Colin Toddhunter

On 19 April 2024, the Philippines Supreme Court issued a cease-and-desist order on the commercial propagation of genetically modified (GM) Golden Rice and GM eggplant in the country.

The Stop Golden Rice Network says that the court decision is a victory for farmers and consumers everywhere as the decision goes beyond Golden Rice and insecticidal eggplant and covers “any application for contained use, field testing, direct use as food or feed or processing, commercial propagation, and importation of GMOs.”

The court recognised that government agencies and other proponents of GM Golden Rice and GM eggplant “failed to submit proof of safety and compliance with all legal requirements.” The order remains indefinite until GMO proponents can fulfil all the mandated steps and provide concrete evidence that these GMOs are indeed safe.

A network of farmers, consumers and civil society organisations, Stop Golden Rice emphasises the need to address hunger and malnutrition through securing small farmers’ control over resources such as seed, appropriate technologies, water and land.

The campaign group says:

We believe that GM crops are primarily pushed by global monopoly capitalists in food and agriculture… there is already irrevocable evidence of the failure of GM crops and how it has contributed to further indebtedness, crop failures, hunger and loss of biodiversity.”

It states that the court’s decision shows that ordinary people can prevail in the face of corporate power.

The story of Golden Rice

Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in many poor countries in the Global South and leaves millions at high risk of infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness.

The agritech industry has long argued that Golden Rice is a practical way to provide poor farmers in remote areas with a subsistence crop capable of adding much-needed vitamin A to local diets. Lobbyists say that Golden Rice, developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, could help save the lives of around 670,000 children who die each year from Vitamin A deficiency and another 350,000 who go blind.

Such claims, however, are based more on spin than reality, and, over the years, the interests behind Golden Rice have wasted no time in attacking anyone who questioned it.

As Britain’s Environment Secretary in 2013, the now disgraced Owen Paterson claimed that opponents of GM were “casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world”. He called for the rapid roll-out of vitamin A-enhanced rice to help prevent the cause of up to a third of the world’s child deaths. He claimed:

It’s just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked.”

On Twitter, The Observer’s Nick Cohen chimed in with his support by tweeting:

There is no greater example of ignorant Western privilege causing needless misery than the campaign against genetically modified golden rice.”

The rhetoric took the well-worn cynically devised PR line that anti-GM activists and environmentalists are little more than privileged, affluent people residing in rich countries and are denying the poor the supposed benefits of GM crops.

Despite these smears and emotional blackmail, in a 2016 article in the journal Agriculture & Human Values Glenn Stone and Dominic Glover found little evidence that activists were to blame for Golden Rice’s unfulfilled promises.

Researchers still had problems developing beta carotene-enriched strains that yield as well as non-GM strains already being grown by farmers. It was questionable whether the beta carotene in Golden Rice could even be converted to vitamin A in the bodies of badly undernourished children. There had also been little research on how well the beta carotene in Golden Rice would hold up when stored for long periods between harvest seasons or when cooked using traditional methods common in remote rural locations.

In the meantime, Glenn Stone noted that that, as the development of Golden Rice crept along, the Philippines had managed to slash the incidence of Vitamin A deficiency by non-GM methods.

So, whose interests were really being served in the push for Golden Rice?

In 2011, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a senior scientist with a background in insect ecology and pest management, answered this question:

An elite, so-called Humanitarian Board where Syngenta sits – along with the inventors of Golden Rice, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and public relations and marketing experts, among a handful of others. Not a single farmer, indigenous person or even an ecologist or sociologist to assess the huge political, social and ecological implications of this massive experiment. And the leader of IRRI’s Golden Rice project is none other than Gerald Barry, previously Director of Research at Monsanto.”

Sarojeni V Rengam, executive director of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, called on the donors and scientists involved to wake up and do the right thing:

Golden Rice is really a ‘Trojan horse’; a public relations stunt pulled by the agribusiness corporations to garner acceptance of genetically engineered (GE) crops and food… money and efforts would be better spent on restoring natural and agricultural biodiversity rather than destroying it by promoting monoculture plantations and GE food crops.”

To tackle disease, malnutrition and poverty, you have to first understand the underlying causes – or indeed want to understand them.

Renowned academic Walden Bello notes that the complex of policies that pushed the Philippines into an economic quagmire over the past few decades is due to ‘structural adjustment’ that included the restructuring of agriculture and export-oriented production.

