HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, let me say hello to you, and especially to Your Excellency, Ambassador Pasandideh from Iran. We are very happy that you are joining our discussion, because you never hear in the Western media the side of Iran. And in the spirit of the dialogue for truth-seeking, I’m very happy that you will join us today.

We are now entering the third week of the war against Iran. This is an unprovoked war of aggression that has been stated in the meantime, even by former Western leaders and diplomats. And the goal of regime change in Iran clearly has not been accomplished. There is no victory in sight. And even the German TV is reporting today that President Trump obviously totally miscalculated the situation. This, however, was completely unnecessary, because there was a classified national intelligence report in the United States published a week before the 28th of February, in which they stated that in their estimate, even a large-scale assault would not lead to regime change in Iran, and that the opposition would take power would be very unlikely.

So, why did President Trump do this anyway? Well, now it seems, and he is even saying that he was convinced to do this by four people, Hegseth, Rubio, Witkoff, and Kushner. And in particular, Rubio went on the record to basically explain that since they knew that Israel was about to attack, and this would lead to a counterattack from Iran, that they had to do a preemptive attack on Iran, which is a completely strange logic, but that’s what he is saying. So, what is the situation? I mean, we are in a complete strategic mess as a result. If you just review the events since the beginning of this year, on January 7th, President Trump had declared in an interview with the {New York Times} that he did not need international law.

Subsequently, you had the kidnapping of an elected head of state in Venezuela, President Maduro, and more recently, the assassination of the Supreme Leader of Iran, who at the same time not only was the leader of Iran, but also the head of all Shi’ites worldwide. So, this is clearly a new phase, because the targeted eliminations, be it through kidnappings, be it through assassination of elected leaders of state, clearly is a sign of a plunge into lawlessness, where the question of where this should all end, is worrying many people. 

Now, as the military campaign apparently is not going well, and there are many reports from knowledgeable scientists like Ted Postol, Ray McGovern, and many others who describe in great detail that the military operation is not going as planned; but naturally the big danger is that this conflict can escalate. Now, how could it escalate? There was the absolutely shocking article by one person with the name of Helman Ullman, who is an advisor to the Atlantic Council, which is a pretty official position, who wrote an article in the paper {The Hill}, which is distributed to the Congress every day, to every Congressman and Senator. And there he wrote that any attempt for strategic bombing never resulted in the desired goal; not in Vietnam, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. And that there’s only one example in history where strategic bombing succeeded, and that is Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And therefore, the potential use of a nuclear weapon to accomplish the goal would be within the options available. 

Now, this is extremely shocking, because we know that Israel is in possession of nuclear weapons, even if it never admitted it and never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And famously, John F. Kennedy, in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis, basically said one should make sure one never brings a nuclear-owning power into a position where they either have the choice of humiliation and defeat, or use of a nuclear weapon. 

Now, I think this is an imminent danger. And that is why, despite the fact that the public opinion clearly is shifting, for example, the Foreign Minister of Oman, who was the chief negotiator with Iran and the United States in the negotiations in Geneva on the 26th—they had negotiated in Geneva on the 27th. He went to the United States and briefed President Trump, saying that major breakthroughs had been accomplished; that Iran had already agreed to massively reduce or downgrade its enriched uranium, and that he was very confident a solution could be reached. And that was basically now turning out for the second time to be the cover story for launching the attack with all the Israeli input in the background. This Oman Foreign Minister, in the meantime, put out a statement saying that this war is an illegal war; that it completely violates international law, and that one has to rethink the entire security structure of the Middle East. 

Now, I think that we are in an incredibly dangerous moment of history. The additional element is the economic consequences of this war following the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, the oil price going through the roof; naturally, this is leading to enormous consequences for millions of households who have enormous problems with their livelihood as a result. But it could also be the final blow to an already very fragile financial system. And it could, if not reversed soon by ending the war and going back to the table of negotiations and diplomacy; if this continues, it could lead to a blowout of the entire financial system. Given the fragility of the Western financial system, it could lead to a repetition of a systemic crisis like 2008. Just this time, the so-called tools of the central banks have all been used up. 

So, what is the solution? There are all kinds of scenarios saying how the world will look like after the war is ended, that Israel will have greater Israel in the Middle East, be the strongest military power; that Europe eventually will have got its independence, rearming Europe in an unprecedented militarization with the German army being the strongest army in Europe, and the United States controlling the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific. Anyway, I think none of these things will happen quite that way. I think we are in an unprecedented epochal change because what is underlying all the hotspots, Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, the new war between Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is in each case a specific reason. But the underlying dynamic is the fact that the old order clearly is disintegrating and the global majority, which represent 85% of the human species, are intended to create a more just world order based on the BRICS, the SCO, and similar organizations. There are forces in the West who absolutely want to prevent such an order from coming into being. 

So given the fact that this strategic situation has many, many complicating elements, I have been saying, and that was the purpose of the International Peace Coalition from the very beginning, and the Schiller Institute after the outbreak of the special military operation in Ukraine, we started to campaign for a complete change in the paradigm. That if we stay in these geopolitical games, the danger that what happened with geopolitics two times in the 20th Century will be repeated; namely a world war. Given the fact that we have now thermonuclear weapons, and the likelihood that these weapons would be used in such a global war, being almost 100% certain, which would mean the end of civilization, we have to get together and find a solution based on reason, a New Paradigm which allows the survival of civilization. 

For that reason, I issued as a result of the discussion of last week in the IPC, a letter to Pope Leo XIV, and I appealed to the Holy Father, because he already had referenced the great thinker Nicolaus of Cusa on the 25th of October last year, citing in particular the method of thinking of the {Coincidencia Oppositorum}, the Coincidence of Opposites, that he should reach out to the Patriarchs of the Russian and the Greek Orthodox Churches in the spirit of the unity of the Council of Florence and Ferrara of 1439; and that he should basically reach out also not only in his capacity as being of American background to President Trump; but also to all other religious leaders. Urging that they should all come out and work for peace, pray for peace, and get unity of all religious leaders in the spirit of Nicolaus of Cusa and his writing {De Pace Fidei}, which is a beautiful Socratic dialogue where all the religions are discussing with God how they can find peace in faith. 

Now, also in the meantime, a high-ranking ayatollah from Iran has appealed to the Pope, basically in the same spirit, obviously referring to him as the morally outstanding figure, who is maybe the last person who can intervene to avoid a terrible catastrophe of humanity. So, we have started to circulate this letter. I naturally sent it to the Holy Father directly, and that is one of the topics we should be discussing today. 

Otherwise, I can only say that the danger to humanity, in my view, has never been more grave than right now, and we have to appeal to all people of good faith to help us to avert a catastrophe which mankind would not survive if it really comes to its consequence.

ANASTASIA BATTLE: Next, I would like to welcome the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Mexico, His Excellency Ambassador Pasandideh. It is important that we hear from the government of Iran at this time of crisis, and I kindly ask the audience for your patience as we have an extra layer of interpretation today, so please be mindful. Thank you for joining us, Your Excellency. You have the floor.

AMB. ABOLFAZL PASANDIDEH: I would like to greet all the participants of this webinar. I’m very happy to be with you, my friends, in this webinar today. I explain in Persian and my colleague translates in Spanish.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about one of the most irrational wars in contemporary history. Since February 28, Iran has been the victim of an unfair and unequal war. This war has crossed several human boundaries:

1. It was a betrayal of diplomacy; for the second time, we were attacked in the middle of negotiations.

2. It was a mockery of the Charter of the United Nations. The UN Charter was the achievement of two world wars, written after the deaths of tens of millions of people to prevent pointless wars and to ensure that innocent human beings would not be killed again.

3. It was a blatant symbol of the use of force and power instead of international law.

4. It replaced multilateralism with unilateralism.

Dear free-minded friends of the Schiller Institute, we are living in the 21st Century and in the age of the internet. It was expected that in this era, negative and aggressive nationalism would give way to humanism. Unfortunately, racists and radical nationalists have taken better advantage of the Internet age. Today we see that supporters of human rights and human values are more isolated than they were in the era before the Internet.

Today, Iran has become a bastion of resistance. Venezuela was taken easily; if Iran is also taken, resistance against coercion and unilateralism will collapse like a row of dominoes. It is not clear who will be next after Iran: Mexico or China? Silence in the face of this aggression will make life more difficult for the people of the world. Here, scientists, thinkers, and free-minded intellectuals are expected to become more active and to free the realm of thought from the monopoly of racism and radicalism. The tools of thinkers and intellectuals are the pen and the word. With the pen and the word, it is also possible to neutralize the effects of guns.

We have very few platforms to counter the narratives of powerful actors. Before becoming victims of F-35 and B-2 warplanes, we had already become victims of narrative-building. 

I would like to thank the free-thinking members of the Schiller Institute for listening to my remarks.

  BATTLE: Thank you, Your Excellency, for that contribution to the discussion today. This was very important that we hear from the government of Iran, and we greatly appreciate you joining us today. Let’s go to Helga Zepp-LaRouche for a response.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, I want to basically state our motives in inviting Your Excellency to this discussion, because I think if truth is the first victim of war, then there is no hope of ever getting to peace. We have been following the events since the end of last year very closely, and found that there was a complete difference in the narrative being told by the Western media, and what we were able to put together in terms of what actually happened. I only want to quote Mr. Bessent, Scott Bessent, the Secretary of Treasury, who in a hearing with the Senate was so blunt as to say that the economic warfare which the United States had conducted against Iran by basically bankrupting a bank, by causing a run on the currency, causing inflation, which caused the demonstrators to go on the streets. And when the government of Iran started to talk to these demonstrators promising relief, that then there was an outside intervention from agents with weapons and so forth, he called that “economic statecraft.” And if you look at the title of the Schiller Institute, we from the very beginning named ourselves an institute for statecraft. So the notion of statecraft is a dear notion for us, because we thought that statecraft was in jeopardy already. That’s why we called it the Institute for Statecraft, meaning that it is the function of the state to improve the livelihood of the citizens, to make sure the well-being of the people is proceeding and so forth. So Bessent admitted that there was an outside economic warfare operation, which he falsely called statecraft. And then Pompeo put out a tweet, saying that every demonstrator had a Mossad agent by his side.

So therefore, when the narrative pushed by the Western media, and most politicians except some very good exceptions, like the Spanish government, for example, I think it’s just very dangerous if falsehood, which naturally in case of war is always the case, but nevertheless, if we ever want to go back to peace, we have to remedy this situation. So that is just my comment to your remarks.

  PASANDIDEH: I thank you very much for your different points of view. Precisely everything that we had said in our remarks coincides. We are interested to hear from the other panelists, and at the end I will state some further views.

BATTLE: Great. Thank you. All right, I see that we’ve resolved the technical problem with President Ramotar. President Donald Ramotar is the former president of Guyana. Please, if you have any reflections or thoughts from the discussion so far.

PRESIDENT DONALD RAMOTAR: First of all, I would like to say how happy I am to have listened to the Ambassador from Iran and to tell the people of Iran through him how much we admire their tenacity and the courage that they’re showing in the face of this unprovoked attack against the people of Iran. I can’t think of any other country that I have known in conflict which has had the attack on its leadership and the decimation of its leadership on more than one occasion. We remember Qasem Soleimani, who was murdered some years ago, and then many of their scientists were killed and many of their leaders were also killed. And yet, when the attack came last Saturday, the Iranian people could have so quickly mobilized a defense and a counterattack on that. That type of heroism is hardly known in our world these days. 

But I would like to also say that this is a continuation of a policy that seems to have been going on for a while. It has been for some time now a deliberate attempt to destroy international institutions and to degrade them, including the United Nations, the Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and we also see the attack on the destruction of international law. And this is a continuation of the aggression against the Palestinian people, because of the whole Middle Eastern countries, the only country that is standing up to defend the human rights and the rights of the Palestinian people to live as normal human beings, are the Iranian people. And they are the only ones that are supporting the resistance in the place. And that is why they are under this tremendous attack, because Iran is being seen as the main obstacle of Israel to control the whole Middle East, and is the main obstacle to the United States to control all the resources in that territory. 

So Iran is fighting a battle not only for its own survival, but for the struggle of peoples of the whole Middle East, all those in the Middle East, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in other places, who are fighting for their survival. And the stance of Iran has really exposed the cowardice and the sell-out of many of the Arab leaders against the people of Palestine. I think there probably may be an element of shame in that as well for them. 

I want to mention too that the fight that Iran is putting up also is a fight for Cuba, because Cuba is under tremendous pressure at this point in time. For more than three months now, Cuba has not had a single drop of oil for transportation purposes and for other types of activity. The blockade in Cuba has become almost unbearable. And the Cuban people are showing a lot of heroism at this point in time to resist this kind of pressure. 

And the main tactics in this, in my mind, is similar that has happened in many other parts of the world. They’re trying to create dissatisfaction within countries to get countries’ populations to rise up against the governments by using sanctions and, in the final analysis, using force to attack them.

With those words, I wanted to extend to the people of Iran my own solidarity, the solidarity of other like-minded people from the Schiller Institute and other places for the kind of resistance they’re showing. And if I may say one word of a little bit of disappointment, Ambassador, I hope that you take your security much, much stronger. You’ve suffered too much at the leadership. You had too much of penetration. And any other country, any other smaller country, would have been totally decapitated. But you managed to survive. But I think you should take that as a lesson in strengthening your security. But best wishes and good luck. Thank you for your attention.

BATTLE: Okay. Thank you very much, President Donald Ramotar, for your remarks. I see the Ambassador has raised his hand. Please go ahead, Ambassador.

AMB. PASANDIDEH: First I would like to thank Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche for going to the roots of this problem. She has provided a very broad analysis of everything that has happened, and as well as the reasons behind this entire conflict.

Obviously all of these sanctions which have been imposed by the United States on our country are pressure on their behalf. We are now glad people are defending our country.

We also thank former President Donald Ramotar for his analysis and the solidarity which he has expressed. We thank him very much also for his truthful analysis with regard to the current global circumstances. Thank you very much.

BATTLE: Thank you very much, Your Excellency. Okay, so we shall continue with our agenda and then come back for more discussion with the panel. So next, I’d like to bring in Father Harry Bury, a Catholic priest for 70 years. He’s a lifelong peace activist. He’s with the Twin Cities Nonviolent and the U.S. Catholic Priest Association. Please go ahead, Father Burry. You have the floor.

FATHER HARRY BURY: Thank you. Thank you very much. Our hearts are breaking, truly breaking, at what is happening to Iran. The insane action of Israel and the United States attacking Iran is not only crazy, it’s immoral. And as a Catholic Christian priest, I’m here to say that Jesus came, in my faith, Jesus came to reveal what God wants us to do. And what God wants us to do is to love one another as God loves us. And we are to love one another because that is the answer to peace. 

Jesus said very carefully, very strongly, that we are to love our enemies. Love our enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bombing them is not a way of doing good. It’s insane. The cultural norm all over the world is that the best way to end wrongdoing is by violence, punishment. And history has shown us that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. Violence is not the answer to peace. Violence, as we’ve been doing it, has been an act of vengeance, not an act of love. And so what we need to do is be good to those who hate us. That’s what God is asking us to do in my mind and in my faith, to do good.

And that’s really what the Oasis Peace Plan is about. The Peace Plan is promoting people to do good through development, to help other nations have what they need for the people to lead happy, decent lives. And BRICS is one group; B for Brazil and R for Russia and I for India, C for China and S for South Africa. And now another 14 nations have joined them and others are about to do so. And they’re practicing the Oasis Peace Plan. They are actually trying to help other nations be equal to other nations. And that’s what is being good to others, doing what Jesus asked us to do. And so that’s what the Oasis Peace Plan is about. That’s what the Schiller Institute is about. And that’s what BRICS is about. And we need to join them. 

And in doing so, Helga LaRouche has written a letter to our Holy Father to join us in this action of doing good to others. And she has called us to endorse that letter. So I’m asking all you who are listening to this that you sign the letter. She is inviting you to sign this letter to the Holy Father, asking him to stand with us in bringing about peace by doing what Jesus has asked us to do; namely to be good to those who hate us. Not to bomb them, not to hurt them. 

What was the first action that happened when Israel and the United States attacked Iran? It was to destroy a school of some, I understand, 173 children were killed in that first action. And it brings tears to many people who understand what that is. And so we’ve got to change. We’ve got to change the way we think, as Nicholas of Cusa and Lyn LaRouche urged us to do. Not to be thinking the old way that the way to end violence is by violence. It doesn’t work. And our history shows that.

So please, please answer Helga’s invitation and sign the letter. And you can do it by going to schillerinstitute.com and have your name with all of us, asking the Holy Father to join with us in doing good to those who hate us. And that’s the way we’re going to end violence and have peace, is by loving our enemies, not killing them. It doesn’t work. So please, please consider signing the letter with us to the Holy Father. Thank you very much.

BATTLE: Thank you, Father Bury, for your remarks and your continued fight for truth. I see the ambassador has raised his hand. Please go ahead, Your Excellency.

AMB. PASANDIDEH: If truth be told, the words of Father Bury have touched our spirit gravely. What a shame that very few politicians are in this meeting to listen to the words of the Father; such beautiful words.

