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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/federal_bureau_of_intimidation_the_governments_war_on_political_freedom

Federal Bureau of Intimidation: The Government’s War on Political Freedom

“In so many of the little places of everyday life in which life is lived out, somehow democracy doesn't exist. And one of the creeping hands of totalitarianism running through the democracy is the Federal Bureau of Investigation… Because why does the FBI do all this? To scare the hell out of people… They work for the establishment and the corporations and the politicos to keep things as they are. And they want to frighten and chill the people who are trying to change things.”—Howard Zinn, historian

Discredit, disrupt, and destroy.

That is how the government plans to get rid of activists and dissidents who stand in its way.

This has always been the modus operandi of the FBI (more aptly referred to as the Federal Bureau of Intimidation): muzzle anti-government sentiment, harass activists, and terrorize Americans into compliance.

Indeed, the FBI has a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures.

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, the FBI’s targets were civil rights activists, those suspected of having Communist ties, and anti-war activists. In more recent decades, the FBI has expanded its reach to target so-called domestic extremists, environmental activists, and those who oppose the police state.

Back in 2019, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism, without any apparent thought for the Constitution’s prohibitions on such overreach.

That misguided pledge sheds a curious light on the FBI’s latest nationwide spree of SWAT team raids, surveillance, disinformation campaigns, fear-mongering, paranoia, and strong-arm tactics.

For instance, just before dawn on Jan. 25, 2019, the FBI sent 29 heavily armed agents in 17 vehicles to carry out a SWAT-style raid on the Florida home of Roger Stone, one of President Trump’s longtime supporters. Stone, charged with a political crime, was taken away in handcuffs.

In March 2021, under the pretext of carrying out an inventory of U.S. Private Vaults, FBI agents raided 1400 safe deposit boxes in Beverly Hills, seizing “more than $86 million in cash as well as gold, jewelry, and other valuables from property owners who were suspected of no crimes.”

In April 2021, FBI agents raided Rudy Giuliani’s home and office, seizing 18 electronic devices. More than a year later, Giuliani has yet to be charged with any crimes.

In June 2022, Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official under the Trump Administration, was led out of his home in pajamas while federal law enforcement officials raided his home.

In the summer of 2022, FBI agents wearing tactical gear including body armor, helmets and camouflage uniforms and carrying rifles raided multiple homes throughout Little Rock, Ark., including a judge’s home.

In August 2022, more than a dozen FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago, the winter home of Donald Trump.

And in September 2022, 25 to 30 armed FBI agents raided the home of an anti-abortion activist, pointing guns at the family and terrorizing the man’s wife and seven children.

Politics aside, the message is clear: this is how the government will deal with anyone who challenges its authority.

You’re next.

Unfortunately, while these overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear, none of this is new.

The government has been playing these mind games for a long time.

As Betty Medsger, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, noted in 1971, the FBI was engaged in practices that had never been reported, probably were unconstitutional, and were counter to the public’s understanding of the agency’s purpose.

The objective: target anti-government dissenters for wide-scale harassment, widespread surveillance and intimidation in order to enhance their paranoia and make them think there was an “FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

Medsger, the recipient of stolen government files that provided a glimpse into the workings of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency, would later learn that between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted an intensive domestic intelligence program, termed COINTELPRO, intended to neutralize domestic political dissidents.

The explicit objective, according to one FBI memo: “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” perceived threats to the government’s power.

As Congressman Steve Cohen explains, “COINTELPRO was set up to surveil and disrupt groups and movements that the FBI found threatening… many groups, including anti-war, student, and environmental activists, and the New Left were harassed, infiltrated, falsely accused of criminal activity      .”

Sound familiar? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Those targeted by the FBI under COINTELPRO for its intimidation, surveillance and smear campaigns included: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, the Black Panther Party, Billie Holiday, Emma Goldman, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Felix Frankfurter, John Lennon, and hundreds more.

Among those most closely watched by the FBI was King, a man labeled by the FBI as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” All told, the FBI collected 17,000 pages of materials on King.

With wiretaps and electronic bugs planted in his home and office, King was kept under constant surveillance by the FBI with the aim of “neutralizing” him. He even received blackmail letters written by FBI agents suggesting that he either commit suicide or the details of his private life would be revealed to the public. The FBI kept up its pursuit of King until he was felled by a hollow-point bullet to the head in 1968.

John Lennon, a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist, was another high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.

Lennon was singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files illegally collected on his activities and associations.

For a while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Years after Lennon’s assassination, it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of files on him, including song lyrics.

J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, directed the agency to spy on the musician. There were also various written orders calling on government agents to frame Lennon for a drug bust. “The FBI’s files on Lennon … read like the writings of a paranoid goody-two-shoes,” observed reporter Jonathan Curiel.

As the New York Times notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”

Indeed, all of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising, and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with electoral politics.”

The Church Committee, the Senate task force charged with investigating COINTELPRO abuses in 1975, echoed these concerns about the government’s abuses:

“Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.”

The report continued:

“Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed—including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.”

Fifty years later, we’re still having this same debate about the perils of government overreach.

For too long now, the American people have allowed their personal prejudices and politics to cloud their judgment and render them incapable of seeing that the treatment being doled out by the government’s lethal enforcers has remained consistent, no matter the threat.

The lesson to be learned is this: whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now, rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government and its henchmen today will eventually be meted out on the general populace.

At that point, when you find yourself in the government’s crosshairs, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white; it will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen; it will not matter whether you’re rich or poor; it will not matter whether you’re Republican or Democrat; and it certainly won’t matter who you voted for in the last presidential election.

At that point—when you find yourself subjected to dehumanizing, demoralizing, thuggish behavior by government bureaucrats who are hyped up on the power of their badges and empowered to detain, search, interrogate, threaten and generally harass anyone they see fit—remember you were warned.

Frankly, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are long past the point where we should be merely alarmed.

These are no longer experiments on our freedoms.

These are acts of aggression by a government that is no friend to freedom.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/putin-address-russian-people-september-21-2022/5794513

Putin’s Address to the Russian People: “Abandoning Hope For Peaceful Coexistence”?

Introduction by Paul Craig Roberts

The Western media is a collection of liars in a propaganda ministry, and its so-called “Russian experts” are for the most part Russophobes operating on grants from the US military/security complex.  

Consequently, Westerners have no valid understanding of the conflict in Ukraine, how it arose, and how the West’s involvement together with extraordinary provocations, has  created in the Russian leadership the conviction that the goal of the West is to destroy Russia. 

As this conviction hardens, the Russian leadership is abandoning hope of peaceful coexistence with the Western world and is preparing for war.

In his speech Putin begins the preparation of the Russian people for the hard reality.  Putin doesn’t like the hard reality and did his best to avoid it by ignoring provocations and insults until it became impossible because, as Putin says,  “the West has crossed every line.”

The West, of course, is Washington.  The rest of the Western world reports to Washington as I learned from a US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. “How,” I asked him, “do we get the other countries to do what we want?”  “Money,” he replied. “You mean foreign aid?”  “No, we give the leaders bagfuls of money.  They report to us.  We own them.”

This means that there are no independent Western voices in Britain, Germany, France or elsewhere to moderate Washington’s drive for world hegemony.  There is no one to say, “do you know what you are doing?”

There is no one to warn Washington that the US is pushing Russia too hard.  There is no one to warn us against believing our own propaganda. Consequently, Washington has pushed the Russian leadership out of the accommodation mode into the prepare for conflict mode.

This clearly demonstrates how dangerous is the neoconservatives’ unilateralism.  There is no one to talk back to Washington but Washington’s chosen enemies, whose words, if reported at all, are always reported out of context following the propaganda line that it is Russia and China, never Washington, who is the threat and cause of conflict.

I recommend you read the translation of Putin’s address to the Russian Nation.  Possibly Tass or the office of the Russian President will provide a better translation, but his one is sufficient to see how the Russian leadership views a situation that has been misreported by Western presstitutes in a fashion that supports the West’s propaganda picture of Russia’s evil intent.

The fact of the matter is that the problem is Washington’s evil intent.

Military historians understand that once mobilization starts, war follows.  Putin is trying to avoid this irreversible course by ordering a limited, not full mobilization, which he hopes, together with the self-determination under the UN Charter of the four liberated areas to be reunited with the Russian Federation, will convince the West that the war cannot continue unless the West supports military attacks directly on Russian territory. 

I have been writing for 8 years that Washington, despite its arrogance, will not go so far as to initiate war with a superior Russian military force.  This was true in 2014.  I hope it is still true today.

You will not hear Putin’s closing words to the Russian nation from the West’s presstitutes.  Putin puts the idiot West on notice that the West’s survival is unlikely unless Washington gives up its demand for hegemony:

Putin’s address to the Russian people 

The topic of my speech is the situation in the Donbas and the course of a special military operation to liberate it from the neo-Nazi regime, which seized power in Ukraine in 2014 as a result of an armed coup d’état.

I appeal today to you, to all citizens of our country, to people of different generations, age and nationality, to the people of our great Motherland, to all those who are united by the great historical Russia, to the soldiers and officers, volunteers who are now fighting on the front line, are on combat duty, to our brothers and sisters – residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, other areas liberated from the neo-Nazi regime.

We will talk about the necessary, urgent steps to protect the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Russia, about supporting the desire and will of our compatriots to determine their own future and about the aggressive policy of a part of the Western elites, who are trying with all their might to maintain their dominance, and for this they are trying to block and suppress any sovereign independent centers of development in order to continue to rudely impose their will on other countries and peoples. impose their pseudo-values. 

The goal of this West is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country. They are already directly saying that in 1991 they were able to split the Soviet Union, and now the time has come for Russia itself, that it must disintegrate into many deadly warring regions and regions.

And they have been hatching such plans for a long time. They encouraged gangs of international terrorists in the Caucasus, promoted NATO’s offensive infrastructure close to our borders. They have made total Russophobia their weapons, including for decades purposefully cultivating hatred of Russia, primarily in Ukraine, to which they were preparing the fate of an anti-Russian bridgehead, and turned the Ukrainian people themselves into cannon fodder and pushed them to war with our country, unleashing it, this war, back in 2014, using armed forces against the civilian population, organizing genocide. blockade, terror against people who refused to recognize the power that arose in Ukraine as a result of a coup d’état.

And after the current Kiev regime actually publicly abandoned a peaceful solution to the problem of Donbass and, moreover, declared its claims to nuclear weapons, it became absolutely clear that a new, next, as it was before twice, large-scale offensive in the Donbas is inevitable. And then, just as inevitably, there would be an attack on Russia’s Crimea – on Russia.

In this regard, the decision on a pre-emptive military operation was absolutely necessary and the only possible one. Its main goals – the liberation of the entire territory of Donbass – have been and remain unchanged.

The Lugansk People’s Republic has already been almost completely cleansed of neo-Nazis. Fighting in the Donetsk People’s Republic continues. Here, in eight years, the Kiev occupation regime has created a deeply layered line of long-term fortifications. Their assault in the forehead would have resulted in heavy losses, so our units, as well as the military units of the Donbass republics, act systematically, competently, use equipment, protect personnel and step by step liberate the Donetsk land, clear cities and towns from neo-Nazis, provide assistance to people whom the Kiev regime has turned into hostages, into a human shield.

As you know, professional servicemen serving under a contract take part in a special military operation. Together with them, volunteer formations also fight shoulder to shoulder: people of different nationalities, professions, ages are real patriots. At the call of their hearts, they stood up to defend Russia and Donbass.

In this regard, I have already instructed the Government and the Defence Ministry to determine in full and as soon as possible the legal status of volunteers, as well as fighters of units of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. It should be the same as that of career servicemen of the Russian army, including material, medical support, social guarantees. Particular attention should be paid to the organization of supplying volunteer formations and detachments of the people’s militia of Donbass with equipment and equipment.

In the course of solving the main tasks of protecting Donbass, our troops, based on the plans and decisions of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff on the general strategy of action, liberated significant territories of Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, as well as a number of other areas, from neo-Nazis. As a result, a long line of combat contact was formed, which is over a thousand kilometers.

What do I want to say publicly for the first time today? Already after the start of the special military operation, including the talks in Istanbul, representatives of Kiev reacted to our proposals very positively, and these proposals primarily concerned ensuring Russia’s security and our interests. But it is obvious that the peace solution did not suit the West, therefore, after reaching certain compromises, Kiev was actually given a direct instruction to disrupt all agreements.

Ukraine began to be pumped even more with weapons. The Kiev regime has unleashed new gangs of foreign mercenaries and nationalists, military units trained according to NATO standards and under the de facto command of Western advisers.

At the same time, the regime of repression throughout Ukraine against its own citizens, established immediately after the armed coup of 2014, was strengthened in the most severe way. The policy of intimidation, terror and violence is taking on increasingly massive, terrible and barbaric forms.

I want to emphasize that we know that the majority of people living in the territories liberated from neo-Nazis, and these are primarily the historical lands of Novorossiya, do not want to be under the yoke of the neo-Nazi regime. In Zaporozhye, Kherson region, Lugansk and Donetsk have seen and see the atrocities committed by neo-Nazis in the occupied areas of the Kharkiv region. The heirs of the Banderites and Nazi punishers kill people, torture them, throw them in prisons, settle scores, massacre and torture civilians.

More than seven and a half million people lived in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions before the outbreak of hostilities. Many of them were forced to become refugees, to leave their homes. And those who remain – about five million people – are now subjected to constant artillery and rocket fire from neo-Nazi militants. They hit hospitals and schools, arrange terrorist acts against civilians.

We cannot, do not have any moral right to give the people close to us to the torment of the executioners, we cannot but respond to their sincere desire to determine their own destiny. The parliaments of the people’s republics of Donbass, as well as the military-civil administrations of Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, decided to hold referendums on the future of these territories and appealed to us, to Russia, with a request to support such a step.

I would like to emphasise that we will do everything we can to ensure safe conditions for holding referendums and so that people can express their will. And we will support the decision on our future, which will be made by the majority of residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions.

Dear friends!

Today, our Armed Forces, as I have already said, operate on the line of combat contact, which exceeds a thousand kilometers, resist not only neo-Nazi formations, but in fact the entire military machine of the collective West.

In this situation, I consider it necessary to make the following decision – it is fully adequate to the threats we face – namely, to protect our Motherland, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, to ensure the security of our people and people in the liberated territories, I consider it necessary to support the proposal of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff to conduct partial mobilization in the Russian Federation.

Let me repeat that we are talking about partial mobilization, that is, only citizens who are currently in the reserve, and above all those who served in the Armed Forces, have certain military specialties and relevant experience, will be subject to conscription for military service.

Those called up for military service before being sent to the units will necessarily undergo additional military training, taking into account the experience of a special military operation.

The decree on partial mobilization has been signed.

In accordance with the legislation, the chambers of the Federal Assembly – the Federation Council and the State Duma – will be officially informed about this by letters today.

Mobilization measures will begin today, from September 21. I instruct the heads of the regions to provide all the necessary assistance to the work of military commissariats.

I would like to emphasise that Russian citizens called up for military service upon mobilization will receive the status, payments and all social guarantees of servicemen undergoing military service under contract.

I would like to add that the Executive Order on Partial Mobilization also provides for additional measures to implement the state defence order. The heads of defence industry enterprises are directly responsible for solving the tasks of increasing the production of weapons and military equipment and deploying additional production facilities. In turn, all issues of material, resource and financial support of defense enterprises should be resolved by the Government immediately.

Dear friends!

In its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has crossed every line. We constantly hear threats against our country, our people. Some irresponsible politicians in the West are  talking about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine – systems that will allow strikes on Crimea and other regions of Russia.

Such terrorist strikes, including those using Western weapons, are already being carried out on border settlements in the Belgorod and Kursk regions. In real time, using modern systems, aircraft, ships, satellites, strategic drones, NATO carries out reconnaissance throughout the south of Russia.

Washington, London and Brussels are directly pushing Kiev to transfer military operations to our territory. Without hiding their intention any longer, they say that Russia must be defeated at all costs on the battlefield  leading to  the loss of all Russian sovereignty,  the complete plundering of our country, and the destruction of Russian political, economic, and cultural existence.

Nuclear blackmail is also used. We are talking not only about the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which threatens an atomic catastrophe, but also about the statements of some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia – nuclear weapons.

For those who allow themselves such statements regarding Russia, I would like to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and in some components – more modern than those of NATO countries. And when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we certainly will use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff.

Russian citizens can be sure that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured, I stress this again, by all the means available to us. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the same can happen to them.

It is in our historical tradition, in the fate of our people, to stop those who are striving for world domination, who threaten to dismember and enslave our Motherland, our Fatherland. We will do it now, and so it will be.