Hoax Forum

The spy rock of Moscow

2012-01-28T23:32:08+00:00

I’ve only seen this alluded to briefly in the comments of other topics, not given a topic of its own. So here it is, in all of its pseudolithic glory!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16614209

UK spied on Russians with fake rock

A former UK government official has admitted Britain was caught spying when Russia exposed its use of a fake rock in Moscow to hide electronic equipment.

Russia made the allegations in January 2006, but this is the first time anyone in the UK has publicly accepted them.

Jonathan Powell, then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, told a BBC documentary it was “embarrassing”, but “they had us bang to rights”.

He added: “Clearly they had known about it for some time.”

They had been “saving it up for a political purpose”, he said.

The story was first aired on Russian television, which ran a report showing how the rock contained electronic equipment and had been used by British diplomats to receive and transmit information.

It showed a video of a man walking along the pavement of a Moscow street, slowing his pace, glancing at a rock and slowing down, then picking up his pace. Next the camera films another man, who walks by and picks up the rock.

The Russian security service, the FSB, linked the rock with allegations that British security services were making covert payments to pro-democracy and human rights groups.

Shortly afterwards, then President Vladimir Putin introduced a law restricting non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from getting funding from foreign governments. Many closed down as a result.

“We have seen attempts by the secret services to make use of NGOs. NGOs have been financed through secret service channels. No-one can deny that this money stinks,” said Mr Putin.

“This law has been adopted to stop foreign powers interfering in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation.”

“All of our activities with the NGOs were completely above board,” said Britain’s ambassador in Moscow at the time, Tony Brenton.

“They were on our website, the sums of money, the projects. All of that was completely public.”

One human rights group accused of receiving secret payments took the FSB to court for slander but lost.

“They said there was no slander and threw out the case,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

The FSB successfully argued that the allegations did not represent slander as the secret payments showed the Moscow Helsinki Group was a “serious organisation”.

James Bond villains blamed for nuclear’s bad image

2012-01-21T15:49:24+00:00

Since this is kinda nutty I posted it under conspiracies.

The evil villains in James Bond movies are being blamed for casting a long-lasting shadow over the image of nuclear power, says the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Prof David Phillips says that Dr No, with his personal nuclear reactor, helped to create a “remorselessly grim” reputation for atomic energy.

Prof Phillips was speaking ahead of the 50th anniversary of the movie.

The chemistry organisation says it wants a “renaissance” in nuclear power.

Prof Phillips says the popularity of the Dr No movie from 1962 created an enduringly negative image of nuclear power - as something dangerous that could be wielded by megalomaniacs with aspirations to world domination.
Unfair image

The villain of the movie, planning mass destruction from his secret Caribbean hideout, eventually dies in the cooling pool of his nuclear reactor, having been foiled by James Bond, played by Sean Connery.

Against a background of the cold war and a nuclear arms race, the movie showed a world of intelligence agencies, glamorous spies, secretive assassins and underground laboratories.

But the Royal Society of Chemistry, which promotes the work of chemical sciences, says that it also meant that millions of people who saw the film saw nuclear technology being presented as a “barely-controllable force for evil”.

Later Bond villains, as part of their cat-stroking, laser-pointing, world-destroying repertoire, also had nuclear ambitions.

When there are worries about nuclear safety - such as following the tsunami in Japan - the Royal Society of Chemistry fears that the public reaction is still shaped by such emotive, negative associations.

As such, Prof Phillips says that when nuclear power is discussed “it is not at all surprising that the public at home and abroad are sceptical”.

“But the RSC asserts that nuclear power has to be part of the future national energy mix, in which it plays a major role, complemented by renewable sources. Fossil fuels have to be eradicated for people to live in a healthy environment.”

“Let’s say yes to nuclear and no to Dr No’s nonsense.”

‘Unsafe’

This message was not accepted by the Green Party - which argued that Bond movies reflected concerns rather than created them.

“Although James Bond is fiction, the truth is that nuclear power is dangerous, dirty and unsafe,” said spokesperson, Penny Kemp.

“It is improbable to think that people’s perceptions have been influenced solely by The World is Not Enough, but this film came after the Chernobyl disaster so the film was merely picking up on a real fear people have of nuclear power. And rightly so.”

Richard George of Greenpeace said: “A handful of Bond films haven’t tarnished the nuclear industry’s reputation. They’ve managed to do that all by themselves.

“I don’t think they’ve got a top secret fake volcanic island though. But if they did, it would probably be cheaper to build than a nuclear power station.”

BBC News

Glenn Miller clue found in Reading plane-spotter’s log

2012-01-21T15:44:44+00:00

It was a foggy afternoon on 15 December, 1944 when the Norseman aircraft carrying Glenn Miller flew close to Maidenhead, Berkshire.

Soon after it would be seen for the last time at Beachy Head in East Sussex.

What happened next to the craft and its famous passenger, who led the World War II big band craze, has never been uncovered.

No sign of the aircraft was ever found and Miller’s disappearance remains one of World War II’s most enduring mysteries.

And until now, it had never been confirmed the route the aircraft had taken saw it travel by Maidenhead.

The band leader and jazz trombonist, famous for records including Pennsylvania 6-5000 and In The Mood, was on his way from Bedfordshire to entertain US troops in Versailles, France - a flight which should have taken him across the English Channel.

His UC-64A Norseman, an American transport aircraft, never arrived. No trace of the aircrew, passengers or plane has ever been found.

Varying theories about different flight paths have abounded, but the Berkshire route has now been confirmed by the Glenn Miller Archive at Colorado University, and will feature as one of the facts in an official report on the musician’s disappearance, commissioned by Glenn Miller’s children.

The most recent discovery started with a 17-year-old plane-spotter in 1944, who meticulously logged each plane he saw flying overhead while he worked at an airfield in Woodley, Reading.

The now deceased Richard Anderton had two small notebooks filled with details of the locations of passing aircraft, estimated altitude and directions of flight.
‘Pinch of salt’

On 15 December 1944, he logged a UC-64A-type aircraft passing on the horizon to his east and flying below the fog in a south-easterly direction.

It was not until his brother, 77-year-old Sylvan Anderton, brought the books into the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow TV programme 67 years later that the entry came to light.

“I’d had them for about 28 years and really didn’t do anything about it,” said Mr Anderton, who grew up in Reading but now lives in Bideford, Devon.

“I knew there was a connection because he’d cut out an article from the Daily Express in 1969 about Glenn Miller’s disappearance and he’d put it in the pages in the notebook for 15 December 1944.”

Roadshow expert Clive Stewart-Lockhart, who valued the books at around £1,000, said Glenn Miller was “one of the great mysteries of that part of the war,” and that he found the teenager’s dedication to plane-spotting extraordinary “when a bomb could’ve dropped on him”.

He has never questioned the authenticity of the notebooks.

“You’d have to be an absolute genius to make it up,” he said.
‘Very valuable’

But when it came to official verification, Dennis Spragg, senior consultant at the Glenn Miller Archives in Colorado, said he initially took the notebook entry “with a pinch of salt”.

“I was a bit sceptical,” he said.

“If I had £10 for every time I heard someone with a new bit of information on Glenn Miller I’d have bought my own Caribbean island by now.”

But when he looked into it, and found out Mr Anderton was based at Woodley - within eight miles of the Maidenhead waypoint - pieces of the puzzle started to fit.

Mr Spragg said if the craft was passing to the east of Mr Anderton, he indeed would have been able to have seen it on his horizon.

“I went back and consulted the records for what would’ve been the route of the flight,” he said.

“I worked out flight times and the speed of the aircraft and worked out that he probably saw the airplane to his east at eight or nine minutes past two in the afternoon.”

He said the discovery was “very valuable”.

“It’s a piece of the entire story. The notebook confirms that the plane was on time and on course.”

It also eradicates other theories about alternate routes the plane could have taken.

“All the speculators saying he went east of London have now gone out the picture,” said Mr Anderton.

Aside from the notebook’s historic significance, his late brother’s unexpected new status as the next-to-last known observer of Glenn Miller’s plane has caused some excitement in the Anderton household.

“We’re part of the Glenn Miller story, we’re very thrilled about that,” he said.

“We’ve even started playing his music.”

The notebook entry will feature in Dennis Spragg’s report called Major A Glenn Miller, 15 December 1944, The Facts, which is due to be published this year.

Source: BBC News

Help me find a comment

2012-01-19T15:37:29+00:00

Hi,

Apologies if I’m posting this in the wrong place but whilst browsing the net last week I came upon the “is Bill Loyer Jim Morrison” debate on the Museum of Hoaxes site. I read a comment someone had posted saying that a relative of theirs worked for the department in Paris dealing with change of name requests and had a James Morrison submit such a request a couple of years after he “died”. Can anyone direct me to this post?

Many thanks.

AnnetheQuene

“American Radar brought down failed Mars probe Phobos-Grunt”

2012-01-18T10:05:28+00:00

In an effort to cover their ass, some Russian Space officials are trying to blame (in Cold War style) external powers for the failure and subsequent highly publicized re-entry of Phobos-Grunt, the Russian space-probe that should have gone to Mars but failed while still in Earth Orbit. They first blamed the US “HAARP” facilities in Alaska, and next (when that was easily debunked - Phobos-Grunt did not pass over Alaska until well after the rocket engine failure) they try to blame a US radar at Kwajalein.

A good debunking of these Russian conspiracy ideas can be found here:

Jim Oberg (who also gives a good summary of the issue)

Ted Molczan (showing that the Kwajalein radar cannot have targetted the asteroid 2005 YU55 and in that way unintendedly zap the passing space probe at that time

President Obama has been to Mars

2011-12-31T22:38:45+00:00

Apparently the president of the US has been to Mars as a result of training he took in the early 80’s. I think I might need to double layer the tinfoil hat for this one.

Mars visitors Basiago and Stillings confirm Barack Obama traveled to Mars
By Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd

Two former participants in the CIA’s Mars visitation program of the early 1980’s have confirmed that U.S. President Barack H. Obama was enrolled in their Mars training class in 1980 and was among the young Americans from the program who they later encountered on the Martian surface after reaching Mars via “jump room.”

