This week, we on the good Earth have been privileged to fly, along with the astronauts of the Artemis II mission, to a sufficient distance from Earth to not only see the entire planet, pole to pole, and all of humankind, past and present, all at once, in a moment—but in seeing that, we suddenly know the unity of mankind as self-evident fact. In the view that we have been so fortunate to behold out the window of the Orion spacecraft, we see the conflicts and the problems that mankind is so embroiled in fade in an instant against the infinite vastness of our solar system, backed by the Milky Way and 2 trillion other galaxies beyond.
The two-week ceasefire just agreed upon by the U.S. and Iran is but the briefest blink of an eye against all of that, and yet, in that consequential interval, humanity has a chance to right its course away from possible nuclear annihilation and secure a decisive step toward a new paradigm for mankind.
“We are still in a period of utmost tension,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche observed in her webcast of April 8, in which she went on to reiterate her call for an extended Oasis Plan for the entire region: a joint development perspective to green the deserts, along with accompanying agriculture, electricity, and transportation infrastructure, “so that this region would become an area of development in the tradition of the ancient Silk Road.” This is necessary, Zepp-LaRouche reiterated, “if you really want to not just avoid war, but to gain peace.”
That Oasis Plan has garnered endorsements from many prominent figures, including, most recently, former Ambassador Chas Freeman, who, at an EIR Emergency Roundtable discussion on April 6 said: “This gathering is discussing the Oasis Plan, which envisages a peace in West Asia achieved through the cooperative development of its region’s water, energy, and economic integration. Perhaps, like the phoenix, such peace can yet be born from the ashes of an unjust and disastrously counterproductive war. If that opportunity exists, we must surely grasp it while we can.”
The urgency of making such a miracle is underscored by the fragility of the ceasefire agreement. Just hours after the agreement was announced, Israel unleashed a bombing campaign against Lebanon, which it unilaterally declared is not part of the ceasefire. This deliberate violation risks blowing up the entire thing, as was made clear by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, among others, who stated: “The Iran-U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both. The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”
If there were ever a time for all people of goodwill to pull off a miracle, this decisive moment is it. “We are calling on you—” reads the “Call for Immediate Action To Stop the Madness!” just issued by the Schiller Institute, “whether you are a congressman, a doctor, a professor or an engineer—to join with other colleagues from around the world to contact and urge your American counterparts—congressmen, doctors, professors, etc.—to bring maximum pressure to bear on the U.S. Congress, the U.S. President, and civil society to stop the madness! America need not be the enemy of humanity; it can and must return to the role its founding fathers set for it, to foster the sovereign development of every nation on Earth.”
Answer this urgent call to action. Circulate the statement, along with the EIR Emergency Roundtable of April 6 from which this call arose, to all political, parliamentary, peace, religious, and civil society networks, and to media/social media in every nation possible. Mobilize your fellow man to become the decisive factor in current history.
Human destiny is a willful event—we will either sink together out of our inability to break from the degraded axioms of colonialism and empire, or we will decide to rise to that elevated view of humanity visible from the far side of the Moon: a creative species with infinitely perfectible potential for goodness.
