A video was relayed on social networks at the end of last week and contains conspiratorial comments about a boat that supposedly stopped in Sète.
How did Sète find itself at the heart of a fake news story? On November 8, a video was shared on the X account (ex-Twitter) of a certain initiated Citizen. We see him driving a car claiming that a boat would be in the port of Sète “for a week”. And that the latter would be the same as the one seen near the coast of Valencia, in Spain, just before the dramatic floods which hit the region on October 29. To support his claims, the man adds a video vignette of a few seconds (the origin of which is unknown) of the said boat on a dock. He then films the Sète entrance sign on the RD 2.
“It never docked in the port”
In this video seen tens of thousands of times, the Internet user wonders about the link between the presence of this ship and the rains announced in Hérault by Météo France last weekend (orange then yellow alert). He thus repeats conspiratorial remarks having asserted, wrongly, that the torrential rains in Spain were deliberately caused by this boat. Statements which were quickly denied by several national media. RFI revealed that the video initially published dated September 25, 2024, well before the floods, and that it had been filmed in the Canaries.
The vessel in question was identified as the Karadenis Powership Onur Sultan. This floating power plant, flying the Liberian flag, is not used to “control the weather” but to supply electricity to onshore installations. Coming from Mozambique, the boat arrived at the port of Tuzla, in Turkey, since October 16… and is still there according to maritime traffic monitoring sites. Which makes its recent presence in Valence as well as in the Singular Island impossible, as confirmed by the director of the port of Sète. Contacted by Midi Libre, Olivier Carmès ensures: “Given the size of the ship (295 meters by 46, Editor’s note) and the guy on the ship, I can confirm that he never docked in the port.”
The Haarp project, the subject of conspiracy theories
This entire lying narrative is based on the fact that the boat is part of the Haarp project, an American high-frequency research program. This is not the case since this project, launched around thirty years ago, studies the upper atmosphere using antennas present in an observatory located… in Alaska. However, his research is frequently the subject of conspiracy theories, particularly when a natural disaster devastates a territory.
France
