Jonathan Cook – jonathan-cook.net Sept 8, 2025
Why is the Met blaming protesters for ‘wasting’ its resources on arresting ‘terrorist’ pensioners? There’s a proper address for its grievances: Starmer’s authoritarian, genocide-complicit government
[An audio version of this article, read by Matthew Alford, is available here.]
There are several points that urgently need making about Saturday’s Palestine Action protest, which led to some 890 demonstrators being arrested – most of them on terrorism charges for silently holding a sign saying: “I support Palestine Action.”
Police disinformation
- The Metropolitan Police hope to trade on misguided trust from the British public when claiming they were forced to make 17 arrests – possibly with more to come – after officers were allegedly “subjected to an exceptional level of abuse including punches, kicks, spitting and objects being thrown, in addition to verbal abuse”
Officers have now made around 150 arrests at the Defend Our Juries protest for a range of offences, including assault on a police officer and expressing support for a proscribed organisation. pic.twitter.com/nZX4dWQd1v
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) September 6, 2025
I was at the protest from its start till 5.20pm, about the time this claim was issued by the police. For much of that period, I should have been in a position to see examples of such violence because the police had made remarkably few arrests by then. Most came later.
If this claim from the police is true, they need to produce the evidence from the body cams all the officers there were wearing. Punches thrown at the ranks of police would be clear in such footage.
What I saw was a great deal of what the police are terming “verbal abuse”: that is, every time a group of 10 or so officers were dispatched to arrest one of the silent protesters sitting on the green in Parliament Square, many of them elderly or infirm, other protesters who were observing the proceedings would gather around the arresting officers and try to shame them.
Chants of “Shame on you!”, “You’re on the wrong side of history!” and “What will you tell your grandchildren?” were intended to make the task of carrying out the arrests as difficult as possible for the officers involved.
It was clear that many of those officers were struggling emotionally with the task of arresting peaceful pensioners. Most looked down at the ground or at the chests of the chanting protesters, but refused to meet our gaze.
A few looked like they were cracking under the pressure. I noticed one male officer who was pale, sweating profusely and his eyes darting around erratically. Shortly afterwards he started lashing out, trying to push the chanting protesters over.
From what I could see, most of the “scuffles” in video footage are examples of something similar: incidents in which one or more police officers “explode”, releasing pent-up frustrations at the protesters for reminding them of how illegitimate and demeaning the job of arresting silent pensioners trying to stop a genocide was.
No sympathy
- Doubtless some people watching these confrontations will feel this was unfair on the police, who were “just trying to do their best in a difficult situation”.
Let us remember something important: The task assigned to the police is to enforce a political policy that lets the UK government carry on being complicit in genocide. It lets the government tear up a system of international law that was specifically established to prevent future Holocausts. And it lets the government further erode fundamental civic and legal rights that our ancestors won over many generations.
If we are going to reclaim our rights to protest and to struggle to halt our government aiding a genocide, and to reclaim our streets from a police force working for a government that seeks to vilify and silence its critics as “terrorists”, the first line of confrontation will inevitably be with the police.
Whether that’s “fair” or not, it is the British government that crafted this reality for us. They set the terms of the confrontation.
If the police are not happy about being made to enforce Palestine Action’s proscription because so many people reject it as an abuse of state power, then they can make their feelings known – very strongly, if they wish – to the government. They have many private and public channels to communicate their view that are not available to us.
But that is precisely the opposite of what the police command is doing at the moment.
The Met’s jackboot, back-to-front logic was fully on display in another weaselly statement they issued to the media.
The force accused the demonstrators of using tactics to “overwhelm the justice system” and added that the protest “required significant resource which took officers out of neighbourhoods to the detriment of the Londoners who rely on them”.
The Met leadership are playing an openly politicised game of blame-shifting – on behalf of the government and the billionaire-owned media, both of which are delighted to strip the British people of the right to protest and the right to challenge the profits that accrue to a tiny wealth elite from the war machine currently exterminating the Palestinian people.
