Amnesty International called the mass arrests “deeply concerning”.
“The protesters in Parliament Square were not inciting violence and it is entirely disproportionate to the point of absurdity to be treating them as terrorists,” said Sacha Deshmukh, the organisation’s chief executive.
“We have long criticised UK terrorism law for being excessively broad and vaguely worded and a threat to freedom of expression. These arrests demonstrate that our concerns were justified.”
I’m not only talking about this, also about the age verification thing and the talk of a VPN ban.
I think UK and Russia are on a similar level of gone, TBH. One is more queerphobic, the other is actively destroying its social safety net. One is directly involved in a shitty imperialist war but with relatively restrained civilian casualties, the other is funding and aiding a fucking genocide.
And I don’t think Russia will be invading NATO any time soon. Russian military doesn’t really have the resources to pull it off right now, and I don’t think Putin has enough years left in him for the country to recover enough to do it.
I’m not convinced he wouldn’t try it. There have been repeated violations of the airspace of Lithuania, with live explosives.
NATO is expecting Russia to be able to do it as soon as 2029. That’s the deadline it set itself to become war-ready. 4-5 years seems like a good time to start shaping laws and law enforcement to handle a war too.
I also vividly remember everyone, me included, being very convinced that he wouldn’t start a war on Ukraine mainland outside of the krim. I think the same was the case before the Krim was taken. I don’t think we should do that error a third time.
I’m also not really knowledgeable enough to know if there is somebody ready to take over when Putin hits the curb. Common tales are that he doesn’t build up a successor out of fear of being replaced before he wants to. But I’m not gambling on that being the case. And I’m also not sure if it would be such a good thing if Russia falls into a deep power vacuum. A Russian civil war leading to multiple warlords taking over could potentially be even worse for the neighbouring regions than Putin.
Anyways: yeah UK does have big problems on it’s own. I don’t think it’s really important what exactly is the motivation if the current lawmakers for the drive towards more authoritarian laws. It’s important to recognize that that is a global phenomenon and that is driven by the current and coming economic crises.