this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - Ghoul Britannia - COTW: United Kingdom
(hexbear.net)
Image is of the Rubymar, a UK-registed ship sunk by Ansarallah off the coast of Yemen, after trying to illegally avoid sanctions.
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
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.
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I'm a sucker for space exploration stuff but this is very true, especially in this new era of privatized rocketry. Can't imagine being on some Mars colony run by Musk
Fortunately the people at SpaceX who actually do the real engineering work have to follow aerospace regulatory obligations, and the people there making business decisions need to live up to contractual obligations to agencies like NASA who have contracted with them. SpaceX isn't like Twitter where the asshole-in-chief's whims have to be implemented. They actually have to follow legal requirements and the laws of physics.
American rocketry has always been largely privatized, alas. NASA doesn't, and never has, built non-prototype rockets, nor did its predecesor NACA. Even way back in WW2, the US military hired Chrysler (yes, the car company) to do the engineering work on captured V-2 rockets.
I've heard SpaceX has a dedicated Musk Handling team tasked with jangling keys in his face whenever he comes around. Part of the reason he was able to destroy Twitter so effectively is they were blindsided and never had time to learn how to divert his attention from anything sensitive.
Okay bit ootl here, did this start with Elon unsuspending brazilian fash on twitter or was the government going after twitter in the first place and Elon let loose the fash as a reaction to that?
Short Answer: Some Brazilian neonazis and pedos were banned from using social media by decree of the Supreme Court until the investigations against them were finished and they were put on trial. All of these were banned for sending death threats and supporting a coup attempt. Elon decide to "leak" things he didn't read and to reinstate these accounts in the name of "Free Speech". In reality he is just pissed that his plans to steal lithium from Bolivia and Brazil failed. As Lula and Lucho didn't care about the agreements the previous right wing goverments did with Musk, and went with a much better deal with the Chinese BYD.
Long answer: During Bolsonaro's administration, he was a fucking idiot, unpopular and had no support in the legislature, judiciary or grassroots. But that wasn't a problem for him, because he was only there to embezzle public funds for himself and his family while selling the country to the US and the Saudis. He also met with Elon Musk and promised to sell him all of Brazil's lithium, as long as Bolsonaro and his family received some kickbacks. Elon gives him Starlink, which Bolsonaro gives to illegal miners who use it to help invade native lands in the Amazon jungle.
Then Lula da Silva, who had been arrested on US orders, was released from prison by the judiciary, which considered the evidence against Lula to be very weak and that the judge who arrested Lula did so for political reasons. He also regained his political rights. Bolsonaro panicked when Lula began traveling the world, meeting with heads of state and politicians like Macron, Olaf Shotz and Bernie Sanders, while Bolsonaro had been isolated internationally since he refused to acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 elections.
Bolsonaro goes to the US and publicly begs Biden to help him rig the election or stage a coup. Biden laughs, Biden has a good personal relationship with Lula, Biden was the only one to bring the CIA documents about its operations in Brazil to the Brazilian government. Bolsonaro also tried to do the same thing with Putin, but Putin did the same thing that Biden did.
Bolsonaro was also marked because Lula promised that, if elected, he would reveal all of Bolsonaro's secrets and put him on trial. Bolsonaro decided to put a group of corrupt military men in his government and tried to plan several coups. He also decided to attack one of the Supreme Court judges, Alexandre de Moraes, because he was one of the judges who wanted to investigate Bolsonaro's family.
Alexandre was one of the most conservative judges on the Supreme Court, having been chosen by the American puppet installed after the coup against President Dilma. But he absolutely hates Bolsonaro, and Bolsonaro deserves it. Bolsonaro said he would torture and kill Alexandre if he had the chance.
Alexandre knows the Brazilian constitution very well, and there is no such thing as unlimited and unrestricted freedom of expression in Brazil. Nazism, hate speech, LGBTQ+ hatred and racism can land you on a blacklist and land you in jail for real. Every time one of Bolsonaro's influencers commented, they posted some shit on the internet. Whatever they posted would be added to the criminal file and their account would be banned because, if I understand correctly, in Brazil it's the social media owners' responsibility what is posted there.
Alexandre would end up being chosen, because he would have that job anyway, as president of the Electoral Tribunal (the body that judges whether an election was free and fair). Lula wins in 2022 by 0.8% after Bolsonaro tries to use the police and the army to stop people from voting.
Eventually, in 2023, Bolsonaro attempts a coup, but that's a long story that I've talked about a lot before. The coup fails with such force that even Biden supported Lula. The coup pushes the judiciary, which used to be distrusted by the left because it was the judiciary that accepted Lula's imprisonment, into a kind of alliance between the executive and the judiciary.
Because Bolsonaro used public funds to elect his supporters, Congress and the Senate were full of Bolsonaro supporters. But the Senate presidency goes to a moderate liberal who has said several times that he will never let the legislature remove a Supreme Court judge or President Lula.
Lula's government begins to bring in investment from the USA, Russia, Japan, the European Union and China. There was a dispute in the automobile market between these countries, as well as in the electric car market. Elon Musk thought that Lula would continue with Tesla and the garbage deals that Bolsonaro made. But Lula decided to opt for China's BYD, which offered a better deal and a lot more money.
Elon is angry about this because he lost Bolivia and now he lost Brazil. Despite being South African and Canadian, Musk has a lot of American brainworms, one of which is that he thinks US laws are valid for the whole world. He decided to do the same thing he did with American chuds, unbanning their accounts and posting shitty memes making fun of the US judiciary.
He also posted the so-called "Twitter Files", but it seems he didn't read any of it, because it actually shows that the former owner of Twitter did everything he could to promote anti-Lula propaganda and protect the Brazilian chuds.
Elon must have realized it, or one of his lawyers told him that he screwed up and will lose money and may have his house raided by the FBI. The criminal case he is now part of had the cooperation of the FBI, which investigated suspected Brazilians in the US who were illegally selling government property. Elon said that Brazilians could use VPN (who's going to use VPN to use fucking Twitter?), he deleted some of the tweets.
The Brazilian government terminated all contracts with Starlink and the Federal Police questioned Twitter's representatives in Brazil.