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Webcast: On the Danger of Nuclear War: If There Are No Voices Speaking Out, It May Soon Be Too Late!

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, issued an impassioned plea for viewers to “Wake up…and speak out” about the threat of nuclear annihilation coming from NATO war hawks who are using Ukraine to target Russia.  One would have expected, she said, that as we have moved one step closer to nuclear annihilation, there would be voices warning about this in the West.  But the change in U.S. policy, to adopt a “first-use nuclear doctrine”, has not been covered; and when Putin responded by saying he now has to reconsider Russia’s policy, U.S. officials such as Defense Secretary Austin and the media accused Putin of “sabre-rattling”, lying that he threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

She urged that viewers participate in the SI mobilization by:

1.) Supporting her call for accepting Pope Francis’ offer of the Vatican as a neutral venue for negotiations;

2.) Study and circulate the “10 Fundamental Principles” she drafted, as a discussion document, to put in place a new security and development architecture; and

3.) organize for the EIR event on Saturday, Dec. 17, “Peace on Earth, or Humanity’s Doom? The Case for Negotiations.” 


Live event: Peace On Earth, Or Humanity’s Doom? The Case for Negotiations

Saturday, December 17, 2022 — 11am eastern

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks made last Friday, Dec. 9, in the wake of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s admission that the 2015 Minsk Agreements regarding Ukraine were never intended to be upheld, have sent shock waves throughout the world. Putin said, “If Russia does not use nuclear weapons first, it won’t use them second, either,” and that perhaps Russia should abandon its policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons and adopt the U.S. policy of “first strike” thermonuclear war. (The US policy, it should be noted, also allows for fighting war even against powers without nuclear weapons, and even if the United States is not attacked with nuclear weapons.)

Sleepwalkers in America and Europe should wake up. Did you know that “first use against everybody” is the U.S. policy? Do you support that? Do you know that the world has suddenly become a much more dangerous place than ten days ago.

Why? The trust between Russia and the United States/NATO has evaporated to the point that, in the words of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, winner of the 2022 Freedom of Expression Award of the national Journalists Club of Mexico, “one more step, even an unintended mistake, one misreading by one side or the other, could trigger the launching of the entire nuclear arsenals of both sides, leading to a global nuclear war, followed by a nuclear winter of about ten years, which would mean that in all likelihood not one human being would survive.” Is all of human history to be held hostage by this folly?

Join those who say no to war, those who say there is another path, that there are principles of reason and goodness that are more powerful than the hubris of failed empires. The road to peace must be paved “with malice toward none; with charity for all.” What principles must inform the negotiation process among the furiously raging nations? The Saturday symposium, open to all, is intended to discuss “where we go from here.”

Watch the livestream on schillerinstitute.com

Speakers to include: Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder, Schiller Institute; Col. Richard. H. Black (ret.), former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division and former Virginia State Senator; and Ray McGovern, former senior analyst, U.S. Central intelligence Agency (CIA), founding member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Diane Sare, candidate for U.S. Senate from New York; Harley Schlanger, “The LaRouche Organization Daily Update.”

Background Material

One Step Away From the Nuclear Annihilation of Mankind!” by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture” by Helga Zepp-LaRouche


Col. Richard Black Statement on Turkey/Syria Earthquake

Col. Richard Black: On Monday, there was a terrible earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. It was a 7.8 on the Richter scale; a shallow earthquake that was very damaging. It has hit Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, and done enormous damage and created many casualties. The Biden administration has sent aid to Turkey, has reached out to them, has aid workers going there. However, the United States State Department chose this time of death and suffering to make a very antagonistic statement towards the people of Syria. There was a fellow Ned Price, a spokesman for the State Department, who said, “I will make the point that it will be quite ironic if not counterproductive for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now. Gassing and slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering they’ve endured.”

I have got to tell you, I have never seen such barbaric response to a tragedy where you literally have people in Aleppo city, Syria who are looking up at piles of concrete, their lives are coming to an end, they’re freezing in the cold. They’re there without food, without water, and they’re dying. Meanwhile, the State Department takes that opportunity to re-emphasize the fact that we are bitter because we could not impose our will on the Syrian people. It was in 2020 that the United States imposed the Syria sanctions out of anger at the fact that Syria had driven back the ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists that the United States had supported, and was trying to overwhelm the government with. So, now the State Department looks at this as an opportunity to simply ratchet up the regime of starvation and freezing that we have imposed on Syria through the cruel Caesar sanctions.

I’m quite disgusted by the actions of the United States State Department. It is really unbecoming of any civilized nation that they would choose this moment to take out their vengeance on the poor suffering people of Syria. Thank you.


US Col. Richard Black: “Never Closer to Nuclear War”

Mike Billington of Executive Intelligence Review interviews U.S. Col. Richard Black on the tremendous danger of nuclear war.


