The
bipartisan support Mueller’s appointment received is even more
telling given that he is the definition of a Washington insider. The
power elites across the political spectrum seemed to trust him to,
above all, protect their position at the head of the table.
by
Whitney Webb
Part
4 - What the indictment may mean for voices of dissent
Aside
from pleasing the warmongers in the U.S. political establishment and
intelligence community, the Mueller indictment has other potentially
dangerous implications for any person – American or foreign-born –
who criticizes the political status quo.
To
McAdams, this was the most dangerous consequence of the indictment:
“What is most alarming in the indictment is language clearly
targeting ‘witting and unwitting accomplices’ to the so-called
Russian efforts. As former CIA officer Phil Giraldi points out,
‘persons known and unknown’ who ‘unwittingly or wittingly’
helped the Russians could face consequences. Phil quotes a former
prosecutor who says, ‘if I was an American and I did cooperate with
Russians I would be extremely frightened…’ and also quotes
Politico, which writes, ‘Now, a legal framework exists for criminal
charges against Americans…’”
McAdams
continued, noting that many dissenting voices, particularly those who
object to interventionism or appear on outlets associated with
Russia, could now be caught in the wide-cast net encompassing
“Russian collusion:” “What does this mean? Does this
mean that Americans who publicly dispute claims that the Russians are
interfering in our democracy are ‘accomplices’ to the Russian
efforts to dupe us? What about Americans who appear on RT, Sputnik,
or other foreign-funded media outlets to criticize U.S. foreign
policy? Are they accomplices to this ‘crime’ and thus liable to
be prosecuted?”
As a
result, the acceptable range of opinion in regard to U.S. foreign
policy has been drastically reduced. On one hand, the Mueller
indictment creates a foundation for the potential prosecution of any
foreign citizen who criticizes an American political figure up for
election. Thus, foreign writers who often write or tweet about U.S.
politics – such as Aussies like John Pilger and Julian Assange,
Canadians like Eva Bartlett, and Brits like Vanessa Beeley and George
Galloway, among many other examples – could become the subject of a
criminal investigation based on the precedent set up by the
indictment. Even anti-Putin journalist Leonid Bershidsky of Bloomberg
has worried that he could be targeted for merely being a Russian
national who regularly writes about U.S. politics.
McAdams
offered several hypotheticals to illustrate the potential
implications: “If a non-interventionist calls for withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Syria, it can be argued that it is doing the bidding
of Russia. Want to end the 17-year U.S. war in Afghanistan? So does
Russia. Want the U.S. out of NATO and NATO disbanded? So does Russia.
Want a smaller U.S. military budget? So does Russia. Taken
to its logical conclusion, under this aspect of the indictment it
becomes impossible to challenge the current hyper-interventionist,
hyper-militarist U.S. foreign policy.”
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