|
|
BIDEN SICS INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ON U.S. NEWS OUTLETS AND AVERAGE AMERICANS. The Biden Administration took further steps to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies against American citizens this past week.
With the release of a report titled “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” the administration’s plans for smearing and even outlawing criticism of government abuses became clearer.
Specifically, the report calls for:
- Criminalizing anonymous reporting
- Criminalizing reporting which doesn’t present approved government narratives in the guise of “contradicting information”
- Cutting off internet, website and other services for dissident news sites
- Further co-opting U.S. intelligence agencies to surveill news outlets and average Americans exercising Constitutionally protected speech online
- Funding propaganda initiatives head by U.S. spy agencies, targeted at children, to combat “radicalization”
The report advocates a multi-pronged approach to counter free speech rights of both individual Americans and news organizations.
One program, led by the Department of Homeland Security, would disseminate government approved messaging, with a special targeting of children. Under the guise of “enhancing media literacy and critical thinking skills” of the public, the program will promote government approved narratives and discredit information critical of government endorsed political agendas:
“We will pursue innovative ways to foster and cultivate digital literacy and related programs, including educational materials and interactive online resources such as skills-enhancing online games. This can prove a useful component to forging the resilience that may help to stem domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence.”
News Outlets and Ordinary Americans Facing Surveillance and Criminalization
News organizations which don’t include names of authors on articles, or don’t provide “contradicting information” in their stories, would be enough to qualify as engaging in terrorist activity, according to the report guidelines.
The rubric for crushing dissent would be based on the “Christchurch Call”. Founded after a shooting at a mosque in New Zealand in 2019, the Christchurch Call activist coalition has promoted sweeping regulations that would limit the ability of news organizations to report on events deemed to “amplify terrorist and violent extremist content.”
Such a standard might easily have been used to arrest every major media organization voicing the grievances of violent BLM and Antifa protesters in 2020.
In fact, anything deemed as “misinformation” would trigger surveillance and counter measures.
To be fair, Joe Biden knows something about that. In 2015 and during much of the Trump Presidency, a cabal of Obama-Biden Administration operatives, together with media allies, concocted and relentlessly reported on a now completely discredited “Russian Collusion” narrative. It accused the former President of being a compromised dupe of Vladimir Putin, based on a supposedly factual “dossier”.
The dossier turned out to be not only fabricated, but funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and peddled by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump’s campaign and Presidency. To top it off, the FBI purposely hid its knowledge of the Clinton campaign’s connection to the dossier, in applying for the FISA court authorizations.
As for the Biden administration’s new attack on anonymous speech, the American founders considered it an important protection, to say the least. “Common Sense”, the pamphlet credited with galvanizing Americans to throw off the tyranny of a dictatorial King in 1776, was anonymously witten at the time, by Thomas Paine.
True Target: Political Opposition
But the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” clearly is aimed at Trump supporters, not left-aligned radicals. The Biden administration has largely succeeded in strangling popular protests against its legitimacy in the wake of unprecedented voting irregularities and allegations of rampant fraud during the 2020 election.
Following a massive January 6th protest in Washington D.C., Biden and Big Tech media allies vilified the popular outcry as an “insurgency”, and weaponized the FBI, CIA and even the U.S. Post Office to track and “hunt down” protesters who did nothing more than enter the Capitol building. More than 600 protesters, virtually all of them innocent of any acts causing anyone serious bodily injury, have been in jail ever since.
In 2018, leftist protesters swarmed the Hart Senate Office building, and tried to intimidate lawmakers and impede the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The MSM reported sympathetically on the protesters, none of whom endured prolonged jail terms for trespassing or interfering with government business.
The zealous pursuit of Trump protesters has also been a marked contrast to the kid-glove treatment of BLM and Antifa activists who stormed White House gates in the summer of 2020. That one protest resulted in more than 40 seriously injured police, and the burning of a church across the street.
Leftist protesters in hundreds of locations around the U.S. precipitated violence and mayhem in 2020, causing dozens of deaths, attacks on Federal buildings and police precincts, and billions in damage from burnings and lootings of businesses and homes. Most violent offenders escaped arrest. Many of those arrested had their bail and legal fees paid for by Democrat aligned activist groups. Most of those arrested were let off with minimal repercussions.
Having succeeded in carrying out the largest domestic dragnet against political opponents in history by its own admission, the Biden administration is now looking to use radical recommendations from the new “domestic terrorism” report to further marginalize political opposition.
The Christchurch Call provides for governments to shut down online news organizations that don’t tow the government line:
“Governments, online service providers, and civil society may wish to take further cooperative action to address a broader range of harmful online content.”
Even before the latest report and call to action, the Biden administration has signaled its intention to quash unfavorable news reporting. A DHS guide issued on 20 May 2021 provided instructions “for how individuals can be resilient to harmful or false narratives in the online space and effective when consuming and sharing information online”:
“Modern technology continues to make the spread of propaganda and the manipulation of information easier. Social media and traditional news media sources can be both victims and perpetrators of spreading misinformation and disinformation.”
With its “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” the Biden administration is showing just how far it’s willing to go in warping intelligence agencies and violating Constitution protections to neutralize dissenting “perpetrators”.