Category Archives: Fake News

We the people of Colorado aren't taking it anymore You work for us!" reads the handwritten line at the bottom of the letter received at the office of Chaffee County Clerk and Recorder Lori Mitchell. Chaffee County may be next!"

Mitchell told Newsline that the warning, in the context of the rest of the letter, might refer to a potential that her office, like the clerk's office in Mesa County, could be investigated by the secretary of state.

But it's hard to know because, after all we've been through, it's just worrisome," Mitchell said.

Earlier in the summer, in response to mounting threats directed at Mitchell, she had bulletproof infrastructure installed in her Salida offices.

In recent days, at Mitchell's request, agents with the Department of Homeland Security conducted a physical security assessment at the clerk's office, where 10 people work, and she plans to make improvements based on the agents' advice.

The typed section of the letter, which is identical in the versions viewed by Newsline, discusses Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold's investigation into an election-system security breach in the office of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters. Mesa County election-system hard drive images were copied and released to conspiracy theorists with alleged participation by Peters. Staff from Griswold's office visited the clerk's office last month to investigate the breach, and the FBI and Mesa County district attorney are conducting a related criminal investigation.

The letter refers to the visit as raids," and it defends Peters, saying she did nothing wrong. Griswold is using a 'Gestapo Standard' of election intimidation" on behalf of a tyrannical, weaponized government," it says.

Enough. There is no more time nor reason to tolerate or negotiate with tyrants," the letter ends, adding a demand that Griswold resign.

Carly Koppes, the Republican clerk and recorder for Weld County and president of the Colorado County Clerks Association, also received a version of the letter. The handwritten portion of Koppes' letter says We the people" don't want voting machines touched or loaded with new software, and it ends, You may be next!"

Koppes said the meaning of that line is ambiguous, but taken with other threats to her office since the November election it's notable.

Some of my colleagues have received much worse than I have," Koppes said.

Koppes, who was born and raised in Weld County, began working in the clerk and recorder's office in 2004. Elections in her experience didn't used to be so confrontational. In my 17 years I have never seen anything like this," she said.

Some of the letters appear to be signed by Katherine Hawkins" and feature a similar style of cursive handwriting. Other clerks who reportedly received a version of the letter include those in Park and Baca counties. Colorado County Clerks Association spokesperson Michele Ames said that to her knowledge a majority of the clerks in the state" received a version of the letter.

Its distribution appears to be part of a strategy by election conspiracists that involves ramping up their efforts to pressure clerks," Ames said.

Since he lost the election to President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that the election was fraudulent. Some activists in Colorado, such as those associated with U.S. Election Integrity Plan, have sought to prove that election systems in Colorado are vulnerable to tampering and fraud, though their claims amount mainly to innuendo, and the most serious actual breach is the one allegedly committed with the help of the Republican Peters. USEIP volunteers have reportedly gone door-to-door in multiple counties asking individual voters to verify their participation in the election. Election-fraud activists have pressured Colorado county clerks to conduct audits of the election.

Clerks expect such pressure to worsen as the next statewide election, on Nov. 2, approaches.

I have no doubt it will escalate," Mitchell said. Clerks are trying to stay positive, check in with each other, offer support when they can."

Mitchell has worked in the clerk's office since 2011 and has been clerk since 2014. Like Knoppes, she said she has absolutely not" seen anything like the recent attacks on elections officials before.

It just takes a toll on you, because you're worried about your staff," she said. You're just worried about them feeling safe at work and you're worried about everybody's safety for real."

A lot of her staff are longtime members of the community, she said.

We're just trying to do our jobs, our professional jobs, and help people interact with their government, and it's like we're just turned into the enemy all of a sudden," she said.

Mitchell is up for reelection next year. Asked how she feels about remaining in office after the threats she's experienced, she said, I'm going to fight like hell and I'm going to win again I have a job to do and I'm going to do it, and I'm going to run the best campaign I can, and I'm going to win."

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.

