This can have a massive impact on European politics, especially in Italy and especially if the response from the Italian dockworkers totally fucks up the operations of Italian ports for a couple of weeks.
Also I’m curious about the reaction in Spain given that the frigate they sent did fuck all.
This is one of the largest forums in the largest lemmy instance, so controlling powers for information gathering and message shaping such as Mod and Admin here are obvious targets for state actors.
From my own experience and impressions here both in modding actions, the posts of some mods in some other forums and even getting an e-mail from a Tel-Aviv based organisation when I was a member of Lemmy.World (highly critical of the Genocide) on the e-mail address of that account, at least the US and probably Israel have obtained both kinds of positions here.
London Metropolitan Police, so the general police for most of London (not the City Of London, as that part has its own police force).
I say “general police” because there are specialist forces with police powers and London HQs, such as the Scotland Yard and the Serious Fraud Office.
I lived for over a decade in Britain as an immigrant and find it hilarious when Brits online tell me Britain has much less Racism that the rest of Europe.
The entire “anti”-Discrimination legislation over there is about punishing the overtly voicing of discriminatory statements not about stopping discriminatory practices: managing appearences, not “doing the right thing”, mirroring the dominant social practices amongst the middle and upper class English (who control modern day British politics) of favoring heavilly managing appearences instead of behaving morally.
My impression has always been that this approach to discrimination - basically, swipe it under the rug by cracking down of what is said rather than what is done - just make acting in racist and mysogynistic ways be more common rather than less.
Mate, I’ve lived and worked in several countries in Europe and come from a country - Portugal - which in many ways is culturally very similar to Greece, at least judging by conversations I had with Greek friends and colleagues over the years.
In my experience and view, Politics in general, including government, are definitelly the result of what a society considers “normal” and this doesn’t apply to just the Southern European countries but also in my own experience to Western and Northern European ones.
Strictly speaking and as you say they are not the same, it’s more of one being a reflection of the other: what politicians get away with reflects society’s idea of “normal” and things like the cultural view on how strictly people should follow rules: in a country where the idea that “following rules is for suckers” is widespread, Politicians too will not tend to “stay within the rules” with the powers they’ve been entrusted with.
So for example, Corruption is Portugal is IMHO the natural reflection of a culture where Cronyism is widespread and pretty much standard all over the place (and, if you think about it, the Moral distance from “trading favours with paying strangers using the power entrusted to you” to “trading favours with friends using the power entrusted to you” is a lot less than the Moral distance to “thinking one has the responsability to not abuse power entrusted to oneself for one’s own gain directly or indirectly”) and the Law is seen as indicative rather than a set of boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed (except when it comes to violence).
Interestingly and paradoxically, when things do start to change, acceptance of Corruption falls and and the fight against Corruption improves, the Perception of Corruption goes up because there are many more people being caught and convicted for Corruption and that ends up in the News, so it looks like there is more Corruption than before due to more News about it, when it’s actually the opposite.
What I’m waiting for here is the reaction of Italian dockworkers to the Italian frigate doing absolutelly nothing when the Sumud Flotilla was attacked by an Israeli force in International Waters, which is literally an act of Piracy.
I am massivelly curious about what the reaction of Italian dockworkers to the Italian frigate doing jack-shit nothing will be …
Portmanteau!
I strongly suspect the Israelis were running OPs in Europe similar to the one they ran with Epstein in the US and have a ton of blackmail material on ruling European politicians.
Mind you, whilst you are totally right, The Guardian have long been “fucking Zionists” and even now that they toned down their overt support of the Genocide, still are “fucking Zionists” judging by their continued practices of framing both sides differently, such as how in their articles Israelis “are killed” whilst Palestinias merely “die”.