In an article in the August 27 SheerPost, “The Slide Into Authoritarianism,” former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou exposes the Anglo-American-run Five Eyes Intelligence network, which over the past year has increasingly begun to impose authoritarian mechanisms to attempt to silence and dissipate opposition to the NATO-proxy war in Ukraine, and strip away freedom of speech. Kiriakou writes, “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.”
Kiriakou focuses on the case of Richard Medhurst, a fierce critic of the genocide in Gaza, who was arrested at Heathrow Airport last week. To highlight what happened, which has not been widely told, Kiriakou quotes fellow Consortium News writer Chris Hedges, who reports that “after being taken into custody by six police officers, having his electronic equipment seized, and then questioned, [Medhurst] was placed in solitary confinement for almost 24 hours.” He was released on pre-charge bail, and will remain under investigation for at least three months. Medhurst faces the prospect of being charged with an offense under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act that could carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
Kiriakou, a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), reviews the raiding of Scott Ritter’s house by a dozen FBI agents and local SWAT team; Tulsi Gabbard’s having been placed on the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorist watch list, and being shadowed on her plane flights by as many as three Federal air marshals; and last October’s arrest of former U.K. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray at Glasgow Airport.