To Break Free, Germany Needs
the New Silk Road Marshall Plan!
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chair of the German political party Civil Rights Movement Solidarity
Jan. 9—In the highly charged national and international debate about what happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve and about what the refugee policy should be, most people forget the context in which these developments are playing out. In the trans-Atlantic region, the financial crash is fully on, and since several countries have already implemented the ’bail-in’ policy, which means the expropriation of the depositors and the creditors of insolvent banks (the "Cyprus model”), speculators shied away from buying bonds in the first week of January. Directly linked to the collapse is the growing danger of a global thermonuclear war.
Regardless of what a thorough investigation brings to light about the attacks on the women in Cologne by ”North African-looking” gangs of men, these incidents are grist for the mills of right-wingers, from British Prime Minister David Cameron to Donald Trump, to the Alternativ für Deutschland party and all those who have attacked Chancellor Merkel’s refugee policy, and hope to reduce the number of asylum seekers as much as possible. Deputy Finance Minister Jens Spahn, who has written a book strongly attacking Merkel’s policy, has launched a populist call for a “social outcry.”
Such an outcry is indeed necessary, not only against the barbaric culprits in Cologne, but especially against those responsible for the refugee crisis,—the Bushes, Cheneys, Obamas, Blairs, and Camerons who have blanketed South-West Asia with wars based on lies, and who have knowingly and willfully built up terrorist organizations from the Mujahideen to al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and ISIS to bring down elected governments for geopolitical reasons, including by providing them with weapons. The ”failure of the state” that Spahn decries in Merkel’s refugee policy, is in reality the “failure of the policy” of the Anglo-American Empire, which has laid waste to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and now Yemen, making survival impossible for the people there, who are fleeing to places where they hope to have a chance to survive.
Some Serious Questions
The police were unable to control the chaotic situation on New Year’s Eve. Why there was no heightened state of alert for all main train stations, when the Munich and Munich-Pasing stations were closed down twice, raises a number of questions. In any case, Germany now has the “ugly images” which Spahn, in his book, believes have to be “accepted” as a result of drastic measures against the refugees. But instead of the screaming women and children being expelled, which he evokes, this time we only saw the temporarily lawless area around the Cologne main station.
 ttp://vladtepesblog.com
German Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas stated in a Jan. 10 Bild am Sonntag interview that the New Year’s Eve Cologne riots, shown here, were “inter-coordinated or pre-planned,” and that “we must urgently have intelligence on this.”
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Those responsible are, among others, the advocates of the “black zero” deficit policy, i.e., a monetarist austerity policy under which the debt incurred by the state to save the speculators and bankrupt banks is foisted onto the population, and investors’ accounts are seized to cover current banking debts. In other words, those responsible are Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his Deputy Minister Spahn, whose policy led to the layoff of 16,000 police over the past years, just as demands on the police were increasing to ensure security at soccer games, rock concerts, and border controls. The police trade unions have repeatedly warned about the consequences of the staff downsizing.
If the mixture of hostility and social callousness shown by Schäuble and company in the case of Greece, and towards the refugees and now Italy, represents the “community of values” and “defining culture” which should allegedly make us superior, then nobody who has any humanity left at all would want to be anywhere near these people. Among these people are not only Schäuble himself, whom even his friends in his political party say would sell his grandmother to implement his idea of a European superstate, and Jens Spahn, whose call to “be willing to get tough” presents an extremely ugly image—the “hateful German,” so to speak.
 wiss-image.ch/Moritz Hager
Germany’s chief budget-cutter, Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble, speaking in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 24, 2014.
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Expressing similar thinking, Schäuble’s former close collaborator Markus Kerber—presently the managing director of the German Industrial Association—said in his contribution to Spahn’s book that the effort to be made for the integration of the refugees, “depends on the dose.” As if these desperate people needed a few drops of medicine against a cold.
Germans Must Decide
We in Germany in particular, and in the trans-Atlantic sector as a whole, are facing a total dichotomy. On one hand there are people, such as the many volunteers helping with the refugee crisis, who, in the face of the obvious crisis of civilization, are giving their all, their humanity. On the other hand there are those profiteering off the system, who, according to the principle of the three monkeys who can see, hear, or say no evil, defend everything that can preserve their oh-so-comfortable privileges. They do that even if that goes hand in hand with “ugly images,” such as the looming collapse into a new Dark Age, or the extinction of mankind in a third, thermonuclear world war. The principle that holds is: If the Titanic sinks, I still want to at least have the best seat at the final dinner with the Captain.
That was expressed so prophetically in Schiller’s Song of the Bell:
Doch mit des Geschickes Mächten
Ist kein ew’ger Bund zu flechten,
Und das Unglück schreitet schnell.But with the powers of Destiny
No lasting bond may woven be;
And Misfortune strideth swift.
Whoever thinks that he can build his career as a popstar of politics now by becoming an apologist for globalization—which is at the point of totally disappearing into hell,—is just a fool of the same sort that Sebastian Brant wrote about in his 1494 satire, The Ship of Fools.
Just as foolish is the clique of journalists which repeats the mantra that the collapse of the Chinese stock market is responsible for the crash now underway. The Chinese stock market is only a small part of the Chinese economy, and the government is now shrinking it. Meanwhile, China has overtaken Japan and South Korea in terms of the export of high technology goods, such as high-speed trains, satellites, nuclear technology, and so forth. In the midst of the currently escalating financial crash, it is the real economic capacities which survive, while virtual stock market values can be wiped out with a keystroke on the computer.
The Punctum‘ Saliens’
There is currently only one strategic initiative which can provide a solution for the different crises we face—the financial, economic, refugee, and moral crises—and that is the offer by the Chinese government for cooperation in construction of a new Silk Road, on the basis of a “win-win” strategy. We must shut down the casino economy of the City of London and Wall Street, of which Schäuble, Spahn, Kerber, and the prematurely ousted Asmussen are toadies, by immediately implementing a system of bank separation in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall law. And then we need a credit system, like the one we had with the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (Reconstruction Bank) after World War II.
The refugee crisis will not be solved by the ugly, abominable methods of Herr Spahn, nor by the just as unrealistic proposals of Wolfgang Ischinger, who also contributed to Spahn’s book. The only way to do it is to develop both Southwest Asia and Africa with a comprehensive “Marshall Plan.” And the only proposal that exists is the construction of the New Silk Road, as a development plan for all of Southwest Asia and Africa.
If we, in Germany, are to assume the historical responsibility which has more or less fallen into our laps, we have to take the initiative now and commit ourselves to the â˜Silk Road Marshall Plan’ before the possibility to act is taken out of our hands by the escalating events.
Since New Year’s Eve at the latest, it should have been clear for all thinking people that we have come to an historical point which Friedrich Schiller described as the “punctum saliens,” or as the crucial point in the drama. Should we fail, it will lead to a tragedy, but should we seize the occasion to establish a new paradigm, we will usher in a new era for mankind. The New Silk Road, as a program to develop the destroyed and under-developed regions of the world, is the opportunity that we must now seize.
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