Hypocritical attempts to define extremism
Louis Shawcross, Inns Court, Hillsborough, Co. Down, N. Ireland.
What an absolute farce that we have a Conservative Government making new definitions of extremism bringing in what people tweet and/or what people chant whilst protesting on the streets, when they, the same British Conservative Government, are selling arms to repressive regimes across the world and have actually recently joined the US in a bombing campaign.
You couldn't make it up! There are people now residing in British prisons for selling stickers. Now, I can't imagine any slogan on any sticker that comes anywhere close to the extremism taking place in Gaza.
In fact, even having a debate in the House of Commons seems beyond the realms of decency for large swathes of the Members of Parliament, but are happy selling arms to states across the world.
Is it not true that people are being blown to bits in Yemen and is it not also true the British Government is supporting Saudi Arabia in that conflict where people are being blown to bits?
And this form of extremism seems ‘not a problem’ in the course of mainstream thinking and commentary.
The British Government could be suffering from what’s called cognitive dissonance, but that would be giving it a distinction approaching respectability. A better term would be ‘extremist’, ironically.
The British Government seems more reluctant to displease the arms manufacturers and their shareholders rather than protecting innocent lives here and abroad and actually making inroads into banning war.
Imagine that. Imagine a British Government intent on banning war; but it’s these very convictions which are exactly what they seem to be wanting to label ‘extremist’. As I said before, you couldn’t make it up.
William Loneskie, Justice Park, Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire.
After Russia invaded Ukraine it was subject to hundreds of sanctions by NATO including the freezing of £300bn of Russian assets and the blowing up of its Russia-Germany gas pipelines.
Yet when Israel invaded Gaza, killed 30,000 people, mostly women and children, by bombing and shelling, destroyed much of the built environment, destroyed Gaza’s medical system, blockaded food and supplies resulting in starvation, fired randomly at will into crowds of Palestinians, used torture and degrading treatment among the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, NATO simply said: “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
CNN quotes American intelligence stating that more than 29,000 bombs have been dropped on Gaza.
Save the Children say that “nearly all children in Gaza are at imminent risk of famine”.
The EU’s foreign affairs leader states that starvation is being used as a weapon of war.
BBC Verify reports that Gazan doctors and medics were beaten and degraded by the Israeli military.
Israel should be placed under economic and military sanctions with immediate effect until they withdraw from Gaza and allow food, clean water, and medicines into this crowded enclave.