Helga Zepp-LaRouche

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At the Monday, March 30 White House press briefing, a reporter had the temerity to ask Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt what President Donald Trump thought about what Pope Leo XIV said in his Palm Sunday message: That Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying, ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.’” The ever-deft Leavitt twisted the question around, claiming that the troops appreciate that the commander in chief prays for them. She chose not to address the Satanic prayers of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who calls himself the “Secretary of War” and prays for violence and no mercy.

Mohamad Safa, who just resigned from his post as executive director of the Patriotic Vision-PVA at the United Nations because “some UN seniors are serving a powerful lobby and not the UN,” warned: “I don’t think people understand the gravity of the situation as the UN is preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran…. I gave up my diplomatic career to leak this information. I suspended my duties so as not to be part of or a witness to this crime against humanity, in an attempt to prevent a nuclear winter before it is too late.”

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson posted a letter from a Marine commander asking his troops, “Is your gear packed and ready to go? Are your family affairs in order?” Johnson wrote: “A letter like this can only mean one of two things: 1) It is an elaborate deception campaign to convince Iran that the U.S. is going to attack in hopes that Iran will back down, or 2) He understands that he is sending a portion of the Corps he commands into the valley of death. I am hoping it is the former, but I fear it is the latter.”

For his part, the delirious President of the United States Donald J. Trump made another insane post on Truth Social, which reads in part: “Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”

According to Pope Leo XIV’s Palm Sunday message, if President Trump prays for success in this mission, which is a violation of international law and an intent to commit war crimes, God will not hear him.

Meanwhile, on Monday, March 30, NASA teams arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin the countdown for man’s first orbit around the Moon in over 50 years.The first time human beings orbited the Moon was Christmas of 1968, a difficult year for Americans and world citizens, in which both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. The NASA astronauts on that flight, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, chose to read the first ten verses of Genesis because “The first ten verses of Genesis is the foundation of many of the world’s religions, not just the Christian religion,” said Lovell. “There are more people in other religions than the Christian religion around the world, and so this would be appropriate to that and so that’s how it came to pass.” They closed their reading of Genesis with the message: “May God bless all of you on the good Earth.”

There is a phenomenon known as the “overview effect,” which is the singular emotion that strikes those who view the Earth for the first time as a whole from outer space. It is described as a sense of wonder, of unity, of the smallness of the Earth and the vulnerability of it, accompanied by a passionate commitment to care for it and humanity.

God will probably welcome a prayer that our astronauts arrive in Moon orbit soon enough to share those images of the Earth with everyone here, in time to prevent us from plunging over the abyss into nuclear war.

Short of putting everybody on the nearest spaceship, LaRouche organizers are planning a series of street deployments and street theater over the coming week leading into Easter Sunday. One wonders if an exorcism were to be performed on Paula White, would there be anything left?

In discussions with associates today, Helga Zepp-LaRouche urged that her open letter to Pope Leo be circulated at houses of worship throughout the week and weekend, particularly at churches on Easter Sunday, April 5. The letter can be found here.

The live dialogue will be broadcasted at 12am ET / 5pm CET due to change to Daylight Savings Time in the US.

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 whipsawed again on Monday March 23 as President Trump surprised the world by announcing a halt on U.S. strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure. The U.S. and Iran “have had, over the last two days, very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in all caps, adding that he had postponed strikes on Iran’s infrastructure for a five day period. Oil prices fell and stocks surged at the news.

Iran, however, denied the allegations, with Iran’s Foreign Ministry stating that “no talks are taking place between Tehran and Washington.” It added that Trump’s remarks were “part of efforts to manage energy prices and buy time for the implementation of his military plans.” When asked about this, Trump simply suggested that “perhaps that hasn’t been conveyed” because of how badly their country has been destroyed.

There are claims flying in every direction, with very little confirmed as to what, if any, diplomatic process is actually underway, or whether the whole thing is simply an inelegant way for Trump to throw his hands up and walk away. While this is a welcome reprieve in a situation that was quickly headed toward disaster, including possibly nuclear war, at best it is only a pause in a far uglier policy that is still very much alive.

