Andrew Breitbart tweet before death adds fuel to online speculation of D.C. sex-trafficking ring.

Andrew Breitbart is making news even in death.

Social media speculation of a sex-trafficking ring in the nation’s capital has burned up social media sites for weeks. Complicating matters is Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s decision not to comment on anythingWikiLeaks-related for months.

Explosive claims by Internet sleuths, which were prompted after reading stolen documents belonging to Mr. Podesta, have been derided as “viciously phony” by Fox News’ Howard Kurtz. A tweet by Mr. Breitbart shortly before his March 1, 2012, death is now being cited by online researchers as proof that they are onto something big.

“How prog-guru John Podesta isn’t household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me,” Mr. Breitbart wrote Feb. 4, 2011.

The conservative icon’s death at age 43 was attributed to “heart failure.”

Knowledge of the late conservative’s tweet sent Google searches for “Andrew Breitbart” skyrocketing Sunday night as news spread to members of Twitter, Reddit, GAB, Voat and other social media platforms.

“One of America’s best an most respected independent journalists at the time; he is making a very bold claim about John Podesta — back then — based on his own research,” former Huffington Post contributor David Seaman wrote on GAB Sunday night. “This is years before WikiLeaks came out.”

Mr. Seaman and others claim Mr. Podesta and his associates spoke in code in numerous documents released by WikiLeaks. One example includes a Feb. 9, 2014, email with the subject line “Did you leave a handkerchief.”

“Hi John, The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related. Is it yorus [sic]?” a woman identified as Susaner asked. “They can send it if you want.”

Such wording led online sleuths to investigate Mr. Podesta’s connections with D.C. power-player James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong. The Democrat fundraiser and pizza place owner, who is mentioned in 16 different WikiLeaks documents, had a public Instagram account that featured sexual innuendo and bizarre images of children.

Accounts for Comet Ping Pong employees, which are now set to private, featured nudity involving naked men with slices of pizza strategically placed over their genitals.

“From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we’ve come under constant assault,” Mr. Alefantis, 42, told The New York Times on Nov. 21. “I’ve done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized. […] It’s endless.”

The editorial board of The Washington Post also lambasted social media sleuths on Nov. 25 in an op-ed titled “‘Pizzagate’ shows how fake news hurts real people.”

“The allegations against Comet Ping Pong, reported by the New York Times, are absurd on their face and detached from any gossamer thread of fact,” the newspaper wrote. “They took root in the dark crevices of the Web and took flight thanks to social media platforms, whose witless ‘who, us?’ posture in the face of misinformation and outright lunacy is a civic embarrassment. …”

“Like 93 percent of Washingtonians, the restaurateur happened to support Ms. Clinton for president; he has some prominent Democratic friends, past and present,” the Post continued. “Mr. Alefantis’s name surfaced in leaked email from Mr. Podesta’s account, published by WikiLeaks, in which the two men discussed holding a Clinton fundraiser. As far as anyone knows, there is no more logic than that as to why Mr. Alefantis and his restaurant became targets. The First Amendment is a bulwark of democracy but provides no protection for defamatory allegations published in knowing disregard for the truth. Mr. Alefantis is more than entitled to sue for defamation and libel, if he can find the purveyors of the garbage heaved his way.”

 

✔@AndrewBreitbart

How prog-guru John Podesta isn't household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/28/andrew-breitbart-tweet-before-death-adds-fuel-to-o/

A Truth Unveiled.

Our politicians are corrupt.
Our legal system is corrupt.
Our police force is corrupt.

#TimeForChange

The reporting of crime is not a crime.

Free Bradley Manning.

The railroading of Bradley Manning is getting out of control.

Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, the investigating officer in Manning's Article 32 hearing has recommended that Manning face a court-martial for all 23 charges of which he is accused. 1

The charges Almanza has recommended are absurdly disproportionate to the acts Manning is accused of committing — the most egregious being "aiding the enemy," a charge that carries a possible penalty of life imprisonment. This charge rests on the government's dubious claim that Manning knowingly provided intelligence to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, because he knew Wikileaks might publish the information on the internet.

Almanza's recommendation will now move up the chain of command, where Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington will ultimately decide if Manning should be court-martialed, and on what charges. Can you help us stop this snowballing, unfounded attempt to paint Manning as a traitor?

Call the Department of Defense right now, leave a message for Maj. Gen. Linnington asking him to drop the "aiding the enemy" charges against Bradley Manning.

Click here for a phone number and a sample script: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/manning-call

Manning's supporters see Lt. Col. Almanza's recommendation as just another step in what is becoming a sham trial. Almanza himself served as a prosecutor for the Justice Department, which is also investigating Manning, but refused to recuse himself as investigating officer. Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, claims the DOJ wants to flip Manning and have him testify against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.2

Of the 48 witnesses requested by Manning, Almanza only allowed 12 to testify - 10 of which were also requested by the government. Coombs has requested oral depositions of the denied witnesses, who he says have the potential to show how baseless the "aiding the enemy" charge really is. The fact that they were denied testimony in the first place says a lot about the reasoning behind such a severe accusation.

This entire process has not only been insanely cruel, it is setting a dangerous precedent for how the government deals with whistleblowers. We must stand up to the overcharging of Bradley Manning. His life and the safety of all whistleblowers depend on it. Can you call the Department of Defense, and urge Maj. Gen. Linnington to use his power to stop the over-zealous prosecution of Bradley Manning?

