ATS cited on about.com Great Job!!!!!

While having some fun looking at both real and hoax pictures on urbanlegends.about.com... I stumbled across the "Welcome to Kenya, Birthplace of Barack Obama" picture.

Wouldn't you know, about.com cited ats for disproving the image and labeling it as a hoax. Unfortunately, the analysis doesn't credit the the specific user, only the site.

Great job, and if anyone knows who the user was please put it up so we can pass out a big cookie.

Here is their analysis in case you can't or do not want click the link.

Analysis: This is a hoax. First, Kenya's two main languages are Swahili and English. The road sign above contains what appears to be Arabic script. Second, the image was Photoshopped. The original, discovered by a user posting on the conspiracy-theory website AboveTopSecret.com, is of a road sign in Madha, a territory of Oman located in the United Arab Emirates. In English and Arabic, it says: "Wilayat Madha Welcomes You."

Never mind i re-read your thread, I misinterpret something.

[edit on 11-4-2010 by Maddogkull]

that's cool. that this website is credited as a source. that really says something about the quality of members

Nice find!

Here is the ATS thread about the photo.

Member happygolucky seems to be the first to note that the Arabic letters are suspicious on a Kenyan sign, and nefermore posts the link to the original picture in this post.

reply to post by searching4truth


you know what ? this is really funny , this is the first time i see these signs , and if i knew about then when they were posted the first time i would have told every one what every sign said .

the first sign im sure 100% was done with Photoshop because the arabic words were written in the wrong way , from left to right and also letters were separated , i think it was a joke because under Kenya it says Hawai , and the last line says : not the birth place of Barak Obama but the first line says some thing strange like paul has been buried .

ok the next sign is familiar to me, being from UAE its just some 150 Km away from me i used to go there with my friends 25 years ago .

and you can clearly see that both signs are the same .

That is wonderful, we have so many smart people here looking to analyze, disprove, and in general search for the truth, that we as a community come across as no BS takers. It really makes me feel good to be a part of it.

Originally posted by searching4truth
Great job, and if anyone knows who the user was please put it up so we can pass out a big cookie.

I don't recall who the user was, but a user claiming something is a hoax doesn't by itself get a thread labeled a hoax, as I understand it the site owners make that call, so they deserve the credit for making a good call.

If I recall correctly someone claimed a hoax initially, then there were questions raised about that claim, so it wasn't labeled a hoax immediately.

It was labeled an official hoax about the time the "Punk'd" document was posted, so if I recall correctly that may have been the deciding factor though the earlier hoax claims were somewhat convincing they were perhaps not convincing enough until more evidence was presented.

Way to go ATS!

[edit on 12-4-2010 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Yeah, I know the term hoax is used quite liberally around these parts

I asked simply because in the article the website stated that it was disproved by "a user on ats.com" as opposed to a thread, discussion, etc.

Again, great job keep up the good work.

reply to post by searching4truth

Sorry I was thinking of a different Obama hoax in my earlier post, there are so many . Regarding the hoax about the sign, I think credit for finding the original sign photo goes to Neformore (forum moderator) in this post which I copied below:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by neformore
Well lookee here...

Original pic

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d3f36f0ce40c.jpg[/atsimg]

Link to original site.

Kudos to Neformore for bringing some favorable attention to ATS!



[edit on 12-4-2010 by Arbitrageur]