I received an email from a reader, Brenda, about the New York Times article about the events that had unfolded in Norway. According to the article she had sent,

The attacks appeared to be part of a coordinated assault on the ordinarily peaceful Scandinavian nation, as images of the damaged government buildings called to mind past terror attacks in Beirut or Baghdad or Oklahoma City.

Strangely enough, when I came to blog about it, the Beirut comment disappeared. A visit to the news article nowshows that Beirut is no longer mentioned and the paragraph was rewritten:

The explosions in Oslo, from one or more bombs, turned the tidy Scandinavian capital into a scene reminiscent of terrorist attacks in Baghdad or Oklahoma City, panicking people and blowing out windows of several government buildings, including one housing the office of the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who was unharmed.

The only reason I could think of is that the journalist/editor realized that people are able to remember terrorist attacks that occurred in Iraq and Oklahoma but can’t remember a terror attack in Lebanon. Clearly the “images of damaged buildings” conjured images of Beirut, but the Lebanese capital does not conjure “scenes of terrorist attacks”.

For this reason, I believe a “Looks Like Beirut” Certificate is very much warranted against Elisa Mala and J. David Goodman.

Screenshot from Google showing the pre-edited version of the article.