Call the Department of Defense right now, leave a message for Maj. Gen. Linnington asking him to drop the "aiding the enemy" charges against Bradley Manning.

Click here for a phone number and a sample script: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/manning-call

No matter the Army's decision, Firedoglake will continue to report on this case and organize actions in pursuit of a fair trial and, ultimately, justice for Bradley Manning.

In solidarity,

Brian Sonenstein
Director of Online Activism,
Firedoglake.com

PS: If you can't call, consider chipping in $5 to support Firedoglake's continuous coverage of the Bradley Manning case: https://secure.firedoglake.com/page/contribute/manning-general

1. All Charges Against Bradley Manning Referred to Court Martial, Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 1/12/2011.

2. Manning Defense Files Motion Requesting Article 32 Officer Recuse Himself, Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 12/16/2011.

Wikileaks Under Attack From Pentagon.

I didnt think the Pentagon would be so stupid to go after Wikileaks.
How wrong was I ?

Pentagon officials have announced the detention of Army private Bradley Manning, as well as stepped-up efforts to locate Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks web site, in a security crackdown sparked by the release of politically damaging video of a US military massacre in Iraq.

On June 7, Defense Department officials confirmed that Manning was in confinement in Kuwait “for allegedly releasing classified information.” Three days later, Pentagon investigators told the web site Daily Beast that they were looking for Assange in connection with the Manning investigation. The Australian-born WikiLeaks founder had scheduled speaking engagements in New York City and Las Vegas last week, but canceled them, citing “security considerations.”

WikiLeaks, which solicits leaks of government and corporate criminality worldwide and makes them public to a global audience on the Internet, published a decrypted and edited version of the video footage in April, using a special web site entitled “Collateral Murder.” The original video was shot by the US military in 2007 in the course of a helicopter assault in eastern Baghdad which left some 15 people dead, including two Reuters journalists.

The video and the accompanying voiceover of radio traffic, in which American soldiers joked about exterminating Iraqis, sparked widespread international outrage and a furious counterattack by the American military/intelligence apparatus. Defense Secretary Robert Gates denounced the release of the video, although he conceded that the footage was produced by the US military and had not been doctored.
According to press accounts, Manning was detained May 26 after he made the mistake of confiding in an online acquaintance, Adrian Lamo, an experienced hacker. Manning told Lamo that, in the course of his work as an Army military intelligence analyst at Forward Operating Base Hammer, east of Baghdad, he had been able to acquire a vast stockpile of internal military and State Department documents and communications, including the original footage from which “Collateral Murder” was produced. Lamo turned Manning in to the Army and FBI.

Manning is reportedly being held at a military facility in Kuwait. Several computer hard drives taken from him arrived in Washington Thursday and are now being analyzed by government computer experts to determine what documents Manning downloaded and what he did with them.
Manning enlisted in the Army in 2007 and held a Top Secret/SCI clearance. He reportedly told Lamo that he had been looking through military and government networks for more than a year and found “incredible things, awful things… that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC.”
Besides the video which became “Collateral Murder,” Manning said he supplied WikiLeaks with a second video showing a May 2009 US air strike near the village of Garani in Afghanistan, in which more than 100 people were killed, including many children.

The main focus of the military/FBI investigation is Manning’s claim to have downloaded some 260,000 secret diplomatic cables, which he described as showing “almost criminal political back dealings.” Manning added, according to an e-mail to Lamo, “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public.”

WikiLeaks has denied being in possession of the 260,000 secret cables. Assange has reportedly offered to help finance Manning’s legal defense.
The detention of Manning and the pursuit of Assange must be opposed by all those who defend democratic rights. The American people, and the people of the entire world, have a right to know of the crimes committed by the American military/intelligence apparatus under the orders of the American president.

The attack on WikiLeaks and its collaborators is part of a broader security crackdown by the Obama administration. As reported by the New York Times this week, the White House has decided to go ahead with the prosecution of Thomas Drake, a whistleblower at the National Security Agency, who sought to expose financial mismanagement at the NSA by providing information to a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.
According to the Times article, “The indictment of Mr. Drake was the latest evidence that the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks. In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions.”
This stepped-up crackdown on leaks came the same week as the issuance of a report by Physicians for Human Rights that doctors working for the CIA collaborated with interrogators who conducted torture of prisoners. The doctors monitored the torture sessions to make sure the prisoners did not die—so they could be interrogated and tortured further—and to refine the methods used to make them more painful and effective. The report’s title speaks for itself: “Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program.”

The Obama administration is striving to plug leaks, not out of concern that the lives of American soldiers could be endangered, as it habitually claims, but for the same reasons that motivated the Bush administration: top government officials—in the Pentagon, CIA, NSA and in the White House itself—could face war crimes charges, either in the United States or before an international tribunal, based on the evidence produced by such revelations.

Relatives of those killed in the helicopter gunship attack in Iraq criticized Manning’s detention. Nabil Noor-Eldeen, whose brother Namir was one of the Reuters employees killed in the assault, told the press, “Justice was what this US soldier did by uncovering this crime against humanity. The American military should reward him, not arrest him.”
Manning is not a criminal, but someone evidently motivated by revulsion against the crimes committed by “his” military and “his” government. The World Socialist Web Site joins with all those demanding that Manning be released without any charges being brought against him. We further demand the dropping of all efforts to investigate and suppress the activities of Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks activists.
Patrick Martin

Cut and pasted from The World Socialist Web Site

Shoot Anything That Moves !!

From Wikileaks