RICO and now NDAA: Are you soon to become a domestic terrorist?

You know how RICO--the so-called Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was originally supposed to go after Mafia-style Big Crime organizations that do really nasty things . . . and then began to transmogrify for use against protest groups.

Mike Adams of Natural News points out that the recently-passed NDAA--National Defense Authorization Act about which I wrote a couple of times last month--is now ready for use against . . . you've got it . . . "domestic terrorist" groups like Food Not Bombs, whose purpose is to provide vegetarian buffet foods in public parks to feed the homeless, the hungry, and social protest movements like the Occupy protesters we have seen in the United States.

Adams makes an oblique reference to the famous statement by Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), the German theologian who spent seven years in Nazi concentration camps. After World War II, Niemöller said:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Adams titled his article, And then they came for the food activists.

Hey: "I'm not one of them." I don't like crowds and I don't like mobs and, at best, I'm a "socialist" only in the sense that I believe in voluntarily doing good to or for those in need. But government-enforced "socialism"? No thanks!

So I'm definitely not "one of them." But I was raised to act according to the old maxim, usually misattributed to Voltaire, that "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Here's what Adams writes based on multiple sources I have listed below this quote:

The FBI investigated a former Chicago Tribune journalist for handing out leaflets advocating animal rights. Will Potter was arrested by Chicago police and then released. Shortly after, the FBI knocked on his door. Will was threatened with being placed on the "domestic terrorist list."

More journalist than street activist, Will decided to dive into the rabbit hole of federal law enforcement suppressing environmental and animal rights activists. From that experience he wrote his book Green is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege. What Will discloses is disturbing.

Eco-terrorists, animal rights terrorists, and political prison

The war against terrorism already includes environmentalists and animal rights groups. Both groups occasionally engage in acts of vandalism, temporary occupation, and "illegally" releasing animals from lab experiment facilities.

But usually these activists conduct peaceful demonstrations and disseminate materials promoting their valid causes. If there is any vandalism, one could be charged for that and either fined or jailed according to the offense and the accused person's previous record.

But now, two secret prisons designed for domestic terrorists have sprung up in Indiana and Illinois. And environmental and animal rights activists have been considered domestic terrorists for years. These special domestic terrorist prisons are called Communication Management Units (CMUs).

Per prison documentation, CMUs are "self-contained" housing units for prisoners who "require increased monitoring of communication" in order to "protect the public." Current prisoners were transferred from minimal security prisons to CMUs without notice or due process.

The CMUs limit phone calls, visiting time, and mail much more than even maximum security prisons. Everything is monitored closely. Another Prison Bureau mission statement for CMUs is to keep people with "inspirational significance" from communicating with their groups or anyone in the media and public.

And now food activists are eligible for CMUs

This covers a wide spectrum of peaceful activists. Documents retrieved under the Freedom of Information Act (FIA) disclose the FBI's intent to infiltrate food activist groups and arrest food activists as domestic terrorists.

There have been raids on the Food Not Bombs activist groups. Their activity has involved creating vegetarian buffet food stands in public parks to feed the homeless, protest marches, and investigating and communicating corrupt global food distribution. That's a hot one!

Recently, public park feeding festivals were closed down forcefully. Members are often under surveillance. As early as 1989, military run classes in domestic training used the Food Not Bombs group as a case-study for one of "America's most hardcore terrorist groups".

Most of us know of other raids on raw milk distributors, family farms, private vegetable gardens and private food storage facilities. An outdoor vegetarian banquet held at someone's ranch was even disrupted by state health officials recently.

All of these cases of local law enforcement or food agency harassment eventually make their way into FBI files. But there's more -- the FBI has urged local authorities to harass and provide information. A Food Not Bombs site reports that private security agents from large corporations, like Monsanto, are also involved with food activist surveillance and monitoring.

The "War on Terror" is the cover for all this intimidation of citizens actively concerned about the future of food quality and food freedom. A compliant media and dumbed down population allows it.

Adams lists, as sources for his article,
Michael Kindt's Open Up and Say "Ahh", FoodNotBombs.net' America's Dirty Little Secret, Domestic Surveillance, Potter's What is the “Green Scare”?, and a two and a half-year-old article by Potter titled Secretive U.S. Prison Units Used to House Muslim, Animal Rights and Environmental Activists.

It disturbs me to think that more than a generation of Americans have been encouraged to read George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, but when the real Big Brother is upon us, we are, in general, as supine as the citizens of Orwell's country.

How sad!

Sounds "a little bitter"

Is it possible this article is a hoax? If not, Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, sounds like maybe he's gone off his rocker. He claims that, "Except for 9/11 itself, . . . there have been no terror attacks on the US." And even with respect to 9/11, he speaks of "the government’s improbable conspiracy theory explanation." (!!! --Quite a string of words, there! And does he really believe it? Maybe! As the next sentence shows.)

"Indeed," he goes on to say, "an investigative program at the University of California discovered that the domestic 'terror plots' hyped in the media were plotted by FBI agents." (!!!) --Roberts--assuming this article was written by Roberts, a man who has received the highest security clearances in the United States--links to an article published in a Russian-sponsored website to document these claims.

