ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

The System Is Collapsing:
This Is a Cause for Optimism

This is the edited transcript of the Schiller Institute’s October 11, 2019 New Paradigm interview with the founder of the Schiller Institutes, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, by Harley Schlanger. A video of the webcast is available.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute. Welcome to our webcast with our founder and chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche. It’s October 11, 2019.

And as we’re coming to you today, we’re seeing the collapse of the system: It’s unfolding rapidly, it’s leaving its mark on politics, on economics, on everything, even though it’s not in the media.

I think to start with we should comment on this fairly extraordinary press conference given by Donald Trump on October 9, where he addressed the question of why he’s for ending the never-ending wars. Helga, what were your thoughts when you saw this press conference with President Trump?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I’m very happy, and I think we should really encourage all our viewers to watch this video clip yourselves, because the Western media are not going to report it; they have not yet done it, and they may never do it. As a matter of fact, they’re completely distorting it. What Trump did in this press conference, makes him a top candidate for the next Nobel Peace Prize. The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, correctly and justifiably got the Nobel Peace Prize for 2019, which had been given to many unworthy people in the past.

But what Trump said is historic. He is reversing the 50-years of paradigm shift that we have talked about many times, which followed the assassination of John F. Kennedy and led the United States down the path of Anglo-American unipolar world rule. This has gone back and forth with different presidents, but Trump is reversing it. He’s bringing the United States back in the direction of what the United States was intended for, with the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I know that many of our viewers will have a hard time breathing, up to a hyperventilation, when I say this, but please, listen to this speech yourself.

First Sitting President to Denounce the MIC

Trump referred to Eisenhower; he said we have to end these endless wars, and this has all been done by the military-industrial complex (MIC), about which Eisenhower warned at the end of his second term. And they’re making a lot of money by fighting these wars, but we have to end it. He said, these wars, $8 trillion, cost many American lives, but millions of lives on the other side. We went there with the pretext of supposed weapons of mass destruction and they did not exist, there were none, and now we have to bring our soldiers back.

At the end of Trump’s remarks, he went into a very moving personal observation, and I believe him. With politicians, you always have to ask yourself, are they making a show for some purpose? But I think there was something coming out of Trump that should be heard by people around the world. He said that the hardest thing for him to do as President happens when dead soldiers come back in a coffin. The parents at first seem to be OK, but when they see the flag-draped coffin with their son or daughter, many of them break down crying. He said this is the hardest thing he had to do and it has to stop.

Now, I think this is world-historic. If he can carry through with this, and I think after this press conference, he has set a path, which is an historic game-changer of the highest strategic importance. The people who are now attacking the United States for pulling out of Syria, they are the real imperialists. So you can see, the mainstream media, and many politicians around Europe are hysterical about that. In the United States, the neo-cons and the Democrats are howling. I can only say this is absolutely an historic step, and deserves full support.

Schlanger: There are two things that struck me about this, that I think are important: One, is people who are saying the Trump decision to withdraw is going to destabilize the region. What destabilized the region were the wars that were launched, under the British imperial geopolitics that the opponents of Trump support! So there’s a high level of hypocrisy there. But, I think the other thing, Helga, that you’re alluding to, is that what emerged from President Trump, watching him, is a personality who actually cares. Unlike the caricature of Trump put forward by his opponents in the impeachment crowd, he really expressed a sense of caring about the lives of people and the difference that governments can make.

Now, as you said, we’ve got to see if he can carry it through. There are discussions under way from Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and others. The Russians are very much involved. What should the next step be for the United States?

Peace Through Economic Development

Zepp-LaRouche: I think the U.S. should work with Russia. Lavrov just made an extremely important comment, by saying that this was the policy of Bush and Obama, and that Russia warned the United States’ previous administrations many times not to play the “Kurdish card” against the Arabs. A lot of things may come out now, because remember that it was Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who in 2012 went to Obama and warned him against this policy of de facto supporting ISIS and so forth.

