The Peace Press — Saturday, June 5, 2021 edition

Russia is not our enemy. China is not our enemy. North Korea is not our enemy. Iran is not our enemy. Venezuela is not our enemy. Syria is not our enemy. Yemen is not our enemy. Diplomacy with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and other nations is utterly necessary and a good pathway forward to help resolve issues of common global concern like climate change, nuclear proliferation and violent-religious extremism. We cannot afford to not engage in warm diplomatic relations with either of these nations. Any politician, Democrat or Republican, who advocates a policy of confrontation with Russia or China should be harshly criticized loudly and often and consistently. Wage peace and persevere!!!!

The reason that our government and its bullhorns in the media are trying to get you hate China and Russia is because these two nations refuse to bend to U.S. Imperialist dictates in the world. They cleverly use the partisan system to get the Left to hate Russia and the Right to hate China but neither of these nations pose any real threat to any of us. As a result of Imperial Washington’s insistence on unipolar global domination as the only “exceptional” nation in the world as they claim, China and Russia who both share a long common border are forced to work cooperatively together to mitigate the threat of U.S. international bullying and Imperialism. In short, Imperialist Washington largely created the mess it seeks now to resolve. However, the Imperialist recipe for resolution is to force China and Russia to act submissively to the U.S. Imperialist demands as less than equal partners. In a changing world moving closer to multi-polarity, this demand is as offensive as it is comical. It represents the old way of the world and not the new way of the world now upon us in most ways. These conflicts can be resolved but not through military threats or interventions.

It is through diplomacy, and not by threats of war or threatening military actions like provocative naval exercises, that we stand the most to gain. Diplomacy opens new doors, builds trust, enhances cooperation, encourages the willingness to compromise and fosters mutual understanding. But war and threats of war do just the opposite by elevating hostility, deepening suspicions, vastly increasing insecurity and fostering fear and hatred. Talking and exchanging ideas never hurt anyone whereas war has killed hundreds-of-millions.

Money, profits and power are the reasons why the Establishment desperately wants you to hate Russia and China. But Russia and China are not our enemies.

On most issues and polices, Biden = Trump. If you are naive and gullible and many people are exactly that then you will be mesmerized each election cycle by the lofty rhetoric alone without adequately measuring the actual policy. If you measure actual policy, you will find there is very little difference between Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden — — — — -4 peas of the same pod with about the same policies overall. In a democracy, you might have a genuine choice but we have no genuine choice in our system of government. The only real choice you have is to persistently agitate and pressure the levers of power. Change comes from what you do and not from who you elect.

“Despite our differences with China — some of them profound — we would do well to prioritize pursuing mutually beneficial diplomacy and building collaborations to address the existential threats to survival over preparing for catastrophic war with the Middle Kingdom.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/06/01/biden-dangerously-accelerating-new-cold-war-china

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“The bill undermines Kerry’s negotiated agreement with China, sabotaging an opportunity for the U.S. and China — countries responsible for releasing half of the world’s fossil fuel emissions — to partner on curbing emissions and sharing strategies for greening the Earth.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/06/02/schumers-anti-china-bill-sacrifices-climate-empire
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“Despite our differences with China — some of them profound — we would do well to prioritize pursuing mutually beneficial diplomacy and building collaborations to address the existential threats to survival over preparing for catastrophic war with the Middle Kingdom."

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/06/01/biden-dangerously-accelerating-new-cold-war-china
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“These continued increases for the Pentagon undermine our desperate need to prioritize human needs and real security over corporate greed.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/06/02/bidens-military-budget-unconscionable
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“Let’s be clear on one thing: The US “defense” budget has little to do with defense. If it was really about defense, it could be cut by 90% and still be bloated.

The US “defense” budget is about two things: Redistributing wealth from your wallet to the bank accounts of “defense” contractors, and trying unsuccessfully to rule the world.

On the former front, if it was really about defense, US Coast Guard ships would be patrolling the US coast, not the Iranian coast, and a much smaller force of US military personnel would have spent the last 20 years in places like Texas and Vermont rather than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, etc.”

https://original.antiwar.com/thomas-knapp/2021/06/03/joe-bidens-a-big-spender-but-not-quite-big-enough-for-republican-defense-scammers/
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This is invariably the result of perpetual war — — — — more repression at home. In reality, the troops are not fighting for your freedom, they and the wars they fight are emboldening tyranny at home and abroad. This is made possible by the immoral, murderous, oppressive policy of perpetual war. The War on Terror is a war on you, your liberty and innocent civilians around the world murdered, maimed and displaced in the name of the American Empire.

“Homeland Security just issued its fourth danger bulletin this year. And both the weapons and rhetorical tactics of the first War on Terror are increasingly visible.”

“Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country.”

“Americans have seen this scam before. Throughout the first War on Terror, DHS, which was created in 2002, was frequently used to keep fear levels high and thus foster support for draconian government powers of spying, detention, and war.”

“Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.”

