By Fighting Words Staff
Former Marine, U.N. weapons inspector and outspoken critic of U.S. war policy Scott Ritter had his home in Delmar, NY, raided by the FBI on August 7.
Ritter became famous by exposing the Bush Administration’s pretext for launching the invasion of Iraq by stating falsely that the Saddam Hussein government harbored weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Ritter had been on the U.N. inspection teams in Iraq and found no such evidence of WNDs in the country.
Eventually the Pentagon and Bush White House was forced to admit that Ritter was right all along, earning him the bitter hatred of U.S. imperialism from then on.
More recently, Ritter has spoken against the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine, where the U.S. has sent billions of dollars in weapons to the fascist-controlled Kyiv regime, which had since 2014 waged a brutal war against its ethnic Russian people in the eastern Donbass region of the country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irwieBMLBWk
That conflict had cost more than 13,000 lives until Russia intervened in 2022 after repeated diplomatic agreements were broken by the Zelensky regime, who instead has sought membership in the NATO military alliance against Russia.
Ritter has given many YouTube presentations on the Ukraine conflict. Here are recent examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNm7PbmDe2M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpubIhM0oig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irwieBMLBWk
After the raid, Ritter told the press:
The search warrant which “allowed them to look for electronic equipment,” according to Ritter, was “related to concerns apparently the US government has about violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act.”
“I will say that things like this have a chilling effect on free speech,” he said, adding that he believes “there’s no doubt that I’m being targeted because of statements I’ve made about US policy in Ukraine.”
“I am not in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. I have not done anything that do(sic) it and hopefully, by executing the search warrant and taking the materials that they did, they will rapidly reach that conclusion,” Ritter told reporters in front of his home on Wednesday afternoon.
In June the government seized Scott Ritter’s passport without any explanation.
This same article shows Ritter also condemning the U.S.-supported Zionist Netanyahu regime:
Referring to recent reports of Palestinian detainees being raped and sexually abused in Israeli detention centres (sic), Ritter said “I think we’ve got to the point where it’s gone beyond perverted parody.”
“When the Israelis jailed nine soldiers for raping Palestinian prisoners, and then Israeli citizens rise up and say that the Talmud, interpretation of Jewish law, says it’s not a crime to rape non-Jews and that these men should be freed,” the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer added.
“Not only that, then they sent hundreds of people to the Palestinian prisons demanding to be allowed in so they can rape the Palestinian prisoners because they’re permitted to under Jewish law,” Ritter continued.
Ritter also drew attention to Israel’s bombing of schools in Gaza saying “They blew up a school today with students in it. The students were inside the school burning to death.”
“That happens on a daily basis,” he emphasized.
In an interview with the Chinese newspaper Global Times, Ritter described how Washington sees its former colony, the Philippines, as simply a tool to be used against the People’s Republic of China:
The US can use the Philippines as a blocking mechanism to counter China’s activities in the South China Sea. It can also use the Philippines as a base of operations to fall back on, to launch attacks against China, or to project US power. They seek to exploit Filipino manpower as a proxy force for the US, so that in any future conflict, it’s Filipinos who are paying the price in terms of dead bodies, not the Americans. Eventually, like any tool, they will be broken. Regardless of whether the US achieves its objectives or not, the Philippines will be a broken nation, and that’s not an ideal outcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ329_d9Dks
So far, no charges have been lodged against Ritter. But that is certainly a threat, particularly when one sees the arrests and upcoming trial of leaders of the Uhuru Movement.
Government attacks the Uhuru Movement
Scott Ritter is not the only victim of the U.S. government’s attacks designed to intimidate and silence critics of its war policy.
For 50 years, the Uhuru Movement has been a part of the Black Liberation struggle in the U.S. On July 29, 2022, the FBI conducted violent pre-dawn raids on the homes of several leaders of the Uhuru Movement and the African People’s Solidarity Committee in St, Louis, Missouri, and St. Petersburg, Florida.
As a March 4 article in the Black Agenda Report stated:
These raids were followed by a bogus indictment that charged Chairman Yeshitela, Chairwoman Penny Hess of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, and Chair Jesse Nevel of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement with being agents of Russia and acting on behalf of the Russian government.
These are known as the Uhuru 3.
These leaders each face extremely serious charges. If convicted, they face 15 years in prison. The government is clearly trying to intimidate the Black community as a whole, to deny them their right to speak out against the U.S. supported colonial and neo-colonial suppression of people, whether it be the ethnic Russian people in the Donbass, the Palestinian people or the Indigenous people here, all oppressed people around the world. https://www.youtube.com/live/qmbZVMpvdr8
Their trial begins on September 3 in Tampa, Florida. The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has issued a call for participation in Freedom Summer 2024 mobilization in St. Petersburg, Florida on August 31: https://handsoffuhuru.org/the-freedom-summer-project-2024/
Hands off Scott Ritter and the Uhuru 3!
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