In a world built by plutocrats, the powerful are protected while vengeful laws silence their critics | George Monbiot

In the UK and around the world, those who challenge rich corporations are being hounded and crushed with ever-more inventive penalties

Why are peaceful protesters treated like terrorists, while actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law? Why, in the UK, can you now potentially receive a longer sentence for public nuisance" - non-violent civil disobedience - than for rape or manslaughter? Why are ordinary criminals being released early to make space in overcrowded prisons, only for the space to be refilled with political prisoners: people trying peacefully to defend the habitable planet?

There's a simple explanation. It was clearly expressed by a former analyst at the US Department of Homeland Security. You don't have a bunch of companies coming forward saying: I wish you'd do something about these rightwing extremists.'" The disproportionate policing of environmental protest, the new offences and extreme sentences, the campaigns of extrajudicial persecution by governments around the world are not, as politicians constantly assure us, designed to protect society. They're a response to corporate lobbying.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist