Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Join With Me To Stop the Bloodshed

This is an edited transcript of Harley Schlanger’s weekly dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute, on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Subheads and embedded links have been added. The video of this dialogue is available here.

Harley Schlanger: Helga, things are moving very rapidly on various strategic fronts, with new developments on [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s war on Gaza, diplomatic initiatives aimed at calming down the hotspots, and the Schiller Institute’s initiative to not just calm things down, but to move to a new strategic architecture. Let’s begin with something which was just announced a few hours ago, that an agreement has been reached for a four-day ceasefire in Gaza, beginning tomorrow, which will allow for the exchange of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, for Palestinians who have been imprisoned in Israel. This has been the focus of major international diplomacy. Questions are being raised by both sides as to whether the other can be trusted. What is your view of this, Helga—both of the ongoing diplomatic activity, and what this means overall? Does this represent a potential, significant change?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: One would definitely hope so. I think there are many factors which came into play: One is the fact that there has been an international outcry against what was generally perceived and characterized by many as “genocide,” going on in Gaza of a dimension which is mind-boggling and very, very impossible to continue to bear. There were demonstrations in many countries. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is involved in a major diplomatic tour, together with the Arab League, going to the five permanent member nations of the UN Security Council, first visiting China, then Russia, then following that, Great Britain and France. Netanyahu’s situation in Israel is becoming almost as untenable, because many people, including relatives of the people who were the victims of Oct. 7th, accuse Netanyahu of being responsible for what happened. Then, you had a long march of the relatives of the hostages on Nov. 4, also demanding that Israel must act to free the hostages.

So I think there has come a lot of pressures on the situation, and one could only hope that this present pause, which hopefully will last, is going to be used to be extended beyond the four days; it was already said that for every additional 10 hostages released, one more day the pause would be prolonged. But obviously, this is not enough. And it is up to the United States, primarily, to make sure that this war ends, because that is the one force which Israel would have no choice but to recognize.

I think this is the time for all people who are really tortured by what happened, to move and mobilize together with us and all the other peaceful efforts which are under way, that you have to put on a definite solution in the form of—China is pushing an international peace conference for the establishment of the two states as a solution to the conflict; but most important, there has to be a commitment by all forces involved to have peace through development. The only way how there is any hope to settle this conflict and bring it to an end, is to have a peace plan for the entire region—that is, all of Southwest Asia—by mobilizing for the “Oasis Plan.”

The Oasis Plan was a plan developed by my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, already in 1975, which was the idea that you have to have massive production of freshwater, because all of these states are deserts for the most part, and that you have to have real industrial development; which now is possible, due to the existence of the Belt and Road Initiative and the willingness of China to play a major role in the development of the region. Four countries of the region are going to become members of the BRICS as of January 1, 2024: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran; and then sort of part of the region is Egypt, which is the bridge to Africa at the same time.

So, if there would be now a commitment to put an international development conference for the entire region on the table, maybe that would also provoke peaceful forces inside Israel to make sure that they become the dominant force in the country, so that there could be an end to this absolute horror show, about which I could say a lot more, but there are now many more people speaking out about it. At this point, the only thing which counts is to bring the war to an end and bring in development.

The Control Rests with the U.S.

Schlanger: You’ve covered some of what was in the first few questions we received, but I’ll ask them anyway, because they reflect the polarization that’s out there. From someone in New York: “What makes you think Hamas can be trusted to keep a ceasefire?” And from Israel: “Why don’t Biden and the American Congress recognize that the problem is Netanyahu and his alliance with the most radical, extremist Zionist settlers?” This person referenced National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who both voted against the ceasefire exchange deal.

Zepp-LaRouche: The answer to the first question, is the plight of the Palestinian people, I think is enough, and anybody who has any heart left will concede to this demand. And I can only say that if you don’t put credit for the future into the picture, you never will get to an end of this.

And to the second question, I can only reflect on what Lyndon LaRouche used to say, namely, that it is not Israel which determines the situation, but it is the strategic intention of the United States which many times has used Israel as a hand grenade, to put into a situation. And I think therefore, the control over this is clearly inside the United States.

The Idea of the International Peace Coalition

Schlanger: There have been several questions that have come in regarding your activity and the Schiller Institute activity: Someone asks: “What is the International Peace Coalition, that we’re involved in, and how can one get involved?” This is from someone who is interested in the Nov. 26 Emergency Forum that’s been set up for 11 a.m. Eastern Time, titled, “No More War Crimes! Development not Depopulation!”

So, what is the IPC and how can people get involved?

