The erosion of democracy
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
George Monbiot sounds the alarm against the serious erosion of the democratic right to protest.
While the media were raging against Suella Braverman’s attack on tofu-eating wokery, he points out that “scarcely any of them reported what she was doing at the time.
She was pushing through the House of Commons the most repressive legislation of the modern era” in the Public Order Bill.
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Wed 26 Oct 2022. Read the original here.
Sunak’s Britain is already broken. We need more than a general election to fix it
As the crackdown on our freedoms intensifies, the list of our national ailments seems endless. But there’s one issue that can prise things open
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Read Jonathan Cook on Monbiot please. Monbiot’s been part of the problem. It was pointed out in the comments of The G (if they were allowed to stay there). Monbiot is no hero. He was a midwife’s assistant for the birth this catastrophic Govt. And how ironic that his support for Israel (complicit silence on environmental destruction – his supposed concern – and indigenous people’s oppression) means that in the USA, BDS is not only under attack re: Palestine but environmental cause boycott too. At the Convivencia Alliance webinar, 25/10/22, Mark Braverman said what was happening to Palestinians was emblematic of bigger issues including climate destruction. Monbiot has been wilfully blinkered.
And the Labour leader that ‘The Guardian’ helped put in place will implement this with rigour.
Joe W: in the run-up to the 2019 general election Monbiot was urging people to vote for Corbyn’s Labour, as one can see in the DDN video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vdzoe3QJoo
The commitment to integrity did not last long, broken on the same day that it was made.
Liz Truss’ premiership lasted much longer than that.
Her most lunatic idea was to increase the UK military budget by 50%.
That would cost £24 billion a year. This huge sum is roughly the equivalent of raising income tax by 5p.
It is so ridiculous, that Sunak appears to be moving away from it.
Joe W & Hugh Roper: Monbiot is as much a turncoat as Alcibiades. He is no more or less than another one of these journalists who have found their profitable niche.
What IS tofu?
Talking of BDS, which Joe mentioned, I came across the following Democracy Now! video on youtube earlier, which is very interesting and well worth a listen (18 mins):
“Free Speech Issue”: Meet the Arkansas Publisher & Lawyer Asking SCOTUS to Overturn Anti-BDS Law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PUVYzPpYvo
It seems extraordinary that in a Guardian opinion piece calling attention to the Public Order Bill, ‘the most repressive legislation of the modern era’, George Monbiot didn’t even make passing reference to something he found ‘deeply shocking’ only a few weeks ago: Al Jazeera’s Labour Files: The Crisis.
Monbiot does note how Keir Starmer’s only statement on the Public Order Bill, thus far, actually endorses this headline policy. Did he, as a freelance journalist, not think here of the Labour Files? Of the party’s ‘handling’ of antisemitism allegations? In which it seems clear people of dissenting “minority” points of view were/are being subjected to party discipline – not unlike climate protesters facing vilifying punishment for gluing themselves to roads. The former are not imprisoned, but is there no relation to be discerned between the two? Isn’t this all too obvious repression of dissent – in our main party of “opposition” – something for the British public to be concerned about? Just how can the allegations in the Labour Files not be up for discussion in the so-called liberal press? Not be a matter of public interest?
In not even mentioning the Labour Files, despite discussing both Starmer & the Labour Party, Monbiot seems to be shielding from view what should surely now be a matter for open, public debate. However he’s justified writing nothing more than a tweet on the subject, it seems plainly unfair to Guardian readers; who, unlike Monbiot, don’t get to form an opinion on the Labour Files and hence to make any such decision about it come election time, dismissive or otherwise.
Don’t knock him . What he has written is all too true…perhaps we need more conversions like this on the ‘Road to Damascus’