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International Experts Warn of Danger of Nuclear War Today

Read the transcript International Experts Warn of Nuclear War

International Experts Warn of Nuclear War

 

          From the International Peace Coalition meeting, March 8, 2024

Helga Zepp-LaRouche:[Founder of the Schiller Institute, Germany] Let me all greet you and express my gratitude that so many experts are on this call because, I think a few thinking people in various parts of the world are getting really, extremely concerned about the fact that we are closer to nuclear war than at any time in history before. And given the breathtaking irrationality of many Western leaders, it is requiring an extraordinary effort of the International Peace Coalition and other peace movements, which we have to unite, to really get a change in the situation.  First of all, we have the ongoing NATO maneuver, Steadfast Defender. This is 90,000 NATO troops deployed already now since February into May, exercising for the first time the idea that there is an attack by Russia on a NATO country, and large numbers of troops are being moved in this maneuver. There is a Russian publication which comments on that, saying that such maneuvers give a very good cover and a pretext for an actual attack, so in that sense, we are in a heightened alert situation for that reason. And the same goes, naturally, for the overall strategic situation, where the idea to have an international security and development architecture on the international agenda, which would take into account the interest of every single country on the planet, that is also coming more and more into the discussion because, as you will hear in a few minutes, a congressman from Mexico has made a very important speech with exactly that demand.

          So I will stop here, at this point, but I can only say we are in a situation where we could lose civilization at any moment—it is that tense, and I think the discrepancy between what we know is going on, and what the awareness of the population is, there couldn’t be a greater gulf. And that is what we have to urgently remedy, and get people mobilized to change the policy, into a new paradigm, for a shared community of the one future of humanity, because that’s what we have: We are one humanity, sitting in one boat, and if this goes wrong, there is nobody going to be left to discuss why. That is why we have to increase our efforts tremendously.

          Thank you.

Col. Richard A. Black (ret.):[Former head of the U.S. Army Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, former Virginia State Senator] The writing is on the wall: Ukraine is a slaughterhouse. They’re losing the war, and the time is now that NATO, if they want to do something, they’re going to have to step in and do it themselves. Keep in mind, that there are a tremendous number of people in all NATO’s countries, whose lives and reputation, whose family wealth, depends on war-connected activities, and they do not intend to let Ukraine go down.

          So it’s an extremely dangerous time. We need to do whatever we can to resist the possibility of American and NATO troops becoming directly involved in the Ukraine war to a greater extent than they already have. Thank you.

Lt. Col. Ulrich Scholz (ret.):[Former NATO officer, former Tornado pilot, Germany] What I think is the war has to end, because it’s leading nowhere. On the very first day it was leading nowhere. Now, the question is, really, why do they keep on doing it? And for me, I would say, it’s a face-saving exercise now. They want to get out, but they don’t know how.

          And the poor Ukrainians, I think, nobody is asking them, because officially we have their President, who is always very belligerent, but how do the Ukrainians feel?  So, I think they are exhausted, and they are bled out, and I think just from this point of view, whoever is going to win on the political end, whoever is going to win, the Ukrainians are going to lose. So, I think this is the issue, that we somehow get talks, in Türkiye or wherever, where we can find, in the area of both sides, the West and Russia, we come to an area where we have common interests.  I think that’s just diplomacy: Look for an area where we have common interests, and then focus on that one, and stop the shooting. That’s the only way to get out it.

Graham Fuller:[former U.S. diplomat, CIA analyst, and Islamic scholar]As long as the United States simply cannot face the reality that it is no longer able to call the shots in the world, then we are still faced with a very dangerous situation. It’s almost like a tired boxer, who insists on climbing back into the ring, and showing that he can still fight and still be number one. It’s harsh to say that, but I fear that that is the reality at this point. Perhaps the truth in the United States is slowly sinking in, with the rise of China and the rise of the BRICS powers and the Global South; maybe it’s gradually sinking in. But it cannot happen too soon, because otherwise we are in a very dangerous game of “chicken” in Ukraine, with the United States determined to prove that its side will win.

          And I hope, if some kind of voice of rationality can emerge at end, and bring this war to a close, this could, hopefully, influence other very ugly and tragic situations, like the one in Palestine and Gaza, today.  Thank you.

Prof. Richard Sakwa:[British political scientist, former professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, U.K.] First point, I do agree that we are now in the foothills of a Third World War. It’s not, in a nuclear age, this sort of war is not going to be immediately declared, but we are—so far, we actually haven’t hit the first ladder on the escalation precipice or escalator, but we are very close to doing so. There are plenty of people in Moscow who are suggesting that, perhaps, some sort of a salutary warning, perhaps a small nuclear strike on a European town has been mentioned.

          So once the taboo on even talking on a limited nuclear war is out there, and the way this is being dismissed by Western commentators, shows just how dangerous this moment is. This says precisely, which I know that the LaRouche Organization and all of us are emphasizing peace and development: In other words, a framework for commonwealth. We see it in all of the statements of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the enlarged BRICS-Plus organization, and indeed, the Russo-Chinese alignment, which is so important, and,indeed, with India and so many other states.

          So, the Global South, the political East, simply refuses and hopefully can act as a moderating voice, and hold us back, escalating and climbing up further from the foothills to the peaks of the Third World War. That’s a little note of optimism, but I think in these dark times, we have to cling to the idea that the rest of the world simply isn’t playing this game.

Prof. Steve Starr:[Professor at the University of Missouri, former director of University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program] There’s a false narrative that you can use a tactical nuclear weapon, to stop the Russians, you can make them back down. Well, Russia has nuclear weapons, just as the United States does. And once we introduce nuclear weapons into a war, if you’re fighting another nuclear power, you want to bet that they won’t use them against you? I  think that’s another false narrative.The Russians made fun of the idea of winning a limited nuclear war back in the 1980s.

          So I think the danger of nuclear war is greatly exacerbated by these narratives, that “we can make Russia back down,” that “we have nuclear primacy over Russia,” and if we have leaders who are delusional and accept these narratives, then it’s a very strong likelihood that we can wind up being victim to them.

Dr. George Koo:[retired business consultant specializing in U.S.-China trade and Chairman of the Burlingame Foundation] All of the previous speakers have spoken about the danger of a nuclear war, as a result of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. I just want to mention that the Pacific is also a spark, a sensitive point, because the United States is sending the signal to Philippines, to Taiwan, and trying to encourage, and trying to encourage them to start a proxy war.

          In the United States, we have learned since we withdrew from Afghanistan, it’s much better go get others to do the actual fighting for us, and we just provide the wherewithal, the arms and the military weapons. But I want to point out to the American public, that if the United States has successfully provoked a firefight between China and the Philippines, or between China and Taiwan, the P.R.C. government fully recognizes who’s actually behind such conflict. And I predict, and I feel the first thing that will happen, if such conflict were to start, the first thing they would do, would be to take out all the U.S. naval vessels in the Pacific, so that, whether it’s the Taiwan people or the Filippino people can see that China is fully capable of destroying the military backing, and that will cause them to think twice.

Ray McGovern:[former CIA analyst, co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)] The next year, President Kennedy—actually less than a year later—in his speech to American University on June 10, 1963, warned: Look, the thing we have to remember is not to give another nuclear power a choice, between humiliating defeat and using nuclear weapons.

          Now: Why do I mention that? Well, there is going to be a humiliating defeat in Ukraine. The Russians are not even going to have to consider using nuclear weapons, but the acolytes and the sophomores that are advising Biden, might just say to the President, “Look, you know, we only have several months before the election. We’re going to lose, it’s going to be a humiliating defeat in Ukraine. Technically, if we don’t get that $80 billion more from Speaker Mike Johnson, we’ve got these other weapons—why don’t we try these mini-nukes? That would show ‘em, that would show the Russians, and that would last us, maybe, right to the election.”

          Now: Am I imagining something? No! These people have done the unimaginable, time after time after time.

Congressman Benjamín Robles Montoya:[incumbent Member of Congress, Mexico] [addressing the Mexican Congress, translation from Spanish] Today, the threat of nuclear war is again looming— with the United States sending weapons to Ukraine and Israel, where what is happening is an atrocious genocide. And meddling in the China-Taiwan conflict, with Russiapulling out of strategic arms reduction treaties, and nuclear test bans.

          Colleagues, we have reached the very precipice of nuclear war, and it is imperative that all nations raise their voices—not the voice of one nation, nor of several nations, but of all of humanity—for peace and against nuclear war. Let all the citizens of the world also unite in pursuit of a new international security and development architecture that guarantees the right to welfare and economic development of the people of the planet. Achieving peace through development, that is the path.

          That is all, Madame President.

The 40th consecutive weekly online meeting of the International Peace Coalition on March 8 opened with a warning from Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche that we are continuing to flirt with nuclear war. She cited the currently ongoing NATO “Steadfast Defender” exercise where 90,000 troops are explicitly rehearsing a war with Russia as an example of the supercharged environment. The mainstream media, rather than looking at the increasing danger of World War III, marked by the recent scandal of the leaked audio in which German military officers discuss covert means of directly entering the Ukraine war, are focusing their attention on speculation over who leaked the audio file.

Turning to the situation in Southwest Asia, she said that the conflict in Gaza is being driven by geopolitical motives and cannot be looked at separately from Ukraine. Several UN Special Rapporteurs are now calling it genocide, calling attention to the growing danger of starvation, and saying that it is intentional on the part of the Netanyahu regime. Investigation of genocide will inevitably bring us to the question of U.S. and German involvement and culpability. The Oasis Plan, as proposed by Lyndon LaRouche in 1975, provides the only way out of this ghastly situation.

Zepp-LaRouche’s strategic overview was followed by military and intelligence experts who expanded on the nature of the war danger.

Col. Richard Black (ret.), former chief of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, observed that the Ukraine war was the lead item in President Biden’s “State of the Union” address, underscoring that whenever a President says he won’t send U.S. troops, it’s almost a promise to do the opposite.

German Lt. Col. Ulrich Scholz (ret.), a former NATO planner and lecturer on air warfare, warned: “NATO nations have not trained together for decades, and are not capable of going to war. If the Americans don’t do it, nobody’s going to do it.” Regarding the war propaganda in Europe, he said, “All the war talk is a face-saving exercise. They want out.” His advice? “Look for an area where we have common interests and stop the shooting.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche interrupted the proceedings to report that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has now advised Americans that they should avoid large Moscow gatherings for 48 hours, as extremists plan to attack such events. Numerous countries that routinely ape U.S. foreign policy gestures have followed suit.

Former U.S. diplomat, CIA officer, and vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, Graham Fuller told the gathering: “The fundamental problem of world stability today lies in the inability of the United States to read the tea leaves, to understand the geopolitical shifts in the world today.”

He said that the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower; the U.S. can’t face this reality, and this is the danger. “One of the problems of democracy is that you have to galvanize the entire population to go to war…. You’ve got to demonize the enemy, demonize Putin, make it a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil.” Fuller asserted that advocacy of democracy is being used as a weapon, but we don’t support democracy when it is inconvenient. “We have a United States today which is perhaps the most ideologically driven nation in the world.”

Prof. Richard Sakwa, British Emeritus Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, warned: “We are now in the foothills of the Third World War.” He said that we should distinguish between two levels: the world as it was structured in response to the horrors of World War II, with the UN and international law in the spirit of “Never Again”; and the paradigm which replaced this after 1989, or what he termed the “Second Cold War.”

In the first Cold War, diplomacy continued. But when Obama expelled the Russian diplomats in response to unproven allegations, diplomacy was being destroyed. “A political West emerged based on Cold War thinking.” Sakwa said that there is an emerging consensus against this in the “Political East.” They promote an idea of commonwealth, in opposition to the imperialism of the West. “The Global South and Political East can hold us back from moving from the foothills to the peaks of a Third World War.”

Mexican Congressman Benjamín Robles Montoya’s statement March 6 on the floor of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, was shown to all assembled. The Congressman emphasized, “We have reached the precipice of nuclear war…. Achieving peace through development, that is the path.”

Prof. Steve Starr, the former director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and published author in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warned that the war danger is heightened by the fact that Joe Biden is up for re-election, and can’t be seen to be losing the war in Ukraine. He said that “the danger of nuclear war is greatly exacerbated by false narratives,” such as the one where we can use tactical nukes to make Russia back down. The electromagnetic pulse generated from a single nuclear weapon, detonated above the U.S., could take out our entire electrical power grid, all solid-state circuitry and computers. An 800-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated directly over a target such as Manhattan would ignite a firestorm over an area of 100-150 square miles. Each side has thousands of nukes, and the resulting smoke and soot created from their nuclear detonations would form a global stratospheric layer reducing the sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface and halting agriculture for 10 years, in what is called “nuclear famine.”

George Koo, retired specialist in U.S.-China trade, concurred with Colonel Black: The U.S. has a tendency to say one thing and do the opposite. He said that the U.S. is sending a signal to the Philippines and Taiwan, encouraging them to start proxy wars with China. The P.R.C. government fully recognizes who is behind this. They will take out U.S. naval forces in their neighborhood in response.

Humanity for Peace coordinator Anastasia Battle presented a report on the March 2 meeting in Detroit, “Emergency Conference for Peace in Gaza: The Children of God Cry Out for Justice,” at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, the historic church of C.L. Franklin, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech in 1966. Nine videos of the speakers are now available on YouTube.

Ray McGovern, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, reminded the participants that President John F. Kennedy, during his June 10, 1963 speech at American University, warned that we should never give an adversary a choice between humiliating defeat, and nuclear war. Now this very choice is being presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin at re-election time. He presented his assessment of Vladimir Putin: “I would say he’s a statesman, and he’s a pretty cool customer.” McGovern went on to wryly quote former President George W. Bush: “Don’t ‘misunderestimate’ the Russians.”

McGovern presented some provocative speculation about the recent resignation of State Department harpy Victoria Nuland. He pointed out that we haven’t seen the entire leak from the German officers. If Russia intercepted it, so did the U.S. National Security Agency. Maybe Nuland was working behind everyone’s back with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to transfer Taurus missiles to Ukraine. McGovern emphasized that this is speculation, but as likely an explanation as any.

This was followed by a discussion session in which many new participants introduced themselves. In conclusion, Helga Zepp-LaRouche recommended that the Americans ally with the Global South. “The signs of hope are small, but sometimes when you are in a crisis, even small signs of hope can cause a shift.” She reported, as such a sign of hope, the growing number of leaders who have endorsed Lyndon LaRouche’s Oasis Plan for peace in Southwest Asia.


Mexican Congressman Robles Calls for New International Security and Development Architecture

Speaking on the floor of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies on March 6, 2024, federal congressman Benjamin Robles Montoya delivered a three-minute statement denouncing the danger of nuclear war and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and stressing the need for a new international security and development architecture.

Back in 2022, Congressman Robles had been one of the founding members of a grouping of current and former legislators from around the world demanding a mobilization to stop the danger of nuclear war.


The Growing Danger of Nuclear War as NATO Declines – Col. Richard H. Black (ret.)

Col. Richard H. Black (ret.), former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, former Virginia State Senator, addresses the International Peace Coalition on March 8, 2024. A summary of the event follows below.

The 40th consecutive weekly online meeting of the International Peace Coalition on March 8 opened with a warning from Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche that we are continuing to flirt with nuclear war. She cited the upcoming NATO “Steadfast Defender” exercise where 90,000 troops will explicitly rehearse a war with Russia as an example of the supercharged environment. The mainstream media, rather than looking at the increasing danger of World War III, marked by the recent scandal of the leaked audio in which German military officers discuss covert means of directly entering the Ukraine war, are focusing their attention on speculation over who leaked the audio file.

Turning to the situation in Southwest Asia, she said that the conflict in Gaza is being driven by geopolitical motives and cannot be looked at separately from Ukraine. Several UN Special Rapporteurs are now calling it genocide, calling attention to the growing danger of starvation, and saying that it is intentional on the part of the Netanyahu regime. Investigation of genocide will inevitably bring us to the question of U.S. and German involvement and culpability. The Oasis Plan, as proposed by Lyndon LaRouche in 1975, provides the only way out of this ghastly situation.

Zepp-LaRouche’s strategic overview was followed by military and intelligence experts who expanded on the nature of the war danger.

Col. Richard Black (ret.), former chief of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, observed that the Ukraine war was the lead item in President Biden’s “State of the Union” address, underscoring that whenever a President says he won’t send U.S. troops, it’s almost a promise to do the opposite.

German Lt. Col. Ulrich Scholz (ret.), a former NATO planner and lecturer on air warfare, warned: “NATO nations have not trained together for decades, and are not capable of going to war. If the Americans don’t do it, nobody’s going to do it.” Regarding the war propaganda in Europe, he said, “All the war talk is a face-saving exercise. They want out.” His advice? “Look for an area where we have common interests and stop the shooting.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche interrupted the proceedings to report that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has now advised Americans that they should leave Russia, or if they are unable to leave, they should remain in their homes. Numerous countries that routinely ape U.S. foreign policy gestures have followed suit.

Former U.S. diplomat, CIA officer, and vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, Graham Fuller told the gathering: “The fundamental problem of world stability today lies in the inability of the United States to read the tea leaves, to understand the geopolitical shifts in the world today.”

He said that the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower; the U.S. can’t face this reality, and this is the danger. “One of the problems of democracy is that you have to galvanize the entire population to go to war…. You’ve got to demonize the enemy, demonize Putin, make it a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil.” Fuller asserted that advocacy of democracy is being used as a weapon, but we don’t support democracy when it is inconvenient. “We have a United States today which is perhaps the most ideologically driven nation in the world.”

Prof. Richard Sakwa, British Emeritus Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, warned: “We are now in the foothills of the Third World War.” He said that we should distinguish between two levels: the world as it was structured in response to the horrors of World War II, with the UN and international law in the spirit of “Never Again”; and the paradigm which replaced this after 1989, or what he termed the “Second Cold War.”

In the first Cold War, diplomacy continued. But when Obama expelled the Russian diplomats in response to unproven allegations, diplomacy was being destroyed. “A political West emerged based on Cold War thinking.” Sakwa said that there is an emerging consensus against this in the “Political East.” They promote an idea of commonwealth, in opposition to the imperialism of the West. “The Global South and Political East can hold us back from moving from the foothills to the peaks of a Third World War.”

Mexican Congressman Benjamín Robles Montoya’s statement March 6 on the floor of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, was shown to all assembled in which he stated, “We have reached the precipice of nuclear war…. Achieving peace through development, that is the path.”

Prof. Steve Starr warned that the war danger is heightened by the fact that Joe Biden is up for re-election, and can’t be seen to be losing the war in Ukraine. He said that “the danger of nuclear war is greatly exacerbated by false narratives,” such as the one where we can use tactical nukes to make Russia back down. The EMP generated from a single nuclear weapon, detonated above the U.S., could take out our entire electrical power grid, all solid-state circuitry and computers. An 800-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated directly over a target such as Manhattan would ignite a firestorm of 100-150 square miles. Each side has thousands of nukes, and the resulting smoke would form a global stratospheric layer, halting agriculture for 10 years, in what is called “nuclear famine.”

George Koo, retired specialist in U.S.-China trade, echoed Colonel Black: The U.S. has a tendency to say one thing and do the opposite. He said that the U.S. is sending a signal to the Philippines and Taiwan, encouraging them to start proxy wars with China. The P.R.C. government fully recognizes who is behind this. They will take out U.S. naval forces in their neighborhood in response.

Humanity for Peace coordinator Anastasia Battle presented a report on the March 2 meeting in Detroit, “Emergency Conference for Peace in Gaza: The Children of God Cry Out for Justice,” at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, the historic church of C.L. Franklin, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in 1966. Nine videos of the speakers are now available on YouTube.

Ray McGovern, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, reminded the participants that President John F. Kennedy, during his June 10, 1963 speech at American University, warned that we should never give an adversary a choice between humiliating defeat, and nuclear war. Now this very choice is being presented to Biden at re-election time. He presented his assessment of Vladimir Putin: “I would say he’s a statesman, and he’s a pretty cool customer.” McGovern went on to wryly quote former President George W. Bush: “Don’t ‘misunderestimate’ the Russians.”

McGovern presented some provocative speculation about the recent resignation of State Department harpy Victoria Nuland. He pointed out that we haven’t seen the entire leak from the German officers. If Russia intercepted it, so did the NSA. Maybe Nuland was working behind everyone’s back with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to transfer Taurus missiles to Ukraine. McGovern emphasized that this is speculation, but as likely an explanation as any.

This was followed by a discussion session in which many new participants introduced themselves. In conclusion, Helga Zepp-LaRouche recommended that the Americans ally with the Global South. “The signs of hope are small, but sometimes when you are in a crisis, even small signs of hope can cause a shift.” She reported, as such a sign of hope, the growing number of leaders who have endorsed Lyndon LaRouche’s Oasis Plan for peace in Southwest Asia.


A New Approach Is Needed For Gaza — The Oasis Plan

Watch, study and share the Oasis Plan: thelarouche.org/oasis

We must answer the question, “Are we an intelligent species, or not?” If so, the answer is to bring forward more voices for the Oasis Plan, based on the principle that development is the name of peace.


“Knew or Should Have Known”: Governments Complicit in Genocide Will Not Be Able to Plead Ignorance at the Coming Nuremberg Tribunal

February 4, 2024–We summarize the strategic situation, and what must be done to immediately reverse the current rush to genocide and global war, as follows:

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on Jan. 26, 2024 that it is plausible that genocide is actively being carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza, as charged by the government of South Africa.

South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor explained on Jan. 31 that the ICJ’s order means that “Third States must, therefore, also act independently and immediately to prevent genocide by Israel and to ensure that they are not themselves in violation of the Genocide Convention by aiding or assisting in the commission of genocide. This necessarily imposes an obligation on all States to cease funding and facilitating Israel’s military actions, which are plausibly genocidal.”

ICJ rulings are binding on participating governments and responsible officials in those governments, and Israel was given 30 days to report back to the Court and document its compliance with the Court’s Order.

Instead of following the Court’s requirements, Israel and its principal international allies have arrogantly flouted those rulings from the moment they were issued on Jan. 26, 2024.

On Jan. 26, the very day that the ICJ Order was issued, the governments of Israel and the United States colluded to suspend all funding to UNRWA, which provides the vast majority of the life-and-death humanitarian aid for Gaza, doing this on the basis of a questionable Israeli dossier charging a dozen UNWRA employees (out of 13,000 in Gaza and 30,000 in the region) with working with Hamas, a secret dossier which has yet to be made public.

A total of 17 countries plus the European Union (United States, Germany, Sweden, Japan, France, Switzerland, Canada, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Austria, Finland, New Zealand, Iceland, Romania, Estonia, and the European Union) have now frozen their funding of UNRWA, guaranteeing that the threatened famine now besetting 2.3 million people in Gaza will become an actual famine with hundreds of thousands of deaths, as UNRWA’s funding totally disappears by the end of February.

On Jan. 30, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that they were flooding the tunnels in Gaza with seawater, which will predictably not only kill Hamas and hostages alike but also destroy the possibility of having any fresh water or agriculture in the region for decades.

As of Feb. 4, the forces of the IDF are poised at the outskirts of Rafah in southern Gaza, preparing to launch a full-scale military assault on the over one million desperate Palestinians whom the IDF has driven there from other parts of Gaza, in order to impose a policy that the ICJ has characterized as “plausible genocide” and which therefore could end up being the “final solution to the Palestinian problem.”

The combined military forces of the United States and the United Kingdom – the two countries most directly responsible for financing, arming and unleashing today’s Israeli depopulation war against Palestine – launched air strikes over the weekend of Feb. 3-4 against selected “enemy targets” in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, with a manifest intent of sending a “Shock and Awe” message to terrify the entire world into submission.

These developments now threaten to spread the war in Southwest Asia to Iran and engulf the entire region in war, which could rapidly become a nuclear World War III. Therefore, the following immediate actions are called for:

  1. DEMONSTRATIONS: Demonstrations should be held world-wide in front of the embassies or consulates of the 18 countries which have frozen funding for UNRWA, demanding that they immediately restore that funding, vastly increase the flow of humanitarian aide to Gaza, bring about an immediate and permanent cease-fire, and convene an international conference to develop concrete steps towards establishing a two-state solution for the region based on mutually-beneficial economic development.
  2. CEASEFIRE RESOLUTIONS: City Councils and state legislatures across the United States, and elected bodies in all countries around the world, should follow the example of the City Council of Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S., which on Jan. 31 passed a resolution, which stated that they “support the United Nations implementation of Resolution 377, known as ‘Uniting for Peace,’ which called an emergency session of the General Assembly which voted in favor of ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’ in Gaza.”
  3. CONTACT REPRESENTATIVES: Every Congressman and Senator in the U.S. should be told that they will be thrown out of office if they do not publicly express their adherence to both the Constitution of the United States and to international law to which our nation has subscribed (including the decisions of the ICJ), both of which now demand action to stop the genocide before it goes any further. Elected officials in other countries should also be called on to abide by their corresponding legal and moral obligations.

All governments around the world, all public officials, are now on notice: Not only is it the case that they “should have known” what was happening in Gaza on their watch; they now know. And history – and a likely coming Nuremberg Tribunal – will judge them accordingly.


International Court of Justice Mandates: The Arc of the Moral Universe Bends Towards Justice!

When, today, the nation of Algeria calls upon the United Nations Security Council to give “binding effect” to the just-released mandates of the International Court of Justice regarding the “plausible case” of genocide being committed by the Israeli military in Gaza, will the United States and Britain degrade the citizens of their respective nations, and the world, by their expected exercise of a veto? That would be, in effect, to veto the near-unanimous vote of the highest court in the world. Will the United States and Britain do that this time in the name of “defense of the rule of law?”

Will the United States and Britain, as they and other nations did with the meticulously researched and detailed South Africa petition, decry as “without merit” the legal conclusions and mandates of the panel of judges from Russia, Slovakia, France, Morocco, Somalia, China, India, Jamaica, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Australia, Brazil, South Africa—and the United States itself? In addition to the souls of Palestine, the ghosts of the United Nations personnel who have already given their lives in this mad conflagration will be watching, as will be the eyes of the world.

Now that the International Court of Justice has unequivocally established mandates upon the nation of Israel, a signatory on the 1948 Genocide Convention, with which that government is required to comply within 30 days of the January 26 ruling, it is clear to any reasonably sane person that that could only be done under the conditions of a permanent ceasefire. The shabby attempts by the Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and other publications to say that no cease-fire was explicitly proposed by the court, suggests more about the now-rampant illiteracy of the twenty-first century press, than it does about what the content of the ruling clearly states. For example, if even the first two of the six ICJ mandates’ provisions are considered—“1.) The State of Israel shall, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular:

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical

destruction in whole or in part; and

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;” and

“2.)The State of Israel shall ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described in point 1 above,” —it should be clear to any honest person that these measures can only be accomplished through the immediate cessation of conflict in Gaza.

In addition, there is no longer any escaping the fact, that a significant portion of the elected representatives of the governments of the Trans-Atlantic nations and NATO have placed themselves on the record in supporting the practice of genocide as that has now been identified. The Center for Constitutional Rights, in a November 3 letter warning the American Congress against voting for military aid to Israel, said, “ Please take notice that should you vote in favor of that package, you risk facing criminal and civil liability for aiding and abetting genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law, and may face investigation and prosecution at the International Criminal Court, and in third-states under the principle of universal jurisdiction.” They also appended the following footnote: “Federal Criminal Law. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1091—which was enacted to comply with the United States’ obligation under the Genocide Convention—whoever commits, incites, attempts, or conspires genocide in or outside the United States, is eligible for punishment. See War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2441 (a) and (b).”

Yes, the United States Congress and other American individuals {can} be held accountable. This is, of course the job of the American people, as it will be the job of people in all of the countries throughout the world where governments seek to force compliance with genocide upon their populations, as happened only 80 years ago. The courageous stand of Nelson Mandela’s South Africa on behalf of humanity, and therefore of the Palestinians, must now be adopted by all of us, as we shame the Anglo-American Establishment, and its accomplices, into exposing themselves to the world. And while it is they who are the perpetrators of war and genocide, it is we who are the preventers of it—should we choose to do so.

No business as usual! Cease-fire now! Bring all Nuremberg Criminals to justice! Remember; “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”


Keynote Address – 2024 and 2074: A New Paradigm for the Next Fifty Years

International LaRouche Youth Movement Statement in Support of South Africa

On Saturday, January 20, 2024, the Schiller Institute hosted an International Youth Dialogue to discuss the “10 Principles for A New Development and Security Architecture,” proposed by Schiller Institute Founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Over the course of the dialogue, youth leaders from nations across the globe discussed the historical and epistemological precedents of—as well as the required solutions for—the current, expanding world military and economic crisis, which now threatens to become a global, potentially thermonuclear, catastrophe.

The participants of that youth dialogue now release this statement of unequivocal solidarity with the application of South Africa in the International Court of Justice, which suit has unmistakably helped to bend the course of universal world history towards Justice.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted that, “According to Friedrich Schiller, the great German Poet of Freedom, after whom the Schiller Institute is named, there is no contradiction between being a patriot of your own country and thinking and acting as a world-citizen.”

We young women and men—from Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, Tanzania, Germany, France, Nicaragua, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, El Salvador, Bangladesh, the U.S.A. and several other countries—affirm this elevated conception of patriotism, and recognize that it must be at the core of any substantial development towards international peace, in Southwest Asia and around the world.

Patriotism and world-citizenry combine in the dual invocation of both Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in South Africa’s application. South Africa did not take up its suit as merely an “exceptional” country ready to use its “forces” in order to “police” its cousin Israel. Rather, in the spirit of 1776, South Africa raised its voice as one sovereign nation among many. In the redemptive dimension of its particular history, South Africa represents the species-characteristic capacity of the whole of humanity: the capacity for progressive perfection through moral, cultural and economic development.

Having the sublime courage not to deny its own history of legalized injustice, and accepting the heavy responsibility of its accession to the 1948 Genocide Convention, South Africa has swiftly demonstrated to the world, through the universality of its individual intention, how One can become Many and Many become One; in so doing, South Africa has triumphed over the “logic” of permanent war, through the power of Reason and agapic Love.

In 1963, King warned the United States of an impending “spiritual death,” the result of “this business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane.” King’s warning was given new form by Pope John Paul II, in 1987, when he wrote of “a world which is divided into blocs, sustained by rigid ideologies, and in which instead of interdependence and solidarity different forms of imperialism hold sway.” Pope John Paul II called this “a world subject to structures of sin.”

The illusory power of these “structures of sin” has been radically challenged by the moral authority of South Africa’s suit, confirming Mandela’s statement that “the march towards freedom and justice is irreversible.”

With the aid of South Africa’s moral guidance, we refuse—as King refused—to be “mesmerized by uncertainty.”

We soberly reaffirm Mandela’s imperative:

“Let each one of you and all of our people, give the enemies of peace and liberty no space to take us back to the dark hell of apartheid. It is only disciplined mass action that assures us of the victory we seek. Go back to your factories, schools, mines, and communities; build on the massive energies that recent events in our country have released by strengthening disciplined mass organization. We are going forward.”

Transcript of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s introductory remarks

The following is an edited transcript of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s introductory remarks to an online Schiller Institute International Youth Conference, Jan. 20, 2024.

Hello; let me first of all greet all of you. It is really a big joy to talk to young people from over 20 countries, because right now we are in the most incredible moment in history ever. I know you can say that for many moments of history, but I think we have never been at a time where, on the one side, the dangers to the very existence of mankind have never been so great, but, at the same time, it is also a very joyful and hopeful moment, because we are in a transformation in which one system—the old neo-liberal order, the so-called rules-based order—is clearly failing. We are seeing the emergence of a completely new paradigm which promises to become a much better basis for the relations among countries internationally.

Let me first speak a little bit about what to do about this war danger. The fact is, that, because you have the collapse of the neo-liberal order, those forces that want to keep a unipolar world, or at least a world in which the old system of the rules-based order keeps dominance over the rest of the world—that clearly is not working. We indeed have the danger that the present crises which we see in Ukraine and very emphatically in Southwest Asia, both unfortunately have the potential of getting out of control and, in the worst case, becoming a global nuclear war. If it would come to that—and we must do everything possible to prevent it—it would mean the annihilation of civilization. Because once you have the exchange of nuclear weapons—and I completely refute the idea that something like a tactical, regional nuclear war is possible. Because it is the logic of nuclear war that once one nuclear weapon is used, the likelihood that the entire arsenal of all nuclear forces will be unloaded is extremely high. That would mean that, following such a nuclear exchange, there would be a nuclear winter of about a minimum of ten years, in which all life on Earth would die because of a lack of sun, a lack of food. So, this is why I think the young people, you who have your entire life hopefully ahead of you, have to have a stronger voice in making clear that the powers that be stop a course which is so threatening to the very existence of humanity. 

Therefore, what the Schiller Institute has been trying to do since the war danger has become so absolutely acute—essentially since the war in Ukraine started—we have emphasized very much that we have to teach people in every country on the planet to think about the one mankind first, before thinking about any particular national interest. To think about the one humanity is not a contradiction to being a good patriot, because, according to Friedrich Schiller, for whom the Schiller Institute is named—the great German poet of freedom—there is no contradiction between being a patriot of your own country and thinking and acting as a world citizen.

Now, I have coined a slogan, “World Citizens of All Countries, Unite!” Some of you who are familiar with Karl Marx may remember that he coined the notion “Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!” Since I have the privilege to have been born in the same city as Karl Marx, the oldest city in Germany, Trier, I have just changed that into “World Citizens of All Countries, Unite!” That is not just a slogan. I believe that as we see the tendency of the Global Majority becoming more prominent, we are also in an era in which, while sovereignty is extremely important and will be important for quite some time to come, nevertheless we are already in a period in which you can see that there will come a time in history where nations will be less important. They will not disappear, because culture, language, tradition, art will always play a very important role, but we for sure as a human species will eventually reach an identity that makes us much more conscious of being the one humanity. I will return to that later on.

There is also one philosophical foundation upon which one can think [about] the one humanity; it’s a philosophical method which has been developed by one of my favorite philosophers, Nicolaus of Kues, who was the founder of modern science in Europe, the founder of the sovereign nation-state. He lived in the 15th Century. He developed a method of thinking which he called the Coincidentia Oppositorum, the Coincidence of Opposites. The main idea behind that, is that the human mind, empowered with creative reason, can always think of the higher one than the many. Nicolaus of Cusa was a Cardinal in the Catholic Church and the Foreign Minister of the Vatican of his time. He arrived at this idea from theological considerations; that the one God has more power than all the many He created. But it’s also something you can access if you are not religious, because in mathematics you have also the idea that there can be always a mathematical power which has more power than the many. I think that that is very helpful, and we should discuss this maybe in the discussion period. It’s a very helpful device, especially in a world where you have some people saying, “America first!” Other people say, “My country is the chosen country.” I, coming from Germany, in the meantime am extremely reluctant whenever somebody says, “My country is the best,” because we in Germany did not have such great experiences with that.

But to come at this consideration of thinking about the interest of the one humanity first, I think, is of existential importance when it comes to the danger of nuclear war. Right now, we are in a situation where many people in the West are talking about the coming inevitable war with Russia, with China. You have people in Sweden, Finland, Germany who are saying the war with Russia will come in two years, in three years, on Swedish territory. Just yesterday, the head of the Military Committee of NATO, Admiral Rob Bauer, said that, in NATO, we must have a red alert because of the coming inevitable war with Russia. I think this is obviously propaganda; it’s a narrative, because there is no inevitable danger of a war with Russia. If you look at the reason why people are saying this, it has nothing to do with the actual behavior of Russia or China. It has a lot to do with geopolitics.

If you ask yourself, “How did we come to a situation where the danger of nuclear war is being earnestly discussed, like the head of NATO saying that, or one of the heads of NATO. You have to take it back—and you could take it back a lot longer—but I want to take it back to the end of the so-called Cold War. This was 1989-91, the period of German unification when the Soviet Union disintegrated. At that time, we already were extremely active as the LaRouche Movement, the Schiller Institute, because we had a clear conception, and when the Soviet Union disintegrated, we proposed the Eurasian Landbridge as the basis for a peace order, uniting Europe and Asia through development corridors, which we already called at that time The New Silk Road. That would have been an absolutely realizable conception, because there was no more “enemy”; the communism of the Soviet Union had just disappeared. It would have been possible to at least design a European common house, as [Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev at the time talked about. I will spare you the many aspects of it, but the reality was that our proposal was rejected, because, in the United States and Great Britain, you had the neo-cons, who said, “Oh, wonderful! The Soviet Union is no longer there, now we have won the Cold War, and we can establish a unipolar world, where only we are the dominant power.” There was one fellow in particular who designed this, [Paul] Wolfowitz, one of the defense experts of the United States. He coined the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which was the idea that, now that the West supposedly had won the Cold War, the United States would not allow any other country or group of countries to ever bypass the United States economically, socially, militarily, or otherwise. Unfortunately, that policy went into effect. At that time you had an American historian named [Francis] Fukuyama, who said that this was the end of history. What [these circles] meant by that, was that, given the fact that communism supposedly had failed, the whole world would adopt the neo-liberal economic model and the liberal model of social policy. They basically said, that will mean there will be no more war, there will be the end of history.

The Pope at that time, John Paul II, warned that the West had not won, because the whole world was still under the rule of the structures of sin; that the structures of sin did not only exist in the Soviet Union, but they also existed in the West. The Pope said, if you don’t believe it, look at the condition of the Third World to see the under-development, the poverty that these structures of sin still rule.

In the beginning of the 1990s, there was no Russia being an enemy, because [Russian] President Yeltsin, who completely implemented the neo-liberal policies, the liberal economic reforms, did exactly what the Western oligarchy wanted from him. So, there was no problem from their standpoint with Russia—except that the demographic curve of Russia collapsed by one million per year, and the Russian economist Sergei Glazyev called that genocide, because the intention was to reduce the Russian population, ruin Russia already then, under the guise of liberal policies. 

China was not an enemy, either, because China was still developing, having made already incredible progress, but it was not yet anywhere near challenging the United States. But then, China became a member of the  [World Trade Organization] WTO, which the Western forces had invited China to join. They did so, because they thought that once China was part of the WTO, they would also adopt the liberal model and become part of “us.” 

That all started to change when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin came to replace Yeltsin, because Putin was determined to undo the liberal reforms, re-establish Russia as a global power, which, under Yeltsin, had basically collapsed. Then they started to say, Putin is really an enemy. And naturally, when China became part of the WTO, it really meant that China all of a sudden had access to all the advanced technologies of the West. It started a big jump in productivity in lifting altogether 850 million people out of poverty in China, which was an incredible civilizational contribution. But eventually, China did not adopt the liberal model of the West, but to the contrary, China turned back to its 5000-year cultural tradition. The Chinese called this “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Naturally, then China was making incredible motion forward. Finally, in 2013, China felt economically strong enough—it had tried earlier, but not succeeded—to offer the rest of the world to participate in the Chinese model. This was when President Xi Jinping, in Kazakhstan, announced the Belt and Road Initiative. Then, the economic development started to spread from China. They offered many economic cooperation agreements with the countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. By about 2017, the West really started to treat China as an adversary.

We observed this very closely, because we had our own plan for a World Landbridge, for a Eurasian Landbridge extending into all continents, which we published in 2014 as a book called The New Silk Road Becomes the World Landbridge. We were quite surprised that, for the first four years, there was almost no coverage about the New Silk Road in the Western media. But then, at the end of 2017, all the security papers [strategic reports and analyses—ed.]—of the US first, and then all the European allies—started to treat China as an adversary, as a competitor, but also more and more as a threat.

The effort to maintain the unipolar world was expressed by, among other things,  altogether five eastward extensions of NATO. While the West had promised that NATO would not move an inch to the east after the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO moved 1000 kilometers to the east; closer and closer to the borders of Russia. In 2014, the Western powers made the Maidan coup, which was a fascist coup financed by—among others—the US State Department for $5 billion. This was admitted to by [then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs] Victoria Nuland. The idea was that NATO would extend into Ukraine. From the standpoint of the security interests of Russia, this was unacceptable, because it would be like during the Cuban Missile Crisis [in 1962], when the Soviet Union brought their missiles, which were nuclear-armed, to Cuba. It came to a similar crisis. It should be obvious to anybody that, if NATO is trying to do the same thing the other way around by bringing offensive weapons systems to the border of Russia, this would be a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. This is when the war in Ukraine really started; it started actually in 2014.

After that, the sanctions regime against Russia became more brutal all the time. Eventually, this even led to the weaponization of the dollar after Russia’s special military operation had started on February 24, 2022. At that point, we entered the present showdown phase of the situation. The Western democracies—and I almost have to put the word democracies in quotations—tried all the time to pull the majority of the Global South countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia into the camp of the so-called democracies. But the countries of the Global South looked at this whole situation, and, since they had been the victims of colonialism for almost 600 years, they did not buy the narrative put out by the US and European media. They refused to take the side of the West, basically insisting they would remain neutral. From that time, there was an absolute explosion in the tradition and memory of the Non-Aligned Movement. The spirit of Bandung, the first Afro-Asian conference of 1955, came back with a vengeance, one can say. The countries of the Global South more and more were being encouraged by China, because they had for the first time an alternative for development. For all these years before, the West had not given them credit to build infrastructure. Why did the Europeans not, in the years after the Second World War, give them long-term, low-interest credits to build infrastructure—ports, railways, industrial parks? They did not. Instead, they had the IMF conditionalities, which meant that the so-called Third World countries would have to spend the money they made from exporting raw materials, not to invest in health systems, not to invest in infrastructure, but to pay their debt to the banks of the Paris Club first.

So, therefore, what then happened is that the Global South became stronger and stronger; the countries of the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—became more active. Eventually, at the end of last year, in the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, they decided to become the BRICS+. From January 1st of this year, it’s the BRICS-10. Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia (which is in the process of becoming a member), the Emirates, and Iran are all members of the BRICS. And about 30–40 more countries have already applied to become part of the new economic system, which is also intending to create a new reserve currency, to have their own economic system. After the weaponization of the dollar, when the US and European banks confiscated about $300 billion of Russian assets, and $9.5 billion of Afghanistan assets, these countries started to think maybe it’s not such a safe thing to have your assets in dollars; maybe we should have trade in our own currencies—rupees, reals, rubles, and others. 

Basically, that is where we are right now, because this year Russia has the chairmanship of the BRICS+, and I absolutely expect that in the present situation the BRICS will make a gigantic step forward to become a new economic system. This is a system which is very different than the so-called rules-based order, because they do not have a secretariat, they do not have a common policy they want to impose on the rest of the world, but among them, they respect each other’s sovereignty, the different social systems, that every country can choose their own path for development.

I think there has to be another point in the picture. With the recent suit by South Africa against Israel for committing genocide in Gaza, this is a world-historic event, because, as it has been stated by many people, how can you deny that there is genocide going on in Gaza when the TV stations of the whole world are streaming live what is going on in Gaza every day? When you seal off a tiny strip of land, and you make sure that for three-plus months no food, no electricity, no medicine, no water is coming in, and even the United Nations is saying that it is expected that the number of people dying from disease as a result of this will be much higher than the number of those who will have died from the bombings, the intent is very clear. So, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the South African government presented this case with 84 pages documenting what is going on in Gaza. I watched the first three hours of the presentation and some of the second three hours. I have never seen such an airtight legal argument, not only showing the dimension of the humanitarian crisis, but also the clear intent. When you have all the top officials of Israel talking about the Amalek, talking about animals, that nobody should survive, and then seeing the soldiers dancing in a frenzy— Anyway, I think the significance of this is historic, because it proves that the country of South Africa, which went through apartheid and overcame a system of racism of the worst kind, has taken the leadership for the whole world, while the West, those countries with the so-called high moral standard talking about democracy and human rights, when confronted with this incredible situation in Gaza, are covering up and not bringing it to the ICJ. It was South Africa which saved the honor of humanity. That is symptomatic of the kind of change we are seeing in the world right now. I think this will have reverberations, because the whole Global Majority is siding with South Africa. And I’m very sad to say that Germany took the wrong side in this battle by siding with the United States and Israel, with the mistaken argument that, because Germany committed a genocide more than 80 years ago, that we have to stand by the side of Israel, no matter what they do. This is a wrong idea, and I’m very saddened by it. Hopefully, we can remedy it.

I hope we can remedy it, because there is something positive to be reported from Germany. That is that—actually, almost unexpectedly—a couple of weeks ago, the German farmers started to take to the streets to protest against cuts in their various budgets and subsidies for fuel which threaten to bankrupt them. They are now on the streets; they had on one day more than 100,000 tractors out. They basically blocked all the main highways. They had one full week of demonstrations, and it is not stopping. They are now uniting with the truckers, who are also protesting, as well as many other segments of the population also supporting them, because their own existence is at stake as well. The bakers, the restaurant owners, other categories. Hopefully, the industrialists will realize they are in a similar position, because this present neo-liberal system is threatening Germany to crash completely against the wall.

Now, let me make another point. I think what we see right now with the fight of the German farmers and the fight of the Global South, is actually the same fight. Now, that may not be apparent to people in Bavaria or people in Somalia; they may not look at it this way. But actually, if you really understand what is going on, it is the same fight. Because, what are the countries of the Global South fighting against? They are fighting against a system of control of the terms of trade. They are now demanding that every country of the developing sector has the right, not only to develop their own resources, but to increase the production chain, the value chain in their own countries by developing industry, agriculture, infrastructure, building new cities, going into new areas of science and technology. In other words, becoming a middle-income country in the near future. Who is trying to block that? It’s the institutions of finance, of Wall Street, the City of London, it’s the military-industrial complex of the North, of NATO, and the food cartels. If you look at the charts of who are the powers that be in Wall Street, in the City of London, and other financial centers, these complexes finance military-industrial and food cartels and reinsurance companies. They are so interwoven that you cannot separate them one iota.

Therefore, the farmers who are fighting against these same cartels and the developing countries are fighting against that same thing. They have much more in common than meets the eye. One of the things we want to accomplish is to match these two powerful motions to become one, because the only way, in my view, to get out of this crisis, is by uniting the people of Europe and the United States with the people of the Global South. I cannot see any other solution, because that is the one New Paradigm we have to accomplish. We have to come to this New Paradigm by ending the 600 years of colonial rule for the Global South. 

Let me quickly introduce my Ten Principles, because about two years ago, I started to suggest a new security and development architecture which has to replace the present geopolitical order. I would like if some of you have thought about it already, that we discuss how to actually put such a new security order on the table. The Ten Principles which I proposed: First of all, the absolute sovereignty of every country needs to be respected. There must the absolute eradication of poverty on the whole planet. A universal health system in every country; universal education for every newborn child and adult. A credit system which can finance that. A World Landbridge to bring infrastructure to all corners of the planet. And then three philosophical ideas—namely, this method of the Coincidence of Opposites as a method of solving problems, and the discussion of how to find out the truth. How do you differentiate between opinion and narrative, and the actual truth? And there is a method which natural science gives us right now as a way of indeed finding the truth and the effect of ideas in the physical universe. And finally, the discussion about the image of man; that man is good by nature. That is not too long a discussion, but we can come back to it in the Q&A. 

Let me introduce one other train of thought. That is, I want to encourage all of you, and actually excite you and interest you to study the ideas of my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche. Because the fact that our movement exists at all is a miracle. We were supposed to be smashed and not exist, eradicated from the face of the Earth. Why? Because Lyndon LaRouche had developed a method of thinking which is the way to set people free. It’s how to unleash your own creativity and to give you the key that actually almost everybody can become a genius; however, it requires a certain amount of industriousness, it’s not falling like manna from heaven. But it does require work. 

Let me give you a couple of ideas of why I’m saying that. Our movement is based on the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, who developed a method of thinking which is based on physical economy, it’s based on a method of identifying the axioms of thinking, not just going by what people say, but immediately looking at it analytically. Identify the axioms and assumptions on which certain statements are made. That way, you find an unmistaken key to every area of knowledge. That method of thinking enabled him to already make a prognosis about the present situation today, where we have a systemic collapse of the neo-liberal order. He already identified that in 1971, when President Nixon decoupled the dollar from the gold standard and introduced floating exchange rates. He recognized that the taking down of the old Bretton Woods system—the credit system which was established in the postwar period—and replacing it with a system which was entirely oriented towards profit maximization and therefore the disrespect for the common interest of the general population, would lead inevitably to a new depression, a new fascism, and the danger of a new nuclear war, unless you would replace this system with a completely different economic order. 

I can only encourage you to look into the writings of what we have published in the last 50 years to see how absolutely accurate he was in predicting every turn of the present financial system to the worse. Many newspapers and liberal economists had insisted that no economist could ever know that the world financial system would enter the present crisis. We can prove that that is not true, because all the steps which occurred, he identified with absolute precision. The reason why the United States economy is in such a poor condition, except for its military-industrial complex, is because they did the out-sourcing of their production to cheap labor markets. They shifted from an orientation of the common good to a shareholder-value society. They changed from having full-chain production in your own country; they changed to the just-in-time mode. They went more and more to the idea that money makes money, which ended up in the derivatives trade, which now amounts to $2 quadrillion in outstanding derivatives contracts, which are unpayable. That is why we are right now in danger of a total collapse of the financial system.

LaRouche’s method of thinking is very much associated with understanding what is it that moves society forward. What is the source of wealth? Namely, that is entirely the creative powers of the individual which are able again and again to come up with new ideas, identifying qualitative breakthroughs in science, in great art; identifying principles which give us new insight in how the physical universe works. When we apply these principles in the production process, it leads to an increase of the productivity of the people, of the industrial capacity, and the productivity in general, leading to an increase in physical wealth again and again. So, it is not the possession of raw materials; it is not the control of the terms of trade—what the free market economists are saying. It is entirely the ability of the human mind to use its creative powers to make discoveries of physical principles, qualitatively new principles. Then applying them in production and in this way increase the power of man over nature and over the universe. That is the right which has been denied to the developing countries until the recent struggle, in which the Global South is insisting that you have to apply your innate right to apply this principle to your own economies.

This is basically associated with the image of man. The ecologists are trying to convince people that man is a parasite; that man is a burden to nature. Some even go so far as to say that women should not have children anymore, because every newborn child is a burden to nature. There are books like that in Germany and the US. Some other people are saying that man is only the steward of nature, and should phase in not being different than the other species; that even plants have an equal right to human beings. I think this is a fundamentally wrong conception, and Lyndon LaRouche, already very early in his creative work, which lasted, actually, I would say eight decades—that’s about right—very early on, he recognized the importance of space travel. This is very important for the young people today, because we have a huge cultural crisis. There are studies everywhere that young people have a concentration span like a grasshopper; they are married to their electronic devices, and are increasingly incapable of interacting socially; and thinking about a year in their own life which is not located in the here and now. 

Lyndon LaRouche made many speeches about why it is so important to lift the eyes and the mind to the stars and start to think about space science, space travel. The obvious fact which everybody who starts to look into it is aware of, is that our planet Earth will not be livable forever. Because of certain processes in the galaxy and the cycle of Milky Way, sometime in about 2 billion years, our planet will not be so livable anymore. We have to think about expanding in the universe at large. This poses all the right challenges. Just yesterday, the Japanese landed an object on the Moon; it may not function perfectly, but they are now the fifth nation to do so. It is very clear that our present phase of space exploration is just in the baby shoes. Think about two, three, four generations from now, that the idea once we conquer different fuels for space travel, like fusion for example, the travel time to Mars and other planets will become much shorter. Therefore, it will be much more realistic that we explore nearby space. The moment we leave Earth, we are leaving the gravity zone of Earth, and therefore we are entering a relativistic space and time. That completely changes the kinds of physical laws we have to deal with, which Einstein enabled us to even think about. And even before, [Arab philosopher and physician (980–1037)] Ibn Sina had similar ideas, but that’s a different discussion.

