Capitalism in Crisis Throws Democracy Out the Window

By Mike Craig

Northern Ireland

I really wish the general public would pay attention to this.

 

We do not live in a democracy. Within the capitalist system democracy is always limited, but because global capitalism is teetering on the brink of collapse, those who own and control it will go to even greater lengths to try and save it at the expense of democracy and international law. 

 

Part of this battle is the attempt to take over the Middle East and remove all threats to Western hegemony. Israel is a key part of this project, and contrary to the idea that Israel controls western governments, the reality is actually the other way around. 

 

The USA, the UK and the EU need Israel as the attack dog against the perceived enemy - any country which doesn't lie down and accept western control, or any country which would threaten the primacy of the petrodollar in global trade. The West's attack dog is a settler colony which suffers from a serious case of siege mentality, the longer the colony continues to exist the more deeply imbedded this mentality becomes. 

 

The g*nocidal tendencies of this have reached a point where even the supporting western governments have become embarrassed by it, nevertheless they still continue to arm the g*nocide and cover for it.

 

Over the last few years we have seen George Orwell's predictions becoming a reality, nowhere more so than in the Middle East, where truth has been turned on its head. 

 

Israel is in breach of several international laws and countries who support it, like the UK, are also in breach of international laws for continuing to support its actions rather than carry out their duty which is to hold it to account.

 

In the UK too, truth has been completely turned on its head. The Government is a collective criminal, it's lapdog media and its leading judiciary are guilty too, yet they compound this by criminalising any protest against their delinquency.

 

This isn't just about Palestine Action, it is an assault on democracy and the real rule of law. 

 

Our Governments and their institutions are arch criminals who hold no value for human life. 

 

We are now entering the period of barbarism which we were warned about by Rosa Luxembourg. 

The Labour MPs determined to show they represent Israel, not the British people

The Labour MPs determined to show they represent Israel, not the British people

Labour wants the repression of Palestine Action to serve as a blueprint for politics. Why not lock up opposition party leaders and any constituents who protest government policy?

Johnathan Cook, June 17, 2026

Mike Tapp, a minister in the Home Office, recently posted on X a “gotcha” response to Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s criticism of the Labour government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action. 

In the wake of the Court of Appeal ruling this week to uphold proscription, Polanski noted the government’s authoritarian assault on civil liberties. Thousands of grandparents –retired lawyers, doctors, vicars, army veterans – he pointed out, had been arrested on terrorism charges simply for holding a placard saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

In response, Tapp asked Polanski: “Do you support the Palestine Action group?”

This was Tapp’s attempt at entrapment. If Polanski answered in the affirmative, he could be jailed for up to 14 years – because of the unprecedented decision Tapp’s own Home Office took to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organisation. 

No direct action group in the UK’s history has ever before been designated a terrorist group, on a par with al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Tapp clearly thought he was being clever. But all he was really doing was further exposing the ugly, patently authoritarian nature of the government he serves in and its complicity in Israel’s endless atrocities in Gaza.

Tapp is not some disinterested party in all this. He is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, the genocide-compatible wing of the Labour party that dominates the cabinet.

Investigative journalist Paul Holden noted on X: 

Tapp has taken money and benefits from Labour Together, Labour Friends of Israel and Stuart Roden, who founded the Israeli-based VC company Hetz Ventures with Judah Taub. Taub is a former IDF Special Forces operative who served as an IDF reservist in Gaza. 

The Labour government is stuffed with compromised individuals like Mike Tapp, who serve as Israel’s cheerleaders in the UK. 

In addition, or more likely as a consequence, many of these ministers, from Keir Starmer down, receive large donations from the Israel lobby. 

Polanski replied to Tapp: “The fact that your government has made it illegal for me to answer yes is a damning testament to your flagrant disregard for civil liberties.”

The McCarthy-emulating Tapp is not some outlier in the Labour party. He is its beating heart. It was his wing of the party, at the behest of the Israel lobby and working covertly through the unlawful activities of Labour Together, that helped confect an imaginary “antisemitism crisis” in the party in the second half of the 2010s. 

