Almost 500 anti-genocide activists arrested as Starmer government moves to ban protests outright
(www.wsws.org)
from technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to world@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 15:28
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54948823
from technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to world@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 15:28
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54948823
London’s Metropolitan Police arrested another 492 people over the weekend after a protest Saturday in Trafalgar Square, as the Starmer government accelerated its crackdown on opposition to the Gaza genocide.
The entirely peaceful protest was held to oppose the proscription of Palestine Action. It was organised by Defend Our Juries and attended by over 1,000 people. Of the arrests, 488 were for holding up signs declaring, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.
#world
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UK is a fascist regime. Well done!
Folks who get really up in their feelings about the Trump/Harris election seem to forget that Harris was taking campaign advice from this guy. It’s so easy to forget how absolutely poisoned so-called “Liberal Democracy” has become with a broad strain of fascist tendency.
On the one hand, you’ve got a guy who is looking to literally lay siege to cities in the US that didn’t vote for him. On the opposite side of the pond, they’re doing mass-arrests of anyone with a “Please Stop Killing Brown People” bumper sticker. And in the middle, a sea of smug dipshits posting “You got what you voted for”.
And then there's the Americans, for whom literally everything has to be about America in some way or another.
Americans own the world. Everyone else just lives in it.
That might have been true 40 years ago but those times are gone, you just haven’t realised it yet
Have you seen their fiction? Even in sci-fi, they’re the center of the fucking universe. Galactic Space Empire HQ, located in NYC/LA/San Francisco of course.
As opposed to British fiction where everything os centered around London? George Orwell thought London would be the center of the Anglo-American axis back in 1948 while the British Empire crumbled around him.
Similar issue, yes. It’s said that you should write what you know, my point is more that Americans seem incapable of producing fiction where the lower 48 aren’t the nexus of the universe, not that the British weren’t also doing the same thing centuries earlier.
Aliens sure seem to visit London all the god damn time in Dr. Who. People write literature about the places and people they know. Why would an American write a book about aliens visiting Berlin?
Also, how long ago do you think 1948 was? Because it wasn’t “centuries” ago. And the most prominent American sci-fi authors do not have their stories revolve around the US. The Foundation, Dune, Star Wars, and the Expanse were all written by American authors and only one of them has any characters from the USA
1948 was before black people were given equal rights in the US, so as far as I am concerned it should have been centuries ago. Stop dick measuring with the previous garbage empire like their shortcomings somehow excuse your own.
edit: <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7d43c51b-8519-4f7e-a863-7f30ca2a1609.png">
Was it my support of civil rights or my pointing out how silly it is to compare yourself to a condemnable empire as a defense that made you mad?
I would love to discuss German, Indian, and Chinese sci-fi, but none of it seems to be very popular on the international stage so unfortunately we can’t discuss it. The guy i responded to complained that American media focuses so much on America, while citing only Star Trek, but that’s literally how media is in every country, so i cited British media because that’s what i am familiar with as i am a dual citizen of both countries.
And perhaps associating the racist policies living people grew up with as something that happened centuries ago is why we can’t make much progress today.
Or maybe it’s using the fucking bri*ish empire as your yardstick for progress?
Where have i tried to use the British Empire to measure social progress? I mentioned an example of English literature where ot is comical to think England would be the nexus of power, which someone then said doesn’t count because it was from “centuries ago”. Now i don’t even know what y’all are trying to yell about, as a thread about the British descent into fascism turned into American literature to whatever the hell you are even talking about at this point
Nobody’s yelling, you are clearly having a minor meltdown.
Another user mentioned the valid point of American media being pretty self fellating when it comes to who is treated as the centre of civilisation, and you spat out your binky and decided to bring the UK into this. He responded that yes, Britain has been doing this for centuries (as empires tended to back before mainstream telecommunication), and you wilfully misunderstood his point, prattled on about doctor who and 1984.
I merely responded that measuring your dick against the British empire is a pretty fucking low bar, because that is what you did. I also reminded you that if you don’t think 1948 was long enough ago (as you implied), maybe consider the social changes that have taken place.
You been running in circles answering questions nobody asked and misreading responses; a clear sign that you have gotten emotional and are not equipped to engage in this conversation as a reasonable actor.
The person you originally responded to was correct, you were wrong. Maybe learn from that instead of doubling down and randomly bringing the UK into it. To once again repeat, THIS particular thread is in response to someone correctly observing that American media is pretty self fellating when it comes to who is treated as the centre of civilisation.
Because lets face it, no matter how bad the UK might be, the US is in a far worse position right now. Crying about it and pointing fingers just makes you look petulant. If you can’t deal with criticism of your country maybe you should stay out of discussions where it might come up?
Sidenote: shout-out the Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem, a Polish author.
Thanks! I have almost worked through my backlog of sci-fi books and have been looking for something new while i wait the next book in the captives war series to come out
What? He called it “Airstrip One”.
Your point being? Do you think Orwell named the UK after a US air force call sign that wouldn’t be coined until after his death? I won’t be lectured on literature by someone who has the media comprehension of a middle schooler.
