Den arabiske verden vender sig mod øst! Ugens webcast med Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Fredag den 9. december. Besøget i Saudi-Arabien af Kinas præsident, Xi Jinping, er “en del af en ny strategisk tilpasning”, forklarede Helga Zepp-LaRouche i sin webcast i dag. “Araberne vender sig mod øst”, og der er indgået aftaler for mere end 30 milliarder dollars. Dette er en del af en ny dynamik, som indebærer en eksplosiv vækst i BRICS-alliancen. Dette udgør ikke en trussel mod Vesten, hævdede hun – Vesten bør “opgive geopolitikken … og samarbejde” i stedet for at fastholde fortidens fejlslagne politik.

Zepp-LaRouche, som i denne uge blev interviewet af den førende russiske tv-personlighed, Vladimir Solovyov, og som modtog prisen for ytringsfrihed tildelt hende selv og Schiller Instituttet af den mexicanske journalistklub, udtalte, at hun er blevet opmuntret af reaktionen på de ti principper for en ny strategisk og finansiel arkitektur, som hun havde foreslået. Et nyt kor af verdensborgere er ved at finde sammen, hvilket er det bedste håb for menneskeheden i lyset af NATO’s fortsatte krigsfremstød.

Transskription af teksten på engelsk:

HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger. Welcome to our weekly webcast with Schiller Institute founder and chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Today is Friday, Dec. 9, 2022.

And Helga, it’s been a busy few days, especially for you: There were two events that occurred in the last couple of days. One was an interview with the preeminent talk show host in Russia Vladimir Solovyov, where he asked you about the 10 fundamental principles that you drafted, and then there was the award bestowed on you and the Schiller Institute by the Journalists Club of Mexico, the Freedom of Expression Award. Why don’t we start with the Solovyov interview? This was really quite important, wasn’t it?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, I think it’s one of the major talk shows on Russian TV. And I think it’s very important that Mr. Solovyov obviously has looked quite in detail at the 10 principles I proposed to have a new international security and development architecture. [https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/] And he said it was very thought-through, and in general he came across with the idea that there is hope, that a diplomatic solution can be found. So I think it was important that, now, millions of Russians now know about these 10 principles. And since we are also spreading it elsewhere, I’m quite optimistic that, hopefully, we can put it on the international agenda.

SCHLANGER: It’s important that at the end he said, “I hope you succeed!” And I think the award from the Journalists Club of Mexico is also something which is part of the spread of these ideas.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes. I think Mrs. Celeste Sáenz, the chairwoman of the very prestigious Mexican journalists’ association, basically in her opening speech mentioned the fact that it’s an outrageous scandal that myself and others are on this Ukrainian list. And she said the Schiller Institute’s work is extremely important in times when the freedom of speech is not guaranteed. So, I’m very happy about this award, because sometimes, a prophet is not appreciated in his or her own country, but Mexico is one of my favorite countries, anyway, so that’s very, very, good.

SCHLANGER: Mine, too, having lived in Texas for years, and done a lot of work in Mexico. It’s a very interesting country, and very beautiful.

In terms of the spread of these ideas, I think it’s quite important to look at the motion toward the new financial and strategic architecture: This week, Xi Jinping was in Saudi Arabia, for meetings with a number of Arab countries in the Middle East. This is an extension of the Belt and Road Initiative, but also the new diplomacy. What do you make of this?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, this is really important: Because this has been, in one sense, prepared since Xi Jinping visited the Middle East in January 2016, when he went to Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. And this time, he’s participated in three summits, one with the Saudi government; one with the Arab states, and one with the Gulf Cooperation Council. And China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said this is “epochal” historic visit. It puts the Chinese-Arab and Chinese-Saudi relationship on a completely new strategic level. And generally, the press coverage and observers are saying that the Arabs are turning East.

Now, that obviously is very big. Not only in this visit to Saudi Arabia were there economic deals for $30 billion, concluded 34 contracts. China imports 25% of the Saudi export of crude oil. But I think even more important than that is that Xi Jinping was treated with top honors. Six Saudi fighter jets accompanied his plane, and they colored the sky with the colors of the Chinese flag, that is, red and gold. And that is in total contrast to the rather subdued way how Biden was treated in July when he visited.

And it is very clear that there is a new strategic alignment going on. This involves the whole BRICS dynamic, because there are now many countries that want to join the BRICS-Plus, that is Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Turkey, Iran; and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said that there are altogether 17 countries that have lined up and applied for full membership in the BRICS. Now, already now, the BRICS has a GDP which is larger than the G7, and if you add all of these countries, it is very clear that the power center of the world economy, which already has shifted to Asia, will be amplified a lot in the direction of the countries of the BRICS-Plus, plus the countries that work with this organization which is very quickly growing.

So I think this is very important, and in one sense revives the spirit of the ancient Silk Road, because the Chinese-Arab relationship dates back about 2,000 years, and obviously, it will have an impact on the entire dynamic in the Middle East. Also, important, is that Xi Jinping had meetings, I think with 40 leaders from regional countries, including the new Prime Minister of Iraq, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, and there, also, a strategic partnership was agreed. And the oil-for-technology agreement that had existed before, but was dormant because of all kinds of sabotage and intervening problems, but that means, also, that Iraq is now looking in the direction of cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative.

I think the Western countries, rather than trying to fight this, which they continue to do with all kinds of racist statements, like coming from Chatham House almost every day, they would do so much better if they would adjust to the new emerging reality, give up the geopolitical confrontationism, and rather start to cooperate! This is a new world economic order which is emerging, and it is based on non-interference in the internal affairs of the other one, it’s based on respect for the sovereignty of the other one, non-meddling with the social system, and this is just a much more durable concept for peace in the world than what we have seen with the “right to protect” and humanitarian interventions, especially with the wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, which only resulted in millions of people dying for nothing, 17 million refugees—I mean, this is the biggest human rights violation which you can imagine. Obviously, it is not being discussed, but I think the West should really draw the conclusion out of the failed policies of the last decades, and join this new arrangement which is emerging, and which brings hope for many millions of people throughout the entire region.

I’m actually quite optimistic that this is a very, very important game-changer in the entire region and beyond.

SCHLANGER: And it reflects what you wrote in your article on the Spirit of Bandung [https://larouchepub.com/hzl/2022/4945-the_role_of_the_nonaligned_mov-hzl.html ] which is being published in a book, which I should have mentioned at the outset that this is coming out, now. But it also raises the question that you brought up: Why would the West be angry or upset, as though they’re being betrayed, by countries that are looking out for their own interests and moving into this new architecture?

Now, in that context, we had the statement from a Trilateral Commission member from Japan, who raised the question of why are you forcing us to choose? This is a completely absurd approach from the West but it’s a self-isolation, isn’t it?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Given the fact that the Trilateral Commission is an organization which basically represents the establishment, and then, somebody from Japan saying, don’t force us to choose, because if we have to choose, we will choose China over the United States—I think this is also a sign of the times.

SCHLANGER: We have a very interesting story unfolding in Germany, of the attempted coup that the German police supposedly foiled—I think there were 3,000 police and security officials involved in it—what do you know about this, Helga?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, this is, on the one side, a farce, but it has a serious background. The farcical part of it is that this was the biggest raid in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, since the Second World War: 3,000 police, special intervention units, the SEK, and various other units, they raided altogether 130 apartments; they arrested 25 people. This was supposedly because they had information that the Reichsbürger, an association of people who basically say the Federal Republic of Germany does not exist, and since we never had a peace treaty and there was never a referendum on a new constitution, they say that the old Kaiser Reich, or the old Weimar Republic, or whatever, still exists, or they want to go back to a monarchy. There may be 20,000 people in Germany who believe this; most of them, and that is also shown by the pictures, are pensioners, gray-haired people. Supposedly they were planning a coup, that they were planning to take over the government.

Now, I think this is a PR stunt if you ever have seen one, because one parliament member from the Linkspartei said that she knew about this two weeks ago, as she also knew that many of the media were informed: Selected mainstream media knew about it; they had time to prepare background articles, which suddenly, the records were published on the day of the raid, so everything was there. The media were along with the deployment of the police, filming everything—it was the big story. So, if these Reichsbürger would have been that dangerous, and with weapons and everything—maybe they have some weapons—but it’s so out of proportion; if they would have been so absolutely dangerous then the police should have been very secretive, not warning anybody ahead of time. But obviously, the purpose of it was quite different: The purpose was to discredit these Reichsbürger and all the other demonstrators, which—we should not forget the role of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz national police agency in previous deployments of the NSU and other deployments against the rightwing.

So this is a very dubious thing, and it’s like you take something which has a little kernel of reality, and then you blow it up in such a way as to discredit the whole thing. And everybody knows that there are many people taking to the streets because of the sanctions, which they feel is a blowback against the German economy; many firms are going bankrupt; energy prices are going through the roof; people are afraid of inflation; many people fear that they won’t get through the winter because of the exploding energy prices. So there is a total social ferment, and therefore, if you do what looks like such a staged operation beforehand, you discredit those kinds of protests. And then Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said, “We were looking into the abyss of a terrorist threat,” with all of these people with their walking canes and rollators! It’s just not real.

And I think the former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev also satirized it, because naturally Russia was blamed again that they have some hand in that. But the White House immediately offered support to Germany because these are people who believe the same QAnon conspiracy narratives, and this is exactly like the January 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol building. Now that is also very questionable, and there are a lot of questions that have arisen as how that was staged.

I think it has a serious background, that it’s being staged because there is a social ferment, but we should really keep a clear head about it.

SCHLANGER: And it occurs at a moment when the German government is losing popularity. The new polls that are coming out show that they’re dropping fairly quickly, like a rock in water. And at this point you have Chancellor Scholz, and Economy Minister Habeck and Foreign Minister Baerbock taking the point against China. How does that fit into the situation?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: You know, Scholz went to China, and he also keeps saying that he is not for breaking off relations with China, and so forth. So he has a slightly different position, but we have learned from people are in the business, that Baerbock, whose Foreign Ministry has prepared a China paper, she apparently—I can only say, we have this from a source—she apparently sent out her paper to all the German embassies internationally, pretending this was already accepted German policy. So, I thought that the Chancellor defines the rules for foreign policy, but one has to see if this so-called “foreign minister” decides what Germany’s policy is, or the Chancellor. In any case, it is completely idiotic: If Germany wants to really commit hara-kiri, then they should continue to alienate China. And I think Xi Jinping’s state visit to Saudi Arabia hopefully wakes some people up, that the momentum is not against China but it is with China. And I hope this is a wakeup call for some people.

SCHLANGER: Also news from Germany was the admission by former Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Minsk Agreement was designed to buy time for Ukraine. That was said by former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko before, and now it’s coming from Merkel. This tasks the whole situation of the pre-special military operation by Russia in an entirely different light, doesn’t it?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think this is really incredible! Because we always made the point that Germany and France, which were supposed to be the countries enforcing or encouraging the Minsk Agreement [for negotiations between the Ukraine government and the Russian-speaking Donbass region], and we always said they didn’t do anything. But now it turns out— and Merkel said it in two interviews, one with Der Spiegel and then again with Die Zeit—that there was no intention to go ahead with Minsk 2! That there was an intention to gain time for Ukraine to rearm and become stronger.

I mean, this is incredible—and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova correctly said that this means the whole credibility of Germany is completely destroyed, that Merkel has admitted that she did not intend to work for peace, but that the idea was to use lies and manipulation to prepare for war! This is incredible! And I think it should be at rest for good the idea that Putin attacked Ukraine without a reason and out of the blue. Obviously, if Merkel has admitted, as Poroshenko did, that they were just lying to Russia, misleading Russia in order to arm Ukrainian troops on a NATO standard, it is putting the truth into the whole story, and it shows the lies.

Now, this is dangerous, because Putin obviously knows about that as well, and he said that he now thinks it was a mistake to wait for eight years to react to the attacks on Donbass by Ukrainian armed forces, which killed 14,000 people, and about which Russia complained many times to the OSCE; and the OSCE had never done anything about it. And Putin now says, he thinks it was a mistake and he should have responded to the coup in 2014, militarily, immediately. And also, it has strategic implications when you do that.

So Putin is now also saying that the fact that the United States is putting all these modernized tactical nuclear weapons into Germany basically may force them to rethink the Russian nuclear doctrine which says that Russia will never make a first strike, because they only will use nuclear weapons when the existence of the Russian Federation is at stake. Now, he says, putting these weapons in such close vicinity to the Russian border means that Russia may not have time to go for a second strike—I mean, this is really escalating the spiral toward nuclear war, and it is just totally disgusting.

SCHLANGER: You also have the discussion under way about the Ukrainian strikes on Russian air bases inside Russia. Some people are saying it’s a provocation to force Russia to respond, it would lead then to a further escalation. So it does appear as though the whole situation is escalating as you are warning.

Now, there was an event on Dec. 6 by Chatham House on “Russia’s War on Everybody” [https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/members-event/russias-war-everybody] and what they laid out is their racist view that Russia has an imperial doctrine that predates Putin, that that is the danger. And this, of course, fits in with the talking points that have come from the British from the beginning. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to watch the video, but what do you make of this kind of discussion going on now in this context?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, it just is one more confirmation that it is, again and again, the British who are instigating the escalation. As Boris Johnson, who in April personally flew into Kiev to sabotage the then-existing negotiations to which Zelenskyy had already agreed. And you can actually say that it was to Boris Johnson’s credit that 100,000 people have died since—including Ukrainians. So it’s just totally disgusting.

I think this double standard, people should really look at that. The former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Jiří Paroubek, he just came out and said that all the upset about Russia attacking the infrastructure in Ukraine, targetting the electricity supplies, that that is completely phony. And then he quotes the NATO spokesman James Shea from the time of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, who said, yeah, sure, we’re bombing the electricity because that’s also used by the military and this is completely legitimate to do. So, Paroubek says that after these statements, you cannot apply a double standard, because Russia just learned from NATO what you do in such a situation.

SCHLANGER: Not to mention what was done in Iraq by the United States and NATO.

Now, Helga, this does bring us back to what we started with, which is the importance of the 10 fundamental principles that you laid out, to move to a new strategic and financial architecture. I know there’s a lot of discussion that’s going on. It has to continue, and in fact, be raised to a higher level, and should be discussed by governments. But what’s your sense of where we have to go from here, to bring these ideas into the policies of governments?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I’m quite encouraged, because a lot of people who have looked at these 10 principles are reacting very well. They say it’s a very serious and well thought-through conception, because these 10 principles are not programmatic points: They’re principles and I try to look at the situation and say what must be remedied about what prevents peace? I took the Peace of Westphalia as an example, where one of the principles that came out of that was the idea that if you want to have peace, you have to take into account the interest of the other. There can be no lasting peace, if one or two or more parties are neglected. That’s a very important principle.

So my 10 principles start off with the idea that you have to have an alliance of perfectly sovereign nations, because otherwise you have no accountability; supranational institutions just don’t work. So the principle of sovereignty is the first idea.

Then the idea of overcoming poverty as the most important task, because if there are 2 billion people threatened with starvation, that is right now the most urgent task.

Naturally, a world health system.

And then the second part basically goes into the philosophical considerations which have to be the underpinning of such an approach: And I refer to those conceptions in the different cultures which say that there is a higher lawfulness which has to be respect, which in European history was called “natural law”; in India it’s called “cosmology,” which needs to be applied on the planet; in China, it’s called the “Mandate of Heaven.”

These are important ideas. I refer in one principle to Cusanus’ [Nicholas of Cusa] “Coincidence of Opposites” as a way of thinking: How you can think the One, which has a higher power than the Many—the one humanity which is more important than the many nations.

And then finally, the 10th principle is that the nature of man is that man is essentially good, and that all evil comes from a lack of development.

Now, I’m just referencing these very briefly, but I think these ideas must be discussed, because we have to come to principles which unite humanity, and not divide it. So I would encourage you, our viewers, to read these principles, and if you want, write something about it. We will introduce, on the Schiller website a page where important articles that are contributed will be published. And then hopefully, we will get other organizations to enter such a dialogue, because we need actually a chorus of world citizens who say, we need a change in the paradigm, because if we are going into nuclear war, there will be nobody left. So that means that everybody has to take responsibility to remedy this present, very dangerous, but also very hopeful situation, and bring it to a better direction. [https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/ ]

SCHLANGER: The responses that I’ve been getting are people who are saying, initially, well, this is hard to do on a philosophical level. But then if you ask them, “How far has pragmatism and Realpolitik gotten us? That’s why we’re in this crisis.” And in fact, you only overcome this kind of crisis by moving to the higher basis for agreement.”

Helga, I thank you for joining us today. I think the developments of this last week, including the interviews that you and your associates are doing, the award in Mexico, the developments around China and the Middle East, all point in a hopeful direction. But we still have to engage more people in this process, and the fundamental principles drafted by Helga Zepp-LaRouche will be appended to the webcast today, at the bottom of the description section, so you can read them and comment on them.

So Helga, thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you next week.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, till next week. [hzl/hcs]