If you think about the fact that we, with our lives, not only have to solve the problems of the present transformation of an old order, which is still colonial, into a New Paradigm where the one humanity will be the first consideration. Later, when we think about space travel, the concept of one humanity will become much more obvious. We should not think about who controls the Moon or other such silly headlines you can read these days, or who will weaponize space to better conduct war on Earth from space. No, this comes to the very question of the identity, of who are we in the universe? When you look, for example, at what the Hubble Telescope found, or now the James Webb Telescope, there are at least two trillion galaxies. This, for me, is one of the most mind-boggling ideas. When you look up to the stars, and you think there are so many stars. But this is just a tiny tip of the iceberg. Two trillion galaxies—we are just at the very beginning of exploring what the universe is all about; how it functions, and how we can maintain the existence of the human species in an immortal way.

Obviously, each of us is mortal. We are born, and we die. And the short span between these two occurrences, most people are wasting it, because, before they even get to the idea that they could contribute something lasting with their life, they become old and senile and they have missed the opportunity to do so. But, the reality is, that once you understand that our identity as human beings is not limited to our biological existence, but that when we truly develop our creative potential and contribute some knowledge to the existing body of knowledge of mankind as a whole, and in this way increase the ability of mankind for a durable existence, this exists even after we are dead. In this way, we are creating immortal ideas in science, in art, that we contribute to the immortality of the human species at large, but also participate in that immortality if we produce such valid ideas.

I have an absolutely optimistic view about the future of mankind, because I think that once we create a world where geopolitical confrontation is overcome by the idea that we have new relations among nations respecting the other and bringing forward the best traditions; that we have a dialogue of civilizations and cultures where each nation and each civilization actualizes the best they have ever produced in terms of culture, poetry, science, all the beautiful things people in past generations have produced; and we enter a dialogue with the other nations to bring forward the best they ever have produced, then we will really grow up. The present situation in the world I always compare with four-year old boys. I have a horror of those four-year old boys, because they tend to kick each other. We, as nations, should not behave like four-year old boys. When we develop our creativity in the way I was trying to convey before, relating to the creative potential of the other person, the other nation, and vice versa, we will enter the age of adulthood of mankind. There is absolutely no limit to what we can accomplish as the only creative species known in the universe so far.

I think that is where we are, on the verge of reaching this. This is why I’m saying this is the most exciting moment in history. While the danger of complete extinction in a nuclear war has never existed as now, at the same time, if we overcome this present difficulty—because in the long arc of history, it’s not more than a difficulty—and actually truly realize what we are as a creative species, I think that we will enter a period of a new renaissance which will be much more human and much more beautiful than anything we have experienced so far. And I want to invite you to be part of it, and think about yourself as shaping it, of not just sitting there watching how it develops. Become an active part in making our world more human, more livable, and more beautiful. Thank you.


The Military-Financial Complex Is Bloated on Blood Money from Wars

This report was prepared by an EIR Research Team · December 22, 2023

Taxpayers in the United States and NATO nations support vast sums of money thrown away annually to the military-industrial-financial complex, for economic waste and physical destruction. This provides a tremendous bonanza to four Wall Street financial giants and banks that are the dominant stockholders of all the biggest war producers, and the ones driving the perpetual wars to maintain their bankrupt financial system with its $2 quadrillion speculative bubble. They are picking your pocket to fund the wars, and keep their bubble alive – and they are engaging in genocide and population wars.

In the U.S., the defense budget was $858 billion in 2023, and it is rapidly heading towards $1 trillion per year. Meanwhile our highways and railroads, our bridges and tunnels, our hospitals and schools are crumbling. And the rest of the world also desperately needs American technology and capital goods to help their development, working with China and Russia, rather than driving the planet towards World War III against them.

Here’s the face of the enemy of mankind, the modern-day Military-Financial Complex:

They Are Owned by Wall Street Speculators

They Are Addicted to Blood Money For Wars

Those Resources Should Be Used For People, Not Wars

Related Material

It’s Time To Turn the Military-Industrial Complex into Peace Production · by Dennis Small

Turn the Military-Financial Complex to Useful Production · by Richard Freeman, Paul Gallagher, Carl Osgood, and Dennis Small

Eisenhower’s 1953 ‘Chance for Peace’ — War Producers Can Retool for Humanity · by Richard Freeman and John Scialdone


Webcast: Intensify Efforts for LaRouche’s Oasis Plan to End War in SW Asia

Join the initiatives of Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute to urgently mobilize for an immediate ceasefire, a comprehensive Middle East peace conference, a two-state solution, and the implementation of LaRouche’s Oasis Plan.


Webcast: Days of Decision – Build a Mass Movement for Peace Through Development

A series of diplomatic meetings occurred yesterday, with more scheduled for today and the coming days ahead, of leaders seeking a strategy to find an exit from the vicious cycle of violence, which did not begin on October 7, but has proceeded continuously since the British left Palestine in 1948. An agreement for an extended ceasefire is a crucial first step, which could be enforced by the U.S., which would be supported by most nations.

A two-day extension of the “Humanitarian Pause“ was announced Monday evening, Nov. 27, thereby extending the pause until Thursday morning, Nov. 30. The question lingering in front of the world, however, remains: Can this temporary pause be turned into a real, lasting peace? And what’s required to actually achieve that?

Nov. 29 will see the convening of a high-level meeting of United Nations Security Council in New York, to be specially chaired by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In addition, members of the Arab League and Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), whose foreign ministers have recently visited most members of the Security Council, will be in attendance, likely making the event another step forward in the flurry of global diplomatic activity underway.

In discussion with associates on Nov 27, Helga Zepp-LaRouche reminded people that this conflict in Gaza, as with the war in Ukraine, are pawns of today’s reigning unipolar world order, and are thus being pushed in ways to further a much larger geopolitical agenda. This is also why it is so dangerous, because as the system continues to collapse before the eyes of the world, there are some who are willing to go to the end of the Earth to maintain their control—even if that includes world war.

Therefore, the United States and other Western nations must be brought to see other nations, particularly rising powers such as Russia and China, not as threats to “our system” but as allies in an effort to improve the whole world. Those who are stuck in a geopolitical confrontation are like “robots,” Zepp-LaRouche said, “they have no idea of culture nor of justice,” and they have no respect for the cultures of other nations.

“It is high time that the United States goes back to its foreign policy of John Quincy Adams, and that Europe likewise really starts to overcome the remnants of colonialism,” she continued. These underlying axioms are the biggest obstacle for Western societies’ ability to see a solution out of this crisis, Zepp-LaRouche said: “They do not really take into consideration the fact that the Global South has a fundamental right to overcome poverty, and that their decision, which was reinforced by China’s rise and the economic power of China … that they have the absolute right to control their own resources, increase the value chain in their own countries by reprocessing and the creation of semi-finished and finished products, and by building up real, full-fledged economies in their own country to increase the living standard of the entire population.”

Therefore, the way to shift the world today is to “get Europe and the United States to really understand that cooperation with the Global South, and not confrontation, is the easy way to get out of this whole war danger and establish a new paradigm among the nations of the world.”

The principles that are the key to mutual security based on common economic development were exemplified by Lyndon LaRouche in his Oasis Plan. These principles can be applied globally within the framework of a New Security and Development Architecture and the underlying Ten Principles of Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

Join the Schiller Institute in these crucial days and help build a mass movement for peace through development.


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