UFO Hoaxes Exposed

In honor of those working to raise awareness of legitimate phenomena going on around our planet, I try to shoot down hoaxes to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Here are two recent fakes.

Kazakhstan
This is in response to a video posted by All News Web. To be clear, I think All News Web is doing great work while posting every vid in the world and letting our intuition guide us.  The original vid is supposedly from Kazakhstan, reportedly shot on May 2, 2011. I semi-stabilized the vid to reveal that the UFO is not stable in the least.


Pay close attention around the :26 mark. The object makes a dramatic shift in position and rotation, then snaps back.

Sorry, guys. This one's very suspect. I believe it's a hoax. I wish as badly as you do that people would stop trying to put fake videos online. They dilute the truth.
 



Algonquin, IL
The details are reiterated in the video, but it seems pertinent to give you a synopsis.  Some yahoo filed a report through MUFON.com yesterday with a fake story to go along with his fake video and fake photograph.  Actually, the vid and pic aren't fake - but they're not of a UFO, either.  Once I raised the luma levels of the images it was very apparent the "UFO" was not in the sky.  The enhanced media exposes a tree line, rooftops and power lines all ABOVE the alleged craft.  Looks like someone just held some blinking lights in place and figured the dark background would look like the night sky. 

Alas, this is the digital age and such obvious fakery is easily exposed. 

It's time to end the death penalty in America

Last week, Amnesty International released it's 2010 report on the use of the death penalty across the globe.  The information should be particularly embarrassing for Americans, as the United States was among the Top 10 countries to use capital punishment. 


The United States of Evil

What could be more humiliating than murdering more prisoners than all but 4 other countries?  Well, the company we're in.  Only China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen killed more in 2010 than the U.S.  We may like to think we're the good guys of the global neighborhood, but we're rubbing elbows with George W. Bush's entire axis of evil.  If one is judged by the company one keeps, we might have to include ourselves on W.'s list, even without taking into account the number of people Barack Obama's America killed last year using the "War on Terror" as an excuse.

Rounding out the list:  Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Bangladesh and Somalia.  It should be noted here that these countries took the lives of around half or fewer prisoners last year than the United States.  I wonder how many war-mongering, death-penalty-supporting social conservatives in America would consider any of the other 9 countries on this Top 10 as having a "culture of life".

Encouraging developments
But there's reason for hope.  Amnesty International notes the global trend is away from using the death penalty. 

At the end of 2010 the global trend towards abolition of the death penalty could not have been clearer... The number of countries that are abolitionist in law or practice has substantially increased over the past decade, rising from 108 in 2001 to 139 in recent years.

Furthermore, in the American state probably most identified with use of the death penalty, Texas, a two-year moratorium has been proposed in the state legislature.  As goes Texas, so goes the nation?  Let's not get carried away.  That said, the state of Illinois just completely abolished capital punishment.  Maybe MLK was right when he said the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, albeit ever so slowly.

One final glimmer of hope is the recent news that Hospira, Inc. - the only U.S. manufacturer of an essential lethal injection drug - stopped making the drug a year ago, and scarce supplies will soon expire.  We have Italy's opposition to the death penalty to thank here.  (Thank you, Italy!)

Ultimately, you can't fuck for virginity.  You can't fight for peace.  And you certainly can't prove killing is wrong by killing killers.  Let's work together for a less evil America.  Support the movement to abolish the death penalty in your state.  Kansas could be next.  Click here to send a message to Kansas legislators supporting a bill to outlaw capital punishment.