The Five Eyes intelligence services are plainly building up Venn diagrams of the democratic opposition to Zionism and the neoliberal project.
U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer upon his official appointment by the king in May. (Simon Dawson/ No 10 Downing Street, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk
No major Western leader is ever again going to be able to speak about human rights or ethical values, without attracting howls of derision. They are turning on their own people in order to prevent protest at a genocide they actively support.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer stepped up the pressure on opponents of Zionist genocide last Thursday with the arrest of journalist Sarah Wilkinson and the charging of activist Richard Barnard, both under the draconian Section 12 of the Terrorism Act which carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
The U.K. MSM has of course ignored these, but is universally carrying outrage at the conviction of two Hong Kong journalists for sedition, which carries a maximum sentence of … two years.
But they tell us it is China and not the U.K. that is the authoritarian dictatorship.
(To be plain, I do view the Hong Kong convictions as also an unwarranted interference with free speech. I merely point out the incredible hypocrisy of the British Establishment and far worse laws here.)
Richard Barnard has been charged and will face trial, apparently related to public speeches supporting the Palestinian right to armed resistance.
BREAKING: After a targeted campaign by the zionist lobby, Palestine Action's co-founder Richard Barnard is facing three charges for two speeches.
He is accused of supporting a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act and encouraging 'criminal activity'. pic.twitter.com/cWq0qwk15v
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) August 29, 2024
Sarah Wilkinson was released on bail after about 14 hours. Like the recent arrest and bailing of Richard Medhurst, the arrest and bailing is a device to chill her reporting and activism.
[WATCH: Medhurst Speaks to CN on His Arrest]
The harassment of dissident journalists at ports, using the extensive powers of the Terrorism Act for questioning and confiscation of communications equipment, has become routine. I myself suffered detention, interrogation and confiscation of equipment for “terrorism” last October.
But the Sarah Wilkinson case is an escalation, in that this is a raid on a journalist whose home was invaded by 16 policemen at 7.30 a.m., while she was arrested and taken to the police station as her home was comprehensively turned over, presumably looking for gunmen under the bed.
Bailed to never use a computer or phone again while @swilkinsonbc waits months for a trial that probably won’t come @georgegalloway @MoatsTV pic.twitter.com/pnF1OwiFVt
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) September 1, 2024
More details of the raid have come out which are scarcely believable. Armed counter-terrorism police wearing balaclavas were used against a peaceful, female journalist. She was manhandled and physically hurt. The ashes in her mother’s funerary urn were desecrated in a “search.” And Sarah’s bail conditions include that she may not use a computer or mobile telephone.
UK journalist Sarah Wilkinson under house arrest on terrorism charges.
?Police in balaclavas refused to identify themselves, ransacked her house and even descretated her mother's ashes.
?She was refused medication and not given food while interrogated for hours at Shrewsbury… pic.twitter.com/A9Tl4jy0uM— The Crispin Flintoff Show (@CrispinShow) September 2, 2024
It is a fascist government that sends 16 police to bust a peaceful journalist at home at 7.30am.
Like the stopping of Richard Medhurst’s plane on the tarmac by police vehicles and his being dragged from the plane (which had just landed and was en route to the gate anyway) this is an authoritarian theatre of intimidation, a Nazi stamping of the violence of the state.
Richard Barnard is a co-founder of the brilliant Palestine Action, which has done so much to disrupt the Israeli arms industry in the U.K. as it continues to send vital equipment to carry out the mass destruction of civilians in Gaza.
Richard has been charged under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act over two speeches he made supporting the Palestinian resistance.
I have of course said this before, but it bears repeating:
Palestine has the legitimate right of self-defence against the illegal occupation.
The occupying power Israel has no right of self-defence. That is the plain position in international law.
[See: Craig Murray: Medhurst & the Right to Armed Resistance]
Yet in the U.K., it is legal to offer full-throated support to Israel’s genocide and to wish that all Palestinians are exterminated.
IDF participants in genocide happily move between Israel and the U.K. with no legal consequences.
Yet it is illegal to support certain Palestinian organisations when engaged in legal acts of armed resistance.
The state’s actions against activists have been ramped up — as I predicted — since Starmer came to power.
[See: UK Prime Minister Terrorizing Palestine Supporters]
Five young activists in Glasgow were 10 days ago given sentences ranging from 12 months to 24 months in prison for direct action against Thales weapons plant in Govan, which makes parts for Israel’s Watchkeeper drones, widely used against civilians in Gaza.
BREAKING: Five actionists were sentenced to prison today after they occupied and cost Thales' weapons factory in Glasgow over £1million.
For disrupting Scotland's complicity in colonialism and genocide, three were given 12 months and two were given 14 and 16 month sentences.… pic.twitter.com/5Uef9v6sxa
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) August 20, 2024
The sentences from Sheriff Judge McCormick were savage — far higher than would normally be given on the specified charges, which were of breach of the peace, vandalism, disorderly conduct and acting in an abusive manner.
