This transcript appears in the September 25, 2020 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this transcript]
ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST
We Must Keep Fighting for a Summit, As the War Hawks Are Going All-Out To Prevent It!
We present here an edited transcript of excerpts from the Schiller Institute’s weekly “Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche” of September 16, 2020. The video of the full webcast may be found here.
Harley Schlanger: Helga, we’re now less than two months away from the U.S. election. While everything seems to be up in the air, there are crises everywhere. One of the things that’s hardly discussed at all, except by you, and also by President Trump, is the war danger. He’s been making a number of statements about this, but for the most part, the provocative actions of some people on his staff, such as [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and others, are not really making it into the media. What’s your assessment about where things stand, and this increasing danger of war?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: The strategic situation is one of total confrontation on the side of the war party and its British and neocon elements in the United States, against Russia and China. And also [EU Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen in her speech about the state of the European Union did not hold much back in this respect, falling in line with Pompeo. I think between now and the U.S. election, we have to expect an escalation of tension.
There has been talk about a military coup in the United States. I think people should really be on high alert. There has been an increase of provocative flights of B-52 bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, and fighter jets along the Russian and Chinese borders in recent weeks. There were intercepts, all extremely risky maneuvers, and there has been a characterization of Russia and China as adversaries from various U.S. military commanders.
The climate is so thoroughly poisoned. I think people really have to understand that between now and November 3, there is the danger that these things could go out of control. That is why we are pushing so hard to get a summit, on the level of the presidents of the United States, Russia, and China, at a minimum, or the P-5 permanent five members of the UN Security Council. We have to get out of this geopolitical confrontation that can get out of control. And if it does, it may be too late.
Schlanger: This last Saturday, we had an event where we focused on Lyndon LaRouche’s prescient forecast from January 2001, where he warned of a “Reichstag Fire” event, and then on September 11, 2001, he was pointing to the “inside job,” the fact that the security services had to be involved in it. I think when you put that together with retired Col. Richard Black’s warnings of a coup, then it becomes clear that there’s an element of the U.S. military security forces, some of the same people who were behind the Russiagate coup, who are directly committed to war. I’d like to hear your thoughts are on that.
Zepp-LaRouche: I would advise people to watch the program you mentioned, because nowhere else do you find such a condensed assessment of the security situation in which we find ourselves.
What is operating right now in NATO, from the British defense secretary, from Pompeo, and from [U.S, Defense Secretary Mark] Esper, and some others, including various military commanders in the United States, is, the reactivation of Dick Cheney’s policy. That’s the policy of the neocons, the Project for a New American Century, which was developed during the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It was fully laid out by Cheney in 1992. He claimed that the United States would never allow any country or any bloc of countries to ever surpass the United States economically, politically, or technologically.
When China’s New Silk Road developments started to gain momentum in 2017, after four years of almost silence on the side of the mainstream media and the major think tanks, we saw, all of a sudden, a coordinated attack on the Belt and Road Initiative, calling China an adversary. And the military doctrine of the United States is becoming more oriented towards total containment of China.
I think that that is now operational. Listen to what Pompeo had to say yesterday, in a speech before the completely Anglophile Atlantic Council. People should listen to that.
He didn’t talk about the 1,000-year Reich, but he did talk about a 100-year system of containment of China, saying that the tide is turning, that Africa, ASEAN, Eastern European countries are all turning away from China. That is completely false. His efforts—devoting almost all his time to containing China—are not getting anywhere in those regions.
So I think this is really a very dangerous development. Take that together with what Colonel Black said on Saturday, referring to the open letter to General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, posted on a website called Defense One last month, in which two colonels had called on the U.S. military to make a military coup if President Trump would refuse to concede and leave the White House in case he has an election defeat, and that the military should take him out.
Colonel Black said that there is an ongoing discussion in the U.S. military exactly along these lines, and he was warned about it. This is what President Trump has referred to repeatedly—the last time on Labor Day—as the “military-industrial complex,” a formulation first used by President Eisenhower, by saying these are the people who like to be involved in the endless wars. So it is this military-industrial complex, which is in a direct confrontation with the elected President of the United States. And the issue is war and peace: President Trump has said repeatedly he wants to bring the troops home, he wants to end the endless wars.
Schlanger: There seemed to be some momentum toward a summit—maybe it was just with Trump and Putin, perhaps with the P5—but that has pretty much been scuttled with respect to a meeting at the time of the UN General Assembly. How do you see that? Is there any potential that this could be pulled together before the election?
Zepp-LaRouche: There are many experts who try to tell us that given the absolutely out-of-control situation, that this is not going to happen before the U.S. election. You could easily say, “Yeah, these people are right, given the fact that because of coronavirus, Putin is not going to the General Assembly; he only will address it by video.” Such experts say that when we have such a provocative atmosphere, with the Navalny case, with these overflights in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea region, and flights near the Russian and Chinese borders, that the atmosphere does not exist. Smarter people have encouraged us to keep fighting for a heads of state summit, saying it’s the only reasonable way to go.
My biggest concern is, given that there is this talk about a coup, that you have all this incredible tension around the day of the election. Hillary Clinton has said that under no circumstances should Joe Biden concede the election result on November 3; this could go on for days, maybe weeks, before the result is clear. Then there is the danger of more riots in the streets and under those conditions, you easily could have a situation where the domestic situation gets completely wild and out of control, and then, under those conditions you have the danger of some incident getting out of control.
I’m not optimistic that a summit will happen, but I’m still calling on all of you to help, to join this mobilization, and I wouldn’t be saying that if I were not convinced that we are really sitting on a completely explosive powder keg. People are asleep; the peace movement does not exist, or if it exists, it’s for sure not very efficient, and most politicians seem to be completely unaware, uninterested, focused on completely ridiculous issues. I’m really calling on you to join the Schiller Institute in this mobilization to demand a summit, because I cannot see any other avenue by which we get out of this very, very dangerous situation.
Schlanger: Colonel Black, in his speech at the Schiller Institute event on September 5, said that what’s necessary is for a spotlight to be shone on this, and for people to speak out. Helga, how can this work in this politicized and polarized situation where people are afraid?
Zepp-LaRouche: One thing that people can do is they can help us to put pressure on the parliaments around the world to investigate not only what Colonel Black said, but especially what Kirk Wiebe said, namely, that the NSA [U.S. National Security Agency] had the information about the upcoming 9/11 before it happened. Now, that’s an incredible statement, but Wiebe and [former NSA Technical Director William] Binney were working in the NSA, they were in contact with all the people who had the evidence; they had it themselves. And when they warned the then chief of the NSA Michael Hayden, he suppressed it.
Now this is a serious charge: This has ramifications not only for the United States, because it led to the Patriot Act, it led to all these interventionist wars, wars that have, according to a study from one of the U.S. universities, caused up to 58 million refugees! The strategic situation has worsened so incredibly, that I think every parliamentarian and every parliament has the right to say, we want to find out, is that true? Was the September 11 attack known about ahead of time? And I think that that is something everybody can help to do: spread this information, get media, alternative media, social media, investigative journalists who still have some honor to pick up the story.
The other thing that people can do, well before the U.S. election, is to bring out the whole scandal that there was no Russiagate, that this was an operation of British intelligence. Bring out the story of September 11, the real story behind it, and blow up the coup! That is the one thing that will obviously change the situation.
Schlanger: Helga, you’ve been discussing this for years: What gives you the strength to think that this can be turned around?
Zepp-LaRouche: I think you have to have a vision of where the world should be. My vision of what the world should become is that every person on this planet should have the right to a long life, healthcare, enough food, enough clean water, enough study to develop his or her creative potential, and these things come about only through creating economic conditions that enable it.
That is why I joined the organization of my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, many years ago, because he was the only one who advocated the industrial development of the developing countries, in the 1970s, picking up on what Franklin D. Roosevelt had intended the Bretton Woods system to become.
I think the perspective we have developed over the last, really, half-century—a new world economic system, seen clearly in the idea of the New Silk Road becoming the World Land-Bridge—that is the program we need. We need peace by collaborating with Russia and China. The United States must be part of that—but we also have to industrialize Southwest Asia and Africa. Other countries need to be included, parts of Eastern Europe, and parts of the Balkans. We really have to change this policy of the privilege of a few, to which Ursula von der Leyen clearly belongs. We don’t need politicians like her. She is the incarnation of what’s wrong with Europe. So we should really work to get an alternative.
Schlanger: Well, for 40-50 years the LaRouche organization has not only pointed out the enemies of mankind, but it has also presented solutions. I would urge people to watch the video from last weekend’s LaRouchePAC town hall on Saturday, September 12. So Helga, thanks for joining us again today, and we’ll see you again next week.
Zepp-LaRouche: Till next week.
