EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY JUNE 8, 2023
International Peace Coalition Must Grow To Stop World War III
June 7, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The release below was posted today by the Schiller Institute, whose founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche is a participant in the process reported. The Schiller Institute is circulating a petition statement, released May 17, on the occasion of this year being the 60th anniversary, June 10, of the famous American University speech by President John F. Kennedy, on what he himself called, “the most important topic on Earth: world peace.” The petition statement, which as of today has signatures from over 55 countries, is titled, “Urgent Appeal by Citizens and Institutions from All Over the World to the (Next) President of the United States!” On June 10, the Schiller Institute is hosting an international webinar, “The World Needs JFK’s Vision of Peace!”
International Peace Coalition Must Grow To Stop World War III
June 7—If you are interested in working with the International Peace Coalition, please contact questions@schillerinstitute.org
A Zoom meeting with over 25 representatives of peace organizations from about a dozen nations was held on June 2, with the aim of bringing the diverse peace movements around the world together to counter the rapidly escalating threat of a U.S.-NATO full-scale war with Russia and potentially also China. Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche opened the meeting, noting the extreme danger of the NATO escalation toward war: Defender 23 now ongoing, the largest multinational air operations exercise in NATO’s history; the drone attacks on Moscow, and the virulent proposals for dismantling the Russian Federation. She said there were significant peace rallies in the U.S. and Europe in February and in March, but since that time the war escalation has rapidly increased, and the peace movement clearly needs to increase much more. So it is urgent to launch a much more integrated form of organization to unify and expand the world’s peace movements to end the march to war, before it is too late.
The discussion included the urgent need for the diversion of military spending to development, contrasting the cost of a single F-16 (in the tens of millions of dollars each) to the massive need for development financing in most parts of the world.
The challenge of mobilizing large numbers of Americans to become a voice for peace is one priority, and joining with the Global South, which is experiencing a renaissance of the Non-Aligned Movement to finally overcome all forms of colonialism, another. The voice of the majority of the human species must be heard, since the existence of all of us is at stake.
Over 25 “world citizens” from a dozen nations—France, Guyana, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, the U.K. and the U.S.—participated in the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, discussing proposals for achieving these goals.
Following are excerpts from some of the participants in the discussion:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder, Germany:
“The large demonstrations in February in Washington, D.C. and in Berlin, Germany, having 50,000 people, and many other local rallies since, do not match the masses in the streets which protested the Pershing II/SS-20 middle-range missile crisis in the 1980s, with hundreds of thousands of people in the street, who were aware that we were close to World War III then. ... I think that we really have to make an effort; and I would wish that this discussion today leads to a new form of organization where we would use this group of people as a kernel to try to unify the peace movement internationally, across five continents.”
Donald Ramotar, former President of Guyana:
“We have to pull our minds together, and I hope this meeting will help to make a contribution in that way, to break out of this information blockade that most people in developing countries are facing.”
Richard H. Black, former Virginia State Senator, U.S.A.:
“We are in a great deal of danger, and I think it makes a great deal of sense to bring all those groups together, especially those who don’t agree on many things, but where we intersect, where we overlap, this is where we need to act and join forces.”
Ray McGovern, co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington:
“It doesn’t matter if Ray McGovern believes that Putin is right on this, what matters is that Putin thinks this is the case! What we need are whistleblowers, like my former friends in the CIA—What we need is a mass mobilization to say, ‘Look, stop this Defender 23, it can come to what the Chinese call a ‘no good end.’ ”
Jack Gilroy, Veterans for Peace and Pax Christi, U.S.A.:
“There is a huge education needed in the United States to teach the American people, through writings and videos and various pronouncements by people in the existing Peace communities, that people must understand that Americans did provoke Russia to act.”
Martin Schotz, author, History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, & the Murder of President Kennedy, Massachusetts, U.S.A.:
“My work is primarily trying to get President Kennedy’s American University speech distributed as widely as possible. The reason for that is that Kennedy has outlined in great detail and sophistication, what the Peace process is all about and the various aspects of it. If one looks at U.S. foreign policy of the last 30 years, from my point of view, the U.S. is 180 degrees from that speech. The exact opposite process it’s been following, and that is a war process.”
Chandra Muzaffar, President of International Movement for a Just World, Malaysia:
“Number 1, I think that it is extremely important to create a strong Peace movement in the United States of America....
“Number 2, I think it is also very important to encourage groups at the grassroots level in different parts of the world. I come from the Global South, and I think it is quite possible to do this, not through Peace groups, since there are not many in the Global South, but there are other types of civil society movements, they should be enthused to act....
“And the third, we have to try to get some voices within the corridors of power to act.”
Angela McArdle, Chair, Libertarian Party, and “Rage Against the War Machine” Organizer, U.S.A.:
“What I hope is what we do is really laser focus on the anti-war movement. What can we do to advance an agenda of Peace and how can we do it that makes room for as many people as possible? I don’t believe that the bloods of monsters of the war machine, like Mitch McConnell or the McCain/Cheney types, will have any interest in what we’re doing, but I would hope that people who are regular ‘low-information’ voters on the right and left will see what we are doing, be inspired by it, and want to join with us.”
Nick Brana, Chair, People’s Party, and “Rage Against the War Machine” Organizer, U.S.A.:
“I have a format that I think would be really good for the next meeting, that I think would really help us work [on] this enormous challenge we face, and work backwards from our goal to end the war ... to what are the possible solutions. There have been Peace negotiation proposals by the Vatican, by Brazil, by China. There have been mass demonstrations to stop the war in the U.S., mass demonstrations to stop the war in Germany ... and then we can identify a number of different possible win conditions for us as an international Peace movement, that these are the routes by which the war can be ended. And then work backwards from those.”
Alessia Ruggeri, Trade Unionist, Italy:
“I remember very well our mobilization with the Schiller Institute to unblock Afghan funds being frozen by the Federal Reserve, funds which were needed to feed starving children. And I share Helga’s view: Peace means also economic development, as the BRICS countries are demanding right now. It is very important that all peace movements come under a single cap, a single direction, thanks to this initiative of the Schiller Institute. This way we can be stronger.”
Maurizio Abbate, Chairman, Ente Nazionale Attività Culturali (ENAC), Italy:
“I’ve heard a lot of reports of large demonstrations: 300,000 people or so in important cities. But this reaches only people who know the problem, who are committed. But the great majority of people who listen to the mainstream media will not understand... So it’s important to reach the people who do not know and do cultural work... One should start from culture: Schools and universities.”
“No2NATO” Representative, U.K.:
“It’s clear that the mainstream media narrative across the West is the same. People listen to their television. They are hearing the same narrative day in and day out. We need to try to change that narrative... George Galloway and Chris Williamson send their apologies for not being able to attend the meeting, saying, ‘We do hope to attend any future events that you do.’ ”
Bernie Holland, SGI-UK National Culture Centre, U.K.:
“I am very touched by your sincerity regarding these problems. Now this word sincerity is important here in the context of statecraft and diplomacy. I’m putting emphasis on this because for many years, we have seen the great lengths that President Putin and Secretary Lavrov have gone to build an ‘entente cordiale’ with Western partners, only to be met with dissent and deceit.”
Ulf Sandmark, President, Schiller Institute Sweden:
“What I want to bring up is the Nord Stream issue. Because the Swedish prosecutor is sitting on the proof, taking the material from the bottom of the sea. They are saying that all traces on those materials are from explosives. They are not releasing the proof at all, but they are actually doing a cover up of the crime scene. We in Sweden don’t have the power to force the prosecutor to release these things. So we need international pressure.”
Johan Nordquist, publisher, Truth Guardian, Sweden
“The ignorance is monumental amongst ordinary people. And I think we have to overcome that. One way to do that, which has inspired me, is Scott Ritter’s effort to counter Russophobia. In Sweden, it is very difficult to speak because of the widespread Russophobia.... One very simple message to reach people who are not aware, or are still in the mainstream media bubble—and that would be to ban nuclear weapons.”
Diane Sare, U.S. Senate Candidate, New York, U.S.A.:
“I was just thinking about this challenge ‘why aren’t people in the streets, why don’t we have millions of people in the streets?’ I think there are two reasons. One is that Americans had believed that you change things through the electoral process. But many Americans, from both sides, have lost faith in their electoral system, with good reason. So they are at a loss. The other is a despair.... If things get really bad, and worse, or that people realize they are worse, will this cause them to go out in the streets? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s going to work that way.”
Jacques Cheminade, former Presidential candidate, France:
“What we have here (in France) at this point is the highest form of social demonstrations, I think probably in the developed sector. These demonstrations are against the pension reform, the counter-reform of the French government. So, as such, if it’s limited against pensions, it becomes a single issue and it doesn’t work. And what we have to do is to transform this social ferment into a mobilization for Peace.”
Steve Starr, Professor at the University of Missouri, former Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science
“The hallmark of the Biden regime is irrationality. I think we have to find a way to get these people out of power. We can’t wait for elections and whether the elections would be rigged or not would be another question. There is a man named Francis Boyle, who wrote up articles of presidential impeachment; and I think it would be worthwhile to get someone to bring those up to the House of Representatives. Because the neo-cons running foreign policy are entirely corrupt and delusional. I think some of them think they can get Russia to back down and I think some think they can win a nuclear war.”
In attendance were also:
María de los Ángeles Huerta, former Mexican Congresswoman
Chris Fogarty, Irish-American leader
Marinella Correggia, Eco-peace activist, journalist, Italy
Christer Lundgren, Sweden
Gisela Neira, World Anti-Imperialist Platform, Germany
Juan Carrero, Fundació S’Olivar, Spain
José Vega, Activist, Interventionist and Schiller Institute organizer, U.S.A.
Anastasia Battle, Activist, Interventionist and Editor-in-Chief, Leonore Magazine, U.S.A.
Kirk Meighoo, former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago
