WikiLeaks dropped a bombshell on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7”, the whistleblowing site began releasing the largest publication of confidential documents, that have come from the top secret security network at the Cyber Intelligence Center.
Long before the Edward Snowden revelations, Julian Assange noted how “The Internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen.” He decried the militarisation of the Internet with the penetration by the intelligence agencies like NSA and GCHQ, which created “a military occupation of civilian space”.
Now, WikiLeaks’ latest disclosures shed further light on this cyber-warfare, exposing the role of the CIA.
At a recent press conference from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange explained how the CIA developed its own cyber-weapons arsenal and lost it after storing it all in one place. What is alarming is that the CIA became aware of this loss and didn’t warn the public about it. As a result, this pervasive technology that was designed to hide all traces, can now be used by cyber-mafias, foreign agents, hackers and by anyone for malicious purposes.
Part one of this WikiLeaks publication dubbed “Year Zero”, revealed the CIA’s global hacking force from 2013 to 2016. The thousands of documents released contain visceral revelations of the CIA’s own version of an NSA. With an ability to hack any Android or iPhone, as well as Samsung TVs and even cars, they spy on citizens, bypassing encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram. The Vault 7 leaks that exposed the CIA’s excessive power is of great importance from a point of view of security for individual privacy. But it has larger significance tied to the mission of WikiLeaks.
Opening Government into the Deep State
Describing itself on its site as “a multi-national media organisation and associated library”, WikiLeaks aims to open governments in order to bring justice. In the speech at the SWSX conference in Texas, delivered via Skype in 2014, Assange described the particular environment that spawned the culture of disclosure this organisation helped to create.
He noted how “we were living in some fictitious representation of what we thought was the world” and that the “true history of the world” is “all obscured by some kind of fog”. This founder and editor in chief of innovative journalism explained how disclosures made though their publications break this fog.
The magnitude of this Vault 7 cache, which some say may be bigger than the Snowden revelations, perhaps lies in its effect of clearing the fog to let people around the world see the ground upon which the narratives of true history are written.
Since coming online in 2007, WikiLeaks has published more than 10 million documents. Each groundbreaking disclosure got us closer to where the real power of the world resides. In 2010, WikiLeaks rose to prominence with the publication of the Collateral Murder video. With the release of documents concerning U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they hit on the nerves of the Pentagon —the central nervous system of the Military Industrial Complex. With the release of the U.S. Diplomatic Cables, they angered the State Department and came head to head with this global superpower.
Last year, this unprecedented publisher with its perfect record of document authentication, began to blow the cover off American democracy a step further to clear the fog. WikiLeaks played an important role in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. The DNC leaks disrupted the prescribed script of corporate sponsored lesser of two evils charade politics. The publication of the Podesta emails that revealed internal workings of the Clinton campaign, gave the American people an opportunity to learn in real time about the function of the electoral arena as a mechanism of control.
With the demise of the Democratic Party, led by its own internal corruption, the cracks in this façade widened, unveiling the existence of a government within a government.
People are beginning to glimpse those who seek to control behind the scenes – anonymous unelected actors who exercise enduring power in Washington by manipulating public perception.
This unraveling that has been slowly unfolding, appeared to have reached a peak last month when Trump’s former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn resigned. He was forced to do this on the grounds that leaked classified information revealed he was lying about his phone conversation discussing sanctions with the Russian Ambassador.
WikiLeaks now entered its 10th year. The momentum continues, bringing us to a new pinnacle of disclosure. At the end of last year, in anticipation of this new release, WikiLeaks tweeted, “If you thought 2016 was a big WikiLeaks year, 2017 will blow you away.” During the dramatic takedown of General Flynn, the media created a frenzy around unconfirmed claims that Russia was meddling with the U.S. election and Putin’s alleged ties with Trump, creating another fog of obfuscation. It was in this climate that WikiLeaks published documents showing CIA espionage in the last French presidential election.
History Awakening
The idea of a shadow government has been the focus of political activists, while it has also been a subject of ridicule as conspiracy theories. Now, WikiLeaks’ pristine documents provide irrefutable evidence about this hidden sector of society. The term ‘deep state’ that is referenced in the mainstream media, first hit the major airwaves in 2014, in Bill Moyers’ interview with Mike Lofgren. This former congressional staff member discussed his essay titled “Anatomy of the Deep State” and explained it as the congruence of power emerging as a “hybrid of corporate America and national security state”.
We are now watching a deep state sword-fight against the elected Caesar of American plutocracy in this gladiator ring, surrounded by the cheers of liberal intelligentsia, who are maddened with McCarthy era hysteria. As the Republic is falling with its crumbling infrastructure and anemic debt economy, far away from the coliseum, crazed with the out-of-tune national anthem, the silent pulse of hope begins to whisper.