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Marjorie Greene swears the increase in ivermectin poisonings is fake news but won't say if she takes it - Raw Story

On January 12, 2018, only four days after his 76th and last birthday, British tabloid Daily Mail carried a remarkable headline about renowned physicist and pop-science legend Dr Stephen Hawking. Has Stephen Hawking Been Replaced with a Puppet? it asked. As if it was not enough, it went on: Conspiracy theorists claim the REAL professor is DEAD and a puppet has taken his place and reveal the SIX clues that support the idea. The story is just as intriguing. It claimed that the said conspiracy theorists believed that Dr Hawking had actually died in 1985, three years before his rise to prominence. The geniuses who came up with the story left no attribute of the mans appearance from his teeth to his blond hair to build the case. The good doctor died in just about two months of this story. If I were a scientist whose lifes mission was to make humanity smarter and I saw such overwhelming evidence of my target audience getting dumber with every passing day perhaps I would request my medic to unplug me from life support. Please make nothing of my sentiment. I do not want to imply either that his demise was a deliberate decision or that this story had anything to do with the story. I just wanted to juxtapose the amount of crazy we witness around us with one of the finest minds known to us. No genius deserves such a dumb audience. The story is still available on the middle market newspapers website.

The idea that a celebrity was replaced with his/her lookalike is not new. People have a hard time dealing with the mortality of such icons. To some John F Kennedy Jr did not die in the 1999 plane crash and is in hiding. That his grandfather Joseph Kennedy was a known anti-Semite, a Nazi sympathiser and his father President JFK when young called Hitler stuff of legends in his diary seem to have contributed to QAnons appropriation of the lore. Now this man in hiding is a willing accomplice of Trump and will reveal himself and replace Mike Pence as the Vice President when he takes his rightful place to drain the swamp. The story about Hawking is reminiscent of another such myth. That the Beatles star Paul McCartney died in a traffic accident in 1966 and was replaced by a copy. Why this courtesy was not extended to John Lennon is anybodys guess. You can learn more about this myth by searching Paul is dead on the internet.

Fake news, conspiracy theories and pseudoscience have all darkened our memory throughout history. But in this day and age, it has taken a stranger, more bizarre turn. In 2016, Oxford dictionaries declared post-truth the international word of the year which encapsulates the passing year in language. There is debate about the origin of the word itself and it is apparently traced back to 1992 but it may owe a lot to the works of Nietzsche, particularly his 1873 essay Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense, If someone hides an object behind a bush, then seeks and finds it there, that seeking and finding is not very laudable: but that is the way it is with the seeking and finding of truth within the rational sphere. If I define the mammal and then after examining a camel declare, See, a mammal, a truth is brought to light, but it is of limited value. I mean it is anthropomorphic through and through and contains not a single point that would be true and universally valid, apart from man. The investigator into such truths is basically seeking just the metamorphosis of the world into man; he is struggling to understand the world as a human-like thing and acquires at best a feeling of assimilation. In our own time, post-truth epitomises a lament about the vanishing objective standards meant to discern the truth.

How fitting that Nietzsche would figure into this debate because a recent book flags his work for its contribution to more than just the term. Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right by Ronald Beiner does a great service to its readers by warning them about the perils of reading his and Heideggers works uncritically. Nietzsches critique of modern society, his desire to see a revival of slavery, his contempt for Christianity, longing for pre-Christian Europe all fit nicely into that which is going on in the wests alt-right and neo-Nazi circles. I think I have tried to tackle this issue whenever I have discussed the works of Savitri Devi and her efforts to blend Nazism with Hinduism. It is all a desire to go back to the pre-Christian paganism of Europe by reviving the Aryan myth. This should worry you because it cements my thesis that the source of all Islamophobia, all anti-Christian sentiment and all antisemitism are the same. If truth be told all of it qualifies as antisemitism. Why? Because neo-Nazis have a problem with Jesus, who despite being Jewish in their eyes is common to Christianity and Islam. All Abrahamic faiths are the enemy here and they can be taken out one by one.

The recently concluded US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the re-centring of the terror group IS in the public discourse seems to further bolster my fears about the approaching days. IS is the abbreviation of the Islamic State a name the terror group seems to have chosen with a lot of deliberation as the best gift to Islams detractors. It will be used to revive Huntingtons propaganda against Muslims in the world.

Meanwhile, two trends from our Eastern neighbours are instructive. India seems to be trying really hard to link IS Khorasan Province with Pakistan. Sadly, its own documented links with the group and the attacks by the said body against Pakistan are making this job difficult.

Second trend. You must have seen a viral video claiming that the Taliban hanged a man to death from the US abandoned Black Hawk helicopter. In a tweet, CNNs fact-checker Daniel Dale then shared a story by Alt-News, to its credit an Indian online fact-checker, which showed that this was not just a patent lie but was initially promoted by Indian editors and senior journalists like Sudhir Chaudhary. Hatred, intolerance and total abdication of professionalism and objectivity are making India, once a trusted voice on democracy, a laughing stock of the world. With Indias mighty troll army and its journalists also assuming the role of trolls the threat of fake news and its damage to civilisation is only likely to grow exponentially.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4th, 2021.

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Fake news - The Express Tribune

That Facebook and social media have a very serious problem with misinformation it is something that no one escapes. Since the times of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is known that there are many sources of false news and aimed at manipulating public opinion through falsehoods in all areas. From politics to health (and in this regard we have had very clear examples with the coronavirus), everything has a place on Facebook.

Although Facebook claims to work against this type of content, and certainly in the case of the coronavirus its efforts are being noticed on the network, the truth is that there is generally the opinion that they act too lightly in this regard. And as a result of a peer-reviewed study by researchers from New York University and the Universit Grenoble Alpes in France, it appears that this could have an explanation. And it is that the investigation shows that lFalse information garnered six times more engagement on Facebook than real news.

As we can read in The Washington Post, the study analyzed the Facebook page posts of more than 2,500 news publishers between August 2020 and January 2021. The researchers found that Pages that post more false information on a regular basis get more likes, shares, and comments. This circumstance was observed across the political spectrum, but the study found that editors on the right are much more likely to share misleading information than editors in other political categories, according to the report.

In response to this study, a Facebook spokesperson told the US newspaper that interactions do not represent the full scope of each post. In other words, a publication with fewer interactions could, in reality, have reached many more users of the social network and, consequently, have been more read. However, the researchers affirm that the social network does not provide such information at all.

As an example, the researchers used CrowdTangle, a Facebook tool that offers analytics on posts. The problem is that In August, Facebook cut off this group of researchers access to this data, as well as the library of political ads on the platform. Facebook claimed that continuing to give outside investigators access to the data could violate an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission it signed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a claim the FTC called inaccurate.

If Facebook is acting against disinformation, why are you concerned about this type of investigation? The US regulator has already stated that the justification provided by the social network is inaccurate? They may be wary of your capabilities in this regard, and dislike anything that is known to have become a platform for spreading fake news. Nevertheless, limiting outside research that might help you, it certainly sounds a bit ugly.

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Disinformation and fake news triumph on Facebook - InTallaght

Industrialist and philanthropist Ratan Tata took to Instagram and shared a story calling a viral quote attributed to him fake. He wrote, This was not said by me. Thank you.

In a post doing rounds on social media, the 83-year-old businessmans name was put. The post advocated the use of Aadhaar Card for liquor sales.

The post read, Liquor sales should be sold through Aadhaar card. Government food subsidies should be stopped for alcohol buyers.

It further read, Those who have the facility to buy alcohol can definitely buy food. When we give them free food they buy alcohol."

Public figures have been constantly facing the problem of fake news on social media. Every now and then, a few posts go viral attributing bizarre quotes to them.

Ratan Tata had been a victim of such news last year when he was wrongly attributed for a statement on the downfall of economy. It was claimed in the post that he doesnt agree with the experts on the issue of economy and its relation to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, Tata was quick to point out that he had nothing to do with any such statement. Tata wrote on Twitter, This post has neither been said, nor written by me. I urge you to verify media circulated on WhatsApp and social platforms. If I have something to say, I will say it on my official channels. Hope you are safe and do take care.

With fake news taking over social media, the celebrities have only one way of countering it and that is to release a denial as soon as possible.

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`Not said by me, thank you`: Ratan Tata calls liquor sales-Aadhaar card quote attributed to him `fake` - Zee News

Ratan Tata, 83, has called out fake news in the past as well.

Industrialist Ratan Tata took to Instagram once again this afternoon to flag a quote wrongly attributed to him. The widely-shared quote seems to suggest that Mr Tata had advocated for "liquor sales through Aadhaar cards."

"Liquor sales should be sold through Aadhaar card. Government food subsidies should be stopped for alcohol buyers [sic]," the quote attributed to Ratan Tata read, according to a screenshot the business leader shared on his Instagram Stories this afternoon. "Those who have the facility to buy alcohol can definitely buy food. When we give them free food they buy alcohol," it continued.

Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, flagged the post as fake. "This was not said by me. Thank you," the 83-year-old wrote while sharing a screenshot of the post, along with a GIF with the words "Fake News".

This is not the first time that Mr Tata has had to flag a quote wrongly attributed to him. Last year, he gave a clarification after a post with remarks attributed to him - linking "huge downfall of economy" to the coronavirus pandemic - was widely shared on social media.

Mr Tata, at the time, had people to verify media circulated on WhatsApp and over social media platforms before sharing it. "If I have something to say, I will say it on my official channels," Mr Tata had written.

Yesterday, another industrialist was also forced to issue a clarification on a post attributed wrongly to him. The post purportedly contained some "life changing advice" from Anand Mahindra, but the chairman of Mahindra Group clarified yesterday that he never said those words.

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"Not Said By Me": Ratan Tata On Post Linking Liquor Sale To Aadhaar Card - NDTV

On September 1, Islamist-sympathiser and columnist with Shekhar Guptas The Print, CJ Werleman, shared an undated video on his Twitter profile and claimed that a group of Hindu men desecrated and destroyed a Muslim Graveyard in Nathan, India. He wrote, Hindutva radicals desecrate and destroy a Muslim graveyard in Nathan, India.

Several Islamists picked up the video to defame Hindus. Bibi Sajeda wrote, Are these bhakts agents of urbanism? Which authority has given them this assignment?

Aidarouss Ahmed Hirsi said, #HinduvtaTerrorist militias destroy a #Muslim cemetery in Nathan, #India

Abdul Hameed Lone said, Hindutva radicals desecrate & destroy a Muslim graveyard in Nathan, India. This is a question mark for the international community as to where India is heading in the South Asian subcontinent & u are all silent.

Kamaal Khan, who appeared to be associated with Tipu Sultan Party, wrote, Hindutva radicals desecrate and destroy a Muslim graveyard in Nathan, India.

News Agency MuslimMirror wrote, Hindutva radicals desecrate and destroy a Muslim graveyard in presence of police in Nathan village, Naggar Tehsil in Kullu District of Himachal Pradesh, India.

All the claims made by CJ Werleman in his tweet were wrong. First, the incident is not from Nathan as claimed by him. OpIndia reached out to Kullu Police, under which Nathan village in Naggar Tehsil is located. SHO Ashok Sharma, Kullu Police, said that the video is not from the Kullu district and no such incident took place in the area.

The video is from Nahan, the headquarters of Sirmaur District in Himachal Pradesh, and it does not show a Muslim Graveyard destroyed by Hindutva radicals as claimed by Werleman. Actually, the video shows an illegal majar being demolished by some Hindu activists with the cooperation of the administration. If one watches the video carefully, a couple of policemen can be seen present at the spot. This indicates that it was not some vandalism, but had the support of the administration.

Kamal Gautam, the General Secretary of Hindu Jagaran Manch in Himachal Pradesh had already posted the same video yesterday on Twitter. In his tweet, he had informed that the Sirmaur unit of Hindu Jagaran Manch had uprooted an illegal majar constructed by Islamic jihadis under their land jihad agenda at Nahan. He added that Jihadis were trying to encroach this precious prime land near medical college Nahan.

A report by Punjab Kesari confirms this incident, which says that the municipal board demolished the illegal majar with the cooperation of HJM members. The report states that some unknown people had set up the illegal majar on government land near the Dr Y S Parmar Medical College in Nahan. The organisation had informed the urban body about the illegal construction, after which it was demolished and the construction material stocked at the site were removed.

HJM state secretary Manab Sharma said that some unknown people had gathered construction material to build the illegal majar in the night. After they informed the authorities about the same, the illegal construction was removed in the presence of administration and police officials.

Therefore, the video shows an illegal majar being demolished by Hindu Jagaran Manch with the full cooperation of the administration and police, and it was not a Muslim graveyard destroyed by Hindutva radicals as claimed by The Print journalist.

This is not the first time Werleman has published a fake report to claim there is Islamophobia in India. On several occasions, he had made false allegations that the Indian government is suppressing Muslims. In August 2018, he took to Twitter to wrongly claim that the BJP had banned the slaughter of livestock during Eid. Werlemen also claimed that the Police Officer was forcing an Imam to declare Qurbani is a punishable crime to his followers in the video that he had attached. In the same year, he posted a video of claiming Hindutva fanatics destroying 25 Muslim owned businesses and properties in Aurangabad on 25th March.

