No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
They also suggested there was no obligation placed on the UK to make other states comply with international humanitarian law but only to ensure that no breach occured within its jurisdiction.
The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully in continuing to sell F-35 parts and components to a global pool, even though some of those components might be used by Israel in Gaza in a way that the government regards as a breach of international law.
Much of the case will turn on the extent to which international law places obligations in domestic law.
WTF? Even our government (Denmark) foreign minister is alarmed by what Israel is doing in Gaza, and he is traditionally very pro Israel!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
This is so widely reported and acknowledged the only way to ignore it is extreme bias or more likely corruption.
It is also absolutely clear that Israel is committing war crimes regularly, there is zero doubt t about it, and the political leadership in Israel is wanted criminals because of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_arrest_warrants_for_Israeli_leaders
Please UK, don’t go as corrupt malignant and stupid on us as USA. 🙏
As I explained above, the leadership of the party currently in Government in Britain - the Labour Party - and hence the entire cabinet, literally owe their posts to a campaign of accusations of anti-semitism against the previous leader of their party (who was from the leftwing faction of the party rather than the neoliberal faction - aka New Labour - as the current one) with massive help from Israeli-linked Jewish Organisations in the UK.
That campaign was so extreme that at one point a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was accused of being an anti-semite as means to taint said previous leader by association and was kept going at full throttle through an election causing the Labour Party to lose it which ultimatelly brought down that leader. Over time it was shown that the party under that leader was actually less anti-semite than the general British society, but by then the damage was done and he had been ousted, with the neoliberal faction taking control of the party again (they have an anti-democratic system for controlling who gets to run for party leader, so they’ll make sure no leftwinger ever gets the chance again - the other guy only got to run as candidate to party leader to be the token opposition since nobody expected him to win it, but he did).
The current PM is the guy who got elected to lead the party following all that.
Effectivelly the British Government was bought by Israel, not with money but with Propaganda that leveraged the large Jewish community in Britain, specifically the most rightwing amongst them who are rabidly pro Israel. This is why the current British Government unwaveringly supports Israel and their mass murdering or amongst others tens of thousands of children.
I’ve lived for over a decade in Britain (and left with Brexit) and was even involved in politics there before I left (fair disclosure: I was a Green Party member) as well as having lived in other countries in Europe and in my opinion Britain has already gone “as corrupt malignant and stupid on us as USA” years ago, they’re just far posher about it (than both the US and pretty much all far-right politicians in the rest of Europe) plus they have far slicker propaganda, so people outside the country can’t really spot it easilly and those inside the country - most of whom are stuck in an English-language bubble as most Brits speak no second language - generally can’t tell how far to the Right not just their Politics but their Press is compared to most of Europe.
And don’t get me started on how the civil society surveillance aparatus in Britain revealed by Snowden was worse than in the US and in Britain, unlike in the US, they didn’t walk back on it at all but instead just passed a law to retroactivelly make the whole thing legal, the Editor of the main British newspaper in reporting those relevelations - The Guardian (which, by the way, is Liberal not Leftwing) - was kicked out and the Press suddenly went quiet on all of it and haven’t mentioned it since.
By the time I left Britain, I tought it was the country closest to Fascism in all of Europe (except perhaps Hungary) and the transition from a Government of the Tories (who were worse than Trump during their first presidency IMHO, only far posher) to a New Labour government (i.e. Labour under the Israel-installed leadership) barelly walked it back.
If you think about it, in some ways British politics is somewhat a mirror of the politics in America (and remember that Britain too has a First Past The Post electoral system) only less brash and loud, partly because the culture of the elites in Britain (especially England) is very heavy on inculcating in their children a certain way of being which is heavy on presenting a false image of oneself and saying the “right” things (just look up what the Brits mean with “Public school educated”, which by the way doesn’t mean educated in state schools but actually in private and very expensive schools).
Wow, you really paint a bleak picture, and I can’t even point to something and say you are wrong! 🙁
Actually I recognize all your points, except I was not aware the antisemitism thing was so bad? Remember it’s not all smear campaigns that actually work.
The first past the post system is really damaging to democracy, and you are right we are seeing that in UK just as much as in USA.
Still UK has a tradition of a more humane society and not as cutthroat brutal as USA, so I think the level of sociopathy in society is lower in UK than in USA.
But unfortunately this has clearly gotten worse in every way over the past decade or two. With increased surveillance, cutting social programs and NHS hard, and increased xenophobia.
The part about antisemitism, was that Jeremy Corbyn? IMO he was very much to blame for Brexit too, and he was himself a brexiteer AFAIK. He was a very poor candidate for Labour IMO.
Anyways I think there is hope for UK, they are traditionally a more social society, but Russian propaganda has really done a lot of harm, and COVID amplified it.
Hopefully the Russian interference will end, and that will make it easier.
That’s the thing, it doesn’t.
The UK was incredibly inhuman in the time of the Empire, committing several genocides abroad (to the point that Churchill, before his greatest and highly celebrated moments during WWII, presided to once such Genocide in India) not just against the people who they ruled abroad but also against their own people (for example, they replaced Slavery with Indentured Servitude, a similar system but targetting their own poor and based on Debt, and who can forget the Workhouses of the 19th Century).
The post war period with a genuinelly leftwing Labour party, the growth of Unions, Worker Rights, broadenning coverage of Education and the creation of the National Health Service and Social Security, was the exception to literally centuries of crushing, extreme inequality and has been in reversion since the 70s.
What Britain does have is amazing cultural propaganda (unsurprisingly in the nation which IMHO, has the greatest Theatre culture in the World) that relentlessly pushes a whitewashed version of the nation (for example, all of productions about the Victorian era embelish it with none showing such details as how back then, when the lord and lady of the manor passed servants in a corridor, the latter had to turn to the wall and could not look at them).
The problems of Britain are far deeper and more ancient than mere Russian Propaganda (though that was a wonderful excuse for the local parties to excuse their at best ineptia after Brexit) and are entrenched in just how deeply stratified and conservative British Society (especially the English one) is, not to mention the quite high levels of Nationalism and delusions of National Superiority that are constantly fed by both the Press and Politicians.
(I was there during the Leave Referendum campaign and one of the problems the Remain side suffered was that the politicians campaigning for it - mostly from New Labour - had been in Government themselves and had used the EU as scapegoat for their own unpopular measures as well as eagerly participated in the whole blame-the-EU trend from the Press, so they if they openly mentioned most of the good things about the EU and British membership of it, that would go against the lies they themselves had once said about the EU)
Not to exonerate Russia, but most of the external support for Brexit came from America - for example Cambridge Analytica was paid by rich Americans, not Russia.
I mean, I used to think like you, and then I went to go and live in the bloody place for more than a decade and English society isn’t at all “social”, unless by social you mean Racist and incredibly stratified (think the Indian Caste System, though a bit less bad and not as overt). Things there really are massivelly rigged for inequality and very low social mobility. Probably explains why the social conquests of the post-WWII period were so easilly reverted and now even Labour is running around parroting “the Poor are lazy” propaganda and passing laws to punish the poor for being poor, IMHO the very opposite of “social”.
I could go on about the general behaviour I’ve observed in British society when it comes to were one is in the social ladder and others elsewhere in that ladder, or about the process through Public Schools and Oxbridge which makes sure the scions of the elites remain elite, but this is already far too long a post, so I’ll leave you with “just” this wall of text.
Clearly you have thought more bout this than I have, which makes sense since you lived there for a decade.
But to the defense of UK, I think very many considered non western countries primitive and uncivilized, so they needed to be treated as such.
Which is of course sick and immoral as hell, but it wasn’t something exclusive to UK. Also UK did give voting rights to women pretty early, only shortly after the Scandinavian countries, and way earlier than USA, which was founded on being a democracy!
But I was thinking mostly about the time after WW2, where as you say they made many improvements. There’s a HUGE difference in the culture of our societies in the west from before and after WW2.
What a shitshow! But it was British, so the bigger scandal here is probably that they helped Trump win against Hillary. But clearly an example of underhanded upper class controlling the masses.
Well, considering non-western countries primitive and uncivilized hence needing to be treated as such was a very popular “civilized (white, always white) man vs savages” centuries old fable used all over Europe to justify inhuman treatment of those in cultures deemed “uncivilized”, and still is today - for example, why do you think Israel as always pushed so hard the idea that Palestinians (not Hamas, the actual Palestinians) are “violent” and even “human animals”, which is really just a “civilized man vs savages” framing of their white colonialism (and hence justifies stealing the land from the “violent savages” and even the Genocide as “self-defense” from said “violent savages”).
If you think about it, claiming that your own culture is superior hence it is moral to members of that culture to lead “lesser” cultures, with the conquest and domination of said “lesser” cultures being used as proof of one’s cultural superiority culture is self-serving circular logic. I mean, it’s fair to claim that such culture is “martially” superior, but that’s not at all the same as “civilized”.
One needs to be very, very weary of self-serving proclamations of one’s own group’s “superiority” in any way (be it Culturally or Racially) as justification for conquest, pillaging and even murder of those in cultures one claims are not “superior”.
If one learns a bit about British History, the word “civilized” isn’t exactly they one that emerges: absolutelly, they were and are heavy on their own version of ritualism in the exercise of power (as seen in things like judges and barristers wearing wigs in High Court) but highly refined rituals isn’t the same as being civilized, at least not by the standards of the later half of the 20th Century when ideas like Humanitarianism and Environmentalism (more specifically “the love of Nature”) became widespread. As I said, Britain ditched Slavery (good) but did so by paying compensation to all slave owners (bad) and 30 years later created Indentured Servitude (almost as bad as Slavery) which almost nobody else had so in practice the didn’t stop slavery, they just replaced Chattel Slavery with a different kind of Slavery and yet nowadays they really try an extract the maximum positive optics from the first (and only good) of those acts whilst never mentioning the other two.
Ever since Brexit I think it’d a little late for that.
Brexit was bad, but hopefully we can still work closely together. UK is still finding their footing after Brexit.
