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Reminder to China and Russia: No New World Order Can Emerge Without Resolving the Palestinian Issue

Internationalist 360, Lama El Horr

June 5, 2024

Leaders in the march towards a new world order based on multipolarity and respect for international law, China and Russia have not failed to condemn Israeli-American crimes in Gaza.

However, these condemnations seem insufficient in a context where the peoples of the world are dismayed to witness unbridled Israeli-American sadism, aimed at obliterating the struggle of the Palestinian people – and, through them, of all peoples aspiring to liberate themselves from the American imperialist yoke.

In these conditions, the timid Chinese and Russian reactions do not seem to match the global repulsion aroused by the abominations that reach us from Gaza.

The stakes for Beijing and Moscow are high

Since the start of the Israeli invasion of Gaza on October 8, 2023, China and Russia have deferred to international law. With the exception of a few diplomatic initiatives aimed at fostering unity of purpose between the various Palestinian components or the countries of the region, Beijing and Moscow have limited their actions to the framework of the United Nations, thus demonstrating their attachment to international legality. Beijing and Moscow are thus indirectly supporting South Africa's prosecution of Israel – in other words, of the Western sponsors of Israel's crimes – before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which falls under the jurisdiction of the UN.

The fact that China and Russia have not officially associated themselves with South Africa's prosecution of Israel, however, allows us to draw several conclusions about the ulterior motives of these two great powers.

Logically, China and Russia have lost faith in international jurisdictions, which have never compromised the interests of the West, despite the latter's thousand and one transgressions of international and humanitarian law. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya The examples are legion. By remaining aloof from, yet approving of, the legal proceedings brought against Israel, Beijing and Moscow are consecrating the cracks in the current world order, in which all decisions, including those emanating from the ICJ, depend on the UN Security Council, and thus on the American veto.

The two powers thus set themselves up as arbiters, not of the proceedings against Israel – a task that falls to the ICJ – but of the unipolar system that has prevailed since the Second World War, and particularly since the end of the Cold War. This retreat allows China and Russia not only to point out the dysfunctions of international jurisdictions, but also to insist on the need to build a fairer world order that puts an end to the impunity enjoyed by the Western minority to the detriment of the overwhelming global majority.

Beijing's and Moscow's decision not to officially join Pretoria's moves also reflects a concern to spare Washington's susceptibilities. By not cutting off commercial, economic and diplomatic exchanges with Israel, both Beijing and Moscow are taking care to avoid too abrupt a disintegration of the American empire, and thus prevent a head-on war with Washington. At a time when U.S. influence in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America is waning, and the Eurasian axis is consolidating, China and Russia want to avoid too abruptly wresting from Washington the entity that was, along with the U.S. dollar, its main tool of domination over the world: Israel.

The unspoken agenda of the collective West

For its part, the collective West is seeking to impose a different reading of events. Faced with the global panic caused by the unbearable suffering of the Palestinians, it has become customary to hear the Western media denounce the Israeli Prime Minister's refusal to abide by the rules of international law. As if the individual Netanyahu were more powerful than all the world's states combined, and the whole world were at the mercy of this man – a man portrayed as crazy and armed to the teeth.

These Western media machinations are a convenient way of clearing Israel's sponsors in the eyes of world public opinion, and of keeping the door open to future negotiations between Washington, Beijing and Moscow.

Firstly, these anti-Netanyahu statements, which abound in the Western media, reflect a distortion of facts and history. You only have to look at the UN archives to realize that Israel's trampling of international law is far from new. Thanks to Israel's Western protectors, dozens of UN resolutions condemning the state of Israel, which has been above the law since its creation, have gone unheeded. It's also worth remembering that the State of Israel and the UN – the body that created Israel in the first place – are almost the same age. This speaks volumes about the credibility of this organization, whose members have allowed the inextricable situation they created to degenerate into colonialism and replacement politics – at the very moment, it should be remembered, when decolonization movements were being born around the world.

