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“The United States Is Engaged in Self-Attrition”

July 18, 2026by tobi in General, International Peace Coalition

Report on 163rd meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC)

July 17, 2026 (EIRNS)—The 163rd consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) opened with remarks by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and IPC initiator. She observed that for the 6th day in a row, the United States has massively bombed Iran, targeting civilian infrastructure. Iran has responded by attacking U.S. bases and has asked the Houthis in Yemen to target the Bab al-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea, another important chokepoint in addition to the Strait of Hormuz. This can “plunge the world into a depression, a hunger catastrophe, an energy crisis,” as early as August, Zepp-LaRouche warned.

In Europe, “Ukrainians have started to massively target Russian facilities in the Black Sea, and in retaliation Russia has begun to hit ports in the Odessa region—that massively affects grain, oil and fertilizer” Zepp-LaRouche said, noting that this poses a double-edged threat to world food supplies, since Russia alone supplies over 10% of global grain exports. On the other hand, she said, you have the insane decision by Germany to purchase the U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles and station them on German soil—we are facing a resumption of the medium-range nuclear missile crisis from the 1980s.

In the United States, an increasingly delirious U.S. President Donald Trump went on national TV to charge that 220 million files on U.S. voters were stolen by China in 2020.

Zepp-LaRouche tempered her presentation with some favorable developments. She reported that Russia, China and the Vatican are working to curtail abuses of artificial intelligence (AI). Russia and China have agreed to form for this purpose the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, to be headquartered in Shanghai. Similarly, at the summer residence of Pope Leo XIV in the city of Castel Gandolfo, Italy, in a 3-day meeting, 30 Nobel Prize laureates and top experts agreed upon the Rome Declaration on Nuclear Weapons and AI. Meanwhile, in the United States, 104 Congressmen voted to de-fund Israel. This was not sufficient to pass the amendment, but it was nonetheless significant, marking the first time that a substantial number of Congressmen defied the wishes of the Israel lobby.

Jack Gilroy is a regular IPC participant, representing Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi–Upstate New York, and Pax Christi International. He gave an updated report on the initiative to emulate the diplomacy of Pope John XXIII during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when Pope John served as an intermediary between U.S. President John Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and helped to defuse a situation where the world was on a hair-trigger for nuclear war.

Joe Maxwell is the former Lt. Gov. of Missouri; a lawyer; a retired First Sergeant and 20-year veteran in the Missouri National Guard; Cofounder of Farm Action; and current President of the Farm Action Fund. He commended the Schiller Institute and the IPC for 163 weeks of leadership. He went on to present an exhaustive report on the impact that American farmers and rural communities are facing because of the wars that were initiated in Ukraine and Iran, coming on top of an already difficult situation for independent family farms. The United States is losing, on average, 63 farms a day (small, and middle-sized)—as American families are struggling to afford food. Four companies control 85% of the cattle processing in the U.S. Maxwell went on to present similar statistics for other commodities. Farmers in the U.S. are also being squeezed on the input side; fertilizer prices have doubled, and diesel fuel has gone up 40%. U.S. farmers will lose $31 billion this year, between the monopolistic policies of international agribusiness and the wars.

U.S. independent presidential candidate Diane Sare listed the chokepoints that imperil the world economy: the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea, the “Epstein class” takeover of Albania on the Adriatic Sea, and Ukraine’s attacks on Russian shipping routes in the Black Sea. She lamented that these threats were worsening while the United States is being led by a “witless, malignant narcissist in the White House.” The world is still coasting on oil that was in transit before Hormuz was closed, so there is a delayed reaction to the closure of the strait, but soon the full impact will be felt.

Sare reported that a critical flank is the battle around the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in the Congress. Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khana (D-CA) have an amendment to strip the now-notorious section 219 from the NDAA, the section which effectively merges the military and intelligence functions of the United States with those of Israel. The move to strike it is an action which Sare supports (see her statement. She reported on how Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA) changed his vote on another amendment, Amendment #8, also introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie, to strip $3.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel from the 2027 State Department appropriations bill. This is proof in principle that Congress can change, in order to respond to the wishes of their constituents.

Zepp-LaRouche posed a question to Maxwell: what are the delayed effects of fertilizer shortages? He responded by saying that if you cut off nitrogen fertilizer, it takes about a year for the impact of higher prices and shortages to be felt. The result is less food, and mass hunger. Co-moderator Dennis Speed followed up, by suggesting that the IPC should explore the relationship between attacks on agriculture and the migrant crisis, because food shortages compel people to move in search of food in order to survive. Zepp-LaRouche agreed that the denial of development will cause the migrant crisis to explode.

“The United States is Depleting Itself”

Dennis Speed introduced frequent IPC participant Larry Johnson, who signed on to the meeting after finishing another commitment. Johnson is a former CIA intelligence official and a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Johnson noted that Iran had lived through six days of continuous bombing since he had spoken at the last IPC meeting one week ago. Contrary to the frequent, hysterical proclamations of triumph coming from the Trump administration, “Iran holds the strategic edge in this battle,” Johnson said. He painted a devastating picture of the attrition in U.S. military capabilities under the conditions of the war with Iran: at the rate in which missiles are being consumed, Lockheed Martin made only 7 days’ worth of missiles over the past year. We are running out of ordnance. “The United States is engaged in self-attrition,” Johnson said. “All Iran has to do is hammer U.S. bases every day with ballistic missiles… the United States is being effectively driven from the Persian Gulf.” After the United States denied China access to its Global Positioning System in the 90s, China created an independent BeiDou Navigation Satellite System which Iran is now accessing. “The United States is depleting itself.” The U.S. has caused global shortages of diesel and aviation fuel, which inevitably affects our military capabilities.

Discussion

Zepp-LaRouche asked Johnson whether there are people in the Pentagon that understand the consequences of these policies and who can respond intelligently. Johnson answered that they have underestimated Iran’s resolve. Before long, Trump will be forced to make major concessions and find some way to sell them to his base in a face-saving way, claiming that he is magnanimously responding to Iranian pleas for mercy. Meanwhile, the U.S. is systematically relocating its forces out of the region, to move them out of range of Iranian missiles.

In response to a question about the 41-43 million persons who attended the funeral of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Zepp-LaRouche called it the largest demonstration in world history, and an assertion of “thousands of years of identity of a civilization.”

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Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: U.S. Escalation in the Strait of Hormuz Threatens Fragile Financial System

July 14, 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, July 15, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

Sometimes, “being reasonable” is the most revolutionary thing an individual, and certainly a population or nation, can do. An epidemic of Reason breaking out among the people of the United States, in the 250th year of the nation’s birth, would be most welcome by the rest of the world.

It is, for example, entirely unreasonable to allow section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act to be passed by a Congress that, in so doing, renders itself powerless in the very matters of war and peace, for which it, as representatives of the American people—not monied lobbies—and no other branch of government, or unelected civil service, or permanent bureaucracy, must be held accountable, according to the Constitution of the United States. That is, it is not within the powers of the Congress, by its passing what should be called the “Jonathan Pollard U.S.-Israel War Technology Cooperation Initiative” to arbitrarily abdicate, to decide to not be the Congress, to repudiate the powers of that body. That would require a deliberate alteration of the Constitution of the United States. A passage of House Section 219 (and its counterpart, Senate Section 1217) would be treason against the nation, and the world.

Independent Presidential candidate Diane Sare, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and now several others have pointed this out. Now, the most reasonable among the American people—as well as those outside of the United States who realize the danger such an action poses to the world— must take unified action, by any and all appropriate means, to reverse this course.

It is essential that the people be reasonable, since the Trump Presidential Administration is not. Helga Zepp-LaRouche yesterday reported, “Now, obviously, the NATO summit, which just concluded in Ankara, was fraught with absurdities as well. I think the most ridiculous statement coming out of the summit was by Trump, who said that there was so much love in the air in this meeting. Now, how you can have love in the presence of all of these warmongers is very difficult to imagine, but he claims that this was happening. And obviously he’s very happy, because he got these stupid Germans, namely Pistorius and Merz, to buy the Tomahawk cruise missile for at least $1.2 billion, plus a couple of millions. While before, Biden had basically promised that these Tomahawk missiles would be put there in Germany for nothing, because it’s obviously in the very interest of whoever is the war faction in the United States, and totally contrary to the interest of Germany, which is being made a prime target for such a medium-range, nuclear-capable first-strike missile, which heightens the security problems of Germany. But now instead, Germany is paying for it.

“But, if you think about it, in the previous design, it was part of a multi-domain operation concept, to which belonged satellites, intelligence, electronic warfighting, cyber capabilities, data fusion, aiming, and far-reaching precision strikes, were all part of one coherent package. And the Tomahawk was the top of the spear. Now, Germany is buying the top without the spear, having all the costs, and it’s completely insane. So, it’s naturally clear that Trump is happy to sell that, but it just shows you the insanity.”

“O judgement!! thou art fled to Brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason.” Would that Shakespeare’s admonition in Mark Antony’s Act Three speech in Julius Caesar might enlighten those that should wonder how the mass assassination policies of the Israeli regime and the American government carried out in Iran actually resulted in the largest assembly ever recorded in human history—over 40 million people in Iran. Millions of those people believed they were possibly walking to their deaths, and assembled nonetheless.

“The awful Shadow of some unseen Power floats, though unseen, among us.” Members of the Epstein class deny that power exists. That power, and the Power of Reason, by the way, are actually identical. In the document “Quo Vadis, Humanitas?” issued by the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, the authors state that “The purpose of this document is not only to offer a discernment capable of weighing the anthropological consequences of techno-scientific discoveries and the corresponding ethical choices of people and societies today…. The theoretical-practical nature of theology encompasses the proclamation of faith (kerygma) and education in a vision of humanity, in dialogue with scientific progress, in which everything that is good can be integrated.” Such “heavy ideas” have always been the province of the Executive Intelligence Review, and its founder and “chief intelligence officer,” the late economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche. In 1983, he observed:

“In popular jargon, and unfortunately, also amongst some elements of our political intelligence community, there is an obsession with the modern American habit of demanding that reality and ideas come in popularly advertised brand-name packages, with contents explained in the same simplistic terms as a typical ‘Madison Avenue’ advertising slogan.… The sort of person who insists that his facts should come in popularly advertised brand-labeled packages should not expose himself to the mental anguish he will suffer in confronting even the simple day-to-day truths of routine counterintelligence work. On this level, the world is very complicated; in this realm, there are few allies, and almost no one operates openly under the brand label of the one, two, or three interests he ultimately serves.”

Once, in a conversation about challenging people to change the world through organizing others to think about “heavy ideas,” LaRouche referred to the often-stated complaint about his “long policy papers” and “complicated” presentations. He proposed, “The way to respond to that, is to pose this question: ‘Maybe you are too uncomplicated to survive?’” Executive Intelligence Review was created to qualify any thinking person to discover and adopt solutions, to “know what to do,” including how to create a New Security and Development Architecture, as is discussed by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her Ten Principles for a New Security And Development Architecture.

A Council of Reason is immediately needed. It must be assembled from citizens, particularly young citizens from around the world, and those that believe in the world-historic importance of the international revolution of 250 years ago, summarized in the American Declaration of Independence. That began a process which Indonesia’s Sukharno called, at the First Summit of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, “the first successful anti-colonial revolution in history.” It is not enough to, as India is presently doing, close down places like the “Jaipur Polo Ground, where King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, had played,” and other symbols of British colonial rule. It is Winston Churchill’s “empire of the mind” that must be defeated by the power of Reason, and a Council of Reason that knows, and acts upon “what is to be done.”

“A Very Important Clarion Call to the Americans”

July 11, 2026by tobi in General

Report on International Peace Coalition, Week 162

July 10, 2026 (EIRNS)—At the outset of the 162nd consecutive online meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC), Schiller Institute founder and IPC initiator Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned that “both theaters of war… are escalating.” The recent NATO summit produced nothing but more calls for confrontation in Ukraine between Europe and Russia. She called attention to the announcement by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that the United States had approved the sale of Tomahawk cruise missiles and the corresponding ground-based Typhon launchers to Berlin. Tomahawk missiles are offensive, nuclear-capable weapons. Trump had rejected a request from Ukrainian Acting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in October 2025 to provide them.

In Iran, the Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the United States has collapsed. Between 41 and 43 million people joined in events to mourn assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the largest funeral in recorded history. “The population is rallying around the government more than ever before,” she said.

The one bright spot is Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, and the Pope’s message on July 4 is “a very important clarion call to the Americans,” Zepp-LaRouche emphasized. Instead of traveling to the United States to deliver his remarks in person, he visited the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean where migrant refugees are being held. Zepp-LaRouche concluded, “If we do not change course very very soon… we may reach a point of no return.”

President Donald Ramotar, former president of Guyana (2011-2015), warned that the migrant issue has become a global problem, and is being used as a political football by governments with failed economic policies. He recounted the history of the Windrush Generation, an “invited exodus” of Caribbean migrants who arrived in the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1971 to help rebuild the nation after World War II. Now they or their descendants are being expelled. In the Western Hemisphere, there is migration caused by military coups or economic sanctions sponsored by the U.S. There is also the “Brain Drain,” where highly educated people in the Global South are being deliberately targeted. More than 70% of Guyanese university graduates are being lured to jobs in the U.S. Cuba has the human capital necessary to rapidly develop, but the economic warfare from the United States has created a crisis that forces people to emigrate. The solution is development. Ramotar said further that colonial policies are still in effect; raw materials are being extracted and exported by foreign interests and not being used for the development of our nations. “The vultures are gathering” now that Guyana has found uranium, in addition to its oil and gold wealth. He decried “the false impression that China wants to take over the world,” and described the mutually beneficial relationship that his country has had with China.

Jack Gilroy, an activist with Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi–New York State, and Pax Christi International, recalled the trauma of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, and the crucial role played by Pope John XXIII at that time. The Russians saw the pope as a voice of reason and his message resonated with them.

Edouard Husson is a professor, historian, and editor-in-chief of the newsletter Brennus in Paris. He commented on the fact that U.S. President Donald Trump had Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei assassinated and then seems surprised and shocked when the Iranian population rallies around him. He described the massive turnout for Khamenei’s funeral as an event as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Western leaders no longer know how to win the wars they start, nor do they know how to make peace.”

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, Founder and President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) in Malaysia, said, “We must resolve the root crisis, which is the dispossession of the Palestinian people… The vast majority of humankind wants to resolve this issue,” but the United States is the obstacle to resolving it.

Larry Johnson, former CIA intelligence official and a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) observed that the recent NATO summit had made matters worse in both Europe and the Middle East. Small went on to analyze the economic causes of refugee flows from Mesoamerica to the U.S., which he characterized as misery “imposed by Wall Street and the City of London.” Johnson replied first with a sports analogy, recalling the first time Muhammad Ali or Willie Mays was defeated and comparing that to the ongoing demise of the once-mighty United States. As examples, he cited how the Houthis stopped the U.S. Navy cold in the Red Sea, and now Iran has prevailed over the U.S. military. If the United States were to attempt a ground invasion of Iran, any viable staging area for a large amount of U.S. troops would be completely vulnerable to precision attacks by Iranian drones and missiles, a completely different situation than the U.S. faced with its invasion of Iraq. The funeral of Khamanei was unprecedented in world history, Johnson said, and compared it to the U.S. response to the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. “The real issue remains oil,” he said. 70% of the U.S. oil refineries are set up to process heavy crude, which does not come from domestic production and is essential to produce diesel and aviation fuel. We have been drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and it is significantly depleted.

Johnson also noted the significance of the fact that Russia has moved from the use of the term “Special Military Operation” to calling the situation in Ukraine a war. He mocked the propaganda in the West which asserts that Ukraine has the upper hand, which he called “delusional bullshit.”

The Crumbling Empire

Zepp-LaRouche responded to the other speakers, stating that “all the colonial wars have been lost” but narrative control has been strengthened. She asked the other speakers for their views on this topic, and what followed was a wide-ranging discussion which included a focus on recent events in Bangladesh. Husson described how “divide and rule” tactics are used to keep French politics from addressing the real topics: war and peace, and economic collapse.

Ramotar asked that we imagine the potential for China and India to enter a collaborative relationship. The government of India vacillates between anticolonialism, and Hindu chauvinism which pushes them to collaborate with Israel due to shared hatred of Islam. “The old tactics of divide and rule are still a very potent weapon.”

Johnson mused that “when you have leaders consumed with their own hubris, and oblivious to facts,” you get what we have today. He zeroed in on the controversy about the sale of F-35 fighters to Türkiye, and recited an astonishing litany of technical problems that afflict the plane. “Why do you want to give Turkey a turkey?” he quipped.

Moderator Anastasia Battle reminded participants to contact the U.S. Congress and urge them to strike section 219 from the National Defense Authorization Act, to prevent the effective merger of U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence functions.

Discussion

German activist Jonathan Thron reported on a presentation to a chapter meeting of the NachDenkSeiten newsletter on the potential for nuclear fission and fusion energy, and the BRICS. He commented that “people are really looking for optimism,” and the “green” outlook is no longer dominant. A participant asked, what about artificial intelligence (AI) and the use of data centers, which consume extraordinary amounts of energy? “The development of AI is a natural development,” Thron replied; “do we use it for good purposes or bad purposes?” Zepp-LaRouche noted that first unprovoked war of aggression against Iran was based on fraudulent intelligence from Palantir, the huge AI firm.

