Date: July 16, 2017
01) Why Narratives ALWAYS Defeat Logical Arguments: History’s Greatest Debate
“An exploration of the relationship between logical arguments and narratives as they relate to convincing people and changing worldviews.
To make the case, I employ Shakespeare’s famous clash between Antony and Brutus from “Julius Caesar”. The original production I used can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X2l1YFuM-w“
Date: July 16, 2017
01) Roger Scruton – The True, the Good and the Beautiful
“Eminent Scholar of aesthetics Roger Scruton raises important questions about the individual’s relationship with morality and the arts.”
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Date: July 16, 2017
Notice of Raw Links: By Bernie Najarian with assistance from Kamil Beylant, Artémie Khazdjian and friends who remain nameless. I have to admit I’m something of a Russophile. Growing up in an Armenian-American household in the late-mid 20th century, I had the impression that the absorption of Armenia into the Soviet Union wasn’t the worst forced association in history. The Red Bear kept the genocidal hordes from the south out, if nothing else – though most of those hordes seemed to be civilizing up nicely in any case. I thought it would be a good idea to learn some Russian in case I ever had a chance to head over that way. True, I never succeeded in becoming a credible speaker, but I can find my way around. Some classics of Russian literature came my way – in English – and I rather got into the atmosphere of the slavophile world. When the Berlin Wall fell and Russia released the S.S.R.’s, including Armenia, to become independent nations, I looked forward to years of peaceful coexistence and reasonably priced vodka. When Vlad Putin replaced the vaporous Boris Yeltsin, I decided not to be too worried about his KGB background. When he sent his forces in 2008 to reinforce Abkhazia’s abstraction from Georgia, I thought, “well, the Abkhaz are a distinct nationality.” The simultaneous plucking-out of South Ossetia from Georgia? Dubious – if you gave every ethnic group in the Caucasus its own country, the United Nations would need to double the number of chairs in its main hall. But no major outrage. The Russo-Georgian war fades into history. Moving along then. Threats to the Baltic countries and Ukraine about supposed insecurity of Russian populations there? Come on, leave those countries be, Vlad, you don’t need to redo the old empire. What are you nervous about? Aren’t we all buddies now? It’s not as if we have different economic systems any more, give or take a few oligarchs with a lot of gold watches. Then more Ukraine – pulling strings for your eastern pet Yanukovich, but he did seem to get elected fairly enough the second time around. Then became grandiose, but not sinister. Pro-Europe people-power demonstrations driving him out before his term is up? Not legally kosher, but on the other hand, Vlad, was this sufficient provocation to send in your military to ‘rescue’ euro-threatened Russians in Donetsk? Did we really need Russo-Ukrainian football hooligans firing your missiles into white-haired babushkas’ apartments? The clip-off of Crimea – tawdry, even though the inhabitants were mostly Russians – the indigenous Tatar minority didn’t want you. But you had to save that Sevastopol naval base, didn’t you? It’s all about the naval bases – and also in Syria, where the urge to have a toe in Mediterranean waters made you buddy up with one of the world’s most grisly dictators. No qualms about defending a nerve-gassing war criminal; no international moralist is going to erode our military status. Shukran (thank you), Assad, old buddy. The 2006 ban on Georgian and Moldovan wine imports – now you’re just being a jerk, even if a couple of brands were fake wine. The attempt to ban public coming-out and LGBT association? You posing macho prick. ‘Of course you know,’ says the little grey rabbit, ‘this means war.’ But a war of cleverness, not fisticuffs. LGBT discrimination banned at the Olympics and you’re busted for doping. How’d you like them bananas? I’m not really here to talk about Putin, though. I’m here to talk about American politics, especially as it’s seen on the internet. I raise the seemingly obscure topic of the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 because it was the first war in history where full-fledged cyberwar – the hacker and DDOS (direct denial of services) components, plus the disinformation component – was used as part of the military effort. This Russian innovation caught the Georgians completely by surprise, and it would still surprise many people today who don’t study such things. I contend that we’re in the midst of such a cyberwar right now. The reason this isn’t completely obvious is that the usual military component is being severely restrained. The cyberwar probably began when US president Barack Obama, in 2013, started giving the CIA about one billion dollars per year to arm groups striving to unsaddle the Syrian government – the host of Vladimir Putin’s naval base. Earlier, as a Wikipedia article notes, “In July 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad had ‘lost legitimacy’ as President. On 18 August 2011, Barack Obama issued a written statement that urged Assad to ‘step aside.’” Since open warfare between the US and Russia would probably plunge us to a millisecond from doomsday, most of the Putin pushback has been limited to information war. The battlefront in this war that first came to my attention was labelled #Pizzagate. I’ll describe this bizarre item, for the benefit of the unfamiliar, in a few paragraphs. First, though, how do you make friends and influence people? You become one of them, an insider, right? I first began to twig to possible Russian cosplay (role-playing, including visual images as ‘costuming’ effects) on the internet when my frequent collaborator Kamil Beylant (@securityconcern) described a curious interaction he’d had on Twitter. He’d found a supposed Texan, gun-loving supporter of Donald Trump who consistently tweeted material opining that Bashar al-Assad was being unfairly vilified. As Kamil tells me, “I decided to call bullshit, and tweeted to the person that he should get real, since Bashar al-Assad, even though he is fighting ISIL, has absolutely no personal fan club in the United States. Soon afterward, the account was discontinued. Its owner couldn’t be verified as a real person in the US.” There is some wiggle room for doubt here, in that Texas is big and wide enough to harbor an eccentric Assad-lover somewhere among its gun-totin’ rightey-whiteys. But there’s no particular reason to think that this tweeter was really a Texan, or an American. All we know was that the person could write in English and keep up with American cultural memes. And that they were comfy with a Middle Eastern dictator who killed dissidents, gassed rebels, and liked Russian naval vessels as beach equipment. If Assad is on the list of people to pump up, who’s on the list of people to smack down? Hillary Clinton is clearly one of them. The election she ran in is long over, and she’s mostly been walking her dog since then, as far as we know from news coverage. Yet dozens and probably hundreds of tweeters and redditors relentlessly rag on her as if we were in a hotly contested election week in a Swiftian Yahoo land. Barack Obama, who is now condemned to being an after-dinner speaker for life, is also constantly AK’d with gnashings and trollisms. There are daily calls for his arrest, even his death – not to mention fantasies that he’s gay and his wife Michelle is trans (pre-op, as quasi-indicated by dubious online photos showing midriff folds in her dress). Perhaps the instability of Donald Trump is helping to keep these two in the limelight, and the bashers are trying to fend off impeachment via election nostalgia. The giveaway to what’s more likely happening, however, is their neighbor in the demonization pillory, a billionaire investor called George Soros. Soros has decided to recycle some of his investment success into the plugging of liberal democracy movements, most notably in and around Hungary, his original homeland. His financially-supported ideas about how to promote democracy in the former Soviet lands have taken root in Serbia, Ukraine, and especially in Georgia, where Soros was considered a major player in setting up NGOs active in the ‘Rose Revolution’ that overthrew Soviet-style president Eduard Shevardnadze. Similar democratization movements in the Arab world gave rise to the Arab Spring that overthrew the Tunisian and Egyptian governments and initiated the Syrian Civil War. Nearly everything Soros and his aspirations are involved in puts him into conflict with one major world leader in particular – Vladimir Putin. The last thing Vlad wants is popular revolutions curbing presidential powers in his own land or those around it. The upsetting of dictatorial stability in Syria is also highly threatening. Russia banned Soros’ non-profits, Open Society Foundations and Open Society Institute, in Nov. 2015. Also in 2015, books by Soros and related literature were seized and burned at a college in Vorkuta, in northern Russia, and newspapers publicized a presidential envoy’s letter stating that Soros’ charities were involved in “forming a perverted perception of history and popularizing ideological directives alien to Russian ideology.” Soros, in Oct. 2016, returned the compliment by criticizing Vlad Putin’s bombing of Aleppo to shore up the Assad regime as a war crime (www.snopes.com/putin-issues-arrest-warrant-for-george-soros/). Soros’ concept of open democracy is strongly supportive of refugees, and this has put the financier into the bad books of some European and American ethnocultural nationalists who are appalled by recent refugee floods. Generally, though, he is hardly a household name, and his endeavors have scarcely influenced refugee movements, except insofar as his support of democracy in Syria eventually contributed to the displacement of Syrians caught in civil war. The far-right horror at the advance of their bugbear ‘rape-fugees,’ then, can hardly explain the intense wall of vilification that has been built around the name Soros on social media. He is almost always mentioned in the context of American politics. The brand of politics that mentions Soros online often corresponds to what Kamil Beylant calls ‘pedo-McCarthyism.’ This type of opinion resembles the ‘reds under the bed’ ideas of the McCarthy era in U.S. politics, where Sen. Joseph McCarthy led an innuendo war against anyone who had ever had any contact or apparent affinity – or even unbiased discussion – with people, groups or ideas considered to be Communist. Just as McCarthy could imply ‘reds’ into almost any situation, pedo-McCarthyism can always find ‘peds’ – pedophiles. Guilt-by-association – even the most abstract, imaginary association – is the name of the game. For example, what happens when Republican former Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, belatedly convicted in 2015 of engaging in sexual relations with underage boys when he was a teacher in the late 1960s, is found by a ‘Pizzagate’ blogger posing in an old video with scandal-plagued Republican House Majority leader (2003 – 2005) Tom DeLay, and current Speaker Paul Ryan? [quote] “What is this video trying to tell us? Features Dennis Hastert, Tom DeLay, John Boehner & Paul Ryan. Is the poster saying peds all become Speakers? Could this account for PR’s attempted undermining of DT? (Paul Ryan, Donald Trump – BN). PR’s wife was George Soros’s star protege. We know George is into all the slime that can be created.” [end quote] Soros, who has never been tainted with any sex scandal more inflammatory than divorce and remarriage, is tagged in there as part of a pedophile conspiracy because Paul Ryan’s wife knew him, and Paul was a work colleague of the then-undisclosed historic abuser Hastert, who hadn’t committed a sexual offense since his marriage in 1973. Anything goes when you’re smearing Soros with ‘all the slime.’ But does any genuine American really have incentive to involve him this way? It’s possible – but not bloody likely. Twitter, somewhat ambivalently (i.e., with many account suspensions), hosts a spate of ‘pizzagate’ and ‘pedogate’ accounts who have a lot to say about Soros. In a sample of their tweets from late June, 2017, I found several prominent accounts obsessed with mixing slags against Soros with fanciful scenarios of pedophile scandal (about which I’ll say more soon). The ‘David Seaman’ (@d_seaman) account is a major player: Seaman says “Such a bad time to be a Soros twinkie or any other bottomfeeding enemy of human freedom. The problem is they don’t see what’s next.” The meaning of “what’s next” is clarified by fellow-pizzagater “Kevin W” (@kwilli1046) in a statement retweeted by Seaman: “George Soros belongs in jail. He causes civil unrest and violence in multiple countries. His time is up.” A video clip from the Russian news service RT is attached, with the title ‘World’s Biggest Meddler.’ This is followed up by ‘Sarah Abdallah’ (@sahouraxo) who says (Jun 20), “The institute of destabilizer-in-chief John McCain is bankrolled by billionaire regime-changer George Soros and tyrannical Saudi Arabia.” Abdallah also shows up in late June defending Bashar al-Assad with “Assad and his family visit a wounded soldier in Hama (photo shown). This is the man Nikki Haley wants you to believe is ‘killing his own people.’” Responding tweeters satirize this cretinous bit of spin by posting photos of Hitler visiting soldiers. There seems to be a pattern here, like in one of those optical puzzles where a bunch of squiggly lines, squinted at properly, resolve to form a shape, like a face or a dog (https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2015/sep/25/the-worlds-most-brain-twisting-puzzles-in-pictures#img-5). In this case, there seems to be a face, and that face is a very familiar one from world news. That face must have had a big smile on it in March 2016, when the personal Gmail account of John Podesta was phished by the Russian intelligence unit Fancy Bear (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_emails). Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton and later chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was a key player in high-level organizing and fundraising efforts supporting the Assad-despising Democratic Party. Fancy Bear put a veneer of popular-resistance legitimacy over this raid by depositing the emails with the Wikileaks organization, where the text was made searchable and placed alongside officially released emails from Hillary Clinton’s controversial private server. Frustratingly, however, the emails were all but bereft of scandalous or even interesting material. This must have been very disappointing to intelligence groups who were undoubtedly put to work looking for any minute item of intel value. One imagines incentives or rewards were offered for good finds, however cryptic, in the vast volume of banality and tedium. Picking among the twigs and seeds, reddit.com user DumbScribblyUnctious and others got into the social media of people prominently mentioned in the emails, including James Alefantis, the owner of a restaurant where Democratic fundraisers had been held. Comet Ping Pong, the place was called, since it contained both a hipster pizzeria and useable ping pong tables. Scribbly decided it was a place to be suspicious about. He/she elaborated its sins as follows: [quote] Comet Pizza is a pizza place owned by James Alefantis, who is the former gay boyfriend of David Brock, the CEO of Correct the Record (a super-PAC funding body supporting the Hillary Clinton election campaign). It has been the venue for dozens of events for the Hillary campaign staff. John Podesta has had campaign fundraisers there for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. John’s brother and business partner Tony Podesta has his birthday party there every year. It’s also a dive that according to reviews and photos has hidden bathroom doors and creepy murals. The bathrooms in particular have murals exclusively of nude women, as well as a great deal of graffiti relating to sex. Reviews of the restaurant are bizarrely polarized. Websites describing it positively note that there are regularly “unsupervised children running around”. Their menu includes a pedophilic symbol, as do the signs and decorations of other neighboring businesses. [end quote] The “pedophilic symbol” on the menu was a logo showing crossed ping pong paddles. It was vaguely similar in shape to a ‘child lover’ symbol used by a few websites in the lawful minor-attracted community (inclusive of non-abusing pedophiles, hebephiles, ephebephiles and bigenerationals). The symbol clearly showed a butterfly composed of large heart-shaped forewings and small heart-shaped hindwings – far more complex than two crossed paddles. The amount of spin imagination needed to see the ‘child lover’ symbol in the paddles was also enough to turn many nearby logos and signs into ‘pedophilic symbols.’ Pizzerias, especially, were inclined to use wedge-shaped logos that could be taken as similar to a spiral upright blue triangle used as a ‘boy lover’ symbol among the minor-attracted. (This one, unlike the butterfly, was a rather frequently and openly used symbol on the internet). The spin imaginations of Scribbly and those like him/her put the boylover symbol into a position similar to that of the Parisian bookstore that trademarked the expression ‘libération des femmes’ (women’s liberation) just as it began to become popular. Spiral triangle symbols are everywhere in the modern graphic arts world, not least where pizza slices are being fancied up. Suddenly all sorts of things could be portrayed as cryptically pedophilic. This symbolic spin game, by now, has gone so far that even the reversed circular spiral device on ‘Donate Life’ organ donation posters of the Washington (DC) Regional Transplant Community has been likened by numerous Twitter accounts to a scrawled spiral triangle symbol used on a few websites to represent the ‘little boy lovers’ community. This leap of silliness has generated the paranoid insinuation that the organ donation people are involved in trafficking parts of satanically sacrified children. (This won’t at first seem to make sense, but read on.) Under investigation by Podesta-pickers, Alefantis soon yielded more conspiracy fodder to go along with his crossed paddle logo. His Instagram account showed photos and associated comments that struck Scribbly as weird. [quote] We recently found the instagram account of James Alefantis. The contents of it are indescribably bizarre and the contexts of the posts and comment chains are weird. Alefantis does not have any children nor do his closest associates, but the photos seem to be a near constant assortment of different children of a variety of ages, intermingled between posts about gay bars, clubs, photos of common rape drugs, and piles of foreign currency. After it being trawled through for 24 hours it has been set to private. A large set of archived copies can be seen here in the next section. Similarly the instagram and twitter accounts of Comet Ping Pong are being edited selectively. The accounts of the people favoriting and commenting on these posts are equally bizarre in both content, context, and demeanor. http://archive.is/9FN8n – Girl, striped, taped to table http://archive.is/r93DT – Michelle Obama playing Ping Pong http://archive.is/vSqri – Girl, drinking milk http://archive.is/vaDfJ – Girl, standing in basket http://archive.is/jXWrG – Photo of refrigerated meat locker, weird comments [end quote] And so on. Here we come to an interesting point in the spin flurry around Comet Ping Pong, which rapidly surged from Scribbly’s starting point to become the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy movement. In my reading of the Pizzagate info you’ve seen so far, and more that will come later, I see an interesting clash between two strands of American culture, one of which may be being played upon by outside helpers. Americans, at least those of European ethnic background, are more-or-less divided between what I call romanticists and ironics. Romanticists tend to see the world in black-and-white terms, a confrontation between angels and demons. Children, to them, are among the angels, at least in theory (in real life, the brats may get it, but in theory they’re beyond precious). Proper décor in the household is all about niceness, or in religious homes, inspiration. For ironics, events like the holocaust made sentimental fervor and passionate locals-first politics suspect. They may be moved by the cuteness and innocent sincerity of a child, but feel compelled to make worldly and ironic remarks to show they’re not going over to the sentimental side. Their home décor may include elements that acknowledge human cruelty or sexuality, even if children are present – they think of this material as a needed reality check and a defense against woolly jingoism. Scribbly, examining the Alefantis Instagram, was a romanticist reading an ironic milieu. He saw creepiness wherever he looked, including children who weren’t haloed as iconic angels. For example, the image Scribbly captions as “girl, striped, taped to table” showed a lass of about seven, grinning away, with her wrists paper-lightly adhesive-taped to a wooden tabletop. A commenter says ‘New seating area / procedure for your youngest guests? Hilar.’ (inferred ‘hilarious’ – BN). A second comment identifies the girl by her regularly used hashtag ‘carisjames,’ i.e., Caris (a last name is found in some sites), the god-daughter of James (Alefantis). There has been much speculation online about the name Caris, including a suggestion that it comes from the ‘date rape drug’ carisoprodol, but it’s just an anglicization of the Greek name Charis, meaning Grace. The surname Alefantis is also Greek. (A popular attempt by a Pizzagate conspiracist to derive ‘James Alefantis’ as the French ‘J’aime les enfants’ – I love children – was one of the more comical moments of spin exaggeration in this frenzy). This picture, in any case, clearly represents a momentary whimsy of some kind, a playful in-joke, but it breaks the romanticist law that children must be romanticized. Thus, as a third commenter notes, “this is pretty creepy, bro.” I suspect James found the tape a needed anodyne for a scene that might otherwise have been too darn cutesy to publish. The photo that Scribbly captions ‘photo of a refrigerated meat locker, weird comments’ shows a walk-in refrigerator, emptied and cleaned, with a comment from ‘Jimmycomet’ (James Alefantis) saying “Oh yeah this looks fun.” The extreme cleanliness of the refrigerator suggests it may have been newly installed or recently stringently cleaned. Whether the comment is a restaurateur’s glee about a big fridge or a joking piece of grand-guignol theatrical comment (grand guignol is the tongue-in-cheek live-theater version of the horror movie) – or both – is ambiguous. Two commenters remark on how big the fridge is, which suggests it may be a new improvement in the business. Then a commenter pushes the grand-guignol button by saying “#killroom,” which leads to a series of follow-up jokes like “drunk tank,” “just wash it up when you’re done,” “#murder” (the hashtag would link this post to every other public Instagram post hashtagging murder – not exactly privately conspiratorial) and even “where the werewolves lock themselves up during the full moon?” Scribbly, as a hardcore romanticist, sees these comments as ‘weird’ and creepy, and has no notion of the apotropaic use of such motifs in modernist-ironic culture, where joking about such creepy interpretations is intended to neutralize their appearance in the imagination. Orthodox Pizzagatery represents this room as a real child-killing chamber, casually revealed on Instagram with elite fearlessness. At times, it’s hard to know whether Scribbly and friends are genuinely experiencing naïve culture shock or deliberately putting invidious spin on things. A close-up photo showing the baby face of Caris (https://archive.li/gMkFG) at first has commenters remarking on her cuteness, with James as ‘jimmycomet’ then spiking the sentiment by commenting to her mother, “#themostexpensiveaccessory.” A commenter named Joe then says to James, “You are quickly becoming my favorite hashtagger #hotard.” The word ‘hotard,’ a common family name and the name of a bus line, also has a niche in the Urban Dictionary as ‘hoe’ (hiphop for whore) ‘tard,’ ‘an extra dumb promiscuous slut.’ James then replies to Joe with “#hotard.” Modernist-ironics can recognize this exchange as mock gay camp banter, with Joe calling James a slut in a friendly way, and James returning the ironic compliment. Joe’s phrase illustrates why one should never omit punctuation, even in internet terseness – a comma would have removed any ambiguity about who ‘hotard’ was addressed to. As it is, Scribbly and friends, seeing a sexual connotation defacing the comments next to an iconic cute baby, leap to the idea that the baby is being called a promiscuous slut. The comments, including the properly sentimental ones, are represented as a weird orgiastic code exchange involving sexualized babies. The social media photos were only the beginning of Scribbly’s excited culture clash with James and his friends. It turned out James often helped organize art viewings at the house of John Podesta’s lobbyist brother Tony, and Tony was the quintessential anti-sentimental art collector. He was most proud of a large sculpture called ‘The Arch of Hysteria’ by Franco-American expressionist artist Louise Bourgeois. It showed a headless female body with back arched in an inverted U shape, a sign of extreme emotional distress. The sculpture dates to 1993, and places Bourgeois in the mainstream of modern women’s commentary on the Victorian-era psychological diagnosis of ‘hysteria,’ pioneered by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Youtube Pizzagate chronicler MartyLeeds33 remarks that “regardless of the artist, it seems to be a very morbid thing to have as a prized possession hanging in your living room.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6vvx2rHid0 23:56). This is really the nub of the problem. Marty and other Pizzagaters, as decorators, would prefer a nice landscape, a Victorian children’s painting, or even a snazzy abstract to the ‘morbid’ piece of flagrant reality acknowledged in metal by Bourgeois. Podesta, on the other hand, prefers decorating with acknowledgments of mortality. He also owns paintings by Serbian artist Biljana ?ur?evic, someone viewed or spun as highly alarming by Scribbly and colleagues. From a piece I wrote earlier (https://justpaste.it/PizzaZaccaria): [quote] ?ur?evic (pronounciation similar to Georgevich), as a survivor of a bloody civil war, had acquired a taste for depicting reality as gory and violent. Some of her paintings, as seen in a major art retrospective that was held in Haifa in 2009, showed things like half-naked soldiers with snarling Rottweilers tied to a rail, and a small, near-naked boy suspended with belts from the ceiling of a shower stall. Tony had a ?ur?evic in his living room showing two dead girls washed up in a marsh – something the artist had witnessed during the war – next to a larger painting showing living girls lying comfortably in a radiating circle among maple leaves scattered at the bottom of an empty, shallow, tiled pool. [end quote] And then there was Marina. [quote] The crème de la crème, however, of the sinister art Tony Podesta sponsored, was an evening of performance art by another Serbian artist, Marina Abramovi?. Marina’s oeuvre included hosting people in empty rooms where they could help her spread pig’s blood and other bodily fluids, like breast milk, on the walls and floors in an endeavor she called ‘spirit cooking.’ They wrote slogans in blood like ‘with a sharp knife, cut deeply into the middle finger of your left hand. Eat the pain.’ She had published an art book containing some of this visceral quasi-haiku in 1996. The hands-on performance was supposed to induce a feeling of being at one with reality in all its danger and vulnerability, while containing its chaos with made-up ritual. To the conspiracy theorists, this ‘spirit cooking’ was Satanism, pure and simple. It showed that the elite pedophiles must be taking part in the legendary ‘satanic ritual abuse,’ the subject of a major, painstakingly debunked moral-panic outbreak in the 1990s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse). [end quote] The Pizzagaters apparently gave no thought to the idea that the art interests of Alefantis, the Podestas and friends could be showing a determination to prevail against the gore and possible hysteria (now called PTSD, in part) of real life by acknowledging and containing them. There was no reflection that people interested in visceral-reality art might honor, value, respect and protect a baby or child as much as the romanticists did. The imagery was just too disturbing; therefore, the people must be just as disturbing, if not more so. The thought that the Pizzagaters have formed themselves, through all their fearful emoting, into a headless Arch of Hysteria, pre-satirized by Podesta’s artworks, is hard to escape. There was something relevant in that statue after all. Marina inadvertently helped the idea that her art was disturbing with a statement on reddit in response to a questioner asking “What place do you see the occult as having in contemporary art? Can magick be made (not simply appropriated / performed)? She responded “Everything depends on which context you are doing what you are doing. If you are doing the occult magic in the context of art or a gallery, then it is the art. If you are doing it in a different context, in spiritual circles or private house or on TV shows, it is not art. The intention, the context for what is made, and where it is made defines what art is or not.” Most of us from the modernist-ironic side of life have read a lot curatorial notes and artist quotes with this sort of commentary. The conclusion I and many friends have drawn is that they mostly illustrate that it’s a dubious idea to try to explain or define art in writing. Marina’s ‘spirit cooking’ is loosely based on some folk magic attributed to the Romanian diaspora community in Serbia, but she’s clearly practicing and making her name as an artist – no magical deeds have been attributed to her. MartyLeeds33 thinks Marina’s statement shows that she goes all-out into the occult when she’s doing a house party, the sort of showing she did for Tony Podesta. This leaves unexplained why a televised presentation, stated by Marina not to be ‘art,’ would be more séance-like than a public art gallery performance. I think Marina has actually diplomatically sidestepped the ‘magick’ person’s question and commented that her art was ‘art’ per se when it was contained in a context usually labelled art, but was something less formal when found outside of recognized art precincts, such as in a house or on television. Certainly, there’s no indication that anyone has attempted to invoke the satanic forces by showing Marina’s oeuvre on T.V. Symbolizing nitty-gritty mortal reality with blood, in any case, is one of the most prominent artistic tropes of the late 20th century and the current day. In parallel, the attempt by post-feminists to supplant Christian rituals with neo-pagan symbolisms like healing crystals and solstice gatherings has also been a prominent running theme. Actual invocations of malevolent forces in such endeavors tend to be just as forbidden as they are in Christianity; these forces represent domination and power, which in turn represent male evil. Satan is the epitome of the male rapist woman-batterer. He has no devotees in this feminist-influenced blood-and-chanting milieu. Still less is there any affinity for the ultimate feminist symbol of abusive male power, the sexual exploitation of children. Sometime around the time Scribbly started the Pizzagate frisson spinning, someone, either in an intelligence community or in a low-intelligence community, had a catalytic moment of what you could call spinspiration. Among the bucketloads of banalities in the Clinton and Podesta emails, there were many communications related to fundraising events, and it turned out many such events involved pizza. This word rang a bell from the specific milieu of the wild-and-crazy 4chan website, where there was a history going back to at least 2010 of people using ‘cheese pizza’ as a euphemism for another item abbreviated ‘c.p.,’ namely, child pornography. A poster called Luckless on the minor-attracted website boychat.org noted in July, 2012, that “posting a picture of a pizza pie (on 4chan) would be enough to prompt people into replying with kiddy porn.” Such threads were soon deleted, even on 4chan, but were very active in their short timespan. (Boychat itself is a news and discussion board that does not allow image posting). The emails also mentioned other foods, and this spinspired other adventurers to look for connections to hidden pedo signaling. Someone soon remembered that the gay community in the mid-20th century had referred to men attracted to beardless, post-pubescent youths (including both legal and underage beardless males) as ‘chicken hawks,’ sometimes rendered ‘chicken lovers.’ The admired youths were termed ‘chicken’ because of their smooth skin. Any references to chicken could thus be spun as pedophile code. Then a particularly ambitious Podesta-picker who had clearly read through many emails came up with a theoretical list of what other food names might mean. The FBI had posted a bulletin a few years earlier depicting the various pedophile logos, including those mentioned above, and this Pizzagater or his/her later recyclers falsely attributed the ad-hoc food code list to the FBI. The clue that these food codes were made up specifically to spin innuendo into the Podesta and Clinton emails can be seen in the presence of the completely incongruous word ‘map,’ as I’ll soon illustrate. [quote] “hotdog” = boy “pizza” = girl “cheese” = little girl “ice cream” = male prostitute “walnut” or “nuts” = person of color “map” = semen “sauce” = orgy [end quote] All of these codes are, as far as I can determine, complete fictions, but ‘map’ is specifically a retrofit designed to incriminate a slightly off-beat email received (not sent) by John Podesta. John was out looking for summer rental properties in Martha’s Vineyard, New York State, and was thought to have left a souvenir handkerchief behind at one of the places his rental broker took him to. Here’s the email series, minus unrelated back-emails I’ve trimmed off. In the first, the owners’ agent contacts John’s broker or local contact, Susan Sandler, to say a handkerchief has been left. In the second, Sandler emails John about it. In the meantime, she’s clearly obtained a further description of the handkerchief, most likely by telephone. It appears to be a souvenir or promotional handkerchief with a city map printed on it, an antiquey sort of souvenir that’s still produced for sale in New York and other major cities. (Vintage collector example of a New York hankie depicted online: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/451274825135815302/) [quote] From: Kathryn Tate Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2014 10:04 AM To: Sandler, Susan Subject: You left something at the Field house Susan & Herb I just came from checking the Field house and I have a square cloth handkerchief (white w/ black) that was left on the kitchen island. Happy to send it via the mail if you let me know where I should send it. I also meant to inquire yesterday about the pillows you purchased. I can send them as well, if you let me know where they are in the house. Safe travels to all Kate From:ss@sandlerfoundation.org To: john.podesta Date: 2014-09-02 17:54 Subject: Did you leave a handkerchief Hi John, The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related.) Is it yours? They can send it if you want. I know you’re busy, so feel free not to respond if it’s not yours or you don’t want it. Susaner [end quote] Pizzagaters were tantalized by the pizza reference, since it promised sexual scandal, but what to do with the ‘map’ in the description? Someone clearly had the brainwave that the blotch of a semen stain could be likened to a topographical shape, so that Susan might be ‘in’ on pedophilic rituals and actively conspiring with Podesta to return him the evidence of the ‘map’ he had made while sexually assaulting a ‘pizza.’ The fake FBI food code was sent out including this equivalence, legitimizing the pedophilic interpretation of ‘map.’ Bizarrely, most Pizzagaters find this email to be the number one smoking gun in the Podesta files ‘proving’ that the elites gather to rape and sacrifice small children. I can only assume they’ve never seen a map handkerchief. I find this particularly funny since I own one myself – a downtown Manhattan street map, sans pizza. The only thing that would make the Podesta hankie ‘pizza-related’ is that it was produced by a pizzeria and had logos or other advertising content on it. This would have been a limited-edition run of promotionals and thus potentially something that a collector might want to keep. On the other hand, the idea that someone would offer to mail back a hankie with a semen stain on it from a criminal orgy is completely devoid of plausibility. If such a rag existed, it would be destroyed. This kind of lapse of reason has made people imagine the Pizzagaters are all nutteroonies, but anyone hastily drawing this conclusion may be underestimating the power of spin to use apparent madness in its favor. In February 2017, pink-haired Pizzagater Mellisa Zaccaria (@thehoneybee_ on Twitter), thought she’d decloaked a more rational explanation of the ‘pizza-related map.’ Having discovered that the phrase ‘minor-attracted person’ is often abbreviated ‘MAP’ online, she believed she could retranslate the phrase as ‘child-porn related pedophile.’ She came up with a conspiracy scheme that implicated the rental broker as an accessory to mass child rape. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24sQ45MD2_w 11:45) [quote] ..This woman (Susan Sandler – BN) must have maybe shown an interest in some of this depravity of exploiting children, maybe a party where they’re spirit cooking, maybe – something. Someone has left this handkerchief, I believe it to be John Podesta, I believe he left it for this woman, Susan Sandler, to let her know that he has the goods, that he can connect her with people, that maybe in the Cape he can provide that this sort of child exploitative service. I believe that John Podesta left this handkerchief for Susan Sandler to let her know that he has access and/or connections for this person – maybe not for her, but for clients that she deals with. She deals with VERY WEALTHY clients that may be interested in child sex parties, in child sex trafficking, child pornography, whatever. This is clear to me that John has left handkerchiefs before at other places. I think it has ‘a minor attracted person that seems child porn related’ – that’s how you would read this email…. This is kind of a new finding and I think it’s really important. [end quote] Mellisa got ahold of some historic information about coy Victorian maidens signaling romantic interest by ‘accidentally’ leaving fancy handkerchiefs behind at social occasions. She used this info to back up her wild scheme for cloth-based Satanic child rape communication. Her scenario has John Podesta using casually dropped hankies to announce his child rape pimping services to local real estate people in vacation spots for the wealthy. I believe that the only impulse that could lead a person to cleave to such a loopy idea is what I call ‘acadenvia,’ the envy of academics. Pizzagaters are mostly reasonably well educated people who aren’t trained as academic researchers, but they delight in their home-made ‘eureka’ discoveries, and their fascinating click-based research. Any novel conspiracy idea they come up with feels like a major scientific breakthrough to them. Impressing other conspiracy theorists is the kitchen research equivalent of a Nobel prize. Suddenly, they have entered a whole parallel ‘research’ universe where they can have credibility and not be left behind in grunt-world by people who got more education than they did. The ego stroking this process provides serves to buoy the most far-fetched ideas into long-term life. Whole conspiracy communities imagine that they, not the practitioners of cautiously correlated academic method, are the true bearers of realistic understanding. It’s a thrill. Pizzagate ‘researchers’ all heavily stress the allegedly incriminating ‘weird’ emails they’ve collected with food references in them. These accusations all fall apart at the slightest examination. I’ll go over more important examples before we move on. A frequently seen one, from Fred Burton at the strategic intelligence company Stratfor in Austin, Texas, says “I think Obama spent about $65,000 of taxpayer’s money flying in pizza/dogs from Chicago for a private party at the White House, assume we are using the same channels?” Pizzagaters point out that White House security doesn’t allow catered food. The place has five full-time chefs who are surely capable of boiling up some weiners. What’s going on here? Couldn’t this mean that Barack Obama – who not only knows John Podesta but also is shown in a favourite Pizzagate photo playing ping pong with a young boy in a White House corridor – was flying in young boys and girls from Chicago at great expense for a (somehow) clandestine rape-and-sacrifice gala? Looking at associated emails, however, shows that Burton’s mail was one of a series. The series began with Fletch Good writing, “Well, you guys all seemed to enjoy the first Hot Dog Day back in mid-August so much, I thought I’d volunteer again to do another hot dog run tomorrow for lunch. For those of you who weren’t around the first time, the place is called Dog Almighty [now out of business], it’s down on South Lamar near the Manchaca intersection (in Austin). As I said before, this place has the most awesome hot dogs and fries in town.” (Etc. – another paragraph follows with hotdog details and rhapsody about award-winning chili and vegetarian options). So far, this seems to be about hot dogs. Fletch Good, on Oct. 10, 2008, tells everyone to get their orders in, and tells publishing Vice-President Aaric Eisenstein that he’s also expected to be interested, so he should get his order in. The event must have been a success, because on May 14, 2009, Stratfor President Don Kuykendall announces yet another hot dog feast, this time billed as “Chicago Hot Dog Friday.” A search on Google maps shows that while Dog Almighty is now closed, there are several places in Austin that bill themselves as ‘Chicago Style’ hot dog vendors, including Lucky Dog Chicago-Style grill and Chi-town Chicago-style Eatery. Even the Mangia Pizza shop not far from Stratfor’s head office is selling ‘Chicago Style Pizza.’ Chicago is a big deal in Austin restaurants. Don makes a typical CEO’s praise statement, “to celebrate all you hotdogs out there” (a ‘hotdog’ being a risk-taker and high achiever) and again invites Aaric to participate. In response to this, half an hour later, Fletch Good sends off the response that made him famous: “I think Obama spent about $65,000 of taxpayer’s money flying in pizza/dogs from Chicago for a private party at the White House, assume we are using the same channels?” This is clearly a joke about how the hot dogs got to be ‘Chicago Hot Dogs’ this time – are they going to be flown in from Chicago? If so, how are we paying for it? Barack Obama is from Chicago, so a fantasy is spun forth about him using his infinite tax resources to fly Chicago dogs and pizza in to the White House. What grain of truth this jest may have in it is hard to say – perhaps Obama did have a large barbecue party with Chicago-style dogs, or perhaps Fletch is just free-wheeling. The “I think” and “about” are typical setups for humorous exaggeration. In any case, the question is either barbed humor or giddy humor, and it has nothing realistic to say about Obama actually transporting anything from Chicago. This conversation would seem 100% foody except that Aaric Eisenstein quips “If we get the same ‘waitresses,’ I’m all for it.” It isn’t obvious exactly what this refers to – restaurant staff delivering hot dogs, female Stratfor colleagues handing them out? – but the Pizzagate interpretation that the ‘waitresses’ are code-hot-dog (young boy) sexual assault victims or accompanying little girl victims seems absolutely preposterous. Some Pizzagaters see gunsmoke in the quotes around ‘waitresses,’ but apart from any office in-joke this may refer to, the word is generally under opprobrium as sexist, and is replaced by the neutral ‘server’ in polite discourse. Aaric is therefore quoting from old-style language. Having worked in a workplace that had pizza parties, I have to say, to turn such an appreciated sort of festivity into a false accusation of sexual brutality is perverse, grotesque, and, frankly, sick. But Pizzagaters know no shame. In yet another branch of their email speculations, they beat up on a doting granddad. Here’s the email exchange that got Herb Sandler into boiling nutter oil. [quote] From:john.podesta@ To: hs@sandlerfoundation.org (altered) Date: 2015-12-24 21:42 Subject: Re: Cheese Miss you Herb. Happy Holidays and see you in 2016. On Thursday, December 24, 2015, Sandler, Herbert wrote: Mary (Podesta – BN) and John I think you should give notice when changing strategies which have been long in place. I immediately realized something was different by the shape of the box and I contemplated who would be sending me something in the square shaped box. Lo and behold, instead of pasta and wonderful sauces, it was a lovely, tempting assortment of cheeses, Yummy. I am awaiting the return of my children and grandchildren from their holiday travels so that we can demolish them. Thank you so much. I hope you and your gang are well. I miss you both Best wishes for a merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Herb Do you think I’ll do better playing dominos on cheese than on pasta? [end quote] The sane interpretation of this email is both obvious and heartwarming. Perhaps in connection with sojourns at Martha’s Vineyard, the Podestas send an annual Christmas gift to Herb Sandler, most likely related to Susan, mentioned above. Usually it’s a box with samples of pasta and jars of different sauces; this year it has changed to an array of fine cheeses instead. Herb isn’t going to start eating the treats by himself; he’s going to wait for his grandchildren to arrive. He plans to spend quality time with them playing dominos, as he must do every year, since he jokingly asks if John and Mary think he’ll win more easily if he is metabolically stoked on cheese rather than pasta. One infers the grandchildren do quite well against him. The child pornographic or rapist interpretation of the ‘dominos’ phrase is so far from probability that a rational mind can’t encompass it. Yet this phrase is a major player in every recitation of Pizzagate quasi-evidence. Herb’s contemplation of parlor games with his grandchildren has put him in the internet pillory where the spiteful and relentless hope to taunt him forever. The clash between romanticist and modernist culture comes out again in the next email I’ll discuss, one that gets the Pizzagaters very excited because it discusses actual children. This one involves a planned recreational trip to a farm by a Hillary Clinton associate called Tamera Luzzatto, who is clearly also friends with John and Mary Podesta. She is planning to bring her grandchildren out to the farm, which has a swimming pool they are well known to enjoy. The email series mentioning this is giddy from start to finish; it features a DC lawyer called Drew Littman, then part of legal counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, mocking past political stagings done at farms by saying, “Thanks for remembering me, as I was planning to use the farm as the backdrop to announce my candidacy for speaker of the house.” Getting in on the joke, Tamera Luzzatto quips, “Well, since Hillary stood with (Democrat Senator Daniel) Moynihan at his farm with bales of hay to run for the Senate seat, HELLO SPEAKER Littman!” Littman then goes into full comedy mode with [quote] Also, if terrorists or unhappy former Clinton/Kerry interns with submachine guns attack the farm during my remarks, we won’t all die, because I’ll make a split-second decision lead us in a well-coordinated and ultimately totally successful charge against them. This is going to be a great day all-around. [end quote] The email series has begun with wry humor; Tamera Luzzatto is making the invitation, and also backhandedly excusing her plan to mix some children into this excursion that colleagues have been invited to. [quote] With enormous gratitude to Advance Man Extraordinaire (Jon) Haber, I am popping up again to share our excitement about the Reprise of Our Gang’s visit to the farm in Lovettsville. And I thought I’d share a couple more notes: We plan to heat the pool, so a swim is a possibility. Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and almost 7) (children of son Ben Luzzatto and actress Alexandra Tydings – BN) so you’ll have some further entertainment, and they will be in that pool for sure. And with the forecast showing prospects of some sun, and a cooler temp of lower 60s, I suggest you bring sweaters or whatever attire will enable us to use our outdoor table with a pergola overhead so we dine al fresco (and ideally not al-CHILLo). [end quote] The phrase that has pricked the ears of the romanticist Pizzagate readers is ‘entertainment.’ This suggests to them that the children are being used to provide some sort of entertainment service for the adults, which in turn makes their everclean minds immediately turn to sex. They don’t realize, or don’t wish to realize, that modernists often excuse the intrusion of children with such ironic phrases, in this case meaning “they may draw your attention whether you like it or not, especially if you plan to go swimming.” The actual intention inverted within the irony is to forewarn and mollify people who are reticent to mix socially with children, not to announce the children as entertainment possibilities. Romanticists aren’t much on irony, unless it’s militarized as sarcasm, and prefer to see children presented as suitably cocooned and venerated. The word ‘entertainment,’ in their mindset, is far too brash to be applied to kids, making them sound like, perhaps, showgirls or even strippers. Thus, a civil warning that ‘there will be noisy kids at the pool’ has become a deadly orgy in Pizzagate lore. Littman has clearly decided NOT to lead a “a well-coordinated and ultimately totally successful charge against” these psycho-terrorists, so he’s not going to get any nomination for hero of the Pizzagate day. I suppose he reasons that those who charge against nuts may become hazardous to people with peanut allergies. The last email I’ll mention is the one that Pizzagaters take as proof of the Satan-worshipping designs of the elite pedo-pizzaphiles. It’s a complicated series about a delicate negotiation [quote] HONDURAS: MAYBE, MAYBE From: Cheryl Mills To: Hillary Clinton Date: 2009-08-28 13:30 Subject: HONDURAS: MAYBE, MAYBE UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05764911 Date: 07/31/2015 From: Mills, Cheryl D Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 8:30PM To: (redacted) Subject: Fw: Honduras: Maybe, maybe Fyi From: Kelly, Craig A To: Mills, Cheryl D; Abedin, Huma; Sullivan, Jacob 3 Cc: Smith, Daniel B; Macmanus, Joseph E Sent: Sat Aug 29 16:53:56 2009 Subject: Fw: Honduras: Maybe, maybe Attached is from Lew Amselem, our rep to OAS (Organization of American States). He gives a readout of his conversation today with Arias Accord negotiator Jon Biehl. Some nice comments about S from Biehl and (Costa Rican president Oscar) Arias. I will forward another note from Hugo Llorens with similar message. Best, ck From: Amselem, W Lewis To: Task Force Honduras; Otero, Maria Sent: Sat Aug 29 13:54:22 2009 Subject: Honduras: Maybe, maybe From: amseleM To: Amselem, W Lewis Sent: Sat Aug 29 13:51:00 2009 Subject: Biehl called a little after 1:30 pm to say the meeting with the de facto envoys had been abruptly cancelled – but for perhaps a positive reason. (Post-coup President-designate Roberto) Micheletti has asked about half the team to return to Tegucigalpa (Corrales stayed, as “he seeks to confirm that he will not lose his visa”). In the phone call he got from the de facto envoys as they headed for the airport, Biehl said he detected a positive attitude. The envoys seemed confident they would get M (= deposed president Manuel Zelaya) to sign the SJ (= San Juan) Accord. The envoys promised to call Biehl late this afternoon with the news from Honduras. If, if, if, if, the news is positive, Biehl and OAS Political Director Victor Rico will leave for Tegucigalpa tomorrow morning to meet Micheletti, make sure this is not another time-wasting tactic, and get something in writing from him that he agrees to the Accord and will sign it. Just before speaking to me, Biehl had spoken with Arias who expressed cautious optimisim that we might have a break-through. Arias told Biehl to tell us, that if that happens the United States gets the credit. Arias said the US has played the game exactly right, with the appropriate mix of carrots, sticks, toughness, unified message, even-handedness and, above all, good timing. Arias said the Europeans have been calling him over the past two days, and have fallen into line with the US; the Swedes, as head of the EU, and have told him that they will take their cue from the US and will support US actions. Arias, Biehl said, was extremely complimentary of the “great political instincts shown by Secretary Clinton.” -1-4n UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05764911 Date: 07/31/2015 With fingers crossed, the old rabbit’s foot out of the box in the attic, I will be sacrificing a chicken in the backyard to Moloch . . . Tri [end quote] https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/14333 This email relates to an event called the Honduran Constitutional Crisis of 2009. In it, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who seemed to be embarking on changing the constitution so that he could serve additional terms of office, was ousted by the army at the behest of the Supreme Court. He went to exile in Costa Rica. House Speaker Roberto Michelletti was installed as the new president, an existing protocol applying to the resignation or death of a standing President. Long time Central American peace negotiators Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica, and Jon Biehl, from the UK, worked with Hillary Clinton’s group and the Organization of American States (OAS) to try to effect a political solution that would allow Zelaya to resume his seat under certain conditions so that the tendency towards state coups could be controlled. The solution failed; Honduras refused to reinstall Zelaya, and the country was suspended for two years from the OAS. Eventually it was reinstated, and, in 2011, Zelaya was repatriated to Honduras and new serves on the nation’s behalf in the coordinating body called the Central American Parliament. The only part of this mail that interests the Pizzagaters is someone’s tag at the end saying, in effect, that they know the negotiations have been dicey and they hope the ‘Arias’ reconciliation deal will go through. To wish the deal luck, they joke that they will cross their fingers, rub a lucky rabbit’s foot, and sacrifice a chicken to the ancient Canaanite god Moloch, whose name is (apparently unbeknownst to the Pizzagaters) frequently used in such circumstances. Pizzagaters have gone into tremendous detail on the relationship of Moloch to Canaanite child sacrifices reported in the Old Testament – and especially on the eerie connection between the greedy Satanic deity and the concept of ‘chicken’ – as noted above, part of the food code taken to suggest pedophilic interest. There is no content in these Honduran emails the least bit compatible with pedosexual activities, but to Pizzagaters, the postscript serves as proof that the Clinton elite are Satan-worshippers connected to child sacrifice. Serendipitously, as I was researching this article, I had lunch with a colleague who’s a security expert, and in talking about the troubled course of his latest threat-risk report for a federal department, he said “now all we need to do is wave a few dead chickens back and forth in the air and pronounce the whole thing ritually pure.” The Pizzagaters don’t realize that people in the techno-bureaucratic world say these things all the time. It is, once again, irony, the conversational trope they misunderstand or find exploitable for spin mischief. Perhaps romanticists wouldn’t bandy about the name of a bad ole idol like Moloch, but modern-ironics have no fear of abusing the historical artifact’s dreadful name in a joke. If a mountain was ever built out of a semantic mole hill, Pizzagate is that volcanic innuendo heap. You might question, then: to what extent here is the motivation maladroitness, madness or machination? Are these people naïve, insane or deliberately herding a mob with scare tactics? There may be examples of all three motivations. Mellisa Zaccaria strikes me as being in the naïve camp, newly ‘woke’ to the conspiracy theory, and finding out with ga-ga revelation that long established terms like ‘MAP’ (minor attracted person) exist. She seems to sincerely believe that elites are torturing and killing hundreds of children, even as we speak. This is obviously not well thought out. Even though tens of thousands of young people are reported missing every year – usually teens who’ve had spats with their caregivers – most are found within a short time. A major public effort is usually made to find every truly missing child, other than teen runaways who’ve exhausted the patience of their relatives or are left in peace because they’re better off away from abusive guardians (and old enough to emancipate if they could get through the legal work). Long-term, mysterious disappearances are so unusual that they can mostly be collected into a manageable Wikipedia list and also into specialized websites for people who trace the missing as an avocation. My local transit system had screens showing images of missing children from all the nearby states; I soon came to recognize every one of the names and faces. Most of the cases were decades old and the series of images seldom changed. In the UK, allegations of cruel and sometimes ritualized abuse by elite people such as former PM Edward Heath and Conservative member of Parliament Harvey Proctor were eventually laid to rest by showing without doubt that the children the complainant ‘Nick’ said had been murdered could not have existed. All candidate missing children were well documented and could be ruled out as matches for Nick’s lurid tales of knifepoint rape, torture, near-drowning, and being asked to pick which friend would die next. Mellisa is fiercely devoted to helping suffering and tortured children who are purely figments of imagination. And her situation is unlikely to change, since she’s now being spoken to by a storytelling woman, a female ‘Nick’ pseudonymed ‘Emma’ (readily determined by a seeding of clues as a Tracy Remington) who, though luckily protected by audible direct advice from God, claims that police departments throughout the U.S. shelter satanic abuse cabals, as exemplified by the McMinnville, OR, police, who refuse to deal with child porn hidden in pdf files by her husband (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2173222/stepbrother-of-vip-paedo-fantasist-nick-reveals-serial-liar-has-torn-apart-their-family-with-constant-probing-from-police/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIj7cMSs_UI). Remington also believes the Facebook game Farmville connects through pop-ups to bestiality porn made by her husband. All witch-hunts begin with such storytellers, who suffer either from schizophrenia or from variants of factitious disorder / Munchausen syndrome. The latter is characterized by the concocting of dramatic, often bizarre sufferings, either personally or on behalf of a proxy such as a child, to attract sympathetic attention. In terms of Pizzagaters whose actual grip on reality seems compromised – the madness option – Alex Jones of the Infowars website comes to the forefront, or at least, he appears to. This wide-eyed, gesticulating video presenter has unleashed some of the battiest conspiracy rants these bunk-battered ears have ever heard. My researcher colleagues have transcribed some examples from a Youtube video called ‘LIVE: Police/Military Involved in U.S. Pedophile Roundup Speak Out,’ and I’ll document those below (Jones gives blanket permission to reproduce his material) along with notations about actual facts involved. Jones’ most common modus operandi is to take a catchy headline, vaguely refer to the facts of the associated story, and then go on a lurid, often grotesque fantasy jag about all the hidden back stories that he claims are only known to himself and privileged insiders. Lately, he’s been abetted in this by former Navy Seal and current television personality and special effects guru Craig Sawyer, who claims to be the source of some of the hidden stories – including thousands of child murders that obviously can’t have happened. I’ll come back to Craig presently. First, here’s Alex. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=606T-rqodzw, April 1). I’ve quoted his material extensively because it gives a good indication of the general flavor of Pizzagate and its broader-perspective sister-conspiracy Pedogate. My comments are in curly brackets. [quote] “Trump is rolling them up but then nothing’s done – the courts are sitting on it! {The alt-right proposition that Donald Trump has accelerated the arrests of child sexual exploiters is unsupported by facts – https://reason.com/blog/2017/02/27/trumps-fake-crackdown-on-sex-trafficking}. Kinda like the courts announce they won’t deport illegal aliens. And he said, it’s unbelievable, Trump moved against all this, they’re catching them WITH the kids in cages {no kids have been found in cages in sex busts. Closest real news story is that rapist/murderer Todd Kohlhepp kept an adult woman in a shipping container. The most prominent recent sex trafficking bust found nothing akin to cages http://ktla.com/2017/02/01/474-arrested-28-sexually-exploited-children-rescued-during-statewide-human-trafficking-operation-lasd/} – Jerry Sandusky’s son just got indicted as a major procurer {not true: he tried, via online chat, to interest two underage girls in sexting or oral sex, http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/13/us/jerry-sandusky-son-charged/index.html} – you’re seeing hundreds of arrests in New York, hundreds in Florida, hundreds all over, hundreds in Illinois {no unusual numbers of arrests have happened, especially not in ultra-vigilant Polk County, FL where Sheriff Grady Judd’s online stings have been pulling them in for years}. Remember Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, pedophile procurer {he offended only prior to 1973 when he was a teacher and not yet married – see Wikipedia} – and since he was a procurer, he got put in as the head Republican {fabrication}. You’re coming out with the police capturing the former British prime minister {fabrication}, I’ve got mainstream headlines, here’s Washington Post, “How the BBC star Jimmy Savile allegedly got away with abusing 500 children and sex with dead bodies” – Satanism! {Speculation derived from UK tabloids and probably minimally connected to reality}. That’s the Washington Post’s whitewash. They FOUND the dungeons where the kids said they were {fabrication}. They FOUND the dead bodies {fabrication}. They declared national security {conspiracy theory excuse for why Jones and Sawyer’s assertions can’t be evidenced}. Now why is this important? Because the globalist British taste – it’s not the British people – the weird Romanian Hungarian – I mean, nothing against them either – Transylvanian royal blood line that became the German royal blood line {Prince Charles claims Vlad Dracula, 15th century voivode of Wallachia, is interconnected among his European royal ancestors, but Wallachia is not Transylvania and Vlad’s only connection to the vampire ‘Count Dracula’ is in the pilfering of his surname for Bram Stoker’s 1897 fiction.} and now the British – I mean hell, Prince Charles literally lives now in Transylvania {untrue} and is involved in all this unbelievable stuff – the point is, is that he was best buddies with Jimmy Savile and would quote bring kids to Prince Charles to ‘love on’ {fabrication}. And then you google Prince Charles hugging kids in orphanages, it’s just unbelievable. {Charles carried out some charitable actions in Romania and bought several guest houses there for tourists to stay in. https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/stay-at-prince-charles-historical-guest-house-in-romania.html} “Watching all the censorship, and watching the media say ‘pedophilia doesn’t exist’ {fabrication} when task forces are arresting thousands of people a month, in hundreds of cases WITH the kids in CAGES {fabrication}– that he has CIA Defence Intelligence, MI6, MI5, German intelligence, NATO – (shows pics of logos) … snuff films {fabrication}, kids in cages {fabrication}, mass rape, child porn, all of it .. and then they see them arrested and then nothing happens {To gain a search warrant requires a cooperating judge, and documents of arrests are on the public record, so the fiction of mysterious raid cases where courts refuse prosecution is easily seen to be false}. 10:30 “LA sheriff’s office saying ‘these are kids grabbed out of back yards, you name it.’ {quote not found, nor anything resembling it, except warnings given out about coyotes} 11:10 “This is the most shameful part. Trolls on Youtube, trolls on info, at levels I’ve never seen, are saying ‘there’s no such thing as pedophilia’ {fabrication} or ‘pedophilia is good’ and they are all over the place and you’ve got NAMBLA {dormant} and you’ve got Salon writers saying ‘legalize pedophilia, it’s a good thing,’ {Salon interviewed ‘virtuous’ pedophile Todd Nickerson, who rejects sex with children and is already ‘legalized’ by obeying the existing law} that’s the new trendy liberalism where they’re now beginning to bully people, saying ‘just accept it, go along with it, the UK’s trying to lower the age of consent {there is no suggestion in UK government or political parties to do this}, this is the coming-out of the pedophiles, the lowering of the age of consent. But while they PUSH to say ‘we’re people, let us run your lives, let us have your kids’ {classic witchhunt ‘they’re putting you out of control’ scare rhetoric} they’re saying ‘it doesn’t exist, you’re crazy’ {Jones is probably referring to people saying his own conspiracy theories are unreal}. 16:50 re Comet Pizza: “there’s probably nothing going on there.” – “the media is gonna confab some thing to divert us off on.” {Jones was an avid Pizzagater until Alefantis’s lawyer sent him some stern paperwork; he then made a retraction. His muddled explanation was that the Comet Ping Pong story was probably a false lead planted by the media.} “Folks, they will delete police press conferences on Youtube when they bust pedophiles with 4-year-olds in bed – I’ve got stacks of news this week with a bust – they’re just running scared, everywhere they’re blocking, everywhere. {conspiracy hoax} “From the law enforcement sources we’ve got, they are raping kids to death. {fabrication} Cause the bottom of it’s Satanism and killing kids and that’s known {actually, it’s a persistent myth}, it’s come out in the British news, they found the Satanic altars at Savile’s house, in a hidden crypt, you know, the-the-the-the dead kids he had sex with, all of it – so this is all confirmed {fabrication} 20:30 “Hillary Clinton is an enabler and a supporter of pedophilia.” (story, Daily Express, “Jimmy Savile was part of Satanic ring” James Fielding, Jan 13, 2013) {Tabloid story not corroborated – journalistic fiction: http://saff.nfshost.com/savilemonster.htm }. 21:00 “There’s a wave coming against globalism {political agenda showing}. Globalism is run by psychopaths that are inbred who hate humanity and have no caring. If you’re a total psychopath, what’s the greatest thing to abuse for your thrill – CHILDREN! Type in Jimmy Savile, Prince Charles, his best friend, highest level national security clearance, and they finally confirmed what was said by BBC reporters 20 years ago {untrue} – they’d bring little girls in before the Prime Minister and they’d put plastic out – his favorite was about a 6- or 7-year-old – he wouldn’t have sex with them, they would slit their throat and he would masturbate while they died {outlandish fabrication – insanity or unscrupulous fear manipulation? The only Prime Minister about whom there were pedophile rumors was Ted Heath, who was actually a closet gay, but minimally sexually active; even the debunked rumors only involved boys}. Then Savile would have sex with the bleeding-to-death little girl {insanity-like fabrication}. So Savile is raping little girls while blood shoots out of their neck like Baron Harkonen in Heart Plug [1984 David Lynch film of Dune] and all this is going on and it’s mainstream news {no…} (shows news story by Richard Kay, Daily Mail, 12 Jun 2015, ‘How Savile seduced the royals,’ which includes nothing similar to the garish fiction just put out by Jones) 27:15 “Whether you believe in the devil or not, these groups are all into it, because it’s about focusing and being selfish and hurting innocent things and getting off on the fact that they have the will to do it. (grinds hips in his chair on cam) “Behind the scenes, the military and these high risk raids they’re doing on heavily armed compounds all over the United States {fabrication, though common pimps do tend to have guns} – and they’ve found Islamics are involved – obviously in Islam there’s a lot of pedophilia, sex slavery – harems also have children, Saudi Arabia basically has legalized pedophilia – you just can’t have sex with kids when you’re a kid, it’s when you’re an adult you can, and as an adult you can’t have sex with other men, but ONLY with kids, that’s like, I mean it’s the sickest crap you’ve ever … that’s admitted in the Quran {distorted: the Quran allows married sex only, with up to four wives, plus slave women}, which was written in Saudi Arabia (it wasn’t Saudi Arabia then but you know it is now) … it was like a camel raiding slaving group and then they took over Mecca … the purest form of Islam is this wahhabi group and it’s just pedophilia writ large {traditional Sharia in some zones allows marriage of pre-teens, but most wives are adult} “You just can’t make it up … you get into these elites, and he’s Transylvanian {shows European Commission chair Jean-Claude Juncker, who’s from Luxembourg} – the literal heir of the real Nazi Fod (sic).’ “These are parasites of the middle ages that got all the money in the Crusades … They then had the bloodlines that took over the royal bloodlines… These are the people and I mean, folks, if you study the Transylvanians where these legends came from with Dracula and all that stuff, drinking kids’ bloods and crown (sic), these people are friggin’ crazy. Everyone knew that if you were going to Transylvania, don’t take your kids … it is the place where kids are on the menu, they cook them, put them in stews – you can’t make this stuff up… {florid fiction; in context, ‘you can’t make this stuff up’ is hilarious.} “Saudi Arabia, giant pedophile base, you got Transylvania as a pedophile base… 32:33… “the main thing is they rape babies and slit their throats when they orgasm {insanity-like fabrication}. then they take the horror of the raped babies, you know, all its hormones, and they put in a big glass then they drink it {insanity-like fabrication}. 33:30 “There is a permissive atmosphere for pedophilia and child sacrifice – that’s what an abortion is. If you had an abortion, you got lied to. “I probably paid for more abortions than you can count on both hands before I was 25 and then I realized it was murder and stopped doing it {his own offspring?} 38:00 …“They’ve got the TSA (= Transportation Security Administration) under orders, groping your kids, which they know is grooming {except that there’s already been an underwear bomber on a plane, and Qaeda/ISIS/Boko gladly use kids as death mules if they aren’t blocked; anyone wanting to avoid hand search can go through the scanner.} … and they’re teaching your kindergartener about same-sex marriage – that’s sexualization of children {why would knowing about same-sex marriage sexualize children more than knowing about opposite-sex marriage does?} 38:30 – “I’m going to wire him (Craig Sawyer) $100,000 — We’re going to raise Craig 10 million dollars … we’re praying for God’s providence … (long ‘give me the strength’ prayer) {follow the money; notwithstanding pleas of selfless sacrifice and invocation of deity. Sawyer has no authentic visual documentation of his ‘kids in cages’ fantasy, but with enough money and his special-effects skills and contacts, he could undoubtedly cook up something looking pretty realistic.} 40:42 “Go into the real dungeons, notice, you show, here’s the key to everything totally proving this – hundreds of articles out the last month on 3000 arrests, 100+ in Pennsylvania, 100 in FL, hundreds in NY, hundreds in CA, hundreds in NE, hundreds in IL, you go and you look at it, and this is caught kids in the cages {fabrication, followed by the most insane demagoguic jag on the internet à}, in dungeons that are like whorehouses but kidnapped kids with pedos lined up all day to dump their disease into these kids, and wreck their minds and their souls and splinter their hearts and if you pay any more, you get to kill a baby … that’s what Craig says, the law enforcement goes in and there’s like frickin’ barrels of kids they haven’t put in acid yet … it’s just like, these people are like, they’ve never seen anything like it … industrial Satanism. ..we’re talking about kids strapped in, tops of their heads cut off, devil worshippers in their brains. …. ‘blaaaa we’re going to kill your kids, we have will of our God Satan…’” “Anything they’re covering (mainstream media), you know that’s fake” {recap of the excuse for backing down on Comet} “You got all these other world leaders kissing kids, running these foster homes where they get caught abusing kids like Savile and Prince Charles” {any crimes attributed to Savile don’t transfer to Charles by occasional association} 49:00 (Jones claims to have been invited to have sex with kids in grottoes in the Hellfire Club, Oxford) 50:00 (Jones claims to have fled Hollywood parties because big stars – not named – were pointed out as pedophiles by someone who then told him, “when the trucks come in you don’t want to know what happens.”) {requires believing in truckloads of missing children who are never missed by anyone, involved in events that no one ever leaks info about even when paparazzi-hounded celebs are involved} “I’ve studied this weekend like 10 hours last night and today literally how they do it in England once a police chief catches them, they find a dungeon, they find dead kids, they declare national security… they’ll then spike a file with somebody innocent, the news will focus on the innocent group, and they’ll say “oh my God the police have to apologize ‘cause there’s an innocent person involved.” {all fabrication} And then I went wow, now I’m learning about this here in America and how they do this. It’s, it’s truly incredible. “We can’t get upset about what MSM (= mainstream media) does, they just put out disinfo all day, they’re just a sorry lot of sell-outs who’ll do whatever they’re told. {discredit reality checks and your fantasies can take over the market; follow the money} “Can you imagine the footage of kids in cages? That’s where they were in California, just in this raid {untrue}. We know people ON the raids {sure you do}. Can you imagine them pulling two-year-old skeletons out of acid that aren’t fully dissolved yet? {there’s no matching reality for this figment of imagination} It’s game over, folks – we are inches away from game over right now. {always a bridesmaid, never a bride} 54:12 “You’ve got George Soros {interesting change of topic}, a Nazi collaborator who helped round up Jews, then they call me anti-Semite because he’s Jewish when I call him a Nazi … the ADL (= Anti-Defamation League) .. I don’t even hate ‘em, I just think “thank God I’m not those people.” {Wiki: When Soros was 13 in 1944, the Nazi-organized Judenrat “asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices … I was given these small slips of paper…. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, “You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported.” – That’s not collaboration, it’s sabotage – BN.} “Law enforcement isn’t perfect; but the globalists give law enforcement missions that are unconstitutional and then they demonize them in the media to make their main enemy the scapegoat, because that’s who they actually fear, that’s why they want robots and automation and gutless things to be in control because they’re going to have to get rid of strong men who are good, bad and ugly, to enforce for their little pot-bellied pedophile world, their little vampiric uuh buh, pedophiles are just a gateway, folks, they’re the gateway drug. It’s Satanism, it’s child sacrifice, it’s all there, but they always say it’s a hoax, it doesn’t exist, knowing you don’t want to admit it exists because you’re a good person and can’t believe that’s happening even though it’s confirmed. {confirmed as fiction, that is} “So pedophilia and satanism do exist – it’s exploding. The Democrat elite and the Republican elite are big parts of it. 1:12:27 “It’s, it’s about victory … We can’t just sort of live and not go after them. Will there ever not be pedophiles? No, but they’re going to be hiding out folks in places like Transylvania. That’s famous for it {pure fantasy}. That’s why the legends come from there. We’re going – we’re going to push them back beyond the shadows; we’re going to push them back into the ratholes and right into hell. And where it’s going to be incredibly rare – not Salon saying how great it is {never happened}, and a major clothing line saying how great it is and you know all this crap they’re pushing, we’re going to break them entirely, you know, with God’s help. “The UN officially has a man-boy love association, NAMBLA {the long dormant NAMBLA has never been associated with the U.N.; in fact, in the late 1980s, when it was still active, it was specifically excluded from proxy association via LGBT umbrella organizations – see its Wikipedia}, saying they want to legalize pedophilia, you know. they’ve got bills introduced there to legalize it {fabrication}. It’s happening, they’re sexualizing our children in the schools, they’re saying our kids belong to them… {fearmongering} It’s not a power trip, it’s the opposite … I’m so grounded now [clasps teary eyes] and so close to God that it horrifies me … to imagine .. what it’s like to be the people that are so grounded to Satan and what they’re involved in… I tell you, that terrifies me in God’s presence… now God is removing the humility and I’m getting jacked in to the high voltage.” [end quote] Hallelujones. As you can see in the above, Jones is re-using an ancient ploy: he’s revising the traditional anti-Semitic ‘blood libel’ about Jews ritually sacrificing Christian babies, but painting fantasy elite pedophile heads over top of the ancient Jewish heads in his depictions. Every century there are ranting bigots like Jones, and the only thing remarkable about him is that he’s found a way to modernize the blood-libel game by changing its target. As in the case of many ‘lone wolf’ terrorists, it’s very hard to discern the ratio of mental illness to sane criminal malevolence in this program. The Jones videos have hundreds of thousands of viewers, and they generally turn into extended infomercials for various survival and health potions sold by his Infowars online store, but to what extent can you have ‘crazy like a fox’ without at least some underlying crazy? Possibly the various political pitches seen in Jones’s stuff, like the slags against Soros and the focus on attacking ‘globalism,’ yield some clues, and the material I’ll bring forth below may help to clarify this. The most interesting question is: what could have got a formerly respectable soldier and movie effects hotshot like Craig Sawyer involved in this grotesque fibfest? Why is he supplying his name as credibility for the impossible – the raids that are repeatedly authorized by judges, and arrests made by law enforcement, that are never followed up on by the same police and judges, and where the types of crimes alleged (‘kids in cages, skeletons in acid’) have never been evidenced and require believing in vast numbers of victims corresponding to no known missing people? Why tell a lie that’s so easy to see as a lie? Perhaps a partial answer may be found in the word ‘pedophile’ as a mind-closer – anything bad said about such people, false or true, must be good and can’t be closely questioned by anyone, for fear of being called a ‘pedophile sympathizer.’ And the non-offending pedophiles like Todd Nickerson are by no means numerous enough to mount an overwhelming defense of the reality they defend. As you know from the introduction to this article, though, I think there’s more to it than that. Craig Sawyer is not just someone reporting information to Alex Jones. He’s a typical Pizzagate/Pedogater sharing all of Jones’s passions, even the revilement and conspiracy-indictment of George Soros. [quote] 9 Jun 2017. @CraigRSawyer. MSM deceit fully unveiled: Entire ‘Russia’ mantra revealed false! Never forget who lied so passionately! CNN, NYTimes etc #Liars4Soros [end quote] In general, he shares the common focus of Pizzagaters on denial of Russian influence in the 2016 election. [quote] @CraigRSawyer Shame, discredit and dishonor upon ALL who uttered the words “Russia Collusion” in that NOW DISPROVEN false… (Video from ‘truthfeed.com’ titled ‘Chris Matthews admits Trump-Russia Collusion Theory has Fallen Apart’ http://truthfeed.com/video-chris-matthews-admits-trump-russia-collusion-theory-has-fallen-apart/79965/) 17 May 2017. @AP (Associated Press): “Breaking: Justice Dept. appoints former FBI head Robert Mueller to oversee probe into Trump-Russian connection in 2016 election.” Craig Sawyer response tweet: “Good! Now we can finally put this ‘Russia’ BS to bed.” [end quote] I’m not suggesting we jump to any instant conclusions about this. Let’s look at some parallel cases. Besides David Seaman, mentioned above, there are other core Pizzagaters who have a lot to say about the innocence of Russia. For example, there’s Liz Crokin. Liz is a journalist with political interests who worked on a George Bush campaign and interned at the State Department before moving on full-time reporting, first in crime and politics in Chicago and then as a celebrity chaser for Us Magazine Weekly and the National Enquirer, among others, in Los Angeles. In 2012, she became drastically ill with viral meningitis that turned out to be caused by the genital type of the herpes virus (HSV-2) and accused her much older boyfriend, Orange County businessman Mallory Hill, of infecting her. Her revenge came partly in the form of a lawsuit, in which she accused Hill of committing battery by knowingly infecting her. The Daily Mail in the UK found the lawsuit scandalous enough to write up, and said “She claims that Hill’s act amounted to battery because the STD left her permanently brain-damaged after it led to her being hospitalized with viral meningitis.” Part B of her revenge was writing a thinly disguised novel called ‘Malice’ about a woman who had similar problems with a man who turned out to be, as the Mail puts it, “a child abuser, rapist and sex addict.” In defending himself, Hill, according to the Mail, “says (Crokin) invaded his privacy and smeared his reputation in interviews promoting her novel Malice, as well as in the book itself. He flatly denies having infected her with the STD.” In court documents, “Hill accuses Crokin of telling ‘vulgar and scathing lies’ in the book.” Crokin, meanwhile stated that her brain-damage “and subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder could have been avoided altogether if Hill had confessed to having herpes when their relationship began.” Amazon reviews on the book are divided into those loving every salacious tabloidy minute, and those like that of Jennifer Henrichs (Sept. 25, 2015): “This book was complete crap. We chose it for our book club and not one person finished it. I read another review that said ‘House of Cards meets 50 Shades of Grey’ but it was a far cry from either. It’s supposed to be based on a true story and I can’t believe the author would publish an explicit book about her trashy life and be proud of that.” Jennifer may have to expand her disbelief, in that Crokin claims to have two sequels planned. Liz, today, is for all practical purposes a full-time Pizzagater, constantly tweeting, writing articles and doing interviews, both as host and as guest, about hypothetical satan-worshipping pedophiles in high places and – her other favorite topic – about the need to stop accusing Russia of any wrongdoing. She says, in tweets, “The left and the MSM has pushed the Russia conspiracy to distract from these REAL stories: #Pedogate {the internationalized concept of Pizzagate, Satanic pedo-elites everywhere}, #SethRich {case of an alleged whistleblower who was murdered mysteriously}, #ObamaGate {miscellaneous accusations including blame for the Russia collusion idea};” “The Russia lie undermines our democracy, the will of the People & our Constitution … #SessionHearing” (Jun 13); “Warning: The Media Matters Twitter BOTS are working overtime to maintain the left’s Russia fantasy” (Jun 13); “Putin has been more honest to the American people than our own leaders! But the media censors him b/c he tells the truth (16 Sept 2016); “Putin is right! Putin = anti-NWO (= New World Order) pedos, Trump = anti-NWO pedos, Putin + Trump = end of elite pedos… Get it yet!?” In one of her columns in the alt-right forum townhall.com (https://townhall.com/columnists/lizcrokin/2017/03/05/trump-sex-trafficking–how-it-ties-to-russia-n2294220) she said, [quote] “It makes you really wonder, why would any decent media corporation censor stories exposing child rapists, or worse, cover up for them? Well, on Feb. 23, former Congressman Cynthia McKinney – who courageously addressed sex trafficking on the house floor in 2005 – shed some light on this topic. She tweeted this in a tweet with a video of Trump’s recent press conference on sex trafficking: ‘Forewarning: this brings down Dems and Repubs! He needs to go straight all the way because this goes to the top!…’ If McKinney’s statement is true, could the shadow government’s coup against Trump be tied to child sex trafficking? After all, both General Mike Flynn and his son were targeted after making public statements about sex trafficking. And if you look deeper, why is the shadow government using Russia as the scapegoat? When you listen to President Vladimir Putin’s speeches, like Trump, he’s a Christian, a nationalist, a staunch anti-globalist/NWO and an outspoken critic of pedophilia. During Putin’s 2016 Christmas speech {it was actually a speech from 2013; see below}, something you’ll never see in the MSM {because it actually happened years ago at a club meeting}, he spoke out against the New World Order {he didn’t mention a ‘New World Order’} agenda to promote pedophilia. He stated that Western culture is promoting that “faith in God is equal to faith in Satan”. Putin said this about pedophilia: “The excesses and exaggerations of political correctness in these countries indeed leads to serious consideration for the legitimization of parties that promote the propaganda of pedophilia.” {official translation: “The excesses of political correctness have reached the point where people are seriously talking about registering political parties whose aim is to promote paedophilia.”} These sentiments are very similar to statements Trump has made. [end quote] Russia, innocent, pure and up to no tricks, is merely being used as a distraction so that most Western politicians and celebs can swish their hands through the brains of kids whose heads have just been sawn open (as per Jones’ video, quoted above). Russians appreciate and re-propagate her support. Liz is frequently linked on Russian or other Putin-loving media such as therussophile.org and dobroyeutro.ru (‘dobroye utro’ means ‘good morning’ in Russian; see https://www.therussophile.org/president-trump-zeros-in-on-elite-pedophiles.html/, http://dobroyeutro.ru/kategoriya/c1QtZzJsNjE3bDg/) When it comes to Pizzagate, Liz is ultra-orthodox. She quotes ‘Jon Danger @RedPilledRebel’ as saying “Pedo-Satanist ringleader @johnpodesta hasn’t even attempted to explain the bizarre pizza references in his emails” (attached photos show the ‘pizza-related map’ and ‘better playing dominoes’ email lines, highlighted in yellow, as well as a banal email line about liking an unspecified hot dog stand in Hawaii; there’s also an unverified old tweet from the late far-right media owner Andrew Breitbart accusing John Podesta of being ‘slave op coverer-upper,’ and a picture of the Marina Abramovi? cut-finger ‘spirit cooking’ poem, quoted above.) In her own comment, Liz says ‘How could any rational person think this is normal?’ As we’ve seen, finding the normality in the emails isn’t hard, if you look. What kind of ‘spirit cooking’ is this supposedly hard-working journalistic researcher Liz doing by pretending otherwise? There are dozens of others who make almost the same selection of statements that Liz makes, most notably the Hagmann brothers, Doug and Joe. This dogmatic duo constantly work with Liz, Mellisa Zaccaria, and other members of the core Pizzagate group inside and outside their Hagmann Report series of Youtubes and podcasts. They defend Russia frequently and often have their output cited or reproduced in Russian websites. It’s time to cut to the chase and show how all this Pizzagate stuff really fits together. The key to it all lies in the speech Vlad Putin made in 2013, the one Liz quoted from above. I’m going to paste in a bit of the beginning and a key section from the middle. https://www.rt.com/politics/official-word/putin-valdai-national-idea-142/ [quote] ‘It is impossible to move forward without spiritual, cultural and national self-determination’ – Vladimir Putin Published time: 20 Sep, 2013 14:22 Russian President Vladimir Putin attending the tenth anniversary meeting of Valdai International Discussion Club in the Novgorod Region, September 19, 2013. (RIA Novosti/Sergey Guneev) / Vladimir Putin spoke before the final plenary bmeeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, outlining Russia’s urgent need for a united national idea in order to succeed in a global environment. PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, friends, ladies and gentlemen, I hope that the place for your discussions, for our meetings is well chosen and that the timing is good. We are in the centre of Russia – not a geographical centre, but a spiritual one. [Novgorod Region] is a cradle of Russian statehood. Our outstanding historians believe and have analysed how the elements of Russian statehood came together right here. This is in the light of the fact that two great rivers – the Volkhov and Neva – acted as natural means of communication, providing a natural linkage at the time. And it was here that Russian statehood gradually began to emerge. As has already been pointed out, this year the [Valdai] club has brought together an unprecedented list of participants: more than 200 Russian and foreign politicians, public and spiritual leaders, philosophers and cultural figures, people with very different, original and sometimes opposing views. You have already been conferring here for a few days now, and I’ll try not to bore you unduly. But nevertheless, I will allow myself to state my views on subjects that you have touched on during these discussions in one way or another. I am not only thinking about analysing Russian historical, cultural, and governance experiences. First and foremost, I am thinking of general debates, conversations about the future, strategies, and values, about the values underpinning our country’s development, how global processes will affect our national identity, what kind of twenty-first-century world we want to see, and what Russia, our country, can contribute to this world together with its partners. … We must be proud of our history, and we have things to be proud of. Our entire, uncensored history must be a part of Russian identity. Without recognising this, it is impossible to establish mutual trust and allow society to move forward. Another serious challenge to Russia’s identity is linked to events taking place in the world. Here there are both foreign policy and moral aspects. We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan. The excesses of political correctness have reached the point where people are seriously talking about registering political parties whose aim is to promote paedophilia. People in many European countries are embarrassed or afraid to talk about their religious affiliations. Holidays are abolished or even called something different; their essence is hidden away, as is their moral foundation. And people are aggressively trying to export this model all over the world. I am convinced that this opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis. What else but the loss of the ability to self-reproduce could act as the greatest testimony of the moral crisis facing a human society? Today almost all developed nations are no longer able to reproduce themselves, even with the help of migration. Without the values embedded in Christianity and other world religions, without the standards of morality that have taken shape over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. We consider it natural and right to defend these values. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question. [end quote] Everything that you read in this Putin manifesto is a wonderful symphony to the ears of many supporters of Donald Trump. Russia and the right-of-center USA have, in different ways, striven to accomplish the same objective for a long time: maintain the dominance and prominence of the European-derived, unilingual Christendom or post-Christendom that constitutes the majority (Russian in one case, English in the other), while accommodating minorities who can live peacefully subordinated within this framework. In contrast to militant white nationalists and anti-semites, the holders of this political viewpoint respect any ethnic or religious minority that stays in its place and cooperates. Here’s Vlad again: [quote] Over the past centuries in Russia, which some have tried to label as the “prison of nations”, not even the smallest ethnic group has disappeared. And they have retained not only their internal autonomy and cultural identity, but also their historical space. You know, I was interested to learn (I did not even know this) that in Soviet times [authorities] paid such careful attention to this that virtually every small ethnic group had its own print publication, support for its language, and for its national literature. We should bring back and take on board much of what has been done in this respect. Along with this the different cultures in Russia have the unique experience of mutual influence, mutual enrichment and mutual respect. This multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity lives in our historical consciousness, in our spirit and in our historical makeup. Our state was built in the course of a millennium on this organic model. Russia – as philosopher Konstantin Leontyev vividly put it – has always evolved in “blossoming complexity” as a state-civilisation, reinforced by the Russian people, Russian language, Russian culture, Russian Orthodox Church and the country’s other traditional religions. It is precisely the state-civilisation model that has shaped our state polity. It has always sought to flexibly accommodate the ethnic and religious specificity of particular territories, ensuring diversity in unity. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and other religions are an integral part of Russia’s identity, its historical heritage and the present-day lives of its citizens. The main task of the state, as enshrined in the Constitution, is to ensure equal rights for members of traditional religions and atheists, and the right to freedom of conscience for all citizens. [end quote] The last line might elicit a raspberry from the loyal Russians who belong to Putin’s political opposition, but its insincerity is, in a way, separate from the noble statement it makes in print. Trump fans in the Pizzagate stripe, who are mostly not virulently racist and who in some cases even oppose racism, find this speech inspiring. In fact, one wonders if – apart from the occasional reference to a Russian philosopher – there is anything in this speech that Donald Trump would hesitate to say. The question of collusion between the Putinist rhetoricians and Trump and his people may indeed be a red herring. There’s no need for collusion for these people to work together. They already belong to the same political party. The only difference that separates them is their differing geographic situations, along with the accompanying differences in military-strategic precautions. The question for the Trump-Putin party then becomes “How are we going to knock down those people who want to give non-Russian/English foreigners far more social power in our lands, and who promote underclass sexual groups that might weaken the will of the dominants to put babies as a priority? What can we do, without resorting to overt racist schism, so that we don’t become swamped in a sea of Others?” A very Machiavellian answer to that is “Let’s say that all the leaders and cultural forces we don’t like are secretly raping and killing babies and having orgasms while they bleed.” We may never know whether DumbScribblyUnctious was Russian, American, or other. In the movement he or she started, the Russian and American priorities of the Trump-Putin party combined together. I suspect that perhaps half the people posting about Pizzagate and Pedogate are Americans, while the other half are sock accounts of a modest number of Russians who have a paid full-time occupation cheerleading, reinforcing, and providing new ideas and praise. They are at cyberwar not with the US, but with the Democratic Party, its values, and whoever comes too close to it. Their usernames are full of eagles, God, Texas and so on. If one of the unquestioned American players makes a tweet that omits the Russia angle, there is always someone there in the audience to make sure it gets included. Liz Crokin no sooner says “Jeffrey Sessions is saving kids from pedos while the left is creating a circus to stop him from ending sex trafficking” (13 Jun 2017) when along comes Eagle_Eye1776 (so patriotic!) to reply with “political liberals pedophile sex networked (sic) covered up by fake Russia investigation.” The top American Pizzagaters, meanwhile, are mostly show-biz people living in the economic wobbliness of Youtube pay-per-play and Patreon support (many Pizzagaters have donation links in place and regularly encourage use). Who knows if some of the more fervent ones, like Crokin and the Hagmanns, may not have made some arrangements to increase their donations by taking money from real Putinist intermediaries, in exchange for publicity about foreign-derived hot button concepts like ‘Soros is the enemy’? They don’t need to betray their own principles to do so. In any case, the objective here is to utterly destroy the lefty people who are against Trump, Putin, pre-1965 Western values, the real meaning of Christmas, white babies as a top social duty, and shocked rejection of art glorying in diverse sexuality or gory, visceral navel-gazing. Any fabrications that need to be made to create this hammer of doom are just fine. Something is needed to smash the Democrats, the non-Trump Republicans and the degenerate, Democrat-supporting Hollywooders and pop stars out of history forever. The campaign against Hillary will never be over, you could say, until she’s indicted on Trumped-up charges. Primitive, bawling blood libel is great for the unhinged wingy-dings like Alex Jones, while the moderates can stick to finding Satanism in a grandpa’s emails about playing dominoes with his grandchildren. It’s all about getting out there into the world of internet research and gathering more things to make innuendo about – discovery, revelation. Don’t bother to check the good material you already have – no one has time to read it and see that it falls apart. And if they do, no one cares, because, you know, ‘destroy Hillary.’ Saving trad American culture and keeping the Russian naval base at Tartus, Syria, are branches of the same agenda: who are we to care if the Syrian psychopath who’s keeping the other Syrian psychopaths in check stays in power? Boo to George Soros who’s trying to open the Syrian floodgate with democracy! That culture has no place for democracy – so goes the unspoken party line – since it’s the history of Christendom, love your neighbor as yourself, that allows such an even-handed system. If you don’t call Obama a pedophile, you’ll eventually be swamped by Syrians, so get to it! Pizzagate is, in my opinion, the great American-Russian cooperative project of our time. Perhaps military people like Craig Sawyer have become interested in it because it promises a future time of peaceful alignment between a moderately dictatorial, white-heavy but not terribly intolerant Russia, and a slightly less dictatorial but still heavily culturally censored, white-heavy, not horribly intolerant America. Just keep saying that the existing ‘deep state’ systems are secretly raping and slaughtering babies, and you can eventually create so much distrust in any sign or trace of liberality that the more far-reaching branches of cultural exploration – the blue-haired transgenders who cuss your cis-hood, the blacks who object to cops cautiously killing the dark people who frighten them, the people who say non-offending pedophiles who abuse no kids should be allowed to live and let live – can be crushed into the ground. You’re off the hook, Mr. Trump – it’s not that you’re colluding with Russia. In many, very important ways, you ARE Russia. And so are your supporters. |
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Date: July 15, 2017
01) Joe Manchin Tries to Pander to Progressives on TYT, Fails Miserably
“Joe Manchin appeared on ‘The Young Turks’ for an interview with Cenk Uygur in a clear attempt to pander to progressives seeing that he’s being challenged by a true progressive in 2018. His attempt to appeal to progressives, however, arguably backfired. He not only came off as a disingenuous politician, but gave some answers that were completely incoherent. In this segment, we break down Manchin’s interview with Uygur, and respond to some of his main claims.