Their goal was to use anti-democratic means to drive Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters out of the Labour party and put corporate donors and the Israel lobby firmly back in charge of policy.

While Tapp was seeking to jail the only Jewish leader of a major British political party this week, it emerged that another Labour MP, Peter Kyle, had reported a female constituent of his in Brighton to the police. She was arrested and charged after writing to him in protest at the government’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Kyle apparently believed that, in writing to him, her MP, the woman had committed a crime under the Communications Act by “causing him annoyance”. Presumably, Kyle finds it annoying to be reminded of his party’s collusion in genocide. 

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And presumably he imagines too that, in his version of democracy, MPs should never be questioned by those they represent on ethical issues, such as complicity in a genocide. 

Shockingly the Crown Prosecution Service agreed to pursue Kyle’s case through the courts, proving once again that it is nothing more than an adjunct of the executive branch. 

In a rare sign of the independence of the judiciary – at least at its lowest levels – a local magistrate threw the case out this week. 

There is, of course, a connecting thread in these two cases: both Labour MPs hoped to use the law to crush criticism of their party’s continuing support for Israel’s genocide.

They imagine their authoritarian repression of Palestine Action can serve as a blueprint for British politics. Why not lock up opposition party leaders and any constituent who dares to write protesting at their criminal behaviour? 

This is how Starmer’s Labour party conducts its politics: through intimidation, disinformation and show trials. 

And they do it not for our benefit or, as they keep proclaiming, in the interests of “national security”. 

No, they do it for the benefit of a foreign government viewed, even in Israel, as the most extreme in its history, one that includes self-declared fascists who Israel’s former top general, Moshe Yaalon, this week compared to the Nazis.

The Starmer government is tapping deep into its own fascist instincts. And with Nigel Farage’s Reform party nipping at its heels, there is little hope that the situation is going to improve any time soon.

Israel Today, Like American Slavery in The South, is an Entire Nation Gone Mad.

Richard Mellor

I recall in my youth reading about the Roman games and that for entertainment they would have bulls ra*e women. I found that hard to believe. How is that possible? I am not going to describe how as what I read then described it. It still seemed so horrible and bizarre that I didn't really believe it. But here it comes up again. 

The former IOF guy in the interview here is pretty convincing and he also talks about how Palestinians are hated by most Israeli's but after October the 7th, it's beyond hatred but a psychosis. That’s why we hear them say that all Palestinian children are the enemy and should be killed; they are not seen as human. The English bourgeois referred to the Irish as the “savage Race” and as “white Chimpanzees”. 

This speaks to what human nature is and what it isn't. People will argue that humans are naturally greedy and individualistic, but this is simply not the case if we look at history. What we can become is dependent in the main on the conditions in which we live and the wider society.

 

Human beings have the ability to show great kindness, compassion and heroic sacrifice in defence of others or the weak and underrepresented; but we also have the capacity to be horrible, unkind and outright brutal. Human nature is not a static thing, and history shows that the latter example is the most prominent and a powerful tendency in us. Capitalism is an individualistic, selfish, dog eat dog system, it is very powerful and naturally influences how we live, think and behave. It makes us sick because it goes against our best instincts.

 

I remember a global study that asked women what they wanted (I think it was just women) most in a partner and the overwhelming response was solidarity. So, despite the massive amount of propaganda telling us what look is important, how one dresses, what one does for a living, or if they smoke the right cigarettes------as the Rolling Stone’s song goes, and “none” would be the more common answer today-----, they chose solidarity. Isn’t love really solidarity? Someone who empathizes, understands and sacrifices for the benefit of the unity of the whole. One who accepts that their own existence is tied to others.

 

There is such a thing as mass psychosis surely. In Na*i Germany, there was a huge percentage of German’s who agreed with the Na*i’s views about Jews. Folks, especially white brothers and sisters might want to read about Mary Turner whose husband along with 11 other black men had been lynched in retaliation for the killing of a white farmer. Mary denied her husband had been involved and threatened to sue the ring leaders and her own life was threatened so she fled. But they caught up with her. Her is a clip from John Jeter’s book; Class War in America—Are You a Worker or are You White

 

Order Class War:  Are You a Worker or are you White by Jon Jeter Here

It hard to imagine that people could behave this way. It’s not natural to us, it’s starts in society as a whole and serves the interests of the powerful.

 

This was not an isolated event. It took place in a society that birthed it, that encouraged it and that required it. The society could not function unless it demonized a whole section of the population, and native Americans suffered the same fate, just like the Zionists have done to the Palestinians. Malcolm X was correct when said that, “you can’t have capitalism without racism”.

 

The Palestinians stand in the way of an ethno-centric ruling class and its aims; they have to be othered. In order to colonize a people you have to demonize them to win support from your own working class without whose help, the elimination of the “vermin” would not be possible.

The pro-Zionist mass media always asks the question: Do you think Israel has a right to exist? It already exists of course, so it's a trick question. We would not say today that the US system of slavery in the south has a right to exist today. The majority of the people on the planet accept that the German state under Na*zi rule had no right to exist and indeed destroyed it. Israel, accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing of an entire population by most of the world's authorities on this matter, does not have the right to exist in its current form.

Ken Klippenstein: Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists"

 Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists"

New national strategy vows to “cripple them BEFORE" crimes are committed

Ken Klippenstein May 6,2026

Sebastian Gorka

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The White House declared war on the American people today, labeling its political opponents as terrorists, including “Left-wing extremists.” The new label also claims that there are “deepening alliances” between “the far-left and Islamists” — or pro-Palestinian protesters.

The language is contained in the White House’s newly released National Counterterrorism Strategy. It is the first National Strategy to be unveiled since 2021, when the Biden administration issued its document. The Strategy identifies the “left-wing,” “anti-Fascists,” “Anarchists” and “radically pro-transgender ideologies” as threats equivalent to jihadi groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, or narco-traffickers. 

The Strategy is the brainchild of White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, an eccentric figure I have reported on, who last year hinted at terrorism charges being levied for political opponents of the administration. The document makes clear he got his wish. Gorka called the Strategy “my life’s work,” and apparently waxed so poetic in previous drafts that his superiors told him (by his own account): “Cut it down, Gorka!”

“Currently we face three major types of terror groups,” the Strategy says, listing “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs,” “Legacy Islamist Terrorists,” and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.”

	Strategy 2.52MB ∙ PDF file
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"Counterterrorism" itself is a propaganda term, sanitizing the actual practice: pre-crime, which aims to build cases against people for what they might do, most ominously based on speech or beliefs. (I've written about the Bureau’s pre-crime push at length.) The Strategy doesn't bother hiding it. It promises to "Identify terror actors and plots before they happen" and to use "law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent."

The Strategy also hints at a crackdown on pro-Palestinian groups. In a section laying out “five functional aspects of the current CT environment” beyond the previously named three categories, it warns of “New and deepening alliances between the far-left and Islamists, i.e., the ‘Red-Green’ alliance” — a phrase borrowed from conservative discourse to suggest a conspiratorial alignment between the American left and radical Islam.

The “Red-Green alliance” term has been pushed by Israeli think tanks like the Reut Group — which defines the term as “the nexus between radical progressive groups to Islamists organizations” — and picked up by right-wing U.S. news outlets. The framing is designed to recast pro-Palestinian activism as a front for jihadism.

The Strategy proposes employing the same tactics used to map out jihadi networks like al Qaeda against Americans here at home, promising “rapid identification and neutralization” of the supposed threat. This is exactly the technique that Gorka and other top Trump officials like Kash Patel cut their teeth on during the post-9/11 global war on terror — experience that I previously warned they would lean heavily on.

Per the document:

“In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT [counterterrorism] activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent.”

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) defines the threat as those espousing “anti-American,” “anti-Christian” and “anti-Capitalism” viewpoints. The new National Strategy uniquely identifies “radically pro-transgender ideologies” as terrorists, adding yet another threat group to the federal government’s targeting.

As I reported last year, the FBI in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder was preparing a war on what it considers transgender “extremism,” based on my sources. That report was subject to endless fact-checks asking how I knew this — something I can’t answer without burning my sources — and whether I was spreading panic in the transgender community. The counterterrorism strategy affirms my reporting, explicitly pointing to “the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies” as part of its justification for the new targeting. 

The Strategy is, in important respects, Charlie Kirk’s strategy. Within hours of his September 10, 2025 murder at Utah Valley University, White House, Justice, and Homeland Security officials scrambled to draft a sweeping domestic crackdown, as I previously reported. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the killing “a domestic 9/11,” vowing his department would now do to American political networks what it once did to al Qaeda’s in going after their finances.

Charlie Kirk was not just an ally of the new terror hunters. Trump reportedly considered the 31-year-old Turning Point USA co-founder part of his “extended family,” in his words, with a direct line to the Oval Office that few others enjoyed. The President credited Kirk with delivering young voters in 2024, posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on what would have been his 32nd birthday, and used his February 2026 State of the Union to mourn “my great friend Charlie Kirk,” with Kirk’s widow Erika seated in the chamber as a special guest.

Kirk’s death resulted in the issuance of NSPM-7, on which much of the new counterterrorism Strategy is built.

The new Strategy also leans heavily on grievances about the “weaponization” of counterterrorism powers under prior administrations to justify a sweeping expansion of those same powers. It cites past FBI controversies — surveillance of “conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia,” “parents standing up for their children at school board meetings,” and investigations of “Members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates” — as the rationale for what it calls a previous “radical shift” in U.S. counterterrorism.

In other words: abuses of counterterrorism authorities against the right have now become the grounds for unleashing those same authorities against the left.

The Strategy anticipates this reversal and tries to inoculate against it. “Our counterterrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us,” it insists, before going on to describe a regime that does precisely that — provided the disagreement is categorized as “extremism.”

Except that’s exactly what it does!

The strategy includes a foreword by President Trump that emphasizes its unparalleled focus on the homeland: “my Administration has put an unprecedented focus on dismantling threats to the American homeland in our Hemisphere.”

The global war on terror has come home.

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Ken Klippenstein: FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center

FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center

Are you on the list of domestic terrorism indicators.

Ken Klippenstein April 6 2026

FBI Director Kash Patel

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President Trump's budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists.

The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September. 

Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession.

Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs:

• “anti-Americanism,”

• “anti-capitalism,”

• “anti-Christianity,”

• “support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,”

• “extremism on migration,”

• extremism on “race,”

• extremism on “gender,”

• “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,”

• Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and

• Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”

Graphic depicting FBI budget request 

In other words, if your politics are anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI.

The new center combats these supposed threats “by integrating intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis,” the budget request says.

Its creation appears to be inspired by the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — an event that reportedly precipitated the formulation of NSPM-7 in the first place — according to the budget request, which alludes to “heinous assassinations” having “dramatically increased.”

The budget request also singles out social media as some kind of breeding ground for domestic terrorism, saying:

“Domestic terrorists exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications. They use these platforms to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials encouraging radicalization and mobilization to violence.”

Good thing millions of law-abiding Americans don’t use those!

In his testimony to Congress, FBI Director Kash Patel said that he would investigate every single person on the Discord channels used by accused killer Tyler Robinson. But leaked screenshots of those same Discord chats that I obtained, as well as interviews I conducted with its participants, made clear that these chats were about gaming, not politics. 

This was far from Patel’s only overreach. Shortly after Kirk’s death, he announced the Bureau was investigating “the possibility of accomplices,” vowing to run down all “theories and questions” about outside involvement — including a possible foreign nexus. 

Patel would later conclude that there was no evidence for any of it, but by then, baseless theories about an Israeli government role in Kirk’s death had proliferated across social media. Joe Kent, Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center director until his resignation last month, reportedly tried to investigate these claims while in government, and has since echoed them publicly.

Maybe these guys should’ve taken their own advice about the perils of social media.

