A group of 227 parliament members in Iran has called on the Judiciary to issue death sentences for people arrested during the ongoing antigovernment protests.
The parliament, elected in a non-competitive election in February 2020, is packed with hardliners and Revolutionary Guard officers.
In a statement that was read out in the parliament on Sunday, the lawmakers called the protesters ‘mohareb’ — which literally means warrior in Arabic, but in Islamic law or sharia it means ‘enemy of God’ that carries the death penalty. They also compared the protesters to members of ISIS, who “attack people’s lives and property…”
The Iranian regime has so far charged several people with ‘moharebeh,’ “corruption on earth,” “assembly and collusion against national security” and “confrontation with the Islamic Republic” for participating in the protests.
Describing the current wave of popular protests as “riots,” the MPs claimed that “the US and other enemies” are inciting violence, organizing rallies, and providing financial support and weaponry to commandeer the protests. They also said “thugs and mobs” have killed tens of people and disrupted the security of the country.
Echoing the Islamic Republic’s propaganda line, the lawmakers said that “the enemies have been defeated in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen” therefore they organized the “riots” as a reaction to “victories of the Islamic Republic.”
Without mentioning any individuals or groups, the hardline lawmakers also asked the judiciary to take legal actions against “the politicians who incited the rioters.”
Earlier in the parliament session, Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) said that main elements of Mossad, CIA and their allied groups are behind the unrest in the country.
Late in October, hardliner MP Mohammad Esmail Kowsari, also a high ranking IRGC officer, implicitly threatened that the government will respond differentlyto the ongoing protests from now on.
While protests continue across Iran, the Islamic Republic’s Judiciary has also announced that it has indicted over 1,000 people who were arrested during the demonstrations.
Authorities have been claiming that “separatists” and “instigators” are behind the efforts to overthrow the government and break Iran into areas controlled by ethnic groups, a claim routinely denied by Iranians on streets and social media.
President Ebrahim Raisi on October 25 accused “enemies of the Islamic Republic” of fomenting the protests, echoing what Khamenei said a day earlier. Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf in turn vowed that parliament would take action to change the ways of the morality police in a bid to calm the protesters.
“Death sentences against people for exercising their right to freedom of expression, after the killings of peaceful protesters, abductions and gunning down children, and other atrocities, indicate a government that is out of control and willing to quash protests at any cost,” said a statement by Center for Human Rights in Iran.
The Norway-based human rights organization also expressed concern regarding the fate of the detained protesters saying, “dozens of them have been charged with the security-related charges of ‘moharebeh’ and ‘corruption on earth’ which carry the death penalty.”
The Islamic Republic’s history and current evidence indicate that they intend to use the death penalty as a tool of political repression to intimidate their opposition.
Earlier in November, 40 Iranian lawyers issued a statement saying most people no longer want the Islamic Republicand called on their peers to speak up and defend the people.
Iran has been gripped by protests since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin who had been arrested on September 13 for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code and died three days later from severe head trauma. Protests spread fueled by public outrage over a crackdown that led to the deaths of other young men, women, and children. Now in their seventh week, the protests show no sign of ending.
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“The Real Story of January 6,” a documentary by The Epoch Times, reveals the truth that has been hidden from the American people. While a narrative has been set that what took place that day was an insurrection, key events and witnesses have been ignored until now. The documentary takes an unvarnished look at police use of force and the deaths that resulted in some measure from it. The film asks tough questions about who was responsible for the chaos that day. With compelling interviews and exclusive video footage, the documentary tells the real story of January 6. The film is narrated by Joshua Philipp, host of “Crossroads” on EpochTV and a senior investigative reporter at The Epoch Times.
Jasper Fakkert, editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, said: “There has been a narrative perpetuated about January 6 that omits many of the facts about what happened that day.
“With in-depth interviews and exclusive video footage, we take an objective look at the issues, the people, and the impacts of the events.”
The film takes a close look at the shooting of 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt and the deaths of three other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. It analyzes the police response to the massive crowds and use of force around the U.S. Capitol.
It examines the human impacts of Jan. 6, including the suicide of one defendant and the long pretrial imprisonment of dozens of others. It also investigates claims that some attacks on the Capitol and police were carried out by unindicted suspicious actors.
While there is growing speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 protests and recording responses for the purposes of entrapment, evidence now proves that “plainclothes” members of a special Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) were embedded among the protesters for the purposes of conducting video surveillance. Evidence also points to a day of security deficiencies and police provocation for the purpose of entrapment.
According to a report—First Amendment Demonstrations, issued Jan. 3, 2021, by Chief of Police Robert Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—the MPD began to activate Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) platoons on Jan. 4, 2021. Full activation of 28 platoons was scheduled to occur on the following two days.
According to the Department of Justice website, “A CDU is composed of law enforcement officers who are trained to respond to protests, demonstrations, and civil disturbances for the purpose of preventing violence, destruction of property, and unlawful interference with persons exercising their rights under law.”
The objective of MPD was “to assist with the safe execution of any First Amendment demonstration and ensure the safety of the participants, public, and the officers.” CDU personnel and Special Operations Division (SOD) members were to “monitor for any demonstration and/or violent activity and respond accordingly,” according to the report.
There has been speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the protests for the purposes of entrapment. As Red State reported in October 2021, “multiple surveillance videos show masked men opening up the doors to the U.S. Capitol Building to allow protesters to enter. In fact, one video shows them entering while Capitol Police officers simply stand around. Yet, we have no idea who those men are.”
The ‘Covert Cadre’ of ‘Provocateurs’
On a Dec. 7, 2021, episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the attorney for several Jan. 6 prisoners, Joseph McBride, identified a man tagged on the internet by so-called “Sedition Hunters” as “Red-Faced 45.” The man, dressed in red from head to toe—with even his face painted red—appears in a video engaging in continuous dialogue with uniformed personnel and others whom McBride insists are agents embedded in the crowd. McBride said the man is “clearly a law enforcement officer.”
“He passes out weapons, sledgehammers, poles, mace. Some of those things come in contact with some of the other protesters who have subsequently been charged with possessing dangerous weapons and are using dangerous weapons at the Capitol. That is clearly entrapment.
That is clearly the government creating conditions of dangerousness and entrapping members of the crowd to possess weapons and possibly use them for reasons that we cannot comprehend.”
On Jan. 13, 2021, J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy, published a first-hand account of his observations. Waller is also President of Georgetown Research, a political risk and private intelligence company in Washington, D.C.; and was founding editorial board member of NATO’s peer-reviewed Defence Strategic Communicationsjournal (2015–2018), and a senior analyst with Wikistrat. He is convinced people were embedded in the crowd to execute “an organized operation planned well in advance of the January 6 joint session of Congress.”
The Epoch Times reported on Jan. 1 that senior federal law enforcement officials refused to answer questions about an Arizona man named Ray Epps, captured on video the day before the rally wearing a Trump hat repeatedly encouraging protesters to “go into the Capitol” the next day. Many were suspicious of him. Chants of “fed, fed, fed” drown him out. On Jan. 6, he is seen telling the crowd “we are going to the Capitol, where all of our problems are.”
Bobby Powell host of “The Truth is Viral” podcast, has several videos exposing two men, clad all in black, whom he believes are FBI informants. They are seen breaking windows, attacking the Capitol building, and even pushing people inside.
