A Dangerous Hoax Bomb Plot Of The Statue Of Liberty?

Even though it is still a hoax, do bomb threats like these still pose a danger by starting a dangerous stampede of tourists scampering for safety? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Given the dirty bomb and anthrax bomb attack scares by Al Qaeda on US soil during the first decade of the 21^st Century, the zero tolerance policy adopted by law enforcement agencies on such attack scares – even hoax ones – seem justified. But such draconian policies prove an effective deterrent of such “antisocial activities” such as the recent Statue of Liberty bombing hoax? 

Earlier this year, a man who identified himself as a 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspirator and then threatened to blow up the Statue of Liberty back in April 24, 2015 has finally been arrested on Wednesday, August 19, 2015 by the FBI. Jason Paul Smith, 42, was charged with conveying false and misleading information and hoaxes and could face a 5-year prison sentence. According to a court complaint, Smith said in a 911 call that he was Abdul Yasin, the only conspirator not captured of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Smith was recently arrested in Lubbock, Texas where he is charged with conveying false and misleading information and hoaxes the authorities said. 

Jason Paul Smith of Harts, West Virginia, said he was Mr. Yasin and an “ISI terrorist” when he called 911 from his i-Pad to say “that ‘we’ were preparing to blow up’ the Statue of Liberty,” and FBI special agent Alexander Hirst wrote in a complaint filed in the United States District Court in Manhattan. A federal public defender did not respond to a message seeking comment on the case. The call on April 24, 2015 led to an evacuation of Liberty Island and bomb-sniffing dogs have been brought to make a sweep. The Statue of Liberty was reopened to tourists the next day after no bomb or other deadly device was found. According to FBI agent Hirst, Mr. Smith, who attended a school for deaf and blind students used a service for the hearing impaired in contacting 911 to place his hoax emergency call that got prioritized and thus was only later found out to be a hoax call. 

UK PM David Cameron Hoax Call: Serious Lapse In Security?

Is the recent hoax call debacle of UK Prime Minister David Cameron represented a serious lapse in security of Number 10 Downing Street? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Number 10 Downing Street confirms that the UK Prime Minister ended the call after realizing that that the caller was falsely claiming to be the UK Intelligence Director. Security procedures are being reviewed at Number 10 Downing Street after a hoax caller pretending to be the head of the GCHQ managed to get through to Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday, January 25, 2015. Cameron spoke to the imposter, who was claiming to be the GCHQ Director Robert Hannigan, but Cameron soon ended the call when he realized that he was being tricked. 

According to Number 10, no sensitive information was disclosed during the conversation between the men, which was described as “quite brief”. In a separate incident, a caller rang GCHQ and managed to obtain Director Hannigan’s mobile phone number. 

A government spokeswoman said “Following two hoax calls to government departments today, a notice has gone out to all departments to be on alert for such calls.” “In the first instance, a call was made at GCHQ which resulted in a disclosure of a mobile phone number for the director. The mobile phone number provided is never used for calls involving classified information. In the second instance, a hoax caller claiming to be the GCHQ director was connected to the prime minister.” The spokeswoman said incidents of this kind were taken seriously and procedures were being reviewed to see whether any lessons need to be learned. 

It is not the first time that the UK Prime Minister David Cameron has been taken in by hoax callers and other hoaxers. In 2013, the prime minister wrote a tweet to an account in the name of the Work and Pensions minister Iain Duncan Smith. The account, however, was a spoof – about which Prime Minister Cameron appeared ignorant. 

Orson Welles’ War Of The Worlds Broadcast: Not A Hoax?

Even though it scared half to death thousands of radio listeners at the time of broadcast, would you believe that the now iconic Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast is not considered a “cruel hoax”?

By: Ringo Bones 

Back in 193, thousands of American radio listeners from coast to coast went into a panic when actor Orson Welles’ radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells managed to convince listeners that Martians who looked like octopuses had landed near Princeton, New Jersey in rocket ships. In spite of the radio broadcast’s nationwide success, however, Orson Welles’ men from Mars were not technically a hoax precisely because Orson Welles had no intention of hoaxing anyone. The main intention of Orson Welles was to present a radio play based on what was at the time of the iconic broadcast – a 40-year-old novel.

The fact that people accepted the drama as factual radio news broadcast was purely accidental. 

Psychologists who have studied the affair suggest that the reasons for the widespread public acceptance of so preposterous a tale were due to the widespread public anxiety over the troubled international situation at the time – i.e. Adolf Hitler’s military adventurism in the Sudetenland, not to mention the already widespread acceptance of the radio as a trustworthy medium of information. And another factor for the public’s widespread readiness to believe that Martians actually landed in Princeton, New Jersey as a prelude to a planet-wide invasion was largely due to the recent demonstration of incredible scientific advances of feats once thought too impossible to be achieved witnessed by the public in recent world’s fair expositions. So if one asks when is a hoax not a hoax, the Orson Welles’ War of the Wolds radio broadcast of 1938 is an excellent example.

Heaven is For Real: Latest Literary and Theatric Hoax?

Near death experience over the years might have given scores of people a religious epiphany, but should it serve as a basis for “religious doctrine”?

By: Ringo Bones 

The New York Times bestseller that has recently made into a movie that became a box-office hit during the Easter weekend of 2014 has been now called into question by a prominent Baptist minister from California. Both avid readers and moviegoers had been fascinated by the life of Colton Burpo whose near death experience when he was four-years-old while undergoing surgery for a burst appendix was the basis of a book titled Heaven Is For Real which had been recently made into a movie.

Unfortunately, a prominent radio talk show host named John MacArthur who is also a pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, begs to differ. According to John MacArthur, Colin Burpo was probably “coached” to tell tales of what Organized Christianity’s accepted consensus on what Heaven – a place where righteous Christians are rewarded for living a righteous and pious Earthly life are sent as a reward after they die - looks and feels like. But is Pastor John MacArthur’s “expert insistence” only serves to drive a schism in the global Organized Christianity community?

Given what hard science had recently uncovered on the near-death experience phenomena, using near-death experience as a “doctrinal dogma” for traditional Organized Christianity could drive ordinary Church going folk into agnosticism and even atheism. And this very idea had since made secular humanists cringe at the prospect given the strides science had recently uncovered on the near-death experience phenomena.

Canadian cognitive neuroscience researcher Dr. Michael A. Persinger wit over 300 peer reviewed publications during his tenure at the Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario since 1971 had since become science’s de facto bastion on the scientific and rational explanation on the near-death experience phenomena. Dr. Persinger even established the science of neurotheology ever since he designed a laboratory rig that could induce the near-death experience to healthy, sane and rational test subjects just by stimulating certain regions of the brain via electromagnetic means.

And let not forget the proliferation of herbal natural highs during the past 20-years where psychoactive plants like Salvia Divinorum and the San Pedro cactus – scientific name Echinopsis pachanoi – has been experimented and known to induce visions akin to near death experience. More so the San Pedro cactus ehose common name was due to its ability to make someone who takes it mimic the experience of meeting Saint Peter in the Christian Heaven’s Pearly Gates while being read the Book of Life / Book of Judgment while seeking absolution and redemption for his or her soul. Which makes the Heaven is For Real hoax issue a really thorny one.

Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend Hoax: A Victimless Crime?

Even though the court of public opinion already perceives Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o as in on the hoax, are such social network “catfish shenanigans” truly a victimless crime?

By: Ringo Bones

The story is so heartwarming that during the time when it immediately came out, not a single high-profile journalist made the requisite due-diligence to double – or even triple – check the story of the dying wish of the girlfriend of the Notre Dame football team’s star linebacker, Manti Te’o, to not miss the game just to attend the star linebacker’s girlfriends own funeral. And what makes the said story more heartwarming is that Te’o’s girlfriend passed away within 24 hours of his own grandmother. Even though Manti Te’o’s grandmother is real, there’s now evidence that recently surfaced that his girlfriend is allegedly a made-up social media hoax.

The first journalist who uncovered anomalies about Manti Te’o’s girlfriend was the Deadspin reporter Timothy Burke. And ever since the evidence suggesting that the Notre Dame’s star linebacker’s girlfriend named Lennay Kekua could be just a made-up Facebook profile hoax, the public is now already polarized on either Manti Te’o is generally hoodwinked by some prankster or is in on the hoax himself. Though a recent in-depth report made by MTV a few years ago titled “Catfish” about people who made-up fake Facebook or other social media profiles in order to defraud, make shenanigans or as a result of deep-seated psychological disorders. From this perspective, Manti Te’o could be a genuine victim of social media “Catfishing”. Either way, some of us ever wondered why a “hunk of a jock” named Manti Te’o would ever make up a “fake girlfriend” even though his fame and athletic build makes him one of the worlds eligible bachelors – up there with Britain’s Prince Harry.

