In Britain’s increasingly authoritarian society, any sort of protest can find itself at odds with the law. You might even go to jail, says Guardian columnist Owen Jones
I really think we need to distinguish between terrorism in the sense of “are they going to keep blowing people up?” and “terrorism” in the sense of “are my taxes going to go up because of this?” I feel like the word is being stretched for the second example…
Yeah what they did was excessive vandalism. Not terrorism not unless it’s the first move in a long strategy although if it is, it’s a pretty dumb one since they’ve all been arrested.
I would imagine that an incompetent barrister wouldn’t have much difficulty arguing that actively sabotaging military equipment is, and has been for centuries, treason against the crown.
It is now - but yeah my heart bleeds for those poor RAF jets, they’re definitely what’s important here, not making the word ‘terrorist’ a meaningless empty word that can be used to justify anything at all.
You might personally think defence trumps all other things - I don’t. Its clearly not unimportant (and I never suggested it was) but defence is, we’re told, something we use to protect our way of life and our way of life includes not being called a terrorist for doing something which very obviously is not an act of terrorism.
All forms of protest are under a sustained attack in the UK right now and this is just another extension of that. Sabotaging reality to exert control over a populace is obviously a very much worse thing.
Come on, “throwing around red paint” is quite misleading, no?
They poured it into the engines of multiple RAF jets, destroying those engines. That’s several million in damages, and a lot of downtime.
And legally speaking, it absolutely was a terrorist act.
I really think we need to distinguish between terrorism in the sense of “are they going to keep blowing people up?” and “terrorism” in the sense of “are my taxes going to go up because of this?” I feel like the word is being stretched for the second example…
Yeah what they did was excessive vandalism. Not terrorism not unless it’s the first move in a long strategy although if it is, it’s a pretty dumb one since they’ve all been arrested.
I would imagine that an incompetent barrister wouldn’t have much difficulty arguing that actively sabotaging military equipment is, and has been for centuries, treason against the crown.
Not terrorism then
It is now - but yeah my heart bleeds for those poor RAF jets, they’re definitely what’s important here, not making the word ‘terrorist’ a meaningless empty word that can be used to justify anything at all.
Of course defence is important. How separated from reality are you for you to think it isn’t?
Sabotaging UK defence is obviously a bad thing, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
You might personally think defence trumps all other things - I don’t. Its clearly not unimportant (and I never suggested it was) but defence is, we’re told, something we use to protect our way of life and our way of life includes not being called a terrorist for doing something which very obviously is not an act of terrorism.
All forms of protest are under a sustained attack in the UK right now and this is just another extension of that. Sabotaging reality to exert control over a populace is obviously a very much worse thing.