Have you heard about omigod the most totally awesum proof of UFOs ever? You know, that whole UFO thing that happened over the Dome of the Rock in Israelistine? That millions of people saw and now there is no denying it???

Same here. In fact, if it wasn’t for a few stories floating around, the Czar would have missed it entirely.

Anyway, it is, as you suspect, a load of bull.

Benjamin Radford, who does a pretty good job shredding these stories, eviscerates this one over at CBS News. He has all the videos and links you need to see the original footage, and all the evidence that follows that this is, um, not original footage but highly edited footage.

Not so fast: some folks in the video editing business are critiquing the claim that the footage shows so-called motion tiles—evidence that the footage was edited to put in the ubiquitous handheld shake you see. Maybe those folks are right. Maybe the presence of motion tiles is not a guarantee that the UFOs were faked.

So then why do all the videos show the same handheld shaking with the same degree of shake? The Czar and his many cahooters all have home camcorders and cell phone recorders, and none of them shake to this degree. This is because nearly all of these devices have image stabilization built in, specifically to eliminate this.

Ah, but Czar—if you zoom in really close over a distance, slight movements of the hand become huge exaggerations to the camera, and you get the handheld shake. True: but why was everyone equally zoomed in past the limits of their processors to compensate? In fact, an odd observation—all of the purported videos seem to be almost the exact same distance from the Dome of the Rock. No one was closer? No one among the thousands of people in the area had a closer view or the ability to record it? Hell, if the Egyptian revolution taught us one thing, it’s that everybody has a cell phone camera overseas.

Sorry, fantasists: no UFO here. Hoax. Hoax. Hoax.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.