Could the “dead girlfriend hoax” eventually spell the death knell of Manti Te’o’s lucrative sporting career? Even though the jury is out on whether Manti is really in on this somewhat bizarre hoax, many now are starting to wonder if the Notre Dame star linebacker is suffering from deep-seated psychological issues and that his deep Freudian scars really compelled him to make up an imaginary girlfriend. Or maybe he might have impregnated 50 or so of the world’s ugliest women during one victory night’s drunken debauchery – only time will tell. 

Royal Phone Hoax Victimizes The Duchess of Cambridge

Did a couple of Australian DJs managed to victimize the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton during her hospital say via a “Royal Phone Hoax” prank call?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though tenured historians are very much reluctant to admit it but so called “prank calls”, or “hoax callers”, had probably been around since everyone started using Alexander Graham Bell’s then newly-invented telephone. And believe-it-or-not, the latest victim of this “phone shenanigan” is no less the currently most beloved British monarch – as in HRH the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton.

During her “routine” hospital check up in the King Edward VII Hospital after a bout of morning sickness due to her pregnancy, the Duchess of Cambridge’s “confidential” medical results were inadvertently leaked by an inexperienced hospital staff who fell victim to a “Royal Phone Hoax” back in Wednesday, December 5, 2012, by someone impersonating to be HRH Queen Elizabeth II no less. The so-called hoaxers were later identified to be DJs from an Australian FM station named Mel and Michael of 2Day FM.

Unfortunately, this resulted in a “royal uproar” given that British laws consider unlawfully snooping on someone’s confidential medical results is considered an invasion of someone’s privacy under existing laws and statutes in the UK. If the House of Winsor ever decides to press charges and pursue the two Australian crank callers to the fullest extent of the law, Mel and Kim of 2Day FM could probably spend some serious jail-time. Although a few years ago, former Republican 2008 U.S. Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was victimized by French phone hoaxers, who are also DJs of a French FM station, claiming to be the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy. 

The American History of the Bathtub Hoax: The Hoax That Refuses To Drown?

Does the famous American history of the bathtub hoax the one that stubbornly refuses to be drowned in spite of repeated denials? 

By: Ringo Bones

According to hoax scholars, the American history of the bathtub hoax is a textbook example of a practical joke-based hoax. Not only does it qualifies being defined as “a deception for mockery or mischief” but also qualifies as something being deliberately concocted untruth made to masquerade as truth. Originated by H.L. Mencken, this “somewhat believable hoax” refuses to be drowned in spite of repeated denials. Originally published as a news article in the New York Evening Mail on December 28, 1917 under the heading, “A Neglected Anniversary” – it states that the first American bathtub was displayed in 1842 by Adam Thompson of Cincinnati, at a stag party, where the entertainment consisted of trying the bathtub out for an actual dip. 

To Mr. Thompson’s surprise, the article states that physicians denounced the bathtub as a menace to health. The state of Boston prohibited the use of the bathtub except under strict medical advice; various states even imposed installation taxes or special water taxes; and in the state of Philadelphia, a measure forbidding the use of bathtubs from November to May was defeated by a mere two votes. Despite this opposition, it was nigh impossible to legislate the bathtub out of existence. Even President Millard Fillmore installed one in the White House after his inauguration in 1850 and took the first “presidential bath”. 

Of course not a word in that very interesting New York Evening Mail article was true. Nearly ten years, however, H.L. Mencken found it necessary to write: “Pretty soon I began to encounter my preposterous “facts” in the writings of other men. They began to be used by chiropractors and other such quacks as evidence of stupidity of medical men. They began to be cited by medical men as proof of the progress of public hygiene. They got into learned journals. They were alluded to on the floor of Congress… Finally, I began to find them in standard works of reference.”

Even today, the “facts” concocted by H. L. Mencken about the introduction of the bathtub into the United States are still finding their way into innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, speeches by prominent persons, plumbing advertisements, official US government publications and even serious books on social history. The American history of the bathtub hoax refuses to be drowned, indeed.