Tiden løber ud for Gaza. FN’s generalforsamling må handle nu.
Den Internationale Fredskoalition møde #117 den 29. august 2025
På engelsk:
International Peace Coalition Meeting #117, Friday, August 29, 2025
ANASTASIA BATTLE: Hello, everyone; welcome! This is the International Peace Coalition. This is our 117th consecutive meeting. Thank you all for participating in this process. My name is Anastasia Battle, and I’ll be your moderator along with Dennis Small and Dennis Speed, my co-moderators. I like to remind everyone at the start of each meeting that we created this forum in order to bring the entire world peace movement together around a consolidated idea to create true peace. Whatever philosophy you’re from, whatever nation you’re from, language you speak, religion, it doesn’t matter; if you are for true peace, then you are welcome here.
We have an excellent line-up of people today going through the world situation, which has been quite tumultuous. So, please take a moment to share this invitation with your friends, your organizations, reasonable enemies if you have some, to invite them to this discussion today. It will be very important. Coming up we have the September 3rd event and SCO meeting; but I’ll leave that to our next speaker to update everyone.
So, I’d like to have Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute and the initiator of the International Peace Coalition to start us off. Please go ahead, Helga.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello to all of you. It is very difficult to determine where one should start, because the strategic situation is so full of dangerous spots which could go out of control, and the whole dynamic in general is not going in a positive direction at all.
But let me start with the most pressing issue, because time is running out in Gaza and the West Bank, where the genocide is continuing. Every single day people are dying; famine is there. The offensive against Gaza City by the IDF has started, and the international community is so far absolutely impotent and doesn’t act. We are coming up now to the UN General Assembly, and that creates probably the last chance to do something to stop this. The military operation against the occupied Palestinians—it’s not a war where Israel has declared war on the Palestinians. Israel is the occupying force in a very small contained area called Gaza. It is unbelievable! I think we should be aware of the fact that if the whole world community is proving unable to stop a genocide which is going on in front of the eyes of the entire world community, that is not only potentially meaning the deaths of more than 2 million Palestinians. I think it is the end of civilization, if you can call it civilization after this. So, it’s the last chance. On the 18th of September—this is in the middle of the UN General Assembly—the deadline runs out for a provision which was concluded and agreed upon one year ago by the UN General Assembly that Israel has to comply with the rulings of the International Court of Justice or further measures can be adopted by the UN General Assembly. That creates a window, because obviously Israel has not been compliant; nobody has been putting pressure on it. The United States has been backing whatever Israel is doing; Western governments have done absolutely nothing substantial to intervene. That means that the only remedy left is to go to the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution #377, which says that if the UN Security Council is blocked by, for example, the permanent veto of one of the Permanent Five, then the decision-making can go to the UN General Assembly, which can then decide to adopt measures. What would be required would be a resolution in the UN General Assembly which specifies which measures must be taken, including sending forces—either Blue Helmets or some other military force. That depends naturally on the discussion in the UN General Assembly. Then, by a two-thirds majority, they can decide to send such a force.
There are all kinds of proposals which are side traps and actually not functioning to remedy the situation, such as a two-state solution [which the Schiller Institute otherwise supports- editor]; because this does not change the genocide. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has pointed that out. There is now growing resistance mounting; for example, there is a letter signed by more than 200 former EU diplomats and other such people demanding action. Also, the staff of Volker Türk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, are demanding that he take action. So, I would suggest that we discuss this, and that we deploy the International Peace Coalition to support such an action of the UN General Assembly uniting for a peace resolution to go into effect.
As I said, this is probably the last chance there is; because if we wait any longer, the majority of people in Palestine will be dead or simply transported to a small area in the south somewhere, amounting to a concentration camp, and maybe shipped out. Ethnic cleansing is on the agenda. So, that’s my first point. One should take note of the fact that of all people, Tony Blair and Jared Kushner were in a meeting at the White House discussing some proposals for Gaza. That clearly smells of the Gaza Riviera proposal.
If that genocide would not be enough—and let me just restate it again for emphasis. If the world community fails to act on that, I think we are losing everything. We are not just threatening to lose the Palestinian people; we are losing the ability to look into the mirror every morning. We are losing the idea that there is something like international law. It’s really a massive issue which is at stake.
