International Peace Coalition

This Is the Moment When ‘Ideas Matter’

by EIR staff

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Jan. 24—Today’s 86th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) opened with Helga Zepp-LaRouche referencing the “relief” around the world with the end of the Biden/Blinken nightmare and the dramatic changes taking place as a result of the new United States President Donald Trump Administration, despite its problematic aspects. “The situation is very promising, although much can go wrong.”

Trump’s order to release the assassination files—the John F. Kennedy files in 15 days, and the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King files in 45 days—is a “bombshell,” she said. The exposure of the lies and cover-up by the Warren Commission could and must clear the fog created in people’s minds about the crimes unleashed by the killing of President John F. Kennedy. The Schiller Institute Chorus’s performance of Mozart’s Requiem on the 50th anniversary of his funeral mass in Boston, which included recorded statements by President Kennedy on issues of development, science, and culture, demonstrated what a profound difference existed between him and all later Presidents.

These revelations, she emphasized, could open the path to the U.S. returning to its own better moments of technological advance, industrial growth, and cooperation with other sovereign nations. A recent video issued by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—who is part of Trump’s announced Cabinet—exposes the role of preeminent BlackRock financial speculators in the wars and economic looting driven by the military-industrial complex.

Hope for an Era of Security and Development

The Oasis Plan is the single element that can bring the world together in not only bringing peace to Southwest Asia, but giving direction and hope to the world for an era of security and development for all nations.

Col. (ret.) Richard Black, former head of the Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon and former Virginia State Senator, lauded the potential that Kash Patel as FBI Director, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, and Pam Bondi as Attorney General could clean out the “rogue intelligence agencies.” He emphasized the long history of FBI corruption, reviewing several of the leading points in The LaRouche Organization’s newly-released pamphlet, “The Liars’ Bureau.” He described Tulsi Gabbard’s role, along with his own, in exposing the U.S. financing of al-Qaeda’s operation intended to bring down the President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, noting that Gabbard’s visit with Assad came one year after his own visit, as the first American political leader to visit Assad.

Graham Fuller, former diplomat, CIA officer, and co-chair of the National Intelligence Council, praised the BRICS as the most important element of the emerging world. He called for a renewal of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran, which Trump dismantled during his first term. Such a move could help bring the U.S. and Russia together, and could enable an important extension of the Oasis Plan into Iran and beyond into Central Asia. The issue is, will the U.S. see the BRICS as an opening or a threat? The issue of Greenland is of interest, as the Inuit people span Greenland and the northern reaches of Canada and are one of the largest indigenous populations in the world. Addressing the development needs of this population and the rich resources of the territory would change the character of the potential conflict of the superpowers over the issue of the Arctic region and the Northern Sea Route.

Alon-Lee Green, head of the Standing Together peace organization in Israel and Palestine, was interviewed by the Schiller Institute’s Gerald Belsky, expressing hope that the ceasefire is holding—that bombs are no longer falling, people are returning to their homes (“although most of their homes no longer exist”), and hostages and prisoners are being released. He warned that this may not last, as we see already that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has moved his killing forces to the West Bank. Green at first expressed reservations about the Oasis Plan, arguing that there must first be peace and independence for the Palestinians, lest economic proposals become a diversion. Belsky emphasized that without a development perspective the peace process would not succeed, and said both the political and economic aspects must be carried out simultaneously—with which Green concurred.

Zepp-LaRouche joined the discussion to assert that the Oasis Plan would only work if there were a fundamental shift in the global parameters, but that this change is, in fact, exactly what is taking shape. She reported that Chinese economist and professor Zhang Weiwei, speaking at a recent Schiller Institute conference, said that China could build this vast water and power project. We have a rare and crucial opportunity, she said, in which people can break out of their fixed modes of thinking and bring about great developments, as happened during the Renaissance, which transformed the Middle Ages into the modern age. To save Gaza requires both the creation of statehood for the Palestinian people but also the development process represented by the Oasis Plan.

Former CIA officer Larry Johnson, a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), warned that the CIA was lying to President Trump, greatly exaggerating Russia’s casualties in Ukraine, and otherwise making it appear that Russia was losing the war. Johnson was hopeful that Trump would put a halt to arms sales to Ukraine, which could perhaps put an end to the war. He also asserted that Trump had ordered an audit of the Department of Defense, which would expose a great deal of corruption.

Arms Control Agreements Don’t Work

LaRouche movement leader and former congressional candidate Jose Vega asked if Trump’s statement that he plans to meet with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss nuclear weapons might bring about an agreement to end nuclear weapons. Zepp-LaRouche responded that arms control doesn’t work, and in any case all the previous agreements are gone now. Rather, new physical principles which can render nuclear weapons obsolete must be developed, as Lyndon LaRouche proposed with his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The Russian deployment of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile demonstrates breakthroughs in this direction. We must bring the world’s scientific researchers together to develop this alternative.

A number of those present questioned some of the policies promoted by different speakers, which led to a spirited discussion. One person complained that nuclear power was no longer needed, that solar power would provide all that the world required. Zepp-LaRouche called on the questioner to consider the issue of “energy-flux density,” and what was necessary for an expanding human race to meet the massively expanding need for energy. Another person challenged what he called “support for Donald Trump,” comparing him to the rightwing leaders in Israel as part of a “conservative international,” and saying all of the documentation of this could be found online. Zepp-LaRouche responded that people should not believe what they read online or when they search for something on Google—the very idea that knowledge consists of “googling” is ridiculous, she said.

She concluded the meeting by emphasizing that this is a moment of great changes in the world, and we must all work together to persuade every country to reach back to the best in its own culture, to bring those cultural expressions to the fore to achieve a new paradigm for all mankind. The Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia can be a decisive step in that direction. “At moments like this,” she said, “ideas matter. Get rid of the degradation of culture, as they are doing in Asia.”