ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

Ignorance of Our Beautiful Options Is the Biggest Problem We Face

This is the edited transcript of the Schiller Institutes’ July 28, 2019 New Paradigm interview with the founder and President of the Schiller Institutes, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, by Harley Schlanger. A video of the webcast is available.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger with the Schiller Institute. Welcome to our weekly webcast with our founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Today is Sunday, July 28, 2019.

We’ve had a number of very striking developments in this last week, starting with the completely failed effort to use the appearance of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller before Congress to gin up pressure for impeachment of the President. Helga, you saw some of the video of this. What was your impression of Mueller’s testimony?

Mueller’s Testimony

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I only watched for a certain period, because it was getting pretty boring. Mueller’s testimony was long expected, and the Democrats had made such a big show about it, but then, here was Mueller basically saying, “I don’t know. Look at the report. . . .” He didn’t even seem to remember what Fusion GPS was, which is the central firm in the middle of this Russiagate affair. If you listen to the comments afterwards, from Michael Moore to David Axelrod, and various other people in the United States, they all agreed Mueller was a complete disaster, a catastrophe. I thought the most interesting comment, actually, came from the renowned lawyer and constitutional law specialist, Alan Dershowitz, who said to Fox News, “[Mueller] was not familiar with the contents of the report. It’s very clear that Mueller did not write the report.”

Now, that brings up a whole bunch of questions. I really thought that if Mueller is in such a bad shape that he could not stand in such a hearing, why did they put him up there? Why did they not just say he had a diplomatic illness, a sudden knee operation or something which would prevent him from being exposed like that? If there is a doubt that he even wrote the report, then who did write it? And that brings us to the nexus of people behind Mueller. And that takes us to the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Obama Administration, the intelligence chiefs of the Obama Administration, all the way to British intelligence, with which there was collusion.

I find this very interesting. As the next phase, Attorney General William Barr, U.S. Attorney John Durham, and also Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz will hopefully make public all their investigations. All of these individuals are investigating what was really behind the Russiagate coup attempt, in terms of Christopher Steele’s connection to British intelligence.

Trump was very happy with the hearings, as absolutely nothing came out. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, he said,

Hopefully, we are going to be able to find out how a thing like this started. This was treason. This was high crimes. This was everything as bad a definition as you want to come up with. This should never be allowed to happen to our country again.

He said this was three years of wasted time, wasted money.

So I think this is a complete defeat of those people who tried to use that as an entry point for impeachment against Trump, and the Russiagate, which has been dominating the news for almost three years now, has all been absolutely nothing. And the question now on the table is, who did it, and what was the intention? And the real culprits will hopefully all be exposed.

Schlanger: I think one of the more important points that Mueller made, even though he was very evasive, he kept saying “It’s not in my purview” when talking about, for example, as you mentioned, Fusion GPS, which was really the starting point of the so-called “official investigation.” But he said that they found no crime, and so that’s why they made no specific indictments, and it had nothing to do, really, with Russia—except that, at the end, Mueller made a big pitch, saying that it’s “still” Russia, that the Russians are still intervening in our electoral process.

We’ve now arrived at a point where there is no basis for impeachment. What does this mean in terms of the direction that Trump could go now, if he wanted to?

Zepp-LaRouche: If Trump wants to, he could now make good on his election promise, and what he said carefully a couple of times since, namely, improve the relationship with Russia, especially, which is very urgent; but, by the same token, he also could respond to the many Chinese offers for cooperation, for a win-win collaboration on the Belt and Road Initiative, on space exploration and research, and manned space flight down the road. So it’s really up to Trump right now.

LaRouche PAC Moon-Mars Petition

Our colleagues in the United States are not looking at this complacently, because the obstacles are still many, the neo-cons are still there, the Democrats are still in their crazy mood. So our colleagues from LaRouche PAC in the United States have written a very, very good petition, committing the signers and calling upon Trump and the Congress to successfully carry out the Artemis mission, thus making good on Trump’s promise to bring an American man and woman to the Moon by 2024.

This petition is very concrete and shows exactly what steps have to be taken, to not have another situation where programs are cancelled, like the Apollo program; or fusion research which has been underfunded for decades; but the steps required for a Moon-Mars program, as formulated and outlined especially in the 1980s by my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche.

I really urge all of you to look at this petition, titled “We Commit to the Moon-Mars Mission,” sign it, and distribute it as widely as possible, because I think we need a general education of the population of what is needed to actually fulfill these very ambitious programs.

Schlanger: One of the most important positive changes for the United States to make is to accept China’s repeated offers for cooperation in space. The Chinese, again, extended an offer to the United States, and there have been a number of papers written, including a White Paper from China. What is it that they’re asking the United States to do?

Zepp-LaRouche: Many nations right now are conducting very ambitious space programs. China has its Chang’e-4 (lander) and Yutu-2 (rover) vehicles active on the far side of the Moon, which is eventually supposed to bring helium-3 to Earth as fuel for thermonuclear fusion. On July 27, India successfully launched its Chandrayaan-2 mission to investigate water on the South Pole of the Moon. Next year, China will send a vehicle to Mars to investigate terraforming. And in the United States, NASA is now mobilizing under Trump’s Artemis program to bring human beings to the Moon by 2024.

There is already very far-reaching cooperation among the European Space Agency (ESA), Russia’s Roscosmos, the China National Space Administration (CNSA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), all of whom have just participated in the big 4th International Conference on Lunar and Deep Space Exploration in Zhuhai, China, all agreeing to cooperate on lunar missions.

Now, the best thing the United States could do would be to reverse its policy, imposed in 2011 by the Wolf Amendment, prohibiting NASA from cooperating with the Chinese on space research, because this is really an obstacle. China is about to become the leader in space technology, and it may already be there in certain aspects. And if you think about it, as my late husband always said, it’s not about carving up the Moon or other parts of space, it’s getting humans there, it’s making this incredible step beyond that accomplished with the Apollo 8, in which for the first time, humans escaped from Earth’s gravitational pull and orbited the Moon, and beyond man’s first steps on the Moon with Apollo 11.

Cooperative Crash Program a Necessity

With the Artemis project, we are now engaged in a mission that will lead to our constructing a permanent settlement on the Moon, and it makes much more sense if all the international efforts are put together, rather than having each Earth-based spacefaring nation attempting it alone. The steps to be taken are many, and the project would move along much better if everyone was involved in each step along the way.

Of course, adequate funding is absolutely crucial. At the same time, international space cooperation is the absolute necessary basis for what Xi Jinping always calls “the shared community for the future of mankind,” a situation where geopolitics is overcome, and we create the basis for a durable peace for the entire human species.

So the purpose of this petition is, among other things, first of all, to discuss exactly what needs to be put into the mode of a crash program, and in what ways international cooperation should take place.

Schlanger: Helga, speaking of international cooperation, there was a very interesting meeting on July 26 of the foreign ministers of the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—in Brasilia, where Russia’s Sergey Lavrov made a very strong statement about the cooperation that’s developing. During the discussions, Lavrov said that while there’s opposition coming from some networks in America, it’s not coming from Trump. And Jair Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil, will going to China.

So it seems there is potential for the Four Power arrangement or for the great powers working together, and now with Russiagate potentially lifted as a problem, there’s nothing standing in the way.

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, the only thing standing in the way is that there are still hard-core neo-con forces in the United States. For example, the National Defense Strategy of 2017 seems to be the guideline for the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, who repeated all of these lines in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee: that China and Russia are the strategic adversary; that the Belt and Road Initiative is a way of China attempting hegemony. The barriers are, unfortunately, still there.

China’s State Council Information Office has just issued a white paper titled, “China’s National Defense in the New Era,” describing China’s military efforts. China is absolutely increasing its military power, in response to this anti-China campaign—I want to say that emphatically. But in this White Paper, they also say, basically, that they do not intend to ever accomplish hegemony, that they absolutely are working on and promoting the shared future for mankind, and that it is not their intention to challenge either the United States or anybody else.

But one has to see that this kind of paradigm shift—which can only come from international cooperation in the space—is a very urgent question: So, let’s discuss the content of this petition a little bit.

Schlanger: Why don’t you go ahead? People can read it, but it’s really important for them to get a sense of where this is coming from.

A Fusion Energy Based Economic Platform

Zepp-LaRouche: It defines the steps which have to be taken, one of them being that we need a crash program for thermonuclear fusion power. Now, this was the Fourth Law in my late husband’s program for what must be done to avoid the danger of a new financial collapse. For almost half a century now, the standard line was always “Fusion is 30 years away.” Looking at the funding required for a serious crash program, you would need about $50-60 billion. Now, look at how much the war against Iraq cost the United States: $1.4 trillion! If you look at the amount spent in 2018 on “renewables,” it was almost $300 billion.

So, to reach thermonuclear fusion, which replicates the kinds of processes occurring in the Sun, and which would create, in a second-generation iteration, using helium-3 as a fuel, an entirely new basis for generating energy, making the energy-flux of energy production several orders of magnitude higher.

And it would not just be a new, practically limitless energy source for the human species, but would also make realistic, for the first time, interstellar space travel: Because it should be obvious that we cannot go to Mars by conventional means, that is, using chemical fuels for propulsion, because the trip would extend for six months one way, and that is not suitable for the human body. You need actually power sufficient to produce 1-gravity acceleration all the time, which means you go to full acceleration half the way, and then decelerate in the same way, so that space travel to get to Mars would be reduced to a few days, maybe two, three, or maybe four days. That is a completely different conception, so that needs to be done.

At the same time that we settle on the Moon and explore Mars, our fusion-based economy will raise civilization onto a completely different industrial platform because the spillover effect of new technologies would probably be an order of magnitude greater than it was for the Apollo project, which was the science-driver for the economy on Earth for many years. Indeed, the world urgently needs such a massive jump in the increase of productivity, and it would benefit all of humanity for a very long time to come.

In just this one area, using the Moon as the stepping stone has also incredible advantages. First, because the mass of the Moon is only about 1/5 that of Earth, its gravitational pull is only about 1/5 that of Earth, therefore it is much easier—5/6ths easier—to lift payloads off the surface of the Moon than Earth. Second, the Moon has a wealth of resources that can eventually be mined and used by manned Moon-based industries producing vehicles, equipment, and supplies destined for Mars and beyond.

Moon-Mars Is Answer to Green Hoax

So all of these are absolutely crucial steps. I find this extremely exciting, the idea of having permanent settlements on the Moon. That is not to say that one person goes and stays on the Moon forever, but that we set up well-defined cities, that—as Krista Ehricke was explaining last weekend at the July 20 Schiller Institute conference—will be complete with changing seasons, parks, woods, all kinds of things for people to have recreation, a very good life, and at the same time be pioneers for that which makes us human, namely, to conquer the unknown, to go to ever-changing boundaries in the universe, and establish the identity of humanity as a spacefaring species. And in that way, clearly distinguishing ourselves from all other living beings. I think this is very exciting.

This is all now being discussed. We see a new “Moon fever.” People have the idea that we are not confined to a closed, Earth-bound system, but we can not only launch a vehicle into Earth orbit, but we can reach other heavenly bodies, and set up colonies. I think this is absolutely exciting. As I see it, the only way to get out of our present economic crisis in the United States and Europe, is by orienting ourselves with a science-driver approach. We need a tremendous boost in productivity to develop the less developed countries. This moon fever, this optimism, is the pathway to a sane and successful policy for all of mankind.

Schlanger: And that’s why people should look at the petition, read it, discuss it, sign it, get others to sign it. Because in it is a coalescence of ideas of strategic cooperation, economic effect, and then, most important—from what you’ve been talking about recently—the psychological effect, that we create a new mission for a young generation, which is otherwise being herded into terrorism against culture. We just saw this in Leipzig, Germany in the last couple of days, with this Extinction Rebellion. That was a pretty stark reminder of the danger that we face from this Green movement.

Zepp-LaRouche: I think it’s definitely clear that the Green movement, in its entirety, is economically completely, absolutely out of it. They have no idea. They’re talking about the Green New Deal as being the big boost for the economy. Now the reason the Apollo project was such an incredible benefit for the real economy—where every penny invested was returning 14 cents in terms of spinoff effects, everything from computer chips, to Teflon, and a whole array of industrial processes, materials, and products—was that it led to a breakthroughs in science and technology, and it made production on the Earth less expensive.

But if civilization is duped into going exclusively with so-called “alternative energies,” the social cost to produce energy will skyrocket, with horrible consequences. Already in Germany the energy price is double that of France, and with the explicit aim of the “climate cabinet” in Berlin. The new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, with her First 100 Days program has said similar things. If you increase the energy prices, to the point where people supposedly are forced to change their behavior, this can only lead to a complete collapse.

An Appeal to Germany

I wrote an appeal [See the Appeal elsewhere in this issue of EIR] to German industry, trade unions, parents and teachers, and thinking people, to defend Germany as an industrial nation, because it’s very clear, that if this policy is carried out, then young people who want to have a future will leave Germany. They will go to Asia, to China, to other countries; that means the demographic curve in Germany will be even more devastating than it already is. Germany will be reduced to a lot of old people, with nobody to take care of them, and who will be left with nothing to pay for their existence, because the bottom of the German economy has just fallen out.

Now, I don’t that this Extinction Rebellion and the Fighting4Future organizations have given any thought to this. I don’t think they’re a spontaneous movement at all. There are string-pullers in the background; we have started to publish some things about that already. But to desecrate the statues of Bach and Goethe and so forth, that just shows you that these people really have absolutely no idea what is important in life and are just tools. I think they’re being used by some other forces, attached to the City of London and Wall Street, who want to have this boost in renewable energies in order to make big bucks in the short term on such non-functioning technologies, just at the very moment that the financial system is collapsing.

This is, unfortunately, happening. They’re being supported by, or at least they’re getting a lot of support from the media. In Stuttgart, Germany where they demonstrated against people flying in airplanes, even the authorities from the Stuttgart airport said they support that! I mean, that’s just crazy. And I’m afraid we’re in for some more trouble in the coming period, and people will have to reassess their views and change their mind on these matters, because what is at stake is really the future of Germany as an industrial nation, and not only Germany.

Schlanger: As we’ve reported, the same people who are financing this Green movement, which is becoming much more aggressive, are behind the attacks on Russia and China, and were big supporters of Russiagate.

On the other side, as you referenced last week, 90 Italian scientists signed a petition rejecting the claim that there is anthropogenic global warming. Their statement is beginning to get some coverage.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. This is now picking up steam in other countries. For example, in Sweden, where a little while ago, 1,500 Swedish scientists signed a similar appeal, and they’re republishing now the Italian petition, and also announced that they’re preparing something on the European level, and want to present such a motion to the European Union (EU). Their basic argument is that since there is no connection between world temperature and man-generated CO₂ emissions, all the measures being proposed to reduce man-generated CO₂ emissions constitute an unnecessary and extremely expensive and inefficient cost to society. There is no question that climate change is taking place, but if you look for the wrong cause, for that which is responsible for the change, then you cannot remedy the effects.

So, I think this is a very important debate, and we have demanded for a very long time that this must be taken out of the area of ideology, and that we need to go back to a scientific approach.

Schlanger: Just to go back to Germany for a moment: you referenced in an earlier webcast the growing poverty gap in Germany. You also brought up the utility crisis. A recent poll shows that a majority of Germans would like to have better relations with Russia. Such popular sentiment seems to run counter to the push to keep Germany in the old paradigm, of deploying a military force to the Persian Gulf, which was rejected by the German government.

Drop the Sanctions Against Russia!

Zepp-LaRouche: I think it’s a very promising sign. A recent survey conducted by the German paper, Der Tagesspiegel, found that 72% of Germans living in the East are for dropping the sanctions and having a rapprochement with Russia; and even 54% of people asked in the West of Germany had the same view.

So I think that, from the standpoint of the people, there is actually an overwhelming desire to end this whole imposed regime of sanctions and divisions, so I think that that is a very good sign. I think we are in a time where these decisions have to be made. So maybe if Russiagate stops in the United States, and Trump will resume a positive effort to continue his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he initially attempted at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany in 2017, and then again in Helsinki, Finland and most recently this year in Osaka, Japan. Then, maybe the opposition to better relations with Russia will go away. But I absolutely think that these are just tiny, baby steps; we really need to think in completely different terms.

We need to think in terms of a new epoch. We have to go away from geopolitics and the idea that you have to have blocs like the EU, building up an army in Europe, which is what Macron and von der Leyen are pushing, and that European policy should go against the United States, against Russia and China—I mean, this road can only lead to disaster, apart from the fact that I don’t think the idea of building up a European army in the present condition of the EU is any realistic perspective. It’s just a pipe dream of some warmongers.

But we need to really think: Where should civilization be in a hundred years from now, and how should we form an alliance of countries in the mutual interest? We don’t have to start from scratch on this: Already 130 countries are walking in this direction and forming a New Paradigm. People in the West don’t know about this, because the Western media are so completely—really only an extension—of the military-industrial complex and the geopolitical British Empire faction.

I think there is a tremendous lack of knowledge of the incredibly beautiful options that exist, and this is why I would appeal to you, to support and join the Schiller Institute, and amplify our efforts. People become pessimistic because they don’t know that other options exist. You may encounter the almost absurd situation, where you hear someone, “Oh, there is no problem,” and they’re completely complacent, saying, “The powers that be would never start World War III; they couldn’t do that”—which is not true. There is always still the danger that things could really go completely wrong. And then there are those who say, “Oh, there’s absolutely nothing you can do, it’s all over, it’s hopeless.” So, between these two positions, people are not acting!

The only thing that will decide humanity’s fate, is becoming active with us, to shape the next fifty, hundred years, because we are at an absolutely epochal change, which has been understood by the Asians much better than the Europeans and the Americans. There is an absolutely optimistic way to go. So join us and support our efforts: And that’s the best thing you can do, for yourself, and the future of mankind.

Schlanger: There’s nothing I can add to that, except to join with you, Helga, in urging our viewers and readers to join the Schiller Institute, if you have not already done so, and organize your friends, family, relatives, coworkers. Sign the petition and circulate it, so we can get the United States into the New Paradigm.

Anything else, Helga?

Zepp-LaRouche: No, just that you should become active. I think that is really important.

Schlanger: Absolutely. OK, thanks! We’ll see you again next week.

Zepp-LaRouche: I think so. Bye-bye.