Abolish the Post-9/11 National Security State

[Manhattan Project Dialogue](Abolish the Post-9/11 National Security State (rumble.com)) with Harley Schlanger and host Dennis Speed

Saturday, September 14, 2024

DENNIS SPEED: Hello, and welcome to today’s Manhattan Project town meeting for the LaRouche Organization for Saturday, September 14, 2024. We’ve titled today’s presentation “Abolish the Post-9/11 National Security State.”

As I think many of you know, the collective Biden has just met with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington. There’s no press conference, no public record of the meeting, no Q&A, so we don’t exactly know whether or not Biden said anything in the meeting. What we do know is that the meeting was happening simultaneously with the trip to Kyiv of Tony Blinken and the Foreign Minister Lammy of Great Britain. What they were there to discuss was the permission to be given to Ukraine for the launching of long-range missiles into Russian territory. And in a way that is deceptively stated to have not been the discussion, at least as of yesterday, there was no announcement about this. But it was also the case that various media outlets—including the London Guardian—had indicated there was not going to be an announcement about whether or not permission was given. This is significant because we have statement from Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, with respect to this issue. He said it’s not a question of giving Ukraine permission. He said, “If this decision is made, it will mean nothing short of direct involvement. It will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically. This will mean that NATO countries—the United States and European countries—are at war with Russia. If this is the case, then bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

Now, we’re being assured by persons who don’t know, that the fact that Putin says this doesn’t mean anything, because the Russians often say this kind of thing. That’s not very comforting to those of us who recognize the power, the impact, and the purpose of thermonuclear warfare; and the fact that there has never been a weapon in human history that has been built and not used. That of course does include nuclear weapons, and one should point out that the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in a war has been the United States. In that sense, there is no prohibition of precedence at work in the mind of the United States to using nuclear weapons. We say this because of the continuous assertions that China or Russia or Iran or North Korea are all going to use nuclear weapons. The one nation that has used them is this one; and this nation has no policy of no first-use of nuclear weapons.

We titled today’s program “Abolish Post-9/11 National Security State.” Since September 11, 2001, 23 years ago, the United States has openly trampled on Constitutional law regarding many things: The right to conduct war; surveillance of its citizens; censoring the thought of its citizens.

What we’re going to do today to begin the show is to review the warning that Lyndon LaRouche issued in January 2001, eight months prior to September 11th, about why an event like September 11th would occur in the then-incoming Bush administration. He is answering a question as the video will begin, and he was referring to the appointment of John Ashcroft to the position of Attorney General. I think you’ll be able to pick up the context from there.

[video: January 3, 2001 webcast: https://larouchepub.com/lar/2001/jan_3_webcast_qanda.html]

LYNDON LAROUCHE: Two things: First of all, when Bush put Ashcroft in as a nomination for the Justice Department, he made it clear: The Ku Klux Klan was riding again. That’s clear.

Now, Bush—maybe Bush didn’t know what he was doing, but somebody in the Bush team did, and a lot of them had the voice to say something about it.

Ashcroft was an insult to the Congress. If the Democrats in the Congress capitulate to the Ashcroft nomination, the Congress is finished.

This is pretty much like the same thing that Germany did, on Feb. 28, 1933, when the famous Notverordnung [emergency rule] was established. Just remember, that after the Reichstag fire, Goering, who commanded at that time Prussia—he was the Minister-President of Prussia at the time—set into motion an operation. As part of this, operating under rules of Carl Schmitt, a famous pro-Nazi jurist of Germany, they passed this act, called the Notverordnung, the emergency act, which gave the state the power, according to Schmitt’s doctrine, to designate which part of its own population were enemies, and to imprison them, freely, and to eliminate them. This was the dictatorship.

Now, remember, that Hitler had come into power on Jan. 30 of that same year, less than two months earlier. He’d come in as a minority party, which had been discredited in the previous election. He was put in by bankers, including the father of President George Bush, the former President, Prescott Bush. Prescott Bush, as agent for Harriman of New York, worked with the British banks, to put Adolf Hitler into power in January of 1933. At that time Hitler was discredited, and about to be bombed out. He was stuck into power, because that was the last chance to get him in power.

Everyone said, no, Hitler’s not going to make it, because the majority of the population is against him. Then, on Feb. 28, 1933, the Notverordnung act was passed, on the pretext of the Reichstag fire. And this established a dictatorship, which Germany did not get rid of until 1945.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the case of Ashcroft is comparable to the Reichstag fire. But, it’s a provocation, a deliberate provocation. And if the Democratic Party and decent Republicans do not combine to throw that nomination back in the face of the nominator, this Congress isn’t worth anything. That is, because it will have surrendered its dignity.

If you give those kinds of powers, of a Justice Department, to that Ashcroft, and what he represents, under that flag, you don’t have any justice left in the United States. And any Democratic senator who disagrees with me, shouldn’t be a senator. He doesn’t represent the Democratic Party. So, it’s going to be up to the people to make sure.

Now, what I would say is this: Members of the House of Representatives do have some powers. They may not be the formal powers of the Judiciary Committee, but they have some powers. [end video]

SPEED: So, that January of 2001, and you heard what LaRouche had to say about the danger of the circumstance of the possibility of a Reichstag fire-like incident. There’s more to the excerpt, but what we’re doing now is going to today of September 11, 2001, and a broadcast in which LaRouche appears on the Jack Stockwell show in Utah. It was exactly as the planes hit the World Trade Center.

[audio: Sept. 11, 2001 radio interview with Jack Stockwell: https://larouchepub.com/pr_lar/2001/010911stockwell.html]

JACK STOCKWELL: I’m still sitting here looking at this incredible image in front of me of this burning World Trade Center, as these two jets have just slammed—one jet has slammed into each of the two towers. So, we’ll go ahead; I’m going to get my guest on here with me. Mr. LaRouche, good morning, sir.

LAROUCHE: Good morning, Jack.

STOCKWELL: Well, what a pleasure and an honor to have you back on my program again. I was hoping to move the discussion initially with what we were going to do here into the area of the sublime.

LAROUCHE: Yes, right.

STOCKWELL: But now, with what has just happened in New York, with this—you know, interesting enough. Just yesterday, I received—I think it was just yesterday—a bundle of leaflets from your organization in Leesburg that I regularly pass out in my office warning of terrorist attacks in America here very shortly.

LAROUCHE: Yes.

STOCKWELL: And here we have the morning that you’re on my program, what’s happening in New York at the World Trade Center. I don’t know if you’ve seen these images or pictures yet on the television.

LAROUCHE: I haven’t yet. I was just sitting up here working, and just heard about it before I went to call you.

STOCKWELL: Yes. Well, the smoke is billowing out of the one tower here. My wife called me a moment ago. And apparently they caught, live, on film, the second jet smashing in to one of the other towers.

LAROUCHE: Obviously, this is not exactly an accident.

STOCKWELL: No, sir. I don’t believe it is.

LAROUCHE: I mean, it’s not a coincidence. It’s obviously—this is so remote in probability that there has to be intention in this thing.

STOCKWELL: Well, it’s one thing for somebody to strap on a jacket made of dynamite and walk into a diner in downtown Jerusalem. It’s another thing to jump inside of a Lear jet and go smashing in the side of a building like that.

LAROUCHE: The thing you have to look at, and the context in which this is occurring, is two things. First of all, the first suspicion that’s going to be on this is Osama bin Laden. That name is going to come up prominently, whether as suspicion or just suspicion.

STOCKWELL: Certainly.

LAROUCHE: And the second thing, which is not unrelated to the Osama bin Laden question, is this festival which is planned—really a terrorist festival for Washington, D.C.

STOCKWELL: At the end of the month.

LAROUCHE: Yes. We have a global process. Look, the financial system’s coming down. That’s always a dangerous thing. Because when the entire system is being shaken up the way it is now, by the financial collapse, political things happen, because various people try to intervene and orchestrate events by spectacular interventions, which will change, shall we say, get public attention off one thing and put it on another.

So, this is obviously—I mean, I cannot draw a conclusion, except the circumstances tell me something rather evil is behind this thing. And I don’t know which, but they’re both connected, because I know the Goldsmith brothers—for example, Jimmy Goldsmith was key in helping to create—he’s now deceased—Osama bin Laden and people like that. The Taliban and so forth.

And at the same time, his brother, Teddy Goldsmith, who is still very much alive, is sort of the spiritual godfather of this movement which is planning to inundate Washington, D.C., with some pretty nasty stuff at the end of this month….

