Helga Zepp-LaRouche

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Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today released an open letter to Pope Leo XIV, which began by explaining her purpose in addressing the Pontiff: “I am writing to you at this grave hour of mankind, since you may be the only person left who could hopefully avoid a descent into what you yourself called an ‘irreparable abyss…’” She went on to stress the imminent danger posed by the rapidly expanding Iran war.

Over the past 48 hours, despite wishful thinking to the contrary, the Strait of Hormuz has been closed to oil tankers, and energy supplies are suffering major disruption, as the U.S. and Israel carry out sustained, massive strikes on Iran. The Malthusian (aka ‘Satanic’) masters behind these policies measure their “success” in terms of closing down physical production, modern standards of sanitation and longevity, and the institution of sovereign nations. And for them, shutting down energy supplies is a long step in that direction. These are the super-decadent “Epstein Class,” who abide in a fantasy world populated only by objects of their depredation

Look at Central Europe. Today, Hungary called upon the EU’s Brussels gang to face reality, and drop the ban on Russian oil and gas. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Peter Fico warned that the gang’s “ruthless, crude violation” of international law has unleashed the type of recklessness of Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, in making a public call for the assassination of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Such a state of mind, Fico warned, could easily have Zelenskyy pull a Nord Stream 2.0, destroying the famous Druzhba oil pipeline from Russia to Europe.

The same disease is taking over the United States. Thirty U.S. congressmen stood up and called out the ‘Armageddonist’ infection gripping various military commanders, starting from the end-of-the-world psychopath, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. President Trump continues to work in close tandem with Hegseth on Iran, telling the media that last week’s bombing of the Iranian girl’s school, in a “double-tap” attack – a war crime – was carried out by… Iran! Yet, later in the day, Trump proceeded to call Russian President Putin to discuss the crisis in Iran. While the specifics of which have not been made public at this time, Trump suggested that they should renew their pledge to consult more regularly.

Zepp-LaRouche’s letter to Pope Leo XIV intervened into this rapidly worsening global crisis with a direct call to action. “I am writing to you at this grave hour of mankind, since you may be the only person left who could hopefully avoid a descent into what you yourself called an ‘irreparable abyss,’ an escalation of the unprovoked war against Iran into potentially a global nuclear war, which would end all life on earth.

“In the recent period, the world has entered a radically worse phase, where international law has been declared nonexistent… and the principle of ‘might makes right’ is being elevated to be the privilege of the powerful.”

Needless poverty and death have resulted, yet, even worse, nuclear annihilation is staring humanity in the face. “Something that could be a positive, maybe even the decisive step to arouse the consciousness of the world, would be—in the spirit of the Council of Florence and the unity of the church brought about by Nicholas of Cusa, bringing the delegations of the Orthodox Church to the Councils of Florence and Ferrara—that you, your Holiness, and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, as well as Patriarch Bartholomäus I of Constantinople, would take the courageous step and call together for all religious leaders of the world, as well as all people of good faith, believers and non-believers alike, to step forward in defense of peace.”

Referring to the Pope’s own call last fall for the “coincidence of opposites” method of thinking and acting, originally proposed by the Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa after the 1453 fall of Constantinople threatened to turn worshippers of one God into vicious factional warriors against each other, Zepp-LaRouche stated: “At a time when there is the danger of a world war, and when some use the cloak of religion to argue for an early Armageddon, that same voice of reason must be raised … that it cannot be that people kill each other in the name of God.”

She concluded: “If, as a first step, the Churches of the West and the East would unite and campaign actively and daily for world peace, this could affect the majority of people to express their commitment for peace and thus cause a change in world history and fulfill the will of God, who for sure did not create the world and gift humanity with reason, to have it destroyed by the lack of it.”

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.

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz stood before the UN Security Council and described Iran’s retaliatory strikes as “unprovoked.” The United States and Israel have been bombing a sovereign nation for three consecutive days, killing its leader along with dozens of senior officials, and when that nation fires back, the word chosen is “unprovoked.” This is not spin. This is the erasure of reason, the vocabulary of a hegemon that believes its actions define the law, and which expects the rest of the world to go along.

