EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2022

Leadership Produces Miracles

May 10, 2022 (EIRNS)—The mental laziness that accepts a supposedly inevitable collapse of food production, of trade in physical necessities, of mutual security guarantees, and really of civilization, reeks of decades of moral turpitude. But that doesn’t mean one has the excuse of sinking down into it. Calm, deliberate, focussed, and passionate interventions are exactly what can carry the day.

One modest example of such is Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Pakistan TV’s “Views on News” program today, cutting through the fog of endless war talk, and—no flinching—sounding a clear trumpet call: Peace must be the goal, and it must be now. No Plan B. So, stop giving counsel to one’s fears, really to one’s passionless, hollowed-out sense of victimization.

Two participants in the April 9 Schiller Conference, France’s Jacques Cheminade (of Solidarité et Progrès) and Italy’s Alessia Ruggeri (of the Comitato per la Repubblica), took over the Database Italia online TV panel dialogue on May 8—where the case for a quality of leadership capable of a “Westphalia” solution to the drive for war, intersected the living presence of leaders who can think on their feet, but from the top down. If one argues for the necessity for leadership, it is a good idea to be a leader. And in Italy, the political environment is joyously unstable, and begging for a way out of an otherwise dismal EU destiny.

Within a few weeks, a very meager opposition in Italy to the massive arming of Ukraine has blossomed into the majority. A Pope, though with a history of falling for frauds, still managed to say the obvious about NATO, that it is essentially responsible for war in Ukraine; the never-to-be-trusted Italian industrialist and media mogul, Carlo De Benedetti, nevertheless called for Italy to decouple from the Washington-London foreign policy axis; his underling, the secretary general of the Italian Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, demanded that Europe “must move now, united, for peace!” Semi-miracles, each and all. And this afternoon, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi, of all people, made a scene at the White House, telling President Joe Biden rather agitatedly: “We stand together in condemning the invasion of Ukraine, on sanctioning Russia, and on helping Ukraine, as President Zelenskyy is asking us to do. But I have to tell you that in Italy and in Europe now, people want to put an end to the massacres—to these massacres, to this violence, this butchery that’s happening. And people think about what can we do to bring peace.... People think that—at least they want to think about the possibility of bringing a ceasefire and again some credible negotiations. That’s the situation right now. I think that we have to think deeply on how to address this.”

Even the weight of history made its presence known, as the May 8-9 anniversary of Victory in Europe over the Nazi horror, occasioned the refreshing image of a world united to conquer actual—not cartoon—evil. The “Immortal Regiment” marched on, challenging some to rise to the occasion—and clearly causing fits amongst some very filthy and paranoid individuals, who are neck-deep in their current genocidal plans.

On the former, Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone posed a clarifying thought, on a U.S. that once fought against fascist totalitarianism: “It’s probably worth taking a moment to highlight the fact that this entire war could have been avoided if the U.S. had simply pledged military protection for Zelenskyy against the far-right extremists who were threatening to lynch him if he enacted the peacemaking policies he was elected to enact. It’s just a simple fact that for a fraction of the military firepower the U.S. is pouring into Ukraine right now, it could have prevented the entire war by simply protecting Ukrainian democracy from the undemocratic impulses of the worst people in that country.” On the latter, leave it to that profound thinker, Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. He went ballistic with his bizarre “history” lesson of Russia as the fascist force to be conquered in honor of V-E Day—even while he is openly arming and sponsoring the neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine.

Hundreds of thousands marched for miles through Moscow on Monday, May 9, in Russia’s annual “Immortal Regiment” parade of citizens, displaying the photos of the loved heroes, honoring their family members who fought in the Great Patriotic War. And over 1 million people gathered in Red Square in Moscow to participate. Those mystic chords of memory are what make the “Immortal Regiment” immortal. Participating in a fight for truth may be all we have, but it is enough.