‘Corona was vals alarm’

Foto: photoheuristic.info CC BY 2.0

Duitse overheid ernstig in verlegenheid door gelekt rapport: ‘Corona was vals alarm’

in Buitenland 30 mei 2020 13:00 29,989 Bekeken

De Duitse overheid en mainstream media doen aan damage control na de publicatie van een vernietigend rapport vanuit het Duitse ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken over corona.

In dat rapport staat onder meer dat:

• Het gevaar van Covid-19 overschat is
• Mensen die sterven door corona aan het eind van hun leven waren
• Er wereldwijd zo’n 250.000 coronadoden zijn, terwijl er gedurende de griepgolf van 2017/18 1,5 miljoen doden vielen
• Corona geen groter gevaar vormt dan veel andere virussen
• Dit een vals alarm was
• De overheid tijdens de coronacrisis één van de grootste producenten van nepnieuws is gebleken

Dramatische gevolgen

In het rapport wordt verder gesteld dat de meeste mensen sterven als gevolg van de coronamaatregelen die de overheid heeft ingesteld, niet door het virus.

In eerste instantie probeerde de overheid het rapport af te doen als ‘het werk van een medewerker’. Dat klopt niet, aangezien het document is opgesteld door een wetenschappelijk panel dat gevormd is door het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en dat bestaat uit medisch deskundigen van diverse Duitse universiteiten.

De auteurs brachten op 11 mei een persverklaring naar buiten waarin ze de overheid bekritiseren wegens het negeren van de adviezen van experts. Ze zeiden ook dat hun patiënten veel schade ondervinden van de coronamaatregelen.

Op 23 mei kopte de Duitse krant Bild: Dramatische gevolgen van coronamaatregelen: 52.000 kankeroperaties uitgesteld. Een arts waarschuwde dat ‘we de gevolgen van de coronacrisis nog jaren zullen voelen’.

Orwelliaanse maatregelen

Het vernietigende rapport is op 9 mei door ambtenaar Stephan Kohn gelekt aan het magazine Tichys Einblick, één van de populairste alternatieve media in Duitsland. Politici en media openden vrijwel gelijk de aanval. De reactie van staatssecretaris van Binnenlandse Zaken Günter Krings was veelzeggend: “Als je dit soort papers gaat analyseren, kun je net zo goed aluhoedjes uitnodigen bij parlementaire hoorzittingen.”

Magazine Der Spiegel gebruikte het woord ‘complot’ in een artikel over het gelekte rapport maar liefst 17 keer. Buiten Duitsland is er nagenoeg geen ruchtbaarheid aan gegeven.

In Duitsland wordt al sinds begin april gedemonstreerd tegen de coronamaatregelen. De demonstraties zijn vooral gericht tegen het corona-narratief en mensen als Bill Gates. De grootste betoging vond plaats in Stuttgart, waar op 9 mei tienduizenden mensen op de been waren.

Duitsers zeggen nee tegen de Orwelliaanse maatregelen, variërend van surveillance-apps tot vaccinaties. Ze zien in het gelekte rapport hun gelijk bevestigd.

https://www.ninefornews.nl/duitse-overheid-ernstig-in-verlegenheid-door-gelekt-rapport-corona-was-vals-alarm/?fbclid=IwAR2vvBgVb5H2Y4hNuhbYgKlovWOa_vkK27S9VqBBP1hSofcPNS5zynkY24A

Washington Moves to Vietnam-Style “Scorched Earth” Policy

30.05.2020 Author: Vladimir Platov

In Syria, Washington Moves to Vietnam-Style “Scorched Earth” Policy

Column: Politics

Region: Middle East

Country: Syria

It is now clear, not only in the USA but also beyond its borders, that US efforts to quietly oust the Assad regime in Syria have failed.

Washington’s original mission of “protecting the civilian population” in Syria quickly turned into “fighting terrorism,” but this, of course, primarily meant engagement with the very same jihadists from Daesh (terrorist formation banned in the Russian Federation – ed.) who were armed and trained by the United States.  Subsequently, in August 2014, a 15-state coalition was formed to reinforce the intervention and included Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain and Morocco, as well as the NATO allies. Then the Kurds were brought into the fray, used by Washington to seize control over all major oil and gas deposits in the east of the country.

After the defeat of terrorist group Daesh (banned in the Russian Federation – ed.) and its transformation into a run-of-the-mill underground armed Islamist movement akin to Al-Qaeda (also banned in the Russian Federation – ed.), another terrorist formation previously nurtured and used by Washington, the White House began a new escalation of tensions in Syria and neighboring Iraq. To this end, Washington’s new line became that of fighting “Iranian expansion” which it intended to use to justify the continued presence of its military contingent. This contingent, together with the US’s allies, was engaging in the flagrant plundering of Syria’s natural resources.

Recently, official US rhetoric has increasingly spoken of the “revelation” that the US’s main objective in Syria is “to defeat the Russians.” Admittedly, such “revelations” are not new. A year after Russia’s involvement in Syria began in 2015 (upon the invitation of President Assad), former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell admitted in a television interview that, in his opinion, the US should “covertly” participate in the business of “killing Russians and Iranians.” More recently, James Jeffrey, US special representative in the region, said of US troops in Syria that:  “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”

The conveyer belt of plundered Syrian natural resources has been bringing significant profits to the very military-political elite which initiated the intervention in the country for several years now. So, too, has the export and sale of Syrian archeological treasures (unfortunately, US law does not allow for any serious punishment for theft of artefacts from territories of other countries, which is evidenced by reports of similar crimes committed by Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq).

However, the covert distribution of the profits from the smuggling of oil and archeological treasures into the pockets of those who initiated the intervention is evoking increasing resentment and discontent among members of the elite not lucky enough to be part of this exclusive club of profit mongers. So have the billions spent in vain by the White House on the war in Syria (a significant part of which has also remained in the personal accounts of select members of the US military-political elite), which, according to experts, equate to around $11.5 million per day since August 2014, or $7 billion over the past six years. This is why Democrats regularly criticize Donald Trump for exorbitant spending on pointless wars in the Middle East.

All this forced Sean O’Donnell, inspector general of the US Department of Defense, to report to Congress with a 134-page document on Operation Inherent Resolve and US actions in Syria and Iraq. The report openly says that the main objective of the “counter-terrorism” operation in the Euphrates Basin is the security of oil and gas deposits controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces and the US coalition. US officials have thereby confirmed that, under the guise of protecting their troops, they are actually engaged in business and the plundering of natural resources rather than any sort of fight against terrorism.

So, to give further impetus to its actions in Syria, the White House has moved not just to “making it a quagmire for the Russians”, but to the Vietnam tactic of “scorched earth.” This in particular has been indicated over the past few days by a number of reports in various media and internet resources on the mass burning of civilians’ agricultural land in the east of Syria. On the morning of 17 May, according to inhabitants of Adla, a village in the Al-Shaddadah area south of the city of Al-Hasakah, the occupying US forces’ Apache helicopters were flying low and dropping incendiary bombs, setting wheat fields on fire while hot, dry winds fanned the flames. After making their “delivery”, the helicopters began flying aggressively low above residential buildings, frightening residents and especially children and giving a clear signal: do not sell your wheat to the Syrian government. On 24 May, a similar tactic was again employed: an American military patrol in the area of Al-Manajir intentionally launched an incendiary rocket in the direction of arable land owned by an Arab farmer, causing a field in the north-west of the Al-Hasakah province to catch fire.

It is important to remember that bread is Syria’s most important food product and, despite the global coronavirus pandemic, Damascus is interested in protecting its grain supply, with the country’s annual wheat harvest having begun two weeks ago. The northern provinces of Al-Hasakah, Raqqa, Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor, together with the central province of Hama, produce 96% of the country’s wheat. Through the use of fire as a weapon of war, 85,000 hectares of grain were burnt in 2019, and the Syrian government was forced to import 2.7 million tons to cover the losses. According to UN statistics, Syria suffered severe food shortages and some 6.5 million people were considered food insecure in 2019.

Today, the eradication of Syrian agriculture and the White House’s revival of the Vietnam “scorched earth” tactic have become the US military strategy in Syria. All this should be addressed by international public and legal organizations, and Washington should be officially charged with war crimes in Syria, as well as the murder of thousands of peaceful citizens of the country by American forces.

