This transcript appears in the November 20, 2015 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: A TURNING POINT IN HISTORY

Germany’s Role at
This Decisive Point in History

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

[PDF version of this transcript]

Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the following keynote to the national party congress of the German political party BüSo (Civil Rights Movement Solidarity), which she heads, in Berlin on Nov. 14, 2015.

Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests of the BüSo, I am very happy that you’re here, because everyone can sense that we have arrived at a turning point in history.

Before I speak more about that, I would first like to express my deepest sympathy for the victims of the attack in France, and to the whole nation of France.

It is totally clear that the bestiality and barbarity of these terror attacks almost surpass imagination. The latest information is that there were seven attacks; 137 people are dead, and approximately 280 wounded, many of whom are in critical condition. You have to ask yourself, where does this bestiality come from? What makes human beings act as if they are no longer human beings?

EIRNS/Christopher Lewis Helga Zepp-LaRouche at the BüSo national party congress on Nov. 14.

It has been only 10 months since a similar attack was launched on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The same day, there was a public event in the Congress in Washington, D.C., where former Senator Bob Graham charged that the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo was the result of the fact that President Obama, and Bush and Cheney, had covered up the real circumstances of the 9/11 attacks. In particular, he said, the famous 28 pages of the original Congressional Joint Inquiry Report had still not been released to the public, even to this day. This, despite the fact that Obama had promised the families to do so in his 2008 campaign.

These 28 pages are relevant because, as far as we know from the allusions of Congressmen, who have read this report, they concern the role of Saudi Arabia and its financing of the terrorists on 9/11. In addition, the former head of the American Defense intelligence Agency (DIA), Gen. Michael Flynn, said in an interview this year with Al Jazeera, that his agency had, in 2012, warned the White House, and Obama personally, that the shipment of heavy weapons from Benghazi, a city in Libya, to the so-called “good rebels” in Syria, would end up in the hands of an Islamic Caliphate. That was two years before ISIS declared itself the Islamic State. General Flynn stated that Obama not only ignored this advice, but knowingly pursued a policy that would lead to such an Islamic terrorist state.

We have to have this in the back of our minds, and we need an open debate on it, to put an end to the sources of terrorism. General Flynn has said that it was a conscious and deliberate policy. That is the issue the Bundestag and our government should discuss.

The Kill Policy

It was just made known this year that the Pentagon has spent around half a billion dollars to train 5,000 rebels in Syria for the war against President Assad. Then, it turns out that, after many months of such training, a total of four rebels were left on the side of the United States. All the others had gone over to ISIS.

This farcical policy has meanwhile been the subject for the satirical show “Die Anstalt.” In that show there was a very funny segment, which was a takeoff on the schmalzy “Das Herzblatt (Blind Date).” On one side of a partition was the American President, and on the other side three hooded ISIS fighters. He had to choose his “sweetheart”—which one is the good rebel, which one is the bad, and which one will change from good to bad (joining ISIS), against whom he must make war.

These connections are clearly just below the surface of German consciousness, or else they would not have been presented in this broadcast.

A few weeks ago a second whistleblower surfaced, a second Edward Snowden, who released the so-called Drone Papers to Glenn Greenwald and his Internet site The Intercept, where they were published. These papers reveal the enormous extent of the Obama Administration’s drone policy. The official policy is to draw up lists of suspects, who will then be killed by drones, without due process of law. What emerges from these documents is that an average of 90% of the victims are innocent civilians, including children—who were placed on new lists of suspects, after the fact, in order to create a rationalization.

Already, back in May 2012, the New York Times reported that, every Tuesday is “Terror Tuesday” in the White House. President Obama personally compiles a so-called “kill list,” which is the basis for the drone strikes for the coming week.

The clear consequence is that we are not dealing here with just murder, but with mass murder. This fact alone—that the President of the United States is allowed to kill people in this way, without a legal trial and without representation by a lawyer or defense counsel—is sufficient grounds for an immediate impeachment under the U.S. Constitution, and even the application of the so-called 25th Amendment. Anyone who so violates human rights, surely doesn’t have the mental and moral qualifications for the office of the U.S. Presidency.

The significance of the Drone Papers is similar to that of the Pentagon Papers for President Nixon. At that time, the Pentagon Papers were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg to Sen. Mike Gravel. These documents showed clearly that the official line, that the Vietnam War was a total success, was a lie, and specifically, that the infamous body-count policy of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who every day counted the dead bodies, was criminal. These papers were then read by Senator Gravel, who invoked a special constitutional procedure to do so, into the official Senate record, which later led to Nixon’s downfall.

You have to fathom what this drone policy is. Back in 2012, the Stimson Center, as well as the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and the Rand Corporation, produced an analysis concluding that the drone policy had exactly the opposite result from that intended. For every terrorist who was eliminated, ten, 20 or 30 new ones were recruited, because the rage over the injustice of the murder of civilians, and over the barbarous arrogance, with which it is carried out, increases hatred for the West immeasurably. Thus the drone policy functions like cutting off the head of a hydra—for each head chopped off, 13 new ones grow.

