Sharks Along The L.A. Avenue, Lasers Triggering Fires Fuel The X-Verse
Fake photos of sharks in L.A., lasers in Hawaii, made-up claims of American involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and Republican threats to shut down the government unless all charges against trump are dropped.
It’s been a fairly normal week down the D.C. rabbit hole.
First there was Vivek Rramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech company founder, who is running for the Republican nomination for president while he claims to support trump and said that if he is elected, he would pardon trump if the ex-president is convicted of any of the multitude of crimes named in the federal and state indictments against him.
Vivek is slated to be one of seven other Republican presidential candidates at the first primary debate of the 2024 race tonight. The entrepreneur’s popularity has gone up in recent weeks, though he still remains far behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and GOP front-runner, trump.
Last week, Ramaswamy was interviewed on the conspiracy-minded, far right BlazeTV. The interviewer was Tucker Carlson wannabe Alex Stein, who hosts “Prime Time With Alex Stein” which boasts 550,700 followers, including Donald Trump Jr.
TheBlaze was founded by right wing commentator Glenn Beck after Beck left his post at Fox in 2011. BlazeTV also hosts shows like “Unashamed,” with the Christian Duck Comander and his sons. Another BlazeTV show is the Glenn Beck Program, with Beck who has promoted conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama and about billionaire, Jewish philanthropist George Soros and has said “There is more proof for the resurrection of Jesus than man-made climate change.”
It’s not a very presidential locale.
Stein started the Ramaswamy interview by asking the candidate if he believed the Apollo moon landing was real or fake. Ramaswamy answered, in all seriousness, “I have no evidence to suggest it was fake so I’m going to assume it was real.”
So far, so good.
Then Stein moved on to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al Qaeda that killed more than 5,000 people
“Sept. 11, inside job or accept what the government tells us?” asked Stein.
To which Ramaswamy replied, “I don’t believe the government has told us the truth. Again, I’m driven by evidence and data. What I’ve seen in the last several years is we have to be skeptical of what the government doesn’t tell us. I haven’t seen evidence to the contrary but do I believe everything the government told us about it? Absolutely not. Do I believe the 911 commission? Absolutely not.”
“Yea,” Stein responded, “The 911 commission lied.”
The report from the committee organized to investigate the attacks, known as the “9/11 Commission,” concluded that no evidence was found that the Saudi government or senior Saudi leaders were involved in funding al Qaeda, even though wealthy citizens in the country have been considered primary sponsors of the terrorist group.
The FBI released declassified documents in 2021 revealing it extensively investigated support that was given to Saudi nationals who participated in the attacks and alleged ties between the hijackers and Saudi nationals living in the U.S.
Next, there was the eye catching photo of a shark swimming down a California highway in the wake of storm Hilary. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, retweeted the storm photo Monday, apparently unaware that he was a victim of a longstanding hoax.
A photo showing a shark swimming down a highway circulated across social media over the weekend when Hilary hit Southern California with significant rainfall. Parts of Southern California saw heavy flooding, mudslides and power outages Sunday night and Monday. The National Weather Service of Los Angeles said “virtually all” of the city’s daily rainfall records have been broken.
Cruz retweeted the photo and a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said “Friend of mine out in LA just took this picture on the 405.” In his retweet, Cruz said, “Holy crap.”
The bogus photo can be seen at https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3m8Fyk_0o4alf2Q00
Snopes, a fact-checking site, reported the photo initially circulated on social media after Hurricane Irene slammed Puerto Rico in 2011. The image of the shark was apparently pasted into a photo of the flooded streets in Puerto Rico. Since then, the photo has recirculated, often after a major rainfall event, Snopes said.
It was not the first time Cruz has had problems with promoting a fake photo or video on social media. Shortly after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Cruz reposted a video that appeared to show the Taliban hanging a man from a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter. The tweet apparently was intended to criticize President Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops. The problem was the hanging man was in a harness, perfectly safe and the helicopter was probably one that was decommissioned by the U.S.
Fact checking by Snopes showed the video was real but it doesn’t show anyone being hanged. The video began circulating in late August 2021, supposedly showed the Taliban hanging a traitor by the neck from a rope beneath a Black Hawk helicopter seized after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Taliban had seized U.S. equipment and was celebrating the U.S. withdrawal. Many people claimed without evidence that the video showed someone being hanged while some even claimed, without evidence, that the victim was an American interpreter.
