If tomorrow morning a foreign army invaded Britain, I will be among the first to take up arms against the occupier. But I will not go to kill other young men in Russia, occupy Ireland, or assist a genocide in Palestine. These are my red lines, and such acts also illegal under intl law. We could have the best foreign service and armed forces in the world by simply being neutral and abandoning imperialist aggression. The militarism in Whitehall is out of control.
@revoltinghippie@RoryStewartUK@GailGailtranter They are using their economic might to bring millions of their citizens out of poverty, not spending it on armaments to go, as you say, bullying the rest of the world. They are an invented bogeyman.
Thoughts from the US
"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
- Charles Pierce
For the first time in over 20 years, Israel has deployed tanks in the West Bank, after expelling 40,000 Palestinians from refugee camps.
This is a prelude to full annexation, and makes a mockery of the ceasefire agreement that Israel continues to violate.
We are witnessing ethnic cleansing โ and our governmentโs ongoing failure to defend international law is utterly, utterly shameful.
Palestinians are human beings who deserve self-determination.
That is why we will continue to demand economic sanctions, a full arms embargo, and the only path to peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine.
@MrHarryCole@2230Josh@jeromestarkey Why do most of the people in this thread prefer to be governed by the US and Israel, rather than have good relations with a country that prefers not to go bombing countries all over the world?