Scott Ritter: FBI Raids Part & Parcel of US Government’ Intimidation
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – August 12, 2024
Former USMC intelligence officer and Sputnik contributor Sсott Ritter’s New York home was raided earlier this month over allegations he had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires anyone who acts on behalf of a foreign nation to register as such to the US government.
The US government is “not happy” with the truthful message that he is conveying as a Sputnik contributor, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter believes.
This explains the recent FBI raid on his home over claims he had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
It was “disconcerting and chilling” when around 40 FBI agents raided his house, revealed Ritter.
“I asked repeatedly, ‘Why are you doing this?’’ What are you concerned about? Tell me what specific actions you’re concerned about and I can help resolve this.’ Now, we had a lengthy conversation, the special agents and I, but never once were they able to say this is why we believe you’re in violation,” he said.
However, what the agents did talk a lot about was the pundit’s relationship with Sputnik.
“They were very concerned about the work that I do as a contributor to Sputnik […] The US government is clearly unhappy with my message, unhappy with the impact that I’m having, and nervous that they can’t control me. And so I think that this raid, this search warrant, this ongoing investigation is part and parcel of a larger project of intimidation that unfortunately will continue, I believe, for the near future,” Ritter said.
The FBI and US Department of Justice are bothered by the impact people like him are having “on informing an audience not only inside the United States, but around the world about the malfeasance of American foreign policy,” Scott Ritter said. However, the author and commentator refused to be intimidated, saying he looked forward to continuing to operate as a contributor to Sputnik.
“I’m very proud of this relationship and I think highly of the editors and producers that I work with, and I look forward to continuing to do this for the foreseeable future,” Ritter stated.
EU Threatens Musk Over “Harmful” Speech Ahead Of Trump Interview
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 12, 2024
On the day of Elon Musk’s interview with President Donald Trump on X, the EU’s top digital official, Thierry Breton, issued a reminder to Musk of his responsibilities under EU law to curb the spread of “harmful content.”
Breton, the pro-censorship internal market commissioner, emphasized the significance of platform moderation in a letter and a post on X, stating, “With great audience comes greater responsibility.”
The European Union, under its censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), mandates that digital platforms stringently monitor online content to shield users from potential “harm.”
This legislation is part of a broader scrutiny of X, which has consistently been targeted by the EU. Breton’s correspondence highlighted that the DSA’s mandates apply uniformly, including to Musk.
The reminder was prompted by concerns over the “risk of amplification of potentially harmful content in the EU,” particularly with Musk’s upcoming interview with Trump and Musk’s own recent remarks concerning the attack on free speech currently being experienced in the UK.
Breton further warned, “My services and I will be extremely vigilant to any evidence that points to breaches of the DSA and will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox, including by adopting interim measures, should it be warranted to protect EU citizens from serious harm.”
As the European Union persists in the stringent enforcement of its censorship law, the imposition of its regulatory well beyond its borders, notably into the United Kingdom—a nation no longer tethered by EU membership—raises profound concerns about the overreach of censorship under the guise of protection.
The EU’s call for rigorous content moderation, even in territories outside its jurisdiction, smacks of an unsettling desire to extend its influence, stifling discourse and dissent not only within its member states but also in nations that have consciously chosen a different path.
The insistence on such broad and pervasive controls over digital content by an entity like the EU, which should ostensibly champion democratic values, is alarming.
This form of interventionism in the UK, under the pretense of safeguarding EU citizens from “harm,” undermines the very essence of free speech—a cornerstone of democratic societies. By dictating terms and conditions that stretch its authority into non-EU territories, the European Union not only compromises the sovereignty of other nations but also sets a dangerous precedent for global digital governance, where freedom of expression becomes a casualty in the battle against vaguely defined “harmful content.”
Judges Back Meta in Vaccine “Misinformation” Battle, Free Speech Advocates Vow to Fight On
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 10, 2024
The 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled this week in favor of Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The case was brought forward by the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) over allegations that the social media giant violated free speech rights.
The lawsuit, initiated in August 2020 and later updated in December, claimed that Facebook, along with its CEO Mark Zuckerberg and two fact-checking entities, Science Feedback, and the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact site, was complicit in an unconstitutional act of privately exercising governmental censorship. CHD alleges that Facebook, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal institutions, is censoring content and discussions that the government is barred from suppressing under the First Amendment.
We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.
The plaintiff specifically accused these sides of working in tandem to unfairly stifle valid attempts to discuss vaccine safety on Facebook, often through indirect yet sensorial measures like the use of warning labels. According to CHD, this type of arrangement between public entities and private corporations represents a breach of the First Amendment due to its perceived status as “state action.”
Despite these arguments, the 9th Circuit court concluded that CHD was not successful in meeting the initial requirement for state action, as the censorship inflicted was more a result of Meta’s content moderation policies and not any directive under federal law. Further, the court also asserted that CHD did not present any evidence of a binding agreement requiring Facebook to execute any particular action in response to misinformation about vaccines.
Although all judges did not share the same opinion, Circuit Judge Daniel P. Collins presented a partially dissenting viewpoint. He opined that the interactions between Meta and the Government involving the suppression of specific types of vaccine-related speech were substantial enough to evoke First Amendment considerations.
Expressing disappointment and worry, CHD CEO Mary Holland stated, “If we cannot stop the government’s joint action with Big Tech to censor unwanted information, our First Amendment is a pyrrhic victory — it means almost nothing in our real world of social media.” While she was pleased with the non-unanimous nature of the decision, Holland hinted at the possibility of appealing to the US Supreme Court after further review.
At the heart of the court battle, ongoing for almost four years, were claims, primarily leveled by CHD’s then-Chairman and Chief Executive Counsel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that tactics employed by the US Government to pressure Facebook into censoring vaccine “misinformation” were existential threats.
Israeli strikes on Gaza kill two more Palestinian journalists, their family members
Deceased Palestinian journalists Abdullah al-Soussi (L) and Tamim Muammar (Photo via social media)
MEMO | August 10, 2024
The agency called on: “The International Criminal Court Prosecutor to quickly begin investigations into the occupation’s crimes against Palestinian journalists.”
‘Targeted Harassment’: Scott Ritter Blasts Raid on His Home as US Government ‘Fishing Expedition’
Sputnik – 08.08.2024
Former USMC intelligence officer Scott Ritter’s home was raided Wednesday over allegations he had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires anyone who acts on behalf of a foreign nation to register as such to the US government. However, individuals accused of such a violation are typically notified by letter, not a raid.
The recent raid carried out on the New York home of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was another chapter in the US government’s harassment campaign against him and his family, he told Sputnik.
“It’s a fishing expedition. It’s harassment,” Ritter told Radio Sputnik’s Critical Hour on Thursday, noting that the US government’s end goal is to discredit him in the eyes of the public as he continually works to shed light on US policy.
Within the more than two dozen boxes that were carried out of Ritter’s home were documents that substantiated his findings that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction, a key claim that encouraged the US to undertake its invasion of the Middle Eastern nation in 2003.
“This is the archive that backs up my allegations, my assertions that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, that the US policies … that accused Iraq of such were premised on a lie. It’s an archive that I was relying upon to write a book that’s in draft form right now, and they seized that archive,” Ritter told show hosts Dr. Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon, adding that the confiscation of those documents were out of the scope of the search warrant.
“This is not about FARA. It literally isn’t. This is targeted harassment. This is a frontal assault on free speech and free press.”
Touching on how the legal system has outlined that sharing a viewpoint with a foreign government does not equate the status of foreign agent, Ritter recalled he had told one of the agents on the scene that his “main premise is stopping a nuclear war” and less about throwing his support behind another government.
“My main premise is to, you know, support diplomacy over militarism, to promote dialogue instead of confrontation, you know, and to promote arms control instead of an arms race,” he said. “If this is a crime in America, then convict me and throw the key away. But it’s not.”
Having acted as a journalist for some 20 years now, Ritter has published works in numerous publications that include the Washington Post and the New York Times. Ritter told Nixon that he’s no different than any other journalist being paid for their work.
“But they’re trying to twist this into somehow saying that I am in the employ of the Russian government, and that I am acting on instructions from the Russian government. The good news is that nothing they seized will back up these assertions. The bad news is I don’t think it matters,” he said.
“They kept saying you’re trying to shape the opinion of the American people. You’re damn right I’m trying to shape the opinion of the American people. Everybody engaged in journalism is doing this. This is what you’re supposed to do to empower people with knowledge and information, fact-based knowledge and information so they can make their own decisions. The most dangerous thing in a democracy like America is a knowledgeable citizen, a citizen empowered with information to make an informed, you know, choice on election day, not dumb sheep being herded down the path.”