So this is all very, very interesting, and as you said, the region is not destabilized by the U.S. pullout, but follow-up has to be done. It has to include close cooperation between the United States and Russia. Lavrov has already said that what needs now to be activated is the Astana process. Turkey has to talk to the Syrian government, and there has to be a diplomatic solution involving all parties in the region: Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian government; along with the big neighbors: Russia, China, India; and also, the United States.

Take this region as a whole, and start to put in development, which only will be possible by the extension of the Belt and Road Initiative—China is committed to playing a key role in the reconstruction of Syria. This has the potential of turning an almost hopeless region, in the very near future, into a region of development and prosperity. And then the climate for recruitment of terrorism will change, it will dry out. One of the major reasons why these terrorist groups were able to recruit is because of the extreme level of poverty and no perspective. Therefore, if you now put in economic development, this can all change for the better in a relatively short period of time. It will not solve all problems overnight, but it will change the directionality. Rebuild Afghanistan, bring in development. That will improve the situation for the women! Many things will be affected, provided a New Silk Road is extended into this region.

LaRouche’s Exoneration

Schlanger: I think bringing in this bigger picture, brings out the really important role that your husband, Lyndon LaRouche played over the years, presenting alternatives to the British geopolitical doctrine, including precisely this kind of great power arrangement, a Russia-China-United States discussion process. Doesn’t this really show why Lyn was thrown in prison? Because he was talking about this in the ’70s and ’80s.

Zepp-LaRouche: This is now the moment to escalate the campaign for the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche. It’s a very opportune moment. A new world economic order is emerging with the Belt and Road Initiative, the perspective of cooperation between Trump and Russia, and hopefully, Trump and China, is exactly what Lyndon LaRouche’s vision was: that the United States return to becoming a republic again. This is what he was working for—my husband worked for at least 50 years, if not more, to bring the United States back to the cause for which it was intended by the Founding Fathers.

However, his exoneration right now, is, in my view, the absolutely necessary ingredient to make this policy work. Because, the other major change that is going on is that the financial system is finished! We are in the middle of a financial collapse: This collapse is now coming. I think there are absolutely hectic moves by the Federal Reserve, by the central banks in general, to try to somehow find a way to save themselves.

The Financial System Is Collapsing

But I think we are in an acute crisis, and even if the media is not telling you anything about it, all the signs indicate that we are in a much deeper crisis than in 1998, when the Federal Reserve called on the 16 largest financial institutions to bail out LTCM (Long Term Capital Management), which bankruptcy and dissolution was a systemic threat to the global financial system at that time. We are now in a situation almost exactly like that of 2007-2008, when the Lehman Brothers crisis caused the foundations of the whole system to shake. Since the central banks have done absolutely nothing since then, other than quantitative easing, money printing, and bailouts, we are now at a point where all the signs are that there are nothing but panicked moves, because the suspicion is that at least one, if not more, of the very big banks, and maybe some insurance companies, are on the verge of disintegrating and bringing down the whole system.

So, the Four Laws of my husband—immediate Glass-Steagall; go back to national banking; a credit system; a crash program for the increase of the productivity of the economy through fusion and space cooperation; plus a New Bretton Woods. These are the absolutely necessary remedies at this point. And they go hand-in-hand with the exoneration because I don’t think otherwise people can think straight: So, I’m calling on you, in this moment of crisis to come and act with us.

Schlanger: Sticking with the financial collapse for a moment, since September 17, the Federal Reserve has been pumping an enormous amount of liquidity into the system, which was supposed to have stopped at the beginning of October, but has now been extended into mid-November. When this process began, it was reported that there would be a $75 billion limit, and yet, yesterday, the figure was $88 billion. So, Helga, I think this does show that the desperation you mentioned is there.

One of the key people involved in this is Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England. What is his role? What is he doing to try to contain this collapse, and to build up new bubbles?

