Panel 1: Second Discussion Session

The following is an edited transcript of the second of two discussion sessions during Panel 1 of the Schiller Institute Conference on September 5.

The panelists were asked to respond to what they had just heard before taking questions from the audience. Moderator Dennis Speed said, “Clearly, the international implications of even discussing militarily removing the President of the United States, one wishes not to really have to ponder too long, but you have to ask a question about that. I’ll just leave it at that, hanging in the air.”

Martin Sieff: What we’ve heard from the latest speakers, especially from Col. Black, is extremely alarming, and must be taken most seriously. There is a very alarming historical precedent that leaps to mind to me, and that is the steps that were taken under President James Buchanan in 1860, to his everlasting shame, that expedited the secession of the southern states and the beginning of the Civil War. On that occasion, too, there is a parallel with now. We saw open attempt to influence and seduce serving senior officers of the United States Army to follow successionist states and the eventual Confederacy. And large numbers of them did so. And the result was a national catastrophe.

I do think that the alarming scenario that Col. Black has documented, needs to be understood in similar terms. But the media sits on it. There appears to be no way through the conventional media to alert the American people to this imminent danger. And I think it must be taken most seriously.

James Jatras: We hear more and more of various scenarios that may ensue in November, none of which looks particularly appetizing. But one is something along the lines of what we saw in the last Congressional election, particularly in California, in Orange County, where a number of wins were scored for Republicans on election night, and then in subsequent days and weeks flipped over to the Democratic camp, because of absentee and late voting and all these other things that we’re seeing more and more of, especially with mail-in voting, justified supposedly by the virus.

I think there’s a very real danger that we could get to a situation on November 3rd where we think, possibly, we have a winner, possibly it’s Trump, but then it turns out not to be, and we have something like the year 2000 on steroids, where we really don’t have any idea who the real winner is, or possibly even competing inaugurations. That’s when I think we have a real danger, of the kind of unconstitutionality to remove Trump because there is this ambiguous circumstance that has been created, perhaps deliberately created, in order to facilitate that.

It should be of great alarm to everybody, I think, that so much of the resistance to Trump has been generated from inside the bowels of the bureaucracy in the Establishment itself, including the military Establishment, the so-called “steady state” as even its partisans like to describe it. Let’s remember, in line with our earlier discussion today, this is the very Establishment that wants to keep pursuing these very confrontational policies with Russia and China, and to avoid doing the constructive things all of us have been advocating in this discussion.

So, I think we’re facing a real possibility of a showdown of some sort in the fall.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: The danger of a Constitutional crisis come early November is clearly there, also in light of Hillary Clinton saying that Biden should under no circumstances concede. Nancy Pelosi, I think, said similar things. Biden himself also. So, the danger around the ballot controversy is clearly there.

Think, what can possibly be done to derail something which could really get us into an incredible danger—where what Sen. Black said is not excluded, it seems to me—apart from what we were discussing earlier of the P5 changing the dynamic by replacing the geopolitical confrontation with a win-win cooperation, at least as a declaration of intent?

The other, second, major thing which I think could be done to change this present course of action, would be for Attorney General Barr to finally publish the results of the different investigations, including the Durham investigation. The big elephant in the room is the fact that it was British Intelligence, including the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, the Christopher Steele story, the whole collusion by parts of the intelligence apparatus in the United States with British Intelligence, that were involved in a coup attempt against President Trump.

If that were to be published before the election, that would clear the way and reestablish the United States as a Republic.

So, my question to the other panelists is: What do you think, from your area of expertise, what can be done to further that, to get Barr to publish these things, because I think that would really put the cat among the mice.

Col. Richard Black: I’m not sure that I’m prepared to exactly answer Helga’s question, but let me say what’s unfolding right now: The military has taken a very concerted view that they’re diminishing the President’s ability to use the Insurrection Act to maintain order. They’re also preparing for a possible military coup, to take action to physically remove the President, if they dislike the way that things occur after January 20th.

What gets to be problematic, is that several Democrat states have instituted this mail-in voting. The problem with mail-in voting, it has a long-storied history of misuse and failure and fraud.

Back when Lyndon Johnson was first running for U.S. Senate, he had lost the race, a couple of weeks went by, and suddenly, from one of his areas, they emerged with something that was called “Magic Box 13.” Back then, all the ballots were hand-written. When the Republicans went to federal court, the judge looked at and saw that every single ballot was written in the same handwriting, using the same pen, so it was obviously illegitimate. He threw them all out.

The Democrats then went to Abe Fortas on the Supreme Court, who was friendly to their cause. He blocked the whole thing, and as a consequence, Lyndon Johnson became the Senator from Texas, and eventually rose on to cause tremendous bloodshed in Vietnam, and so forth.

So, there is a long history of voter fraud. We know what happened with the JFK vs. Nixon election, the first election, how Mayor Daley came in. He brought in a bunch of fake votes that tipped the election.

This is not a new thing. What I envision happening is that Trump might very well win a very sweeping victory on November 3rd, but Hillary Clinton is saying [to Biden]: “Don’t accept that; don’t concede, because we can take these ballots that are being distributed by the tens of thousands and we can create as many votes as you need to win.”

I don’t know what we do. This is extraordinarily dangerous. It’s never happened before. It will be an example of clear fraud that I think should be fairly obvious to the public. It’s going to be a dangerous time that we’re going to pass through. I think it’s just important that the people be informed of what’s about to happen.

The fact that it’s being backed up by potential military force and the ability to implement a violent coup—I should say, maybe not “violent”—a forceful coup is potentially a very genuine threat to the future of the constitutional experiment and the Republic of the United States.

Kirk Wiebe: We have to replace the existing system; I don’t mean in terms of government process. I’m talking about the terrible state of the election software, hardware, the voting machines, the way the systems count votes, the way they report votes, that whole process, from voter registration, and cleanup and validation of those who have the legal right to vote, right on through the tallying and the reporting—it’s a mess! It’s a mess, because it’s not under the purview of the federal government to fix all that. The Constitution was written to keep the power of voting within the various states. We have 50 secretaries of state responsible for the election processes within their states. How do you get 50 people together in a room, or their representatives, and say, “Let’s reinvent the voting process to provide security, validation of those voting, and the count.” And let’s not stick it on the internet in a stupid way, where people can play with it, hack into it.

Bill and I sent letters to all 50 secretaries of state, about a month ago, saying, we can help you fix your voting process. We didn’t get one response. Not one! In fact, I would tell you, Bill and I have been thinking for over a year and a half on ways to improve—not the whole system, because even with a year and half’s notice, there’s a lot of work to be done across 50 states. But there are a few prudent things we could have done. We could have helped a few key states, battleground states, verify their registration rolls, using database comparisons, and straighten that out.

But we could find no one willing to fund or take on this project. And we found no way to communicate with anyone at the federal level who might help grease the skids politically and/or financially. We know the Senate threw money at the states! I think recently $200 million, now that’s not a lot of money, but it should be a good amount to do something effective. It didn’t do anything for 2020.

So, we got a problem, Houston. It begins in the 50 states, and we need a willing, well-intentioned group of people to get into a room and do what most people do: Figure it out and move forward, or we’re going to be right back in this problem in 2024.

Bill Binney: No, I just agree with everything that Kirk said. I was very disappointed in the lack of response on our proposal to the secretaries of state of all the 50 states. It just says that whatever they’re doing, they don’t appear to be serious about it. I mean, they seem to be in a hodge-podge. It’s hard to understand how anybody, unless you control the devices or the software running the devices, it’s hard to understand how anybody could influence the election, other than being able to act through that hardware or through the software. In other words, is there some implant in it to make the outcome a certain way. Other than that, I don’t see anybody being able to hack anything in an election in our country! ’Cause there’s 50 different versions and they’re all doing different things.