Vladimir Platov, Middle East expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

https://journal-neo.org/2020/05/30/in-syria-washington-moves-to-vietnam-style-scorched-earth-policy/

Cartels That Run The World

The Matrix Revealed: Cartels That Run The World

by Jon Rappoport

The following information comes from insider interviews with Ellis Medavoy and Richard Bell, two people I interview extensively in my collection, The Matrix Revealed. This is just a brief taste of what they have to say... Major institutions on this planet that control Military, Money, Energy, Government, Medical, Corporate, Media, and Education are becoming, more and more, global cartels, horizontally integrated across national borders. This is more than a top-down command process. It's organically evolving. Three steps forward, two steps back. There is a great deal of competition among the components of a given cartel, but there is also cooperation. And in the long run, the see-saw is tipping in the direction of cooperation, as these entities realize they may well have more to gain that way. I can't stress too strongly this EVOLVING process. All attempts to merely assume twelve men in a room run the planet fall woefully short. Instead, over time, people who lead a powerful institution (like Energy, for example) look out and recognize more major players, and in this recognition there is an impulse to compete and win and destroy, but there is also an impulse to build commonality and therefore monopolize the entire territory. During one conversation with retired master propagandist Ellis Medavoy, I asked him about the extent of mutual cooperation in his given field, psychological warfare. He responded: "Twenty years ago, I would have said we were all operating separately and jealously. Each of us was mining his own contacts and building his false pictures of reality for the masses. But then things began to change. Globally. First of all, more of us were pushing the same holograms. And because communication and travel were speeding up so rapidly, we were working a lot of the same venues. We would run into each other more often. We began to share information. I mean, it was cautious. We weren't gushing with unbridled love, I assure you. The competitive factor was still strong. And we had fights. But through all that, we began to see through the fog, so to speak. We began to understand the effectiveness of cooperating. We would test each other with privileged information, to see if we could trust each other to keep it private. A tidbit here, a tidbit there. "And you see, behind us, other groups were finding commonality, too. For example, in the area of medical propaganda, where I operated a lot of the time. And these groups saw they could join together for specific operations, on an international scale. They could push enormous lies globally, and everyone of their class would profit and gain wider control. So I would find myself working with a psy warfare guy from, say, France, or Germany in a joint venture. We would rub elbows. We'd be feeding from the same basic money trough. "We'd both be briefed by a team of intelligence experts, and those experts would be of several nationalities. Slowly, I saw a new kind of umbrella structure emerging. "See, suppose during the secret lead-up to a planned economic crisis [money cartel], you can distract everybody with a phony epidemic [medical cartel]. Do you see? Leaders perceive a reason to cooperate. Planners become more intelligent and clever. They reach across lines they never would have reached across before... "You begin to see the outlines of a much more inclusive future structure. This is multi-front warfare." Richard Bell, another former insider, said to me: "People like to assume that money is everything. If you can limit the amount of money the public has, eventually they weaken and cave in and they're easier to control. And this is certainly true. But on the other hand, as mega-corporations gain more power and range and markets, you have a clash, because those corporations, which are now cooperating in ways they never have, as a cartel in some respects, want customers for their products. They don't want abject poverty across the board. People have to be able to buy their products. "So there is a heavy conflict. It's a conflict between elite bankers [money cartel] and mega-corporations [corporation cartel]. It needs to be resolved through advance planning, over the long term. So now you have these powerful men sitting down and talking in a new way. Other big-time players get involved, too [government, media, energy cartels, for example]." This is just the beginning of what these people have to say about the Matrix in their interviews and how it REALLY works.

Here are the contents of  The Matrix Revealed: * 250 megabytes of information. * Over 1100 pages of text. * Ten and a half hours of audio. The 2 bonuses alone are rather extraordinary: * My complete 18-lesson course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, which includes the teacher's manual and audio to guide you. I was previously selling the course for $375. This is a new way to teach logic, the subject that has been missing from schools for decades. * The complete text (331 pages) of AIDS INC., the book that exposed a conspiracy of scientific fraud deep within the medical research establishment. The book has become a sought-after item, since its publication in 1988. It contains material about viruses, medical testing, and the invention of disease that is, now and in the future, vital to our understanding of phony epidemics arising in our midst. I assure you, the revelations in the book will surprise you; they cut much deeper and are more subtle than "virus made in a lab" scenarios. The heart and soul of this product are the text interviews I conducted with Matrix-insiders, who have first-hand knowledge of how the major illusions of our world are put together: * JACK TRUE, the most creative hypnotherapist on the face of the planet. Jack's anti-Matrix understanding of the mind and how to liberate it is unparalleled. His insights are unique, staggering. 43 interviews, 320 pages. * ELLIS MEDAVOY, master of PR, propaganda, and deception, who worked for key controllers in the medical and political arenas. 28 interviews, 290 pages. * RICHARD BELL, financial analyst and trader, whose profound grasp of market manipulation and economic-rigging is formidable, to say the least. 16 interviews, 132 pages. Also included: * Several more interviews with brilliant analysts of the Matrix. 53 pages. * The ten and a half hours of mp3 audio are my solo presentation, based on these interviews and my own research. Title: The Multi-Dimensional Planetary Chessboard---The Matrix vs. the Un-Conditioning of the Individual. (All the material is digital.  Upon ordering it, you'll receive an email with a link to it.) Understanding Matrix is also understanding your capacity and power, and that is the way to approach this subject.  Because liberation is the goal.  And liberation has no limit. I invite you to a new exploration and a great adventure.

Use this link to order Jon's Matrix Collections.

Jon Rappoport The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.

You can find this article and more at NoMoreFakeNews. https://nomorefakenews.com

A Society On The Brink Of Complete And Utter Chaos

A Society On The Brink Of Complete And Utter Chaos

By Michael Snyder

End Of The American Dream

May 30, 2020

It is heartbreaking to watch the violence that is taking place on the streets of Minneapolis.  I have quite a few relatives that live in the Twin Cities area, and I have been there many times.  In the old days it always felt so peaceful, but not anymore.  The tragic death of George Floyd has unleashed a massive wave of anger, and the riots have made headlines all over the globe.  Originally, many had anticipated that Thursday night would not be as violent as Wednesday night was, but that was not a safe assumption to make.  Around 10 o’clock, protesters stormed into the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct building and set it on fire…

Minneapolis is in the midst of a third night of unrest in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, with protesters taking over the police department’s 3rd Precinct building late Thursday night.

The break-in happened at about 10 p.m., with helicopter footage showing a large fire burning near the main entrance.

Police released a statement, saying in part, “in the interest of the safety of our personnel, the Minneapolis Police Department evacuated the 3rd Precinct of its staff. Protesters forcibly entered the building and have ignited several fires.”

Living A Life That Rea...Michael SnyderBest Price: $14.48Buy New $14.53(as of 06:20 EST - Details)As the building burned, fireworks were being shot into the sky in celebration.

Of course the violence that we witnessed the previous evening was quite alarming as well.  By the end of the night, rioters had torched and looted a number of prominent retail stores…

Shocking images Thursday morning showed the widespread destruction left overnight after stores including Wendy’s, Target, Walmart and Autozone were looted and some even set on fire.

Mayor Frey pleaded for calm ahead of more expected protests this evening telling residents ‘we cannot let tragedy beget more tragedy.’

Videos also showed what was reported to be an apartment building entirely engulfed by flames as rioters stood and watched and the fire department was nowhere to be seen.

I don’t think that any of us will ever forget watching a Target store being looted, and at this point Target has decided to close all of their locations in the entire state “until further notice”.

Overall, more than 50 buildings were burned down on Wednesday night, and one protester boldly declared that “the whole city can burn down”…

“The whole city can burn down. They should all be out here protesting, not just people who care about black lives. Everybody. Burn it down. Make them pay. Maybe then they’ll understand,” one protester, Elicia S.—she declined to give her full last name—told The Daily Beast late Wednesday.

“I read somewhere that you’re never gonna care until it hits your front door. We are here now, knocking in the front door,” demonstrator Becky Mathews added.

Sadly, it isn’t just the rioters that are out of control.

When George Floyd was arrested, it wasn’t for committing a violent crime.  He was accused of “allegedly trying to pay at a local deli with a counterfeit $20 bill”, and surveillance video from the scene does not support police claims that he resisted arrest.

Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for eight entire minutes, and video of the moment when Floyd finally lost consciousness is absolutely horrifying.

Of course this is far from an isolated incident.  According to the Los Angeles Times, approximately one out of every 1000 African-American males will die at the hands of our police…

About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to a new analysis of deaths involving law enforcement officers. That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops.

Look, I have friends that are current or former police officers, and I am so thankful for the good men and women that work so hard to protect all of us day in and day out.

But the truth is that there are a lot of really bad apples out there, and troubling incidents are happening with increasing frequency all over the nation.

For example, a young mother named Sara Walton Brady was recently arrested by the police in Idaho for simply taking her children to play in the park.  The following comes directly from a message that she sent to me, and she said that I could share it with all of you…

On April 21, 2020 I saw a video on Facebook by other moms about a playdate at Kleiner Park scheduled for the afternoon. That video showed people at the park and the tape ripped down from the play structures. I decided to go with my two middle children and showed up about an hour late.

I was only there 5-10 minutes when three officers from the Meridian Police Department arrived; one Sgt. And two officers. The Sgt., who I now know is Sgt. Fiscus, came marching onto the playground ordering all of the children and moms off of the bark and playground area while brusquely explaining that the city of Meridian the parks and they were closed by the order of the governor and the mayor.

This obviously upset several of the moms there, including myself. I attempted to ask questions to the Sgt. About what authority he had to remove people from the park. During this attempted dialogue he continued to tell people that the playground area was closed and people needed to leave. However, he continually directed people to a concentrated area on the grass, which would have been a violation of the Idaho governor’s order of being closer than 6 feet. None of this made sense to me as I saw multiple other people recreating in the park – walking, fishing, and even people playing a game of basketball. It also didn’t make sense to me why we could be closer together on the grass and it was okay to violate that portion of this new found rule, but not on the park where the kids and the adults were much more spread out.

As I continued to ask these questions the situation became more heated and eventually the officer told me I had five seconds to leave the bark or he was going to arrest me. The officer then proceeded to count down to me, as I often do to my children when they are not listening. I told him “Fine! Arrest me for being in a park! Do it!” While turning around to his threat.

I was placed inside the back of a very hot patrol car and left there for several minutes at which time I was eventually booked into jail for a misdemeanor trespassing charge. I was also accused of tearing the tape down on the playground that was had been placed there previously. I did not tear down any tape as it was down when I arrived. I was told that children had ripped it down.

Multiple other people were on the bark while I was arrested yet no one else was charged with trespassing, cited, or arrested. I was also told that after I was transported to the jail that several people went back onto the bark (after tearing more tape down) and began playing on the playground and bark as the police watched. None of this was addressed by the police.

My case has now been conflicted to the State of Idaho. This is very concerning to me that they have not dismissed the case and they have unlimited resources to make an example of me. It’s also concerning to me that while people are losing their jobs and businesses’ that the State would use hard earned taxpayer money to waste on a mom who was at a park with her kids and try to make an example of me.

Please help me raise funds for legal fees to fight the State of Idaho. I am told that it could cost anywhere from $30,000-$50,000. You can go to supportsarabrady.com.

Sincerely,
Sara Walton Brady

I was friends with Sara Walton Brady long before this incident occurred, and I can tell you that she is a rock solid citizen.

In fact, Idaho would not be in the giant mess that it is today if a lot more patriots like her lived in the state.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the whole country is a giant mess, and what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

Our entire society is on the brink of a complete and utter meltdown, and I expect that the upcoming election will bring tensions that have been simmering all over the nation to a boiling point.

There is a reason why so many people are looking to move out of our major cities right now.  America is literally in the process of coming apart at the seams, and there will be a lot more rioting, looting and civil unrest in the days ahead.

Reprinted with permission from End of the American Dream.

The Best of Michael Snyder

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Copyright © End Of The American Dream

Previous article by Michael Snyder: You May Not Understand This Now, But You Must Get Prepared for the Food Shortages That Are Coming

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/michael-snyder/a-society-on-the-brink-of-complete-and-utter-chaos/

Michael Flynn & the FBI Setup

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Michael Flynn & the FBI Setup

The case of the fallen Trump official shows exactly what is wrong with our criminal justice system.

By John Kiriakou 

Consortiumnews.com

May 30, 2020

Much has been made in recent weeks of whether or not former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn should or should not have been prosecuted for making a false statement to the FBI in 2017.

