Helga statement, article, transcript

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Responds to German Heavy Weapons to Ukraine

May 1, 2022by Mary Jane Freeman in General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, World war danger updates

Faced with a Looming Nuclear War with Russia: Has the Bundestag Lost Its Mind?

An Appeal to Citizens: Don’t Let Germany Get Drawn Into Nuclear War with Russia —

April 30, 2022 (EIRNS)—Helga Zepp-LaRouche wrote the following as the lead article in the German weekly newspaper Neue Solidarität for the May 5, 2022 issue, which has been translated from the German original. (https://www.solidaritaet.com/neuesol/2022/18/hzl.htm)

The irresponsible and highly dangerous decision of the German government and Bundestag to give into the pressure from the U.S. government, NATO, and the warmongers in their own ranks, and agree to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine, must immediately be reversed! It represents an acute danger for the existence of Germany, as it makes us—together with the United States, Great Britain and other NATO member states that are also providing a vast arsenal of weapons to Ukraine and training Ukrainian troops in their own countries or, according to Figaro journalist Malbrunot even inside Ukraine—a party to the war. It is also a big step in a spiraling escalation toward a nuclear Third World War! Instead, Germany and France must push, with great force, for an immediate cease-fire and a diplomatic solution.

The Biden Administration is trying to mask its participation in the proxy war against Russia, with repeated statements by President Joe Biden that the military option in Ukraine is not on the table, because no one wants to trigger World War III. But given the massive arms shipments, the various aid amounting to $14 billion in the past two months, and now another $33 billion on top of that, and given the sharing of intelligence with the Ukrainian armed forces, as is openly admitted by the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, the United States is already de facto a participant in the war.

Bruce Fein, an American constitutional law expert and former associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, argues that the U.S. and NATO member countries are already co-belligerents in the war. John B. Henry, the Chairman of the Committee for the Republic, which includes well-known former diplomats and members of government, is of the view that, under international law, this gives Vladimir Putin the right to take military action against the U.S. and those countries.

After Chancellor Scholz had refused on April 22 to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine, because he wanted to do everything possible to avoid an escalation that could lead to World War III, just three days later, his intention had evaporated. German Defense Minister Lambrecht announced just in time for the major meeting at the U.S. air base in Ramstein on April 26, to which U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had invited military leaders from 40 countries, that the government coalition had decided the day before to supply Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine. So much for statements by the Chancellor or for Germany’s sovereignty—they are obviously meaningless.

Secretary Austin announced that from now on, such meetings would be held once a month at the Ramstein air base, which houses the headquarters of the “United States Air Forces Europe” and “Air Forces Africa,” the NATO “Allied Air Command Ramstein,” as well as the “U.S. Air and Space Operations Center,” which controls drone strikes in the Middle East and Africa. The purpose of such meetings will be to optimize and coordinate the weapons production by arms industries in the various countries. Interestingly, the largest and most modern American military hospital outside the U.S., which is largely financed by Germany, is also located there. Obviously, decisions of greater import are taken in Ramstein than in Berlin, including as to whether or not Germany will be a party to the war in Ukraine.

So far, NATO and Western governments have turned a deaf ear to Putin’s warnings about crossing red lines, although he has repeatedly shown that his words are followed by deeds. This time, we should heed the warnings. In a meeting with lawmakers in St. Petersburg on April 27, one day after Lambrecht’s announcement, Putin said that in the event of outside intervention and the creation of an unacceptable threat to Russia, retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast. Russia, he added, has the tools for that purpose that no one else has at this point, and they will be used. All the decisions, he said, have already been made.

On the same day, April 27, the Wall Street Journal carried an article titled “The U.S. Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War,” in which former Undersecretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey maintained that the U.S. should prepare to win a nuclear war if it did not want to lose it. U.S. warships should be armed with nuclear weapons, he wrote, and destroy Russian nuclear-missile submarines that are the main base of Russian second-strike capability. A similarly insane fantasy underlay the U.S. “Global Lightning” exercise, held in late January, which practiced an extended maneuver involving a hybrid of conventional and nuclear methods of warfare.

The idea that a limited nuclear war is possible and that it could be “won,” and that small nuclear weapons that are “usable” should be deployed, is madness. Nuclear arms expert Ted Postol has made an absolutely compelling case, most recently in a dialogue, on why the use of even a single nuclear weapon will inevitably lead to a general nuclear war, leading to the use of all existing nuclear weapons. And all the political morons who lightly talk about the need to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine, even if it means the risk of nuclear war cannot be ruled out, belong in a locked hospital ward, not in positions of political responsibility. (The Postol remarks were made in a recent interview with Robert Scheer.)

Postol describes the effect of nuclear weapons: “We’re talking about a wall of fire that encompasses everything around us at the temperature of the center of the Sun. That will literally turn us to less than ash, if this thing gets going. I can’t emphasize how powerful these weapons are. When they detonate, they’re actually four or five times hotter than the center of the Sun, which is 20 million degrees Kelvin. They’re 100 million degrees Kelvin at the center of these weapons.”

Human beings can’t imagine the scale of such heat, he explains. He himself has written articles repeatedly about the consequences of nuclear weapons on cities, for example. Postol said, “This is something beyond anything that human beings have been able to imagine. And I don’t know how to emphasize how dangerous this is.”

He further describes that a single nuclear weapon would wipe out an urban area with a radius of 5 miles, or an area of about 75 square miles, that it would take only 20% of the American ICBMs available “to destroy all of Russia’s ICBM, land-based ICBMs—maybe a thousand,” and thus 80% of the warheads could be used for other purposes (for example against targets in Russia, China or Germany). Russia, he goes on, because of its less capable early warning system, had to set up an automated response in the event the Russian leadership were killed in a surprise U.S. nuclear first strike. Russia’s unfortunate inability to improve its early warning system, according to Postol, has resulted in a “doomsday weapon” that makes the situation much more dangerous because a fatal error could trigger a nuclear war.

It should be clear to every thinking person—and the 586 members of the Bundestag who voted for the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine are obviously not among them—that the Federal Republic of Germany becomes a co-belligerent because of that, and thus becomes a target in the event of war. Ramstein, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, Büchel, Pirmasens, Baumholder, to name just a few targets, would burn up.

Rather than pursuing a course of suicide and the end of humanity in a misconceived loyalty to the Alliance, Germany must work for an immediate ceasefire and diplomatic negotiations. Rather than letting ourselves be whipped up into a hatred of Russia (and China) by commissioned war-mongering journalists and gun-toting women, we need to start doing our own thinking again. It is not the policy of détente that has led to the current crisis—it allowed for the peaceful reunification of Germany after all, it is the expansion of NATO five times to the East and the obstinate refusal of the political and military establishment to respond to Putin’s demand for legally binding security guarantees.

We are indeed living through a turning point, but not in the way the “narratives” of mainstream politicians and media would have us believe, rather the attempt to maintain a unipolar world in which only the U.S. and U.K. are in charge, has failed. The majority of nations in the world are in the process of building a world order based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and enabling the economic development of all.

Germany will remain non-sovereign and an occupied country for only as long as we allow it to be so in our minds. We must work now for real peace, for a diplomatic solution, and beyond that for a new international security and development architecture that guarantees the survival of humanity. Become active with us to make that happen!

—zepp-larouche@eir.de

Add your name to the petition To Convoke an International Conference to Establish A New Security and Development Architecture for All Nations ; and watch, and circulate the April 9, four-panel international conference which was a crucial initiating step in bringing that new architecture into being.

100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture!

February 7, 2022by David Dobrodt in General, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche · February 6, 2022

PDF of this statement

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the five nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council affirmed in a joint statement on Jan. 3 of this year. Since the use of nuclear weapons always involves the risk of using the entire nuclear arsenal, a percentage of which is enough to cause the extinction of the human species, the confirmation of this fundamental insight should actually have practical implications for the military strategy of all nuclear powers.

Notwithstanding this joint statement, in the last week of January, the U.S. Strategic Command launched the Global Lightning exercise, designed to test the readiness of U.S. nuclear forces.

Although this was a so-called “routine” maneuver integrated this year with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and thus aimed at a possible confrontation with China, in the context of heightened tensions between Russia and the United States and NATO, it can be seen as just another—but perhaps the most dangerous—element in the way that the West is playing with fire with respect to Russia and China.

The timing of the maneuver coincided with hitherto unproven allegations by the United States and UK that Russia was planning a military attack on Ukraine between late January and mid-February, which the Russian government has repeatedly denied. The nuclear command-and-control exercise is based on the U.S. Strategic Command’s current nuclear war plan. Hans M. Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists, was able, under the Freedom of Information Act, to obtain the cover page of this plan, entitled Stratcom Conplan 0810-12, Strategic Deterrence and Force Deployment, Change 1. Kristensen, one of the most competent specialists in the field of nuclear strategy and weapons, explained to Newsweek that the Global Lightning exercise does not simply assume a nuclear first strike by one side or the other, but an extended nuclear war that will continue after the first exchange of strikes.

Even though the individual components of this new war plan, which has been operational since April 30, 2019, are subject to the highest levels of secrecy, the outlines of this conception emerge. The assumption is that the United States and NATO would be able to survive a nuclear first strike by Russia or China, then retaliate, absorb further attacks, retaliate again, etc., in an ongoing military confrontation. This nuclear war plan includes not only nuclear weapons but various other lethal systems such as missile defense systems, directed energy weapons such as electromagnetic pulse weapons and lasers, cyberattacks, and Space Force attacks from space. Who would be able to survive such a prolonged nuclear war? The few people who can nest in deep underground bunkers? It makes the morbid fantasies of Dr. Strangelove look like a child’s birthday party.

Last year’s Global Lightning maneuvers in April 2021 focused on a potential conflict with Russia; this year it was devoted to a possible confrontation with China. The Pentagon’s various strategy papers since 2017 had increasingly defined Russia and China as geopolitical rivals and adversaries, replacing the fight against global terrorism with great-power competition as a strategic priority. At the same time, the modernization of the nuclear triad begun by the Obama Administration continued and the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons was increasingly lowered by the stationing of low-yield warheads on Trident submarines, among other things.

The Strategic Conflict

Although there was little official comment, President Putin’s March 1, 2018 announcement was about Russia’s new nuclear systems. These included the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle (launched from an ICBM, it travels at 20 times the speed of sound and boasts excellent maneuverability that renders the American missile defense system essentially obsolete;” the hypersonic aeroballistic missile Kinzhal; as well as nuclear-powered cruise missiles, fast underwater drones and laser weapons—a shock to the western military establishment. Meanwhile, China has also developed its own hypersonic missiles with infrared homing technology, a capability that the American military may not have for two to three years. American satellite imagery has also located about 300 missile silos under construction in scattered locations across China, some of which may remain empty, but others would have nuclear missiles in a state of “launch on warning” to forestall a disarming surprise attack.

This is broadly the strategic background against which Putin presented two treaties to the United States and NATO on Dec. 17, demanding that they be legally binding: no further eastward expansion of NATO, and no offensive weapon systems stationed on Russia’s borders; plus guarantees that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO.

Unlike many trans-Atlantic politicians and media outlets, Gen. Harald Kujat, the former Inspector General of the German Armed Forces, believes that the gathering of some 120,000 Russian troops near the Ukrainian border—some of them, however, hundreds of kilometers away—is not indicative of an impending attack on Ukraine, but that Russia wants to demonstrate strength with this threatening backdrop in order to force negotiations with the U.S.A. and NATO on an equal footing.

So far, the United States and NATO have refused to make any commitments on Putin’s key demands, and appear only willing to make what Russia considers secondary commitments on new disarmament talks. Putin has announced “military-technical measures” in the event of a definitive refusal. In view of the fact that the stationing of potentially offensive weapon systems in the vicinity of the Russian borders in connection with NATO’s eastward enlargement—this includes, for example, the Aegis missile defense system stationed in Poland and Romania—created a situation for Russia comparable to the stationing of Soviet missiles in Cuba, the question arises as to what these “measures” might look like.

The American Russia expert Gilbert Doctorow suspects that they could include the stationing of nuclear-armed SS-26 Iskander-M short-range missiles in Belarus and Kaliningrad in order to threaten the NATO front-line states and eastern Germany in return. He further suspects Russia may plant sea-launched hypersonic Zircon nuclear-armed cruise missiles off the coast of Washington, D.C., which Russian experts have previously said could destroy the American capital so quickly the President would not have time to board Air Force One to escape. Theoretically, the Zirkon hypersonic missiles could, of course, also be used anywhere on the seven seas and are very difficult for conventional air defense to detect and intercept in view of their velocity—nine times the speed of sound—and maneuverability in flight.

So it is only logical that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock on Jan. 20, 2022 showed only 100 seconds to midnight. That’s only about a minute and a half until the nuclear apocalypse. Even though, since the escalation of the Ukraine crisis, after a deep sleep of almost 40 years, the anti-war movement has issued a whole series of appeals, public calls and open letters—most recently from 100 organizations in the U.S.A. demanding that President Biden de-escalate the tensions with Russia—the enormous extent of the threat has by no means penetrated the public consciousness.

Uncertainty about the Causes

But even among most Westerners who recognize the imminent danger, there is a lack of clarity about the underlying causes of the existential danger to human existence. They are to be found, on the one hand, in the systemic character of the crisis of the neoliberal financial system, which has now entered its hyperinflationary final phase; and on the other hand, in the claim of the financial establishment in the City of London, Wall Street and Silicon Valley to a unipolar world in which only the power interests of this establishment determine what shall happen in the “rules-based order.”

The dilemma now arises from an opposing dynamic. Since the paradigm shift of August 1971, prophetically recognized by Lyndon LaRouche—when Nixon effectively ended the Bretton Woods system by abolishing fixed exchange rates and thus paving the way for speculative profit maximization—there has been an increasing shift in the trans-Atlantic world away from investments in the productive physical economy and towards speculation in increasingly exotic derivative-based financial products, of which the most recent folly is “shifting the trillions” into the Green New Deal.

From the standpoint of the physical economy this policy—of making investments in industries with the lowest possible energy-flux density—ultimately represents an extensive destruction of capital, just like investments in the military production of weapon systems and the army. The fact that this effect is usually not recognized has to do with the confusion about monetary values, money vs. real wealth, and the illusion that the share values of listed companies say something about the productivity of the economy. Of course, it is in the interest of the yacht-owning billionaires, some of whom have long since acquired condominiums in deep-seated bunkers in Australia and elsewhere, that the bubble economy be sustained for as long as possible, even as the proportion of the population that is impoverished continues to increase, and the middle class shrinks.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and the trans-Atlantic establishment, despite all warnings—for example from Pope John Paul II—succumbed to the fantasy of having “won” the Cold War, and interpreted the “end of history” to mean that the whole world must now subject itself to the neoliberal rules-based order, there was no longer any need to keep any promises made to Russia not to expand NATO eastward. The whole spectrum of instruments for cementing the unipolar world was used: regime change, either through color revolutions or “humanitarian” wars against all governments that held other values. Victoria Nuland publicly boasted that the State Department had spent $5 billion on NGOs in Ukraine alone, which initially led to the 2004 “Orange Revolution.” When President Yanukovych refused to join the EU Association Agreement in late 2013, not least because the EU is fully linked to NATO in terms of treaties and security, the not-so-democratic side of the rules-based order came to the fore in the form of the Nazi Maidan coup of February 2014. This did not result in any annexation of Crimea by Putin, but rather a referendum by the people of Crimea, who wanted to withdraw from Kiev’s fascist policies. Even then, Putin stated that the West was actually concerned with containing Russia and that, if not in Ukraine, they would have found another excuse for doing so.

The decisive hardening towards Russia and China became visible, in 2017 at the latest, in the changed language in the security doctrines of the Pentagon and the characterization of these two countries as “enemies” and “autocracies.” While the Western institutions initially reacted to the announcement of the New Silk Road by Xi Jinping in September 2013 with an extensive blackout for an amazing four years, these institutions have now reacted to this largest infrastructure project in human history as if it were an existential threat—namely to the unipolar world!

Virtually all sanctions that have been imposed anywhere in the world unilaterally, i.e., without UN Security Council resolutions, ultimately had the chief purpose of preventing China’s economic rise and Russia’s regaining the status of world player.

The transcript of the Jan. 25 background press briefing by two unnamed White House officials shockingly reveals this intention. They present a whole spectrum of “serious economic measures”—starting at the highest level of escalation—to thwart Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy, by denying him access to all modern, advanced technologies, such as AI, quantum-computers, and any technology related to defense or aerospace, to prevent him from “diversifying” the economy beyond exporting oil and gas. The objective is the atrophy of the Russian economy.

This policy, formulated in incredibly brutal language, is nothing more than a continuation of Jeffrey Sachs’ so-called “shock therapy” of the 1990s, which had the explicit aim of reducing Russia from the status of a superpower at the time of the Soviet Union to that of a commodity-exporting Third World country. That policy was then, as it is now, a declaration of war—the only difference being that Putin is not a pathetic figure like Boris Yeltsin, pampered by the West for geopolitical motives, but a brilliant strategist who knows how to defend Russia’s interests.

The no less hateful tirades against China, which can be heard today from court scribblers of the Empire, as well as from former Maoists of the SDS era who have now risen to top positions in the Green Party, cannot change the outstanding success of the Chinese economy, which recorded a growth rate of over 8% in 2021 despite coronavirus. China has done more for human rights than any country of the so-called Western community of values, lifting 850 million people out of poverty domestically— including the Uyghurs, who now enjoy vastly better living standards and faster-than-average population growth—and offering many developing countries for the first time the chance to overcome poverty.

The silence of the same circles on the largest of all humanitarian catastrophes, triggered by Western sanctions in Afghanistan, in which one million children are starving and a total of 24 million people are at risk of dying this Winter, seals their complete discrediting.

Joint Statement by Putin and Xi

If various authors have warned that the campaigns against Russia and China could lead to even closer ties between these two countries, then rest assured that this is exactly what has now happened during Putin’s visit to the Olympic Games in China. However, there is an urgent need to remove the ideological spectacles and recognize the extraordinary opportunity presented for the whole world by the joint declaration of Presidents Putin and Xi in this extremely dangerous world situation.

The 16-page document entitled, “Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era and Global Sustainable Development,” calls for replacing geopolitical confrontation with economic cooperation as the basis for a common security policy. Both nations are calling on NATO to refrain from further expansion plans, to move beyond Cold War thinking, and to enshrine the long-term security guarantees that Russia is demanding. The role of international organizations such as the G20, BRICS, APEC and ASEAN should be strengthened, they say. Russia will cooperate in realizing China’s proposed “Global Development Initiative” and emphasizes the importance of the concept of the “community of a common destiny for mankind.”

Let’s think back to the hundred seconds before midnight on the doomsday clock: Who can deny that we are an indivisible community of destiny? In recent weeks, more level-headed voices have spoken out in favor of a new pan-European security architecture including Russia and Ukraine, which could be enshrined in a new Helsinki agreement. However, in view of the complexity of the world situation, the threat to world peace affecting all states, and the inseparability of the security of all, it is necessary to go beyond Helsinki and create an international security architecture that encompasses the security interests of all states on Earth.

This architecture must be based on the principles of the Peace of Westphalia; i.e., it must guarantee the interests of all states and, above all, their right to economic and cultural development. The maintenance of world peace presupposes a total and definitive renunciation of Malthusian politics, and requires undivided access to the achievements of scientific and technological advance for all nations. This new order— the prerequisite for the survival of the human species—requires a new paradigm of thought that must draw upon the best traditions of all cultures at the highest humanistic level.

We have a choice: Either we keep the clock ticking until the last of the hundred seconds has struck, and then there will be no one left to comment on the result; or, we can remember that we are the only known creative species in the universe, and shape our common future together.

zepp-larouche@eir.de

Russian Amb. Chumakov and Schiller Institute’s Helga Zepp-LaRouche Delivered Remarks at Memorial Wreath Laying in Honor of Alexandrov Ensemble

January 1, 2022by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Cultural renaissance updates, General, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Our cultural events, Russia, United States

Press Release:

Ambassador Dmitry Chumakov, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Founder of the International Schiller Institute, Delivered Statements at the Memorial Wreath Laying Ceremony in Honor of the Alexandrov Ensemble and Other Victims of TU-154 Plane Crash

Ambassador Dmitry Chumakov, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the international Schiller Institute gave keynote remarks on December 29, 2021, at a memorial event in honor of the Alexandrov Ensemble members who were killed in a plane crash on Christmas Day, 2016. The members of the renowned Alexandrov Ensemble – previously the Red Army Chorus — were on their way to perform in Syria during the Syrian war. The commemoration took place at the Teardrop Memorial in Bayonne, NJ – a monument donated and built by the Russian people and government in condolence to Americans for the tragedy of 9/11. The monument is named, “To the Struggle Against World Terrorism.” Ambassador Chumakov’s are found here.

Ambassador Chumakov’s remarks, available now on the website of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, noted that the cultural collaboration of the Russian and American people in events such as this yearly commemoration of the loss of the Alexandrov Ensemble, shows “that human relations and friendly ties between Russians and Americans are indissoluble.” He concluded that “Amidst a very complicated international situation, it is the humanitarian ties that strongly bring us together,” and noted particularly to the Schiller Institute and the Fire Department of the City of Bayonne that “Your contribution to the friendship and solidarity of the people of Russia and the United States cannot be overestimated.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks, read by Diane Sare, founder of the Schiller Institute NY Community Chorus, referenced President Putin’s recent interventions, and bluntly described the danger of a “reverse Cuban Missile Crisis to which the President of your country has reacted in an unmistakable fashion: he insists, rightfully, that the promises given to Russia around the time of the German Unification, that NATO would not move eastward, closer to the borders of Russia” … “were [promises which were] broken repeatedly”, and that they be “now belatedly” “restated in a written and legally binding form — at least as it concerns Ukraine and Georgia.” She closed: “The Schiller Institute fully endorses the demand by Russia that these treaties must be signed, and that the world must be pulled back from the brink of the abyss. … Let us revive the spirit of the cultural contribution of the Alexandrov Ensemble to mobilize the strength in ourselves to create a more human civilization!” Mrs. LaRouche’s full remarks are available at this link.

The event was moderated by Capt. Randy Geis of the City of Bayonne Fire Department, and the invocation and benediction prayers were presented by Reverend Dorothy Patterson of Bayonne, NJ. The laying of the wreath at the Teardrop Memorial was led by the Bayonne Fire Department, followed by a public laying of flowers to the Alexandrov and to all victims of world terrorism, added at the base of the Teardrop Memorial. Musical selections included Russian songs sung by soloists Everett Suttle, Michelle Erin, and Lisa Bryce; the Christmas Spiritual “Sister Mary had-a but One Child,” arranged by Roland Hayes; and Grechaninov’s “Praise Ye the Name of the Lord.”

The video of the event is available on the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus website.

Zepp-LaRouche: Psychopaths Are Threatening Our Existence! Germany Must Leave NATO!

December 13, 2021by madeleine in General, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche

The following is a pre-publication version of a Dec. 11 article by Helga Zepp-LaRouche which will appear in the forthcoming issue of EIR magazine.

In view of the political orientation of the new government in Berlin, it seems almost hopeless to demand Germany’s immediate exit from NATO. But if Olaf Scholz is serious about the oath of office he took two days ago when he took office as Federal Chancellor, namely that he “wants to dedicate his energies to the well-being of the German people, increase their benefits and protect them from harm,” then he has to set this exit in motion immediately. Because in NATO, and especially in the U.S.A. and Great Britain, there are influential forces who, for geopolitical reasons, toy with the existence of Germany and beyond that, of all of humanity. The real reason for the global military muscle play on multiple fronts is the systemic collapse of the neoliberal system, which they are trying to cover up with a complex confetti shower of anti-Russian and anti-Chinese narratives.

Some weeks ago, a media scenario was set up about the alleged preparation for a Russian military invasion in Ukraine, on the existence of which the National Intelligence Director of the U.S.A., Avril Haines, tried to convince the NATO ambassador in Brussels, but Russia emphatically denied it. For weeks there were simultaneously a series of provocations—such as a NATO maneuver in which a nuclear attack on Russia was rehearsed and U.S. planes flew within 20 kilometers of the Russian border—as well as drone attacks in eastern Ukraine and daring “reconnaissance flights” in Black Sea.

Russia accused NATO of crossing several “red lines” in Ukraine and of failing to respond to protests about it. In the run-up to the virtual summit proposed by President Biden at the height of the tension between Biden and President Putin, Putin demanded legally binding agreements that NATO would not expand further east toward the Russian border, which Biden initially rejected with the argument that one does not accept Russia’s “red lines”; while NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg emphasized that Russia has no right to develop “spheres of influence.”

Amid the escalation of tensions, the second-highest Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, threatened a first strike with nuclear weapons: “Military action could mean that we stand off with our ships in the Black Sea and we rain destruction on Russian military capability…. We don’t rule out first use nuclear action.”

Tulsi Gabbard, former Congresswoman from Hawaii and a lieutenant colonel in the Hawaii Army National Guard, commented on Wicker’s tirade: “Anyone who would propose or even consider what he is saying as an option, must be insane, a sociopath or a sadist.” Wicker is no exception with his proposals, which would destroy not only the American people and the whole world, but also the Ukrainians, whose democracy is supposedly being protected. The same rhetoric comes from the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the administration and the media, the same neoconservatives and neoliberals who dragged the country into the regime change wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

One can only agree with Tulsi Gabbard. Anyone who has followed the escalating propaganda against Russia and China, which has come from practically the entire political spectrum in the United States in recent years, will be reminded of the saying, that whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

The Reality of Ukraine and Iran

The content of the two-hour conversation between Biden and Putin is not yet public. In any case, Biden contacted four NATO partners regarding the legally binding assurance of a limitation on NATO, and announced further consultation with all NATO partners. And of course, all European governments know the true story of the Victoria Nuland-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the active role of neo-Nazis from the tradition of Stepan Bandera in this coup, and the lie about the alleged annexation of Crimea by Putin, which was in reality the sovereign choice (by voting) of the people in Crimea that in view of the neo-Nazi terror in Kiev, they would rather belong to Russia. Perhaps it is time for the European governments to admit the truth about the events in Ukraine, in which they were naturally involved with their charitable foundations, before World War III breaks out on a fake narrative of Putin’s alleged aggression.

But even if the acute Ukraine crisis can be temporarily defused—Biden speaks of postponing Ukraine’s NATO membership for ten years—the acute danger of a world war remains.

The second source of danger from which a war could spark and spread is the situation surrounding the nuclear program in Iran and the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—ed.] treaty, which the Trump Administration had terminated. Although CIA Director William Burns has just confirmed that the secret service is not aware of any indications that Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program, Israel also sees the civilian nuclear program—to which Iran is entitled under international law—as a threat to its lifestyle, as Israel’s Defense Secretary Benny Gantz pointed out during his visit to the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Austin affirmed that the United States was determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

But the most dangerous situation is undoubtedly the U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan. After the world got dangerously close to World War III as the situation in Ukraine worsened, a number of American political experts spoke out—and this is new—about the American habit of staging pretexts for the initiation of military operations. The retired diplomat Peter Van Buren referred to the explosion of the battleship USS Maine in the port of Havana in 1898 (the cause of the Spanish-American War was not a Spanish terrorist attack, but a boiler explosion); the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, with which the United States entered the long-planned Vietnam War; and of course the 2003 Iraq War, in which everyone involved knew beforehand that the WMD story was a lie, as Nancy Pelosi has publicly admitted.

Endless Wars Are Not ‘Human Rights’

With regard to China, Van Buren wrote, it “appears to be the next war now searching for a reason.” Since China refuses to invade Taiwan and thus provide a pretext for war fever in the United States, he wrote that there could be a less problematic outcome, an arms race for hypersonic weapons. “But what if the U.S. has its mind set on a real war, as in Vietnam and after 9/11, and needs a palatable reason to be found?” asks Van Buren, only expressing what has long since become obvious.

Can it be assumed that these and many other “false flag” incidents are known to Western governments and parties? Apart from maybe a few inexperienced backbenchers—absolutely! That is why the participants who took part in President Biden’s “Democracy Summit,” which should more likely be called hypocrisy summit, are about as trustworthy as the organizers of the notorious “carpet bus rides,” where plush carpets are foisted upon unsuspecting pensioners as “real Persians.”

The idea that this is an alliance of the “good guys,” a community of values that campaigns for democracy, human rights and freedom, against the “bad guys,” the autocratic regimes that oppress their populations, is an advertising story with which a spoiled product is intended to be disguised with cosmetic plasters and sold.

At least since the U.S. administration and its “allies” left Afghanistan in an absolutely catastrophic state after 20 years of war (withholding money that belongs to the Afghans and thus exacerbating the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet, where 24 million people are threatened with death from starvation and from winter’s cold), none of these flawless democrats should use the words “human rights” any more. We should speak of the millions of dead, injured and refugees who were created by the endless wars built on lies. And what about Julian Assange, whose only crime was exposing war crimes? He is being murdered by legal means before the eyes of the world.

The list could be much extended: The martial “pushback” policy of the EU with Frontex against refugees, who are only refugees because they are the victims of the “endless wars”; the refugee camps, which Pope Francis compared to concentration camps; the consequences of the Malthusian policy of the Klaus Schwabs of this world, which sees the attempt to overcome poverty as the greatest threat to the “climate” and thus says any development must be stalled for decades through “conditionalities.”

On the other hand, the success story of the “autocratic” governments does not look so bad: China has not only lifted 850 million people of its own population out of extreme poverty and given developing countries the chance to overcome poverty and underdevelopment for the first time. The United States has had almost 800,000 coronavirus deaths with a population of 330 million people, while China has fewer than 5,000 deaths with 1.4 billion people. Perhaps—the Eurocentric carpet sellers might want to think about this—is human life worth more to the “autocratic” regimes?

Germans should really urgently draw the conclusion that remaining in a military alliance, which in the event of a crisis will result in their annihilation, may not be such a good idea. There is, indeed, an alternative to NATO’s policy of confrontation which has been obsolete since 1991. There is an urgent need to establish an international security architecture that takes into account the security interests of all states.

zepp-larouche@eir.de

Italian Endorsements of Schiller Institute’s Operation Ibn Sina

November 29, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Italy, Media coverage of our activity, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

MILAN, Nov. 23, 2021 (EIRNS)—Alessia Ruggeri, chairwoman of UPI Italia, an association of small and medium-sized enterprises, and a renowned trade unionist in Sicily, today endorsed Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s proposed “Operation Ibn Sina” for Afghanistan with a press release which was published today in Il Corriere di Sicilia, a daily read in all of Sicily and is expected to be published in the next days in other Southern Italian papers. {Read the article here.} The press release is entitled “Helga Zepp-LaRouche launches Operation Ibn Sina to save the Afghan people” and reads:

“The Committee for the Republic, through its spokeswoman Alessia Ruggeri, endorsed the Ibn Sina initiative of the Schiller Institute. ’I believe that the world is experiencing a quite sad political, economic and social moment, with the complicity of mainstream media. We have to regain the lucidity and ability to intervene in support of a right cause. The Afghan people are paying the price of international geopolitical strategies which deny their inalienable rights guaranteed by the UN Charter.

“ ‘I therefore accept with great honor the invitation of the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites to be a part of it and give a significant European contribution,’ Alessia Ruggeri concludes, thanking Liliana Gorini, chairwoman of Movisol, an Italian political party inspired by Lyndon LaRouche.

“Also the lawyer Roberto Zappia endorses the appeal in support of the Afghan people, first exploited for the affirmation of the territorial and political hegemony of the world powers and subsequently abandoned to the voracity of the finance and to its cynical ruthless logics.”

The press release goes on to quote Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Operation Ibn Sina from the recent Schiller Institute conference and Dr. Joycelyn Elders on the recent activities of the Committee Coincidence of Opposites, particularly in Africa. {See Dr. Elders’ call, Open Letter to Virologists and Medical Experts.}

Messages from the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Movement to Yemen’s “First BRICS Day Conference”

November 28, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, BRICS updates, Cultural renaissance updates, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, United States, Yemen

Nov. 23, 2021 (EIRNS)—From Helga Zepp-LaRouche:

Your Excellency Prime Minister Saleh bin Habtour; Your Excellency Mr. Hisham Sharaf, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Yemen, a good friend of the Schiller Institute; Dear Members of the Yemeni BRICS Youth Parliament and its Chairman Mr. Fouad Al-Ghaffari:

Ladies and gentlemen who are gathered in the Capital of Yemen, Sanaa, I send you the most heartfelt greetings from Germany!

We are fully aware of the tremendous strain you are under as a result of the criminal blockade, which, as long as it continues, means that all this talk in the West about a “rules-based-order” is worse than meaningless. Because if they condone, de facto, this blockade, they condone the result—which is the death and suffering of a very large number of [the] Yemeni people! You have been incredibly courageous and inspiring for all members of the Schiller Institute around the world, by not giving up your fight to have a better future for your country and the world!

In these days, the New Silk Road launched by President Xi Jinping will have its 8th anniversary and the role of the BRICS in the world has increased to become a more and more influential element in world history. I am sure that Yemen will be an important part of it in the not-so-distant future, and [that] your organization will have been the decisive element in having accomplished that, and in that way reconnecting the glorious history of Yemen with a hopeful future.

The Schiller Institute has launched “Operation Ibn Sina,” which is to bring modern health systems to Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria and as a synonym, to have a renaissance of the period, when your region of the world carried the torch of universal progress for all of mankind.

I also like to [recall] how proud my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, was of your unchanging industriousness for study of his scientific method, and I would like to encourage you to expand it, and make sure that it will have entry into the education system of your country. Yemen will be the birthplace of many geniuses, which will transform humanity into becoming truly human.

The old paradigm, a world divided by geopolitical aggression and the rule of a few over the many, is clearly coming to an end, and the new paradigm of cooperation, and a dialogue of cultures is becoming stronger and stronger. We join with you, and an increasing number of countries and forces in the effort to bring this change about, and give you the solemn promise, that we will always remain your true comrades-in-arms, until you have gained the sovereignty of Yemen, and are truly free.

With great affection, in the name of the entire international Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Major Breakthrough in Sanaa, Yemen: Defying New Wave of Anglo-Saudi Bombardments!

November 28, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Cultural renaissance updates, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Helga media coverage or interview, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Media coverage of our activity, Yemen

Nov. 23, 2021 (EIRNS)—Today, leaders of the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Movement joined other international figures in participating in a conference called to celebrate the “First BRICS Day” in the capital of Yemen, Sanaa, under the auspices of Yemeni Prime Minister of Yemen Abdulaziz Saleh bin Habtour. The conference, held at the Emergency Medical College, had been organized by the Yemeni BRICS Youth Parliament and its Chairman and long-time collaborator with the Schiller Institute, Mr. Fouad Al-Ghaffari, to celebrate Yemen’s commitment to securing full independence and development by working with the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—and playing a key role as part of the New Silk Road initiated by China.

The event took place as the Saudis were continuing a new wave of bombardment targeting the capital, Sanaa. Yet the Yemeni government considered it so important that the Prime Minister, joined by the Ministers of Vocational Education, Foreign Affairs, and Culture, all participated, joined by Yemeni parliamentarians and other national figures. The Yemeni official news agency Saba News has already published a lively wire report on the event, which conveys the deep commitment of Yemen’s leadership to help end today’s dominance of the Western liberal system, freeing nations to develop. The Prime Minister expressed his thanks to the friends in Russia, China, and the other speakers who sent messages of solidarity from Germany, India, France, Iraq, and the United States of America. (The Saba News item is linked here.)

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, was the first of the 11 international guests whose recorded video message was presented, following the opening remarks by the Dean of the Emergency Medical College. She was introduced as the New Silk Road Lady. She was followed by Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, and Chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation. Jacques Cheminade was next, representing the Solidarité et Progress, presented as a former French presidential candidate. The Schiller Institute’s Hussein Askary followed with the video presentation on the history of collaboration with the BRICS Youth on the Yemen Reconstruction Plan “Operation Felix” and the LaRouche School of Physical Economics.

There was a high-level Russian representation, with a message from Anatoly Karpov, chess legend and member of Duma. Larisa Zelentsova, the Russian President of the International Alliance of BRICS Strategic Projects (BRICS Alliance) (iabrics.org) sent a video message. A message was also sent by Albert Zhukov, founder of the Golden Chariot Transport Award. Purnima Anand, President of the BRICS International Forum, India, also sent a message.

Two messages were sent from the United States, one by LaRouche movement organizers Marsha and Doug Mallouk, and one by independent candidate for U.S. Senate in New York, Diane Sare.

These speeches and messages were preceded with a ceremony where PM bin Habtour received the BRICS Youth Award and Transport Golden Chariot award. Minister of Foreign Affairs Hisham Sharaf signed the first copy of the new edition of the Yemeni BRICS “Sustainable Development University Curriculum,” which is a compilation by Fouad Al-Ghaffari of projects and works in economics centered around Lyndon LaRouche’s economic method. A chapter is dedicated to what the authors have characterized as “LaRouche’s Five Keys of Progress” which are a reworking of the “Metrics of Progress” from the EIR Special Report “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, 2014.” Another chapter is dedicated to the latter special report. A chapter includes a short version of “Operation Felix” for the reconstruction of Yemen from 2018, completed in 2018 as a joint project of the Schiller Institute, BRICS Yemen, and the Yemeni Investment General Authority.

Many references to Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute’s resolutions and calls regarding Yemen are also in the book. A chapter is dedicated to the Arabic LaRouche School of Physical Economics launched by Askary, with links. The 160-page book in Arabic language has a general outline of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030. But on every page the LaRouche Five keys are superimposed on the 15 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Following the statements by the foreign VIPs, Al-Ghaffari made a 15-minute presentation on the history and nature of the Yemen BRICS operations since they were founded in December 2014.

The Minister of Vocational Education also made remarks, and the conference was concluded by a statement by Prime Minister bin Habtour.

First reports from the event are that it was a surprise for everyone, due to the high-level of international representation from intellectual and scientific layers. This is a great victory for the people and leadership of Yemen on behalf of all humanity.

And it is a celebration of seven years of hard work and cooperation with the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Movement, which began when Fouad Al-Ghaffari attended EIR’s release of its Special Report “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-bridge,” in Washington, D.C., keynoted by Helga Zepp-LaRouche. After meeting with Marsha and Doug Mallouk, he carried the copy of the report he purchased back to Yemen to start this new organization to teach Yemeni youth as well as policy-makers about the LaRouche economic method, the New Silk Road / Belt and Road Initiative, and the BRICS. A few months later, in March 2015, the war of aggression by Saudi Arabia and the UAE was launched with the aid of the U.S. and Britain. Despite this criminal war and subsequent murderous blockade, the BRICS Youth of Yemen continued their studies and mobilization of government agencies.

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Project Ibn Sina: Restore Afghanistan’s Ancient Greatness

November 26, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Afghanistan, Agriculture, Economic development updates, General updates, Healthcare, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Nov. 21 (EIRNS)–This is the edited transcript of the speech delivered by Mrs. LaRouche, the founder of the international Schiller Institutes, on November 17 to the online conference, “Humanitarian Roundtable for Afghanistan,” sponsored by the Council on Global Relations (CGR) located in Metro Washington D.C. The conference was convened by the CGR to address “the need for urgent assistance and a shift in narrative,” and to “make a difference in the lives of 39 million Afghan people facing a collapsed economy in the heart of a brutal winter coming out of 40 years of war.”

Hello to all of you.
I just want to state emphatically that the money that is being withheld by the U.S. Treasury—but also Commerzbank, Bundesbank, and the Bank for International Settlements—this money belongs to the Afghan people. I think that this is what we have to face, given the situation that was pointed out by both Dr. Beasley [of the UN World Food Program] and Dr. Tedros from the World Health Organization, that 97% of the people are in danger of being food insecure. And food insecure is just another word for starving to death.

Then you have a health crisis—95% of the people have no access to healthcare. And that is happening in a condition of famine and of the COVID crisis. So, to withhold that money for any more days means you’re risking the lives of people. So, I think the first step must be an absolute demand that the money which rightfully belongs to the Afghan people must be released without condition. I think this idea of giving it piecemeal and making conditions and so forth, that just will contribute to chaos. It will force the Taliban to resort to opium production, which they do not want to do. I think I mentioned in a previous discussion that Pino Arlacchi, the UN special representative in the fight against drugs in 2000, had an agreement with the Taliban, in which they agreed to stop all opium production.

The increase of the opium production occurred during the NATO presence—especially this year, opium production went up by nine percent in the period before the Taliban took over. Then the price shot up to the sky, because there was an expectation that Taliban would not continue the opium production. The price went up because of potential scarcity. So, the people who are withholding the money from the Taliban are pushing the opium trade! That should be stated very, very clearly.

Secondly, if you’re now not supporting a government that you may not like politically—but it’s there—and if you don’t support them being successful, you are encouraging the opposition. And what is the opposition? It has been largely terrorist groups, and you know that terrorism will spread, not only in Afghanistan but throughout the region. The big question is that maybe that is the intention, as a geopolitical force against the countries in the region, especially Russia and China.

So, the people who are withholding the money—and I want to be very, very clear, because there is no point in talking about nice things if that is not settled first—the people who are withholding the money are doing it completely illegally. And I think they should be held accountable. Any death which occurs from here on will be the guilt of the people withholding the money. And I think that has to be stated first.

I think if we can agree on that, then I’m willing to talk about a better vision. Psychologically, I can understand that it is very difficult for the NATO countries and their armies, after having lost a war having been in the country for 20 years. I talked to some people who were there, and I understand that this is a trauma. They did not expect it, and they are having a very hard time switching to another mental attitude. But that has to occur if Afghanistan is to be saved.

I have thought a lot about what can be done to give hope to a country that has gone through hell for the last 40 years. And really through hell for the last several 100 years—going back to the Great Game, to Brzezinski and his Islamic card that started this whole present disaster. People in Afghanistan have lived through trauma, and they need something to put the country back together with a beautiful vision. This region of the world was once known as the land of the 1,000 cities. Admittedly, this was on the order of 3,000 years ago, but there was once a period in which this region was one of the cradles of mankind. I think to be grounded in one’s own great tradition is a very important stepping-stone for building a positive future.

Then, naturally, there are many poets one could mention. The fact is that there is a health crisis right now of biblical dimensions, a pandemic which is unprecedented in terms of the potential of where it may go. So, my idea is: It has to start with the modern health system. Afghanistan needs modern hospitals. They can be built in two weeks. The Chinese proved in Wuhan that you can build a modern hospital of 1,000 beds in two weeks. Then you need doctors, modern, educated doctors, nurses, health workers. A lot of the diaspora Afghanis are doctors. They are in the United States, they are in Europe. They can be mobilized to come back and help to build a modern health system. And that modern health system can be the beginning of an economic transformation. If you are going to have a modern health system, you need water, you need electricity, you need other infrastructure. But that building of a modern health system can become the engine of hope and the engine of economic reconstruction. This, however, needs to have a beautiful vision, an idea of what that means.

Many years ago, I studied the works of Avicenna, or Ibn Sina as he is called in the Arab world. He was one of the great universal thinkers. He lived from 980 A.D. to 1038 A.D. He was not only an extraordinary thinker; he developed philosophical conceptions which had influence way beyond the Arab world, and to the Mediterranean, and to European thinkers. But especially it is known that he was an extraordinary physician. He wrote several medical books, and a canon on medicine which was the standard work in Europe until the 17th Century, and in some cases even the 19th Century. He developed an idea of the anatomy of the body, the nerve system, the psychology. He knew about new diseases like breast cancer. He developed the connection between muscles and nerves. He wrote a whole book about modern medicines based on herbs and other such things. But he is famously known to have been one of the great sons of Afghanistan.

He was probably born in Bactria. There are also some people who say, no, he was born in Bukhara, or maybe in Persia. It does not matter. His father was for sure born in Bactria, and he is for sure a son of the region.

He is an example of how somebody coming from Afghanistan can be a contributor to universal history, by moving mankind forward, by developing a whole new, modern medical science. So, I’m suggesting that the effort to save Afghanistan be called Operation Ibn Sina, because it somehow captures both the proud tradition and also a vision that Afghanistan again can be a pearl of the nations of the world. Afghanistan will be contributing something to other nations. You need to give people who have gone through such hell a vision of a beautiful future.

I think that would capture the imagination of a lot of the people, both inside Afghanistan and out. The danger is terrorism and drugs, and you want to have an image which presents a completely different future, one based on the intellectual tradition which made this country a great country in the past, and it means that it will again be a great country in the future.

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CGTN Interviews Helga Zepp-LaRouche on “Western Perspectives On China’s Whole-process People’s Democracy”

November 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, China, Economic development updates, General updates, Helga media coverage or interview, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Video, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Media coverage of our activity

Nov. 3 (EIRNS) – CGTN yesterday published a six-minute video excerpt, with accompanying text, of an interview with international Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. The following is a copy-edited version of that CGTN transcript.

Editor’s note: The concept of “whole-process people’s democracy” was first put forward about two years ago during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to a civic center in Shanghai. Since then, some Western media outlets have been attacking it for being hollow and misleading. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and president of the Schiller Institute, shares her thoughts on the concept. The opinions expressed in the video are her own and not necessarily those of CGTN.

CGTN: Why does the Western media keep attacking the “whole-process people’s democracy”?

Zepp-LaRouche: My understanding of this “whole-process people’s democracy” is that it is an inner party democratic process whereby you identify, on the basis of meritocracy, which are the most qualified people for the job and who are the [best] servants to the common good. And I think there is an empirical proof that this method is truthful, because China was able to lift 850 million people out of extreme poverty. That is the greatest contribution to history I know of. But to lift so many people out of poverty and also to offer that to the developing countries is exactly what is the crime in the view of the Western people who attack China on this point, because China has overcome extreme poverty in its own country, and it is now helping developing countries to do likewise. This is exactly the same mindset which was the mindset of Malthus since the time of the British East India Company which, as you know, was behind the Opium Wars against China.

It is not because of what they say. It is because the Chinese model has upset the whole world order. Because you have offered for the first time to the developing countries the possibility to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, and they wanted to keep the colonial order. I think this is really the bottom line of the accusations against China. I’ve been in China many times, and my impression was always that the spirit of the people is extremely positive [and] optimistic [about] the future. Therefore, the CPC must be doing something very right. If you ask people in the West, most people are pessimistic about the future. So, I think that expresses, in my view, more truthfulness than any of the propagandistic lines in the mainstream media.

CGTN: How do you see Chinese democracy and Western democracy?

Zepp-LaRouche: Democracy sounds very nice, but in many cases, it is a label, and you had better look what is the content of the bottle on which the label is pasted. Because nowadays the different parties are mostly lobbying for different interests. I would like to read you another quote from George Washington’s “Farewell Address” as president of the United States in 1796, where he warned of the evil spirit of party in general.

He said, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

I think that is what we are seeing right now in the West. In many countries, you don’t have real democracy, but you have [the] form of despotism like in the United States. The polarization between the Republicans and the Democrats has torn the country completely apart. In Germany, where you have now the effort to form a new coalition, the voters will not get as government what he or she voted for, because they form coalitions as they want.

There were periods, however, where the Western democracy did function. This was the case in the beginning of the American Revolution, and it was the case with the Fifth Republic of Charles de Gaulle. But unfortunately, we, in the West, have moved very far away from these more noble conceptions, so we are more in the system of despotism which George Washington warned about.

CGTN: Can China and the West maintain good and stable relations?

Zepp-LaRouche: I think that there are indeed different models of democracy, according to the specific tradition and culture. It is very possible for these different systems to cooperate. However, this will only function, if they are united by a higher one [that] must be in the interest of all of mankind. I think the model closest to that is what President Xi Jinping has proposed – a community with a shared future, because that includes this idea of humanity as a whole. There is in the West an idea which is very similar, or actually identical, and that is the philosophical idea of a thinker from the 15th century, Nicholas of Cusa, the coincidence of opposites, which is the idea that since human beings are the only species capable of creative reason, that we always can think the higher one, a level of unity where all the differences disappear. So I think we need to enter a dialogue why this concept of the coincidence of opposites and President Xi Jinping’s idea of [a community with a shared future] are one and the same idea. And once we agree on that, I think cooperation will be very easy.

Civilization Itself Is at Stake: Will We Rise to the Challenge?

April 15, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), Russia, United States, World war danger updates

Civilization Itself Is at Stake: Will We Rise to the Challenge?

Escalating tensions with Russia, driven by Ukrainian’s suicidal push for NATO membership, U.S. encouragement, and the U.S. military itself, threatens — despite President Biden’s reaching out to President Putin for an in-person summit — to explode into war, nuclear war. A provocative visit of former U.S. government officials to Taiwan adds more fuel to the fire of China’s cross-strait relations. Economic lending into the real economy by U.S. banks withers, even as they are showered with money. Inflation accelerates, and a blowout of the trans-Atlantic financial system is inevitable. Death by starvation stalks the impoverished inhabitants of war-zones Syria and Yemen.

Will these crises culminate in what would become nuclear conflict, a devastation of the human race, or will a new paradigm overthrow the oligarchical structures that drive conflict? What flanks can you create to achieve that happier outcome?

In her weekly Schiller Institute webcast discussion, Helga Zepp-LaRouche responded to the urgent call to the world by Cardinal Mario Zenari in Syria for the world to come to the aid of the Syrian people. More than 90% of Syrians are below the level of extreme poverty, and many are in danger of losing their lives due to famine. (Zenari’s Time is Running Out.) The last decade of war, the unjust sanctions, and the Covid pandemic have created an absolutely intolerable condition of suffering for the Syrian people.

Similar horrors confront Yemen, where the agonizing reality of hunger is conveyed in the powerful documentary {Hunger Ward}, referred to by the head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, who saw children dying before his very eyes in the hospital, and he was unable to help.

In both Syria and Yemen, the results of supposedly “humanitarian interventionist” wars — and there is nothing humanitarian about them! — conducted under the guise of defending the people from murderous governments, are genocidal. Was U.S. military intervention in Syria driven by Assad’s chemical weapon murder of the people there? No, that was not the reason, and the claims about the attacks were not true. As Col. (ret.) Richard Black (USA) has explained, the plan for regime change in Syria was developed ten years before the 2011 destabilization, as part of a policy of regime change in the entire region, comprising Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya.

The narrative about the causes of the war is completely wrong.

But even leaving that aside, start from the current humanitarian situation: “When you have a people about to die, and the world does absolutely nothing, that means the people watching that are {morally unfit to survive.} And I’m crying out to you to help us make a mobilization to get rid of the “Caesar” sanctions and to have the immediate reconstruction of Syria.”

In contrast, the so-called donors’ conference in Brussels raised a few billion dollars, but it was an absolute charade. The funds will {not} go to the Syrian government, but rather to neighboring countries that have taken in refugees, to NGOs, and to opposition groups. But, as Cardinal Zenari says, without a {reconstruction}, there will be no end to the misery. Peace through development is the only way out of the crisis.

And we know how to do this! The Schiller Institute has worked for half a century on plans for the development of Southwest Asia, dating back to Lyndon LaRouche’s 1975 “Oasis Plan” proposal. Since then, the LaRouche movement has developed a plan for Syria (“Project Phoenix“), a plan for Yemen (“Operation Felix“), all in the context of bringing Southwest Asia into a development paradigm of the New Silk Road / Belt and Road Initiative.

Against this potential stands the Caesar sanctions, based on a lie. Photographs supposedly showing victims of torture carried out by the Assad government were used as evidence to push through these brutal sanctions policy. But these photographs were mainly of Syrian soldiers killed by al-Qaeda-linked groups! This is not the first time such fabrications have been presented. Saddam Hussein’s forces were accused of ripping babies out of incubators in Kuwait. This was used to start the 1989 Iraq War. Then we had the “yellow cake” and other supposed evidence of Saddam Hussein’s program to create weapons of mass destruction — again, all lies. Then we had the lies from the White Helmets about the supposed use by Assad of chemical weapons.

Zepp-LaRouche demanded: “This must stop and the Caesar sanctions must be lifted. And all the members of Congress who do not lift these sanctions make themselves complicit in every death that occurs in the region…

“This has reached the point where either the world wakes up and we start to remedy this, or we will not survive, because of our own moral failure as a human species.

“I call on you: work with the Schiller Institute. Work with its Committee on the Coincidence of Opposites, which is working to get aid programs and reconstruction.

“I appeal to you: get in contact with the Schiller Institute and respond to the call by Cardinal Zenari, which has not been covered much at all by the Western press, which alone should show the one-sidedness of the media, which we must overcome.”

Will you answer the call? Become a member of the Schiller Institute and work to make its vision a reality.

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