CJ Werlemen appears to have a particular grudge against Uttar Pradesh, probably because a saffron-clad monk is the Chief Minister of the state. In several tweets, he had mentioned Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as a Hindutva terrorist.

In 2018, Kasganj Police had to refute his allegations after Werlemen accused them of teaming up with Hindu extremists to target Muslims. In a separate instance, this time not involving Uttar Pradesh, Werlemen used a video depicting the violence during the Bhima-Koregaon clashes in Maharashtra and claimed that it, in fact, showed Hindus destroying Muslim property.

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Columnist with Shekhar Guptas The Print spreads fake news claiming that Hindutva radicals destroyed a Muslim graveyard - OpIndia

Selena Gomezs costar Aaron Dominguez is applauding the singer for the way she handles press intrusion and fake news about her personal life.

During an interview with Insider, Dominguez, who stars alongside the former Disney actor in Only Murders in the Building, said he admired the actor for the way she dealt with fake reports about the two of them dating.

"She deals with it a lot, I'm sure. When you're under the spotlight a lot... that's a pointed topic for her all the time, he said.

Dominguez went on to say that he is unable to comprehend why Gomezs romantic life is constantly falling prey to rumours since she "has so much more to offer as an artist as well."

"She handles it very well, and as gracefully as she does. She was class A the entire time through, he said.

Back in February, photos from the set of Only Murders in the Building came to surface, showing Gomez and Dominguez cosying up for a scene, which subsequently sparked rumours of them dating.

Clearing the air about the speculation, Gomez had told the Los Angeles Times in March: "She was class A the entire time through. I honestly thought, 'No wonder guys don't want to date me!' I think people only care because I'm young, and the older I get the less they'll care. For now it's a part of the job that I don't really like.

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Selena Gomez praised for gracefully handling press intrusion and fake news - Geo News

Media watchdogs have called on government to withdraw the bill, saying it could be used to stifle criticism.

ByJeong-Ho LeeBloomberg

South Koreas ruling party is set to push through a bill stepping up penalties for fake news, with international media groups arguing the measure could hamper press freedoms and opposition lawmakers saying its intended to silence critics.

President Moon Jae-ins progressive Democratic Party used its supermajority in parliament Wednesday to move out of committee the bill to revise the Press Arbitration Act, setting it up a full vote in a plenary session as early as this week.

Under the revised bill, news organizations would be required to issue prompt corrections for the deliberate or grossly negligent dissemination of false news reports. It also calls for up to a five-fold increase in compensation paid as a penalty, if a court acknowledges the publication is false.

For cases that are hard to track the specific damage amount, the bill dictates media organizations to compensate plaintiffs within the range of 50 million won ($43,000) to 100 million won ($85,000).

The bill is meant to combat the dissemination of fake news, according to Democratic Party, which has pointed to what it sees as a rise in news articles often without any attribution that has moved markets before corrected or deleted. Others have published anonymous allegations posted online that have turned out to be untrue or denied by the accused, it said.

The bill establishes public trust in the press and expands the value of free speech, party spokesman Han Jun-ho said.

The main conservative opposition People Power Party called the bill unconstitutional and is planning a filibuster. The Democratic Party revealed its intention to curb the media that reported unfavorable news to them, PPP spokeswoman Jun Joo-hyae said Monday.

Press freedom is a sensitive subject in South Korea, where authoritarian leaders who ruled the country until the late 1980s used their power to stamp out dissent and squeezed the media to be in line with the government.

Media watchdogs, including the Vienna-based International Press Institute, have called on Moons party to withdraw the legislation. At a time when authoritarian governments are increasingly adopting so-called fake news laws to stifle criticism, it is disappointing to see a democratic country like South Korea follow this negative trend, IPI Deputy Director Scott Griffen said in a statement last week.

Moon, whose single, five-year term ends in May, and his party have had their battles with the press. Some of the most heated have come around two of Moons choices for justice minister who were forced to step down in the face of local media reports of graft and favoritism, which eventually led to investigations by prosecutors and charges being brought.

The media bill comes after Moons party put in place a law that took effect in January mandating prison terms for people spreading falsehoods about pro-democracy rallies in Gwangju in the 1980s that were crushed with deadly force, which prompted criticism from historians who saw the measure as an excessive use of authority.

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South Korea faces resistance to proposed fake news bill - Aljazeera.com

Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.

