International Peace Coalition, Week 169

by EIR staff

Aug. 28—The 169th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) began with remarks by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, IPC initiator and Schiller Institute Founder. She acknowledged that after 169 weeks, the war danger is getting worse, but emphasized that solutions exist and we must win the political battle to implement them. In Ukraine, Britain and France are stoking the flames of conflict by introducing more high-tech weaponry, which increases the risk that Russia will treat them, and Britain in particular, as direct participants in the conflict, as Russian government Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned this week. In the Iran War, the United States has reached an impasse of sorts because of depletion of its arsenal.

Zepp-LaRouche has not yet reached a conclusion about the significance of the new “Mecca Alliance”—a trilateral mutual defense pact signed in Mecca on August 7 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif—but it could possibly create an avenue for successful negotiation and a new regional security architecture, provided that it is combined with an economic development perspective such as the Oasis Plan. The Western economies are in a desperate situation, and the rearmament drive in Europe is “just so crazy,” particularly because there is an emphasis on the mass-production of weaponry which is technologically obsolete. The United States is now paying more in interest on its national debt than it pays for its stupendous military budget.

Dennis Small, Executive Intelligence Reviewʼs Ibero-American Intelligence Director, began by observing that President Donald Trump’s every campaign promise and prediction have been contradicted by reality, and recalled Lyndon LaRouche’s warning about the absolute folly of continuing failed economic policies. He recalled how current U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent played a key role in George Soros’ move to short the British Pound in 1992. He elaborated Bessent’s present gambit to use the Treasury’s trillion-dollar “rainy day” fund to buy back Treasury notes, and the defiant response of the financier community. We have reached a point where government debt and interest rates are both rising. Bessent is buying back long-term debt with short-term loans, which is accelerating us toward the precipice. Small also reviewed Bessent’s shrill demands that all nations should stop trading with Iran, which are likely to be rebuffed by all of Iran’s major trading partners, and concluded that this tactic will accelerate the development of a new security and development architecture that will supplant U.S. dominance.
Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, in Washington, D.C., provided a video to explain the goals of his open letter to Pope Leo XIV, calling for an intervention by him to convene an emergency summit to prevent nuclear war. He is concerned that Trump’s “pathological narcissism” makes him vulnerable to pressure from those around him, to “break the taboo” against the use of nuclear weapons.

Zepp-LaRouche, in response, reminded participants that the drive for rearmament will be funded by cuts in entitlements, increasing the general misery and causing governments to further resort to war in order to divert attention from that, just as it did in the case of Germany under the Nazis.

Co-moderator Dennis Speed pointed out that the new interest bill for the U.S. government is now higher than the entire U.S. government budget in 1987. He then introduced Larry Johnson, former CIA intelligence official and a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Johnson said that the corruption in the United States and of Trump personally “makes the corruption in Ukraine look tame by comparison.” He called Bessent’s so called “D-Day sanctions” against Iran “a complete joke,” because Iran is in the process of withdrawing from the U.S.-dominated financial system. He ridiculed Trump’s claim that the Strait of Hormuz is open, and reviewed the impending crisis as the world runs out of diesel fuel, which is “the economic heart of economies.”

Zepp-LaRouche acknowledged again that the situation is grave, but reminded the participants that the problem is solvable and that we can draw upon historic traditions such as Confucianism in China, and the Peace of Westphalia in Europe. These traditions informed her composition of her Ten Principles.

Dennis Small pointed out that the only reason there is a problem with Social Security and other so-called “entitlements” is that Wall Street insists that it is “entitled” to have its desires take precedence over the well-being and very survival of the U.S. population. He reviewed the personal corruption of Trump, whose family made $2 billion last year in cryptocurrency speculation, but warned against a simple-minded assumption that this is the root of the problem. He insisted that such corruption is simply a symptom of the presently bloated and dying financial structure. He demanded, with LaRouche, a return to a fixed-rate currency exchange system; predictability is good for trade in physical goods and bad for speculation. We must also close to speculators the door of free convertibility of currencies.

Dennis Speed quoted Hannah Arendt on the consequences of a news media that is permeated with lies: the population is rendered impotent because it no longer believes in anything. In response, Zepp-LaRouche pointed out that the use of the word “narrative” indicates that truth is no longer considered to be a factor in news reporting. In its place, we have competing fairy tales concocted by various factions to further their respective agendas.

Throughout the meeting, various speakers noted that there is widespread speculation about the recent visits of CIA chief John Ratcliffe and Archbishop Paul Gallagher to Russia. Dennis Speed asked Johnson for his take on this topic. Johnson characterized most of the hot talk about this as “a load of crap.” He opined that Ukraine’s survival as a nation is now very much in question and it may not last to the end of the year.

Discussion

A German participant lamented the loss of Germany’s intellectual tradition, the “Land of Poets and Thinkers.” Zepp-LaRouche took the optimistic view that Germany has bounced back more than once from terrible dark ages, and it could happen again. She said that “the Europeans have allowed themselves to be de-rooted from their own cultural traditions,” unlike Asian nations that are bolstered by the positive elements in their 5,000-year history. Dennis Small responded with a bit of caustic sarcasm about the cultural development of Trump and present-day America.

Zepp-LaRouche returned to this topic in her concluding remarks, insisting that every person must mobilize his or her emotions to resist the depressive effects of “narrative control” and the degradation of culture.  The key to success in this struggle, she said, is the emotion of love.