McBride finds it strange that these “provocateurs,” as he calls them, have yet to be charged, despite their having a much more active role in the Capitol incident than some who were charged, including some individuals who never even set foot on Capitol grounds.
The Proof
Unknown to the public until now, the First Amendment Demonstrations report also reveals that an undisclosed number of “plainclothes” MPD ESU “members” were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”
It is unclear who the MPD ESU “members” were. However, they are never referred to as “officers” or “police.” Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the MPD, an ESU is not among them. In order for other security personnel to recognize embedded ESU members among the protesters, they wore a specific “bracelet on their left wrist identifying them as MPD personnel,” the report stated.
“While it is admittedly an important type of unit to have in the nation’s capital, electronic surveillance requires warrants,” Waller told The Epoch Times. “The word surveillance itself implies intrusive rather than passive monitoring of people, in which case it would be required for the police to get warrants to conduct electronic surveillance on people. What kind of warrants were asked for and under which jurisdiction? Were they issued? If not, why? Are such warrants necessary for the type of surveillance this unit was doing and how does it work? This raises a huge amount of questions about an entirely new kind of surveillance unit by the police chief of the nation’s capital.”
Waller also said the reference to “members” of the unit, as opposed to “officers” or “agents,” is also very disturbing. While he said “the rest of the memorandum sounds very disciplined in it’s language and specific,” that it doesn’t identify “officers” as members of the Electronic Surveillance Unit “is very troubling.”
“Are they using private contractors? Are they using political volunteers?” Waller posed. “Are using paid agents of different types? We don’t know. This is something the public has a right to know and we need to get to the bottom of it. If the D.C Police is running electronic surveillance on American citizens without warrants, this could be a very serious breach of our civil liberties.”
An Oct. 29, 2021 report by Politico exposed that a 17-page strategy report called “The Civil Disturbance Unit Operational Plan,” showed that police made plans for plainclothes “officers” to monitor protesters and carry out five objectives:
To provide an environment in which lawful First Amendment activity can be safely demonstrated.
To prevent any adverse impact to the legislative process associated with unlawful demonstration activity.
To effectively mitigate actions associated with civil disorder; safely respond to crimes of violence and destruction/defacing of property.
To safeguard and prevent any property damage directed at the US Capitol, West Front Inaugural Platform, and all Congressional buildings.
Establish and maintain a fixed march route while excluding access to counter-protestors to minimize potential for violent interactions.”
However, because the CDU was understaffed and unprepared, it failed in all its objectives.
According to a 140-page report issued by then-Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton—”Review of the Events Surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Takeover of the U.S. Capitol”—Capitol Police’s CDU was ordered by supervisors not to use the department’s most powerful tools, like stun guns. Bolton’s report, which has not yet been widely released to the public, also contends “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including stun grenades, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership.”
The CDU was given riot shields, many locked in a bus some distance away, that “shattered upon impact.” They had expired weapons that didn’t work and inadequate training.
Bolton’s report also noted that officials were warned in an intelligence assessment three days before the protest that “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike” and that “Congress itself is the target.”
However, reports surfaced that then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett sent a memo to lawmakers informing them that security officials found that “there does not exist a known, credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex that warrants the temporary security fencing.”
Some Capitol Police officers were reportedly told to go home amid staffing shortages, reported Business Insider.
According to the “UNITED STATES CAPITOL POLICE TIMELINE OF EVENTS FOR JANUARY 6, 2021 ATTACK,” also obtained by The Epoch Times, “USCP Deputy Chief Gallagher replies” to the Department of Defense (DOD) “via text” on Jan. 3, 2021, “that a request for National Guard support is not forthcoming at this time after consultation” with Chief of Police (COP) Steven Sund.
On Jan. 4, 2021, “COP Sund asked Senate Sergeant at Arms (SSAA) Michael Stenger and House Sergeant at Arms (HSAA) Paul Irving for authority to have National Guard to assist with security for the January 6, 2021 event based on briefings with law enforcement partners and revised intelligence assessment.”
• COP Sund’s request is denied. SSAA and HSAA tells COP Sund to contact General Walker at DC National Guard to discuss the guard’s ability to support a request if needed. • COP Sund notifies General Walker of DC National Guard, indicating that the USCP may need DC National Guard support for Jan. 6, 2021, but does not have the authority to request at this time. • General Walker advises COP Sund that in the event of an authorized request, DC National Guard could quickly repurpose 125 troops helping to provide DC with COVID-related assistance. Troops would need to be sworn in as USCP.
However, the timeline shows it took over three hours and five frantic requests before the National Guard was deployed.
During his opening remarks before two Senate committees on March 3, 2021, Walker told members of Congress he received a “frantic call” from Sund in the early afternoon advising that the security perimeter of the Capitol was being breached. However, military leaders informed him that deploying troops would not be “good optics.”
During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Piatt and Flynn denied making such comments.
At the hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene informed the committee three people were involved in turning down repeated requests for the deployment of the National Guard: “Chuck Schumer in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi in the House, and Mayor Muriel Bowser. Also involved, are the SSAA Stenger, who answers directly to Schumer, and HSAA Irving, who answers directly to Pelosi.”
In stark contradiction to then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett’s assessment that no “credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex” existed to warrant “temporary security fencing,” there are multiple admonishments in the First Amendment Demonstrations report of the importance “for the members to monitor the fence line” and orders that “all members” were to “monitor 16th Street and the surrounding area for any potential issues or demonstrations.”
“Members assigned to the bicycle rack” were ordered to “restrict pedestrian and vehicle movement upon making the closure of the police lines.”
“The bicycle rack, in conjunction with police cars and blocking vehicles will create a barrier in which no person or vehicle will be allowed to pass,” the report said.
However, video evidence shows police waving protesters past bike racks and even removing them to open a path into the restricted areas to encourage people to move toward the Capitol Building.
A March 2, 2021, USCP Report of Investigation regarding the incident, also obtained by The Epoch Times, confirms that on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, “an Unknown Officer violated USCP Directive 2053.013, Rules of Conduct, when they allegedly waived unauthorized persons into a restricted area secured by bike racks toward the US Capitol during an insurrection.” Evidence in the case included the “video posted to twitter, dated 01/06/21 ” and “CCTV of the East Front of the US Capitol, dated 01/06/21.”
On Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, then Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) Commander of the United States Capitol Police, Inspector Michael Shaffer, sent an email with the Twitter video of the unidentified officer (UO) to Inspectors Amy Hyman (Senate Division), Thomas Loyd (Capitol Division), Kimberley Bolinger (House Division) and Acting Inspector Jessica Baboulis (Library Division) requesting assistance in identifying the UO. All parties responded to Shaffer that they were unable to identify the UO.
The recommendation was that the report “be APPROVED and the case CLOSED.”
On Feb. 4, 2021, this case was put on hold pending a review by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Public Corruption. No further information is available.
Provocation and Entrapment
In a June 10 interview with EpochTV’s “Facts Matter,” Julie Kelly—a political consultant in Illinois and senior contributor for American Greatness—described Jan. 6, 2021, as “an inside job” and “something Democrats and some Republicans and federal agencies put together to entice” and “entrap” people who went to hear President Donald Trump’s speech. She noted that the FBI used agents to try to infiltrate the so-called militia groups.
