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Helga Zepp-LaRouche Webcast Transcript

Beyond War and Chaos:
Creating A Vision For The Future

November 2012

Webcast video

Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute and the leader of the German politcal party Bueso. Her activities and intellectual endeavors have brought to life the profound ideas of Nicholas of Cusa and Friedrich Schiller. Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche addressed an International Webcast and engaged in an important dialogue on the internet on November 11, 2012. The transcript of her presentation below is followed by the transcript of the 75 minute Question and Answer session. The Schiller Institute calls upon thinkers and planners of all nations, who are interested in our “Peace through Economic Development” approach, to send in discussion papers.

Question 1: Why must we abolish the euro in order to end austerity in southern Europe?

Question 2: How can we explain to people that you can not turn essential functions over to the free market, such as transportation infrastructure? What would be your recommendations to the government of Greece?

Question 3: Why is Turkey now surrounded with enemies?

Question 4: What would a political solution for the United States look like, for the five coming years?

Question 5: Why is there money to bail out banks, but not poor countries? Why don't we criticize Russian President Putin? What is the role of Russia in the conflict in Syria?

Question 6: (On the German elections) Are the obvious attempts of the CDU and FDP to get rid of Steinbrück part of a common party struggle? Or, are we dealing with factors which aim beyond whatever election results we’ll see in 2013?

Question 7: What is the difference between all the political groups of today, and the Schiller Institute? What should the future youth culture look like? What would be the role of youth today, to get that new outlook actually created? What is the best way to be sure, and rigorous, when it comes to a conception of universal truth, versus only experienced facts?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Webcast Invitation: Beyond War and Chaos: Creating A Vision For The Future. Sunday, November 11, 2012, 5:00 PM Central Europe Time (11:00 AM Eastern U.S. Time)

STEFAN TOLKSDORF: Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome to this live broadcast here on www.bueso.de, obviously not only in Germany, but internationally, and that’s again why we decided to make the main conference language this afternoon, English. Now, let me just say a few words before we start with the proceedings. We have received before this event, a number of questions that will definitely be considered in the time-frame that we have, which will be just around two hours, but you can still send in questions during the discussion, if you decide to do so, but I would ask you to send them in either in German or English, because these are the languages that I can handle. If you have questions in other languages, you can send them, but you will probably have to wait so we can get back to you in written form after this event.

As you have seen from the invitation, we will spend this afternoon with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. She is the president of the international Schiller Institute, and also the chairwoman of the German political party Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität [Civil Rights Movement Solidarity, BüSo].

She is very well known recently, and that is also where you might have met her for the first time, during a speech that she gave at the Rhodes conference on the Dialogue of Civilizations, a speech that actually did receive wide international attention, because she delivered a very condensed, not just analysis of the current strategic and world situation, but a solution. And I think much more importantly, she addressed the question of how to even think about such a solution, because that’s often where the problem lies.

She is also the principal author and organizer of a development plan that we have presented in many of the countries of Europe, a plan known as "The Plan for an Economic Miracle in Southern Europe, the Mediterranean, and North Africa," which I think is characteristic of the way that we approach this current situation.

Now, the aim this afternoon is to change history. And in order to do that, we have to address some very fundamental questions that are usually not addressed, because as you well know by now, in the year 2012, everybody knows that we are in probably the worst crisis of the last hundreds of years in modern history. And those who don’t know, I don’t know how to help them.

But knowing that this crisis exists, does not necessarily make you fit to address a solution, and as you have seen, from the so-called Friday project, that Mr. LaRouche in the United States has undertaken in the last month, there is a lot more involved in this situation. And one indication that I’m pretty sure, Helga will also address, is that with the firing or the resignation of the now former head of the CIA, there is also a first indication of a world-changing situation, as Mr. LaRouche has pointed out, after the U.S. election.

Now, we’ll get to that, and I would just tell you the mail address again: It’s webcast@bueso.de for your questions...

So, with that introduction, I give the floor to Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Good afternoon for people in Europe, and good morning to people on the other side of the Atlantic. Well, I’m holding this live webcast, because mankind is in mortal danger, and we have right now, strategically, a crisis which is beyond the imagination of most people. If one considers all aspects, we have, to just name the most important elements of this crisis, we have a systemic crisis of the financial, which is about to disintegrate, at least concerning the trans-Atlantic region; we have a military-strategic crisis, which as I will point out, means that we are very, very close, potentially to World War III; and that is probably the underlying reason for all of this, we have a very deep cultural and moral crisis, and all of these are interacting.

Now, for any thinking human being who looks at the world, it should be clear that civilization is about to crash into the wall at full speed. And we need, therefore, an urgent discussion about the paradigm shift which can completely change the way we go about things, and how we approach everything.

Now, the purpose of this webcast is to further elaborate an already-existing dialogue among intelligent people, and well-meaning people around the globe, and to suggest and realize a concrete shift which must be introduced into the strategic discussion immediately. Now, this webcast is also, to demonstrate that there are very practical alternatives, and to once and for all get rid of this absurd statement, which is the favorite sentence of Mrs. Merkel, who keeps saying that "there is no alternative" to her policies, and there is an alternative. It is very useful to remember, what my husband, Mr. Lyndon LaRouche had said last week, only one week ago: He said, when the whole election hysteria in the United States was still at a peak and people were thinking in terms of party politics, and belonging to this club or the other club, he said, "Don’t think about what happens on Tuesday, on Nov. 6th; just wait until the end of the week, and then you will see how reality will assert itself." And indeed, we have right now, only five days after the U.S. election date, dramatic global shifts under way, which already means we are in a different universe than a week ago.

Now, only three days after Election Day, General Petraeus, the head of the CIA, resigned. Now, the ostensible reason is an admitted extramarital affair; there may be something to that, because it is now becoming clear that the FBI was investigating Petraeus since spring of this year, but for obvious reasons, it was decided to keep Petraeus and not have this scandal erupt before the election. Which may have caused serious national security problems; that needs to be investigated. But much more likely, is that this firing or resignation rather of General Petraeus has to do something with what is now coined "Benghazi-gate," namely the scandal around the assassination of Ambassador Stevens and three other American employees of the embassy [in Libya], on Sept. 11th, that is eight weeks ago. And this Benghazi-gate, the circumstances of this incident has been coined by the Republican Senator McCain as "much more serious than Watergate." Because in Watergate, no blood was on the hands of the people involved.

Now, this Benghazi-gate story is a very, very big affair, but the second, very dramatic shift, also, in the last couple of days, was that the Russian Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff were replaced, and there is a much broader military and military-industrial reorganization.

Now, immediately after the Election Day in the United States, also, Prime Minister Cameron of Great Britain decided, backed up by Obama, to have a military escalation against the government of Assad in Syria, by arming the rebels, a policy which very easily could lead to a confrontation with Russia and China, and could easily lead to the triggering of a large war. And the firing of a rocket from the side of Syrians into the Golan Heights, supposedly in response to grenades which have been flying for several days, also shows you what a powderkeg the situation in the Middle East really is.

Then, fourthly, both in the United States and in Europe, you have absolutely brutal austerity, murderous austerity, and in the aftermath of the big storm, Sandy, which destroyed important sections of New York and New Jersey, now it turns out that ability to repair this, does not exist. And that the proud city of New York, in part, has been reduced to a situation like Haiti, like the Third World.

Now, the situation in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, where the cuts imposed by the Troika, or better, as it is now called, the "Destroika," are increasing the death rate, and in general the Eurozone and the United States financial banking system and economy are about to disintegrate, either through a chain-reaction collapse, or through the infamous policy of quantitative easing III, which is a synonym for money-printing; which is also done not only by Bernanke but also by the ECB.

Now, the combination of all of these things, should tell anybody that we are in an absolutely explosive situation, which could go out of control as we are talking here, or I’m talking and you are listening.

Now, first, let’s look at the situation concerning the resignation of General Petraeus: Now, this is big, this is very big, and it is a genie which is not going to go back into the bottle. Because all the attempts to have cover stories and so forth will not work, because too many people have been injured, or killed for that matter; there will be many hearings in the Congress and in the Senate, starting on the 13th, that is two days from now, and continued on the 15th in the House and the Senate. The first round of these hearings will be behind closed doors, but despite certain signs that there is a desire to do so, the likelihood that the truth about what is really going on there, can be suppressed is very unlikely.

Now, this is a big deal, because as I said, the FBI already started to investigate General Petraeus’ email and other things in the spring, and obviously, given the fact that he had this affair with a journalist, who is an American educated from West Point, but nevertheless, that he had all of this email traffic probably means that he should have resigned months ago, because it probably was a violation of national security.

Now, everything points to the fact that President Obama did not want this scandal to erupt before the election, and obviously, there is much more to it, and even if the truth will only come out if all of these Congressional investigations proceed, there are certain circumstantial things which are already known: One is that it involves very important policy issues, because it is now generally recognized by a large section of the American military and the American intelligence community, as well as observers from other parts of the world, naturally, that the entire policy of fighting al-Qaeda, fighting the war on terrorism, going for regime change, using drones, that this whole policy has completely failed. And even if you follow the internal logic of American interests, the result is a complete rubble-field.

For example, there are people in the military and in the intelligence community, who recognize that this drone warfare has led to the exact opposite, namely, it has led to an increased recruitment of al-Qaeda members, and it was General Petraeus in particular, who was in charge of the so-called "militarization of the CIA." And this has actually led to an increased hatred of the United States, and obviously, many innocent casualties.

Now, this policy of drone warfare, which has minimum caused civilian deaths which has caused at least one-fifth of these innocent civilians were children; altogether almost 5,000 people were killed. There are Bills of Impeachment being prepared right now against President Obama, because of this, because it was completely lawless: No accusation, no legal process, and there is, right now, an investigation in the United Nations for the same crime. And naturally, the situation is complicated by the fact that you have, now, Muslim Brotherhood governments, or governments which are close to the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Turkey, and potentially many other countries.

