Et nyt paradigme for menneskeheden:
Afskrift af Helga Zepp-LaRouches tale
til seminaret på Frederiksberg den 18. april 2016

Kommer senere på dansk.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Addresses Seminar in Copenhagen,
April 18, 2016 [unproofed draft]

We Need a New Paradigm for Humanity

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, thank you very much for this
kind introduction.
Dear Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: I would like to
start my presentation with showing you a point of view which may
be unusual to discuss the strategic situation, but I think it is
quite adequate.
This is a time-lapse video where you can actually have a view
from space. This is the kind of view normally only astronauts,
cosmonauts, taikonauts have. They all come back from their space
travel with the idea that there is only one humanity, and that
our planet, which is very beautiful and blue; however, it is very
small in a very large solar system and an even larger galaxy, not
to mention the billion galaxies out there in our universe.
With that view comes, naturally, the question of the future.
Where should mankind be in 100 years from now, in a 1000 years,
in 10,000 years? Well, you have to exercise your power of
imagination. In 10,000 years, we probably are well beyond having
colonized the Moon, we have completed very successful Mars
missions, we will have a much, much better understanding about
our solar system, our galaxy, and we will have gotten a much
deeper understanding about the principle of our universe.
Just think, that it took 100 years before modern science
could confirm that Einstein's conception about gravitational
waves was correct. Ten thousand years of the past human history
has brought tremendous progress. But just think that this growth
can go on, exponentially. And since there is no limit to the
creativity and perfectibility of the human species, in 10,000
years we can have a wonderful world.
So, let's look from that view, into the future, to the
present, to have the right perspective.
Yesterday, the {New York Times}, in the Sunday edition, had
an article saying "The Race Escalates for the Latest Class of
Nuclear Arms," portraying in detail that the United States, and
Russia, and China are developing new generations of smaller and
less destructive nuclear weapons, which would make them more
useable. They quote in the article James Clapper, the Director of
the National Intelligence of the United States, that the world
has now entered a new Cold War spiral, where, basically, totally
different laws and rules govern, than it used to be the case with
Mutual Assured Destruction.
The previous NATO doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction
proceeded from the assumption that the destructive power of
nuclear weapons is so horrible, because it will lead to the
annihilation of the human race, that nobody in their right mind
would ever use it. And therefore, it was a deterrence that these
weapons would never be used.
This is now no longer valid. What they are now discussing,
openly, on the front page of the {New York Times}, is that what
we, for a very long time, only we and a few of military experts,
have said, namely, that these modernized tactical nuclear
weapons, like the B12-61, in combination with stealth bombers,
with hypersonic missiles, can actually lead to the winning of a
nuclear war.
Ted Postol and Hans Kristensen, very respected military
analysts, have detailed at great lengths, why the idea of a
limited nuclear war is completely ludicrous, and it is the nature
of the difference between thermonuclear weapons and conventional
weapons, that once you enter a nuclear exchange, that it is the
logic of such a war that all weapons will be used, and that will
be the end of mankind. We are closer to that possibility than
most people dare to even consider, because if they would, they
would not remain so passive as they are now.
This is why I want to make emphatically the point–and this
is the purpose of conducting meetings like this seminar and many
other conferences we are engaged in–that we have reached a point
in human history where geopolitics must be superseded with a
completely new paradigm. And that is why I started with the view
from space. We need a new paradigm, basically saying goodbye to
the very idea of geopolitics, which has caused two world wars in
the 20th century. That new paradigm must be completely different
than that which is governing the world today.
We have, right now, rising tensions in the South China Sea.
Policymakers and the neighboring countries are extremely worried
about what will happen in the period between now and the trial in
The Hague. You have the largest maneuver around North and South
Korea right now, where people in the region are extremely worried
that the slightest provocation could lead to an exchange of
nuclear weapons.
You have the NATO expansion up to the Russian border.
Countries like Poland and Lithuania are asking to have these
modernized nuclear weapons located on their territory, even that
makes them prime targets.
The United States is continuing to build the anti-ballistic
missile system which, supposedly, was against Iranian missiles,
but after the P5+1 agreement has been reached, it is obvious this
was always a pretext and the aim was always to take out the
second strike capability of Russia.
Then you have the entire region of Southwest Asia, still
being a terrible destruction and consequence of failed wars.
North Africa is exploding. You have new incidents between NATO
and Russia, all of a sudden in the Baltic Sea, which was, up to
now, a calm region where there are no conflicts, or, there have
been no conflicts.
