Oct. 9—Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and Initiator of the International Peace Coalition (IPC), began its 175th consecutive weekly meeting with praise for the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay. Pillay chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, that concluded in a Sept. 16, 2025 report that Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza. She went on to describe the wave of protests that have broken out around Europe, noting that “the one common denominator” is opposition to the war drive being led by the governments of the “coalition of the willing.” She also underlined the importance of Pope Leo XIV’s proclamation that Saint Augustine was, in fact, not the author of the “just war” doctrine, particularly the version that is presently being misused by war enthusiasts. She called for a “just peace.”

As an indication of the “brutalization of the population as part of the cognitive warfare,” Zepp-LaRouche cited U.S. so-called “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth’s stated intention to live-stream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter, U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan. Hasan was convicted of murder in 2013 for the 2009 shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others.

Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and co-coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones campaign and of World BEYOND War, of which she became board president in 2022. She began by greeting many of the prominent personalities who have spoken at past IPC meetings, including Prof. Falk, who followed her in this session. She referenced the assassination of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, who served as the first United Nations Mediator for the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. He was killed by the Zionist Stern Gang on Sept. 17, 1948, to thwart the peace proposal which he and Ralph Bunche, an American diplomat and assistant to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, had drafted and which was submitted to the UN the following day. She described how Pope Francis had directed that the “popemobile” be converted to a medical relief vehicle, and how the Israelis, to this day, have refused to allow this vehicle to enter Gaza. She concluded with the famous quote by a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of Jan. 18, 1943, Marek Edelman, who asserted that “to be a Jew means always standing with the oppressed, never the oppressors.”

Prof. Richard Anderson Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s chairman of the board of trustees, and was United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2008 to 2014. He recalled how, in the past, leaders of the United States welcomed immigrants—an indication of what “the American narrative could be and should be.” He described the current deportation of immigrants to “third countries” as “racism on top of xenophobia.” Falk echoed Zepp-LaRouche’s appreciation of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to his former boss at the UN, Navi Pillay, but expressed the wish that it could have been shared with his fellow Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, which would have also been richly significant.

He added that Pope Leo speaks with a moral authority that the secretary-general of the UN lacks. The latter “cringes at the point of challenging the powers of the world.” He described how leading politicians must defer to corruption in order to attain and retain their status. Zepp-LaRouche, in response, agreed that corruption has become a sort of prerequisite for political leadership; that a person who aspires to political power must have skeletons in his closet to ensure that he can be controlled. She presented a vision of an alternative system, based on a dialogue of civilizations, and said that Popes Leo XIV and Francis are examples of the leadership required. Kelly recounted a tale of an encounter with a U.S. Marine in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion and “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq in 2003. The Marine astonished her by identifying the book which she had seen him reading earlier, as a copy of Joseph Conrad’s anti-colonial novel, Heart of Darkness—which he said that he was reading for the thirteenth time. She again praised Pope Leo and said, “We don’t want to give up on that edifice of international law.”

Dennis Fritz, retired U.S. Air Force Command Chief Master Sergeant, reminded the participants of earlier warnings by other military men, Gen. Smedley Butler, who famously said that “war is a racket,” and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who warned of the military-industrial complex. Today, our political leaders seek unequaled military power, which they will use to get anything they want, typified by the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, which set the stage for multiple wars in the Middle East. He said that so-called “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth presides over the “scariest Pentagon” he has ever seen, and warned of Hegseth’s plan to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create a fully automated attack capability.

The Upcoming Election in Brazil

Beatriz Bissio, associate professor in the Post-Graduate Program of Comparative History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said that “democracy in Brazil is now facing its greatest test since the restoration of constitutional order in the mid-1980s” with the contest between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. The latter represents “the rise of the far right, globally,” and is supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The first round of elections on Oct. 4, she said, produced shocking results, with Bolsonaro coming out on top with 47% of the vote while President Lula came in second, with 45%. She described Brazil as being encircled by right-wing regimes, with the exception of Uruguay. “The outcome of the [run-off] elections in Brazil [on Oct. 25] will have reverberations in Latin America and beyond…. The far-right governments are subservient to U.S. interests.”

Felipe Bombardelli, a Brazilian postgraduate student in robotics at the Federal University of Paraná, is active with the International Youth Movement of the Schiller Institute. He described that there was very little political participation of students at the universities in Brazil going into the first round of the elections—many people on the left, including in Lulaʼs Workersʼ Party (PT), thought Lula would win on the first vote. Waking up to realize that “it will take a miracle to make Lula President,” an unprecedented mobilization of students, professors, and even labor has exploded, in the face of a difficult situation, in support of Lula’s candidacy.

Staying on the topic of student activism, Schiller Institute activist Remi Lebrun reported on the ground from Paris, France, where there is a widespread mobilization, primarily among high school students, who are protesting the collapse of conditions in French public schools. The government has responded with severe repression, worse even than that directed against the yellow vest movement in France between 2018 and 2020. High school students are now being joined by middle school and college students, and their parents.

Discussion

In response to questions, the participants discussed the proposal of E. Martin Schotz, MD, the coordinator for the JFK Peace Speech Committee and a leader of Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA), who in the previous week’s IPC meeting had suggested an “American National Congress” modeled on the African National Congress, which led the fight against apartheid in South Africa. They moved next to the possible consequences of a Flávio Bolsonaro victory in Brazil, including the possible withdrawal of that nation from the BRICS.

Independent U.S. congressional candidate Jose Vega raised the implications of the latest shooting by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) agents of a 28-year-old man with a 5-year-old child in the back seat of his car, near the Bronx, New York. He placed it in the context of worldwide anger over the mistreatment of the poor and elderly, such as the case of María del Carmen Abascal in Spain—an 87-year-old woman evicted from her apartment in Madrid after an investment fund acquired the property and tripled the rent—by governments that are increasingly bankrupt but insist on transferring funds to an arms buildup.

Zepp-LaRouche closed the meeting by reiterating that the world is entering an inevitable phase change, and whether that change is for better or worse will depend on the courage of individuals.