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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a Tuesday press briefing issued an ultra-provocative statement telling Ukraine that "NATO's door is open". 

He pledged that one day the eastern European country which has for nine months been under Russian invasion will become a NATO member. This of course is a prime issue for Moscow which triggered Putin's "special operation" in the first place. 

Stoltenberg issued the reaffirmation in the presence of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top diplomats of NATO countries, who are currently gathered in Romania to discuss continued support to Kiev headed into the harsh winter months. 

Stoltenberg further touted (and seemed to directly taunt Moscow) that Scandinavian countries Finland and Sweden are soon to be the next full members of the Western military alliance: 

"Russia does not have a veto" on countries joining, he said about the recent entry of North Macedonia and Montenegro into the security alliance. He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin "will get Finland and Sweden as NATO members" soon.

On this front, Turkey's government has recently described "progress" made by Finland and Sweden regarding Ankara's demands that they take more action against the Kurdish PKK and associated individuals living in their countries. 

Turkish foreign ministry officials assessed the following to come out of the latest talks: 

"We exchanged a series of ideas with the police and their colleagues in Türkiye to speed up the fight against the terrorist threat to Türkiye from the PKK," Oscar Stenström told local radio after Turkish, Swedish and Finnish delegations met in Stockholm on Nov. 25.

...A joint statement issued by the three countries after the meeting stated that Türkiye had accepted that "NATO candidates had taken steps that fulfilled their commitments."

“We had a very good tone, and for the first time in a joint statement, we signaled that progress was being made," Stenström said.

Norway's government has meanwhile seconded Stoltenberg's call for eventual Ukraine admission into NATO: "We stand by that, too, on membership for Ukraine," a Norwegian official said.

The era of easy money is now officially over.

For 15 years, policymakers have tried to stimulate the global economy through money creation, zero interest-rate policies, and more recently, aggressive COVID fiscal stimulus.

With capital at near-zero costs over this stretch, investors started to place more value on cash flows in the distant future. Assets inflated and balance sheets expanded, and money inevitably chased more speculative assets like NFTs, crypto, or unproven venture-backed startups.

But, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins details below, the free money party has since ended, after persistent inflation prompted the sudden reversal of many of these policies. And as Warren Buffett says, it’s only when the tide goes out do you get to see “who’s been swimming naked.”

Measuring Money and Markets in 2022

Every time we publish this visualization, our common unit of measurement is a two-dimensional box with a value of $100 billion.

Even though you need many of these to convey the assets on the balance sheet of the U.S. Federal Reserve, or the private wealth held by the world’s billionaires, it’s quite amazing to think what actually fits within this tiny building block of measurement:

Our little unit of measurement is enough to pay for the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, while also buying every team in the NHL and digging FTX out of its financial hole several times over.

Here’s an overview of all the items we have listed in this year’s visualization:

Has the Dust Settled Yet?

Through previous editions of our All the World’s Money and Markets visualization, we’ve created snapshots of the world’s assets and markets at different points in time.

For example, in our 2017 edition of this visualization, Apple’s market capitalization was only $807 billion, and all crypto assets combined for $173 billion. The global debt total was at $215 trillion.

And in just five years, Apple nearly quadrupled in size (it peaked at $3 trillion in January 2022), and crypto also expanded into a multi-trillion dollar market until it was brought back to Earth through the 2022 crash and subsequent FTX implosion.

Meanwhile, global debt continues to accumulate—growing by $85 trillion in the five-year period.

With interest rates expected to continue to rise, companies making cost cuts, and policymakers reining in spending and borrowing, today is another unique snapshot in time.

Now that the easy money era is over, where do things go from here?

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

Sometimes the internet being eternal works to our advantage. Recently, there’s been a dustup in European politics over a three-year old video of now Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stepping on the third rail of European politics.

In that video she openly explained that colonialism in Europe isn’t over and she tied it to African immigration into Europe, which Italy has born the brunt of thanks to the EU’s rules which force countries to accept anyone that shows up on their shores.

The mechanism for France’s dirty colonial secret is they still control fourteen West African nations through a French colonial currency (CFA Franc) issued by France.

Now, since Meloni’s rant, the CFA Franc has been slightly revised but the real source of its power over West Africa was not, more on this later.

What’s important is that this video has all of a sudden resurfaced at a time when Italy and France are involved in a major row over France’s (and Davos’) latest attempt to paint Meloni as some heartless Fascist for denying a French NGO boatload of migrants from North Africa into Italy.

The boat eventually wound up having to go to France as Meloni stuck to her guns. Remember, folks it was then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini who first tried to defy Davos on this and his reward was to be sued in Sicilian court over ‘human rights abuses.’ This began Salvini’s fall from political power in Rome as he didn’t have enough support from his then coalition partner, Five Star Movement (M5S).

Eventually, Salvini was forced out of power, M5S cut a deal with the Rome Mafia to betray its supporters and the rise of Meloni and the Brothers of Italy (FdI) was inevitable.

The lame attempt by France to attack Meloni on immigration was met with a much different result this time as she enjoys a far stronger political position than Salvini did in 2017-18. So, the boat went to France and all the French could do was fulminate about it.

Enemy at the NGO Gates

In fact, the French Foreign Minister Gérald Darmanin went so far as to call Italy France’s enemy over this issue. This level of histrionics over less than 250 migrants is both so predictably French and overblown it borders on the comical.

So much for European solidarity, I guess.

But it’s all part of the silly Davos PR campaign against Meloni. Nothing changes with these people. They have a pathological need to win every single little battle, because as psychopaths they know any sign of weakness is an invitation to the gallows as people see them for what they are.

As always, the timing on this video of Meloni coming out is interesting. It’s a clear counterattack on France’s theatrics.

My question, as always, is who did this? Obviously Meloni’s people are part of this but does it imply she has some other support?

Stick with me, because I have a theory on this.

Ultimately, this dustup fully highlights the mendacity and, frankly, evil of the former colonial powers of Europe.

The CFA Franc was something that you ‘just didn’t talk about’ as France continued to extract wealth from West Africa through monetary expropriation.

The very idea that the vestiges of colonialism are on the wane in Europe is not only fundamentally false it is intrinsically woven into the fabric of the EU itself in every way. The CFA Franc should be an anachronism, but France holds onto for its benefit, subsidizing its ridiculous government and failing social institutions.

Among first world nations France has the highest effective tax rate for upper income earners.  And yet, they still can’t keep things running effectively and have to extract wealth from north Africa.

How brutally inefficient and sickly is a French economy that derives nearly 50% of its electricity from a mostly-homegrown nuclear industry and has levels of taxation that make even a nineteenth-century slaveowner blush that it still needs to operate a colonial wealth extraction system in West Africa in the 21st century?

But it’s also a microcosm of the euro itself and even the corruption of the US dollar through national control over interest rates thanks to a monolithic central bank.

Like many of you, I had no idea the CFA Franc even existed and I’m still wrapping my head around the idea that in 2022 fourteen countries do not have monetary sovereignty, serfs to a feudal lord on a separate continent.

Again, just when I thought I’d plumbed the depths of Eurotrash globalist depravity, they make me look naïve.

But what’s been very clear is that the CFA Franc has been a no-go in international and inter-European political discussions for decades…. and someone close to Meloni just made it a global issue.

So much so, that no less than Le Monde had to put out a fire suppressor article.  It’s a laughably poor piece of apologia.  It’s a typical piece of ‘word parsing’ that picks out specific little exaggerations to discredit Meloni as stupid and uninformed while avoiding the basic problems of France running a wealth vacuum in 14 of the poorest countries in Africa.

Le Monde quickly switches to the ‘migrant’ issue to ‘debunk’ Meloni’s claims about African immigration as a result of the CFA Franc.  Sure the country of origin of most migrants are from countries on the shore of the Mediterranean, but where did they come from in the first place?

It’s like saying Hondurans who cross into the US from Mexico aren’t Hondurans and that policy in Honduras didn’t contribute to the migration. But, this is really a side issue. Meloni is fundamentally right that the CFA Franc keeps these countries poor through currency arbitrage and contributes directly to North Africa’s instability and lack of economic progress.

To think that doesn’t have spillover effects into Algeria, Morocco or anywhere else along the southern Mediterranean is simply laughable.