Jeremy Brown exposed a video of FBI Terrorist Task Force agents attempting to recruit him to spy on fellow Oath Keepers.
The Department of Justice still won’t answer questions about Ray Epps, an Arizona resident captured on video encouraging protesters to breach the Capitol Building.
Video footage found at Gateway Pundit shows flash grenades being launched by Capitol Police into a group of protesters, consisting of women, children, and elderly people, who were standing peacefully behind barriers. According to American Greatness, Capitol Police were also firing on the crowd with rubber bullets. The approximate time of the confrontation was around 1:36 p.m. However, the USCP Timeline does not mention the deployment of these flash grenades.
Another video, which still exists on TeaParty.org, was filmed by Kash Kelly from ground level where the flash grenades went off. Kelly, who is now himself in prison regarding pretrial release violations regarding a previous charge and the subsequent charges related to his presence in Washington, is shown ensuring the evacuation of women in the area where the flash grenades exploded.
“The police started shooting at people,” Kelly says. “There were kids in the crowd.”
More extensive video footage, analyzed by Ray Dietrich of Red Voice Media, shows “the beginning of violence on January 6.”
An unidentified USCP officer is seen repeatedly yelling down to the crowd, assembled peacefully below his position, advising that if they “want to get a good picture” they should “go up into the bleachers.”
“The video shows the moment either stun grenades or tear gas canisters were deployed into the crowd of protestors,” Dietrich says as the video plays out. “The question I have, after a 20-year career in law enforcement, is why were these munitions deployed? I have picked this video apart and many more, and cannot see why the USCP used this force against the crowd. There is no fighting and no violence, so why did they target these people with less-lethal weapons?”
“What happened next?” Dietrich asks rhetorically. “Chaos. Violence. The crowd fought back. The Capitol was breached.”
As the stunned crowd scurries in the attack, police can be seen spraying people in the face with pepper spray. In another segment, three police officers are beating a protester who is being held on the ground. In a measure that further escalates the tension, police begin deploying tear gas into the already frantic crowd. In a course of 20 minutes, a once peaceful scene descends into total chaos.
In June 2021, reports surfaced that the Justice Department had begun to release its own video footage, including footage from body-worn cameras that allegedly show assaults against police officers defending the U.S. Capitol.
A summary of findings shows that:
Evidence shows that until the deployment of munitions, the crowds were peaceful.
MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) members were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”
Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the Metropolitan Police Department, an ESU is not among them.
You know it tells you a lot about the priorities of a ruling class that the rest of us are getting yet another lecture about January 6th tonight from our moral inferiors, no less. An outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards, that took place more than a year and a half ago, but they’ve never stopped talking about it.
In the meantime, in the 18 months since January 6, gas prices have doubled. Drug ODs have reached their highest point ever. The U.S. economy is now careening toward a devastating recession at best and scariest and least noted of all, this country has never in its history been closer to a nuclear war.
Yet the other networks can’t be bothered to cover any of that tonight. Instead, they’ve interrupted their regularly scheduled programing to bring you yet another extended primetime harangue from Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney about Donald Trump and QAnon. The whole thing is insulting.
In fact, it’s deranged and we’re not playing along. This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it. What we will do instead is to try to tell you the truth. We’ve attempted to do that since the day this happened.
We hated seeing vandalism at the U.S. Capitol a year and a half ago, and we said so at the time, but we did not think it was an insurrection because it was not an insurrection. It was not even close to an insurrection. Not a single person in the crowd that day was found to be carrying a firearm – some insurrection. In fact, the only person who wound up shot to death was a protester.
She was a 36-year-old military veteran called Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was just over 5 feet tall. She was unarmed. She posed no conceivable threat to anyone, but Capitol Hill Police shot her in the neck and never explained why that was justified. Those are the facts of January 6, but since the very first hours, they have been distorted beyond recognition, relentlessly culminating with last night.
Last night, CBS Nightly News told its viewers that insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6 “caused the deaths of five police officers.” That is a pure lie. There is nothing true about it, and they know that perfectly well. Here’s reporter Bob Costa, who should be deeply ashamed to say something this dishonest.
ROBERT COSTA, CBS: Thursday’s primetime hearing will take Americans back to January 6, when an estimated 2,000 rioters breached the Capitol building, causing the deaths of five police officers.
It’s hard to believe he said that. Rioters cause the deaths of five police officers. You just heard CBS News tell its viewers that. This must be the big lie theory. The more bewilderingly false a claim is, the more likely you will be to believe it. Apparently, that’s what they’re betting on. In fact, precisely zero police officers were killed by rioters on January 6, not five, none. Not a single one. So, how’d they get to five? Well, CBS is counting the suicides of local police officers that took place after January 6, in some cases, long after January 6.
Suicide, unfortunately, is pretty common among cops. Policing is a tough job, as we’ve noted. But in these specific cases, the ones CBS is referring to, the chief of Washington DC’s police department told The New York Times that actually he had no idea if his officers were driven to kill themselves by January 6. CBS just made that up.
The fifth death that CBS News is referring to is of Capitol Hill police officer Brian Sicknick. You will remember his name. Sicknick’s body lay in state at the Capitol after the media told us he’d been beaten to death by Trump voters with a fire extinguisher. Here’s what they told you.
FREDERICKA WHITFIELD, CNN: Officer Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
CNN REPORTER: Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
ANA CABRERA, CNN: Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher during the hour-long attack.
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC: They beat a Capitol Police officer to death with a fire extinguisher.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher during the fight.
CRAIG MELVIN, MSNBC: He died at the age of 42 after he was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.
Once again, that’s not true. Everything you just heard was completely fabricated. The D.C. medical examiner performed an autopsy and the autopsy report showed that Officer Brian Sicknick had not suffered any kind of blunt force trauma. He was not beaten to death. He died of a stroke in his office later. No one has been charged in Officer Sicknick’s death because Officer Sicknick wasn’t murdered.
They are lying to you. That is provable. Not a single person you just saw has apologized for lying. Not a single one. And it’s not just the news media. Here’s Congressman Pete Aguilar of California claiming that officers lost their lives on January 6.
PETE AGUILAR: These hearings will be a chance for the country to come together to rally around the truth and unite around the rule of law. We owe it to the officers who lost their lives and the officers who were injured to tell that story and to ensure that this never happens again.
Let’s rally around the truth, he says, as he lies to you. May those words burn your tongue, liar. But what did happen exactly on January 6? What’s the truth of that day? Well, that’s still unknown. From the extensive video we have of January 6, it’s clear that some in the crowd, more than a few, were encouraging protesters to breach the Capitol, to commit felonies. We’re not guessing at that, we’ve showed you the tape.
We have pictures of their faces. In the case of a man called Ray Epps, we know his name, but they’ve never been charged. Ray Epps was standing in exactly the same place that a lot of people who went to jail were standing, but he wasn’t charged. His name was taken off the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Why is that? It doesn’t make any sense at all.
The January 6 committee will not explain that after a year, millions of dollars and a thousand interviews. They won’t tell us, nor will they tell us how many FBI agents and assets were in the crowd that day and what were they doing there. Why can’t we know that? And why are they still hiding thousands of hours of surveillance footage from within the Capitol? If the point of the committee was to get the truth out there, why can’t we see the tape?
Why did authorities open the doors of the Capitol to rioters and let them walk in, usher them in the doors? That’s utterly bizarre. You saw that live. No one’s ever explained it. What’s the explanation for that? And by the way, whatever happened to the mysterious pipe bomber whose bombs we later learned many months later, Kamala Harris’ bodyguards discovered. Kamala Harris told us she was at the Capitol that day, but she wasn’t. She was at the DNC with a pipe bomb outside. Her bodyguards found that bomb, but she lied about that. She hid that. Why?
That’s got to be one of the weirdest stories ever. What does it mean, Liz Cheney? Silence. And of course, above all, they lied about the reason that January 6 happened in the first place and you know what it is. The entire country watched Joe Biden get what they claim was 10 million more votes than Barack Obama himself got. Joe Biden got 10 million more votes than Barack Obama got, and a lot of those votes arrived after the election.
In a lot of places, voting was stopped in the middle of the night. Why? In the biggest states in the country, voter ID was optional. Why is that okay? A lot of the protesters on January 6 were very upset about that and they should have been. All of us should be, but the January 6 Committee ignored all of that completely. Instead, on the basis of zero evidence, no evidence whatsoever, they blamed the entire riot on White supremacy. Here’s Joe Biden.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We’re confronting the stains of what remains, a deep stain on the soul of the nation, hate and White supremacy. The violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago was about White supremacy, in my view.
What? There’s no evidence for that – none. The people at the Capitol, including the ones who broke the law by entering the Capitol, which is a crime, those people to a person said they were upset because they believed their democracy had been stolen from them and whether all of their claims are true or not, that’s a valid reason to be upset. But rather than reassure the rest of us that actually our democracy is sound, elections are fair and transparent, there’s no cheating and we can prove it, rather than do that, they call half the country names and not just names, the worst thing you can be called, a White supremacist. And then, most bewilderingly of all, virtually no Republican in Washington pushed back against any of that.
In fact, Lindsey Graham, violence worshiper to the end, said that his only regret was that the Capitol Police didn’t shoot more Trump voters in the neck and kill them. “You’ve got guns, use them,” Graham said. So here you have a sitting U.S. senator, a Republican, urging police officers to shoot unarmed Americans, many of whom were ushered into the Capitol building by law enforcement.
How can people talk like that? For more than a year, they justified rhetoric like Lindsey Graham “shoot more” by claiming that January 6 was an insurrection. That’s not a word they were used to describe, say, the monthslong siege of a courthouse in Portland, or the ongoing coordinated effort to intimidate Supreme Court justices at their homes with guns, a story they ignored today. But January 6 was different, they reminded us. It was unique because it was their offices and because it bothered Nancy Pelosi.
ADAM SCHIFF: The president incited an insurrection against Congress to prevent the peaceful transition of power.
CEDRIC RICHMOND: And then he sat back and watched the insurrection.
REP. HALEY STEVENS: Insurrection, a violent mob.
CORI BUSH: A White supremacist president who incited a White supremacist insurrection.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: A insurrection against our government.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: A insurrection against our government.
PELOSI: The insurrection that violated the sanctity of the people’s Capitol.
JIM MCGOVERN: This was not a protest, this was an insurrection.
BIDEN: It’s not protest. It’s insurrection.
We are not defending and would never defend vandalism, violence, rioting. We disapproved of it when it happened. We disapprove of it now, all riots, not just this one. But this was not an insurrection.
But, you know what will get you to insurrection? If you ignore the legitimate concerns of a population, if you brush them aside as if they don’t matter when gas goes to $5 and you say “buy an electric car.” When cities become so filthy and so dangerous that you can’t live there, when the economy becomes so distorted that your own children have no hope of getting married and giving you grandchildren, when you don’t care at all about any of that and all you do is talk about yourself, nonstop – you might get an insurrection if you behave like that, speaking of insurrection.
The “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington D.C. drew thousands of peaceful protesters in support of the common cause of opposing mask and vaccine mandates. Robert Kennedy Jr., founder and Chairman of Children’s Health Defense delivered a speech to the rally attendees was focused on Big Pharma, which has escaped accountability and demands for transparency despite their core responsibilities during the Covid pandemic. His words were so provocative they ignited a media firestorm.
“You cannot sue that company,” he reiterated. “They have a license…”
“These are criminal companies, by the way,” he proclaimed. “These are serial felons.”
“The four companies that make all four of our U.S. vaccines for the children’s program… have paid $35 billion in criminal penalties for hundreds of violations and damages in the last ten years,” he went on.
“These are the companies that gave us the opioid crisis,” he added. “That kills 56,000 children a year. More American kids every year than the Vietnam War killed in twenty years.”
“These are not good citizens,” he emphasized. “These are criminal enterprises.”
“And now you’re taking away any economic or legal incentive for them to behave?” he asked rhetorically. “What do you think they are going to do?”
“Do you think they’ve found Jesus, suddenly?” he went on. “And they’re going to take care of us and our children, they’re suddenly concerned with public health?”
“No,” he said.
“They took away due process rulemaking, they’ve taken away our right to be free of warrantless searches and seizures, this very intrusive track-and-trace surveillance, etcetera,” he went on.
“We are watching something now that I never believed that I would see in my lifetime,” RFK Jr. said. “I have read Orwell and Kafka and Aldous Huxley, this dystopian science fiction novels that someday the United States would be overtaken by fascism.”
“Fascism, incidentally, is defined… Mussolini defined it as the merger of state and corporate power,’” he added.
“And orchestrated by Tony Fauci,” he went on as the crowd booed loudly.
“What we’re seeing today is what I call ‘turnkey totalitarianism,’” he continued. “They are putting in place all of these technological mechanisms for control we’ve never seen before.”
“It’s been the ambition of every totalitarian state from the beginning of mankind to control every aspect of behavior, of conduct, of thought, and to obliterate dissent. None of them have been able to do it,” he added.
“They didn’t have the technological capacity,” he noted. “Even in Hitler’s Germany you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. I visited in 1962 East Germany with my father. And met people who had climbed the wall and escaped. So, it was possible. Many died, surely. But it was possible.”
“Today, the mechanisms are being put in place,” he warned. “That will make it so that none of us can run, and none of us can hide.”
“Within five years, we are going to see 415,000 low orbit satellites,” he claimed. “Bill Gates and his 65,000 satellites alone will be able to look at every square inch of the planet 24 hours a day. They’re putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior. Digital currency that will allow them to punish us from our distance and cut off our food supply. Vaccine passports.”
This part of the speech ignited a media firestorm. They pounced on RFK Jr.’s bit about satellite surveillance and issues with 5G, hardly fringe matters, to lambaste his speech and brandish him a “conspiracy theorist,” which essentially means it is beneath them to address his concerns.
Jake Tapper called him “an ignorant lying menace.” Adam Klasfield of Law Crime News weirdly commented, “The obscene Holocaust invocations and analogies, from RFK Jr. and others at this anti-vaccine rally, sound eerily similar to the rhetoric that appears in legal briefs for indicted Oath Keepers extremists.” Professor Peter Hotez, CNN’s resident vaccine fanatic, opined: “Since June 200,000 unvaccinated Americans lost their lives needlessly to COVID19, victims of antivaccine disinformation, aggression, dog whistles from extremists who compare vaccines to the Holocaust, or promote conspiracies about Bill Gates, Tony Fauci, Me, other US scientists.” Poor guy. It turns out the disinformation has been coming from his side all along.
The reflexive “conspiracy theorist” label was invoked, just as it has countless times in the past before the “theory” actually became the “reality,” such as with “vaccine passports” themselves… which are now being used all over the world to deny people work and access to public spaces.
Even if it is difficult to verify all of RFK Jr.’s claims, the epithet “conspiracy theorist” no longer has the power to unilaterally shut down conversation. It would be remiss not to point out there is no biggest perpetrator of “conspiracy theories” than the mainstream media, which lied for years about Russia collusion, just like it has lied the entire time about the Covid pandemic. We continue.
“You have a series of rights, as flawed as our government is, you can still go out and go to a bar, you can go to a sporting event, you can get on a bus or an airplane and you can travel, you have certain freedoms,” RFK Jr. went on. “You can get educated, etcetera.”
“The minute they hand you that vaccine passport, every right that you have is transformed into a privilege contingent upon your obedience to arbitrary government dictates,” he added.
“It will make you a slave!”
“What do we do?” he asked. “We resist.”
At the end of the day, this is about accountability. It is about accountability for the elected leaders and unelected public health officials who have seized upon a pandemic to wantonly violate every American’s unalienable rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right to travel, and the right to bodily autonomy.
RFK Jr. has issued a rousing clarion call for all those who believe that the unlawful vaccine and mask mandates are simply “public health issues.” They are much more than that. They are about rights.
Nothing less than the future of Western civilization is on the line. There are dire implications if we fail to resist the authoritarian state’s escalating violations of human rights. No matter what its pretexts.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald spoke to RT’s Chris Hedges about the eerie similarities between the US government’s legally excessive actions after the 9/11 terror attacks and the Capitol riot earlier this year.
Those who “questioned” measures taken in the name of combating terrorism were treated as terrorist sympathizers in the months following the 9/11, Greenwald told Hedges during an appearance on RT’s ‘On Contact’, and the same argument is being made now by the media and Congress against anyone questioning the government’s response to January 6.
“Exactly the same thing is happening now,” the investigative journalist said, noting that the Justice Department’s targeting of “mostly poor and impoverished and lawyerless people” is similar to what was experienced by many Muslims who faced accusations or ended up in Guantanamo Bay, with few legal options.
“What they’re doing here is essentially running a parallel investigation to the Justice Department because they’re angry that the Justice Department hasn’t indicted anybody on these grandiose claims,” Greenwald said of the House committee investigating the riot, calling the actual investigation a “spectacle” to feed a “hungry liberal mob.” A federal grand jury released an indictment for former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon for failing to answer a subpoena to testify in front of the committee earlier this week.
Congress’ involvement helps to “vilify” those accused as a “supplement” to the Justice Department’s already questionable treatment, Greenwald argued. Greenwald has referred to this as the “second war on terror” due to the similarities in government action. Numerous Capitol rioters taken into custody have been denied bail and reportedly faced harsh conditions in prison, similar to the treatment of those accused of terrorism in the months following 9/11.
People being investigated in connection with January 6 are often not even aware, Greenwald added, thanks to third-party subpoenas provided to phone companies, email servers, etc. that request the person in question not be informed. The lack of oversight and safeguards makes it “almost knowingly and deliberately illegal,” the journalist, who is famous for publishing materials on mass US government surveillance exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, said.
Another striking similarity, Greenwald told Hedges, is reports of the FBI’s involvement with the acts in question. Many domestic terror plots foiled by officials in the months following 9/11 involved numerous FBI agents and informants, Greenwald recalled, and the same could be true for January 6, as reports have indicated FBI informants were in contact with some at the protest.
“To what extent did the FBI have advanced knowledge?” Greenwald asked, noting many of the “ringleaders” encouraging violence on January 6 have not been charged, while numerous nonviolent offenders have.
“It’s time for us to resist,” U.S. Senator Ron Paul asserted to his fellow Americans.
“They can’t arrest all of us. They can’t keep all of your kids home from school. They can’t keep every government building closed – although I’ve got a long list of ones they might keep closed or might ought to keep closed,” Paul said. “We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats. We can simply say no, not again.”
“Nancy Pelosi — you will not arrest or stop me or anyone on my staff from doing our jobs. We have either had COVID, had the vaccine, or been offered the vaccine,” Paul added. “We will make our own health choices. We will not show you a passport, we will not wear a mask, we will not be forced into random screenings and testings so you can continue your drunk-with-power rein over the Capitol.”
Paul went on to say that that Americans should not accept “anti-science” positions from the Biden administration, adding that he will “stop every bill coming through the Senate with an amendment to cut their funding if they don’t come to work in person.”
Paul also mention the importance of getting children back to school, stating that “every adult who works in schools has either had the vaccine or had their chance to get vaccinated.”
“Children are falling behind in school, and are being harmed physically and psychologically by the tactics that you have used to keep them from the classroom during the last year. We won’t allow it again,” Paul said. “If a school system attempts to keep the children from full-time, in-person school, I will hold up every bill with two amendments. One to defund them, and another to allow parents the choice of where the money goes for their child’s education.”
“Do I sound fed up to you? That’s because I am. I’m not a career politician. I practiced medicine for 33 years. I graduated from Duke Medical School, I’ve worked in emergency rooms, I’ve studied immunology and virology, and I ultimately chose to become an eye surgeon,” Paul added.
Paul also unleashed on Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I’m not the only one who is fed up,” Paul continued. “I can’t go anywhere these days without people coming up and thanking me for standing up for them. Whether I’m at work, or at events in Kentucky, at airports, in restaurants, or in stores, people thank me for taking a stand. They thank me for standing up for actual science. For standing up for freedom. For standing against mandates, lockdowns, and bureaucratic power grabs.”
“I think the tide is turning as more and more people are willing to stand up. I see stories from across the country of parents standing up to the unions and school boards,” Paul said. “I see brave moms standing up and saying, ‘My kids need to go back to school in-person.’ I see members of Congress refusing to comply with Petty Tyrant Pelosi. We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children? Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not? Not this time. I choose freedom.”
I have been feverishly writing lately on covid mandates and vaccine passports issues, and I’m sure most readers understand why – We are currently at the cusp of a great conflict against the powers that be; people who are exploiting the (mostly manufactured) covid crisis for unprecedented political and economic control. And when I say “manufactured”, I mean that there is no crisis, no need for mandates, no need for lockdowns and no need for vaccine passports.
We are dealing with a virus that around 99.7% of people will easily survive according to the medical establishment’s own studies and stats as well as numerous independent studies, yet, for some reason we are being bombarded with fear mongering from the media and from governments.
The Federal Reserve and other central banks burned trillions of dollars in stimulus measures and PPP loans to keep businesses from going completely bankrupt, and to keep jobless “non-essential” workers from starving during the initial shutdowns. But , we could have simply kept the economy going this entire time and paid a fraction of that cost helping the tiny minority of people that would actually suffer from the illness.
Yes, that’s right, I’ll say it again and again because I STILL to this day see the media and misinformed covid cultists continually claim the death rate of covid is much higher. It is not. The median Infection Fatality rate of covid is ONLY 0.26%. This is a FACT. This is the science according the vast majority of medical studies out there on the IFR. Let me repeat: The entire world is being locked down and told we have to give up our inherent human liberties because 0.26% of the population might get more than sniffles and brain fog from a covid infection. Why?
This essay is a little different from what I usually write in that it is not so much an appeal to pure reason or pure science and more an appeal to principle. I have been asked by many readers lately if it is not better to argue against pandemic mandates based on ideals and principles rather than hammering away at the science. I think it’s important to do both, but let’s take a moment to consider the moral question and the moral question alone. To do that we must ask some simple questions:
Who has the right to control your medical decisions? Who is qualified to control your constitutional right to life, liberty and the right to seek out prosperity? Who should be given the power to tell you what you can say, where you can work, where you can buy, where you can sell, where you can walk, where you can travel, what you must believe in?
As I have noted in numerous articles with endless scientific facts and evidence, no one who wants to remain free from covid mandates or vaccine passports is putting anyone else at risk. Again, the median death rate for covid is 0.26% and neither the mandates, nor the masks, nor the vaccines have put a stop to covid infections. Interestingly, it has been the states with the harshest lockdowns and mask restrictions that had the highest rates of infection for the past 18 months. Even now, fully vaccinated people are getting covid by the thousands in “breakout cases”, and some of them have died. Infections and deaths dropped off in January long before the vaccines were widely manufactured. Only 5% of the US population was vaccinated with a single dose by February. The fact is, the vaccines have achieved nothing.
Even if I was among the 0.26% of people that are at risk of dying, I would NEVER demand that the other 99.7% of the population give up their freedoms and their children’s freedoms just so I might feel a little bit safer. That would be an act of selfish madness.
But lets say for a moment that we set aside all the science that supports the anti-mandate position. What if the death rate of the virus was much higher? What if we were dealing with Ebola or some other nasty pathogen? What if 1 out of 100 people were at risk? What if 1 out of 10 people were are risk? Would medical tyranny and mass lockdowns be acceptable then? The answer is no, they would not be.
Why? Honestly, it’s a matter of who is in power and who is implementing such mandates. Why should we have blind confidence in governments made up of corrupt elitists and globalists? Who are they to look out for our best interests? How are these people qualified to protect the public trust? They are not qualified and will never be.
Thus, it is left up to the individual to protect themselves how they see fit, but the establishment tells us we are not capable of doing this. Rather, we must defer to their “better judgment”. They are supposedly smarter than us all, and as “benevolent” technocrats only they have the knowledge and righteousness to determine the course of every living person’s future.
Globalists like Gideon Lichfield at MIT told us exactly what the plan was in March of 2020 in an article tiled ‘We’re Not Going Back To Normal’. They admit that the goal has always been to institute vaccine passport restrictions that will last for many years to come, if not forever. From the article:
“Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating—legally—against those who are.
…one can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.”
As I have been warning they would do for the past year, multiple governments are keeping pandemic lockdowns and restrictions in place or they are bringing them back (in the case of the US), and it should be clear to everyone that this circular process of medical tyranny is not going to end. It is never meant to end. The goal of the establishment, of globalists and governments, is to keep the restrictions in place indefinitely.
The mainstream media has consistently attacked the claim that governments would enforce vaccine passports as conspiracy theory. Now they are openly admitting that the plan is to institute vaccine passports and they are vigorously defending it. They are discussing with avid fervor how they might be able to FORCE or compel each and every person to take the jab, even if they don’t want it and even if the jab serves no purpose.
I have my own suspicions of the jab and its true purpose and safety, but lets not forget that the jab is at the very least a stepping stone to the vaccine passports. The passports are the key to everything. Without the passports, medical tyranny cannot be established. Without the passports they have no leverage over the population to dictate the fundamental aspects of our lives. They NEED the passports in order to get their “Great Reset”. Without a “papers please” social credit system in place, their Reset will fall apart.
It is therefore imperative above all else that the vaccine passports are never allowed to take root. The program must be stopped and destroyed.
I am not a major “influencer” in conservative or liberty movement circles. I am not a big YouTube personality or a media Juggernaut. I have no big business backing or deep pockets to spur a national campaign. I’m not particularly fond of public speaking though I have learned to deal with it. I am just a writer with a love for the values of freedom, the values of reason and in many cases the values of faith that give humanity meaning. And, what I see is a deadly serious need; a need for an organized front line against the storm of dictatorship that is on our doorstep.
What I suggest is simple – A national campaign against the medical passports. Globalists, socialists and corporatists understand the concept of “pressure” and how to apply it to get what they want. I believe we must also learn how to wield pressure in the opposite direction. It is not enough to sit in our homes isolated from each other content in the knowledge that millions of other people feel the same way we do. We must also take action.
We must send a message: WE WILL NOT COMPLY!
I’m not sure that any single person out there has the “clout” to drive this campaign alone, and it’s probably better that way. What is required is a mass movement united by principles, not a movement tangled together by a cult of personality.
The primary strategy of the covid cult has been to work with larger corporations to demand proof of vaccination (vaccine passports). We must let these companies know in no uncertain terms that we will cut off all consumer support for their businesses. We will not work for them and we will not give them a penny of our money. Instead, we will approach smaller local businesses, find out if they are a part of the ‘We Will Not Comply’ campaign, and if they are, then we will support them instead. It’s time to teach these corporations a lesson and put them out of commission by removing our money and our labor from their pockets.
The next strategy by the establishment has been to mandate vaccinations for government workers. Again, mass walkouts are the answer. Let them sweat by losing half of their workforce. And then maybe take them to court. Bury them in lawsuits while strangling their ability to operate.
Eventually, the Biden Administration is going to attempt federal level lockdowns and vaccine controls. It’s only a matter of time. This is where organization is vital. Counties and states with majority conservatives and liberty advocates must band together and once again say “We Will Not Comply”. If your state government is on board and defying Biden then that will be extra helpful, but do not make the mistake of assuming that state governments alone will protect you. You must be organized at a local level, with your community and local businesses ready to make a stand. This must start now, before it is too late.
Finally, if the covid cult decides to pursue direct force as an option, we must be ready to fight back. Without local organization at minimum, defending ourselves will be difficult or impossible. This means bringing back an old standby of the Founding Fathers: The militia.
There is a time for preparation and a time for taking risks. Without risk there can be no freedom. We are quickly approaching a time in which gamblers and true believers could decide the fate of the world for the next century. A grassroots and organic movement needs to be assembled to fight back against the rising tide of totalitarianism. Each of us can only do our own small part, but together, in concert, I believe we can stop medical tyranny and the Reset in its tracks and even reverse the damage done.
I believe we are living here now at this crossroads for a reason. I believe we are meant to be here; that we are being given a chance to be the right people in the right place at the right time. I believe that we can end this evil, but only if we dare to try. It begins with one simple step: Telling the world “We Will Not Comply!” And then, we must follow through on our promise.
Far from being a war against “white supremacy,” the Biden administration’s new “domestic terror” strategy clearly targets primarily those who oppose US government overreach and those who oppose capitalism and/or globalization.
In the latest sign that the US government’s War on Domestic Terror is growing in scope and scale, the White House on Tuesday revealed the nation’s first ever government-wide strategy for confronting domestic terrorism. While cloaked in language about stemming racially motivated violence, the strategy places those deemed “anti-government” or “anti-authority” on a par with racist extremists and charts out policies that could easily be abused to silence or even criminalize online criticism of the government.
Even more disturbing is the call to essentially fuse intelligence agencies, law enforcement, Silicon Valley, and “community” and “faith-based” organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, as well as unspecified foreign governments, as partners in this “war,” which the strategy makes clear will rely heavily on a pre-crime orientation focused largely on what is said on social media and encrypted platforms. Though the strategy claims that the government will “shield free speech and civil liberties” in implementing this policy, its contents reveal that it is poised to gut both.
Indeed, while framed publicly as chiefly targeting “right-wing white supremacists,” the strategy itself makes it clear that the government does not plan to focus on the Right but instead will pursue “domestic terrorists” in “an ideologically neutral, threat-driven manner,” as the law “makes no distinction based on political view—left, right or center.” It also states that a key goal of this strategic framework is to ensure “that there is simply no governmental tolerance . . . of violence as an acceptable mode of seeking political or social change,” regardless of a perpetrator’s political affiliation.
Considering that the main cheerleaders for the War on Domestic Terror exist mainly in establishment left circles, such individuals should rethink their support for this new policy given that the above statements could easily come to encompass Black Lives Matter–related protests, such as those that transpired last summer, depending on which political party is in power.
Once the new infrastructure is in place, it will remain there and will be open to the same abuses perpetrated by both political parties in the US during the lengthy War on Terror following September 11, 2001. The history of this new “domestic terror” policy, including its origins in the Trump administration, makes this clear.
It’s Never Been Easier to Be a “Terrorist”
In introducing the strategy, the Biden administration cites “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” as a key reason for the new policy and a main justification for the War on Domestic Terror in general. This was most recently demonstrated Tuesday in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statement announcing this new strategy. However, the document itself puts “anti-government” or “anti-authority” “extremists” in the same category as violent white supremacists in terms of being a threat to the homeland. The strategy’s characterization of such individuals is unsettling.
For instance, those who “violently oppose” “all forms of capitalism” or “corporate globalization” are listed under this less-discussed category of “domestic terrorist.” This highlights how people on the left, many of whom have called for capitalism to be dismantled or replaced in the US in recent years, could easily be targeted in this new “war” that many self-proclaimed leftists are currently supporting. Similarly, “environmentally-motivated extremists,” a category in which groups such as Extinction Rebellion could easily fall, are also included.
In addition, the phrasing indicates that it could easily include as “terrorists” those who oppose the World Economic Forum’s vision for global “stakeholder capitalism,” as that form of “capitalism” involves corporations and their main “stakeholders” creating a new global economic and governance system. The WEF’s stakeholder capitalism thus involves both “capitalism” and “corporate globalization.”
The strategy also includes those who “take steps to violently resist government authority . . . based on perceived overreach.” This, of course, creates a dangerous situation in which the government could, purposely or otherwise, implement a policy that is an obvious overreach and/or blatantly unconstitutional and then label those who resist it “domestic terrorists” and deal with them as such—well before the overreach can be challenged in court.
Another telling addition to this group of potential “terrorists” is “any other individual or group who engages in violence—or incites imminent violence—in opposition to legislative, regulatory or other actions taken by the government.” Thus, if the government implements a policy that a large swath of the population finds abhorrent, such as launching a new, unpopular war abroad, those deemed to be “inciting” resistance to the action online could be considered domestic terrorists.
Such scenarios are not unrealistic, given the loose way in which the government and the media have defined things like “incitement” and even “violence” (e. g., “hate speech” is a form of violence) in the recent past. The situation is ripe for manipulation and abuse. To think the federal government (including the Biden administration and subsequent administrations) would not abuse such power reflects an ignorance of US political history, particularly when the main forces behind most terrorist incidents in the nation are actually US government institutions like the FBI (more FBI examples here, here, here, and here).
Furthermore, the original plans for the detention of American dissidents in the event of a national emergency, drawn up during the Reagan era as part of its “continuity of government” contingency, cited popular nonviolent opposition to US intervention in Latin America as a potential “emergency” that could trigger the activation of those plans. Many of those “continuity of government” protocols remain on the books today and can be triggered, depending on the whims of those in power. It is unlikely that this new domestic terror framework will be any different regarding nonviolent protest and demonstrations.
Yet another passage in this section of the strategy states that “domestic terrorists” can, “in some instances, connect and intersect with conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and misinformation.” It adds that the proliferation of such “dangerous” information “on Internet-based communications platforms such as social media, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, all of these elements can combine and amplify threats to public safety.”
Thus, the presence of “conspiracy theories” and information deemed by the government to be “misinformation” online is itself framed as threatening public safety, a claim made more than once in this policy document. Given that a major “pillar” of the strategy involves eliminating online material that promotes “domestic terrorist” ideologies, it seems inevitable that such efforts will also “connect and intersect” with the censorship of “conspiracy theories” and narratives that the establishment finds inconvenient or threatening for any reason.
Pillars of Tyranny
The strategy notes in several places that this new domestic-terror policy will involve a variety of public-private partnerships in order to “build a community to address domestic terrorism that extends not only across the Federal Government but also to critical partners.” It adds, “That includes state, local, tribal and territorial governments, as well as foreign allies and partners, civil society, the technology sector, academic, and more.”
The mention of foreign allies and partners is important as it suggests a multinational approach to what is supposedly a US “domestic” issue and is yet another step toward a transnational security-state apparatus. A similar multinational approach was used to devastating effect during the CIA-developed Operation Condor, which was used to target and “disappear” domestic dissidents in South America in the 1970s and 1980s. The foreign allies mentioned in the Biden administration’s strategy are left unspecified, but it seems likely that such allies would include the rest of the Five Eyes alliance (the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) and Israel, all of which already have well-established information-sharing agreements with the US for signals intelligence.
The new domestic-terror strategy has four main “pillars,” which can be summarized as (1) understanding and sharing domestic terrorism-related information, including with foreign governments and private tech companies; (2) preventing domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence; (3) disrupting and deterring domestic terrorism activity; and (4) confronting long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.
The first pillar involves the mass accumulation of data through new information-sharing partnerships and the deepening of existing ones. Much of this information sharing will involve increased data mining and analysis of statements made openly on the internet, particularly on social media, something already done by US intelligence contractors such as Palantir. While the gathering of such information has been ongoing for years, this policy allows even more to be shared and legally used to make cases against individuals deemed to have made threats or expressed “dangerous” opinions online.
Included in the first pillar is the need to increase engagement with financial institutions concerning the financing of “domestic terrorists.” US banks, such as Bank of America, have already gone quite far in this regard, leading to accusations that it has begun acting like an intelligence agency. Such claims were made after it was revealed that the BofA had passed to the government the private banking information of over two hundred people that the bank deemed as pointing to involvement in the events of January 6, 2021. It seems likely, given this passage in the strategy, that such behavior by banks will soon become the norm, rather than an outlier, in the United States.
The second pillar is ostensibly focused on preventing the online recruitment of domestic terrorists and online content that leads to the “mobilization of violence.” The strategy notes that this pillar “means reducing both supply and demand of recruitment materials by limiting widespread availability online and bolstering resilience to it by those who nonetheless encounter it.“ The strategy states that such government efforts in the past have a “mixed record,” but it goes on to claim that trampling on civil liberties will be avoided because the government is “consulting extensively” with unspecified “stakeholders” nationwide.
Regarding recruitment, the strategy states that “these activities are increasingly happening on Internet-based communications platforms, including social media, online gaming platforms, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, even as those products and services frequently offer other important benefits.” It adds that “the widespread availability of domestic terrorist recruitment material online is a national security threat whose front lines are overwhelmingly private-sector online platforms.”
The US government plans to provide “information to assist online platforms with their own initiatives to enforce their own terms of service that prohibits the use of their platforms for domestic terrorist activities” as well as to “facilitate more robust efforts outside the government to counter terrorists’ abuse of Internet-based communications platforms.”
Given the wider definition of “domestic terrorist” that now includes those who oppose capitalism and corporate globalization as well as those who resist government overreach, online content discussing these and other “anti-government” and “anti-authority” ideas could soon be treated in the same way as online Al Qaeda or ISIS propaganda. Efforts, however, are unlikely to remain focused on these topics. As Unlimited Hangoutreported last November, both UK intelligence and the US national-security state were developing plans to treat critical reporting on the COVID-19 vaccines as “extremist” propaganda.
Another key part of this pillar is the need to “increase digital literacy” among the American public, while censoring “harmful content” disseminated by “terrorists” as well as by “hostile foreign powers seeking to undermine American democracy.” The latter is a clear reference to the claim that critical reporting of US government policy, particularly its military and intelligence activities abroad, was the product of “Russian disinformation,” a now discredited claim that was used to heavily censor independent media. This new government strategy appears to promise more of this sort of thing.
It also notes that “digital literacy” education for a domestic audience is being developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Such a policy would have previously violated US law until the Obama administration worked with Congress to repeal the Smith-Mundt Act, thus lifting the ban on the government directing propaganda at domestic audiences.
The third pillar of the strategy seeks to increase the number of federal prosecutors investigating and trying domestic-terror cases. Their numbers are likely to jump as the definition of “domestic terrorist” is expanded. It also seeks to explore whether “legislative reforms could meaningfully and materially increase our ability to protect Americans from acts of domestic terrorism while simultaneously guarding against potential abuse of overreach.” In contrast to past public statements on police reform by those in the Biden administration, the strategy calls to “empower” state and local law enforcement to tackle domestic terrorism, including with increased access to “intelligence” on citizens deemed dangerous or subversive for any number of reasons.
To that effect, the strategy states the following (p. 24):“The Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, with support from the National Counterterrorism Center [part of the intelligence community], are incorporating an increased focus on domestic terrorism into current intelligence products and leveraging current mechanisms of information and intelligence sharing to improve the sharing of domestic terrorism-related content and indicators with non-Federal partners. These agencies are also improving the usability of their existing information-sharing platforms, including through the development of mobile applications designed to provide a broader reach to non-Federal law enforcement partners, while simultaneously refining that support based on partner feedback.”
Such an intelligence tool could easily be, for example, Palantir, which is already used by the intelligence agencies, the DHS, and several US police departments for “predictive policing,” that is, pre-crime actions. Notably, Palantir has long included a “subversive” label for individuals included on government and law enforcement databases, a parallel with the controversial and highly secretive Main Core database of US dissidents.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the “pre-crime” element of the new domestic terror strategy explicit on Tuesday when he said in a statement that DHS would continue “developing key partnerships with local stakeholders through the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to identify potential threats and prevent terrorism.” CP3, which replaced DHS’ Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention this past May, officially “supports communities across the United States to prevent individuals from radicalizing to violence and intervene when individuals have already radicalized to violence.”
The fourth pillar of the strategy is by far the most opaque and cryptic, while also the most far-reaching. It aims to address the sources that cause “terrorists” to mobilize “towards violence.” This requires “tackling racism in America,” a lofty goal for an administration headed by the man who controversially eulogized Congress’ most ardent segregationist and who was a key architect of the 1994 crime bill. As well, it provides for “early intervention and appropriate care for those who pose a danger to themselves or others.”
In regard to the latter proposal, the Trump administration, in a bid to “stop mass shootings before they occur,” considered a proposal to create a “health DARPA” or “HARPA” that would monitor the online communications of everyday Americans for “neuropsychiatric” warning signs that someone might be “mobilizing towards violence.” While the Trump administration did not create HARPA or adopt this policy, the Biden administration has recently announced plans to do so.
Finally, the strategy indicates that this fourth pillar is part of a “broader priority”: “enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence.” In other words, fostering trust in government while simultaneously censoring “polarizing” voices who distrust or criticize the government is a key policy goal behind the Biden administration’s new domestic-terror strategy.
Calling Their Shots?
While this is a new strategy, its origins lie in the Trump administration. In October 2019, Trump’s attorney general William Barr formally announced in a memorandum that a new “national disruption and early engagement program” aimed at detecting those “mobilizing towards violence” before they commit any crime would launch in the coming months. That program, known as DEEP (Disruption and Early Engagement Program), is now active and has involved the Department of Justice, the FBI, and “private sector partners” since its creation.
Barr’s announcement of DEEP followed his unsettling “prediction” in July 2019 that “a major incident may occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.” Not long after that speech, a spate of mass shootings occurred, including the El Paso Walmart shooting, which killed twenty-three and about which many questions remain unanswered regarding the FBI’s apparent foreknowledge of the event. After these events took place in 2019, Trump called for the creation of a government backdoor into encryption and the very pre-crime system that Barr announced shortly thereafter in October 2019. The Biden administration, in publishing this strategy, is merely finishing what Barr started.
Indeed, a “prediction” like Barr’s in 2019 was offered by the DHS’ Elizabeth Neumann during a Congressional hearing in late February 2020. That hearing was largely ignored by the media as it coincided with an international rise of concern regarding COVID-19. At the hearing, Neumann, who previously coordinated the development of the government’s post-9/11 terrorism information sharing strategies and policies and worked closely with the intelligence community, gave the following warning about an imminent “domestic terror” event in the United States:“And every counterterrorism professional I speak to in the federal government and overseas feels like we are at the doorstep of another 9/11, maybe not something that catastrophic in terms of the visual or the numbers, but that we can see it building and we don’t quite know how to stop it.”
This “another 9/11” emerged on January 6, 2021, as the events of that day in the Capitol were quickly labeled as such by both the media and prominent politicians, while also inspiring calls from the White House and the Democrats for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the incident. This event, of course, figures prominently in the justification for the new domestic-terror strategy, despite the considerable video and other evidence that shows that Capitol law enforcement, and potentially the FBI, were directly involved in facilitating the breach of the Capitol. In addition, when one considers that the QAnon movement, which had a clear role in the events of January 6, was itself likely a government-orchestratedpsyop, the government hand in creating this situation seems clear.
It goes without saying that the official reasons offered for these militaristic “domestic terror” policies, which the US has already implemented abroad—causing much more terror than it has prevented—does not justify the creation of a massive new national-security infrastructure that aims to criminalize and censor online speech. Yet the admission that this new strategy, as part of a broader effort to “enhance faith in government,” combines domestic propaganda campaigns with the censorship and pursuit of those who distrust government heralds the end of even the illusion of democracy in the United States.
Liberty International News 