Ray McGovern: “Know Where You Stand, And Stand There!”

Watch the February 4 Schiller Institute conference

Ray McGovern: Thank you, Dennis. I’m very happy to be with you. The title of my little talk here, “Know Where You Stand, and Stand There,” comes from a commencement address by my friend and tutor and mentor, Father Dan Berrigan. Actually, it doesn’t come from that commencement address, it is the sum and total of that commencement address. He was asked by a very prestigious university to come and give the commencement address; this was about four decades ago. He came, and he stood up there, and he said those words—“Know where you stand, and stand there.” And then he very politely left and sat down with the audience. That’s all you really need to know, folks. You need to know where you stand, and stand there.

Now, sometimes we’re a little worried. Nonviolence is good, but sometimes when we put ourselves in other people’s faces and they react with a very great anger, we too are tempted to get angry. Not only at their reaction, but at the whole concept of the widespread injustice throughout the world. So, I would just encourage us all to remember that anger is a virtue. None other than Thomas Aquinas said so. He said, “Anger is a virtue, but you have to have just so much of it.” He warned against too much anger—iracundia—always being ticked off, that was the Latin word. But he also warned about “unreasoned patience”—that’s the best we could do from the Latin. He said “Unreasoned patience sows the seeds of vice, nourishes negligence, and encourages good people to tolerate bad people, or the bad things that people do. I don’t really think there are bad people.”

So, what we need to do here is figure out how to act; how to act nonviolently and with just the right dosage of the virtue of anger. I’m not the greatest representative of what is now called by José Vega and others “interventions.” Interventions in the same sense of the word, people are pretty crazy in Washington. But I’ll give you some personal examples of how I tried to stand up and do what Dan Berrigan suggested.

First slide, please. This is a photo of me standing up, turning my back to Hillary Clinton, who you can see off my left shoulder. She was talking about repression in Iran, and suffice it to say, there was great repression exercised on me simply for standing up, not saying a word, nonviolently again but angry. I was beat up pretty badly, but I didn’t even have to stay in jail that night. I got to go home. I had to go to the hospital first, and interestingly enough, the doctor said, “Now, you were beaten up. You have to report this to the authorities.” I said, “To State Department security? They did it!”

Second slide, please. Here I wasn’t so lucky; I did have to spend the night in jail. But that’s OK; good things happen in jail. You get to feel what other people feel being all closed up and unfree. What are the lessons here? Well, this particular photo was taken after I stood up and intervened, so to speak, with the Senate Intelligence Committee before they approved the nomination of torturer-in-chief Gina Haspel to be the new CIA director five or six years ago. What encouraged me to do that? Just the obscenity of the whole thing. Hello! So, what do you do in situations like that? Well, number one, you kind of, as you can see, you blend in with the indigenous to get in. You put your best wedding suit on, which I had. Number two, you stay away from known interveners—Code Pink, for example. You let them sit over in a corner; you go separately. Number three, you hope that one of those Code Pinkers has a camera—and indeed, one did. Therefore, this picture, after they had taken me out of the hearing room. And what I have as number four here, I was just thinking today. People have been asking me, “What’s this green band you have on there, Ray?” Let me read it to you. “Rachel Corrie, April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003.” Suffice it to say that if 23-year old Rachel Corrie can stand up to Israeli bulldozers about to demolish yet another Palestinian home, and then, that Israeli bulldozer being instructed to back up over Rachel to make sure that her back was broken. Three days before the attack on Iraq, so it would not make the headlines. Well, if Rachel Corrie can do that, McGovern, you can do that, too. At least you’re not going to get run over, yet at least, by an Israeli bulldozer.

We Catholics call this a sacramental; something that reminds you of a grace-giving event, or a grace-giving thing, or a grace-giving person like Rachel Corrie. Her dad gave me this bracelet three months after she was killed.

I want to also suggest that those of you who are interested in some action, go to all the think tank presentations as José Vega has started to do. Here’s one that I’d like to show you. There’s a little clip of an event at John Podesta’s and Hillary Clinton’s old think tank. I went to all those things as long as I lived in Washington. Sometimes I got to ask questions, if they were never welcome. This time, they didn’t recognize me, they didn’t let me ask a question. But I hung around; you might say “Nevertheless, I persisted.” So, I went up to Adam Schiff, then-head of the House Intelligence Committee, and asked him about Russian hacking, which now has been conclusively disproven. Could we show this two-minute clip? If you fall asleep, you’ll miss the whole thing.

MCGOVERN: My name is Ray McGovern. I served in CIA under seven Presidents and nine directors.

ADAM SCHIFF: Thank you very much.

MCGOVERN: We have a little alumni group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. We’ve been following this issue very closely. One of our members is the former technical director of NSA. I’m interested in, one week ago, when the President said this—I don’t want to misquote him—“The conclusions of the Intelligence Committee with respect to Russian hacking were not conclusive regarding WikiLeaks.” In other words, there’s a big gap between alleged Russian hacking and WikiLeaks. The Intelligence Committee does not know how or if that information—to the degree it exists—got to WikiLeaks. Now, you assert as flat fact that Russia did this. Do you know more than Obama?

SCHIFF: Well, I would never claim to know more than Obama. I think he’s a brilliant man.

MCGOVERN: That’s a very serious question.

SCHIFF: It’s a serious question. I have every confidence in the intelligence of Russian hacking of both the DNC as well as John Podesta.

MCGOVERN: James Clapper is a convicted—

SCHIFF: Do you want to hear the answer? I will, and while I can’t go into the classified information, I have every confidence that the Russians have used WikiLeaks. Whether Julian Assange was a known participant, or as the Russians describe a useful idiot, that we will hopefully find out. But, I don’t have any question in the conclusions of the Intelligence Committee.

MCGOVERN: You have every confidence, but no evidence, is that right?

SCHIFF: No, I can’t share the evidence with you.

MCGOVERN: That’s bogus. [end video]

MCGOVERN [live]: Well, I have to concede now after all these years, that Schiff said one thing that was true. That was that he couldn’t share that information with me, because it didn’t exist.

What’s the lesson here? I just want to encourage everyone—go; go to these meetings; go to these think tanks, and nevertheless persist. I didn’t know the camera was still on. I didn’t know that C-Span still had audio. But I did it, and I’m glad because that was captured.

Now, what else? I’m going to read in conclusion, a poem written by my mentor, Dan Berrigan, a quote from whom we started this little talk. It’s called, “Some.” I don’t want to spoil it for you; it’s not very long, but I do want to have a photo up as backdrop. Could we have that slide #4 please.

SOME

Some stood up once and sat down.

Some walked a mile and walked away.

Some stood up twice and sat down

I’ve had it, they said.

Some walked two miles and walked away

It’s too much, they cried.

Some stood and stood and stood.

They were taken for dummies

They were taken for fools

They were taken for being taken in.

Some walked and walked and walked.

They walked the earth

They walked the waters

They walked the air.

Why do you stand?

they were asked, and

Why do you walk?

Because of the children, they said, and

Because of the heart, and

Because of the bread.

Because

the cause

is the heart’s beat

and the children born

and the risen bread.

[photo] You’re looking at a little boy, two years old, the age of our youngest of ten grandchildren. He was trying to escape the oppression, the war in Syria. He was of Kurdish origin, the stepchildren of all wars. And suffice it to say, he drowned with his big brother and his mother, trying to get to Greece. Alan Kurdi is his name. “Because of the children,” they said. So, nevertheless, we must persist, because of the children. And we must look for moral leadership; but absent moral leadership, we’re it. There’s no other but us. We can appeal—for example, I have appealed to Pope Francis, and that’s appeared on the largest religious network run by Catholics. You can see it on my website—raymcgovern.com. But we can’t wait; we can’t wait for a voice from the Vatican. We have to do what we can ourselves. That’s why I applaud and I welcome the chance to be on every Schiller conference to which I am invited. I applaud all of us, and particularly Helga, for exercising moral leadership at this critical point in time. Thanks very much for your attention.


One Step Away From the Nuclear Annihilation of Mankind!

To all religions, elected officials, civic organizations, and people of good will worldwide

The international Schiller Institute endorses the offer of Pope Francis to use the venue of the Vatican for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine for a diplomatic settlement of the war in Ukraine. The confrontation between the U.S., NATO, and Russia has escalated to the point where one more step, even an unintended mistake, one misreading by one side or the other, could trigger the launching of the entire nuclear arsenals of both sides, leading to a global nuclear war, followed by a nuclear winter of about ten years, which would mean that in all likelihood not one human being would survive.

According to the U.S.-based Arms Control Association, citing senior U.S. Officials: “Biden has decided not to follow through on his 2020 pledge to declare that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies. Instead, he approved a version of a policy from the Obama administration that leaves open the option to use nuclear weapons not only in retaliation to a nuclear attack, but also to respond to non-nuclear threats.”

In response to that change, Russian President Putin declared on December 9, in a press conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan that Russia will reconsider its nuclear doctrine to use nuclear weapons only if the existence of the Russian state is threatened, and may respond to the U.S. doctrine of preemptive strike by adopting the same policy of a preemptive strike. That means we are one step away from a thermonuclear catastrophe.

We call on all people of good will to support the offer of Pope Francis, which has been reiterated by Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, to use the venue of the Vatican for the immediate beginning of peace negotiations, without any preconditions.

This is no longer an issue between Russia and Ukraine, and it never was. The Ukrainian people, like the Russian people, are victims and their suffering must stop immediately. This has become an issue of the entire human species, because if such a nuclear war happens, there will be no survivors.

We call on you to join our request for a diplomatic solution. Also join our campaign to conduct choruses in the whole world to sing the canon for peace, “Dona Nobis Pacem.” May the voices for peace move the hearts and minds of those responsible.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Founder, Schiller Institute
December 12, 2022


Keynote Address — How to Avoid Nuclear War: The Nature of Man

Watch the February 4 Schiller Institute conference

Helga Zepp-LaRouche:

Hello. Let me greet you wherever you may be around the globe. If the so-called “ordinary citizen” would know how close we are to thermonuclear war, and with that the annihilation of mankind and therefore everything what we lived for and who we love, there would be 8 billion people in the streets demanding an immediate end to the madness of those oligarchical interests, who are driving the human species towards extinction.

The only people who would not be in the streets, would be people who have committed themselves to evil. Boris Johnson and his likes would not be in the streets.

The aim of this conference and many similar activities is to create a world movement of world citizens, who, faced with the biggest crisis in the history of the human species, work together all over the world in order to establish a new paradigm of cooperation instead of confrontation, a new paradigm in international relations, that allows for the life and happiness of every human being on the planet.

We must end the war through negotiations immediately, which is why we are organizing worldwide support for the initiative of Pope Francis to offer the venue of the Vatican for negotiations without preconditions. Fortunately, President Lula of Brazil is now forming a peace club of nations of the Global South, who all support the idea of ending the war through diplomacy, and who have clearly refused to be pulled into the geopolitical confrontation between the U.S. and Russia and China. The role of the Pope as the representation of man’s nature as being in the image of God and therefore above politics, is the ecumenical rallying point, which should be strengthened by this peace club, which should be joined by all nations and all organizations, as well as individuals.

The present crisis is not about Ukraine, it is about the attempt to reconquer control over a unipolar world at a moment, when that possibility has irrevocably gone. And it is about the control of the narrative of who is the instigator of this war of aggression; and naturally the Western mainstream media want us to believe that it is Russia who is the sole culprit in this “unprovoked war of aggression” and that everybody who claims that this war has a prehistory dating back at least to 1991, is automatically labelled as a “Putin-agent.” Every person who is not a moron and has lived consciously through the last three-plus decades, must reject this as an insult to his or her intelligence.

Just for refreshing our memories: It should be clear, that whoever is preparing and conducting a war of aggression, especially a potentially nuclear one, commits a Nürnberg crime. Despite the promises not to expand NATO to the East, it was done once it was realized that Putin did not intend to continue the shameful sell-out of Russian interests by Yeltsin. And despite such warnings as that of William Burns from the 1st of February 2008, marked “confidential,” in his capacity as U.S. ambassador in Moscow, that NATO-enlargement would be regarded as a threat by Russia, that it would perceive that as encirclement and fear unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences—the “Drang nach Osten” (the “Drive to the East”), continued.

How hypocritical can politicians in the West be to deny knowledge of the involvement of Victoria Nuland in the 2014 Maidan coup, and her oh-so-ladylike words, “F— the EU” concerning the decision that puppet “Yats” [Arseniy Yatsenyuk] should replace the legitimately elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych!

And should the German BND, the German external secret service, really have been so sloppy as to misplace the records about the activities of the Stezkos, convinced admirers of Stepan Bandera, and their Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and their support through the Gehlen Organization in Munich, the traces of which one finds, once one looks into the Maidan coup? To blame Putin as the aggressor when the West could have prevented the war by enforcing the Minsk Agreement, and then Merkel and Hollande come out and say: “Sorry, we never intended that, we just wanted to win some time to prepare the Ukrainian soldiers for the upcoming war”—which was obviously already regarded as inevitable already in 2014? Merkel and Hollande deserve a place in the Guinness book of records for winning the prize in the destruction of trust in international relations!

Putin had presented his concerns for the security of Russia already to the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and then dramatically on December 17, 2021 to the U.S. and NATO, demanding security guarantees for the core interests of Russia, which were conveniently ignored.

And into what category of behavior falls Boris Johnson intervention in Kiev in March 2022, when there was a readiness to seek a negotiated solution on both sides? Peace-loving or provoking?

The Swiss retired colonel and intelligence expert Jacques Baud just said on February 1 on Sud Radio that the real shift in the Russian strategy occurred last June, when they abandoned the option of negotiations, after they realized that the Anglo-Americans and their allies would not allow the Ukrainians to negotiate peace. Now practically most experts agree, that because of Russia’s perception, that the aim of the West is to “ruin Russia” (Baerbock) “eradicate Russia from the map, to cut it in different entities, for which regime change would be a self-evident precondition, that Russia aims to completely grind the Ukrainian Army. Give Boris Johnson the Nobel Peace Prize for that!

While in the U.S. there are opposing views, if there should be a long war in Ukraine being beefed up with evermore weapons to wear down Russia to the point of collapse, and then have a war with China in 2025 over Taiwan—which could become a world war, as a recent memo of General Mike Minihan suggests; or that a long war in Ukraine would be detrimental to U.S. interest, as discussed in a new study of the Rand Corporation, because a protracted war would absorb key resources such as manpower and money from other more important tasks, such as the coming showdown with China.

While more reality-oriented military, such as U.S. Chief of Staff General Mark Milley and former General Inspector of the Bundeswehr General Harald Kujat strongly argue for the Ukraine war to be ended through negotiations, because the Ukrainian army would have accomplished anything they could have, the real war mongers reveal themselves who have been the driving force behind the scene all along. The Conservative MP and U.K. Defense Committee Chair [Tobias Ellwood], is calling for a direct war between NATO and Russia: “We need to face Russia directly, rather than leaving Ukraine to do all the work.” Former British Shadow Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth, also advertises that NATO must get “boots on the ground,” because “Ukraine must win the war.”

And then there are all these legions of mentally disturbed journalists, who bombard the population around the clock: “See, there are no red lines for the Russians, they did not use nuclear weapons after we send howitzers, not after we send armored personnel carriers, not after we send Leopards and Abrams tanks, so now let’s give the Ukrainians fighter jets—F16s. Yeah, and it is completely OK for them to retake Crimea, which after all is still Ukrainian territory [despite the referendum by the population there, that they voted to be part of Russia]. And who cares about Kosovo?”

It is obvious that Ukraine can’t win this war, and that a continuation only means the horrible dying and suffering of the Ukrainian people. We must realize, that we are still in a situation more dangerous than at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a global nuclear war could happen in the short term if there is an attempt to attack Crimea; or by accident. And even if that were to be avoided, as long as “Global NATO,” now closely allied with the EU, is trying to ruin Russia and contain the rise of China—if needed, by military means.

Why would the rise of China have to be contained? What other crime has China committed than to lift 850 million of its citizens out of poverty and offer other countries of the Global South a development model through the BRI [Belt and Road Initiative]? Since the BRI started to become effective in overcoming underdevelopment in these countries, the security doctrines of the West started to identify Russia and China as “rivals” and “opponents.” What has the subsequent policy of accusations, sanctions, and exclusions accomplished? As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said in his recent annual press conference: “Anything goes. Once revered mechanisms and institutions that were created by the U.S.-led West have been discarded. Free market, fair competition, free enterprise, the unviability of property, and the presumption of innocence; in a word, everything the Western globalization model relied on collapsed overnight. Sanctions have been imposed on Russia and other objectionable countries that do not comply with these tenets and mechanisms. Clearly, sanctions can be imposed on any country which, in one way or another, refuses to mindlessly follow American orders.”

It is obvious however, that the effort to set the “rules-based order”—of which it is completely dubious how these rules are set—against the so-called “autocracies” and “dictatorships,” has generated a devastating blowback to the West. It is not the Russian economy which is collapsing as a result of the sanctions; it is the European and especially the German economy which is threatened with deindustrialization. Rather than being drawn into the geopolitical war on the side of the “democracies,” the vast majority of the Global South, the BRICS+—for which 17 nations have applied for membership—have refused to condemn Russia. And Brazil and Argentina refused to sell ammunition to Germany for the Leopard tanks. And rather than succeeding in splitting China from Russia in its strategic partnership, the spokeswoman of the [Chinese] Foreign Ministry Mao Ning declared on January 30th in a reaction to the decision to send more heavy tanks to Ukraine: “The United States is the main initiator and driving force of the Ukrainian crisis. It continuously supplies heavy and offensive weapons to Ukraine, prolonging the crisis and making it more intense. The U.S. should stop sending weapons there and making profits from the war.”

The result of weaponizing the dollar by confiscating foreign assets in dollar denominations, such as $300 billion from Russia, $9 billion from Afghanistan, is the speeding up of a de-dollarization of international trade and rapid moves to set up an independent international currency. The countries of the BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and others are involved in setting up a new international currency based not only on gold, but also on oil, gas, and other hard commodities; a proposal which was issued by Lyndon LaRouche in 2000. Since the economic engine of the world economy has shifted long since to Asia, and the BRICS—even without the “plus”—already have a higher GDP than the G7, the “Golden Ruble 3.0” and the new currency will carry the momentum of future economic development.

Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, puts his finger on the biggest vulnerability of the present U.S. policy of decoupling and confrontation towards China. Pointing to his own cooperation with China in the 2008 crisis—China at that time was a huge holder of corporate banking and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities—to avoid contagion and a complete meltdown. Such cooperation today is unthinkable, and in that light of the much stronger position of China. China has tripled the size of its economy since 2008, and has vast economic cooperation with 150 countries with the BRI; many of which have shifted their orientation—such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and many countries of the Global South.

So, what will be the outcome of the present crisis, when the Anglo-Americans and NATO want Ukraine to win on the battlefield, which can only be “accomplished” by risking nuclear war with Russia? When Russia for now has given up the hope for a diplomatic solution? It is becoming clearer and clearer, that it is the de facto bankruptcy of the neoliberal financial system that is the driving force behind the desire to escalate the war. If it comes to a new, this time even deeper crisis like 2008, why on earth should the countries who are being attacked, and who have an alternative, cooperate with the West on saving their system?

In light of the expected major offensive by Russia bringing into play its vastly superior troop strength, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in Ramstein on January 20th, that he sees only a short window of opportunity to turn the tide in Ukraine—’til the spring. The acute danger is that the undeniable efforts to pump everything into Ukraine now—more tanks, fighter jets, missiles, etc.—could cross the borderline to Armageddon.

Therefore, it is super urgent that all people of good will around the world support the initiative of Pope Francis and that a group of countries, such as the Peace Club of President Lula and others, are putting the need for a new international security and development architecture on the international agenda, before it is too late. The Ten Principles on which such an architecture should be based—which I presented at a conference in November—have received significant international attention and can be a starting point for the discussion.

Interestingly, the most controversial has turned out to be Principle Number 10, which says:

“Tenth: The basic assumption for the New Paradigm is, that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul and being the most advanced geological force in the universe, which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion; and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.”

Many people challenged the idea of an image of man where he or she is fundamentally good and all evil is due to a lack of development. It is urgent to take this interjection up, because it goes to the essence of our ability to solve the crisis or not. I think philosophers and theologians of Christianity, Confucianism, Islam, or Hinduism, and other great religions and philosophies and great Classical art will agree about the essential goodness of man and his obligation for self-perfection, life-long learning, and development of agapē.

On the other hand, it is only the various forms of oligarchism, that insist on the intrinsic evil in man, such as Malthus, imperialism, colonialism, racism, or fascism, which agree on the concept of man as “beast man.” And then there are various forms of liberalism, such as existentialism, or “l’art pour l’art,” which explicitly reject the need for self-improvement, and preach instead the mantra of “Everything goes,” which obviously has resulted in the present decadent collapse of the Western system. Or just read Joseph de Maistre’s Letter to a Russian nobleman, where he describes how man is by nature evil, and therefore needs to be controlled by an oligarchical dictatorship of a nobility which has God-given privileges which oblige them to rule over the ordinary evil people; the model of oligarchy.

The idea that man is by nature evil or should live as his wicked impulses dictate, is an ideology which is deployed by the oligarchy—or should we say the devil—as a tool to control people and prevent them realizing their true nature as creative beings in the image of the Creator.

In Chinese culture one finds the essentially same idea. These are some basic Chinese virtues and values: “As Heaven maintains vigor through movements, a gentleman should strive for self-perfection”; “A just cause should be pursued for the common good”; “Govern the country with virtue and educate the people with culture”; “A gentleman takes righteousness as his character”; “A man who is benevolent loves all.”

I believe that we have to unite as world citizens, devoted to the common good of the one humanity, realizing that a tender love to humanity in order to overcome this existential crisis of our species is what is required, and rid the world of oligarchism once and for all. Thank you.


Conference: The Age of Reason or the Annihilation of Humanity?

Panel 1 — Saturday, February 4, 10am EDT, 4pm CET

How Nuclear World War III Can Be Avoided

Moderator: Dennis Speed, The Schiller Institute 

· Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder, The Schiller Institute: “How to Avoid Nuclear War: The Nature of Man” 
· H. E. Donald Ramotar (Guyana), former President of Guyana: “Russia/Ukraine and its Importance for the Global South” 
· Ray McGovern (United States), former senior analyst, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); founding member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS): ” Know Where You Stand, And Stand There!” 
· Jack Gilroy (United States), Organizer, Pax Christi, NY State/ Pax Christi International; Board Member, New York Veterans for Peace: “In Support of Pope Francis’ Initiative for Peace”
· Amb. Chas Freeman (United States), former Ambassador  to Saudi Arabia, former Deputy Chief of Mission to China: “We Must Change America to Avert War” 
· Dr. Jur. Wolfgang Bittner (Germany), Jurist, Author: “We Are in War Mode” 
· Sam Pitroda (U.S./India), Telecom and IT Innovator; “Potential for Peace in a Hyperconnected World” 
· Diane Sare (United States), candidate for U.S. Senate (New York); Nick Brana (United States), National Chair, People’s Party; Angela McArdle (United States), Chair, Libertarian National Committee: “Can Americans Put Aside Their Divisions to Stop Nuclear War?” 
· Pastor Robert Smith, Pastor, New Bethel Baptist Church, Detroit, MI, Chair, Foreign Mission Board, National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.; Rev. Kinzer Pointer, Pastor, Agape Fellowship Baptist Church, Buffalo, NY; Rev. Dr. Ernest Johnson, Professor, Southern University Law Center, Pastor, Windows of Heaven Ministry, Baton Rouge, LA  (United States): “We are Obligated to Speak and Act for Peace,” American clergy support the Pope’s initiative for “negotiations without preconditions” to prevent World War III 

Question and Answer Session 

Panel 2 — 2pm EDT, 8pm CET

The Name of Peace: A New Security and Economic Development Architecture

Moderator: Dennis Small, The Schiller Institute and Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) 

· Jacques Cheminade (France), President of Solidarité et Progrès party, former Presidential candidate: “LaRouche’s Design for the New Paradigm” 
· Celeste Sáenz de Miera (Mexico), Secretary General, Mexico Journalists Club “Reflections on Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New Paradigm” 
· Prof. Liu Haifang (China), Associate Professor, School of International Studies, Director, Center for African Studies, Beijing University: “China and Trilateral Cooperation for International Development Assistance: Perceptions and Actions” 
· Elison Karuhanga (Uganda), Partner, Kampala Associated Advocates: “Uganda’s Oil Project and Energy Independence”
· Prof. Yoro Diallo, (Mali/China), Executive Director, Center for Francophone Studies, Director, African Museum, Institute of African Studies, Zhejiang Normal University, China: “Sino-Africa Cooperation: Building a Community of Peace and Shared Development” 
· Dr. Fred M’membe (Zambia), President of the Socialist Party of Zambia; former editor, Zambia Post; former Presidential candidate: “The Age of Colonialism Must Be Replaced by Win-Win Cooperation” 
· Shakeel Ahmad Ramay (Pakistan), CEO, Asian Institute of Eco-Civilization Research and Development: “Sustainable Peace through Inclusive Development: A Case Study of GDI and GSI” 
· Marcelo Muñoz (Spain), Founder and President Emeritus of Cátedra China think tank, “If Europe Decouples from China, It Will Sink into Poverty” 
· Julio De Vido (Argentina), former Minister of Economics and Public Works, former member of Congress: “BRICS-Plus: Bringing the Belt and Road Initiative into the Americas” 
· Pedro Augusto Pinho (Brazil), President, Association of Petrobras Engineers (AEPET): “The Collapse of the Financial System Raises the Danger of Nuclear Conflict”  
· Amb. John Lander (Australia), former Ambassador to Iran, former Deputy Chief of Mission to China, former Director, China Section, Dept. of Foreign Affairs: “Why the West Should Work with China on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as the Alternative to War.” 

Question and Answer Session 


Zepp-LaRouche’s Schiller Institute Receives “Freedom of Expression Award” from Mexico’s Journalists Club

The prestigious Journalists Club of Mexico on December 7th announced the results of its 70th annual National and International Journalism Competition, presenting its awards to journalists selected by an independent jury. The Schiller Institute and its founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche received the Freedom of Expression award, which back in 2019 had been conferred on Julian Assange. This year, Daria Dugina, the Russian journalist who was killed in a terrorist attack outside Moscow back in August, was given a posthumous award received on her behalf by the Russian ambassador to Mexico.

The ceremony began with the Mexican national anthem. Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, press spokesman of the Mexican presidency brought greetings from President López Obrador to the gathered journalists, diplomats and other guests. And the leaders of the Journalists Clubs added their voice to the international demand for peace and an end to war, and against the assassinations and threats by groups such as Ukraine’s CCD.


Foundation to Battle Injustice holds Press Conference on U.S. Election Fraud

On December 1, 2022 the Moscow based Foundation to Battle Injustice held a press conference on the issue of election fraud in the United States. The press conference, moderated by the Foundation’s chairwoman Mira Terada, featured U.S. Senate candidate from New York Diane Sare, Schiller Institute spokesman Harley Schlanger and independent American journalist John Mark Dougan. Dougan, a former Marine, deputy sheriff and computer specialist, is currently based in Moscow where he hosts a regular podcast focused on the war in Donbas.

Mira Terada began the press conference by asserting that because of election fraud American democracy is facing its most grave crisis in modern political history. She discussed how the Covid-19 crisis opened the door for states to make radical changes to their voting procedures, particularly massive expansion of mail-in voting. This combined with dubious “malfunctions” with electronic voting machines and delays in vote counting, sometimes lasting up to a week or more, provides ample opportunity for vote manipulation. She then reported on specific examples of various voting irregularities which occurred during both the 2020 and 2022 elections. Terada finished her remarks by stating that “Fraud, distortion and manipulation of the voting process in favor of the same party clearly indicate a violation not only of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but also of the Declaration on Free and Fair Elections adopted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1994 and signed by the United States.” She and her colleagues believe that “regular suppression of voters is an illegal measure unacceptable in the 21st century, which contradicts the norms and traditions of a truly democratic society.”

Diane Sare spoke following Ms Terada’s opening remarks. Sare began her comments by recounting the enormous effort her campaign had to make, because she was running as an independent, just to get her name on the ballot, which required 45,000 valid petition signatures gathered in a six week period. Her primary message to New York voters was that nuclear war with Russia and China is not good for the economy. Despite the fact that hers was the only independent campaign to meet the petition requirement, gathering 66,000 valid signatures, she was excluded from the only candidates’ debate. The reason given for her exclusion was that based on polls, she had less than fifteen percent support amongst likely voters. Not one of the polls used for the debate even mentioned Sare’s name as a candidate, and some supporters reported that they were told by the pollsters that Sare was not an option.

Sare then showed the now famous screenshots of her votes mysteriously diminishing from 55,000 on election night down to 25,000 the next morning. In Rockland County, Sare’s county of residence, her vote total election night was 6,212 or five percent. The next morning the count was 277. The question she asked was why would such an obvious fraud be perpetrated in broad daylight? Was this a “Straussian lie” in the tradition of the University of Chicago’s arch neocon Leo Strauss, the purpose of which is to demoralize people and make them feel powerless and impotent because everyone knows it’s a lie but no one has the courage to refute it? Sare’s attitude is that this blatant fraud makes her more determined than ever to fight and she has already declared her intention to run for the Senate in 2024.

The number of votes for Diane Sare decreased by 24,000 overnight

Sare ended her presentation by bringing attention to the recent election in Taiwan, where people voted overwhelmingly against war with China. The financial elites don’t want a similar surprise in the United States where the majority of people, like the Taiwanese, want peaceful relations with Russia and China. This is why it is so important for them to control the media, the election outcomes and what people perceive is the view of the majority of Americans.

Harley Schlanger was the next speaker and began his presentation by stating his intention to give the “bigger picture.” The fact is there have always been allegations of vote fraud in the United States, particularly in the 2000, 2016 and 2020 elections. However, to understand how this fraud is carried out one must look at the CIA and NSC because they’ve been rigging elections all over the world for many years. The investigations into the 2020 election vote fraud failed because they were approached from a local level. The question is: how are elections manipulated so that both political parties maintain control over the government? The way this is done is by preventing any serious issues from being presented to the American people by either party; only narrow issues are allowed which are acceptable to the ruling forces.

According to Schlanger, during the recent midterm elections 75 percent of the American people believed that inflation, the economy and the war danger were the most important issues. But instead of addressing these issues, candidates focused on identity politics: race, gender, abortion and local issues. Putin was blamed for high energy prices and inflation. (If your dog got pregnant, Putin did it.) So the reason there was no big “red wave” as many pundits predicted was because the Republicans did not present any real alternative to the policies of the Biden administration. Schlanger said that because of this suppression of debate on important issues we have ignorant people with no idea what the candidates for whom they vote stand for. People are completely unaware that the United States and NATO are pushing for war with Russia. And this was the primary reason Diane Sare’s campaign was suppressed, because even one voice speaking truth can break the power of the oligarchy.

The final speaker, John Mark Dougan, spoke on the more technical aspects of vote fraud. He began by stating that the United States since 1950 has interfered in more than fifty foreign elections and that now U.S. intelligence agencies are interfering in our own elections. One of the ways this interference is perpetrated is with electronic voting machines. The software for these machines, according to Dougan, uses algorithms which are “weighted” for a particular outcome, similar to the big tech companies which use similar algorithms to determine what content people see on social media platforms. This is why the software is “closed source” and cannot be subjected to forensic analysis. Dougan suggested that Sare take this into consideration when investigating how her votes were disappeared.

Time constraints allowed for only a couple of questions during the question and answer period which were directed to Diane Sare. One of them was whether Sare was planning to take legal action to try to resolve the issue of what happened with her vote. In response, Sare expressed her doubts that the courts would address this, but that rather we have to build a movement for political change. She discussed a group she worked with during her campaign called Citizens Audit which demonstrated how elections in New York are rigged. The Sare campaign and Citizens Audit tried to file an injunction prior to the election based on this election rigging evidence but were unable to find even one lawyer willing to take on the case. Why? Because in the wake of the January 6 investigation, people are afraid they will be ostracized like Rudy Giuliani, who was disbarred from practicing law in New York for questioning the 2020 election results. Also, look at the case of Julian Assange, who could tell the truth about the source of the Hillary Clinton email leaks if U.S. and British intelligence agencies were not trying to kill him. Current policy is decided by the intelligence agencies and there has to be a movement of people in the United States where justice is done. This also relates directly to the case of Lyndon LaRouche who was unjustly convicted for political reasons based on fraudulent charges, while running for U.S. President, and spent five years in jail as a result.


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