Helga Zepp-LaRouche closed today’s 139th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) with the saying “What you love, you own; What you hate, you lose” by Friedrich Schiller, the namesake of the international institution she had founded in 1984. She reviewed the “incredible danger” of the potential for a war in Iran, which could expand both regionally and globally. Equally dangerous is the explosion of the $2.4 quadrillion debt bubble, being driven by the intentional devaluing of the U.S. dollar, which could facilitate the collapse of the entire world financial system. The newly released US Defense and Security Policies demonstrate that the U.S. policy has dropped the pretense of “democracy and human rights,” and is now purely global hegemony, the power of the strong against the weak. The European economies are now in free fall, and there is a clear danger of a new fascism to meet the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution.
A clip of the presentation given by Graham Fuller at an earlier meeting of the IPC was played in tribute to our dear friend who died this past week. Graham was also eulogized by Dennis Speed, who described Fuller’s development as a leading foreign policy thinker and “world citizen” through his work as a leading CIA official, and later as a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The next speaker was Lt. Col. Anthony Aquilar, who, after serving in the Special Forces for 25 years went to work in Gaza with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supposedly to help feed the Palestinian people being killed and tortured in Gaza. Aquilar distinguished himself by becoming a whistle blower around the world, exposing that the GHF was serving as part of the continuing genocide against the people of Gaza. He said he had just returned from Minneapolis where he had campaigned for the abolition of ICE and the abolition of the Patriot Act. The killing and brutal suppression of citizens taking place in Minneapolis was a “boomerang” effect from the multiple wars being carried out around the world, just as Malcolm X had warned that the War in Vietnam was “coming home to roost.” The violence he saw by ICE in Minnesota, he said, was just like the violence he saw in Gaza against the Palestinians. He blamed the poor training and the incompetent leadership, warning that there were already plans under way to extend the operation to Ohio, Georgia and elsewhere. He said he is now running for Congress in North Carolina, because he wants to “serve the people.” He had been speaking and meeting with members of Congress and found them wanting, and that people must try to serve the people, not the military industrial complex or the financial institutions. He said the Patriot Act had opened the gate to expansion, through executive orders, to an emerging police state. “It is time to replace the government,” he said, and called on everyone to take action, to run for office, to speak out, to write – to see this as a “great moment of opportunity.”
Josephine Guilbeau, a retired Army intelligence officer, and a member of the Eisenhower Media Network, has also spoken out against the genocide in Gaza, and also travelled to Minneapolis to protest the brutality and killing by the ICE operation there. She reported that she was arrested in Minneapolis, but was never charged, and was never read her rights, contrary to the Constitution. She said there was essentially no rioting, no damage, yet the ICE response was “military style operations designed for foreign wars, counter insurgency, military suppression before any dialogue.” She warned that there was a “fear society” being created, which was “incompatible with a free society.” The global war on terror was being applied within the U.S.. “I am not speaking out of anger, but out of responsibility,” she said, to prevent the U.S. becoming a “police state, like Gaza.”
Diane Sare of the Schiller Institute, who is a declared independent presidential candidate, reported that she is holding a press conference, the day that the New START treaty expires, noting that Russia’s Medvedev said that this will be the first time in 50 years that there will be no arms control in effect, allowing for a “nuclear gain of function.” Joining her in the press conference will be Scott Ritter and Garland Nixon. She will call for the U.S. to accept Vladimir Putin’s offer to extend the New START treaty for one year while a new treaty is worked out. Trump has given no response to this offer. She is also calling for a “No First Strike” pledge, for the U.S. and for all countries, “including Israel.”
Helga responded to the reports by Aquilar and Guilbeau by asserting that the problem is “vision of man.” It was the British so-called “philosophers” like Thomas Hobbes who argued that man was an animal who required to be restrained by a “Leviathan,” which is why the American Revolution was fought against the British Empire. The ideas of the American Founding Fathers were based on Leibniz, that every man had the right to live a fulfilled, productive life.
Jose Vega, an independent candidate for Congress in the Bronx, which is the “poorest Congressional district in the U.S. ,” asked Aquilar and Guilbeau to comment on the town hall meeting they attended with Jose in the Bronx the night before. Aquilar said that seeing the destruction of the living conditions in the Bronx, while billions of dollars are being spent on war and killing people in Gaza and elsewhere, is “a betrayal of the American people. “Just stop funding wars,” he said, and “audit the Department of Defense.” Guilbeau added that the people attending the meeting understood this.
Diane Sare quoted from an article written by Lyndon LaRouche in 1999 at the time of the Columbine High School mass shooting by two students, titled “Star Wars and Littleton”. There were two factors involved, he wrote – one was the dehumanization that was inculcated in the population through Hollywood, such as the movie Star Wars with non-human characters, the second was the idea of a “rules based order,” in which the “rules” were dictated from authorities, with the idea that breaking the “rules” could be punished, even by death. She compared this to the use of tariffs and sanctions against countries, like the sanctions on Cuba which are intended to starve them and leave them without electricity. America was intended to be governed by Natural law, as embedded in the Constitution.
Former president of Guyana Donald Ramotar praised the former members of the military who were standing up, adding that he perceives that people are changing, they don’t want war or the military industrial complex.
A question was submitted asking why the IPC praises the American Revolution, since it was based on slavery and the genocide against the Indians.
Diane Sare said that was not the basis of the Revolution, but part of the reason people think that is that the histories have generally been written by the “losers – the British.” Hamilton and others knew the nation could not develop with a slave society, and encouraged people to read Hamilton and other Founders. Helga added that the view from the Global South could be seen in the Bandung Conference, where Sukarno said that the American Revolution was “the first anti-imperialist revolution in history.” The British never forgave the colonials for their revolt, and tried to destroy it militarily in the War of 1812 and then by supporting the Confederacy against President Lincoln. “This is also why the German Friedrich List promoted the American System against the British System.
Dennis Small reviewed the catastrophic condition of the global debt bubble, now over $2.4 quadrillion in debt and derivatives, and ridiculed the Trump claim that tariff income will bail out the nation, showing both that the total tariff income is a fraction of the amount Trump was claiming, and that a full 96% of that tariff was actually being paid by the American people through increased prices, while manufacturing continues to collapse.