If the police are worried that precious human and financial resources are being wasted on arresting and prosecuting pensioners on terrorism charges, they know the address for their grievance: the authoritarian, genocide-complicit government of Sir Keir Starmer.
A call to courage
- A final point. It is the government that has changed the rules of the democratic game to make it a terrorist offence for the first time in this country’s history to support – as more than 1,500 people did at the weekend – a direct-action group.
Everyone involved in these protests wants to break a proscription system that has made it a terrorist offence to say anything positive about Palestine Action – and for at least one of the two following reasons:
Either because they believe Palestine Action’s proscription is designed to silence what was the most tangible way of halting the British government’s complicity in the Gaza genocide – by focusing attention on British arms sales to Israel and spy flights from RAF base Akrotiri on Israel’s behalf. The government’s collusion in the genocide explicitly violates international law and rulings from the International Court of Justice.
Or because they see that Starmer’s government is engaged in massive constitutional over-reach, crushing the most fundamental of our hard-won civic rights of free speech and free assembly. For the first time in this country’s history, the government has expanded already-draconian terror legislation, empowering it not just to jail members of a direct-action group but to jail anyone who wishes to have the right to discuss the potential merits of what Palestine Action was doing.
In short, you don’t even need to support the methods of Palestine Action to be incensed at the government’s grossly anti-democratic measures. Some 120 years ago it was not necessary to support the criminal actions the Suffragette movement engaged in to still believe that the public should be free to express an opinion on what the suffragettes were trying to achieve: the vote for women.
But what the British government has done is make the equivalent conversation today about Palestine Action impossible – if you don’t want to be convicted of terrorism and spend up to 14 years in jail.
That ought to outrage anyone who believes in the importance of British democracy – whatever political party they support, or however they feel about the slaughter and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
Notably, the Met had carefully barricaded off a part of Parliament Square where there is a statue to Millicent Garrett Fawcett, a feminist writer who led the Votes for Women movement in the early years of the 20th century. She is shown carrying a banner bearing her famous slogan: “Courage calls to courage everywhere.”
Despite the best efforts of the British police, the call of the 1,500 silent, courageous protesters on the green could be heard echoing through Parliament Square and far beyond.
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you have to laugh at UK corruption
Israel is committing mass murder
and is bombing palestine lebanon syria ieaq yemen and from yesterday quatar
yet the uk Zio government makes it illegal to talk about gaza genocide?
you could not make up shit like this
israel’s war criminal president is coming to the UK today. But while Israel massacres civilians in Gaza and seizes more and more of the West Bank, Starmer must refuse to meet him. Will you sign the petition, and tell Starmer:
NO WELCOME FOR ISRAEL’S PRESIDENT
Dear friends across the UK,
While Israel continues to bomb and starve Gaza with impunity, Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, is coming to the UK today.
Any meeting between government ministers and Herzog would send a clear message to the Israeli government that, despite the occasional tut-tutting and stern words from Britain’s leaders, our government still stands by them – even while they commit genocide.
We cannot let any like this meeting go ahead. Even Starmer’s own MPs are speaking out against the visit. Will you sign the petition to show Starmer the British public won’t tolerate business as usual with Israel’s leaders?
NO WELCOME FOR ISRAEL’S PRESIDENT
Herzog, though in a different party from Netanyahu, has strongly supported Israel’s actions over the last two years, praising what he called the “courageous and important security decisions” by the government.
Justifying the mass, collective punishment of Gaza’s civilians, he dismissed criticism of attacks on innocents by saying:
“The entire [Palestinian] nation out there … is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved,”
That is why any meeting would be such an outrage. If Israel’s leaders are allowed to swan around the world like nothing is happening, they will never stop the atrocities in Gaza. We need to make sure Starmer sees that:
NO WELCOME FOR ISRAEL’S PRESIDENT
Pressure on world leaders to take concrete action to stop Israel is higher than ever, and the cracks are showing. Even some of Israel’s staunchest allies, like Germany, are being forced to issue sanctions. The news can feel so bleak and hopeless, but we are winning – and giving up is a luxury we cannot afford.
