lad os tale om at gøre en ende på det Globale Nords isolation!
Onsdag, August 23, 2023
HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello and welcome to our weekly webcast with Schiller Institute founder and chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche. I’m your host Harley Schlanger and today is Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. You can send your questions or comments to questions@schillerinstitute.
Today is the second day of the historic BRICS summit taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa. It’s been greeted with excitement by most of the world, and I should say, dismay from the City of London and its adherents. Helga, you drafted a statement, an “Appeal to the Citizens of the Global North: We Must Support the Construction of a New Just World Economic Order!” which viewers can read and sign and circulate, as we want to get this discussion going in the Global North. (https://schillerinstitute.
Many people complain that there’s no one in the governments in the Global North who will listen to this or pay attention. What affect did you intend in drafting your statement?
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, what a day! Let me first express my absolute joy about what happened today: I watched the BRICS summit, the speeches, I heard the news and read the news about success of the Indian Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Moon, which was highly successful. And then Prime Minister Modi announced in his speech that India will not only propose cooperation in space exploration among the BRICS countries, and the BRICS-Plus countries, soon, but that he proposes to create a BRICS space cooperation consortium. This is, really, together with all the many constructive proposals that were coming from the different heads of state and government, this marks the beginning of a new age of mankind. Because, if the majority of the countries start to cooperation in the exploration of space, of science, space travel, this will completely change the identity of man. We will definitely make the jump which started with the lifting of the first man off from Earth; then the Apollo Moon landing, and now we have a definite idea for the major nations to cooperate in moving man not only to the Moon, creating Moon villages, but going further, with the exploration of the possibility of eventually building a city on Mars, and going beyond. I can only say, there is no better proof about the excellent intention of the BRICS countries to move humanity into a new paradigm, a completely new way of living together, than that decision.
So I think it’s an excellent day for humanity, and I want to use this and many other occasions to express my full-hearted congratulations to India, for its successful Moon mission, to the BRICS countries, for their very successful BRICS summit, and there were many other excellent points made. But I think altogether, if one listened to President Ramaphosa, President Lula da Silva, Prime Minister Modi, President Putin (who was transmitting by live video), and President Xi Jinping, I can only say, this was a breath of fresh air. If you don’t believe me, please go to the YouTube or whatever other media and watch the speeches yourself. (https://www.youtube.com/@
This is the future, and this makes, to answer your question, this is making our campaign which I initiated with the Appeal to the Citizens of the Global North, that we must convince the countries of the Global North to join with joyful transformation of the history of mankind. Because, if the North at this point is catching up with the cultural optimism which is expressed by the BRICS leaders, it can only be to the benefit of everybody. And I think it’s the absolute important moment to stop this geopolitical arrogance, thinking that only the G7 are the good ones and all the other ones are barbarians living in a jungle, as Josep Borrell had said last October [https://www.eeas.europa.eu/
So I think this is an incredibly important moment, and I have written this Appeal to the Citizens of the Global North to absolutely demand that the governments of the Global North join this development and create a new world economic order for the benefit of all of mankind together: That is the demand of the hour, and we must absolutely not let this moment pass, because it is one of these absolute star moments of human history, when you can really change the whole directionality of where things go.
Now, there has been a lot of concern, will the Western leaders even listen to this? I think they will have to listen. I watched and tried to find out what the main media were saying this morning, and there was hardly any coverage. And if there was, it was “yeah, there are tensions between India and China, and they will never get their act together.” Well, I think that this summit is proving the opposite, and this is so powerful that I think the Western leaders cannot ignore it. Because you have to always consider that the vast majority of the people in the developing South, which is now the Global Majority, are also watching this, and they’re perfectly capable of comparing what they’re getting from the so-called West and what they’re being offered by the BRICS. And I think the answer is very clear.
So the only reasonable answer is, don’t condemn it, don’t try to derail it: Join it, because that is the way of the future.
SCHLANGER: And you can get Helga’s appeal on the Schiller Institute website. [https://schillerinstitute.
I would just tell you, Helga, that before we started, I noticed on CNN and the {Washington Post}, their coverage of the Indian Moon landing was essentially to contrast the success of India’s mission with what they described as the “failure” of the Russian mission last week, and again, they’re trying to do this divide-and-conquer, as opposed to acknowledging the great accomplishment of Indian scientists and engineers.
