[Peace-discuss] Flyer to be distributed at today's regular anti-war demo in downtown Champaign

[C G Estabrook]

WHILE WE ARE  PREOCCUPIED WITH POLITICS AT HOME,
OUR GOVERNMENT IS KILLING PEOPLE 
IN WARS AROUND THE WORLD

International polls show that the United States - not Russia, China, Iran, or Israel - is by far the most feared government in the world. The wars the U.S. is waging in eight countries, and its war provocations against Russia and China, risk a wider - even nuclear - war. 

 ~ Although most Americans are not aware of it, the U.S. government is today making 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 “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - has killed thousands of people (most of them not the presumed targets), including American citizens and hundreds of children.
 ~ More than a quarter of a million American troops are stationed in a thousand U.S. 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 three quarters of the countries of the world. Their activities have included kidnapping (the U.S. government calls it ‘rendition’), torture, and murder. 

Since World War II the United States has killed between 20 and 30 million people in wars (in Korea, Vietnam, the Mideast, and elsewhere) designed to maintain the world-wide economic dominance that the US inherited at the end of World War II, as the only largely undamaged major country.

It is unfortunately the basis of US foreign policy to use war and the threats of war to retard the economic development of Russia and China as competitors to American control of the world economy - from U.S. support for a fascist coup in Ukraine to U.S. naval provocations in the South China Sea and huge NATO military exercises in eastern Europe.

The rest of the world recognizes that the U.S. government 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 our 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 made poorer by generations of our government’s wars.

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

Write our representatives in Congress - demand U.S. troops and weapons out of the Mideast 
~ Medicare for all ~ free education through college ~ universal basic income ~

Representative Rodney Davis: <https://rodneydavis.house.gov/contact/>
Senator Tammy Duckworth: <https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/content/contact-senator>
Senator Dick Durbin: <https://www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email>

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