Sri Lanka == Fucked!

[Martin Van Buren Stan]

The british are just obsessed with fucking over south asia aren't they? Good on them.

Wonder how this will affect the garment industry? Don't all these big cunt brands earning billions exploit the fuck out of countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to make all the clothes?

Yeah I've been looking and can't find a single article about us helping them through this. Really shameful but hopefully some pressure will mount and we'll do something

[Buelligan]

Fascinating and heart breaking article about the situation here that opens with an anecdote about the very real effect of "abstract concepts" like the economy disappearing. Medicine shortages, 5 million Sri Lankans skipping meals and 56,000 severely malnourished children. Oh well, the economy is just made up numbers on a screen!

Numbers on a screen that we all obey.  As if they were the words of god.

Do your shoes evaporate the moment after the bank tells you you're bankrupt?

"We" permit speculators and money-monkeys to rob the food from our mouths and the clothes from our back and we just let it happen, we allow them to destroy whole countries in the name of greed and with the blessing of the establishment and the law.

Look at the price of energy and ask yourself why.

[Martin Van Buren Stan]

Numbers on a screen that we all obey.  As if they were the words of god.

Do your shoes evaporate the moment after the bank tells you you're bankrupt?

"We" permit speculators and money-monkeys to rob the food from our mouths and the clothes from our back and we just let it happen, we allow them to destroy whole countries in the name of greed and with the blessing of the establishment and the law.

Look at the price of energy and ask yourself why.

So the Sri Lankans could have avoided this if they stopped obeying those words on a screen is what you seem to be implying. It's just gross victim blaming from a comfortable Westerner pretending to be compassionate.

[bgmnts]

So the Sri Lanka could have avoided this if they stopped obeying those words on a screen is what you seem to be implying. It's just gross victim blaming from a comfortable, Westerner pretending to be compassionate.

Don't think that's what she's saying at all tbh.

[Buelligan]

So the Sri Lanka could have avoided this if they stopped obeying those words on a screen is what you seem to be implying. It's just gross victim blaming from a comfortable, Westerner pretending to be compassionate.

So we could stop all of this if we stopped steering a safe well-behaved centrist path and stood up against the utter cunts despoiling our lives, our countries and our planet.

[Lemming]

So we could stop all of this if we stopped steering a safe well-behaved centrist path and stood up against the utter cunts despoiling our lives, our countries and our planet.

Genuine question: how? The only weapon we have in the UK is the electoral system, and through it, we repeatedly discover that huge sections of the population actively want to maintain the establishment status quo - or even strip back the few parts of it that offer any kind of help to the average impoverished person.

I've been waiting for mass civil unrest for years now and I'm increasingly coming to the opinion that it's not going to happen because most people simply aren't on board with any major change, and are too busy regurgitating batshit soundbites about "the dignity of hard work" or "welfare cheats"  or "having the opportunity to succeed" or whatever to notice that the ground is being eroded out from beneath them as all the world's wealth and assets flow rapidly into the hands of about four awful American men. I think the "best" case scenario is that things get bad enough that the elites are forced to significantly expand the welfare state (think the previously-unfathomable furlough scheme), maybe to the point of offering something vaguely akin to a minimum income in a last-ditch life-support measure to keep society from crumbling, but even getting that will be like pulling teeth.

[Buelligan]

Sorry, I have to go workies pdq.  But for starters, stop tolerating all the bullshit.  Stop sitting quiet whilst these cunts lie in our faces.  Stand up and say something.  Or walk out.

And think about Liverpool - you know, Murdoch tried fucking them and now, people all over the world, they know what Liverpool thinks about that.  Try selling The Sun there.  Stop being afraid.  Think about those people who stop deportation vans taking people.  Join a picket, give your pence to a strike fund.  Boycott Divest and Sanction.  Do whatever you can, whenever the opportunity arises to fuck these cunts, small or big, stick your stick in their spokes at every living opportunity.  Kill their computers and lentil their tyres.  Glue yourself to a road.  And that.  All of that.  And more.  Do it now.

[Zetetic]

Genuine question: how? The only weapon we have in the UK is the electoral system, and through it, we repeatedly discover that huge sections of the population actively want to maintain the establishment status quo - or even strip back the few parts of it that offer any kind of help to the average impoverished person.

I've been waiting for mass civil unrest for years now ...

I now think that we do have other ways of exercising power than voting (or suing for that matter), but we - well, certainly I - need more practice if we want to be able to use them at scale.

My personal experience is that, right here and now, community unions and renters unions are a good way to get that practice.

There are lots of fairly small battles - over evictions, over rent arrears, over fines - against fairly small opponents - landlords, letting agents, bus operators - being won across Britain by things like phone blockades, or review bombing, or delivering demands in a group of ten people every week for a month. These might seem kind of frivolous in themselves - but I think they are good practice for being part of collective direct actions, organising others to do the same and winning stuff in the process.