WikiLeaks unlocked the vaults that had swallowed the stolen past. As the doors open into this hidden America, history awakens with dripping blood that runs deep inside the castle. As part of the release of this encrypted treasure-trove of documents, WikiLeaks posted on Twitter the following passphrase; “SplinterItIntoAThousandPiecesAndScatterItIntoTheWinds.” These were actually words spoken by President John F. Kennedy, a month before his assassination. His exact words were “I will splinter the CIA into a thousands pieces and scatter it into the wind” – which shows his attitude toward the CIA as an arm of the deep state and what many believe to be the real reason for his assassination.
The secret stream of history continues, taking control over every aspect of civil life and infecting the heart of democracy. The U.S. has long since lost its way. We have been living in a fictitious representation of the flag and the White House. It is not judicial boundaries drawn by the Constitution or even the enlightenment ideals that once inspired the founders of this country that now guide the course of our lives. Tyranny of the old world casts its shadow, binding Congress, the Supreme Court and the President into a rule of oligarchy. CIA documents revealed that the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt was used as a covert hacking base, while CIA officers work under the cover of the State Department to penetrate with these intelligence operations. The Wall Street Journal now reports that President Trump has given the CIA expanded authority to carry out drone attacks, which was power that prior to that had only been given to the Pentagon.
Decisions that radically alter the direction of our society are not made in a fair democratic election, a public hearing or the senate floor. They are made in the FISA Court and secret grand juries, bypassing judicial warrants and democratic accountability. This hidden network of power that exists above the law entangles legislators, judges and the press into a web of deception through dirty money and corrupt influence. It controls perception of the past, present and future.
The Internet Generation
As the deep state comes to the surface, we are able to see the real battle on the horizon. What is revealed here is a clash of values and two radically different visions of a future civilization. In his response to the Vault 7 publication, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director was quick to lay blame on the millennials. He said, “This group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty, secrecy and transparency than certainly my generation did”. To him, these young people are the problem, as if their different cultural approach and instincts must be tempered and indoctrinated into this hierarchical system, so they know who their masters are.
Who are these people that are treated as a plague on society? This is the Internet generation, immersed with the culture of the free-net, freedom of speech and association. They believe in privacy for individuals, while demanding transparency for those in power. Peter Ludlow, a philosopher who writes under the pseudonym Urizenus Sklar, shared his observation of a cultural shift that happened in 2011. He noted that WikiLeaks had become a catalyst for an underground subculture of hackers that burst into the mainstream as a vital political force.
Assange recognised this development in recent years as a “politicisation of the youth connected to Internet” and acknowledged it as “the most significant thing that happened in the world since the 1960s”.
This new generation ran into the deep state and those who confront it are met with intense hostility. Despite his promise of becoming the most transparent government, Obama engaged in unprecedented persecution of whistleblowers. Now this dark legacy seems to be continuing with the present administration. Vice president Mike Pence vowed to “use the full force of the law” to hunt down those who released the Intelligence Agency’s secret material.
As these conflicts heat up, resistance continues in the Internet that has now become a battleground. Despite crackdowns on truthtellers, these whistleblowers won’t go away. From Manning to Snowden, people inside institutions who have come to see subversion of government toward insidious control and want change, have shown extraordinary courage.
According to a statement given to WikiLeaks, the source behind the CIA documents is following the steps of these predecessors. They want this information to be publicly debated and for people to understand the fact that the CIA created its own NSA without any oversight. The CIA claims its mission is to “aggressively collect foreign intelligence overseas to protect America from terrorists, hostile nation states and other adversaries”. With these documents that have now been brought back to the historical archive, the public can examine whether this agency has itself lost control and whose interests they truly serve.
The Future of Civilisation
As the world’s first stateless 4th estate, WikiLeaks has opened up new territory where people can touch the ground of uncensored reality and claim creative power to participate in the history that is happening. In a press conference on Periscope, Assange made reference to a statement by the President of Microsoft, who called for the creation of a digital Geneva Convention to provide protection against nation-states and cyber-attacks. He then affirmed WikiLeaks’s role as a neutral digital Switzerland for people all over the world.
WikiLeaks is taking the first step toward this vision. After they carefully redacted the actual codes of CIA hacking tools, anonymised names and email addresses that were targeted, they announced that they will work with tech companies by giving them some exclusive access to the material. Assange explained that this could help them understand vulnerabilities and produce security fixes, to create a possible antidote to the CIA’s breach of security and offer countermeasures. WikiLeaks tweeted notifying the public that they now have contacted Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and MicroTik to help protect users against CIA malware.
The Internet unleashed the beast that grows its force in the dark. Unaccounted power is dragging global society down into an Orwellian dystopia. Yet, from this same Internet, a new force is arising. Courage of the common people is breaking through the firewall of secrecy, creating a fortress that becomes ever more resilient, as the network of people around the world fighting for freedom expands.
When democracy dies in darkness, it can be reborn in the light of transparency. The deep state stretches across borders, sucking people into an abyss of totalitarian control. At the same time, the epic publication of Vault 7 that has just begun, reminds us that the greatness in each of us can awaken to take back the power of emancipation and participate in this battle for democracy, the outcome of which could not only determine the future of the Internet, but of our civilisation.
Nozomi Hayase, Ph.D., a native of Japan, is a columnist, researcher, and the First Amendment advocate. She is member of The Indicter‘s Editorial Board and a former contributing writer to WL Central and has been covering issues of free speech, transparency and the vital role of whistleblowers in global society.
It is the leakiest of times in the Executive Branch. Last week, Wikileaks published a massive and, by all accounts genuine, trove of documents revealing that the CIA has been stockpiling, and lost control of, hacking tools it uses against targets. Particularly noteworthy were the revelations that the CIA developed a tool to hack Samsung TVs and turn them into recording devices and that the CIA worked to infiltrate both Apple and Google smart phone operating systems since it could not break encryption. No one in government has challenged the authenticity of the documents disclosed.
We do not know the identity of the source or sources, nor can we be 100% certain of his or her motivations. Wikileaks writes that the source sent a statement that policy questions “urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency” and that the source “wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyber-weapons.”
The FBI has already begun hunting down the source as part of a criminal leak investigation. Historically, the criminal justice system has been a particularly inept judge of who is a whistleblower. Moreover, it has allowed the use of the pernicious Espionage Act—an arcane law meant to go after spies—to go after whistleblowers who reveal information the public interest. My client, former NSA senior official Thomas Drake, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, only to later be widely recognized as a whistleblower. There is no public interest defense to Espionage Act charges, and courts have ruled that a whistleblower’s motive, however salutary, is irrelevant to determining guilt.
The Intelligence Community is an equally bad judge of who is a whistleblower, and has a vested interest in giving no positive reinforcement to those who air its dirty laundry. The Intelligence Community reflexively claims that anyone who makes public secret information is not a whistleblower. Former NSA and CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden speculated that the recent leaks are to be blamed on young millennials harboring some disrespect for the venerable intelligence agencies responsible for mass surveillance and torture. Not only is his speculation speculative, but it’s proven wrong by the fact that whistleblowers who go to the press span the generational spectrum from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to mid-career and senior level public servants like CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake to early-career millennials like Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The lawbreaker does not get to decide who is a whistleblower.
Not all leaks of information are whistleblowing, and the word “whistleblower” is a loaded term, so whether or not the Vault 7 source conceives of him or herself as a whistleblower is not a particularly pertinent inquiry. The label “whistleblower” does not convey some mythical power or goodness, or some “moral narcissism,” a term used to describe me when I blew the whistle. Rather, whether an action is whistleblowing depends on whether or not the information disclosed is in the public interest and reveals fraud, waste, abuse, illegality or dangers to public health and safety. Even if some of the information revealed does not qualify, it should be remembered that whistleblowers are often faulted with being over- or under-inclusive with their disclosures. Again, it is the quality of the information, not the quantity, nor the character of the source.
Already, the information in the Vault 7 documents revealed that the Intelligence Community has misled the American people. In the wake of Snowden’s revelations, the Intelligence Community committed to avoid the stockpiling of technological vulnerabilities, publicly claiming that its bias was toward “disclosing them” so as to better protect everyone’s privacy. However, the Vault 7 documents reveal just the opposite: not only has the CIA been stockpiling exploits, it has been aggressively working to undermine our Internet security. Even assuming the CIA is using its hacking tools against the right targets, a pause-worthy presumption given the agency’s checkered history, the CIA has empowered the rest of the hacker world and foreign adversaries by hoarding vulnerabilities, and thereby undermined the privacy rights of all Americans and millions of innocent people around the world. Democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and journalistic sources—whether they call themselves whistleblowers or not—are a critical component when the government uses national security as justification to keep so much of its activities hidden from public view.
As we learn more about the Vault 7 source and the disclosures, our focus should be on the substance of the disclosures. Historically, the government’s reflexive instinct is to shoot the messenger, pathologize the whistleblower, and drill down on his or her motives, while the transparency community holds its breath that he or she will turn out to be pure as the driven snow. But that’s all deflection from plumbing the much more difficult questions, which are: Should the CIA be allowed to conduct these activities, and should it be doing so in secret without any public oversight?
These are questions we would not even be asking without the Vault 7 source.
‘Nothing is more difficult,’ wrote the German political essayist Kurt Tucholsky in 1921, ‘and nothing requires more character, than to find yourself in open contradiction to your time and loudly to say: No.’ First of all, it is intellectually and psychologically difficult to step outside the received wisdom of your time and place. What has been called ‘the normative power of the given’ persuades us that what we see all around us, what everyone else seems to regard as normal, is in some sense also an ethical norm.
Numerous studies in behavioural psychology show how our individual conviction of what is true or right quails before the massed pressure of our peers. We are, as Mark Twain observed, ‘discreet sheep’. This is what John Stuart Mill picked up when he wrote in On Liberty (1859); that the same causes that make someone a churchman in London would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Beijing. The same truth is gloriously captured in the humorous song ‘The Reluctant Cannibal’ (1960) by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, in which a young cannibal revolts against the settled wisdom of his elders and declares that ‘eating people is wrong’. At the end of the song, one of the elders exclaims, to huge belly laughs all round: ‘Why, you might just as well go around saying: “Don’t fight people!”’ Then he and his colleagues cry in unison: ‘Ridiculous!’