Well, according to my middle school media comprehension the implication of the name “Airstrip One” is that the island of Great Britain acts as a bulwark against or potential invasion staging post to Eurasia, as it did in the Second World War. London is far from the Imperial Centre in that story, though there is no clear capital of Oceania and Ingsoc. Orwell’s pessimistic view of the UK’s future is as a province of the American Empire.
I mean… After the USSR fell, the US was the only major player in space for like 25 years, until China finally started to dabble the last few years.
It’s not necessarily an ego stroke to extrapolate from that point.
But also, the media is targeted at American viewers. Of course they’re going to use familiar cities.
Do you also complain that doctor who, despite being able to travel anywhere in the both the universe AND time, lands in modern day UK so often?
I do find it offensive that every time the Doctor and companions land in the US, everyone is a gun-toting dumbass.
I mean, it’s accurate, but still offensive somehow!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9f303c0d-70a4-4ee7-9ad9-0713fe2ebfce.gif">
All authors are like that. You write about what you know, that way you save yourself lots of research and mistakes.
Liberals will ALWAYS end up siding with the Fascists to try to suppress the Left. Happened in Germany in the 1930s, and the dumbass liberals eventually ended up lined up against the same walls the communists and socialists were lined up against. If you’re a liberal today and defending this fascist suppression against Palestine Action: you’re next.
I’d argue that the Liberals are a little farther down the line. This administration isn’t finished bullying women, intellectuals, non-Caucasians and the queer community to death, they’re just getting started.
Happened in the 1910s, even. Hence the old quip about Bernie Sanders killing Rosa Luxemburg.
Or marched out into the snows of Russia to seize more Lebensraum for the imperial core. Or just bombed to death in Dresden or Berlin when the front lines collapsed.
The hard math of living in a fascist state is standing up and getting shot today or ducking and hiding in hopes you won’t get shot tomorrow.
Liberals made their bed back in 2009. We’re all just living in the aftermath.
What about the other 160 or so democracies? How they doin?
Especially the proportional representation ones. FPTP is just a hint of democracy.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers, but…
I’m counting far less than 160.
Sure. But then IRV still gave us NYC Eric Adams as mayor of New York. There’s more to democracy than the shape of your ballot.
Sorry I didn’t make any claims as to what constitutes a “full” democracy, I was going with these guys who put it at about 167 “democracies”.
IRV is just FPTP+. Like you say, it isn’t an electoral system so much as a ballot system.
We studied it, in Canada, under the name “Alternative Vote”. It was the only one we could find that was worse than FPTP:
www.ourcommons.ca/content/…/image002.gif
There’s a reason why politicians keep suggesting it, and it’s not for our benefit.
I’d settle for what defines “democracy” at all. I’ve seen folks claim El Salvador is a democracy while Nicaragua isn’t, entirely because the government of El Salvador is politically aligned with the US and the Nicaraguans are not.
I don’t really care what flavor of election system you think is the right one. However you square it, you can have shit candidates win popular mandates. There is no system that’ll keep people you don’t like out of office, shy of a dictatorship that puts you in charge.
Suggesting it? Thirteen states have now banned ranked-choice voting as municipalities decide on whether to adopt it
You’re against logic and reason?
I’m not interested in a system that will keep people I don’t like out of office. I’m interested in a system that represents the will of the people, rather than the will of a select rich and powerful few.
If you’re willing to care, you might find one.
I don’t see the problem here, like I said, it’s worse than FPTP.
I met an Aussie in Thailand who claimed that ranked ballot elections are undemocratic, that recent Australian protests were not racist, that immigration was a huge problem in Australia, that Australians are not actually racist at all, and that recent Australian protests were about protesting Palestine, and not racist at all.
Calling Japan a full democracy is a stretch. They’ve been ruled by one party for over half a century, and definitely not b/c they’re good at their jobs.
It’s really not.
freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/…/2025
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4c0e7c21-7fcc-464e-88fe-fa6ac44713d6.png">
They need to update it apparently, because I can’t see those rights.
freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/…/2025
A country actively kidnapping people off the streets, removing due process and habeus corpus, deporting prisoners to random countries, building concentration camps, and deploying troops on the streets has a score of 84/100. Forgive me for not feeling particularly free with my score of 91.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House#Criticism
Having a read of this I think it’s fair to say boiling down a nation’s “freedom” to a single number is a silly unacademic metric, before even getting into the likelihood of bias and manipulation.
If it looks like a
duckfascist, swims like aduckfascist, and quacks like aduckfascist, then it probably is aduckfascist. Regardless of what a likely bias think tank’s research may say.Wow, what a clown propaganda machine.
They weren’t declaring all protests illegal then, were they
They aren’t now, either. 2024 was after the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, too, which was the biggest restriction on the right to protest in a long time and would be more significant than the change being discussed.
It’s a bit worrying that people are just taking this incorrect headline from a propaganda rag at face value.
