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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on October 14, 2023, 03:54:39 PM »
Repetition is a Form of Change  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 [= 9 January 2002] 7:48 pm
You can't read the same message twice - you change, it changes.

You cannot read the same message twice - you change, it changes.

Aristotle, Rhetoric.
'It is difficult to punctuate Heraclitus's writing because it is unclear whether a word goes with what follows it or with what goes before it. Eg, at the very beginning of his treatise, he says:
"of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending".
It is unclear what "forever" goes with.'

the same is present living and dead awake and asleep young and old for the latter change and are the former and the former change and are the latter
disconnections combinations wholes and not wholes concurring differing concordant discordant from all things one and from one all things
changing it rests and resting it changes
we step and do not step into the same rivers
we are and we are not
 
It is wise to listen, not to me, but to the words. The words say: 'All things are one.'

Although the words stay the same, they seem to change.

Though the words stay the same, they seem to change.

New Member  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:27 pm
Hello ... pleased to meet you all - albeit marginally ... in a place on the edge of things that have no end and which is central and marginal and everywhere between at the same time and ...

Love Philip. 

The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:36 pm
Although separated and virtual strangers, we walk and talk together and blend in thoughts, emotions and feelings and find missing parts in others and giving missing parts to others and we take upon us, together and alone, the mystery of things - all things strange familiar simple complex mixed singular high low bitter sweet sorrowful joyful ... and although it can seem like meaningless nonsense it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense.
 
Does it make a difference ...?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/12/02 10:06 am
Does it make a difference whether this message is read or not read?
The act of writing it has brought some difference
(change)to the universe - and who can say what consequences that will have? (Tiny, trivial seeming acts can [perhaps occasionally, perhaps often, perhaps always] have wide-ranging consequences.)
Readings would further complicate matters - and responses even more so. 
Plotinus on Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:07 am
Plotinus [Enneads]:
Heraclitus who, by example, urges us to inquire into limitless matters, posits necessary exchanges from opposites and talks of paths up and down and around and
"changing it rests"
and
"it is weariness for the same to labour freely and to be ruled"
and he leaves us to conjecture and omits to make his argument clear and to reach conclusions, perhaps because he realised that we should inquire for ourselves as he himself inquired

Reality is complex, messy, not clear-cut.
So the way(s) into greater understanding of it cannot be simple, tidy, unambiguous.
Heraclitus rambles through the borderlands between coherence and incoherence.
Strange stuff emerges from that marginal zone.
 
Lifting the veil ... opening the doors of perception ... and all that.
It can be done - and doesn't require drugs.
But it is (perhaps) a mistake to imagine that what is revealed when the veil is lifted is more real than what is perceptible when it is still in place.
Reality is (most likely) multi-layered - all in all.
No level of reality is likely to be more real than any other

... and when you think you've got it sussed, then is the time for caution ... scepticism ... humility ... that way you go on learning ... or developing ... or just changing ...
Of reality we know nothing firmly ... it changes.
 
It seems unwise to speculate at random about the widest matters. But what esle can we do?
 
Ramble.
(1) Wander disconnectedly in discourse, talk, writing.
(2) Walk for pleasure and with pleasure, with or without a definite route, and with or without a clear destination

Flame and Vortex.
Both flame and vortex are example of dissipative structures - the maintenance of which require a continuous input of energy, and the effect of which is to dissipate that energy.
In a vortex, the energy is the potential engery of the water, which is dissipated as the water falls.
In a flame, the energy from chemical reactions is dissipated as heat.
As soon as the energy stops, the form disappear.

Shifting sands. Seething seas. Swirling skies.
Sea sounds. Synaesthesia. See sounds.

Of reality we know nothing firmly.
It changes.

... changing waterways churn on while I ramble on ...
 
The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:36 pm
Although separated and virtual strangers, we walk and talk together and blend in thoughts, emotions and feelings and find missing parts in others and giving missing parts to others and we take upon us, together and alone, the mystery of things - all things strange familiar simple complex mixed singular high low bitter sweet sorrowful joyful ... and although it can seem like meaningless nonsense it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense.
 
Re: The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:45 am
With few exceptions (perhaps none), every person experiences conscience, self-respect, remorse, empathy, shame, humility, moral outrage, etc - to varying degrees, at various times and places.
Out of this grows what seems to be a worldwide morality, including notions of altruism, justice, compassion, mercy ... even redemption.
Unfortunately, small-scale personal familiarities, and a limited sense of common interest, narrow the range of moral sentiments - making them selective: applied to 'us' but not to 'them'.
People give trust to strangers only with great effort.
True compassion, applied to all humans (recognised as fully human - and of 'us'), is in short supply.
 
Re: The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:52 am
... meeting as an anonymous strangers in lonely crowds ... throwing love around ... and it changes ... and perhaps it grows ... and perhaps it blooms ... tomorrow ... or tomorrow ... or tomorrow ...

Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/2/02 9:29 am
Leonardo: 'Everything proceeds from everything else and everything becomes everything else and everything can be turned into everything else.'

[If you look for long enough, everything might be seen in a young woman's smile ... or an old man's frown.]
 
Re: Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/6/02 7:29 am
Leonardo:
The artist can call into being the essences of animals of all kinds, of plants, fruits, landscapes, rolling plains, crumbling mountains, fearful and terrible places which strike terror into the spectator; and again pleasant places, sweet and delightful with meadows of many-coloured flowers bent by the gentle motion of the wind, which turns back to look at them as it floats on; and then rivers falling from high mountains and the force of great floods, ruins which drive down with them up-rooted plants mixed with rocks, roots, earth, and foam and wash away to its ruins all that comes in their path; and then the stormy sea, striving and wrestling with the winds which fight against it, raising itself up in superb waves, which fall in ruins as the wind strikes at their roots.

+++++

Drafts ...

Names change ... labels change ...
Or, as the existentialist (concluding naturally, she believed) put it: 'Time passes, people change.'
True enough.
All in all ... it changes ... but the essence of it all remains the same ...

So...
The quaker, the catholic, the anglican [words meaning many things (and not necessarily indicating faiths), while also being merely nominal signifiers of particular, relatively insignificant, individualized human beings] wandered in and out of relative obscurity, and each others' and other people's lives, and noticed a few things that nobody had ever noticed before, and never would again, and missed many other matters that they might have noticed, but didn't.
While the voices sometimes sang in their ears, saying that this was maybe all folly.

'Six hands at an open door...'
But...
There might have been more, and the names might have been different, and ...
The time might not have yet come ...
Or it might have been and gone ...
Or, next time, after a reshuffle, it might all be different ...

One name might have been Zed ... who was a typically British delightfully mixed up mess ... iridescent, polyglottic, cosmopolitan ... a free-wheeling wild daisy ... daisy ... on an old-fashioned upright English bicycle ... riding to the unifying international news agency building through a changing London docklands on an island of sorts (which was nominally a home for dogs) and near the time centre at Greenwich ... and nearby lived mostly ignored people who would not recognise her as a fellow English rose because their own blooming possibilities had been neglected ... (and not far away in time and place, under a futuristic light railway bridge,  a multicultural ideas spreading news agent was murdered by ethnic nationalists with closed minds who couldn't escape from their past prejudices) ... Z was a far from unnecessary letter ...

Another might have been M  ... a sharp-tongued, snub-nosed Scottish socratic ... passionate and compassionate ... much concerned about The Issues ... who liked dialectics in non-standard dialects ... and complained that talking to him could be like talking to herself ... and who wrote letters with reverse strip-teases in them ... she sat in bed writing to him and put on an extra jumper and extra socks and ... well he was cold-seeming ... and he had once sat on a bed with her when she was wearing a partly transparent nightie and he had pretended very carefully not to see through it ...

Or there might have been another A ... a very sophisticated Irish named (and double-barrelled) self-styled working class lass ... who encouraged him to go with the flow with kind words and curving flowing limb motions ... and who walked alongside him in a slightly absurd part-falling manner (which might have had something to do with the vaguely ridiculous thick-souled shoes she was wearing) ... but with her, as with others, there seemed to be a mountainous obstacle course in the space between them  ... which even a veteran rambler could not find a route through .. or around ... and perhaps it was better to maintain a distance between ... 

And ...
You get the odd glimpse of the infinite complexity of it all ... but then you lose it ... and you go on with your small-scale guess-work ...

So ...
Call them what you will ... ally, catty, philly ... or make them up as you go along ... angels, imps, aliens ...  or (as it actually seems to go) rearrange bits of the previously existing into new patterns ...

They travelled.
Chilly awakenings under canvas. Buses that never turned up. Dreary, slow, often-stopping local trains. The dizzy kaleidoscope of landscapes and ruins. Cities that changed before their eyes as they stopped to stare for an instant. Seascapes and skyscapes. Ships coming in not laden with gold. Flowing patterns of lives in motion in a world in motion, with the increasing density of everyday experience seeming to render all experiences increasingly transient and superficial.

And...

Each found places there were satisfactory for a while, then unsatisfactory.
So they went to other places - or to spaces between things that, for a while at least, they could call their own.

And then one day, or it might have been many days, they seemed to find themselves among people clutching gods of sorts that they did not quite believe in any more, or which, one way or another, or in several (even many) ways did not satisfy all their needs of belief.
It seemed to be a time of general and particular confusion ... or of reconsideration ... or of reviews  ... out of which a new synthesis of older ways of thinking might emerge.

If the hypothesis of a fully transcendent creator implanting motion in the system of extended bodies were judged no long(er) sustainable, then it would seem an instrinsic characteristic of the extended or spatial world that everything within it is constituted of particular proportions of motion and rest - which suggests that motion must be essential to and inseparable from the nature and constitution of extended things. The proportions of motion and rest within the system as a whole must be constant, since there could be no external cause to explain any change in the system; but within the subordinate parts of the system the proportions of motion and rest are constantly changing in the interaction of these parts among each other.

Spin spin spin out the ever-changing (and ever so easy to misrepresent and misinterpret) system of Spinoza, or something like it.

Minds in turmoil, how they longed to embrace simples. Many times they rushed towards them, desperate to hold on to solid forms. Many times they fluttered through clutching fingers, sifting away, like shadows, dissolving like dreams, and each time the griefs cut to the hearts sharper, and they cried out incoherent words, which winged into the darkness.

Now down they came to the water's edge, streaming tears ... drops of sea-stuff returning to the world-wide waterway.

Rumour has it that if you throw a cup of water into the sea and return a decade or so later to scoop up a fresh cup of water from the same (which is not of course the same) bit of the sea, then, despite all the churning and mixing that has occurred in the sea over the decade or so, the cup will contain some molecules of the water you threw into the sea at the earlier time. It seems unlikely, but statistical probabilities suggest it - there are more molecules of water in a cup (whatever its size) than there are cups (or the equivalent volume) in the sea.

'I don't know what to say.'
'No words. No words. Hush.'

Hush.
Sea sounds. See changes.

So we made for the outer limits, where the worldwide waterway seemed to flow towards its end - though of course it was an illusion. Some said it was where the Cimmerians previously had their homes, a realm shrouded in mist and cloud, where the sun could never flash rays through the murk. Others said it was a just a small northern town in the middle of winter.

Wandering on, bedlam melodies wandering through our minds ...

... we get by and keep on keeping on with a little help from our friends all is on little loves and small acts of kindness and big hugs pulling mussels from shells and pulling muscles in other words squeeze me you know how to do that Annie and get your gun she's passed it's a miracle her paint's all over town and Alison my aim is true I know this world is killing you and her and him and me and OK I was just Cathy's clown on a hillside desolate will nature make a man of me yet visions of swastikas two new pence to have a go and fall wanking to the floor and frigging in the rigging while there are footsteps on the dancefloor the next time I'll be true I heard on the grapevine that rumour had it that I just called to say I love you thank you for giving me the best day of my life and thank you for calling inquiries while I got stuck in the moment records stick stuck records bells on our fingers ask not whom we toll them for we shall have music wherever we go on go on go on at last the go on show at last but not the end there is no end to wandering I would go out tonight but I have not got a thing to wear but don't you forget about me as you walk on by if you see me walking down the street walk on walk on by with love in your heart and take a walk on the wild side and you just know that bitch won't fuck again but say it ain't so Joe say it Joe eh Joe Hey Joe where are you going with that gun in your hand excuse me while I take another face from the ancient gallery and kiss the sky often mistaken for kiss this guy kiss me kiss me you know how to please me yeah yeah kiss me in the milky twilight you wear that dress and I will wear those shoes and she was last seen the last time I ever saw her face wearing stop me stop me if you've heard this one before hey hey hey what's going on we're sailing off the edge of the world living like Fu Manchu there's nothing else to do maybe baby we know where we are going once in a lifetime on the road to nowhere or funky town or kook city and live life from a window just taking in the view all around the world looking for you and you just stayed in your room that day that day when we took off our clothes and you were crying and the stupid things you said and I said we were birds of paradise and you saw the whole of the moon pink pink pink moon no matter where I roam I will return to my British roses before the sky closes on them and open on others and no one will ever take me from she and she been a long time been a long time been a lonely lonely lonely long time under the northern skies waiting and wondering and wandering on for more life in a northern town wandering on and maybe tomorow maybe someday we'll get by ...