In the Middle East briefing, discussing President Obama's
trip to Riyadh on the 21st of this month, they say that this trip
will open up a new page of NATO in the relationship to the Middle
East, that what Obama will try to establish is a new relationship
between NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
So, we have a situation where the {New York Times}, also
yesterday, and I'm quoting these papers to say that these are not
some opinions of us, but this is now the public discussion, that
what is really at stake in the South China Sea is not so much the
fight around some uninhabited reefs and cliffs, or some tiny
islands, but it is the American effort to halt China's rise. And
not only China's rise, but that of Asia. China, Asia arising; the
trans-Atlantic region is in decline.
Just now, we are heading towards a new financial crisis, and
all signs are, that we are going into the same kind of crash like
2008. Already since the beginning of this year, $50 billion
corporate defaults were taking place, which is on the same level
like what happened in 2009.
What the United States is trying to assert under this
conditions, where the trans-Atlantic world is in decline or
marching towards collapse, to insist that nevertheless a unipolar
world must be maintained. The problem is, that unipolar world,
effectively, no longer exists. But still, what carries American
policy to the present day, is the Project for the New American
Century, the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine, which is a neocon idea
which says that no country and no group of countries should ever
be allowed to challenge the power position of the United States.
In the age of thermonuclear weapons, the insistence to maintain a
non-tenable world order could very quickly lead to the
annihilation of civilization.
It is a fact: China has made an economic miracle in the last
30 years which is absolutely breathtaking. And it is continuing,
despite all the media rumors about China's economic collapse.
India has by now the largest growth rate in the world; it's above
7%. Many other Asian countries have explicitly formulated the
goal for themselves to be developed countries in a few years. The
Chinese economy right now is rebounding. They just announced that
in the next five years China is going to import $10 trillion
worth of imports. They will invest $600 billion worth of
investments abroad. Every day 10,000 new firms are being created
in China.
So, if you look at the development, especially since
President Xi Jinping announced in September, 2013 in Kazakhstan,
that the New Silk Road, the One Belt One Road, is put on the
agenda. In the Two and a half years since that time, more than
sixty nations have joined with China in this development. They
have created the New Silk Road, the Maritime Silk Road; these
nations have created a whole set of alternative
economic-financial institutions, such as the AIIB, which, despite
massive pressure from the United States not to do so, immediately
was joined by sixty founding members. The New Development Bank
also started just now its functioning. The New Silk Road Fund,
the Maritime Silk Road Fund, the Shanghai Cooperation Bank, and
many more. All of these were created because the IMF and the
World Bank had not invested in the urgently required
infrastructure.
These banks are now engaged in very, very impressive, large
projects. For example: China invested $46 billion in the
China-Pakistan corridor. When President Xi Jinping recently went
to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran, consequently Iran,
fool-heartedly, declared that they are now part of the One Belt
One Road, New Silk Road development. Greece is now talking about
that after China is investing in the Port of Piraeus, that Greece
will be the bridge between China and Europe. The 16+1, that is
the East and Central European countries, just declared that they
absolutely want to participate in China helping to build a fast
train system in these countries. Those projects which the EU has
not bid, China is now building. Part of it is, for example, the
Elbe-Oder-Danube Canal, which will connect the waterways of these
countries. When President Xi recently was in the Czech Republic,
President Zeman announced that the "Golden City" of Prague will
be the gateway between the Silk Road and Europe. Also, Austria
and Switzerland are now fully on board and see the benefits of
their country's joining with the New Silk Road.
When President Xi Jinping at the APEC meeting in October
2014 offered to President Obama to cooperate in all of these
projects in a "win-win" perspective, he not only proposed
economic cooperation, but he put on the agenda a completely new
model of international relations exactly designed to overcome
geopolitics. The new model is supposed to be based on the respect
for sovereignty, non-interference into the internal affairs of
the other country, respect for the different social system the
other country chooses to adopt. It would really be, in a certain
sense, a fulfillment of the principles which are laid out in the
UN Charter anyway.
How was the Western response?  Very, very ambiguous.  The
United States in spite of this, never really responded to
President Xi's offer.  They keep insisting on an unipolar world.
For example, in the TPP, like in the TTIP for Europe, it is said
very, very clearly, the U.S. sets the rules of trade for Asia and
not China.  Recently, the American Defense Secretary Ash Carter,
and also NATO commander General Breedlove, declared the enemies
#1 of the United States are, first, Russia, second, China, third,
Iran, fourth North Korea, and only fifth terrorism.