I’m sure the thousands of arrests are all made up, too, huh?
What? Are you saying that all protests have already been declared illegal? Go ahead and cite this declaration you just made up. And also explain the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have not been arrested recently on various causes, from pro-Palestine marches to anti-immigration ones.
If you haven’t gone nuts and don’t actually believe this thing that isn’t happening has already happened, then the arrests of people are irrelevant because they’re not part of proposed changes.
Oh, sorry, I didnt know the “Freedom Eagle Burger index” based off Washington DC said it’s not fascist. Well, pack up guys, nothing to see here!
Always has been. See 1984, V for Vendetta, etc.
You… you know those are fiction, r-right?
You know all fiction is based in reality, right? Authors write what they know.
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/9faf8add-1ed0-4788-8c9f-bcf91c028347.png">
And how else would you describe mass imprisonment of pro-palestinian protesters? Furthermore: how is this fascist apologia not banned on .world?
Man, MAGA sure hates free speech.
Zionist scum
Fascist.
Too busy complaining about getting banned from .ml
Please shoot me.
Sorry, in UK you get stabbed only.
Yeah we are America lite and it’s harder to get guns.
Real question:
Im going tongo tin foil haters a bit with the implication:
If you have a faist government why not just bring back the royal family as the leaders?
I get that facism is different than monarchism but many of the key distinctions aren’t that significant imo, in that they both lean heavily towards autocracy and both Aggressively punish dissent.
Wow. Fuck that.
I don’t like the way this is being framed.
People aren’t arrested for supporting Palestine.
They are arresting for praising Palestine Action, a UK organization that was banned after breaching into a Royal Airforce military base
www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn81g4e0nlyo
politico.eu/…/uk-military-jets-damaged-pro-palest…
So? I support Palestine Action and all actions they’ve taken to stop the UK’s complicity in genocide. It’s illegal to say this in the UK.
And arresting people for saying that is acceptable because…?
hand on hip and wagging scolding finger “Oi mate, yous can’t soiy that, it’s prohibited language! You’re noit allowed to suppoht a group declared terrohrist feh sproiy paintin’ a jumbo jet!”
Are you Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins?
Maybe a little?
Spraying military aircraft with red paint isn’t terrorism by any stretch of the imagination. Who does it terrorize? And supporting an organisation whose members sprayed fighter jets with paint isn’t terrorism either. There’s no justification for the UK government’s use of anti-terrorist legislation against these protesters.
By contrast, supporting a regime that has been openly committing genocide for years and uses torture and murder to intimidate its opponents could well qualify as terrorism.
And runs political interference campaigns at the highest levels of its allies to gain unlimited support. We label other countries foreign actors waging hybrid warfare for a lot less. It’s crazy.
People that were against terrorism legislation argued this until they were blue In the face and people people told them don’t worry, the government is totally not going to abuse these powers.
User name checks out
When Keir Starmer was a solicitor he defended people, successfully, for the same kind of thing. This isn’t terrorism, this is my government taking away our rights to protest.
People are ignoring their proscription to bring attention to the insanity of it and hope to force the government to back down. It’s mainly old people being arrested; including priests. I would do it myself but it’s hard when you’ve got work and being in jail would hinder that.
For what it’s worth I support Palestine Action.
I mean. It’s obviously working. Coward.
Amnesty International, Liberty, and the UN disagree with you.
…org.uk/…/uk-banning-palestine-action-disturbing-…
…org.uk/…/governments-use-of-terrorism-powers-aga…
ohchr.org/…/un-experts-urge-united-kingdom-not-mi…
They should just start doing protests under the banner of Palestine Action 2 instead.
“Palestine Mechanism”
Palestinian electric boogaloo.
Who gets to declare that the distinction matters? Why do they get to do that?
How is this fascist nonsense not banned from .world is beyond me
I don’t like you.
LOL, they are violating their Freedom of Speech instead of violating their Freedom of Speech?
I don’t support the UK crackdown on peaceful protesters, but this wsws.org is a de-facto Chinese propaganda medium. That’s not a good source.
The Independent
How so?
Not OP but I found this on wiki:
Is it so hard to find a socialist organisation that isn’t just simple contrarians?
I guess they at least oppose the (2022) Russian invasion of Ukraine so they're not completely bonkers. Not Chinese propaganda level, but still disappointing.
They frequently portray Ukraine as an aggressor in its war, rather than Russia (they call the Kursk incursion of Ukraine the “imperialist-backed incursion of Russia”, and they write that Taiwan’s ruling party DPP “must renounce its confrontational approach to China” in an obvious disconnection from reality that Russia started the war in Ukraine, and China is becoming increasingly aggressive against Taiwan including threats of an military invasion - Source, but you’ll find ample evidence that this site is conveying authoritarian talking points in practically all its reports, and barely properly citing a source for their claims).
This is outright Chinese propaganda.
Isn’t WSWS run by Trotskyists?
It’s a good source if it reports on the fascist behaviors of the UK government. With this trend, how long do you think western media will be able to report freely on this stuff?
