fredag den 19. juli 2024
På engelsk:
ANASTASIA BATTLE: Thank you everyone for your patience in all of this. We’re just getting some technical things set up right now. We had to restart the meeting due to harassment. You were not forced out, there was harassment of people hacking in. So, thank you for your patience. If you were on about 30 minutes ago, you would know that we had severe harassment on our call, we’re just getting some technical things set up to secure the meeting. Thank you for your patience. This is a very important discussion, and obviously other people believe it to be so important they don’t want it to happen.
Hello everyone; welcome. This is the International Peace Coalition. This is the 59th meeting that we’ve held in a row. My name is Anastasia Battle and you are enjoying this very important meeting today of our coalition where we bring together forces from all over the world in order to not just end war, but create real peace in the world. We very much appreciate new people joining us. I have Dennis Small and Dennis Speed who will also be co-hosting with me. We’ll have a line-up of speakers which I will post the agenda in the chat. We have turned off a number of technical options; we apologize for the harassment we received earlier, but this is a very important meeting and discussion that we are having, and I think the harassment we received is only an indication of how important this is.
So, I’d like to open it up to Helga Zepp-LaRouche to get us started. Please, go ahead, Helga.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Again, greetings to all of you. This was a very ugly effort to prevent our meeting, but I’m happy that most of you have had the patience to stay on.
Let me just review where I see the strategic situation. Last week when we met, we discussed the NATO summit, which clearly was a war summit. I’ll make a couple of remarks on that shortly. But only one day after we met, you had the assassination attempt against Trump. If you reflect on the fact that this almost failed; maybe some investigation will unearth the exact centimeter, inches, or percentage of an inch by which the bullet failed to hit his head, and only hit his ear—naturally part of the head, but not a crucial one. If that would not have occurred, and I have this image; people have to understand that if that movement of the head or whatever else was the reason that the bullet did not kill him, was just a tiny margin. That is my image of how close we are actually to World War III, if you look at the overall dynamic and the forces in motion. That should shock people not just because of the failed assassination attempt, but because of the worry for world peace which we all should have, and the entire world should have.
Obviously, there is a lot of discussion now about the incredible security failure, the perimeters were not checked; there was no coordination between the Secret Service and the local police. Many mistakes were made. All of that will now be the subject of an investigation in the Congress. And if that investigation produces more results than previous investigations which were cover-ups will depend in large part on the Trump camp. Hopefully, they do make it until November, which is what Politico already wrote; saying there could be many assassination attempts on Trump before the election. That gives you the atmosphere of the environment. I think you all can imagine that if this attempt would have been successful, the effect on the domestic situation in the United States would have been absolutely dramatic. The polarization beyond the present level of polarization which is already quite amazing. But strategically, given the fact that, according to Prime Minister Orbán and many others, Trump—and he stated it at the convention himself—has expressed his desire to end all wars on the planet; including Ukraine, including hopefully the Middle East situation. You can imagine if the Presidential candidate who is promising that would have been eliminated, that chance for peace would have been eliminated. And we would have been one gigantic step closer to World War III, and who knows what else was in place in case it turns out that this was only part of a larger scenario. So, I think that really makes clear how precarious and fragile world peace is.
Now,Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov just recently a few days ago, conducted a meeting in the UN Security Council where he proposed several steps on how to get away from the course to World War III. In his speech, he pointed to the fact that not all nations that are in the United Nations agree to one of the most important conceptions of the UN Charter; namely, that all states have equal sovereignty and equal rights. He pointed specifically to the often-stated and not hidden U.S. exceptionalism which puts the United States above all other nations. And Lavrov elaborated demands of unconditional obedience from all allies. That is not an exaggeration, because in the context of the NATO summit, it was announced that the United States will station long-range missiles in Germany, which will have a range will go way beyond the Taurus range; it will go way beyond Moscow. Therefore, this represents an obvious and immediate escalation; these missiles will be stationed only in 2026, but that is just a time plan for now. What happened was, that Chancellor Scholz then made a comment saying “Yes, the United States decided to put long-range precision weapons systems into Germany. This was a necessary and important decision which came at the right moment.” Can you imagine that? The German Chancellor said the United States made that decision. Lavrov had charged in his speech at the United Nations that the United States makes these decisions independent of the national interests of the allies of the client states.
