Benedict Edwards

It entirely depends why they did it. Crime is what you do. Terrorism is why you do it.

Not to mention the two police and one employee injured in the Thale attack. This isn’t just criminal damage, they were accused of damage with intent.

Aah you’re one of those people who thinks the government and companies aren’t made up of people.

Crime is defined by what you do. Terrorism is defined by why you do it.

I don’t think you’d bend over this hard to defend an equivalent right wing group.

Fine, but now you're arguing for collateral damage. You've stopped arguing that violence is wrong (that Palestine Action would never do something like that) - now you're now arguing their violence is fine, but only if its only *inadvertently* hurting people. Fine, but where's the moral high ground?

Feels like Para 5.6 covers that, and the remaining paragraphs at least indicate one potential direction of travel.

Do you think we should wait until organisations like this actually kill someone before proscribing them? Would you feel the same about a neo-Nazi group doing the same kinds of things?

I'm completely on the side of the Palestinian people right up to the point where you feel it necessary to throw Jewish people under the bus as well.

I've loved Bob Vylan for years but Death To The IDF and From The River To The Sea are both antisemitic statements, and he shouldn't have said them.

The government HAS told us. Paras 5.2 to 5.8.

www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/80...

It's aligned with the United Nations General Assembly definition as shared December 1994 (GA Res. 49/60):

They are both proscribed terrorist organisations according to the UK government. You may think that's an overreach, and you're entitled to it. But they are clearly comparable in this sense.

Terrorism is "the use or threat of violence, designed to influence governments, intimidate the public, or advance a political, religious, racial, or ideological cause".

Sounds like it's on the money to me.

You accuse me of old news then link to a story from 2008? Come on now.

Will you accept they're at least terrorist adjacent if they're found guilty of attacking a policewoman with a sledgehammer while committing criminal damage for political reasons?

This is beneath you, Paul. We are talking about whether an *organisation* has taken part in acts of terrorism.

Not every Al Qaeda member flew planes into buildings, but they are all members of a proscribed organisation which took part in acts of terrorism and would therefore be subject to arrest.

Police officer hit with sledgehammer near Bristol Police say officers seized sledgehammers, axes, whips and other homemade weapons.

They attacked a policewoman with a sledgehammer. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I’ll hit YOUR growth button

I've heard there were a pair of cords
That Sultans wore, and it Pinged the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the gormless gits
The greebos stomp, the moshers lift
The basin haircut singing Where’s me jumper
Where's me jumper
Where's me jumper
Where's me jumper

We've been re-watching Alan Partridge recently. This reads irresistibly like one of his on air rambles.

I couldn't get to the end of the piece. Is the last line 'wait a minute where am I'?

Please point me out to where I said they didn’t suffer from racism but ‘prejudice, akin to that faced by redheads’ and I’ll apologise.

You’re pretending to be angrier at me for inadvertent exclusion through shorthand than you are at someone who effectively denied the holocaust.

It’s absurd.

She DID clarify her comments. She also - rightly imo - apologised for them. Then last week she said she had 'no regrets' about saying them.

You can share your lived experience without throwing Jewish and Traveller people under the bus. Abbott didn't.

Racism clearly takes different forms.

That does not mean Jewish people don't suffer from racism. That's what Abbott said and it is indefensible.

That doesn't seem to stop you trying though. Goodbye.

That's uncontentious, but it's not what she said. She said Jewish people didn't suffer from racism but instead suffered prejudice. Now she's said she has 'no regrets' over those comments.

It's the 'no regrets' she's been suspended for, not the clarification of her uncontentious remarks.

Contrary to popular belief, that hypocrisy does not mean the Labour Party is now obliged to accept racism from its MPs as a matter of course.

And while I found the island of strangers speech gross, it is many orders of magnitude less gross than telling Jewish people they don't experience racism.

She apologised for it at the time and got the whip restored.

By saying she had 'no regrets' about it now, she has had the whip removed.

You might disagree with the decision but I think that's consistent.

The only cynical thing about this story is Abbott's (now clearly obvious) non apology.

UK's Labour suspends Diane Abbott for saying Jews experience prejudice, not racism Britain's main opposition Labour Party has suspended high-profile lawmaker Diane Abbott over a letter she wrote in which she said the prejudice experienced by Jewish people was similar to, but not the same as, racism.

She's suspended NOW for saying that she didn't regret her comments THEN.

Deeply disingenuous to pretend the two incidents are unrelated.

www.reuters.com/world/europe...

She literally said Irish, Jewish, and Traveller people don’t suffer from racism but instead faced prejudice - like a ginger person might.

This is indefensible stuff Owen.

There was a girl there who I think would’ve come out as non binary if she hadn’t taken her own life a few years later.

There were plenty of trans people around at that time tho. That’s why the equality act et al was passed and included trans people under its protections.

I was in college in 1993 and we learned about the sex / gender distinction in psychology a levels. It was entry level stuff even then.

The only modern fad is the reactionary moral panic against trans people. 40 years back they were just living their lives.

We can't put wind farms in Dagenham. That's Mr Bigstuff country.

Fact Check: David Attenborough wrongly linked to false online claim about 'black and red ants in a jar'

Absolute nonsense

today.rtl.lu/news/fact-ch...

Absolutely. The positions of 'sex and gender are distinct' and 'there's no such thing as gender' are completely incompatible. I was hoping it might've been possible to bring them to that realisation but they've blocked me now.

It was the medically proven efficacy of gender reassignment which led to dysphoria's removal from the DSM, so your comparison of it with an actual mental disorder is not just mean, its unscientific.

Society hasn't gone nuts - just the anti-science part.

What's so offensive about the word 'cis'?