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US universities impose ‘police state’ rules to prevent campus protests over Gaza war

Press TV – August 18, 2024

US universities have imposed “police state” rules to avoid a repeat of campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, with students and faculties warning of the chilling effect they would have on free speech.

Reports indicate that as summer break ends, university administrations across the United States are imposing tougher measures to avoid a new wave of campus protests, which led to nationwide police crackdowns on campuses last semester.

Large protest encampments set up last semester eventually ended after a nationwide police crackdown on campuses in different US universities led to more than 3,100 arrests.

Scores of students faced criminal charges and disciplinary measures, and several schools scaled back graduation ceremonies for protesting against the Israeli war which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians so far.

Columbia University students, who were at the vanguard of the movement, may encounter the most changes.

The university president, Minouche Shafik, resigned this week in the wake of criticism for her handling of the protests, but not before overseeing the installation of fencing around the lawns of the school’s quad – the heart of campus life and the site of large protest encampments.

According to the Wall Street Journal, university administrators are also considering bringing in “peace officers” with the authority to arrest students – something Columbia’s current 290 security personnel cannot do.

In an email sent to students last month, the administration also announced a “color-coded campus status” system, with varying levels of access restrictions “based upon the potential disruption to our academic mission and/or campus operations.”

To further confront protesting students, some universities have banned the use of “event tents, tables, walls, outdoor displays, inflatables, freestanding signs, huts, sculptures, booths, facilities, flashing or rotating lights, illuminated signs, or similar objects and structures.”

Students say despite new draconian rules the pro-Palestine rallies will continue as long as Israeli atrocities go on in occupied Palestinian lands.

“The war is still there … nothing has changed in Palestine,” said Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a sociology PhD student who participated in the Columbia University students’ campus protests.

He said universities’ efforts to quash the protests when students return from summer vacation will fail.

“It’s going to be more of a police state than it was, but I don’t think that means no one’s going to do anything,” the graduate student pointed out.

Human rights advocates and student activists as well as university faculty members have sounded the alarm about the new policies, warning that the restrictions in addition to endangering free speech, run counter to educational institutions’ mission to foster debate, risk deepening tensions on campuses, and – in the case of public universities – may run foul of schools’ constitutional obligations.

Last week, the American Association of University Professors issued a statement condemning the harsh anti-protesting rules at universities.

The tougher new rules “impose severe limits on speech and assembly that discourage or shut down freedom of expression”, wrote the group, which represents more than 44,000 faculty members nationwide.

“Those who care about higher education and democracy should be alarmed.”

August 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The American Board of Internal Medicine Revoked All 3 Of My Board Certifications

Although I can still practice medicine, the ABIM’s actions against me and Paul Marik threaten the sanctity and autonomy of the physician-patient relationship.

Pierre Kory’s Medical Musings | August 17, 2024

I will just start by saying that I believe that the ABIM’s decision was 100% predetermined even before we first received their accusation in June 2022. There was no way they were going to declare us innocent of misinformation, even though a good portion of this country knows how effective and accurate our deeply evidence-based Covid treatment guidance was (and still is).

One of the reasons why they were never gonna let us off is that, if they declared us “innocent,” (i.e. accurate) that action would have immediately imperiled the decisions by medical boards across the country who persecuted hundreds of doctors for using ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or for recommending against Covid-19 mRNA gene therapy products. More importantly, it could potentially launch hundreds of thousands of lawsuits by the families of patients who died due to lack of early treatments offerred by clinics and hospitals or filled by pharmacies.

The above examples which led to the deaths of so many shows the sheer power of mega-corporations that put their financial interests ahead of our health and our lives. Through their overwhelming influence over nearly every institution of society and Science (media, journals, health agencies, politicians, medical schools, physicians etc), they literally succeeded in depriving a whole country (and world) of the most effective, inexpensive, safe, and widely available treatments for Covid. My biggest worry is that this crime against humanity may never enter the history books and thus will be eventually erased from memory. Which is looking probable.

The massive financial opportunities that Covid immediately presented to Big Pharma were threatened by the “inconvenient truths” Paul and I put out there. This ABIM action is one way in which Big Pharma punishes those who are foolish enough to do so. Foolish is not quite the right word in our case as I would argue we were simply naive to the consequences of advocating publicly for the use of off-patent medicines for an immensely profitable disease. It wasn’t heroism as some think, but rather extreme naivete.

I really never thought I would have to lose/leave three jobs and now three Board certifications for speaking truths. Recall that I was very well known in my specialty prior to Covid and was about to become Full Professor when I resigned as Chief of the Critical Care Service at the University of Wisconsin (where I was also the Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center). Reading the Washington Post article “Doctors Accused of  Spreading Misinformation Lose Certification” was a pretty sobering reminder of how far I have supposedly “fallen” (Not so fun fact: they completely overstated my salary as the money I received in 2022 included retroactive pay for 2021).

But I am still standing folks. I am happily practicing medicine at my Leading Edge Clinic with my amazing partner Scott Marsland. As many know, we specialize in treating vaccine injury syndromes and Long Covid, and I believe we are soon closing in on having treated our 1,400th patient.

Thank God I managed to build a private, fee-based practice two and half years ago. At the time I suspected this was coming while also already aware that I was “unemployable” by the system. I got fired by my last hospital for a 100% made up complaint, despite the fact they desperately needed me. I was an independent contractor at the time and my ICU partners and all the nurses really liked me. But my partners were telling me that they were under increasing pressure by the Chief Medical Officer to “get rid of Kory.” Although they initially resisted, my stance on vaccines started to cause even more problems for them. When the ICU Director, who was both a friend and a colleague, called to fire me, his last words were, “Pierre, I know there is a war going on and unfortunately you are a casualty.” Truer words were never spoken.

Just know that Board certification is not a license to practice medicine (that comes from state medical licensing Boards of which I have more than a few still). But this ABIM action now puts a definitive end to any hope of me returning to an academic or “system” position (not that I have that hope anymore). Why is that? Well, because Board Certification was originally just a badge of distinction that doctors could use to impress each other and their patients. But they have since weaponized and monetized Board Certification in that currently you cannot obtain a faculty appointment at an academic medical center without one. Nor can you work for most hospitals without one. Even worse, insurance plans will not put you on their provider panels without it. So, although I have been fully excommunicated from “the system,” I cannot be happier about it.

Understand that what happened to me this week was a devastating censorship action, plain and simple. It was done for two reasons; the first was to destroy my reputation and credibility so that my voice will no longer carry (essentially silencing me) and the other was to send a message to doctors that if they stray from consensus, no matter how scientifically absurd (e.g. mRNA vaccines for a coronavirus), dangerous (e.g. remdesivir, mRNA jabs), or ineffective (Paxlovid), they will be punished.

The damage that will result to patients again, is incalculable. No longer will “system” doctors be able to practice medicine with the autonomy they require to arrive at the best decision for each individual patient. Nearly everything they do will be protocolized with society guideline recommended treatments (i.e. consensus manufactured by Pharma). No longer will they be able to “think out of the box” or use treatments which although known effective, do not have the blessing of those in control of that system. I am as terrified as ever of needing a hospital.

Not to overstate the importance of their actions, but Medicine as I knew it, or thought I knew it, is even more dead if that is possible. If you can’t have a differing scientific opinion without losing your career over it, then how is that Medicine or Science? In fact, in our repeated written defenses, we challenged the ABIM, asking them where “the line” is between legitimate scientific debate driven by a differing emphasis on or interpretation of data and outright misinformation.

Misnformation, as I understand it, is defined as “incorrect or misleading” information. For us to be misinformationists, in my mind, would mean that all the data from trials and studies that exist for therapeutics in Covid;

  1. the overwhelming preponderance of data for the efficacy and safety of ivermectin in Covid shows it to be ineffective and dangerous
  2. the overwhelming preponderance of data for the vaccines show they are safe and effective

Basically, it comes down to how you interpret the body of evidence which currently exists. Paul and I adhered rigidly to a “totality of the evidence” approach, drawing from in-vitro, in-vivo, clinical and epidemiologic data. All of it lined up in a truly magnificent, inspiring, and unprecedented way. Well, except for the “Big 7 RCT’s” which manipulated the design, conduct and analyses to conclude ivermectin was ineffective. I spent literally hundreds of hours (along with others like Alexandros Marinos), publishing critiques which exposed the most absurd scientific misconduct I had ever witnessed. If interested, here are just some of those critiques, e.g. Oxfords’ PRINCIPLE trial, the TOGETHER trial (three parts, here, here, and here, and the NIH ACTIV-6 trial )

We also evolved with the data, unlike the agencies who had quickly determined in December of 2020 that the vaccines were safe and effective and never, ever veered from that stance up until this day. In contrast, the founding members of the FLCCC, for quite a long time, differed in respect to the efficacy, safety, and need for the mRNA vaccines. I was the first and most vocal against the mRNA vaccines (starting in April 2021) which actually almost led to the breakup of the FLCCC or at least the membership of the original 5.

Prior to April 2021 I was simply neutral/skeptical. That skepticisim was due to what I thought might be folly in trying to vaccinate against a coronavirus (I knew that historically coronavirus vaccines had failed because the vaccinated animals developed antibody dependent enhancement and also that coronaviruses mutate rapidly). Then I did my first deep dive on VAERS and the epidemiologic data showing massive spikes in mortality and hospitalizations timed with the rollout of the jabs across dozens of countries. Voila, I was now “anti-vaxx.”

I continued to track and analyze the ever-emerging data and the horrors they revealed. This work ultimately led the FLCCC to reach an internal “consensus” that the vaccines should be avoided at all costs (literally at all costs as none of the costs incurred by taking the jab were worth someones life). Anyway, I just wanted to show that we evolved with the data, always questioning and reviewing as new data emerged.

I will end by reminding all of how dangerous the ABIM’s actions will be to all of our lives because it will further erode and/or literally destroy the patient-physician relationship. As I wrote in a previous Op-ED in the Daily Caller on January 31, 2023, “A War Is Still Being Waged Against Doctors Who Question Covid Orthodoxy:”

By virtue of their professional training, doctors must advise patients on available treatments and known risks of any treatment or procedure. By threatening doctors who might provide information different than their preferred worldview, ABIM is disrupting the doctor-patient relationship.

When allowed to practice their craft freely, physicians can prevent societal disaster by focusing on individual patients, informed by clinical experience.

Groups like the ABIM, and public medical officials like Fauci, should support and encourage evidence-based debate and patient-centered care.

Instead, they have suppressed both that debate and treatment approach by persecuting its proponents. This campaign must be stopped, its origins and evolution must be thoroughly documented, and it must never be allowed to recur. Physician autonomy must be restored lest all patients suffer.

August 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Want More Freedom of Speech? Try Less Government.

By Jonathan Turley | August 15, 2024

Below is my column in The Hill on my call for a bill that would bar federal funding of any program and grant to censor, blacklist, or target individuals or sites based on their content. It is time to get the U.S. government out of the censorship business. The column discusses the proposal in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” to block any further funding for the current system of corporate, academic, and government programs targeting opposing or dissenting views.

Here is the column:

It is time to get the United States out of the censorship business for good.

In the last three years, the House of Representatives has disclosed a massive censorship system run in part with federal funding and with coordination with federal officials. A federal court described this system as truly “Orwellian.”

The Biden Administration has made speech regulation a priority in targeting disinformation, misinformation or malinformation. President Joe Biden even said that companies refusing to censor citizens were “killing people.”

His administration has now created an anti-free speech record that is only rivaled by the Adams Administration, which used the Alien and Sedition Acts to arrest political opponents.

Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is an example of how speech controls and censorship have become mainstream.  Her agency was created to work on our critical infrastructure, but Easterly declared that the mandate would now include policing “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes combating “malinformation,” or information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

I have testified for years about the censorship system. For much of that time, Democrats insisted that there was no proof of any coordination or funding from the government. Such evidence did indeed exist, but Democrats worked to block any investigation to confirm what we already knew about government officials targeting individuals and groups for throttling, bans, and blacklisting.

Then Elon Musk bought Twitter. The release of the Twitter Files destroyed any plausible deniability of the government’s role in this censorship system. Various agencies had employees working with social media companies to target those with opposing or disfavored views. At the same time, we learned of grants from the federal government supporting blacklisting and targeting operations.

That includes efforts to quietly choke off the revenue of disfavored sites by pressuring advertisers and donors.

While companies like Facebook have continued to fight to conceal their coordination with the government, the Twitter Files pulled back the curtain to expose the system. Indeed, Democrats largely abandoned their denials and turned to full-throated defenses of censorship, even calling free speech advocates “Putin-lovers” and “insurrectionist sympathizers.”

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in the only election where free speech was a primary issue for voters. It should be again. Vice President Kamala Harris is known as a supporter for these censorship and blacklisting operations. She can now defend that record and convince Americans that they need to have less free speech.

This debate should ideally focus on one simple legislative proposal. In my new book, I suggest various measures that can regain the ground that we have lost on free speech. One such measure is a federal law that would ban any federal funding of any offices or programs (government, academic, or corporate) that rate, target, censor, throttle, or seek to take adverse action against individuals or groups based on their viewpoints in public forums or social media.

There can be easy exceptions to this ban for individuals or groups engaging in criminal conduct or unlawful foreign interference with elections. Threatening individuals or trafficking in child pornography constitute conduct, not speech. They are criminal acts under the federal code.

Nothing in this law would prevent the government from speaking in its own voice. If Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas wants to challenge claims made about him or his agency, he can do so on the agency website or make his case to the media. That is the essence of free speech. What he cannot do is create a Disinformation Governance Board to regulate the speech of citizens or groups.

In my prior testimony to Congress, I warned about the use of what I called “censorship by surrogate” through which agencies did indirectly what they are barred from doing directly under the First Amendment.

This new law will not put an end to the burgeoning anti-free speech movement. It will not end the new market for groups making millions in seeking to silence or strangle sites with opposing views. However, it will create a wall of separation of the government from censorship systems.

It would also offer a simple and clear line for the 2024 election. Candidates will have to take sides on free speech. If candidates like Harris want to continue to support the government in blacklisting or censoring citizens, they should own it. We spent years of politicians engaging in cynical denials of the government’s role in censorship. If these politicians are “all in” with censorship, then they should be honest about it and let voters make the same choice that was made in 1800.

With billions to play with and enabling allies in Congress to conceal federal operations, speech regulation is an irresistible temptation for the government. We have seen how this temptation quickly becomes an insatiable appetite for government officials seeking to silence rather than answer critics.

Let’s get our government out of the business of rating, throttling  blacklisting, and censoring citizens.  It is time to pass a free speech protection act.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

This op-ed is part of The Hill’s “How to Fix America” series exploring solutions to some of the country’s most pressing problems. 

August 17, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Israel’s creation and exploitation of Palestinian human shields

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 17, 2024

How many times have Israeli officials justified massacring Palestinian civilians because Hamas uses them as human shields? Israeli media has now reported the opposite – the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) using Palestinian civilians as human shields in areas slated for incursion. “It is better that they explode and not the soldiers,” an Israeli soldier was told by an IDF commander. According to testimonies given to Haaretz by soldiers, senior IDF staff are aware of the practice.

In Israeli narratives of Palestinian human shields, the context is completely stripped away. There is no mention of the fact that Gaza is blockaded, that people have no way out and that a densely populated strip of land is home to both civilians and the resistance movement, including their weapons. Israel using the term “human shields” to describe Hamas’s limitations in terms of resistance in Gaza is not only misleading, but also completely wrong. It is Israeli colonial violence that has created Palestinian human shields.

After creating Palestinian human shields, Israel found a way to use them. First, to build its narrative justifying each aggression against Gaza. In the genocide, Israel used Palestinian human shields to save the lives of soldiers tasked with killing Palestinians in Gaza.

While Israel’s colonial narrative deems Hamas a terror group, it is interesting to note how the Israeli media specified that the human shields used by the IDF “are not terror suspects”. The phrase itself speaks volumes about Israel’s genocidal intent and action in Gaza – every Palestinian is a target, not just Hamas. Palestinian civilians, Israeli media reported: “Are detained specifically to be sent into buildings and tunnels that troops believe may be booby-trapped.” Briefly, the IDF will explore any avenue to kill Palestinians in one way or another, and human shields make for convenient collateral damage for Israel, which doesn’t even need to justify its atrocities, not even in genocide, thanks to the impunity the international community bestowed upon the settler-colonial entity.

“These are just reports at this point,” US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel stated in reply to reporters’ questions about Israel using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Yet the Haaretz report quotes Israeli soldiers confirming the IDF’s knowledge, which points to a practice legitimised by Israeli military officials.

Patel, however, found it pertinent to mention the Israeli propaganda, which states Hamas uses civilian infrastructure to operate from, as well as using civilians as human shields. “That is not hyperbole,” he added. There has never been greater hyperbole than Israel’s colonial narratives unless we are speaking about the US that disseminates hyperbole as truth.

Just a day prior to Haaretz’s report, Ynet News ran an article justifying Israel’s killing of civilians taking shelter in schools by blaming Hamas for using the premises and, therefore, civilians as human shields, quoting IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari. “Israel views civilian casualties as a tragedy, while Hamas sees them as a strategy,” Hagari stated.

Israel’s use of Palestinian human shields as part of its military strategy clearly contradicts Hagari’s words and Netanyahu’s narrative. The only tragedy for Israel is the exposure of its crimes. Although with allies such as the US, which constructs its own definitions of what constitutes truth and hyperbole, tragedy is quickly exploited for PR opportunities, while Palestinian civilians – human shields created by Israel – decay in the genocide the world has learnt to accept.

August 17, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli evacuation orders shut 10 wells, worsening water crisis in Gaza

MEMO | August 17, 2024

The new Israeli evacuation orders for areas in eastern Gaza have resulted in the shutdown of 10 water wells, Deir al-Balah Municipality in the central Gaza Strip announced on Saturday, Anadolu reports.

Ismail Sarsour, head of the municipality’s Emergency Committee, told Anadolu : “The new Israeli evacuation orders for eastern Deir al-Balah have effectively taken 10 out of 19 wells out of service.”

“Access to three other wells west of Salah al-Din Street has become hazardous,” Sarsour stated.

He emphasized that the water situation in Deir al-Balah will become extremely dire in the coming days, especially with the shutdown of the eastern wells, which serve as a critical water supply for areas west of Salah al-Din Street, including the city center.

Deir al-Balah is currently home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, particularly in the city center and its western areas.

Residents in the Gaza Strip are already facing significant challenges in accessing potable water, often traveling long distances to secure just a few liters. In various parts of the strip, displaced people are rationing drinking water in fear of future shortages.

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, the ongoing Israeli war has displaced nearly 2 million people out of a total population of 2.3 million.

The Israeli army issued immediate evacuation orders on Saturday for residents of Deir al-Balah.

On Tuesday, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) reported that approximately 84% of Gaza’s territory has been under evacuation orders since Oct. 7.

Israel’s continued onslaught on Gaza has drawn international condemnation for violating a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.

The ongoing war has resulted in over 40,000 Palestinian deaths and has left vast areas of Gaza in ruins, exacerbated by a severe blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

August 17, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US moving towards total censorship – Moscow

RT | August 17, 2024

Freedom of speech in the US is only permitted for those who express pro-American views, while dissenters are subjected to a “political inquisition,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, has claimed.

The diplomat was commenting on an FBI search at the home of Russian-born US political analyst and author Dimitri Simes in Virginia, on Tuesday. Simes, a critic of President Joe Biden’s administration, has been co-hosting a geopolitical talk show on Russia’s Channel 1 since 2018.

The targeting of Simes is another example of the “witch hunt” taking place in the US in the run up to the presidential election on November 5, Antonov wrote in a post on Telegram on Saturday.

“Hundreds of people are declared undesirable just because they dare to contradict the policies of the administration. They are forbidden from having their own point of view” and government agents are “breaking into homes, performing searches and seizing documents,” he stated.

According to the ambassador, the situation in the country resembles the “dark times of McCarthyism,” a campaign against suspected communists led by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

“The local ruling circles have decisively embarked on the path of total censorship. Freedom of speech in modern America is sacred only if this speech is pro-American. All dissidents are subject to political inquisition, especially when it comes to those who fight against one-sided and biased views on Russia,” he said.

Antonov accused Washington of double standards when it comes to democracy and freedom of speech. While “easily” neglecting the rights provided by the First Amendment at home, US officials, “at the same time continue to lecture the whole world on democratic values and human rights,” he wrote.

Simes is a naturalized US citizen, who immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1973. He served as an aide to President Richard Nixon and as the publisher and CEO of National Interest magazine, which advocates a realist approach to international relations and geopolitics.

At the height of Russiagate, Simes was among those investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a suspected contact between Donald Trump and the Russian government. The report by Muller in 2019, which failed to find any evidence of collusion between Moscow and Trump’s 2016 campaign, also vindicated Simes.

FBI agents arrived at his property in Virginia a week after a search took place at the home of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state. Ritter, who is now a journalist and commentator, said the US authorities appeared to be “primarily concerned” with his “relationship” with Russian media outlets – RT and Sputnik news agency.

August 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Blair, UK Government Warned Over NATO War Crimes in Belgrade

© Aaron Chown
By John Miles – Sputnik – 16.08.2024

As NATO aggression in the former Yugoslavia fully unmasked the alliance as a tool of Western imperialism, newly-released documents reveal controversial former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of the possible legal consequences of the bombing of a state-owned broadcaster in Belgrade.

“Twenty five years ago, NATO bombed the main studio of Yugoslavia’s state-owned broadcasting company, Radio-Television Serbia (RTS),” writes the independent outlet Declassified UK. “The attack at 2am on 23 April 1999 came amid Bill Clinton and Tony Blair’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo.”

“16 media workers were killed and 19 injured in the strike on RTS, which remains the single most controversial event in NATO’s 78-day military campaign,” notes journalist John McEvoy.

The UK and allied NATO forces claimed to be acting in the interest of protecting ethnic Albanians as ethnic violence broke out on all sides during the breakup of the former socialist Yugoslav republic. But President Slobodan Milošević remained a conspicuous holdout as newly-independent states deregulated their economies in line with neoliberal economic policy advocated by Western governments.

The United States would back numerous “color revolutions” after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, with wealthy donors like George Soros encouraging and standing to benefit from economic liberalization enforced by Western-led institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

The case of Milošević demonstrates a scenario during which the United States was willing to employ substantial military force to seek regime change, paving the way for NATO aggression in countries like Libya and Afghanistan.

Blair claimed the destruction of the RTS headquarters and other civilian targets was justified in the name of dismantling the “dictatorship” of Milošević. Sixteen media workers were killed during the bombing, which Amnesty International labeled a “war crime.”

“Killing journalists does not stop censorship, it only brings more repression,” claimed the International Federation of Journalists in a statement.

“We do not see how the suppression of news sources can serve any useful purpose,” said European Broadcasting Union president Albert Scharf. “Over and beyond the deaths involved, the EBU is concerned about any attempts to limit the rights of audiences to full news services.”

Declassified files now reveal that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned against the depraved attack at the time by British attorney general John Morris, who questioned how the destruction of the broadcast headquarters was related to NATO’s purported cause in ensuring “relief of humanitarian need in Kosovo.”

The UK and the United States launched the illegal act of aggression in Belgrade without a required UN Security Council resolution, demonstrating the lengths NATO was willing to go to to ensure Western hegemony after the end of the Cold War.

“We are moving towards a situation where our aim will become removing Milosevic,” admitted Blair in a note at the time, revealing that regime change was the ultimate motive of the assault. “Plainly Milosevic will threaten the stability of the region as long as he remains.”

NATO forces would go on to strike a number of other civilian targets including Belgrade’s Hotel Jugoslavija and Montenegro’s main airport, with little apparent concern for the climbing death toll. Thousands were killed or wounded by the end of the campaign while elevated rates of cancer and birth defects are still observed due to NATO’s highly controversial use of depleted uranium.

The UK would become the first of multiple Western countries to recognize the disputed breakaway territory of Kosovo in 2008. Future leader of the territory Hashim Thaci, who played a key role during the NATO aggression via his leadership of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, is currently on trial on war crimes charges at The Hague.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, under intense pressure from the United States, would controversially decide against investigating the bombing of the RTS as a war crime.

August 16, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter: Biden Administration Declaring War on Journalism

Sputnik – August 16, 2024

Recent FBI raids on properties belonging to Russian-American political scientist Dimitri K. Simes and Scott Ritter, who both challenge the mainstream US political propaganda, are meant to squash dissent on Ukraine, former UN weapons inspector Ritter told Sputnik.

The conflict in Ukraine – in which the US has become deeply involved by providing the Kiev regime with billions of dollars – reportedly has people questioning Washington’s hawkish policy that the government seeks to suppress.

“What is our crime? Our crime is to have an opinion that is opposite of that of the United States government when it comes to Ukraine,” Ritter emphasized.

It is not just about the government deceiving the American people, it is about the mainstream media working in close coordination with the US government to deceive the American people about a war, Ritter noted.

“That’s where independent journalists come in. That’s where a genuinely free press [comes in], a press that isn’t subordinated to the US government, that doesn’t serve as a stenographer of US government policy, a free press that questions the official narrative,” he pointed out.

Ritter concluded that the US government does not trust common people, irrespective of their political leanings, and is actively trying to deceive and manipulate the public.

Earlier, Simes, a Channel One presenter in Russia and the founder and ex-president of the Center for the National Interest (USA), told Sputnik that he had not been to the United States since 2022, and had not been notified ahead of time that FBI agents would be conducting a search of his property in Rappahannock County, Virginia, this week.

August 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Court Denies Jordan Peterson’s Appeal as Free Speech Fight Heats Up in Canada

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 15, 2024

Psychologist and author Jordan Peterson has announced that Canada’s Supreme Court refused his appeal against undergoing social media re-education (“remedial”) training.

The case stems from the demand of the Ontario College of Psychologists (which licenses practicing clinical psychologists) for Peterson to be subjected to media training. The ruling now means he is to pay court costs to the organization seeking to impose this measure on him.

According to Peterson, the demand was spurred by his negative stance regarding what’s known as “gender-affirming care,” the doomsday climate change narrative (that he spoke about on Joe Rogan’s podcast), and criticism of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In a video posted on YouTube, Peterson said the court’s “terrible decision” not to consider his appeal was yet another “blow to free speech” in his country – and could well result in the revoking of his license to practice, while the ultimate goal of the social media re-education would be to get “something approximating a public apology” for his opinions and for expressing them.

Peterson previously mentioned his criticism of social service workers and police “threatening to apprehend the children of the Trucker Convoy protestors” as another reason for the Ontario College of Psychologists wanting to get him “reeducated” – though he did not speak about this in the YouTube video.

In a post on X, Peterson said that the Supreme Court ruling amounted to admitting that “mid-level bureaucrats who rule the professional colleges and regulatory boards” have more power than the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In another post, he criticized Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government which he said was “overseeing the commissars” standing in the way of conservatives’ free expression, including “perhaps” Ford himself.

Peterson is also critical of the way Canada’s CBC covers the case (including his remarks on the Rogan podcast), referring to the broadcaster as “paid lackeys.”

But Peterson has received support from other corners, including Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, who said they were willing to work with him “to see if he wants to take the case international” – which he seems to be open to.

And Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre lambasted the decision as an attempt to impose forced political reeducation, noting that this came after “another government bureaucracy threatened to ban a Canadian from practicing his profession because he expressed political opinions the state doesn’t like.”

August 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Palestinian detainee reveals that Israeli occupation forces used him as a human shield for 40 days

Palestinian Information Center – August 15, 2024

RAMALLAH – The testimony of a Palestinian detainee revealed that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) used him and another prisoner as human shields for 40 days in Gaza.

The Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a joint statement on Thursday that the IOF forced the Palestinian detainee to wear a military uniform, placed a camera on him, and accompanied him with a drone.

The Authority and the Society confirmed that if the prisoner refused to be used as a human shield, he would be subjected to brutal beatings, deprived of food and basic needs, in addition to being shot and prevented from receiving medical treatment.

The joint statement presented the testimony of the 21-year-old Gaza youth “M.D.,” who was used by the IOF as a human shield for more than 40 days, along with another detainee who was with him.

The same source said that the Palestinian young man, who was working at the Kerm Abu Salem crossing, was subjected to acts of torture, deliberate humiliation and assault, starvation, terrorism and threats, after he and a group of citizens were arrested by the IOF soldiers last June and detained between the Palestinian-Egyptian borders and Rafah.

According to the testimony of the Gaza youth, the IOF used him as a human shield on a daily basis, through several methods, such as placing him at the front of IOF military vehicles, with his hands and feet tied, and forcing him to wear the Israeli military uniform and attaching a camera to his body.

According to the horrifying testimony of the young man, if he refused to go along with the IOF orders, he was subjected to beatings, and added that a drone was used to guide him during his movements. During his detention, the young man confirmed that the IOF soldiers did not provide him with enough food, deprived him of using the bathroom or taking a shower, and this continued throughout his detention period, until he was shot in the chest on the 6th of August, and he remained without treatment for about half an hour.