USA is a different more fundamental break of trust, which I would hate to see repeated with UK.
In most EU countries USA is now more unpopular than China!
UK is on a route where they are balancing EU and USA against each other, while completely forgetting that it was not EU that wanted the break, and EU is still their friend, and USA is not. just look how USA is treating Canada! It’s insane that UK is looking towards USA considering how unfriendly USA has become even to their closest ally!
The Leave Tory government pretty much aped the first Trump presidency in terms of policies, only as public school educated scions of the moneyed elites they were posh(ish) rather than loud and brash like Trump.
The New Labour government is currently aping the Democrat Party after Trump, only they’re possibly even more rightwing than the Democrats were in that period.
(And overlaying all this there are things like Britain having a far more extreme civil society surveillance system than the US and which, unlike in the US, was not walked back after the Snowden revelations but instaed was rectroactivelly made legal, plus Britain does not have a written Constitution so a simple Parliamentary majority gives close to absolute power).
If the trend continues the next UK Government will be led by Farage or an even more radicalized Boris Johnson trying to tear down whatever little Democracy the UK still has.
The core difference to the US is that Britain is and has been for long far more culturally heavy in “know your place” than the US (it now seems the post-War period of worker rights and a more egalitarian society was the exception, not the rule) and the British moneyed elites are far more dynastic in nature than the ones in the US (we’re talking centuries of upper class status being inherited, not a mere 2 or 3 generations).
What? Really? That guy is so stupid and disgusting I can’t fathom how he has even a single follower.
Shit, I hope you are wrong, because that’s one of the things I was counting on to prevent UK from falling too deep.
I went to the UK in the 00s were I rode the boom, then the 2008 Crash, then Austerity and all the way to Brexit, leaving just before it came into effect.
My opinion of Britain when I moved there was very good, my opinion when I left was the the country had entered the final stage of post-Imperial decay and was fucked. If you look around at nations who were once heading empires (Italy, Egypt, Greece, even Spain and Portugal), IMHO you can get a pretty good idea of were ex-Empires end up in and how long the decay can last.
Corbyn elected leader of the Labour Party was my last hope for that country and the massive campaign to oust him involving pretty much the entire Press and most of the Parliamentary Group of his Party (who were all from the New Labour faction of the party) for me pretty much proved that the entire system is completelly rigged an unable to move anywhere but further rightwards. The behaviour of the New Labour faction after they stole power back from the leftwing of the party - mainly the purges - and subsequently in Government - more rightwing than ever, in some way straying into the far-right - just confirmed that impression.
Frankly given the highly propagandistic Press environment in the UK and what was already a deeply flawed partial implementation of Democracy to begin with, I really can’t see any path were the UK would become merely more like Scandinavia (i.e. more Social Democrat) rather than more Fascist - the tendency of the elites in Britain was always towards Fascism (just look at how much the loved the Nazi ideas back in the 1920s before Germany started invading neighbouring countries, with there even being a picture of the previous queen as a child being taught to do a Nazi salute by her uncle, the then King) and the “know your place” mindset never left the society, and to me all that has been happening since Thatcher - from the destruction of Unions to the capture and consolidation of the Press, down to the capture of the Labour party by the moneyed elites, consolidated by the anti-Corbyn coup and subsequent internal purges - has been the elites in Britain wresting back control by subverting the few working mechanisms of Democracy in Britain.
So far what I’ve expected when I left Britain in disgust after the Leave vote has been happening (though Corby was unexpected and a bit of hope, but the methods used to crush him just confirmed my impression of how thoroughly captured and subverted the system is in Britain), just slower than I expected.
I’m sorry for anybody who is a Leftwinger in the UK and doesn’t even have another nationality to be able to move to a place with an actual Future for themselves and their children.
You make a lot of good points, and I’m reminded that I learned in school that they consider there are 4 classes. UK Royalty, UK upper class and UK lower class and last is all foreigners. This was always a very strange concept to me, and I admit I didn’t really believe it. I thought it was some sort of tongue in cheek saying. This seems to be a lot like American exceptionalism.
That 4 classes thing definitelly matches my impression of the place (and in fact I think Brexit was to a large extent the product of the cross between foreigners - including Europeans - being seen as the lowest of classes and the way the English put a lot more energy into “keeping in their place” those they see as below them in the social ladder than in actually climbing the ladder themselves).
That said, nowadays there is a Middle Class, who do not think of themselves as Working Class (though they actually work for a living), the higher part of which (the Upper Middle Class) think of themselves as Upper Class, though said Middle Class which was the product of the strong turn Left of the country in the post-War period is now being destroyed along with the things that allowed its emergence out of the Working class in the first place.
America at least did not have the whole idea that “people should know their place”, quite the contrary even.
Here’s an interesting comedy sketch from back in the 60s, which is satirical hence based on how people think (and then taking the piss out of it) rather than pure fantasy and illustrates some of this mindset which as far as I can tell is almost the opposite of the mindset that American (used to) have.
As I see it, modern Britain somehow managed to combine the worst aspects of Europe with the worst aspects of America.