TO NEW WORLDS, LIKE CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS!
Which Way:
The Common Aims of Mankind,
Or Destruction?
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Aug. 17—Never before in the history of mankind have man's fundamentally opposite choices as a species been so clear: On the one hand, the collapsing world of greed, the financial oligarchy's ruthless drive for profit, and a subservient political class interested only in maintaining its power, a world dominated by supposedly geopolitical interests that has brought us to the very brink of thermonuclear world war. But on the other hand, a very different geometry, as the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars demonstrates, which is oriented toward the future and the laws of the order of Creation. We face the decision of which path to pursue, which means literally deciding "to be or not to be," in the weeks ahead.
In the Near and Middle East, the playing with fire continues. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks during her recent visit to Turkey, that she agreed with her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, that the option of a no-fly zone over the rebel-held areas of Syria should be thoroughly discussed, triggered worldwide consternation, because such an option could only be enforced militarily, and Russia and China would never agree to it in the UN Security Council. Many of her supporters in "Hillary 2012," a grouping that had still hoped she would run against Obama at the upcoming Democratic National Convention, were appalled by this total surrender to Obama's confrontational strategy toward Russia and China.
Playing with Fire
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Frank Ricciardone, immediately after her visit, set a distinctly different tone at a press conference with Turkish media. "Issues like a buffer zone or no-fly zones are easy to talk about conceptually but very difficult to realize practically," he said. "We are a state of law, as Turkey is, so we will operate under international law in trying to promote this transition. We'll keep working with the General Assembly and with the Security Council to try to get forthright resolutions by the world community to bring relief to Syria."
U.S. Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey made clear, at a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon on Aug. 14, that the U.S. military leadership does not favor either a no-fly zone in Syria or an Israeli military strike against alleged nuclear facilities in Iran. Asked about an imminent Israeli attack, General Dempsey formulated a clear message: "I'm not privy to their planning, so what I'm telling you is based on what I know of their capabilities. And I may not know about all their capabilities, but I think that it's a fair characterization to say that they could delay, but not destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities."
Dempsey's remarks obviously hit a raw nerve amid an intensified debate about an Israeli military strike, which could take place even before the U.S. elections in November. Attilla Somfalvi wrote on the website YNETNEWS on Aug. 16 that Dempsey "assumed the role of responsible adult and slapped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the duo orchestrating the national hysteria surrounding the possibility of an attack on Iran." The message is clear, he said: Without the U.S., there is not much Israel can do, and the U.S. would not itself be drawn into this war.
But informed sources see precisely this danger. The situation in the region as a whole has long been a powder keg, and in reality the confrontation with Syria (where the CIA is now openly cooperating with al-Qaeda and Saudi-financed Salafists) and with Iran is a thermonuclear "chicken game" with Russia and China. Even though there are regional issues between Shi'ites and Sunnis, they are still just pieces on the great chessboard that geopoliticians such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bernard Lewis, and Samuel Huntington have described. The question of war and peace, and thus the question of the potential extinction of the human species—if thermonuclear weapons are used—hangs on the outcome of the conflict in the trans-Atlantic establishment over whether to respond to the collapse of the financial system by the reintroduction the Glass-Steagall Act and an economic development program, or by war and dictatorship.
The campaign of demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin is also part of this strategy of confrontation against Russia and China, for if you are going to raise the threat of war, you also have to create an enemy image. The media hype surrounding Pussy Riot is part of this, notwithstanding all the pronouncements of solidarity by foolish politicians and clueless teenagers. Behind Russian opposition figures Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov are the same George Soros-directed forces who were responsible for various "Orange" or other colored revolutions and who would be glad to stage a regime change in Russia too, in the interests of the British-based empire. The criminal offense of desecrating a religious site and chopping up a woodcarving of Christ on the cross with a chainsaw[1] have nothing to do with "democracy." Similar actions in churches in Germany would also have resulted in criminal charges, with up to three years imprisonment or monetary penalties, according to German religious lawyer Ansgar Hense.
A Strange Coincidence
It was certainly an irony of history that the ruling against Pussy Riot and the ruling by the German Federal Constitutional Court on the use of the Armed Forces domestically were announced on the same day, because nothing makes clearer the hypocrisy and contrived nature of the media reporting. The authors of Germany's Constitution deliberately established a strict separation between the use of the police to respond to domestic threats and the Armed Forces to deal with external threats, in light of the experience of the use of the Army in the Weimar Republic. There were, after all, mass protests in the streets by millions of people against the loosening of this separation by the Emergency Laws of 1968. The 16 judges of the Plenum of the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe have now ruled that domestic deployment of the Armed Forces with combat weapons should not be totally ruled out—and so far there has been no resistance at all. Karlsruhe has thereby in effect amended the Constitution—a function which is the prerogative of parliament and not of the court—an aspect of the Constitution that, given Germany's 20th-Century history, was there for a very good reason.
The only dissent came from Justice Reinhard Gaier: "The attempt to narrow down the use of the Armed Forces [as stated in the majority opinion of the Plenum—ed.] by requiring 'imminent' harm 'of catastrophic dimensions' lacks the necessary clarity and calculability. It provides great latitude for subjective interpretation, if not even rash predictions, with entirely indeterminate categories that could scarcely be effectively administered by the courts in daily practice—such as in the case of anti-government mass demonstrations. This is in any case an unacceptable use of the Armed Forces. It is difficult for free exchange of opinions to flourish in the shadow of a military arsenal."
The deployment of troops domestically is supposed to remain the ultima ratio, the last resort, yet this decision comes at a time when the collapse of the euro and the disintegration of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system are imminent. And how will a population respond that has been criminally left in the dark by politicians and the media about the true situation—that literally overnight the whole system could come crashing down—and that for some time has lost confidence in politics and the banks? One can only agree with Gaier's opinion, that this decision means it is no longer assured "that the Armed Forces are never deployed as a domestic political instrument of power."
The Euro: Bringing Out the Big Guns
Scenarios about an imminent collapse of the euro are dominating the media. Finland is preparing for it publicly, and other countries are doing so secretly. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the EU governments are preparing a Plan B for an "orderly" exit of Greece from the euro, and the Economist speculates about Chancellor Merkel having a Plan B. A war is raging—will we have hyperinflation or Brüning-style austerity?—between the "euro saviors" around European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, who are getting the "Big Bertha" ready for a "bazooka solution" of unlimited money printing, and the "guardians of the money supply" around Bundesbank head Jens Weidmann.
The only way there can be a real solution is if we turn away from the wrong-headed policies of the past 40 years. We have to reverse the paradigm shift that took place in the mid-'60s since the Kennedy assassination: the end of the Apollo program, the gradual shift away from production and towards speculation, the deregulation of the financial markets, the green ideology, and the counterculture. For that we need a two-tier banking system, sovereignty over national monetary and economic policy, and a credit system to finance construction of the real economy.
The landing of Curiosity on Mars, a fantastic breakthrough for human creativity, shows the direction we need to take toward scientific and technological progress. The technological cooperation, which was enthusiastically cheered, especially in countries whose instruments are placed on the rover, must become the standard for all problems of humanity. This is exactly what the Russian government has placed on the agenda with its proposal for a Strategic Defense of Earth (SDE). This program, which is in the tradition of Lyndon LaRouche's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and President Reagan's proposals for U.S.-Soviet cooperation, defines the level of cooperation we require to avoid the risk of an economic meltdown and a third party and probably last world war.
The Curiosity landing and the first information transmitted from Mars are a dramatic reminder that mankind is still in a very early stage of development, because man has only been on the Earth for about 2 million years. There is infinitely much more to explore and discover, not just in our galaxy, but in billions of other galaxies that are anti-entropically evolving! Let us decide now to work together for the common aims of mankind and are we will finally become really human!
[1] That's what a topless demonstrator in Kiev, Ukraine, did in solidarity with Pussy Riot on Aug. 17—ed.