Zepp-LaRouche closed by saying that a conclusion we can draw from this discussion is that we need to sharpen our understanding of empire and colonialism. Friedrich Schiller, the German poet, philosopher and historian after whom the Schiller Institute is named, wrote the Revolt of the Netherlands for only one reason, to show that empires can be defeated.

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Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Cornered Netanyahu to Visit White House, Again!

July 7, 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, July 8, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

Looking at the sweep of history, one sees that when empires go down, the trigger is often a failed military operation—an assault, a siege, a war. This observation was made today by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute, to draw out the import of some of today’s leading current events and set the tasks for what must follow the defeat of oligarchism and empire per se.

One proviso: when we are “in the middle of events,” we do not often see them as patterns of the larger picture. But the picture is, empires don’t last. We are now in the period where “the empire”—referring to the extended, financial-military/Epstein cross-borders complex—is attempting to persist—and it is lethal—but it is in trouble.

Look at the Greater Israel empire drive on multiple military fronts; against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, against Syria, Iran, and so on. Israel is overstretched in all directions, causing death and destruction.

Look at the profound message from Iran, rejecting imperial assault. Despite the U.S.-Israeli rounds of warfare, and assassinations of leaders, the people of Iran stand firm for their nation, culture and millennial-long civilization. Up to 20 million people were in processions today commemorating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed, along with family members, by Israeli-U.S. airstrikes.

Zepp-LaRouche commented, “when you’re in the middle of history, it’s very difficult to give it always a definite name, but what you can say is, this is definitely the period where the empire, meaning now not any particular empire, but meaning the oligarchical system, is definitely overstretching itself because these establishments just don’t want to register that to fight wars to achieve your aim is a losing proposition.

“Sometimes it may take decades before that becomes clear, but when has the United States won the last war? Not in Vietnam, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, not in Syria, not in Libya, not in Ukraine, and definitely not in Iran. So, rather than realizing that that method of trying to consolidate a world hegemonic position is not successful, they refuse to learn from China, who is not using any weapon, but just offering economic development, and therefore making friends all over the place.

“So, why are these elites not smart enough to recognize that the only way they could compete in the systemic competition with China would be to do likewise and try to make friends by developing these countries? But obviously, given the fact that all of these people have put their fortune into making profit with the war industry, their thinking is blocked to think in this direction….”

The task in this situation, for all friends of humanity, is to fill the void for morality and policy, as more and more people and nations reject empire. In short, we must mobilize for all aspects of the core concept that development is the name for peace.

On July 31, this news service and the International Peace Coalition will co-host a roundtable for world dialogue on emergency and long-term perspectives to intervene in the world crisis, on behalf of development and peace. With a world development drive, there are no wars, and no migrant “problem.”

Note an especially dreadful update today, resulting from Washington’s record of empire: the entire electric power system collapsed in Cuba, affecting its total population of over 10 million. This is the direct result of U.S. economic warfare for nearly seven decades against the country. The UN General Assembly will meet in New York on this emergency July 7, in morning and afternoon sessions titled, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”

The same day, in the domain of empire, the annual NATO Summit takes place in Turkiye, convening leaders of its 32 member states, to discuss more warfare and military-financial-complex looting.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche summed up a perspective for action: “I think the task for us is very clear. It’s a mission impossible to get the world off the edge of the abyss, and re-install the principles of the American Revolution in the United States; and to create a John Quincy Adams foreign policy for the United States, and a new security and development architecture for the rest of the world.”

The Pope’s Message and the Struggle for Peace

July 6, 2026by tobi in International Peace Coalition

Report on International Peace Coalition, Week 161

July 4, 2026 (EIRNS)—The 161st consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) took the unusual step of starting an hour later than usual, so that participants could view the live video address of Pope Leo XIV as he accepted the 38th Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and IPC initiator, reported that “he represents in his person and his teaching… the values of the American Revolution and the founding fathers.” She recommended that everyone read his recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, because the present state of American policy has deviated so far from those values.

Other IPC participants had varying reactions to the pope’s address. Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, and cofounder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), prefaced his remarks by saying, “I’m a cradle Catholic.” He went on to acknowledge that Pope Leo is speaking out, but “in abstractions and generalities,” and he chose not to speak freely about “the blood-stained face of history.” He drew a comparison to the role of Pius XII, who also spoke in abstractions during World War II.

Later in the meeting, Zepp-LaRouche conceded that “maybe the Pope could have spoken more clearly against the war.” But she pointed out that leading warmongers in the United States have reacted sharply to comments by the Pope, and she said that there is a German proverb: “hit dogs bark,” meaning that their hysterical reactions were proof that the pope’s words had reached their intended targets.

McGovern said later that upon reflection, he still feels that he was not “too harsh on Pope Leo.” The United States is participating in a war of aggression and a genocide, and the Pope failed to “stick his neck out” and address these things directly, unlike Jesus who “didn’t speak in platitudes.”

Father Harry Bury, a renowned Catholic priest for 70 years, lifelong peace activist, member of the U.S. Catholic Priest Association, and the founder of Twin Cities Nonviolent, said that while this is a dangerous time that is escalating toward a third world war, he is still hopeful because of two factors: the Schiller Institute’s Oasis Plan, and the Pope’s recent encyclical.

During the discussion period, co-moderator Dennis Small called attention to the fact that the government of Spain has announced an amnesty for 1.3 million migrants. Two weeks earlier the Pope was in Spain, where he said that we need to have development so that people can remain in their home nations and not be forced to leave in order to survive. Mexican farm activist Alberto Vizcarra added that the Pope applies the doctrine of the “common good” to agriculture, which must prioritize the needs of humanity over the profits of speculators.

In her concluding remarks, Zepp-LaRouche said that the recent encyclical is “a very powerful intervention”; what he said about the American Revolution is more perceptive than the comments of anyone outside of Lyndon LaRouche and his collaborators. “We have to get Americans back to their soul,” she said.