Many governments are obliging. Britain has opened its bases while insisting it is not at war. Germany’s foreign minister dismisses the relevance of international law. France declared itself “satisfied” with the killing of Khamenei. The E3 condemned Iran’s retaliation without a word about the attack that provoked it. The European Commission president called for “regime change.” Brussels, pressed to say whether the strikes were legal, pivoted to Iran’s human rights record, as though one may bomb a country without UN authorization, so long as the country is disagreeable.

One European government said no: Spain barred U.S. forces from its bases, forcing tanker aircraft to depart Rota and Morón. “Spanish military bases will not be used for anything that falls outside the agreement with the United States and the United Nations Charter,” Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said. Israel’s foreign minister accused Spain of “standing with all the tyrants of the world.” The insult tells you more about the mockers than the mocked. Madrid has endorsed international law—something that happens too rarely today.

The goal is not to install a new government in Tehran. It is to destroy Iran’s capacity to function as a sovereign state and to send a message to any nation aspiring to strategic independence. Strip away the rhetoric and what remains is a war to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world—waged by two nuclear-armed states against a country that does not possess nuclear weapons and that, the night before the bombing began, offered, through the Omani foreign minister on American television, to accept the core nuclear terms Washington claimed to be seeking—zero reprocessing, elimination of stockpiles—with long-range missiles and regional proxies on the table to follow. According to analyst John Helmer, the sticking point was Iran’s missile program, which Tehran regarded as essential to its survival. The response was not to negotiate further, but to begin bombing, even as the envoys were still at the negotiating table in Geneva.

The energy infrastructure of the Persian Gulf is under attack, European gas prices have spiked 50%, and the Strait of Hormuz is closed to navigation. Israel is bombing Lebanon again. Iran’s own foreign minister has acknowledged that military units are operating on pre-set instructions without centralized command. Retired U.S. Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a four-time combat veteran, has warned that American interceptor stocks may last only two to three weeks, while Iran has spent decades stockpiling weapons underground and can reportedly still produce 100 missiles per month under sanctions. And the question that hangs over everything is whether Israel will resort to nuclear weapons if Iran’s missile forces survive—not a hypothetical, if Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s account is correct, that Netanyahu has already communicated to Trump that Israel regards Iranian missiles as existential and may act with or without American agreement.

Zepp-LaRouche called on citizens in every country to demand that their governments cease all military actions and return to diplomacy, invoking the Peace of Westphalia, the 1648 settlement that ended the Thirty Years’ War, because the warring parties recognized that the only path to peace included fostering the well-being of the other, and that if the fighting continued, there would be no one left to enjoy the victory.

In the age of thermonuclear weapons, that is no longer a metaphor. It is what happens next if this course is not reversed.

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.

The world strategic situation is defined by the various efforts to revitalize imperialism on the one hand, and on the other this dying system’s conflict with the efforts of the Global South to establish a new, more just world system. This was the assessment of Helga Zepp-LaRouche during a discussion with associates on Feb. 16 following the dramatic developments of the past few days.

Characteristic of the efforts to revitalize a naked imperialism were the remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who bemoaned the post-war contraction of “the great Western empires” during his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Rubio laid out the cynical worldview that is increasingly coming to dominate the Trump administration: “In a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate.” You see, men are creatures that only understand brute force, Rubio asserts.

Of course, Rubio’s remarks were also a not-so-veiled threat against Europe, whom Rubio addressed by saying, “America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and … we want to do it together with you.” But rather than condemning Rubio’s assertion that Western hegemonism must again dominate the world, he instead received a standing ovation by his European counterparts! Not only did European leaders trip over themselves in making ever-greater rearmament commitments for the alleged coming war with Russia, but a new discussion has broken out over the expansion of nuclear weapons across the continent. Polish President Karol Nawrocki has become the most recent one to announce this, when he said during a Feb. 15 interview: “I’m a great supporter of Poland joining the nuclear project…. This path, with respect to all international regulations, is the path we should follow.” Nawrocki’s comments followed similar statements by Latvia, Finland, Sweden, and Germany.

