This article appears in the February 24, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON
Peace and Development Movement Finally Comes Out in the Streets
[Print version of this article]
Feb. 20—In this third week of February, NATO leaders became almost frantic in their calls for a war escalation—the imminent risk of nuclear war be damned—to “defeat Russia” this Spring and destroy its government under Vladimir Putin.
In the same week, not a moment too soon, a movement to stop the march toward nuclear Armageddon, and to end NATO itself, finally came out into the streets of the Americas and Europe. Its highlight, so far, has been yesterday’s rally of several thousand Americans at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., with as many young as older people, calling for peace, economic development, and an end to NATO. The Feb. 19 event was the first major U.S. anti-war demonstration to emerge in a 15-month-long war crisis threatening global nuclear war.
Called “Rage Against the War Machine”, it was organized by differing political groups that had not worked together before. They overcame intensive attempts by war party media and intelligence groups to turn them against each other, and brought out two dozen notable speakers and 3,000 or more people in a five-hour, completely unified and optimistic assembly at the steps of the historic Memorial, to stop the threat of nuclear annihilation. At least 60-70,000 were watching on Internet live streams. In the view of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, whose Schiller Institute was a key organizing force for the demonstration and whose call for a “movement of world citizens” was broadcast on the rally’s video screen, this was a successful “coincidence of opposites” created for a higher purpose, a new architecture of peace and economic development.
The movement for that higher purpose will now accelerate and expand. There were other demonstrations and rallies already that same weekend, starting with an unexpectedly large demonstration of 10,000 in Munich, Germany on Feb. 18, organized by several groups as “Munich steht auf” (“Munich Stands Up”). At the Munich rally, there was a prominent announcement of the next day’s Washington rally. In Germany, a petition to stop arming Ukraine and start negotiating peace, launched by a parliamentarian and a liberal journalist, gathered 500,000 signatures in four days. The Munich steht auf demonstration directly confronted the Munich Security Conference, where NATO heads of state and foreign ministers took turns making frenetic demands that all the most advanced military systems be thrown into Ukraine, including long-range missile systems, combined with yet more economic sanctions to defeat Russia now, precisely because support for this war is falling and opposition rising among European populations in particular.
While the NATO political and financial oligarchs are aware of this growing opposition, the peoples of those nations do not realize it, and won’t, unless more and more people come out and take public action to show it. The Munich demonstrators began such a wave of action for peace. Then the Washington demonstration was flanked by smaller rallies “against the war machine” in Los Angeles, other U.S. cities, and Mexico City. And in the next week, rallies in some 100 cities in Germany, and others elsewhere in Europe, are planned on or about Saturday, Feb. 25, while the Washington rally forces will go to see members of Congress and the Schiller Institute will hold two international on-line symposia with a range of political speakers for peace and development.
‘Don’t Let Biden Stumble into WWIII’
Early in the Washington rally, following journalist Garland Nixon’s speech, the demonstrators saw a brief video of Helga Zepp-LaRouche calling for a “movement of world citizens for a new security and development architecture”, accompanied by a 3-minute presentation by nuclear weapons expert Steven Starr which described the way in which war between the nuclear superpowers and the resulting nuclear Winter must entirely extinguish humanity.
In Zepp-LaRouche’s statement shown to the Feb. 19 rally, she said:
It is this criminal policy of nuclear brinkmanship which contains the danger of the annihilation of the entire human species in a global nuclear war and following nuclear winter, which is what automatically makes every individual on Earth a world citizen, who has to take the responsibility for the outcome of this present conjuncture of human history.
We, therefore, want to catalyze an international movement of world citizens who are committed to propose a new international security and development architecture, which will take into account the interest of every single country on the planet. This concept, to consider the interest of every country, was the principle of the Peace of Westphalia, which laid the basis for peace after 150 years of religious war in Europe, and represented the beginning of international law, and laid the foundation for the UN Charter, which we need to uphold and reassert.
Speakers at the Lincoln Memorial demonstration included former Members of Congress: Tulsi Gabbard, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich; many independent journalists such as Garland Nixon, Kim Iverson, Chris Hedges and Max Blumenthal; comedian and Internet journalist Jimmy Dore; Ann Wright, former U.S. Army Colonel, diplomat and now international peace advocate; and leaders of the Schiller Institute: Diane Sare, who was a key catalyzer of the united front of organizational leaders from the Libertarian Party and the Movement for a People’s Party; and Jose Vega, who has led interventions on Members of Congress who voted for the massive funding of Ukraine in the war, interventions which have become famous and emulated.
Many of the speakers, particularly Diane Sare, Tulsi Gabbard, Garland Nixon and others—concentrated on warning against the imminent danger of NATO’s Ukraine war turning into nuclear war and the annihilation of human civilization.
Diane Sare’s presentation, “We Choose Not To Be Tragic,” was so pointed and thought-provoking for the demonstrators that we have made it the editorial of this issue.
‘Let’s Get To It!’
Jose Vega had been called on by rally co-moderator Nick Brana of the People’s Party to “train others” to do the kind of interventions at Congressional town meetings which Jose has done against the war, and which have been seen on social media by millions.
He spoke to the demonstration, saying:
I’m really happy to see all of your faces here. And I also want to give thanks to Diane Sare: he ran against Killer Chuck Schumer and I worked on her campaign.
You know, people always ask me, “how do you just start doing that, how do you just stand up and start going after politicians?” Well, the truth is, I’m an American citizen and I know what that means. There’s an old saying that goes, “Know where you stand, and then stand there!” And where are we standing today? A hundred years ago, this Lincoln Memorial was constructed and inside is a sentence from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which says “We highly resolve that government, of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth”!
But how do you actually do that? My answer is, we have to be that free government that we intend to preserve, to improve or to create. We, not our elected representatives, are the fourth branch of government! [cheers] We are not congressmen, we are not judges, we are not the Executive branch—we are more than that! We are the people! We are not a political party! We are the people! And we have the responsibility not to be divided in the face of injustice.
What we do in America affects the whole world, so why are we, the people, doing nothing to stop our unjust wars? The bankers of Wall Street, the City of London, the bankrollers and the war profiteers hate you, us, as much as they hate Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping—and maybe more!
Judge them by their deeds. And if you don’t believe me, look at our cities! They are destroyed! And it’s even worse, now. I’m from the Bronx, in New York City, and we used to say “it’s burning.” But look at what’s happening in Ohio: It’s burning down, too! Will you, the people, rise up to stop it?
And so, to close, I would like to say that we have to listen to other nations, and reject the idea that war is a form of diplomacy. Martin Luther King, who spoke here, and is with us, here on the Mall, made the point that “There is such a thing as being too late.” It is not yet too late, but only if we unite above party, ideology, and personality. We have to establish principles for a new strategic and development architecture that treats all nations equally.
And only when we remember that we are the people, that we have the responsibility to reverse injustice—foreign and domestic—will we create something better, a more perfect Union: If we do our job, we will be the government that we and the whole world wants to see! So, let’s get to it!
‘USA Must Join the New Paradigm’
Festive rally banners, displayed throughout the live stream of the rally, included one featuring a world map. It proclaimed, “Peace Through Development—Schiller Institute,” with illustrations of the World Land-Bridge, the North American Water And Power Alliance Project (NAWAPA), and the Transaqua Project for Africa. Another banner proclaimed, “Join the Chorus for Peace—Dona Nobis Pacem,” with pictures of Pope Francis and Brazil’s President Lula. A third displayed the pictures of the leaders of the BRICS nations, including Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, with the caption, “Helga Zepp-LaRouche Says: To Stop WW3, USA Must Join the New Paradigm—Schiller Institute.” During the livestream, the last banner was particularly prominent behind almost every speaker, and all three banners were displayed throughout.
“Dona Nobis Pacem,” sung by some 30-plus members of the 70-person Schiller delegation, resonated as about 700 people marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the White House. This was unexpectedly useful in dispelling at least one semi-organized attempt to disrupt. As other marchers heard it, they remarked to others, including Schiller Institute members, “This is exactly what we need to do.” Make a joyful noise, yes, but with optimistic content, and in bel canto form. Then, it resonates, and therefore radiates the optimism without which stopping war were not thinkable, let alone possible. The very idea of the Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture, based on the ideas of the 15th Century’s Nicholas of Cusa, becoming the basis of a popular mass movement for social change, is so bold, and so right, that it can and will work. The Nord Stream terrorist bombing by NATO against Germany and Russia; the upholding of lethal “Caesar sanctions” against Syrian children and families, to the point of weaponizing the recent earthquakes against them; the callous admission by multiple misleaders that “we never meant to negotiate peace with Russia, even though we told both the Russians and the public the opposite”; and the deliberate depopulation of Ukraine by continued British/American support for a war they cannot win, making it a military proxy for an all-out financial war against the new global development, health, and security architecture being embraced in South America, Africa and Asia in a resurgent “Spirit of Bandung”—all of this reveals that the present governments of all the trans-Atlantic nations have “been tested in the balance, and found wanting.” It cries out for the new leadership that appeared as a seed-crystal at the Feb. 19 Lincoln Memorial gathering.
