Report on IPC #140
Feb. 6, 2026 (EIRNS)—The 140th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) on Friday, Feb. 6, took up the question of the latest revelations from the files on the Jeffrey Epstein case, and elevated the discussion to consider how to improve the moral character of humanity as part of the IPC mission to efficiently end the danger of war.
Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche led off by noting that the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty, New START, had expired on the previous day, and it is unclear whether any agreement will replace it. There is a big U.S. Naval armada assembling in the Persian Gulf region, which could presage a strike on Iran and create “unforeseeable consequences.” There is also an “impending Damocles sword” of a general collapse of the financial system. The IPC response includes renewed efforts to re-establish international law, based on the UN Charter, but what is absolutely required is the new global governance system embodied in the Ten Principles put forward by Zepp-LaRouche.
She went on to describe the new environment created by the recent release of additional Epstein files, which she compared to the “Clean Hands” operation in Italy, which was used by the security services to “totally blow up” an existing corrupt system and replace it with an updated version of the same thing. What is actually needed is nothing short of a new Renaissance, and perhaps her proposed global security and development architecture should be updated to include a cultural renewal.
Diane Sare, U.S. independent LaRouche presidential candidate, began by citing the Sept. 2, 1945 remarks by General Douglas MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri after receiving the surrender of Japan, who said that the moral character of humanity must catch up with our incredible advances in science, lest we destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons. She has made three policy proposals:
1.) The United States must declare a doctrine of “no first use” of nuclear weapons, and require that every nuclear-armed nation, including emphatically Israel, must also so declare.
2.) We need a new security and economic development architecture, including a reform of the UN Security Council to reflect the growing influence of the nations of the Global South.
3.) We must join with Russia to build the Bering Strait Tunnel linking Alaska to Siberia, and take up Russia’s Oct. 2011 “Strategic Defense of Earth” proposal to jointly build a system capable of protecting the planet both from missile threats and from threats coming from outer space, such as asteroids.
Sare shared the recent TASS coverage of her presidential campaign, noting her call for a new START Treaty and her association with Lyndon LaRouche, who was widely respected in Russia. She said that people are looking for signs of intelligent life in the United States.
Starting from Scratch on Arms Control
A video presentation by Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, recounted his experience as the first U.S. weapons inspector on the ground in the Soviet Union to implement the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of Dec. 1987 and his role in the development of onsite inspections, which help to establish mutual trust. Even though the New START Treaty regulating strategic nuclear weapons only ended on Feb. 5, 2026, Ritter said that there have been no inspections related to the treaty since 2022, due to sanctions, and no data exchange since 2023. This means “we’re starting from scratch…. Nobody trusts American negotiators.” The world we live in today is one where the threat of nuclear war is greater than it was at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. “We need a leader, and I believe that leader is Diane Sare,” Ritter concluded.
Garland Nixon, veteran progressive radio and television talk show host, who had spent over 20 years in law enforcement, commented on the release of the Epstein files “through the eyes of an investigator.” He said that we should understand that this is a controlled release, designed to emphasize some things and de-emphasize others, so some level of skepticism is appropriate. He said that the revelations of Epstein’s connections to the British Crown are significant, and validate what the LaRouche movement has said for decades about the British Crown’s perfidious role in global politics.
Zepp-LaRouche, in response, asked Nixon to comment on the analogy of the released Epstein files to the “Clean Hands” operation in Italy. He suggested that the Epstein affair is different, because “once it got out of the bag, they lost control.” Sare added that the question is whether human beings are animals, and if they are not, we must find a way to use the revelations to advance our civilization. Nixon called this “a crisis of legitimacy for the ruling elite,” which shows them to be morally unqualified to lead. “How now do we take advantage of an opportunity,” he asked, to replace a rotten system with an actually better one? Zepp-LaRouche said that we must “shed off oligarchism, because this is what this is all about.”
IPC co-moderator Dennis Speed asked Nixon to comment on the role of his mentor, author and historian Paul Robeson, Jr. (1927-2014). Nixon replied by saying that we must rebuild the legacy of Robeson’s father, the noted actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976), in order to “bring the Black community out of this brainwashed anti-Russian” outlook that has been fostered by the Democratic Party apparatchiks.
Nixon went on to describe how Christine Maxwell, twin sister of Jeffrey Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell, cofounded in the early 1990s Magellan, one of the first internet search engines. He noted that Christine later founded Chiliad, a data analysis company based in Herndon, VA, whose software was used by the FBI to establish a counterterrorism data warehouse after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack.
Zepp-LaRouche observed that, in the present political structure of the Anglosphere, corruption is considered mandatory, because corrupt people can be reliably controlled, and people who are not corrupt are a potential threat to the system. With the Epstein revelations, “the gutter of this whole system comes out in the open.”
A brief excerpt from a video interview with former Guyanese President Donald Ramotar, conducted on Feb. 3 by IPC co-moderator and EIR Ibero-American editor Dennis Small, was featured. Ramotar warns that world opinion has not grasped the significance of the expiration of the New START Treaty; “the consciousness is lagging behind the danger” of nuclear war.
Discussion
A peace activist from Germany returned to the question of a cultural renaissance, sharing her experience of attending an event in Berlin for the Chinese Spring Festival, in which a Chinese tenor movingly sang a Lied by Schubert. She also congratulated Nixon for his work to call attention to the importance of Paul Robeson.
In response to another question, Diane Sare described the American population’s changed response to the question of space exploration as a symptom of cultural decline, optimism supplanted by pessimism.
Zepp-LaRouche said that we must “aim to bring politics and economics into increasing cohesion with the laws of the universe.” When you go to a museum, you see evidence of cultures that did not make it, because they failed to do this. As Nicholas of Cusa emphasized, pleasures of the flesh do not satisfy the human spirit: “you will like the sweetness of truth better than a stuffed goose.”
In response to a participant who called for the impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump, co-moderator Dennis Small insisted that “the idea of impeaching Donald Trump is insufficiently ambitious … let’s think really big,” by replacing the entire bankrupt system, rather than just focusing on the person in the White House. His view was echoed by Sare, who added that we must give people a positive vision of the future, “an actual human standard.”
A question posed by another participant sparked an extensive discussion of Friedrich Schiller’s conception of man, as opposed to that of Immanuel Kant. Zepp-LaRouche described a singer who sang well, but misbehaved in his personal life. She jokingly urged the singer to reduce the interval between songs to a minimum in order to improve his moral character, underscoring Schiller’s conception of how exposure to beauty can educate the emotions to produce the “beautiful soul.”
In conclusion, Zepp-LaRouche urged that we use “the moment of catharsis”—which we are experiencing with the Epstein event—to launch a new Renaissance. She stressed that “practical” proposals which lack the proper epistemological basis are doomed to fail.
EIR