Mark Carney and his Green Financing Scam

Zepp-LaRouche: My educated guess would be that Mark Carney is the key opponent of President Trump. Because the plan of Mark Carney, and the other central bankers, is very clear: After the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, they set up mechanisms to divert all financial investments into so-called “green financing.” The whole CO₂ debate is really a way of making sure that no investments, no credits are channeled to the real economy, but that everything goes into the speculative bubble of CO₂ emission trading and similar things.

This group of bankers and speculators set up an assault! It became very clear at the Jackson Hole 2019 Economic Policy Symposium, August 22-24. At this annual meeting of the central bankers and key players in the finance system, Mark Carney called for regime change. You could say, implicitly, he meant regime change against President Trump, the coup being in line with the House of Lords report, “UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order,” that a second Trump administration cannot be allowed under any circumstances, in the interest of the Anglo-American “special relationship.”

But Carney also means to replace the dollar with a global digital internet currency. In Tokyo at another conference, together with Michael Bloomberg, Carney said that the key corporations will have to deliberately reduce their CO₂ emissions, and if they don’t do that, the central banks will make rules that will force them to do so.

Now, this is a declaration of war: Because in 2008 it was still the savings and loans banks that provided credit to smaller firms, to the medium and small industries, the Mittelstand, and that way they survived. But if you were now to have rules—like those that Ursula von der Leyen, in her capacity as the new President of the EU Commission, said she would implement—if you have that, we will have an eco-fascist dictatorship. Such an unelected regime would eliminate industry, it is really what this “Greta” business is all about, because Greta Thunberg is a poor girl whom they’re using, but the whole climate hysteria-mongering is really a pretext to channel capital in the direction of “green investments,” and that means population reduction. There is no way to go out of coal, out of gas—and they don’t want nuclear, also—without causing billions of people to die. And that is a very serious matter.

So, this is why they’re so freaked out against President Trump. He pulled the United States out of the Paris Accord. This was obviously not supposed to ever happen; President Obama was absolutely in their pocket, and then in comes Trump who pulls out of the Paris Accord.

I think with what he just announced about pulling the U.S. military out of Syria, we can see that President Trump has the potential to act in the middle of the financial crisis, in a quite different way than that demanded by these central banks. He’s in a war with the Federal Reserve now. The corporate media is complaining that he’s attacking the independence of the Federal Reserve. He may not always be right all the time, but he does have the potential, in a crisis like this to implement Glass-Steagall, to go back to constitutional control of a credit system.

It will not necessarily happen automatically. That is why I’m calling on you, our viewers, to work with us, to help us to bring in LaRouche’s Four Laws internationally—not just in the United States, but internationally. Only if we have a global Glass-Steagall, as an absolute precondition, will we be able to reorganize the financial system to become a credit system, a New Bretton Woods system as Lyndon LaRouche has defined it many times. Only then will we have a chance to get out of this crisis. And that requires an international mobilization. It also demonstrates that our organization, in a moment like this, is the most important ingredient to make this work, and therefore also help with the exoneration of Lyn. Because people have to study his works. They have to look at the physical economy method of his thinking, to do this right.

I’m actually quite optimistic that this can be done. Big changes are happening, and sometimes, you need a huge crisis to get rid of something very evil, like the present monetary system.

Is the Pope Christian?

Schlanger: It certainly seems that this issue of population reduction is becoming more evident, the idea that more people must die more quickly. We’re seeing this emerge in all kinds of discussions, and one of the most shocking—maybe it’s not so shocking to people who have been following this—is this synod of Bishops on climate that’s going on at the Vatican. What can you tell us about that?