As if this would not be enough, I think the situation that we discussed last week with the IPC meeting where Prof. Postol was putting out this extreme warning that in his view—and he is the expert—and he has reiterated that he has the absolute knowledge and evidence. There is no doubt about what he is saying. He said basically that Iran has enough nuclear material ready so that either they already have nuclear weapons, or they could have them in a few weeks or days. So, he said that we have two undeclared nuclear powers in the Middle East. To make things worse, the European Three—that is Great Britain, France, and Germany—have now activated something which is called the Snapback, which refers to reinstituting the sanction regime which was abandoned after the JCPOA was affected. Now basically they are giving Iran a 30-day deadline to again allow the International Atomic Energy Agency in for inspections to find out where their remaining nuclear material is. Obviously, the answer from the Iranian government has been negative; they say they have no reason to believe that there is any legitimacy in the request, because the last time they cooperated, they were cheated. The United States was negotiating while preparing to back up the Israeli military attack. So they say they have absolutely no reason to believe any of the statements being made are true.
The Russian government in the person of Dmitry Polyanskiy has denounced this method of what he calls coercion and blackmail by the Europeans. Basically the Iranians also say that they have no capability, because who wants to listen to these Europeans when they have not been able to intervene with the U.S. attack in the first place? Polyanskiy says there are two ways of dealing with issues; one is diplomacy, and the other is coercion, blackmail, and threats. That is obviously what the Europeans are now doing. There is also a study out which says that the sanctions regime has caused more than 500,000 civilians to die because what do these sanctions aim at? They hit the civilian population; they lower the living standard, make everything more expensive; and people die from hunger and lack of medicine. So, that is a ticking time bomb, because the 30-day deadline means that the situation is on absolute fire.
Just to mention one more item which I think is important, there was just the arrest of the so-called coordinator of the Nord Stream sabotage in Italy. A Ukrainian man, who supposedly was the commander of the operation whereby the 50-meter sailing yacht was the tool with which the sabotage was carried out. The German authorities say that all seven who participated in this have now been identified. One man died on the battlefield in Ukraine; the other five are known, at least their identities are known. That story I think is extremely doubtful. There are many experts around the world in many countries who absolutely doubt that this very sophisticated operation could have been carried out from a small sailboat with practically amateur divers. It’s completely ludicrous, and Russia, China, and other countries have demanded an independent investigation to establish complete transparency as to what happened. This is not just a terrorist attack. Remember, the Nord Stream sabotage changed the geopolitical landscape, because it not only started the present economic downfall of Germany and all of Europe which is now going at high speed, but it was the beginning of completely geopolitically separating Europe from Russia. That obviously was to the total benefit of the United States during the Biden administration, because now Germany and other Europeans are buying LNG gas from the United States at prices three to four times higher than the cheap gas from Russia. That was the beginning of the collapse of the German economy. I can only tell you, France is bankrupt. On September 8th, there will be a vote of no-confidence of Prime Minister Bayrou. In all likelihood, he will lose the vote. Then there will be a new prime minister which is very unlikely that an agreement can be found. Therefore, the National Assembly will be dissolved, and there will be parliamentary elections or Macron will resign and then Presidential elections will take place. In any case, there is no stable government, and the French economy is in freefall; as is even more dramatically the German economy. There you have bankruptcies, insolvencies, rising unemployment. I can only see that in the next several weeks and months into the fall and winter, we will have a complete collapse of Germany and the European economies. That is the result and late consequence of the sabotage of Nord Stream 2; and therefore we absolutely have to demand that the demand from Russia in particular, but also China which has made the point that if that state terrorism is not investigated, no critical infrastructure at no place in the whole world is secure. So, an independent real investigation is absolutely required.
Now, the ongoing militarization of Europe, and unfortunately of Germany in particular, is also going full speed ahead. The so-called Coalition of the Willing do not give up their intention to keep the war going in Ukraine; which has clearly been lost on the battlefield. Nevertheless, there are ominous developments going on. The latest of which is that there was a meeting of the German Cabinet in the Defense Ministry in a room which is called the Submarine Room, because it is completely isolated. You cannot eavesdrop on that room; it’s protected against surveillance. So, why do they meet there? Well, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Grynkewich, was there, and it’s only my guess what they may have been discussing. But when these meetings are taking place, one should be extremely alarmed because of the ongoing armament and operational Plan Germany, whereby the Army is going to the schools trying to recruit pupils to join the Army. There is a general narrative that there will be an attack by Russia on a European country by 2029 at the latest, which is being repeated by all these mainstream media on a daily basis. So, this is the situation.
Now fortunately, there is something else going on entirely concerning the Global Majority. Tomorrow starts the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Tianjin in China, where Prime Minister Modi will probably meet with Xi Jinping on the sidelines. President Putin is the guest of honor. 34 leaders of other countries will participate. Maybe President Trump will not go there, which we had tried to evoke with our appeal. It does not seem that he will go there, but maybe he has deserved the Nobel Peace Prize because he got India and China much closer together, and that can only serve peace, so that’s a good thing.
But jokes aside, I think at this event of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they will present their ten-year strategic plan. You should be very interested to hear that, because I am sure there will be a lot of economic and other integration of Eurasia around that. Then, on the 3rd of September, you will have on the one side the military parade in Beijing, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in the Pacific. That will be a super important event as well. And I’m sorry, Putin will be the guest of honor at that; I mixed it up before. That will be a very important demonstration. And on the same day, September 3rd, the Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum will also start. One of the main topics is the development of the Arctic. More than 6000 firms will be there; many countries of the Global South will see their chance to invest together with Russia and others to develop the kinds of raw materials which they are in need of. If the German leadership were still in the realm of sanity, they would say, “Let’s cooperate with Russia,” because Germany has no raw materials, and we need to develop such secure raw materials in cooperation with Russia and the BRICS. I’m not sure that such sane statements are possible, at least at this moment. This will hopefully be a place where the continuation of the potential of building the Bering Strait between Alaska and Eurasia will also be on the table. At least, we will try everything we can to make sure that it’s being discussed, because that would be a core piece of our World LandBridge proposal as the economic basis for a lasting peace in a new security and development architecture which must take into account the interests of every single country on the planet.
So, that is what my short introduction in the beginning is. As you can see, the dangers are extremely severe and acute. On the other side, a way out is already visible; namely for the Western countries to simply join the Global Majority. Then everything would be very easy to be solved. That’s my initial report.
{{Remarks during the Discussion:}}
[In answer to Prof. Toloraya:] I would like to answer that briefly. I think you need a little bit more differentiated analysis, because the Golden Billion [Western population] is not a homogeneous group. The governments which are the war mongers right now in the Coalition of the Willing have very thin support. Macron’s government will not be there next week. Starmer has maybe one-digit support in the British population. Merz has at best 29%, and the CSU-CDU 24%. So that is not exactly a majority. The reality is that because of the dramatic collapse, the vast majority of people will absolutely lose everything. Merz just said that the present German economy cannot maintain the social welfare state. That means they will go for massive cuts which will ruin the livelihoods of many people. That’s why I’m saying that if there would be a clear offer coming from the Global Majority of cooperation, like joint ventures in the development of Africa, joint ventures in the development of the Far East whereby it is becoming clear to the majority of the people of Europe that there is another way. Because people don’t want to go to war; it’s just that when they only hear the mainstream media, then they are despairing. I can tell you, people in Germany and France are getting quite desperate; in the United States they’re getting quite desperate. So, I think it does require a little bit more intervention. Because the elites are like you say—Merz was the CEO of BlackRock in Germany for many years, and he obviously has more the interests of the military-industrial complex in mind than the OCs[ph] were to defend the common good of the people. But I think that there is much more room for intervention which is what we should concentrate on.
[Response to Graham Fuller and Ray McGovern:] I have a better part of me which is an optimist, and in that sense I agree with you, Ray, that if you look at the long arc of history, it bends towards progress and justice. So, I’m absolutely certain that if we get out of this present crisis, there will be a beautiful future for humanity; because I think man is capable of reason. If you think about all the incredibly beautiful things mankind has already produced, all the pieces of art in China, in India, in Persia, in Europe, there is something about human beings which I think is making them capable of facing every challenge.
Having said that, I however think that we are in the short-term in an extremely dangerous situation, because this idea that the Russians are now saying that the Fourth Reich is reappearing in Germany and Europe is extremely worrisome. Anybody who considers what happened in World War II should really have sleepless nights over that. I was talking with a contact earlier today, and I said, “I’m a political battle horse; I have been in politics now for a very long time. But still I cannot understand what is driving these people to for no good reason risk the existence of our country.” Then this person said, “Well, maybe it is that these people are bought. That they have some advantage from what they do, and that weighs more than their consideration of the country in the long term.” I don’t know. What does it help you if you get riches if everything is being destroyed in the end? I think there are many Russians who even wrote books that said if Germany continued on its present course, it will be wiped out. Germany is the one country which is most in danger if it comes to war of being completely wiped out. Already in the past in all nuclear maneuvers of NATO, the existence of Germany does play a consideration at all. People who participated in NATO maneuvers know that, and they have been reporting that.
So, therefore I welcome what both Prof. Toloraya and Graham and Ray are saying. You have to shout loudly into Germany, because I think especially Russians and Americans and people from the outside have to make themselves heard so that maybe some of these Germans who are sleepwalking right now will wake up. So, thank you.
[In answer to comment re West not wanting to relinquish control, etc.] I just want to say connecting both what Pamina said and what Elsa now said. I’m following world developments every day; and I take into account what’s going on in the Global South, in Africa, in Latin America, in Russia, China, India. I can only tell you, please do not concentrate on the way the world looks from inside Germany. Because I can tell you that this is a completely distorted view. If you are only listening to German media, you get depressed. I can only warn you that the whole country becomes depressed because you think that you are surrounded by enemies. There is no positive development occurring anymore; there will be cuts occurring in all social fields; the hospitals get closed; the schools don’t function; the Russians are evil, the Chinese as well. You go crazy! I make it a question of my mental health to not think about Germany first thing in the morning, because I would go crazy, too. That is why I want to encourage people like you from India, to speak out. Maybe Putin doesn’t want to address these demonstrations; maybe you should. Because I think the most important thing right now is to hear voices from the outside. The Global Majority is the Global Majority. Even the British think thanks admit that the Global Majority is 85% of the world population, and it is rising.
Look at India. India has right now in my view a very beautiful revival of its Non-Aligned tradition. The more Trump is pushing India, the more that Non-Aligned tradition comes out and becomes active. India has I think 6.5% growth. India will soon be the largest country in the world, bypassing the number of people living in China. So, it’s 1.4 billion-plus people; together with China, it’s 3 billion people. Two countries, 3 billion people! What are the 80 million Germans as compared to that? So, I think we have to really readjust the way people look at the world. The more we get the cross-national border dialogue going, and people speak with each other, I think there is an absolute possibility that people will recognize we are sitting in one boat. Either we join our efforts and work together, or we all are destroying each other. So, I think we have reached that point in human history.
I have said this in the past, but let me repeat it. In the past, when the Roman Empire collapsed, in India there was the Gupta Period, and it took years before people even realized that the Roman Empire had collapsed because you had to travel by ship, and it would take very long. You would get sick, you would die, and before you could return. In other words there was no handy [cell phone], there was no internet. You could have parts of the world collapsing and other parts rising. If you look at the last several thousand years, it was always like that; the torch of progress would go from one culture to the next. It was shifting. This is now different; this time we are all sitting in one boat. If there is a nuclear exchange anywhere, it is my firm belief that it will lead to such a disaster that the chances that we all may not make it are very high.
That is what we have to start with, because once you realize that we have to change because if we get into a war right now, there will be no winner—nobody. There will not even be an historian to investigate what went wrong. If you don’t start with that, you are not realistic. But if you start with that, and say we must have a dialogue of cultures, and we will recognize how beautiful this world is, you have a completely different approach. I think that is what we have to strengthen.
[In response to collapse of German economy] Briefly, I think that there will be a huge reaction. I just read earlier today that the Verdi[ph] trade union will start demonstrations against the cuts. I’m absolutely certain that that will grow, because the dismantling of the welfare state in Germany is so dramatic. They’re cutting hospitals everywhere. They now have training sessions where the nurses and doctors are advised that in the coming war with Russia, they will have to treat wounded NATO soldiers first before ordinary people who have illnesses. This is just crazy! I personally think we are going to have a very hot autumn. Whatever the temperature in the winter will be, it will be a hot winter as well. This cannot function! You cannot do what they are trying to do. The Bundeswehr is a joke! They dismantled the Bundeswehr for so long, and now they want to basically fill it up with money. They will try; they will try very hard to militarize all of Europe. But I think the economic bottom will fall out before they succeed.
So, I think we are going into a very stormy period. I think it will require a lot of people with cool heads, and providing solutions. I think chaos is a big danger, because we may have an uncontrolled collapse. The United States is bankrupt; the U.S. debt issue is becoming a big topic. France is bankrupt. I think the reason why these elites are so unnerved is because they know perfectly well that we are sitting on an unsustainable system, and you could have an uncontrolled collapse which will make 2007-8 look like peanuts. The countries of the BRICS are trying to create a different mechanism for credit creation. Putin was talking about a new industrial platform as a financing mechanism. I think the West should start thinking about how we fix this bankrupt system. My late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, has provided the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche, which are still absolutely valid. The first is generalized Glass-Steagall; tell the investment banks to take care of themselves, they will no longer get taxpayer money. Put the commercial banks under state protection, because they are the institutions which have to provide credit for the productive parts of society. Create a national bank in every country, and then create a New Bretton Woods system with heavy emphasis on providing lots of opportunities to the Global South for credit generation to overcome their under-development. Then, focus on scientific and technological breakthroughs in fusion technology; because this will mean a gigantic jump in the productivity of the economy. Then, go for international cooperation in space research and travel, and similar things to get the necessary increase in productivity like what China is doing. China does a lot of things correctly, and India is not very far behind. Other parts of the world are much smarter than the Europeans at this point. So, let’s learn from them.
{{Closing Remarks:}}
I just want to say a word about this Reagan question. The one thing which sticks out in my mind is President Reagan’s positive response to my late husband Lyndon LaRouche and the whole SDI question. You should go and look at the video of the TV appearance President Reagan made on March 23, 1983, when he offered collaboration to the Soviet Union to jointly make nuclear weapons obsolete. That was a very serious idea which my last husband was elaborating in a protocol for the superpowers, which was a whole plan for how to make nuclear weapons obsolete. The only way to do it, was that the two superpowers would jointly develop new technologies based on new physical principles and then jointly deploy these systems. I think that is still a very valid conception, although it may have changed in terms of the predicates. I think the Russians have in part acted on their own on that basis with hypersonic weapons and similar things. But I think Reagan reiterated that same proposal eight months later in an open letter to the Soviet Union. So, if you are an historian, or interested in getting the historic record straight, go to these sources. Go to the {EIR} archive and you will find the relevant leads to find these things.
I think this was very important, and to do Reagan justice, I agree with you, Graham, that he should be upheld for that reason. He is, of all the conservatives for sure, the most reasonable one, and deserves to be upheld.
Otherwise, I can only repeat what the course of the discussion was. We will go into dramatic changes in the next weeks. The SCO meeting I think will have a clear perspective for the next ten years. Then you will have the two events on September 3rd in Beijing and Vladivostok. Then in the following weeks, there will be the UN General Assembly. So, a lot of things will happen in that period, and I think this is the period to try to inject this idea of a new security and development architecture. Because one of the things which is wrong with the European approach at this point is that they are talking a lot about providing security guarantees for Ukraine. But what about security guarantees for Russia? The Helsinki Accord concluded with one very important idea, and that was the concept of indivisible security: That you cannot have security for one and not for the other. The Europeans [internet freeze] …
I was just talking about the concept of indivisible security. I think that requires some discussion, because one way of countering this Russo-phobia question is, is there a legitimacy of having security guarantees for every country involved? The reason why the Versailles Treaty was really the first step toward World War II was because it did not take into account the security interests of everybody. I think that lesson needs to be learned. If you want to have a new world war, then you deny that. So, I think more discussion about that is required.
Otherwise, I can only appeal to you to become active with us, because we need to build the International Peace Coalition to be an absolutely strong voice. If you are from countries which are not yet that represented, please bring all your friends and colleagues to the next session. We definitely should internationalize the IPC much more than we are doing already. So, please get active with us.