Our noble child touchers

IIRC, the architect of UK austerity, George Osbourne, was writing about how we needed to cut government spending well before the financial crisis. Possibly while the government was still posting surpluses (which it has not done since austerity began lollol)

I want to believe it represents the UK itself.

But also, what if he had been a Muslim immigrant? That obviously wouldn't justify anything that had happened. And so the race, religion and nationality of the attacker are entirely irrelevant.

I wonder why the government is having a difficult time signalling to its population that collective punishment is unacceptable...

https://x.com/xQuaintrellex/status/1820132985858842696

But then they'll have French people in their country.

Here is some footage from the incident:

(CW: Violence, blood)

https://www.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/1eb3aqy/uk_police_officer_assaults_person_laying_on_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/1ebdgm3/another_part_of_the_police_attack_in_manchester/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/1ebn34j/final_part_of_the_police_assault/

Significant possibility that race played a part in this event, and certainly has played a part in the reaction across politics and media. For example, the predictable reaction from the . Reform MPs claiming the footage is "reassuring".

I think if I was ever in this situation, it would not end well for me.

Feel like pure shit.

There was an interview from within the entity that had a portion deleted that has stuck with me since I first read it:

"The genre of the dancing soldiers may seem amazing to us Israelis as a nation. It's fun. It's great for morale, but it doesn't look good in any other context. And that's exactly the thing - this association: the soldiers are not private individuals. The world does not look at a reservist in Gaza as a neighbor from my building, and the soldiers are not 'all our children'. In the eyes of the world, soldiers represent an army. On the other hand, think about all the TikToks that come out of Gaza - there is no tendency to point to them and say 'this is all Hamas propaganda'. A separation is made there between the citizens of Gaza and Hamas. But in the Israeli experience, we don't distinguish ourselves in this way. Our society is militaristic, for us militarism is great, it's part of who we are, but in foreign eyes it is not perceived positively."

The wolves are self-aware.

At the same time, it struck me as deeply strange that the question would even need to be asked. Many Israelis come from other parts of the world where they would be not have been raised in that specific Starship Troopers-esque society*. And yet they acclimatise to such a degree that they kind of forget how genocidal glee looks like to the outside world. It's bizarre.

*Yes, yes, I know, but there's degrees to it. When Americans saw Abu Ghraib, it was not the majority position that the soldiers should have been even crueller.

From the UK, and that is definitely the image we're given of it. Austere concrete blocks in Eastern Europe, empty shelves in supermarkets, boxy cars that are twenty years behind the times. If we're taught anything specific about USSR's economy in general education, it's that central planning resulted in famines and shortages, partly because planners could not have enough information about the market, and partly because of corruption from the producers who had no market incentive to exceed quota or become more efficient.

At the same time, in the first year of my economics degree, I was taught that the USSR kept pace with, and at times, even exceeded US GDP until around the seventies. There were lots of graphs.

Apparently it also limits aid to the Palestinian Authority if

“the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court (ICC) judicially authorized investigation, or actively supports such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/22/gaza-unrwa-funding-congress/

The report will limit itself to the events of October the 7th.