“This is harassment designed to silence me. It’s designed to intimidate me. And for everybody listening, understand this is a frontal assault on the Constitution of the United States,” Ritter stressed. “A frontal assault on free speech. A frontal assault on the free press.”
“Free speech isn’t free if when you execute your right to speak freely, you get raided by the FBI. And a free press cannot exist if, carrying out your journalistic duties, you are accused because of the position you take of, you know, working for an entity because these positions have to clash with the official policy objectives of the United States.”
Asked if the raid was tied to the June seizure of his passport or a recent event he attended in New York to discuss his latest work and efforts to encourage an ease of tension between the US and Russia, the former intelligence officer admitted “they’re all connected.”
Ritter detailed he had planned additional trips to Russia later this year that would help to gain information that would help “empower the American audience about, you know, the reality of Russia and the danger of American policy.”
“The United States government did not want any of these trips to happen. They seized my passport and now they’re just extending the harassment,” he said. “They fear what I’m doing, and they fear what we are doing and this is what happens when governments get afraid of their own citizens. Citizens who, again, I remind everybody, are simply executing their rights of free speech and, as a journalist, my participation in the free press.”
“I never want to be a foreign agent. I’m not acting as one and I don’t want to act as one. I will never represent another country. I represent America, only America,” he continued. “I believe in the potential of my country to be that which we, you know, purport to be, what we want to be, and I recognize that we’re not there and one of the reasons we’re not there is because of the policies of my government.”
“And, therefore, as an American citizen, it is my duty to speak out and shine a light on where I think my government is going wrong so that we, the people, can take corrective action and get the government back on track because the government serves us, we don’t serve the government.”
There Is Something Rotten in Washington
Scott Ritter is harassed by FBI for calling for peace while Israel’s Lobby overthrows elections
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 8, 2024
One thing you can say about the Administration of President Joe Biden is that nearly every week there is something new and exciting to discuss. Galloping dementia recently gifted us with Joe’s 11 minute abdication speech in which he announced that he would not be running for another term as president. He babbled about how he was taking the step in spite of his desire to continue. The president, who is 81 and recently best noted for his failing mental state causing him to fall down stairs, felt compelled to say that he believes that his record as president “merited a second term” but that “nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy.” He also claimed that “I’m the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world,” even though it is engaged in a military occupation and combat operations in Syria, bombing Yemen and conducting counterterrorism in Iraq as well as supporting logistically and with intelligence the large and growing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. He has pledged to Israel that he will “defend” it if attacked, presumably no matter what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assassinates or bombs to provoke a war against Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Joe ended up by celebrating the nomination of Kamala Harris as heir-designate to the Oval Office after disposing of the troublesome and assertive Donald Trump, who presumably is the one who will tear up the US Constitution and “destroy democracy” if given the chance to do so.
But that was two weeks ago. More recently the fun fair on the Potomac turned its guns on a major critic of the federal government’s policies, most notably exercising its proclivity to float a lot of lies to turn anyone who exercises his or her first amendment right to free speech into some kind of traitor who has to be silenced. Many would argue that if the Biden Administration has one major failure beyond losing control over the country’s southern border, it is failure to manage US Foreign Policy in such a fashion as to avoid initiating or expanding existing international conflicts so as to turn them into major wars. If one considers Ukraine and Gaza, both conflicts that could have easily been stopped or de-escalated if the State Department had stopped acting as a shill for Volodymyr Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu and had instead created disincentives to continuing the fighting, the case for US involvement as an antagonist is non-existent. The American people benefit in no way from either war and opinion polls make clear that there is considerable popular opposition to the carnage taking place along both fronts.
On August 7th, it was reported that Scott Ritter, who I consider a friend, had his house in New York State searched by FBI and police and twenty five boxes containing documents and electronic communications devices were reportedly taken away for examination in an “ongoing investigation.” Scott, a former Marine corps intelligence officer, has anti-war credentials that go way back to before the Iraq War when he, as a United Nations Weapon inspector, declared that Saddam Hussein had no “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). WMD fear was being promoted in Washington as the reason for attacking and disarming Iraq. Scott was pilloried both by the mainstream media and by the Pentagon’s and White House’s mostly Jewish neocons (Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Richard Perle and Scooter Libby) who were busy fabricating deliberately misleading information and disseminating it to encourage the George W. Bush administration to start the war, which it obligingly did. Scott nevertheless has continued to be an effective gadfly over war and peace issues ever since that time.
Ritter had earlier had a run-in with the Biden regime in June 2024 when he was at the airport in New York City preparing to fly to Istanbul on his way to St. Petersburg to attend the prestigious international Economic Forum that that city hosts annually. A team of three FBI agents accosted him as he was about to board his plane and they confiscated his passport under orders from the State Department. They would neither give him a receipt for the document nor did they produce a warrant. No reason was given for the action, and Scott has since that time been unable to get his passport back.
The passport confiscation and now the house search appear to be connected with what is referred to as a Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 investigation. FARA came into being just before the outbreak of the Second World War, when it was feared that “agents” of the Italian and German governments were all too freely spreading their propaganda in the US. In particular, FARA mandates that the finances and relationships of the foreign affiliated organization be open to Department of the Justice inspection. It states that “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or otherwise acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal.” Those who fail to disclose might be penalized by up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.
To be sure, the U.S. government has recently been aggressive in demanding FARA registration for other nations as well as for Americans working for foreign powers. There have been several prominent FARA cases in the news. Major Russian news agencies operating in the U.S. were compelled to register in 2017 because they were funded largely or in part by the Kremlin. Also, as part of their plea deals, the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn both conceded that they had failed to comply with FARA when working as consultants with foreign governments.
While the Department of Justice is now going after Scott Ritter using FARA presumably because he is an effective critic of Joe Biden’s wars, there are some indications that other elements in the US government security apparatus are going after others who have dared to oppose what the White House and Congress have been up to. On August 6th, while Democratic nominee Kamala Harris pledged to defend “freedom, compassion, and the rule of law” to cheers in Philadelphia, Hawaii’s former Congresswoman and National Guard officer Tulsi Gabbard described how she was being tracked by teams of government agents in surveilling her and her husband whenever she travels by air. Whistleblowing Air Marshals leaked how Gabbard had been singled out as a “domestic terror threat” under the so-called “Quiet Skies” program. Her boarding passes bear the SSSS notation which makes her subject to additional security searches and questioning. Her probable crime is opposing the war in Ukraine or, possibly, having recently published a book entitled “For Love of Country: Leave the Democratic Party Behind.”
While Attorney General Merrick Garland is active in pursuing individual Americans for possible FARA and “domestic terrorism” violations, he is strangely but predictably reluctant to go after the most corrupt foreign government’s US-domestic lobby which dwarfs all others in terms of illicit cash flow and political impact. It is a foreign government that receives billions of dollars a year in “aid” and other benefits from the United States taxpayer. Consider beyond that, the possibility that that government might take part of the money it receives and secretly recycle it to groups of American citizens in the United States that exist to maintain and increase that money flow while also otherwise serving other interests of the recipient country. That would mean that the United States is itself subsidizing the lobbies and groups that are inevitably working against its own interests. And it also means that those lobbyists though US citizens are acting as foreign agents, covertly giving priority to their attachment to a foreign country instead of to the nation in which they live.
I am, of course, referring to Israel. It does not require a brilliant observer to note how Israel and its allies inside the U.S. have become very skilled at milking the government in the United States at all levels for every bit of financial aid, trade concessions, military hardware and political cover that is possible to obtain. The flow of dollars, goods, and protection is never actually debated in any serious way and is often, in fact, negotiated directly by Congress or state legislatures directly with the Israeli lobbyists. This corruption and manipulation of the US governmental system by people who are basically foreign agents is something like a criminal enterprise and one can only imagine the screams of outrage coming from the New York Times if there were a similar arrangement with any other country.
Recent revelations suggest that Israel’s cheating involves subsidies that are paid covertly by Israeli government agencies to groups in the United States which in turn took direction from the Jewish state, often inter alia damaging genuine American interests. The Israeli Lobby also has been long noted for its interference in American elections, including spending large sums of money to oust politicians who complain about the Jewish state and its behavior. Progressive Congresswoman Cori Bush, a critic of Israel, was recently ousted after her opponent received $8 million and earlier this year Jamaal Bowman lost after a record $15 million went to support another “friendly to Israel” candidate.
Many of the groups receiving Israeli money failed to disclose the payments, which is a felony. At the same time, even the casual observer of government in Washington would inevitably note how Israel’s various friends and proxies, uniquely, have been de facto exempt from any regulation by the US government. The last serious attempt to register a major lobbying entity was made by John F. Kennedy, who sought to have the predecessor organization to today’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) comply with FARA. Kennedy was killed before he could complete the process and some have linked his death to efforts to register the Israel lobby elements while also blocking Israeli attempts to illegally and secretly develop nuclear weapons.
If one is requiring all the Israeli proxies that together make up the Israel Lobby to register under FARA, you might start with AIPAC, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) but there will be many, many more before the work is done. And there is Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which also has received funding and material aid directly from Israel. The fundamentalist Christian head cases that place Israel’s interests ahead of those of their own country finally need to have their bell rung.
One might well suggest that the Biden Administration stop harassing ordinary Americans who are exercising their free speech right to critique unnecessary wars and instead go after the Israel Lobby, which is a major contributing factor to why those wars are taking place at all. It would also be nice to end the hypocrisy that surrounds anything having to do with Israel in Washington. The country is no democracy, no ally, and it is a major league war criminal with possibly hundreds of thousands of dead Palestinians as evidence of its genocidal inclinations. Several hundred Congressmen cheering war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu do not change that. Apart from anything else, that the United States is involved in sustaining and providing cover for the slaughter of thousands of innocents while also pursuing its own citizens who are saying “Thou shalt not!” is an abomination.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
US government ‘has declared war on me’ – Scott Ritter
RT | August 8, 2024
Former US Marine turned journalist Scott Ritter has accused the US government of committing an “act of intimidation” against him for his journalistic work after federal agents and state police executed a search warrant on his house in New York State on Wednesday.
In a video statement on his Telegram channel on Thursday, Ritter, who is also a former UN weapons inspector, said that the warrant was based upon suspicion that he had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The authorities appear to be “primarily concerned” about his “relationship” with RT and the news agency Sputnik, he added.
According to Ritter, the FBI agents accused him of working “on behalf of the Russian government” and receiving “directions” from the two Russian outlets while being compensated for his contributions.
Ritter stressed that he was not a foreign agent and pointed out that he gets compensation from “any journalistic entity” he provides content for.
Ritter also dismissed as “absurd in the extreme” the accusation that his articles and podcasts were “designed to manipulate the opinion of the American people on behalf of the Russian government.”
He called the raid “an act of intimidation by the US government designed to have a chilling effect” and to discourage him from further cooperation with the Russian-based media outlets, Ritter said.
”There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I will back down because I’m doing nothing wrong,” he stated, adding that he is “an American citizen, holding my government accountable and exercising the rights given to me by the Constitution.”
Ritter went on to say that the US government has “declared war” on him, on his ability to write, to speak, and to interact with the American people and the broader international audience.
”It’s not a war I plan on losing,” Ritter concluded.
Ritter is a former US Marine Corps major who served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s. He opposed the 2003 US invasion, insisting that Saddam Hussein’s government did not have weapons of mass destruction, as Washington claimed at the time.
According to the US Department of Justice, the US Foreign Agents Registration Act “requires certain agents” to disclose their relationship with “foreign principals,” thus “informing the public on the identity of persons engaging in political activities on behalf of foreign governments.”
Similar legislation adopted in Russia has been harshly criticized in the West, branded as “oppressive” and a “crackdown on opposition.”
US is a police state persecuting its citizens
By Lucas Leiroz | August 8, 2024
The US government continues its violent persecution of all citizens who express opinions contrary to the foreign policy of the White House. Once again, the country’s authorities unjustifiably harassed military analyst Scott Ritter, raiding his house under the allegation that Ritter is a “foreign agent.” Apparently, any American citizen who disagrees with the policy of war with Russia is considered a “spy” by the government, which shows how Washington is becoming an antidemocratic police state.
The FBI and the New York State Police raided Ritter’s house in Bethlehem Township, south of Albany. The agents remained inside Scott’s house for about five hours, collecting materials they considered suspicious. More than two dozen boxes were removed from the place by the police containing various items meant for investigation, including several electronic devices.
The police presented a search and seizure warrant based on the Foreign Agents Restriction Act. In practice, this means that for the American police, Scott Ritter is officially a “Russian asset.” The investigations are certainly intended to find some kind of incriminating content that would allow a formal charge of espionage and conspiracy against the American state.