It’s the Currency, Stupid!!

The key to understanding the evil of the CFA Franc is no different than understanding the evil of the euro or the Fed Funds Rate. It’s mercantilism through currency arbitrage.

The CFA Franc is not just pegged to the euro (formerly the French Franc) it is also tied to the ECB’s monetary policy debt rate.  This is the part no one, especially the writer at Le Monde, wants to touch.  

So, as Le Monde states there are the two central banks in Africa that issue the two different CFA Francs. What they fail to state is that both currencies are still pegged to the euro, making local monetary policy a joke. France and the ECB still control their economies.

The ECB’s monetary policy is set by Germany for Germany’s benefit.  Having (up until now) the strongest economy in the EU, Germany gets an effective benefit from the euro trading at a single exchange rate.

If the euro were to collapse and the Deutschmark returned, it would rise dramatically versus the previous euro exchange rate. For Italy, the return of the lira would see it fall.

This is simply the value add/deficit of the labor in the aggregate of the country, represented by the exchange rate through the discounting mechanism.  

This is why the euro and the EU are nothing more than colonialist systems designed to do exactly what they have done, impoverish the European periphery, which includes Italy, and concentrate capital in the center, in Brussels’ political power.

As much as I’ve used the Hunger Games to describe the US, it is even more apropos for the EU.

California and New York have used the singular Fed Funds Rate in the same way Germany has used the euro to dominate US electoral politics, ensuring that for decades their populations stayed high, the capital flowed to them, trapping people there and grinding them out between the twin millstones of inflation and taxation, just like Lenin described.

So, now applying that same model to France and it’s former colonies, does anyone believe that the labor efficiency of the Ivory Coast is the same as Germany?  or even France?

Of course not. But that’s the situation for these countries. France is running the same mercantilist scam of any colonial power by keeping the home country’s currency weaker than it should be in exchange for real goods from abroad.

But we see this effect in the reverse from the colony’s perspective. By setting a peg for the CFA Franc, it is always stronger than it should be if allowed to float. Even if initially set weaker than it should be to attract capital, eventually the exchange rate will become an albatross around the colony’s neck, strangling economic growth while all the wealth is extracted back to the homeland, thanks to the ECB’s monetary policy.

While the CFA Franc was reformed slightly under Macron, the essential link between France’s banking system and these colonies remains key, using the ECB’s ruinous monetary policy to take the profit and leave misery behind. 

Now, the good news is that mercantilism only works for so long before the currency mismatches become so great that the whole scheme has to collapse. It is, after all just another Ponzi Scheme.

In the case of France and Germany running their wealth extraction system across not just the 17 other countries of the euro-zone but 14 African countries as well, we’re reaching that breaking point.

Pres. Macron Tear Down This Peg!

Italy needs to be let loose from the euro. The populists and everyone not on Herr Schwab’s payroll understand this. Davos will blow up the world before letting that happen.

Meloni knows this. And she also knows that France has real designs on annexing parts of northern Italy and will fight very dirty to win here.

Macron tried to marginalize her on immigration, tugging on heart strings about denying migrants. She stood her ground, forced France to take the boats and when France tried to publicly shame her, she trotted out the CFA Franc and put that issue right to bed.

But here’s the fun part. She just put out her budget proposal for the EU’s consideration. It’s a very crafty proposal, skirting the edges of the rules set out by the EU, violating the spirit of the rules while not actually violating many of them. See this article from Reuters on rescinding the limits of cash use.

Martin Armstrong has a quick overview of the budget where he pulls out some of the salient points (from his perspective).  His takeaway is that Meloni is putting real limits on Italy’s welfare state.  

So, this is how she can play the game of not radically increasing spending. She’ll increase spending to subsidize rising energy costs clearly imposed on Italy by Germany and Brussels through ruinous sanctions on Russian energy as a stop gap measure. Sound familiar? Because this is what cost Liz Truss her job in the UK.

But she is also reforming the entitlement system for the long term which will keep the overall budget deficit which will call Brussels’ bluff on whether they will maintain support of Italy’s bond market.

We know this is a bluff otherwise ECB President Christine Lagarde wouldn’t have created the Transmission Protection Instrument to maintain internal credit spreads at the July meeting.

She knew this day was coming the minute Mario Draghi walked away from his post as Prime Minister. The TPI was announced the next day.

It looks like, at first glance, that Meloni’s found a way to circumvent being forced to implement “German Austerity” — raising taxes and cutting spending to protect bondholders — by cutting long-term entitlement spending while at the same time cutting taxes where they are needed most.

If there is a budget proposal that could mollify credit markets over Italy’s fiscal situation it would look something like this. It puts the EU on their back foot in budget talks. Because this plan could actually work.

Part of the budget plans includes slashing taxes for the self-employed by extending the 15% single tax rate from an annual income of €65,000 to €85,000, slashing VAT on certain essential goods by half, and conditionally reducing the retirement age to 62, provided that individuals have paid in at least 41 years of contributions.

What’s funny about this is that this budget, which explicitly breaks the EU’s cap of a 3% of GDP budget deficit, pushing it to 4.5% thanks to energy subsidies to families, is being hailed by the European press as “More EU Friendly than expected.”

What were they expecting, for Meloni to introduce miniBOTs and a new domestic currency like Salvini talked about in 2018?  

No, this is clearly messaging that states Brussels isn’t in the position to fight her because she holds all the cards in the negotiations.  Remember, $640+ billion in TARGET2 liabilities are the Bundesbank’s problem, not Italy’s.

Having exposed France to the world over the CFA Franc and understanding exactly how vulnerable the ECB and the EU Commission actually are in the Eurodollar markets, Meloni has pushed Italy into a good position to begin reversing the colonial extraction system of the EU itself.

A quick look at the polls in Italy has her riding a big lead at 30% support and moving higher.  If she gets this budget past the EU Commission, that number will instantly jump to 40% or higher.  The worry that Salvini and Berlusconi will betray her then drop precipitously. 

The Ring Heads South

Remember, lurking in the background of all of this is Wall St., the Fed and patriots in the US military.

This is who I think is helping Meloni stand firm here. The Fed’s aggressive policy stance has the Eurodollar markets teetering and Lagarde is no longer talking about QEternity but QT and higher rates, albeit very grudgingly.

If the price cap on Russian oil fails and Ursula Von der Leyen cannot ride herd on a 9th sanctions package, then Italy will quickly move into the driver’s seat on energy imports into Europe.

Wall St. understands this. And with a grateful Meloni in Rome realigning EU policy or forcing a breakup it also paves the way for a new cycle of energy investment now beyond desperately needed.

Who wants in on that action? Well, pretty much everyone, especially Wall St.

Meloni just told France’s African colonies to stand up and follow Burkina Faso’s lead.  With countries like Algeria, Egypt and Morocco all looking to join the BRICS alliance, the end of France’s colonial control over North Africa could end very quickly and Italy then has massive leverage on the EU to turn back on the sanctioned energy supplies.

This is a fight for all the EU marbles folks, and Meloni, I believe knows this.  So, she’ll play the dutiful game of supporting Ukraine publicly.  But, there’s almost nothing Italy can do practically to do that. It’s an empty promise.  They have no money, no domestic military to speak of… what is that promise actually worth?

No, France and Germany, the mercantilist powerhouses, are the ones that have to foot this Ukraine bill. Meloni and Italy are happy to support them bankrupting themselves while she lays the groundwork for increasing Italy’s leverage over them.

The Fed is doing its job by forcing the euro down, bond yields up and taking options away from Christine Lagarde.  

You beat colonialists by taking away their money printing machine. It’s that simple.

*  *  *

Join my Patreon if you don’t want to be colonized

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reported the latest National Instant Criminal Background System (NICS) checks on gun sales during Black Friday was one of the "Top 10" busiest days in history.

NSSF said NICS processed 711,372 background checks during the days leading up to and including Black Friday. FBI's NICS recorded 192,749 background checks on Black Friday alone, a 2.8% increase from Black Friday 2021, when 187,585 background checks were completed. 

Below are the number of NICS checks leading up to Black Friday.

