Afskrift på engelsk:
Schiller Institute New Paradigm Webcast, October 11, 2018
With Helga Zepp-LaRouche
The Stakes In the U.S. Midterm Elections: War or Peace
HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger with the
Schiller Institute. Welcome to our webcast for today. It’s Oct.
11, 2018: Our webcast will feature, as always, Helga
Zepp-LaRouche, our founder and chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
We were just reviewing events prior to this webcast, and
there’s so much going on, as we come now with less than five
weeks to the midterm election in the United States, which is
going to be an extraordinarily important in determining whether
the American people are going to step up to the responsibility of
joining the New Paradigm, or whether they’re going to succumb to
the demoralization and the media control.
We’re also seeing things that the LaRouche movement is
famous for, which is economic forecasting. And Helga, why don’t
we start with that: We saw a very big drop in the stock market
yesterday, there’s jitters on Wall Street, anxiety around the
world. What’s going on?
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: The system is disintegrating, and it’s
just a question of time when this will happen. I find it very
remarkable that the IMF is pronouncing the famous “D” word.
Remember that the “D” word was never to be mentioned, because the
market would supposedly follows the psychology of the markets,
and when you mention the word “Depression,” then that could bring
it on and so was the tale. But now the IMF meeting in Bali,
Indonesia has been warning that challenges are to be faced,
otherwise, the second Great Depression would be looming.
Now, I find this really remarkable, and I think what they’re
trying to somehow prepare the population that thing is really
coming down. This stock market plunge of more than 800 points —
I think something like 820 — you had President Trump who
basically said the Federal Reserve is “crazy” with their interest
rate policy, which caused a complete reaction by [IMF Managing
Director Christine] Lagarde and so forth, but he kept repeating
it twice. He said the situation is much too tense to continue
this. Naturally, this is the reason why you have the reverse
carry trade from the emerging markets, which was mentioned by the
IMF as the biggest threat to the system, and the second biggest
threat or maybe on an equal level, being the indebtedness. Now,
Lagarde also mentioned the indebtedness of the governments, the
corporate firms, and also other categories, like student loans
and car loans and all of this, is 60% higher than it was in 2008.
Then, in addition to all of these things, you have the
collapse of the real economy, with for example home-building
peeked in the United States in January and has been in a free
fall and since about May this was also the case for copper and
timber — all of these have lost between 15 and 20% since the
beginning of the year. So, these are all markers that this thing
is not continuing.
And then, you have, naturally, on top of that the growing
fight between the EU and Italian government. You had the famous
letter, or infamous letter by the two EU Commissioners [Pierre]
Moscovici and [Valdis] Dombrovskis, to the Italian government
warning them that their intention not to stick to the EU-imposed
budget deficit of 2.4%, that this would not be allowed, which was
the trigger for a run on the Italian bond, and as a result, the
spread between the Italian and the German values have gone up to
300 points; and it is generally said if it goes up to 400 —
basically that means that the Italians have to pay 3% and more to
refinance their loans — and that could actually really all
contribute to a crisis.
On top of it, by the 15th of this month, that is in four
days, the Italian government will publish the details of their
budget. And it is expecting that the rating agencies immediately
afterwards will put out some rating, in all likelihood
downgrading the Italian bonds, or downgrading Italy as a country,
which then basically, depending how they are formulating it, if
the outlook is basically neutral, people say this could just go
through; but if they put a negative outlook on it, then that
could lead to a big banking crisis — actually not only of Italy,
but of the entire Western financial system.
It is clear that some of these people in the European
Central Bank and EU Commission obviously think they can force the
Italian government to capitulate, that they can control the
consequences of this, but this is playing with fire: Because you
have a highly, highly volatile financial system, and I can only
say, in 2008, the whole world was more or less unprepared for the
crash, because they were not listening to the warning this my
husband had already put out, very clearly, on July 25th, 2007 —
this was one week before the secondary mortgage crisis in the
United States exploded. And he had said at that time, this
system is finished. All you can see now, is how it comes down.
And people didn’t listen to it. So the crash occurred in 2008 and
they didn’t draw any conclusions out of their own mistakes, and
just kept pumping money — quantitative easing. And basically
all these instruments of the Central Bank are now completely
exhausted and used up.
And contrary to 2008, when everybody was unprepared, those
people who are now trying to cause the Italian government to
capitulate and continue with the austerity, which the Italian
government was voted in, because they rejected that austerity.
So, if they push too hard, I think one should not forget that
both Italian government coalition parties, the Lega and the Five
Star Movement party, they have Glass-Steagall in not only their
party program, but also in the coalition treaty.
Now, obviously, the Italian government knows what they’re up
against. They have seen speculators moving in on countries,
driving them into the ground, so they are relatively careful, and
they’re not saying anything terribly provocative. But if
somebody from the outside pushes them into a crash, I would not
exclude the possibility, or I would actually say it’s quite
probable that they would implement Glass-Steagall as a
self-defense.
So it is quite different from 2008, and I think the only
lesson that one can draw out of all of this, is we need to
amplify our efforts to go for a New Bretton Woods system, which
we have a campaign on internationally, we have a petition; this
has been signed by many people in the meantime, and I would urge
you, our viewers, sign this petition, get it around, prepare
anybody you know — elected officials, mayors, parliamentarians,
congressmen — to prepare for Glass-Steagall, and not only that,
but the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche. Because unless we
reorganize this entirely bankrupt financial system in an orderly
fashion, the danger is an uncontrolled collapse.
You need a New Bretton Woods system, you need
Glass-Steagall, we need to get rid of the casino economy; we have
to have credit for the financing of the real economy, and we have
to have a new credit system to basically finance investments on a
multinational level among all the countries of this world, to get
the world out of this danger of a depression.
So, if the IMF talks about the danger of a Great Depression,
people should take it to heart. Think about what happened in the
Great Depression in the ’30s — in the United States it was
devastation, but in Europe it was even worse, because it led to
fascist movements and that to world wars. So people should not
take these things lightly: Get onboard with us. Join the
Schiller Institute, join our campaign for New Bretton Woods,
because that’s the only answer one can give to this danger of a
looming crash.
SCHLANGER: I had a chance to read through the Executive
Summary of the IMF report, and there were two omissions — they
were there in a sense, but they didn’t really acknowledge them,
— both of which your husband was out in front of for many, many
years, in dealing with the IMF. On the one side, it’s clear that
it’s {their} policy which has failed. The austerity regime which
the IMF is famous for, these have never led to any economic
development. And then, secondly, the quantitative easing, the
low-interest credit for speculation, instead of Glass-Steagall —
the IMF was promoting that. And so, the two things they
promoted, they’re now admitting are failed. Do you have any
thoughts on that, Helga?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think the possibility that the IMF would
reform itself is probably going in the probability towards zero.
I think it requires a different kind of action. In a certain
sense, you have right now in the whole world, already, a revolt
against these failed neo-liberal policies. This was expressed in
the Brexit; this was expressed in the election victory of
President Trump; the new Italian government is an expression of
that; also the Austrian government. And I think that — in a
certain sense, national sovereignty has to be reasserted, and I
don’t think these supranational institutions which were the main
reason why these policies were imposed, which had created havoc:
Look at what happened to Greece. The Greek economy was
diminished by one-third. The Italian economy was destroyed. The
fact that we have now a totally different government in Italy,
which is pro-growth for the most part, which is for the
relationship with China, for the relationship with the New Silk
Road, all of this is a response to the failure of these policies.
And there are many people in Europe who are expecting that, given
the fact that the EU is basically doing exactly the same thing in
principle, namely, sticking to the neo-liberal austerity, that
you will have an earthquake in the coming European Parliament
elections [in April] which will show that these present policies
will be absolutely out.
I think this is much too long term. I think the crisis is
upon us now, so I can only say: The only solution is for the
package I just said before: The IMF is really a bankrupt
organization, and that was stated by my husband in 1975, when he
proposed to replace this IMF with an International Development
Bank, which would provide large-scale, low-interest credit for
development projects in the developing sector; and if that would
have been done, we would not have a migration problem, we would
have prosperous countries around the globe; but now, with the New
Silk Road, this policy is on a good way.
So I can only say, “listen to the wise words of Lyndon
LaRouche,” belatedly, but better late than never.
SCHLANGER: And that was a very popular item, “How the
International Development Bank Works,” that Lyn wrote back in
’76, I think it was. We used it as part of his campaign — for
his first campaign for President.
Coming up on the midterm elections, there’s a lot of turmoil
that’s been unleashed. What’s clear is that Hillary Clinton has
not learned anything from the results of November 2016. You have
a real civil unrest that’s being built, deliberately, because the
Mueller case, the Mueller Russiagate story, is collapsing. This
can become a very dangerous situation. Let’s start with what
Trump said — Trump said, the Democrats have gone crazy. I
assume you would share that assessment, Helga?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: If calling for violence is a sign of
insanity, then I would agree with him. And it’s funny, I was
looking at the German media, and they all portray this fight,
this very hot situation in the United States, as if it’s all just
electioneering by Trump that he would call the Democrats a “mob.”