Today, seventy-six years later, in view of U.S.-Israeli ambitions in the Middle East region, it's legitimate to wonder whether the Israeli invasion of Gaza was more than just a consequence of October 7.

On September 29, 2023, a week before Operation Flood of al-Aqsa, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan welcomed the fact that the Middle East region had never seen such a lull in violence for two decades. Three days earlier, however, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that "So far in 2023, Israeli forces have killed 181 Palestinians in the West Bank or Israel, exceeding the yearly death toll by Israeli forces in the West Bank since 2005." So were Jake Sullivan's Kafkaesque words a smokescreen, a bluff? Was the ethnic cleansing underway in Gaza totally improvised, or were the United States and its Israeli ally trying to conceal the horrors to come, in order to surprise their adversaries?

A month later, during his trip to Israel to support Netanyahu, the French president had suggested mobilizing the international coalition already in place against the Islamic State to fight Hamas as well. Although this suggestion was immediately dismissed by Macron's entourage, it was nonetheless expressed publicly. What was the objective? To threaten the members of the Axis of Resistance with a proliferation of terrorism in the Middle East if they didn't stay out of the way of Israeli-Western operations against Gaza? If this was the objective, then Macron's threats have not borne fruit, as evidenced by the involvement of Ansar Allah, Hezbollah and other regional factions of the Axis of Resistance in defending the Palestinians.

Have Beijing and Moscow taken the measure of the Palestinian drama?

By making constantly contradictory declarations, and setting unattainable war aims, the United States and Israel have so far revealed their intention to continue the ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

The contradictory statements made by the U.S. administration reveal, not only the White House's embarrassment in the face of world opinion, but above all Washington's strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis its geopolitical rivals. The United States claims to care about the lives of Palestinians, but continues to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic and media protection. They refuse to authorize an Israeli incursion into Rafah, but allow carnage when the incursion takes place. They portray Netanyahu as an uncontrollable madman, but threaten any international court that deigns to indict him. Their war aim is to destroy Hamas, but they negotiate with Hamas. They propose a post-war plan with the Palestinians, but want to choose their own interlocutors.

At the same time, Israel and its American ally have set themselves unattainable war aims: without the release of the Israeli hostages, there will be no ceasefire in Gaza. Does this mean that if the Israeli hostages are not released, Israel will be able to exterminate the entire Palestinian population? Haven't there ever been hostage-takings in the world, and for much lesser reasons than national resistance to military occupation? Has France, for example, whose citizens have been kidnapped in Lebanon, Colombia and elsewhere, destroyed 80% of the countries concerned, displaced 90% of their populations, massacred their civilians by the tens of thousands, starved their inhabitants and destroyed their hospitals, schools and places of worship, in order to recover its hostages? Of course, French Algeria is excluded from this example.

There's also another antiphon, according to which the Israelis don't have a Palestinian interlocutor to make peace with. Let's stop for a moment at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or Sde Teiman: if the captives in these torture centers had to choose a representative, would they elect the fellow inmate who would amplify their enslavement, or the one likely to break their dungeon? Clearly, the Israelis have never pondered the words of Mahmoud Darwich, who observed with irony that the occupier is surprised at not being loved by those who live under his yoke.

As for the prospect of finally applying international law and recognizing the Palestinian state, this was once again rejected by Israel, the U.S. and part of the EU, who prefer "direct negotiations between the parties". The Palestinians are therefore invited to negotiate the remaining 20% of their ancestral land directly with the occupier – who is meanwhile continuing to colonize the West Bank. Did Algeria negotiate the contours of its sovereignty with the French colonial power? Haiti did: but are its territory and its people freer as a result? To advocate a return to the "peace process" for the Palestinians under the aegis of the United States, sponsor of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, is ultimately to advocate the maintenance of American hegemony, and to endorse the death of international law.

In the face of these iniquitous developments, Sino-Russian actions at the UN are akin to administrative tasks, and appear derisory. Sporadic declarations by Chinese and Russian representatives in favor of the creation of a Palestinian state, respect for UN resolutions and the right of Palestinians to armed struggle, have no bearing on the Palestinian drama.

