by Daniel Platt
The International Peace Coalition (IPC) began its second year of weekly online meetings today, with a strategic overview presented by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. She announced that former Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who has participated in IPC meetings, would be taking part in a panel discussion on the question of the demonization of Russia today, as part of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, drawing 19,000 participants from some 130 countries. Ritter’s presentation would be virtual, because, in an attempt to prevent him from participating, representatives of the U.S. State Department had stopped him from boarding his plane at JFK Airport and seized his passport.
This shocking event takes place in the midst of a rapidly deteriorating strategic situation. “Red lines are being crossed by the day,” said Zepp-LaRouche. “The number of European heads of state warning that Europe is preparing for war is growing.” The Anglophile faction, on the other hand, is showing its ugly face, including at the June 6 bellicose commemoration of the D-Day Normandy landings, 80 years ago, that were aimed to stop Hitler. Zepp-LaRouche warned of “the complete transformation of many parties in Europe into war parties.”
Meanwhile, Russian warships will arrive in Havana next week for military exercises in the Caribbean. Zepp-LaRouche said that that will remind people of the Cuban Missile Crisis, noting that NATO forces are encroaching on Russia’s border. Another grim development is the announcement of Biden’s “upgraded” nuclear weapons strategy. “I can’t imagine what a more assertive strategy is supposed to be,” commented Zepp-LaRouche. She relayed a warning from retired German Gen. Harald Kujat that that could become the tragedy of the 21st Century, just as two world wars were the tragedy of the 20th Century.
On the global economy, Zepp-LaRouche cited Pope Francis saying that mismanaged globalization is depriving the Global South of hope for the future. She also called attention to an interview she gave to TASS two days ago, in which she agreed with Putin that the outcome of the Presidential election in the U.S. will make no difference, if the U.S. does not bother to take care of its own actual interests.
Prof. Steven Starr, an expert on nuclear war, who has spoken at many IPC meetings and Schiller conferences, offered a PowerPoint presentation spelling out the ghastly consequences of a nuclear exchange between NATO and Russia. He compared the entry-level nuclear weapon which was used on Hiroshima, rated at 15,000 tons of TNT equivalent, to today’s thermonuclear weapons, which are 7 to 85 times more powerful. Submarine-launched nuclear missiles from either side can reach their targets in 7 to 10 minutes, leaving government leaders little time to consider a response.
Starr went on to report recent developments in weaponry. He recently wrote a book on the effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP); one nuclear detonation could destroy our entire power grid. Russia now possesses hypersonic missiles that fly at 20 times the speed of sound. They have been used in Ukraine, and despite NATO propaganda, none has been shot down. Once launched, strategic missiles cannot be recalled. Peer-reviewed studies, since 2007-08, have confirmed the “nuclear winter” theory: Because of the precipitous drop in global temperatures caused by massive amounts of smoke in the upper atmosphere, the aftermath of a thermonuclear exchange would affect not just people in the target area: Most humans and animals in the world would starve.
In light of all this, Starr said, the eagerness of the neocons to flirt with nuclear war can only be characterized as “incredible incompetence and ignorance combined with hubris…. I really wonder if anyone in Washington knows this anymore,” he mused, and concluded his remarks by apologizing for “this terrible presentation.”
Starr was followed by LaRouche independent Congressional candidate in New York’s CD 15 Jose Vega, who logged on from the campaign trail in the Bronx. He reported on a successful event which he had held the previous night, which featured popular comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore, as well as the Due Dissidence podcasting team. Some 100 people were in attendance, about half of whom had helped petition to successfully put Vega’s name on the ballot. He asserted that people in the U.S. are effectively living under fascism today. “Instead of funding all these wars … we could have mutual economic cooperation going on,” he said. “The future is watching what we’re doing right now.”
Vega was followed by LaRouche Party U.S. Senate candidate in New York Diane Sare, who paraphrased the poet Percy Shelley, saying, “We are in a revolutionary moment where the poets among us can become the legislators of the world.”
During the discussion, LaRouche organization leader Dennis Speed brought up recent revelations of Israeli social media bots which are attempting to control the “narrative,” and reported that AIPAC has spent $8 million attempting to defeat New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who represents the Bronx CD 16 district bordering Jose Vega’s.
Participants from Argentina and Germany reported on anti-war events they are organizing. Then Jacques Cheminade, leader of LaRouche movement in France, commented on the June 6 D-Day celebration in his country, calling it “the most obscene and frightening show,” which was being cynically staged to drum up enthusiasm for the rapidly collapsing Ukraine war project.
EIR Intelligence Director Dennis Small reviewed the driving force behind the war danger: The fantastic indebtedness of the Anglosphere, driven by the quadrillions of dollars in the financial derivatives bubble.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche used her concluding remarks to respond to some of the questions which came up during the discussion. In response to a question from a participant in Ibero-America as to why leaders of Western Europe are “walking like sheep” behind the U.S. President, she said that the best thing you can do, is to ask as loudly as possible: Why is Western Europe going down the path of self-destruction? She recalled that her late husband, EIR founder Lyndon LaRouche, had charged that after World War II, morality was replaced by consumerism. She said that this should not be confused with the need to build up the physical economy, which is needed to offer the population a decent living standard.
In response to another participant, who cited an article in Israel’s anti-war +972 Magazine on the role of Artificial Intelligence in targeting Palestinians, she agreed that this is an important topic, adding that NATO is using AI to control the narrative; “free speech is out, you cannot have a different opinion.”
A clergywoman and activist had raised, in response to Dennis Small’s explication of the debt crisis, the Biblical concept of a Jubilee to cancel debts. Zepp-LaRouche responded, “I fully agree with a worldwide Jubilee.” She added that in addition to the cancellation of unpayable debt, especially derivatives, you need Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws reorganization of the banking and financial system, including a reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall legislation to separate real banking from financial speculation. She said that we must tell the banks to get their books in order, and if they can’t, they should declare bankruptcy. Then, fresh credit must be limited to finance real physical production. Pope Francis has mentioned next year’s Jubilee 2025, for which he called for a new security and development architecture.
Zepp-LaRouche said that a video of Professor Starr’s presentation will be produced, and that we should get it out to all elected officials from city officials up to U.S. Congress and national parliaments. She concluded by saying that everyone should stay tuned for the announcement of a press conference next Wednesday, June 12, with Scott Ritter and others.
