Tag: hoax

20-year-old Ohio man arrested after he allegedly faked an anti-Palestinian hate crime

Authorities in North Ridgeville, Ohio, arrested 20-year-old Hesham A. Ayyad on Tuesday and charged him for allegedly faking a hate crime attack last month. 

According to Cleveland.com, On Oct. 22 Ayyad told the Cleveland chapter of the Islamic Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that he was assaulted by someone in an SUV making “anti-Palestinian slurs.” However, investigators found his injuries were the result of a fight with his brother.

On Oct. 23, CAIR issued a press release on the incident that said Ayyad was the victim of a “reported hit and run,” and said that “he was walking home from eating lunch when a car slowed down and rolled down the window. The driver of the car allegedly started yelling at him using anti-Palestinian statements like “Kill all Palestinians,” and “Long live Israel,” as he swerved his car to intimidate the victim. The driver then allegedly turned around and hit the man while shouting “DIE!” CAIR attached a picture of Ayyad in the hospital, wearing a neck brace. 

Police officials said that the 20-year-old told them he was struck by a vehicle in a racially motivated assault. After an investigation, police said Ayyad was not the victim of a racially motivated assault, and that video evidence showed “that injuries sustained at the time of the incident were caused by a violent fight that the alleged victim had participated in with his brother.” 

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Football Eye Black Isn’t Blackface

When La Jolla High School played Morse High School under the Friday night lights on October 13, students from the surrounding San Diego area filled the stadium to cheer on their prospective teams. Making posters, dawning face and body paint, yelling chants, and sporting jerseys were all part of the electric football game atmosphere.

J.A., a middle-schooler from Muirlands Middle School, attended the game with another student and that student’s mother. To show support for his team, J.A. let his friend put eye black paint on his face. A security guard even complimented the design. The game was largely uneventful with La Jolla winning handedly (56–6). But almost a week later, J.A. was called into a disciplinary meeting with his parents at Muirlands. 

In that meeting, J.A. was told he would be suspended from school for two days and was no longer allowed to attend future athletic events because he wore “blackface” to the football game. The suspension notice only specified that he was being suspended because he “painted his face black at a football game,” and the alleged offense was marked as “Offensive comment, intent to harm.” J.A.’s father told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment nonprofit, that no one complained or said anything negative about his son’s eye black while at the game. The school’s principal also failed to specify how they found out about the incident.

As Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at FIRE, notes in a November 8 letter to Muirlands Middle School, “J.A.’s non–disruptive, objectively inoffensive” face paint is absolutely constitutionally protected expression.

In the letter, FIRE reminds school officials that “public school students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.” It argues that “the First Amendment protects J.A.’s non-disruptive expression of team spirit via a style commonly used by athletes and fans.”

Eye black applied under the eyes and even on the cheeks is not blackface, and to suggest as such is a gross mischaracterization. Blackface is dark makeup applied all over the face to mimic, exaggerate, and mock black people. J.A. was simply cheering on his local football team with friends—and there is no reason to punish him for that.

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Seymour Hersh Releases Leaked Pentagon/DIA Document — One More Nail In The Coffin Of Western Gov’t Official Story Of Syria Chemical Weapons Claims

With absolutely no fanfare in either the alternative or mainstream media, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh has released a leaked Pentagon/DIA assessment of the chemical warfare capability of Jobhat al-Nusra/Al-Nusra Front (also known as Al-Qaeda), a fact that Western governments and Western media simply would not admit during their “chemical weapons” propaganda volley against the Syrian government. The document is from June 20, 2013.

The documents were released in Hersh’s article entitled “When the Intelligence is Inconvenient” and can be found on his Substack page. The entire article can be read in full with a subscription.

A brief excerpt from the article reads:

On Sunday Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Jonathan Karl of ABC’s This Week that he remained “very confident in Ukraine’s ultimate success” in the ongoing war with Russia. He depicted Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to escalate its attacks inside Russia as “their decision, not ours.”

Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence and his acceptance of a significant escalation in the Ukraine war defies belief, given the reality on the ground today in the war. But it also could be based on insanely optimistic assessments supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA’s assessments, as I have reported, are now the intelligence of choice inside the White House.

As a journalist who has written about national security matters for many decades, how can I explain a process that is clearly contrary to the best interests of the people of the United States and its leadership?

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‘He made it up’: Police say George Santos lied about Chinese communists kidnapping

During a series of phone calls with a New York Times journalist, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) claimed that his extended family was victimized by the Chinese Communist government which was behind the brief kidnapping of his niece.

According to a police official: it never happened.

In an extensive piece for the Times, journalist Grace Ashford detailed a history of receiving calls from the embattled lawmaker at all hours, where he alternately defended himself and complained about the turn his life has taken since entering Congress, one time claiming, “I literally threw my entire life into the toilet and flushed it to get elected.”

In the midst of those calls, he claimed his niece had been abducted in Queens and hinted the Chinese Communist government was possibly behind it.

According to Ashford, Santos was complaining about the threats he has faced when he confessed to her, “I’ll give you one, I’ll give you one story that nobody talks about,” she wrote before adding that he related, “… how his 5-year-old niece disappeared from a playground in Queens, only to be located 40 minutes later on a surveillance camera with two Chinese men. He said the incident was the subject of an active police investigation, implying heavily that it might have been in retaliation for his vocal stance against the Chinese Communist Party.”

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Matthew Shepard’s Murder Was Almost Certainly Not an Anti-Gay Hate Crime

In the fall of 1998, a man named Matthew Shepard was savagely beaten, strung out on a fence like a scarecrow, and left to die as the Wyoming night temperatures plunged. Over the last two and a half decades, the killing has been called many things. But a BBC headline from 2018 perhaps captures best: It was “the murder that changed America.”

A statement from President Joe Biden helps explain why. “Twenty-five years ago today, Matthew Shepard lost his life to a brutal act of hate and violence that shocked our nation and the world,” he said this morning. “The week prior, Matthew had been viciously attacked in a horrific anti-gay hate crime and left to die – simply for being himself.”

Shepard’s murder was, without a doubt, an act of hate and violence. But the latter part of Biden’s statement—that his murder was spurred by homophobic animus—is the most important. For years, it has been repeated in the some of the largest media outlets. It has driven federal policy. It is the part that “changed America,” despite all evidence pointing to the fact that it isn’t true.

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Alabama Judge Issues Ruling in Carlee Russell Hoax Case

An Alabama judge found Carlee Russell guilty of two misdemeanor charges after she faked her own abduction in July.

Hoover Municipal Court Judge Thomas Brad Bishop on Wednesday found Russell guilty on charges of false reporting of an incident and false reporting to law enforcement, both misdemeanors, according to FOX affiliate WBRC.

The state recommended one year in jail, the maximum, which is six months for each charge. They also recommended a fine of $831 and restitution of $17,974.88.

According to the report, the case will be appealed to circuit court.

Russell, 24, dialed 911 on July 13 at around 9:34 p.m. to report a toddler walking along the southbound side of Interstate 459 near Birmingham, according to the Hoover Police Department.

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Reporter details rise of ‘white supremacy’ in US by highlighting antisemitic rhetoric from fired black high school teacher

Recently, a California Bay Area high school teacher was fired following an extensive investigation into his alleged anti-Semitic lectures, which were said to include performing Nazi salutes in class. 

Shortly after those incidents took place, a leftist reporter by the name Emily Schrader took the opportunity to blame the occurrence on ‘anti-Semitic white supremacy’ in an article titled, “Under attack: White supremacists lead antisemitic charge in U.S.” 

Nowhere in Schrader’s article does she mention that the fired teacher she references, Henry Bens, is black. 

Schrader contacted The Post Millenial to say that she did not write the article’s headline and has requested for it to be changed.

“The article’s examples are mostly not white supremacy but radical left with ethnic studies curriculum and DEI initiatives that actively exclude Jews,” she explained.

The second paragraph of Schrader’s story notably states, “American Jews are now at a crossroads as far-right antisemitism is also on the rise from white supremacist groups in the United States.”

