Nobody wants a city on Mars. Nobody wants AI in every app. Nobody wants a robot butler. Nobody wants data centers everywhere. Nobody wants flying cars or humanoid robots. We want clean water, we want bees to survive, and we want a habitable planet.
Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany needed compliant judges to provide a legal veneer to their darkest crimes.
Judge Johnson joins their wretched company. He overturned a jury's conviction of four anti-genocide activists for criminal damage and sentenced them as terrorists instead.
As one their barristers pointed out, the four defendants were initially arrested by police on suspicion of involvement in an act of terrorism. But the prosecution decided not to charge them with terrorism offences because it knew no jury would ever convict them based on the evidence.
Instead the Crown held two trials: a sham one for the jury, and the real one conducted in secret by the judge. That is not justice. It is a show trial worthy of the worst tyrannical regimes.
I spent all day in Woolwich Crown Court yesterday for the Filton activists' sentencing hearing with my colleague @daniaakkad.
The court heard that the Terrorism Act was never intended to cover direct action protest.
It heard that all of the defendants had been cleared of violent intent and sentencing them as terrorists would mark a historic first for charges of criminal damage.
It heard that the Suffragettes, who did "a bit of smashing themselves", would have been labelled as terrorists but have now been vindicated by history.
It heard the activists' goal was to stop the supply chain of drones and weaponry to Israel as it commits genocide in Gaza.
It heard that attaching a terrorism connection to a case without it ever being heard by a jury was unconstitutional and posed a threat to the criminal justice system itself.
It heard that the "terrorism connection" has been disproportionately used against minority groups and those advocating for them while not being used for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, including the man who killed Jo Cox MP.
It heard that the law has been reinterpreted since the action took place, meaning the activists could have had no idea that what they did could have been caught up in terrorism laws at the time of the protest.
It heard that the prosecution submitted key evidence just eight days before the hearing, giving the defence no time to review it or even discuss it with their clients.
Despite all of this, Judge Jeremy Johnson, who has already tried to refer the defence's lead barrister for contempt of court and been forced to apologise for it, sentenced the defendants as terrorists.
The judgment was handed down within minutes, indicating Judge Johnson had already made his mind up before the hearing had begun.
Being in court yesterday felt akin to witnessing a colonial crime: punishing activists with terrorism offences in order to set a precedent that taking direct action to stop a UK-backed genocide will not be tolerated.
Sentenced and imprisoned on grounds of “terrorism” that no jury ever convicted them of.
Meanwhile, the British government continues to aid and abet the greatest crime of our time.
A historic miscarriage of justice — and a truly dark day for civil liberties in this country.
Say something critical about Israel and you’re likely to get fired, or sued, and have an endless smear campaign aimed at you by the Murdoch hate factory. Say some anti-Palestinian nonsense and no matter how stupid, you get a nice long puff profile.
Bloomberg is owned by the world's 18th richest man.
Billionaires emit more carbon in one hour than a poor person does in a lifetime.
This is propaganda.
Destroying private 'israeli' weapons used in a genocide gets you a longer sentence than child grooming in occupied Britain.
For the first time, activists are sentenced as 'terrorists' for property damage.
This will go down as one of the most unjust cases in British history.
Today four activists face terror-related sentences for taking direct action against an Elbit Systems weapons factory in Filton, Bristol - a factory that makes drones sent to the genocidal apartheid state of Israel to kill Palestinians in Gaza.
Back in April, I warned in Parliament that jurors would not be told terrorism sentences could follow a criminal damage conviction.
No terrorism charges were ever brought. The proscription against Palestine Action has since been ruled unlawful. The defendants were even prevented from telling the jury they acted to stop genocide.
This is a Labour government defending Israeli death factories and stripping away all of our fundamental rights.
Everyone who cares about our democracy should be outraged.
The world’s first trillionaire made a pedophile rapist the president of the United States and then personally made sure starving children couldn’t get food and medicine, with 14 million deaths projected from his actions alone. He’s possibly the most evil person in history.
People only hate Elon Musk because he comes from an emerald mining fortune made in apartheid South Africa, he buys ideas and pretends he’s an inventor, he’s a white supremacist, union-busting, abusive employer, he’s hoarding $1T in stolen wages, he makes us ashamed to be human,
Something that bothers me about Xenoblade Genesis discussion is how people are more excited for it to be an MCU crossover then being excited for the game itself
The promise of colonialism has always been the same: surrender your dignity, abandon your dead, betray your people, and in return we’ll let you participate in your own subjugation. What an offer.
I am so fkn sick of people like this using ADHD as an excuse for being a dickhead. I have it! It makes me terrible at emails and doing my washing; it doesn't make me try to cover up a genocide, or call a powerful neurodiverse woman 'problematic' while speaking to an IDF sniper.
Instead of discussing how Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire, we should talk about how he killed hundreds of thousands of people through his dismantling of food and medical aid to poor countries
https://t.co/8kY171r5w1
The obsession with box-office, budgets, financial expectations, under-performance, blah blah blah is so exhausting.
HOW DID THE MOVIE MAKE YOU FEEL? DID IT MOVE YOU? WAS IT UNABLE TO LATCH ONTO YOU EMOTIONALLY? WHY OR WHY NOT?
JFC.