Now, much of the opening day of the BRICS summit yesterday was taken up with discussion of the role of the New Development Bank, the establishment of a mechanism of credit for a variety of trade agreements and so on. And so we received several questions that are related to the New Development Bank: They requested your thoughts on whether there will be a new financial system? Is this a step in the right direction? And also, a very interesting comment from someone who asked, “Would Lyndon LaRouche urge the BRICS countries to not be cautious and move more aggressively toward a new system?” So those are two questions for you.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: The answer to the first question is, definitely, yes. I think there is nothing in the world which will stop this, except World War III, which would not be to the benefit of even those who start it. Because this is now gaining a momentum, as I wrote in my Appeal, the de-dollarization is not an aggressive act coming from the countries that are doing it; it’s an act of self-defense. Because the sanctions, which were for the most part unilateral sanctions—not approved by the UN Security Council, and therefore, technically illegal—and on top of it, the weaponization of the dollar, whereby the U.S. confiscated $300 billion or more from Russia, $9 billion from Afghanistan, and also amounts from other countries, that has led to a situation where these countries have basically said it’s no longer secure to have your assets in dollars, and therefore, let’s have trade in national currencies. And eventually the New Development Bank was significantly upgraded to become—as President Lula said at one point, the “great bank of the South,” a lending institution—and it will start lending already this year; I think they announced they will lend the first credit in October in rupees, and in other currencies: So it is a transformation, and it cannot be stopped.
Now, the second question: I don’t know. I think Lyn was a very thorough methodological thinker, and he would not advise people to do things in a rush, which need to be done with care. And that’s what I see what these leaders are essentially doing, because the difficulties to be surmounted are not small. You have to consider that they said they will definitely create an international currency for balancing accounts among them, but to have a real, international reserve currency, with all that that requires is taking a lot of consideration. You have to make it in such a way, as a stable thing, so that it can last. Also, the other measures which are being mooted, are all necessary.
So I would say, Lyndon LaRouche would for sure encourage them to move ahead full steam, but he also would say that the importance is that the principles which he laid out in many writings, the first one in the proposal for a new International Development Bank, the IDB, which he wrote in 1975! [http://r.schillerinstitute.
So I think, since I know that the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche are circulating widely, I would be very optimistic that that will be done right.
SCHLANGER: Helga, we have from the chatroom a question that was I think initiated by your opening on the Indian Moon mission. Someone asked the question: “How is the role of space going to shape geopolitics over the next 20 years?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: It is very important, because it is the most important thing to shift the thinking of people about the nature of man. It’s not just an exciting scientific and technological adventure, to move into a completely new economic platform, because, you know, Lyndon LaRouche developed the notion of economic platform, to mean that every time you develop a qualitatively new method of economics, which space science lends itself to, to basically be continuously such a motor. It redefines all previously existing economic functions, and therefore, it is really a jump every time you do that in terms of productivity.
So it has extremely important scientific and economic features, but I think the most important is what it does to the identity of man. I always think about the vision of the great rocket scientists and astronomer, and space scientist Krafft Ehricke, who had this vision about the {Extraterrestrial Imperative}: Meaning, that first of all, that once you enter space exploration, it is a driver, because it forces you to adjust all the previously assumed axioms to whatever is required in space, and that is a necessity. It does not allow for the ludicrous; space requires that you behave rationally, and therefore it will change the identity of man, from thinking of themselves just as “earthlings,” who have their nose on the ground and don’t look up the stars, but to a species living in space. And as we have seen with the incredible cooperation among astronauts on the ISS, or in any other field, when they look down on the small planet Earth, a tiny blue planet in a huge, huge galaxy; and we are now living in one of at least 2 trillion galaxies.
So the future of man in space will mean that we will think of ourselves as completely different. And it will change the identity of man: Imagine if you are having a village on the Moon, where all international countries are working together. Then you start from there to really seriously think about missions to Mars: With revolutions in fuel technology, such as fusion power, you can reduce the travel time significantly so it will become safe for people to travel to Mars. Then, maybe years down the road, but nevertheless, a city on Mars will happen, and then beyond that, even if you think about several generations ahead, I’m sure that interstellar space travel is not impossible to think about.
So I think we are really on the beginning of a completely new era in mankind, because rationality and the idea of scientific cooperation, that will be what I have called the “age of adulthood of mankind” where we no longer squabble around any more and have little wars which are not to the benefit of anybody, except the speculators.
So I think this is a really an extremely important date today.
SCHLANGER: You’re listening to a very happy Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder and chairwoman of the Schiller Institute.
