ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

Discredited Russiagate Coup
Must Be Shut Down
For the Sake of Humanity

This is an edited transcript of the Schiller Institute’s Sept. 27, 2018 New Paradigm interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, by Harley Schlanger. A video of the webcast is available.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger welcoming you to this week’s webcast of the Schiller Institute, our weekly international strategic discussion with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institutes. There’s an extraordinary series of developments around the meeting of the UN General Assembly. I think it’s very important that people get a sense of what’s occurring and what the implications are. In this webcast, we’re also going to take a look at the fallout from the declassification order from President Trump, what’s going on with Rod Rosenstein and his role.

I think the best place to start is Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Helga, how did you see the speech—its importance, the pros and cons?

Trump’s Speech at the UN

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: The European/Western mainstream media chose to only report that Trump got laughter after he praised the accomplishments of his administration, and they blocked out entirely what were the really important aspects of his speech and the many bilateral diplomatic activities. You have to take all of this as one picture to really understand what is going on, as you say. On the one hand, the coup attempt against Trump is still ongoing; on the other hand it’s clear that this may be defeated in a relatively short period of time. So the situation is really dramatic.

I think the strong points of Trump’s speech were clearly that he emphasized the right and need of having sovereignty for every country. He praised other cultures as being extremely important. He made a very articulated pledge for patriotism, which was quite different from the flat, two-dimensional pitch of people like Steve Bannon, but was actually important and very good.

Trump attacked the failure of the free trade institutions, the failure of the World Trade Organization, and the International Criminal Court, and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations—all institutions which we have criticized for very similar reasons.

So I think the speech overall was very important.

There were some problematic points in it, which I will go into in a second. But I think one has to first look at the total spectrum of diplomatic activities that Trump conducted on the sidelines. First of all, he met with President Moon Jae-in from South Korea. This was quite remarkable, because it highlights what we had characterized as the potential for a “Singapore model,” following the summit of Trump with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un last July. At that time I said that the “Singapore model” can be applied to every crisis in the world. For example, in the spirit of the New Silk Road, by changing just a few parameters, the crisis between North and South Korea, and between North Korea and the United States, turned from confrontation into win-win cooperation, which is now possible because of the environment of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Contrary to the press reports, this diplomacy is working. I would like Western so-called leaders to just reflect on the fact that President Moon Jae-in of South Korea said on September 25, that Trump has become more than a friend, that he has telephoned him twenty times, had seven summits, and that they have complete and perfect trust. I think Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on the success of Trump in the North Korea developments, pledging that Russia, for its part, would do everything possible for the economic development of North Korea, including the development of infrastructure. It is being mooted that Trump will meet with Kim Jong-un fairly soon, so this is all on a very good track.

So I think this is the big success story of the Trump Administration, which is completely blacked out by the mainstream media.

Trump also had a sideline summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, another extremely important development, this time, not so much between Japan and the United States, but between Japan and Russia, because what Abe said in his UN General Assembly speech, was that he hopes to have a peace treaty with Russia before the end of the year. And I should have also mentioned that North and South Korea pledged a peace treaty, also before the end of the year, and unification.

Back to Japan: Abe said that if such a peace treaty between Japan and Russia is signed, it will contribute greatly to peace and stability in the entire East Asia region.

So here you have two extremely important strategic developments, which are almost not mentioned in the mainstream media.

While President Trump really attacked Iran, it’s not Iran, in my view, which is entirely responsible for terrorism. Look at what Saudi Arabia is still doing in Yemen. One should have a more balanced view. One can only hope that President Trump is preparing a Middle East general peace plan. There are indications that he’s doing that. For example, Trump also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and after that said that he would endorse a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, that it would be left up them, if they wanted to have a one-state or a two-state solution, but it is very important that he reiterated the endorsement for a two-state solution. Obviously, this is very difficult, after all the illegal settlements that have been built in recent years—but nevertheless, this is also on the way.

And one sign that there may be actually a broader, more strategic plan underway, is that President Trump also met with the new Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and there they discussed not only Libya, the whole Mediterranean policy, but according to some Italian press reports, they also discussed the possibility of Italy playing a mediating role between the United States and Iran. Now this is very important, because Italy is the only Western country that has developed a positive attitude of cooperation with the Trump Administration. This was visible at the G7 meeting in Canada. Conte has already visited the White House, and now they have continued that cooperation. I think this is very, very important, because Italy not only works with President Trump, but as the recent trips of the different Italian ministers and cabinet members to China demonstrate, Italy is the one European country which has developed excellent relations with China, and China is obviously important in the background of the Iran question.

As you can see, this is a very widespread and complicated network of diplomatic activities, which is being carried out very skillfully, completely counter to the way in which at least the European media and naturally the mainstream media in the United States are characterizing Trump, and the evil accusations of coup plotters, that he is a misfit and is not capable of handling things. In the context of the UN General Assembly, Trump is portraying quite the opposite—a very far-sighted diplomatic effort involving many parts of the world and many crisis spots.

This is all very interesting, and we should look at these things in a differentiated, new, and not black-and-white way in which you are either for Trump or against Trump. As we have said many times, the relationships of the United States, Russia, and China are really the essence of the ability to maintain peace, and therefore everything which has to do with that is of the utmost importance.

China: Return to Principles of Westphalia

Schlanger: Trump’s discussion of sovereignty, not forcing our so-called “values” on other countries, was welcomed by some of the people—Lavrov. The Chinese commented on it. But there was also a back-and-forth between Trump and Chinese officials, the Chinese media. I’d like to hear your comments on that.

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with American and Chinese businessmen in the context of this UN General Assembly, and he reiterated the absolute necessity of going back to a positive U.S.-China relationship. So from the Chinese side, from the official government level, they keep emphasizing the need to have a positive relationship. Wang Yi naturally reacted very sharply and quickly to the accusation of Trump that the Chinese had meddled in the midterm election—this seems to refer to a four-page insert in the Des Moines Register paid for by China Daily, which said that Trump’s tariff-based trade policies would hurt Iowan soybean farmers, making it harder for them to export to China.

I don’t know if that’s “meddling” or not. In any case, on a lower level, namely the media level, the Chinese have made the point that at stake with these trade issues, is not just tit-for-tat tariffs, not just the U.S. sale of weapons to Taiwan, violating the one-China policy, not the sanctions against China because China bought some weapons systems from Russia; but as one insightful article in the Global Times says, “That the issue is increasingly moving beyond trade, is the real cause of concern, and that is where the real danger lies. The consequences become hard to predict. That is why signs of accelerating strain on mutual goodwill deserve serious attention from both parties.” I think that is really what’s at stake.

So I really wish that President Trump would return to where he started with President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago and then the state-plus visit in Beijing at the end of last year, because too much is at stake. Anyway, I just think there needs to be a change in the policy.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, it’s very good that Trump talks about sovereignty, but this should apply to all countries, not just the United States. And another comment in the Chinese media was similar, saying the same thing: that sovereignty is very good, but equality is equally important, and both are values that came out of—interesting for the Chinese to say—out of the Peace of Westphalia, and we must return to the principles of the Peace of Westphalia, which was exactly sovereignty, equality, policy in the interest of the other, and even love in foreign policy, and the role of the state in the reconstruction of a country after the war: These are all important principles of the Peace of Westphalia, and it is quite right to say that we must urgently return to them.

Schlanger: People want to know what you think Trump was talking about when he attacked the International Criminal Court (ICC), and said that it was good that the United States had pulled out of it. What is the ICC, and what’s the importance of Trump’s attack?

Zepp-LaRouche: The ICC is basically an international court which in the past has been extremely biased. It has only gone after African leaders; it has taken a very biased position in the legal suit of previous Philippine governments against China concerning the South China Sea. So I think it is indeed a very dubious court, and it was quite good that Trump attacked it.

1980s Project for Controlled Disintegration

Schlanger: What about Trump’s talking up the great success of his economic policies? One of his real weaknesses—one which you have pointed out repeatedly, and one that we’ve covered in our publications—is that he’s making the same mistake that was made before, of looking at the stock market as some kind of measure of economic success. This could be a very serious problem, couldn’t it?

Zepp-LaRouche: I want to read to you some recent figures. There are many people pointing to the potential for an immediate financial blowout, to occur even before the midterm elections. All the figures are really warning signs: state debt as of 2018, compared to 2008, is 104% higher; consumer debt, 44.7% higher; student debt, 165.3% higher; corporate debt, 72.7% higher.

Trump has said that the U.S. trade deficit with China occurred after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). Now that’s not exactly what happened, because China joined the WTO in 2001, but as we have pointed out, and especially as my husband Lyndon LaRouche has stated in the context of his Presidential campaigns, in numerous speeches, articles, and TV addresses, the reason why the United States went the wrong way has everything to do with the paradigm shift which occurred in 1960s.