90% chance the mossad has a bunch of videos of Starmer and his cabinet diddling kids, or engaging in animality with pigs, whatever is the depravity du jour was in his heyday.
Meanwhile the nazis march against london with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon at the helm. 0 actual enforcement. The funniest part is Yaxley-Lennon was invited by an israeli minister to visit Israel…
Can you imagine travelling back to 1943 and telling people in the camps that their sacrifice would be the fertilizer of a new wave of the same ideological poison that deprived them of dignity and life. This is just heartbreaking… What’s even the point of resisting anymore?
Friendly reminder indeed that Epstein was likely a Mossad asset and there are likely more like him.
Source?
He used the word “likely”. This indicates that this is his opinion on the matter, not fact.
Indeed. My opinion stems from the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father was suspected of being a Mossad agent and Epstein himself had ties to some Israel government figures.
Sauce
timesofisrael.com/for-writer-who-broke-epstein-ca…
because…what other choice is there, let them win?
Resisting tyranny is how everything good in the world is possible. The way to have lives worth living is to defeat tyrants and their ideologies. We defeated the Nazis but not fascism. Now we have to defeat the ideological descendants of the Nazis.
If we don’t defeat fascism, neoliberalism, and capitalism now the turn around time for the next fascist movement will be measured in years not decades. We have seen as much with the Biden administration. They failed to meaningfully hold Trump and MAGA to account for the insurrection or fundamentally fix the underling systemic issues that they are symptoms of and now we are living under fascist rule.
We don’t have dignified lives or liberal democracies to go back to. The way to get something better is with socialist democracies where workers own corporations and the political process. Until then it’s liberty or death. We benefited from a free democracy. If anyone is to enjoy that again we must resist now and until we are all free.
That’s a funny looking labour government you got there UK.
How did you guys go from Corbyn to this? Is it so hard to have a labour party leader that doesn’t back Israel or Russia?
Starmer is terrified of Reform. So he’s taken the really smart stance of pulling Labour to the right to court a demographic that would never vote Labour anyway, and in the meantime utterly piss off his core base.
This almost always fails and only ends up moving the country average to right and make extreme right seem more mild.
Also I don’t think right wing voters have that strong an opinion on Israel. This is more likely zionist lobbies pulling some of Starmer’s strings.
Controlled opposition, doing what the fascist sociopath pedophile oligarchs paid them to do.
He’s been do that for years. Hell labour advisors even managed get Kamala and the dnc to to harder right
Same story, different country
Same shit, different assholes.
Yeah, it’s very sad since I think people are more willing to vote Labour if they were just better. Now their voter base is more likely to stay at home instead of going to the voting booth. Weird move by Starmer since he was in the march against the Iraq war himself.
It’s so depressing. I remember the election that Ed Miliband lost, and how many of us were unsurprised that people found no appeal in Tory-lite as opposed to the regular Tories; Labour implicitly conceded to the Tories by affirming the idea that austerity was the only way to go. Now the same is happening with Reform.
If Labour really wanted to challenge Reform, they’d challenge Reform’s base assumptions. They’d argue, for example, that reducing immigration won’t solve the housing crisis or NHS wait times, because those essential services are suffering from over a decade of chronic underinvestment. They don’t need to fight on Reform’s terms, because if they do, Labour will lose — again.
A campaign by Israeli-backed British Jewish groups of anti-semitism slanders against Corbyn (so extreme that at one point a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was deemed an anti-semite to get at Corbyn by association) toppled him down from Labour Party leadership, to be replaced by these types, who as soon as they got control of the Labour Party started purging it of people who had voiced Leftwing ideas and support for Corbyn.
Essentially Labour was emptied from the inside and its shell was filled with supporters of a foreign ethno-Fascist regime.
This is a big part one party system of governments tend to fail.
Also indicative of how multi party systems Can fail apparently.
Power Duopolies, such as those found in countries with First Past The Post systems, suffer from similar problems as the Power Monopolies in one party systems, such as how there is a path to power which is entirelly unaccountable to voters, of just taking over one of the Power Duopoly parties from the inside and then let the normal back-and-forth of the duopoly system - since people only ever have 2 options, naturaly the power goes back an forth as people vote for the “lesser” evil that then turns into the “greater” evil so they vote for the other “lesser” evil - bring that party back to power.
Funilly enough, in the UK that seems to have been done to both of the Power Duopoly parties, first to the Tories during the Leave Referendum and after that to the Labour Party when Israel joined with the Liberals (and I don’t mean the LibDem Party, I mean Blairites) and even the Tories to overthrow Corbyn (who was openly a defender of the rights of Palestinians) and replaced him with the Liberals who then proceeded to make sure there was nobody left-of-center in that party.
If you look at the US, you see the very same phenomenon transforming the Republicans from a Conservative Party to a Fascist one, as well as how the Democrats have be thoroughly taken over by those serving the interests of Israel and of Billionaires.
I think that the less rigged a country’s voting system is for “stability” (read: for making sure only the same handful of big parties has power and they seldom have to do it as part of a cohalition) the more robust it is to this kind of taking over of a large party as an unaccountable way to get power, mainly because more parties have to be taken over and people will migrate more easilly way from a party when it stops representing them (there is no such thing as tactically voting for the “lesser” evil in a Proportional Vote system).
Great points.
My comment wasn’t in reference to FTPT specifically, though I suppose the UK uses FPTP in voting for party leadership?
And im guessing this doesn’t happen so much in other countries that don’t use FPTP?
In my own experience, if all the voting systems rigged to benefit size, there is a broader phenomenon of larger parties existing which which are usually in power (though often in cohalitions) and which attract the kind of people with no scruples who go into politics to become wealthy from selling access to power (i.e. the corrupt).
However in the two other countries I lived in beyond the UK, one of which had Proportional Vote and the other Multi-representative Electoral Circles (so, not as bad as FPTP, but still Mathematically rigged), I have not seen a case of the larger parties being obviously taken over as means to get to power like I saw in the UK, though I’ve seen smaller parties being created and/or supported by foreign money and then eating up some of the vote of the large parties.
Certainly were I am now - Portugal, which has Multi-representative Electoral Circles - of the two new Far-Right parties which were created not that long ago, one of which for sure got money from the Fascists in Brasil and the other also likely had funding from abroad (the campaign phamplets and other materials in their very first elections were both far too expensive for a small party and using the kind of design and slogan style one finds in International Marketing campaigns in huge contrast with other small parties), probably American (they’re an ultra-neoliberal party created a couple of years after Steven Bannon came to Europe with money he openly said was to fund far-right parties), though there I don’t know for certain. Both of those parties are taking votes away from the large rightwing party but also partialy from all the way into the leftwing (the more Fascist of the two is even picking traditional working class votes that used to go into a Communist Party)
Every party HS a different system. The conservatives have their MPs select two candidates in multiple rounds of voting to put in front of all their members.
Labour has a system where a candidate needs to have a minimum support from their MPs too but it’s still an election from labour members and supporters. They rank their candidates I believe
What in the fascist UK fuck.
Reform UK will have a hard time catching up with Labour in the fascism League.
V for Vendetta is starting to look more like prophecy than fiction…
In the end, the problem stems from billionaires. They created the right wing propaganda machine that caused this far right authoritarian rise. They did it recklessly only to increase their own power. Billionaires can no longer exist. Capitalism is failing. We need a new path forward.
Humanist Capitalism has to come out of the ashes
Unions, cooperatives, and unionized cooperatives no matter what
Yes, I’m sure that when the Oil Manufacturers Cooperative murders climate activists and spreads propaganda to prevent the adoption of sustainable alternatives, humanity will be much better off…
Capitalism in any form is unsustainable, any system that treats the world as fungible is. What we need is fundamental, structural change.
We need a system that naturally incentivizes degrowth and makes the filling of power vacuums by corrupt, greedy, or opportunistic people or systems impossible.
That’s not capitalism, it’s not syndicalism, it’s not state communism. It’s something in the realm of anarchocommunism. Societies that are prosperous because nobody in them is trying to screw people over: ones without capital accumulation or exertion of power, that are nevertheless resistant to power over them.
That makes a lot of sense, have anything similar enough to that I can read up on?
Just read Marx and Lenin. They talk about all of this in depth.
Nah, Capitalism had its moment. It’s time for socialism now.
It’s not black and white. You can have parts of the industry capitalist and part of it socialist. I am all for housing reform, I wouldn’t mind paying more taxes if it meant that we are all gonna live a happier life. I probably wouldn’t want state owned means of production as we all know you can’t trust em that much.
Capitalist and commerce are not synonyms.
I don’t think you know what socialism or capitalism are.
github.com/…/crash_course_socialism.md
This might help.
Oh boy, hyper capitalism, to go from we pay you to give us your soul- to you have to give us your soul and body or we flay your family is a natural step. This is hyper capitalism. Long ago you chose that corporations are human . It is not capitalism to not give humans food or rights. It is hyper capitalism. It is too much to give money to megacorp demonic entities that consume the earth to end our lives as a species, it is too much . It is not capitalism. Not the cute little communist opponent no it is HYPER capitalism, another beast an insane and psychotic beast
“Hyper” capitalism is just capitalism at its root without strong government controls. Capitalism leaves larger and larger groups out - that’s how it works. Capitalism is designed to have winners and losers and without socialism to pick up those left out, they are ground under the system to death. The capitalism we’ve all known has always been heavily regulated (even if it’s becoming less regulated). Past capitalism always relied on exploiting the lower classes, immigrants, or slavery. Capitalism working as a self contained system has always been a pipe dream.
Hyper capitalism is an extreme version of capitalism employed by the USA which defies reason concerning subjects such as worker unions and consumer rights etc. Something that several socialist first world countries have while still being capitalist.
Why do Zionists have so much control outside of Israel?
What the fuck is wrong with the West? Don’t tell me /pol/ was right…
not tongo full tinfoil, but this is beyond just lobbying.
