International Peace Coalition

‘We Have To Jump Over Our Shadow’

by EIR staff

[Print version of this article]

Aug. 23—Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, opened the proceedings of today’s 64th consecutive meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) by saying that her earlier view of the danger facing all of us in the next six months has been confirmed by developments of the last week. She described as “eye-opening” a report in the Financial Times of Aug. 13, on the recent discussion of a possible nuclear demonstration strike by Russia on an uninhabited area, to show that they mean business if NATO provocations continue.

The Kursk invasion, which she described in great detail, has increased the danger of nuclear war. It has been timed to exploit the “hot phase” of the U.S. presidential campaign when candidates make a public show of military “resolve” in order to win votes. The fact that Russia has thus far refrained from using nuclear weapons is being used by British think tanks and media to dangerously argue that there are no “red lines” that we should hesitate to cross.

She characterized Secretary of State Blinken’s recent trip to Southwest Asia as “caving in to everything that Netanyahu is demanding.” “It is a nightmare that the whole world is watching this and not intervening,” she said. She reported that Ronen Bar, director of the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), had just issued a warning, made public on Aug. 23, that settler terrorism in the West Bank is leading to a global delegitimization of Israel.

In the U.S., the secret “Nuclear Employment Guidance” of President Biden, written in March but leaked to the New York Times this week, puts the recent NATO summit in a completely new light, now that we know that preparations are under way for nuclear war with Russia, China, and North Korea. Regarding the Democratic National Convention, Zepp-LaRouche observed that “an amazing Hollywood performance was conducted,” where there was no debate, no discussion, everything was orchestrated. “Can we expect anything different from Kamala Harris?” she asked, and then presented a ghastly excerpt from Harris’ convention speech, in which she promises that she “will ensure that America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” to roars of approval from the assembled minions. The IPC meeting concluded with pointed proposals, which emerged from an intense discussion among participants from around the world. Zepp-LaRouche asked participants to find ways to circulate and promote Chandra Muzaffar’s proposal to invoke UN Resolution 377A (V) and put the issue of the genocide in Gaza before the General Assembly, since the Security Council has been paralyzed by U.S. vetoes.

On the urgency of retooling the military-industrial complex for peaceful purposes (including independent congressional candidate Jose Vega’s proposed Space Civilian Construction Corps), she recommended that we review all the many such proposals, and issue a fresh, comprehensive plan. And in answer to a comment by one of her countrywomen in Germany about unifying the peace movement, she said we should wake up our fellow citizens to the fact that the implications of the Ukraine/NATO invasion of the Kursk region in Russia should make us put aside our ideological differences and fight to ensure the survival of us all. To do this, she concluded, “We have to jump over our shadow, as we say in Germany.”

Stopping the Terror from the Billionaires

Dr. Marino Elsevyf, professor of Constitutional and Criminal Law at the University of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, thanked Zepp-LaRouche for remaining faithful to the principles of her late husband, “the great American leader, Lyndon LaRouche,” principles which he shares as well. He had attended the September 1995 Independent Commission hearings on the LaRouche trials. Concocting criminal charges against a political adversary, to avoid the appearance of a political prosecution, is a well-known tactic. He added that in Latin America, “we call this ‘prevarication’. ”

Dr. Elsevyf’s remarks were followed by brief video excerpts from the 1995 hearings. Helga Zepp-LaRouche was shown saying that the biggest crime committed by the permanent bureaucracy of the Justice Department was not the unjust imprisonment of Lyndon LaRouche, but rather the denial to the world of access to his ideas, which were so badly needed. LaRouche himself was shown discussing what led to the prosecutions, including his backchannel discussions during the Reagan administration with officials of the USSR, which were “somewhat fruitful but ultimately aborted.” Henry Kissinger’s faction felt that “I was getting too big for my britches.” When President Reagan endorsed LaRouche’s proposal for the Strategic Defense Initiative on March 23, 1983, “there were a lot people out for my scalp.”

Col. (ret.) Richard Black, former chief of the Army Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General in the Pentagon, elaborated on the recent “Nuclear Employment Guidance” of President Biden, which envisions a nuclear war simultaneously or sequentially against Russia, China, and North Korea. Col. Black emphasized that this is not framed as a response to an attack, but rather as “employment.” He pointed out that this was supposedly prepared to counter China, whose nuclear arsenal is only slightly larger than Israel’s, not in the same category as the U.S. Black insisted that the saber-rattling increases talk of nuclear war “and is designed to move us inexorably in that direction.” The U.S. has a first-use doctrine, and “the President is not constrained by law.” U.S. policy toward China “has become mercilessly provocative,” he said. He concluded by reporting on the appalling comments of USAF Gen. Mike Minihan, who said that “when you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger.”

For All of Humanity

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) in Malaysia, reviewed the history of the Zionist project in Palestine, calling it “one challenge which stains our conscience.” “Zionism is a racist ideology, which has nothing to do with Judaism … it is actually a betrayal of the Jewish religion,” he said, adding that “in principle, I support this notion of linking peace to development,” as promoted by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute. “Most of all, anchoring this development in the goodness of the human being.”

Steven Starr, former director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, provided a timeline of Ukrainian attacks on Russian bases where nuclear weapons are stationed, as well as attacks on strategic radar systems. He stressed that these attacks cannot be carried out without technical assistance from the United States. Nuclear power plants are also under attack. “Basically, NATO has invaded Russia.”

Jack Gilroy of Veterans for Peace read the “Peace Pledge,” which is being initiated at New York’s Binghamton University (SUNY Binghamton), asking students to reject recruitment to any job that feeds the war machine. The Pledge reads: “I renounce and reject all allegiance to any firm that produces, sells, or gives weapons or weapons systems or hardware or software to any entity. I shall never interview for or accept any offer to work for any such firm.”

At the end of the discussion, Zepp-LaRouche elaborated on the idea of transforming our militaries into cadres for development. She had once forced herself to read the many hundreds of pages of Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State, in which he promoted the soldier as “an adjunct of the weapons systems.” Rather than militarization of Europe, she said, we should retool and rebuild. China has 40,000 km of high-speed rail, whereas the United States has a grand total of zero, and Europe is in bad shape. Instead of squandering the remaining industrial and technological capabilities on senseless neocon wars, we could transform the planet for the better.