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The U.S. Is Not Exempt From The Revolutionary Upsurge

October 17, 2026by tobi in General, International Peace Coalition

Report on IPC #176

The 176th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) began with a strategic briefing by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and IPC initiator. She warned of the possibility of a major escalation by the United States and Israel against Iran, possibly using the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs, and since most military targets have been destroyed, the attack may be directed against civilian population centers. U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are both facing the possibility of major electoral defeats in the near term, which creates an incentive for both to act aggressively. In Ukraine, the Russians have little hope of a diplomatic solution when they are dealing with Acting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump, so they are motivated to end the war with a military victory. The only forces moving toward a diplomatic solution are China and the Global South, Belarus, Pope Leo XIV, and the IPC. The peace movement is still plagued by division, but protests are erupting all over the world over a variety of issues, and the potential is there to unite these protests into a unified movement for a new security and development architecture.

Jack Gilroy is a member of the Pax Christi New York State Council, Veterans for Peace, and Ban Killer Drones. He reminded the participants of the famous aphorism that crisis means opportunity. It has been ten weeks since the launch of the open letter to Pope Leo, appealing to him to call for a global peace summit. The pope is doing well after receiving surgery for lung cancer. Gilroy discussed the pope’s upcoming conference of religious leaders for peace,, and reviewed all the initiatives that have been taken by the Schiller Institute and IPC to intersect the pope’s activities, to promote a paradigm shift and a solution to the war danger.

A video was presented with an on-the-ground report from France on how IPC organizers are educating the French youth who are out on the streets, protesting the conditions in their schools.

This was followed by a second video in which Luiz Augusto Erthal, editor of the Brazilian news platform TodaPalavra, presented a report on the presidential race in his country, and how Brazilian youth are now engaged in spectacular mass demonstrations in support of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s candidacy. American social media such as Meta are intervening on behalf of right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, by suppressing pro-Lula social media posts. Lula is making a contribution to history by promoting a reduction of the work week from six to five days.

He described the million-strong youth mobilization in support of Lula’s candidacy as “a final line of defense against fascism, barbarism and imperialism.”

UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter joined the panel, who stated his intention to debunk the propaganda that the United States is betraying Ukraine. Ukraine only exists today, in its current form, to serve as a proxy for the Anglosphere to damage Russia. American political leadership no longer concurs with this agenda. Trump worries about the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, and he is trying to manipulate the perceptions of the population and the energy markets with a short-term infusion of diesel, in the form of his deal with Russia. We are now looking at the divorce between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, and the death of the Ukrainian state.

In response to a question by Zepp-LaRouche, Ritter responded by warning that Europe must choose between its own survival and “joining Ukraine in her deathbed.” Zepp-LaRouche asked how the situation in Southwest Asia will interact with this. Ritter predicted that Trump will resume bombing Iran, but he is also looking for a viable exit strategy from the war. He opined that the critical feature of the regional crisis is what will become of Saudi Arabia, which is undergoing a major destabilization.

Co-moderator Dennis Speed welcomed the arrival of Larry Johnson, a well-known whistleblower and former CIA intelligence official, with a short summary of the proceedings thus far. Johnson noted that the MOAB bomb can only be delivered by the slow, turboprop-driven C-130 aircraft, which are very vulnerable. He reported on how he addressed the UN Security Council in an informal Arria-formula meeting on October 14, 2026, invited by the Russian delegation. He described the presentation by the U.S. representative as curiously detached, like an arsonist calmly describing a fire to authorities after having set it. He said that he came away from this meeting convinced that Russia and Europe will be in a shooting war within a year, and described the presentations by Denmark, Latvia, France and Greece as “vicious.” Unlike in the 1960s and 70s, the Europeans seem oblivious to the danger that nuclear weapons may be used.

Johnson opined that the days of the present Saudi regime are numbered. The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, a Zaydi Shia Islamist political and military group from northern Yemen, have inflicted unprecedented damage on Saudi Arabia. He said that Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has been an inept and corrupt ruler whose hold on power is tenuous at best.

In response, Zepp-LaRouche vowed to find a way to prevent the war that Johnson predicted for Europe. She raised the question of how to break the cognitive warfare of NATO, and asked what motivates the war-crazed Europeans. Johnson said Russia is terrible at telling its story, which ought to be a compelling one; he compared Russia in the 1990s to a drug addict that visited the depths of despair, but recovered and became a successful businessman. Johnson credits Russian President Vladimir Putin with orchestrating Russia’s recovery. Johnson contrasted the ineffectual messaging of Russia’s foreign policy team to what he called the “brilliant” efforts of the young Iranians who make humorous and truthful Lego videos to mock the Western neocons.

Independent U.S. presidential candidate Diane Sare said that Americans have a hard time conceiving that other nations have the same right to sovereignty that we do, and we need to take seriously the phrase in our Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” The United States is not exempt from the revolutionary upsurge that is occurring elsewhere in the world.

Discussion

Congressional candidate Jose Vega addressed the political unrest around the world, saying that “people want to fight despair and nihilism.” In the U.S., people have “decided that enough is enough with ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” and are also concerned with housing and economic issues. He asked Zepp-LaRouche to speak on the question of the death penalty. She responded that no government has the right to take a life, a view which she attributed in part to her Catholic upbringing. She spoke of the “Schreibtischtäter” (desk-perpetrators), bureaucrats who kill with the stroke of a pen. Jack Gilroy echoed her words and asked how a government can persuade people not to murder by murdering them.

Luiz Augusto Erthal was asked by Dennis Speed for an update on the Brazilian elections. Erthal said that Lula’s performance in the first round was disappointing, but in the second round, the engagement of the youth has been decisive and has caused a transformation of Lula and his campaign. The media, the oligarchy, and the “Don-roe Doctrine” are arrayed against Lula, but he is better prepared to combat them now.

In response to a question, Zepp-LaRouche warned that if the West attempts to sabotage China’s development, it will backfire due to China’s resilience. She concluded by saying that the weeks ahead will bring many surprises, possibly terrible ones, but also possibly good ones. As Jack Gilroy said, crisis means opportunity. She called for a “continuous mobilization” to support an intervention by Pope Leo and the other initiatives promoted by the IPC.
[eir]

Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Farmers, Truckers, Students March Against Austerity and War

October 13, 2026by tobi in Helga Webcast

Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org.

