GUILTY OF TRUTH

Are thought crimes next?

On the Arrest of Richard Medhurst
(Chris Hedges on Substack)
August 25, 2024

"The arrest of the reporter Richard Medhurst, who has been one of the most ardent critics of the genocide in Gaza and Israeli apartheid state, at Heathrow airport is part of the steady march towards the criminalization of journalism, something all of us, including Medhurst, understood lay at the heart of the long persecution of Julian Assange.

Where the “norm” was for police to detain people for questioning under Schedule 7, Medhurst became the first journalist in Britain to be arrested under Section 12 of the draconian Terrorism Act."

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JOHN KIRIAKOU: The Slide Into Authoritarianism
(John Kiriakou: Special to Consortium News)
August 27, 2024

"All of us who care about civil liberties, civil rights, human rights and freedom of the press have had a front-row seat lately to a slide toward what can only be described as authoritarianism. The governments of the U.S., U.K. and even Canada have been working hard, sometimes in a coordinated fashion, to silence dissenting voices. The governments’ tactics have been heavy-handed, to say the least."

John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.