What's Happening? It? (TRIGGERS UPON TRIGGERS)

[Harvey]

Personally, I'd resist every attempt at making this a good versus evil narrative, especially in Christian terms, for the very simple reason it's part of the core power dynamic and as we all know, fighting 'evil' is the single greatest excuse/justification for doing evil in our history. From Rome to the crusades, from the inquisition to the conquest of the Americas, from Nazism to the war on terror. American exceptionalism today thrives on this handy moral exemption for doing just about any evil imaginable and a few which aren't.

A recent blog post from Ursula K Leguin, applicable to just about any active thread on RI from Standing Rock to this one:

The Election, Lao Tzu, a Cup of Water

Americans have voted for a politics of fear, anger, and hatred, and those of us who oppose this politics are now trying to figure out how we can oppose it usefully. I want to defend my country, my republic. In the atmosphere of fear, anger, and hatred, opposition too easily becomes division, fixed enmity. I’m looking for a place to stand, or a way to go, where the behavior of those I oppose will not control my behavior.

Americans are given to naming enemies and declaring righteous war against them. Indians are the enemy, socialism is the enemy, cancer is the enemy, Jews are the enemy, Muslims are the enemy, sugar is the enemy. We don’t support education, we declare a war on illiteracy. We make war on drugs, war on Viet Nam, war on Iraq, war on obesity, war on terror, war on poverty. We see death, the terms on which we have life, as an enemy that must be defeated at all costs.

Defeat for the enemy, victory for us, aggression as the means to that end: this obsessive metaphor is used even by those who know that aggressive war offers no solution, and has no end but desolation.

The election of 2016 was one of the battles of the American Civil War. The Trump voters knew it, if we didn’t, and they won it. Their victory helps me see where my own thinking has been at fault.

I will try never to use the metaphor of war where it doesn’t belong, because I think it has come to shape our thinking and dominate our minds so that we tend to see the destructive force of aggression as the only way to meet any challenge. I want to find a better way.

My song for many years was We Shall Overcome. I will always love that song, what it says and the people who have sung it, with whom I marched singing. But I can’t march now, and I can’t sing it any longer.

My song is Ain’t Gonna Study War No More.

Though we’ve had some great scholars of peace, such as Martin Luther King, studying it is something Americans have done very little of.

The way of the warrior admits no positive alternatives to fighting, only negatives — inertia, passivity, surrender. Talk of “waging peace” is mere glibness, you can’t be aggressively peaceful. Reducing positive action to fighting against or fighting for, we have not looked at the possibility of other forms of action.

Like the people who marched to Selma, the people who are standing their ground at Standing Rock study, learn, and teach us the hard lessons of peace. They are not making war. They are resolutely non-violent. They are seeking a way out of the traps of anger, hatred, enmity. They are actively trying to get free, to be free, and by their freedom, free others as well.

Studying peace means in the first place unlearning the vocabulary of war, and that’s very difficult indeed. Isn’t it right to fight against injustice? Isn’t that what Selma and Standing Rock are — brave battles for justice?

I think not. Brave yes; battles no. Refusing to engage an aggressor on his terms, standing ground, holding firm, is not aggression — though the aggressive opponent will always declare that it is. Refusing to meet violence with violence is a powerful, positive act.

But that is paradoxical. It’s hard to see how not doing something can be more positive than doing something. When all the words we have to use are negative — inaction, nonviolence, refusal, resistance, evasion — it’s hard to see and keep in mind that the outcome of these so-called negatives is positive, while the outcome of the apparently positive act of making war is negative.

We confuse self-defense, the reaction to aggression, with aggression itself. Self-defense is a necessary and morally defensible reaction.

But defending a cause without fighting, without attacking, without aggression, is not a reaction at all. It is an action. It is an expression of power. It takes control.

Reaction is controlled by the power it reacts against. The people who at present claim to be conservatives aren’t conservatives at all, they are radical reactionaries. The position of the reactionary is not that of the agent, but that of the victim. The reactionary tends always toward paranoia, seeing himself as the obsessive object of vast malevolent forces and entities, fearing enemies everywhere, in anyone he doesn’t understand and can’t control, in every foreigner, in his own government.

Many contemporary Republicans have permanently assumed the position of victim, which is why their party has no positive agenda, and why they whine so much.

The choice to act, rather than react, breaks the paralysis of fear and the vicious circle of aggression, frees us go forward, onward.

We have glamorized the way of the warrior for millennia. We have identified it as the supreme test and example of courage, strength, duty, generosity, and manhood. If I turn from the way of the warrior, where am I to seek those qualities? What way have I to go?

Lao Tzu says: the way of water.

The weakest, most yielding thing in the world, as he calls it, water chooses the lowest path, not the high road. It gives way to anything harder than itself, offers no resistance, flows around obstacles, accepts whatever comes to it, lets itself be used and divided and defiled, yet continues to be itself and to go always in the direction it must go. The tides of the oceans obey the moon while the great currents of the open sea keep on their ways beneath. Water deeply at rest is yet always in motion; the stillest lake is constantly, invisibly transformed into vapor, rising in the air. A river can be dammed and diverted, yet its water is incompressible: it will not go where there is not room for it. A river can be so drained for human uses that it never reaches the sea, yet in all those bypaths and usages its water remains itself and pursues its course, flowing down and on, above ground or underground, breathing itself out into the air in evaporation, rising in mist, fog, cloud, returning to earth as rain, refilling the sea. Water doesn’t have only one way. It has infinite ways, it takes whatever way it can, it is utterly opportunistic, and all life on earth depends on this passive, yielding, uncertain, adaptable, changeable element.

The death way or the life way? The high road of the warrior, or the river road?

I know what I want. I want to live with courage, with compassion, in patience, in peace.

The way of the warrior fully admits only the first of these, and wholly denies the last.

The way of the water admits them all.

The flow of a river is a model for me of courage that can keep me going — carry me through the bad places, the bad times. A courage that is compliant by choice and uses force only when compelled, always seeking the best way, the easiest way, but if not finding any easy way still, always, going on.

The cup of water that gives itself to thirst is a model for me of the compassion that gives itself freely. Water is generous, tolerant, does not hold itself apart, lets itself be used by any need. Water goes, as Lao Tzu says, to the lowest places, vile places, accepts contamination, accepts foulness, and yet comes through again always as itself, pure, cleansed, and cleansing.

Running water and the sea are models for me of patience: their easy, steady obedience to necessity, to the pull of the moon in the sea-tides and the pull of the earth always downward; the immense power of that obedience.

I have no model for peace, only glimpses of it, metaphors for it, similes to what I cannot fully grasp and hold. Among them: a bowl of clear water. A boat drifting on a slow river. A lake among hills. The vast depths of the sea. A drop of water at the tip of a leaf. The sound of rain. The sound of a fountain. The bright dance of the water-spray from a garden hose, the scent of wet earth.

[Sounder]

Thanks slomo for the evil Zero Hedge article.

The following is a longer version of a question I sometimes pose to the board, that is; Will a better society be built by having learning spread widely, or conversely, by directing societies development through the desires of a narrow class of experts that function to do the thinking for the rest of us?

