Panel 1 Discussion Session

This is an edited transcript of the Discussion Session immediately following the presentations to Panel One of the Schiller Institute conference, “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture!” on February 19, 2022. The participants were Dennis Speed (moderator), Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Harley Schlanger, Jens Jørgen Nielsen, Shakeel Ahmad Ramay, William Binney, Col. (ret.) Alain Corvez, Kirk Wiebe, and Maj .Gen. (ret.) Carroll Childers.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: First of all, I want to thank all the speakers for having contributed extremely valuable ideas. I think we should discuss how we make sure that we reach an ever-larger group of people internationally, because I think the converging view was that it’s an extremely dangerous moment, and it’s not yet clear what is the outcome of this historical moment.

I would like to just comment on the speech of Natalia Vitrenko, which it’s always shocking to hear her. I think that that is not part of the equation. The fact is that the West completely backed up a coup in 2014, which brought in many elements of a Nazi tradition. That was known to all the countries in the West. I’m saying that because the Western intelligence services supported these Nazi elements in the entire postwar period with sort of a gradual operation against the Soviet Union.

This is a big scandal because it’s always mentioned that Putin is the aggressor in Crimea, and that he’s the only one who changed the borders of Europe in the postwar period, with violence. It is always omitted that the West supported the fascist coup. If that is not discussed, then the whole picture, the whole narrative is completely wrong. So, I would hope that Natalia’s speech in particular would find the widest circulation, because if you want to get the narrative really straight, then that is an absolutely crucial element.

Harley Schlanger: One of the things that came through clearly in virtually every presentation, although it wasn’t always named this, is that the problem is geopolitics. This is something that Helga has been emphasizing: that unless you get rid of a world view shaped by geopolitics, you’ll never escape war, exploitation, and depression. It’s important to realize this because, what’s the crime of Russia and China? It has nothing to do with what Russia is doing in Ukraine. It has to do with what they’re doing with Eurasian integration, and the fact that an integrated Eurasian economic space is very attractive to most European countries; in particular, France, Germany, Italy, and others.

This has been the basis for an Anglo-American imperial policy back before it was Anglo-American; when it was just British. With the beginning of geopolitics at the end of the 19th Century, when the British Empire was threatened by such things as the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad, and so on. So, the doctrine basically says you must, at all costs, prevent unity in Europe, and the possibility of a European orientation towards Eurasia.

That hasn’t changed. What changed was when the United States, after World War II, was brought in, especially after the Kennedy assassination, to the geopolitical doctrine. I think this is where we have to wage our fight today. I think Shakeel was very much on point when he said that the Belt and Road Initiative represents a way out. A collaboration among nations for economic development, including for the United States, which has been badly damaged by the economic policies of the post-Cold War period.

I think virtually everyone was talking about this; I just wanted to make it explicit that as long as the American policy—Republicans, Democrats, military, think tanks, academia, media, and so on—is shaped by this Anglo-American or British geopolitical doctrine, which benefits the world’s leading speculators and looters, there’s no way out. The advantage we have now is that that system is collapsing—the economic system—and we see the weaknesses in the so-called unity of the West for a war with Russia.

We have an opportunity now, but we have to go at the core of the problem, which is this geopolitical doctrine which turns nations against each other.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: I would say that the panel here has a lot of work before us, because I can say for my own country, in the Parliament we just had a discussion about Ukraine, about sending soldiers to Estonia. I think it was almost all in the Parliament who agreed that Russia is an aggressor and things like that.

When I talk to Russian people—I’m very often in Russia, and I speak Russian—they are very surprised, because why is it that Europeans submit to the Americans and accept that the Americans can decide that Europe should not work with Russia? If you look at it from another planet, from the outside, it seems very strange that Europeans submit like that to American wishes. I think it was Jim Jatras who mentioned that Biden said to the face of Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, that Nord Stream 2 will close. I’m a little puzzled, because I think it’s very obvious that Europe has its own interests towards Russia in cooperation with Russia.

It’s very difficult to convince. I also very often talk to Danish politicians, and they are very emotionally engaged with the media and academics. I think the vast part of it is very much engaged in this Russophobia. So, there’s a task ahead of us.

Shakeel Ahmad Ramay: I think we also need to talk about corporate greed, because the real problem at this point in time, the nexus of the industrial and military complex, at the heart of it, corporate sector greed to capture the resources of different countries. Maybe that is something to talk about: How the corporate can be pinpointed and pressured to alter their ways.

Speed: This is a question to the panel from Renée: “Thanks to Jim Jatras for bringing into the discussion the motivation to stop Germany from linking into Eurasian development. Is it not the case that the coup in Ukraine, which built up momentum starting in 2013, but really got going in 2014, was substantially also a reaction to China’s announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative through Xi Jinping’s speech in Kazakhstan? The preparations for the coup in Ukraine originated much earlier, but the fuse was lit at that time. Can you comment?”

Zepp-LaRouche: The time is a coincidence, but I think that the definition of Russia and China as enemies was about the period when that became much more into focus. I was watching the Belt and Road development after Xi Jinping announced it, and was actually quite surprised that for about four years, the Western media, the Western think tanks and politicians almost ignored the Belt and Road Initiative despite the fact that it was clear at that time that it would become the greatest infrastructure project in history ever. I think it was just a real surprise, and an underestimate of what it would become. I’m not quite sure, maybe some other people have some other insights, but I think it was not exactly a reaction to that.

The Battlefield of Public Opinion

Speed: This question is from Argentina: “What is the situation of Ukrainian public opinion? Is there any organized resistance by the more progressive sectors of society to the deliberate driving of the country into this dramatic situation?”

Nielsen: As Natalia Vitrenko mentioned, of course it’s well known here that the government in Ukraine shut down the Russian television channels and they put [opposition leader] Viktor Medvedchuk under arrest and things like that. It’s very far from a democracy in Ukraine. So, of course, I know, like Natalia Vitrenko, there are also some other groups working against it, but it’s very difficult because I would not call it a fascist regime, to put it very strongly, but I think it’s a very authoritarian one. It’s certainly not a democracy, and there’s no real free speech. Actually, you can be punished just if you are in favor of the Minsk II Accords, and you can be punished if you say about Stepan Bandera that he is not a hero and things like that.

Under the surface, there is widespread anger against the government, and they’re certainly not satisfied. I have talked with several Ukrainians working in Denmark and Poland and other countries. They are very dissatisfied, they’re very frustrated, because Ukraine is an extremely poor country, and Ukraine should be, according to the level of education, and the fact that it’s a black earth area. They have all the premises for becoming a flourishing and rich country, but it is not at all. Of course there are really dissatisfied people everywhere in Ukraine.

Zepp-LaRouche: There was recently a survey [in Ukraine] whereby a lot of people had turned into an anti-Russian view, which is surprising, because at the time the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact disintegrated, the mood was completely different. The overwhelming majority of the population was for the formation of a new entity to be created with Russia. But look at the incredible bombardment of propaganda which went into the situation. Victoria Nuland admitted in 2013-4 that the State Department alone had spent $5 billion on NGOs [in Ukraine]. What did these NGOs say? They said, join the EU; join NATO. Then you will have immediately a living standard like Germany; you will have lots of time for vacation like in France.

A lot of ordinary people who went into the Maidan at the end of 2013, the beginning of 2014 in the preparatory period of the coup, were simple people who just hoped for a better life. The poverty was, and unfortunately is, tremendously big. These people were deluded, and now after Yushchenko became President, he started this very conscious anti-Russian propaganda.

So, I think there was an incredible social engineering of the population in Ukraine, and that’s why the sentiment has shifted. Groups like the Progressive Socialist Party of Natalia Vitrenko are fighting an heroic fight despite an incredibly difficult situation. But I think that the Nazi element is an integral part. Dmytro Yarosh, who was the head of the Right Sector, is now a military advisor. And the role of the British should not be underestimated. The former general, Gen. (ret.) Sir Gordon Messenger, is now also an advisor to the military, advising the Ukrainian Army on military reforms and things like that.

So, there is a lot of stirring the pot, and the victim of all of that is the Ukrainian population.

Schlanger: Natalia Vitrenko, when she ran for President, got 11% of the vote, and it’s clear that what’s happened, what Helga just described is key. But I put the burden for this on the West, the western media which created the myth of the “democratic revolution” in Ukraine, and the idea that the Ukrainian population was anti-Russian. In fact, it was a coup that was orchestrated according to a book on color revolution, which is the regime-change model that the British developed and the Americans worked on in Ukraine.

There has been a complete black-out in the Western media of the important role of the neo-Nazi militia in the Maidan coup in February 2014. There’s still today the possibility to assassinate Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were he to break with this policy.

Our job is to make sure that people in the West know that we’re dealing with an example of the most hideous form of what happened after the end of World War II with the Dulles brothers and others, working with Nazi organizations to impose anti-Russian policies.

Ramay: When we talk here in Pakistan with some of our friends, one of the things we are talking here, is that the Americans and their allies, are trying to create chaos in Afghanistan, so, on one border of China. On the other side, they are trying to create chaos in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, on the other side of China and the corridors.

Actually, we have to look at this also from the perspective why they think they cannot compete with China; they cannot isolate China. So, the best available chances are in creating chaos around China, or around the BRI corridors. Why do they think they cannot isolate China? Because if you compare Russia with China, at that time, Russia was not that much connected in the global system. China is highly, highly interconnected in that system, so it will be very difficult to disengage the world from China. So, they are trying to create chaos. That is another perspective.

Speed: The next question is from Adam: “How can we overcome the Western mainstream media, which is influencing American and European public opinion to have a very negative view, both of Russia and Vladimir Putin, to the point of war? What can we do?”

Zepp-LaRouche: In the U.S., you’re really living in occupied territory, controlled by what Ray McGovern calls the MICIMATT—the military-industrial, congressional, intelligence, media, academia, think tank complex. It’s not very different in Europe. For example, in Germany, NATO forces in all these institutions, the British head of an institution called Integrity Initiative, which has the idea that in all these institutions—parliament, media, think tanks—what they would call “cluster agents” in all these institutions—parliaments, media, think tanks. In what may appear to be an otherwise totally normal newspaper, one or two or three journalists are inserted whose job is to make sure that the pro-NATO line is being kept at all costs. After a while, when you watch TV, you can identify these cluster agents, because they always immediately come out with the official line.

Now, once you recognize that that is the problem, and that means that the so-called “democracy” of the Western liberal system is maybe not so democratic at all, then you are left only with the choice to develop what they call in German “civil courage”: Zivilcourage. That really needs some courage, because most people, when they realize that the official opinion is in such a way, they don’t stick their neck out, they don’t want to be overheard saying something different, they want to go along to get along. And that is how democracy turns into a dictatorship.

But if people basically say, “I have to fight for the truth,” and you speak out, and you speak for your opinion, then you can change it, and you can help to change the environment.

From my perspective, and I think I know both Russia and China, maybe a little bit more than the average person—I’m not calling myself an expert, but I have enough experience to have my own judgment about the character of the people, about the policies of the leadership, their general intention; and I can assure you, that from my perspective, neither Russia nor China is anything like what they’re being characterized in the press! As a matter of fact, it’s almost like the Western media, have a convex spectacle—or maybe I’m mixing it up with concave—in any case, they’re saying everything about Russia and China that they themselves are doing!

It’s almost a mirror image, and once you take that into account, then all the beautiful virtues which are attributed to the West are actually, really represented for the most part, by Russia and China. China, in particular, has done an enormous amount for human rights, by lifting 850 million people out of poverty, by reaching out to the developing countries, by offering them for the first time ever to overcome poverty and underdevelopment. So I think it’s really upside down, and you have to fight for the truth; use your friends and relatives and acquaintances to set the record straight. And join us! Because if you cannot do it on your own, you can be extremely efficient when you join an organization which is fighting for the truth: And that is the one thing I claim for the Schiller Institute.

Schlanger: Helga said pretty much what I wanted to say, except I’ll add one point: The media in the United States have no credibility and their ratings are collapsing! There’s a vacuum being created because of that, and our job is to use the ironies that demonstrate not just that it’s fraudulent, but for example, when they say “the West is democratic and China and Russia are authoritarian.” What about the case of Julian Assange? What about the case of Lyndon LaRouche? Those treatments show that this is not a democracy in the West. When you attack Russia for censoring, what about the social media censorship in the United States?

So all the objective circumstances are there, including the loss of credibility for the media. What’s not there is what Helga was just talking about—the courage to go out and take on the passivity, or the indifference to the effects of policies that are being carried out in the name of Americans. We have to get under people’s skin on that.

I hear so often from people who say, “They’re too powerful, they’re in control completely.” They’re not in control! The financial system is set to blow! We’re on the verge of World War III, because the geniuses running the unipolar world have no policy except provocation and war! Their powers are ebbing! It’s a moment in time when courage is the biggest lack on our side, and people should just get off their rear ends and get out and do something! And joining us is the best way to start.

Speed: Now, we’re going to bring up Bill Binney, who was the former Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis and Reporting Section of the National Security Agency, where he worked for 30 years, until he resigned after the catastrophic intelligence failure of 9/11. Binney was once asked by a Danish journalist who was covering a story about how their defense intelligence had been giving massive amounts of raw material to the NSA: “This is exactly the problem that I saw. That NSA, CIA, FBI and Bush— started with Bush, Cheney, Hayden, and former CIA chief George Tennant. They set the process up in 2001 and then they extended it to various other countries in the world, including the Five Eyes—U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.”

So he is a person who when he speaks about things involving the topic that just got raised to us, probably knows what he’s talking about.

War Justifies a Military Budget

Bill Binney: I’m glad to be with you. To me, I see this entire issue as promoted, or starting with two fundamental issues: One is the NATO/U.S. and other military alliances, and the need to justify, in the United States, an $800 billion a year budget for the military-industrial, MICIMATT complex, as Ray McGovern calls it. So they have a very large budget here to justify, and so does NATO; they have their whole military deployed around the world, and so they have to justify this. Now, in order to do that, they have to have some potential enemy.

Well, the only enemy that has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world—has more than we do, really—is Russia. And so, that’s the primary one, and that’s based on the old Soviet Union, the hatred and fear of the Soviet Union that has evolved over decades since before World War II. So that’s a prime candidate to be our potential enemy.

When they first started talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO I was here in the United States saying, “Well, if you’re going to do that with Ukraine, why don’t you also ask Russia into NATO? That way we’re all part of the same thing.” But the objective was to have a potential enemy, so they could justify the huge budgets.

So that’s one of the main reasons that’s behind it: It’s all this money, military-industrial intelligence complex. It’s like a secret government, so to speak.

The second major reason that I see is a historical one. If you look back through history, all regimes, when they’re in trouble internally in their own countries, they tend to look outside to say, “There’s a threat out there.” They have this “threat”—to get people—I call it the “Wizard of Oz” game: “Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain. Look over there!” So the whole idea is to focus attention away from what’s happening internally, in the United States, away to what’s happening in Ukraine, so that people get more concerned about that.

Now, Biden has said he doesn’t want to get into a shooting war with Russia, and I know he doesn’t, because what he wants to do, is divert attention away from all the major problems his regime has here in the United States. And they are major—not just things on the southern border, or crime, or the economy (especially!), and the supply chain, all of that, all these major problems internally in the United States, that in one year have been problems. Before that, they weren’t; now they are. Those are going to be really big for the upcoming election in November, and so they have to divert attention away from that, so that people before they vote, won’t be paying attention to the real problems.

Well, they’re going to have a hard time doing that, because the economy is really hitting them hard. But their idea is to divert attention away to this external threat, so they can get past this upcoming election and still stay in power.

And so, my thought is the regime here in the U.S. is going to keep this problem going to at least November of this year. And they’re not going to get into a shooting war.

The Failure of France as a Mediator

Speed: We have a question for Colonel Corvez. Can Colonel Corvez speak about the role that the French and President Macron are taking, to try to defuse the situation in Ukraine?

Corvez: French President Macron went to Moscow to meet President Putin, but before the meeting, Putin knew that he was receiving a President who was part of NATO, and he was actually the missi dominici of President Biden of the United States. It's behind him, President Biden, that the deep state is ruling the United States.

And then, as he [Macron] is, for six months, the President of the European Union, he thought he could do something to try to solve this crisis. But he cannot solve the crisis discussing with President Putin, if he is still a premium member of NATO, because he has been received by President Putin as a President who is a representative of NATO and of the United States. That’s why he was not in a position to be effective in his mediation.

That’s the difference between him and the way President Putin received three days later, President Bolsonaro from Brazil. You can see from the beginning of the arrival, the difference between the arrival of President Macron and President Bolsonaro. Everything was different, because President Putin was thinking, receiving the President of Brazil as an independent President, and not a missi dominici of the United States policy. But when he was receiving President Macron, he was receiving a representative of the United States policy.

That’s why we in France, many people in France, are working to say that we have to come back to our sovereignty and our independence, to be a country which will be able to make a bridge between Russia and Western Europe. That’s the only way to get a peace solution in this crisis.

This crisis is the reverse of Cuba, between Khrushchev and Kennedy in 1962. It’s exactly the opposite position, because Kennedy said to Khrushchev: I cannot accept your nuclear warheads so close to my border, and I shall go to war, nuclear war with you if you don’t take out your missiles. President Putin asked the same thing to NATO: You have your warheads on our border. This is not acceptable, and this cannot go on like this, if we want to have a world with peaceful relations between the different countries.

Then to come back to the mission of President Macron to Moscow: Maybe it was a good idea to go there, and try to find a solution, but it was not possible to find a solution with Russia, when you come to say, “I am in the camp of, on the side of the United States.” He would have had to offer a new position, saying, “We understand your requirement, we understand that you need security for your country, and we are going to discuss with you what we can do.”

Ukraine is a poor country which is the ground for the dispute between the Western bloc and Russia. But instead of the many declarations of President Putin and the government of Russia, saying that we are not going to invade Ukraine, the propaganda said the contrary all the time, because they don’t want to come to the solution to take out their warheads near Russia. The only solution, as a nuclear war is not possible.

Until now, the United States has imposed their views on many countries in the world, starting with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and others, because these countries have no nuclear warheads to say, “I don’t agree with you.” But look at North Korea: This small country, now they have a nuclear warhead, have said to the United States, “You cannot attack us, because if you attack us, you will receive our nuclear warheads.”

