Is there actually anything going on? Or are we just watching the Tories try and fill the dead air before their inevitable electoral wipeout next year?
What's the covid inquiry looking like? I hear Cummings has been dropping some bangers. He's gone from public enemy number one to some sort of folk hero. Bit of an unexpected turn.
And who is it going to turn out to be under the rubber face mask Keir Starmer is wearing, after all?
I know nobody really wants to talk about politics at the moment because it's all pretty hopeless, but let's at least post the vaguely amusing and/or rage inducing bits in here rather than making a new thread every time.
>>98140 >there's one side quite clearly fucking butchering the other with a complete lack of humanity.
Did you miss all those news reports of the massive Hamas attack on Israel recently? There's whataboutism and then there's being wilfully ignorant on the butcher of innocent people because they're not on your team.
Yes, the ones Israel has already killed 10x the number of Palestinians in apparent retribution for just in the weeks since it happened, that's the one we're on about, yes? Who's being wilfully ignorant?
There's no reasoning with people like you. Israel has the clear military and economic advantage, it has the backing of the world's most powerful states, if it wanted to defend itself it fucking well certainly could do without committing genocide in the process. It just doesn't want to.
>>98147 >Israel has already killed 10x the number of Palestinians
Now whose engaging in whataboutism. No, lad, Hamas are rotters and the world isn't some black-and-white game for you to play.
>if it wanted to defend itself it fucking well certainly could do without committing genocide in the process
It's pretty arguable actually. The IDF need to rescue hostages and destroy Hamas, by design that's going to lead to enormous amounts of collateral damage and evidently continuing the long-running blockade to just seal Hamas off and call it a day doesn't work. The combined support of the West isn't going to magically not get people killed as the War on Terror and related siege of Mosul show - you're just being silly now.
It's actually really simple lad. Look at Ukraine. They are fighting a war of self defence. Look at Israel. They are using the pretext of self defence to just indiscriminately murder people belonging to a different arbitrary group.
The civilian casualties Israel is inflicting in order to fulfil its objectives are beyond excessive. Stop deflecting with "b-b-but Hamas are baddies", because we're not talking about Hamas, I couldn't give a shit about dead Hamas fighters. They knew what they were signing up for. We're talking about innocent civilians.
At best the argument you are making is that the IDF is the most incompetent counter-insurgency military force in the world, despite the fact that after 50 odd years of practice, it should be more experienced that anybody else. Swooping in and surgically assassinating daft militant wog organisers surgically and cleanly should be no problem for them by now- Bust instead they just drop an airstrike that kills 400 people just to get one suspected enemy operative.
I'm guessing this is the place to put this? General politics?
Regarding the flood my street recently suffered (>>/b/460902) - I heard a rumour that the local water boards license to pump overflow water into the sea was revoked, so they've been dumping it into the rivers instead. Cue the overflowing of the brook nearby (and others about the county) and the council forgetting to use the flood gates and turn the offshore pump on.
We're beginning to see the local flooding excaserbated by the potential incompetence of those in authority. But similar to those people sandbagging their above-waterline-properties while others are being actively submerged, I'm wondering if condemning the waterboard and local councils activity is simply passing the buck to people who're just looking out for their own.
It's an interesting view into politics; the water board is doing what it can under the circumstances (I assume), the local polititians are covering their tracks and managing the scenario as best they can .. but should the rumour be true I can see it being enough to sway a future election. Though would it really achieve anything to oust them from their chairs while any other person or party would be compelled do the same?
You can say foresight, and I'd definitely expect atleast the waterboard to realise pumping extra water into the rivers would swell them, but is that really
Is it worth persuing a story of scandal and incompetence? I don't know - maybe I'd be more sure if I actually suffered any property damage.
It reads like textbook incompetence. Any decision like this will usually involve a risk assessment, and those involved have missed several possible points at which the flooding could have been averted.
>>98154 Not him, but counterpoint: Hamas are underground in an urban maze. It's a bit different to Ukraine. Not that I'm defending the ethnic cleansing going on by Bibi Harris, but it's important to know why he chose that tack (it's the only viable one, arguably, and also this is convenient because it makes his retaliatory mass murder look 'necessary').
>>98259 Attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime, and for that reason using tactics that require your opponent to do so (such as using human shields or hiding behind civilian infrastructure) is also a war crime.
>>98262 >Attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime
That's a grey area for the law of armed conflict with obvious reason that collateral damage is a given in a war zone and civilian infrastructure can present legitimate military objectives. The obvious examples are civilian power plants, communications and transport infrastructure which have been bombed by everyone pretty much as soon as anyone could.