Yet norms change even within a single lifetime, especially as we live longer. So as elderly disc jockeys are arrested for sexual harassment or abuse back in the 1960s, we should be uncomfortably aware that some other activity that people regard as fairly normal now might be viewed as aberrant and abhorrent 50 years hence.
To step outside the established wisdom of your time and place is difficult enough; openly to stand against it is more demanding still. In Freedom for the Thought that We Hate (2007), his fine book on the First Amendment tradition in the United States, Anthony Lewis quotes a 1927 opinion by the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, which Lewis says ‘many regard as the greatest judicial statement of the case for freedom of speech’.
The passage Lewis quotes begins: ‘Those who won our independence… believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.’ This is magnificent, although it also illustrates the somewhat self-referential, even self-reverential, character of the modern First Amendment tradition.
Lewis cites Brandeis, who credits this thought to the 18th-century founders of the US. But those founders would have been well aware that they got it straight from Pericles’ funeral oration during the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BCE, as reported – if not invented, or at least much improved upon – by Thucydides. ‘For you now,’ Thucydides’ Pericles admonishes his ancient Athenian audience, after praising the heroic dead, ‘it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy’s onset.’
More directly, the US tradition of courage in the defence of free speech draws on the heritage of the 17th-century English. People such as John Lilburne, for example. In 1638, while still in his early 20s, Lilburne was found guilty by the Star Chamber court of helping to smuggle into England a tract against bishops that had been printed in the Low Countries. He was tied to the back of a cart on a hot summer’s day and unremittingly whipped as he walked with a bare back all the way from the eastern end of Fleet Street to Westminster Palace Yard. One bystander reckoned that he received some 500 blows that, since the executioner wielded a three-thronged whip, made 1,500 stripes.
Lilburne’s untreated shoulders ‘swelled almost as big as a penny loafe with the bruses of the knotted Cords’, and he was then made to stand for two hours in the pillory in Palace Yard. Here, in spite of his wounds and the burning sunshine, he began loudly to tell his story and to rail against bishops. The crowd was reportedly delighted. After half an hour, there came ‘a fat lawyer’ – ah, plus ça change – who bid him stop. The man whom the people of London had already dubbed ‘Free-Born John’ refused to shut up. He was then gagged so roughly that blood spurted from his mouth. Undeterred, he thrust his hands into his pockets and scattered dissident pamphlets to the crowd. No other means of expression being left to him, Free-Born John then stamped his feet until the two hours were up.
As an Englishman, I find particular inspiration in the example of Free-Born John, and those of all our other free-born Johns: John Milton, John Wilkes, John Stuart Mill (and George Orwell, a free-born John in all but name). More broadly, there is no reason to understate, let alone to deny, a specifically Western tradition of courage in the advancement of free speech, one that can be traced from ancient Athens, through England, France and a host of other European countries, to the US, Canada and all the liberal democracies of today’s wider West. But it would be quite wrong to suggest that this habit of the heart is confined to the West. In fact, there have been rather few examples of such sturdy defiance in England in recent times, while we find them in other countries and cultures.
Consider, for instance, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Liu was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment in 2009 for ‘subverting state power’. Both his written response to the charges against him and his final speech in court are, like many of his earlier writings, lucid and courageous affirmations of the central importance of free speech. He definitely does not draw only on Western traditions. For example, in his book No Enemies, No Hatred (2012), he quotes a traditional Chinese 24-character injunction: ‘Say all you know, in every detail; a speaker is blameless, because listeners can think; if the words are true, make your corrections; if they are not, just take note.’
After paying a moving tribute to his wife (‘Armed with your love, dear one, I can face the sentence that I’m about to receive with peace in my heart’), Liu looks forward to the day ‘when our country will be a land of free expression: a country where the words of each citizen will get equal respect, a country where different values, ideas, beliefs and political views can compete with one another even as they peacefully coexist’. The judge cut him short in court before he had finished speaking, but free-born Xiaobo, like free-born John, still got his message out. In his planned peroration, Liu wrote: ‘I hope that I will be the last victim in China’s long record of treating words as crimes. Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.’
Liu was by this time famous, and that great speech made him more so. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. But perhaps the most inspiring examples of all come from people who are not famous at all: so-called ordinary people doing extraordinary things. People such as the Hamburg shipyard worker who, at the launch of a naval training vessel in 1936, refused to join all those around him in making the Hitler salute. The photograph only achieved wide circulation on the internet more than 60 years later. There he stands amid a forest of outstretched arms, with both his own firmly folded across his chest, a portrait of stubborn worker’s pride. His name was August Landmesser. He had been a Nazi party member but was later expelled from the party for marrying a Jewish woman, and then imprisoned for ‘dishonouring the race’. After his release, he was drafted to fight in the Second World War and never returned.
