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Table of Contents:

Boston Marathon Bombing was staged: nobody injured or killed on April 15, 2013


Theory: The 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing was staged by "crisis actors". Seriously injured bystandered Jeff Bauman was really amputee Lieutenant Nick Vogt.

Best evidence: These pictures are the evidence:



Evaluation: Jeff Bauman, born 1986, lost his legs during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, and lives with his wife Erin in New Hampshire. Lieutenant Nick Vogt, born 1991, lost his legs in Afghanistan in 2011, and now lives in Ohio with his wife Lauren. Snapshot moments can always be picked out of a video to show facial similarities between two different people. But there is no real evidence that these two people are really the same person.



FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FALSE, AND OFFENSIVE


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Staged Murder of Alison Parker and Adam Ward on August 26, 2015
on live television during a CBS interview, when the
gunman, a fired CBS employee, sought revenge for his grievances.


Theory: This "faked" murder in Roanoke, Virginia was staged by "crisis actors". Conspiracy theorists believe that many shootings are staged in order to create public sentiment for helping to pass gun control legislation.

Best evidence: There are 2 videos of this shooting: a) live media film footage and b) the footage taken by the gunman, Lee Flanagan II, with a hand-held video recorder. Conspiracy theorists claim that these are 2 different takes -- that the two videos do not match because they were not filmed during the same time.

Evaluation: While the two videos seem to be different, that is because they are different angles. Here, the two videos are aligned and stabilized, and you can see that the videos are authentic and real.


Warning! disturbing live footage:



And finally, there are shootings in America every day, and the media picks and chooses which ones it wishes to cover, and which to ignore. If gun control were the goal of the media, then why are so many shootings ignored? They should all be covered, and exaggerated, in order to scare the public into pushing for gun control. And why bother to stage fake shootings when you have real ones already, to emphasize --- but yet, so many are ignored?


FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FALSE, AND OFFENSIVE


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Obama spied on the 2016 Trump campaign


Theory: "Trump Claims Obama Ordered Wiretap On Trump Tower, Offers No Evidence." - NPR All Things Considered, March 6, 2017

Best evidence:

  • "One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House." - New York Times, Jan. 19, 2017, Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates

  • "But on Wednesday, Mr. Trump got an assist from a powerful House Republican who said the president or his closest associates may have been “incidentally” swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies." - New York Times, March 22, 2017, Monitoring May Have ‘Incidentally’ Picked Up Trump Aides, House Member Says

  • "In fact, F.B.I. agents sent an informant to talk to two campaign advisers only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign. The informant, an American academic who teaches in Britain, made contact late that summer with one campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, according to people familiar with the matter. He also met repeatedly in the ensuing months with the other aide, Carter Page, who was also under F.B.I. scrutiny for his ties to Russia." - New York Times, May 18, 2018, F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims

  • CIA director John Brennan claims, according to his own handwritten notes, that Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ordered "tying him [Trump] to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee." According to Brennan, the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services." CIA director John Brennan discussed these plans with then President Barack Obama.

  • "The fact the FBI continued to receive intelligence from Mr Steele, who ran MI6’s Russia desk from 2006 to 2009 before setting up Orbis, is potentially significant because it shows his work was apparently still being taken seriously after Mr Trump took hold of the reins of power. .... The original dossier had been dismissed, according to the New York Times, by sources inside the CIA as "internet rumour", but it was used by the US Justice Department to support a secret court order authorising surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Page is now suing the FBI and Justice Department for $75million." - The UK Telegraph, May 3, 2021 MI6 spy Christopher Steele 'produced second dossier on Donald Trump for FBI'

  • In a December 11 2019 Congressional hearing, inspector general of the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz, is asked about false information and manufactured charges used to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Horowitz: "It's either sheer incompetence or intentionality or something in between.... I think it’s fair for people to sit there and look at all of these 17 events and wonder how it could be purely incompetence."

    Evaluation: The semantics of words is a game here, but the Obama administration did have wiretaps and spies infiltrating the 2016 Trump campaign. The following 2016 Trump campaign advisors were wiretapped or contacted by government informants during the 2016 Trump campaign: George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.


    FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS TRUE, IF INVESTIGATING CAN BE INTERPRETED AS SPYING


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    Planes overhead are spraying Chemtrails into the air as biological or chemical warfare


    Theory: This is government chemical warfare against humanity, or weather management, and maybe part of population control. This attack on humanity is part of a larger plan by Satan worshippers, who may be idolizing the false god Baal. According to Mark Taylor, the alt-right conspiracy theorist and “firefighter prophet” about whom Liberty University made a movie, "The chemtrails, all the spraying is to detract us from hearing God’s frequency. They are spraying aluminum and barium in the chemtrails and if you look on the periodic table—barium is BA, aluminum is AL; it spells BAAL. That’s deep. That’s no coincidence. We are literally walking antennas because we’ve been breathing the aluminum, we’ve been breathing the barium. We are literally giant antennas, which was intended." (May 6, 2019)

    Best evidence: Observing that some of the condensation trails left by planes do not dissipate is mostly cited as best evidence. Also, they measured the increased byproducts of aluminum and barium in the chemtrails. Baal refers to the Levantine deities who were false gods, and has importance in demonology. If you look on the periodic table, barium is BA, aluminum is AL, combined might be a reference to Baal. The documentary "What In The World Are They Spraying?" is the most popular summary of evidence.


    Evaluation:

  • Airplane contrails stay longer in the sky when the atmosphere has more condensenation, which is why we always see "chemtrails" and clouds forming together on the same days. This is simply a matter of confusing cause-and-effect with correlation.

  • Unfortunately, aluminum and barium are pollutants naturally found in burning fossile fuels and manufacturing. Conspiracy theorists concerned about Chemtrails might want to join the environmentalists who have already been complaining about this for decades. According to the EPA: "Oxides of silicon, iron, aluminum, and calcium compose 95 percent of the weight of both bottom and fly ash. These constituents also are present in significant quantities in boiler slag (EPA, 1988). Calcium sulfate is the principal constituent of limestone-based FGD waste. Large-volume wastes also contain trace metals. Mean concentrations of arsenic, barium, beryllium, boron, copper, and vanadium are highest in fly ash. Bottom ash has mean contaminant levels lower than fly ash for most constituents. Mean concentrations of antimony, lead, mercury, selenium, and zinc are highest in FGD waste." - March 1999, Page 3-13, EPA Report to Congress; Wastes from the Combustion of Fossil Fuels


    FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FALSE


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    Putin attempted to help Trump in the 2016 election using social media


    Theory: "Vladimir Putin could care less about delivering healthcare to the people of Russia, or building infrastructure and Vladimir Putin many people know well, Wakes up every morning, and goes to bed every night trying to figure out how to destroy American democracy. He has organized all infrastructure of his government around that effort." - January 30, 2020: Senate Impeachment Trial, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey

    Best evidence:

    COMMITTEE SENSITIVE - RUSSIA INVESTIGATION ONLY
    116TH CONGRESS 1st Session
    SENATE
    REPORT 116-XX
    (U) REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE
    ON RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES CAMPAIGNS AND INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 U.S. ELECTION

    As John Kelly noted: "After [2016] election day, the Russian government stepped on the gas. Accounts operated by the IRA troll farm became more active after the [2016] election..." ....The overwhelming majority of the content disseminated by the IRA [Internet Research Agency] did not express clear support for one presidential candidate or another. .... The relatively low number of IRA Facebook and Twitter account posts that specifically mention either candidate is not dispositive of the IRA's intent to influence voters. In practice, the IRA's influence operatives dedicated the balance of their effort to establishing the credibility of their online personas, such as by posting innocuous content designed to appeal to like-minded users. .... No single group of Americans was targeted by IRA information operatives more than African-Americans. ...Although the specific objectives behind the IRA's efforts to animate American social media users to organize around political and cultural identification is not entirely evident from the available data, the general intent to foment and promote divisiveness and discord amongst the American populace is strongly evidenced, as are the desire and capability of the IRA to effectively coopt unwitting Americans.... The Committee's analysis of the IRA-purchased advertisements indicates that the vast majority neither mention expressly the U.S. presidential election, nor explicitly advocate voting for or against a particular presidential candidate..... The overwhelming preponderance of the video content posted to the IRA's YouTube channels was aimed directly at the African-American population. Most of the videos pertained to police brutality and the activist efforts of the Black Lives Matter organization.


