The Lead

Beating the Addiction to Gambling, Violence and Death

by David Shavin (EIRNS) — Sep. 29, 2024

Whatever team is making decisions at the White House, this “collective Joe” grouping has, on two recent occasions, apparently turned down the opportunity to go full “flight-forward,” when confronted with the matter of firing Western long-range missiles deep into Russia. On Sept. 13, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer came to muscle Biden on the matter, and on Sept. 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attempted his unique form of charm on the White House. On both occasions, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had sent a loud and clear message the day before, that Moscow was in no mood to play games, where Ukrainian proxies have their “‘label” on the launching of U.S., British and French long-range missiles deep into Russia.

For the last two decades, as NATO marches up to Russia’s borders, there has been established a track record of Western leaders doing their level best to shut out such warnings from Putin. One can imagine them clamping hands over their ears or turning up the volume of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung—or, in Antony Blinken’s case, picking up his guitar to warble Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Regardless, there has been no guarantee that any given message from Putin would get processed. So, if it is as reported, that some within intelligence and military layers in the U.S. have temporarily given some pause to the rush to thermonuclear war, it is a belated but very much welcome development.

Yet the U.S. Secretary of State Blinken, for one, rushed in the day after the Biden-Zelenskyy White House meeting, to assure one and all that the “deep strike into Russia” was still a live option. “We’re looking at this very carefully…. I’ve said this many times and I’ll say it again, every step along the way, we’ve adjusted and adapted to [Ukraine’s military] needs, and I’m confident that we’ll continue to do so.” The plan is to put the trigger for thermonuclear confrontation back on the table on Oct. 12, when Biden is to chair the next Ukraine Defense Contact Group “Ramstein” meeting in Germany.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s government in Israel, with a fresh $8 billion in U.S. weapons and munitions, dropped bunker buster bombs in a residential area of Beirut, leveling apartment buildings, in their assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s longtime leader. Washington promptly frowns at their naughty boy and hands over some more 2,000- and 5,000-pound bombs. And Blinken assures one and all that, with the same deadly refrain, that he is just one step away from having Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire, so diplomacy can proceed. Yet, for anyone with eyes that can see, Netanyahu’s gang provokes and provokes until they get a fight, and if they don’t get a fight, they simply escalate their provocations. Now Lebanon, as was done with Gaza, is facing destruction if they protest and destruction if they keep quiet. Iran is perhaps a more immediate trigger point than Ukraine.

Let’s be fair. The Anglosphere gang may be pushing for a thermonuclear showdown, but, to their thinking, their enemies are threatening the financial death of the City of London and Wall Street’s gigantic Ponzi scheme, threatening not a nuclear but a financial Armageddon. Indeed, the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—along with the new countries that have joined, the larger gathering of countries planning to join, and the Global Majority of the world, simply no longer plan to abide sacrificing the lives and futures of their populations to keep the financial derivatives bubble afloat. So, one might say the motivation of these financial wizards is clear—yet they are insane. Their speculative addiction always was going to come to a bad end, but worse, their addiction to their fantasy has addled their judgment. A thermonuclear confrontation is not simply Russian roulette with one-in-six chances of survival.

The BRICS summit takes place in Kazan, Russia, over Oct. 22-24, at a time when the bankruptcy—financial, political and moral—of the Anglosphere is there for all to see. The United States and Europe do not have to go down with the ship. History will record that China has made consistent and repeated offers to both share in the demonstrated successes of the Belt and Road Initiative’s approach. Citizens of the United States and Europe must not succumb to the ugliness, the violence, the addictive behavior—and to secure a road out of hell, there’s no substitute for courage and morality.

Sounds foreboding? On Oct. 2, former U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock and Dr. Ted Postol join Helga Zepp-LaRouche on a key Schiller Institute’s live webinar. They offer unique first-hand insight into the tragic mis-step when the West spurned Russia’s desire to join the West and into the horrifying reality of the nuclear war gamble. The courage to look at what has to be dealt with will yield the moral strength to do what’s right.