I’m assuming there’s lots of blackmail involved
The colonial mindstate is still alive simple as that
The UK government’s reaction is so extreme that Israel having proof of something like as child sexual abuse commited top British politicians seems likely (remember that from just the tiny slice of info that came out, both Prince Andrew and Mandelson were involved with Epstein).
yhea, because the UK is burning it’s democracy to serve a tiny ex colony of theirs.
makes no sense
If UK government was being blackmailed like that the two countries would be enemies, UK intelligence is as powerful as israel.
You’re not tongoing at all imo.
And now that we’re on the subject, has anybody ever been as far to go make to do look more like?
Nah, it’s the mental illness and catastrophic human problem of religion. These nutcases think their invisible sky daddy is commanding them to do it.
if you think the problem is religion instead of colonialism. then you drank too much propaganda
Uh huh, and that definitely isn’t driven by the mental rot of religion?
I agree that is definitely a part of the problem. In the United States we see the evangelicals blindly and fiercely supporting Israel because they believe in the apocalypse. The zionists want to bring forth their messiah as well. Bibi believes he has been chosen to bring forth the messiah. A lot of issues here are stemming from and being justified by religion.
Israel is key to western imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. The relationship between zionists and the west is in the same “too big to fail” category that protected the criminal bankers who left so many destitute in 2008. For capitalism’s true believers, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
I don’t even know if they do, this is possibly/probably just the government repeatedly and gleefully shooting itself in the foot.
Palestine protests themselves aren’t criminalised (despite the title), what is however is criminalised is support of the Palestine Action group.
This is because they are a proscribed as a terrorist organisation, after a couple of their members snuck onto a military base and spray painted aircraft.
This is stupid in almost every way you can look at it, it criminalises people who are innocent of everything but carrying a sign or wearing a t-shirt, it makes the government look both cruel and inept and it has (as far as I can tell) been a huge boon to the credibility of Palestine Action resulting in more people joining or at least supporting them. And finally it (makes the government appear to/reveals the government does) support a nation enacting a genocide.
As for why; the aircraft were refusing tankers en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330_MRTT I assume this was done because of rumors that the RAF were refueling IDF planes bombing civilians but last I heard they use incompatible in flight fueling systems.
Various news articles suggest 7m of damage which seems a bit high for spray paint, my guess is that knowing that people with unknown intentions had unsupervised access to military aircraft they demanded the planes on be stripped and re built to check for other sabotage.
The UK terrorism laws are unfortunately defined very broadly and can apply in the case of serious damage to property, not just intent to cause death and injury ohchr.org/…/uk-palestine-action-ban-disturbing-mi…
There was also some controversy in that PA were grouped in with organisations which meet the more common definition of terrorism aljazeera.com/…/uk-lawmakers-vote-to-ban-palestin…
Historically, British Zionism has been fundamentally tied to English supremacism and antisemitism.
Essentially, Israel is the UK’s “not quite final solution” to the “problem” of Jews living in Britain - a place to dump all the Jews so England can be more ethnically pure.
This is public information - see the history of Zionism in Britain on wikipedia. The lesson ethnonationalists took from the holocaust - with Hitler publicly bemoaning he had no place to dump Jews forcing him into his final solution - was that every ethnicity needed their own homeland.
The story is similar for USAmerican white supremacists and ethic supremacists across Europe. If Israel collapsed, millions of Jews would flee to Europe and the US, and that’s terrible if you’re an antisemite.
But for the past 80 years, publicly admitting you’re doing it for antisemitic or even ethnic supremacist reasons has been a faux pas, so there has been a whole literary genre of dogwhistles and motivated reasoning, combined with weaponizing of the “antisemitic” label, resulting in an intentionally opaque mess of justifications.
So then, as icing on the cake, the observation that this is a mess has been brilliantly co-opted by the propagandists through antisemitic conspiracy theory: Don’t look behind the curtain, look at the Jewish boogeyman projected onto the curtain.
And of course capitalism also plays into this, but the capitalist elite has always been quite generous towards their fellow elites. “Socialism for the rich” is not just a turn of phrase, a lot of billionaires lost good money in the 2008 financial crisis bailout.
Golden parachutes, positions for each other’s nepo babies, charity balls for trophy wives’ pet projects, etc. - Despite capitalism supposedly being about profit maximization, the elites don’t eat their own. They will let their portfolio burn billions to help each other out. But who is the in-group?
Surprise - it’s white supremacists again. It’s Epstein, Trump, Musk, the Kochs, the Waltons, the Clintons, the Kennedys, the British royals, etc. Nonwhites can definitely get invited to the cookout - Obama, Oprah, Rothschilds, etc. - but they are always peripheral and more easily cast out.
It’s not a cabal, it’s a community. Trump was the village idiot but his talent for demagoguery made him the hero of the town. White supremacy isn’t a nefarious grand scheme, it’s just a common belief that affects their friendships, their worldview, and their choices. Multiculturalism was a fun idea that helped destroy unions but now that people are angry it’s easiest to fall back on the people you know (if you know what I mean). Bailouts are helping friends through tough times.
