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Seen, Heard, Read...
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Stay informed with our curated collection of noteworthy updates and insights from the world of conspiracy theories. Uncover the latest trends, explore intriguing perspectives, and broaden your understanding. Delve into our recommended content that keeps you in the know.
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WEATHER. Joe Biden addressed what he called "stupid" claims that the federal government can control the weather. "Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia, is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather, we're controlling the weather. It's beyond ridiculous. It's so stupid, it's got to stop," the US President Biden said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for many years a target of conspiracy theorists, created a new "Hurricane Rumor Response" page to combat misinformation. The White House launched an official Reddit account, with one of its posts focused on debunking hurricane misinformation. And many local officials have taken to social media to push back on harmful misinformation. Rep. Chuck Edwards, a North Carolina Republican, urged his constituents to beware of "untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and hearsay about hurricane response efforts across our mountains."
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Source: Marjorie Taylor Greene/X, 10/06/2024
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Claims that the government was controlling Hurricane Milton spread widely on social media platforms including X, TikTok and Facebook just days after similar false claims spread during Hurricane Helene. One post on X with more than 100,000 views claimed Hurricane Milton is a "modified and manipulated" storm being used as a "weapon." "Yes they can control the weather," QAnon-believing Congresswoman Greene posted to X on Oct. 3. "It's ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can't be done." Greene also shared a 2013 CBS News segment in which a physics professor discussed lab experiments investigating the potential use of lasers to affect the weather. Conspiracy Watch writer Mike Rothschild has written a book Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories, including exploring the antisemitic conspiracies peddled by Greene and others. In 2021 it was uncovered that, a few years earlier, before her election, Greene wrote on Facebook that she believed “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm” was involved in California wildfires, which were, in this telling, caused by a beam from “space solar generators” (Source: CBS, October 9, 2024).
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ELON MUSK. The world’s richest man, X owner and Tesla mogul Musk has said it would be “pointless” to try to kill Kamala Harris weeks after a pressure campaign led to him to delete a social media post expressing surprise that no one had tried to assassinate the vice-president or Joe Biden. The avowed Trump backer re-entered the murky waters of political assassinations in a web video interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson which Musk then posted on his X platform. Referencing the original comment at the beginning of the one hour and 48 minute exchange, Musk tells Carlson: “I made a joke, which I realised – I deleted – which is like: nobody’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala because it’s pointless. What do you achieve?”
Both men dissolved into laughter, with Carlson responding: “It’s deep and true though.” Musk told Carlson he may have a high price to pay should Trump be defeated by Harris in next month’s election—up to and including federal prosecution—admitting that he had gone “all in” in his gamble to return the former president to the White House in November. Musk helped spread accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “actively blocked” donations to victims of Helene and is “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own” — allegations that FEMA officials call false and which run afoul of state and local Republican leaders’ praise for the assistance from Washington. Musk also amplified rumors that authorities in North Carolina had “taken control to stop people helping” stricken residents and accusations that sheriffs were threatening to arrest FEMA staff “if they hinder rescue and aid work.” Many of his allegations centered on the claim that immigrants had already depleted federal disaster funds, which FEMA has said is untrue. “FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason,” Musk wrote without evidence on X, where he interspersed messages about hurricane damage with political attacks on Democrats (Sources: The Guardian, October 8, 2024; Fortune, October 8, 2024; Politico, October 8, 2024).
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OCTOBER 7. The Hamas pogrom in Israel of October 7, 2023 created a “permission structure for antisemitism” writes Dara Horn in The Atlantic. “What American Jews have experienced in the past year is both a pattern and a warning. Physical assaults, harassment, and death threats; vandalism at homes and businesses; bomb threats at synagogues—all of these have become almost commonplace for American Jews in the past year. In addition to this intimidation and violence, Jews have also been loudly and proudly ostracized in spaces ranging from professional networking groups to the corner bookstore, in what can only be described as an ongoing campaign to push Jews out of American public life. Reasonable people have tried to rationalize this as simply passionate “free speech,” imagining that it’s an expression of concern for civilians in Gaza, whose suffering is undeniable—a wishful but implausible conclusion, because people who care about civilians do not generally express that compassion by harassing and intimidating other civilians. Clearly, something else is going on. What I observed in my deep dive into American Holocaust education, I now realize, was a massive appropriation of the Jewish experience that obscured, behind a screen of happy universalism, an intellectual tradition that has been used to justify the demonization of Jews for millennia. This appropriation was entirely consistent with what non-Jewish societies have routinely done with the Jewish experience: claim that that experience happened to “everyone,” and then use it to demonstrate how wrong Jews are for rejecting the “universalism” of their own experience—for refusing to be just like everyone else. As far back as the Seleucid and Roman Empires, which turned the site of the Jews’ ancient temple into a center for their own worship as part of their persecutions of Jews, non-Jewish societies have followed a similar pattern of appropriation and rejection” (Source: The Atlantic, October 7, 2024).
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TA-NEHISI COATES. Shari Redstone, the media mogul whose Paramount empire controls CBS News, criticized the network’s leadership on Wednesday for its decision to reprimand a star morning show anchor over his handling of an on-air interview with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. “They made a mistake here,” Ms. Redstone said during an appearance in Midtown Manhattan, adding, “I think we all agree that this was not handled correctly.” Coates’ new book includes conspiracy theories about Israel as an apartheid state, comparing the Jewish state to the “Jim Crow South” (the post-civil war racially segregated South) and describing it as the “one place on the planet — under American patronage — that resembled the world that my parents were born into.” Redstone’s remarks have added to the turmoil that has swirled inside CBS News in recent days, especially after top executives rebuked the anchor, Tony Dokoupil, on a newsroom-wide call on Monday, saying his interview had fallen short of editorial standards. Dokoupil had challenged Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a tense but civil appearance last week on “CBS Mornings,” at one point saying parts of Mr. Coates’s new book — which compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Jim Crow laws — “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” Other critics were more direct, excoriating his book as “an anti-Israel, antisemitic screed filled with lies, misrepresentations & omissions (especially). He calls Israel the most evil nation on earth. His academic fraudulence is only exceeded by his vicious hate for Israel.” Coates says he learned to see the Israel-Palestine conflict through the lens of race via his father Paul Coates. It has been revealed that Coates is republishing the antisemitic screed ‘The Jewish Onslaught’. The founder of Black Classic Press is slated to receive an award from the National Book Foundation for his lifetime service to the literary community (Sources: The New York Times, October 9, 2024; The Washington Post, October 9, 2024).
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