Now, the whole story of Benghazi is obviously what is really at stake here. The Obama Administration, and Obama personally, and especially Susan Rice, maintained up to almost two weeks after the terrorist attack on Sept. 11th, that this had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, but that it was a spontaneous demonstration because of this anti-Islamic video, which was already known to many authorities at the time, that that was not the case. The questions which are now being asked, is why, on the eleventh anniversary of Sept. 11th, when it had been clear for many months and several reports had been written by Ambassador Stevens, asking to reinforce security, warnings that the whole situation was pretty much out of control, why was there nothing done to beef up security? Then, why, when all the other institutions, like the British Embassy, the Red Cross and others, had left Benghazi because of the untenable security situation, why did the U.S. Consulate and the CIA house which was one and a half miles away from the consulate, why did they stay?

Why was a private British security firm used, which supposedly had unarmed personnel, and why was there no response to the fact that these employees were warning that a terrorist attack was about to occur? Why, when it was known, 20 minutes after the attack, and emails were sent to the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, that nothing was done to come to the help of the ambassador and the three other Americans?

There was a CIA house nearby; there were special forces trained for these kinds of things, reinforcement teams in Rota, in Spain, in Sicily, in Bahrain, why were they not deployed?

If it is true, which is likely, that drones were flying over the Benghazi Consulate, transmitting live video feeds in real time to the White House and other places, why was there no action? Why did President Obama, the next day, still have this story that these were spontaneous demonstrations - I mean, one explanation could be that he had based his entire election strategy on the fact that he had killed bin Laden, that he eliminated al-Qaeda, that he was a strongman respecting security and that he didn’t want a terrorist attack to ruin that image.

But it now looks as though there are more things behind that. Because we, that is, our colleagues in the United States from EIR, Executive Intelligence Review, we already had reports on the 12th of September, that is, one day after the attack, that the attack was done by Ansar al-Sharia, this al-Qaeda related terrorist group, and that they had a strong presence in Libya and in Benghazi in particular.

Now, it is very likely that this whole operation has something to do with arms supplies coming from Libya to Syria, and this was related to the reinforcement of the terrorist part of the Syrian opposition. Now, one comment which captured the situation was a remark by President Putin who sarcastically said, "well, if you look at the people operating in Syria, you could just open the prison of Guantanamo, let these people out, arm them and send them to Syria, because it’s the same kind of people."

Now, the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Telegraph hinted that the consulate in Benghazi may been a diplomatic cover for hidden CIA missions, and that the whole operation may have been involved in weapon deliveries to the Syrian opposition. Now, General Petraeus was supposed testify under oath, this coming Wednesday or Thursday [Nov. 14-15], in front of the House and Senate committees. While he will probably not get out of having to testify, because the Republican Congressman Peter King, who is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, basically said that he will have to testify a little bit later, because he was absolutely at the center of events, and that he has to testify more than anybody else.

Now, the genie, therefore, will not go back into the bottle. This is a very, very big affair. Because it involves the failure of the regime-change policy which started with Bush Sr. and the neo-cons, when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1990, which you remember at that point, when the Soviet Union basically collapsed, and there would have been the possibility to have a true peace order for the 21st century, unfortunately at that time in the United States, in the Bush Sr. administration, you had the emergence of the neo-cons and their New American Century doctrine, which was essentially the idea that now that the main enemy was gone, to basically subdue the world under the control of an Anglo-American empire based on the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States.

Now, one outgrowth of this terrible imperial policy, was the Blair Doctrine. Blair gave this horrible speech, in 1999 in Chicago, in which he declared that the era of the Peace of Westphalia has ended, that the UN Charter which guarantees the national sovereignty of nations has essentially ended, and that from now on, there was the "right to protect," as this policy was later called, to have "humanitarian interventions" around the globe, and under the pretext of human rights violations and similar things, to intervene against a list of villains, of rogue states, and basically that led to the present chain of disasters.

We should remember, that Blair, the author of this policy, which is now adopted by the Obama Administration, was also the author of the lies that gave us the second Gulf War. He was instrumental in writing or in getting this MI5 memorandum written which said Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda, which was a lie; that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, which was a lie; that these weapons could reach in 45 minutes every city on the globe, which all turned out not to be true. And Blair’s policy not only represents a war crime, but it has led to a complete, utter, total failure of the policy of the United States, and unfortunately the West, at least those who participated in elements of this policy.

The policy of regime change and murder, or well, finally the execution of Saddam Hussein, means that this country has been bombed back into the Stone Age; you are now on the verge of a full-fledged religious war between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites in Iraq. Then, if you look at Afghanistan, where in light of what we now know about the true circumstances of Sept. 11th, the original, first Sept. 11th, probably this war which invoked Art. 5 of NATO, should have never happened in the first place, and if you look at the situation in Afghanistan now, it is also an utter, total failure, where the Afghani trainees, who are supposed to eventually take over security are now turning around, more and more, and killing those people who are training them, which is not exactly the proof of the success of this policy.

Now, the war of aggression against Libya, which was a war of aggression, and not a humanitarian intervention as Obama declared it, probably to fool people in the United States to avoid going to Congress and get permission from Congress to declare war; because the Founding Fathers of America had a very good reason to say that only Congress can declare war, and not one man, not the President, but that you need to have the agreement of the Congress, which Obama, by declaring it a humanitarian intervention avoided. And also, at that point, caused Russia and China to be neutral in the UN Security Council.

Now, obviously, the lesson of that was learned by Russia and China, and in the case of Syria, they are no longer neutral, but they have said a very clear veto, when it came to operations against Syria.

Now, when the bestial murder against Qaddafi occurred, it was clear that that is part of a whole campaign which was supposed to be extended immediately to Syria, to Iran, to Russia, and to China.

Now, look at the situation in Libya today: You have a completely destroyed country, a country which may not have been a humanist haven under Qaddafi, but it was, as it was with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and as it is now clearly seen in Syria, all of these countries had much, much, much better conditions with the so-called dictators than now! In Libya you have now tribal warfare, you have an increased presence and control of al-Qaeda and similar groups. And if you look now at the so-called opposition in Syria, which exists, but this opposition - the real opposition, they still prefer President Assad to what is now coming in the form of Salafists and al-Qaeda forces financed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Now, this all has to be investigated, and it has to include an argument which has been made by Sen. Bob Graham, who was the head of the House and Senate Congressional investigation commission which looked into Sept. 11th [2001], and produced a report. However, of this report, 28 pages are still classified to the present day, despite the fact that President Obama, in the 2008 election campaign had promised to declassify that, something which was demanded by the families of the victims of the tower, who wanted to know what was in these 28 pages, and Obama never declassified them.

Now, at the occasion of the recent Sept. 11th, Senator Graham wrote an article in the Huffington Post where he said, these 28 pages have to be urgently declassified because they pertain to the role of Saudi Arabia. And if one knows anything of the region, then that is the crucial track, to really find out what is the control, the imperial control by Saudi Arabia and British over, on the one side U.S. policy, but also reaching into European policy.

Now, the intent of Prime Minister Cameron and Obama, and remember that Blair is the military advisor to Obama presently, to arm the rebels and to increase the efforts to topple Assad, or if it would ever come to the desire by the Turkish government to establish a no-fly-zone; if it comes to that - and we are very close to that - that could only be reinforced by military means. And then, given the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO, you would have, probably instantly a conflict with Russia and China, which could very quickly lead to World War III.

Now, you have to look at the picture as a whole, to understand why I’m saying that we are very close to World War III: There is the declared intention of Prime Minister Netanyahu from Israel, to strike against the nuclear facilities in Iran. Now, does Iran have nuclear weapons? I don’t think so. And this is also the opinion of the National Intelligence Estimate, the umbrella organization of the American secret services, who recently reiterated their findings from 2007, that Iran has discontinued its military program, its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and that they have not started it again.

That, however, if you put yourself in the position of Iran, being surrounded by nuclear powers, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, which is said to have either 200 or 400 nuclear warheads, Iran in the best estimate of knowledgeable sources, is trying to be nuclear weapons capable, as quickly as possible. But it does not pursue a nuclear weapons program. Now, that’s a very important difference But, if there would be a strike against Iran, obviously, in that case, and it is also estimated, that Iran’s entire nuclear program could not be destroyed, and within a certain delay of maybe a year or two, Iran, for sure, would try to achieve nuclear weapons, cancel the NPT treaty, and then as quickly as possible, develop nuclear weapons. But that is a different situation than that as if Iran would already be pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Now, if this would happen, you know, it would mean World War III. This is the understanding of every Middle East expert or strategic analyst, and the only reason why it has not happened yet, is because you have the U.S. military, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence services - Mossad, Shin Bet - who all are totally against this, because they know it not only would lead to the destruction of Israel, but it would lead probably to World War III. People have spoken about how this would lead to 100 year destruction of the entire region. But we are on a hair-trigger.

Now, there is this intention by Netanyahu, he has said it himself, many times, and now you have the following additional situations: You have a major maneuver, involving almost 5,000 soldiers, 3,500 American soldiers, 1,000 Israeli soldiers in the maneuver called "Austere Challenge 2012." Now, this is simulating an [audio loss]

... of the anti-missile defense shield which Russia is objecting to, so much. Then, this maneuver started on the 21st of October, and it is still ongoing.

Then since a couple of days, you have a huge maneuver, involving U.S. and Japanese troops around these contested islands in the Pacific. These are 50,000 troops, and the Chinese government has already said that they regard this as a provocation, just by the sheer number of this policy.

So then, you have to look at what is the position in respect to Russia and China. When the old Bush Administration started the policy of regime change in 1990, which was only interrupted in the eight years of Bill Clinton, there was very clearly a situation where the east extension of NATO was regarded by Russia and China as an encirclement policy.