And that restructuring of the agrarian economy is something touched on by Claire Robinson of GMWatch who notes that leafy green vegetables used to be grown in backyards as well as in rice (paddy) fields on the banks between the flooded ditches in which the rice grew.

Ditches also contained fish, which ate pests. People thus had access to rice, green leafy veg and fish – a balanced diet that gave them a healthy mix of nutrients, including plenty of beta-carotene.

But indigenous crops and farming systems have been replaced by monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Green leafy veg were killed off with pesticides, artificial fertilisers were introduced, and the fish could not live in the resulting chemically contaminated water. Moreover, decreased access to land meant that many people no longer had backyards containing leafy green veg.

Blindness in developing countries could have been eradicated years ago if only the money, research and publicity put into Golden Rice over the last 20 years had gone into proven ways of addressing Vitamin A deficiency. However, instead of pursuing genuine solutions, what we have seen is pro-GM spin in an attempt to close down debate.

Technology and development

If the discussion so far tells us anything, it is that technology is not neutral. It is developed and promoted by people who want to cement their control over a sector and stand to financially gain from its rollout.

All too often, politicians, corporations and the media equate new technology with ‘progress’. And those who question it, as we see with GMOs, are called Luddites or anti-science in order to prevent proper debate over the social, economic and ethical concerns of rolling out a given technology.

Take the Green Revolution, for instance. There was nothing progressive, inevitable or neutral about its seed, chemical and related infrastructure technology.

Despite it being rolled out under the banner of ‘progress’, it underperformed, was exploitative and has had devastating social, ecological and environmental impacts (see the writings of Prof. Glenn Stone, Vandana Shiva and Bhaskar Save). It served US geopolitical, financial and agribusiness interests and prioritised urban-industrial expansion at the expense of rural communities and a more diverse, healthy and nutrient-sufficient agriculture.

But the Green Revolution became integral to the ‘development’ agenda.

In a recent article on the Winter Oak website, Paul Cudenec says that ‘development’:

…is the destruction of nature, now seen as a mere resource to be used for development or as an empty undeveloped space in which development could, should and, ultimately, must take place. It is the destruction of natural human communities, whose self-sufficiency gets in the way of the advance of development, and of authentic human culture and traditional values, which are incompatible with the dogma and domination of development.”

Cudenec argues that those behind ‘development’ have been destroying everything of real value in our natural world and our human societies in the pursuit of personal wealth and power. Moreover, they have concealed this crime behind all the positive-sounding rhetoric associated with development on every level.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in India.

The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, global agribusiness and financial capital are working to corporatise India’s agriculture sector. This ‘structural adjustment’ policy and process involves displacing the current food production system with contract farming and an industrial model of agriculture and food retail that serves the above interests.

The plan is to displace the peasantry, create a land market and amalgamate landholdings to form larger farms that are more suited to international land investors and export-oriented industrial farming.

The demand is that India sacrifice its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of billionaires. This is all passed off as ‘development’.

It involves the state facilitating the enrichment of a wealthy elite and privileging a certain model of social and economic development based on urban sprawl, centralised power and dependency on global finance, corporations, markets and supply chains. All legitimised under the banners of innovation, technological progress and ‘development’.

There are other pathways that humanity can take. Anthropologist Felix Padel and researcher Malvika Gupta offer some insights (based on their work with India’s Adivasi communities) into what the solutions or alternatives to ‘development’ might look like:

Democracy as consensus politics rather than the Western model of liberal democracy that perpetuates division and corruption behind the scenes; exchange labour rather than the ruthless, anti-life logic of ‘the market’; law as reconciliation rather than judgements that depend on exorbitant legal fees and divide people into winners and losers… and learning as something to be shared, not competed over.”

However, we see more ‘development’ being proposed: more rural population displacement and human dislocation, more mining, port and other big infrastructure developments and the further entrenchment of corporate interests and their projects.

While many have a different vision for the future, self-interest and consumerism underpinned by economic neoliberal dogma continue to seduce the masses into accepting the prevailing ‘development’ agenda.

Corporate industrial agriculture is integral to that agenda. A model that took hold half a century ago in the Western nations and which has resulted in nutrient-deficient food, narrower diets, the massive use of agrochemicals, food contaminated by hormones, steroids, antibiotics and a wide range of chemical additives, the eradication of many smallholder farmers, spiralling rates of ill health, degraded soil and contaminated and depleted water supplies.

That’s ‘progress’? Well, agribusiness interests aside, perhaps so for the many private health clinics that have sprung up in India in recent years.

The introduction of GMOs represents a further entrenchment of the prevailing ‘development’ agenda.

The decision by the Philippines Supreme Court called out government agencies and those behind the Golden Rice agenda for key failures. This is important for India, whose Supreme Court is about to decide on whether to sanction the commercial cultivation of GM mustard. It would be India’s first GM food crop (of which there are many more in the pipeline).

[…]

Via https://off-guardian.org/2024/04/29/a-victory-for-farmers-supreme-court-halts-genetically-modified-rice/

Sputnik International

The GLSDB, or Guided Long-Range Surface-to-Surface Delivery Ballistic Bombs, is a joint development of Boeing and Saab, which added a rocket engine to the air bomb and adapted it for launch using multiple rocket launchers.

The Ukrainian Army is unable to effectively use GLSDB precision-guided bombs, which the US transferred to Kiev at the beginning of the year, due to Russian electronic warfare equipment, according to the Polish portal Interia, citing a statement by Under Secretary of Defense of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante.

According to the report, GLSDB bombs can only rely on inertial navigation to calculate the location of the target when the GPS signal is suppressed by electronic warfare. As a result, they miss the target. The reason for the high efficiency of Russian electronic warfare suppressing the GPS signal against GLSDB is the relatively low flight speed of these projectiles when gliding in the air, according to the article.

GLSDBs are special long-range projectiles for US-designed launchers. Developed by the US company Boeing and Sweden’s Saab, it is a high-precision bomb with a rocket motor attached that is fired from ground-based launchers, including the M270 MLRS and HIMARS.

The rocket engine lifts the bomb to a significant altitude and then uses GPS and inertial navigation to guide it to its target. This gives the GLSDB a range of up to 150 kilometers. The fact that these missiles rely on GPS navigation is their vulnerability, as the Russian Armed Forces effectively use electronic warfare to suppress GPS signals.

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20240428/ukraine-fails-to-use-us-top-notch-glsdb-munitions-due-to-russian-electronic-warfare-systems—1118153210.html

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (Portugal), A Poesia Está Na Rua I [Poetry Is out on the Street I], 1974.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Fifty years ago, on 25 April 1974, the people of Portugal took to the streets of their cities and towns in enormous numbers to overthrow the fascist dictatorship of the Estado Novo (‘New State’), formally established in 1926. Fascist Portugal – led first by António de Oliveira Salazar until 1968 and then by Marcelo Caetano – was welcomed into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1949, the United Nations in 1955, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1961 and signed a pact with the European Economic Community in 1972. The United States and Europe worked closely with the Salazar and Caetano governments, turning a blind eye to their atrocities.

Over a decade ago, I visited Lisbon’s Aljube Museum – Resistance and Freedom, which was a torture site for political prisoners from 1928 to 1965. During this time, tens of thousands of trade unionists, student activists, communists, and rebels of all kinds were brought there to be tortured, and many were killed – often with great cruelty. The ordinariness of this brutality permeates the hundreds of stories preserved in the museum. For instance, on 31 July 1958, torturers took the welder Raúl Alves from Aljube Prison to the third floor of the secret police’s headquarters and threw him to his death. Heloísa Ramos Lins, the wife of Brazil’s ambassador to Portugal at the time, Álvaro Lins, drove by at that moment, saw Alves’ fatal fall, and told her husband. When the Brazilian embassy approached the Portuguese Interior Ministry to ask what had happened, the Estado Novo dictatorship responded, ‘There is no reason to be so shocked. It is merely an unimportant communist’.

It was ‘unimportant communists’ like Raúl Alves who initiated the revolution of 25 April, which built on a wave of workers’ actions across 1973, beginning with the airport workers in Lisbon and then spreading to textile workers’ strikes in Braga and Covilha, engineering workers’ strikes in Aveiro and Porto, and glass workers’ strike in Marinha Grande.

Around this time, the dictator Caetano read Portugal and the Future, written by General António de Spínola who was trained by commanders of the fascist General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, led a military campaign in Angola, and was formerly the Estado Novo’s governor in Guinea-Bissau. Spínola’s book argued that Portugal should end its colonial occupation since it was losing its grip on Portuguese-controlled Africa. In his memoirs, Caetano wrote that when he finished the book, he understood ‘that the military coup, which I could sense had been coming, was now inevitable’.

What Caetano did not foresee was the unity between workers and soldiers (who themselves were part of the working class) that burst through in April 1974. The soldiers were fed up with the colonial wars, which – despite the great brutality of the Estado Novo – had failed to quell the ambitions of the people of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The advances made by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), and People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) were considerable, with Portugal’s army losing more soldiers than at any time since the eighteenth century. Several of these formations received assistance from the USSR and East Germany (DDR), but it was through their own strength and initiative that they ultimately won the battles against colonialism (as our colleagues at the International Research Centre on the DDR have documented).

On 9 September 1973, soldiers who had been sent to Guinea-Bissau met in Portugal to form the Armed Forces Movement (MFA). In March 1974, the MFA approved its programme Democracy, Development, and Decolonisation, drafted by the Marxist soldier Ernesto Melo Antunes. When the revolution erupted in April, Antunes explained, ‘A few hours after the start of the coup, on the same day, the mass movement began. This immediately transformed it into a revolution. When I wrote the programme of the MFA, I had not predicted this, but the fact that it happened showed that the military was in tune with the Portuguese people’. When Antunes said the ‘military’, he meant the soldiers, because those who formed the MFA were not more senior than captains and remained rooted in the working class from which they had come.

In December 1960, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the ‘necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all its forms and manifestation’. This position was rejected by the Estado Novo regime. On 3 August 1959, Portuguese colonial soldiers fired on sailors and dockworkers at Pidjiguiti at the Port of Bissau, killing over fifty people. On 16 June 1960, in the town of Mueda (Mozambique), the Estado Novo colonialists fired on a small, unarmed demonstration of national liberation advocates who had been invited by the district administrator to present their views. It is still not known how many people were killed. Then, on 4 January 1961, a strike at Baixa do Cassange (Angola) was met with Portuguese repression, killing somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 Angolans. These three incidents showed that the Portuguese colonialists were unwilling to tolerate any civic movement for independence. It was the Estado Novo that imposed the armed struggle on these parts of Africa, moving the PAIGC, MPLA, and FRELIMO to take up guns.

[…]

That island of love was not just to be built across Africa, from Praia to Luanda, but also across Portugal. On 25 April 1974, Celeste Caeiro, a forty-year-old waitress, was working at a self-service restaurant called Sir in the Franjinhas building on Braancamp Street in Lisbon. Since it was the restaurant’s one-year anniversary, the owner decided to hand out red carnations to the customers. When Celeste told him about the revolution, he decided to shut down Sir for the day, give employees the carnations, and encourage the employees to take the carnations home. Instead, Celeste headed to the city centre, where events were unfolding. On the way, some soldiers asked her for a cigarette, but instead, she put a few carnations into the barrels of their guns. This caught on, and the florists of Baixa decided to give away their in-season red carnations to be the emblem of the revolution. That is why the 1974 revolution was called the Carnation Revolution, a revolution of flowers against guns.

Portugal’s social revolution of 1974–1975 swept large majorities of people into a new sensibility, but the state refused to capitulate. It inaugurated the Third Republic, whose presidents all came from the ranks of the military and the National Salvation Junta: António de Spínola (April–September 1974), Francisco da Costa Gomes (September 1974–July 1976), and António Ramalho Eanes (July 1976–March 1986). These were not men from the ranks, but the old generals. Nonetheless, they were eventually forced to surrender the old structures of Estado Novo colonialism and withdraw from their colonies in Africa.

Pro-Palestine protests have swept university campuses across the United States, with calls for the alienation from “Israel” or Israeli-affiliated institutions.

As student protests and movements increasingly gained momentum, hundreds of arrests were made as police tried to thwart their efforts, and the government mobilized to introduce legislation that would ultimately punish those participating.

Israeli lobbyists and the Israeli government are relentlessly pressuring US government officials to take more action against such movements in an effort to silence the criticism targeted toward “Israel” and demands to divest from the occupation.

Democratic US Congressman Ritchie Torres announced on Friday that he will introduce legislation to establish so-called anti-Semitism monitors for federally financed institutions in the United States, amid growing pro-Palestine demonstrations on campuses around the country.

However, pro-Palestinian voices have not been silenced despite all attempts to muffle their calls. In this context, it is worth mentioning the significant and prominent steps some student movements and university organizations have recently taken to divert from “Israel” and its web of affiliations.

City University of New York CUNY

In 2021, CUNY’s Law School’s student council voted for instating a resolution supporting the BDS movement and urged the university to divert from its inks with “Israel”.

Its efforts were clearly dismissed when the college’s chancellor issued a statement saying the student council’s action represents their personal belief, and does not represent the university itself.

“CUNY does not support and to be clear cannot participate in BDS activities, and is required to divest public funds from any companies that do,” he added.

Binghamton

A similar resolution was voted for in Binghamton University, with its Student Association (SA) Congress voting in favor of the BDS in April 2024.

The SA issued a statement declaring opposition to institutions that fund or arm “Israel”, such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, saying they refused to indirectly fund “an industry that manufactures weapons of war and mass destruction” through allocated portions of their tuition.

In response, a university spokesperson said the student body speaks for itself, not the university administration, and condemned any resolution in support of BDS.

“During this time, maintaining a safe and secure environment for everyone on campus remains the University’s top priority. A dedication to safety will remain unwavering as it strives to uphold the freedom for students and faculty to pursue their educational and professional endeavors without fear or obstacles.”

New York University Department of Social and Cultural Analysis

In 2021, the department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU voted in favor of severing ties with the university’s Tel Aviv campus through a resolution for non-cooperation.

The resolution passed, de-sponsoring Tel Aviv’s faculty and cutting inter-campus faculty exchanges.

“With respect to this departmental vote: it’s a little puzzling as to what form it would take, as our Tel Aviv campus does not draw on the department of social and cultural analysis for its academic program,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman said on the resolution.

Case Western Reserve University

In 2022, the Undergraduate Student Government at Case Western Reserve University passed a resolution urging the university to examine its investments in Israeli companies.

According to the Case Western Reserve Observer, the resolution advocated for divestment from companies involved in “the construction, upkeep, or economic advancement of illegal Israeli settlements, outposts, and roads and transportation systems exclusively for settlers in occupied Palestinian territories.”

Nevertheless, University President Eric W. Kaler expressed disappointment with the resolution shortly after its passage, as per his statement.

“I pledge that Case Western Reserve will continue to be a place welcoming to all. Vigorous political debate is welcome and encouraged, but hate towards any group will be opposed at every step, including categorically rejecting the calls to action outlined in this resolution,” Kaler said.

University of California, Davis

In February 2024, the UC Davis student government (ASUCD) endorsed a BDS resolution, which restricts the allocation of the group’s budget to companies that endorse “Israel”.

As stated in an Instagram post by the group, “The bill passed prohibits the expenditure of any portion of the $20 million ASUCD budget on companies implicated in the occupation and genocide of Palestinians, as outlined by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. This means that none of the student fees funding ASUCD operations will go towards financially supporting over 30 companies complicit in Zionist violence, including McDonald’s, Sabra, and Chevron.”

A university spokesperson said the student body operates independently from the administration.

UCLA

In February 2024, the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council and Graduate Student Association both endorsed a BDS resolution, citing “Israel’s” involvement in “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide” against Palestinians, as per UCLA’s Daily Bruin.

Nonetheless, UCLA released a statement denouncing the resolutions, stating that they “conflict with the stance of the University of California and UCLA, which, along with all other UC campuses, have consistently rejected appeals for boycotting and divesting from Israel.”

Harvard

The Harvard Law School (HLS) Student Government has passed a resolution urging the university to completely divest from any organization that supports the Israeli war on Gaza.

The measure urges the Harvard Management Company (HMC), which manages the school’s $50 billion endowment, “to divest completely from weapons manufacturers, firms, academic programs, corporations, and all other institutions that aid the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the genocide of Palestinians.”

The HLS Student Government alludes to Harvard’s commitment of nearly $200 million in businesses linked to the Israeli occupation military and illegal settlements in Palestine, as well as HMC’s prior divestment from South African apartheid and the tobacco industry in 1990.

The resolution’s author, Swap Agrawal, expressed that some Palestinian students at the school have “lost dozens of family members in the ongoing genocide,” noting that students reported feeling strongly that it was “necessary to put pressure on things to change.”