The German Role

On Nov. 7, a week ago, the Süddeutsche Zeitung published a long article on the extent to which the German authorities are helping the United States in its drone war. The German authorities supply the Americans with telephone and SIM card numbers, which are used for the attacks on the terrorists. The drone attacks do not target specific suspects, but anyone who happens by chance to be holding the cellphone in his hand. No one verifies that this is the person who is on the list. Nor does anyone check where the cellphone is located. Whether the alleged terrorist is just then in a children’s hospital, or in a crowded market, doesn’t make any difference at all.

The American military base in Ramstein, Germany plays a central role in these attacks. Several weeks ago, a hearing by the NSA investigation committee in the Bundestag heard the testimony of former drone pilot Brandon Bryant, who has become a kind of whistleblower, because he said that he could no longer morally tolerate killing people in this mechanistic way. He reported that a device is attached to the bottom of the drones, called Gilgamesh, a radio cell which locates all cellphones in the neighborhood of the drone. If the number o f a suspect shows up, then this drone is launched against the holder of this cellphone.

democracy now Former drone pilot Brandon Bryant, during an interview with MSNBC’s Democracy Now in October 2013, exposing the immoral character of the drone policy.

All German intelligence services, according to Bryant’s testimony, are working with this program: the Militärische Abschirmdienst [Military (Counter-Intelligence], the Verfassungsschutz [Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, roughly comparable to the NSA], and the BND [Bundesnachrichtendienst, equivalent to the CIA]. Up until 2014, the Americans were even allowed to question refugees, even those with German Tarnpapieren [faked identity papers issued by the authorities], for as much information as possible about the country from which they came; about people they knew; and in many cases, this was then followed by drone strikes. Many times Americans, disguised as Germans, would also question these refugees without German officials present. The Süddeutsche Zeitung came to the conclusion that without German participation, the drone war would not be possible in this form.

Ramstein is the hub for drone attacks in the Middle East and Africa. It has also been reported that the Federal Prosecutor General is currently investigating whether a preliminary investigation could be opened on the basis of charges brought by victims of these drone-kill operations—for example, the son of a victim in Somalia. The possible charge is accessory to murder, since there is no state of war between America and Somalia, or between Germany and Somalia. Thus these drone attacks do not fall under the laws of war, but under criminal law.

The obvious conclusion from all these things is that this form of cooperation must stop immediately, and after this convention, with the consent of all of us, we will send a message to the German government to this effect.

The War Threat

This matter has further implications on which I would like to now elaborate. Let me make a preliminary observation. If you look at the whole strategic situation—those who are here know much about it, because we are one of the few organizations which deal with strategic issues at all—the most shocking element is the enormous discrepancy between the dimensions and complexity of the crisis, and the relative cluelessness, or rather, indifference, shown by a large part of the population. We are standing on the edge of a third world war; we stand on the edge of a new financial crisis which will overshadow by far that of 2008; but if you look at the news media, if you listen to the politicians, you hear practically nothing about it.

The media dictatorship, under which we, without a doubt, live, makes it very difficult for the ordinary citizens to put the picture together. There is almost no report in the German media—and I follow the news with a nearly scientific or clinical interest—which does not have a twist, a spin. Be it about Ukraine or Syria, about China, or the refugee crisis, the news coverage in Germany is always tendentious. From the politicians you only hear approved themes. Certain subjects are not mentioned at all, and the subjects which are on the “approved list,” as it were, are always treated with a certain bias.

In addition, distractions from reality are enormous.

I have just come back from the United States, and I turned on the TV, although I normally don’t watch TV. What do I see? The Bambi awards [an award issued by the Burda media conglomerate to celebrate “achievements” in German TV, along the same line of entertainment self-celebration as the Oscar awards in Hollywood]. The first song I heard was more or less: “We are all going to die, we must live in the moment.” The worst expression of the human spirit is the desire to live in the here and now, to forget everything else, and glorify the moment. That was the first concentrated message of this program.

The media are waging war against the population, by preventing people from thinking. There are rules of the game which you must follow. Whoever doesn’t comply with the rules of the game, doesn’t belong to the club, is ostracized. Whoever wants to belong to the “Western community of values,” which is allegedly so superior to all other cultures, must abide by the rules of the game.

Of course, the war danger doesn’t come from Russia and China, but from the policy of the Obama Administration and the British government. The reason for that is the continuity from the Bush Sr. Administration, an eight-year interruption with Bill Clinton, then eight years of the Bush/Cheney Administration, and now Obama; on the British side it was Thatcher, Blair, and Cameron. The common aim of these two countries is to create a world empire through the Anglo-American special relationship. This idea of creating a world empire, a unipolar world, has brought us toward a third world war. That is absolutely clear to Russia and China.

Putin’s semi-annual meeting with Russia’s military leadership has just taken place in Sochi. On Nov. 10, Putin stated publicly that Obama’s policy boiled down to a nuclear first strike against Russia; that the missile defense system in eastern Europe isn’t really about missiles from Iran or North Korea, but about the ability to disable Russia’s nuclear second-strike capacity. This policy has been in preparation since the United Sates unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty in June of 2002, under Bush Jr.

Since that time, Russia has had many conferences. At one security conference in Moscow three years ago, a video was shown from which it was very clear that the American BMD system in Poland, in the Czech Republic, in Romania, Bulgaria, and Spain, was not aimed against missiles from Iran, but it was meant to eliminate Russia’s second strike capability. Putin made the point, which was obvious the whole time: that after the successful conclusion of the P5+1 agreement, where Iran agreed to renounce building nuclear weapons, and to accept to international controls, there is no longer any reason to continue building up this BMD system. It is exclusively about changing the strategic balance in favor of the United States and NATO, he said, and possibly winning a nuclear war.

The British paper the Guardian reported on Nov. 11, in an article by Julian Borger, on a PBS program on the modernization of American tactical nuclear weapons in Germany. The so-called B-61-12 tactical nuclear weapons, which are currently being modernized, have a modern tail kit with fins, more power, new electronics, a new explosive trigger, and a precision guidance, which allow them, when placed on a stealth bomber, to steal into the airspace of Russia, or other states, and not be observed by radar. The former commander of the American Nuclear Strike Forces, Gen. James Cartwright, said recently in an interview, that this modernization of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe—and Germany is one of the headquarters—makes the bomb more usable, and that there is a danger that, in this way, the world would slide into a third, this time nuclear, war.

That means that the old doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, of total obliteration of both sides—which meant a kind of nuclear balance of terror, because each side knew that it could not deploy nuclear weapons because the other side would do the same, and then there would be a total nuclear contamination of the planet, a nuclear winter that no one would survive—that this MAD doctrine no longer holds. On the contrary, some now think that the modernization of these nuclear weapons makes a first strike worthwhile, and that one could win a nuclear war.

The Russia-China Response

Russia and China have made it very clear that they are totally aware of this danger. At the military parade in Beijing on Sept. 3, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific, China—and by the way, Putin was visible on the podium with President Xi the whole time—displayed a new missile which has a speed 10 times the speed of sound. It is assumed that it could be extremely dangerous for American aircraft carriers—that is, it can incapacitate them.

Nirvana News Both Russia and China are actively upgrading their ability for self-defense. Above, we see Russia’s latest intercontinental missile, the Bulava, being testfired in Nov. 2014, and (below) Chinese nuclear missiles on parade in Beijing during the Sept. 3 commemoration of the end of World War II in the Pacific.

Xinhua/Peng Zhaozhi

The Russian Navy has also undertaken tests of its Bulava missile from the submarine Vladimir Monomak, in maneuvers that are to last until Nov. 16. The missiles arrived very precisely at the Kura test-site in Kamchatka. The U.S. Navy, on the other side, over last weekend, tested two Trident DS-missiles. In other words, we find ourselves in an arms spiral, where China and Russia are making it very clear that the idea of incapacitating their second-strike capacity with these modern weapons, is a total illusion.

The key lies with the submarines. If you realize how many thousand nuclear weapons are installed, partially on missiles, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers, submarines, moving trucks, and moving trains, it is perfectly clear that the idea of incapacitating the total second-strike capability of an enemy, is a total illusion.

The American military analyst Hans Kristensen, in a document well worth reading, has pointed out the fundamental difference between conventional and nuclear war. In a conventional war, one side will try with all its means to destroy the enemy’s arsenal to the point that he can’t fight any more, and then the war is over. In the case of a nuclear war, the idea that you can eliminate all the nuclear weapons is an illusion. The calculation assumes that it is not possible to do so, and that there are many possibilities of concealing them.

The Russian military budget amounts to approximately $49 billion today; the American military budget is 10 to 15 times higher. The United States has two new weapons systems in production—the F35 stealth airplane, and a new atomic submarine, both of which are more expensive than the entire Russian defense program. Sputnik News has reported that NATO is now preparing to take over the entire military and paramilitary establishment in Ukraine—that is, it will not pursue formal membership in NATO for Ukraine, but instead, full compatibility of the weapons systems and the command-and-control system is clandestinely in process.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter just came back from a trip to Asia, during which he launched an array of provocations. After that, at a press conference in the Reagan Presidential Library in California, he said that it is Moscow’s saber-rattling which raises questions about the Russian leadership’s commitment to strategic stability, and their respect for norms against the use of nuclear weapons, which leaders in the nuclear age have demonstrated in the past. He then issued a warning: “Make no mistake; the United States will defend our interests, and our allies. . . . We’re investing in the technologies that are most relevant to Russia’s provocations, such as new unmanned systems, a new long-range bomber, and innovation in technologies like the electromagnetic railgun, lasers, and new systems for electronic warfare, space, and cyberspace, including a few surprising ones that I really can’t describe here.”

It is not Russia which is making provocations, but Russia is reacting to exactly what Ash Carter has enumerated.

Fortunately, there is resistance in the United States—not yet a majority, but at least it’s stirring. Democratic Congressman John Conyers, at the beginning of November, convened an event in the Congress, to which he invited members of the American Committee for East-West Accord, which is deeply worried about a new Cold War between the United States and Russia. Three members of this group all expressed their concern that the U.S. policy toward Russia has gone totally off the rails, and that the demonization of Putin, and the total disregard for Russian security interests and standpoint, have brought about a totally dangerous situation.

Former U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock, who was the President Reagan’s ambassador to Moscow at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, asserted there, once again, that at the end of negotiations with the Soviet Union, clear assurances had been given by the West, that NATO would not expand up to Russia’s borders; that NATO could perhaps spread a protective umbrella over the states of the former Warsaw Pact, but would build no bases in these countries.

That is exactly what is denied by the media today. Matlock was an eyewitness—he was in Russia when Gorbachov was negotiating with then German Foreign Minister Genscher—and he has stressed this many times.

State Department Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna October 23, 2015. Their agreement has led to a series of fruitful negotiating sessions on Syria, involving more than a dozen nations.

A specialist in Russian studies, Prof. Emeritus Stephen Cohen, from New York University, said that the new Cold War which we are now experiencing is much more dangerous than the old one. We have troops on the border with Russia, and there are no more rules of the game. Putin has reacted cleverly, he said, as a strategist, to all these things, and has created new facts on the ground through solid strategic cooperation with China. Whoever takes on Russia, must therefore assume that he will have to deal with Russia and China, and probably with a whole series of other countries.

Russia Turns the Flank

Above all, Russia, through its military intervention in Syria—which began on Sept. 30, has very rapidly created military facts on the ground, Cohen said, as the Russian Air Force is providing protection for the Syrian Army, which can then attack, and has made great progress against ISIS and other terrorist groups. But Russia has, at the same time, linked this with a global diplomatic initiative. It has brought all the countries of the region to one table.

The first meeting was two weeks ago in Vienna. Present were Saudi Arabia and Iran, two clear adversaries, but also Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Today, the second Syria conference is taking place in Vienna. German Foreign Minister Steinmeier flew in for the meeting from Paris, where he was attending a soccer game, just as the terrorist attacks were being committed.

German policy clearly supports Russia’s initiative fully, because it is the only chance for defeating terrorism. At this second conference today, according to my latest information, the Syrian government of Assad, as well as various rebel groups are participating. The objective is to reach a unity government, and eventually free elections in a transitional process—thus a political solution.

In response, the Obama Administration has sent 50 members of the Special Forces to Syria—the famous “boots on the ground”—an action which, under the U.S. Constitution, requires the consent of the Congress. Of course Obama has not gotten that approval. He is not in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government, as Russia is, and he also has no mandate from the UN Security Council.

There is a bipartisan group in the U.S. Congress which has demanded an immediate debate and vote in Congress on this specific matter. It’s represented by Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.) on the Democratic side, and Rep. Walter Jones (N.C.) on the Republican side. Yesterday (Nov. 13), 35 more Congressmen demanded an immediate debate and vote on this mission in a letter to the newly elected Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Under the United States Constitution, only the Congress, not the President, can decide whether to go to war. Obama has violated this principle many times, and that is also further grounds for impeachment.

Furthermore, the Pentagon has now confirmed that its provocations against China in the South China Sea will continue. Two B-52 bombers flew over the vicinity of a newly constructed Chinese island in the South China Sea, an action which was followed by an immediate warning from China, because the act violated China’s sovereignty. The Global Times, a Chinese paper close to the government, wrote that China is not afraid of a war with the United States. In the event military tensions in the Pacific between the United States and China intensify, China possesses weapons systems capable of reaching the territory of the United States. They made clear they will not capitulate.

View full size Global Times In October 2013 the Chinese paper Global Times published this grahic of the range of radioactive fallout which could hit the United States, if China were forced to respond to an attack by the West.

When the ASEAN defense ministers met recently in Kuala Lumpur, Ash Carter tried to get this conference—of which the U.S. is not even a member, but had only been invited as a guest—to adopt American formulations on the tensions in the South China Sea; fortunately, it met strong resistance.

The United States had also tried, through subterfuge, to get the Philippines to allow U.S. military bases to be built on its territory, which is against the Philippine Constitution. The subterfuge it used was that it would station American weapons on Philippine bases, and still call them Philippine bases. The Philippine Supreme Court then ruled that this agreement did not constitute a treaty under international law, but was only an Executive order, and therefore the Senate did not have to ratify it. However, the Senate voted that it was a definitely a treaty under international law that the Senate had to approve. (See articles in Section III.)

So you see—and I can only cite a few examples here—that there is resistance throughout the world and many countries are aware of where it will lead.

What is the state of the resistance in Germany to these lunatic policies? Taking what I just now said, and what you, yourselves, know from the media or your own research—if you consider all of this, then I think it’s absolutely time to reassess the strategic and existential interests of Germany, and define them anew. It can no longer be simply assumed that we are “a part of the western community of values,” and that therefore, no matter what happens, we must always go along with what the United States and Great Britain present to us.

My husband, Lyndon LaRouche, who is an extremely acute strategic thinker, and has always put his finger on most critical elements, has recently referred to the fact that the United States has gone through a great change since the assassination attempt against President Reagan in the first year of his Presidency (1981). At that point, President Reagan fortunately was not killed, but he was nonetheless in a weakened condition, so that the influence of Vice President George Bush increased more and more. Especially during the last two years of Reagan’s Presidency, he had increasing health problems, which dominated the situation.

Neo-Cons on the Rampage

Neo-con policies were continued when George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan as President. Then there were eight years under Clinton, which were a mixture of good and bad, and then eight years of Bush and Cheney, followed by seven years of Obama. Thus, with an eight-year hiatus, we have had a continuity of neo-con policies in the United States for 21 years!

Department of Defense/Cherie A. Thurlby President George W. Bush with his two chief advisors from PNAC, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (left) and Vice President Dick Cheney (right). The three are shown at Rumsfeld’s farewell parade at the Pentagon in December 2006.

These policies had a massive influence on Europe. In 1997 an organization called the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was founded in America. It’s in this organization that the roots of the refugee crisis can be found. The members included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Robert Kagan—he’s the husband of Victoria Nuland, a woman with a remarkable sexual drive, since she wants to f*** the whole EU; she must be a nymphomaniac of an extraordinary sort. At its founding, this group said the United States must create a new American empire, and that was the policy which President Bush junior then pursued.

Unfortunately that was also the combination which dictated the situation when the reunification of Germany came about in 1989. We in Germany, especially the people of the former DDR, made a truly peaceful revolution. It was not only a “turning point,” as the term was later modified into a circumlocution. It definitely could have been the beginning of a new order of peace for the Twenty-First Century.

Did Russia deploy tanks? Russia had agreed that German reunification would proceed peacefully and therefore had the justifiable hope that Germany would be a reliable partner, and maybe even a friend. The Russians are therefore tremendously disappointed and hurt that certain German governments have demonstrated themselves to be poodles of Washington and London. Then there were the Western concessions that there would be no NATO troops on the Russian border, which the Russians believed at the time.

The CIA did a study in 1991, which said that Russia’s economic development should be discouraged, because Russia has more natural resources and a better-educated workforce than the West, and therefore any economic development would only result in Russia later becoming an even bigger competitor on the world market. So instead, Russia should be blocked economically. This then resulted in the famous shock therapy devised by various professors. From 1991 to 1994, this shock therapy reduced Russia’s industrial potential by 70%.

The Russian economist Sergei Glazyev wrote in his book about the Yeltsin period of the ’90s—which was appropriately titled Genocide—that this was a deliberate program of population reduction, in which the Russian population was reduced by about a million people each year. The mortality rate was higher than the birth rate.

This was also when the PNAC policy of regime change began: the Orange Revolution, the color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and later in the Arab world, etc.

The consequence for Germany was that the achievement of German reunification, fully legitimate under domestic and international law, was betrayed because of the combination of French President François Mitterrand, who threatened German Chancellor Helmut Kohl with war, as Jacques Attali has reported in detail in his biography of Mitterrand; and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who at the time was reviling Germany as the Fourth Reich; and the elder Bush, who said that Germany had to be contained through self-containment. And the best way for this to happen was through German integration into the EU and the Maastricht Treaty—i.e., Germany had to give up the D-Mark, was forced into the European Monetary Union, and thus embedded or locked into this alliance.

Then came eight years of Clinton. These were a mixture. The Oslo Accord was good, but the neocons immediately came up with the “Clean Break” policy, so regime change was to be the policy for all the governments in the Middle East. Then in 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, completely in the interests of Wall Street.

On Jan. 3, 2001 my husband gave a very famous webcast in which he said that the administration of Bush, Jr., which would be coming into the White House three weeks later, would confront with difficulties in the financial system far beyond what people imagine, and that they would therefore stage a new “Reichstag fire.” That was exactly nine months before Sept. 11.

Sept. 11 was not at all what the official line says, and this is now a very hot topic in the American Congress, where about 21 Representatives and also some Senators are demanding the publication of these 28 pages. And of course the 3,000 family members of the World Trade Center victims have built a movement in America that is demanding the same thing. As many attest who have read these 28 pages, they have nothing to do with U.S. national security interests, but rather the cover-up of criminal machinations. This is something that must be made public.

LPAC/Matthew Ogden Former Senator Bob Graham at a press conference on Jan. 7, 2015, where he demanded the release of the 28 pages in the interests of national security, as well as justice.

If what happened on Sept. 11 was not what the official account describes, then, of course, the Afghanistan War, which was based on Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, is also invalid. And after all, this war is one of the reasons for the refugees. Today, there are millions of people who can no longer stay in Afghanistan, because the 13 years of NATO deployment there have only made everything worse. Drug production in Afghanistan is 40 times what it was before. That is one way that the terrorists are being financed. The Taliban is expanding its control, and the people are fleeing from these circumstances. Sept. 11 is therefore an important issue for the refugee question.

This was also, of course, the time of the extensive abrogation of civil rights in the United States, with the Patriot Act and various follow-up laws. Then the unbridled addiction of the NSA to investigating everything in the world that moves, to check out every e-mail, every phone call—it really is an addiction. There is no way that all of this data could be evaluated; it’s a mania.

Wars Built upon Lies

The Iraq War that began in 2003, of course, is the result of the memorandum of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the MI6, a memorandum riddled with lies, which then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN General Assembly as the reason for war: that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could reach every city in the world in 45 minutes—all that was a lie. That is another reason for the refugees: the war in Iraq.

In March 2011, support for the Opposition in Syria began in the context of the Arab Spring. The military attack on Libya in 2011, the brutal murder of Qaddafi—these are also reasons for the refugees. Today, if we look at Libya, the country is completely destroyed, razed to the ground. You don’t have to be a friend of Saddam Hussein, or Qaddafi, or President Assad, but the fact is that these States, with these Heads of State, were functioning countries with a functioning infrastructure, with women’s rights (women could be educated). If you look now at Iraq, Syria, and Libya, these countries are razed to the ground, bombed back to the Stone Age.

These are the reasons for the refugees. If they are not discussed and corrected, then the problem will not be solved. We need this debate very urgently.

Since the military strike against Libya, the UN Security Council has been virtually nonfunctional. The Obama Administration has said that this was not a war but a “humanitarian intervention” to protect the poor rebels in Benghazi against the evil dictator Qaddafi. Of course it was still a military operation, but this lie at first convinced China and Russia to hold back; but to my knowledge, that was the last time they were taken in by such things.

The military strike against Libya was the point at which my husband Lyndon LaRouche, astute as he always is, said that there is a much larger purpose behind this: namely, to prepare for a thermonuclear war against Russia and China. At that time, many people said that simply cannot be, it’s not possible; but now the people who deal with these things are no longer in doubt.

Creative Commons/E. Arrot Jihadi fighters in Libya in 2011, who ripped the country apart, and signalled the Western drive for war against Russia and China.

In September 2013, the war against Syria was almost at the point of a U.S. military strike, which was prevented literally in the last hours by the U.S. Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, who went to Obama at the White House and said: You have no mandate from Congress, and you will be impeached if you do it.

As already mentioned, in 2012 DIA director Gen. Michael Flynn had warned about the plans to build an Islamic Caliphate.

Catastrophic Situation in the U.S.

Does this mean that the United States is the beneficiary of this policy? Of course not. Former diplomats themselves such as Chas Freeman, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and other countries, have given public speeches in Washington saying who said that even from the narrow perspective of American security interests, the U.S. has lost a massive amount of influence throughout the Middle East, because its enemies and the hatred of the United States have grown so enormously; this policy has been a total loss.

Has the United States itself profited economically? Not at all. The U.S. at the moment is in a classical breakdown crisis.

creative commons/Joshua Doubek The crash of the commodity markets, especially oil, is devastating the one recent area of “growth” in the U.S. economy, the fracking industry, as shown here.

The New York Times reported last week that the mortality rate for white Americans between the ages of 40 and 50 has risen by 10%, and for the poor population even by 22% [from 1999 to 2014]. Forty or 50 is not a good age at which to die. With progressive medical research, people should live longer. The reason for this increase is alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide. The number of drug-related deaths in the U.S. is now greater than the number of deaths from traffic accidents or firearms.

The official unemployment rate in America is about 5%, about 7.5 million. Ninety-four million people of working age are not included in the statistics. These are either people who have never had a job, or have given up looking for one, and are therefore no longer counted in the statistics. This adds up to 104 million Americans of working age who are unemployed, or 23%, about a quarter of the working-age population—an enormous loss for the economy. At the same time, people have to take on more work; they have a lower income and less free time.

Right now there is an escalating drug epidemic. In 2013, some 46,000 people died of an overdose: 120 per day. From 2007 to 2013, i.e., including during the Obama Administration, heroin addiction increased by 150%. For those with an annual income of $50,000 (about the median income), heroin consumption is up 60%. In New York, 60% of the people are at the poverty line or below. In Baltimore, one out of every ten people is addicted to heroin, and 50% of the people are functional illiterates.

Soldiers who deployed for several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan play an important role. Many come back with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and their families are completely destroyed.

The effect on the children is huge. Everyone knows the stories of shootings in schools and police violence which is the result of the militarization of the police—not as they are called in Germany “the police, your friend and helper;” they operate according to military principles, with military weapons.

The murder rate and violence in the African-American population is a whole chapter in itself. We recently had some guests who reported it to us in detail. It is a completely different world, a hell where “black on black crime” rules.

I could continue the list, but I do have to say for the sake of completeness that the next financial crash is imminent. There are several top economists who say it will likely happen before the end of the year. The IMF has just said we are unprepared for the next financial crisis, because all the instruments have already been used up. With the zero-interest-rate policy having been in effect for many years, it is impossible to lower rates any further, and all countries are deeply in debt.

The commodity price bubble today is exactly what the housing bubble was in 2007, and will burst; the commercial real estate bubble is bigger today than in 2007; the “too-big-to-fail” banks are 40% bigger than in 2008; the total outstanding derivative debts are $2 quadrillion—i.e., $2,000 trillion. If that crashes, no bail-out and no bail-in will be enough.

For the United States it is absolutely clear: The only chance is to bankrupt Wall Street through Glass-Steagall. This is currently a very important topic in the election campaign, with Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley demanding it, and also Rand Paul on the Republican side, and the trade unions mobilizing for it. So the U.S. must reinstate Glass-Steagall, i.e., bank separation, and must become a republic again. This is the reason that my husband brought this process to Manhattan, to organize networks radiating out from Manhattan that will return the United States to its original character as a republic. This is an idea that is still endorsed by a minority, but there are also thinking Americans who look at the situation as I’ve just described it.

What Germany Can Do

What can Germany do in this situation? I have focussed so much on the strategic situation, because Germany is of course only a medium-sized country, and people always say: “We can’t do anything anyway.” But that is not the case at all. Germany can do very, very, very much.

1. The first step must be for a debate to be waged in Germany about what its existential interests actually are. Such a debate is completely lacking in the German media, it is lacking in German politics, and I can only ask you all to help us get this debate going.
   
   Quite obviously it is not in the German interest to be cannon fodder for th imperialist plans to launch a third world war on behalf of an Anglo-American empire. In that case, there would be nothing left of Germany. Therefore, one of the first steps must be to end the sanctions against Russia immediately.
   
   Helmut Schmidt recently said in an interview that the Ukraine crisis was not triggered by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but by the Maastricht Treaty. I can only fully and completely agree with the late Helmut Schmidt. That is the seed of the evil, because the Maastrich Treaty turned the EU into an empire, and the whole idea of expanding the EU eastward was born of exactly the same spirit as the eastward expansion of NATO. That was the reason that in November 2013, the EU presented Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych with a fait accompli, in the form of the EU Association Agreement, which Yanukovych then rejected at the last moment because it would simply not have worked. This was the beginning of the Maidan and everything that followed.

2. Secondly, I think that the participation of the Bundeswehr in all military operations that are part of this first strike scenario must be immediately ended. We in Germany must not take part in an offensive war. This is in the UN Charter; it was the self-evident reason for the Nuremberg trials, and war must never again emanate from German soil. As long as there are tactical nuclear weapons on German soil, this risk definitely remains.

3. We need a public debate on the security interests of all countries, including the security interests of Russia and China. I have proposed for quite some time a new, inclusive, international security architecture. It must take into account the security interests of each country. Otherwise it is impossible to establish a peace order.

4. Fourthly, we need a public analysis and debate about the causes of the refugee crisis. I have already mentioned some points about that. Then Mr. Schäuble’s ridiculous thesis about the inept skiers who triggered the avalanche can be tossed onto the garbage heap of history where it belongs. It was not an inept skier; it was precisely this policy of wars built upon lies and the support for rebels, where “good” rebels immediately turned into “bad” rebels, etc.
   
   In addition, Mr. Schäuble should immediately resign, if he wants to contribute to a solution of the refugee crisis. His “black zero” (zero-deficit) policy, which has already plunged all of Southern Europe into disaster, which pushed Greece to the brink of the abyss, which has destroyed a third of the Greek economy, sending the suicide rate into the stratosphere, and sinking the people into despair—all this is the result of the black zero. If the black zero is now continued until 2016, even though dealing with the refugees obviously requires investment for which new loans must be made available, then what Mr. Schäuble says is the tinder, the fuel, that is stoking the escalation of right-wing violence in Germany. So Schäuble should resign.

5. I am for the immediate disbanding of the Verfassungsschutz and the BND. In their place, we should have a German intelligence service. Every country has the right to a secret service, but every country also has the right for its secret service to be of its own nationality.

6. Sixth, we should accept President Xi Jinping’s offer to cooperate with the New Silk Road.

The Chinese Option

Here I must say very briefly: Luckily, in addition to these horrors that have developed in the trans-Atlantic world, there exists a very different economic model! China is at the center of it, but also the BRICS countries, which are now cooperating with many countries of Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

This economic model is based on entirely different principles. It is not a speculative casino economy, but is based on promotion of the common good. China developed its own economic model, which has achieved as much development in the past 30 years as the industrial countries in the past 200, as the focus was on excellence in education, the utmost development of scientific and technological progress, and improving skills, in particular of the youth and women. China has also developed a new model of relations among nations, which calls for respect of the sovereignty of others, non-interference into their affairs, and acceptance of other social systems. Any country that wishes to join in the New Silk Road project is welcome to do so for the mutual benefit of all in a “win-win” strategy.

China is more Confucian than communist. China’s 2,500 year old Confucian tradition is a defining factor in the entire political and economic life of the country. It is based, among other things, on an image of man as being unlimitedly perfectible. Confucius says you have to do something new every day—never do what you already did yesterday. It’s absolute innovation. That has led to China being able to free 600 million people from poverty in the past 30 years. That’s why I have made the point that China has done more for human rights than all the representatives of the so-called Western “community of values,” who talk a lot about democracy and human rights, but do the opposite.

Xinhua/Li Tao Chinese President Xi Jinping (left), on his trip to Vietnam Nov. 5, toasts with Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

The British, of course, are clever and see the new signs of the times. When Xi Jinping was recently in the UK, they rolled out the red carpet for him and spoke of the dawning of a golden era of British-Chinese relations. They like to be the first to jump on the bandwagon of new developments.

But Angela Merkel also, when she was in China, insisted on a strategic partnership. In particular in science and hi-tech areas, cooperation should be consolidated. And a very important seminar on the New Silk Road just took place in Spain, where the director of China’s most important development center said that the New Silk Road should become a Noah’s Ark for all countries in need. That is absolutely correct.

Of course, China is pursuing its own interests, but it also always respects and promotes the interests of the other. This can indeed become a Noah’s Ark for all countries that are in need.

Development against Terrorism

I immediately proposed, in line with a proposal I made in 2012, that the only way to fight terrorism is to extend the New Silk Road to the Middle East and Africa. These regions are so destroyed at this point, and not only the cultural heritage in Palmyra or all the infrastructure, but the livelihood of the people has been largely destroyed as well.

Let’s assume that all the neighbors have a fundamental interest in putting an end to terrorism. Russia is tremendously threatened by it. After all, the head of ISIS is a Chechen, and the Chechens are closely linked to the Right Sector in Ukraine, and are also closely related to ISIS; it’s all one network. China has the same interest, because of Xinjiang and the Uighurs. India has huge problems due to the influence of Saudi Wahhabism-Salafism among the Muslim population, but so also do Iran, Egypt, etc. If all the neighboring countries work together on this, and then others, such as Germany, Italy, France and even the U.S., all say: Together, we will implement a Marshall Plan for the Middle East. . . .

We will build the World Land-bridge, we will take the entire region and declare war on the desert, we will develop new water resources through desalinization of sea water. We will create new water supplies through ionization of the humidity in the atmosphere, we will green the deserts, we will build infrastructure and new cities. And, by doing so, we will create an incentive for the young people in the Middle East, so they do not become jihadis, but want to have a future, to start a family, to become scientists and engineers.

That is the only way to overcome terrorism. Bombs cannot do it alone; we have to create an incentive at the same time for these people to have a future.

At the Vienna conference two weeks ago, China put that forth as the 4th point of its proposal, that the reconstruction of Syria must begin immediately. The projects should start in the areas where peace reigns, so that people who are now at war already see the peace dividend as an incentive to end the war.

The same is true, of course, for Africa. The situation in Africa is not just due to the impact of this war policy. The West is also to blame for decades of non-development under the conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund and the Green environmentalist policy. The WWF stopped most of the projects, such as dams, river regulations, etc., and thus contributed to the current poverty.

We need to extend the World Land-bridge into these regions, and then we can have hope that the new name for peace is development.

Changing the Culture

For all of this to work, we in Germany also need a complete change in our culture. We need a paradigm change. The majority of the population today is controlled from the outside. Either we accept living under a dictatorship or an oligarchy, under the motto “we can’t do anything anyway”—which is the most common phrase heard among Germans—or we just go along. We accept the entertainment industry and stupidities on television.

I don’t know if you watch TV, but all you can find now are crime series. There are no more movies. Recently the “Movie of the Week” was running, and I turned on the TV with joy. What was it? A crime thriller! This is a real dumbing-down, as if the whole world were made up of crimes, how to solve them, and the odd relationships among police captains.

There has been an incredible dumbing-down of intellectual life. There is no cultural debate, no intellectual fights over about the great issues of our time.

If Germany is to survive this difficult historical moment, we must re-discover our true identity. What I mean by true identity is, of course, Classical culture. Classical culture as it was developed in music, through Bach, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms. In terms of poetry, we are just as richly blessed, with Lessing, Schiller, Heine, and hundreds of other classical poets. In philosophy and natural sciences, as is known, Germany is the country which has produced the most thinkers, poets, discoverers and inventors, but they are just not known any more. Who reads Nicholas of Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz? Who knows Schiller’s poems by heart or who applies the aesthetic theory in everyday life?

creative commons The monument to poets Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller in Weimar, Germany.

We have to get to know these classical figures once again and then refuse such outside control over our minds, because that is what determines the “good conduct” of the conformist, which says we want to belong to a certain group, a certain club, the trans-Atlantic club or the free-market club or some other club which is supposed to be advantageous for us. That is why we are not free.

The reason we are unfree is not because Germany has not signed a peace treaty, as some people repeat endlessly. We are not free because we do not have inner freedom. We have to find our way back to an inner control, to self-determination. What Schiller says in his wonderful poem “Hope”—“what the inner voice speaks”—is true, and that is what we must learn to hear again.

My husband has recently talked about “placement” of the voice in bel canto singing and its importance. The Italian bel canto method, the “art of beautiful singing,” has to do with putting the voice in the right place. That implies considering the entire human body, chest voice, head voice, all the resonance chambers of the body, as pieces of one instrument, and apprehending there the intonation and intention of the composer. But it does not just involve “placing” the notes or the music; it actually concerns tuning our lives, and the placement of our identity within the order of creation.

Anyone who has already considered whether there is really such a thing as a premonition,—and this is not just to be understood in a religious way, or according to any one religion. Most of you have already experienced the sentiment one has when one does exactly what is necessary to do. When you know that you are acting as a “good Samaritan,” that you as a person are acting, essentially, in a human way, in the way one should actually always act, but unfortunately only manages to do so from time to time. But everyone knows this sentiment of inner happiness or inner freedom, where you know that you freely doing what’s necessary. That is the quality of inner freedom that we have to win back.

Schiller described this in his demands of an artist. He said that before an artist dares to move his public, he must first ennoble himself to the level of an ideal person. We have to make the same demand on ourselves. Not that we will manage to do it every second and every minute, but we act on the idea that we achieve our own humanity, by contributing, through our living, something which allows mankind to progress.

That is actually what should define us. That is what German culture must re-become.