U.S./NATO Military Deployments Around Russia and China
The New Citizen
There are indications of Russian attention to the global scope of U.S. BMD planning, that is aimed against both Russia and China, as can be seen in this map.
Ring Around Russia: Threats to a Great Power That Won’t Back Down
The New Citizen
President Putin told a conference on Strategic Nuclear that, “nuclear arms ... remain a truly important guarantee of Russia's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and play a key role in supporting global and regional equilibrium and stability.”

Now the U.S.-NATO missile defense system which is being built in Poland, Czechia and Spain, has been declared completely unacceptable by the new Chief of General Staff of Russia, General Gerasimov, who, at a conference a couple of months ago in Moscow, basically made the point that this missile defense shield is not directed against Iran, but it would take out the second strike capability of the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal, and therefore make Russia essentially defenseless and completely destroy the strategic balance. And therefore, as Gerasimov was saying at the time, could lead to the use of nuclear weapons in Europe itself.

Now, if you look at all of these situations, the situation around Syria-Turkey, the fact that this conflict is already spilling over into Lebanon, into Jordan; the tension between Israel and Iran; the building of the missile defense shield, about which the remarks of Russia can not be called "for internal propaganda use" - I mean, as some, in my view rather irresponsible politicians are saying in the West. This is serious! Then you have these maneuvers, and you have on top of it, a very tense situation with a drive to extend these wars, being pushed right now, mainly by Blair, by Cameron, all of this means we are on the verge of World War III.

And if it comes to that, it would in all likelihood, come to the use of thermonuclear weapons, and it is the nature of such weapons that they would be used, all at once, and you could have the extinction of human civilization in about one and a half hours.

Now, as I said in the beginning, this is a crisis beyond the imagination. Because it comes together, with an escalation of the financial crisis in the trans-Atlantic region. The United States’ banking system and the European banking system, but for these continuous streams of bailout packages, are completely bankrupt.

If you look what is happening in the United States, in the aftermath of this Sandy story, there are still hundreds of thousands of people, in New York and New Jersey, without heat, without electricity, without gasoline; there are people stuck in high-rise buildings, 20-story buildings, where older people can not easily go through pitch dark hallways, down 20 stories and then go a mile to get food and water; so there are people now starting to really freak out, and they’re still dying!

When the storm happened my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, immediately said, look, this will never be rebuilt, because the money is not there; you would need huge sums! In order to prevent this, it would have been necessary to build shields against the floods which would have cost about, maybe $6 billion. There was a proposal by a Dutch firm about three years ago, but for austerity reasons, it was decided not to build this. Now, you probably have $60 billion or maybe $100 billion in damages, but that money is not there, - and the spare parts are not there! Because if you want rebuild, for example, the New York subway, the production capabilities to do that no longer in existence.

Now, if you look at just a couple of figures of the rest of the picture of the United States’ economy: 43 million Americans are dependent on food stamps! Now, that’s not a small number. That means it’s about half or more than half of the population of Germany! So, just draw a line, maybe at the Rhine-Main area, and either in the north or in the south, all of these people would be living on food stamps. Every seventh American is depending on that.

By the end of the year, the U.S. Federal debt will be $16.8 trillion. This is a sum which increased by $6 trillion during the period of the Obama Administration. The per-capita indebtedness of the United States, is 35% higher than that of Greece. And it is higher than that of Italy, Spain, Portugal, or France.

Now, if, in this situation, the only answer is murderous austerity policy, which is what Obama is now announcing, and which is causing the American trade union movement to fight the same Obama whom they voted for only five days ago, and have rallies all over the place, this policy of austerity is now imposed on Greece, which already has 58% youth unemployment; Spain, 55% youth unemployment. And now, the Troika, or better, Destroika, demands further cuts before the next tranche of bailout money will be paid. They demand 10, 20, 30% cuts in wages and pensions; they want to shut down hospitals; they want to cut health care: And this is murdering people!

Now, the EU in its present form, and people should not blind themselves to that, is just another expression of the Blair policy. What I mean by that, is, if Blair’s doctrine is to end national sovereignty, to end the period of the Peace of Westphalia, then there’s only aim, to postpone the bankruptcy of a bankrupt financial system, that is what we see right now: They combine brutal, murderous austerity with Quantitative Easing 3, and Draghi from the ECB says, "whatever it takes to save the euro," this is leading in the short term - and I really mean short term - to a hyperinflation in the entire trans-Atlantic region like it was in 1923. And as we know in Germany, from family experience, that hyperinflation is the most brutal form of expropriation.

Now, I could paint the picture more elaborately, but let’s just stop here. There is a solution. It requires however, a fundamental paradigm shift, and a complete turning away from politics as usual. We need to go back to the principle of the Peace of Westphalia, the complete respect for national sovereignty. We have to completely reject the idea of humanitarian intervention, and of supranational bureaucracies.

Now, for Europe, this means we have to absolutely cancel the EU Treaties from Maastricht to Lisbon, we have to return to national currencies, and we have to establish, simultaneously, a global Glass-Steagall Act, and I mean the real Glass-Steagall as Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed it, and not some watered-down versions like the Vickers Commission ring-fencing, or Volcker Rule, which leave holes for banking speculation as big as a barn door. And we have to have a real separation of the banks, where the state protects the commercial banks, and the investment banks have to get along without taxpayer money and without having access to the savings of the commercial banks. Now, if that means that most of these investment banks have to declare insolvency, so be it! But this circle of refinancing a small circle of speculators who become richer and richer, and a mass of population in the United States and Europe which is plunging into Third World conditions, that has to stop. And there is no legitimate reason to continue this policy for one minute!

There is a solution, namely, to go back to a credit system in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, to go to national banking, and to give credits for real production. Now, admittedly, this will be a little bit bumpy, it will not be without a short period of problems. But, compared to hyperinflation, which is going to eat away all the savings of the population, and will lead to chaos in the short term - if even Helmut Schmidt, who is a proponent of this same policy, is warning about civil war, and a revolution erupting in Europe, I can only say, this is what will happen in the short term, because if there is hyperinflation, or an uncontrolled collapse, people will indeed go crazy, because there is no future and no hope!

If, however, one does an orderly reorganization, cancels the EU treaties, from Maastricht to Lisbon, goes back to a national currency control of the nation’s own currency and its own economy, and then starts to rebuild the real economy, there is no reason why the economic miracle which Germany made in the postwar period , with the help of the Marshall Plan and the credit lines from the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau directed to real production, why that example can not be replicated at any point, really in the world.


An overview map of NAWAPA, from the original 1964 video by Parsons Co. The video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTissXa48yg.

Now, for the United States, this means we have to have NAWAPA, the largest water-management project ever undertaken in history, which is already ready to go: There were congressional feasibility studies already made a long time ago, and we have updated it to be NAWAPA XXI, and we need for Europe the extension of the World Land-Bridge, the Mediterranean and Africa. And now, we definitely need to have a complete, different approach to the Near East and the Middle East.

Now, the whole region, include Central Asia and the Gulf, must immediately put on a plan for real economic development. We have to have infrastructure corridors, connecting to the World Land-Bridge in Russia, China, and other countries, and we have to have transport corridors, connecting that part of the world with Asia, with Europe. But especially, we need to have huge amounts of new, fresh water. Because, if you fly in a plane over this region, from the Sahel zone to the Sahara to the Arab Peninsula, to Central Asia, where you also have tremendous water shortages, you have desert!

Now, the ridiculous absurdity is, that for ever $1 earned by most people in this region - I’m not talking about the sheikhs, but I’m talking about the average population - there are $50 spent on military expenditures! Now, is that not insane? Should we not rather have an agreement from Russia, China, India, Iran, hopefully some European countries, hopefully the United States, to really develop this region.

Now, my institute, the Schiller Institute is presently working on a comprehensive development plan for the entire region, from Central Asia, all the way to Iran, Iraq, to the Gulf States, to Egypt, Syria, Israel, Palestine, all the way to Turkey, and to take that region as one entire area, hanging together, and plan an infrastructure development plan, as you would look at Western Europe, or certain parts which are developed in the United States. And there is no reason why this region can not be uplifted, through a joint development strategy, and this way you establish a higher level of region, which allows all these countries which are right now, or many forces in them, are being murdered, being slaughtered, slaughtering each other, for ethnic, religious, and other conflicts, and basically say, that if they agree to work together for a higher purpose, that peace can be established in this region.

Now, the Schiller Institute will shortly present this plan, and I want to invite all the people who are listening to this webcast, to contact us and collaborate on the implementation of this program. We must turn this region, which right now could be called the "Cockpit for World War III," and which is, like the Balkan Wars before World War I, a region where you have so many historic alliances and conflicts, which immediately start to kick into each other and go into a big war, that has to be completely changed. And this area has to become an economic prosperous region and be guided by the policy of "peace through development."

Now, as I said, if we can get the big powers, the neighbors, Russia, China, India, Iran, hopefully some Europeans, hopefully the United States, which will have a very different situation in a short period of time - I’m sure of that - then there is hope. We have to, at this point, where we are looking at the potential extinction of civilization, we have to change the paradigm, and we have to stop thinking in terms of supposed geopolitical interests and the destructive extension of war, which is a policy of absolute evil! This policy of regime-change, and trying to topple government after government is evil, and it has to stop!

Now we have to change, instead, to the common aims of mankind. If we don’t make this shift, then it will turn out, but there will be nobody to watch, probably, that we will not have been more intelligent than the dinosaurs, who went extinct, 65 million years ago.

Now, let’s look at another area where the common aims of mankind, are absolutely urgent: In our universe, in the different galaxies there are billions of asteroids and comets flying in space. Many of them have not been discovered, we don’t know where most of them are, but they have devastating consequences. We all have seen pictures of the Moon, for example, where there were craters which were struck by such comets or asteroids. About 250 million years ago, there was an asteroid which impacted the planet and had a deadly chain-reaction of events, of tsunamis, volcano eruptions, of poisonous liquids which developed, and all of this led to a 98% extinction of all species.