GOVERNMENT'S response to the Covid-19 pandemic is seriously impacted by the proliferation of disinformation, an official of the Philippine Institute of Development Studies (PIDS) said.

"The damage inflicted by fake news can be serious, and its ramifications far and wide as news could travel more quickly on social media, especially sensational stories, which most disinformation producers invent in selling fake news," Sheila Siar, PIDS research and information director, said in a webinar.

Quoting World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Siar said the world is fighting not just a pandemic but also an "infodemic" as fake news is spreading faster than Covid-19.

Based on the definition of WHO, "infodemic" refers to the overabundance of information - some accurate and some not - that makes it difficult for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.

"Fake news can expose individuals and communities to further risks from not following the health protocols and not getting vaccinated. It can also instigate public fear, panic and anxiety, creating a host of mental health issues," she said.

Siar, in her policy paper, noted that false information could also affect the economy.

An example is the "news about the supposed health benefits of certain plants, such as ginger, in preventing Covid-19 infections," which "triggered an artificial spike in prices, causing a global shortage."

Fake news could also cause unnecessary hoarding and panic buying, according to Siar.

In a study she cited, the sudden increase in the demand for health supplies, such as masks and protective equipment, disrupted the local and global supply, resulting in a market failure.

Siar suggested some interventions to prevent the proliferation of fake news.

According to her, there is a need to increase people's awareness, familiarity and understanding of available tools for fact-checking.

She said government agencies, academic institutions and media networks should help in promoting these to validate the authenticity of information circulated on the internet and through social media.

Siar said strengthened citizen engagement is also needed, noting that "misinformation is a whole-of-society problem and not just an issue for the government to solve or for the tech companies to address."

She said it is vital to engage citizens in fact-checking and capacitate citizens through continuous training and education.

Siar also highlighted the importance of developing analytical thinking and digital intelligence early on in life among children, stressing that "based on cognitive psychology research, the propensity to fall prey to fake news is linked to poor analytical thinking and reflective reasoning."

Moreover, she urged the government to include media literacy in the country's basic education curriculum, explaining that "while there is a subject called Media and Information Literacy in the Senior High School program, it is a general course and not focused on developing media literacy skills."

Siar encouraged netizens to make fact-checking an automatic response whenever they receive potentially false information and messages from dubious sources.

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'Fake news threat to public health' - The Manila Times

African National Congress KwaZulu-Natal secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli has denied any involvement by any ANC member regarding fears about a national shutdown.

The African National Congress (ANC) of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) stated that it was not involved in spreading a planned shutdown poster.

The poster, mentions that a planned national shutdown protest will be held outside the party's provincial offices on Monday 23 August.

The African National Congress KwaZulu-Natal secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli has denied that the party was aware of any plans for the supposed march.

When the poster went viral last week, we issued a statement as the ANC to distance ourselves from the post because we are deeply concerned that it included a logo of the ANC, and since then, we have been checking within our structures to ensure that none of our members are involved, and we now know that this is not the work of the ANC people.

In fact, it appeared to us as fake news intended to provoke fear and panic in the province but we are still following it.

Even today we have not seen anything; anywhere including places that were affected in July.

We've told the ANC structures to be on the lookout for anything unusual and to notify us or law enforcement if they observe anything unusual so that we can immediately identify individuals who are doing wrong and determine if any of our members are engaged so that we can take action.

We are very confident that the structures of the ANC would not allow for what happened back in July to happen again.

RELATED: Contact crimes increased by 60.6% in Q1, Cele reveals

Over 300 people were killed in KwaZulu-Natal as a result of violence and looting.

Since then, provincial governments have been under enormous pressure to repair shattered social relations and R45 billion worth of public and private infrastructure.

Listeners on the Clement Manyathela Show weighed in on the possibility of a nationwide shutdown, with many expressing their displeasure with the prospect of the shutdown damaging the country's already struggling economy..

Zuma failed to obey the judiciary system which is why he has been arrested, so people should not be talking too much in his defense. He is in jail and deserves it.

If the government was serious about its counter intelligence effort why have I not received a simple Whatsapp number where we can alert them if we see any inflammatory messages or adverts when they come up on our social media pages.

I think the instigators are not imprisoned because the government is unaware of their identities. They keep making political remarks to give the impression that they are in control when they clearly are not because if they were, they would be in jail right now.

Listen to the full conversation below...

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The shutdown appeared as fake news intended to instill fear and panic - ANC KZN - 702