These normally would attract at most a suspended sentence on a first offence. McCormick also ignored the Scottish government guidelines not to give custodial sentences of 24 months or less but to seek alternatives.
More tellingly, McCormick completely ignored the elephant in the room: the genocide in Gaza, which Thales are supplying.
(The fact the action occurred before the genocide should be properly viewed as a commendable act of prescience.)
The Zionist Starmerite Establishment were quick to crow over the jailing – notably Luke Akehurst and John Woodcock (who is laughably called Lord Walney nowadays and is the government adviser on political violence) who said “Activists considering breaking the law to get their way need to see there will be consequences.”
This follows similarly harsh sentencing of climate change activists, including those who merely took part in Zoom calls discussing direct action.
The authoritarian reaction of the threatened Zionist ruling class is a worldwide phenomenon. Redoubtable Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis has been ludicrously accused under the country’s Racial Discrimination Act for retweeting pro-Palestinian tweets.
American activist Professor Danny Shaw was turned over by the F.B.I. on return to the U.S. following a trip which included speaking on a panel alongside me at the Palestine International Film Festival.
BREAKING: Professor Danny Shaw Becomes Latest Victim of the Assault on Free Speech
Professor Danny Shaw, former heavyweight boxer and educator, was detained and interrogated by the FBI and DHS at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on August 28, 2024, following his attendance at the Free… pic.twitter.com/eFEm0yrdPg
— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) August 30, 2024
Also in the United States my friend Scott Ritter has been raided by the F.B.I. and all his electronics and other materials confiscated.
[See: SCOTT RITTER: A Farewell to Truth]
I have spoken to Danny Shaw and to Richard Medhurst. In all of these arrests and detentions, including my own, the emphasis has been on confiscating electronics and on questioning focusing very strongly on contacts, meetings and sources of finance.
The Five Eyes intelligence services are plainly building up Venn diagrams of the democratic opposition to Zionism and the neoliberal project. It is notable that many of those recently targeted over Palestine — including Mary Kostakidis, Richard Medhurst, Scott Ritter and myself — were active in the campaign to free Julian Assange.
I have always maintained that Keir Starmer’s record shows that he will be an even bigger danger to civil liberties than the Tories. It is worth noting that all of the Tory recent draconian legislation — The Public Order Act, The National Security Act and even the Rwanda Act — was not opposed or was supported by Starmer as the pretend “leader of the opposition.”
Starmer and Cooper are continuing the Tory policy of challenging a High Court ruling won by the human rights group Liberty, that Suella Braverman acted illegally in tabling secondary legislation lowering the threshold to ban a demonstration on grounds of inconvenience to the public.
The forthcoming Online Safety Act will be truly chilling, including making it illegal to publish what the government deems misinformation.
Starmer has always been MI5-controlled. The fact that, while a Tory government was in power, the Crown Prosecution Service destroyed all the key documentation revealing Starmer’s involvement in the Assange, Savile and Janner cases (the last being far more important than generally appreciated), shows the extent to which Starmer is a protected Deep State asset.
If we are to survive this descent into fascism as a society, we need to be prepared to dissent now, and each of us needs to be prepared to go to jail if necessary.
A last word to Craig Mokhiber, the senior U.N. international lawyer who resigned in protest at U.N. pusillanimity in face of genocide:
A dark evil has descended over the West. As the genocide in Palestine continues, the US, UK, Germany & other Western governments, instead of cracking down on those committing, aiding and inciting the genocide, are cracking down on those opposing the genocide. Human rights…
— Craig Mokhiber (@CraigMokhiber) August 31, 2024
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
There has been no time in history when the people censoring free speech were the good guys. ( a quote by Robert F. Kennedy, JR.)
Democracy in America is akin to mass society.
”Such is not the case in a democratic country; there public favour seems to , there public favour seems necessary as the air we breathe, and to live at variance with the multitude is, as it were, not to live at all. The multitude require to leaves to course those who do not think like themselves; public disapprobation is enough; a sense of their loneliness and impotence overtakes them and drive them to despair.”
”Democracy in America” p.275.
Someone is still posting to X on Sarah Wilkinson’s account. If she is unable to use a phone or computer as a condition of her bail, I suppose she’s not the one doing the posting. Or am I missing something?
I’d have a lot more sympathy for journalists if so many weren’t complicit and cheerleading for this type of thing when it happens to their ideological enemies. Julian Assange went years without any support from MSM outlets. Some of the worst attacks against him came from the same news outlets that benefited the most from they early days of Wikileaks (I’m looking at you, Grauniad).
Ditto for their the glee at taking tipoffs from government jackboots so they could film 3 am raids on octogenarian ‘criminals’ in the Trumposphere and cackle with joy at watching old men like Roger Stone being frog-marched out of their homes while still in his jammies. Or at the sudden surge of charges based on ‘novel’ legal theories that have never been charged before in the ‘get Trump’ lawfare assault to try and ‘protect democracy’ by keeping an opposition candidate off the ballot or in a jail cell. How positively Brazilian of them. How did locking up Lula work for his opponents?
Every western democracy is teetering on the edge of becoming a banana republic, if they aren’t all ready. Why people still choose to ‘trust the system’ is beyond me. The same 90s kids who Raged Against the Machine are now Raging for the Machine, and the Boomers pillory the guy who wrote ‘Welcome to the Machine’ for not embracing the war machine.
I wish there was some kind of sociopath/psychopath screening where politicians and public servants have to pass negative to make it near power. The current state of affairs is that only dark triad personalities are able to enter the institutions. If there are no checks or balances in the legal system, or media, against abuses, there is certainly none in the character, morality, or ideology of people like Starmer. I believe there really and truly is nothing they would not do, if they can get away with it.
I agree, We need to be ready to sacrifice our freedom in order to protect free speech.
An excellent and brave article. Truly:
“No major Western leader is ever again going to be able to speak about human rights or ethical values, without attracting howls of derision.”
They have no shame; but they used to be better at hiding it.
Yes, but the howls will be from the margin. I watched some of the Dem Convention in Chicago, including Kamala’s acceptance speech, with liberals whose position is to back anyone who can beat Trump. It doesn’t matter what Kamala’s done or what she says she’ll do. Gaza doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but stopping Trump. She reflects their sense of who they are, he doesn’t, and that’s all that matters.
It matters not who occupies the White House! Nothing systemic in foreign policy will change. If you still think the President has the power to actually do what they promise, then you have a lot of studying to do. We have to stop thinking in terms of Dem or Republican as it is just political theatre. We are Rome! Do you understand what has happened since Kennedy was murdered? It has been a slow, well-planned march into a one world government. No more nation states, no more civil rights, Constitutional government, as it is gone now. Our choices are paper or plastic, take it or leave it.
so terribly chilling – and so disappointing
to realize how vain our hopes were that,
after WWII, ‘vietnam’ and other horrors,
large majorities of people would bring us
ever closer to freedom and justice for all.
instead, we’re moving backwards,
with many backbones vanished or broken.
and our spirits would be, too, if it weren’t
for intellectuals, journalists, analysts and
all other courageous providers of [bitter]
truths, hard facts and invaluable insights
outside the MSM … around the globe.
[i’d not be surprised if s.o. were soon to suggest:
‘why not rewrite that passage of int’l law that
grants occupied peoples the right to self-defence
by any means required.’
then again, hardly anyone cares about int’l law
anymore – so why bother to rewrite parts of it?]
“If we are to survive this descent into fascism as a society, we need to be prepared to dissent now, and each of us needs to be prepared to go to jail if necessary.”
Terrifying, but true I suspect.
It has always been true.
This is sad, when a small tribe of people with vast amounts of money given to so-called politicians can sway their votes and enact undemocratic laws against their constituents for the benefit of that small but powerful group, not only in the UK, but in the U.S Congress and the White House and other Western European countries where they have a stranglehold in national governments.
Who were really the big winners of WWII, in spite of the murderous regime of Nazi Germany, contrary to the Hollywood version?
Craig Murray is a giant among honest and courageous (for the TRUTH) men, My hat goes off to him, and thanks, Mr. Lauria and the Staff of Consortium News for publishing this article!
Among your contributors good sir, are those of us also near totally censored, anti-war, Poly-Sci, Economics educated. Thanking you as U$uAl.
As anyone with their eyes open can see, our ruling elites are really taking the gloves off. They’re currently suppressing, canceling, deplatforming, banning, censoring or harassing certain outlets and scholars/critical thinkers who take a hard line against Israel’s genocide and Zio power in general and NATO’s extremely dangerous proxy war on Russia’s border.
I’ve never seen suppression like this. Eventually they could even come for CN some day.
What our ruling class is counting on is that a critical mass of committed people against all this censorship never forms, never coalesces to fight back. Which side eventually wins this battle will tell us everything.
chilling. the Daily Sceptic has more – Starmer’s Bid For Total Power Has Failed (but sorry, paywalled).
“Western governments, instead of cracking down on those committing, aiding and inciting the genocide, are cracking down on those opposing the genocide.”
Led by small, vacuous people, this complete immorality at its very heart is the cause for the fall of empires. At some point, it’s demise becomes simply “Finally. Good riddance.”
The trajectory of empire: unaccountable power – corruption – incompetence – collapse.
Absolutely! Empires got to empire, or expire.