A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE: PEACE ON EARTH?
Will Humanity Have Any Future at All?
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Dec. 14—It was the same before the two world wars of the 20th Century: The preparations for the great war were going full blast, and everyone should have recognized the handwriting on the wall. But the masses of people were busy living their day-to-day lives, going along to get along. Those who sounded the alarm were few, and their words were ignored.
It is the same, or even worse, today: Western civilization is driving at full speed over the cliff. The deteriorating situation in the Middle East brings us closer every day to a thermonuclear World War III, but governments and parties are making increasingly insane decisions and are apparently unable to think through the consequences of their actions, like sleepwalkers who totter blindfolded on a tightrope over the abyss. Unless we change the direction of politics fundamentally, this Christmas may perhaps be the last.
No image but that of the sleepwalkers could aptly characterize the vote in the Bundestag for deployment to Turkey of two Patriot air defense systems, AWACS reconnaissance aircraft, and 400 German soldiers. The Bundestag members were apparently intoxicated by their own political slogans and once again proved that they will not allow themselves to be confused by the facts. If there really were only a threat from Syria, the Mantis short-range protection system would be much more suitable, whereas the deployment of the Patriot air defense systems—there will also be two batteries from the U.S. and the Netherlands moved to Turkey—is part of the NATO forward strategy, in preparation for an imminent confrontation with Iran. And this, as every Middle East expert worthy of the name knows, a war against Iran means a great war with Russia and China. If this war occurs, it will be thermonuclear, and will probably wipe out all mankind, in just an hour and a half.
Escalation Against Syria
The fact that the U.S., British, and French governments have recognized the Syrian opposition as the legitimate representative of Syria, has also opened the possibility for a much more direct intervention into the fighting in Syria. Russia Today quoted in this context one of the editors of Foreign Policy, Conn Hallinan: "This means that heavy weapons will be deployed. Potentially, there will be a no-fly zone. So it's really an open declaration of war against the Assad regime." A no-fly zone can of course only be enforced by military means. Therefore, the argument that the deployment of the Patriots is a purely defensive measure is an incredible sham.
But who is this Syrian opposition? After the U.S. State Department finally put the Islamist al-Nusra Front, an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, on the list of terrorist organizations this week, the recently designated leader of the Syrian opposition, Mouaz Alkhatib, announced to the participants at the conference of the "Friends of Syria" in Morocco that this characterization of al-Nusra must be reversed. The only thing that counts, he maintained, is that the guns of rebels be directed at the Assad regime.
Opponents of the regime organized solidarity rallies for al-Nusra after the Friday prayers in several cities in Syria, and shouted slogans such as: "The people want the Islamic Caliphate," and "God save the al-Nusra Front." Many had called for these rallies with the slogan: "No to U.S. intervention—we are all Jabhet al-Nusra." The al-Nusra Front claims credit for more than 500 armed attacks.
The fact is that all Western governments know that the so-called Syrian opposition consists largely of members of al-Qaeda, radical Islamist Salafists, and mercenaries from over 100 countries, which are funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It is also true that the policy of Zbigniew Brzezinski from the 1970s and 80s, to build up the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, created a hydra which has produced since then many new heads and radical Islamist organizations. It is also the fact that the British government and the Obama Administration unscrupulously use these organizations to continue the policy of regime change, which, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. has attempted to sweep aside all governments that oppose the establishment of an Anglo-American empire.
A Rubicon for Germany?
It is all the more egregious that the outrageous CDU parliamentarian Andreas Schockenhoff, who makes every effort to ruin the relationship between Germany and Russia, and has already been accused by the Russian government of undermining basic norms of international law, demonstrated once again during the Bundestag debate over the deployment of Patriot missiles that he is entirely indifferent to international law. He said, "Since the UN Security Council remains deadlocked and has been unable to take effective action, no other course was possible than to supply the Syrian opposition with weapons to stop the Syrian regime."
Hello, Mr. Schockenhoff! The design of the UN Security Council may not be perfect, but whoever circumvents the competence of this supreme body of the international community to decide on war or peace, in order to supply the opposition to a sovereign state with weapons, has identified himself as a follower of a legal concept that is neither in accordance with the UN Charter nor with the German Constitution. Where is the Verfassungsschutz [German equivalent of the FBI] when we need it?
Since Schockenhoff has the nerve to charge that Russia's and China's use of their vetoes has led in effect to the activity in Syria of "forces such as al-Qaeda," then we have to ask whose business Schockenhoff is actually conducting—he certainly does not represent the interests of Germany. His party colleagues should take a closer look at the results of the hearings in the U.S. Congress on the Benghazi scandal, pertaining to the role of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, or the articles and speeches of real patriots in the U.S., such as Republican Congressman Walter Jones, Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, and the lawyers Bruce Fein and Francis Boyle. They are among the brave people sounding the alarm who should be listened to if a third, thermonuclear, world war is to be prevented.
The parliamentary vote on the Patriot deployment has not been mentioned once, even in some of the "alternative" online media, although it may well have been the Rubicon for Germany's active participation in a policy that is a shortcut to disaster. [Former Chancellor Gerhard] Schröder and [Foreign Minister Guido] Westerwelle at least had the good sense to refuse to participate in the wars against Iraq and Libya. This inattention by the press is symptomatic of the methods by which politicians and the "politically correct" media make scandalous efforts to disguise the fact that we are on the verge of losing all the accomplishments of modern society, of sovereign republics as nations that are committed to the common good and the dignity of free individuals.
International law, as it developed from the Peace of Westphalia to the UN Charter, is currently being trampled on around the globe by the so-called Blair Doctrine and the idea of imperial "humanitarian" interventions, without even so much as a public debate. The freedom of collective bargaining for the unions of the EU was also laid to rest by the Troika [IMF, European Central Bank, EU Commission], as in the United States by the newly adopted "right to work" law in Michigan, without the same unions taking to the streets.
In the health systems of the U.S. and the EU there is blatant triage in the tradition of Hitler's "Tiergarten 4" arrangement, by which certain groups—newborns with birth defects or the elderly or the sick—are cut off from life-saving care, without the legislators who are responsible being hauled before the Nuremberg trials, even though we have long been on the "slippery slope" described by Dr. Leo Alexander.[1]
For a long time, step by step, we have been stripped of everything for which many generations before us fought, so that their children and grandchildren might have a better life; everything is being sacrificed on the great altar of maximum profit. The quality of our food is getting worse, except at the gourmet shops for the wealthy. The quality of our clothing is increasingly determined by "one euro" shops and cheap production in Third World countries, where modern-day slavery is the rule. The entertainment industry designs our leisure products, which are more and more on the "one-euro standard."
Another symptom is the descent of television's Thomas Gottschalk as the nation's leading mind-killing airhead, from the program "Wetten, dass?" [the German equivalent of the American game show "Wanna Bet?"] to the even more banal "Das Supertalent" show with Dieter Bohlen. Anyone who thought that the youth culture had hit bottom with Britney Spears has to experience the cult of ugliness with Lady Gaga and now the consummate stupidity of "Psy."
While the masses march over the cliff like lemmings, nestled comfortably in the mainstream of public opinion, more and more of our thinking contemporaries realize that we in a systemic collapse. Everything depends on that 5%, or at best, 10% of the population turning in time to the solutions offered by the BüSo:
- a two-tier banking system,
- a credit system,
- an economic development program, and
- renaissance of Classical culture.
Take advantage of Christmas to reflect on that. Work with us!
Translated from German by Daniel Platt
[1] See Nancy Spannaus, "Nazi Precedent for Obama Health Plan: Its Now Time To Insist—Never Again!" EIR, May 22, 2009.
