This week three media goliaths — Facebook, Google, and Twitter, who collectively act as information gatekeepers for the Internet — announced they would begin implementing censorship practices against news sites they deem misleading.
Websites that publish “fake,” misleading, or even satirical news will now be subject to a sliding scale of infractions that will target ad revenue and social media algorithms. Without ad revenue from monetization platforms like Google Adsense, many of these sites would not be able to continue publishing, and without Facebook’s distribution platform, even sites with good organic reach could find their traffic severely crippled.
“Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose of the web property,” Google stated, following the lead of Mark Zuckerberg.
On a proprietary note, do these companies have the right to restrict users of their services who they deem to be in breach of contract? Yes. Is it understandable to want to exert some control over hacks who manipulate search engine and social media algorithms at the expense of a misinformed public? Yes. Does this exonerate the intellectual and cultural crime of using the specter of online ‘yellow journalism’ to deliver a crippling blow to the revenue streams of independent media…?
The move comes after Facebook and Google found themselves taking a lot of heat after the election. (Liberal) detractors went so far as to blame Facebook and Google for Trump’s win, claiming the constant online echo chamber of sensationalist news, unsubstantiated claims, and apocryphal headlines paved the way for Clinton’s electoral collapse.
The new restrictions will target a wide variety of websites: sites whose editorial content is deemed (by, Google, Facebook and Twitter’s board of directors, presumably?) false or misleading; sites that intend to invoke outrage with clickbait-y titles; and even sites that are purposely fake (such as the Onion’s sister site, Clickhole) for satirical purposes.
The websites on the new blacklist include Zero Hedge, The Free Thought Project, Collective Evolution, Disclose.TV, and dozens of others. The selections run the gamut from partisan propagandistic sites to alternative philosophy and healing resources. Unsurprisingly, alt-right darlings Infowars and Breitbart, both of which will soon wield vast power in the Trump administration, are targeted. In the case of Infowars, one might surmise the conservative Trumpland publication’s insistence that Hillary Clinton’s inner-circle practices satanic rituals had something to do with their inclusion on the list.
Some of the other sites on the list are surprising. Collective Evolution, as an example, may be considered by some to have New Age influences, but many of their articles practice sound journalistic ethics.
Why such a draconian response? Some analysts believe “fake news” had a role in flipping the results of the election away from what the mainstream media had predicted — away from their carefully groomed candidate. Their conscription of Google, Facebook, and Twitter (which may institute something called ‘mute’ filters) in order to exact revenge may cripple, if not destroy, an alternative media infrastructure that has grown into a formidable challenge to the traditional media establishment.
Because of how blatantly fascistic this move is, I struggle to respond to those who say, ‘Well, some of these sites are bad.’
Yes, some of them are, but that’s not the point. The point is that this is a Pandora’s Box scenario. Once we give the Corporate State the ability to curate online content via punitive measures, we’ve bestowed upon them the power to act as gatekeeper for a stunning amount of public knowledge. This is crony capitalism integrated into the very ethos of the fourth estate, using groupthink and the free market to drown out sites that don’t make the cut of acceptable. They will now be able to go through all news stories and delegate carte blanche which ones are “false” and must therefore be algorithmically and punitively castrated. They already used Russia as an excuse to not acknowledge Wikileaks impeccably researched leaks. What won’t they stoop to in order to conceal their future transgressions?
It will actually likely end up resembling aspects of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). In that (hopefully dead) trade agreement, corporate tribunals would have been given the power to overrule national laws that hurt their profits. Similarly, with the “fake news” control mechanism, the political-media-industrial complex will be able to determine which stories are damaging to their geopolitical and domestic narratives and then use Google, Facebook, and Twitter to suffocate any news articles that challenge these narratives. Half-truths and controversial op-eds will be cited as reasons for bans. Hacked information from Wikileaks cables could be cited as specious and without corroboration, or, more likely, Russian espionage (well, if Clinton were still around, at least).
There is another parallel, and it’s nothing less than 9/11 itself. After the terrorist attacks that tragically took the lives of over three thousand Americans, the government used the nation’s fear and collective trauma to ram through the Patriot Act, which created a matrix of laws that has been stripping us of our civil liberties for over 15 years. It appears the political establishment wants to use Clinton’s loss in a similar way: to bottle public anger over the election into the deliverable censorship of grassroots media. I’ve been claiming for months that the government’s next war would be on hackers and publishers of hacked material. It appears I may have been wrong (oops, I guess Google and Facebook ought to break our site over their knee). The next war could be on independent media, who the establishment rightfully believes is one of their biggest enemies at the moment. Who else can expose to everyday Americans that the government and their corporate goon-slaves are full of the worst kind of shit?
Let’s be clear: there are certainly sites on the list that publish bad journalism, sloppy journalism, or straight up lies. And sometimes it’s easy to find them. After all, Professor Melissa Zimdars (who contributed to the list) made the following astute point:
“Odd domain names generally equal odd and rarely truthful news.”
But whether or not some sites practice questionable editorial standards is completely beside the point. By attacking the finances of alternative media sites who publish controversial but well-researched journalism, the government is blacklisting an entire movement. The precedent Google and Facebook will establish with this move will have incalculable ramifications on the future of alternative media and the Corporate State’s ability to censor any story they deem dangerous. This is nothing short of a two-step with fascism.
If they don’t want “misleading” news, they better kill the networks.
Let’s unpack this for a moment and pretend that truthful journalism is really what Google and Facebook are after. If that were the case, they would need to cut off the revenue streams of CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, and all of the other mainstream news channels — you know, the same ones that collectively manipulated us into accepting the Iraq War and the subsequent regime change policies that have killed millions in the Middle East. And, see, that’s precisely the reason the mainstream media would never be held to these kinds of standards: they are a division of the State Department; they help manufacture consensus. You see, their “fake” news is important; the government’s fake news is real news.
Beyond just propagating blatantly misleading and fraudulent news (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the link I just used, which catalogs instances of mainstream media perpetuating false news, is on the new official list of “fake” news), the networks have long been guilty of commission by omission — curating the news cycles so that stories on critical issues like Standing Rock, TPP and others get a fraction of the air time of, say, an airplane crash or Trump’s latest gaffe.
This is Trojan horse for the government
In the Deep State (which you won’t hear even a mention of on network news), the government operates as a series of revolving doors between private defense contractors, media conglomerates, the surveillance apparatus, and giant financial institutions. After the revelations of Snowden (source is another from the list of fake news – be wary!), it became clear that the government was spying on and data mining American citizens with impunity in ways far worse than even 1984 had imagined.
Caught with their pants down, the government stopped, right? No. In fact, they doubled down, except they did something smart: they farmed it out to corporations and created a new synergistic surveillance state. Without Silicon Valley, many of the NSA’s transgressions could have never come to pass. Similarly, the government will now outsource its censorship game to corporations. Ironically, it will be Google and Facebook, two companies that represent the 21st century Information Age, who will be holding the cuffs.
This is another example corporations pitch hitting for the government, and it sets a horrifying precedent.
What can you do?
1. Don’t listen to them. Trust independent media (while being extremely discerning) over corporate media.
2. Help in the effort to create alternative and underground internet and social media infrastructure. A huge part of this is holding independent media accountable to accurate reporting, confirming sources, and obtaining original documents. Alt. media doesn’t have the same financial resources available to them, but with the ubiquity of the Internet, there’s no excuse for sloppy reporting.
3. Support alternative media with donations and content sharing.
4. Boycott mainstream media.
5. Tell Google and Facebook you disagree with censorship.
6. Encrypt (always encrypt). This isn’t necessary for some journalists — but if you are breaking a big story you should be using anonymous web tools like Tor, a VPN, as well as using encryption to transmit and unlock messages. Take a look at the Twitter account of information activist Cory Doctorow. He lists a long string of numbers and letters. That is his public key, otherwise known as asymmetric cryptography, which allows him to communicate information privately and anonymously. In the future, it will be unthinkable for journalists to not protect themselves, their data, and their sources in this way.
