![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Voltaire-on-freedom-of-speech.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
by Caitlin Johnstone
\nvia Medium.com<\/p>\n
A lot\u2019s been happening really fast.<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s a white noise saturation day and it\u2019s impossible to keep track of everything going on, so I\u2019m just going to post my thoughts on a few of the things that have happened.<\/p>\n Biden\u00a0has announced<\/a>\u00a0plans to roll out new domestic terrorism laws in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them,\u201d\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0reports.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Did you know that Biden\u00a0has often boasted<\/a>\u00a0about being the original author of the US Patriot Act?<\/strong><\/p>\n The first draft of the\u00a0civil rights-eroding<\/a>\u00a0USA PATRIOT Act was magically\u00a0introduced one week after the 9\/11 attacks<\/a>. Legislators\u00a0later admitted<\/a>\u00a0that they hadn\u2019t even had time to read through the hundreds of pages of the history-shaping bill before passing it the next month, yet somehow its authors were able to gather all the necessary information and write the whole entire thing in a week.<\/p>\n This was because most of the work had already been done. CNET\u00a0reported the following<\/a>\u00a0back in 2008:<\/p>\n \u201cMonths before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, [then-Senator Joe] Biden introduced another bill called the\u00a0Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995<\/a>. It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of \u2018terrorism\u2019 that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detention of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review. The Center for National Security Studies\u00a0said the bill would erode<\/a>\u00a0\u2018constitutional and statutory due process protections\u2019 and would \u2018authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Biden\u2019s bill\u00a0was never put to a vote<\/a>, but after 9\/11 then-Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly credited his bill with the foundations of the USA PATRIOT Act.<\/p>\n \u201cCivil libertarians were opposed to it,\u201d Biden\u00a0said in 2002<\/a>\u00a0of his bill.<\/p>\n \u201cRight after 1994, and you can ask the attorney general this, because I got a call when he introduced the Patriot Act. He said, \u2018Joe, I\u2019m introducing the act basically as you wrote it in 1994.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A recent\u00a0Morning Joe<\/em>\u00a0appearance by CIA analyst-turned House Representative Elissa Slotkin eagerly informed us that the real battle against terrorism is now inside America\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n \u201cThe post 9\/11 era is over,\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Slotkin\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0while sharing a clip of her appearance.<\/p>\n \u201cThe single greatest national security threat right now is our internal division.\u00a0The threat of domestic terrorism. The polarization that threatens our democracy.<\/strong>\u00a0If we don\u2019t reconnect our two Americas, the threats will not have to come from the outside.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cBefore Congress, Elissa worked for the CIA and the Pentagon and helped destabilize the Middle East during the Bush and Obama admins,\u201d\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0journalist Whitney Webb in response.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat she says here is essentially an open announcement that the US has moved from the \u2018War on [foreign] terror\u2019 to the \u2018War on domestic terror\u2019.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n In response to\u00a0pressures<\/a>\u00a0from all directions including\u00a0its own staff<\/a>, Twitter has followed Facebook\u2019s lead and removed Donald Trump\u2019s account.<\/strong><\/p>\n And it wasn\u2019t just Trump. Accounts are vanishing quickly, including\u00a0some popular Trump supporter accounts<\/a>. I myself have lost hundreds of followers on Twitter in the last few hours, and I\u2019ve seen people saying they lost a lot more.<\/p>\n It also wasn\u2019t just Trump supporters; leftist accounts are\u00a0getting suspended too<\/a>. The online left is hopefully learning that cheering for Twitter \u201cbanning fascists\u201d irrationally assumes that (A) their purges are only banning fascists and (B) they are limiting their bans to your personal definition of fascists. There is no basis whatsoever for either of these assumptions.<\/p>\n Google has ratcheted things up even further by\u00a0removing Parler<\/a>\u00a0from its app store, and Apple\u00a0will likely soon follow<\/a>. This push to marginalize even the already fringey social media sites is making the libertarian\/shitlib argument of \u201cIf you don\u2019t like censorship just go to another platform\u201d look pretty ridiculous.<\/p>\n