Another participant noted that Peter Thiel of Palantir accuses the Pope of being an agent of communism because he calls for regulation of Artificial Intelligence.

The Current Strategic Picture

Zepp-LaRouche observed that it is difficult to say which theater of war is more dangerous, the Middle East or Ukraine. The answer is probably Ukraine, since it involves a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has publicly questioned the intention behind the Aug. 15, 2025 Anchorage, Alaska meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. While the summit had seemed to offer a pathway to resolve the conflict, top leaders now wonder if it may have been a strategic deception by the West, like the Minsk Accords of 2014-2015. In the Middle East, the June 17 U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding is “in complete shambles.” “Day by day, hour by hour, the energy and fertilizer crisis around the world is getting worse,” she said. The United States and Israel have foolishly pursued a policy of assassinating moderate Iranian leaders, putting the hardliners in control.

Prof. Richard Anderson Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2008 to 2014, observed that the current crisis ironically overlaps the “fake celebration” of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. World leaders are captive to a dangerous ideology “rooted in militarist geopolitics.” Because they can’t accept the reality of military supremacy leading to political defeat, they are driving us closer to the nuclear precipice. They refuse to learn the lessons of the limits of military power. There is also the pernicious problem of private sector militarism: “Wars are profitable whether they are won or lost.” The founders of the United States understood that a democratic republic can’t handle peacetime militarism.

Ray McGovern added that there is an additional factor of danger to the NATO-Russia confrontation: Finland and Lithuania have announced that they will deploy nuclear weapons on their territory, and it is likely that the other Baltic states, Estonia and Latvia, will follow suit.

Professor Bassam el Hachem, Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Lebanon, said that Lebanon is more mobilized than ever against the American and Israel aggression. Hezbollah is called terrorist because they are resisting Israel. Israel is not satisfied with occupying Palestine; they want to go farther with a “Greater Israel” plan. He added that the attack on Iran in the midst of negotiations was a “dirty knife in the back of the Iranians.”

Co-moderator Dennis Speed read a message from Dennis Kucinich, former U.S. Congressman from Ohio and former U.S. Presidential Candidate, who was unable to attend in person. Kucinich is focused on Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would merge U.S. defense and intelligence with Israelʼs defense technology capabilities. Speed reported that in a phone discussion with Kucinich, they both agreed that it should be called the Jonathan Pollard initiative, after the American-born Israeli spy and former intelligence analyst who was sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment in the United States for spying for Israel, released in 2015, now lives in Israel and has even called for Israel to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Congress should not be asked to vote on the $901 billion NDAA without hearing debate on amendments. Kucinich urged everyone to read his July 2 article U.S.-Israel Military Merger Delayed: Here’s Why and How You Can Stop It.

Report from a Mexican Farm Activist

Baltazar Valdez Armentía, leader of United Farmers of Sinaloa and on the Steering Committee of the National Front to Save the Mexican Countryside, said that Mexican agriculture was threatened by three factors: the geopolitical crisis, including the Iran war which is causing shortages in energy and fertilizer; environmental collapse; and predatory financiers who make hunger central to their business strategy. “While farmers receive a pittance for their crops,” speculators rig the game to maximize their profits. His movement calls upon the Mexican government to confront the transnational agro-financial corporations. They are demanding parity prices and protective tariffs, a crackdown on speculation, and the construction of adequate infrastructure.

Report from Philadelphia

Independent congressional candidate Jose Vega (in New Yorkʼs 15th C.D., the Bronx) reported that he was in “an undisclosed location” in Philadelphia. The free outdoor public viewing of the Pope’s livestreamed remarks at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia was cancelled due to heat, so Jose took the opportunity to organize people who showed up hoping to attend. He commented on the recent election victories by insurgent Democrats, and observed that Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw lost his primary as part of the same process we see in Maine, Michigan, New York and Colorado. We don’t have time to wait for new Congressmen to be sworn in, insisted Jose. “We need to be thinking about how to rebuild the parts of the world that we have destroyed,” using the method of the Oasis Plan. We can’t just be defined by what we oppose.

eir

Lenore Magazine published: Celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the True American Republic

July 1, 2026by tobi in Culture, General

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the creation of the American republic, and the world must remember the great ideas and minds that worked to create it.

Reader, I invite you to celebrate the true American History, one that was over 2,500 years in the making after Plato’s Republic was introduced to human thought. At the very end of this special issue of Leonore, read in full the 1776 Declaration of Independence and think on all the incredible contributions that were made toward it, and what contributions you, the intellectual inheritors of these ideas, can make now.

See below for highlights from this issue.

Table of Contents:

  • The Renaissance Roots of the American Revolution
    By Christopher Sare and Robert M. Wesser
  • The American Republic in 2026: There is Much Opportunity to Do Good
    By Diane Sare
  • The Declaration of Independence’s ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’: Franklin, Leibniz, and the Next 250 Years
    By David Shavin
  • Why and How France and Spain Helped the American Revolution
    By Karel Vereycken
  • The Netherlands’ Obscured Support for American Independence
    By Richard Sanders
  • The LaRouche Organization Statement: America at 250: Will We Now, As We Once Did, Come to the Aid of Our Country?
  • Lyndon LaRouche: A Success of the American, Anti-Oligarchical Revolution
    By Leonore Editorial Board
  • Urgent Appeal from Pope Leo XIV: ‘Stop! Repent! Before It’s Too Late!’ The New Name for Peace Is Development!
    By Helga Zepp-LaRouche
  • Beauty and Truth Can Rescue the American Republic
    By Cloret Ferguson
  • Artist Christian Schubart: Promoter of America’s Founding Ideals
    By Alexander Hartmann
  • Review: Oh, dear, America…
    By Philip S. Ulanowsky
  • Poetic Offerings
  • The United States’ Declaration of Independence from the British Empire

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Invest in the power of great ideas humanity has to offer. Become a recurring member today!

