Ah yes, nothing screams terrorism like… paint.
It’s vandalism. It’s property damage. It’s rude as fuck. But it’s not terrorism. Trying Americans for protests calling it terrorism is a form of terrorism.
Trying Americans for protests calling it terrorism is a form of terrorism.
There are no Americans involved in this story…
Wow, Lemmywinks. What crawled up your ass?
I don’t really think you’re over reacting to anything, just rare to get a chance to say that.
It is. I’d consider it a form of stochastic terrorism. Stochastic terrorism is the public demonization of a person or group through mass media that incites a violent act which is statistically predictable but whose specific perpetrator and timing cannot be predicted.
So the government labeling anti-fascists as terrorists, or people that support an end to the Palestinian genocide as terrorists could fall under the definition of stochastic terrorism. We have the public demonization of anti-facists via policy and yellow journalism, which leads to those people speaking out against fascism to be targeted by the police/government for exercising their right to free speech and assembly. The anti genocide protesters spreading red paint and breaking windows are vandals for sure, but I wouldn’t go so far as to label them as terrorists. Labeling them as terrorists creates an opening for the government to deny them freedom via criminal charges worse than any crime they are actually guilty of.
If the penalty is so steep for minor offenses, they will encourage real terror. Why wouldn’t the next ones just blow up the bank if they’re going be charged as terrorists regardless? It’s not a charge you ever recover from.
i remember the days when terrorism included fatalities
They also called paint £200k in damage. And broken windows £500k. Just utterly insane figures to inflate the seriousness of what’s just basic vandalism of a building.
In Italy, when we occupied the high school against the Berlusconi government, we were asked for one € each for one pane of glass broken.
That made for an extremely expensive glass since we were around 1000 in the institute and it was 2002.
Of course, the Dean pocketed more vaffanculos than coins.
Labour has paved the way for Reform to go full fascist.
Yeah, I always have to remind myself that these repressive stories from the UK are being done under the government elected in to stop the conservatives. Where do the more conservative parties have to go when this is the baseline of the center left?
In the UK the state can deprive a person of their UK citizenship when they are labeled a terrorist by the state. Guess what will happen next to these people.
literal whole buildings for entire blocks have graffiti and random crap in places all around the world. Spray paint clearly isn’t good enough.
terrorism is such a low bar nowdays, I miss when they had to work for it
If throwing a can of paint is the same as throwing a bomb then why not throw bombs? Seems like a dumb thing for a government to promote…
This is their way of subduing the populace even more. If politicians and corporations were actually scared to fuck people over, we’d live in a much better world.
Thats actually what they want. They are engineering a reason.
again it seems like they got their terrorism charge, so it didn’t matter what the person did. i find the argument that we should never do anything they could use to justify their fascism ridiculous, when we are talking about a live demonstration of said fascism being justified with non violent resistance.
Don’t put words in my mouth.
We’d better not give them a reason, or they might start doing fascist things.
Both outcomes benefit them. Either it scares and subdues everyone or does the exact opposite which gives them even more ‘justification’ for crackdowns.
Oh nooo… PAINT!!! What utter terror…
B…but it’s difficult to remove! :(
Think of the people that would need to be paid for such an effort. By a poor little bank, no less! :(
Anyone who finds spray paint on a bank more terrifying than the Arms Manufacturing Industry is a fucking psychopath.
They should have to prove terror has been caused to a considerable part of the population.
Where is the terror exactly? That’s prevarication. Anyone judging paintings as terrorism should be put to jail.
If something that should at worst be called vandalism is considered terrorism what’s preventing activists from just doing actual terrorism?
Ethics, probably
violence is the anwser, not spray paint, you’ll be designated as a terrorist either way so you have nothing to lose.
You start
don’t need to, my democracy (Canada) threw out your puppet Pierre Poilievre and the sedition plot for Alberta is failing, now the conservatives are becoming more irrelevant by the day as the old folks die off, why should i die for your country when that’s your responsibility. but rest assured, if any of your lead brain dumbfuck soldiers come to my country under donalds order, i will happily find ways of getting rid of them like other wars they’ve failed to win.
if this is your response then you deserve to be a debt slave you coward.
lol what country do you think I’m from?
American, considering your first response and you pointing a finger at me tells me you didnt care to check where im from hypocrite, if your going to be useless, just keep your mouth shut.
lol I’m not American. Why do you assume that under a post about the UK? Dumb ass Hoser.
same shit diff country brits are doing the same thing as america now, but you are right in that i didn’t check cuz this sound exactly like what donald is doing. nothing about my original point has changed.
Canada is absolutely not safe from PP and our closest to actual left party was effectively destroyed through this, and now the liberals are shifting further and further right
lol nah, the cons are diving deeper in the poles and the ndp is rising, theyre dieing as moderate cons flock to either ndp for workers rights or carney for civil order. only the maple magas and con tribalist that cant change are still red.
Kill thousands of Palestinian children, including by picking infants up by the ankle and swinging them hard as you can into brick walls, and impaling pregnant women through the stomach and leaving them to die in the dirt?
You’re a “settler.”
Throw paint at something to protest that?
You’re a “terrorist.”
The British government paved the way for those settlers, don’t forget. They assumed control of the land, kicked out the natives and beckoned for all the Israelites to enter, who, obviously, started murdering anyone still in Palestine. This chapter of their cruelty started in 1948 and Britain’s government, who has always been a piece of shit, made it so.
That’s crazy. Fortunately the world is full of countries like China, the US, Germany, Russia… you know, big places where everything has run on compassion for others and doing the right thing for the last hundred plus years.