The Palestinian young man found himself the next day in the Israeli Soroka hospital, where he stayed for 3 days, until he was released on the 9th of August through the Kerm Abu Salem crossing, and he was then transported by ambulance to the Nasser Medical Hospital. The tests showed that the injury caused him a fracture in his chest and another injury in his lung, and he still needs urgent treatment.

For their part, the two bodies concerned with the affairs of Palestinian prisoners considered that the young man from Gaza was exposed to a complex and horrific war crime, starting from his arrest and using him as a human shield throughout this period, and torturing and humiliating him, and then injuring him, and releasing him from the hospital without completing his treatment.

The two bodies once again called on the international human rights institutions to regain their necessary and required role in the face of the ongoing genocide war and the systematic crimes committed by Israel against prisoners and detainees, and to assume their necessary responsibilities, and stressed the need to overcome the horrific state of impotence that surrounds their role, and to go beyond this role that is limited only to monitoring crimes and violations and issuing positions and statements, to a level that leads to holding Israel and its supporters accountable.

International humanitarian law and the 1949 Geneva Convention prohibit armies from using civilians as human shields, and the International Criminal Court considers this a war crime.

Israel has been continuously waging its devastating war on the Gaza Strip for more than 10 months, which has so far resulted in more than 40,000 martyrs and more than 92,000 injuries, mostly women and children, in addition to massive destruction of vital facilities, residential buildings, and an exacerbating famine in the besieged Strip.

Israel continues its war despite two resolutions from the UN Security Council to stop it immediately, and orders from the International Court of Justice to end the invasion of Rafah and take measures to prevent genocide and improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

August 15, 2024 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Resistance to military conscription deepens in Ukraine as leaders talk of role as a mercenary power

By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | August 15, 2024

Every day, across the country, police are reporting arson attacks against Ukrainian military vehicles. Military personnel in the rear are increasingly wary of leaving their vehicles on the streets overnight, instead parking them near police stations. But even this does not always help.

Those detained by police for these attacks have mostly been teenagers between 12 and 18 years of age, according to governor Oleh Sinegubov of Kharkiv Oblast (province), writing in early August.

Shoot the youth who are attacking military vehicles?

As a result of such attacks increasing in number, Oleh Romanov, commander of an anti-tank unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), has declared he has given permission to shoot on sight those who set fire to military vehicles in the rear. “In coordination with higher command, using military immunity, I give verbal permission to my fighters to shoot those things on the spot. Such traitors must be eliminated on the spot, considering wartime conditions.” His unit is the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, formerly a unit of the neo-Nazi ‘Azov Battalion’ now fully integrated as an autonomous unit of the regular army.

So the commander of what is today a regular Ukraine military unit is openly claiming that he has issued orders to shoot without trial civilian youths should they be caught in the act of damaging military equipment… or be only accused of doing so.

Ukrainian authorities are not denying that many of the attacks against military equipment are carried out by teenagers, nor do they deny that orders to shoot perpetrators are being issued and are bypassing the formal, decision-making of the country’s government and armed forces general staff. Such orders are also bypassing the Ukraine constitution, which since the year 2000 (at the insistence of the European Union at the time) has prohibited the death penalty.

All of this highlights once again that the ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi formations embedded within the AFU are accustomed to acting without regard for the law and at their own discretion, arguing that without their actions, the military front and the entire Ukrainian state machine could well crumble.

At the same time, the Ukrainian telegram channel Rubicon believes that the order issued by the commander of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade to “shoot on the spot” arsonists or others engaged in damaging military equipment could only be authorized from above (for example, from the presidential office), aiming to intimidate not only potential arsonists but anyone contemplating civil disobedience against the Ukraine government’s war policies.

Fear of military conscription only deepening

Ukrainian authorities traditionally blame Russia for any antiwar protests that may take place in Ukraine, but the fact that the vehicles of military enlistment officers were the first to be burned many months ago suggests more of a spontaneous protest against conscription than anything being covertly organized.

The Ukrainian Telegram channel Kartel comments on the recent trends, writing, “Arson attacks against the vehicles of employees of [military enlistment officers in Ukraine], that is, the vehicles of those who are hunting down men of the age of military service, are now being recorded all over the country. And the public does not consider the people behind these incidents as playing along with Moscow; the arsons have actually become a symbol of protest against forced conscription, corruption, and all the other injustices committed by authorities.”

Protests against conscription have manifested themselves in the form of arson attacks on military vehicles, physical assaults on individual Ukrainian soldiers in the rear, and spontaneous rallies against conscription officers at work. In early August, the town of Kovel near the Polish border in western Ukraine exploded. Crowds turned out for a rally demanding the release of three forcibly conscripted locals. The crowd stormed the military enlistment office and the protest continued through the night until residents secured the release of the three detainees.

The next day, authorities accused the protesters of “working for Russia” and launched criminal prosecutions. Ukrainian MP Yevhen Shevchenko wrote in Telegram on August 3 that the events in Kovel showed that “the party of peace is growing in the form of people voting against the war with their feet”. He continued, “How are the blind philosophers in Ukraine coping with this? Will they continue to brag about the fact there is no such thing in Ukraine as a formal party of peace?”

The Telegram channel Rubicon notes that riots against military enlistment officers are not a rare or unique phenomenon in Ukraine. There have been mass rallies protesting the continued war against Russia in Zaporozhye city and region; in Carpathia region (western Ukraine), where road blockades of burning tires have been erected by Roma people; and in Odessa city several months ago, where a mass brawl took place between ambulance crews and military enlistment officers when one of the crew was seized and threatened with forced conscription. But what happened in Kovel differs significantly from everything that has happened before. There, it was a mass confrontation and brawl against military and government authorities that unfolded in which men who would ‘normally’ be quietly hiding at home to avoid being forcibly conscripted took part.