(Globalists are passive aggressive ninnies.)

I have spent the better part of the last 10 years working diligently to investigate and relate information on economics and geopolitical discourse for the liberty movement. However, long before I delved into these subjects my primary interests of study were the human mind and the human “soul” (yes, I’m using a spiritual term).

My fascination with economics and sociopolitical events has always been rooted in the human element. That is to say, while economics is often treated as a mathematical and statistical field, it is also driven by psychology. To know the behavior of man is to know the future of all his endeavors, good or evil.

Evil is what we are specifically here to discuss. I have touched on the issue in various articles in the past including Are Globalists Evil Or Just Misunderstood, but with extreme tensions taking shape this year in light of the U.S. election as well as the exploding online community investigation of “Pizzagate,” I am compelled to examine it once again.

I will not be grappling with this issue from a particularly religious perspective. Evil applies to everyone regardless of their belief system, or even their lack of belief. Evil is secular in its influence.

The first and most important thing to understand is this — evil is NOT simply a social or religious construct, it is an inherent element of the human psyche. Carl Gustav Jung was one of the few psychologists in history to dare write extensively on the issue of evil from a scientific perspective as well as a metaphysical perspective. I highly recommend a book of his collected works on this subject titled 'Jung On Evil', edited by Murray Stein, for those who are interested in a deeper view.

To summarize, Jung found that much of the foundations of human behavior are rooted in inborn psychological contents or “archetypes.” Contrary to the position of Sigmund Freud, Jung argued that while our environment may affect our behavior to a certain extent, it does not make us who we are. Rather, we are born with our own individual personality and grow into our inherent characteristics over time. Jung also found that there are universally present elements of human psychology. That is to say, almost every human being on the planet shares certain truths and certain natural predilections.

The concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral, are present in us from birth and are mostly the same regardless of where we are born, what time in history we are born and to what culture we are born. Good and evil are shared subjective experiences. It is this observable psychological fact (among others) that leads me to believe in the idea of a creative design — a god. Again, though, elaborating on god is beyond the scope of this article.

To me, this should be rather comforting to people, even atheists. For if there is observable evidence of creative design, then it would follow that there may every well be a reason for all the trials and horrors that we experience as a species. Our lives, our failures and our accomplishments are not random and meaningless. We are striving toward something, whether we recognize it or not. It may be beyond our comprehension at this time, but it is there.

Evil does not exist in a vacuum; with evil there is always good, if one looks for it in the right places.

Most people are readily equipped to recognize evil when they see it directly. What they are not equipped for and must learn from environment is how to recognize evil disguised as righteousness. The most heinous acts in history are almost always presented as a moral obligation — a path towards some “greater good.” Inherent conscience, though, IS the greater good, and any ideology that steps away from the boundaries of conscience will inevitably lead to disaster.

The concept of globalism is one of these ideologies that crosses the line of conscience and pontificates to us about a “superior method” of living. It relies on taboo, rather than moral compass, and there is a big difference between the two.

When we pursue a “greater good” as individuals or as a society, the means are just as vital as the ends. The ends NEVER justify the means. Never. For if we abandon our core principles and commit atrocities in the name of “peace,” safety or survival, then we have forsaken the very things which make us worthy of peace and safety and survival. A monster that devours in the name of peace is still a monster.

Globalism tells us that the collective is more important than the individual, that the individual owes society a debt and that fealty to society in every respect is the payment for that debt. But inherent archetypes and conscience tell us differently. They tell us that society is only ever as healthy as the individuals within it, that society is only as free and vibrant as the participants. As the individual is demeaned and enslaved, the collective crumbles into mediocrity.

Globalism also tells us that humanity’s greatest potential cannot be reached without collectivism and centralization. The assertion is that the more single-minded a society is in its pursuits the more likely it is to effectively achieve its goals. To this end, globalism seeks to erase all sovereignty. For now its proponents claim they only wish to remove nations and borders from the social equation, but such collectivism never stops there. Eventually, they will tell us that individualism represents another nefarious “border” that prevents the group from becoming fully realized.

At the heart of collectivism is the idea that human beings are “blank slates;” that we are born empty and are completely dependent on our environment in order to learn what is right and wrong and how to be good people or good citizens. The environment becomes the arbiter of decency, rather than conscience, and whoever controls the environment, by extension, becomes god.

If the masses are convinced of this narrative then moral relativity is only a short step away. It is the abandonment of inborn conscience that ultimately results in evil. In my view, this is exactly why the so called “elites” are pressing for globalism in the first place. Their end game is not just centralization of all power into a one world edifice, but the suppression and eradication of conscience, and thus, all that is good.

To see where this leads we must look at the behaviors of the elites themselves, which brings us to “Pizzagate.”

The exposure by Wikileaks during the election cycle of what appear to be coded emails sent between John Podesta and friends has created a burning undercurrent in the alternative media. The emails consistently use odd and out of context “pizza” references, and independent investigations have discovered a wide array connections between political elites like Hillary Clinton and John Podesta to James Alefantis, the owner of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. called Comet Ping Pong. Alefantis, for reasons that make little sense to me, is listed as number 49 on GQ’s Most Powerful People In Washington list.

The assertion according to circumstantial evidence including the disturbing child and cannibalism artwork collections of the Podestas has been that Comet Ping Pong is somehow at the center of a child pedophilia network serving the politically connected. Both Comet Ping Pong and a pizza establishment two doors down called Besta Pizza use symbols in their logos and menus that are listed on the FBI’s unclassified documentation on pedophilia symbolism, which does not help matters.

Some of the best documentation of the Pizzagate scandal that I have seen so far has been done by David Seaman, a former mainstream journalist gone rogue. Here is his YouTube page.

I do recommend everyone at least look at the evidence he and others present. I went into the issue rather skeptical, but was surprised by the sheer amount of weirdness and evidence regarding Comet Pizza. There is a problem with Pizzagate that is difficult to overcome, however; namely the fact that to my knowledge no victims have come forward. This is not to say there has been no crime, but anyone hoping to convince the general public of wrong-doing in this kind of scenario is going to have a very hard time without a victim to reference.

The problem is doubly difficult now that an armed man was arrested on the premises of Comet Ping Pong while "researching" the claims of child trafficking. Undoubtedly, the mainstream media will declare the very investigation “dangerous conspiracy theory.” Whether this will persuade the public to ignore it, or compel them to look into it, remains to be seen.

I fully realize the amount of confusion surrounding Pizzagate and the assertions by some that it is a "pysop" designed to undermine the alternative media. This is a foolish notion, in my view. The mainstream media is dying, this is unavoidable. The alternative media is a network of sources based on the power of choice and cemented in the concept of investigative research. The reader participates in the alternative media by learning all available information and positions and deciding for himself what is the most valid conclusion, if there is any conclusion to be had. The mainstream media simply tells its readers what to think and feel based on cherry picked data.

The elites will never be able to deconstruct that kind of movement with something like a faked "pizzagate"; rather, they would be more inclined to try to co-opt and direct the alternative media as they do most institutions. And, if elitists are using Pizzagate as fodder to trick the alternative media into looking ridiculous, then why allow elitist run social media outlets like Facebook and Reddit to shut down discussion on the issue?

The reason I am more convinced than skeptical at this stage is because this has happened before; and in past scandals of pedophilia in Washington and other political hotbeds, some victims DID come forward.

I would first reference the events of the Franklin Scandal between 1988 and 1991. The Discovery Channel even produced a documentary on it complete with interviews of alleged child victims peddled to Washington elites for the purpose of favors and blackmail. Meant to air in 1994, the documentary was quashed before it was ever shown to the public. The only reason it can now be found is because an original copy was released without permission by parties unknown.

I would also reference the highly evidenced Westminster Pedophile Ring in the U.K., in which the U.K. government lost or destroyed at least 114 related files related to the investigation.

Finally, it is disconcerting to me that the criminal enterprises of former Bear Sterns financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his "Lolita Express" are mainstream knowledge, yet the public remains largely oblivious. Bill Clinton is shown on flight logs to have flown on Epstein's private jet at least a 26 times; the same jet that he used to procure child victims as young as 12 to entertain celebrities and billionaires on his 72 acre island called "Little Saint James". The fact that Donald Trump was also close friends with Epstein should raise some eyebrows - funny how the mainstream media attacked Trump on every cosmetic issue under the sun but for some reason backed away from pursuing the Epstein angle.

Where is the vast federal investigation into the people who frequented Epstein's wretched parties? There is none, and Epstein, though convicted of molesting a 14 year old girl and selling her into prostitution, was only slapped on the wrist with a 13 month sentence.

Accusations of pedophilia seem to follow the globalists and elitist politicians wherever they go. This does not surprise me. They often exhibit characteristics of narcissism and psychopathy, but their ideology of moral relativity is what would lead to such horrible crimes.

Evil often stems from people who are empty. When one abandons conscience, one also in many respects abandons empathy and love. Without these elements of our psyche there is no happiness. Without them, there is nothing left but desire and gluttony.

Narcissists in particular are prone to use other people as forms of entertainment and fulfillment without concern for their humanity. They can be vicious in nature, and when taken to the level of psychopathy, they are prone to target and abuse the most helpless of victims in order to generate a feeling of personal power.

Add in sexual addiction and aggression and narcissists become predatory in the extreme. Nothing ever truly satisfies them. When they grow tired of the normal, they quickly turn to the abnormal and eventually the criminal. I would say that pedophilia is a natural progression of the elitist mindset; for children are the easiest and most innocent victim source, not to mention the most aberrant and forbidden, and thus the most desirable for a psychopathic deviant embracing evil impulses.

Beyond this is the even more disturbing prospect of cultism. It is not that the globalists are simply evil as individuals; if that were the case then they would present far less of a threat. The greater terror is that they are also organized. When one confronts the problem of evil head on, one quickly realizes that evil is within us all. There will always be an internal battle in every individual. Organized evil, though, is in fact the ultimate danger, and it is organized evil that must be eradicated.

For organized evil to be defeated, there must be organized good. I believe the liberty movement in particular is that good; existing in early stages, not yet complete, but good none the less. Our championing of the non-aggression principle and individual liberty is conducive to respect for privacy, property and life. Conscience is a core tenet of the liberty ideal, and the exact counter to organized elitism based on moral relativity.

Recognize and take solace that though we live in dark times, and evil men roam free, we are also here. We are the proper response to evil, and we have been placed here at this time for a reason. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it coincidence, call it god, call it whatever you want, but the answer to evil is us.

[Nordic]

Listen all of this crap we're arguing about is due to one thing: the complete lack of actual journalism in the US.

Journalism is dead. Everybody knows it. It's all "fake news" now.

Which means we're all trying to figure SHIT out on our own. This is literally a crowd investigation. And the vast majority of the people investigating it are terrible at it.

Imagine, if we had journalism, we all might be willing to step back and let the pros handle it.

But that's not gonna happen. There are no pros.

We're on our own.

There's gonna be collateral damage. That's just a reality.

[Nordic]

Okay, ignoring the fact that -- unless you include all the sexually repressed Republican activists, some meth-addled Bible Belt preachers, and a few poncy British Tories who have been shown to enjoy a bit of rough trade with rent boys -- NO cases of Satanic pedophilia have ever been proven...

Kind of hard to watch.

[Harvey]

Listen all of this crap we're arguing about is due to one thing: the complete lack of actual journalism in the US.

Journalism is dead. Everybody knows it. It's all "fake news" now.

Which means we're all trying to figure SHIT out on our own. This is literally a crowd investigation. And the vast majority of the people investigating it are terrible at it.

Imagine, if we had journalism, we all might be willing to step back and let the pros handle it.

But that's not gonna happen. There are no pros.

We're on our own.

There's gonna be collateral damage. That's just a reality.

Part of the problem you've identified is also a basic lack of resources. Web based detective work is fundamentally limited for all the reasons the web is not the world. No amount of web sleuthing can surpass legwork, interviews, trawling through physical records and evidence, visiting the scenes, observing and recording the actors.

All of that requires resources.

[slomo]

Personally, I'd resist every attempt at making this a good versus evil narrative, especially in Christian terms, for the very simple reason it's part of the core power dynamic and as we all know, fighting 'evil' is the single greatest excuse/justification for doing evil in our history. From Rome to the crusades, from the inquisition to the conquest of the Americas, from Nazism to the war on terror. American exceptionalism today thrives on this handy moral exemption for doing just about any evil imaginable and a few which aren't.

Harvey, I hope you actually read the ZeroHedge essay, because the author is careful not to filter through Christianity, and in fact the very thing he says is at issue is our ability to exercise our conscience as individuals.

[Plutonia]

Hillary was in email contact with convicted child trafficker Laura Silsby in Haiti:

Laura Silsby was convicted of child trafficking? This is news to me. I thought she was was convicted of arranging illegal travel out of Haiti after trafficking charges were dropped.

Sorry, b, was in a hurry as usual yesterday. It was Silsbys' lawyer JORGE TORRES PUELLO that was convicted of trafficking: http://theawarenesscenter.blogspot.com/ ... llana.html

Here is a more comprehensive overview of the whole deal from Owning Laura Silsby’s Shame: How the Haitian Child Trafficking Scheme Embodies the Western Disregard for the Integrity of Poor Families: http://harvardhrj.com/wp-content/upload ... 9/King.pdf

On January 29, 2010, less than three weeks after the earthquake, Haitian authorities arrested ten U.S. Baptist missionaries for attempting to take 33 children by bus across the border into the Dominican Republic without proper documentation. A week later, the missionaries were charged with child kidnapping and criminal association. While the missionaries claimed good intentions and ignorance of Haitian laws, Haitian prosecutors argued that there had been intentional wrongdoing. In the course of a month, President Clinton brokered the release of all the missionaries, except for the group leader, Laura Silsby.

While Laura Silsby awaited trial, the press brought to light several facts that raised serious suspicions about her intent to traffic or smuggle the children as part of a grey adoption scheme. In 2009, Silsby visited Haiti
with the stated intent to establish an orphanage. At the time, Silsby faced numerous court cases in the U.S. for bad debt and unpaid wages.

