Oligarchy Plans Global Fascism; A New Versailles Threatens Germany

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

This commentary is translated from the German weekly Neue Solidarität, of Feb. 13. Mrs. LaRouche is the chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo), a German political party.

The global financial crisis is becoming more and more acute, and even the financial press is using terminology that up until recently could only be found in this newspaper: Expanding "shock waves" are shaking the system, to the point that we find ourselves in a hyperinflationary systemic crisis. The so-called monoline insurance companies, which handle $2.3 trillion worth of transactions, are threatened with massive losses; the collapse has now reached beyond the so-called subprime mortgages to broader categories of mortgages, and to the private commercial real estate market, wreaking havoc in the construction sector and with tax revenues. Payments on a large portion of the Eu600 billion worth of auto loans are falling behind, while Eu900 billion in personal credit card debt is in danger. The mortgage and real estate crisis in Great Britain and Spain threatens even to exceed the American one. The U.S.A. is threatened with plunging into a Depression, and when America gets a cold, the rest of the world is in danger of catching pneumonia.

If we recall the reaction of the financial oligarchy to the world financial crisis and Depression of the 1930s, it should not surprise us that the financial oligarchy today is responding with the same recipes to the current crisis, as they did then. At that time, the international cartels saw Mussolini's corporatism and Hjalmar Schacht's austerity policies as the answer to the economic problems that followed the First World War, the debt structure after the Versailles Treaty, the world financial crisis, and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It should come as no surprise, that Wall Street has chosen its own candidate, to represent the interests of the financial oligarchy, in the White House.

The Bloomberg Candidacy

The multibillionaire Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is ready to throw his personal fortune of $11 billion (!) into the election campaign, and has put together a campaign apparatus in all 50 states. The coverage in the British press of Barack Obama's involvement with the dubious circles of financier Tony Rezko, who is now in prison, and with Nadhmi Auchi, the Iraqi who lives in London, makes it clear, how easily a media campaign could bring Obama's candidacy to a halt.

Bloomberg will be supported by a combination of interests including George Shultz and Felix Rohatyn, who, apart from their earlier support for the Chilean dictator Pinochet, are now united by the idea of a global empire. One option, is that Bloomberg would become the Vice Presidential running-mate of John McCain, whose health is a topic of discussion in Washington. But there is also a possibility of bringing Bloomberg into the Democratic Party as a power factor, once Obama has been destroyed by the media, and Hillary Clinton is somehow blocked. At the peak of the financial crisis, which could come even before the party conventions, the Bloomberg apparatus could seize power, with the help of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Kennedy clan.

Danger in Europe

In view of the highly alarming developments in Europe around the EU Treaty, it is clear, that the international financial oligarchy envisions a globalization that would push through a corporatist and Schachtian policy, at the cost of the living standards of the population. With the Treaty of Lisbon, which was agreed upon at the EU summit of Dec. 13, 2007, but has not yet been ratified by the parliaments, there would be put into place for Europe the most massive budget-cutting programs, and military deployments throughout the world, over which the member-states would no longer have veto power.

The so-called simplified European Treaty—by means of which the European Constitution, which France and the Netherlands rejected in referenda in 2005, was, in a sophistical trick, renamed a "treaty," although 95% of the content remained—signifies an enormous step toward a supranational dictatorship, just as the Monster-of-Maastricht Treaty and the Stability Pact were before. Although the French and Dutch people in their 2005 plebiscites made their rejection of it quite clear, the governments are now, in a completely undemocratic way, trying to get the same, renamed package surreptitiously ratified by the parliaments.

The most telling indication of where this trip is supposed to take us, is the creation of the office of a European President, to be elected by a majority of heads of state and government, for two and a half years. This President would have the authority to take or to prevent political initiatives. When you consider that the person who is getting the nod for this post, Tony Blair, is the father of the Iraq War, who was already named by Bush to be the representative of the so-called Mideast Quartet, then it is clear, that the Anglo-American special relationship that existed between Bush and Blair, is to be continued between Bloomberg and Blair.

If the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified by the Parliaments, some 50 areas of responsibility for decision-making would be turned over to the EU bureaucracy, which of course has no accountability to any electorate. These would include, for example, a so-called solidarity clause in foreign policy, which means that all EU members would have to support the fight against "terrorist activities," including with military means. This formulation is completely elastic, so as to force participation in deployments all over the world.

The pressure on Germany from the U.S.A. and NATO, to participate with military forces in southern Afghanistan, gives a foretaste of what is planned. And if, as a result of this policy, there are terrorist attacks on Germany, then further military operations will follow against the perpetrators, no matter what country they come from. And then we would be in a " 'Hundred Years War' against terrorism," as former CIA Director James Woolsey said after Sept. 11, 2001. If EU President Blair were to decide to go to war against Iran, for example, there would be no way to prevent it.

Also completely unacceptable, is the creation of the post of an "EU Foreign Minister," a so-called "High Representative" for the foreign affairs of the EU, who could dictate foreign policy, over which the individual member states would no longer have veto power.

The article concerning the domestic market adopts the EU guidelines for the privatization of public services such as railroads, post offices, telecommunications, and electric and gas supplies. Further, state assistance to public utilities or companies would be declared illegal. Any return to state ownership of public utilities on the part of the local authorities, would be just as impossible, no matter what experiences they may have had with the privatization of services by the [financial] locusts.

Other areas covered by the EU guidelines, would be viewed as satire, if they did not unfortunately also have effects in the real world. Take the specified 85 decibel limit on noise, which would make the performance of Classical concerts impossible; the ban on décolletage at beer gardens because of the obligation to protect people from sunburns; the ban on classifying marmelade as jam, or the regulations governing the curvature of bananas and cucumbers, to take just a few abstruse examples.

If you then take into account the systematic sabotage of high technology in Germany, then it becomes clear, that the intention of the international financial oligarchy is to apply the Morgenthau Plan,[1] a bit belatedly. While France, for example, is effectively marketing nuclear power plants and technology, as well as the TGV [high-speed train], internationally, the use of the Transrapid [German-designed maglev train]—which is technologically in a different league—is prevented. Instead of relieving the dreadfully congested autobahns in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia by a combined system of effective and environmentally friendly Transrapid and CargoCap, the state government decided to turn the entire Ruhr region into an "environmental zone," in which only pollution-free autos and trucks would be allowed to travel—which naturally raises prices, without doing anything to prevent traffic jams.

The same goes for the continuing sabotage of the fourth generation of inherently safe high-temperature nuclear reactors, which would make possible real energy security and the shift to a new hydrogen industry; this can only be understood if you keep in mind the oligarchical interests behind all these absurdities. When the Versailles Treaty after the First World War imposed upon Germany such high war reparations, that the hyperinflation of 1923 was the only possible consequence, the hidden intention was to wipe out Germany as an industrial nation, once and for all. When the foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, tried to prevent such plans with the Rapallo Treaty, he was assassinated less than a year after signing it. The Morgenthau Plan was not implemented, only because the Cold War presented different geostrategic conditions.

When Mitterrand, Thatcher, and George H.W. Bush, after the fall of the Wall, finally got Chancellor Kohl to give up the deutschemark and go with a currency union, with the euro, Germany had been convinced to sign on to its second Versailles. If now the German Bundestag (parliament) agrees to the Monster of Lisbon, this would be the conclusive ratification of this second Versailles Treaty, and no one who has studied history, could deny that the root of the Second World War was in the first Versailles Treaty.

One thing is for sure: If those who are responsible, in political, economic, and social organizations, do not wake up soon and provide resistance to these policies, which are fundamentally aimed against German interests, then, in another 20 years, the Cologne Cathedral could end up in a museum in Mongolia, as a fossil of a society that was too naive, too corrupt, and to indolent to secure its own survival.

Anyone who believes that Article 20 of the Basic Law, and especially its Paragraph 4,[2] is still valid, should join the BüSo.

[1] U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau put forward this plan in 1944, for the partition and deindustrialization of post-war Germany—ed.

[2] Article 20 states, in part, that "the Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and social federal state." According to Paragraph 4, "All Germans have the right to resist against anyone who attempts to eliminate this system, if no other relief is possible."