Again, such moments are emphatically not confined to the West. During the Arab Spring of 2011, a ‘day of rage’ was proclaimed by dissidents in Saudi Arabia. Faced with a massive police presence at the appointed location in the country’s capital Riyadh, almost nobody showed up. But one man, a strongly built, black-haired teacher called Khaled al-Johani, suddenly approached a group of foreign reporters. ‘We need to speak freely,’ he cried, with an explosion of pent-up passion. ‘No one must curb our freedom of expression.’ A BBC Arabic service film clip, which you can watch on YouTube, shows a tall secret policeman, in white robes, headdress and dark glasses, looming in the background as he snoops on al-Johani’s speech. A little further away, armed police mutter into their walkie-talkies. ‘What will happen to you now?’ asks one of the reporters, as they escort the teacher back to his car. ‘They will send me to prison,’ al-Johani says, adding ironically: ‘and I will be happy.’ He was subsequently condemned to 18 months’ imprisonment.
In many places, we can find monuments to the Unknown Soldier, but we should also erect them to the Unknown Speaker.
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?
“You don’t become completely free by just avoiding being a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.” ~Naseem Nicholas Taleb
In the midst of a hyper-violent culture blinded by the statist agenda of control, militarized cops brainwashed by the statist notion of law and order, and a bloated military with the monopoly on power through tyranny, it’s difficult for the would-be-resister to live with any confidence that their freedom will not be compromised by the violent thugs in power or by the indoctrinated statists that represent the majority.
Difficult time to be free. Made even more difficult because of the level of psychosocial statist programming causing the majority to believe that everything is okay as long as they keep voting. Caught up in their hyper-realities, going through the motions of being an abstraction of an abstraction, the ignorant statists are convinced that everything is just fine, that the authority of the state is necessary, that the militarization of the police will help keep them protected, that an obese, money-sucking, terrorist-generating military will somehow make them more secure. What is this, 1984? What’s next? War is peace? Freedom is slavery? Ignorance is strength? Sadly, in some ways, we’re already there.
The problem with statism is that everything seems okay inside the bubble, but the bubble is always about to burst. Statism is slavery by consent. It hoodwinks people into enjoying their servitude. It (brain)washes out logic and reasoning through nationalism and patriotism, thus scrambling the ignorant statist’s brain into exploitable soup. Bombarded by state-engineered symbols that the statist marries their fragile ego to, statism is by far the most dangerous religion. Made all the more dangerous because people are born and bred into being statists and cannot even imagine thinking outside its box.
But resistance is not futile. It only seems that way because we are surrounded by the Goliath that is the state. No, on a long enough timeline, resistance is fruitful. Resistance always has, and always will, lead to human flourishing. It might not always be pretty, but resistance to any and all standing orders (manmade laws), is the key to a healthy, sustainable, and progressive evolution for our species.
The art of having no masters is perfecting the science of resistance. But resistance isn’t fairytale romantic. It’s not pretend confliction. It takes effort. It takes perseverance. It takes counterintuitive ruthless compassion, usually in the face of those you care about. Definitely not for the faint of heart. But, then again, having a faint heart is for statists who imagine they need a master, not for anarchists who know they need only master themselves. Yes, resistance is fertile but, more than anything, it’s courageous, uncomfortable, and dangerous.
Let’s break it down…
Resistance is Courageous
“I’d rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.” ~Robert H. Schuller
The art of having no masters cannot be rationalized until one has the audacity to question things as they are. As Chomsky famously stated, “The general population doesn’t even know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.” Indeed. Until the individual stands up and dares to jut his/her head above the sea of status quo conformity, they will continue to be ruled. But being ruled, or not, is always a state of mind. Until the individual has the audacity to change their state of mind to self-rule despite those who seek to rule them, their “soft slavery” will continue.
Statism is the epitome of soft slavery. Statists are like house slaves.There just happen to be a lot more of them, and the “house” is the state. As long as the house slave (statist) doesn’t disobey the house master (the state), they live relatively comfortable and secure lives. All their needs are met. Except, of course, the need for freedom and self-ownership.
Thus, it takes a particular flavor of courage to rise above the comfort and security in order to actualize self-mastery. The statist who merely goes along with the state’s agenda, attempts nothing great, and succeeds. The anarchist who rises above the washed-out conformity of it all, attempts something great and, though he may fail, he at least gains self-authority and takes his first steps toward self-mastery and perfecting the art of having no masters.
Resistance is Uncomfortable
“To live by the dice or accept death with confidence requires a consummate self-possession, which is the essence of character. No one becomes a hero staying at home, going to the office, or attending church.” ~Michael Dirda
The art of having no masters is not a pleasant art. It is in all ways disruptive. It is completely unsettling. Much cognitive dissonance must be successfully navigated. And there are always setbacks. Because the art of having no masters means having the courage to (at least attempt to) master the individual self, despite those who seek to rule the individual’s self, it is never comfortable. Though one can glean much comfort out of owning oneself, it’s never easy. Especially in a world that thinks everything should be owned.
One is constantly outnumbered. Whether it’s the giant goliath of the state itself or the tiny goliath of the inured statist, it can be painfully and awkwardly uncomfortable. But resisting those who would rule you was never meant to be comfortable. As Brene’ Brown stated, “You can have courage or you can have comfort, but you can’t have both.”