(I find lots of things about trying to engage with this stuff very difficult, but these organisations have proved very accessible. In the context of years and months of 'moral injury' at work, doing stuff with these organisations has been the thing that has made me feel that making some things better is possible. Hence, I recognise, the cultish air to my proselytising, unfortunately.)

The rail strikes show that there are opportunities, and likely will be more in the near future, in workplaces for exercising power at greater scale in ways other than voting. (My first- and second-hand experience is that these are often a bit more difficult to get into, but others may have had very different experiences depending on where they work and what their union is like.)

(I want to acknowledge that this is effectively a repost of stuff I said in the rail strike thread. I hope this is clearer that I managed there.)

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

My friend went there on honeymoon and he said the people are really nice, which makes this even sadder.

The people are lovely.  Me and the misses where over there in January and things seemed ok on the surface, but things seem to have declined rapidly.  The guy driving us back to the airport got a flat in the middle of nowhere, we helped him and and gave him a big tip.  He was so thankful, bless him.  He was telling us how the tourism industry was decamated during the pandemic, and now this. The country was very badly managed by Rajapaksa for a long time. Really sad.

[Mister Six]

The british are just obsessed with fucking over south asia aren't they? Good on them.

Wonder how this will affect the garment industry? Don't all these big cunt brands earning billions exploit the fuck out of countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to make all the clothes?

They'll just shift over to Vietnam or somewhere. Probably already have, as the country's been circling the drain for months.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

intresting report on newsnight earlier in the week

[Buelligan]

I now think that we do have other ways of exercising power than voting (or suing for that matter), but we - well, certainly I - need more practice if we want to be able to use them at scale.

My personal experience is that, right here and now, community unions and renters unions are a good way to get that practice.

There are lots of fairly small battles - over evictions, over rent arrears, over fines - against fairly small opponents - landlords, letting agents, bus operators - being won across Britain by things like phone blockades, or review bombing, or delivering demands in a group of ten people every week for a month. These might seem kind of frivolous in themselves - but I think they are good practice for being part of collective direct actions, organising others to do the same and winning stuff in the process.

(I find lots of things about trying to engage with this stuff very difficult, but these organisations have proved very accessible. In the context of years and months of 'moral injury' at work, doing stuff with these organisations has been the thing that has made me feel that making some things better is possible. Hence, I recognise, the cultish air to my proselytising, unfortunately.)

The rail strikes show that there are opportunities, and likely will be more in the near future, in workplaces for exercising power at greater scale in ways other than voting. (My first- and second-hand experience is that these are often a bit more difficult to get into, but others may have had very different experiences depending on where they work and what their union is like.)

(I want to acknowledge that this is effectively a repost of stuff I said in the rail strike thread. I hope this is clearer that I managed there.)

Amem to all that brother! 

[Crenners]

These Sri Lankan should stop putting up with this absolute bad times man. Just say no. They still got nature, they got air. Fill your lungs Lankans and shout out loud NO THANKS. Form an army of truth and take the actual army to the cleaners man and fill your bellies with the fruits of the bounteous Earth. So what if some bigwig says your fucked, you just walk out the house and start eating. Rice grows faster than grass, get fructus off a tree, eggs. Nature is yours and don't let these bastars let you forget it because we are also nature. When your thirsty five friends must cry with laughter into your mouth. What do you mean your kiddie got mumps? There's a dock leaf on every street corner. White man medicine is the greatest con there ever was. Find tablets and pour em down a grid. You will feel absolutely great.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Only buses, trains, and vehicles used for medical services and transporting food can by petrol in Sri Lanka for the next two weeks.

Everyone's been told to work from home (probably the most shocking thing for people like Johnson) and schools in "urban areas" have been closed.

[bgmnts]

Update:

The People stormed the presidential palace and then got the cunt to resign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK1lkzuRmqo

So awesome to see. Shame we'll never have that here.

[bgmnts]

Loving some of these images:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-62111900

[Martin Van Buren Stan]

The fires are bad but seeing those guys laughing while jumping into his pool was good. Wonder how much fuel the fucker needs to maintain that house with the swimming pool.

[steve98]

Only buses, trains, and vehicles used for medical services and transporting food can by petrol in Sri Lanka for the next two weeks.

So then they start cracking into the pipelines and forcing tankards to disgorge their cargo; then somebody lights a Woodbine and it's WOOOOSH.

[Johnny Yesno]

So then they start cracking into the pipelines and forcing tankards to disgorge their cargo; then somebody lights a Woodbine and it's WOOOOSH.

It's ok. Beer's not flammable.

[BlodwynPig]

It does seem some people genuinely think that.

I'm sure one or two of the comments in here are made with the best intentions but they seem to boil down to 'let the country burn, it's better than the IMF'. Missing the point that things have to be paid for if you don't produce enough of your own. It would be lovely if the IMF just gave them dollars for nothing, but no one is going to do that so it's better than everyone starving.

A bit rich, coming from you ;)

[BlodwynPig]

Update:

The People stormed the presidential palace and then got the cunt to resign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK1lkzuRmqo

So awesome to see. Shame we'll never have that here.

We are not even allowed to shout outside Westminster, let alone protest