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They don't care. The tories don't give a single gently caress about our standing on the world stage anymore, they only care about asset stripping this country and giving things to their mates. They're probably thrilled they cut those off before this conflict as if they were still around their timely relevance would make them harder to justify axing.
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Nov 27, 2023 11:13
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Oh dear me posted:It seems to me that chipping away at their own population's expectation that they'll follow international law has been a desired side effect, if not a primary goal, of western foreign policy for decades The more far-sighted folks in charge have absolutely been laying the groundwork for the coming climate chaos, and manufacturing consent for how they intend to handle it. We are going down an exceedingly dark path.
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Nov 27, 2023 11:27
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keep punching joe posted:Nice timing for tories killing off your soft diplomacy/propaganda outlets just in time for *gestures wildly at the Arabian peninsula * Soft diplomacy is what you use with people that you're not happy to openly commit genocide against. And an Arabic language channel is a very good way to get the truth to Arabic speakers, and the truth is the greatest enemy that the UK establishment has.
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Nov 27, 2023 11:41
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Oh dear me posted:It seems to me that chipping away at their own population's expectation that they'll follow international law has been a desired side effect, if not a primary goal, of western foreign policy for decades 
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Nov 27, 2023 11:55
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Allowing the 18th century notion of common sense as 'the inner sense which governs all others, through which rational correction may take place' to be corrupted into 'stuff that i think is right' has contorted a lot more.
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Nov 27, 2023 12:00
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Isomermaid posted:It's a good article and she may be right that the current situation is a new low that really pushes us over some kind of line in terms of the speed and the levels of horror but honestly it feels like Iraq was more to blame than she's crediting. I know it's a cliché at this point. But that was the moment a Western government took what it saw as a just cause and spun it to build a narrative to do what it wanted in return. We had a system of international law that could've been used to do the same thing if the UN had gone for it after a due process, but that wasn't happening quick enough for Bush, wasn't finding the right answers, and so he announced what he was going to do and the justification was cobbled together afterward. The protests were massive and we were told "yeah but no". I think there's merit to what you are saying here, but despite everything, the Bush administration still felt like they had to try and make the case to provide at least the veneer of following the rules. That's why they bothered trying to claim the UN processes were failing, why Colin Powell did his whole routine with the vial, and as mendacious and/or naive as it was, there was an articulation of how things were expected to go and what was supposed to happen afterwards. They clearly didn't give a single poo poo about anyone skeptical of their claims or who said it was a bad idea that would be enormously costly, but there was still a belief that the 'rules based order' was either real or a fiction worth preserving. Compare to today where there's an explicit rejection of any international processes (because even the most biased would be far short of the unrestrained action Israel desires the freedom for), no real effort to justify anything beyond 'Hamas must be destroyed' because October 7th', and they have mostly gone  over both explaining or justifying specific actions and in explaining what this is supposed to lead to next. Yes, if they did that stuff it would almost all be a huge pack of lies, but the important distinction is that they feel perfectly comfortable not even bothering, and being scornful of the idea they should bother, to a degree that makes Putin's justification for Ukraine and Bush's for Iraq look like Herculean labors of exacting international legal scholarship.To be clear I draw a direct line from 'Bullshit excuses' to 'Can't be arsed with excuses' so I am absolutely here quibbling over details that do not matter to the people of Iraq or Palestine, but I do see it as an evolutionary process and the shedding of the fiction - that the order existed in any sense beyond cover for the strong to do what they wanted - may very well herald still darker times to come.
