Global Politics & Cultures (formerly Independent Thought & Freedom) - Robert Mueller, Roger Stone, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon LaRouche and Political Persecution In The USA w/ Mike Billington

Robert Mueller, Roger Stone, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon LaRouche and Political Persecution In The USA w/ Mike Billington

02/19/19 • 6 min

Global Politics & Cultures (formerly Independent Thought & Freedom)

LISTEN to the FULL episode 10 w/ former political prisoner and author Mike Billington BELOW!

While purportedly fighting for democracy and human rights in Venezuela and other countries, the US neglects abuses elsewhere, including at home.

What is also interesting is that even over long decades, you will find the same individuals involved in this home-grown, perverse American persecution.

One such person is Robert Mueller.

In the 1980s, as Robert Mueller was head of the "Get LaRouche" Task Force that brought the heavy hand of the American State down upon one of its visionary dissidents, the late Lyndon LaRouche.

Michael Billington was one of the Larouche Movement's leading activists, and experienced the full brunt of these long coordinated actions first hand.

In this excerpt of our recent conversation, Billington speaks of how Robert Mueller started to prosecute the LaRouche movement after Ronald Reagan adopted LaRouche's Strategic Defence Initiative.
Interestingly, it was Roger Stone (the same one Mueller recently had arrested using a similar overwrought display of armed State force) who brought LaRouche's ideas to President Ronald Reagan's attention. These were designed to facilitate cooperation between the USA and the USSR at the time, similar to Trump's stated goals of wanting to work together with Russia and China.

Billington recounts the dramatic events when law enforcement and military forces surrounded the LaRouche headquarters in what appears to have been a preparation for a something like a deadly Waco, Texas event, which actually occurred in just a few years later.

Billington eventually received the harshest and longest sentence from the Mueller prosecution - 77 years -in what was clearly an abuse of process and wrongful prosecution.

Last week, Lyndon LaRouche passed away at the age of 96, just a few weeks after the Larouche Movement launched a petition to exonerate him and the others from these false charges.

This is very relevant for what is occurring today in the United States. I urge you to learn more and sign the petition.

LISTEN to the FULL episode 10 w/ former political prisoner and author Mike Billington BELOW!

While purportedly fighting for democracy and human rights in Venezuela and other countries, the US neglects abuses elsewhere, including at home.

What is also interesting is that even over long decades, you will find the same individuals involved in this home-grown, perverse American persecution.

One such person is Robert Mueller.

In the 1980s, as Robert Mueller was head of the "Get LaRouche" Task Force that brought the heavy hand of the American State down upon one of its visionary dissidents, the late Lyndon LaRouche.

Michael Billington was one of the Larouche Movement's leading activists, and experienced the full brunt of these long coordinated actions first hand.

Billington eventually received the harshest and longest sentence from the Mueller prosecution - 77 years -in what was clearly an abuse of process and wrongful prosecution.

Last week, Lyndon LaRouche passed away at the age of 96, just a few weeks after the Larouche Movement launched a petition to exonerate him and the others from these false charges.

This is very relevant for what is occurring today in the United States. I urge you to learn more and sign the petition.

Previous Episode

Keeping High Spirits in Low Places: Singing Fidelio in Prison w/ Mike Billington

LISTEN to the FULL episode 10 w/ former political prisoner, author, Asia EIR editor, Mike Billington BELOW!

What would you do in prison for 77 years? What if your sentence was trumped up for political reasons, you could demonstrate that it was unjust, but the system threw everything it had at you, flying in the face of justice, due process, and fair play?

Mike Billington, a leading figure in the LaRouche Movement, faced that problem in 1989 when Robert Mueller -- the same Robert Mueller investigating Donald Trump -- began his politically motivated prosecution.

He could have sunk into depression, fear and the hopelessness of life in prison, mixed in with mass murderers, child molesters, and the worst offenders imaginable. He could have become bitter with rage and revenge. But he did neither.

Instead, he did remarkable things. He trained himself to sleep during the day, so that he could study at night, undisturbed by the constant noise of prison life. He taught himself to read and write Chinese, and became knowledgeable about the history of Chinese philosophy.

He wrote a book about prison life: Reflections of an American Political Prisoner: the Repression and Promise of the LaRouche Movement.

And perhaps most amazingly, he recalls his "greatest experience" in prison as being the work he did, with co-defendant Paul Gallagher, in founding a prisoners' chorus, where prisoners sang classical choral music, including the "prisoners' chorus" from the opera Fidelio by Beethoven.

This was in keeping with the examples of the best political prisoners in history: Gandhi, Nehru, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., St. Paul, Henry David Thoreau, and others.

I interviewed him for my podcast, "Independent Thought & Freedom", and in this moving excerpt he tells this particular prison story.

Next Episode

Choosing a Life of Action as a Young Man w/ Basdeo Panday

LISTEN to the FULL episodes 1,2 & 4 w/ former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Basdeo Panday BELOW!

Is Higher Education a way of running away from the world?

Basdeo Panday, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, lived and extremely full, active and productive life. However, as a young man, there was one crucial choice that led him in that direction.

After spending many years in England, the young Basdeo Panday had received a scholarship to go to New Delhi in India to get his Master's degree.

On his way to India, he decided to stop in Trinidad and Tobago, to visit his family. Not impressed by the new independent government of Dr. Eric Williams -- the internationally renowned intellectual -- and curious about the political and trade union protests that were rising up all over the country, the young Panday decided to attend a political meeting near his village.

Speaking there was another Trinidadian intellectual of international renown, CLR James, along with prominent national political personalities.

To his surprise, the young Panday was invited to the stage to speak. He had no idea what to say, but what happened after that meeting would change his life forever.

He had to decide what he wanted to do with his life and whether he should abandon the track that was already laid out for him for a comfortable future. What Stephen Maharaj -- the local radical Member of Parliament for the area -- told him, shook him up and he could never be the same again.