Not Surprising, Really
But we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have caught Reuters in an egregious fabrication of the news. If you read this report, you'll learn that workers at the Istanbul Airport "sacrificed" a camel. This was, according to Reuters, a celebration for having finished some work ahead of schedule.
The national flag-carrier said on Wednesday maintenance staff killed the camel at Turkey's busiest airport after sending a batch of aircraft back to the supplier ahead of schedule.
Turkish Airlines has suspended the head of plane maintenance pending an investigation, the company said in a statement.
Turkish newspapers carried pictures of the camel, two rugs thrown over his hump, ahead of Tuesday's sacrifice. They also showed pictures of the beast chopped up into chunks of meat.
Top-selling daily Hurriyet said 700 kilos of camel meat were distributed among the workers. Turkish Airlines was accepted last week into the Lufthansa-led Star Alliance.
Of course, they got it all wrong. In point of fact, our usually inebriated sources tell us that the truth is completely different. It seems that the maintenance staff actually was acting in self defense. The camel was really an agent of the Animal Uprising™ and was caught in the act of trying to hijack one of the planes. When cornered, the camel began a lethal barrage of camel spit and the workers had no choice but to whack the creature. Divvying up the carcass afterward was just a bonus for a job well done!
UPDATE: Now here's an even bigger surprise: the BBC got it even more wrong. They not only reported the same misinformation in the Reuters story, but compounded it with the headline: Turkish Airlines gets the hump. Actually, Kerim got the hump.
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Animal Uprisingâ„¢ Sacrifices 1,400 Turks — Sunday, 31 December , 2006 @ 1:38 pm