In November 2009, she registered her New Life Children’s Refuge charity at an address in Boise, Idaho, and a month later the house was repossessed for lack of payment. In the midst of her personal debt crisis, the January earthquake struck Haiti, and Silsby organized a mission to gather 100 orphans from the "streets” of Haiti and take them to a shelter in the Dominican Republic. The children would be housed in a leased hotel because Silsby’s purported charity did not yet manage an orphanage or own any property in the Dominican Republic.

U.S. authorities later stated that New Life Children’s Refuge was not listed as a U.S. nonprofit or as a U.S. international adoption agency. In March, after her arrest, evidence was introduced in Silsby’s case show-
ing that on January 26, 2010, she had previously attempted to take a different group of 40 children across the border.

Haitian and Dominican authorities turned her away for lack of authorizing documents. Three days later she attempted to cross over with the second group - the 33 children - again without proper documentation.

After the earthquake, the Haitian government tried to crack down on unauthorized adoptions to avoid child trafficking. In addition, the Dominican consul in Haiti had personally warned Silsby that she lacked the
necessary paperwork to take children out of the country and risked arrest.

On March 17, 2010, after careful verification of identities by the Social Welfare Ministry of Haiti, 32 out of the 33 children were returned to their families (the last one being returned shortly thereafter),
thus confirming that none of the children were orphans

So what should we make of this then?:

1. Hillary Clinton was following Silsby's attempts to "rescue" Haitian orphans since 2001: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/3776

2. Huma Abedin (ex-Mrs Anthony Wiener) was constantly forwarding information about Laura Silsby and her NGO to Hillary Clinton" after the 2010 earthquake: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/2772

3. That "getting Silsby off the hook was one of the first things Clinton did after arriving on the scene in Haiti: https://i.sli.mg/QmbkNd.jpg

4. And that the attorney who represented Silsby was a convicted sex trafficker: https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/32/3 ... aries.html

A Dominican Republic man who acted as legal adviser to a group of U.S. missionaries held for several weeks in Haiti on child kidnapping charges has been arrested in Santo Domingo, local police said on Friday.

Jorge Puello Torres, wanted by El Salvador as a suspect in a human trafficking ring, was detained at a car wash in the city late on Thursday, a spokesman from the Dominican Republic's police anti-narcotics unit said.

He was arrested in the Dominican Republic's capital on a warrant issued by Interpol, the international police organization.

U.S. and Dominican Republic authorities had been looking for Puello after El Salvador officials said they suspected him of being involved in running a human trafficking ring that recruited Central American and Caribbean women and girls and forced them to work as prostitutes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-quake ... ernational)

More: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/79 ... wsrc%5Etfw

ALSO: thank you P. for your even-handed, rational responses here.

I Just try to keep in mind that members of my communities - both on and offline - ARE NOT MY ENEMIES - though some may also be trolls, shills, snitches, sex offenders, disruptive, misinformed, disagreeable, etc. It may be obvious to state, I believe that I have more in common with everyone here at RI (even the shills) than I do with any of Trump's class of rapacious, predatory, untouchable elite mofo's.

[PufPuf93]

It would be interesting to take a list of Silsby's child "clients" (allegedly legal and otherwise already identified as trafficked) and do individual case studies as to where and what they are today (2016).

[guruilla]

Long piece, not exactly balanced but not a complete smear-up job either; a few interesting points. I post it because reportage about Pizzagate is relevant to the cultural phenomenon/public perception that is "Pizzagate," not because I necessarily agree with anything in it.

Belleville woman helped cook up Pizzagate
Writer disavows responsibility for Sunday’s attack, but passed explosive allegations along.

Stephanie MacWilliams, a contributor to the website, Planet Free Will, wrote an article last month in which she recounted a man’s claims about a politically connected pedophile ring housed at a pizza parlour in Washington, D.C.

Following the spread of fake news and “Pizzagate” — which inspired a violent incident in a Washington, D.C. eatery and might have even affected the course of the U.S. election — leads to at least one surprising destination: the home of a stay-at-home mom and writer in Belleville, Ont.

Stefanie MacWilliams, a contributor to Planet Free Will, wrote an article last month that took off on social media. In it she recounted a man’s claims about a politically connected pedophile ring housed at the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlour in the U.S. capital.

Last Sunday, less than three weeks after MacWilliams’ article was published, Edgar Welch was arrested after a rifle was discharged in the restaurant. He later said he wanted only to investigate the claims.

“I kind of wanted to put out the information that was there with the statement I’m not accusing anyone of anything, there’s no concrete evidence of anything,” MacWilliams said Wednesday, adding that her readers were very interested in it.

Among the claims are allegations that aides to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were involved in a child prostitution ring hidden in mysterious tunnels beneath the pizzeria.

Planet Free Will was among the websites recently called out by the New York Times for sharing fake news.

“I was personally a little bit insulted,” said MacWilliams of the label, adding, “Fake news has become used as this ridiculous term . . . it’s the new ‘conspiracy theorist.’ ”

MacWilliams’ article describes journalist Jack Posobiec livestreaming his theories from Comet Ping Pong itself until staff asked him to leave. She writes “we must stress that there is as yet no concrete evidence of any wrongdoing,” but adds, “it is certainly odd that Jack Posobiec was kicked out this evening.”

MacWilliams, 24, began writing for the website earlier this year and is one of its three contributors, along with owner and editor Joe Jankowski, a self-described libertarian who started the website in January as a hobby.

“I would pretty much describe it as a conservative-leaning and libertarian-leaning news website,” said Jankowski, a 25-year-old who works in entertainment and lives in Pennsylvania.

The conspiracy theory — stemming from creative interpretation of well-connected Washington political players’ emails, made public by Wikileaks — abounds on websites like 4Chan and Reddit. MacWilliams said she doesn’t believe or disbelieve the theory but said, “What I’ve been calling for is the media to treat us fairly and to stop smearing us with the fake-news label.”

Despite the fallout of Pizzagate (as it’s come to be known) that resulted in an armed man entering Comet Ping Pong in search of alleged child sex slaves, MacWilliams said she has no regrets.

“I really have no regrets and it’s honestly really grown our audience,” she said.

James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong, felt differently. In a statement on the restaurant’s Facebook page on Monday, he wrote, “I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here (Sunday), and stop promoting these falsehoods right away.”

The story of Pizzagate is about what is fake and what is real. It’s a tale of a scandal that never was, and of a fear that has spread through channels that did not even exist until recently.

Pizzagate — the belief that code words and satanic symbols point to a sordid underground along an ordinary retail strip in the nation’s capital — is possible only because science has produced the most powerful tools ever invented to find and disseminate information.

What brought Welch to the District of Columbia on Sunday was a choking mix of rumour, political nastiness, technological change and the intoxicating thrill that can come from running down a mystery.

His actions in one of Washington’s wealthiest neighbourhoods reminded Americans that last month’s election did not quite conclude the strangest political season in the nation’s history. Welch did not shoot anyone in the disturbance, but he delivered a troubling message about the shattering of trust in a troubled time.

On Oct. 28, FBI Director James Comey told Congress that he was reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. New emails had been found on a computer belonging to disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Two days later, someone tweeting under the handle @DavidGoldbergNY cited rumours that the new emails “point to a pedophilia ring and @HillaryClinton is at the centre.” The rumour was retweeted more than 6,000 times.

The notion quickly moved to other social-media platforms, including 4chan and Reddit, mostly through anonymous or pseudonymous posts. On the far-right site Infowars, talk-show host Alex Jones repeatedly suggested that Clinton was involved in a child sex ring and that her campaign chairman, John Podesta, indulged in satanic rituals.

“When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her,” Jones said in a YouTube video posted on Nov. 4. “Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can’t hold back the truth anymore.”

According to YouTube, that video has been viewed more than 427,000 times.

Over the next couple of days, the wild accusations against Clinton gradually merged with a new raft of allegations stemming from WikiLeaks’ release of Podesta’s emails. Those emails showed that Podesta occasionally dined at Comet Ping Pong.

On Nov. 7, the hashtag #pizzagate first appeared on Twitter. Over the next several weeks, it would be tweeted and retweeted hundreds or thousands of times each day.

An oddly disproportionate share of the tweets about Pizzagate appear to have come from, of all places, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Vietnam, said Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University in North Carolina. In some cases, the most avid retweeters appeared to be bots, programs designed to amplify certain news and information.

“What bots are doing is really getting this thing trending on Twitter,” Albright said. “These bots are providing the online crowds that are providing legitimacy.”

On the Friday before the election, Alefantis, who owns two restaurants on the same block in northwest Washington, noticed something odd in his Instagram feed: a stream of comments calling him a pedophile.

Upset, Alefantis told some of his young employees at Comet Ping Pong about the hateful comments, and they poked around online. They found rapidly burgeoning discussions on Reddit, 4chan and Instagram about a purported child sex ring operating out of their restaurant.

In the final days before the election, other shopkeepers on the block began to receive threatening phone calls and disturbing emails. Strangers from faraway places demanded to know about symbols on their shop windows or photos on their walls.

Across from Comet, at the French bistro Terasol, co-owner Sabrina Ousmaal noticed a disturbing Google review of her restaurant that alleged that Terasol, too, was involved in a plot to abuse children.

Then, more online comments appeared, focusing on a photo on Terasol’s website that showed Ousmaal and her daughter posing with Clinton, who had eaten there several years earlier. The Internet sleuths also fixated on a heart logo that appeared on the restaurant’s site as part of a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which Ousmaal, a cancer survivor, has supported for years.

“These maniacs thought that was a symbol of child pornography,” said her husband and business partner, Alan Moin. “It’s crazy.”

The family removed the symbol from their site, but the online comments adapted to the new reality: Terasol must be hiding something. The anonymous calls increased.

Alefantis and other merchants were mystified: Where was this all coming from? Can’t anyone make it stop?

The merchants approached Facebook and Twitter and asked that disparaging, fictitious comments about them be removed. The shopkeepers said the replies they got advised them to block individual users who were harassing them.

The owner of 4chan, Hiroyuki Nishimura, said in an email to The Post that “Pizzagate reminds me that a country indicated (there were) stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and many people and countries were deceived. It is same old story.”

Nishimura, a Japanese Internet entrepreneur, said the rumours about Comet could be false: “Some people, who believe they do something good, may be deceived by false information.” But, he said, their motive was good; they “did it for saving children.”

On Connecticut Avenue, the hate calls and death threats kept mounting. Surely, the shopkeepers thought, this will all go away after the election.

On election day, Brittany Pettibone, a right-wing online activist in California who writes science-fiction novels with her twin sister, tweeted drawings of children under the label “Sexualized children, child abuse, pools, and bondage.” She wrote that the images were “a look inside Hillary Clinton’s friend Tony Podesta’s house.” Tony Podesta, a Washington lobbyist, is John’s brother.

Pettibone attached the hashtag #PizzaGate. “We need to expose this,” she wrote in another tweet.

Dozens of commenters responded almost immediately. “How do we make this VIRAL?” one wrote.

Several of the most frequent and prominent purveyors of the Pizzagate rumours said they first learned about the supposed conspiracy from Pettibone’s postings.

For a few days after Donald Trump’s victory, a relative calm returned to Comet. But along the block, merchants were hearing from all manner of strange callers. At Besta Pizza, owner Abdel Hammad got an urgent message from the company that maintains his website. A reviewer alleged that his shop’s simple, pizza-shaped logo was a symbol of child pornography. Hammad, an Egyptian immigrant who voted for Trump, was stunned. “It’s a slice of pizza,” he said.

Hammad removed the image from his site but could not afford more than $2,000 to pay for new signs out front.

“Why did you change the website?!” anonymous callers screamed at him on the phone.

“We’re going to put a bullet in your head,” one threatened.

Down the block, at Politics and Prose Bookstore, employees noticed tweets and other online posts that included them on a list of stores linked by underground tunnels that do not exist.

***
On Nov. 16, Jack Posobiec, a former Navy Reserve intelligence officer who had spent much of the previous year as a leader of a pro-Trump grassroots organization, decided he’d had enough of just reading tweets and blog posts about the pizza place in his city.

Posobiec, 31, had never eaten at Comet; he had never even heard of the place until he started reading about it on conservative, anti-government media sites.

Now, with Trump elected, he read the posts more closely. Any story that accused Clinton, John Podesta and Brock of nefarious deeds deserved some investigation, he thought. He believed the Clinton campaign was “full of secrecy and deception.”

It seemed reasonable to Posobiec that Podesta might have organized a sex ring in cahoots with Brock. But the only part of the scenario that was real was that Podesta had been known to eat pizza at Comet. This part is false: pictures purporting to show that symbols, such as butterflies and spirals, in signs at Comet and other shops were statements about pedophilia.

Posobiec said he was curious and confused. He and a friend decided to go have some pizza. They walked into Comet eight days after the election, sat down and ordered. Posobiec got the garlic knots. His friend got a beer. But they were not just hanging out. Posobiec was using his phone to broadcast his evening at Comet on Periscope, an app that allows users to stream video live.

Posobiec said he never made any disturbance inside Comet, but the restaurant’s managers saw him take his camera into a back room where a child’s birthday party was underway. It did not seem appropriate for a child’s party to be broadcast on a stranger’s Periscope feed. The manager asked two D.C. police officers who happened to be across the street to assist.

Posobiec and his friend “were gently refused service and asked to leave,” said a person familiar with the restaurant’s decision.

That evening, after Posobiec was ushered out of Comet, Pettibone tweeted: “You’re my hero for doing this, Jack. Never let go.”

On Twitter, the hashtag #pizzagate peaked in the hours after Posobiec’s video appeared.

On the phone and online, threats poured in, with as many as 150 calls a day.

The shopkeepers approached D.C. police for help. An officer advised them that the online rumour-mongering was constitutionally protected speech. Ousmaal replied in an email that she respects freedom of speech but that “derogatory libellous and hateful blogs and emails should not and cannot qualify.”

The officer, Anthony Baker, responded, “I don’t have anymore options to give unfortunately.”

Earlier this fall, in Salisbury, N.C., Edgar Maddison Welch saw some friends doing drugs and he started preaching at them, aggressively.

Danielle Tillman, 23, was the best friend of Welch’s girlfriend. She said she had just taken acid when Welch got upset, chanting Jesus’ name at her.

“He grabbed my hand and got in my face and was like, ‘Let the demons out of her,’ ” Tillman recalled. “It was super weird.”

Welch, known to friends as Maddison, had struck friends as a sweet young man who’d had trouble finding his way. He had dabbled in acting — his father ran a small movie studio out of his house — and in writing and firefighting. None of it stuck. He liked to hike, long stretches out West, through mountain ranges, over rivers, into national forests.

A few years ago, he told his hometown newspaper that through hiking, he had broken his addiction to the Internet.

But Welch had another habit. He was arrested several times on drug-possession charges and his name appeared on a forged prescription, according to police records. He was convicted of marijuana possession and public drinking and was sent to a substance-abuse program.

Friends say Welch, 28, in recent months grew far more outwardly religious. “He sees himself as someone who is a protector,” said his friend Charles Dobson, 28. “He is just a thrill-seeking guy.”

On his Facebook page, Welch has posted biblical verses and psalms, some related to the end of days, along with photos of his two children. “Only by your power can we push back our enemies,” one verse reads. “Only in your name can we trample our foes.”

A few years ago, Welch told a longtime friend and former roommate, Dane Granberry, about stories he had read online describing miles of secret tunnels under the Denver airport. Welch, who had also been fascinated by conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks having been staged by the United States, had become obsessed with the tunnels idea and spent long hours reading articles, watching videos and searching for details.

“He’s into doing his own research,” Granberry said. “I don’t think he has very much faith in the media, but none of us do.” Granberry said her friend needed to see things for himself.

He showed up at Comet on Sunday about 3 p.m.

Gareth Wade, 47, and Doug Clarke, 50, were sitting down for pizza and beer when a server told them that someone had walked in with a gun. As Welch passed by their table, he told them to vacate the building. They rushed out.

Outside, dozens of D.C. police officers swarmed the area, evacuating businesses and blocking off streets. A police helicopter circled overhead.

Inside Comet, Welch, armed with a Colt AR-15 assault rifle, a .38-calibre Colt revolver and a folding knife, fired his gun two or three times, police said.

Welch, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt, remained inside for about 45 minutes, searching for underground vaults or hidden rooms, police said. At least one gunshot broke off a lock to a door. It led not to hidden sex workers but to a computer room. The bullet damaged a computer tower.

At some point, a Comet worker who had been in the back freezer retrieving dough and had missed the earlier commotion heard the shots and emerged into the restaurant. Welch swung the rifle in his direction and the worker fled out onto the avenue, police said.

Finally, Welch responded to police calls for him to leave the building and surrender. He put his AR-15 on top of a beer keg and his revolver on a table. He came out with his hands up, following police commands to walk backward toward them.

Welch was handcuffed, and Sgt. Benjamin Firehock asked him why he had done it. Welch said, according to the arrest affidavit, “that he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harbouring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there. (Welch) stated that he was armed to help rescue them. (Welch) surrendered peacefully when he found no evidence that underage children were being harboured in the restaurant.”

Within hours of Welch’s arrest, online conspiracy theorists had already decided that he was not one of them. Some suggested he was a “false flag,” a government plant — an enemy of their cause — who had been used in an elaborate plot to conceal the truth.

For years, people have made similar claims about everything from the 9/11 attacks (a government conspiracy to justify war, they say) to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (a government conspiracy to justify gun control, they say).

Now, in Welch’s case, the conspiracy theorists insisted that the real news about his dangerous assault was, in fact, fake news.

Comet Ping Pong reopened Tuesday night; the crowd was large and supportive.

Starting in early November, MacWilliams noticed that stories based on the Podesta emails were making waves. A friend “who knows I’m interested in politics and shares conspiracy things with me” sent MacWilliams stories about Comet Ping Pong.

Then she happened upon Posobiec’s live stream from Comet. This, she decided, was a story. She told the Pizzagate tale in a YouTube video, on Twitter and on Planet Free Will.

In the third paragraph of her story, MacWilliams wrote that “we must stress that there is as yet no concrete evidence of any wrongdoing.” She thought she was being quite responsible. She had read Internet chatter about strange happenings and code words, and she thought this needed investigation. She was miffed that Posobiec had been escorted out of Comet when his video tour might have gotten to the bottom of the mystery.

MacWilliams’s story spread via social media. She became part of what she called a “worldwide citizen investigation” of Pizzagate.

When she saw Reddit and Twitter react to the conspiracy theory, respectively shutting down a discussion forum and suspending the accounts of some users, she worried that a coverup was underway. “As soon as you tell people they can’t talk about something, they’re going to talk about it a whole lot more,” she said.

MacWilliams calls herself a journalist, but she does not try to be “100 per cent accurate,” either. She believes the beauty of the Internet is that people can crowdsource the truth. Eventually, what is real will emerge, she said.

Pizzagate, she said, is “two worlds clashing. People don’t trust the mainstream media anymore, but it’s true that people shouldn’t take the alternative media as truth, either.” The lack of stories about Pizzagate in the mainstream press meant that the back channels of the Internet would step into the breach.

MacWilliams remains caught up in the thrill of the chase. “There is a camaraderie to it,” she said. “It is like sitting around with your friends saying, ‘What really happened to JFK?’ It is like a giant game, especially nowadays when you can crowdsource thousands of emails and figure out what’s going on. It’s like a real-life Kennedy assassination where all the stuff is at your fingertips, and it’s happening today.”

The story is everywhere. Some Americans especially keen on Pizzagate find themselves being accused of being Russian stooges, or of working for hackers intent on disrupting the American political process.

In a small city north of Tel Aviv, in the small hours of the night, Avrahaum Segol, a New Yorker who immigrated to Israel 15 years ago, makes call after call back to Washington. He says he has never been to Comet Ping Pong, but he is burning with a need to know. He found the elderly woman whose family once owned the colourful neon sign that sits over Comet’s front door. Alefantis bought the sign from a defunct liquor store in Adams Morgan.

Segol called the woman and spelled out his baroque story. He quoted from an H.G. Wells story called “In the Days of the Comet,” and he wondered whether the symbols on the sign — crescents and stars — might reveal a message about sexual misdeeds or satanic rituals.

The woman listened to some of this, then told Segol, “You’re an idiot.” She hung up on him.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/201 ... agate.html

[Agent Orange Cooper]

Peter Levenda weighs in on #pizzagate:

Peter Levenda
December 7 at 4:33pm

As some of you may know, I was involved the past few months in a series of discussions concerning satanic cults and pedophilia, in particular the idea that there is an international cabal of satanic, devil-worshipping pedophiles. If you’ve been following this, you know my stand on the issue: that there are, indeed, international groups of those who traffic in children and who are engaged in child prostitution and child pornography rings, but that I do not find that dragging concepts like “satanic cult” into the mix does anything for the children who are, in fact, being trafficked. There is simply no evidence of the existence of a satanic cult specializing in the trafficking of children, and to insist otherwise only serves to devalue the discussion where real gangs and real organized crime rings are exploiting women and children around the world without the need of “satanic” trappings, rituals, or belief systems.

This discussion became overheated in the environment of “Pizzagate”, the inclusion of performance artist Marina Abramovic and Democratic Party officials in that faked scandal, and the resultant shooting this past weekend at Comet Ping Pong (the pizza parlor implicated as the center of this alleged satanic-Democratic cabal of child abusers). My objection to those who scream “satanic pedophiles” and who insist that there is overwhelming evidence of same is that they are using “spectral evidence”: a term coined at the time of the Salem witchcraft trials over three hundred years ago to denote evidence that no one can see except the accusers. Nineteen innocent people were executed on the basis of that “spectral evidence.” Today, Pizzagate is a case in point.

However, to those who still believe in such things I have a suggestion.

(No, not that. Another suggestion.)

You know that I just published a novel about international terrorists and religious groups. One of the groups I write about in that book is called the Yezidi or Yazidi. For centuries these people were considered to be “devil worshipers” by Muslims and Christians alike. They are still considered that way by the followers of the Islamic State, which has undertaken a campaign of genocide against them. Thousands of Yezidi have been slaughtered. Thousands more – women and children – have been taken into slavery, a fact that the Islamic State brags about in their own publications and on-line. Women and children are traded, sold, and bought. They are raped by their captors, and then sold to another set of captors where they are raped again. Prices range from about ten dollars each to more than twenty-five thousand dollars, depending on the desirability of the victim. The children who have been victimized this way already are showing evidence of severe psychological trauma.

There is little information about the Yezidi in the media, other than the fact that they are being killed in large numbers, their shrines defaced and destroyed, and the most vulnerable among them being brutalized in ways I hope you cannot imagine.

But see: here is real proof of the organized abuse and murder of children by a gang of religious fanatics. It is happening now. In huge numbers. And the excuse the Islamic State uses to conduct this barbarity? The Yezidi, they say, are devil-worshipers.

You know. Like Marina Abramovic and Tony Podesta and James Alefantis. Right?

Yeah. Think about that.

If you truly believe in any of this despite all evidence to the contrary, and if you still insist that there is an international cult of satanic child molesters, then put your money where your mouth is. Do something for children who are being abused right now by just such a cult. Take a stand on something real, and help save a child or its mother right now.

You can send a donation via the website http://www.yazda.org. Or via UNICEF.

Do it. Show the world you’re serious and that you really care about children, and that you care about them more than you do your own fevered fantasies. Show the world you have nothing in common with the bigotry of the Islamic State, or with shooting up pizza parlors on the basis of false stories and unsubstantiated, unsupported reports in un-refereed alternate media.

In other words, grow the f*** up.

I officially retract my defense of Levenda in past threads/venues (paging guruilla). Well-meaning or not, this mistakes the point abso-lutely. It reads like something drawn up in a DNC conference room, or by someone who subscribes to the same worldview propagated by CNN. "If you want to do something, donate to UNICEF!" Give me a fucking break.

[barracuda]

So what should we make of this then?:

So much of Pizzagate hinges upon determining motivations. Did individuals around Comet Ping Pong make "baby coffins"? Or was it a coffin-shaped coffee table? Is this notable because it underscores a deviant and nefarious motivation on the part of all persons making or liking or sharing a picture of a coffin-shaped coffee table? Was the intention to do bad things to babies on the coffee table? Or is the answer simply mundane?

So wrt Laura Silsby, her motivations would seem to be paramount. I have no problem with describing her actions in 2010 as "child trafficking". As the Harvard paper notes, it fits the description set forth by UNICEF. Nevertheless, did she intend ill-will towards the children? This is the only question that matters in the context of Pizzagate - was her intention evil, or was she yet another in a long line of misguided western "child saviors" whose fervent Christianity was waylaid by her poor business and administrative abilities and her willingness to break the law if she felt in her heart it was the right thing to do?

This guy doesn't seem to have an axe to grind in favor of Silsby, on the contrary, he's suing her:

"In my heart, I think she probably went down there with good intentions, to help people that were in trouble, but it's a lack of foresight and planning, once again. She did that in her business life and it seems to follow her in her personal life," Bryan Jack, an employee at Personal Shopper currently suing Silsby for back pay, told CNN.

So beyond the obvious systemic issues with the entirety of international "child saving" and adoptions, do you think Silsby intended to sell these children into satanic ritual abuse? I mean, straight up. And if not, how does this event have bearing upon the subject at hand? Do you think the Clintons were just running to support anything that smacks of possible access to children to satisfy their need for youthful bloodletting, and this fit the bill? Because that strikes me as the implication you're driving at.

[Heaven Swan]

Also, just as a status update / preview of how many RI topics will be in the news in 2017: I was asking a true believer what they expected to "get convictions" for, with no victim testimony, and I was linked to this. The victim? Cathy O'Brien.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SNsrPkxMGQ

Not going to embed it because it's an egregiously crappy video.

Not sure if this was posted here, but Ed Opperman claims that Trump wanted to seat Cathy O'Brien in the Bill victims section at that last debate, and his team was looking for her contact info.

Strange days indeed.

Omg. Cathy O'Brien in the victims section... That's frightening. And shows how organized and thought out operation Pizzagate is. Yes, now I believe it's a psyop, not micromanaged in every detail but clearly building on past counter-operations such as the Cathy O/ Brice Taylor one.

This morning I got this video in my inbox from one of my acquaintances that has taken to sending me Pizzagate stuff-

Flat Earth Pedophile CIA SEX SLAVE MK ULTRA Brice Taylor
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=you ... 7NGOI8XCX4

They have no victims so they're dredging up everything related to SRA, like that video upthread, from god knows how many years back, from Australian 60 minutes, about ritual abuse in England that they've relabeled Pizzagate. A clear attempt to associate every conceivable reference to RA with Hillary Clinton and the demoocrats.

Many on this site I'm sure already know this, but from my research with survivors it became clear that Cathy O'Brien and Brice Taylor, who, although no doubt truly suffered under MK Ultra mind control, were still under said mind control when they were wheeled out by their handlers into the public eye with their books and testimonies.

They had not broken free of the MC network and had not fully healed, deprogrammed and remembered what happened to them, therefore the details of their stories are not trustworthy. IOW they were still closely linked with dangerous perps who were (and are) conducting wel-financed psychological operations against the people of the world.

What is their (the perps) game? What are their aims? These are questions that can be researched and analysed without a lot of investigative footwork. It can be done through reading, talking to survivors, and taking a few steps back to look at the big picture.

[American Dream]

Conspiracy theorists: 'Pizzagate' shooting just a false flag


In this Dec. 5, 2016, photo, the front door of Comet Ping Pong pizza shop, in Washington, Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. For conspiracy theorists, "pizzagate" didn't end when a man brought a gun to a Washington restaurant in a misguided attempt to rescue child sex slaves, instead, the shooting fired up further belief in the baseless claims. On blogs, YouTube channels and internet radio shows devoted to conspiracy theories, some see Edgar Maddison Welch as the latest "false flag".That's a term for a cover-up or distraction orchestrated by the government or other powerful figures.

by BEN NUCKOLS, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - For conspiracy theorists, the bizarre rumors of "pizzagate" didn't end when a man brought a gun to a Washington restaurant this week in a misguided attempt to rescue nonexistent child sex slaves. Instead, the shooting sparked discussion that the conspiracy runs deeper.

On blogs, YouTube channels and internet radio shows devoted to conspiracy theories, the arrest of Edgar Maddison Welch on Sunday was just the latest "false flag," a term for a cover-up or distraction orchestrated by the government or other powerful figures. The persistent belief in the false-flag theory shows just how stubborn fabricated conspiracies can be, according to experts.

According to police, Welch drove to a restaurant called Comet Ping Pong to investigate the "pizzagate" rumors that Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, and other Washington insiders were harboring child sex slaves there. Police said Welch fired several shots inside the pizzeria on Sunday with a military-style rifle but surrendered peacefully after he found no evidence of a secret pedophilia ring.

There's no evidence to back up the rumors about the restaurant, a beloved neighborhood institution in the wealthy enclave of Chevy Chase. In the past year, Comet employees have reported a damaged car, a stolen bag and online harassment; otherwise, it's never been the subject of a police investigation.

But to true believers, the absence of proof is just another sign of a conspiracy and a well-orchestrated cover-up.

James Fetzer, a longtime conspiracy theorist who also believes the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, told The Associated Press that Welch's visit to the pizzeria was staged to distract the public from the truth of the "pizzagate" allegations.


"There's no doubt about it in my mind," said Fetzer, a former philosophy professor and the founder of a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. "You see, this is part of the whole idea to smear the alternative media, which are putting out so much more truth than the mainstream."

Welch - a fitfully employed, 28-year-old father of two from North Carolina - is being held without bail. He told The New York Times in a jailhouse interview that he "just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way."

Once a conspiracy theory gains traction, confronting true believers with facts is pointless, said Michael Barkun, a professor emeritus at Syracuse University's Maxwell School and the author of "A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America."

"When you get to conspiracy theories like this, they're closed systems of ideas," Barkun said. "They're constructed in such a way that there isn't any evidence you can present to someone who believes them that will lead a believer to change his or her mind."

"Pizzagate" believers point out references to pizza in Podesta's hacked emails, which were published by WikiLeaks, and Comet owner James Alefantis' ties to Democratic donors. They scour Alefantis' social-media posts and even his restaurant's menu for "code words" and "symbols" that supposedly reference child sexual abuse. They jump to incredible conclusions based on Podesta's and Alefantis' tastes in art.

Fetzer and other conspiracy theorists seized on the fact that Welch had dabbled in movie acting as a giveaway that his visit to the restaurant was staged. Welch wrote a short film and appeared as a victim in a slasher movie alongside a friend, Kathy Sue Holtorf, who told the AP that Welch "never wanted to become an actor."


Blogger Joachim Hagopian, a false-flag proponent, told the AP that conspirators look for "a patsy or stooge" to pose as a lone gunman with an assault rifle. Welch, he said, "fits the pattern" with his acting background.

"He's got an IMDB (Internet Movie Database) profile," Hagopian said.

Conspiracy theorists have made similar claims about parents of the 20 children who were killed at Sandy Hook in Newtown Connecticut, in 2012, calling them "crisis actors" pretending to grieve for nonexistent children. Sandy Hook was a false flag meant to promote gun control, the conspiracy theorists said. Just this week, a Florida woman was charged with threatening the parent of a child who died in the shooting because she thought the attack was a hoax, according to federal authorities.

The ultimate false flag in modern times, according to conspiracy theorists, was Sept. 11, 2001. Some believe the World Trade Center towers were destroyed by the government, using bombs or other means, as part of a plot to justify the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hagopian said he believes attacks since then - including the mass shootings last year in San Bernardino, California, and this year at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida - also were false flags.

Hillary Clinton has been linked by conspiracy theorists to child sex abuse since the mid-1990s, Barkun said. Andrew Breitbart, the late founder of right-wing site Breitbart News - later led by President-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist, Stephen Bannon - tweeted in 2011 that Podesta was a "world class underage sex slave op cover-upper."


Radio host and Trump supporter Alex Jones, a well-known conspiracy theorist, said in a YouTube video Sunday that he believes the claims about powerful Democrats abusing children, but he wasn't convinced Comet Ping Pong had anything to do with it.

"The big bug zapper to distract all the investigators is the D.C. pizza place," Jones said.

The video was deluged by comments criticizing Jones for backing away from the "pizzagate" story.

Conspiracy theories can help believers process genuinely horrific news, such as child sex abuse scandals involving the Catholic Church or Penn State University, said James Broderick, an English professor at New Jersey City University and the co-author of "Web of Conspiracy: A Guide to Conspiracy Theory Sites on the Internet."

"Having a targeted source of villainy creates, in some people's minds, a feeling of control," Broderick said. "Evil isn't random. It's a result of these nameable forces that we can target."

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/natio ... a7c65.html

[Iamwhomiam]

What is their (the perps) game? What are their aims?

To sow enough confusion into the mix to ever allow a "beyond any shadow of doubt" conviction.

[Heaven Swan]

Very good points about motivations and Silsby.

Forgive me if this has already been posted but it's an excellent short film "The Traffckers" about systemic long standing corruption in the world of (or business of) international adoption. Understanding the playing field is necessary to avoid being played.

I'm posting the link. If someone could PM me about how to embed a video here I'll fix it. It never seems to work for me.

http://fus.in/2fkcYpJ

So what should we make of this then?:

So much of Pizzagate hinges upon determining motivations. Did individuals around Comet Ping Pong make "baby coffins"? Or was it a coffin-shaped coffee table? Is this notable because it underscores a deviant and nefarious motivation on the part of all persons making or liking or sharing a picture of a coffin-shaped coffee table? Was the intention to do bad things to babies on the coffee table? Or is the answer simply mundane?

So wrt Laura Silsby, her motivations would seem to be paramount. I have no problem with describing her actions in 2010 as "child trafficking". As the Harvard paper notes, it fits the description set forth by UNICEF. Nevertheless, did she intend ill-will towards the children? This is the only question that matters in the context of Pizzagate - was her intention evil, or was she yet another in a long line of misguided western "child saviors" whose fervent Christianity was waylaid by her poor business and administrative abilities and her willingness to break the law if she felt in her heart it was the right thing to do?

This guy doesn't seem to have an axe to grind in favor of Silsby, on the contrary, he's suing her:

"In my heart, I think she probably went down there with good intentions, to help people that were in trouble, but it's a lack of foresight and planning, once again. She did that in her business life and it seems to follow her in her personal life," Bryan Jack, an employee at Personal Shopper currently suing Silsby for back pay, told CNN.

So beyond the obvious systemic issues with the entirety of international "child saving" and adoptions, do you think Silsby intended to sell these children into satanic ritual abuse? I mean, straight up. And if not, how does this event have bearing upon the subject at hand? Do you think the Clintons were just running to support anything that smacks of possible access to children to satisfy their need for youthful bloodletting, and this fit the bill? Because that strikes me as the implication you're driving at.