Author: Alicia

(Unformatted Transcript)

Dear friends, I’m very happy to speak to you today on this particular day, which is D-Day, and that should fill us all with the hope that the danger of a new fascism, which is arising in the world, can be defeated–but hopefully with less casualties.

I’m saying this because we are right now on the edge of World War III, and we are at that moment, exactly for the same reasons, which were causing World War I, and World War II, to happen: Geopolitical interests of an imperial force against the well-being and common good of nations. Because, contrary to the myth, world wars do not happen because of conflicts among nations, but because of imperial designs for the benefit of a small oligarchy, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

I think anybody who follows even the public domain of news, of TV, or media in general, has plenty of evidence that we are heading towards a strategic confrontation between the United States and NATO, on the one side, and Russia and China. And this is not something planned for the distant future. This is on the table right now. It’s planned for this summer.

Last week in the Australian media, there was an email published by military analyst John Shindler, who said that he just received an email from an official from NATO, a non-American, who said, “War is on for this summer–let’s hope it will not be nuclear.”

Now if you look at the different flashpoints where this war could erupt, well, you have the escalation of the Ukraine crisis. Massive fighting escalated this past Wednesday. President Poroshenko claims that the Ukraine is already at war with Russia, and he claims that there is a full invasion by Russian forces in East Ukraine. This is completely denied by the Russian side. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov just said, “No. Russia is putting its utmost priority to make sure the Minsk II process is succeeding.”

Now the Ukrainian parliament just made amendments which allow for the admission of armed forces of other states to fight on the territory of Ukraine. So, while it is not excluded that some individual Russians are on the side of East Ukraine, the official Russian army is not, but you have now special troops, mostly from mercenary armies and private institutions of various countries. And there is also — This bill, by the way, was introduced into the Ukrainian parliament by Prime Minister Yats, and if you remember, Yatsenyuk is the darling of Victoria Nuland, who imposed him in a coup on the 21st of February, 2014.

Now the Defense Secretary Ash Carter has been meeting yesterday in Stuttgart at the U.S.-European Command, with top American defense officials and diplomats to map out a “counter-strategy” to the Russian military operations in Ukraine, and to “reassure allies.” That is always the word used to cover for an escalation, and behind closed doors, two dozen generals, ambassadors, and others were discussing whether to expand military exercises, or beef up the assistance to the Baltics or other countries, and who knows what else they were discussing. It was kind of an emergency meeting.

Ash Carter also said that he is very open to the idea to provide Ukraine with so-called lethal weapons. Now that is completely opposed by most of the European countries, especially Germany, France, and others, because it’s the opinion of Hollande, Merkel, and others that if you provide lethal weapons into Ukraine, a country which is utterly bankrupt–the economy is totally collapsed, the population is suffering a humanitarian catastrophe–it will just lead to more killing, and the danger of an escalation. And that’s why the Europeans, that’s why Merkel went to Moscow, that’s why you have the so-called Minsk group which tries to solve this problem by peaceful means.

Now, why am I saying that the danger is so immediately acute? Well, if you look at the official NATO website, they have an 8-page document there which goes through the different maneuvers taking place between April and November, and there are major force exercise, but mostly on the Russian periphery, along the Russian borders. Many of those maneuvers are related to the “very high readiness joint taskforce,” or “Spearhead Force,” which NATO agreed upon to establish at the recent Wales NATO summit last September. And they also discussed that these maneuvers will involve the expansion of the NATO response force, and some of the names of these maneuvers are: Arctic Challenge, which involves 8 countries and ended on Friday; Steadfast Cobalt, which is mainly in Poland–this will go until the 15th of June; another one in Holland; and a series of so-called Allied Shield maneuvers in the Baltics, from the 5th to the 20th of June; South Strike, from the 8th to the 19th of June in Poland and the Baltics; Noble Jump, 10th to the 21st of June in Poland and other locations; Sea Breeze, from the 22nd of June to the 3rd of July, in the Black Sea; Trident Juncture, from the first of October to the 6th of November, in Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

And you have simultaneously Russian maneuvers, non-stop, matching the NATO maneuvers, including a maneuver of the Strategic Rocket Force last week. Last week you had the snap maneuvers in the Central Military District, and the message coming from all of that is very clear: that Russia is absolutely not going to back down.

A week ago, you had an incident where the {USS Ross}, which is an Aegis-equipped ballistic missile defense destroyer, belonging to the Ballistic Missile system, which the United States is building in Eastern Europe and in the Mediterranean, and that ship, the {USS Ross}, left the Romanian port of Constanta, moving towards Russian water. At that point, the Russian Navy sent SU-24 jets, and forced the {USS Ross} to turn around, and go back.

Now that incident is, or was, hair-raising, because there was in the recent period a whole bunch of top military experts from the United States, from Europe, who warned that, contrary to the Cold War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, today there is no red telephone between the President of the United States and that of Russia, and that the normal code of communication, the so-called red telephone, more or less has completely broken down. And therefore the danger of even an accidental launch, just some mistaken reading of screens, or some other human failure, could lead to launching of thermonuclear war, which at this point, would in all likelihood mean the extinction of civilization.

And the thing which is so horrifying about it, is, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy was in office, people were aware that nuclear war means the annihilation of civilization, and compared to that time, we are now in a much, much more dangerous situation for reasons I’m going to elaborate than then, and there is no public debate! There is no mass protest! There is no peace movement in the streets.

In the middle-range missile crisis at the beginning of the 1980s, when the SS-20 and the Pershing-2 were directed against each other, and all the time being launched on warning, because the distance was so short, you had hundreds of thousands of people in street, in Europe, and people were aware how big the danger is. And now everybody is sleepwalking, or watching TV, or going to the holidays, or some other activity.

Now the growth of the NATO-U.S. missile defense system in Europe, when this started, it was clear to every military expert that this means the United States has gone to a first-strike policy. And more recently, Russia has also denounced, in no uncertain terms, that they also regard the Prompt Global Strike doctrine as a first-strike doctrine.

The Russian Defense Ministry also was concerned about an exercise in the Atlantic, with the involvement of 8 countries called RC Demonstration 2015, which simulates the interception of Russian ballistic missiles. And just to mention this, over the Christmas period, President Putin already had announced the upgrade of the Russian military doctrine by saying that they regard these first-strike doctrines–the Ballistic Missile system in Europe, and the Prompt Global Strike doctrine–as a severe security threat to the existence of Russia, and therefore, they preserve the right to even use nuclear weapons in order to prevent such a strategy from being successful.

Now that shows you in what proximity of the catastrophe we are.

The military leaders of Europe, with whom we are in contact, have assured us–and I don’t want to name any names, but these are people who are really top, top experts–they said all of these maneuvers, and all of these permanent rotations of U.S. troops to the Baltics, sending in tank battalions, and other heavy equipment, all is just confetti. It doesn’t mean anything. Because these troops could not possibly win a war against Russia in a conventional way, and this is just a PR campaign to calm the nerves down of nervous Nellies in the Baltic countries who mostly have leaders anyway who have been chosen in exile, and put in these positions.

But below the nuclear threshold, nothing would function. So we are not really talking about some conventional little war in Europe, but they are talking clearly about a thermonuclear war.

Exactly the same escalation of the confrontation is happening towards China right now. [first slide] At the end of May, the U.S. Navy P8A Poseidon Surveillance aircraft flew over the Yongshu reef, which is part of Spratly Islands, and they had a CNN crew on board. And that CNN crew film the reef, and the people on this little rock, and basically then a tremendous PR campaign was launched about this being the proof of the “aggressive behavior of China,” and naturally China is on some of these rocks, filling up sand, and making them actually little islands, but that is not only China. Every country in the region has done that. The Philippines, Vietnam, and others.

And there again, Ash Carter said that there should be no mistake about this. China protested and said, this is violating the 12-mile radius around these reefs. And then Ash Carter said, “There should be no mistake about this. The U.S. will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do around the world.”

The {China Daily} at that point rejected capitulation to U.S. bullying tactics, and basically said this was just the U.S. implementing the pivot to Asia strategy, to counterbalance the rise of regional powers, China and India. And this was the first time they named India as being part of the reason why the United States is doing the Asia pivot policy.

Then the {Global Times}, the official Chinese paper, also said, experts warn of the potential of a military conflict over heightened U.S. surveillance over these islands, and a representative of the PLA Academy of Military Science, Peng Wanghang, said, “China will likely strike back if the U.S. comes within 12 miles of the islands. The U.S. is deliberately provoking China.”

And what was the comment of the {Wall Street Journal?} “War on China now.” They say, “the longer the U.S. fails to contest Beijing’s South China Sea claims, the more aggressive China will become, and perhaps willing to fight for them. The time to resist China’s maritime pretensions is now.”

Deng Xiaoping already in the ’80s, when little rumblings around these islands had come up, he said, Let’s not fight over rocks in the South China Sea. Let’s freeze the whole conflict. Let’s jointly develop these places and benefit all of them, and leave it to future generations to figure out who has what territorial claim, but let’s not get into fights right now.

That advice was obviously not taken, because especially as the rise of China became an issue–and remember that General Dempsey repeatedly warned not to fall into the Thucydides trap over China, because the neo-cons around the fall of the Soviet Union had developed this idea that they would never allow {any} country to rise above the power and economic might of the United States, and not even a group of countries.

Now, China is rising. China is 1.4 billion people. India is probably 1.3 billion people, and they have growth rates. China used to have a growth rate of up to 12%; now it has consciously reduced that to about 7%. India has a growth rate of 8%. So these countries are rising, and they represent much more people than the United States. So why should they not develop? But General Dempsey had warned not to fall into the Thucydides trap, referring to the fact of Athens in ancient Greece, against Sparta, because when Sparta started to develop, the Athenians were worried that they would lose power, so they started the Peloponnesian War, and overstretched their empire, and that is how Classical Greece went under. So, Dempsey said, the United States should not make that mistake.

Obviously, they’re not listening. And right now, you have all kinds of thinktanks–CSIS and others–who invite people from the South China region and have them play war games over these islands.

So, already in 2012, Manila deployed its largest naval asset, decommissioned U.S. 1960-era patrol cutter, to arrest Chinese fishermen on the Scarborough Shoal, there you see it [graphic], a reef in the northeast of the South China Sea. But then, it turned out the entrance was too small, and the water too shallow for a warship, so instead they had to send a small boarding team, which went into the lagoon, and made the arrest. But that gave the Chinese law enforcement enough time to send a vessel, and intervene. So Manila had lost face because they were looking militaristic, sending a warship against fishermen, and basically having militarized the dispute.

China at that point retaliated with economic pressure, and for one full year, the Philippines had no ambassador to China, and eventually had to pick a new, more peaceful ambassador to assume that post.

Similarly, in 2012, China prevailed against Vietnam over disputed Blue territories, and the Paracel’s Woody Island. Now the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Miss Hua Chunying said in response that the Chinese land reclamations around the Meiji Reef, which is also claimed by the Philippines, only have the purpose to improve functions for the living conditions of the personnel which are stationed there, to help to develop maritime search and rescue disaster prevention, maritime science and research, meteorological observation, navigation, safety, fishery production service, and all kinds of civilian demands besides the need of military defense.

So, it is clear the buildup of these reefs and shoals into artificial islands increases both the civilian and the military use. But as the former Prime Minister of Australia Hawke just said, this is not a threat to anybody. Our ships are not being hampered and they can travel through these areas without a problem.

Now, why should these rocks and a little sand on top of the, be such an issue, that people start talking about possible war between the United States and China?

When I arrived in Beijing last February, in 2014, this was a few days before the Nazi coup in Kiev occurred. I was talking to Chinese officials and I warned them that this could lead to a potential great war. And they had no idea. They were not interested in Ukraine. They said, oh, Ukraine is very far away, and we are much more concerned about our conflict with Japan and the South China Sea. Naturally that attitude has changed after the total escalation over Ukraine, but in Europe people have still a similar attitude. They say, oh, why discuss about these rocks in the South China Sea? Why should we concern ourselves with this?

Well, both conflicts are the result of geopolitics, of empire politics which led to two world wars already, so we should not dismiss such things at all. We have to go back to what was geopolitics before World war I, the crazy assumptions of such people like Mackinder and Milner, who at that time, at the end of the 19th Century, developed the idea that whoever controls the Eurasian mainland, is putting the Atlantic rim countries at a disadvantage in terms of controlling the world.

At that point, you had in Europe and Eurasia, the Trans-Siberian Railroad developed. You had Bismarck who adopted the American System of economy, which was the idea coming from Henry C. Carey, the advisor of Lincoln, and these ideas were transmitted to Bismarck especially by the head of the industrial association in Germany at the time, Wilhlem von Kardoff. And it was the idea that what generates wealth in society is not free trade; it’s not the ability to buy cheap and sell expensive; but it is entirely the development of the creative powers of labor and the productive powers of industry.

Now, this adoption by Bismarck of the American System of Economy, as it was developed by Lincoln at the time, in a very short period of time, in a few years, turned Germany from a feudal country into one of the industrial powers of the world, and also, to have the best social system in the world, going along with that. But that was very much a thorn in the eyes of the British Empire at that point, and their control of the sea trade, because if then, as in the ’90s of the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian railroad brought an advantage to trade via land, via railroad, they saw their control on the sea threatened.

So, they did a whole bunch of maneuvers to derail this. One was, they used their influence in Germany is get the ouster of Bismarck, which was really the beginning of World war I. They manipulated the landscape to have the Entente Cordiale, the Triple Entente, the attack by Japan on Russia in 1905, the two Balkan wars in 1912, and then when the shots of Sarajevo occurred, this was just the trigger, but not the cause of this war.

Now World War I ended with the Versailles Treaty, and that Treaty had the seeds already of the Second World War, {and} the third World War, if we don’t stop it. At the end of World War I, the German-held territories of the Shandong Peninsula was transferred to Japan at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Shandong, including Jiaozhou and the Pacific Islands north of the equator, were supposed to go Japan. This included the Marshall Woods, the Micronesia, Mariana Islands, and the Carolines, but Japan was very unhappy that only half of the rights of Germany were given to Japan, and they walked out of the conference.

The reason why Japan was treated so nicely is because, after all they got half of them, they had a secret agreement in 1917 with Great Britain and France and Italy, that guaranteed these territories to Japan, and Japan, in turn agreed they would support the British annexing the Pacific Islands south of the Equator. So Article 156 of the Treaty of Versailles transferred these German colonies and concessions in Jiaozhou, China to Japan.

Naturally this led to the protest of Liu Tseng-Tsiang, head of the Chinese delegation, who rejected this agreement, and China, as a consequence, did not sign the treaty, as the only country of that conference. China had a tremendous feeling of injustice and outrage, which led to the demonstrations which became known as the May 4 movement, which was that thousands of students demonstrated in Beijing, in strikes and boycotts of Japanese goods–and also workers and merchants participated, and all layers of the society regarded the Versailles Treaty as an utter fraud.

Thirty years later, after the Second world War, there was the San Francisco Peace conference, where China, thanks to John Foster Dulles, was not even seated. They were not even invited to participate despite the fact that they had fought the Japanese longer than anybody, and they had the highest casualty rate in Asia.

So, the Western powers established the current Eastern Asian order in China’s absence. And John Foster Dulles, who was the designer of the Treaty, deliberately left certain Asian frontier territories without owners. There is a book called the {The Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific}, written by Kimie Hara, which basically said that the San Francisco Peace Treaty created the causes for almost every territorial dispute in Asia. And this is a very long list of disputes: the Kurile Islands, the Northern Territory, the division of North and South Korea, the Dokto-Takashima Islands, the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, the separation of Taiwan from the Mainland, the Paracels-Yisha and the Spratly Namsha islands.

This is why this can be operated every time you want to have a war. And it is obvious that you do not find the dynamics if you just look at the current day media. And as I will show you in a second, the Ukraine crisis, and the conflict with Russia, come exactly from the same origin.

Now, the Versailles Treaty was not a peace treaty. It was a debt dungeon in the interests of the financial oligarchy. No serious historian any more would claim that Germany was the only war party in the first World War, but as I said, this had a 30 years pre-history where the main manipulators were really the British, for reasons that they hated the German industrial revolution introduced by Bismarck, and they hated the idea of the Eurasian development.

Nevertheless the Versailles powers ruled that Germany had to pay both its own war debt, which was significant, and reparations. And that so was so much more than the German industry could possibly produce, that it led to the 1923 hyperinflation, the 1929 crash, the Great Depression of the ’30s, and that all gave rise to the National Socialists, and that way, the preparation for World War II was created. The same method, by the way, was behind the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Middle East in such a way that you can manipulate any ethnic situation whenever you want to. It also was the basis of the 1919 Trianon Treaty, which created the same kind of powder keg for the Balkans, and in each of these situations, potential future territorial conflicts were already built in.

Now, the same debt prison which Versailles meant to Germany after the First World War, which was really the seat of the catastrophe to come, that same debt prison has been imposed for exactly the same reason, with the Maastricht Treaty on all of Europe and led to the Ukraine crisis. Because Helmut Schmidt, the former Chancellor of Germany, whom you can disagree with on some points, but he was one of three German individuals in the last week — Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier — who strongly came out against the confrontation with Russia, and strongly criticizing Merkel for not inviting Putin to the G7 summit which takes place this weekend. Because none of the big conflicts, they argue, can be solved without Russia, not terrorism, not ISIS, not the Ukraine issue, not the financial crisis, so why not invite Putin to participate?

Now, Helmut Schmidt also said, that the origin of the Ukraine crisis was the 1992 adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. Why? Because it was at that point, that not only was a debt regime imposed over all of Europe, forbidding, for example, credit generation for productive purposes, but especially, and that is the argument Schmidt made, it was a beginning of the eastward expansion of the EU, which always went in parallel to the eastward expansion of NATO.

Now, the policy of the Troika against Greece, — the Troika being the IMF, the European Central Bank and the EU Commission — as you know imposed several “rescue packages” on Greece, which now has led to a complete debt of EU360 billion. Now, 97% of that money {never} remained in Greece, but immediately went back to pay the European banks, and on 3% of that money stayed in Greece, so the Greek government has argued, legitimately and understandably, that they cannot and will not pay that debt, because if you look the smallness of Greece, the smallness of the Greek economy, they would have to have a 200% growth rate of GDP in order to pay their debts. So they have demanded a debt cancellation conference.

Five months of negotiations between the new Syriza-Independent Greeks government with the Troika has led to a complete standstill, and Greece was supposed to pay EU300 million to the IMF on Friday. And then they were on the telephone with Merkel, with Hollande, and were presented with the ultimate list of tax increases by EU3.5 billion, by more cuts in the pensions, in the health system — so, Prime Minister Tsipras said, this is unacceptable. This cannot be the basis for an agreement because we have a red line and that is we made promises to our population and we won the election on that basis, that we will not pay debt which we regard as illegitimate.

So, now they have, for the time being, said we will pay all the monies which will come due in June, which is altogether EU1.5 billion by the end of June. That may be the beginning of the end, not only of the euro, but of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system. Because on this Greek debt hangs several {trillion} in derivatives, and therefore, I think Tsipras has, for sure, the better cards, because [Finance Minister] Varoufakis is an economist, he knows his business, and they know perfectly well, that in the moment the Eurozone kicks out Greece, in an uncontrolled way, then you will have the evaporation of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, which has presently altogether, and there is a swap agreement between the ECB and the Federal Reserve, therefore they hang together, have an outstanding derivatives debt exposure of $2 quadrillion. So this is why you have right now the reemergence of this same geopolitical impulse, where some of the financial oligarchy just say — not everybody, because some of them have changed — some of them say: Well, if Asia is rising and the trans-Atlantic sector is collapsing it is better that we risk a thermonuclear showdown, rather than letting them take the winning of this game.

So that is why we are on the verge of World War III. But it is not so simple anymore, because in the meantime, a dramatic, dramatic change has occurred: Since Xi Jinping announced the policy of the New Silk Road of China in September in Kazakhstan in 2013, and especially the allying even stronger of the BRICS countries at the Fortaleza summit in July 2014 in Brazil, you have a completely new dynamic in the world. What has emerged, pretty much unknown to people in Europe and the United States, because the mass media have slandered this or blacked it out completely, you have the emergence of a completely parallel economic and financial system. And in the last year alone, you have an unbelievable amount of joint projects in infrastructure, scientific and technological cooperation, nuclear cooperation, joint space programs.

Infrastructure projects, for example, include the building of a second Panama Canal, in Nicaragua with the help of China. You have right now, you had the visit of Prime Minister Li Keqiang in Brazil, Peru, and Chile, which resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding between China, Brazil, and Peru, to build a transcontinental railroad, which for the first time in history unites the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean by railway.

Now, this is historic, because if you look at the map of Latin America, up to now, you have {no} continental-wide infrastructure project, or system, you only have little pieces of railway from the raw materials to the port, which is the leftover from the colonialist exploitation of Latin America. But this is now changing, because Li Keqiang went on to Chile, and they agreed to build four tunnels between Chile and Argentina, to also connect the trade, to have access to the Atlantic and the Pacific.

And this is all based on Xi Jinping’s pronunciation to have a “win-win” policy, that naturally China has advantages, it has expanding export markets, but it brings the urgently required infrastructure to these countries.

They have also agreed not only on all of these infrastructure projects which are too numerous right now for me to list, but they have created a completely new parallel financial system. The United States tried to prevent anybody from joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the AIIB, but then, Great Britain wanted to join, and then Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, Japan — no, Japan not — Israel! So altogether 58 nations wanted to become {founding} member nations of the AIIB, and this bank, like all the other banks which I will name in a second, are not to speculate: They are only there to issue credit for infrastructure for the real economy.

Now, the BRICS countries are the New Development Bank into function this coming July around the BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia. And also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which also has their summit at that time in Ufa, will have their own development bank; the SAARC countries, this is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, will have their own development bank; China has created in addition, a New Silk Road Development Fund, a Maritime Silk Road Fund, and so this is really taking off. All of these banks have around $100 billion ground capital — naturally, they can lend out much more money than their basic capital; the BRICS have also created a currency reserve arrangement [Contingent Reserve Arrangement], which is a pool to defend all participating countries against speculative attacks. They have learned their lesson from the Asia crisis [in 1997-98] when such people applied criminal speculation against the currencies of the countries of Asia, like George Soros, who speculated the currencies of Asia down by 80% {in one week} in ’97!

This has been going on, especially in the last year. There is a completely new economic and financial system emerging, and as I said, the media did not report it at all: they had slanders against Xi Jinping, Putin, naturally, the “demon”; Xi Jinping, the new “dictator” and Mao Zedong, “tensions between China and India.” So they’re only reporting things which were either outright lies, or negative images, so that people in America or Europe would not know about these things.

But this is now changing: Since about two, three weeks, the success of this new system is becoming so overwhelming that they could not help but to report about it. This is {Time} magazine, with the headline, “New Silk Road Could Change Global Economics Forever.” This is written by Robert Berke, and it goes through all of these projects, going into the history of the ancient Silk Road, Marco Polo, but especially coming to the present situation. But then, it still has the spin, by saying, “all this is, is really a chess game for the control of Eurasia. This will lead to a new Cold War, where the outcome is still completely open.” This is another such article, “Could the New Silk Road End Geopolitical Tensions?”

And then also, there is a lengthy reportage in the official German radio Deutschlandfunk, “China’s New Silk Road: Old Route, New Ways,” also going into the legendary ancient Silk Road — in great detail, actually quite excited reporting, that this is really taking off, with {huge} development projects. But then, they say, you know, the Chinese propaganda is that this is for the benefit for all of mankind, which gets them very upset, and they don’t want to believe it. And they say, “Ja, there is the one route which goes from the ancient emperor’s city of Xi’an, through Central Asia to Russia, Poland and ends in the city of Duisburg — Duisburg is the largest interior port of Europe, where Xi Jinping went, when he recently went to Germany and they received him with the big banner, “The Silk Road Has Arrived in Germany.” But then they say there is also a second route, which goes from the ancient city of Kashgar, which is in the west of China, all the way to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Turkey and also ends up in Europe. And, it involves the famous Karakorum Highway going from Kashgar to Pakistan, and so forth and so on.

A couple of months ago, I had requested at a similar conference as this, that we absolutely must get a public debate, in Europe and in the United States, that an alternative to a collapsing trans-Atlantic system exists, and that China and the BRICS countries have offered to the West to cooperate and be part of it. And I would say it is a certain success of our work that we have now several major articles reporting that. And I’m only picking out a couple. Also the director of the international security studies at the British Royal United Services Institute [rusi], which is the leading military think tank of the U.K., Raffaello Pantucci, says, this dynamic cannot be stopped, it will happen anyway. The Chinese Silk Road {is} the way out for the European crisis, why not just cooperate?

The Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy also said, this is the chance for Greece to recover the lost economic space of the past 20 years and become an advanced country, cooperating with the BRICS and the Silk Road. And that is actually the position of the Greek government, who have said since a long time, that Greece, which has historical long traditions with China, — I mean, they pride themselves that when China had the Silk Road, and that even before, an ancient civilization, Greece was one of the cradles, or {the} cradle of European civilization, and they already, through the ancient Silk Road, had deep cultural and economic ties; and therefore, Greece should revive right now the bridge between Europe and China. And Greece, because of the Orthodox Church and other historical ties, has also extremely good relations with Russia.

Also an economist from Ecuador, Pedro Páez, said, why is Europe not just cooperating with the Silk Road? The austerity drive has no future, it failed in Latin America before, and it will fail in Europe. While the Silk Road represents the hope for Europe to revive its economy.

Now, how should we look at that? China is preparing a completely different model, of government and of relations among states. I can only encourage you to read a book which contains 70 of the recent speeches of Xi Jinping from 2013-14, called {The Governance of China}, because if you read these 70 speeches, you get a sense that you have a {completely} different leader in front of you, than we are accustomed to in the West since the murder of the John F. Kennedy, or the ouster of Adenauer and de Gaulle. Because we have more or less dwarves as political leaders who are involved in scandals, who are involved in all kinds of things, but who have not presented a vision. As a matter of fact, I can tell you, in Europe right now, we have a lot of people who say: all our governments are doing is crisis management; they were running and panting after one crisis after the other, like a dog exhausted from long running, but they have no vision, they have no solutions, and that is why what is offered here is so attractive.

One quote from Xi Jinping, is the following: “We had an obligation to fulfill a dream for humanity. Instead of working against each other, we must work together as states. For that we need trust and unity. We have to name the old ways as inappropriate for the 21st century. Each country is like a little light, but if we bring them together, we can light up the nightly sky.” Key to understand China is Confucius, because Confucius was the official state philosophy of China for about 2,500 years, with only the very short interruption of the Cultural Revolution, but it is practically in the genes of all Chinese.

Xi Jinping talks about the “Chinese dream” and the “dream for humanity.” This actually comes from this Confucian conception, how society should be organized. In the center of this philosophy, is the idea of the perfectibility of man, that you cannot govern a country only by legislation or decrees, or punishment. He says, if a people is regulated only through the threat of punishment and decrees, it may be possible to get them not to do what is forbidden, but they will not develop a feeling of shamefulness. (Now that somehow sounds familiar, if you look at the present.) He says, but if people are guided by morality and ethical customs, they will not only develop shamefulness, but they will be striving for perfectibility.

Confucius developed his philosophy against a long period of war and chaos in China, and he proceeded from the idea that there is a higher lawfulness in the universe, than that which guides the political activities of the day. He called that, like before him other philosophers, the “Mandate of Heaven.” This is some idea which in European philosophy appeared as the notion of “natural law,” that there is an inbuilt, higher lawfulness, which man can violate, for a little bit, but sooner or later, these higher laws will punish the violators. And in the same way, Confucius says that the Mandate of Heaven, which means the obligation to create an harmonious development of society, and harmony means not just peace or just calmness, but it means, consensus of the governed, unity and all of this directed toward the common progress in society.

The closest thinking in European philosophy I have found who matches the ideas of Confucius, is the famous scientist Nikolaus of Cusa, of the 15th century, who not only was the father of modern science in Europe and therefore, also America, but also the creator of a sovereign republic, the idea of the modern nation-state, and he developed, for the first time, the idea that rulership must be based on the consensus of the governed, and that is exactly the idea of the Confucius, who says the government must act on the Mandate of Heaven, and if the government is bad and loses that Mandate, it is the obligation of {Chun-Tzu}, the “noble sages,” to replace that government and bring the state back into order.

Nikolaus of Cusa had the idea that government not only should be provided by the wisest, but those of the wisest who have the strongest sense for lawfulness, for the legality of the state. Now, what is the mandate, is an objective matter: It’s natural law, it’s a high order within creation. But recognize that and to act on it, requires the development of humanity, therefore, Confucius put so much emphasis on education, especially to develop virtue.

The education method which Confucius developed is not based on teaching facts or giving information, but by inspiration, by being a role model, and the aim is the search for truth. And Confucius even had the idea to throw his pupils periodically into a crisis, so that they would find a deeper and better truth and be willing to take down their previous assumptions. Now, in that sense, Confucian ideas are also very similar to the idea of the “aesthetical education” of Friedrich Schiller, which is still in my view, the most noble idea, namely that one is able to educate every human being to become a beautiful soul and a genius.

Now, Nikolaus of Cusa developed a method of thinking in the {De Docta Ignorantia}, — this is actually a very nice picture, when you go to Bernkastel-Kues, the next time (which you should do pretty soon), because that’s the birthplace of Nikolaus of Cusa, and this is a painting in the little chapel in the hospital which he donated 500 years ago, and which is still in operation for about 35 people, as an old people’s home; there’s a little chapel, and this is a larger painting, and the interesting thing about it is you see the bad clergy who go to Hell. So, since he was a key reformer of the Church and would have made Luther completely superfluous, I find it quite interesting that he had such an idea.

In one of his main writings, {De Docta Ignorantia}, or {The Learned Ignorance}, he has this idea that man never knows the truth, but is in a perfect process of perfection and self-perfection Confucius says more or less the same thing. He says: A good man is not slavishly following the steps of others. He’s not even following slavishly his own steps, because experience has taught him that every occasion is different and you have to permanently evaluate each situation afresh and then choose what is the next step.

Confucius also was very strongly of the opinion, that Classical music elevates man, while destructive music destroys society. Now, if you look at the music of the Atlantic region today, I think we should be extremely worried. And he says, the effect of bad music has the same negative effect as populist orators; these people know how to talk very well, but only to achieve a sudden effect to please a sensuous experience of the audience, but watch out; these people are always only following their own interests and therefore are very dangerous.

Nikolaus of Cusa has the same polemic against the school of rhetoric which during his time was very popular among the Scholastics, and they basically based on the Aristotelian school of rhetoric that you just have to learn to talk up your issues well, and then you have success. I would say that almost every politician in the United States and Europe right now, at best, are a well-trained rhetorical orators, and therefore they are very dangerous.

I think if you look at all of this, there is no question in my mind, and I hope to at least make you curious enough that you investigate it on your own, that Xi Jinping is a completely Confucian man. He said {The Governance of China}, also,

He also said that they want to replace, as quickly as possible, the mark “Made in China,” with “Created, Invented in China.” The Chinese dream is to create a better future for the whole society, based on the fullest development of the creative potential of every individual in society. The New Silk Road policy offers that participation in that in a “win-win” policy: Everybody can participate and replicate the Chinese dream, which has led to the astounding economic miracle of China in the last 30 years, in which China developed in 30 years, what Europe and the United States took almost 200 years to accomplish.

President Xi Jinping offered to President Obama at the APEC conference last October in Beijing, a new model of relations between major countries, which is based on mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs; respect for the different social systems; and, based on a “win-win” cooperation which happens to be the same principle as the Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, which established that foreign policy must be based on the interest of the other. That happens to be also the basis of international law, and the UN Charter.

Now, how should we, and how can we, therefore, overcome the {immediate} danger of thermonuclear war, {and} the immediate danger that this beautiful mankind would {vanish} in extinction! Well, I think it’s very simple: What we have to do, and especially what you have to do, is to revive the American dream. Remember that such a thing once existed? The dream of the Founding Fathers was to create a republic, to make this country a “beacon of hope and a temple of liberty” where every person from around the globe would be happy to come to and become an American. The idea of a republic, of a Constitution, which was based on the principles of the common good, and the non-violation of sovereignty, not only for the present but also for future generations.

How can we overcome the danger of a financial blowout? Well, it’s very simple: We have to end the casino economy which is driving the war. How do we do that? implement Glass-Steagall. Now, fortunately, the Presidential campaign of Martin O’Malley is taking prominence more and more every day, and he has said that the first action he would take when he gets into the White House, would be to implement Glass-Steagall: Now that would mean ending the this high-profit, total maximizing the profit of a few, and going back the American System of economy. It should be surprising that the {Wall Street Journal} therefore, has declared Martin O’Malley “enemy number-one” in an article yesterday, and he said he proud of that.

Now therefore, it is the task of every patriotic American to help Lyndon LaRouche, to help us, and to help in general to create a team around O’Malley, which can revive every aspect of the republican tradition of America, especially the policies of Alexander Hamilton, who, after all, created a National Bank, he unified the country by taking over the debt of the different states, which was $70 million at the time, an astronomical figure, and he created then a credit system based on his four reports to the Congress. And all of this had the same idea, that the only source of wealth {is} the creative ability of the population.

So all the United States has to do to cooperate with the AIIB, the New Development Bank, the BRICS, the New Silk Road, is go back to your own tradition, go back to the principles of the American Revolution. The United States must be pushed to take up the offer of Xi Jinping and to cooperate in the great projects! And that means, not only create projects in Asia, Latin America, and Africa: rebuild the United States! I think if you have travelled some of the roads between Washington and New York recently, I think you should be convinced that you need infrastructure! Have you travelled on the Amtrak? You need a high-speed train system!

