The British Politics Thread - The Bear and Badger

acemuzzy

Classic Rouj

davyK

I've always been puzzled by the fact that any criticism of Israel (this is generally - I'm not referring to Roujin or anyone else here for that matter) attracts an anti-semite accusation. Any justified criticism has to be accompanied by qualifying comments.

No-one is above criticism.

acemuzzy

Some things are below criticism though. E.g. Elf.

Kow

davyK wrote:

I've always been puzzled by the fact that any criticism of Israel (this is generally - I'm not referring to Roujin or anyone else here for that matter) attracts an anti-semite accusation. Any justified criticism has to be accompanied by qualifying comments.

No-one is above criticism.

It's very intentional. The Israeli lobby/propaganda machine/whatever has been putting a lot of effort into throwing accusations of anti-Semitism at anyone who criticises Israel in any way. They've been successful to the point where everyone is self policing now for fear of being tarred with the terrible brush of career destruction. It's also a convenient weapon to attack your political enemies. The Israelis could eat babies live on tv and there'd be comments about how it was sad but there was no other way.

Kow

Israel has a right to defend itself against babies by eating them.

hunk

It's also a great heat seeking homing weapon to squash happless progressive lefties trying to criticise a conservative regime of apartheid.

The babies analogy works well too.

Brooks

An actual, structurally significant abuse of Identity Politics, as opposed idk non-binary teenagers having a loud one on twitter/on campus which the same bunch of cunts will insist we're supposed to be desperately concerned about instead.

Said it before, will say again - the Right wrote the fucking book on identitarianism having got to that point long ago.

equinox_code

There is a common 'logic' behind the criticising Israel = antisemitic thing, but it's hardly eloquent. It goes something like this: Criticising Israeli policy = Palestinian rights = enforcing international law = UN resolution 242 = Palestinians being able to return to their homes = Arabs soon outnumbering Jews in Israel = Israel no longer a Jewish state = denying Jews their right to a state like wot everyone else has = Israel wiped off the map = antisemitism. From there they simply reduce the equation.

Brooks

The notion that any state has a Right To Exist is both completely untenable and a convenient fiction for tribally minded goons.

davyK

Leave names aside. It's better to criticise the actions. And if it is apparent a policy is behind them even more so.

GurtTractor

I feel like I should read Joe Sacco's Palestine (1993) again sometime soon.

Armitage_Shankburn

I remember the olive grove but. The old man and his olive trees.

The images stick with you: Arab children hit with stray bullets filling hospital wards. Teenage settlers patrolling Hebron armed with Uzis. A grandfather crying after being forced by Israeli soldiers to chop down his family olive grove, their only source of income. Houses demolished in retribution for unproven crimes by the families of their residents. And despite their age, those stories have a troubling relevance today: last year marked a four-year high in the demolition of Palestinian homes, while just last month, Israeli forces uprooted three thousand Palestinian olive trees.

davyK

Lines on maps eh? The idea has been a right fuck up from the word go.

nick_md

A straight line on a map just makes me think, hmm.

Armitage_Shankburn

Coke habit's a real cunt

GurtTractor

Yeah the olive trees stuck with me too -

Armitage_Shankburn

Yeah that one hits home. Without olive trees and figs, my peeps wouldn't have survived for me to be here.

The thing is, it's much much worse than when Sacco got these stories.

Shameful

LivDiv

Its Dominic Cummings testimony day.

I think we all know the general gust of what he is going to say. The questions are how scathing and how Bohnson can deflect in the coming days.

I suspect the public won't be interested because Cummings is massively unpopular.

acemuzzy

The key question is: is Murdoch in a pro- or anti-Johnson mood this week. That seems to dictate pretty much fucking everything these days.

acemuzzy

I think the other important factor will be the quality of evidence that comes alongside the verbal testimony. He said/he said will be the positioning otherwise. Hopefully he took some actual smoking guns with him as he left.

Roujin

Also Cummings was like head policy cunt for no. 10 woke he was there so it's going to be interesting to see how he manages to sit on the government strategy when he was at the heart of dictating what that strategy was and how it should be delivered.

Roujin

Oooh it's already up and running on parliamentlive.tv

monkey

“I’m sorry I didn’t do more to make up for Tory incompetence” seems to be the gist so far.

monkey

“Lots of key people were literally skiing in the middle of February.”

Roujin

For play to the chair, he's not letting him get away with much so far.

monkey

Yeah, seems decent.

Roujin

Cobra was mainly just PowerPoint meetings, wasn't worth the time according to big Dom lolololol. Chair continuing to pick him up on all his dumb statements.

Roujin

Incredible, he just sort of implied that Boris wanted whitty to inject him with covid on live TV to prove it wasn't dangerous.

I can't believe the chair didn't ask him if that was a direct suggestion made by the PM.

monkey

The Chair is Tory. He was one of the ones Johnson threw out over Brexit and then reinstated. So probably not going to seek out too many embarrassing details about Johnson.

Roujin

Yeah MP for Tunbridge Wells innit.

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