The Lead

If You Want To Survive, Build a Council of Reason

by Stewart Battle (EIRNS) — Aug. 10, 2024

The world is rapidly progressing along a path of destruction, egged on by the pro-war faction of today’s unipolar order. Put another way, as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.) described it in Friday’s meeting of the International Peace Coalition, this empire, like the many others before it, will not exist forever—but it remains to be seen whether mankind will survive its demise. Several events over the recent days make this picture crystal clear.

In Southwest Asia, the West continues to support Israel’s wreaking havoc in Palestine, Lebanon, and beyond, threatening to pull the region into an all-out war. Only a day after the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt issued a statement calling on Israel and Hamas to sign the ceasefire-for-hostages deal proposed by the U.S. earlier this year—a proposal which Israel itself agreed to send a delegation to discuss—Israel proceeded to bomb a school in Gaza that was housing thousands of refugees. Likely over 100 have been killed in a show of brutality which is unfortunately commonplace, and which will only further exacerbate tensions. How Hezbollah or Iran will respond to the July 30-31 inflammatory assassinations is still anyone’s guess, but the fact is that the region is on the verge of exploding.

The Ukrainian gambit into Russia’s Kursk region is proving to be a serious provocation that has taken tensions to a new level. Much remains uncertain regarding how quickly Russia will regain control of its territories and how many will die in the process, but what is certain is that some in the Western war party are using this to push “timid Western leaders” to now flood Ukraine with more weapons. As the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board recommended on Friday, Aug. 9: “The best response is to flow even more weapons into Ukraine, including long-range missiles that target bases and supply lines in Russia, and remove limits on the use of ATACMS missiles.”

These two theaters of war, so to speak, illustrate that the world is not at all out of the woods, despite the overwhelming desire globally for peace and negotiations to resolve these two conflicts. But to these should be added a third “theater,” that of an increasing Gestapo-like crackdown on internal dissent within especially the United States and Europe. A case in point of this is the recent FBI raid of the house of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the grounds that he has violated the laws of failing to register as “a foreign agent.” Ritter is only the latest example, as his case points to the war (as he himself described it) against those who speak out for peace and against the Anglo-American empire’s insane and dictatorial policies of war.

The fact of the matter is that if we are going to shift that situation, it will be through courage. There’s a reason the Greeks said that Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was born fully armed. It is not a lack of “information” or control by the media which prevents people from acting today. How did Gandhi recruit his nation to rebuke the British Empire? How did Martin Luther King, Jr. inspire a movement during the civil rights era? The courage to confront today’s evils does not come from knowledge, but the other way around.

This is the issue which Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call to create a Council of Reason is aiming for—a coalition of leading voices who will stand up and speak truth to the direness of the world situation. Become a part of the mobilization, and find that voice within yourself to create this shift now.