What’s your point with this whataboutery ?
It’s just some strange tribalism I think. I think in their mind you have to be supporting another empire instead, it seems some are unable to understand that you support none of them.
That’s an interesting theory… I have none myself, except maybe they were being terribly sarcastic?
Ding ding ding.
I’m lost on how so many people seemed to take me listing the countries I did followed by the description of them as having “run on compassion for others and doing the right thing for the last hundred plus years” and seen anything other than sarcasm.
All of the listed countries have been responsible for the deaths of mass numbers of innocent civilians, and kids, and nuns, and nuns carrying infants who were carrying baby kittens over the last 100 or so years. Fuck, more than one of them has been responsible for that in the last few months.
In my case it was a combination of it being hard to read sarcasm online in many cases, especially if you are not already familiar with the author, along with the number of times I run into “You don’t support A? That means you support B!” in political discussions.
I find it more than a bit ironic that after I list many other countries who have done and/or are doing tons of awful things you say that.
What strange tribalism? What tribe? Why do you think I’m imagining anyone is supporting any empire? I said nothing positive about anyone. The entire point was “Yeah, seems like the bulk of the world is run by awful cunts. Let’s have a pint.”
… and that means I’m in some sort of tribe? Do we at least get fancy hats?
“Sentenced as terrorists” is not what is really happening here. As I said before, when a crime carries over 2 years of prison (and property damage of 200k does) the judge can consider “terrorist connection” as an aggravating factor. They belong to Palestine Action which is considered terrorist organization in UK. This proscription was recently upheld by Court of Appeals.
They are not being sentenced for being members of Palestine Action. The court is considering “terrorist connection” aggravating factor in property damage conviction. If the aggravating factor is added it will have an impact on the conditions of their parole, not the sentence itself*.
*Edit: it actually does affect the final sentence, like any other aggravating factor.
If the aggravating factor is added it will have an impact on the conditions of their parole, not the sentence itself
Where did you get this idea from? Aggravating and mitigating factors specifically apply to the length of the sentence in UK law.
From the judgement:
Section 69 of the Sentencing Act 2020 requires that the court treats your offending’s terrorist connection as an aggravating factor. That means it increases the seriousness of the offence
I will impose the shortest custodial term that is commensurate with the seriousness of the offence.
That is to say, yes, the terrorism connection absolutely increases the severity of the sentence.
On top of that, since the jury were unaware that this was being considered, and not allowed to consider motivations in their verdict, there seems to be a fundamental rupture in the process of natural justice.
I hope that this case is revisited, and the sentences reduced, because there is an element of scapegoating apparent, which is not just.you agree with the practice of inflating the cost of crime so that any action can be considered terrorism? seems a bit much for me and backing of government oppression.
terrorism has a meaning, and is not dependent on amounts of property damage.
this is the same thing as redefining illegal immigrants as enemy combatants so you can suspend habeous corpus, and other human rights
Where in my comment did I say I agree or disagree with any of it?
terrorism has a meaning, and is not dependent on amounts of property damage.
If you would understand my comment you would realize that is pretty much exactly what I said.
‘ they are not being sentenced as terrorists, just sentenced as committing terroristic actions’ is an argument without purpose.
the discussion is around the inflation of the crime to scare people from pushing against what is happening.
Thank you for the technical clarification.
The word “terrorist” is not merely a technical designator. It is highly emotionally charged and political. It is a word that evokes hundreds of victims in blind attacks on trains or on buildings and aeroplanes. It evokes fanaticism and destructiveness, frothing hatred and irrational bloodlust. “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” Terrorists are the villains in every movie ever. In the wider society, a “terrorist connection” is a connection to all that.
So splitting the legal hairs here is at best irrelevant. We live in a society not a courtroom. The government has slapped the Big Scary Word on a thing it shouldn’t have.
And even if this government gets all the benefits of the doubt (personally I really don’t think they should) because they are trying their best to balance between impossible political attractors (personally I think they are just enablers of a genocidal apartheid regime for political expediency), the next one or the one after the next one will not hesitate to use the Big Scary Word not as a technical designator but as a political sledgehammer.
So splitting the legal hairs here is at best irrelevant. We live in a society not a courtroom. The government has slapped The Big Scary Word on a thing it shouldn’t have.
I think it is important to to know what’s happening and not just repeat narrative coming from one side. People argued with me that “terrorist connection” means people are being convicted of additional crimes without the knowledge of a jury. Now you’re claiming the government is calling them terrorists while the “terrorist organization” proscription for Palestine Action was upheld by Court of Appeals. Palestine Action is using the threat of serious damage to property to intimidate people and advance ideological cause. They are publishing a "target map: https://targetmap.org/map. This is pretty much the definition of a terrorist organization according to UK laws.
We all would like UK government to sanction Israel but few governments in the world are willing to do that. Groups like Palestine Action try to change the status quo by committing crimes.I don’t think terrorist organization proscription is an overreach by the government here. I think that instead of being intimidated by it we should admit that yes, in this case, we do support the terrorist.
That’s a circular definition: the Labour government passed laws that defined Palestine Action as terrorists so therefore they are terrorist because the courts said they fit the description of the laws.
The other thing that you seem to have forfeited is a sense of proportionality. So, if you want to go around declaring yourself …a “terrorist sympathizer”, don’t let me stop you. I’ll keep on insisting that Palestine Action should have never been proscribed in the first place. All of the craziness follows from that first moment of Labour stupidity and overreach.