... jigsaw feeling ... has me reeling ... which may be lurching desperately ... or which may be a kind of dancing.

What triangles ...
The solitary sage of Walden (or there or there abouts - or some other place of concorde) pointed out that triangles of extraordinary size were set up when two people by chance (as it might seem) separated by many earthly miles looked at the same distant star at the same earthly instant ...

What polygons of unthinkable complexity are formed when the consciousnesses of three or more (billions maybe) are linked up deeply for a single instant.

And each individual consciousness is limitless ... set off at any instant in any direction in any individual mind, and you'll never reach an end to the association networks ...

Beyond the outlines ... barely experienced, poorly remembered ... fragmentary details ... the bewildering spread of the simple seeming event ...

Figures in a blended inscape and outscape ...

Cathy and her clown walked together near the water's edge. Blurs from some perspectives, dots, or even less from others. Viewed from some places and times they become recognizable human forms, though mostly in outline, devoid of many details. Further perspective shifts reveal complexitity upon completity. It is possible to conceive of a multiverse perspective ... all possible perspectives at the same instant.

Two little people on a coastal walk in a small town, on the margins, but at the centre of things ... So it is with all: any point, any person, any event, is central and marginal and everywhere in between.

She is small and short-stepping. He is tall and long-striding. The long and the short of it. Big he who is not so big and small she who is not so small. They do not seem well matched. Their mortions are not very synchronized-seeming, as she is too fond of pointing out for his comfort (and hers perhaps too). She walks close to him, often bumping into him rather clumsily. Mostly she talks, he listens. A deluge of words. Waves crashing on to the shore. Her voice rises in pitch and and increases in tempo as she continues. She seems anxious to get things said, while she still has the chance, while there is still time.

They walk in no particular direction, to nowhere in particular. Separate random walks are taking place, which, since they are walking together, in however an unsynchronised and clumsy and bumping manner, become a shared walk. They walk on the edge of land and sea, near a pub called the Water's Edge. Human naming systems help to make a sort of sense of things, providing reference points and an order of sorts.

They seem on the edge of things, in a marginal zone, a place of transition. and they are nearing the edge of their time together. Soon they'll separate, perhaps forever. So it seems she has to get her words said. She talks of people on the edge of things, marginalised people, known as the underclass for want of a  more human label, whom she's encountered in the early stages of her training as a probation officer. It seems important to her to let him know of what she has witnessed. He's a bit puzzled by that. She's leaving him behind, but wants to fill his mind with her thoughts and experiences. She's planting trace memories perhaps.

Another way of seeing it ... on the shores of the cosmic ocean a strangely beautiful well-matched asymetric couple mess things up.

(This much seems true: new life comes from asymmetry - the evidence is all around. Fear death by symmetry - when all the complex, messy slightly disordered asymmetrical unities break up, and 'it' becomes a spread of equally distanced particle fragments drifting ever further apart.)

Random walks

The myriad contingencies of a short walk in a small town.

But when you consider them with an open mind everything can seem to connect and every part seems integral to the whole.

Sitting in my small town room, given strange powever by technologies, the workings of which I do not understand and never will, I seem to travel far, and seem to perceive many things.

Common culture. It is in us all. Flowing through us all and being transformed by us all.

All in all.

All things might be written in a single book of love, of which creation is the scattered leaves.

Organisations can form in the underground [and they can be forces for good - not terrorist networks], and they can communicate in undertones, and without the constituent parts having much  conscious awareness that they are a part of a larger whole.

Birds flock together at appropriate times, but probably are not much aware that they are flocking.

Perhaps we are often acted upon by organising forces beyond our understanding.

This long watch, which dog-like he kept ... Soon the long wished for signs might relieve his passive toils ... beacons gleaming through long recurring nights ... Beacons .. which might only be cigarettes ... These walls could recall strange things .. and much else...
Like a shrunken leaf ... that is not really dying ... all recycles .. flows .. changes ... feebly feeling  ... like a dream that walks by day ... the persuasive breath of memories involuntarily recalled ... mostly stirring the heart with songs .. sometimes sensed as beautiful .. sometimes not ...

Like shapes in dreams he wandered through the years, seeming random, planless, his forethought in chains ...

But the vision of the birds might yet work its end into bliss ...

But contraries might yet blast darkly first...

This way the part-time seer hymned, dubiously mixing doom and bliss, dark mingling with light ... and much confusion and obscurity ...
Sharing with the way-haunting birds, which seemed to signal something ... he was responding to the strains .. which could not be merely sounds .. there had to be some meaning, some purpose in everything ... the singings sounded of sorrows and glad days ... and of good times that might yet shame the bad.

Meanwhile ... a most unpleasant surprise was in store for the platonic prick ...
...just as the likely lass began yawning as he was telling her all sorts of amusing stories that had happend to him at different times and places, and even referring once to the Greek cynical philospher Diogenes, the weird sister appeared from one of the back rooms. Whether she had torn herself away from a cold collation, or from the little green drawing room, where some postgraduates' conversation had become more alarming to her, whether she had come of her own free will, or whether she had been thrown out of her previous environment in embarrassing circumstances, which she might or might not later reveal ... whatever the cause or collection of part-causes that had brought her from some other place to this place, she apeared to be cheerful and in the best of spirits. And she was holding on to ther arm of the devil's advocate, or one who was assuming that role, for the time being, and in the particular circumstances in which they now all found themselves. Yet he appeared unhappy. Maybe she had been dragging him along with her (and even perhaps attempting to pull him to the floor) for some time. Whatever the cause, assuming there was one, the poor putter-of-the-case-against certainly seemed discomforted, for he kept attempting to turn around, while his eyebrows beetled in all directions, and his eyes seemed to be searching for a way to excape from this amicable arm-in-arm promenade with the weird sister.
It was, indeed, quite an intolerable situation. The platonic prick saw no ther way out of it than to gulp down quickly, with forced convivialtiy, two cups of coffee, with were, of course, laced with red wine, while he kept on telling the most unlikely stories. The devil's advocate became ever more disconcerted, but still could find no way of excape. The weird sister laughed and scowled at the fun of it all. The kindly quaker remained, as often, seemingly calmly silent.

Bridge buildings ...

Ally and philly were sitting together in a bar, which might have been called The Bridge (but that was actually another place, another time) and she began openly to speak her mind to him for once ... The wonderful flow of words enters him and fills him and swells him, and the words change her in his mind ... she'll never seem the same again. After an hour or two, he feels obliged to say something about himself, but when he attempts to interrupt her word-flow, she says, 'No ... I'll speak' ... and the wonderful warming and expansive words continue to come out of her, and to close the space between them, and to fill him with a her glow, which he will never forget, even though, for various reasons, they do not see much of each other afterwards.

She was possibly the least malicious person he had ever met, but ally was the one person to speak negative things about catty into his ears - telling him that catty 'was just not worth it' and that he 'could do better than that woman'. And when he thought feelingly about it then, and for a long time afterwards, he saw multiple possible meanings in what she said ... but he could not accept the proposition that any human being was 'just not worth it', because all are worth it, or else all are worth nothing ... and maybe that was just quibbling ... but ... that was the way it was with him.

Years later, (this year in fact) pally ally cropped up in India and Pakistan (this is no fiction) at a time of tension, when some feared the possibility of a nuclear war.  She was part of a leading world stateman's 'travelling entourage' (her words) ... to most a unnoticed face in a crowd ... but to the platonic prick she was a symbol of peace  ... she carried love with her and no hatred that he could imagine. And oddly enough (or not) tensions on the Indian sub-continent reduced afterwards, and the threat of nuclear war faded. Of course many others were involved. The key seemed to be: not the 'great' men's [there were, alas, still too few 'great' women on the world's stage] words and deeds ... nor even the charms (which were considerable) of his known female peace symbol ... but all those millions of little loves of little lives of mostly kindly mostly decent people who didn't actually want to slaughter others, or to be slaughtered themselves - maybe they all worked together, without quite knowing it, to calm things down.

Meanwhile, the curious cat cared so much about the marginalized people whom she worked with (and for) that it once (or more) almost broke her. She saw hellish visions of 'bottomless pits of need and deprivation' ...
And there can seem to be no end to the suffering in the private hells of even an affluent society.
But even with such dispriting thoughts in mind to discourage her, she returned to work and did little things to help people and to fill up the void bit by bit.

In the near past that was a long time ago cat wrote many letters to phil and complained that he never wrote enough to her ... it was a complaint that mixed fairness with unfairness, as most do ...
In her letters, as far as he could remember, she only ever quoted him one line of poetry, from Tennyson's Ulysses:
   '... I am a part of all that I have met ... '
As she might or might not have gone on to point out, the reverse it also true:
    ... All that I have met is a part of me ...

The surprising thing was that while Cat and Al studied much the same subject in much the same place at much the same time, and wandered more or less contemporaneously in much the same streets of at least two other cities ... and had much in common ... and must have crossed paths occasionally ... and had even perhaps caused each other some hurt of sorts, via their connections through Phil ... they never fully met (unless a trick was missed) .. which is something a shame, because they had much good to share with each other ...

It can seem like nonsense, but it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense ...

All this was a long time ago. But what is a long time? The long and the short of it all. Big he who was not so big and small shes who were not so small. I remember little but much. I forget much but little. And I would do it again but in different ways. Repetition is a form of change. Nothing is the same twice, so nothing is the same ever. Say hello, wave goodbye. Wave goobye, say hello. In every meeting, the image of birth, a sort of coming together. In every parting, the image of death, a sort of falling apart. I never knew you well enough, you never knew me well enough. So it goes. Undertanding of other people is, like all understanding, never good enough. On it goes. On we go. Finding out more. Making new patterns, remembering and forgetting, building up and breaking down. Say hello, wave goodbye. Kiss and hug if you want to, do not kiss and hug if you do not want to. Something was taking its course, that much is certain, if no more. Whether we follow a course to birth or to death is uncertain. And that uncertainty clouds the issue of whether we act freely or follow courses determined for us. But there does seem to be free will on the local human scale. At any possible world junction there are many, perhaps limitless, possibilities open to us, and every instant brings us to a new possible world junction, when a small act of choice can make a huge difference. But if, whatever choices we make, the overall course of things is towards a break up of all unities, and so towards oblivion for all, then individual destinies seem trivial. If it is not to be futile, then we must find courses that lead somewhere, to some betterment, some resolution, some harmony, some development, or just some continuation. Maybe it comes down to faith, but that might just be wishful thinking.  But you never know - and maybe there's hope in uncertainty. No one, the pessimists or the optimists, really knows.  Humans are perhaps just too limited in understanding, and probably, however developed they become, always will be. That is the way it seems to be and maybe will remain. And so one cannot escape from the voices singing that this might be all just folly. But then folly is not the same as futility. And folly is at least amusing and out of amusement might come a more profound kind of comedy, which is a movement towards harmony, and when the motion is towards harmony then perhaps the easier it becomes to make approaches towards some ideal harmonic state - even if it is never reached. And actually achieving complete harmony might not even be desirable, because that might be the end of it all - after which no more for worse or for better.

It seems foolish to speculate at random about the widest matters ... but what else can you do?
 

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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on October 12, 2023, 11:53:13 AM »
... so it looked like\as if Hamas had [PRE-]plann’d a relatively small-scale 'local' attack ... but ... once the ‘apartheid barriers' were breached ... lads from the otherwise 'occupied'/'oppressed' territory (it was like/as if a ‘pressure cooker valve’ being ‘released’ ...) decided to join in ... result was ... [read 'news'] ...
73
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on October 07, 2023, 04:39:03 PM »
I/i['off my head' (get it?!]] crash-landed on this planet 1962/3 ... & then ...
74
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on October 07, 2023, 04:10:22 PM »
I/i was 'conceived' [of] during the CubanMissileCrisis [1962/3] ... so i/I never had much of a FUTURE ...
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   TUC Congress 2023 Convenes in Liverpool: The Need to Establish Anti-War Governments All Over the World Has Never Been Greater

Workers Weekly, RCPBML

Sept 9, 2023


On Sunday, September 10, this year's TUC Congress convenes in Liverpool. Once again, Congress comes at a time when workers in Britain and around the world are asserting that their voice must be heard, recognised and respected. Only the working class has an interest in providing the pressing economic and social problems of society with solutions. This is a moment in history when the working class and people are developing and continuing to fight for the perspective and vantage point that there is only one world, one humanity, and that the use of force to settle conflicts between nations and peoples must be opposed. How to bring about a situation where it is the interests and decision-making of working people which prevail, where a state with a modern democratic personality is brought into being? The need to establish an anti-war government in Britain and anti-war governments all over the world has never been greater.

One of the greatest challenges the workers face is to establish mechanisms for discussion and deliberation amongst their peers so that they can share their experiences as they organise to address the present conditions. Today, the situation in Britain and throughout the world is such that the workers cannot afford to simply adopt pre-established positions fed to them by others, but must work out their own positions and provide themselves with their own information which can reveal what must be done next.

At the TUC Congress, there are 79 motions and many debates planned around motions and composite motions, not least the fight against the new anti-union legislation, the Minimum Service Level (MSL) Act, the fight against poverty pay and for pay restoration and investment in public services such as education and health. However, at this Congress a position is being fed to the delegates by two motions posed as "Solidarity with Ukraine" suggesting that workers are supposed to support an "anti-imperialist" struggle against Russia in Ukraine with "the continuation and increasing of moral, material, and military aid from the UK to Ukraine" (1).

These motions do not address the interests of workers in Britain, Ukraine, Russia or throughout the world and in fact they represent the opposite. They serve the interests of those who are making huge profits out of continuing the war in Ukraine. What do workers have in common with a ruling elite that is using billions of pounds of public funds for schemes which further integrate Britain's economy and whole arms industry into the Anglo-US imperialist war machine and NATO's declared expansion into Eastern Europe and Ukraine up to the borders of the Russian Federation? Such motions ignore that it is the Anglo-US-led NATO warmongering alliance that has deliberately provoked and is escalating the war in Ukraine against Russia. The Ukrainian regime is now almost entirely financed and led militarily by NATO as its proxy army. These Anglo-US imperialists are using the Ukrainian working class and people as cannon fodder for their own interests to "weaken Russia", without getting directly involved themselves. Workers know through their bitter experience of matters here that the aim of the British government in the world is not to bring about peace, or democracy, or self-determination of peoples as they claim, but is to destroy whatever countries they and their oligopolies cannot control in the world.

This is why the Anglo-US-led NATO powers have continued to engage in provocations and warmongering confrontations not only to Russia but also towards the people of China and the DPRK in East Asia. At the same time, these same old colonisers of Africa are continuing to interfere and exploit the African working class and people and continue to rob the rich mineral wealth of the African nations for themselves. They are always at the centre of wars and conflicts in Africa as in the Middle East and elsewhere. None of this is in the interest of workers anywhere and the Anglo-US-led NATO alliance can never be a mechanism workers should support to settle conflicts between nations and peoples.

The working class of Britain must address that it is the only class that can lead the fight for an anti-war government in Britain. In fact, it is their internationalist duty to settle scores with the crimes that Britain's ruling elites have committed while claiming to act in the name of the British people. Britain's role in NATO must be condemned and especially its actions in escalating the war in Ukraine which is not the road to peace. Britain's membership of NATO must be opposed. Facts demonstrate that NATO is a most destructive oligopoly comprised of the military-industrial-civilian complex of the United States, Britain and other countries. Britain's involvement in wars of invasion, occupation and interference abroad have not only led to devastating loss of life and destruction abroad but have led to the militarisation of the British economy. Militarisation of the economy has diverted the resources of the economy thus contributimg to the impoverishment of working people and destruction of vital public services at home. Also, its effect here and world-wide is that it ensures that the people are deprived of the benefits of new developments in science and technology that can be harnessed to improve the life and welfare of the people and address all the pressing economic, scientific, social and cultural problems that face humanity.

These vital questions must be discussed by the workers themselves and their voice needs to be heard so as to work out their positions. Only the working class has an interest to transform the situation and harness the technological advances to serve a human-centred society that looks after the interests of working people for their prosperity and for peace at home and abroad. The working class of Britain must address that it is the only class that can save the day and lead the fight for an Anti-War Government in Britain. Workers' Weekly calls on the TUC delegates to rise to the occasion. The need to establish anti-war governments all over the world has never been greater.

Note 1. TUC Congress motions https://congress?tuc.org.uk/motion_type/all_motions/#sthash.POp0XDrO.ZbzvTp8l.dpb
76
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on August 03, 2023, 01:14:46 PM »
ErichMariaRemarque: 'This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and, least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of people who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.'
77
For Your Information / Glimpses of an Endgame in Ukraine
« Last post by Roger on July 28, 2023, 11:40:36 AM »

   Glimpses of an Endgame in Ukraine
M. K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline posted in Internationalist 360

JUly 25, 2023


   Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) met Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, St. Petersburg, July 23, 2023

The problem with the war in Ukraine is that it has been all smoke and mirrors. The Russian objectives of "demilitarisation" and "de-Nazification" of Ukraine wore a surreal look. The western narrative that the war is between Russia and Ukraine, where central issue is the Westphalian principle of national sovereignty, wore thin progressively leaving a void.

There is a realisation today that the war is actually between Russia and NATO and that Ukraine had ceased to be a sovereign country since 2014 when the CIA and sister western agencies — Germany, the UK, France, Sweden, etc.— installed a puppet regime in Kiev.

The fog of war is lifting and the battle lines are becoming visible. At an authoritative level, a candid discussion is beginning as regards the endgame.