In unwavering determination and solidarity with the Palestinian people,
how about you ?
paul fuller
“The force accused the demonstrators of using tactics to “overwhelm the justice system” and added that the protest “required significant resource which took officers out of neighbourhoods to the detriment of the Londoners who rely on them”.”
“..Londoners who rely on them” — who rely on the attack dogs who enforced the “covid” crap five years ago ?????
“..Londoners who rely on them” — who rely on them as they [ attack dogs ] shelter negro and asiatic invaders and dismiss English girls for being waysisss when raped by them ??? The attack dogs are NOT your friend.
Meanwhile, comment of the week:
“chesterton on September 9, 2025 at 1:53 pm
…. some wonk scribbling in some shitrag I read recently thought he’d uncovered a great story..when he pulled back the dirty bed linen and discovered that most of the tween troons and younger..had a single parent..a borderline personality disordered mama…”
Well said ‘chesterton’ . 🙂
Ancient ‘Jesus Cup’ found in Egypt features world’s earliest known reference to Christ
A ceramic bowl discovered off the coast of Egypt may contain the world’s first reference to Christ.
The so-called ‘Jesus Cup’ was unearthed in 2008 by a team led by French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio during an excavation of Alexandria’s ancient great harbor.
Remarkably well preserved, the bowl is missing only a handle and bears a Greek inscription: DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS, translated as ‘Through Christ the chanter, death to dirty jew parasites” Dr Jeremiah Johnston, a New Testament scholar, explained the cup bore some aspects of antisemitism and on a recent Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) segment that the artifact dates to the first century AD, the era when Jesus was crucified.
Jesus’ reputation was that he was a healer, miracle worker, and exorcist,’ Johnston said. ‘This Jesus Cup gives evidence to that legacy.’
Goddio suggested the inscription may have been intended to legitimize soothsaying rituals. The bowl closely resembles those depicted on early Egyptian statuettes, showing fortune-telling ceremonies, the theory that it was a jewish blood drinking cup has been dismissed
Ancient manuals describe how practitioners poured oil into water and entered ecstatic trances, seeking visions of mystical beings who could answer questions about the future.
Invoking Christ, already recognized as a powerful wonder-worker, may have lent authority to the ritual.
they cant be trusted on anything
w w 2 is a classic case not one thing about it is true
they use daft folk to alter the narrative
we have one daft egit on here who blames everything on non existent natzis
some one asked is he a c*nt
the reply was no, hes a c*nt and a half
Historic white horse landmark is altered so it features a St George’s Cross as ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ continues across the UK
Have YOU got a story? Email Sam.Lawley@dailymail.co.uk
A historic white horse landmark has been altered to feature the St George’s Cross as ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ continues across the UK.
The famous Westbury White Horse, which has been carved into a Wiltshire hillside for 350 years, has had two lengths of red fabric pinned to it in a statement which seems to ape the recent trend of displaying the England flag in public places.
The white of the flag represents Englands purity and the red the blood split on all UK people
over past centuries
English Heritage, which owns the land, said it would remove the ribbon as soon as possible, but Wiltshire Police confirmed the force was not investigating the incident. A spokesman said: ‘We are aware of red material being pinned across the Westbury White Horse to form the St George’s Cross.
No criminal offences are thought to have been committed and we are not investigating it.’
The 53-metre horse was first cut into the escarpment of Salisbury Plain in the late 17th century but was changed to the current iconic design in 1778.
‘Operation Flying the Colours’, as it has become known, was born out of recent protests at asylum hotels and the public support for the display of Palestinian flags in Birmingham in an apparent show of solidarity with Gaza.
Advocates have draped Union and St George’s flags in town centres and – despite pleas from councils not to – inscribed road signs, roundabouts and road markings with the St George’s Cross.