STOCKWELL: The FBI is now saying that a plane was possibly hijacked for this attack. If you can do that with the World Trade Center, what could you do with the White House?

LAROUCHE: Absolutely. I’ve been very concerned about this. You know, I’m not very sympathetic with what some of these agencies do. But I’m concerned, not just as a presidential precandidate. But I’m concerned with the security of the United States and the peace of the world. And this is not good for the health of the nation or the world. These things should not happen.

And we could prevent this kind of stuff. But we just don’t do it, because, I don’t know. Someone says let it happen.

STOCKWELL: How would you prevent terrorist activity?

LAROUCHE: Well, the thing is, if you don’t—if you dispense with the myth that there are a number of unknown people out there coming out of the mists, and nobody knows where they come from, then you would say, How can you stop the terrorist operations?

If you know how the world is actually organized, you know you cannot organize a sustained preparation for terrorist operations in any country without the backing of a powerful government, or governments.

So that, if you know what the operation is—and I would say, you know, I have been warning against this Teddy Goldsmith operation all along, because I know what it’s connected to politically. It’s extremely dangerous.

And if I had been President, or in a similar position during this period, I would have had an all-out, very discreet, but very all-out and effective discussion with some other governments in the world, and we together would have taken appropriate steps to try to neutralize this kind of danger.

Of course, you can’t be 100 percent in this sort of thing. But you can do a pretty good job. And two planes. Now, that’s pretty big. That’s—one plane, that might not be preventable. But two in the same short —

No, that’s not small-time stuff….

STOCKWELL: Lyn, you were saying there a moment ago that the system was over. Now, what a lot of people, what a lot of my listeners need to understand, Mr. LaRouche, is the difference between our economic systems of this country that’s driving this market crash, and basic economics.

That there’s a difference—you can go in right now, and change the economics to save the system, rather than leaving the same system of economics that’s currently afloat and watching it crash on the shores of absolute bankruptcy.

There are things that can be done right now to save our system, and leave it intact—or not the system, but the economy of this country, with a drastic change in the system.

LAROUCHE: Very simply. You just use the principle of the general welfare, as it’s actually intended in the Preamble of the Constitution, as Roosevelt used that authority. You declare bankruptcy when needed.

For example, most of the banks of the United States are potentially bankrupt, if they’re not already bankrupt. Well, do you let the banks shut down? You don’t. You have the Treasury Department move in on the Federal Reserve System, which is the mother of these things. Take over the Federal Reserve System under bankruptcy reorganization.

And under the authority of bankruptcy reorganization, in cooperation with the states, who also control banks, charter them, you make sure that banks must keep their doors open, will keep their doors open.

You must ensure that employment is maintained. You must ensure that actually it grows. You must ensure that pensions are paid. You must ensure that communities function. And you must also have some growth. Otherwise, how are you going to reorganize out of bankruptcy if you don’t have some real growth, which means that certain projects, like infrastructure projects—necessary ones—are put into place, to absorb some of the unemployment which is inevitable, and get the economy moving again.

On that basis, using nothing but the precedents we have in our national law, our national history, we could reorganize this economy out of a virtually total monetary and financial collapse, by the will of government and the cooperation of the people, with good leadership in a very short period of time….

STOCKWELL: Well, we have about a minute left, Lyn. Can you bring something sublime out of this?

LAROUCHE: I think the point is, when you get a crisis, which is like a war. I mean, this—what is reported in New York, you’re talking about 50,000 people possibly killed. Do you realize that’s in the order of magnitude of the official death toll of—

STOCKWELL: —of Vietnam.

LAROUCHE: —of Vietnam.

STOCKWELL: Yes.

LAROUCHE: So this is not a minor thing. This is not something that happened. This is not a terrorist incident. It’s something much bigger.

But when you get into a crisis like this, the first thing you have to do, especially terrible crises, the more terrible they are, the more this principle applies: Do not panic! Do not shout “fire” in a crowded theater! Get the people safe and out.

And what’s needed now, is to recognize that we got to this mess because the institutions of our government—forget who did it. Forget who did whatever’s done.

But think about this could not have happened if our government functioned. And the reason our government didn’t function and doesn’t function—I hope that changes quickly now—is because nobody was paying attention.

STOCKWELL: Yes.

LAROUCHE: Therefore, let us pay attention and recognize that when we are running the economy the way we are running it, the things we’ve been doing, we have set ourselves up for this kind of crisis.

The thing to respond to a crisis like this, is to remove long-term and medium-term causes of the crisis itself, of the situation which allowed this to happen, to come to this pass. [end audio]

SPEED: All right. That was Lyndon LaRouche live during the attack on the World Trade Center. The reason we played it is not merely that we are at the 23rd anniversary of 9/11; but to remind you of two things. First of all, it was President Vladimir Putin of Russia who first contacted President Bush of the United States to both support the United States in that moment of crisis, and also to inform the President that he, Vladimir Putin, had told the strategic nuclear forces—the rocket forces, if you will—of Russia to stand down. That is to say, there was no alert called. This is important to understand why that message was important. Seeing the events of that day, and knowing that Russia was not involved; knowing that China was not involved, etc. Because that’s the kind of thing that would have been clear to President Putin. He knew something equivalent to a government or set of governments had to be involved. And if it was the air space of the United States, someone in the United States had to be involved. He knew that; and therefore, it was unclear who was running the Presidency at that moment. Or, whether or not there was a coup against the Presidency ongoing at that moment.

Today, we have someone in the White House who we all know is not capable of functioning. We have a circumstance in which we are talking about long-range missiles being lobbed into Russia. We have this being discussed jointly by the British government and the United States government, sort of on behalf of NATO, with Zelenskyy, who is of course a totally unreliable figure. And we have the President of Russia with the statement that we read at the top of the show; making it clear that the idea of the launching of those missiles means that NATO countries—the United States and European countries—are at war with Russia. If this is the case, then bearing mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.

What we’re going to do now is play the presentation given by Helga Zepp-LaRouche yesterday at the International Peace Coalition meeting. But we’d like you to try to keep in mind what you heard from LaRouche and his admonitions at the end; that you don’t panic the people. You must also however ask the question, “How did we get here?” That our government was not paying attention, and that that must be immediately changed.

[video: Helga Zepp-LaRouche International Peace Coalition Meeting No. 67, Sept. 13, 2024; https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2024/09/14/international-peace-coalition-sanity-must-prevail-over-war-madness/]

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I was saying that the Doomsday Clock is clearly ticking, and it is a good question how many seconds are left to midnight. Today, as we are meeting here on the IPC call, Prime Minister Starmer from Great Britain is meeting in Washington with President Biden sometime today. Supposedly, they may or may not announce the “permission” to be given to Ukraine to use U.S. and British long-range missiles for strikes deep inside the territory of Russia. That decision could have been made already, it may be announced or not; but in any case, President Putin already made an extremely sharp reply saying that the West is already using drones inside Russian territory and other weapons, but if this decision is being made concerning long-range missiles which have high precision and very great range, this will be a completely, totally different matter. He said that because the longrange missiles cannot be used by the Ukrainians, because they do not have the satellite reconnaissance which only the U.S. and NATO countries have, they also need NATO-trained specialists for the targetting, because the Ukrainians do not have that capability, and therefore, it is not a question of NATO giving Ukraine the “permission,” but that this will be a decision if NATO directly gets into a military conflict openly with Russia. Putin said this would mean a change in the core of the very nature of the conflict, and that Russia would take appropriate responses.

Obviously, this is buzzing all over the capitals of the world, and Sergey Karaganov, who is not the same like Putin and not the same as the Russian government, but he is a spokesman who is quoted practically as a sort of a warning sign of what could come. He said that Russia, now, for sure, must signal its willingness to use its nuclear weapons very clearly, because with the still-existing Russian nuclear doctrine—namely that Russia will use nuclear weapons only if the territory of the Russian Federation is directly threatened— obviously would not deter the enemies of Russia sufficiently, and therefore, to stick to that would be suicidal. In other words, that Russia should use a tactical nuclear weapon against a NATO country as a message to tell the world that they are serious about it.

The Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov said that he thinks that this decision is already being made; that there would be too many hints and too many discussions, and therefore he thinks it’s a matter of days until that will become clear. That the public opinion is being prepared for such a change.

Secretary of State Blinken was giving a press conference where he was asked by Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post if this is not representing a very dangerous escalation. Blinken, in an absolutely incredible language, said well yeah, but this is not a dispositive factor. Behind this strange formulation, the message is very clear that taking the risk of a general nuclear war is worth taking if it improves the prospect of delivering a strategic defeat to Russia.