Now that is in spite of the fact that many other statesmen,
such as United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign
Minister Steinmeier, and many others, have recently also stated,
that all crucial problems of the world cannot be solved without
the cooperation of Russia, and China.  For example, the P5+1
agreement with Iran, would never have come into being without a
constructive role of {both} Russia and China . Without Putin's
very intelligent intervention in the military situation in Syria,
this situation could not have come to the potential of a
political solution.
Also, apart from the military pressure, there is massive
pressure on the new institutions such as the AIIB and the New
Development Bank, to {not}  be outside of the casino economy but
to follow the "international standards."
Now, in these times of the Panama Papers, of the various
LIBOR scandals, of the money laundering of many of these banks,
it is a sort of laughable thing, what should be these
"international standards" of the Western financial system.
Now, let's be realistic.  At the IMF/ World Bank meeting
which just concluded in Washington over the weekend,  behind the
scenes there was complete panic, but nobody dared to speak about
it openly,  behind the scenes people were talking, what former
IMF boss Strauss-Kahn has said repeatedly, publicly, that we are
heading towards the "perfect political storm."  That if one of
the too-big-to-fail banks collapses, it will lead to a crisis
much, much worse than 2008.
At the recent Davos Economic Forum, the former chief
economist of the BIS William White said that the world system is
so utterly overindebted, that there are two roads only possible:
Either you have an orderly writeoff of the debt, like in the
religious Jubilee, so that you just say "these debts are not
payable," and you write them off, or it will come to a disorderly
collapse.
Now, the situation is all the more urgent, because unlike
2008 when everyone was talking about the "tools" of the central
bank, like interest rate reduction, rescue packages, bailouts,
all of these tools don't function any more. As a matter of fact,
when the competition for more zero interest rate, or even
negative interest rate, when into high gear in the last month,
when, for example, the Bank of Japan or the central bank of
Norway, or the ECB declared a zero interest rate policy, or even
a negative interest rate policy, it boomeranged!  It had the
opposite effect:   Rather than leading to more investment, in the
real economy, it led to a deflationary escalation of the
collapse.
When Mario Draghi, the chief of the ECB, recently announced,
"yeah, yeah, we have a discussion about helicopter money."  And
Ben Bernanke echoed it and said, "yes, now we need helicopter
money," meaning electronic printing of {endless} amounts of
worthless money, virtual money, they de facto announced that the
trans-Atlantic financial system is absolutely in the last phase.
Because after helicopter money comes only evaporation.
But this is only the most obvious of the crises.  Another
one, which is in a different domain, but equally systemic is the
refugee crisis in Europe.  Now,  I supported Chancellor Merkel
when she initially said, we can manage that,  we can give refuge
to these people, and for the first time, I was  saying "this
woman is doing the right thing."  I know there was a lot of
international criticism, but she acted on the basis of the Geneva
Convention on refugees, but it was the right thing to do.  But
the reactions from the other European countries, revealed an
underlying, basic flaw of the EU, a flaw which was not caused by
the refugees, but it was revealed by the first serious challenge,
that in the EU, as it has been conceptualized in the Maastricht
Treaty going up to the Lisbon Treaty, there is no unity, there is
no solidarity; and with the collapse of the Schengen agreement
which allows free travel within the internal borders of the EU,
the closing of the so-called Balkan routes, to prevent refugees
from coming, the basis for the European common currency is also
gone, because without the Schengen agreement, the possibility to
have the euro last is extremely dubious.
Now, with the recent response by the EU to basically have a
deal with Turkey, I mean, this is beyond the bankruptcy of the
whole EU  policy if you can top it.  At a point when the Russian
UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, presented the UN Security Council
with evidence that the Turkish government, is continuing up to
the present day to supply ISIS with weapons and other logistical
means, to then say, we pay Turkey EU6 billion, for what?  To have
them receive refugees; and Amnesty International has already
said, there is no guarantee that these people will be protected,
but rather that Turkey is sending them back to the war zones,
like Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
So, if you look at the pictures of Idomeni, where the
Macedonian police are using tear gas against refugees who are
absolutely desperate; if you look at the fact that Greece is now,
rather than having refugee camps which would somehow process
these unfortunate human beings, they have, on pressure of the EU,
been turned into detention centers.  Pope Francis was just in
Lesvos, together with the Greek Patriarch Bartholomew, and this
Patriarch said, the present EU policy on the refugee crisis, is
the completely bankruptcy of Europe.  The Doctors Without Borders
left their job in Greece, because they said they cannot be
accomplices to the murderous policy of detention, where the
police decide who is a patient and not doctors.  Instead of
protecting the people running away from wars and persecution,
they are now being treated as criminals.
