Invitation to tomorrow's INTERNATIONAL PEACE COALITION meeting
An initiative of the non-partisan Schiller Institute shines a light on much-needed diplomacy and information sharing in these tense times
While not a “letter” per se information is being posted here - sections can be used in letters, emails, and other communication to invite others to join on on weekly IPC meetings to expand their learning of key issues NOT on the front pages of the newspapers, where given their importance for our global society, they most certainly belong!
International Peace Coalition Meeting
September 13, 2024, 11am ET
On Zoom
German, Spanish and French interpretation available
See write-ups of past meetings and how to sign up for coming meeting links here:
https://schillerinstitute.com/international-peace-coalition/
If you miss the meeting on Friday, September 13, filling in the form will let you be notified of future meetings, usually held on a weekly basis at the same time.
Readers may notice that the “angle” taken by the International Peace Coalition differs from the angle
used in the Statement on Ukraine’s Independence Day recently posted by Global Affairs Canada here
being spoken about in meetings of the Standing Committee on National Defence, a committee made up of Members of Canada’s Parliament
followed in every mainstream (corporate and government backed) media platform in the country
What is one to make of the disconnect - given that highly accredited and long time followers of war and peace matters, military intelligence professionals, those with analytic skills in military strategy, often born out of personal experience in the field, are finding more reasonableness in the stance taken by the members of the Schiller Institute than in those shared by the majority of Canadian journalists?
Why do these people denounce NATO’s attempts to destabilize Russia?
Should we just not all take the side our government has chosen to take?
Would it be disloyal to Ukrainian Canadians to teach people the back story behind the “special military operation” launched in February 2022?
Aren’t we harming our Canadian troops by pointing out that there is truth and logic in the other side of this conflict?
Has the idea of “diplomacy” changed now in the 2020s? Is there anything we can learn from the diplomats of the Cold War era?
Please note:
We have a legally assured RIGHT TO DISSENT - just because a government has chosen to say A, that does not compel everyone never to utter B, C or D. Actually, under international law we have obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the right to participate in public affairs by engaging in criticism, opposition and dissent. See this handbook presented by Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada.
Most viewers of mainstream media over the past 6 months will not have heard reports of a long list of developments in this and other conflicts, unless they have diversified their news diet to include sources linked to here:
Issues 22 and 23 of Canadian Shareable News provide additional insights into this deadly conflict including these stories:
BC based Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom and ON based Voice of Women released the text of letters they sent to Canada’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. They expressed concern at the disproportional violence perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians. And they appealed to the government to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation through disarmament and dialogue. They sought to have the F-35 procurement and F-16 training program for Ukraine cancelled. They also thanked the Embassies of China and Hungary, for their recent “peace missions”. vowpeace.org/wilpf-canada-vow-joint-letters-to-political-leaders/
The Toronto based Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition held a series of events around August 6 which are described here: vowpeace.org/now-is-the-time-canada-sign-the-ban-treaty-hiroshima-nagasaki-day-remembrance/. This was in support of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Learn more about the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons here: www.icanw.org/#rec59254786
The team behind this Substack spends up to 5 hours a day compiling regular detailed War Reports, focussing primarily on but not limited to Ukraine. NOTE THE MORE RECENT POSTS UP TO AUGUST 29. For example, the report from August 20 contains detailed maps, multiple battle reports complete with squad names and geographical coordinates, casualty counts (1935 Ukrainian soldiers, including more than 330 lost at the site of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia near the Kursk nuclear power plant.) Also included were links to military commentary from US Ret. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Col. Douglas MacGregor, Col. Daniel Davis, Larry Johnson and others. The same report also addressed topics like “On the Prospects of Turkish Presence in Iraq”; “Is Israel losing?” And “American Presence at the South End of China” where the USA is starting to involve Australia and the Philippines. substack.com/@askeptic/p-147934442 In addition to daily reports, the authors place links to articles, documentaries, etc. that have a longer term relevance here: askeptic.substack.com/p/analyses-ukraine.
Canada’s Standing Committee on National Defence appears to ONLY invite expert speakers to their meetings who speak on ONE side of the Ukraine/Russia dilemma. https://www.ourcommons.ca/committees/en/NDDN (Admittedly, we have not opened meeting notes for 4 years of meetings, but random checks reveal various experts speaking from a Ukrainian perspective and none presenting the stance of Russian authorities or external analysts such as those invited to speak at Dialogue Works)
MESSAGE TO ALBERTANS AND MANITOBANS
Given that Alberta and Manitoba jointly are home to more Ukranians anywhere in the world outside Ukraine, leadership needs to come from us.
We cannot let petty disagreements and unethical silencing of the perspective of Ukrainin citizens of Russian descent who had ASKED for Russia's help in fighting gruesome attacks from the US backed Zelensky regime continue allowing young men and women to be slaughtered at the rate reported on in Issue 23 of Canadian Shareable News.
The more people who listen in on these weekly meetings, the more people understand how the silence of the corporate and government backed media on the back story of the "unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia" has led to Canadian lawmakers making decisions that have the potential to risk Canadian lives as well. By NOT informing the public of the huge size and power differential between Russia and Ukraine, and of the power and sheer magnitude of Russia's weapons stocks back when there was even a nearly signed peace deal, the more thos Canadian troops deployed to help train Ukrainian soldiers (many of whom I suspect halil from Alberta) are at risk. And the more Alberta, Canada, NATO countries cheer on the march to battle with totally uninformed pieces like this one Kursk offensive is a morale boost https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/reaction-inside-ukraine-kursk-offensive-1.7301150 the closer we are pushing Russia and NATO countries into a nuclear war that has the very real potential to freeze all life on the planet to death. Dr. Steven Starr's book list is impressive. He is a frequent presenter at the IPC meetings.
Let's ensure that ALL CANADIAN media are aware of what their silence on both sides of the Ukraine/Russia hostilities is leading to. Awareness is our own key to ramping things back down again. IF WE CONTINUE TO LET OUR “well-intentioned but uninformed” decision makers lead the way, we need to face the realties of…
https://nuclearfamine.org/about-steven-starr/
Divisive rhetoric and informaion omission got us here. Let us roll those back the tendency of those who divide us. Let us ensure freedom of speach for all and Say NO to censorship in all its forms.
WHY is the Schiller Institute experiencing pushback labelling it as as pro-Russian, if they are giving a voice to those diplomats, negotiators, military and intelligence professionals who were personally involved in bringing the COLD WAR to an end? Is someone afraid their insight has the power to lead to peace chocking off demand for more production in the weapons industry?
For example, on Sept. 3, 2024 the Schiller Institute featured an interview with former U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock. Having served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union during the period of its collapse, Matlock provides a unique perspective on U.S.-Russia relations from that period of time to the present—as well as insights on other crucial matters.
This week the Schiller Institute wrote of the responses to that interview:
The Schiller Institute’s Sept. 3 publication of Ambassador Jack Matlock’s truthful assessment of the absurdity of current United States foreign and (self-defeating) military policy toward Russia, China and Southwest Asia—which, as of March of this year, includes a commitment to a three-front nuclear war against Russia, China and North Korea—is now being picked up by other news outlets. This has caused a small earthquake among the once-competent “elites” of the trans-Atlantic, who, unlike the “children of Madeleine Albright”—Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, Samantha Power et al.,—know that what Jack Matlock has said, is true. Matlock was President Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, and a true witness to, participant in and shaper of our current history, a different breed than today’s “junior varsity” at the State Department.
“It seems to me that it is extremely dangerous to attempt what is, in effect, an undeclared war against a nuclear armed power, which perceives, rightly or wrongly, that its sovereignty and even its political existence are being threatened,” Sputnik reported Matlock saying from his Sept. 3 interview. Matlock remarked days later, at the Sept. 6 meeting of the International Peace Coalition, that “I think what we need to understand is that the expansion of NATO, and particularly the bases—and in this case, it was the bases that were planned in Poland and Romania for anti-ballistic missiles. It turned out that, although these were defensive weapons, they could easily be converted to offensive weapons. So, it was understandable that the Russian leader (Putin) would be quite opposed. And yet, we went ahead, and after progressively withdrawing from virtually every arms control agreement that we had negotiated in the 1980s and early ‘90s, we began to try to influence the Ukrainian government and offer NATO membership. So I think that this was a complete reversal of the diplomacy we used in the Cold War.…”
What, however, if the whole chessboard is simply turned over? What if voices of reason, like that of Jack Matlock, or Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity co-founder Ray McGovern, or Col. Larry Wilkerson of the Eisenhower Media Network, are successfully amplified and heard in the United States, echoed by similar voices in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and many other nations? That is the process that is now happening through the International Peace Coalition. It is the precondition for real Socratic dialogue about a new security and development architecture.
It is Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute’s proposed Ten Principles for a New International Strategic and Development Architecture that do, in fact, take the interests of all into account. The possibility that the Institute’s proposal might successfully catalyze a “Council of Reason” among trans-Atlantic nations, that would overthrow the “mad dogs and Englishmen” that are provoking nuclear war, has spooked the NATO thought-police. They have released, through the outfit called Intelligence Online, a story, “United States Washington-based non-profit continues spreading Kremlin message,” which begins, “The Schiller Institute has continued to cooperate with Russian media outlets, even while the U.S. cracks down on foreign influence.” While this is the same tactic used in the 1982 activation of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) against economist, statesman and Schiller Institute co-founder Lyndon LaRouche, there is a difference.
In a supersaturated environment, a single molecule, a “weak force,” can incite crystallization, the sudden appearance of well-defined, ordered structure, “as if from nowhere.” In that same way, an idea, based on a principle, dismissed as “impractical” only months before, can become the dominant intellectual currency in a time of crisis. That idea, representing a deeper, unseen, higher, “poetic” principle, can take the form of an effective policy, embraced by much, even all of humanity, such that imperfect people and leaders, “even whilst they deny and abjure, are yet compelled to serve, that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul.” That is why, despite all of our flaws and imperfections, Percy Shelley’s often-cited observation that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” tells us by what method we, and humanity, can hope to prevail. It is by the light of that truth, spoken by Ambassador Matlock and others, that the false authority presently wielded by the vampires of total and perpetual war is evaporated, as a vampire self-destructs in sunlight.