“When I hate, I rob myself of something; but when I love, I become richer by the object I love.”

Friedrich Schiller, Thalia (1, H.1-4)

Jan. 30—Helga Zepp-LaRouche closed today’s 139th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) with the saying “Everything you love, you own; and everything you hate, you lose,” a sentiment often expressed by the great German “Poet of Freedom” Friedrich Schiller, the namesake of the international institution she founded in 1984.

She opened the meeting by reviewing the “incredible danger” of the potential for a war with Iran, which could expand both regionally and globally. Equally dangerous is the pending explosion of the $2.4 quadrillion debt bubble, being driven by the intentional devaluing of the U.S. dollar, which could facilitate the collapse of the entire world financial system. The newly released National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy demonstrate that U.S. policy has dropped the pretense of “democracy and human rights,” and is now purely global hegemony, the power of the strong against the weak. The European economies are now in free fall, and there is a clear danger of a new fascism to meet the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

A clip of the presentation given by Graham Fuller at an earlier meeting of the IPC was played in tribute to our dear friend, who died this past week. Graham was also eulogized by the Schiller Institute’s Dennis Speed, who described Fuller’s development as a leading foreign policy thinker and “world citizen” through his work as a leading CIA official, and later as a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The next speaker was Lt. Col. (ret.) Anthony Aguilar, who, after serving in the U.S. Special Forces for 25 years, went to work in Gaza with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supposedly intended to help feed the Palestinian people. Aguilar distinguished himself by becoming a whistle blower around the world, exposing that the GHF was serving as part of the continuing Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza.

Minneapolis Gets the Gaza Treatment

He said he had just returned from Minneapolis, where he had campaigned for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the abolition of the USA Patriot Act of 2001. The killing and brutal suppression of citizens taking place in Minneapolis was a “boomerang” effect from the multiple wars being carried out around the world, just as Malcolm X had warned that the war in Vietnam was “coming home to roost.” The violence he saw perpetrated by ICE in Minnesota, he said, was just like the violence he saw in Gaza against the Palestinians. He blamed poor training and incompetent leadership, warning that there were already plans underway to extend ICE’s operation to Ohio, Georgia, and elsewhere.

Aguilar said that he is now running for U.S. Congress in North Carolina, because he wants to “serve the people.” He had been speaking and meeting with members of Congress and found them wanting, and emphasized that those in office must try to serve the people, not the military-industrial complex or the financial institutions. He said the Patriot Act, enacted under President George W. Bush in Oct. 2001, had opened the gate to expansion, through executive orders, of an emerging police state. “It is time to replace the government,” he said, and called on everyone to take action: to write, to speak out, to run for office—to see this as a “great moment of opportunity.”

Josephine Guilbeau, a retired Army intelligence officer, and a member of the Eisenhower Media Network, has also spoken out against the genocide in Gaza, and had also travelled to Minneapolis to protest the brutality and killing by the ICE operation there. She reported that she was arrested in Minneapolis but was never read her rights, contrary to the Constitution, and was never charged. She said there was essentially no rioting, no damage, yet the ICE response was “military-style operations designed for foreign wars, counterinsurgency, military suppression before any dialogue.” She warned that there was a “fear society” being created, which was “incompatible with a free society.” The global war on terror was being applied within the United States, she said. “I am not speaking out of anger, but out of responsibility,” she explained, to prevent the U.S. from becoming a “police state, like Gaza.”

Diane Sare of the Schiller Institute, who is a declared independent presidential candidate, reported that she would be holding a press conference on Feb. 5, the day that the New START Treaty expires, noting that as the former President of the Russian Federation and current Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev had said, this will be the first time in 50 years that no arms control will be in effect among the nuclear weapons powers. Col. (ret.) Douglas Macgregor, U.S. Army issued a video warning that this could allow for a “nuclear gain of function” where regulations on the development and deployment of nuclear weapons vanish. Joining her in the press conference will be former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and well-known strategic analyst Garland Nixon. She will call for the United States to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to extend the New START Treaty for one year while a new treaty is worked out. U.S. President Donald Trump has given no response to this offer. She also noted that Col. Macgregor has called for a “No First Strike” pledge, for the United States and for all countries, “including Israel.”

Zepp-LaRouche responded to the reports by Aguilar and Guilbeau by asserting that the problem is the “vision of man.” It was the British liberal so-called “philosophers” such as Thomas Hobbes who argued that man was an animal who required to be restrained by a “Leviathan,” which is why the American Revolution was fought against the British Empire. The ideas of the American Founding Fathers were based on those of Gottfried Leibniz, that every man had the right to live a fulfilled, productive life.

Jose Vega, an independent candidate for Congress in the Bronx (CD-15 NY), which is the “poorest congressional district in the U.S.,” asked Aguilar and Guilbeau to comment on the town hall meeting they had earlier attended with him in the Bronx. Aguilar said that seeing the destruction of the living conditions in the Bronx, while billions of dollars are being spent on war and killing people in Gaza and elsewhere, is “a betrayal of the American people.” “Just stop funding wars,” he said, and “audit the Department of Defense.” Guilbeau added that the people attending the meeting had understood this.

Star Wars, Littleton, and the ‘Rules-Based Order’

Sare quoted from an article written by Lyndon LaRouche in 1999 at the time of the Columbine High School mass shooting by two students, titled “Star Wars and Littleton.” There were two factors involved, he wrote: One was the dehumanization that was inculcated in the population through Hollywood, with movies such as Star Wars (1977) which featured non-human characters; the second was the idea of a “rules-based order,” in which arbitrary “rules” were dictated by authorities, with the idea that breaking of the “rules” (by anyone else) could be punished, even by death. She compared this to the use of tariffs and sanctions against countries, like the U.S.sanctions on Cuba, which are intended to starve its people and leave them without electricity. However, America was intended to be governed by natural law, as embedded in the U.S. Constitution.

Former President of Guyana Donald Ramotar praised the former members of the military who were standing up in protest, adding that he perceives that people are changing; they don’t want war or the military-industrial complex.

A question was submitted, asking why the IPC praises the American Revolution, since it was based on slavery and the genocide against the Indians. Diane Sare said that this was not the basis of the Revolution; that part of the reason people think so is that the histories have generally been written by the “losers—the British.” Hamilton and others knew the nation could not develop with a slave society, and Sare encouraged everyone to read Hamilton and the other founders. Zepp-LaRouche added that the view from the Global South could be seen in the 1955 Conference of Asian-African nations in Bandung, at which Indonesian President Sukarno said that the American Revolution was “the first successful anti-imperialist revolution in history.” The British never forgave the colonials for their revolt and tried to destroy the fledgling nation militarily in the War of 1812, and then by supporting the Confederacy against President Lincoln. “This is also why the German Friedrich List promoted the American System against the British System,” she noted.

EIR Ibero-American editor Dennis Small reviewed the catastrophic condition of the global debt bubble, now over $2.4 quadrillion in debt and financial derivatives, and ridiculed the Trump claim that tariff income will bail out the nation, showing that the actual total tariff income is a fraction of the amount Trump was claiming, and that a full 96% of that tariff has been paid by the American people through increased prices, while manufacturing continues to collapse.

Zepp-LaRouche in her closing remarks stressed the importance of love, not hate, as the basis of international relations. By seeking the most beautiful aspects of other nation’s cultures—art, poetry, statecraft—the potential to solve problems is created. But on the flip side, “You can make hell for yourself by hating.” She argued that a fundamental problem plaguing society today is that, “We have lost the idea of being joyful in creation,” which is the true source of happiness for the human species—the only known creative species in the universe. With that, she challenged everyone to study her Ten Principles and the Jan. 12 Emergency Roundtable event, and to help organize for a planned March 2 follow-up conference, in order to “build this movement of international world citizens.”