• Saturday, Nov. 20, 2022: 102,376

• Sunday, Nov. 21, 2022: 57,665

• Monday, Nov. 22, 2022: 103,543

• Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2022: 109,895

• Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2022: 116,033

• Thursday, Nov. 25, 2022: 29,111

• Friday, Nov. 26, 2022: 192,749

Third-highest Black Friday NICS checks on record since the system was established in 1998. 

When a person tries to buy a firearm at a gun shop, known as a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL), they're required to fill out an ATF form, and the FFL forwards that information to the NICS electronically. NICS staff performs a background check on the buyer to ensure he/she does not have a criminal record or isn't otherwise ineligible to purchase or own a firearm. 

Joe Bartozzi, NSSF President and CEO, commented on the large influx of law-abiding Americans buying guns last week and said:

"Background checks for firearm purchases were already trending to make 2022 the third strongest year on record, coming off of the outsized years of 2020 and 2021.

"These figures tell us that there is a continued strong appetite for lawful firearm ownership by law-abiding Americans and that firearm manufacturers across the country continue to deliver the quality firearms our customers have come to expect."

What's important to note is that NICS checks are a proxy for the number of guns sold and are not exact because the background checks are performed on the buyer rather than the gun. 

Elevated NICS checks imply a strong firearm appetite among law-abiding Americans. There was no explanation given why this trend remained red hot since the early pandemic days. 

What might have supercharged gun buying among law-abiding Americans is this summer's US Supreme Court's NYSRPA v. Bruen ruling affirmed the right-to-carry applies outside the home, which forces states to stop arbitrarily denying carry permits to applicants who didn't meet specific requirements. Perhaps another reason is that under the Biden administration, violent crime has soared in some parts of the country -- law-abiding Americans might want protection. 

Just when the automobile industry thought it was out of the clutches of the Covid-induced supply chain SNAFU that had taken place over the last several years, it looks as though China's strict Covid policy threatens to pull them back in again. 

"At least three major automakers" are once again shuttering production, according to a new report from Bloomberg this week. Honda has shut down operations in Wuhan for the time being due to "limitations around movement" in the area, the report says.

The company also suspended operations at a lawnmower engine plant in Chongqing.

Yamaha has also been hit by the new Covid lockdowns, partially suspending operations at a motorcycle plant in Chongqing. Bloomberg reports that 8,721 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the area on Monday this week. 

VW also halted production at a joint venture plant that it has with China FAW Group on Monday of this week, the report continues. Volkswagen is attributing the shutdown to a shortage of components. It has also shut down two of five production lines at its factory in Changchun and has no date for resuming operations.

Nissan, Mazda and Mitsubishi told Bloomberg that their operations had not been affected. 

Recall, just last week we published on how China's Covid restrictions were actually tightening when the country's market had assumed they were easing. 

We published:

"More than a week after Beijing fine-tuned its Covid Zero strategy, local governments are struggling to balance the need to control the pandemic while also limit the economic damage. Shijiazhuang, a closely-watched city that had experimented with a version of “living with the virus,” has reversed course, suspending schools and asking residents to stay at home for five days. As infections multiplied, subway rides in some big cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing have tumbled.

The result is that Goldman Sachs’s Effective Lockdown Index has increased in recent weeks, despite Beijing’s new order to reduce the need for mass testing and citywide shutdowns."

 

Authored by Madalina Vasiliu via The Epoch Times,

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers militia group, was found guilty by a jury on Nov. 29 of seditious conspiracy connected to the events on Jan 6, 2021.

One co-defendant, Kelly Meggs, was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Tuesday, while three others—Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell—were acquitted of that charge.

In total, Rhodes was found guilty on three out of five counts: seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and tampering with documents or proceedings.

Meggs was found guilty on five counts out of six: seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging any duties, and tampering with documents.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, on June 25, 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

The other three defendants were each found guilty on multiple lesser charges.

In closing arguments, defense attorneys said the government failed to prove that the Oath Keepers planned to attack the Capitol or to interfere with the certification of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

A defense lawyer said that none of the 50 witnesses in the Oath Keepers trial testified that they heard any of the defendants discuss or plan to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

However, in the final rebuttal, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said that according to the jury instructions (pdf), the government did not have to prove that the defendants had a detailed plan to breach the Capitol and meet in person to discuss their alleged scheme. An implicit agreement and mutual understanding were enough to prove the defendants’ conspiracy, he said.

