Metabunk
Debunked: "Missile Strike" caused Nashville Explosion
The idea that a city of 700,000 people would somehow fail to notice a missile being fired a an AT&T building, or even the idea that some powerful and secretive cabal would think that nobody would notice, is pretty obviously ridiculous. But missiles are a common target for conspiracy theorists and so it should have been un surprising that some people say that the explosion in Nashville was not only from Anthony Warner's RV, but was augmented, or perhaps caused, by a missile.
The evidence presented for this is tenuous. Firstly there's the idea that the explosion happened across the road from the RV, an idea that took hold because of video showing a the central fireball being obscured by a dust cloud - discussed and debunked in another thread.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/de...sion-was-across-the-street-from-the-rv.11516/
The second piece of evidence is what looks like a trail of smoke that appears very shortly...
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Debunked: Nashville Explosion was "Across the Street" from the RV
The following video is a cropped and slowed version of the official Metro Nashville PD video of the RV explosion. I've also corrected it for the camera motion from the blast, so you can more accurate see where things are before and after.
Some people have claimed that the explosion comes from "across the street". This is an understandable mistake. If you overlay a before and "during" shot, you see a portion where the fireball is visible on the right, but the RV was on the left.
However even in this comparison, it should be obvious what is going on. The fireball is there, but it's blocked in the center by...
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Is Falun Gong Behind Seth Holehouse's "The Plot to Steal America"? It looks like it.
A slickly produced video titled "The Plot to Steal America", which regurgitated many election conspiracy theories and pointed the finger at China, was shared in a tweet by Donald Trump on December 23, 2020.
The video is narrated and ostensibly created by Seth Holehouse and his web site "Man in America." Holehouse is a member of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa), a "new religious movement" that many people have described as being a cult. Several people have noted this connection and suggested that the video is simply disinformation, propaganda from Falun Gong. Falun Gong has a long history of attacking the communist government of China, and more recently of strongly supporting Trump.
It appears that attempts have been made by Falun...
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Explained: 82nd Airborne: "A Storm Is Coming" - Operation Devil Storm
"'Storm coming" is a joke I use whenever the the weather looks a bit dark. It's an old Yorkshire reference (like "there's trouble at 'mill"), a folksy comment meant to invoke the idea of a gruff old farmer looking out over the field at oncoming clouds.
It's also a very common metaphorical phrase used in movies and books. A search of the movie/TV data base QuoDB returns over a thousand results.
It also represents a foundational belief in the QAnon theory, dating back to a random comment Trump made about "The Calm Before The Storm" in 2017
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'Fast Movers' and 'Transmedium' Vehicles
In an article that was widely anticipated by the UFO community, Tim McMillan of The Debrief provides several nuggets of stories and information that will surely excite many, and provide a welcome distraction for some reporters, but ultimately does not advance the quest for actual physical evidence. The sources were either anonymous, vague, or speculative.
Article: Given the report’s classification and their discussion of a “sensitive intelligence matter,” the officials we spoke with did so only under strict conditions of anonymity.
There are descriptions of two photos (but not the actual photos)
Firstly a silver...
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Burst Pipe Conspiracy Theories, Fulton County's State Farm Arena, Georgia
Article: Statement Regarding Absentee Ballot Tabulation at State Farm Arena
NOV 3, 2020
At approximately 6:07 a.m., the staff at State Farm Arena notified Fulton County Registration & Elections of a water leak affecting the room where absentee ballots were being tabulated. The State Farm Arena team acted swiftly to remediate the issue. Within 2 hours, repairs were complete. No ballots were damaged, nor was any equipment affected. There was a brief delay in tabulating absentee ballots while the repairs were being conducted.
Tonight Fulton County will report results for approximately 86,000 absentee ballots, as well as Election Day and Early Voting results. These represent the vast majority of ballots cast within Fulton County.
The above statement was posted on the State Farm Arena web site on Oct 3, but it's...
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Debunked: Trump's Claim of "1,126,940 votes created out of thin air" in PA
This false claim was Tweeted by Trump yesterday:
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332552283553476608
In one of the most factually inaccurate Presidential tweets of all time, Trump retweeted an image posted by PA State Senator Doug Mastriano, and claimed it shows that 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. Or course if this were true then something would be terribly wrong with the election, but of course it's not.
Here's the image in questions:
The numbers in the table are mostly correct (for the time, they are all slightly higher now, on 11/28), but for some reason report Trump's election-day votes are listed as higher than they were. Here's the official figures:
Or in a similar...
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332552283553476608
In one of the most factually inaccurate Presidential tweets of all time, Trump retweeted an image posted by PA State Senator Doug Mastriano, and claimed it shows that 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. Or course if this were true then something would be terribly wrong with the election, but of course it's not.
Here's the image in questions:
The numbers in the table are mostly correct (for the time, they are all slightly higher now, on 11/28), but for some reason report Trump's election-day votes are listed as higher than they were. Here's the official figures:
Or in a similar...
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Debunked: Crowder's "Fraud Week" Title Graphic (and Why it Matters)
Steven Crowder, a political comedian, has a logo currently being used to introduce segments of his show where he promotes false or unproven claims of election fraud. It shows a red line for Trump and a blue line for Biden. Red is safely ahead, but then blue suddenly jumps up into the lead with no change in red.
This graph is based mostly on actual data, but with a little twist that makes it into a lie.
Have a look at the actual graph that spawned this theory, back on Nov 4.
Same graph? Have a closer look:
The red line used to make the bar of the F is missing in the actual data. Where did it go? It went up. Trump's vote actually went up at the same time as Biden's, just not as much...
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Debunked: Democratic senators complained about 'vote switching' by Dominion voting machines in 2019
In social media and fringe news sites, claims resembling the following are popping up:
Source: https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1327305801824940047
Screenshot:
Here is the bunk in short:
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D), Amy Klobuchar (D) & Ron Wyden (D) issue a formal complaint in 2019 to Dominion Voting Systems.
Among the complaints? Allegations of 'vote-switching.'
Source: https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1327305801824940047
Screenshot:
Here is the bunk in short:
- It was a letter requesting information, not a formal complaint
- It went to all three major voting systems manufacturers (or rather to their largest shareholders), not just to Dominion
- The primary concern is "about the spread and effect of private equity investment in [...] the election technology industry", namely by cost-cutting
- It does not single out Dominion...
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Explained: Trump's Claim of Suspicious Early Morning Michigan Bump [It's Detroit]
Trump Tweeted two graphs today from the NYT data.
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1329602736053252107?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1329602736053252107%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Ftrump-makes-new-unverified-claim-about-michigan-votes-after-meeting-state-republicans-1548896
The Wisconsin one was already discussed, and is generally agreed to be the Milwaukee City mail-in returns.
The 149,772 number seems wrong in the Michigan example. But the 96% figure is correct based on the data. This comes from:
Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1329602736053252107?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1329602736053252107%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Ftrump-makes-new-unverified-claim-about-michigan-votes-after-meeting-state-republicans-1548896
The Wisconsin one was already discussed, and is generally agreed to be the Milwaukee City mail-in returns.
The 149,772 number seems wrong in the Michigan example. But the 96% figure is correct based on the data. This comes from:
Code:
...
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Debunked: Suspicious "Biden Only" Ballots in Georgia
Steve Cortes, claims that if you subtract the number of votes cast for senator from the number of votes cast for president, then this gives you votes that were ONLY cast for that presidential candidate. He then claims that in the Georgia race, this number is suspiciously high for Biden, and this is "far too wide to be believable".
He does the math with Georgia, and comes up with 818 votes for Trump (claiming these are people who voted for Trump only), and +95,801 votes for Biden (claiming these are people who voted for Biden only.)
The simple math checks out, although now with updated numbers, it's -789 for Trump and +99,868 for Biden
But wait, LESS...
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Trump's Claim that "THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS."
Trump has been claiming a bunch of things, but one that seems to be foundational to his argument, and repeated by Giuliani at the Four Season Total Landscaping press conference is the one about observers not being allowed in the counting rooms.
