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.
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The bulletins site is here!
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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.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/de77e24a-5aa5-4f5f-b899-024b62ba60e1.jpeg)
I go shopping for rare Korean foodstuffs to bring back to Alaska and I come back to a megathread that's popping off like there's gonna be a massive military conflict.
Folks make sure to try to double-check your sources when you post them, try to keep parent comments on topic - I don't mind a bit of anxiety posting but try and keep that as contained as possible aka don't spam comments - make sure to hit the report button if anything is rule breaking, and generally have a nice morning/day/night wherever you're posting from.
Semper post, time to get a beer.
Edit: I'll keep this up for like 24 hours or whenever the fireworks taper off
Edit 2: tonight's theme song has been brought to you by our sponsors: 'The Find Out company' who's motto is "When you fuck around too much, think of us."
If Israel responds, this is a war. If Israel does not, this is the conclusion of Iran's response to their attack.
Israel says they will be retaliating. Until that is walked back treating it like the start of a conflict is accurate.
If Israel does respond, there is a good chance it will cause the rest of the Axis of resistance to movilize and join the conflict
They want to drag the US into it though. It's their only hope of winning.
I love how I can take a couple hours away from my phone to clean, come back, see (385 new) and know what's happaned.
could god make a bibimbap so big that even he himself couldn't eat it?
A bibimbap bowl so big that God could only consume it if he had Stalin's spoon.
What foodstuffs did you get?
I got some lotus roots, korean red pepper powder, some Korean soy sauce brands that had different additives like anchovies or other stuff, a shitton of dried mushrooms and other stuff from Jeju island, and a bottle of makgeolli and some ice cream for tonight.
Of course some of these we got up north but they're more expensive, so I figured I might as well take advantage of some of my empty checking bag space
I love lotus root so much. it's awesome in hot pot and stirfrys
It's also great when you marinate it in soy sauce or lightly candy it in a syrup
What are your thoughts on the Jeju island cactus colony?
I'll be real, I didn't know there were cacti on Jeju, and I've even traveled across the island.
It makes me want to go back and look at them though.
While they were most likely introduced by humans, I really want to believe the theories that they were brought over by something like wacky ocean currents or a poor constipated bird.
Yeah so I checked with some family and apparently when I was last on jeju the whole thing was hella smaller than it is now, like it was just a local peculiarity.
At least as far as I've read or asked on it, nobody knows how it got there, so you can make up your own theory and run with it lmao
Hell yeah those are some choice items. Getting any oranges while you're down there?
I don't got too much time left here but for the time I've been down here I've been visiting the street vendors in Chinatown and enjoying the fresh fruits they been selling.
Oh nice that's a good strategy
Will keep my anxiety posting to replies![emoji rat-salute-2 rat-salute-2](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/49b82fe1-58fc-4583-bf28-0c3679496a56.png)
I was drinking beer and this is what I come back to
I know exactly how you feel, I just woke up to all of this
What's really fucked up is this is like the 3rd time this has happened to me with the megathread
My sleep patterns are fucked up enough already but it seems like every time I have a day off to catch up and sleep all day I wake up to find the megathread has 500+ new posts
Am I cursed or something? Should I just not sleep anymore?
i left the site for 1-2 hour and the news mega had over 300 new comments lol
dont drink (all) the kimichi sauce that collecting at the bottom , it can poisen you fast !