The artwork below appeared on the wall of the Royal Courts of Justice after almost 900 demonstrators were arrested last Saturday (in similar fashion the 500 I reported on the week before). Banksy confirmed it was his handiwork on Instagram

Responding to Banksy’s work, a spokesperson for campaign group Defend Our Juries, which organised Saturday’s rally, said it “powerfully depicts the brutality unleashed by Yvette Cooper on protesters by proscribing Palestine Action”.

They said: “When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent, it strengthens it.”

“As Banksy’s artwork shows, the state can try to strip away our civil liberties, but we are too many in number and our resolve to stand against injustice cannot be beaten – our movement against the ban is unstoppable and growing every day.”

The artwork was scrubbed off within about 48 hours (see above), as it was inevitably going to be, being on a listed building, but the symbolism of its removal, on top of the symbolism of the artwork itself, strongly resonates with people, like myself, concerned about the attempts to quash and silence dissent in this country right now.

Starmer and his ‘starmtrooper’ cabinet colleagues have become prone to misusing legislation to impose an Orwellian agenda of silencing grassroots opinion. They cut their teeth first by thoroughly purging and/or silencing the left wing of his own party through suspension and expulsions on trumped up charges. The extent of this is that once lifelong Labour Party members are now seeking to rehome what were once that party’s core socialist values and defence of the working classes and disadvantaged in an altogether new party of the left (provisionally named ‘Your Party’). This leaves Starmer’s Labour Party with a moral vacuum at its centre which allows it to be complicit in the Zionist atrocities being committed in Gaza and beyond as it prostitutes itself to Zionist and related corporate interests.

Thus, it was able to distort its definition of terrorism to actively support the terrorist state of Israel but proscribe as terrorists UK citizens so appalled at the UK’s complicity in genocide that it dared to damaged RAF property and daub blood red paint on some war planes.

As I’ve reported before, this re-defining of ‘terrorism’ has been criticised and condemned by many, most notably by Volker Turk (UN’s high commissioner on human rights). I would like to believe that Yvette Cooper has subsequently been removed as Home Secretary for growing tired of defending this indefensible authoritarianism.

Starmer’s mob have created a whole raft of new opportunities to silence dissenting voices his Online Safety Act. Superficially, nobody can really argue with an objective of keeping children safe from exploitation and harm online. But is this the only objective of this legislation?

While some will argue that it is “making the internet safer”, it is also destroying hundreds, if not thousands of smaller online communities that simply cannot bear the cost of compliance. This includes registering a “senior person” with Ofcom who will be held accountable should Ofcom decide your site isn’t safe enough. It also means that moderation teams need to be fully staffed with quick response times if bad (loosely defined) content is found on the site. On top of that, sites need to take proactive measures to protect children. Failure to comply can lead to fines of millions of pounds.

Not surprisingly, many law-abiding forum hosts have simply shut down. This from LFGSS, a small one-person passion project for bikers in London:

“We’re done… we fall firmly into scope, and I have no way to dodge it. The act is too broad, and it doesn’t matter that there’s never been an instance of any of the proclaimed things that this act protects adults, children and vulnerable people from… the very broad language and the fact that I’m based in the UK means we’re covered.

The act simply does not care that this site and platform is run by an individual, and that I do so philanthropically without any profit motive (typically losing money), nor that the site exists to reduce social loneliness, reduce suicide rates, help build meaningful communities that enrich life.

The act only cares that is it “linked to the UK” (by me being involved as a UK native and resident, by you being a UK based user), and that users can talk to other users… that’s it, that’s the scope.

I can’t afford what is likely tens of thousands to go through all the legal hoops here over a prolonged period of time, the site itself barely gets a few hundred in donations each month and costs a little more to run… this is not a venture that can afford compliance costs… and if we did, what remains is a disproportionately high personal liability for me, and one that could easily be weaponised by disgruntled people who are banned for their egregious behaviour (in the years running fora I’ve been signed up to porn sites, stalked IRL and online, subject to death threats, had fake copyright takedown notices, an attempt to delete the domain name with ICANN… all from those whom I’ve moderated to protect community members)… I do not see an alternative to shuttering it.”

Of course, the big players can carry these costs and will benefit from losing the competition with myriads of small platforms. And the truly nasty, exploitative operators will either ignore the law or find loopholes. It’s naïve in the extreme to think compulsive, sick abusers will pack it in simply because one channel of operation has become trickier.

But look how easy it is now for government to closedown dissenting voices. Are we safer or in more danger now that vandals can be convicted as terrorists? Is the internet really safer now that any small community can be closed down as a potential refuge for abusers?