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.


  • Redcuban1959 [any]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Congratulations to Elon Musk, because of his Twitter meltdown, China's BYD Auto has won and is now firmly established in the Brazilian market. Meanwhile, Tesla will enter the Brazilian market, Elon Musk will probably be banned from entering Brazilian territory and Twitter will also be banned and, if we're really lucky, the FBI will give him a good scare by raiding his house.

    It also makes Lula da Silva and the Brazilian Supreme Court more popular. There's nothing better to unite people than an idiot American bad-mouthing a country he doesn't understand or speak the language of. Now, Congress and/or the Supreme Court could easily pass a law establishing more regulations for the Internet, since the majority of the population would support it.

    • assyrian
      ·
      8 months ago

      it's funny to see how Brazil and the US handle the same scenarios in vastly different ways. Brazil actually punishes its criminal right wing president - the US lets Trump do whatever the hell he wants. Brazil actually punishes Musk - the US lets him say and do whatever the hell he wants.

      • Redcuban1959 [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Bolsonaro, during his administration, accepted "gifts" (bribes) from the Saudis. These "gifts" were supposedly for the Brazilian government, not for him. He received these "gifts" in order to sell oil refineries at a very low price to the Saudis. Bolsonaro tried to sell these "gifts" in the US. Because of this, the Brazilian Federal Police asked the FBI to investigate the case. The FBI signed a collaboration agreement with the Brazilian Federal Police and the Supreme Court to help the investigation in any way possible and to share information.

        The FBI has concluded its investigation into Bolsonaro and his minions. And it has provided all the information to the Brazilian Federal Police and Supreme Court. Technically, the agreement is still valid, as there is a possibility that the Brazilian Supreme Court or Federal Police will issue an arrest or search warrant for anyone being investigated in the so-called "Coup Attempt Case" and the "Far Right Digital Militia Case".

        If a Supreme Court judge considers that Elon Musk, who is now also being investigated, is eligible for a search warrant, the FBI is allowed to raid his home/office to obtain the information/items they need.

    • grandepequeno [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      Musk is one thing but banning twitter sounds kinda crazy, you sure that's in the cards?

      • Redcuban1959 [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        I'm sure the Brazilian courts have the power to ban any website if it doesn't comply with Brazilian law. Iirc they banned Facebook and Whatsapp several times (they were unbanned after Meta complied with the law) due to the fact that Meta refused to remove posts that promoted criminal activities.

        In Brazil, from what I've read, social media owners are responsible for every post a user makes. And it is their duty to remove or censor from Brazilian viewers if it is against Brazilian law. Brazil also has it's own website to report Internet crime. Technically you could still use a vpn to access the website, but who tf in Brazil is going to use a vpn to see Musk's tweets.

        • grandepequeno [he/him]
          ·
          8 months ago

          I see, ok if it has happened before several times it doesn't sound crazy at all

    • carpoftruth [any, any]M
      ·
      8 months ago

      is there a link for more context on this? I usually zone out on musk news because he's such a tedious prat

      • Redcuban1959 [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Elon Musk Leads Far Right Propaganda Blitz On Brazil’s Democracy - Brazilwire

        And you can check Brian Mier twitter page for more information, as he lives in Brazil and is very close with the Workers' Party (Lula da Silva's party).

        There's a BadEmpanada video explaining the whole situation in Brazil until the coup attempt in 2023. I don't know many sources in English about this whole Musk Vs. Brazil situation, because this situation is only a small part of the Bolsonaro coup attempt that is part of the Bolsonaro movement that is part of the 2016 coup/car wash operation that the US funded.