Where is the terror exactly? That's prevarication. Anyone judging paintings as terrorism should be put to jail.
literal whole buildings for entire blocks have graffiti and random crap in places all around the world. Spray paint clearly isn't good enough.
The UK has successfully watered down terrorism to mean "petty crime"
It was watered down 25 years ago to include property damage but has never been used until, surprise surprise, Zionist genocide is being inconvenienced.
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.
What did they weigh your mother?
i remember the days when terrorism included fatalities
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 ?
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...
Thats actually what they want. They are engineering a reason.
Both outcomes benefit them. Either it scares and subdues everyone or does the exact opposite which gives them even more 'justification' for crackdowns.
Of course it's a terrorist, it's literally creating hundreds of explosions per second!
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! :(
We really live in a country where terrorism means anything that the government wants, Huh.
If by "we" you mean people in the UK, yes.
US too, descending into fascism hand in hand
And USA
This article is about the UK. That's why it's talking about "Barclays bank," "Preston Crown Court," listed damages in £, etc.
I'm saying folks over there have the same issue, that or "socialist" as if the word is equivalent
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.
I appreciate the joke 😂 (though I'm not too surprised many others didn't get it, relying as it does on a ~25 year old South Park reference)
I'm imagining they're all just down voting because they're sad I beat them to it.
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.
My friends in America wonder why I don't move back to the UK, and I always tell them, same shit different weather.
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?
"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.
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. A "terrorist connection" is a connection to all of 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.
Ok, that's fair. For me the definition used for the proscription doesn't sound like something tailor made to fit Palestine Action nor does it look like a tool for squashing dissidents. I would say that is a group of people operated covertly to intimidate businesses supporting Palestine (for example damaging businesses providing relief to Palestine and hosting a map with targets, encouraging people to do the same) I wouldn't hesitate to call that terrorism. I think it's fine if you're worried about being called a "terrorist sympathizer". I don't really mind that. Palestine Action is committing crimes to achieve their goals and I'm not going to pretend they don't.
I don't think anyone's been terrorised by this creative painting social exhibition. Hell, I'm sure some employees of the bank enjoyed it as well.
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