We are witnessing the weaponization of the intelligence apparatus and the unjust treatment of political prisoners jailed because of thought crimes against the State. The United States constantly accuses its adversaries of holding ideological opponents, while insisting it has none of its own. For its entire history, the US government has used the incarceration of its political prisoners as a tool to crush dissent and advance the interests of economic elites. We need to embrace due process again and assume innocence before we claim that someone is guilty. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with investigative journalist, Owen Shroyer about BALLOTS AND BULLETS - THEY KILL POLITICAL PRISONERS DONundefinedT THEY?
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In 2023 I had become silent on a lot of political subjects but there is one that I have been holding back for a while and I feel it needs to be addressed.
While this political opinion is not a left or right-based rant undefined this needs to be pointed out undefined because it seems to be the new normal -and I worry about our future because of it.
I want to address the weaponizing of the intelligence apparatus and the treatment of political prisoners jailed because of thought crimes against the state.
The United States constantly accuses its adversaries of holding political prisoners, while insisting it has none of its own. But for its entire history, the US government has used the incarceration of its political opponents as a tool to crush dissent and advance the interests of economic elites.
Well-known cases are those entrapped or framed in US national security state sting operations, or imprisoned with extreme sentences for a minor offense because of their political activism and political choices.
“Political prisoner” has often meant those revolutionaries jailed for fighting their national oppression undefined we are now seeing more people being oppressed by an authoritarian government and we need to be aware of it undefined because we all may end up facing the barrel of a gun being accused of insurrection or worse.
Today, the US national security state considers its most dangerous enemies those who expose its crimes at home and abroad.
Many thousands of incarcerated people never received a fair trial or were innocent of the crimes they have been jailed for.
While the United States represents just over 4% of the world’s population, it holds approximately 20% of its prisoners.
Arguably after the events of January 6th and maybe even before then undefined I have noticed that The United States and the West in general have had this unhealthy obsession with rules, guilt, submissiveness, and punishment.
We have developed this attitude that if there is an accusation made against someone undefined then that someone has to be guilty, and needs to be punished.
Americans have no tolerance for Due Process undefined and this has been something programmed into us by the mainstream media in order to vilify those who meet certain requirements.
That is if they belong to a certain party, have a certain skin color, or a certain sexual orientation.
In North America and Europe, almost everyone is under constant scrutiny: people are spied on, and observed, their personal information is being continually extracted, and surveillance cameras are used indiscriminately.
Life is synchronized and managed. There are hardly any surprises.
Rebellion is not only discouraged, it is fought against, brutally. For the tiniest misdemeanors or errors, people end up behind bars. As a result, the U.S. has more prisoners per capita than any other country on Earth.
And as a further result, almost all conversations, but especially public discourses, are now being controlled by so-called ‘political correctness’ and its variants.
People who speak their minds are being punished by the thought police -and it always winds up with a show trial and an apology tour by the offender.
Many parts of the planet have developed ‘Stockholm Syndrome’: after being kidnapped, imprisoned, tormented, raped, and humiliated, the victims have ‘fallen in love’ with their tyrant, adopting his worldview, while serving him full-heartedly and obediently.
This arrangement, of course, has nothing to do with the healthy or natural state of things.
We find ourselves adapting to the sadistic punishments of our leaders and are terrified of having some sort of agent kicking in our door, throwing a hood over us and transporting us to a Black Site.
Black sites are secret detention facilities and yes they do exist in the United States.
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
The facility, is a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.
This Black site has been known for many abuses of American citizens including:
Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
Shackling for prolonged periods.
Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.
Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “NATO Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.
Crime and punishment is now being doled out for thought crimes and now even protest is a crime.
Now keep in mind that I mean protest undefined not the wanton destruction of property and riotous behaviors that have traumatized cities all over the United States.
Also, dissident voices are being sought after for thought crimes against the tyranny of the state. Many of these so-called combatants are being labeled mentally ill for even believing in conspiracy theories.
This is how it begins.
In communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, based solely on their own judgment, even if those individuals pose no danger to others.
In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,” exhibit a “willingness to engage in meaningful discussion,” have “excessive fears of specific stimuli,” or refuse “voluntary treatment recommendations.”