It’s hard to overstate how much the FBI is focusing of domestic terrorism under Patel and the Trump administration. Yet the media have barely covered NSPM-7, let alone the FBI shift.

Shortly after Kirk’s death, FBI Director Kash Patel testified to Congress that he was overseeing a 300 percent increase in domestic terrorism investigations.

And in the first months of the administration, the FBI replaced the 9/11-inspired Terrorist Screening Center with the “Threat Screening Center.” As I reported at the time, the new mission broadened the scope to include “all national security threats,” which ostensibly was expanded to accommodate increased focus on transnational criminal organizations. Now the threat screening center oversees multiple terrorist watchlists that separate international terrorists, transnational criminals, and purely domestic “threats.”

Then there’s the fact that the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist is growing, as I reported last year.

Again, all of these developments have yielded virtually zero media attention.

The public might have won the battle of Minneapolis, but the White House hasn’t given up on its domestic terrorism fixation, even after virtually every official has walked back claims that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were “domestic terrorists.”

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Opinion: It appears Mossad has activated "Iranian sleeper cells" to pull Europe into war

Originally published by Council Estate Media

Possible Iran Link say UK police. Source.  * Image not with original post.

It appears Mossad has activated "Iranian sleeper cells" to pull Europe into war

Just as things start getting desperate for Israel, we are led to believe that Iran has done the one thing that might give Israel a chance of winning this war: launch attacks on Europe.

Overnight, a new terrorist organisation has cropped up called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya (HAYI), which roughly translates to the “Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand”. The group has claimed responsibility for targeting Jewish institutions and communities in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in a series of attacks that Israel has spent months telling us were coming… 

We are now told by security experts who knew nothing about this group until yesterday that the IRGC Quds Force is likely behind it (due to logo similarities). Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli have described HAYI as “a jihadi group tied to an Iranian proxy”. However, all might not be as it seems: linguistic errors in Arabic materials and inconsistencies in online accounts suggest this group was hastily cobbled together. 

Laughably, the word “Arabic” is misspelt on the inscription beneath the logo in the group’s branded material, and the name of the group’s Arabic channel is misspelt in Arabic. Videos and text that the group have released are filled with Arabic grammatical, spelling, and phrasing mistakes—the likes of which you would expect from someone who doesn’t speak the language.

Ask yourself why an Islamic terror group would make such basic Arabic linguistic errors. Does that not strike you as weird? Muslims take their language and faith so seriously that many learn the Qu’ran word for word, but they can’t spell Arabic on their logos? HAYI had no public footprint before 9 March 2026, but now we’re supposed to accept everything we’re told about them at face value—and be afraid of Iran.

Attacking Jewish groups across Europe offers Iran no strategic value, but it does offer Israel propaganda value. We are talking minor property damage and minimal casualties—the type of attacks that drive a narrative that Jews are under attack and westerners must come to their rescue. Why would Iran expend resources doing such a thing?

Let’s take a closer look at those attacks:

• On 9 March, an IED caused minimal structural damage and no injuries outside a synagogue in Liège, Belgium. 

• On 13 March, an arson attack damaged a synagogue in Rotterdam, causing no injuries. 

• On March 14, an IED caused property damage at a Jewish school in Amsterdam, causing no injuries. 

• On 16 March, a blast caused minor property damage at a commercial centre in Amsterdam, but again no injuries. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly glad these attacks are not hurting or killing anyone, but this doesn’t exactly fit the pattern of terrorism, does it?

We’ve just seen an attack on four Jewish ambulances in London and I think everyone’s first reaction was “Wait, we have Jewish ambulances in London?” Anyways, it turns out that funding for replacing two ambulances had been secured weeks before the attack through charitable trusts, and now the prime minister is saying he will replace all four. I’m unclear why we are paying for Jewish ambulances when the NHS has a shortage, but here we are…

As far as I know, the only damage, aside from the burnt ambulances, was a few shattered windows. Police are treating this as an antisemitic hate crime, and assessing the possible Iran link, but not the Israel link. It seems they want to push a narrative rather than assess all possibilities—and while you could argue I am doing the same, I would argue my hypothesis is a damn sight more plausible than theirs. Israel has a history of false flags and a motive to carry out more: it is losing this war and needs help.

