Beheading hoax
Benjamin Vanderford faked a beheading video:
“It was part of a stunt, but no one noticed it up until now,” Vanderford told The Associated Press after being awoken at his San Francisco apartment early Saturday and informed that much of the world was suddenly under the impression he had been decapitated.
Heh. Rather blasé for the media. Why?
When his political aspirations waned, he decided to distribute the footage on Kazaa, which is used to trade millions of audio, video and software files daily, “to just make a statement on these type of videos and how easily they can be faked.”
Although the video went for months without drawing attention, it spread quickly after it was posted on a militant Islamic Web site that has previously carried claims of violent acts that eventually were verified.
The clip aired Saturday on the Arab satellite television station Al-Arabiya, as well as the Lebanese Al Hayat-LBC satellite station, before Western news organizations, including The Associated Press and Reuters, published news of the unverified beheading.
Well, that’s odd.
August 8th, 2004 at 12:55 pm
He used to have a website for his campaign here, but it seems to have been pulled. It was loading very, very slowly yesterday when I got a look at it.
He labels himself a “progressive,” whatever that is. I did some searching around in San Francisco election databases and found he’s running for a seat on the SF Board of Supervisors. He’s one of about 20 candidates for that particular seat. If you look, you’ll see that the only party designation listed is for “Green.” No one lists as a Democrat, for some reason.
August 8th, 2004 at 10:18 pm
Mike..actually a number of the people running are not only Democrats, but either past or present members of Democratic County Central Committee.
October 24th, 2004 at 9:16 pm
Ed. – Comment from 67.169.8.14 deleted – if you have a point to make, do so nicely. Or do so some where else.