Iran has struck Israel.

previous preamble

The continuing fall of the remains of the British Empire is pretty entertaining from the outside: an archaic royal family that is seemingly being smote with disease by God itself for their past crimes; a navy that virtually no longer functions, ramming into foreign ports and under constant repair; and an economy that cannot seem to stop sputtering, fucked whether they're in the EU or outside it. Watching the impacts on people from the inside is a little more worrying, though.

A fifth of the population is in poverty, including nearly a third of all children. These figures have barely shifted since the Labour government in the early 2000s, aside from a decreasing poverty rate for pensioners. Actually, poverty hasn't substantially shifted since Margaret Thatcher. Before her, the poverty rate was around 14%, but her catastrophic policies caused a major increase, and poverty levels since then are still 50% higher than over 50 years ago, because neoliberal economic policy since then has not fundamentally changed. Parties and corporations have impoverished the usual vulnerable groups, such as large families, minority ethnic groups (including half of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households!) and disabled people. These differences are also regional, with the North more impoverished than the richer Southeast (but some of the poorest boroughs are in London, so it's a complex pattern).

With Corbyn's defeat in 2019 mere months before the pandemic began, the Labour Party shifted back towards the right, with left-wingers purged from the party if they did not kowtow to Keir Starmer. This leaves us with a situation where the only substantial difference between the two parties would be on social policy, but it goes without saying that economic policy is the overwhelming factor that determines if minorities can have a decent life. Worker-oriented movements since then have been largely not under the umbrella of major party leaderships, such as the Don't Pay movement in late 2022 that arose in the wake of dramatically rising energy prices where 3 million people vowed to not pay them (which did lead to results).

Most notably recently is the major upset in the constituency of Rochdale - the victory of George Galloway - who is the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, which describes itself as both socialist and socially conservative. This took place both in the context of aforementioned economic troubles, as well as anger over Israel's genocide of Gaza in the British population, especially in British Muslims. It remains to be seen how much of this is an isolated event, especially as Corbyn has, understandably, refused to collaborate with Galloway due to his socially conservative stances. The UK general election will be held at some point within the next 9 months or so, and might well be a shitshow depending on what happens domestically and geopolitically before then; parallels to the current American electoral shitshow with increasing anger over Biden are pretty apparent. The Conservatives are quite likely to lose given 14 years of uninspired rule if current polling is correct, but it truly is a race to the bottom.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is the United Kingdom! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


  • plinky [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    how come not a single left party in europe far away from russia makes an argument "nobody can attack us, fuck your defense spending". I can sort of get like baltics and poland, but why spanish or french parties (british are cursed by definition) not say we will spend 0 on defense, you can donate to our military through charity (form attached)

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      This is a widespread public opinion in Ireland btw, which is not part of NATO. About 50% disapprove of joining, most citing the idea of "why the fuck would Russia invade Ireland."

      • Vncredleader
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        Yeah though SF has been bragging that they would increase defense spending.

        https://vote.sinnfein.ie/neglect-of-our-defence-forces-continues-in-budget-2024-matt-carthy-td/

        https://www.pbp.ie/defend-neutrality-but-where-does-sinn-fein-stand/

    • Kaplya
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Nord Stream bombing was a message.

      Honestly you gotta hand it to Biden on this one. Trump would never be able to achieve anything like this. I still cringe at that clip of Trump in front of EU leaders, thinking he’s some kind of the Art of the Deal master, asking the European leaders to spend 2% of their GDP on NATO defense, and the whole room couldn’t stop laughing at him. Biden wiped that smirk off their face pretty fast I suppose.

      • plinky [he/him]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Its a message cause germans decided to take it, instead of speculating immediately on usa role in this. Same as euros taking gladio on the chin tbh

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
          ·
          9 months ago

          They are all pathetic vassals. The CIA just straight up abducted and killed an Australian Prime Minister and it just made that craven nation even more subservient

          • VILenin [he/him]
            ·
            9 months ago

            inshallah , just as servants would sometimes be killed and buried with their masters, the Eurovassals will be buried in the ash heap of history along with their lord.

    • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Well, european elites are loyal. They just are. The US led world exists partially to their benefit. We talk a lot about how Europe is being squeezed right now, but a) those elites profit from the squeeze; and b) the squeeze pales in comparison to what the US does in Latin America or Africa. It's like Japan's Plaza Accords. Most countries could only wish they stagnated like that.

      On the other hand I'd say that future of the EU is uncertain and there are pulls in multiple directions. The Germans were More Loyal than the King when the war started. The French wanted to play themselves up as mediators. Neither really got anything from their moves, but if Russia had been weak those wouldn't have been bad decisions. Ultimately Europe acted under bad intel and is now married to their course of action. According to the principle of letting no crisis go to waste, the French went back to talking nonsense about a unified european army under them. But who knows what will happen 20 years from now? What if that army come into being?

      Let's also not underestimate the media stranglehold that Europe is under. Even outright fascists can't really oppose EU or US policy. Imagine a social democrat or a socialist standing against poor underdog Ukraine. That's a death sentence.

      • plinky [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        But that's why i asked about left parties and without even going into ukraine. Just flat out "we are socdems, why would we spend on the military toys" . you can even make complicated peace dividend scheme, where your defense spending is returned to all people as a check, like 300 euros, and people are free to re-return it, if they want to

        • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          There are probably left parties and groups making that argument, but by definition that puts them in the 'fringes'. Regardless of how popular that sentiment may be, few amongst the elite will see things that way (as I said, the elites are loyal). To make things worse the media apparatus is built around marginalizing leftist groups. Just look at the other post in the thread about danish soc-dems claiming that protesting the palestinian genocide is an attack against democracy. That's how captured european politics are.