Now, 65 million years ago, another asteroid hit, near the Mexican coast, which had an impact of 200,000 times the entire nuclear arsenal, and that sent shockwaves around the world, and created a gigantic dust cloud, in the context of which, then, the dinosaurs and about 70% of all species at that time, disintegrated and died out.

Now, the last large impact was in 1908 in Tunguska in Siberia, where either an asteroid or a comet exploded before it struck Earth, but nevertheless, the downburst impact was larger than the eruption of Mount St. Helen volcano. It was relatively small, but it still led to a huge crater, the size of greater New York.

Now, at the beginning of this year, an asteroid flew by the Earth - and it did not hit, naturally - but now, it turns out, it’s coming back. It will fly by the Earth again on the 13th of February, and only 24,000 km distance - now that’s not a very big distance, if you look at the universe at large. It only has a diameter of 30 meters, and it would only create a crater, if it would ever strike Earth, the size of the territory of a small city.

Now, in the last 60 years, there was enormous progress in the knowledge abut our and other galaxies; the theory of comets developed, we developed telescopes and probes, which we can send out to near space, and there is bigger, deeper understanding about orbits, the chemical composition of these asteroids and comets, and it is right now an absolute priority to discover them in time when there can be enough warning time, and to develop the means to neutralize them, to change their direction. There are various proposals how this can be done. But all of these things are not yet tested, and one has to be extremely careful about the side-effects, but so far there is no reliable method yet.

Now, if you really think about that, mankind has every reason to fear that we eventually will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs. And even if one can say that these comets always triggered a new evolution or a new qualitative level of evolution in terms of species - after the reptiles were eliminated in one earlier great extinction, the dinosaurs developed; after the dinosaurs were eliminated the mammals, warm-blooded creatures developed. But I don’t think we can really be relying on that if we are extinct, some more intelligent species will develop, which the universe is probably going to produce, but I don’t think that that would acceptable.

So mankind should basically develop abilities to conquer dangers from space. And long before the Sun is going to have serious troubles, maybe much earlier than 2 billion years from now, we should be able redefine the way we think, about our position on the planet, and we should define the common dangers and common aims of mankind, and work together, like the proposal of the SDE, global missile defense systems, which is not excluding Russia and China but including them; we should have joint research and development concerning the danger of asteroids, comets, early warning systems for volcano eruptions, for earthquakes, and these are the things we should basically engage together.


Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. receives a globe of Mars at his 90th birthday celebration.

Now, there is reason for optimism: Because when the Curiosity Mars rover was landing just a little while ago, this gives us, for the very first time, the perspective to look, from Mars, into the future of changes which basically we have to start focussing on. We now have an observation point on Mars. Admittedly, with a 14-minute delay before signals which are sent from Earth are going into effect on Mars, but, we can from now on, use this Mars rover and future such rovers and other instruments to map the relations in the Solar System, and to study those areas where asteroids and comets are very dense, for example, the area between Mars and Venus, and we have to find out where these rocks are, what is their orbit, which of them are threatening Earth. And we have to no longer think, sort of like little people on the planet Earth and look up into space, but we can think from Mars, and from Earth, naturally, and from the Moon, and soon from other places.

That means that we can think about the universe in a completely different way.

Now, that means we can make a qualitative leap in the way we think. We can leave the domain of sense-perception and the reliance on our senses as a means of cognition. We can think in terms of the universe as composed of a complexity of universal principles, and as it was in the history of science and of Classical art, always, whenever you introduce a new principle, a new qualitative principle, this redefines the entire set of existing known principles to that present time.

We are now before a situation where, either we continue the way we are doing right now. Or, we make a leap, where we go to the common aims of mankind, and accomplish what the great German-American rocket scientist, Krafft Ehricke called, the "Extraterrestrial Imperative." He coined that notion to specify the necessary next phase in the evolution of mankind. I mean, if you think that life on the planet developed from the oceans, by aid of photosynthesis to the Earth, to the ground, in the form of vegetation; then after a certain point in the evolution, human beings appeared. Human beings first lived only at the mouths of rivers or coastal areas, then, because they developed infrastructure, they could expand, more and more, to more and more territory, a process which is not yet completed, because there are entire areas of the world which are not yet developed through infrastructure. But that the manned space travel would be the necessary step in the evolution of man. That was Krafft Ehricke’s idea and that the Extraterrestrial Imperative would also mean that people would have to become rational human beings, and follow natural physical scientific principles. Because otherwise , you can not be in space and survive.

Now, I think we are now at that point, where either we can get our act together, so to speak, and stop solving conflicts by war! Because it is threatening to lead to our destruction. And that we have to leave the era of infantilism, geopolitical wars, or juvenile delinquencies, and reach the adulthood of mankind.

Now, there is a third aspect of this civilizational crisis which I was mentioning in the beginning, and that is the moral decadence of our Western culture, and it is the deep, deep cultural pessimism, which has basically, almost taken over most people. If you ask people in the street to help to implement such plans, as I was here mentioning, the normal answer you get is, "One can not do anything anyway." Or, "man is bad, evil, anyway." You know, people have a deep-rooted cultural pessimism, which naturally comes from the paradigm shift of the last 40 years.

Just compare the present perception of what people think with the cultural optimism which existed in the period of the Apollo program, when you would ask you children or teenagers, "what do you want to become when you are grown up?" and many of them would say, "I want to become an astronaut, I want to become an engineer, I want to become this, or become that."

Now, with 58% youth unemployment in Greece, with young teenagers being unemployable because they have no motivation to learn. Many Mittelstand firms are hiring apprentices only to lay them off after a couple of weeks, because they just don’t want to work, and they can not work. If you look at the youth culture, which is, in many cases, a combination of bestial pornography, violence, and which is the result of a degeneration from generation to generation for the last 40 years, and maybe longer, well, this complete lack of empathy, of complete egoism, almost autism of many children and teenagers, well, then, you can not deny that we have a big problem: Because if the youth generation is the most feared and dangerous part of society, then, you know, something went deadly wrong.

Now, contrary to that, if you consider for a moment, the absolute enthusiasm with which the landing of Curiosity on Mars was greeted by youth around the world, who, even if they may not have known all the scientific principles involved, naturally, they had a reaction: "Man, there is a future, there’s something out there, there is something I still have to discover and something I have to learn for."

Now, the idea that there is, a future is what is absolutely important: Because the only way mankind can avoid extinction, is a shift in the identity of an ever larger number of people, away from immediate gratification of the senses in the here and now, the maximization of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and a shift to the identity to be truly creative people.

Now, the creativity, the passion to discover new universal principles, in Classical art, and in natural science, and to study the laws of the universe, is only possible if you have a vision of the future. If you have a vision of man in space, a man who uses the breakthroughs, making in space research, to solve the problems on Earth, because that’s the only way how they will be solved, and use that as a guidance to shape the present.

When it is clear that mankind can only survive in the universe, by progressing to higher states of scientific understanding and higher levels of energy flux density, is it then, not a crime not to pursue these sciences and developments? And to totally abandon the Green paradigm, because the Green paradigm means, by definition, that man will never conquer the dangers coming from space because all the energy flux density rich or high energy flux density sciences, and technologies which are necessary, are going to be victimized by such crazy ideas as those of Mr. Schellnhuber and his crazy plan to "decarbonize" the world economy! Now if you go in the direction of the Green paradigm, then mankind will not survive! It may not be as quick a death as thermonuclear war, but it will be a slow death, because we will put out of our arms and hands all the scientific tools which we need to guarantee our own survival.

Now just look at it in perspective: Mankind is only around for a meager 7 million years, that is very, very short. Recorded, written history, is only 5,000 years! Space exploration began seriously, less than 100 years ago. Then sending of telescopes and probes only started to be really thought about 50 years ago.

Now just think, if we now shift gears, say no to the Green paradigm, say no to the geopolitical wars, and instead focus on the common aims of mankind, focus on those sciences and technologies, and Classical art forms which are truly human. Then, just think how, in 1,000 years from now, mankind would look.

Now, we will make qualitative leaps which will be much, much, much bigger, and much more beautiful and exciting than the development we took from the Stone Age to now. And if you would have asked a Stone Age man, how will people look in the year 2012, he probably would have looked pretty stupid. And if you ask the same question to most citizens today, "How will mankind look in the universe, in the space, 1,000 years from now?" you probably would get the same reaction. But that doesn’t mean that the true nature of man is not exactly to be that creative species in the universe, and to be the only species which can conquer these dangers, and become the only immortal species on the planet, and maybe, much beyond.

Now, if we are to survive, then only if more and more people think like Classical artists, and think like natural scientists. And we need to induce that paradigm shift, and we need to have a discussion about that, because what is glaringly absent right now - when you had the Cuba crisis, there was a huge discussion! In the media, among the politicians; John F. Kennedy warned that if it comes to the use of thermonuclear weapons, the people who die in the first minutes will be the happy ones, as compared to those who die a few weeks later.

Now, there is no such discussion today, even if the danger is much, much bigger. When you had the medium-range missile crisis, the SS-20 and Pershing II crisis at the beginning of the ’80s, you had hundreds of thousands of people in the street, warning that this could lead to the extinction of civilization because these weapons systems were on "launch on warning."

Now, it is launch on warning, practically everywhere, and there is no discussion, despite the fact that everybody can see that we are absolutely close to our own destruction.

Now what we need is not only a discussion about these dangers, because people need to know it, and they have to think about it, and they have to make an informed decision that they don’t want this. But we need to discuss also the alternatives, that there is no reason in the world why we can not go back to Glass-Steagall, to a credit system, to building the real economy, to have scientific breakthroughs, to go back to a culture of humanist Classical culture, and we need to have a discussion about that! We can not just see how civilization is crashing against the wall and not do anything about it.

And that is my appeal to you.

Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche


Stefan Tolksdorf

TOLKSDORF: If you just joined into this broadcast, what you’re watching is a live discussion here with Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the President of the Schiller Institute on the question of the future of humanity. ...

I think that Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks have pretty clear that in order to solve this crisis, and I’m saying this specifically to the youth, to the people who are even much younger than I am, this is not something we can do in our spare time, or on the weekend, or as a kind of a side effort to whatever else you may be planning for your personal lives. This is something that we need people to be - and especially young people, in Europe, in the United States, and in other parts of the world, to engage in fully, as fully active members, or contributors to this organization. Because as you probably can clearly identify from the discussion that we have just heard, this is not something we can do without our full commitment.

So, a number of questions have reached us, and always, there is the problem that after such a presentation, you might wish you had written your question just now, in the last minute, because it might have already change. But these are the times, it is like that. So, I want to get to some of these questions. First I will start with the situation in Europe. We will get to other things, a little bit later.

Question 1: Why must we abolish the euro in order to end austerity in southern Europe?

But one question which is somewhat a reasonable one has reached us from a representative from UNESCO, from Greece. And it says here, "No doubt, to reestablish the Glass-Steagall law for banks and use the model of water corridors for a new Marshall Plan for Greece and the Mediterranean, this is important - there’s no question about it. But the question is, why is it necessary to abolish the euro for that? And why can we not use the existing monetary union in order to reverse the existing policy, and achieve our common goals within that common currency, by simply stopping the policy of austerity and misery in southern Europe?"

MRS. ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think that the euro has a problem, because, first of all, Europe was never a so-called "optimal currency space." Because you would have to have relatively equal or similar conditions in the different countries.

Now, one argument which often is made, is, "well, but the United States also has different degrees of development and it still functions with the dollar." But the difference is, the United States is one country, it has one language, it has one history, it has one culture which binds it together, despite differences between the South and the North, the East and the West.

But that is not the case for Europe, and while I’m not excluding that some time in the distant future, we could reach a state of development where a European common currency would make sense, I think that the fact that we do not have a European people, but that we have 27 or maybe more nations, in Europe, who have a different language, or most of them have a different language, who have a different history, who have a different culture, simply means that you can not have a common policy.

Because, if you don’t have self-participation in the government of the population, then it can not function. You need to have the representative system, where between the governed and the government is a reciprocal legal relationship, which requires that people have to know what they’re doing. Now, the problem is, I don’t think that the people of, for example, the French-speaking Swiss know much about what the Dutch are doing, what the Walloons are doing, what the Bosnians are doing. I’m not reading the newspapers of Italy, I don’t know about the different parts of Spain, but in order to have a common currency, you would need to have one language, one people.

And the problem is, that, I think that there is not a big problem to go back to the national currencies, but you have to have a clear development perspective. And naturally, you want to have a credit system, which means you have to have multinational credit treaties among these sovereign nations, which go over 25, 30, 50 years; and then maybe at the end of that, you would come to the conclusion that you want to have a different kind of system. But right now, I think that the only way you can have that kind of development is you need the sovereign control over your currency and your economy. And I don’t think that anybody who wants now to have a common Europe, a fiscal union we already almost have, a banking union, or the United States of Europe, I think at this point if you ask the people of the different European nations if they want to have a United States of Europe, I’m pretty sure that any referendum, if you would make it, would be an absolute "no," as it was demonstrated in the case of France and Holland, who did have a referendum in 2005. Or as the present trend in Great Britain shows, and especially after the "Destroika" had imposed these policies on the southern European states, I think the tensions and the almost hostilities among the countries, were never as big in the postwar period as right now.

So the idea to have a common Europe right now, or a unified Europe, which would be the precondition for a European currency, they just don’t exist. And if you think about it, let’s go back to the national currencies and have this reconstruction, and then it is always our freedom to, in the future, decide what we want to do.

back to question list

TOLKSDORF: Now, obviously there are a number of questions, dealing with the situation in Greece, and I have to say, unlike earlier occasions when we were in discussions with friends and partners in Greece, the description that they give of the problem in Greece is - let’s say it’s even clearer than it was before. So, I’m going to try to summarize a little bit, but you can be sure that Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche will get the question in written form, so we can also discuss it further after this forum.

Question 2: How can we explain to people that you can not turn essential functions over to the free market, such as transportation infrastructure? What would be your recommendations to the government of Greece?

So, let’s start with one. This comes from a representative in the International Sociological Association and European Sociological Association in Greece. And it say that "the Greek authorities have imposed a peculiar embargo on the country’s rail links to Europe in 2011." This is something that we also reported and discussed earlier. "Our exports to Germany, to Italy, to France have decline, during the last three years. European multinational exercise a monopoly control over the national food market, creating a food crisis for children and the elderly in Greece. State agencies do not regulate the internal markets, it’s considered a ’free market.’ Transportation infrastructure within the country is inadequate and development halted since the crisis, making even more difficult to transport internally, the national goods produced in Greece.

"And since the country is considered the gate from Europe to the East, much of these transport links are not organized, and obviously to the detriment of what’s considered a free European economic space. And this is reminiscent of the Victorian-era trade between England and India.

"And as a a result of the abovenamed conditions, Greece now exports unprocessed raw materials, which are heavily subsidized by the EU, also reminiscent of the situation in the Soviet Union after the collapse in 1990-1991. We import tents and clothing, at the same time that we produce all of Europe’s cotton. And in view of the above Greek crisis, Europe has abandoned Greece. The crisis is unevenly imposed upon a small country, and the solution is not to transform them into a ’special economic zone,’ as has been clearly described by Germany and Greek politicians and analysts."

Now this idea of the special economic zone also comes up in a different context, but naming generally the same the same problem, so, this questioner then asks the question, "do you think this will make Greece more competitive?"

Now, I’m not sure if that’s really the question, or an ironic statement, but nevertheless, from a different questioner, this is raised more clearly, and I’ll just add it to that, because they say here: "Greece used to have an extensive transport network, both sea and air between the many islands, and the mainland, obviously. For over a decade, that has now been privatized, and connections are increasingly expensive, and mainly during the tourist season, outside the tourist season, often there is no transport available, no matter what price you are willing to pay." It says here, "How can we explain to people that you can not turn essential functions over to the free market, without strict governmental standards and regulation, which provides affordable, durable, and reliable connections between the population centers, and simply put, the question is here: What would be your recommendations to the government of Greece?"

EIRNS/Julien Lemaître
Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Dr. Hal Cooper, Jr.

MRS. ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think the situation in Greece, in a certain sense, it’s just the most dramatic and tragic of all the other situations, but it has nothing to do with Greece. I mean, all this propaganda about how lazy the Greeks are, they are not willing to do... this is just complete, utter nonsense! And the only reason - okay, Greece may have a different culture and philosophy and so forth, but it’s not what the media are say! The reason why Greece has these problems, and why these projects have been cut, is because especially since the outbreak of the so-called financial crisis July 2007, there has been only one direction of funds, and that is away from the real economy, away from the living standard of the population, away from the taxpayers of all countries, into the pockets of the banks, the speculators and the high-risk speculation, which has not stopped at all!

So, in this whole period, what has been accomplished has been to transform a crisis of private debt, turned into state debt. And now, since the states are overindebted, the policies of the EU and European governments is to compensate for that with massive austerity, to create balanced budgets. Now, austerity is the most insane and stupid thing you can do! If we should have ever had Chancellor Brüning, we should have learned the lesson that if you impose, in the middle of a depression and in the middle of a currency crisis, brutal austerity in the tradition of Brüning and Schacht, you create more unemployment - that was the case from the beginning of the ’30s, until the taking of power of Adolf Hitler - and it is the case everywhere you do it!

So, that the increase of unemployment in all of the countries is going up, should not be a surprise, because that was very clear and unfortunately, if you look at the ideology of the EU bureaucracy, of these people, Barroso, Van Rompuy, and all of these people whose names one doesn’t even want to remember, because there is a natural impulse not recognize them as your representative - the ideology of these people is Green. Almost all the directives coming from the EU, from Brussels are Green, they are directed toward deindustrialization, post-industrial kinds of utopias, and they’re only designed to keep a bankrupt banking system afloat, to keep channeling funds into this banking system, at the price of hyperinflation, and to squeeze the real economy and the living standards of the population up to the point of increasing the death rate. And there is no solution within this system!

What you have to do, is, you have to completely abandon the present the present, bankrupt, unsolvable, and unsavable system, cancel it, and go to a credit system. Now, recently, I talked with a representative of a large firm, and I presented these projects to this person, and he said, "Oh, I know these plans already. These are in large part old EU transport plans" - naturally, not only, but we have included them; and he said, "but who should finance this?" And he kept coming back to this one question, "who should finance that?"

Now, it’s very simple: The credit system, which we absolutely have to establish, if there is supposed to be a solution, is a promise for the productivity of the labor of the future. Now, obviously, if you have a situation in Greece, where you have 58% youth unemployment, and where 60% or more of all firms and shops are closing down; where young and educated people are leaving the country, because they have absolutely no perspective if they stay, then there is no hope!

But, if you decide to have a plan of economic construction, infrastructure connecting Greece with Asia and with Europe, which it is not by rail right now, and you have other science-driver components of such a reconstruction program, you create productive jobs, you attract young people to come back to Greece, to have educated people come back and work there. You give a credit line, but that credit line is a promise for the future, because something physical will be produced! And contrary to just pouring money into bankrupt banks, where it leads to hyperinflation and tries to cover the debt of the past, actually useless virtual paper.

If you give a credit towards future production, and you employ people in productive jobs, and you have a meaningful construction program which adds to the wealth of the country, then this future wealth which is being credit pays back for the initial credit line. And it can be proven in the history of the last couple of hundred years, that everywhere where this policy was applied, the tax revenue, after a relatively short time, was bigger than the initial credit line, simply because it is the absolute character of human labor to create things which were not there before. It’s called the value-added character of labor.

For example, if you say, we have a credit line for the next 10, 20, 30, or more years, depending on how much time you need to complete a project, and you’re not going to try to service these credit lines before the factory is built, before the railroad is built, before the other science centers are built, you just give it as a credit for duration you need to complete this project. Then, there is no reason why this does not function. It does not have a hyperinflationary, or even inflationary effect, because you are increasing the productivity of the productive facilities and the productivity of labor. And that is simply the model which we have to adopt.


Abraham Lincoln
  Nicholas of Cusa
Alexander Hamilton   Henry Carey

And as I said, this was done in the Meiji Restoration in Japan, which turned Japan from a totally medieval, backward country, in a few decades, into one of the leading industrial powers of the planet, because Japan was for several centuries, completely isolated. And when economies in the middle of the 19th century, traveled to Holland, to Germany, to the United States, and they studied Friedrich List and Henry C. Carey, the economic advisor of Lincoln, and they came back to Japan, and they implemented these protectionist policies, Japan made this gigantic leap in almost only a couple of decades.

The same thing happened when Germany was industrialized with the policies of, first, Friedrich List, the Customs Union, but then, especially in the period of Bismarck, when, through the influence of some industrialists in Germany who studied Henry C. Carey, turned Germany from a free-trade country into a protectionist country, Germany became also one of the leading industrial nations of the world.

The same thing happened with the industrial revolution in Russia, where especially Count Witte played a very important role; it happened with the industrialization of America; with de Gaulle’s policies. So there are historical examples, where this kind of credit policy, or approximations thereof, did turn economic miracles loose! And that is the only way how Greece, and Spain, and Portugal, and other countries ever will come out of this present crisis.

back to question list

TOLKSDORF: It is indeed a complex problem. And just in case you hear that sound, this is not a complicated Morse code, it’s just the heater system.

I want to, since time is limited, I would like to definitely recognize another question, even though it is a little bit too long, that has been sent to us from Greece. This is from a member of the Hellenic Literature Association, a retired military figure who does, I think, a very thoughtful analysis of the various problems, not only in Greece, but in a larger sphere, he points to huge defense expenditures, to structural problems of the Greek economy, that can not, as he or she says, within the European Union, and the ECB mechanism of the Troika, or "Destroika" as we now call it; and points to the situation of Greece also geographically, which is not comparable to other countries of Europe, because Greece is situate at the joining point of three continents, so it has a special role. And it says here, "Greece must remain economically and politically stable, because as a stabilizer and peacekeeper in the area, since that function of Greece is lacking, it has also destabilized a very volatile situation in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean."

So, to the author, I will pass this question on for a bit more of a detailed treatment, because it’s just a little bit too long. I wanted to recognize it though, because a longtime friend from Turkey of our organization has sent in a very simple question, that touches upon what you are raising.

Question 3: Why is Turkey now surrounded with enemies?

And it says here, "Turkey started a new foreign policy under the slogan, ’Zero Problems Abroad,’ a couple of years ago, and now, she ended up surrounded with enemies." The question is, "what did the foreign affairs minister of Ankara do wrong, or what was wrong in his ways of thought?"

MRS. ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think that the situation for both Greece and Turkey is essentially, the problem is empire. That you have home-made problems, for sure, and I think in Turkey, you have different historical currents and tendencies which are quite opposite to each other, but I would say that the large part is not really located either in Greece or in Turkey, but that the problem is, right now, you have a tendency towards empire. And that tendency existed, obviously, for a long time, but it really escalated when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Because the natural impulse to keep a certain amount of science and technological progress, in part, also motivated by the fact that you had two armies of two blocs, that you had a certain counterbalance, you had, which was not a good thing, but it had a certain effect that you had countries allied with either the West and the United States, or with Russia or with China, created a different dynamic, which, as I said, it was not a desirable condition, but it left certain options.

And what is happening since the collapse of the Soviet Union, you had this drive to, what is normally called "globalization," which really was a huge paradigm shift in the direction of basically increase the power of the banking sector, of speculation, away from production, outsourcing production to slave labor markets, to have an increased integration of the banking system, of the central banks, the investment banks, the hedge funds, the security firms, becoming this financial monster, called "globalization"; which we call the British Empire, because it is the policy of empire. And a lot of things can only be explained as a derivative of this larger empire tendency in the world. Because a derivative of that policy, is then, that certain interests were financed, for example, the spread of these NGOs, the spread of organizations which pretend to be advocates of democracy and human rights, but in reality, in many cases turn out to be destabilizing forces for the sake of the empire, for the sake of regime change, as we could see it in the case of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, or, now, this disgusting spectacle of Pussy Riot in Russia, where one can only say that the people promoting these kinds of values, they should really look into the mirror of what are they promoting?

Now, as I said, the tendencies of this, I would really urge you to consider, because the dynamic, why are all the neighbors of Turkey now in an adversary condition? I don’t know if that is really the result of Turkish policy, or is it not the result of a general dynamic which has turned the whole world into a nightmare of the kind I was speaking of in the beginning.

And, in the same way, I think only if we return to the paradigm of the Peace of Westphalia, where national sovereignty is being respected, where we form a community of principle among sovereign nation-states, and part of the new paradigm has to be that the "interest of the other," which is one of the crucial principles of the Peace of Westphalia, has to be put on the table.

We are on the verge of our own destruction. By pursuing supposed geopolitical interests against each other, or, for the sake of this empire And we have to replace this by a system which was accomplished after a four-year-long discussion in Münster, establishing the Peace of Westphalia, where the first principle that for the sake of peace, that all crimes committed by either side or the other, have to be put aside and forgotten. And the second, very important principle, was, that for the sake of peace, from now on, every country has to pursue the interest of the other, as if it would be its own interest.

Now, I happen to think that this approach comes from Nikolaus of Cusa, the great thinking of the 15th century, who is the father of the sovereign nation-state, outlined for the first time in one of his early works, Concordantia Catholica, and which has the idea that peace in the macrocosm can only exist, only if you allow the development of all microcosms, meaning nations, and that each microcosm, each nation, has to absolutely develop the other nation, to its own self-interest.

And I think that that principle, which is obviously the opposite of present foreign policy, which is subversion, murder, destabilization, if we can not come to this level of understanding, then the consequences will be such as I outlined earlier. But I believe in the ingenuity of people: I believe that man is capable of making a leap, and that Gottfried Leibniz was absolutely correct, when he said that a great evil has power to evoke an even greater good.

And that is what we have to do, and that is why I am saying we need to have a discussion about the peace initiatives, and I’m reemphasizing it, because obviously these questions were sent before what laid out in my presentation, but the answer is in what I said: We have to have a paradigm shift, we have to have a comprehensive, large development project, for the entire region from Central Asia to the Gulf, from Iran to the Mediterranean, as one region. And I have a vision, how that can look in 20, 30 years from now, as an incentive for people to stop killing each other.

And we have to have an agreement on the common aims of mankind, fighting together against the threats which could kill us all, which range from nuclear missiles, to asteroids, earthquakes, and Green policy, and we have to defeat those things, and that is what we need to discuss. And I would actually urge people, beyond this webcast, to keep calling us, sending emails, sending contributions, write in papers, because we want to open an international forum for the discussion of such constructive solutions, as an alternative to the present doomsday policy of the EU and other governments.

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TOLKSDORF: I would like to turn to a subject that is in this situation, pretty obvious that it would have come up, which is the U.S. Presidential election, or the reelection of President Obama. Now, in one shorter email, which I think it’s probably more a side aspect, specific to the situation in Germany. The questioner refers to the problem that the German people apparently have, but the United States population might have as well, since they reelected President Obama, the difficulty of actually recognizing what kind of policy this President stands for.

But I would like to get, in that context, to get to a longer question that was also sent before not only this webcast, but also before the election, but which opens an important aspect here: So, it says here, and I’m going to have to read a part of this just to make it clear - it says here, "the media are concentrating very much on Europe and the euro crisis, now with the coming election" - then, coming election in the United States - "a political situation could evolve with much graver effects than even the euro crisis. So in that context I would like to ask how long can a President Obama, under the current conditions in the Congress and in the Senate, how long can he even remain in office? For months now, we have the impression that political America has come to a standstill, and is in a Catch-22: With Obama and a renewed period in office for him, no political solution seems in sight, and no solution to the economic problems. Also, I don’t expect anything from the central bank, which has now added QE, quantitative easing, to the so-called ’conventional means,’ which seems completely without effect.

"But, the Republicans putting up Mitt Romney who was a frightening option here, because he seems helpless..." well, anyway I can shorten that, because Romney is now out of the picture. But the questioner says, "it really makes you think, why did the Republicans not commit to a more capable candidate?" And the question then ends: "Should Obama be reelected, and forced to step down or be impeached within the next two years? What would a political solution for the United States look like, for the five coming years? Was Mitt Romney only a tactical candidate of the Republicans, in their calculation of a political big bang, to then put up a more durable candidate, and put the Democratic Party into the off in the long term?"

Question 4: What would a political solution for the United States look like, for the five coming years?

MRS. ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think the situation in the United States is serious, but not hopeless. Because, as I try to say in the beginning, the circumstances of the resignation of General Petraeus, the Benghazi-gate, Sept. 11th #2, if there is a serious effort now to investigate all of this, and I think that the genie can not be put back into the bottle, you have the chance to unearth everything that went wrong in American foreign policy. Now, I don’t know if that will happen or not, but there is the potential to do so.

There are patriots in the Congress, in the Senate and in other institutions. I had the fortune to talk to some of them, or see some of them, in action; I know that there is a gigantic effort right now to impose Glass-Steagall. Right now, for example, it’s very difficult for me to judge how quickly this Benghazi-gate investigation will lead to a possible impeachment of Obama, but it could! It could very quickly do that. There is the additional problem of the so-called "financial cliff," that the eight-person commission that were supposed to cut the budget by $1.2 trillion, failed to reach a compromise, and therefore, the so-called "sequestration" is now coming into play, which is the automatic cut of $600 billion in the defense sector and $600 billion in the social security area! Which is absolutely unbelievable, because it will cut into life-important questions in the social field, and it will cut in a lot of jobs in the defense sector.

So, there is a big upheaval about that, and all of this is really making clear, the United States is bankrupt, their foreign policy has failed, and I can only hope that all of this will increase the drive for Glass-Steagall. There is right now a good potential in the Senate, that the Senate will introduce a similar bill for Glass-Steagall like it exists in the Congress, with the bill of Marcy Kaptur, because in the recent Senate election, two new candidates were elected to become Senator, who are very well known proponents for Glass-Steagall.

So, if there would be an introduction of a Glass-Steagall legislation in the Senate, and there is a growing motion by such people as Thomas Hoenig, who is the vice chairman of the FDIC for Glass-Steagall, and others, the regional banking associations, representatives of savings banks, so I think that if this motion towards Glass-Steagall could be implemented in November or December, in the period before the next term of the President takes place, I think the sequestration goes into effect on 3rd of January, so if Glass-Steagall is would be implemented before, and you would have a move towards a credit system, then, a positive solution is possible.

Now, if that doesn’t happen, all Hell will break loose. So we are really on a very short-term mobilization for trying to get an alternative. And our organization can take the credit for having created a debate for a Glass-Steagall in Europe. If you would have asked people two years ago, "what is Trennbankensystem? What is Glass-Steagall?" they would have had no idea! In the meantime, you have all kinds of Trennbanken discussions, the so-called Liikanen [Report], which is not it; you have even [former SPD German Finance Minister] Steinbrück coming out for a Trennbanken, which turns out, if you look at it closely, is just the old Vickers Commission and ringfencing, a proposal which has been dismissed already as nonfunctioning, by parts of the City of London, and even representatives of Wall Street. You have a lot of economists in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, talking about Glass-Steagall. You have a bill in the Icelandic parliament, which has a very good chance of being adopted by the entire Icelandic parliament at the beginning of next year. You have similar initiatives all over the place. And if the United States would implement Glass-Steagall, then that’s the first step to getting out of this mess.

So, please contact us, join our efforts to put pressure on the parliaments to not miss this opportunity. Because the absolute only chance is now, between November-December, we need to have a change, or else everything will spin out of control. So, please contact us, and help us to implement that!

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TOLKSDORF: I would like at this point, to recognize a question that has come in, but I think during Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks has been answered several times. Nevertheless, it is important, because I think it’s a question that many people have in mind: A question from a senior African diplomat, who says the following:

"As has been witnessed during the last meeting of the G20, one would wonder if there’s no money to bail out everybody, or if there’s no money to bail out the poor? We observe that there’s a large amount of money earmarked for the faulted banks in the United States and in Europe, but not even 1 billion is earmarked to the poor countries, which they need to keep their growth momentum, so that they will also play their part to curb the economic crisis of the world. Why?"

Question 5: Why is there money to bail out banks, but not poor countries? Why don't we criticize Russian President Putin? What is the role of Russia in the conflict in Syria?

As I said, I think this question has been addressed very much, and just for time reasons, if you want to say something about it. But for time reasons, I would also like to take on one other subject, which came in, and it’s often to be expected, which deals with the situation in Russia, and also the relation of Russian policy to other countries. One question, which we often run into is our lack of, or our apparent lack of criticism, of the Russian President Putin. Why are we not criticizing Putin?

But I think, on a more serious note, what is the role, and you’ve addressed it in part, what is the role of Russia in the conflict in Syria? Because obviously, there are many things that are being criticized, maybe justly, maybe not, in the internal situation in Russia with regards to human rights, and freedom of the press and so forth; but obviously, the relation of such a large nuclear-armed country in a conflict that could become nuclear war, as they have warned, namely in Syria, I think is much more important. So maybe you can go again, a little bit into the question of the role of Russia, in today’s strategic situation?

MRS. ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I still would like to briefly answer the gentleman from Africa. I mean, if you look at the development of the last 40 years, it is very clear that since the paradigm towards the Green paradigm, which started, really, at the end of the ’60s, with the emergence of the Club of Rome, there was the clear intention that the Third World should be reduced in terms of their population. And all the policies do not make any sense if you don’t take that as premise and the intention.

In the ’50s and in the ’60s, you had in the United Nations, the idea of Development Decades, which was the idea that in every decade you would have certain goals for development, overcoming poverty, improving the social structure, improving living standards, having longer life-expectancy, and to progress and progress decade after decade, to eventually overcome underdevelopment: That was in the ’50s and the ’60s, a self-evident policy.

And then, when basically, the oligarchy decided that there should be a paradigm shift, then the idea of underdevelopment was replaced with the notion of overpopulation. Now, overpopulation, at the beginning of the ’70s, was known among all the left groups and NGOs to be a "Rockefeller Baby." In other words, being an interest campaign by certain multinational interests, but people knew, that if you have real development, women at a certain point do not want to have 10 or 14 children, but they want to have their own studies, they want to learn enough so they would have an average of two children or one child, or three children, or four at most, but they wouldn’t like to have so many children as they are now forced to have, to have some pension perspective when they’re old.

So the idea, basically, to reduce the population was a conscious paradigm shift induced at the end of the ’60s, beginning of the ’70s. And this policy is mass murder: because you look at what the Pope John Paul II said, when the Communist system collapsed, between ’89 and ’91: He caused a big uproar by saying that those people who say that capitalism has proven morally superior to Communism are completely wrong, and that one system is as evil as the other, and that if you needed a proof, you just had to look at the condition of the Third World to see the evidence of that.

I remember that that caused a huge freakout at the time, but the Pope was absolutely correct. And now, you have a policy which is conscious] mass murder, conscious reduction of population, increasing the death rate, decreasing the birth rate, and unless this is blasted and the people who propagate these things, like Prince Philip, or the World Wildlife Fund which prevents the building of important infrastructure like dams and other things, deliberately, causing people to die, these things must be condemned. And there needs to be an Ächtung, an proscription, of these policies.

So, I just want to say that. And people have to basically network, so that the idea about real development plans becomes more known, and hopefully when this present crisis really erupts, and the system is changing, which it either does, or we go up in war, then there is the possibility to also put a real development perspective for Africa and other places on the agenda.

Now, concerning Russia: Well, it’s very simple. I think that President Putin is probably the single reason, and the single man, why World War III has not yet started. Maybe together with General Dempsey, and my husband and a few others. But if Putin would not have put his foot down, so to speak, to defend the UN Charter, to defend the idea of the sovereignty of nations, as he has done in the case of Syria, then this motion to roll over and have regime change after regime change, probably would have already gone further, and wiped out Iran, and you know, the effort to destabilize Russia through the same apparatus of George Soros which was behind the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution Georgia, is already in motion against Russia! The so-called "White Revolution," or the so-called "Arab Spring" in Russia is the same idea, and similar destabilizations have been tried against China, but with very little success.

So, I think that the question of human rights and democracy is a very relative thing. I think if you look at the conditions in Greece, how they’re cutting the pension of old people, how they’re shortening their lives by denying medical care, don’t you think that that is a human rights violation? Where is democracy in Europe? Who has been asked if they want to have the euro? Who has been asked if we want to have a "European President"? I don’t recall that I ever voted for either the euro or a European President, so there is no democracy worth talking about, about fundamental questions, like what kind of a Constitution do we want? Do we want to give our sovereignty away to a supranational bureaucracy which is not accountable?

Anyway, I think people should be a little bit more thoughtful, about these notions about "democracy," "human rights," and I think that, while the Russian policy is not perfect by any means, I think the influence of neo-liberal financial policies is still much too strong. I think there is not a clear understanding about what a credit policy; there is not enough emphasis on retransforming Russia back again to an industrial power, after the Yeltsin period turned it into a raw materials producer.

So there are many criticisms, but I think that the general policy of Russia is one to protect national sovereignty and in that way, they have contributed, probably the most, to prevent World War III from happening. And that is the most important matter.

Other questions we should discuss, but if you compare the big projects which are on the agenda in Russia, and the complete lack of any such projects in the EU, I think even on that account, Russia looks much, much better than any country affected by this Destroika.

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Question 6: (On the German elections) Are the obvious attempts of the CDU and FDP to get rid of Steinbrück part of a common party struggle? Or, are we dealing with factors which aim beyond whatever election results we’ll see in 2013?

TOLKSDORF: You mentioned earlier, Steinbrück and his proposal there, which is already outdated. Now, since there will be a Federal election in Germany next year, and from what it looks like now - which doesn’t say much, but I’m just saying from what it looks like now, it might be an equally bleak choice there when it comes to credible politicians and credible statesmen. I would like to ask the following question, which came from a member of BüSo in Germany, and it says: "On Oct. 1st, Peer Steinbrück was nominated as the candidate for Chancellor for the SPD. Since that time, accusations about his supplementary incomes, and unpublished speaking fees, are coming in almost daily, and as we know, the timing, when these so-called skeletons are taken out of the closet, is rarely coincidental, I would like to ask the following questions: Are the obvious attempts of the CDU and FDP to get rid of Steinbrück, are these part of a common party struggle? Or, are we dealing with factors which aim beyond whatever election results we’ll see in 2013?"

MRS. ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think, as the aftermath of the Steinbrück fee scandal made very clear, that whoever sits in the glass house, should not throw stones: Because now it turns out that the so-called [governing] coalition parties were also quite liberal in filling their pockets with such fees. I mean, I think that the question for me, is why was the city of Bochum so stupid as to pay EU25,000 for a speech which doesn’t really contribute anything to the solutions of the existential problems?

