In February US President Obama quadrupled the 2016 military budget for the NATO armies advancing towards Russia’s western borders. These armies have, until now, constituted nothing but a provocation of Russia,  warranted by nothing if not arms deals or other ignoble motives.The ‘Cold War’ is now threatening to move into a real war, in which the use of nuclear warheads by Russia is also a possibility.
“This step [by the  Obama Administration] is unprecedented in modern history”, remarked Stephen Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Russian Studies and Politics at Princeton University. “Apart from Nazi Germany on the eve of its invasion of Russia, the military power of the West has never positioned itself so close to Russia. The decision of the Obama Administration is nothing other than Russian roulette à la  Washington.”1
This move of course immediately makes all the alleged peace efforts by the USA, and others towards Russia, look like a farce – another opportunity to realise the fundamental hypocrisy of US foreign policy today. The word  “hypocrisy” is not applied here as the expression of any subjective indignation, but as an objective characterisation of the basic drive of this policy, in the sense of Rudolf Steiner’s words: “the lie with which the West has to work, if it wants to succeed (…)”2

During a pedagogical conference in Hamburg in the second weekend of February, the former Member of the German Parliament for the Greens and also Member of the European Parliament, Gerald Häfner, said to a small circle how shockingly slight the resistance in the Bundestag had been after 9/11 against the “unconditional solidarity” with the US government called for by Chancellor Schröder and the leader of the Greens, Fischer. That resistance was finally able to ensure that only a deployment of the Bundeswehr to Afghanistan was approved, and not also to Iraq etc. It is grotesque that in such circumstances in the world Anthroposophists who seek to be leaders believe they have to take up the fight against “conspiracy theories”, as has happened with the League of Free Waldorf Schools since last summer3 – without troubling themselves about the fact that this poisonous propaganda term (conspiracy theory) originated in the circle of the conspirators against John F. Kennedy.4

1916 is also the year in which to commemorate an important European, who was not murdered but has nevertheless been the victim of a persistent campaign of character assassination: Helmuth von Moltke. It is to be hoped that more contemporaries will be able to consider the life and suffering of this personality of world-historical significance without prejudice (and not rest content with questionable spiritual encounters with him in which one is assured: “One likes to work with such people!”).5 We would like to draw attention here to the remarkable impression of Moltke by Heinrich Mann in the article by Andreas Bracher in this month’s issue of TPA (p. 22).

T.H. Meyer

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1   globalnet@mindspring.com

2   Der Europäer, Vol. 3 / No. 5 / March 1999

3   “What Is Public Opinion?” TPA, Vol. 1 / No. 8 / June 2015. On the death of Kennedy see James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 2010

4   This happened when the spokesman for the League of Free Waldorf Schools, Henning Kullak-Ublick, warned against inviting “conspiracy theorists” as lecturers to Waldorf Schools. In a letter of 2 November 2015 defending himself against “Heinz Mosmann and many others” he recommended the book by Karl Hepfer, Verschwörungstheorien: Eine philosophische Kritik der Unvernunft, [Conspiracy Theories: A Philosophical Critique of Unreason] Hepfer gives an overview of current “conspiracy theories”, without presenting even a single serious representative of views that diverge from the “politically correct”.

5   As has been proclaimed in the German language publication Erlebnis Erdwandlung, 2009, p. 154.

Correction
In the article “The Anglo-American and the Middle European-German Mission” (Vol. 1, No. 11/ February 2016, p. 3ff.) by Thomas Meyer the quotation from The Mission of the Archangel Michael (GA 194) – “Now, the actual victors are the Anglo-American peoples…” – was erroneously cited as being from Steiner’s lecture of 15.12.1919. It is actually from the previous day’s lecture, 14.12.1919.