SCHILLER INSTITUTE WEBCAST

Exposed! Those Running the Coup Against Trump Want War with Russia!

This is the edited transcript of the Schiller Institute’s November 23, 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. My name is Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute. Today is Saturday, November 23, 2019. Welcome to our weekly webcast with the founder and Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

The Continuing Absurdity of the Push to Impeach Trump

As we’re coming to you, the world is in the midst of turmoil. There’s upheaval everywhere. We’re seeing the collapse of the neo-liberal system. And at the center of this is the continuing absurdity of the push to impeach President Donald Trump, now taking place in the House Intelligence Committee, moving ahead with an impeachment even though there’s been no evidence presented yet of an impeachable offense.

Helga, you’ve been following this: This goes from the absurd to the even more ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: It is quite amazing, because if you listen to the Democrats or the mainstream media in the U.S. and also in Europe, you would think that the impeachment of President Trump is a “done deal,” that his guilt of colluding not only with Russia but now with Ukraine, bribing the Zelensky government, and that it’s only a question of a very short time before Trump is out of office.

Now, that is not necessarily the course of action, because what you have right now, is two completely opposite narratives of what is going on, and what has been going on. The Democrats are on a rampage: It is unbelievable.

I did actually bother to watch to a couple of the hearings with this William B. Taylor, Jr., and George Kent. If you know what is going on, what is at stake strategically in the effort to get a war with Russia, you could not help but see that these people are absolutely pushing the idea that Russia is an evil monster, that Russia is already committing all kinds of atrocities. While in reality, there are two completely different stories:

One is that President Trump is having all of these troubles—with Russiagate, and now the Ukraine story, with the impeachment—because, in the 2016 election, he said he wanted to have a decent relationship with Russia; that his initial relationship with China was very good, that he is committed and, despite all difficulties, started to end the endless wars, the interventionist wars of Bush and Obama before him; but what these people try to maintain, both in Russiagate and now in the Ukraine story, is as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it, that Trump is really a Putin agent! “All roads [with the President] seem to lead to Putin.” Now, this is completely ridiculous.

William Taylor and Kent both portrayed the events in Ukraine, the people who actually did the Maidan coup, which was a Nazi coup, as comparable to the American Revolution! They went so far as to say that the people in east Ukraine fighting against Russians are like the Minutemen in the American Revolution or are like Baron von Steuben and the Marquis de Lafayette.

I have never heard the truth turned upside down so unbelievably much. But I think the good news about it, is that in all of this hearing—which was public now for the last week, and was a closed, Star Chamber investigation before that, led by Adam Schiff, who is the head of the Intelligence Committee in the House—they were not able to establish any proof which would provide grounds for impeachment: It’s all hearsay, it’s all just assumptions, but no actual proof that Trump did anything which would deserve his impeachment.

This is not the end of the story. Trump is very feisty; he basically said just wait for what happens in the next several weeks with the investigations of Attorney General William Barr, of U.S. Attorney John Durham, and the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on alleged FISA Court abuse by the FBI, which is scheduled to come out on December 9. Trump said that you haven’t seen anything like it yet; this is going to be the biggest scandal in the history of the United States.

This is what’s in store and why the Democrats and the intelligence community are so absolutely hysterical. Because if all of these things come out, well, then the only ones who have been caught in wrongdoing are them. So, this is very, very fascinating—this is coming down to the wire. This is showdown time.

The Ukraine Operation

Schlanger: Helga, I think it gets to the point you were making about understanding the history of the situation, because this just didn’t happen when Trump became President. The operation with Ukraine is a longstanding one, run by the same people, including Taylor and others, Fiona Hill, to destroy the country. We got a very good report on this from Natalia Vitrenko at our November 16-17 Schiller Institute conference. [See EIR Vol. 46, No. 46. Nov. 22, 2019, pages 26-31.] It’s clear that Ukraine was destroyed after the fall of the Soviet Union, and then it was destroyed again with the Maidan coup, with these same people doing it!

If you can go through a little bit of this history, I think it would give our viewers and readers a sense of why it’s so incredible that they’re trying to present the story that they’re trying to protect Ukraine, help Ukraine, and preserve it as a buffer zone against an aggressive Russia, when in fact, they’ve actually destroyed the country.