If you want to know who is likely behind these attacks, just look at who is talking about them. The Iranians certainly aren’t—they haven’t said a word—but the Israelis won’t shut up! Attacks like this are designed to shape the public consciousness and you don’t achieve that through silence.

The Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli is pushing the narrative hard:

“The recent events in Europe are not isolated incidents but part of a disturbing pattern of action: Terrorist networks affiliated with the Iranian axis are trying to expand their arena of operation into the cities and Jewish communities of Europe. The message must be clear – Jewish communities are not a legitimate target for threats, and the international community must act resolutely against any entity that attempts to export terrorism and antisemitism beyond the borders of the Middle East.”

It’s been exhausting watching our politicians condemn this recent “outbreak of antisemitism” and pander to Israel when we all know Israel is behind this group, just like it is behind Al Qaida and ISIS: two organisations that conveniently never attack Israel. We are told it’s antisemitic to accuse Israel (a country engaging in both genocide and an illegal war of aggression), but strangely it is not racist to accuse their victim Iran.

It’s important that we start calling out these false flags, otherwise they will only escalate. We have just seen a massive fire at a US oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas and we don’t know the facts yet, but I struggle to believe this was an accident, given the timing. Could this be the excuse they need for boots on the ground?

ICE Making List of Anyone Who Films Them. (Trump's Domestic Terrorist Database.)

ICE Making List of Anyone Who Films Them 

“We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” 

KEN KLIPPENSTEIN JAN 23

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The Department of Homeland Security has ordered immigration officers to gather identifying information about anyone filming them and to “send that information to Intel who will do a ‘work-up’ on them,” a federal law enforcement official directly involved tells me.

“Meaning, trying to identify them via social media, running their license plates if available, and running a criminal history check,” the official explained. 

The directive is part of a sweeping, nationwide effort by U.S. immigration authorities to identify anyone and everyone trying to film their conduct, including not just ICE but other agencies like Border Patrol as well. The ultimate goal is to create a watchlist of anti-ICE protestors, which the Trump administration believes are part of an organized network of domestic terrorists. 

A loose-lipped ICE agent in Portland, Maine publicly hinted at the effort in an exchange on Friday that was captured on video. The video shows the ICE agent taking pictures of a car belonging to a woman who had been recording him, prompting her to ask why. The ICE agent replies: “‘Cause we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that.”

The remark wasn’t just bravado or trolling. In addition to what my own sources at DHS are telling me, David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, published a report last month pulling together reams of incidents similar to the one in Portland. The report concludes that DHS has a formal policy of intimidating people trying to film them on the dubious legal grounds that doing so amounts to impeding federal enforcement.

“DHS has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities,” the report says. 

But the policy goes farther than just deterring people from filming ICE. As my source explained to me, the Department of Homeland Security is drafting a new policy to collect intelligence on and watchlist protesters.

Asked about the purpose of DHS policy of filming the ICE filmers, Bier told me that the information are being fed into databases for possible future law enforcement action.

“ICE agents film arrests both to feed the DHS social media blitz and to identify them,” Bier told me. “They upload information to their databases and see if they have outstanding warrants or are here illegally.”

The practice can also be seen in the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. Video of the incident shows ICE Agent Jonathan Ross holding up a phone and filming Good in her vehicle shortly before the shooting.

ICE agent filming Renee Good prior to shooting

There was a lot of confusion about why he was filming, with social media abuzz with speculation that it was publicity related. The agent, it turns out, was likely gathering intelligence to map out the supposed domestic terrorist network to which Trump administration officials would almost immediately assert that Good belonged. 

“This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to try to kill law enforcement officers is going to stop; and I'm asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it as domestic terrorism, because it's clear that it's being coordinated,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said about Good’s death.

Now, federal officials are reportedly investigating Good’s widow. 

The new war on terror is here and this time, Americans are the target.