Editor’s Note: Though evidence presented may be circumstantial and unconvincing when examined individually and without context, when examined as a network of clues with internally coherent symbolic meanings and direct connections to dubious groups and individuals, there’s a compelling and very disturbing case to be made. While we must not make false accusations against the innocent, it’s just as important not to ignore a preponderance of supporting evidence and allow crimes to be buried. And as growing numbers of people realize, the absence of an official investigation is not proof of innocence. In some cases, especially among the powerful, it supports the opposite conclusion. For clear examples of this, research Jimmy Savile or the Clinton family using non-government/corporate sources.
I’ve created this blog to share the information 4chan has collectively gathered and researched about a suspected pedophilia and human trafficking ring that we seem to have uncovered existing within our DC politicians and the elite class.
It all started with one incredibly suspicious email that had skeptics suggesting they weren’t actually talking about pizza, but rather in code. Here it is;
If this is not speaking in code, then it makes absolutely NO SENSE. Not a single person has been able to offer a coherent explanation on what this could mean if ACTUALLY pizza and map related…
Not to mention this disturbing “coincidence”.
Read the headliner above on the website. “Evelyn is growing up. Soon she will be the queen of the entire US of A. right now, for a limited time only, you can spend some time with her online, raw and uncut. Take advantage of this now, as in the future she will have the power of life and death over you.” FUCKING BARF. The bottom email is from JOHN PODESTA’S email dump by Wikileaks.
In other Podesta emails, a pizza joint called “Comet Ping Pong Pizza” is referenced multiple times. You can find this at Wikileaks Podesta search = Comet
This is where it starts to get weird, and I will try to bring in only the most relevant evidence. John Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and he also served this position for Obama. He acted as a chief of staff to Bill Clinton. He is not an elected official, but it is clear he has real influence in American politics. In the emails, you will read that this Comet location seems to be a hot spot, serving as a fundraiser location for both Obama and Hillary Clinton. Why would they choose a pizza joint supposedly kid-friendly with the main attraction being PING PONG TABLES IN THE BASEMENT??
First suspicious activity is merely its location. Check out these FBI issued known pedophilia symbology:
Comet Pizza is located right across the street from “Beyond Borders”, which says on its website it works to “end child slavery and violence against girls” in Haiti and it is a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation Charity. Confirmation of these facts can be found by visiting this website: Beyond Borders
Okay, so all coincidence so far. Let’s take a look at the symbology seen in this area. First Comet Ping Pong’s storefront:
Weird, but proves nothing. But wait, let’s look at the Besta Pizza symbol (two stores down from Comet and owned by DOJ employee Andrew Kline).
Please refer back up to known pedophile symbology. This one is so blatantly obvious, it’s disgusting. But anyone could say this is all just speculation. UPDATE: BESTA HAS CHANGED THEIR LOGO
Let’s look across the street, at the Terasol Bistro and Artisan Gallery that is two stores away from Clinton’s Beyond Borders. This was found on their website. Please look toward the bottom.
An adult hand with a kid’s hand inside known pedo symbol for little girl lovers – the double heart. GIVE ME A BREAK. These people are hiding in plain sight. But okay, I know everything continues to be just speculation. Now it’s going to take a turn for the ugly, and VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. THESE IMAGES CONTAIN DISTURBING MATERIAL.
The owner of Comet Ping Pong is James Alefantis. James also owns the “Bucks Fishing and Camping” store that advertises cutting meat with a machete…
James “jimmycomet” is the ex-lover of Correct the Record’s David Brock (a pro-Hillary super PAC which has gone on record stating it funds millions of dollars for online trolls to confront anyone talking negatively about Hillary Clinton on social media such as Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and yes, even 4chan). We happened to find his Instagram… and this is when it starts to get very disturbing.
Here we see a unique Jeffrey Dahmer sculpture posted on James’ Instagram. This is important because the owner of this one-of-a-kind art piece is none other than Tony Podesta (John Podesta’s brother). In the comments, he even admits this is indeed at Tony’s house. Check out the Washington Post article talking about Tony’s “art”.
Tony also mentions in a different article one of his favorite artists is Biljana Djurdjevic. Link: Tony Podesta Article
Here’s a quick look at her art. If this woman isn’t/wasn’t a victim, I will eat my own shoe. (Material copyright of Biljana Djurdjevic)
It is interesting to look at Kim Noble’s art, who is known for suffering Satanic Ritual Abuse and her personality has permanently splintered into different entities. In this painting, you can see five adults standing in what looks to be a pentagram. Below the child being raped, there is a handkerchief and this appears in multiple of Kim’s paintings. Apparently the handkerchiefs are put under the child to collect blood/semen as a token or “map”. Hmm, where else have we heard about a handkerchief recently?
Okay, so back to the owner of Comet Ping Pong Pizza. Let’s take a look at some of his Instagram postings, and please tell me it does not make your skin crawl. Oh and is anybody surprised he’s a fan/friend of Marina Abramovic, Ms. Satanic Spirit Cooker herself? Marina Spirit Cooking You know, the woman who we recently learned through Podesta leaks likes to hold private Spirit Cooking nights at her house and invites the Podestas? On a reddit AMA, she even admitted herself, if these rituals are performed in a gallery, it is art, but if in private or even on TV or film, it is NOT art. Then what is it Marina? C’mon people, don’t be blind.
Oh and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence this she-beast hangs out with top celebrities like Lady Gaga, Beyonce and JayZ. Totally normal stuff, guys. More concerning, though, is that she hangs out with John Podesta and Hillary Clinton…
BACK TO COMET PIZZA/JAMES ALEFANTIS FOR REAL THIS TIME
About four years ago, a random baby pops up on his feed. Read the comment “cuteness is very serious business.. Seriously”. Sure, not too disturbing until you look at this pic:
Not too disturbing? THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.
Notice someone even says “this is pretty creepy bro” in the comments. Ping pong table in the background…
La boum boum is apparently slang for prostitution in Thailand (?). Regardless, I don’t think there should be any location in a “kid-friendly” restaurant with NO CELL PHONE USE ALLOWED :,(
Here’s a compilation from 4chan.
Notice in the lower left corner, there is a picture of a freezer room. James captions it “ohh looks like fun”, a friend comments #killroom and #murder. Going to the friend’s Instagram, you will find pictures of baby coffins. Can’t make this shit up, people. I’ll search for a pic for proof on 4chan, I didn’t screenshot earlier because I thought people were just posting joke pics at first.
It gets weirder. Anon found the Instagram of a person named Josh who works at Comet Ping Pong. Check this out:
Notice he even tags Comet Ping Pong as the location? “CUM VISIT”. And I’m not sure how accurate because I didn’t want to Google it, but someone on 4chan said honey has a specific connotation in the pedo world.
Here’s the owner again wearing “little boy lover” glasses.
I am going to move away from the owner of Comet Pizza now, although there is other very weird things going on there but I can’t cover it all.
Comet pretends to be kid friendly, yet a woman named Sasha Lord designs these really messed up posters to promote upcoming bands playing.
Notice how the poster looks a lot like the Jeffrey Dahmer art. Also, on the pizza poster, WHAT THE FUCK IS PIZZA EXORCISM? And why is it all ages? Internet searching the band Heavy Breathing returns interesting results. A member of the band is named Amanda Kleinman. Check out one of her many creepy Youtube videos where she refers to herself as “puppet” and literally talks like a baby (using w’s instead of l’s, etc.). I chose this video because she has drawn what is known as a “Changeling” – a spirit that steals a human child and replaces it. Google it. Fucking creepy. Creepy Klein Video
Okay so at very best, these are very odd, Satanic type people. At worst, they are part of a massive pedophile and human trafficking ring that involves some of the world’s most powerful people. Is it a coincidence Clinton Foundation only works in countries that do not issue birth certificates? Or that Bill Clinton rode on Epstein’s ‘Lolita Express’ 26 times (that we know of)?
Even creepier is that we KNOW there are underground tunnels in DC, and there are some very close to Connecticut Ave. Look at what the owner posted:
What are they doing? Notice the ping pong table against the wall? UPDATE: Anon said they checked with the city, and neither Comet Pizza or neighboring businesses have filed a building permit within the last three years. It is off record whatever they had done here.
Knowing all this, it may become creepier to see that John Podesta has a piece or artwork in his office portraying cannibalism.. Below is a real picture from his office published in an interview with his face photoshopped in so casual observers know who this art belongs to.
Another name of interest is Rachel Chandler. She is pictured here with Bill Clinton at what most expect is age 15. She even writes on her Instagram (before it went private) that she was only 15 when she was pictured with P. Diddy, Eminem. Now on her tumbler and Instagram, there are photos of random naked children. Rachel “Child Handler” Tumbler We believe she is now involved in recruiting. The evidence on Instagram was more damning, but we can no longer access her posts.
Researching Bill we have also encountered the name Kevin Reynolds who is involved in some “East Hampton Babysitters” business with a website that also connects to a masseuse business…
It doesn’t stop there. Look close enough and you may see it in places you’d never believe.
Actual friendship bracelet these sick fucks made public
This is very disturbing stuff, and I believe any sane citizen can connect these dots and say something very sinister is happening. I am honestly horribly frightened at what we’ve uncovered, and I fear for the life of those who try to expose it, including my own.
UPDATE 11/9 – Anon has learned of a password secured area for Comet Pizza http://www.cometpingpong.com/protected This is extremely odd for a pizza place. Within hours, Anon had infiltrated the servers. I’m not a hacker, so I’m just relaying information here, but it seems there is extensive security which even our best men have not been able to breach. ALL THAT TO PROTECT A PIZZA JOINT? They have confirmed the coded files names able to be viewed but not downloaded are video files.
UPDATE 11/10 – Besta Pizza officially changed their logo. Dr. Pong Site is hosted by the same admin that hosts cometpingpong.com. They advertise on a menu “sticky as a long, slow summertime fuck – 10,000”. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK.
UPDATE 11/12 – 4chan was under DDoS attack yesterday. This began around the time we discovered two things: 1) the images in Podesta Wikileaks may contain hidden information through steganography. So far we have not been able to extract the data, but it seems a promising lead. Many suspect if extracted, we would find the smoking gun – child porn. Obviously this is just speculation at this point. 2) The name Arun Rao is connected through James Alefantis’ Instagram. He works for the DOJ and he is responsible for prosecuting human traffickers.
^Best pic I have for now. Will do a better version when I get back from a conference I have to attend this week.
Anyways, 4chan mods started deleting the 100+ thread archives of over five days worth of collective investigative research. Some of this information is likely lost forever. We had a huge crowd sourced investigation, like nothing ever undertaken before with hundreds of leads and connections documented, and now most threads are gone. 4chan also started banning users randomly. I opened up a new thread, posted a few pics like I had been doing for days now related to Podesta, and suddenly I was given a four day ban on posting. They are definitely trying to silence us, there is no doubt. If that is not admission of guilt, I’m not sure what is.
UPDATE 11/17 – A woman by the name of Monica Petersen who was investigating child trafficking in Haiti in possible connection to the Clintons has been reported deceased. Officials refuse to give family any additional information. This was confirmed through her personal Facebook page.
UPDATE 11/21 – SMOKING GUN FOUND. Anonymous member 0hour found multiple Twitter accounts with ACTUAL child porn posted. Please remember that Twitter has banned people like Milo for ‘saying mean things’, yet somehow these accounts remained. Before being banned, 0hour had linked to one username saying it was an FBI account. People in the comments confirmed there was a baby with an adult male penis being inserted into its mouth and other videos. The account was eventually suspended. People ended up finding 100’s of pedophile/child porn accounts by looking through the followers of the username 0hour posted. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE 0HOUR!
I also read that 2GB of child porn was obtained by Anon from WeThePizza’s website. I have not seen confirmation of this yet, though. Quite frankly, I hope not to. This entire experience has shaken me to the core.
If you would like further information, please visit
for a comprehensive review of connections and links by this amazing, now international crowd-sourced investigation.
20:46 Update 11/21 DON’T WORRY FOLKS, NYTIMES SAYS IT’S FAKE AND WE SHOULD FEEL BAD FOR THE PEDOS https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/fact-check-this-pizzeria-is-not-a-child-trafficking-site.amp.html?client=safari
UPDATE 11/22 – The powers that be just shut down the sub Reddit r/pizzagate, but they let r/pedofiends exist. THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MINUTE. 1984 is real, folks. Deleting subreddits and 4chan threads surely just SCREAMS innocent, right??
UPDATE 11/23 – We are being bombarded by trolls continually gaslighting the accounts talking about PizzaGate online. Who pays these people? Only ad hominem attacks, nothing of real merit. Trust me, I do NOT want all this to be true, but until someone can explain the code talk, the Instagram pictures, the bands and businesses with all the pedophile symbols, I have to assume this is AT MINIMUM very important to look into. I keep reading the same robotic talking points, “This is a 4chan hoax!”. In response, I say Wikileaks emails are 100% accurate. The screenshots of James Alefantis’ Instagram are 100% genuine (I saw them personally before he went private). All other information is available online to confirm for yourself, please DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE SPREADING DISINFORMATION THAT THIS BLOG CONTAINS FAKE NEWS. The only thing I can not 100% verify the source from is the Obama picture. Some Anon posted it on 4chan and I haven’t seen any other sites reference it. Was it FBIAnon helping us out?
And if you still are not convinced, I challenge you to do your own fact checking and research. Basically the connections are so vast, there is no way to accurately summarize it in an essay meant to capture the immediate attention of the public. FBIAnon was right… It is like a spiderweb; it connects to powerful people not just around America but around the entire globe. Norway and Australia both recently exposed pedophile rings in high places. Soon it will be our turn to finally bring justice to some of the most heinous of crimes (and I use justice loosely, because there is NOTHING that will ever help these poor children to live a normal life after what they’ve been exposed to).
UPDATE 11/24 – Reddit CEO, username spez, admits to EDITING user comments without admin permission. Suspected Media Matters (connected to Alefantis’ ex-lover David Brock) disinformation talking points identified and seem to be taken straight from Saul Alinsky’s playbook which is dedicated to Lucifer:
Accuse the accusers of what you are guilty of
Gaslighting (making one question one’s sanity)
Discredit source: 4chan hoax, autistic troll, obsessed with pedophiles, conspiracy theorist, alt-right, internet sleuths, psyop to false flag for fake news suppression etc.
Do not acknowledge evidence, EVER
THEY JUST LIKE PIZZA OKAY?
Please take this knowledge with you when on social media. Do not engage the trolls – just block them, otherwise they SUCCEED BY DISTRACTING YOU FROM INFORMING REAL PEOPLE. #PizzaGate #PedoFiles #Pedosta Highjack trending tags.
Go to your local independent media. Keep addressing the issue until they’re forced to acknowledge it. Go to the church. Angry Christians will unite to make their voices heard. If everybody tells only three people, we can multiply our forces exponentially. The more people that know, the more likely law enforcement will be forced into making arrests.
UPDATE 11/27 – Twitter has started locking my account for posting about #PizzaGate. I was forced to delete a jimmycomet’s Instagram pic due to “child sexual exploitation”. Does that count as solid evidence? Fox News and NPR join the list of pedophile protectors today. Below is a collective list of MSM which has completely distorted the facts of this investigation in attempt to slander us as tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists.
OFFICIAL THOUGHT POLICE:
New York Times
Washington Post
Bloomberg
Zero Hedge
Fox News
Veterans Today
NPR
Snopes
Yahoo
BBC
RT America
Independent
Guardian
Seattle Times
Globe and Mail
CNN
CBS
Sky News
Mashable
Daily Kos
TIME
Colbert Report
Business Insider
YouTube, Google, Twitter, FB, Reddit, 4chan in the form of censorship
We will not forget. We are the media now. Please comment other MSM sources I have missed attempting to silence us through the “fake news” narrative.
UPDATE 11/28 – New York Times CEO Mark Thompson accused of concealing evidence about notorious pedophile Jimmy Savile; now conceals evidence of #PizzaGate.
UPDATE 11/29 – I was contacted by a producer at The Daily Show for interview. I responded with an email address which presents my real name, so if I stop updating soon then RIP me. Feel free to voice opinions on the matter in the comments. I honestly don’t know if I’m better off revealing myself (because the government already has my IP address, duh) and therefore it would look shady if I died suddenly… or I am better off as simply Anon.