Andrew D. Basiago, 50, a lawyer in Washington State who served in DARPA’s time travel program Project Pegasus in the 1970’s, and fellow chrononaut William B. Stillings, 44, who was tapped by the Mars program for his technical genius, have publicly confirmed that Obama was enrolled in their Mars training class in 1980 and that each later encountered Obama during visits to rudimentary U.S. facilities on Mars that took place from 1981 to 1983.

Their astonishing revelations provide a new dimension to the controversy surrounding President Obama’s background and pose the possibility that it is an elaborate ruse to conceal Obama’s participation as a young man in the U.S. secret space program.

Full article here

Chavez: “USA infects S-American leaders with cancer”

2011-12-29T13:34:26+00:00

Venezuela’s Chavez: Did U.S. give Latin American leaders cancer?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speculated on Wednesday that the United States might have developed a way to give Latin American leaders cancer, after Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez joined the list of presidents diagnosed with the disease.

more at the source

This Jim Morrison thing has to stop

2011-11-30T04:55:30+00:00

Again, it keeps coming up: did he fake his death or not? Was he part of some grand CIA/MK/Ultra mind control experiment? Was he an agent? Is he living as a cowboy in Oregon? I highly doubt it. But those of who attest to this fact, are trying to pull the wool over our eyes, clearly Bill Loyer a.k.a. Jim Morrison formerly of the Doors, must be. After all he is 5’8”,has 7 kids, is a brick layer and can ride a horse, so he must be. And then there’s JLizard and David Logan both whom have taken this myth to higher ground as it were. The real Jim Morrison,may be deceased, but as in any myth, it seems the legend will go on. Unless of course, Jimbo did indeed fake his death and is out there probably pushing a shopping cart down some back allery, searching for used cigarette butts and rambling the words to his long forgotten poetry.

Poor Jim, we hardly knew ye.

Climategate: Part Deux

2011-11-25T17:19:24+00:00

Two years ago, someone hacked into a University of East Anglia server and anonymously posted thousands of emails from climate scientists. Quickly dubbed “Climategate”, global warming deniers jumped on this, trying to show that these scientists were engaging in fraudulent activities. However, it was clear to anyone familiar with how research is done that this was complete and utter bilge; the scientists were not trying to hide anything, were not trying to trick anyone, and were not trying to falsely exaggerate the dangers of climate change.

I wrote about this when it happened and then again quickly thereafter, showing this was just noise. Accusations of fraud were leveled at climate scientist Michael Mann, but time and again he was exonerated: like this time, and then this time, and then this time, and of course this time, and then my favorite, this time.

Climategate was widely denounced as a manufactured controversy, except, of course, by denialists. Because they denied it. That’s axiomatic.

However, like a bacterium festering away someplace dank and fetid, Climategate is poised to infect reality once again: The Guardian is reporting that a second cache of stolen emails has been released anonymously, and once again the cries of conspiracy are being heard. However, it looks like these emails aren’t really new, and were simply from the original stolen batch, but were held back until today. Mind you, the emails from the first Climategate were released right before a big climate conference, in an obvious attempt to derail it in the media. This new batch was released days before a similar conference, in what appears to be a similar propaganda move.

Full Story

Spy Sat Calibrators? King-Sized Jokes? China’s Colossal Structures Confound

2011-11-17T16:17:40+00:00

It´s the latest craze on the webz.
So join in!

There seems to be no end to the weird and king-sized structures populating China’s desert — or to the explanation for these megaprojects.

Take the giant jigsaw-like grids that started the latest wave of interest in these mysteries of the Gobi. Some suggest they are hoaxes perpetrated on the Google Earth-obsessed. Jonathan Hill, a research technician at the Mars Space Flight Facility, notes that the grids can be viewed from space. So maybe they’re used to calibrate China’s spy satellites. In an interview with Life’s Little Secrets, Hill cites this white cross, which was created in the 1960s in Casa Grande, Arizona by the U.S. to calibrate their orbiting eyes in the sky.

But that doesn’t explain this Masonic-looking pair of patterns, etched into the desert. Clearly, there’s more going on than just a spy-cam focal point. Some believe it is the Yaerbashi training airfield of the Chinese air force’s 8th Flying Academy, or perhaps China’s Yaerbashi Test Range. Others wonder if it might be a giant joke played on sat-spotters.

“As to what the figure-8 things and the weird glyphs on the northern chevron are, I have no real idea,” emails former CIA analyst Allen Thomson. “Although it wouldn’t surprise me if the glyphs were made by some people who were bored out of their minds by being stuck out in the middle of nowhere and decided to have some fun with the eyes in the sky.”

If it’s a giant gag, it’s not the only one. Check out all the things Danger Room’s readers have found in the last day, scouring Google Earth’s images of the Gobi.

Full story with pics.

Click on all the links for previous articles and more pics.

Now it´s a matter of time for the first engrish slogans to pop up…