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Always have been a police state, anti terrorism laws are ALWAYS used to silence ‘dissident’ voices
From 5 July 2025, it is an offence under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 to be a member of Palestine Action,[7] fundraise for it,[8][9] wear or display items arousing reasonable suspicion of membership,[10] or if someone invites support or even “expresses an opinion or belief supportive of” Palestine Action “reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support” it.[11] These offences carry a maximum penalty of up to 14 years in prison for membership or inviting support, and up to 6 months in prison or a fine for displaying supporting items.[7][10][11][9]
Is Palestine Action a specific movement/group or is palestine Action literally just supporting Palestine? Asking from a non UK perspective.
It’s a specific group that recently broke into an RAF base and started mucking about with the aircraft, hence why the government aren’t their biggest fans.
Shortly after they did this they were designated as a terrorist group by the home office which is why public support is an offence.
Their latest action was against the planes, but they have actually been extraordinarily successful at damaging the economic machine behind the genocide through targeted and sustained sabotage campaigns against Elbit Systems weapons manufacturer and their supporters, like Barclays Bank. They have already forced the closure of two weapons factories and forced Barclays to divest. It is most likely this sustained campaign that is the real reason for the terrorist designation, though the action at Brize Norton was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back.
they have actually been extraordinarily successful at damaging the economic machine behind the genocide through targeted and sustained sabotage campaigns against Elbit Systems weapons manufacturer and their supporters, like Barclays Bank
Can you recommend some reading on this?
I learned about this through an interview with a PA member on Rev Left Radio: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/palestine-action-direct-action-against-the-death-machine
It certainly made proscribing them an easy sell; you won’t find many people who think it’s unreasonable of the government to take a dim view of sabotage.
Hopefully it won’t distract too much from the bigger story of almost everyone apart from the government taking a dim view of genocide.
Sabotaging the tools of genocide should be supported by everyone who isn’t a monster.
/ air tankers, unrelated to any genocide
100 years from now, who would possibly doubt that PAC are the heroes here and labor are the villains? Genociders are never on the right side of history. These people are heroes.
It’s not even really a Labour issue, support for Israel has been a long standing policy (partly because the UK was largely responsible for the creation of Israel back in the 1920s) and the motion to proscribe Palestine Action was broadly supported by every party. Regardless of the morality it was completely obvious and expected that breaking into a military base and damaging expensive aircraft was going to have consequences.
Doesn’t mean it’s not the morally right thing to do. Aircraft that are being used to bomb innocent civilians should be vandalized. Hell that’s the minimum. The morally right thing to do is to set them on fire. Legality and morality are only weakly correlated. Obviously the law says what the powerful want it to say, but that doesn’t mean it’s right or just. Setting fire to a UK plane that is being used to genocide people is no different than setting fire to an empty train in 1944 that’s about to be sent out on a run to gather up people to take them to a concentration camp. Sorry, but that’s just the simple truth of it. You can cite evil laws you want, but you might as well be citing the laws of Nazi Germany. Everything they did was legal as well.
Some things are just wrong. And enabling them is wrong. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say that. The people who vandalized those planes did nothing wrong. They’re victorious heroes. We should be memorializing them in song and story. The laws of evil men are not even worthy of consideration, beyond the practical choices of those choosing to engage in such acts of bravery and heroism.
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Jet engines may react poorly with paint in the intakes. Those aircraft will need to be inspected and possibly repaired/maintained before they are allowed in the air again. That is sabotage.
They weren’t fighter jets, they used crowbars as well, and even a tiny bit of paint in a jet engine can cause catastrophic damage at the sort of RPM and temperature they operate at.
Are the protestors with signs saying they support palestinian action intending to state that they support the group or that they support action generally?
Either way they’ve manufactured this issue to protest anti-terrorism laws right?
Not sure if would die on this hill.
‘Palestine Action’ definitely refers to the group, otherwise you’d just put ‘Palestine’. I don’t think they did this to protest ant-terrorism laws, they’ve been very focused on targeting the genocide in Palestine so starting a new off-topic fight wouldn’t make sense for them.
Ah, thanks for the info.
Ah, so it’s the old “pay our people to do something ‘terrible/highly controversial’ in the name of our ‘enemy/opposing group’ so that we can discredit them and their cause and apprehend any of them”-rule
I don’t think there’s any need for false flag conspiracy theories. Palestine Action took credit for breaking into Brize Norton. I can only assume they thought it would generate enough attention to be worth the risk.
