The Peace Press — Wednesday, December 01, 2021 edition
China is not our enemy. Russia is not our enemy. Iran and North Korea are not our enemies. Any opposite claims are pure Imperialist warmongering propaganda. Active, ongoing, warm relations and diplomacy with Vladimir Putin and Xi JinPing and Ibrahim Raisi and Kim Jung Un is utterly necessary and the best way to help resolve issues of common global concern like climate change, nuclear proliferation, pandemics and violent-religious extremism. We cannot afford to not engage in warm diplomatic relations with either of these nations. What kind of government the people in each nation live under is a problem for their own population to resolve — — -it is none of our business and we should keep our noses out of how they govern their respective nations. We should seek ways to cooperate rather than compete with Russia and China.
“America always has had political leaders who appeared to fear, even hate, peace. Teddy Roosevelt was one. However, at least Roosevelt got his hands dirty. Today the most fervent warmongers, unlike Roosevelt, typically never go near a battlefield.
However, they remain busy. The bipartisan War Party is pushing for confrontation and possible war with Iran, Russia, and China. Budgets are being adjusted, allies are being consulted, military plans are being drafted, threats are flying, and faux warriors are posturing. The Biden administration claims that it wants peace but is fueling the flames of all three potential conflicts.
Why should America to go to war in any of these cases, let alone all three? Frenzied US policymakers seemingly have gone mad, talking about war in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East simultaneously!”
https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2021/11/28/how-many-wars-does-washington-want-and-for-what/
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“At no point is it permissible to question if these nations might be reacting defensively to western aggressions and discuss the possibility of working toward detente, writes Caity Johnstone.”
“Every day there’s more propaganda banging the drums of war between nuclear-armed nations a little louder. Western media are churning out reports about Russia preparing to invade Ukraine any minute now and China preparing to invade Taiwan any minute now, saying the response to each is obviously to move a lot of high-powered weaponry to both of those locations. None of them are questioning whether these allegations are true or whether those responses are wise.
This is so dangerous. This whole two-front nuclear brinkmanship game is so very, very dangerous, and they keep finding ways to make it more dangerous. And hardly anyone notices it, because the news media outlets that people look to to understand the world aren’t telling them it’s dangerous.
The only danger you’re allowed to discuss in mainstream western reporting about Russia and China is their scary aggressive expansionism, like this new Newsweek propaganda piece here. Nowhere are you allowed to question if it’s true, or to even breathe a word about the possibility of detente.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/11/29/sleepwalking-into-a-nuclear-nightmare/
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“Once again, the United States and some of its security clients in Eastern Europe are doing their utmost to create a crisis atmosphere with respect to Russia. A key player in that effort is the government of Ukraine. As Ukrainian officials did in April 2021, they are again highlighting allegedly suspicious Russian troop movements near the border between the two countries in late October and early November. Ukrainian leaders contend that such maneuvers might well be the prelude to a military offensive.
Kiev’s propaganda offensive escalated dramatically on November 20 when Brig. General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s director of defense intelligence, asserted in interview with Military Times that Moscow already had plans in place to launch an invasion by the end of January 2022.”
https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Galen_Carpenter/2021/11/29/the-usual-suspects-are-trying-to-foment-a-crisis-with-russia/
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“A failure to challenge inflated claims about China’s nuclear arsenal will have serious and painful consequences.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/china-nuclear-competition/
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“David McBride, a former Australian military lawyer, tells journalist Michael West about alleged war crimes and a cover-up in Afghanistan. He faces trial for leaking hundreds of pages of defense force information to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (whose offices were then raided by federal police), offering insight on clandestine operations of Australia’s elite special forces, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children. Republished here with permission.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/11/29/watch-believing-the-propaganda-that-the-government-follows-the-law/
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“So while the US military, national security, and foreign policy establishment will likely feel the need for the US to be involved in the various concurrent crisis spots in the region, the only realistic policy for peace and stability in the region (so the US government can go back to focusing on the Indo-Pacific and antagonizing China) is one based on de-escalation, decentralization, and a tacit or overt acceptance of a Russian sphere of influence in its immediate neighborhood. For this to even be possible, however, US policy makers need to realistically reflect on how their various actions since the end of the Cold War must look from the Russian perspective, because while Russia and its allies are almost always portrayed as ominous encroachers on Europe’s peace, the reality is that Russia sees its moves as defensive, not offensive, and as direct responses to US and European actions and policies.
From NATO and EU expansion deep into eastern and southern Europe to covert and overt support for color revolutions in places like Georgia and Ukraine, to the bombing of Serbia and the waging of economic warfare, Russia feels as though it has been relentlessly battered and beset by the US and its allies since the end of the Cold War. Russians resent having been humiliated during their period of weakness following the Soviet Union’s collapse, though they had received assurances from the United States that it would not move its military forces, NATO’s forces, into the former Soviet sphere. For most Russians, then and now, the 1990s were a period of predatory “privatization,” organized crime, Western debt traps, shortages, poverty, depression, and death. And while Vladimir Putin does repress political opposition, reliable external polling and reporting leaves little doubt about his genuine popularity among a large swathe of the population.”
https://mises.org/wire/its-time-us-stop-courting-conflict-russia
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“Many in the West argue the United States must be prepared to offer military assistance to both — and possibly fight for Taiwan — as anything less would be tantamount to a 1938 “Munich” appeasement. The far more applicable historical analogy, however, would be 1956 Hungary and 1968 Czechoslovakia — when Washington wisely opted against military intervention, successfully preserving American national security and ultimately, peace in Europe.”
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/11/1956-hungary-and-1968-czechoslovakia-lessons-for-taiwan-and-ukraine-today/
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“Facing little opposition from either Republicans or Democrats, the U.S. military is almost never held accountable for killing civilians during airstrikes.”
“So far, the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee has refused to open an investigation into the Baghuz attack or any other possible war crimes by U.S. forces in the war against ISIS.”
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/11/28/us-military-does-not-truly-care-about-civilian-casualties
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“Cobalt, a key metallic element used in lithium batteries and other “green” technology, is sourced from slave labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the West points the finger at China, the US Africa Command is indirectly policing mining operations that profit US corporations.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/30/africom-corporations-dr-congo-climate-china/
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On Iran — — — -again, it is not Iran that is the aggressor nation, it is the United States. Remember, it is the United States that withdrew from the JCPOA and resumed the imposition of sanctions. What incentive to comply with the JCPOA does that leave Iran? None. Any moves Iran makes outside of the JCPOA, including greater enrichment, is the fault of the United States for helping create the conditions that led Iran to take some actions.
“US Envoy Robert Malley warns that the administration is prepared to exert pressure on Iran if they use the resume Vienna nuclear talks as a pretext for accelerating their nuclear program. He warned “it simply won’t work.”
This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Iran’s past actions, or at the very least an attempt to totally revise the history of the peace process. Iran’s parliament has ordered some nuclear moves in the context of nuclear talks.
Far from doing it to accelerate the program or using talks as a pretext, those moves have uniformly been ordered when the US started to pull away from the talks, or conversely when Iran’s civilian program was sabotaged by Israel and the US refused to criticize the intervention.”
https://news.antiwar.com/2021/11/28/us-warns-iran-not-to-use-talks-to-accelerate-nuclear-program/
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“The Islamic Republic of Iran has entered the talks with a strong will and elaborate preparations in order to ensure the removal of unlawful and cruel sanctions.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/11/29/iran-says-us-must-lift-tyrannical-and-illegal-sanctions-return-nuclear-deal
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“Indirect negotiations between the US and Iran to revive the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, resumed in Vienna on Monday.
The talks resumed after being stalled since June, around the time Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was elected. The new rounds of negotiations are being brokered by the EU and are being held in the same format as the previous ones.”
https://news.antiwar.com/2021/11/29/talks-to-revive-the-iran-nuclear-deal-resume-in-vienna/
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“It’s time to put differences aside and return to the Iran nuclear deal,” said one advocate.
“The people of Iran have for too long been forced to struggle on two fronts: against a repressive government at home, and a deadly regime of sanctions and warmongering from abroad.”
“As negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program convened in Vienna on Monday, more than three years after the U.S. walked away from an international agreement, anti-war groups called on the Biden administration “to choose the proven path of peace” and re-enter the pact for the benefit of Iranians, Americans, and the global population.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/11/29/sake-peace-anti-war-groups-demand-biden-return-nuclear-deal-iran
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“Moreover, America routinely walks out of agreements and organizations, the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, merely being the latest example. Similar is the hypocrisy of attacking human rights violations by an adversary (say, Iran) while ignoring human rights violations by a friendly power (such as Saudi Arabia), which was a hallmark of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s unprincipled tenure. Indeed, Pompeo acted as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s consigliere, seeking to protect the latter from being held accountable for his many crimes.