Zepp-LaRouche: The International Peace Coalition (IPC) is the effort we launched almost four months ago, with the idea to unite all the different peace groups around the world. I have the distinct impression that it’s the vast majority of people around the world who are sick and tired of being the victims and fighting wars for a small, oligarchical elite, by sacrificing their young men and women in senseless wars, and [who would agree] that this whole idea that in the 21st Century conflicts can be settled with war has to stop! In the age of thermonuclear weapons, such an idea is for sure outdated, and must be stopped.

The IPC is the idea to unite the peace movement in the West—first of all, to unite them, because that is where the divide-and-conquer principle, unfortunately, is still relevant, and sometimes it takes just subtle ways, you know, saying, “don’t talk to these people,” “stay away from these people.” So, what should be a groundswell, a stream of opposition against the very idea of war, is many times a little demonstration here, a little action there. We have to unite all of these efforts in the so-called North, and then combine the peace movement of the Global North with the aspiration of the countries of the Global South to have a just new world economic order.

One of the purposes of the IPC is to make both sides—the peace movement in the North, and the developing countries in the South—recognize that their interests are absolutely identical and that both of their problems—the lack of development in the South and the lack of peace in the North—are caused by the same oligarchical principle, which clearly is in the phase of demise and does not like the idea that the new system is emerging, primarily around the BRICS countries, but also many other organizations of the Global South.

You can join that effort! That’s most laudable. The next conference on Sunday, Nov. 26 will be available through the Schiller Institute website. We will be discussing the options for a peace solution in Southwest Asia, but also, emphatically make clear that if we don’t get peace, that what happened in Hiroshima with the victims of the nuclear bombs being dropped there, threatens the fate of the entire world.

Since some of the war hawks have basically justified the way-out-of-proportion reaction by Israel against Gaza, saying it was legitimate, because after all the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and terror firebombed Dresden, flattening that city and causing 35,000 people to die in the flames at the time, therefore, the over-proportionality of the Israeli response is legitimate as well! It is outrageous that anybody who’s human could say such a thing.

At the Nov. 26 forum, we will show the extraordinary documentary, 8:15 Hiroshima: From Father to Daughter, to those who register in advance. It was made by the daughter of one of the victims of Hiroshima, showing exactly what this meant, what death in a nuclear catastrophe meant. People will really see the connection that if we do not get under control the two wars—the Ukraine war and the war in Southwest Asia—this has the potential of developing into a global war, which by necessity would be a nuclear war, and that would mean the end of civilization. The author of the documentary, the Japanese woman who wrote the script, Dr. Akiko Mikamo, will be available after the film to take questions.

Schlanger: You mentioned your late husband’s “Oasis Plan.” A pamphlet, “Peace Through Development for Palestine and Israel: The LaRouche Oasis Plan,” is available online from The LaRouche Organization.

BRICS Emergency Summit on Gaza

Now, Helga, we have a question that came in from one of our contacts in Mexico, who asks, “Do you have a report on the BRICS Emergency Summit on Gaza that took place yesterday?”

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. That was very important. There was participation from Russian President Vladimir Putin, Brazilian President [Luiz Inácio] Lula da Silva, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was represented by Foreign Mininster Jaishankar. They discussed an initiative calling for an immediate settlement of the conflict, in basic terms. That the BRICS are now taking responsibility, is very important. The BRICS, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League, which latter two organizations went to the countries of the UN Security Council [permanent] members, creating the kind of environment which gives hope that a solution may be possible.

The BRICS New Development Bank

Schlanger: We have a question from Jeremiah who is obviously trying to do some organizing on behalf of what we’re doing. He asks, “how do you challenge people to get them to support a credit system to develop a future along the lines of the LaRouche plan? And to get the West to join the BRICS, rather than remaining a subject of an imperialist nation?”

Zepp-LaRouche: The question of accepting such a credit system may force itself onto the agenda, whether people like it or not. Because there is no question that we are sitting on a complete powder keg: The U.S. managed right now to prolong the budget somehow, but that is a complete fiction, because the U.S. is so over-indebted, and any kind of disruption could explode this whole thing—as it is doing in Germany right now!

Germany is now in a situation comparable to that in the U.S. before they reached a compromise on the budget, but much more unsolvable, really. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe just ruled that it was forbidden for the coalition government to use the funds which were set aside as a special fund for the cost of the coronavirus pandemic, to finance some of the transformation to a green economy. This is out. Now, there is a hole in the budget of €60 billion.

Panic has struck this coalition, resulting in an expense stop. A lot of things which previously were budgeted are not being paid out. For example, the money which was supposed to compensate every household for the heightened energy cost of about €300, is cut. A lot of people will now have a hard time to pay their exorbitant energy bills. Many other programs will be cut. In general, it will be across every area in the social programs, except the military budget! And that will cause a lot of people to become really furious. Maybe we can come to that question later on.

I think the need to accept the reorganization of an utterly bankrupt system will become apparent more and more, because the military buildup is the only thing the governments are willing to pay for, while all the basic necessities—infrastructure, welfare, health care, education, all of that is being cut! I think the willingness of people to demand a change will rapidly increase.

Especially because you have now the New Development Bank [of the BRICS], headed by Dilma Rousseff; she is known to have fought for a new credit system, ever since she was Brazilian President, and now she’s the President of the New Development Bank; and there are many efforts by the different BRICS countries, especially China and Russia, but also others, to develop a new currency, a new reserve currency, a new credit system. While the West is suffering from all of these collapse consequences, the countries of the Global South are moving in this other direction, and that will be visible more and more.

The reasonable thing would be to say: “OK, we will make a review of our business model.” And that’s the other thing: It’s so clear, all the efforts of the Global North, of the United States, of NATO, of Europe, are failing! Look at all the wars which were fought! Vietnam was lost, Afghanistan was an utter failure. Iraq, failure. Assad is still there [in Syria]; Libya a failed state as a result of the NATO intervention. All of these policies were utter failures. The Ukraine situation is now coming; soon it will be so apparent that this war has been lost as well, and the only outcome is tremendous suffering of the Ukrainian people, also the Russian people, and all the others, who are suffering from the consequences, like the millions of refugees who have fled.

So why cannot the establishment of the Global North, why can’t the United States, Germany, and France, have the stature to get together and say: “Well, maybe we proposed a policy which did not function!” Any firm threatened with bankruptcy hanging over its head would get together and either have the management make a new business plan, putting the business on a better perspective, or replace the management. The Western political elites seem to be absolutely incapable of taking that simple step, of correcting their policies which are obviously based on completely wrong axioms.

The gap between the people and their governments has never been so great, like in the United States and Europe. And I think this is threatening to go into an explosion. The coming winter will just worsen the situation. We have to find more and more people who will demand a new paradigm. It should be clear that all of these things hang together, and that you cannot solve one problem after the other, one by one, but that you really have to correct the entire system if it is failing you.

Will Germany Once Again Ready Itself for War with Russia?

Schlanger: You just provoked a question from Germany, where someone asks: “With the Ukraine situation devolving as rapidly as it is, and with Germany pledging more money for Ukraine, and this budget crisis you just described, can the current coalition government in Germany survive?”

Zepp-LaRouche: One would hope not! Look, the situation in Ukraine is over. That is openly discussed in a lot of American columns, by politicians and so forth, and it’s clear that the Ukraine war, the so-called counteroffensive, did not work. The new budget of the United States, which just passed, does not prolong the money to Ukraine, so the money from the United States will be significantly less; I think something like 30% less, or some major reduction.

And what is happening in Germany? The Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius just went for the third time to Kiev since he’s in office, promising more German aid, more German equipment, more German money. And this Pistorius recently made a speech, in which he said that we have to make Germany “war ready”—kriegstüchtig. That caused a tremendous outcry among many people, because whenever Germany goes in the direction of militarism, there are some reasonable people who don’t find that so hot. What happened then? Then he went into a long TV interview explaining, it just means to make Germany ready to defend itself.

Who is threatening to attack Germany? Well, various think tanks and related outlets, like certain journalists and various university professors, all of a sudden are talking about the need to anticipate a coming war with Russia! Now, I don’t want to have that! They’re saying that war with Russia will be inevitable in six years or ten years, because, they argue, that after the Ukraine war is over, Russia will immediately go into a rearmament to attack the next country, maybe in the Baltics, maybe Moldova, maybe even some other countries in Europe, and that therefore war in Europe will become likely.

And since Russia could be ready in six years, probably in 10 years, they say, NATO has to be prepared to fight that war in six years. And therefore, the only part of the German economy to be built up is the military sector. Everything else is to be cut, but there has to be a military buildup and a militarization of the German society, an increase in military production, more soldiers into the Bundeswehr [the armed forces], and strengthening of the so-called “resilience” of the population, therefore, as one think tank proposes, everybody from the age of 35 to 65 is to be put through one year of service! Not everybody will be sent to the front, but to wherever they can fit in and play a role.

This is the plan for a coming world war. And I think we have to really wake up and say, after the Second World War in Germany, we had a very famous and very useful slogan, which was “Never again!” And that meant, never again to genocide, never again to war, and that war should never emanate from German soil again, ever.

We have to increase the peace movement. This coming Saturday, there will be, hopefully, a big demonstration in Berlin. Those who are able should go and participate. And we have to have a debate that going in the direction of a militarization of Germany is the absolute wrong way. Every person who knows somebody in Germany should contact them, and tell them, “Are you out of your mind that you would tolerate this?”

I think Germany urgently needs an intervention, because inside Germany we are becoming more and more a colony. As a matter of fact, I’m afraid we already are one—and we need people to wake up. There is an alternative. The alternative is that we work together with the Global South, the Global Majority of mankind, and have a system where everybody can survive and not go in the direction of insane militarization, which is in the worst traditions of Germany and the rest of the world.

The Optimism of President Kennedy

Schlanger: You’re describing the power of the so-called military-industrial complex in its broader terms, the corporate cartels, and so on, in most of the NATO countries and definitely in the United States. Which brings me to the next question, which is that today is the 60th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who most people believe was targeted because of his resistance to the military-industrial complex plans in the United States, on a variety of issues.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, I devoted my daily update today to the memory of John F. Kennedy, and people can look at that. The question that came in, is: “Do you think that the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its coverup is still preventing leading figures in U.S. politics from challenging the establishment?”

Zepp-LaRouche: I think so, because it is like these terrorist murders. In a certain sense, it was a terrorist attack—the idea of political murders. Apart from getting rid of somebody who is in the way of the powers that be, assassinations of prominent individuals always also have the intended co-message to all other people: “Don’t act likewise, or you could have a similar fate.”

My late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, used to say that the big wound of the United States is not only the assassination of Kennedy, but the coverup through the Warren Commission. Because the inability of American society to uncover the real story behind that murder has led to a complete paradigm shift.

I can only advise you, go to the website of the JFK Library, and look at his “peace speech,” as it is called, of June 10, 1963 at American University and some other speeches of Kennedy, such as his Sept. 20, 1963 address to the United Nations General Assembly; or the Feb. 5, 1962 speech to Congress on Education, and you will see that he had a completely different paradigm.

JFK was a cultural optimist. He was for the economic transformation of the Global South. He believed in the absolute ability of human creativity to solve any problem. He thought that you have to talk to your enemy. After all, he averted the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the military advisors tried to convince him to solve the conflict militarily, which, given the fact that the Soviet missiles already in Cuba had nuclear warheads on them—which people didn’t know at the time--and their use could have led to a general nuclear war. Kennedy has so many aspects, which are in diametric opposition to the policies of the U.S. government today, that one can really see that the real reason why they assassinated him was to cause a shift in paradigm in the direction of the present militaristic outlook of the military-industrial complex—what we see in action today.

The parallel in Germany was the assassination of Alfred Herrhausen on November 30, 1989, at the moment of the pending German reunification, which was also not only aimed to eliminate Herrhausen as the Chairman of Deutsche Bank, who had a very different policy than the banking system today—namely debt forgiveness for the developing countries, and development programs, like for Poland, outside of the conditionalities of the IMF. And by eliminating him, they not only could eliminate that policy, but also it was a warning shot against all the people around then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, to not use the momentum of German reunification to enforce real German sovereignty. And from that, we are suffering to the present day.

So, I think any effort to investigate the Kennedy murder and correct that, is probably as crucial to the survival of the United States, as a similar effort would be in respect to Herrhausen for Germany.

Schlanger: Also, it would help to investigate the Nord Stream pipeline bombings.

Mobilize for the HFP Emergency Forum Nov. 26!

In closing, Helga, let me come back to the Humanity For Peace Emergency Forum, this coming Sunday, Nov. 26, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time: “No More War Crimes! Economic Development, Not Depopulation!” and get your assessment of the significance of people actually getting together and having these kinds of discussions.

Zepp-LaRouche: I can only report it for myself, but also of some friends and colleagues with whom I was talking, that when you are right now in this political situation, where it is very clear that an entire system is collapsing: You have an unspeakable reaction to the failure of the Ukraine war, by going in the direction of a military buildup. This has the danger of getting out of control, into a larger war. Then you have the horrific situation in Southwest Asia: It should get everybody upset, and prompt them to really act and try to change it.

Most people, because they don’t see governments in the West responding to any of this with reasonable policies, there is a tendency—at least in Germany; I don’t know if it’s in the United States or other countries like that—for people to freeze, become paralyzed. They see it, and they say, “Oh! I can’t stand this anymore! I don’t want to watch the news anymore!” Rather than understanding that if they don’t act right now, it may get worse!

Take the step and join us: Get together with us in events like the one coming up on Sunday. You will hear reasonable people from all around the world. This will be a forum to actually talk about it and talk about solutions. You will then be able to find your way back to optimism and become human again, because, if you are freezing and paralyzed, you have lost your essence, so to speak.

So, I can only advise: Please, we need you, we need every person on the planet to mobilize, because this is a test of our morality to survive. The answer is not yet clear.

Schlanger: Let me just punctuate that with a quote of John F. Kennedy, from an address he gave before the American Newspaper Publishers Association April 27, 1961, where he was attacking the idea of secrecy and censorship. He concluded by saying: “Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed—and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.”

I would definitely second what President Kennedy said, and what Helga just said about the importance of speaking out, not giving in to fear; and to Helga: thanks for joining us today.