[Peace-discuss] Flyer

[C G Estabrook]

[Flyer for the AWARE anti-war demonstration in downtown Champaign (Main & Neil Sts.), 2-4pm on Saturday, September 1, 2018]

SEPTEMBER 1, 2018 ~ THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
IS MAKING WAR AROUND THE WORLD

...the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright 
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.

...I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

...The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

...All the conventions conspire 
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good...

--from ‘September 1, 1939’ by W. H. Auden (1907-73). Announcing, “We are finally shooting back,” Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and World War II in Europe began. 
~
Imperialism’s face and the international wrong today are the wars the U.S. is waging around the world, and its war provocations against Russia and China that risk a wider - even nuclear - war. 
~ Although most Americans are not aware of it, the U.S. government is today waging war - and killing people - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen - principally to control the flow of oil out of the Mideast and North Africa, which the US uses as a weapon against its economic rivals from Germany to China.
~ The ongoing drone assassination program - called by Noam Chomsky “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times' - has killed thousands (most not the presumed targets), including American citizens and hundreds of children.
~ More than a quarter of a million US troops are stationed in a thousand US bases on foreign soil, most of them surrounding Russia and China.
~ The 70,000-members of the U.S. ‘Special Operations Command’ are active in 75% of the countries of the world. Their activities include kidnapping (‘rendition’), torture, and murder.

The rest of the world recognizes that the U.S. today is what Martin Luther King called it long ago, the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

With other peace groups around the world, we call upon President Trump and the U.S. government to close all foreign military bases, bring all U.S. troops (and weapons) home, and provide social supports - including free medical care, education, and a universal basic income - for Americans, who have been immiserated by generations of U.S. government wars.

AWARE, the ANTI-WAR ANTI-RACISM EFFORT - on Facebook at <AWARE of Champaign-Urbana Illinois>


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