So much for democracy...
...in the Outlaw US Empire!
If you follow only the western mainstream media, you probably have not heard/read anything about it; however, if you follow alternative news media here on Substack and other platform, such as Telegram, Wordpress, Blogger, etc., most likely you already know this story. Just in case you do not, here it is: as reported, among others, by Laura Ruggeri in this post on her Telegram channel…
The US State Department has seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.
“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me,” Ritter told RT. “They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.” Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a RT contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation. (Source: RT)
@LauraRuHK
So much for democracy… in the so-called “land of freedom” and “exporter of democracy” across the globe!
Soon after that, news started circulating that also “Former New Jersey Superior Court judge Andrew Napolitano, author, and host of the Judging Freedom podcast on YouTube was also taken off the plane to Russia”, as reported by Pepe Escobar in this post on his Telegram channel a couple of days ago, as well as in this article (“Freedom of speech in the U.S.A.? Think again!”) by Gilbert Doctorow yesterday. However, Pepe Escobar rectified his mistake with the following post one hour after the original post:
IMPORTANT UPDATE
Judge Nap was NOT removed from that flight from NYC alongside Scott.
Larry Johnson, who's already in St. Petersburg - we're meeting tomorrow - wrote me, “the judge canceled earlier in the day because the Russian citizen, a former FSB officer, who is going to sponsor them was arrested last night via orders from a political opponent. Their sponsor is running for mayor in some city outside of Moscow. This local official acted with local police. Once Scott learned that he told the judge better to cancel, I don’t think that had anything to do with Scott being removed from the flight.”
By the way, Judge Nap was interviewing Larry exactly when Scott was facing Little Blinkie's no-fly mandate.
Also Gilbert Doctorow rectified his error by the end of the day yesterday in this other interesting article (“The sequence of destruction in any Russian response to NATO-directed attacks on its heartland”), which I invite you to read, as it also speculates about potential escalation scenarios between the Outlaw US Empire and Russia.
Former CIA analyst, Larry C. Johnson, also posted this podcast on his blog, explaining why Scott Ritter’s passport was seized.
Of course judge Napolitano also posted this explanatory video on his YouTube channel, which was reported also by Andrei Martyanov here on his blog.
Finally, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov (pictured above), also issued a harsh statement on this topic, as reproted in this TASS article (originally in Russian):
Lavrov called the US a police state
According to the Russian foreign minister, the refusal to let Scott Ritter into SPIEF proves it
OYO /Republic of Congo/, 4 June. /TASS/. The refusal of the United States to let former US intelligence officer and ex-UN inspector Scott Ritter to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) once again proves that it has become a police state. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“This is just another example in addition to the many that confirm that the United States, which calls itself the leader of democracy of the whole world, has long since become a police state”, the minister pointed out at the press conference.
Asked whether Moscow could do something about it, Lavrov noted that Ritter was not a Russian citizen and had not applied for citizenship. “Therefore, we cannot do anything from the legal point of view. But our assessment is probably not difficult to guess”, the foreign minister emphasised.
Lavrov pointed out that Ritter intended to appeal to the court over the violation of his constitutional rights and ‘will continue to pursue the realisation of his right to travel to the countries he wants. The minister also added that in addition to Ritter, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Andrew Napolitano was also removed from the plane bound for Russia. [We now know that this is not factually correct, though!]
“We have now been asked questions by Agence France-Press (AFP) and Air Force Africa. You can operate in any country, but your colleagues from Russia are banned in almost the entire European Union. And the blacklisting of journalists and entire agencies continues. Draw conclusions, where is democracy, where is a police state, where who is or is not put on a plane, where who is allowed to say what he or she wants”, the head of the Russian diplomatic ministry concluded.
Earlier, Ritter told TASS that he was removed from a flight from New York to Istanbul, through which he was going to arrive in Russia to participate in SPIEF. He said he was not given a reason why the US authorities did not let him out of the country, saying only that it was being done on the instructions of the State Department. Ritter was escorted out of the airport and his suitcases were returned.
P.S.: In the meantime, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, has announced during his visit to China that Turkey would like to join BRICS and that this issue will be discussed at the group’s ministerial meeting in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia) next week, as reported by TASS. This is quite an event if you consider that Turkey is a member of NATO that has always wanted to join the EU, but with not much progress in recent years, meaning that Erdogan may have decided to shelve the idea of joining the EU, probably seeing its impending doom.