Therefore, reviving the American dream would mean, to build a fast train system, preferably a maglev system or some other technology, from the north to the south, from east to the west: not have the Amtrak system, in which people die because of a lack of safety, and Cass Sunstein’s policies of a couple of years ago; but have the idea that we could build in the United States, 30, 40, 50,000 km of fast train! You would stop having these old and not so secure airplanes for travel on the East Coast. You would have a fast train, a maglev system, where the travel time would be a quarter of what it is now by plane, because you would just get into the station, you would travel an hour and you are already in Chicago or someplace else.

And that’s just the beginning of the technologies which are right now being developed further by the Chinese to be able to travel at the speed of a thousand miles in the near future.

Now, why not rebuild America? America needs new cities! India right now is building {one hundred new cities}, so-called “smart cities.” These are cities which do not have your typical suburban sprawl and then some strip malls with Dunkin Donuts, and then McDonalds and then… and it doesn’t matter where you go, in each city, it’s the same. If you are dropped by helicopter, into these strip malls, you don’t know where you are, because they are each exactly the same in every place in the United States! Let’s build {beautiful} cities! Let’s build smart cities, where all the infrastructure is being put underground, like in a modular system, the sewerage, the water, the electricity the transport, and then, have the core of the city, new universities, libraries, theaters, operas, research facilities; then build housing around that; let the population participate in urban culture, which is lacking.

New York is probably the only city — maybe Chicago and maybe Boston, a little bit — but you need urban culture! Why is that China has the most Classical musicians in the world, most vocal and most instrumentalists? Because they know that Classical music is what makes creativity easy.

And let’s declare a war against the drought! Right now large parts of America, California, Texas, and other states west of the Mississippi, are being lost! And because you have Greenie politicians who say, there must be “water conservation,” you know, water use is being reduced by Brown in California, by 25 or even 36%, and that destroys agriculture, it destroys cities, it destroys human living conditions for people.

Let’s declare a war on the drought: California is located on the ocean, so there is enough water. Let’s build a couple of small nuclear plants to desalinate large amount of ocean water. Let’s revive NAWAPA, bring the water which is now flowing into the Arctic in Canada and in Alaska, along the Rocky Mountains, through a system of canals, all the way to Mexico: Which was already agreed upon by Congress during the time of John F. Kennedy. Let’s apply the knowledge we have about cosmic radiation and the processes in the galaxy to have ionization of moisture over the ocean, let’s have cloud formation, change the rain patterns, regain the deserts in the southwest of the United States.

Let’s have a revival of the American dream. There is no reason why people should forget what that was. Let’s create a mass movement for development. And let’s go back to the foreign policy of John Quincy Adams. Let’s create an alliance of sovereign nation-states, working together for the common aims of mankind, and realize the dream for all of humanity.

It is so clear that if we don’t change our ways now, if we don’t go to a completely new paradigm, we may not exist by the end of this year. But a new paradigm, a new epoch of human civilization, which would realize the idea that the human species is the only creative species known so far in the universe, means also that this humanity too precious, too beautiful, too lovable, to be risked in thermonuclear war.

Let’s turn the United States around, and accept the “win-win” perspective. And let me give you one thought for you to think about: can you imagine the joy around the world, which now is not so fond of the United States, due to Bush, Obama, two Bushes, and the image of the United States has become the lowest around the world. If the United States would now turn around and say, “we are participating in this new paradigm, the whole world would be so happy, and it is {absolutely possible}.

So I really ask you, work with us to accomplish that.

(Unformatted Transcript)

Dear friends, I’m very happy to speak to you today on this particular day, which is D-Day, and that should fill us all with the hope that the danger of a new fascism, which is arising in the world, can be defeated–but hopefully with less casualties.

I’m saying this because we are right now on the edge of World War III, and we are at that moment, exactly for the same reasons, which were causing World War I, and World War II, to happen: Geopolitical interests of an imperial force against the well-being and common good of nations. Because, contrary to the myth, world wars do not happen because of conflicts among nations, but because of imperial designs for the benefit of a small oligarchy, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

I think anybody who follows even the public domain of news, of TV, or media in general, has plenty of evidence that we are heading towards a strategic confrontation between the United States and NATO, on the one side, and Russia and China. And this is not something planned for the distant future. This is on the table right now. It’s planned for this summer.

Last week in the Australian media, there was an email published by military analyst John Shindler, who said that he just received an email from an official from NATO, a non-American, who said, “War is on for this summer–let’s hope it will not be nuclear.”

Now if you look at the different flashpoints where this war could erupt, well, you have the escalation of the Ukraine crisis. Massive fighting escalated this past Wednesday. President Poroshenko claims that the Ukraine is already at war with Russia, and he claims that there is a full invasion by Russian forces in East Ukraine. This is completely denied by the Russian side. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov just said, “No. Russia is putting its utmost priority to make sure the Minsk II process is succeeding.”

Now the Ukrainian parliament just made amendments which allow for the admission of armed forces of other states to fight on the territory of Ukraine. So, while it is not excluded that some individual Russians are on the side of East Ukraine, the official Russian army is not, but you have now special troops, mostly from mercenary armies and private institutions of various countries. And there is also — This bill, by the way, was introduced into the Ukrainian parliament by Prime Minister Yats, and if you remember, Yatsenyuk is the darling of Victoria Nuland, who imposed him in a coup on the 21st of February, 2014.

Now the Defense Secretary Ash Carter has been meeting yesterday in Stuttgart at the U.S.-European Command, with top American defense officials and diplomats to map out a “counter-strategy” to the Russian military operations in Ukraine, and to “reassure allies.” That is always the word used to cover for an escalation, and behind closed doors, two dozen generals, ambassadors, and others were discussing whether to expand military exercises, or beef up the assistance to the Baltics or other countries, and who knows what else they were discussing. It was kind of an emergency meeting.

Ash Carter also said that he is very open to the idea to provide Ukraine with so-called lethal weapons. Now that is completely opposed by most of the European countries, especially Germany, France, and others, because it’s the opinion of Hollande, Merkel, and others that if you provide lethal weapons into Ukraine, a country which is utterly bankrupt–the economy is totally collapsed, the population is suffering a humanitarian catastrophe–it will just lead to more killing, and the danger of an escalation. And that’s why the Europeans, that’s why Merkel went to Moscow, that’s why you have the so-called Minsk group which tries to solve this problem by peaceful means.

Now, why am I saying that the danger is so immediately acute? Well, if you look at the official NATO website, they have an 8-page document there which goes through the different maneuvers taking place between April and November, and there are major force exercise, but mostly on the Russian periphery, along the Russian borders. Many of those maneuvers are related to the “very high readiness joint taskforce,” or “Spearhead Force,” which NATO agreed upon to establish at the recent Wales NATO summit last September. And they also discussed that these maneuvers will involve the expansion of the NATO response force, and some of the names of these maneuvers are: Arctic Challenge, which involves 8 countries and ended on Friday; Steadfast Cobalt, which is mainly in Poland–this will go until the 15th of June; another one in Holland; and a series of so-called Allied Shield maneuvers in the Baltics, from the 5th to the 20th of June; South Strike, from the 8th to the 19th of June in Poland and the Baltics; Noble Jump, 10th to the 21st of June in Poland and other locations; Sea Breeze, from the 22nd of June to the 3rd of July, in the Black Sea; Trident Juncture, from the first of October to the 6th of November, in Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

And you have simultaneously Russian maneuvers, non-stop, matching the NATO maneuvers, including a maneuver of the Strategic Rocket Force last week. Last week you had the snap maneuvers in the Central Military District, and the message coming from all of that is very clear: that Russia is absolutely not going to back down.

A week ago, you had an incident where the {USS Ross}, which is an Aegis-equipped ballistic missile defense destroyer, belonging to the Ballistic Missile system, which the United States is building in Eastern Europe and in the Mediterranean, and that ship, the {USS Ross}, left the Romanian port of Constanta, moving towards Russian water. At that point, the Russian Navy sent SU-24 jets, and forced the {USS Ross} to turn around, and go back.

Now that incident is, or was, hair-raising, because there was in the recent period a whole bunch of top military experts from the United States, from Europe, who warned that, contrary to the Cold War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, today there is no red telephone between the President of the United States and that of Russia, and that the normal code of communication, the so-called red telephone, more or less has completely broken down. And therefore the danger of even an accidental launch, just some mistaken reading of screens, or some other human failure, could lead to launching of thermonuclear war, which at this point, would in all likelihood mean the extinction of civilization.

And the thing which is so horrifying about it, is, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy was in office, people were aware that nuclear war means the annihilation of civilization, and compared to that time, we are now in a much, much more dangerous situation for reasons I’m going to elaborate than then, and there is no public debate! There is no mass protest! There is no peace movement in the streets.

In the middle-range missile crisis at the beginning of the 1980s, when the SS-20 and the Pershing-2 were directed against each other, and all the time being launched on warning, because the distance was so short, you had hundreds of thousands of people in street, in Europe, and people were aware how big the danger is. And now everybody is sleepwalking, or watching TV, or going to the holidays, or some other activity.

Now the growth of the NATO-U.S. missile defense system in Europe, when this started, it was clear to every military expert that this means the United States has gone to a first-strike policy. And more recently, Russia has also denounced, in no uncertain terms, that they also regard the Prompt Global Strike doctrine as a first-strike doctrine.

The Russian Defense Ministry also was concerned about an exercise in the Atlantic, with the involvement of 8 countries called RC Demonstration 2015, which simulates the interception of Russian ballistic missiles. And just to mention this, over the Christmas period, President Putin already had announced the upgrade of the Russian military doctrine by saying that they regard these first-strike doctrines–the Ballistic Missile system in Europe, and the Prompt Global Strike doctrine–as a severe security threat to the existence of Russia, and therefore, they preserve the right to even use nuclear weapons in order to prevent such a strategy from being successful.

Now that shows you in what proximity of the catastrophe we are.

The military leaders of Europe, with whom we are in contact, have assured us–and I don’t want to name any names, but these are people who are really top, top experts–they said all of these maneuvers, and all of these permanent rotations of U.S. troops to the Baltics, sending in tank battalions, and other heavy equipment, all is just confetti. It doesn’t mean anything. Because these troops could not possibly win a war against Russia in a conventional way, and this is just a PR campaign to calm the nerves down of nervous Nellies in the Baltic countries who mostly have leaders anyway who have been chosen in exile, and put in these positions.

But below the nuclear threshold, nothing would function. So we are not really talking about some conventional little war in Europe, but they are talking clearly about a thermonuclear war.

Exactly the same escalation of the confrontation is happening towards China right now. [first slide] At the end of May, the U.S. Navy P8A Poseidon Surveillance aircraft flew over the Yongshu reef, which is part of Spratly Islands, and they had a CNN crew on board. And that CNN crew film the reef, and the people on this little rock, and basically then a tremendous PR campaign was launched about this being the proof of the “aggressive behavior of China,” and naturally China is on some of these rocks, filling up sand, and making them actually little islands, but that is not only China. Every country in the region has done that. The Philippines, Vietnam, and others.

And there again, Ash Carter said that there should be no mistake about this. China protested and said, this is violating the 12-mile radius around these reefs. And then Ash Carter said, “There should be no mistake about this. The U.S. will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do around the world.”

The {China Daily} at that point rejected capitulation to U.S. bullying tactics, and basically said this was just the U.S. implementing the pivot to Asia strategy, to counterbalance the rise of regional powers, China and India. And this was the first time they named India as being part of the reason why the United States is doing the Asia pivot policy.

Then the {Global Times}, the official Chinese paper, also said, experts warn of the potential of a military conflict over heightened U.S. surveillance over these islands, and a representative of the PLA Academy of Military Science, Peng Wanghang, said, “China will likely strike back if the U.S. comes within 12 miles of the islands. The U.S. is deliberately provoking China.”

And what was the comment of the {Wall Street Journal?} “War on China now.” They say, “the longer the U.S. fails to contest Beijing’s South China Sea claims, the more aggressive China will become, and perhaps willing to fight for them. The time to resist China’s maritime pretensions is now.”

Deng Xiaoping already in the ’80s, when little rumblings around these islands had come up, he said, Let’s not fight over rocks in the South China Sea. Let’s freeze the whole conflict. Let’s jointly develop these places and benefit all of them, and leave it to future generations to figure out who has what territorial claim, but let’s not get into fights right now.

That advice was obviously not taken, because especially as the rise of China became an issue–and remember that General Dempsey repeatedly warned not to fall into the Thucydides trap over China, because the neo-cons around the fall of the Soviet Union had developed this idea that they would never allow {any} country to rise above the power and economic might of the United States, and not even a group of countries.

Now, China is rising. China is 1.4 billion people. India is probably 1.3 billion people, and they have growth rates. China used to have a growth rate of up to 12%; now it has consciously reduced that to about 7%. India has a growth rate of 8%. So these countries are rising, and they represent much more people than the United States. So why should they not develop? But General Dempsey had warned not to fall into the Thucydides trap, referring to the fact of Athens in ancient Greece, against Sparta, because when Sparta started to develop, the Athenians were worried that they would lose power, so they started the Peloponnesian War, and overstretched their empire, and that is how Classical Greece went under. So, Dempsey said, the United States should not make that mistake.

Obviously, they’re not listening. And right now, you have all kinds of thinktanks–CSIS and others–who invite people from the South China region and have them play war games over these islands.

So, already in 2012, Manila deployed its largest naval asset, decommissioned U.S. 1960-era patrol cutter, to arrest Chinese fishermen on the Scarborough Shoal, there you see it [graphic], a reef in the northeast of the South China Sea. But then, it turned out the entrance was too small, and the water too shallow for a warship, so instead they had to send a small boarding team, which went into the lagoon, and made the arrest. But that gave the Chinese law enforcement enough time to send a vessel, and intervene. So Manila had lost face because they were looking militaristic, sending a warship against fishermen, and basically having militarized the dispute.

China at that point retaliated with economic pressure, and for one full year, the Philippines had no ambassador to China, and eventually had to pick a new, more peaceful ambassador to assume that post.

Similarly, in 2012, China prevailed against Vietnam over disputed Blue territories, and the Paracel’s Woody Island. Now the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Miss Hua Chunying said in response that the Chinese land reclamations around the Meiji Reef, which is also claimed by the Philippines, only have the purpose to improve functions for the living conditions of the personnel which are stationed there, to help to develop maritime search and rescue disaster prevention, maritime science and research, meteorological observation, navigation, safety, fishery production service, and all kinds of civilian demands besides the need of military defense.

So, it is clear the buildup of these reefs and shoals into artificial islands increases both the civilian and the military use. But as the former Prime Minister of Australia Hawke just said, this is not a threat to anybody. Our ships are not being hampered and they can travel through these areas without a problem.

Now, why should these rocks and a little sand on top of the, be such an issue, that people start talking about possible war between the United States and China?

When I arrived in Beijing last February, in 2014, this was a few days before the Nazi coup in Kiev occurred. I was talking to Chinese officials and I warned them that this could lead to a potential great war. And they had no idea. They were not interested in Ukraine. They said, oh, Ukraine is very far away, and we are much more concerned about our conflict with Japan and the South China Sea. Naturally that attitude has changed after the total escalation over Ukraine, but in Europe people have still a similar attitude. They say, oh, why discuss about these rocks in the South China Sea? Why should we concern ourselves with this?

Well, both conflicts are the result of geopolitics, of empire politics which led to two world wars already, so we should not dismiss such things at all. We have to go back to what was geopolitics before World war I, the crazy assumptions of such people like Mackinder and Milner, who at that time, at the end of the 19th Century, developed the idea that whoever controls the Eurasian mainland, is putting the Atlantic rim countries at a disadvantage in terms of controlling the world.

At that point, you had in Europe and Eurasia, the Trans-Siberian Railroad developed. You had Bismarck who adopted the American System of economy, which was the idea coming from Henry C. Carey, the advisor of Lincoln, and these ideas were transmitted to Bismarck especially by the head of the industrial association in Germany at the time, Wilhlem von Kardoff. And it was the idea that what generates wealth in society is not free trade; it’s not the ability to buy cheap and sell expensive; but it is entirely the development of the creative powers of labor and the productive powers of industry.

Now, this adoption by Bismarck of the American System of Economy, as it was developed by Lincoln at the time, in a very short period of time, in a few years, turned Germany from a feudal country into one of the industrial powers of the world, and also, to have the best social system in the world, going along with that. But that was very much a thorn in the eyes of the British Empire at that point, and their control of the sea trade, because if then, as in the ’90s of the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian railroad brought an advantage to trade via land, via railroad, they saw their control on the sea threatened.

So, they did a whole bunch of maneuvers to derail this. One was, they used their influence in Germany is get the ouster of Bismarck, which was really the beginning of World war I. They manipulated the landscape to have the Entente Cordiale, the Triple Entente, the attack by Japan on Russia in 1905, the two Balkan wars in 1912, and then when the shots of Sarajevo occurred, this was just the trigger, but not the cause of this war.