Helga, I have a question on the BRICS, from someone who is retired from working with the UN food program, and this person wrote about Putin’s promise yesterday, that Russia would provide 25-50,000 tons of grain to each of six African countries for free, to address the food crisis. “With Putin making that promise, with countries like Burkina Faso sending emergency food supplies to Niger, doesn’t that expose the hypocrisy of the rest of the world, which seems to accept that hunger and starvation are inevitable, and that sanctions against hungry nations are acceptable?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yeah, I guess the answer to this question is, yes it does expose it. Because the Western media, again, had nothing better to do than to say this shows the evil intentions of the Russians, trying to make the poorest countries dependent on their grain. I mean, if you are sitting somewhere and you are about to starve, you will be absolutely happy about anybody who comes to your lifesaving. And of the whole Russia-Ukraine grain deal, it has been found out that a lot of the grain which Ukraine could export, did not go to the African countries or other countries in need, but it went basically went into Poland; it made the Polish farmers extremely upset, because it was in competition in prices to the grain they produce; it went to other European countries.
I think the genie is out of the bottle, because there was for a long time the effort to conceal all of these conditions, but the train has left the station: because, if you listen to the speeches from many, many leaders from the Global South, they are now saying, we have understood what the realities are. And they are not going to be discouraged, even though there is still tremendous pressure, like on ECOWAS situated in Nigeria to go for military action against Niger; or even on the African Union, putting an ultimatum to the new Niger government. All of this reflects Western influence, but I can only repeat myself: The more quickly the countries and forces in the countries, not just the governments, but also the farmers, the trade unionists, civil groups and others, the more quickly they express support for what is now evolving the better, and the better the chances that we can overcome the present strategic crisis in a very short time.
SCHLANGER: I have a couple of questions that go back to the matter of geopolitics and the war danger, from a U.S. blogger who wrote a question, identifying that there was resistance to the opening of a NATO headquarters in Japan from French President Macron, and so that was at least somewhat postponed. And yet, NATO seems to be going full steam ahead in Asia: You had the meeting last week of Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and South Korea’s President Yoon Yuk Seol, with Joe Biden in Camp David, promising to move toward a coordination of what they described as an “Asian NATO.” And this blogger asks: “Why would Japan go along with this?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: That is a good question, which many people should as the Japanese. Because, it’s for sure connecting Japan not with its best tradition of the Meiji Restoration. The Meiji Restoration would be the outlook Japan should have in joining what is developing with the BRICS right now.
The Meiji Restoration, after Japan was self-isolated for several centuries, people went out to the United States, to Germany, to Holland, and other European countries, and studied what became physical economy, and they brought it back to Japan. And within a few years, Japan developed and exploded from being an extremely backward country into one of the major industrial powers in the world. That literally occurred in less than a few decades.
And that is the outlook which was still existing in the post-war period, with the Mitsubishi. I visited an interesting science city not very far from Tokyo, where all the major Japanese industrial firms worked together under one roof for the benefit of the whole country. And that Mitsubishi outlook is what would be required right now for Japan to join with the BRICS.
Unfortunately, as everybody knows, Japan has also another tradition, that of the military alliance with Germany in the Second World War, and naturally this brings forward the most horrible memories in China because especially the Japanese attacks on China and territorial conquering, including Hongkong, and many other battles, the Massacre of Nanjing, so this is really bad for Japan! And I don’t know why Japan is doing that, because they have clearly to choose between two completely different traditions, and one can only hope that the general dynamic convinces people in Japan that they have a better future than to join something which can only lead to a catastrophe if it’s pursued to the end. And given the fact that there are all these tensions already, there were several warnings, even I think from one of the American think tanks, they said, a nuclear war in Northeast Asia in the next 10 years is likely to happen.
Now, if I had such a perspective in front of me, coming from a U.S. think tank, I would start to think, “Hey, wait a second, the Americans are letting the Ukrainians fight in Ukraine; they would like to have the Nigerians fight in Africa against Niger; so maybe, it’s not such a good idea, maybe we should really help to establish a system of peaceful coexistence of sovereign republics working together, and the whole idea of an ‘Asian NATO’ as being part of a Global NATO is the worst idea and should be put into mothballs, or better, into the wastepaper basket, and the more quickly the better.”
SCHLANGER: Someone who’s been on some of the calls of the International Peace Coalition referred to your comments that the American Revolution was the first successful anti-colonialist war, and that the Founding Fathers were explicitly against imperial policies. And this person asks: “How can we get Americans to recognize that the development around the BRICS is in that tradition, and therefore should be supported by real patriotic Americans?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think that’s one of the most important things to do right now, for people in the United States. Because, unfortunately, the real history of the United States has really been forgotten—or never learned by many, many people. But we, from the LaRouche movement, we did an enormous amount of historical studies. If you go on our websites, you find in our {EIR} Archive, where you can pull out an enormous amount of original historical research, because the role of Benjamin Franklin in bringing the influence of Gottfried Leibniz into what became the young American republic; the roots of the American System of economy, the ideas of a republic among republics, by John Quincy Adams, and especially naturally the War of Independence against the British Empire for the right for economic development: That’s exactly what the BRICS countries are trying to do now. And it was President Sukarno at the Bandung Conference in 1955, who, in his major speech, he reminded the American people that they set the example and the pathway by fighting the first war against colonialism.
