CEC Australia

Helga Zepp-LaRouche - Keynote Address

Why the universe needs us to implement Glass-Steagal

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Keynote to CEC Australia 25th Anniversary Conference, May 18, 2013

CRAIG ISHERWOOD: Helga, you're loud and clear. So, welcome to Australia via cyperspace. And just by way of introduction, Helga is the chairwoman of the international Schiller Institute; and just recently a number of us had the privilege of going to Germany and participating in the last of a series of conferences.

So Helga has made some time to address our conference and update us on the extremely important breaking developments that are happening in the world today. The main theme of our conference, of course, is the work of Nikolaus of Cusa, as you've seen from the written material that we've sent out to everyone, and Helga is a scholar in Nikolaus of Cusa, someone who's brought Nikolaus of Cusa to life, literally, throughout the world in the last many, many years.

So without any further introduction, I'd like to welcome Helga to our conference. And after you've give your address, we've invited people to come forward and ask as many question as they can. So, welcome to Australia. [applause]

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I'm obviously very happy to greet you for your 25th anniversary national conference, especially naturally on a day like today: Because, as you know we had the extremely happy occasion that a major step towards saving civilisation from the brink of the abyss was taken yesterday [May 16th], when Sen. Tom Harkins introduced into the United States Senate the Glass-Steagall Act, and exactly in the tradition of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Now, the same bill, almost word by word had previously been introduced in the Congress, the so-called Kaptur-Jones bill, which by now has 62 cosponsors. Now, the fact that now the Senate has almost the same exact bill, means that the global fight for Glass-Steagall has really gotten into a winning proposition. Now, the same day, yesterday, Illinois was the 20th state of the 50 states of the United States, which introduced the resolution for Glass-Steagall urging their Congressional delegation to support Glass-Steagall. Now, also yesterday, the Regional Council of Tuscany, the region in Italy, introduced a similar resolution—which makes me also very happy, because it's a sign that Europe, despite all of its troubles, is not dead, but is alive and fighting.

And the fact that there was this identical bill in both houses of the U.S. Congress means that this is now a very serious proposition, because in the United States, it's generally understood that if you have a bill in both houses, then it's not just "a bill," but it is a serious proposal to actually be voted on and enacted on.

Now, obviously, this does not yet mean that we have won the fight, but it means the war can be won! I mean, it's a completely different universe from the day before yesterday and yesterday, and I can say very, very proudly, that the absolutely lion's share for this policy to come that far, is going to our international movement. Because the name "Glass-Steagall," for example, two or three years ago in Europe was completely unknown, the notion of separation of the banks was equally unknown, and now, very serious forces around the globe, in Europe, in the United States, in Asia, and obviously also in Australia, are really fighting very hard to get Glass-Steagall implemented.

Now, I can report to you from those who did the work in the Congress and the state legislatures, that there is right now a completely changed, much more serious mood among those who are voting for it, or are giving their name to it, because they know this is not just banking reform, curbing high-risk speculation, but this is the first step to the absolutely necessary going back to the American System of economy, in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton. Obviously, American System of economy means not just credit system, it means the principles of the American Constitution, the absolute sacredness of national sovereignty, it means the idea of the common good, not only for this generation but for generations to come, are being upheld again.

Now, this is a major, major step in the direction for the survival of civilisation, because most of you know that my husband, Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, has said very many times in the recent years, that without Glass-Steagall there is absolutely no chance that mankind is able to escape the danger of its extinction. This breakthrough in the U.S. Senate, is only the first moment, but it comes not one moment too early, because the world right now is hanging on the edge of a total blowout of the global financial system, which immediately would mean a plunge into global chaos and a dark age. And absolutely related to this pending blowout of the financial system, we are still, as we are talking here to each other, on the verge of thermonuclear war.

Now, the present global financial crisis obviously didn't start yesterday, but it is the end result of the paradigm shift which occurred 40 to 50 years ago, the shift away from production, away from science and technology, towards fast money, "money makes money" on the markets, to the idea of high-risk speculation. But this present paradigm-shift was obviously escalated with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999.

So the present condition of the world, is therefore the result of the efforts of the British Empire to undermine the idea of national sovereignty, the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and so forth. And when I say "British Empire," I do not only mean the nominal British influence through the Commonwealth, which you in Australia are obviously extremely, painfully aware of, but I mean that power of globalisation which has emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The conglomerate of independent, or not so independent central banks, investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, private equity funds, locusts of all kinds, and basically the idea of the world empire which was really created after the collapse of the Soviet Union, by Margaret Thatcher and Bush Sr., whereby they had the idea to create an Anglo-American empire based on the Anglo-American special relationship, and have proceeded ever since, to eliminate any obstacle to this empire.

And the means by which they proceeded were rather nasty: They had the idea of "regime change" against any country which would not submit by free will; they were pursuing the so-called "coloured revolutions" against many countries of the former Comecon [Soviet-allied Council for Mutual Economic Assistance] and Soviet bloc; they were working, as it now is coming out in tremendous scandals, with terrorist rebels in order to overthrow legitimate governments around the world, and they are finally targeting those two countries which naturally have to be absorbed, if the empire is to be completed, and that is, Russia and China, and they are doing so at the risk of a thermonuclear war.

Now, the financial side, which went along with this building of the empire, was on the one side, based on the greed for money and power, of a significant minority of the oligarchy. But there were two factors involved: One is, naturally, a depraved financial oligarchy, which has no other interest than the maximisation of their profit at the expense, litreally, of the happiness of billions of people, at the lives of many millions of people already. But there is this second factor, and that is, an oligarchy centred on the British Monarchy, which indeed wants to reduce the world population from 7 to 1 billion people. And that has been explicitly stated by such creatures as Prince Philip.

Now, we are on the edge of a blowout of this system, and that makes the present situation so extremely dangerous. The CEO of the largest asset-management firm in the world PIMCO, Bill Gross, basically said recently that the entire world financial system is nothing but a gigantic Ponzi scheme, a chain-letter which eventually will blow up. And this chain-letter is about to disintegrate in a super-nova, I mean, this phenomenon when stars die. And a German economic newsletter commented on this PIMCO statement, by saying that the aggressive light which goes along with the super-nova when a star dies, is at the point of its extinction, is practically the same as the irrational exuberance which you can see in the stock markets right now, where all the bourses are going up wildly to record highs, all based on hot air and virtual money. And what Bill Gross then basically said, that after the super-nova explosion occurs, after that... there is nothing.

Now, it happens to be that this nothing, in the real world means a lot of dead people, it means billions of people schedule to die.

Now, if you look at the trans-Atlantic region, it's hopelessly bankrupt. The Eurozone is at a point of disintegration and total crisis, and right now, you have the end phase of something which happened after ‘89 into ’92, namely that the euro, this completely artificial currency, which is absolutely not based on an optimal currency zone, but which unites countries which are completely different—you have highly industrialized countries like Germany, you have agrarian states, like Greece or Portugal, and they could never work. So the euro, from the beginning was not intended to make Europe strong, in the face of the emerging powers of the BRIC, for example; but it was from the beginning, meant to destroy Europe on behalf of the British Empire.

Now, the euro was imposed, supposedly, as the price for German unification. And the EU from that moment on, the latest became what the British Empire wanted, namely the regional European expression of the British Empire, and that was stated explicitly in one article, some years ago, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Daily Telegraph, who basically admitted that the Brussels policy is the perfect carrying out of what London's policy is, and that advisor of [EU foreign policy representative] Lady Ashton, Robert Cooper, said shamelessly that the European Union is the largest imperial extension in history.

Now, this was not meant to become a strong continent, but it was meant to return Europe to a feudal condition. Now, Jacques Attali, the advisor of [the late French President] Mitterrand, who was one of the culprits in the creation of the euro, basically admitted that the euro was created deliberately with a birth defect; that it was clear that a monetary union would not be possible without a political union, and that sooner or later, it would come to an existential crisis of the euro, and then that crisis could be used to enforce the political union. And that is exactly the point where we are at now.

The euro and the EU are at the point of collapse, and the people of Europe and the institutions are threatened with a gun to their head: Either you accept a full-fledged EU dictatorship, or the EU and the euro will collapse and disintegrate in a chaotic way.

Now you have a situation where the so-called permanent bailout mechanism, the ESM, presently has only EU700 billion, which, in light of what is at stake is the proverbial peanuts. So therefore, there is a big push to establish a banking union and the collectivisation of the debt, which naturally the Germans should pay, because Germany is the only major country in Europe which still has a net surplus. So, as a result of the continuous bailout policies since actually 2008, the European bank debt is at a whopping EU9.3 trillion, and the state debt is at EU3.4 trillion. That means there is an immediate money requirement of EU12.7 trillion, as compared to the meager EU700 billion in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

So therefore, what they're now coming up with is the so-called "Cyprus template" which we saw, when basically the Cyprus parliament has rejected the draconian cuts, it became clear that they really want to have an expropriation of the deposits of the depositors in both savings banks and business accounts, even under EU100,000. The Parliament rejected it, and they said, "okay, only above EU100,000," but that is really just a preliminary step, because when [German Chancellor] Merkel after the explosion of the financial crisis after Lehman Brothers, had promised state guarantee for every asset in the banks up to EU100,000—now, it becomes clear that this is obviously not enough, and recently Focus magazine admitted that if it comes to a crisis, then every asset in the bank�savings bank, business account, giro account, from EU1 upward is really a target.

And even that is not enough: If you take all permanent bailout mechanism, all the savings and assets, this is not enough. So therefore, what you can read in the European press right now, is that the debt is so big that for generations to come Europe is supposed to groan under the debt burden! And they say, the "road to slavery is opened."

Now, if you look at what this empire is doing to Europe, the central banks all over the world, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, they are going for "quantitative easing" which means hyperinflation, just printing as much money as you need, but, in combination with brutal austerity—and, the "bail-in," which means access to the assets in the banks.

Now, this is the expropriation of the life-savings of the people, in the most brutal form, and it means in practice, genocide. In Southern Europe, it is absolutely clear, that what is happening is genocide The UN representative for human rights denounced the policy of the Troika as a severe human rights violation. The former Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party in Portugal, Manuel Alegre, recently gave a very shocking interview, where he said that, we in Europe are already all living in a concentration camp, that it would be a complete illusion for some to think that it will not hit them, just because some others are already marched away to die; because if they don't act now, this will be the fate of all of us.

Now, there is a new book out in the United States, by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, Why Austerity Kills, and it is a quite useful discussion, not new, but it just confirms what we have said many, many times that there is a direct correlation between unemployment and suicides. That politicians have little regard for the human cost of their decisions, that the fiscal policy is a matter of life and death: For example, in Greece, the health budget was cut by 40% since 2008 by the Troika; 35,000 doctors and nurses have lost their jobs; infant mortality has gone up by 40%; malaria returned, cancer patients have to wait 18 months before they can get surgery, which some don't make it that far; youth unemployment in Greece is now at 64.2%, in Spain and Portugal, it is above 50%. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people are either unemployment or underemployed, and obviously this is the biggest cost to the world economy, and it is deliberate to shrink the real economy and to reduce the capacity for civilisation.

Now, the price of austerity can be calculated in numbers of human lives it costs. The monetarist austerity which puts the profit of the banks as more important than human life is killing people. If you add the Green paradigm to that, which has the same effect, you can really see that there is a conscious effort to reduce population. For example, the speculation in food, in biofuels, the reduction of food supplies worldwide, is already shrinking the world food supplies below the level needed to maintain the present number of people. To fill one tank of 50 litres of biofuels, you need 352 kg of corn on which a child in Mexico or Africa can live one full year. So, the person who is filling his tank once is killing a child in the Third World.

The 10 largest food conglomerates control 85% of all food trade worldwide and they are culprits, together with the banks in this policy.

The World Bank has admitted that there are 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty, and when the price for corn goes up by 63% in two years, which it just recently did, many people die because they can not afford it any more. Egypt, a major country in Africa and in Asia, where 50% of the people live on or below the poverty line, these people now have to spend 85% of their income on food. And naturally, the mortality rate is going up.

So there is genocide all over the place. And everybody can see it. The crime which is developing before the eyes of the world public is so gigantic that it is an outrage why more people are not saying so, when they are being murdered just as in the concentration camps.

Fortunately, the Pope made a very important intervention with a recent speech, where he made a very strong condemnation of the tyranny of the present financial system, which he says, has induced fear and desperation in the hearts of many people, for whom the joy of life has vanished. What has increased is indecency and violence are on the rise. And he says, all of this has its origin in a very profound human crisis. It reduces men and women to consumer goods which can be used and thrown away.

Now, just think about the human trafficking of prostitutes from Asia, from Eastern Europe, or think about the trafficking in human organs, which poor people are supposed to sell in order to live; or think about the absolute undignified working conditions in places like Bangladesh, where people indeed are working for slave-labor wages and in safety conditions where they die by the hundreds if these buildings collapse.

Now, the Pope says, furthermore, that the financiers presently consider God as dangerous, because He calls for man to have his full centre as a human person, and is calling for independence from any kind of slavery. Therefore, the Pope appeals for a financial reform, and calls for a courageous change in attitude on the part of political leaders in the world. And I think this should be used to the widest, because not one Catholic and not one Protestant, not one Christian, or not one believer in any other great religion should not have to miss listening to this appeal.

Now the change in attitude we see emerging, but it is obviously sufficient, but there is worldwide a pre-revolutionary, and in some places even a revolutionary, situation developing. For example, the mood in the United States is to go back to the American System of economy, and the motion for Glass-Steagall is only the first step. There is a growing targetting of Obama for impeachment: Afro-American leaders are turning away from Obama, by saying that, he has created conditions worse than under Bush! Important Afro-American leaders like Cornel West accused Obama of war crimes. The Afro-Americans are turning away, but also progressive Democrats and many others.

Now you have the eruption of several important scandals: The Benghazi scandal, which will eventually unearth the real reasons for the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans. Now, what will come out, as my humble guess, is, that what is really at stake in the Benghazi affair, is that the policy which was started by Brzezinski in the ’70s and in the ’80s, namely to train radical Muslims, the mujahideen for the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, is now modified in the form that the Anglo-American empire is working consciously with terrorist rebels in order to effect their policy of regime-change, as we have seen it in Iraq, Libya, and now threatening in Syria.

Now, this will come out in the hearings, I'm sure, but there are also many other scandals. The famous IRS scandal, where the administration used the IRS to target opponent groups, which naturally makes the population most upset, because it is their pocket which is at stake. Then, the AP scandal, which touches on the First Amendment and which has turned the entire media corps against Obama. Then, still lurking, you have "Fast & Furious" the scandal of the gun-running to the Mexican drug mafia. Not to mention the other scandals which right now are not in the foreground, but which could become, which is the drone killings, which has killed more than 5,000 people, including collateral damage in the form of the deaths of civilians. The rule by Executive Order, bypassing Congress; the declaration of war without authorization of Congress; the killing of Americans and others without due process.

So, to sum it all up, I think Congressman Issa has done that in the best way, by saying, "the problem with this administration is that they regard themselves as being above the law," and naturally, President Obama does not feel obliged by the American Constitution, but rather what he learns from the Queen, Blair, Cameron, and such people.

