zombietime

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Photographed by zombie at an anti-war rally in San Francisco on February 16, 2003. See also New antisemitism.

zombietime is a website maintained by "zombie", a pseudonymous photographer, which documents apparent far-left, antisemitic, or anti-American views and public indecency at political demonstrations, street festivals and other public events. It also has a section devoted to historic and contemporary Muslim depictions of Muhammad as well as a collection of unflattering or embarrassing photos of Democratic politicians.

The site has been involved in controversies regarding the Flight 93 National Memorial, photographs of an ambulance during the 2006 Lebanon War, and accusations of bias in the San Francisco Chronicle's photographic coverage of an anti-war rally. It won Best Photo Blog award in the 2005 Weblog Awards competition, and zombie's work has been included in a number of publications.

1 Origins
2 The website
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Origins

"zombie" is a pseudonymous photographer who spells that name with a lower-case "z", and has never revealed his or her real name, gender, age or profession. In a winter 2006 interview with the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, zombie states that he/she did not initially intend to set up a website at all; rather, having been "left-wing" his entire life, and having attended many protests and rallies, zombie decided to go to the anti-war rally in San Francisco on February 16, 2003, bringing with a digital camera purchased the day before. The signs carried at the rally "shocked and mortified" zombie:

There were overtly anti-Semitic signs, banners blaming 9/11 on conspirators in the U.S. government, guys dressed up as suicide bombers, and all sorts of craziness. I took out my new camera and started clicking away. By the time the march was over, I was a changed person. If that was what the “Left” had become, then I wanted no part of it.

zombie subsequently uploaded the images to his/her computer, and, unaware of the existence of blogs, taught him/herself some rudimentary HTML codes, and created a web-page for the pictures on the free "user page" provided by zombie's Internet service provider. zombie did little with the site for the next year, but on the evening of February 10, 2004 zombie was walking through the campus of University of California, Berkeley, and by chance passed by group of people demonstrating for and against an appearance by Daniel Pipes, who, at the time, zombie had never heard of. zombie decided to stay and photograph the events, then uploaded the photographs to a second page. The pictures gained significant attention, and from that point zombie tried to document as many political events as possible.^[1]

In another 2006 interview, zombie stated his/her rationale for maintaining the website:

I have to do this because the mainstream media wants you to believe that the "anti-war movement" is both huge, mainstream, and reasonable. It is not. I would estimate that perhaps 20% of the American population agrees with these protesters, and the other 80% don't. And that other 80% would really hate them if they just knew what the protesters' beliefs really were. Which is why I try to expose them.^[2]

[edit] The website

The website documents the views expressed at protests and other public events, focusing strongly on what zombie identifies as antisemitic statements and protesters' displays of support for organizations designated by a number of countries, including the United States, as terrorist groups. zombie claims that such displays of sentiment are rarely covered by the mainstream media.^[3]

Original photographs, on-site reports, and commentary posted on zombietime have been cited as source material by some mainstream media,^[4]^[5]^[6] and linked to by several blogs, including Michelle Malkin, The Jawa Report, Instapundit and especially Little Green Footballs, which follows zombie's work closely.^[7]

Though sometimes described as a photoblog, according to its creator "it is simply a Web site." ^[8] On April 1, 2008, zombie introduced zomblog, an actual blog, to the website.

[edit] The Flight 93 National Memorial

In September 2005 zombie 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."^[9] 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 the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy hit the blogosphere, zombie began compiling and posting a collection of historic and contemporary depictions of Muhammad to create "The Mohammed Image Archive". The archive includes examples of Muslim portraits of Muhammad, meant to counter the claim that Islam has always banned any portraits of its founding prophet. zombie reports receiving numerous death threats and fatwas via email, some of which have been posted on the Mohammed Image Archive mail page.^[10] When zombietime, along with 11 other blogs that had reposted some Muhammad 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.^[11]^[12]^[13]

[edit] The Red Cross ambulance incident

zombie's commentary on a reported Israeli airstrike^[8] on two Red Cross ambulances during the 2006 Lebanon War 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,^[14] publicly decried the incident as a hoax and admonished the media for what he called slipshod reporting.^[15] 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.^[16] 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"^[17]) and the right-of-centre press defending the assertion of a hoax.^[18]

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.^[19] 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.^[20] The HRW report did not settle the controversy, with many still insisting that the attack did happen^[21], while others continue to assert that it was a hoax.^[22]

[edit] Awards and publications

The zombietime website won the Best Photo Blog award in the 2005 Weblog Awards competition, an award voted by online users.^[23] zombie's essay, Anatomy of a Photograph,^[3] was included as a chapter in the third edition of the popular textbook Everything's an Argument.^[24] Photos taken by zombie were used in Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild,^[25] a book by Michelle Malkin.