Please share the YouTube link with your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to increase the reach of the solutions presented by the LaRouche movement.

Wednesday, October 14th, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

Monday morning the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the economics Nobel to Robert Hall and Michael Woodford for the theory that governments and central banks, by communicating their plans, “can influence this view of the future and move the economy in the right direction.” The committee chairman said their models leave us “better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises.” The shock is here. Brent oil opened the day at $105. The Strait of Hormuz is mined, and Riyadh’s airport has been hit four times in five days. China has stopped exporting fuel. The 30-year Treasury is at a 24-year high. And the prize goes to a doctrine in which talking about the economy is the way forward.

Is that doctrine already the method of government? On Sunday President Trump posted that “effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE” between Russia and Ukraine. Zelensky said it was news to him. Today Peskov would say only that “contacts continue,” and Lavrov observed that “ceasefire” has replaced “strategic defeat of Russia” as the slogan of Zelensky and his European “masters,” with the same purpose, a respite to rearm. The White House then told Axios that the ceasefire covers refineries only, a proposal its own official called “one-sided.” Something real did happen: Treasury’s license for Russian diesel runs to April 2027, while seven senators of both parties are demanding it be revoked. And Boris Johnson wants the Royal Navy to intercept Russian fuel tankers. But a ceasefire is not declared into existence. It is negotiated, and Witkoff and Kushner have put their Moscow trip on hold.

The same method runs through the week. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., with 4,080 measles cases in the country and several children dead in Pennsylvania, announced that HHS will pay doctors for every report filed to a system that records anything that happens after a vaccination and proves nothing, so that the number of reports, the anti-vaccine movement’s favorite statistic, will rise. Homeland Security agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home three weeks before the election, well inside the 60-day pre-election window during which Justice Department guidance has forbidden such actions. The War Secretary proposes to livestream a firing squad, although it’s not clear whether that will actually happen. We have announcements in place of policy.

Meanwhile the people who do real work are in the street. Italy’s steelworkers struck today in Taranto and Genoa against a court order to shut the country’s last blast furnace by Oct. 25. France’s students and teachers strike for “10 billion on the table” in a school system where more than half of secondary schools began the year short a teacher. Argentina’s students march Thursday. Italian farmers who gathered in Cosenza on Saturday will march on Rome Oct. 27. In Germany the labor minister resigned this morning and the SPD will elect a new leadership; Merz has 10% approval and his own party’s premier in Saxony says four years of weapons instead of diplomacy have led to “a catastrophe.” These are not calls for improving management of expectations. They are asking whether they have a future, and demanding concrete actions to ensure they have one.

Lyndon LaRouche wrote in 2007, when the Nobel went to three game theorists a year before the crash none of them foresaw, that the award showed the Committee “does not presently require a demonstration of what scientific tradition defined as a ‘crucial,’ or unique … proof of principle in defining its standards for awards,” and that the world needed their designs “about as much as a sufferer from the common cold needs the curative powers of a heavy dose of cyanide.” The proof of principle in economics is whether a people can feed, fuel, employ and improve itself, and raise the next generation to go further. Diane Sare’s independent campaign for President has a program of Glass-Steagall, a national bank in place of the Federal Reserve, and credit directed to production. The alternative, as she put it of Hegseth’s autonomous-warfare command, is a system that keeps “sucking the life-blood out of the real economy and the human race.” Three weeks before the midterms, in which LaRouche independent Jose Vega is a candidate in NY-15, the choice is between a government that announces and a government that builds.

For a ‘Just Peace’

October 10, 2026by tobi in International Peace Coalition

Report on IPC #175

Oct. 9, 2026 (EIRNS)—The 175th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) began with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and IPC Initiator, who praised the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African judge Navi Pillay, who chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel that concluded in a Sept. 16, 2025 report that Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza. She went on to describe the wave of protests that have broken out around Europe, noting that “the one common denominator” is opposition to the war drive being led by the governments of the “coalition of the willing.”

As an indication of the “brutalization of the population as part of the cognitive warfare,” Zepp-LaRouche cited U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s stated intention to live-stream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan who was convicted of murder in 2013 for the 2009 shooting rampage on the base that killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others. The final and most important news she reported was the proclamation by Pope Leo XIV that Saint Augustine was, in fact, not the author of the “just war” doctrine, particularly the version that is presently being misused by war enthusiasts. She called for a “just peace.”

Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and co-coordinator of the “Ban Killer Drones” campaign and of “World BEYOND War,” of which she became board president in 2022. She began by greeting many of the prominent personalities who have spoken at past IPC meetings, including Prof. Falk, who followed her in this session. She referenced the assassination of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, who served as the first United Nations Mediator for the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. He was killed by the Zionist Stern Gang on Sept. 17, 1948 to thwart the peace proposal which he and Ralph Bunche, an American diplomat and assistant to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine had drafted and which was submitted to the UN the following day. She described how Pope Francis directed that the “popemobile” be converted to a medical relief vehicle, and how the Israelis, to this day, have refused to allow this vehicle to enter Gaza. She concluded with the famous quote by a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of Jan. 18, 1943, Marek Edelman, who asserted that “to be a Jew means always standing with the oppressed, never the oppressors.”

Prof. Richard Anderson Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and was United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2008 to 2014. He recalled how, in the past, leaders of the United States welcomed immigrants—an indication of what “the American narrative could be and should be.” He described the current deportation of immigrants to “third countries” as “racism on top of xenophobia.” Falk echoed Zepp-LaRouche’s appreciation of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to his former boss at the UN, Navi Pillay, but expressed the wish that it could have been shared with his fellow Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, which would have also been richly significant.

He added that Pope Leo speaks with a moral authority that the Secretary-General of the UN lacks. The latter “cringes at the point of challenging the powers of the world.” He described how leading politicians must defer to corruption in order to attain and retain their status. Zepp-LaRouche, in response, agreed that corruption has become a sort of prerequisite for political leadership, that a person who aspires to political power must have skeletons in his closet to ensure that he can be controlled. She presented a vision of an alternative system, based on a dialogue of civilizations, and said that Popes Leo XIV and Francis are examples of the leadership required. Kelly recounted a tale of an encounter with a U.S. Marine in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion and “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq in 2003. The Marine astonished her by identifying the book, which she had seen him reading earlier, as a copy of Joseph Conrad’s anti-colonial novel, Heart of Darkness—which he said that he was reading for the thirteenth time. She again praised Pope Leo and said, “We don’t want to give up on that edifice of international law.”

Dennis Fritz, retired U.S. Air Force Command Chief Master Sergeant, reminded the participants of earlier warnings by other military men, Gen. Smedley Butler, who famously said that “war is a racket,” and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who warned of the Military-Industrial Complex. Today, our political leaders seek unequaled military power which they will use to get anything they want, typified by the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, which set the stage for multiple wars in the Middle East. He said that Pete Hegseth presides over “the scariest Pentagon” he has ever seen, and warned of Hegseth’s plan to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create a fully automated attack capability.

The Upcoming Election in Brazil

Beatriz Bissio, Associate Professor in the Post-Graduate Program of Comparative History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said that “democracy in Brazil is now facing its greatest test, since the restoration of constitutional order in the mid-1980s”—with the contest between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. The latter represents “the rise of the far right, globally,” and is supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The first round of elections on Oct. 4, she said, had shocking results with Bolsonaro coming out on top with 47% of the vote while President Lula came in second, with 45%. She described Brazil as being encircled by right-wing regimes, with the exception of Uruguay. “The outcome of the [run-off] elections in Brazil [on Oct. 25] will have reverberations in Latin America and beyond… the far-right governments are subservient to U.S. interests.”

Felipe Bombardelli, a Brazilian post-graduate student in robotics at the Federal University of Paraná, is active with the International Youth Movement of the Schiller Institute. He described that there was very little political participation of students at the universities in Brazil going into the first round of the elections—many people on the left, including in Lulaʼs Workersʼ Party (PT), thought Lula would win on the first vote. Waking up to realize that “it will take a miracle to make Lula President,” an unprecedented mobilization of students, professors and even labor has exploded in support of Lula’s candidacy—in the face of a difficult situation.

Staying on the topic of student activism, Schiller Institute activist Remi Lebrun reported on the ground from Paris, France, where there is a widespread mobilization from primarily high school students who are protesting the collapse of conditions in French public schools. The government has responded with severe repression, worse even than that directed against the “yellow vest” movement in France between 2018 and 2020. High school students are now being joined by middle school and college students, and their parents.

Discussion

In response to questions, the participants discussed the proposal of E. Martin Schotz, MD, the coordinator for the JFK Peace Speech Committee and a leader of Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA) who in last week’s IPC meeting suggested an “American National Congress” modeled on the “African National Congress,” which led the fight against apartheid in South Africa. They moved next to the possible consequences of a Flávio Bolsonaro victory in Brazil, including the possible withdrawal of that nation from the BRICS.

Independent congressional candidate Jose Vega raised the implications of the latest shooting by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) agents of a 28-year-old man with a 5-year-old child in the back seat of his car, in the Bronx, New York. He placed it in the context of worldwide anger over the mistreatment of the poor and elderly, such as the case of María del Carmen Abascal in Spain—an 87-year-old woman evicted from her apartment in Madrid after an investment fund acquired the property and raised the rent—by governments that are increasingly bankrupt but insist on transferring funds to an arms buildup.

Zepp-LaRouche closed the meeting by reiterating that the world is entering an inevitable phase change, and that whether that change is for better, or worse, will depend on the courage of individuals. [eir]

Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Social Rumbling Shakes Euro Governments

October 6, 2026by tobi in General, Helga Webcast

Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org.

Please share the YouTube link with your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to increase the reach of the solutions presented by the LaRouche movement.

Wednesday, October 7th, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

The turmoil of the emergence of a new era in world history is upon us, as in the turbulent years of the 1980s. These are not “normal times.” This time is reminiscent of the months just before the sudden fall of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989, followed by the “unthinkable” dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later. Now, as then, most analysts fail to grasp the depth of what is actually going on. Their axiomatic beliefs prevent it.

There is something that unifies the popular uprisings in Spain (“housing”), France (“education”), Germany (“government collapse”), and Italy (farmers, fishermen and truckers actions.) The triggers may seem different, but the underlying process is the same. One thing is clear—all NATO economies are failing, and no NATO nation’s people support the drive for a new world war!! The trans-Atlantic’s leaders, for the most part, “have been tested in the balance and found wanting.” The multiple flashpoints of war, the electoral campaigns of the next 30 days in Brazil, Israel and the United States, should be viewed, not as “important current events,” but as embedded in something much bigger. The assembly of 800,000 people in France for Pope Leo’s Sunday Mass, half or more of whom had not ever been to such a gathering in their lives before, were seeking what they hoped would be the presence of authentic leadership, in the person of Pope Leo XIV. His recent campaign for a “Just Peace” doctrine in the Church, supplanting the opportunistic practice of citing—but not studying—St. Augustine on “just war,” and his adamant rejection of nuclear weapons, can supply a moral compass in a time of crisis.

In a discussion yesterday, EIR intelligence officer Roger Moore reminded the assembled that forty years ago, October 11-12, the Reykjavik, Iceland Summit between American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev was held. Internet narratives that refer to Reykjavik state that it was Ronald Reagan’s refusal to abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that was the “deal-breaker” for negotiations there, that could have eliminated the use of most, if not all nuclear weapons. That “narrative” is wrong. In reality, it was that very SDI proposal, involving creating joint technological breakthroughs for an advanced laser weapons defense system, that was designed to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete,” and therefore unnecessary. Gorbachev’s rejection of Reagan’s SDI proposal ended the chance for the Soviet Union to escape its own demise, accelerated by the “primitive accumulation” methods its economy was forced into to attempt to keep pace with the United States and NATO in the 1980s arms race.

The truth is that the founder of this magazine, EIR Editor-In-Chief Lyndon LaRouche, had, with the knowledge of the Reagan Administration’s National Security Council, formulated the SDI policy. LaRouche engaged in a series of negotiations with representatives of the Soviet government from December of 1981 through early 1983. Ronald Reagan famously announced the SDI policy in a speech on March 23, 1983, to the shock of governments worldwide, and many officials in the United States.

Five days before Reykjavik, as Lyndon LaRouche reported in his “The Night They Came To Kill Me”: “On October 6, 1986, a virtual army of more than four hundred armed personnel descended upon the town of Leesburg, Virginia, for a raid on the offices of EIR and its associates, and also deployed for another, darker mission. The premises at which I was residing at that time were surrounded by an armed force, while aircraft, armored vehicles, and other personnel waited for the order to move in shooting. Fortunately, the killing did not happen, because someone with higher authority than the Justice Department Criminal Division head William Weld, ordered the attack on me called off. The forces readied to move in on me, my wife, and a number of my associates, were pulled back in the morning….. This is not only my cause for complaint. The great majority of Americans are as much the intended victim as I am. They have a right to know what is being done to them in this connection. I explain….. Ironically, but not accidentally, this operation was unleashed at the time President Reagan was meeting Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, where the President, once again, firmly restated his commitment to SDI.”  

LaRouche’s proposal was the moral opposite of multiple preceding “deep state” lunatic proposals for nuclear war, starting with Winston Churchill’s May, 1945 “Operation Unthinkable,” which sought to nuke the Soviet Union by no later than September, 1945. In 1949, Operation Dropshot, formulated by the United States Department of Defense, proposed dropping 300 nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union to destroy 85% of its industrial capacity, with “collateral damage” of tens of millions of deaths. There were more proposals, all hidden from the American people.

In 1954, the US’s “Operation Vulture” proposed using 3 “small tactical” atomic bombs to save the defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. In 1958, according to the late Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, the United States had a plan to bomb mainland China with nuclear weapons in order to prevent an invasion of Taiwan. (In a 2021 interview with CBS News reporter Michelle Miller, Ellsberg said, “I was part of a plan that should never have been made, that was a crime against humanity.”) And on July 20, 1961, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, Gen. Curtis LeMay and others presented a plan to JFK to launch a surprise nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, by no later than December of 1963.

The following year saw the October, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and the courageous actions by the Kennedy brothers to open up back-channel negotiations with the Soviet Union. Like those JFK/RFK discussions with Khrushchev, the LaRouche discussions were carried out under duress, and on the brink of war. For example, the near-nuclear war of 1983, thwarted by the courageous intervention of one man, Stanislav Petrov, was discussed just last week in Valdai by Vladimir Putin. In that case, intelligence, not artificial intelligence, prevailed. The LaRouche-Reagan initiative known as the SDI, far from preventing negotiations in Reykjavik, was the basis for a new security and development architecture at that time, presented in LaRouche’s 1984 Presidential campaign “Draft Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States and the USSR.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who was with Lyndon LaRouche when they came to kill him, has proposed Ten Principles for a New Security and Development Architecture, in a time when “the tables have turned.” Today, the idea of “a Just Peace” must pervade discussions in the churches, unions, and other institutions of the United States and Europe. Those in motion and turmoil must begin to think in the spirit of  Pope Leo’s and Zepp-LaRouche’s Nicholas of Cusa, whom the Pope discussed in his Angelus speech last October 25.

The world needs a “coincidence of opposites” approach to world peace. China and Russia can help a declining trans-Atlantic world, but only if the United States Presidential system can become capable of responding. The American Presidency is an institution, not merely an individual. LaRouche Independent Presidential candidate Diane Sare will shortly release a statement that will denounce the crazed Pete Hegseth’s  Autonomous Warfare Command, as well as propose a sane approach to a just peace with Iran, China, Russia and all nations. The lesson of that October 6, 40 years ago, is that a great idea, and a great movement for great ideas advanced on behalf of humanity, can never be defeated, if you keep fighting.

From Confrontation to Collaboration

October 4, 2026by tobi in General

174th Meeting of the International Peace Coalition

October 2nd marked the 174th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC). Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and IPC initiator, opened the proceedings by warning of new developments, including the potential dangers of the military use of artificial intelligence (AI). U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is promoting the development of autonomous weapons systems, with no discussion of human control over these systems. She referenced the “absolute exploding situation in the Mideast,” where the blockage of both major maritime chokepoints threatens a global depression. On the other hand, a bright spot is the IRGC’s open letter to the American public, which gives Americans access to Iran’s side of the story for the first time. She also cited the remarks of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 23rd annual forum of the Valdai International Discussion Club on Oct. 1, 2026, who described how Russia had sought to integrate itself with Europe and had been rebuffed. She recalled as well the case of Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who overruled the automatic retaliation mechanism in Soviet doctrine and prevented nuclear war on Sept. 26, 1983.

Agriculture in Crisis

Marcia Merry Baker, EIR Co-Editor for Economics, described today’s economic crisis situation as a “breakdown phase,” following economic shocks last Spring. She began with the projected collapse of total cereal grains production worldwide in the 2026-2027 crop year of 2.5%—which, she said, “might not sound like much, but it’s going to get bigger and faster as the planting and harvesting cycles go ahead, unless we intervene to stop it”—this in a world already facing hunger and shortages of food. She noted the trading of fertilizers globally has declined by 20 to 30 percent since the February start of the Iran War. The shutdown of shipping by the Persian Gulf oil states through the Strait of Hormuz has doubled the price of key industrial chemicals like sulfur. This is compounded by price rises in gasoline, jet fuel, heating oil and especially by shortages of diesel fuel. She described how Europe is moving to cut agricultural subsidies in order to re-direct the funds into rearmament. On the positive side, she cited agreements by Russia to supply India with fertilizer, and until recently, by China to export fuel to Southeast Asian nations. At Valdai, Putin spoke of resuming Russia’s global energy exports, provided that the economic sanctions are lifted.

Mike Callicrate is a cattle rancher, farm policy leader, and founder and owner of Ranch Foods Direct in Colorado. He catalogued the rapid decline of ranching due to bad policy, saying that “we are losing our ability to feed ourselves.”

Jesus Holguin Cazares, Kansas Cattlemenʼs Association President, reported on the sudden raids by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) last week in several communities with big meat-packing plants in southwestern Kansas. ICE gave no advance notice to anyone, including local law authorities. For several days, processing stopped, accounting for 20% of the U.S. beef supply. Ranchers had thousands of heads of cattle with nowhere to go. The ICE raids created a climate of fear where even well-documented U.S. citizens of Hispanic origin are reluctant to show up for work.

