(NaturalNews) To all Natural News readers: I normally wouldn't be posting this article on Natural News, as we've switched all politics and liberty coverage over to NewsTarget.com. But with all the rumors and speculation now circulating about Pete Santilli, I thought it important to chime in and issue our TalkNetwork.com joint statement from myself and the producers. It always disturbs me when citizen journalists get arrested and charged with serious crimes.

Before I get to that, let me disclose that TalkNetwork.com will be announcing a significant format change here shortly. It's something we've been working on for a while that avoids the real-time limitations of only being able to carry a few dozen hosts and shows. We are wanting to greatly expand the number of different voices that can be heard on TalkNetwork.com, and we especially want to get more people involved who cover permaculture, natural medicine, home gardening, sustainable living and other similar topics. I have long wanted to expand the diversity of voices on TalkNetwork, so if you see some changes announced next week, they don't have anything to do with Santilli. We've been working on this retooling idea for a couple of months.
 

Feds arrest citizen journalist and charge him with CONSPIRACY!

On the subject of Santilli, it's totally true that he was arrested in Oregon and has been charged by the feds with a criminal conspiracy to "impede" federal law enforcement officials. You can read the criminal complaint here. We have a statement to share below, but the first red flag on this is that to my knowledge Santilli was primarily working as a citizen journalist and he wore a big "PRESS" vest.

Keep in mind that while Santilli has been charged with a "conspiracy," the entire mainstream media tells us every single day that people who believe in conspiracies are loony whackos. Thus, according to the mainstream media's own logic, conspiracies don't exist which means the federal charges against Santilli are wholly fraudulent to begin with. Is the FBI now saying conspiracies are REAL? Somebody alert the New York Times... (BTW, the real conspiracy here is the BLM land grab and its attempt to take over valuable mining plots that can be leased to the Russians and other nations who pay kickbacks to powerful politicians, but that's a REAL conspiracy which means the media isn't interested in it...)

Nevertheless, the fact that he has now been arrested and charged with conspiracy is extremely worrisome to citizen journalists everywhere, especially given the news earlier this week that the Center for Medical Progress filmmakers who went undercover to ensnare Planned Parenthood were also charged with serious crimes. The pattern is unmistakable: Citizen journalists are being increasingly criminalized in America... but only when they are broadcasting content the government doesn't like. I very much doubt Santilli actually "impeded" the feds in any way. More likely, he verbally berated them and gave them the finger (or similar actions along those lines).

The second point here is that, to my best knowledge, Santilli was serving as a very important citizen journalist from the point of view of the ranchers, constantly reminding the FBI that citizens were keeping an eye on them, too. He may have helped prevent this situation from worsening into a Waco-style slaughter by the feds.

I personally don't know the details of what went on because Santilli stopped communicating with myself and other TalkNetwork producers almost two weeks ago. He was broadcasting his video streams on YouTube LIVE, not on TalkNetwork, so we had no opportunity to coordinate anything with him or to even know what was happening there. He basically was "lone wolfing" the whole thing, which is fundamentally how he runs his show anyway.

Personally, I've been out of the loop on the Oregon situation for quite a while. My own attention has been focused in laboratory preparation for a very large science announcement I'm making next week that has huge implications for public health. So I've spent the last two weeks in the lab running ICP-MS instrumentation, and I had no direct contact with anybody in Oregon (I was just skimming the headlines like all of you, checking my favorite sites from time to time to see what was happening.)

From what I can tell so far, Pete Santilli appears to be getting hit with wildly unfair blame in all this. He was opposed to the Malheur refuge takeover in the first place, and he was trying to keep a live camera going on site to broadcast the plight of the ranchers to the world and hopefully scrounge up some more public support or sympathy for their situation. His presence there probably helped prevent a massacre from taking place, which is why I'm concerned for the remaining ranchers who are still holed up there. What does the FBI have planned for them now?

Along those lines, the FBI has released this video footage showing their shooting of one of the ranchers. This is clearly the FBI's effort to try to show, from their point of view, that the man they shot (LaVoy?) was reaching for something. I obviously wasn't there, so I can't really comment any more on what this video shows or doesn't show. Lots of other websites have better analysis than I can offer on this. But you can see their helicopter footage for yourself and decide what you think went down...

But getting back to Santilli, to my best knowledge, Santilli worked tirelessly to help de-escalate the situation and share the plight of the ranchers by broadcasting his live streams on YouTube LIVE. Then again, I've been out of the loop on this for a while, so maybe there are developments in all this that I'm not aware of.

Like nearly all liberty lovers in America, I am extremely frustrated and disturbed by the way our federal government treats ranchers and land owners across our nation. As a rancher myself, I understand how crucial it is for families to be able to know they can protect their property from unjust land grabs and BLM intimidation attempts. And while I don't promote threats of violence against anyone, I also realize that some land owners in America have been pushed around to their breaking point. Unless the feds revise their land grab policies, we are likely to see many more "sagebrush rebellion" activities in the future.