This is not the first time that Scott Ritter has been attacked by the authorities of his own country. The analyst has already lost his passport and the right to leave the US after the American police forcibly escorted him off a plane when he was about to go to the Russian Federation in June. Ritter had been invited to participate in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, where he was expected to give a talk on a panel about multipolarity and geopolitics. However, shortly after boarding the plane, American guards confiscated his passport without providing any explanation, which is a serious violation of basic individual rights.
Now, with the FBI’s harassment, Scott’s situation is even more complicated. Without a passport, he is unable to leave the country to seek political asylum in another state. Having to remain on American soil, he is likely to be increasingly targeted by Washington’s authorities, who have become well-known for implementing a method similar to psychological torture to coerce citizens who disobey the country’s tacit “rule” of supporting the White House’s aggressive foreign policy.
Ritter is a former officer of the US Marine Corps, having served as an intelligence agent specializing in missiles during the Gulf War. He became known for his work as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, having been an opponent of the US invasion of the country. At the time, Ritter repeatedly stated that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and therefore the US military action was unjustified. The judicial and police harassment against him began in the early 2000s precisely in retaliation for his pro-peace stance.
In the same vein, having studied Russian affairs academically, Ritter is deeply familiar with the history of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and has been a vocal critic of the US policy of arming Kiev since 2022. He advocates a peaceful policy between the US and Russia and the establishment of mutually favorable conditions for coexistence. In the same vein, Ritter has used his military expertise to debunk some fallacious Western narratives about the situation on the battlefield.
Since 2022, he has been pointing out how Russian troops maintain complete control over the military situation, with Ukraine having no chance of reversing this scenario. Ritter’s work is seen as a threat by the Western propaganda machine, which constantly needs to spread lies to convince public opinion to continue supporting Ukraine. Ritter’s situation has become even worse since October 2023, when he spoke out against Israel’s violent incursions into Gaza and has become a critic of US support for Netanyahu. The persecution of Ritter has escalated since then, with both the pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel lobbies now targeting him.
In fact, what is happening to Ritter is just one example of how the US is becoming a police state. Democracy and freedom of speech are no longer part of American political principles – at least not on a practical level, being just pointless rhetoric. Unfortunately, Ritter is likely to face even more police and judicial abuse, since without a passport he has no way of leaving the country to escape persecution. The same fate awaits any American citizen who dares to publicly criticize the international crimes committed by Washington.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
UK Police Blame Social Media for Unrest
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 7, 2024
While some observers explain the chaos that has erupted in the UK in the wake of an attack that resulted in the murder of three children as an outburst based on societal issues that have been bubbling beneath the surface for a long time – the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) sees”disinformation” as the main culprit.
Inaccurate or misleading posts on social media could serve as the trigger for protests and riots, and the NPCC, which is coordinating law enforcement in the UK, is focusing on “silenc(ing) those intent on spreading false news” – suggesting that this institution’s stance is that the unrest has no other meaningful deep underlying causes.
This is clear from the tone NPCC has taken, referring to “so-called protests” and, “criminals pretending to be protesters.” In other words, the crisis is simply down to “criminals” reading “fake news” on social media.
And so, it is disinformation that is “a huge driver” behind the violence, and, “we know a lot of those attending these so-called protests are doing so in direct response to what they’ve read online,” said a report on the NPCC site, quoting its public order lead, B.J. Harrington.
Harrington also revealed that the police acted “swiftly” across the country to make 147 arrests in connection to the clashes – adding that he expects that number to increase.
Regarding posts NPCC considers to be fake news and disinformation, this official noted that “high profile accounts” are to blame for their proliferation.
And, NPCC – but not only – is “working hard” to “silence those intent on spreading false news.”
Harrington said that law enforcement is achieving this together with communities and “our partners” – without naming the latter. But he did inform the public that both police officers and intelligence teams are engaged in identifying people involved.
As soon as the protests, which in places turned violent, erupted, a number of former and current government and intelligence officials immediately blamed “foreign meddling” and “misinformation” for the turn the events took after the fatal Southgate stabbing attack.
State AGs Criticize Janet Yellen for “Fearmongering” on De-Banking Bans
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 6, 2024
20 attorney-generals from Republican states have penned a letter addressed to US Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen, in protest of the Treasury’s apparent push to stigmatize anti-de-banking laws as “harmful to national security.”
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
The signatories, led by Florida AG Ashley Moody, cited the Treasury’s recent letter that went after those states that either have or are preparing to enact laws aimed at protecting clients from de-banking.
