(May 27, 2025 at 6:34 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Yeah, I saw that as goofy news and decided to put it here. But now, seeing how there are some anally retentive members, I guess I should open a different topic for this kind of news, perhaps titled "Fringe science".

What would be the point of that, exactly? To poke fun at scientists doing research you clearly don't understand? I think the joke would be on you.

It’s important to remember that plate tectonics and The Big Bang Theory (among other things) were once considered fringe science.

Boru

Continental drift in particular. Poor Alfred Wegener was lampooned mercilessly, by both the popular media and his colleagues. But within a few decades, he was exonerated albeit posthumously.

FBI to release conspiracy-shattering Epstein video that proves how he really died

Deputy Director Dan Bongino says the Jeffrey Epstein tape will show the disgraced financier died by suicide without outside involvement.

Ever since Epstein’s death in August 2019, conspiracy theorists have peddled stories that the disgraced Wall Street financier was murdered while he awaited child sex offences.

They believe he was killed to silence him from speaking about what he knows of the world’s rich and powerful men.

But the video, which was recorded inside the Metropolitan Correctional Centre (MCC) in New York, where he was being held, is now set for release.

It is currently being enhanced for clarity and will be published alongside the unedited original.

According to Bongino, the footage will show Epstein was entirely alone in the cell bay where he was found dead in August 2019.“There is significant public interest,” he said.

“I'm just telling you what we see in the file. I just want to be crystal clear on this. I am not asking anyone to believe me. I'm telling you what's there and what isn't right.

“Not a video of him killing him. Not the actual act, but the entire MCC Bay, there was not only one camera. There were others.

“We are working on cleaning it up to make sure you have an enhanced. And we're going to give the original. So you don't think there were any shenanigans.

“So I say to people, if you have a tip, let us know. But there's no DNA, there's no audio, there's no fingerprints, there's no suspects, there's no accomplices, there's no tips.

“There is nothing. If you have it, I'm happy to see it. The video is clear as day. He's the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.”

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/f...in-1178725

Our tax dollars at work.

Huh. Maybe my recollection is faulty but wasn't the claim at the time there were technical difficulties with the cameras and there was no video?

I don't even believe he was murdered. Intentionally left unobserved so he could kill himself, sure. I could even believe he was convinced to do so.

What precisely is this video supposed to prove again?

(May 29, 2025 at 2:30 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: FBI to release conspiracy-shattering Epstein video that proves how he really died

Deputy Director Dan Bongino says the Jeffrey Epstein tape will show the disgraced financier died by suicide without outside involvement.

Ever since Epstein’s death in August 2019, conspiracy theorists have peddled stories that the disgraced Wall Street financier was murdered while he awaited child sex offences.

They believe he was killed to silence him from speaking about what he knows of the world’s rich and powerful men.

But the video, which was recorded inside the Metropolitan Correctional Centre (MCC) in New York, where he was being held, is now set for release.

It is currently being enhanced for clarity and will be published alongside the unedited original.

According to Bongino, the footage will show Epstein was entirely alone in the cell bay where he was found dead in August 2019.“There is significant public interest,” he said.

“I'm just telling you what we see in the file. I just want to be crystal clear on this. I am not asking anyone to believe me. I'm telling you what's there and what isn't right.

“Not a video of him killing him. Not the actual act, but the entire MCC Bay, there was not only one camera. There were others.

“We are working on cleaning it up to make sure you have an enhanced. And we're going to give the original. So you don't think there were any shenanigans.

“So I say to people, if you have a tip, let us know. But there's no DNA, there's no audio, there's no fingerprints, there's no suspects, there's no accomplices, there's no tips.

“There is nothing. If you have it, I'm happy to see it. The video is clear as day. He's the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.”

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/f...in-1178725

Is it bad that every time I see the name "Bongino" I picture an Italian baby hitting a bong??

(May 30, 2025 at 4:13 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Is it bad that every time I see the name "Bongino" I picture an Italian baby hitting a bong??

No, it's not bad, it's perfectly normal.



But now you also remind me of that Catholic idiocy called Santo Bambino, which is a statue of Jesus made from the wood that grows in the Garden of Gethsemane in the 15th century. It was displayed in a church in Rome where it received letters from people around the world thanking it for healing them. But it then got stolen in the 1990s so the priests made a new wooden Jesus which again heals people just like the one before.

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Worlds Largest UFO Conference Comes to Indian Wells

The 11th annual Contact in the Desert UFO Conference is set to launch this week at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort and Spa in Indian Wells. Running from May 29 through June 2, the conference is billed as the world’s largest gathering of leading UFO researchers and experts in history. There will be over 50 lectures, several workshops, and appearances by renowned guest speakers as the event explores the latest developments and research in the field of UFO phenomena. NBC Palm Springs Mary Strong sat down with the Co-Owner and Producer of Contact in the Desert, Ron Janix to talk about the exciting line-up of this years speakers and the significant progress has been made on Capitol Hill regarding UFO sightings.

https://www.nbcpalmsprings.com/2025/05/3...dian-wells

(May 30, 2025 at 12:16 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: the conference is billed as the world’s largest gathering of leading UFO researchers and experts in history.

Both of them.