Immediately, days after this disgusting EU-Turkey deal, it
turned out that it's a complete failure, the so-called "European
values," human rights, humanism, well–they're all in the
trashcan, because now the refugees, obviously still fleeing for
their lives, go to Libya trying to get into small boats to Italy.
And just yesterday the news came that another 400 people drowned
in the Mediterranean.  And this will keep going on.  And it will
haunt the people who are refusing to change their ways.
Now, there is a new element in the situation which may cause
sudden surprises, and that is a program which was presented by
CBS, a week ago Sunday, in the so-called "60 Minutes" program
portraying the coverup, of the U.S. governments from Bush to
Obama, of the famous 28 pages omitted in the publication of the
official Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 by the U.S.
Congress; and as many people have said, and was said in this
program, this pertains to the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11.
Yesterday, {all} the U.S. talk shows, and all the U.S. media,
pointed their finger to the coverup of the Bush administration
and even to the present day of the present government, that there
is a coverup of criminal activity.
Now, the Saudi Arabian government reacted very unnerved, and
this was again reported in the {New York Times}, that they would
sell off $750 billion in U.S. Treasuries, if the U.S. would allow
a bill that would allow Saudi Arabia to be held responsible in
court, for their role in 9/11.  Now, that's not exactly a sign of
sovereignty, but of despair.  There are several U.S. Senators,
among them Mrs. Gillibrand from New York, who demand that this
whole question of the Saudi Arabian role in 9/11 must be on the
agenda when President Obama goes to Riyadh this week.  Which in
any case, may not happen, but it will not be the end of the story
because the genie is now out of the bottle.
OK:  How do we respond to these many, many crises? Well,
there is a solution to all of these problems.  The trans-Atlantic
should just do exactly what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in 1933, in
reaction to the  world financial crisis at the time.  Implement
the full banking separation — Glass-Steagall — and the whole
offshore nightmare which is being revealed in the Panama Papers,
and remember, that this firm Mossack Fonseca is only the fourth
largest of such firms, and 11 million documents still need to be
read through, and processed.  But we have to go back to the kind
of international credit system, as it existed in the Bretton
Woods system, before Nixon ended the fixed exchange rate in 1971,
opening the gate for  floating exchange rates and especially the
creation of offshore money markets for the unlimited creation of
money and other illegal operations as it now is coming out.
Then we need a writeoff of the absolutely unpayable state
debt, which has accumulated and ballooned after the bailouts of
2008 and afterwards. And we have to basically get rid of the
toxic paper of the whole derivatives markets, because they are
the burden which is eating up the chance for the investment in
the real economy.
Then, we need a Marshall Plan Silk Road; and the only reason
I'm  talking about a Marshall Plan, despite the fact that China
is {emphatic} that they do not want a Cold War connotation to the
New Silk Road, it gives people in the United States and Europe a
memory, that it is very possible to rebuild war-torn economies,
as it happened in Europe after the Second World War.
Now, with the ceasefire which was negotiated between Foreign
Ministers Kerry and Lavrov, you have now a still-fragile, but you
have the potential for a peace development in Syria, and soon
other countries in the region.  But it is extremely urgent, that
the peace dividend of this ceasefire is becoming visible for the
people of the region, immediately.  That is, there has to be a
reconstruction and economic buildup, not only of the territory
and the destroyed cities, but the entire region, has to be looked
at as one:  From Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, from the North
Caucasus to the Persian Gulf.  Because you cannot build
infrastructure by building a bridge in one country.  You have to
have a complete plan for the transformation of this region, which
mainly consists of desert.
Now, the idea is to have a comprehensive plan, greening the
deserts, building infrastructure, creating new, fresh water from
desalination of ocean water, of tapping into the water of the
atmosphere through ionization, and various other means. And then
build infrastructure corridors, new cities, and give hope to,
especially, the young people of the region, so they have a reason
not to join the jihad, but to become doctors, to become
engineers, to care for their family and their future.
Now this is not just a program any more, because  when
President Xi Jinping visited Iran about two months ago, he put
the Silk Road development on the agenda for this region.  So, all
you need to do, is extend the Silk Road, and the first train has
already arrived in Tehran; you have to continue to build that
road, from Iran, to Iraq, to Syria all the way to Egypt.  Other
routes should go from Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to India. From
Central Asia to Turkey to Europe, and this obviously can only
work because the problem is so big, that all the neighbors of the
region, Russia, China, India, Iran, Egypt, but also the countries
which are now torn apart by the refugee crisis such as Germany,
Italy, Greece, France, and all other European countries must all
commit themselves to work on such a Silk Road Marshall Plan for
the reconstruction and economic buildup of the Middle
East/Southwest Asia, {and} all of Africa, because the economic
situation is equally dire in that continent.
The United States must be convinced that it is in their best
interest to cooperate in such a development, and stop thinking in
terms of geopolitics.  Now, the United States should only be
encouraged to cooperate in the development of these regions, but
the United States needs {urgently} a New Silk Road itself.
Because if you look at the condition, not only of the financial
sector in the United States, but especially the physical economy;
if you look at the social effects of the  economic collapse, like
the rising suicide rates, in all age brackets of the {white}
population, and especially rural women in the age between 20 and
40, the suicide rate is quadrupling and even beyond.  This is a
sign of a collapsing society.
Now, China has built as of last year, 20,000 km of fast
train systems.  Excellent, top-level technology fast-train
systems;  it wants to have 50,000 km by I think the year 2025.
How many miles of  fast train as the U.S. built?  I don't any.
But if the United States would join the New Silk Road and
participate  in the economic reconstruction, as Franklin D.
Roosevelt did it with the Tennessee Valley Authority plan, with
the Reconstruction Finance Corp. in the '30s, the United States
could very, very quickly be a prosperous country, and could again
be regarded by the whole world as "a beacon of liberty and a
temple of freedom," which was the idea of America when it was
founded.
So, the whole fate of the whole world will depend if we all
succeed to get the United States to go back to its proud
tradition of a republic, and stop thinking like an empire,
because that cannot be maintained in any case;  because all
empires in the whole history of mankind always disintegrated when
they became overstretched and collapsed.  There is not one
exception to this idea.
Now, therefore, let's go back to the idea from the
beginning:  Let's approach all problems in the present from the
idea, where is the future of mankind?  Where should mankind be?
Do we exist, or will we destroy ourselves.  And that requires a
change in paradigm, which must be as fundamental and thorough,
like the paradigm shift from the European Middle Ages to the
modern times.  And what caused that shift was such great figures
as Nikolaus of Cusa, but also Brunelleschi, Jeanne d'Arc, and
many others; but what they introduced was a rejection of the old
paradigm–scholasticism, Aristotelianism, all the wrong ideas
which  led to the destruction of the 14th century, and they
replaced with a  completely {new} image of man, man as an {imago
viva Dei}, which was a synonym for the unlimited creative
potential and perfectability of the human being.  It led to a new
image of man which created a blossoming of science, of modern
science, of the modern sovereign nation-state;  it made possible
the emergence of Classical arts.
And that is what we have  to do today:   We have to stop
thinking in terms of geopolitics, and we have to focus on the
common aims of mankind.  Now, what are these "common aims of
mankind"?  It is, first of all scientific cooperation to
eradicate hunger, poverty, to develop more and more cures for
diseases, to increase the longevity of all people.  We have to
study much more fundamentally, what is the principle of life?
Why does life exist?  How does it function?  What, really, is the
deeper lawfulness of our universe?  And that must define the
identity of human beings, which is unique to the human species.
And I have an idea of the future, which will be full of joy.
Because we will discover new principles in science and in
classical art, and we will create a new Renaissance.  As the
Italian Renaissance superseded the Dark Age of the 14th century,
what we have to do today, is we have to revive the best
traditions of all great nations and cultures of the world; and
make them known to the other one.  Have a dialogue of the most
advanced periods of Chinese, of European, Indian, African, other
cultures, and revive–and that is being done in China,
already–the great Confucian tradition, which is in absolute
correspondence with the best neo-Platonic humanist ideas of
Europe.  We must revive the great Vedic tradition in India, the
Gupta period; the Indian Renaissance of the late 19th to the 20th
century.  We must revive the Abbasid Dynasty of the Arab world;
the Italian Renaissance; the Andalusian Spanish Renaissance, the
Ecole Polytechnique in France, the great German Classical period.
The great Italian method of singing in Verdi tuning and the bel
canto method.  And if all of these riches of all the different
countries become the common good of all children of this planet,
and everyone can learn universal history, other cultures as if it
would be their own, I can already see how humanity can make a
jump, and how we can create the most beautiful Renaissance of
human history so far.
I think everybody who is thinking about these questions, has
a deep understanding, that we are at the most important crossroad
in human history. And it is not yet clear which way we will go,
but it is clear to me, that we will {only} come out of this
crisis if we mobilize the subjective emotional quality, which in
the Chinese is called {ren}; and the European equivalent, you
would call {agapë}, love.  And we will only solve this problem if
we are able to mobilize a tender, maybe even {passionate} love,
for the human species.  [applause]