No examples of this supposed far-right antisemitism by white supremacist organizations are provided in the story. 

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Despite Debunking, Rainbow Fentanyl Myths Continue

In 2022, fears erupted over “rainbow fentanyl,” brightly colored fentanyl pills that were said to be designed by drug traffickers to lure innocent children into taking opioids. Parents were warned to be on the watch for the pills—especially in their children’s Halloween candy stash.

A warning from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) released last August warned that the increasing presence of brightly colored pills “appears to be a new method used by drug cartels to sell highly addictive and potentially deadly fentanyl made to look like candy to children and young people.”

“Rainbow fentanyl—fentanyl pills and powder that come in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes—is a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” added DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.

However, it was startlingly easy to debunk panic over rainbow fentanyl. As it turns out, drug dealers have plenty of willing adult customers. So why would these they try to lure children, a customer base with no money of their own? And why would dealers give away valuable stock to do so?

“I’m skeptical that [dealers] would try to target children where there is not an existing market,” Sally Satel, an addiction psychiatrist and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Reason‘s Lenore Skenazy in 2022. Considering the high risk of overdose in children, Satel added that “few would survive and come back for more.”

Just as there are adult reasons for vape companies to sell flavored vape pods, which were the subject of another panic, there are adult reasons for dealers to color their fentanyl—namely, to “brand [their] stuff.”

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Texas mother who blamed son’s life-threatening injuries on ‘white couple’ arrested for lying to police

A Texas mother was arrested on Saturday for allegedly making false statements to police about her two-year-old son’s life-threatening injuries sustained in February, in which he had suffered internal injuries, burns, and a lacerated liver.

Shelby Martinez, 30, was arrested on Saturday at her apartment complex where her son was injured and has been charged with making false statements to police, according to KFDX Wichita Falls.

Authorities say Martinez and the boy’s father, Thomas Gates, tried to cover up how their child received life-threatening injuries.

Their two-year-old son was allegedly run over by Gates when he was backing out with his vehicle, but the couple blamed it on an “unknown white couple,” according to police. Martinez and Gates are both black.

Gates was arrested in February, several days after the incident, for the same charge after coming clean to the police about how the incident played out.

According to authorities, Gates told them that a car driven by an unknown white female and male had pulled out of a parking spot at the Maverick on Maurine Apartments on Ridgeway and hit his son as he and his family were getting into their car.

After Martinez was questioned by police, they claimed that the details of her account were different from Gates’. Martinez was reportedly combative at the Fort Worth hospital and refused to give an interview to police.

Forensic evidence showed that Gates had lied to police about the location of where his child had been hit. Detectives found blood in the parking lot of their apartment complex, not across the street which Gates had stated, police said.

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Former Yale student cleared to sue accuser over false allegations

A former Yale student who was kicked out of the school in 2019 after being accused and acquitted of rape in 2018 can now sue his accuser for defamation over statements she made during a school hearing on the matter after a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling over the summer.

According to the New York Post, 30-year-old Saifullah Khan has had a $110 million defamation lawsuit pending against the school since 2019, and has been fighting to bring his accuser into the suit.

In June, the state’s supreme court granted Khan’s request, and ruled that the accuser, a fellow student, shouldn’t receive “qualified immunity” from her testimony in a school hearing that Khan raped her after a 2015 Halloween party.

Qualified immunity protects people from being sued over statements they make in judicial cases, but the court ruled that the university hearing wasn’t a stand-in court proceeding, since Khan wasn’t allowed the chance to cross-examine his accuser.

“For absolute immunity to apply under Connecticut law,” the June decision states, “fundamental fairness requires meaningful cross-examination in proceedings like the one at issue.”

Khan’s team listened during the referenced hearing to the woman’s testimony from a separate room, never being able to cross-examine her. The ruling said Khan’s defense attorney was left to act as a “potted plant.”

The court said that Yale’s hearing couldn’t be considered “quasi-judicial” because the woman wasn’t made to testify under oath, and Khan wasn’t provided with a transcript of the testimony.

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