In response, Zepp-LaRouche referenced Pope Leo XIV’s remarks on the migrant controversy. “You do not solve the migrant question by expelling people,” she said; the answer is to stop wrecking the economies of other nations, which is what provokes waves of refugees. Mike Callicrate charged that meat packers “love disruption, they love chaos,” because it drives down the price that ranchers can ask for their cattle. Merry Baker agreed that ICE raids have disrupted the meat packing in southwest Kansas, contributing to a global crisis. Zepp-LaRouche urged everyone to step back from local controversies and view them from the perspective of a global shift away from the colonial system.

From Confrontation to Collaboration

Fr. John Heagle, Director, Priests Against Genocide (USA) and Member, Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, reminded the session that Pope Paul VI said, “If you want peace, work for justice.” He compared this to Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call for a paradigm shift, and cited various Catholic Church leaders who called upon the church to engage with humanity as a whole. Paul VI called upon world leaders to recognize that “development is the new name for peace,” but he may have been naïve, because secular governments have disregarded his words, a situation which Fr. Heagle described as “the total failure of our democracy today.” Priests Against Genocide is working around the world where people are being slaughtered because of who they are. He described the role of the Church as a “field hospital” for the multitudes of victims. He ended with a powerful poem written by a child in Gaza describing the action of a parent writing their name on the child’s leg to identify them.

E. Martin Schotz, MD is Coordinator for the JFK Peace Speech Committee (MAPA—Massachusetts Peace Action) and author of History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy. He described the philosophical shift that President John F. Kennedy underwent toward the end of his life, toward a rejection of “Pax America” and the deployment of war as an instrument of policy.

Zepp-LaRouche praised Fr. Heagle as an exemplar of authentic Catholicism, as opposed to those who twist the “just war” doctrine of Saint Augustine in order to excuse wars that are anything but just.

Co-moderator Dennis Speed once again introduced Larry Johnson, former CIA intelligence official and a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Speed summarized the content of the meeting thus far for Johnson, who was just arriving in the session. Johnson related that he had just returned from Russia where he had met with numerous military leaders, including one who had already concluded from the pronouncements of NATO leaders that Russia would soon be at war with Europe. He warned of the seriousness of the supply shortages that have ensued in the wake of the Iran War: “Diesel is to the global economy what blood is to the human body.” He said that U.S. President Donald Trump suffers from a form of mental illness and “has lost any social filter.” Referring to Trump’s UN speech where he spoke of annihilating Iran, he warned, “when Trump’s rhetoric exceeds that of Adolf Hitler, we’re in a very dangerous position.”

Jacques Cheminade, head of the Solidarity and Progress (S&P) party of France, described the impact of Pope Leo’s visit to Paris, with an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 people gathering for an open-air mass at the Place de la Concorde on September 26 to hear the pope’s message of peace. Cheminade described the intervention of his organization into the events of the pope’s visit, and the distribution of 12,000 leaflets of the [[open letter]] [[https://nuclearinsanity.substack.com/p/appeal-to-pope-leo-xiv]] by Peter Kuznik, which the IPC is collaborating on.

Discussion

In response to questions from Germany, Africa and Mexico, Marcia Merry Baker reported that there is an initiative in the world that is very precious, that promotes cooperation among farm leaders of the United States and Mexico, and could be expanded to include farm leaders from other nations as well. Co-moderator Dennis Small, EIRʼs Ibero-American intelligence director, observed that the destruction of agriculture in both the United States and Mexico is the driving force behind the waves of migrants entering the U.S. To appease the banks, Mexico and other nations around the world are forced to abandon food self-sufficiency in favor of cash crops for export, in order to pay debt service. According to polls, 75% of Americans oppose the very policies which cause immigration, and their anger should be directed at those policies rather than at the migrants. Mike Callicrate called for a return to an agriculture whose fundamental purpose is to feed people, as opposed to being a playground for speculators.

In concluding remarks, Fr. Heagle echoed Zepp-LaRouche’s indictment of those who misuse Augustine’s Just War doctrine to excuse wars of aggression, and emphasized the importance of the open letter to Pope Leo XIV. Zepp-LaRouche returned to President Putin’s warnings in Valdai, that the crisis of a new world war could erupt much faster than people think. We are so close to extinction, but we are also so close to the new paradigm that we desire. [eir]

Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Win-Win and the American System

September 29, 2026by tobi in Helga Webcast

Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org.

Please share the YouTube link with your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to increase the reach of the solutions presented by the LaRouche movement.

Wednesday, Sept. 30th, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

A quick look at the realities confronting the so-called architects of today’s “rules-based” order shows that their system is past the point of no return. The U.S.’ illegal war against Iran is failing to achieve anything other than the destruction of the global economy, and risks spreading throughout the region and beyond. U.S. President Donald Trump, one who is quick to brag about “defeating the deep state” and making everything “great,” has failed at both, and now presides over possibly the worst looming economic disaster in decades.

Take the absolutely disastrous economic shocks that are now sweeping the globe as a result of the illegal war against Iran: Global fertilizer trade is down 20-25% from the start of the war, causing farmers to shift to alternative means of cultivation and decrease the amount of land under cultivation; grain production is estimated to drop 2.5% compared to a year ago as a result of the Iran war, exacerbating an already fragile food situation where more than 2 billion do not have an adequate diet; fuel inventories have been steadily drawn down over the past six months, and are now decreasing by more than 6 million barrels of oil per day globally; and diesel prices have skyrocketed, reaching an all-time record of $6.52/gallon on Sep. 22 in the U.S., forcing a crisis for the productive sectors of every nation in the world.

The Trump administration is now mulling a diesel export ban or related measures to try to lower fuel prices before the midterm elections. The news has already sent shockwaves around the world, particularly in European countries such as Germany, whose fuel reserves are extra low and rely heavily on U.S. imports.

At the same time, U.S. Treasury rates are soaring to their highest levels in decades, with 10-year notes surpassing 5.2% yields on Sep. 28. An article in the London Financial Times on Sept. 22 even admitted what few have dared to: The Federal Reserve has been carrying out full-on quantitative easing—printing money and building up its balance sheet by buying Treasury securities from big Wall Street banks. It began this policy in November 2025, having ended “tightening” nearly a year ago. Thus, despite the much-ballyhooed efforts to rein in inflation, the Fed has been bailing out large banks at a pace of $40 billion/month while assisting them in reducing their Treasury holdings. In case it wasn’t obvious, the underlying fundamentals are not looking good.