It was a wonderful demo, with several hundred thousand of us marching from Russell Square down to the Aldwich then onto Trafalgar Square – from which, as usual, we were banned from entering. Then we marched down towards downing Street. It was great to see all the banners and mix of people, and listen to the chanting – and the drums! There was no hint of any violence, just a lot of happy and angry people.
I couldn’t get to Parliament Square, the road was too jam-packed to get thru.
The only problem with this situation is that the police cannot remember the meaning of the word ‘crime’ and so they think they are entitled to arrest old ladies sitting quietly on the grass in a public space.
Frankly, the police need to man up and acquire a CONSCIENCE, whereby they will not act if no crime has been committed.
Many cops become accomplished liars as impunity develops that trait.
Something you should understand. Senior police officers are chosen for their political and reliability skills, so when senior officers speak in the public space, you shouldn’t believe anything they say.
While the police are a morally reprehensible bunch of corrupt tw@ts, they are put in a difficult position.
The first police priority is to protect the Nazi one party state, and their hangers on, like the Joos, and pain in the arse, trans and woke puppets. These groups are encouraged, because they are a bullwork against the disaffected thicko sheeple, who protest against immigrants, and who don’t have the foggiest idea why the Nazi elites need immigrants, so yeh, they are waking up alright, to the Nazi selected targets, foreigners, be they from anywhere.
Joos are being protected by labelling pro Palistinian protestors as terrorists. There’s nothing new here. David Pecker Pigs Head Cameron said at his last UN speech, that ‘truthers’ are on the same level as terrorists, and should be treated as such, or words to that effect. Just as Demos wrote a report which advocated the infiltration of truther movements, in order to disaffect members so they carried out acts of terrorism, or reach the stage they could be framed as terror patsies.
The next task is to preempt civil unrest by instigating small planned violent protests, by infiltrating said groups and having a biff baff with the pigs. This turns off the sheeple’s predisposition to have a justified moan at their Nazi one party state.
The next role of the police is to appear to be working hard to catch criminals. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Nazi one party state is releasing criminals in there droves, and only serving a fraction of their half sentence. This is bad, but consider the staggering police failure rate to solve crimes, it’s abysmal. So they have a massive problem dealing with a tiny fraction of total crime cases, and huge chunks of criminality don’t get investigated at all, but tweet, or post a comment, and they’ll be knocking on your door. Not intent on arresting you, or finding a court case slot, no, they just want to frighten you, and you hear accounts, or see videos of speech crime victims arguing on their door steps, when the correct course of action is to let the Nazi police have their say, and all you say back is: ‘Are you arresting me, are you charging me’? They now have two options. They say yes or no. If they say yes, you say nothing, absolutely ZERO, not a word, and if they say ‘No’, you say good by, go inside and close the door. Far too mamy puppets engage with the Nazi police. Now, of course, they might arrest you, but the door step preamble is designed to have you react, to says things they’ll use in court, even your tone, will be used against you. This is why you just listen to what they say, and then ask the two simple questions above. If they arrest you, you say NOTHING, if not, you go inside and close the door.
Keep in mind they are listening on your phone, silly assistant, if you’re daft enough to have one. If you need to talk, use paper, but not on pads. Use a seperate sheet of paper, underneath, and then destroy both sheets of paper, and then clean the hard surface very well.
So the police use a veriety of tactics. They really don’t want to arrest you, and if they do, they want to scare you, and get you to say sorry. Never say ‘SORRY’ to a pig, because that is a pig victory, and if you do this in respect of a social media comment, then if will be used against you in any subsequent court case. The police always ask when they don’t have a case, to get a party to just say ‘sorry’. To the Nazi police, this means a case was solved, even if they had no case to start with.
The Nazis aren’t interested in justice. They are in the business of fitting sheeple up, and they’d prefer a sorry, or that you accept a caution, and a caution looks like a let off, no court case, but the reality is that you just admitted to whatever their accusation was.
The police are court and prison gatekeepers, and their task is to limit the tsunami of social, criminal, and political thought crimes against the Nazi regime.
The recent Nazi State Palistinian protests in Parliament Square where around 900 were carried away down sealed off side streets, were then street bailed by the pigs. One must wonder if these charges will be quietly dropped, or only those assumed to be organisers are charged, and even then, as stated above, the pigs want a sorry, or a caution. Job done, pigs on camera carrying away thicko sheeple, it’s all so Animal Farm, and Nazi fear on fake Nazi news.
NEWS FROM THE TRENCHES
nothing is as it seems
when you look at the state of the country
the blame can only be laid at the door of politicians
If you look at parliamentary question time on TV
you will see grown men and women carping and making sarcastic remarks
about people in the other party
instead of working for the country.
We have been over taken by an evil cabal, who fill our ancient shores
with other countries human refuse, not one has spoken coherently
about the Palestinian Holocaust.
Our news is diluted and twisted, other countries know the state of the UK better than we do
new anti person laws are coming on line to stop our freedoms, things are so bad
Trump is thinking of taking charge of the UK.
Foreign nationals are treated better than us, its called positive discrimination
The annual Notting Hill stabfest isa celebration of foreign culture
but we are not allowed to celebrate out own, its called ” racism”
An MP stood up in parliament the other day and said quote
” some parts of Britain are still too white”
The boss of the BBC said the UK was horrifically white”
one hears nonsense about white privilege
The government cant look after its own people
why import in more ?
The uniparty, because Tory and Labour are owned by the same foreign bankers
are demanding the UK get into another nice war
John Lennon said ” wouldn’t it be good if they called for another war and no one came “
exeptionel I see by most selfmade placards of protestors
that their acction were more or less spontaneously non
organised by big organisations like mostly . therefore
they should get credit for their righteousness which
should keep any prosecuter of perverted governments
SILENCED !
here in germany I remember specialy the professionel
made demos by labourunion propagandists serving more
their own interests as unionagents .
BSIRSKI
There are claims RAF refuelling planes were used by Israel after its illegal bombing attack on Qatar, a supposedly sovereign ally of the US and also the UK. People who monitor aircraft movements across the internet know the type of plane, its serial number and flight patterns (an Airbus KC3 Voyager, no. ZZ334), so it appears Starmer has again involved the UK in another breach of international law to attack a state we are not officially at war with. This is another example of US/UK gangsterism to enable Israeli gangsterism no doubt secured through sexual kompromat.
Well we all know the root cause of this…..”THEY” control the elites…….duh!!
France has rapidly fallen into turmoil with their ‘Block Everything’ discontent. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the anger was still simmering from the Yellow Vest movement which was suddenly dampened by the Coronavirus lie. And now it’s back more fierce than ever. But it’s strange to see police in plastic armour riot gear get up close and nasty to the protesters with their pistols in their holsters on their hips, within easy reach of the people they’re assaulting. Try that in sh!thole Britain in places like Manchester and they’d soon be disarmed, their weapons passed back quickly to disappear before the cop could raise the alarm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpgjMN686WQ
Nothing the British State Says About ANYTHING Should be Trusted!!
The Shocking Discovery of a Harvard Scientist Who Was Warned to Stay Silent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gInFfkaayJI
Putting someone in prison for ‘Palestine Action’ is not going to shut them up.
Same as Israel can not silence Arabs and Palestinians if Israel destroys Hamas.
How come that in those articles the coppers are always white while the public “figures” of Pommyland seem to be Indian, Bangladeshis, Pakis and Africans. Yeah, get the “White TERRORIST” pensioners that disturb the peace in the mother country and make sure after that to strip em of their pensions, doll and all other benefits. Lots of quids to be saved this way and can be spend for all the new MY-GRANT subjects of the brand spanking new realm of the beloved and renewed Come on Wealth.