The following is an edited transcript of the June 11, 2025 weekly Schiller Institute dialogue with Schiller Institute founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Subheads have been added. The video is available here.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, and welcome to our weekly dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. She is the founder and leader of the Schiller Institute. Today is Wednesday, June 11, 2025. I’m Harley Schlanger and I’ll be your host.

Helga, the pace of events continues to be more than dizzying. We’ve had several breaking developments just in the last hour, so I think what we should do is—I’ll just turn it over to you to get started.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, hello to all of you. I have to, on short notice, change what I wanted to communicate to you, because I just received a rather breathtaking, short video clip from Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. So, I would like our assistant to show this. Please watch this, and then we’ll talk about it.

Tulsi Gabbard: I recently visited Hiroshima, in Japan, and stood at the epicenter of a city that remains scared by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945, eighty years ago. It’s hard for me to find the words to express what I saw, the stories that I heard, the haunting sadness that still remains. This is an experience that will stay with me forever.

This attack obliterated the city, killed over 300,000 people, many dying instantly, while others died from severe burns, injuries, radiation sickness and cancer that set in, in the following months and years. Nagasaki suffered the same fate. Homes, schools, families, all gone in a flash. The survivors, the hibakusha, they carried the pain of extreme burns, radiation sickness, and loss, for decades.

Survivors of this attack were asked to put in paintings and drawings their own memories and how they felt and what they saw, and those paintings and the suffering that they conveyed, the pain and the sense of loss were almost more powerful than the photos themselves.

Yet, this one bomb, that caused so much destruction in Hiroshima, was tiny compared to today’s nuclear bombs. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of just 15 kilotons of TNT, whereas today’s nuclear warheads range in size from 100 kilotons to over 1 megaton. A single nuclear weapon, today, could kill millions in just minutes. Just one of these nuclear bombs would vaporize everything at its core: people, buildings, life itself. The shock wave would crush structures miles away, killing and maiming countless people.

And then comes the fallout: Radioactive poison spreading through the air, water and soil, condemning survivors to agonizing deaths or lifelong suffering. A nuclear winter could follow, with smoke and ash completely blocking the Sun, plunging the world into darkness and cold, killing crops and starving billions. Acid rain would scar the Earth, wiping out entire ecosystems.

This isn’t some made-up science-fiction story. This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now. Because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political-elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers. Perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families, that regular people won’t have access to.

So, it’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust. [end video]

A Timely Intervention

Schlanger: Helga, this is coming in the context of a growing tension, but also tremendous changes. So, why don’t you start from there.

Zepp-LaRouche: The fact that Tulsi Gabbard, in her position as the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, put out such a video, while we don’t know at this point, yet, the background or circumstances—other than she apparently did travel to Hiroshima—I think this probably reflects something we don’t know yet—maybe a discussion in high circles. It is quite possible, very probable, that this video would not have been released without the knowledge of President Donald Trump. And, given the fact that at the end of the Biden Administration, according to credible leaks, the Pentagon was convinced of the possibility that it would come to an exchange of nuclear weapons if long-range missiles were given to the Ukrainians for delivery deep into the territory of Russia; that there was an estimate [of the probability] that this would lead to nuclear war of 50%—and that was accepted. There was almost no discussion about this in the mainstream media, but they’re not known to be very truth-seeking these days anyway. But it is quite possible that there is a relationship to the fact that the Ukrainians launched this drone attack on the strategic bombers in Russia, which are part of the nuclear triad of Russia.

Now, there is still a lot of uncertainty on what were the circumstances of this Ukrainian drone attack. There are some people, including the Russians themselves, who say that this would have been absolutely not possible without assistance from MI6 [Britain’s foreign intelligence service], possibly with knowledge and cooperation of the CIA. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov himself basically stated that the Russians are 100% sure that this was conducted and aided by British intelligence, and the role of the British is being emphasized in the entire escalation.

Other people are saying, “No, this was the Ukrainians all by themselves. They have perfected drone warfare.” There is an article in Financial Times which claims this was entirely only the Ukrainians; that they have the most advanced warfighting capability concerning drone warfare right now. So, I’m not making a final judgment on this debate, but if the U.S. Director of National Intelligence releases such a video in this context, I think we should take it extremely seriously. We have been warning about how easily a war can escalate; how past incidents and accidents have heightened tensions. We are sitting on a powder keg, and I can only say that I personally extremely welcome the fact that Tulsi Gabbard put out this statement, because most people are worse than sleepwalking; people are absolutely indifferent to the escalation of the danger. And there are warmongers in the West, there is no question about it!

I fully agree with her conclusion that it does require the people to send an unmistakable message to the so-called “leaders,” who are, after all, only employees of the people, who are the sovereign, and that this warning should be spread as widely as possible. So, take this video, repost it as widely as you can, and get a discussion going about the danger. That would be my initial response.

