All the UK people talking shit about what Americans should be doing don’t have a leg to stand on while things like this are going on.
None of us have a leg to stand on, we fail to act, as if no legs are had to be found.
I’m sorry, but there have been regular protests since the proscription of Palestine Action, around the country, and large enough for the attention of national news.
And another direct action group has formed and already got to work.
Apart from No Kings, a one day event more akin to a parade than a protest. And some unrest in LA that never amounted to anything. What has America been doing against their rise of fascism? Fuck all.
Not to mention our population is unarmed, protesting in the knowledge they are risking 14 years in prison, and doing so on behalf of people on the other side of the planet, not for their own benefit.
The UK is making America look like a push over in comparison.
Land of the
BraveCowards.Right. Getting arrested for holding up placards is so much better.
Then your government openly breaking laws. And ignoring your constitution. With zero consequences. Yes.
The only way to fight unjustified laws, between elections is to be arrested.
Nah, Americans execute people, therefore lose every moral contest by default.
There have been countless protests against Israel from a load of different groups.
Only Palestine Action has been prescribed, because they broke into a military base and destroyed the engines of two aircraft (and let me be clear, since this seems to be a conspiracy theory online: no, these aircraft do not aid Israel in their war crimes, they are in-air refueling planes incompatible with the refueling system Israeli jets use).
Separately, PA has assaulted people with sledgehammers.
Other protest groups have largely been peaceful and left alone, as they should be.
To compare action being taken against one group that’s done the things mentioned above to the stuff going on in the US is a staggering false equivalence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mnnje4wlro
“One of the officers was taken to hospital with injuries to her back and has since been discharged, while the other officer received medical treatment at the scene after being struck on the back of his legs.”
If you’re going to take direct action, then you do so and if the police turn up you get arrested and go through the system; that’s kind of the traditional “British way” of doing direct action - it’s still pretty polite. So the six arrested here sound like right arseholes, Samuel Corner not the least (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20l0vzpn1mo). Having said that, I can’t read “assaulted people with sledgehammers” without conjuring up images of life-threatening and life-changing injuries. So I think that whilst he’s a knob, this sounds like a scuffle rather than the picture that immediately springs to mind. I guess there’ll be more detail in November.
That being said: that was a year ago. The recent prohibition immediately followed someone spray-painting some planes, and that’s the thing in the public mind. I think most people associate that sort of thing with chucking soup over the frame of a painting - there’s not been a direct line drawn in the media between the burglary last August and the recent activities. I don’t think there’s been a claim of further assaults by P.A. or that it’s their general MO. Certainly the thing that hit the press recently appeared to be “victimless” in that regard (we’d have heard about it otherwise).
So the public outrage is at the outlawing of an organisation that probably summons a mental image of the Campbell Soup brigade rather than a kneecapping; that and some well-publicised awkward policing is what is behind the protests. I don’t think that anyone protesting this would be anything but appalled at thuggery.
No one is taking about isreal here.
I presume the editors of Private Eye will also be arrested?