That for sure is true, because the last time we had something comparable, was in the early 1980s, when you had middle-range missiles stationed in Europe with the SS-20 and the Pershing II, which at that time were mostly all on launch-on-warning, which meant that the time between the launch of any one of these missiles and the actual war, was only 4-6 minutes. That awareness got many hundreds of thousands of people so alarmed that they took to the streets. There were mass demonstrations in Bonn and other places. If you would ask any one of the participants, or Helmut Schmidt, the Chancellor at the time for that matter, they would say, “We are only minutes away from World War III.” And the peace movement did have an impact in creating an environment which was conducive to the arms negotiations which then took place and which overcame this immediate crisis.
Now, the problem we have is that there is no doubt. Anybody who studies what came out of NATO, who listens to what participants were saying, they are preparing in the West a war against Russia and China. That is not an exaggeration. Kathleen Hicks, who is the Deputy Defense Secretary in the United States, said that NATO, the United States and its allies, must be prepared for a long war not only in Europe, but also in the Pacific. Now, at the NATO summit, NATO decided to become Global NATO, to expand into the Indo-Pacific, that two more nations would join the AUKUS—that is the military alliance between the United States, Great Britain, and Australia, and the two countries added would be South Korea and Japan: Meaning that there is a full positioning planned for the coming world war.
Now, unfortunately, all the signs if you look, all the militarization of Europe, all the plans how to involve the civil defense, how to bring the idea of militarization into all pores of society, as it was written and elaborated by the German think tanks, by the German Defense Minister Pistorius, that is fully underway. And unfortunately, yesterday Ursula von der Leyen, the up-to-now President of the EU Commission, was re-elected with a vote of 401 to 300-something—in any case, she has now a second term.
The speech she made in the European Parliament is actually, it’s very difficult to believe that so many European Parliamentarians would actually vote this woman in, because she is so bellicose and she stands so very clearly for the following policies: She is still for an unquestioned commitment to the policies of Israel—the Israeli government, not the Israeli people—and just today, the International Court of Justice made another ruling, saying that the continued occupation of Palestine and the settlement policies, are absolutely illegal. We will hear later from Professor Falk on the situation in the West Bank. The situation in Gaza is absolutely horrifying. Independent of all previous rulings, these killings and massacres one after the other, killing a hundred, wounding hundreds is going on. This does not prevent Mrs. von der Leyen from backing this policy. She is for beefing up Frontex—this is an organization which has also been brought to court already because of their pushback operations against migrants, many of whom have been drowning in the Mediterranean. This is a complete barbarism. She, in her speech, called the peace mission of Prime Minister Orbán of Hungary a policy of appeasement, de facto equating naturally Putin with Hitler. Obviously, she rules out diplomacy as an option. She called for the strategic defeat of Russia, which all military experts are saying is an impossibility, because if Russia is about to be threatened in their territorial integrity, they will launch nuclear weapons, as they have said in their doctrine all along, which means there is no way how Russia will be defeated. If you push it over the edge where that is threatened, we will have World War III, and nobody will be alive, not even Mrs. von der Leyen and her family. Also, naturally, when one judges the performance of somebody in such a position as the EU Commission President, the last five years under Ursula von der Leyen represents an unmitigated disaster of the European economy, which is in a free fall. So, simply by that token, it is completely stupid and unwise to re-elect her, but that is what just happened.
Now, she is not the only war person in the new EU leadership. So is the replacement for Josep Borrell, former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who has come out with the most hair-raising warmongering, herself: She called for cutting up Russia into 40 or more pieces, threatening in that way the territorial integrity of Russia.
