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Jake Hanrahan

15 Mar, 7 tweets, 3 min read

Pay attention to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill—it is an attempt by the government to push Britain deeper into authoritarianism. It will restrict free protests in a way Russia and Turkey does. This is a vicious attack on freedom in the UK.

gov.uk/government/pub…

“It will become a crime to fail to follow restrictions the protesters ‘ought’ to have known about, even if they have not received a direct order from an officer.”

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-564007…

Under this bill you could get up to 10 years in prison for toppling a statute. Bare in mind the average jail time for a pedophile in Britain is less than 5 years.

Police will be allowed to legally shut down any protest (including, according to the bill, even a protest of as little as one person) if they decide it’s too noisy. This is insane. I cannot believe more people aren’t up in arms about this. Not trendy enough? #PoliceCrackdownBill

https://twitter.com/voice_wales/status/1371548905956081664?s=21

Good for them. Out ASAP, same night. People in England should take note. They won’t though sadly, people have become mostly docile here due to a mix of Americanised idpol, right wing buffoonery, and social media activism. Very depressing.

https://twitter.com/voice_wales/status/1371548905956081664?s=21

@metpoliceuk

Legal observers arrested by @metpoliceuk officers as people protest against the authoritarian “Police, crime, sentencing, and courts” bill.

https://twitter.com/netpol/status/1372102846028611584

The British government is trying to pass an overtly authoritarian new law that could seriously hinder free protests in the UK. I had a look at one of the fact sheets to work out how this might unfold. hanrahan.substack.com/p/how-the-uks-…

#PoliceCrackdownBill

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More from @Jake_Hanrahan

Jake Hanrahan

@Jake_Hanrahan

15 Mar

@PopularFrontCO

New @PopularFrontCO podcast episode out now: We speak to @the_ayeminthant about the deadly anti-coup protests in #Myanmar.

> podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/res…

> patreon.com/popularfront

Listen in your browser instead if you want. soundcloud.com/popularfrontca…

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All the work we do at @PopularFrontCO is funded completely independently. We don't take money from governments, Think Tanks, or corporate business. Consider supporting us. patreon.com/popularfront

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Jake Hanrahan

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3 Feb

Watching breakfast tv news in the UK this morning felt very odd. It was full pelt jingoism for Captain Moore (who is in my opinion a hero, don’t get me wrong). There wasn’t a word about how appallingly our government has handled the pandemic, nothing about the cruel..

...irony that Moore should have to raise £30million for an NHS the Tories have systematically been trying to gut, only to die of covid. It was non-stop uncritical thinking and thinly veiled praise of what is a catastrophic mishandling of the covid pandemic by inept leadership.

It felt like I was watching Fox News. I get that Captain Moore’s life should be celebrated, but his death should also place a bigger spotlight on the government and journalists should be further scrutinising the Tory failure, not “holding back” fake tears at 8am.

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Jake Hanrahan

@Jake_Hanrahan

2 Feb

@PopularFrontCO

New @PopularFrontCO podcast episode out now: We speak to @jacklosh about the largely under-reported conflict currently raging in the Central African Republic.

> podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-b…

> patreon.com/popularfront

Listen in your browser. soundcloud.com/popularfrontca…

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Jake Hanrahan

@Jake_Hanrahan

27 Jan

Spent a week reporting in #Karabakh / #Artsakh, covering it from the Armenian side (Azerbaijan refuses entry to independent journalists: rsf.org/en/azerbaijan).

Some thoughts on the frontlines...

My first impressions were just how desperately sad and eerie it is out there.

Brave young men are stationed at vulnerable outposts often with inadequate equipment. They received little training before being drafted. They have done and will do everything they can to keep fighting, but I don’t think the government has done enough for them to be honest.

On one of the frontlines in Martuni (which was roughly 2km away from an Azeri outpost, that’s on higher ground no less) the soldiers had equipment mostly donated to them via the Armenian diaspora. Some weren’t even issued boots by the government.

Read 18 tweets

Jake Hanrahan

@Jake_Hanrahan

1 Jan

I’ve been reading up on the #Nashville suicide bomber Anthony Warner. Possibly wrong here, but I think this could be kinda “post-ideological militancy” more than the 5G theory. Kind of like the 2018 Austin bomber, kind of like Sky King, kind of like Killdozer even...

What I’ve been half-heartedly calling “post-ideological militancy” is roughly pointless physical violence as a desperate response to an age of pointless abstract violence.

There does not need to be a political ideology or a crime feud behind urban guerrilla violence anymore.

Examples...

The 2018 Austin #Texas bomber, Mark Anthony Conditt, killed two people and injured several others in a series of parcel bombs. Why? This is what he said himself: “I am doing this simply because I want to watch the world burn.”

eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

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Jake Hanrahan

@Jake_Hanrahan

28 Nov 20

Clashes in France as the first phase of a deeply authoritarian new law is passed in the lower courts. The law will make it illegal for citizens to film police at certain times and give the police the power to decide on a whim who is and isn't a reporter.

Luckily (for the sake of freedom and democracy), the people of France are not as pacified as the rest of Western Europe. They have been protesting this diabolical new law all over #Paris tonight.