‘Very disturbing’: crackdown on oil pipeline protests in Uganda concerns UN rights expert

“In mid-September, four dozen university students marched through Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, to deliver a petition to parliament calling on the government to end fossil fuel investments and scrap the 900-mile east Africacrude oil pipeline (Eacop) ... Police officers refused to let them enter parliament. Most were chased away, but four male students were corralled under a table near the main entrance, where they say police kicked and punched them, and beat them with wood.

“After the beatings, the students were handcuffed and taken to a police station, where they say officers accused them of having been paid to protest against the pipeline. The four students spent the weekend in one of the city’s most notorious and overcrowded prisons, before being charged with public nuisance and released on bail.

“‘Young people are the majority in our country and we are the most vulnerable to the climate crisis. But anyone rising up against Eacop is facing the brutal wrath of the regime,’ said Magambo, who suffered a dislocated ankle and damage to his left eardrum. ‘It is a laughable case, but they want to keep us busy in court so that we can’t organize and protest. But we have to join the global community’s fight against fossil fuels,’ he said.

“Last month’s arrests were the latest in a wave of criminal charges and other judicial harassment against activists and organizations, raising concerns about the environmental and social impacts of the east African pipeline – which is one of the largest fossil fuel projects under construction in the world.”

imagine you are a cop who was nice a few times to a random fish vendor who got arrested on new year's eve for getting beat up for dropping a tv and then over the next 20 years he consistently insists to everyone that you are good pals and best of friends. meanwhile, he has built a criminal empire and keeps getting away with murder, bribery, and mysterious vanishings, which in turn only leads you to spend those 20 years alienating friends, ending relationships, and burning professional bridges trying to catch him and put him in jail. also he keeps trying to get you to eat dinner with him.

Jet Set Radio (PS3)

fascist nazi rightwinger rishi sunak & co.

“Just before the Fourth of July weekend, postdoctoral scholar Jessica Ng, graduate student William Schneider, and another graduate student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), were arrested by campus police on charges of felony vandalism over $400 and conspiracy to commit a crime. They were arrested at their homes (where their personal items were confiscated including keys, phones and at least one computer), taken to San Diego county jails, and held overnight on $20,000 bail each.

Their crime? Allegedly writing slogans like ​“Living Wage Now” on a concrete campus building — in washable markers and chalk — during a peaceful protest almost a month earlier.”

UK 1991

“OTTAWA WILL SUPPRESS LABOR DEFENCE LEAGUE, POLICE MAKE FIRST RAID,” Owen Sound Sun-Times. February 22, 1933. Page 6 --- Immediate Sequel to Crisp Warning of Mr. Bennett ---- IS CANADA-WIDE ---- Mounted Police Raid Headquarters at Prince Rupert -- (Canadian Press Despatch) OTTAWA, Feb. 22 — Nation-wide investigation of the Canadian Labor Defense League — allegedly the Communist Society in Canada operating under another name — has been ordered by the Dominion Government and is being conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Raid on the Prince Rupert headquarters of the league and seizure of its books which occurred yesterday is the first move in the campaign to stamp out the propaganda which this organization has been carrying on. 

A Prince Rupert books and papers were taken from local headquarters of the league. No arrests were made. According to Hon. Hugh Guthrie, Minister of Justice, the organization is being financed from outside Canada and rhe Minister can surmise only that the money is coming from Moscow.

Evidence is in the possession the Mounted Police to show that the Defense League seeks to overthrow the Canadian form of government by violent measures and that it is co-operating with Communists in the United States, who have threatened the Minister by telegraph telling him what will happen If the Reds Incarcerated in Portsmouth Penitentiary are not liberated. 

"We have been watching the Canadian Labor Defense League very closely," Attorney-General Price said last night. He Indicated, however, that any action would probably emanate from Ottawa.

what's the situation in SL rn?

Ranil Wickremesinghe bought won the Parliament vote and was declared Executive President for the remainder of Gota's term, despite only having had 30 thousand votes in the actual election 3 years ago and not even being able to win his own seat in Parliament. Protest movement again splintered as liberals deserted it for yet another promise of stability. Ranil, finally having achieved his lifelong ambition of becoming Executive President like his uncle JR Jayawardena (the greatest monster this country has ever produced) dispensed with the "tolerant, liberal, progressive, minority-friendly" image he built his career on and is now revealing himself a worse tyrant than Gota.

He intimidated our strongest allies, the Bar Association, into silence, and immediately made the Prevention of Terrorism Act even more Draconian. The government has been cracking down on all the protestors it can get their hands on. They forced us to dismantle Gotagogama, our pride and joy, and hand it and the Presidential Secretariat back to the government. Hours before the handover, the cops surrounded the area, boxed them in and attacked everyone within. They didnt even let the ambulances inside until they were done. They are now trying to fine the protestors for millions in "damage".