Indeed. Those seeking to perfect the art of having no masters must embrace the discomfort that comes with rocking the boat. It’s a double-edged sword, for sure. On the one side is sweet freedom, but on the other side is taking the painful responsibility for that freedom. But the genuinely autonomous, the authentic seekers of freedom, the true anarchists, will always choose to stab themselves with that double-edged sword, no matter how uncomfortable or painful it might be. Thereby taking the next step toward self-mastery and further perfecting the art of having no masters.
Resistance is Dangerous
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, and carpenters; the very minds of the people we are trying to save. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent upon the system, they will fight to protect it.” ~Morpheus, The Matrix
If resistance is dangerous, then the art of having no masters is doubly dangerous. Especially in a world where the majority of the people are dead-set on having masters. In a world where the majority are convinced they need a queen, or a king, or a president, it makes it problematic for those who are seeking to take responsibility for their own power and who are teaching self-leadership. It’s dangerous because people are afraid of what they don’t understand. And the majority of people simply cannot understand a world without rulers and masters. Talk about not being able to think outside the box, let alone the Matrix.
Everyone wants to give their power to an authority, never stopping to think that authority should be themselves. Everyone wants to be Neo, but nobody wants to take responsibility for their own power. Sure, give credit where credit is due (as Neo did with Morpheus), for true leadership is an honorable thing indeed, but not to the extent that your freedom is discredited and your power is taken away. Self-empowerment is the key to unlocking the door of having no masters. And it leads to authentic leadership.
With all these people giving up their power, in Stockholm-syndrome-esque proportions, it makes it difficult for the would-be self-master to work on his/her self-mastery. But work on it they should. We need more leaders who are able to resist. We need more courageous individuals who are not afraid of getting uncomfortable or facing the danger of being right when the majority of people are wrong. We need more self-empowered individuals seeking to empower others, despite a world that’s attempting to take that power away. We need more trailblazers who are not afraid to spearhead self-authority straight through the heart of state-authority. We need leaders who have the audacity to teach self-leadership and self-rule through self-empowerment, despite the state which only seeks to rule by the illusion of authority through the overreach of violent power.
In short: we need more people who care about life to resist those who do not, because life is freedom and freedom is life. That is the heart and soul of the art of having no masters. As Derrick Jensen said, “We are the governors as well as the governed. This means that all of us who care about life need to force accountability onto those who do not.”
It is getting harder to keep a secret these days. The collective shadow of our society, once safely relegated to the dark basement of the unmentionable, is now exposed to daylight, forcing us to face our contradictions. I’ll offer three examples: Donald Trump’s leaked recordings, Hillary Clinton’s emails and Wall Street speeches, and the endless procession of videos of police brutality.
Once upon a time, “locker room talk” like Donald Trump’s lewd and degrading remarks leaked to the media would have stayed safely sequestered from public view. Misogynistic locker room banter existed, as it were, in an alternate universe. What was said on the golf course or the barroom didn’t register as part of a man’s public reputation; in those places, men were free to say things that would be unforgivable in public. The coexistence of these two realms was seldom questioned. As a high school and college athlete, I remember hearing the kinds of things Trump has said, and they were quite unremarkable in that context. A boy could say the most brutish, repellent things in the locker room without damage to his reputation outside it. Respectable society would never find out. Likewise, when reporters and politicians mingled outside the public performances of their roles, an unwritten understanding kept their conversations safely off the record. I imagine Donald Trump feeling a sense of betrayal at the revelation of his remarks, as if a boy reported to another boy’s girlfriend what he said about her in the locker room.
I think this division into two realms extended to internal, psychological divisions in the individuals making the degrading boasts and comments about women. In polite company, they became people who did not harbor such thoughts. The locker room alter-ego was safely contained in a different psychic compartment. I can imagine a Donald Trump being sincerely – sincerely! – scandalized to hear in polite company the very things he himself said in the safety of the mens’-only field of misogyny. I can imagine him condemning what was said in all earnestness, with zero awareness of hypocrisy.
So it is that rape culture is allowed to persist. It needs a shadow zone. The locker room conversations that objectify and degrade women and contribute to rape culture need a “locker room” in which to happen, a wall of separation between it and the larger realm of general social acceptability.
This wall of separation is breaking down, thanks in large part to the ubiquity of recording technology and the impossibility of stopping the distribution of the recordings on the Internet. Contradictions, whether personal or social, that could once remain hidden are coming unstoppably to light. It is getting harder to uphold a divided self.
As with sex, so with money. Hillary Clinton is having a hard time maintaining a wall of separation between her public posture of economic populism and her decades-long ministration to the needs of Wall Street. In former times a politician’s speeches to elite insiders would exist in an inviolably separate realm from his or her public image. In inside circles of power, the politician would be free to express himself directly. No concealment of his allegiances was necessary, because no one outside the political and corporate elite was listening. So of course, Hillary Clinton was loathe to release the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street banks. Those speeches were the equivalent of locker room talk, which is supposed to stay in the locker room. Here, though, the context is financial domination rather than sexual domination.