But, it is a fact that Maxine Waters already some months ago,
called on everybody to get into the face of Trump cabinet
members, whenever you them — there were some actually violent
incidents; people were not served in restaurants; and also some
other Democrats basically called that you should be “in their
faces” of the Trump camp. And that has created a complete
hysteria, which was amplified by the Kavanaugh case, where even
Alan Dershowitz, who said that he’s a liberal Democrat, he said
that the attempt, for example, Senator Feinstein and Eric Holder,
they said that Kavanaugh should not be accepted, that this would
put into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court! I mean
this is really incredible. Dershowitz then correctly said, forget
it, Kavanaugh is now Supreme Court Justice and he will be there
for his lifetime; this was due process, and the Democrats should
go back to being civilized and not violate all the norms and
rules.
I mean, this is incredible: I’m not an expert on American
constitutional questions, but it seems to me if the Senate, or
some Senators, are putting into question the legitimacy of the
Supreme Court, this is heading towards a constitutional crisis,
or some kind of a state crisis if these people are not stopped.
I think they have lost all barriers, and they have lost all
sense of limit! This is a completely hysterical situation, and I
can only say that this is very dangerous. And we have said many
times that Trump is being attacked, essentially, — I mean, you
can pick on tiny points here and there — but that’s not the
point: The main reason why Trump is being attacked, is because he
tried to get the relationship with Russia on a good basis. He
had a very successful in Helsinki with Putin. And at least, in
the initial phase, he had an excellent relationship with China
and Xi Jinping. And that is why the geopolitical establishment
went absolutely crazy — as a matter of fact, they’re escalating
their campaign, both against Russia and against China, in
unprecedented ways. And it is the question of war and peace, and
people should really understand that, that the Democrats have
really gone crazy on the issue of Russia and also China, and they
should not fall into this trap, because in the consequence, this
would mean World War III.
SCHLANGER: One of the other important points, I think is
that what we’re seeing, is again, people like George Soros
funding these rent-a-mobs. And Soros, of course, has been
involved in this for many, many years. And I believe, Helga, you
first identified the operation against Trump after the election,
as similar to the “color revolutions” that Soros, combined with
people like John McCain, the National Endowment for Democracy,
the Clinton State Department, to run coups and regime changes,
throughout the former Soviet bloc countries. I think we’re now
seeing that what you said about the “color revolution,” is
totally accurate, including the danger of a Maidan Square-type
chaos being unleashed. Sen. Rand Paul said yesterday that he
fears that there could be assassinations.
Is this pretty much what you had seen two years ago, this
color revolution scenario?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yeah, because whenever you have George Soros
involved in such, and he financed, according to reports, $50
million to a private group which, according to these reports,
which was called into being by a “senator,” not named, but the
individual involved was formerly an aide to Senator Feinstein, so
the speculation naturally goes in this direction. This was an
outsourcing of the whole Steele operation to a private group,
basically using $50 million so that this could go on, after
Steele was officially fired from his liaison with the FBI.
Now, this is incredible. I think this will all come out,
and also following the James Baker testimony, which even if it
was behind closed doors, nevertheless, what came out in various
Fox TV programs and various other revelations, that it was
Michael Sussman, the lawyer of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the
lawyer for the DNC, which was the original trigger for the whole
Russiagate affair. I find this absolutely incredible and I can
only hope that the American voters draw their conclusion out of
it, because that means that the Hillary Clinton campaign was
involved with a foreign power, namely great Britain, against her
opponent in the election campaign, and then afterwards, basically
against an elected President. Now, I don’t find this very
“democratic,” to say the least, to use these kinds of secret
service methods, deep state methods, to work against your own
President, who has been democratically elected.
This, in my view, is the biggest scandal, and if it is all
coming out, if all the documents are being declassified, I think
it will go down in history, as the biggest scandal in American
history. And that is what’s at stake with this midterm election.
SCHLANGER: I think it’s very important that Baker, who was
the legal counsel to Comey and the FBI, in his testimony before a
private Congressional hearing, that he acknowledged that Sussman
gave him the Steele report, which was then incorporated into the
original FISA warrant against [Trump campaign advisor] Carter
Page. That just makes clear that all these Democrats who have
been protesting what Representative Nunes did in his House
Intelligence Committee, that they were wrong, they were lying;
they were trying to cover up for the connection between the
British, the Clinton campaign, and the FBI.
Now, Helga, a couple of other things we need to cover before
we finish today: One is the very significant stopover in Beijing
by Secretary of State Pompeo. He had just come from North Korea,
where there was what appears to be quite a successful meeting
with Kim Jong-un. But when he got to China, it was a slightly
different environment, largely because of the moves toward trade
war. What happened when Pompeo got to Beijing?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: This was shortly after Vice President Mike
Pence had made this absolute diatribe at the Hudson Institute,
attacking China in the {worst} possible way, and this was taken
very badly by the Chinese government and Chinese media, who
really questioned, does that mean there is a shift in the Trump
Administration, in a total hostile attitude towards China?
Basically, when then Pompeo arrived in Beijing, just a few days
afterwards, he basically reiterated that it is the policy of the
United States to have a good relationship with China, to agree to
the One-China policy, and that the United States is not trying to
stop the rise of China. And there were several Chinese media
which noted the fact that this was an extremely important
statement to come at this moment.
There was one interesting article in the {Global Times} by
the American analyst and expert, Clifford Kiracofe, who made the
point that there is a clear difference between Pence, who sort of
speaks for the deep state, and Trump, who is trying to change the
U.S. foreign policy, but is being “hamstrung” by this crew on the
side of the deep state. And Kiracofe basically said the U.S.
establishment is unwilling to learn the lesson from what’s going
on strategically, that the world is changing and that there is a
multipolarity already now.
Now, the significance of this is not only Kiracofe saying
that, but that the {Global Times} is publishing that, which is a
paper which is very close to the Chinese government. So I think
it’s important that the Chinese are still, despite the trade war
and the escalation coming from ridiculous — like Elizabeth
Economy, who was already on a rampage in 2014, came out with
another major piece, accusing China of all kinds of things — I
don’t need to repeat this stuff; and I already in 2014 said that
Elizabeth Economy obviously has an “economy-class mind” if she
says these things, and obviously, she has not improved since.
But in any case, I think it is very important that Pompeo
was there to set the record straight, because obviously, the need
to find solutions to the world does require the collaboration
among the major powers of the world. Those people who are
pushing this insane confrontation, like Hillary Clinton did in
her speech in Oxford, where she was on an absolute rant against
Russia, I mean, these people should really not be listened to, at
all.
SCHLANGER: Another group that shouldn’t be listened to, but
unfortunately is, is the IPCC, which is in the news again, with
the so-called “manmade climate change” theories they have,
demanding that carbon dioxide be eliminated from the universe.
This goes back to the campaign you waged against the
British-backed, German figure John Schellnhuber, who has been
pushing these policies. And now it looks as though this is going
to be aimed as dagger at the heart of the German auto industry.
And it’s a good thing that Trump pulled the United States out of
the Paris climate change agreement. But where is this heading?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: This is report which says the climate accord
from Paris was not good enough, we need not stop 2% temperature
increase, but we should stop at 1.5% by 2050. And obviously,
this is basically what Schellnhuber put out some years ago with
the “great transformation” as he called it, the decarbonization
of the world economy, getting rid of nuclear, getting rid of
coal, oil, gas, just go to “renewable” energy sources; and there,
it is very, very clear that what my husband has developed in
terms of the cohesion and the correlation between energy
flux-density in the production process, and the potential
relative population density, which can be maintained with that
energy flux-density, means that the goal which Schellnhuber set
forth that the Earth can only carry 1 billion people, that that
is what they now want to put back on the agenda. It’s a
desperate effort by the forces of the Empire against Trump, who
has promised to reindustrialize the United States; especially
against the New Silk Road, against the Belt and Road Initiative,
which now is the new spirit which has captured more than 100
countries already, which work with the Belt and Road Initiative
to their benefit. And it’s an effort to really throw a monkey
wrench into this dynamic.
But I think it’s desperate, I think it’s dangerous, but I
don’t think it will work. I don’t think that these people will
convince China, India, Latin America, Africa, the Asian nations,
even some of the European nations, to lie down and die, because
this is what that would mean.
It’s dangerous anyhow, because you can see that it’s needing
a mass hysteria on the CO2 question. I mean, first of all, we
have long debated that the CO2 emissions is really a minimal
factor in climate change. Climate change is taking place,
there’s no question about it, but as we have documented many
times in the past, it has to a very large extent to do with the
position of our Solar System in the Galaxy, and it is long-term
cycles from Ice Ages to warming periods, and within that, you
have still smaller fluctuations; and this is determining the
climate.
So the whole discussion of whether the CO2 emission of man
causing these climate changes is just completely absurd. Now,
it’s very dangerous, because, as you can see, this brainwashing
of the population — in Europe, for example, one day after the
IPCC put out this quack report, the EU Environment Ministers met
and they decided that the CO2 emission from cars should not be
30%, like they had previously argued, but it should be 35%; and
the German government, which basically initially said 30%, and
then agreed to this compromise — it’s just crazy.
Now, what will that do? The boss of VW, the largest German
carmaker today came out and said that if this aim is being
implemented to have 35% cut in cars’ CO2 emissions, then this
will cause, alone for VW, 100,000 jobs — and that’s just one
carmaker. Now, you can add all the other ones, and you will end
up with millions of people going unemployed and the whole
industry collapsing! Germany, as an economy, is already on
extremely fragile ground because of the exit from nuclear energy,
and if they now are pushing to eliminate coal altogether, this
will be the death of Germany as an industrial country.
Obviously, we will make a big campaign against that.
There is a big worry, because obviously, for example, Poland
is 90% dependent on coal in terms of its electricity production.
And if they force countries to implement that, you will have a
populist explosion in the next vote, if not earlier.
So this is all completely crazy, and it should be stated
very clearly, that with the presently existing technologies, for
a very long time, the world population cannot be maintained
without coal, and there are safe and modern coal plants which are
completely environmentally friendly; and it’s completely
motivated by, not the environment, but by an anti-population
attitude. We had put out in 2015, a report “‘Global Warming’
Scare Is Population Reduction, not Science,” and in that report,
we had the Queen of England on the cover, because obviously,
Schellnhuber, who wants to be addressed all the time as “CBE,”
Commander of the British Empire, — we had documented in that
report that these are British policies. And I think what we see
with this IPCC report, and anti-coal emission campaign; and in
Berlin, they now forbid diesel cars, cars which fueled by diesel
are forbidden from driving in 11 zones in Berlin! Now, the
craftsmen’s association has said that this means that 50,000 cars
of craftsmen will not be allowed to drive in the city, and
everybody who needs the services of a craftsman, who needs a new
roof, or needs a new pump, or whatever, they will not be serviced
any more.
This has nothing to do with real issues: This is mass
psychosis, and it’s driven by the hedge funds, by Wall Street,
because the CO2 emission trade is a quackery: We denounced that
in the past, and now, to impose a global carbon tax, which is
also what is being pushed, would mean they have again a good
weapon against national sovereignty, because once you agree that
national economies have to submit to the policing in terms of
their carbon emission, here you go again in the direction of this
globalist eco-fascism.
It’s not scientific, I think it’s the opposite: It’s
oligarchical and it’s an effort, really aimed, in my view
primarily against the New Silk Road, but naturally also against
Trump, also against Germany, and many other countries. So, we
should really denounce that, and we will have a whole bunch of
articles about that on this webpage; we will have a whole section
on the Schiller page, where we will have interviews and
statements. And we invite you, if you have some scientific
contribution to make to this subject, we will publish it on this
website and have a public debate. Because this is really
dangerous for the future of civilization.
And we have to have the opposite approach: We have to have
an optimism about man being able to go into fusion power, to
develop completely new scientific methods for energy, safety, for
raw materials security, space travel — I think we should not get
into this scare which is really a tool of the oligarchy to try to
stop the development of the people.
SCHLANGER: Helga, we’ve gone on a little bit longer than
usual, but I think there’s one other thing we have to bring up,
because we teased it last week, which is endorsements for
Independent Congressional candidate Kesha Rogers in Texas. In
case, people don’t know this, in the last couple of days, we’ve
two very prominent American Republicans and conservatives —
actually, they may not even be Republicans in the party sense —
but Roger Stone, a longtime friend of Donald Trump, a
self-proclaimed “political provocateur” issued a very strong
endorsement of Kesha Rogers. And then, Senator Richard Black, a
Virginia state senator, who’s been very involved in exposing the
coup and also exposing the deep state operations against Syria,
he issued a statement endorsing Kesha Rogers. Helga, do you have
any thoughts on these two endorsements?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think it’s great, and I can also add that
the French former Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade also
endorsed Kesha Rogers, saying that even though he’s not an
American, Kesha’s campaign has international significance,
because she is the flagship against everything which is going
wrong in the United States, right now. So I think we will have
more such statements, and I really wish all of you to come out
and support Kesha Rogers, because this is a campaign of national
importance and international importance. [Rogers is an
Independent running in the 9th CD in Texas, against incumbent
Democrat Al Green, who promotes impeaching President Trump
regardless of whether he has committed a constitutionally defined
crime or not — ed.]
SCHLANGER: OK, I think that about does it. Until next week,
Helga, we’ll see you.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: OK, till next week.