ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST
As the Pace Quickens for
the World Land-Bridge,
Mueller Must Go!
[Print version of this transcript]
This is an edited transcriipt of the Dec. 7 webcast of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, available at https://schillerinstitute.com/
Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute. Welcome to this week’s strategic briefing from the Schiller Institute founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Since we did not have a webcast last week, there’s a lot of news to get to, and let me start with what I think is one of the most important events that took place, which was on Nov. 25-26 in Bad Soden, Germany, just outside of Frankfurt, when the Schiller Institute held an international conference under the title of “Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind,” a discussion of the broad implications of the New Silk Road and the New Paradigm. There was a large audience representing more than 30 nations, a number of key presentations, a lot of discussion, and videos of this are available on the New Paradigm Schiller Institute website: https://schillerinstitute.com/fulfilling-dream-mankind/. I’d urge people to take some time to look at them and study them. [Also see Dec. 1 and Dec. 8 issues of EIR.]
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EIRNS/Christopher Lewis
Helga Zepp-LaRouche (right) with participants at the Nov. 25-26 Schiller Institute Conference in Bad Soden/Taunus, Germany.
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One of the key events at that, was the keynote given by Helga. And Helga, I thought this was an extraordinary conference, and I’d like to get your thoughts on it.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I think so too, and I also got similar responses from many of the participants. Because, if you look at the perspective which we laid out at this conference, both the strategic significance of the New Silk Road strategically and the unbelievable dynamic that initiative is taking, but also, we have a very specific focus, namely the development of Africa and the development of Southwest Asia—the reconstruction of the countries of the Middle East. Now that there is a possibility that the war is coming to an end with the defeat of ISIS, the reconstruction of Syria can begin, and the New Silk Road can also be extended into Iraq, possibly Afghanistan—and hopefully soon, the terrible situation in Yemen can also be addressed by real economic development, which obviously is extremely urgent.
But if you look at the plans we laid out, we had very high-level speakers from China, from Egypt, from the United States, and from many countries in Eurasia. We had a whole section on the development of the Balkan countries; so I think this conference really was in absolute, stark contrast to the absence of any kind of a vision in the so-called “coalition” discussions in Berlin. Also if you look at the miserable result of the meeting between the European Union and the African Union in Ivory Coast, which took place more or less at the same time, which resulted in absolutely no perspective—I think it makes really very urgent that we continue the mobilization to get the European nations into collaboration with the New Silk Road of China.
The conference was really very, very uplifting and made people extremely happy. We published a new study by the Schiller Institute, called Extending the New Silk Road to Southwest Asia and Africa. This is a very comprehensive study, which I would suggest everybody who is interested in the development of Africa or of the Middle East should get. It’s also a perfect Christmas gift, much more productive than video games or play stations, because it pertains to the real future of how mankind can get out of this crisis.
I think this conference was groundbreaking, and I would encourage you, our viewers, visitors, and listeners, to go to this website, and just take the time to listen to the speeches, because you will see there is a perspective for how we can move Africa into a completely new paradigm, and I think the time is just right for this to happen.
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Connected Africa
Ghana President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (right podium) in a joint press conference Dec. 3, 2017, in Accra, Ghana, with the President of France, Emmanuel Macron (left podium).
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I just saw a beautiful speech by the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, who on the occasion of the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to his country, in an absolutely self-confident speech, stated that the African nations no longer want to be at the mercy of Europeans, but that they want to take their own fate into their own hands. This represents a completely new self-confidence of in Africa. Therefore the perspective we discussed at our conference finds very, very fertile ground right now: Because Africans are sick and tired of being sidelined by the IMF conditionalities or the World Bank; and because of the Chinese investments, especially in the last ten years, but especially the last four years, there is a new confidence that Africa can overcome its underdevelopment. The President of Ghana just said it: He said, the energy which the young people of Africa are now using to cross the Sahara, and to cross the Mediterranean in tiny boats, risking their lives—that energy should be redirected for the building up of Ghana and all the other nations of Africa.
I think there is a new spirit, and whoever is concerned about the refugee crisis or the fate of Africa—or the fate of Europe, for that matter—should get our study and get onboard with the Schiller Institute to help us to get European nations onto a different perspective.
Schlanger: I think one of the more interesting parts of that exchange between the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, and Macron was the look on Macron’s face; because many African leaders have been saying such things privately, but what you’re talking about as this new self-confidence, is the ability to express it publicly in a forum like that, and to say, “Look, we don’t want you to come here and be our sugar-daddies. We’re going to build and this is our future.” And I think that was something that was clear at our conference.
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EIRNS
Helga Zepp-LaRouche spoke at this 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Forum, Nov. 29, in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China.
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Right after our conference, you took a trip to China where you participated in a conference on the Maritime Silk Road, and I thought it was interesting that in your speech, you continued the theme of your keynote in Bad Soden of the dialogue among cultures, throughout the world and across the centuries, starting with Confucius. How was your presentation received by the audience in China?
Zepp-LaRouche: I think it was received extremely well. I would have liked to speak about the economic part of the New Silk Road, but they wanted me to explicitly talk about the cultural exchange. I think that everybody really responded to the idea that you have to go to the best tradition of each culture and each nation, and then have a dialogue among them on that level.
I must say a couple of words about my experience. It’s not the first time that I was in the province of Guangdong. The conference took place in Zhuhai, which is near the southern tip of Guangdong, just next to Macau and opposite Hong Kong. I was really, absolutely, impressed: This region of China has undertaken a development which is absolutely breathtaking, in terms of new industries and new city planning. We visited, as part of the conference proceedings, a city-planning center, where in a very, very impressive way they portrayed how all the modular aspects of the city of Zhuhai were composed in the best possible way, connecting population areas, living quarters, industrial areas, and research centers. This was really, as one of the visitors said, “city-planning at its best—that is exactly how you should plan a city.”
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Xinhua/Liang Xu
Construction site of the main bridge parts of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge.
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For me, the absolute high point, was traveling over the new sea bridge which is the largest sea bridge in China: It’s 55 km, and it connects Zhuhai, Macao, and Hong Kong. We came to within about 17 km from Hong Kong. It is really a total masterpiece of engineering. They had to invent 120 new patented techniques to build this bridge. For example, it has tunnels and artificial islands, and some of the area of the underground is very soft, so they had to develop new techniques to drive cylinders into the ground. It was just incredible. It took them only eight years to build this unbelievable, very, very beautiful and modern bridge.
And if you compare that, for example, with the abysmally slow speed at which even reconstruction of the highways is being done in Germany or elsewhere, it really shows that the New Silk Road Spirit and the idea of the Chinese economic miracle—you know, it is something which used to be German, which used to be the German economic miracle, but people here have forgotten that. And when here you travel on a German highway, you see two people working for five days a week, and most of the time no work occurs, but incredible traffic jams happen. I think we need a completely new view on how we build things, on how we reconstruct our infrastructure. Really we can learn a lot from the Chinese right now.
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EIRNS
Helga Zepp-LaRouche was a speaker at the forum in Zhuhai.
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I was really impressed. You now have an unbelievable number of conferences about the New Silk Road! In Latin America, one took place in Uruguay, with 3,000 people from Caribbean countries and Latin American countries. You had the 16+1 conference in Budapest. I don’t want to name all of them, but you have practically a huge conference almost every day somewhere in the world. This dynamic is really moving quickly. It is almost incomprehensible why some people in Berlin and in Brussels are still dragging their
feet the way they do. They should give this up
and join the New Paradigm!
What’s Behind ‘Russiagate’?
Schlanger: And of course, we have the same problem in Washington. If you look at the press in the trans-Atlantic region, the kind of report that you just gave, of optimism, of growth, of a real dynamic—there’s no sense of that. People are still stuck in the 1970s or 1980s, in their view of Russia and of China. That’s got to change.
You mentioned all these conferences taking place. At the same time, We have the absurdity of Joe Biden writing an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, pushing the Hillary Clinton/Obama line that Russia is the great threat. The International Olympic Committee, in a totally spiteful way, kicked Russia out of the Winter Olympics! This kind of mentality, again, shows the Cold War spirit, as opposed to the spirit of the New Silk Road.
That, of course, is what dominates the whole Mueller investigation into Trump. I’d like you discuss that, because I think people really have to get a sense that this investigation is falling apart. Trump tweeted out this week, something like “It all starts to make sense,” regarding revelations concerning this character Peter Strzok.
Helga, I know you’ve been following this. The important news that people aren’t getting, is that the FBI, from the beginning was part of the buildup of this narrative of “Russia did it, Putin did it.” It went through top levels of the FBI; Strzok was the number-two guy in counterintelligence. He was in on the interview with Hillary Clinton, the interview with Flynn that led to his guilty plea.
Put this together for us, because you just gave a picture of this dynamic in Eurasia, while in the West we’re heading toward a financial collapse, and a political disintegration as well.
Zepp-LaRouche: We should remind ourselves that the whole purpose of Russiagate has nothing to do with Russia meddling in the U.S. elections, or anything like that. It was entirely an operation to prevent President Trump from having a positive relationship with Russia. Also with China, after he changed his line on China, which was still very anti-China during the election campaign, but after he met President Xi Jinping in Mar-a-Lago in April, that completely changed. They have developed a very good relationship ever since. The whole operation came through the FBI and the Department of Justice, which is still full of people from the Obama/Hillary Clinton clan, in collusion with British intelligence. They set up all kinds of operations in order to box Trump in, so that he couldn’t carry out any of his foreign policy aims.