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-new-domestic-war-on-terror-has
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“In exclusive audio, Russiagate target Konstantin Kilimnik responds to evidence-free US government claims that he is a Russian spy who passed Trump campaign polling data to the Kremlin 2016.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/03/russiagate-target-kilimnik-speaks-out-on-spy-claims-trump-russia-conspiracy-theories/
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NATO — — -A useless, washed-up, braindead relic of the Cold War now treating Russia and China as enemies to justify it worthless continued existence. Did you know that when a nation joins NATO that they are required to spend a certain percentage of their budget on purchasing only U.S. armaments? They are also forced to open their borders to some stationing U.S. troops. For these reasons, NATO is the hegemonic arm of the United States of American Empire in Europe — — — — -it is a force for global domination and perpetual war. ABOLISH NATO NOW!!!!!!!!! Wage peace and persevere!!!!
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“And what is the nation supposedly posing such an existential threat to global peace and security? A country of 145 million people, only 43% of that of the U.S. The combined population of nations constituting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is 1 billion, seven times that of Russia. Last year Russia’s military budget was under $62 billion. The U.S. military budget for next year is projected to be $753 billion, over twelve times as large as Russia’s. NATO’s joint annual military spending is over $1 trillion. The U.S. divides up the entire surface of the planet between six regional military commands and as many naval fleets, the latter including eleven nuclear-powered supercarriers. The area of responsibility for Russia’s military commands is strictly Russia and its territorial waters. It has one, non-nuclear, aircraft carrier. Russia doesn’t belong to any military alliance. The U.S. heads up the only one in the world, one with thirty members and forty partners.

Russia has military personnel in Syria and small peacekeeping contingents in Abkhazia, Armenia, South Ossetia, Tajikistan and Transdniester. The U.S. has scores, by some counts hundreds, of military bases and installations on every inhabited continent. Yet Washington and NATO, the global military bloc it created and controls, assert that Russia is the main threat to world peace and have convinced much of the world of that contention.

Statements emanating from NATO Headquarters in Belgium in recent weeks have provided a uniform narrative portraying Russia as expanding its alleged military aggression further and further afield from former Soviet space. Until recently charges of said Russian aggression were limited to its role in South Ossetia and Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine since 2014. Now the indictment is substantially broader.”

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/06/01/heading-toward-summit-new-nato-narrative-depicts-russia-as-threat-to-world-peace/
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Propaganda disguised as entertainment:

We are not lagging, folks, we are spending like a drunken sailor on a military that does very much harm in the world and to us Americans too because of how much money diverts away from everything else.

“Together with one voice, the anonymous U.S. officials and the “paper of record” — which is supposed to scrutinize U.S. officials — assure us definitively that the mysterious aerial phenomena that have reportedly been witnessed by military personnel are certainly not any kind of secret U.S. technology, but could totally be aliens and could definitely be a sign that the Russians or Chinese have severely lapped America’s lagging military development.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/06/04/media-using-ufo-report-to-stir-arms-race/
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The best way to honor the troops is to PROTEST THE WARS!!!! Stop the killing of U.S. troops and many innocent civilians that die as a result of U.S. wars of Imperialist aggression. We are not a force for good in the world.

“The best way to honor the nation’s war dead is to stop adding to their ranks.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/honor-the-us-war-dead-stop-adding-to-their-ranks?utm_source=FFF%2BDaily&utm_campaign=889f03041c-FFF%2BDaily%2B06-02-2021&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1139d80dff-889f03041c-317323329
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“But voters appear to be united on the need to stop intervening in Middle Eastern wars. A quarter of respondents — including a similar proportion of Democrats, Republicans, independents — chose “ending U.S. involvement in wars in the Middle East” as one of their top priorities.”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/06/03/poll-voters-care-more-about-ending-endless-wars-than-confronting-enemies/
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“The Biden administration hasn’t followed through on its commitment to end U.S. support for the Saudi coalition war on Yemen. Almost four months since Biden announced the end to US support for Saudi coalition “offensive operations,” the administration refuses to tell Congress what kind of support it has halted and what it has continued. A request from 41 members of Congress to clarify the extent of ongoing US support for the Saudi coalition went unanswered for months, and then last week the State Department delivered a “non-answer” that failed to provide any new information. Meanwhile, the coalition blockade that has delayed and diverted ships and prevented the delivery of essential goods remains in place with deadly consequences for the civilian population, and the US has approved additional arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates earlier this year.”

https://original.antiwar.com/Daniel_Larison/2021/06/01/lift-the-criminal-blockade-on-yemen/
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“Two successive U.S. administrations were complicit in war crimes in Yemen. The Saudi royals did the killing, both directly through air strikes and indirectly through a blockade. Tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians have died in more than six years of conflict.

