This article appears in the February 10, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
In Europe and the U.S.
Millions Standing Up Against the War Economy and War
[Print version of this article]
Feb. 4—As the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine is approaching a year in length Feb. 18-19 and threatening world war, rallies explicitly for negotiated peace in Ukraine are planned in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere in the Americas, and huge demonstrations and strikes have broken out against the anti-population austerity measures of Europe’s new war economies.
Demonstrations in France brought an estimated 3 million people out in the streets in nearly 250 events all over that nation of 70 million—with a two-thirds majority of the population supporting them, according to a Feb. 1 national poll—demanding that the Macron government drop its “pension reform” austerity measures. The demonstrations grew steadily in numbers over three days of mobilization. On Jan. 19, over 1 million people demonstrated, and President Emmanuel Macron responded at a Spanish-French summit the next day, “We must have that reform.” But on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31 the demonstrations—now also including strikes and walkouts which disrupted every service from bakeries to national railroads—grew into the millions. More are promised on Feb. 7 and Feb. 11.
This government, which is in the process of hiking France’s military spending by 70%—from the equivalent of $38 billion in 2019 to a projected average of $65 billion/year from now to 2030—is trying to make French citizens work longer and older for the same pension, along with other varieties of economic austerity. So the millions in the streets are confronting the French shift to war economy under the gun of the demands of NATO, the United States, and the UK to defeat and weaken Russia.
Began with Rally against NATO
The protest wave began on Jan. 14 with a rally of several thousand held in Paris by the Patriots Party led by former parliamentarian Florian Philippot, against price inflation, against sanctions, for peace negotiations with Russia and leaving NATO’s integrated command. Jacques Cheminade, President of the Solidarité & Progrès (Solidarity & Progress) organization and close friend of Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, was warmly welcomed by the demonstrators and told them:
To focus on the Russian offensive in Ukraine is to ignore history. The responsibility for this war sits with the financial oligarchy, which is aiming at the destruction of the nation-states that carry out the war. It does not serve the economic, social, and cultural development that is the foundation of peace….
The Schiller Institute, with which Solidarity & Progress works internationally, calls for support of the Vatican proposal to host a peace conference without preconditions without delay. I must say, even if I am contradicted by some, that Presidents Lula [of Brazil] and Erdoğan [of Türkiye] may have some role to play…. We also propose ten principles of reflection for a new international architecture of security and development, so that the world is no longer divided into blocks, because to admit a division into blocs is to accept war.
On Jan. 31 the French national trade union federation CGT, which put the nationwide number of protesters Jan. 31 at 2.8 million with 500,000 in Paris, bore large banner signs that read, “No Dismantling of the Social State, No World War.” One local wrote on its leaflets:
While our living conditions are under attack, we reject public money being used for the war. Let’s reduce weapons and raise wages: We reject the participation of our country in the Ukraine war, or anywhere else…. France has to exit NATO, and this military alliance should be disbanded; end financial support and weapon deliveries to the Ukrainian government….
German military spending was doubled over two years by a “special fund” of €100 billion put through by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government last March, while industrial production and work has been shrinking for lack of energy supplies.
And in the UK, the new government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has only just begun to raise military spending, after raising taxes, while working households have faced double-digit inflation and fuel shortages. After the House of Commons passed “minimum service” legislation Jan. 30 intended to block strikes by compelling employees to scab on their unions, 550,000 workers promptly went out on strike Jan. 31 and Feb. 2. They included teachers, civil service workers, rail engineers, and then firefighters and other unionists.
Here, too, it is the war against Russia and preparations to fight China which drive the working population into action. The British Under-Secretary of State for Enterprises and Markets, Kevin Hollinrake, said on Feb. 3, according to the Daily Mail’s strike reporting:
An inflation-matching pay increase of 11 percent for all public sector workers would cost £28 billion [equal to $33.5 billion, over three years—ed.]. We are already running a £175 billion deficit.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson already increased military spending by £24 billion in three years (2019–22); and the current Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, Defence Minister Ben Wallace, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak propose to raise it by £157 billion more from 2023–2030, an annual increase of £20 billion or 40%, very far above the “inflation-matching pay increase” Minister Hollinrake rejected.
So in the UK they, too, are striking against a war economy.
Washington:
‘Bring Back a Fighting Anti-War Movement’
In the United States, where the mother of all military budgets at $850 billion now far outstrips all U.S. civilian discretionary spending combined, Feb. 19 is the target for a demonstration against the war in Washington, with spin-off rallies elsewhere in U.S. and European cities. This demonstration is called by a coalition called “Rage against the War Machine,” and organized by multiple “independent organizations and minor parties united in being against this war,” as described by Angela McArdle, Chair of the Libertarian Party National Committee.
The demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial will be followed by several days of delegations into the U.S. Congress, according to Movement for a Peoples’ Party founder Nick Brana. Both he and McArdle were speaking Feb. 4 at a webcast dialogue with Diane Sare, LaRouche independent candidate for Senate in New York, as part of the Schiller Institute’s conference that day, “The Age of Reason or the Annihilation of Humanity?”
Sare, Brana, and McCardle will all be among the speakers at that demonstration, which has already spun off rallies Feb. 19 in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico City, and Munich. It will be followed up Feb. 25 by a London “No to NATO” demonstration.
Sare pointed out that the Washington demonstration has “already survived some storms” in that the independent organizations and speakers, who appear to be on different parts of the so-called “political spectrum” and have disagreements on other issues, have stayed united despite energetic propaganda efforts in various media to divide them and slander them to each other.
Sare had put out a strong statement on Jan. 31, addressed to all those organizing the Feb. 19 event and to the public [see Box]:
We have decided to put aside our differences, many of which are substantive, to unite our voices against the “war machine.”
I would like to remind everyone that nuclear war is final…. If we get to that point, nothing else will matter.
“This is not a left-right issue,” Brana emphasized during the Feb. 4 discussion on the Schiller Institute’s platform. “We need to bring back a fighting anti-war movement in this country.”
To Be, or Not To Be—
The Dangerous Fallacy of Guilt by Association
Jan. 31—A message from Diane Sare:
On February 19, there will be a demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial (how very appropriate) of Americans who are so alarmed about the potential for a nuclear war, thanks in no small part to the policies of our own government, that we have decided to put aside our differences, many of which are substantive, to unite our voices against the “war machine.”
I would like to remind everyone that nuclear war is final. It is the end—of everything on this planet. If we get to that point, nothing else will matter. We are aware that some people clearly disagree with that notion, and believe that there is something called “limited nuclear war,” or that Russia (as it has never done in history) will back down if we threaten them with enough gusto.
Is it surprising, therefore, that stringers for the FBI and other alleged “intelligence” agencies are seeking to spread gossip and lies to prevent this rally from coming off in the most potent way possible?
Speakers are being nagged not to associate with “the Libertarians,” or “the Communists,” or “the LaRouchies.” Many of us are familiar with these tricks, having been targeted by exactly such operations for many years. In the past such tactics have been only too effective, which is why we are now facing thermonuclear war.
Some of us, like myself and Scott Ritter, have been placed on Ukrainian “kill lists” because our words are so damaging to the wartime propaganda which has swept into our nation like a tsunami, submerging every voice of reason. Doesn’t it appear at least a little “totalitarian” that the former head of the CIA, John Brennan, is now a news host at MSNBC?
Perhaps the one time Mike Pompeo told the truth was when he bragged in a speech at Texas A&M that the job of the CIA was to “lie, cheat, and steal.”—Oh, and wasn’t he also plotting to assassinate Julian Assange?
We are committed to preventing a thermonuclear war. We are calling for negotiations to occur between parties who have been killing each other in large numbers. Has anyone involved in this rally been accused of the kind of crimes which occur in war, and which are encouraged by our own “intelligence” agencies, who fund and deploy neo-Nazis and ISIS terrorists without the slightest pang of conscience?
Are we now going to allow those criminals to weaken this rally, because we must each stick to our own “pure” ideology, or “precious bodily fluids”? Where and when are the pure and noble actions which our detractors are organizing? Oh, they don’t exist.
See you in DC!
Preview the issue here and see the full table of contents.
The Schiller Institute has just released Volume 2, No. 1, of its new journal Leonore, which opens with the following from Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.’s October 20, 2002, article, “The Historical Individual:”
“The principal cause for the doom of any culture, is that mental disorder typical of popular opinion, which is to assume the validity of any assumptions currently adopted by a learned profession, or religious teaching, or more crudely adopted as ‘generally accepted popular opinion’.”
The 88-page issue, contains eleven articles, including the first English translation of one of the last letters by the 15th century scientific and political genius, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, which has been called his “religious last will,” and an original translation of Friedrich Schiller’s “On the Sublime,” described as “perhaps his most refined discussion of the process of the development of the soul.”
The preview includes the ground-breaking article by Jason Ross, “Vernadskian Time: Time for Humanity,” which addresses “the paradoxes posed by Vernadsky’s scientific work,” which open the way to a an entirely new set of definitions of space, time and matter, taken from the standpoint of the human mind.
The journal is yours as a monthly Schiller Institute contributing member. Memberships start at $5/month. Sign up here.
