Defend Germany's
National Interests
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
This statement was issued on Dec. 3, 2007 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo) party in Germany. The statement was translated from German, and subheads added.
It very frequently occurs, that the ideological blindness of "simple" citizens leads to decisions that injure their self-interest to the core. But it is among the freedoms of democracy, that the citizens act like this, provided they do not violate the law. However, such behavior is more problematic, if it occurs in the case of the Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Indeed, she determines the policy guidelines, but she has also sworn an oath of office, to defend the welfare of the German people, and to prevent harm to them.
The positions that the Federal Chancellor has taken in the recent period with regard to Russia, China, and Iran, not only damage German economic interests and thereby, jobs; they also infringe fundamentally upon the security interests of Germany, because they send Germany out of bounds in pursuit of a neoconservative agenda, and contribute to an atmosphere of confrontation. Either Mrs. Merkel is impervious to advice, or she really does not understand the complexity of historical processes. Perhaps she actually believed she was standing up for democracy and human rights, when she was taken in by the theatrics of Garry Kasparov on the occasion of her meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Samara. That Kasparov is part of a new British "Great Game" against Russia, would have become clear to her, had she taken into account his connection to the former manager of his chess tournaments, John Arnold Bredenkamp, a supporter of the late racist regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
China Takes Offense
That China would react so strongly to her reception of the Dalai Lama, who is also sponsored by the powers which are attempting to carve up China's territorial unity, should also have been clear to her. Again: Is Mrs. Merkel only impervious to advice, or does she share the objectives of neoconservative confrontation, which can only end in a catastrophe? And the Federation of German Industries (BDI) is correct in its criticism of her, that her talk about sanctions against Iran does not help democracy in Iran, but only damages German-Iranian relations.
She receives the bill for this policy in the case of China, by return mail: While long-planned meetings with representatives of Germany were cancelled on all levels, on the occasion of the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to China, China elevated its relationship to France to the highest strategic significance, and concluded economic agreements with him in double-digit billion amounts. Neither the Pope nor Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi found it advisable to receive the Dalai Lama.
The behavior of Mrs. Merkel is all the more disastrous, in that it occurs at a time, when Germany would have every reason to improve its relationship with China and Russia, instead of damaging it. For the systemic financial collapse, triggered, but not caused by the U.S. mortgage crisis, has, in the meantime, gripped the entire international banking sector, and has long ago evolved from a storm into a hurricane, whose full destructive force will increase further in the coming months. The collapse of the dollar is not an internal U.S. affair, about which all of the most short-sighted anti-American people can gloat; it has long ago exceeded the threshold of pain for Asian and European exports.
This is precisely the reason, why the official Chinese news media, from Xinhua, via the People's Daily and the China Daily, to the most important financial press, have so prominently picked up the press conference by Lyndon LaRouche preceding a "Forum on U.S.-Chinese Relationship and Peaceful Reunification of China" in Los Angeles [see EIR, Dec. 7]. In his presentation, LaRouche emphasized that the crisis of the global finanicial system has advanced so far, and the constellation of power in the world has developed in such a way, that only the four strongest nations, namely, the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India, are in combination strong enough, to jointly undertake an orderly reorganization of the world financial system in time. For China, with its 1.4 billion people, what is at stake is nothing less than the stability of the country, which China, after its experiences above all in the 19th and 20th centuries, would never again like to see in danger. President Hu Jintao also announced a series of steps and conferences, which have as their theme, the macro-economic stability and protection above all of the poor people of China..
Therefore, Germany would have every reason to orient itself toward China and Russia, and to strive in common with these nations toward an exit from the financial crisis. In the U.S.A., the most important steps in this direction come from the growing movement for the implementation of LaRouche's legislative proposal, the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA), which is supported by a growing number of cities. If there is to be any exit at all from the world financial crisis, then it will lie in the most important nations of this world coming to an agreement on a New Bretton Woods and a New Deal for the world economy in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, as opposed to the neoconservative, neoliberal policy of confrontation.
What Kind of 'Democracy and Human Rights'?
More generally, the focus on "democracy and human rights," which Mrs. Merkel, who is an attorney, has of late so often adopted, is thus a concern. For which is better for people: if, for example, China provides credit to African nations and helps them to build infrastructure; or if Europe, in referring to human rights, denies these states the credit and the assistance they need for infrastructure development? And how does the International Monetary Fund observe human rights, when for decades it has insisted that the developing nations, instead of financing their health-care and educational systems, should rather pay their debt, which the IMF has constantly increased by its demand for currency devaluations?
And what about the human rights of children and teenagers in Europe, who are not protected by any law against menticide, where, through killer video games, which glorify violence, children and teenagers are exposed to a brutality, which they obviously cannot handle, and which turns more and more students into monsters running amok, who kill themselves, their teachers, and their schoolmates?
And what about the human rights of the unemployed, who lose their jobs through the unbridled manipulations of the "locusts," plunge into poverty and long-term unemployment, thanks to Hartz IV, and are thus bilked out of the earnings of their life's work, only because the Federal Chancellor, according to her own words, does not want to have an "orgy of reregulation of the hedge funds by the state"?
Those who live in glass houses, should not throw stones. There are not a few people in the developing nations, who recognized long ago, that in the so-called industrial nations, the violations of human rights and democracy take place merely in a more sophisticated and cleverly devised way.
In any case, it is in the fundamental self-interest of Germany, that in the face of the coming hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis of the world economy, we seek close collaboration with Russia, China, India, and the actual America, which is now making itself heard in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt.