April 11, 2024 (EIRNS)—This headline of today’s daily EIR.News is the title of the opening panel of the international online conference Saturday, April 13, sponsored by the Schiller Institute. The second, and concluding panel of the day is titled, “The Oasis Plan: The Physical Foundation for the Development of Southwest Asia.”
While the specifics discussed will, in the main, focus on the Eastern Mediterranean and the greater region from Southern Asia westward to the Maghreb, the principle of the right to development applies the world over, and it is urgent. This perspective is the guiding spirit of the International Peace Coalition, to mobilize to defeat the Global NATO madness, now at extreme stages in several parts of the world. Look at the escalating danger on three fronts: Southwest Asia, Ukraine, and the Asia-Pacific.
Southwest Asia: A drumbeat is coming from the White House, State Department, Pentagon and major disinformation media to promote the prospect of escalated regional warfare from an Iranian counterattack to Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian consular facility in Damascus, producing a joint Israel-U.S.A. counter-counterattack on Iran in turn, and so on. Today U.S. Central Command Gen. Michael Kurilla was in Israel, meeting in person with top IDF and Israeli military officials to coordinate a defense of Israel in case of an Iranian attack. President Biden told the media at an April 10 press conference that the U.S. “commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad. Let me say it again: ironclad.” Secretary of State Blinken pledged the same in a phone call with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the same day. Bloomberg, Reuters, and other media are chattering non-stop about when, where, and how Iran will strike—through proxies, directly, indirectly, etc.
The murderous needlessness of this war scenario buildup was highlighted today in a statement released in New York by the Iranian Mission to the United Nations: “Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated.”
Meantime in Gaza, the “ironclad” U.S. support for Israel was disgraced yet again this week by another attack on an aid convoy. A number of trucks carrying UNICEF medical nutrition treatment for infants and other humanitarian relief today came under fire at a checkpoint midway between south and north Gaza. No aid worker was killed, unlike the IDF murder of seven World Central Kitchen staff on April 1 (the same day it struck the Iranian consulate in Syria!), but UNICEF had to discontinue the mission.
World Health Organization physician Dr. Margaret Harris told media April 11 that aid workers in Gaza have themselves each lost up to one-third of their body weight in recent months, because of the lack of food. She further warned that 1 million people are now looking at famine near-term. The official death toll of civilians in Gaza is 33,580, with more than 76,000 injured, and thousands missing.
“What is forced displacement and the deliberate starvation of an entire population if not an act of genocide?” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa demanded to know today, speaking of the West Bank and Gaza in addressing a celebration of Eid-al-Fitr marking the end of Ramadan. “This week marks 30 years since the Rwandan genocide unfolded before the eyes of the world and little was done to stop the killing of 1 million people,” he noted, but South Africa “will not sit back, our arms folded, as another genocide is perpetrated in our lifetime.” The President had just concluded a visit to Rwanda on April 7.
Ukraine: NATO refuses to give up its war against Russia using Ukraine, no matter what the cost in risk of all-out war, and meantime, mass destruction and loss of life. Today, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Lithuania, meeting with leaders of the “Three Seas Initiative” (13 EU nations of the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas) attempting to drum up more arms support. In New York, at the UN Security Council, a special-request session was held this morning as a platform to denounce Russia for “human rights violations.” Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia denounced the affair as “optics,” while the nations engaged in it are doing nothing at all to recognize reality or history, or to work for a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. He said that on April 12, a special UN Security Council session will be held at the request of Russia on “Peace and Security.”
Asia-Pacific: The U.S.-Japan Joint Leaders Statement released after the meeting at the White House yesterday between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is a lengthy, bellicose document, so extreme and explicitly aimed against China, that Beijing issued démarches to both the United States and Japan. Today at the Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing, spokeswoman Mao Ning spoke out fiercely against the Joint Statement and the conduct of the U.S. Among other things, this calls the question on the pretense by Washington to seek a stable relationship with China by the visits of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials.
Beijing further sent the message to the U.S. that playing the Taiwan gambit against China will not be tolerated, and issued sanctions against two major U.S. military-industrial complex companies, General Dynamics Land Systems, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, for selling military components to Taiwan. The assets of these companies in China have been frozen. None of their executives or staff is permitted into China.
Underlying each of these three arenas of war and genocide is the oligarchy’s ideology of geopolitics, whose premise is that human beings are but beasts condemned to eternally fight one another to survive. This Saturday’s “Oasis Plan” international conference will demonstrate just how wrong that evil ideology is, by bringing together people of good will around the task of “creating the conditions for dialogue, security, peace and development” in Southwest Asia and everywhere. Be sure to participate and organize everyone to join you.
