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Last week I had the pleasure to again appear on Tucker Carlson’s popular broadcast. Although the program appears on several different platforms, on X alone the episode has been seen by more than two and a half million people.

That does not include the various clips and shorts that people made and posted themselves. It is incredible how the reach and influence of the independent media has grown over the past decade or so.

As I have often said, while there are many evil things out there on the Internet, at the same time we have the tools to communicate the unfiltered message of freedom like never before.

Even though Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News was enormously popular – number one in the nation – the network still yanked the show from underneath him because they didn’t like some of the things he was saying.

Now, Tucker and other independent media figures answer not to studio executives with their own agendas, but rather they answer directly to the American people in the marketplace of ideas. Carlson’s reach as an independent is arguably greater than when he was on Fox.

And there are many more like him with large – and not so large – audiences who are appealing directly to the “consumer,” without the middleman to tell them what they can and cannot say. Admittedly, sometimes what people say is ugly, but we do not have free speech to only talk about the weather.

Big media and big government are in bed together and they hate the fact that we can communicate with each other without their filters and influence. They long for the days when they could shovel down our throats just what they wanted us to hear and believe.

While we may be winning this battle for free expression, we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we have won the war. We must remember just a few years ago during COVID that all it took to have your platform wiped off the face of the earth was to dare question the “wisdom” of Anthony Fauci.

Even today there are forces seeking to use the power of the state to silence opinions they disagree with.

In Europe, free speech is under attack by totalitarian measures like the Digital Services Act, which creates a police state in the name of “protecting” citizens from “disinformation.” Of course, “disinformation” is simply information that governments or elites don’t want to get out. You can go to jail for an X post in Europe, while violent criminals are set free.

Make no mistake – many in the US would love to have such a system in place to protect speech they like and punish speech they don’t like. We have already seen attempts to intimidate – or even deport – people who have protested the recent mass killings in Gaza, for example. And the US government forced sale of TikTok was not a victory for free speech.

The truth is, “cancel culture” exists in both the left and the right and everywhere in-between. If we want to maintain and expand our ability to communicate freely and grow our voice in the independent media sphere we cannot let our guard down. “Free speech for me but not for thee” – using government force to shut down unwanted voices – will result in free speech for no one. And once it is gone, it will not be easy to get back.

Original article:  ronpaulinstitute.org

By Caitlin JOHNSTONE

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Australian authorities were fully aware that inviting Israel’s president for a visit was going to ignite unrest and furious opposition. They invited him anyway, and sent in the police to assault the protesters.

I saw a video of two cops pinning a kid in a keffiyeh face down on the ground and proceeding to punch him over and over again long after he’d been subdued.

I saw another video of police repeatedly punching a middle-aged man who was holding his hands in the air until he fell to the ground.

I saw another video of police repeatedly pepper spraying a demonstrator directly in the face as he was visibly complying with their demands to move and providing no resistance whatsoever.

I saw another video of police manhandling Muslim men who were literally on their knees praying, presenting no possible threat of any kind.

That’s right kids, welcome to Australia, where the government invites the head of a genocidal apartheid state for a happy cuddle party and then beats the shit out of anyone who opposes this.

It’s a testament to the courage and vitality of the pro-Palestine movement in Australia that people keep showing up to anti-genocide protests even as authorities do everything they can to create a chilling effect on them.

After all, this happens as the state of Queensland moves to make it illegal to utter the pro-Palestine phrases “from the river to the sea” or “globalise the intifada”, with violations punishable by two years in prison. This is easily the single most bat shit insane speech suppression legislation in Australian history, and that’s an extremely high bar.

To be clear, not one person sincerely believes that “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a genocidal or antisemitic statement. This is one of those many, many instances in which Israel supporters are pretending to believe something they do not actually believe in order to further outlaw criticism of Israel.

They’re trying to make it so that nobody feels comfortable opposing Israel’s abuses without first consulting with a lawyer about what exactly they are legally permitted to say in that moment, thereby throwing a chilling effect on pro-Palestine activism throughout the nation.

This comes weeks after the Australian government passed frightening new “hate speech” laws in the name of “combatting antisemitism” which will make it much easier to designate activist groups as “hate groups”. Australian officials have conspicuously refused to say that the new laws will not be used to ban groups for speech that is critical of Israel, which tells you all you need to know about the real intentions at work here.

This also comes as the state of New South Wales cracks down on protests with extreme aggression, banning protests in certain areas and seeking to outlaw the use of the phrase “globalise the intifada” to appease Australia’s obscenely powerful Israel lobby. Premier Chris Minns is presently defending the actions of the police he sent in to crack skulls at the Herzog protests on Monday.

Just two months ago a prominent member of the Australian Israel lobby publicly announced that he wants a total ban on pro-Palestine protests throughout the nation, and said it is criticism of Israel that is the problem, not just hatred toward Jews. Joel Burnie, Executive Manager of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), explicitly said that what he wants is “No more protests! No more protests!” in Australia.

“I for one as a Jewish leader will no long talk about antisemitism in isolation from Israel, because it’s the rhetoric and language on Israel that motivates the people to come and kill us,” Burnie said during a video conference, later adding that “ language on Israel invading all of our social spaces in Australia have made this country a very unsafe space and place for Jews.”

Increment by increment, Joel Burnie and his ilk have been getting their wish ever since. Australian civil rights are indeed being disintegrated to protect the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.

As I often remind readers, Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no national charter or bill of rights of any kind. A tremendous amount of faith has been placed in state and federal legislators to simply do the right thing, which has proved foolish and ineffective. Professor George Williams wrote for the Melbourne University Law Review in 2006:

“Australia is now the only democratic nation in the world without a national bill of rights. Some comprehensive form of legal protection for basic rights is otherwise seen as an essential check and balance in democratic governance around the world. Indeed, I can find no example of a democratic nation that has gained a new Constitution or legal system in recent decades that has not included some form of a bill of rights, nor am I aware of any such nation that has done away with a bill of rights once it has been put in place.”

This system plainly does not work. Australians desperately need speech protections enshrined in our Constitution, because we cannot trust our leaders to resist efforts to silence us whenever our speech becomes inconvenient to powerful people and influential lobbying groups.

The more aggressively they fight to silence us, the louder we need to become. It is more necessary to oppose Israel and its supporters than ever before, because now they’re coming after us and our rights. It’s not just about opposing genocide, war and apartheid anymore. It’s about fighting for our own rights and our own future.

Original article: caitlinjohnstone.com.au

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Last week, a half-dozen masked and unidentifiable Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed a 37-year-old federal employee, a nurse, by spraying pepper spray into his eyes, pushing him to the ground, stealing his lawfully owned and carried handgun, and then shooting him nine times in the back.

The thugs from ICE whom the federal government has sent to Minneapolis have produced murder and mayhem on a scale far more violent, disruptive and disturbing to human life than have the immigrants residing there without papers.

Under the Constitution, immigration — who can legally come to and remain in the United States — was left to the states to regulate; and naturalization — who can become an American citizen — was left to the feds.

The court held — for the first time — that Congress could exercise regulatory powers from a source other than the Constitution. It reasoned that when British troops left the colonies after their surrender in 1781, the power to regulate immigration stayed behind and metaphysically transferred itself to the new federal government here. A rationale from nowhere.

Since then, federal immigration regulations have waxed and waned, usually depending upon contemporary economic trends and prevailing racial attitudes. A century after the ruling on the Chinese Exclusion Act, at President Ronald Reagan’s prompting, Congress enacted the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which granted amnesty and permanent legal residence to all immigrants then in the U.S. The sky did not fall.

The White House has defended the ICE killings of two innocent Americans in the maelstrom of Minneapolis by using phrases like terrorist, agitator, assassin and self-defense. In the process of politically smearing two dead victims, it has tried to divert attention away from the ICE Gestapo-like tactics in the streets. And, in an act of obstructing justice, ICE has kept all the evidence of these murders from state investigators.

Are the masked men in the streets immune from prosecution for murder as the White House claims?

Federal and state laws mandate — and all police, even DHS agents, know this — that if the driver of a vehicle moving less than 5 miles per hour is trying to turn away from you, you don’t kill the driver; you let her turn or get out of the way. If somehow you feel threatened by a man on all fours on the ground whose lawfully carried handgun you have already seized, and whom you have temporarily blinded with pepper spray because he photographed you, you restrain him, you don’t shoot him in the back.

The reason police foreknowledge of right and wrong (who doesn’t know it is wrong to shoot an unarmed person in the back?) and of lawful and criminal use of force is relevant is another bizarre Supreme Court ruling which declared that prosecutions of government agents for excessive use of force will rise or fall on whether other similarly situated government defendants manifested this foreknowledge. Another legal principle from out of nowhere.

Can the state of Minnesota prosecute the ICE killers? Yes, under federal and state laws. Just ask Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sharpshooter at Ruby Ridge whom the state of Idaho prosecuted for excessive force when he killed the wife of the person the feds were trying to arrest by shooting her in the back. And there is no statute of limitations for murder.

More dangerous than American Gestapo is American Psycho — an attitude of government devoid of moral principles. One that — as authoritarians throughout history have done — targets a helpless, hopeless, politically weak minority and justifies murdering those who protest the violence employed in the targeting.

We have a government devoid of social virtue and bent primarily on demonstrating its power over persons. It is unbridled by the good, by the natural law, by the Constitution and by common decency. It has no values. It believes life is meaningless. In its fear of ordinary folks photographing its use of force in the streets, it verbally defends killing the photographer.

This psychotic government claimed the first Minneapolis person its agents murdered was a terrorist. She wasn’t. Then it claimed her spouse was a terrorist. She wasn’t.

Then it claimed that the nurse videoing its agents was there to kill them because he lawfully carried a handgun and ammunition. He wasn’t. Then it claimed he “brandished” his gun. He never touched his gun; the ICE agents took it from him before they executed him. Now it claims this nurse it shot in the back while he was on all fours on the frozen earth and blinded by pepper spray was a threat to its agents. That’s hogwash.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told the media that her agents felt threatened and so they disarmed the nurse. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment which protects the right to keep and bear arms, is as potent as the First Amendment. There was no legal basis to spray or detain the nurse, and thus these agents could no more lawfully disarm him than they could silence his speech about them.

This shameless lying is contradicted by what we all can see.

The same psychotic mentality that argued last year it can execute people on the high seas without trial has brought that might-makes-right nihilism into our streets. If Congress doesn’t stop this sickness in the executive branch by defunding it before it is too late, the voters will deem Congress complicit.

Of course, the psychopaths have the upper hand. Watch out, people of Iran. When the psychopaths are failing at home, they will bring us to war abroad.

Original article: creators.com

Segue nostro Telegram.

Momenti di alta tensione al di là dell’Atlantico: la polizia di frontiera statunitense è coinvolta per la seconda volta – nel giro di sole due settimane – in un caso di cronaca che vede un cittadino statunitense (un infermiere trentesettenne) abbattuto per strada a colpi di arma da fuoco da agenti in servizio. Si tratta dunque della seconda vittima in un lasso di tempo molto breve, dopo quella di una giovane donna – ugualmente uccisa mentre era a bordo della propria autovettura –  quindi un caso che rischia di innescare grandi proteste, oltre che profonde riflessioni, su più temi che vanno a costituire le basi di una tormentata identità americana nella contemporaneità.

Vediamo di precisare il come e perchè gli eventi in questione non rappresentano semplice cronaca, bensì potenzialmente la miccia di qualcosa di molto più grande, partendo dalla basilare dinamica dei casi in questione. Il luogo dell’azione è lo stato del Minnesota, come si sa, importante zona di passaggio al confine col Canada, mentre i protagonisti della vicenda sono gli agenti dell’ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement), ossia un’agenzia di polizia che si occupa della lotta all’immigrazione illegale. A tale merito bisogna precisare innanzitutto come esistano negli USA due agenzie di sicurezza che si occupano del medesimo campo: la prima è la più nota US Border Patrol ovvero la polizia di frontiera vera e propria che vigila sugli ingressi clandestini, operando la maggior parte degli arresti nei pressi delle zone limitrofe ai confini, mentre invece l’ICE ha compiti di carattere maggiormente investigativo che si estendono fino a centinaia di km di distanza dal confine in questione. In sintesi, la polizia di frontiera ha compiti prevenzione del crimine più immediati e circoscritti alle zone di passaggio strettamente dette, mentre l’ICE ha una natura più sottile e di lungo termine, estendendo la propria area di operatività anche in profondità del territorio statunitense (fino a 160 miglia secondo la legge, ma nella prassi assai di più): in pratica ha la facoltà di perseguire e fare indagini sui migranti illegali anche molto all’interno del paese, godendo della facoltà – rara nell’ordinamento legale americano – di effettuare perquisizioni nelle case anche senza un mandato del tribunale. Una situazione questa, che mette giocoforza la suddetta agenzia anti-immigrazione a diretto contatto con la popolazione statunitense, con normali cittadini non coinvolti nella questione (o con migranti illegali che tuttavia nel frattempo hanno trovato modo di integrarsi efficacemente nel tessuto sociale), il che rende l’operato della polizia più invasivo e maggiormente soggetto a creare situazioni di violenza fuori controllo. Situazioni come quelle che hanno guadagnato le prime pagine dei quotidiani negli ultimi tempi, ed evocano domande latenti nell’opinione pubblica, quali i limiti legali di azione delle agenzie di sicurezza, il diritto o meno di portare armi da parte di cittadini statunitensi ed infine – tema più critico in assoluto – in merito all’immigrazione stessa.

Il diritto di effettuare controlli senza un mandato del giudice in effetti aggira il 4° emendamento della costituzione americana – fondamentale nella civiltà giuridica e sociale statunitense – che assicura il fondamentale diritto all’inviolabilità della propria dimora, salvo decisioni del tribunale stesso (in altre parole il concetto di innocenza fino a prova contraria); come se questo non bastasse viene aggirato anche il 2° emendamento che garantisce la facoltà di portare armi da fuoco: l’ultima vittima è appurato portasse una pistola con sè e questo è stato l’argomento con cui la polizia ha giustificato il proprio operato (cioè affermando che il soggetto fosse un pericolo dal quale occorreva difendersi: la cosa tuttavia viene messa in dubbio dalle prove emerse al momento). Il punto di tutto è che il caso del giorno, pur nella sua apparente semplicità, è in realtà molto complesso per la sua portata potenziale nello scuotere l’opinione pubblica, nel far emergere domande di fondo su quella che è l’identità politica e sociale americana, soprattutto durante un’amministrazione così divisiva come quella di Donald Trump.

Al di là dei punti sopramenzionati, lo spettro più profondo che si evoca è quello rappresentato dalle stesse agenzie di polizia protagoniste del caso, delle quali si chiede il ritiro ora dalla città di Minneapolis dove è il tutto è avvenuto: il punto è la posizione della società statunitense in merito al tema migratorio, con tutto quello che esso comporta.

Non è chiaramente necessario ricordare il grado di criticità di tale tematica nella vita del gigante a stelle e strisce e la misura in cui influenza la sua politica, interna in primo luogo e sul lungo termine anche estera. Il punto di fondo è che le sparatorie di Minneapolis in questi giorni, mettono in luce come il problema migratorio sia divenuto un vero e proprio conflitto, non più limitato alle zone di frontiera, così come tradizionalmente lo si concepiva, ma un qualcosa che investe il paese in profondità fin nei suoi angoli, non lasciando alcuna area realmente al sicuro di tutto questo. In altre parole, uno dei tanti segnali di una grande guerra che sta gradualmente deflagrando nel corpo dell’intero paese.