At the same time, there was enormous disarray in Munich. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz explicitly said there is a rift between Europe and the United States, and that the rules-based order “no longer exists.” He also pounded the war drums against Russia, saying that defending Europe’s freedom will require everyone to “make sacrifices.” Similarly, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that hard power is “the currency of the age,” and therefore, “we must be ready to fight.”

In the backdrop of all this, however, is the continued rollout of the Epstein files. These files do not only incriminate the individuals who have been exposed—which itself remains only a small fraction of the actual number who were involved—but are an indictment of the entire imperial order which has tolerated this kind of thinking, as with Rubio’s barbaric outlook. This point was made powerfully in a Feb. 13 op-ed by U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. After criticizing Prime Minister Starmer’s “shameful, appalling” decision to appoint Epstein-friend Peter Mandelson, Corbyn takes the scandal to a much higher level: All the other politicians lined up to replace Starmer “are likely to carry forward the abject political legacy he leaves behind. That includes the failure to redress the obscene levels of inequality in our society; the disgraceful attacks on the disabled; the disgusting anti-migrant hatred…; and the ongoing military cooperation with Israel as it violates the sham ceasefire and continues its genocide against the Palestinian people.” As EIR has repeatedly insisted, it’s not Epstein that was the problem, but rather the entire system of which Epstein was merely a symptom.

The Epstein scandal is the death knell of the Western liberal system, Zepp-LaRouche noted further, “because it has revealed the utmost immorality of what’s behind colonialism and what’s behind interventionist wars—imperial wars of all sorts. And I think that is not going to go away. It is a symptom of a dying empire, and whatever the agony will be, how long it will stretch on, I do not think it can be reversed.”

Therefore, the fight for a new paradigm and a cultural renaissance has never been more important than it is today. “Because the real war is the war of culture and the image of man. Is man a beast? … Or is it the noble idea, of the human species as the only species gifted with creative reason, and capable of making beautiful compositions in classical music, building cathedrals, and writing poems? And that is the real battle of this whole thing…. That is the most important answer we have to give to that, because otherwise people will just sink in despair and disgust, and then there will be no hope for humanity.”

The upcoming EIR Roundtable Conference on March 2, “Epstein and the Bottomless Depravity of the ‘Elites’ —Urgent Need for a Cultural Renaissance!,” will be crucial in this regard. Register today and organize up a storm for it.

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 or post them in the next live stream.
Please share the YouTube link with your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to increase the reach of the solutions presented by the LaRouche movement.

The latest warning of the danger in allowing the New START (strategic arms reduction) Treaty to expire on Thursday, Feb. 5, with no negotiations process underway between the United States and Russia for arms control and reduction, comes from Dmitry Medvedev, who signed the treaty in 2010, when he was President of the Russian Federation. He said in an interview, published on Feb. 2 in many media, including Reuters and TASS: “I don’t want to say that this (letting the New START Treaty expire) immediately means a catastrophe and a nuclear war will begin, but it should still alarm everyone. The clocks are ticking, and they obviously have to speed up.” U.S. President Donald Trump, despite occasional references to the danger, never replied to the September 2025 proposal offered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, to continue talks past the expiration date of Feb. 5, 2026. Even at the last second, it would be welcome news if commitment to talks were announced.

On Feb. 5 in the United States, newly announced candidate for President of the United States Diane Sare will hold an online press availability to focus American and world attention on what is at stake. The event “For a New, New START” will include guest Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and expert on arms control.

Also circulating internationally is the “Declaration of January 12: Let Us Create a Movement of World Citizens!” which warns of “a new dark age, or even a global nuclear war,” if the “so-called principle that ‘might makes right’” is allowed to stand.

