HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello and welcome to our weekly dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. She’s the founder of the Schiller Institute and the convener of the International Peace Coalition, which has a Zoom call every Friday for I think 170 straight weeks now. Today is September 9, 2026. I’m Harley Schlanger and I’ll be your host. You can send your questions and comments to Helga via email at questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them on the chat page.

Now Helga, last week the Executive Intelligence Review had a special roundtable discussion on Germany, and the discussion was the question of where’s Germany going, the collapse of the country, the industry, the economy, and so on. Now since that time there was an election in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt, which you described as a shock felt around the world. What happened in that election and what are the implications of that vote in the strategic situation worldwide?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think it’s a landmark change where the population in Sachsen-Anhalt voted by almost an absolute majority, not quite, but you know almost half of the voters gave a clear no to the war policy of the government. I think that that was probably the most important aspect of this vote and secondly naturally the fact that the German economy is in a free fall. So I think this is a very hopeful sign, even if one cannot agree with all aspects of the policy of the AfD, but my attitude is to say that now they basically should sort out are they really a peace party, which would mean that they would agree with what we have been saying for a long time, that the only way Germany can get out of this present strategic crisis which we are clearly in, in many aspects, is to form a positive cooperation with the SCO countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS countries, the Global Majority, and together solve the migrant question by overcoming the underdevelopment of the developing sector. I think that’s the absolute key question because if you only say migrants should all be kicked out without addressing the root causes of why the migrant crisis exists—that is, I mean, why do people run away from Southwest Asia, from Africa, from Latin America? It’s because of the interventionist wars, because of the unilateral sanctions, because of all of the policies of the so-called Collective West. And therefore, either one addresses the root causes by stopping these interventionist wars, stopping all kinds of illegal sanctions, illegal because they are not agreed to by the UN Security Council, but unilateral, and to start to overcome the remnants of 500 years of colonialism, which is the only reason why some of the parts of the world are underdeveloped. So if the AfD agrees, you know, to help to remedy these things, I think that would be the real test.

Otherwise, I think it’s good that the war policy of Merz and Co. was interrupted. They don’t seem to get it, you know, I listened to the speech of Merz in the Bundestag afterwards, and he is completely unable to learn anything. So, you know, there is a poll right now by the First Channel TV, which says that 88% and a little bit more of the German population completely or mostly disagrees and disapproves of the government policy. So if Merz would have any antennas about what the population wants, he would resign. I think he will not last there in the office for very long.

SCHLANGER: Well, actually, we’ve had several questions that came in about the future for Merz and his government. One question from Brandenburg is “What do you expect in the next state to vote, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern? And if the CDU vote continues to fall, will there be a move to bring down the Merz chancellorship?”

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I have not looked at the very detailed situation in those two states. But one can be absolutely sure that the trend of the AfD and also the BSW taking more votes, I think will continue because, you know, I think the AfD vote in Sachsen-Anhalt is an encouragement for any voter in Germany, East or West. So I think this will continue. I think the attitude of the Social Democrats who think that they have not been punished because they did not get less votes. However, you know, if the former so-called Volkspartei, People’s Party, is now reduced to 9%, that’s not exactly something to be terribly proud of. So I think that the trend will continue and the opposition in the CDU against Merz will grow.

However, I think they probably need a couple of more blows than they have gotten, because even after the election result in Sachsen-Anhalt, the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, had nothing else to do than to demand that the chances for a prohibition, a ban of the AfD, should be sped up and investigated by creating a task force to do that. I mean, that’s just stupid. You know, how do you want to ban a party which gets half of the population’s vote? The entire policy of a firewall has completely failed. And the longer the CDU keeps up that kind of an attitude, the more they will vanish and soon will be happy to make it to the 5%.

SCHLANGER: Now, you brought up the unpopularity of the war. We were seeing intense diplomatic activity around Ukraine this last week. First the trip of Trump envoys Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow, then to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy, followed by a one-hour phone call between President Trump and President Putin.

The question came in, “Do you see the prospect of progress for an end to the fighting in Ukraine?”

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, this is a long effort. First of all, Trump had promised before he was elected for the second time that he would bring the Ukraine war to an end in 24 hours. I think that was a little bit, you know, too much taking his mouth full. Then he tried in Anchorage. Then in the subsequent development, it was clear that the forces of the Deep State in his administration were powerful enough to get him off track enough so that Foreign Minister Lavrov even doubted that the Anchorage meeting was meant to be serious, or was it just another effort to fool Russia like the Minsk 2 agreement with Merkel and Hollande. So now it seems that in the recent meeting, again, the Russians were reacting basically with an open mind.

And unfortunately, the so-called Coalition of the Willing immediately descended on Kyiv at the same time that Kushner and Witkoff went there after their Moscow visit. And that caused Foreign Minister Lavrov to make a really increasingly sharp attack on the Europeans, which unfortunately, one cannot contradict him, because what Lavrov said is that Europe has for a long time been the source of wars, 500 years of colonialism, slavery, exploitation, two world wars. And, you know, so it’s a long history of not such a proud record. And the more the Europeans keep pushing war, even when the Trump administration sends out a signal to end it, it just ruins the reputation of Europe because it causes the Russians to remember more and more and be more outspoken about it. And really, unfortunately, one cannot deny it because these things happened. And I think that if Trump indeed is going in the direction of ending this war, it would be a most welcome step, because the danger of that crisis leading to World War III is hanging over the world like a Damocles sword waiting to come down on us. So I’m hopeful that maybe this time, there is some serious effort behind it.

SCHLANGER: The other continuing war zone is Southwest Asia. And there are signs that there’s a new hot phase, which is breaking out with the U.S. attacking Iran, Iran attacking the U.S. One U.S. podcaster commented to me that the U.S. strategy seems impossible to follow. There seems to be a paralysis between threats and launching something, pulling back; and yesterday oil hit $100 a barrel. Given the unwillingness to send in ground forces, does the U.S. have any viable military options? And what is the overall significance of the Mecca Group of Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia? Will they play some role in the outcome of the situation in Southwest Asia?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I don’t think the United States does have a viable military option. I mean, there was this discussion about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, which had been raised by Elbridge Colby and some other commentators. So that naturally is the nightmare scenario looming in the background.

Otherwise, I don’t think the United States does have a military option. And I don’t think they have an economic option either. Because, you know, this tit for tat, you know, I destroy your tankers, you destroy my tankers. It’s just bringing the world closer to the abyss of first a nuclear war, and a depression and mass starvation. Because the longer this increase in energy prices lasts, the more it will affect food production, energy prices, fertilizer prices, and it will end up with many people dying of hunger in the end. So I think that this is terrible. I think that the Mecca alliance is a potential venue, if it is combined with our idea of an Extended Oasis Plan, meaning economic development for the entire region of Southwest Asia, including all the countries which have been destroyed by interventionist wars before, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so forth.

But I think that the new element in the situation was the extremely important SCO meeting in Bishkek, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, because I think that is growing into a very important alliance, or partnership, which I would rather say, of countries, which does affect also the security architecture in Southwest Asia, given the fact that there are several countries of that region which are members of the SCO. So I think that that is a very important new development, which has been completely blacked out by the Western media.

In German media, for example, there was as good as no mention, if at all, I didn’t see any. And that is just totally, I mean, if we are in a democracy and supposedly have free opinion and free press, and you block out a meeting where almost half of the human population is meeting and making important agreements on many, many fields, and you’re blocking that out completely, you must be terribly afraid that the news about such event may convince your own population that you’re not the only game in town. So I think, as the news will not be suppressible forever, I think there is a new dynamic in the world, which the West better take note of and take a positive attitude toward rather than trying to contain it, which I think is impossible. That train has left the station.

SCHLANGER: Well, that new dynamic was on display in Bishkek with the SCO meeting, and in Vladivostok with the Eastern Economic Forum. And then in two days, there’ll be the convening of the BRICS meeting in New Delhi. I have a two-part question on this.

One, a somewhat cynical financial podcaster asked, “Are the BRICS ever going to break with the dollar system?” And the second question is about comments made by Putin spokesman Peskov, who was asked about the question of de-dollarization, is this an attack on the U.S.? And he said, it’s actually an American policy, which is ruining trust in the dollar. Now, this person then asked, “Given the record of Treasury Secretary Bessent as an economic hitman who has attacked the pound and the yen working with Soros, do you think he may be intentionally acting to bring down the dollar?”

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, given the fact that he has expressed that formulation that he didn’t want to go to total sanctions against Iran, because he said, “Why would I want to bring down the entire financial system?” reflects the fact that he is acutely aware of the fact that that possibility is a very real and active one. So, it is not to be excluded that he has a game plan going in the direction of causing a collapse of some sort to try to basically get rid of the unpayable derivative bubble and a good part of the U.S. debt bubble.

In any case, many of the policies of various groups in the West do not make sense if you look at them just on the surface. They do make sense, however, if you think that they are either an attempt to deflect from the collapse of their own system, or even trying to get rid of the debt by causing a war and keeping control in such a war. This is naturally completely crazy, because the kind of rearmament going on, at least on the side of the Europeans, the European Union, and the so-called Coalition of the Willing, is destructive, like hell. It is destroying the economy of the member countries of these states, in that case, Germany, France, Great Britain, but also indirectly, naturally, the entire European Union.

And I think that we are in a complete danger zone, which is why I think the discussion of addressing that needs to be raised in the population, because such a discussion is not there. My late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, who yesterday would have had his 104th birthday, did provide not only the analysis of what the problem is, in many, many forecasts he gave throughout the course of his life; but he also gave the answer for how to solve it, the famous Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche, which still are the basic instruments which must be used if you want to get rid of this bubble without war. That is a global Glass-Steagall banking separation, a national bank in every country, a new credit system by creating large-scale, long-term credit with low interest rates for clearly defined projects, and naturally making a scientific and technological leap by going to productivity increases, which only can come from focusing on such technologies as fusion energy, as space technology, and so on.

So the package of what LaRouche has designed to get rid of this crisis is absolutely still there and deserves to be much more discussed in the public arena by everybody who wants to solve this problem without war.

SCHLANGER: Going back to the question of Southwest Asia and also the policy of sanctions, the Burnham government announced yesterday that it will introduce sanctions against imported goods produced in the Occupied Territories of Israel to protest the violence employed by settlers against the Palestinians living there. A reporter from a British blog said this means nothing as the UK continues to provide military and logistical support to Israel, and his thesis is it’s designed instead to whip up charges of anti-Semitism to reinforce support for the Netanyahu government. Do you have any thoughts about this?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I agree with the questioner because this comes late and doesn’t really affect the overall situation. I think much more interesting is the new article which appeared in Ha’aretz that according to this article, which after all is a leading newspaper in Israel, that Netanyahu was warned about the Hamas attack 10 days before by the President of the United Arab Emirates and all the opposition leaders in Israel from Bennett to Lapid to various other people basically take this Ha’aretz information very seriously. So it will be very interesting to see how this will play out.

SCHLANGER: I mean it’s interesting in terms of the development of the opposition. The New York Times had an article on “Generals Who Fought for Israel Now See Jewish Terrorism as the Threat.” This refers to some generals who were touring and talking about ethnic cleansing by the Israelis as actually the cause of the problem. So there’s obviously much more coming on this.

I also want to go back to economic policy. We saw, I think it was two days ago, the Canadian response to the Trump tariffs and the U.S. response to the Canadian response. Are we headed for a trade war with Canada or possibly something bigger?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, Trump has stated very clearly that he wants to gobble up Canada as the 51st state of the United States, and I think his appetite is big enough that he would want to swallow such a big country. I mean more on the serious side, Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, is trying to link up with the European Union, which I don’t really think would be good for anybody, neither the Canadians nor the European nations.

One has to watch this very carefully, but I’m more optimistic about the kinds of changes which have been started with the AfD victory in Sachsen-Anhalt, which probably will be followed by more states, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but also the situation in France soon. I hope that the changes which are occurring right now, you know, in a certain sense, I remember when President Trump was voted in for the first time in 2016. My late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, said this is not an American vote, it’s a global change, where the population is getting absolutely fed up with the kinds of globalist policies which make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

At that time, you had the referendum in Italy, which was also of the same nature and some other elections. And I think what we are seeing right now is a new wave of the same phenomena, that the people really have had it with these policies which make the billionaire club larger, but billions of people become poorer and poorer around the world, not just in the developing countries, but also in the so-called advanced countries, which are not so advanced anymore. So I think we are on the verge of a global revolution, which hopefully will lead to a new paradigm if enough people really think of what the new world should look like. And I think it would be very good if everybody would think about what kind of a world do you want to help to create, or leave behind when you are leaving this life? Because people should not just think about what they do with their pleasure in the here and now, but they should really think that everybody is part of a chain of generations, where we have a moral obligation to contribute so that future generations are living better than we do.

And right now, you know, if you look at the governments around the world in the West, they seem more of the conviction to leave behind a scorched earth, as long as they can fill their bellies and pockets in their lifetime, but not think about how they can create a positive future. So I think this is the kind of discussion which we urgently need to have. But you know, right now, I’m optimistic that these people who are really oligarchical in their nature, will be swept aside.

SCHLANGER: Well, last Friday, the Executive Intelligence Review held another roundtable discussion, this time talking about the fight going on in South America, between the Trump forces that are pushing for keeping China out, versus economic nationalists. And the major topic was the bi-oceanic railway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific through South America. Now, this infrastructure project is, in a sense, the gateway to the future. And the Schiller Institute has often spoken about the economic benefit of such projects, including the Extended Oasis Plan, the Bering Strait tunnel, and so on. But what makes this kind of project so necessary, beyond just the nuts and bolts of the economy?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I mean, Alexander von Humboldt traveled to Latin America in the 19th Century, and because he had to travel by foot, by ship, you know, by very awkward means. And he, from his own experience, realized that if you want to open up a continent, which he recognized that it was one area hanging together in one territory, and that to open it up you need infrastructure. And, you know, he had several proposals for how to connect river systems through canals. And in a certain sense, the idea that infrastructure is the precondition for the development of any part of the world, was already worked out by him. So when President López Portillo invited us to Mexico in 1982, my husband and myself, this was when the peso was under enormous attacks through capital flight, and López Portillo had invited my late husband to ask him for advice.

So as a follow-up of that visit, he then wrote this program called Operation Juárez, which was incredible. It was not just to defend Mexico, but to defend all of Latin America, which had a debt crisis at that time. And when López Portillo started to implement Operation Juárez, including creating a national bank, and nationalizing the banks, the Wall Street circles were completely panicked because they thought that there would be a debtors’ cartel. Now, that did not happen, despite the fact that López Portillo started to implement Operation Juárez, because at that time the imperialist circles managed to divide Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, and the necessary unity was not possible.

I think right now, because of the option of linking to the Belt and Road Initiative through the deep water port in Peru, in Chancay—and naturally everything will depend on what will be the outcome of the Brazilian election next month. I think the possibility that many more Latin American countries unite for such a development program is absolutely there. So I think that the discussion of such infrastructure projects like the bi-oceanic corridor is going to inspire the whole Global South, and I’m optimistic that the wheel cannot be turned back.

SCHLANGER: Now, you mentioned earlier that yesterday was the 104th birthday of your late husband, the American economist and statesman, Lyndon LaRouche. In thinking about his life, and you’ve mentioned your travels with him, your meetings with him, what do you wish that people knew about him that they don’t know because of the corrupt media, and what do you think is his continuing legacy?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I would want people to recognize that he was the most beautiful soul I have ever encountered in my lifetime; that he was a true renaissance man with unbelievable creativity, and that he provided an accurate analysis of everything that people are complaining about now. And people have to start reading what he wrote, because I believe to the last minute of my life that he provided solutions which I have not seen coming from almost any other circles. I mean, obviously, there are many countries now, including, ahead of all of them, China, who are doing extremely important things which are in a certain sense in complete affinity with many of the ideas he brought forward; not least the idea of the World LandBridge, which the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative today is realizing to a very large extent.

But I think there is so much more wealth in his writings in terms of science, in terms of cultural traditions. He revived, at least for the western part of the world, a lot of inside knowledge about the real history of the fight for ideas which had been almost completely eradicated by such operations like the Congress of Cultural Freedom, and many similar operations trying to eradicate even the memory of a lot of the important traditions, you know, in the tradition of the Platonic humanist tradition of Europe as compared to the Aristotelian tradition.

So, I think I would really wish that people would have the good sense of going to his books and reading them. They can only profit from it.

SCHLANGER: Well, and we have the LaRouche Legacy Foundation to collect that work. People can look it up online and participate and contribute to it. And Helga, I think you’re playing a very important role in ensuring that the legacy of your late husband is not buried as the other side would like it to be.

So, we’ll have another International Peace Coalition call on Friday. Any headlines for us coming from it?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think we will for sure discuss the continuation of this Latin American initiative because this is not a regional thing; this has world importance. We will for sure discuss our continuous campaign with the appeal to Pope Leo XIV, which is growing very well. And naturally, we will discuss the impact of the German vote in Sachsen-Anhalt, because I think it will have an inspiring effect on many parts of the world. So, you absolutely should join us because it will be full of surprises and experts’ opinions, which you will not hear anywhere else.

SCHLANGER: And maybe people getting on that call will become less depressed because they’ll see there is a way out. So, Helga, thanks for joining us today and we’ll see you again on Friday.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I hope so.