We have to understand that the United States cannot wage a war against Russia, because it would be the apocalypse, the end of the world. They have to use other countries to try to reach their objective, and Ukraine is the poor country that since 2014, and even before, has been used by United States policy to threaten Russia. When Macron went to see Putin in Moscow, the result was clear that he would not come with a solution because it was impossible to have a solution when you stay in a camp, and don’t accept the requirements of the other side.

MICIMATT

Speed: We have a question for Harley: “In your keynote, you summarized the circumstances we are currently facing today in Ukraine. Yesterday, it was reported that over 700,000 civilians from the Donbas region were evacuated by Russia. While the mainstream media is presenting this as a ‘false flag,’ it is clear that they are attempting to provoke a conflict in the region to make it appear that Russia is conducting a full-on invasion of Ukraine. But your approach is unique, in the fact that you mention the ongoing economic crisis in Ukraine, and the crisis in the trans-Atlantic financial system generally. Why is this a critical thing to understand in respect to the strategic crisis?”

Schlanger: Let me go back to something we’ve discussed a little bit, this idea of MICIMATT, the military-industrial, congressional, intelligence, media, academia, think tank, approach: What we’re really talking about with that, is a conglomerate, or a blob, of corporate cartels, corporations that are in debt, that have been trading financial instruments of no underlying value, back and forth, and getting funds from the Federal Reserve or other central banks to back them up, so they can keep these financial assets on their books at face value.

This has collapsed! It’s gone! Since September 2019, trillions of dollars have been expended in overnight loans that then turned into indefinite loans, to keep the system afloat.

One of the interesting aspects of Ukraine is that after the Maidan revolution, or coup, what happened? The new government brought in the International Monetary Fund that imposed a “shock therapy” policy on Ukraine, which loaded up debt on the country, at the same point that it has lost much of its industrial capability, a large part of which is in eastern Ukraine [the Donbas]. Ukraine needs $4-$5 billion to avoid a default. That’s not a lot, given that there’re trillions of dollars outstanding, but it reflects the fundamental weakness of the trans-Atlantic financial system, and this is the corporate conglomerates that fund the academics, the media, the think tanks, that churn out the narratives that we get shoved down our throats every night, when we hear from the Blinkens, the Jake Sullivans, the MSNBC, NBC, CNN, media.

It’s not “objective journalism.” It’s an intent to sustain a narrative which keeps people helpless in the face of a crisis, where they’re trying to move to a whole new system. They don’t want a security guarantee for Russia: They want the continued confrontation, partly because of what Bill Binney said, because they’re trying to justify a huge defense budget; but also because they’re trying to justify keeping a bankrupt system afloat.

What Lyndon LaRouche said has to be done, is that the system has to be put through complete bankruptcy reorganization. Many of these zombie corporations, that don’t make enough money to pay the interest on their debt, should either be shut down, with the cancellation of that debt; or, should be reorganized, so that they can eat some of their losses, have the speculators eat the losses, but then ensure that there’s credit for physical production. That can only occur, if this MICIMATT is defeated.

The reason that I focus so much, and we at the Schiller Institute focus so much on the financial side of things, is that you can’t separate the strategic policy from this financial morass that they’re in. It’s not that if Ukraine defaults, that blows out the system—virtually any default could blow out the system. And if they try to prevent defaults by pumping in more money, they’re just increasing the inflation.

They’re at an end! They would prefer to use a confrontation as the basis for forcing through these changes that they want, toward a Great Reset, than to accept the idea that they have to go through bankruptcy reorganization.

Bankruptcy reorganization—LaRouche’s Four Laws—should be the program that all patriots of all nations support, because those are coherent with the idea of sovereign nation-states acting for the common good.

Speed: We have with us now Kirk Wiebe, a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and a former senior analyst with the National Security Agency. He’s also a partner in the prevention of crimes of the intelligence community with Bill Binney.’’

The Corruption of Money

Kirk Wiebe: Good afternoon, good evening, to the panel members and the audience, and thank you to the Schiller Institute for hosting this wonderful discussion: How timely it is!

As I’m listening to all of you comment, and respond to the questions, I have been taking notes, because the discussion has been absolutely relevant and spot-on. And I guess, if I could sum up what I’m hearing, we are in an environment of conflict versus cooperation. And it’s because of the reasons that Harley and Bill Binney mentioned: Money. We are corrupt! The key players in this whole discussion—not within the Schiller Institute!—but the key global players are largely corrupt! And money is the driver behind the financial system, behind the corporations that are not allowed to fail, behind the rigid stance of Biden’s administration on NATO.