The conscription crisis is a sign of a failing war

According to the writers at ‘Rubicon’, the government in Kiev cannot change its current conscription regime. Volunteering for the army has run out, all-but ending as early as 2022. Meanwhile, financial motivations to gain recruits, as are widely available in Russia, are very expensive and unrealistic for a depopulated Ukraine with a moribund economy, notwithstanding the funds that the U.S. government has allocated to boost recruitment.

Nevertheless, the large Western governments continue to demand intensified conscription by the Ukraine government, which means more capture and kidnapping by military conscription officers without the slightest heed or attention to human rights. Ukrainian MP Fyodor Venislavskyy wrote on Telegram on August 6 that Ukraine’s Western ‘partners’ are also raising periodically the proposal that Ukraine lower its official age of military service (conscription). He writes, “They believe that the age range of 18-25 is the most optimal and effective age of military service for citizens when physical and psychological qualities needed to be able to fight are at their prime.”

Currently, the age of military registration in Ukraine is 18, while the youngest age for military service is 26.

Ukrainian politicians and analysts typically offer ‘regrets’ to the Ukrainian population for the demands by Western governments for more military recruitment, at the same time saying that Ukraine’s Western allies have the right to pronounce on such a domestic matter because they are the ones providing the funds and equipment to wage war against Russia.

More war dead in order to improve negotiating position 

Western analysts and politicians are unrelentingly pushing Ukraine further into battle, using the argument that Kiev needs more combat in order to improve its future negotiating position. This argument was used in 2022 and again in 2023. Today, it is the equivalent of flogging an exhausted and worn-out horse. It also shows a complete misunderstanding of the aims of the political and military leadership in Russia.

Western capitalists measure everything against themselves. They imagine future negotiations between Russia and Ukraine as resembling one company up against its business competitor, each side seeking to strengthen its respective position. But for the Russian leadership, nothing changes should the AFU occupy a Russian town or two or should it withdraw from there to the relative safety of the border of Poland.

The list of demands and conditions by Russia for an end to the war (including an end to the dream by NATO and Kiev for a rump, NATO-member Ukraine) will remain unchanged no matter what happens. This rigidity and unchanging of military goals is the key to Russian stability and to the slow and steady military advances it is making.

This is being continually reinforced by the deep wellspring of historic memory of the Russian people. They recall only too well the harsh, social and economic disaster of the post-Soviet years of the 1990s, when promises by the West to Russia of eventual integration into the Western world’s economy had the ear of the Russian governments of the day while many Russian people themselves held such hopes. The 25 years since then, and in particular the past ten years, have shown to the Russian people that their country does not need economic ties to the Western economy to survive and even prosper. Indeed, Russia is doing quite well today having lost much of its trade and investment ties to the West.

Flight of youth from Ukraine, and mass desertions from the armed forces 

Expecting a lowering of the conscription age, young people in Ukraine are fleeing the country daily by the dozens and hundreds. Some are dying while making perilous crossings across the rough river border in western Ukraine. Oleksiy Arestovich, a former adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, wrote in early August in the online Eurasia Daily that ‘official’ estimates of the flow of men of conscription age trying to escape from Ukraine are being underestimated by 30 times.

“If I tell you how many people are trying to escape from Ukraine every day, you would gasp. The State Border Service admits 100 or so people trying to leave each day, while a Rada deputy has recently admitted 200. But the real figure is approximately 30 times higher… Imagine, each day, the equivalent numbers of five military brigades are seeking to escape from Ukraine. Many try to cross the Tisa (Tisza) River [which borders Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia in places] each day by whatever means possible.”

According to recent estimates by the National Bank of Ukraine, a further 700,000 people will leave Ukraine in 2024-2025. The Bank expects a gradual return of Ukrainians to their homeland only from 2026 and only if, by then, the security situation improves, new housing is built, and the overall economic situation improves.

Mass desertion is no less of a problem than is conscription for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Germany’s Deutsche Welle state broadcaster reported on August 2 that desertion from the Ukrainian army in 2024 has reached an alarming scale. Every 14th serviceman has quit his unit arbitrarily, the publication reports. Overall, since the beginning of 2022, the prosecutor’s office has counted 63,200 criminal proceedings for desertion.

Poliltnavigator news website reports on August 5 that according to retired SBU (secret police) colonel Oleg Starikov, more and more soldiers are deserting. “I have a comrade who is now deputy commander of a battalion of paratroopers. He is not a professional soldier; he was conscripted and rose to the rank of lieutenant. I asked him about the personnel situation he faces, and he replied that the soldiers serving under him, quite simply, ‘do not want to serve, they do not wish to fight’.”

” ‘So what are they doing out there?’, I asked. ‘They dig trenches and build fortifications’, he replied. ‘But that is logistical support,’ I replied, ‘who is doing the actual fighting?’, I asked again. ‘They do not want to fight’, came the reply.”

A mercenary role for the future Ukraine?

Although the Armed Forces of Ukraine are constantly short of men and Ukrainian troops have been slowly retreating along the front lines all year, Ukrainian authorities and security services are finding in countries other than Ukraine new recruits, weapons, and other means to fight for the interests of the West. Ukraine has no special interests in these other countries, but the U.S., UK, Germany, and France do.

In August, two African countries, Mali and Niger, severed diplomatic relations with Ukraine. Both accuse Kiev of supporting radical terrorist groups [linked to Al Qaeda] that have been fighting the governments of these two countries since they began to distance themselves economically and militarily from the West last year.

The Mali government reacted to statements by Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR) which praised an alleged involvement by Kiev in an attack against Mali government forces last month near the border with Algeria. “The actions taken by the Ukrainian authorities violate the sovereignty of Mali, go beyond the scope of foreign interference, which is already condemnable in itself. They constitute clear aggression against Mali and clear support for international terrorism,” the Malian government charged.

In Senegal, Ukraine’s interference in Mali’s affairs also caused outrage. The Ukrainian ambassador was summoned to that country’s foreign ministry to hear its condemnation.

On July 31, the Kyiv Post reported that Ukrainian forces made a strike on Russian and Syrian forces at the Kuweires Air Force base in Syria. As well, in the spring of 2024, there were published reports of Ukraine’s involvement in the fighting in Sudan. As reported by the Wall Street Journal in March, Ukraine has participated in combat in Sudan because “the West has been reluctant to get directly involved”.

Thus does the Kiev regime try to sell itself to the West as resembling an effective, private military company that will fight against anti-imperialist movements around the world whenever and wherever the Western governments do not dare to introduce their own troops. Rubicon Telegram channel reports on August 6, “We can only state this curious precedent in international relations when an entire state begins to position itself as a large, highly specialized, private military company (PMC).

In the early days of August, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced its support for a draft law ‘On International Defense Companies’ which, in essence, would legalize the operations of PMCs (mercenary companies) on the territory of Ukraine. One author of the bill, MP Serhiy Grivko, proposes to send Ukrainian soldiers to serve in other global hot spots, saying that many will not wish to surrender their weapons and return to peaceful life.

“Following the demobilization of a large number of personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there is a risk of a wide range of negative consequences,” the bill says. The ‘negative consequences’ for Ukraine in this case is the presence of a large number of foreigners with weapons in hand on Ukrainian soil, the reactions should payments to PMCs (which the Ukrainian budget cannot afford) ever be reduced, and the beginning of anticipated “destructive political processes in the country”.

Simply put, Ukrainians are to become expendable human material spending their entire lives fighting wars and working to pay off international loans, all for the sake of preserving the hegemony of Western imperialism.

August 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The FBI ‘Visits’ Scott Ritter

By Andrew P. Napolitano | Ron Paul Institute | August 15, 2024

Among the lesser-known holes in the Constitution cut by the Patriot Act of 2001 was the destruction of the “wall” between federal law enforcement and federal spies. The wall was erected in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which statutorily limited all federal domestic spying to that which was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The wall was intended to prevent law enforcement from accessing and using data gathered by America’s domestic spying agencies.

Government spying is rampant in the US, and the feds regularly engage in it as part of law enforcement’s well-known antipathy to the Fourth Amendment. Last week, the FBI admitted as much when it raided the home of former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter. Scott is a courageous and gifted former Marine. He is also a fierce and articulate antiwar warrior.

Here is the backstory.

After President Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Congress investigated his use of the FBI and CIA as domestic spying agencies. Some of the spying was on political dissenters and some on political opponents. None of it was lawful.

What is lawful spying? The modern Supreme Court has made it clear that domestic spying is a “search” and the acquisition of data from a search is a “seizure” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. That amendment requires a warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause of crime presented under oath to the judge for a search or seizure to be lawful. The amendment also requires that all search warrants specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized.

The language in the Fourth Amendment is the most precise in the Constitution because of the colonial disgust with British general warrants. A general warrant was issued to British agents by a secret court in London. General warrants did not require probable cause, only “governmental needs.” That, of course, was no standard whatsoever, as whatever the government wants it will claim that it needs.

General warrants authorized government agents to search wherever they wished and to seize whatever they found — stated differently, to engage in fishing expeditions.

FISA required that all domestic spying be authorized by the new and secret FISA Court. Congress then unconstitutionally lowered the probable cause of crime standard for the FISA Court to probable cause of speaking to a foreign agent, and it permitted the FISA Court to issue general warrants.

Yet, the FISA compromise that was engineered in order to attract congressional votes was the wall. The wall prohibited whatever data was acquired from surveillance conducted pursuant to a FISA warrant to be shared with law enforcement.

So, if a janitor in the Russian embassy was really an intelligence agent who was distributing illegal drugs as lures to get Americans to spy for him, any telephonic evidence of his drug dealing could not be given to the FBI.

The purpose of the wall was not to protect foreign agents from domestic criminal prosecutions; it was to prevent American law enforcement from violating personal privacy by spying on Americans without search warrants.

Fast forward to the weeks after 9/11 when, with no serious debate, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. It removed the wall between law enforcement and spying. And by 2001, the FISA Court had on its own lowered the standard for issuing a search warrant from probable cause of speaking to a foreign agent to probable cause of speaking to a foreign person. This, too, was unlawful and unconstitutional.

The language removing the wall sounds benign, as it requires that the purpose of the spying must be national security and the discovered criminal evidence — if any — must be accidental or inadvertent. In January 2023, the FBI admitted that it intentionally uses the CIA and the NSA to spy on Americans as to whom it has neither probable cause of crime nor even articulable suspicion of criminal behavior.

Articulable suspicion is the linchpin of commencing all criminal investigations. Without requiring suspicion, we are back to fishing expeditions.

The FBI’s admission that it uses the CIA and the NSA to spy for it came in the form of a 906-page FBI rulebook written during the Trump administration, disseminated to federal agents in 2021 and made known to Congress last year.

Last week, when FBI agents searched Ritter’s home in upstate New York, in addition to trucks, guns, a SWAT team and a bomb squad, they arrived with printed copies of two years’ of Ritter’s emails and texts that they obtained without a search warrant. To do this, they either hacked into Ritter’s electronic devices — a felony — or they relied on their cousins, the CIA and the NSA, to do so, also a felony.

But the CIA charter prohibits its employees from engaging in domestic surveillance and law enforcement. Nevertheless, we know the CIA is physically or virtually present in all of the 50 US statehouses. And the NSA is required to go to the FISA Court when it wants to spy. We know that this, too, is a charade, as the NSA regularly captures every keystroke triggered on every mobile device and desktop computer in the US, 24/7, without warrants.

The search warrant for Ritter’s home specified only electronic devices, of which he had three. Yet, the 40 FBI agents there stole a truckload of materials from him, including his notes from his U.N. inspector years in the 2000s, a draft of a book he is in the midst of writing and some of his wife’s personal property.

The invasion of Scott Ritter’s home was a perversion of the Fourth Amendment, a criminal theft of his private property and an effort to chill his free speech. But it was not surprising. This is what has become of federal law enforcement today. The folks we have hired to protect the Constitution are destroying it.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

August 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

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