Now Karaganov also said that it’s clear to everybody that the United States would never risk New York or Washington, for Paris or Berlin. The idea being that if there is a use of nuclear weapons, it will always be limited to Europe. Foreign Minister Lavrov said that he is convinced that the decision to use these long-range missiles was made a long time ago, and that already in the recent attack by Ukrainians on civilian targets in Russia, like Kursk and other areas, already was guided by Western military assistance. Alexander Bartov[ph] from the Academy of Military Science said if they make such a decision for long-range missile use, this will not change the course of events. They already have been using the ATACMS, and that has not brought them a significant advantage. But he also said that they have several goals: First, to study the functioning of the Russian air defenses, which gives them much data which then can be analyzed later on for a more general attack; and secondly, that they are trying to cause as much damage as possible, and it is very clear that Moscow will end this tactic.

Lt. Gen. Koshkin from the Plekhanov University basically ridiculed the idea that the U.K. and the U.S. have to give Ukraine the permission to do that. It would be like the tail wagging the dog. Now Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia spoke to a UN Security Council meeting on September 10, where he did confirm that the attack on Poltava was indeed targetting the critical infrastructure of Ukraine related to Ukrainian military capabilities, and it did hit specialists in radar and electronics, a training place of such people, a hotel nearby where these people were residing, fuel depots, arsenals of Western aircraft, storage sites, etc. And also hit were specialists from the U.S., Britain, France, Poland, and Swedish military. They were all people who had been qualified by Russian analysis before as legitimate targets, as they are actively directly involved in the military conflict.

I think it is unfortunately an extremely alarming situation. I think we are at a point of no return. I think it is a completely different matter than everything we have seen so far. It brings the danger of a nuclear escalation as close as possibly days away. That confirms what we said at previous IPC meetings, where we somehow put forward the thesis that the period between now and the November U.S. election, and eventually if the next President takes office in January, is the most dangerous period in the history of mankind ever: Because what is at stake with the battle between a unipolar world or the pretense to keep up the unipolar world versus several countries of the Global South that represent the Global Majority, trying to establish a new system which is not exclusive. As a matter of fact, the West could very easily decide to join with the Global Majority, but obviously, they want to maintain the order as it has been so far.

Now that means we have to have a mobilization, warning people, warning the public. Because the problem is, the general population has no inkling how close we are in the worst case to extinction of the entire human race and all life on the planet. So, I think that that is something people have to be asked, because I think the political leadership has no right to take actions which potentially threaten all life on Earth!

In that light, even the decision which was announced by Chancellor Scholz to put U.S. medium-range missiles into Germany from 2026 onward, is sort of a long time from now, but that also must be blocked. Fortunately, there are some groups of people, peace movement groups of various types waking up to this danger in Germany. Obviously, that would create a permanent, acute danger, because the warning time would be extremely short, it would make Germany a prime target in any conflict which Germany could not survive as a nation. There is also a larger discussion in the background that no matter who becomes the next President, that the United States will disengage from Europe, either with a big splash, with a MAGA isolationist policy, or in a more subtle way withdrawing from Europe, and making Europe pay much more for their defense. Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance just said in an interview, that in any case, Germany must pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, after Trump has supposedly gotten peace. So, it is an absolutely unbelievable situation.

I think first on the long-range missiles, we have to get a strong voice of the people, of individuals, of groups, to say “No!” to that, and take to the streets. There are several demonstrations scheduled on September 28 and 29 in the United States, and on October 3rd in Germany; and on September 21st is International Peace Day. All of these must be absolutely used to mobilize people to go in the streets and make their intention known: that they completely reject that, and with it the governments that are pushing such decisions. But I think we need something much more urgent and fundamental even, and that is, we have to come up with a new security and development architecture which solves this conflict. The geopolitical conflict between the West and Russia and China must be overcome by establishing a new security architecture which takes into account the interests of every single country, or else it will not work.

I think that these are the subjects for today. I have not mentioned the crisis in the Middle East, but we have another speaker who will address that. That’s what I wanted to say initially. [end video]

SPEED: You’ve just heard Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s presentation to the International Peace Coalition meeting yesterday. You heard particularly what has to be done immediately, which is to put forward the security and development architecture conception that is contained in the Ten Principles document that she authored two years ago. But at the same time, the other element is that we have to find a way in the United States to get the Dr. Strangelove faction—the same faction that was clearly involved in some way in the 9/11 events of 23 years ago, despite the fact that that is never allowed to be discussed—to get their hand off the nuclear button.

To discuss where we are, how we got here, and how the perspective you’ve just heard from Helga Zepp-LaRouche can be implemented, we have Harley Schlanger, spokesman for the LaRouche Organization.

HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello everyone. I’ll start with the commemoration of 9/11, where there were solemn events to remember those who were lost and those who bravely risked their lives to go into the Twin Towers and elsewhere. But I think you have to go beyond that; you have to look for the intent and who benefitted from such an event. To know what happened, you also have to look at how that was used to change things. Because there’s no question we’ve gone through some tremendous changes in the United States and in the world after 9/11.

One thing that’s evident in the discussion of 9/11, but is very rarely talked about, is that there was a lot of advance warning that something like that would happen. We had from the CIA, Georg Tenet, the CIA Director, in August I believe it was in 2001, said they had some discussions about some hints they were picking up. They knew something was coming. Probably more significant was the admission by the head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, that they knew something was coming. What Dearlove said is, “The fact that a large-scale terrorist event occurred was not a surprise.” He reported on June 2001 meeting where there was a British-American intelligence meeting. According to Dearlove, “The primary topic of discussion was a major terrorist event.” It’s kind of interesting that you had a British-American intelligence meeting, because there was one just last Saturday, where the head of MI6 and the CIA Director were interviewed by the Financial Times at a public meeting, where they were discussing the need to strengthen the “special relationship” to confront Russia.

So, you look at these patterns, and I’m going to go through an arc of history where you can see again that these are not random happenings. That doesn’t mean that they’re all precisely planned and that people knew exactly what they were doing. It’s sometimes hard to imagine George Bush knowing what he was doing in advance. But there were people who were directing and controlling the overall environment. So, when you have reports such as the one that Tenet mentioned, or that Dearlove mentioned, which you can get from human intelligence from infiltration, from surveillance. But those don’t tell you why.

You had the same pattern following the October 7th attacks on Israel, where it was clear there were advance warnings coming in. How could there not be? Israel has massive surveillance capability on Gaza. There was an official report that there was some practice going on, but the official story is that it wasn’t taken seriously. So, one could legitimately ask “Why not?”

I want to then look at the historic context of 9/11, and the intent of what occurred afterwards from the standpoint that you heard earlier from Lyndon LaRouche. Because LaRouche, when he looks at these things, doesn’t look like Sherlock Holmes for the thread or the footprint or something that is evident. He looks at from the overall historic context and the dynamic. That’s what you saw in his January 3, 2001 webcast, where he spoke of the use of the Reichstag fire in Germany in 1933 to impose the beginning of Hitler’s dictatorship. So, what LaRouche said in his January 3rd webcast, was very precise. You heard some of this before, but here’s the heart of this Reichstag question.

“What you’re going to get with a frustrated Bush Administration, if it’s determined to prevent itself from being opposed—its will—you’re going to get crisis management. Where members of the Special Warfare types, of the Secret Government, the secret police teams, and so forth, will set off provocations, which will be used to bring about dictatorial powers and emotion, in the name of crisis management.”

Those were LaRouche’s words. In other words, 9/11 became the basis for a move to dictatorial powers. Now, how did LaRouche know that? What was the economic conjuncture that he was looking at? Because these political events are not abstractions; they come out of a context and, as I said, an intention. We had just gone through the late 1990s economic crisis: the Asian tiger debt blow-out; the Russian default. We had Alan Greenspan with his unsteady hand on the wheel, creating one bubble after another; including the Y-2K. Younger people may not remember this, but we were told that when the year 2000 came, the change in computers in terms of the digits for the date would blow out the whole system. So, there was a pumping of money to prepare for that, which of course never happened.

But you also had the blow-out of the dot.com bubble; the idea that we could use the earlier phase of artificial intelligence to transform the economy. The NASDAQ went through the roof, and in March 2000, it crashed. That was the background that LaRouche was talking about as to why the Bush administration might get frustrated. It was because they had no plan to deal with this, did they?

