When #Protest Becomes Terrorism // PREVIEW

https://bit.ly/4uVNm7K

#ACAB #CriminalisationOfDissent

It was sickening though also enlightening to hear NSW Premier #ChrisMinns on the radio (ABC) this morning. It helpfully clarified that fundamentally, the public reason for all the chaos in Sydney's CBD last night, the reason Minns insisted NSW police prevent any march from occurring, is at its core quite deeply bigoted and racist.

What Minns admitted to in that interview this morning is that he did not trust rally organisers to do what they said they would do. He did not trust that a rally route ending at parliament house wouldn't actually be a Trojan horse for protesters to suddenly break off through police lines and go rampaging on a pogrom through the streets, looking for Jewish people to harm. That is why there couldn't be a march.

Something like 100 rallies organised by the same people, at which we have followed the agreed route every time. A hundred rallies without any arrests for violence or flouting lawful police directions (indeed, the only charges of violence in the context of 28 months of anti-genocide protest are from a police officer recklessly causing grievous bodily harm to a political candidate who ran against Prime Minister Albanese and came second to him in his electorate).

#NSWpol #NSWPolice #protest #Sydney #Gadigal #CriminalisationOfDIssent #HerzogNotWelcome

Words of NSW Police Deputy Commissioner #DavidHudson, 4th July 2025, spoken under oath during a NSW parliamentary inquiry:

“We can’t prevent the free movement of people throughout the city just because you’re in a protest. You can walk down the street, the footpath. Bearing in mind, at that particular protest at the town hall, there were a lot of women, children [and] women pushing prams. It’s not like we were going to put walls up and start boxing on with these people who have a right to protest.”

How things change in 7 months.

That's precisely what NSW police did last night at Sydney Town Hall, to another protest with people from all walks of life (including kids in strollers)—walls were put up, and police did indeed start 'boxing on', even if someone is backing away with their hands up, or kneeling on the ground in prayer, or already pinned to the ground with a knee in their back, or part of a large crowd kettled & unable to disperse (while police charge with pepper spray & horses, yelling "disperse or be arrested").

And the point at which the police first charged? Very soon after rally organiser #JoshLees had begun using a megaphone to encourage people to disperse (not that we could, due to police kettle in place).

#NSW #ProtestIsNotACrime #CriminalisationOfDissent #NSWPolice

Chris Minns, NSW Premier: "for the sake of Social Cohesion™, we're inviting a wanted war criminal from a rogue state to visit, granting police extraordinary emergency powers to forcefully suppress the expression of non-approved messages in non-approved locations, and installing extra Social Cohesion™ fences and barriers in the middle of the city. In order to ensure maximum Social Cohesion™ please don't come into the city, and if you do, then disobeying the instructions of one of the 3,000 Social Cohesion™ officers will result in a $5,000 fine. This is for your own good. You will cohere, or else."

#NSWpol #CivilLiberties #CriminalisationOfDissent #IsaacHerzog #Herzog #ChrisMinns #NSWLabor #Gadi #Sydney #SydneyNews #NSWPolice #protest #ProtestIsNotACrime

Thinking today of mob around this continent feeling unnoticed and unwanted (again).

If (almost) any other community had been targeted by an attempted mass murder (likely mass casualty bombing attack) at a gathering marking a sacred day of mourning, do you think it might have made a few more headlines? Might there be a bit more discussion in parliament? Calls for a #RoyalCommission, extensive community discussion of how to address the pervasive #racism very likely at the root of the attack?

There already exists a comprehensive national #antiracism strategy developed over years in consultation with a wide number of relevant experts and stakeholders. It was delivered to the federal government and tabled in parliament over a year ago. The government is yet to respond.

Instead, the duopoly reaches for knee-jerk rushed legislation, atrociously designed, with almost no opportunity for genuine scrutiny, that relies purely on the discredited approach of further #CriminalisationOfDissent Indeed, the existence of these laws is already being weaponised by the #MurdochPress against the very group targeted by the attempted bomb attack, claiming that #Indigenous criticisms of white Australia are racist hate speech and the groups organising the #InvasionDay rallies ought to be proscribed.

Jesus wept.

Finally, some arrests associated with the Epstein case...

...except it is of four people in the UK involved in this piece of public service broadcasting/protest, a mini-doco projected onto the walls of Windsor Castle on the evening a certain foreign visitor came for a sleepover.

Their alleged offence? Their brief and accurate overview of publicly-available information about said guest made someone feel bad.

More people ought to see this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8V4VNBw078

#LedByDonkeys #Epstein #Trump #TrumpEpstein #protest #CriminalisationOfDissent #PublicServiceBroadcast #history #documentary #EmperorHasNoClothes

Why it matters when western governments deliberately blur the lines between the military, administrative and political wings of organisations they accuse of terrorism.

Amongst other ill effects explored by Jonathan Cook, it has a massive chilling effect on public discourse, especially when combined with far-reaching, broadly written 'anti-terrorism' laws prohibiting any speech or behaviour that could be taken to be supportive of such organisations.

In the UK, simply praising the work of doctors saving lives in Gaza potentially leaves you open to prosecution under anti-terrorism laws.

https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/why-i-wrote-an-expert-report-against

#UKpol #terrorism #FreeSpeech #media #Auspol #CriminalisationOfDissent