Even at a distance of 200 years—he passed away in 1828—the immortal painter Francisco Goya still likes to comment, as the occasion demands, on “current events” that, no matter how “contemporary” or “cyber” they may appear to be, still reflect the time-worn folly of brinkmanship, of war, and of “strategies of tension” that can lead to war. This folly appears to arise from an almost-genetic stupidity on the part of a financial oligarchy that is so ideologically inbred, that it is constitutionally incapable of learning anything from its mistakes. On such a full sea of folly is the world now afloat, in the mounting tensions seen instigated by the “Queen’s Navy,” the United States/NATO “ship of fools", with Russia and China, and the allies of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Ever hear of the idea of “threat inflation?” For example, accusing the Russians of plotting to invade Ukraine, based on the same reliable “yellowcake” intelligence method used for the 2003 Iraq War, and for “Russiagate,"—and then, if/when they don’t invade, claiming “a strategic-military victory for the forces of democracy?” Francisco Goya knew all about this flim-flam 200 years ago.
He illustrates the “threat inflation” fraud in his engraving “disparate conocido”—, “well-known folly.” A crowd cowers before two figures, one of whom brandishes a saber and appears to be shouting. The other, behind him, may actually only be a scarecrow, made up to look human, which the “soldier” seems to be defending. One lone figure in the cowering crowd, who stands out, has one hand on his ass, (which is prominently turned toward the face of the threatening soldier,) and one on his mouth. He isn’t fooled by the fraud, so he says to the threatening soldier-figure, in a graphic language that all viewers can understand, “Kiss my ass.”
And that we hope, reader, will also be your response to this current “threat inflation.” We urge you to ask, “What’s really going on?” It is to that, that our publications, our analysis, and our strategic initiatives, such as “Operation Ibn Sina” are directed.
Though at this hour we have yet to receive an official Russian response, it can be safely said that, short of a face-to-face summit, as described by Vladimir Putin’s “P5” proposal, and additional face-to-face talks between Biden and Putin, and/or Biden and Xi Jinping, nothing more than a tense pre-war truce, at best, will prevail in the world. That is not enough to ensure that the world does not go to thermonuclear war, either intentionally, or accidentally. The American response, as expressed in the words of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who spoke for 40 minutes after the Biden-Putin call, and then took questions, was (in approximation) that Biden told Putin that there is “another option” to confrontation: de-escalation and diplomacy. We were able to do this at the height of the Cold War, creating stability mechanisms to help increase transparency. This was done in the post-Cold War period through the Russia-NATO Council and the OSCE, and there’s no reason that cannot be done now. Biden also said that the U.S. is prepared to advance the Minsk accords in support of the Normandy format.
But, according to Sullivan, Ukraine was “the main topic of discussion.” Biden let Putin know that if Russia’ “further invades” Ukraine, that “strong economic measures” would be the response of the United States and the NATO countries of Europe, along with additional defense materiel sent to Ukraine, and “fortification of NATO allies on the eastern flank.” Seventeen countries have joined NATO since the verbal pledges were given by Secretary of State James Baker to Gorbachov on February 9,1990, that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” (Baker used that formulation a full three times during that post-Berlin Wall meeting, saying, according to archival documents, that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” Former CIA Director Robert Gates, speaking in 2000, criticized the 1990s “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.")
President Putin has for some time requested written guarantees that NATO will cease to expand its presence eastward, to the very borders of Russia. He raised this matter in the two-hour discussion with Biden. Apparently that has been rejected outright by the United States. The United States is also saying that it will not respect the Russian notion of “red lines.” Really?
Filmmaker Oliver Stone, in an interview conducted yesterday, pointed out that “in 1962, when the Missile Crisis came, the generals were very clear: bomb the shit out of them (Soviets.) . We’re going in there. [Gen. Curtis] LeMay wanted to go in. This was an excuse for them to go in, because the Russians had put missiles in Cuba. Kennedy … refused to go to war. It came very close. We owe perhaps our lives to his judiciousness in this case, because it was very close. And it was really Robert, Jack, and the Soviet ambassador, and Khruschev who solved this issue at the last second.”
From 1974 until today, forces associated with Lyndon LaRouche have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous stupidity from those unable to understand how close—as a result of decades of population-destroying, genocidal economic policies conducted against the world’s poor by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and, now, the likes of the Davos World Economic Forum and the “Guardians for Inclusive Capitalism” (in the form of the Great Reset)— we have often come to thermonuclear war. We have conducted many mobilizations to prevent that occurrence. Too many people apparently believe that such a war is unthinkable, and would therefore never occur.
But thermonuclear war is only unthinkable for those that have trouble thinking. The danger is also impossible to resolve without a viable global alternative. In this time of the pandemic, when potentially species-threatening diseases make everyone on the planet potentially vulnerable, the folly of the past five decades of IMF/World Bank policy is luridly obvious. A world health platform, accompanied by 1.5 billion jobs in the water, sanitation, transportation, energy, construction, medical, agricultural, and educational sectors—an effort that must accompany the vaccines and medicines that are, in the short term, the necessary measures for any viable crash effort—will be led by the nations with the physical-economic capabilities to do so. China, the United States, and Russia will find the solution to “threat inflation” by facing the real threat, which is not each other but the limitations of our imagination that must be overcome to solve the present and looming challenges facing humanity as a whole at the frontier of medical, biological, and physical science. The figure of Ibn Sina is the “patron saint” of that challenge, and Operation Ibn Sina is a higher-order strategy, generated from the world of the unthinkable, for the “axiomatically challenged.” Perfidious Albion is “hereditarily incapable” of playing that positive role, and that is the elegant, nonviolent solution to the pestilence of oligarchy.
