Scrutable

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... SApp_Other

Seems like this just came from one force in the SE, but putting Extinction Rebellion alongside National Action and al-Muhajiroun seems at best utterly misguided.

Vertigowooyay wrote: Fri Jan 10, 2020 6:18 pm https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... SApp_Other

Seems like this just came from one force in the SE, but putting Extinction Rebellion alongside National Action and al-Muhajiroun seems at best utterly misguided.

It depends on whether you're only interested in public order, rather than reality.

So basically by helping run our local XR families group, I'm actively recruiting children into domestic extremism!

That said I ran into a police spy when I was doing subversive activities such as growing vegetables and making crumbles for local charities.

What a ridiculous story - I mean the document, not the reporting. The police can report on how much the protests cost them, but as long as they’re peaceful that is simply their job isn’t it? If they are pulling police away from other matters then that increases the impetus for politicians to actually act on stuff.

That said the Guardian make a point of the document being tagged as OFFICIAL when actually that is the lowest level of classification above PUBLIC. Any document not intended for broadcast to the public but not containing anything particularly sensitive will be labelled OFFICIAL.

Any action group that starts to use rune like symbols to identify themselves, runs the risk of being identified with groups doing the same who are a risk to public safety. I'm not saying it's right, just a natural association in some people's minds. By "some people" I mean some ranking police officers.

Boustrophedon wrote: Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:59 pm Any action group that starts to use rune like symbols to identify themselves, runs the risk of being identified with groups doing the same who are a risk to public safety. I'm not saying it's right, just a natural association in some people's minds. By "some people" I mean some ranking police officers.

ER protests absolutely have risked public safety, which is fine. Effective protests generally do get a bit dangerous, because otherwise they're too easy to ignore (e.g. all those million-strong marches in London about Iraq and brexit and stuff that were lauded for their lovely family-friendly atmosphere and achieved nothing. If you really want political change you've probably got to blow things up at some point.)

The police have a long track record of treating environmental activists as terrorists (which some may interpret as them seeing their role as maintaining the establishment, not supporting civil society). They're probably just annoyed that their spies aren't allowed to sleep with the school strikers.