Yet the multipolar world that China and Russia are shaping with their partners in the Global South will not stand if it is built on the shaky foundations of the past.

We must bear in mind that, whatever the new world order to come, Gaza and the Palestinian drama will be its nerve center. What's more, if China and Russia – and other emerging powers such as India – don't prove more inventive in resolving the Palestinian question, future eras are likely to reproach them for their passivity in the face of this appalling ethnic cleansing that is unfolding before our very eyes – and which is, let's not forget, a replica of the replacement policy that gave birth to the United States of America.

This Article was First Published on China Beyond the Wall.

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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on May 02, 2024, 04:22:44 PM »
'War Porn'?
Leo Kessler, Guns At Cassino, futura publications, 1975, p37/8.
'"After the war when they start making the war films ..., they ought to show the front like it really is," one of the South T'ns said in his  almost unintelligible ... dialect. "Parts of soldiers lying all around, people getting shot while they're trying to take a shit - that kind of thing!"
"Yeah," another young blond trooper supported him, "and they should throw a little crap into the theatre's air-conditioning when they show it, so the civilians in the audience can smell what it is like on a battlefield too. Shitty!"
+
{James}JoyseanWurd4'battlefield':BluddenFylth/Blood&Filth ...
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For Your Information / This is the way the West ends
« Last post by Roger on April 01, 2024, 09:58:58 AM »
This is the way the West ends

Ukraine’s humiliation and Gaza’s shame accelerating estrangement of West and the rest at a crucial turning point in global power relations
by Adriel Kasonta March 29, 2024   

 With the United States entangled in conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the threat of a war with China looming large, Professor Michael Brenner’s insights and views on the state of the US-led liberal order are arguably as timely and important as ever.

Brenner, a respected luminary on transatlantic relations and international security, is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
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He has also served at the Foreign Service Institute, the US Department of Defense and Westinghouse. In a wide-ranging and no-holds-barred interview with Asia Times’ contributor Adriel Kasonta, Brenner lays out how the US and collective West lost their moral authority and way.

Adriel Kasonta: Despite what we hear from the Western political class and the compliant stenographers from the mainstream media, the world doesn’t seem to look as they want us to believe. The hard reality on the ground, known to anyone who lives anywhere but Europe or the US, is that the collective West is experiencing an accelerated decline in political and economic domains, with significant moral ramifications. Could you please tell our readers what is the root cause of this state of affairs and what is the rationale behind continuing this collective suicide?

Michael Brenner: I suggest that we formulate the issue by asking what is the causal direction between the moral decline and the collective West’s political and economic decline? On Ukraine, it has been a fundamental geostrategic error that has had negative moral consequences: the cynical sacrifice of half a million Ukrainians used as cannon fodder and physical destruction of the country, in the cause of weakening and marginalizing Russia.

The stunning feature of the Palestine affair is the readiness of immoral government elites – indeed the near entirety of the political class – to give their implicit blessing to the atrocities and war crimes Israel has committed over the past five months, which is having profound repercussions on the West’s standing and influence globally.

At one moment, they speak proudly about the superiority of Western values while condemning the practices of other countries; at another, they lean over backwards to justify far greater humanitarian abuses, to provide the perpetrator with the arms to destroy to kill and to maim innocent civilians, and in the case of the United States, to extend diplomatic cover in the United Nations Security Council.

In the process, they are dissipating their standing in the eyes of the world outside the West, representing two-thirds of humanity. The latter’s historical dealings with the countries of the West, including the relatively recent past, left a residue of skepticism about American-led claims to being the world’s ethical standard setters. That sentiment has given way to outright disgust in the face of this blatant display of hypocrisy. Moreover, it exposes the harsh truth that racist attitudes never had been fully extinguished – after a period of dormancy, its recrudescence is manifest.