Yours in the fight for the Good,
Anastasia Battle
Editor-in-Chief, Leonore

Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Declare Independence from Imperial Geopolitics

June 30, 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, July 1, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

Conflicts in both Iran and Ukraine have evolved over the recent days and weeks. Schiller Institute founder, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, summarized the strategic situation as follows in a discussion with associates: “The world situation remains one where the overall trajectory is towards World War III. And while the focus tends to shift between the Middle East and the Ukraine-Russia theater, the underlying dynamic is that the collective West, which is quite uncollected, is nevertheless not giving up their effort to keep dominance in the situation and suppress the legitimate demand by the Global Majority for a new, more just world economic order.”

Indeed, both the United States and Iran have resumed strikes over the recent days, at least to some degree. Despite President Donald Trump having claimed that “Iran has requested a meeting” to salvage the ceasefire, and that both sides would send negotiators to Doha, Qatar for talks on Tuesday, June 30, the President was quickly rebuffed by Iranian officials. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei stated that there will be no talks, technical or otherwise, with the U.S. this week. An Iranian technical delegation will visit Qatar this week, but it has no relation to US officials visiting the country.

At the same time, Israel is rapidly accelerating its involvement in conflicts throughout the region, as if designed to stymie any potential cessation of hostilities. It has continued strikes into southern Lebanon despite the ceasefire signed between the two. And with regard to the so-called ceasefire, a closer look shows that it has clearly been arranged to give Israel full leeway for continuing its provocative behavior. A similar situation is also happening In Syria, as Israel expands its presence there.

In Ukraine, the situation is becoming markedly worse. Ukraine has dramatically increased and intensified its drone strikes deep into Russia over the recent period, hitting many oil infrastructure facilities. President Putin has now had two meetings with oil principals in Russia over the previous few days. While the attacks have not caused major problems along the lines crowed about in the Western media, Putin did say they have caused “certain shortages.” Russia is currently drawing on its petroleum reserves, he noted, but they are at almost the same level as this time last year. The real aim of these strikes, he said in an interview Sunday, is “to fuel … an information operation as part of the broader confrontation with Russia.”

However, as has been stated numerous times by the Russians, as well as this news service, these strikes are being done with the direct assistance of European governments, putting Europe in the crosshairs of a war which is becoming increasingly defined by terrorist strikes against civilian infrastructure. This is being accompanied by a growing drumbeat across the mainstream media in the West, egging on Ukraine and its supporters to pour even more into the war against Russia—despite Ukraine’s losing of the war and lack of people left to fight.

As is obvious, mankind is on the precipice of disaster—not because of any of the details within Southwest Asia or Ukraine, nor even because of the individuals in the Trump administration, as disastrous as they are. Rather, these are the geopolitical land mines that were set by the British Empire over the past 50 years, using their agents such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others, that prevent the global powers from finding a common paradigm of cooperation. The recent upsurge of popular political action in the wake of the genocide in Gaza, the war in Iran, and the flagrant crackdown on free speech and other guaranteed rights by citizens across the world, is indicative of a situation ripe for rejecting the failed status quo. The recent elections in New York state, and the upset victories by so-called socialist candidates who merely told the truth about some of these issues, is a case in point. But what replaces the dying and failed system?

Now is the time for a true citizens movement that uplifts the level of outlook that has tolerated these crimes and accepted this condition of the world. We are now only days away from the July 4 celebration of the anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence—an occasion for Americans and citizens around the world to reflect on the principles that launched a fight against empire 250 years ago. That fight is not settled today. Will we live up to the challenge?

“Sitting on the Absolute Edge of the Abyss”

June 27, 2026by tobi in International Peace Coalition

Report on Meeting of the International Peace Coalition, Week 160

by EIR staff

June 26—The 160th consecutive weekly session of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) focused on the war danger, which remains grave, but also on economic issues which are closely related. Schiller Institute founder and IPC initiator Helga Zepp-LaRouche began by saying, “The world is sitting on the absolute edge of the abyss.” An important obstacle to peace is that “You cannot trust one word which is being uttered by the so-called leaders of the collective West.” She commented on a “not-so-subtle shift” in what is coming from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has stated recently that the Anglosphere is going for complete dominance and wants no obstacles to their continued extraction of resources from the rest of the world. The United States, and President Donald Trump in particular, he said, has stopped trying to be an honest broker in the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, as had been discussed in his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaksa in Aug. 2025. If that is true, Lavrov said, the suspicion would be that Anchorage was just a ploy to buy time for Ukraine, and “…keep Ukraine as a launching pad for the fighting against Russia.”

The West is going for an unparalleled military build-up as their economies are collapsing. The Prime Ministers of Canada, Mark Carney, and Luxembourg, Luc Frieden, with their call for the creation of the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) are openly calling for a return to the policies of Hitlerʼs Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht in order to finance the build-up. To end this insanity, the nations of the West must declare their willingness to cooperate with the global majority, and “they would be received with open arms” by the new institutions which have emerged.

A video interview with Mossi Raz, former Israeli Member of Knesset and former Director General of Peace Now, conducted by EIR’s Gerald Belsky. Raz commented on the recent letter by former Israeli officials, demanding the eradication of “Jewish terrorism” in the occupied West Bank. He agreed that the inaction of Israeli security forces is dangerous. Raz supports a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine; neither side is going to leave, so there must be some form of economic cooperation. Most Israelis are unaware that this potential exists. Youth are unaware of even the initiative that has been put forward by the Arab League. Most think that Arabs only want to kill them.

Dr. Taylor Haynes, National President of the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) and former Republican candidate for Governor of Wyoming, said that he is fighting on two fronts: as a rancher, he opposes the big 4 meatpackers who control 85% of the meatpacking in the U.S. and are consolidating control over distribution of food. And he is informing people in his region about the detrimental effects of wind farms and other measures being imposed in the name of fighting climate change.