Flynn allegedly lied to two FBI agents about what he had said in a conversation with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.  But we know now that the FBI agents set him up, emailing each other in the days before they interviewed Flynn and asking whether their goal should be to trick him into lying so that they could prosecute him or “get him fired.”

The Flynn case is, in a nutshell, exactly what is wrong with our criminal justice system.  Former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson warned us in 1940 that cases like Flynn’s would become the norm:Mean Justice: A Town&r...Humes, EdwardBest Price: $4.50Buy New $30.00(as of 05:09 EDT - Details)

“The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation that any other person in America.  His discretion is tremendous.  He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations.  Or the prosecutor may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizen’s friends interviewed.  The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial.  He may dismiss the case before trial, in which case the defense never has a chance to be heard.  Or he may go on with a public trial.  If he obtains a conviction, the prosecutor can still make recommendations as to sentence, as to whether the prisoner should get probation or a suspended sentence, and after he is put away, as to whether he is a fit subject for parole. While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”

The problem has become largely a bureaucratic one.  Do you think prosecutors get promoted or reelected by not prosecuting people?  Do you think they get promoted or reelected by not seeking the longest possible sentences for those they convict?  Of course not.  Just imagine the trophy that Michael Flynn, a retired star lieutenant general and national security adviser, would have been in a prosecutor’s career.

A 2012 study by ProPublica found that the Justice Department wins 98.2 percent of its cases, almost all as a result of a plea deal. So, what strategies do prosecutors use to ensure a conviction?  There are two common ones:  charge stacking and venue shopping.

Charge Stacking

Charge stacking is just what it sounds like.  Let’s say a defendant appears to have committed a crime; let’s say mortgage fraud.  The prosecutor doesn’t charge him with just mortgage fraud.  He’ll add a couple of conspiracy charges and maybe a charge each of wire fraud and mail fraud.  The defendant is now facing 50 years in prison, rather than five.  So, what does the magnanimous prosecutor do?  He offers to drop all the other charges if the defendant pleads guilty to the original charge of mortgage fraud.  It’s no wonder there are so many innocent people in prison. Most people wouldn’t risk 50 years in prison if they can accept a plea, get a sentence of two years, and make the whole thing go away.

Venue Shopping

Venue shopping is another nice trick.  Prosecutors will seek to charge a defendant in the federal district where he or she is most likely to be convicted.  CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling is a great example of venue shopping. Jeffrey blew the whistle on racial discrimination at the CIA, as well as an illegal program targeting the Iranian nuclear program.  He was accused of passing classified information to then-New York Timesreporter James Risen, who then used the information in a book.  Risen lived in Maryland and worked in Washington, D.C., at the time.  Sterling lived and worked in St. Louis.  But he was prosecuted in the Eastern District of Virginia, known as the “espionage court” because no national security defendant has ever won a case there.The Field of Fight: Ho...Ledeen, MichaelBest Price: $1.48Buy New $6.40(as of 02:20 EST - Details)

Prosecutors knew that Sterling couldn’t win there, so they had a secretary buy Risen’s book at a Barnes & Noble in Arlington, Virginia. Bingo.  They had a “crime” committed in the Eastern District.  (The feds argued that because Risen’s book contained classified information, its very existence was a crime. The secretary’s purchase of the book, by this logic, caught Sterling in the act of passing the information to the secretary through the book in Virginia and committing espionage, the charge against him.)

Sterling insisted on his innocence and he decided to go to trial. He was convicted of nine felonies, including seven counts of espionage.  He is finally out of prison and still maintains his innocence. But the prosecutors got their scalp.

The system is broken and there’s no easy fix.  Ours is an adversarial legal system.  The French and others have a magistrate system where the courts investigate crimes and work with the defendant’s attorneys to get the truth.  If the person is guilty, the two sides work together to come up with the fairest and most just solution.  But in an adversarial system, one side wins and one side loses.  That’s why Robert Jackson’s words are so important. Remember the power and authority of the prosecutor.  And until we see real, systemic changes in our justice system, we can only keep our fingers crossed.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program. 

Copyright © John Kiriakou, Consortiumnews.com

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/no_author/john-kiriakou-michael-flynn-the-fbi-setup/