The clock runs out this coming Tuesday on the two-week ceasefire in the U.S.-Israel war of aggression against Iran. There is no confirmation at this time that a second round of direct negotiations between the U.S. and Iran will in fact occur on Monday in Islamabad, Pakistan, although some media are reporting it as a possibility. Despite President Trump’s multiple pronouncements to the contrary, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, as a response to the U.S. continuing to wage war against Iran in the form of a maritime blockade of all Iranian ports.
Meanwhile, the United States has gathered a military force in the region of over 50,000 soldiers and some 20 warships, including three aircraft carrier strike groups: the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and the USS George H.W. Bush.
If war resumes, as seems to be the trajectory at this point, besides the immediate danger of escalation to global nuclear war, there are going to be huge dislocations in the global physical-economic production process—some people today call it the “supply chain”—Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche emphasized today. For example, there are growing shortages of jet fuel across Europe, which gets 75% of its supply from Southwest Asia. Rationing is already under discussion in the European Commission. The German industrial economy, once the proud locomotive of the European economy as a whole, is today in free fall, with growing waves of corporate bankruptcies, Zepp-LaRouche reported.
“Where are the adults in the room?” she demanded.
One such voice, at least, is that of Pope Leo XIV, who is continuing on his four-nation tour of Africa. After visiting Algeria and Cameroon, the Pope arrived today in Angola, a country of 38 million with a 30% rate of extreme poverty, according to World Bank statistics. And yet where others might feel despair and pessimism, the Pope expressed hope and optimism in comments April 18 before Angolan political authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps gathered at the Presidential Palace in Luanda:
“For the entire world, Africa is a reservoir of joy and hope, which are virtues that I would not hesitate to call ‘political,’ because her young people and her poor continue to dream and to hope. They are not content with what already exists; they strive to rise above, to prepare themselves for great responsibilities, and to take an active part in shaping their own future. Indeed, the wisdom of a people cannot be stifled by any ideology, and the longing for the infinite that dwells in the human heart is a principle of social transformation far deeper than any political or cultural program. I am here among you, at the service of the finest powers that animate the persons and communities, of which Angola is a rich and vibrant mosaic.”
This writer is powerfully reminded by the Pope’s words, of the speech delivered by Lyndon LaRouche on April 4, 1987, to a packed auditorium of 450 people in Lima, Peru at a conference jointly sponsored by the Schiller Institute and the St. Augustine School in Lima to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio.
“The entire developing sector is threatened in a similar way (as Africa), unless necessary measures are taken soon,” LaRouche stated. “We must win the fight for such a just economic order, and we must win it now.”
“Never accept the idea that some countries are rich, and other countries are poor,” LaRouche continued, elaborating on the need for Mankind to take on the challenges of space exploration. “Never think of yourself as a person from a poor country. I have asked you to turn your eyes up to the stars, to see, with pride and confidence, what your mind is capable of enabling you to accomplish. Your dreaming that dream of the stars, is your nation’s potential; your nation’s potential is its future reality…
“Never accept the sight of human misery; human misery is unnecessary. Never accept the idea that the world is in danger of being overpopulated by anything except a surplus of diseases and malthusians,” LaRouche concluded.
With that same sense of optimism for the future, which comes from confidence that all Mankind can gain access to “the infinite that dwells in the human heart,” as Pope Leo put it, the LaRouche movement and allies will deploy in force to Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday April 22, to demand that Congress immediately cut off all funding to the Iran war, as independent Presidential candidate Diane Sare called for in a recent statement. As with the Vietnam War, this can instantly turn off the spigot that is fueling the killing.
And we will mobilize forces internationally to also let the U.S. Congress know the views of the Global Majority, and to convene in force for the 151st weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition on Friday April 24.
