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A Danger of Giving FBI Agents Quotas on Domestic Terrorism and White Supremacy Related Crime

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | September 15, 2022

Sometimes police will be given quotas for ticketing drivers. Results of the pressure put on cops to meet their ticket targets tend to include that many drivers are pulled over and ticketed for minor infractions that would be better overlooked or based on dubious or fabricated grounds. Is a similar quota system, with expectable similar results, developing now in regard to “domestic terrorism” and “white supremacy” related crime at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)?

A Wednesday Washington Times article by Kerry Picket and Joseph Clark, referencing information provided by current and former FBI agents, suggests that is the case. Picket and Clark write:

Current and former FBI agents tell The Washington Times that the perceived threat has become overblown under the administration. They say bureau analysts and top officials are pressuring FBI agents to create domestic terrorist cases and tag people as White supremacists to meet internal metrics.

“The demand for White supremacy” coming from FBI headquarters “vastly outstrips the supply of White supremacy,” said one agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We have more people assigned to investigate White supremacists than we can actually find.”

The agent said those driving bureau policies “have already determined that White supremacy is a problem” and set agencywide policy to elevate racially motivated domestic extremism cases as priorities.

“We are sort of the lapdogs as the actual agents doing these sorts of investigations, trying to find a crime to fit otherwise First Amendment-protected activities,” he said. “If they have a Gadsden flag and they own guns and they are mean at school board meetings, that’s probably a domestic terrorist.”

The Gadsden flag is a historical American flag with a yellow field showing a timber rattlesnake and the words: “Don’t Tread on Me.” It is often used as a symbol of liberty.

Read the complete article here.

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute

September 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

Kiev will stop asking for Western support only after Russia’s “defeat”: FM

Samizdat | September 20, 2022

Kiev will no longer request weapons deliveries from the West, only after Ukraine prevails over Russia, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba claimed on Monday, adding that the supplies are part of a “recipe to defeat” Moscow’s forces.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Kuleba indicated that despite a constant flow of Western armaments into the country, Kiev needs even more of them, given that it is now fighting such an “enemy” as Russia.

“Sometimes I’m being asked when there is enough of weapons that we have received. And I always say… it will be enough only after Ukraine wins. Until then, we will be asking for more,” he stated.

The Foreign minister also noted that Kiev’s recent counter-offensive in Kharkov region has shown that the combination of Ukrainian forces’ “stamina” and Western-supplied weapons, most of which come from the US, are “the recipe to defeat Russia on the ground.” Moscow, however, insisted that it pulled its troops back from some areas to “regroup” and to strengthen the Russian forces in the Donetsk region.

At the same time, Kuleba admitted that sustainability of Western weapon deliveries is an issue, which needs to be constantly raised by Kiev authorities as they talk with their Western colleagues.

NATO has been supporting Ukraine since 2014, but has significantly ramped up its military assistance after Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring country in late February.

However, the delays in weapons deliveries have been quite frequent. Last week, Die Welt reported that while Germany has agreed to provide Ukraine with 18 self-propelled RCH-155 howitzers in addition to the military hardware already supplied, the guns would not arrive for at least another 30 months.

Earlier this month, Germany’s defense minister, Christine Lambrecht, claimed that Berlin has handed over “an unbelievable amount” of weaponry from its reserves to Ukraine, adding that the country has “reached the limit” in terms of what it can send to Kiev.

Moreover, earlier this month, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged that the bloc’s members have significantly depleted their weapons stockpiles, urging the Western defense industry to ramp up arms production.

September 20, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Japan maintains sanctions but boosts its LNG imports from Russia

Japan’s economic woes are compounded by anti-Russia sanctions

By Ahmed Adel | September 20, 2022

Despite being one of the very few non-Western countries to join the US-led sanctions against Moscow, Japan has suddenly tripled the amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imported from Russia to solve its energy problem. Although the Japanese government plans to reduce its dependence on Russian gas supplies, it appears that Tokyo cannot immediately give up gas and fuel from the Eurasian country. 

According to the Japanese Ministry of Finance, Japan in August increased the amount of LNG imported from Russia by 211.2% compared to last year. It is noted though that crude oil imports in the same period year-on-year decreased by 20.3%. According to the data, coal imports from Russia in August decreased by 32.6% compared to the same period last year.

In the opposite direction, iron ore imports increased by 44.9%. In addition, Japan increased the number of vegetables and fruits imported from Russia by 154%, but reduced the amount of grain and soybean imports by 94-95%. While the total volume of goods exported from Japan to Russia in August decreased by 24.3% compared to the same period last year, reaching $384 million, the amount of Japanese goods imported from Russia recorded an increase of up to 67.4%, with a value of up to $1.15 billion.

The Japanese want to gradually reduce imports of Russian coal and oil, but Tokyo does not want to cut the amount LNG because this is a gas supply that plays an extremely important role in maintaining the country’s economy. 

At the end of June 2022, the G7, the group of leading industrialised countries in the world, which includes Japan in its ranks, announced a plan to reduce dependence on the supply of gas, oil, and fuel from Russia. However, the sharp increase in LNG imports from Russia to Japan seems to indicate a different truth. Not only Tokyo, but also many Western countries, will find it difficult to end their dependence on Russian gas in the short and medium term.

It is recalled that Japan’s energy self-sufficiency rate is only 11%, much lower than the US’s 106%, Canada’s 179%, and the UK’s 75%. Therefore, if Russia stops selling oil and gas to Japan, Tokyo will face a great risk of energy insecurity.

This month, G7 countries also announced their intention to impose a price cap on Russian oil. However, the EU itself cannot find a common voice on this issue, especially as Moscow has warned that “unfriendly” countries will not have the opportunity to import oil, gas and fuel from Russia if they impose a cap. This is a scenario that Japan wants to avoid. 

According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan’s total energy consumption in 2019 is equivalent to 247 million tons of oil, of which natural gas accounts for nearly 8.7%. Renewable energy (other than electricity) accounts for only a very small part, about 0.1% and even tends to decrease slightly over time. In recent years, Japan has not discovered any more natural gas fields of major commercial value. Japan, for its part, only produces about 2 million tons per year.

To meet domestic demand, Japan imported 82.9 million tons in 2018 – from Australia 34.6%, the Middle East 21.7%, and Malaysia 13.6%, but also from host of other countries. In fact, Japan uses LNG mainly for power generation through 37 LNG terminals, with the highest proportion belonging to JERA (42%) and Tokyo Gas (17%).

After the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown, Japan changed its energy development strategy, focusing on the issue of safety and energy security. Along with that, Japan also strives to further enhance energy efficiency.

In the context of Japan’s limited potential to exploit renewable energy, the use of nuclear power is opposed by many domestic organisations. For this reason, LNG imports became a key strategy for Japan. By 2030, the share of LNG in Japan’s power generation capacity is forecast to reach 27%.

It is noted though that August marked the thirteenth month in a row that Japan has been importing products more than it has been exporting, with about half of the deficit coming from energy imports from the Middle East.

“The weaker yen is boosting (the cost of) imports at a time of surging energy prices. Energy and grain prices have shown signs of stabilizing recently, but the impact of the sharp drop in the yen will continue for a while with a lag,” one analyst told Japanese daily Mainichi.

In this way, Japan’s anti-Moscow sanctions are also affecting its economy, just as it is all across Europe. There is little evidence either that Tokyo is planning to reverse its sanctions, suggesting that its economic woes will continue to be compounded by the self-sabotaging sanctions imposed against Russia.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

September 20, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Nuclear Power | , | Leave a comment

Bombshell court filing suggests the FBI knew ‘Russiagate’ was a fraud in January of 2017, but it kept up its pressure on Trump

Igor Danchenko’s confession appears to reveal the bureau’s true intentions

By Felix Livshitz | Samizdat | September 20, 2022

Lawyers for Igor Danchenko, the primary source of the notorious and utterly discredited “Trump-Russia|” dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, have filed a motion to dismiss the charges brought against their client by special counsel John Durham.

In the process, they have revealed another startling and potentially criminal dimension to the FBI’s probe of potential collusion between the campaign of former President Donald Trump and the Kremlin.

Danchenko’s case

Durham charged Danchenko in November 2021 with five counts of lying to the bureau. Four of those relate to statements he made in a February 2017 interview, in which he repeatedly claimed to have met and had conversations with Sergey Millian, a Belarusian-born businessman who claimed ties with the Trump campaign.

Danchenko, and thus Steele, claimed Millian was a key source of the dossier’s most explosive allegations – namely, that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and the Kremlin, that Russia’s GRU had hacked the Democratic National Convention email server and provided the content for WikiLeaks for the purposes of “plausible deniability,” and the then-Presidential candidate had received a “golden shower” from prostitutes while in Moscow years earlier, which was filmed by Russian intelligence and could be used as “kompromat.”

In his FBI interview, conducted between February 9 and 12, 2017, Danchenko claimed to have received this incendiary intelligence through telephone conversations and email exchanges with Millian, who also suggested they discuss matters further in person in New York City. However, Durham charges that Danchenko fabricated these calls, repeatedly emailed Millian without response, and was never invited to any meeting anywhere.

The new court filing shows that to buttress these claims, Danchenko provided the Bureau with a synopsis of a mid-August email he sent to Millian, a month prior to his sit-down interview series. Yet, as the filing notes, the communication makes no mention of the phonecalls they’d purportedly engaged in previously, or the prospect of meeting in person.

