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The guardian reports on a sobering event in Washington DC.
US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.
[...] The suspect entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at a restaurant employee, who fled and notified authorities, police said. The man then discharged the weapon inside the restaurant. There were no injuries.
[...] [Police] said the suspect during an interview with investigators revealed that he came to the establishment to "self-investigate" Pizzagate, the police statement said. Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gidds on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:38PM
...that everything can look weird, if you dig down far enough, produce enough material out of context, and let people fill in the gaps themselves.
Hence the quote [brainyquote.com] commonly (but perhaps wrongly) attributed to Cardinal Richelieu.
Similarly, it seems Freud may never have said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" [quoteinvestigator.com], but there's still a lot of truth in it.
That's why we have courts and are required to prove that people committed crimes before sentencing them, because we know how deceptive appearances can be.
In fact, because deceiving ourselves is so easy, we have a whole huge field of endeavour called 'science' based on trying to avoid it!
So no, just because something looks 'really weird', and like a 'pile of coincidences', doesn't mean there's anything wrong. There might be something going on that's related but mostly innocent and blown out of all proportion; there might be something completely unrelated and innocuous; there might be nothing at all. Especially if some of the things that look 'really weird' are the results of misunderstandings, exaggeration, misrepresentation, and/or outright invention. But even if not.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:03PM
The value of that link is the article isn't even true.
which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms
has nothing to do with it.
It would be like claiming Bill Clinton and Monica invented the quote about sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Not even talking about the right people, but the media people are very certain about whats right or wrong, which is weird.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:50PM
> The value of that link is the article isn't even true.
You sure put in a lot of work to avoid addressing contradicting evidence that might pop your bubble.
You must have a lot of yourself invested in the idea of pizzagate.
What would it take to convince you that pizzagate is completely false?