Signals from Washington

Schlanger: I think this is a reflection of the courageous and persistent work that you’ve been doing, the Schiller Institute has been doing, to put forward Lyndon LaRouche’s, your late husband’s understanding of the specific role of the British oligarchy and the British Empire.

This has really broken out in the last few days in many discussions. You mentioned Sergey Lavrov; there have been a number of Russian commentators as well. But also, there is an article by Kit Klarenberg of The Grayzone exposing “Project Alchemy,” a covert British intelligence war against Russia in the Black Sea. This really gets at the core of the problem of who’s trying to stop the normalization of relations between the United States and Russia.

What can you say about what you see around Trump?—because it’s still a confusing picture.

Zepp-LaRouche: There are, indeed, very confusing and even contradictory signals. Just today, President Trump announced that he, apparently, concluded a deal with China: that everything is now fine again, that China will export rare earths to the United States, and that Chinese students can again study at American universities. So, that’s a positive sign.

Then, there are reports that President Trump apparently also was on the phone with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, and basically told him that he can not carry out a nuclear or any other strike against Iran, and that this whole issue has to be settled peacefully.

On the other side, you have this unbelievable situation in Los Angeles [California], where there is anger at the policy of the Trump Administration to expel so-called “illegal aliens”—immigrants. This is causing heartbreaking scenes, where families are being drawn apart. There are demonstrations now spreading in many American cities, and that seems to be a legitimate concern.

But then you have provocateurs among them, who are creating violent acts, and who are getting into struggles with the police force and the National Guard. Trump has deployed the National Guard, which I think is a very problematic step, because it is definitely an escalation against the population; even the U.S. Marines have been sent there. Trump made a speech at some American military camp, where he used language which I absolutely abhor—I don’t even want to repeat it here—in terms of how he characterized these demonstrators.

I think President Trump, probably—I still keep being convinced of it—definitely wants to normalize relations with Russia. And given the dangers which Tulsi Gabbard’s video points to—the annihilation of all life on the planet—I think that is the most important issue. And one should stick to that issue as a priority, because so many forces are deployed—the British, for sure; the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”; and many other factors—to try to derail this effort by Trump to normalize the relationship with Russia—the U.S. and Russia being the two most powerful nuclear-weapons forces in the world. And if you start with the top, then that is the most important issue to concentrate on.

Does that mean one should approve of everything else? Absolutely not. I think President Trump needs, in some respects, some better advisors than he seems to have—especially on the Middle East, which is very, very problematic.

So, I can only say, this is the hour when ordinary citizens have to become active again. Remember the spirit of the American Revolution which, after all, was a revolution against the British Empire! The [U.S.] War of Independence was the first anti-colonial war in the history of mankind, and the more Americans, shortly before the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, [who] would think back and revive the spirit not only of the American republic, but of the American Revolution— I think that that would be most important.

The American Revolution was not just an American, local affair, but it was an international project, in which humanist and republican forces from Europe and elsewhere, but especially from Europe, basically decided to make the American project the first true republic in the world. Therefore, what happens to America is not just America’s business, because if this project fails, if they submit to the “special relationship” with Britain and run the world as modeled on the British Empire, then that would be the absolute, ultimate failure of the American project.

So, a lot is at stake here, and ordinary people have to start to take responsibility, because the world is in such a state of chaos, and you cannot rely on the institutions which existed in the last 80 years—because they are crumbling! They are clearly in a process of disintegration, and I think we are just seeing the beginning of that. And, therefore, the more people become active citizens, the better [is the] hope for mankind to get out of this without a catastrophe.

Schlanger: Helga, I think we’re getting a reflection of the awakening of the broader network of people in the questions that I’ve gotten in the last hour or two. Someone writes in and says, “There’s a report on a communiqué from the NATO summit upcoming, that seems to be moving away from an anti-Russian/pro-Ukraine posture.” Do you have anything on that?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. This is very interesting, because, unlike the communiqué of 2024, which declared Russia to be the enemy and so forth, it still mentions Russia in the context of the Ukraine war—or, rather, the other way around: It still mentions Russia as a threat to NATO, but it does not point to the role of Russia as the “aggressor” in the Ukraine war, and it does not talk about Ukraine having access to NATO, which the 2024 communiqué did.

I think it is clearly a reflection that there is a deep rift between those Europeans who call themselves the war alliance, or the “Coalition of the Willing”—which is not all of Europe, and it’s for sure not all of the EU and NATO, because a large part of these two institutions do not agree with that; otherwise, they wouldn’t have to form the “Coalition of the Willing.” But there is clearly a rift. That’s a very positive first step in the right direction, so let’s see how this NATO summit plays out.

