this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

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.

Cambridge Analytica

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

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.