FBI document warns conspiracy theories are a new domestic terrorism threat

Comment: We knew it was coming.... 

--------------- 
Yahoo.com

The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News. (Read the document below.)

The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs.

The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement).

“The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

The FBI said another factor driving the intensity of this threat is “the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures.” The FBI does not specify which political leaders or which cover-ups it was referring to.

President Trump is mentioned by name briefly in the latest FBI document, which notes that the origins of QAnon is the conspiratorial belief that “Q,” allegedly a government official, “posts classified information online to reveal a covert effort, led by President Trump, to dismantle a conspiracy involving ‘deep state’ actors and global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring.”

This recent intelligence bulletin comes as the FBI is facing pressure to explain who it considers an extremist, and how the government prosecutes domestic terrorists. In recent weeks the FBI director has addressed domestic terrorism multiple times but did not publicly mention this new conspiracy theorist threat.

The FBI is already under fire for its approach to domestic extremism. In a contentious hearing last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray faced criticism from Democrats who said the bureau was not focusing enough on white supremacist violence. “The term ‘white supremacist,’ ‘white nationalist’ is not included in your statement to the committee when you talk about threats to America,” Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said. “There is a reference to racism, which I think probably was meant to include that, but nothing more specific.”

FBI Conspiracy Theory Redacted by Kelli R. Grant on Scribd

New MH17 Documentary Proves Beyond a Doubt that a Cover-Up Took Place

Andrew Korybko
Global Research

The newly released documentary directed by Yana Yerlashova together with independent Dutch investigator Max van der Werff proves beyond a doubt that Ukraine and its Western partners did all that they could to cover up the true cause of MH17’s tragic downing half a decade ago, introducing new evidence and testimonies that cast serious doubt on the “official” narrative of what really took place on that dreadful day.

***

The entire world is already aware of the two competing theories about MH17’s downing half a decade ago, with the West insisting that a supposedly Russian-supplied BUK surface-to-air missile accidentally destroyed the passenger aircraft while Moscow has always maintained its innocence and claimed that it’s being framed as part of a politically motivated cover-up. Most people have already made up their minds about what they think really happened on that dreadful day, but those who doubt that an actual conspiracy took place might finally reconsider their views after the newly released documentary by Yana Yerlashova together with Dutch investigator Max van der Werff.

The “official” narrative blames Russia for this tragedy, but it’s since been revealed through the new evidence and testimonies that active efforts involving a broad array of countries were undertaken from the get-go to paint Moscow as the culprit despite there being no facts whatsoever to back up that provocative claim.

“MH17 – Call For Justice” sheds light on the dark truth of what happened immediately after the plane’s downing, with journalist John Helmer’s summary of the 28-minute-long documentary pointing out the key takeaways for those who don’t have the time to watch it in full. The video powerfully includes a brief interview with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir, who had earlier spoken out about the cover-up and reaffirms that Russia was blamed for what happened even before any information was conclusively known about the incident.

India’s “Playing Hard to Get” with America by Letting the AIIB Fund China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

Read more

Operation Mindfuck 2.0

Douglas Rushkoff
Medium.com

ropaganda used to mean getting people to believe stuff. Now it means getting them to question what they believe or whether there’s any truth at all. However disorienting this is, it may not be all bad.

The term “propaganda” originally referred to a 17th-century committee of Roman Catholic cardinals that sought to propagate the religion through foreign missions — the marginally and only temporarily benevolent face of European colonialism. In modern times, public relations guru Ed Bernays revived the term to describe the way Woodrow Wilson’s administration convinced Americans to support U.S. involvement in World War I. Propaganda was about telling the same story through so many media channels at once that there appeared to be only one story.

Today, however, the primary goal of government propaganda is to undermine our faith in everything. Not just our belief in particular stories in the news, but our trust in the people who are telling the stories, the platforms, and fact-based reality itself. Facts are, after all, the enemy of beliefs.

What many of us forget is that this new style of influence through disorientation is really an appropriation of the counterculture’s techniques. This is what the Situationists were doing. So were the hippies and “heads” of the 1960s.

Before Watergate anyway, it felt as if the press and the government were on the same side, telling the same story to us all. There was no way for the underfunded counterculture to compete with mainstream reality programming—except by undermining its premises. The flower children couldn’t overwhelm Richard Nixon’s National Guard troops, but they could put daisies in the barrels of their rifles.

Taken to the extreme, this sort of activist satire became Operation Mindfuck, first announced in 1968 by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea in their Illuminatus Trilogy. The idea was to undermine people’s faith in government, authority, and the sanctity of consensus reality itself by pranking everything, all the time.

The idea of Operation Mindfuck was to break the trance that kept America at war, blindly consuming, and oblivious to its impact on the rest of the world. Destabilize the dominant cultural narrative through pranks and confusion. Say things that may or may not be true — but probably not. But maybe. 

Levitate the Pentagon as an act of protest. Publish conspiracy stories about Jackie Kennedy walking in on Lyndon Johnson sexually abusing the exit wound in JFK’s head when his body was being transported back to Washington, DC.