Quote:There will be over 50 lectures, several workshops, and appearances by renowned guest speakers

For reference, a small professional organization will typically run 3-5 sessions concurrently for 2-3 days during their AGM with 6 - 10 speakers in the morning and afternoon of each day. A large professional organization would blow through 50 lecturers before coffee break.

Unfortunately, this kind of conspiracy is pretty much a routine around any (modern) war - for example in Ukraine.

Quote:Pallywood: It’s one of the most powerful conspiracy theories in the world. There’s a reason so many believe it.

The term Pallywood—a portmanteau of Palestine and Hollywood—stems from a long-standing claim that Palestinians fabricate their suffering for cameras, using actors, dolls, or staged scenes to smear Israel. It offers an all-purpose, ready-made excuse to dismiss even the most well-documented atrocities, sowing just enough doubt to ignore Palestinian suffering entirely.

This conspiracy has been around for years, but mentions of Pallywood spiked dramatically after Oct. 7, 2023, far surpassing previous peaks for the term during past Israeli military offensives in Gaza and the West Bank. Beyond Israel, Pallywood has gained traction in right-wing circles worldwide, particularly in the U.S. and India. One of the most grotesque examples came in December 2023, when a wave of pro-Israel accounts—including the official @Israel handle, the Jerusalem Post, and influencers like Ben Shapiro—amplified the claim that a grieving Palestinian man, seen in a widely shared video cradling his killed baby grandson, was faking it. “Hamas accidentally posted a video of a doll (yes a doll),” the @Israel account wrote in a post that was viewed more than 1.3 million times. Others—including StopAntisemitism, Hen Mazzig, and Yoseph Haddad, echoed the claim to millions more. “Pallywood 🤣,” delighted Eli David.

In truth, the baby, 5-month-old Muhammad Hani al-Zahar, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. The supposed “doll” these accounts amused over was his body. The Jerusalem Post eventually retracted its article. But by then, the damage was done. The lie didn’t need to hold up under scrutiny—it confirmed what many were already primed to believe.

Few have done more to promote the Pallywood myth than Richard Landes, a medievalist and historian of apocalyptic movements who coined the term. In his most recent book, 2022’s Can “the Whole World” Be Wrong?, he argues that Western journalists are unwittingly reporting Palestinian propaganda as legitimate news (a phenomenon he calls “lethal journalism”), rendering them complicit in spreading antisemitic narratives under the guise of human-rights reporting. The book expands on the idea of Pallywood as an intricate, evolving system of staged deception designed to manipulate global opinion against Israel.

He pointed to Gazawood, a crowdsourced website and X account that compiles what it claims are Pallywood slipups—supposed bad edits, recurring actors, makeup mistakes. The account frequently shares videos of dead Palestinian babies, speculating that they might be fake. “If you pause the footage and look closely, you’ll see other people in the background who were smiling at the performance,” Landes added, referencing videos like this one.

Laila Al-Arian, an Emmy- and Peabody-winning investigative journalist and executive producer of Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, has spent the months since October 2023 reporting on Gaza. Her feed is flooded with footage of bombed homes, bloodied children, frantic rescue efforts—as well as accusations that it’s all fake.

“It’s everywhere on my Twitter,” she told me. To her, the concept of Pallywood is no more credible than the “crisis actor” conspiracy theories used to deny mass shootings in America, like the one at Sandy Hook. “Facts don’t matter. They’re inventing stories to discredit what’s right in front of them: suffering, atrocities, death,” she said.

These days, when Palestinians post TikToks documenting life in a locked-off war zone, many Israelis begin from a baseline of disbelief. “ ‘Why are they baking cakes if they’re starving?’ ‘How are they making polished videos if they’re under siege?’ ” Divon said, explaining the reasoning. The rise of A.I. has only deepened public skepticism, making it feel increasingly plausible that any image or video, no matter how realistic, could be fake.

https://slate.com/technology/2025/05/isr...ywood.html

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Meanwhile

Quote:Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson doubles down on 9/11 conspiracy theories

Speaking with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, Johnson, R-Oshkosh, said his interest in the attack on New York City, particularly regarding Building 7, a 47-story office building that fell several hours after planes were flown into the nearby Twin Towers, is “because the 9/11 families want to know the answer.”

“I’m just as prone as everyone else to go, ‘Well, that’s wacko. That’s a conspiracy,’” Johnson said. “But then you start getting the information and you start going, ‘Wow, is that weird.’”

“Building number 7 — you see it come down — and we’ve all watched, because it’s cool to watch these buildings being demolished, boom, just freefall,” Johnson said. “The only way that happens is if you remove all of their supports at the same time. You blow them all out so a building can really free-fall. If it’s collapsing from something else, it’s like, you know, you build like a fire, and it collapses off to the side or something, right?”

Speaking with conservative radio host Meg Ellefson a day later, Johnson again cited the 2020 film “Calling Out Bravo 7,” a production he’s referenced in the past that questions the official story behind the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 in New York.

“And as we find out, in so many different instances, you really can’t trust the government what they told you,” Johnson said. “I mean, the government has just repeatedly lied to the American public for decades on so many different issues. It’s sad. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.”

Johnson’s latest comments come about a month after the the Oshkosh Republican told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson he believes there are “an awful lot of questions” surrounding one of the deadliest attacks on the United States.

https://madison.com/news/state-regional/...6b4c0.html