While the numbers clearly indicate the economic dead-end of this policy, they also indicate the ongoing dissolution of the underlying Beast-man outlook, currently rampant throughout the Western establishment. From the illegal regime-change wars, to the policies of global economic exploitation, to the toleration of the genocide in Palestine, and the commitment to spend trillions more on military budgets—these policies are being overwhelmingly rejected, even if they still hold sway over a portion of the world.

One only has to look at the recent visit of Pope Leo XIV to France, where he told the audience, “I urge you… never to grow resigned to the prospect of war or to consider it ‘inevitable,’ but instead to persevere in the promotion of dialogue and diplomacy.” He was met by a crowd of 300,000 in Paris and separately by 80,000 youth, in an overwhelming response to the kind of moral leadership lacking in the West today. A similar phenomenon was seen at the New Delhi BRICS Summit, where, for example, the President of Iran was welcomed by a community representing over 50% of the world’s population. This is also evident in the fact that Russia’s Sergey Lavrov participated in a full 50 meetings during his three-day stay in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Or, in another expression, consider the outpouring of excitement seen at the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus’ recent performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on the 25th anniversary of September 11. Even though infrequently experienced in the world today, Beethoven’s and Schiller’s call that “All men shall become brothers” is ringing in the hearts of a growing portion of humanity.

In discussion with associates on Sep. 28, Helga Zepp-LaRouche characterized the situation as follows:

“If one looks at the process going on at the strategic level, I think it is important to not get stuck in this event or that event, but to actually recognize the fact that we are in the most gigantic transformation of the world order since at least the end of the Second World War—and it is not yet clear what the new order will be. What is clear, however, is that the old order, based on Western dominance and imperial ideas about the superiority of the West—that order is gone indefinitely and for sure.”

This is how to locate the state visit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, which the Chinese called a “milestone.” President Xi is optimistic that the so-called Thucydides Trap can be overcome, Zepp-LaRouche continued, because he knows that the majority of the world has “a completely different sense of what security means, namely development,” and is “clearly, consciously” setting about to create entirely new institutions and “a new kind of international cooperation.” Therefore, “if the world is supposed to get out of the dilemma where a Damocles sword of nuclear extinction hangs over us, the only way that will be accomplished is if we can convince the significant forces in Europe and the United States in particular to join with that Global Majority.”

The Drama Unfolding at the UN General Assembly

September 26, 2026by tobi in International Peace Coalition

by EIR staff

The 173rd consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) began with remarks by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and IPC initiator. She expressed her hope that meeting between Trump and Xi “could become a game-changer” in U.S.-China relations. She echoed Xi’s view, that solving many problems in the world would require the two largest economies working together. She said that one cannot overlook the fact that the military doctrine of the U.S. and the Anglophile nations has been the encirclement of Russia and China, but if Trump can normalize relations with those countries, he will have earned a positive place in history. The dominant theme at the UNGA is the question of whether the world going forward will be governed by the law of the jungle, or will we have a civilized world with a new security and development architecture. She said that the Western powers have no clue that the majority of the world is now orienting toward a new paradigm of peace through development. “We are in one of those moments where everything will depend on the courage of individuals to take up the flag of peace,” she said.

Harley Schlanger, President of The LaRouche Organization, introduced Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian-American academic, intellectual and political analyst who is Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran, and a former advisor to Iran’s Nuclear Negotiation Team. He said that the roots of the war we are seeing today may be found in Iran’s independence and its decision to be non-aligned. Iran has also supported the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and taken up the cause of the Palestinians, which made it a target of the Anglosphere. He compared both the Christian and Jewish varieties of Zionism to ISIS and al-Qaeda, all radical sects which do not reflect the religions they purport to represent. In fact, Israel bombed a synagogue which is located in the heart of the Jewish community in Tehran.

In response, Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the desperate attempts by the Anglosphere to preserve a unipolar world as the root cause of military conflicts in the world today. She said that presenting a true history of Iran is crucial to “setting the record straight.”

Garland Nixon, veteran progressive radio and television talk show host, pointed to the inherent contradiction in the narratives that Russia is losing its war with Ukraine, while simultaneously alleging that Russia is about to march through Europe and across the English Channel. He said that greatest fear of the Western elite is actually “internal uprising,” due to the rapidly deteriorating conditions of life in Western nations. “The more aggressive the U.S. foreign policy is, the more you suffer,” he said, citing the example of how the recently proclaimed new sanctions will impact living standards in the U.S. He suggested that the policies and rhetoric of the ruling elites have become so shockingly extreme that the masses may respond, and refuse to comply with the demands of those elites.

H.E. Donald Ramotar was President of Guyana from 2011-2015. Addressing Prof. Marandi, he observed that the Mossadegh government in Iran was overthrown by the CIA in 1953, the same year that the PPP government in Guyana was overthrown by Britain in a similar operation, and there has been subsequent kinship between the two nations. He accused the U.S. of “gangster-style operations,” citing as an example how Iran was invited to the negotiating table and then bombed. He lamented the fact that technological innovations such as AI, rather than being used to improve the quality of life for the common folk, are instead being channeled into military aggression. The quality of leadership in the West is declining, he said, because increasingly the power lies with private corporations instead of elected governments. He criticized UN Secretary General Guterres for his unwillingness to call what is happening in Gaza a genocide, and stated that UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese should have received the Nobel Prize for her efforts.

Prof. Marandi emphasized that Iran is a normal nation, and there is no “cult of martyrdom.” Iran supports the Palestinian cause because Iranians recognize the humanity of the Palestinians.

Richard Black, Schiller Institute UN Representative, reported on his organization’s activities around the General Assembly meeting, and read excerpts from the letter to the UN, written by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, which calls for a new security and development architecture “with the spirit of Bandung, the spirit of Shanghai, and the spirit of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.” He highlighted the role of Diane Sare’s presidential campaign, and her critique of the Delphic nature of international banker/Canadian PM Mark Carney’s Partners for Multilateralism (P4M), which is intended to undercut the BRICS and sabotage the actual movement for multilateralism.

Discussion

The discussion section began with an on-the-ground video presentation from a French activist who was present in Paris to welcome the pope, whose message of peace contrasts with the French government’s calls for war.

History and Culture

Co-moderator Dennis Speed asserted that we are seeing “an end to the doctrine of supremacy,” and asked the panelists to comment. Garland Nixon commented that in Russia, there is more attention to history and culture than one finds in the West, but in the West, there is an awakening interest in these topics which is changing the way people see the world.

Zepp-LaRouche reminded the participants that in the West, the CIA launched the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was an operation aimed at the extirpation of classical culture. The British promote a truncated version of history which erases the contributions of cultures which are much older than Britain’s.

Richard Black described a visit to an historical museum in China, where he saw large crowds of Chinese families who were passionately committed to imparting their nation’s very long history to their progeny.

The Next UN Secretary General

A participant warned that the US was throwing its support to the candidacy of Rafael Mariano Grossi to become the new Secretary General of the UN, and reminded the meeting of Grossi’s corrupt role as head of the IAEA, and how he visited Iran and probably provided intelligence to Israel which was used to assassinate Iranian scientists.

Zepp-LaRouche recalled the involvement of Palantir in spreading disinformation about Iran’s nuclear program in order to manufacture consent for the war, and asked whether Grossi was complicit in this. She said that if Grossi wishes to become Secretary General, “he should not have such dark spots on his shirt.”

Neocolonialism

President Ramotar characterized Venezuela as a “full-fledged colony of the United States,” and said it typifies the colonialist nature of U.S. policy, as opposed to China’s more benevolent approach. He called attention to the recently concluded agreement which gives the U.S. significant control over Greenland.

Co-moderator Dennis Small offered a definition of neocolonialism as a system where nations are granted nominal political independence, but their economies remain entirely under external control. He agreed on the significance of the Greenland agreement.

Zepp-LaRouche responded to a question by reiterating her view that if Trump can restore normal relations with Russia and China, he will have secured a positive role in history. She said that model that security comes from military strength is the view of a shrinking minority; the “tide of the times” is that the road to peace is development, and this view is now universal among the global majority as reflected by the BRICS and SCO. She concluded that we are at a branching point; on the one side, we have the tendency toward neocolonialism, or neo-feudalism as power shifts to private companies or individuals, and on the other hand, there is the outlook which the IPC represents.

Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: UNGA Session Offers Opportunity to Consolidate a New Paradigm.

September 22, 2026by tobi in General, Helga Webcast

Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org.

Please share the YouTube link with your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to increase the reach of the solutions presented by the LaRouche movement.

Wednesday, Sept. 23rd, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

To the Heads of State and Delegations participating in the UN General Assembly in September 2026

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The following statement was released today by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute.

This institution,  the United Nations General Assembly, may not be perfect and may need reform, but it does represent still, at this moment of extreme crisis, the most important institution where representatives of the entire human population come together to address existential problems.

This time, the UN General Assembly takes place at a moment of great danger to the very existence of the human species. Two regional wars, the Ukraine war and the war against Iran, are both threatening to escalate into  wider regional conflicts, and even global nuclear war. Several senior  military experts are warning that we are in a situation more dangerous than during the Cuban missile crisis.

Most recently in the United States and Great Britain, the discussion has broken out into the open about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons, and even the idea that a “limited nuclear war” can be fought and won. Anybody who has studied the matter knows that there is no such thing as a tactical nuclear war, because even the use of a single so-called tactical nuclear weapon will escalate, within days, to a full global nuclear war, leading to the annihilation of the human species.

In the course of the last thirty-five years, after the end of the Cold War,  the world has undergone the transition from  the failed effort to to establish an unipolar world to an unfolding multipolarity, which, however, is still governed by the logic of geopolitics. Geopolitics is based on the idea that one nation, or a group of nations, has a legitimate interest that it can impose on another nation or group of nations. 

We are experiencing at the same time the end of the epoch of five hundred years of colonialism. If we, as the human species, want to prevent this tumultuous transition period from ending up in a new world war, we have to replace geopolitical confrontation with a completely new paradigm, the vision of ONE humanity. It is the same question which was discussed during the time of the young American Republic, in the Federalist Papers:  Can mankind govern itself?

If this question is to be answered affirmatively in the time of  thermonuclear weapons, we must establish an entirely new paradigm: The  idea of the one humanity first, must be put above all particular interests.

This U.N. General Assembly is the place to put the concept of a “New Security and Development Architecture” on the agenda, which must take into account the interests of every single country on the planet.  The four Global Initiatives – but especially the Global Governance Initiative – put forward by China, represent a very practical approach to establishing  the basis for such a new paradigm.

Let the “Spirit of Bandung”, and the “Spirit of Shanghai”, and the spirit of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, that All People Shall Be Brethren, be your inspiration!

Respectfully,

Helga Zepp-LaRouche,

Founder of the Schiller Institute

International Peace Coalition, Week 172: On the Brink of an All-Out Regional War in Southwest Asia

September 19, 2026by tobi in General, International Peace Coalition

by EIR staff

Sept. 18—The 172nd consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) began with remarks by Dennis Small, IPC co-moderator and Ibero-American Editor for the Executive Intelligence Review. Small emphasized that U.S. President Donald Trump, despite his bluster, is not the “master of his fate.” At this point, with the closure of both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the world is headed for an enormous economic shock, which Trump is powerless to prevent. He has failed to thwart the BRICS and the shift toward a multipolar world, as the world could see at the recent BRICS conference in New Delhi, India. Trump has announced that the United States has stationed weapons in space, and that the U.S. is discussing the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons, because he still hopes to intimidate the rest of the world.

Omer Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, reported that genocide, like war, has been used as “the continuation of politics by other means.” He cited historical examples where the perpetrators of genocides were able to achieve their policy goals. Since opposition to genocide was codified in 1948, there was a deterrent of sorts, but the impunity with which Israel is carrying out its genocide in Gaza threatens to take us back to the world as it was before the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). In the case of the Palestinians, both Hamas and the Israeli regime-initiated violence in order to accomplish specific objectives, and both have been successful, but at a price. Hamas drew global attention to the plight of the Palestinians, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. The Israeli regime hopes to provoke another Intifada in the West Bank, which would serve as a pretext for another genocide there, to hasten the ethnic cleansing and annexation.

Harley Schlanger, President of The LaRouche Organization, praised Bartov’s presentation and his recent book, Israel: What Went Wrong? Schlanger discussed the topic of Israel’s postponed constitution, which was superseded in 2018 by the “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People,” which effectively institutionalized apartheid, as is described in Bartov’s book. Schlanger proposed that rather than focusing on disincentives such as sanctions to change Israeli behavior, the world should promote positive incentives such as Lyndon LaRouche’s Oasis Plan, which would benefit both sides of the conflict.