He said that “the geopolitical thing is above my pay grade” because his information comes from agenda-driven media.

In response, Zepp-LaRouche mentioned a new German book called “Truth Complex” (Der Wahrheitskomplex) which describes how narrative control has been imposed throughout the West, using artificial intelligence (AI) to suppress any dissenting viewpoints.

Co-moderator Dennis Small responded that in Mexico, the National Front for the Protection of the Countryside opposes Mexicoʼs basic grains being controlled by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest derivatives trading organization in the world, whose speculation threatens the continued existence of Mexican farmers and their ability to feed the population.

Haynes asked in reply, why would anyone allow their food source to be managed by an exchange in another country which has nothing to do with production?

Moderator Anastasia Battle had just returned from the 2026 World Youth Development Forum in Wuhan, China, which discussed concrete solutions to poverty and food scarcity, where US Schiller Institute president, Megan Dobrodt and herself spoke. It issued a declaration of support for peace through economic development. There was a thoughtful discussion of AI, with some speakers saying that “AI has speed, you have soul—co-create with it.” Human creativity involves a “leap of faith” of which AI is incapable of doing.

Battle reported the focus on “People-centered sustainable development” as the key to lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. Some of the conference participants had the opportunity to visit the Three Gorges Dam, where they learned of China’s successful stewardship of the Yangtze River. This dam provides electricity for 300 million people! It calmed the river which quite often would flood and destroy lives in the region. The Chinese have been actively working on preserving and reviving the plant, animal and cultural life along the river. Even celebrating a beloved poet Qu Yuan for the dragon boat festival. At one point there were only 10 Chinese sturgeons left, but now their number has grown to 300,000. Contrary to the claims of Western environmentalists, development does not equal destruction.

Larry Johnson, former CIA intelligence official and a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), warned that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is more dangerous than the one in Iran and the Persian Gulf, in terms of possible escalation to nuclear war. The Russians have reached the end of their patience. Whatever agreements were reached in Anchorage are dead. Russia is making rapid advances in the war. Unlike Operation Barbarossa (Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on June 22, 1941) which caught Russia by surprise, this time Russia is prepared.

Johnson noted that countries around the world are drawing down their strategic reserves of petroleum. Diesel and aviation fuel are approaching critical shortages. The Strait of Hormuz is not open—claims that it is open are a lie.

Zepp-LaRouche replied that the worst-case scenario would be one where a military escalation coincides with a blow-out of the financial system. The elites are unwilling to change any failed policies, preferring to control the narrative and exclude any discussion of an alternative policy.

Johnson observed that Russia and China are both calling for a new security architecture in the Persian Gulf, and Pakistan has assumed a leading role, assisting China in diplomacy. BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are supplanting U.S. influence in the region. Commenting on the result of Tuesday’s U.S. primary elections, he said, “The toxicity of the language of these Zionists is a reflection of how much trouble they’re in…we’re witnessing the decline of the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.”

Co-moderator Dennis Small appealed for financial support so that the IPC can have another 160 meetings. As an example of the IPC’s effectiveness, he cited the case of a Spanish Bishop who received one of the letters sent by an activist who reported on this in last week’s IPC meeting. The Bishop sent a reply, in which he agreed emphatically with what we are doing, and said that it is consonant with what the Pope is striving for.

Discussion

Zepp-LaRouche warned that you cannot underestimate the amount of intelligence warfare being deployed, combined with narrative control and the perennial “divide and conquer” tactic. This is the reason that the peace movement is not united. This is something we must outwit and outflank.

In response to a participant who asked why only China and Russia have embraced the concept of a credit system as expressed in the U.S. Constitution, co-moderator Dennis Small replied that any nation that attempts to adopt such a system is picking a fight with the most powerful and dangerous forces in the world. For a credit system to work, it must be insulated from the forces of financial speculation which will seek to divert the credit issued away from physical production and into feeding their bubbles.

In concluding remarks, Dr. Haynes vowed that he will continue his activities on social media, despite the shadow-bans and other obstacles, and by intervening in public events whenever the opportunity presents itself, presenting the facts calmly.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned that we are “in for a very stormy next several months.” We must be realists with respect to the danger, but also eternal optimists. The global majority represents 80% of humanity, and they are headed in a useful direction. Humans, as she emphasizes in the 10th of her “Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture”, are essentially good; evil is caused by a lack of development, and can be overcome through development. Commenting on the role of American Pope Leo XIV, she said, “This Pope is a gift from Heaven,” she said, and we should use his encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” as “a tremendous weapon.”

Radio Television Serbia Broadcasts Report on Berlin Schiller Institute Conference

June 25, 2026by tobi in General, Helga media coverage or interview, Media coverage of our activity

June 24, 2026 (EIRNS)—In the morning program of national Radio Television Serbia (RTS) on June 22, editor Dr. Jasminka Simić presented a 4-minute video report on the conference of the Schiller Institute in Berlin, Germany on May 30–31, 2026, where she was a featured speaker.

Simić’s report, which highlights several of the 24 speakers of the two-day conference on the urgent need to establish a new global security and development architecture, identified the importance of Lyndon LaRouche’s historical strategic perspective for today: “When American President Nixon replaced fixed exchange rates with flexible exchange rates in the summer of 1971, American economist and founder of the Schiller Institute, Lyndon LaRouche, predicted that the continuation of the liberal course would necessarily lead to a new systemic crisis, depression, and the threat of war, unless a completely different economic system is implemented.”

At the conference, representatives of Asian countries pointed out the necessity of development, strengthening a shared future, and equal benefits for all. Professor Zhang Weiwei, Director of the Chinese Institute at Fudan University in Shanghai: “And that is crucial, because the lives of the people are extremely important in Chinese philosophy. Whatever you do, politically, economically, socially, it must ultimately provide something tangible for the lives of the people, whether in a material or non-material sense.”