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Nov 27, 2023 12:21
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I've rooted out the person responsible for all the lies the BBC has been publishing
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Nov 27, 2023 12:22
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Darth Walrus posted:The more far-sighted folks in charge have absolutely been laying the groundwork for the coming climate chaos, and manufacturing consent for how they intend to handle it. We are going down an exceedingly dark path. Coming 3 degree rise is gonna make the UK warm (We're gonna be Spain) but bearable, but it's gonna absolutely gently caress large parts of the world that are already hot. Immigration is gonna go through the roof in the next few years, and Tory style 'everyone gets shipped off to be processed off shore' is probably going to become more and more common. That, along with right wing press pushing 'immigrants are making your life worse/ schools and the NHS can't cope with the extra strain' and more and more countries electing increasingly hard right politicians is making the next decade look pretty terrifying We're on the cusp of entering The Cool Zone™
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Nov 27, 2023 12:23
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Our national belief in "common sense" as, basically, a uniquely British religion based on the superiority of hardnosed pragmatism, child-level simplicity and gut feeling over consideration, complexity and reflection, is 100% the cultural tendency that I'd bet on leading us down the garden path to Proper British Fascism. It can be used to justify almost any act of regressiveness, and it powerfully speaks to irrational feeling and insecurity in the guise of down-to-earth reasonableness (which also gives cover to the ideology underlying it). It's perfect for the job. grobbo fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 12:24
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grobbo posted:I might be misunderstanding you, but I think Mailk does establish a why; that the international rule of law has been imposed to benefit existing powers and establishment stability and therefore will always be a veneer of fairness and justice, which has now led to a particularly ridiculous and blatant 'the rules don't apply to our friends' logic being applied during the current crisis, and that UK politicians' rhetoric has been stretched so far in defence of the evidently indefensible in order to protect our foreign policy at all costs that it's become monstrous, absurd gaslighting to their own constituents who are largely helpless direct witnesses to atrocity. You're not wrong, but as in the original article, you've written a lot of words to say what has happened, and one line to say why. Other responses in this thread add some more nuance though, like yes Iraq was the thin end of the wedge, but any pretence that a country would try and follow international law is basically abandoned by now.
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Nov 27, 2023 12:28
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Ms Adequate posted:I think there's merit to what you are saying here, but despite everything, the Bush administration still felt like they had to try and make the case to provide at least the veneer of following the rules. That's why they bothered trying to claim the UN processes were failing, why Colin Powell did his whole routine with the vial, and as mendacious and/or naive as it was, there was an articulation of how things were expected to go and what was supposed to happen afterwards. They clearly didn't give a single poo poo about anyone skeptical of their claims or who said it was a bad idea that would be enormously costly, but there was still a belief that the 'rules based order' was either real or a fiction worth preserving. I'm not sure this is accurate, for what it's worth, purely because it's specifically Israel. Israel has never given a single poo poo about excuses or rules based order or anything like that. Israeli culture is massively 'might makes right' and has been since it was founded. You can see this with every single war it's fought. They're all either conquest wars (up until 1982) or wars for survival of the state (to defend the land they conquered) which turn into conquest wars. Past the Lebanon War in 1982, it's mostly been 'operations' to "pacify" areas already under Israeli control (West Bank or Gaza) because the non-israeli population was getting rowdy. We are now at a point where these superpowers must support Israel because of decades of 'muslim = bad' propaganda, and that's doubled down in the UK thanks to the Corbyn smear years. I think that's really as deep as it gets. Friend = good, and if you criticise Friend then you will lose your job and be branded a racist.
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Nov 27, 2023 12:29
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I did find it darkly funny that after Russia's invasion of Ukraine they, what I can only interpret as deliberately, used the same bullshit justifications at the UN security council as the US did over the invasion of Iraq. I was very much of the impression they were mocking our so-called rules-based international order. I know that many non-aligned countries did say that while the invasion was bad, the US and UK et al were hypocrites for kicking up a fuss.
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Nov 27, 2023 12:29
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grobbo posted:Our national belief in "common sense" as, basically, a uniquely British religion based on the superiority of hardnosed pragmatism, child-level simplicity and eye-for-an-eye gut feelings over consideration, complexity and reflection, is 100% the cultural tendency that I'd bet on leading us down the garden path to Proper British Fascism.  
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Nov 27, 2023 12:33
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Ah, the unredacted Muller Report.
