UK abuses powers in apparent retribution for exposing propaganda and intelligence-aligned ‘journalists’
UK investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg was detained by border police on his return to the UK in what appears to have been a punitive move – and certainly carried worrying overtones of the fascism into which this country has been dragged by the Establishment – for his and the Grayzone‘s successes in exposing UK/US propaganda and the secret communications of intelligence-aligned supposed journalists.
Klarenberg was detained by a group of plainclothes officers at Luton airport and held under the UK’s draconian ‘counter-terrorism’ laws – without even the right to remain silent and under pain of prosecution if he failed to surrender the passwords to his electronic devices to the police, apart from anything else an inexcusable breach of journalistic privilege and the crucial right to protect the identity of sources, as well as opening the possibility of the state planting ‘evidence’ to use against him:
Klarenberg’s powerful journalism has exposed the communications among intelligence agents and cut-outs, ‘academics’, so-called ‘disinformation experts’ and supposedly ‘left’ journalists – including, most notably, emails in which the now openly pro-war hack Paul Mason outlined and charted which left outlets, including the Grayzone site for which Klarenberg writes, should be discredited and put out of business.
Klarenberg has also exposed UK plans to destroy the Crimea-Russia Kerch Bridge, the CIA’s recruitment of two 9/11 hijackers, abuse of the Official Secrets Act by Tory MPs. Mason’s bizarre non-denial of the emails included attempts to smear Klarenberg as a Putin asset. Social media platforms appear to have collaborated with state attempts to reduce the circulation of revelations about Mason, as Klarenberg’s colleague Max Blumenthal has pointed out:
During the more than five hour detention, police seized Klarenberg’s electronics and bank cards, fingerprinted him and took DNA samples – then quizzed him about his political views, his journalistic work with Grayzone and his sources for the leaked emails – none of which are remotely criminal and which are supposed to enjoy protected status under UK law. Klarenberg was also grilled, bizarrely, about his home rental arrangements, faced wild accusations-framed-as-questions about supposed links between Grayzone and Russian and was questioned about his views of Tory PM Rish Sunak.
Such abuses of power and trampling of human and journalistic rights are unlikely to receive journalistic scrutiny or meet parliamentary opposition in the UK’s blighted, one-party-two-rosettes political landscape, where the UK’s collusion with the US to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange despite the disgraced US case against him has been resolutely ignored by both Keir Starmer’s notional opposition party and the entire so-called ‘mainstream’ media.
The UK moves ever nearer to outright fascism – and indeed in such actions it is already there. Solidarity with Kit Klarenberg, Julian Assange and all real journalists facing oppression and persecution in the UK and elsewhere.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
The round up has started then.
Started long ago.
https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/28/chris-hedges-the-democratic-partys-crucifixion-of-matt-taibbi/
I am afraid Klarenberg isn’t going to be the last independent journalist to be arrested. The establishment is after his sources and by arresting him and demanding passwords to his electronic devices is scaring other possible sources away.
We need to learn from this case and investigative journalist need:
-to start publishing under aliases
-have multiple electronic devices, so that only one kept at a safe place is used for confidential information
-when travelling sent by email to the safe device the communications needed and them delete them multiple times to make them unobtainable
-to sent copies to a trusted under the radar friend so that information still available once erased.
-If possible to programme a magnetic field that when the electronic safe device is removed it would erase the entire content of the hard disk.
Well said Maria Vasquez.
Kit doesn’t even live in the UK anymore because of the threats he’s had in the past. I believe he lives in Belgrade and was coming back to the UK to see family. Apparently anybody can now be arrested if they don’t give the police their phone code and if they refuse to answer questions because their lawyer isn’t present.
The slippery slope is getting steeper. The UK is now recognised as the most authoritarian nation in the West, and all Labour does is agree and abstain on every new law the Govt brings in.
This is truly concerning in and of itself, but also because it follows the recent arrest of a French publisher in April – story here https://novaramedia.com/2023/04/18/french-leftwing-publisher-detained-by-uk-counter-terrorism-police/
The British state is unarguably an authoritarian one walking down the road to fascism, with British police now acting like the former East German Stasi
“Walking to the road to fascism” I am very sorry John to burst your bubble, as someone born under fascism and living under fascism until my late teens the UK is already there.
I bet many that voted for Brexit thinking that they could escape the EU’s “clutches” would right now undue their vote if they could to claim the safety that membership of the EU was affording the UK in terms of HR..
Even in Italy with Fascists in government, journalist aren’t detained in this fashion. Moreover, I am pretty sure Italian journalist are already taken precautions just in case.
My youngest son has recently joined the pigs. He is not my son any more.
…..and the reason that you have disowned your son is?
…..and the reason this is your business is?
Dave Hansell – Dave clearly stating that “He is not my son any more” might just give you a clue.
Keef gets the gig and we’re all going on the list.
Believe it. 😕
We do. Well, except for SteveH obviously.
On a similar matter:
Shane Sullivan wrote a book about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. In the preface, he wrote about a strange experience he had when he discovered a possible CIA role.
“Former CIA operatives I interviewed suggested that my phone would be monitored and that I think about the safety of my family.
A few weeks after my initial discovery of apparent CIA operatives at the (Ambassador) (H)otel, I had an odd visit from two undercover detectives from the Greater London Metropolitan Police…”
How can you talk about living in a fascist state when you have the BBC working night & day to protect us from ‘misinformation’ or ‘false information’ or just old fashioned ‘communist propaganda’ and if the BBC fails in its responsibilities, we always have Rupurt Murdoch to tell us ‘the Truth’.