From New York: “For the past 30 years, any time regime change in the form of color revolution, the modern form of Western hybrid warfare otherwise, is undertaken to remove a sovereign leader of a country it is under the guise of ‘democracy’.

“The legitimate leader is invariably replaced by an Anglo neoliberal proxy, who invariably leads the country into poverty, drug dependence, destruction of real, existing physical economy, and pessimism, bringing increased death, demoralization, and destruction.

“Given this outcome, borne out dozens of times in the preceding decades, I have the following questions:

“(a) How exactly is a color revolution organized in a targetted country?

“(b) What factors mark a targetted country for regime change by this Anglo-British axis?

“(c) Given the resulting and intended destruction and enslavement of nations through these means, how is it not obvious to everyone on the globe that these warfare tactics are being deployed? How does a nation best fight back?

“This is relevant to what is now unfolding in Belarus, and the actions long attempted versus Russia and China, and in the United States, right now.”

Jatras: The methodology is well set out in Gene Sharp’s book—I can’t remember the exact title, but it has all of the mechanisms involved in terms of mobilizing people on the street, making it look as though it’s the police that are responding with violence, rather than the so-called “protesters.” You create a “narrative” with it, which is then picked up, seamlessly, by all the world media and by the governments that are behind the regime change plan. And of course, there will always be local abuses, there’ll be things wrong in these societies that are used as pretexts and slogans in order to justify the regime change. You add to that the kind of threats that’ll be used against the target government, that they’ll be held responsible for various crimes, there’ll be sanctions imposed on the country.

There is a methodology to this which, as the questioner points out, is well known. And it tends to work very well.

How does the country protect themselves from that? To start with, get all these NGOs—if you’re a foreign country, I’m not talking about here in the United States—get all of these NGOs out of your country. At least the Russians have done that; I don’t think the Chinese allow them, because these are simply breeding mechanisms for the eventual regime-change operation.

A question for Martin Sieff from Gerald from Oakland, California: “Can you discuss the Sir Kim Darroch affair? While many think that the British are also-rans who have no say in things anymore, Sir Kim Darroch and others did not agree with that. They actively sought to control President Trump and the United States, by ‘flooding the zone’—that’s this term that Darroch used—through media and personal influences over President Trump. Darroch was directly involved in the attempt at regime change against the nation that was hosting him as an ambassador. Finally, even though he was unceremoniously booted out of the U.S., he got a raise back home and was made a member of the House of Lords. Today he is being interviewed in the British press attacking Boris Johnson and Trump, showing that he has not a whiff of shame about what he did. In fact, he’s still at it. So why do you downplay the British Establishment role in the world?”

Sieff: I don’t deny the British Establishment role in the world—I am, after all, Irish. Having said that, I have been in Washington for 33 years, and your friend in Oakland has not. And what I have repeatedly seen during that period of time, as I said before, is, the British are eager to get onboard, they certainly are—the City of London is an enthusiastic part of this neoliberal, global consensus. The British people have suffered as much as the American people have from the catastrophic results of unlimited free trade, and unregulated borders. They’re equal victims of this. But, when one looks at the British Establishment, you do not see the American establishment eager to ape the British Establishment. You do see the British political establishment, and I still see it to this day, and this is an increasing process—

Margaret Thatcher was often independent of Ronald Reagan, though they treated each other with great respect. She was the one who told Reagan—and I have access to the people who were privy to this information at the time—that Gorbachev was “a man we could do business with, to conduct arms control treaties, and end states of tension in the Cold War.” She was also very angry at Reagan and showed it openly, when Reagan invaded Granada. The British had consternation, when one of Reagan’s most influential cabinet members and a close influence on him, the late Jeane Kirkpatrick supported Argentina against Britain in the Falklands War [Malvinas War].