TYT™s Interview with Joe Manchin (Full Clip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FUcp4gq-zI“
The boy’s name is Charlie Gard…It’s unfortunate that this was the response Mike gave to his plight…Really sad situation…but he’s in a dire spot, with no good treatment options available…And the experimental treatment his family wants is both expensive, and not likely to help…The UK wont let him leave the country, to get that experimental treatment.
I also want to say, I really dislike seeing them take The Humanist Report down this direction…The intruding clips, slowing down of clips, etc…it’s lame and annoying…no matter who does it.
I realize there’s only so many times you can role your eyes, and give a witty comeback…But this just comes off cheap and dumb…I’d rather see The Humanist Report maintain it’s previously higher standards.
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Date: July 15, 2017
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 – Atheist Media Links
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Date: July 14, 2017
01) Sam Harris & Gad Saad Unpack the Stigma Surrounding Racial Differences
“and also gender differences to a lesser degree, on sam’s recent podcast with gad saad. they find it objectionable to try and shut down research on certain topics .”
I’m not going to post a lot more videos, exploring this subject…though I may post more, if I find them instructive and interesting.
What is attracting me to this subject, is that the information itself has no agenda…but it’s very socially taboo, so it garners a lot of hostility against it. Because of human history, this information is vulnerable to having “a taint of malice” assigned to it…It’s like it cannot be allowed to “just exist”, in it’s own right.
You could almost say…as a MAP who’s recognized the same fate, over data concerning people like myself…it’s in my DNA, to reject offhanded, superficial attacks on socially controversial findings…I’m way more interested in whether the data is sound and true, than whether it offends someone.
While I understand that some people’s offence is born out of noble reasoning…if their offense stops us from understanding reality in this world, then their sense of offense is a roadblock and a handicap…
…Which is why so many people in this world need to put their hair-trigger sense of offense into check…It’s not a help…it’s a hindrance…
At the same time…a valid question is, what are we to do with this information?…
In the USA we have much race mixing…which is perfectly fine…I am of mixed race, myself…I do not identify with any singular race…And we do have multiple generations, who are mixed race…There is no “going back”…We wont un-mix.
…Maybe race mixing is a good thing…I cannot see “pure races” being bred out of existence…The world is to vast…we wont get everyone together…But, maybe it is a good trend?…
Does it help, that the findings may not so much matter in the future, if the majority no longer identify with “a race”?
Getting back to the previous question, a bit…I have to ask…how do we justify keeping information from the masses, based on the notion of what someone might do with it?…or what it may inspire in someone, that might not be good?
Sure…Adolph Hitler existed…but I am not Adolph Hitler…Nazis existed…but I am not a Nazi…Racists exist…but I am not a racist…
…Why should this information be kept from me?…Why should I not explore, consider and critique it?…Why should I not have the ability, to understand what is being put forward?
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Date: July 13, 2017
01) How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet
“A Pew Research Center survey published two years ago found that 70% of 18-to-24-year-olds who use the Internet had experienced harassment, and 26% of women that age said they’d been stalked online. This is exactly what trolls want. A 2014 study published in the psychology journal Personality and Individual Differences found that the approximately 5% of Internet users who self-identified as trolls scored extremely high in the dark tetrad of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and, especially, sadism.
But maybe that’s just people who call themselves trolls. And maybe they do only a small percentage of the actual trolling. “Trolls are portrayed as aberrational and antithetical to how normal people converse with each other. And that could not be further from the truth,” says Whitney Phillips, a literature professor at Mercer University and the author of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. “These are mostly normal people who do things that seem fun at the time that have huge implications. You want to say this is the bad guys, but it’s a problem of us.”
[…]
“One can see discourse norms shifting online, and they’re probably linked to behavior norms,” says Susan Benesch, founder of the Dangerous Speech Project and faculty associate at Harvard’s Internet and Society center. “When people think it’s increasingly O.K. to describe a group of people as subhuman or vermin, those same people are likely to think that it’s O.K. to hurt those people.”
Date: July 13, 2017
01) New study shows that 41% of adults get harassment online
“The Pew Research Center released a study claiming that online harassment is as terrible as every, and 41% of all adults interviewed claimed they have been the victims of cyber bullying.
According to a new study from the Pew Research Center, online abuse is as rampant as ever, despite efforts by major tech companies like Facebook and Twitter to cut back on trolling and bullying.
The study, which was conducted among 4,248 U.S. adults, revealed name calling and embarrassment as the most common forms of online harassment.
Among those who’ve been harassed, about 18% of U.S. adults said they have been the target of severe behaviors such as physical threats, stalking and sexual harassment. About 66% said they witnessed harassing behavior online — not surprising since much of the bad conduct occurs on public social media platforms.”
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Sub-Sections:| Perverted Justice Journal | The Vile Files | Anonymous Hate Watch | Judith Reisman Watch | |
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Date: July 13, 2017
“Children are sacred beings, little angels that we must protect at all costs.” It’s because of people like “The White Rose”, that it is so important for the MAP voice to be present and loud. In the absence of us, and who we are as real human beings…people like her leisurely stroll along, and spread whatever propaganda about us they please…with little to no resistance. …And we get this endless parade of voices and content, rehashing the same old talking point propaganda…drowning out any real discussion of the relevant issues, by virtue of overwhelming saturation…and creating this illusion, that “this is all there is to know”… To any MAP out there…as a MAP, do you find it acceptable that people like “The White Rose” speak “on your behalf”, creating and maintaining a stigmatized, stereotypical characterization that represents you? …Do you find it okay, that people like this are spreading untrue accusations about you…and even summarizing you down to being “a predator”? …Do you find their support and assertion of “the rightfulness” of institutionalized fear, hatred, libel slander and violation against you to be in any way just, or of good moral character? We need to flood the social media websites, in masses…not expect a small trickle of MAPs to carry all the weight, in circumstances where alone they will be quickly silenced… It’s time every MAP started taking part, in actively shaping this dialogue. Depending on who you believe…as much as one quarter [maybe more] of the population is estimated to have MAP sexual traits…If we could tap into a small fraction of this and organize it…the media websites would not be able to contain us…They would not be able to squelch us out, and grossly skew the visible dialogue. It’s precisely because of this grossly uneven battlefield, danger riddled solely for MAPs…that people like “The White Rose” get to regurgitate this kind of mental bile…and the common audience is going to think “this is right”…”this is authoritative”…”this is the only acceptable thought”…It’s all they ever hear, or get exposed to…They have nothing alternative, to give them a more balanced perspective. …They don’t know the reality…They only know what they’ve been fed all their lives. It’s time we took this state of things, and broke it’s back…It’s time we finally won this excruciating, decades old war…and claimed our human right to engage in the public dialogue…as MAPs…as people who are understood to be MAPs, having a massive stake in all of this, ourselves. The red herring of “give your sympathies to the children, not to the MAPs”, acting as though the social trend has not been 100% in the direction of hyperbolic “child protection”, for the past thirty plus years…and pretending as though a tiny few initiatives to benefit MAPs [of all ages, including children and youth, not just adults] will somehow “threaten child safety”, is indefensible bullshit. There is so much wrong with this video, I could spend the rest of the day picking it apart…Any self aware, competently informed MAP with a sense of human self worth, could. I reject this type of garbage, presented as if it were an authoritative message. That is not an accurate representation of MAPs and who we are. The uninformed have no right, to be controlling and manipulating this dialogue… …sure as hell not, when their control and manipulation is viciously attacking other human beings. This is like an endless treadmill: Amongst the list of other things I should be mentioning…I just wanted to point out something I’ve pointed out countless times, in the past. I’m not trying to attack “The White Rose” on any personal level…she just happens to have recently made a video, which follows a certain kind of “template” pattern for people like her…Most of these people lack a clear understanding of what is going on, yet they create these beautifully distorted, formulaic pieces of media, and present them as “authoritative fact”…behaving as though they’ve just delivered “a slam dunk”, on whomever they are targeting. …While those of us who’ve been closely involved with these issues for the past decades, can clearly see the glaring problems in what they’ve put forward. Typically, B4U-ACT gets attacked in these kinds of media…but let’s just stick with what she brought up…”Virtuous Pedophiles”… An endless parade of people like “The White Rose”, often mockingly and contemptuously sneer at MAPs “get help!”…But these exact same people don’t even recognize it, when MAPs are actively organizing, and attempting to build an institutional structure that can honestly help them. “Virtuous Pedophiles” [like B4U-ACT], doesn’t even support changing age of consent law…For all practical intents and purposes…they fall in line with the dominant social narrative, on sex between minors and adults. Their goals are to be [and become greater] support structures for MAPs…and a guiding place, for those MAPs who are in turmoil [possibly at risk of breaking laws]. However much I may disagree with VP…I will never attempt stripping them of their sincerely held intentions…And through their worldview, they are attempting to build a world where social conflict involving MAPs is avoided…And they place the onus primarily on the individual MAP. They’re actually trying to get MAPs to network, organize…and I believe, ultimately “come out of the closet”…in a manner not so different from the “circles of accountability” model. When people like “The White Rose” start naming, libeling and shaming groups which are literally doing, what people like them have been telling MAPs to do for decades…”get help!”… …And when people like “The White Rose” start attacking, tearing down and trying to stop, the various efforts of MAPs to tangibly help their own community, especially in ways that fully cater to the demands of these bigots… …It has become clear, that people like “The White Rose” are incompetent in this arena of dialogue, and need to excuse themselves from this discussion, if they possess any integrity whatsoever. You cannot be relentlessly harassing MAPs to “obey your demands”, just to turn around and do everything in your power to stop MAPs who are trying to “obey your demands”. |
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Date: July 13, 2017
“How do those with disabilities feel when religious people declare them sinners, a life lesson, or a miracle just waiting to happen? We explore this subject, and the stories of various listeners who have been labeled, named, claimed, prayed over, and in some cases, ignored.” |
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– Atheist Media Links
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