Claim On 07/03/2016 in Abu Dhabi Joe Biden gave a speech to members of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, during the speech he referred to the troops as “Stupid Bastards” Snopes …
On 07/03/2016 in Abu Dhabi Joe Biden gave a speech to members of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, during the speech he referred to the troops as “Stupid Bastards”
Snopes Rating – Mostly False
Our Rating – True
Justification
There is video evidence from multiple sources and angles showing that Joe calls the troops, quote:
Stupid Bastards
Joking or otherwise, it was inappropriate for a Vice President to use this term in a speech as a member of the Government. It is demeaning to all levels of rank in the US Air Force.
Claim On 28th September 2020 the mayor of London Sadiq Khan faked getting a flu vaccination. Snopes Rating – None Full Fact Rating – None Our Rating – Partially true Justification …
On 28th September 2020 the mayor of London Sadiq Khan faked getting a flu vaccination.
Snopes Rating – None
Full Fact Rating – None
Our Rating – Partially true
Justification
Sadiq Khan tweeted the following along with a photo
We are heading into flu season.
If you or someone you know is entitled to receive a flu jab, remember you can get one for free at your local high street pharmacy or GP surgery.
Booking one is easy. Just visit http://londonflu.co.uk
In the image it can clearly seen that this is a photo opportunity and not a real vaccination being given.
A close up of the original image shows that the needle has it’s cap on it and thus could not be used to give an injection into his arm as is suggested by the tweet. Also it appears that despite his shirt being rolled back it is covering the intended site of the injection.
This is not the first time a politician has posed for a photo of a vaccination being given, there are other examples of this happening from around the world.
The premier of Queensland, Australia, Annastacia Palaszczuk was filmed in a second mock vaccination shot for the press as they missed the first:
The Ontario Minister of Health, Christine Elliott may also have staged a vaccination injection for the press.
It is unlikely that Sadiq Khan is a genuinely faking his vaccination because he is afraid to take one, giving the mayor two vaccination shots could be dangerous to his health so it is also likely that a press piece would not actually give him a second injection, and instead use a dummy needle for the sake of appearances. However this exercise is misleading to the general public, and should not be done to avoid such speculation of what is obviously posed.
Evidence
Twitter:
We are heading into flu season.
If you or someone you know is entitled to receive a flu jab, remember you can get one for free at your local high street pharmacy or GP surgery.
Claim On 21st September 2020 Sir Patrick Vallance said that UK would see 50,000 cases a day by mid-October unless action is taken. Snopes Rating – None Full Fact Rating – …
Patrick Vallance prefaced all of his comments as speculation that was not a prediction or prophecy, despite it being reported as such.
He said in his statement
At the moment we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every 7 days. It could be a little bit longer, maybe a little bit shorter, but let’s say roughly every seven days.
If, and that’s quite a big if, but if that continues unabated, and this grows doubling every seven days then what you see of course, let’s say there were 5000 today, it would be 10000 next week, 20000 the week after, 40000 the week after.
And you can see that by mid October, if that continued, you would end up with something like 50000 cases in the middle of October per day.
It remains unknown as to why he thought the words of this statement should be spoken, and why it was a good idea to broadcast easily misconstrued information.
Claim In September 2020, Roger Stone said U.S. President Donald Trump should, if he loses the November election, declare martial law. Snopes Rating – True Our Rating – False Justification This …
In September 2020, Roger Stone said U.S. President Donald Trump should, if he loses the November election, declare martial law.
Snopes Rating – True
Our Rating – False
Justification
This story is all about political bias, but if you look at what was said by Roger Stone, it is clear that each statement he makes needs context and that it is preceded with speculation about a discussion topic. Snopes like the MSM websites jumped on a specific part of Roger’s discussion and twisted it for political gain with their viewers/readers/supporters. For example snopes writes:
Therefore, by prejudging the result of the election — stating that a Trump defeat would be de facto proof of widespread election fraud — Stone was in effect saying that the president, if he loses, could and should, under the auspices of martial law and the Insurrection Act, arrest and charge certain prominent figures with election fraud. The news articles referenced above therefore quoted and reported Stone’s remarks accurately.
Breaking this down
Roger has not pre-judged the election outcome, but was having a discussion about possible scenarios as part of war gaming a political mire.
He never stated that a Trump defeat would mean widespread election fraud was proven
He never used the term Marital Law – this is an interpretation
Of course the rule of law should be followed in the case of a discovery of fraud, no-one could say this is unjustifiable.
The quote given by snopes wasn’t the beginning or the end of the discussion and a crucial part was not recorded, which is why context is so important.
Pre-Snopes quotes
Roger was talking about a potential Democratic party coup with Alex Jones and discussed the following.
Roger: The entire coup attempt failed when Nikki Hailey blew the whistle, denied, refused to join the coup and told the president. Not because she’s a hero but because she’s a neo-con looking down the road and understand the popularity of Trumpism within the Republican party
Alex: She knows what happened to the people who stabbed Julius Creaser, it didn’t end well.
Roger: We are now in a situation where they are telegraphing their punches; Trump is going to lose the election, he’s going to refuse to leave the White house, the military is going to replace him. Pelosi has said it, Schumer has said it, Nadler has said it, Schiff has said it, Biden has said it, kamala has.
These statements are scenario discussions based on what has been reported to be said by Democrats. he then war games further:
Roger: You [Democrats] are going to steal the election, and if you think Trump and his supporters are going to stand down and let that happen you are dreaming.
Roger then talks about funding, but concludes by saying
Roger: But I still honestly believe in my heart that if only voters who are entitled to legally vote because they are citizens, vote, and they vote once, Donald Trump will be elected President. The ballots in Nevada on election night should be ceased by federal marshals and taken from the state. they are completely corrupted, no votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case.
Post-Snopes quotes
After the snopes quote ended the discussion actually continued
Roger: I do not advocate preventive detention, but people who commit crimes and think they can continue to get away with it because we have two tiered justice, are just wrong.
The to and fro between Alex and Roger is simply a “What if?” scenario, at no point does Roger stone say he wants Martial Law or that the president is going to enact it in the event he loses the election.
Evidence
The Infowars show archive is here: https://banned.video/watch?id=5f5ab321af4ce8069e7478a0
An embedded clip of the discussion quoted is here:
The supporting evidence snopes provides is commentary by Democrat supporting news outlets, no other Republican supporting view is offered, and thus snopes bias is revealed.
Claim Indian scientists at the following institute and university wrote a paper on the Novel Coronavirus: Kusuma School of biological sciences, Indian institute of technology, New Delhi-110016, India Acharya Narendra Dev College, …
Indian scientists at the following institute and university wrote a paper on the Novel Coronavirus:
Kusuma School of biological sciences, Indian institute of technology, New Delhi-110016, India
Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, New Delhi-110019, India
They were identified as the following people:
Prashant Pradhan
Ashutosh Kumar Pandey
Akhilesh Mishra
Parul Gupta
Praveen Kumar Tripathi
Manoj Balakrishnan Menon
James Gomes
Perumal Vivekanandan
Bishwajit Kundu
The paper was called “Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag” and can be found here on a bioRxiv server:
The methodology for the experiment was sound and the despite this being a pre-print of a scientific paper that had not yet been peer reviewed, the only review comments made that caused the paper to be withdrawn were about the language used in the discussion, and there being similarities between HIV-1 inserts and other organisms inserts.
There was no criticism of the method, the collection of the test data or the tools used, and their computer aided results obtained .
Instead the following critisism was made in: “https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/03/retraction-faulty-coronavirus-paper-good-moment-for-science/”
The use of the word “uncanny” in the title, together with “unlikely to be fortuitous”
The author’s methods seemed rushed, and the findings were at most a coincidence
Neither of these reasons by an unknown reviewer are addressing the data or the findings. They simply chastise the authors for some non-scientific terms being used.
Further criticism was made by Arinjay Banerjee in:
The critique in this piece is that the HIV protiens identified were common to other viruses and thus could not be conclusively shown to be HIV.
indeed it has high identity to the HIV gp120/gag. However, the authors chose to align only this small region and not do a basic check on whether there were other sequences which were also homologous (showing high degree of similarity/identity). As it turned out, the region is also homologous to many unrelated sequences. As such, the conclusions drawn from the data are no longer valid
However HIV had not been ruled out either by this thought process, so the comments were a distraction rather than a real objection.
So we have some vague hand wavy excuses for why the paper was invalid. The following things by virtue of not being part of the review are thus considered to be correct and true:
The correct virus sequences were obtained and were correctly processed
The correct tools were used to process the sequences to arrive at a computer assisted conclusion
The tools were used correctly producing output that is consistent with reviewing scientists expectations
The virus has unnatural inserts that a bat coronavirus wouldn’t normally have
The amino acid inserts do resemble those found in HIV-1
Claim Joe Biden said that 200 million Americans had died as a result of the Cronavirus Covid-19. Snopes Rating – None Our Rating – True Justification There is video evidence of …
Joe Biden said that 200 million Americans had died as a result of the Cronavirus Covid-19.
Snopes Rating – None
Our Rating – True
Justification
There is video evidence of Joe Biden on 20/09/2020 during his Philidelphia rally, stating that by the end of his speech it is estimated that 200 million people (Americans) would have died from the Coronavirus Covid-19.