That’s where you have to look at the question of intent. I’ll just reference again the post-October 7th events in Southwest Asia after the attacks by Hamas into Israel. What you can see is that Netanyahu used this for a specific purpose. His approach to solving the Palestinian problem is to get rid of the Palestinians; and that’s what he is doing with his sidekicks Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and the radical expansionist grouping within the Zionist movement.

To go back now to 9/11, let’s look at the changes that took place. First you had the Patriot Act; the move toward massive data collection. The establishment of a surveillance state on the highest level ever in the United States. This was of course documented after 2013 by Edward Snowden, but many people had an inkling of this as it was going on. There were whistleblowers like Bill Binney, who came forward and warned about this. At the same time, you had the commitment to the so-called “war on terror.” There is an element of this which is also certainly suspect, because who were the terrorists? Where did the terrorists come from? There was a whole operation run under the Arc of Crisis theory of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is a key player in this. We’ll get back to him in a few moments. But Brzezinski used the idea—which he got from the British, from Bernard Lewis and others—that Islamic fundamentalism could be turned against Soviet communism. The test case for them was in Afghanistan, not surprisingly, because Afghanistan had a history of being the center of a fight between the British Empire and the Russian Empire; the so-called Great Game. The deployment of terrorists was not simply an irrational group of Muslims who were upset about Western civilization, but a coordinated operation which included the arming and training in Afghanistan of militants—including the emergence of the bin Laden group, al-Qaeda with the funding from the Saudis, and then the Taliban from the native Afghanistan group.

So, the war on terror became a game of the West to supposedly stamp this out, when in fact, we know that there are many instances—as in the case of the regime change mobilization in Syria—in which Western forces (that is, the CIA and MI6) were aiding and training the terrorists.

Then you had the militarization of the economy; the expansion of the defense budget; the idea of permanent war. This is a very short quote from Dick Cheney when he was on “Meet the Press,” five days after 9/11. He was asked, “What should we expect? What are you going to do?” Cheney said, “The response will be a long-term proposition which will take years.” Well, that’s the permanent war policy of the oligarchy.

The other thing that happened with this, was the acceptance as norms of something which had previously been unacceptable. In this case, torture. The idea that you could round people up, lock them up permanently in Guantanamo, or rendition them to other countries and torture them to try to find out who was behind the terrorism. When in fact, many of the people who were picked up had nothing to do with any terrorist group. Some of the people who were picked up had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet, the idea was that you could use torture to get information.

There was an exchange by Chuck Todd and Cheney—I think this was in 2005.

[video: Dick Cheney on “Meet the Press,” Sept. 16, 2001: https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/full-episode-dick-cheney-s-post-9-11-interview-152345669882]

CHUCK TODD: 25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released.

DICK CHENEY: Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are—

CHUCK TODD: Well, I’m asking you.

DICK CHENEY: How are you going to know?

CHUCK TODD: Is that too high? You’re okay with that margin for error?

[In other words, that 25% or more may be innocent.]

DICK CHENEY: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. [end video]

SCHLANGER: That’s very similar to Madeleine Albright’s statement that she had no problem with 500,000 Iraqi children dying as a result of the sanctions, if it led the removal of Saddam Hussein.

At the same time, the other thing that began to creep into, more than ever before, American politics was the Big Lie. You can see that in terms of what was presented; that the Iraq War was due to Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction. The potential that this would get into the hands of other terrorists, and that therefore, we had to move to stop it. And also, that Iraq was involved with al-Qaeda, which real intelligence people knew was false.

Cheney, in a 2005 speech, derided the critics of the Iraq War as “opportunists” and said that the suggestion that the Bush administration had purposely misled the public about the presence of weapons of mass destruction was “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges every aired” in Washington, D.C.

As we know today, that was a complete lie. But we’ve become accustomed to that. Look at Russia-gate. We had four years of the Trump administration with the lie that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee computers; that Putin was intervening to elect Trump, and on and on. Lie after lie after lie. Then with Ukraine, the same thing. There are no Nazis in Ukraine. That Putin was unprovoked when he went in with the special military operation, and so on.

The other change was with the surveillance state; the post-9/11 censorship and control of the media. Why is this important? I want to take a look, as part of this arc, at the fact that the events of 9/11 put in power a unipolar order which was consolidated after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991-2. But that this led to the triumph of the war party in both parties. The best evidence I can give of that; the most obvious point, was Dick and Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for President of the United States. The idea of the arch neo-con war hawk, murderer, killer Cheney embracing Harris, should say something to Democrats who lived before the 1990s.

The war party controls both parties. Some people will say, “Yes, but Trump is the nominee. Trump is anti-war; he says he’s anti-war. He didn’t start any new wars when he was President, so how can you say that about the Republicans?” Very simple. Look what happened with the second tranche of money from the United States to Ukraine and to the Israel war in Gaza. There was opposition that was allegedly run by Trump and the Republican Party that held back the passage of the bill, which was a $95 billion second tranche of money to Zelenskyy and his kleptocrats. But it was held back by the Republicans for six months. We were told, this is a disaster for Ukraine; they’re going to lose because the money is being withheld. Then, almost overnight, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who was supposedly a loyal MAGA Republican, went to visit Donald Trump, and ended up convincing enough Republicans so that the Republicans joined with Biden and passed the bill. This is where we see the two-parties today. Regardless of what Trump says, the Republican Party is still a neo-con party; as the Democratic Party has been completely taken over.

Now, how did that happen? Well, what we see—and this is where it’s important, and I don’t have the time to go through the details on this—but the importance of the role of the British. I mentioned before Dearlove; Margaret Thatcher was very much involved in the first Gulf War, where she came to meet with George H.W. Bush and said she stiffened his spine, which led to Operation Desert Storm. The role of Tony Blair using fake weapons of mass destruction evidence on Iraq in convincing the Bush administration to go to war against Iraq; which George W. Bush intended to do anyway. But there’s a British component. But what’s important is to see the extent to which the outlook of British geopolitics is infused in the present Democratic Party leadership and most of the Congress.

This goes back to the 1970s and the launching of the Trilateral Commission. Three of the key people in that were Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and Paul Volcker. The policy was that in order for the United States to maintain a stable world order, you needed to have what they called “controlled disintegration,” which was essentially a population reduction, Malthusian policy. De-industrialization and the takeover of environmentalists and so-called Green policy. Kissinger and Volcker were very much involved in the 1971 break-up by Nixon of the Bretton Woods system. Brzezinski ran the Carter administration, which was responsible for bringing the Afghan war into existence by destabilizing Afghanistan so that the Soviets sent troops to fall into a trap. That was Brzezinski’s trap; that was the Islamic card, or the Arc of Crisis policy. As for Volcker, those who are young may not know this, but interest rates were over 20% in the United States when Ronald Reagan was President, because Volcker was the Federal Reserve chairman and had a policy of controlled disintegration.

This led to an extremely disruptive period; the period of the late 1960s, early ’70s was dominated by the Vietnam War and then the inflation and Nixon’s pulling the plug on the old system. After that, you had the developments around Carter, which led to high inflation in the early period of the Reagan administration. And it led to some very lopsided elections. In 1972, Richard Nixon crushed George McGovern. How did the Democrats respond? They formed something called the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. The instigator of this was Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the war hawk Democrat from Washington state. Today one of the leading think tanks in London committed to war is the Henry Jackson Society, so this was an international association of neo-cons who moved in to play a role in the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. But then again in 1984, the Democratic Party was crushed by Reagan, and what happened then was the formation of something called the Democratic Leadership Council. This was again the idea of moving the Democrats to the center. This was largely spearheaded by Al Gore; Bill Clinton was a part of this. But this in particular, as in the first time, these were reactions to the growing influence of Lyndon LaRouche. What LaRouche said was we need a Franklin Roosevelt approach to the economy; we need to have infrastructure; we need to pay attention to wages, to education, to health care, to economic growth based on scientific and technological progress. The people pulling the strings of these things were not in support of that. They were, in fact, committed to the idea of the Kissinger NSSM 200 which said the world is overpopulated, and we should use food as a weapon against the Global South. Then again in the ’80s, the idea of tax cuts and free market and free trade. These were all policies coming from London that were adopted by both Democrats and Republicans.

This came together with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the proclamation that the United States was the sole superpower. Here’s where you have another one of the lies. The idea was that there would be NATO expansion, but they wouldn’t tell the Russians that. The National Archives is now full of documents from the early part of the 1990s, of promises made first to Gorbachev and then to Yeltsin that NATO would not be expanded. And yet at the same time, there was a constant back-channel discussion with the governments of the newly-freed former Soviet republics of Eastern Europe and so on. A back-channel that you will become part of NATO.

At the same time, you had the development of the European Union, which was another effort in this same direction to subordinate the nations of Europe to a globalist corporate cartel operation. Then on top of that, you had the economic policies imposed on the former Soviet Union, which included privatization, the looting of their economy of the raw materials of the industrial base, the demographic which resulted nearly crashed the nation and led to its break-up, but it was pulled together at the end of the 1990s, and that is when Vladimir Putin came in.

What you could see is the continuity of policy; the idea of the empire; of preventing any opposition to a unipolar order. Both parties were committed to that. So, this was based on a policy of geopolitics that went back to the 19th Century. The problem is, Americans don’t know most of what I just reported. They may know a bit here and a piece there, but what they might tend to do is dismiss this as conspiracy theory. But if you actually look at the real documents; you look at the reports written by the people involved; you look at the results. And what you see is that we’ve been on a course toward a World War III for quite a while; at least since 2014. But the seeds to that go back to the policy of moving to dismantle Russia from the immediate post-Soviet period and using the expansion of NATO onto the very borders of Russia—which is Ukraine, the Baltic states, and so on—to create the basis for saying to the Russians, “Sure, we want you in our club; on our terms. You can’t be a sovereign nation.” This is why it’s so important that people get what Helga Zepp-LaRouche did with her Ten Fundamental Principles. Because she outlined a set of ideas which define a basis for cooperation among sovereign nation-states, for mutual benefit, for mutual economic development.

That’s the way you get out of this. And what you find then when you see that emerging, with the BRICS as an organization, with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the voices coming from the Global South demanding the opportunity for real economic development. What you see is that that’s what’s being opposed by the City of London. That’s why there’s a war going on in Ukraine; that’s why there are threats against China. That’s why there’s an effort to embroil the whole region of Southwest Asia in war. To stop the emergence of a new system outside the control of the Anglo-American or trans-Atlantic empire. The corporate oligarchy that benefits from that is the one that funds the political parties. So, why should it be surprising that Dick Cheney would endorse Kamala Harris?

The final point is to realize what are they ultimately doing? They’re operating against the interests of the people in the countries that are suffering from this. In the United States, the debate the other night supposedly was going to talk about a strategy to combat inflation. There is no real economic discussion. Harris has no program. The idea that she has put together the best minds to have a program was very effectively debunked by Trump when he said, “Well, if you have all these great ideas and you’ve been in power the last three and a half years, why are we in such a mess right now?” But that’s not a solution; and that’s why you have to take a look at the fundamental principles of Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the economic approach of Lyndon LaRouche. The idea that you can understand history in a way that will enable you to find a pathway to the future; as opposed to the idea that everything is random or accidental, or else it’s all totally planned from the top. The problem is, that people who think they’re planning it from the top are not very bright; and they’re about to get us into a nuclear World War III if we don’t take their fingers off the nuclear button.

SPEED: I have a few things that I think we should do, but I will first to this one question I think is relevant; particularly for people who are trying wrap their head around what is now evolving. It says, “Harley, it is very valuable to hear you go through the ramifications from 9/11 and the change that occurred in the U.S. afterwards, which places our nation on the path of becoming an openly fascist national security state. I was born just one year after 9/11, and like many others in my generation, we have not know a United States which has not been endlessly engaged in war and the surveillance of its own citizens, or manipulating the press and social media to push nefarious narratives. I think a lot of people my age, whether they’re totally conscious of it or not, feel that they are imprisoned in an environment of complete censorship; especially when it comes to their ability to engage in meaningful dialogue on actual ideas. You see it when you go to a public school, an airport, a concert, or a stadium. It’s a repressive totalitarian environment which makes you feel hopeless and imprisoned. For people in this state of fear since 9/11, how would you inspire them and actually get them to think when there’s no environment for them to do so?”

SCHLANGER: Well, the simple answer, but not so easy to do is that we need a Classical renaissance. We need, as LaRouche used to say, to think like Beethoven. If you think about what the question implies, that the education system is terrible, that people don’t know how we got here. That their attention is grabbed by the first shiny object that passes in front of them; that we’ve become a population seeking pleasure, entertainment, and escape from reality; and think of escaping from reality as a positive virtue. It’s not enough to say, well you have to face reality. Facing reality is pretty tough. The idea of an election between Trump and Harris? The idea of a Congress made up of a bunch of bots like Ted Cruz and Blumenthal of Connecticut; you look and you can’t find very many redeeming leaders that are role models. Then the idea is, is Taylor Swift the role model? Or Hulk Hogan?

The point is, there’s a battle that has gone on throughout human history to find what is uniquely human and to develop those uniquely human characteristics in as large a section of the population as possible. Whether it was through church or religious teachings; whether it was through secular scientific education. But the best way of looking at that is through the idea of the aesthetical education of Friedrich Schiller. The idea that you have to find in yourself the highest qualities of character and attach your emotion to the development of the human race as a whole. Of course in religion, it’s the idea of agapē.

But I think the best way to do that is to restore the Classical culture of the theater, as Lessing discussed it, as Schiller carried it out. As one of the people who is sort of a protégé of Lessing, Schikaneder, tried to do in his collaboration with Mozart. And of course the highest expression of this is in the music of Beethoven, Schubert, others in the German Classical tradition. But locating your sense of humanity in the highest quality of emotions of love for mankind, and expressing that in ways that maybe are not possible in language, but through the universal quality in music.

I think the starting point is, we need a Classical renaissance. We need to understand what was done in Italy during the period of the Golden Renaissance with architecture, sculpture, and with music, to elevate this concept of man as being in the image and likeness of God. I just had a unique experience a couple of weeks ago. I was in Verona, Italy, where they have a 2,000-year old amphitheater. It still functions; it’s a beautiful building in the center of town. I took my family to see the opera The Barber of Seville. Not the greatest opera, but a funny one, and some good music. But what was amazing is that you’re in a coliseum in the middle of a city at 9pm at night and the sky turns from blue to black, and it’s hard to see. Yet there are 12-15,000 people filing into the amphitheater to see an opera. The sense of good will and fellowship is certainly unlike what you find at football games or sporting events or rock concerts. You can see how easy it would be to elevate a population with these kinds of events.

I think the best way to get out of this is to think about what it would mean to re-emphasize or to learn anew, discover for yourself, the creative impulses that have led to advances in the past; whether it’s in science, art, culture generally. If you do that, you’ll find that we have much more in common with the average person in Russia or the Muslim population or anywhere in the world, and there’s no need to fight. We actually can see the beauty in other cultures, and make that our purpose of coming to understand that.

SPEED: We have a couple of questions I’m going to combine that will take off from there. There’s a question on the Southwest Asia situation. “What’s happening there now? What’s the relationship between what is happening there now and the danger of an expanded war, possibly with Iran or others?” And then finally, “What could be done—including now that the United Nations is opening up for a new session—on this matter?”

SCHLANGER: Starting with Southwest Asia, the problem we have there is the war hawks in the West and the Zionist leadership in Israel is integrally related to that war hawk faction. In fact, it was created by the British Empire at the end of the 19th Century, early 20th Century, with the Balfour Declaration and so on. The idea of a unipolar religious state is something that most people look down upon; except when it comes to Israel. What’s going on there is on the surface, it’s over 100 years of warfare, and since 1948 an occupation of land that was supposed to be split between two peoples—the Palestinians, who are Muslims and Christians, and the people who were brought there after World War II, the Jewish population.

The problem is that the attempt to establish either one democratic state, or two states has been sabotaged every step of the way. When the Palestinians step forward and demand their rights, what they run into is the effect of the occupation. And when the Israelis say, “We need peace, and the resistance movements among the Palestinians threaten us, therefore we have to crush them,” who steps in to stop that? That’s the biggest problem. The Biden administration has been saying now for 10 months, we need to stop this; we need to stop the fighting; we need a ceasefire; we need to return the hostages. Well, there’s one way to do that, which is to cut off the support and funding for the state of Israel. To say to the Israelis, “If you want to have any relationship with the rest of the world, you need to start with a ceasefire. You need to end the Occupation, and then work out plans for a viable Palestinian state,” which was guaranteed by the United Nations back in 1948. And you can say all you want about the disunity and confusion in the Arab world; it doesn’t matter. We’re turning our backs on the killing of at least 40,000+ people, including close to 20,000 children. To say that that’s acceptable to wipe out a resistance ideology is an intolerable sign of the immorality in the post-9/11 period.

The other part of this—and I just want to make sure people know this—is that there’s an active effort from the Chinese in particular to resolve this. The Chinese moved in to try and work out—and did get a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. There’s a discussion process underway about unifying the various factions of the Palestinians. At the same time, there’s been an incorporation of a number of states in the region into the BRICS. Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia (the Saudis are still not sure about it), but the United Arab Emirates and Iran are all now part of the BRICS. So, what happens if you have this kind of explosive situation in which the Israelis launch strikes with regularity into Lebanon, into Syria, into Iran? Killing the chief negotiator of Hamas in Tehran when he’s there for the funeral of the President? These kinds of provocations are not just aimed at stopping the Palestinians, but destabilizing the BRICS.

That’s why I think it’s so important that Helga keeps emphasizing the potential for this new strategic and economic development architecture which is coming from the Global South. Now, is this a threat to the United States and Europe? Not at all. If you want to look at it honestly, the threat to Europe has been that as these countries have been chewed up in these wars—the Iraq War, the Syrian War, the Libyan War, the Afghan war, and so on—refugees have flowed into Europe and have been part of a destabilization of Europe and a weakening of the potential of Europe to do something other than be vassals for the Anglo-American empire. So, the solutions to these things are very obvious.

Now, with the UN General Assembly coming up in September, there’s an opportunity for these things to be discussed. But it’s going to require breaking out of the old axioms. The question here that Helga has insisted on, is that there has to be reform of the institution of the United Nations, but the United Nations is indispensable as a place where nations can come and discuss and try to work through problems. Now, you have a number of initiatives—I can’t go through the details off the top of my head—but there are a number of initiatives. But what’s important is that the United States has to stop being the impediment to discussion. The fact that Biden won’t talk to Putin; that Kamala Harris insists that her approach to Putin and Ukraine will be the same as Biden’s. This creates an environment in which the stalemate continues politically and diplomatically, and in that context, the war escalates. That’s the worst of all possible worlds. It’s crucial the new session of the UN incorporate a serious discussion of peace in Southwest Asia, and peace in Ukraine. The impediments to that are the NATO forces and the forces of Netanyahu and his allies.

SPEED: Well, with respect to the last point that you brought up, there was another matter that came up in the questions, and that involved censorship. It’s interesting, because, as you point out, the perspective is: We’re not going to talk to Putin, we’re not really going to talk to the Chinese about anything we don’t want to talk to them about. We don’t really want to talk to the Iranians. We don’t really want to be at the UN, where the International Court of Justice (ICJ) wants to talk about the genocide question with respect to Southwest Asia. But there’s another element: There’s censorship. You’ve had the attack on Rumble, you’ve had the Telegram arrest, the attempts to shut down RT, which are sort of ongoing, actions in the case of the Uhuru group in Florida. And then there’s a small, obscure group called Intelligence Online, that has attempted to threaten that the Schiller Institute should be shut down by the American government.

So, here’s the issue: Scott Ritter, who’s also been a target of this, last night was on with another interview, with Danny Haiphong, and it was called “Putin Readies NATO War as Ukraine Collapses, Hezbollah and Iran Stun Israel.” That was the topic. And the question that we got was: “Do you think that the reason for all of these attempts to suppress any outside agencies or outlets, is because the narrative is being so thoroughly exposed and challenged? That they can’t afford to have dissenting voices in either the United States or in Europe? And if that is the case, what should these people, the targets, do about it?” It was a sense that the question was, in general, journalists and others who have been attacked, as well as institutions.

SCHLANGER: Well, first of all, realize that these moves toward censorship are an example of desperation, and a recognition that if people actually knew what was happening, if they got the truth, they wouldn’t tolerate the spectacle, the “kabuki theater” that’s called politics in the West. What’s incredible is that, we’ve seen a—in a sense, we’re in the cusp of a total transition, a transformation of the political parties, away from any kind of reasonable dialogue, but also in a polarization that is inaccessible to reasonable dialogue. And so, the media role is to constantly inject disinformation to keep people confused, demoralized, apathetic; and it’s clearly the case that they realize that there’s a potential for explosion against that.

I mean: There’s a problem when reality hits a narrative. When you say to people, “inflation is under control,” yet eggs are now costing almost three times what they were two years ago, when you can’t afford to buy a house; when rents are going way up above the ability of people to pay, we’re seeing a situation, where someone is told, “things are getting better,” but their own personal experience tells them it’s not true, and they talk to their neighbor, and their neighbor wants to talk about football, or some other subject, because they don’t want to talk about what’s hitting them: So the role of censorship, of hybrid warfare, is to change the way people think. It’s not just to lie to them or give them misinformation: There’s something called “pre-bunking,” which is being studied now as a means of controlling populations, where the you destroy the potential for a new idea to come into existence. And so, you keep people stuck in axioms that have no solutions for them. And that’s the role of censorship.

Now, one of the reasons there’s a desperation, and why they’re moving more rapidly, going against Scott Ritter, against Dimitri Simes; you know, we’ve been a target of this for what?—five decades! Going back to the 1970s when the only time LaRouche was mentioned, according to the dictates from the Washington Post was to attack him, to no say what he said. This is the result of LaRouche’s demolition, in 1971 of Abba Lerner, who was sent out to discredit LaRouche’s economics, and instead LaRouche exposed Lerner and the liberal economists around him, as Schachtian fascists!

So, we’ve been subjected to suppression for years, and yet, we’re still here. And in many ways, which the IPC process is showing, is that the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche are more widespread and more embraced than ever before! A certain amount of this is persistence, but it’s also being on top of the situation: This is why we put out Executive Intelligence Review. You can get the Executive Intelligence Review daily news every day, so that you have something to put up against the crap coming out of the mainstream. And so, it isn’t a question of personal initiative, but looking for opportunities where you can fight the censorship! And I think this includes the kinds of interventions that Jose Vega and his team are doing in New York, where you get up in the face of someone who’s an “authority,” and expose them as a fraud.

Censorship can work, to an extent. But if you’re telling people who are starving that they’re well-fed, that’s when the reality hits the narrative in the face: and we’ve come to that point.

Look, one of the problems I see, when I broadcast my Daily Update, the video update that we air on The LaRouche Organization website—a 10- to 12-minute recapitulation of the latest events from the standpoint of history—what happens a lot of the time is that people will say, “Oh! You’re exaggerating about nuclear war.” Or, “LaRouche said there’s a danger of nuclear war and it hasn’t’ happened yet.” And so, people are trapped in their sense of impotence and the axioms they have, so they’re afraid to be challenged, they’re fearful. And I think this is where overcoming fear, the best way to do that, is to talk to other human beings! To engage in real, meaningful discussions. Make sure you know what you’re talking about, but do that. And then, as you get your confidence, go to town meetings, go to city council meetings, go to congressional meetings, union meetings, church meetings, and bring up reality! Because if we don’t, we’re headed down a path, which is being controlled by the people who make the narratives, and that pathway right now, I can tell you, they may be able to control the way Americans think, but they’re not able to control the way the Russians think, or the Chinese think, or the Iranians think—and these countries are moving in a different direction. Not necessarily against the West; they see the West as their adversaries, but Putin keeps saying, “I’m willing to talk. Let’s talk!”

So the potential is there to break out of it, but it does require a certain higher level of courage and love of mankind, to be willing to put yourself forward to do that. And I can tell you, if you spend some time with [Jose Vega]( https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100025446510118) or with Diane Sare, they get a great deal of joy and pleasure out of fighting for the truth: That’s what organizing is. You’re trying to bring a higher conception of what it is to be human, to someone who’s been beaten down. And they may not get it at first; they may not appreciate it, but eventually they will. And that’s the organizing process that I think is the way out of this crisis.

SPEED: This is sort of the final question, or thing for you to respond to, Harley. And we’re going to be ending with another section from the International Peace Coalition meeting from yesterday. But here is what we want to bring up on the screen right now, which is a remark from President Vladimir Putin, again, speaking in St. Petersburg on Sept. 12, at a meeting of the BRICS nations’ security officials, and he said there: ““We could not ignore the growing interest in BRICS on the part of many states. As of today, more than three dozen countries, 34 states to be exact, have declared their desire to join the activities of our group.... We are also planning to consider the range of possible candidates for receiving such status.” Of course, BRICS is Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and then several new nations that have also joined as of this year: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

I think it’s notable as we are talking about what is happening in White House, and the discussion about war and weapons, there was a different discussion that was happening St. Petersburg, Russia, of a different idea of security. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I think the former Defense Minister of Russia, Sergei Shoigu, who is now Secretary of the Russian Security Council, had some things to say about security at this very same meeting.

And I’ll just quote what Shoigu had to say in an interview published on Sept. 11, because they were remarks that were uncharacteristic of him. And he said, “It is now obvious for everyone, that whatever savings they have, may end up in someone else’s pocket rather than their own”—referring to the U.S. and EU confiscation of Russia’s $300 billion reserves. He said, that governments “realize that they need to go away from the US-dependent financial system. There is a need for a structure that would not be so monopolized and dependent on U.S. domestic laws,” and that the current system “cannot stand. “

And I just wonder, given those two statements, what you would like to say, as we go to our conclusion.

SCHLANGER: It’s very clear that the Russians and the Chinese have a very good understanding of British geopolitical understanding, which essentially says that Eurasia must be divided. That there cannot be a commonality of interests in economic policy between Europe and Asia, and Russia is the dividing point for that: That either the Russians submit to what the Europeans and what NATO wants, or they’ll be at odds; they’ll be at war. And the Russians know that, they have a very clear sense, much more clear, I think, than even the more intelligent American political officials, of what geopolitics means. Geopolitics has been an attempt to define security, in terms of military alliances, intelligence warfare and so on. And what history has taught us, especially going back to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, is that there’s no security that comes from that, but that security is when you work for the interests of your neighbor, and they work for your interests; that you have that as commonality, and a sense, minimally, of staying out of their internal affairs, not trying to impose your will on them. But that the higher hypothesis there, is that you actually recognize that you may have some capabilities that the other country doesn’t, or vice versa, and that that’s what trade should be; that’s what cultural relationships should be.

And so, what the Chinese and the Russians are working with now, in the BRICS process, is the connection between economic development and mutual security, and this is what Putin laid out on June 14, when he talked about the Eurasian security solution, and the importance of the Russian-China alliance, the unbreakable nature of that alliance. And we’re seeing the desperate efforts by the NATO countries to break India off from that, or to use the economic problems currently in South Africa, to break South Africa off. It’s a real fight!

But the way the Russians are looking at it, is that they cannot be defeated militarily because they’re a nuclear power, and the attempt to do so, whether it’s by Biden, whether it’s by NATO, or whoever, will have a horrible outcome for all humanity, but Russia will not be defeated. So from that standpoint, where does security come from? It comes from mutual economic benefit, and that’s what the BRICS are working on. There’s a whole question of when will the BRICS replace the IMF system?

And this is the problem of just talking about a multipolar world: You’re still talking about just division, you’re still talking about potential conflict. The idea, I think it was Chas Freeman put forward the idea of multi-nodal, that is, that you have different points that come together, on common interest, that this is the way you overcome the unipolar system. And that’s clearly the outlook the Russians are working on. And they were forced into a situation with Ukraine, where either they could turn their back on the people of eastern Ukraine that resisted the coup in 2014, and let them be slaughtered by the neo-Nazi militia; or, appeal to the West on the basis of common interests, and human rights, to intervene. And the West did not intervene! In fact, the West used the time to arm the Ukrainians to do more damage to the eastern Ukrainian population!

The fighting in Donbass, it was Ukrainians killing Ukrainians. Some of the Ukrainians were of ethnic Russian background, but they were still Ukrainians. And Putin moved in with the special military operation to stop that. So, that’s, again, a high conception of security, and what they’re doing now, with this Eurasian security concept is an attempt to break, once and for all, away from the idea of British geopolitics, which is essentially an imperial doctrine that says “might makes right” and this, of course, is the unipolar order of the “sole superpower” and the hegemon theory, that if you’re strong enough, you can impose your will on everybody.

That’s not going to work any more, especially in a nuclear age. So either we figure out a way to have diplomacy and negotiations, and peace based on that higher conception, or, mankind may not make it.

SPEED: Thank you very much Harley. We’re now going to conclude by showing the presentation from the International Peace Coalition meeting yesterday, by Ted Postol, MIT professor emeritus, and one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear weapons. ...

[video: IPC Meeting No. 67, Sept. 13, 2024]

If Nuclear Bombs Drop on Germany

Sept. 13, 2024 (EIRNS)—Here are the remarks by Professor Ted Postol to the International Peace Coalition meeting, No. 67, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024:

PROF. TED POSTOL: The fact that Blinken would say anything that suggests he would consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons somehow acceptable in Europe or anywhere else, it’s just hard for me to understand if he has any idea about what he’s talking about. Frankly, I believe he doesn’t have much of an idea of what he’s talking about, and this attitude, this cavalier attitude towards something that I think knowledgeable people who have worked on these issues would tell you, would with overwhelming likelihood result in the destruction of modern civilization as we know it, for minimizing embarrassment to the Biden administration for a political problem they have, is beyond my belief. It’s beyond belief to me that anybody could be both so ignorant and so reckless; I don’t know how else to state this. I realize it’s very strong language, but it’s just hard to comprehend that anybody could be so reckless; especially someone who is in a position where decisions he makes have serious consequences for the security of really the modern world. It’s that bad.

Now, it seems to me that the Russians are really very appropriately—incidentally, I just got off a Zoom talk with a Russian television program that will run on Sunday. An interview in which I talked about the danger of escalation and some of the activities the United States has been involved in which are clearly aimed at fighting and winning a nuclear war. There is a disconnect at the top levels of the U.S. government between reality and their misperceptions of things. This has really gotten completely out of control, and Blinken’s recent statements just further confirm my greatest fears that the people in and near the White House have actually no idea what they’re doing.

The facts are simple. The West—and it’s really the United States that leads NATO—has lost the war in Ukraine. The Russian military advances are now absolutely unstoppable, unless the Russians were to arbitrarily decide to put down their weapons and run away, the war is absolutely lost. It’s actually been lost for a longer time. The incursion into Kursk that was made by the Ukrainian government has accelerated the disastrous military defeat of Ukraine. What the Ukrainians did was, they pulled their most capable and experienced forces from their eastern front and put them into this incursion into Kursk. Now the incursion has failed; we know that in all likelihood the objectives of the incursion were to take the nuclear facility in the city of Kurchatov, which is west of the city of Kursk, and to take over that reactor facility in an operation that would be a kind of nuclear blackmail operation, similar to what might have occurred if the Ukrainian government was able to retake the nuclear reactors at Zaporozhye. So, it’s pretty clear. The Russian government states that it has captured documents—and I think this is almost certainly correct—that indicate that this was the initial plan of the Kursk invasion. This military operation had to succeed within a few days of its beginning. In other words, it could not succeed unless it caught the Russians completely by surprise and took advantage of this surprise and was able to take this nuclear facility almost immediately. The Russians reacted very quickly, and stopped the incursion. The initial incursion involved maybe 10-12,000 of the most capable Ukrainian forces. These forces were equipped with the most capable equipment that was taken from the eastern front defensive area for this Kursk incursion.

So, for example, there were first-line air defense systems that were brought in along with the forces; presumably to try to prevent the Russian Air Force from working freely to destroy their ground forces. The Russian Air Force very quickly destroyed at least two Patriot units—these are first-line air defense units—a bunch of BUK first-line air defense units, and immediately left these Ukrainian forces naked to the strikes of the Russian Air Force. So, they had no protection against Russian air power. The Russians, up to about now, have caused about 10,000 casualties. This force was originally 11-12,000. It may have been reinforced; I don’t have the data on reinforcements. But the reinforcements are not large, because the Russians have used their Air Force to cut off reinforcement efforts for the Ukrainian forces in Kursk. So, this incursion is collapsing as we talk into a major, major catastrophe for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The eastern defensive areas have lost their most capable, experienced fighting forces. The forces that have been left on the eastern defensive areas are largely forces containing recent conscripts; people who have been taken against their will, put into the army, have very minimal training. They don’t want to be there; they are dropping their weapons and running in many of the situations. They’re surrendering in many of the situations. They’re being killed at a very high rate by the Russians in many of the situations. We are very close to a complete collapse of the Ukrainian defensive forces in Donbass. This has all been accelerated by the Kursk incursion.

What the Ukrainians have been arguing to the West is that the fact that the Russians have not retaliated in a big way to the Kursk incursion is some kind of indication that the Russian government is not willing to escalate in response to this escalation on the part of the Ukrainian military forces. This is a bogus argument; it is a very dangerous argument. And it is an argument that is designed to take advantage of the outright ignorance of the political leadership—Mr. Blinken in particular—to the fact that what Ukraine wants is an escalation that will bring NATO into direct conflict with Russia.

Now, anybody who has any intelligence at all, should know that this kind of escalation would be a devastating action that could easily lead to nuclear weapons being used, which would then bring us over the line into a rapid uncontrolled escalation to general nuclear use. This is the most incompetent and dangerous political decision being made by Mr. Blinken, who should be saying, “No, no, no, this is not a war that should be allowed to escalate into the destruction of Western and Northern civilization and possibly Southern civilization as well.” This is outrageous.

I have prepared some slides at Helga’s urging, to explain a little bit about what this decision to put mobile tactical nuclear weapons into Germany could mean in 2026—assuming we get there; assuming we don’t have a nuclear exchange before that. I would like to say though that the danger is very great, so I’m not disagreeing with Helga. But I do think Putin is fortunately one of the adults in the room, and I don’t know what he’ll do. I do think he will respond to this; and it will be a very costly response for the West. But I’m not sure that he will escalate to nuclear use, although there is certainly a large amount of political pressure on him to do that; just as there is a large amount of political loose talk among American political leaders about using nuclear weapons. This is insane; this shows people have no idea of what they’re talking about.

In any case, I can make a few statements that might be of interest to the German public about what the situation could look like in 2026, let alone what it could look like—I can expand very briefly to what it might look like now, too, for Germany. But let me just start by stepping back to this extraordinary and dangerous, ill-considered decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons by 2026 into Germany. The German people need to understand this, because the leadership of the German government has done a tremendous disservice to the German people. Not only have they done a disservice in terms of endangering Germany, in terms of the potential for nuclear war, but they have done a tremendous disservice to the German economy. Because the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline is the major factor that has led to the ongoing and continuing collapse of the German industrial capabilities over this last year. So, this sudden contraction of the Gross Domestic Product, the problems with Volkswagen being near to having to move manufacturing out of Germany; all of these are things that have been agreed to by the German government that are decisions made in Washington, D.C. I just want to point this out as well; the German government is not being served by its own political leadership; its own political leadership is accepting decisions in Washington that have done and will continue to do very severe damage to Germany’s industrial future, its economic future, and the economic future of all of Western Europe. It’s a failure of leadership at the most fundamental level to not protect your own country from very bad decisions that are being made outside of your country—in this case, Washington.

These decisions are the same kinds of decisions that have led to the destruction of Ukraine. Because Ukraine followed the lead of the Americans; it did what the Americans told it to do. Now Ukraine has lost the war, and it’s going to be further destroyed by its attempts to prolong this war. This is an extraordinarily serious incident, and historians—if there are historians around to write the history of this—are going to write a history that will be hard for people in the future to believe. That leadership could have failed so comprehensively in the West; led by the United States, but of course, certified and led by the leadership in Europe which has created the near collapse of the European as well as the increased danger to European countries as well.

Let me just step back and talk about the situation in Germany if American nuclear weapons are deployed in Germany as planned and stated by Blinken and others, and agreed to by Scholz. Let me be clear; this could not happen if Mr. Scholz did not agree to it. What I’m showing here in this particular image [Fig. 1] is the dust cloud that is produced by a 100-kiloton nuclear warhead. What is shown here is the percentage of radioactivity—and I’ll explain what this means—that’s in various parts of the dust cloud. The dust cloud is produced by a fireball that creates shockwaves and nuclear residues from the nuclear materials that underwent disintegration, producing an enormous amount of energy. It creates a fireball that then buoyantly rises, bringing a large amount of the radioactive material along with dust into this crown of this mushroom cloud, where 90% of the radioactive material is placed. Now, if you look at this nuclear dust cloud [Fig. 2] relative to weapons of other yields, you will see that this cloud is enormously large for the 100-kiloton warhead. I’ve shown a 1-megaton warhead; this is the kind of cloud that could occur if German cities are also attacked by Russian forces, which I think is a probable outcome if the nuclear weapons start to be used. I also have here, you’ll not see that there are some rainclouds next to the 100-kiloton nuclear warhead, so sometime on a rainy day when you look up at the sky, the lower clouds are close to where most of the rainclouds reside. So, you can see this cloud rises to enormous altitudes. In this case, the altitude here is about 8-9 miles, so it’s about 10-12 km in altitude. So, if you look at these little marks that are above each of the numbers showing the distances on the ground, one of those little marks would be equivalent to maybe the size of the one of the big microwave towers in Berlin, or the Washington Monument if you’re in Washington. So, these clouds are enormous in their size.

Now, what happens when a cloud like this is produced [Fig. 3] is the cloud will be carried downwind by the natural ambient winds at an altitude of maybe 10 km in this particular diagram. And the dust particles of various sizes would be falling out of this cloud onto the ground. These dust clouds would have radioactive materials from the nuclear detonation attached to them. So, they would fall onto the ground as the cloud continues to drift along and spread out, along with the wind moving it, onto the ground. So, here is a diagram [Fig. 4] put together very quickly. It’s a notional diagram; people should understand this. It’s a minimalist prediction or estimate of what a very minimal nuclear attack by Russian tactical nuclear weapons against German-American nuclear tactical weapons might look like in terms of consequences for people in Germany. Let’s look at one of the red oval areas. In this red oval area, this shows you the area in which everyone in this area would get a lethal dose of radiation if they didn’t evacuate the area immediately after a Russian tactical nuclear weapon of 75 kt yield was detonated on a site where the Russians believe there are German-American tactical nuclear weapons that might be launched. So, at the left end of this oval is a nuclear detonation. There’s a cloud produced and then there’s a downwind area where basically everybody in this area who didn’t get out of the way in 24 hours would get a lethal dose of radiation. They might die in days or weeks; if they were closer, they might die in hours. So, the level of radiation exposure would vary drastically.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that I’ve assumed a constant wind speed everywhere over Germany. If the attack occurred, the direction of these oval areas and their distance along their direction would vary dramatically. So, you could have some of these things going north-south; some of them going east-west; some of them going west-east. The population would not necessarily know immediately after the attack where the wind direction is, because communications would be disrupted or nonexistent. So, if you were in a given area, you would not know if you were in the path of a fallout cloud. The blue region shows an area where 50% of the people would be sick from exposure to radiation if they were in the path of the fallout. So, now keeping in mind that in this particular case I have postulated; this is just a guess that roughly 10 or so 75-kt tactical nuclear weapons—I used 75 kt because Putin made statements multiple times now that the Russian tactical nuclear weapons that they would be using would be 75 kt. So, these are for 75 kt; I’ve taken Putin at his word.

In reality, if Germany allows these tactical nuclear weapons to be deployed all over Germany, the likely scenario would be hundreds of nuclear weapons. I put 10 in here because it’s comprehensible if I show only 10. But the likelihood would in fact be hundreds of nuclear weapons. The reason it would be hundreds of nuclear weapons is that these German-American tactical nuclear weapons would be on trucks. And those trucks would be indistinguishable from commercial trucks that are moving things like fruit and vegetables and building materials. Because the trucks are disguised to look very much like commercial vehicles so they can be moved along open roads and then set up in areas where they would be able to launch the nuclear weapons. Well, the Russians will get some intelligence, so they will have some information about where potential launch sites could be. But they will also have to guess about where many of the launch sites are, and if they’re worried about their country being attacked, there’s going to be no question as to what decision they are going to make. A suspect site will be attacked as well.

So, hundreds of nuclear weapons resulting in these levels of fallout could occur. It would be an existential catastrophe far surpassing the worst catastrophe that occurred when the Allied troops invaded Germany at the end of World War II. A much worse catastrophe in terms of the loss of life, the level of destruction. Germany would go back to being a country that was in a worse state by far than what it looked like at the end of World War II.

Let me underscore: This would occur due to German leadership. Because the Germans do not have to accept these American nuclear weapons on their soil. So, this is a German decision. German citizens have a right to determine whether or not this happens in Germany. I put this together on very short notice, so I can do more detailed analysis for people in the future. So, people can get more information from me. I’m happy to help people become aware of the potential consequences. I want to underscore that I am not telling people what to do here. It is the decision of the Europeans and the German people, in particular, with regard to this American decision as to whether or not they will accept this American decision. The people of Germany need to make sure that they express their will to the German leadership. Because Scholz should not be in a leadership position, unless if the German people think that this is something they are willing to risk because the Americans want it and Scholz is willing to accept it. Then it’s your choice. I’m not telling you what to do. But this is a potential consequence of allowing these weapons to be put on German soil.

I’ll stop here; thank you.

[The Manhattan Dialogue concluded with a video relevant to Sept. 11, and then the Sept. 11, 2015 performance by the Schiller Institute chorus of the conclusion of Handel’s Messiah, “Worthy Is the Lamb,” and “Amen.”]