What is outstanding, along with the epic danger of today’s situation, is that millions more people, and many more nations, are seeing that might does not make right.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder, addressed this shift, with the analogy of the two-edged sword. The lawless acts of belligerence in recent months—from the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and punishment of Cuba, to the European so-called elite, refusing to back a settlement of the Ukraine conflict—are resulting in a blow-back of opposition. People seek a New Paradigm. Zepp-LaRouche reported that the openness around “the follow-up of the Jan. 12 Emergency Roundtable is absolutely unprecedented…. The call that we need a new system of global governance which must take into account the interests of every country on the planet is becoming a whole chorus of voices. The people are absolutely ready to accept that.”

In this context, there is a surge of diplomacy to be noted, although no solutions are guaranteed. As of the time of writing of this bulletin, talks between representatives of Iran and the United States may take place in Istanbul on Friday, Feb. 6. This schedule comes from evening media reports. Talks between Ukraine and Russia, with the United States represented, are set for Abu Dhabi on Feb. 4-5. This was reported by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Feb. 2.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, slated to meet with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff in Turkiye, conferred on Feb. 1 in calls with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye. The Jordanian government issued the warning on Feb. 2 that its airspace is off limits to any potential attack on Iran.

While seeing this evil and danger, we remind ourselves that people are human and can grasp that there is a crisis, and there are solutions. Zepp-LaRouche on Feb. 2 spoke of how, today, “the dynamic is going in the direction of a different system of cooperation among nations, obviously superior to brute force, and ‘might makes right.’”

Circulate and make use of the newly-posted sign-up page on the January 12 Declaration.

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 or post them in the next live stream.
Please share the YouTube link with your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to increase the reach of the solutions presented by the LaRouche movement.

A nation can endure hardship, disagreement, and even bitter factional conflict—and still remain a republic. What it cannot survive is the steady replacement of law with raw force, until “authority” means nothing more than whichever armed agency arrives first. America is now witnessing, in real time, what it looks like when the Executive claims powers the Constitution never granted, while Congress stares, stunned, as if the words on the page were only ceremonial.

And yet something new is breaking through the fog: a real and broad backlash against the accelerating abuses. The expanded ICE deployments, the street clashes, the mistaken arrests, and the deadly raids are no longer being processed as “tough policy,” but as a rupture in the very idea of the republic. When the public can no longer tell whether elections are fair; when domestic “law enforcement” becomes indistinguishable from foreign occupation; when even basic rights of speech are treated as deportable offenses—then the country itself is coming undone.

This is the deeper danger hiding behind the day’s headlines: not only the shock of Minneapolis, nor the unsealed records of students targeted for their protected speech, nor the ongoing threats against Canada’s sovereignty, nor the propaganda drumbeat for war with Iran—but the emergence of a single, unifying principle across them all: might makes right. Abroad, it looks like seizure and intimidation. At home, it looks like a creeping constitutional vacuum filled by federal power grabs.

But there is a limit to a tyrant’s power—not because tyrants restrain themselves, but because reality eventually refuses to cooperate. Stauffacher expresses this in Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell:

Yes! there’s a limit to the tyrant’s power!

When the oppressed looks round in vain for justice,

When his sore burden may no more be borne,

With fearless heart he makes appeal to Heaven,

And thence brings down his everlasting rights

Which there abide, inalienably his,

And indestructible as are the stars.

From the time of the American Revolution, through the War of 1812 and the Civil War, that “tyrant” was the British Empire, which ruled through military might, financial domination, and manipulation.

The question before the United States, entering the 250th anniversary of its founding, is whether we will merely condemn the swamp—endlessly describing the qualities of the mud, the anatomy of the parasites—or grasp the rope being thrown to us: a new paradigm worthy of the republic’s promise, grounded not in simple libertarian protest, but in the best intellectual tradition that shaped America itself: the Leibnizian idea that the purpose of government is the advancement of the general welfare, and the creative powers of the human mind.

That is why the Declaration of January 12 is not a “commentary” on the crisis, but a pathway out: a movement of world citizens, acting to restore international law, pursue international growth on the basis of physical economy, and build genuine development corridors—rather than lurching, outrage by outrage, into a new dark age.

There is a limit to the power of empire. The question is whether we choose, now, to install a new paradigm. Let us create a movement of world citizens!