Dear Friends of the Ron Paul Institute:Much has been written about the indictments earlier this month of 13 Russian citizens and three Russian entities in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump campaign election collusion with the Russian government. But some of the most critical and chilling parts of Mueller’s indictments have been completely ignored in the mainstream media and only lightly noticed even by much of the alternative media.
If you read the indictment (37 pages) or even followed it on reasonably skeptical media, you will notice that nowhere is there any evidence or even assertion that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to help ensure election. An indictment can be a very fanciful document, as it is just a collection of assertions that may or may not be based in fact. This one spins a mysterious web of Russians who allegedly attempted to influence Americans through social media to be either for (or against) Trump, or for (or against) Hillary with the purpose, we are told, of “sow[ing] discord in the US political system.”
In other words, we are to believe that the Russian government took out a few Facebook and Twitter ads with a social media budget of about $100K (and most ad buys occurring after the election) to force us to lose faith in our current two-party system. But as multiple nationwide polls have been indicating for years — before this “plot” — Americans have long been losing faith in the current two-party electoral system. According to a 2015 Gallup poll “Americans are more likely now than at any other time in recent history to avoid choosing either the Republican or the Democrat label when asked to identify their political identification, with 43% instead now choosing the label ‘independent.'”
A very good case can be (and has been) made that the entire Russian “campaign” outlined in the Mueller indictment, which was funded by a private Russian businessman, was in fact a commercial enterprise intended to make money with “click-bait” ads on hot-button issues among Americans. If they want you to click, are they going to show “Hillary for prison” ads or some benign pictures of soap or cows in a meadow?
All this aside, however, there is something very sinister in the Mueller indictments that should raise the hair on the back of any neck that cares about the US Bill of Rights and particularly the First Amendment.
As I said in a recent interview in the MintPressNews:
What is most alarming in the indictment is language clearly targeting ‘witting and unwitting accomplices’ to the so-called Russian efforts. As former CIA officer Phil Giraldi points out, ‘persons known and unknown’ who ‘unwittingly or wittingly’ helped the Russians could face consequences. Phil quotes a former prosecutor who says, ‘if I was an American and I did cooperate with Russians I would be extremely frightened…’ and also quotes Politico, which writes, ‘Now, a legal framework exists for criminal charges against Americans…’
What does this mean? Does this mean that Americans who publicly dispute claims that the Russians are interfering in our democracy are ‘accomplices’ to the Russian efforts to dupe us? What about Americans who appear on RT, Sputnik, or other foreign-funded media outlets to criticize U.S. foreign policy? Are they accomplices to this ‘crime’ and thus liable to be prosecuted?
We have been promised more indictments and there have been suggestions that future indictments may target “unwitting accomplices” in what the Mueller team is trying to convince us is an assault on our political system.
What is an “unwitting accomplice”? Is it any person or organization that questions whether the Russians have committed “another Pearl Harbor,” as some Democrat lawmakers have suggested? After all, if “the Russians” want us to doubt that they got Donald Trump elected and we in fact do doubt that they got Donald Trump elected aren’t we all doing the bidding of the Russians?
If we call for the US military to end its occupation of 30 percent of Syrian territory, aren’t we doing the bidding of Russia? After all, the Russian foreign minister Lavrov said just last week that if there is to be any workable peace plan for Syria the US should end its military occupation and stop arming rebels. If we also believe that the US should leave Syria and abandon the idiotic policy of “regime change” aren’t we just acting as “unwitting agents” of Putin?
If we say “enough is enough” in the 17 year US war on Afghanistan, aren’t we unwitting accomplices of Russia, which also would like the US to end its war in that country?
And what about China? If we oppose increasingly aggressive US military operations in the South China Sea, aren’t we just “unwitting agents” of Chinese premier Xi?
And if we do not support US sanctions against North Korea and if we reject US neocon war propaganda about North Korea aren’t we just acting as unwitting agents of Kim Jong-Un?
You see where this is going? The neocons and the Beltway elite would like nothing more than to criminalize any skepticism of their aggressive US foreign policy — of their global US military empire that is bankrupting us and making us less safe. They use the power of the state to rip us off and enrich themselves by creating false “enemy scenarios” out of whole cloth and now they want to use the power of the state to imprison us for treason if we question their hijacking of a real “pro-America” foreign policy.
They have a gun to the head of free speech and they want nothing more than to see you and me in jail for opposing them.
So do we keep fighting, or do we do a Winston Smith:
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother…
We have made our choice. We will keep fighting. Will you join us?
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