Ricordiamo che gli Stati Uniti, nell’ultima generazione hanno incassato un flusso migratorio tale da ridisegnarne i connotati culturali ed etnici: la statistica di base dice che tra il 1980 e il 2025 la popolazione statunitense è passata da 226 a 345 milioni, vale a dire un salto di oltre 100 milioni di abitanti nel giro di meno di 50 anni di tempo. Qualcosa di mai visto per proporzioni e rapidità del fenomeno: cifre che indicano una radicale metamorfosi in atto del volto della nazione americana, delle sue abitudini e mentalità, fissate sin dai suoi esordi storici. In concreto la popolazione “bianca” – secondo i dati dell’american census bureau, dipendente dal ministero degli interni – sarebbe pari al 57% dell’intera popolazione residente: questo rispetto al 79% del 1980 o al 90% del 1960, ovvero un calo di oltre 30 punti percentuali nell’arco di 60 anni (o di 20 punti se consideriamo solo gli ultimi 40). Approssimativamente, ogni decennio vede svanire un segmento dell’identità statunitense così come essa è considerata essere dalle fasce più conservatrici della società: la nazione anglosassone sorta gradualmente nei secoli dell’età moderna ed affrancatasi dall’alveo imperiale britannico con la rivoluzione del 1776 (e tutto sommato sopravvissuta per buona parte del 900, sino alla generazione del secondo dopoguerra) sta gradualmente “evaporando” – generazione dopo generazione, complice l’inverno demografico che affligge tutte le società post industriali – lasciando posto ad una nuova, i cui connotati sono difficili persino da immaginare. Gli Stati Uniti quali “nazione anglosassone” – come si è abituati a definirli per antonomasia – vengono sempre più rapidamente sostituiti da una “nazione globale”: un superamento storico dovuto a meccanismi socioeconomici di grandissima scala derivanti al sistema di fondo di cui Washginton è alfiere da oltre un secolo (liberalismo), che se da un lato ne fanno la prima potenza finanziaria sul pianeta, dall’altro determinano un inesorabile processo di “sostituzione etnica” al suo interno (nella misura cioè in cui la società, oramai prospera, necessita di un flusso demografico costante che garantisca la presenza di classi subordinate, mantenendo l’equilibrio di base della piramide socioeconomica tradizionale). In parole altre è proprio il liberalismo – ontologicamente connesso alla mentalità anglosassone d’oltreoceano – a determinare la sua stessa estinzione (cioè dell’elemento etnico da cui nasce): questo è naturale, poichè il modello capitalistico è del tutto indifferente alla preservazione delle identità, trattando essenzialmente la società che governa secondo un meccanismo atto esclusivamente a produrre ed entro il quale gli individui sono pedine (non importa se le pedine cambiano, basta che seguitino ad esistere nella loro funzione produttiva).

Senza addentrarci troppo nel campo della filosofia e della sociologia, possiamo affermare che questo è l’autentico enigma americano – se così vogliamo chiamarlo – le cui radici sono state poste molto tempo fa, nei secoli passati, ma che vedrà la massima manifestazione nel secolo in corso, lungo il quale dovrà affrontare quindi 2 temi capitali: il primo concerne la politica estera e vede l’eventuale sorpasso del gigante cinese nell’arena globale, mentre il secondo – il tema del giorno – concerne la vita interna del paese e potrebbe vedere la scomparsa della nazione americana (in senso tradizionale) con tutte la gamma di potenziali conseguenze – fenomeni di disgregazione sociale, conflitti, potenziali scissioni territoriali  – che ciò può generare.

Come ovvio, impossibile formulare previsioni precise per processi di lungo termine, estremamente complessi, che occuperanno i 50 anni a venire: a prescindere dagli esiti che saranno, è tuttavia chiaro che nei casi di cronaca odierna si possono cogliere le prime avvisaglie di un grande confronto che vedrà contrapposta la società al il proprio stesso stato, o per meglio dire ancora, governanti e governati (per l’ennesima volta). Le elite, mosse dall’imperativo di preservare lo status quo a prescindere dallo stato d’animo delle masse e queste ultime, viceversa, nel tentativo di difendersi da poteri alti che non più le rispecchiano. Il dilemma che evocano le sparatorie di Minneapolis è anche questo, sebbene sia soltanto l’inizio di un dramma che si svilupperà per le generazioni a venire e non soltanto negli USA, ma in tutto l’occidente.

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I have long maintained that one of the big obstacles libertarians face in the achievement of a genuinely free society is the fact that most Americans honestly believe they are free.

 When people are convinced they are free, they have no reason to want to join up with us libertarians in our effort to establish a genuinely free society. Instead, they simply view libertarianism as a “weird” philosophy that purports to achieve what we already have — a free society.

One can only hope that the recent killings of 37-year-old Renée Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, both of whom were regular American citizens, will enable at least some Americans to break through the inches-thick indoctrination that has encased their minds and that has convinced them that they live in a free society. After all, how can a society genuinely be considered free when the government wields the omnipotent power to kill anyone it wants?

And make no mistake about it: As we have seen, U.S. officials have the omnipotent power to kill any American they want. That’s a harsh reality that so many Americans still do not want to accept. They’d rather remain convinced that they live under the same governmental structure on which our nation was founded, one in which the federal government’s powers were limited and restricted by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

So many Americans do not want to face reality — that this is a very different type of government — one that is every bit as brutal and ruthless as totalitarian-like regimes throughout history and one that wields such omnipotent powers as killing, torture, and indefinite detention without due process and trial by jury.

Consider the drug war, one of the most tyrannical powers that any totalitarian-like government, even one whose officials are democratically elected, can wield against its own citizens. Look at how many people they have killed over the years with this aberrant governmental program.

Indeed, just look at those 100-plus people they’ve just killed in cold blood on the high seas using the drug war as their justification. That’s what’s called the exercise of brutal and ruthless omnipotent power. No one is ever going to be prosecuted or convicted for killing those people.

But Americans have let them get away with drug-war ruthlessness and brutality, year after year, decade after decade. Never mind that U.S. officials never get even close to “winning” their drug war. What matters is that U.S. officials be permitted to continue waging it, even if that has meant the destruction of our very own freedom at the hands of our very own government.

A dark irony in the destruction of our freedom is the fact that the federal government oftentimes creates the problem that it then uses as the excuse to further destroy our freedom. For example, take drug cartels. They don’t exist in a genuinely free society because drugs are legal in a genuinely free society. Thus, in a free society, drugs are sold by pharmacies and other reputable businesses, and drug cartels and drug gangs simply do not exist.

Seizing on drug addiction as a societal problem that the government supposedly needs to resolve (but never can do so), the government declares the sale of drugs to be illegal. Immediately, the drug cartels come into existence as part of the black-market effort to meet the demand of drug consumers. Rather than repeal the drug laws that bring this black market into existence, the government instead uses the existence of the drug cartels to expand its powers, including, as we have seen, the omnipotent power to kill people who the government suspects are violating its drug laws.

If anyone thinks that the government’s omnipotent power to kill drug-war suspects on the high seas is limited to foreigners, he is living in a world of hyper-naiveté and delusion. With those killings in cold blood on the high seas, the U.S. government, especially the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, are sending a powerful message to the American people: “We are in charge. What we are doing here on the high seas, we can do anywhere and to anyone, including Americans, and there isn’t anything anyone can do to stop us. Get used to it.”

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out that the U.S. government had become the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. What so many Americans do not wish to confront is that nothing has changed and, in fact, the problem has only gotten worse and worse. Over the years, it has been foreign citizens who have borne the brunt of the ruthlessness and brutality of the U.S. regime, but what so many Americans have simply blocked out of their minds is the fact that the power to exercise that ruthlessness and brutality against Americans has always been there, like a sword ever ready to be unsheathed when necessary.

We are now witnessing this phenomenon in the war on illegal immigration. ICE agents and the Border Patrol have the power to kill any American protestor they want. No one can stop them. No one can prosecute them. No one can convict them. The killers are fully protected, even if that means lies, cover-ups, pardons, defense, and support. Just get used to it. Even if the ICE and Border Patrol killings (of both immigrants and Americans) subside, the power to kill with impunity and immunity will continue to be wielded, ready to be exercised again whenever necessary.

From time to time, the American people need to be reminded (e.g., Waco and Ruby Ridge) who is the boss. The boss is the U.S. government. The citizenry are the serfs, the servants, the subordinates. The job of the citizenry is to work and produce wealth so that there are alway sufficient tax revenues to support the masters. The job of the federal government is to rule and govern. That sometimes entails ruthlessness and brutality, but that’s just the way it is. Get used to it.

The easiest thing for people who are breaking free of the “we are free” indoctrination that has encased their minds is to assume that the problem is Donald Trump, ICE, the Border Patrol, the DEA, or military or CIA “overreach.” They are mistaken. The problem is not the people running the illegitimate systems. The problem is the systems themselves, including drug prohibition and America’s socialist system of border controls, that have attached themselves to the federal government, much as a malignant cancer attaches itself to a person’s body.

To achieve a genuinely free society, it is necessary for a critical mass of Americans to come to the realization that the solution lies not in reforming these malignant systems or in getting “better” people to run them. The solution lies instead in fully and completely excising all of the wrongful, destructive, and malignant systems that have attached themselves to the federal government.

Original article:  www.fff.org

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It shouldn’t fall to armed Americans to take on the White House militia because the governor can’t use the National Guard to force ICE out of Minnesota, writes Joe Lauria.

After the second execution of a U.S. citizen by the White House militia in the streets of Minneapolis, the governor of Minnesota demanded ICE agents leave the state. But the U.S. Constitution leaves him with few options to make it happen.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a governor, and not the White House, controls National Guard troops operating inside a state, the Constitution’s so-called Supremacy Clause means that Gov. Tim Walz cannot deploy Minnesota’s 13,000 troops to stop the 3,000 ICE agents from terrorizing the population.   

Such a dramatic move by a disciplined force to arrest or disarm the ragtag ICE agents would of course risk civil conflict if ICE did not back down.

After the second ICE murder this month, Walz demanded: “The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

But according to the Constitution, all he can do is plead directly with the White House, which he did in a phone call with Donald Trump on Tuesday; or ask a federal judge to temporarily halt the ICE deployment, which Minnesota has done, arguing that it has become an illegal federal occupation of the state in violation of the 10th amendment.

Otherwise, under the Constitution’s Article 6, Clause 2 — the so-called Supremacy Clause — federal agents can operate in any state without the consent of state or local government.  All the locals have been able to do so far is refuse to cooperate with ICE.

Since ICE is a paramilitary force controlled by the civilian Department of Homeland Security and not the Pentagon, the Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the military from domestic law enforcement, cannot be invoked to evict ICE from Minnesota. 

These legal protections have emboldened White House officials to continue the operation and to investigate the mayor and governor rather than the shooters, as well as condemn the victims of ICE’s brutality instead of the ICE agents inflicting it.

After the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Trump officials like Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, and DHS Director Kristi Noem accused the murdered of being “terrorists.”

Miller also accused Pretti of being an “assassin” because he brought a legally obtained handgun to the protest against ICE agents. Citizen videos shot of the killing clearly show Pretti being disarmed of his pistol before he is murdered execution style by two agents as other agents pin him defenselessly to the ground. Several bullets were pumped into him after he became motionless.

Vilifying Pretti as an assassin because he was legally carrying a gun has upset a group normally 100 percent behind Republican governments: the gun lobby.

If the Constitution bars the governor from using his troops to repel an invading paramilitary army, it allows the citizenry to be armed and to take action only in self-defense, a not far-fetched development that would be best avoided.

Local police arresting ICE agents would not only invite altercation, but federal prosecutors are withholding evidence in the Good case, making it difficult for the state to charge an agent. A federal judge has ordered DHS to preserve evidence in the Pretti killing.

The egregiousness of these murders, especially of Pretti pinned to the ground — disarmed of his legally-owned gun — is a massive test for the identity of the United States. What kind of a country will it allow itself to become?

How far will it tolerate a federal authority waging war on the population? Is there a line government can cross to trigger a response from elected leaders? (Such a line was never crossed in their support for an allied nation committing genocide.)

The way to stop ICE is not to resort to vigilante violence, but for Congress to defund it and for public pressure, especially from his gun-loving base, to get Trump to back down. Already we see some Democratic lawmakers saying they won’t vote to fund ICE — and may shut down Congress to achieve that — and Republican Senators like Ted Cruz are asking for an investigation into Pretti’s death.

It is a moment of truth for the United States.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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According to a recent tabletop simulation, what the Trump administration is doing in Minneapolis is exactly what is needed to pit brother against brother in the United States.

Since January 6, around 2,000 ICE agents have stormed Minnesota in response to a vast fraud scheme that saw Somali scammers steal billions of dollars from the state. This has led to neighborhoods across the state being terrorized by masked agents who are indiscriminately and aggressively harassing and seizing individuals right off the streets and in their homes.

On January 7, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who has been branded a “domestic terrorist” by the Trump administration, who appeared to be attempting to flee police officers in her vehicle before she was shot in the head three times. Rather than investigate the actions of the officer who shot Ms. Good, the Trump administration has announced “absolute immunity” for ICE agents, as well as members of Custom and Border Patrol.

“That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vice President JD Vance said of the ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, who killed Ms. Good. “He was doing his job.”

The violence being perpetrated against innocent civilians did not stop with Ms. Good. Federal agents have forcibly taken thousands of individuals to detention facilities, regardless of their legal status. They have shot protesters in the legs while blinding two activists with so-called “less deadly” munitions. They fired teargas canisters at the car of a family carrying six children, sending one child to the emergency room. They aggressively dragged a woman out of her car and on to the ground screaming.

Meanwhile, instead of investigating the conduct of the officer who shot Renee Good, the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, and Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, accusing them of conspiring to obstruct federal agents. Renee Good’s widow is also under investigation.

If you think all of this resembles the early rumblings of a civil war, you are not alone. The scenario closely mirrors one explored in an October 2024 tabletop exercise conducted by the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), at the University of Pennsylvania. In that simulated exercise, an American president initiated a highly unpopular law-enforcement operation in Philadelphia when he attempted to bring Pennsylvania’s national guard under executive control. When the governor balked and the guard pledged its loyalty to the state, the president deployed active-duty troops, resulting in an armed conflict between state and federal forces. According to Claire Finkelstein, the director of CERL, the “core danger we identified is now emerging: a violent confrontation between state and federal military forces in a major American city.”

Ominously, none of the participants, which included top-ranking former military and government officials, considered the explosive scenario unrealistic. In a rapidly evolving emergency such as the one in Minnesota, courts would most likely be “unable or unwilling to intervene in time, leaving state officials without meaningful judicial relief.” In other words, a full-blown clash between the state and federal forces, otherwise known as a civil war.

In such a scenario, military leaders must be prepared to “assess the legality” of their orders. Even under the Insurrection Act, federal troops are not legally permitted to attack protesters unless they are defending themselves from an imminent threat. Yet as we saw with the cold-blooded murder of Renee Good, such egregious conduct is already happening in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.

In November, Washington was rocked by comments by Democrat Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, and five other veterans, who implored military leaders to “refuse illegal orders” against American citizens, even if the orders come from the Commander-in-Chief. While that may sound like nothing more than good old fashion common sense, it opened the door to the Trump administration accusing Kelly of treason and sedition.

Though the Philadelphia simulation appears to resemble the harsh events citizens in Minneapolis have experienced at the hands of ICE agents, the simulation misses one key factor: currently, municipal and state officials don’t seem interested in attacking ICE agents anytime soon. Let’s pray that that trend continues.

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Guards are leaving federal inmates in restraints for hours and even, in dozens of cases, as long as a week. That’s just the latest finding on abuses pervading the system.  

I’am a regular writer on prison conditions across the United States.  Stated plainly, all Americans should be ashamed of the states of U.S. prisons, whether at the federal, state or local levels.

Overall prison conditions, medical care, poor food quality, violence, the use of solitary confinement as a punishment, drug and other contraband sales by guards, and sexual abuse are on par with some of the worst prison systems in the world.  Indeed, they are akin to the situation in many underdeveloped countries.

The conventional wisdom in the United States is that the federal system is better than state and local prison systems and, if you must go to prison, you should want to be a federal facility.  That’s not saying much.

The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a broken, dysfunctional mess, even though President Donald Trump actually tried to shake up the place by naming a former federal prisoner as the BOP’s deputy director.  A year in to Trump’s second term, however, there are no notable improvements.

Animal-Grade Food

Medical care remains substandard, to put it nicely.  It is not unusual, for example, for prisoners to complain repeatedly to their prison’s medical unit of serious symptoms, only to be given Tylenol or, frequently, accused of malingering and given nothing.

Months later, we read in the criminal justice media that the prison had cancer or AIDS or some other dread disease and that their family or estate had filed suit against the BOP for wrongful death.

Similarly, much prison food is classified as “animal grade,” rather than “human grade.”  I’m not talking about the year-old dyed green bagels that prisoners get every day for months after they went unsold during the previous year’s St. Patrick’s Day.  (I’m not joking here.)

I’m talking about food that is literally not meant for humans.  When I first arrived in prison, on my first full day there, I saw boxes of fish stacked up behind the “chow line” in the cafeteria and clearly marked, “Alaskan Cod—Product of China—Not for Human Consumption—Feed Use Only.”  I declined the fish.

Part of the problem is that many prisons have been privatized, at all levels of government.  Companies like GEO make a profit by spending as little money on prisoners as possible.  And the easiest way to cut costs is in food and medication.

And who’s going to do anything about it?  Can you imagine being a member of Congress running for reelection, and going out on the campaign trail to say, “I want to give prisoners BETTER food and medicine!”  You won’t win many new votes.

Headquarters of the GEO Group in Boca Raton, Florida, 2013. (Eflatmajor7th /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0)

The problems in the BOP go beyond food and medical care.  I wrote recently in Consortium News about the arrests of a huge number of prison guards across the country on charges of bringing drugs, cell phones, and other contraband into prisons.  It happens every day.  But there are other problems besides these obvious ones that are not being addressed.

Unrestrained Restraints 

Earlier this year, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (IG) released a report taking the BOP to task for misusing restraints against prisoners.  The IG found “thousands of incidents” where BOP guards kept prisoners in restraints involving both wrists and both ankles for at 16 hours.

In hundreds of incidents, prisoners were restrained for more than 24 hours, as well as dozens where prisoners were kept in restraints for as long as a week.

The law is clear that when a prisoner is in restraints, he must be checked every 15 minutes by a guard, every two hours by a lieutenant, every four hours by medical staff, and every eight hours by a psychologist.  But a majority of guards were found to not understand the definition of the word “restraint,” and so the extra supervision was rarely enforced.

Violence continues to be endemic in federal prisons.  I’m not talking about prisoner-on-prisoner violence, which is to be expected.  I’m talking about guard-on-prisoner violence, which, of course, is illegal, yet common.

In one recent example, a prisoner identified in court documents as JM bought a straw hat from the prison commissary.  A guard, apparently not knowing that straw hats were for sale in the commissary confiscated it from JM.

Several hours later, JM asked for his hat back, only for the guard to pull him into an area not covered by security cameras.  The guard beat JM severely, shoved a blunt object up his anus, and left him bleeding on the floor.

JM eventually made his way to the prison nurse, who refused to allow him to filed a sexual assault complaint against the guard.  And when he complained in writing, he was transferred to a higher-security prison.  JM said in his lawsuit that he knew the protocol for reporting such a crime because this was the second time a guard had sexually assaulted him.

The Justice Department isn’t spending money on food or medication for prisoners, nor is it spending money to maintain the physical plant of its prisons.

U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan, where Jeffrey Epstein died, were closed because they were  literally uninhabitable. The Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) at Dublin, California, the site of the BOP’s “rape club” was deemed to be “unreformable.”

Fourteen prison officials, including the warden, the chaplain, the captain, and the doctor were charged with raping dozens of female prisoners, who ended up sharing in a $114 million federal settlement.

And now FCI Terminal Island, California, is being closed because chunks of concrete are falling from the facility’s ceiling.  One chunk was so big that it disabled the heating system for the entire prison.  It would have been only a matter of time before someone was killed or injured.

Trump said earlier this month that he wanted to increase the Pentagon’s budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.  The current budget is already more than the next eight largest countries’ defense budgets combined.  How about a few bucks to ensure the most basic human rights of America’s prisoners?

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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Riley Gaines had just debuted as a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture’s new milk-mustache ad campaign when she made her first appearance in the White House press briefing room Thursday afternoon.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was overjoyed to see the former collegiate swimmer–turned–conservative commentator in attendance and, after addressing the escalating protests in Minneapolis, directed the first question of the day to her.

“I’m surprised it took us a year to get you here but I’m very happy to see you,” Leavitt said before personally promoting Gaines’ new podcast. “So, thank you, and you brought a beautiful baby and husband too, so thank you so much for joining and why don’t you kick us off.”

As Gaines’s husband Barker wrestled with the pair’s 3-month-old baby Margot, who was wrapped in a bulletproof blanket due to “death threats,” the former swimmer immediately began reciprocal praise of Leavitt: “First and foremost, congratulations to you, being a girl mom will change your life in the best way possible,” gushed Gaines. In Trump’s new press corps, flattery increasingly comes before real journalism.

Amid a packed news cycle—the seizure of another oil tanker in the Caribbean, another night of volatile protests in Minneapolis, and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado arriving at the Capitol—the first question of the day landed elsewhere. It concerned transgender athletes, an issue being currently weighed by the Supreme Court.

Leavitt couldn’t have been happier with the line of questioning, as was evident by her blissful reaction to Gaines, responding in a tone that sounded closer to that of a third-grade teacher praising a student for getting the correct answer. The happy-go-lucky exchange stood in stark contrast to what was to come when Leavitt was forced to field a tough question from a real reporter only a few moments later.

Niall Stanage, a White House columnist for the Hill with decades of experience across major outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, drew criticism from Leavitt after he challenged the Trump administration’s characterization of the death of the 37-year-old Renee Good, an American citizen and mother of three, who was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross during a confrontation in Minneapolis last week.

“Earlier, you were just defending ICE agents generally,” Stanage began. “And earlier on, Secretary Noem spoke to the media and she said, among other things, that they are doing ‘everything correctly.’ Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year. A hundred seventy U.S. citizens were detained by ICE, and Renee Good was shot in the head and killed by an ICE agent. How does that equate to them doing ‘everything correctly’?”

“Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?” Leavitt snapped back at Stanage.

“Because an ICE agent acted recklessly and killed her unjustifiably,” replied Stanage.

“Oh OK, so you’re a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion,” replied Leavitt.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Stanage incredulously.

“Yeah, because you’re a left-wing hack, you’re not a reporter, you’re posing in this room as a journalist, and it’s so clear by the premise of your question,” Leavitt said. “And you, and the people in the media who have such biases but fake like you’re a journalist, you shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat. But you’re pretending like you’re a journalist… and the question that you just raised and your answer proves your bias.”