We need to create conflict, so that money can be spent, and those in the elite, the ruling elite, can get a paycheck. The Colonel, Mr. Jatras, and again, Harley, have been spot-on. We no longer need NATO! It’s absolutely clear! And the Colonel brought up the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis: We would not allow a Soviet interest so close to our border. Well, my goodness! Should it be surprising that Mr. Putin does not want any more influence up against his border? It’s a perfectly understandable situation from the standpoint of the Russians, and until the U.S. and the West start conducting business in a spirit of cooperation, and getting away from this money-making notion that we have to have conflict, we cannot make forward progress.

And imagine the effect that has on The LaRouche Organization’s, Helga’s vision, for assisting the poor countries of the world? We are wasting huge sums of money on corruption, and I include in that a false premise that we must maintain NATO, because of a Russian threat.

And that’s where I see things right now. Thank you!

Pressure on Pakistan

Ramay: I can also contribute one or two examples from Pakistan. Pakistan was pressured on economic terms, to leave the BRI, but Pakistan sustained the pressure. [inaudible] So the first idea they point to, punish Pakistan economically; then they can come forward with other things.

Secondly, money is so important, but they also want to, you can say, create hindrance in other countries, if they’re moving to a development ladder. For example, what is happening in Afghanistan. I think in Afghanistan, the same attention is also required, because the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, they have a spillover effect on other regional countries. But that is happening right now. And Mr. Biden—God forbid, and God save this world—has taken over half the money of the Afghan people whose foreign reserve account had been frozen in the Federal Reserve.

So we also need the same attention on Afghanistan. Because that is happening right now: We need to avoid the human crisis in Afghanistan. Thank you.

The Fight for Sovereignty

Speed: Next is a question from Anastasia: “Regarding what Binney had brought up, I realize that the Ukraine crisis is a false flag operation, a made-up story, but it seems to me that it’s more an issue to destabilize Russia and China, rather than only an American coverup. The problem I see is that if people don’t take the buildup to war seriously, that we will end up in one. What are your thoughts?”

And from Venezuela: “I think Lyndon LaRouche said many times that the present crisis is the result of people having bad ideas, common ideas that reflect a culture of hedonism, a wrong concept of mankind…. In respect to the present strategic crisis, I had a discussion with a friend on Nord Stream 2. He said that it is ‘normal’ to expect that Ukraine would try to block the Nord Stream 2, in order to not get negatively affected by the project. What kind of thinking does that reflect? Is this the kind of thinking that Lyndon LaRouche was referring to earlier, how ideas shape the present crisis?

“And, do you think it’s possible to have a new international security architecture that ensures security and stability and the development for everyone, if this kind of thinking remains in the international arena?”

Zepp-LaRouche: I think the Ukrainians, naturally, would like to have all the revenues from any energy transported from Russia into Western Europe for themselves, but I think they’re also as much manipulated.

Nord Stream 2, which affects not only Germany, but altogether 12 European countries, has become a synonym for sovereignty. All the people who are yelling and screaming, “Nord Stream 2 must be closed down!” are in the NATO faction, and [are not] the people who have the guts to say, as Chancellor Scholz did in the beginning—now he’s wavering a little bit—that Nord Stream 2 is a perfectly private business, and therefore should not be subject to these state-related sanctions.

It’s a question of sovereignty, and for me, this question of fighting for sovereignty is really key. If leaderships of countries accept being deprived of their sovereignty, then they have absolutely no say! And the people then say, “Oh, there’s nothing one can do.” That is a phrase which is the most devastating sentence. As I have said in the past, people should be put in a dungeon for ten years for saying “There’s nothing I can do about it.” If that would make the rounds, people would stop saying that, because that is what turns people into underlings.

Nord Stream 2 is really whether the Europeans fight for their sovereignty or are they underlings and slaves.

Transition from a Unipolar to a Multipolar World

Speed: This is a question from Haiti: “What role has the United States played in the unipolar world, and how would it participate in a multipolar order? How can we get the United States to accept that sort of idea?”

A similar question has come in from Chad: “What are the strategies to advance to redefine a multipolar world?”

Ramay: I think the best available solution is where the system can offer something to the greed of the corporate. And that is not possible, because the new economic system we are talking about is mostly about the society-base, where everybody can get some benefit, not the few elite. So, until/unless, the role of the elite corporate sector is eliminated, or you can say, minimized, there’s a chance of a conflict.

Wiebe: What brings nations together, more than anything else—and this has been true, historically—has been economics. We must cultivate economic vigor. We talk about a multipolar world—well, what are we saying? We’re talking about a world where the majority, the huge majority, and I mean 90-plus percentile parts of the world, can participate! That’s all we’re talking about! And the more we focus on the economics and the strategies, and the processes that engender healthy, strong, economic exchanges among and across nations, the sooner we will achieve a legitimate, justifiable balance in a multipolar world. At least, I think so.