Just as there are also extremist groups that are killing people in the name of Islam and religion. But taking into account that the spirit of Islamic religion is a religion of friendship and peace; and also the spirit of Catholics and Christians is the same. It is friendship and the search for peace. I too am in total agreement with what Father Bury has said, because Donald Trump is hiding behind religion and is killing people by hiding behind religion. And this is obviously an aggression against any and all religions in the world. Thank you very much. 

BATTLE: Thank you, Your Excellency. And next, we’ll continue with the agenda. And I just kindly ask our next speaker, if you can end your remarks at 11:50; only because we have to get closing remarks from the ambassador before he has to leave. And then we can come back to you. So next, I would like to introduce Jack Gilroy with Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi Upstate New York and Pax Christi International.

JACK GILROY: Well, thank you, Anastasia. And I was prepared for much more than three minutes. But in three minutes, I can just say that what Father Barry had to say, of course, is not anything new. Because he’s been saying it ever since he chained himself to the Saigon fence during the horrible war of the United States, slaughtering almost three million people in Vietnam. So the contrast between what Father Bury is saying as a Christian, believing in the nonviolence of Christ, and the falsehood of the Christian Zionist with their Jewish Zionist friends, that violence is part of the culture, is something that we really have to clarify. And later, I would like to, if I have a chance, go into some areas along these lines as to how children are a very important point.

As Father Bury indicates, the first attack on Iran was against children. Then there is the fact that the Israelis, the Zionists, have been killing children in Gaza by the tens of thousands; snipers intentionally shooting babies and young children. These despicable acts are something that surely is not in line with the nonviolent Christ. And it’s not in line with the Jewish sense of justice. These are perverted individuals, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that later on.

BATTLE: Thank you very much, Jack Gilroy, for your understanding and keeping your remarks concise. And we will absolutely give you more time to go through what you had planned to discuss. 

I’d like to go to His Excellency Pasandideh for his final remarks before he has to leave.

AMB. PASANDIDEH: I think that if we search a bit further back, and look to the roots of these problems, we will find a point where unilateralism is being strengthened. This kind of unilateralism in the First and Second World Wars arose as Nazism, fascism. And we saw that more than 80 million people were killed in the world.

In fact, the creation of the UN, the United Nations Charter, was for the same purpose; that the world has to be based on the rule of laws and rights. But we are finding today that all of these norms that were written down are not being respected. False information is given and no one apologizes. We have to take this into account. If countries are viewed as enemies, why do children have to be victims of this? We have reached the point where we attack areas and the oil and gas is kept, and there is great contamination. What is civilians’ responsibility for this? Why should they have to breathe poisoned air?

We should also mention that they are attacking places which are the cultural patrimony of Iran. This is part of humanity’s patrimony. How can they dare attack places that belong to all of humanity?

I think a very positive conclusion that we can draw from this meeting is what we can do to be able to return to unite and maintain multilateralism, so that the permission is not given for any person or any country to make the decision to make a change of regime in a country. Or to say that this Supreme Leader cannot work anymore, he cannot be in his post. I am the one who gets to choose who will be the next Supreme Leader.

I think that what has been lost in the world today is peace. God has not created us to fight and kill each other. And obviously, if we go towards multilateralism, we will find a world that is more positive and more beneficial to all. Because when we achieve multilateralism, it is because we are accepting the cultural differences of each people and of each nation. Thank you very much.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: First of all, I want to full-heartedly thank Father Bury, because it is people who have a beautiful soul like you who give us hope that we will get out of this crisis in the human way. So, thank you very, very much. 

Otherwise, I just would like to suggest that maybe in this moment it is time to revive the proposals of the former President of Iran, Khatami, who was putting the idea of a dialogue of civilization on the table. Because I think that if people would know the true character of the other side, the culture, the contribution to universal history, bridges can be built even in the most difficult situations. So, I did not discuss this with anybody, so I don’t know if this proposal is timely or not. But I would like to give it to you for consideration.

And otherwise, I thank you also, Ambassador Pasandideh, for joining our meeting. And I’m looking forward to keep in contact.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who initiated the IPC, opened the discussion, emphasizing that the danger of nuclear war is increasing, as the U.S. and its NATO allies escalate the shipment of military arms into the war zone, lyingly asserting that Ukraine is “winning” the war. Even some of the whorish U.S. press are now acknowledging that the military “counteroffensive” by Ukraine has been a thorough failure. Zepp-LaRouche emphasized that there must be a total break from this disastrous policy somewhere in the West – be it Germany, France, or the U.S. – to end the confrontation and begin cooperation between the nuclear powers, to create an architecture of security and development for all nations. Such a break appears to be a remote possibility. That means that we must expand our efforts to break through the wall of lies about Russia and China.

Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst who used to give the daily briefing to the President of the United States, and who co-founded the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), then noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has for years asserted that U.S. domestic policy determines U.S. foreign policy, said that the Biden family is in deep trouble, due to the revelations about the Hunter Biden laptop and the global corruption now exposed, but that President Joe Biden simply continues the insane assertion that Russia has “already lost the war” in Ukraine. The neocon policy now promoted by the Biden Administration, and his leftover Obama gang (Blinken, Sullivan and Nuland) – who should be facing jail time for their multiple crimes – are more likely to launch a nuclear war than face incarceration. In his long career in intelligence, McGovern said that he had “never seen this level of danger.”

Oliver Boyd-Barrett, a professor at California State University, provided a detailed study of the actual battlefield situation in Ukraine, noting the “sheer scale of numbers dying in this infuriating and unnecessary war.” The effort to deny the failure of the Ukraine “counteroffensive” has failed, but there is still the “fog of war” which can be used to justify the escalation to a nuclear launch. The promotion of Victoria Nuland to the number two at the State Department demonstrates that the regime is “either too stupid or too evil” to stop the madness.

Anastasia Battle, who moderated the event, reported on massive outreach to independent journalists. She also reviewed the current list of scheduled speakers for the August 6 rally at the UN, which will be live-streamed from 1-4 p.m.

Former President of Guyana Donald Ramotar said that the West terribly miscalculated when they thought the sanctions would destroy the Russian economy and that modern NATO weapons would crush them in Ukraine, but that the danger of nuclear war is now even greater. He recommended that we recruit scientists to join in the peace effort.

The next speaker, scientist Steve Starr, author of “The State of the Nuclear Danger” and other articles and videos on the effects of nuclear weapons, quickly agreed to write a public letter to other scientists to join the movement, as Mr. Ramotar had proposed.

Reports by organizers from several of the planned international sister rallies provided a sense of the global nature of the movement.

Diane Sare, the founder of the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus briefed the meeting on the plan to perform the Mozart Requiem in a New York City church following the rally at the UN, to honor the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by the U.S. nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities in 1945. A guest conductor from Türkiye, who has conducted music for several other rallies for peace, volunteered to conduct the event. There has been a surge of choristers joining, and an orchestra is being mobilized as well.

Bernie Holland, an activist from the UK, suggested that even if nuclear weapons were to be abolished from warfare, that the bombs themselves should be re-designed to serve as defense of the Earth from asteroids, a plan known as the Strategic Defense of Earth (SDE). He encouraged everyone to read the book written by Mike Billington, Reflections of an American Political Prisoner—The Repression and Promise of the LaRouche Movement, and referenced that the Chinese character for “crisis” is made up of both the characters for “danger” and “opportunity,” which he also compared to Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s reference to the “coincidence of opposites” from Nicholas of Cusa. He added that this is also coherent with Buddhist teaching. We must take full advantage of the opportunity of the current crisis, he said, to create a “critical mass of consciousness” among the people.

Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche closed the meeting, noting that the recently released movie about Robert Oppenheimer was bringing attention to the horror of nuclear weapons, and that the Schiller Institute had prepared a leaflet to distribute to audiences at the film, encouraging them to join the August 6 rallies. She supported the call for scientists to join the movement, but suggested that the letter be addressed to “scientists and artists,” since scientists and artists share the love of the positive vision of mankind’s future. She called for participants to spend the remaining days before August 6 mobilizing everyone, especially youth and the Global South, which is experiencing a revolutionary upsurge, turning against the call to war coming from the NATO countries in favor of peace and development in cooperation with Russia and China, convinced to end the age of colonialism once and for all.

Send your questions for Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche to: questions@schillerinstitute.org

Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche tomorrow in her weekly dialogue for a discussion about building an International Peace Coalition.

#worldwar3 #newparadigm #peacemovement #decoupling #nuclearwar #russia

July 21, 2023 (EIRNS)—The International Peace Coalition (IPC) held its seventh weekly international meeting on Friday, July 21, with representatives of 17 nations, most of whom reported on the mobilizations taking place in their countries, targeting the August 6 international Day of Action on the anniversary of the genocidal U.S. nuclear destruction of Hiroshima.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, opened the call by emphasizing that the madness of the warmongers at the July 17-18 NATO summit is still escalating towards full-scale war, which will not be stopped until the truth about the cause and the intention is understood by the broad public around the world. The fact that two systems now exist, one based on the unipolar world of Global NATO, and the other based on the BRICS and nearly all of the Global South nations moving to a new system committed to ending colonialism for good.

Zepp-LaRouche held up the case of Germany, where sovereignty is completely lost, where the “rules-based order” (with no one knowing who makes these so-called “rules”) is destroying the economy. Everything that Germans built up after the destruction of World War II is now being destroyed, with businesses fleeing the country in droves—and this despite the fact that 70% of the population think that the government is doing a terrible job. The sovereignty of every country is under attack by the U.S.-U.K.-Global NATO war party—she reminded people that the sovereignty of every country is the first of her “Ten Principles.” We must make August 6 a “clarion call” for a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine. To do that we must live up to the call by Steve Leeper, the former head of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, that organizations worldwide must put aside any differences and unite on August 6 at the UN or elsewhere to stop the war drive.

Reports on organizing efforts came in from around the world:

Nicaragua: Bolívar Téllez Castellón of Nicaragua reported that a committee is being formed to mobilize support for August 6 and beyond, and several of the leaders are making short videos to rally support, which he is sharing with the IPC for worldwide use in Spanish-speaking nations. He noted that the country had been subjected to a fratricidal war for over 20 years, but is now working with Russia and China to achieve real development.

Malaysia: Chandra Muzaffar, founder and director of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), announced that he had sent out the release announcing the August 6 event, and the Steve Leeper letter, to the 20-25,000 strong JUST mailing list. [https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2023/07/19/open-letter-to-friends-enemies-and-people-who-have-no-idea-who-i-am/] He also reported that he had written to a number of peace organizations in Asia, calling on them to join the IPC. JUST is sponsoring its own event on August 6, which is under discussion as to the format. He said that getting a million people out on the street, either in New York City or worldwide, is a very large target, but a necessary one given that what is at stake is the human race itself. The current danger is the greatest in history—in 1945 only one side had nuclear weapons, now many countries have them, and they are far more deadly than the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs. We owe it to history, and to future generations, to succeed in our task. It is “flourish or perish.”

Germany: Jimmy Gerum, who is serving as the press secretary for Humanity For Peace coalition, declared that “every war is started with a lie,” and we must mount massive pressure from individual independent journalists to break through the lies in the mainstream media.

Guatemala: Raul Marroquin, of the Observatory for Human Peace in Guatemala, said he has been associated with Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute for many years. Now we see that the oligarchs of the world want to see the end of humanity, which we must act to prevent.

France: Karel Vereycken, a leading member of the Schiller Institute in France, described the July 8-9 Schiller Institute Conference in Strasbourg, the first in-person Schiller conference since before the pandemic, where 250 people heard from leading people from Russia, China, India, Africa, Europe, and the U.S. The French Schiller Institute is planning three events: August 6 at Notre Dame; August 9, the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, at the offices of UNESCO; and a later date on science, exposing the role of John von Neumann as the person who encouraged President Harry Truman to use the atomic bomb on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Austria: a peace activist described the long-standing pride in Austria that they have maintained their status as a neutral country, opposed to war but advocating active nonviolent neutrality, which is now under enormous pressure from NATO and the NATO-influenced media. He said his associates have held demonstrations for years on August 6 and August 9, and they will again this year as part of the International Day of Action.

Sweden: Ulf Bejerstrand, who started the “Voice of the People” to allow the people to break through the media lies, said that they have 50,000 followers on social media. He said that if the people come together they can defeat the warmongers.

Sweden: Ulf Sandmark, the President of the Schiller Institute in Sweden, said they were planning an event in Stockholm on August 6. He said the collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative was a severe blow, orchestrated by NATO and the oligarchs, precisely because it was a small but significant step towards cooperation and peace.

Mexico: Carolina Dominguez of the Schiller Institute in Mexico, described their organizing in support of President John Kennedy’s June 10, 1963 speech seeking for U.S.-U.S.S.R. cooperation for peace and development. She said that the youth in Mexico do not believe the NATO narrative, and that they respect Russia and the BRICS countries. She quoted Mexican hero, President Benito Juárez, who defeated the Habsburg occupation of Mexico, and who insisted that “Respect for the rights of others means peace.” She said the organization had distributed thousands of copies of the “Urgent Appeal by Citizens and Institutions from All Over the World to the (Next) President of the United States!” issued by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, calling for a return to the principles of peace advocated by JFK.

United States: Elliot Greenspan, the head of the LaRouche Movement’s Outreach Task Force, described the efforts to bring the “hyphenated-Americans” from Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, Guineans, and others, as well as Christian organizations, together for the August 6 demonstrations, further insisting that the differences which certainly exist between these layers must be put aside to prevent a nuclear war. Dennis Speed, a U.S. national leader of the Schiller Institute, said that to get a million people out on the street, as Chandra Muzaffar had indicated, is a difficult but essential task if the genocidalists are to be stopped. He noted that the NATO sabotage of the Black Sea Grain Initiative was yet another case of these Malthusians working to starve millions of people to death, and that JFK’s “Food for Peace” concept is crucial today.

Germany: Barbara Spahn, Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (BüSo), reported about a coalition of small parties that has already held 2 peace rallies in Frankfurt. For August 5, another rally is planned, where, among others, Bundeswehr colonel (ret.) Florian Pfaff, will speak.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche closed the meeting, praising the progress made thus far in the IPC, but insisting that it must grow faster to reach the goal. Each member must take the responsibility to reach out to other organizations—peace, religious, democracy and other groups—to join the movement. She encouraged the use of the video by scientist Steven Starr on the devastation of a nuclear war, and also promoted reading Friedrich Schiller on how to “bend the tyrant’s arm.”

Attendance IPC#7:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), founder and leader, Schiller Institute
President Donald Ramotar (Guyana), Former President of Guyana
Chandra Muzaffar (Malaysia) JUST International/SHAPE
Abdoulaye Balde (US), Guinean and American League of Friends for Freedom
Oliver Boyd-Barrett (US), Professor Emeritus, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Dr. Balkrishna Kurvey (India) President of the Indian Institute for Peace, Disarmament and Environmental Protection
Barbara Spahn (Germany), BüSo Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität
Mamadou Dathe Diallo (USA/Guinea) Guinean American League of Friends for Freedom
Beatriz Solórzano León (Guatemala), Lawyer, Parliamentary Technician
Bernie Holland (UK) No2NATO
Fr. Robert Cushing (U.S.), Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP), Pax Christi GA, former priest
Bolívar Téllez Castellón (Nicaragua), Lawyer and university professor
Carolina Domìnguez Cisneros (Mexico) 
Raul Marroquin (Guatemala)
Peter Weish (Austria)
Verena Konig (Austria)
Udo Leibmann (Poland) United for Freedom
Boubacar Sidy (US/Guinea)
Ilker Özyavuz (Germany) Team Todenhöfer
Hondo Tonumaa (Estonia)
Martin Schotz, (US) author, “History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy”
Ruben Dario Guzzetti (Argentina), Argentine Institute of Geopolitical Studies (IADEG)
Christine Bierre (France), Solidarity and Progress
Fr. Harry Bury (US), Archdiocese of Saint Paul in Minneapolis, MN
Jacques Cheminade (France), head of Solidarity and Progress
Jimmy Gerum (Germany), Lighthouse Media
Juan Carrero (Spain), President, S’Olivar Foundation
Juan Gómez (Chile)
Martha Rollins (US/Costa Rica) Int’l Peace Delegations: Ibero America, Columbia, Cuba and Palestine
Ulf Bejerstand (Sweden), Party leader, Musician
Liz Augustat (Germany), Peace Through Culture
Simon Miller (US) LaRouche Youth Movement
Robert Castle (US) LaRouche Youth Movement
Karen Ball (US) Pax Christi – Texas
Mike Billington (US) Executive Intelligence Review Magazine
Muhammad Selim Akhtar (U.S.) Muslim Alliance
Ulf Sandmark (Sweden), President Schiller Institute, Sweden
Wolfgang Lieberknecht (Germany) Internationale Friedens Fabrik Wanfried
Meshack Maxongo (South Africa)
Marianne Liljeholt (Sweden), Party Board member, Freedom Movement
Joyce Hall (US) Pax Christi
David Andersson, (US) Coordinator of NYC bureau for Pressenza Press Agency and hosts a talk-show, Face 2 Face, broadcast on Youtube and Facebook
Jurgen Wolf (Scotland), No2NATO UK, Workers Party BG
Mark Rolofson (US) 
Chris Fogarty (US/Ireland), Irish American Leader
Fredrick Weiss (US) Classical musician
Ronald Betag (US) Schiller Institute, Texas
Dennis Small (US), Schiller Institute, Virginia
Dennis Speed (US), Schiller Institute, New Jersey
Diane Sare, (US) U.S. Senate Candidate, New York
Jose Vega, (US) Interventionist, Organizer Schiller Institute
Anastasia Battle (US) Organizer, Interventionist and Editor-in-Chief, Leonore Magazine

