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.
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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.
Sweden expels Chinese journalist over national security fears (Reuters)
STOCKHOLM, April 9 (Reuters) - Swedish authorities have ordered the expulsion of a Chinese journalist, saying she could pose a serious threat to national security, a lawyer representing the woman said on Monday.
Full article
The 57-year-old Chinese woman has lived in the country for almost 20 years and denied all the accusations, lawyer Leutrim Kadriu told Reuters. Kadriu did not name the woman or say whether she had already left. He said he could not go into details on the charges as they concerned national security and were officially confidential.
“The security police have argued that it can be assumed that my client may pose a serious security threat. This assessment has been agreed by the Migration Agency, the Migration Court and the government,” the lawyer said.
The Migration Agency declined to comment. Public broadcaster SVT did not give details of the charges, but said, without identifying its sources, that the woman had published articles on her website and had received payments linked to the reporting from the Chinese embassy in Stockholm. She had also hosted Chinese authorities and business delegations on visits to Sweden and sought to arrange meetings with Swedish officials, SVT said.
A spokesperson for China’s Stockholm embassy said its government always requests Chinese citizens to comply with the laws of their country of residence, and expects Sweden to guarantee that the rights and interests of Chinese citizens are not violated.
SVT said the woman was detained in October and Sweden’s Migration Agency decided to expel her soon after, in a ruling later upheld by a migration court. The government upheld the court’s decision last week, SVT added.
“On April 4, the government decided to reject an appeal against a decision on deportation under the law on the special control of certain foreigners,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told Reuters. “Beyond that, I cannot comment on the individual case.”
A Swedish Security Service spokesperson also declined to comment on the case but added: “The Security Services’ mission to protect Sweden and democracy includes preventing people who are not Swedish citizens - and who are deemed to pose a threat to Sweden’s security - from residing or establishing themselves in Sweden.”
Swedish security services said in February that China, Russia and Iran posed the biggest security risks to the country.
weird way to spell “the united states of america” but ok
At this point any Chinese continuing to seek living in these countries are participating in social Darwinism because they’ve made it clear that they’re going to target regular Chinese who have even a slightly elevated profile.
Just to be clear, before saying “any”, the person in question is 57yo and has lived there for 20 years. Telling an almost elderly person they should GTFO back where they came from otherwise they support social darwanism is not it.
The Chinese Gen Z are already disillusioned with the west so this is not a problem.
Frogman is right, don’t shoot the messenger for delivering an unpopular message. The west is racist and sinophobic and getting increasingly so every day. That’s just a brute fact, people from China living abroad in the west will experience it whether what frogman says is “it” or not
BRB telling the Chinese grandma next door she should grab her bag and GTFO back to China or else she is a “social darwanist”.
Nobody is discussing what the US/West wants to do or the fact they’re racists and fascists. But that is just victim blaming but you do you.
I don’t see it as victim blaming, i see it as looking at reality and naming it. The “blame” and moralizing is coming entirely from you, not from me. I’m describing things.
Moralizing? Oh lol please, you immidiately opened up with apologizing for the messenger as “unpopular” and “not wrong”. Pretty much an embarrassed way of saying I agree 100% with what they wrote.
Still you’re not the person I replied to, yes the OP was victim blaming. If they simply say “oh yeah absolutely the west is unsafe and you should consider that” then that is fine, in fact I agree with that and I wrote something almost the same recently.
But apparently you don’t realize you’re literally describing what every chud dreams of, what a beautiful world would it be if the “undesirables” just packed up and left. The reason? Oh I’m sorry someone on the internet is going to morally judge you as a fucking SOCIAL DARWANIST(their literal words) otherwise.
Shoot the messenger indeed, the messenger is a fucking fascist blaming the immigrant for their own choices.
I tried to be polite, you know, by pointing out the very first fact on the very first line of the article, the person in question is a 57yo lady living in the country for 20 years. Asking them to simply “leave” or judge them as a social darwanist? Fucking stupid nonsense.
The Chinese Luxurious Space Gay Communism will be achieved, but first we need to grab every Chinese and put them on a plane back to China, lest they regret their own “choices”.
Yes, moralizing. You’re going off the rails with baseless conjecture and mindreading moralizing assumptions. Where did I or Frogman ask them to leave? Racist westoids will do that all on their own
You seem to be forgetting that our role is to coldly autopsy the corpse of history, not get in arguments and starting fights with the other doctor for pointing to the damaged liver and saying “damaged liver”.
What is Sweden’s level of diplomatic relations with the PRC?
AFAIK Sweden and China has full normal diplomatic relations.