Changing your mind about "Pizzagate"

I have been wondering for quite some time now about whether to try writing about this topic, how I would approach it, and what the repercussions might be for making the attempt. In recent days, having had some time to reflect on the topic and take some renewed interest in it, I guess I have decided that the best thing to do is just go for it, even though I am not gleefully anticipating the blowback I imagine I’ll take from friends and acquaintances.

The difficulty I’m having here is, I want to change your mind about something, but I don’t really think I can. As you might have noticed from your own forays into using the internet, changing people’s minds about things is notoriously difficult… and that sad situation is only getting worse. There are reasons for this… some of them have to do with basic human psychology, some of them have to do with the increasing deadening of our critical faculties by bombardment from questionable information sources, some of them have to do with our own intellectual laziness and willingness to go along with propaganda.

Of course, it has been noted that ‘literacy’ in the 21st century will be a word used to describe those whose opinions can remain fluid enough to change with new information. But that can and must be a gradual process. Drastic changes of opinion in a short period of time are extremely disorienting.

So with that out of the way, what I’d like to do is pitch a really absurd, far-out, wild-sounding idea that you’ve probably already encountered, and been so offended or short-circuited by that your brain just immediately went ‘nope, not having that’ and switched itself off, allowing you to get on with your life. It’s a shocking idea, a horrendous idea, a heartbreaking idea, and at first glance, a seemingly absurd idea so alien and repulsive that it feels ethically wrong to even contemplate it. And I don’t want you to believe me, or take me at my word. I’m asking you to empathize with me when I tell you the story of how and why I changed my mind.

You see, I am an average middle-aged Joe from Canada. Never married, no kids. I struggle with my weight and my mental health. I like science fiction and I like playing board games with my buddies and I like take-out food. I have been diagnosed with schizo affective disorder, and anyone who cares to do away with my opinions on that basis can doubtlessly do so easily. I’ve had a lot of trouble coming to terms with what I know and with what I think I can prove. It’s hard to keep a sunny perspective about the human species or its prospects sometimes. You see, I have come to be of the opinion that our civilization appears to be run, at the highest level from behind the scenes, by literal Satan-worshipping child molestors. And I sometimes wonder how to live in a world like that.

Yes, I know. Many of you think this is alt-right troll chatter from the bowels of neckbeard 4chan, and I’ve lost my mind, and there’s all sorts of reasons why it just can’t be so. I hear you. I mean, what can I say? I could start by saying I skew politically left-libertarian in terms of my ideology. I think it’s important to falsify the notion that this is a ‘right wing’ talking point. I could then point to examples of UK pop culture icons who were high-ranking Freemasons and friends of the Royal family who are documented to have worn robes, chanted Satanic prayers, and raped children, but what you want is proof. You want to hiss at me that I’m a kooky conspiracy theorist. You want to get on with your life and pretend this is just nonsense.

Well, I mean, I wish you were right. I really do. And man, I really feel for you, because there’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now than smoking a joint and playing a video game and saving the world from imagined alien menaces. I mean, I don’t have kids, so I have no actual personal investment in what kind of world this turns out to be in the long run, it might be argued. I guess I’m thinking about those of you who do have something to live for though. I mean, hypothetically, I guess, I have to say that I find myself wondering, if this kind of, well, let’s call it ‘evil’, is actually, factually, loose in the world, doesn’t our refusal to acknowledge it kind of, like, make us complicit?

I think pondering questions like the one I just posed will give you some indication of why so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ are so invested in their hobby of trying to get people to think outside of their current abstractions.