**Affiliations for identification purposes only

At their fifth meeting, in an impassioned presentation, Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), had described he just concluded July 4–5 conference sponsored by JUST and the Save Humanity and the Planet (SHAPE) centered in Malaysia, titled “Asia-Pacific NATO: Fanning the Flames of War.” The target was AUKUS, the Australia-U.K.-U.S. security pact whose purpose, Dr. Muzaffar said, is to “contain China.” Most Asians oppose this pact, but the political leaders want to “assure the domination of Asia by the British and the U.S.,” and undermine any peace movement. The meeting was quite successful, with speakers from Australia, China, Malaysia, the U.S China and South Korea, with several new organizations participating in the event. JUST and SHAPE will get the news on the IPC to their mailing lists. Dr. Muzaffar thanked Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute for building the IPC, which he said he “hopes will grow and flourish, as it is key to our future.” [Read IPC#5 Press Release Here]

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder and leader of the Schiller Institute, opened the sixth meeting by noting two globally important events in the week since the IPC’s fifth meeting on July 7: the two-day international conference of the Schiller Institute in Strasbourg, France on July 8-9; and the NATO Summit of July 11-12 in Vilnius (referred to as the “villainous Vilnius Summit” by one speaker at the IPC meeting). While the NATO Summit was a war cry for more escalation of the surrogate NATO war against Russia centered in Ukraine, the Schiller Institute conference provided ideas and discussion on the urgency of substituting cooperation for confrontation, preventing the current rush to an outbreak of global nuclear war, and bringing the world’s nations together in a paradigm of development.

Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the newly-announced decision by President Joe Biden to deploy cluster bombs to Ukraine—altogether 300 million bomblets—a madness that will cause thousands of deaths of innocents, as has already been demonstrated by the death and maiming of children and other civilians in Cambodia and Vietnam from the landmines and cluster bombs deployed during the Indochina war of the 1960-70s—deaths and injuries continuing even today. There is international opposition to this genocidal act, including from within the United States, but Biden is going ahead regardless.

The ugly irony of this move, Zepp-LaRouche added, is that Biden has admitted that even though he once opposed the use of cluster bombs as a war crime, now the U.S. and its NATO allies are running out of ammunition to continue the bloodletting in Ukraine, and therefore will use the cluster bombs to keep the war going. She pointed to the decision to deploy F-16s to Ukraine as yet another insane act, noting that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia will have no way to know if the nuclear-weapon capable F-16s are armed with nuclear weapons or not, and must therefore treat them as being nuclear armed.

Zepp-LaRouche also pointed to the NATO Summit’s embrace of a policy to expand the domain of NATO to the Asia-Pacific region, targeting China with the same war-policy as deployed against Russia in Europe.

As to Ukraine, she reported the intention presented at the NATO Summit to turn the country into a military production center, with the West’s major military-industrial companies setting up production facilities in Ukraine for a “forever war.” In the process, there was no discussion by any NATO participants of a peace plan, or even for negotiations for peace. At the rate of destruction of the Ukraine economy and the death of thousands of young men in the bloody cauldron of war, there will be no way for the country to rebuild even if the war can be stopped.

The lesson, Zepp-LaRouche concluded, is that the International Peace Coalition must grow and create a massive public outcry against the madness. The plan for international demonstrations on Aug. 6, the 78th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima by U.S. President Harry Truman, must be the basis for expanding this effort.

Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and a co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), gave a situation report on the war in Ukraine, asserting that while Biden is declaring that Ukraine is winning, even that Putin has “already lost” the war, that simply demonstrates that Biden is living in an “alternative reality,” since it is abundantly clear that the opposite is the case. The much-heralded “counter-offensive” by the Zelenskyy government forces has been a colossal failure, with the mass destruction of tanks and other military equipment, as well as yet more thousands of lives sacrificed.

Col. Richard H. Black, a retired Marine officer and former Army Joint Advocate General (JAG) lawyer who headed the Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon before retiring from the military and serving in Virginia’s House of Delegates and Senate, reviewed the failure of Kiev’s “counteroffensive,” suggesting that the idea of a perpetual war of attrition is a losing proposition for Ukraine, and that they may not be able to sustain the current pace even through the end of August.

Regarding the cluster bombs, Col. Black remarked that the world agreed to ban mustard gas and other chemical weapons as war crimes, and for the U.S. to simply declare that cluster bombs are to be accepted because “Ukraine needs them” does not change the fact that their use is a war crime. Are we to declare later that nuclear weapons will stop being illegal if “Ukraine needs them,” he asked? We are heading for nuclear war, he warned, and there is far too little resistance to it in the U.S., so this Coalition must grow.

Joseph Boyd-Barrett, a professor (emeritus) at California State University and an expert on the uses of propaganda, gave further evidence of the falsification in the mainstream media about the war in Ukraine. Ukraine and its Western backers in NATO have already essentially lost the war, as their munitions are running out and the NATO countries are not able to sustain the supply, while Russia “can produce multiples” of the munitions produced by the combined NATO backers of Kiev. He also estimates that the supply of weapons to Ukraine will run out by the end of August.

The problem remains that the Ukraine government, and its backers in NATO, don’t care that the country and the population are being destroyed by the war policy, and refuse to negotiate. Zelenskyy was elected on a pledge to bring peace, but now it must be said that the Kiev regime’s policy is to see their own population murdered by continuing a war which cannot be won. The Democratic Party in power in Washington appears to believe that the only way to win the next general election in November 2024 is to keep the war going through next year.

Juan Carrero, a peace activist from Spain, said that the Western elites are suffering from dementia, as they repeat without any evidence that Russia will lose the war. He said that he had lived in Hiroshima for a year and a half, and saw the effects of the destruction, calling for the Aug. 6 demonstrations worldwide to be a turning point to stop the madness.

Moderator Anastasia Battle read four demands which the IPC will issue on its website https://humanityforpeace.net/
They are:

• 1. End the supply of weapons to Ukraine.
• 2. Begin unconditional peace talks with all parties to the war
• 3. End the NATO alliance.
• 4. Establish a new security architecture for all nations, ending the division of the world into warring “blocs.”

Bernie Holland, a peace activist from the U.K., asked Helga Zepp-LaRouche to discuss her concept of the “Coincidence of Opposites” which is the eighth of her Ten Principles of a NewInternational Security and Development Architecture.

Zepp-LaRouche replied with an in-depth discussion of the concept, developed by the 15th-century genius Nicholas of Cusa, who discovered the idea as a method of thought based on the truth that the “One” is superior to the “Many,” that only by recognizing that there is a common principle which unites all human beings, whatever their faith or ethnicity or nationality. This method of thinking made it possible for Cusa to bring about the unity of the Roman and Orthodox Christian religions at the ecumenical Council of Florence between 1431 and 1449, and later was the basis of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. In the current age of nuclear weapons, that principle of creative thought, based on love rather than hate, is the only basis for world peace. Other speakers reported on their organizing efforts for peace in Argentina, Chile, England, France, Germany, Holland, India, Italy, Nicaragua, Scotland, and across the U.S. All agreed to build an even larger attendance, including representatives from the Global South, for the next meeting on Friday, July 21.

Rally and Concert:
Humanity for Peace is hosting a “Global Rally for World Peace and an End to All Wars!” On Sunday, Aug. 6 from 1-4 pm at the Dag Hammerskjöld Plaza (United Nations Plaza) in New York City, 47th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue, followed by an evening concert from 6-8 pm at the Unitarian Church of All Souls, 1157 Lexington Ave. at East 80th Street, of Mozart’s Requiem, performed by a combined chorus and orchestra which will include the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus and musicians. It will be free and open to the public.

A full report on the fifth meeting of the International Peace Coalition, held on July 7, is here: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2023/07/13/press-release-fifth-international-peace-coalition-event-reveals-growth-and-extensive-organizing/

In Attendance:

• Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), founder and leader, Schiller Institute
• Colonel Richard Black (U.S., ret), former head of the Pentagon Criminal Law Division, former Virginia State Senator
• Oliver Boyd-Barrett (U.S.), Professor Emeritus, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
  Alessia Ruggeri (Italy) Trade Unionist
• Anton Winter, (Austria) Nouvelle Alliance, UZG – Initiative Zivilgesellschaft
• Dr. Balkrishna Kurvey (India) President of the Indian Institute for Peace, Disarmament and Environmental Protection
• Barbara Spahn (Germany)
• Beatriz Solórzano León (Guatemala), Lawyer, Parliamentary Technician
• Bernie Holland (UK) No2NATO
• Fr. Robert Cushing (U.S.), Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP), Pax Christi GA, former priest
• Bolívar Téllez Castellón (Nicaragua), Lawyer and university professor
• Boubacar Sidy (USA/Guinea)
• Christer Lundgren, (Sweden)
• Ruben Dario Guzzetti (Argentina), Argentine Institute of Geopolitical Studies (IADEG)
• Christine Bierre (France), Solidarity and Progress
• Fr. Harry Bury (U.S.), Archdiocese of Saint Paul in Minneapolis, MN
• Ingo Scharpff (Germany)
• Jacques Cheminade (France), head of Solidarity and Progress
• Jimmy Gerum (Germany), Lighthouse Media
• Juan Carrero (Spain), President, S’Olivar Foundation
• Juan Gómez (Chile)
• Karen Ball (U.S.) Pax Christi – Texas
• Liliana Gorini (Italy), Movisol
• Mike Billington, (U.S.) Executive Intelligence Review Magazine
• Muhammad Selim Akhtar (U.S.) Muslim Alliance
• Ray McGovern (U.S.) former senior analyst, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); founding member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
• Rev. Dr. Terri L. Strong (U.S.), AME minister from Memphis, TN Chair of the Actions and Global Concern Committee of the Church Women United
• Ulf Sandmark (Sweden), President Schiller Institute, Sweden
• Wolfgang Lieberknecht (Germany)
• David Andersson, (U.S.) Coordinator of NYC bureau for Pressenza Press Agency and hosts a talk-show, Face 2 Face, broadcast on Youtube and Facebook
• Jurgen Wolf (Scotland), No2NATO UK, Workers Party BG
• Jack Gilroy (U.S.), Organizer, Pax Christi, NY State/Pax Christi International; Board Member, New York Veterans for Peace
• Sonja Van den Ende, (Netherlands/Russia) Independent Journalist, covers Russia/Ukraine conflict, for Katehon 
• Chris Fogarty (U.S./Ireland), Irish American Leader
• Fredrick Weiss (U.S.) Classical musician
• Dennis Small (U.S.), Schiller Institute, Virginia
• Dennis Speed (U.S.), Schiller Institute, New Jersey
• Diane Sare, (U.S.) U.S. Senate Candidate, New York
• Jose Vega, (U.S.) Interventionist, Organizer Schiller Institute
• Anastasia Battle (U.S.) Organizer, Interventionist and Editor-in-Chief, Leonore Magazine

**Affiliations for identification purposes only

“The way to look at the strategic situation is that, given the fact that we are on a trajectory towards confrontation, this will not change until we get a real break in the situation. And since we are not anywhere close to that break, which would require that either the United States or some major European countries stop the confrontation and make a clear signal to cooperate with the Global South and China and even Russia, this will continue to escalate, and that is why our activation and effort to put together an international peace coalition of everybody—not just some, but everybody—is so absolutely crucial.”

Send your questions for Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche to: questions@schillerinstitute.org
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche tomorrow, July 18, in her weekly dialogue for a discussion about building an International Peace Coalition.

The International Peace Coalition (IPC), initiated by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, held its fifth weekly international meeting today, July 7, with guests from over a dozen countries in Asia, South and Central America, Africa, Europe and the US. Presentations were mostly focused on reports of organizing activities around the world, with extensive reports on such mobilizing in the U.S., UK, Germany, South Africa, Malaysia, Argentina and Central America.

Anastasia Battle moderated and it was announced by Irene Mavrakakis that many new aspects of the website are now live (www.Humanityforpeace.net) for the Aug. 6 international demonstration Humanity for Peace.

Helga opened the call by noting that the planning for the NATO Summit to be held in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11-12, demonstrates the extreme danger facing mankind at this moment in history. While the idea of bringing Ukraine into NATO at this event has been dropped, there is no discussion of a peace plan of any sort on the agenda, only ranting about the defeat of Russia and numerous open proposals for full scale war on Russia, even insane calls for “disarming” Russia. It is clear that the war party running the NATO leaders intend a “long war” by continuing the massive armament of Ukraine, even establishing NATO military-industrial production capacity within Ukraine itself – a “nightmare scenario of a frozen conflict” if not an escalation to nuclear war and an expansion of the war policy to Asia. Our responsibility is to make this Coalition grow, to “replace confrontation with cooperation” to stop the momentum to global war.

Ray McGovern, a former CIA official and a founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) noted that the NATO leaders are the classic example of insanity – doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. He said that some EU leaders appear to have convinced Zelensky not to blow up the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as they did with the Kakhovka dam. We’ll have to wait to see what NATO decides to do this week. They may decide to double down, intending to keep the war going through next year’s election. If so, then what will Russia’s response be? They could launch an offensive, going to the Dnieper River and beyond, or they could continue the meat grinder in the east and south. That option has a time restraint, since the arrival of F-15s and more tanks, while not winning the war, will make things more dangerous.

Chandra Muzaffar, head of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), gave very impassioned remarks describing the conference sponsored by JUST and the Save Humanity and the Planet (SHAPE) centered in Malaysia on July 4-5, titled  Asia-Pacific NATO: Fanning the Flames of War. The target was AUKUS, the Australia-UK-US security pact whose purpose, Chandra said, is to “contain China.” Most Asians oppose this pact but the political leaders want to “assure the domination of Asia by the British and the U.S.,” and undermine any peace movement. The meeting was quite successful, with speakers from the U.S., Malaysia, Australia, China and South Korea, and several new organizations joined the event. They have a 20,000 strong mailing list, and will get the news on the IPC to them. He thanked Helga and the Schiller Institute for building the IPC, which he “hopes will grow and flourish, as it is key to our future.”

A lively discussion took place on the nature of the Strategic Defense Initiative, if there was a technological way to stop the war and reference to the importance of JFK’s American University Speech. This led Helga to present the history of Lyndon LaRouche, Ronald Reagan and the representatives of the USSR who attempted to unite to build a joint defense against nuclear weapons, making them “obsolete” through new technologies, which would also be the scientific driver for building the physical economies of the USSR itself and the nations of the Global South. While there was no final agreement, the discussion was welcomed and will be pursued.

Helga closed the meeting by expressing her happiness that the IPC was growing and calling for everyone to reach out to new organizations and individuals to join the Coalition, the “be louder” than the voice of the military industrial complex and their political and media voices.

Attendance:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), founder and leader, Schiller Institute
Ruben Dario Guzzetti (Argentina), Argentine Institute of Geopolitical Studies (IADEG)
Dr. Balkrishna Kurvey (India) President of the Indian Institute for Peace, Disarmament and Environmental Protection
Bernie Holland (UK) No2NATO
Fr. Robert Cushing (US), Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP), Pax Christi GA, former priest
Jason Banyer (Switzerland), Büezer und KMU Partei
Martha Rollins (US/Costa Rica) Int’l Peace Delegations: Ibero America, Columbia, Cuba and Palestine
Chandra Muzaffar (Malaysia) JUST International/SHAPE
David MaciLwain (Australia) Peace Activist
Irene Mavrakakis (US), Liberty Speaks, Rage Against the War Machine organizer
Jimmy Gerum (Germany), Lighthouse Media
Juan Carrero (Spain), President, S’Olivar Foundation
Karen Ball (US) Pax Christi
Joyce Hall (US) Pax Christi
Martin Schotz, (US) author, “History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy”
Mokete Meshack Maxongo (South Africa) South Africa LaRouche Movement
Ray McGovern (US) former senior analyst, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); founding member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Darrell Nichols (US) Bishop, Toledo OH
President Donald Ramotar (Guyana) former President of Guyana
Beatriz Solorzano Leon (Guatemala)
Wolfgang Lieberknecht (Germany)
Boubacar Sidy (USA/Guinea)
Dr. Bolivar Tellez (Nicaragua), professor, Central University of Nicaragua
Juan Carrero (Spain), President, S’Olivar Foundation
Bernard Allen-Bey (US) NAACP
Mamadou Dathe Diallo (USA/Guinea) Guinean American League of Friends for Freedom
Fredrick Weiss (US) (musician)
Dennis Small (US), Schiller Institute, Virginia
Dennis Speed (US), Schiller Institute, New Jersey
Diane Sare, (U.S.) Senate Candidate, New York
Jose Vega, (U.S.) Interventionist, Organizer Schiller Institute
Anastasia Battle (U.S.) Organizer, Interventionist and Editor-in-Chief, Leonore Magazine

July 5, 2023 – In light of rapidly rising threat of nuclear war, the Schiller Institute releases the initial list of 186 prominent signers, from 55 countries on six continents, of Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Urgent Appeal by Citizens and Institutions from All Over the World to the (Next) President of the United States!. 

