Police protect Barclays investments in death against symbols of death
Police Scotland seem to be lining up with Barclays Bank to prevent political activity on a public street against Barclays' $25m investments in arms giant Raytheon. Barclays profits from military technology that Israel uses to carry out its massacres of Palestinians as part of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Last Saturday (March 5th) Police Scotland officers on Princes Street threatened to arrest SPSC members, although the officers seemed to be scrabbling to identify any crime being committed that could conceivably justify an arrest of peaceful protestors on a public street, leafletting the public as they have been doing now for some weeks. Ludicrously, the officers finally claimed the 'grim reapers' representation of Barclays bloody investments had to go because they might frighten young children!
This heavy-handedness follows lobbying of Police Scotland and Scottish Government Ministers by pro-Israel groups to protect Israel from challenge by treating support for Palestinian rights and opposition to Israeli crimes as (leading to) 'anti-Semitism'.
Officers initially threatened to arrest the SPSC members for 'obstruction' but conceded when it was pointed out that there was and had been no obstruction. Then arrest threats were repeated on the basis that a child could be frightened by the symbols of death on the public street to either side of the Barclays door. Have any arrests ever been made of party-goers on Halloween who might possibly frighten a sensitive child? Or the guides on the incessant ghost tours assembling on the Royal Mile?
To be clear, we have been and will remain outside Barclays because the trail of culpability from Israel's massacre of children in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine leads directly to those at the top of the bank who direct investments and profit from such mass killing. 
The majority of Palestinian children in Gaza are being deliberately traumatised by Israeli sonic boom attacks, massacred with weapons that Barclays invests in purely for profit. Money from childrens blood, trauma, shattered bodies, destroyed homes and schools. The suits who profit from such wanton killing are even worse than the brutes who actually use the fruits of Barclays investments to destroy the Palestinian human beings. They profit from broken Palestinian bodies, the deliberate killing of Palestinian children, then go home to kiss their own children "Good night" after a foul days work.
Tell Barclays to stop profiting from the massacre of Palestinians!
Tell Police Scotland not to prevent peaceful public protests!
Help us to defend our - and your - right to public protest
Saturdays 11am - 1pm
Barclays Bank on Princes Street
(opposite Waverly Station)
SPSC members willl be outside Barclays bank on Princes Street as usual this Saturday. Please support the protest to ratchet up the public pressure on Barclays to end its money-making from this filthy trade.
Please post here, pm, email edinburgh@scottishpsc.org.uk or text 07986 804 298 to defend our rights to public protest.
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Edinburgh Branch
8 March 2016