SLfgb

Oh yes definitely The Little Prince is a must-read.

The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren is one of my childhood favourites. Originally Swedish but has been translated into English.

The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt another childhood fav., it has been translated from Dutch. Actually, anything by Dragt I loved, but not sure which have translations or not.

In terms of adult fiction, I was hooked on Stig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (he only wrote the first 3 though).

Someone mentioned Kurt Vonnegut; I recommend the one I've read of his: Slaughterhouse 5.

The Circle still gives me pause more than 5 years later. It's by Dave Eggers.

Switzerland is not an EU country...

Lol, what? Australia is a US lackee more than anywhere else. And the CIA was definitely involved in the Whitlam sacking.

same.

15yo me gets an angry phone call from the dad where I'd scored a weekly long-term babysitting gig after the first or second night: don't think for a second that you're coming back! (I'm paraphrasing here).

I give a one-word reply and he hangs up.

All I did was leave after getting paid without saying bye while they were checking on the kids. (They were asleep). Because I didn't want to be coerced to get a ride like last time.

Took me years to realise they were in the wrong.

I am angry at the politicians in the US etc for their continued support of the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.

I'm also angry at the Israeli head of state and political machine, who controls the IDF. When I say 'the IDF' I mean of course the military arm of the state of Israel. The Likud charta explicitly states the aim of one Israel 'from the sea to the river' - oh, the irony!

What Hamas has done on Oct 7, even if all stories are to be believed, pales in comparison to what Israel has done to innocent Palestinians - schools, universities, hospitals, aid workers, journalists, etc -before and since. And it was clearly provoked by years of being occupied in an open-air prison. So I'm sorry if I'm not interested in the 'we're only defending our own' shtick.

A two-state solution is only possible if Israel withdraws, stops occupying Palestine and allows it to exercise full sovereignty of its borders, governancet, and defence.

Look it's hard to say if it saved lives in the overall ww2 tally, but surrender to save lives was the rationale of the Generals eg in The Netherlands. They looked at what the Luftwaffe had done to Rotterdam, looked at what weapons they had themselves, considered the prospect of what was going to happen to Utrecht next, and decided that further resistance was futile. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_in_World_War_II#German_occupation

Funny story, I was mistaken for an Israeli patriot today, just because of my accent and what I was wearing. I was reassured, if you like, that the world is not going to ostracise Israel and Israel will keep existing. That was the gist of it anyhow. Of course I have no doubt israel will keep existing, what with all the support of the world's hegemons. What worries me is that Israel will keep existing in its current form: a fascist, genocidal ethnostate. Describing the only armed resistance against occupation permitted by Israel to take hold, as an 'army', creates a false sense of equivalence between Hamas's militants and the IDF with all its powerful tech. To describe what's been going on in Gaza for the past 10 months as a war between two armies simply defending their own people is, well stunning, when faced with all the evidence of the IDF's targeted mass killings of Palestinian civilian lives, as well as their callous disregard for Israeli lives (eg Hannibal directive).

First what needs to happen is the US stop unconditionally funding the IDF.

(I mean, it is in their charter)

pretty sure it's no longer in their charter.

Also why do you keep calling it an army. Gaza doesn't have an army.

Quite a few nations capitulated against the Nazis within days or even without a fight to avoid war. It saved a lot of lives. Does that make it the right choice? Who is to say...

What's for sure is that Boris shouldn't have vetoed the peace agreement in 2022.