“The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.”- Georges Bernanos
“Perverted Justice” and “Porn Bombing”
The internet has already spawned its own version of reflexive and ill-informed initiatives which serve to increase the market for psychopaths’ machinations. The distortion of facts and the suppression of real issues and thus possible solutions are kept out of reach. Confusion and cognitive dissonance must continue to shower all forms of potential progress related to a clear understanding of these problems.
The internet has already spawned its own version of reflexive and ill-informed initiatives which serve to increase the market for psychopaths’ machinations. The distortion of facts and the suppression of real issues and thus possible solutions are kept out of reach. Confusion and cognitive dissonance must continue to shower all forms of potential progress related to a clear understanding of these problems.
Perverted Justice.com is but one example of those that are willing to seek retributive justice and project their own fears into the emotional maelstrom. This particular website has formed a “gateway” for recruiting “volunteer contributors who pose as underage children in chat rooms. Posing from a variety of ages (standard ages are 10-15), these contributors simply go into chat rooms with fake online screen names and wait for predators to instigate conversation with them.”
Xavier Von Erck, the website owner, claims to target and expose “wannabe pedos” from online chats which have been recorded after the fact and where many have been arrested, convicted and placed on the California sex register. You are also able to send the target an email (assuming he still has an account which is unlikely) and “…If no police agency expresses interest in prosecuting those adults, we post them publicly on our website. […] Regardless of past interaction with police, we make an effort to present each case to police so that there is an opportunity to prosecute before the log is posted on this site.”
Once the wannabe predator has been sufficiently stimulated and worked up into a frenzy of deviancy, phone numbers are taken and addresses given, ready for the police show down. The chat room dialogue is then posted on the website with a photo for all to see. At the bottom of every posting we see:
Slimyness Scale: Your opinions on this post
On a 1-5 scale. 1. Not slimy at all 2. Somewhat Slimy 3. Just Plain Slimy 4. Really Slimy 5. Really slimy 6. Oozing, dripping with slimyness!
Though this kind of puerile behaviour is by no means the worst that can be seen on the site, it gives an indication of the intent of the website owner and the people employed to run it. Some believe that responses such as these, far from helping to address society’s problem of paedophilia and child rape crime, actually helps to create it. Though the intent may be to inform and defend children, the route taken to convictions are dangerously close to vigilantism dispensing with the “rule of law” however inadequate this may seem. Once “adult citizens” follow the already extremely suspect version of entrapment then the concept of law and justice becomes less than meaningless where a judge and jury are simultaneously those acting as creators and instigators of crimes.
Von Erck provides an extensive FAQ section where all seems above order and meticulously thought out. There are a few problems with this set up however. It appears “Xavier Von Erck” or real name: Phillip Eide, a 26 year old computer gamer of Portland, Oregon, the owner and “director of operations” set up Perverted-Justice over 4 years ago with a strict “Rule of No First Contact” which was observed for the first 2 years. An immediate ban from the site would follow if any member contacted the police or news outlet regarding their ensnarement.
Late last year it seems the rule was “relaxed” largely due to pressure from ex-members who formed an alternative site (corrupted-justice.com) to alert the public that all was not rosy in the land of alleged paedophile busting. Since the PJ’s inception they have claimed to have “busted” over 600 men with no police involvement. Corrupted Justice (CJ) asked: “How many of those 600 were actual predators who were [allowed to] walk free because the vigilantes didn’t involve police? How many of those people were actually innocent and mistakenly ruined as a result of being targeted by untrained, anonymous Internet cop-wannabes?” The answers are less than encouraging. Of the 15 plus “group media busts” in which they involve the television media in their stings is minimal at best, the end result being that sexual predators walked away suitably embarrassed and angry and no doubt, still at large.
According to CJ: “Out of 1106 men they have ‘busted’, only 42 convictions have resulted.” What is even more worrisome is that very few of the alleged “busts” have much to do with child solicitation:
The tiny percentage of their "busts" which have resulted in an arrest were virtually all a result of media reports, phone calls to police from neighbors, etc. after the fact. - The result - Mostly plea-bargains to minor charges because of a lack of usable evidence.
Since the taping for February 3rd's Dateline program, Perverted-Justice has resumed "busting" people with absolutely no law enforcement involvement, preferring instead to let their anonymous members dish out their own form of "justice". In a number of recent cases since the Dateline taping, they have mistakenly begun anonymously threatening completely innocent, non-involved people by telephone and e-mail…1
This is akin to rattling a hornet’s nest and then running for cover. CJ asked in their editorial last year: “…what ever happened to the One Thousand and Sixty Four potential predators they busted but for which they didn't contact the police? They are living in your community instead of sitting in jail where many of them may belong…” Other substantiated claims against Perverted Justice include:
* The employment of minors in explicit online sex chats.
* Anonymous harassment and terrorization campaigns against those targeted.
* Identity theft against critics of Perverted Justice.
* Serious threats, defamation against journalists, attorneys and other child-protection
* Identity theft against critics of Perverted Justice.
* Serious threats, defamation against journalists, attorneys and other child-protection
* organizations who have voiced concerns regarding the group's vigilante tactics.
* Classic psychopath tactics of denigrating critics by paramoralisms and paralogistics 2
* No evidence of any actual recognized or legitimate law enforcement training for Perverted-Justice members has been made public other than the “extensive training” claimed by present members.
Die-hard Israel supporter and media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his tabloid news corporation MSNBC screens the “Dateline” show “To Catch a Predator” paid Perverted Justice over $100,000 to participate in the program. This is understandable, as the level of voyeurism is matched by the other. However a “reputable” news corporation does not pay for stories, or compensate sources, yet this is exactly what they did while watching the ratings climb and pandering to the same old tired propaganda that enraptured over 8 million viewers. It is tabloid T.V. at its worst it yet remains a sure-fire winner for those seeking short-term profits from long-term misery.
* Classic psychopath tactics of denigrating critics by paramoralisms and paralogistics 2
* No evidence of any actual recognized or legitimate law enforcement training for Perverted-Justice members has been made public other than the “extensive training” claimed by present members.
Die-hard Israel supporter and media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his tabloid news corporation MSNBC screens the “Dateline” show “To Catch a Predator” paid Perverted Justice over $100,000 to participate in the program. This is understandable, as the level of voyeurism is matched by the other. However a “reputable” news corporation does not pay for stories, or compensate sources, yet this is exactly what they did while watching the ratings climb and pandering to the same old tired propaganda that enraptured over 8 million viewers. It is tabloid T.V. at its worst it yet remains a sure-fire winner for those seeking short-term profits from long-term misery.
In combination with PJ’s activities such exploitative programming merely make predators far more aware of legitimate police stings (a term to be used loosely) and to make the field of child molestation and paedophilia reduced down to nothing more than pop-corn entertainment. All this feeds into the overall impression that PJ is something other than an altruistic community protection programme, rather, it is part of a further operation to muddy the issues involved in sexual exploitation. Think “War on Terror” and we have the same programme – different channel.
In August 2004, KenoshaOnline, a news portal for Kenosha and Wisconsin was forced to shut down its anonymous forum due to repeated spamming from a Defence Department source with “links to incest, bestiality, gay sex and other inappropriate media.” 3 KenoshaOnline’s John Norquist contacted the Pentagon regarding the “porn bombs” but the Department of Defence refused to comment. The site’s traffic saw a significant fall once the forum was disconnected.
From this example alone we can see that the pornography business can be used as a means of control for a variety of purposes unbeknownst to the public. Even Google has had to defend itself since August 2004 from the likes of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who has been pressing the search engine giant to release data about people’s searching habits on the internet. 4 The Justice Department was keen to view specific information, including the types of queries submitted by users and the websites in its index. Not one to be accused of worrying too much about the privacy of its users, even Google believes the criteria is too broad and “threatens trade secrets.” It fell to privacy groups to warn that user identities could be indirectly revealed, especially with the government’s new drive to collect data for “fighting crime and terrorism.” Their justification of course, was the enforcement of pornography laws with special attention to the 1998 Child Protection Act, which was blocked by the Supreme Court pertaining to legal challenges regarding how it was enforced. Gonzales has now sought a court order to force the company to part with the records. This is strangely hypocritical as the search engine is already in bed with the CIA.5
The company’s habit of censoring websites has come under particular scrutiny of late. The internet-based Inquisition 21 group seeking to bring a class action law suit against UK police for the Landslide/Operation Ore scandal had their website inquisition21.com delisted by Google. They believe due to the nature of the evidence they are sharing concerning child porn police corruption. After refusing to comment on the action Google issued a general statement yet failed to confirm that the Inquisition21 website had breached any of the guidelines. The censorship came just as the site was about to make potentially damaging disclosures about the handling of the Operation Ore investigations. 6
While a reform of sex laws are periodically needed for improvement on a variety of bills and clauses, the introduction of measures, that in effect, hand over responsibility to government bit by bit, decreases our own “response-ability,” often without the relevant information as to why such laws are considered so essential for our children’s protection and safety. In reality, freedom and responsibility are deeply connected and if one is curtailed the other will inevitably follow suit. The end result is Governments accruing more control while its citizens scratch their heads and wonder how on earth it could have happened.
Notes
1 See www.corruptedjustice.com for further details.
2 Paralogism: n. illogical or fallacious deduction. paralogical, paralogistic, a. paralogize, v.i. be illogical; draw unwarranted conclusions. paralogist, n. conversive thinking: subconscious selection and substitution of data leading to chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter. For example, If you are "anti-pedophile" as Von Erck professes to be, then it is standard procedure for such people to use the "pro-pedophile" reference “in the hopes that those seeking "unfiltered" information about the website activities will be dissuaded from going further. This stigmatization and avoidance of the core issues are the methods by which Counter Intelligence Programs (CoIntelpro) do their work in the areas of 9/11 Truth Movement, The Human Potential or New Age Movement and in the area of law courts and sexual exploitation generally. This is not to say that Von Erck is cointelpro, but it certainly smells like it.
3 See also: ‘Is Pentagon flooding Kenosha site with porn?’ By Rachel Campbell, The Journal Times , Racine WI, August 26 2004.
4 ‘Google defies US over search data’ BBC News, Friday, 20 January 2006.
5 Former CIA agent and computer expert Robert David Steele, who has close connections with top Google directors, suggested that Google co-operated with the CIA. Steele is was the second-ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988-1992 and a former clandestine services case officer for the CIA. His latest accusations against Google have raised the possibility that other accusations are now credible and that Google is truly censoring in places far from China and much nearer home. For example, Google has been caught censoring recent programmes and critiques critical of the Iraq war. On the October 2006 Alex Jones radio programme, Steele said, “I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government - that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they'll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off. Google was a little hypocritical when they were refusing to honor a Department of Justice request for information because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development.”
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