Friday, May 08, 2009

Debunking More World Net Daily Bullshit

E-mail etiquette dictates that you rig messages you send to hide the "to" addresses so that the only address a single recipient sees is his or her own; and while this is generally a sound practice, it can be, from time to time, irksome not to be able to send a blanket reply to all recipients of a particular e-mail. This is especially useful when a blanket e-mail contains false information that should be immediately debunked.

So as a public service, I am providing a link to an article on Snopes that debunks an e-mail going around about supposedly imminent terrorist attacks on the United States. I'm on the fence about Snopes, but more often than not think of them as reliable - largely because the information they provide is sourced, and can therefore be checked for accuracy.

In the Snopes article is a link to a story on World Net Daily - which is absolutely not credible in any way, shape, or form - that tells about the predictions of these imminent terrorist attacks. The problem: the article was posted on World Net Daily in 2005.

I just checked a calendar, and 2005 was four years ago. These terrorist attacks were imminent four years ago - but haven't happened yet. That does not qualify as either imminent or accurate. It does qualify as fear-mongering ultra-conservative right-wing bullshit.

Google the search string "Juval Aviv e-mail," and the Snopes article is the first thing you get. The link to the World Net Daily article is at the bottom of the Snopes page. It takes all of about a minute to debunk this kind of nonsense - practically no effort at all. The debunking was posted on Snopes in January 2009 - which means that five months later there are still people who believe this nonsense enough to pass it on.

Paging Lee Greenwood.

1 comment:

Godfather Weilhammer said...

Now John, you're just using fuzzy math. World Net sounds an awful lot like CBS News. These crazy media kids...when will they learn?