Harry's Place

Menachem Begin

Har. Was it the Jew?

Oh dear.

Not once but twice!

Look at 1994 – Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin have been wiped of the chart.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1994/

I see no trouble keeping in FW De Klerk, the last President of the Apartheid government!

Simon Rogers is a news editor for the Guardian.

Facts are sacred!! Hahahahaa. Al-Guardian!

Does anyone need any more proof that The Guardian is antisemitic?

At least the Guardian doesn’t make any pretence of being a newspaper any more.

Wipe the Jews – and their achievements – off the map, why don’t you Guardian?

Even if the list came from another source, one would think the Guardian would fact-check.

Basically, by striking out the names of three Israeli leaders, The Guardian has taken an *active* position that, despite the joint-award, no Israeli leader has ever made any effort to bring about peace in the ME, while affirming its belief that Yasser Arrafat in fact did.

The odd thing is that they have left in the name of the country but omitted the individuals.

I find it hard to imagine this is deliberate on the Guardian’s part, but the source of the list might be telling in itself.

Amazing.

Hi
I’m afraid rather than conspiracy, we’re also just capable of making a mistake in complicated data entry (which affected a number where there were two or more winners). This has been rectified.

Not that complicated surely! And were there any non Israeli omissions?

Yes, obviously it’s a deliberate ploy to discredit Israel and to intentionally “strike out” the names of the leaders involved, and not an error with missing or incorrect metadata or something like that.

FFS! What planet do you people live on exactly?

Talk about conspiratorial mindsets. Sometimes I really despair of people here.

I have just emailed the Guardian. Lets see how long this takes to be corrected.

It’s been corrected

I don’t believe that there were any non-Israeli omissions.

On a second reading, if you look at the table, you clearly see that both countries [sic] are listed in the columns to the right: “Egypt – Israel”, and then “Palestine – Israel”.

I’d say this is a genuine case of cock-up, not conspiracy. If the latter, the word “Israel” would have been omitted, too.

According to HuffPo, Obama’s won the Nobel Peace Prize. Someone tell me this is a joke: ‘Man wins Nobel Prize for making Speech’.

Hey Simon, while you’re fixing things, any chance of “rectifying” Anas Al Tikriti’s computer?
I asked him on Comment if Free (which is the Guardian, right?) to name me just one Hamas leader who rejected their charter.

And wadaayaknow? Right at that very point his computer broke down.

“I’m afraid rather than conspiracy, we’re also just capable of making a mistake in complicated data entry “

I have a print out. Tell us who else was missing.

In defence of the Guardian, shurely shome mishtake?, I looked at the list after seeing tevya’s comment, and noted that in some of the cases only the first named winner of the prize was listed, but oddly The Quakers were listed in first and second positions for 1947 – a double quake on the richter scale?

This is not to say that the Guardian are not antisemites, and on probability, given numerous other incidents not so easily explained away, the scumbags surely are.

I take back my comment. I’d like to offer The Guardian my services as a proof reader. I’ll work for anyone.

Whoops. Looks like The Guardian is bang to rights on this one.

It’s going to be difficult explaining this one in front of the judge.

I used to think the shouts of the Guardian being anti-semitic were a little exaggerated, but now I’m not too sure.

Live long and prosper.

“I’m afraid rather than conspiracy, we’re also just capable of making a mistake in complicated data entry (which affected a number where there were two or more winners).”

That’s strange. I just went through the whole list, and the only three errors where were more than one winner were the ommissions of Begin, Rabin and Peres. In every other case the other winners are included. What a coincidence that the only three “mistakes” were all Israeli Jews.

Rather wonderful to see how on the basis of a ridiculous cock-up several here conclude it’s proof of The Guardian’s anti-Semitism.

Some here would find anti-Semitism in an empty cookie jar.

Thanks gents: you’ve managed to rob the word of nearly all meaning! Sad really…

Is Obama up there?

“Some here would find anti-Semitism in an empty cookie jar.”

I think the point is that even I, no scholar of these matters, knew that Arafat shared the 1994 prize with the Israeli team. It says something about either, a) editorial standards, or b) editorial blinkers at the Guardian that that didn’t leap out before someone hit ‘publish’. I mean, it’s not like they don’t take an interest in Israel/Palestine issues

“some here would find anti-Semitism in an empty cookie jar.”

Ah, the famous Tony Lerman maneouvre!

“I’d say this is a genuine case of cock-up, not conspiracy. If the latter, the word “Israel” would have been omitted, too.”

No, it rather proves the acts were deletions and the person doing the deletions didn’t think to look at the other columns.

I’ve just done a full audit and the only three names missing are the Israelis. This cannot be a “random error”.

“The Quakers were listed in first and second positions for 1947 – a double quake on the richter scale?”

In 1947, the prize was won jointly by the Friends Service Council, and the American Friends Service Committee. They are separate organisations but to save space have been abbreviated to “The Quakers”.

Gert the neighbourhood loon is here!

Welcome back – I thought we were all beneath you and you were never, ever returning?!

That lasted long.

It might be a random error.

Unfortunate one for the Guardian though, considering its reputation on these things.

Not only has it been corrected, they’ve even swapped one of the entries round to put Rabin/Peres first. A bit of overcompensation, maybe?

Clearly The Guardian is the subject of today’s “daily hate”

.No, it rather proves the acts were deletions and the person doing the deletions didn’t think to look at the other columns.

It proves nothing of the sort. Except to conspiracy theorists.

Look at how the entry for Sadat changed, too.

Without being intimately familiar with the production processes or markup languages used chez the Graun (but using such things actively elsewhere) I’d wager that (as with that Neil Morrissey/Morrissey mix up mentioned in the arts section) the problem is connected with erroneous or incomplete or inaccurate metadata, rather than anything strictly editorial.

Reading this sort of snide insinuation is just embarrassing

Simon Rogers, you claim that this was a simple data entry error. But this data wasn’t typed in by some absent minded junior clerk. It was downloaded whole. How can I tell? Simple.

The Guardian gave the source in the original version. The link takes you to a Google spreadsheet listing all the peace prize winners. If you compare the formatting and style of the Google list to the Guardian’s list, you’ll see that they are identical in every way, from punctuation to spelling and style. The list was downloaded and added to the Guardian page (click the spreadsheet under file and you’ll see an option for downloading).

Somebody then edited that list to remove Begin, Rabin and Peres’ names. But in their haste they forgot to remove “Israel” from the recipient’s country.

This is not a “mistake in complicated data entry” but a conscious decision by someone at the Guardian to exclude the names of three recipients on the basis of their nationality.

It stinks.

Thanks for exposing this latest Guardian-Islamist conspiracy to drop the Joos down the wells round the back of 90 York Way. It would be worth checking out this “Simon Rogers” guy – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s a secret collector of Nazi memorabilia, he might even be a member of CND… Did you know that Bishop Tutu used to be in the SS?

Thanks gents

Ahem

“I’ve just done a full audit and the only three names missing are the Israelis. This cannot be a “random error”.”

Thanks, Brett.

They have now changed the list and Begin, Peres and Rabin and have now appeared.

Harry G: “they’ve even swapped one of the entries round to put Rabin/Peres first. A bit of overcompensation, maybe?”

No Harry, that’s how it appears in the Google list, the Guardian’s source for this data.

I’ve got a little list.

Probably make a nice ringtone too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbxGWIFuVvE

Noah Ward has done well – he won the Nobel Peace Prize 19 times between 1914 and 1972. Does anyone know if he is Jewish?

“It might be a random error.”

What are the mathematical chances of the random error involving three people of the same nationality?

Apparently as of 16.50 error amended.

A sin of omission over commission. But, still…

“It proves nothing of the sort. Except to conspiracy theorists.”

Venichka, I work with a lot of data. In fact the job I’m in the middle of now involves a lot of data stored in tables. Please explain to me how, in terms of this data set, it is possible for three items of random data, in no way dissimilar to other entries, to be lost and ALL – by some strange coincidence – are Israeli Prime Ministers. Meanwhile over 200 other items, covering individuals and organisations from all over the world, are imported without a hitch.

I’m not a statistician, so maybe someone could help out here, but what are the odds of three data entries out of over two hundred randomly going missing and there’s a single, external (non-relevant from a data engineering point of view) factor that unites them, i.e. they’re all Israelis PMs?

I think the theory necessary to explain this would have to be wilder than any you’re accusing others of harbouring.

As for data entry problems, Shirin Ebadi’s gender is male according to The Guardian.

Joseph K, I really don’t know where to begin, but I’ll have a go.

The “source” document you refer to is the Google docs spreadsheet we set up as an expanded version of the summary on the page – so that you can download the full dataset.

The original from Nobelprize.org is just an HTML page which takes a lot of mangling to get into spreadsheet form.

The errors happened when we decided to put joint winners in two columns – which is why the country reference survived, but the name didn’t, ie you see “Israel” but not Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. When the table first went up this lunchtime, it also missed out John Raleigh Mott, The Quakers and the League of Red Cross Societies. We assumed all the errors were at the top but unfortunately they weren’t.

This combined with an error on the page which meant that comments couldn’t be viewed on a Mac in Firefox – so I didn’t see the comments until, literally, the Harry’s place post went up. If I had, I would have picked it up much sooner.

Many apologies if you were offended, but it really wasn’t deliberate.

“Thanks for exposing this latest Guardian-Islamist conspiracy to drop the Joos down the wells round the back of 90 York Way.”

You can scoff all you like but it doesn’t change the *fact* that there were three names and three names only missing from the list. And they were all Israeli.

My God, the tin-foil hat wearing brigade are out in force this evening

ITS A CONSPIIIIIIIRACY!!!!!!!!!!!

This is all very odd.

*If* the other joint winners were all present and correct, then the only possible explanation is that someone very junior was deputed to post the data onto the table, and decided to delete the Israelis for reasons of his or her own. In which case, I trust there’s a sacking in progress as we speak.

“We assumed all the errors were at the top but unfortunately they weren’t.”

Why do you keep digging?!

Did NONE of you know that Israelis had won the Nobel Prize?

“The errors happened when we decided to put joint winners in two columns – which is why the country reference survived, but the name didn’t, ie you see “Israel” but not Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.”

So how come none of the other several-dozen joint-winners didn’t get dropped?

I’m sorry but the whole pretext of this piece is beneath contempt.

If anything the fact that all three of the missing entrants are the same nationality might well make it EASIER to explain; at least if their nationality was given by an item of metadata referring to that which was incorrect. (eg someone had mistyped “ill” rather than the correct ISO-3166 code for Israel, “il”). But without seeing the actual XML or SGML or whatever they use I couldn’t say.

But as to whether I trust a credible national newspaper like the Guardian….or a bunch of fanatical conspiracy theorists who appear to love nothing more than feigning grievances more …well that much is obvious

Really, this is the most preposterous thread at Harry’s Place for some time.

Is this the first sin of omission by The Guardian with regard to Israel?

I would have thought “omission” tends to define them.

Simon Rogers is the Guardian News Editor responsible for the table that appeared above. I think his explanation shows just how well the Guardian has kept up its famous “Grauniad” tradition even now they’ve no longer got compositors they can blame. If this is their approach to checking unproblematic facts, we can hardly be surprised if they seem to find apparently statistically unlikely difficulties in making accurate reports about Israel and all things Israeli.

(Hint to Guardian News Editors: it helps to check actively that your text is correct rather than just assuming it is. It’s much better to do your own proof reading than leave the readers to do it for you.)

How much do Guardian News Editors get paid?

Simon Rogers

Sorry, don’t buy it.

26 double entries seem to have been logged correctly, including the years directly before and after the Arafat/Rabin/Peres win.

How can you get it right so many times and wrong when Israelis are meant to be listed?

Dov

Describing Shirin Ebadi as a man is classic male chauvinism that is endemic in The Guardian and they should all be shot, fucking liberals.

I’ve done a bit more research on “SSimon”. One of his old classmates at Hackney comp is the German lady from the SWP. But it gets worse. Much worse. Apparently he was seen chatting with Shameless Milne at the Grauniad summer party just before 7/7!!!

I’m just giving you the FACTS they don’t want you to know. Draw your own conclusions.

I see Gert is busy.

Simon, what do editors do all day if not fact-check? Do you just normally assume all facts are correct?

Saddam Hussian and Hafez Assad.

“If anything the fact that all three of the missing entrants are the same nationality might well make it EASIER to explain; at least if their nationality was given by an item of metadata referring to that which was incorrect. (eg someone had mistyped “ill” rather than the correct ISO-3166 code for Israel, “il”). But without seeing the actual XML or SGML or whatever they use I couldn’t say.”

Utter nonsense. The ‘names’ field isn’t even linked in a “meta-data” way to the nationality field and there would be no relational link in the importing of the fields.

Who here, exactly, is alleging a conspiracy?

Does widespread chauvinism against women in the workplace constitute a “conspiracy”?

This is hilarious!

Listen “Rogers”, no-one in this Place buys your pathetic excuses about database cock-ups. Nice move trying to include the Red Cross as a cover, but you don’t fool us.

Just admit it. You did it cos you hate Joos!

DAILY HATE! DAILY HATE! DAILY HATE!

Roll up! It’s your turn to Condemn the Guardian here now!

DAILY HATE! DAILY HATE! DAILY HATE!

Don’t worry if you miss ht chance -t he opportunity will come round again soon.

“Many apologies if you were offended”

Not offended, just laughing at the Guardian for being so predictably po-faced about it. If the Guardian could fart, it would be in blank verse.

I hate to break it to you guys but as someone who knows a thing or two about computers (and as someone who has written one or two algorithms, and has very seriously thought of destroying all computers on earth hoping their creators would die in hell because of small mistakes in the algorithm like this one) Simon Rogers’ explanation makes a lot of sense.

“If the Guardian could fart, it would be in blank verse.”

Oh I really DO like you!

Simon so-called “Rogers”.

“SSimon”

Do you condemn the holocaust? Do you? YES OR NO? It’s a straightforward question. Why are you having such difficulty in answering?

Yeah, I’m now enjoying this thread in an entirely issue-neutral fashion.

When the table first went up this lunchtime, it also missed out John Raleigh Mott, The Quakers and the League of Red Cross Societies. We assumed all the errors were at the top but unfortunately they weren’t.

It’s very convenient that there is no way of verifying these ‘errors’, but your claim is belied by these facts. Mott’s award was from 1946 – almost half way through the list. The TCS was from 1963 – two-thirds through the list. So, in what way were these “at the top”?

Anyone checking data and finding errors half way through… and two thirds of the way through… and then thinking inexplicably “hey’ that must be it, I won’t check the rest of the way” is an idiot. Besides, it took me less than 10 minutes on my own to go through the WHOLE LIST to verify that the only omissions were the Israelis.

Still.

BTW, the supposed “Quaker” mistake (1947) wasn’t really a mistake so much as a confusion because both joint winners were in fact branches of The Quakers. But ho-hum.

The list starts at 1901. These other mistakes you allege you made(that no one actually saw) where from 1946, 1947 and 1963. Yet these you claim were “at the top of the list”. How?

Brett.

You’re trying to rebut the man’s explanation by saying that only an idiot would have made such a “mistake”, as if that fatally undermines his story.

You seem to forget that we’re dealing with the Guardian here.

“Don’t worry if you miss ht chance -t he opportunity will come round again soon.”

Oh they (The Guardian that is) will make sure of it!

I have a screen grab of the original listing on my blog.

I counted 26 times where the Guardian got it right.

http://dayvidsaffer.com/2009/10/09/guardian-no-israeli-nobel-peace-prize-winners-ever/

“Simon Rogers’ explanation makes a lot of sense.”

Particularly if you believe that he doesn’t check facts properly, and that even when discovering there is a serious factual problem with an article, he only checks the top half and doesn’t bother checking the bottom half.

You’ve been busted Mr Nazi.

As Brett from Barking says: It’s very convenient that there is no way of verifying these ‘errors’

Oh ‘yes’! Ho hum! You’ve ‘just’ been caught with your ‘pants’ down.

And yet you still refuse to answer the question: Will you or will you not condemn Georgina Henry and Heinrich Himmler?

Brett – now you have pointed out that the “at the top” story is hogwash, Mr Rogers won’t be back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_AyF9rKDo&feature=related

I suppose allowing Robin Shepherd no response to Lerman’s “review” of his book was technically a sin of omission too.

And who, exactly, is calling any one at The Guardian a “Nazi” or, even, an “antisemite”?

Really? I assumed that Trufer bloke was his sockpuppet.

On a simple, verifiable matter like this, it makes no sense at all for the Guardian to exclude Israel from the list, as it would obviously get spotted pretty quickly… unless it was part of an devilishly cunning scheme to make pro-Israel conspiracy mongers look foolish, in which case all is going according to plan.

In 1944 the Nobel peace prize went to the International Red Cross. This while Jews were still being murdered in the camps and the IRC didn’t say anything about it, though they knew what was going on.

The children of the victims should sue the Nobel committee to have the prize withdrawn.

“I assumed that Trufer bloke was his sockpuppet.”

And not an especially bright one, at that.

Given that the table has been manually manipulated to now put Peres & Rabin as the “1st Winner” and Arafat as the “2nd Winner” then its obvious that the contents of thetable are subject to manual manipulation.

By what process of data import does it have the function called “Don’t import the names of Israelis”.

The way even this is presented is to suggest that Arafat was an “also-ran” when the truth is that the prize was awarded equally. There is no logic whatsoever to the concept of “2nd awardee” either you got it shared or un-shared.

My working assumption is that once the antisemitic scrote realised the Guardian artificially created the 2nd column for names then its easy just to kill off the Israelis because the scrote hates them.

In this scrotes mind its impossible for an Israeli to be honoured in any way. The statistical odds of leaving out ONLY Israelis is so massive as to be beyond explanation.

“Hi I’m afraid rather than conspiracy, we’re also just capable of making a mistake in complicated data entry (which affected a number where there were two or more winners). This has been rectified.” Simon Rogers:

OK, so it was a mistake but why in all cases it was the Israeli recipient’s name that was omitted and not the Arab or Palestinian recipient’s name.

True even when the Israeli names came first. Explain that one Mr. Rogers?

“Really? I assumed that Trufer bloke was his sockpuppet.”

It’s Gert, surely? (Who will never, ever come back here remember.)

“On a simple, verifiable matter like this, it makes no sense at all for the Guardian to exclude Israel from the list, as it would obviously get spotted pretty quickly… “

Yes, incontrovertably, this is precisely what they did. Three names missing. All Israeli

This just in: Obama also awarded Nobel prize in chemistry. “He’s just got great chemistry,” says Nobel Committee.

Simon Rogers:“The ‘source’ document you refer to is the Google docs spreadsheet we set up as an expanded version of the summary on the page – so that you can download the full dataset. The errors happened when we decided to put joint winners in two columns – which is why the country reference survived, but the name didn’t, ie you see “Israel” but not Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. When the table first went up this lunchtime, it also missed out John Raleigh Mott, The Quakers and the League of Red Cross Societies.”

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain that, Simon. All sounds very technical. So all that happened is that somehow some names from the second column, which do appear in the spreadsheet that the Guardian put up, got lost due to some kind of unfortunate technical hitch. This would explain why Mott, The Quakers and The League of the Red Cross Societies, all of whom are listed in the second column, did not, apparently, originally appear in the Data Blog list. Bloody gremlins, eh?

The funny thing is though, Rabin and Peres’ names appear in the first column on your spreadsheet, and not the second. Did other names disappear from the first column, too?

That’s interesting, Jacob Arnon. I wonder what Simon’s response will be.

I don’t understand all the technical stuff but this looks very dodgy. I see the Daily Telegraph has picked it up, and it’s lead story on Jewish Chronicle website.

Have we established yet whether Simon’s account (that he didn’t bother checking facts properly, not even when it was pointed out to him ‘at lunchtime’ that there was a serious problem) has any weight, or whether it’s the more plausible explanation?

On a simple, verifiable matter like this, it makes no sense at all for the Guardian to exclude Israel from the list, as it would obviously get spotted pretty quickly… unless it was part of an devilishly cunning scheme to make pro-Israel conspiracy mongers look foolish, in which case all is going according to plan.

I agree. It might have been done deliberately by some rogue element at The Guardian. But more likely it’s plain sloppiness perhaps combined with historical ignorance. It’s highly unlikely that The Guardian’s editors would deliberately give the paper’s many critics of its Israel/Palestine coverage a free “A-ha!” moment like this.

“My working assumption is that once the antisemitic scrote realised the Guardian artificially created the 2nd column for names then its easy just to kill off the Israelis because the scrote hates them.”

There’s no evidence for that.

In my view, it’s an omission that is odd, like a lot of other Guardian omissions with regard to Israel.

One day Israel may be “omitted” from the family of nations altogether.

No prejudice involved. Just a simple clerical error.

“It’s highly unlikely that The Guardian’s editors would deliberately give the paper’s many critics of its Israel/Palestine coverage a free “A-ha!” moment like this.”

That assumes the fallacy that no one ever acts against their own best interests.

Error. Mistake. Omission. All plausible. And with regard to Israel, more than highly likely.

Last month the notorious paedophile Sydney Cook was blasted into space to spend the rest of his life aboard a one-man prison vessel posing no further threat to children on Earth. But it was revealed that an 8-year-old boy was also placed on board by mistake and is now trapped alone in space with the monster. A spokesman said “This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen”

Not only Nobel Peace Prize winners are omitted by Guardian fact checkers – Wirral has also suffered this fate. From the Guardian’s letter pages:

“And now your newspaper appears deliberately to omit all reference to Wirral. In a recent Let’s Move To … (Weekend, 29 August), …Please do not assist shortsighted councils in elbowing Wirral prematurely into folklore.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/oct/07/wirral-merseyside-liverpool-rutland

Haha – is this an obscure reference to the Nobel Prize for Children recently awarded to Roman Polanski?

Venichka

SGML indeed, who are you trying to fool

They forgot to crop out Elie Wiesel – 1986.

They forgot to crop out Elie Wiesel – 1986.

That’s because he’s American and that is too subtle for the Guardian hoodies to detect that he’s Jewish.

Did Gert really only realise an hour or so ago that Obama won the Nobel?

My God Brett, what an anally retentive wierdo you are

LET.IT.GO (and take the tin foil hat off)

I just asked a tech wizard about this and he says that Joseph and Jacob leave the Guardian explanation in tatters.

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/20864/guardian-omits-rabin-peres-begin-nobel-list

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timcollard/100013131/the-jewish-names-missing-from-a-guardian-list-of-nobel-prize-winners/

I saw it on one of the big American news sites too.

This is part hilarious, part pathetic….is there a Jewish news agency left who havent run on this complete non-story?

Has the estate of John Raleigh Mott been informed of his initial exclusion? Surely they could sue for damages to his reputation?

Wipe the Jews – and their achievements – off the map, why don’t you Guardian?

Wow – maybe you’re right, maybe al-Graun is cheerleading for a new holocaust in a really geeky and inept way by sabotaging its own spreadsheets….. Or maybe not, and maybe harry’s place really is a total insane asylum these days.

“For the Nobel Peace Prize winners list, we used data from Nobelprize.org. However, there was a technical issue during the data transfer from the site, which meant that many of the names of the joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize were accidentally omitted, although the country of origin of the winners was not. This has now been corrected.”

A technical issue: digitusomittendusirahelem. D.O.I., for short.

Google docs has an in-built revision system that lets you see any version of the document; pity but on the public version this is disallowed

Simply staggering. Beyond words. It has to be have been deliberate.

Hmmmnn..
Unlikely to be a conspiracy – remember its the Gruainiad we are talking about.

Deliberate or not, this is a hoot. The Guardian’s anti-semitism has come back to bite it from out of nowhere. No smoke without fire and all that. As for us Jews being paranoid, of course we are, Harry Trufer, but as Woody allen said, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get us.

The League of Red Cross Societies is hardly an equivalent omission, since also mentioned was the International Committee for the Red Cross. While Mott was omitted, his fellow US winner was included. Neither the Red Cross as an institution nor the US as a country was left out.

5 omissions: 2 barely omissions, 3 every Israeli candidate.

It was obviously a deliberate move by someone with access to delete the names that has been allowed through by sloppy editorial incompetence. As someone said before afterall it is the Grauniad

as the probability of the omissions being a mistake are so gargantuan (in the area of billions to one), and given the political leaning of the guardian, it seems to me that occam’s razor points in the direction of direct human involvement as opposed to extraordinary chance. simon, i would look to a staff member as the cause.

I can’t wait for the Guardian to get the Nobel Piss Prize

Sorry, I should have also said the Quakers. But, as David T said, that was a double entry, with one included, and the Quakers as a whole were not omitted.

The non-Israeli omissions are explicable as kinds of haplography: Red Cross once for twice, Quakers once for twice, a US candidate once for twice.

It is odd that the inputter omitted every Israeli candidate. it needn’t be deliberate. It’s odd that Israel did not occur to him or her among the family of nations.

A clerical error.

How difficult is to do Copy-Paste and not lose the Israelis in the process?

my astro physicist brother tells me the rough possibilty of 3 correlating omissions from a list of 200 (1/200 cubed) is 0.00000125%, which is about 8333333:1, not quite the billions i suggested earlier, i’m no maths wiz, but slightly more than half the chance of winning the lottery, so it’s a possible mistake, but extraordinarily unlikely.

Listen. If the Guardian were an objective paper this wouldn’t be such a big deal.

However the Guardian is not objective, it’s been rife with “mistakes” as long as I can remember.

The bias is palpable.

Fabian: “How difficult is to do Copy-Paste and not lose the Israelis in the process?”

I don’t believe that’s what happened. I believe they just did a straight copy-paste from some site which had already eliminated the Israelis. It will have been an honest if sloppy mistake, but one which shows what sort of sites the Graun prefers to derive its information from.

Cipriano

I don’t believe that’s what happened. I believe they just did a straight copy-paste from some site which had already eliminated the Israelis. It will have been an honest if sloppy mistake, but one which shows what sort of sites the Graun prefers to derive its information from.

Golly.

I have the possibility of selling the controlling interest in a road bridge over the river Thames just near Tower Bridge and was wondering in you were interested?

Honestly.

“How difficult is to do Copy-Paste and not lose the Israelis in the process?”

PSC routinely do it in their map logo.

cipriano

according to simon rogers “The original from Nobelprize.org is just an HTML page which takes a lot of mangling to get into spreadsheet form.”

so did you just invent your explanation then?

well, what’s the alternative explanation for all the missing individual names being those of israelis?

The source from the UN site looks like this:

“<li><span class=”h3teaser”>2008 -</span> <a href=”2008/index.html” class=”no_line”>Martti Ahtisaari</a></li>
<li><span class=”h3teaser”>2007 -</span> <a href=”2007/index.html” class=”no_line”>Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore</a></li>
<li><span class=”h3teaser”>2006 -</span> <a href=”2006/index.html” class=”no_line”>Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank</a></li>”

And so on. To process it for import into a spreadsheet, one could convert this to a csv file. To use a simple example, in PHP – which has a couple of useful built-in functions for this – it’s as easy as this:

$data = “…”; // the file contents or html source as above
$csvdata = strip_tags(str_replace(” -”, “,”,$data));

Have any other Israeli Nobel prizewinners been left off the list, or just the three Israeli politicians who won the peace prize?

As an addendum, as a response to both Pollard’s latest thread and another commenter I wrote:

“European antisemites want Jews to leave Europe”

The antisemite par excellence wants Jews to leave this world altogether. The Nazis planned, with local Palestinian Muslim nationalists, to exterminate the Jews of Palestine.

The “understanding” between antisemitism and Zionism is that which all victims and victimisers “share”: the knowledge that the victim would rather be elsewhere.

By the argument used by some, the Jews who fled the Nazis for anywhere but Palestine also had “beliefs” compatible with Nazism.

Balderdash, of course, and, in some cases, manifestly antisemitic balderdash.

Having said that, I am uncomfortable with Pollard’s defending Kaminsky, who seems to be saying some straightforwardly antisemitic things.

I do not know what Pollard is playing at.

My post, iike ALL my posts, was premoderated and never appeared.

How often do I post on CIF? A few times a month? AT MOST.

Yet every single one of my posts is premoderated i.e. screened out.

There are some people who live on CIF. Who routinely have some of their posts deleted while others are allowed to say.

I am writing a PhD. I express myself carefully and in as measured tones as possible.

No matter. Nothing, NOTHING, gets through.

Simon Rogers, you cannot be serious or are you taking us for fools? The most anti-Zionist/anti-Jewish on line rag and you are asking us to believe that your missing out only Israeli/Jewish Nobel Peace Prize winners is an oversight?

I am going to suggest that you google “Freudian slip” before you make such facile excuses again.

armaros, have just seen your comment. Good one!

How in the world Barack Obama rates a Nobel Peace Prize is beyond me.
I agree with Gert (above).

Any chance of a retraction of this obviously bullshit story, now that it looks and smells so much like obvious bullshit?

A simple “Harry’s Place is sorry we published this bullshit story that we based upon such obvious bullshit, which turned out to be such obvious bullshit” will do, guys.

Will you, Flying Rodent, apologise for littering HP with your rat droppings?

This is the first time I’ve ever said this online, but when I chose the oddball handle “FlyingRodent” I did consider that it was pretty likely that people would connect it with rats, pigeons, mice and, well, hamsters.

Boy, I love a hamster.

Nonetheless, any chance that “Lucy” could post an apology for his/her obviously wrong accusation? For the record, you understand.

“A simple “Harry’s Place is sorry we published this bullshit story”

It’s not bullshit. They left out three names. Three names only. All three Israelis. Only Israelis. All Israelis. The evidence is there in black and white.

It’s not bullshit. They left out three names. Three names only. All three Israelis. Only Israelis. All Israelis. The evidence is there in black and white.

Dude, get a grip on yourself. That way madness lies.

a) Israelis were the only national group wholly omitted (the 3 other names were effective haplographies).
b) why should you care? If Lucy Lips or HP is such a non entity, so beneath your superior intellect and understanding, why should anything posted here get you into such a righteous lather?

No apology?

I should say

(the 3 other names were categorical haplographies).

“No apology?”

Why should you care? What’s it to you? Defending the honour of a paper which we, clearly, at present, hold in low esteem?

Why? If we are such madmen? Why join us in the asylum? Why swim with us in the sewer?

“No apology?”

Why should you care? What’s it to you? Defending the honour of a paper which we, clearly, at present, hold in low esteem?

Why? If we are such madmen? Why join us in the asylum? Why swim with us in the sewer?

I porpopse another correction shouldn’t the list have been renamed..”The Yassar Arafat your taking the “peace” prize”?

Cui bono? Jews did it – it’s the only possible explanation…

FlyingRodent is a right twat, isn’t he?

He comes from the Hundal school of constantly downplaying and minimising anti-Israeli bigotry and anti-semtism.

I don’t think we need technical explanations for how it happened. What’s clear is the politics. There are people in the Guardian who thought that the way to do down Israel this week would be to deprive the Jewish state of its peace-loving credentials – in effect, a subtle form of discrediting. No one would notice that the names of these winners would be missing and so the subtle but perpetual negation of Israel’s achievements would reach Guardian readers yet again.

Imagine, the Guardian website builders’ surprise when in fact it was spotted. ‘Bloody hell,’ they thought, ‘we’ve been rumbled. How did that happen? Were these Israeli Nobel prizewinners famous? We didn’t know. Are there people out there who know about such things? We thought we could just disappear them. But we can’t. Jeeeez. And, oh blow, we never thought that when it was pointed out to us, this would put us in a bad light with the friends of Israel everywhere. And to think, we thought it was such a cunning plan!’

PS I think there are some people here competing for the newly created Berlusconi Award.

Berlusconi, as reported today:

“I am without doubt the person who’s been the most persecuted in the entire history of the world and the history of man,”

Simon Rogers????!!!!! Simon????!!!! Rogers????!!!! Sounds like a self-hating Jew to me… The evidence that he is, will come when he denies that he is. Never believe a rumour till it’s officially denied.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot!

The Nobel Peace Prize should have been awarded to the Israeli Air Force.

One of the main reasons given for awarding Obama the prize is for his (future) efforts to contain nuclear proliferation in the world.

But no other person or institution has already done so much against nuclear proliferation than the IAF. It’s only because of its pilots that neither Iraq nor Syria (and, hopefully, some of these days, Iran) have the bomb.

Don’t you all think that the Norwegians have been unfair to the IDF?

fuck! i find it hard to spot irony in text form!………………..sorry cipriano

Stephen Pollard writing on his Jewish Chronicle blog, with the headline: Keep the Jews out! takes yea another gratuitous swipe at The Guardian, whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that the original list posted on CiF contained the following names:

* 1911 – Alfred Fried
* 1911 – Tobias Michael Carel Asser
* 1968 – Rene Cassin
* 1973 – Henry Kissinger
* 1986 – Elie Wiesel
* 1995 – Joseph Rotblat

Alright, I suppose some smart-arse will be along promptly to tell me that Elie Wiesel wasn’t Jewish or that Nobel Prize winners are not a race, or that I’m being too politically correct, or some such bollox. Anyway ….

CINNA THE POET

Truly, my name is Cinna.

First Citizen

Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.

CINNA THE POET

I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

Fourth Citizen

Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

CINNA THE POET

I am not Cinna the conspirator.

Fourth Citizen

It is no matter, his name’s Cinna; pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.

Barak Obama awarded the peace prize, the nobel peace prize for Barak Obama.

That has to be, without any shadow of a doubt, the single most sycophantic decision ever taken by the “Liberal” Left of Europe, I genuinely believed that the cowardly appeasement of Islamofascism was the most embarrassing thing the Left could have done in the last hundred years, but I was wrong, giving Barak Obama the Nobel peace prize for what? beats that hands down.

How on Earth did we the West become the sniveling lump of jelly that this decision has confirmed we are.

Oh yes, sorry, socialism.

Barak Obama gets a Nobel peace prize, unfuckingbelievable.

The Guardian is notorious for two things: mistakes and anti-Semitism. This could be either. Not to worry though; at the rate it’s losing money, we won’t have to worry about it much longer.

I am afraid the best thing that can be said of Mr Simon Roger’s explanation of the Guardian fiasco is that it is ‘plausible’. Plausible was a term favoured by the defence at Magistrates Courts in the old days, perhaps to describe the excuse of some old lag found ‘looking for his dog’ in someone else’s bedroom at two o’clock in the morning.

The Guardian is losing money? Maybe their accountants just entered some transactions “in the wrong column” in their account books ?

mindthecrap

The Guardian is losing money?

Yes indeed. (snigger).

Somebody mentioned somewhere that they hoped that it was nothing trivial.

Can you contact me at clapthehammer@gmail.com

Anaximanders other sandal

Barak Obama gets a Nobel peace prize, unfuckingbelievable.

Indeed the secretive selection committee must be a group of real clowns.

Perhaps Simon Rogers is starting to understand what it’s like for Jews who read the Guardian – assumed guilty until innocence is proved, all explanations rejected, facts twisted, etc, etc. I hope he is enjoying it.

In a set of 200 numbers there are exactly 1313400 different ways of choosing any particular set of 3. In other words, the chance of completely randomly missing exactly three Israelis from a list of 200 names (which include just three Israelis) is less than one in a million.

Even if one corrects, as generously as possible, for possible factors, e.g. that all instances occurred in the case of an award to two or more entities/individuals, the chances are still very small. Not astronomically small, just small.

Small probability on its own is not a proof. But small probability is a bright warning light that something very fishy is going on. I must admit that I find it impossible to comprehend what even the most rabidly anti-Zionist Guardian journalist would have had to gain from such an exercise (which was bound to be discovered to a great fanfare). But then I am neither anti-Zionist, nor Guardian journalist and, at least in my view, not rabid.

Almost always the Stupidity Hypothesis trumps the Conspiracy Hypothesis. But not always. And the chances are higher than one in 1313400.

It is also interesting that the link in the article to download the data has a link that points to http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=t428ng6efkWu-fCkABi4YgQ

In which, out of all the cells in the entire spreadsheet, only the cell D95 (a cell containing the name of a country) is in a smaller font than the rest. Care to guess which country? Why Israel of course – must be yet another coincidence. Is this document one uploaded to google docs by the Guardian? If so, after all this, why is Israel in a smaller font? If it is not a doc owned by the Guardian it means that this list was compiled independantly before Simon’s. If so, then Simon’s excuse that the error was introduced when the winners were split into 2 columns is implausible since this google list is exactly the same form, same headings, punctuation etc as SImon’s yet it doesn’t have the errors.

A little bit of statistics 101:

There are 1313400 independent ways of choosing a set of 3 out of 200 objects: the formula being 200!/(3! 197!). Hence, were we to assume that the choice was a Bernoulli event (i.e. completely independent), the chance of the Rogers Mishap occurring innocently is 1/1313400 = 0.000007613826709…

However, let us be more generous. Let us take for granted that 5 infelicities occurred in the table: three Israelis and two random others. What is the probability for this?

There are 200! / (5! 195!) = 2535650040 different ways of choosing 5 objects from a set of 200 objects. However, while three of these objects are presumed fixed (the three Israelis), the other two can be any of the remaining 197. In other words, we need to divide the above by the number of choices of 2 objects in a set of 197, i.e. by 197! / (2! 195!) = 19306. And the outcome is… 131340: the previous probability is increased by a factor of ten to 1 / 131340 = 0.00007613826709…

In other words, were a chimpanzee to pick once a day, at random, 5 names out of a list of 200, the choice of these five being exactly three pre-designated individuals, plus random two, will occur once in roughly 360 years. Which, thinking of it, is an acceptable level of mishaps.

And this brings me to my (as ever constructive) suggestion for Guardian News Group. You are in a deep hole. Advertising revenues go down, even more so the sort of advertising revenues from public bodies that form large proportion of your income stream. Newspaper sales go down. Managers of your group and editors in chief need large annual income to keep them in style to which they are accustomed. And your flagship newspaper is blundering (as you can see, here my generosity shines: blunder, not conspiracy…) at an unacceptable rate. What to do? Well, this: Sack all these expensive journalists and employ chimpanzees instead. The above statistical analysis confirms: things can only get better.

Ah, two corrections. Firstly, it is Guardian Media Group. Secondly, were GMG to run out of chimpanzees (which, after all, are endangered species), it is possible to replace them by flying rodents. The level of intelligence might decrease, but, provided with the right training, they should be able to do the job.

Muffin, the other probability issue is that the other two “random” mistakes weren’t actually mistakes, they were simply appreviations.

Case 1:
COMITÉ INTERNATIONAL DE LA CROIX-ROUGE (INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE REDCROSS) Geneva, founded 1863.
LIGUE DES SOCIÉTÉS DE LA CROIX-ROUGE (LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES) Geneva.

This was abbrevaiated simply to “The Red Cross”.

Case 2:

THE FRIENDS SERVICE COUNCIL (The Quakers), London. Founded in 1647.
THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE (The Quakers), Washington.

This was abbreviated to simply “The Quakers”.

So in neither of these examples was someone actually “left out”.

It is not the case that they included “THE FRIENDS SERVICE COUNCIL” but left out “THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE”. They simply conflated these two associated groups under their more well-known moniker “The Quakers”. Ditto the Red Cross entry.

These are two *fake* examples of omissions. An excercise in mendacious obfuscation. Throwing chaff, as it were.

Brett: As I’ve already stated, I’ve leaned backwards in the cause of generosity. But the important point really is that, even if you assume the most generous scenario, it cuts the very small odds just by a factor of ten, and they remain very small.

Even if Simon Rogers is right, he is admitting to stunning incompetence and unprofessionalism.

But yes, his account is obv rubbish. And his statements patronising. Vile.

It is also interesting that the link in the article to download the data has a link that points to http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=t428ng6efkWu-fCkABi4YgQ

If this is the source document for the Guardian then someone manually altered the 1994 entry contrary to any import rules they applied because Peres & Rabin appear in the “Winner 1″ column and ARafat in “Winner 2″. In the Guardian Arafat is now moved to “Winner 1″ column. ITS NO ACCIDENT!!!

Perhaps when the Guardian prints a list of all Nobel Prize winners they can “accidentally” leave off all Jews and shrink the list by a third (about 172 Jewish winners); vs 9 Muslims.

For accuracy I should have said Arafat WAS in “Winner 1″ column until people complained.

(As an aside BTW, MPAC UK website comments are now post-moderated. Don’t take that as an opportunity to be nasty but rather an opportunity to debate)

All it takes is one person with an animus against, ignorance of or indifference towards Israel (and the environment at TG would hardly exclude the latter two) to omit the three Israelis accidentally/accidentally on purpose.

Perhaps the Palestine/Israel thing confused them. Unlikely, as other joint winners came from two different states. Such a person could not have been ignorant of the result of excluding one or the other. The person either didn’t care or didn’t care enough. They cared enough for every other national group, though.

Presumably the Guardian’s list was compiled by entering names into countries. Somebody forgot or “forgot” to enter any names into the Israel boxes.

The only national group, the only national group, to be so wholly omitted, was the Israeli.

The Quaker and Red Cross conflations are a bit odd. Whoever was doing this job was a bit amateur. But, maybe, to such a person, one Christian organization is as much like another.

But Palestine/Israel wasn’t even a conflation. No Israelis were mentioned at all.

This isn’t a huge list. It’s not a huge job, Just find the correct country for each winner, and enter the name into the correct column.

Only Israelis, Only Israelis, were omitted as a national group.

Odd. Quite odd.

Conspiracy is highly unlikely. Let’s just say that this kind of accident WRT Israel is more likely to happen at TG than elsewhere.

Several people have accused Brett from Barking of being a loony who wears a tin foil hat. Of course, when anyone speaks ‘the’ truth to power, they get called crazy.

Was Brett also ‘crazy’ when he said that “SSimon Rogers” was a shape-shifting reptilian? Or the time He saw George Galloway ‘on’ the grassy knoll?

Keep up the GOOD WORK Brett! You are alone! The whole of Barking is behind you!

Also, in cookiecutter’s spreadsheet link, 1947 simply contains “The Quakers” in both columns. So whoever imported the data simply imported the conflation.

“The Quaker and Red Cross conflations are a bit odd. Whoever was doing this job was a bit amateur. But, maybe, to such a person, one Christian organization is as much like another.”

No, these two weren’t conflated into one. TWO Red Cross organisations were conflated into a single “The Red Cross” entry and separately (in another entry) TWO Quaker organisations were conflated into a simple “The Quakers”.

This was not a “mistake”. It is arguablely entirely reasonable to abbreviate in this way.

The ISRAEL case was different.

They’re now *pretending* that the Red Cross example and the Quaker example were similar omisssions (to the Israelis case). They weren’t.

“Harry Trufer” (Zin) is quite an interesting example of someone who feels that if he repeats his sneers and jibes enough times, the facts will magically change.

But they won’t. What remains is the fact that The Guardian published a list of Nobel Peace Prize winners with three omissions. Only three. And those three just happened to be all the Israelis.

Brett from Barking has thoroughly *exposed* the conspiracy. Anyone that still thinks it was all the result of an innocent little database error, should be put “in” a straightjacket and made to sit ‘with’ the normal people.

“SSimon Rogers” is also author of “How Slow Can You Waterski?”

The Guardian says that “How Slow Can You Waterski? draws together a selection of the most imaginative questions and the most surprising answers”

For example: “What are the chances of being struck by lightning in bed?”

On behalf of Harry’s Place let me ask another “imaginative question”: What are the chances that “SSimon Rogers” does not lead a secret anti-semitic cabal in the heart of the Guardian news room?

About the same as being struck by lightning in bed, I’d say!

Isn’t it about time that “Rogers” was arrested for denying the holocaust?

Nurse Ratched enters the forum carrying a large syringe…

What remains is the fact that The Guardian published a list of Nobel Peace Prize winners with three omissions. Only three. And those three just happened to be all the Israelis.

Sadly, it remains unclear what threat the Guardian’s genocidal omissions pose to our precious bodily fluids.

Gentlemen, do you remember the unfortunate incident of Harry’s Place and the anti-semitic pizza slice? For those who don’t, HP’s hilariously overwrought post about the vile, Jew-hating foodstuff was a Godsend for HP’s political enemies. We all laughed like drains for ages, and still bring it up whenever HP produces an especially ridiculous conspiracy theory.

Well, this thread is even sillier and more embarrassing than your silly and embarrassing racist pizza freakout was. While I naturally urge you to continue making risible jackasses of yourselves, I think it’s only fair to point out that this kind of hilarious idiocy is going to blow up in your faces again and again, and in those of the Pollards, Finkelsteins and Phillipses who have foolishly chosen to join you on your Big Day Out at Wingnut Zoo.

Look, I shouldn’t have to say it again, but any sensible person knows the odds that “a database error” deleted only – and all – Israeli entries is so infinitesimal as to be laughable.

Any further contributions from “Harry Trufer” and “FlyingRodent” may disappear due to a “database error”. They should not take this personally since it is entirely plausible that their specific posts will be randomly deleted, purely by chance, and with no malice-aforethought. Computers are funny that way.

Flying Rodent and Harrytroofer re-charge their batteries on the dark side of the moon! There. That’s told them, though I doubt the news will come as a surprise to them.

The Guardian says that Simon Rogers’ “How Slow Can You Waterski? draws together a selection of the most imaginative questions and the most surprising answers”

For example: “What are the chances of being struck by lightning in bed?”

Probably quite high if you’re wearing a tin foil hat

Deep breaths, here people.

What is more likely – that a sub-editor at the Guardian having meticulously put together a list of Nobel Prize winners and then, with malice aforethought, went down it and deleted the name of the three Israeli pms to have been so honoured. Something I have never before come across – can you find a single instance on the interwebs of some lunatic group claiming that the Nobel awards of Messrs Begin, Rabin and Peres were never, in fact awarded, and the belief that they were is put about by a perfidious Zionist conspiracy?

Or that someone rushed something out in a hurry and managed to make a pigs breakfast of it. Which, lets face it, is pretty much part and parcel of modern journalism. And a long-standing Grauniad tradition.

Think about it people. What is the most likely outcome of leaving off those names? People complaining and the mistake being rectified, which did in fact happen. The meanest of intellects would probably be able to twig that this wasn’t going to start a ‘have you noticed that no Israeli has ever won the Nobel Peace Prize? Suspicious that’ meme. So I think that it is hardly likely that this was the motivation for what actually happened. Most Guardian readers probably remember that Begin, Rabin and Peres were awarded the Nobel, so it wouldn’t really be worth anyone’s while attempting to conceal the fact.

But of course, a proof-reading cock-up is too, too dull. Much more satisfying to impute malevolence to other people on the thinnest of justifications.

Think of England

Perhaps when the Guardian prints a list of all Nobel Prize winners they can “accidentally” leave off all Jews and shrink the list by a third (about 172 Jewish winners); vs 9 Muslims.

Did any of those Muslim Novel Prize winners get their prize for the ‘hard’ sciences? You know. Like adding to the sum total knowledge of mankind.

One of the 9 was surely Yasser.

What a Hoot.

So Brett,

Suppose that a junior employee has maliciously deleted the Israelis’ names. Suppose that Simon Rogers did his proof-reading sloppily, and now that he found out about it, he corrected the error. What does it say about the Guardian in your opinion?

Mordaunt: “What is more likely – that a sub-editor at the Guardian having meticulously put together a list of Nobel Prize winners and then, with malice aforethought, went down it and deleted the name of the three Israeli pms… Or that someone rushed something out in a hurry and managed to make a pigs breakfast of it… But of course, a proof-reading cock-up is too, too dull.”

So, let me see – they compiled a spreadsheet list of Nobel Prize winners (which they placed online and which included the Israeli names), used this spreadsheet in the article, but unfortunately, somehow, the three Israeli names – and only the three Israeli names – fell off the list in the process? Yes, that’s entirely plausible.

Did any of those Muslim Novel Prize winners get their prize for the ‘hard’ sciences? You know. Like adding to the sum total knowledge of mankind.

Ahmed Zawail. Chemistry. One of absolutely greatest scientists alive.

And what have you, Crap Hammer, added to the sum total knowledge of anything?

When are you going to apologise for your rat droppings, Flying Rodent?

Mordant, bite my backside.

The only national group wholly omitted: the Israeli.

Odd.

Rosen. You write beautifully. Perhaps if it resembled anything I have said it would mean I were a creative like you. Alas, it does not.

“Did any of those Muslim Novel Prize winners get their prize for the ‘hard’ sciences? You know. Like adding to the sum total knowledge of mankind.”

And what have you, Crap Hammer, added to the sum total knowledge of anything?

Muffin, also there was Abdus Salam of Pakistan, who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics with his American Jewish colleague Steven Weinberg.

And I second your question to Clap Hammer.

Thanks Gene, Should have remembered Abdus Salam. Not just a great physicist but also Yuval Neeman’s PhD supervisor and the founder of ICTP.

Ah, yes, and if Field Medalists and Abel Medalists are allowed, may I add Sir Michael Atiyah?

Even if Simon Rogers is right, he is admitting to stunning incompetence and unprofessionalism.

‘I work for the Guardian’? Big deal. I bet he tells that to anyone who’ll listen.

What depths next will Flying Fuckwit stoop to? That the deletion of 6 million Jews from the human race database in 1939-1945 was also an accident?

Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that this actually was an anti-semitic outrage. What exactly did it consist of? Well, for about five hours, a list of Nobel Prize winners was missing three Israeli statesmen. The invocation of the holocaust is a massive failure of intellect and proportion. Get a grip.

So, let me see – they compiled a spreadsheet list of Nobel Prize winners (which they placed online and which included the Israeli names), used this spreadsheet in the article, but unfortunately, somehow, the three Israeli names – and only the three Israeli names – fell off the list in the process? Yes, that’s entirely plausible.

It’s more plausible than the claim that someone took the trouble to perpetrate what would have been undoubtedly the feeblest anti-semitic outrage in recorded history. Two things – Peres and Rabin won the award in 1994 so only two entries had to be banjaxed. Secondly human beings are pattern seeking animals, which is why when we look at the night sky we see a face in the moon and characters from Greek mythology in the stars, despite the fact that these are entirely arbitrary conventions created by the human imagination. All this is basically, the decent equivalent of seeing the face of the Virgin Mary on a burrito.

Mordant, bite my backside.

Well now, I bet you say that to all the boys.

“Well now, I bet you say that to all the boys.”

No. Only ones called “Biter”, who attempt to patronize with a toothless mordant wit.

The Guardian omitted the names of the Ssshh, you know who, by accident?

Don’t be so obtuse, please, try to at least pretend to have some self respect.

I realize the mentality of the committed anti Jewish, sorry, sorry, sorry, forgot the codeword again, “anti-zionist” Left and Right bigots predisposes them to this sort of imbecilic credulity and indeed normally precludes them from having anything but tiniest microgram of self respect but I implore you, don’t be so mind numbingly obtuse.

An attempt to say this omission was by accident and not by design would be, for the advocates of such a ridiculous “explanation” an admission that they are indeed, pathetic, credulous, wooly brained ideological imbeciles.

But then the advocates for the “mistake” theory already know this, don’t they? Actually NO, of course they don’t because if they did, then they wouldn’t be advocates for the “mistake” theory, but they don’t so they “R”.

“All this is basically, the decent equivalent of seeing the face of the Virgin Mary on a burrito.”

If by “all this” you mean the fact that only Israelis were wholly omitted as a national group, I beg to differ.

Mordaunt (take a deep breath now)……….”It’s more plausible than the claim that someone took the trouble to perpetrate what would have been undoubtedly the feeblest anti-semitic outrage in recorded history.”

as has been pointed out before, the probability of the 3 israeli PMs being accidentally omitted, stretches to at least millions to 1, therefore when compared to deliberate manipulation (probably by a guardian minion rather than official guardian policy) it is clearly the LEAST plausible of the possibilities. frankly i question your ability to “Think about it people.”(??!!!). we are already aware of previous issues regarding the guardian’s past staff (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/guardian-man-revealed-as-hardline-islamist-499135.html) or current staff (seumas milne?) so the chances that this was the result of rogue staff meddlings, increases further.
we get to choose between a million to 1 shot and the chance that an employee of a newspaper, with a record of employing islamists, and columnists and contributors who regularly denounce israel, deliberately removed the israeli PMs names.
btw i’m not sure you understand what “plausible” means.

but unfortunately, somehow, the three Israeli names – and only the three Israeli names – fell off the list in the process? Yes, that’s entirely plausible.

Let me repeat. In the online spreadsheet from Google you find Peres & Rabin in Column 1 and Arafat in Column 2. When the Guardian imported that spreadsheet (assuming its the one they imported) then they had to have manually edited the result in Column 1 and substituted Column 2 (Arafat) (that translates to Winner 1 and Winner 2). That suggests malice.

The comments about statistics in response to the comments from Simon Roberts are less relevant that the comments from Simon Roberts, which perhaps were approved by Simon’s bosses. Were they, Simon, and has cat got your tongue? Simon’s feeble response says a lot about standards at The Guardian, and the extent to which its journalists go out on a limb to defend the indefensible.

(How come he didn’t just claim that the manipulation of the data was merely anti-Zionist, and for Harry’s Place to now claim that there had been any element of antisemtism is merely to distract attention from…

Further to my previous post,
Simon Rogers has shown in another post that he owns the Google spreadsheet. He has now updated it so that it no longer has Israel in a smaller font than any other country. He has done so but made no mention of doing so or explanation as to why Israel was in a smaller font than any other country to start with despite commenting on other changes he made to the spreadsheet.

I still have a copy of the original screensnap at

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_J8LSJP1YWRM/StEYAX2UOkI/AAAAAAAAAAM/A-vTdaLWE-M/s1600-h/nobel.JPG

Again it looks like someone was trying to make a subtle point about diminishing the importance of Israelis and Israel by placing Israel in a smaller font than every other country in the list. Add the likelihood of that to the omission of 3 Israeli PMs and it looks much more likely that a particular staff member was deliberately trying to make a point about diminishing Israel.

I have asked him the following on the Guardian blog:
Please explain why only Israel had the small font and why, after I highlighted it, you changed it without commenting on it.

The original screensnap is hosted at
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_J8LSJP1YWRM/StEYAX2UOkI/AAAAAAAAAAM/A-vTdaLWE-M/s1600-h/nobel.JPG

“This is part hilarious, part pathetic….is there a Jewish news agency left who havent run on this complete non-story?”

There are many similar comments above from the usual suspects. Im sure The Guardian is proud to have defenders of such astonishing wit.

I have no regard whatsoever for the Guardian. At the same time I have no insider information or knowledge that this was a deliberate omission.

What should concern The Guardian is that many perfectly rational people believe that its quite likely that a) they employ someone idiotic enough to think this sort of smear was a good idea and b) none of its people picked up the error before publication (For fxxks sake who doesn’t know about Rabin?)

Similarly, it should be of concern to a paper ‘of the left’ that its support above comes from the quarter it does and the manner in which it does.

MattG

If it is correct to assume that the Guardian caters to a number of legitimate positions, one of which is antisemitism (ref Seven Jewish Children) then perhaps it should not be surprising that some of its staff might not think that juvenile pranks such as putting Israel into a smaller font or omitting the names of the prize winners was not part of the legitimate struggle against the Zionist entity, and that any protests against these peculiarities would in any case be airily dismissed by senior editorial staff as typical Jewish, sorry Zionist, sensitivity.

Which from an outsider’s perspective leaves the Guardian kind of snookered even if the paper itself still thinks its playing pool.

MattG:
“What should concern The Guardian is that many perfectly rational people believe that its quite likely that a) they employ someone idiotic enough to think this sort of smear was a good idea and b) none of its people picked up the error before publication (For fxxks sake who doesn’t know about Rabin?)”

The bottom line is that the Guardian is getting a taste of its own medicine here; assumed guilty with no chance of proving their innocence. Many people are simply delighted to see them hoisted by their own petard of moral superiority and infallibility. After so many cases of deliberately biased and selective reporting about I/P, it is not surprising that so many readers have concluded that this case was also deliberate.

“The bottom line is that the Guardian is getting a taste of its own medicine here; assumed guilty with no chance of proving their innocence.”

They *can* prove their innocence. They can get the journalist or intern responsible for importing the data to retrace their steps in front of neutral observers. If there is a “data import error” with the way they did it, then presto! – the error should occur again and quite ‘randomly’ three Israeli Prime Ministers will fall off the spreadsheet while the fonts on the source spreadsheet will ‘randomly’ adjust to make all countries including the random text string “I-s-r-a-e-l” appear in a smaller typeface.

Bobby,

re. Israel in tiny font, that is odd. Maybe that was a “note” to someone about deciding which to put first, Israel or Palestine. Or perhaps it was so read by someone.

I think the screw up is the most likely explanation. It’s just that, with The Guardian, it’s more likely to happen wrt Israel that with others, for whatever reason: hostility, ignorance or ambivolence.

