Feb. 14—Today, the Defense Ministers of NATO began a two-day session. They have a mission to pull together whatever armaments, tanks, etc., that can be pulled together, for a vaunted spring counteroffensive in Ukraine, in a desperate attempt to trade blood for an improved deal at the negotiating table. They also have a new strategy paper, challenging them to figure out a way to simultaneously fight one war in Europe along with an “out-of-area” one in Asia. Later this week, over Feb. 17-19, the Munich Security Conference convenes for three days, evidently on how to provide for security without considering the concerns of the world’s largest nuclear power. For the first time in post-Soviet Russia, Moscow’s officials have been refused an invitation.
But while these assemblages of bloody warmongers proceed, a chorus of voices for ending their senseless drive toward thermonuclear confrontation is building, with a major demonstration in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 19. France’s leader of the LaRouche movement, Jacques Cheminade, gave an inspirational address to a peace rally in Paris on Feb. 12. Various groups across the political spectrum are organizing for the Washington event, having to fight through the typical “divide and conquer’ techniques, pitting pigeon-holed”lefties" and “righties” against each other.
Featured speaker Chris Hedges put it rather well in his Feb. 12 posting: “We will not topple corporate power and the war machine alone. There has to be a left-right coalition, which will include people whose opinions are not only unpalatable but even repugnant, or we will remain marginalized and ineffectual…. Alliances are built around particular issues, in this case permanent war, which often fall apart when confronting other concerns.” Hedges also quoted Nick Brana, chair of The People’s Party, who organized the rally in collaboration with ideologically polar opposites amongst the libertarians, saying that “the left has become largely irrelevant in the U.S. because it is incapable of working with the right…. It clings to identity politics over jobs, health care, wages and war, and condemns half the country as deplorables.”
Something must be working right, as the neo-liberals at the New Republic, as they say, smelled fire and broke the glass. They went berserk today with a raving, incoherent assault upon LaRouche Senate candidate Diane Sare—the voice of reason and statecraft in the peace mobilization. The article’s purported author—a proponent of “identity politics over jobs, healthcare, wages and war”—proved that LaRouche’s emphasis on production over speculation meant he was a fascist!
So, don’t be drawn into petty squabbles. Keep your eyes on the prize.