That sounds fishy. But the Russian website links to a Mother Jones article, The Informants.

I encourage you to read both articles, but the Mother Jones article first, since it is the primary source for the Russian article.

Before I become side-tracked on a Mother Jones article, however, I want to quote Paul Craig Roberts. I merely want to say that it seems wildly improbable that a responsible and well-informed person like Roberts would say the kinds of things he does!

But maybe not.

After all, he did write The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

I'll let you be the judge, however. Is he off his rocker?

Here is the conclusion to the much longer article he wrote titled, Is the War on Terror a Hoax?

I am a former staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. I required high security clearances as I had access to information pertaining to all US weapons programs. As chief economist of the House Budget Committee I had information pertaining to the US military and security budgets. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I was provided every morning with the CIA’s briefing of the President as well as with endless security information.

When I left the Treasury, President Reagan appointed me to a super-secret committee to investigate the CIA’s assessment of Soviet capability. Afterwards I was a consultant to the Pentagon. I had every kind of security clearance.

Despite my record of highest security clearances and US government confidence in me including confirmation by the US Senate in a presidential appointment, the airline police cannot tell me from a terrorist.

If I were into model airplanes or attending antiwar demonstrations, little doubt I, too, would be arrested.

After my public service in the last quarter of the 20th century, I experienced during the first decade of the 21st century all of America’s achievements, despite their blemishes, being erased. In their place was erected a monstrous desire for hegemony and highly concentrated wealth. Most of my friends and my fellow citizens in general are incapable of recognizing America’s transformation into a warmonger police state that has the worst income distribution of any developed country.

It is extraordinary that so many Americans, citizens of the world’s only superpower, actually believe that they are threatened by Muslim peoples who have no unity, no navy, no air force, no nuclear weapons, no missiles capable of reaching across the oceans. . . .

With the “terrorist threat” and Al Qaeda deflated with President Obama’s alleged assassination of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was left unprotected and unarmed by his “worldwide terrorist organization,” Washington has come up with a new bogeyman – the Haqqanis.

John Glaser reports that, according to anonymous CIA officials, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen “exaggerated” the case against the Haqqani insurgent group when he claimed, setting up a US invasion of Pakistan, that the Haqqanis were an operating arm of the Pakistan government’s secret service, the ISI. Adm. Mullen is now running from his “exaggeration,” an euphemism for a lie. His aid Captain John Kirby said that Mullen’s “accusations were designed to influence the Pakistanis to crack down on the Haqqani Network.” In other words, the Pakistanis should kill more of their own people to save the Americans the trouble.

If you don’t know what the Haqqani Network is, don’t be surprised. You never heard of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. The US government creates whatever new bogeymen and incidents are necessary to further the neoconservative agenda of world hegemony and higher profits for the armaments industry.

For ten years, the “superpower” American population has sat there, being terrified by the government’s lies. While Americans sit in fear of nonexistent “terrorists” sucking their thumbs, millions of people in six countries have had their lives destroyed. As far as any evidence exists, the vast majority of Americans are unperturbed by the wanton murder of others in countries that they are incapable of locating on maps.

The scariest thing, here? He's sounding like that political pariah named Ron Paul.

Or maybe not. The more I'm seeing, the more I'm thinking Paul really is about to become the "flavor of the decade."



And, finally, a few more comments about that Mother Jones article I mention above. I read the article and began to think Martin Stolar, a lawyer the authors quote who represented a man caught in a 2004 FBI sting operation in New York City, may be right. Maybe the 15,000 paid FBI informants today (up from 1500 in 1975--during the violent anti-Vietnam War protest era!) really are seeking to justify their salaries by "creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror."

The Mother Jones authors note that, "In the FBI's defense, supporters argue that the bureau will only pursue a case when the target clearly is willing to participate in violent action."

But after reading the article, I began to think, "Yeah. They pursue 'cases where the target is willing to participate in violent action' kind of the way child molesters target weak and socially disconnected children so as to find willing participants in their crimes."

The fact that child molesters are able to seduce children into going along with the abusers' crimes doesn't make the children guilty of crimes, nor does their "willingness" make their molesters less guilty.

I encourage you to see whether my analogy is correct. Read the transcript of what I'd like to call the seduction of Narseal Batiste to engage in a terror plot.

As James J. Wedick, a former FBI agent, comments,

These guys [the alleged terrorists] couldn't find their way down the end of the street. They were homeless types. And, yes, we did show a picture where somebody was taking the oath to Al Qaeda. So what? They didn't care. They only cared about the money. When we put forth a case like that to suggest to the American public that we're protecting them, we're not protecting them. The agents back in the bullpen, they know it's not true.

Read the Mother Jones article to see whether the analogy I am suggesting is valid.

Are the kinds of behaviors the FBI informants engage in what American citizens want to pay multi-billions of dollars each year for via the FBI? And is it to catch terrorists like these that we are willing to find ourselves, more and more, surrounded by a ubiquitous police state?

Fascinating and disturbing view of Israel and the Middle East

I have not understood why the UN seems so anti-Israel. I understand it even less after watching the Terrorism Awareness Project's What Really Happened in the Middle East. (Turn your speakers on!)