MattG

What should concern The Guardian is that many perfectly rational people believe that its quite likely that a) they employ someone idiotic enough to think this sort of smear was a good idea and b) none of its people picked up the error before publication (For fxxks sake who doesn’t know about Rabin?)

For a newspaper so obsessed with demonizing Israel, it is beyond belief that this was an innocent mistake.

Even if basically, the Peace Prize has nothing to do with Israel.

“hostility, ignorance or ambivolence”

Careful, before you know it you will be in the Guardian’s favoured territory of pomo relativity – cultural ambiviolences and the Other’s other for example.

On the other hand, the Guardian’s Nobelgate might be considered a perfect example of an Ambivalent Attachment Disorder to the concept of antisemitic anti-Zionism!

Zkharya,
Surely if you want to put in a note you don’t make the font smaller. If anything you make it larger or change its colour. A smaller font could be seen to symbolise lesser importance. Also what kind of a note is it to remind someone to decide to put Israel or Palestine first and it is then ignored and forgotten about completely until I highlighted it? Combine this with the other errors whereby ONLY the Israeli PMs were omitted and it looks far more likely someone decided to make their anti Israel point.

The explanation that it was a screwup and as “proof” they say there were 3 other errors simply does not hold up as screensnaps of the original list do not have any errors other than the Israelis. If this was not the highly critical of Israel Guardian, I would be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt but knowing that they have staff with very anti Israel feelings I can quite easily visualise a staffer deciding to make his point in this way.

Simon Rogers initial comments re-double entry and other names missed of the original chart is bulls*it – as the screen shot taken proves. Instead of coming up with other nonsensical comments (as in, “no-one noticed that we also had Kofi Annan down as US, rather than Ghana”) he should of owned up, apologised and drawn a line under this incident.

Instead he continues to claim it as a genuine mistake, whilst the evidence he supplied that it was not only Israelis left off is shown to be, simply put, a lie.

“they say there were 3 other errors”

Two of the errors – Quakers and Red Cross – weren’t really errors, and the third is simply an alleged error since nobody can recall actually seeing it. It was allegedly spotted because it was at the “top of the list” but 1946 is in the *middle* of the list, and in any event, spotting one error would normally prompt a more thorough check for any others, which it apparently didn’t.

The Guardian Nobelgate:

Concerned reader: Why was there no bell on the gate?

Simon Rogers: We have installed a failsafe erroneous fact-checker early activation system (TM), however, our text transfer protocol, aka Shorter Giggle Markup Language, crashed unexpectedly. What can we do?

This guy has a screenshot of the original chart, and Rogers claim that the Mott fellow was also omitted is not true.

http://dayvidsaffer.com/2009/10/09/guardian-no-israeli-nobel-peace-prize-winners-ever/

The apparent lie from Simon Rogers about the other names being missing is a bigger deal than the original omissions.

Also, the Saffer fellow posted a link to the original screenshot to CiF, but CiF has now deleted it.

Hahahaha! This is the funniest thing I’ve ever read! Even better than the anti-semtic pizza! Hahahaha!

“Also, the Saffer fellow posted a link to the original screenshot to CiF, but CiF has now deleted it.”

Ohad

I dont think I posted the shot there or not, but bobby posted one and thats still up (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/oct/09/nobel-peace-prize-winners-barack-obama )

“Sorry to piss on your tin foil hat,”

a) the hat must be yours and

b) trust me, you’re not. You must have confused it with your feet

“but this thread is absolutely hysterical”

Well, Zin, if you’re happy, I’m happy.

“Well, Zin, if you’re happy, I’m happy.”

Apologies, Zin’s (aka Harry Troofer) post got deleted due to a “computer error”. Please feel free to repost it. Sorry. These things happen.

Well my swivel-eyed Nobel-troofer, if the tin foil hat fits…

…wear it. Yes, please do. By all means.

Great letter from Dennis MacEoin to Managing Editor of the Guardian some months ago about anti-Israel bias at the Guardian. She never bothered to reply!

http://cifwatch.com/2009/10/07/must-read-critique-of-guardian-editorial-bias/

As one of the comments below MacEoin’s letter points out, the Guardian appears to follow a policy of ‘deliberate omission.’ Ironic, perhaps ‘ironic’ is inappropriate in the context of anything that the Guardian does, therefore, that this policy should extend right down to the trivia of names omitted, accidently or otherwise.

“Also, the Saffer fellow posted a link to the original screenshot to CiF, but CiF has now deleted it.

Ohad

I dont think I posted the shot there or not, but bobby posted one and thats still up (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/oct/09/nobel-peace-prize-winners-barack-obama )”

Actually that is the link to the one that Simon Rogers has been updating. That file now has the font corrected by Simon. This has been done sliently with no explanation or comment on it despite me asking a direct question about why it was smaller to start with.

A link to the screensnap of the original one with a smaller font for Israel is at
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_J8LSJP1YWRM/StEYAX2UOkI/AAAAAAAAAAM/A-vTdaLWE-M/s1600-h/nobel.JPG

Rogers mentions the D95 problem (small font for Israel) in one of his posts. It seemed a bit technical.

Correction: It wasn’t Rogers that mentions the D95 cell, apologies.

Typically, a smaller font size in a spreadsheet means that the cell has been entered or altered by a person other than the original owner.

I’m not surprised pieces of anti-semitic shit like FlyingFuckwit, Douglas Clark or Toad of Toad Hall are defending the guardian over this.

Cell D95? Is that the anti-semitic cell at the heart of the Guardian newsroom? Or the one at the Pizza Express?

Do you lot ever wonder whether you might be, well, slightly mad? No, seriously.

There’s been some fantastic lines though. My own personal favourite is this from Grainger:

“Correction: It wasn’t Rogers that mentions the D95 cell, apologies”

Straight out of The Professionals, innit? You can almost see Cowley mouthing the words to Bodie and Doyle.

Even the computer hate jewish

Bret,

Any way you can show everyone your screen save of the Guardian’s original table, showing only the 3 Israeli omissions?

Thanks!

Shira,
You can see the screen save you are after at
http://dayvidsaffer.com/2009/10/09/guardian-no-israeli-nobel-peace-prize-winners-ever/comment-page-1/#comment-55

Scroll down the page a little and you will see the entire screensnap of the list with only the Israeli omissions.

Thanks Zin, if you are uncomfortable with facts this is your problem.

It would be interesting, however, for Rogers to provide an answer as to why the text in the D96 cell was smaller than in the other spreadsheet cells.

The list is wrong in even another sense: there is no “Palestine”. No country is or was ever called “Palestine”. Usually, you can use “Palestinian territories” (Although I prefer Judea and Samaria).

And if the Arabs continue in the path of Hamas, there won’t be a Palestine country ever, (but many more Palestinian refugees).

Even the computer hate jewish

Rapi, you don’t know how stupid your pigeon English antisemitism reads.

The list is ‘wrong’ in so many ways because the Guardian cannot admit to itself that it has a problematic attitude to reporting events in the Middle East.

This is really a story about shoddy journalism if anything.

Fabian,
Interestingly the guardian have updated the list again to change Palestine to Pal Terr.

So In short this was originally a list that omitted all the 3 Israeli PMs, placed Israel in a smaller font in the spreadsheet than every other country and called the area Palestine.

Hmm – despite this – some people still believe this was all simply a computer glitch and nothing to do with showing where the people at the Guardians’ sympathies lie!

Have we established yet whether the Simon Rogers version (I don’t bother checking facts even when I am told at lunchtime something is wrong, and I’ve a laughably weak knowledge of history) is correct, or the antisemitic theory?

“The list is wrong in even another sense: there is no “Palestine”. No country is or was ever called “Palestine”.”

Yeah, that is a dumb reason to criticise the list. The person simply listed the land/country whence Arafat thought he came.

I’m surprised they changed it to “Pal Terr.”. Presumably because they think it can make more of a point this way than last time.

No comment..

MattG:
What should concern The Guardian is that many perfectly rational people believe that its quite likely that a) they employ someone idiotic enough to think this sort of smear was a good idea

Name a perfectly rational person who thinks this was some kind of smear. Go on, find a single, rational person who thinks this was anything other than a computing error.

or b) they employ someone who openly admits he doesn’t know much about history, doesn’t check his facts properly, and that even when alerted ‘at lunchtime’ that there was a serious factual problem with an article *still* doesn’t bother checking it properly. People used to lose their jobs for that sort of incompetency.