Danchenko’s lawyers now argue that this email in fact proves he wasn’t lying about having had direct contact with Millian, and made clear they’d never spoken to his interviewers. Problematically for all involved, though, Danchenko, and as a result Steele, both attributed wild charges against the Trump campaign to Millian before this email.

FBI vs the truth

In turn too, this means the FBI had concrete reasons to believe at least some of the Steele dossier was bogus on January 25, 2017 at the very latest. But the Bureau, undeterred, continued to not only “assess” the dossier’s veracity, but to use it as a justification for further surveillance of Trump 2016 presidential campaign adviser Carter Page, and intensifying its investigation of the campaign.

The FBI’s questionable use of the dossier in court submissions to secure FISA warrants against Page is well-known, and was a key criticism of a December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General review, which determined the Bureau made 17 errors or omissions in its FISA applications.

Even more damningly though, just two days after Danchenko presented the discrediting email to the FBI, Trump privately met with then-FBI director James Comey, and the President specifically raised the Steele dossier.

According to Comey’s account of the dinner, as retold in the Mueller report: “the President… stated that he was thinking about ordering the FBI to investigate the [Steele] allegations to prove they were false. Comey responded that the President should think carefully about issuing such an order because it could create a narrative that the FBI was investigating him personally, which was incorrect.”

In other words, Comey played Trump, appealing to his ego and feigning concern for his reputation, when he knew better than anyone bar Steele and Danchenko themselves that the FBI was already investigating the former MI6 operative’s “allegations” and knew them to be meritless. Had he told the truth, perhaps the entire Russiagate fraud would’ve collapsed before it had even properly erupted publicly.

If he’d known, the President may not have been successfully pressured into demonstrating his anti-Russian credentials with an increasingly hostile and belligerent stance towards Moscow, which saw Trump go to dangerous lengths the previous administration had deliberately avoided, such as arming and legitimizing the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and shredding vital Cold War arms control treaties, brinksmanship that brought us to where we are today.

Hate of Bureau

In any event, while the filing is in many ways useful confirmation of top-level FBI knowledge of the dossier’s inherent worthlessness at an early stage, it could pose problems for Danchenko’s prosecution.

His conviction hangs on the ability of Durham’s team to prove his lies to the FBI materially influenced its investigation, and it can be easily argued that the Bureau’s evident determination to investigate Trump’s non-existent Russia ties meant no disclosure, true or false, would’ve convinced the agency to stop.

That the FBI was utterly determined irrespective of facts to damage Trump, first as a candidate, then as leader, has long-been clear, yet it has largely faded from public memory. One might argue it’s quite incredible that even the former president’s supporters have not invoked this dubious history in the wake of the Bureau’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, which bears clear hallmarks of being likewise politically motivated.

Evidence of the FBI’s anti-Trump agenda is amply available in black and white – so too the agency’s surging Russophobia. Two of the key Bureau figures central to the Trump-Russia probe, one-time lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, spelled this out both in public testimony and private text messages.

On the latter front, Strzok texted Page in July 2016 – right when the Trump-Russia probe was launched – to declare, “f*** the cheating motherf***ing Russians… bastards… I hate them… I think they’re probably the worst. F***ing conniving cheating savages.” He also pledged that the pair would together “stop” Trump from winning. Page was only slightly less foul-mouthed when she testified to Congress in July 2018:

“It is my opinion that with respect to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of life.”

Quite why Strzok and Page, along with many other Bureau operatives, haven’t been prosecuted for their role in arguably the biggest US national security scam since the Iraq War isn’t clear.

September 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

Hospital Runs Myocarditis In Kids Awareness Commercial As If It’s A Common Illness

“Suri had a bad stomach ache that turned out to be myocarditis”

By Steve Watson | Summit News | September 16, 2022

The New York-Presbyterian Hospital is running a commercial in an effort to raise awareness of myocarditis in children, seemingly suggesting that inflammation of the heart in children is a common condition.

The video, titled “Pediatric Patient Story – Suri” tells the story of a child who “had a bad stomach ache that turned out to be myocarditis, a serious inflammation of the heart.”

The video caption states that “Our multidisciplinary pediatric critical care team worked to regulate her heartbeat – and got her back to feeling like herself.”

Watch:

Myocarditis cases in children are rare, with studies indicating that in children there are 1 to 2 per 100,000, usually stemming from cold viruses. The majority of those cases resolve on their own or with treatment.

So why the sudden need to raise awareness?

Likely because data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) shows how reports of myocarditis and pericarditis related to vaccines exploded in 2021 and 2022.

September 20, 2022 Posted by | Video | , | 2 Comments

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