Zepp-LaRouche: That’s really an incredible thing: I think the Catholic Church, with this Pope, is really abandoning Christianity. In this synod on the Amazon, they openly talked about “Mother Earth”—don’t they know that the emergence of Jesus Christ and Christianity was an absolute war against these kinds of pre-Christian cults, like the Gaia cult, which is the greenie idea of a cyclical world outlook. Christianity was the overcoming of that idea of cyclical concept of the cosmos and nature, and so forth. This is really bad! Concerning the normal catalogue of sins, Pope Francis has added ecological sins, making them real sins! This is completely unbelievable.

Unfortunately, the Protestant churches are no better. They’re equally green. And I really think this is a crisis. This whole thing has confirmed what a close friend we had many years ago in the Curia, who unfortunately is no longer alive, told us. This was long before the sex scandals of the Church erupted. He told us that he was deeply concerned that the Church may not continue to exist after 2,000 years. I think adding ecological sins to the confessional is, in one sense, a synonym for a lot of things that are going on. Because, with the Church going green like that, this means they may not continue to exist. We’re in a time right now, when all the institutions we had thought would be here forever, are crumbling, because the system is crumbling.

And what this requires, is a serious discussion among adults, among well-meaning people around the world. What should the international order be in which mankind can provide itself with an enduring, long-term sustainability for all of us on the planet? How can we as a human species, give ourselves a set of international relations and principles that will allow us to exist for the next millions of years, and not just the next 18 months or so?

I think this problem in the Church is really worrisome, and I know that there is a lot of opposition within the Church, as there is a lot of opposition in the central banks. For example, Sabine Lautenschläger, the German board member of the European Central Bank, just resigned, amid reports that she disagreed with this money-pumping.

So we are in an absolutely tumultuous change of an epoch, and I want to invite people to really give some thought as to what the new epoch should be like. We have discussed many things about it, and especially the writings of Lyndon LaRouche are absolutely required—”must” reading for the answer to that question.

Schlanger: And I think this Vatican synod conforms to what was warned by—I believe it was Lavrov—that the West is entering a “post-Christian” era. But, while the elites may be going that way, I still think there are many, many people who are Catholics who reject this, and need to take to the streets now, take this fight out on the question of the real nature of man.

Whither U.S.-China Trade Talks?

Now, one other aspect of this fight is the discussion that’s now going on in Washington. The Chinese delegation is now coming in. There’ll be talks on pursuing a trade agreement. What do you know about that, Helga?

Zepp-LaRouche: One can only hope that it will go well. Vice Premier Liu He is leading a very large delegation of Chinese leaders of the Commerce Ministry and similar institutions. Trump initially said that he thinks there is a good perspective.

I really hope that the talks will lead to a resumption of a good relationship between the United States and China. I can only hope—because I don’t have any inside knowledge at this point. There are lots of things going on that threaten success in these talks: the Hong Kong color revolution; the continued circulation of lies on Xinjiang; the weapons to Taiwan; the destabilizations in the South China Sea. So, I think if they come to some kind of an agreement, and at least prevent any further escalation of the tariffs, that will be a good thing.

I can only repeat what I’ve said many times: The United States and Europe can only profit from cooperating with the Belt and Road Initiative. Just look at what China is doing—I’m so excited: I’ve traveled several times on maglev trains already, both in the test run in Emsland in Germany, but also between Pudong and Shanghai. Maglev is an incredible technology, because it has the character that it accelerates very quickly, from zero to full speed, but without the kind of pushback you get when you push hard on the gas pedal in a car.

Right now, the Chinese are building a maglev line between Wuhan and Guangzhou: This is to be 1,000 km long. The speed at which the maglev train will attain on this line will be 600 km/h; however, the same train is being designed to go up to 1,000 km/h. At 600 km/h, travel time from Guangzhou to Wuhan will be reduced from ten to two hours!

These are all things that would be of incredible benefit for Germany. Putting more cargo and passengers on trains, rather than airplane flights, is an idea we have demanded for decades. It just doesn’t make sense to go by plane for such short distances. Just improving the old ICE, the German high-speed rail, is a plan without vision. We need maglev trains, much like what China is doing—fast maglev trains for inter-city traffic, and for urban traffic the so-called slow maglev, which goes 160 km/h, perfect for inner-city traffic. It reduces the travel time enormously. The United States could use such a network of inter-city and urban maglev lines.

I can only hope that some of these ideas are being discussed, and hopefully, this will happen.

Proposal to Develop North Korea’s
Port at Rason

Schlanger: On this “track,” there was a very interesting proposal made by Dr. Lyle Goldstein, Associate Professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, for the U.S. to join with Russia and China in developing a port in North Korea. This seems to be the right direction for these discussions to go.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. I think this is the right moment, and Professor Goldstein references the fact that Trump’s firing of National Security Advisor John Bolton makes it absolutely possible for Trump to now make such an approach. Goldstein points out that the northeast port in Rason in North Korea—which is already connected to China through a modern road from Jilin Province, and through a rail connection to Vladivostok in Russia, connecting it to the Trans-Siberian Railway—is the environment in which the Belt and Road Initiative cooperation can create a solution for North Korea, and that the United States should contribute to it.

Trump at various occasions has said that the United States will help to make North Korea a rich country. This is now a moment to really go in this direction. And you know, with this development approach, you can solve any problem on the planet: That’s very much in reach now, and I think we should go in this direction.

Schlanger: We’ve covered a lot in this discussion, because there’s so much going on, but I think one of the most important things is that you emphasized your optimism at this moment. It seems that one of the major problems we have is the pessimism of a lot of good people, who have bought into the line that nothing that can be done. This is one of the reasons, I believe, why you keep emphasizing the importance of Lyn’s exoneration. Would you take a last moment here to explain why it’s necessary for people to be optimistic in approaching their lives?

Why I Am Optimistic

Zepp-LaRouche: As I have stated in the past, the reason why this whole “Greta,” FridaysForFuture, Extinction Rebellion urgent call for panic, is so bad, is because it not only creates panic, but also horrible cultural pessimism. Asserting that the world is ending in 18 months, as Prince Charles says, or 12 years as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said, is scientifically absurd. This will not be the case. But it has a terrible effect on people. There’s now a growing mental health problem of eco-depression, eco-psychology—this is really disturbing people. The German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had a terrible editorial, “Prima Klima, ohne Kinder”—“Fantastic Climate without Children,” which says that every additional child born is a burden, and so children should not be born. It goes so far as to say that old people should commit suicide to keep the climate in shape! This is what this leads to! This leads to a form of insanity. Many years ago I wrote an article saying that cultural pessimism is a form of mental disease. And I really think that that’s the case.

Instead, let us look at people who have put forward optimistic visions about the future of humanity—space pioneers such as Hermann Oberth, Robert Goddard, Krafft Ehricke, and my husband, who all had the idea that mankind is in the very early phase of our development; the colonization of the Moon, and then Mars, are just the first steps. Once we have fusion as propulsion for interstellar flight, we will be able to envision future generations—maybe a century or two away, but in the conceivable future—that will expand in the Solar System. We will have a presence in the galaxy beyond Earth, and who knows, maybe beyond our galaxy. We will populate the universe as we populated Earth. The idea that you have Earth-like conditions on exo-planets, that you can create conditions for large cities on Mars, with large cupolas under which you can create conditions like on Earth—all of these things, while they may not be possible tomorrow, inspire people. I was so fascinated to re-read that it was Jules Verne who inspired all the space pioneers in Russia, in Germany, in the United States. You can say that his From the Earth to the Moon was only a novel, but many of the things he presented came true.

So I think it is important to look at the stars and be optimistic about the limitless ability of man to improve, both intellectually and morally. That is our nature, and therefore, we have every reason to be optimistic.

Schlanger: Thank you again, Helga, for giving us a super-dose of optimism, and we’ll see you next week.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, till next week.