So the relationship between Britain and the United States, (a) is not seamless, and (b) existentially, the British Establishment and policymakers feel vastly more dependent on the United States, than is the case the other way around! What I will add to this is, the British Establishment—and clearly, it’s now really the intelligence establishment, very much so—expected [Hillary] Clinton to win, was totally onboard with the American Deep State in 2016, would be totally onboard here. But clearly, we see Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not totally onboard with them and is not regarded as fully trustworthy by them!

So we have a subtle, complex picture here. But the role of the British Establishment as players in this is very clear! And the one point I will add here is, they’re often at a tactical level, criminally incompetent, which I suppose in some respects is a sign of encouragement. Because if you look at the Steele dossier, which was used so lively and for so long as a supposed threat to discredit President Trump, it’s childish. It’s infantile! A 12-year-old child could not put together a more unconvincing or amateurish piece of work—and yet, Steele, who put it together was the head of the Russia section of the British intelligence service, a position of enormous sensitivity and responsibility for at least six years! This is the kind of people they have running things. In a sense, there is hope, if you see what I mean! Because incompetence creates vulnerabilities.

So I do not look upon the British Establishment as godlike, and I do not look upon them as telling the American establishment, from a position of Olympian superiority, what to do! That is simply not what we have systematically seen and observed and continue to see.

Zepp-LaRouche: I think that the problem of who wags the tail and who is the dog—I think if you look at the long history of British imperial history, in Africa, in the Middle East, in India, against China, there is no question that the British have a vast experience which they bring into play all the time. And you look at where certain campaigns originate, like for example, the campaign against China being responsible for the spread of the virus, it clearly comes from the former heads of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove and John Sawers.

And I think that apart from that you can trace down where certain operations started, which many times was with the British, including the White Helmets operations, the false flag operations, getting President Trump to even send an attack [on Syria] in the middle of a summit with President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. All these things come really from British origin.

But apart from that, the thing to also consider is that the real British role is not just that it starts in Great Britain, but that the coup which was accomplished is to win the American establishment over to go with the British Empire as a model. I think that is really the way to look at it. So when we say “British,” it is not necessarily always the physical British, it is a concept. The British Empire is not the British people—I agree. The British subjects are very poor, they have terrible food, they eat blood pudding and similar things [laughter], it’s really the method. It’s the Empire, it’s the control of the financial system. The model of the central banks, the investment banks, the hedge funds, insurance companies, controlling the financial system, that is the British model, as compared to the Hamiltonian American model.

So I think we should really look at the British question as a concept, and whoever has sold out their soul to it is part of it.

Col. Black: Yes, I wanted to go back just a little to the question about these color revolutions and how they are executed. The color revolutions typically will begin—there’ll be a planning process that precedes them, but then afterwards there’s often pressure to release various terrorists, very dangerous elements in the prisons, as kind of a “show of good will.” We saw this in Libya, where Qaddafi’s government was asked to do a show of good faith; they released a number of Muslim Brotherhood terrorists in Benghazi, and then, of course, the CIA uses that to put together an uprising.

And once the uprising begins and civil servants are being killed and so forth, then snipers are used to begin to fire—first they’ll kill a protester, then they’ll kill a police officer, back and forth; before long, each side thinks that the other is shooting at them. And at that point, the world media loads on and says that the legitimate government is without control, they’re causing all this violence. And eventually they bring pressure.

In Libya, for example, when the time came that the central government said, OK, we’re going to send a fairly modest military force, we’re going to crack down, we’re going to stop the execution of civil servants, then you had people within the Senate—John McCain was one of them, you had John Kerry on the other hand, and they were saying, “OK, we’ve got to go in, we’ve got to stop this. We’ll do a no-fly zone.” And under the pretext of that they commenced a massive bombing that destroyed hospitals, government centers, transportation networks, water centers, electricity generation—destroyed everything. And at that point, they managed to raise up an army that eventually overthrew the country.