It was also speculated that in San Francisco, just before the visit of Xi Jinping last November undefined Gavin Newsome ordered the rounding up and disappearance of many of the homeless that were in the streets.
Seemingly overnight, many of the city’s permanent sidewalk population disappeared. So did their drug zones, tents, sleeping bags, junk piles, used needles and feces.
City crews power-hosed sidewalks, erased graffiti, painted murals and colorful crosswalk markings, installed planter boxes with wildflowers and erected fences around the Moscone Center where the summit was being held.
Presto, San Francisco suddenly looked clean, safe, and civilized again. It looked like a place tourists from Iowa and dictators from China would feel comfortable visiting.
Many residents believed that many of the homeless were taken away to facilities and were forgotten undefined others feared that they were disappeared and many were never heard from again.
Other conspiracy theorists even believed that many of them had been secretly killed.
I am sure that is seen as extreme undefined but not entirely.
One of the least reported stories in 2023 is a story where a political prisoner was being targeted for death by The CIA.
The CIA seriously considered plans to kidnap or assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in late 2017, according to a Yahoo News investigation.
The story was based on several interviews in 2021 with more than 30 former U.S. officials, eight of whom detailed U.S. plans to abduct Assange and three of whom described the development of plans to kill him. If it had been up to CIA Director Mike Pompeo, they almost certainly would have been acted on, after WikiLeaks announced it had obtained a massive tranche of files – dubbed “Vault 7” – from the CIA’s ultra-secret hacking division, and posted some of them online.
After Vault 7, Pompeo and Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel wanted vengeance on Assange.” It went so far, Yahoo News reported, that “Pompeo and others at the agency proposed abducting Assange from the embassy and surreptitiously bringing him back to the United States via a third country.
Potential scenarios proposed by the CIA and Trump administration officials included crashing into a Russian vehicle carrying Assange to grab him, shooting the tires of an airplane carrying Assange to prevent its takeoff, and engaging in a gun battle through the streets of London. Senior CIA officials went so far as to request ‘sketches’ or ‘options’ detailing methods to kill Assange.
U.S. plans to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange have received little to no establishment news coverage in the United States.
The harassment and torture involved is overkill for those who wish to unveil the truth undefined and of course, we in America believe that other countries conduct sadistic operations against political prisoners who don’t agree with government tyranny.
However, we need to be aware that the constant weaponizing of intelligence agencies against political rivals sets us up for the establishment of the gulag.
The word “gulag” refers to a labor or concentration camp where prisoners oftentimes political prisoners or so-called “enemies of the state,” real or imagined were imprisoned as punishment for their crimes against the state.
Totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union also declared dissidents mentally ill and consigned political prisoners to prisons disguised as psychiatric hospitals, where they could be isolated from the rest of society, their ideas discredited, and subjected to electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures to break them physically and mentally.
In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers.
Think about this type of future.
Your social credit score labels you as obnoxious and troublesome. That is your first mistake. Then you just happen to be talking in a bar while intoxicated saying a few bad things about government officials.
Someone overhears you and is offended. He tells the bartender -and the bartender calls the authorities,
Now mind you undefined there has been no crime committed according to your First Amendment right.
But if, in the opinion of the local authorities, your presence in a particular place is “prejudicial to public order” or “incompatible with public tranquility,” you may be arrested without a warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place that is deemed necessary for your reprogramming, or even drug treatment.
The latter would violate your cognitive liberty.
You could also face a public surveillance charge where you could be on a watch list for 10 years.
It is the age-old practice of despotic regimes that eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by making them disappear—or forcing them to flee—or exiling them literally or figuratively or virtually from their fellow citizens—is happening with increasing frequency in America.
Especially when it comes to the upcoming election.
The unprecedented and corrupt indictment of President Trump is built on sand and is brazen election interference. It is an indictment about nothing.
Biden’s further transforming of the FBI and Justice Department into political enforcers to jail his leading political opponent could lead to the end of our constitutional republic.
The indictment has followed years of prosecutorial misconduct, harassment, and abuse victimizing Trump- Now we will have to go through meaningless court hearings and of course if he is found guilty then we have a high-profile political figure in jail based on the circumstantial thought that he organized and planned an insurrection.
Again let the evidence prevail undefined but the court of public opinion has sparked controversy over whether or not he should even be on the ballot in certain states.