Nielsen: Empires do not last very long. In history, there’s been many empires, but they also broke up, all of them, and the basic question is, how do they end up? Some will do it peacefully: I’m happy to live in a country, Denmark, we used to be an empire, but we’re not anymore. I think it’s a good thing that the Soviet Union broke up. When the British and French empires [fell], it was quite difficult: there were a lot of wars. It’s a very basic question, how will the United States, how will this empire dissolve? Hopefully, it will be peaceful, but I’m not quite sure it will be.

I think it’s a very, very basic question. To uphold an empire, required the use of more and more money. So, I think it’s a very, very crucial question: how the Americans will [re]act to the fact that they will be just a kind of nation in the future, in a multipolar world. The multipolar world is coming, whether the Americans will like it or not.

Mineral Wealth and Military Attraction

Speed: We have another person who has a brief remark. This is Maj. Gen. Carroll Childers, 44 years in the United States Army National Guard, retired in 1999.

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Carroll Childers: Good morning! I’m sitting off on the side listening, and enjoying the discussion quite a lot. Last night, I had by chance been reading a list that a friend of mine had sent me, which was all about all the great mineral wealth that Ukraine has. And it just occurred to me that, well, that’s the kind of reason people look for to go to war. One of the speakers here today mentioned the importance of economics to the world, and how the world gets along based on the economic exchanges that they’re able to work out. And then, you look at, well, there’s a count of minerals in the ground in some countries, and then there’s the count of how much military power that certain countries have.

Certainly we don’t want to go to a nuclear war situation, even over vast mineral quantities that might be available as a result of the outcome of the war. I know the panel of people that’s put together for these meetings, a lot of them have a lot of information about the nuclear EMP (nuclear electromagnetic pulse) weapon, and what it can do to the world, or to a targetted area. It only takes one of those to cause a great deal of economic distress.

And so, it’s not just a matter of counting rounds—how many has Russia got versus how many have we got? Well, we believe they have a much greater count than we have, but it only takes one or two of the EMP type rounds, and gosh! I’ve been retired so long, and I don’t have a clearance, and I’m not even sure what other kinds of capabilities the Russians have in their nuclear arsenal. But it certainly is a subject that we need to have control of, and not allow ourselves to get into a nuclear exchange with Russia.

The current administration gives me great anguish. When I see what they are doing, I wonder: “Why are they doing these crazy things? Are they doing it because they’ve actually given up?” That’s a couple of my thoughts I’d like to share with you. Thank you, very much.

‘Global Lightning 22’

Zepp-LaRouche: Actually, I’m glad you’re bringing this up, because as you know, the title of this conference is “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock.” That is the estimate published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. And they renewed this judgment on Jan. 20, this year.

Look at the maneuver, “Global Lightning 22,” which started actually in the last days of January and went into the beginning of February. The scenario of this maneuver is a protracted nuclear war. It was all top secret. It was revealed by two journalists and [nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists] Hans Kristensen, commenting about it in Newsweek, naturally only about those things which could be known, which is not a lot.

What is known is that it is based on the idea that you can have a protracted nuclear war, mixed with conventional, mixed with neutron bombs, with cyber war, with attacks from space, and various components. The idea is that one or the other side could make a nuclear attack; the other side absorbs that nuclear attack, then retaliates, the other side absorbs, and so the combat is supposed to go on back and forth. The idea is that one side is then winning a limited nuclear war.

This is absolutely crazy! I have read many of the articles published on the difference between conventional and nuclear war. Ted Postol, for example, makes the argument that there is a fundamental difference between the two: that in a conventional war, you can stop at a certain point, and basically halt. But he argues that it’s the very nature of nuclear war that once you start using one nuclear weapon, that all of them will be used. So, once you start such a thing, you are looking potentially at the annihilation of the human species. And even the idea to have a rehearsal about that seems to be completely insane, and there’s no discussion about it, or almost no discussion about it. If anybody among the panelists would have something to say about it I would be very appreciative.

Closing Remarks

Speed: If the panelists respond to Helga, go ahead; otherwise we want to wind up with your summary remarks.

Nielsen: I’d very much like to thank the Schiller Institute for giving me this opportunity of taking part in this very, very interesting conference. I think it’s been of extreme interest to hear from various parts of the world. It’s convinced me even more that we are very close to what might be doomsday. So, I think it’s very, very important, and I’m very glad. I don’t think I can add something new to the debate, apart from the fact that it’s very, very important that we collect our resources to impose a new, multipolar world order. Again, thank you very, very much for a very interesting conference.

