Feb. 27—Russia, with all of its problems, did not crumble under Western sanctions. It turns out that a lot of what they could get from the West had little to do with survival, and they were thrown back to the necessity of concentrating on producing more of what they actually needed. The country did not break apart over the mobilization to free the Donbass from Kiev’s eight years of artillery shelling and political deprivations. It turns out there really are a lot of native Russians and Russian-speakers in Crimea and the Donbass, whom other Russians identify with. (It wasn’t as if they were being conscripted to fight an imperialist war.) And the supposed “isolation” of Russia has done more to isolate the West from the Global Majority of the world than leaving Russia punished in the corner.
The question is, do leaders of countries in the West scratch their heads and ask themselves, what of their assumptions about how the world works need to be re-evaluated or dropped? What made anyone think that using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia would work, unless they had a profound misunderstanding as to how a nation or how a culture works?
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was invited to drink the Kool-Aid at a Paris gathering of some 27 countries yesterday, organized by France’s President Emmanuel Macron. As Russian victories multiply and Ukraine suffers from the sharp drop in its two-year-long bonanza of ammunition and money, Europe’s leaders, knowing they don’t have the ammunition or the money, would normally have a “smell the coffee” moment, and sit down with Moscow, asking, what were you saying about mutual security guarantees? But they gathered yesterday to hear Macron rally the forces to do whatever it takes, including long-range missiles to hit Russia deep inside its borders and European troops deployed into Ukraine. He argued that Russia has gotten more harsh, so this was necessary. Why doesn’t Macron consider the possibility that Russia had to extend themselves to deal with a mess on their border, and that they are not in the mood to keep dealing with fools?
Fico chose to expose the crazy proposals at Macron’s gathering—he said that they “send shivers down your spine”—and posed the obvious: Why wasn’t there even one proposal, even a peep about negotiating an end to the fighting? Is that, as with the little boy who asked why the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes, enough to stop the Kool-Aid party?
Aaron Bushnell decided to sacrifice his life by setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington two days ago. While he would not abide the genocide being carried out in his name, would not be the “good German,” he also chose to broadcast his incineration to pose the question of what happens to thousands and thousands of Palestinian children when their bodies are incinerated by bombs? That was Bushnell’s choice to spend his talent. Is that enough to stop the deep denial of what greed and insensitivity has done to a great nation?
Who knows? They are both honest efforts. However, in this best of all possible worlds, the injustices, the sacrifices, honest efforts without immediate rewards, require that they trigger human creativity. Today, a direct path to triggering that is the campaign to Support the LaRouche “Oasis Plan for Peace and Development in Southwest Asia”. It is time for an outbreak of public sanity.
