Zero Hedge — Senate Declares War On Assange

Realizing the gravity of the situation of becoming a persona non grata to the US government (and CIA), Assange then siad that “it is an interesting thought experiment to consider where other media outlets lay on this spectrum. It is clear that if the 'Pompeo doctrine' applies to WikiLeaks then it applies equally if not more so to other serious outlets."

Outlawing dissent while privileging official propaganda transmitted via compliant media. The road to tyranny leads through the US deep state and the US government. Surprised?

Zero Hedge
Senate Declares War On Assange

Tyler Durden

Also

In April, Trump’s newly appoint CIA Director Mike Pompeo branded WikiLeaks a “hostile non-state intelligence agency” which, according to Zerohedge, meant that Wikileaks would not be afforded the protections of the First Amendment under the constitution.

The Duran
CIA colludes with Congress to brand Wikileaks a “hostile non-state intelligence agency”

Alex Christoforou

see also

Zero Tolerance - Venice Mayor Orders Cops To Shoot Anyone Who Shouts 'Allahu Akbar'

Kali Holloway — Trump-Loving GOP Lawmaker Proposes Bill to Define Protests as a Form of 'Terrorism'

A Trump-supporting Republican lawmaker is trying to legally define protests, like some of those erupting across the country against his candidate of choice, labeled a form of “terrorism.” In a statement issued Wednesday, Washington state Senator Doug Ericksen says he is drafting a bill that would allow for felony prosecution of protesters who “intentionally break the law...by obstructing economic activity.” Considering that almost all protest could be defined as getting in the way of business interests, Ericksen’s bill is an obvious attack on citizens’ First Amendment rights.

In an unvarnished look at the trickery we may see plenty of in Trump’s America, Ericksen says he will propose creating “a new crime of economic terrorism” which could be used against those whose protest activities “block transportation and commerce, cause property damage, threaten jobs and put public safety at risk.” Ericksen, who was Trump’s deputy campaign director in Washington state, said in the statement that he’s actually all for civil disobedience, even though he wants to make many kinds of protest—that is, constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly—felony offenses.

“I respect the right to protest, but when it endangers people’s lives and property, it goes too far,” Ericksen said. “Fear, intimidation and vandalism are not a legitimate form of political expression. Those who employ it must be called to account.”
Ericksen also threatened those who support protesters in their right to protest, stating, “We are not just going after the people who commit these acts of terrorism. We are going after the people who fund them. Wealthy donors should not feel safe in disrupting middle-class jobs.”

Criminalizing dissent. George Soros in the crosshairs, too.

Now all that remains is a Scalia-inspired Supreme Court to countenance this.

AlterNet

Trump-Loving GOP Lawmaker Proposes Bill to Define Protests as a Form of 'Terrorism'

Kali Holloway, a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet

Tom Boggioni — LRAD's, Steel Batons and Armored Personnel Carriers: Cleveland Cops Stocking up before GOP Convention

Anticipating massive demonstrations in the streets during the Republican National Convention in mid-July, Cleveland police authorities are using emergency funds to stock up on the latest in crowd control equipment — armoring themselves as if they are going to war.

According to the Washington Post, Cleveland officials are using a $50 million “security grant” to beef up security around the convention, but are not tipping their hand on everything that they have purchased which is alarming some civil liberties groups concerned about the rights of protesters.

AlterNet
LRAD's, Steel Batons and Armored Personnel Carriers: Cleveland Cops Stocking up before GOP Convention

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

Andrew Fishman — As Brasília’s Corruption is Exposed, Lawmakers Try to Criminalize Dissent

Leaked secret audio recordings of Brazil’s most powerful figures have sparked a series of explosive scandals in the nation’s ongoing political crisis. Now, Brazilian lawmakers are trying to outlaw publication of such recordings.

A bill, which has been idling since last year in the Câmara dos Deputados, Brazil’s lower house of Congress, has picked up new steam this month. The proposed legislation seeks to criminalize the “filming, photographing or capturing of a person’s voice, without authorization or lawful ends,” punishable by up to two years imprisonment and a fine. If the recording is published on social media, the penalty rises to four to six years.
When it was originally introduced, the bill was criticized as one of many proposed draconian measures designed to protect politicians and a direct threat to freedom of expression and the press.

The anti-recording bill was introduced in 2015 by Deputado Veneziano Vital do Rêgo, of interim President Michel Temer’s increasingly right-leaning PMDB party. Rêgo, who voted for the impeachment of now suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, has reason to fear being secretly taped: he is a suspect in 35 pending investigations for various financial and administrative crimes, as of April, according to Transparência Brasil, a leading anti-corruption watchdog, and the fact-checking website Agência Lupa.

More of "our guys."

The Intercept
As Brasília’s Corruption is Exposed, Lawmakers Try to Criminalize Dissent
Andrew Fishman

Carey Wedler — Nixon Advisor Admitted War on Drugs Invented to Crush Anti-War and Black Movements

In 1994, a former Nixon policy adviser admitted the War on Drugs was waged not to keep Americans safe, but to crush dissent. According to John Ehrlichman, who served time in prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, the Drug War was intended to disempower anti-war and black rights movements in the 1970s.

Author Dan Baum wrote in the April edition of Harper’s Magazine that in 1994, he spoke with now-deceased Ehrlichman, who frankly explained why President Nixon pushed prohibition:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”…

And therein lies one of the most powerful, lesser-known reasons for prohibition: it is a heavy-handed tactic to silence dissent.