UPDATE 12/01 – BBC joins pedo protectors and runs #PizzaGate hit-piece. It is worth mentioning James Alefantis has now professed on multiple platforms that Comet “doesn’t even have a basement”, yet just last year in an interview with Metro Weekly, he specifically said “Like our sauce — we harvest a whole crop of organic tomatoes — 10 tons of tomatoes every year. Can them all, store them in the basement…”. Ask a police officer whether lying is indication of guilt.😉
I also would like to mention I Google Maps searched Lovettsville in further investigation of the Tamera Luzzatto email to John Podesta which references a “farm in Lovettsville” and children for entertainment. It turns out only one Lovettsville exists and it is in Virginia – only one hour and five minutes away from D.C. in driving time. There are not many farms in this town. That’s why it stood out when Quarter Branch farm had something called the Fazenda Burity located on what looks to be pretty much the same property. The Google Maps description calls the Fazenda Burity a farm, but yet it has photos of a long building with many doors, people dining in an outside gathering area, a pool, and other photos which do not look anything like a farm. Even stranger still, the website listed on Google Maps for this location sends you to a site with a .br (Brazil) extension in Portuguese. Something does not seem right. Hai FBI, I know you’re probably reading this blog. PLEASE INVESTIGATE THIS SHIT.
12/03 – Strong evidence Facebook is censoring (or at least suppressing) #PizzaGate:
(
All those tags just magically happen to be at 1k? Get real. And I know a lot of us are losing stamina… Feeling helpless because we all know arrests can’t happen now or Obama will just pardon them. I received this email two days ago; at first I didn’t think much of it but it is unlike any other email I’ve received thus far – it featured a lot of extra code, so it has piqued my curiosity. Here it is:
It is cryptic. “You aren’t alone. Friends on the other side, will provide.” I hope it is true.
12/05 – FALSE FLAG ALERT! Many people suspect the supposed gunman yesterday was a false flag meant to be used to scrub PizzaGate from the internet in a way less obvious than the Orwellian route. Why do we think so? Number 1) They released his name as “Edgar Maddison Welch”. Edgar is a failed ACTOR; here’s his IMDB. Number 2) Just last month, the same Edgar Maddison Welch ran over a 13-year-old with his car. This leads to speculation the Comet “shooting” may have been part of a sweetheart deal. Number 3) Somebody moved the street camera which originally faced Comet Pizza so that it’s mostly blocked by a pole when viewed online through the city’s site. Check out this tweet from December 3rd, a day before the Comet incident: Thomas Bernpaine Sees the Future
Take all these odd circumstances into consideration, and you still may not be convinced. The biggest thing that sealed the deal in my mind is the reaction by the mainstream media. Instantly the biggest DNC shills, Jake Tapper etc. begin tweeting about the “dangerous consequences” of “fake news”. A verified account of some unknown-to-me Guardian/Huffington Post/Vice journalist by the name of @karengeier on Twitter begs WordPress to take down MY BLOG because “this is where a lot of them are getting information from” and “why have something even Reddit didn’t want”. CENSORSHIP ALERT, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. Later at night, I began to see a call from journalists to SUE people like me. Folks, please ask yourselves this – if #PizzaGate were not real, would they have needed to delete 4chan threads and subreddits and now attempt to DELETE AND SUE A PERSONAL BLOG to hide something that is so obviously fake, in their opinion? I must ask why James Alefantis has not contacted me once either to A) clear his name and provide the rational explanation to all this or B) send a letter threatening defamation/libel if I do not take down this article. A friend who is a lawyer told me it is unlikely they would risk the investigation of a defamation suit due to things such as discovery depositions which they open themselves up to. I will provide update if any of the people in this blog contact me, which they can easily do through the contact link on this page… But alas, not a single communication has been made by the whole lot of them. What would be your first course of action if suddenly the internet [wrongly] thought you were a human trafficking pedophile?
12/08 – CENSORSHIP ALERT! Just as many had suspected, the powers that be have now begun the process of removing PizzaGate from the internet. As we speak, YouTube is deleting HUNDREDS of videos which display the evidence presented against those accused. I find this incredibly shocking and appalling because 99% of the information gathered in this investigation has been legally and publicly obtained through Wikileaks, search engine results and James Alefantis’ once PUBLIC Instagram (which has since been archived). I honestly feel I have awoke to find myself in a bad nightmare; I see the difference between North Korea and America is more arbitrary than previously conceived. During the first days of the investigation, this blog was on the first page of Google search results. Even just a week ago when I searched, dcpizzgate.wordpress.com was on the third page of search results. I searched last night and when simply typing in “pizzagate”, this blog no longer appears in any of the 20 pages of filtered results. That tells me this blog is effective in changing opinions, and it is therefore dangerous. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is a weapon. And that’s why they fear the spreading of this information. For weeks I have been looking at posts including my blog through Twitter search, but suddenly today the “all tweets” section yields “zero results”, even though the “top tweets” still displays results. Just yesterday, former State Dept. official Steve Pieczenik shared my blog on his Twitter. He has long spoken out about pedophilia within American government. Thank you for your dedication to exposing the truth – you’re a true hero.
Since the false flag event, I have been getting some threats… Calling me a sick fuck, saying I should give out my address so people kind find me, etc. Undoubtedly the majority of the emails I have received have been “thank you for exposing this” and people claiming to be somehow knowledgeable of the inside all saying that everything presented here is true and it goes even deeper. This blog is not meant to present all the evidence gathered; it is simply a red pill for normies.
12/09 – On December 1st, I updated about a farm in Lovettsville (a reference from the Tamera Luzzatto email to John Podesta about kids in the pool as entertainment) I found called Quarter Branch Farm. On December 7th, Quarter Branch posted on Facebook that they are closing permanently. Coincidence or guilty as sin? Thanks to the reader who sent me this tip.
If you would like to continue the research and help the global, crowd-sourced investigation to save the children from these horrific, unimaginably evil abuses, many say this is a good place: Voat Pizzagate Thread
And lastly, I want to say THANK YOU to all my readers, people who have shared this blog and made YouTube videos referencing it to get the word out. The only thing that can possibly overcome this level of evil is a very concerted effort by the masses to stand up and say, “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!” You all have started the fire, and for the first time in a while, I actually feel hopeful that we can bring these sick perverts to justice.
Sign off note: Dear MSM, I voted for Bernie then third party. Stop smearing everyone investigating this as alt-right, Trump-supporting internet sleuths! This goes beyond politics; we are all merely concerned citizens and I believe rightfully so. If even 4chan is nauseated by this stuff, it must be pretty bad. Edit: In regards to criticism of the Satanic considerations – I don’t even believe in Jesus or Satan, but I’m calling it like I see it; these people think it’s fun to worship Satan, whatever that may be in reality. I simply think of it as evil and sociopathology. I acknowledge this problem does not inflict only the Democrats, and I know it is documented this exact phenomenon has been happening for decades, if not longer. This is bigger than Comet Ping Pong or even Hillary Clinton; this problem runs deep and that is likely why the entire media is scrambling to cover it up. America is basically at the final boss right now. MSM and the pedo elites underestimated weaponized autism. BTFO.
Disclaimer: I do not condone or support the harassment or any sort of violence against the people listed or referenced in this blog. I do, however, condone peaceful protest and civil investigation, along with the death penalty for convicted pedophiles🙂
If you would like to continue the research and help the global, crowd-sourced investigation to save the children from these horrific, unimaginably evil abuses, many say this is a good place: Voat Pizzagate Thread
Sign off note: Dear MSM, I voted for Bernie then third party. Stop smearing everyone investigating this as alt-right, Trump-supporting internet sleuths! This goes beyond politics; we are all merely concerned citizens and I believe rightfully so. If even 4chan is nauseated by this stuff, it must be pretty bad. Edit: In regards to criticism of the Satanic considerations – I don’t even believe in Jesus or Satan, but I’m calling it like I see it; these people think it’s fun to worship Satan, whatever that may be in reality. I simply think of it as evil and sociopathology.
Disclaimer: I do not condone or support the harassment or any sort of violence against the people listed or referenced in this blog. I do however condone peaceful protest and civil investigation, along with the death penalty for convicted pedophiles🙂 Maybe after some prolonged, otherwise unethical medical experimentation and living tissue brain research?