Jonathan Kuttab is a Palestinian-American Christian who is Executive Director of the Friends of Sabeel North America, and also Co-Founder of Nonviolence International. He expressed his appreciation for the ongoing IPC meetings, and praised the diverse and global nature of their participants. He then moved on to the topic of genocide denial in the case of Gaza. He said that the most difficult thing to prove in legal proceedings of genocide was intent, but Israel has made its intent extremely easy to demonstrate and document. Westerners who deny the genocide are doing so to hide their own culpability. Israel’s impunity threatens to normalize genocide, a return, as Prof. Bartov warns, to the world as it was before the Genocide Convention. What is particularly shocking is the attacks on the international courts and on international law itself.

In response, Bartov debunked the “two-state solution,” charging that “the idea of two separate states with a wall between them is a fantasy.” He praised an organization called “A Land for All,” which promotes a plan which envisions two sovereign states—Israel and Palestine—within a single shared homeland, linked by open borders and shared institutions rather than strict separation. He said that it was difficult for many people to come to terms with the fact that Israel, which presented itself to the world as a refuge for victims of the Holocaust, could now be perpetrating a holocaust of its own, but because Israel “overplayed its hand” and pushed its impunity too far, the eyes of the world have been opened.

Dennis Small addressed the issue of denial, saying that people are unwilling to face the truth because they have no solution, and consequently reality is too painful. He said that the worst damage is to those who tolerate the genocide, more so than to the actual victims. He contrasted the benevolent image of man found in China’s Confucianism with the bestial image found in Thomas Hobbes and his “war of each against all.” He also reminded the participants that Zionism was in large part a project of the British Empire.

Beatriz Bissio is an Associate Professor at the Post-Graduate Program of Comparative History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She described her previous career as a journalist with a publication called Third World Notebooks, during which she extensively covered Palestinian issues and interviewed the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat. She then moved to the subject of the recent BRICS conference, which was by no means guaranteed to succeed, particularly because of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s friendly relations with Israel. Despite this, the meeting was a major success. The meeting between Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping was particularly important, producing the memorable comment, “We are partners, and not rivals.” The conference on the whole, while not unanimous on all controversial issues, was characterized by “diplomacy, dialogue and the patient construction of consensus.” She said that this conference allows her to be optimistic, despite the cruel realities which are addressed in the IPC’s series of meetings, and cited the 1955 Bandung Conference, a landmark meeting of 29 Asian and African nations which laid the foundation for the BRICS, who are the “inheritors of Bandung.”

Discussion

In response to a questioner who asked why the Arab states do not come to the aid of the Palestinians, Kuttab said that the Arab nations are not democracies and they are not responsive to the wishes of their populations, plus they are afraid of the Israelis. Schlanger came in to point out that Iran is an exception, which is the reason that a war was launched against it.

A German woman said that Germany had a special responsibility to oppose today’s genocide in Gaza, since it was guilty of genocide itself under the Nazis. She thanked Schlanger for bringing up the British role, and also called attention to the importance of the controversy surrounding the American rap star Macklemore, who came under attack for supporting Palestine on stage. She described his official statement as “beautiful.”

Ulf Sandmark, head of the Schiller Institute in Sweden, gave a report on the situation there, and the interventions being carried out by his organization, which are helping to build an anti-war coalition among the opposition parties.

Small returned to the topic of the Anglo-American desperation to preserve their “unipolar world,” including the intention to use nuclear weapons. He described Israel as a “stick of dynamite” that could be detonated and discarded, also in the pursuit of the unipolar dream.

A journalist asked Kuttab to explain the “slavish devotion” of American politicians to the Israeli regime. He described it as something intended to serve broader interests, and said that these politicians would happily “throw Israel under the bus” if it seemed advantageous. But, he said, there is a shift in the United States, especially among young people, and Jewish people who no longer feel comfortable with what Israel is doing. He predicted that the U.S. will eventually remove the “umbrella of impunity,” and Israel must come to terms with that.

Schlanger returned to the importance of the IPC process to help people get “outside the axiomatic structure of their thinking,” to overcome the brainwashing to which they are subjected in the legacy media. He described the day’s meeting as a thorough discussion which “takes up these questions at the root.”

Schiller Institute Publishes New Translation of Friedrich Schiller’s The Aesthetic Education of the Human Being

September 17, 2026by tobi in General

Sept. 16, 2026 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute has just published Friedrich Schiller’s most important philosophical work, The Aesthetic Education of the Human Being, in a new, improved translation by Leni Rubinstein. The book also includes his essay, On the Sublime. The book is now available at Amazon for $15.

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was a historian, dramatist, poet, and philosopher—a very special, beautiful thinker whose ideas remain of crucial importance for the present world, and for humanity in the future. In all of his works, be they his dramas, essays on universal history, poems, or philosophical writings, his intention was to create a worthy future for humanity through the ennoblement of the individual. He used to be known throughout the United States as “The Poet of Freedom,” and there are statues of him in parks all over the country.

In the 1790s, Schiller wrote a number of profound philosophical essays, of which The Aesthetic Education of the Human Being is the zenith—and Schiller himself recognized that in a series of letters to friends.

Schiller’s intention was to rout the dominant influence of Immanuel Kant, who believed that there is no intelligible standard for truth and the beautiful, and that the sensuous part of your being must be negated—contrary to Schiller’s view that the human being is a harmonious whole, who must strive to educate his or her emotions and bring them into harmony with intellectual reason, through classical art, and who must strive towards becoming a beautiful soul. “We call a soul beautiful when it can confidently let its emotions guide its own will, without any risk of coming into contradiction with its [the will’s] own decisions…. In a beautiful soul, sensuousness and reason, duty and inclination harmonize, and grace is its epiphany.” The whole character of a beautiful soul is moral. Love (agapē) is the emotion of the beautiful soul, the emotion that generates creativity.

In 1801, Schiller wrote On the Sublime, another gem which is included in this book. Schiller wrote this essay late in life, and it is perhaps his most refined discussion of the process of the development of the soul.

This book is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about educating children and youth to develop all the capabilities they have been born with, so they truly can be citizens of their country, and of the world, and thus pave the way for future generations. Which means that this book is a must-read for all individuals who care about the future of mankind.

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