Zepp-LaRouche: Look at the résumés of these people—Taylor, Kent, and Fiona Hill—they were all working in different capacities around the State Department. Ukraine cannot be separated from the policy levied against the members of the former Comecon, the Soviet Union. It was the intention of the Bush I and Bush II administrations then; and unfortunately not much interrupted by Bill Clinton for that matter, to apply “shock therapy.”

In 1991, Ukraine was the 10th largest economy in the world. It had a full-set industrial production capacity, including up-to-date airplane production. “Shock therapy” dismantled all of this; the living standards of people were forced down, and down, so that by 2013, when the EU pushed the EU Association Agreement with Ukraine, then President Viktor Yanukovych could not sign it, because it would have destroyed Ukraine, by opening its market up to EU goods without any borders, without tariffs, without limitations.

So, Yanukovych backed out at the end of November 2013, providing the pretext for the Maidan demonstrations. Given the fact that the living standards of the population had been so degraded, there was some legitimate social ferment.

It started first with some demonstrators, but within days—and we reported it at the time—Nazis from the Bandera tradition were brought in, and also some terrorist elements were flown in from Syria, from the Middle East—not the Syrians, but the so-called “rebels” against the Syrian government. At that point the demonstrations became more violent. And then, on Feb. 22, 2014, a coup!

Incredibly, an operation which had been kept alive but in the dark in the postwar period by the CIA, by the BND [German foreign intelligence], was let loose. This was the Azov Battalion: Andriy Parubiy, the really hardcore people, regarding themselves openly as Nazis, using swastikas, using the symbols of Stepan Bandera. We documented this at the time. They had headquarters in Munich.

Well Known to the West

All this was very well known to the West. There is no way any Western government can say that they did not know that Nazis were brought into the Ukrainian government with President Petro Poroshenko. And you know, Victoria Nuland, is on the record saying the State Department spent $5 billion supporting NGOs building up to what happened in the Maidan. They decided to bring in their guy “Yats,” as she said it in this infamous phone call with Geoffrey Pyatt who was the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev at the time, referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

So it was absolutely known what was being made to happen, and therefore, for these State Department officials, who were first involved in the shock therapy, destroying Ukraine as an industrial nation, and then being part of the State Department-run coup that brought in this Nazi government, simply because they were known to be anti-Russian, it really takes some nerve to appear in a House witness chair and call von Steuben and Lafayette as being the same as the these people in the Azov Battalion! This really is incredible. And I think they count on people having short memories, that people in the United States generally tend to not know much about Ukraine and other countries; so they are peddling a narrative that is the total opposite of what really happened.

I don’t know how far the historical analysis of William Barr and Rudy Giuliani and these people will go—but Giuliani was in Ukraine, he met with some of the investigators and prosecutors there, so there is at least the possibility that all of this will be unearthed, and the nature of what really happened will come out.

I can only advise you, our dear viewers and readers, we have published everything in many languages since 2014, so help us to get the true story out, because what is really at stake is the future of Ukraine. During his election campaign Zelensky promised he would try for a rapprochement with Putin, and in that way end the war in Eastern Ukraine. But, now the IMF is demanding the same kind of vicious austerity of the previous administration: more social cuts, more cuts in pensions, and increasing the retirement age, thereby creating an environment for a second Maidan. Meanwhile, he has practically the gun of the Azov Battalion to his head. Under such pressure, they expect Zelensky to either do what they want, that is, not make up with Russia, or risk being toppled. At issue here is war or peace.

Schlanger: That became clear when Fiona Hill was in the witness chair. She has worked under both Bush and Obama. How she ended up in the Trump Administration is beyond me. But she said, repeatedly, that it’s “Russia, Russia, Russia!—Forget Ukraine, this is a paranoid conspiracy theory about Ukraine.”

Well, we’ll find out, when Barr and Durham finalize their report. But I think it’s also worth noting in the case of Fiona Hill, that in attacking the Russians, she said that we know that the Russians were involved in the Russiagate, in the 2016 election—why do we know what? Because Mueller said it. Because it was supposedly proven. Once again, it was never proven!

The IMF, ‘Shock Therapy,’ and the Bidens

Now, Helga, the next matter I want to bring up, is sort of a segue into the next topic to discuss, is the role of the International Monetary Fund, which was working together with people like Taylor, who was coordinating with the IMF some of the transition through shock therapy. And now we’re seeing everywhere around the world, the IMF policy causing popular rebellions. The IMF was at the center of the destruction of Ukraine, wasn’t it? It’s also at the center of all these rebellions taking place around the world.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, absolutely. And they’re still absolutely at it. But before we go into this, I would still like to focus a little bit more on the situation in Ukraine itself.

There is now a new prosecutor general. His name is Ruslan Ryaboshapka, and he is expanding the investigation into this firm Burisma. The founder of Burisma is Mykola Zlochevsky, who is now being accused by a prosecutor, Kostyantyn Kulyk, who is charging that the money given to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, when he was on the board of this firm Burisma, together with some other people—altogether $16.5 million—was for what? Well, just for having the name “Biden.” Ordinary people don’t earn that kind of money so quickly.

This case has now been brought up by two Ukrainian parliamentarians, Andriy Derkach and Oleksandr Dubinsky, who are claiming that this was money embezzled from the Ukrainian people, and that they are conducting an investigation in the Ukrainian legislature, the Verkhovna Rada.

This is very interesting, because you would think that in the middle of an impeachment proceeding against the sitting President of the United States, the media would pick up on that, and say, “Oh, there is a new angle, we have to see.” But just the opposite has happened: First of all, the major media did not immediately report on this. But it went all over the place in Twitter and social media. Then, there was an incredible campaign, including by Fiona Hill, to say these two parliamentarians are not credible; they tried to close down the websites and Twitter accounts of people who would retweet this. So, people took it off by free will to avoid being shut down completely!

Now, I would say, all this needs some more investigation. Burisma is in the middle of it, and I think we haven’t seen the end of it yet, because the accusation against Trump is that he demanded from Zelensky that the wrongdoings of Biden be investigated. But if now, from Ukraine itself, it has come out that there was embezzlement of taxpayers’ money, of the money of the people of Ukraine, this is a very, very big story.

Also the main oligarch, so to speak, in the background of Zelensky, Igor Kolomoisky, was a complete supporter of the Maidan coup in 2014, but now, in a recent interview by the New York Times, of all places, says that he is now backing Zelensky’s rapprochement with Russia, because Russia is less bad than the West. So he has switched sides completely.

All I can say is, I urge you, viewers and readers of this program: Please study the history of the Maidan coup and what really happened, because it is the key to the present crisis, and it may be the turning key to completely discredit the people who are committing, first, the Russiagate, and now the Ukrainegate against Trump. And you may, before Christmas, have a completely opposite story than what the media want you to believe.

Schlanger: And just to remind our viewers and readers: Joe Biden was the point man for the Obama Administration in Ukraine, working with Nuland, the former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs; working with green multibillionaire George Soros; working with, among others, “former” MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who also shows up very infamously, in the 2016 Russiagate story.

Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act

Concerning the Maidan-style coup in Ukraine, isn’t this what’s now unfolding in front of our eyes now in Hong Kong? It’s getting very serious there, very dangerous. What are the latest developments?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, I mean the violence has gotten much worse recently. The demonstrations may have become smaller, but the hard-core terrorists became more determined, so the situation is really, really bad, and now the two Houses of the U.S. Congress have voted up the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019.” If signed by President Trump, the Act will deny Hong Kong its special status, which would have severe implications for business activity, and now, since the bill passed the Senate via unanimous consent, and by 417-1 in the House, Trump is under pressure to sign it.

Now, when Trump was asked on “Fox and Friends” if he would sign the Bill, and “stand up for Hong Kong,” he replied:

We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi. If it weren’t for me, Hong Kong would have been obliterated in 14 minutes. [Xi’s] got a million soldiers standing outside of Hong Kong that aren’t going in only because I asked him, “Please don’t do that. You’ll be making a big mistake.” [The Act] is going to have a tremendous negative impact on the trade deal. And he [Xi] wants to make a trade deal.

So Trump basically refused to take the side of provocations in Hong Kong.

He probably will sign, because the Bill was passed with a veto-proof majority, but he also said, he is still trying to maintain a positive relationship with Xi Jinping.

Now, the Hong Kong situation is an existential threat for China: This was expressed very clearly in Global Times, in which it is reported that this act goes to the core of China’s interests, that what is happening now in Hong Kong is about to destroy the place completely. It could be “erased from the modern world”—using this very strong formulation—but, if this continues, the mainland has no other choice than to intervene; if the life of more people is destroyed, there is no other choice, even if it means damaging China’s relationship with the United States.