Then the DPRK put the nuclear issue and American inconsistency together. Insisted Pyongyang: “the ‘rules’ that the US is making a fuss about are not the ‘rules’ of impartiality, objectivity and universality but those of the ‘US style which serve the American values to the core, and the US favorite phrase of ‘international order’ is the one necessary for maintaining the US’ hegemony as it is a far cry from world peace and security. The US uses the American-style gangster-like logic and argument that its nuclear threat to other countries is ‘for keeping the international order’ and that other countries’ exercise of the right to self-defense to cope with the US military threat is a ‘breach of the international order.’ This is the height of application of double standards.”
https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2021/11/30/north-korea-doubts-americas-rules-based-international-order-and-pyongyang-gets-it-right/
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“The Biden administration’s decision to sell $650 million in air-to-air missiles and related equipment to Saudi Arabia is a violation of President Biden’s pledge to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” and to end the sale of weapons that can be used in its brutal war in Yemen, a conflict in which nearly a quarter of a million people have died since it was initiated in March 2015.
To their credit, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have introduced a joint resolution of disapproval to stop the sale, which is likely to be voted on this week. It deserves support in the service of peace, human rights, and an end to the catastrophic suffering in Yemen.”
https://archive.md/CnB8i#selection-3791.0-3799.305
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“Last week, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul decided to take a stand against Saudi Arabia. He was joined by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Mike Lee of Utah. Together, they issued a joint resolution of disapproval to block proposed U.S. arms sales to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
According to the press release, this weapons sale to Saudi Arabia included 280 air-to-air missiles and 596 missile launchers. Other sophisticated weapons were included, as well as associated training and support. The entire cost was estimated to be approximately $650 billion.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/sens-rand-paul-bernie-sanders-and-mike-lee-issue-joint-resolution-to-put-yemeni-people-before-profits
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“No Turks work for a new shadowy group targeting Turkey, but it is linked to an anti-Iran, pro-Israel network.”
“Despite having no actual Turks publicly affiliated with the group, the Turkish Democracy Project boasts a roster heavy with hawkish former U.S. public officials and diplomats with close ties to Israel and the Gulf Arab states, including former Bush administration counterterrorism official Frances Townsend, former U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and President Donald Trump’s famously aggressive former national security adviser John Bolton. “It’s time to sound the alarm on Turkey,” Bolton, best known for his advocacy of U.S. confrontation with Iran, said on Twitter at the time of the Turkey Democracy Project’s launch.”
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/11/26/dark-money-network-pushes-pro-uae-saudi-policies-from-new-york/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dark-money-network-pushes-pro-uae-saudi-policies-from-new-york
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“Aid groups, experts say international sanctions on the Taliban have led to the collapse of the aid-dependent economy.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/29/holdaresanctions-to-blame-for-afghanistans-humanitarian-crisis
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“Pentagon involvement in the production of Top Gun: Maverick is just the latest scene in a long story of US military and intelligence use of Hollywood movies to shape popular culture in a way that fits America’s narrative of the world.”
https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2021/11/28/a-cia-and-pentagon-production/
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“Three years on from the explosive Julian Assange/Paul Manafort story, we question whether the Guardian has honored its stated commitment to the truth.”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/a-lot-of-mistakes-the-guardian-and-julian-assange/279088/
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“The Grayzone’s Ben Norton sat down for an interview with Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada to discuss the country’s decision to leave the OAS, attempts to build an international alliance against US unilateralism, and what an anti-imperialist foreign policy looks like.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/27/nicaragua-foreign-minister-denis-moncada/
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“The European Union on Friday joined a prominent Israeli human rights group in condemning last week’s demolition of multiple homes in occupied East Jerusalem, an illegal action that displaced 22 Palestinians including 15 children.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/11/28/eu-joins-rights-group-condemning-israels-day-destruction-palestinian-homes
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“For many years, I, along with other Palestinian intellectuals, raged against the misrepresentation and marginalization of Palestine and the Palestinians, not only by Israel and its allies in mainstream media, but also against the elitism that existed within the Palestinian movement itself.
Hearing Williams utter these words was quite satisfying. More important was the context in which these words were said. The event, ‘Distant Voice No More? Giving Rise to a New Generation of Palestinian Journalists’, was hosted by the new and vibrant organization Palestine Deep Dive (PDD) and co-hosted by the Foreign Press Association. The idea behind the inception of PDD is to challenge the common narrative that has permeated corporate media on Palestine and Israel for decades. This new organization has done an impressive job within a fairly short period of time.
The attendees included international rockstar Roger Waters who, over the years, has become an icon for the Palestine international solidarity movement, the same way that his songs, among them ‘Another Brick in the Wall’, symbolized global support for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/29/we-do-exist-why-the-palestinian-voice-should-take-center-stage/
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“Priti Patel has sent a message to Palestinians: You can have democracy, just as long as you vote for a party that accepts the right of Israeli troops to terrorise your families”
