Oct. 31—The Pope has, reportedly, offered Vatican City for negotiations between the U.S., Europe and Russia on the matter of “shared security” arrangements. Previously, it had been reported that the Pope had reached out to President Biden regarding the Vatican helping to arrange peace talks between Russia and Ukraine; but they were ignored. Instead of despairing and resigning matters to fate, enlarging the call to negotiations over shared security is the proper escalation. It goes beyond any tenuous and unstable ceasefire that skirts the issue. Rather, the “shared security” arrangements are exactly the necessary discussion that was spurned last year, when Russia brought up the impolite topic, why was a military force relentlessly moving toward their border?
The level of deliberation necessary to address such “shared security” matters has been on display for more than a few months at the Schiller Institute conferences. Now, the breakout last week of active and retired legislators from around the world at the Schiller-initiated October 27 “Second Seminar of Current and Former Elected Officials of the World” continues on a daily basis, toward a November 22 third seminar, “For World Peace: Stop the Danger of Nuclear War Now”—also hosted from a conference room of Mexico’s Federal Congress. (https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/10/25/conference-for-world-peace-stop-the-danger-of-world-peace/ ; https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/conference_20221122 )
Every day counts. China launched a new space station today. Russia’s Putin presided over a meeting in Sochi today with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, to tackle the differences that have driven the two countries back into conflict. Brazil’s Lula da Silva officially won the presidential election over Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil, putting the real possibility that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) grouping could get into high gear. As this is written, there are no little machinations going on, figuring out whether Bolsanaro should shut down the country and plunge Brazil into a civil war. The dangers are real, for, while the Atlanticist gang does not have history on their side, every day that their insane delusions roam the planet, the human species is in existential jeopardy.
The newly released U.S. military doctrine, by design, threatens the world: "We have trigger points to begin a nuclear exchange, but you’re just going to have to guess. Ukraine’s head of military intelligence knows that the majority of Putin’s so-called appearances in public are actually done by a body double. Ukraine’s Myrotvorets hit list named an Israeli Cabinet Minister as a target. And youths in the U.S., who a study finds spend, on average, ten hours per day in front of a screen, appear to get more depressed the longer they do so. Is it a surprise that average scores on English and math have been plunging throughout the country?
Or, in brief, consider the apposition: On one hand the insightful report of Wang Wen, the dean of Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute, of Putin’s 3-hour, unscripted open discussion after a 45 minute keynote at the Valdai Discussion Club, challenged by questioners from around the world, providing thoughtful, potent, on-target and straightforward answers—a performance demonstrating that the accustomed mediocrity, banality and duplicity of the current Western so-called leaders was never necessary and needn’t be tolerated. On the other hand, witness the president of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde come unglued in public at the thought of the same Putin.
Ideas work. Good ideas work to create good. There are three weeks to the most concentrated demonstration on the planet as to how that works. Citizen candidates Joel Dejean and Diane Sare are at the center of that breakout process, in the first of those three weeks. We have a fighting chance.