Let’s talk, briefly, about that ‘conspiracy theorist’ thing. If you find the words ‘conspiracy theory’ coming to mind as you read this, you kind of need to be honest with yourself that that’s a knee-jerk reaction. Ask yourself this; are you using the term in the pejorative or normative sense? If it’s the pejorative, then please admit to yourself that it’s intellectually dishonest by definition to construct a criticism of another’s position that is founded on pejorative epithets. If you are using the term in the normative sense, intending to allege only that I am supposing that human beings occasionally can be observed to collude in their own best interests in ways which aren’t a matter of public record, then I am in agreement with you. You and I are both conspiracy theorists in the normative sense, and well we should be, for that is the default position of sanity. So now we are just arguing about how far along things have gone downhill.

My perspective on such things shifted gradually over the course of many years, having taken a steep turn into less-familiar territory around the time of 9/11 in 2001. I had always thought of governments as stupid and myopic, but I was initially slow to embrace the idea that the powers that be could be deliberately malevolent. I think many of us hide from facing the idea that things aren’t all on the up-and-up because it becomes an exercise in recognizing evil in oneself. But, for example, if we contemplate war and its nature for very long, it becomes fairly obvious that the people who profit from such activity are deeply unhealthy and malevolent. The question then becomes not “How could anybody think the world works this way?”, but rather, “How could anybody think otherwise?”

“Pizzagate” was a term given to a putatively debunked ‘conspiracy theory’ that a child molestation ring was being run out of a Washington, D.C. Pizza parlour. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you will find a detailed outline of the ‘facts’ surrounding this bizarre controversy and you will be soundly assured in no-nonsense language that it has all been thoroughly discredited by everyone, not least of which by that stalwart defender of reason and right-thinking snopes.com

I don’t believe it has been ‘debunked’ at all, and I am presenting forthwith the facts that changed my mind on the topic.

1.> Wikileaks published John Podesta’s emails. Some allege these publications were falsified. People who say so are ignoring the fact that John Podesta has admitted via Twitter that the emails are in fact his.

2.> The emails contain multiple examples of Podesta and his allies emailing each other strange gibberish involving what appear to be food-related codewords. Stuff like “Do you think I’ll do better playing dominos on cheese than on pasta?” Some folks think these code words relate to some clandestine activity, and some specifically allege they relate to pedophilia. One letter indicates Obama, for one function, spent 65,000 dollars of public funds to fly “hot dogs” in from Chicago.

3.> James Alefantis, a friend of Podesta’s, is mentioned multiple times in those emails. Alefantis runs an ostensibly family-friendly pizza joint in Washington named Comet Ping Pong. He is well-connected politically, considered (by GQ Magazine at least) a Washington power player for some reason, and is the former partner of David Brock (described by Time as “one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic party”) who runs the Democratic “media watchdog group” Media Matters.

4.> People visiting Alefantis’ public profile in Instagram for his restaurant found a great deal of disturbing imagery. You can easily see it for yourself with a cursory search engine lookup. Pictures of babies taped to tables with stacks of cash behind them. Kids wearing shirts emblazoned with the logo “Pizza Slut”. Comments by Alefantis and his employees, including “#hotard”, adorned the pictures. Alefantis’ instagram profile picture was (and still is) an image of Antinous, the greek boy sex slave of Emperor Hadrian from ancient legend. All of this is verifiable by using a search engine to look up images tagged “James Alefantis Instagram”. Though some have alleged that these images are fake and do not originate from his Instagram account, Alefantis has never denied the images’ authenticity, and in fact has confirmed their legitimacy on camera in an interview he did outside his restaurant with several picketing ‘conspiracy theorists’.

5.> Alefantis immediately reached out to the media for support against the defamation of his character by the crazy conspiracy theorists who took issue with the contents of his Instagram page. Major newspapers including the Washington Post ran articles defending Alefantis as the innocent victim of insane kooks run amok. None of the articles made an issue out of the contents of the Instagram account or of Alefantis’ connections with John Podesta. Nobody thought to say, “Gee, Mr. Alefantis, it seems like maybe your family friendly pizza restaurant shouldn’t have a child sex theme if you want people to not get the impression that you’re running a sex shop out if it.”

