The 136th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition opened with remarks by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and International Peace Coalition initiator. She warned that, in the wake of Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela, “there is no more international law, and it has been replaced by ‘might makes right’ and the law of the jungle.” She then introduced Dennis Kucinich, former U.S. Congressman from Ohio and former U.S. Presidential candidate. Kucinich said that we are at an inflection point where we will either stand for peace, or watch the world disintegrate around us. He said that in addition to the Venezuela war, the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE operatives demonstrates the lawlessness of the Trump administration. This breakdown of order is leading us ever closer to another world war. “We are tiptoeing through the graveyard of history, pretending that a nuclear war can’t happen, “ Kucinich said.
Zepp-LaRouche then noted Trump’s announcement that he wants to increase the military budget by 50% to $1.5 trillion, which should be seen in conjunction with the rearmament of Germany and Japan. Both Trump and JD Vance have stated that they want to take Greenland, and the spokeswoman for the Trump administration has statedly plainly that a military option is on the table.
She said it was important not to forget the attempted drone attacks on the residence of Russian President Putin. Europe’s “Coalition of the Willing” wants to station troops in Ukraine after a peace deal, which is “ludicrous” because the potential stationing of NATO troops in Ukraine is what started the war in the first place. She said that the killing of Renee Nicole Good was bad enough, but what was worse was Trump and Vance taking the side of the ICE agent who killed her. “The only tiny element of positive news,” Zepp-LaRouche acknowledged, was the unprecedented public reaction against the sanctions on Swiss Col. Jacques Baud.
Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2008 to 2014. He analyzed the failure of the postwar framework established in 1945, which allowed the five nations that were winners of the war a privileged position, an unrestricted veto that was not contingent upon international law. There was one rule of law for the winners, and a different one for everyone else, which was “woven into the normative order,” he said. “The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials only held the losers accountable for their crimes.” Trump’s vision for the world is dominated by geopolitics, not the rule of law. The attack on Putin’s residence and the Venezuela intervention were designed to be immune from the restrictions of international law.
Zepp-LaRouche reiterated her view that geopolitics has been the cause of two world wars, and thanked Falk for shedding new light on the problem.
Col. (ret.) Alain Corvez (France), international consultant and former advisor to the French Defense and Interior Ministries, said that there are certain states, particularly the U.S. and Israel, which do not respect the UN Charter, and the Charter is therefore finished. He just returned from Iran, where he saw the unabashed lies of the international media. Life is difficult for the Iranians after 45 years of sanctions, and there are legitimate demonstrations, which the U.S. hopes to harness to make a “color revolution,” which will not succeed.
Prof. Fernando Garzón (Ecuador) is Director of Solidarity with Palestine and former consultant on Defense Policy Strategies. He agreed with Corvez that there are developments in Iran which, like Venezuela, are being misrepresented by the international media.
He described two models: The military operational model which has been increasing, such as in Gaza, and includes the use of AI, typified by Palantir, for military purposes. In Gaza there was a kind of experimentation which is now being applied in Venezuela, not solely by the U.S., but also with coordination with Britain and France.
The second model is governance, where military campaigns are associated with investments. The oil companies had begun to negotiate well in advance of the kidnapping of Maduro. The “Gaza Riviera” scheme, promoted by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, applies a method where violent military actions are used to impose a business arrangement. An extremely important counterweight to all of this is the BRICS, which is trying to return to a civilized approach.
A snippet was aired of an Interview with Diego Sequera from Venezuela, who said that Americans are suffering economically and fed up with the endless wars. Trump’s oil grab will be financed by taxpayers, not Exxon.
