Those charged with terrorism for supporting Palestine Action will have no jury in trials limited to 36 minutes each, with prison sentences up to six months. These are the plans for Starmer Courts for mass trials of anti-Genocide protestors.
Man, it’s almost like allowing the criminalization speech or association is a bad idea, and puts tools directly into the hands of fascists.
If only somebody had foreseen this when the UK started jailing people for state disapproved speech years ago.
If only the Prime Minister who used to be a fucking human rights lawyer was able to explain why jailing people without a jury trial is a bad thing.
Side note, I do laugh about all the people who exited the US for the UK, thinking it would be better… and finding it is somehow exactly the same! (Or worse, but with healthcare)
I mean there is more than just healthcare…
Quality of food is so much higher, actual walkable cities, far less gun violence etc.
You don’t have to worry about gun violence when they take you from the street for talking.
I wonder what FlyingSquid is up to right now.
He killed himself
Where did you hear that?
He was telling people he was moving to the UK to get his daughter “out of the US” (lol) and then he was going to kill himself. He wanted to be dead, so let’s not get too sad that absolute prick got what he was planning for.
I didn’t express any emotion, just asked where you heard that.
So you’re just making an assumption, or an educated guess?
I didn’t mean to suggest you were. It was my emotion about that jerk.
And yes, I have zero confirmation— but lots of knowledge of his intentions, that he had repeated many, many times.
UK is firmly on my “do not travel” list. I have a personal rule about not traveling to fascist states.
I was an immigrant there and left the UK just before Brexit came into effect and never went back (even though I have friends over there) because I was very aware already back then of the Authoritarian shit already in place (for example, already a decade ago there was no right to have a lawyer present when detained and interrogated at an airport, and the crazy overboard anti-Terrorism legislation now being used was already on the books back then).
The tools now being used very overtly by Starmer have been in place for quite a while, alongside a lot of shit that in the old days one would only find in Authoritarian nations, used for surveillance of the civil society and suppression of free-speech and demonstrations.
That crap that has been added in the last couple of years is but a fraction of the insanely anti-democratic shit already in the books back then, since most of that shit was added in two big waves, one after 9/11 and another after the Snowden Revelations (when the government retroactivelly made legal all the unlawful civil society surveillance that had been doing) and in between and since slowly expanded in scope and layered with ever more oppressive shit, mainly targetting demonstrations and civil society groups.
That said, the Authoritarian mindset of the British elites long predates this latest wave: for example back in the 80s Ecological organisations were under surveillance and even being infiltrated by undercover police officers, and don’t get me started about Britain’ long running Press-Censorship system: D-Notices.
Except in the domain of armed police violence, Britain wasn’t better than the US, it was just much more subtle, which makes sense since at least England is very obcessed with managing impressions, especially the upper classes.
already a decade ago there was no right to have a lawyer present when detained and interrogated at an airport
That’s been true in the US for decades, and most other countries. Border control is administrative, it isn’t a legal proceeding.
Though I wonder if you’re thinking of Blair’s “reform” that eliminated the right of silence when being questioned? Well, you can still be silent, but they can hold it against you.
Maybe, I lived in the UK when that stuff was changed but it’s been a while and I’m probably a bit off on the details.
At the time there was some outrage because it suspended rights which were widely believed to be fundamental over there.
I’ve spent many years in both countries. I’m in the UK now. Regarding the UK, you’re right in principle but wrong in practice. The system is bad at constraining authoritarian overreach in the near-term, for a number of structural reasons. But at the same time, the US enforces draconian laws more widely and consistently than any UK government. If you’re on their shit list, they mess with you, but that’s a vanishingly rare occasion compared to the kinds of fuckery that US authorities get up to, and the consequences tend to be far less catastrophic as well. None of the pro-Palestine protestors are getting sent to jail for 20 years (not that they should be getting charged or punished at all). And the quality of life is better, and there is very little violent crime outside a few big cities. Come and see for yourself, don’t assume that binary-thinking Lemmy posters are reliable sources.
I lived for over a decade in the UK and hence am quite familiar with the British system.
However the standard I compare Britain against is The Netherlands, not the United States.
In European terms the UK is de facto more authoritarian than most, though not in a goose-stepping jackboot way but more in a “laws designed for very broad interpretation” + “they’ll throw the book at you if you’re foreigner, or critical of the system itself (for example, member of a leftwing party, an ecologist or participate in demonstrations against the government)” + “massive but quiet surveillance to detect dissent early”.
Maybe the posh, velvet glove wrapping a steel fist, way of exercising power in the UK is a fucking paradise next to the “gun in your face” way of the US, but it’s not at all a free and fair system compared with most of Europe, especially Northern Europe.
The system will fuck you for being a dissenter, but they’ll do it by taking your shit, your options and possibly your freedom, not by taking your life. Then again, nowhere in Europe they’ll take your life like that - that specific form of abusive/reckless use of force in policing is very rare in Europe and an outright scandal just about everywhere in it when it happens.
Thanks to the DNC, most people left-of-center are already disarmed.
They’ve been frantically confiscating any remotely sharp object for years, and nobody has firearms. The populace has been disarmed for many years now.
Exactly.
The laws making carrying a knive a crime have been on the books for at least a decade and as for firearms the UK has long been like most of Europe in that it’s pretty hard to get a license for anything but a single hunting weapon.
They’ve been frantically confiscating any remotely sharp object for years
Nonsense. I can walk down the street right now with a big fucking butcher knife, as long as I can show that I’m on my way to work and the knife’s a tool of my trade. Of course, that works better if I’m not waving it around at passers-by and it’s wrapped up with other knives and chef’s gadgets. The same goes for other sharp and dangerous tools and caustic and poisonous chemicals used for construction or agriculture. But if I get caught with a jacket pocket full of heroin bindles, and that same butcher knife is found hidden down the leg of my tracksuit, I’ve got some explaining to do. Context matters. The police are given discretion, and they actually do exercise it. It’s not the US. Zero-tolerance enforcement is a rare thing here. So are police killings of civilians.
When you read these articles, you imagine a police state. But the reality is that I’m harassed by cops, by criminals and by asshole members of the general public far less here than I was in the US. And by “much less,” I mean never. That was not the case in the US.
What you’re describing is the way that law should be applied, not how it can be applied: it’s down to the discretion of the police officers who stopped you and the Crown Prosecution Service, whether they detain you and prosecute you or not if, for example, you have a small pocket knife when you get stopped and frisked (which in the UK, like in the US, is statistically more likely if you’re black and look poor or if you look middle eastern).
Just like this specific Anti-Terrorism Law which is now being used in a way other than how the politicians claimed it was going to be used, so the anti-knife legislation is written so that it can be abused - all of it relies on humans in positions of power being fair rather than on the laws being written as fair and I can tell you from personal experience (and even more the experience of friends of mine) that the Justice System’s “fairness” (especially at the lower levels) is a lot different if you’re a White British than if you’re a foreigner, Black, Indian or Middle-eastern looking.
Your argument boils down to “Trust the coppers and trust the Courts” which the very post we’re commenting under shows as total bollocks.
PS: That said I totally agree Britain is not at all a Police State, at least not yet. It already is a Surveillance State at about the level of Eastern Germany, and judging by things going on right now as described in the post we’re commenting under it’s going towards becoming a Police State far faster than most of Europe, but even now the abusing of the overbroad legislation put in place in the last decade or two and of policing powers is still localized - though getting broader and broader - rather than generalized.
3d printers? Pipes, nails, and cordite/fulminates?
Factory built firearms I can believe, but I don’t believe that the populace would be incapable of constructing their own, nor would be unwilling to if push came to shove.
It is a modern phenomenon, but there is no effective way to fully disarm a population without vetting and restricting the imports and purchases within the entire economy (including the internet/communications infrastructure), which I’d imagine the UK doesn’t want to do.
I mean, there’s always the classic chair leg with a few nails in it.
You can always improvise a blunt weapon, but realistically I think something like a general strike is more likely to happen.
Might be time for the King’s citizens to invest in smuggling. If European coyotes can get an entire person across the Channel, it’s not impossible.
That’s insane!
What is the world coming to?
Blatant fascism in the United States of America.
What a shocker to see this coming from the UK equivalent of the Democrats. Perhaps years of voting for the “lesser evil” isn’t panning out like people thought it would, but thank god people compromised on their beliefs and fell in line to get these politicians elected. “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” and all that jazz. Imagine how bad things would be if those other guys got elected.
Imagine how bad things would be if those other guys got elected.
I mean, aren’t we seeing exactly how that plays out in the US? We have masked armed thugs breaking into people’s homes and disappearing them, while the new “Department of War” launches missiles at random fishing boats.
Time for the people of the UK to birthstrike against fascism.
Collapse the birth rate into the fucking ground. It’s the one real lever of power that the general populace still retains over the wealthy/leadershit.
The wealthy are humans and humans have to breathe, drink, eat, pee and poo.
Collapse the fucking capitalist machine by calling an indefinite strike. Let’s see how important are politicians, investors and zionists when trash is accumulating everywhere and diseases run rampant.
Strike, strike everywhere, paralise the entire country. Politicians are our servs not our overlords. Remind them of this!
The fact that arousing suspicion of something is enough to be condemned is wild.