This is, of course, false. And so it has been addressed many times by different outlets. So I thought it would be useful to gather those analyses here:
The best account is the one from the Detroit Free press, which tells of far TOO MANY challengers, of both parties, and disruption of the process coming from some of those challengers.
Article: "Help needed now," Tweeted a group called Stand Up Michigan. "Go as soon as possible. We are attempting to mount...
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Election Fact Checking Resources and Tips
It was inevitable that this was going to be a race characterized by rumors, bunk, lies, and disinformation. The closeness of the race makes fact-checking all the more important. Here are some resources that can be used to figure out what's real and what's not.
Tip: many of these sources will be viewed as being partisan, or being run by a "deep state." Where possible dig down and find the most neutral source (such as the state election commission), or a source that's more likely to be accepted by your friend.
GOOGLE - Google should be your first step. Because of the huge amount of attention on this subject, any disinformation is being very quickly exposed as such, often in great detail by multiple sources. Just type in a few key words regarding the subject, include the...
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Debunked: "Tip Top" as a QAnon Clue from Trump [He's said it before]
In the recent media coverage of the "QAnon" conspiracy theory that followed some Q supporters showing up at a Trump rally, one of the pieces of evidence that the Q supporters gave on camera was the idea that Trump said "tip-top" because a Q made him do it.
This actually seems quite compelling as a sound bite on TV. There's the post on 4Chan with an anonymous user asking Q to work "tip-top" into a Trump speech, this is immediately followed with a clip of Trump saying "tip-top". There's even a bonus white rabbit (a reference to the "rabbit hole" in "red-pill" modern mythology).
But it all falls apart when you look at the actual context. Here's a timeline of Trump saying "Tip Top" (or "Tippy-top") and 4Chan/QAnon talking about it. Note the dates.
April 11 2016 - Speech at Red Hook Civic Association...
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Twitter's October Outage
Twitter has been broken for about 30 minutes.
https://downdetector.com/status/twitter/map/
Normally this would be chalked up to random failure, and quite possibly it is. But it comes at a time where the role of Social Media in the public discourse, and in particular the election, is increasingly contentious. Twitter suspended the Trump Campaign's twitter account for posting a link to a dispute New York Post article regarding Joe and Hunter Bider, and the conservatives have been highly critical. Possibly someone has decided this is the right time for a cyber-attack.
Or maybe just someone messed up. We'll see. But the atmosphere is certainly going to lead to a variety of speculation.
https://downdetector.com/status/twitter/map/
Normally this would be chalked up to random failure, and quite possibly it is. But it comes at a time where the role of Social Media in the public discourse, and in particular the election, is increasingly contentious. Twitter suspended the Trump Campaign's twitter account for posting a link to a dispute New York Post article regarding Joe and Hunter Bider, and the conservatives have been highly critical. Possibly someone has decided this is the right time for a cyber-attack.
Or maybe just someone messed up. We'll see. But the atmosphere is certainly going to lead to a variety of speculation.
Continue…
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Tales From The Rabbit Hole
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Episode 58: Peter Bergen – Kirkpatrick, UFOs, and the Pentagon
Fri, 26 Jan 2024 14:15:46 PSTPeter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen.” He...
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Episode 57: Alex Dietrich, Clouds, Critical Thinking, and UFOs
Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:52:09 PDTAlex Dietrich served a 20-year career as a Naval officer and fighter pilot with two combat deployments. She was also deployed to Afghanistan as an Infrastructure reconstruction engineer. She then transitioned to academia, serving as...
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Episode 56: Robert Bartholomew – Havana Syndrome and Mass Psychogenic Illness
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 14:30:39 PDTRobert Bartholomew has a PhD in Medical Sociology, and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He’s an expert in Mass Psychogenic Illness...
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Episode 55 – Professor Avi Loeb: The Galileo Project
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:22:31 PDTWhat is a University professor doing investigating UFOs? Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University heads the Galileo Project, which seeks (in part) to identify the nature of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by establishing a network of...
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Episode 54 – Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko: Pastels and Pedophiles
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 18:00:54 PDTMia Bloom is Professor of Communication at Georgia State University with a PhD in political science from Columbia University. Sophia Moskalenko is a research fellow at Georgia State University and a researcher at the National...