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Helga Zepp-LaRouche:
Defend the Interests of Germany

December 5, 2007

The following statement, countering the disastrous policies being implemented by German Federal Chancellor Merkel, was issued December 3 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chairwoman of the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BueSo) party in Germany. Note: this document was translated from the German.

 


German government
Chancellor Angela Merkel just doesn’t seem to
get it, on either domestic or foreign policy.

It very frequently occurs, that the ideological blindness of "simple" citizens leads to decisions, which injure their self-interest to the core. But it is among the freedoms of democracy, that the citizens can do this, provided they do not violate the law. However, such behavior is more problematic, if it occurs in the case of the Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Indeed, she determines the policy guidelines, but she has also sworn an oath of office, to defend the welfare of the German people and to avert damage to them.

The positions, which the Federal Chancellor has taken in the recent period vis a vis Russia, China and Iran, not only damage German economic interests and thereby jobs, they infringe fundamentally upon the security interests of Germany, because they send Germany out of bounds in pursuit of a neo-conservative agenda and contribute to an atmosphere of confrontation. Either Mrs. Merkel is impervious to advice, or she really does not understand the complexity of historical processes. Perhaps she actually believed, she was standing up for democracy and human rights, when she was taken in by the theater of Garry Kasparov on the occasion of her meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Samara. That Kasparov is part of a new British "great game" against Russia, would have to have become clear to her at the latest, had she taken into account his connection to the former manager of his chess tournaments, John Arnold Bredenkamp, a supporter of the late racist regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

That China would react so strongly to her reception of the Dalai Lama, who is also sponsored by the powers, which are attempting to carve up China's territorial unity, would also have had to be clear to her. Again: Is she only impervious to advice, or does she share the objectives of neo-conservative confrontation, which can only end in a catastrophe? And the Federation of German Industries (BDI) is correct in its criticism of her, that her talk about sanctions against Iran does not help democracy in Iran, but rather only damages German-Iranian relations.

She receives the invoice for this policy in the case of China by return mail: While long-planned meetings with representatives of Germany were canceled on all levels, on the occasion of the visit of French President Sarkozy to China, China elevated its relationship to France to the highest strategic significance and concluded economic agreements with him in double-digit billion amounts. Neither the Pope nor the Italian Prime Minister Prodi found it advisable to receive the Dalai Lama.

The behavior of Mrs. Merkel is all the more disastrous, in that it occurs at a time, when Germany would have every reason to improve its relationship with China and Russia, instead of damaging it. For the systemic financial collapse, triggered but not caused by the U.S. mortgage crisis, has in the meantime gripped the entire international banking sector and has long ago evolved from a storm into a hurricane, whose full destructive force will increase further in the coming months. The collapse of the dollar is not an internal U.S. affair, about which all of the most short-sighted anti-American people can gloat; it has long ago exceeded the threshold of pain for Asian and European exports.

This is precisely the reason, why the official Chinese news media, from Xinhua via the Peoples Daily and the China Daily to the most important financial press have so prominently picked on the speech by Lyndon LaRouche before a conference of the Forum on U.S.-Chinese Relations and China's Peaceful Reunification in Los Angeles. In his presentation, LaRouche emphasized, that the crisis of the global financial system has advanced so far and the constellation of power in the world has developed, such that only the four strongest nations, namely, the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India, are in combination strong enough, in order to jointly undertake an orderly reorganization of the world financial system in sufficient time. For China with its 1.4 billion people what is at stake is nothing less that the stability of the country, which China, after its experiences above all in the 19th and 20th centuries would never again like to see in danger. President Hu Jintao also announced a series of steps and conferences, which have as their theme the macro-economic stability and protection above all of the poor population.

Therefore, Germany would have every reason to orient itself towards China and Russia and to strive in common with these nations towards an exit from the financial crisis. In the U.S.A., the most important steps in this direction come from the growing movement for the implementation of Lyndon LaRouche's legislative proposal, the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA), which is supported by a growing number of cities. If there is an exit at all from the world financial crisis, then it will lie in the most important nations of this world coming to an agreement on a New Bretton Woods and a New Deal for the world economy in the tradition of Roosevelt, as opposed to the neo-conservative, neo-liberal policy of confrontation.

In general, the focus on "Democracy and Human Rights," which Attorney Mrs. Merkel has of late so often adopted, is thus a concern. For which is better for people, if, for example, China provides credit to African nations and helps them to build infrastructure, or if Europe in referring to human rights denies these states the credit and the assistance they need for infrastructure development? And how does the IMF observe human rights, when for decades it has insisted that the developing nations, instead of financing their health care and educational systems, should preferably pay their debt, which the IMF has constantly increased by its demand for currency depreciations.

And what about the human rights of children and teenagers in Europe, who are not protected by any law against menticide, where through killer video games, which glorify violence, children and teenagers are exposed to a brutality, which they obviously cannot handle, and which turns more and more students into monsters running amok, who kill themselves, their teachers and their schoolmates? And what about the human rights of the unemployed, who lose their jobs through the unbridled manipulations of the "locusts," plunge into poverty thanks to Harz IV and long-term unemployment, and are thus bilked out of the earnings of their life's work, only because the Federal Chancellor, according to her own words, does not want to have an "orgy of reregulation of the hedge funds by the state"?

Whoever lives in a glass house, should not throw stones. There are not a few people in the developing nations, who recognized long ago, that in the so-called industrial nations the violations of human rights and democracy take place merely in a more sophisticated and cleverly-devised way.

In any case, it is in the fundamental self-interest of Germany, that in the face of the coming hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis of the world economy we seek close collaboration with Russia, China, India and the actual America, which is now making itself heard in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt.