Analysis with John Rees on repression of Palestine movement

[Evvy_dense]

Good discussion here

Analysis with John Rees on repression of Palestine movement

People protesting and getting arrested, in flotillas, inhibiting arms companies from supplying weapons for genocide in Palestine, are doing the work of their governments who are not meeting their legal obligations.

In the case of the UK their government has been the most complicit, active and enthusiastic supporter of the US position. Their puppet faces might now appear to express condemnation of Israel - but simultaneously they are arresting not just those people putting themselves on the line with openly defiant banners supporting the banned group, but also those like Defend Our Juries (see the story below from two days ago) that are protesting at the open abuse of our legal system by the government and the police; a duty that would befall every supporter of the domestic law, and which is clearly the point of the escalation of the arrests to include people sitting at home outraged at the illegal actions of their own government.

Protesting a new law is now ITSELF being treated a terrorist activity, and the entire population, unable to legally express their opinion even on the law itself, is a repressed population.

[Evvy_dense]

A new line between the UK state and its population has been crossed which passed with barely a ripple in the media.

ED

Six deny terror charges over alleged plan to defeat Palestine Action ban. Tom Wilkinson
The accused are alleged to have tried to organise mass gatherings with the aim of rendering the ban on Palestine Action unenforceable. Six deny terror charges over alleged plan to defeat Palestine Action ban | The Standard

Supporters of Palestine Action took part in a mass action in Parliament Square (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

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Six people who appeared in court to deny terror offences are alleged to have tried to organise mass gatherings with the aim of rendering the ban on the group Palestine Action unenforceable.

The charges related to plans for meetings in London, Cardiff and Manchester which were allegedly organised over Zoom meetings in July, August and this month.

Former government lawyer Timothy Crosland, 55, from Southwark, south London, appeared in the glass dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, along with gardener Dawn Manners, 61, from Hackney, east London and David Nixon, 39, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

In a separate hearing on Thursday afternoon, student Patrick Friend, 26, of Grange, Edinburgh, appeared in court along with Gwen Harrison, 48, from Kendal, Cumbria, and Melanie Griffith, 62, from Southwark.

*They each are accused of breaches of the Terrorism Act after allegedly arranging, managing or addressing meetings, knowing that the purpose was to support a proscribed organisation. {*really?}

The defendants are alleged to be members of a group called Defend Our Juries (DOJ), or to work closely with it, which opposes the ban on Palestine Action.

Emma Haraway, prosecuting, said the charges related to defendants using Zoom meetings to encourage people to attend mass gatherings in support of Palestine Action, which has been listed as a proscribed organisation, and thus overwhelm the police.

The defendants denied all the charges that they face and were granted conditional bail by District Judge John Zani, despite opposition by the prosecution.
They will next appear at the Old Bailey on September 26.

After the hearing, a DOJ spokesperson said that 42 terror charges for “hosting public Zoom calls is nothing short of a scandal”.

They added: “Imposing tagged curfews and restricting access to devices simply for providing a legal briefing to non-violent protesters on holding a seven-word cardboard sign outside Parliament is a gross abuse of power.

“These are the tactics deployed by dictatorships — not a democracy.”

DOJ claimed the arrests were a tactic aimed at derailing mass action planned for Saturday but that they will have the opposite effect.

They said: “The mass defiance of the ban cannot be stopped and is growing all the time.

“It will only stop when the UK Government abandons this grossly unjust proscription and ends its complicity in Israel’s horrific atrocities.”

Crosland said the defendants were being treated as terrorists for “peacefully holding cardboard signs in Parliament Square”.

He added: “All they’re doing is confirming the power that lies in our hands when we take quiet and determined action together, resisting genocide and defending our democratic freedoms by opposing this crazy ban.”

Six deny terror charges over alleged plan to defeat Palestine Action ban

[Kieran_Telo]

Zoom meetings → jail (after a show trial)

Clearly, no one is safe.

[PatB]

Agreed. The Defend Our Juries arrests are almost comical but not funny. They are supporting the current ‘justice’ system (such as it is). A fundamental part of the legal system in use for many hundreds of years and used daily by lawyers, judges, barristers and courts around the UK. How much more farcical can the UK government get?

On a lighter note. it’s unfortunate for Angela Rayner that she’s not Jewish. If she was, every critic of her “breach of ethical standards” would have seen her elevated to the status of a saint and every critic of her actions, including many ‘celebrities’ on lamestream radio and TV would have been arrested for anti-semitism. I’m not sure there would be enough prisons to hold them all.