Misinformation Watch

The internet is rife with debate over an Ohio town, with even Elon Musk jumping in on extreme claims over immigration.

The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, reposted claims on Monday from a Republican strategist that 20,000 Haitian immigrants had moved into Springfield, and were killing and eating residents’ animals.

“Vote for Kamala if you want this to happen to your neighborhood!” Musk wrote, later sharing an AI-generated picture of a duckling and kitten with the caption “Save them.”

In a recent speech at the National Conservativism Conference, vice presidential candidate JD Vance urged the audience to “go to Springfield, Ohio.”

It's not the first time the Ohio senator has spoken about the small midwestern city.

In a presidential race where immigration is taking center stage, Vance has frequently pointed to Springfield as a cautionary tale of unchecked immigration: the town of around 60,000 has received some 15,000-20,000 migrants in the last four years, many of them from Haiti.

Residents in Springfield, Ohio, are sounding the alarm about the increase in Haitian nationals overwhelming the city's resources and causing an uptick in traffic accidents. One local's recent post on social media made the rounds on social media over the weekend, stirring up rumors that some of the illegal immigrants were stealing and eating residents' pets. 'Grabbing up ducks by their neck and cutting their head off ... and eating them.' The post read, "My neighbor informed me that her daughters [sic] friend had lost her cat." "One day she...

The petrodollar died this month -- or so I learnt via the financial blogosphere. In the past fortnight, Google searches for “petrodollar” have spiked to a record, and viral posts about Saudi Arabia ditching the greenback have ricocheted throughout commodity and currency trading rooms. Apparently, a cataclysmic event has ended American economic hegemony.



Epochal stuff — and completely false. Nonsense on stilts.

It seemed like big news, and many wondered why the mainstream media had seemingly ignored it. Turns out, there was a very good reason.

Earlier this week, reports circulating widely on social-media platforms like X offered up a shocking proclamation: A 50-year-old agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia requiring that the latter price its crude-oil exports in U.S. dollars had expired on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia’s 50-year petrodollar agreement with the US expired on Sunday, June 9, 2024, giving Saudi Arabia the freedom to sell oil in various currencies. Saudi Arabia’s decision not to renew its contract allows for the sale of oil and goods in multiple currencies, like the Chinese RMB, Euros, Yen and Yuan. This move is anticipated to speed up the use of currencies other than the US dollar in global trade.

The financial markets are bracing for disruption now that Saudi Arabia decided not to renew its 50-year petrodollar partnership with the United States, MSN reported.

This opens the door for Saudi Arabia to sell oil and other goods — instead of exclusively in the U.S. dollar — in multiple other currencies, including the Chinese renminbi, and in euros, yen, and digital currencies such as bitcoin.

Saudi Arabia’s shift to other currencies is expected to hasten the global movement away from the dollar.