So, I think this really creates an incredible problem. Fortunately there are many people in Europe who are not thinking that way. Orbán just made a very courageous peace mission. Immediately after he took over the Presidency of the EU on the first of July. On July 2, he was in Kyiv meeting with Zelenskyy; he continued to go to Moscow meeting with Putin and to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping. Then he went to the NATO summit and from there to Mar-a-Lago, consulting with Trump, about whom he says, if Trump is elected, he would not wait until he is in the White House in January, but he would immediately start peace negotiations in November.
So, all the people who are reasonable think that you have to go to diplomacy, you have to go to a negotiated solution. There are many people in different factions in the European Parliament who think likewise. Orbán has created a faction in the European Parliament which includes the Lega in Italy, the Le Pen party in France, and smaller parties in other countries. So, it is not that this is a unilateral policy, but it is clear that the policy of von der Leyen will be a continuous militarization of the EU.
Also, we see massive moves toward suppression of freedom of the press, of freedom of opinion, and this all forebodes not well in terms of the future of democracy and all the other things which are heralded by these people all the time.
So, I think we are in a very dangerous situation. I think it does require that we really think of how to intervene to make sure that this is not leading straight to World War III. I think the idea of learning from the peace movement in the early 1980s is definitely required. There are peace demonstrations on the 6th of August, because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then, there will be demonstrations on the 1st of September, International Peace Day. Scott Ritter has called for a very large demonstration in the United States on the 28th of September, which I think would be good if it would find echoes elsewhere in the world. And then for Germany, there is planned big national demonstrations on the 3rd of October, which is the day of German unification, at least in the view of many people if not all, because many people in the meantime have second thoughts about this unification, which people in East Germany regard as a colonization of their states.
So, I think to go to these demonstrations and organize as many people as possible, make them aware of the incredibly dangerous situation is one thing. And the other thing is, After the attempt on Trump, I issued a call that given the extreme danger and fragility of the situation, I called on people—elder statesmen, retired military, retired scientists and others—to form a Council of Reason. By simply asking such people to step forward and discuss internationally how we can arrive at a New Paradigm which eliminates the geopolitical confrontation, which is going on right now, and to make sure thata new international security and development architecture is being put on the table, which has to represent the interests of every single country on the planet in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia. Because if you don’t take into account the interests of the other, and in this case all others, all nations, there is no peace possible. Because whenever you arrive at some conclusion which does not include everybody, as occurred with the Versailles Treaty, it’s just a stepping stone for the next war. In the case of Versailles, the interests of Germany and China were not respected, and you all know what was the result of it.
So, I’m calling on people to help us find these people. They may be retired heads of state, ministers, other leading people who have the expertise, and wish and love for peace, to step forward now. We should really try to reach out in all countries in the world to find such outstanding people and ask them to come forward, and hopefully, change this dynamic in the international situation, such that we can avoid World War III, because after that, there is nothing, nothing to be discussed, nothing to be investigated, because we all will be dead, if it comes to that.
So, please help us to build this Council of Reason, and maybe we can discuss it in the context of this discussion. Thank you.
Remarks during the Discussion:
KYNAN THISTLETHWAITE: So, this is Kynan Thistlethwaite. Right now, I’m at an opening for Yemeni center, here in New York City. There are a lot of different people here representing different communities, and we’ll be intersecting a lot of people. But I just wanted to jump on very quickly and ask a question to Helga and some of the other participants, given the context of what’s happening after the assassination attempt on Saturday, and also in terms of the Global NATO operation for mass war against Russia and China, and which is really the context in which this attempt took place. There’s a whole other array of actions that had happened before that: The assassination attempt against Robert Fico, which fortunately failed. A lot of people say he miraculously survived this, and other such attempts. We’ve of course, the Schiller Institute, the LaRouche Organization, has documented what this actually is, in theInternational Assassination Bureau pamphlet that we put out in February 2023. And I think that is the key to discovering what actually took place on Saturday, and who is driving these wars. There are a lot of things we can do to expose this. There’s the interventions that Jose Vega, who’s also here at this event, and others have carried out against many different politicians. There was the report last week of what the French activists were doing among different ministers in France, which I thought was very powerful. That’s exactly what we should be doing now, and I’m glad that that’s being carried forth internationally.
There’s also the Council of Reason, which I think is exactly the key to organizing people—statesmen, elder statesmen, diplomats—to bring back on the table what true diplomacy is: Because our current politicians have completely forgotten what that is.
So, that’s what I wanted to ask: What can we do now to expose this International Assassination Bureau? And how will the Council of Reason play a role in that? Thank you.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think what motivated us to publish this pamphlet on the International Assassination Bureau, because when you look at only one incident, it always is a lone assassin, or there’s some specific situation which is then explained away. But, if you look at the long list of people who have been assassinated, and I just name a few—you had in the United States John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. You have all the African leaders. You had Enrico Mattei, Aldo Moro. You had 20 attempts on Charles de Gaulle. In Germany, you had Siegfried Buback, Jürgen Ponto, Alfred Herrhausen, Detlev Rohwedder. And I’m probably leaving out a lot of them, but if you look at the common denominator between these things, it is always people who are crucial for their nation. It is always people who are, one can say, for peace, for the common good of their people. So, maybe you miss it if you look at one, but if you look at the entire list, you come to the conclusion that it is something which unites those who are behind it and those who are targetted, on opposite sides of the equation, naturally.
So, I think we should probably think about updating this pamphlet, because—and Politico has, as far as I know, been bought up by the German Springer publishing house, so, what causes a German-owned publication to put out a statement that there will probably be many more attempts on Trump before the election? I find this quite outrageous, that these things are being put out like that. And the media, in many parts, are part of the scenario, of either cover-up, or setting up, or whatever. So, that is one thing.
The other thing is that the investigation into the murder attempt against Prime Minister Fico of Slovakia, is still going on. They have published already several statements pointing out again that it’s not a lone assassin, and it’s not an internal Slovakian affair, but that there are foreign string-pullers. And I think we should definitely look at that also more closely.
I think that the world is in such jeopardy right now, that if you just look at the—well maybe the U.S. election will cause some dramatic change, at least temporarily; hopefully end this Ukraine war, but I’m not so confident that he will end all other wars, given the positions of the people around Trump on the Middle East and on China. So I can only hope that that is not the last word on Trump’s thinking.
But overall, the situation is so desperate that I really think mankind is tested for our morality and ability to survive. If we, as the only intelligent species known in the universe so far, cannot change a policy which is clearly leading to our own self-destruction, then this would be the biggest tragedy I can possibly think of. But I don’t think that that is quite where we are at. I know that there are many thinking people, who are just not organized. They have maybe not ever taken such responsibility before, because they are scientists, industrialists, or some other category of people. And I really would like to reiterate the appeal I made in the beginning, that all the people participating in this call should help us to brainstorm: Who in your society in the United States, in Mexico, in Argentina, in Mali, in Slovenia, or wherever you may be located, who are the people who have the moral stature, who have the wisdom, who have the integrity of personality, that they could step forward and really create like an advisory board, a Council of Reason, to come out and help us to put this other paradigm on the agenda?
I would like you to either, if you have some ideas now, share them with us in the chat, or contact us afterwards, maybe have a brainstorming session among your friends and colleagues and help us to put such a Council together. Because I think just the mere fact that it would occur, and it would start to communicate with the world, could already make a difference to go in the direction of replacing war with diplomacy and dialogue. So, that would be my urgent appeal.