As far as the United States is concerned, the reference points for this judgment are not the mythic image of “the city on the Hill”; the last, best hope of mankind; the indispensable nation for achieving global peace and stability: the Providential people born in a state of Original Virtue destined to lead the world down the path of Enlightenment. None of those idealistic standards. No, it has debased itself when measured against the prosaic standards of human decency, of responsible statecraft, of a decent respect for the opinions of humankind.

Moreover, the ensuing estrangement between the West and the rest is occurring at a turning point in international power relationships. It is a time when the tectonic plates of the political world are shifting, when the old constellations of power and of influence are being successfully challenged, when America has responded to feelings of self-doubt as the ordained global guide and overseer by compulsive, futile displays of muscle flexing.

Anxiety and self-doubt masked by false bravado is the hallmark sentiment among America’s political elites. That is a poor starting point for a re-engagement with reality. Americans are too attached to their exalted self-image, too narcissistic – collectively and individually, too lacking in self-awareness, too leaderless to make that wrenching adaptation. Those appraisals apply to Western Europe as to the United States. Leaving a diminished, aggrieved but unrepentant trans-Atlantic community.

AK: In your recent essay “The West’s Reckoning?”, you mentioned that the situation in Ukraine humiliates the West and the tragedy in Gaza shames it. Can you expand on this a bit more?
Photo: Courtesy of Michale Brenner

MB: Defeat in Ukraine entails much more than the military collapse of the Ukrainian forces that is in the cards. For the United States has led its allies into what amounts to a campaign to permanently diminish Russia, to neutralize it as a political or economic presence in Europe, to eliminate a major obstacle to consolidating American global hegemony.

The West has thrown everything they have into that campaign: their stock of modern weapons, a corps of advisers, tens of billions of dollars, a draconian set of economic sanctions designed to bring the Russian economy to its knees and a relentless project aimed at isolating Russia and undermining Putin’s position.

It has failed ignominiously on every count. Russia is considerably stronger on every dimension than it was before the war; its economy is more robust than any Western economy; it has proven to be militarily superior; and it has won the sympathies of nearly the entire world outside the collective West.

The assumption that the West remains custodial of global affairs has proven a fantasy. Such comprehensive failure has meant a decline in the United States’ ability to shape world affairs on matters economic and security. The Sino-Russian partnership is now ensconced as a rival equal to the West in every respect.

That outcome derives from hubris, dogmatism and a flight from reality. Now, the West’s self-respect and image is being scarred by its role in the Palestine catastrophe. So, now it faces the double challenge of restoring its sense of prowess while at the same time regaining its moral bearings.

AK: Is it accurate to say that Ukraine and Gaza are connected in the sense that both indicate a failing liberal international order that is attempting to prevent itself from collapsing and causing turmoil as it descends into oblivion? If so, what are some potential outcomes for the future?

MB: Let’s bear in mind that the liberal international order serves Western interests above all. Its workings were biased in our favor. That’s one. The regularity and stability that it produced, for which the IMF, World Bank, etc were the institutional cynosure, ensured for decades that it would go unchallenged. That is two.

The rise of new power centers – China, above all, and the wider centripetal forces redistributing assets more generally – has left the United States and its European dependents with two choices. Accommodate themselves to this new situation by: a) hammering out terms of engagement that accorded a larger place for the newcomers; b) resetting the rules of the game so as to remove the current bias; c) adjusting the structure and procedures of international institutions in a manner reflecting the end of Western dominance; and d) rediscovering genuine diplomacy.

Nowhere in the West has that option been seriously considered. So, after a period of ambivalence and muddling, all signed onto an American project to prevent the emergence of challengers, to undermine them and to double down on assertive policies to yield nothing, to compromise nothing. We remain locked on that course despite serial failures, humiliations and the impetus given the BRICS project.

AK: According to some Western politicians and policymakers, other global powers are often treated as passive actors without agency or power to shape the world according to their national interests. This Manichean worldview is marked by a distinction between the “rules-based order” and international law or “democracy vs authoritarianism.” Is there an alternative to this thinking and what are the chances of change occurring before it’s too late?

MB: See above response. There are no signs that Western leaders are prepared intellectually, emotionally or politically to make the necessary adjustments. Necessity is not always the mother of invention. Instead, we see stubborn dogmatism, avoidance behavior and a deeper plunge into a world of fantasies.

The American reaction to manifestations of declining prowess is denial along with compulsion to reassure itself that it still has the “right stuff” through increasingly audacious acts. We are seeing where that has led in Ukraine. Far more dangerous is the reckless dispatch of troops to Taiwan.

As for Europe, it is evident that its political elites have been denatured by 75 years of near-total dependence on America. A complete absence of independent thinking and willpower is the outcome. In more concrete ways, Europe’s vassalage to the United States obliges it to follow Washington down whatever policy road the seigneur takes – however reckless, dangerous, unethical and counterproductive.

In predictable fashion, they have walked (or run) like lemmings over whatever cliff the United States chooses next under its own suicidal impulses. So it’s been in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in regard to Iran, in Ukraine, on Taiwan and on all matters involving Israel. The string of painful failures and heavy costs produces no change in loyalty or mindset.
A printed photograph of a US Army soldier in a chair among the trailer trucks, and electronics which sold for the price of iron at a bazaar outside airfield in the Bagram district north of Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 19, 2021. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP via Anadolu Agency / Haroon Sabawoon

It cannot – for the Europeans have absorbed totally the habit of deference, the Americans’ worldview, their skewed interpretation of outcomes and their shamefully fictitious narratives. The Europeans no more can throw this addiction than a life-long alcoholic can go cold turkey.   

AK: There has been a lot of discussion about the negative impact of neoconservatism on US foreign policy and the world. In essence, neoconservatism seeks the role of the US to dominate not only the Western Hemisphere (as per the Monroe Doctrine) but the entire world, as per the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

Although some US think tanks are now advocating for an end to the “never-ending wars” in the Middle East and for Europe to continue the US-provoked proxy war with Russia, it seems that the neoconservative ideology has taken on a new guise of “progressivism” and “realism”, and now aims to focus solely on China, even to the point of replicating the Ukraine scenario in Taiwan. How accurate is this assessment?

MB: The entire foreign policy community in the United States now shares the basic tenets of neoconservatives. Actually, the scripture is Paul Wolfowitz’s notorious memorandum of March 1991 wherein he laid out a comprehensive, detailed strategy for systematizing American global dominance. Everything that Washington is doing, and thinking, now is derivative of that plan.

Its core principles: the United States should use all the means at its disposal to establish American global dominance; to that end, it must be ready to act preventively to stymie the emergence of any power that could challenge our hegemony; and to maintain full spectrum dominance in every region of the globe. Ideals and values are relegated to an auxiliary role as a veneer on the application of power and as a stick with which to beat others. Classic diplomacy is disparaged as inappropriate to this scheme of things.

For Biden himself, a confident, assertive, hard-edged approach to dealing with others derives naturally from belief in Americanism as a Unified Field Theory that explains, interprets and justifies whatever the US thinks and does. Were Biden reelected, this outlook will remain unchanged. And were he to be replaced by Kamala Harris mid-term, which is likely, inertia will keep everything on the fixed course.

AK: Do you think the United States is destined to remain a global empire, constantly in conflict with anyone it perceives as a potential threat to its world dominance? Or is it possible for the country to become a republic that collaborates constructively with other global players to achieve greater benefits for its citizens and the broader international community? As the saying goes, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword,” right?

MB: I’m a pessimist. For there are no signs that either our rulers, elites or public are susceptible to coming to terms with the state of affairs depicted above. The open question is whether this pretense will simply persist as a gradual weakening of global influence and domestic well-being unfolds, or, rather, will end in disaster.

Europeans and allies elsewhere should not accept to be sideline observers nor, even worse, become co-inhabitants of this world of fantasy as they have in Ukraine, on Palestine and in demonizing China.

Michael Brenner is the author of numerous books and over 80 articles and published papers. His most recent works include “Democracy Promotion and Islam”; “Fear and Dread In The Middle East”; “Toward A More Independent Europe”; “Narcissistic Public Personalities & Our Times.”

His writings include books with Cambridge University Press (“Nuclear Power and Non Proliferation”), the Center For International Affairs at Harvard University (“The Politics of International Monetary Reform”), and the Brookings Institution (“Reconcilable Differences, US-French Relations In The New Era”). He is reachable at mbren@pitt.edu
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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on March 28, 2024, 10:38:28 AM »
... in other words ... i (‘off mI ‘ead’) was having increasing ‘difficulties’’ assessing ‘TRUTHs’ ...
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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on March 27, 2024, 01:48:22 PM »
... and when I listened to Nader&Roger in ‘full flowing/fucking form(s)’, i did not hear ‘thetruth’(sic) ... all I heard was ‘“propaganda” in other “forms” ... :'(  ... in other words/‘weirds’ i (0ff m’i ‘ed) was having increasing difficulty/ies ‘assessing’ the ‘TRUTHs’ ...
 

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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on March 07, 2024, 01:22:51 AM »
... we sat by a pond one day in autumn, being,  so we thought, questingly quarel-some, but the ‘details of dispute’ meaning ‘so much’, then, now, crowd absorbed, are forgotten ...
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Palestinians Discuss National Government and Address Ceasefire Negotiations
From February 29 to March 1, Palestinian political forces held meetings in Moscow aimed at reaching a "comprehensive national unity."

Following the meeting, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau Mousa Abu Marzouk told a Russian news agency that "there are no differences between it and other Palestinian factions that could not be bridged to form a unity government." Any differences, he said, "are surmountable and we hope that we can overcome all the difficulties. The main problem is the external interference of the United States and Israel in Palestinian affairs and all the unattainable goals in our negotiations are precisely because of this interference."

Palestinian political forces agreed to continue negotiations, adding that the next gathering would also likely take place in Moscow and focus on "the mechanism for establishing the government and its responsibilities." "We will have a continuation of these negotiations in order to establish a national government and already deal with the rest of the problems that need attention and discussion. So the creation of a government will be discussed at the next meeting," Marzouk said.

Present at the meeting were the Hamas movement, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Fatah movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), PFLP General Command, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and the Al-Saiqa organization, as well as several others.

The Palestinian resistance organizations released a joint statement on March 1. "The Palestinian factions gathered in the city of Moscow express their thanks and appreciation to the Russian leadership for hosting their meetings and for its position in support of the Palestinian cause," the statement says.

"They affirm, in light of the criminal Zionist aggression against our people, the positive and constructive spirit that prevailed at the meeting, and agreed that their meetings will continue in rounds," the joint statement went on to say, adding that upcoming meetings are to be held soon.

The statement called for thwarting Israeli attempts to displace Palestinians, whether in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank or the holy city of Jerusalem. It also called for an emphasis on the illegality of settlement expansion. The factions called for efforts to lift the siege on Gaza and end the occupation of the West Bank.

They also stood by the goal of forcing Israel "to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and preventing attempts to establish its occupation or control over any part of the Gaza Strip under the pretext of buffer zones," as called for in the Israeli prime minister's recently unveiled plan for a post-war Gaza.

The statement completely rejects "any attempts to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, including Jerusalem, as part of efforts to rob the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination."

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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on February 28, 2024, 01:42:25 AM »
... better to ‘do’ it out/on the fictional, rather than the ‘real’ ... that way no one got hurt/killed ... pt.x
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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on February 16, 2024, 04:56:13 PM »
... ‘they’ blink away ... the deaths of ... some/many/one/2/thousands/millions ... whatever ... & I /i thought (2myself) ... it is a ‘waste of time’ in ‘wast(e)ing “time” on these ‘shit-bags’ ...
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