Conspiracy Theories - The Art of the Prank

August 4, 2016December 15, 2023

The Strange Saga of Melania Trump’s Speechwriter

In one of many remarkable moments in this year’s Republican National Convention, potential First Lady Melania Trump delivered a speech blatantly plagiarized from incumbent First Lady Michelle Obama. A little-known Donald Trump speechwriter named Meredith McIver showed up to take the blame, sparking conspiracy theories. And things have stayed weird.

“Who’s Impersonating Melania Trump’s Plagarist Meredith McIver?”
by Gideon Resnick
The Daily Beast
August 2, 2016

Meredith McIver, a former ballerina turned Donald Trump co-author, is definitely a real person. But her social media persona, which came into being after she took the blame for Melania Trump”s plagiarized speech, definitely is not.

The account @imeredithmciver began tweeting on July 20, the day after Melania Trump”s prime-time Republican National Convention speech was upended by the revelation that she had cribbed some lines from an address by Michelle Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. And it is still posing as McIver to this day, with no comment or pushback from the Trump campaign.

As the campaign is in the throes of daily sparring with a Gold Star family, fire marshals, and even the speaker of the House, there”s been no acknowledgment of the fake social media presence of McIver, who told The Daily Beast she has no online presence. Multiple people have emailed The Daily Beast claiming to have some knowledge about the mysterious appearance of the account, ranging from abject satire to claims the Trump campaign is actually behind it.

“I just wanted to set the record straight. @realDonaldTrump is a wonderful man,” the account tweeted just as McIver was getting roped into the burgeoning scandal. With her social media proclamation, the account included a photoshopped image of McIver and Trump standing next to each other in his office. Continue reading “The Strange Saga of Melania Trump’s Speechwriter”

August 26, 2014December 15, 2023

Mirage Men: Smoke, Mirrors & Government Disinformation

AOTP contributor John Lundberg’s movie Mirage Men, co-produced with Mark Pilkington, Roland Denning & Kypros Kyprianou, is now available for rent and on DVD. The book, Mirage Men: A Journey into Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs: The Weird Truth Behind UFOs, written by Mark Pilkington and published in 2010 by Constable, documents the making of the film.

Watch the trailer:

The Guardian in the UK covered the movie:

The real Men in Black, Hollywood and the great UFO cover-up

In a new documentary, US government agents claim they spent decades giving fake evidence of extraterrestrials to gullible ufologists. But why? And how can we trust them now?

Read the whole article here.

June 6, 2012December 15, 2023

Patrick Hruby on Sports Conspiracy Theories

The Truth Is Out There: From The 1985 NBA Draft Lottery To The Olympics To Game-Fixing … Which Conspiracy Theory Can You Believe?
by Patrick Hruby
The Post Game
May 30, 2012

“You know,” says the magician, “it’s very easy to fix flipping a coin.” For instance: The tosses before football games. Turns out they’re totally riggable. Even with a straight coin. Con men know how. So does the magician, Richard Kaufman. He’s in his 50s, has dark, curly hair, works as the editor of Genii, the nation’s leading magic magazine. Specializes in card tricks. Only now, here in the sunlit kitchen of his suburban Washington, D.C. home, he’s talking tumbling coins.

Heads or tails. Even odds. As indifferent as the universe itself, like the flips that sent Lew Alcindor to the Milwaukee Bucks, Bill Walton to the Portland Trail Blazers, Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon to the Houston Rockets.

Unless …

Continue reading “Patrick Hruby on Sports Conspiracy Theories”

October 14, 2010December 15, 2023

ConCERN: The End Is Near?

1st extinction event: Leaked CERN documents state LHC
has 70% chances to produce “˜ice-9″² strangelets on 11/9
CERN Truth
September 11, 2010

Abstract. We have received and will show in this article astonishing documents leaked out of CERN internal servers, about the CASTOR project, a Centauro and Strangelet Object Research to hunt for strangelets “˜likely“˜ to be produced at the LHC.

According to those internal documents CERN has been lying for years to the press and in the suits, since it always affirmed that it won”t produce the ultra-dangerous, ultradense “˜strangelets”, the liquid explosive made of up, down and strange quarks, responsible of the ice-9 reactions that cause supernovas.

In those documents CERN affirms there is a 65-70% of chances of producing negative strangelets, which according to standard science on strangelets today, will provoke the ice-9 reaction (name taken from Cat and Cradle”s book in which a physicist destroys the world throwing a new type of water that freezes the planet, since an ice-9 reaction will condensate the planet in a 15 kilometers ultra-dense strange star).

Thus CERN has been lying and it is playing with all mankind a Quantum Russian Roulette game with 4 shots out of 6, 66% chances of extinction. This will be even if we survive the biggest genocide of history, calculated multiplying probability and victims: 66% x 6.6 billions=4.4 billions, 1000 times the Holocaust. The experiment will start in 45 days now. We might be living the last month of our existence as individuals and as a species. This Fall can be indeed the Fall of Man. And yet, the experiment is not stopped. This machine is too big to fail. Ave Caesar Hauer, morituri te salutant”¦

Keep reading for a full disclosure of those documents

thanks Miso

December 29, 2009December 15, 2023

Kennedy Photo Hoax

Submitted by W.J. Elvin III as seen on The Slatest:

TMZ Duped by Kennedy Photo Hoax, December 28, 2009

Early Monday morning, celebrity gossip site TMZ published a photo it claimed could have “changed world history.” The photo, according to the Web site and the experts it marshaled, showed former President John F. Kennedy surrounded by naked women on a yacht.

1227_jfk_boat_tmz_01_425

Alas, the picture is not what it seemed. The photograph ran as part of a Playboy photo spread in 1967, four years after JFK was assassinated. TMZ conceded its error Monday afternoon, once a tipster alerted them to the fact. The 1967 photograph accompanied a story titled “Playboy’s Charter Yacht Party: How to Have a Ball on the Briny with an Able-Bodies Complement of Ship’s Belles.” The photo fakery may sour TMZ‘s brand, which had garnered credit for being the first to accurately report the deaths of Michael Jackson and, more recently, actress Brittany Murphy.