Now World War I ended with the Versailles Treaty, and that Treaty had the seeds already of the Second World War, {and} the third World War, if we don’t stop it. At the end of World War I, the German-held territories of the Shandong Peninsula was transferred to Japan at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Shandong, including Jiaozhou and the Pacific Islands north of the equator, were supposed to go Japan. This included the Marshall Woods, the Micronesia, Mariana Islands, and the Carolines, but Japan was very unhappy that only half of the rights of Germany were given to Japan, and they walked out of the conference.

The reason why Japan was treated so nicely is because, after all they got half of them, they had a secret agreement in 1917 with Great Britain and France and Italy, that guaranteed these territories to Japan, and Japan, in turn agreed they would support the British annexing the Pacific Islands south of the Equator. So Article 156 of the Treaty of Versailles transferred these German colonies and concessions in Jiaozhou, China to Japan.

Naturally this led to the protest of Liu Tseng-Tsiang, head of the Chinese delegation, who rejected this agreement, and China, as a consequence, did not sign the treaty, as the only country of that conference. China had a tremendous feeling of injustice and outrage, which led to the demonstrations which became known as the May 4 movement, which was that thousands of students demonstrated in Beijing, in strikes and boycotts of Japanese goods–and also workers and merchants participated, and all layers of the society regarded the Versailles Treaty as an utter fraud.

Thirty years later, after the Second world War, there was the San Francisco Peace conference, where China, thanks to John Foster Dulles, was not even seated. They were not even invited to participate despite the fact that they had fought the Japanese longer than anybody, and they had the highest casualty rate in Asia.

So, the Western powers established the current Eastern Asian order in China’s absence. And John Foster Dulles, who was the designer of the Treaty, deliberately left certain Asian frontier territories without owners. There is a book called the {The Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific}, written by Kimie Hara, which basically said that the San Francisco Peace Treaty created the causes for almost every territorial dispute in Asia. And this is a very long list of disputes: the Kurile Islands, the Northern Territory, the division of North and South Korea, the Dokto-Takashima Islands, the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, the separation of Taiwan from the Mainland, the Paracels-Yisha and the Spratly Namsha islands.

This is why this can be operated every time you want to have a war. And it is obvious that you do not find the dynamics if you just look at the current day media. And as I will show you in a second, the Ukraine crisis, and the conflict with Russia, come exactly from the same origin.

Now, the Versailles Treaty was not a peace treaty. It was a debt dungeon in the interests of the financial oligarchy. No serious historian any more would claim that Germany was the only war party in the first World War, but as I said, this had a 30 years pre-history where the main manipulators were really the British, for reasons that they hated the German industrial revolution introduced by Bismarck, and they hated the idea of the Eurasian development.

Nevertheless the Versailles powers ruled that Germany had to pay both its own war debt, which was significant, and reparations. And that so was so much more than the German industry could possibly produce, that it led to the 1923 hyperinflation, the 1929 crash, the Great Depression of the ’30s, and that all gave rise to the National Socialists, and that way, the preparation for World War II was created. The same method, by the way, was behind the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Middle East in such a way that you can manipulate any ethnic situation whenever you want to. It also was the basis of the 1919 Trianon Treaty, which created the same kind of powder keg for the Balkans, and in each of these situations, potential future territorial conflicts were already built in.

Now, the same debt prison which Versailles meant to Germany after the First World War, which was really the seat of the catastrophe to come, that same debt prison has been imposed for exactly the same reason, with the Maastricht Treaty on all of Europe and led to the Ukraine crisis. Because Helmut Schmidt, the former Chancellor of Germany, whom you can disagree with on some points, but he was one of three German individuals in the last week — Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier — who strongly came out against the confrontation with Russia, and strongly criticizing Merkel for not inviting Putin to the G7 summit which takes place this weekend. Because none of the big conflicts, they argue, can be solved without Russia, not terrorism, not ISIS, not the Ukraine issue, not the financial crisis, so why not invite Putin to participate?

Now, Helmut Schmidt also said, that the origin of the Ukraine crisis was the 1992 adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. Why? Because it was at that point, that not only was a debt regime imposed over all of Europe, forbidding, for example, credit generation for productive purposes, but especially, and that is the argument Schmidt made, it was a beginning of the eastward expansion of the EU, which always went in parallel to the eastward expansion of NATO.

Now, the policy of the Troika against Greece, — the Troika being the IMF, the European Central Bank and the EU Commission — as you know imposed several “rescue packages” on Greece, which now has led to a complete debt of EU360 billion. Now, 97% of that money {never} remained in Greece, but immediately went back to pay the European banks, and on 3% of that money stayed in Greece, so the Greek government has argued, legitimately and understandably, that they cannot and will not pay that debt, because if you look the smallness of Greece, the smallness of the Greek economy, they would have to have a 200% growth rate of GDP in order to pay their debts. So they have demanded a debt cancellation conference.

Five months of negotiations between the new Syriza-Independent Greeks government with the Troika has led to a complete standstill, and Greece was supposed to pay EU300 million to the IMF on Friday. And then they were on the telephone with Merkel, with Hollande, and were presented with the ultimate list of tax increases by EU3.5 billion, by more cuts in the pensions, in the health system — so, Prime Minister Tsipras said, this is unacceptable. This cannot be the basis for an agreement because we have a red line and that is we made promises to our population and we won the election on that basis, that we will not pay debt which we regard as illegitimate.

So, now they have, for the time being, said we will pay all the monies which will come due in June, which is altogether EU1.5 billion by the end of June. That may be the beginning of the end, not only of the euro, but of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system. Because on this Greek debt hangs several {trillion} in derivatives, and therefore, I think Tsipras has, for sure, the better cards, because [Finance Minister] Varoufakis is an economist, he knows his business, and they know perfectly well, that in the moment the Eurozone kicks out Greece, in an uncontrolled way, then you will have the evaporation of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, which has presently altogether, and there is a swap agreement between the ECB and the Federal Reserve, therefore they hang together, have an outstanding derivatives debt exposure of $2 quadrillion. So this is why you have right now the reemergence of this same geopolitical impulse, where some of the financial oligarchy just say — not everybody, because some of them have changed — some of them say: Well, if Asia is rising and the trans-Atlantic sector is collapsing it is better that we risk a thermonuclear showdown, rather than letting them take the winning of this game.

So that is why we are on the verge of World War III. But it is not so simple anymore, because in the meantime, a dramatic, dramatic change has occurred: Since Xi Jinping announced the policy of the New Silk Road of China in September in Kazakhstan in 2013, and especially the allying even stronger of the BRICS countries at the Fortaleza summit in July 2014 in Brazil, you have a completely new dynamic in the world. What has emerged, pretty much unknown to people in Europe and the United States, because the mass media have slandered this or blacked it out completely, you have the emergence of a completely parallel economic and financial system. And in the last year alone, you have an unbelievable amount of joint projects in infrastructure, scientific and technological cooperation, nuclear cooperation, joint space programs.

Infrastructure projects, for example, include the building of a second Panama Canal, in Nicaragua with the help of China. You have right now, you had the visit of Prime Minister Li Keqiang in Brazil, Peru, and Chile, which resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding between China, Brazil, and Peru, to build a transcontinental railroad, which for the first time in history unites the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean by railway.

Now, this is historic, because if you look at the map of Latin America, up to now, you have {no} continental-wide infrastructure project, or system, you only have little pieces of railway from the raw materials to the port, which is the leftover from the colonialist exploitation of Latin America. But this is now changing, because Li Keqiang went on to Chile, and they agreed to build four tunnels between Chile and Argentina, to also connect the trade, to have access to the Atlantic and the Pacific.

And this is all based on Xi Jinping’s pronunciation to have a “win-win” policy, that naturally China has advantages, it has expanding export markets, but it brings the urgently required infrastructure to these countries.

They have also agreed not only on all of these infrastructure projects which are too numerous right now for me to list, but they have created a completely new parallel financial system. The United States tried to prevent anybody from joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the AIIB, but then, Great Britain wanted to join, and then Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, Japan — no, Japan not — Israel! So altogether 58 nations wanted to become {founding} member nations of the AIIB, and this bank, like all the other banks which I will name in a second, are not to speculate: They are only there to issue credit for infrastructure for the real economy.

Now, the BRICS countries are the New Development Bank into function this coming July around the BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia. And also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which also has their summit at that time in Ufa, will have their own development bank; the SAARC countries, this is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, will have their own development bank; China has created in addition, a New Silk Road Development Fund, a Maritime Silk Road Fund, and so this is really taking off. All of these banks have around $100 billion ground capital — naturally, they can lend out much more money than their basic capital; the BRICS have also created a currency reserve arrangement [Contingent Reserve Arrangement], which is a pool to defend all participating countries against speculative attacks. They have learned their lesson from the Asia crisis [in 1997-98] when such people applied criminal speculation against the currencies of the countries of Asia, like George Soros, who speculated the currencies of Asia down by 80% {in one week} in ’97!

This has been going on, especially in the last year. There is a completely new economic and financial system emerging, and as I said, the media did not report it at all: they had slanders against Xi Jinping, Putin, naturally, the “demon”; Xi Jinping, the new “dictator” and Mao Zedong, “tensions between China and India.” So they’re only reporting things which were either outright lies, or negative images, so that people in America or Europe would not know about these things.

But this is now changing: Since about two, three weeks, the success of this new system is becoming so overwhelming that they could not help but to report about it. This is {Time} magazine, with the headline, “New Silk Road Could Change Global Economics Forever.” This is written by Robert Berke, and it goes through all of these projects, going into the history of the ancient Silk Road, Marco Polo, but especially coming to the present situation. But then, it still has the spin, by saying, “all this is, is really a chess game for the control of Eurasia. This will lead to a new Cold War, where the outcome is still completely open.” This is another such article, “Could the New Silk Road End Geopolitical Tensions?”

And then also, there is a lengthy reportage in the official German radio Deutschlandfunk, “China’s New Silk Road: Old Route, New Ways,” also going into the legendary ancient Silk Road — in great detail, actually quite excited reporting, that this is really taking off, with {huge} development projects. But then, they say, you know, the Chinese propaganda is that this is for the benefit for all of mankind, which gets them very upset, and they don’t want to believe it. And they say, “Ja, there is the one route which goes from the ancient emperor’s city of Xi’an, through Central Asia to Russia, Poland and ends in the city of Duisburg — Duisburg is the largest interior port of Europe, where Xi Jinping went, when he recently went to Germany and they received him with the big banner, “The Silk Road Has Arrived in Germany.” But then they say there is also a second route, which goes from the ancient city of Kashgar, which is in the west of China, all the way to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Turkey and also ends up in Europe. And, it involves the famous Karakorum Highway going from Kashgar to Pakistan, and so forth and so on.

A couple of months ago, I had requested at a similar conference as this, that we absolutely must get a public debate, in Europe and in the United States, that an alternative to a collapsing trans-Atlantic system exists, and that China and the BRICS countries have offered to the West to cooperate and be part of it. And I would say it is a certain success of our work that we have now several major articles reporting that. And I’m only picking out a couple. Also the director of the international security studies at the British Royal United Services Institute [rusi], which is the leading military think tank of the U.K., Raffaello Pantucci, says, this dynamic cannot be stopped, it will happen anyway. The Chinese Silk Road {is} the way out for the European crisis, why not just cooperate?

The Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy also said, this is the chance for Greece to recover the lost economic space of the past 20 years and become an advanced country, cooperating with the BRICS and the Silk Road. And that is actually the position of the Greek government, who have said since a long time, that Greece, which has historical long traditions with China, — I mean, they pride themselves that when China had the Silk Road, and that even before, an ancient civilization, Greece was one of the cradles, or {the} cradle of European civilization, and they already, through the ancient Silk Road, had deep cultural and economic ties; and therefore, Greece should revive right now the bridge between Europe and China. And Greece, because of the Orthodox Church and other historical ties, has also extremely good relations with Russia.

Also an economist from Ecuador, Pedro Páez, said, why is Europe not just cooperating with the Silk Road? The austerity drive has no future, it failed in Latin America before, and it will fail in Europe. While the Silk Road represents the hope for Europe to revive its economy.

Now, how should we look at that? China is preparing a completely different model, of government and of relations among states. I can only encourage you to read a book which contains 70 of the recent speeches of Xi Jinping from 2013-14, called {The Governance of China}, because if you read these 70 speeches, you get a sense that you have a {completely} different leader in front of you, than we are accustomed to in the West since the murder of the John F. Kennedy, or the ouster of Adenauer and de Gaulle. Because we have more or less dwarves as political leaders who are involved in scandals, who are involved in all kinds of things, but who have not presented a vision. As a matter of fact, I can tell you, in Europe right now, we have a lot of people who say: all our governments are doing is crisis management; they were running and panting after one crisis after the other, like a dog exhausted from long running, but they have no vision, they have no solutions, and that is why what is offered here is so attractive.

One quote from Xi Jinping, is the following: “We had an obligation to fulfill a dream for humanity. Instead of working against each other, we must work together as states. For that we need trust and unity. We have to name the old ways as inappropriate for the 21st century. Each country is like a little light, but if we bring them together, we can light up the nightly sky.” Key to understand China is Confucius, because Confucius was the official state philosophy of China for about 2,500 years, with only the very short interruption of the Cultural Revolution, but it is practically in the genes of all Chinese.

Xi Jinping talks about the “Chinese dream” and the “dream for humanity.” This actually comes from this Confucian conception, how society should be organized. In the center of this philosophy, is the idea of the perfectibility of man, that you cannot govern a country only by legislation or decrees, or punishment. He says, if a people is regulated only through the threat of punishment and decrees, it may be possible to get them not to do what is forbidden, but they will not develop a feeling of shamefulness. (Now that somehow sounds familiar, if you look at the present.) He says, but if people are guided by morality and ethical customs, they will not only develop shamefulness, but they will be striving for perfectibility.

Confucius developed his philosophy against a long period of war and chaos in China, and he proceeded from the idea that there is a higher lawfulness in the universe, than that which guides the political activities of the day. He called that, like before him other philosophers, the “Mandate of Heaven.” This is some idea which in European philosophy appeared as the notion of “natural law,” that there is an inbuilt, higher lawfulness, which man can violate, for a little bit, but sooner or later, these higher laws will punish the violators. And in the same way, Confucius says that the Mandate of Heaven, which means the obligation to create an harmonious development of society, and harmony means not just peace or just calmness, but it means, consensus of the governed, unity and all of this directed toward the common progress in society.

The closest thinking in European philosophy I have found who matches the ideas of Confucius, is the famous scientist Nikolaus of Cusa, of the 15th century, who not only was the father of modern science in Europe and therefore, also America, but also the creator of a sovereign republic, the idea of the modern nation-state, and he developed, for the first time, the idea that rulership must be based on the consensus of the governed, and that is exactly the idea of the Confucius, who says the government must act on the Mandate of Heaven, and if the government is bad and loses that Mandate, it is the obligation of {Chun-Tzu}, the “noble sages,” to replace that government and bring the state back into order.

Nikolaus of Cusa had the idea that government not only should be provided by the wisest, but those of the wisest who have the strongest sense for lawfulness, for the legality of the state. Now, what is the mandate, is an objective matter: It’s natural law, it’s a high order within creation. But recognize that and to act on it, requires the development of humanity, therefore, Confucius put so much emphasis on education, especially to develop virtue.

The education method which Confucius developed is not based on teaching facts or giving information, but by inspiration, by being a role model, and the aim is the search for truth. And Confucius even had the idea to throw his pupils periodically into a crisis, so that they would find a deeper and better truth and be willing to take down their previous assumptions. Now, in that sense, Confucian ideas are also very similar to the idea of the “aesthetical education” of Friedrich Schiller, which is still in my view, the most noble idea, namely that one is able to educate every human being to become a beautiful soul and a genius.

Now, Nikolaus of Cusa developed a method of thinking in the {De Docta Ignorantia}, — this is actually a very nice picture, when you go to Bernkastel-Kues, the next time (which you should do pretty soon), because that’s the birthplace of Nikolaus of Cusa, and this is a painting in the little chapel in the hospital which he donated 500 years ago, and which is still in operation for about 35 people, as an old people’s home; there’s a little chapel, and this is a larger painting, and the interesting thing about it is you see the bad clergy who go to Hell. So, since he was a key reformer of the Church and would have made Luther completely superfluous, I find it quite interesting that he had such an idea.

In one of his main writings, {De Docta Ignorantia}, or {The Learned Ignorance}, he has this idea that man never knows the truth, but is in a perfect process of perfection and self-perfection Confucius says more or less the same thing. He says: A good man is not slavishly following the steps of others. He’s not even following slavishly his own steps, because experience has taught him that every occasion is different and you have to permanently evaluate each situation afresh and then choose what is the next step.

