July 26, 2024 (EIRNS)—The 60th consecutive weekly online meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) convened today with EIR’s Dennis Small pointing to Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s proposal for a Council of Reason, reminding participants that the danger is driven by the “endgame and demise” of the predatory, speculation-focused financial system. “A significant alternative is being put together” by nations of the Global Majority—the Global South—that can provide the economic underpinnings for a lasting peace. In China, the recent congress of the CCP made clear that science, creativity and innovation are the drivers for economic progress.
Zepp-LaRouche’s July 23rd “Call To Create a Council of Reason,” became an important point of discussion in the meeting. She had warned of the danger “that the world could split into two separate blocs, the collective West on the one side, and the nations of the Global Majority on the other. If this happens, not only could we see a new edition of a cold war, economic decoupling, and tremendous fall-outs and even crashes, but it could lead to a global nuclear war which could end all life on Earth.”
In the West, the political death-throes of the system are becoming more frenzied. With the withdrawal of Biden from the presidential race and the anointment of Kamala Harris as his replacement candidate, Small described how it is telling that the person in charge of selecting Harris’s running mate is former Attorney General Eric Holder, who helped his then boss, Barack Obama, select drone assassination targets, and authored the infamous “Holder letter” which provided a “Get Out of Jail Free Card” to the too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks.
The institutional collapse in Europe mirrors that of the United States. The EU is trying to “run Orbán out of town on a rail,” because the Hungarian Prime Minister dared to pursue diplomacy for peace in the NATO war in Ukraine against Russia as an alternative to saber-rattling.
Ukraine is now blocking the transit of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. NATO is taking control, not just of the Ukraine war, but also of nuclear war policy in all member nations, superseding national governments and “putting the United Kingdom in the catbird’s seat.”
‘The Bibi Extravaganza in Congress’
Many of the participants commented on the events of July 24, when Israeli Prime Minister and indicted war criminal Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress and was rewarded with 52 standing ovations. Netanyahu made “a rather transparent appeal” to Donald Trump, when he spoke of advancing from the Abraham Accords, a deal negotiated by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for the normalization of relations between Israel and a number of the smaller Arab nations, to something Netanyahu grandly called the “Abraham Alliance.”
Dr. Clifford Kiracofe, a former Senior Staff Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and President of the Washington Institute for Peace and Development, characterized the Congressional session as “The Bibi extravaganza in Congress.”: “The spectacle, as disgraceful as it was, was not a new phenomenon,” he said, because Congressional support for Zionism dates back to the 1920s. “The Christian Zionists see the Israeli project as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy,” and because of the pro-Zionist frenzy in government circles, the U.S. is “incapable of any sort of balanced policy in the Middle East.”
H.E. Donald Ramotar, former President of Guyana, said that the Netanyahu visit stripped the U.S. of any pretense of concern for human rights. “We see them now in all their nakedness,” he said. Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and whistleblower, lamented the manipulation of American elected officials, saying “they gave ovations for genocide in the U.S. Congress.” Ramotar and Rowley both picked up on the idea of the Council of Reason. She strongly suggested that the Council examine the manipulation of people through the “choosing the lesser evil,” and thus leading otherwise good people to cheer on mass murder. President Ramotar made clear that he looks forward to the creation of such a Council of Reason, a deliberative body to steer the world towards safety and well being for all nations and all people.
Dennis Fritz, Director of the Eisenhower Media Network, on the question of the manipulation of Congresspersons, asserted that their behavior can simply be explained by the “love of money and power,” mentioning AIPAC in this context.
International Flashpoints and the Emerging New Paradigm
Former President Ramotar was a speaker at the conference in China, commemorating the 70th anniversary of Premier Zhou Enlai’s “Five Principles” announcement. His presentation in China was based on much of what he had discussed at IPC meetings: The talk of Southern Countries being a burden on the North is demonstrably false. From 1960 to 2020 there was a net capital transfer of $152 trillion from the South to the North. The Northern nations had created “debt problems and unequal trade relations.”
However, Ramotar now sees a “new balance in the world which was absent since the 1990s,” when the U.S.S.R. collapsed. The Western war frenzy is because they “feel that they are losing ground to the emergence of the BRICS.” Some have now become colonies themselves—with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz allowing the United States to station long-range missiles on German soil, with no consent from the German population. Ramotar, in conclusion, said, “I’m beginning to see more hope than I saw a month ago.”
Coleen Rowley focused on the mass manipulation of public opinion in the U.S., asking, “What can cause otherwise good people to turn into monsters?” She was shocked by the rapturous response to Netanyahu in the Congress. She suggested that if people can be led to realize that they are being fooled, maybe we can break the climate of manipulation. One hopeful sign is that more and more people are saying that they won’t vote party line. We must “defeat lesser-evilism,” she said, which is characterized by “people giving up their ability to analyze and think,” and becoming “what we call ‘good Germans.’”
Dennis Fritz, who is retired from the U.S. Air Force, where he served as the principal senior advisor to four-star commanders, returned to Netanyahu’s address to Congress, saying he was personally affronted by Netanyahu calling demonstrators “useful idiots working on behalf of Iran,” because he was one of those demonstrating, along with other military veterans and esteemed intelligence professionals, such as retired Colonels Larry Wilkerson and Ann Wright. He would not advise anyone to join the military now, “to be used as pawns in a corrupt foreign policy.”
A Good ‘Ground Game’
A conversation between Fritz and independent Congressional candidate Jose Vega in the Bronx on the topic of the public interventions, made famous by Vega and CODEPINK, led to a broader discussion of how to reach people in all nations, and at all levels of society. Fritz said, “We need a ‘ground game’ to educate the people.”
In the discussion, Small endorsed a point, made by Rowley, that the “Council of Reason,” as proposed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, “has to take up as a central issue how a population can be degraded to support evil.” He added that to get away from “lesser-evilism,” you need “greater-goodism,” which echoes the controversy between Plato and Aristotle. He warned that populist disgruntlement, if colored by pessimism, leads to fascism. We need optimism, of the sort that can be generated by LaRouche’s Oasis Plan and World Land-Bridge proposals.