The appeal, issued May 17, calls for the Presidency of the United States to return to the peace policy of John F. Kennedy enunciated in his historic address at American University June 10, 1963. On June 10, 2023, the Schiller Institute (SI) accelerated worldwide diffusion of that speech on its 60^th anniversary with this international online conference: The World Needs JFK’s Vision of Peace!

The SI urges everyone possible to add their name to the appeal, and to bring it to the attention of every organization concerned with the welfare of mankind that they can. Total current signers are 1300, with translations into 7 languages. The aim is to reach 5,000 before the worldwide peace actions on August 6, the anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, from 100 plus countries. The Institute particularly encourages maximum viewings of the Kennedy speech itself, by individuals, schools, and all categories of other groups, in a spreading world awakening. Here is the full 27-minute Kennedy Peace Address; here, a 4-minute set of video highlights, with subtitles.

The circulation of the Urgent Appeal and Kennedy speech has spurred the formation of a rapidly growing International Peace Coalition, initiated by the Schiller Institute on June 2. The summary press release of its most recent deliberation, International Peace Coalition Charts a Path to the New Paradigm, begins: “On Friday June 30, the International Peace Coalition (IPC) held its fourth meetings with approximately 60 organizers from Argentina, Germany, Guinea, Nicaragua, Span, Sweden Switzerland, the UK, the United States, and other nations participating in the proceedings. The meeting could be best characterized as a strategy session on how to expand the IPC through various means of direct action such as street organizing, social media, political interventions, and classes, with the goal of not only preventing the immediate threat of global thermonuclear war, but laying the foundation for a durable peace – a New Paradigm.”

Please add your efforts to the urgent expansion of the Coalition’s work. Contact the Coalition at questions@schillerinstitute.org.

The conclusion of the Appeal, and initial list of prominent signers:

We the undersigned want America to be again the America expressed in that beautiful speech of JFK. We want the United States to be again a beacon of hope and a temple of liberty. We believe that this is the basis for “peace for all time,” as JFK said.

Initiating signer

Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), founder Schiller Institute

Additional prominent signers

On Friday June 30, the International Peace Coalition (IPC) held its fourth meeting with approximately 60 organizers from Argentina, Germany, Guinea, Nicaragua, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, the United States, and other nations participating in the proceedings. The meeting could be best characterized as a strategy session on how to expand the IPC through various means of direct action such as street organizing, social media, political interventions, and classes with the goal of not only preventing the immediate threat of global thermonuclear war but laying the foundation for a durable peace—a New Paradigm.

Moderated by Anastasia Battle of the Schiller Institute, the meeting began with a very concise strategic overview by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute and initiator of the IPC, outlining the heightened danger of war between Russia and NATO in the wake of the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries against the Kremlin. Apparently Western Intelligence agencies had advanced knowledge of the event, an event which could have led potentially to chaos in the largest nuclear power, but made no effort to alert the Russian leadership. Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche contrasted this to the support President Putin had offered to the Bush administration after the 9/11 attack. Would it really be preferable to have the strongest nuclear power fall into chaos with potentially catastrophic consequences? 

She also pointed out that there are now voices in Russia such as Prof. Sergey Karaganov, head of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, who are calling for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Karaganov’s colleague, Prof. Dmitri Trenin, at the same time is warning that Western elites have lost the fear of nuclear weapons, and with that the sense of the consequences of their policies. Zepp-LaRouche then laid out the root cause of the conflict—a geopolitical showdown between two systems: one system—the unipolar system—which clearly has gone under, and the rise of a new system represented by the nations of the Global South asserting in a very legitimate way their right for economic development. 

This was demonstrated recently at the June 22–23 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact hosted by President Emmanuel Macron in France, where President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa asserted that if the West is serious about helping the nations of Africa, it should finance the Inga Dam project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which would bring electricity to 12– 15 countries. Africa currently has 600 million people without electricity. She ended her opening remarks by emphasizing the urgent necessity of a New Security and Development Architecture which allows the development of all countries on the planet as the only means to address the current disarray.

Much of the ensuing discussion centered on IPC plans for a peace rally at the United Nations scheduled for August 6, the 78th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A flier will be produced for the event as well as a unique website listing all of the participating groups. Plans are also in the works for sister events everywhere possible both leading up to and on the day of the event. A suggestion was made that the IPC should strive to get at least one person from every country in the world to make a video in support of the peace rally, which could be posted on the website. Several participants highlighted the importance of bringing more young people into the peace process through campus organizing and other means. There were also many useful suggestions of various social media platforms that could be used for expanded outreach, and suggestions of numerous peace groups that should be contacted for networking purposes. Generally participants were very enthusiastic about the opportunity to strategize with like-minded people on concrete actions necessary to bring about a lasting peace.

Dr. Rev. Terri Strong proposed that the IPC draft a policy paper—to be presented to world leaders — detailing the detrimental effects of massive spending on military ventures, thereby draining money and other resources away from social programs which would benefit their own populations. The example of Germany was mentioned, where, because of budget cuts, the healthcare system is in a state of collapse. Were a fraction of the money being spent on military expenditures used instead for healthcare this problem could be resolved. It was decided that a social policy paper be drafted specific to the needs of each country in the form of a petition to be presented to the leaders of these various nations.

Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche ended the discussion answering a question posed to her about gun violence in the United States. She made the point that violence in the small and violence in the large are interconnected. The U.S. currently experiences a mass shooting every fourteen hours, which is insane. But where does this come from? She then went through the history of how the U.S. military used various methods to break down the natural resistance humans have to using weapons to kill other humans, ultimately resulting in point-and-shoot video games which were subsequently marketed to the general public — including children who are now being turned into mass killing machines.

Her solution—totally coherent with the goals of the IPC—is to launch a campaign among schools, churches, teachers, parents, etc. to start a mass movement centered on the idea that the basis of humanity is love. JFK’s 1963 “peace speech” should be used as a pedagogical device along with aesthetical education to help people discover the true nature of what it means to be human. This is necessary to move civilization to a New Paradigm of international relations, without which we will not succeed in keeping humanity alive.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), founder and leader, Schiller Institute
“I think we have reached the point in the history of mankind where we absolutely have to make the jump beyond geopolitics because geopolitics was the cause of two world wars in the 20th century and if we do not get over the idea that there are legitimate interests of a nation or a block of nations against another block of nations then the seeds of World War III will remain there no matter what happens now in the short term. So I think the idea of the One Humanity—I have been suggesting to look at it from the standpoint of Nicolas of Cusa’s Coincidence of Opposites … which is a method of thinking that you can at any moment—no matter what problem you are dealing with—always can conceptualize the One which has a higher power than the Many. And in respect to mankind the One Humanity for sure has a higher power than the many nations or groups of nations. And I think we have to teach people to think in terms of the One Humanity; the interest of human civilization and the joint future of mankind.”

Dennis Speed (US), Schiller Institute, New Jersey
“The dropping of the atomic bomb was a great crime. And the dropping of any atomic bomb at any time is a great crime. There has to be a way—and there was a way at the time in 1945—for humanity to come up with a different solution…. We need to bear witness to that and we need to think about doing that where people all over the world … can participate….”

Colonel Richard Black (US, ret), former head of the Pentagon Criminal Law Division, former Virginia State Senator
“I think it’s important—and also to realize—that what is happening on the battlefield is very important to what’s happening with the peace movement. Because despite the media hype and rhetoric the fact is that the Ukrainian counter-offensive launched several weeks ago has run into a Russian wall-of-steel. It is an absolute Slaughter and a disaster…. [A]t some point this cannot continue; it just won’t. And when that becomes more obvious, whatever your movement is doing with the rallies and so forth I think will gain enormous strength as it becomes more obvious what a disaster this is on the battlefield.”

Jimmy Gerum (Germany), Lighthouse Media
“I want to stress again about the importance of the media. You know the hypocrisy of the worldwide media has increased to a really high level and [with] our initiative in Germany we are looking for international contact to journalists because we think we have a special situation in Germany—also in Middle Europe—that we have a very strong public broadcasting system; and this public broadcasting system joins the hypocrisy, and we have a duty to change this…. And I want to ask everybody who knows and has contact with independent journalists: let’s have a media strategy because peace starts with honest media.”

Ron Bettag (US), Schiller Institute, Texas
“Every activity done between now and then [Aug. 6]—and I know there’s a longer arc we can look at to the 21st of September which is UN day; a day of peace. It’s also Kennedy’s speech at the UN. So there’s a dynamic here that we definitely could all just put our sights on and continue to organize everybody to do as Dennis [Speed] said: even these smaller events will have a real effect.”

Nick Brana (US), chairman of the People’s Party, Rage Against the War Machine Organizer
“I want to just confirm that Rage Against the War Machine is totally on board. I’m totally on board; the People’s Party is totally on board with the August 6th action. And so kudos and credit to everybody who has really worked hard to put it together…. The People’s Party, you can count us in and we’re looking forward to it…. Also very happy to see this Coalition growing and excited to be taking part in it and help out however we can for August 6th and beyond.”

Karen Ball (US), Pax Christi, San Antonio
“Pax Christi arose out of the French and the Germans coming together as Catholics and saying: this is insane that we’re killing one another when we have the same belief system…. Catholic social teaching talks in terms of how we should be working towards peace. So I’m going to reach out to leaders at this particular [Catholic university] to see whether this might be something that—an event that we can plan on campus.”

Dr. Bolivar Tellez (Nicaragua), professor, Central University of Nicaragua
“NATO has given all it could give to Ukraine. All that is left for them to do is to deploy military units on top of the so-called advisors; so they have destroyed Europe and are destroying the United States. That is my comment and I’m at your disposal for any cooperation that I can offer from Nicaragua. Greetings and thank you.”

Ruben Dario Guzzetti (Argentina), Argentine Institute of Geopolitical Studies (IADEG)
“There was a international seminar sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Science in which some 25 people including myself participated. The topic wasn’t specifically the issue of peace but was also included among the many presentations…. No specific initiatives were brought forward on this specific topic [peace] and we have another meeting this afternoon. We have great hopes, for it is a meeting in which multiple organizations will participate… together to generate a joint initiative. I will present the proposal of doing something for August 6th and we will strive to build awareness of this issue.”

Bernie Holland (UK), No2NATO
“Regarding these 6th of August events: I’ve heard all the plans from your side of the Atlantic. It’s in the UK we need to get [events]. This is why I was hoping here’d be more people from No2NATO on this call. So I’m going to make a point of this at the next No2NATO meeting; that I’ve been on this call with you today and that this initiative is very important…. It’s not just in the US; … it’s a global existential issue we’re talking about. So I’m going to try my best to mobilize other organizations I’m involved with here in the UK as well to take very seriously the idea of events to correspond with [those in the U.S.].”

Dennis Small (US), Schiller Institute, Virginia
“I think if we make a special effort and a focus to quickly pull … together for example an international meeting like a couple of the others that were talked about here but within a week or so—to pull together handfuls of youth from these different countries with this focus of the One Humanity and organizing jointly for peace, I think this is the kind of thing that could be a spark plug for the broadest possible mobilization.”

Rev. Dr. Terri L. Strong (US), AME minister from Memphis, TN; Chair of the Actions and Global Concern Committee of the Church Women United
“I just finished writing a social policy for the Church Women United for the committee that I chair and it’s a social policy on war and peace.… [A]nd I had the idea to get a lot of signatures for that social policy and present it to … the presidents and leaders—those who are actively in war as well as those who support the war such as the United States being one of the main contributors to the Russia- Ukraine War, so far as all kinds of resources and finances as well as weapons. And so I was wondering if this group would do the same thing: write a social policy [paper], get a million signatures and present them to the heads of state of all of the countries that are in war?”

Juan Carrero (Spain), President, S’Olivar Foundation
“I’m thinking particularly of the young people…. As Dennis [Small] said they are the future. Our means of reaching out to them—a hundred thousand may not be such an easy task. But perhaps ten thousand may commit … to support only parties that agree with leaving NATO. We have always had better success when we commit to specific tasks…. At this time the power of the media is crushing—they [youth] are completely captured. But perhaps this direct contact with the youth would make it possible to get ten thousand young people from all of these countries who will commit to only voting for parties that support leaving NATO.”

Darrell Nichols (US), former president, Northwest Ohio NAACP, Southern Leadership Conference, UAW member
“I’m kind of plugged into several places [social media platforms] that have a very large listening audience. And it would be kind of off topic, but I do know some people that are hungry for a different type of content and there’s probably nothing more urgent right now. It [peace] just needs to be a conversation that people are aware of. So we’ve got a few resources and if I can help in any of that regard—I’m even thinking—you know we’re for Chrysler. We’ve got 7,000 people working in my plant and maybe if there’s a way that somebody could help me we could approach the UAW membership and get that spread throughout the United States.”

Mamadou Dathe Diallo, Guinean American League of Friends for Freedom
“I’m very excited. It’s my first time to be here, and some of my colleagues are here, and we are representing an organization called GALFF: Guinean and American League of Friends for Freedom. We are originally from West Africa and now here in the United States. And we are very, very excited and glad to be part of this because we have lived to see war in West Africa: Liberia; some of you guys might know Sierra Leone; Ivory Coast and places like that. We have seen what wars can do to humans—innocent people: women, disabled people. So we decided to form this organization in Indianapolis to make sure whatever we can do to stop wars—to stand against wars—whatever can bring destruction to humanity that we are against it and we will … fight to stop it.”

Abdoulaye Balde (US), Guinean and American League of Friends for Freedom
“I am a medical doctor from West Africa and I am from this organization called GALFF. Thank you very much for organizing this coalition. This organization is better than the United Nations; better than any organization I can think about. I am going to ask the Almighty—the owner of the heaven and the earth and everything between—to give you victory….”

Jason Banyer (Switzerland), Büezer und KMU Partei
“I am from Switzerland and I’m the chairman of that party of the Büezer Partei. And we organize and educate young people especially through social media. We make a lot of videos which are provocative and make people think and sometimes even change people’s minds on the question for instance—mainstream media how they portrayed this war as a war for democracy even though it’s clear that it is an imperialist war being waged by the West. We are for workers rights and especially for neutrality. Because here in Switzerland we see neutrality as the best way of being anti-imperialist because there are certain left-wing people or left-wing groups, and the greens and social Democrats and so on, which want to push for sanctions; which want to push for war; even which think that somehow it is progressive to support a war. And we push against this imperialist propaganda and we try to expose these warmongers.”

Jose Vega, (U.S.) Interventionist, Organizer Schiller Institute
“I’m here in the United States. I’m known for doing interventions—I know in the UK they call it door-stepping. It’s where you go to the politician’s event or something and then you—well you step on their door; you interrupt them while they’re speaking for bringing attention to something like the possibility of nuclear war. And I want to emphasize also the power of street action too and actually being out in the street with a table and some signs…. I have 76,000 people who follow me on Twitter now and I find that my followers are most responsive when I post something of an action. So the other day I posted a video of me being out in the street with Diane Sare with a sign that said “No Joe” and then there’s a picture of a nuclear bomb behind it. That got a couple thousand likes. You know people really seem to resonate with action rather than just online content. They really like to see people out on the street and I think this would be true for any country that is on this [IPC] call right now. You know if people were just out in the street with signs that just said something like “No to NATO” or “Prevent Nuclear War,” that would be very powerful and that’s exactly what people on social media are starving for.”

In Attendance:

Angela Mc Ardle, Libertarian Party Chairwoman, Rage Against the War Machine Organizer
Irene Mavrakakis (US), Liberty Speaks, Rage Against the War Machine organizer
Martin Schotz, (US) author, “History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy”
Bernard Allen-Bey (US)
Robert Cushing, Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP), Pax Christi GA, former priest
Dr. Jur. Wolfgang Bittner (Germany), Jurist, Author: “We Are in War Mode”
Wolfgang Lieberknecht (Germany)
Liz Augustat (Germany), Peace Through Culture
Christine Bierre (France), Solidarité et Progrès 
Dr. Balkrishna Kurvey (India) President of the Indian Institute for Peace, Disarmament and Environmental Protection
Juan Carrero (Spain), President, S’Olivar Foundation
Fredrick Weiss (US)
Juan Gomez (Chile), World Without Wars and Violence
Donald Ramotar (Guyana), former President of Guyana
Martha Rollins (US), Int’l Peace Delegations: Ibero America, Columbia, Cuba and Palestine
Ulf Sandmark (Sweden), President Schiller Institute, Sweden
Joyce Hall (U.S.), Pax Christi Texas
Klaus Fimmen (Germany), Bueso Party 
Diane Sare, (U.S.) Senate Candidate, New York
Anastasia Battle (U.S.) Organizer, Interventionist and Editor-in-Chief, Leonore Magazine

 **Affiliation for identification purposes