I'm not entirely sure I need to go into detail on why civilians may die in a warzone but it's generally accepted that collateral damage can happen in attacks. What's missing is proportionality and minimisation which is the kind of war we're used to seeing western countries fight and why it's such a big deal about whether Israel is showing genocidal intent or otherwise hurting people as a form of collective punishment. Hence why Israel is keen to show how every school was built on top of a bomb factory.
Sage ticked because this isn't what I pictured I'd be doing at 1am on a weekday when I grew up.
Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime. An attack against a legitimate military target that would likely or certainly result in civilian casualties may be legal, conditional on the principle of proportionality. In International Humanitarian Law, proportionality is assessed in relation to the military objectives - an attack that causes substantial civilian casualties or damage to civilian objects is likely to be lawful if it also causes substantial damage to military assets. It is often assumed that if one party to a conflict suffers greater casualties, then the other party must have acted disproportionately; this is an understandable intuition, but it has no basis in law.
Civilian infrastructure loses all protection if it is used for military purposes - no grey area, either it's civilian or military. A hospital with a weapons cache is, under humanitarian law, just a weapons cache. Conversely, there's no excuse for bombing civilian infrastructure just on the off chance that it might be useful to enemy combatants. If civilians are present, then the principle of proportionality still applies.
Civilians are protected against attack unless and for such a time as they "take a direct part in hostilities". Unfortunately, the term "direct part" is not clearly defined in international law, which became a crucial issue during the most recent war in Afghanistan. If a civilian allows their home to be used as a weapons cache or a firing point, are they taking "direct part"? If they actively engage in providing reconnaissance for combatants? If they are a member of a paramilitary group and provide direct material support to combatants in a theatre of conflict, but do not themselves bear arms? There isn't anything near a consensus agreement on these issues, nor any substantive legal precedent.
The IDF are maybe doing some war crimes sometimes, they're definitely pushing right up to the line of what's legal, but this kind of conflict wasn't really imagined when the laws of war were being written and there's a huge amount of uncertainty; anyone who is making confident assertions one way or the other is either a legal genius or a bullshit merchant. Hamas are definitely doing loads of absolutely inarguable war crimes, but that doesn't absolve Israel for legal responsibility for their actions. The whole thing is horrible, but the distinction between "horrible" and "illegal" matters.
>>98266 >The IDF are maybe doing some war crimes sometimes, they're definitely pushing right up to the line of what's legal,
Shooting unarmed people under white flags, dressing as doctors to assassinate incapacitated patients, targeting medical aid and collective punishment by starvation aren't crossing that line?
>>98267 Are you unable to hold 2 opinions at once? It is undeniable that Hamas is deliberately using civilians and associated infrastructure with an intent to plan attacks and it's obvious that the IDF is also blurring the lines on what is and isn't a legitimate military target and doesn't really have an idea what it's doing.
There will be a lot of discussion as there always will be on what has sat where and if I wanted to go further there's so much blatant bullshit and rumour going around that it's difficult to know what is actually happening anyway.
>>98268 >Are you unable to hold 2 opinions at once?
If those opinions are "The IDF are working in a grey area and we just can't tell" and "I have seen filmed evidence of multiple war crimes committed by the IDF" then yes that's something I struggle with. I didn't mention hamas so can't see why you'd suggest I'm denying anything they've done. Unless the IDF had evidence showing that unarmed man waving a white flag had hamas tunnels inside him it seems openly in bad faith for you to use that argument. Same goes for the hostages they shot, maybe they had hamas hiding in their bellies.
Obviously illegal if targeted, unfortunate but legal if genuinely accidental. Civilian commentators tend to grossly under-estimate the chaos and uncertainty of war, particularly in urban environments. It's plausible that whoever was responsible was just a trigger-happy nutter who was shooting at anything that moved, but it's equally plausible that he was a scared young man who made an extremely poor split-second decision under acute stress. I wasn't there and I can't say.
International Humanitarian Law expects combatants to make all reasonable efforts to protect civilians, but it doesn't expect infallibility. A large proportion of coalition casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan were the result of friendly fire incidents, but I don't think that anyone would credibly argue that British troops simply didn't care about shooting their mates, or that the RAF were deliberately targeting Royal Marines.