Now it turns out, this Peter Strzok was involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton and her use of a private server for emails. And he changed the language in the report from “gross negligence” to “extremely careless.” The difference in these two formulations, is that the first one would have been followed by a criminal prosecution, because it’s illegal, it’s a national security risk to have such gross negligence. He changed it into a soft formulation so that Hillary Clinton got off the hook. So this is the first thing.
While he was doing that, he also investigated the Russiagate affair, and now it has become known that he was having an extramarital affair with another FBI agent, and they had wild email exchanges, which is now public, which clearly shows these people—both Strzok and the woman he was having an affair with—were violently anti-Trump and fanatically pro-Hillary. So, very far from being objective in their investigation, they were just acting as tools of the Obama Administration in doing all of this.
This has now come out. And it has now also been revealed that Andrew McCabe, who is the Deputy Director of the FBI, set up General Michael Flynn, the short-term National Security Advisor of President Trump. The way they did that is incredible. In the transition period, or shortly thereafter, McCabe called General Flynn, who was the National Security Advisor at that point, and just said, “We’re coming over with a couple of agents.” So, Flynn thought that this was a routine visit to discuss security procedures and instructions, which is normal when such a transition occurs. Then they appeared and all of a sudden it was an official interview, an official investigation—and naturally Flynn had no lawyer, and so that led to his demise.
Now it all comes out, that the FBI and the Department of Justice acted extremely improperly, to put it diplomatically, and right now there is an avalanche of articles, making exactly that point—from the Wall Street Journal where the entire editorial board said there has to be an investigation of Mueller because he has a conflict of interest. Then the Boston Herald had a similar article. There was a discussion on a talk-show about “cosmic corruption in the Department of Justice and the FBI.” Others are calling for a special investigator to investigate the FBI and Department of Justice.
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C-Span
House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), center, with Representatives Peter King and Ron DeSantis.
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The tide is now turning, and there is an investigation going on in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate—by Congressman Nunes, House Intelligence Chair, and Senator Grassley, Senate Judiciary Chair. They are calling on all kinds of people to testify under oath. But nothing is yet decided, because Mueller, for his part, is also escalating. This witchhunt could boomerang. The people who are conducting the “Maidan,” the coup against Trump, could become the targets of a criminal investigation themselves, and end up in jail.
So this is a turn in events. Naturally, you don’t hear anything about that in the European media, and the mainstream media, but that’s what’s happening now, and it’s even in the mainstream media in the United States. So this is very, very hot, and stay tuned with us to follow this story.
Schlanger: Just to add a couple of points, Helga. On this point that you brought up that it has nothing to do with Russia’s alleged interference in the election—what they used to get Flynn for lying, was the transcript they had from the intercept of the phone call he had with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. So they knew exactly what he said. Flynn wasn’t prepared for the meeting with the FBI, and he said a couple things that were not true to the transcript—that’s how they got him for lying. But what does that have to do with Russian meddling in the election? Nothing.
The reason Flynn was calling the Russian ambassador, was to reverse the hostile environment that existed between the United States and Russia under President Obama! Now, that’s what Trump was elected to do, to change that. So this whole lie about “collusion” and “meddling” can be turned on its head.
Now, if they’re going to do a full investigation, they should start with the report we produced: ”Robert Mueller Is an Amoral Legal Assassin; He Will Do His Job If You Let Him!”
And there’s one other element of the Strzok story which struck me: He was probably involved, one of the few people involved, in the Fusion GPS Steele dossier. He may have been directly in contact with Steele, and the question now being asked by Congressman Nunes and Sen. Grassley, is, was the Steele dossier the basis of the FISA warrant, which allows the National Security Agency and the intelligence community to spy on the Trump campaign? This isn’t getting out—it’s out a little bit in the United States, as you say—but it’s not getting out in Europe at all, is it?
What You Can Do
Zepp-LaRouche: No, no. And the media here are still writing about Trump as if he were a complete madman. But in the United States, the debate is shifting. For example, there was a quite useful article by a constitutional lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, who made the correct point that nothing that Trump did, or Flynn did for that matter, is a violation of the Constitution, because it is absolutely the business of the President of the United States to make policy, and that’s what Trump tried to do.
So I think the interpretation of this whole thing may change completely very soon, if it changes in the United States, and the dossier which we produced is investigated in the Congress, in the Senate, and on many levels in the different states by authorities of all kinds. I can only advise our viewers again—please, get this dossier and read it. If you want to know what is really going on in the United States and why Mueller is doing what he’s doing, you will find there the best documentation ever. Let me just reiterate: This is the same apparatus which went after my husband and our organization in the United States in the 1980s and in the 1990s; this is the apparatus which covered up for 9/11 and the role of the Saudis, and this is the apparatus which is now trying to mount a coup against the elected President of the United States. So this dossier is definitely a must-read for anybody who wants to find out what the “Deep State” really is. You know, there’s a lot of discussion about the “Deep State,” but it does not really address this from the standpoint that it is really the British empire, using its corrupt influences in the United States, which is doing all of this. So get this dossier and spread it around.
