The British journalist revealed on X his treatment by the authorities after being arrested under Section 12 of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act.
Richie Medhurst on his X feed announcing details of his arrest.
I was arrested at Heathrow Airport under the Terrorism Act, Sec 12 because of my reporting.
6 police officers were waiting for me at the entrance of the aircraft.
I was held for almost 24 hours and questioned.
I believe I'm the first journalist to be arrested under this… pic.twitter.com/pbf6q5dXIf
— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) August 19, 2024
The arrest on Aug. 15, came eight days after the F.B.I. raided the home of journalist and CN columnist Scott Ritter in the United States.
Section 12 of the British Terrorism Act criminalizes holding certain opinions or beliefs. It reads:
“12 Support.
(1) A person commits an offence if—
(a) he invites support for a proscribed organisation, and
(b) the support is not, or is not restricted to, the provision of money or other property (within the meaning of section 15).
[F1(1A) A person commits an offence if the person—
(a) expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and
(b ) in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.]”
Oh gawd, it just keeps getting worse . . .
They are eventually going to hit everyone.
They don’t want to hit everyone at once because that becomes obvious even to the people who are not paying attention.
Time to move to panquake.com-
Begin w/talkliberation on substack. De-google all “phones” too.
Let the techno-feudalists eat each others’ lunches. But save our incredibly courageous demonized journalists, the world over. Take joy, dear Richard. Your work has reached the scales of weighty resilience. Be aware they’ve done this same shit-show to Max Blumenthal, & of course to the inimitable, uncorruptable Craig Murray. As you know. Your commrades in love, honesty and decency abound. (Get thee behind me, satan. Richie & friends are breaking your ghoulish barriers to truth.)
May it be so.
Warm hugs, dear Richard.
Please do not fly through airports run by authoritarian governments.
Seriously, it isn’t safe. Ask a guy named Julian about the ‘law’ and ‘courts’ in the United Kingdom which has fought consistently against democracy and freedom for centuries.
Can anyone identify at least one airport – in the western world – that isn’t?
The law is Orwellian. This will be nasty. Why is support for Israeli genocide not terrorism?
Because it doesn’t threaten their jobs or pensions.
But UK citizens criticizing their government for violating civil liberties or imposing wildly unpopular laws on their serfs, errr citizens, does threaten their jobs and pensions and cannot be allowed.
There you have the face of western Democrappy. Or should I say Demockery?
The collective west is bankrupt – financially, morally, ideologically, intellectually…. Time for a renewed eastern world to emerge.
I think as is the case with Trudeau in Canada, the newly-installed Keir Starmer in Britain is the WEF in power.
U.K. is already an authoritarian state, regardless of who is in power.
This is a type of totalitarianism is something new; it is oligarchico-corporative in nature.
Free speech is now hate speech, protesting against the state is now terrorism.
And things will only get worse.
James Galbraith succinctly summarized our situation in an article published in Jacobin a few years ago entitled, “Predator State.”
In the introduction he wrote:
“We are living in a world where the corporate state of the 1950s has morphed into a predator state — a political system in which a narrow band of elites uses policy instruments for its own benefit, while the rest of the population foots the bill. This clique is enabled and defended by a class of professionals — economists, lawyers, and consultants, whose main function is to justify the predation and denigrate any attempt at political change. These forces loosely comprise a New Class, and they constitute the political mainstream in the United States, as well as Europe. It is not surprising, then, that many people on both sides of the Atlantic are now rejecting what they see as a captured mainstream.”
Those “policy instruments” include suppressing wrongthink, which threatens the elite-controlled “Predator State.”
James Galbraith succinctly summarized our situation in an article published in Jacobin a few years ago entitled, “Predator State.”
In the introduction he wrote:
“We are living in a world where the corporate state of the 1950s has morphed into a predator state — a political system in which a narrow band of elites uses policy instruments for its own benefit, while the rest of the population foots the bill. This clique is enabled and defended by a class of professionals — economists, lawyers, and consultants, whose main function is to justify the predation and denigrate any attempt at political change. These forces loosely comprise a New Class, and they constitute the political mainstream in the United States, as well as Europe. It is not surprising, then, that many people on both sides of the Atlantic are now rejecting what they see as a captured mainstream.”
Those “policy instruments” include suppressing wrongthink, which threatens the elite-controlled “Predator State.”
Excellent find
With the added bonus that quoting relevant content from someone like Galbraith, who already figured as core mainstream academia back in the 60’s & 70’s, is tremendously irksome and uncomfortable for those who instinctively defer to status. Without any critical thought whatsoever.
Superficially the laws may appear benevolent and harmless enough to many. But the devil is in the potential for abuse, being clearly vulnerable to wide interpretation.
First we have the Zionist attack on “Global Terrorism” (i.e. opposition to Zionist terrorism). Now we have the Zionist attack on “Domestic Terrorism” (i.e. opposition to Zionist terrorism).
OMGodzilla. Don’t let them catch you thinking.
Another outrage from a neo-fascist government. Richard Medhurst is a journalist I support, just as I support Julian Assange and Consortium News and Scott Ritter and Kit Klarenberg, Craig Murray, and every other speaker of truth who is persecuted by the neo-fascist warmongers. I will continue to support him.
You just listed names of people or organization that will be or are already being targeted by the so called “guardians of democracy and free speech” I would add Lowkey (targeted by zionists) to it as well. There was an interview of him on Youtube recently about the recent riots in UK. It is a very good interview. It is listed under “in conversation with British rapper and activist Lowkey on Riots and deep political issues in the UK”
Thanks. I like him, too.
It’s easy to support journalists / personalities who you like and agree with.
The question is do you also support people who you might loathe, such as Elon Musk or Tommy Robinson?
People should not fear their government …. governments should fear their people.
Is England, the birthplace of Magna Carta a free country any longer?
@caliman:
was it ever?
It surely was freer … at least in our lifetimes. People were censored more socially than criminally previously, I feel. Now, it seems the knives are coming out.
Btw, the importance of the Bill of Rights for us USians cannot be overestimated. Though, of course, even constitutional rights are worthless if the public allow themselves to be bamboozled by social and security services, as has happened several times in our history. But at least here the govt has to act like it’s complying with our rights, unlike Europe.
Richard Marshall gives good advice. Do not expect this commitment to crush dissent to ease under Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘New Model Labour’ UK government. Quite the opposite.
Kit Klarenburg has covered the related UK National Security Act 2023 in useful detail at The Grayzone.
Richard Norton-Taylor at DeclassifiedUK continues to explain the ramifications for all of these and other ‘livestock management’ laws and regulations.
And don’t forget Craig Murray, both here at Consortium News and his (under siege) website ‘craigmurray.org.uk’.
Time for Richard to diversify his income streams – next they go for the money. They will either seize his accounts or freeze the funds. Now would be a good time to have some Bitcoin and many different accounts.
Sorry to hear about Richie.
Not sure where to post the following but it has to be said: RIP Phil Donahue. Here’s a guy who would have Nader on somewhat regularly and would also give a non-hostile platform to anti-war voices. He was the last of a dying breed.
Amen!
Donahue was sacked from “liberal” MSNBC the moment he came out against Bush’s Iraq War.
As with the protesters during the Vietnam War, the protesters of our dirty wars in Latin America, the protesters against our Iraq War, and those protesting Israel’s genocide, our military industrial-corporate “Establishment” does not tolerate dissent, not even from wildly successful, truth-telling folks like Phil Donahue.
And when we look back on these episodes it’s always the case that the dissidents were right, morally and politically, and the “respected” establishment, including the “legacy media,” was wrong.
Chris Hedges, similarly, was nudged out of the NY Times as its Chief Middle East correspondent for his public, vocal opposition to the Iraq War, while at the same time the NYTimes journalists who publicly, vocally supported the Iraq War had no problem with the Times’ editors. Why? The NY Times supported our hideous war of aggression, as it has usually supported our other hideous wars.