Whether the government’s effort was a pointed strategy to demonize counterculture and anti-authoritarian thought itself — or simply to suppress the movements that harbored them — is unclear. Regardless, Ehrlichman’s admission clarifies the increasingly evident reality that the Drug War was never about keeping people safe.…

Anti-War Media
Nixon Advisor Admitted War on Drugs Invented to Crush Anti-War and Black Movements
Carey Wedler

Nicole Flatow — The Most Outrageous Police Tactics In Ferguson

This is pretty consistent with the tactics used against protestors in the anti-war movement in the Seventies, although some of the technology is different and the police were not a militarized as they are now. And this was against predominantly white affluent people or their children in the nation's capital. In some ways it was worse in DC than in Ferguson with respect to violation of civil rights and constitutional liberties, and it was on a far larger scale, with hundreds of thousands or protestors involved and battalions of police and military.

Think Progress
The Most Outrageous Police Tactics In Ferguson
Nicole Flatow

See also, Emily Tess Katz, Marc Lamont Hill Reports From Ferguson: National Guard 'Feels Like More Repression', HuffPost Live

Truthout — Cecily McMillan Verdict Proves Dissent Is Dangerous

The conviction of Occupy Wall Street protester Cecily McMillan for assault on a police officer shows that the judiciary is corrupt and dissent will not be tolerated. We can no longer call ourselves a democratic society, and as Chris Hedges says, we are living in the “post-constitutional era.”

Since 9/11, the justification given for incremental loss of our freedoms has been “keeping us safe from terrorism.” But in truth, governments always seek to accrue more power to control their populaces in service to elite economic interests. It is an imperative which pre-dated 9/11, but one that afterwards spiraled out of control.

A heightened state of fear, a subliminal awareness of being expendable in the neo-liberal economy and the distraction of consumer culture have kept the majority of Americans in paralysis. In the meantime, institutions which protected our rights have been systematically undermined. This, unfortunately, is the regime we now live under:

The Authoritarian State

The Police State

The Surveillance State

The Post-Constitutional State

The Totalitarian State

The Corrupt State

The Corporate State

Pretty good rundown of fascism. But that only goes for the left. Meanwhile, on the right militias threaten federal agents with impunity.

We must champion people like Cecily McMillan, John Kiriakou and Chelsea Manning who have gone to prison for their courageous acts. It’s time to wake from our dream and resist.

Truthout
Cecily McMillan Verdict Proves Dissent Is Dangerous
Anne Meador, DC Media Group | Op-Ed

Washington's Blog — In 1972, the CIA Director Relabelled “Dissidents” As “Terrorists” So He Could Continue Spying On Them … And Nothing Has Changed

U.S. Government Labels Dissent As Terrorism

For 500 years, government spying has always aimed at crushing dissent.

Likewise, the U.S. government has long used anti-terror laws to crush dissent and protect the powers-that-be.

As Edward Snowden said:

These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.

He’s right. And see this.

Indeed, the government arbitrarily labels anyone it doesn’ t like – including American citizens – as “terrorists”.

In 1972, the CIA Director Relabelled “Dissidents” As “Terrorists” So He Could Continue Spying On Them … And Nothing Has Changed
Washington's Blog

See also Jonathan Turley, House Members Renew Call For The Capture Of Snowden As “Traitor” and Spy

Fascism on the march in the US.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Rebrands Constitutionally Protected Behavior as Terrorism

On Monday, June 22, the Center for Constitutional Rights appealed the dismissal of a federal lawsuit that bears my name, Blum v.Holder and challenges the constitutionality of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). Last March, Judge Joseph L. Tauro dismissed the case because, he said, the plaintiffs “have not alleged any specific, actual harm suffered.” But I have been deeply harmed. The AETA explicitly punishes causing an “animal enterprise” to lose profits, and I have spent years living in fear that the more persuasively I tell the truth about the animal suffering that underpins so much of our daily lives, the more likely I am to get thrown in jail.

The ruling by the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts offers one very narrow interpretation of the statute and a hollow promise that the AETA will not be used to prosecute those engaging in first amendment protected speech - but I am not relieved. If the AETA exists only to prosecute activists who engage in criminal activity, as the court claims, then it needn't exist at all. Ample state and federal laws already exist to prosecute those who damage property or engage in harassing or threatening behavior. What did not exist until the AETA was a way to rebrand effective advocacy on behalf of animals as terrorism. The court's ruling allows the AETA's labeling of nonviolent civil disobedience as a terrorist act and punishes those who trespass on factory farms and illegally liberate animals from horrific conditions orders of magnitude more severely than someone who steals or damages property for reasons other than animal rights.

Who are the actual terrorists here?

Truthout | Op-Ed
The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Rebrands Constitutionally Protected Behavior as Terrorism
Sarahjane Blum

Torture is "enhanced interrogation." Kidnapping is "rendition." Aggression against a sovereign nation that has not attacked is "pre-emptive defense." Ignoring habeas corpus is "indefinite detention." Whislte blowing is "espionage." Abrogating human and civil rights is "patriotism." Civil disobedience in protest is "terrorism." Dictatorship and empire are "freedom" and "democracy."

Orwellian.

Fascism Alert — Ranjit Devraj: Delhi bill to criminalize opposition to GM food

India's environmental and food security activists who have so far succeeded in stalling attempts to introduce genetically modified (GM) food crops into this largely farming country now find themselves up against a bill in parliament that could criminalize such opposition. 

The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) bill, introduced into parliament in April, provides for "single window clearance" for projects by biotechnology and agribusiness companies including those to bring GM food crops into this country, 70% of whose 1.1 billion people are involved in agricultural activities....

"The new bill is not about regulation, but the promotion of the interests of food giants trying to introduce risky technologies into India, ignoring the rights of farmers and consumers," Sahai said. "It is alarming because it gives administrators the power to quell opposition to GM technology and criminalize those who speak up against it." 

Asia Times Online
Delhi bill to criminalize opposition to GM food
Ranjit Devraj

Looks like criminalizing dissent is catching on.