And I think that that is exactly the viewpoint that Americans should take right now, if they judge what is happening in terms of the BRICS. Because the reason why the BRICS countries have such an enormous attraction right now, for, I would say, probably 130, 140, 150 countries—the only reason why countries say they are not supporting it, is because they are under too much pressure to dare to do so—but it is because they want to have the same rights for development as the young American republic was fighting for, and they want to have the right to have infrastructure as a precondition for industrial development; they want to have modern energy, clean water, industrial parks; they want to have a decent living standard for all of their people, a modern health care system. And that is really what the fight is all about and therefore, I think, to study the origins of America, to study the real history, the battle between the American System and the British System—Friedrich List wrote about that when he was in America for several years; and later, you had Henry C. Carey writing on the same topic.
So in a certain sense, the real history of America was to become independent, to shed the status of being a colony, and to have the right for development. And there were many phases, because the British Empire did not give up lightly. They did not accept the loss of what was in their view the most important colony, so they started to try to undo this militarily in the War of 1812. And then later in the Civil War, the British Empire allied with the Confederacy to defeat the Lincoln and the Union. They did not succeed. This was a major, major effort to undo the accomplishments of the American Revolution, and after that, they realized that practically, it could not be done militarily, so they started, especially after the assassination of William McKinley, to try to influence the American establishment to adopt the model of the British Empire as the platform to rule the world on the basis of the Anglo-American unipolar world conception. And that’s what we are still fighting with today.
And it’s very important to study that, and I can only suggest that people should use our archives, because a lot of work went into that, including that of my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, because nowadays, there are so many people in the world, and we meet them all the time, who are filled with a profound anti-American sentiment, because they dislike the idea of the unipolar world, they dislike interventionist wars, they think the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Libya, for example: The Libyan war is a big issue of discussion in Africa right now.
So they don’t want this any more, and therefore, they throw the baby out with the bathwater by becoming anti-American. And that doesn’t help you much, because if you don’t talk to the United States, to convince them and bring out the better tradition, I don’t think we can solve the strategic conflict, either.
So it’s not very wise to just put a label on the United States and reject it altogether. I think it’s important to cooperate with good forces in America. And I heard with great pleasure, that in the first day, more than 500 people from the United States were signing the Appeal to the Citizens of the Great North, we mentioned at the beginning of this show. And that is just in one day: We will definitely expand that.
So, for example, what Indian Prime Minister Modi announced, in terms of the BRICS space cooperation consortium, that is exactly what John F. Kennedy proposed in 1963 to the Soviet Union! So I think that that idea will catch on in the United States, and there will be people who are excited about space cooperation, and that will be one of the areas where we can build bridges and see that cooperation is so much more reasonable, than to continue on the war and continue on the path of confrontation.
The history of the United States, what it really was and what it was not, should be an object of intellectual curiosity for everybody.
SCHLANGER: Helga, I’ll conclude with an email I got from someone who just signed the appeal, and said that she would be circulating it. She said she was “inspired by it and by your optimism, so much so that she’s willing to take on what seems to be the dead, former anti-war movement people in Europe, to try and get them into the proper frame of mind, to win this fight.” She thanks you for issuing the Appeal, and said we’ve got to get more people behind this immediately in Europe.
Any final comments, Helga?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I want you to join my optimism. Because, people in Germany are generally so downtrodden and so pessimistic that nothing can be done, and indeed, if you only look at the internal German dynamics, with this horrible government we have right now—where the Chancellor just made a statement calling people who are fighting for peace, “foreign angels coming directly from Hell”! I mean, this is really bad: I think he has just earned himself a place in history as one of the most horrible Chancellors you could possibly think of. What a stupid statement to make! But so, if you only look at the German situation you could get really depressed—but don’t look at it that way. Look at it from above. Look at it from the dynamic of history, and the majority of people right now, led by five, very excellent leaders of their countries, are moving in the formation of a new world economic order. And that is something that this movement, the LaRouche movement, has been fighting for, for I would say a half-century, and now a lot of what my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, wrote and discussed and accomplished a lot of incredible things over the decades, this is now becoming a reality! That is a reason to be happy, and to get onboard, and get active.
And I want to thank the questioner, I am perfectly happy to join your efforts, because the peace movement needs to be put on that perspective.
SCHLANGER: Well, with that, Helga, thank you very much for joining us today, and we look forward to our discussion next week.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes! And become active right now. Sign the petition, and call us, and let’s do things together.
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