AS THE CRISES ESCALATE
Justice Victorious over Obama’s Veto:
Which Side Is Germany On?
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche,
chair of the German Civil Rights Movement Solidarity Party (BüSo)
[Print version of this article]
Oct. 1—The devastating defeat which the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives dealt President Obama, with their overrides of his veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), represents an historic opportunity to reappraise and rectify the entire catastrophic policy of the trans-Atlantic world since September 11, 2001. That must include the consequences of the wars in the Middle East and North Africa—based on lies—and the causes of the refugee crisis and terrorism.
The most important lesson to learn from these votes—which were the result of a 15-year, heroic struggle by the families of the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center—is this: Yes, we can indeed act to help achieve victory for justice! At the decisive moment, the passionate appeal of the victims’ families to the Congressmen won out over the geopolitical manipulations and alliances of the Bush and Obama regimes.
As several of the family members stressed in interviews, for them this fight was not about what compensation they could get, but about justice for the people whom they have lost and about dismantling the cover-up of the true circumstances behind 9/11, a cover-up that provided the pretext for many wars in which millions of innocent people lost their lives and whole nations were virtually totally destroyed.
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LaRouche PAC organizers in New York City.
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Given the dramatic escalation of the military situation in Syria and the confrontation between the United States and Russia, which threatens to escalate into a global war, this setback for Obama comes not a moment too soon. Russian President Vladimir Putin has obviously drawn his own conclusions from the Pentagon and State Department’s sabotage of the ceasefire process between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. At exactly the point that Kerry and Lavrov had reached an agreement, there was a meeting in Washington of Obama, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the CIA, shortly after which the “unintentional” bombing of the Syrian army by U.S. air strikes occurred. In addition, the American side has not upheld its part of the Kerry-Lavrov agreement, namely, to separate the “moderate rebels” from the Islamic State and al-Nusra.
At the same time, the United States blamed Russia for the attack on an aid convoy, while Moscow blamed the terrorists. After the collapse of the ceasefire negotiations, the Syrian army reacted with the strongest attacks on the positions of the terrorist groups, which had by then deployed a strike force equivalent to two divisions of fighters in East Aleppo.
Ill-Concealed Threat Against Russia
Then on Sept. 28, State Department spokesman Rear Admiral (ret.) John Kirby predicted that extremists would attack Russian targets, perhaps even in Russian cities; that Russian soldiers would be brought home in body bags; and that more Russian airplanes would be shot down—a prediction the Russian side considered a blatant threat.
Admiral Kirby said, according to the official transcript of the State Department Daily Press Briefing of Sept. 28: “extremists and extremists groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which will include, no question, attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities, and Russia will continue to send troops home in body bags, and they will continue to lose resources—even, perhaps, more aircraft.”
Meanwhile U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter was visiting various military bases around the United States to make the case for Obama’s trillion dollar program of modernization of nuclear weapons. At his first stop, at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Carter announced, in front of a backdrop of a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber, that nuclear weapons have not been deployed since 1945, but that one should not take this for granted. He then proceeded to declare North Korea and Russia to be equal threats. The Russian Foreign Ministry reacted “with concern,” noting that Carter’s remarks meant that the U.S. would apparently be prepared to deploy nuclear weapons in an armed conflict which involved Russia, and that the United States is knowingly presenting a false picture of the content of the military doctrine Russia adopted in 2014.
More Air Strikes on Syrian Troops?
According to Reuters, the U.S. administration is now openly threatening air strikes against the Syrian army, while sections of the U.S. government have expressed fear that Russian soldiers could also be killed in such attacks. At the same time, American officials have pointed out that they could allow Turkey and Saudi Arabia to supply the Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft weapons. German author and journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer has, in the meantime, published interviews which he had conducted a short time before with an al-Nusra commander in Aleppo, in which this leader admitted that all the rebels’ weapons came from the United States, and were then distributed by al-Nusra to different groups with constantly changing names.
September 11th was the evil deed which then “must give birth to perpetual evil,” as it is said in Schiller’s play, The Piccolomini—that is, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, in which “regime change” was justified on the basis of misrepresentations. How long must we go on hearing the story of the “good rebels,” who change their names and composition faster than weapons are delivered to them?
Instead of condemning the “barbaric” attack by the Syrian army on Aleppo based on this distortion, as Chancellor Merkel did after a telephone call with Obama—in order to play her intended role in a deceitful film—the Bundestag should urgently launch its own investigation into the implications of the “28 pages” and JASTA for understanding the causes setting in motion the refugee crisis and the terror attacks in Europe.
A New Paradigm to Prevent War
It as just as urgent to stop the confrontation with Russia—which could lead very quickly to a global thermonuclear war—as it is to get the immediate reorganization of the bankrupt financial system at long last on the agenda. The entire international financial press is full of panic articles, saying that the collapse of Deutsche Bank, whose stock fell to under 10 euros a share on Sept. 30, threatens to unleash a global meltdown, due to the entanglement of all the counterparties in Deutsche Bank’s extensive 42 trillion euro derivatives bubble. Deutsche Bank is faced with its “Lehman Brothers” moment, they say. On Sept. 30 Bloomberg News quoted Michael Ingram of BGC Partners in London: “We have a very connected financial system. A zombie financial system at some point translates into a zombie economy.”
Obviously fearing the rage of the voters, Mrs. Merkel claimed a few days ago that the German government will not step in to rescue Deutsche Bank. No one believes that because everyone knows that the explosive power of Deutsche Bank is sufficient to plunge the global financial system into the abyss, and thus to also throw the world economy into absolute chaos. Immediately after Merkel’s statement, hedge funds began to speculate on an upcoming government reorganization by selling short.
The only way to stop the threatened collapse of the world financial system is the immediate, temporary nationalization of Deutsche Bank, which must be taken over by an administrative commission. Its derivatives contracts must be unwound in an orderly fashion, that is, substantially written off. Then the bank must be provided with a new business plan in the tradition of Alfred Herrhausen, and thereby turned into a commercial bank for investing in industry. Because of the global scale of Deutsche Bank’s operations, the implementation of the Glass-Steagall banking separation model in the Deutsche Bank case would provide a perfect starting point for the realization of a global Glass-Steagall system.
Germany Must Stand Up for Itself
At the G-20 Summit in Hangzhou, China put on the agenda the perspective of both win-win cooperation in the world economy on the basis of innovation, and the necessity for a new financial architecture. The implementation of the New Silk Road, on which already more than 70 countries are collaborating, provides the concrete prospect for overcoming the world financial crisis and relaunching the world economy. Germany needs to join in.
Twenty-six years after German reunification, it is high time for Germany to stand up for its own sovereign interests. It should certainly be allowed, now that the European Union, of all entities, has rediscovered the virtues of national sovereignty and committed itself so clearly to the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia, as opposed to the rights of the family members of the victims of 9/11.
 cc/Tobias Koch
Wolfgang Schäuble and Chancellor Angela Merkel in the German Bundestag, 2014.
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To make this possible, we need a new paradigm of thinking; we must hark back to the high point of our own culture, German Classical culture, in which music, poetry, and science blossomed. If we rise to the level of thinking on which geniuses such as Nicholas of Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller, Einstein, and Krafft Ehricke thought, we will be able to awaken the sublime frame of mind and the creative optimism we need to find solutions on that higher level, the level on which these great souls thought.
And why shouldn’t we be able to realize a renaissance of our humanistic tradition? In China they are celebrating the 2,567th birthday of Confucius by bringing to life his philosophy—which is very similar to European humanism in many respects—in all layers of society. In Germany, we have the good fortune of having an extraordinarily great number of poets, thinkers, and scientists who have contributed to universal history. We need only rediscover them. Our future can only lie in the ideal of a humanity which realizes the common goals of our species, goals expressed poetically and musically in Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