So I think it’s just totally stupid to do this! And unfortunately, when Mr. Steinbrück, who otherwise wanted to charge the cavalry against Switzerland, which has contributed to the present image problems Germany has in that country, his proposal for a Trennbankensystem is really unfortunately in the frame of Vickers Commission, Volcker Rule, and therefore, it’s not the real thing. And one could also not expect that somebody who is so much on the side of the banking system, and has been invited by banks and similar interests, to take care of the poorer parts of the population.

I think that the SPD is suffering from the result of this, now, by dramatically dropping numbers in the polls, and I just think this whole thing makes clear that in reality, we would need, in Germany, the same thing that my husband has proposed for the United States: namely that the party system does not function.

Now, I’m saying that consciously, despite the fact that I’m the chairwoman of a party, but nevertheless, I mean, I think the European parliamentarian party system is much worse than the Presidential system in the United States. Because in the United States, you have at least, the primary system, where candidates run for the voters approval in the primaries, and they have to be tested with the voters. So the voter has at least a little ability to imprint his wishes in the outcome of such an election.

In Germany, it is the Fraktionszwang, the party discipline, which totally controls who becomes a candidate, or what is the thinking of the candidate. In reality, this is anti-constitutional, because Art. 38 of the Grundgesetz says the representative is only responsible to his own conscience, and not anything else. But in practice, nobody would ever say anything which is not approved by the party leadership, because then they would be afraid that they would not be put up for the next election.

So in reality, when people in Germany say "there’s nothing you can do," there is a big problem with that! Because actually it’s very little, and then you have such anarchic formations like the Pirate Party, that’s a very short-lived affair, because then the lack of any substance, lack of any program, means that such parties collapse very quickly.

Now, therefore, I think we really would also need a different discussion - or, we need a discussion in Germany, because there is none! There is no discourse, there is no discussion about war or peace, there is no discussion about economic method, it’s all streamlined, in the parties, in the media. You have a total thought-control in this country. And that is one of the reasons why we are making these webcasts, and we are inviting you to enter a dialogue, is because we have to revive the discussion culture in this country, and eventually, we have to have representatives, who are representing the true interests of Germany and not those people who have the big money and purses, to direct how the discussion goes, which is the case for the media, which is the case for the parties, and that is the reason why, despite this financial crisis, is already more than five years raging, there has not been one reregulation, because these parties completely obey the sources from which they get their financing. And that is a proven fact, because if it were otherwise, we would not have this mess.

So we need a change in the culture, and we need to have an open discussion about policies, and eventually, we should think, if the parties of the parliamentarian system are really the best way to organize ourselves, or if we should not really have the representatives from the different vanguard fields, from science, from labor, from art, and have people representing real skills, rather than these politicians.

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Question 7: What is the difference between all the political groups of today, and the Schiller Institute? What should the future youth culture look like? What would be the role of youth today, to get that new outlook actually created? What is the best way to be sure, and rigorous, when it comes to a conception of universal truth, versus only experienced facts?

TOLKSDORF: So, we will come to the end. ... So, I will take the liberty to compose the last question out of three, simply because they go in a very similar direction, and the answer to one of these also answers the others. One questioner greets the participants of the webcast from Spain, and raises, I think, an interesting question and a fair one, today, by simply saying, "It is very difficult to organize for the ideas that the Schiller Institute represents, because people have lost to a large degree their faith in politicians, and they’re afraid that this organization will end up just like all the others." So the question here is, "what is the difference between all the political groups of today, and the Schiller Institute?"

And the other two, one comes from someone I know is very much concerned with recruiting young people to be active and actively engaged in this organization, and simply asks to say a word or two about what the future youth culture should look like? Because the problems in today’s youth culture are obvious, and Helga you already addressed the "common aims of mankind," but what, specifically, would be the role of youth today, to get that new outlook shaped, and actually created?

And in that context, I think the third question fits right in: What is the best way to be sure, and rigorous when it comes to a conception of universal truth, versus only experienced facts? And I would just give you that as a last question.

MRS. ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think that what’s different about the Schiller Institute and other organizations, - well, obviously, the fact that we have been around, not as Schiller Institute, but as the LaRouche organization, more than 40 years, and we have not been corrupted. Now, the negative side of that, is, we don’t have big money-bags, we don’t have hedge funds who are filling our bank accounts, but we still exist, and that despite enormous efforts to stop us. And I have been asked many times, "Why is it that you’re still doing these things? Wouldn’t it be easier to adapt to the mainstream, to the current trends?" And I think that once you have really, an understanding about what it takes to understand the laws of the universe, how you have to apply scientific criteria, those things which are normally only are done by physicists, chemists, biologists, geophysicists, or other scientists, and you take that as the way to think. And that you’re trying to understand and master the composition of Bach, of Beethoven, of Schubert, Schumann, of great poets, like Schiller, Shakespeare, and you are trying to understand what was the creativity which went into their discoveries. And then you try to have that kind of a method of thinking, in all other areas of life, in politics, in your private life, in your social life.

In other words, I agree with Friedrich Schiller, who in the Letters for the Aesthetical Education Man, which he wrote after the collapse of the French Revolution into the Jacobin Terror, he basically said that the future of mankind, would really only be possible, or would function, if people would think like scientists and great artists. And these are the only people who believe that there are knowable physical or artistic principles, and that is a way how you can train your mind, and that is the key to creativity.

Now, I think that the key difference between this organization and other organization is, we don’t have certain interest for this or that, but we have an interest to increase the creativity of mankind in the universe, and to contribute with our life and our efforts, our share, so that mankind can overcome this present that I call infantilism or juvenile delinquency and reach the age of adulthood. In that sense, we are selfless, in thinking like Socrates, or thinking like Solon of Athens, who, according to Friedrich Schiller, when he was asked "what is the purpose of mankind?" he said, "Progression": That man progresses. And that is right now in great jeopardy.

In think, you know, in, in a certain sense, what makes us different, and I’m saying this in all humility, what makes us different is that we have love for mankind, that we have passion, that we can not see this present condition of Africa, of the youth culture, of all of these terrible conditions which are in violation of the dignity of man, and once you have reached that standpoint, and you’re not a complete temporary, you know, some people for a certain point find these ideas interesting, but then they want to have their petit bourgeois concerns, but once you really have tasted the "sweetness of truth" and Nikolaus of Cusa called it once, then you don’t want other food. You’re not interested in all these pleasures which normal organizations are corruptible by. And that makes us different. And the fact that we still exist after more than 40 years, sticking to our guns, well, I think there are lot of people who show respect that we do that. And they also show respect that we are developing organization, that we pursue creativity, that we have, as a standard that all of our members should continuously develop, and not become Brotgelehrter at a certain point, but that there is a continuous exploring of new items, of new subjects, of new discoveries. And that’s the way how people should live. So, we are in that sense, actually a very happy organization.

And you know, I think that what youth should do, I mean, if youth understand where we are at, that with the present system, they have absolutely no future - I mean, we all may have no future, but even if World War III would not occur in the near future, you know, if you are a young person, what you hear is that for the first time, the older people are saying, "yeah, my children and my grandchildren will have a worse life than I." This is the first time in history that this has happened! It used to be the opposite! It used to be that parents would say, "I’m working so that my children and my grandchildren will have it better than me." And right now, that road is blocked, and if you have a large percentage of youth unemployment, you have no future!


Violinist Norbert Brainin, right, with Lyndon LaRouche, in 1994..

So, I think that if the youth, or those among you, who really understand that, and that you would make a commitment and say, "I reject the youth culture, I reject everything which has to do with disco, pop music, and I will try to study what is Classical music. I will discover the principles of Classical composition, and I will make sure that future great composers will emerge, and maybe I’ll be one of them." So that basically, in the areas of art, of science, reject the mainstream, the mainstream is really mediocre, it’s going downhill, it has led to this present crisis. And I think that if young people would rally discover the pearls of the Greek Classical culture, which after all is the cradle of European civilization. And, by the way, I believe that there is a motion in Greece right now among certain exceptional people, intellectuals, to revive the great tradition of ancient Greek, to revive the writings of Plato, of Socrates, to revive the great tragedies of the great tragedians, Aeschylos and others, and to simply put back the cultural greatness of Greece on the agenda, and make that the foundation for future developments; and the same thing goes for Spain, for Portugal, who after all, had also their Renaissance periods, as well as Italy.

And I think if young people would just say, "This present globalization system has cheated us, it does not give us a future, but we have found the fountain, where to find the pearls and the treasures to create a future," then I think it can be done. It just needs to be informed and it needs to be programmatic, and that is then really the way to solve this.

So, I think young people have a tremendous opportunity right now, because more and more people will recognize in the immediate future, that we definitely need a huge change, a paradigm which will over turn everything, because this thing can not continue the way it is. Mankind is in an existential crisis, and I think that that is also potentially, the beginning of a new era of mankind, which leaves behind us all these things which we are contemplating as bad, today.

TOLKSDORF: Helga, thank you very much.... In conclusion, if you can weigh this, this is enough homework to start right away, and have long days and short nights, because this webcast shows exactly what you addressed now in the end, what makes this movement different from every other one. So my feeling tells me that we should turn this webcast proceedings into a DVD to make it available for download on the Schiller Institute and related websites, and also available for order as a physical copy, because this is an excellent tool to organize. And to organize, for instance, to make more such events possible, but also, as you can imagine, some of you might have participated in earlier events of this kind, to make more of these, to actually bring people together for these kinds of discussions, and bring these policies to the nations of the world that it need it so direly.

So, in closing I would ask you, if you’re not already doing so regularly, to contribute to this movement generously, and if you haven’t entertained that thought before, to join us in this struggle. Maybe just go through your notes and really think about what has been discussed this afternoon, and take it to heart and act accordingly.

I hope that we can announce a new webcast very soon. You will see that on the websites as soon as we can make up a date, because these forums are I think, essential, at this current juncture in history.

So thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much Helga, for being here. And I hope to see you all very soon. Good night.

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