Pizzagate Part Deux: The Trouble With Open-Source Research, & The Media Go to War
Originally published December 2016
When I published my initial coverage of Pizzagate in November outlining Pizzagate’s origins and some of its verifiable discoveries, the investigation was just taking off. Since then, things have developed a great deal — and not all for the better. Interest in the research has exploded, causing a noticeable deterioration in the overall quality of posts, leads, and comments in the forum where the bulk of the investigation is now taking place. Sensationalistic claims with no evidence, claims with irrelevant “evidence,” conspiratorial assertions provided without basis, an increase in racist and anti-Semitic posts, and other distracting, irrelevant, or hostile nonsense have been pushing down posts by people who had been uncovering genuinely compelling connections and leads.
This is to be expected when from the massive increase in participation on a platform that provides an open forum where anyone can contribute. There is fear amongst many researchers that anti-Semitic, racist, or violent posts will be cherry-picked by media outlets to “prove” that the research has been the work of hateful alt-righters, when in fact these represent a very small minority, and are guaranteed to happen on a platform that allows anyone to join and post. As a solution, pockets of serious researchers are discussing alternative closed platforms where they can focus and work, and then post findings on the public forums when something seemingly significant is uncovered. I believe for the research to remain effective, this kind of move will be critical going forward.
The “Fake News” Meme & Silencing Alternative Viewpoints
Fears have also been aroused due to the recent gunman incident at Comet Ping Pong. Researchers fear that someone will be physically attacked, and the blame will be placed on them under the guise of the “fake news” meme. Even a cursory examination into the discussions shows a wide and emphatic rejection of violence, anti-Semitism, doxxing, and other forms of hate and harassment.
When someone does post something advocating violence or hatred, it is usually followed by strings of replies denouncing that person and their views. However, it wouldn’t stop media outlets from reporting on it as if it were widespread. Nor would it stop their readers from believing it, as the average news consumer typically accepts the headlines in front of them at face value without researching more deeply — especially if the information reinforces an existing belief.
As I’ve reported, articles “debunking” Pizzagate have universally made false claims about the theories, such as the lie that researchers have concluded that Comet Ping Pong is the “headquarters” of a pedophile ring “led by Hillary Clinton” for the Democratic party. Debunking articles generally also focus on some of the crazier-sounding theories being floated, while avoiding those that are more difficult to immediately explain away.
An example of what has to be intentionally misleading coverage in New York Times’ latest attempted debunking shows a well-circulated photo of Obama playing Ping Pong with a boy in the White House. The photo had resurfaced during the Pizzagate investigation with, since it is the Internet, a number of people making sensationalistic and/or incorrect claims about its “connections” to Pizzagate. By displaying it on a video where the uploader had added the caption “OBAMA AT COMET PING PONG,” the New York Times’ readers will now assume that this photo had a substantial impact on the conclusions of the researchers.
The silly screengrab, clearly taken in the White House, that the NYT used to manipulate readers into believing that Pizzagate research is based on universally absurd evidence
They also cherry-pick research that the researchers themselves have debunked, giving the implication that these debunked aspects form the bulk of the evidence. Other ideas they cite are believed by only a minority of people involved in the research.
The main overall thesis of Pizzagate is that pedophilia is extremely widespread and endemic to the global political power structure on all sides of the left/right spectrum, just as Hollywood has been accused of being a hotspot for pedophilic activities as well.
Also, as with Hollywood, researchers believe that those involved are using their power to source children and to cover up their crimes. The over-arching argument at this point is that the number of coincidences defies easy explanation and that with this much smoke, there may very well be fire as well. There are many other theories being floated and more radical ideas being explored, but the central argument is simple. This is far from the impression you will get from media outlets denouncing the research.
Due to recent news coverage expanding upon the “Russian hackers” meme in a child pornography context, along with a slew of articles misrepresenting Pizzagate, there are two major concerns. One is that the collective consciousness is being set up to deny Pizzagate even in the event of a major research breakthrough. For the other concern, enter H.R. 9393.
H.R. 9393
There is a palpable fear in the air that censorship of alternative news outlets, blogs, and even discussion forums might be underway on the pretense that “fake news hurts real people.” This fits with the “Russian hackers” meme that has been pushed since the Trump/Clinton election season, and in fact times up perfectly with a section added to the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act, or H.R. 6393, a bill that funds intelligences activities. 2017’s bill delegates funding to:
“counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”
The section lists forms of possible ‘Russian influence’ as:
Establishment or funding of a front group.
Covert broadcasting.
Media manipulation.
Disinformation and forgeries.