The real issue was laid out by American statesman Lyndon LaRouche 20 years ago, in an article titled “Strictly Speaking, There Is No Iran Crisis.” In it, he said that the push for a regime-change war against Iran was “a continuation of the evolution of what became known as Britain’s Sykes-Picot gambits.” LaRouche continued: “That is to emphasize that the targets of ‘The Crisis on the Global Chessboard’ include Russia and China, Russia more immediately. However, the more immediate phase of the British-led game in progress, is the promotion of British Arab Bureau veteran Bernard Lewis’s revival of the global anti-Islam strategy which had been the basis for the creation and perpetuation of that medieval imperialist alliance of the Venetian financier-oligarchy and Norman chivalry, known as ‘The Crusades.’ What is in progress, currently centered in [then-British Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s and Jack Straw’s Liberal Imperialist London, is the creation of that permanent state of warfare and revolution intended to be the organizing principle of a new form of global imperialism, a form currently labeled ‘globalization.’ A global, perpetual religious war against Islam, is the British imperial policy adopted currently, for this purpose, by the Blair allies associated with the U.S. Bush-Cheney regime.”

Replace George Bush and Dick Cheney with Trump’s new brand of Silicon Valley neocons and Prosperity Gospel crusaders, as well as the ongoing role of Tony Blair in the Middle East, and the situation is clear. Add in the growing role of Palantir, which epitomizes the way this “permanent state of warfare” was necessary to implement “a new form of global imperialism,” as it simultaneously establishes both global surveillance platforms and increasingly lethal (and financially profitable) military techniques—all under the rubric of defending “our way of life” from our “adversaries.”

Yet, despite this evil and almost unfathomable level of danger, the world is perched at an absolutely unique inflection point. Nothing can “go back to normal” after this conflict is over, as is also the case after the genocide in Gaza. The world has fundamentally changed, and the moral bankruptcy of the West has been irreversibly exposed for the world to see. If growing parts of the world were not already looking for the exit from this imperialistic nightmare, you can be sure they are now. The question remains: What will replace it? Can mankind actually organize itself into a new system which doesn’t ultimately lead to a war of each against all?

There is a flurry of diplomatic activity underway throughout Southwest and South Asia, with significant nations, such as Turkiye, Egypt, and Pakistan, playing new roles in reining in this crisis by the hands of the Americans and Israelis. The recent proposal by Oman’s Foreign Minister to establish a regional framework for the transparent use of nuclear energy, is also an indication of how this region could begin to break free from the British Empire’s matrix of permanent war and geopolitics.

Speaking to associates on March 23, Helga Zepp-LaRouche summed up the opportunity before us in the following way: “I think it is really up to us to say that this present course of events, even if this goes back and forth by the day, it has to be taken off the table entirely, and it has to be replaced … with the idea of a total change in the direction of the Oasis Plan, and an Oasis Plan being expanded to the entire region, from India to the Mediterranean, from the Caucasus to the Gulf. Because this region includes many countries that have been victimized by the interventionist wars in the last decades, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, and the West Bank. The entire region is now in shambles, given the fact that the business model of the Gulf states, being on the one side extremely wealthy from their oil income, but having no in-depth state. Their populations are very small, all the work is being done by guest workers, and being protected by the U.S. military bases. This business model is now in shambles, and therefore it would be in the vested interest of these Gulf states to use the money of their sovereign wealth funds to invest in regional infrastructure programs … desalination of large amounts of ocean water, [building] canals and systems of irrigation—creating a greening of the desert like China has done in the case of Xinjiang and in the northeast, where they greened a desert the size of the territory of Germany, where now there are forests and farmland and orchards and tourism, and people have become wealthy rather than being dirt poor.

“So that approach has to be put on the table…. And if all relevant forces would work together, the Sunnis and the Shi’ites cooperating, rather than being played according to colonial scripts since Sykes-Picot and earlier, creating a clash of civilization, they should unite and go for peaceful development. That is our unified approach, and the United States should be convinced that that is in the best interest of the United States as well.”

The live dialogue will be broadcasted at 11am ET / 4pm CET due to change to Daylight Savings Time in the US.

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.

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.