I remember very well him campaigning against this very clearly in the 1976 Presidential campaign, because at that point, you had the New York Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission initiating what they called the 1980s Project, a call for “controlled disintegration” of the U.S. and Western economy, proposing to move from an industrial society into a post-industrial society. They did various studies which were published by McGraw-Hill—I think altogether over 30 books, covering every aspect of the planet, how this “controlled disintegration” should work. Among other things, the 1980s Project was a projection of artificially induced shocks, such as an interest rate increase, an energy price increase, the cut-off of credit, and similar means of manipulation. Its idea of deindustrialization, or post-industrial society, went along with the idea of outsourcing “unwanted” industries to cheap-labor countries.

This corresponded to the initial phase of China’s opening up, where China made itself a cheap-labor market, but this was not pushed, at least not alone by China. It was pushed by the Carter Administration, by the New York Council on Foreign Relations, by the Trilateral Commission, as it was by the World Wildlife Fund and the Club of Rome. All these institutions expressed different aspects of this paradigm shift. And it led to mistakes on the part of China, such as not respecting the environment, just going for cheap labor production, which the Chinese government has long ago recognized and is moving very hard to remedy, such as making extremely important efforts to clean the air, to clean the groundwater, and other effects of its earlier policy.

The reason Detroit and the other rust belt cities are deindustrialized has a lot to do with these policies. Pittsburgh, for example, is a case study in such deindustrialization as is, by the way, North Rhine-Westphalia, the former industrial heartland of Germany, now almost worse off than many of the former East German states.

Obviously, the WTO is also a problem, but I think you have to look much deeper if you want to correct this policy and reindustrialize, but reindustrialize with the most modern technologies, such as fusion and space technologies in win-win cooperation in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. There needs to be a real discussion: Go back to the American System of economy, which Trump in various rallies said he absolutely admires and praised.

We need a correction to Trump’s vision, because I think one of the Achilles’ heels, if not the Achilles’ heel of the Trump Administration, is the danger of a financial blowout, which could occur at any moment. If we really want to get to the root of the problem we must go back to those paradigm shifts, starting in the 1960s and the 1970s, whose aim was to replace modern industrial cities with post-industrial “utopias.”

Breakup of the EU Just a Matter of Time

Schlanger: I think you would argue that part of the effect of the postindustrial policy has been to create an overall economy which makes governments completely incapable of governing. We see this throughout Europe now. We were talking earlier about Germany. It’s probably just a matter of time before something breaks up the EU, before the Merkel government in Germany collapses. Where do things stand right now in Europe, Helga?

Zepp-LaRouche: The German situation is terrible, because of what has been played out in the case of Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of the BfV, the equivalent of the FBI in Germany. Maassen made some really incompetent remarks concerning a video—a fake video—covering the right-wing demonstrations following a murder in Chemnitz. This led to a deal between the SPD and CDU and CSU, to kick Maassen upstairs to Undersecretary in the Interior Ministry, at a higher pay grade, which naturally upset a lot of people. So then, SPD head Andrea Nahles responded and said, No, we have to renegotiate it.

I don’t want to go through the details—because for an international audience this is probably confusing—but what it showed very clearly to Germans is that these government representatives do not care about the future of Germany, they don’t care about the common good; they only care about their own posts, their own power position. And naturally, the CDU and CSU and SPD are falling in the polls like a rock.

Now the danger in all of this is that the right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which is no alternative at all because it has absolutely no solutions, is now in the polls the second most numerous party, which is really a big problem and reminds you of the 1930s. Even so, one cannot totally equate this with the 1930s, but in that party, you have some really hard-core evil people.

This leaves a situation where everybody is speculating on when Merkel will be out. Today the big tabloid daily Bildzeitung has a banner headline, “Who Will Write the Letter to Her?” referring to the fact it was Angela Merkel who brought about the fall of fellow CDUer, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in 1999, by writing an open letter to him, which was quite an act of disloyalty. So basically Bildzeitung is now calling for a rebellion against her, as she has just lost the vote for faction leader in the Bundestag. And the CDU’s partner, the Bavarian Party, CSU, which has an election coming up on October 14, is also dropping in the polls like a stone.

So this does not look good, because if we have new elections in Germany—if there is not a complete change in the policy—it could not lead to any better result than the further rise of the AfD.

Then there is the European Union (EU). You know, many people say, just one shot and the European Union may fall apart. There are now several large EU member states—Italy, Spain and France—that no longer respect the budget discipline imposed by the EU Commission. The whole thing is in disarray, and the only two countries with any positive orientation at all are Italy, because of its relationship to China and also to Trump, and Austria, where Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is organizing a major European-African forum before the end of the year.

So, you have a completely disunified European Union, but you have some promising anomalies. But what’s happening in the larger picture is definitely not taking place in Europe right now, except for what I said about Italy and Austria.

Schlanger: To come back to the United States, one of the things you mentioned is that the effect of the mass media not covering what Trump is actually saying and doing, is directly related to Russiagate. That there’s been a complete change in the last months of the coverage, I think, is in large part due to what we’ve done in showing the importance of the British role—using Christopher Steele, using these various sting operations with Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper, Alexander Downer. And now we see on the firing line, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This new coverage is crucial, because if Trump will follow through, as he said he would, with the declassification, the documents can put into the public discussion the fact that all of Russiagate from the beginning was designed to stop Trump from moving the United States into the new paradigm.

Can you summarize for us where things stand now regarding Rod Rosenstein, and the fight to blow apart the fraudulent “narrative” of Russiagate?

Declassify the Documents!

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, today Trump and Rosenstein are supposed to meet. We have to see what comes of that. But the background is that there are now increasing signs that in May 2017 there was a meeting in which Rosenstein participated with high-level Department of Justice and FBI officials. At that meeting there was a discussion of using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to get Trump out of the White House, and in order to develop evidence for that, to have Rod Rosenstein wear a wire to secretly record Trump.

That was leaked by the New York Times a week ago, and Rosenstein immediately denied everything. But the point is, if he did participate in such a highly treasonous meeting and did not blow the whistle right away, which he obviously didn’t, but instead, he appointed Robert Mueller as a Special Counsel for an unprecedented investigation against a sitting American President, based on a complete web of false dossiers, and orchestrations and so forth. Rosenstein obviously felt that after the leak of the New York Times, he could not testify in the Congress, so he offered his resignation to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. So we’ll have to see.

The demand made by civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz, as the only way to solve this, is that everything concerning the May 2017 meeting be immediately made public. Those present have to be asked under oath what happened. And everything concerning the role of the British must be published also. There are now more and more people who are aware that this is a coup. For example, Sen. Lindsey Graham said this is a “bureaucratic coup” in action.

And yes, Rosenstein went to the White House in the meantime and said that the declassification should be delayed, because the British and the Australian governments objected. Other people have said the whole “Five Eyes” intelligence relationship will be blown, the British-American “special relationship” will be blown. If that happens it would be a good thing, not a bad thing!

So, all the documents should be declassified immediately, because, as Pat Buchanan correctly said, the integrity of the American republic is more important than an embarrassment for the British.

I think this is really a countdown. Because of the British and the Australian complaints, President Trump put Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, in charge of reviewing all of the documents. Trump encouraged Horowitz to follow through with absolute speed, because speed was of the utmost essence in this, and that is absolutely true.

But what is at stake here, just to reiterate, is an absolutely unprecedented meddling, not by Russia, but by the British government, by the GCHQ, by the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6, and that must be put out in the open, because that is the way the British Empire is maneuvering, and that must be absolutely stopped if the world is to live in peace.

Do Not Sit on the Sidelines!

We are in an absolutely fascinating situation, and I would urge all of you not to sit on the sidelines, on the fence, because this is a period when history is being made. Trump is doing extremely important things, and if he is not correct on all points, that is not the point. When has a President ever attacked those institutions of the British Empire?

I think this is very important, so we should really understand that the midterm election is important for war and peace, and if some things are not right, don’t focus on those things, focus on what is really essential. Help us to bring in the economic discussion, of the physical science of economy as it was developed by Lyndon LaRouche, help us to bring others to see the utmost importance of convening a New Bretton Woods conference, immediately, among the most important powers—United States, Russia, China, and India. This is the focus of our mobilization both in Washington, and also in the UN General Assembly, where we are circulating our petition.

Please sign this petition, circulate it, and help us educate others on the principles of physical economy, which is not the same thing as the stock market and monetarism, but pertains to the productivity of the labor force, of the industrial capacities, of the whole of the creativity of the individual. We have to strengthen an understanding of what makes an economy strong, and that is a permanent increase in scientific and technological innovation, which must not be limited to one country, but it is the right of every country to have such access to science and technology.

It’s a very fascinating moment, so join the Schiller Institute and get on board.

Schlanger: And organize your friends to join us every Thursday, so they, too, can hear an update from Helga, which will go a long way toward cutting through the flack that’s thrown up by the so-called mainstream media, so that people can actually become effectively involved, not just in this moment of the midterm elections, but in the shaping of the next two or three generations.

Helga, is there anything else you want to cover?

Zepp-LaRouche: No. I think we should really get active!

Schlanger: OK. So we’ll see you next week, Helga. And you, our audience, just got your marching orders: Get active!