Certainly, Russian President Vladimir Putin's videoconference with the permanent members of the Security Council in Moscow last Friday and his meeting with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg on Sunday become the defining moment. The two transcripts stand back-to-back and need to be read together. (here and here)

There is no question that the two events were carefully choreographed by the Kremlin officials and intended to convey multiple messages. Russia exudes confidence that it has achieved dominance on the battle front — having thrashed the Ukrainian military and Kiev's "counteroffensive" moving into the rear view mirror. But Moscow anticipates that the Biden administration may be having an even bigger war plan in mind.

At the Security council meeting, Putin "de-classified" the intelligence reports reaching Moscow from various sources indicative of moves to insert into Western Ukraine a Polish expeditionary force. Putin called it "a well-organised, equipped regular military unit to be used for operations" in Western Ukraine "for the subsequent occupation of these territories."

Indeed, there is a long history of Polish revanchism. Putin, himself a keen student of history, talked at some length about it. He sounded stoical that if the Kiev authorities were to acquiesce with this Polish-American plan, "as traitors usually do, that's their business. We will not interfere."

But, Putin added, "Belarus is part of the Union State, and launching an aggression against Belarus would mean launching an aggression against the Russian Federation. We will respond to that with all the resources available to us." Putin warned that what is afoot "is an extremely dangerous game, and the authors of such plans should think about the consequences."

On Sunday, at the meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg, Lukashenko picked up the thread of discussion. He briefed Putin about new Polish deployments close to Belarus border — just 40 kms from Brest — and other preparations under way — the opening of a repair shop for Leopard tanks in Poland, activation of an airfield in Rzeszow on Ukrainian border (about 100 kms from Lvov) for use of Americans transferring weaponry, mercenaries, etc.

Lukashenko said: "This is unacceptable to us. The alienation of western Ukraine, the dismemberment of Ukraine and the transfer of its lands to Poland are unacceptable. Should people in Western Ukraine ask us then we will provide support to them. I ask you (Putin) to discuss and think about this issue. Naturally, I would like you to support us in this regard. If the need in such support arises, if Western Ukraine asks us for help, then we will provide assistance and support to people in western Ukraine. If this happens, we will support them in every possible way."

Lukashenko continued, "I am asking you to discuss this issue and think it through. Obviously, I would like you to support us in this regard. With this support, and if western Ukraine asks for this help, we will definitely provide assistance and support to the western population of Ukraine."

As could be expected, Putin didn't respond — at least, not publicly. Lukashenko characterised the Polish intervention as tantamount to the dismemberment of Ukraine and its "piece meal" absorption into NATO. Lukashenko was upfront: "This is supported by the Americans." Interestingly, he also sought the deployment of Wagner fighters to counter the threat to Belarus.

The bottom line is that Putin and Lukashenko held such a discussion publicly at all. Clearly, both spoke on the basis of intelligence inputs. They anticipate an inflection point ahead.

It is one thing that the Russian people are well aware that their country is de facto fighting the NATO in Ukraine. But it is an entirely different matter that the war may dramatically escalate to a war with Poland, a NATO army that the US regards as its most important partner in continental Europe.

By dwelling at some length on Polish revanchism, which has a controversial record in modern European history, Putin probably calculated that in Europe, including in Poland, there could be resistance to the machinations that might drag NATO into a continental war with Russia.

Equally, Poland must be dithering too. According to Politico, Poland's military is about 150,000 strong, out of which 30,000 belong to a new territorial defence force who are "weekend soldiers who undergo 16 days of training followed up by refresher courses."

Again, Poland's military might doesn't translate into political influence in Europe because the centrist forces that dominate the EU distrust Warsaw, which is controlled by the nationalist Law and Justice Party whose disregard for democratic norms and the rule of law has damaged Poland's reputation across the bloc.

Above all, Poland has reason to be worried about the reliability of Washington. Going forward, Polish leadership's concern, paradoxically, will be that Donald Trump may not return as president in 2024. Despite the cooperation with the Pentagon over the Ukraine war, Poland's current leadership remains distrustful of President Joe Biden — much like Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

On balance, therefore, it stands to reason that the sabre-rattling by Lukashenko and Putin's lesson on European history can be taken as more of a forewarning to the West with a view to modulate an endgame in Ukraine that is optimal for Russian interests. A dismemberment of Ukraine or an uncontrollable expansion of the war beyond its borders will not be in the Russian interests.

But the Kremlin leadership will factor in the contingency that Washington's follies stemming out of its desperate need to save face from a humiliating defeat in the proxy war, may leave no choice to the Russian forces but to cross the Dnieper and advance all the way to Poland's border to prevent an occupation of Western Ukraine by the so-called Lublin Triangle, a regional alliance with virulent anti-Russian orientation comprising Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, formed in July 2020 and promoted by Washington.

Putin's back-to-back meetings in Moscow and St. Petersburg throw light on the Russian thinking as to three key elements of the endgame in Ukraine. First, Russia has no intentions of territorial conquest of Western Ukraine but will insist on having a say on how the new boundaries of the country and the future regime will look and act like, which means that an anti-Russian state will not be allowed.

Second, the Biden administration's plan to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat in the war is a non-starter, as Russia will not hesitate to counter any continued attempt by the US and NATO to use Ukrainian territory as a springboard to wage a renewed proxy war, which means that Ukraine's "piece meal" absorption into NATO will remain a fantasy.

Third, most important, the battle-hardened Russian army backed by a powerful defence industry and a robust economy will not hesitate to confront NATO member countries bordering Ukraine if they trespass on Russia's core interests, which means that Russia's core interests will not be held hostage to Article 5 of the NATO Charter.
78
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on July 17, 2023, 03:06:18 PM »
'... bring the troops home ...' [... end the overseas military 'adventures' ...]
79
Yuri Afonin: Comparison of Prigozhin with the Bolsheviks is absolutely illiterate historically
Communist Party of the Russian Federation

June 26, 2023


   [robotic translation] First Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Yu.V. Afonin commented on statements that the leader of the armed rebellion, Yevgeny Prigozhin, allegedly did the same thing that the Bolsheviks did in 1917.