However, America provided, armed, refueled, and serviced Saudi warplanes. Washington also dispensed targeting intelligence, allegedly to diminish civilian casualties by a foreign military which routinely struck weddings, funerals, apartments, markets, and more. The remains of US ordinance litter bombsites across the Yemen. Victims called the conflict the Saudi-American war.”

https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2021/06/01/the-us-cannot-bring-peace-to-yemen-but-it-can-end-americas-involvement-in-yemens-war/
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“The president is going full speed ahead on beefing up the triad and expensive modernization — despite cries from his own party.”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/06/01/biden-budget-bakes-in-billions-for-nuclear-weapons/
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Propaganda is pervasive and everywhere folks, you must develop a sensitivity to it — — — — even when watching programs on the History Channel or the Science channel, propaganda is pervasive, cleverly embedded and ubiquitous.

“Politico is hyping a ‘threat’ that may or may not be happening, but even if it was, there’s no need to hit the panic button.”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/06/03/take-us-to-high-alert-iranian-oil-tanker-might-be-headed-to-the-atlantic/
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But why should we be thanking the troops? What purpose does that serve? Why is that necessary? What have they done that is worth thanking them for? Do we do this more for ourselves than for them? Why aren’t more people asking that question?

“In recent years, it’s become common to thank both retired and active-duty military personnel for their service — an expression met with various measures of appreciation or discomfort by recipients. The new custom is a step beyond the long-established sentiments embodied by Memorial Day, which acknowledges those who fell in combat in the ranks of a rare American institution that retains wide public confidence. While the thank-yous are well-intentioned, they represent a shift in attitude for a country that once distrusted anything resembling a powerful military. They also gloss over the costs — acknowledged on Memorial Day — of war and vast armed establishments. Those costs are worth emphasizing as the U.S. finally prepares to extract itself from a two-decade conflict in Afghanistan.

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” James Madison, later to become fourth president of the United States, argued at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. “Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”

The founders’ antipathy to a large, permanent military establishment prevailed for over a century. “Americans had a distrust of a large standing army, going back to the founding of the republic,” the Department of Defense notes as among the barriers to be overcome before the U.S. could effectively enter World War I.”

https://reason.com/2021/05/31/on-memorial-day-remember-skepticism-toward-a-large-standing-military/
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he U.S. president ignores the crisis in Cuba at his own peril, writes Medea Benjamin.

“As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden pledged to “promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.” Early in the Biden administration, the White House announced that it was undertaking a review of Cuba policy.

But to the surprise and disappointment of many Cuba watchers, and despite the fact that most of Trump’s policy changes could be reversed with a single executive order, Biden has not moved an inch.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/06/02/biden-should-prioritize-normalizing-relations-with-cuba/
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“With tens of millions of dollars over years of work, CIA front USAID helped create and train Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista opposition. At the center of its operations is the elite Chamorro Foundation, which stands accused of money laundering.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/01/cia-usaid-nicaragua-right-wing-media/
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“Julian Assange’s father John Shipton begins a month-long, 17-city U.S. tour in Miami as his son languishes in Belmarsh Prison in London awaiting a U.S. appeal against the denial of his extradition. Live Sunday 7 pm EDT.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/06/05/watch-assanges-father-on-us-tour-first-stop-miami/
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“Throughout the 11-day slaughter, the US refused to condemn the Israeli killing of Palestinian children and gave the Israelis political cover by blocking UN Security Council statements calling for a ceasefire. In a pathetic attempt to pretend that the Biden administration cares about the suffering Israel is causing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced additional aid for the Palestinians after the truce was reached. The assistance includes about $5.5 million to rebuild Gaza, a pittance compared to what the US is poised to give Israel.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, Blinken somehow claimed that Israel took “significant steps” to avoid killing civilians in Gaza. This ignores the deliberate targeting of civilian homes. In one Israeli air raid, bombs hit a residential building in the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza, killing 10 people; two women and eight children.”

https://original.antiwar.com/Dave_DeCamp/2021/06/01/after-gaza-slaughter-israel-wants-another-1-billion-out-of-the-us/
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“H.R. 2590 would restrict U.S. military aid to Israel from being used to demolish homes, annex Palestinian land, or imprison Palestinian children in military detention facilities.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/hr2590-us-aid-israel-palestine/
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“The president must recognize that many in his own party are no longer bought into blindly accepting a bipartisan consensus.”

“The United States could have defused this crisis before it reached the point of more devastation in Gaza, with over 240 killed, and rockets causing a dozen deaths in Israel. The United States intervened too late with measures that, had they been employed a few days earlier, could have averted these tragic deaths.

Biden must now realize that he cannot afford to ignore this issue. Hopefully, he also recognizes that although the playing field might look the same, recent events have caused some significant shifts.”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/05/24/after-latest-round-of-violence-biden-faces-a-new-israel-palestine-conflict/
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“Mohammad Shabangu, a Black South African academic, analyzes the unspoken and accepted censorship around the question of Palestine in his U.S. classroom. “

“As much as I wish it were not so, [Edward] Said was right that American popular opinion regarding Palestine will need to change along with the necessary political and material instruments of justice. BDS therefore has the potential to reframe approaches to the question of Palestine in the U.S.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/06/03/the-possibility-of-thought-bds/