Helga Zepp-LaRouche

In Helga Zepp LaRouche’s year-end webcast, she opened by reviewing the most significant developments of the last weeks, and what these mean for the year ahead. She highlighted the positive potential for the deepening of cooperative relations among Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi:

1. The promise of the Trump-Putin relationship can be advanced by Trump’s participation in events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the victory over fascism. Also of importance will be talks on arms limitations, as Russia now can deploy the Avangard hypersonic missile system, making existing U.S. counter strategies obsolete;

2. Improved relationship with China, beginning with Phase I trade agreement. This is targeted by the geopoliticians, who see the rise of China as a threat, with the Economist presenting the British war plan in their last issue.

She also spoke of the dirty tricks being run by Democrats on impeachment, which risk the party’s future; and of the Sword of Damocles dangling over the financial system, which requires the implementation of LaRouche’s Four Laws to avoid a crash.

In conclusion, she spoke of how these dangers and opportunities bring us to recognize the absolutely unique contributions of Lyndon LaRouche, especially his scientific contributions which refuted the imperial neo-Malthusianism which is pushed by today’s fascist geopoliticians. His “There Are No Limits to Growth” is essential reading for those serious about overcoming the anti-human green policies pushed by financial figures such as Carney and Lagarde.

TRANSCRIPT

HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute: Welcome to our webcast with our founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Today is Dec. 31, 2019, the last day of the decade, and what would hopefully be the beginning of a new year, with a bright future for mankind. But that’s still questionable. As we’ll be discussing today, there’s a great opportunity, but the dangers that continue with the geopolitical doctrines that are popping up everywhere.

So, let’s start with the situation with Russia, Helga, because there were what you described as “baby steps” taken with the most recent Trump-Putin discussion. Where do you see this going?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think that people at the beginning of the year, which will be tomorrow, always start with deeper thoughts than usual: Where should this year go? What should be accomplished? What are the dangers? And I think President Xi Jinping, in his New Year’s speech of today, actually, said that the coming year will be a milestone year.  And I would even take it a step further: I say, that everything will depend on what will happen with the impeachment process in the United States, which is around the Russia and China question of the relations between the United States and these two countries; will the crash happen? Can we make a reform in time? And by the end of this year, I think a lot of strategic decisions will have been made which will determine if the world is on a way of a big confrontation and possible war, or if we can use this coming year to put the world into order and establish a completely new set of international relations.

Now, it is very clear that the three presidents, Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping, are working in their own way to establish a good relation among these three countries, and I think this is actually the most important strategic question, because once you have an accord among these three countries, I think every other problem in the world can be tackled — not solved immediately, and it’s not overcoming all difficulties, but you have the precondition that you can solve the strategic questions.

Since you mentioned the first “baby step,” or one of the baby steps, I think it’s quite important that Trump and Putin had another very useful telephone call, where Putin thanked Trump for having provided information which helped to not have a terrorist attack over the New Year period in St. Petersburg; two Russian nationals were arrested as a result of it, and the head of the FSB, the Russian secret service, reported that there has been in the recent period an intensification of collaboration among these security forces. So this is very, very positive.

Also, I would think that, reflecting a direct intervention by Putin with tacit approval of Trump, the fact that the situation in Ukraine is easing up a little bit: There was a prisoner exchange between the Kiev government and the Donbas region. There was a treaty between Russia and Ukraine that for five years, there will be the delivery of natural gas through Ukraine to Europe, so these are baby steps which are going in the right direction.

But I think the really big question which is coming up in April and May is the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism; and there, you have naturally, the big event, the 75th anniversary celebration on May 9 in Moscow, to which Putin repeatedly invited President Trump, and Trump basically expressed great interest to go there, even if details have not been decided. But there is also on April 25, the meeting at the Elbe, and this has a very big emotional importance for the Russians, because this was the first time at the end of World War II, where the U.S. and the Soviet soldiers met at the Elbe, and this was a very difficult moment, but a moment which turned into great joy, and it has an enormous significance: Because simple soldiers were embracing each other and made a solemn commitment at the Elbe that they would put all their efforts in trying all they could that something so horrible as Nazism and the Second World War would never ever happen again. And they invoked the “Spirit of the Elbe,” to say that this is something where all nations of the world — not just the United States and Russia — but all nations of the world should really think that from now on, all conflicts must be solved peacefully.

There will be a big celebration for two days [April 24-25] in Torgau, and also there, Putin has invited Trump to attend. And I think that given the fact that this is really a way of improving the relationship between Russia and the United States, on the highest level, namely, with a solemn commitment to never have war again, that we actually really want to support this idea for Trump to go to both these events — and all other leaders and people of good will. Because 75 years after World War II, it is time to return to this idea of “Never Again!” to never again have Nazism, to never again have conflict resolution through war. And since Trump is committed to ending the endless wars, and, obviously, not have a big war with the Russians — I mean, he has said that the disarmament discussion around nuclear weapons is the most important strategic question number one; I think the Russians recently have proposed to even include their new, hypersonic missile, the Avangard, which has been now made operational, to include that in the New START discussions, which I think is very, very important. Because the development of these hypersonic missiles is really upsetting the applecart of the effort to have a global missile defense system which includes the illusion of fighting and winning a limited nuclear war, which is completely upset by this Avangard missile, because it does not follow a ballistic trajectory and therefore it totally tips off the missile defense system. And the Russians now offering to include that Avangard in the New START Treaty negotiations, I think is an absolutely important signal and signal for hope.

I think that the U.S.-Russia relationship is coming center stage in this coming period in April-May, and I would appeal to all people of good will to agree and stop this Russophobia, stop this demonization of Russia, and understand that the improvement in the relationship between these two largest nuclear powers is the absolute first precondition to maintaining world peace.

SCHLANGER: The other key relationship you talked about is that between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping of China. It appears as though there will be a meeting in January to finalize the phase one of the trade deal. There are a lot of important things coming out of China — I know that one of the things President Xi spoke about in his New Year’s address was the importance of lifting 10 million more people out of poverty during 2019. Helga, how important is it that this trade deal go ahead. And it’s clear that this is really a sticking point with the geopoliticians that are doing everything they can to stop the Trump-Xi relationship, just as they have to stop the Trump-Putin relationship.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Obviously, that is the big problem for the geopoliticians, because the rise of China is regarded by them as a threat to their geopolitical control of the world; while Xi Jinping again offered in his New Year speech that the Belt and Road Initiative is open for all countries — and that includes, obviously, the United States. So I would really urge people to read this speech by Xi Jinping themselves, because it’s a very impressive review of the accomplishments of China in the year 2019. I cannot even go through all the aspects: you know, the beefing up of the various economic development zones, the Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin triangular which is a complete overhauling and modernization of the Beijing area. then the area of Guangdong-Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Zuhai-Macao-Hong Kong — that region is, despite the troubles in the Hong Kong, actually the motor of the world economy. This is the most advanced technologies anywhere in the world, and the powerhouse of the Belt and Road Initiative. And various other development zones. And he made also a pledge that in 2020, China will fulfill its promise to alleviate poverty in all rural areas and eliminate the last pockets of poverty in China. And given the fact that there are, I think, only 7 million poor people left in China, this is an incredible perspective, and there’s no reason not to believe it, because they have already lifted 850 million people out of poverty in the last decades.

This was a very important speech, and people who are subject to the anti-China propaganda, as well as the anti-Russia propaganda, should read that speech of Xi Jinping, and just think about it, and think what it means for not only China, but for the world as a whole, that China is taking such a constructive role.

Now, obviously, this is a thorn in the side of the British Empire, which has shown its face in Hong Kong in the most clear way, because British colonialist powers still think that Hong Kong should belong to them. And there was an article, actually only a couple of days ago, in the London Economist, which I also would encourage people to read, because sometimes you have to read crucial pieces to understand — and this is sort of a war game plan for what the British want to do in respect to Trump and China in the coming year. They say: Well, on the one side, nobody can really say that Trump is not a hawk, because, after all, in the 2016 campaign, he was very anti-China, he imposed tariffs, he imposed sanctions in the context of Huawei, but, really, he does not blame China for the trade deficit; he actually says that the Chinese leaders were smart to use loopholes, and so forth, and this would create a gap between him and his own officials, who obviously do have a much more hawkish attitude against China than Trump.

But then they say, gleefully, well, you know, events in the coming year will drive Trump into a cold war confrontation with China, because when the Hong Kong riots continue, eventually the mainland troops will have to “crack skulls” (and they use this martial language), then the Republicans in the U.S. Congress will side with the Democrats to impose sanctions on Chinese officials and taking away the special status of Hong Kong in terms of trade relations; then the human rights campaign against Xinjiang will escalate; then you will have a Tibet succession fight because the Dalai Lama is already 85 and that is coming close; the crisis with Taiwan will escalate, and also in the South China Sea. And they say, when the financial crisis will get worse, all of these conflicts will actually escalate and that will force Trump to really go into a confrontation with China.

So that is their game plan. And I just remembered, in 2007-2008, when we had the big financial crisis, there were several articles in the British press, and I’m planning to review those, where they said that, OK, it’s impossible to have regime change against the communist government in Beijing, but, if there is a global financial crisis again, then all these separatist tendencies, in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, all of that can be escalated, and then the mainland government will lose control and we can replace them.

So that is their intention. I think this is an evil, geopolitical design. I don’t think it will function, but one is better off to recognize what is the intention of these forces — . and The Economist is a pretty authoritative publication for the City of London, with or without Boris Johnson. I don’t think the Brexit, which will happen at the end of January, will change that attitude much.

I don’t think it’s a realistic thing, because if you look at China, they’re doing an incredible job, their growth rates are, despite all the efforts thrown against them, still in excellent shape, and one can only wish that the end result of this would be that Trump overcomes his opposition inside the United States and can actually take up the offer of Xi Jinping to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative, because that would be the one thing which really would solve most problems in the world.

SCHLANGER: I would say your review of the U.S.-Russia relationship and the U.S.-China relationship is a perfect backdrop to actually understand what’s going on with the impeachment fight in the United States, that this, as we’ve always said, has nothing to do with the so-called issues that were raised in the Mueller report, the Russiagate story, the Ukrainegate story, but has to do with these broader geopolitical issues.

And now, we see the absurdity of Pelosi, arguing that they had to rush the impeachment through the House, because every day Trump stays in office is a grave threat to national security; and then, once they get the Articles of Impeachment, withholding it from the Senate trial!

Helga, what’s your sense of where we’re headed with this impeachment fight as we go into January, with the possibility that there will be a trial in the Senate, some time during this next month?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I wish I could give a definite answer on that, but, normally you would say, Nancy Pelosi has no case, she has no proof that Trump pressured the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; she knows that she has no proof and that’s probably the reason that she has said that she doesn’t bring the case immediately to the Senate.

Now, however, knowing how these things work, one can only assume that they want to use this time to line up some dirty tricks, like getting certain Republican senators to withdraw support from Trump. There are two operations which have surfaced: One is an operation by William Kristol, who has formed a PAC; they want to do advertisement in the so-called “weak” Republican districts, these are cases where it’s known that they’re not so pro-Trump; they want to have advertisements and try to convince them to abandon the support for Trump. Then you have, naturally, the terrible William Weld, who is a counter Presidential candidate in the Republican Party: He also has said that he’s working on Republican senators.

But it’s not clear. I don’t think this will work, because these Republican senators are also aware, if they turn out to be traitors against Trump, where the public sentiment is still very high in large support for Trump that they could risk their own political careers if they’re not successive. So it’s an iffy game.

I think what Pelosi is doing, she is risking to ruin the Democratic Party; I think it’s very clear that these people are absolutely no friends of the U.S. Constitution. This was pointed out by the constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who basically said that Pelosi’s maneuvering, to only go to the Senate vote when she thinks she has a majority, that that as such is already unconstitutional.

But this is a coup, the coup is ongoing, so I can only say, be on alert. Our colleagues in the United States are trying very hard to get the various weak points to pop, like the revelations by [former NSA Technical Director] Bill Binney, that there was no Russian hack, that is still at the absolute core of the whole story of Russiagate. Then you have the Barr and Durham investigation, on top of the Horowitz Report, which already established the absolute crimes of the FBI. Now, the Durham investigation, which is a criminal investigation, is much more broad-ranged. It goes through the origins of where did the Russiagate start, who started it. It goes into the cooperation of the U.S. intelligence heads with British intelligence. However, this is going to take some time.

So we are really in a run against time, and it’s very difficult to say how this will end up. If Trump wins, and if the investigations all proceed, a lot of people could go to jail. But on the other side, I can only warn that people are complacent: Because some of the Trump supporters are too complacent because they think that Trump has so much support that everything is OK. But this is an ongoing coup! So, we need to get these revelations of Binney, of people like [former CIA analyst] Larry Johnson, who pointed very much to the origin of the whole thing with this Professor Mifsud working for British intelligence; so all of these leads have to be followed up. And I can only appeal to you to not be complacent, but become active with us.

SCHLANGER: This brings us to the other leading issue that will have to be resolved in the coming months, what you refer to as the “Sword of Damocles” hanging over all of us, which is the financial crisis, the continuing repo operations, the flooding of money, the helicopter funds, and the fact that there’s no solution within the existing establishment position. Where do we stand now with the financial crisis?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: The Fed put into the system over the Christmas/New Year period more than $500 billion, and they announced that they will inject as much money “as needed.” And obviously, Trump has an interest that nothing should happen during the election campaign. I think that the ECB President Christine Lagarde has announced that she will continue what her predecessor Mario Draghi had done, to take whatever it takes to save the euro, which means, more quantitative easing, more buying of state bonds, more injection of liquidity: But that basically means that the system is already at the absolute end, because if you continue with zero interest rates, even negative interest rates, this goes at the absolute expense of investment into the real economy; it eats up the savings of ordinary people because the inflation rate is higher than the negative or zero interest rates.

And, it basically brings the options for 2020, concerning the financial system, down to three options: One, a crash. That can happen because the whole financial system is a minefield, and while the central banks are intending to flood as much money as needed, it could actually happen that somewhere there’s a mistake, and a chain reaction indeed could happen, given the fact that the complexities of the system are such that no central banker, much less any other banker, has an overview any more. The trading in currencies in nanoseconds, and all of these things, means the whole system is a huge casino, run by supercomputers — it’s a completely out of control system.

So either there’s a crash, or, if the central banks continue this absolute massive liquidity pumping in order to avoid a crash, sooner or later, you will have inflation coming to the fore. They always say, this is not the case, because the money creation is just within the financial system and does not enter the realm of real physical goods, but that is not true, because you have bubbles already: You have the real estate bubble; you have the stock market bubble — don’t think that the value of the stocks reflects the actual worth of the firms involved. And eventually, if you keep pumping money like that, you end up in hyperinflation, and as we know from German in 1923, that would mean the complete destruction of the life savings of the normal depositors, normal people.

Then you have, on top of that, the insanity of Mark Carney, who wants to have a regime change: Take away any power of the sovereign governments and replace it with the central banks running the whole affair directly, and going into a green financing: He just give a horrible interview to BBC, which was guest edited by Greta Thuberg, where he said that he wants to have pension funds and others divest from coal and gas-related industries, going into Green finance, going into a “circular economy,” and all of that, means the social explosion which you already see around the globe, will increase. Because if you will force people, through increase of prices, to change their behavior towards “Green” behavior, you help fuel the already-existing mass strike process going on around the globe.

So I think the only third alternative for 2020, therefore, is a global Glass-Steagall, separation of the banks and ending the casino economy. And I would actually call on you, our viewers internationally, to contact us, because we plan to mobilize for this idea of a Glass-Steagall, together with the other Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche: National banking, New Bretton Woods systems, crash programs for advanced technologies, like fusion power and cooperation in space exploration. And only if we change the economy, according to the principles of physical economy in time, can the first two operations, of either a crash with chaos, or hyperinflation, be avoided. So Glass-Steagall must be brought back onto the agenda.

SCHLANGER: What is clear from this review that you’ve just presented, as well as the options for the months ahead, is the absolute prescience of your husband Lyndon LaRouche, whom we lost in this last year, through his passing. And I think it’s critical, in looking at this, that 2020 is going to be the year of LaRouche’s ideas, if mankind is going to emerge from this crisis. And, as the person who is closest to Lyndon LaRouche, your thoughts on this would be most welcome right now, Helga.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, you have right now, an unbelievable assault on the population: This Green ideology, which is really a brown ideology in new clothes, tries to convince people that growth is evil and destroys nature, and climate and whatnot. The way how this is discussed is old neo-Malthusianism. We’ve fought this from the very beginning, when the Club of Rome escalated the old British conservation movement, which was really a continuation of the Nazi idea of treating people like animals. So when the Club of Rome published their report in 1972, the Limits to Growth, my husband repudiated that immediately with a very powerful book There Are No Limits to Growth. And I would challenge people to read that book, because it took apart the fraudulent basis on which the Club of Rome had said the world was developing until 1972, and now we have to somehow adjust, and we are in a closed system, and we have to from now on have austerity, zero growth, because the resources are limited.

What my husband developed in this book was the absolute absurdity of this idea, because “resources” are not a fixed thing: What is a resource is always determined by the scientific and technological level with which man is using these materials; whether you have a stone with which you kill your neighbor in the Stone Age, or whether you say, this is a rare earth element and I can make mobile phones and others things out of it, entirely depends on the level of technology. And especially space research makes very clear, that the resources of the Earth are not limited, but that we are in a process of basically using resources from our Solar System, our galaxy, and who knows what beyond that in the future; so what my husband basically in There Are No Limits to Growth is put this whole question on a scientific basis, and obviously, one of the fallacies of composition which these anti-growth people are committing is to make equivalent, just mindless quantitative growth with the qualitative growth whereby human creativity discovers deeper and better principles about the physical universe, and applies them in the form of science and technology.

Right now, I can only say there is an unbelievable brainwashing, where people are really driven into a frenzy about this climate question. There is no question that there are changes in the climate, but it is not discussed out and proven among scientists, what are the causes of it, because there are many factors involving the position of the Solar System within the galaxy, processes on the Sun, many factors, and the anthropogenic aspect of climate change is very, very small, and that needs to be publicly debated.

This will obviously be a big issue in the coming year, and years, and I think that many people in the United States, in Europe, in Africa, in other parts of the developing countries, remember and recognize that my husband was the intellectual counterpole to the City of London, to Wall Street pushing these oligarchical schemes; and they are coming forward. There is a renewed interest in the scientific work of my husband — we are in the process of preparing the publication of his works: And I want to invite all of you to help to spread these ideas. Now, we had in the last year, three very successful memorials for my husband: One in New York, one in Frankfurt, one in Latin America, and I would urge people to look at these — they are on our websites — and get a sense a sense of who Lyndon LaRouche is and why the ideas which he has presented absolutely must be realized in the coming year.

SCHLANGER: Well Helga, I think what’s clear is that we have to make sure that your optimism becomes the strategic outlook of all our viewers and listeners. And on behalf of all of them, I want to wish you a Happy New Year, and let’s make sure that this coming year, 2020, is the Year of LaRouche.

So Helga, thank you, and I’ll see you next week/

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, till next week.