We see this same general scenario used over and over again, where you start—there’s always discontent in every country. There’s discontent here, and in Britain, everywhere you can name. But you start with those. You add to them these criminal elements that can be used as your street army, and then, by funnelling money through the CIA and some of these billionaires who are interested, and they fund them, and it grows from there. So the color revolution has been used as a model repeatedly.

And the fear is, and the concern is, that a color revolution may be coming here to the United States. This is something that I am very deeply concerned about, as a retired officer myself.

Question: “Mr. Kortunov raised the importance of U.S.-Russian collaboration, regarding nuclear terrorism. We know the Russians sent information to the United States, before the Boston bomber, and the Russians recently thanked the U.S. for intelligence regarding potential attacks in Russia—I think that was around New Year. However, former Secretary of Defense William Perry in his William J. Perry Project raised the danger of nuclear terrorism in the midst of social chaos. Dr. Perry’s project produced the film called Bill Perry’s Nuclear Nightmare.

“Do you think the current chaos in cities in the United States and the call to take down the police, who tend to be the first line of defense against terrorism might create conditions for such attacks?”

Additionally, there are several questions, not asked of anyone in particular, asking: “What can be done about this by people in the targetted nations, and otherwise?”

Col. Black: Well, for one thing, people have got to come out in support of the police. If you want to know what to do, put up a sign in the back of your car that says, “Stop the looting, stop the arson, stop the murders. Support your local police.” Or something like that. Let me give you a very concrete example of something that an ordinary citizen can do. Drive out in the morning traffic with it. You’ll get some honks of agreement, you’ll get some people flipping you the bird, but you’re going to survive. Nobody’s going to kill you unless you happen to be going through Chicago, or some other violent place.

But take action! I run into people who are afraid, I mean, really good people, and they’re afraid to do something. And we’re not to the point yet, where you have to be seriously afraid that something is going to happen, unless you get caught up in one of the BLM-Antifa revolutionary lootings and burning. Most people can drive a car out in traffic, and it gets people’s attention, if you put something in the back of your window that says I’m against all of this urban violence; people take note. They say, “Yeah.” People are really starting to think about this.

I’m just giving you one very practical example, but political movements result when individuals think of something they can do. Maybe they can send out a mass email, who knows? But politics is kind of a free market type of thing: You think of something you can do; you go out and you take action. And between now and November, we better start doing a lot of individual action to making things happen on our own.

Zepp-LaRouche: That is a very difficult question to answer, because obviously the whole issue of nonproliferation is very crucial, and therefore the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2015 with Iran] is being supported still by practically everybody except the United States and Dominican Republic, because the worry is, if it’s cancelled, then Iran has no incentive than to go back to building nuclear weapons. And the same in a certain sense is true for North Korea, and you heard what Dr. Kortunov said.

This is all the more important as a reason why the United States, Russia, China, must cooperate on the real dangers, which is terrorism, nuclear terrorism being one aspect of it. And that is why the military doctrines are really questionable in putting Russia and China as the biggest threat, when it is those countries with which there should be collaboration on all kinds of threats, terrorism, the drug epidemic, and anything of that sort. So I think the collaboration of these major countries on these issues is what needs to be put on the agenda all the more urgently.

For Col. Black: “The information you provided about the prohibition in Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, of even retired military officers undermining the authority of the President may come as a surprise to many, myself included. Has it been necessary to prosecute under those code provisions, or are we facing an unprecedented situation? What tools, legal and otherwise, do we have in stopping a possible military coup? How does the Insurrection Act classify domestic terrorism, and how does the Uniform Code of Military Justice shape the response of the U.S. officer corps?”

Col. Black: Your listener was surprised that Article 88 applied to retired officers. Every officer, when he does out-process to retire, is informed about the meaning and effect of Article 88. There’s nothing that prevents a retired officer from getting together with a group of friends and saying, “I think that such and such is the worst thing in the world. Personally, I think he’s a dog.” He can do that. The problem is when you publicly use contemptuous words towards the President. You can criticize policies; you can be very harsh. You can say, “I really oppose this particular policy or this action.” It’s when you use contemptuous words against the President. If you say, “He’s a jerk,” that’s a contemptuous word. And you have some gray areas, but I think it’s pretty clear that some of these officers have gone over the board.

The reason it’s so important for retired officers, is that you take these retired three- and four-star officers, they really remain an integral part of the military establishment, for many years after their retirement. That’s the story on Article 88.

The other question was how does the Insurrection Act define domestic terrorism? I’m not aware of the term “domestic terrorism” being actually used in the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act is a broad grant of authority from Congress to the President to recognize his ability to put down insurrections, uprisings, and that sort of thing. Typically, it’s triggered by a request from the governor of a state, who says, “Hey look, I got a problem.”

This happened in 1992 in California, with the L.A. riots that had gone on for a long time, with tremendous bloodshed and destruction. The governor requested and then the President activated and sent the troops in. But I don’t know that the term “domestic terrorism” is in there—I could be wrong, there may have been an amendment, I’m not aware of—but I don’t think that that term is actually used in the Insurrection Act.

Kirk Wiebe: My response deals with the issue of rogue nuclear weapons, under the umbrella of terrorist activity, and my comment is this: With the imminent demise of the Soviet Union, there was a lot of concern here in the U.S. and in the Department of Defense, of which both Bill and I were a part of at the time, about the disposition of Soviet nuclear weapons and what would happen under the autonomous rule of the various republics making up the Soviet Union. And there was a lot of concern.

If there’s anything, any government keeps good track of, it’s what it owns and possesses in terms of nuclear weapons. So the accounting for them is probably among the best of anything they do, probably better than counting their own population. Because, precisely because of the danger nuclear weapons pose. Our concern was, what about the breakup of the Soviet Union? What’s going to happen?

I don’t have a good feel for what really happened, but my sense is, there was a pretty good accounting between us and the Russians on the disposition of nuclear weapons. So my sense is any nuclear weapon in rogue hands is worrisome, but I don’t think that issue is widespread in terms of the greater picture.

For Mr. Jatras and Mr. Sieff: “Could any of the panelists say something about the recent Serbia/Kosovo agreements in coordination with President Trump, as a template for future cooperation among other countries, emphasizing economic development to resolve problems?”

Jatras: Very briefly, this little deal between Serbia and Kosovo is not a template for anything. This is just a brainchild of Richard Grenell, the outgoing ambassador to Germany, who was looking for a kind of a poor man’s Camp David photo op, for Trump to say, “Here’s this great diplomatic achievement.” This really doesn’t amount to anything except further kicking the can down the road on what the status is of this pseudo-state Kosovo, that was established by—let’s be honest—NATO aggression in 1999. What the future brings is not going to be changed very much by this agreement, one way or the other. It’s another little feather in the cap of Israel to have two more embassies, one of which doesn’t actually represent a country, move to Jerusalem. Other than that, it’s meaningless.

Sieff: I differ from Jim on important marginal aspects of this, and fully agree with him on all the key points. It’s a vanity move to make the administration look good. From what I can tell, and I’ve been looking at it quite closely, none of the U.S. officials who are pushing this have any real knowledge of the region, whatsoever, of its history, of its culture. Many of them are probably totally ignorant of the NATO bombing campaign that artificially created Kosova in the first place. Even the Prime Minister and the President of Kosova and Serbia were pretty much at daggers drawn through the whole—it’s a farce. It’s an amusing farce if you look at it closely, but it cannot be taken, as Jim said, to be a template for anything.

For Mr. Binney: “Operation Mockingbird, a program that the CIA began in the early years of the Cold War, attempted to manipulate news media for propaganda purposes. What role do intelligence services play in today’s so-called mainstream media?”

Binney: As far as the role of intel in media, I would simply say, go back to Director of CIA Gates when he said, I think in 1983, he said, “We have started to infiltrate the media and you’ll know we’ve succeeded in doing that once everything that’s believed by the public in the United States is false.”

And I would also point out, if you simply look at the people who came from intel, like Clapper and Brennan and so on, who are now populating the commentators on the media! It’s the mainstream media that’s picking these people up. So what that really tells me, that their whole objective of infiltrating the media, getting them to say what they want, what the bureaucrats in government want, they’ve succeeded, they’ve done it. We’ve had it. We are in that state now.

A question about the possible fuller realization of Mrs. LaRouche’s proposal for cultural elevation and exchange as a crucial aspect of turning our nations from the course of confrontation to a partnership in reaching for the stars.

Zepp-LaRouche: I think this is really the most important question of all, because it is my absolute conviction, that all policies, no matter what they are, flow out of the image of man that the people have. If you have a degraded image of man, or you think that only some people are belonging to an elite, or others are like cattle who can be diminished, like the Helots in Sparta, or the slaves in Rome, then that image of man dictates every aspect of your policy.

So therefore, I think that we absolutely need, in combination of this P-5 or four major powers summit, no matter which, but we need a summit—what has to be included, absolutely, is a Renaissance of classical culture. This is very important, and I mentioned this already, but I know a lot of Afro-Americans think she is a great star, this Cardi B. But for me, this is the absolute incarnation of slavery, of accepting a degraded state of mind, and what we need instead, and I know people are very peculiar about their taste in music, but we are in the Year of Beethoven [250 years since his birth], and if you compare that kind of music with the absolutely elevating, ennobling spirit of Beethoven and many other classical composers, it should be so obvious that if mankind does not elevate itself now out of this present condition, by going back to the greatest traditions of each culture, I don’t think we will make it.

On the other side, this great culture is absolutely available, and we will hear tomorrow a beautiful performance of that music, and I would like people to reflect that I absolutely think that we will not solve this problem if we don’t change the way people think. And I agree with Friedrich Schiller, and that’s why the Schiller Institute is named after him, that it does require great classical art to effect the aesthetical education, the moral ennoblement of people. And I can tell you, if you look at the present contemporary people, if we do not improve them morally, if we do nothing, we have a chance no better than a snowflake in Hell, to come out of this crisis. So the question of a cultural renaissance is the absolute precondition to solve all these crises.

“Greeting you from Venezuela. Congratulations for your excellent conference. We are under terrible economic sanction attack by the U.S. government, and I wonder what we can do to avoid these economic sanctions and break the chains to set us free. We want respect for our nation and political decisions. What do you think we can do for success in this global economy?”

Zepp-LaRouche: There are certain things which really should be outlawed under conditions of pandemic. One of them is sanctions, because it is clear that sanctions deprive the country which is being hit, especially those taking care of the urgent medical questions to protect the population. I mean: Sanctions should just stop while the pandemic is going on, as a principle, and those who are imposing it, like the U.S. Congress which is quite expansive with it, they should also just know that all this discussion about human rights and democracy is becoming quite hollow around the world, and people recognize that there is a double standard of those who are using it.

Otherwise, I think what I said earlier in my remarks that the crisis we face is so fundamentally all-inclusive, that I think that the principle of the coincidence of opposites, what Nicholas of Cusa developed in the 15th century as a new method of thinking, of thinking that the one is of a higher quality than the many, and that you have to think about the interest of mankind first, before you think about any particular problem. We cannot hope to solve all these different individual problems at the same time, because we are in a systemic collapse. We are seeing the end of an epoch and therefore you have to design some completely new paradigm, and then the relations among the major powers, U.S., Russia, China and others, if that is being put on a really human basis, then such questions as sanctions are like the derivative, which will disappear.

So I can only reiterate that if you want to solve any particular problem, help to solve the big one, because if we do not move humanity as a whole into a new paradigm, I’m afraid that all of the problems which were discussed today, may actually spin out of control, and we will end up in a complete chaos of civilization.