They have been using the media and sockpuppet social media accounts to push the narrative that the protestors are terrorists and anarchist-communists out to destabilise the country and grab power. It's working. Student leaders, members of the clergy, union leaders are being arrested and detained without charge, and theyve been hunting down the people who occupied the government buildings and arresting them, citing theft and vandalism. We are of course not taking any of this lying down, but now that the fuel and gas situation has eased somewhat under a rationing system, people are distracted trying to survive and the protests no longer have anywhere near the same thrust and power.

The proposed 23rd Amendment that was supposed to remove the executive powers of the President is shaping up to be as much of a joke as 22A was back in June. The attempts to form an All-Party Interim Government are also failing because the whole point of an interim government is calling elections as soon as possible, which Ranil never will, and the Opposition parties rightfully don't want to subject themselves to this asshole's authoritarian pro-Rajapaksa agenda.

And it is a Rajapaksa agenda. His chief goal is to protect the government party and the Rajapaksas and maybe even make the Rajapaksas look like the kinder alternative to pave the way for Gota to come back and the Rajapaksa scion Namal to make his Presidential bid in '24. It's why we're calling him Ranil Rajapaksa.

Things are so fucking bleak and dire that I stopped following the news or even going on Twitter because I become suicidal whenever I do. So I'm basically just looking after my cats, reading comics and trying to figure out reasons to keep living in this unending hellworld. I don't know the details or specifics of what's going on anymore, and this is the first time in a long time I've been able to bring myself to talk about it. The one thing I'm hanging onto is that so far, the protests have been driven by the sheer incompetence and greed of the government. Part of the incompetence is not understanding how far past endurance you can push people before they snap. Last time also, after the protests plateaued in May, we ended up storming the Presidential Mansion and Secretariat by July because they massively fucked up the opportunity to calm people down. For my part at least, I have no faith in people, but I do have faith in the ability of these power hungry bastards to dig their own graves. Question is how many of us they'll drag down with them.

I may not be good at doing much with activism cause I'm still getting my own shit together, but I'll tell you I remember stuff

Slips my mind more than I like, but I don't forget what's happened to Iranians, to Syrians, I don't forget the Hong Kong protests

I remember how it was, I refuse to follow a new narrative when I was there watching across an ocean

As an American I think I have an obligation to support people fighting for their freedom... kinda one of the things about the American identity that's supposed to mean something, the idea you're supposed to support everyone everywhere in being able to choose how to live their life

So I won't forget what the Iranian government's done, I won't ever let them pretend to be moral after I watched them with blood on their hands, their so called morality police brutalizing people just trying to live, and then fighting to be free

I may not be able to do much, probably don't do as much as I could or should, but I'll never forget and when it's called for I'll never forgive either

Can't follow all the horror in the world, hell, I can hardly keep up with Haiti or Sudan who both deserve support

But I do pay attention, I do see some of what happens, I won't forget and I won't let people feed me a new version of what I've seen

Don't mess with the Bilderberg lady

At least 100 Israelis have been arrested for social media posts supporting Palestinians in Gaza and 70 remain in detention, according to a legal advocacy group in the country. Adalah, which represents Arab Israelis in human rights cases, said the arrests are part of an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of expression in Israel. “We’re seeing things we didn’t see before,” Adi Mansour, an attorney in Adalah’s civil rights unit, said in an interview. “There’s a change in the perception of what is allowed and what is prevented.”

[...]

Israel Police posted a video to its Arabic TikTok account Tuesday in which the police commissioner said that he would not allow demonstrations in support of Palestinians.  “Anyone who wishes to show solidarity and support Gaza is invited to board the buses heading there now,” Yaakov Shabtai, the commissioner, said, according to the video’s caption.

'Yet Sunak’s major U-turn on the government’s climate commitments signified a new shift within the Conservative party: delayed timelines. No longer is this government just not doing enough in terms of policy; it’s now actively choosing to defer deadlines set by previous governments.'

After Cop28, know this: Sunak and his rightwing allies around the world have no interest in saving our planet | Diyora Shadijanova | The Guardian

"Where do you think my grandmother spent the Second World War?"

"Adam Broomberg, a prominent Jewish artist and Berlin-based photographer, asked this of the police after they grabbed him by the neck, threw him to the ground, beat him on the back then led him away in handcuffs."

(later in the article...)

"The justification for a pre-emptive ban on a child-friendly afternoon action to hold up watermelons, the fruit associated with Palestine, would almost be comedic if it weren’t quite so cynical—’antisemitic watermelons’. On Nakba Day itself, police vigilance was so extreme that police at one point stopped people from dancing the dabke on the basis that this traditional Palestinian dance potentially amounts to ‘political expression.’ All literature about BDS and any flyer containing the word ‘Nakba’ was seized."