Fake Arms Grab memo

One of the really odd things coming out of conspiracist thinking is the idea that all mass shootings are faked. It boggles the mind how impossible it would be to stage a fake school shooting—how many people would have to be in on the conspiracy, and the impossibility of keeping such a thing secret.

Part of the problem is deliberate fakery targeted at the conspiracists, such as this example from 2013. One birther said: “Yes, this is a real document,” pointing to an image, purportedly from the UN Disarmament Commission, talking about a number of gun restriction goals, a nightmare scenario for the pro-gun side. Of course, it mentions “Agenda 21.” One birther remarked:

… psycho leftwing Snopes is already claiming it’s a fraud even though it’s got the UN bar codes all over it.

Here’s one of those codes:

image

I hope that’s good enough for you to scan. When I did, it went to a UN page for a real document. You can select “English” and see that the document is from the UN Disarmament Commission, but it’s totally about something else.

imageWe can determine that the document is a fake because the QR Code doesn’t match the document number on the document. The QR Code on the fake document is http://undocs.org/A/CN.10/L.70 while the plain text on the fake document is L.72 (see at right).  Even if the conspiracy theorist claims that the UN switched documents on their web site, they cannot get around the internal contradiction between the QR code and the document number on their version.

I couldn’t readily find the Snopes article, but PolitiFact rated the story “Pants on fire.”

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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8 Responses to Fake Arms Grab memo

  1. Matt says:

    Doc wrote:

    I couldn’t readily find the Snopes article, but PolitiFact rated the story “Pants on fire.”

    This may be it – from the Snopes message board, (first post on page 17 of the thread) but it links to an article on the main site:

    http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=2128&highlight=disarmament&page=17

  2. Dave says:

    The QR code translates to: “http://undocs.org/A/CN.10/L.70”

    It redirects to a document at the UN website. undocs.org appears to be also a UN website, but it strikes me as odd that the domain name is registered through an anonymous registration service.

  3. vic says:

    Dave:
    The QR code translates to: “http://undocs.org/A/CN.10/L.70″

    It redirects to a document at the UN website. undocs.org appears to be also a UN website, but it strikes me as odd that the domain name is registered through an anonymous registration service.

    I went to the official UN site (un.org) and searched for “esubscription”. The first document returned was for the latest copy of the UN Journal http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/En/lateste.pdf . Near the bottom of the front page there is a blurb:

    “8,734 users have already subscribed to the Journal. Take advantage of the eSubscription and receive the Journal early morning! http://www.undocs.org

    Perhaps undocs.org was registered by a vendor which is providing the e-subscription services for the UN.

    But in any case, like Doc said, it is about something totally different. Unless the birther is worried that the UN is going to take away his nuclear weapons.

  4. Tomtech says:

    4) Recommendations for achieving the objective of nuclear disarmament and
    non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    It appears that there are some people who are worried about the U.N taking away their nuclear weapons.

  5. RanTalbott says:

    they cannot get around the internal contradiction between the QR code and the document number on their version.

    Sure they can: it was deliberately mis-coded to provide plausible deniability in case a copy fell into the wrong hands. The incorrect QR code is conclusive proof that it’s real 😈

  6. Pastor Charmley says:

    To some degree it’s a variation on the idea that the UN is a one-world government in embryo. This of course betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the UN is and how it operates, but it allows for fantasies of blue-helmeted UN troops rounding up patriotic Americans, fantasies that are probably easier to sell than the idea that the US military that is celebrated as heroic, would be the ones doing any rounding-up, and that at the bidding of a US government.

    Of course the idea is incoherent, conspiracy theories usually are when subjected to a truly searching examination, even though their promoters claim to be exercising critical thinking. This is because “question everything” in these cases actually means “question everything the other side says, but not what our people say.”

    One clue to the problem with conspiracy thinking is the tendency of people, as they get more obsessed with conspiracy theories, to think that all school shootings and terrorist incidents are false-flag attacks. This was seen most humorously in the claim that the Boston Marathon bombing was a “false flag attack” before any flag” had actually been announced! Since the people pushing the false flag claims were expecting that the speculation it was carried out by domestic right-wing terrorists to be the “flag”, they were rather caught on the hop when it wasn’t.

  7. Pastor Charmley says:

    Incidentally I note that the right-wing conspiracy nuts are strangely silent on the fact that “psycho leftwing Snopes” regularly debunks fake stories about Sarah Palin and other right wing figures. The reality is that “leftwing” [sic.] here is a “boo word”, a word that tells people that these people are really bad.

    I have taken to referring to the “Snopes is totally untrustworthy” folk as “those who believe that Snopes is funded by George Soros/ Barack Obama/ the Democratic Party/ the Illuminati/ Hydra/ SPECTRE/ KAOS” as a result of the patent folly of the argumentum ad hominem.

  8. Steve says:

    Pastor Charmley: This was seen most humorously in the claim that the Boston Marathon bombing was a “false flag attack” before any flag” had actually been announced!

    A good, solid post. As a Bostonian, however, I didn’t see any humor in anything about the Boston Marathon bombing.
    Otherwise, you’re spot-on.

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