The last few days have seen the U.S. ramping up its war on domestic political dissent in multiple ways, with U.S. lawmakers petitioning the Biden administration to crack down on anti-genocide protesters it suspects of foreign influence, and a journalist critical of U.S. foreign policy coming under the crosshairs of Washington’s increasingly weaponized Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The FBI has raided the home of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia.
Consortium News reports:
Federal agents removed Ritter’s electronic equipment and numerous boxes of paper files from his Albany, N.Y. area home Thursday on suspicion that the former U.N. weapons inspector is violating the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.
In a video posted to his Substack page, Ritter said that normally in alleged FARA violation cases the authorities send a letter to the subject of the inquiry informing them of the investigation. They do not send numerous F.B.I. agents to the door with a warrant to search and remove potential evidence.
The warrant, a copy of which Ritter posted, only called for electronic devices to be removed, but the agents, whom Ritter said acted professionally, also removed boxes of paper United Nations files from his days as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s. As Ritter says in the video, U.N. documents are never classified and could have nothing to do with the alleged FARA case against him.
‘So the idea that, this is normal procedure is absurd in the extreme. I’m not a foreign agent. What I am is a journalist. And this is how we need to couch this entire thing. What the F.B.I. did yesterday, what the United States government did yesterday, was a frontal assault not only on free speech, but a free press,’ Ritter said in the video.
The U.S. has been getting increasingly aggressive in using FARA to suppress political speech that is critical of U.S. foreign policy, with dissident voices being increasingly targeted by the Department of Justice on accusation of circulating unauthorized ideas in collaboration with governments like China and Russia.
This coincides with a report from Ken Klippenstein about a letter sent to the White House by 22 members of Congress demanding that protesters against the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza be investigated for any unauthorized affiliation with foreign governments, and severely penalized if any ties are found to “the Iranian regime”.
Klippenstein writes:
Last Thursday, 22 members of Congress sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding the investigation and criminal prosecution as well as financial ruin of Gaza war protesters, whom they claim have received funding from Iran. ‘We write today regarding recent revelations that certain anti-Israel organizations in the United States have received funding from the Iranian regime,’ the letter begins. The revelation originated in a recent statement by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, on top of statements by FBI director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco that Iran is trying to influence public opinion.
The letter goes on to call for the Justice Department ‘to criminally prosecute and pursue civil forfeiture actions against any individual or entity that violates the law by receiving funding from the Iranian regime.’ It ends by urging ‘the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and Treasury to make public all available information, without compromising sources and methods, regarding Iran’s funding of these pro-Hamas organizations so that the American people can see who these groups truly are.’
Congress is pressuring the intelligence community to drop the hammer on “anti-Israel” protesters in the U.S. that it suspects of foreign influence, including with “severe monetary penalties” and criminal prosecution.https://t.co/QfkmySCGqB
— Ken Klippenstein 📎 (@kenklippenstein) August 9, 2024
Klippenstein notes that the letter demands a list of individuals and organizations that have received direct or indirect support from Iran or any of its “affiliates”, copies of banking information on “anti-Israel groups” believed to have received sanctioned funding, and information regarding what “severe monetary penalties” will be imposed on those found to be in violation.
The U.S. empire has been doing everything it can to restrict the flow of inconvenient information as public opposition to its criminality swells at home and abroad. Propaganda, censorship, the war on the press, banning TikTok, consolidating the collaboration of Silicon Valley with U.S. government agencies, police crackdowns on campus demonstrators, and quashing political dissent are all outward manifestations of the agenda to manipulate the way the public thinks about what’s happening in the world.
The leaders of the U.S.-centralized empire understand that real power lies in the ability to control not just what happens in the world but what people think about what happens, because doing so allows them to act however they want to act without the risk of revolution. Our task as ordinary members of the public is to weaken their control of the dominant narratives in our civilization, and wake the public up to the truth of what’s really happening under the rule of this tyrannical power structure.