Afonin Yury Vyacheslavovich First Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Deputy of the State Duma

For the past three days, the whole country has been discussing Prigozhin's armed rebellion. In particular, there are many historical parallels. President Putin in his address compared the current situation with the events of 1917. Characteristically, however, he did not mention the Bolsheviks in any negative context. However, immediately there were commentators who tried to settle scores with the Bolsheviks again. Most of them can be ignored. But among these commentators was a former very high-ranking official - Sergei Stepashin. He literally stated the following: "Vladimir Vladimirovich compared the situation with the events of 1917. I understand what we are talking about - then the Bolsheviks betrayed and, in fact, destroyed the army, and we lost the First World War, or rather, we did not lose, but did not become winners.

Of course, as the ideological heirs of the Bolsheviks, we consider it necessary to answer.

In fact, anyone who knows history decently understands that in 1917 the Russian army and the Russian state were destroyed not by the Bolsheviks at all, but by completely different forces. And this happened long before Lenin and his associates came to power. And the Bolsheviks just became that powerful historical force that revived the Armed Forces of the country in the form of the Red Army and gathered back the already virtually collapsed state. It was the Leninists who saved Russia, did not allow it to be torn to pieces by the then collective West.

The fact that it was not the Bolsheviks who destroyed the Russian army in 1917 was recognized even by the leaders of the white movement. If you read the diaries of General Alekseev or the memoirs of General Denikin, you can see that they unequivocally link the collapse of the army with Order No. 1 of the Petrograd Soviet, issued on March 1 (14), 1917. This order gave rise to such phenomena as the election of commanders, the discussion of orders for the command of soldiers, and so on. In fact, this gave impetus to the complete disintegration of army discipline. But who was the author of the text of this order? History has preserved their names. Attorney at Law Nikolai Sokolov is a non-factional Social Democrat, Nikolai Chkheidze is a Menshevik, and Semyon Klivansky is a Menshevik. There were no Bolsheviks around. Then, in fact, the same line in the army was pursued by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky, first as Minister of War of the Provisional Government, then as its head. Most of these figures, by the way, then fiercely fought the Bolsheviks.

Why did the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries turn to a policy that actually destroyed the army during a huge war? By and large, the reason is that they did not want to give the people what they wanted, but at the same time they tried to secure popularity in the army. After February, the revolutionary spirit of most of the leaders of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries evaporated. They were frightened that the revolutionary mood of the masses was going much further than the overthrow of tsarism and stood up in defense of the property of the landowners and capitalists. They refused to hand over the landowners' land to the peasants, dragged on with the resolution of this key issue, telling tales that supposedly it could not be resolved without the Constituent Assembly. They dreamed of leaving plants and factories in the hands of the capitalists. And this is not surprising: in the Provisional Government, along with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, were the oligarchs of that time - Alexander Guchkov, Mikhail Tereshchenko, Alexander Konovalov. The ministers of the Provisional Government wanted to continue the war in the interests of the Entente, that is, in fact, shed Russian blood for the sake of the profits of the bankers of London, Paris and New York. But at the same time, without giving anything to the people, they tried to somehow win over the soldiers to their side and did this at the cost of destroying discipline, in fact, at the cost of the collapse of the army.

It was because of this collapse of the army that the Bolsheviks later had to conclude the Brest Peace. Now the darkness of critics of the Bolsheviks has divorced, but none of them can formulate: how would they continue the war with the mighty Kaiser Germany and its allies in conditions when the army had already collapsed? It's just that they can't say anything about it.

To all those who really want to understand what happened then, I strongly advise you to watch the film "The Great Statesman". It is easy to find it on the Internet. This is a film about Lenin. We filmed it in 2020, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ilyich, and filmed it in collaboration with leading historians. There, on a large amount of factual material, we show that Lenin then acted precisely as a great statesman, under whose leadership the army was revived and the country was preserved.

The Red Army, relying on the broadest support of the people, was able to beat both the interventionists of the then collective West, and the whites, who acted as mercenaries of the West, and various nationalists, including Ukrainian nationalists - Petliurists, the ideological predecessors of the current Kiev politicians. It was thanks to the Bolsheviks that Russia then survived as a state.

The same position is taken by the Russian communists today. For us now the most important task is to preserve our state, which is subjected to the most powerful pressure from Western imperialism.




80
73rd Anniversary of US Military Aggression against DPRK: Solidarity with the DPRK against the US
Workers Weekly RCPBML

June 25, 2023


   PHOTO: Korean Friendship Association UK protest outside the US Embassy in London on June 24th in solidarity with the DPRK against the US

PHOTO: South Korean protests against US military exercises

Sunday, June 25, marks the 73rd anniversary of the US-led military aggression against the Korean nation that started the 1950-1953 Korean War (1). This US-led coalition of aggression, under the flag of the United Nations, involved troops from 17 countries, with Britain as one of the leading forces. Aimed at occupying the whole of Korea, the war lasted three years until the US, Britain and the troops from the south of Korea were defeated and the US was forced to sign the armistice on July 27, 1953, 70 years ago next month. This weekend events are being held in Britain and around the world to start a month of expressing solidarity with the DPRK and against the US, and paying tribute to the heroic Korean people who continue to affirm their right to be by fighting for an independent and united Korea, and for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang mass rallies took place at different parts of the municipality on June 25, the day of struggle against U.S. imperialism. More than 120,000 working people and youth and students in the capital participated.

Today, the US with the south Korean military are marking this anniversary by once again staging five ongoing "combined joint firepower annihilation drills" targeting the DPRK. Four of these exercises were in June. Also, last week it was reported that the USS Michigan, one of the largest nuclear missile submarines in the world, "capable of launching special forces missions", was in south Korea as part of these exercises. The statements say it is part of the recent bilateral agreements on enhancing "regular visibility" of US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula in "response to North Korea's advancing nuclear programme". That the DPRK defends itself against US nuclear weapons, which have always been present, if not "visible" on the Korean peninsula, is not a crime but is its right in the context of the ever-present US nuclear blackmail and threats. It is the right of all nations and peoples to defend their self-determination and peaceful development.

These ongoing military and nuclear weapons exercises on this 73rd anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War are not only the largest in many years but are accompanied by false claims that such exercises are "defensive" to the Republic of Korea (ROK). It is clear that they are now openly aimed, as they were in 1950, at waging war against the DPRK, at "occupation of Pyongyang" and at a "beheading operation". As they did before in 1950, the US and its allies wheel out the false claims that it is the DPRK that is the "aggressor" and threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Il Sung, President of the DPRK and Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army in the Korean War.

Condemning these exercises in April when they were announced, a KCNA commentary (2) pointed out that the exercises demonstrate that the hostility of the US to the DPRK has never been greater. The commentary added that this hostility is reminding the people and army of the DPRK of the aggression of June 1950, when they were subject to this war crime against the people of Korea, and is further arousing the greatest vigilance against the military and nuclear aggression posed by the US on the Korean Peninsula. On June 15, a representative of the Ministry of Defence of the DPRK issued a strong warning against the "combined joint firepower annihilation drill" targeting the DPRK.

In the Korean War, three million people died at the hands of the Anglo-US forces in Korea. The US carpet-bombed the DPRK and there was hardly a brick left standing in the cities and towns of the north. The US and their allies did not hesitate to use terrible chemical and biological weapons, and even thought of using nuclear weapons, provoking a wave of indignation throughout the world. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in the north and south of Korea were massacred. Civilians were buried alive, dismembered, burned to death and drowned. Many were forced to dig their own graves before being executed in the same manner that the Nazis massacred civilians, particularly those who resisted (3).

This was a time when the Korean people had made tremendous sacrifices to defeat the colonial occupation by the Japanese fascists and establish their legitimate right to independence. Already President Kim Il Sung, the leader of the armed struggle against the Japanese occupying forces, and the architect of the liberation of the country, had founded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948. It was the US, Britain and their allies that could not tolerate the existence of an independent anti-fascist Korea, with its popular government and its determination to create a socialist society. It was the US, Britain and their allies that divided Korea and maintained their military occupation following the defeat of the fascist forces by the Koreans themselves.

The division of the one nation of Korea continues to this day with the US led punitive trade and economic sanctions, which also block "food and agricultural products" (4), threatening the well-being and lives of the people in the DPRK, which is a mountainous country with smaller areas of arable land than the south of Korea. With these illegal and inhumane sanctions, themselves an act of war, they hope to starve the people of the DPRK into submission and blame their socialist political system.

The dangerous militarisation of the Korean Peninsula by the US continues today as part of its hegemonic ambitions to dominate East Asia and also China. The US is conducting ongoing military and nuclear exercises on land, sea and in the air, in and around the Asian-Pacific Taiwan strait and South China Sea as well as around the Korean Peninsula. Britain has also joined the US in these dangerous military manoeuvres in the Asia-Pacific and on the Korean Peninsula into 2023. This year for the first time since the Korean War, Britain has deployed its Royal Marines to the Korean Peninsula to join the US in its war preparations against the DPRK. This act by the British government was an insulting provocation given that the former soldiers of the Royal Marines of 41 Independent Commando were the ones that had carried out amphibious raids behind north Korean lines between 1950 and 1951 as part of the armed forces of the US, fraudulently dispatched under the United Nations flag (5), which invaded and occupied Korea.

Pyongyang in 1953, the result of US-led barbarity in the Korean War

From the time of the Korean War until now, the US has refused to sign a peace treaty, which betrays its true aims on the Korean Peninsula. The DPRK, its leaders and people's government, far from being the threat to peace, have always stood for peaceful re-unification of the two Koreas and continue to take stands against the interference of the US and for peace worldwide. Unlike the US, Britain and other powers that condemn the DPRK's existence and its right to be, the DPRK has not invaded and occupied any country.

Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang

The interests of all peoples is to build their solidarity with the DPRK and the Korean people against the US to secure peace on the Korean Peninsula and to put an end to the more than 70 years of US-engineered division, militarisation, tension, and strife between north and south and oppose the criminal trade and economic sanctions against the DPRK. The peace-loving people of Britain must condemn British government for its support for these ongoing and large-scale military exercises and provocations against the DPRK and demand that Britain gets its marines and other forces out of the Korean Peninsula.

Today, when the US imperialists and their cohorts, such as Britain, are stepping up war preparations in the Asia-Pacific, it is more important than ever to remember the terrible tragedies visited upon the Korean people during that war that must never again be permitted. The working class and people must play their part to ensure that another war does not break out on the Korean Peninsula and that Britain ends its hostile stand towards the DPRK.

Notes
1. On June 25, 1950, after a whole series of incursions and military provocation against the DPRK, the forces from the south of Korea, placed under US command, crossed the 38th parallel, which separates the north from the south, with an objective to "disperse and disarm North Korea's People's Army" in order to "take Pyongyang in three days" (to cite Syngman Rhee, "President" of the South Korean puppet government at the end of 1949).

2. "War Maniacs' Reckless Move", KCNA commentary, April 2, 2023
http://www?kcna?kp/en/article/q/55cc18c6b08e669b07a7abf7b8c9dce3.kcmsf

3. All this was documented by the Commission of the Women's International Democratic Federation to Korea May 16-27, 1951. In their report We Accuse! the Commission condemned these crimes that were being committed against defenceless civilians and called for the UN to demand an end to all fighting, that all foreign troops be pulled out of Korea and for the Korean people to determine their own affairs.

4. Democratic People's Republic of Korea sanctions: guidance
https://www?gov?uk/government/publications/democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea-sanctions-guidance/democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea-sanctions-guidance

5. The US accused the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) of "starting the war" when it was they who were interfering in the internal affairs of Korea which, through the efforts of the people themselves, had won its independence by defeating the Japanese occupation in August 1945. First the US illegally divided Korea into north and south. It then mobilised the UN to intervene in a civil war which constituted foreign interference in the internal affairs of a country and is illegal under the UN Charter. The UN Security Council used the fact that the People's Republic of China had not yet been permitted to take its seat because the US was supporting the deposed Nationalist Chinese regime of Chiang Kai-shek that had taken refuge in Taiwan, and Russia was absent in protest of this refusal to seat the legitimate government of China, to adopt the resolution. The resolution to wage war on the Korean people was adopted in contravention of Article 32 of the UN Charter which calls for parties to the dispute to be present at the discussions of the problems. It is also in contravention of paragraph 3 of Article 27 of the UN Charter, which provides that a Security Council resolution is only valid if approved by a vote of Council members, including approval by all permanent Council members. Neither condition was met since, at the time, neither the Soviet Union nor China were present.




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