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Nov 27, 2023 12:36
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grobbo posted:Our national belief in "common sense" as, basically, a uniquely British religion based on the superiority of hardnosed pragmatism, child-level simplicity and gut feeling over consideration, complexity and reflection, is 100% the cultural tendency that I'd bet on leading us down the garden path to Proper British Fascism. I don't think it's at all unique to the UK, it's exactly the same approach the right in the US take. They appeal to things they want to believe are true and claim anybody who says they're not is a cultural marxist who is conspiring to destroy the concept of truth. They can never just be wrong about things, it's always a conspiracy to get them and destroy everything they hold dear.
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Nov 27, 2023 13:06
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DreddyMatt posted:Coming 3 degree rise is gonna make the UK warm (We're gonna be Spain) but bearable There's a grim but very believable book by Adam Nevill, called Lost Girl, that explores what the UK will be like if this comes to pass. (Hint, not great.)
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Nov 27, 2023 13:21
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DreddyMatt posted:We're on the cusp of entering The Cool Zone™ quote:Over time everything gets steadily more expensive and you start not being able to always buy whatever you want, either because it's now out of your price range or because there are actual shortages of things like coffee. Weather gets more severe and less predictable. People you know have their homes and livelihoods destroyed by extreme weather events and have to decide whether to rebuild or start over somewhere new with nothing. If you're unfortunate enough to live somewhere like the desert (lol Phoenix, Arizona) then it will become actually unaffordable to live there at all because you'll spend more on air conditioning than you make in income. Every summer you hear about hundreds of elderly people whose air conditioning broke and they died of heatstroke in their own home. Diseases that haven't been seen in your country for decades or centuries start to reappear, like malaria. Diseases that have never appeared in your country before, like Zika or Dengue, also start to appear. Mosquitoes seem to be the one insect that isn't dying out.
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Nov 27, 2023 13:31
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Not to be confused with Lost Girls by Alan Moore, which is
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Nov 27, 2023 13:32
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It's my understanding that the 3 degrees rise is pretty much locked in now. What were some of the outcomes stated in that book? Without trying to downplay the horrors mentioned in my previous post My dumb guy opinion is that for my bit of the UK (South coast beach resort not living near a river) we may actually do well - increased tourism revenue, changes to what we farm and produce here, etc E: keksce, you're making climate change sound like such a downer. Let me have a little treat on a Monday morning DreddyMatt fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 13:33
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At least when the sea levels rise world leaders will no longer have to fear being sent to The Hague.
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Nov 27, 2023 13:36
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Mega Comrade posted:2 weeks ago the BBC accidentally misreported a reuters article about IDF going into the hospital with translaters and medical teams to IDF shooting translaters and medical staff. Reminds me of an article I read about Afghan 'war correspondents' (I think it was Afghanistan) who would basically get up, go down to the internet cafe in the morning, scan AP / twitter all day and email stuff home, then go back to bed. They were 'in' Afghanistan in terms of technically being there, but might as well not have been because they never left the hotel compound. I'm not saying the BBC are biased necessarily, I'm saying the BBC are not checking if their sources are biased, either in the rush to get a story first or in a weird, 'balance' kind of "It's our job to simply report the news" way. Content farming has broken the internet. All these outlets love to go on about 'post truth' like it wasn't caused by them publishing stories they were in too much of a hurry to go viral with, and then maybe printing an unpromoted retraction later that 10 people see organically. smellmycheese posted:The bbc has several floors of Arabic speakers in the various BBC Arabic / Persian departments in Broadcasting house. They’re just below the One Show and Radio 1
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Nov 27, 2023 13:49
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OwlFancier posted:I don't think it's at all unique to the UK, it's exactly the same approach the right in the US take. They appeal to things they want to believe are true and claim anybody who says they're not is a cultural marxist who is conspiring to destroy the concept of truth. They can never just be wrong about things, it's always a conspiracy to get them and destroy everything they hold dear. Yeah, I totally agree that the approach isn't unique in practice; I just think that nationally, we suffer under the specific belief that British rationality is our unique racial quality which evidences our superiority and right to authority but which is permanently under threat, etc - in Eco's terms, British common sense is the basis of our homegrown cult of tradition and action. I guess the distinction for me would be, broadly (and this is a massive gloss / simplification) that: - Even a respectable American fascist's fantasises tend to be strikingly emotive, adventurous, and epic, with as you say that focus on heroism and protectionism; standing up for our rights, our way of life, families, and freedoms from outside threats and conspiracies. - The respectable British fascist's fantasies are often essentially petty, colonial, and caretakerly, with deference to our betters in the social order rather than individual heroism at its root - as with Parris' article, we maintain a reassuring fantasy of Sensible Men coming back to sweep away all the nonsense and annoying irrationalities of modern life and put all the furniture back in its proper place. What makes the respectable British fascist furious and afraid isn't a malevolent attack from conspirators out to destroy our way of life, it's the inexplicable indignities and unreasonable inefficiencies of toll bridges not accepting £5 notes or name-changes to Welsh hills or silly international laws that get in the way of a simple solution. That's probably much too simplified, particularly in the modern era where the Tories have gladly embraced talk of cultural marxist conspiracies, but that Muller book does sound like it's making a similar argument about pettiness (its protagonist turns fash in large part because a street sign has a comma in the wrong place, the summary says), so I'll give that a read! grobbo fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 14:13
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The actual things that the americans try to cast as catastrophic threats to the white race though are things like "i saw a mexican" and "a woman didn't want to have sex with me" and "the green M&M doesn't make my dick hard" and "pronouns exist" and "people aren't respecting our statues enough" though. They're in many cases very much the same stupid petty things that the right in the UK are pissing and moaning about if not even more pathetic. And very much indicative of a group of people who have nothing actually wrong in their lives but are still miserable. Which also describes the british commentariat and political class as well as the tory core voters of rich old people, so it's not very surprising that they come up with the same poo poo. And of course none of them are very creative so they frequently just import poo poo directly from the US. I assume the same stupid poo poo seeps out of the anglosphere into other countries as well and they probably have their own dumb pricks making up similar meaningless shite. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 14:26
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There's a quote attributed to Einstein that common sense is the collection of prejudices we acquire before the age of 18. I think that the urge towards common sense solutions is really a desire to return to times that felt simpler, and not realising that was because children are excused a lot of life's complexity, not that the world was a simpler or better place.
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Nov 27, 2023 14:38
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There's definitely a throughline of "I shouldn't have to understand or adapt to the world" which, like, is the core of conservatism, really. What else is it if not screaming and whining about how the world isn't how you remember it and that's terrible. Even if you're remembering something that never existed.
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Nov 27, 2023 14:41
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A lot of it is people who are used to screaming and shouting at the people around them to intimidate them into getting what they want, suddenly dealing with a world they can't intimidate into doing what they want. So they just scream and shout louder because it's the only thing they know.
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Nov 27, 2023 14:46
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David Cameron has been back less than a month.
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Nov 27, 2023 14:54
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Bobby Deluxe posted:
BBC News not once but twice called the London marches for Palestine as pro-Hamas, then issued a correction but not an apology*. They are biased af. *EDIT - For clarification, I'm referring to the correction they made on air the same day, not the written one posted below. frytechnician fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 14:57
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Positive coverage of one of two marches this weekend across the newspaper front pages.
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Nov 27, 2023 15:09
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frytechnician posted:BBC News not once but twice called the London marches for Palestine as pro-Hamas, then issued a correction but not an apology. They are biased af. quote:During our continuing coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict we mentioned some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that took place on the weekend of October 14/15. We spoke about “several demonstrations across Britain during which people voiced their backing for Hamas”. We accept that this was poorly phrased and was a misleading description of the demonstrations. Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets across the UK and although there were some arrests there was little evidence of any significant support for Hamas during these demonstrations. We clarified this on air later in the day and apologise for the error.