Closing Remarks:
I want to answer various people, also especially Prof. Rabkin on the pessimism question. I’m not pessimistic, I’m so absolutely worried about world peace and the danger of war, that I don’t have an image which is expressing this better than the idea that if this bullet on Trump would have hit just a tiny half an inch or a tenth of an inch—by an accidental of his head, or the wind blowing and deflecting the bullet, or whatever the final analysis will say, but it was that close! Can you imagine? That’s a chance in a million! Or in a billion or a trillion. And I think that that is the image people have to somehow incarnate, that that is the condition of all of humanity. Because if you assume that, then you get off your couch, and you start working with the IPC. And I’m making again a very dramatic appeal: Help us to unify the peace movement! Because still you have a situation, you have this movement in this country, and that group in that country, but they all make very laudable efforts, but unless we really unite internationally and become the strong voice of the majority of the world, I don’t think it’s strong enough to stop this. So, my urgent appeal is: Contact all these groups; get them to the next meeting next week, and make as much networking as is required to accomplish that.
I also want to strongly propose to Anastasia that we take this Romanian initiative and publish it in such a form that it can be picked up from the IPC, from the Schiller Institute, and that we try to get—because this is not a Romanian problem: The same things happen in many countries that have made similar treaties. The condition of democracy is almost—I think it’s gone! I think the NATO summit was the final instance to outdo, outrule democracy by simply saying we have to make everything “Trump-proof”. What does that mean? It means that no matter what the American voters are deciding, namely to elect potentially Trump or some other government in some other country, it does not matter, they want to make NATO the supranational dictatorship: For example, moving the Ukraine Group headquarters from Ramstein, which was under U.S. auspices, to Wiesbaden, where it will no longer be a U.S. thing, but a NATO thing. Now, we have our office in Wiesbaden, so it’s not exactly a thing which—I don’t think it makes a big difference because once you have war, it will be war in general.
But democracy has been ruled out. What they are doing to Orbán, I mean, the EU has rules: The rules are that you have a rotating Presidency, and Hungary has done nothing wrong to violate any of the rules of the EU! All Orbán did, was to say he is trying to get a peace agreement. He said, I don’t have a mandate, because the EU doesn’t give me a mandate. But he has the right to do what he did as a representative of a sovereign country, namely Hungary. The Hungarians had many wars on their territory, they lost large portions of their territory in these wars, and they don’t want another war. If you don’t have the head of state, being elected by a majority of your people, to make an initiative for peace—if that puts you in an ostracized position—I mean, give me a break! You don’t have democracy in the EU anymore, nor in other matters.
Yesterday we got avideo from Michael von der Schulenburg, who just recently got elected into the European Parliament for the Wagenknecht BSW new party. He sent this video to me, saying—it’s a passionate four-minute appeal describing how war lustful these politicians are in the EU. He says these people don’t think about if their children and grandchildren would be sent to the front. They’re not affected by that, they think it happens to somebody else! So, look at this video, we’ll put it as a link in the chat or wherever. Anastasia will put it out. He is saying that they did not allow any of these newly elected parliamentarians to speak, in the European Parliament!
So, where is democracy? There is a case where a journalist has just been banned. I have no sympathies for this particular person who I think has political views I have nothing in common with, but nevertheless, he is a journalist, he has a publishing house. And even the mainstream journalists in Germany condemned this action, because they correctly see it as an assault on the freedom of the press. Based on what? Based on the whims of the Interior Minister of Germany, who just decided on her own to ban this outlet.
So, you can go to jail in Germany, by now if you’re saying that history started on the 23rd of February, because history is now supposed to start on the 24th of February. If you say there is any pre-history to what happened, you already become a target of criminal action. The condition— I think we are, if not there already, we are very closely moving to the danger of a new fascism, dictatorship. And if you look at what is happening in the so-called Western democracies, you can almost say it’s upside down, and everything they are accusing Russia of doing, they are doing, and they are projecting. It’s a completely incredible situation.
Therefore, let me again address this question of pessimism. Having said all this, you can imagine that I’m not exactly euphoric about the world situation, but world war being an inch close, danger of fascism, all of these things are true: Why am I, nevertheless, an optimist? I think my optimism comes from a different plane or a different region, and that is, the nature of man. I believe that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was correct in the 17th century, when he said that the universe is made in such a way that the great evil always evokes the greater good. And I think the entire evolution of mankind and the universe is the proof of it, because if that would not be true, we would have died already in the Stone Age or even earlier, but we have made a tremendous arc of progress.
Furthermore, I think that ideas are what drive history. And, therefore, my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, had huge fights with all kinds of people, who, in the United Nations and other places, would say, “You cannot discuss about economic development, because first you have to have a political settlement, and then, you can start to tackle economic issues.” He always said, “No, you have to do something which improves the livelihood of the ordinary people, so that they develop a hope and a perspective.” When the Oslo Accords were there, he said, “You have to have theOasis Plan or an economic development plan. And you have to move in right away. There have to be bulldozers and earth-moving machines, so that the people see that the Oslo Accords are improving their lives.” This was not done. It was sabotaged by the World Bank at the time. Therefore, the Oslo Accord, with murders on top of it, did not succeed.
But now we are in a different situation, because you have right now an historic change of an epoch. Xi Jinping always says this is a development, which has not been seen in 100 years. But I think this is not actually, really enough, because we see right now an epochal change such as has not been seen in 500 years at least. Because colonialism started around the year 1500. And for 500 years-plus, the colonized countries suffered slavery, exploitation, incredible wars, being suppressed, having a life expectancy massively reduced because of the colonial system.
But these countries are now moving to create a new economic system, with the help of China. China, which has made a civilizational contribution which is not recognized for its merit, but it is true! Can you imagine a country that in 40 years moved from the Sub-Saharan level of economic development, which it was 40 years ago, and now, you go to some of these Chinese cities like Shenzhen, or Guangdong, or Chongqing, or many, many others, and they’re so modern: They have 40,000 km of fast train systems, which you fly through the landscape with these fast trains. They are now building a 600 km maglev train. And I could add to this long list. Because of their economic strength, they have reached out to the Global South countries, and they now see for the first time a perspective for overcoming their underdevelopment with the help of China. And some of the emerging markets are also an engine of growth. Indonesia, for example, will bypass Germany as the fourth largest economic power this year or next year.
So, there is a tremendous transformation where a new economic system is being built by countries that do want to go back to the UN Charter and sovereign equality for every country on the planet, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. And I’m absolutely certain that that is the power which is stronger, because it gives people hope.
So, while I maintain that we are in the most dangerous situation ever in history, because of thermonuclear weapons, the next 3.5 months will be the most dangerous in the history of mankind ever: But I think that there is right now a paradigm shift underway which is not hopeless. I think the Oasis Plan and similar development plans are extremely important to be projected, because if people see a hope—for example, in Southwest Asia, Jordan has no water; Yemen is poor; Syria is poor; Iraq, Afghanistan. If you inject economic development, it will even impact the people in Israel. And I don’t think Israel can forever neglect the idea that they have to have security in their neighborhood as well. Israel will be forever situated in the Middle East. In the same way that Russia will be forever our neighbor in Europe.
And I think that if you combine, on the one side, a clear warning on what will happen if this goes wrong—namely the annihilation of humankind—and at the same time, show people clear roads where you can overcome this situation, I believe that the nature of human beings is such that you can appeal to reason, and that you get out of this mess. I think a very crucial stepping stone to this will be to find those elder statesmen, former military, former doctors, people who are in pension age or maybe early retirement or whatever, but who are stepping forward now to say, we must give ourselves another order, an international peace and development order, and architecture, which allows for the survival and interests of every country on the planet, and who help to change the public debate.
I think that’s the best idea I have thought about so far. And if you agree with me, rather than saying it’s all hopeless and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, you should step forward and help us to bring these people together and make sure that the Oasis Plan is becoming a household word, especially in the Middle East, so that people can develop some hope. I think hope is the best catalyst that people need, to have the courage to act to stop the catastrophe.