The Crumbling ‘Narrative’ Wall

Schlanger: Along those same lines, I mentioned earlier the Kit Klarenberg article, where he brought up Project Alchemy, as an MI6 operation, which was involved in such things as targeting the Kerch Bridge between Russia and Crimea and other things. We have a question here from a contact in the United Kingdom who says, if you put Klarenberg’s article together with the articles earlier this year in the New York Times and The Times of London about the CIA and MI6 role in preparing for war with Russia going back to 2014, he writes: “How long can the supporters of a long war against Russia hide behind their assertion that Putin’s special military operation was ‘unprovoked’?”

Zepp-LaRouche: I don’t think much longer. Because there is now a whole—not an array, but several books are being written by very good, credible historians, which detail the pre-history. You can either go to the Maidan coup, which was clearly instigated by Victoria Nuland, who bragged that the U.S. State Department spent $5 billion on NGOs alone in Ukraine, preparing the Maidan coup. We published a lot at the time, when it happened. And in any case, you can start there, that this was an illegitimate coup against a legitimately elected government in Ukraine. And all the things which happened afterwards: the vote in Crimea, where the population decided to reunite with Russia; developments in the Donbass as a reaction against the prohibition of using the Russian language, and the beginning civil war against Donbass—all of these things have been part of the pre-history.

You can discuss the Minsk 2 sabotage by [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel and [French President François] Hollande; this is all on the public record. You can look at the various efforts by Putin to get legally binding security guarantees for Russia, as recently as December 17, 2021, and the refusal of the Biden Administration and NATO to answer that in any way. We could make a long, long list. And we have actually, as it happened on a day-to-day basis, published all of that. Or, you can even take it back earlier, to the broken promises that NATO would not move one inch eastward, at the time of the end of the Cold War.

In any case, it is a well-documented pre-history. And as I said, very important books are being published about that, around the world, so it’s increasingly difficult for those who are trying to keep the wrap on that and stick to the NATO narrative about the “unprovoked war.” That story is crumbling. It has never been believed by the people of the Global South, who have their own independent judgment, and don’t fall as easily for the NATO narrative as some of the duped people in Europe or the United States.

So, I think that story is going to evaporate. And maybe, in the future, people will take a fresh look at that history and come to quite different conclusions than the present mainstream media try to evoke.

Schlanger: In addition to the books that you say are being written, every week—in fact every day—Executive Intelligence Review puts out a Daily Alert that’s way ahead of virtually everyone else, and that’s something that people can subscribe to and circulate.

Now, there are a few more questions on the emergence of the citizenry as an active part in changing history. From the UK, there’s someone who writes in about a headline story that quotes former U.S. intelligence operative Fiona Hill, who was very much involved in the Russiagate story, putting out a statement saying, “Russia Is at War with the United Kingdom and the U.S. Cannot Be Relied On.” And the contact writes: “When can we expect the population in Europe to take their heads out of their you-know-what and move to bring down their unpopular governments?” And along those lines, there’s a question specifically for you—someone writes: “I heard about your rally in Schrobenhausen on Saturday [June 7], opposing [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz’s intent to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine.” She writes, “Can you give us an update on the response? And what can people do to protest this policy in Germany?”

Zepp-LaRouche: My answer to the first question would have been to refer to the rally in Schrobenhausen, which we did last Saturday, and this was very, very— I would say, refreshing. And there is a video [in German] out, which I think we have posted on the Schiller site, if I’m not mistaken. If we haven’t done it, we will do so.

It was really very excellent, because Schrobenhausen is, together with a city in Sweden, these are the two places where the Taurus is being put together. And given the fact that the Russian response to a deployment of the Taurus to Ukraine—this has been mooted by several Russian military experts—could very well be, that if the Taurus would ever be used, let’s say, against Moscow, or other places widely into the territory of Russia, that it is possible Russia would respond with one or more of these Oreshnik missiles—hypersonic missiles which cannot be stopped; they’re undefeatable. So, there is a possibility that the factory where the Taurus missile is being produced would be taken out. This would be a very, very sharp signal.

Schrobenhausen is a city of, I think, 13,000 inhabitants, 40 km from Munich. That’s why we had a rally: the Schiller Institute, and another organization called Basis, and also a parliamentarian [Dr. Rainer Rothfuss] from the AfD [Alternative for Germany party], and some other people. Citizens were speaking! What was really good is that there were about 800 people, most of them from Schrobenhausen itself. What was really incredible, the speeches were on a very high level, not just your typical campaign speeches or rally speeches, but very thoughtful, high-level, intellectual discussion; and the population—you can see that in the video—they were listening attentively, being extremely serious.