And Israel? Israel is a lightning rod. Anti-elitism can be tainted with antisemitism, ethnic supremacy is legitimized by their existence as a supposed solution to antisemitism while criticism of it isn’t directed at white supremacy, anti-imperialism can be externalized, Islamophobia is sustained to justify oil wars, the military-industrial guys have a nice playing ground, the news can always look away from coups and neocolonial violence elsewhere, etc.
So that’s the world - a bunch of rich white guys using Jews as a scapegoat for their own fuckery. Same as the past 1800 years, really.
5000 years*
In short, it’s just because of oil. And American interests, which is a longer way of saying oil. Israel is an American outpost in an oil-rich region and serves its purpose of keeping the other Arab countries weak, divided and corrupt by constantly dishing out violence, bribes and blackmail in every direction.
And yes, the UK is doing this in America’s interests and not their own, because the UK is not a sovereign country. It is a colonized puppet state of the Americans and has been since at least Tony Blair.
Haha what, please use occams here. It’s hyper capitalism enforcing violence to cling to its embarrassing dependency on war. It doesn’t matter about oil any more. The megacorps that are dependent on oil are adapting and becoming another form of demonic entity that have still full control over the astroturfing and distraction machinery, an important part of the global death chamber project
Have you paid attention to whats coming out of western countries? They’ve doubled and tripled down on oil in America and Europe still has its pathetic addiction to Russian gas. Oil still rules west of the Urals, green energy transition is nowhere to be found. I’ve been hearing “Europe will wean itself off Russian gas this year” for over 3 years now, likely will not happen as long as Arab countries keep the price of oil at basement prices, at Israel’s gunpoint.
The thing is oil is for the war machine and our reliance on it is synthetic. Should another more lucrative energy source appear, it will take its place and every mentioned problem persist under the same conglomerate
This is so self defeating… Palestine Action should have never been declared a “terrorist organization” in the same category as Al Qaeda and Daesh. People see right through that and it causes a backlash. Nd the UK government doubling down on the backlash creates even more backlash. I mean anyone can see that at this point that the government has lost the political battle on this one and is just chugging through due to the sunk cost fallacy. This is only paving the way for the Right to do a comeback. Fucking centrist liberals man, god damn.
No of course not, Al Qaeda is our great ally in Syria now, or some completely legit and organic offshoot of said group.
The sunsetting of a once great empire.
It’s been twilight for quite some time now.
I mean, it was never great in a good sense
I’m sure the people of India who starved think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure the Irish really think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure most of Asia and Africa think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure the indigenous people of any land the British Empire conquered think the British Empire was great.
Keir Starmer is a cunt
nah. he lacks the warmth of a cunt.
And depth
and he doesn’t seem as fun as a cunt.
Or as useful.
At what point are people going to riot?
Not rioting is better. Peaceful protest, and thousands getting locked up, is what creates the conditions that might enable real social change.
If that doesn’t work, then you have a proper riot (i.e. of the kind that isn’t bread and butter to the powers that be). Edit - lot of downvotes here. You need to read a bit of revolutionary theory. No doubt there are Americans downvoting, who of course don’t have a leg to stand on based on what they did with their exhorbitant ly privileged society./ YOu are showing your ignorance.
If you could choose between justice and peace, which would you choose?
Neither at the cost of the other?
It’s a silly question.
Peace — not to be confused with passivity.
In a culture of peace, true justice could emerge; it would manifest as support of those who experience violence and rehabilitation of those that feel they need to turn to violence to get their way.
Justice and peace are usually not framed as concepts that exist in a vacuum which one chooses between, but rather as interdependent concepts.
I believe that when we choose violence and retribution over nonviolence and rehabilitation/restoration, our manifestation of justice reflects that.
Martin Luther King considered you his greatest barrier to racial and social justice.
MLK didn’t reject peace – he rejected complacency and false order. My belief in restorative justice and nonviolence is directly aligned with his legacy, not in opposition to it.
A culture of peace is proactive, inclusive, and cooperative. I am not the white moderate he spoke of.
Edit: Just still blown back from the notion that I’m somehow a white moderate for advocating for the same peaceful nonviolent action MLK was. Hit the books friend - you’re wrong and here are direct quotes to clarify the situation for those reading:
I’m not concerned about tranquility and the status quo. I agree with MLK that a riot is the language of the unheard. Just like him I still advocate for nonviolent action, while not disowning anyone - especially the unheard.
I’m not saying the latter statement, not even a little bit - not ever. I am an advocate of direct, nonviolent action and positive peace, as opposed to the negative peace MLK criticized. I’m not attached to false order and I value justice over it. I am deeply concerned about justice and humanity and I don’t advocate for moderate and ineffectual action that doesn’t affect the status quo.
Just because I chose peace and advocated for a culture of peace, doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the role of true justice creating true peace. There’s a lot of nuance here and the question was a trap to begin with. If I could go back in time, I would’ve answered peace and justice and just left it at that.
