A-Infos (en) Italy, FAS Sicilia Libertaria: White flag or the art of surrender (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The pusillanimous cried foul, while the arms manufacturers moved quickly 
with the acolyte minister to make the president with the helmet declare 
that it was not in Italy's plans to withdraw from armed support for 
Ukraine fighting against Putin's Russia , the invader, to whom they sell 
brand new weapons (Crosetto has just declared that they are already at 
450 million euros), while the Italian state gives him old and almost 
useless ones. And all this because the Argentine Pope, responding to a 
Swiss journalist in mid-March, spoke of an agreement, including a 
reference to the "white flag", so much so that the Vatican itself felt 
obliged to clarify, implicitly alluding to the linguistic 
misunderstanding of the pope who came from afar. As if the expression 
did not exist in the Spanish language and the Pope was not a Jesuit. 
Even the geopolitical expert who moved permanently from Gruber, 
Caracciolo, was careful to underline that if one surrenders, he no 
longer has anything to "dialogue" with the enemy, forgetting that 
alongside "unconditional surrender" there is also a contrary figure, the 
"conditional surrender", in which at a table, with or without mediators, 
the terms in which this can be achieved are discussed (think of an 
armistice, for example). The fact is that Caracciolo, like the Pope, 
knows that Ukraine's chances of winning the war are not there, nor are 
there any hopes that the Russian dictator will be deposed by his own 
population, and not after the overwhelming victory in the elections held 
in miter tip.

For Italians who are passionate about music, the reference to the white 
flag may well remind us of Battiato's song, when he specifically alludes 
to it in front of men of power: but in older ones the memory could go to 
Arnaldo Fusinato's poem dedicated to Venice reduced to exhausted after 
the long resistance against Austria: The disease is raging, we lack 
bread, the white flag is flying on the bridge! This cry seems to allude 
more to "we can't take it anymore" than to surrender, but this meaning 
does not remain completely muted. Historically, the white flag, in the 
context of a war, can have various meanings: surrender, obviously, but 
also a request for a truce or even a sign of peace. We don't know what 
was going through the pope's mind, but beyond the interpretations, more 
or less ideologically interested, the context of the reference seems 
clear to us when he says: "He who sees the situation, who thinks of the 
people, who has the courage of the white flag, to negotiate. Today we 
can negotiate with the help of international powers. The word negotiate 
is courageous. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not 
going, you need to have the courage to negotiate. You are ashamed, but 
with how many deaths will it end?".

It seems that the Argentine, when he wants, doesn't mince his words and 
doesn't shy away from expressing what many have been thinking for a long 
time and which, in general, they keep silent in order not to go against 
the grain, which is disastrous if you are a journalist or a politician, 
given the government trend. But there is also a cultural background that 
considers the idea of giving up as negative, an attitude that we try to 
inculcate in children from childhood, together with the goodness of a 
certain aggressiveness, while for girls we proceed in the opposite 
direction, accepting to give in and make this surrender a value. From 
this derive the arguments between males and the games of who can piss 
the furthest, up to the male logic of war itself, with its corollary: 
surrendering is cowardly behavior. Which would be laughable, if there 
weren't thousands of deaths involved, while Meloni puts on her helmet, 
imitating her black idol. On the contrary, it takes a lot of courage to 
lie on the ground unarmed in front of the rifles, see our Maria 
Occhipinti of Ragusa, during the Non si parte, or Jan Palach in Prague 
in front of the Russian tanks, or like the young people of Tiananmen.

It takes courage for him to refuse war and personally sacrifice himself 
against abuses. We are not making an apology for surrender or passivity 
as a lifestyle or struggle, but rather insinuating, as the war manuals 
teach, that a strategy that does not include the possibility of an 
agreement is basically irrational, especially when one of the parties 
involved has of many more men and sophisticated weapons. In fact, in 
truth, a few months after the start of the invasion, Ukrainians and 
Russians were one step away from signing an agreement in Turkey which 
envisaged definitively ceding Crimea to Russia and sitting at a table to 
decide the fate of Donbass. It was at that moment that the head of the 
English government rushed to Kiev to dissuade Zelenski from signing.

Which is to say: the plan of the Western powers and NATO had its own 
rationality which sacrificed, as we are seeing, Europe to bleed Russia 
and reduce its global influence. As we know, this is not working and the 
one who is emerging as a world power is China and, partly, India. 
Because one of the two: considering that Ukraine has no chances of 
winning the war, even with the support of the West, either an agreement 
will be reached quickly, perhaps by ceding the Russian-speaking 
territories occupied by Russia, or NATO intervenes with more powerful 
men and weapons, and Europe behind, and the Fourth World War will be 
well served.

Meloni also seems aware of this disjunctive factor, at least when she 
converses on the telephone with Russian comedians, but she certainly 
cannot shout it from the rooftops so as not to have to contradict 
herself and frustrate her electorate and, even more so, her 
arms-producing financiers . Thus, following the president of the 
European Council Charles Michel, who declares "if we want peace, let's 
prepare for war", the president of our government criminally repeats 
like a parrot: "Peace is not built with feelings and good words, but 
with deterrence". It seems that we haven't learned anything from history 
or, better yet, we're playing whoever has it the longest, since those 
who suffer the consequences are the submissive masses, who perhaps even 
voted for them! (the genital metaphor lends itself well to the president 
with the helmet!).

On the contrary, when there are no other outlets and people continue to 
die by the thousands, "bend over", a meaning included in the etymology, 
can paradoxically be an intelligent and even tactical act, in the sense 
of the Sicilian saying cálati juncu, ca passa la china (bend over as the 
flood passes), and then get up again when you are stronger or have found 
a different way of war to resolve conflicts. Unfortunately, in the 
specific case of the war between the West and Russia, through poor 
Ukraine which causes deaths and the destruction of its territory, the 
courage to surrender is precisely lacking among the leaders. "In this 
era of madmen we lacked the idiots of horror...", sang Battiato!

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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