Funding agents of influence.
Incitement and offensive counterintelligence.
Assassinations.
Terrorist acts.
No standard is provided by which intelligence agencies have to prove that Russian influence is involved, calling into question how the law could be abused to stifle free speech. What constitutes “media manipulation,” and how must it be connected to Russia to be prosecutable?
Julian Assange denies Russian involvement in recent Wikileaks releases, a claim corroborated, in the case of a DNC leaks by a UK-based diplomat. Though they could be lying, there has been little evidence presented for the accusation other than claims from anonymous US government sources and a debunked Washington Post article (more on that later).
“Fake News Hurts Real People”
It should be mentioned that fake news does hurt real people, but when compared to falsehoods pushed by the largest global media outlets, damage caused by alternative media suddenly appears laughably minimal. Repeating claims from anonymous government sources as “facts” is not journalism; it’s effectively no different than being a mouthpiece for the State. Far too often, journalists allow themselves to become parrots for unnamed diplomats, bureaucrats, and cronies, and the result is often deadly. See below for examples when major American and international news media:
-Repeated, uncritically, the lie that WMDs were in Iraq, justifying the Iraq War — helping gain public consensus for a conflict that has killed about 70,000 civilians and a quarter of a million people in total. This tragic journalistic failure is reported in detail in former New York Times reporter Michael Massing’s book Now They Tell Us
–Lied that Spain sunk the USS Maine, sparking the Spanish-American War, just to sell newspapers
-Collectively have (at minimum) hundreds of CIA assets and agents working both as reporters and in management positions, according to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein in his report “The CIA and the Media”
–Uncritically repeated claims from a teenager, supported by members of Congress with no verification and who gave only her first name, when she lied that babies in Kuwait were torn from their hospital incubators by Saddam’s henchmen, generating public support for the first Gulf War that generated thousands of deaths. The teenager ended up being the daughter of a diplomat and her lie was concocted by a PR firm hired by Kuwaitis to artificially drum up support for a US invasion
-Eagerly publish grisly footage and reports of ISIS beheadings while remaining conspicuously uncritical of US ally Saudi Arabia in comparison, which publicly beheads someone every two or three days, stones people to death for crimes from atheism to adultery, and punishes rape victims
-Have been caught feeding debate questions to Presidential candidates before the event and giving veto power to politicians over what to include in articles
–Lied to protect legendary pedophile Jimmy Savile
-Based their assessment of the veracity of a highly-publicized list of “Fake News” websites almost entirely on the unverified claims of ProporNot, a newly-formed and anonymous group of unknown people providing no evidence or methodology whatsoever for their conclusions. The Washington Post is now facing a lawsuit for their article, published two days after H.R.6393 was passed. After heavy criticism they issued an Editor’s Note claiming that they did not intend to lead credence to the claims, despite that being the entire premise of the piece
-Have been caught faking smaller events that did not result in wars or deaths, but display a blatant disregard for basic journalistic ethics. One recent example is an incident in which ABC news staged a fake “crime scene” by tying yellow Sheriff’s Department tape between two off-camera mic stands, providing a more dramatic backdrop for an otherwise drab interview shot. While CNN reported on this gaffe, they have also been caught doing extremely similar trickery. Photo from the ABC segment below:
Faith in traditional media outlets is at an all-time low. With repeated incidents such as those listed above, and the kind of absurdity illustrated by the image below, no one should be particularly surprised:
The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Incident
Researchers are greatly suspicious of Comet Ping Pong gunman Edgar Maddison Welch, and I believe the suspicion is not entirely without merit. Although many have brought up that he is a small-time film actor, and his IMDB page lists a film Something About Pizza where he is credited as playing “gunman,” IMDB pages can be edited by the public, raising the possibility that a troll could have inserted the information.
Either way, his credit has now been removed, so whether it has been removed to hide his participation or because it was false to begin with, we won’t ever know. The IMDB page for the film, before both it and Welch’s IMBD pages were edited to remove references to Welch’s involvement, is below:
According to his homepage, Welch’s father also owns a small film production company called Forever Young Productions, was executive director of a charity focused on child abduction and abuse, and has done work for state and federal law enforcement that included involvement in undercover operations. These tidbits have led to further speculation. Because of the production company and IDMB page, some overzealous bloggers have claimed indisputable proof that Welch is a “crisis actor” — someone hired to participate in staged events. Of course, they are far from being indisputable “proof” of any such thing, but are still very much worth noting.