Now, the world, in addition, is on the verge of World War III, until you have a dramatic change in government in the United States. This again, is the result of the British Empire policy. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the fall of the [Berlin] Wall meant there was de facto no more enemy, this was a historical chance to establish a peace order for the 21st century. The LaRouche movement at that point proposed a concrete plan to unite Eurasia through the Productive Triangle, and then through the Eurasian Land-Bridge, and labor on through the World Land-Bridge. But unfortunately, the neo-cons emerged in the United States, a totally Anglophile formation declaring the "New American Century" doctrine, which was then implemented by Bush Sr., and Thatcher, and which has lasted essentially ever since, with only a certain exception in the eight Clinton years.

So what that meant for Europe was the introduction of the euro as a containment against Germany, and what it meant for the rest was that the EU and NATO went into the direction of the East extension, the encirclement of Russia as if the Cold War were still in place.

There was no reason, why in ’91, one could not have asked Russia to join NATO, or to dissolve it, because there was no more enemy. But, it went in the direction of the empire, and therefore, the U.S. ballistic missile defense system, which later was developed by Bush Jr., in Poland, in Czechia, in Spain, and recently in Turkey, was clearly aimed at eliminating the second strike capability of Russia, and later of China. And this is completely understood by Russia and China, that that is the intent.

There was a recent study of the Strategic Studies Quarterly, "The New Era of Nuclear Weapons," in which they basically assert, that because of recent technological innovations, it would be possible to conduct "decapitating strikes" against the nuclear arsenal of opponents, that because of the emergence of very precise guidance systems, and new reconnaissance technologies, it would be possible to take out the nuclear weapons of an opponent without nuclear fallout. Therefore, the rules of the Cold War, that any use of nuclear weapons would lead to the Mutual Assured Destruction of everybody, would no longer be valid, and therefore, nuclear weapons could be used.

Now, this article, in my view, was the most candidate admission of what the present doctrine of the United States, Great Britain, and NATO is. And it is very obvious that the U.S. ABM system in Eastern Europe is part of this, as is the deployment of Patriots to Turkey, and that behind the so-called "Asian pivot" policy of the Obama Administration is exactly the same thing.

You have pinpointed in the New Citizen very clearly, that Australia is being turned, essentially, into a military base for an upcoming thermonuclear conflict with China, which according to some who are thinking in the tradition of Dick Cheney, believe that the emergence of a future economic competitor in the world market has to be prevented by all means, and that therefore such a confrontation is legitimate. Which, by the way, was the same reason why the Soviet Union underwent shock therapy after ’91, in order to prevent Russia from ever becoming an economic competitor on the world market.

So therefore, the same process which began in the ’90s in Australia, in turning Australia into basically a base for such a deployment, a period in which the European Union was turned into an empire, this all coincided with the policies of the former [Australian] Deputy Defense Secretary Hugh White, a policy which was updated by Obama during his 2011 trip Asia, where the decision and the deal was made for a permanent deployment of 2,500 U.S. Marines in Darwin.

Recently, that policy which is steadily being pursued, came to the edge of the thermonuclear abyss, when Israel some weeks ago, launched two military strikes into Syria, which was clearly an act of war, and where the danger existed that Syria could have answered by a counterstrike. At that point, the danger was very acute that this would turn into a large regional war, and potentially the large thermonuclear war. And only because there was a concerted intervention by the American Chiefs of Staff, and by some others, it was stopped for the time being. From very reliable sources, we learned that what was behind this Israeli strike was their idea that a strike against Iran will take place some time this year. And that they wanted to get all possible allies of Iran in such an event out, by destroying weapons depots for the Hezbollah, or Hamas, and it was so hot, that at that point, in an unprecedented move, Carla Del Ponte declared that there were chemical weapons used in Syria, but not by the Assad government, but by the rebels. And that completely took the wind out of the sails of such people as McCain and Lindsey Graham who had basically argued that the "red line" mentioned by Obama had already been crossed.

So, that buildup still continues, and the decision of the British to redeploy in a big way into the entire Southwest Asian region, east of Suez, which was revealed by a report from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), this is bringing the world to a hair-trigger from a thermonuclear extinction. And the world will not be safe, as long as the Empire exists, and we should not let down our awareness for one second. Because they can create pretexts as they wish: Remember the famous words of U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, after it became known that the war against Iraq was based on lies, that there were no weapons of mass destruction: Then Wolfowitz simply said, it doesn't matter, we used this only as a pretext anyway.

So, we are sitting on a powder keg. And the only way to defeat the Empire is a return to in the United States to the tradition of the American Revolution, for which the Glass-Steagall is a first step.

Now, we should be totally aware, if the U.S. Congress implements Glass-Steagall, this will mean a sudden change worldwide. If the commercial banks are put under the protection of the states, if the investment banks are left to themselves without taxpayer money bailouts, most of them will have to declare insolvency. This will have an immediate worldwide affect, because of the cluster risk, all market segments worldwide are connected, and at that point, Europe, despite what they plan now, will have to go for Glass-Steagall. And I don't mean the watered-down version which they are discussing now, and which was today [May 17] agreed upon by the German government, a separation of the bank proposal even less sharp than the Liikanen Report proposal which is already a joke.

Now, as I said, we must not only think about a financial reform. But the world is in such a civilisational crisis, which affects every aspect of life, culture, the youth, pensions, the health system, litreature, poetry—just simply everything!—that I believe, in the very deepest corner of my heart, that the world will only come out of this crisis, if we go for a complete new paradigm.

 

Nicholas of Cusa

I'm very happy that you decided to make Nikolaus of Cusa such an important factor in your conference. Because I've been convinced since a long time, actually since I found his ideas many years ago, that his ideas are the best foundation to lead the world out of this existential crisis. Now, Nikolaus was very conscious that he was writing something, especially from the De Docta Ignorantia onward, something so revolutionary which had never been thought before, that he was, with his writings, beginning a new era. And if you look back at what was the effect of his works, you can actually see, that he was absolutely on the mark, that his writings, indeed, marked the difference between the dark Middle Ages, and the modern times.

Now, he consciously broke with scholasticism which dominated the universities at that time, and which was the debate how many angels could sit on the head of a pin, and also the stupid mechanistic views of the Peripatetics, which also was the leading ideology of the time. And he very consciously introduced a completely different method of thinking, the most famous idea of it, is obviously, the coincidentia oppositorum, which is the principle that the One has a higher power than the Many, in a way which I will specify immediately.

And naturally also, De Docta Ignorantia, and also in the dialogues of The Layman and many of the sermons, he rejected very much the idea of man being able to achieve knowledge through sensuous experience. In the famous Trinity sermon of 1444, he developed the idea that the conception of the goal of the human intellect determines the road on which the mind travels to that goal; he called that the praesuponit, the future defines the present. It is that which the mind and the faith defines as a goal, which defines the way how you achieve it and which road you take. So, knowledge, therefore, is not a logical extension of the addition of all existing knowledge of the past, but it is what we aim at which is already in our faith and in our intention.

He arrived at a deep conception of the creation of the physical universe, which was the basis for Kepler later on to discover gravitation. He believed in the complete unity of faith and science, and that view allowed Kepler to come to his discovery overturning Copernicus and Ptolemy, and Cusa already had the same wonderful idea that the more you study the universe, the laws of creation, the more you become clear that this must all be the work of a tremendously loving Creator.

Now, Nikolaus already had the idea, that the universe is totally determined by change, and that this change has an upward development. That neither the Earth nor the Sun is the centre of the universe, and this was really the beginning of modern science. He also had the idea of concordantia in the universe and among mankind, that there is a cohesion between the laws of the macrocosm, the universe at large, and the laws of the microcosm, which is the cognitive powers of man, and that concordantia is only possible if all microcosms develop in the best possible way, and that not in a linear way, but all unity in multitude is based on the higher principle whereby the entire process of the totality is developing in a complicative way, like in a fugal development, whereby the development of the one is necessary to facilitate the development of the other.

Now, he presumes the idea of a concordance in the universe, and for mankind, based on the development principle which must be also be the basis for a better world order today. It must be the absolute sovereign nation as developing microcosms, and this is the idea of the Concordantia Catholica based on the representative system, that the government and the governed must relate to each other in a reciprocal relationship, whereby the government takes care of the best possible common good of the governed, and the representatives take care of the interests of the governed, and also represent the common good of the government.

Now, this is a very important idea, because that conception of the representative system was really for the first time realised in the American Constitution in the full way. Now, each microcosm, therefore, only can fulfill its full potential by supporting the best possible development of the other microcosm. Now, if you apply that to politics, and that was done in the Peace of Westphalia, where the principle of the "interest of the other" is coming exactly from this Cusanic idea, and that was the ending of the 150 years of religious war in Europe. If you apply that to the politics today, then the best possible development of one nation must include the best possible development of all other nations.

Now, what that means concretely for Australia, is that Australia must have as its self-interest, that China develops in the best way, Japan, all the other countries in Southeast Asia, and vice versa. Obviously, this is only possible, if all of these nations are united through the common aims of mankind.

Now, what are the "common aims of mankind"? Obviously, it means that this miserable, unworthy condition in which a majority of civilisation finds itself, as a result of the policies of the Empire, must be overcome. That poverty must be eliminated, hunger must be eliminated, and this would be eminently possible and feasible, through the realisation of all the different projects of the World Land-Bridge, which at the same time, obviously, can also be the basis for peace for the relations with Russia, with China, with Japan, with many other countries.

Now, this is only possible, because the One has a higher power than the Many. And mankind as a whole, is a higher idea than the many different cultures and religions. This was already the basic idea of another writing of Nikolaus, which he wrote after the Fall of Constantinople, the De Pace Fidei, where he has 17 wise men from different nations and cultures and religions asking God for advise, and while others were talking about a clash of civilisations, in the pre-mature form, he had the idea that there was only one God, one Truth, and one Religion, and he already talked about uno religio in rituum varietate, "only one religion with different rites," which was an incredibly progressive idea for a Cardinal of the 15th century!

Obviously, the creation of the physical universe, according to Nikolaus, occurs through the creativity of man, and he even goes so far to say, and again, this was in the 15th century, that after the emergence of mankind, the continuous process of creation, only occurred through the creative acts of man, which is unbelievably important.

Now, he also had the notion of manu ductio which is basically a pedagogical of explaining how this method of development occurs. And he had basically an image as if it would be like metamorphosis of a plant, where the mind starts with a seed, and then through a multiple process of cognition, is reaching the full dimension of the development of a tree with rich fruits, which gives then the way to many more seeds and many more trees.