6.> Not a single newspaper, radio, or television show anywhere in the Western world had a reporter on staff apparently willing to look into the matter critically, by, say, spending 45 seconds doing a search engine lookup on Alefantis’ Instagram. With one exception. Ben Swann of CBS did a five-minute television news segment about Pizzagate where he mentioned this issue. Ben Swann had been an award-winning journalist with a history of doing slightly fringe newscasts. Within a week, his social media accounts were cancelled, and Swann was pulled off the air.

Excitable ‘conspiracy theorists’ are not always well known for their restraint, and some have badly overreached in their attempts to prove that there’s a secret dungeon underneath Comet Ping Pong or what not. This is a tenuous claim, and thus is low-hanging fruit for debunkers who want to sweep all this stuff under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist. But the fact that tenuous claims have been advanced and falsified around the ‘pizzagate’ narrative should not serve as the straw man that allows one to dismiss the information provided in this article out of hand. The facts presented here are just that, and the only claim I am making is the one they seem to support: that these are weird, disturbing pictures for a politically connected businessman to have associated with his family-friendly pizza restaurant.

So, look. This is a deep rabbit hole. Ted Gunderson was a lauded and accomplished FBI agent who late in life made it a mission to spread the word about satanist child molesters operating through the alphabet agencies of the United States Government. The Jeff Ganon story during the W Bush years hinted at a massive behind-the-scenes sex trade. During the Reagan years a story broke about a White House sex ring… a story which quickly vanished.

I’ve already alluded to the Jimmy Savile case. Every so often a woman will go on a talk show and discuss her background as a victim of ritualistic sex abuse, and then never be heard from again. Usually any mention of “satan worship” brings the bible thumpers out of the woodwork, leaving most modern sophisticates to conclude that this is the delusion of fundie Christian nutbars, and pay it no further mind.

My contention is that the astute observer will have noticed that the persistence of this rumour, and the trail of verifiable cases which appear to have broken through to the surface world, hints at a terrifying truth, most significantly because the breadth and scope of it, were it to be true, should leave us with serious questions about how we could be so blind as to be letting this happen right in plain sight.

I can point to any number of examples in history when the nobility got carried away with satisfying debauched appetites. The French nobility comes to mind. Roman orgies come to mind. What makes anyone think human nature has changed that much? And should we suppose that the war profiteers who bomb other countries as part of their business model have healthy personal interests and appetites?

What I’m trying to do is point out that what may at first seem like an implausible idea is in fact entirely plausible. In all honesty, you shouldn’t need training in critical thinking to put two and two together based solely on the information I’ve just provided to you. When a guy is posting pedo images on social media and then yelling foul when he’s called out on it, you are really on the wrong side of history to be defending his virtue. And of course, Alefantis’ putative guilt in this matter isn’t by itself sufficient evidence of a worldwide conspiracy of evildoers. I want to be very clear on this. But we also need to consider that the deafening silence of the sockpuppet corporatist mainstream “media” sources on this very alarming issue most certainly is indicative of a cover-up of sorts on a large scale. These facts I have presented are, I want to reiterate, not obscure or hard to discern. Everything is right there in plain sight for any journalist worth his or her salt to bring to our attention. So why are major publications like The Washington Post instead intent on defending Alefantis’ honour? These are questions one should ponder at length.

If you just can’t get your head around it, well, ok. I couldn’t either for a long time. There are people who couldn’t come to terms with OJ Simpson being a murderer. They wanted x to be true, so could not be convinced that it wasn’t. Once I realized I was making the same mistake, I began to have second thoughts about this stuff.

The difference, really, is that in the former case, nobody’s affected by our silence or misinformed opinion. In this case, presumably, innocent children are suffering horribly partly because of our collective refusal to see the facts, admit to them, engage with them, and backtrack on our falsified narratives. That means that despite this being a horrible, ugly thing to contemplate, we are morally obligated, it seems to me, to contemplate it.

The good news is that a lot of people are aware that this is taking place, and are involving themselves in the fight to get the word out. I would encourage you to search your own soul, think hard about the issue, and see if there’s anything that you can do. We all want the world to be a better place. I’m not sure myself how to bring that vision to life… but if the world is, as it appears to be, being run by horribly corrupt soulless psychopaths who literally worship the mythological incarnation of evil, maybe getting them out of the way would be an important first step.

What do you think?

Internal Investigation Reveals Massive Child Sex Abuse Cover-Up at the BBC

 via The AntiMedia

United Kingdom — Few will be surprised at more allegations of the U.K. establishment exonerating itself for turning a blind eye to sexual abuse cases. New reports have revealed that serious failings at the BBC allowed TV presenters Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall to sexually abuse almost 100 people undetected for decades.

After results emerged from an allegedly impartial investigation commissioned by the BBC, accusations of a cover-up are rife together with claims that, once again, the establishment has investigated and protected itself.

In October 2012, revelations that well-known TV personality and charity fundraiser, Sir James Savile, who died in 2011, was a prolific sex offender shook Britain. Some of Savile’s sex crimes were said to have taken place in connection with his work for the BBC.

Another TV presenter, Stuart Hall, was jailed in 2013 after admitting to indecently assaulting 13 girls — one as young as nine — between 1967 and 1985. In a foul slap in the face to his victims, the sexual predator was released from prison in December after serving just half of his sentence.

Savile’s youngest victim was eight years old

Results of the 1,000-page, Dame Janet Smith Review have now been published in full on the BBC‘s website. In what is being called the most expensive whitewash ever, the £6.5 million investigation into both men’s sexual misconduct also examined the culture and practices within the BBC during the Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall years.

Focusing on the departments they worked in during the 1970s and 1980s, the Review has contacted over 800 people. It claims to have interviewed over 380 witnesses in the Savile investigation and 100 in the Hall investigation. Over 70 victims of Savile were identified — including eight who were raped — as well as 21 victims of Hall.

Published on Thursday, the Review accuses BBC staff of missing opportunities to stop Savile dating back to the late 1960s. Dame Smith blamed a culture of fear for preventing allegations from coming to light, and said staff were reluctant to speak to managers in a culture she referred to as “deeply deferential.”

The Review claims that although BBC employees were aware of sexual assault complaints against the late Jimmy Savile, they did nothing to stop him. Despite the findings, the BBC has been cleared of responsibility after the former court judge found no evidence that senior managers “ever found out about any specific complaint relating to Mr. Savile’s inappropriate sexual conduct.”

On Thursday, presenter Tony Blackburn became the latest casualty of the cover-up and was fired for allegedly failing to fully cooperate with the Savile inquiry. According to the BBC, Blackburn was sacked because he “fell short” of the standards expected of someone providing evidence to a BBC inquiry.

While some are calling Blackburn a scapegoat and a smokescreen, the radio DJ accused the BBC of hanging him out to dry:

“Given Dame Janet Smith’s concerns of a culture of fear in coming forward at the BBC, the fact that I have been scapegoated for giving my honest account and best recollections of those events 45 years ago — which I felt was a whitewash — what whistleblower at the BBC would ever come forward when they see the way they have hung me out to dry.

Sadly today’s news agenda should have been about the survivors of abuse carried out within the BBC but, by sacking me, they have managed to take the focus off those who have suffered so much.”

Satanic sex abuse in the UK... and beyond?

The following comes from The Guardian:



1,400 investigated in child sex abuse inquiry, including politicians 

Officer leading Operation Hydrant inquiry says out of 1,433 alleged offenders 76 were politicians, 43 were from music industry and 135 were from TV, film or radio

Police across the country are investigating more than 1,400 men – including 261 high-profile individuals – over allegations of child abuse in the past, a senior officer running the national operation has revealed.

The scale of alleged child abuse across society – both recent and non-recent – was stark, said Ch Const Simon Bailey, who runs Operation Hydrant, the national coordinating team overseeing the various inquiries.

Figures from police forces in England and Wales published on Wednesday reveal that 1,433 men have been identified in reports of alleged abuse by victims, since the operation was set up in 2014.

Of these 216 are dead, 76 are politicians, both national and local figures, 43 are from the music industry, 135 from TV, film or radio and seven from the world of sport. The cases include recent high-profile convictions, including Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter and Max Clifford.

Hundreds of institutions have been identified by victims of non-recent abuse as places where their abuse took place. These include 154 schools, 75 children’s homes, 40 religious institutions, 14 medical establishments, 11 community groups, nine prisons or young offender institutions, nine sports venues and 28 other places including military establishments.

Bailey warned that the number of victims could run into the hundreds of thousands, and called for much more support for survivors of child abuse. He said he believed that the enormous increase in reports of all types of child sexual abuse – which have risen by 71% since 2012 to 116,000 reports this year – was not just down to more victims coming forward.

Instead, Bailey warned that the internet was creating the opportunity for more abuse to take place, and said live-streaming of child abuse on mobile phones was the next challenge facing law enforcers.

Bailey said the number of reports of abuse, both by adults of historical abuse, and by children today, was increasing on a daily basis, and the figures released on Wednesday were just a snapshot of the challenge faced by the police and society as a whole.

He supported calls for much more funding for victims of child abuse. “The government has allocated millions of pounds to provide additional support, but I am not sure that is going to be enough. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of victims,” he said.

Of the 116,000 reports of child sexual abuse this year, 52,446 are allegations of sexual abuse in the past, some involving cases going back decades. This amounts to a 166% increase in reports of non-recent abuse, said Bailey.

Detectives on Operation Hydrant are coordinating the many investigations into non-recent abuse involving both high-profile individuals and institutions, from a hub in Sheffield.

A team from Operation Hydrant is liaising with Justice Goddard to support the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.

Each of the 1,433 suspects has been put into a major crime database, which is cross referenced to ensure that no inquires are being duplicated and to identify suspects whose offending crossed borders. So far 30 individuals have been identified in one or more of the investigations.

Bailey said the figures were stark. “This year I am anticipating an estimated 116,000 reports of child sexual abuse will be received, that is a 71% increase since 2012, so it gives you some idea of the scale of this.

“What we are seeing is an absolutely unprecedented increase in the number of reports that are coming forward. That has brought about a step-change in the way the police service has had to deal with this. We are rising to and meeting the challenge, this is what Operation Hydrant is about.”

Bailey said the Hydrant team was working to create a database which would try to ensure that the failures of the past – as identified in the Jimmy Savile case – would not be repeated.

During the investigation of the late Radio 1 DJ it emerged that intelligence and information, including reports of abuse, were buried in the system – in some cases to prevent leaks – which meant when individual police forces with their own allegations checked the national police computer database his name did not come up.

“One of our primary objectives is to make sure where we get intelligence and where we get evidence of abuse it is being coordinated so we don’t make those mistakes. That particular case showed mistakes were made and he was able to go on and continue further abusing. The whole idea is that we don’t make those mistakes again,” he said.

Bailey said everyone from teachers, GPs, parents and wider society had a duty to look out for signs of abuse. He said: “We face a massive challenge in terms of resources, time and expertise to balance offering routes of justice for those who suffered in the past while safeguarding and protecting children in a vulnerable position today.”

Sheila Taylor, from the national working group on child sexual exploitation, said a massive public health campaign was needed to address the scale of child abuse within society.

John Brown from the NSPCC said the failure to support victims amount to a public health problem. “That is the issue. We are not helping children and adult victims to recover and there are huge costs to society, there are economic considerations and individual psychiatric costs.”

Tom Watson, the Labour MP whose claims made in the Commons that there was a paedophile network linked to parliament triggered a Scotland Yard investigation, said: “The sheer number of allegations just shows why there should be a dedicated national police response to child abuse inquiries. Intelligence gathering and data sharing will be far easier were there to be a dedicated team comprising of specialists from around the country.

“We are only just beginning to understand how as a country, over many generations, we managed to turn a blind eye to Britain’s child abuse scandal. The survivors deserve justice and future generations require greater protection.”

Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said: “The scale and scope of sexual abuse of children committed in the past can often seem overwhelming. What these figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council do is to provide some degree of measure of the issue.

“And what a measure it is; prolific offenders from all spheres of society, thinking they were untouchable, abusing children and the most vulnerable in settings where they should have been safest , including schools, care facilities and religious institutions.”

***

UK paper The Express goes into more detail about the Jimmy Savile case, alleging:

Jimmy Savile was part of satanic ring

 JIMMY SAVILE beat and raped a 12-year-old girl during a secret satanic ritual in a hospital.

 The perverted star wore a hooded robe and mask as he abused the terrifi ed victim in a candle-lit basement.

He also chanted “Hail Satan” in Latin as other paedophile devil worshippers joined in and assaulted the girl at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. The attack, which happened in 1975, shines a sinister new light on the former DJ’s 54-year reign of terror.

Savile, who died aged 84 in October 2011, is now Britain’s worst sex offender after police revealed he preyed on at least 450 victims aged eight to 47.

The girl kept her torment hidden for nearly 20 years before finally opening up to therapist Valerie Sinason.

Dr Sinason told the Sunday Express she first spoke to the victim in 1992. “She had been a patient at Stoke Mandeville in 1975 when Savile was a regular visitor.

“She recalled being led into a room that was filled with candles on the lowest level of the hospital, somewhere that was not regularly used by staff. Several adults were there, including Jimmy Savile who, like the others, was wearing a robe and a mask.

“She recognised him because of his distinctive voice and the fact that his blond hair was protruding from the side of the mask. He was not the leader but he was seen as important because of his fame.

“She was molested, raped and beaten and heard words that sounded like ‘Ave Satanas’, a Latin­ised version of ‘Hail Satan’, being chanted. There was no mention of any other child being there and she cannot remember how long the attack lasted but she was left extremely frightened and shaken.”

Savile was a volunteer porter and fundraiser at the hospital between 1965 and 1988 and had his own quarters there.

Five years after the hospital attack, he abused a second victim during another black mass ceremony held at a house in a wealthy London street.

The woman was 21 at the time and was made to attend an orgy, which later took on a darker twist.

Dr Sinason, director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, said: “A second victim approached me in 1993. She said she had been ‘lent out’ as a supposedly consenting prostituted woman at a party in a London house in 1980.

“The first part of the evening started off with an orgy but half-way through some of the participants left.

“Along with other young women, the victim was shepherded to wait in another room before being brought back to find Savile in a master of ceremonies kind of role with a group wearing robes and masks. She too heard Latin chanting and instantly recognised satanist regalia. Although the girl was a young adult, who was above the age of consent, she had suffered a history of sexual abuse and was extremely vulnerable.”

Both victims contacted Dr Sinason, who is president of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, while she was involved in a Department of Health-funded study into sexual abuse committed during rituals and religious ceremonies. She said: “Both these witnesses did speak to police at the time but were vulnerable witnesses and on encountering any surprise or shock did not dare to give all the details.”

The police took no action.

 Dr Sinason added: “Savile was still a huge celebrity in the early Nineties, let’s not forget, and there was never any action taken against him or any of the others involved.

“Neither girl knew one another, they lived in different parts of the country and contacted me a year apart yet their experiences are very similar. Whether Savile was a practising Satanist or merely enjoyed dressing up to scare his victims even more will perhaps never be known but he left those two girls mentally scarred.”

Dr Sinason has passed details of the abuse to officers from the Savile inquiry, Operation Yewtree.

A joint report published on ­Friday by the Metropolitan Police and the NSPCC uncovered at least 30 claims of abuse at Stoke Mandeville.

The hospital said it was unable to discuss individual cases while its own “Speaking Out” investigation was ongoing.

Anne Eden, chief executive of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “As the investigation’s name suggests, it is very keen to hear from anybody with any knowledge that they feel could help its work or anybody that needs support because of Jimmy Savile’s alleged behaviour.”

***

Next up is video of one of the abuse victims claiming that everyone being investigated is a Freemason:

***

Let's hear from The Corbett Report:

Pedophiles in Politics: An Open Source Investigation

As 2015 begins, high-profile cases involving accusations of pedophilia in the highest ranks of political power are making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

MPs Caught in Pedophile Network

The first case involves the exposure of five VIP pedophile rings operating in Britain in the 1970s and 80s that have been researched in a dossier compiled by John Mann, an MP for Bassetlaw in the Midlands, which was then submitted to the London Metropolitan Police for further investigation. These five rings all included at least one current or former member of parliament, with a total of 24 politicians having been identified in Mann’s dossier. Six of those 24 are currently serving members of the UK government, including three MPs and three members of the House of Lords. As an MP himself, Mann enjoys parliamentary privilege to name the accused politicians in the House of Commons but has said he will not do so because he believes the accusations should be investigated by police first.

The Met are already investigating claims made by an alleged victim of the network that a Conservative MP strangled a boy to death during one of the ring’s sex parties, and that he personally witnessed two other boys murdered by the gang, including one who was run over in broad daylight. Mann has also indicated that he believes two men may have been murdered as part of a cover-up of the network’s activities.

One of the hurdles in investigating the claims is the Official Secrets Act, which prevents the disclosure of state secrets and “sensitive” information. “It is clear there are a lot of people who could provide a lot of information, potentially vital information, to support ongoing criminal investigations,” Mann said regarding the investigation. “But they are not doing so because of the Official Secrets Act. They are fearful of not only breaking the law but the potential effect on their pension. This is absolutely crucial if we are to get some of these ex-officers coming forward and to get prosecutions of some of the former MPs.” He has asked Home Secretary Theresa May to lift the restrictions, allowing former officials to speak up about what they know about the case, but so far there is no indication that this has been done.

Epstein Accuser Names Names

Meanwhile in the United States a similarly shocking set of allegations are emerging from a Florida court case surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the prominent American financier and billionaire who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. In the years since his conviction, dozens of women have come forward to accuse him of abuse, and he has made 17 out-of-court settlements in various civil cases arising from these accusations. There is now an ongoing federal civil suit in Florida in which two women are alleging violations of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act in the remarkable plea deal that saw Epstein emerge from the scandal with a single count of solicitation of underage prostitution and a 13-month prison sentence.

Late last month, Virginia Roberts made headlines by submitting a motion to be added to the legal action in Florida. Those documents allege that Roberts was one of Epstein’s underage sex slaves and names both Prince Andrew, Duke of York and fifth in line for the British crown, and Alan Dershowitz, a well-known lawyer and author, as men with whom she was forced to have sex while underage. Buckingham Palace has emphatically denied the claims, and Dershowitz threatened to sue Roberts’ lawyers over the allegations but was instead counter-sued for defamation.

The scandal threatens to re-focus attention on the Epstein case, which raises many important questions about the billionaire’s connections with the rich and powerful. It has since been revealed that Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for contacting his friend Bill Clinton, who, court records allege, “frequently flew” on Epstein’s private jet between 2002 and 2005. The American tabloid press is now reporting that the new claims have created problems for Clinton’s marriage, with Hillary allegedly visibly angry at Bill at a recent public appearance.

Nothing New

Allegations of pedophilia networks amongst the political and entertainment “elite” are of course nothing new. In recent years Britain has been rocked by revelations of repeated, serial sexual abuse of children by popular children’s television entertainers Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris. These scandals have raised questions about institutional support for these activities at a number of levels, including the BBC, the political classes and even royal participation in the enabling and cover-up of the abuse.

Likewise in America, allegations of political pedophile rings date back decades, with the most notorious being the Franklin scandal in which Lawrence E. King Jr. was accused of running an elite child prostitution ring for Nebraska Republican Party members and high-ranking U.S. politicians. The story involves accusations that link the ring to CIA drug dealing, murder and cover up, including accusations of ritual abuse in the Bohemian Grove. The investigation was championed by former State Senator John De Camp and eventually brought before a grand jury in Douglas County but was eventually thrown out as a “carefully crafted hoax” and two of the alleged victims were themselves convicted of perjury after two other witnesses recanted their supporting testimony. Still, questions still surround the cover up of the case as documented in suppressed documentaries like Conspiracy of Silence.

Cover Ups

The question of whether the London Met will be adequate to the task of properly investigating Mann’s dossier is not an idle one. Just last year reports revealed that the Met had 260 crates of evidence documenting police corruption in the north-east corner of London alone. The evidence relates to Operation Tiberius, a 2002 investigation that concluded there was “endemic corruption” in the Metropolitan Police force and that organized crime networks had been able to infiltrate the Met “at will.” The report that issued from that investigation was 170 pages long, but only six heavily-redacted pages were provided to a parliamentary committee that had requested the information. Only a handful of the scores of then-serving officers and officials identified by the investigation were ever prosecuted.

In the Epstein case, as well, there are numerous questions surrounding the possibility of high-level cover up. In recent weeks it has emerged that Epstein struck a remarkable secret deal with the US Attorney’s Office that barred more than 500 pages of documents detailing negotiations of the deal and a staggering 13,000 documents from the investigation into Epstein’s activities that were shelved as a result of the bargain. Moreover, the victims were not told of the plea bargain until after it had been concluded. All of this resulted from the US Attorney Office’s pledge to avoid turning the case into a “media circus” and disclosing the names of people like Prince Andrew.

Clearing the Smoke, Smashing the Mirrors

As always with ongoing legal investigations, it is important to sort the credible from the incredible, the proven from the unproven, and the mere allegations from the actual findings of fact. Hoaxes, lies and moral panics have erupted in the past that have proven fraudulent in the long run.

So what are the credible sources in investigations like these? How can those with a monetary or other interest in slandering the rich and powerful be separated from those with credible claims of abuse? What bodies or institutions can be relied on to investigate claims of this nature, especially when they involve sitting politicians and others in the highest reaches of political or financial power?

These questions and others like them will be answered in an upcoming edition of The Corbett Report podcast. In the meantime, Corbett Report members are encouraged to sign in and leave their own thoughts on these issues, including sources for further reading on theses topics and discussion of why pedophilia accusations of high-ranking politicians continue to crop up, and what these claims might mean if they are indeed true.

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Further reading: 

Theodore L. Gunderson (November 7, 1928 - July 31, 2011 was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent In Charge and head of the Los Angeles FBI. He was most famous for handling the Marilyn Monroe and the John F. Kennedy cases. He was the author of the best selling book How to Locate Anyone Anywhere.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Gunderson

 Here's video of Ted alleging the existence of a vast underground network of drug-smugglers and Satanic pedophiles operating through the albabet intelligence agencies of the United States, with tendrils reaching all the way to the steps of The White House. He also goes on at some length about false flag attacks in the United States, and about The Bavarian Illuminati, whoever they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qWYv67XA4

One thing Ted was excited about was having obtained a copy of the documentary, Conspiracy of Silence: The Franklin Cover-up, which had been scheduled to air on television but had been nixxed by congressional order. Uh oh, there's that "conspiracy" word again.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_child_prostitution_ring_allegations

Here's the documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQHrbJPhus4