Tag: hoax

Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report

The Grayzone has identified  serious issues with the credibility of key sources quoted in the New York Times’ December 28 story, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Authored by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, the article purports to prove “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” than even Israeli authorities have been willing to allege . However, the Times report is marred by sensationalism, wild leaps of logic, and an absence of concrete evidence to support its sweeping conclusion.

The Times has come under fire from family members of Gal Abdush, the so-called “girl in the black dress” who features as Exhibit A in Gettleman and company’s attempt to demonstrate a pattern of rape by Hamas on October 7. Not only have Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law each denied that she was raped, the former has accused the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle. Though the family’s comments have sparked a major uproar on social media, the Times has yet to address the serious breach of journalistic integrity that its staff is accused of committing.

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Disney Shamed into Retracting Phony ‘Steamboat Willie’ Copyright Claim After Film Enters Public Domain

The Disney Grooming Syndicate has been forced to back down from bullying a private citizen who legally used Steamboat Willie in a YouTube video.

YouTuber and voice actor Brock Baker published all eight minutes of Steamboat Willie on his popular YouTube channel (1.1 million subscribers). That alone would normally be considered a copyright violation. On top of that, Brock added his own audio to the classic cartoon that introduced Mickey and Minnie Mouse to the public in 1928.

But.

Steamboat Willie has been in the public domain since the beginning of the year, and Brock published his video a few days after that. Nevertheless, Disney still slapped him with two copyright claims. First, Disney filed a copyright claim on the cartoon itself. The result was that YouTube demonetized the video. After Disney backed off that, the Grooming Syndicate filed a second copyright claim for Steamboat Willie’s soundtrack — which is also in public domain. The whole thing is public domain. Nevertheless, Brock’s video got demonetized — until they earned enough negative media attention to reverse course.

In a way, you can see Disney’s point… The disgraced company is losing billions on its lousy streaming service and theatrical releases, so every dollar does count. But public domain is still public domain, and this bullying campaign is obviously meant to scare off anyone else who would dare do what Disney can no longer do: make money by entertaining the public.

This vile multinational corporation has enjoyed so much special treatment over the years with copyright protection and legislation, and it’s still harassing a private citizen on YouTube who is only guilty of having a few laughs about a cartoon that no longer enjoys copyright protection.

Overall, unless no one files for copyright protection, I’m opposed to the idea of public domain. As evil as Disney is, it is still in business, and its property should be protected for as long as it stands. That’s Good John’s thinking…

Bad John loves seeing Disney lose, fail, and drown in its own greed and perversions.

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Miami cops shut down rumors of 10-foot-tall alien, UFOs at shopping mall

It turns out 2024 didn’t kick off to an extraterrestrial start, after all.

Miami police shut down wild rumors that a 10-foot-tall alien was roaming the Floridian city on New Year’s Day after the conspiracy theory ran rampant on social media.

“There were no aliens, UFOs, or ETs,” the department confirmed Friday.

The speculation was ignited after a video circulating online seemingly captured a massive figure strolling outside Bayside Marketplace, a shopping mall in downtown Miami, that was surrounded by dozens of police cruisers with their lights flashing.

But the truth behind the grainy, zoomed-in footage taken from several stories above is much less otherworldly, according to cops.

“It’s a shadow of a person walking. If you look at the beginning of the clip, you can see the person at the bottom of the shadow,” Officer Michael Vega said in a statement.

“If there was any creature, myself and other officers would have our handgun, rifle, and shotgun out while we hide behind our cars.”

The real cause of the massive police presence was in response to reports that a group of more than 50 juveniles possibly armed with sticks were fighting in the mall.

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Pentagon’s ‘Extremism In Our Ranks’ Propaganda Debunked By Their Own Study

Recall 2021… when the Biden FBI deployed counterterrorism resources against concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings, and Gen. Mark Milley told Congress that he wanted “to understand White rage” one month after an enraged father was dragged out of a Loudon County, Virginia school board meeting after his daughter was raped by a transgender boy in the girl’s bathroom – which the school board then covered up.

Remember that?

And instead of addressing the concerns of millions of angry parents who had woken up to a nationwide phenomenon of mentally ill schoolteachers, critical race theory / DEI indoctrination, and transgender boys crushing the dreams of female athletes, the Biden administration turned the whole thing into a ‘white rage’ problem caused by extremist Trump supporters.

In December of 2021, the Pentagon furthered the ‘white rage’ narrative, warning that ‘extremism’ within the ranks was on the rise, which would require ‘detailed new rules’ to prohibit service members from engaging in ‘certain activities.’

The new policy lays out in detail the banned activities, which range from advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government to fundraising or rallying on behalf of an extremist group or “liking” or reposting extremist views on social media. The rules also specify that commanders must determine two things in order for someone to be held accountable: that the action was an extremist activity, as defined in the rules, and that the service member “actively participated” in that prohibited activity.

Previous policies banned extremist activities but didn’t go into such great detail, and also did not specify the two step process to determine someone accountable. -AP

Turns out that was total bullshit…

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America’s new arrivals now stage ‘bogus robberies’ to cheat the system

The fact that the hordes of new arrivals know all the loopholes and legal angles to scam our immigration laws and maximize benefits on our welfare system, while the working American does not, is really quite astounding, and tells me that there have to be a number of lawyers involved, telling these people what they can do to cheat American citizens out of a country. Check out this story, reported by the New York Post yesterday:

Two New York City men staged armed robberies at convenience stores and fast food joints across the United States to scheme immigration benefits, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Rambhai Patel, 36, and Balwinder Singh, 39, were arrested on Dec. 13 and both charged with one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud for their alleged plot, which allowed the ‘victims’ of their robberies to apply for special immigration visas, Massachusetts prosecutors said.

According to prosecutors, the pseudo robbery plots “involved a ‘robber’ threatening a store clerk with an apparent firearm before snatching cash from the register in front of a store’s surveillance camera.” These “victims” would then be eligible to qualify for a special visa (“U visa”), which if approved, provides the alien with:

• temporary immigration status including work authorization;

• temporary immigration status for qualifying family members of the victim; and

• the possibility of lawful permanent resident status.

So how much was this scheme allegedly raking in? From The New York Times:

Based on surveillance footage, cellular phone records and interviews with a cooperating witness, the F.B.I. concluded that purported victims each paid $10,000 to be ‘robbed’ in exchange for immigration ‘papers’ and that store owners received $1,500 to $2,000 for providing venues for fake crimes.

How do convenience store workers come up with $10k in extra cash? Isn’t that a minimum wage job? (In Massachusetts, minimum wage is only $15.) Could it be that these people are exploiting every other aspect of our socialist welfare system? Maximizing the loopholes and while we foot the bill? I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

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Coco Berthmann says she’s a sex-trafficking survivor who was sold to paedophiles by her own mother – but after she admitted to faking cancer, is her story all it seems?

The lies of a cancer scammer who also claimed to be a survivor of human trafficking are unravelled in a gripping podcast exploring her manipulation of others.

Coco Berthmann, 29, originally from Germany but now living in the US, first began to gain fame and interest after sharing a horrific story about her ordeal as a trafficking victim in 2017.

During the height of her fame, the cancer faker hosted her own TEDX talk, appeared on podcasts speaking about the things that allegedly happened to her, and met survivors of human trafficking including Elizabeth Smart, whose case of being abducted, held hostage and repeatedly raped for nine months in 2002 made headlines around the world after she successfully escaped her captor.

But after Coco pleaded guilty to communications fraud in July 2022 after pretending she had cancer and raising almost $10,000 USD through a GoFundMe page for ‘alternative treatments’, a journalist from Florida began to look into other parts of her story on which people have cast doubt.

Believable: The Coco Berthmann Story, which was produced by Dear Media, charts the influencer’s rise to fame after moving to Salt Lake City, Utah, becoming a Mormon, and procuring a loyal following by sharing stories about being trafficked by her mother, sometimes in harrowing detail.

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Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis

Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.

The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists.

The fallout from December 5 House Committe on Antisemitism hearings has already cost University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill her job, while demands by billionaire pro-Israel donors and politicians for the firing of Harvard’s Claudine Gay have grown by the day. Both stand accused of refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews, even though no such calls have taken place on their campuses.

Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to the forces orchestrating the carefully choreographed, heavily-funded campaign to crush Palestine solidarity activism on campus.

The law firm leading the assault on the universities has included David Friedman, the former ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, among its partners. Until 2021, this firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, was registered with the US Department of Justice as a foreign agent on behalf of an Israeli principal.

The firm’s clients include associates of a jailed Ukrainian billionaire who bankrolled neo-Nazi militias, along with a who’s who of corporations accused of defrauding and even killing consumers.

Meanwhile, the “Jewish student” witnesses who set the stage for the attacks on Magill and her fellow university presidents at the House Antisemitism Committee were employed on at least a semi-professional basis by Israeli lobbying cutouts.

They included Jonathan Frieden, a Harvard Law student who moonlights as president of Alliance for Israel; MIT graduate student Talia Khan, the president of MIT Israel Alliance; and Bella Ingber, co-president of NYU’s Students Supporting Israel.

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JOE BIDEN KEEPS REPEATING HIS FALSE CLAIM THAT HE SAW PICTURES OF BEHEADED BABIES

ON OCTOBER 11, four days after the Hamas-led attacks in Israel, President Joe Biden addressed a group of Jewish community leaders in the Indian Treaty Room of the Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” Biden said. “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”

It was a jarring statement. And it was false.

Biden had seen no such pictures, nor received any such confirmation. He made those comments after Nicole Zedeck, a journalist for Israel’s i24 News, reported that 40 babies had been decapitated, citing Israeli soldiers at the scene of the attacks at Kfar Aza. A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently stated that babies and toddlers had been found with their “heads decapitated.”

Three hours later, Biden promoted the claim to the world and asserted he personally saw pictures of the horrifying scene, giving the story supreme legitimacy.

Hamas denied the allegation, and other Israeli journalists at the scene began reporting they had not seen evidence such beheadings had occurred nor had they been told it had happened by any of the Israeli soldiers they spoke with. Zedeck, the reporter from i24 News who was first to spread the allegation, later tweeted that “soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed. The exact death toll is still unknown as the military continues to go house to house and find more Israeli casualties.”

An anchor at the network defended the reporter and said that three separate Israel Defense Forces officials had told i24 News “that around 40 babies & small children were murdered in Kfar Aza, some burned, some beheaded.” CBS News and CNN also spread Israeli assertions that babies and toddlers had been decapitated.

Eventually, the Israeli government was forced to admit it had no evidence to support the claim, though it continued to imply that it might be true. A military spokesperson said that the IDF would not further investigate the beheading charges because it would be “disrespectful for the dead.”

White House officials then “clarified” what they claimed Biden was actually referring to. “U.S. officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently,” reported the Washington Post. “The president based his comments about the alleged atrocities on the claims from Netanyahu’s spokesman and media reports from Israel, according to the White House.” The purpose of such graphic descriptions, according to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, was “to underscore the utter depravity and the barbaric nature with which these terrorists murdered and butchered innocent Israeli civilians.” Kirby, who dodged direct questions about whether Biden had personally seen any photos, added, “And that further underscores why — and this is what the President’s specific point was yesterday — that we got to stay with Israel. We’ve got to continue to make sure they have the support that they need.”

Biden has never publicly retracted the incendiary claims. And the Washington Post reported that the president had been urged by staffers not to make that allegation in his speech on October 11, “because those reports were unverified.”

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Viral footage showed protesters chanting ‘gas the Jews’. Nobody can verify it

The original source of videos appearing to show pro-Palestine protesters chanting “gas the Jews” has refused to provide unedited footage as police and independent fact-checkers have been unable to verify whether the chants happened.

On October 9, pro-Palestine protesters gathered in front of the Sydney Opera House as it was lit in blue in solidarity with Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack. At least two men were arrested after allegedly clashing with police at the rally, where some members of the crowd shouted anti-Semitic chants such as “fuck the Jews”, according to multiple reports. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong condemned the protests.

Other videos shared by conservative Jewish group the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) taken during the protest purports to show some attendees also chanting “gas the Jews”. This account is significant as the “gas the Jews” chant is likely to meet the criminal threshold for threatening or inciting violence (unlike the other anti-Semitic slogans that were chanted) and because the viral footage has become totemic of the rising wave of anti-Semitism in Australia and around the world.The Israel-Hamas war confirms the erosion of the right to protest in AustraliaRead More

The morning after the protest, the AJA shared two videos to X, formerly known as Twitter, both consisting of multiple shots of the protest cut together along with captioned audio saying “gas the Jews”. The first is a 25-second video shared with the text “Sydney, 2023 Muslim mob of 100s chant ‘Gas the Jews’ ”. The second is a 59-second video with the description “UNCUT VERSION — SHOCKING ‘Gas The Jews’ on the steps of the Sydney Opera House”, and has been viewed more than 6 million times.

Based on these videos, news outlets around the world published reports of the “gas the Jews” chants, including Reuters (which noted that the video was “unverified”), the New York Post and Fox News. 

In the aftermath of the protest, NSW Police rejected an application for a subsequent pro-Palestine protest. Premier Chris Minns declared that activists would not be allowed to “commandeer our streets” — although future protests were approved and have taken place — and his government introduced legislation to “strengthen” hate speech laws by making it easier to prosecute people who threaten or incite violence against protected groups. 

But despite the enormous amount of attention and considerable response to the reports, third parties have been unable to verify the “gas the Jews” claim, and further footage corroborating the chants has failed to emerge. Crikey has reviewed other footage from the protest captured by other attendees but has been unable to find any corroborating the AJA’s claim.

NSW Police told Crikey that no charges hade been laid relating to the alleged chant more than two months after assistant commissioner Tony Cooke told a press conference it was reviewing footage of the protest.

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Recommended reading…

Get it HERE

“If you believe the news, today’s America is plagued by an epidemic of violent hate crimes.

But is that really true?

In Hate Crime Hoax, Professor Wilfred Reilly examines over one hundred widely publicized incidents of so-called hate crimes that never actually happened. With a critical eye and attention to detail, Reilly debunks these fabricated incidents—many of them alleged to have happened on college campuses—and explores why so many Americans are driven to fake hate crimes. We’re not experiencing an epidemic of hate crimes, Reilly concludes—but we might be experiencing an unprecented epidemic of hate crime hoaxes.”