Helga Zepp-LaRouche interviewed Palestinian Authority Ambassador to Denmark H.E. Prof. Dr. Manuel Hassassian on October 14, 2025, who gave his full support for the Schiller Institute and Lyndon LaRouche’s Oasis Plan.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche characterized the interview as being exactly the right thing for this historical moment and a very important contribution to Schiller Institute’s renewed campaign for the Oasis Plan for peace through economic development for Palestine, Israel and the entire region.
Ambassador Hassassian expressed the hope that the war against Gaza, which has caused so much carnage, has finally ended. He called for the establishment of a Palestinian state to achieve lasting peace, and gave a full, lengthy endorsement of the LaRouche Oasis Plan as a crucial vision for the economic development of the region. He called for governments to adopt the plan and integrate it into other plans under discussion. Now is the time to market the Oasis Plan, he said. The Ambassador also praised the Schiller Institute for its initiative.
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions, comments, and reports to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the live streamchat.
Monday Oct. 13 was a bittersweet day. Hamas released all 20 of the remaining Israeli hostages, not including the 4 deceased who were also returned to their families. At the same time, Israel released 2,000 Palestinian prisoners—some of whom had not been seen for decades—to shouts of joy and celebration. Much-needed humanitarian aid, medicine, and cooking fuel also began to flow into Gaza by the truckload, in a way that has not happened for months and years.
Despite all this, it’s impossible to ignore the less-than-ideal speech of U.S. President Donald Trump in the Israeli Knesset, replete with his adulation of the wicked Miriam Adelson; or the toothy grin of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who deserves prison instead of praise; or the reports of widespread arson across the Gaza Strip, as evacuating IDF soldiers leave yet further destruction in their wake. This includes the incineration of one of Gaza’s last remaining waste treatment centers, putting all of Gaza City, after two years of genocidal war, finally without this vital piece of infrastructure.
So yes, bittersweet: Because a ceasefire has been achieved and the killing has stopped, yet the perpetrators escape responsibility, justice has not been served, and talk of a Palestinian state appears nonexistent.
A fundamental sea change is required to turn this brief but invaluable moment into something truly lasting—not only for Palestinians, but also for Israel and for the region as a whole. And the current batch of leadership around Trump and Netanyahu, especially if Tony Blair is allowed to play a role, is inadequate at best. A transcendental change is required if a return to the bloodshed and the same cycle of violence is to be avoided.
Toward this end, it’s important to consider the words of former Speaker of the Knesset Avrum Burg, who wrote on Oct. 12 about the developments of the recent days: “There are moments in history when not only states change but entire nations. It is not borders that are redrawn but consciousness itself; not governments that are replaced but the collective soul that undergoes transformation. After 1945 the Germans awoke from the nightmare of Nazism and faced what had been done by them and in their name. After Vietnam, Americans emerged from the shattering of national innocence as a different people. The war in Gaza is such a moment for the Jewish people. It is not another round in the endless cycle of Middle Eastern violence but a historic turning point. It is a moment in which we must look in the mirror and recognize what we have become. And it is ugly.”
Burg goes on to call for exactly such a transcendental change. He condemns the policies of vengeance, racial supremacy, and religious fundamentalism, and instead evokes the better traditions of Judaism. “The beating heart of Judaism was never physical force but spiritual refinement,” Burg continues. “The Jewish hero was never the neighborhood bully but ‘the one who conquers his own impulse,’ and ‘the one who turns his enemy into a beloved friend.’” He calls for a “Global Jewish Fund for the Reconstruction of Gaza,” as well as other actions to salvage the situation for Palestinians, and pave the way for a peaceful coexistence between the two peoples. These are not intended as a mere “political gesture,” he writes, but rather are “the only way to survive spiritually.”
As a former leading member of Israel’s government, Burg’s sentiment underscores the potential that exists for such a transcendental shift. In this context, the LaRouche Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia becomes more important than ever. The Oasis Plan has the potential to completely change the parameters of the current negotiations, establishing the physical requirements for the prosperity of all and redefining the environment in which long-term peace can blossom.
This is not a period to sit and criticize, but one to envision what a better future can and must look like, and organize for it. Join the effort.
Aug. 21 (EIRNS) – The Schiller Institute today released the names of 97 prominent signers of Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Urgent Appeal to Presidents Xi Jinping, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin! calling on the three presidents to meet at the Sept. 3 Beijing commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific (VJ Day).
Zepp-LaRouche based her urgent call on the need for dialogue to pull mankind back from the pathway toward nuclear confrontation.
Her call has taken on special significance in the wake of the successful summit in Alaska of U.S. President Trump and Russian President Putin on Aug. 15. Though Western media and political circles have attempted to reduce the summit to the issue of Ukraine, in fact it opened the door to a wide array of economic and strategic initiatives, including such large infrastructure projects as the long-discussed proposal to construct a tunnel under the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia. Zepp-LaRouche had called exactly for that proposal in a widely-circulated statement issued Aug. 10, Zepp-LaRouche Calls on Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi: The Bering Strait Tunnel Project Is the Perfect War-Avoidance Policy.
The August 15 Alaska meeting “was an extremely important step towards normalizing relations between the two largest nuclear powers, and it pulled the world away from a possible abyss,” Zepp-LaRouche told TASS in an interview the day after the summit. The same day, she told a gathering in New York City that, “We are lucky that Putin and Trump did what they did yesterday in Alaska. It’s just the first step. Hopefully this will lead to other agreements. Hopefully Trump will go to the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Beijing on 3rd of September.” If he does, she told TASS, this will give him the opportunity “together with President Xi Jinping, President Putin and a host of other leaders from the Global South to send a powerful signal to the world that the leaders of the major powers are moving from confrontation to cooperation, and thus ushering in a new era in human history.”
The following 97 endorsers from 37 countries, are a representative selection of the more than 600 signers received as of Aug. 20, 2025. The names are listed alphabetically by country, and within each country, alphabetically by last name. Profession, title and/or affiliation, are for identification purposes only
Afghanistan/Germany
Daud Azimi, Engineer; Board Member, Peace National Front of Afghanistan
Argentina
Roberto Fritzche, Professor of Economics, University of Belgrano
Austria
Ute Kollies, former official for West Africa, U.N. Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Bolivia
Gen. (ret.) Edwin de la Fuente Jeria, former commander-in-chief, Bolivian Armed Forces; military historian
Brazil
Luiz Erthal, editor-in-chief, Toda Palavra
Eduardo Siqueira, Brazil/U.S. analyst and researcher; Prof. (Emeritus) of Public Health, University of Massachusetts – Boston
Canada
Julian Fell, Canada, former Director, Nanaimo Regional District, British Colombia; Member, Board of Directors, Epigraphic Society
Douglas Lightfoot,Mechanical engineer (ret.); founder, Lightfoot Institute
Costa Rica
Enrique Garcia Dubon, economist
Suy Wong, Network of Solidarity with Palestine; Costa Rica chapter, Anti-Fascist International
Czech Republic
Vincenzo Romanello, Ph.D., Czech Republic/Germany/Italy, Nuclear engineer; founder, Italian chapter, “Atoms for Peace”
Dominican Republic
Marino J. Elsevyf Pineda, Attorney at Law; notary
Ramón Emilio Concepción, Attorney at Law; Presidential Pre-candidate, PRM party (2020)
Rafael Reyes Jerez, Journalist; producer of the programs “Cara a Cara” and “Economía y Política”.
Alcibiades José Abreu Marte, Professor, School of Mathematics, UNIBE (Universidad Iberoamericana) and Universidad Católica Santo Domingo
France
Jacques Cheminade, former French presidential candidate; President, Solidarité et Progrès
Col. (ret.) Alain Corvez, consultant, international strategic affairs; former Advisor to Commandant of UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)
Rear Adm. (ret.) Hubert de Gevigney, Naval officer
Yves Pozzo di Borgo, former Senator, Union of Democrats and Independents
Germany
Dr. Jur. Wolfgang Bittner, author
Joachim Bonatz, Vice President, OKV (East German Board of Trustees of Associations)
Ulrich Leonhardt, spokesperson, peace association, North Germany
Col. (ret.) Friedemann Munkelt, Association for the Maintenance of the Traditions of the NVA of the GDR
Jacqueline Myrrhe, international space consultant; special interest, Chinese space program
Cornelia Praetorius, Mothers Against War, Berlin-Brandenburg
Rainer Rothfuss, Member, German Bundestag, AfD
Dr. Rainer Sandau, Technical Director, Satellites and Space Applications, International Academy of Aeronautics (IAA)
Jürgen Schwarzenberg, engineer; political scientist; freelance journalist
Greece
Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, ambassador Ad Honorem; former Secretary-General, Organization of Black Sea Cooperation
Dr. Takis Ioannidis, Co-Founder, Global Gandhian Harmony Association; Dr. Litt., poet, writer
Guyana
H.E. Donald Ramotar,former President of Guyana, 2011-2015
Italy
Maurizio Abbate, Chairman, National Institute for Cultural Activities (ENAC)
Franco Battaglia, Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry, Modena University; CLINTEL
Nino Galloni, General Director, Labor Ministry, 1990-2002; economist and author
Claudio Giudici, President, URITAXI (national trade union of taxi drivers)
Liliana Gorini, Chairwoman, Movisol
India
Purnima Anand, President, BRICS International Forum
Maj. Gen. (ret.), Dr. A. K. Bardalai, Distinguished Fellow, United Services Institution of India, New Delhi; Former Deputy Head and Deputy Force Commander of U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)
Koushik Das, journalist
Karori Singh, former Director, South Asian Studies Center, and Emeritus Fellow, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur
Iran/U.S.
