 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Reports

Zombie documents the views expressed at protests and other public events, focusing strongly on antisemitic statements made by protesters. Zombie states that such displays of sentiment are rarely mentioned by the mainstream media.

Zombietime is often referred to as a blog, but in fact does not use blogging software and lacks many of the defining features of a blog (timestamped posts, comments, blogrolls, etc.). Also, unlike most blogs with daily posts, zombietime is updated with new material comparatively infrequently.

[edit] The identity of "zombie"

The creator of all the content on zombietime goes by the online name "zombie" (which he or she always spells with a lower-case "z"). zombie has never revealed his or her real name, gender, location, age or profession.

[edit] Motivation

In an interview in August 2006, zombie explained his or her motivations, claiming "The anti-war movement is really an anti-American movement. The media [try] to demoralize 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 misrepresention. That's something I'm trying to correct."^[1] The same article also noted "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."^[1]

[edit] Awards and publications

zombietime won the Best Photo Blog award in the 2005 Weblog Awards competition, an award voted by online users.^[3]

The zombietime essay Anatomy of a Photograph^[4] was included as a chapter in the third edition of the popular textbook Everything's an Argument.^[5]

Photos taken by zombie were used in Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild,^[6] a book by Michelle Malkin.

[edit] Controversies

[edit] The Flight 93 National Memorial

In September 2005 zombietime criticized the initial design of the Flight 93 National Memorial, asserting that "the winning design chosen to memorialize the heroes and victims of 9/11's Flight 93 is in the shape of a red crescent that looks — either accidentally or intentionally — remarkably like an Islamic crescent."^[7] Similar claims were made by a variety of blogs and news outlets, and the subsequent controversy resulted in the design being modified.

[edit] The Mohammed Image Archive

Soon after of the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons controversy hit the blogosphere, zombie began compiling and posting a collection of historic and contemporary depictions of Mohammed to create "The Mohammed Image Archive". The archive includes examples of Islamic portraits of Mohammed, countering the claim that Islam has always banned any portraits of its founding prophet. zombie claims to have received numerous death threats and fatwas via email, some of which have been posted on the Mohammed Image Archive mail page.^[8] zombietime, along with 11 other blogs that had reposted some Mohammed imagery, was listed on a Muslim hacker forum as an "enemy of Islam," the government of Pakistan took the highly unusual step of blocking access to zombietime nationwide, to avoid further inflaming religious sensibilities.^[9][10][11]

[edit] The Red Cross ambulance incident

zombie's commentary on a reported Israeli airstrike on two Red Cross ambulances during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict played a part in international debate over the incident. While initial media reports had originally stated that Israel had intentionally fired upon and hit two ambulances carrying civilians in the Lebanese village of Qana on the night of July 23, 2006, zombie asserted (based on a number of photographs from the scene) that the attack was a hoax perpetrated by Hezbollah.

A few weeks later, the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who had independently decided that initial reports of missile strikes on the ambulances could not be true,^[12] publicly decried the incident as a hoax and admonished the media for what he called slipshod reporting.^[13] A flurry of articles appeared in Australian newspapers in which zombietime was cited — for instance, conservative columnist Andrew Bolt mentioned zombietime ("whose research I’ve drawn on") in a column.^[14] The controversy split along partisan lines, with newspapers such as The Age and The Australian criticizing Downer and zombietime's account ("unverified evidence carried on an unattributed right-wing website"^[15]) and the right-of-centre press defending the assertion of a hoax.^[16]

In December 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a 24-page dossier about the ambulance incident, providing a fresh examination of the evidence on the ground with additional photographs of the scene and the vehicles involved. HRW concluded that "Israeli forces attacked two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances that night in Qana, almost certainly with missiles fired from an Israeli drone flying overhead" and strongly criticized those who called the reports a hoax.^[17] In response, zombietime published a rebuttal asserting that the Human Rights Watch report suffered from flaws and contradictions and noting that the missiles mentioned by HRW would have totally destroyed an ambulance.^[18] The HRW report did not settle the controversy, with many still insisting that the attack did happen^[19], while others continue to assert that it was a hoax.^[20]

[edit] Media references to zombietime

Several zombietime reports have been deemed newsworthy by the mainstream media, and the site has received both positive and negative attention in the press.

Fox News has used zombie's photos and analysis during news broadcasts, including one Brit Hume report about extremism at an anti-Israel rally. and another about the Qana Red Cross Ambulance Incident.^[21] zombie's video recording of Hatem Bazian's speech about an "intifada in America" prompted Bazian to appear on Fox's Bill O'Reilly Show to defend himself.^[22]

A BBC reporter earlier used images taken from the Mohammed Image Archive to confront an imam about the Islamic position on religious iconography.^{[citation needed]}

After Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stated that the allegations that "Israel had bombed deliberately a Red Cross ambulance [. . .] do not stand up to even the most rudimentary scrutiny",^[23] he referred people to zombie's analysis of the Red Cross Ambulance Incident, as did columnist Andrew Bolt.^[14] The three broadsheet Australian newspapers (The Australian, The Age, and the Sydney Morning Herald) ran articles attacking zombie and describing zombietime as a "right-wing blog".^[1][24]

Additional media outlets using or discussing zombietime's content include The Guardian^[25] and The San Francisco Chronicle,^[26] among many others.

zombietime was also mentioned in the media among sites — including Power Line, EU Referendum, Little Green Footballs, et al. — most responsible for uncovering the Adnan Hajj photographs controversy during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.^[27]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• zombietime
• "Inside a Leftist Hatefest", a photo-essay by zombie in FrontPage Magazine, 8 November 2004
• zombie's videos at YouTube