Now, Nikolaus was conscious that he developed an epochal new philosophical method, and he also, in the De Docta Ignorantia, especially in the second book, developed what you could call an ontology of the universe. He even said that the fulfillment of the universe is the cognition and the creativity of man, that it is the vis creative, the "power of creation" expressed in man acting as imago viva Dei, as the "living image of God," which drives the universe. In the De Docta Ignorantia, he says, "All our great attention asserts in unity, that the faith is the longing of cognition. Because in every faculty, in the meaning of every scientific discipline, there are made certain prepositions, the credam praesuponum nuntur [phonetic], the first principle which can only come from faith and out of the insight in that which needs to be investigated can be gained."

Now, this is a very interesting idea because it is the idea that if science and faith are the same, and if you have a belief in what has to be part of the divine order of creation, then your mind will seek that, and you will fly with your investigation like a bird towards a goal, where the bird does it sort of instinctive, where the goal is defined, but the road is following from that.

Now, if you look at that, you really find in these thoughts, the first in all of written history and litreature, a discussion of how the method of hypothesis really functions, how you develop the thinking of a flank, how you create a poetical or a musical idea, by having this higher idea which is then the goal which can then be developed; in the same way, like a great composer has a musical idea, before he develops the composition; like a poet has a poetical idea before he composes the poem.

Now, this is a very important method which must be the basis of putting the political and economic order of our present world into cohesion. Now, therefore, I think in Nikolaus of Cusa, you find all the crucial ideas, all the beautiful ideas, for example, the proof about the immortality of the soul, which Nikolaus argues, that the fact that the soul creates all the arts, the sciences, the geography, the music, and that these remain forever, means that that which creates these things obviously has to have a higher power than the things created, and since the created things are immortal, the soul, the creator, has to be immortal, too.

Nikolaus also had the beautiful idea that man, at each point of the development of mankind can, with scientific rigor, define what is the next necessary step of breakthrough in knowledge. Now, is that not what we know today, when we say that the future of mankind, has to become mankind in his identity as mankind in space? That with all the knowledge we have about the dangers from space, from asteroids, the dangers of our Solar System in a couple of billion years from now, that we have to have the idea of the goal, where the next scientific breakthrough has to be, in order to guarantee the existence of mankind? Now, Nikolaus already had that idea in the 15th century, and I think therefore, the more you study him, the more you become happy and enlightened.

Now, if the British Empire would prevail, both financially and in the sense of military doctrine, it is very likely that mankind will be extinct, and that we will prove to have not been more intelligent than the dinosaurs. But I have the fundamental, similar optimism about the fact that the universe is too beautiful, the laws of creation are too powerful, that the plan of the Creator is too beautiful and strong, for this to happen, if we do our job. So therefore, let's move with all powers we have, to use this epochal change where we are right now, to put the political and economic order in cohesion with the laws of the universe. If we do that, I think the future of civilisation will be the brightest possible one, and I think we are in the middle of the fight. Glass-Steagall is now a realistic proposition, so let's move with all our power to get the whole Glass-Steagall globally, and then move on, to implement a Renaissance. [applause]

 

Q&A WITH HELGA

CEC national leader Craig Isherwood:

I would like to add something that Helga has put forward as our mission. Because this conference; this 25th birthday conference of the CEC is a celebration of the work we've done to date. Twenty five years ago my wife and I and some others established this organisation, specifically around the ideas, at that point, of National Sovereignty. Now we were greenhorns in politics, and we didn't really know much about what we were doing, and it wasn't until we met Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas, that this concept of Imago Viva Dei, that we are made in the image of God, and that we can participate in His creating, which is called Capax Dei, came alive to me personally and we established this organisation on those principles.

In other words, Nicholas of Cusa, for many people who have never heard of him before, we actually established our organisation on his principles 25 years ago. But here today, we have to have a new revolution in our country. Because the point is, whilst we've done very good work till now, as you have heard what Helga has just said, we are now at the point of potential extinction of mankind.

We witness that with what's happening in Western Australia, where 1,200 hundred farmers are being thrown off the land, out 4,500 farmers, in one of the most productive wheat belts in the entire world; you see it with the destruction of the cattle industry; you see it with the destruction of the Murray Darling Basin; you see all those sorts of things that are all part and parcel of the British Empire's plan.

The problem is that a protest movement is not good enough. There are going to be many protest movements over the next period coming up to the federal election. What's required is a revolution in the minds of the people that we have in this room today, to begin more than what you ever thought possible in order to change and direct the leadership of this country, because we are the leadership of this country.

So we intend to challenge you in this conference through the work of Nicholas of Cusa. It is not an accident that the profound ideas that you hear may make you feel a little unsettled. Our last conference went through the ideas of the British Empire in detail, and the single greatest preoccupation the British Empire has, no matter what area you look at, is the destruction of Christianity and this idea of man created in God's image. It doesn't matter where you look, doesn't matter what you look at, it's all the same idea.

So many of the ideas that have infiltrated your minds over the span of your life, are most likely to be completely wrong. You have prejudices that you most likely don't even know you have, based upon the brainwashing of being inside the British Empire.

So that's why I say it is not an accident we have chosen Nicholas of Cusa to be a focal point of our conference today. We will have plenty of discussion about our political policies and the extension of that, with the example of how a credit system developed historically from inside Australia based explicitly on that of Alexander Hamilton, by name. We will do that, but would someone like to ask Helga a question?

Doug Mitchell:

Hi, Helga, I'm one of the full-time organisers from the National office here in Melbourne. I've had a question for a while that's related to the organising process, specifically organising in this period. But just to let you know: gathered here this weekend are a lot of our activists, who are organising the population, introducing them to Glass Steagall, because not a lot of people in the country are familiar to this concept, but also we are encouraging people to go and see their members of parliament and pressure them to endorse it, or, introduce a Private Member's bill for it.

But the question I had relates to what you said that the world would not be saved as long as the British Empire exists. Because in the organising and also in talking to people I hear a lot of "Oh, it has to get worse before people wake up", or, people think there is going to be some moment down the track when the system totally explodes. But I was thinking didn't the system crash in 2008, and so since then we've seen the whole trajectory toward this new system, where Lyn defined back in his webcast in February, where the oligarchs want to shepherd in their own smaller system. So it's not like we have to wait for some moment where the system is going to explode, its already crashed and we have to fight and we have to be the ones that establish the new paradigm as you say. And I think if you could just address that in the sense of organising and how people should approach it?

HELGA: Well, I think that we are so much on the verge of that moment which we are addressing, that if that moment comes it's too late. Because if you look at the amount of derivatives outstanding, if that shebang would come down in an uncontrolled way triggered by another Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, you could have a chain-reaction which would blow out the system exactly in the form like the supernova image which Bill Cross from PIMCO used. The danger would be that say one of the big banks, "too big to fail" banks, would collapse, and that could happen by accident because you have these ridiculous computer systems which speculate with the difference of nano-seconds on different currencies, totally crazy things, which already led in May two years ago to a sudden plunge of the New York stock exchange of 16% in ten minutes, and then they stopped trading to prevent a further chain reaction collapse.

So we are sitting on a complete powder keg. If one of the big banks, "too big to fail" banks were to collapse, you could have a disorderly disintegration of the Euro-Zone, and you would have the sudden bankruptcy of the system. The banks would close. You would have a phenomena like what happened in Albania in 1997, when these pyramid scandals collapsed, and in a matter of one day all the banks closed, people would go to the money machine and the card would be taken; the food stores were plundered by the starving population; the police and the army started to plunder with their families because they were hungry too; and this chaos lasted for several weeks until the Italian Carabinieri came to re-establish some sort of order.

Now if that were to happen to the entire Euro-Zone, and in the United States, I mean I don't want to think that, because social chaos, social upheaval, would be the result, and I know that in the European Union for example, they are already making contingency plans for that. They have maps where they have areas where the social riots are expected to erupt; Berlin, Rhein-Main, the suburbs of France, and so-forth and so-on. The British government has evacuation plans for the fact that when the Euro collapses, whereby they would transport British subjects back to the British Isle, which naturally is completely ridiculous because once you have such upheaval, it will really touch the City of London as much as anywhere else.

What would happen in the United States with all these weapons that people possess in their houses, I don't want to think about it. So if this moment you are saying comes it will be too late. Because I think we would plunge into a chaotic dark-age, and I cannot imagine how that would not then lead to an escalation of regional wars which could really go into the big war.

So don't wait for that moment, because if you wait for that moment you may as well kiss civilisation goodbye. I think what we have to do is we have to appeal to the thinking 5% of the population. Fortunately there are such people. I think you are blessed in Australia with one of your former prime ministers, [Malcolm] Fraser, who is somebody who has made statements very clearly showing he understands what is wrong, the danger of world war. There are other people: The Pope's recent statement is proving that he understands what the problem is. There are other people around the world that all belong to this 5% category and what we are doing right now with our mobilisation is to catalyse these people, many of them are sitting somewhat privately in their laboratory, their working place, their home, and they don't think an alternative exists.

But when we do what we are doing right now with the Glass Steagall fight in the United States, this is the second American Revolution. I mean its not yet won, but we are at a very good phase in it. I mean you should have seen the type of mobilisation that we did in the United States where our organisation plus an army of 500 activists or more, helping with deployments for practically every week for the last several months, to the Congress, to the state legislators, to the mayors, to the City Councils, involving more and more groups of Trade Unionists, local bankers and other activists, and basically getting them involved in this motion for the survival of civilisation. And I am absolutely certain that it can be done, and I think right now the most optimistic fight we have is in the United States, would be to carry that over into Australia in the same way we are doing in Europe where we are basically getting people out of their cultural pessimism, which is the natural desire when you are living under an Empire.

I mean in Europe if you ask somebody that you want to do this, or you want to do that, 99% of the answers are, "Oh, one cannot do anything anyway." So the next thing that I ask people is what is the system you are living under when you say that you can't do anything? Are you living in a democracy? And then they say that our democracy may not be in such great shape.

So the first thing is that people have to become conscious that they are living in an Empire, and then the next step is you determine what is the Achilles heel of the system. And the Achilles heel is that the system is bankrupt and therefore Glass Steagall is the one absolute super weapon which can really bring the Empire down. If the United States re-establishes their American tradition I think we can do a miracle around the world. So transmit the optimism which is coming right now from this historic fight in the United States, and I'm sure all other parts of the Empire, like Australia, like Europe, that we will liberate ourselves and start to take our fate into our own hands again.

JAN PUKALLUS, CEC State Secretary, state of Queensland:

There was some prescribed reading that everybody had to do for the conference. I'm not sure what everybody has done, but I was on the toes of the Queenslanders, and among them were some reservations, because amongst the Cusa that we were give—this giant booklet—there was your piece on "The Sweetness of Truth". Now there was wondering among our supporters, and this wouldn't be just from Queensland either, it would be throughout the organisation, especially new people. They wonder: Well, all this is very nice philosophy on what Helga is talking about, but its kind of fluffy and airy fairy, and they can't see the relevance, and I admit I had the same concerns when I first started reading the Australian Alert Service, where on the back page of the Alert every week there was something philosophical, and back then I was thinking: this isn't hard-core politics, and I wondered what it was all about.

So perhaps you could address that for everybody?

HELGA: That thought never has occurred to me (laughing), because look, man is not an animal. I'm very happy with the new Pope, because the new Pope is called Saint Francis, and I regard myself as a Franciscan in heart. I regard the animals as my sisters and brothers. However despite the fact that I love animals, I must also say that man is very distinct from all other living creatures, including the animals, by the capacity of reason. If you look at the existence of the universe of which we know only very little actually, but in the existence of the universe mankind only exists 7 million years at most. And of this history of mankind only about 3,000 years are documented in terms of writings. And that is a very short period of time.

Now if you think about 3,000 years, which I think is about 200 generations, that's not much. And if you look at the evolution of how man developed from barbarianism; how for example the first time man developed the idea of a sovereign thinking individual. The first trace we have of that was in the writings of Homer in the Odyssey, where he describes the fight with the gods. The next major development was the Greek tragedians especially Aeschylus and the Prometheus Unbound, which is a beautiful description how Prometheus got punished by the god of Olympus, Zeus, because Prometheus had brought fire to man, and fire is an absolute synonym for technology. And in that play, or in the excerpt of this play, it is described what are the benefits of technology and how agriculture, sailing, ship travelling, all of these things were improved through fire and technology. But that was the first time where man challenged his sovereign identity.

The next major step was Plato. Plato developed the idea of man being capable of ideas; that ideas are something which are not pragmatic deductions from sensuous experience, but that ideas are something which only the human mind can make and develop through creative hypothesis. And if you test that hypothesis and the hypothesis is adequate it leads to an increase in human knowledge. And the process of human beings to be able to do that again and again, and improve and deepen the knowledge leads man to progress and Plato called that the hypothesis of the higher hypothesis.

So then the next step clearly was what Nicholas of Cusa developed with the introduction of modern science; then you had Kepler discovering the laws of the universe at large; then you had Leibniz discussing the question of physical economy for the first time; and then you had the great German classical period starting with Mendelssohn, with Lessing, and then with Schiller, with the musical tradition from Bach to Beethoven. And if you look at the evolution of man in only that short period of time, as the image of man as it was expressed for example in my view, in the highest form by the German classical tradition by such thinkers and poets like Friedrich Schiller, where you can see that man has really developed in an unbelievable way his creative potential, his insights, his creative powers so great, that that is really so undeniable, so why would not every parent have the wish to give that knowledge to their children, to contribute with their life something so that their children have something more to give to the future generations. In that way we become immortal by connecting your fate hopefully to the limitless chain of human generations.

So therefore, when you talk about De Visione Dei, which is really a very pedagogical way of how to identify the coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites), which Cusa describes as this wall, which you have to jump over. You have to think beyond; you have to think outside the box; you have to think beyond that which already exists as a body of knowledge, and the De Visione Dei is just a very nice pedagogical way of describing how you can become self-conscious about that, and why this creative power is really what makes human beings the best species of its kind in creation.

So if politics is not informed by that image of man we will end up always with these bestial forms which we have today. Where people waste their entire life to chase what? To chase pleasure in the here-and-now; to chase pleasure and maximum profit and crawl over billions of corpses of dead people to make another profit on the stock exchange, not thinking what will be the effect on the rest of society.

So if you don't want to have an oligarchical society where people are determined by greed and behave like swine at the food trough, then you have to inspire the thinking capabilities of human beings, and you know it's really like what Nicholas says, that once you have experienced the sweetness of knowledge, the sweetness of real true human knowledge, of making discoveries about the laws of the universe, of being able to write poetry, of being able to discover universal physical principles, the joy you find out of that is so much bigger than any joy that you can get out of stuffing your face with caviar, or some other earthly paradise pleasure, and the more you develop a taste for that sweetness of truth the more you will become a more complete human being. Like a great musician who wants to play the piano the whole day; like a great artist who wants to write poetry the whole day; like a scientist who doesn't leave his laboratory because he finds his happiness and his fulfilment in his work.

So the sweetness of truth is really the greatest sweetness of all, and you know I wish that we could come to a situation where the politicians are philosopher kings, exactly as Plato had already had the idea. Then, only then like Nicholas of Cusa said, that not only the wisest men should be the politicians and the political leaders, but also those wisest who have the biggest respect for justice and the law. If we come to that point then we are out of this crisis if the majority of institutions on the planet are wooed by these ideas I think we will go into a better phase of human evolution.

So I think there is a direct connection to politics. Absolutely. [Applause]

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