January 7 marked the celebration by the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians of Christmas Day. President Vladimir Putin’s Christmas message said: “This bright, much-awaited holiday is dear to millions of people all over the world. It gives believers joy and hope and inspires good thoughts, deeds and actions…. Religious organizations make a meaningful contribution to strengthening the institution of the family, to educating young people and to affirming in society such intransient moral ideals and values as caring for one’s neighbor, mercy and compassion, and support for those in need of help and attention. This multifaceted and much needed work deserves most profound recognition.” Putin attended services at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and the Church of Great Martyr St. George the Victorious.
President Joe Biden also issued a statement, which said: “Today, we pray for Orthodox Christians who are suffering around the world due to war, conflict, deprivation, and oppression. They, like all human beings, are created in the image of God, and deserve safety and security, dignity and respect. We will continue to advocate for these core principles, including religious freedom, and on this day, we keep these communities close to our hearts.”
Religious freedom? Even Biden is aware that Zelenskyy banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in August 2024, replacing it with the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” a move denounced at the time by the Pope, who said, “In thinking about the laws recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the freedom of those who pray, because those who truly pray always pray for all … a person does not commit evil by praying … let those who want to pray be allowed to pray in what they consider their Church"; and the World Council of Churches, which said “the WCC is deeply alarmed by the potential for unjustified collective punishment of an entire religious community and violation of the principles of freedom of religion or belief under a new law approved by the Ukrainian Rada on 20 August 2024.”
Meanwhile, “Christ is still under the rubble” in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed there in the past three days, including doctors, journalists and poets. While the official estimates of 45,000-plus dead are still used, we must remember the unofficial estimates of The Lancet medical journal, that the total, when the rubble is cleared, and a more accurate account is made, may be as high as 186,000. On November 17, 2023, in correspondence to the editors, “Save the Remaining People of Gaza—Save the Children,” the authors said, “The meaning of humanity in a conflict setting is to prevent and alleviate suffering wherever it is found, to protect life and health, and to ensure respect for the human being. Right now, that means stopping the war. We, as human beings, must regain our humanity for the sake of the next generation. We declare no competing interests.”
President Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address, famously reflected on the irony that, in the War Against the Southern Secession of 1861-65, “Both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.” He proposed a less mercenary, higher view. Rather than a theology of war, Lincoln proposed to end war “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Can the American Presidency, so now fallen, ever be so ennobled again?
The Presidential system was very much in the international news on January 7. The 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter, lay in state at the Capitol Rotunda, and the President-elect Donald Trump gave a press conference, the day after his being certified as President. There is a half-century spanned by those two American Presidents, Carter and Trump. In that half-century, the United States took a disastrous “post-industrial society” highway to Hell. This road, contrary to the old adage, was not even paved with good intentions. It was paved by Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, on behalf of the City of London, and its “Great Game” against Russia, played out, then as now, in Afghanistan and Southwest Asia—"British brains and (dumb) American muscle.”
Jimmy Carter was, for those four years of his one Presidential term, a tragic participant in an evil process that nearly brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war, but with which he, we have now learned in subsequent years, often disagreed. It was only in the years after his Presidency that he rose to the stature of statesman, most notably in his work for peace in Southwest Asia, expressed in the title and contents of his 2006 book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, probably Carter’s fiercest critic during his 1977-1981 term, and who campaigned in 1980, not only against Carter, but against other Trilateral Commission candidates like Republicans George H.W. Bush and Gen. Alexander Haig, nonetheless wrote a defense of Carter. That was in response to Carter’s courageous stance on the matter of the Palestinians and peace in the “Middle East.”
LaRouche said, “First, (Carter) is right on the issue of the title of his current book. What the Israelis and others are currently practicing against the Palestinians, is nothing differing in principle from a continuing practice of Apartheid. Every sane and intelligent political figure I know agrees with that in fact, but only a few of those politicians acting in the tradition of ‘political animals,’ are willing to be caught saying that publicly.” LaRouche, who, as the late former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark said, “more than any other quality, will be remembered for his courage,” highly valued “the courage to speak the truth, boldly and without artifice” in public officials, as well as in people generally.
Whatever else one thinks about Donald Trump—and his various remarks in today’s press conference have left the world with more questions than answers, in typical Trump fashion—Trump does not hesitate to say what is on his mind, whatever that may be. (Trump’s genuine, instinctive response to his attempted assassination on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, also shows a unique feature of his makeup, which cannot be ignored.) While some consider this trait to be dangerous, it is far less dangerous than the duplicity that has, for example, characterized the last decades, and the last year, in particular, of the American Presidency—which was clearly being run, and is still being run, by an unelected “collective Biden.”
In the 12 days of life it still has left, the collective Biden will attempt any unspeakable practice and unnatural act that it can wriggle through the fast-closing aperture of its window of opportunity. The stage, however, is set for a momentous change. Remarks that Trump made in his press conference concerning the Ukraine conflict, for example, as well as NATO, may indicate a real change. The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, if defended and won, could result in real change. Trump’s re-naming the DOJ the “Department of Injustice” indicates that he expects and will fight for real change there. But tea-leaf reading what Trump may or may not do, is a fool’s errand. The approach to the United States Presidency must always be that taken by Lyndon LaRouche—propose what must be done and why, and fight, including against the President, if necessary, so that the Presidency adopts that policy. Our role—not only The LaRouche Organization, but all citizens—is to demand, from the Trump Administration and from all our governments, a new Security and Development Architecture, a “New Dispensation” from war, worthy of a humanity made in the image of the Creator.