Joe Biden wants to distract from his own personal corruption and join the ranks of foreign dictators by trying to jail and turn Trump into a political prisoner. Congress should act immediately and do everything possible under the law to undo this attempt to destroy our form of government.
The Democrats have gotten away with “Russiagate,” false impeachments, “Insurrection gate,” “documents gate,” covering up Hillary Clinton’s felonies, suppressing and censoring the damning information on Hunter Biden-and a large variety of other violations of law and due process
The exhaustive attack on Donald Trump has gone on for 7 years.
Ask yourself if this is healthy for a republic or democracy.
It obviously isnundefinedt and if he does spend time in prison that wonundefinedt stop him.
Abraham Lincoln was also absent from the ballot in 1860.
Ten Southern states failed to issue ballots on behalf of Lincoln because he was opposed to slavery. When that was not enough to prevent a Lincoln victory, his opponents had him assassinated.
The US Civil War broke out in 1861.
When JFK was in Dallas he shook his head because there was a full-page advertisement that said that he should be tried for treason because he too was being accused of orchestrating the racial riots or “Betraying the Constitution” for giving “support and encouragement to the Communist-inspired racial riots,” among other supposed violations.
Later that day he was gunned down in Dallas.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
There is a pattern that we are allowing to happen based on nothing but hate and incivility.
Just before Christmas The House authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, however, in this case, the media favored the President by saying the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.
These men, Biden and Trump are the frontrunners in the election according to the media.
Can we even see how all of this is going and that the deep state, and all of the sadistic members of the cabal undefined are showing us how they are going to carry out matters of thought crime and freedom of speech in the future?
If there is trouble in Washington and the possibility of death to political prisoners -where does that leave you and me?
So many people will say, bring it on, I have a gun and I will protect what is mine undefined but that too can be seen as a mental fault -and can be used under the guise of red flag laws.
Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are a perfect example of this mindset at work and the ramifications of where this could lead.
As The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.
While in theory, it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This administration has declared MAGA Republicans as a threat and also veterans who consider themselves patriots as a threat to democracy.
For instance, the Justice Department launched a pilot program aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.
One tactic being used to deal with so-called “mentally ill suspects who also happen to be trained in modern warfare” is through the use of civil commitment laws, found in all states and employed throughout American history to not only silence but cause dissidents to disappear.
It is a sad statement that veterans are being targeted now in the United States.
Journalists who were once considered third observers have also been targeted especially after the riots and mob attacks of 2020 and 2021.
For many newsrooms, the protests were a wake-up call to the vulnerability of the U.S. press. It was also a wake-up call for the alternative reporters who were beaten up or harmed by either the police or the rioters themselves.
A press pass may be influential in persuading a police officer to not arrest you, but it’s not legal protection.
It certainly didn’t help our producer Ron Patton -who while getting lunch for our staff was targeted by Portland police as they threw a flash bang directly at him.
He was not even near the main action of the rioters in Portland but was still attacked.
Now the recent breakdown in norms has wide-reaching implications for press freedom, both domestically and internationally. Long considered a defender of global press freedom, Washington has moved away from this position as many other countries have now abandoned protection for the press undefined and now in wartime, many of them have been held hostage or killed as political prisoners.
The idea that we have no political prisoners is a myth undefined the idea that leaders like Joe Biden are not using the system as a weapon to jail political opponents is also a myth.
It is being done with a lot more frequency than before -and you might wind up being targeted for something you thought was harmless- mainly expressing your thoughts about something political undefined or just a conspiracy theory you heard about on the internet.
Political prisoners have no shared ideology. Standing for justice does not necessarily mean that one defends their political views; it means that one demands oneundefineds freedom because they have been unjustly incarcerated.
We need to embrace due process again; we need to assume innocence before we claim that someone is guilty.
SHOW GUEST:
Owen Shroyer is the host of the Info Wars War Room, 3-6 pm, central time on weekdays and Sunday Night Live at Banned.video. He’s been banned across social media since 2018. Owen has been politically persecuted and is still involved in a legal defense against the Democrat party machine and weaponized government since 2019. Shroyer is well-known for political protest videos exposing liberal insanity and violence. He supports free speech and other pro-American issues.