There can be no peace without justice.
I disagree. We’re past the point where peaceful protests will create change. It’s abundantly obviously that those in charge do not care. And they also got it in their heads that AI makes us less necessary.
If leaders and executives won’t listen to reason, then it’s time to instil fear into them. Remind them there are so many more of us than them, and that their positions are a service to us, not a privilege or an entitlement.
rioting is not the answer. if you are going to take action, be careful and deliberate.
You can target something specific with a riot.
You can, but the rest of the mob won’t.
Angry rioters do fucked up shit. Watch LA 92. All that violence and anger turned in on itself, attacked the most vulnerable, weasled into racial divisions.
With a more organised direction for that energy, the city could have been paralyzed, rotten cops and the judges could have been run out of LA and real systemic change could have begun.
exactly.
but everybody got
their rocks offcatharsis and the feeling was expressed - even though the reason for the feeling was never addressed.doubt
I mean sure you can use the chaos to try and get cover for something specific. But generally, people rioting are on-tilt and looking for easy targets that look like their oppressors. Then, everybody gets catharsis and the riot disappears.
It’s just lazy. but, better than nothing, i guess.
Peaceful only works when the people in power have a conscience and are willing to come to a peaceful resolution. When they want to eliminate your ability to tell them no, then rioting becomes the path forward.
We are in the UK, not the US.
The leaders of the US and UK have more in common with each other than they do with their own people
I agree.
Although in the UK there was some old graffiti that said ‘a nation of sheep, owned by wolves’.
I would say it is more ‘a nation of sheep, governed by wolves, owned by pigs. We’ve all heard of wolves in sheep’s clothing, well we have a lot of pigs in sheep’s clothing. And the wolves and the pigs interbreed freely, so we have all manner of porcine lupine combinations.’
Not quite as snappy my variation though.
And you in the UK are being told that you can’t tell the establishment “no” through peaceful protest.
And what do you do when everyone who would dare to do anything is locked up by peacefully protesting? You’re going to run out of bodies, before you realise you’re fucked.
Yeah you just don’t know what you are talking about.l
You’re entitled to your opinion, but you didn’t answer the question.
Not an american, you are still being silly. Also you sound american with all that rollover attitude to authority. They are outlawing peaceful protesting, the solution is not to keep doing the same thing but with more smugness.
Peaceful protests are most effective when they’re backed by the threat of violence. It’s not the keg that forces concessions, it’s the fear of the powder within. The cops have no issue beating up defenseless victims in the name of “order”. Only when they’re at risk themselves do they think twice.
For that, the protests need to be large enough that escalation becomes an actual concern. Pre-gunpowder armies stacked their infantry deep, because more people behind you makes you bolder in face of the enemy before you. The larger the crowd, the more dangerous the potential rioters become.
Premature escalation might get the bold vanguard beaten and made examples of. Only when there’s enough support to keep the momentum going can riots effectively serve as an “or else” to the peaceful demands.
Not American. You are wrong. We are lucky that many have more sense than cowardice because to do exactly what your opponent wants att any point in a rape is bordering malicious
There you go, Trump. There’s your 51st state.
It would be poetic, the former colonies coming back to annex the fatherland. Too bad it’s because they’re all Nazis now.
This will backfire.
We hope.
I just don’t think there is a single occurrence of it not backfiring
And remember this is from the “left” party in the UK.
As an American, it’s super disheartening to read stories about European governments being fascist assholes as well. It’s nice to imagine there’s somewhere to go to escape it.
“I’m escaping to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism…SPAAAAAYCE!”
<img alt="" src="https://media.tenor.com/Lb38F7i4DgQAAAAM/portal-portal2.gif">
I mean Europe is the home of facism and literally spread it throughout the world
Yeah, which means they should know better more than anyone else. There’s also the fact that the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow, so Europe alone doesn’t get the blame.
I honestly believe the anti American sentiment from Europeans on the internet comes from them hoping the origin of racism and facism is connected more to America than Europe. European facism, racism, and sexism has done more damage than any other group on the face of the earth
Considering everything about America originated from England, it’s a real ouroboros type of situation.
Isn’t this fucking idiot a human rights lawyer? People have a right to protest
This is why I fucking left. Oh yeah, the tories are a shitshow. Oh look, their replacements are barely better.
Where’s safe?
*arrested as Labour’s Party government moves to ban protests outright.
what the fuck?
Kier Starmer is a genocide denying twat.
I can’t decide what’s more depressing.
A) The subject of the linked article, or
B) The fact that an article on World Socialist Web Site is linking to posts by Amnesty UK and Defend our Juries (three organizations that should all know better by now) on Xitter.
Jesus
At an absolute bare minimum, the last two should be cross posting everything to Mastodon, and the first should be linking to the Mastodon accounts whenever available.
Oh, look! Amnesty UK has a Mastodon account that they’re not fucking using, apparently never have.
[Edit: spelling]
Fuck Tory Lite