Pino Arlacchi, a former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, believes that fundamental changes are needed to renew the UN world organization. “African countries have been demanding this for a long time, because certain parameters and procedures are not the same as they were 80 years ago,” said Charles Onana, a political scientist from Cameroon: “Africa will be crucial for the survival of Western countries, including even the question of defense, because the resources are there, and not elsewhere.”

Jasminka Simić, scientific researcher and journalist for RTS, spoke about the great potential of AI for the socio-economic transformation and cooperation of the countries of the Global South.

Stop Geopolitical Confrontation

During the first panel, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President and founder of the Schiller Institute accused the political elites of the West as bearing “responsibility for missing the unique historical opportunity of 1989—the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War—to establish a peaceful order for the 21st century. The Russian leadership acted generously by agreeing to the reunification of Germany, and even its membership in NATO—albeit on the condition that foreign troops must not be located on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic.”

Jacques Cheminade from France identified the “geopolitical logic, which, if we do not stop its course, threatens the destruction of humanity. We all know here that the architecture of peace, built through mutual development and security, represents the key to the urgent and necessary change.”

Lawyer and writer Wolfgang Bittner from Germany addressed the nature of Germany’s sovereignty, where 11 American military bases are located. “The Granting of Sovereignty to the Federal Republic of Germany on September 12, 1990 through the 2+4 Treaty on the reunification of the two Germanies was accompanied by treaties on troop stationing, membership in NATO, a military alliance with a permanent cooperation structure under the Pesco umbrella, as well as other comprehensive military and economic agreements under the jurisdiction of the European Union.”

In conclusion, Simić reports about the effort by Helga Zepp-LaRouche for a“World Citizens’ Movement” based on the concept of the “coincidence of opposites” established by the 15th-century German philosopher and mathematician Nicholas of Cusa. “This means that although we hold opposing views, we share the same challenges of modern society, from the pandemic to nuclear threats, which inextricably binds us to a new paradigm in international relations with the idea of human unity.”

Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche: The Magnificent Humanity at the Crossroads

June 23, 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, June 24, 2026, 11am ET/ 5pm CET

This past month, two teams of human beings reached into the two ends of the universe at once. In the hills of southern China, the JUNO observatory—a 20,000-ton sphere of liquid scintillator, watched by more than 43,000 light-sensors, 650 meters underground—caught the near-weightless flicker of the neutrino, and in just 59 days of operation measured the laws governing that ghostly particle more precisely than all prior experiments of recent decades combined. In those same weeks, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration published its latest catalog of gravitational waves: some 390 collisions of black holes and neutron stars have now been recorded—ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself, one of them traced to a merger more than three billion light-years away. A decade ago, we had detected exactly one.

Neither the neutrino nor the black hole can be seen, heard, or touched. They lie, as Lyndon LaRouche wrote in 2010, beyond the reach of the senses altogether: “In the very large, as the very small, the metrics of sense-perception can no longer claim authority over the principles which reside, essentially, in what Riemann points to as those extremes of our universe.” And it is precisely there, he added—”in nothing as much as those same extremes”—that the deepest laws of the universe must be sought. To discover them, humanity does not wait for biological evolution to provide us with better eyes; we build new senses. Our species is the only one we know of that reaches past its own senses to grasp the very large and the very small, and changes the universe by what we learn.

Let’s measure the present against that image of mankind.

In Switzerland, the first round of U.S.-Iran negotiations under the 14-point Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding concluded June 21 at the Bürgenstock resort, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, with the U.S. and Iran not yet speaking directly. They agreed on a roadmap to a final deal within 60 days, a High-Level Committee to oversee it, and, most consequentially, a “de-confliction cell” to ensure the end of military operations in Lebanon—which Iran’s foreign minister called the “first real test” of the negotiations. That test is already underway: Israel refuses to leave southern Lebanon (and “nothing will change it,” Prime Minister Netanyahu insists), while Iran has tied the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to a genuine Lebanese ceasefire. The potential for peace is real, and fragile.

Even should it hold, the damage is done and spreading. By energy-market reckoning, some 15 million barrels per day of oil—and its energy equivalent in liquefied natural gas—will be missing from world supply well into 2027, depressing an economy already enmeshed in the “everything bubble” of leveraged debt and derivatives. The effects will be felt, as they so often do, by the poorest. The UN’s latest “Hunger Hotspots” report warns that hundreds of millions face deepening hunger even as food and humanitarian aid is slashed. The same species that built JUNO is told there will not be enough food.

That is the contradiction of this moment. The species that can read the collision of black holes three billion years gone is told, by the managers of a dying system, that it cannot afford to house its young, feed the hungry, or build a railway across a desert. It is a failure of policy, not a lack of capability. Helga Zepp-LaRouche identifies the greatest failing directly: the refusal to recognize the indivisible nature of security and economic development of all nations. What Iran is insisting upon for relatively helpless Lebanon, and through Lebanon for the whole of the Global South, is what Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas states for all mankind—that no people may climb to heaven on a tower built by kicking the ladder away from the poor, as we said yesterday.

The Pope titled that encyclical “Magnificent Humanity.” The neutrino detector and the gravitational-wave catalog are examples of what that means—a fact about the creature said to be made in the image of the Creator, unlike any beast. Civilization organized around that truth would treat the development of every nation as the natural extension of the same creative power that built JUNO. A civilization that denies that truth of human nature, makes war on reservoirs and lets hundreds of millions go hungry.

Which of these we become is up to us. The decision is being made now, in the negotiating rooms at Lucerne, on the 60-day clock running toward a final deal, at this Friday’s International Peace Coalition mobilization, and in the streets of the nation soon to celebrate its 250th birthday. Let it be a celebration of what was once, and can be again, the great anti-colonial republic of the United States—a celebration led by LaRouche Presidential candidate Diane Sare, who will be holding an event in Philadelphia on July 5, joined by the irrepressible Congressional candidate Jose Vega.

The universe yields its deepest principles to those that reach for its extremes.

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