    Evaluation: Since most of the social media activity from Russians noted above happened after the election, and the activity mostly involved posting videos of police abuse to Black Lives Matter websites, without mentioning either candidate, this does not seem like election interference. To call this activity election interference is a conspiracy theory without evidence.


    FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FALSE


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    The government staged the December 14, 2012 mass shooting
    at Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut


    Theory: In order to disarm U.S. citizens for assisting in a social control agenda, this horrific mass shooting was staged to help pass gun control legislation. There were no actual deaths, and this event was staged by crisis actors. Theorists claim there were multiple gunman and the real shooter, Adam Lanza, may have been a patsy. As a result of the shooting, Congress attempted to pass the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, although it never had a chance to pass the Republican Senate.

    Best evidence: Many initial mistakes in reporting by the media (for example, the number of shooters, the type of gun, and the locations of the gunman) were cited as proof of a staged event. Secondly, mistakes in online records concerning the gunman and victims were also cited. Finally, allegedly disingenuous behavior by the families of the victims seen on live TV were also cited as proof that this event was staged by "crisis actors". Pauses in moments of grieving are picked up as "bad acting" according to conspiracy theorists.


    Evaluation:

  • Between January 3, 2009 and January 3, 2013, there were four years where Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate ---- a Senate that would have been forced to politically back the Assault Weapons Ban, and Obama would have signed it. The alleged conspirators cannot control the timing of random events, but they can control the timing of staged events, if this were a staged event. The gun-control bill was introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein on January 24, 2013, one month after the Sandy Hook shooting. It was defeated in the Republicans' Senate on April 17, 2013. Why not send it to the Senate before January 3, 2013, if it was important? It seems that, if this was a staged event, it was badly timed. This alleged staged event is a lot of work, and requires a major risk of getting caught, so why not do it when Democrats control the Senate if it can be staged at any time?

  • There were many mistakes in the initial media reports (for example, there was talk of a second gunman). This fact, on its own, does not have conclusive meaning without formulating an analysis of why mistakes were made. Why would you need to coverup multiple shooters if nobody was actually killed? Aren't these victims just "crisis actors"? The theory is full of these contradictions. In fact, conspiracies to stage events should be well-rehearsed by pre-planned narratives that are accurately fed to the media.

  • Also, behavior of the families of bereaved victims while grieving should not be scrutinized. Deep emotions always lead human behavior on rollercoasters. Everybody tries to celebrate life ---- while they grieve over loss, and some funerals are purposely organized into celebrations of life, with joking, dancing and singing. Scrutinizing how people grieve during tragedy is unfair and ignorant --- and exploiting a snapshot moment is inhumane.

  • Murdered victims found alive after the shootings were all misidentifications; snapshot moments can always be picked out of a video to show facial similarities between two different people. In order to analyze whether or not somebody is pretending to be somebody else, you need more than just a snapshot where two people look alike. For example, some people think that the famous actors here, Winona Ryder and Natalie Portman are really both Keira Knightley, because of these snapshot moments.


  • And finally, there are shootings in America every day, and the media picks and chooses which ones it wishes to cover, and which to ignore. If gun control were the goal of the media, then why are so many shootings ignored? They should all be covered, and exaggerated, in order to scare the public into pushing for gun control. And why bother to stage fake shootings when you have real ones already, to emphasize --- but yet, so many are ignored?



    FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FALSE, AND OFFENSIVE


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    U.S. Federal Investigators harassed and
    killed African-American civil-rights workers


    Theory: Before and during the 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassed and/or killed African American civil rights leaders. The F.B.I. program of CoIntelPro (Counter Intelligence Program), where U.S. government officers infiltrated peaceful organizations in order to direct them towards violence, was especially important to these distruptive government operations.

    Best evidence: F.B.I. documents claim to watch and intimidate Martin Luther King for the purpose of "neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader." On November 18, 1964, the FBI Director called MLK "the most notorious liar in the country" and King received death threats from the FBI in the years following. In another example, the singer of the 1954 song "Strange Fruit," a song written as a critique of African American lynchings, was harassed by Harry Anslinger, the Commissioner for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He specifically sought to neutralize and imprison outspoken African Americans. In another example, Black Panther Party member Fred Hampton was killed by the F.B.I. in 1969, after two years of harassment.


    Evaluation: These disruptive actions against civil-rights workers, and many more, are well-documented by public declassified U.S. government documents.


    FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS TRUE


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    Russian government hacked the 2016 Democratic
    National Committee (DNC) servers


    Theory: Russian government officials hacked into the DNC email servers in order to help Trump get elected in 2016. The Trump campaign had knowledge of this illegal breach and supported it.

    Best evidence:

  • April 29, 2016 to May 25, 2016: Julian Assange of Wikileaks receives leaked emails from Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers. Emails show that the DNC, and more specifically, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, undermined the Bernie Sanders nomination in the 2016 primaries. Roger Stone, connected to Donald Trump campaign, learns of Wikileaks possession of DNC emails: "Stone, an informal adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, said he had learned from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that his organization had obtained emails" (Washington Post March 13, 2018)

  • June 12, 2016: Julian Assange publicly announces on ITV that he has the DNC emails and is preparing to release leaked DNC emails in July after they are reviewed and prepared for the Wikileaks website. Julian Assange later (August 9, 2016) claims that the emails came from employees inside the DNC, particularly Seth Rich.

  • June 13, 2016: Alarmed, the DNC hires Alex Ionescu, an anti-Putin Romanian hacker working for CrowdStrike, to handle damage control for potential email leaks. Alex Ionescu uses his hacker experience in Romania to help create a hacker narrative. In December 2018, Alex Ionescu would expand his presence in his Romanian homeland with new CrowdStrike offices in Bucharest.

  • June 14, 2016: DCLEAKS.com (registered domain in Craiova, Romania) attempts to claim a role in the hacking of DNC servers. @dcleaks sent a direct message to @WikiLeaks, noting, "You announced your organization was preparing to publish more Hillary’s emails. We are ready to support you. We have some sensitive information too, in particular, her financial documents. Let’s do it together. What do you think about publishing our info at the same moment? Thank you." (Page 45, Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election)

  • June 14, 2016: Also, "Guccifer 2.0" as a fake persona, now appears in public, named after a Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel who had called himself "Guccifer". Marcel Lehel is well known to Alex Ionescu of CrowdStrike from his Romanian hacking experience. Marcel Lehel, the original Guccifer, said that Guccifer 2.0 is an American invention. On June 14 the Washington Post reports, citing CrowdStrike as their source, that Guccifer 2.0 is a fake persona created by Russia in order to hide the true Russian origins of the DNC hacking.

  • June 15, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 attempts to claim credit for the DNC hacking: "Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups. ... I’m very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy. ... Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers. But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers. ... Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I’ve been in the DNC’s networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it? ... Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC’s network." Guccifer 2.0 releases internal DNC report document on Trump campaign and claims: "The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish them soon."

  • June 27, 2016: Email from Guccifer 2.0 (guccifer20@aol[.]fr) using Russia-based "Elite VPN" reached out to The Smoking Gun (TSG) claimed to have Hillary "leaked emails" on DCLeaks, a "Wikileaks sub project". (Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, page 43)

  • June 2016: Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had Fusion GPS subcontract former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to compile the dossier on Russia/Trump collusion. This document created a public stir and narrative around collusion. Later this document was found to be false.

  • July 10, 2016: Seth Rich, employee at DNC who Julian Assange fingered as the leak source of the May 2016 emails, was murdered execution-style in streets of DC (crime does not resemble a robbery) at about at 4:20 a.m., at Flagler Pl NW & W St NW, Washington, DC 20001 (2 miles from FBI van robbery earlier that night).

  • July 14, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 allegedly sends Wikileaks files of DNC emails (wk dnc link1.txt.gpg), the first transmission of data from Guccifer 2.0 to Wikileaks --- and this alleged transmission, if Guccifer 2.0 is connected to Russians, is the only evidence of Russian involvement in DNC hacking (Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, page 46) (Washington Post, July 13, 2018)

  • July 2016: FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith and others, later convicted for doctoring false documents (August 2020), lied on court surveillance wiretap warrants in order to link Trump to Russia.

  • July 22, 2016: Wikileaks releases DNC emails using their online search database and exhibits highlights. These emails, now public, would be very embarrassing to the Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaign if they were covered by the media.

  • July 26, 2016: CIA director John Brennan claims, according to his own handwritten notes, that Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ordered "tying him [Trump] to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee." According to Brennan, the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services." CIA director John Brennan discussed these plans with then President Barack Obama.

  • September 2016: "The fact the FBI continued to receive intelligence from Mr Steele, who ran MI6’s Russia desk from 2006 to 2009 before setting up Orbis, is potentially significant because it shows his work was apparently still being taken seriously after Mr Trump took hold of the reins of power. .... The original dossier had been dismissed, according to the New York Times, by sources inside the CIA as "internet rumour", but it was used by the US Justice Department to support a secret court order authorising surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Page is now suing the FBI and Justice Department for $75million." (The UK Telegraph, May 3, 2021; MI6 spy Christopher Steele 'produced second dossier on Donald Trump for FBI')

  • November 2016: Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, says: "The Feds get through [the password-protection on Seth Rich’s computer], and this is what they find. This is according to the FBI report... What the report says is that – some time in late spring or early summer – he [Rich] makes contact with WikiLeaks. That’s in his computer... They [the FBI] found what he [Rich] had done was he had submitted a series of documents – of emails, of juicy emails – from the DNC... By the way, all this shit about the DNC, where the hack, it wasn’t hacked."

  • December 15, 2016: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former intelligence officers, claimed that the evidence showed the DNC emails were leaked from an insider and not hacked by Russians.

  • January 5, 2017: Media claims 17 intelligence Agencies confirm Russian election interference. Later, Sept 6, 2019, correction, admitting it was just the CIA, FBI, and NSA, and other intelligence agencies do not concur. NPR: "Director of National Intelligence James Clapper affirmed an Oct. 7 joint statement from 17 intelligence agencies that the Russian government directed the election interference — and went further. (Editor's note on Sept. 6, 2019: While the DNI does speak on behalf of 17 intelligence agencies, the work that led to the assessment about Russian interference came from three of the 17 — the CIA, FBI and NSA.)" https://www.npr.org/2017/01/05/508355408/intelligence-chiefs-stand-more-resolutely-behind-finding-of-russia-election-hack

  • February 2, 2017: Imran Awan, friend of Seth Rich, is cut off from DNC I.T. support after investigations over data breaches and theft. Yet Wasserman Schultz continued to pay Awan even though the other Democrats purged him from their payroll and Schultz promises to pay him additional money after he goes to Pakistan.

  • May 24, 2017: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police for taking Awan hard drives: "Under my understanding, the Capitol police are not able to confiscate a member’s equipment when the member is not under investigation," Wasserman Schultz said. "It is their equipment and it is supposed to be returned." FBI never had physical contact with hacked DNC equipment for their investigation, only Crowdstrike had access to do any direct investigation. "The FBI never took physical hold of the DNC’s computer system." (AP; September 26, 2019) In May 2020, three years later, Crowdstrike says in newly released Congressional testimony, "We did not have concrete evidence" that Russians were involved in the DNC email leak.

  • May 2017: Rod Wheeler, investigating Seth Rich death, claims: "I have a source inside the police department that has looked at me straight in the eye and said, 'Rod, we were told to stand down on this case and I can't share any information with you.' Now, that is highly unusual for a murder investigation, especially from a police department."

  • July 24, 2017: DNC tech support Imran Awan (who is Pakistani) was arrested at the airport charged with bank fraud by misrepresenting bank loan for a rental property; application for a home equity line of credit claimed the rental property was his wife’s primary residence; this crime led to a nationwide manhunt.

  • September 16, 2017: According to the Washington Post, Awan hacked in DNC, "Investigators found that the five IT employees had logged on at one server for the Democratic Caucus more than 5,700 times over a seven-month period, according to documents reviewed by The Post. Alvi, the only one of the five who was authorized to access that server, accounted for fewer than 300 of those logins, documents show."

  • July 3, 2018: Imran Awan signed a plea agreement, keeping him out of jail, declaring that he was NOT guilty of leaking the DNC emails (in order to not counter the Russia hack narrative), "The Government has uncovered no evidence that your client violated federal law with respect to the House computer systems. Particularly, the Government has found no evidence that your client illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members' offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information, including classified or sensitive information." Imran Awan "will be fully subject to criminal prosecution" if he reveals any information to counter the official narrative of the data breach.


    Evaluation: Whether "Guccifer 2.0" is fake persona created by CrowdStrike, or if "Guccifer 2.0" really is "the Russians," the timeline clearly shows that Guccifer 2.0 was not involved in the DNC data breach --- which was complete by May 2016, before any existence of activity from "Guccifer 2.0" or any Guccifer 2.0 communication with Wikileaks ---- and therefore there is no evidence that Russians hacked the DNC emails. Julian Assange of Wikileaks had the leaked emails in May, while traces of "Guccifer 2.0" did not exist until June 15, and there was no transfer of email data from "Guccifer 2.0" until July 14. This was too late to be relevant for any Russian connection. Attempts to connect Guccifer 2.0 or DCLeaks.com to Russians cannot inform anything related to the DNC hacking, which pre-dates their activities and appear to be part of a false narrative.


    FINAL VERDICT: RUSSIA ELECTION CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FALSE


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    Pizzagate: Powerful world leaders human trafficking
    children as part of a worldwide child sex-ring


    Theory: On October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of emails from John Podesta's Gmail account, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, emails acquired through "phishing". Somebody reading these emails from Wikileaks deciphered the "pizzagate" conspiracy, where high-ranking Democratic Party officials use the D.C. Comet Ping Pong pizzeria to human traffick children as part of a child sex-ring. Proponents of the theory found symbols of spirals, hearts and butterfly-shaped images in the emails that deciphered code for Satanism and pedophile preferences. The 2020 conspiracy-theorist movement of QAnon has picked up on the pedophile conspiracy, with their motto, "Save the Children", mixing it with other theories regarding the "Deep State." They believe that President Donald Trump is fighting on the side of QAnon against the pedophiles. On August 19, 2020, when a reporter told President Donald Trump, "QAnon believes you are secretly saving the world from this cult of pedophiles and cannibals," the President replied, "I haven’t heard that ---- but is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?"

    Best evidence: Symbols in emails and on menus, handsigns, and photographs are interpreted to provide evidence that shows a web of secret connections.


    Evaluation: There is no direct evidence, just interpretations of symbols and photographs. Many of these interpretations are extrapolated from believing in the larger conspiracy, but do not in themselves actually constitute evidence. The contents of the photographs, such as pictures of children, or a photo of a pizzeria basement, are almost always misidentified.


    FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS FALSE


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    The Apollo moonlandings were faked and staged, and nobody walked on the moon


    Theory: The whole world was watching, and the moon landing could have been a P.R. nightmare for Nixon, if anything went wrong. Nixon was worried about losing-face in the midst of cold-war tensions and bad news from the vietnam war and, in order to prevent any possible embarrasment from an unexpected mishap, NASA broadcast a fake, staged moon landing where America's cold war adversaries could witness only a perfect moon landing operation. The first moon landing was Apollo 11 during July 1969 (followed by Apollo 12: November 1969, Apollo 14: February 1971, Apollo 15: August 1971, Apollo 16: April 1972, and lastly Apollo 17: December 1972).

    Best evidence:

  • Conspiracy theorists claim that the moon landing was staged in a studio or on a secret location, such as Area 51, and therefore evidence of Earth's atmosphere and gravity is evident in the photos, where one should only find objects and people in the photos subject to the moon's atmosphere and gravity. Video footage of the United States flag, planted on the moon by all Apollo missions, should show the flag behavior as it would in a no-atmosphere environment. The flag had extra supports so it would stand at attention in a no-wind environment. Yet we see the flag moving in ways that seems like it could be from the wind. See here below, some debunkers have shown that a flag might move in a vacuum atmosphere, due to momentum of the extra flag supports:


  • Moon rock seen in photo is a staged prop, and it is marked with a letter to denote its inventory and staged location. Debunkers claim that the "C" is not a letter, but a hair or imperfection in the camera film.

  • The photos and videos from the moon landings show no stars in the sky. Conspiracy theorists claim that it would have been impossible to match the staged star ceiling to the real view of the cosmos, so stars were left out of the pictures and videos. Scientists say that, although it seems dark on the moon, these videos and pictures were taken during daylight and no stars would be seen in the sky because they are drowned out by the sunlight.

  • The sun is the only light source for astronauts on the moon; they did not bring their own lighting equipment. With the sun creating shadows, a light source millions of miles away, all shadows should fall in the same direction. Conspiracy theorists see these intersecting shadows as proof of staged photos in a studio with multiple light sources. Also, lighting "hotspots" can be seen in these photos that are more common in artificial light rather than natural light. Debunkers claim that these intersecting shadows are caused by the type of optical lens used for these photos:


  • The Apollo 11 landing site has no jet burn or crater where the soft landing took place. The dust seems untouched by any disturbance. Debunkers claim that the engine blast was not strong enough to scatter the lunar regolith, and also that the Apollo 11 lander did not come down directly straight vertically, but also moved horizontally during its descent, so scouring of the surface might not be directly under the landing module. These 2 explanations seem to contradict themselves, but only one needs to be accurate.

  • The deadly radiation of the Van Allen radiation belts circle the Earth, captured in the planet's magnetic field. The magnetic field blocks radiation particles and cosmic rays, trapping them outside of Earth's orbit. Conspiracy theorists say that these astronauts were not equiped to protect their health from these deadly radiation belts, but scientists say that they were.



  • Moon walking looks like it is just walking in Earth's gravity with the film speed slowed to half speed to give the impression of less gravity. While this is true for some footage, there is also footage of some astronaut activities that are clearly not explained just by a footage rate speed change:

  • The 2001 documentary, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon", producered by Bart Sibrel and narrated by Anne Tonelson, shows footage from NASA of Apollo 11 in July 1969 with astronauts Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin faking their location in space. Bart Sibrel claims that NASA accidently sent them footage that was meant to be kept secret. In the footage, the astronauts are placing the camera in the back of the spacecraft in order to limit the visibility of Earth just through the small spacecraft window, rather than show the full extent of Earth's size in relation to their location. This gives the false impression that they are in the moon's orbit rather than in the Earth's orbit. this can be see here

    Evaluation: It is believable that the first moon landing, Apollo 11, was partly staged in order to ensure that America looks good in the face of uncertainty. Yet the evidence does show that subsequent Apollo missions did land on the moon just as described. There are third-parties who have taken high definition photographs of objects and visible traces of human activity on the moon left by the Apollo missions (traces from Apollo 11 seem to be missing). According to the BBC, "The photos from Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) show the flags are still casting shadows - except the one planted during the Apollo 11 mission." (Apollo Moon flags still standing, images show", July 30 2012)


    FINAL VERDICT: CONSPIRACY THEORY IS MOSTLY FALSE; the first moon landing, Apollo 11, may have been partially staged --- in order to guard against bad publiclity, in case of error during this first-time attempt; but the moon landing missions overall did seem to succeed according to the evidence. This means there is a chance that the first astronauts to the moon were not Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, which could be a major point of embarrasment to the United States, and explain why conspiracy theorists feel there seems to be a coverup.


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