Read more

Russian 'Agent' Maria Butina Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison on 'Conspiracy' Charge

Sara Murray and David Shortell
CNN via Sott.net

A federal judge sentenced Russia national Maria Butina to 18 months in prison on Friday, after she pleaded guilty to trying to infiltrate conservative political circles and promote Russian interests before and after the 2016 presidential election.

Comment: Like many people who plead guilty in the US, she did so because the system there makes you plead guilty in exchange for 'leniency', not because she's actually 'guilty'. In Butina's case, they tortured a confession out of her.

She is the first Russian citizen convicted of crimes relating to the 2016 election, though her efforts to infiltrate Republican circles appeared to be separate from the Kremlin's sweeping election-meddling campaign detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller's report.

Comment: That's CNN's way of saying she had no connection with the Kremlin whatsoever.

The 30-year-old gun rights enthusiast has been incarcerated since her arrest in July and will receive credit for the nine months previously served. She will be deported to Russia after serving her sentence.

Comment: Take note, American 'gun rights enthusiasts': they're 'gunning' for you next.

"This was no simple misunderstanding by an overeager foreign student," Judge Tanya Chutkan said.

Chutkan said that Butina, who studied at American University in Washington, engaged in work on behalf of a Russian official that was "sophisticated" and "dangerous."

"The conduct was sophisticated and penetrated deep into political organizations," Chutkan said, siding with the government's sentencing recommendation and noting that Butina's actions took place as Russia was actively trying to interfere in the US democratic process. 

Read more

With Mueller Report issued, WSJ pushes for investigation into the 'real scandal'

Zero Hedge

Just hours after reports that Rep. Devin Nunes will refer criminal charges against Clinton operatives & high-level FBI & DOJ officials for perpetuating the Russiagate hoax for over three years, The Wall Street Journal's outspoken voice of reason, Kimberley Strassel, stresses that Americans deserve a full accounting of the missteps of Comey and the FBI.

Attorney General William Barr has reported to Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller has cleared President Trump and his campaign team of claims of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election. This is more than an exoneration. It's a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau's corrosive investigation.

Mr. Mueller's report likely doesn't put it that way, but it's the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal-surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants. 

The wreckage is everywhere. The nation has been engulfed in conspiracy theories for years. A presidency was hemmed in by the threat of a special counsel. Citizens have gone to jail not for conspiracy, but for after-the-fact interactions with Mr. Mueller's team. Dozens more have spent enormous amounts of money and time defending their reputations.

None of this should ever have happened absent highly compelling evidence-from the start-of wrongdoing. Yet from what we know, the FBI operated on the basis of an overheard conversation of third-tier campaign aide George Papadopoulos, as well as a wild "dossier" financed by the rival presidential campaign. Mr. Mueller's no-collusion finding amounts to a judgment that there never was any evidence. The Papadopoulos claim was thin, the dossier a fabrication.
Which is all the more reason Americans now deserve a full accounting of the missteps of former FBI Director James Comey and his team-in part so that this never happens again.

Read more

Fukushima at Eight: Ongoing Cover-Up of the Nuclear Hazards in Japan and Abroad

Michael Welch, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and Arnie Gundersen
Global Research

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

– Albert Einstein

The eight year old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster marks a critical turning point in human history. 

As of November 2018, 18,434 people are known to have died from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and the follow-up tsunami which struck the nuclear facility leading to the inundation of electric generators powering the circulation of coolant in the reactors. When the generators failed, three units experienced catastrophic meltdowns. [1]

Radioactive water has for years now been draining into the Pacific Ocean. Toxic debris spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 73,000 people remain evacuated, and fully 3,600 dies of illness from causes like illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the event. [2]



The group Simplyinfo.org has been undertaking extensive ongoing research and analysis of the Fukushima disaster and its aftereffects. In its recently released annual report, Simplyinfo presented a number of astonishing and grim revelations.

The report estimated the threat of radioactive microparticles created by the meltdowns as possibly “the single largest ongoing risk to public health from the Fukushima disaster.” According to the research, these pieces of material from the nuclear fuel meltdowns are small enough to be inhaled or ingested and lodge in major organs of the human body where they continually irradiate cancer-causing levels of radiation, making them much more hazardous than the external sources of radiation being monitored by health authorities. [3]

The report also highlighted startling instances of negligence and cover-up. One notable example was the case of Dr. Shunichi Yamashita. He had downplayed the health risks in public meetings, but was discovered through an internal memo retrieved from an ‘off-site center’ set up as a central commend for the disaster to have warned of ‘a serious possibility of thyroid damage to children in the region.’ [4]

As the radioactive contamination continues to be a concern the Japanese government of Shinzō Abe is inviting the world to visit Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics. The authorities are maintaining that the situation has been contained. Officials have decided to have the city of Fukushima host baseball and softball games, and are even having the iconic torch run start in Fukushima. [5]

Efforts to normalize life in Fukushima 8 years after the meltdowns appear to be successful if trends in media consumption are any indication. Articles marking the anniversary were eclipsed by other breaking stories.[6]

Read more