Them taking credit is no proof that they have no goverment agents inflitrated in their lines
They are known to be bankrolled by James “Fergie” Chalmbers, American millionair heir, “communist” who by his own words “chants death to America every day” and is a supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has been on Russia state sponsored visits to the regions annexed by Russia writing glowing praises of them.
It seems likely that at least Palestein action are useful idiots for the Russian state. Which isnt to say that banning them as a terrorsit group isnt massive overreach and completely undemocratic.
I think the better question is ‘Does what they did justify them being classed as terrorists’ rather than ‘Were they entrapped by government agents’.
It uses Direct Action which are methods that governments tend to associate with terrorism
It’s a specific group that was proscribed after breaking into RAF Brize Norton and vandalizing tankers.
AKA, they’re a group of heroes and the villainous government wants to keep doing evil.
Yes, because the world is actually a Saturday morning cartoon…
You would have said the exact same thing about the Holocaust.
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They threw paint into jet engines, which now have to be stripped down and rebuilt. They also went at the planes with a crowbar, and damaged security barriers at the perimeter. The damage is estimated at £7 million.
The army has nothing to do with any of this.
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wear or display items arousing reasonable suspicion of membership
Bro, they’re making it illegal to wear a fucking keffiyeh. What a shitty fucking law.
People in the UK should protest en masse so that this damn police state can’t arrest everyone.
Head garments regulations are a recurring debate in France as well, what a coincidence it’s always about Muslim clothes and not Babushka’s scarfs
What does it mean to be a member? I’m still getting email updates and stuff and I’ll go to protests they organise.
I support Palestine action and I think this proscription is crazy.
Fuck that law. Isn’t that the law Putin used against Navalgny?
Let’s hope the UK citizens prove less cowardly than the US ones.
You have a lot of trust in people who voted to isolate themselves from their biggest allies and trading partners just a couple years ago.
took me a minute before i realized the US only did that months ago instead of years
I don’t see how relevant that is here. Arguably the EU is supporting Israel’s genocide.
It’s relevant, they’re easily led by the nose, and now they’re kissing the diaper. From what I can see, they’re no better than the americans.
They’re already monarchists
X to doubt. The UK threw out due process a long time ago, wave the ‘terrorism’ tag and egregiously Orwellian policies become law:
- Legalized warrantless arrest and imprisonment of suspects without trial or warrant for 28 days
- Permits freezing of a suspects assets without trial
- Allows unlimited imprisonment of foreigners suspected of terrorism without trial
- Military police permitted to operate on UK soil openly, even for non terrorism reasons
- TPIM orders without trial that permits electronic tagging, travel bans, limited house arrest, curfews and constant monitoring.
And all that’s before we even talk about the recent Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act nonsense.
Drawing attention to the abuse of these powers is now terrorism. Please hand yourself in to your nearest police station for reeducation.
The PAC are heroes. We should be building statues of them. No one a hundred years from now will think Labor is on the right side of history here. We should be nominating these people for sainthood, not criminalizing them.
At least they have Corbyn daring to do what Sanders does not.
Hollywood level politics. Just shut up
Palestine action? Never heard of them. We support Action for Palestinian.
The People’s Front of Judea?
No, The Judean People’s Front.
- The people’s front of Palestine AKA the Palestinians people’s front AKA… The name changes will cease when the facists stop being facist
I mean ok but the drafters of the Terrorism Act did think of that already, changing your name doesn’t get you out of anything. Both the IRA and National Front were forever peeling off into splinter groups with new names back in the 20th century.
How does that even work then, do they just decide what group you are supporting?
Pretty much, I mean that’s why we have judges, to look at all the facts of the case and make a decision on whether this is functionally the same group of people doing the same things as they were under another name. Legal loopholes aren’t as easy as some people think.
The movie references the splintering of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).
- 1967 Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF)
- 1968 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC)
- 1969 Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)
- 1972 Popular Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Splitters
As American, I’m always so glad to see our cousins across the water follow our inane footsteps. Cheers Brits!
Cross Atlantic solidarity against fascism 🤝
Atleast we’re in solidarity about being fucked off
Brexit? They were first.
Fuck you, government. I do not respect your existence, and day by day, am losing respect for the laws you demand we follow. Fuck your rules.
I mean, I get it. Anarchy looks so great sometimes. But I like roads and schools and hospitals and firemen; and we need to.elect someone who ensure those persist.
And then it’s down to choosing the least-worst bunch to do that. And that’s how it’s been for decades.
So, ask yourself: is changing out this regime and losing a bit of healthcare and a bit of infrastructure and a bit of other things that make life livable here, is that a reasonable exchange?
If you say yes, I respect you. If you say no, I respect you. But we can’t vote single-issue: we have a choice between leadership packages, and we need to evaluate them as a whole. The yanks lost their election by voting single-issue, and ended up allowing the worst choice ever to win.
So vote carefully.
‘I’ll vote for people who support genocide if they will pass a little bit less publicly owned infrastructure into the hands of private capital’ is a pathetic position to take.
It absolutely is not worthy of respect.
Your take is so weak. The “yanks” lost the election because of disinformation campaigns and low information voters. By placating fascist political action, all you are is delaying the inevitable decline of civilization. You’re a frog sitting in a warming pot complimenting the relaxing pond.
The Democrats lost because they fucked up and lost sight of the average person as they disappeared up their own arses.
If the Dems don’t take accountability for their own failings it will continue to happen
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The dichotomy of anarchy and voting is confusing. Anarchy in context probably means lawlessness. Defining anarchy as lawlessness ignores anarchy as a political philosophy.
Roads, schools, hospitals and fire departments do not require bosses. Anarchy keeps infrastructure without bosses.
Voting puts bosses in place to make decisions. Anarchy prefers consensus building between effected parties.
People deserve to make more decisions in how their lives are run. A lack of respect for laws passed by our bosses is fitting.
Voting for bosses that make laws to chain people who can run their own school or hospital is unnecesary. Vote because it is the extent of power afforded to us now. Concurrently build better systems and power structures like anarchy.
I think you mean anarchism.
I don’t think you know what anarchism means.
Also, governments can build infrastructure without supporting foreign genocide.
The Original Commenter (OC) of this thread isn’t saying they want to abolish government entirely. They are saying that government has been twisted and no longer represents the wishes of its people.
I don’t know maybe it is better. Yes many will die horribly but already is, just in another part of the world because of governments that are being used as tongs by billionaires
Palestine Action are heroes. We should be singing songs about them, not prosecuting them.
Remember, legality and morality are only vaguely related. Beyond the natural crimes of murder, rape, etc. laws are just politics by another name. And the wealthy and powerful write laws to advance their own corrupt interests. Many moral obligations are criminalized, and many things that if there is a Hell will surely get you sent there are perfectly legal.
Those planes deserved to be vandalized. Hell, they deserved to be set on fire. It’s a shame they weren’t destroyed completely. If those planes are being used to carry out a genocide, then they should be destroyed. That is the simple absolute moral truth. If the law says otherwise, then the law is wrong. Anyone violating it still needs to keep the consequences in mind. But outside observers should not be afraid to speak truth to power. What Palestine Action did was not wrong; it was an act of heroism. The UK should be electing these people to parliament, not prosecuting them. Want courageous leaders who will actually stand up to powerful interests and do the right thing, even when it’s hard? Well it seems you just found that exact rare kind of person right here.
Destroying planes that are bound to assist in bombing in Gaza is simply the morally right thing to do, regardless of the law. It’s no different than a Jewish resistance fighter in the 1940s setting fire to a cattle train about to go collect prisoners for transport to Dachau. Sometimes destruction of government property is the only morally correct choice available to people.
And we shouldn’t be afraid to say this. People in the UK should be contacting their politicians demanding a full pardon for these heroes.
Those planes deserved to be vandalized. Hell, they deserved to be set on fire. It’s a shame they weren’t destroyed completely. If those planes are being used to carry out a genocide, then they should be destroyed.
The planes were totally unrelated to what’s going on in Gaza.
Destroying planes that are bound to assist in bombing in Gaza
What’s the indication these planes would do that? Israel doesn’t even need British tanker planes to fly the tiny distance to Gaza.
US does police state better.
US is Judge Dredd.
UK is 1984.
Apt considering the setting
Orwell was writing what he knew
Does it different. In the US the violence is more up front. Here it’s done through mechanisms of the state.
Germany does it the best
In Germany we are at a point where it’s difficult to identity antisemitism became everyone who doesn’t actively support the genocide in Gaza is called an antisemite
Same as everywhere else
…in the western power block, a relatively small portion of the world(despite ridiculously appropriating the name ’ intenational community ') that now has another good reason to be hated by the rest of the world.
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They aren’t antisemites. They stand with Israel /s
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We did it the best from 1933-1945, but currently we are nowhere near the american police state.
ACAB. Doesn’t matter where or when in the world we’re discussing. ACAB is universal.
While this is true, there are still various degrees of how much the police is used as a tool of oppression and the shit we see in America is miles away from what we see in Germany.
I’d argue the Stazi were far more effective than the Gestapo, and that German police stating peaked in the mid 1980s.
Fair enough with the Stasi. I could see how why, but I Am not capable of comparing the effectiveness of both.
The Gestapo relied almost entirely on public informants. The Stasi had an extensive and qualitative surveillance apparatus.
i bet my police state could beat up your police state
Yes yes. We do a big police deathmatch between the US and UK. All the cops of both countries in one huge brawl. Whoever comes out alive gets the trophy and a twenty dollar gift card for a Fast Food restaurant of their choice.
Only antisemites think genocide is bad. /s
Some Aussie comedian on KGB News has just said that the disabled should be shot or starved into work …but a few people holding signs is the problem. How baffling.
We’re they being serious? If so, please do share their name.
Also, do you mean 2GB?
Whole different line up on KGB radio I’d imagine haha
No, it’s a piss take name for GB News. Link to what I was on about.
Thanks for sending this through, I don’t think this guy is Australian though. Definitely not grown up here anyway.
What a fucking shit guy though.
Isn’t this a big part of the MAGA platform?
Probably. There are people here that love Trump/MAGA.
Even if they were trying to use this sort of rule with wholesome intentions, I’m not sure how targeting groups by name instead of deed makes sense. It’s like doing a healthy diet by giving up Coca-Cola by name even though Pepsi and RC have the same nutritional profile and availability. Enjoy the Whack-a-mole game!
Taken to its logical conclusion, someone should start a pro-Palestinian squad and call it the Reform Party.
The group in question broke onto an airbase and put a couple of RAF planes out of action. They crossed a red line for the government.
Oh boy wait till you hear what the suffragettes were willing to do for another righteous cause, a bit over a century ago. I don’t know man, maybe the government should start reexamining its policies if ordinary people among its citizens are willing to start breaking into airbase and damaging their own planes.
They were willing to commit mass murder in London and Dublin, and to assassinate the Prime Minister. Also deeply keen on removing all Jews from the House of Commons. Things that today would indeed mark them as a terrorist organisation.
Later, Emmeline Pankhurst would found a political party with the aim of requiring all civil servants to prove their racial purity back at least 3 generations, and many of the more prominent members of the WSPU became prominent members of the British fascist movement, several being detained as a precaution during the second European fuss.
As a campaign, the WSPU was an abject failure. It put women’s votes back a decade, and Pankhurst failed to ensure that working class women were excluded from the franchise (she also wanted working class men excluded).
It was only a cataclysm the scale of WWI, and the groundwork of the suffragists working in opposition to the suffragettes, which brought votes for all.
Sounds like a classic case of both the moderates and the radicals being essential for any real change. The moderates are the hammer and the extremists are the anvil.
Society is like a bar of iron. It’s stuck in its shape and resists change. Non-violent moderate protest alone is like a hammer without an anvil. You strike the iron, but the iron ignores the blow. With moderate protest alone, the established powers simply ignore the protests. They bend and duck out of the way and nothing changes. But violent groups serve as the anvil. They hold the powers that be in place and prevent them from ducking away from the hammer blow of the moderates.
Both hammer and anvil are needed. Without the violent extremists, the moderates are simply painted as extremists and ignored. With them, the moderates can actually gain traction. Moderate protest movements don’t succeed unless there is also a violent wing. Moderates are only moderate if there is something to moderate against. Without the violent extremists, the moderates will be the ones labeled criminals and arrested, regardless of how extreme their tactics actually are.
The Suffragettes did nothing to advance the cause, quite the opposite. They poisoned centrist politicians against suffrage, confirmed the claims of the opponents talking about “mad women”, and made it hard for supporters of suffrage to make progress. On the other hand, they failed in their aims to hound out Jewish MPs from Parliament, and at the height of their bombing campaign Britain enjoyed the lowest insurance claim year in history.
It’s very likely women would have got the vote sooner if the militants just… didn’t. We’d be better off without immature hotheads spoiling for a bit of violence.
Nothing they did makes them terrorists, no matter what you think of the action they took
They caused £7 million pounds damage. Now if someone damaged YOUR property and the police did nothing how would you feel? As the £7 million will now have to be found from tax payers money can you not see why the government is pissed… regardless of the cause this sort of action has consequences.