[…]

Via https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/list-of-us-colleges-advocating-for-divestment-from–israel

By Jon Michael Raasch, Political Reporter In Washington, D.C., For Dailymail.Com and Kelly Laco, Executive Editor Of Politics In Washington D.C. For Dailymail.Com

‘The Committee and Select Subcommittee remain concerned about how and to what extent federal law enforcement and financial institutions continue to spy on Americans by weaponizing backdoor information sharing and casting sprawling classes of transactions, purchase behavior, and protected political or religious expression as potentially ‘suspicious’ or indicative of ‘extremism,” the letters to the institutions said.

‘Documents obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee show that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) circulated concerning materials,’ to each of the seven additional firms Jordan wrote.

Charles Schwab, MUFG, PayPal, Santander, Standard Chartered and Western Union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

HSBC declined DailyMail.com’s request for comment.

‘This kind of warrantless financial surveillance raises serious concerns about the federal government’s respect for Americans’ privacy and fundamental civil liberties,’ Jordan wrote in a separate letter to Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen, also obtained by DailyMail.com.

According to investigators, FinCEN and the FBI received data on 211 individuals from the Bank of America in a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) on January 17, 2021.

But the SAR was only sent after the FBI and FinCEN asked U.S. banks to scour customer transactions for key terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘Trump’ to identify ‘extremism’ in a memo distributed in the aftermath of January 6.

The federal agencies provided the financial institutions ‘thresholds’ for which an SAR should be raise, according to Peter Sullivan, the FBI’s former financial sector liaison.

He sat for a transcribed interview with the weaponization committee on April 9.

According to the ‘threshold’ set by the FBI and FinCEN, Bank of America then sent the data of the 211 individuals.

‘Given this coordination, the Committee and Select Subcommittee are concerned that the federal government, through the FBI and FinCEN, sent similar or identical thresholds to other financial institutions that manipulated the SAR filing process to elicit the information and transaction history of individuals without any allegation of federal criminal conduct,’ the letter to Yellen said.

When pressed on the Treasury’s FinCEN materials circulated to top financial institutions during a February Congressional hearing, Yellen dodges lawmakers’ questions, responding once ‘I promise a thorough look into everything.’

After Bank of America sent over the list of 211 customers’ whose transactions met the federal ‘thresholds,’ Sullivan requested additional transaction history.

He asked that Bank of America send over any ‘weapons-related transactions.’

Four Bank of America customers out of the original 211 qualified.

This prompted ‘criminal background queries’ into the four customers.

Later, four federal agents were deployed to three FBI field offices to investigate those individuals.

After the investigations were complete, the FBI uploaded their findings to a portal and sent out ‘a number of leads’ on additional persons of interst.

But, according to the then-Section Chief of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Selection Steve Jensen, the leads were pulled because they ‘lacked allegations of federal criminal conduct.’

Meaning, though these individuals met ‘thresholds’ set by the FBI and FinCEN, they were not actually being investigated for an alleged crime.

‘Given this coordination, the Committee and Select Subcommittee are concerned that the federal government, through the FBI and FinCEN, sent similar or identical thresholds to other financial institutions that manipulated the SAR filing process to elicit the information and transaction history of individuals without any allegation of federal criminal conduct,’ the letter to Yellen continued.

In the aftermath of January 6, FinCEN even suggested that banks review transactions at sporting and recreational supplies stores like Cabela’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops in order to detect customers who might be ‘extremists.’

In addition, officials also warned banks of ‘extremism’ indicators like the purchase of a religious text, like a Bible, or searches including the terms ‘MAGA’ and ‘TRUMP.’

In March, Jordan sent letters to GoFundMe and Eventbrite asking that they cooperate with committee’s ongoing investigation.

House Republicans say that the federal government urged the crowdfunding platforms to ‘comb’ through their personal transactions ‘report charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.’

The federal government also created ‘profiles’ on the American people kept in a ‘secret portal’ shared with companies to identify customer’s levels of extremism, Jordan has said.

An interface shared between over 650 companies and federal officials holds a ‘secret portal’ containing sensitive data on American citizens, the Ohio Republican warned at a March 6 hearing.

‘The federal government is building profiles on the American people. And the profile is not based criminal conduct, it’s based on political belief,’ Jordan said at the time.

‘And if you’ve got the wrong political beliefs, well you’re potentially a domestic violent extremist.’

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13346959/banks-maga-supporters-january-6-investigation-biden-administration-trump.html