Schlanger: And in discussing the Deep State, there’s the other side of the crisis, which is the ongoing collapse of the financial system. There are some new reports out in the last couple of days from relatively senior people, about the danger of this collapse. And I know you have a sense of the difference between what’s happening with the New Silk Road, and on the other side, the collapse of the economies in Europe and the United States.
Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. It’s very clear that all the major institutions expect a new crash to happen fairly soon. There is a financial stability report by the Bundesbank, the German central bank, which basically says it’s a “Catch-22”: If you raise interest rates, it will crash because there’s incredible debt held by corporations, by states, and by other entities, and an increase in the interest rate will trigger a collapse; but it will also happen if you stay with the negative and zero interest rate policy—so it will happen either way.
A similar warning comes from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which also says the financial bubble is unsustainable. A former official of the BIS, William White, who now works for the OECD, said the same thing. There are several hedge fund managers all warning that the next crash is imminent.
We are publishing a new pamphlet in the United States, which provides the only workable solution, explaining why the United States must immediately implement the Four Laws designed by my husband, Lyndon LaRouche. These laws call for Glass-Steagall, the separation of the banks in the tradition of FDR; going back to the National Bank of Alexander Hamilton; launching a credit system; and now the United States must join with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Only this package as a totality will solve the problem.
In Europe, it looks even grimmer, because the European nations are in a very chaotic state. The East European and South European nations want to join with China in the Belt and Road Initiative. There is hysteria on the side the EU and largely also on the side of the German government—whatever is left of it—saying “China is splitting Europe,” which is not true! The Chinese answer to that accusation was, you don’t need China to split Europe, it’s already split, all by itself. But there is no discussion in Europe about banking separation. As a matter of fact, the EU, just a couple of weeks ago, decided on new guidelines prohibiting separation of the banks. And therefore, the survival of the European nations, and these EU policies, are incompatible.
So we need to have a public discussion saying that, in Germany, for example, we have to go back to the kind of credit policy we had in the postwar period with the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau; we need the financing of the real economy, and this whole casino economy has to be shut down.
I think the biggest danger right now is an uncontrolled collapse. And these warnings coming from the Bundesbank and Bank for International Settlements—they really are a warning that people should wake up and change policy before it is too late: So join us in the battle to get Glass-Steagall on the agenda in European countries as well.
Schlanger: Helga, there’s one other thing I’d like to bring up in terms of the hysteria we see in the Western media. President Putin announced yesterday that he’s going to run for reelection, and the news was greeted with the same kind of attacks that we saw against Xi Jinping at the 19th Party Congress in China. But one of the things that they couldn’t cover up is the fact that even in Western polling, Putin is at about 80% popularity. I wonder what your thoughts are on the complete refusal of Western governments to deal with the fact that Russia has changed, and that Russia is part of this dynamic with China in the New Silk Road.
Zepp-LaRouche: I think that that is just a fact. And the fact is that now, more and more countries are changing their strategic alignment, like Japan. I think this is one of the really important elements. There was recently a big Chinese business delegation in Japan which was addressed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who announced that Japan will cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative. So, if Japan can change, and find its self-interest in this New Paradigm, and Abe has established a very good cooperation with Putin, and if they are now working together with China, you can see that a completely new set of relations among nations is developing, putting geopolitics behind them, and putting the question of “win-win cooperation” on the agenda. As Xi Jinping always calls it, “a community for a shared future of mankind.” I think this is a concept which needs to be thought through!
I made the point at the Schiller Institute conference, that we have to have a new set of relations among nations, where the one humanity is a higher concept than the many geopolitical or national differences. We have to have a notion of governance of mankind: Can we give ourselves a system of governance which allows the long-term survivability of our species? This discussion is completely lacking in the West, but it’s very vibrant in Russia, in China, and in developing countries. I encourage you to engage with us, to have such a discussion: How can we govern ourselves for the benefit, the well-being of the people, where the interest of one nation is not against the interest of another nation? So let me, at the end of our discussion here, suggest to you again, that you get this report [displays the report, Extending the New Silk Road to Southwest Asia and Africa], because this is a study which is an in-depth proposal of how to transform Africa and the Middle East. Christmas is coming, so I think it’s a beautiful gift. . . .
Schlanger: I would just add to that, that people can go to the website, https://schillerinstitute.com, to see the videos from the conference that we’ve been discussing and that will help to deepen the appreciation of the imminent potential for this New Paradigm to come into existence.
So thank you very much, Helga, and we’ll see you again next week.
Zepp-LaRouche: Next week—till then.