The Treasury’s letter (sent by Undersecretary Brian Nelson), they write, was critical of laws like Florida’s HB 989, designed to prevent banks from denying financial services “based on factors that are not grounded in measurable risks.”
Previously, the Treasury prohibited banks from doing this, except in cases when a client was documented as unable to meet quantitative, impartial risk-based standards.
“Importing political activism into financial regulation” is how the Republican AGs now describe this marked shift in policy.
The AGs see opposition to said legislation as the Treasury ignoring its statutory role and serving instead to promote the Biden-Harris Administration’s campaign described as radical and fearmongering and meant to advance “activists’ extreme agendas” while sowing confusion about the purpose and nature of those state laws.
According to the letter, that purpose is to promote “responsible money management and protecting consumers from discrimination.”
But the Treasury’s meddling – bringing up national security in this context in order to allow large financial institutions and banks to abuse power – is advancing the political goals of “activists,” the AGs claim.
The activists here would be anti-conservative ones, those trying to remove access to bank services to gun manufacturers, among others.
Undersecretary Nelson’s letter made the assertion that state laws to prevent such policies by financial institutions are “interfering” with the ability to “comply with national security requirements.”
Nelson went on to claim that the legislation he singled out meant “heightened risk” of international drug traffickers, transnational organized criminals, terrorists, and corrupt foreign officials using the US financial system to not only threaten national security but also “launder money, evade sanctions.”
The Treasury has since said that this was a reaction to a “bipartisan letter from members of Congress” who expressed these concerns and that this department agrees with their stance on the issue.
But the AGs say that Nelson’s letter “deliberately misleads financial institutions about these state laws, for example, by falsely suggesting that laws such as Florida’s HB 989 would prohibit financial institutions from considering whether a consumer is associated with designated terrorist groups.”
The letter concludes that the signatories “join with the majority of Americans in looking forward to the day when federal regulators will focus on their statutory duties, rather than on advancing radical political causes and stoking unfounded fear about state laws.”
Russia decries ‘routine repression’ of dissidents in EU states
RT | August 7, 2024
The West is turning into a “neoliberal dictatorship” that is intolerant of any form of dissent, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed on Wednesday. She was commenting on the prosecution of journalist Svetlana Burtseva by EU member Estonia.
Burtseva, a 57-year-old naturalized Estonian citizen, was charged this week under an article of the Estonian penal code that prohibits relations with a foreign entity with the intention of committing treason.
Specifically, Burtseva was accused of writing under a pen name for a Baltic-focused Russian-language news outlet that belongs to the Russian media group Rossiya Segodnya, which is sanctioned by the EU.
Estonian officials have claimed Burtseva committed subversive activities such as writing a book that “belittles” the Baltic country, as claimed by public prosecutor Eneli Laurits.
Commenting on the case, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova said that “similar to other ‘advanced democracies’ of the Baltics, Estonia continues to systematically use repression as a routine tool for quashing dissent.”
She described the allegations against Burtseva as “obviously fabricated” and claimed that they reflect Tallin’s “flawed and absolutely irreconcilable” attitude to opposition.
Moscow perceives the prosecution as an attempt to punish Burtseva for journalism and voicing opinions critical of the Estonian government. International bodies that should defend freedom of speech share the blame, since they have neglected their duties and have long turned a blind eye to the stifling of critical press by the Baltic states, the diplomat argued.
The entire situation “showcases the deep crisis and the deterioration of the Western-style democracy, how it is morphing into a neoliberal dictatorship,” Zakharova concluded.
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Magic Hour for Gates
By Gary Jordan | Wake The F*** UP | March 15, 2021
Bill Gates wants to know everything about you.
He wants to control every aspect of your life.
His insatiable thirst for the supervision and scrutiny of every human being alive has sparked a US$1 billion investment that will blanket the earth in video surveillance satellites, providing real-time feedback with a mere one-second delay. He advocates for Orwellian digital tools to track your every move and has bankrolled US$1.7 billion to provide artificial intelligence that will be used to scan each and every visitor to major event venues worldwide. He wants to do away with end-to-end encryption, so he can snoop on your private conversations. He wants to know when and where you travel and who you travel with. He wants you to eat whatever he says you should eat, drink whatever he says you should drink, think how he wants you to think and know only what he wants you to know. Plus he wants to dictate what goes inside your body.
But he doesn’t want you to know a lot about him.
For instance… continue
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