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This article appears in the November 25, 2011 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

A Call to Action Against World War III

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

[PDF version of this article]

In view of the danger of a military strike against Iran and Syria, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo) in Germany and founder of the Schiller Institute, issued the following call on Nov. 19 to all governments, that they publicly declare that their country will not, under any circumstances, take part in a war against Syria or Iran. And the dynamic underlying this war danger must also be eliminated, namely, the collapse of the financial system. It has been translated from the original German.

International Appeal:
On the Eve of World War III

"I'm afraid that this thing is going to be a fait accompli.... It's just going to happen one morning: We're going to wake up, and the strike has been conducted." Those were the recent remarks to EIR by Gen. Joseph P. Hoar (ret.), former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central Command, on the danger of a military strike against Iran.[1] Only a few days afterwards, Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, warned that Russia could be drawn into a regional nuclear conflict, and that it could escalate into a full-scale war. And quite a few American military officers have been warning about the "incalculable consequences" of an attack on Iran. Leading Mideast specialists have long been warning that any war against Iran would mean World War III.

When a threat is so terrible, so unimaginable, that it surpasses normal human comprehension, the human psyche has the tendency to suppress this reality, out of self-defense, as it were. And the idea of a Third World War, in which weapons of mass destruction will be utilized, is certainly just such a case. With the war against Libya, and now the threats against Syria and Iran, many are sensing that something terrible is in the offing. They're experiencing a déjà vu effect—that they heard this very same propaganda during the run-up to the Iraq war—and they admit that they simply don't want to watch or listen to news reports anymore, since those are merely warm-ups for the planned hostilities.

But it's better for us to think the unthinkable, because only if individuals and governments can paint in their imagination, in excruciating detail, just what the consequences will be of a global war involving the deployment of ABC [atomic-biological-chemical—ed.] weapons, can we effect the change of course that can avert this war danger—five minutes before midnight, so to speak. It is a fact that there exist forces who believe that the reduction in population caused by such a war, down to 1 or 2 billion people, is a desirable result. But what would life be for those who did survive? And even if one or another of us were among the survivors, would that be cause for rejoicing? Or wouldn't we rather be cursing that day, wishing that we, too, were among those already dead?

The purpose of this call is to shake the public awake, and to appeal to those in positions of influence to do everything conceivable to prevent this war. We call upon governments to emulate Denmark's Foreign Minister Villy Søsndal, and to declare publicly that their country will not, under any circumstances, take part in a war against Syria or Iran. And secondly, the entire dynamic underlying the war danger must be eliminated, namely the approaching collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system, and of the euro in particular.

The Economic Cataclysm

"Financial Cataclysm Threatens Europe's Core Nations," "Only Germany Is Secure; Everyone Else Will Go Under," "The Fatal Euro Domino Effect," etc.: With one news media headline trumping another with horror scenarios, the end is indeed near. The latest trick was an attempt to get Germany to commit hara kiri by having it agree that the European Central Bank (ECB) will open up its mega-money sluices and take over all government bonds of Europe's insolvent countries, as well as all toxic "securities" held by private banks.

The ECB as the creditor of last resort: That is a deadly sin against monetary stability—and also a flagrant violation of the ECB's own statutes! So, welcome to hyperinflation à la Weimar 1923—only this time not in just one country, but in the entire trans-Atlantic region!

'Regime Change' in Europe

Regime change has not only long been the standing policy against rogue nations anywhere in the world, but it is also the tried-and-tested weapon against any European government that refuses to cut its citizens' living standards by 50%, and to lower their life expectancy through budget cuts in health care and social programs.

Already the governments of Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and—this weekend—Spain, have fallen victim to this policy. Elected representatives are being replaced by unelected technocrats, such as Lucas Papademos in Greece, Mario Monti in Italy, and the ECB's new head Mario Draghi, all of whom were either directly employed by the infamous Goldman Sachs investment bank, or worked closely with it. The machinations of Goldman Sachs are under investigation by U.S. state attorneys general, and long passages are devoted to the bank in the U.S. Congress's Angelides Report on the causes of the crisis. And the advisors who helped the Greek government falsify its books in order to gain entry into the European Union, were likewise from Goldman Sachs.

Democracy has indeed gone out of fashion in the European Union, and has been replaced by an open bankers' dictatorship. "We don't need elections, we need reforms," opines Europe's "President" Herman Van Rompuy. Did anyone elect him?

If we continue along this course of ever more brutal austerity against the population, all in the name of curbing debts which were the result of bailout packages for the banks; if we cede our very last shred of sovereignty to a "fiscal union" or a European economic government, or even to a European political union, then there's going to be a popular revolt against it.

Because there is no such thing as a "European people." Rather, there are 27 different nations in the European Union, each with its own language, culture, and history. Handing over power to a supranational EU bureaucracy whose treaties, procedures, and guidelines, framed as they are in EU-Esperanto, are incomprehensible to those nations' people, will hurl Europe back into a de facto situation like the days before Gutenberg had invented printing, when scholars were the only ones who could deliberate in Latin, while the masses of the population couldn't read anything written in their own languages.

With this EU Europe, we're dealing with an empire, and the problem is that the "pro-Europe" politicians have internalized the logic of that empire. Nowhere was this clearer than in the attitude toward the war in Libya, when former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and others chose to oh-so-quickly forget that it had been only a short time before, that Qaddafi's tent was set up in their capital cities, in order to seal lucrative trade deals.

Straight Into the Apocalypse

And what lessons do we draw from the NATO war against Libya—a war which, according to President Barack Obama, was merely a "humanitarian intervention," but one in which a head of state was eliminated and bestially killed, without any legal recourse? Lothar Rühl writes in an article titled "Libyan Lessons" in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

"Airborne operations—including, and in the future even more so than before, drones and cruise missiles—are the preferred means for any military intervention. This lesson also holds true for the Bundeswehr's [German army's] planning, which should prioritize all types of airborne deployments with fighter jets, helicopters, and drones."

\Rühl then asked, with respect to events around Syria and Iran:

"Time is short. What is our priority for an intervention or a preventive strike?"—a question which he leaves unanswered. That kind of thinking betrays a flight trajectory that is headed straight into Apocalypse.

Humanity's only chance of preventing the catastrophe immediately threatening us, lies in halting the confrontation course which we have set upon. In our 21st Century, there is no conflict which cannot be solved by diplomatic means. War cannot be an option, because it risks the extermination of the human species.

The European experiment—i.e., the creation of a monetary union among completely diverse nations which definitely have not represented an "optimal currency zone," and which won't be able to do so in the foreseeable future—has been a failure. The honest and responsible thing to do, is to admit this, and to draw the relevant conclusions.

There Is a Way Out

There is very certainly a way out: All EU treaties, from Maastricht to Lisbon, must be cancelled. Europe's nations must regain sovereignty over their currencies and their economies. Fixed exchange rates must be agreed upon, in order to end speculation against currencies and people's savings.

A two-tier banking system must be put into place immediately, one whereby only those commercial banks that serve the general welfare and the real economy will be put under state protection. The investment banks, and the shadow banking sector, must immediately make do without taxpayers' money, and their virtual speculative earnings must be written off. A credit system must finance the real economy and sensible capital investment, according to physical-economic criteria, thereby creating the basis for honoring legitimate claims from the old system.

Instead of heading on a suicidal confrontation course against Russia and China—a course which could only come from a perverse imperial mind-set—we must conclude long-term, 50- to 100-year cooperation agreements with these and other nations, on future projects such as energy and raw materials security, large-scale infrastructure and water-management projects, greening of the deserts, expansion of agriculture for a growing world population, and research into the effects of galactic weather on our planet and manned space flight—in short, projects which we could describe as the common aims of mankind.

Nothing less than the very existence of the human species is at stake. Faced with this momentous issue, can we demonstrate that, in Friedrich Schiller's sense, we are human beings, and not barbarians?

Signed:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche


[1] See EIR, Nov. 18, 2011.

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