Confucius also was very strongly of the opinion, that Classical music elevates man, while destructive music destroys society. Now, if you look at the music of the Atlantic region today, I think we should be extremely worried. And he says, the effect of bad music has the same negative effect as populist orators; these people know how to talk very well, but only to achieve a sudden effect to please a sensuous experience of the audience, but watch out; these people are always only following their own interests and therefore are very dangerous.

Nikolaus of Cusa has the same polemic against the school of rhetoric which during his time was very popular among the Scholastics, and they basically based on the Aristotelian school of rhetoric that you just have to learn to talk up your issues well, and then you have success. I would say that almost every politician in the United States and Europe right now, at best, are a well-trained rhetorical orators, and therefore they are very dangerous.

I think if you look at all of this, there is no question in my mind, and I hope to at least make you curious enough that you investigate it on your own, that Xi Jinping is a completely Confucian man. He said {The Governance of China}, also,

He also said that they want to replace, as quickly as possible, the mark “Made in China,” with “Created, Invented in China.” The Chinese dream is to create a better future for the whole society, based on the fullest development of the creative potential of every individual in society. The New Silk Road policy offers that participation in that in a “win-win” policy: Everybody can participate and replicate the Chinese dream, which has led to the astounding economic miracle of China in the last 30 years, in which China developed in 30 years, what Europe and the United States took almost 200 years to accomplish.

President Xi Jinping offered to President Obama at the APEC conference last October in Beijing, a new model of relations between major countries, which is based on mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs; respect for the different social systems; and, based on a “win-win” cooperation which happens to be the same principle as the Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, which established that foreign policy must be based on the interest of the other. That happens to be also the basis of international law, and the UN Charter.

Now, how should we, and how can we, therefore, overcome the {immediate} danger of thermonuclear war, {and} the immediate danger that this beautiful mankind would {vanish} in extinction! Well, I think it’s very simple: What we have to do, and especially what you have to do, is to revive the American dream. Remember that such a thing once existed? The dream of the Founding Fathers was to create a republic, to make this country a “beacon of hope and a temple of liberty” where every person from around the globe would be happy to come to and become an American. The idea of a republic, of a Constitution, which was based on the principles of the common good, and the non-violation of sovereignty, not only for the present but also for future generations.

How can we overcome the danger of a financial blowout? Well, it’s very simple: We have to end the casino economy which is driving the war. How do we do that? implement Glass-Steagall. Now, fortunately, the Presidential campaign of Martin O’Malley is taking prominence more and more every day, and he has said that the first action he would take when he gets into the White House, would be to implement Glass-Steagall: Now that would mean ending the this high-profit, total maximizing the profit of a few, and going back the American System of economy. It should be surprising that the {Wall Street Journal} therefore, has declared Martin O’Malley “enemy number-one” in an article yesterday, and he said he proud of that.

Now therefore, it is the task of every patriotic American to help Lyndon LaRouche, to help us, and to help in general to create a team around O’Malley, which can revive every aspect of the republican tradition of America, especially the policies of Alexander Hamilton, who, after all, created a National Bank, he unified the country by taking over the debt of the different states, which was $70 million at the time, an astronomical figure, and he created then a credit system based on his four reports to the Congress. And all of this had the same idea, that the only source of wealth {is} the creative ability of the population.

So all the United States has to do to cooperate with the AIIB, the New Development Bank, the BRICS, the New Silk Road, is go back to your own tradition, go back to the principles of the American Revolution. The United States must be pushed to take up the offer of Xi Jinping and to cooperate in the great projects! And that means, not only create projects in Asia, Latin America, and Africa: rebuild the United States! I think if you have travelled some of the roads between Washington and New York recently, I think you should be convinced that you need infrastructure! Have you travelled on the Amtrak? You need a high-speed train system!

Therefore, reviving the American dream would mean, to build a fast train system, preferably a maglev system or some other technology, from the north to the south, from east to the west: not have the Amtrak system, in which people die because of a lack of safety, and Cass Sunstein’s policies of a couple of years ago; but have the idea that we could build in the United States, 30, 40, 50,000 km of fast train! You would stop having these old and not so secure airplanes for travel on the East Coast. You would have a fast train, a maglev system, where the travel time would be a quarter of what it is now by plane, because you would just get into the station, you would travel an hour and you are already in Chicago or someplace else.

And that’s just the beginning of the technologies which are right now being developed further by the Chinese to be able to travel at the speed of a thousand miles in the near future.

Now, why not rebuild America? America needs new cities! India right now is building {one hundred new cities}, so-called “smart cities.” These are cities which do not have your typical suburban sprawl and then some strip malls with Dunkin Donuts, and then McDonalds and then… and it doesn’t matter where you go, in each city, it’s the same. If you are dropped by helicopter, into these strip malls, you don’t know where you are, because they are each exactly the same in every place in the United States! Let’s build {beautiful} cities! Let’s build smart cities, where all the infrastructure is being put underground, like in a modular system, the sewerage, the water, the electricity the transport, and then, have the core of the city, new universities, libraries, theaters, operas, research facilities; then build housing around that; let the population participate in urban culture, which is lacking.

New York is probably the only city — maybe Chicago and maybe Boston, a little bit — but you need urban culture! Why is that China has the most Classical musicians in the world, most vocal and most instrumentalists? Because they know that Classical music is what makes creativity easy.

And let’s declare a war against the drought! Right now large parts of America, California, Texas, and other states west of the Mississippi, are being lost! And because you have Greenie politicians who say, there must be “water conservation,” you know, water use is being reduced by Brown in California, by 25 or even 36%, and that destroys agriculture, it destroys cities, it destroys human living conditions for people.

Let’s declare a war on the drought: California is located on the ocean, so there is enough water. Let’s build a couple of small nuclear plants to desalinate large amount of ocean water. Let’s revive NAWAPA, bring the water which is now flowing into the Arctic in Canada and in Alaska, along the Rocky Mountains, through a system of canals, all the way to Mexico: Which was already agreed upon by Congress during the time of John F. Kennedy. Let’s apply the knowledge we have about cosmic radiation and the processes in the galaxy to have ionization of moisture over the ocean, let’s have cloud formation, change the rain patterns, regain the deserts in the southwest of the United States.

Let’s have a revival of the American dream. There is no reason why people should forget what that was. Let’s create a mass movement for development. And let’s go back to the foreign policy of John Quincy Adams. Let’s create an alliance of sovereign nation-states, working together for the common aims of mankind, and realize the dream for all of humanity.

It is so clear that if we don’t change our ways now, if we don’t go to a completely new paradigm, we may not exist by the end of this year. But a new paradigm, a new epoch of human civilization, which would realize the idea that the human species is the only creative species known so far in the universe, means also that this humanity too precious, too beautiful, too lovable, to be risked in thermonuclear war.

Let’s turn the United States around, and accept the “win-win” perspective. And let me give you one thought for you to think about: can you imagine the joy around the world, which now is not so fond of the United States, due to Bush, Obama, two Bushes, and the image of the United States has become the lowest around the world. If the United States would now turn around and say, “we are participating in this new paradigm, the whole world would be so happy, and it is {absolutely possible}.

So I really ask you, work with us to accomplish that.

(Unformatted Transcript)

Dear friends, I’m very happy to speak to you today on this particular day, which is D-Day, and that should fill us all with the hope that the danger of a new fascism, which is arising in the world, can be defeated–but hopefully with less casualties.

I’m saying this because we are right now on the edge of World War III, and we are at that moment, exactly for the same reasons, which were causing World War I, and World War II, to happen: Geopolitical interests of an imperial force against the well-being and common good of nations. Because, contrary to the myth, world wars do not happen because of conflicts among nations, but because of imperial designs for the benefit of a small oligarchy, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

I think anybody who follows even the public domain of news, of TV, or media in general, has plenty of evidence that we are heading towards a strategic confrontation between the United States and NATO, on the one side, and Russia and China. And this is not something planned for the distant future. This is on the table right now. It’s planned for this summer.

Last week in the Australian media, there was an email published by military analyst John Shindler, who said that he just received an email from an official from NATO, a non-American, who said, “War is on for this summer–let’s hope it will not be nuclear.”

Now if you look at the different flashpoints where this war could erupt, well, you have the escalation of the Ukraine crisis. Massive fighting escalated this past Wednesday. President Poroshenko claims that the Ukraine is already at war with Russia, and he claims that there is a full invasion by Russian forces in East Ukraine. This is completely denied by the Russian side. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov just said, “No. Russia is putting its utmost priority to make sure the Minsk II process is succeeding.”

Now the Ukrainian parliament just made amendments which allow for the admission of armed forces of other states to fight on the territory of Ukraine. So, while it is not excluded that some individual Russians are on the side of East Ukraine, the official Russian army is not, but you have now special troops, mostly from mercenary armies and private institutions of various countries. And there is also — This bill, by the way, was introduced into the Ukrainian parliament by Prime Minister Yats, and if you remember, Yatsenyuk is the darling of Victoria Nuland, who imposed him in a coup on the 21st of February, 2014.

Now the Defense Secretary Ash Carter has been meeting yesterday in Stuttgart at the U.S.-European Command, with top American defense officials and diplomats to map out a “counter-strategy” to the Russian military operations in Ukraine, and to “reassure allies.” That is always the word used to cover for an escalation, and behind closed doors, two dozen generals, ambassadors, and others were discussing whether to expand military exercises, or beef up the assistance to the Baltics or other countries, and who knows what else they were discussing. It was kind of an emergency meeting.

Ash Carter also said that he is very open to the idea to provide Ukraine with so-called lethal weapons. Now that is completely opposed by most of the European countries, especially Germany, France, and others, because it’s the opinion of Hollande, Merkel, and others that if you provide lethal weapons into Ukraine, a country which is utterly bankrupt–the economy is totally collapsed, the population is suffering a humanitarian catastrophe–it will just lead to more killing, and the danger of an escalation. And that’s why the Europeans, that’s why Merkel went to Moscow, that’s why you have the so-called Minsk group which tries to solve this problem by peaceful means.

Now, why am I saying that the danger is so immediately acute? Well, if you look at the official NATO website, they have an 8-page document there which goes through the different maneuvers taking place between April and November, and there are major force exercise, but mostly on the Russian periphery, along the Russian borders. Many of those maneuvers are related to the “very high readiness joint taskforce,” or “Spearhead Force,” which NATO agreed upon to establish at the recent Wales NATO summit last September. And they also discussed that these maneuvers will involve the expansion of the NATO response force, and some of the names of these maneuvers are: Arctic Challenge, which involves 8 countries and ended on Friday; Steadfast Cobalt, which is mainly in Poland–this will go until the 15th of June; another one in Holland; and a series of so-called Allied Shield maneuvers in the Baltics, from the 5th to the 20th of June; South Strike, from the 8th to the 19th of June in Poland and the Baltics; Noble Jump, 10th to the 21st of June in Poland and other locations; Sea Breeze, from the 22nd of June to the 3rd of July, in the Black Sea; Trident Juncture, from the first of October to the 6th of November, in Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

And you have simultaneously Russian maneuvers, non-stop, matching the NATO maneuvers, including a maneuver of the Strategic Rocket Force last week. Last week you had the snap maneuvers in the Central Military District, and the message coming from all of that is very clear: that Russia is absolutely not going to back down.

A week ago, you had an incident where the {USS Ross}, which is an Aegis-equipped ballistic missile defense destroyer, belonging to the Ballistic Missile system, which the United States is building in Eastern Europe and in the Mediterranean, and that ship, the {USS Ross}, left the Romanian port of Constanta, moving towards Russian water. At that point, the Russian Navy sent SU-24 jets, and forced the {USS Ross} to turn around, and go back.

Now that incident is, or was, hair-raising, because there was in the recent period a whole bunch of top military experts from the United States, from Europe, who warned that, contrary to the Cold War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, today there is no red telephone between the President of the United States and that of Russia, and that the normal code of communication, the so-called red telephone, more or less has completely broken down. And therefore the danger of even an accidental launch, just some mistaken reading of screens, or some other human failure, could lead to launching of thermonuclear war, which at this point, would in all likelihood mean the extinction of civilization.

And the thing which is so horrifying about it, is, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy was in office, people were aware that nuclear war means the annihilation of civilization, and compared to that time, we are now in a much, much more dangerous situation for reasons I’m going to elaborate than then, and there is no public debate! There is no mass protest! There is no peace movement in the streets.

In the middle-range missile crisis at the beginning of the 1980s, when the SS-20 and the Pershing-2 were directed against each other, and all the time being launched on warning, because the distance was so short, you had hundreds of thousands of people in street, in Europe, and people were aware how big the danger is. And now everybody is sleepwalking, or watching TV, or going to the holidays, or some other activity.

Now the growth of the NATO-U.S. missile defense system in Europe, when this started, it was clear to every military expert that this means the United States has gone to a first-strike policy. And more recently, Russia has also denounced, in no uncertain terms, that they also regard the Prompt Global Strike doctrine as a first-strike doctrine.

The Russian Defense Ministry also was concerned about an exercise in the Atlantic, with the involvement of 8 countries called RC Demonstration 2015, which simulates the interception of Russian ballistic missiles. And just to mention this, over the Christmas period, President Putin already had announced the upgrade of the Russian military doctrine by saying that they regard these first-strike doctrines–the Ballistic Missile system in Europe, and the Prompt Global Strike doctrine–as a severe security threat to the existence of Russia, and therefore, they preserve the right to even use nuclear weapons in order to prevent such a strategy from being successful.

Now that shows you in what proximity of the catastrophe we are.

The military leaders of Europe, with whom we are in contact, have assured us–and I don’t want to name any names, but these are people who are really top, top experts–they said all of these maneuvers, and all of these permanent rotations of U.S. troops to the Baltics, sending in tank battalions, and other heavy equipment, all is just confetti. It doesn’t mean anything. Because these troops could not possibly win a war against Russia in a conventional way, and this is just a PR campaign to calm the nerves down of nervous Nellies in the Baltic countries who mostly have leaders anyway who have been chosen in exile, and put in these positions.

But below the nuclear threshold, nothing would function. So we are not really talking about some conventional little war in Europe, but they are talking clearly about a thermonuclear war.

Exactly the same escalation of the confrontation is happening towards China right now. [first slide] At the end of May, the U.S. Navy P8A Poseidon Surveillance aircraft flew over the Yongshu reef, which is part of Spratly Islands, and they had a CNN crew on board. And that CNN crew film the reef, and the people on this little rock, and basically then a tremendous PR campaign was launched about this being the proof of the “aggressive behavior of China,” and naturally China is on some of these rocks, filling up sand, and making them actually little islands, but that is not only China. Every country in the region has done that. The Philippines, Vietnam, and others.

And there again, Ash Carter said that there should be no mistake about this. China protested and said, this is violating the 12-mile radius around these reefs. And then Ash Carter said, “There should be no mistake about this. The U.S. will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do around the world.”

The {China Daily} at that point rejected capitulation to U.S. bullying tactics, and basically said this was just the U.S. implementing the pivot to Asia strategy, to counterbalance the rise of regional powers, China and India. And this was the first time they named India as being part of the reason why the United States is doing the Asia pivot policy.

Then the {Global Times}, the official Chinese paper, also said, experts warn of the potential of a military conflict over heightened U.S. surveillance over these islands, and a representative of the PLA Academy of Military Science, Peng Wanghang, said, “China will likely strike back if the U.S. comes within 12 miles of the islands. The U.S. is deliberately provoking China.”

And what was the comment of the {Wall Street Journal?} “War on China now.” They say, “the longer the U.S. fails to contest Beijing’s South China Sea claims, the more aggressive China will become, and perhaps willing to fight for them. The time to resist China’s maritime pretensions is now.”

Deng Xiaoping already in the ’80s, when little rumblings around these islands had come up, he said, Let’s not fight over rocks in the South China Sea. Let’s freeze the whole conflict. Let’s jointly develop these places and benefit all of them, and leave it to future generations to figure out who has what territorial claim, but let’s not get into fights right now.

That advice was obviously not taken, because especially as the rise of China became an issue–and remember that General Dempsey repeatedly warned not to fall into the Thucydides trap over China, because the neo-cons around the fall of the Soviet Union had developed this idea that they would never allow {any} country to rise above the power and economic might of the United States, and not even a group of countries.

Now, China is rising. China is 1.4 billion people. India is probably 1.3 billion people, and they have growth rates. China used to have a growth rate of up to 12%; now it has consciously reduced that to about 7%. India has a growth rate of 8%. So these countries are rising, and they represent much more people than the United States. So why should they not develop? But General Dempsey had warned not to fall into the Thucydides trap, referring to the fact of Athens in ancient Greece, against Sparta, because when Sparta started to develop, the Athenians were worried that they would lose power, so they started the Peloponnesian War, and overstretched their empire, and that is how Classical Greece went under. So, Dempsey said, the United States should not make that mistake.

Obviously, they’re not listening. And right now, you have all kinds of thinktanks–CSIS and others–who invite people from the South China region and have them play war games over these islands.

So, already in 2012, Manila deployed its largest naval asset, decommissioned U.S. 1960-era patrol cutter, to arrest Chinese fishermen on the Scarborough Shoal, there you see it [graphic], a reef in the northeast of the South China Sea. But then, it turned out the entrance was too small, and the water too shallow for a warship, so instead they had to send a small boarding team, which went into the lagoon, and made the arrest. But that gave the Chinese law enforcement enough time to send a vessel, and intervene. So Manila had lost face because they were looking militaristic, sending a warship against fishermen, and basically having militarized the dispute.

China at that point retaliated with economic pressure, and for one full year, the Philippines had no ambassador to China, and eventually had to pick a new, more peaceful ambassador to assume that post.

Similarly, in 2012, China prevailed against Vietnam over disputed Blue territories, and the Paracel’s Woody Island. Now the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Miss Hua Chunying said in response that the Chinese land reclamations around the Meiji Reef, which is also claimed by the Philippines, only have the purpose to improve functions for the living conditions of the personnel which are stationed there, to help to develop maritime search and rescue disaster prevention, maritime science and research, meteorological observation, navigation, safety, fishery production service, and all kinds of civilian demands besides the need of military defense.

So, it is clear the buildup of these reefs and shoals into artificial islands increases both the civilian and the military use. But as the former Prime Minister of Australia Hawke just said, this is not a threat to anybody. Our ships are not being hampered and they can travel through these areas without a problem.

Now, why should these rocks and a little sand on top of the, be such an issue, that people start talking about possible war between the United States and China?

When I arrived in Beijing last February, in 2014, this was a few days before the Nazi coup in Kiev occurred. I was talking to Chinese officials and I warned them that this could lead to a potential great war. And they had no idea. They were not interested in Ukraine. They said, oh, Ukraine is very far away, and we are much more concerned about our conflict with Japan and the South China Sea. Naturally that attitude has changed after the total escalation over Ukraine, but in Europe people have still a similar attitude. They say, oh, why discuss about these rocks in the South China Sea? Why should we concern ourselves with this?

Well, both conflicts are the result of geopolitics, of empire politics which led to two world wars already, so we should not dismiss such things at all. We have to go back to what was geopolitics before World war I, the crazy assumptions of such people like Mackinder and Milner, who at that time, at the end of the 19th Century, developed the idea that whoever controls the Eurasian mainland, is putting the Atlantic rim countries at a disadvantage in terms of controlling the world.

At that point, you had in Europe and Eurasia, the Trans-Siberian Railroad developed. You had Bismarck who adopted the American System of economy, which was the idea coming from Henry C. Carey, the advisor of Lincoln, and these ideas were transmitted to Bismarck especially by the head of the industrial association in Germany at the time, Wilhlem von Kardoff. And it was the idea that what generates wealth in society is not free trade; it’s not the ability to buy cheap and sell expensive; but it is entirely the development of the creative powers of labor and the productive powers of industry.

Now, this adoption by Bismarck of the American System of Economy, as it was developed by Lincoln at the time, in a very short period of time, in a few years, turned Germany from a feudal country into one of the industrial powers of the world, and also, to have the best social system in the world, going along with that. But that was very much a thorn in the eyes of the British Empire at that point, and their control of the sea trade, because if then, as in the ’90s of the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian railroad brought an advantage to trade via land, via railroad, they saw their control on the sea threatened.

So, they did a whole bunch of maneuvers to derail this. One was, they used their influence in Germany is get the ouster of Bismarck, which was really the beginning of World war I. They manipulated the landscape to have the Entente Cordiale, the Triple Entente, the attack by Japan on Russia in 1905, the two Balkan wars in 1912, and then when the shots of Sarajevo occurred, this was just the trigger, but not the cause of this war.

Now World War I ended with the Versailles Treaty, and that Treaty had the seeds already of the Second World War, {and} the third World War, if we don’t stop it. At the end of World War I, the German-held territories of the Shandong Peninsula was transferred to Japan at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Shandong, including Jiaozhou and the Pacific Islands north of the equator, were supposed to go Japan. This included the Marshall Woods, the Micronesia, Mariana Islands, and the Carolines, but Japan was very unhappy that only half of the rights of Germany were given to Japan, and they walked out of the conference.

The reason why Japan was treated so nicely is because, after all they got half of them, they had a secret agreement in 1917 with Great Britain and France and Italy, that guaranteed these territories to Japan, and Japan, in turn agreed they would support the British annexing the Pacific Islands south of the Equator. So Article 156 of the Treaty of Versailles transferred these German colonies and concessions in Jiaozhou, China to Japan.

Naturally this led to the protest of Liu Tseng-Tsiang, head of the Chinese delegation, who rejected this agreement, and China, as a consequence, did not sign the treaty, as the only country of that conference. China had a tremendous feeling of injustice and outrage, which led to the demonstrations which became known as the May 4 movement, which was that thousands of students demonstrated in Beijing, in strikes and boycotts of Japanese goods–and also workers and merchants participated, and all layers of the society regarded the Versailles Treaty as an utter fraud.

Thirty years later, after the Second world War, there was the San Francisco Peace conference, where China, thanks to John Foster Dulles, was not even seated. They were not even invited to participate despite the fact that they had fought the Japanese longer than anybody, and they had the highest casualty rate in Asia.

So, the Western powers established the current Eastern Asian order in China’s absence. And John Foster Dulles, who was the designer of the Treaty, deliberately left certain Asian frontier territories without owners. There is a book called the {The Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific}, written by Kimie Hara, which basically said that the San Francisco Peace Treaty created the causes for almost every territorial dispute in Asia. And this is a very long list of disputes: the Kurile Islands, the Northern Territory, the division of North and South Korea, the Dokto-Takashima Islands, the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, the separation of Taiwan from the Mainland, the Paracels-Yisha and the Spratly Namsha islands.

This is why this can be operated every time you want to have a war. And it is obvious that you do not find the dynamics if you just look at the current day media. And as I will show you in a second, the Ukraine crisis, and the conflict with Russia, come exactly from the same origin.

Now, the Versailles Treaty was not a peace treaty. It was a debt dungeon in the interests of the financial oligarchy. No serious historian any more would claim that Germany was the only war party in the first World War, but as I said, this had a 30 years pre-history where the main manipulators were really the British, for reasons that they hated the German industrial revolution introduced by Bismarck, and they hated the idea of the Eurasian development.

Nevertheless the Versailles powers ruled that Germany had to pay both its own war debt, which was significant, and reparations. And that so was so much more than the German industry could possibly produce, that it led to the 1923 hyperinflation, the 1929 crash, the Great Depression of the ’30s, and that all gave rise to the National Socialists, and that way, the preparation for World War II was created. The same method, by the way, was behind the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Middle East in such a way that you can manipulate any ethnic situation whenever you want to. It also was the basis of the 1919 Trianon Treaty, which created the same kind of powder keg for the Balkans, and in each of these situations, potential future territorial conflicts were already built in.

Now, the same debt prison which Versailles meant to Germany after the First World War, which was really the seat of the catastrophe to come, that same debt prison has been imposed for exactly the same reason, with the Maastricht Treaty on all of Europe and led to the Ukraine crisis. Because Helmut Schmidt, the former Chancellor of Germany, whom you can disagree with on some points, but he was one of three German individuals in the last week — Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier — who strongly came out against the confrontation with Russia, and strongly criticizing Merkel for not inviting Putin to the G7 summit which takes place this weekend. Because none of the big conflicts, they argue, can be solved without Russia, not terrorism, not ISIS, not the Ukraine issue, not the financial crisis, so why not invite Putin to participate?

Now, Helmut Schmidt also said, that the origin of the Ukraine crisis was the 1992 adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. Why? Because it was at that point, that not only was a debt regime imposed over all of Europe, forbidding, for example, credit generation for productive purposes, but especially, and that is the argument Schmidt made, it was a beginning of the eastward expansion of the EU, which always went in parallel to the eastward expansion of NATO.

Now, the policy of the Troika against Greece, — the Troika being the IMF, the European Central Bank and the EU Commission — as you know imposed several “rescue packages” on Greece, which now has led to a complete debt of EU360 billion. Now, 97% of that money {never} remained in Greece, but immediately went back to pay the European banks, and on 3% of that money stayed in Greece, so the Greek government has argued, legitimately and understandably, that they cannot and will not pay that debt, because if you look the smallness of Greece, the smallness of the Greek economy, they would have to have a 200% growth rate of GDP in order to pay their debts. So they have demanded a debt cancellation conference.

Five months of negotiations between the new Syriza-Independent Greeks government with the Troika has led to a complete standstill, and Greece was supposed to pay EU300 million to the IMF on Friday. And then they were on the telephone with Merkel, with Hollande, and were presented with the ultimate list of tax increases by EU3.5 billion, by more cuts in the pensions, in the health system — so, Prime Minister Tsipras said, this is unacceptable. This cannot be the basis for an agreement because we have a red line and that is we made promises to our population and we won the election on that basis, that we will not pay debt which we regard as illegitimate.

So, now they have, for the time being, said we will pay all the monies which will come due in June, which is altogether EU1.5 billion by the end of June. That may be the beginning of the end, not only of the euro, but of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system. Because on this Greek debt hangs several {trillion} in derivatives, and therefore, I think Tsipras has, for sure, the better cards, because [Finance Minister] Varoufakis is an economist, he knows his business, and they know perfectly well, that in the moment the Eurozone kicks out Greece, in an uncontrolled way, then you will have the evaporation of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, which has presently altogether, and there is a swap agreement between the ECB and the Federal Reserve, therefore they hang together, have an outstanding derivatives debt exposure of $2 quadrillion. So this is why you have right now the reemergence of this same geopolitical impulse, where some of the financial oligarchy just say — not everybody, because some of them have changed — some of them say: Well, if Asia is rising and the trans-Atlantic sector is collapsing it is better that we risk a thermonuclear showdown, rather than letting them take the winning of this game.

So that is why we are on the verge of World War III. But it is not so simple anymore, because in the meantime, a dramatic, dramatic change has occurred: Since Xi Jinping announced the policy of the New Silk Road of China in September in Kazakhstan in 2013, and especially the allying even stronger of the BRICS countries at the Fortaleza summit in July 2014 in Brazil, you have a completely new dynamic in the world. What has emerged, pretty much unknown to people in Europe and the United States, because the mass media have slandered this or blacked it out completely, you have the emergence of a completely parallel economic and financial system. And in the last year alone, you have an unbelievable amount of joint projects in infrastructure, scientific and technological cooperation, nuclear cooperation, joint space programs.

Infrastructure projects, for example, include the building of a second Panama Canal, in Nicaragua with the help of China. You have right now, you had the visit of Prime Minister Li Keqiang in Brazil, Peru, and Chile, which resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding between China, Brazil, and Peru, to build a transcontinental railroad, which for the first time in history unites the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean by railway.

Now, this is historic, because if you look at the map of Latin America, up to now, you have {no} continental-wide infrastructure project, or system, you only have little pieces of railway from the raw materials to the port, which is the leftover from the colonialist exploitation of Latin America. But this is now changing, because Li Keqiang went on to Chile, and they agreed to build four tunnels between Chile and Argentina, to also connect the trade, to have access to the Atlantic and the Pacific.

And this is all based on Xi Jinping’s pronunciation to have a “win-win” policy, that naturally China has advantages, it has expanding export markets, but it brings the urgently required infrastructure to these countries.

They have also agreed not only on all of these infrastructure projects which are too numerous right now for me to list, but they have created a completely new parallel financial system. The United States tried to prevent anybody from joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the AIIB, but then, Great Britain wanted to join, and then Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, Japan — no, Japan not — Israel! So altogether 58 nations wanted to become {founding} member nations of the AIIB, and this bank, like all the other banks which I will name in a second, are not to speculate: They are only there to issue credit for infrastructure for the real economy.

Now, the BRICS countries are the New Development Bank into function this coming July around the BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia. And also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which also has their summit at that time in Ufa, will have their own development bank; the SAARC countries, this is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, will have their own development bank; China has created in addition, a New Silk Road Development Fund, a Maritime Silk Road Fund, and so this is really taking off. All of these banks have around $100 billion ground capital — naturally, they can lend out much more money than their basic capital; the BRICS have also created a currency reserve arrangement [Contingent Reserve Arrangement], which is a pool to defend all participating countries against speculative attacks. They have learned their lesson from the Asia crisis [in 1997-98] when such people applied criminal speculation against the currencies of the countries of Asia, like George Soros, who speculated the currencies of Asia down by 80% {in one week} in ’97!

This has been going on, especially in the last year. There is a completely new economic and financial system emerging, and as I said, the media did not report it at all: they had slanders against Xi Jinping, Putin, naturally, the “demon”; Xi Jinping, the new “dictator” and Mao Zedong, “tensions between China and India.” So they’re only reporting things which were either outright lies, or negative images, so that people in America or Europe would not know about these things.

But this is now changing: Since about two, three weeks, the success of this new system is becoming so overwhelming that they could not help but to report about it. This is {Time} magazine, with the headline, “New Silk Road Could Change Global Economics Forever.” This is written by Robert Berke, and it goes through all of these projects, going into the history of the ancient Silk Road, Marco Polo, but especially coming to the present situation. But then, it still has the spin, by saying, “all this is, is really a chess game for the control of Eurasia. This will lead to a new Cold War, where the outcome is still completely open.” This is another such article, “Could the New Silk Road End Geopolitical Tensions?”

And then also, there is a lengthy reportage in the official German radio Deutschlandfunk, “China’s New Silk Road: Old Route, New Ways,” also going into the legendary ancient Silk Road — in great detail, actually quite excited reporting, that this is really taking off, with {huge} development projects. But then, they say, you know, the Chinese propaganda is that this is for the benefit for all of mankind, which gets them very upset, and they don’t want to believe it. And they say, “Ja, there is the one route which goes from the ancient emperor’s city of Xi’an, through Central Asia to Russia, Poland and ends in the city of Duisburg — Duisburg is the largest interior port of Europe, where Xi Jinping went, when he recently went to Germany and they received him with the big banner, “The Silk Road Has Arrived in Germany.” But then they say there is also a second route, which goes from the ancient city of Kashgar, which is in the west of China, all the way to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Turkey and also ends up in Europe. And, it involves the famous Karakorum Highway going from Kashgar to Pakistan, and so forth and so on.

A couple of months ago, I had requested at a similar conference as this, that we absolutely must get a public debate, in Europe and in the United States, that an alternative to a collapsing trans-Atlantic system exists, and that China and the BRICS countries have offered to the West to cooperate and be part of it. And I would say it is a certain success of our work that we have now several major articles reporting that. And I’m only picking out a couple. Also the director of the international security studies at the British Royal United Services Institute [rusi], which is the leading military think tank of the U.K., Raffaello Pantucci, says, this dynamic cannot be stopped, it will happen anyway. The Chinese Silk Road {is} the way out for the European crisis, why not just cooperate?

The Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy also said, this is the chance for Greece to recover the lost economic space of the past 20 years and become an advanced country, cooperating with the BRICS and the Silk Road. And that is actually the position of the Greek government, who have said since a long time, that Greece, which has historical long traditions with China, — I mean, they pride themselves that when China had the Silk Road, and that even before, an ancient civilization, Greece was one of the cradles, or {the} cradle of European civilization, and they already, through the ancient Silk Road, had deep cultural and economic ties; and therefore, Greece should revive right now the bridge between Europe and China. And Greece, because of the Orthodox Church and other historical ties, has also extremely good relations with Russia.

Also an economist from Ecuador, Pedro Páez, said, why is Europe not just cooperating with the Silk Road? The austerity drive has no future, it failed in Latin America before, and it will fail in Europe. While the Silk Road represents the hope for Europe to revive its economy.

Now, how should we look at that? China is preparing a completely different model, of government and of relations among states. I can only encourage you to read a book which contains 70 of the recent speeches of Xi Jinping from 2013-14, called {The Governance of China}, because if you read these 70 speeches, you get a sense that you have a {completely} different leader in front of you, than we are accustomed to in the West since the murder of the John F. Kennedy, or the ouster of Adenauer and de Gaulle. Because we have more or less dwarves as political leaders who are involved in scandals, who are involved in all kinds of things, but who have not presented a vision. As a matter of fact, I can tell you, in Europe right now, we have a lot of people who say: all our governments are doing is crisis management; they were running and panting after one crisis after the other, like a dog exhausted from long running, but they have no vision, they have no solutions, and that is why what is offered here is so attractive.

One quote from Xi Jinping, is the following: “We had an obligation to fulfill a dream for humanity. Instead of working against each other, we must work together as states. For that we need trust and unity. We have to name the old ways as inappropriate for the 21st century. Each country is like a little light, but if we bring them together, we can light up the nightly sky.” Key to understand China is Confucius, because Confucius was the official state philosophy of China for about 2,500 years, with only the very short interruption of the Cultural Revolution, but it is practically in the genes of all Chinese.

Xi Jinping talks about the “Chinese dream” and the “dream for humanity.” This actually comes from this Confucian conception, how society should be organized. In the center of this philosophy, is the idea of the perfectibility of man, that you cannot govern a country only by legislation or decrees, or punishment. He says, if a people is regulated only through the threat of punishment and decrees, it may be possible to get them not to do what is forbidden, but they will not develop a feeling of shamefulness. (Now that somehow sounds familiar, if you look at the present.) He says, but if people are guided by morality and ethical customs, they will not only develop shamefulness, but they will be striving for perfectibility.

Confucius developed his philosophy against a long period of war and chaos in China, and he proceeded from the idea that there is a higher lawfulness in the universe, than that which guides the political activities of the day. He called that, like before him other philosophers, the “Mandate of Heaven.” This is some idea which in European philosophy appeared as the notion of “natural law,” that there is an inbuilt, higher lawfulness, which man can violate, for a little bit, but sooner or later, these higher laws will punish the violators. And in the same way, Confucius says that the Mandate of Heaven, which means the obligation to create an harmonious development of society, and harmony means not just peace or just calmness, but it means, consensus of the governed, unity and all of this directed toward the common progress in society.

The closest thinking in European philosophy I have found who matches the ideas of Confucius, is the famous scientist Nikolaus of Cusa, of the 15th century, who not only was the father of modern science in Europe and therefore, also America, but also the creator of a sovereign republic, the idea of the modern nation-state, and he developed, for the first time, the idea that rulership must be based on the consensus of the governed, and that is exactly the idea of the Confucius, who says the government must act on the Mandate of Heaven, and if the government is bad and loses that Mandate, it is the obligation of {Chun-Tzu}, the “noble sages,” to replace that government and bring the state back into order.

Nikolaus of Cusa had the idea that government not only should be provided by the wisest, but those of the wisest who have the strongest sense for lawfulness, for the legality of the state. Now, what is the mandate, is an objective matter: It’s natural law, it’s a high order within creation. But recognize that and to act on it, requires the development of humanity, therefore, Confucius put so much emphasis on education, especially to develop virtue.

The education method which Confucius developed is not based on teaching facts or giving information, but by inspiration, by being a role model, and the aim is the search for truth. And Confucius even had the idea to throw his pupils periodically into a crisis, so that they would find a deeper and better truth and be willing to take down their previous assumptions. Now, in that sense, Confucian ideas are also very similar to the idea of the “aesthetical education” of Friedrich Schiller, which is still in my view, the most noble idea, namely that one is able to educate every human being to become a beautiful soul and a genius.

Now, Nikolaus of Cusa developed a method of thinking in the {De Docta Ignorantia}, — this is actually a very nice picture, when you go to Bernkastel-Kues, the next time (which you should do pretty soon), because that’s the birthplace of Nikolaus of Cusa, and this is a painting in the little chapel in the hospital which he donated 500 years ago, and which is still in operation for about 35 people, as an old people’s home; there’s a little chapel, and this is a larger painting, and the interesting thing about it is you see the bad clergy who go to Hell. So, since he was a key reformer of the Church and would have made Luther completely superfluous, I find it quite interesting that he had such an idea.

In one of his main writings, {De Docta Ignorantia}, or {The Learned Ignorance}, he has this idea that man never knows the truth, but is in a perfect process of perfection and self-perfection Confucius says more or less the same thing. He says: A good man is not slavishly following the steps of others. He’s not even following slavishly his own steps, because experience has taught him that every occasion is different and you have to permanently evaluate each situation afresh and then choose what is the next step.

Confucius also was very strongly of the opinion, that Classical music elevates man, while destructive music destroys society. Now, if you look at the music of the Atlantic region today, I think we should be extremely worried. And he says, the effect of bad music has the same negative effect as populist orators; these people know how to talk very well, but only to achieve a sudden effect to please a sensuous experience of the audience, but watch out; these people are always only following their own interests and therefore are very dangerous.

Nikolaus of Cusa has the same polemic against the school of rhetoric which during his time was very popular among the Scholastics, and they basically based on the Aristotelian school of rhetoric that you just have to learn to talk up your issues well, and then you have success. I would say that almost every politician in the United States and Europe right now, at best, are a well-trained rhetorical orators, and therefore they are very dangerous.

I think if you look at all of this, there is no question in my mind, and I hope to at least make you curious enough that you investigate it on your own, that Xi Jinping is a completely Confucian man. He said {The Governance of China}, also,

He also said that they want to replace, as quickly as possible, the mark “Made in China,” with “Created, Invented in China.” The Chinese dream is to create a better future for the whole society, based on the fullest development of the creative potential of every individual in society. The New Silk Road policy offers that participation in that in a “win-win” policy: Everybody can participate and replicate the Chinese dream, which has led to the astounding economic miracle of China in the last 30 years, in which China developed in 30 years, what Europe and the United States took almost 200 years to accomplish.

President Xi Jinping offered to President Obama at the APEC conference last October in Beijing, a new model of relations between major countries, which is based on mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs; respect for the different social systems; and, based on a “win-win” cooperation which happens to be the same principle as the Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, which established that foreign policy must be based on the interest of the other. That happens to be also the basis of international law, and the UN Charter.

Now, how should we, and how can we, therefore, overcome the {immediate} danger of thermonuclear war, {and} the immediate danger that this beautiful mankind would {vanish} in extinction! Well, I think it’s very simple: What we have to do, and especially what you have to do, is to revive the American dream. Remember that such a thing once existed? The dream of the Founding Fathers was to create a republic, to make this country a “beacon of hope and a temple of liberty” where every person from around the globe would be happy to come to and become an American. The idea of a republic, of a Constitution, which was based on the principles of the common good, and the non-violation of sovereignty, not only for the present but also for future generations.

How can we overcome the danger of a financial blowout? Well, it’s very simple: We have to end the casino economy which is driving the war. How do we do that? implement Glass-Steagall. Now, fortunately, the Presidential campaign of Martin O’Malley is taking prominence more and more every day, and he has said that the first action he would take when he gets into the White House, would be to implement Glass-Steagall: Now that would mean ending the this high-profit, total maximizing the profit of a few, and going back the American System of economy. It should be surprising that the {Wall Street Journal} therefore, has declared Martin O’Malley “enemy number-one” in an article yesterday, and he said he proud of that.

Now therefore, it is the task of every patriotic American to help Lyndon LaRouche, to help us, and to help in general to create a team around O’Malley, which can revive every aspect of the republican tradition of America, especially the policies of Alexander Hamilton, who, after all, created a National Bank, he unified the country by taking over the debt of the different states, which was $70 million at the time, an astronomical figure, and he created then a credit system based on his four reports to the Congress. And all of this had the same idea, that the only source of wealth {is} the creative ability of the population.

So all the United States has to do to cooperate with the AIIB, the New Development Bank, the BRICS, the New Silk Road, is go back to your own tradition, go back to the principles of the American Revolution. The United States must be pushed to take up the offer of Xi Jinping and to cooperate in the great projects! And that means, not only create projects in Asia, Latin America, and Africa: rebuild the United States! I think if you have travelled some of the roads between Washington and New York recently, I think you should be convinced that you need infrastructure! Have you travelled on the Amtrak? You need a high-speed train system!

Therefore, reviving the American dream would mean, to build a fast train system, preferably a maglev system or some other technology, from the north to the south, from east to the west: not have the Amtrak system, in which people die because of a lack of safety, and Cass Sunstein’s policies of a couple of years ago; but have the idea that we could build in the United States, 30, 40, 50,000 km of fast train! You would stop having these old and not so secure airplanes for travel on the East Coast. You would have a fast train, a maglev system, where the travel time would be a quarter of what it is now by plane, because you would just get into the station, you would travel an hour and you are already in Chicago or someplace else.

And that’s just the beginning of the technologies which are right now being developed further by the Chinese to be able to travel at the speed of a thousand miles in the near future.

Now, why not rebuild America? America needs new cities! India right now is building {one hundred new cities}, so-called “smart cities.” These are cities which do not have your typical suburban sprawl and then some strip malls with Dunkin Donuts, and then McDonalds and then… and it doesn’t matter where you go, in each city, it’s the same. If you are dropped by helicopter, into these strip malls, you don’t know where you are, because they are each exactly the same in every place in the United States! Let’s build {beautiful} cities! Let’s build smart cities, where all the infrastructure is being put underground, like in a modular system, the sewerage, the water, the electricity the transport, and then, have the core of the city, new universities, libraries, theaters, operas, research facilities; then build housing around that; let the population participate in urban culture, which is lacking.

New York is probably the only city — maybe Chicago and maybe Boston, a little bit — but you need urban culture! Why is that China has the most Classical musicians in the world, most vocal and most instrumentalists? Because they know that Classical music is what makes creativity easy.

And let’s declare a war against the drought! Right now large parts of America, California, Texas, and other states west of the Mississippi, are being lost! And because you have Greenie politicians who say, there must be “water conservation,” you know, water use is being reduced by Brown in California, by 25 or even 36%, and that destroys agriculture, it destroys cities, it destroys human living conditions for people.

Let’s declare a war on the drought: California is located on the ocean, so there is enough water. Let’s build a couple of small nuclear plants to desalinate large amount of ocean water. Let’s revive NAWAPA, bring the water which is now flowing into the Arctic in Canada and in Alaska, along the Rocky Mountains, through a system of canals, all the way to Mexico: Which was already agreed upon by Congress during the time of John F. Kennedy. Let’s apply the knowledge we have about cosmic radiation and the processes in the galaxy to have ionization of moisture over the ocean, let’s have cloud formation, change the rain patterns, regain the deserts in the southwest of the United States.

Let’s have a revival of the American dream. There is no reason why people should forget what that was. Let’s create a mass movement for development. And let’s go back to the foreign policy of John Quincy Adams. Let’s create an alliance of sovereign nation-states, working together for the common aims of mankind, and realize the dream for all of humanity.

It is so clear that if we don’t change our ways now, if we don’t go to a completely new paradigm, we may not exist by the end of this year. But a new paradigm, a new epoch of human civilization, which would realize the idea that the human species is the only creative species known so far in the universe, means also that this humanity too precious, too beautiful, too lovable, to be risked in thermonuclear war.

Let’s turn the United States around, and accept the “win-win” perspective. And let me give you one thought for you to think about: can you imagine the joy around the world, which now is not so fond of the United States, due to Bush, Obama, two Bushes, and the image of the United States has become the lowest around the world. If the United States would now turn around and say, “we are participating in this new paradigm, the whole world would be so happy, and it is {absolutely possible}.

So I really ask you, work with us to accomplish that.

Press Conference on Senate Bill 1471, proofed against the video, unedited

SEN. RAND PAUL: Good morning. Over a decade ago, a bipartisan Congressional Committee investigated the 9/11 attacks, and wrote a report. Twenty-eight pages from that report have never been released to the public. We’re here today to call for the release of those 28 pages. The survivors, civilian heroes, and families of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, some of whom are here today, deserve the full truth.

I’m not alone in calling for the 28 pages to be released. Over the 13 years since the Report was completed, many have called for the release of these records, including former heads of the CIA, the Republican and Democratic heads of the 9/11 Commission, even the Saudi government continues to favor the release of these pages.

The cosponsors of my bill are Senators Ron Wyden and Kirsten Gillibrand. We all are calling today for the release of these 28 pages. We are joined by bipartisan members of the House with a similar bill. I especially want to thank my friend Walter Jones for encouraging me to learn more about this issue.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. While their nationality alone does not constitute any wrongdoing by the Saudi government, information that has been revealed over the years does raise questions about their support, and whether their support might have been provided to these al-Qaeda terrorists. For example, according to Senator Graham’s book, two of the hijackers appear to have been aided by another Saudi national in the U.S., who, in turn, appears to have been supported by and worked with the Saudi government. We cannot let page after page of blanked-out documents be obscured behind a veil, leading these families to wonder if there is additional information surrounding these horrible acts.

We owe it to these families. We cannot let this lack of transparency erode trust, and make us feel less secure. Therefore I, along with Senators Wyden and Gillibrand, have submitted Senate Bill 1471, to declassify these pages. I also intend to offer this bill as an amendment next week, to the Defense Authorization bill.

Now I’d like to introduce Senator Bob Graham, who led this Congressional Inquiry, who can tell us more about the development of the Report, and the bipartisan support for releasing the missing 28 pages.

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: Thank you, Senator. And thank your colleagues, and those in the House who have already introduced this important legislation calling for the release of the 28 pages. The 28 pages in a Report of over 800 pages, go to the question of who financed 9/11, and they point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia. Since the final report came through the classification process in the summer of 2003, these 28 pages have been withheld from the American people. In my opinion, yes, the 28 pages are very important, and will, I think, inform the American people, and, in so doing, will cause the American government to reconsider the nature of our relationship with Saudi Arabia.

But, beyond that, these are emblematic of a pattern of withholding information, unnecessarily, and to the detriment of the American people. As an example: One piece of information which was secured by the work of the victims, those who have suffered the most from 9/11—the sons, daughters, wives, husbands of those who were killed on
that tragic day—their efforts have resulted in a trickle of information that better allows us to understand the full scope of 9/11.

One of those requests was to the United States Treasury Department, and it related to a Saudi-based foundation, which had a reputation of having been a significant financier of al-Qaeda. The Department of Justice responded. They responded with a report on the information which it had relative to this foundation. Let me just show you what the report said [holds up page after page of totally blacked-out text]. That is what the United States Department of Treasury felt the American people should know about an organization which may well have been a significant reason for 9/11 to have occurred.

This is an important issue that goes to the fundamental three words of American democracy—”We the People.” This government is a government of the people. People deserve the respect to know what their government is doing in their name. The passage of this legislation will be an important step towards realizing that respect to the people of America.

I’d like to again thank Senator Paul and his cosponsors in the Senate, and to call upon Congressman Walter Jones, who has been the leader of this effort in the U.S. House of Representatives.

REP. WALTER JONES: Senator, thank you very much.

I’m going to speak, and then introduce my two partners on the House side, which would be Steve Lynch from Massachusetts, and also Thomas Massie from Kentucky. And then, after they’ve made their remarks, I will come up and introduce the family members, and after the families speak, we will open this up for questions.

I want to thank Senator Graham for being the driving force of this effort for the truth. What got me started was a book that he wrote years ago about terrorism, and influence of certain Middle East countries. I bought the book. I read it. I called him. I did not know him. We had a great conversation, and I said, “So, the truth does matter—to the families, but also to the American people. I’d like to get involved.”

We had a conversation. Then I went down on the House side— you have to make a request of the Intel Committee—and read the 28 pages. About the same time, my friend Stephen Lynch, who will speak next, also read the 28 pages. It’s a classified setting. Shortly after that, then Thomas Massie read the 28 pages, and from that, we have been working together to get more and more members on the House side, to join in this effort to give the American people the truth. The families deserve it, and the American people deserve it.

To my dear friend Sen. Rand Paul, I want to thank you for taking the lead in the Senate, and getting your colleagues Senators Wyden and Gillibrand to join you in this effort. One of my biggest disappointments has been, on the House side—I can’t speak for the Senate side—but we have gotten very few members on the House side, from the areas that were impacted by 9/11, to join us in our House Resolution 14, which simply calls on the President of the United States to keep his word to the 9/11 families, and declassify this information.

There is nothing in this information, that’s already been spoken to by Senator Graham and Senator Paul, about national security. It’s about relationships. The families deserve—their pain has been with them for so long—they deserve the truth, and certainly the American people deserve the truth, or there is no hope for America.

So, with that, I would like to introduce my good friend from the state of Massachusetts, Congressman Stephen Lynch. Thank you.

REP. STEPHEN LYNCH: Good morning, everybody. I especially want to thank the 9/11 families who are here today, to add such urgency to this effort. Let me thank
Sen. Rand Paul for his energy on this, and for bringing a sharper focus to this issue, and I thank your colleagues, Senator Wyden and Senator Gillibrand, for joining you.

I’d also like to make special notice of Sen. Bob Graham, because back when very few people were focusing on it, Bob having been part of the official investigation, he singled out the need to make all of this information available to the public. In our request for full transparency, we’re joined today by the families of the victims of these tragic attacks on September 11th. Our nation has suffered a tremendous loss, and we’re all devastated by the horrific events of 9/11.

However, these men and women, these families behind me, their lives were forever altered that day. And we deeply appreciate their persistence in seeking the truth about their families. Our commitment to one another, as citizens, in a society that values freedom and justice, demands that we hold accountable those who aided and abetted the savage attacks on our own land, and the murder of thousands of innocent Americans.

When that fundamental duty to protect American citizens has been breached, it is not enough to say, “We will never forget.” We need to do more. The military and civilian personnel at the Pentagon, the first responders and office workers in New York, the passengers and the crew of those hijacked planes, and all those families whose hearts still ache—we owe it them to provide a full accounting of the events and circumstances surrounding the tragedy of 9/11.

It is appalling, it is a disgrace, for a country which prides itself on transparency and truth and justice, that these 28 pages of this bipartisan, bicameral, Congressional Inquiry remains classified after 14 years from those terrorist attacks. This is not a mere redaction! As Senator Graham has noted, it is not just the mere deletion of a few words here and there, as is typical in these reports. This is full-fledged blackout of information, of these 28 pages. They have been excised from that otherwise informative report — 28 pages in length.

It may have been a matter of national security to secure those pages back in 2002, with the urgency and the fear of vengeance at that time. But it is long since time that we made these reports public. Transparency in government is vital to our democracy. Enough time has passed that we can digest this information without worrying about the visceral passions, and security implications, that existed in the days immediately following the attacks. These families, and our nation, experienced a profound and personal loss. These families, and our nation, deserve to have their questions answered.

The declassification of the 28 pages is an important step towards answering these questions. After personally and carefully reviewing these 28 pages, I believe—and Walter and all the other legislators that have read these—feel confident that these can be declassified without harming U.S. intelligence sources or methods. Indeed, I firmly believe that the information contained in these 28 pages, will better inform our national security protocols, and will better inform our anti-terrorism policy going forward.

So I urge my colleagues in the House and Senate—I share the frustration with some members of the House who have not read the report, who have not signed on to this bill, that Walter Jones has articulated. But we need to get this done. We hope many of our colleagues will work with us, to make sure that these pages are declassified in 2015. And again, I want to thank Sen. Rand Paul, for bringing this sharp attention, this sharp focus, on this issue today. And I want to thank these families behind me, for their patriotism, and for their quest for justice, on behalf of their loved ones.

Thank you.

REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Congressman Massie from Kentucky. I want to thank Congressman Jones for drawing my attention to this issue, and I want to make three
points.

First and foremost, to point to the families. The information in these 28 pages, I think, establishes a chain of liability that I think is important for the families in receiving
justice. And I, first and foremost, hope those pages are released for the families of the victims.

Secondly, this is a bipartisan issue. Unfortunately, bipartisan in two regards. We have Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate who are leading the charge to release these pages; but you had two Presidents, either of which could release them, could have released them. The Republican President who is the reason that they are secret, and a Democratic President who keeps them secret.

Tomorrow, or even this evening, the President could release these pages. Our resolution merely urges him to do that. And it’s completely within his authority to release these pages, and I want to make that point today.

Finally, nearly not a day goes by in Congress, where we aren’t discussing about how to prevent another 9/11. Whether it’s in the discussion about whether we should collect Americans’ phone records, whether we should look at the content of their e-mails, to what degree do we need more intelligence-gathering capabilities. That’s all in the name of preventing another 9/11. Whether we should get involved in Syria, to what degree we should be concerned about Yemen, what to do about Iraq? All of these are colored by the question, How to prevent another 9/11?

Some of the best intelligence we have is in these 28 pages, and most of our colleagues in the House have not read them, yet they’re pretending to be informed on these issues, and having a discussion about how to prevent the next 9/11—yet turning a blind eye to these 28 pages. And that is another important reason why they need to be released. Thank you.

REP. JONES: I’m going to introduce Terry Strada. Her husband lost his life in the 9/11 attack. Terry will introduce her children, who are here, and then other members of the families who have felt the pain of 9/11—that believe that the truth of 9/11 will help them, as they move forward with their lives. So, with that, thank you, Terry, so much for all you, and everyone here today, and those who are not standing here, because you’ve done so much to bring the truth to the American people.

Terry, come forward, please.

TERRY STRADA: Thank you. My name is Terry Strada. I am the national chair of 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism. I’m here today
with my three children, Thomas, Kaitlyn, and Justin. I’m also joined by some family members and survivors from 9/11. With us today we have Abraham Scott, who lost his
wife Janice in the Pentagon. We have Mary Ellen Salamone and Aidan Salamone—they lost their husband and father on 9/11. Next you have Emanuel Lipscomb; he is true treasure. He is a civilian hero. He saved many lives on 9/11 down at the World Trade Center. We also have Matt Sellito. Matt lost his son in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And we have with us today a New York fireman survivor, Mike Hadden [?]—he’s with us as well.

Thank you all for coming to be with us today.

Many people believe our suffering is in the past, and future attacks are diminished. Neither is true. Our loss is for the rest of our lives, and so is the real threat of another terrorist attack. We are forever united in our grief, and our commitment for a safer nation. I’ve been outspoken on terrorism financing for several years, because I have lived through the devastation of terrorism, and continue to live with the battle scars today. I lost my husband Tom Strada and dozens of dear friends and colleagues on 9/11. Every single person that Tom worked with, was killed that day. If I had the strength, I could easily have attended well over 25 services and funerals.

To this day, we have not been able to lay my husband to rest, because he has never been identified and returned to us for a proper burial. So, yes, like all of the members here today, I know a lot about the pain and suffering of terrorism.

For the sake of the American people, not just those who suffered injuries or had their families ripped apart, but for all Americans, the entire truth about who attacked us
on 9/11 needs to be aired. We cannot properly secure our future if we remain or are kept in the dark about what foreign country or countries helped facilitate the attacks. And yet, here we stand, more than a decade later. Despite the availability of additional information on this subject, in a secretive and guarded vault beneath the Capitol, only steps away from where we stand today, we remain almost universally uninformed.

Based on what we do know about what is in those 28 pages, we are confident that declassifying them will prove to be critical to unraveling the Saudis played in the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

There is nothing conspiratorial or hidden about the ultimate responsibility for the terrorist attack that led to the incineration of almost 3,000 souls. Nearly every significant element that led to the murderous attacks on September 11, points to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was a member of the Saudi elite. His father and much of his family had been close associates of the family monarchy for decades. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. The very ideology, Wahhabism, that set the attacks in motion, has thrived in Saudi Arabia since the inception of the Kingdom, and when the money trail is followed, it almost always leads back to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is influential because its oil and gas [inaudible] make it powerful in the Middle East and beyond. Money is the lifeblood of terrorism. Without money, 9/11
never could have happened, ever. But it is not financial resources alone that make it such an important player in the reign of terror we are witnessing worldwide. The ideology of al-Qaeda and ISIS draws a great deal to Wahhabism, often referred to as radical Islam, and it’s now taking over mainstream Sunni Islam.

Many events, charities and wealthy Saudis, are not only responsible for financing terrorist organizations, but in one country after another, they are putting up the money that makes possible the training and the radicalizing of individuals in spreading the violence-inspiring Wahhabi-bred ideology into far-reaching places around the globe, including here in the United States.

All people flocking to join ISIS are not necessarily doing so because of lack of economic opportunities. On the contrary. Many of the new recruits are well-educated and economically secure. It is the fanatical ideology that they have given their lives to. The expression of their fanaticism in terrorism is a major threat to our, and other peoples’, safety.

A war on terror cannot be won until we hold accountable the terrorist financiers for their role in propagating that violent ideology, and for facilitating terrorists and terrorist organizations, that are slaughtering innocent people in the Middle East, and vowing to kill us and destroy us here at home.

You should not have to take my word for it. Let’s look at what is in the 28 pages.

Since these highly respected government officials have repeatedly said that the release of the 28 pages poses no threat to national security, we believe that new details of that chapter should be not kept a secret, but should be accessible to inform all of our views.

My husband’s murder, and the murder of all our loved ones, cannot be the price we pay for doing business with the Saudis. Nor should that price ever be repeated, especially simple for the sake of our so-called friendship.

On behalf of all 9/11 family members and survivors, I thank Senator Paul for introducing this vital piece of legislation; former Senator Bob Graham, for his dedication in pursuing this issue; and also Congressmen Massie, Lynch, and Jones. And we call on all members of the Senate and the House to please join us here today, in our request to declassify the 28 pages. Without the truth, there is no accountability. Without accountability, there is no justice. Without all three of these, we can never be safe.

And I’d like to introduce my daughter Kaitlyn.

KAITLYN STRADA: Hello. My name is Kaitlyn Strada. On September 11, 2001, like many thousands of people across America, my father left for work. Only, tragically,
he never came home. By 2 o’clock, terrorists had taken his life, and the lives of nearly 3,000 other innocent men, women, and children. My father was a successful bond broker, a trusted friend, but most importantly, he was a great family man. We miss him every day.

My brother Thomas was 7, I was 4, and my brother Justin was just 4 days old on September 11. On that horrific day, our lives were painfully changed forever. When the smoke cleared and the fires were extinguished, nearly 3,000 children were left mourning the death of their murdered parent. We were young and innocent, not a care in the world one day, and then terrified and heartbroken the next. We experienced the hell, fear, and trauma of terrorism firsthand. We are the children of 9/11.

I stand here today with my family, and my extended 9/11 family, and before all of you, asking our President to declassify these 28 pages, which tell the truth about who is responsible for our pain and suffering. Who helped Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda carry out the heinous attacks on our country, that took our parents away? That question haunts me, and will continue to haunt me until these 28 pages are declassified.

Children should not have hearts broken, their dreams destroyed, and their lives shattered. When my father was killed, something was taken from all of us: our innocence and our trust. 9/11 children are growing up in a world where we can’t trust our own government, because too many truths remain hidden about who was ultimately responsible for the murder of our parents.

Please, Mr. President, on behalf of all the children who have grown up without a parent because of terrorism, help us regain some of what we lost. We respectfully ask that you please declassify the 28 pages, and allow us and the world know the truth.

Thank you.

JONES: Abraham, did you want to say something?

ABRAHAM SCOTT: I’m not getting any younger. Good morning, everyone. I’m not here this morning to beat up on you about President Obama’s promise, or Senator
Paul or Congressman Jones’ promises to declassify the 28 pages. I’m here this morning to let you know that each morning and night, I ask the Lord to allow me to live long enough so that one of my two granddaughters, Angelese [ph], who is 8 years old— and [inaudible] who is 20 months old—should ask me, “Grandpa, what was significant about 2015?” And I’m hoping that I’ll be able to tell them that this Congress, as well as President Obama, passed a law that declassified those 28 pages.

I just hope and pray that I will see that day. And I’m also concerned about other family members who are up in age, and having some trials and tribulations in different ways with grandchildren, Bill Doyle and Rosemary Dillard. I’m hoping that hoping that this will come to reality before we all pass.

This is not a political thing, not to prove that it’s the right thing to do. I beseech the Congress, as well as President Obama, to please pass this bill, and I want to thank Senator Paul, Congressman Massie, Congressman Jones, and the rest of the Congressional people who support this proposal. I wish you Godspeed. And hopefully next time we meet, at least Congress will have passed an appropriation, that will then go to President Obama’s signature. Thank you. Godspeed and God Bless.

QUESTIONS.

Q: My name’s Barry [inaudible]. Bob Graham has on a number of occasions been more specific about how this money was being funneled. He refers to Embassy
of Saudi Arabia. My question, what about [ina]? His book—is Senator Graham aware of who was the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, at the time of [ina] on the part of [ina].

GRAHAM: Prince Bandar.

Q: Right, Prince Bandar. Now, is the same fellow who George W. nicknamed “Bandar Bush” because of his longstanding affiliations with the Bush family? Is that
the same one?

GRAHAM: I only know of one Prince Bandar.

Q: [followup] Well, if Senator Paul wanted to, couldn’t you get up on the floor of the Senate and read these 28 pages into the record, with impunity?

GRAHAM: I would rather you direct that question to Senator Paul. [laughter]

MM: Let’s do that. Good idea.

PAUL: Next question.

Q: I wanted to ask Senator Graham, would he consider running for President?

[laughter]

MALE: We need some competition. [laughter]

Q: …why into the Democratic debate [inaudible] they’ve remarked about this problem?

GRAHAM: Well, first I certainly understand your sense that there’s been a paucity of candidates thus far, [inaudible] step forward. Two, I think there will be someone in those debates, who might have a question or a response that would touch the 28 pages. I don’t think it’s necessary to have a section and I am [inaudible] for time.

Q: Wayne Madsen, WMR. Senator Paul, you mentioned that there was some support from Saudi Arabia for declassification of these pages. And King Salman was
the Governor of Riyadh before 9/11 and there were reports that he facilitated al-Qaeda members’ passage through Riyadh on their way to Pakistan and Afghanistan, with
money, logistics, travel support. So, would he be included amongst these Saudis who are in favor of releasing—?

PAUL: I don’t have in front of me the quote, but it’s from someone in their government, I think within the last year, there has been a [ina] in the past in support of
releasing the 28 pages.

Yes, in the back.

Q: [Jeffrey Steinberg, EIR, unidentified] A question for Senator Graham: I understand that since the issue of the 28 pages, that there’ve been new revelations in
Florida that further tend to point to the role of the Saudis, and that there’s action by a Federal judge, and that there’s been some documents released. And you’ve suggested
that the situation out in San Diego and now in Sarasota, Florida, begs the question of other locations—Herndon, Virginia; Paterson, New Jersey—all of the places. Could you
elaborate on that, please?

GRAHAM: Well, the hijackers lived in a few locations for an extended period of time, in some numbers. We know a lot about San Diego. We are learning about Sarasota, but encountering very similar obstacles to getting access to information there. I do not know what the status of investigations in places like Herndon or Great
Falls [virginia], or Paterson have been. Whether there were investigations—I assume there were—what results that they reached.

To me, there are two basic questions. One, the one that Porter Goss, the co-chair of the 9/11 Congressional Joint Inquiry has asked if these 28 pages are going to be withheld, what is the reason they’re going to be withheld? At least we ought to have a debate over the validity, the strength, the rationale, behind the decision not to release. And then, if they are released, then the debate will be, what do these pages tell us, and what policy adjustments should we make, based on this new reality of the truth of our relation with Saudi Arabia?

STRADA: Excuse me, I’ve been asked to introduce a family member who’d like to give a very brief statement, and we will continue with questions after that. So, this is Matt Selitto.

MATTHEW SELITTO: Thank you. Good morning, my name is Matthew T. Selitto: My son Matthew C. Selitto was murdered by terrorists on Sept. 11th. First, I want to thank Senators Paul, Gillibrand, and Wyden for introducing the Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Victims and Survivors Act. It will finally help to close the Congressional gap in our 14-year struggle for the whole truth about 9/11. Thank you, Sen. Bob Graham, for your extraordinary competent commitment to all of Americans, and to us, and the truth. We have been fighting this cause up and down the East Coast. And to Representatives Jones and Massie, and to my fellow Bostonian, Representative Lynch, for their House amendment, H.Res.14.

I would also like to thank the media here, today. We need you. You are the oxygen that disseminates the story and gives this vital issue life. Please, keep it alive, in front of all Americans, until the 28 pages are declassified.

This 14-year coverup must end now. It must not survive another administration. Today, our members of Congress are making critical foreign policy and national security discussions and decisions in the actions of the information contained in the 28 pages, because they have never read them. How is this possible? As long as those implicated in the 28 pages are protected via classification, we’ll be very vulnerable to their treachery, their terrorism, and their war. Just look at what has happened in the Middle East: Fourteen years on this, they continue with total impunity. Furthermore, those who helped them by allowing the shameful coverup, are complicit.

Finally, let me remind you that the plane that came down in Shanksville, 40 souls took that plane down, as because that plane was coming here, gentlemen and
ladies, to Congress, and many more lives would have been taken, and those lives that have been these Congress people. And these people have a right to know where that
money came from. Who financed the people to have their lives taken?

I would also, finally, like to thank all the people that put extra powered work in putting all this together. Thank you very much: And please, please, let these people
know what is contained in those 28 pages. Mr. President, we’re putting an olive branch out to you, President Obama, we’re putting an olive branch. We come to you
today: Come over to our side, the side of justice, please.

Thank you.

PAUL: We have time for about two more questions, right here.

Q: So a lot of this effort really depends on President Obama. And I’m wondering Senator Paul if President Obama stands in the way, will you consider exercising your Constitutional rights to enter them into the Congressional Record, as you acknowledged you could do?

PAUL: We’re going to try the normal legislative procedure first, and see how it goes. I will bring it up with the President, and I will ask him directly if he will do this.

Back there, the young lady.

Q: By declassifying these pages, in view of them actually saying that the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia could be called off? And then how do you see the impact on the foreign policy in the Middle East?

PAUL: You know, I see this more as just a search for the truth, and both Republicans and Democrats, those who were in charge of the inquiry, they all said at the time they would like to see it released. The heads of the 9/11 Commission also say it should be released; former heads of the CIA have said it should be released. And in our bill we also allow them to look at it, and if they think there’s some kind of ongoing investigation where a name or something like that has to be redacted, we give them the freedom to actually redact it. We just don’t want the whole thing to be black, like Senator Graham showed us it was redacted. We have one more for a journal.

Q: [name inaudible, Al Jazeera] Just wondering, how does this affect the lawsuit for the 9/11 families have against the Saudi government?

PAUL: I don’t have a good answer. Does anybody want to answer that?

STRADA: Well, how would it affect it? It would just be bringing out the truth that we need. It would just be more proof: We have an abundance of evidence, and
this would just be one more piece to that.

PAUL: Thanks everybody. If you want individual questions….