EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY JANUARY 10, 2023
Where Are We ‘At’? and What Do We Do About It?
Jan. 9, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The international Schiller Institute and LaRouche movements in many countries around the world have launched a campaign over the next six weeks to catalyze an international mass movement, extending across the so-called West and the Global South alike, around the demand that unconditional negotiations be undertaken immediately to resolve the Ukrainian-Russian conflict before we are all blown up in a nuclear war. This single continuous mobilization over the next six weeks will be focused through a series of conferences debating the ideas required to create a “world revolution” for peace and development, leading up to a day of international rallies against war on February 19.
The NATO countries insist that there can be no peace negotiations until Russia has been defeated on the battlefield. The maniacal mentality of the current Ukrainian leadership that NATO is deploying was expressed in the shocking interview to Newsweek two days ago by Ukraine’s Ambassador to London Vadym Prystaiko, in which he presents Ukraine’s mission as that of destroying Russia, at the cost of the nation and its people, if necessary. We are “losing people left and right,” he admitted, and the number of military, civilians, of entire cities lost is “huge.” But, he insisted, we are NATO’s best chance to defeat Russia, because “there are not many nations in the world who would allow themselves to sacrifice so many lives, territories and decades of development for the purpose of defeating the archenemy.”
That is madness. A mass movement is now needed. How can we wake up enough people, in time, to overturn those behind this insane commitment?
For starters, join the tens of thousands of people now watching the exchange between outspoken former Marine weapons inspector Scott Ritter, independent New York U.S. Senatorial candidate Diane Sare, and Schiller Institute chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche which took place on January 8, during the Sare for Senate Policy Discussion on the subject “Can Nuclear War Be Avoided?”
That full discussion demonstrated the principle of how this process of dialogue can lead to the “world revolution in ideas” needed, especially in the exchange between those three, posted separately under the provocative title: “Prove me wrong.” It bears watching.
Ritter described the stage upon which this battle is being fought: “Death is on a pale horse, riding to us, as we speak! And if you don’t recognize that, if you’re not aware of that, then you’re going to just blissfully go to the abyss, the Armageddon that Helga spoke of. We are on the cusp of thermonuclear war,” he exclaimed. He laid out, step by step, how we got to where we are today:
“We have the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, and the people responsible for coming up with mechanisms to control these arsenals, and to hopefully diminish these arsenals, are the very same people who are responsible for modernizing these arsenals and making these weapons more relevant to their respective national security postures!
“This is insanity! Literally the definition of insanity! I can’t come up with a quicker route toward global suicide than the one I just described. Nobody is talking disarmament. Everybody is talking arms race.”
Ritter stated that he does not see any possible outcome but a Russian victory on the battlefield, and can only hope that NATO will not, in that event, “rage, rage against the dying of its light,” and end human civilization. He praised the work of Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute to force through a negotiated solution, but said he did not think such an approach was possible anymore. But, Ritter stated, he urged Helga Zepp-LaRouche to please “prove me wrong.”
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche, self-declared realist and “eternal optimist,” responded, laying out her compelling case that mankind, as a creative species, is capable of catalyzing a greater good than this evil we face today.
She urged people to listen to Ritter on the danger; he is right. But this is a moment of epochal change, and there are elements of hope. Pope Francis has offered the Vatican as a forum for such unconditional negotiations, and the Schiller Institute is mobilizing people to back that offer. The idea has been raised that Brazil, under the Lula government, together with other leading Global South nations, such as India, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, etc., could facilitate unconditional negotiations for a peaceful settlement. All such efforts build the potential for a breakthrough.
She insists: The path to the worldwide revolution towards the new international security and development architecture which humanity deserves, which will eliminate the danger of nuclear war, is to spread the discussion everywhere of “the idea that man is good, his nature is good, and that all evil in the world comes from a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.... Because, to stop the war is the first step, but we are creative human beings, who can decide what is the order under which we can live together in the 21st century, and hopefully the many millennia beyond.”
A concluding coda: This past Sunday, from an unlikely corner, came a beautiful vision of what humanity’s future can be. Discussing the recent breakthroughs in developing fusion power, science writer Mark Whittington made the case that those advances bring humanity that much closer to fusion-powered rockets, “that will make the difference between occasional voyages into deep space for scientific exploration and turning the Solar System, with all of its abundant resources, into a realm of human civilization.”
And that was before today’s announcement of a new milestone in fusion confinement achieved in China’s EAST tokamak.
