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Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread

Iran has struck Israel.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is the United Kingdom! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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  • NHS just announced the cancellation of all trans healthcare appointments for under 18s and it's putting over 18s "under review". Given the context I expect this to be a build up to trying to cancel all trans healthcare.

    https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/nhs-englands-response-to-the-final-report-of-the-independent-review-of-gender-identity-services-for-children-and-young-people/

    1. NHS England has already announced that it is bringing forward its review of the adult service specifications, and we have written to the Chief Executives of the organisations that host the GDCs to inform them that this will be undertaken in the context of a broader, systemic review of the operation and delivery of the GDCs. NHS England will provide more detail very soon, but we envisage it will be informed by the deployment of external quality improvement experts into the services. In view of your advice about the need for caution in the initiation of medical interventions for young people under 18 years of age, our letter instructs the adult gender clinics to implement a pause on offering first appointments to young people below their 18th birthday.This letter also makes clear that NHS England expects full cooperation from the GDCs in the delivery of the data linkage study, on which we have corresponded separately.

    • Sunak was saying it should be banned for anyone under 25

    • All based on a "report" that is practically Wakefieldian in its quality. It excluded pretty much any study that showed anything positive for trans healthcare, because they didn't have double blinds/placebos, despite the fact lots of significantly impactful medical studies also don't have double blinds because 1) it's not possible to give someone placebo hormones without them noticing and 2) medical ethics doesn't allow placebo/double blinding in these studies because it's considered a denial of healthcare.

    • The general election is this year? Does Corbyn have a chance at all?

      • hes not gonna do shit, hed have to split the party and hes too much of a coward to do that

      • I'm very conflicted on Corbyn, because on the one hand he is one of the few politicians on the planet outside of a socialist country that I do have genuine fondness for, but on the other hand, his leadership simply wasn't that effective. He might have won in 2019 had the media not totally banded against him, but he should have been much stricter on the party. It's the Western "anti-authoritarian" liberal brainworms in action I suppose - you enact any discipline as a left-winger and an instant later, people are photoshopping ushankas and Stalin's mustache onto you, but that's just what you need to do as a goddamn leader sometimes, and he's simply not a very good leader in that regard. So I don't think it would be a good idea for him to actually lead some kind of third party. Create one with his influence, absolutely - and he's a coward for not doing that - but actually lead it? Unless he's learned his lessons, then no.

        It's a shame that Galloway has his socially conservative views, because he's exactly the kind of brash personality that I and many others have been wanting for so long.

        • It's a shame that Galloway has his socially conservative views, because he's exactly the kind of brash personality that I and many others have been wanting for so long.

          I really fucking vibe with this. If Galloway would drop his fucking reactionary shtick he would get the whole left to rally behind him and build a new thing.

          I don't fucking understand why we can't have the best of both worlds, a hard leader that also encompasses the full breadth of the liberatory left. I don't know why the choice is repeatedly either a soft leader who is correct or a hard leader who comes with reactionary bullshit baggage.

          I think a lot of British leftists have had their brains completely melted by fighting for so long. The "radicals" are institutionalised in a way that fails to present any threat to the system.

          • I’ve been thinking, does a leader come before a movement, or do you need to develop a movement first and a leader will naturally appear out of the movement?

            Like, if you were to establish a vanguard party in the UK, how would that work? If you have a small group of revolutionaries fomenting a movement, will a leader emerge out of the movement as it grows larger? Or you need a strong charismatic leader to propel the movement in the first place?

            It’s kind of a chicken and egg question and I can’t seem to figure out how does one begin. In Russia and China, those were chaotic times and there were already a bunch of politically aware people involved in all kinds of movements interweaving with all kinds of historic events, and it’s hard to identify the origin of such vanguard revolutionary movement.

            • It's both. We are in a perpetual state of struggle where everything is in motion. The struggle itself creates the movement and the struggle itself creates the leader of the movement.

              What is taking place is a consistent rolling through of different ideas and tactics that fail and become checked off in the "this tactic has failed" list of people's minds. Once that has occurred they move onto the next. "Why did that idea fail? Because we had a weak leader? Ok lets get a strong leader."

              The next stage is determining why the strong leader fails. And what needs to be different in order for it to succeed. I can already pre-empt that: The strong leader fails because the left is divided. The general left will not collaborate with Galloway and his ilk because of his social conservatism. Corbyn has outright refused to work with him. The failure here is the division of the left, this has to be resolved but through what means? Through the collapse of the socially progressive left or the collapse of the socially conservative left. What answer people come to when asking themselves these questions will determine what tactic they pursue after him.

              • Yeah I was just meeting some of the more known members of the British communist movement that had ties with Galloway's group and I'm surprised by how much ideologically alike we are and get along famously while discussing shit like stalin-era green policies to offset their rapid industrialization, dunking on the French, and even talking about the urgent need to reform the agricultural industry to end animal cruelty while ensuring the people have a quality balanced and healthy diet, etc.

                But when it comes to discussing Trans issues it's like a damn line in the sand where they become indistinguishable from the hogs. Like thankfully they had tact to stay silent on it when my Trans comrades were around and talk about things we all hold in common but whenever a conversation would lead to lgbtq+ issues the switch would flip and I'd have to spend a decent chunk of time trying to get the conversation away from the topic.

                It was pretty frustrating having folks you agree with on an overwhelming number of topics but have one of them where there's a clear break of differences that you'd know would be irreconcilable if pressed.

                I don't really envy you folks over the pond with your divided communist movement. But I'd honestly say the same thing about us Yankees if I was in your shoes lmao.

                • It's so incredibly divisive it's ridiculous. They call trans people and capitalist pushing the trans on people the "divisive" ones but the reality is that these people are drawing this line, not the rest of the left.

                  It's fucking ridiculous. If we can blast through this issue somehow we will have something incredibly powerful going but I don't know how. It's so hard headed. These are intelligent fucking people on every single other fucking thing but they are letting prejudices and heebie jeebies get the better of them on this one.

                  One thing I do have to say about it is that all the men that I meet that have this problem all feel like they're men that have something to prove about masculinity, they are men that want to be MEN, the women on the other hand barely exist. There is a serious sexism issue going on.

                  • It's wild that one of the women I met had the same thing to say as you about the English side of the movement, we even shared a good laugh over calling it a bit too much of a hooliganish boys club at times. Said that the gap between gender representation heavily unbalances the movement and isolates the movement from a whole wide swath of the working class.

                    I was screaming internally when she said that.

                    • It's a very real problem. Hooliganish is one way to put it, what I tend to describe it as however is less football and more pub-reactionary. I feel it is connected to british drinking culture, which is unique among all the cultures of europe as we have huge binge drinking issues here. The problem is that these people imagine a specific kind of person as "working class", they are a caricature though, created from the experiences of what a "hard" bloke seems like after a long night of binge drinking and getting turfed out into the streets, where shit always hits the fan between the drinking, those looking for fights, and the cops that always make things worse.

                      This experience shapes what these men imagine as the working class man of britain. But it's just a caricature, a minority of dickheadish after pub/nightclub behaviour. This caricature though is something a lot of these boys and man-boys want to be though, they see it as "hard", they like it.

                      It has its uses I will say. This type of person is significantly more likely to be up for a scrap, or up to doing a bit of crime. But it comes with the baggage of social/cultural behaviours perceived to be attached to being this "hard" man.

                      If this image were to change, if being pro-lgbt were to become attached to this image of the drunk man after pubs/nightclubs, then their caricature would change with it. They are pandering to this image and they would continue to pander to this image if it were to shift form a bit.

                      • I believe I do agree. A more balanced and all-encompassing perception of the working class is needed. It would be one thing if you had a balanced perception and decided to focus on sections for tactical reasons as a part of some plan or another. But it feels like folks are eagerly wearing horse blinders and outright proud to miss the forest for a few trees.

                        I can only hope recruiting and retaining more diversity can help balance out the internal culture of the movement among the brits

      • No sign of a Corbyn party, only rumours but I don't know what's happening with that.

        Greens are going to get a big protest vote and Galloway's party might see significant numbers. We'll see. Oddly I think despite Galloway being terf and genuinely using trans issues to gain popularity with reactionaries his effort is probably the best one long-term for trans people. I know that sounds weird but there's way more hope with ideological competition than without.

        One way or another Labour literally can't lose it. But today's Labour is just the Tories from 10 years ago.

2049 comments