What bothers me is not that we are unable to find the solution to our problems, what bothers me more is the fact that neoliberals are so utterly unaware of the real structural issues that their attempts to sort out the tangential issues will further exacerbate the main issues. Religious extremism, militancy and terrorism are not the cause but the effect of poverty, backwardness and disenfranchisement.
Empirically speaking, if we take all the other aggravating factors out: like poverty, backwardness, illiteracy, social injustice, disenfranchisement, conflict, instability, deliberate training and arming of certain militant groups by the regional and global players, and more importantly grievances against the duplicitous Western foreign policy, I don’t think that Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the likes would get the abundant supply of foot soldiers that they are getting now in the troubled regions of Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
Moreover, I do concede that the rallying cry of “Jihad in the way of God” might have been one reason for the abundant supply of foot soldiers to the jihadists’ cause, but on an emotional level it is the self-serving and hypocritical Western interventionist policy in the energy-rich Middle East that adds fuel to the fire. When Muslims all over the Islamic countries see that their brothers-in-faith are dying in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan, on an emotional level they feel outraged and seek vengeance and justice.
This emotional outrage, in my opinion, is a far more potent factor than the sterile rational argument of God’s supposed command to fight holy wars against the infidels. If we take all the other contributing factors, that I have mentioned in the second paragraph out of the equation, I don’t think that Muslims are some “exceptional” variety of human beings who are hell-bent on killing the heretics all over the world.
Notwithstanding, it’s very easy to distinguish between the victims of structural injustices and the beneficiaries of the existing neocolonial economic order all over the world. But instead of using words that can be interpreted subjectively I’ll let the figures do the talking. Pakistan’s total GDP is only $270 billion and with a population of 200 million it amounts to a per capita income of only $1400. While the US’ GDP is $18 trillion and per capita income is in excess of $50,000. Similarly the per capita income of most countries in the Western Europe is also around $40,000. That’s a difference of 40 to 50 TIMES between the incomes of Third World countries and the beneficiaries of neocolonialism, i.e. the Western powers.
Only the defense budget of the Pentagon is $600 billion, which is three times the size of Pakistan’s total GDP. A single multi-national corporation based in the Wall Street and other financial districts of the Western world owns assets in excess of $200 billion which is more than the total GDP of many developing economies. Examples of such business conglomerates are: Investment banks – JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, HSBC, BNP Paribas; Oil majors – Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, RDS, Total, Vitol; Manufacturers – Apple, Microsoft and Google.
On top of that, semi-legit wealth from all over the world flows into the Western commercial and investment banks: last year there was a report that the Russian oligarchs have deposited $800 billion in the Western banks, while the Chinese entrepreneurs have deposited $1.5 trillion in the Western financial institutions.
Moreover, in April this year the Saudi finance minister threatened that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets if Congress passed a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible for any role in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. And $750 billion is only the Saudi investment in the US, if we add up Saudi investment in Western Europe, and the investments of UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf’s investment in the US and Western Europe.
The first and foremost priority of the Western powers is to save their Corporate Empire, and especially their financial institutions, from collapsing; everything else like eliminating terrorism, promoting democracy and “responsibility to protect” are merely arranged side shows to justify their interventionist foreign policy, especially in the energy-rich Middle East.
Additionally, the irony is that the neoliberal dupes of the mainstream media justify and validate the unfair practices of the neocolonial powers and hold the victims of structural injustices responsible for their misfortunes. If a Third World’s laborer has been forced to live on less than $5 a day and a corporate executive sits in the Wall Street on top of $18 trillion business empire, neoliberals are okay with this travesty.
However, we need to understand that how does a neoliberal mindset is structured? As we know that mass education programs and mass media engender mass ideologies. We like to believe that we are free to think, but we aren’t. Our narratives aren’t really “our” narratives. These narratives of injustice and inequality have been constructed for the public consumption by the corporate media, which is nothing more than the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments and the business interests.
Media is our eyes and ears through which we get all the inputs and it is also our brain through which we interpret raw data. If media keeps mum over some vital structural injustices and blows out of proportion some isolated incidents of injustice and violence, we are likely to forget all about the former and focus all of our energies on the tangential issues which the media portrays as the “real” ones.
Monopoly capitalism and the global neocolonial economic order are the real issues while Islamic radicalism and terrorism are the secondary issues and itself an adverse reaction to the former. That’s how the mainstream media constructs artificial narratives and dupes its audience into believing the absurd: during the Cold War it created the “Red Scare” and told us that communism is an existential threat to the free world and the Western way of life. We bought this narrative.
Then the West and its Saudi and Pakistani collaborators financed, trained and armed the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” and used them as their proxies against the Soviets. After the collapse of the Soviet Union they declared the former “freedom fighters” to be terrorists and another existential threat to the “free world” and the Western way of life. We again bought this narrative.
And finally, during the Libyan and Syrian proxy wars the former terrorists once again became freedom fighters – albeit in a more nuanced manner, this time around the corporate media sells them as “moderate rebels.” And the lobotomized neoliberal audience of the mainstream media is once again willing to buy this narrative, how ironic?
Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and MENA regions, neocolonialism and Petroimperialism.
The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress), appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress’ blessing), and veto legislation.
In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government.
These are the powers that will be inherited by the next heir to the throne, and it won’t make a difference whether it’s a President Trump or a President Clinton occupying the Oval Office.
The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.
The power to kill. As the New York Times concluded, “President Obama, who came to office promising transparency and adherence to the rule of law, has become the first president to claim the legal authority to order an American citizen killed without judicial involvement, real oversight or public accountability.” Obama’s kill lists—signature drone strikes handpicked by the president—have been justified by the Justice Department as lawful because they are subject to internal deliberations by the executive branch. “In other words,” writes Amy Davidson for the New Yorker, “it’s due process if the President thinks about it.”
The power to wage war. Ever since Congress granted George W. Bush the authorization to use military force in the wake of 9/11, the United States has been in a state of endless war without Congress ever having declared one. Having pledged to end Bush’s wars, Barack Obama has extended them. As the New York Times notes, “He has now been at war longer than Mr. Bush, or any other American president… he will leave behind an improbable legacy as the only president in American history to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.” More than that, as the Atlantic makes clear, “Obama is inaugurating an era of unbridled war-making by the commander in chief, without any of the checks and balances contemplated by the American constitutional system.”
The power to spy on American citizens. In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to carry out surveillance on Americans’ phone calls and emails. The Bush Administration claimed that the Constitution gives the president inherent powers to protect national security. The covert surveillance has continued under Obama.
The power to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights. The Bush Administration claimed it could strip American citizens of their constitutional rights, imprison them indefinitely, and deny them legal representation simply by labeling them as enemy combatants. While the Obama Administration jettisoned the use of the term “enemy combatant,” it has persisted in defending the president’s unilateral and global right to detain anyone suspected of supporting terrorist activities.
The power to secretly rewrite or sidestep the laws of the country. Secret courts, secret orders, and secret budgets have become standard operating procedure for presidential administrations in recent years. A good case in point is Presidential Policy Directive 20, a secret order signed by President Obama as a means of thwarting cyberattacks. Based on what little information was leaked to the press about the clandestine directive, it appears that the president essentially put the military in charge of warding off a possible cyberattack. A FOIA request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) seeking more details on the directive was allegedly denied because doing so could cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” However, EPIC believes the order allows for military deployment within the United States, including the ability to shut off communications with the outside world if the military believes it is necessary.
The power to transform the police into extensions of the military and indirectly institute martial law. What began in the 1960s as a war on drugs transitioned into an all-out campaign to transform America’s police forces into extensions of the military. Every successive president since Nixon has added to the police’s arsenal, tactics and authority. In fact, the Obama Administration has accelerated police militarization by distributing military weapons and equipment to police and incentivizing SWAT team raids and heavy-handed police tactics through the use of federal grants and asset forfeiture schemes.
The power to command the largest military and intelligence capabilities in the world and, in turn, “wag the dog.”As law professor William P. Marshall points out:
In his roles as Commander-in-Chief and head of the Executive Branch, the President directly controls the most powerful military in the world and directs clandestine agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. That control provides the President with immensely effective, non-transparent capabilities to further his political agenda and/or diminish the political abilities of his opponents. Whether a President would cynically use such power solely for his political advantage has, of course, been the subject of political thrillers and the occasional political attack. President Clinton, for one, was accused of ordering the bombing of terrorist bases in Afghanistan to distract the nation from the Lewinsky scandal, and President Nixon purportedly used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate his political enemies. But regardless whether such abuses actually occurred, there is no doubt that control of covert agencies provides ample opportunity for political mischief, particularly since the inherently secretive nature of these agencies means their actions often are hidden from public view. And as the capabilities of these agencies increase through technological advances in surveillance and other methods of investigation, so does the power of the President.
Thus, it doesn’t matter what the pundits predict, the candidates promise, and the people decree.
It doesn’t even matter whether the people elect Trump or Clinton. After all, politicians sing a different tune once elected. For instance, the Chicago Tribune editorial board observed that although Barack Obama opposed the imperial tendencies of George W. Bush, once in office, Obama “wound up behaving as if he had a scepter and throne.”
What matters is that the damage has already been done.
In other words, each successive president continues to add to his office’s list of extraordinary orders and directives, granting him- or herself near dictatorial powers.
So let’s not have any more talk of which candidate would be more dangerous with these powers.
The fact that any individual—or branch of government—is empowered to act like a dictator is danger enough.
This abuse of presidential powers has been going on for so long that it has become the norm and it will continue no matter which corporate puppet wins the election. The Constitution be damned.
The government of laws idealized by John Adams has fallen prey to a government of men.
As a result, we no longer have a system of checks and balances.
“The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance,”concludes Marshall. “The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”
The solution is far from simple but it’s time, as Marshall suggests, to recalibrate the balance of power. This will mean putting an end to the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts. It will mean that Americans will have to stop letting their politics blind them to government wrongdoing. And it will mean holding all three branches of government accountable to the Constitution (i.e., if they abuse their powers, vote them out of office).
Thus far, Congress, with little spine, less integrity and too busy running for re-election, has offered little attempt at oversight, enabling the president to ride roughshod over the Constitution. The media—the perfect accomplice in this stealthy, bloodless coup—continues to inundate us with the latest celebrity scandal, says virtually nothing about these burgeoning powers. All the while, most Americans continue to operate in blissful near-ignorance, unaware or uncaring that the republic is about to fall.
Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it will be “we the people”—not the president, the politicians, the corporate elite or the media—who will suffer the consequences when freedom falls and tyranny rises. They may justify violating our freedoms in the name of whatever phantom menace-of-the-month threatens “national security,” but we will always be the ones to pay the price.
Finally, the major for-profit media is approaching consensus that it’s easy to hack U.S. political elections. Even candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are raising unprecedented doubts – from very different directions – about the reliability of the upcoming vote count.
Ultimately, there is just one solution: universal hand-counted paper ballots, with carefully protected voter registration rolls, and a transparent chain of custody.
The corporate media and the Democrats are obsessed with the “Russians.” Donald Trump rants about a mythological army of voters voting multiple times.
But the real threat to our election system comes from private for-profit corporations that register voters, control voter databases, then count and report the vote with secret proprietary software and zero transparency, accountability, or recourse.
After ignoring or attacking the reportage since Florida 2000 of Bev Harris, Greg Palast, freepress.org and numerous others, the corporate media seems finally to be getting the message: under the current system, any American election – even the one for president – can be stripped and flipped by a tiny handful of electronic hackers working anywhere from the Kremlin to a party HQ to a state governor’s office to a teenager’s garage.
Here is some of what the mainstream media is finally admitting. In an article posted on July 28, 2016, NBC News pointed out that our elections are vulnerable to hacking because they “are not part of the vast ‘critical infrastructure protection’ safety net set up by the Department of Homeland Security.”
CBS News wrote August 10, 2016, about “the hackers at Symantec Security Response” who demonstrated how “Election Day results could be manipulated by an affordable device you can find online.”
Former national coordinator for counter-terrorism Richard Clarke, reporting for ABC News on August 19, 2016, analyzed the particular security problems related to battleground states like Ohio and Florida: “In 2000 and 2004, there were only a handful of battleground states that determined which presidential candidate had enough Electoral College votes to win. A slight alteration of the vote in some swing precincts in swing states might not raise suspicion. Smart malware can be programmed to switch only a small percentage of votes from what the voters intended. That may be all that is needed, and that malware can also be programmed to erase itself after it does its job, so there might be no trace it ever happened.” Clarke was on the White House National Security Council during both Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations.
Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, in his August 12, 2016 New York Times op-ed “The Election Won’t Be Rigged but It Could Be Hacked,” wrote: “The mere existence of this discussion is cause for alarm. The United States needs to return, as soon as possible, to a paper-based, auditable voting system in all jurisdictions that still use electronic-only, unverifiable voting machines.”
On August 30, 2016, the Washington Post wrote: “Deleting or altering data on voter rolls could cause mayhem on Election Day disenfranchising some voters. Many voting machines themselves also are vulnerable, especially touch-screen systems that do not create a paper record as a guard against fraud or manipulation.” The Post also supplied a list of the 15 states with the most vulnerable voting systems.
The list of those now admitting the obvious includes the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, USA Today, The Guardian, Mother Jones, and Politico, some of which have previously mocked those of us reporting on this issue. Most important has been the highly influential The Hill, which weighed in on May 2, 2016 with “Election fraud feared as hackers target voter records.” The lede was straightforward: “A series of data breaches overseas are spurring concerns that hackers could manipulate elections in the United States.”
Trump advisor Roger Stone wrote a column in The Hill with the headline: “Can the 2016 Elections Be Rigged? You Bet.” He also referred to our latest summary volume, “The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft,” as “a must-read book on the strip and flip techniques used to rig these machines.”
But in the 2016 primary election, there are other must-reads as well. Perhaps the most important is Election Justice USA’s report entitled “Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries.” This report cites six major areas of election irregularities in this year’s 26 primary elections:
1) Targeting voter suppression
2) Registration tampering
3) Illegal voter purges
4) Exit poll discrepancies
5) Evidence for voting machine tampering
6) The security (or lack thereof) of various voting machines types.
In their 96-page report, Election Justice researchers documented how Hillary Clinton’s campaign benefited from these “various types of fraud.” Their conclusion: “Based on this work, Election Justice USA has established an upper estimate of 184 pledged delegates lost by Senator Bernie Sanders as a consequence of specific irregularities and instances of fraud.”
Election Justice’s well-documented estimate that Sanders lost 184 delegates means that if the election had been conducted fairly, the Senator from Vermont would now be the Democratic nominee.
Another document essential to understanding election irregularities that allowed Hillary Clinton to capture the Democratic Party nomination is a paper co-authored by Axel Geijsel of Tilburg University in the Netherlands and Rodolfo Cortes Barragan of Stanford University. Their analysis found that primary election results in states with the most vulnerable and hackable voting machines and without a paper trail overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton 65 percent to 35 percent. Sanders led Clinton 51 percent to 49 percent in states where the vote count could be verified with a paper trail.
The correlation between the increased Clinton vote and the increased vulnerability of the voting machines has been avoided like the plague by the corporate media.
Equally important to read is mathematician Richard Charnin’s blog. Charnin is a man the mainstream media often attacks – but not with mathematical formulas to rebut Charnin’s detailed analysis. Rather they attack him because, like the vast majority of Americans, he believes that John F. Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman. In 2016, official Democratic primary vote counts compared to exit poll results were significantly outside the margin of error in 12 of 26 states. Charnin concluded that the probability of those official vote tallies being correct are one in 78 billion. There were no such discrepancies in this year’s Republican primaries.
Now 16 years after the theft of the presidency in Florida 2000, and a dozen since it was done again in Ohio 2004, the corporate media are approaching consensus that it is indeed very easy to strip millions of legitimate citizens from the voting rolls, and then to hack electronic voting machines and computerized central tabulators to flip the official final outcome.
The threat to this year’s election does not come from non-existent armies of mythological hordes voting multiple times. It comes from the private partisan companies with their secret proprietary software that control the voter rolls, the electronic machines, and ultimately the final outcome at all levels of government. The mega-corporations are the ones that flipped George W. Bush into the White House and Hillary Clinton into the Democratic nomination, not to mention manipulating countless Senate, House, and state and local elections along the way.
For a hopelessly vulnerable electronic election system which is flawed, hackable and riggable from top to bottom, there is just one solution: transparent unhackable voter rolls, and universal hand-counted paper ballots open to public scrutiny from the precinct level to the final official tallies, as dutifully reported by our slowly awakening corporate media.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft, available at www.freepress.org and www.solartopia.org, where Bob’s Fitrakis Files and Harvey’s Solartopia! can also be found.
In August, the corporate media was falling all over itself with breathless coverage on how Russia is interfering in the US election. Back then, stories citing experts suggested that voting machines were vulnerable to tampering that could change the outcome of the vote. A month later, something curious happened.
By September, government officials were doing all they could to tamp down those concerns, and the media duly reported their reassurances.
Should the public be comforted that election mischief will be homegrown?
The articles, usually citing active government officials, serve a dual purpose in reassuring the public: First, there is no way Russia can hack the election, despite cyber hacks in the Illinois and Arizona voter registration banks. Meanwhile, the message is also to insist Russian President Vladimir Putin is still giving orders to disrupt US cyberspace. This latter message culminated in the Obama administration publicly blaming the Russian government for trying to influence the election in early October.
The Post cites two major obstacles for potential (Russian) disruption of our election. One is the difference between the “voter system” and the “election system.” The voter system involves registered voter databases throughout the country, while the election system refers to voting machines and paper ballots.
According to executive director Merle King of the state-funded Center for Election Systems in Georgia, the public conflates these two issues about the election, and that leads to a lot of confusion.
The second hindrance for potential hackers is the decentralized voting process, the Post reported. A major positive for vote security, according to the Post, is that local jurisdictions set their own rules for how votes will be counted.
This claim is buttressed by a letter sent by state election officials to Florida voters which notes the public safeguards already in place for our voting process — including (1) layers of encryption for voting machines, (2) thumb drive backups of votes, (3) lack of internet connection to voting machines, and (4) a review of votes after an election.
The Times also highlights the decentralized nature of the voting system as a safeguard against tampering. However, while the Post viewed the system as sophisticated, the Times saw the state-run and community-monitored systems as too cumbersome to be susceptible to any hacking.
Quoted again is Merle King, along with Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, and FBI Director James Comey. Pamela Smith of Verified Voting — an organization that highlights the susceptibility to election rigging — is also sourced to reassure readers that the upcoming election is safe, thanks to an uptick in paper ballot usage.
Like the previous articles in the Washington Post and LA Times, The Hill presents the decentralized process of US elections as an impenetrable obstacle to Russian hacking. Bolstering the claims of election security in the piece are Florida’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner, Colorado’s Secretary of Wayne Williams, Pennsylvania Department of State spokesperson Wanda Murren, and Wisconsin’s Administrator of State Elections Division Michael Hass. The only non-governmental official quoted is Chris Porter, an administrator of strategic intelligence at cybersecurity firm FireEye Horizons.
Porter cited examples of Russian election tampering in the Ukraine and efforts to “create scandal,” despite their inability to hack the election.
The Chicago Tribunegot its turn on September 14, quoting Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco, who reiterated the safety of the election thanks to the decentralization of the voting process.
These assertions of election security and passive blame on Russia culminated in early October with the Obama administration publicly accusing “senior-most officials in Russia” of tampering with the election, despite their claimed inability to do so.
Taking a Screwdriver to the Election
Let’s go back to August to see why certain experts said that elections could indeed be tampered with.
Princeton professor Andrew Appel made headlines in August after hacking the Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine in seven minutes. Such machines are used in Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
“[Appel] summoned a graduate student named Alex Halderman, who could pick the machine’s lock in seven seconds. Clutching a screwdriver, he deftly wedged out the four ROM chips — they weren’t soldered into the circuit board, as sense might dictate — making it simple to replace them with one of his own: A version of modified firmware that could throw off the machine’s results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter. The attack was concluded in minutes.”
Former government officials working in the cyber sphere have also warned of election tampering. Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke asserted: “Yes, It’s Possible to Hack the Election” on August 18.
“I have had three jobs that together [under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama] taught me at least one thing: If it’s a computer, it can be hacked.”
Special Interests and the Machines
Clarke sees the decentralized election system as the access point for potential tampering —rather than a potential safeguard. While there are safeguards, such as the voter tabulation through paper ballots, almost no state exclusively uses paper ballots. Instead, voting machines — even allowing votes from home — produce no paper ballot record and thus no way to ensure the “correct” vote was cast.
Furthermore, Clark argues paper ballot receipts from the voting machines are only used in the case of a recount — something today’s sophisticated hackers are aware of and would seek to avoid.
“My first reaction to all this government reassurance was ‘are you kidding me?’” Dr. Jonathan Simon of the Election Defense Alliance told WhoWhatWhy. “There is all this concern about outside hacking, but absolutely no talk of internal rigging.”
While Simon points out that there are many election safeguards, connections to special interests by those that control voting machines provides easy access to election rigging.
“Anyone who could stand to profit off certain policies — the Koch brothers, for example — have a better chance of rigging the election due to their connections to voting systems like Dominion, SES and their satellite companies,” Simon explained. “Russia, China, nor any terrorist group in the Middle East have a connection like that.”
Despite encryption and the lack of an Internet connection, Simon claims that there are other ways to change voting results.
“In a memory card, which is used in optical scanner-verified voting, three lines of code to flip votes one way or another can be entered into 7,000 or 8,000 lines of code virtually without detection. Multiple memory cards can be manipulated like this at the push of a button.”
Why Overlook Potential Domestic Hacking?
With articles by outside experts in August claiming the election could be hacked, followed in September with articles by government officials claiming it could not be — by Russia — it raises the question: why overlook domestic tampering?
“These are relatively unsophisticated and simple ways to rig the election,” Simon concluded.
The cutting off of Internet access for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is one more ugly episode in a US presidential election campaign that has plumbed the depths of political degradation.
Effectively imprisoned in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over four years, Assange now is faced with a further limitation on his contact with the outside world.
On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry of Ecuador confirmed WikiLeaks’ charge that Ecuador itself had ordered the severing of Assange’s Internet connection under pressure from the US government. In a statement, the ministry said that WikiLeaks had “published a wealth of documents impacting on the US election campaign,” adding that the government of Ecuador “respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states” and “does not interfere in external electoral processes.” On that grounds, the statement claimed, the Ecuadorian government decided to “restrict access” to the communications network at its London embassy.
This statement from the bourgeois government of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is a study in hypocrisy and cowardice. By abetting the US government’s suppression of WikiLeaks, Quito has intervened in the US elections on the side of the ruling establishment and against the rights of the American people. If Correa expects that his professed sensitivity toward the “principle of non-intervention” will be reciprocated, he should recall the fate of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled in a coup orchestrated by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009.
WikiLeaks cited reports that Secretary of State John Kerry had demanded that the government of Ecuador carry out the action “on the sidelines of the negotiations” surrounding the abortive Colombian peace accord last month in Bogota. The US government intervened to prevent any further exposures that could damage the campaign of Clinton, who has emerged as the clear favorite of the US military and intelligence complex as well as the Wall Street banks.
Whether the State Department was the only entity placing pressure on Ecuador on behalf of the Clinton campaign, or whether Wall Street also intervened directly, is unclear. The timing of the Internet cutoff, in the immediate aftermath of the release of Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches, may be more than coincidental.
In the spring of 2014, the government of Ecuador agreed to transfer more than half of its gold reserves to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for three years, in an attempt to raise cash to cover a growing deficit brought on by the collapse in oil prices. It reportedly sent 466,000 ounces of gold to Goldman Sachs, worth about $580 million at the time, in return for “high security” financial instruments and an anticipated profit on its investment. It is hardly a stretch of the imagination to believe that such a relationship would give Goldman Sachs considerable leverage in relation to the Ecuadorian government.
In any case, it is evident that the US ruling establishment is growing increasingly desperate to stanch the flow of previously secret emails and documents that are exposing the real character not only of Clinton, but of capitalist politics as a whole. While WikiLeaks has released over 17,000 emails from the account of Clinton campaign manager and top establishment Democrat John Podesta, it is believed that there are more than 33,000 still to come.
The transcripts of Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs and other top banks and employers’ groups, for which she was paid on average $200,000 per appearance, are the most incriminating. They expose the workings of the oligarchy that rules America and the thinking and actions of a politician prepared to do anything to advance the interests of this ruling stratum, while simultaneously accruing ever greater riches and power for herself.
While on the campaign trail, Clinton has postured as a “progressive,” determined to hold Wall Street’s feet to the fire. But in her speeches to Goldman Sachs, she made clear her unconditional defense of the banks and financial houses. Under conditions of popular outrage against the bankers and their role in dragging millions into crisis in the financial meltdown of 2008, Clinton gave speeches praising the Wall Street financiers and insisting that they were best equipped to regulate themselves. She apologized to them for supporting the toothless Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law, saying that it had to be enacted for “political reasons.”
In front of her Wall Street audiences, Clinton made clear she had no inhibitions about ordering mass slaughter abroad. While telling her public audiences that she supports a “no-fly zone” in Syria as a humanitarian measure to save lives, she confidentially acknowledged to her Goldman Sachs audience that such an action is “going to kill a lot of Syrians” and become “an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians.” In the same speech she declared her willingness to bomb Iran.
The emails have laid bare the nexus of corrupt connections between the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, her various campaigns and her network of financial and corporate donors, which together constitute a quasi-criminal influence-peddling enterprise that could best be described as “Clinton, Inc.”
The revelations contained in the WikiLeaks material have been ignored or downplayed by the corporate media, which instead has focused unrelentingly on the charges of sexual misconduct leveled against Clinton’s Republican rival, Donald Trump.
The Clinton camp itself has sought to deflect any questions regarding what the candidate said in her speeches or the corrupt operations of her campaign by claiming, with no evidence whatsoever, that the material released by WikiLeaks had been hacked by the Russian government and therefore cannot be trusted.
This line of argumentation serves not only to divert attention from the WikiLeaks material, but also to further the Clinton campaign’s neo-McCarthyite claims of Kremlin intervention on behalf of Trump and advance a propaganda campaign aimed at preparing popular opinion for a direct military confrontation with Russia.
There is an air of desperation in the attempt to quash the WikiLeaks material. CNN news anchor Chris Cuomo, an open supporter of Clinton, went so far as to lie to his audience, claiming it was illegal for them to access the emails and insisting they could obtain any information on them only through the filter of the corporate media.
Well before the release of documents related to the Democratic Party, the determination of ruling circles to suppress WikiLeaks had found repeated and violent expression. State Department officials have come forward with a report that in 2010, in the midst of WikiLeaks’ mass release of State Department cables exposing US imperialist operations around the world, Clinton, then secretary of state, asked subordinates, “Can’t we just drone this guy?” She recently said she could not remember the remark, but if she made it, it was a joke.
During the same period, however, Clinton supporter and longtime Democratic campaign operative Bob Beckel declared in a television interview in relation to Assange: “A dead man can’t leak stuff. This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States… there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.”
To this point, the American ruling class has limited itself to judicial frame-ups and character assassination, counting on the help of its servants within both the media and the pseudo-left, large sections of which have either joined the witch-hunt against Assange or downplayed his victimization.
The principal vehicle for this campaign of persecution had been fabricated allegations of sexual misconduct pursued by Swedish authorities acting in league with the US and British governments. Earlier this year, the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued findings that Assange had been “deprived of his liberty in an arbitrary manner,” meaning the body had reached the conclusion that the Swedish case constituted a politically motivated frame-up.
In the midst of the current attempt to silence Assange, an even more bizarre and filthy frame-up has been concocted, attempting to smear the WikiLeaks founder with charges of taking Russian money as well as pedophilia.
At the center of these allegations is a little known online dating service, Toddandclare.com, which first attempted to lure Assange into a supposed deal to film an ad for the site, for which he supposedly would be paid $1 million, to be provided by the Russian government. When WikiLeaks rejected this preposterous provocation, the same site claimed that Assange had been charged with inappropriate contact through the site with an eight-year-old Canadian child visiting the Bahamas. This accusation was then invoked in an attempt to pressure the UN to drop its demand for an end to the persecution of Assange.
Even a cursory investigation makes clear that these allegations constitute a grotesque fabrication. Bahamian police have stated that there are no charges or any case whatsoever against Assange. The dating service has no business address, working phone number or corporate presence anywhere in the US, having all the earmarks of a dummy company created by US intelligence for the purpose of hounding Assange.
The use of such tactics is a measure of how terrified the US ruling class has become in the face of growing mass hostility to both major political parties and their two abhorrent candidates. Their fear is that the relentless exposure of the inner workings of a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich is robbing the existing political setup of what little legitimacy it had left within the population, and creating the conditions for a political radicalization within the working class and social upheavals, whoever is elected on November 8.
It must be obvious even to nine-year-old casual observers of the scene that the US national election is hacking itself. It doesn’t require hacking assistance from any other entity. The two major parties could not have found worse candidates for president, and the struggle between them has turned into the most sordid public spectacle in US electoral history.
Of course, the Russian hacking blame-game story emanates from the security apparatus controlled by a Democratic Party executive establishment desperate to preserve its perks and privileges . (I write as a still-registered-but-disaffected Democrat). The reams of released emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and other figures in HRC’s employ, depict a record of tactical mendacity, a gleeful eagerness to lie to the public, and a disregard for the world’s opinion that are plenty bad enough on their own. And Trump’s own fantastic gift for blunder could hardly be improved on by a meddling foreign power. The US political system is blowing itself to pieces.
I say this with the understanding that political systems are emergent phenomena with the primary goal of maintaining their control on the agencies of power at all costs. That is, it’s natural for a polity to fight for its own survival. But the fact that the US polity now so desperately has to fight for survival shows how frail its legitimacy is. It wouldn’t take much to shove it off a precipice into a new kind of civil war much more confusing and irresolvable than the one we went through in the 1860s.
Events and circumstances are driving the US insane literally. We can’t construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to us and therefore we can’t form a set of coherent plans for doing anything about it. The main event is that our debt has far exceeded our ability to produce enough new wealth to service the debt, and our attempts to work around it with Federal Reserve accounting fraud only makes the problem worse day by day and hour by hour. All of it tends to undermine both national morale and living standards, while it shoves us into the crisis I call the long emergency.
It’s hard to see how Russia benefits from America becoming the Mad Bull of a floundering global economy. Rather, the Evil Russia meme seems a projection of our country’s own insecurities and contradictions. For instance, we seem to think that keeping Syria viciously destabilized is preferable to allowing its legitimate government to restore some kind of order there. Russia has been on the scene attempting to prop up the Assad government while we are on the scene there doing everything possible to keep a variety of contestants in a state of incessant war. US policy in Syria has been both incoherent and tragically damaging to the Syrians.
The Russians stood aside while the US smashed up Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. We demonstrated adequately that shoving sovereign nations into civic failure is not the best way to resolve geopolitical tensions. Why would it be such a bad thing for the US to stand aside in Syria and see if the Russians can rescue that country from failure? Because they might keep a naval base there on the Mediterranean? We have scores of military bases around the region.
It’s actually pretty easy to understand why the Russians might be paranoid about America’s intentions. We use NATO to run threatening military maneuvers near Russia’s borders. We provoked Ukraine — formerly a province of the Soviet state — to become a nearly failed state, and then we complained foolishly about the Russian annexation of Crimea — also a former territory of the Soviet state and of imperial Russia going back centuries. We slapped sanctions on Russia, making it difficult for them to participate in international banking and commerce.
What’s really comical is the idea that Russia is using the Internet to mess with our affairs — as if the USA has no cyber-warfare ambitions or ongoing operations against them (and others, such as hacking Angela Merkel’s personal phone). News flash: every country with access to the Internet is in full hacking mode around the clock against every other country so engaged. Everybody’s doing it. It is perhaps a projection of America’s ongoing rape hysteria that we think we’re special victims of this universal activity.
It doesn’t stop there. Look close enough and you may see it in places you’d never believe.
^Best pic I have for now. Will do a better version when I get back from a conference I have to attend this week.
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After the Crash 