Zepp-LaRouche Leaflet
Slams Merkel's Neo-Cons
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Under the headline, "Merkel's Neo-Cons Want To Imitate Bush-Politics in Germany: Will There Soon Be a Catastrophe Like Louisiana?" Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chancellor candidate for Germany's Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo), has made a new appeal to German voters. We reprint the text of her latest mass leaflet, issued Sept. 2, in full.
Dear Voters,
The frightful human tragedy, which is being played out in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, shows what happens when the idea of the social state and the General Welfare are thrown out the window. The consequences of these catastrophes, taking place not in a Third World country, but in the South of the world's sole superpower, could, at a minimum, have been reduced, because already four weeks earlier, on Aug. 2, a report was publicized that with a certainty of 95%, several hurricanes would reach the strength this one had. There was enough warning to evacuate the poulation in a timely way, strengthen the levees, and prepare for fast relief measures.But the Bush-Cheney Administration had other priorities. The budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which is responsible for such catastrophes, was cut by $70 million this year; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) responsible for these emergencies was merged instead into the Department of Homeland Security, which was constituted to run the war on terror, and over 40% of the National Guard is deployed in Iraq. Even after the sheer magnitude of the disaster had become clear, Bush required days more to break off his vacation. And as among tens of thousands trapped in the floods, suffering from hunger and thirst, people took food and drink from the supermarkets where the opportunity existed. Bush pronounced that they had better be careful that public order be strictly upheld, and conveyed to the police the order "to shoot to kill."
The apocalyptic events in the South of the United States should be a warning, "with a sledgehammer," to us in Germany, what happens when the principle of the General Welfare is crushed and broken, as Angela Merkel's [nominee] Kirchhof promises that he will destroy the social state "with a sledgehammer." If the brutal "elbow society" which the German neo-cons propose, begins to take hold, then the German people will be thrown into exactly the helpless crisis situation, in which the people of the southern United States find themselves now.
For what else does it mean, when Biedenkopf's friend Meinhard Miegel, Lambsdorff, and Tietmeyer of the New Social-Market Economy Initiative (ISNM), launch a coordinated public attack on Adenauer, and hit him with the criticism that the German social state established after World War II came from him, and makes him the guilty party for today's crisis? And what does it mean when Miegel attacks the European model, insults the Europeans, they have become sated, surfeited, and comfortable, and that they now have to learn from the Asians who work hard and are satisfied without any social state? One had better think to what ends such attacks are aimed.
The principle of the General Welfare was established for the first time in Europe in the 15th Century: In the writings of Nicholas of Cusa; in the Italian Renaissance; in France during the reign of Louis XI. Before then, over long periods, Europe lagged far behind the development of China or India. Only the fight for the General Welfare, which was renewed in the Peace of Westphalia, and triumphed in the American Constitution, made it possible for European culture to win a much higher living standard for a steadily increasing share of the people.
If this principle of the General Welfare, which is the basis of the social state, should be sacrificed in favor of the "Anglo-Saxon model" propagated by Kirchhof or the "Asiatic model" proposed by Miegel and Co., then that means nothing other than that around 70% of the population should be degraded to a standard of living like the poor population in India, China, and Southeast Asian—or even in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Do you remember the tsunami, which struck Indonesia, Thailand and other parts of Asia three-quarters of a year ago? Also there, people were lured by tourism into accommodations in the dangerous vicinity of the beaches, like in Mississippi, for example, defenselessly exposed to the natural catastrophe. If you now see the dreadful images of the South of the U.S.A., with thousands of dead and over one million people who have lost everything, then you should be uncompromisingly clear, that President Bush has simply already put into practice the policies, which the Merkel-troop now proposes for the future of Germany.
Do you consider that an exaggeration? What then do you believe will occur when in the U.S.A. and worldwide, the real estate and mortgage markets collapse, and trigger a global financial crash? Or when this crash is caused by an oil price of $100, $200 or $300? What kind of government do you want to have then, an Asiatic government à la Miegel or a European government à la Adenauer, which defends the General Welfare in such a crisis? Do you then want the great part of the German population to wander about as an itinerant people, without medical provision, without pensions, like the poor people in Asia? Do you really want the German neo-cons to determine our future based on Bush's example?
If people like Kirchhof or Merz were to determine the economic and financial policies of a Merkel-led government, this would mean nothing other than that locusts would no longer launch their attack from the outside on the German economy, and above all on the German middle class, but rather they would sit in person in Berlin in the government. You don't believe it? What else would it mean if Kirchhof is the New Social-Market Economy Initiative (INSM) "ambassador" of Hans Tietmeyer, who is the adviser of the Lazard Freres investment bank? Or that Friedrich Merz is the German chief for the London hedge fund TCI, which has attempted a hostile takeover of the German stock exchange, and has managed to get its chief, Werner Seifert, kicked out.
What is happening in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama is not an internal American theme. It is a wakeup call for the German voter, as to where a neo-con policy leads. It is at the same time an urgent message to you, to do everything possible to help me to defend the social state in Germany.
Almost everything depends on how the U.S.A. will handle the consequences of this crisis. In the best case, the Democrats in the Congress and in the Senate, with the help of moderate Republicans will assert themselves, and implement a policy of the New Deal and a New Bretton Woods System in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. That will then afford a chance to implement my program of the recovery of monetary sovereignty, the return to the D-Mark and a state investment of 400 Billion D-Marks per year for a productive full-employment program. If Germany has productive full-employment once again, the financing of the social state, of the health system, pensions, etc., will no longer be a problem.
What the terrible catastrophe in the South of the U.S.A. also makes dramatically clear, is the complete shipwreck of the system of globalization. Whoever thought that such tragedies would remain confined to Africa and Asia has deceived himself. The neo-liberal policy of the neo-cons has set up the framework in which African and Asiatic conditions can also come to the industrial nations. Hence, there can be only one lesson: We must place on the agenda the program of a just new world economic order, which affords all human beings on this planet a life of human dignity,
You can do this, by placing your trust in me and the BüSo.
Yours,
Helga Zepp-LaRouche
