The UK government apparently thinks that Palestine action is a much bigger threat than the anti vaxxers, but that isn’t really the point. Why don’t you just admit that you are an authoritarian and you only care about authoritarianism when it’s used against you and your preferred causes?

Dang I gotta really spell it out for you. The government makes classifications of crimes that can be applied and then used to shut down speech that they don’t like. That is what they did with the anti vaxxers and that is also what they’ve done with Palestine action. If you allow them to use tools like this, then eventually they will use it against something you believe in. Public nuisance is a whole lot less serious of a crime compared to terrorism, but the end result, or the goal anyway, is the same; shut down people who give voice and advertise causes they believe in if the government doesn’t like them. Additionally, these tools of the government change hands as the parties in power change. Authoritarianism is dangerous no matter who it is used against and needs to constantly kept in check or eventually it will be used against you.

What do you mean? The UK has had a list of terrorists for a long time and if you support them then you can be arrested. “These laws have always been on the books.”

Yes that is the very problematic and dangerous mechanism by which they stifle free speech, and you won’t care until Palestine action people are similarly charged. Which is my entire point.

Yes, they also expressed those views…

I was asking if he thought they should

Yeah? Do you think that should be punishable with jail time?

here you go

these guys got arrested, but not sure if they served jail time.

It started during covid, but nobody cared because the people being locked up were anti vaxxers. It didn’t stop there. It never does.

It’s mostly a metric people use to prove their superiority over other people, when all of the other metrics for happiness and success suggest otherwise.

All are welcome here was a campaign for welcoming refugees, I think. The no trespassing was for people wanting to fish from the river bank on their property that bordered public land, most of whom are first generation immigrants, Hispanic or Hmong. I interpreted it “people are welcome in our country, just not like, HERE.” I mean, I get it, but it had some of the same energy as this post.

I saw a yard sign once that said “all are welcome here”, right next to the “no trespassing” sign. Struck me as contradictory and made me curious what it meant to them.

It’s still way up from a year ago. The insane climb after the election was unsupported hype, which has been corrected. Say what you want about tesla, but the stock price looks pretty healthy.

This is obviously way better, come on. Why involve middle men in something like this? Add more layers and it becomes less efficient. Less of the money goes to helping people and it gets spread around to different agencies, or even worse goes to government contractors who can charge ridiculous rates because they know someone and didn’t have to compete for the contract. I worked at a place once where we got a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless study because if the money didn’t get used it would make their budget smaller for next year. That kind of thing happens all the time.

That only applies if you are the objective truth. If you are wrong, then it’s just another tool for bigotry, an excuse to ignore other opinions.

Yeah you are right. There have been a couple others, but quite a few attempts to ban various parties. I don’t quite understand the system and it’s possible that banning a party there isn’t near as big of a deal as it seems to me. If a party were banned in the united states, it would be very alarming. I think the only party ever banned was the communist party in 1950s, but even that is no longer really in effect.

Who gets to decide who is a fascist and therefore doesn’t deserve to participate in democracy? What is the criteria for not deserving a voice? How do you define fascist? Maybe I’m cynical, but if you can eliminate popular political opposition by branding them as something, that’s a lot of motivation to brand them.

There’s only one political party in German history who banned other political parties. Just because you call a different party a fascist, doesn’t mean you get a pass to act like a fascist.

Luigi situation is interesting because pretty much everyone agrees that the health insurance industry is broken. While most conservatives (probably?) disagree with his method, they can’t wholly disagree with his motive.