Left-wing blogger and Occupy Wall Street provocateur Malcolm Harris recently admitted creating a false rumor that Radiohead would perform a free concert at Zuccotti Park during this fall’s demonstrations.

(Image source: Gawker)

The hoax may have a connection to former New York Times freelancer Natasha Lennard, who wrote about the Occupy Wall Street protests for the Times while actively participating in them–a fact not revealed in Lennard’s NYT reporting.

The new revelations about the origins of the Radiohead hoax shed further light on how the mainstream media promoted the Occupy movement, then celebrated its emergence as a supposedly independent protest phenomenon.

Harris penned an article for Gawker yesterday entitled “I’m the Jerk Who Pranked Occupy Wall Street,” explaining in detail how he tricked the press into believing the band Radiohead was playing a free concert for Zuccotti Park protesters, including creating a fake Gmail account under the name of Radiohead’s manager.

Harris was first featured in a story at Big Government about a panel discussion among Occupy leaders and activists at New York’s Bluestockings bookstore. His biography for that event stated:

Malcolm Harris is the managing editor of The New Inquiry, a contributing editor at Sharable.net, and blogs for Jacobin. He edited the collection “Share or Die: Youth in Recession,” forthcoming from New Society Publishers in the spring. He has been active in OWS since the first planning meetings.

Harris’s piece at Gawker describes in detail how how and why he created the false rumor about Radiohead playing at Zuccotti park:

It started like this: an autonomous group of Occupy Wall Street activists were sitting around brainstorming ways to get more people out to Zuccotti Park over beer and pizza. This was a little over a week into the occupation, before the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge, and it still wasn’t clear whether the whole thing would catch on. Someone suggested we should get Radiohead to play a free concert – they were in town for a couple small shows and fans were ready to sell pounds of flesh for tickets. The band wouldn’t even have to play the thing, people just had to think they were going to.

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This is a cautionary tale about reporters eagerly attacking other reporters working a developing story.  Because it’s not possible to provide evidence as quickly as some might demand it doesn’t mean the story is false.

On July 24, Kimberly Dvorak, of the Examiner, and Don Amato, of the blog Digger’s Realm, broke the story about two Texas ranches outside of Laredo, Texas, being seized by members of Los Zetas drug cartel. Today, Ms. Dvorak posted a copy of the police blotter which provides a good deal of the information necessary to confirm her initial story’s claims:

After 16 days of denials by Laredo law enforcement and local officials regarding a Mexican drug cartel takeover of a Laredo area ranch, a Texas police blotter proves the alleged incident did in fact happen and that multiple agencies responded to the scene of a seized U.S. ranch…

“On Friday 7-23-10 Laredo Webb informed that their county SWAT Team is conducting an operation in the Mines Rd. area. According to LT. Garcia with LSO (Laredo Sheriff Office) received a call from a ranch owner stating that the Zetas had taken over his ranch. As per the 17 (reporting person) he informed them that they stated La Compania (area business) was taking the ranch and no one was permitted on the ranch without permission. SO (Sheriff Office) will have an unmarked green Ford Taurus with two officers stationed at Los Compadres and a white Chevy Tahoe with two officers stationed at Mineral Rd. The LSO (Laredo Sheriff Office) will maintain surveillance in the area and advise if action is taken. Susp (suspect) Veh (vehicle) are described as a gray or silver Audi, a BLK (black) Escalade or Navigator and a van truck with a logo of a car wash spot free on the side. Border Patrol also has their response team on scene. Also known info of BMW’s and Corvettes entering and leaving the area. Auth LT Lichtenberger if assistance is requested LPD (Laredo Police Department) will secure the outer perimeter. (07/24/10 07:42:10 NR1873)”

Dvorak’s latest post confirmed several details that I had been able to ascertain through other sources.  One important detail was different: only one ranch was investigated and under surveillance, not the two originally reported.

The original story quoted multiple anonymous sources in law enforcement and was quickly picked up by Michelle Malkin,  Jawa Report, Big Peace and DBKP among others.  Almost as quickly, the story was branded an Internet  rumor,” “conspiracy theory,” a “hoax” or  outright lies by the usual suspects from the Progressive Left/amnesty crowd. (more…)

In a lead editorial last month in the aftermath of the great Washington snowstorms, ”Lessons from the Snow”, the Washington Post took the stance that the  inundation that plagued D.C.  (like other points in the U.S.) was nothing but a freak weather event — each time — and not something we should expect in the future. That’s really quite something, on the heels of WaPo’s other outbursts of late..

Specifically, on the subject of whether to outsource or regularly manage snow removal duties, “we tend to agree with those who say that it doesn’t make fiscal sense for governments to buy equipment that will be needed once or twice a century.”

Got that? These storms are nothing we should expect to continue.

That’s a rather incongruous line for a decidedly activist outlet, what with all of the moonbattery tossed around like Mardi Gras beads, in response to skeptic mockery of the alarmists’ previous claims that winters are now a thing of the past thanks to man-made global warming. Not that it’s inconsistent with the position the skeptics mocked, mind you.

It’s just that the Post had already come out to join the lunacy by asserting that such storms were, too, precisely what we should expect thanks to man-made global warming. (more…)

It has been fascinating to observe how a multinational corporation that is so popular and trusted can be so flatfooted and incapable of responding to a crisis.

Like many of these crises it started small. The corporation seemed invincible and underwent major growth. Some worried the growth was too fast and retained doubts about the science and the technology. However, these warnings were on the fringe and were easily ignored…

… until three months ago, when the corporation suddenly found itself at the center of crisis after crisis, its science and technology revealed to be hopelessly flawed, shoddy even.

Inside the corporation denial took over, but eventually it became clear the problem was structural.  In a rush for profits and market dominance, executives had ignored procedures, falsified data, and then covered up or tried to minimize their falsifications.

Compounding the problem — the head of the corporation remained silent until he was forced to respond to the concerns of the American people: (more…)

Oops!  The wheels may have just come off Al Gore’s Oscar-winning, eco-friendly tricycle/global-warming scam. From the U.K. Times on Line today (Sunday):

World may not be warming, say scientists

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site. (more…)

There’s a question oft-posed by the proponents of global warming… or of “climate change,” as the new term of art has it, thus allowing warmists to claim both the snowstorm now blanketing America’s East Coast, as well as the melting of that snow, as evidence for their theory.

“To what end?” the warmists ask the skeptics.  Or, in the lingua franca of conspiracy theorists everywhere: “Cui bono, my friend, cui bono?”

Well, lots of people are benefiting from the practical implications of this theory. There’s Nobel Laureate Al Gore for one, who is on track to become the first green billionaire:

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