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Nov 27, 2023 15:11
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Part of the difficulty that does exist for news media is that, essentially, there are two groups of people who access the news. 1) People who will read/listen to a news story and then go away and do some digging of their own to come to a conclusion 2) People who just want to know the basics about an issue - enough to know whether it affects them or not, and if so, in what way - and are happiest when that's all they need to do The news media can't effectively write stories for both groups at the same time, so they pick and choose. The BBC, for example, very much aims for the second group, and creates narratives that they think will help that group understand the news. The problem is that an issue like the current conflict in Gaza can't be explained through a simple narrative so they have to draw a line somewhere at which the current "crisis" started. So even if you're trying to be neutral (which the BBC aren't) you probably have to take "Hamas attacked Israel, killing a lot of people and taking hostages" as your starting point and there isn't really a simple narrative that explains why Israel turning the Gaza Strip into rubble is disproportionate. Not to mention that if you want some visuals to jazz your coverage up with, you're going to get the best stuff from the Israeli government, which comes with an implicit narrative of its own.
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Nov 27, 2023 15:11
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Sometimes the state broadcaster accidentally calls tens of thousands of people supporters of a proscribed terrorist organization 
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Nov 27, 2023 15:15
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Remembering that time hungover Boris stumbled up to the Cenotaph and flung his wreath down. For later broadcasts the BBC accidentally pulled archive footage from a previous ceremony, then accidentally edited it into footage from earlier that day, then accidentally sent it for broadcast approval, and accidentally aired it repeatedly. These things happen in the fast-paced world of rolling news.
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Nov 27, 2023 15:48
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Miftan posted:
Do you reckon it's just that? Because I have to admit I've been a bit stumped just what it is Israel does for the UK to deserve such unwavering support from the establishment. As far as I can tell Israel doesn't reciprocate in the slightest, but there doesn't seem to be any point where the UK is willing to go "Ok this country is more trouble than it's worth, how about we take a break".
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Nov 27, 2023 16:00
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This thread loves AI: https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/blog/afb21/oops-we-automated-bullshit
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Nov 27, 2023 16:04
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I think the US likes it a lot because it fucks with a lot of the other countries in the middle east which the US also likes doing. And also there's their weird evangelical lot who think that all the jews need to go to israel and rebuild the temple in order to make the rapture happen which translates to a support for the country generally and also the whole right of return/ethnic cleansing thing. Also dovetails helpfully with the kind of neo nazi who would very much approve of the madagascar plan with the serial numbers filed off. The UK basically just does what the US does foreign policy wise and yeah, also hates muslims.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:07
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big scary monsters posted:Do you reckon it's just that? Because I have to admit I've been a bit stumped just what it is Israel does for the UK to deserve such unwavering support from the establishment. As far as I can tell Israel doesn't reciprocate in the slightest, but there doesn't seem to be any point where the UK is willing to go "Ok this country is more trouble than it's worth, how about we take a break". It does nothing whatsoever for the UK, but our foreign policy marches in lockstep with the USA, and the USA absolutely loves Israel, and so we're obliged to as well. There's not really much more to it than that.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:11
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There was that time they maybe bribed Priti Patel I guess. And the time they flat out said they had a million pounds to spend on Labour MPs, so who wants some.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:12
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I mean, there's very few actual UK voters for whom unbending support for Israel is a major priority (or indeed any sort of priority). It's one of those cases, like nationalisation, where it's really clear that what the electorate thinks on the issue is irrelevant, as those decisions are made elsewhere, by others.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:15
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Clyde Radcliffe posted:Remembering that time hungover Boris stumbled up to the Cenotaph and flung his wreath down. For later broadcasts the BBC accidentally pulled archive footage from a previous ceremony, then accidentally edited it into footage from earlier that day, then accidentally sent it for broadcast approval, and accidentally aired it repeatedly. Yes they dug up the archive footage to show on Sunday morning, before the ceremony. Then got it mixed up with the newly recorded footage by the team working over the night to cut it together for the morning. Ask yourself why would the BBC try and cover up Boris placing his wreath in a different direction than everyone else, a complete non event that was bound to be shown on all other channels and on the internet anyway. The conspiracy about it being a coverup brought far larger attention to Johnson's gently caress up then it did on the day. There have certainly been cases of terrible bias at the BBC, the Corbyn communist hat being a good example, but a lot of the ones brought up are just gently caress ups. I think my point is where you guys see malice, I just see incompetence.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:15
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