Then several of them came to the microphone and said unbelievably beautiful things. For example, there was one woman who said, “We are telling these politicians who are pushing these provocations that they are our employees. We are employing them; they are not our bosses.” This was an expression of a sovereign spirit. I would really like to hear from German citizens more often because, if there would be a majority of citizens, or even a very large number of citizens, who would remind the politicians that they have sworn an oath to defend the common good of the people, and prevent damage from being done to them, they would have to fear that if they don’t obey their oaths, that they will be chased out of office in the nearest time possible.

So, I think this kind of manifestation of the real sovereignty of the people was very heart-warming, and I can only hope that the example of Schrobenhausen will become a model to be repeated by many cities and citizens all over Germany—and all over Europe.

Hope for Southwest Asia?

Schlanger: On the question of people trying to cover their ass: Four of the Five Eyes countries announced sanctions against the Zionist extremists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, but the question came in: “Why not announce instead, a cutoff of weapons and financial aid to Israel? We had this report on Trump’s call to Netanyahu; the UN issued a report today, saying that Israel is committing war crimes, and former prime ministers of Israel were saying the same thing. Do you see this situation finally changing? And, with the United Nations having hearings shortly, do you see the Oasis Plan being taken up as a solution, as opposed to just some vague notion of stopping the war?”

Zepp-LaRouche: I think that there are right now, unfortunately, mixed signals coming from the Trump Administration, because both [U.S. Secretary of State Marco] Rubio and also [U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth basically said the United States is no longer supporting the two-state solution. That’s tragic! That must be reversed! Obviously, this has to do a lot with the workings of Netanyahu’s influence inside the United States. That would be a catastrophe, and I can only hope that this is reversed, because obviously, if the United States would cut off all weapons and financial aid [to Israel], the whole horror show would stop quickly—and that’s the reality of the matter!

Now, the public opinion in the world is clearly shifting. There are tiny little reversals you have seen, for example, in Germany, where even Chancellor Merz started to take an attitude that this all goes too far—even if it’s too late and insufficient. But nevertheless, this shift is the result of the fact that the reputation of those countries that are still backing what the UN has characterized as genocide, is devastating! And I don’t think it will be recovered! The fact that Germany, for example, has for a very long period ignored the genocide—this time, given Germany’s history, I think this is something which will not be remedied very easily. I can only say, the only redemption would be if Germany and European countries, together with the United States, would put an end to this horror show, and instead revert to rebuilding the region, where the Oasis Plan would be a centerpiece, and peace could be brought to the entire region—not just Israel and Palestine.

But right now, it’s still on the edge, and there are the forces that think the annexation of the West Bank is a legitimate goal. It’s a huge battle: On the other side, you have the Gaza Peace March, where thousands of people have started to march from Algeria and Tunisia all the way through the Maghreb to Gaza. I think they are now in Egypt; they will give a press conference, trying to make the point that the citizens of the world have to march for the right to distribute, at least, humanitarian aid to the people who are locked into Gaza, which is almost a cemetery.

So, this is an issue which, I believe, will determine whether or not the human species has the moral fitness to survive. Because if you tolerate something so absolutely horrendous, it says everything about yourself and your moral fiber.

I can only say, let’s help to mobilize for putting the Oasis Plan on the agenda at the UN conference [on the two-state solution (Israel-Palestine)] which will start [in New York] in a few days. We have mobilized a lot of embassies, and a lot of ambassadors, a lot of forces in the different countries to come out and demand the implementation of the Oasis Plan. So, please add your support to our campaign.

Schlanger: I have one more question for you, Helga, which is from a Mexican-based podcaster, who says, with everything going on in the world, he hasn’t been hearing much about the mobilization of the BRICS countries to establish a new development architecture. He asks if you have any update on that.

Zepp-LaRouche: There is, obviously, the BRICS summit coming up in Brazil in July, and there are already a lot of preparatory meetings going on. I’m absolutely confident that there will be more countries joining; there is a tremendous push by the Africans, for example, to have a much larger role. We will have a very important conference of the Schiller Institute in July in Germany, which will feature the absolute necessity of Europe and China and the BRICS to collaborate; to finally go for a crash program for the development of Africa, bringing electricity to 600 million people who don’t yet have electricity; to address all of the other urgent issues, in terms of water infrastructure—and that will be a major point of discussion. So, you should register for this conference. If you are in Germany, you should register to attend it in person; if you are anywhere else in the world, you should participate online. But we have to absolutely put the agenda of the BRICS countries as the alternative. All the problems of the world could be easily changed and solved if the Europeans and the Americans would just say, “We will stop the geopolitical confrontation with the Global Majority, and we will just shift gears and we will cooperate.” That would be so easy!

And, hopefully, what Trump announced in terms of the agreement with China could be a baby step in this direction. So, let’s see—not waiting, but mobilizing to put this idea of a new paradigm, a new security and development architecture on the table, because that is the level where the solution to all problems can and must be found.