What was really happening was the helicopter was being piloted by a flyer who had been trained by the U.S. and United Arab Emirates. A Taliban soldier was in a harness and was lifted by the helicopter as he attempted to install a flag from the air. The identification of the helicopter also is disputed as many of the aircraft left behind by the U.S. were demilitarized and unusable.
Cruz could easily have Googled the shark image and found that it was a fake. But other doctored photos have been so well-crafted to fool even the best observer. One faked 2008 picture of a series of Iranian missiles made its way to the front pages of the N.Y. Times, Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News and many other major news web sites.
A photo purporting to show four missiles being fired skyward was released by Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The photo was especially provocative in light of Iran’s aggressive missile tests at the time. After it was published in the major media, it was determined that the photo had one too many missiles and was “apparently digitally altered.”
Agency France Press reported that the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image. The contours of the billowing smoke match perfectly near the ground, as well in the immediate wake of the missile. Only a small black dot in the reddish area of exhaust seems to differ from the missile to its left, though there are also some slight variations in the color of the smoke and the sky, the news agency reported.
Another fake photo currently flooding the Twitterverse or X-verse is of a “laser” starting fires in Hawaii.
The phony image has led conspiracy theorists to claim the devastating fires on Maui that killed more than 100 people were started by lasers shot from space. One photo in particular has over 7.6 million views, appearing to show a laser descending from the sky.
The most viewed version of the image is from Matt Wallace, a far-right influencer who often interacts with Twitter owner Elon Musk.
“Are you prepared to handle the truth?” Wallace tweeted, echoing so many of the conspiracy theorists who’ve inundated Twitter in recent days.
The undoctored photo was originally taken by Matthew Thayer for the The Maui News and is available on the Associated Press website. The laser beam is nowhere to be seen.
Wallace followed up his bogus photo with a tweet suggesting the fires aren’t “natural.”
Forbes reported there is no evidence that lasers or directed energy weapons of any kind caused the fires. The original cause is unclear but the New York Times reported on Sunday, “extremely flammable, nonnative grasses” are a likely factor.
Wallace’s baseless claims are reminiscent of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who in 2018 posted claims that California’s wildfires could have been started deliberately or accidentally by a solar power generating satellite. Greene implied that the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family frequently referred to in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, profited from the fires.
Wallace has been very busy spreading lies. He claimed that President Biden fell asleep during a recent meeting with survivors of the deadly wildfires. Agency France Presse reported that in reality, the president was fully awake and the video shared online is abbreviated and low-resolution. Other, higher-quality footage shows the president was awake.
Reality didn’t deter Wallace.
“Joe Biden just fell asleep in the middle of his meeting with victims of the Maui fires,” Wallace posted.
Similar posts spread like wildfire across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Repeating the lie were conservative commentators and politicians including Fox News host Sean Hannity, Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, and Richard Grenell, trump’s former acting director of national intelligence.
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., jumped on the sham report, and said, “Imagine the President of the United States falling asleep while you’re describing the effects of the deadliest fire in the last 100 years. This is absolutely disgusting.”
Wallace also drew Oprah Winfrey into his conspiracy of lies about the fires.
Winfrey, who has a home on Oahu, was seen supporting survivors at an emergency shelter at Wailuku’s War Memorial Complex. A CBS News crew filmed her handing out supplies but the news crew was denied entry by staff members, and Winfrey later returned alone to help out.
Winfrey owns 2,000 acres of land on Maui, including 897 acres of agricultural land purchased earlier this year for $6.6 million. Wallace accused her of starting the fires so she could buy more land.
“Oprah Winfrey Has Been Buying Up Land in Maui Like Crazy,” Wallace (@MattWallace888) declared in a post on X. “IN THE LAST FEW YEARS SHE HAS GONE FROM ABOUT 100 ACRES OF LAND IN MAUI TO OVER 1000 ACRES! Then All of A Sudden Out of Nowhere A Fire Comes And Destroys Many Homes Near Her But Her Land Remains Untouched! “SOUND FAMILIAR?!?!?!”
Wallace’s post has gone viral, with 12 million views, almost 70,000 likes and 25,000 reposts. Wallace’s account has more than 39,000 followers. His audience for his TikTok account is more than 477,000 and the total number of likes is over 4 million.
In another development that should be false but is very real, the far right House Freedom Caucus said that unless its demands are met, it will not support a rise in the U.S. debt ceiling and will not vote to continue funding the government, two potentially catastrophic proposals.
The demands include an end to the criminal cases pending against trump, passage of a dire immigration law and a demand to end the so-called “woke” policies in the U.S. military. The caucus chairs are Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Members include the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was formerly a member and was ejected from the caucus in July for her many attacks on Republican colleagues.