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, former Iranian Ambassador to Germany, 1990-1997
Japan
Daisuke Kotegawa, former official, Japanese Ministry of Finance; former Executive Director for Japan, International Monetary Fund
Kenya
Prof. P.L.O. Lumumba, former Executive Director, Kenya School of Law; former Secretary, Constitution of Kenya Review Commission; former Director, Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC)
Pigbin Odimwengu, Founder, Youth for Youth Revolutionary Declaration movement; 2022 presidential ballot candidate, Kenya
Latvia/Belgium
Tatjana Ždanoka, former Member, European Parliament; Ph.D., Mathematics
Mexico
Dr. Rodolfo Ondarza Rovira, former member, Mexico City Legislative Assembly
Jaime Varela Salazar, Former Director, School of Chemical Sciences, University of Sonora (Unison)
Monaco
Alex Krainer, financial consultant, Krainer Analytics
Morocco
Prof. Driss Larafi, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Ibn Tofail University
Netherlands
(Kees) le Pair, Ph.D., Physicist, University of Leiden; former assistant professor, American University of Beirut; Science Advisor, Dutch Military Research
Nicaragua
Bolívar Téllez Castellón, Ph.D., lawyer and professor, Universidad Americana (UAM)
Nigeria
David Ajetunmobi, trade union leader, Auto sector
Adeshola Kukoyi, founder, Equilibrium Perspectives – University of Lagos
Paraguay
Julia Velilla Laconich, former Paraguay Ambassador to Bolivia, Uruguay, Peru, and UNESCO
Peru
Yorel Kira Alcarraz Aguero, Member of Congress
Arq. José Antonio Benllochpiquer Castro, Vice-President, Christian Democratic Party of Peru
Luis Mora, President, Peruvian Chapter, “World Without Wars and Violence”
Lizette Vásquez, Global Coordination Team, “World Without Wars and Violence”
Roberto Vela Pinedo, former National Dean, College of Economists of Peru; Current president, Amazon Integration Network (REDIA)
Romania
Andrei Marga, philosopher; former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania (2012); former Minister of National Education (1997-2000); former Rector, Babes-Bolyai University
Russia
Dr. Georgy D. Toloraya, Executive Director, Russian National Committee on BRICS Research; Director, Asian Strategy Center, Institute of Economics; Chief Researcher, Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences
Senegal
Alain Charlemagne Pereira – Air Brigade Général (ret.),(CR), former Chief of Staff, Senegalese Air Force; former Ambassador and Permanent Representative, International Civil Aviation Organization; former Chairman, Board of Directors, West African Network for Peace (WANEP); First General Director-General, Centre des Hautes Études de Défense et Sécurité, Senegal
Serbia
Natasa Milojevic, former Member of Parliament
Spain
Juan José Torres Núñez, Ph.D., poet, freelance journalist
South Africa
Andrew Johnson, Professor of Industrial Psychology, University of the Free State
Sweden
Ulf Sandmark, Chairman, Schiller Institute, Sweden
Switzerland
Prof. Alfred de Zayas, former UN Independent Expert on International Order
United States
Muhammad Salim Akhtar, National Director, American Muslim Alliance
Fr. Harry Bury, Twin Cities Non-Violent; Association of U.S. Catholic Priests
Maj. Gen. (ret.) Carroll Childers, U.S. Army
Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret.); former Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research; member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Dr. James C. Cobey, MD, Founder, Health Volunteers Overseas; Steering Committee, Voices from the Holy Land; working with Physicians for Human Rights, shared 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with International Campaign to Ban Landmines Coalition
Arthur Dawes, President, Pax Christi Texas; member, Pax Christi National Board
Terry W. Donze, geophysicist (ret.); author, Climate Realism: Alarmism Exposed
Christopher and Mary Fogarty, author, The Perfect Holocaust: Ireland 1845-1850; Chicago Ireland Support
Jack Gilroy, Veterans for Peace; Pax Christi – Upstate N.Y.; Pax Christi International
Bennett Greenspan, M.D., physician; Past President, Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI)
Ephraim Haile, Eritrean Cultural & Development Center (ECDC) USA
Joyce Hall, Head of Dallas Pax Christi; member, National Pax Christi Disarmament Task Force; member, Peace and Justice Commission
David H. Janda, M.D.; policy analyst; Founder, Operation Freedom
Frank Kartheiser, Catholic Worker Movement
Cynthia Pooler, Internet radio show host, “Issues that Matter”
Lt. Col. (ret.) Earl Rasmussen, U.S. Army
Coleen Rowley, Retired FBI Agent; Former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel; 9/11 whistleblower; member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); First recipient, Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence
Diane Sare, former U.S. Senate candidate for New York; President, The LaRouche Organization
Suzanne Schwartz, Taoseños for Peaceful and Livable Futures, New Mexico; Suzuki String Teacher and Violinist
John Shanahan, civil engineer; president, Go Nuclear Inc.; editor, website allaboutenergy.net
Delbert L. Spurlock, Jr., former General Counsel, U.S. Army (1981-1983); U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, 1983-1989; U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor (1991-1993)
Steve Starr, Professor, University of Missouri; former director, Clinical Science Laboratory; nuclear weapons expert
John Steinbach, Coordinator, Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee, National Capital Area
Barbara Suhrstedt, International Concert Pianist (ret.); member, Board of Directors, Framingham Lomonosov Association for Mutual Exchange
Dr. Mohammad A. Toor, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Pakistani American Congress
Alan Waltar, Past President, American Nuclear Society (ANS); Retired professor and department head, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A & M University
Benjamin Wesley, engineer; Former Independent Party candidate for U.S. Congress, 4th CD, Connecticut
Jim Wohlgemuth, United States, Veterans for Peace, Nashville (TN) chapter; radio host
Zimbabwe
Munashe Chiwanza, civil engineer
Meck Sibanda, Director, Christian Youth Volunteers Trust
Other
Tse Anye Kevin, Acting President, State 55 Afrika
Ahmed Bassalat, Ph.D., Professor of Physics, CERN associate
Mike Billington: Welcome. This is Mike Billington with the Schiller Institute and the Executive Intelligence Review. I’m very pleased to once again have the opportunity to do an interview with Professor Richard Falk. Professor Falk is a Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University. He is also the former United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in Palestine and the Occupied Territories. He also is a member of the editorial board of the magazine The Nation, in which he published a recent article on the issues that we’re going to discuss. He’s the president of the Gaza Tribunal, which we will also discuss. Welcome, Professor Falk, and thank you for joining us.
Prof. Falk: Thank you, Mike, for having me. Glad to be with you again.
Mike Billington: In your article in The Nation on July 15th, which was titled Sanctioning Francesca Albanese — Marco Rubio Tramples on the Law, Justice and Truth. In that article, you review the heroic role of Francesco Albanese as the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza, which is a position you held from 2008 to 2014, in two 3 year terms. In the article you denounced the sanctions imposed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Ms. Albanese. What is the background to this situation?
Prof. Falk: Well, the background is, as far as the US government is concerned, relates to the arrest warrants that the International Criminal Court issued some months ago, to arrest, for crimes, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and the former Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant. In February of this year the U.S. imposed sanctions on the four judges that participated in the endorsement of the prosecutors’ recommendation that the arrest warrants be issued. The ICC was sanctioned through the denial of entry to the U.S. to these individuals and their immediate families, and their assets that were within U.S. were frozen. The ostensible reason that the US government gave for sanctioning Francesca Albanese was that she, in her last report, which has the title “From the Economics of Occupation to the Economics of Genocide,” she singled out 48 American and international corporations that were profiting from the genocidal policies being pursued by Israel, and recommended that the ICC investigate and possibly prosecute individuals associated with these companies. The reason, I think, for the linkage to the ICC in her case was that the Trump Executive Order that originally was issued after the ICC arrest warrants and implicated the ICC in imposing these arrest warrants against Israel, in violation of America’s U.S. political interests. This was backed up by the claim that, because the US and Israel are not members of the ICC — they’re not parties to the Rome Statute setting up the ICC — they’re not subject to its authority, and therefore the ICC and the prosecutor and these judges were overreaching their staff. Francesca’s recent report really didn’t have very much to do with the ICC, except for that recommendation at the end. But it was a kind of a link to the executive order that gave at least the appearance of being a legal foundation for sanctioning her. Rubio, in his statement, made clear that that was not the only grievance that they had against her. He made a statement that she was maliciously associated with anti-Semitism and did harm to U.S. and Israeli economic and political interests, and in fact, accused her of engaging in economic warfare. It was a quite intemperate statement for a prominent US official to make. And it represented, I think, a long term campaign by Zionist NGOs and by Israel to get rid of her, or at least to discredit her in a kind of distinctive and punitive manner. That was the attempt. It had the exact reverse effect. Because now she’s, I suppose, the world’s leading candidate for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. And she’s even being mentioned as the ideal candidate to be the first woman Secretary General of the United Nations. So it interesting polarization between this kind of satanic image of her misdeeds, and the sense of praise for what she has accomplished in the course of being a Special Rapporteur of the UN at a difficult time, when the UN itself has proved to be unable to do anything effective to stop the genocide.
Mike Billington: Right. You yourself wrote an article calling on Albanese to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, rather than the sanctions that she had been given by Rubio and the US. .
Prof. Falk: I also added that a President respectful of the rule of law and international justice, would have requested Rubio’s resignation after making such an outrageous action.
Mike Billington: I was going to add to that there’s a petition now circulating which has well over 300,000 signatures calling on Francesca Albanese to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What do you think will be if the impact of that, if she actually gets that award or if she gets appointed as the Secretary General of the UN, as you mentioned?
Prof. Falk: As far as the Nobel Peace Prize is concerned, I’ve tried to warn people not to have the appearance of a campaign on her behalf for the Peace Prize, that will hurt her prospects. I’ve been nominated a few times myself, and I know from the committee in Oslo that they are very put off by the sense that they’re giving the award in response to a campaign on behalf of a candidate. So I wish this petition wasn’t being circulated because they’re quite capable of reaching their own independent assessment, and they might well react to the feeling that they don’t want to seem to be succumbing to political pressure to give her the award.
Mike Billington: You state in the article that you had in The Nation that the sanctions being imposed are “contrary to international law and morality.” In general, what does this say about the fact that the US role in the world is now increasingly seen as a imposer of sanctions and dictates, rather than any kind of policy for supporting development and progress?
Prof. Falk: I think it’s a very concrete instance of punishing a person that should be given a honorific recognition for her bravery and trustworthy reporting under a very difficult situation. So it’s symbolic of a broader spectrum of acts destructive of justice and world order, of which the US had taken pride in establishing after World War Two. It was established with certain notable deficiencies, but it did respond to public pressure for a war prevention and global security framework that would be more in keeping with the global public interest of peoples, and less an instrument of either capitalist expansion or militarist domination. Unfortunately, after the Cold War, the US chose this path of promoting its national economic and geopolitical interests at the expense of the public good.
Mike Billington: Francesca Albanese was a featured speaker at a meeting that took place in what’s called The Hague Group in Bogota, Colombia, over this last week. This is a group of over a dozen countries that are led by South Africa and Columbia to address the question of the Palestine genocide and the question of statehood for Palestine. I’d like to read a short excerpt from her presentation there, which I’d like to hear your comment. She said that “every state should immediately review and suspend all ties with Israel. I mean, cutting ties with Israel as a whole. And to consider first and foremost what we must do to stop the genocidal onslaught.” She also said there’s a revolutionary shift going on in the mood of the world. “We are seeing a rise in a new multilateralism, a principled, courageous, increasingly led by the global majority,” often called the Global South…. I say the Hague Group has the potential to signal not just the coalition, but a new moral center in world politics. Millions are watching, hoping for leadership that can birth a new global order rooted in justice, humanity and collective liberation. This is not just about Palestine. This is about all of us. Principled states must rise to this moment, and Palestine will have written this tumultuous chapter as the newest verse in a centuries long saga of people who have risen against injustice, colonialism, and today, more than ever, neoliberal tyranny. Do you have anything you’d like to add to that?
Prof. Falk: I think it’s a very eloquent and idealistic vision of a different world order, with values that are much more in keeping with the well-being of humanity as a whole and more conducive to the promotion of peace and justice in the world. They do give a kind of a glimmer of light in a dark sky. There have been several such glimmers of light recently. And they do have the potential, far from the certainty, but the potential of a change in the political atmosphere and in the way in which global security and war prevention and development policies are pursued. It involves curtailing the impact of predatory capitalism and militarist geopolitics. That will not happen without overcoming the entrenched commitment of the established order to things as they are. And we have a very unimpressive, set of global leaders in the important countries of the world at this time of global challenge. A more skeptical response to what Francesca has said would be to criticize the short term, performance orientations of the elites of the world, both the corporate elites and the political elites. Corporate elites thinking of the profit, near-term term profits, political elites thinking of their re-election or their legacy, but in a manner that doesn’t address the fundamental issues that confront the world at this time, ranging from climate change to mass poverty, to very severe forms of continuing political violence in many places, and of course, to the centrality of this ongoing genocide that has been a challenge to even the political language that is used by the US government and other supporters of Israel, which present the most transparent genocide as if it were a routine exercise in justifiable self-defense. That involves, I think, one of the worst Orwellian reversals of reality that has occurred in my lifetime. And it is at the cost of this massive, prolonged suffering endured by all Palestinians, but most especially those living in Gaza and the West Bank.
Mike Billington: You mentioned other glimmers of hope of a major change like this. Do you want to comment on any of the other glimmers you were thinking of?
Prof. Falk: One of the other glimmers is the victory of Zoran Mamdani in the New York morality primary, which defied pollsters and political conventional wisdom that a Muslim progressive had no chance politically to prevail. He was outspent 10 to 1. And he evoked this sense, that also Francesca was projecting, that there is another possibility, another set of possibilities for how one copes with the problems of equity, fairness and the issues that are on the top of the political and economic agenda. What we see in response is the backlash from the darker forces that are bipartisan in character, both the Democratic and Republican establishments. The two party system wants no part of the political ownership of a man. Mamdani kind of revolutionary politics. But at least there is in the arena of, encounters the sense that there could be an alternative. But it’s only a glimmer of light at this point. It has to be reinforced by a popular movement of people and the engagement with the ongoing conflicts, especially Gaza and Ukraine, in ways that bring a more stable future to world politics and allow the focus to be placed more on what people need to lead a decent life, and what the world and the planet needs to be ecologically resilient under growing threats of instability.
Mike Billington: You are also the president of the Gaza Tribunal, which was founded at a conference in Sarajevo in May. The resolution which was signed there by the founders, including yourself, condemned, “the failure of the UN, the growing public protests and leading governments,” whose actions have thus far not stopped the ongoing genocide by war and starvation of the Palestinian people. What is the purpose of this tribunal, and what do you think has been the impact in its founding?
Prof. Falk: I was asked to be the president by some sponsors in Turkey of this undertaking, and they convinced me that it was a worthwhile undertaking. I’m not normally very comfortable in quasi administrative roles and also not very confident in them, but I was unsuccessful in persuading them to seek an alternative to myself. And I thought it was important. I’ve participated as a judge in past people’s tribunals and found them to be a useful way of narrating a conflict in a manner that is progressive and free from media manipulations and Government control and self-censorship and so on. And in the context of the Gaza situation, the formation of such a tribunal takes place after the formal system exhibited an inability to enforce international law. It did some positive things, such as the International Court of Justice’s response to the South African submission that Israel was, in carrying out its policies in Gaza, was violating the International Convention on Genocide. It was very professional and juridically impressive in responding to that submission by issuing some interim orders that acknowledge the plausibility of alleging genocide, and condemned Israel’s disruption of international delivery of humanitarian assistance. These interim rulings were directed to Israel, but were defied, as expected, and so an enforcement gap was made clear that the ICJ could declare authoritatively the law, but its enforcement, if a state such as Israel refused to voluntarily comply, and was subject to the veto of the only part of the UN system that had enforcement capabilities and authorities, the Security Council, that meant that the UN was paralyzed in dealing with enforcement or accountability or complicity. The objective of the. Gaza People’s Tribunal is to close these gaps, or at least to exert pressure on these gaps, by activating people in civil society to exhibit solidarity initiatives that support the Palestinian struggle, by both placing pressure on governments to stop supplying arms, to cut diplomatic relations, to do various things that would indicate more than a verbal commitment to end this genocide. It is shameful that the Arab governments that could exert decisive pressure have proved to be passive or even indirectly supportive of Israel’s tactics in Gaza. So the their the two main objectives of the Tribunal are stimulating activism by civil society individuals and other collective actors, NGOs and so on. And the second one is to document in as objective and comprehensive way the crimes that have been committed centering on the genocide, which, even if the ICJ eventually comes with a favorable decision, will not be rendered for a couple of years at best. So this is promises a quicker result and a result guided more by the pursuit of justice than a legalistic conception of wrongdoing. In other words, a formal court is bound by the technical rules of a legal process. And that means impartiality and due process for the accused side. This Tribunal starts with the premise of Israeli guilt, and it makes no attempt at appraising the arguments advanced by Israel in an objective manner. But it does try to treat the evidence available to it as objectively as possible, and to proceed a long the line, somewhat similar to what the special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, has done in her three genocide reports, to create an archive that is authoritative as to the criminality of the Israeli policies. So it’s action oriented and archival, stimulated, archivally ambitious, and has involved a good many highly qualified people.
Mike Billington: You plan a follow up meeting in October. What are your planning or your expectations for that event?
Prof. Falk: Let me preface this by saying the launch [of the Gaza Tribunal] was in London a few months before the Sarajevo meeting. The Sarajevo meeting tried to assemble a series of reports that addressed these two sets of objectives, and it will be an input into the final session in Istanbul, which will feature a jury of conscience, again trying to distinguish itself from a court of law. It is not. It is motivated by morality as much as by the attempt to identify and apply relevant law. Law is not irrelevant, but it isn’t the controlling criteria of how one assesses behavior in this sort of context, and it tries to be representative of all parts of the world and has members of its broader advisory council that come from different countries. The jury of conscience will also be try to be representative and not composed of jurists alone, but of persons who have reputations as moral authority figures.
Mike Billington: You have particularly protested the use by governments and by the press of calling anybody who protests the the horror going on in Gaza as “anti-Semitic” or “supporters of terrorism.” what do you think about those repeated accusations?
Prof. Falk: I think they are a shamefully effective means of deflecting attention in the media and in the public from the message and trying to get people to talk about the credibility of the messenger. It somewhat works, reflecting the maxim that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Most people and even the media are sufficiently uninformed that they’re easily susceptible to this kind of manipulation. In the case of the use of this so-called weaponization of anti-Semitism against political figures, like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and the three special rapporteurs on Palestine prior to Frances Francesca Albanese, there’s utterly no truth to the accusation that these individuals have any record or attitudes that are hostile to Jews as people. They are hostile to Zionism as an ideology that has made the Palestinians persecuted strangers in their own homeland. And that’s something that has also been manipulated in the press to a great degree, where the reality of Israel is fused with the ideology of Zionism. I grew up in a Jewish home myself in New York City. but in an atmosphere of anti-Zionism. and I guess I’ve maintained that kind of identity throughout my life. I was a close friend of Edward Said, who was one of the principal Palestinian advocates of a just peace and an outcome that recognized the Palestinian rights, but also didn’t favor the forced displacement of Jews that were already in Israel. It did presuppose the dismantling of a Zionist set of rationales for the way in which Israel was governed, which involves, even prior to the genocide, a clear commitment to an apartheid structure, which is also a serious international crime, and was validated by such human rights NGOs as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
I also collaborated with Virginia Tilley in a study sponsored by the UN Commission for the Middle East, on how to interpret the allegations of apartheid in terms of Israel’s policies and practices. That’s all part of the pre October 7th reality that was effectively erased after the Hamas attack in such a way as to validate this reaction as if it came in a political vacuum. As the UN Secretary-General pointed out, and paid the price of being declared persona non grata in Israel even though he has refrained, as have many high officials in Europe and the UN, from using the G word.
Mike Billington: Speaking of the growing Jewish resistance to this Zionist genocidal policy, you probably saw this article by Dr. Omer Bartov, the professor at Brown University, which was published in The New York Times, which we were all quite surprised that The New York Times allowed such a thing to get through their strict restraint on any truth. But anyway, they did run this article, and he pointed out that the Israeli policy is clearly genocide. He said that not only is he Jewish, but he grew up in a Zionist family, that he lived in Israel for a long time, he served in the IDF and that he has spent his life teaching and researching war crimes and the Holocaust, so he recognizes genocide when he sees it, and this is it. You probably know also that even the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has declared that the building of a so-called “humanitarian city” is nothing but an excuse for building a concentration camp, which, of course, in Israel brings up very powerful images for people who lost many of their family in Nazi concentration camps. Do you think there is a shift going on in getting the truth out, getting this narrative out?
Prof. Falk: Yes. I think there is a normalization of language, which includes even the New York Times being somewhat receptive to using illuminating terminology rather than obfuscating terminology, which they had been using, describing this as a war, or as a “justifiable defensive response” to the isolated attack on October 7th. But you should take note of the fact that today, the lead editorial in the New York Times by Brett Stevens, a militant or ultra Zionist, has the descriptive headline “No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide.” It is an intelligent but highly selective way of saying that Israel is engaged in a traditional war scenario, and that bad things happen in wars, but this has nothing to do with trying to kill Palestinians because they’re Palestinians. The casualty totals would be much higher if that was the Israeli objective, he claims. They could kill many more people with the technology that they have and the absence of any meaningful capability to resist, which very seldom is taken note of in the West. This is the most extreme of asymmetric conflicts, where one side is totally vulnerable and the other side, just decides what it wants to destroy and faces no meaningful resistance.
Mike Billington: Just the fact that such a headline would be published demonstrates that they’re increasingly frantic about the fact that the world does recognize that this is genocide. So thou dost protest too much, as they say.
You used the term “political Zionism.” What do you mean by that term?
Prof. Falk: I mean that it is an ideology that started in the 19th century and was a reaction to European anti-Semitism and a biblically rooted idea that Jews would flourish again if they could recover Palestine and make it into a Jewish promised land. They proceeded, in their early stages, under secular leadership. Very antagonistic actually, to Diaspora Jews, while quite pragmatic in their dealing with the Nazi leadership in the early years. They shared with the Nazis, before the Final Solution was adopted by the Nazis, a shared objective of removing Jews. Zionists wanted to coerce immigration to what was then Palestine, and the early Nazis wanted to exclude as many Jews as possible, a kind of ethnic cleansing, and even made favorable economic arrangements with Zionists to allow those who agreed to emigrate to take their property with them, to liquidate their real property and take the liquid assets with them. So there’s a long collaboration, a kind of ruthless pragmatism. Zionists were responsible for blowing up a synagogue in Iraq in order to again persuade Jews that they had no future if they didn’t come to Israel. And several of the European countries helped give the Zionist militias weapons and training. So there was a kind of joint project, orientalist in its character. The residents of Palestine, the Arab residents, were never consulted. This was partly a British colonial policy that wanted to divide and rule Palestine after World War One, the famous Balfour Declaration. Balfour himself, who was Foreign Secretary of the UK, was known to be an anti-Semite and welcomed the idea of Jews migrating to Israel, and supported not a state, but a homeland.
The tactics of political Zionism from the beginning have been to take what they could get at any given time, but not regarded as a satisfaction of their project. In other words, it was the pursuit of so-called salami tactics where you proceed by small steps toward the ultimate objective. In my view, their response to October 7th was their attempt to pursue the end game of the Zionist political project, which the Netanyahu coalition, which came to power several months before October 7th, made rather clear that their objective was to promote the settler militancy on the West Bank with the objective of annexation, and to secure the erasure of Palestinian political identity and goals. Netanyahu came before the UN General Assembly several weeks before October 7th and waved a map at the the delegates which showed what he called the “new Middle East” with no Palestinian entity acknowledged. Therefore, I think October 7th in the broader context of what was called, even by Washington, the most extreme Israeli government ever to govern, was this kind of onslaught on Gaza as a way of terminating any Palestinian expectations of statehood or of continued resistance.
It’s well known that Netanyahu and the Israeli leadership had several very reliable warnings of the impending Gaza attack, including from Washington, months before the event, and that this was either deliberately ignored, or certainly not responded to with any kind of typical Israeli security preoccupations.
Mike Billington: This all goes back to Jabotinsky and Bibi’s father, who worked with Jabotinsky. That whole history was covered extensively in a book by one of the leading members of your Gaza tribunal, Ari Shlaim.
Prof. Falk: He’s a professor at Oxford.
Mike Billington: My associate,Harley Schlanger, has written an extensive report on the book by Iri Shlaim, which we published in the Executive Intelligence Review, which goes into that whole history, and touches on the role of Bibi Netanyahu’s father and Jabotinsky and others in doing what you described. So this is very important.
Prof. Falk: Fascism, particularly in Italy, was a powerful influence on the Jabotinsky view, which in a certain sense was realistic in viewing the fact that the Palestinians would not just abandon their own nationalism. And either Israel would have to face a continuing challenge, or it would have to erect an Iron Wall and have the Palestinians effectively behind that wall.
Mike Billington: Right. The resolution of the Gaza tribunal states that “self-determination” is “a universal rule not subject to exception and binding on all states.” But obviously this is not being followed, not being honored. How do you account for that and what has to be done?
Prof. Falk: I think that that the liberation of Palestinian people depend on the realization of their basic rights that have long been denied. The aspiration for self-determination has a certain, legal and moral foundation, in being endorsed by the UN General Assembly and the being the subject of an important General Assembly resolution which talks about cooperation and friendly relations among states, and affirms not only the right of self-determination, but also the right of a people to struggle with weapons if necessary, to achieve these rights. So there is a right of armed resistance to a situation characterized widely now as colonialism or settler colonialism. I think that’s a very important background reality. Of course there is resistance to its fulfillment in various settings, most prominently now in Gaza, but also in Kashmir, Western Sahara and other other places in the world. There’s been a lot of discussion of the rights of the people in Chechnya in Russia, and in Xinjiang province in China. Puerto Rico and Hawaii in the US context. So there are many unresolved issues of self-determination. It’s also somewhat confused by a second principle in international law, which is that the rights of self-determination cannot be achieved by the coercive fracturing of existing states. That really confuses the issue.
The last thing I would mention or call attention to is that both of the covenants of human rights, which are the basic instruments for the protection and an articulation of human rights, have as their common Article One the inalienable right of self-determination of a people. So it has a real rootedness in the evolution of international law, post 1945.
Mike Billington: On another subject, you have worked with our mutual friend Chandra Muzaffar, who is the founder of the Justice International, based in Malaysia. Recently, the former prime minister of Malaysia, Doctor Mahathir Mohamad, who just turned 100 years old by the way, a week or so ago, issued a very powerful statement which goes after the question — it’s based a lot on Palestine, but it’s basically going after the collapse of civilization that we’re living through. Let me read a short section from this and get your response. He starts by saying, “For centuries we have been ridding ourselves of barbarism in human society, of injustices, of the oppression of man by man.” He goes on about that, but then he says: “But can we say we are still civilized? Now, over the last three decades especially, we have destroyed most of the ethical values that we had built up. Now we’re seeing an orgy of killing. We’re seeing genocide being perpetrated before our own eyes, where the genocide is actually being promoted and defended, perpetuated by the so-called great leaders of our civilization, by a great nation, the United States of America…. I feel ashamed. We should feel ashamed in the eyes of the animals we consider to be wild. We are worse than them…. I hide my face, I am ashamed. Civilization is no more the norm.” Your thoughts on that?
Prof. Falk: I think it’s a very strong and powerful statement. I had the pleasure of meeting Mahathir some years ago, and he has very, strong, impressive convictions, and he’s not afraid to express them in relation to what he feels is the abusive behavior of the West. He’s controversial, of course, in Malaysia itself. He’s harsh toward his own opposition within Malaysia. The present Prime Minister of Malaysia [Anwar Ibrahim], is a former protégé, but also became an adversary of his. So he’s a very interesting figure and one of the few great leaders that is still alive at that age, and active at that age, which I can only envy.
But I think that he overstates to some extent the degree to which what was being done before this most recent period, since the end of the Cold War, the 30 years he refers to, was also characterized by barbarism of various sorts. Not least of which was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of which this is the 80th anniversary year, and one that was exempt from legal scrutiny because it was perpetrated against an Asian country. If it had been used against, say, European cities. There’s no doubt that they would have been punished as war criminals, the surviving leaders, and the nuclear weapons might well have been prohibited as permissible weaponry, that, is now in the possession of at least nine sovereign states that are very reluctant to give them up, give up that weaponry, because it gives them a the hegemonic relationship to the non-nuclear countries. Iran has just recently paid the price of not having nuclear weapons. That Iran war, the 12 day war that supposedly was trying to destroy the enrichment facilities of Iran, was a clear case of aggression under the UN charter and under disgraceful double standards. Israel is a country that acquired nuclear weapons covertly, with the help of the liberal democracies of the West that championed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. When it comes to Iran, they ignore that much worse behavior on the part of Israel. This was an issue in the Kennedy presidency in the early 1960s. So the idea that the West was somehow not responsible for very destructive and unjust policies during the Cold War era, is, I think, somewhat misleading, in the degree to which the Vietnam War was fought in a way that has certain resemblances to what’s happening in Gaza: high technology capabilities being used against a low technology society with no adequate means of defending itself or retaliating.
The apartheid system in South Africa, the vestiges of colonialism — there were many things in the post 1945 period that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, that were quite reprehensible from the perspective of law, morality and justice. So I welcome Mahathir’s statement because of its general sentiments, but I think it overstates the situation that has emerged in the last period.
Mike Billington: Right. So, as I’m sure you know, on July 28th and 29th, the UN General Assembly will be holding a session, delayed from an earlier planned meeting in June which was disrupted by the Iran war. The new session will address the call for a two state solution for the Middle East. The meeting was called by France and Saudi Arabia. We issued a statement by the Schiller Institute and the Executive Intelligence Review called “A Two State Solution, Not a Final Solution.” Of course, we are not the only people to make references to the Nazi regime and their Final Solution to what’s taking place today in Gaza, but it’s worth recalling. In our proposal, we are calling for what’s called the Oasis Plan. This is a proposal first issued by Lyndon LaRouche in the 1970s. He had been looking at this throughout his life, to create a massive water and power development plan in the region, centered on Gaza, but extending throughout the broader region as the only basis for creating a situation which will actually address the needs of both the Palestinians and the Israelis, based on the concept that only by addressing the lack of water, and creating an abundance of water and energy, can we create the equality needed for a Palestinian state and the Israeli state to coexist. Your thoughts on that?
Prof. Falk: Well, I think it made more sense in the 1970s than it does today, in my judgment, because I don’t see either side agreeing. The one thing the Israelis and Palestinians seem to agree about is the non viability of a two state solution. The Israelis don’t want Palestinian statehood of any kind. And the Palestinians don’t want to have a Bantustan emerge out of a supposed solution that is drafted without their consent and participation, which has been there a lot from the beginning. Every step, including the Balfour Declaration, the UN Partition plan, and the various negotiations, have all been carried out without meaningful Palestinian participation. To expect the Palestinians to except a demilitarized state for themselves in collaboration with Israel, which remains a regional superpower, is, again, I think, quite unrealistic. Israel, unless it sheds the its Zionist mantle, is certainly unwilling to demilitarize, and it’s unwilling to have any Palestinian entity legitimately militarized. So I’m much more, sympathetic with an equally difficult resolution to put into practice with the Edward Said vision of a single secular state based on human equality and premised on a thorough commission of reconciliation, which addresses the history of grievances of the Palestinian people. I feel that has at least a glimmer of a chance of making the transition from this horrifying spectacle of one sided genocide, to a sustainable, durable peace.
Mike Billington: The idea of the Oasis Plan: it’s pretty clear that what you just said is true, that as long as you have this genocidal policy being dominant in Israel, nothing’s going to happen of use. But the idea is to put on the table, especially for this conference coming up at the UN, to put on the table the fact that there is a solution, that if both sides work together on an actual development policy, what the Pope once described as “the new name for peace is development,” that if you have a joint plan that addresses the actual needs of transforming the region. Obviously China knows they could get involved with their Belt and Road process, to do the kind of thing they’ve done to transform their deserts into blossoming agricultural regions. They could be part of this. The Belt and Road could be part. And the idea is to put on the table, especially for this conference a discussion about the only real solution that exists.
Let me add, that you brought up the question of reconciliation. I’m sure you know Dr. Naledi Pandor, the former Minister of International Relations in South Africa, who took Israel to the International Court of Justice over the genocide. She has been participating in our Schiller Institute conferences. In an interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche in February she said the following about the Oasis plan and linked it to the question of the South Africa history. She said: “I think the Oasis plan presents a set of very useful proposals that could be looked at by groupings that are in contention as the basis for further discussion. From our own experience as South Africa, having agreed 30 years ago that we would enter into negotiations with those who had oppressed us for many, many decades. We know that once you get around the table, it is the former oppressed who must determine what future they would like to see.” So this addresses the question you brought up, but in a way which locates the need for a policy on the table as to demonstrate that there are solutions, and that, as Helga has said in her Ten Principles, the fact that the lack of development is the cause of poverty in almost every case, but it also true that this is due to man. And since it’s due to man, it’s also reversible, it can be corrected. We have to put that into people’s heads, that these are issues that can be resolved. There are solutions. It’s only the lack of a will to solve these issues. That has to be the basis for our discussion worldwide. Do you want to say anything more on that?
Prof. Falk: I think that in a situation which I would characterize as desperate, I think that’s a constructive initiative which deserves to be tested. I am a little bit skeptical of whether the elites representing those that will meet at this UN conference will be receptive. But at least, as you suggest, putting a solution on the table invites discussion.
There’s a second problem of who will decide who represents the Palestinians at that table. There’s a grave doubt as to the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah as the appropriate representatives of the Palestinian people at this time. Remember that when the South African elite made its decision to entertain the sort of discussion that former Minister Pandor refers to, they agreed to release Nelson Mandela from prison, and he had a stature that enabled him to provide a legitimate representation. The only possible person that could do that in the Palestinian situation is Marwan Barghouti, who is in prison on multiple criminal charges, which are not thought to be a valid. If Israel had any interest in really coming to a mutually beneficial solution, it would at least consider releasing Barghouti from prison. He seems to be the only person capable of unifying Palestinian representation.
Mike Billington: Do you see any any glimmer of hope, as the term you used, that in fact, he will be released, perhaps in one of these prisoner exchanges?
Prof. Falk: I think the South African precedent was a coupled with a political affirmation, that Mandela was released in a context which looked forward to a transformation of the South African governing structure. And I think just releasing Barghouti in a prisoner exchange without endowing him with a show of Israeli confidence that they are prepared to negotiate with him and to respect him, will not be very fruitful. There’s another Barghouti — it’s a big family — Mustafa Barghouti, who’s an opposition figure living in Palestine, living in the West Bank. But I don’t think he has the same charismatic potential that Marwan Barghouti has. He’s very respected. He has a somewhat similar background, actually, to Mahathir. They were both doctors, medical doctors originally, and went into politics. He’s involved with our Gaza Tribunal. We’ve tried to involve Palestinians who seem to be more representative of their real aspirations than the Ramallah group under Muhammad Mahmoud Abbas, which was a sort of creature of the Oslo diplomacy, given legitimacy by the West, but never by the Palestinians. They’ve collaborated, the Palestinian Authority so-called, has collaborated with Israel and the US in security arrangements on the West Bank. So they’re viewed with considerable suspicion. They’re also extremely anti-Hamas. They were pushed out of Gaza by Hamas. The PLO was quite corrupt there. I don’t know the full merits of the conflict, but it’s quite complicated.
Mike Billington: Right. I appreciate this very much. We will definitely get this discussion widely circulated, especially going into this meeting at the UN on the 28th and 29th, which we’re committed to making a turning point, using the Hague Group work in Colombia and the work you’re doing with the Gaza Tribunal and other developments that are taking place. Do you have any sort of final thoughts you’d like to convey to our our audience
Prof. Falk: I think you’ve covered the ground. We didn’t say much about Ukraine, but I think I found it a fruitful exchange.
Mike Billington: Well, we can we can do another discussion if you’d like to touch on the obviously still very sensitive and very dangerous situation around Ukraine and the question of whether there will actually be a reconciliation between the US and Russia or not. It’s certainly not clear that there will be, given the, rather volatile attitude coming from the US presidency at this point, which seems to change every five minutes. But perhaps we can have another another discussion if you’d like to go into the broader issues.
Prof. Falk: Yes. let’s let’s wait a couple of weeks and see how things work out. It’s possible that the Oasis plan would have more traction at this point with Ukraine and Russia. Or trilateral, some sort of trilateral adaptation?
Mike Billington: We certainly think that the Russia-China cooperation and how that led into the BRICS and the process which the BRICS represents as an alternative to the horror that’s being implemented by almost the entire Western leadership at this point is extremely important. We don’t want to see this break down into two “blocs.” we have to figure out a way of getting the Western leaders to recognize their own fate is dependent upon their collaboration with China, especially, and with Russia strategically as well as economically. And if they do recognize that before the whole Western financial system collapses, as it’s heading right now, then we have a chance of a new global architecture which recognizes both the security and the development of every single country, which is, obviously, what you and what Francesca Albanese and others are promoting. The point is that we have to change the direction of civilization as a whole if we’re going to get out of this unfortunate rapid descent into the threat of global war and even a nuclear war.
Prof. Falk: I completely share that view.
Mike Billington: So, yes, let’s consider it a second discussion, which could look broader. And thank you very much for this.
Prof. Falk: Good. If you have a transcript at any point, I can distribute it to my network.
June 22, 2025—Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, stated: “Since the unprovoked attack on Iran, first by Israel and then by the United States, is not only tearing down the system of international law, but has put us on a course towards World War III, I am calling on all people of good will around the world to publish and circulate this statement by The LaRouche Organization in the U.S. in whatever form possible, and help us to mobilize an international united peace movement in all countries of the planet.”
Your life, in as little as a few days or weeks, could end in an “accidental thermonuclear war,” triggered by the dropping of a tactical nuclear device on Iran, either by a renegade Israel, or by the United States, or by Israel with the agreement of the United States. What happens next, will be determined by the reports regarding the successful, or unsuccessful, destruction of the sites.
Here is a question: if the sites were not destroyed, or if Iran announces it is able to rebuild, what will happen then? Will the use of tactical nuclear weapons be the next step?
The driving force for these events is not in “the Middle East.” It is in the global shift in economic power away from the bankrupt trans-Atlantic NATO “Anglosphere” nations, inhabited by the “golden billion,” to the seven billion other people in the world, typified by the BRICS nations. Iran, a member of the BRICS, wants nuclear power, not nuclear weapons. The intent of the War Party is to use the United States, once an anti-imperial nation, as a battering ram against the BRICS, starting with Iran.
With its attack on Iran, the United States has rejected what its greatest diplomat, President John Quincy Adams, characterized as its very nature: “(America) goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy…She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own…she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue…The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.….She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” By breaking his pledge that he would keep the United States out of war, President Donald Trump has now fallen into the policy-grip of the War Party.
If you think that means “the Israelis,” you are mistaken. They are the match, but who sets the fires? Is that the role that Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, Sir Richard Dearlove, Sir Peter Mandelson and others from the City Of London are playing in Washington right now? Are we watching a reprise of London’s role in starting the Iraq war, in particular giving George Bush his infamous sixteen words—“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”—when there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Is this similar to the role that the British Ministry of Defense, through its Project Alchemy, has played in the attacks deep into Russian territory that also threaten nuclear war?
Israel has nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, and has had them for over 60 years. That ugly, open secret is why nations like Iran, whatever you may choose to think of their policies, have acted as they have. If the Iranian sites were in fact not destroyed, the danger is that some crazy from the bowels of the Pentagon will now propose, “The only ‘dead certain’ way forward is to use ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons.”
Stop and think about what the following report from Newsweek, June 20, actually means. “The Trump administration has not taken anything ‘off the table,’ including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, if it decides to take military action against the underground Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow, Fox News reported, citing a White House official.” In response to these reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the only responsible thing: “There have been a lot of speculations. This would be a catastrophic development, but there are so many speculations that in fact, it’s impossible to comment on them.”
No matter what you are told, by the White House, by the Pentagon, or anyone else, there is no such thing as the use of one “tactical” nuclear weapon. In the words of Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, “If nuclear war begins, it doesn’t end until there is a nuclear holocaust. And it happens so fast. There is no quickly going to your secret bunker.”
What does Russia do, if America, or Israel, deploys the first nuclear bomb used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago? Last week, America’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, wrote to President Trump, “No president in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945.”
Let this be clear: President Truman dropping the atomic bomb in 1945 was not essential to ending the war. Dropping the bomb on an already surrendering Japan was necessary to begin the next world war, planned by Britain’s Winston Churchill one month after Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945. In May, Churchill proposed “Operation Unthinkable,” a plan to immediately nuke the Soviet Union with American-made bombs, to “impose the will of the United States and the British Empire,” in the plan’s actual words.
The use of nuclear weapons has always been wrong, has never been necessary, and is never other than a tool of imperial force. We, the people of the United States, and we, the people of the world, must stop the madness of governments and fanatics. The nations of the Global Majority, and especially the BRICS nations, of which Iran is a member, must have their voices heard. Nations should not be brought to the conclusion that the only way to retain and defend their sovereignty is to build nuclear weapons.
In Southwest Asia, we need a consortium of regional countries, working with the United States, Russia and China, to create a nuclear weapons-free zone–which has to include Israel joining the IAEA and signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as Iran did. A crash program for the peaceful use of nuclear power as an energy source, for water desalination and other purposes, needs to involve all nations in the region. A New Security and Development Architecture, based on diplomacy, not assassinations and war, must result from actions taken in the next hours and days.
It is up to the people to save themselves, and civilization itself, by speaking out and acting up. The world needs to hear from free citizens that say, “No to assassinations, regime changes, and thermonuclear war!” It is time, now, to change our world, before there is no world left to change.
Even as Iran was counter-attacking with massive missile strikes against Tel Aviv today, in response to the early morning June 13 Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear program and scientific and military command structure, an urgent and extensive policy discussion was underway among leading U.S. and international strategic analysts at the 106th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC).
The IPC was initiated over two years ago by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Today’s participants included M.K. Bhadrakumar, a retired ambassador and 30-year career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, including serving in Moscow; Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of Science, Technology and International Security at MIT; Larry Johnson, former CIA officer and outspoken member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Ray McGovern, a former Senior Analyst for the CIA and a Founding Member of VIPS; and Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
There was broad discussion of Zepp-LaRouche’s call for the establishment of a new international security and development architecture – which ensures the security and development of {all} nations, not just some. We need a totally new approach to create a new paradigm to replace the dying system based on British geopolitics, she stated. That is the only viable war-avoidance policy.
M.K. Bhadrakumar proposed that the entire issue of uranium enrichment – the supposed basis of Israel’s illegal war of aggression against Iran – could be solved by creating a regional consortium of countries to enrich uranium and allow all countries, including Iran, to have access to the peaceful use of nuclear technology. This could be done under strict international scrutiny to ensure that no weapons-grade enrichment occurs. Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered his country’s good offices to facilitate such an arrangement. And in fact, when Putin spoke with President Donald Trump on June 4, at the height of the crisis created by Ukraine’s provocative drone attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, he offered to help Trump find a negotiated solution to the Iran crisis in this and other ways.
If Trump and Putin would work on this together, Mr. Bhadrakumar emphasized, it would still be possible to avoid a “Doomsday Scenario” in the Middle East.
Zepp-LaRouche added that if China’s President Xi Jinping were also brought into such a project through his conversations with President Trump, broader cooperation could occur with the United States and regional powers such as Saudi Arabia to add transportation, water, and other energy infrastructure projects into the mix. In this way, the beginnings of the needed new security and development architecture for the region would fall in place.
Zepp-LaRouche located the broader context of the crisis and its solution in her remarks:
“We are right now on the brink of World War III. It may have started already, and that is not an exaggeration, because we are now in danger of an escalation spiral which, if not changed by some intervention, could indeed lead in the relatively short term to a global nuclear war in which all of mankind would vanish…
“This is the kind of situation where a completely different approach is required. If you look at the larger context, we have seen in the recent period massive targeting of the Global South, namely the BRICS countries, who are trying to form a new economic system which is based on economic justice and equal chances for every country to develop. We have seen targeting of South Africa, of Egypt, of Brazil, Argentina (which is probably the most far-gone case), and naturally Russia and China. The underlying issue is the fact that the Global South is trying to get a new economic system…
“I think the motive behind a lot of these crises is the fact that there is an attempt to stop the rise of a new system—the BRICS+ and so forth… I’m absolutely certain that if it’s not Ukraine, then it will be Iran or Israel or tomorrow Taiwan or China. [This will continue] as long as we are not resolving the underlying conflict and going in the direction of establishing a new security and development architecture which, in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia, takes into account the interests of every single country.”
June 2, 2025—As you are reading this, financial forces associated with the City of London and Wall Street are careening the world to an appointment with thermonuclear Hell. It is not only sane, but essential, to ask the question: Has the world, with the June 1 attacks “by Ukraine” on four Russian airfields, including the destruction of nuclear-capable aircraft that are part of Russia’s thermonuclear triad, crossed a red line beyond which there lies the immediacy of species-annihilating thermonuclear warfare? During the entire Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, nothing so dangerous as what we are living through right now, ever occurred.
On the eve of the June 2 Istanbul talks, the June 1 Sunday’s destruction of at least 9, and possibly more (the Ukrainians have claimed 40) Russian military aircraft at bases in various parts of Russia (Olenya Airbase in Murmansk, Diaghilev Airbase in Ryazan, Belaya Airbase in Irkutsk, Ivanovo Airbase in Ivanovo) could not have been carried out, various analysts contend, without the supervision of NATO, and the involvement of either Britain, the United States, or both.
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter puts it this way: “This would be the equivalent of a hostile actor launching drone strikes against U.S. Air Force B-52H bombers stationed at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and B-2 bombers stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.” Consider: What would the United States do if, in a military border dispute with Mexico, that nation, using Russian and Chinese made weapons, satellite, surveillance and guidance systems, and even in-person trainers, blew up even one plane at an American Air Force base?
There is a larger, even more terrifying consideration. The Sunday attack on June 1, somewhat reminiscent of “9/11” in its surprise, coordination and complexity, also begs the question as to whether American President Donald Trump did, or did not know this attack was in the works. In the case that he did not know, we could be witnessing the beginning of a coup against Trump by those who set the attack up. Former U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said, “It appears Zelenskyy gave the go-ahead to attack parked Russian nuclear-capable bombers without informing President Trump. (If true that our President was not consulted nor informed, this isn’t simply a breach of protocol, it’s a geopolitical insult and a warning sign…)
Alternatively, if Trump did know about the attack, and authorized it, that would mean that he has given up on a diplomatic relationship with Putin and Russia, and world war would be imminent. In either case, we are heading for war, and fast. And that means, in any case, we will have to mobilize ourselves and your neighbors to “rise up on our hind legs,” declare independence from war insanity, and reverse course by acting like free citizens in the republic of world-history.
We must rise up and stop the deployment of Germany’s Taurus missiles to Ukraine. If, as some journalists believe, they have already been deployed into Ukraine, then the German government must immediately withdraw them. Russia, which lost 27 million people in the Second World War in battles against Germany, would be prepared to destroy the production facilities located in the cities of Germany which made the missiles. Only a New Security and Development Architecture—what China’s President Xi Jinping calls a “Win-Win” dedication to “the benefit of the other”—including development projects such as the LaRouche Oasis Plan for Gaza and Southwest Asia—can forge a narrow path forward and away from species-destroying warfare.
If we do nothing, then the morons of American foreign policy will take over. The psychotic bipartisan charade being carried out by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal right now in Ukraine, is undermining any prospect for peace. “At the heart of their push is a bipartisan sanctions bill, backed by nearly the entire U.S. Senate but still facing uncertain odds in Washington. It would impose 500% tariffs on countries that continue buying Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports—targeting nations like China and India that account for roughly 70% of Russia’s energy trade and bankroll much of its war effort,” wrote Politico.
Graham called it “the most draconian bill I’ve ever seen in my life in the Senate.”
In the age of thermonuclear weapons, war as a means of conflict resolution is suicidal madness. The Global Majority, the nations of Africa, Asia and Ibero-America, want peace through economic development. Civilization will not survive, if it is fought. Yet, there are many in the City of London and Wall Street “billionaires club” that desire perpetual war. We must stop them. The first thing to do, is not to act, but to think. What can you best contribute to reverse this direction?
There are interventions, standing up in public and denouncing those that are perpetuating war in high place; there is street presence, talking to people face to face, and making sure they are not overlooked; there is the appeal to Pope Leo XIV, the first American Pope in history, whose first words upon taking his position were “Peace be with all of you” (see link below); there is circulating, studying and working our LaRouche Oasis Plan for Gaza to the United Nations prior to the special session on Palestine (see link below); there is stopping the Blumenthal-Graham sanctions bill from passing the Congress; there is building the International Peace Coalition, a worldwide organization that has met every week for two years. Finally and most importantly, read and comment upon the Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture, the document, written by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, which inspired the creation of the International Peace Coalition. It falls to this generation to be the one that abolished thermonuclear war, so that humanity might live. Otherwise, we will likely be among the last generations of a human race that looked in the mirror and did not find itself morally fit to survive.
As the U.S. tariff war intensifies, China and the European Union have recently increased high-level contacts. Some observers suggest the EU is turning to China as an alternative to Trump’s America. At a CGTN roundtable marking 50 years of China-EU relations, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, president and founder of Germany’s Schiller Institute, urged both sides to defend the global order and develop the Global South.
The Schiller Institute today released a list of 60 names of prominent individuals from 20 countries who have endorsed the March 8, 2025 call from the Institute’s founder, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, “Instead of Rearming for the Great War, We Need to Create a Global Security Architecture!” It is being issued at a time when Europe is at an historic crossroads, where a difference alternative must be urgently put on the table if a catastrophe is to be avoided.
The statement begins, “The European Union (EU) and most European governments are in the grips of a war hysteria that can only be compared to the warmongering madness that broke out before World War One.”
It concludes, “Europe has reacted to Trump’s sudden signals for an end to the Ukraine war and a resumption of diplomacy with Rusia with great panic – and cries for war. But there is still time to currect this potentially fatal course. If Europe wants to overcome its current economic misery, the way out lies in cooperation with the nations of the Global South, which has long since become the Global Majority.
“Humanity has reached the point where it must overcome the old patterns of thought steeped in geopolitics and the Cold War, and replace them with a new global security and development architecture that takes into account the interests of all nations on this planet. A positive example for this is provided by the Peace of Westphalia, which came about because the warring parties came to the conclusion that if the war continued, no one would be able to enjoy victory, since there would be no survivors. How much more convincing this argument is in times of thermonuclear weapons which, if used, would lead to the extinction of all mankind!”
For the full text of the statement, which has been endorsed by many others worldwide, see Instead of Rearming for the Great War, We Need to Create a Global Security Architecture! The text includes a link for new endorsements, and the Schiller Institute urges all individuals in agreement with the statement to add their names, and circulate the statement as widely as possible.
List of prominent endorsers as of April 24, organized alphabetically by country, and alphabetically by last name within country. Affiliation/background for identification purposes only.
Daud Azimi, Afghanistan/Germany, Engineer; Board Member, Peace National Front of Afghanistan
Ute Kollies, Austria, Former Deputy Regional Director for West Africa, UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Gen. Edwin Alfonso De La Fuente Jeria, Bolivia, Former Commander-in-Chief of the Bolivian Armed Forces
Tom Gillesberg, Denmark, President, Schiller Institute in Denmark; former independent candidate for parliament Ramón Emilio Concepción, Dominican Republic, Attorney-at-law; Presidential Pre-candidate, PRM party (2020)
Mariano Nguema Esono Medja, Equatorial Guinea, Focal Point in Equatorial Guinea, United Nations Regional Center for Peace and Disarmament in Africa
Jacques Cheminade, France, President, Solidarité et Progrès; former presidential candidate
Col. (Ret.) Alain Corvez, France, consultant on international strategic affairs
Col. (Ret.) Jacques Hogard, France, INF-LE, Land Army
Jérôme Ravenet, France, Doctor of Letters and Associate Professor of Philosophy Ali Rastbeen, France, President, Académie de Géopolitique de Paris
Dr. Jur. Wolfgang Bittner, Germany, Author
Joachim Bonatz, Germany, Vice President, East German Board of Trustees of Associations (Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden e.V.), Berlin
Margret Bonin, Germany, Global Women for Peace United Against NATO
Frank Bornschein, Germany, City Councilor, Schwedt; Friends of Peace Schwedt e.V.
Karl Cammann, Germany, Prof. (em.) Dr.
Holger Hüttel, Germany, Chairman, local branch of Die Linke, Sangerhausen
Dr. (med.) Helmut Käss, Germany, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)
Harald Koch, Germany, former member, Bundestag; founding member, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW)
Wolfgang Lieberknecht, Germany, Internationale FriedensFabrik Wanfried, (IFFW)
Ulrich Leonhardt, Germany, Aufstehen Schwerin (Rise Up Schwerin)
Dr. Cornelia Nenz, Germany
Stephan Ossenkopp, Germany, Vice Chairman, BüSo; journalist, “Die Multipolare Welt”
Karin Pflug, Germany, Honorary City Councilor, Quedlinburg
Dr. Andrey Redlich, Germany, Founding member, Society for Human Rights (German section), (ISHR). Thomas Rehm, Germany, Head of workers council, Saale Energie GmbH
Dr. Rainer Sandau, Germany, Technical Director, Satellites and Space Applications, International Academy of Aeronautics (IAA)
Jan Veil, Germany, Freie Linke, South Hesse
Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, Greece, Ambassador ad honorem; Secretary General, Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC), 2006-2012
Raúl Aníbal Marroquín Casasola, Guatemala, Coordinator, Citizen Observatory for Peace “La Pupila del Cielo”, San Cristóbal
Maurizio Abbate, Italy, Chairman, ENAC (Italian Institute for Cultural Activities)
Vincenzo Romanello, Ph.D., Italy/Czech Republic, Nuclear engineer; founder, Italian chapter, Atoms for Peace.
Bruno Romano, Italy, Movisol
Alessia Ruggeri, Italy, trade union leader
Marino Savina, Italy, National President, ANDICOSI (National Association of Security Employees)
Daisuke Kotegawa, Japan, Former IMF Executive Director for Japan; former Japan Ministry of Finance official Pigbin Odimwengu, Kenya, Accountability and Transparency Party, 2022 Presidential Candidate
Rafael Nava y Uribe, Mexico, President, Mexico-Colombia Chamber of Commerce
Celeste Sáenz de Miera, Mexico, Director, Journalists Club of Mexico A.C.
Alberto Vizcarra Osuna, Mexico, Member of Coordinating Committee, National Front for the Rescue of Mexican Farmland
Prof. Driss Larafi, Morocco, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, University Ibn Tofail
Kees le Pair, Ph.D., Netherlands, Physicist, Univ. of Leiden; former Ass’t Professor, American University of Beirut; Science Advisor, Dutch Military Research
Adewale Aiyedun, Ph.D., Nigeria, Forensic Investigator, Audit and Security Consultant
David Ajetunmobi, Nigeria, Trade union leader-auto sector
Adeshola Kukoyi, Nigeria, Founder, Equilibrium Perspectives, University of Lagos
Julia Vellila Laconich, Paraguay, Former ambassador from Paraguay to Bolivia, Uruguay, Peru, and UNESCO (Paris)
Kjell Lundqvist, Sweden, Chairman, European Labor Party
Ulf Sandmark, Sweden, Chairman, Schiller Institute in Sweden
Father Harry Bury, United States, Minneapolis/St. Paul Non-Violent; U.S. Priests Association
Carroll Childers, United States, Major General (ret.), U.S. Army; retired weapons developer, U.S. Dep’t. of the Navy and U.S. Marine Corps
Graham Fuller, United States/Canada, Former U.S. diplomat and CIA official; former Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council
Jack Gilroy, United States, Veterans for Peace; Pax Christi-Upstate New York; Pax Christi International
Martin Melkonian, United States, Treasurer, Long Island (NY) Alliance for Peace and Justice
Lorin Peters, United States, Pax Christi, Northern California Chapter
Earl Rasmussen, United States, Lt. Col. (ret.), U.S. Army; international consultant
John Shanahan, United States, Civil engineer; president, Go Nuclear Inc.; editor, website: allaboutenergy.net
Steven Starr, United States, Professor, University of Missouri; nuclear warfare expert
John Steinbach, United States, Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee, National Capital Area
J. Kirk Wiebe, United States, Retired analyst, National Security Agency; NSA Whistleblower
Jim Wohlgemuth, United States, Veterans for Peace, Nashville (TN) chapter; radio host
April 10 – The following emergency statement, issued by the Schiller Institute, addresses the ongoing global financial crisis and is intended for the widest possible circulation.
The Western financial system is now teetering at the edge of a general, systemic blowout which is about to usher in a new global Great Depression, far worse than that of the 1930s. The skids are being greased by the predatory trade war which the gullible United States President Donald Trump Administration has unleashed against the whole world—but especially China—on the advice of Harvard-trained quacks and hedge fund managers like Stephen Miran.
President Trump seems to intend to free the world financial system from the speculative aspects of globalization, which would be a legitimate effort. But the interpretation that the whole world looted the U.S. puts the whole story upside down. It was the neoliberal financial system of Wall Street and the City of London, which developed after President Nixon took down the Bretton Woods System and introduced floating exchange rates in 1971, that created a mechanism to loot productive capacities in all countries, including the U.S. The present efforts by the countries of the Global South to set up an economic system which would allow their own economic development is a revolt against the conditionalities policy of the IMF and the World Bank.
President Trump is right: the U.S. has been robbed, but so have the countries of the Global South—as well as other countries around the world. Therefore, we are all sitting in one boat, and the effort to correct the mistakes of the system must be a cooperative one.
Wall Street and the City of London have drooled their way to creating a $2 quadrillion speculative bubble which cannot conceivably be paid, no matter how many wars they launch and how much they slash countries’ budgets. They have destroyed the productive economies of Europe and the United States, packaged as post-industrial gobbledygook. They have looted the nations of the Global South through debt servitude and related colonial policies.
To make matters even worse, they have introduced their speculative cancer into the U.S. Treasury bond market itself, undermining the very bedrock of the post-War trans-Atlantic financial system. And they are proposing to postpone the day of reckoning of their inevitable bankruptcy by pumping the system full of worthless cryptocurrency and so-called “stablecoins,” while also demanding that the Federal Reserve go back to the policy of lending endless zero-interest money (quantitative easing)—only this time on steroids.
But you can’t simply propose to bring all of that crashing down, through a modern variant of the Trilateral Commission’s and Paul Volcker’s “controlled disintegration,” or Schumpeter’s “creative destruction,” as many of Trump’s advisers insist.
With what are you going to replace the current hopelessly bankrupt system?
Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has answered that question directly, by insisting on the need to establish a new paradigm, a new international security and development architecture, which must take into account the interest of every nation on the planet, based on the proven principles of her late husband and renowned economist Lyndon LaRouche, starting with the central concept that man is not a beast. President Trump should follow his initial healthy instincts and consult in depth with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and jointly convene an international conference among the nations of the world to establish a New Bretton Woods System. Such a gathering would deliberate on the underlying principles, as well as the specific policies, to be adopted for a new international security and development architecture that will address the interests of each and every nation. Where there are difficulties and disagreements, these will be worked out according to the Westphalian (Judeo-Christian) principle of the “general welfare” of all—not by aggressive pronouncements and threats against others that, in any event, don’t even address the underlying cause of the crisis.
Decades ago, Lyndon LaRouche specified the policies needed to “lick the depression in a single day,” policies restated in his 2014 “The Four New Laws to Save the U.S.A. Now!”
1. The $2 quadrillion speculative cancer has got to go—Wall Street and the City of London are going to have to take the hit. The original Glass-Steagall U.S. Banking Act of 1933 should be reenacted, splitting the banking system into two:
on the one hand, the commercial banks that engage in productive lending (and that therefore get the full backing of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the U.S. government in general); and on the other, so-called “investment banking,” i.e. wild speculation, which will be rolled up, frozen, and given no government backing. No more bailouts of the cancer. This will also do wonders for balancing the federal budget.
2. The productive sector of the economy—which since 1971 has collapsed as fast as the speculative bubble has grown, as is indicated in LaRouche’s famous Triple Curve graphic—must be revitalized with a new source of productive credit to finance the great infrastructure projects and reindustrialization needed. This includes reconverting the military-industrial-financial complex to useful production, which today is a net drain on the productive economy.
One viable way to create such productive credit flows, the way Alexander Hamilton did with the First National Bank of the United States, would be to nationalize the Federal Reserve, rather than using it to bail out the bankrupt banks to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars. This could begin with the creation of a National Bank for Infrastructure in the New York Fed, to begin with power, water and other infrastructure projects for the United States, and international loans to development projects. The bank would be capitalized initially by trade-ins of Treasury debt for equity in the Bank.
3. Reach treaty agreements with similarly inclined nations, to reestablish a fixed-exchange rate international financial system, like we had before 1971, that will provide a favorable, predictable framework for global infrastructure and other investment projects. There is every reason for the United States to join with China’s Belt and Road Initiative and cooperate with the nations of the BRICS—which now represent well over half of humanity—in this global development endeavor.
If the United States returns to such a policy, the Global South will no longer feel the desperate need to de-dollarize and otherwise distance itself from the sinking financial Titanic that is Wall Street and the City of London. They will happily embrace American offers to cooperate on such projects.
4. The future of humanity requires an unending emphasis on science and technology, especially in the frontier areas of fusion power and space exploration. These are the perfect areas for the U.S., China, Russia, India and the BRICS nations to cooperate for the benefit of all. Such a fostering of the creative human spirit is the source of all true economic value.
On the Subject of Tariffs and Trade
Lyndon LaRouche took up this issue of principle in his book-length study, On the Subject of Tariffs and Trade, which was published by EIR magazine in its February 13, 2004 issue. LaRouche there explained:
“Now, we are in the grip of the terminal phase of a general collapse of the existing world monetary-financial system. As I warned, we are also gripped by the threat of a general fascist insurgency, as merely typified by the impact of U.S. Vice President Cheney’s revival of a strategic doctrine of ‘preventive nuclear warfare,’ and a Nazi-like replacement of the traditional military forces and doctrine of modern civilization, by a military doctrine echoing the Roman imperial legions and the Nazi intent to establish a world-reigning international Waffen-SS.”
LaRouche concluded that study with the following policy perspective:
“The national economic interest of the U.S.A. corresponds to the level of development of the productive powers of labor, which corresponds to a reasonably targeted level of improvement of the sustainable potential relative population-density of our nation considered as a whole.
“This achievement depends, essentially, upon the development of the employment of those powers, as Plato defined powers, whose typical expressions are accumulations of experimentally validated universal physical principles, or of cultural principles of a kindred import.
“The development and maintenance of those employed powers, and further improvements in that direction are, to a large degree, made possible through various forms of capital investment in the physical capital of basic economic infrastructure, in public infrastructure, in capital improvements of entrepreneurial enterprises, and in the physical and cultural standard of living of the family households of our national labor-force.
“Under the provisions of a protectionist form of policies of tariffs and trade, if operating within the framework of an international fixed-exchange-rate monetary-financial system, it is practicable to define a spectrum of ‘fair prices’ of commodities at the export-import interface of our economy with the international market. In that case, prices of our commodities may decrease as a result of technological advances which do not lower quality, except that wage-reductions may not be routinely employed as a means for price-reductions of commodities. Trade (import, export, or both) may be used as an added means for regulating forms of price-stability intended to protect the relative physical value of capital invested. In general, lowering standards of living of households as a means for making goods ‘more competitive,’ is effectively outlawed.
“Look at what I have just said against the background of that aspect of the post-1977 wrecking of the U.S. economy accomplished by deregulation of freight and passenger traffic. The result was to concentrate traffic among a limited number of ‘hubs,’ with the effect of driving communities in outlying regions into virtual collapse, and often depopulation. This meant that the productivity of the U.S.A. as a whole collapsed per square kilometer, with an accompanying net collapse of the net physical output by the population as a whole. Insanity? Yes: insanity engendered by the spread of the lunatic dogma of ‘free trade.’
“The object must be to increase the effective physical output both per capita and per square kilometer. This desired effect is fostered by standardized freight-rates, convenient mass-transit of passengers among both principal hubs and regional centers, to such effect that the optimum use is made of the potential represented by the total population and total area of the nation.
“Similar advantages from regulation of trade and tariffs are to be sought among nations, more or less on a global scale. Thus, we must encourage the relevant physical capital formation throughout the planet, to optimize the rate of increase of per-capita and per-square-kilometer gross and net outputs.
“The general principle, bearing on tariffs and trade, illustrated by those cases, is the urgency of shifting the notions of cost and profitability away from cheapness of the physical-capital costs of production and distribution, to gains in the margin of growth per capita which are obtained through raising the objective standard of living and quality and relative intensity of capital formation.
“The initial emphasis must be upon large-scale and massive investment in basic economic infrastructure, to effect an urgently needed, qualitative change in the environment of production and family life. That emphasis on basic economic infrastructure, is the only durable means for promoting a general regrowth of a viable private sector.
“However, none of this could be accomplished, without reference to the successes of President Franklin Roosevelt in saving the U.S.A. from both a depression at home, and the threat of a Nazi-led world-empire. This requires junking Adam Smith and everything that smells of him, and returning to the constitutional principles of the American System of political-economy as described by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and others. This means the restoration of those practices of regulation, including protectionism, associated with the Franklin Roosevelt revolution of the 1930s.”
Lyndon LaRouche Explains the Cause of the Collapse
What is collapsing today, is not an economy, but a vast financial bubble, a bubble whose chief economic expression is the U.S. financial system’s role as ‘The Importer of Last Resort’ for the world at large.… In effect, the world has been supporting, until about now, a vast U.S. dollar-denominated financial bubble, all largely for the purpose of propping up an inflated, intrinsically bankrupt U.S. economy’s role as ‘importer of last resort’ for much of the world. What happens, when that financial bubble moves into its inevitable chain-reaction-collapse phase? That is what is happening now.”