>dressing as doctors to assassinate incapacitated patients
Complex and uncertain. The assassination bit is almost certainly legal, because nobody denies that the three men who were killed were combatants; some countries prohibit assassination behind enemy lines as part of their own codes of conduct, but there's no international consensus on the matter. The wounded bit is more complicated. If they were POWs in the care of the IDF then it would definitely have been illegal, but they weren't. Being sick or wounded does not in itself afford protection; someone must be hors de combat to be entitled to protection - defenceless due to unconsciousness or incapacitation, or freely surrendering. I don't know enough about the medical status of the three men who were killed to know if they were truly hors de combat.
The dressing up as doctors bit is on the cusp, but arguably legal. If any of them were wearing a protective emblem like the Red Cross then that would be a war crime in itself, but I haven't seen any evidence that they have and I doubt the IDF would be that daft. A combatant who disguises themselves as a civilian isn't acting illegally, but anyone not in uniform loses most of their protections as a combatant. Using disguise in order to kill someone would might constitute the crime of perfidy, but using disguise merely to get into the hospital likely doesn't. I've seen scholars arguing both ways, but the details do matter.
I'm not aware of anything that this might refer to, but I'd be happy to discuss it if you can point me to a specific incident.
>collective punishment by starvation
Statements by some members of the Israeli government clearly express an intention to use starvation as a means of war; those statements are unacceptable, possibly illegal under Israeli law, but not a war crime. Parties to a conflict must take all reasonable steps to facilitate the movement of humanitarian relief, but have no obligation to provide humanitarian relief. Completely blocking the entry of aid into Gaza as a siege tactic would be unquestionably illegal, but Israel haven't done that.
They did impede the movement of humanitarian relief during the early stages of the war, but they can quite legitimately argue that the security measures they imposed were reasonable and proportional, given Hamas's track record of using civilian vehicles and humanitarian agencies to traffic arms. If anyone who is directly responsible for control of the border crossings can be shown to have intentionally restricted the movement of aid for no legitimate reason, then that would clearly constitute a war crime.
Aid agencies have undoubtedly had a great deal of difficulty in their operations in Gaza, but I haven't seen evidence that they have been deliberately prevented from operating by the IDF and I have seen significant evidence that the IDF have taken steps to facilitate their operation (humanitarian corridors, scheduled pauses etc). If you have seen relevant evidence, then I'd be keen to see it.
I'm not setting out to defend Israel, I'm just concerned by the way in which terms like "war crime" have been thrown about quite carelessly by people who don't seem all that bothered about what the law actually says. Israel have been operating right at the limits of legality, but I think that it profoundly matters whether they're just the right side or just the wrong side of that limit. If we don't distinguish between blatant war crimes and stuff that is possibly iffy depending on the circumstances, then we open up a really dangerous slippery slope. I don't endorse the way that Israel have conducted the war, I think it's potentially a strategic blunder, Netanyahu is obviously a shithouse, but I'm very wary of false equivalences and a blurring of the line between moral arguments and legal arguments.
>>98270 >Obviously illegal if targeted, unfortunate but legal if genuinely accidental.
The man was standing still in the street for a protracted period of time while holding a large white flag. If you're going to extend this sort of implausible deniability on the grounds we can't truly know anyone's intent then nothing you say is credible.
>The man was standing still in the street for a protracted period of time
I haven't found any source to corroborate that claim; I've seen very little detail at all on the incident. We can fairly conclude that it was a breach of the IDF's rules of engagement, it was a catastrophic intelligence failure, but I don't see anywhere near enough information in the public domain to conclude that it was a war crime. If by "war crime" you mean "a thing that happened in a war that definitely shouldn't have happened", then I agree with you, but that's not what I mean by the term "war crime" - I mean a prosecutable offence under International Humanitarian Law.
If you or I were to "accidentally" shoot someone in the street, we'd have very limited grounds for defence, because what the fuck were we doing with a gun in the first place? An armed police officer who accidentally shoots someone in the street while responding to an armed incident has far more avenues for defence, because he's supposed to be carrying a gun and he's plausibly supposed to be shooting someone on that street. "I shot the wrong guy" is only a reasonable excuse if you have lawful authority to shoot some other guy.
In a warzone - a dusty, chaotic warzone where the enemy don't wear uniforms, launch ambushes from other people's houses and use civilians as bait - those grounds for defence are even broader. Our instincts for what is and isn't criminal conduct fundamentally don't apply, because we're dealing with a context in which killing some people is the entire premise and the consequence of not killing someone quickly enough is often your own death. "I wasn't sure what was going on, I thought I was in danger, so I just panicked and pulled the trigger" is no defence at all under civilian law, but is often a perfectly valid defence in the laws of armed conflict, whether you think that's fair or not.
Again, not saying it wasn't a war crime, just saying that I don't know nearly enough to say with any degree of confidence. I refer you back to my précis - the IDF are maybe doing some war crimes sometimes. Not an exoneration, not an indictment, just a recognition of the extraordinary complexity and uncertainty of the legal position and the facts on the ground. On the whole, I don't see reason to believe that their compliance with IHL is any worse than we'd expect from a NATO army in a similar conflict, as evidenced by the comparably high civilian death rate in a conflict like the battle of Mosul.
>>98272 > haven't found any source to corroborate that claim; I've seen very little detail at all on the incident.
The whole thing is on film, from multiple angles I believe. The sniper was never at any risk to themselves if they hadn't made the shot. Why are you going to such great lengths to create doubt in these contexts while taking it as read that hamas has committed war crimes and not extending them the same? There are statements from Israeli leaders saying they want and intend to do war crimes, there are the same from their military and there's footage of them committing war crimes. But you're hand waving that away on the grounds their intent can't be defined. Why not extend that to hamas? You can't prove the kidnappings weren't meant as a you've been framed style prank or that their tunnels are anything but the world's largest underground miniature railway. We only have their words and actions demonstrating otherwise. Same goes for the IDF.
>>98272 >Again, not saying it wasn't a war crime, just saying that I don't know nearly enough to say with any degree of confidence.
I've personally seen enough footage to be completely convinced that Israel is consciously and deliberately committing war crimes. Not to get into the sheer numbers of civilians being killed.
You are obviously entitled to your opinion but it seems insane to me.
>>98274 Not that lad, but to me the problem isn't that Israel is maybe committing war crimes. The problem is that we can't look at the actions and the stated intent and clearly determine that they are not war crimes. That there's even room to doubt whether what they're doing is legit is, in and of itself, something that should have even their staunchest allies publicly asking questions. War crimes and genocide are not things we should be giving anyone the benefit of the doubt over.
>>98396 When would a May election be announced? Are elections normally announced about a month in advance? I honestly don't remember, and I won't remember for this one when it happens either.
It has to be 28 working days in advance or some shit, IIRC. Don't quote me on the exact time frame but the process is they have to announce it a set length of time ahead, and then have to dissolve parliament, and they all lose their status as MP; that way there's no going "actually let's not have an election after all" because there are no MPs, and the only way of getting MPs is electing them.
The rules exist, otherwise you just know they'd spring it on us last thing on a Thursday afternoon that the election will be held tomorrow, so nobody has a chance to complain and nobody shows up to vote because who can be arsed on a Friday.
The assumption was for the government to complete the spending review before calling an election and for Jeremy Hunt to do some more giveaways in autumn when the economy is in a better state but now it's looking like the leaks of a May election are true. Unless Sunak bottles it an election is imminent.
Exactly 25 working days before polling day. The next local elections are on the 2nd of May, so if we are getting a General Election in May, it would almost certainly be announced on the 26th of March. Mark your calendar.
I think we're about 50/50 for a May GE. The Rwanda Bill is expected to pass on the 20th and that's about the only "good" news that the Tories can expect this year. The actual implementation of the Rwanda Bill will inevitably prove to be a miserable humiliation and there's nothing left in the piggybank for another tax giveaway. Sunak seems desperate to drag things out for as long as possible, but he's surely being advised that things are only getting worse. If nothing else, the Tories are losing about 800 voters a day to the grim reaper.
>>98401 >The Rwanda Bill is expected to pass on the 20th
It's going to need to ping-pong a bit. The Lords have thrown in a whole boatload of amendments, and that's one boat Sunak won't be able to stop easily. Though if the Lords simply capitulate in wash-up to a government that is about to lose its mandate I swear I will personally finish what Fawkes started.
He just wants to speak his mind. He doesn't know fancy words. He already left the Labour Party because of wokeness (sexist abuse of a female councilor), now he's had to do the same with the Tory Party (making up racist conspiracy theories with zero evidence).
>>98435 Has anyone actually asked Anderson, to his stupid face, "who are these Islamists that Khan is mates with?" because I feel as if a lot of the reason he can get traction for this bollocks is that no one makes him explain himself. Obviously it's racist and I've no problem with it being called that, but I feel like it would deflate, to a degree at least, a lot of the "just telling it like it is" people if they had to explain how it is, which would quite quickly expose that it's not like that and never was. It's at least going to make being a "brave truth teller" harder if they're repeatedly shown to be lying.
>>98437 "Real people aren't interested in your middle-class nitpicking. They know exactly who these Islamists are and it's not their fault you're too busy eating hummus to notice real people's real concerns."
+20% in the polls, right there. In politics, answering the question is overrated.
>>98438 Yeah, but you don't just get him to answer the question, you then rip him to pieces and call him a lying tosser when he dodges it. The question is merely the sheath from which you draw the blade.
I had no idea Barry Glendenning was a racist, a Tory and a millionaire. He always seemed so, well, not nice, but y'know, on the Football Weekly Podcast.
>>98440 His Diane Abbott comments really didn’t strike me as the worst things anyone has ever said about her. They’re so inoffensive that people have even been allowed to tell us what they actually were. It’s certainly nowhere near as outrageous as giving money to the Conservative Party.
>>98440 >>98441 Bloody fuck. I just saw this story on the news again, and it turns out that the man I've never heard of in your post is not the man I've never heard of from the news story at all. You were making a joke, and it sailed right over my head. This is why I like anonymous online communities.
Politics doesn't get much more general than this: did you know that there's a name for the prolonged ups and downs in society? We are currently in a down bit, and have been for years, as we've all noticed, and some guy called Kondratiev (or Kondratieff) first observed the waves of good and bad nearly 100 years ago. He didn't go into much more detail than that, so maybe his predictions aren't that impressive, but it's still interesting to read about.
>>98478 This is as bollocks as the "pendulum always swings back the other way" idea. Hard men making good times and so on. It's imposing an arbitrary two-dimensional pattern on something wildly complex and subjective.
Tell that to Stephen Hawking. Both chaos and order are subjective terms. "Order to the spider is chaos to the fly" if you're going to insist on communicating through cliché.
>>98478 I prefer the more mainstream view that we're going through a period of deglobalisation and there's a lot of consequences to that which will require stiff drink. This was happening with Brexit and Trump in the West but also in the East prior to 2014 as Russia and China prioritised generating self-sufficiency in the wake of the Financial Crisis (unfortunately the graphs all stop in 2022).
The systematic issue is that this process is now embedded into corporate and national decision making and has been reinforced by global shocks. The East and West are now trying to lock-in trade and technology barriers against each other in critical industries while coddling domestic production, this has spread internally to alliances creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where states and businesses that don't play the game end up losing out. In the 90s-00s the logic was a silicon valley globalist mindset based on growth potential but now it's turning into national and coalition blocs to secure resilience and strategic advantage which makes the strategy more viable. When Labour get in you can play a drinking game where you have a shot every time an industrial strategy is announced.
So to get really depressing:
- We already failed to build a global response to Covid and the next disaster will face an even more fragmented international system.
- The developing world will be in for a bad time as global shocks become more common and their growth prospects slow.
- Free market ideology sees this as a flashing red warning that we're about to have another world war and it has stopped being controversial for experts say we'll have one by 2030.
- Cooperation on climate change at the industrial level is dying, solar panels are a strategic industry.
This is going to be a rough time for the UK, we might be a major economy but we're an island nation with industries dependent on trade. Were mapped to provide the lawyers and components for global operations and our food and power resilience is pitiful outside of overpriced whisky. We can't just become France, we don't have an empire to retreat into and we're not an intermediary between East and West or the US and EU.
But I think we're liable to do the right moves in a bad situation, we're partnering with Japan, Australia and joining CPTPP is a major long-term hedge. Growth in the UK and globally will be sluggish but maybe it will recover simply owing to technological leaps in AI, space and material science.
Anyway, I feel well clever having built my investment portfolio on a geostrategic level. Call it illusionary all you want otherlad but I didn't get snarled by China/Russia and my big bet on Japan worked out bigly.
This is a good thing. I'm a devoted pinko commie but when the libertarian ancap tards talk about the strength of capitalism being in competition, they do have a point. The problem with globalisation is that there was no competition, at least not the type that benefits the average person. What we have now is just corporations competing to see who can make the most profit, and that's just a race to the bottom.
Before globalisation the nation states still had to compete in terms of giving their workforce the best conditions and opportunities, because international competition meant there was an incentive to actually develop your workforce and give them a better standard of living. Better off workers means better productivity and more money moving around the economy, which is something they have been able to ignore for the last 30 odd years and artificially pump the GDP with population growth instead.
>>98482 >But I think we're liable to do the right moves in a bad situation, we're partnering with Japan, Australia and joining CPTPP is a major long-term hedge.
It's a shame that our biggest misstep in this area was entirely self-inflicted.