Sharon and Thomas Caldwell at the Peace Monument during the January 6, 2021 protest in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Sharon Caldwell)

Nestler told the jury that the three defendants who decided to take the witness stand to testify in their defense (Stewart Rhodes, Thomas Caldwell, and Jessica Watkins) allegedly lied.

“But it’s important to ask not just whether they lied. Ask yourself, why? Because the truth is so damning,” Nestler emphasized.

The government told the 14 jurors that the defendants deleted evidence that could prove even further their plan to breach the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A sign outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington on Sept. 29, 2022. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

James Bright, the attorney for Rhodes, asked the jury how the Oath Keepers could conspire as early as November 2020 to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if the Jan. 6 rally wasn’t announced until late December 2020.

Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers organization in 2009 to assist in natural disaster situations, Bright said, to volunteer to provide security for small businesses that could not afford security services from a regular company and to offer personal security details for VIPs.

Several members of the Oath Keepers testified during the weeks-long trial, saying that the organization gave them a sense of purpose since most members were retired veterans who found meaning in continuing to serve the country.

During nearly two months of trial, the U.S. prosecutors presented exhibits showing contact between the five defendants on trial and others who allegedly plotted to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Most of the government’s evidence came from the FBI agents assigned to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Text messages, video footage, Signal messages (an encrypted messaging app), and Zello audio recordings (a walkie-talkie app) were frequently shown in the courtroom, among other exhibits.

In his closing argument, defense counsel Bradford Geyer walked the jury through a video where he pointed out that unknown provocateurs broke through the Capitol doors first.

“Please send Ken home,” Geyer told the jury.

Another defense attorney, David Fischer, explained an unsent message that Thomas Caldwell, an Oath Keeper affiliate, deleted containing a link. That shouldn’t be considered evidence, the attorney said, since a link is not a document. That link was a video available to everyone, Fischer continued.

The prosecution distorted timeframes throughout its presentation of when the defendants walked up the stairs and entered the building, argued Jonathan Crisp, Jessica Watkins’ attorney. He also said that the government’s evidence was mostly out of context. Crisp explained that the stack formation was a way to get through the dense crowd and not for attacking the Capitol.

Only defendants Jessica Watkins, Kelly Meggs, and Kenneth Harrelson entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and Caldwell did not.

In the aftermath of Jan. 6, the U.S. government charged Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell with seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, aiding and abetting, conspiracy to prevent an officer from carrying out any duties, destruction of government property, civil disorder, and tampering with documents.

Before passing the trial to the jury on Nov. 21 evening, Judge Amit Mehta, an appointee of Barack Obama, reminded the jurors that the trial was against the five defendants on trial and not against the Oath Keepers’ organization.

Edward Tarpley, attorney for Rhodes said, “The judge treated us with respect.”

“There was no evidence ever introduced that there was a plan,” Tarpley told The Epoch Times, “I am grateful for the jury for not finding them guilty on all counts.”

“Jessica testified well, however, the government will seek multiple enhancements,” Jonathan Crisp, attorney for Jessica Watkins, told The Epoch Times.

Seditious Conspiracy

The most recent charge of seditious conspiracy was in 2010 when the government accused nine members of the Hutaree Militia from Michigan of “levy war against the United States.” An FBI agent who infiltrated the militia group provided most of the prosecution evidence.

When the defendants’ trial began two years later, in 2012, U.S. district judge Victoria Roberts dismissed the conspiracy charges. The judge explained that the government’s evidence mainly consisted of the defendants’ controversial speech protected by the First Amendment and did not prove the group’s alleged plan to overthrow the government.

The U.S. government pressed multiple charges, including attempted murder and seditious conspiracy, against five members of the Puerto Rican Nationalists who attacked the Capitol in 1954. The group opened fire on the House of Representatives and injured five Congress members.

Another seditious conspiracy charge was pressed in 1995 against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine of his followers. They were found guilty of planning to bomb bridges, tunnels, and other landmarks in New York City.

In 2006, Adam Gadahn was the first American charged with treason since World War II. He “gave al Qaeda aid and comfort … with intent to betray the United States.”

Read more here...