Nobody said there shouldn’t be consequences, but they have been labeled as terrorists, which is not a fair or correct response.
And… I never said anything about that. If you do something, there are consequences. Those consequences vary but when it is a large sum of money quite often the consequences are disproportionate to the crime (and we can all agree it is a crime, in the literal sense)
So in other words you had nothing to add to what we were actually talking about and decided you wanted to talk about something else instead?
If someone damaged my property, I’d feel pretty aggrieved… and it still wouldn’t make them a terrorist. And the police wouldn’t do nothing, because damaging property is a crime. That property being a few planes doesn’t magically change the equation. Just like the government wouldn’t be doing nothing if they hadn’t designated PA as a terrorist organisation, because a whole raft of criminal charges would still apply.
Literally, and I want to stress this, literally nobody has suggested that PA should not face appropriate and proportionate consequences for their actions. And you knew that. You knew damed well that people have no problem with the government taking action, as long as that action is legal and democratically responsible. Yet you deliberately chose to dishonestly equate opposition to terrorist designation with support for them getting off scot free, even though that’s an obviously false and mendacious equivalence.
You are not very skilled at this dishonesty malarkey. Consider yourself called out.
Eh? I never said that, I just said there are consequences and people are up in arms… You took what I said and ran with it. Should they do nothing about damage that tax payers will have to pay? Really should they? I never said it wasn’t terrorism either or in fact never said it wasn’t… I’m way more aggrieved they took the winter fuel payment away from my 82 yr old mother because it directly affects me. I was pointing out, simply, that it was £7 million pounds plus damages. 7 million. Tax payers will have to pay that somehow because that is how the military is funded, directly or indirectly. Now consider yourself being called out for trying to shame me when I was just saying it is a large figure - nothing more, nothing less. Whether I feel it is proportional or not is not what I meant and you damn well know it as well, you are just as guilty of what you accuse me of. Go try and shame someone else
if someone damaged YOUR property
I’m not supporting a genocide, why would someone damage my property?
out of action
paint
Paint and crowbars. The engines will have to be stripped down and rebuilt.
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Ah “liar”. They were tankers, not fighter jets. And paint thrown in an engine requires the engine to be completely stripped down for parts to be inspected and cleaned because it’s a plane not a lawnmower. They also went at the planes with a crowbar.
Still not terrorism
An attack on military assets for a political aim.
No , terrorism is targetting civilians for political aim
So the beheading of Lee Rigby wasn’t terrorism? Your definition doesn’t match the law or the dictionary.
What this has to do with palestine action?
In 2003, anti-war activists broke into RAF Fairford to stop US bombers heading to Iraq and didn’t get any terrorism charge. It’s pretty clear that it’s all about crushing real actions against genocide
That’s over 20 years ago, before 7/7 changed strategy.
Uk has the obligation to stop all military cooperation with israel that’s the big crimes that people involved in should be in jail for up to 15 years
The Brits need to make like the French and lop heads off until they have something resembling a functional democracy.
Yeah interesting how our first attempt at democracy. Was started by and failed due to. Religious fundamentalism.
Given only wealthy land owners could vote. Hardly democracy.
Unfortunately France is only lagging behind, but on the same authoritarian path.
First thing done after terrorist attack: declare emergency state, a tool designed for cases where the state is at risk of collapsing because of invasion by a foreing country or violent insurrection…
The police gains the power to assign people considered at risk at their residence. Very first use: assign climate activists at residence during the COP.
Emergency state is reconducted multiple times without any rationale, other than vague “terrorist threat”.
One of the first actions from Macron once in power was to make it permanent, by passing its key elements in the law.
Protests against anti-social policies or for climate are now systematically met with a violent response. People come out with an eye or a hand missing due to flashballs and lacrymo grenades. Answer from the government is something like “they had it coming”.
Cases of activists and journalists intimidation by law enforcement are multiplying.
Give it a bit of time, and France will catch up.
And we should probably consider the very wealth as an aristocracy of sorts for that to be effective.
Even on the middle east eye YouTube I’m seeing so many appeals to authority and “it’s illegal, simple as. Full stop. Not for debate”.
Not sure if brigading or what but it really worries me how people think.
It’s not like they’re stupid, it’s like it’s uncomfortable for them to think.
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BBC News - 29 arrests after protest in support of Palestine Action, police say https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gd3pkr9x1o
Whomp… Whomp…! Unfortunately Fascism is real!
They’re feckless cowards.