Much more compelling, however, is the fact that the day before the gunman incident, a researcher monitoring Washington, DC traffic cameras on this website posted that they had noticed something odd. A northwest-facing camera pointed toward Comet Ping Pong had been rotated to point in a new direction. Though the front of the pizza parlor is just out of its direct view in the original position, it shows the corner of Connecticut and Nebraska Avenues.
The day after the camera was moved to face away from Comet Ping Pong, the gunman incident occurred. This coincidence seems possible, but remarkably, the day after the gunman incident, the camera had been rotated back to its original position. Here is the original angle, with the front of Comet Ping Pong located off-camera to the immediate left:
And here is what it displayed when it was rotated what appears to be approximately 90 degrees, the day before the gunman incident, only to be returned back to its original position again the day after:
I don’t know how often the direction of traffic cameras is changed, or for what reasons, but it seems odd that this particular camera would be rotated the day before the incident and then returned to its original position the day after. At the very least it strikes me as rather wasteful of municipal resources, as it isn’t clear what purpose this would serve, especially given that about 50% of the camera’s view was blocked when it was rotated. It is possible the camera is adjusted according to which areas have the highest traffic at different times of day, but regardless of the time of day that I visit the site personally, the camera appears to be in the same northwest-facing position.
The Timestamp Anomalies
Articles about the gunman incident that began appearing online were time-stamped showing publication before the incident actually occurred. Could articles have already been readied, and a publishing mistake caused them to go live prematurely? Or can this be caused by some time of timestamp glitch?
When one integrates the fact that the US government has considered shocking, bona-fide false flag schemes such as the now-declassified Operation Northwoods as part of its regular playbook, operations to discredit Pizzagate — including those where real injuries or deaths occur — suddenly become entirely plausible. Researchers have repeatedly posted warnings that a more serious incident committed by an alleged proponent of Pizzagate could be the next big move to effectively shut down the investigation, and perhaps even justify the censorship of alternative discussion in general.
The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Norway Incident
On November 20th, when awareness of Pizzagate was growing but was still nowhere near its current level, news agency AP published an article about arrests made in connection with a pedophile ring in Norway. The ring included politicians, lawyers, and police, and included the rape of infants and people offering their own children for sexual purposes.
The story was republished in outlets including The New York Times, ABC, and The Washington Post. These newspapers, along with countless others, subscribe to the AP newswire, allowing them to re-post AP’s content. Several weeks later, after interest in Pizzagate had picked up enormously, researchers discovered when attempting to reference the articles that, in addition to others such as the Los Angeles Times, all three of these major outlets had removed them from their websites:
From my stint working for a newspaper, I am aware of two primary reasons for an article to be removed. One is because of factual errors, in which case the standard practice is to just issue a correction notice and fix the factual errors. It is very rare for an article to be so riddled with falsehoods that it is retracted entirely, and these cases are often highly publicized, such as in the case of the Rolling Stone rape article and the Stephen Glass scandal at The New Republic.
Another possible reason would be because it was deemed to not be newsworthy, but this is very rare. One can fairly safely assume neither of these apply to the AP article about the Norwegian pedophilia ring, which is gone from the AP’s website but can still be found elsewhere. The question, then, is why did editors see it fit to scrub the article?
Articles from newswire services can come with certain licensing limitations, so it’s very conceivable that an article would disappear from a third-party outlet once the term of the license had expired. However, since other news outlets are still carrying the identical AP story, this explanation seems unlikely as well.
Perhaps these news outlets thought it could appear damaging to their credibility to run stories claiming Pizzagate is nothing but an insane conspiracy theory, all alongside an article outlining exactly the kind of activities that the Pizzagate research has attempted to expose.
Troll Wars
Researchers have spotted a suspicious trend where the same comments denouncing Pizzagate appear, verbatim, in multiple places. I have noticed this personally when a commenter left an explanation for one of the Podesta emails on one of my Pizzagate articles that I later saw repeated, word-for-word, on two other websites. The following screen-grab shows another such example:
For the record, anyone who has been following the research directly from the beginning knows that Pizzagate is not a “troll job” or “hoax” conceived by tricksters on 4Chan or elsewhere. Whether or not you believe that Pizzagate is true, it originated from a genuine and accidental discovery.
Here’s another example from Twitter. Keep in mind that these aren’t re-tweets, they’re multiple accounts posting the exact same cut-and-pasted message. One of the accounts posted the same Tweet twice on two different days:
What Comes Next
This summary of the corporate media’s War on Pizzagate is not comprehensive, but outlines the main talking points. Stay tuned, as even with the deteriorating situation on the research platform, there have been more interesting connections uncovered. I will outline these in a new article to be released soon.