Corvez: That the remark of Helga Zepp-LaRouche was very accurate and very important: Nuclear war is impossible between nations, because it’s the end of the world. Some experts, especially in America, in the Pentagon, have tried some years before, to say, “OK, we can use just a small nuclear warhead, just to get some success somewhere. But we won’t start a global nuclear war.” But, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche said, this is impossible. Nuclear is a global arm[ament], and this is a very important fact. In the history of humanity, it’s the first time that men have invented, have created a new weapon which is not possible to use, when two nations—at least two, or more—have nuclear warheads.

This is something, a distraction, the inadvertent act, is something very important: It means that the United States can no more impose its will on any country which has also a nuclear weapon. That’s why the United States is trying to use proxies to get its targets; the main purpose of the United States, for the moment, is to try to preserve its domination of the world, especially the economic world.

Somebody said something very clever before: That a multipolar world is an economic world, where nations exchange in the interest of each other, in the interest of all the nations. And such an economic world should be established as soon as possible.

But for the moment, the United States has dominated all the world with the dollar. They are able to have put sanctions on different nations, different persons, different organizations in the world, because they use dollars in their transactions, which were not approved by Washington.

The war in Ukraine, at this moment, is also a war to preserve the supremacy of the dollar in all economic transactions. But now, Russia, China and other countries are starting to say, “We can use our own currency, or create a new system of economic exchange among us.” And this is also the reason for the strength and pressure that the United States puts on the Ukrainian crisis, is to preserve, to sustain the supremacy of the dollar, and the supremacy of the global economic finance, which is based in Wall Street and the City of London.

Ramay: Thank you to the Schiller Institute and Miss Helga, especially, for her invitation. I just want to put forward what I’m thinking: Number 1: Ukraine is not the only crisis which needs to be tackled. I think U.S.A. and its allies are also pushing India to go for a conflict with China. If you look at what is happening on the border of India and China. And they’re engaging India in the Quad, 2+2, and so many other initiatives to push them.

Their agenda is very clear. It’s not about Ukraine, it’s to create some conflict to make a lot of money, as some on the panel were talking about. So we have to address this mentality.

Second, their arrogance, arrogance of the U.S.A. elite class; they say they’re an elite class. I can give you one example: U.S. was asking Pakistan to give them assistance to evacuate from Afghanistan, but Mr. Biden refused to talk with the Prime Minister of Pakistan. So that is their arrogance.

So, economics, arrogance, and self-interest, these are things which make any real contribution difficult. I think the real contribution would be to defy these conditions, and build our own campaign. Definitely the Western media have a major influence in the world, but the social media can also have some influence. Thank you.

Schlanger: I was reflecting on a discussion I had with Helga the other day, when she said, “In times like this, we’re living caught between fear and hope.” While we must never succumb to fear, it is legitimate to be fearful of the consequences of the actions of the West in pushing for this war confrontation with Russia.

But it can also serve as a wake-up call, as an impetus to do something. And so, we must not be afraid to talk to people about the actual danger that exists there.

But hope is the other part of this. There’s a poem by Friedrich Schiller called Hope (Hoffnung), which has a line in it which always stirs something within me, “We are born for that which is better.” The recognition of the potential of other human beings, with reflecting back through history, the struggles that people went through, to create a world where we can have 7.5 billion people, where we have beautiful works of art, and music, and scientific advances. And what has driven that, is a love of mankind, and hope for the future.

Even as we reflect on the real dangers of war, and act against it, the best weapon we have is to give people hope, based on that sense of the common interests of all mankind.

Zepp-LaRouche: Even if this is not the main subject of this panel, for me, the credibility of the so-called Western liberal system, which already was not exactly the highest mark because of what happened to my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, who was treated by a justice system, with a complete absence of any justice; and now something different but similar is happening with Julian Assange. So, there are these credibility questions.

But what really gets to me, as the final test, is what happens to Afghanistan. Here you have the biggest humanitarian crisis on the planet, where according to the World Food Program, 25 million people are in danger of starvation; 1 million children under the age of five, are in a condition where, if they would be in Germany, they would be admitted to intensive care unit, according to the German UNICEF representative. But there are no intensive care units in Afghanistan, so the likelihood that these children will die is unfortunately extremely great.

And the West knows it!

How much would be needed to stop that? According to the UN, a meager $5 billion would be necessary. What is $5 billion compared to a military budget of $800 billion per year? Or to the billions of these multi-billionaires with their big yachts. David Beasley from the World Food Program has actually appealed to Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, and these people that they should just give a tiny percent of their fortune, and the whole crisis in Afghanistan could be solved.

For me, the West, knowing what is going on, and the relatively very little effort it would take to remedy and save 25 million people—and even more, because 98% of the Afghan population is going hungry and not getting enough food, is a moral test. The longer they allow this humanitarian crisis to go on, the less prestige they have in my view, and in the eyes of the world, I’m sure.