Helga Zepp-LaRouche To International Peace Coalition Meeting No. 49
Friday, May 10, 2024
DENNIS SPEED: We want to welcome everybody for meeting No. 49 of the International Peace Coalition. We have many speakers today, so we just want to make a general announcement for everyone to try to keep your remarks both focused and short. But when we get to the Q&A period, there we want people to be focused on responding to the content of what you will hear. You can say anything you wish, but we make that as a request so we can run the meeting as efficiently as possible.
There are obviously a lot of things going on, particularly this past week. Today in fact, if I’m not mistaken, the UN General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution on whether or not Palestine will be granted new rights and privileges, etc. So, there’s a lot even as we are speaking at this moment that is evolving.
What we’re going to do is to go to our first speaker, who is the intellectual generator of the International Peace Coalition, and also the founder and leader of the international Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello to all of you. Well, the situation in the world is extremely advanced, and advancing by the day. Let me start—it’s difficult to choose which crisis is more acute, Ukraine or Southwest Asia—but let me start with Ukraine. There we had a very dramatic development in the last week, where the statements by Macron were reiterated on May 2 to send troops into Ukraine. Then, Cameron said it’s OK if Ukraine is using its cruise missiles to launch attacks deep into the territory of Russia. Then, you had Hakeem Jeffries of the U.S. Congress saying that if Ukraine loses, then the U.S. would send troops. This was, however, countered by a former member of the U.S. Army, Stanislav Krapivnik, who said if U.S. troops would be sent to Ukraine, they would be wiped out by Russia without any doubt. Then, Russia also said that if F-16s are deployed in Ukraine, they will regard that as a deployment of nuclear weapons, because of their dual-use capability. In other words, the F-16s can carry either conventional or nuclear weapons. And to all of that, for the first time in history, Putin announced maneuvers of the tactical nuclear weapons in response to these Western provocations. There have been normally tactical nuclear weapons rehearsals and maneuvers, but this is the first time that it was explicitly in reaction to these statements by Macron, Cameron, Jeffries, and the F-16 question.
That has sent shockwaves in the West, and Macron in the meantime pulled back a little bit and assured that France would not send troops. That was also probably due to his discussions with Xi Jinping, who was on a state visit in France. In the meantime, there has been relative silence so far from the British side. The British and French ambassadors had been called into the Russian Foreign Ministry and were read the Riot Act, and told what would happen, namely, that if these troops or the British systems would be deployed by Ukraine against Russia, this would cause a Russian reaction against all British and American bases and beyond. And that “beyond” was naturally left open, which Scott Ritter said he thought that this could cause an attack on U.S. bases in Romania, in Poland, in France, in Germany. So, we are really in an extremely escalated situation.
This does not prevent Defense Minister Boris Pistorius from Germany from travelling to the United States, where he bought new weapons systems of various kinds for $23 billion. NATO is pushing hard for the 2% of the national budgets being increased to 2.5%. This whole discussion is that if Russia wins in Ukraine, that Putin will march on and attack the Baltics, Poland, and other NATO countries. That is completely unproven; there are several journalists who have demanded that those who are insisting on this argument should bring the quotes from Putin. There are no quotes. As a matter of fact, the only available quote comes from Putin in his discussion with Tucker Carlson, when he explicitly said that Russia has no interest whatsoever to attack NATO countries. Anybody who studies the matter carefully can only come to the one conclusion: The one thing which Russia wants to get out of this whole affair is to have Western security guarantees like those Putin had demanded on Dec. 17, 2021. That Ukraine will not become a member of NATO, that there are no offensive American weapons systems along the Russian border. So, there is the farce one has to say of the planned so-called peace conference in mid-June in Switzerland, where the basis will be the Zelenskyy so-called “peace formula,” but Russia is not invited. It is an effort to pull as many countries from the Global South on the side of Ukraine, to be able to say that the majority of the world is going in this direction. But this has zero chance to actually lead to peace, because if you don’t invite Russia, how can you have a peace agreement if you don’t invite one of the two sides? This is a very dramatic picture.
If you look at the other hotspot, it is almost unbelievable to follow the news every day. In Rafah, since a couple of days, leaflets have been dropped saying that the 100,000 people of the probably 1.3 million people who are in an absolutely desperate situation in Rafah, have been motivated to relocate to another area because of the pending attack of the IDF on Rafah, which is beyond the imagination. Some of these people—I listened to a radio report this morning—some of these people have been relocated eight times; from the north to Khan Younis, to back to Rafah. Now they are told again to move away from there. Always starving, no medical supplies—it is an absolutely intolerable situation. Hamas in the meantime accepted a deal which was brokered by Qatar and Egypt. [Former CIA Director] Burns visited these countries, and then went to meet with Netanyahu. Now, it turns out that this incredibly cynical game, whereby Hamas is promised that part of the deal will be a permanent ceasefire. But when Burns talked with the Israelis, with Netanyahu, he said it will not be a permanent ceasefire. It will be a ceasefire not with a dot at the end, but a comma. Meaning that once the hostages are freed, then the war can continue.
So, this is a situation which is becoming more and more unbearable for the international community to watch; and we should not watch it.
So, on the positive side, I can only say that we had, following our very important Oasis Plan conference on April 13th, this past weekend a diplomatic event in Copenhagen with the presence of 13 embassies, half of dozen ambassadors in person. It was an extremely important follow-up meeting on the level of diplomats and ambassadors, and out of this meeting came a complete commitment to continue the organizing, kick it up to a higher level by trying to get a big international conference with the participation of states on the need to put the Oasis Plan, the development plan for the entire region of Southwest Asia in earnest on the agenda. I think this shows very clearly that if the Oasis Plan is becoming realized, that can be the first stepping stone in the direction of a New Paradigm for the whole strategic situation. That becomes more urgent by the day.
First of all, the London Economist has an article written by its chief editor containing an observation that indeed the old order is decaying, is finished, is no longer existent. This coming from The Economist is quite noteworthy, given the fact that it is the mouthpiece of the City of London. And there is a new poll conducted by an NGO headed by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary General. They made a poll and came to the conclusion that especially since the Gaza war started, the reputation of the United States in the world is rapidly plunging. It’s plunging in the Global South, among the Muslim world, but it’s also plunging among Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, and some other countries of Europe. At the same time, the images of Russia and China are rising; naturally especially in the Global South.
If the establishments are not capable of learning, and it seems they still are very reluctant to do so, which you can see by the very harsh police reactions to the growing student protests in over 100 cities in the United States and now increasingly in Europe; in France, but also now in about 10 German cities, where in the case of Berlin and Leipzig, they went in relatively brutally and then several hundred professors supported the right of the students to defend their free speech. This is being blasted by the mainstream media as a complete break of the dam, the whole order is breaking apart. How can these professors dare to support the students? So, I think we are experiencing right now a real divide between those people who still have something human inside them, and those who are absolutely sticking to a collapsing order which cannot be maintained in any case. That puts the need on the agenda to really go in earnest for our new international security and development architecture, for a New Paradigm in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia. If you do not include the interests of everybody, peace is absolutely impossible.
These are, in a few words, the updates about the situation, and now I’m very interested to hear what other people have to say.
Closing Remarks:
I want to touch upon several points which were made. I think one of the important outcomes of this session of the IPC meeting—and I want to thank all participants for a really very round and excellent discussion of the strategic picture in which we find ourselves. As a matter of fact, I was thinking maybe we should make an exception to the rule, and publish this entire IPC call. I don’t know if you agree with that, but I think it was so rich in terms of both highlighting the danger of nuclear war, the genocide in Gaza and what the mobilization is against it internationally. So, maybe if you could make a vote, or signal your agreement or disagreement in the chat or email, we can see then.
I think we should really try to get across what especially Colonel Black and Scott Ritter and Steve Starr were elaborating, because the danger of nuclear war is so close. Every word that was said I can only agree with, because if the elites would know what they are playing with, they wouldn’t do it. But obviously they are completely arrogant and full of themselves, and they are not aware of the danger into which they are bringing all of humanity. I just would like to add one element, and that is that the Russians have a Doomsday machine. They have a doctrine whereby if the entire Russian leadership would be knocked out in the context of a war, they have installed where a second strike would nevertheless deliver a totally devastating blow. So, that would mean the absolute secure end of civilization. I think people really should consider this.
On the Oasis Plan, what was interesting in the Copenhagen diplomatic meeting about the Oasis Plan was that several participants had expressed agreement that, because many of the people who are suffering what is happening in Gaza, who are immediately concerned to get humanitarian aid to save the lives, may not have the time to think about the Oasis Plan because they tend to think, “Let’s first save these lives, get a political solution, and then think about an Oasis Plan.” We all agreed that that is understandable, even if it’s not the correct approach. But it puts all the more responsibility to the intellectuals to really forcefully try to get this alternative in the minds of everybody, and that is what my appeal to you again is. Help us to get the Oasis Plan into all parts of society—governments, think tanks, universities, military people, other organizations as well.
Thirdly, I want to say that one of the most important weapons right now in the metaphorical sense is to be exactly informed of what is going on strategically. I know that many people around the world are worried about the media telling you a narrative, and not the reality. I would like to use this occasion to tell you that we have a strategic alert newsletter, a Daily Alert, which is extremely inexpensive. It is a daily briefing of how the world strategically changes from yesterday to today. It is based on the experience of 50 years of analysis based on the scientific method of Lyndon LaRouche, who initiated this process 50 years ago. Those people who have been reading it are absolutely convinced that it’s a very unique tool to be informed. So my suggestion to all of you is, if you are interested, you can subscribe to it for free for a couple of weeks, and then if you like it, you can subscribe to it and be much better informed than any other way. We will put this in the chat, and I would urge you to try to subscribe.
Lastly, I can only wholeheartedly support what Dennis Speed said about Beethoven. The Ninth Symphony is probably the greatest work ever written. That’s very difficult because Beethoven has written many absolutely outstanding compositions. But in the Ninth Symphony, especially when you take the totality of the three movements, then culminating in the fourth movement where you have the entire richness of agapē, of elevating humanity on a completely different level. It’s not just that all men become brethren, which is obviously a very beautiful idea which will happen, I’m sure of it. If man matures and becomes adult, we will be all each other’s brothers and sisters, naturally. And I’m not gendering, I have been saying that way back before the genders even came up with the idea. But it is also, if you listen to the text, which was written by Schiller, the Ode to Joy, there is a part in the composition where it says “above the stars, there must be a good Father.” You should listen to that part of the music. I’m absolutely sure that shudders will run down your back, because it is so elevated. It brings up man in the image of God, and that there is justice in the universe, in the Creation itself, and that there is goodness in the universe and that that will prevail. So, I would suggest that you indeed listen to it, and listen to the translation of that text, while you are listening, because I think there is a unity of Schiller and Beethoven which is really the highest expression of humanity I can think of. That is exactly what we need to be uplifted and strong enough to get through this battle.