Now, that is where we are at. And you can actually see that it is the same forces who made the Maidan in Kiev in 2014, who are now trying a Maidan in Hong Kong, by basically forcing the mainland to intervene; they’re the same forces who did the coup in Bolivia, and they are the same forces who are committing the coup against President Trump.

Once you understand that, then everything falls into place and you will not fall for the propaganda against Russia, against China, against Trump. People should think: Why is it that the same media are all vilifying and demonizing all of these three different presidents, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Trump, in the same way?

Well, the key to it is, you have a New Paradigm emerging with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, with the tremendous development around the world that has occurred over the last six years, and the fact that the Western system is in its final phase before the bigger crash than 2008 happens. All of this dangerous nonsense is really but a geopolitical game, to prevent that New Paradigm from coming into being.

Schlanger: I think the remarks by President Trump about why he’s not so strongly pushing this Hong Kong bill, and why he wants to work with Xi Jinping, show why it is they’re trying to get rid of him.

New Pamphlet Released

Now, EIR has just released a 24-page pamphlet, called “End the McCarthyite Witch Hunt Against China and President Trump.” LaRouche PAC is reporting on the Ukraine story and the impeachment with updated webcasts and postings. This is absolutely essential material to understand what’s happening.

Now, Helga, this chaos is spilling all over the world, but we see it especially now in South America. What’s going on there, right now?

Zepp-LaRouche: You are witnessing a mass strike ferment throughout the world—demonstrations in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon. On December 5, many French trade unions and the Yellow Vests will engage in mass strike actions that are scaring the Elysée, because French President Macron fears that he may be ousted because of this mass ferment. These are reports I just got from France. And Chile; then the situation in Bolivia, and Colombia, so you really have a global pattern of mass strikes.

Let me just come back to this pamphlet you just mentioned: I urge people to get this very important pamphlet.

I think one of the most important things in it is a picture I took in 1971. I’m very proud of it because I took this picture when I was visiting China that summer, in the countryside outside of Shanghai. It is of a man pulling his rickshaw piled high with lots of stuff on it, very poor, very undeveloped. And then, right next to that photo is one of a high-speed train. The Chinese are now building a maglev train between Guangzhou and Shenzhen, a distance of 128 km, a trip that will take less than 20 minutes.

So, if you compare these two pictures, from 1971 and now, you should get a good sense of the incredible development China has undergone in the last 40 years, and why the Chinese model of economic development is so effective, because China is sharing this experience with other developing countries, sharing space technology, and other high technology.

So, I think that our new pamphlet is something absolutely to get. It also discusses why there is such demonization of China. So please get this pamphlet. We will very soon be putting the link to it on the website, since it was not yet clear where exactly it will be published. You can also order it, and you should help us to distribute it internationally. I just wanted to say that, because the IMF is spreading misery, and causing upheavals around the world! But the Western elites are absolutely unwilling to consider that the neo-liberal policies are failing, and this is the end of the system, which is why they are so absolutely hysterical.

European Schiller Institute Conference: Day 1

Schlanger: If there are any of you out there who still have any doubts about the role of the Schiller Institute, since it was founded in 1984, as taking up these fights and being at the center of these fights, I would urge you to look at the videos of the conference just held by the Schiller Institute in Bad Soden, Germany.

Helga, this conference was especially dedicated to the life work of your husband, Lyndon LaRouche. And as one who attended and addressed it, seeing these videos of Lyn from the 1970s, the ’80s, the ’90s, and putting that power of his ideas against the crisis today, one cannot but help but be struck by how fresh those ideas from 50 years ago were; they’re still not only valid today, but will be so for another 50 years.

I’d like you to say a few words about this conference, because to me it was an extraordinary event, with people from all over the world, who left with a sense of optimism, in spite of this crisis we’ve been talking about today.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. This conference, which was one of the memorials we are doing for my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, fulfilled its mission to be on the highest level. I talked with several participants, and the response was almost the same, in principle, by many, who always told me, “This was so much more than I expected.”

I think it’s really true.

In the first day of our conference [reported in EIR Vol. 46, No. 46, Nov. 22, 2019] we had an important strategic discussion, which featured Natalia Vitrenko from Ukraine; a very high-ranking Russian from the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences; a high-ranking Chinese diplomat; Italian professors; and people from several other countries. We discussed the New Silk Road, and the development of the Balkans.

We had a very important panel on science: Will Europe be able to play a role in the future of science, given the fact that the EU is blocking every real breakthrough? And then it was very beautiful that two younger members of our association represented the so-called “Basement.” This was the science project of Lyndon LaRouche, the idea that you have to reestablish the fundamental breakthroughs in the history of science, in order to define the next necessary breakthroughs in space and fusion technology. Megan Beets and Jason Ross presented the methodological approach of Lyndon LaRouche.

And if you want to know the secret of why Lyndon LaRouche was such an extremely successful forecaster, which many people commented on, on different aspects, where he made a prognosis which was absolutely on the mark, it is in this scientific method. So if you want to also become a good forecaster, there is actually a way you can find out about it: Go to the Schiller Institute website and look at the proceedings of this conference.

Naturally, we had a beautiful concert, which was, as many people in the audience exclaimed, “World class.” We had Antonella Banaudi presenting some songs from the Schumann cycle, Frauen-Liebe und Leben. Then we had the Schiller Chorus presenting Schubert’s Mass in G Major. As a clearly crowning event, Carlo Levi-Minzi’s playing of Beethoven’s Sonata in E Minor and Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major (the “Wanderer Fantasy”) was absolutely breathtaking. People were completely floored by the quality of the entire concert, in honor of Lyndon LaRouche.

European Schiller Institute Conference: Day 2

The next day, we had several, absolutely delightful presentations by important people who knew Lyn: One of them (Claudio Giudici) being the chairman of the Italian taxi trade union; another, a former State Senator from South Carolina (Theo Mitchell), who absolutely was in the fight for the exoneration of my husband since he came out of jail in 1994. Theo Mitchell is one of the outstanding Afro-Americans. When the true history of the United States is written, if it will ever be written in what really counts, he will be an outstanding person in this history.

Jozef Mikloško, a former Deputy Vice-Prime Minister for Human Rights of Czechoslovakia, who put in a lot of effort to free my husband from jail. He recounted how he met Lyn 17 times; and then many other people. So the picture was really, very elevated. We received a short video message from Jack Stockwell, the radio talkshow host on whose program Lyn was on live that morning when the two jets struck the World Trade Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, who reported not only that Lyn identified where to look for who was behind the attack. Stockwell also said how Lyndon LaRouche changed his life. That was a recurring theme: Many people reported what an incredible impact Lyndon LaRouche had on their lives.

The conference ended very beautifully with a panel on Classical art, which included Diane Sare, the head of our Manhattan chorus project in New York; Antonella Banaudi, who spoke about what she learned from LaRouche on the science of music; and Elvira Green, who sang mezzo-soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for 30 years, and who spoke about the unique musical contribution of the United States with the Classical spirituals. A very lively discussion ensued about why art has to be beautiful and why a cultural Renaissance right now is the most important element in the transformation in world history we are shaping.

Everyone came out of this conference completely strengthened, as you said, optimistic, because it reaffirmed the method with which to think. Despite the fact it was a memorial for my husband, naturally a sad event as such, he was alive in spirit and people came out of this conference completely strengthened. And it ended with a resolution, an appeal for the exoneration of my husband.

I really want you to join our movement. Don’t be passive! This is a moment to be active every day, because every day history is changing, and you have to be an active part to be happy. If you’re just watching things, then you get frightened and you think, “Oh, this world is spinning completely out of control.” But if you act together with other people in the effort to give history a positive direction, it makes everything so much easier. So, join us, call us, get involved with us, and let’s talk again very soon.

Schlanger: Just to put a footnote on the final point you made, Helga, seeing these videos of Lyn made clear, that the proper way to fight is through seeking happiness and through love of humanity—not anger, not bitterness. That gives you the toughness. I think that came through in the conference. And Helga, your role in it was extremely important. Again, go to the Schiller Institute website, schillerinstitute.com, where all four panels are now posted.

Helga, anything else you want to say?

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I think it’s important to have a vision for the future, and base yourself on the best traditions of what humanity has produced so far. And then, you are confident that we can, indeed, create a new era of civilization, and that is very much worth fighting for.

Schlanger: Till next week, Helga, thank you very much, and we’ll see you again.

Zepp-LaRouche: Till next week.