Something similar applies to Clinton’s infamous deleted emails. There is nothing new about the contrast between the public presentation of governance and its ugly inner workings. The exercise of political power has never been pretty. The backroom deals, the threats and coercion, the buying of favors… all the nastiness that the email scandal hints at is characteristic of politics as we know it. The difference today is that it can no longer be confined to the back room. In other words, it is getting harder to maintain the appearance of democracy in a reality of oligopoly.
It is perhaps necessary that Clinton and Trump are both such extreme expressions of the suppressed shadow of our culture, presenting itself in unambiguous form for clearing. Liberal pundits have repeatedly observed that the bigoted sentiments Donald Trump expresses are merely the undisguised version of what Republicans have been saying in code for a long time. The hidden erupts into view. Clinton, meanwhile, is no ordinary establishment politician; she is the very epitome of the establishment, embodying its insincerity, lack of imagination, normalized corruption, and narrow technocratic commitment to preserving the status quo.
This is not meant as a personal criticism. My purpose here is not to condemn Hillary or the Donald; it is to illuminate the dissolving of the insulating compartments that allow contradictions and hypocrisy to exist. Probably in person, each of them is a complex individual like you and me, a mixture of beauty and pain, playing the roles laid out for them. I imagine that in their most private moments neither fully identifies with those roles nor believes in the game into which they have been thrust, any more than you or I believe in it. The elites usually precede the people into cynicism. In any event, our current moment of social evolution is calling each of them, in their public roles, to be an avatar of a cultural shadow archetype, presented to us in extreme form so that it cannot be ignored.
Clinton and Trump are a product of their conditions, playing the “game of thrones” according to the secret rules of the insiders, in a system that has long allowed, encouraged, and in some ways nearly required hypocrisy. That system is coming to an end. We are entering by fits and starts an era of transparency in which, we may someday hope, secret rules and hypocrisy will have no purchase.
Another arena with a longstanding division between sanitized public presentation and gritty reality is law enforcement. As with misogyny and political corruption, there is nothing new about police brutality and nothing new about its disproportionate application to brown-skinned people. For a long time though, it was sequestered in the realm of the unmentionable, relegated to the left-wing margins of political discourse or the statistics of academic papers. No longer. The advent of ubiquitous cell phone video cameras and other video surveillance has lifted the lid off the dark political unconscious and exposed its contents to light.
Here again, this exposure is making the two contradictory functions of the police – serving and protecting, and bullying and abusing – impossible to maintain simultaneously. It is only possible if the latter function is well hidden in the shadows.
I could go on to make similar points about drone strikes, refugee camps, clearcuts, and all the other injury and injustice that technology and social media are bringing into view. For a long time, propriety and ideology have buffered normalcy from the ugly inner workings of its maintenance. For example, the ideology of development has buffered us from the horrors of Third World sweatshops, strip mines, dispossession of land, and so forth. Lurid caricatures of violent criminals hides the grinding injustice of the legal system. The triumphal narrative of exploration and progress obscures the genocide of indigenous cultures. These various buffers, which allow contradictions to stand, have been necessary to operate a civilization built on exploitation and ecocide. Open up any social institution – politics, finance, business, education, medicine, academia, and even philanthropy – and you will find within it the same ugly machinations of power.
Today these buffers are disintegrating, despite the best efforts of established power to maintain secrecy, prosecute whistle-blowers, and control information. We might thank technology for bringing the dark underbelly of our system to light, but I think something larger is afoot. The trend toward transparency that is happening on the systems level is also happening in our personal relationships and within ourselves. Invisible inconsistencies, hiding, pretense, and self-deception show themselves as the light of attention turns inward. The tools of self-examination are proliferating on every level, from the personal to the collective. Herein is a link between the political developments I’ve described and the world of self-help, spirituality, or consciousness. At its best, these comprise ways of shedding light onto our internal contradictions and blockages in order to create a kind of inner transparency. On the interpersonal level too, a lot of work around partnership and community also aims for transparency, for example to expose hidden resentments, repressed desires, and unconscious conflicts. Illuminating the contradictions between the story and the actuality of a relationship brings the possibility of healing.
When previously hidden contradictions rise to consciousness and collide, the result is first denial and rage, followed by cognitive dissonance and the breakdown of normalcy. We see that happening today in the public sphere. That process can be disorienting, even paralyzing, as familiar orienting certitudes turn false. Who are we as a people? What is reliable? What is possible? What is real? We aren’t what we thought we were, and it isn’t what we thought it was. This confusion is a good thing. It is a sign of liberation from the old story that confined us. The exposure and clearing of hidden contradictions brings us to a higher degree of integrity, and frees up prodigious amounts of energy that had been consumed in the maintenance of illusions. What will our society be capable of, when we are no longer wallowing in pretense?
(Editor’s note: While the case presented by the research isn’t hard evidence, it it highly suspicious and deserving of further investigation. But don’t expect any investigation from corporate media, many members of which have been outed by Wikileaks as shills for Hillary Clinton.)
Redditor account Bopbopiposted an image this morning which follows the deceitful tale of the website, ToddandClare.com.
What you should know about the website:
This website is a supposed dating site whereas Julian Assange was allegedly offered $1 million to help create a video. It is supposedly owned by an Indiana couple, but has ties to the Bahamas. The UN opened a case on Assange and it is suspected this specific case is the fuel behind getting him extradited, possibly to the United States. But when you have a look at the site (which I encourage you to do), you will notice it is an extremely amateur website (search dating sites on Google and compare). How did an unknown dating site suddenly come up with $1 million dollars and why did they happen to choose Julian Assange as their desired contract worker?
Assange is now being accused of having cybersex with an 8-year old on the website. To be honest, most of the profiles appear to be fake (again, compare with other dating sites and draw your own conclusions).
Now check out the timeline posted on the previously cited Reddit account:
Update:
As of 10/21/16, ToddAndClare.com has posted the following message on their landing page:
Company Statement 10/21/2016
Following a serious hack of our website, to protect our members we’ve taken the decision to close the network until further notice. If you are a member of Todd and Clare requiring support, please contact us.
On Monday, an official FBI alert from August 18 was leaked to Yahoo News. The alert stated the FBI had uncovered evidence showing that at least two state election systems were penetrated by hackers in recent weeks. The FBI quickly issued warnings to election officials across the country to ramp up security on their systems.
It appears from the Flash Alert that the public was not supposed to know about it.
This FLASH has been released TLP: AMBER: The information in this product is only for members of their own organization and those with DIRECT NEED TO KNOW. This information is NOT to be forwarded on beyond NEED TO KNOW recipients.
The FBI then goes on to describe the nature of the attack and lists the IP addresses associated with the intrusion.
Summary
The FBI received information of an additional IP address, 5.149.249.172, which was detected in the July 2016 compromise of a state’s Board of Election Web site. Additionally, in August 2016 attempted intrusion activities into another state’s Board of Election system identified the IP address, 185.104.9.39 used in the aforementioned compromise.
Technical Details
The following information was released by the MS-ISAC on 1 August 2016, which was derived through the course of the investigation. In late June 2016, an unknown actor scanned a state’s Board of Election website for vulnerabilities using Acunetix, and after identifying a Structured Query Language (SQL) injection (SQLi) vulnerability, used SQLmap to target the state website. The majority of the data exfiltration occurred in mid-July. There were 7 suspicious IPs and penetration testing tools Acunetix, SQLMap, and DirBuster used by the actor, detailed in the indicators section below.
“This is a big deal,” said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer for ThreatConnect, a cybersecurity firm, who reviewed the FBI alert at the request of Yahoo News. “Two state election boards have been popped, and data has been taken. This certainly should be concerning to the common American voter.”
According to the FBI, the hack is the work of a ‘foreign entity.’ However, they have not named the country of origin. This has not stopped other officials from quickly blaming the Russians.
Also absent from the alert are the names of the states involved in the hack.
According to the report from Yahoo News:
The bulletin does not identify the states in question, but sources familiar with the document say it refers to the targeting by suspected foreign hackers of voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois. In the Illinois case, officials were forced to shut down the state’s voter registration system for ten days in late July, after the hackers managed to download personal data on up to 200,000 state voters, Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the Illinois Board of Elections, said in an interview. The Arizona attack was more limited, involving malicious software that was introduced into its voter registration system but no successful exfiltration of data, a state official said.
“The FBI is requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any similar activity to their logs, both inbound and outbound, has been detected,” the alert reads. “Attempts should not be made to touch or ping the IP addresses directly.”
While the alert lists the IP addresses from which the attacks originated, it is highly unlikely that the hackers would use any traceable address.
“This is a wake-up call for other states to look at their systems,” said Tom Hicks, chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission.
This news comes on the heels of a report earlier this month in which a professor from Princeton University and a graduate student proved electronic voting machines in the U.S. remain astonishingly vulnerable to hackers — and they did it in under eight minutes.
Professor Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor who has studied election security, and grad student Alex Halderman took just seven minutes to break into the authentic Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine Appel purchased for $82 online — one of the oldest models, but still used in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia.
Appel notes that the only “reasonably safe” voting method is paper ballots as they can be counted alongside the electronic tally. However, crucial swing states, as Appel notes, rely on more vulnerable paperless touchscreen voting which does not back up any of the numbers.
“Then whatever numbers the voting computer says at the close of the polls are completely under the control of the computer program in there,” Appel wrote in a recent blog post entitled “Security Against Election Hacking.” “If the computer is hacked, then the hacker gets to decide what numbers are reported. … All DRE (paperless touchscreen) voting computers are susceptible to this kind of hacking. This is our biggest problem.”
The fact that the FBI is now admitting to the vulnerability of the election should raise serious concern for Americans. Before 2016, talk of vote rigging, or hacking elections, remained on the fringe — in spite of whistleblowers showing the easily provable insecure nature of electronic voting machines.
As the famous quote, often attributed to Joseph Stalin, notes:
The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
And now, with electronic voting and this news of how easily hackable it is, even the vote counters may not decide.