United States: LaRouche Candidates Diane Sare and Jose Vega Take on Permanent War Machine

Polls of U.S. voters continue to show profound unhappiness with candidates in both parties approaching the 2024 presidential election. Both President Biden and former President Trump, the major candidates, have unfavorability ratings approaching 60%, while the approval rating of Congress has crashed to 15%. The physical economy continues to decay, and polarization around social issues and “identity politics” has left many voters despairing about the future. When it comes to the most pressing issue, however, the danger that ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza are leading to World War III and possibly nuclear war, there is little public debate, as both parties are controlled by neocons, committed to permanent war, and alternative voices are silenced by media controlled by the same cartels that finance the two pro-war parties.

This bubble has just been popped, by the filing of petitions by LaRouche candidates Diane Sare and Jose Vega in New York State, who are running as Independents in the November elections. Sare is challenging U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (a Democrat), while Vega intends to unseat Democrat Ritchie Torres in the 15th Congressional District in the Bronx. To qualify, Sare needed the signatures of 45,000 registered voters in the state, but thanks to the work of a dedicated core of volunteers, she submitted 70,000. Vega gathered over 10,000, or more than three times the 3,000 needed, all registered voters in his district of New York City. To accomplish this, Sare estimates their supporters engaged in discussions with more than 250,000 people.

This kind of campaigning is necessary, Sare said, to overcome the brainwashing done by the media, which she described as part of the war machine. In a recent podcast, in which she was joined by former weapons inspector and anti-war activist Scott Ritter, she stressed that people are not aware they’re brainwashed. “I tell them Russia and China are not our enemies,” and the wars underway are an attempt “to destroy the new paradigm coming into existence with the BRICS and BRICS plus nations [which include Russia and China]….If the United States were acting in its self-interest, we would work with Russia and China and Iran and many nations for the development and freedom of mankind.”

Ritter responded by calling the BRICS the “new club” as opposed to the musty, smelly old clubs of the Establishment. “We need to get people like Diane into the U.S. Senate to promote peace,” he urged.

Both Sare and Vega apply what she described as “Lyndon LaRouche’s approach to campaigning, which is really a Socratic dialogue where you’re transforming the people that you’re engaging with by finding those areas of disagreement and developing a higher conception”. Vega has done this as an intervenor in public forums, challenging officials, including Joe Biden, Vice President Harris, former CIA Director and admitted liar Mike Pompeo, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and exposing their hypocrisy and lies .Right now, he said, the people have no voice. He described the approach he’s taking as building an independent force against the war, and for a new strategic and development architecture, in every Congressional District.