In the aftermath of the exchange, the White House X account was celebratory. “Leavitt DESTROYS a ‘Left-Wing Hack’” read the caption above video of the pair’s back and forth. And though a cursory scan of Stanage’s X account does show a left-of-center (but hardly militant progressive) bias, and though his description of the ICE-involved shooting was adversarial, his question was not unreasonable. The many visual angles provided of Good’s death have left ample room for questioning of ICE’s actions, especially when the result is a dead American, regardless of her openly anti-Trump politics.

Leavitt’s aggressive tenor on Thursday tracked perfectly with the second Trump administration’s general tone regarding the long-tenured journalists who have covered the ins and outs of Washington DC and its presidents in the 21st century. Podcasters and influencers who speak glowingly of Trump and his allies are received as heralded heroes while anyone who dares question the merits of any of Trump’s admittedly singular policies are met with stern gazes and animated anger.

Leavitt’s fiery encounter with Stanage came on the same day that Pentagon officials announced they would assume editorial control of the long-independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes, citing a desire to curb what they called “woke distractions.” In a post on X, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the department would “modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.” Part of curbing “woke distractions” now includes a pledge of allegiance to Trump as new applicants are being asked how their coverage would distinctly advance the agenda of the Trump administration.

The decision to promote right-wing commentators, influencers, and podcasters who reliably amplify the Trump administration has been consistent since Leavitt took ownership of the James S. Brady Briefing Room in January of 2025. More than 30 “new media” outlets, most outwardly and proudly right-wing in nature, have rotated through the briefing room in the year since Trump took office. (Somewhat inscrutably, The American Conservative, which is almost a quarter-century old, was invited to a press briefing as a “new media” outlet.) And though to some degree it can fairly and accurately be argued that the American press has shifted increasingly leftward in its coverage since the Second World War, especially on social and cultural issues, the blowback against journalists who dare question the policy positions of the second Trump administration raises questions about what exactly the point of the exercise is.

In a Trump era that claims to prize merit and accountability, the administration has adopted a press strategy that rewards loyalty over rigor and access over expertise. Experience is no longer a credential; it is a liability if it produces questions the administration would rather not answer. The result is a briefing room where affirmation is mistaken for fairness and scrutiny is dismissed as sabotage. Anyone who values a free press should be concerned not only about how this administration treats reporters today, but about the precedent it sets for administrations to follow.

Original article:  www.theamericanconservative.com

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Americans took to the streets over the weekend in over 1,000 protests across the country to demand justice for a mother who was shot dead by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Renee Nicole Good was your typical suburban American. She was the mother of three children and liked to write poetry. But on January 7, her life was cut tragically short when she was shot in the head by an ICE agent, yet another tragedy that has sharply divided the nation. The protesters insist that Good was unjustly killed, and the visual evidence of the incident strongly supports that argument.

Good was seen on video blocking a neighborhood street with her SUV. While that is certainly grounds for law enforcement to arrive on the scene, what happened in the course of action defies logic. As two ICE agents approach the vehicle, no attempt to calmly converse with Good was seen. Instead, one of the agents grabs the door handle and aggressively demanded that Good exit the vehicle. Obviously scared by the encounter, Good made a fatal decision as she attempted to flee the scene. This caused the second officer, who was standing off to the left in front of the vehicle, to open fire at the windshield with three bullets, hitting Good in the head and killing her instantly.

Most people by now recognize the difference between a regular police stop and the abuse of police powers. A routine police stop involves the officer speaking to the driver in a calm manner while performing the necessary task of checking documents, like the driver’s license and registration. Most Americans are rightly frightened when they get pulled over by the police, and this necessitates that the intervening officer keep the situation under control. That was clearly not the case with Renee Good, who had the misfortune of coming in contact with an ICE agent who is clearly in the wrong profession.

While the jury is still out on the incident, it does not bode well for civil rights in the United States how Good was treated by the Trump administration following the cold-blooded murder. Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, portrayed the victim, a mother and award-winning poet, as a “domestic terrorist”. Good, Noem continued without providing any evidence, had been “stalking and impeding” ICE officers before “weaponizing her vehicle” in an effort to run over the agent who ultimately killed her.

The victim-blaming did not end there. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and a spokesperson for ICE, declared in a post on X that “one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them – an act of domestic terrorism”.

And just like that, an American mother has been placed in the same category as Osama bin Laden. This gross characterization will only serve to reinforce law enforcement in the United States that they are justified for using any means necessary to fight against “the enemy,” which are the very people they are supposed to protect. Two days after the killing of Mrs. Good, Border Patrol agents in Portland, Oregon shot at the occupants of a vehicle as they attempted to flee.

When the Border Patrol agents identified themselves to the car’s occupants, “the driver weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents,” McLaughlin said. One agent, “fearing for his life and safety,” fired a shot, and the driver sped off with the passenger, she said. The occupants of the vehicle survived the attack while an investigation into the shooting is unlikely to provide any real answers.

Of course, there are times when there is no choice but for the authorities to use deadly force when confronting certain individuals in particular cases. What is disturbing about the recent incidences, however, is that the Trump administration is tossing around explosive terms like “domestic terrorists” and “rioters” before any investigation has begun.

It is very difficult to believe that Mrs. Good was a “domestic terrorist.” If that were true, then the United States is a breeding ground of all those millions of ‘terrorists’ who drive around town with their families inside of SUVs. The US Constitution clearly provides for the American people to have the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly and the freedom to address the wrongs of the US government. All of those liberties were glaringly denied to this single American mother, who tragically lost her life due to the brazen behavior of law enforcement. The Trump administration has a duty to not only round up illegal immigrants, but to make sure American citizens are not treated like terrorists in the process.