Den 18. juli 2022 (EIRNS) – De hollandske landmænd, som i de seneste uger har været på gaden med deres traktorer i protest mod ”Green Resets”, de grønne miljøtiltags uvidenskabelige afvikling af fødevareproduktionen, har opfordret til solidariske demonstrationer fra ligesindede rundt om i verden på lørdag den 23. juli. “The World Goes Dutch” er titlen på en af videoerne i forbindelse med opfordringen, som har temaet ikke-voldelig handling og fremviser uddrag af Martin Luther King Jr. og viser aktuelle protester fra landmænd, fiskere, lastbilchauffører og andre, såvel som tidligere scener fra begyndelsen af det 20. århundrede. Der har været afholdt flere landbrugsprotester denne sommer i Tyskland, Italien, Spanien, Polen, Canada og andre steder.

Denne udbredte selvaktivering er vidt åben for at fremme handling hen mod det nye system, der er nødvendigt som beskrevet i den erklæring/opfordring, som har cirkuleret siden juni om et “Ad hoc-udvalg for et nyt Bretton Woods-system”.

https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/call_for_an_ad-hoc_committee_for_a_new_bretton_woods_system

På andre formelle områder er der dyb modstand mod den grønne antividenskabelige økonomiske nedlukning og dens geopolitiske vanvid, der truer med atomkrig.

Dette blev tydeligt tilkendegivet på de sidste to ministermøder i Gruppen af 20, der førte til G20-topmødet for statsledere i november, som Indonesien var vært for. På G20-finansministrenes G20-møde den 15.-16. juli på Bali, planlagde den indonesiske finansminister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, at drøfte finansielle spørgsmål i forbindelse med håndtering af kriserne i relation til fødevareforsyning, pandemier og fattigdom, men i stedet insisterede de amerikanske, canadiske og australske finansembedsmænd på at fokusere indsatsen imod Rusland. USA’s finansminister, Janet Yellen, og den canadiske finansminister og vicepremierminister, Chrystia Freeland (ukrainsk oprindelse), krævede, at Rusland ikke skulle have adgang til G20-møderne. Som følge heraf blev der ikke afgivet nogen fælles G20-finansministererklæring. Men Indonesien og andre lande ville ikke give efter. Minister Mulyani udsendte sin egen formandserklæring, der fokuserede på fødevaresikkerhed og andre prioriterede problemer.

Schiller Instituttets leder Helga Zepp-LaRouche påpegede i dag, at de nuværende vestlige ledere, snarere end at arbejde på en politik for at afslutte hungersnøden og andre kriser, i stedet reagerer på alting med “et nyt skyde-skylden-på-spil”.

Se blot på deres insisteren på sanktioner, sagde hun. Hvis de blev ophævet, kunne vi finde ud af at løse manglen på og problemerne med fødevarer, strøm, brændstof, vand, medicin, sundhedspleje og alt derudover.

Der er betydelige, konkrete skridt i retning af et nyt økonomisk system, der kan erstatte det destruktive London/Wall Street-system. Rusland er godt på vej til at etablere en ny prismekanisme, “National Oil Benchmark”, der skal tjene til langsigtede kontrakter og handel, og som ikke er baseret på de velkendte priser “Brent Crude” eller “West Texas Intermediate Crude”, der er udsat for voldsomme udsving som følge af spekulation. De tjener udelukkende til kortsigtede kontrakter og manipulation. Det forventes, at der vil blive oprettet en russisk oliehandelsplatform i oktober 2022, og den nye russiske olie-prissætning vil blive taget i brug i marts 2023.

Disse nye russiske ordninger for olie er parallelle med de ordninger, der for nylig er blevet indført for hvedehandelen, hvor den russiske referencepris i rubler er blevet fastsat for hvede – det såkaldte NAMEX Wheat Index (National Mercantile Exchange) – baseret på prisen for et ton hvede til afsætning fra havnen i Novorossiysk ved Sortehavet. Det er slut med at være afhængig af prisen på Chicago Mercantile Exchange, der er berygtet for tusindvis af handler om dagen med “fiktive” tønder korn og andre råvarer, hvilket giver handlende og karteller enorme spilgevinster.

Kina har fremsat visse vigtige forslag vedrørende evnen til at bekæmpe hungersnød, samt bekæmpelse af COVID-19 og til at sikre en generel succes med bekæmpelse af fattigdommen. På G20-udenrigsministermødet den 7.-8. juli, hvor konfronterende angreb på Rusland var så ekstremt, at det ikke engang var formålstjenligt, at den russiske udenrigsminister, Sergej Lavrov, blev på Bali, og i betragtning af angrebene på Rusland fra USA og deres kumpaner, gav den kinesiske udenrigsminister, Wang Yi, en omfattende præsentation om fødevaresikkerhed den 8. juli. Han meddelte, at Kina er parat til at stille et ekstra lager og knudepunkt med base i Kina til rådighed for Verdensfødevareprogrammet (VFP), så FN’s reaktion på akutte fødevarebehov og humanitære behov kan udvides. VFP har i øjeblikket seks lagercentre verden over og håndterer al logistik for FN, lige fra dets fly- og lastbilflåde til uddannelsesfaciliteter for personalet og levering af medicin og personale. Kinas tilbud vil i høj grad udvide VFP’s kapacitet, og Kina foreslår yderligere konkrete foranstaltninger.

Zepp-LaRouches pointe om at sanktionerne skal ophæves, og at vi bør gå i gang med nye initiativer til at løse kriserne, blev understreget med en bemærkning fra Sri Lankas fungerende præsident, Ranil Wickremesinghe i et indisk tv-program om sult i dag. Han smed fløjlshandskerne i forbindelse med de vestlige anti-russiske sanktioner. “Tror man, at sanktioner vil hjælpe? De vil kun trække priserne op. … Lad os se på de sanktioner, der er blevet indført, og spørge os selv, om det er nødvendigt. Sanktionerne bringer ikke Rusland i knæ, men de vil tvinge resten af Den tredje Verden i knæ.”

 

Den 18. juni (EIRNS) – Det spændende panel “Runaway Inflation or Glass-Steagall”, som var det andet panel på lørdagens konference i Schiller Instituttet brillerede med omkring 15 talere, som ved hvad der skal til for at løse den nuværende globale økonomiske sammenbrudskrise, og som har mobiliseret andre omkring disse løsninger. Selv om størstedelen af talerne er aktive i USA, var de måske 500 aktivister, der direkte så med fra hele verden, fuldstændig betaget af den fysiske økonomiske virkelighed, som blev fremlagt, og de bad om videoklip : “Det her burde gå viralt!”

Passende nok startede panelet med et videouddrag af Lyndon LaRouche, der den 4. september 1994 talte om, hvordan man kan skabe kredit, “billioner af dollars til nye infrastrukturprojekter”, “billioner af dollars i arbejde”, selv i en sammenbrudskrise, hvor de fleste opsparinger var blevet tilintetgjort af det finansielle sammenbrud. Det er helt klart den situation, som dette panel og verden står over for nu.

Ifølge ordstyrer Harley Schlanger besvarede den LaRouche-uafhængige senatskandidat fra New York, Diane Sares modstander, senator Chuck Schumer, ikke en invitation til at komme med en præsentation til panelet, som Sare var hovedtaler for. Schumer, der har pralet med Wall Street: “Det er min valgkreds”, var heldig, at han afslog, da fødderne brændte under Wall Street og bankerne i City of London under hele forløbet.

Sare gav en dynamisk præsentation af det Amerikanske System, hvor hun præsenterede det med fire store infrastrukturelle bedrifter, udelukkende mulige gennem et nationalt bankvæsen og videnskabelige forpligtelser, som historisk set kendetegner verdens førende økonomier. I USA var det Erie-kanalen, som forenede nationen i begyndelsen af det 19. århundrede, den transkontinentale jernbane, som knyttede den genoprettede Union sammen i 1870’erne, Tennessee Valley Authority, som var verdens mest banebrydende og berømte infrastrukturprojekt, indtil … Apollo-projektet, som er historiens hidtil største nye transportkorridor. Sare lokaliserede Erie-kanalens karakter i sin egen “mission impossible”-kampagne, som rekrutterede 200 frivillige fra kanalens oprindelse, New York, for at overvinde kravet om at indsamle 45.000 eller flere gyldige underskrifter for at kunne opstille til senatsvalget, hvilket ingen anden kandidat formåede at gøre. Derefter gik hun over til at redegøre for de mest omvæltende aktuelle globale infrastrukturudfordringer, som kun er mulige gennem et ”amerikansk system”-samarbejde mellem Kina og USA i Bælte- og Vej-Initiativet.

Sare bød velkommen til Geoff Young fra Kentucky, der i et årti har ført kampagner omkring Glass/Steagall-loven, “Afskaf CIA” og som i år vandt sit demokratiske partis primærvalg til kongresvalget i Kentuckys 6. kongresdistrikt ved at love: “I modsætning til [den republikanske repræsentant] Andy Barr vil jeg aldrig stemme for at sende milliarder af dollars til nazister”. Young opfordrer USA til at “forlade NATO” og “afslutte alle de permanente krige”. Hans kandidatur, ligesom Sares, bliver nu set nationalt for at vise, at ikke alle borgere er demoraliseret af økonomisk sammenbrud og regeringskorruption, og at de vil mobilisere mod Wall Street.

Otte landbrugsledere fra Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado og Californien samt Jim Moore, der er fiskerivirksomhedsleder i Alaska, opfordrede til at genindføre Glass-Steagall og opløse fødevarekonglomeraterne samt de største banker, ellers vil vi stå over for omfattende hungersnød. Den mest ihærdige for at fjerne al storfinans fra landbruget og spekulation fra bankerne var Mike Callicrate, der er kvægavler i Colorado/Kansas og lokal slagterivirksomhedsleder, og som krævede, at der blev sat en stopper for “det nonsens, at Amerika skal brødføde verden – Amerika kan ikke brødføde sig selv!” Landmændene blev præsenteret og koordineret af Schiller Instituttets ordfører for landbruget, Bob Baker.

Det japanske finansministeriums tidligere konkursbehandler af fallerede banker og IMF’s administrerende direktør for Japan, Daisuke Kotegawa, fulgte efter med en påvisning af, at “det er svært at benægte konklusionen, Wall Street og City of London er på randen af bankerot”, og insisterede på at denne gang – i modsætning til historien om City of Londons globale svindelnumre siden 1985 – må principperne for reorganisering af konkurser anvendes effektivt og “respekten” for disse arrogante og kriminelle bankfolk ikke komme i vejen.

I panelet deltog også den italienske økonom Nino Galloni, tidligere administrerende direktør for Italiens arbejdsministerium, den græske æresambassadør og generalsekretær for Organisationen for Økonomisk Samarbejde i Sortehavsområdet, Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, og Dr. Uwe Behrens, logistikchef og forfatter fra Tyskland. Galloni, der har samarbejdet længe med Lyndon LaRouche og er ekspert i globaliseringens virkninger på organiseringen af pensioner og arbejdsudligning i både Europa og i udviklingslandene, fremlagde konkrete forslag til genopretning af det afrikanske landbrug. Hans målsætning er, at der i forbindelse med den bevidste opsplitning af verdensøkonomien som følge af NATO’s selvmordssanktioner mod Rusland og Kina er en mulighed for at gøre en ende på globaliseringen og genoprette det amerikanske nationaløkonomiske system på grundlag af LaRouches principper. Umiddelbart kan vi “give Afrika det tilbage, som altid har været afrikansk”, sagde han, hvilket betyder et selvforsynende landbrug. Dr. Behrens koncentrerede sig om udfordringen til den såkaldte “unipolære verden” i London og Washington, som repræsenteres af Bælte- og Vej-Initiativet (BVI), hvormed “Kina udfordrer USA’s herredømme”. Han sagde: “Jeg takker Schiller Instituttet for denne anledning”. Ambassadør Chrysanthopoulos fokuserede også på BVI, da det tilbyder en løsning på en tiltagende strategisk krise – ja, endog en krigskrise – i Middelhavsområdet mellem Tyrkiet og Grækenland. “Ville det ikke være bedre for verden, hvis stormagterne … samarbejdede inden for Bælte- og Vej-Initiativet,” konkluderede han. “Og sanktionerne bør afskaffes.”

Publikums spørge- og diskussionstime efter præsentationerne var lige så dynamisk, da Helga Zepp-LaRouche sluttede sig til alle paneldeltagerne for at fremsætte et forslag til samtlige paneldeltagere om at iværksætte en verdensomspændende underskriftsindsamling for at få indført et nyt Bretton Woods-system. Organiseringen af hendes underskriftindsamling, der blev søsat i januar, og som opfordrede til en konference af nationer med henblik på at etablere en ny international sikkerheds- og udviklingsarkitektur, har nu ført til yderst indflydelsesrige globale konferencer den 9. april og denne begivenhed den 18.-19. juni. Hun foreslog, at denne appel til et nyt Bretton Woods-system skal have det mål, som præsident Franklin Roosevelt, der skabte det, havde tiltænkt – at industrialisere og udvikle tidligere koloniserede nationer – og ikke som det blev misdannet af Churchill og Truman. Hele panelet drøftede det foreslåede andragende og et nyt Bretton Woods i sig selv, idet de fleste støttede det, mens andre, som Geoff Young, gjorde det klart, hvilken del af en sådan verdensomspændende organisationsindsats de ville støtte.

Panelet kan følges her: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/06/17/conference-there-can-be-no-peace-without-the-bankruptcy-reorganization-of-the-dying-trans-atlantic-financial-system/

 

Ingen tilbagevenden til normaltilstand:

Kun et paradigmeskifte kan afhjælpe den eksistentielle krise

af Janet G. West

8. maj (EIR årgang 48, nr. 20) — Det andet panel, ”Metoden med 'modsætningernes sammenfald': Alene en samlet verdensomspændende sundhedsindsats uden sanktioner, vil kunne vende en global pandemi”, under Schiller Instituttets konference den 8. maj, samlede ledere fra USA, Europa og Sydamerika for at tackle den trefoldige krise med krig, hungersnød og pandemi. 

Ordstyrer Dennis Speed brugte to videoklip til at perspektivere diskussionen i forhold til den overskyggende fare for krig, og til at behandle hvordan krige opstår. Først var et klip fra Lyndon LaRouches tv-udsendelse fra 1999, 'Storm Over Asia', hvori han understregede, at Rusland vil kæmpe tilbage, hvis det presses op i et hjørne – "det er deri faren ligger". For mange mennesker agerer under den vildfarelse, at de kan gøre som de vil i udlandet,  "uden at det giver bagslag". Hvis London og Wall Streets kontrol over den amerikanske politik fortsætter, vil sandsynligheden øges for at Rusland vil kæmpe tilbage til grænsen af atomkrig.

Derefter et klip fra et nyligt interview med tidligere admiral Marc Pelaez (USN, fhv.), som har været kommandør for en atomubåd under Den kolde Krig, om karakteren af beslutningen om at påbegynde atomkrig. Pelaez sagde, at hvis han havde modtaget en ordre om at skride til handling, ville han have gjort det. ”Afskrækkelsen skal være troværdig,” sagde han, “Min ubåds kapacitet kunne udslette alle større byer i USA øst for Mississippi. Og det er bare én ubåd!” Hvis man  gjorde det, "vidste man imidlertid, at der ikke var noget at vende hjem til".

At løse det uløselige

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, grundlægger af Schiller Instituttet, kom med indledende bemærkninger, hvor hun henviste til civilisationskrisen i 1453 med Konstantinopels fald, da Det osmanniske Rige erobrede det byzantinske imperiums hovedstad og effektivt knuste det. Befolkningen blev brutaliseret af angriberne, og mange døde. Nicolaus Cusanus stod over for udfordringen med at forholde sig til denne krise, og hvordan det enorme had fra den ene side til den anden kunne forliges på en sådan måde, at man kom frem til en løsning på et højere niveau. Resultatet af denne inspiration var hans dialog: ''Freden i Troen' (De Pace Fidei), hvor repræsentanter fra mange nationer og trosretninger kom i samtale med Gud i en dialog om, hvordan de kunne leve i fred. 

Efter en række spørgsmål om tilsyneladende modstridende ideer og Guds svar, var konklusionen, at der kun er én sandhed – at universet er lovmæssigt, og at hele menneskeheden bærer den guddommelige gnist inden i sig; at alt menneskeliv er helligt. Så derfor, fortsatte hun, kan de tilsyneladende forskelligartede perspektiver og problemer kun løses ud fra et højere princip, og dette var 'Modsætningerne Sammenfald'; at hinandens udvikling bliver af primær interesse for én selv. Det er ud fra dette synspunkt, at hun gentog sit krav om oprettelsen af et globalt sundhedssystem, at starte opbygningen af den nødvendige infrastruktur i alle nationer, og at alle sanktioner skal elimineres. Og for at gøre det må vi tackle det moralske sammenbrud, især inden for USA.

Standarden: ’moralsk excellence’

Dr. Joycelyn Elders, tidligere cheflæge for militærets sundhedskorps i USA, talte om ideen med at genoplive ”standarden for moralsk excellence” – at gøre mere end hvad vi mener, vi er i stand til; ikke at give op, før målet er nået. Denne standard for moralsk excellence er ikke bare et godt ideal – det er en nødvendighed. Hun gennemgik statistikken: over 2 milliarder mennesker har ikke adgang til rent drikkevand; over 2,5 milliarder oplever fødevareusikkerhed, og 270 millioner mennesker står over for potentiel hungersnød. Omkring 1,2 milliarder mennesker har ikke adgang til elektricitet, og uden elektricitet kan sygdomme ikke overvindes… og [samtidig] hævde, at pandemien er et resultat af moralsk, og ikke lægelige svigt.

Eftersom uafhængighedserklæringen taler om umistelige rettigheder, herunder: "Liv, frihed og higen efter lykke," sagde dr. Elder, at vi nu skal inkludere adgangen til midlerne [for] livets opretholdelse – rent vand, rigelig mad og billig elektricitet skal være tilgængeligt for alle nationer, for uden disse ting er der ingen måde at have et sundhedssystem på eller [at opretholde] livet. Hun kaldte den nuværende politik for "ligegyldighedens selvmordsøkonomi" og afsluttede med at opfordre alle til at blive involveret, genvinde "standarden for moralsk excellence" og understregede, at apati er den værste pandemi af alle.

Dr. Khadijah Lang (USA), formand for 'National Medical Association (NMA) Council on International Affairs' og præsident for 'Golden State Medical Association'; samt Marcia Merry Baker, en ekspert inden for fysisk økonomi og medlem af EIR´s-redaktionskomité, præsenterede de succeser og udfordringer, som udbuddet af medicinsk behandling, mad, vand og sanitet internationalt står overfor. Dr. Lang diskuterede NMA's tidligere arbejde med at indsætte hold og medicinske forsyninger til Mozambique i samarbejde med lokale myndigheder for at yde sundhedspleje og bidrage til uddannelsen af kirurger. Hun beskrev de barske forhold i Østafrika med den nylige græshoppeplage, der ødelagde afgrøder efterfulgt af successive kriser, som alle ramte Mozambique hårdt. Da COVID-19 ramte, var det ødelæggende, for så kunne folk ikke engang gå ud for at skaffe mad…

Mere senere fra dette afsnit.

Vi må overvinde COVID-krisen overalt:

Pastor Robert Smith, bestyrelsesformand for den Nationale baptistorganisations udenlandske Mission talte til konferencen fra Michigan under titlen: ”'Læge, helbred dig selv': Red en nation i krise gennem kærlighed”. Han beskrev prøvelserne med at håndtere de mange COVID-dødsfald i sit eget samfund og den styrke det krævede for at opfriske os med kærlighedens kilder, kilder der er en gudgiven kerne i vores menneskehed.

Luis Vasquez talte fra Peru og præsenterede: "Glem ikke: Den globale koncentrationslejrs ovn er nu nuklear”. Som mangeårigt medlem af Schiller Instituttet, begyndte han med at fortælle, at han og hans kone for nylig var syge med en ny variant af COVID-19, og havde det ikke været for hjælp fra deres familie, var det usandsynligt, at de ville have overlevet. Under ødelæggelsen fra en nyliberal økonomi har deres nation nu ingen offentlige tjenester, ingen skoler, ingen transport, og at få COVID-19 svarer til en dødsdom. I hele Lima er der ingen ledige intensiv-senge med respiratorer; enhver intentiv-seng har en venteliste på op til 300 personer. En iltcylinder koster $1.000; en genopfyldning koster $200. ”Hvis du ikke kan betale, dør du. Dette er en holocaust … ekstremerne er nået … vi er i en global koncentrationslejr”.

Vi kan betragte de forkerte økonomiske beslutninger, der er taget siden 1974, som anstifter af denne nuværende tragedie; verdensøkonomien er et kasino på kanten af ​​konkurs. Vi må mobilisere vores forsknings- og udviklingskapacitet i alle lande; vi ved, at vi kan udrette disse ting, fordi mennesket er kreativt. Vi er alle forbundne nu, og omtanke for andre er ikke kun moralsk, men videnskabeligt sandt.

Dr. Walter Faggett (USA), tidligere cheflæge i Washington, D.C.’s sundhedsafdeling, og i øjeblikket medformand for D.C. område 8 Sundhedsråd, berettede om de succeser, de har haft med at koordinere samarbejde mellem samfundsorganisationer, kirker, universiteter og sundhedspersonel for at øge graden af​​ COVID-19-vaccination i Washington. Han fik følgeskab af Genita Finley (USA), 2. års medicinstuderende og designer af Mississippi Deltas medicinske  skoleprogram, der diskuterede, hvordan hendes program lykkedes med at bringe flere studerende ind på sundhedsstudier og hjælper dem med at overvinde problemer med deres identitetsfølelse af ikke at være "kloge nok" til at blive sundhedsarbejdere. Mississippi Delta har en af ​​de største koncentrationer af fattigdom i landdistrikterne i nationen.

Mere kommer senere.

 

På engelsk:

Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—I am Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane, the leader of the LaRouche movement in South Africa.

I lend my support to warnings delivered by our President, Cyril Ramaphosa, of the need for urgent action to get vaccines to Africa, and to nations elsewhere in the South, to fight the deadly COVID-19 virus. He delivered his warnings and demands to the world’s nations in his Special Address at the virtual Davos Conference of the World Economic Forum (see video excerpt here.).

As quoted by the South African daily, Business Day, President Ramaphosa warned on Jan. 26, “We are all not safe if some countries are vaccinating their people and other countries are not vaccinating,” urging that nations that have oversupplies of vaccines make them available to those who do not have them. This hoarding can have disastrous consequences, as will the continued use of patents by big pharma to restrict production and to overcharge the poorest nations. Speaking on behalf of the African Union, which South Africa currently chairs, Mr. Ramaphosa has called for those patents to be released or seized, so that production, and sale at cost, can take place in countries like South Africa, which have the necessary production facilities.

Mr. Ramaphosa reported to the World Economic Forum that the AU’s African task team for COVID-19 vaccine acquisition has secured a provisional 270 million doses for the continent directly through vaccine manufacturers. This is in addition to the 600 million doses expected from the COVAX initiative. But that is still well short of what is required for the 1.2 billion Africans to receive two doses each.

“Through its participation in these continental and global initiatives, S.A. continues to promote the need for universal, fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines,” he said. “We all must act together in combating coronavirus, because it affects all of us equally, and therefore our remedies—our actions to combat it—must also be equal.” (Se her. )

Three months ago, I issued an urgent appeal to then-President Donald Trump, calling on him to take bold and decisive action to deal with the twin crises of the COVID-19 virus pandemic and the conditions of starvation that were already beginning to ravage the African continent. Making vaccines available at low cost, with financial aid as needed, is a central feature of my proposal.

I pointed out that the U.S. Presidency, with its vast executive power, has the ability to address these problems with measures that would get medical aid and food to people who need it, and thereby save perhaps hundreds of millions of people facing certain death, as has been warned of, loud and clear, by no less an authority than former South Carolina Governor David Beasley, who is now Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme. I made this case once again in December.

The capacity of the United States—working with other nations to supply the medicines and health supplies, as well as the staffing needed to administer them—needs to be mobilized to avert the worst genocide in human history. The power of U.S. farmers to produce needed foodstuffs and the U.S. military’s marvelous logistical capabilities to get food and medicine to where it is needed, could be mobilized by the U.S. President. I have since submitted the outlines of a plan to accomplish this and I am working to refine the proposal with a group of experts and others on the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, created by international Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. (The plan is appended.)

For whatever reason, President Trump failed to act on my proposal, or any proposal, to deal with these crises. As a result, Africa is stalked by mass death on a scale unprecedented in human history. I can say with the assurance of certainty that this is and will be the case if action is further delayed.

There is now a new Administration in Washington, so I must place this crisis before the new President, Joe Biden, and his staff, and say that the world will judge harshly, indifference to these crises. The plan I propose offers the new President a chance to do something both great and important. Such is the responsibility that all who take the Presidential oath of office must face and act upon. The Presidency of the United States is the most powerful institution on the planet. The power of the Presidency gives the President a moral responsibility for the well-being of people beyond the borders of the United States. While respecting the sovereignty of nations, the President must seek cooperation to save the lives.

Read the words of a truly great American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking to his fellow Democrat successor across time, who in his acceptance speech for renomination to the Presidency in 1936, said:

“Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity, than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

Heed this sage advice! I speak not only as a representative of South Africa, but on behalf of all Africans who are calling on President Biden to act now to save lives. Tomorrow will be too late!

Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane

29 January 2021

Talere:

Tom Gillesberg, formand for Schiller Instituttet i Danmark:
Kan Trump og den amerikanske befolkning forsvare Trumps valgsejr imod valgsvindlen? (på dansk)

Gæstetaler: Hussein Askary, Schiller Instituttets koordinator for Sydvestasien, bestyrelsesmedlem, Bælte- og Vejinitiativ Institut i Sverige (brixsweden.org):
Nu skal USA og Europa tilslutte sig Kinas nye Silkevej, og mobilisere fødevareressourcer til bekæmpelse af sult i Afrika. (på engelsk)

Michelle Rasmussen, næstformand for Schiller Instituttet i Danmark:
Beethoven 250 år. (på dansk)

Lyd:

Hussein Askarys præsentation som skærskilt video:

Hussein Askary’s presentation as a separate video in English:

Kan Trump og den amerikanske befolkning forsvare Trumps valgsejr imod valgsvindlen?

Tom Gillesberg, formand for Schiller Instituttet i Danmark

Resumé
USA: Valgsvindel med stemmerne i svingstaterne for at få Joe Biden valgt som USA’s præsident er en del af den farvede revolution i USA for at få et regimeskifte og få afsat Donald Trump.

Dette regimeskifte har været fokus for efterretningstjenesterne og deres partnere i medierne siden Trump vandt præsidentvalget i 2016. Først med beskyldningerne om tråde til Rusland (Steel-rapporten fra britiske efterretningstjeneste, der kom med falske beskyldninger), så løgnen om Russigate, der er blevet modbevist, rigsretssagen og 4 års angreb fra medierne.

Mediernes erklæring af, at Biden har vundet valget og NATO-landes lykønskning af Biden, er et forsøg på at etablere et fait accompli og forhindre at valgsvindlen bliver afsløret.

Trump forsøger at få valgene i delstaterne undersøgt så valgsvindlen kan blive afdækket og retfærdigheden ske fyldest. Mobilisering af vælgerne for at forsvare demokratiet og beskytte Trumps valgsejr.

Massiv censur i medierne og på sociale medier for at forhindre præsident Trump i at tale til befolkningen.

Trump fik over 7 millioner flere stemmer end i 2016 selvom ikke alle stemmerne på ham er blevet tilskrevet ham.

Konkrete historier om valgsvindelen begynder at komme frem.

Tidligere NSA tekniker beskriver hvorledes programmet “Scorecard” kan bruges til at ændre stemme rapporterne fra valgstederne.

Vil USA’s befolkning lykkes med at forsvare den demokratiske proces og Trumps valgsejr?

Hvis kuppet lykkes vil demokraterne forsøge at vinde de to sidste senatspladser i Georgia så Bidens kontrollører også kan kontrollere Senatet, udvide Højesteret og få magten der.

Hvis Biden bliver præsident er der konfrontation med Rusland og Kina på dagsorden. Vil vi få krig? Atomkrig?

Oveni COVID-19 krisen i USA og dens økonomiske effekter venter en nedsmeltning af finanssystemet. Med en grøn New Deal vil utilfredsheden i befolkningen blive enorm. Hvad følger efter den censur imod dissidenter, der allerede er i gang?

Topmøde i Davos 9.-11. november med blandt andet Mark Carney, den nye chef for Bank of England Andrew Bailey, Blackrocks Fink, IMF, ECB, Bill Gates etc. om at gennemtvinge kredittørke imod alle investeringer, der ikke er “grønne”. Digitale valutaer så centralbankerne får den fulde økonomiske magt.

Der er en verden uden for Vestens og NATO’s kontrol. Kina og Rusland er ikke kuede.

COVID-19 var et lille bump på vejen for Kina. Man har igen vækst og Bælte- og Vej-Initiativet og international økonomisk opbygning fortsætter.

Vesten kan ikke stoppe Kina. Vil man forsøge krig? En atomkrig kan ikke vindes, men vil gale hoveder i Vesten forsøge alligevel?

Vil vi i stedet få en “Sputnik-effekt”, hvor Vesten må skifte kurs tilbage til økonomisk, videnskabeligt og teknologisk fremskridt for at kunne konkurrere med Kina og alle de, der vil samarbejde med Kina? Eller vil Vesten blive irrelevant?

De, der satser på økonomisk vækst drevet af menneskelig kreativitet og videnskabeligt og teknologisk fremskridt vinder i det lange løb.

Vi lever i farlige tider men står også potentielt over for det største spring fremad i menneskehedens historie.

Lyt til hele talen her.

 

Nu skal USA og Europa tilslutte sig Kinas nye Silkevej, og mobilisere 
fødevareressourcer til bekæmpelse af sult i Afrika.

Gæstetaler: Hussein Askary, Schiller Instituttets koordinator for Sydvestasien, bestyrelsesmedlem, Bælte- og Vejinitiativ Institut i Sverige (brixsweden.org):

Hussein Askary præsenterede den akutte voksende sultekatastrofe i Afrika og hvordan den kan løses. Dels gennem en nødaktion for at fragte fødevarer fra USA, Europa, Rusland og Kina, men også gennem at opbygge Afrikas egne fødevareproduktion og skabe økonomisk udvikling, især infrastrukturprojekter og industrialisering i samarbejde med Kinas Bælte- og Vej-Initiativ. 

Hussein Askary præsenterede Afrikas egne udviklingsplaner, Kinas rolle i at virkeliggøre dem, og hvorfor USA og Europe skal deltage.  

Hussein Askary brugte en Powerpoint præsentation til illustration under talen, som også findes, som en særskilt video på engelsk her.

 

Beethoven 250 år og menneskehedens æstetiske opdragelse

Michelle Rasmussen, næstformand for Schiller Instituttet i Danmark

Vi har en civilisationskrise: en konfrontationspolitik, som kan føre til krig med Rusland og Kina, en COVID-19-pandemi, økonomiske og finansielle kriser og en voksende sultkatastofe i Afrika.  
Vil vi etablere en ny retfærdig økonomisk verdensorden eller vil det ende i kaos og krig? 
  
Det er en kamp mellem helt forskellige menneskesyn. 
LaRouche understregede altid: hvad er forskellen mellem mennesker og dyr? 
Er vi dyriske? 
Eller har vi en iboende kreativ erkendelsesevne, som gør os i stand til at opdage nye principper — noget nyt, som ingen andre har tænkt på. 
I videnskab opdager vi nye naturvidenskabelige principper. 
I kunst opdager vi nyt om vores egne kreative evner, som kan deles med andre, som i et orkester eller kor eller med tilhørerene. 
  
Skønhed, som Schiller sagde, forædle vores følelser og vores intellekt — 
ikke kun rå følelser som dominerer os uden intellekt,  
ikke kun intellekt uden medfølelse og næstekærlighed. 
  
Men gennem at lege, speciel gennem kunst, at spille, kan de to går op i en højere enhed, som vi kalder en æstetisk tilstand, når vi er omfavnet af skønhed.  
  
Det var Schillers løsning efter den franske revolution, som ikke endte som den amerikanske, men i et blodbad. 
  
Platon skrev, at den vigtigste uddannelse for sjælen var musik — at fylde sjælen med skønhed og gøre den skøn. 
Mennesket ville så lovprise skønhed, modtage den med glæde i sin sjæl, og blive til en skøn sjæl. 
  
Den 16. december fejrer vi Beethoven 250-års fødselsdag. 
Vi fejrer ham, som en af de mest kreative sjæle i historien, men vi fejrer også menneskehedens erkendelsesmæssige evner.  
  
Studér Beethoven for bedre at forstå, hvad vi mennesker er. 
Beethoven, selv da han ikke var i stand til at høre sin egne musik, hørte den alligevel i sit sind, og udfordrede sig selv til at lave det ene gennembrud efter det anden. 
  
Der var ingen stilstand eller entropi, men hvad LaRouche kalder ikke-entropi.  
  
At viljemæssigt blive mere og mere bevist om, at kende sine egne erkendelsesmæssige evner, og presse dem til det yderste for at kunne stige op til det næste niveau, og som han skrev, at nærme sig Guds egen skaberkraft. 
  
Og han havde et formål: at opløfte den trængende menneskehed.  
Han var bevidst om musikkens rolle med at forædle menneskene.  
  
Gennem at spille, synge eller lytte, kan Beethovens kreativitet deles med andre —  
noderne på papiret, er ikke kun toner, men nøglen til Beethovens kreative sind.  
  
Og dermed kan andre mennesker bekræfte et positivt menneskesyn, som også havde en politisk dimension for Beethoven — stræben efter frihed.  
Som Schiller sagde, vejen til frihed går gennem skønhed. 
  
For at fejre Beethoven så lyt til eller syng og spil hans værker. Genoplev hans åndelige gennembrud, bekræft den menneskelig kreativitet, skab et samfund, hvor vi kan genopdage den tabte kunst at skabe skøn musik,  
måske endnu mere kreativ end Beethoven, og udvikle vores erkendelsesmæssige evner, for hele menneskehedens skyld. 
  
Så blev der spillet den første del af 2. sats af Beethovens 7. symfoni, dirigeret af Wilhelm Furtwängler, som eksempel.  
Ud fra en enkel begyndelse tilføjes flere og flere stemmer for at skabe noget stort og opløftende. 

 

 

Billede af det amerikanske flag. WikiImages fra Pixabay 

1. Jacques Cheminade (Frankrig), leder af Solidarite & Progres, tidligere præsidentkandidat

2. Marcia Merry Baker (USA), EIR-redaktionen

3. Bob Baker og amerikanske landbrugsledere:

Ron Wieczorek, South Dakota cattle rancher, LaRouchePAC
Nicole Pfrang, Kansas Cattlemen’s Association Secretary-Treasurer, cattle rancher
Mike Callicrate, Colorado, cattle rancher, Owner, Ranch Foods Direct:
4. Paul Gallagher (U.S.), EIR Editorial Board

5. Fred Haight (Canada), Schiller Instituttet

6. Michael Billington (US), chef for asiatiske anliggender, Executive Intelligence Review

7. Spørgsmål og svar

8. Beethoven-messe i C-dur, opførelse af Schiller Instituttets kor i New york
City.

Panel 2: “Why a 1.5 Billion Productive Jobs Program Can End War, Famine, Poverty, and Disease”

DENNIS SPEED: Good afternoon. Welcome to the second panel of the Schiller Institute’s June 27th conference “Will Humanity Prosper or Perish? The Future Demands a ‘Four Power’ Summit Now!” This is the second panel of our conference and it is entitled “The World Needs 1.5 Billion New Productive Jobs To End War, Famine, Poverty and Disease.”

Our first panelist is Jacques Cheminade, President of Solidarité et Progrès in France. He’s speaking on “How Food Production Can Unite the World.”

JACQUES CHEMINADE: Good day. I’m very honored to be with you today, because of all you have done until now, and mainly because of what we all are going to do after this Schiller conference.

Food production unites the world: We are all conscious of the fact that the two first human rights to be upheld, are to be fed and to be kept in a good healthy condition, in order to contribute to the common good and the future of our societies. If we look at the world as it is we cannot but recognize that these two human rights are continuously and constantly violated and that the present policies of the main states and institutions, with a few remarkable exceptions, are leading us towards a world which is going to be much worse, if we allow it. We are set to become inhuman.

The question is therefore not to comment any more about what is happening or to complain, but to do something about it. That’s why we are here, to mobilize the best of our cultures and our nations to generate a world where the true creative powers of humanity will prosper, against all odds. It starts by food production which unites all people beyond and above cultural and language barriers. It seems commonplace to say such things, but the fact that we are morally and economically compelled to do so is precisely the sign of the inhuman condition in which we have been plunged, with the immediate threat that 100 million of our fellow human beings could die from hunger — 300,000 a day — while the farmers are trapped into a Malthusian world where they literally can’t breathe.

If we start from what humanity needs, taking into account the requirements for an adequate quantity and quality diet, sufficiency for everyone and the indispensable need to create food reserves, we must first double our food production. To produce 5 billion tons of grain, for example, means to more than double the present world harvest.

We hear in the Unites States “We American farmers can feed the world” and it’s true. We hear in Europe, “We European farmers can feed the world,” and it’s true. And we hear in the rest of the world, “We also can secure our food security and sovereignty,” and it’s true.

So what is happening? What’s happening, which makes this potential to not be actualized.

First, the whole world is ruled by the financial dictatorship of Wall Street and the City of London, which cannot care less for people and, in fact, openly promote world depopulation. Unable, in their own terms, to keep their power and to feed the world at the same time, they prefer to keep their power and envisage a world populated with less than 2 billion human beings. Their policy is to kill, either by murderous action, or by voluntary neglect. They let their ideologues openly front for it, under black or green colors.

Second, the outgrowths of this financial dictatorship, i.e., the food and farming cartels, dominate or control all the chains of transportation, distribution and sales in foodstuffs, including the property of vast domains of land.

Third, an anti-productivist ideology is promoted among the urban sectors of the service economy, dominant in numbers among Western countries, betting on both their ignorance of what a productive life is (they don’t even know what a productive life is!), and on their cultural pessimism, induced by the media and the entertainment sectors. There were no stocks of masks or tests in our Western states to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, just as there are almost no grain reserves today to deal with food shortages: the World Trade Organization and the cartels left it up to the marketplace. As a result, China has one-year grain stocks for its needs, Russia six months, the United States much less, and the European Union at best 45 days! Under its Green Deal, the European Commission has decided to cut by 50% the use of pesticides, by 20% the use of fertilizers and by 50% the use of anti-microbials for livestock and aquaculture. It expects to transform 25% of the land into organic bioproduction against 7.5% today. The point here is that, under the guise of caring for us, they obey their real financial masters and cut the means of production without providing any alternative to feed us and feed the world.

It’s criminal not to maintain food reserves. It is criminal to have brought farming prices below the cost of production. It is criminal to have pitted the producers of the world against each other, to lower the prices paid to them for the benefit of the worldwide cartels in grains, meat, seeds, seafood…. It is criminal, that in the poorest countries of the world, 70% of the production is allowed to be lost because there are no cold chains and too many rodents. It is criminal to compel those countries to pay more for the debt service to financial agencies than for building and maintaining hospitals or schools . It is, as Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly said, the model of the private British East India Company spread all over the world, controlling the chains of production, transportation and trade.

So this crisis should be the opportunity to recognize the absolute right to produce food and to get rid of the cartel monopoly system. This, of course, cannot be done as a thing in itself. It demands the shutdown of their source of money supply: the Wall Street and City of London rule, the British Empire. The criminal policies in the area of food and health, are, in that sense, for the people of the world the visible side of the oligarchy’s iceberg and our main weapon to fight the oligarchy. To show the peoples of the world that to fight for a new Glass-Steagall Act, a public credit policy, a National Bank, is not a technical question but a very concrete matter of life or death. The present financial system cannot be maintained through the rule of an unjust law and order, which has mutated into a system of chaos and disorder, based on an “everything bubble” which kills all the more as it inflates.

Therefore we have to come back and rethink about how we can inspire a strategy based on the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche, because they represent the architectural, unifying body for a change. To put it more concretely, the only possible exit door from the present fire.

As I am in Western Europe, I feel obliged to tell you how something which had a good start, failed because its environment was not shaped by a coherent principle corresponding to the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche: I am talking about the European Common Agricultural Policy, launched on July 30, 1962. It was based on four goals: increasing productivity; securing a fair living standard for food producers; establishing a sort of parity price including reinvestment; securing the food supplies and a reasonable price for consumers. It worked for about 30 years, based on a self-sufficient single market, with a productive priority connected to industrial progress (modern tractors, fertilizers, pesticides…), plus financial solidarity and a European preference. The financial aid and support were given in the form of a minimum price guaranteed to the producer, called “indirect aid.” As a result, the Common Market members, as it was called in those days, became self-sufficient and Western Europe grew to be the second world exporter of foodstuffs. The farms grew moderately in size, and the whole agricultural sector underwent a period of relative prosperity, despite its in depth and fast transformation.

Today, we have all the European farmers desperately protesting, hostages to the banks and living on subsidies, having become indebted, working hard and gaining very little, with their sons and daughters abandoning their farms to go to the cities. What happened?

First, under the pressure of the global financial deregulation, the Common Agricultural Policy was changed in the 1990s, the same period characterized by de-industrialization, banking rule and deregulation, mainly in France, but also in all Western Europe. The indirect aid based on price guarantees disappeared and were replaced by so-called direct aid, proportional to the surface of the farms. This was done under the pressure of the World Trade Organization with the pretext of avoiding “price distortions.” As a result, within a context of falling purchasing power of foodstuffs, the aid, decoupled from production, went mainly to the big landowners such as the Queen of England, the Prince of Monaco and the Duke of Kent. The small and medium-sized farmers were strangled through price decreases and the fall of aid. Their only option was either to leave or to be further strangled by the banks, including the farmers’ bank, the Crédit Agricole, which became a bank like all the others and even worse to its old clients! The European Union budget for agriculture was reduced in purchasing power and has decreased in percentage of the total EU budget. Add to that the vulnerability of all producers to the system of floating exchange rates, the middle-sized or small ones sinking and the big ones becoming more like “experts” of the Chicago market than real farmers!

Today, the main talk is to replace the “direct” aid based on farm surfaces, by “environment and climate aid,” of which only the very big ones can benefit. This is a policy of desertification and agricultural depopulation within a context of a green world depopulation. Within this system, there are a few Scotch tape measures proposed, which are maybe relatively helpful but not of a nature to change the situation. For example, it is proposed that the distribution of aid be based not on the surface of farms, but on the number of persons active in them. Others call for stocks of food security against the instability of the markets, fair prices and measures to fight against world hunger. Good intentions, but nothing tackling the depth of the challenge.

Our commitment is precisely to do that, to go to the roots of the problem. The Common Agricultural Policy failed because it did not deal with its global environment. Same thing for parity prices in the United States. You cannot do it within a system which creates all the conditions to go in the opposite direction. Besides, even in its best years, the Common Agricultural Policy was mainly defensive, in French terms, a kind of a Maginot Line doomed to fail under flanking attacks or attacks from above. And whereas it temporarily solved the food crisis within Western Europe, it did nothing to organize markets and food stocks at the needed level of an alliance of world nations of world population.

Clearly, we have now with the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche, not as mantra, but as a roadmap for the fight, the means to break with the existing rules of the game, which was not done under the Common Agricultural Policy. But for that we need to inspire and put pressure on the peoples of the world so that they pressure their governments, as was said in the preceding panel. That is for each of us an issue of life or death. And it can only win with a winner mind, with a tenacious commitment renewed every morning.

For that reason, let me tell you about two things, as a conclusion.

First on the way through which we can inspire. There are LaRouche’s Four Laws as a reference to explore, facing their numerous challenges for real, in the existing world. There is their application in our recent two programs: Build a global health system now! LaRouche’s “Apollo mission” to defeat the global pandemic crisis, and I would add “and beyond” the global pandemic crisis, and LaRouche’s Plan to reopen the U.S. economy: the world needs 1.5 billion new, productive jobs. It is only through this anti-parochial organizing, based on a dynamic development, that we can inspire people who are today so submerged by information and permanently thrown into situations leading them to emotional cop-outs as we see on both sides of the Atlantic. It is through our personal example, based on a tenacious directionality every single day of our lives, that we can lead them to become free organizers.

Second, I would like to give you an example of that, directly linked to our subject matter: It is that of the Maisons Familiales Rurales (Rural Family Houses), a project created by Abbot Granereau, a French countryside priest who introduced a new way of learning in the rural areas of France and beyond. There are now 432 of these MFR rural houses in Europe, 112 in Latin America, 118 in Africa (Mauritania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea…) and in the Indian Ocean and a few in Asia. In France this education is run in association with the state and the local governments, but with absolute emphasis put on the involvement of the families.

Abbot Granereau was the son of a peasant family, who at a very early age questioned both the Napoleonic, pyramidal organizing of the French education system and the fact that the public education system led the best sons of the farmers to quit farming, leave the countryside and often break with their traditionally-oriented families. He decided to solve the problem by launching a new system of his own, that the families could afford and that he called on “Our Lady of the Social Revolution” for inspiration. His idea was to have the high-school age students reside one week every month at an educational home for professional training, which he provided; he went around, buying places to have the students spend a week there, which he provided, not far from their homes and run jointly with the families and later with the teachers. The program ran from November to April, so that the parents could have their children the rest of the time to work at the farm. The education was to be paid by the parents and the status of the students was one of apprenticeship. During the three other weeks of the month, the students were provided with two hours of homework every day. The key to its success was the associative responsibility of the families family integration, and also the students educating their families; this concept of family integration which would be very useful today; the respect of the individual personality of every student, not as units but as persons; and the promotion of actions of social development: visits to farms, producing modern tools, tractors or fertilizers.

Granereau started in 1935 with three farmers, committed to support his project and four apprentices. And he managed in about 30 years to change the fate of the rural world and avoid, at the time, its debasement.

The secret behind his method was to be very rigorous and at the same time to make the students responsible. For every activity one of them was appointed to be responsible for all the others. His commitment was to give to all a good level of education, giving back their dignity to his brother farmers, a knowledge of the new methods of production within an education for their souls. For him, a good farmer had to be what he called “a scientist of the land.” When enough pupils and students came, he separated the functions of teaching, under a good and committed teacher from the Purpan high-level school of agriculture in Toulouse, from those of guidance, which was his full-time responsibility. Granereau wanted to create “peasant leaders” to enter the coming new world with Christian principles. He invented “in his way,” an active method based on exploration, cooperation, participation and mutual trust. He himself did change during all his life: he created a section for young women and girls, then organized a mixed-gender school, carefully promoting a mutual respect of the two sexes; and finally opened up his schools to all families, understanding that the notion of family and mutual respect was key and above religious affiliations. A lot of people were shocked, but he was delighted.

I am convinced that such an approach, based on the respect of every individual mind and the service to the other, should be thoughtfully considered as an inspiration to our methods of teaching today, those against which Lyndon LaRouche has so often polemicized. Not to copy it as such, of course, but to follow its spirit of exploration and creativity. In the countries with a longstanding family farming culture, like in Africa, it would be a model to ensure the transition of agricultural labor, as it has been in France.

The case of Granereau is also a good reference for how to change things. We should ourselves think much more about what Lyndon LaRouche did at the beginning: gathering a few persons in a pilot project addressing not academic questions but, from top down, the key challenges of our times, and sending memos and launching debates all the time. Then you have the best kind of excitement of actually discussing and enriching a program, all the time, and even the higher excitement to make it exist. Let’s do it.

Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you, Jacques.

We’re now going to hear from Diogène Senny, the founder of the Pan-African League — UMOJA. He is a Professor of International Intercultural Management, specialist in economic intelligence and international economic relations, Founder of the African School of Management (EAM) in Congo.

He’s speaking on the topic, “Prosper or Perish: An Introduction to the Geopolitics of Hunger and Poverty”

DIOGÈNE SENNY: Dear Speakers, Dear Participants, Dear Guests, First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the Schiller Institute for having associated me with this discussion at this very special time.

I. Introduction

Ladies and Gentlemen, far from the one-off event, the circumstances in which this conference takes place make of it an Historical Moment, because the enormous health, economic and social consequences connected to COVID-19, are like “Challenges” and “Confrontations” launched against societies and men in the sense of the British historian, Arnold Toynbee.

For once, we are going to connect the issues of Hunger, Poverty and Health with History; not only in a memorial function, but also and above all to view history as the most powerful manifestation of social energy and the will of man to survive.

STORICISMO, in other words Historicism, as the Italians would say, is the act by which one creates one’s own action, one’s own thought, one’s own poetry by moving from the present consciousness of the past. We know that at least 13 billion people, twice the world’s population today, could be fed by the world’s agriculture. Therefore, the destruction of tens of millions of women, men and children by hunger is unworthy of such a rich century! Can we seriously consider alternatives to Hunger, Poverty and Health while maintaining a historical amnesia on matters of the economic and social rights of peoples?

II. Fight against Amnesia

Ladies and Gentlemen, who remembers that a third of the civilian and military deaths of the Second World War were due to malnutrition, tuberculosis and anemia? Who remembers the heaps of coffins have piled up in the churches of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague because of hunger? And especially in Poland and Norway, the fact that some families survived by eating rats and bark of trees? 1947, two years after this appalling reality, who recalls still this attack by the ambassador of Great Britain, while working with the Commission responsible for drawing up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I quote: “We want free men, not well-fed slaves!” End of quote. Who recalls the direct response of his Ukrainian counterpart, I quote: “Even free men can starve to death,” end of quote? This exchange illustrates the beginning of a new geopolitical order, that is to say, the Cold War, and the defeat of the recognition of economic and social rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948.

However, how to believe that the civil and political rights can be effective, without the economic and social rights? It took 45 years, almost half a century, in June 1993 for the UN to adopt a new Declaration in Vienna, making all rights (civic, political, economic, social and cultural) indivisible and interdependent. Alas, what wasted time !

III. The Disappointments of the End of the Cold War

Ladies and Gentlemen, The hope raised by the end of the cold war in terms of economic and social rights was very quickly lost because of the fact that the planetary power of transcontinental agro-industrial companies and Hedge Funds, these funds that speculate on food prices, arable land, seeds, fertilizers, credits, etc., is significantly higher than that of states. Hunger is not inevitable, it comes from organized crime. 90% of peasants in the south, in the 21st century, only have the following working tools: hoe, machete and scythe. FAO reports in the 2010s indicate that 500 million farmers in the South have no access to selected seeds, mineral fertilizers, or manure, and do not own animals. The overwhelming majority of farmers in India, Peru, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ecuador, etc. have no irrigation system. How can you be surprised then that 1 hectare of cereals gives about 700 kilograms to Africans, against 10,000 kilograms for the same space for their colleagues from the Gironde in France. As we have already said, Hunger is not inevitable. It is the result of the will of a few. And it is by the determination of men that she will be defeated.

Some examples to illustrate predation situations by multinationals of the agro-industry in Africa:

In Cameroon: In 2006, we remember the admirable struggle lead by the Development Committee of the N’do region, which brought together farmers’ unions and civil society in the fight against the grabbing of 11,000 arable lands by SOSUCAM (Société Sucrière du Cameroun) , authorized by the Cameroonian government. It should be noted that SOSUCAM is the property of Alexandre Vilgrain, a French industrialist and that this company had already acquired 10,000 hectares in Cameroon in 1965. Here, the colonial continuum is still in full swing in the economic field.

In Senegal: Here it was the Great Senegalese estates (GDS), belonging to French, Spanish, Moroccan, etc. financial groups which acquired tens of thousands of arable land in Saint-Louis, depriving the peasants of necessary spaces for basic crops. As in Cameroon, the farmers of Walo reduced to modest harvests on only 1 hectare of rice, organize themselves to resist with much dignity. In Nigeria, Benin and Mali: International hedge funds also rely on local oligarchs to organize land grabs.

This is how the wealthy merchants of Sokoto and Kano got hold of tens of thousands of hectares of food land.

In Benin, it is the political and economic barons who accumulate hectares, voluntarily left fallow, while waiting to resell them for a higher price instead of investing in the region of Zou, the former breadbasket of Benin’s Wheat.

Finally, we note the same trading mechanism in Mali where wealthy businessmen from Bamako are used to acquire arable land at low prices for resale at gold prices to Saudi princes or Hedge New York Funds.

In Conclusion

Ladies and Gentlemen, The ruin of the economy and the disasters that are looming following the coronavirus pandemic are part of what is known as Cyclical Hunger. Its peculiarity lies in the suddenness and unpredictability of the highly visible damage generated. Its spectacular nature should not blind us to these real causes. However, what has been described throughout this intervention is structural hunger. Structural hunger has root causes. It is permanent and unspectacular, psychically and physically destroying millions of human beings. Structural Hunger exposes millions of malnourished mothers to give birth to deficient children.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We will precede the alternative presented by this conference “Prosper or Perish,” by the word Unity. Because, for us pan-Africanists, the question of Hunger is less about Food Security than Food Sovereignty. Only Political Unity will give us the weapons necessary to protect the immense resource of arable land all over the African continent. It is at this price that Food Sovereignty will be guaranteed to all Africans!

Umoja Ni Nguvu, Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you very much, particularly for that idea about food sovereignty. So people just know, we were listening to a translation from French.

We’re going next to Walter Formento, Director, Center for Political and Economic Research, Argentina. His topic is, “South America on the New Multipolar Road.”

WALTER FORMENTO: Good Afternoon: My name is Walter Formento. I’m the director of the Center for Political and Economic Research (CIEPE), and also a member of the Latin American Social Sciences Network, which is involved in all five continents.

It means a lot to us to be part of this conference, and we hope we can contribute to the dialogue that is beginning here.

In terms of the development and contributions of the New Silk Road and the World Land-Bridge which connects us all, we believe that South America—extending from Mexico to Argentina-Brazil, going through Colombia-Venezuela, Peru-Bolivia and Paraguay—has in its Hispano-American and South American history, a real and concrete accumulation of capabilities for building sovereignty, strategic industries, science and technology—both to contribute and to receive. This stems from each one of these nations individually and then, from an organized pluri-national, South American community, based on their common Hispano-American origins, but even more specifically, on the 2001-2015 period based on UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations), and CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States).

Looking first from Argentina: This South American nation launched the development of its strategic industries from the very moment of its battle against the British invasions of 1805-1807. At the beginning of the 20th century, the process continued with the development of its oil-related energy industries and hydroelectric projects, always interacting with the international context and receiving feedback from that framework.

From the Great Depression which was caused by the systemic crisis of 1929-1944, Argentina, together with Chile and Brazil—the ABC Alliance—deepened the process of sovereign development, strengthening their rail, maritime and river transportation as well as automobile and aircraft industries, which then became the basis for the development of their aerospace and submarine industries. While these industries maintained international ties, they always collaborated with each other, which allowed for their own joint scientific and technological development, This was once again a function of an international context favorable to South America, and particularly to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

In the Argentine case, beginning in 1946, this positive process led to the creation, between 1963 and 1991, of a state-run, public-private industrial, technological and scientific matrix, in which 80% of the goods and services and parts required for national development were produced in our internal market. This also consolidated a social reality in which 90% of the labor forcé was formally employed, with a strong university-educated, technical-professional component, and in which the unemployed labor force was also formally recognized as well. So, from the standpoint of values, this was an integrated and committed social reality.

That is why South America (or Hispano-America), based on its own experience, recognizes the importance of developing a national strategic-industrial-technological complex, but also a South American community of nations as well.

The war and defeat which the London and New York-based Anglo-Dutch oligarchy imposed on Argentina and on South America, and did so with a vengeance, beginning with the 1976 coup d’état in Argentina, followed by the 1982-1991 Malvinas War period, put an end to this virtuous cycle and launched a cycle of decadence enforced by global financial neoliberalism.

Thus today, when we reflect on the New Silk Road and new multipolar financial system, and in that context the World Land-Bridge and its empowering the productive abilities of humanity and nature, including the Dialogue of Civilizations, we see this as auspicious and hopeful. We are called on to commit ourselves, to contribute to and transmit those initiatives promoting aerospace, transportation and new energy technologies.

In some ways, we’re already part of this. There’s the [bioceanic] rail transportation corridor from Brazil, traversing Bolivia and ending in Peru. We’re also involved in the modernization of a rail line, which extends from Buenos Aires (with its factories and workshops for maintenance of machinery and railroad cars), from the province of Santa Fe to Córdoba, Chaco, Salta and Jujuy in the north, then connecting to the main trunk line. In a joint effort, with Russia supplying components and new technologies together with Argentina, we are building a modern new railroad system capable of developing this area even further. We are also developing nuclear reactors, using Chinese and Argentine technology, as well as new hydroelectric projects in the southern Patagonia, close to Antarctica and the islands of the South Atlantic, with their natural interoceanic route that connects the three great oceans: the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic.

After 2008-2010, into 2014, the financial crisis of 2008-2009 again paralyzed the world, which revolved around speculative financial earnings.

But today there is another world, the multipolar world seen in the World Land-Bridge, the world of the New Silk Road, committed to interacting with all continents, and with all nations for a peaceful, harmonious development integrated into a new reality for all humanity—and for nature. We are a committed part of this process; we see ourselves as committed—in thought, in practice and in action—committed through our entire history.

This is our first contribution to these conferences you have been holding, and connecting us to the five continents and with the actors who are the great historical power— in this new commitment to humanity and nature in terms of social and integral inclusion.

I send you a warm abrazo and hope to be able to contribute further to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you very much, Dr. Formento.

We have gone from Europe, to Africa, to South America, and now we go to the Caribbean. Dr. Kirk Meighoo, political economist, broadcaster, and former Senator, Trinidad and Tobago: “The Caribbean’s True Importance in the Making and Re-Making of the Modern Global Economy”

KIRK MEIGHOO: Hi. My name is Dr. Kirk Meighoo, I’m a political economist, broadcaster, and former Senator from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. It’s a real pleasure to be here, to be part of this conference, with the Schiller Institute and I thank the organizers for inviting me.

I’ve been friendly with the LaRouche movement and the Schiller Institute for a number of years now. There are so many things that we share in common, and there’s a lot of projects that I want us to collaborate on, and this certainly is one them.

Now, I’m also a member of the official opposition party. We do have an election coming up this year, and we hope to take government. The platform, the manifesto of our party — and this is from before the COVID crisis — was to create 50,000 new jobs in the economy. And in our small economy, we have 1.3 million people in our island, and the labor force is about 650,000, so 50,000 was a big number. However, with the COVID-19 lockdowns and what it’s done to our economies and the whole global economy, we need to increase that number, at least to 150,000 and by combining it with this program from the LaRouche movement for 1.5 billion productive jobs around the world, there is an incredible synergy that we must take advantage of.

Now, one of the things that I’m always concerned about, is that we small states in the Caribbean, we are actually one of the bigger islands, with over a million population; like Jamaica has 2 million, a little over 2; many of the other islands are much, much smaller; there’s a tendency for us to be overlooked, for us to be forgotten in such schemes, and that is part of our lack of development here. But it is not just a matter of a lack of development, it’s also the type of development we’ve been undergoing.

I’m also part of a tradition of intellectuals here, started in the 1960s, soon after our formal independence, called the “New World Group.” And it’s incredible, the overlap with the LaRouche movement in terms of our analysis and our goals and our solutions. I have always found that to be an amazing thing, and it’s just another illustration on how the truth is one, and we can all arrive at the same truth from our very different points in time, space, and circumstance, and this is certainly one of those instances.

For the Caribbean, the point I’m making about the inclusion of the Caribbean in this global program that the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche movement is proposing, is not just a matter of charity. Because what the LaRouche movement is proposing is an end to the trans-Atlantic system, what might traditionally be called “imperialism,” to the imperial system, to the post-Columbus system, if you want to put it in those terms, and that is precisely what we have been calling for, for decades ourselves. Because, you see, the Caribbean has a special place in this 500-year modern world economic system, that we need to understand, because our participation in it was central. The Caribbean was where the modern world began: It’s where Columbus came in this voyage, it’s where the first global production of sugar, rum, alcohol, etc., which enriched New York, Boston, the East Coast of the United States, fed into the industrial revolution. The organizing of these huge plantations in the Caribbean was a forerunner to industrial capitalism in Europe, and our great intellectuals, such as Dr. Eric Williams, our first Prime Minister spoke about that in his seminal book from 1944, Capitalism and Slavery.

So, we’ve had a long experience, analyzing this, our own experiences. Because we represent the dark side of this modernity. Of course, modernity has brought a lot of good to the world. But in the Caribbean, this type of economy now has become, let’s say since the 1980s and ’90s, the neo-liberal system, but it really starts from the system of slavery in the Caribbean. Because, think about it: These economies were founded on slave labor, which is imported farm labor at cheap or free cost. It decimated local economies. We made nothing for ourselves here. Everything was around sugar production, mainly; sometimes some other people had other crops, but whatever the early English colonists had here for their own self-development — tobacco, food crops, etc.—local settlements, colonies in the true sense of the word, where you’re making your own settlement elsewhere — part of this imperial system that the Caribbean was central to, and this global sugar production, the triangular trade where we were central — this is actually what’s going on in the rest of the world. Because when they established it here, they had to gut out the independent farmers; they had to buy out all the independent landowners, so that the big sugar interests could own all the land, control all the production, in a global system of raw-materials export, where the value added would be done elsewhere, and you break up the whole chain of production.

What did that mean? That meant no manufacturing here. What did that mean? That meant that we were connected to the metropole, rather than to ourselves. So, for example, it’s easier for us in Trinidad to go to New York, and it’s cheaper for us to fly there, than it is to a neighboring island, like Curaçao, or even Antigua, or St. Kitts. Because our communications and infrastructure were always to the metropole. We did not have an internal economy with manufacturing: We did not make our own clothes, we did not make our own food, we did not make our own basic commodities and services for survival. They were all imported. We were a pure import/export economy and we remain so, whether it be in tourism or offshore banking, or oil and gas, like we have in Trinidad and Tobago.

So we’re been struggling with this issue and problem for a very long time. We have some great insight into it, which we can offer the world. And what we see is that this same process is happening around the world, to other countries. So it’s as if they took this early model, pioneered in the Caribbean, which produced tremendous inequality, tremendous misery, tremendous underdevelopment, this is what the trans-Atlantic system is projecting to every country in the world.

Now, solving the problems here will help us solve the problems for the rest of the world. This is where it started. We pose some challenges because of our size, but there are also some opportunities. Our small societies in the Caribbean are like the small city-states of ancient Greece, where Plato and Aristotle and the great philosophers flourished. It’s like the Florentine city-states: These places were 40,000 people at their maximum population. We live in human-scale societies, and these massive, mega-cities which are part of the whole trans-Atlantic system, mainly financial centers processing these huge, global, faceless corporations, those are inhuman environments. And I think it is not coincidental, that much of the violence that we’re seeing in the world is happening in these big cities, where there’s so much anomy, so much alienation, and a lack of humanity, of the face-to-face societies that we have here in the Caribbean, that have produced such amazing creativity, such amazing thinkers, like V.S. Naipaul, like Sir Arthur Lewis, like Derek Walcott, like C.L.R. James, from such tiny, tiny, small islands.

So, this is a plea, a reminder, to think of how we can take our outlying territories, which seem like outliers are the world system, but were essential for the development of the modern world system, and I daresay, we can play an essential part in the remaking of that world system to a more humane, global system.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to make our presentation. I look forward to questions and to interacting with you and also partnering in the future.

Thanks very much.

[Editor’s note: For time reasons, the prerecorded remarks of Mark Sweazy, former UAW trade union leader, were unable to be aired in the panel. We include here his complete remarks, on “Returning the U.S. Work Force to a Culture of Scientific Progress.”]

MARK SWEAZY: Hello, and welcome! My name is Mark Sweazy. I’m the Past President of Local 969 in Columbus, Ohio of the United Auto Workers’ Union. I learned a lot about the Labor Department and how labor works in the United States. With the international union, I chaired for six years the meeting of the 21 Delphi [auto parts] plants in Detroit. When we come together obviously we discussed our problems and the future. What we saw was, the door was shut on our future. 17 of those 21 plants closed. It changed people’s lives forever and ever. I also learned that our history, that you’ve heard some about, teaches us that the struggles and the conflicts and the wars have consequences that become a negative and seldom produce a positive or good result. So, we faced these things over a period of time.

What we face today is the need to put people back to work, regardless of where you live or what you do. We need to get people gainfully employed in the workforce so that we can make better lives for the people themselves, better lives for their families, and better lives for the area in which they live. So, this is a worldwide situation; it’s not just one locale, or one area of a country. This is worldwide. I hope you understand that little bit of an entry, because it’s important. This affects each and every one of us. If we have pride, we want to restore — let’s say we want to restore a great workforce as infrastructure projects have produced in the past. We’re looking to put people back to work regardless of occupation. You can start one place, and transfer to another. There’s nothing that says in the workforce that you have to continue to do something that you’re not fond of, or you just don’t like that job. You can always retrain and become trained to do another job. So, keep that in mind also.

What rewards do we expect? Our rewards in life are in direct proportion as to what we contribute. So, if we contribute something to life itself, we’re going to see the rewards. That’s important to me, because there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing a person who enjoys what they’re doing, and the fact that what they’re doing is productive to our culture. There’s nothing worse than seeing people that don’t have opportunities. As I visited Mexico, Mexico City, Monterrey, what have you, 9 cities in Mexico, I saw people who were educated, become college graduates. But the opportunity to work was not there, and it broke my heart because I’d look into the eyes of these graduating classes, and I’m saying to them, “Are you happy?” And they’d look at me, and they’re questioning — why would I ask them are they happy? Well, there’s no opportunities to work in Mexico; it’s a darn shame. Very few. They’ve got taxicab drivers that should be an attorney. You’ve got taxicab drivers who could have been an engineer. You’ve got taxicab drivers that could’ve been a doctor. I can’t imagine that. In the country I come from, the United States obviously, I can’t imagine somebody going to school and having that type of training, but not having the opportunity to use that training.

So, this is an opportunity to get worldwide training. Not just in the labor fields, but completely through skilled trades, machine tool trades, tech center trades, the building trades — of course, that’s plumbing, pipe-fitting, welding. There’s no end to what this can offer. And how the unions will actually gain, and all the independents who work without unions will gain as well. But who will gain in the end? The communities and the families. The opportunity is there; we just got to look for it. We’ve got to honestly make it happen. This is not a project that’s going to last one year, six months, one or two years. We’re talking 10-20-year projects.

So, LaRouche organization has lined up projects all over the world. And of course, now Helga’s at the helm, and we have a good leader. We want to continue to carry on with that leadership and get people to work so we have viable jobs. People doing what they can for their own families, and possibly in a few years we’ll see these results. And everybody will benefit. The unions will benefit, the independents will benefit, everybody will benefit on that spectrum. It’s a great opportunity for those that need to be employed, and that’s anybody that’s graduating from a high school or tech school or what-have-you. But take it from there. We’ve got people 30, 40, 50 years old looking for jobs. Everybody knows that; it’s not a secret. And not only in this country. So, the benefits are greater than we’ll ever imagine, and what an opportunity we’ve got today to do it in.

Our world deserves today, tomorrow, and in the future, an immediate effort to develop this program, or this type of program. So, the opportunity is ours; the hard work is yet to happen, but it can be done. And that’s what I want everybody to understand. The work can be done. The infrastructure projects are in front of us. So, let’s pick up our shovels, push out our chairs, let’s get up and go back to work. I think we’ll not only enjoy a better life, but I think we’ll enjoy a better future for our nations, as we work together to solve some of these worldwide problems that can be solved through cooperation. To me, I think that’s the real answer that I would have, is worldwide cooperation. We need that today, more than ever. Working together, forming solidarity, and hoping that we can stay employed because of what took place. This program was the beginning. As we look back, we’ll say, “Well, I was part of that in the beginning.” That’s to me the most rewarding aspect that we could ever say for each of our nations today.

So, with that, I’m not going to hold you to your chairs and hope that you take heed to this, but I pray you will. Because it’s necessary and needed. I want to thank you, take care, and remember, the LaRouche organization is there for you. All you have to do is ask the question; they’ll get you an answer. Thank you. Mark Sweazy over and out.

SPEED: Thank you, also.

Now, we’re going to hear from Bob Baker, who’s the agricultural desk for Schiller Institute, and he’s going to be introducing the next video which is by Mike Callicrate.

BOB BAKER: Thank you, Dennis, and thank you Schiller Institute, Mrs. LaRouche, panelists and participants throughout the world.

Image 1. Coronavirus

Look at the state of farming and food in the world, and you see huge disruptions. Just one little microbe—the new corona virus, coming on top of the system already in breakdown, has led to terrible things.

There is a disaster in the meat industry. The mega-global, cartelized packing houses from Australia to Germany to the Americas, are in a breakdown crisis, as workers are sick and living in poor conditions. Masses of meat animals are stranded. And the farmers were hit hard as they’re forced to kill their own livestock.

IMAGE: 2, 3, 4 Doctors Without Borders, or a migrant worker

There is a disaster in fruits and vegetables. Thousands of workers, who travel between countries, and work in hard and poor conditions in fields and orchards, are sick, from California, to Spain and the Middle East. It’s so bad, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) went into Florida last month, to care for thousands of poor farmworkers who had nowhere to turn. In Canada, 60,000 such workers—one-half of them from Mexico—are getting hit, and with the sickness hitting so many Mexican workers in Canada, Mexico’s government suspended travel this week, until something can be worked out.

There is a disaster in the staff of life—wheat, corn, rice. It is—fortunately—not because of a bad crop failure somewhere, except for the locusts in Africa and South Asia, but because we are growing far too little grain. Period.

Lyndon LaRouche would say that the way to think of how much food the world needs, is to start from 24 bushels of total grains per person a year. What that would mean is, we should be having a world harvest of 5 billion tons of all kinds of grains together. Currently, the world is growing less than 3 billion tons. And that would mean enough for direct eating as bread, noodles, tortillas—whatever you like, and milk, meat, eggs and so on. Plus, another 25% for reserves, which now, because of the World Trade Organization, does not exist.

In Biblical terms, it’s seven lean years and seven fat years. We should have strategic storage reserves, we should have silos and warehouses all over the world, of grain, cheese, butter, sugar and other basics. Stockpiles in case of storms, epidemics, fires, locusts. We must double food production.

IMAGE 5: World Map of Hunger

Instead, we’ve had decades of what should be called a “famine policy.” The City of London/Wall Street circles have cartelized the farm-food chain so extremely, so they can “harvest money.” Yes: harvest money. They decide where and how anything is produced, and who gets to eat or not. They ripped off the farmers with below-cost of production prices and make record profits from the consumer by jacking up the retail price. And that is how you cause hunger for millions throughout the world.

IMAGE 6 & 7: June map of locust spread

No wonder we are vulnerable to locusts, and diseases. The locusts in South Asia and East Africa are now heading westward. By August they may reach Mauritania. This must be stopped. A fellow speaker today, from Kansas-Colorado area, will be talking more about the physical conditions connected with just “harvesting money” instead of food. And we will soon hear from the Mexican grain belt.

IMAGE 8, 9, 10: Astronaut farmer

How did we get this way? It is not because we had no alternatives.. We are in the age of the astronaut farmer. We can produce food for all. And it wasn’t like we were all given a pill to make us dumb—except that comes from the entertainment and news media: communication monopolies.

We are all played off against each other, and that must stop. Farmer vs. city people. Nation vs. nation. There is all the talk about “competition” in world food trade. And about having a “level playing field.” It’s all Bunk! It’s not a game. It’s not a playing field. It’s food. It’s the means to life! And farmers are on the streets again in Germany with tractorcades for the right to grow food!

In conclusion, I think of President Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s, when the whole United States nation was played off against each other. In fact, the British sent in forces to help bust up the new nation. Still, during Civil War and a great depression, in only a year, Lincoln and others implemented measures for science and hope. They created science-based farm colleges (the Land-Grant system), settle the entire Midwest with the Homestead Act, crossed the country with a new railroad and corridors of development, and issued a new credit called the Greenbacks.

In this same tradition, a hundred years later, with the help of the two fathers of the scientific Green Revolution, Henry Wallace and Norman Borlaug, a scientific Green Revolution spread from Mexico and the U.S. among international scientists, to make India food self-sufficient in 1974, and China self-sufficient in 1984. Let’s make the whole world self-sufficient in food! Let us begin with Africa right now on an emergency basis; and then, open up the universe!

Thank You.

I’d like to now take this opportunity to introduce Mike Callicrate, who is a board member of the Organization for Competitive Markets, a rancher, and a meat producer from the Kansas-Colorado area. His topic is “Food Unites People Around the Planet.”

MICHAEL CALLICRATE: I’m Mike Callicrate, I’m in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I have a company called Ranch Foods Direct. I also produce livestock on my operation in northwest Kansas, which I’ve done for the last 45 years. But my focus has really been to try to build an alternative food system to the industrial one that we have now.

When I’m asked the question, “Prosper or perish?” it makes me think of David Montgomery’s book Dirt. In his book, David Montgomery talks about the erosion of civilizations and the importance of soil. Without soil, we basically don’t have life. So, I’m going to kind of come at this question of “Will humanity prosperity or perish?” from that perspective, because I think soil is critical to our survival as human beings. The impoverishment and nourishment of a civilization is directly with the consolidation and industrialization of the food supply. Concentration of power and wealth is the greatest threat to any free society. Rather than creating new wealth from healthy soil, the current system is mining and destroying our land for the short-term benefit of a few global corporations. This is a photograph from northwest Kansas where I live. This photograph was taken in December 24, 2013, Christmas Eve. The dirt cloud extended 200 miles from Colorado Springs to the Kansas border. It was 12,500 feet high above sea level to the top; 4 miles across, moving at 50 miles per hour. This is soil; this is the blowing away, the destruction of civilization currently. Much of eastern Colorado’s topsoil is already gone. I fly back and forth between my rural community of St. Francis, Kansas and the urban center of Colorado Springs, where we market our meats that we produce. This is what you see across the eastern plains of Colorado, is the mining of these soils. The withering away of that topsoil. Previously, when it had fertility, it grew healthy plants that fed livestock, which in turn became food for human consumption.

We’re mining our water resources. HBO’s “Vice” did a documentary called “Meat Hook; End of Water” that talked about the global water supply being consumed and used up. This is another indication that humanity is going to perish if we don’t change our ways. We’re pumping the precious fossil water from the Ogallala Aquifer, just to name one of many around the world that is being pumped dry for the benefit of industrial agriculture. Again, an example of a mining operation.

We’re ravaging the environment; we’re building factory farms in low-lying areas. These low-lying areas on the East Coast of North Carolina, South Carolina, places where there’s a lot of rainfall. We’re locating these facilities in low-lying areas because it’s the cheap land. It’s also the place where the cheapest workforce resides. So, this is exploitation of the environment, of the workers. Think about being an animal in one of these facilities, inside one of these barns. Again, in Hurricane Florence, we flooded the factory farm facilities, and rather than let these animals out, they sort of learned their lesson. They kept the animals in the barn, where they starved and consumed one another before they died. This is the earlier Hurricane Floyd, where they let the animals out, and so we’ve got a total disregard of animals, which is another indication of a failing system in a failing society. St. Francis of Assisi said, “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.” Which is certainly what we’re seeing today.

“This global cartel, controlled food system rather than nourish the people who sustain it, consumes them. The result is a food system that concentrates money and power at the top, and poverty at the bottom, while compromising food access, quality, and safety in the process.” That’s a quote from Albert Krebs, Agribusiness Examiner.

With the help of the U.S. government, global gangsters have turned our agriculture into a massive agribusiness mining operation. Meet felons Wesley and Joesely Batista of JBS, who have been in prison, and have recently because they’re considered essential, been invited back to run the biggest meat company in the world — JBS. JBS is headquartered in Greeley, Colorado, and has been part of the four big meatpackers now under investigation for lowering prices to livestock producers at the same time they’re raising prices to consumers. These men should not be involved in anything to do with a critical industry, especially food; but our government allows them to operate.

Allan Savory I thought put it well. He said, “We have more to fear from USDA than any foreign power.” USDA refuses to enforce the Packers and Stockyard Act, which would have prevented the shared monopoly that the Batista brothers hold with Tyson, Cargill, and Marfrig (another Brazilian company). USDA makes life for small plants extremely difficult; making it impossible for them to operate, and giving the advantage to the biggest meat plants who have now failed us in this COVID-19 outbreak.

The industrial food system did fail the COVID-19 test. It has no resiliency. It has extracted, it does not create and build well, it extracts well. It destroys our very mechanisms that we create wealth from; that is, the soil. On the left, you see my store in Colorado Springs, on the same day — March 13, 2020 — on the right is the big box stores in Colorado Springs. Shelves were completely empty; no meat was available. Yet in my store on the left, which is about a 200-mile supply chain from St. Francis, Kansas to Colorado Springs, Colorado, you see full shelves. So far, our supply chain has held up well. We don’t stack employees on top of each other; we remain healthy in our operation.

So, let’s look at what I think we ought to be doing. I think we ought to be returning to a regenerative farming and ranching operation. One that’s made sustainable because it’s supported by consumers who care about the soil, who care about communities and people and the environment in general. So, I’ve set up what I call the Callicrate Cattle Company Regenerative Farming and Ranching concept, where basically it’s a circular economy, not a linear economy that extracts. It’s a circular economy that puts back into the soil, into the community, into the people. So, we start with the soil, and we return to the soil. Critical to this concept working is our ability to access a marketplace that demands what we produce.

“The soil is the great connector of lives; the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it, we can have no community, because without proper care for it, we can have no life” (Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture).

Creating community around local food will be essential in supporting this new regenerative approach to agriculture and food systems, where family farmers, ranchers, and small businesses can prosper, and consumers can have access to safe, dependable, and healthy food. Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you. Our final presentation today is by Alicia Díaz Brown, of the Citizens Movement for Water, Sonora, Mexico. We’re going to play an excerpt of this, because of time constraints. Her presentation is,

“Let Us Return to the Best Moments of the U.S.-Mexico Relationship.”

ALICIA DÍAZ BROWN: Let’s turn to the best moments in the U.S.-Mexico relationship. We thank the Schiller Institute and its President Helga Zepp-LaRouche for kindly giving us the opportunity to participate in this international gathering, in which special importance is given to the problem of food production. In every civilizational crisis the threat of hunger, epidemics and war appears. That is why we agree with the title which headlines this meeting: Will humanity prosper, or perish?

My name is Alicia Díaz Brown and I live in the Yaqui Valley in the south of the state of Sonora in Mexico. I belong to a family of agricultural producers, pioneers in this valley, and I am a member of the Yaqui Agricultural Credit Union and of the Citizens Movement for Water.

For many years, I have been involved in the discussion of problems related to the production of basic grains; but in the last decade I’ve been more intensely involved, because the public policies in Mexico have grown in their disregard of the countryside, to the point of proposing to take water from this region to divert it towards activities which they consider more profitable monetarily, even though that means reducing the land under cultivation and with it the production of food. They don’t care about harming a region that produces 50% of the nation’s wheat production, as well as a significant percentage of its corn production.

I recently saw a photograph that captures a very evocative moment of historical intimacy and common purposes that Mexico and the United States shared in the noble task of producing food to relieve hunger in the world. The picture takes us back to the decade of the 1940s, and the photo shows the then Vice President of the United States Henry Wallace touring a wheat crop in the Texcoco region of Mexico, and receiving a technical explanation from Dr. Norman Borlaug. accompanied by Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and ex-President Lázaro Cárdenas. The government of President Ávila Camacho was just underway.

That was a time in which Mexico and the United States enjoyed governments with sufficient social strength to enforce the principle of the general welfare. Those efforts culminated with the Green Revolution, whose improvements in seed genetics made it possible for there to be substantial increases in yields per acre, principally of wheat and corn. The entire world benefited from this; the hunger of hundreds of millions of human beings was relieved for a time, and it turned out to be a fundamental experiment which demolished the Malthusian and anti-population theories which accept hunger and its aftermath of death as a matter of fate.

The Yaqui Valley in Sonora and the Texcoco region in the State of Mexico were experimental centers, in which Borlaug shared with Mexican researchers and producers his own research, his discoveries, but above all his human conviction that, with the systematic use of science, you can constantly maintain growth of production and combat the blights and fungus that damages plants. They proved that hunger is not an inexorable evil, but rather the result of twisted practices in economic and marketing criteria.

So Mexico and the United States share the prize that, at one point in history, we were able to relieve hunger in the world, because this knowledge was taken to India and to the countries most affected by hunger on the African continent.

But we lost that mission, and the production of food, as with other strategic areas of our economies, was trapped by the corporatization of the economy and by monetarist criteria, in which monetary profits comes first and foremost, and physical production is no longer a moral imperative, and instead becomes an optional element dominated by financial speculation. These policies took over at the beginning of the 1990s and they govern the free trade agreements among the United States, Canada and Mexico.

During the last 30 years, national grain production in Mexico has lacked a price policy which would guarantee the producer his capitalization. Parity prices were eliminated—they had been the cornerstone for the country to be able to achieve an important degree of self-sufficiency in wheat, corn, beans and rice. The state withdrew from the marketing process; the domestic market was abandoned; and national production passed into the hands of international corporations which monopolize world trade and speculate on grain prices on the Chicago Board of Trade

The result of all this is that Mexico has become an importer of basic grains. The current government talks about food self-sufficiency, but they confuse it with self-consumption, and they disperse resources to regions of the country that only consume what they produce, but which lack the ability to produce the food that the country needs. The regions with the greatest productive capabilities in wheat and corn have been left to the mercy of the big corporations that control the international markets, and they withdrew the compensatory support that allowed them to survive.

They try to make Mexican producers believe that these policies benefit North American producers. But at this meeting we see that authentic American producers are complaining about the same problems. If these policies are harming the producers of both countries, we should ask ourselves: Who are the big winners and predators under these rules of the game?

The big winners and predators are not engaged in producing food; they speculate with existing production. They control the prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, and they have turned the market into a dictatorial instrument. They are not interested in producing. Their preferred world is one of shortages and hunger. And what is sorrier still is that our governments have given in to those interests. In that way, the U.S. loses, Mexico loses, and the world loses.

When governments give in, we citizens have the moral and political duty to enforce the principle of the general welfare. At the beginning of my remarks, I referred to a photograph which bears witness to a historical moment of excellent relations between Mexico and the United States. For now, we do not have in our governments people of the moral stature and courage of those who were shown in that photograph.

For that very reason, I believe that now is the time for citizens to make their governments rise to the challenge. Let these meetings serve to begin to weave an alliance of Mexican and North American producers with the ability to exercise the required political and moral pressure on our governments, and in that way establish common goals in terms of how to increase food production; how to reestablish parity prices; how to increase yields per acre; how to build great infrastructure projects of a bi-national nature to manage increased quantities of water and power, which will allow us to significantly increase land under cultivation.

These are some of the tasks we have before us; but what is most urgent is to tell the world that we have initiated this relationship, that we are going to maintain it, and that we are going to resume the historical impetus of the best moments of the Mexico-U.S. relationship, to demand the required agreements among the world’s powers that are morally obligated to lift humanity out of the uncertainty in which the shocking economic crisis has placed us, with its inherent threats of pandemics, hunger and war.

Thank you very much.

Questions & Answers

SPEED: What we’re going to do now is bring our entire panel — everybody that’s live with us — up on screen. We’ve got one or two pieces of business from the first panel that we have to conclude. One question in particular which we are going to direct to Jacques Cheminade, which will get us started. Then Diane has two questions which will be addressed to the entire panel.

So, this question is from Ambassador Dr. A. Rohan Perera, former Permanent Representative of the Republic of Sri Lanka to the United Nations. I’m going to direct this to Jacques. He says:

“The biggest foreign exchange earner for Sri Lanka has been the tourism sector, which had been dependent on tourist arrivals from Europe, and on the garment export sector, mainly to the U.S. market. The total estimated loss as a consequence of the coronavirus lockdown is in the region of $10 billion. In the garment sector, recovery efforts will require liberal access to the U.S. markets.

“Overall, Sri Lanka will require debt restructuring arrangements with lending agencies like the World Bank and with the developed countries who determine their policies. It may be recalled that the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit Declaration — adopted in Colombo at the Fifth Summit in 1976 — cited the New International Economic Order which referred to, among other things, debt restructuring, debt moratoria, and the restructuring of multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank. The idea of BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — is a step in that direction.

“Please comment on the vital question of debt restructuring, amidst this coronavirus crisis, and new institutions that may be required. Thank you.”

JACQUES CHEMINADE: First, on this tourist issue. Very different countries, like Sri Lanka, Cuba, or France, had, because they were not able to develop industrially or to really have a fair development of agriculture, have to make money on tourism; on their beautiful things to see in Sri Lanka, in Cuba, or in France. But this tourism was of a kind not of an educational treatment of the culture of the country, but to a kind of servant economy transformation of the country where there was a service economy based on let’s say arranging things for people who wanted to have fun. This has been a complete disaster. This is because of a lack of a commitment to an economic physical development, like Lyndon LaRouche developed during all his life, and industrial development connected to, as part of representing this in-depth economic development. Therefore, what happened is that progressively, despite the benefits of tourism — I would say because of the type of economy what was created — the countries were trapped into a debt system. This affected first the countries of the Southern Hemisphere. It affected countries of Ibero-America, countries of Asia, and in particular Africa. Through a system of accumulation of interest over interest, this is what our friend Dennis Small calls the banker’s economy or free market. The free market becomes sort of a flee market where they rob you; it has become that. So, it has become debt that accumulates over debt, and you have normally, or if you follow this accumulation of debt because in an unfair economy, you have to pay two, three, four times more debt that what you got from the loans. This is what was imposed on the countries of the South. It is coming inside countries like Spain, Italy, or France at this point.

So, you have the whole world trapped into this debt system. And the whole economy now is an economy which is no more, I would say, a free market economy. It is a controlled free market economy by the laws of the British Empire imposed by central banks. So, this is only maintained through fake money. You have flows and flows of fake money dumped on the markets, which don’t go to the producers, don’t go even to the consumers. This fake money goes into the whole financial secrets of the oligarchy. So, this is what has to be forever eliminated. It’s the British system of Anglo-ization of Anglo-Dutch system of an economy which is not based on a human level and human development, but it’s based on financial dictatorship. Which I call now the system under which we are; a market economy without a market; a dictatorship of these financial interests in all sectors, including culture.

So, we have to free ourselves from that. All the life of Lyndon LaRouche in particular as a point of reference historically, was in 1982 with Lopez Portillo, and in 1976 with our friend Fred Wills in Colombo, was to say we need to be freed from the debt. And we need a bank organized for the development of whole countries of the world. This is what the World Bank was intended to be after World War II. But then, as the Bretton Woods system, it was miscarried by all the Western leaders. What we need now, is what the Chinese with the New Silk Road are doing by let’s say directing economies. It’s an economy based on real physical development, and a growth based on the development of the creative potential of the human being, including in culture. There are efforts in China for Classical culture, for Classical Chinese poetry. And all of this is connected to the whole — which the West would never tell about that — to the whole development of the New Silk Road concept of the Belt and Road Initiative.

So you have that as a reference. And you have the whole fight of our lives which comes into this direction. And now we have a big chance that this becomes for us a real point existing in reality and accomplished. So, we have to go much further, and we speak about the World Land-Bridge. There has been a World Land-Bridge, as we said it with the United States, China, Russia, India, and all other countries that would be connected to this system. So, it demands a mobilization of the leaders of the world, but also the populations everywhere to put pressure on the leaders of the world and the economic system. It’s very interesting from that standpoint that the Yellow Vests in France are calling some of us to be experts in this debt moratorium or debt amelioration, which would get rid of this debt system and see what’s fair and unfair debt.

So, the Glass-Steagall proposal is absolutely a part of that. It means that banks which are involved in giving credit or organizing deposit accounts would be separated from banks which are involved in the markets and which are becoming elements or scions of this whole British system. So, the separation would clean the system.

We need much more, that’s why we need a credit system for the future, developing this type of physical economy with increasing productivity per unit of surface per human being and per matter brought into it. So, this is a sense of a high flux density economy; high energy-flux density should be the choice of this economy.

Among the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche, this is the fourth law. What you should choose once you clean the system, and once you get rid of this debt system. That’s the key, because it’s there that you have to invest human creativity in things that put human beings at the border of this capacity to create. And it will connect the space programs — the astronaut, after all, has to work both with his brains and his hands; exactly like farmers have to work with their brains and their hands. The more advanced farmers in the United States or in Europe are, in their tractors, real astronauts on Earth. I liked a lot this presentation of our American farmer, Mike Callicrate, who said that the soil itself has to be seen as a living matter. It is something that is alive, and it has to be enriched and developed. It has not to be seen as a support or something that you take advantage of; it is something that you feed into for the future. I think that this concept is what links the astronaut and the farmer and which links all of us in this society. I raise this issue of farmer’s education, because I think, what we always discussed with Lyndon LaRouche, that the type of education that this requires is an education which creates or generates in human beings this constantly increasing capacity and this joy to create when you do something socially good for the others. It’s a big issue today, as Helga said before, is public health, because it’s a matter that involves the whole world. It demands world cooperation. And what I keep repeating is that instead of organizing hospitals through financial management, we should organize states as hospitals for the care and development of the people.

SPEED: Thank you, Jacques. Now, Diane, who is an orchestral conductor, has the following task. We have approximately 15 minutes all together. It means that what we have here is very little time for discussion. In fact, what’s going to happen is, she’s going to pose something that came from a couple of countries, and each of you is going to have approximately two minutes to say whatever you have to say, both to one another, you can choose to respond to the question or not, but that’s what you’re going to have. Diane will now take the floor, and if necessary, I will intervene.

DIANE SARE: OK. This question is from Ambassador Mauricio Ortiz, who is the Ambassador of Costa Rica to Canada. He says:

“In your proposal you mention ‘an emergency mission to build a fully functional health infrastructure for the world particularly in South America, Africa, and parts of Asia.’ This proposal is very much needed in those regions.

“Are the international financial institutions willing to invest in that proposal, and what will be the arguments from the Schiller Institute to these institutions to make it real?

“If your proposal is realized, you might note that our country, Costa Rica, has an efficient primary health system with more than 1,000 rural health posts and, along with Chile and Cuba, one of the best health programs in Latin America. This is a system that can be replicated in other countries, including developed countries.”

I’m going to ask the other question here as well. This one comes from the Mission from Colombia to the United Nations:

“Dear all, on behalf of the Permanent Mission of Colombia to the United Nations I would like to pose the following question: How can Latin America play a determining role in the consolidation of this new global configuration?”

“Best regards, Carolina Gutiérrez Bacci; Third Secretary”

SPEED: OK, so what we’re going to do is this. You can choose to address either of the questions or neither of the questions, because you only have, as I said, a couple of minutes. I’m going to start quickly with Bob Baker.

BOB BAKER: Thank you, Dennis. In terms of the health infrastructure and my particular focus on agriculture, I think it’s an absolutely vital situation to develop a food system where everybody can get a proper diet of nutritional food. That is the basis on which to build the argument why every community should have access to the most advanced healthcare that science has brought us to this day. But the driver in that obstacle behind the scenes is an international financial cartel that’s building world global monopolies to stop that. To the extent the nations of the world can expose that and unite the people to take a stand against it, that’s going to be a very important aspect of getting a healthcare system internationally. But this is also why this type of conference we’re having becomes very instrumental if not a key element of getting that done.

SPEED: Thank you. Now I want to go to Kirk Meighoo, whose presentation I particularly appreciated.

KIRK MEIGHOO: Thank you very much. I’ll quickly address the problem. We’re close neighbors of Costa Rica, and we have some links with them that we’ve established recently. This problem of self-sufficiency is something, especially for a small society, and all these small little islands, the question of self-sufficiency in everything is just simply not there.

So, people have even asked questions whether we deserve to be independent, or should we be permanent colonies? These are questions that stay with us, even after independence. It’s something we struggle with. We do have to have a system where we do access, just as the last speaker said, the best healthcare possible for all humanity. But we cannot simply be recipients, receivers of these things; dependents, colonial dependents as we have been for 500 years. We have to have a system where we are also producers.

So, what is the system of trading a local economy, of local production where we are contributing to our own development, as well as participating with others? That is the type of system that the global financial system has been against, and has never been for. It is the old imperial system, and they are just merely modern continuations of that. What we have to do, what our task is, is to create this new system. Not just money from the old system to create this, but how do we make the system where not only do we each benefit from the best the world has to offer, but that we are also contributors, as full human beings to it, as well. That is where I would like to leave it.

SPEED: OK, thank you. Walter Formento, you’re up.

WALTER FORMENTO: [as translated] All of the contributions that are made are very significant. It’s clear that for South America the call for the five nations that Putin made, which Helga also referred to, is a matter of great hope, because this would allow us to ensure that we could achieve peace. Therefore, it will be international politics that will allow us to decide things based on a dialogue of civilizations, a dialogue of peoples, of nations, what the future of mankind and nature will be. In Argentina in particular, the production of food — Argentina is a great producer of food, along with South America, along with Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay as well. The great multinational conglomerates involved in the food sector have taken control as of 30 years ago in Argentina, both in terms of our ability to produce as well as export.

Therefore, at this moment in Argentina and in South America, governments have changed, and with the backing of such an international conference that President Putin has called for, we can move forward in providing sovereign channels for both producing and exporting. The policies that can be carried out inside Argentina in the food sector have to do with allowing producers’ cooperatives to be a part of the great conglomerates that engage in production. We shouldn’t dissolve large-scale production and technology, but rather introduce the nations and all society through such cooperatives so that they participate in the solution, and to be part of the solution. Therefore, there is a way to democratize production.

SPEED: We’re going to have to stop. Thank you. Sorry, we’re going to have to move on. Mike Callicrate?

CALLICRATE: I was really moved by Dr. Meighoo’s comments about islands and the small economies on those islands. I can really get somebody pretty seriously depressed when we talk about the state of the world. But, I can also lift them and get them more excited when I talk about the possibility of going home. Going home to our communities and making them as good as we possibly can. Become wealth creators, grow things, make things, restore the primary wealth trading enterprises to societies around the world. Like with Kirk, if you can just stop the predators, the economic, financial, big food monopoly predators from extracting the wealth and leaving nothing but poverty behind, I think we can begin to repair this damage. Because we do control, as farmers and ranchers and citizens, we do to a large extent control our ability to create the wealth. It’s what happens to it after we create it. The last speaker talked about we shouldn’t dissolve the big corporations. I would argue yes, we should dissolve them. The big corporations should be broken up; not completely eliminate their facilities, but at least put them to where they have to perform in line with the public good. So, I love that analogy of those small islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and islands all across the Caribbean and how that is very much like the islands in rural America, in rural communities around the world. I’m saying let’s go back to making things and growing things, and teach that and kill this model of industrialization of these critical industries, like food.

SPEED: Thank you, very good. We’re trying to get Diogène Senny’s audio up. I don’t think we have it yet. So, let’s go to Jacques.

CHEMINADE: Just one word about Cuban doctors, to speak about that island. It’s proof that you can have the most advanced medicine, interferon, where French doctors have to go there to learn from them. Then you have the best doctors, because they stay and live where the patients stay and live. And third, they are involved in cooperation with other countries in the whole world. They send them, and they do a very good job. In particular, they are now in Doha, in Europe in Italy, and now in French Martinique, so the French have to recognize — and sometimes it’s difficult for them — that these were the best; a team of 15 Cuban doctors in Martinique now. So that’s proof that an island can do an excellent job in a very advanced field, and at the same time they are most human.

SPEED: Thank you. I hope that we have the audio for the Pan-African Congress representative. We are not going off until I hear that. We’re going to do a sit-in until we hear from him!

SENNY: [as translated] The global question of poverty is just a part of the world situation and the African situation. We all know that when we present the situation of the continent, we are more interested in the question of the debt, money, slavery, and we forget that, for example, monoculture which has been imposed by the international cartels have destroyed agriculture with the hedge funds that I denounce, because they want to make money with our land. They buy what we have in our continent, in our countries, to generate profit for them, for a small group of people. But not allow millions of lives of people to develop their land.

That’s why this question of agriculture and self-sufficiency in Africa is one of the most important problems. It’s not an agriculture, it’s a money culture; that’s the agriculture we have. If we want to have modern rice, we have to have modern developments. It’s very important for us, this agricultural question. We see that it is a world problem. What was used before by the African farmers are not in their own hands, because it is in the hands of the hedge funds, the speculative hedge funds.

It is very important to understand, and it is not very well known in the international debate now. That’s what I wanted to add. Thank you very much.

SPEED: Thank you very much. So, now Diane, you have 45 seconds, and I have 45 seconds. Do your postlude.

SARE: OK. I’ll be very brief. I think we should all remember that we have been blessed to have inhabit a beautiful, fertile planet which is very conducive to sustaining life, and in particular human life, if we are sane. But there are 2 trillion galaxies or more in the universe, and each of these many have many other planets. So, contrary to the views of the Malthusians and the money-changers, the creativity of each and every human being on this planet is urgently needed; because we are not capable of making too many discoveries to develop the universe as a whole. Therefore, we have to grow into a new era of mankind.

SPEED: Thank you. So, I will now conclude this panel — largely due to time — by just pointing out that we’ve had Europe, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States all on this panel in the form of discussion. This is the process that must be correlative to whatever happens among heads of state. And this process which the Schiller Institute is initiating, which is also bringing up various forms of important ideas and painful truths as well, is crucial to the actual success of the global Four-Power and related summit that we’ve been talking about. Finally, in the era of coronavirus, this is the only means by which people will be able to prosper and not perish; is this people-to-people dialogue we’ve conducted here.

I want to thank all of the panelists who were with us today. I think there’s a lot that can be done also in additional presentations that we may find in the future, pairing some of you together. I’d certainly like to see the Pan-African Congress together with Mr. Mike Callicrate. I’d like to see Kirk Meighoo involved in some discussions like that. Jacques is always welcome, and he’s always teaching us things. He had something new for us today; go back and take a look at his presentation afterwards, because he has some very interesting ideas that he put forward there.

So, we’re going to conclude now…

Et afskrift på engelsk af Panel I findes nedenunder.

Ovenover: Panel I: “Til erstatning for geopolitik: principperne for statsmandskab”

Schiller Instituttets stifter og præsident Helga Zepp-LaRouche og internationale diplomater, amerikanske valgte politikere, osv.

• Keynote speaker: Helga Zepp-LaRouche: “The Alternative to a Dark Age and a Third World War”
• Dr. Jin Zhongxia, Executive Director for China, IMF; Washington, D.C., United States: “The Fundamentals of East-West Philosophic Relations”
• Boris Meshchanov, Counselor, Russian Federation Mission to the UN, New York City, United States: “Russia’s Global Economic Perspective, Post COVID-19”
• Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former Surgeon-General of the United States
• Ding Yifan, Deputy Director, Research Institute of World Development, China Development Research Center, China: “A Chinese Perspective on a Post-COVID Paradigm”
• Daisuke Kotegawa, former Executive Director for Japan at the IMF; Research Director, The Canon Institute, Japan
• Mayor DeWayne Hopkins (fmr); Former Mayor, Muscatine, Iowa; The Mayor’s Muscatine-China Initiative Committee, United States: “A View from the Iowa Farm Belt: the Muscatine-China Cultural Connection”
• Question and Answer session

******

Panel II: ”Producenter i Verden, foren jer! Hvorfor et program for skabelse af 1,5 milliarder produktive job kan afslutte krig, hungersnød, fattigdom og sygdom”

Jacques Cheminade, lederen af LaRouche-bevægelsen i Frankrig og fhv. præsidentkandidat, og landbrug, fagforening og politiske ledere fra Afrika, Sydamerika og USA.

• Jacques Cheminade, President Solidarité & Progrès, France: “How Food Production Can Unite the World”
• Diogène Senny, Founder of the Pan-African League: “Thrive or perish: An Introduction to the Geopolitics of Hunger and Poverty”
• Walter Formento, Director, Center for Political and Economic Research, Argentina; “South America on the New Multipolar Road”
• Dr. Kirk Meighoo, political economist, broadcaster, and former Senator, Trinidad & Tobago: “The Caribbean’s True Importance in the Making and Re-Making of the Modern Global Economy”
• Mark Sweazy, former UAW trade union leader, United States: “Returning the U.S. Work Force to a Culture of Scientific Progress”
• Robert L. Baker, Schiller Institute, United States
• Mike Callicrate, Board of Directors, Organization for Competitive Markets, Owner Ranch Foods Direct, United States: “Food Unites People Around the Planet”
• Alicia Díaz Brown, Citizens Movement for Water, Sonora, Mexico: “Let Us Return to the Best Moments of the U.S.–Mexico Relationship”
• Question and Answer session

******

Panel III: Ungdommens opgave

Daniel Burke, senatorkandidat i New Jersey, USA fra LaRouche-bevægelsen, og universitets og andre ungdomsledere fra Frankrig, Yemen, Colombia, Mexico, Tanzania, og USA.

• Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute, Germany: Opening Remarks
• Keynote: Daniel Burke, Schiller Institute, United States: “If You Sat Where They Sit, What Would You Do?”
• Carolina Domínguez Cisneros, Mexico; Sebastián Debernardi, Peru; Andrés Carpintero, Colombia; Daniel Dufreine Arévalo, Mexico: “Getting Back the Great Ideas That Were Stolen From Us”
• Franklin Mireri, YouLead Partnerships Coordinator, Tanzania: “The Greatest Want of the World is for True Leaders.”
• Sarah Fahim, Student from Morocco Studying in Paris, France
• Chérine Sultan, Institut Schiller, Paris, France
• Lissie Brobjerg, Schiller Institute, United States: “Are You a Large-Scale Geological Force?”
• Areej Atef, Education Committee Vice President of BRICS Youth Parliament, Sana’a, Yemen: “Youth of the World Face Two World Systems: The Old and the New”
• Jose Vega, Bronx, NY: “A New Space CCC”
• Youth Day of Action Invitation Video
• Question and Answer session

Invitationen: 

Efter vore vellykkede internetkonferencer den 25.-26. april samt den 9. maj på V-E-dagen, vil vores næste konference være den 27. juni, kl. 16:00. Hjælp venligst med at sprede denne meddelelse bredt blandt venner, sociale medier osv.

Siden januar har Schiller Instituttets formand Helga Zepp-LaRouche insisteret på, at USA, Rusland, Kina og Indien skal mødes. Deres ledere må vise det statsmandskab, der kræves for at overvinde åndsforladt koldkrigerisk propagandataktik og geopolitik, og tage del i en hastemission for at opbygge en fuldt funktionsdygtig sundhedsinfrastruktur for verden, især for Sydamerika, Afrika og dele af Asien, der kræver opførelse af hospitaler, vandværker, vejsystemer og uddannelsesfaciliteter til unge læger, sygeplejersker og lægeassistenter.

 I over 35 år, og især i de sidste syv år, har Schiller Instituttet kæmpet for netop den slags statsmandskunst.

 Verden må nu vælge mellem to modstridende syn på menneskehedens næste 50 år:

 Et synspunkt kræver at vende den forestående affolkning af jorden på grund af globale pandemier. Disse pandemier er uden undtagelse resultatet af mislykkede finansielle, økonomiske og militære politikker, og især af den fuldstændige deregulering af de finansielle markeder igennem de sidste tre årtier. Det andet, modstridende synspunkt, kræver en ‘Green New Deal’ -energipolitik, som umiddelbart vil forværre planetens nuværende sundhedskrise og kunne muligvis endda resultere i døden for størstedelen af den menneskelige race.

 Vi må tage afstand fra denne affolkningspolitik, organisere den transatlantiske verden for at tilslutte sig det nye kulturelle paradigme, der nu føres an af Kinas Bælte- og Vejinitiativ, og bevæge verden til det som Schiller Instituttet har kaldt ‘Verdens Landbroen’.

 Netop mens Kina igennem præsident Xi Jinping´s Bælte- og Vejinitiativ har engageret 150 nationer i et forsøg på at stoppe fattigdom i hele verden, har malthusianske økonomiske kræfter i USA og Europa, der er imod dette, stigmatiseret Kina som ‘virussets udspring’ – en slet skjult genoplivning af den racistiske doktrin for 100 år siden kaldet ‘den gule fare’.

 I 1923 skrev medlem af det britiske Overhus Lord Bertrand Russell:

 ”De hvide befolkninger i verden vil snart ophøre med at stige i tal. De asiatiske racer vil blive flere, og negrene stadig flere, før deres fødselsrater falder tilstrækkeligt til at stabilisere deres antal uden hjælp af krig og pestilens. Indtil det sker, kan fordelene som socialismen sigter mod kun delvist realiseres, og mindre reproduktive racer bliver nødt til at forsvare sig mod de mere reproduktive ved metoder, der er oprørende, selvom de er nødvendige”.

 Verden, og især vores ungdom, der skal opbygge planeten i de kommende 50 år, må så stærkt som muligt afvise sådanne ideer og politikker for at pålægge systemisk tilbageståenhed globalt, herunder i forklædning af “Green New Deal”. Der kan ikke længere være nogen tvivl om, at verdens mest avancerede teknologier – i rummet, i fremstillingsindustrien, i minedrift, i landbruget – straks, i kraft af hasteprogrammer, må anvendes mod den globale pandemi og den økonomiske krise, som ellers kan føre til snesevis af millioner døde og fordrevne på kort sigt. En sådan massedød forekommer allerede i Brasilien og andre nationer. ‘Verdensfødevareprogrammet’ advarer om, at vi om nogle måneder vil kunne se så mange som 300.000 mennesker dø af sult dagligt, primært i udviklingslandene.

 Et nyt dokument, ‘The LaRouche Plan to Reolen the U.S. Economic; The World Nees 1.5 Billion New, Produktive Jobs’, (LaRouche-planen til genåbning af den amerikanske økonomi; Verden har brug for 1.5 milliarder nye produktive job) skitserer, hvordan denne tragedie kan vendes ved at søsætte den største økonomiske ekspansion i menneskets historie, herunder 50 millioner produktive job i henholdsvis USA og Europa.

 Da den sydafrikanske præsident Ramaphosa lykønskede Elon Musk, der har dobbelt sydafrikansk-amerikansk statsborgerskab, med den vellykkede gennemførelse af den amerikanske mission til Den internationale Rumstation, udtrykte han den form for nationalt lederskab, der kræves for endeligt at bringe globalt tyranni med globalisering og geopolitik til ophør. De seneste gennembrud inden for videnskab, gjort tilgængelig for de mest nødlidende, kan nu indlede en ny æra, der kunne kaldes ‘menneskelig økonomi’. Som Lyndon LaRouche redegjorde: “I stedet for disse for nærværende fejlslagne ideer, må vi antage en forestilling om økonomi, hvis målestok er funktionelt i overensstemmelse med det afgørende særpræg: princippet om kreativ fornuft”.

 Denne stræben efter økonomisk retfærdighed, især for de af verdens børn, der er født ind i livstruende omstændigheder, vil have den yderligere fordelagtige virkning at tage fat på andre problemer med social retfærdighed, der for nylig har fået så megen international opmærksomhed.

Kontact os for at få tilsendt udgaver med tysk, fransk eller spansk oversættelse. Ring +45 53 57 00 51

*****

Panel I afskrift:

Panel 1: “Instead of Geopolitics: The Principles of Statecraft”

DENNIS SPEED: My name is Dennis Speed, and I want to welcome you to today’s international conference and webcast. We had a technical problem for a moment, and now we think we’ve solved that problem.

Today’s conference is called “Will Humanity Prosper or Perish? The Future Demands a ‘Four-Power’ Summit Now.” We’re going to begin today by the late economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche. He was keynoting a panel of the Schiller Institute — this was in Germany — and the name of the particular panel on that occasion was “Rescuing Civilization from the Brink: The Role of Classical Culture. An Imperative for Mankind.”

LYNDON LAROUCHE video:

This is truly the most important of all strategic questions we have to face today: the fact that the human species is absolutely unique in its capabilities. There’s no other known species in the universe, ever known to have existed, or could exist — even though we have not fully explored, of course, the Crab Nebula or similar parts of the great galaxy which we’re involved in, called the Milky Way. There may be many species with cognitive powers out there. Because the Solar System of which we are immediately a product, although always under the control of the galactic processes — and we know a good deal, today, about those kinds of things: Our organization in the United States has spent a good deal of effort on concentrating, inclusively, on just this question: How old is life? How long has life existed in this galaxy, or within some place in it? What is the nature of mankind, who’s been on this planet only for a few million years? There was no human being on this planet, to the best of our knowledge, until a few million years ago.

And yet, we’re talking about billions of years of this galaxy, during which all living processes known to us have come into existence. And all life is creative, but there’s a sad part: that over 95% of all known living species have been rendered extinct, as failures, in their time. The question, therefore: Why, in these times, when we have entered a period in which there will be more great kills of living processes, at this phase of the movement of the Solar System through the galaxy, why should we be so presumptuous as to imagine that human life is not about to disappear as the dinosaurs did in the last great kill?

What is there about human beings that says they’re not just another animal species, ready to get to the chop in the course of their time?

The answer is a very little-known question. Most people don’t have an inkling of what the answer is! As a matter of fact, our societies are run on the basis of people who have no inkling what the human species is! All they can come up with is an explanation of some kind of an animal, with animal characteristics of pleasure and pain, and things like that, that might control the behavior of this animal.

So why should we expect that we have a right to claim that the human species is going to survive the approaching point of a great kill in the course of the movements of the Solar System up and below and around the galaxy we inhabit? How do we know that this 62-million-year cycle is not going to take the human species away, as it’s taken so many away before? And then, before that, and then before that?

And here you have all these people talking about politics; they’re talking about issues of politics; they’re talking about “practical opinion,” and public opinion, and differentiations in customs, and all those kinds of things! And here we are: We’re approaching the time of the great kill, where everything about us may suddenly disappear; so what are we worried about? If we’re going to disappear, why do we worry? Why do we fight it? [laughter]

What is there in us, that is not in other living species known to us? That might, somehow, miraculously, pronounce a destiny for our human species which we grant to no other living species? The name for that specific quality, which we know in the human species, which does not exist in any other known living species: There’s a quality of creativity, which is absolutely unique to mankind. And if you’re not creative, and if you don’t understand creativity, you haven’t got a ticket to survival yet! Because creativity won’t save you, unless you use it. [end video]

SPEED: We’re continuing to experience highly unusual technical difficulties. There were some problems in some of our international connections….

As soon as we have this technical problem somewhat under control, we’re going to go directly to our keynote speaker, Helga Zepp-LaRouche. We are about now 15 minutes behind schedule, but we’ll be able to do certain things to make that up. We want to apologize again, so that people have an idea, this is a highly unusual circumstance, we’re not going to talk a lot about that right now. Let me simply say so that the format is known, we are going to have first our keynote speech, followed by representatives from China and from Russia, and several others. The topic of the panel, as we announced before, is “Instead of Politics, the Principles of Statecraft.”

Let me say about the Schiller Institute and what we’ve been doing with this conference, or this process of conferences, because it actually began back in April of this year. April 25th and 26th, we held the first of what is now the three conferences. These conferences were devoted to the idea of the creation of a Four-Power summit — Russia, China, India, and the United States. There are various processes that have been able to move in that direction already, and we are in a process today. In fact, among many of the things we’ll be talking about today is a new proposal that has been put forward by President Vladimir Putin of Russia to that effect. Let me also say that for people in the United States in particular, the crisis that has been on people’s minds, as exhibited in the social and political crises in the streets of America, is merely one predicate of a broader international process. And that’s what why we’re starting today with this first panel, to give that broader overview, and to allow you and others to become part of an international operation to reverse that circumstance.

Now, as I said, I think the primary problem that we are dealing with is that we are trying to make sure that the international contacts are also connected. We have translators and we have a need to make sure that everything is moving in sync; that’s one of the particular problems of this kind of international operation.

Let me say one other thing concerning the excerpt that you saw from Lyndon LaRouche, which was done in 2011. LaRouche’s conception there concerning the idea that was strategy; the idea of thinking about strategy from the standpoint of a galactic process, and then looking then — and only then — at the various political episodes that were occurring on Earth, was a way of trying to actually look at what he often also referred to often as intelligence. He was the founder in 1974, of Executive Intelligence Review. And that publication, which is still published to this day, specialized in trying to make his method of intelligence and investigation available generally in American analysis.

This was very successful, in particular, in the drive for certain policy changes that occurred in the United States; most notably, that of March 23, 1983, with the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative. This was the product of a process of negotiation that LaRouche carried out as a back-channel negotiator with the then-Soviet Union, and with the knowledge of the National Security Council and then-President of the United States Ronald Reagan. That policy, and the creation of that policy, and that dialogue with the then-Soviet Union, is, in one sense, not a model for now, but is the same sort of process that must needs be allowed to continue and to happen between President Donald Trump, President Vladimir Putin, President Xi Jinping, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among others. The idea of the Four-Power summit is not exclusionary. It doesn’t say that other powers are not involved. In fact, recent proposals have amplified or expanded the number of persons that might, in fact, be involved.

But what is important to understand is that, as LaRouche once said in another document published in 1980 called “A Dialogue with Leonid Brezhnev,” then the head of the then-Soviet Union, “The Content of Policy Is the Method By Which It Is Made.” So, in the clip that you’ve seen, there, today, the idea of culture and the idea of what a culture actually is, is a strategic matter. In the case of the United States, and in the case of the present-day United States, these matters of a cultural paradigm-shift are actually often far more important than the particular political issues that people talk about. For example, if you look at today’s United States, the issue of our having gone away from being a productive culture, in fact the most productive economy in the world’s history, between the period in particular of the 1933 resurgence of America that occurred under Franklin Roosevelt, through the period of 1945, and then the subsequent period of 1944 through 1971 with the Bretton Woods system. It’s been the need to return to that, and to return to these ideas — those that had come into currency under Franklin Roosevelt’s Presidency — that is the template for what we are saying should be the character of discussion between President Trump, President Putin, President Xi, and Prime Minister Modi.

I want to make one thing clear to everyone as we are about to transition, to get to the keynote, that in thinking about what we are all involved in today — namely, that global pandemic condition created by the coronavirus: Clearly what has happened is, there is a need for all of us to change our axioms. That the idea of international cooperation among sovereign, independent nation-states, for the purpose of creating a worldwide alternative to what’s otherwise going to be, perhaps, the destruction of civilization — not because absolutely everybody would die of the coronavirus or something like that — but the cascading effects and the interconnected effects of a global pandemic condition that we don’t really medically understand, plus the ongoing problem of the financial virus that has, of course, plagued humanity particularly since the time of the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, this combination would create a circumstance in which only all nations working together can possibly achieve an actual reconciliation of this process.

I think we’re about ready to begin.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute — that was back in 1984. She also, of course, is the wife of the late economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, who passed away in February 2019. She played a crucial, decisive role in a set of conversations and dialogues with the government of China during the period of 1993 to 1996; launching the process that became what we now know as the New Silk Road. And we’re happy and proud to present her to you now, to begin the dialogue again. The panel as a whole is, “Instead of Geopolitics, a New Form of Statecraft.” So, it’s always my honor to introduce Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

The Alternative to a Dark Age and a Third World War

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: After this difficult beginning, I’m all the more happy that I’m finally connected to you. And I’m going to talk about the alternative to a Dark Age, or the danger of a new world war. And even if it’s inconceivable for most people at this point, if we do not succeed in the relatively short term in replacing the hopelessly bankrupt financial system by a New Bretton Woods system, exactly as originally intended by Franklin D. Roosevelt, that is, to create an instrument for forcefully overcoming the underdevelopment of the so-called developing sector, then the current orientation of the world….

I don’t know if you heard what I said before because there were some technical problems, but I was saying that even if most people cannot imagine that that can occur, that unless we, in the very short term, implement a New Bretton Woods system, exactly as Franklin D. Roosevelt had intended it, that the current orientation of the world towards ever more conflicts, both domestically in many states of the world, but also on a strategic level, threatens to escalate into a great new world, a Third World War, which because of the existence of thermonuclear weapons would mean the annihilation of the human species — the “great kill” even if it is meant in a slightly different way than Lyn just was heard on this video clip.

Although it is absolutely astounding how many misguided people still believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is either no worse than the flu or a just conspiracy of Bill Gates, the much more likely perspective is unfortunately what epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm has said: namely, that we still have an incredibly long journey ahead of us. Until now, 10 million people have been infected, half a million have died from COVID-19, and we have still not reached the peak of the first wave. The almost non-existent health systems of many developing countries are already hopelessly overstretched. The pandemic has ruthlessly exposed the fact that the neo-liberal economic system not only depends on cheap production in the so-called Third World, but has even created in the United States and Europe slave-labor conditions, as can be seen in the outbreak of the virus in the many slaughterhouses in Europe and the United States.

The economic shutdown has thrown a spotlight on the fragility of what is called “globalization.” In the U.S., around 40 million jobs were lost in three months; the central banks pumped an unbelievable over $20 trillion into the financial system and various government support programs could just barely cover up the timebombs still ticking until expiring of the short-work programs. The IMF currently expects global production to decline by 4.9% this year, and only China is expected to have an increase in production of 2%, which is obviously is much less than it used to be, but nevertheless it grows. Sectors such as air traffic, catering, tourism, the car industry, have suffered massive declines, some of them long-term, but also a large number of medium-sized companies fear they will not survive a second wave and another economic lockdown. The result would be a huge increase in unemployment, poverty and price deflation, while at the same time the central banks’ liquidity pumping is creating hyperinflationary bubbles. Bail-outs of large systemic corporations and banks, as well as politically explosive bail-ins would be further desperate options for governments to implement, but they could not prevent a collapse of the global financial system. A plunge into chaos and anarchy would follow.

In the meantime, a continuation of the current policy would not only lead to increased death rates as a result of the pandemic, but would do absolutely nothing to counter the hunger catastrophe, of which David Beasley of the World Food Program is warning that it will soon take the lives of 300,000 people a day.

Whoever may have thought that a dark age could be ruled out in our modern times, is in for a reality shock. And last but not least, the hedonism acted out by demonstrators who confuse liberties with freedom, is reminiscent of the flagellants and the descriptions of the 14th century as they are given by the writings of Boccaccio, and the paintings of Breughel.

Against this background, it is to be expected that the attempt, originally instigated by the British secret services, to oust President Donald Trump from office by a coup, impeachment or assassination — such was the headline of the British publication The Spectator on Jan. 21, 2017 — or by a “Maidan” coup, as President Putin warned in 2016, these will intensify. The instrumentalization of the outrage resulting from the murder of George Floyd by violent groups funded by George Soros is part of this campaign. The reason for the relentless hostility of the neo-liberal establishment and the mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic against Trump after what, for them, what his unexpected election victory, was, and still is, the intention he expressed at the beginning of his term, to establish good relations with Russia and a good relationship with China. And of course, Trump’s promise to end the “endless wars” of his predecessors, to bring U.S. troops home.

What followed was a three-and-a-half-year witch hunt against Trump. The war cry “Russia, Russia, Russia,” based on grounds for which not the least shred of evidence subsists, was followed by an attempt at an impeachment, followed by the no less malicious war cry “China, China, China,” although there is just as little substance to the charges against China as there was for Russiagate.

During all that, the representatives of the neo-liberal system were not ready for one second to consider that it was the brutal consequences of their own policies for the majority of the population worldwide, that had triggered the global wave of social protest, which included the Brexit and Trump’s victory, as well as the mass protests worldwide from Chile to the Yellow Vests in France. But this establishment is never interested in discovering the truth, only in controlling the official political narrative, in compliance with Pompeo ’s principle, as he explained in his speech in Texas: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole … we had entire training courses for that.”

NATO’s official narrative about Russia’s allegedly increasing aggressiveness, accused of “redrawing borders by force in Europe,” fails to mention of course the broken promises made to Gorbachov, that NATO would never extend its borders all the way to Russia’s borders, and the preceding color revolutions that can be described as acts of war, and finally the coup in Kiev with the open support of Victoria Nuland, which triggered the referendum in Crimea in reaction.

China’s “crime” is not only that it has lifted 850 million of its own citizens out of poverty, and has become, with an economic policy based on scientific and technological progress and a population of 1.4 billion people, the second most powerful economic nation, and in some technological areas, such as high-speed rail systems, nuclear fusion, aspects of space exploration and 5G telecommunications, already the number one. In addition, China’s offer for cooperation on the New Silk Road, and the Belt and Road Initiative, is the first real opportunity for the developing countries since the time of colonialism, to overcome poverty and underdevelopment by building infrastructure.

NATO’s response to China’s regaining its role as a leading nation in the world, a role it played during many centuries of its 5,000-year-long history, has been global expansion into the Indo-Pacific region. This is the stuff of which world wars can be made. And yet, that is exactly the direction that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has indicated in his outline for “NATO 2030,” which he just presented in a video conference with the Atlantic Council and the German Marshall Fund. German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer took part in another webinar last Wednesday with Anna Wieslander, director of the Atlantic Council for Northern Europe, who, in opening the event quoted Lord Ismay, NATO’s first general secretary, who said that the purpose of NATO is “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” But AKK (as she is nicknamed) did not even seemingly realize the insult in these remarks. The geopolitical scenario of a globalized NATO, which is openly designed to instrumentalize NATO for the purposes of the British Empire, on based on the Commonwealth, and which would also rope the EU into playing that role, and would finally position India against China, must be totally rejected by all those who have an interest in maintaining world peace.

President Putin has just written, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, a striking article on the pre-history of the Second World War and the course of that war, and called on all nations to publish all the up to now classified historical documents from that time, so that by studying the causes of the greatest catastrophe in the history of mankind up to that point, the lessons will be learned for avoiding an even greater catastrophe today. Putin writes in a very personal tone, he speaks of the suffering of his own family, of the immense importance June 22nd has for the Russian population, the day on which “life almost comes to a halt,” and why May 9th, the anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War in which 27 million Russians lost their lives, is Russia’s most important holiday. But the indirect message is also that just as the Soviet Union defeated Hitler’s Germany with a gigantic effort, the Russian people will never surrender to renewed threats. Just as Napoleon was led through a long line of defense into the inhospitable Russian winter, and his army was finally as good as wiped out, the evacuation of the people and industrial capacity to the east from 1941 on allowed the Soviet Union to surpass the military production of the Nazis in only one and a half years.

But also the short-sightedness of the Versailles dictate, the support for Hitler from members of the aristocracy and the Establishment on both sides of the Atlantic, and above all the Munich Pact, which is simply called in Russia the “Munich betrayal” or “Munich conspiracy,” is considered as the real trigger for the Second World War. Because it was there, where not only the appeasement of Hitler, but also the joint divvying up of the booty took place, as well as the ice-cold geopolitical calculation, that focussing Hitler’s Germany on the East would inevitably lead Germany and the Soviet Union to tear each other to pieces.

According to Putin, what is the main message of the study of the Second World War for today? That it was the failure to take up the task of creating a collective security system that could have prevented this war was the most important piece! Putin’s article ends with an urgent reminder of the summit of heads of state of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which he has been proposing since January, and which should address precisely these principles of how to maintain world peace and overcome the world economic crisis.

The most important aspect of that is that this format will put the United States, Russia and China around the same table to negotiate the principles that must be the basis of international policy if mankind is to avoid wiping itself out! And yesterday after a long phone call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron, Macron said that he stands for a Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which opens not only the perspective of an integration of the European Union, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Belt and Road Initiative, but also the establishment of a common security architecture based on common economic interests.

However, if we are to meet the gigantic challenges of the pandemic, the global economic crisis and the profound social shocks that have destroyed the trust of large parts of the population in their institutions in many countries around the world, further steps are necessary. Obviously, cooperation between the United States and China, as the two largest economies, is indispensable. Even if this currently appears to be an insurmountable hurdle, the extremely tense relationship between the United States and China must be replaced by cooperation on the common aims of mankind.

Who, if not the governments of the strongest economies, the countries with the largest populations and the greatest military potential, should solve the problems? The Boltons must be removed from these governments and replaced by responsible people who are able to find, in the cultural phases of their respective cultures, the starting points for cooperation on a higher level. Benjamin Franklin’s admiration for Confucian philosophy and Sun Yat-sen’s orientation to the ideals of the American Republic are better advisors than Gene Sharp’s “How To Start a Revolution” or Samuel Huntington’s different scribblings.

One has to define a plane on which the solutions for these quite disparate problems become visible. There is one philosopher, born in the 15th century, known in Russia as Nikolai Kusansky, Nikolaus of Cusa, who developed exactly that method of thinking: the coincidence of opposites, coincidentia oppositorum. This concept expresses the fundamental quality of human creativity, which is able time and time again and at increasingly more developed levels to find solutions on a higher plane, where the conflicts that have arisen on the lower levels, are dissolved.

This can only be the immediate implementation of a credit system, that provides the global economy with credit for industrialization, and thus the real development, of all nations on this planet. The entire life’s work of my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, was primarily devoted to achieving this goal; he drew up his first plan for the industrialization of Africa in 1976, the Oasis Plan for the industrialization of the Middle East in 1975; then followed the 40-Year Plan for India in collaboration with Indira Gandhi, Operation Juárez with then Mexican President José López Portillo for Latin America; a 50-year development plan for the Pacific Basin; and then finally, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Eurasian Land-Bridge, as a peace plan for the 21st century. Many of these projects are being implemented today thanks to China’s New Silk Road, and all nations of the world are called upon to contribute to this World Land-Bridge! This is the blueprint for the creation of the 1.5 billion jobs, that are necessary today to overcome the crisis! It should begin with the establishment of a modern health system in every single country, in order to combat the current and future pandemics, which will not only benefit poor countries, but also the so-called developed countries, that can only avoid new waves of infections in that way. Most countries have a large number of unemployed or poorly employed youth, who can be trained as medical personnel and deployed to build up such health centers.

When millions of people are threatened with starvation, as the World Food Program warns, why can farmers not double their food production and be paid a parity price that guarantees their existence, including with regard to the expected increase in the world’s population to over 9 billion by 2050? Can we not consider ourselves as one single human species, and help to build mankind’s common construction sites with the same solidarity that the entire Chinese population helped the people in Wuhan and the province of Hubei? Is it not time that we stopped wasting trillions on military build-ups, as President Trump said he would soon take up together with Putin and Xi Jinping, when we could use those resources to overcome hunger, disease and poverty, and to develop the creative potential of the current and future generations?

I think it is time for us, as mankind, faced with an unprecedented disaster, to take the qualitative step of making the 21st century the first truly human century!

Thank you very much.

SPEED: Thank you very much, Helga.

Our next speaker is Dr. Jin Zhongxia, who’s the executive director for China of the International Monetary Fund, located in Washington, D.C.

DR. JIN ZHONGXIA: Thank you, Mr. Speed. I would like to thank Schiller Institute for the invitation to attend this important conference. Also, I thank Madame Helga for her excellent keynote speech.

2020 is a very special and challenging year. The trade war, the eruption and spread of coronavirus, the riots in the U.S., world economic recession, and escalated geopolitical tensions, I just name a few major ones. Global growth is projected by the IMF at negative 4.9% this year.

In the following discussion, some of my observations and comments are kind of thoughts in research and of academic by nature, I will speak in my personal capacity only.

Global challenge should be handled globally with a multilateral approach. No country will be safe until every country is safe.

When we start to discuss the multilateral approach in dealing with the pandemic and the global crisis, I recognize that there is a debate on the value of multilateralism and the multilateral institutions. Some people are talking about economic decoupling, a Cold War, and even a conflict of civilizations. Since I am from China, I ask myself: Is there any fundamental conflict between civilizations in the East and West?

Chinese civilization is unique in many aspects, but it’s not fundamentally different from Western civilization. One example: In the 6th century B.C., China had Taiji or Yin Yang concept, which is the co-evolution of two opposite forces. I found in surprise that this was also a core concept in physiological theory in Greek medicine in the same period of time. Another example: A core concept of Confucianism is the “middle course approach,” that also corresponds to the “doctrine of the mean” that was explored extensively by Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece.

In 16th century, the brilliant Jesuit missionary, Matteo Ricci, recognized the striking parallels in Confucius and Mencius to the Christian concept of man in the images of the God and devoted his life to building an “ecumenical alliance” between China and the West.

During the evolution of trade tension between the United States and China, some opinions in the media have demonized China as an evil trade partner that is systematically engaged in illegal subsidizing, cheating and stealing. That reminds me of the overwhelming public opinion in the media against Jewish people in some parts of Europe before World War II. The truth is that after more than 40 years’ market-oriented reform and opening-up, China has already been transformed into a market-based economy. In fact, the share of fiscal resources in GDP mobilized by some European governments is higher than that in China due to extensive social welfare arrangements, but no body in Europe complain that this welfare has distorted the market.

China has profound tradition of market economy both in theory and practice. In the 6th century B.C., Laozi, a famous philosopher and the founder of Daoism, advised his government to “rule without intervention,” which is an ancient version of the invisible hand of Adam Smith. Another famous economist and philosopher Guanzi, in the 7th century B.C., suggested that in the years of economic depression, government could increase expenditure to implement seemingly wasteful projects for the purpose of creating employment. That is the ancient Chinese version of Keynesian economics. Financially, China was also highly developed. As early as in 11th century, China introduced the first official paper currency in the world.

On the issue of economic and technology decoupling, the attempt to block a major people and civilization from competing fairly with other countries and getting access to new scientific and technological knowledge is morally wrong, and will help China to win sympathy around the world.

On the other hand, China has the largest pool of educated labor force, including a largest pool of engineers. That will enable the country to be more innovative, professional, practical and rational.

Compared with other multi-country free trade zones, China has already become the largest single-country retail market by itself. It is more than equivalent to a free trade zone with a highly integrated infrastructure network, centralized fiscal and monetary policy, and deep and liquid labor and capital market. The authorities have also determined to further open its economy, greatly enhance intellectual property (IP) protection, and implement structural reforms, including introducing competitive neutrality for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In the end, it is the effectiveness and efficiency of China’s domestic resource allocation that will determine China’s international competitiveness.

I am not specialized in geopolitics. But I learned that the scenario of decoupling and a new cold war is based on an old strategy called “divide and conquer,” or “offshore balance.” It is very smart from the offshore players’ perspective. But it will benefit the offshore manipulator at the expense of onshore neighbors. I wonder whether those equally smart onshore players are willing to buy this, and how high a price the offshore player wants to pay to convince so many countries to engage a long-term conflict with their major trade partner.

It is not objective to exaggerate China’s conflict with India at the border. It is important to recognize that the current border is largely a stable equilibrium. The common interest of these two ancient civilizations is to cooperate and develop their economies and achieve a joint historical revival. The two countries should benefit from their common cultural heritage based on centuries of peaceful and friendly cultural exchanges, particularly the exchanges in the form of Buddhism.

The history issue between China and Japan often looks like a deadlock, but a forward-looking approach is the key. China has largely recovered its self-confidence, and it is very clear that China’s revival does not mean revenge. When new generations from China visit Japan as tourists, most of them feel they like Japan. Japan is China’s only neighboring country that has maintained a lot of Chinese characters in their written language, and they use chopsticks, eat rice, use soy sauce, and practice calligraphy, all of these are the typical reflections of East Asian culture.

A healthy and stable Sino-Russian relationship can be much more sustainable than many people’s imagination. Their stable cooperative relationship can be attributed to many factors. It is not a coincidence that their combined territory maps the Mongolian Empire in history. Toward the end of last century, China and Russian leaders reached a wise and visionary agreement to delimit and confirm their common border. Their mutual respect and support to core interest of each other can go a long way.

The biggest loss the United States could incur from a decoupling and a new cold war is that many of the 1.4 billion Chinese people, who are otherwise very friendly toward America, could turn into opponents. By contrast, a friendly and cooperative China will be definitely the Americans’ greatest fortune in Asia.

I believe a constructive competition and cooperation between China, the United States and other countries under a rules-based multilateral system should be the right choice. Fortunately, the IMF is still functioning normally and has played a constructive leading role, which is also supported by the World Bank and other multilateral banks.

In just a few months, recently, the IMF has implemented debt relief to more than 27 countries, supported by contributions from a group of better- resourced members, including China. The Fund has augmented its lending instruments to low-income countries by more than 10 billion SDR, and approved emergency financing (RCF and RFI) of 47 billion SDR for more than 74 countries. It has created a new short-term liquidity line (SLL), and is pushing for approval of new agreement of borrowing of 365 billion SDR, and preparing for a new round of Bilateral Borrowing Agreement of 138 billion SDR. China has actively participated in all the above efforts and made its own contribution.

The Fund and the World Bank jointly proposed a Debt Service Suspension Initiative that has been endorsed by the G20. China has further called for an extension of this initiative to 2021. A fair burden-sharing and full participation of all creditors is critical for a successful implementation of this initiative.

China has made more efforts outside the multilateral framework, including 1) additional $2 billion grant assistance to most affected countries, especially developing countries, to combat COVID-19 and recover social and economic development; 2) establish a Sino-Africa hospital cooperation program covering 30 hospitals in Africa, China has recently sent five emergency professional medical teams to Africa, which is in addition to the existing 46 Chinese medical teams in Africa; 3) in addition to implementing the G20 debt moratorium initiative, China will provide more assistance to countries that have been most heavily affected, together with other stakeholders; 4) China has promised that once it completes developing and testing its own vaccine, it will provide this product to developing countries as global public goods; 5) China will establish a comprehensive storage and transportation hub to support global medical supplies, under the direction of the United Nations.

The merit of multilateral assistance is that it is rules-based, approved by a collective board representing all its member countries; and the recipient countries are facing the multilateral institution, rather than a particular country or country group, therefore it can reduce (although not eliminate) geopolitical sensitivity. Although there are different views on many different issues, and even bilateral tensions between some member countries, the majority of the Fund’s membership have been able to find common ground on many issues.

The Bretton Woods institutions could do two more things, in my view.

First, a general allocation of SDRs that will increase the supply of international reserve asset, reduce the burden of any single country to supply its reserve currency excessively and provide low-income countries necessary resources to alleviate their debt distress.

Second, the multilateral banks should greatly expand their lending to include not only developing countries, but also developed countries, including the United States, itself. That will fully utilize the low interest rate environment and greatly stimulate global demand and pull up growth in receiving countries.

In conclusion, I wish the after-COVID-19 world a more cooperative and peaceful one. Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you very much.

Now we will hear from the Hon. Boris Meshchanov, Counselor, Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

HON. BORIS MESHCHANOV: Dear and distinguished Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche,

Dear colleagues and friends from so many countries,

Our video broadcast audience,

The problems put in the center of today’s discussion are of high importance. We welcome highlighting acute questions of international relations through the prism of development, building physical infrastructure, cooperation between major powers in the interests of the poorest and most vulnerable, in accordance with the United Nations Agenda 2030. We fully share the crucial significance of industrialization, eradication of poverty, reforming of international credit-generating institutions and ensuring food security. Those are basically in the spotlight for the whole global community. We emphasize that the right to development persists as a basic human right. Development beats inequality, contributes to peace and is an indispensable condition for building just, peaceful and inclusive societies.

I would like to start my presentation, citing the report by the United Nations Secretary-General saying: “As we are facing multidimensional and multifaceted impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, global solidarity with Africa is an imperative — now and for recovering better. Ending the pandemic in Africa is essential for ending it across the world.” In the context of this challenging crisis we all seek to re-assess the model for development with the needs of the most vulnerable at its cornerstone. I would like to address this issue with respect to how our country deploys relations with the African continent.

It is justified that today more than ever before, our eyes are directed to the regrettable fortunes of populations in remote corners of the world, where governments are grappling with triple crisis of health and finance, trying to avoid widening social disparity and future economic distress. Aware of its historical responsibility for the formation of the modern system of international relations and its further improvement, the Russian Federation considers international development assistance as an effective mechanism to solve global and regional problems, and to respond to new challenges and threats. Our priorities have been the eradication of poverty and promotion of sustainable socio-economic development of partner states; influencing global processes in order to form a stable and just world order based on universally recognized rules of international law and partnership relations among states as well as responding to natural and man-made disasters and other emergencies.

In doing so, as it can easily be seen through the ideals of Russian philosophers and artists and classical Russian literature, assisting our friends abroad has always been based on the respect of the other’s dignity. It has been reflected in our national policies and priorities, and technical and humanitarian assistance has always been delivered at the request of the recipient side. We have proceeded from the assumption that any approaches in the spirit of colonial rule, like the General Act of Berlin of 1884, bringing about the principle of “effective occupation” that prejudiced the freedom of the Africans themselves, attempts to come to an agreement behind one’s back and act solely from the standpoint of mercenary calculation, will most likely not be accepted by these peoples themselves. On the contrary, we value and promote equitable partnership on the international arena ,upholding the principles of truth and justice, respect for the civilizational identity of each people, the path of development chosen by each people themselves.

As the Russian President Vladimir Putin recently emphasized, the development of relations with the countries of the African continent and their regional organizations is one of the priorities of Russian foreign policy. Links between us are based on the friendly relations between the Russian Federation and African states and the traditions of the joint struggle for decolonization and achieving the independence of African states, as well as on the rich experience of multifaceted and mutually beneficial cooperation that meets the interests of our peoples.

Dear colleagues and friends,

One of the main lessons learnt from this pandemic is an urgent need for international solidarity and cooperation, without exclusions and exemptions. In line with this objective, we have committed to giving Russian-African interaction a truly systemic and integrated character. African states are confidently gaining political and economic weight, affirming themselves as one of the important pillars of the multipolar world, and are taking an increasingly active part in working out the decisions of the international community on key issues of the regional and global agenda. We need to respect their rights to benefit equally from globalization, whatever shape it will take following the impacts of the pandemic.

In our strong opinion, the world needs Africa not just like a pantry of valuable minerals or a bread basket, but strong and sovereign region, developing an equal dialogue with its partners in accordance with the norms of the national legislation, based on the multilateral nature of the world order. Today, when proposals are made to reform the global governance system, we are consistently upholding the need to reflect the role of Africa in those structures that are engaged in global governance.

Our fundamentals are not only ensuring the wide global participation of African states, but also resolving conflict situations, on the principle of “African solution to African problems.” Together, we are able to counteract political dictatorship and currency blackmail in the course of international trade and economic cooperation, in order to put pressure on objectionable countries and unfair competition. Introduction of unilateral coercive measures not based on international law, also known as unilateral sanctions, is an example of such practices. Joint efforts are needed to promote trade, investment and sustainable development in order to make the global economic system more socially oriented, to oppose any manifestations of a unilateral approach, protectionism and discrimination, to support the world trade, based on the rules of the World Trade Organization.

Under this paradigm the first Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum took place in October 2019 in Sochi, with 92 agreements, contracts, and memoranda of understanding, worth $12 billion signed and problems of trade, investments and banking, industry and construction, transport and logistics, energy and high-tech addressed, among others.

We paid special attention to identifying promising areas of economic, trade and investment partnership of the Russian Federation, as a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, with the African Union, as well as with the leading regional organizations of Africa — the Arab Maghreb Union, the Sahel Five, the Southern African Development Community, the Common Market for East and South Africa, the East African Community, Economic Community of West African Countries, Economic Community of Central African States, and others.

In our movement towards Africa we need to be creative and promote new mechanisms for partnership, encourage active participation of business in exhibitions, fairs, and congress events, and develop the practice of exchanging business missions.

Moving towards Africa in this new old world would be impossible without learning each other better, taking into consideration local customs and traditions for our partners, rich cultural and linguistic variety. In Sochi in 2019, we have committed to develop cooperation in the field of education, implement vocational training, and academic exchange programs to promote social stability by protecting people, especially youth, women and persons with disabilities, and expand their capabilities by increasing the availability of education, technical and vocational training. Participants in the Russia-Africa summit confirmed that obtaining quality education and developing skills by young men and women can become a driving force for structural economic transformation and industrialization in African countries, as well as the basis for strengthening the industrial potential necessary to diversify the economy.

It so happened that our country has already contributed to the development of the African continent, in particular, in industry, infrastructure and energy security, areas promoted by the Schiller Institute as the fundamentals of the so-called physical economy, so I would focus on them briefly.

So far, Russia has been involved in the creation of the Russian industrial zone in Egypt. Among the key competencies of Russia for Africa, one cannot overestimate the role of rail infrastructure for the development of Nigeria, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola. Under current conditions, it is important that the use of technologies such as medical trains in Africa will prevent the spread of infectious diseases and fight epidemics.

In energy, we count on the future construction of the first nuclear power plant in Egypt and the Russian Center for Nuclear Science and Technology in Rwanda facilitating the development of integrated solutions in the field of nuclear energy in agriculture, health, education, science and industry. Those two are not the only countries in Africa that intend to develop nuclear energy. Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Zambia are also on this growing list. Most African countries suffer from severe electricity shortages. Accordingly, in the near future they should double their generating capacity to meet current needs. The current pandemic-caused crisis, apparently, has aggravated this challenge for them.

In saying this we should not forget about stepping up efforts to combat climate change in Africa, transfer relevant technologies, build the capacity of African states. Meanwhile, general greening of the economy, in our approach, needs to be based on responsibility, consistency and realism. Key to that is technological progress. Serious efforts are being deployed to improve energy efficiency in industry, agriculture, housing and transport. In our country, we have launched national project “Environment” to create incentives for Russian business to implement best “green” technologies, to ensure the environmentally friendly low-emission development. And we will proceed to provide assistance to developing countries, including Africa, to help them meet their own climate goals without prejudice to the objectives of ensuring inclusive and sustainable economic growth, industrialization of economies and leaving no one behind.

The pandemic is spreading across the world, threatening to backslide the efforts applied to build a more resilient architecture. It’s high time for humanity, responsibility and spirit of partnership to be demonstrated. A truly systemic issue with reference to today’s discussion, is food security, which holds a special place among Russia’s priorities in its efforts to achieve sustainable development globally. First of all, we believe that it has to be addressed at the level of supplying the world enough high-quality food to stabilize international markets, and make it more accessible and affordable for a maximum number of people. At the same time, the zero-hunger goal must be addressed as a matter of urgency for those countries that are food insecure. To that end, over the last 20 years, Russia has been steadily and consistently increasing its own production and export of food — grain, cereals, pulses, meats, poultry, oils, milk and dairy products, etc. Russia has become one of the world’s largest exporters of food.

During the pandemic, food supplies were transferred to the Union of Comoros (172 tons) and Madagascar (about 500 tons).

Apart from tackling the problem of food security, Russia donated hundreds of KAMAZ trucks, together with the necessary parts, equipment, and technical support, for key World Food Program operations in Africa. Starting from 2020, $10 million are being reserved exclusively for Africa. It is the first time that Russia assigns a geographic priority for its voluntary contribution to the World Food Program.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, East Africa is experiencing its largest invasion of desert locusts in decades, and our country is making a $10 million contribution to support FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] operations in Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda.

In connection with the coronavirus pandemic, Russia received requests from a total of 29 African countries, as well as from the African Union, asking for assistance in combatting the impacts of COVID-19. To date, units of laboratory supplies and personal protective equipment have been provided to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; multi-purpose medical modules, tents and accessories to Djibouti; test systems to South Africa and Guinea.

At the same time, we believe that helping a sick person with a virus is paramount, but only part of the problem is solved. A fundamental factor is the availability of an effective preventive and educational system in the countries affected by the epidemic. As an example, I refer to the example of the Republic of Guinea, where two mobile hospitals have been deployed, and where mobile laboratories based on KAMAZ vehicles were transferred, and medications were delivered. With the participation of Russian experts in this country, more than 800 specialists have passed specialized training since 2015. Russia makes a significant contribution to the scientific research of the Ebola virus. With the support of one of the flagships of Russian business, the United Company RUSAL, the Russian-Guinean Research Center for Epidemiology and Prevention of Infectious Diseases was established in the Guinean city of Kindia.

Last, but not least, long and intensive discussion is ongoing concerning the unbearable debt burden of African states. Russia actively contributes to alleviating it under the debt-for-development program intergovernmental agreements. Those between Russia and Madagascar, Mozambique, and Tanzania, are being implemented. For instance, as part of these arrangements, the Government of Mozambique in cooperation with the World Food Program, has launched a multi-disciplinary national school feeding program. It provides for the conversion of a part of the county’s debt to Russia amounting to $40 million during 2017-2021, into activities that address malnutrition among sick children and foster primary education in Mozambique.

With that, I deeply thank you for your attention, and look forward to your questions.

SPEED: And we want to thank you very much, also, Mr. Meshchanov, because we had some problems with the video as you were speaking. We’re going to first of all make sure the entire speech is made available immediately in terms of the actual text, and we’d like to also apologize. We’d like to have, at some point and I want to say this publicly, if we can actually re-do your video, because it was not quite in synch. The audio was fine, people could hear it very clearly and it was an extremely important message. And so, I want to thank you, again, very much for what you just did.

MESHCHANOV: Thank you.

SPEED: Our next speaker is Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former Surgeon General of the United States.

DR. JOYCELYN ELDERS: Hello. I’m Dr. Joycelyn Elders, and I am happy to speak to the Schiller Institute conference today, whose theme is “Will Humanity Prosper or Perish?” I hope, as I am sure you all do, that humanity prospers.

Ironically, a lethal disease, the coronavirus pandemic, may be the only way to unify the world to reverse what might otherwise appear to be a sure slide into disaster.

We are here to discuss a new paradigm for the whole world—not just for the richer or more well-off nations. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has proposed that a world healthcare platform must be constructed to respond to the present crisis. She has circulated a short memo to this effect, calling for a Committee of Opposites to be formed to implement it. I would like to respond to one passage of that memo in particular. Here is what it said.

“A very large number of youth in the U.S. and the European nations coming from the economically disadvantaged segments of society are presently looking without a perspective into the future and are therefore exposed to an entire specter of perils. They could be educated through a training program in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s CCC program to become medical auxiliary forces and could be deployed together with doctors and medical professionals in the building of first temporary, and then permanent hospitals and hospital wards in African and other developing sector nations. For the countries of the Southern Hemisphere the support from the industrialized nations is existential: Therefore it will be possible to find cooperating institutions, such as governments, religious and social organizations, as well as youth organizations, who can help to set up such facilities and win the trust in the population for such an approach. In the industrialized nations, for example, hospitals could set up partnerships with existing hospitals in the developing nations, which then could be used as affiliates for the construction of an expanded health system. One can also draw in nongovernmental organizations with experience in so-called conflict areas, such as the Peace Corps, catastrophe protection organizations, and various relief organizations.

“In the U.S. and European nations retired doctors, helpful individuals, and social and religious organizations could work in a Committee to put together teams of medical personnel and apprentices for this deployment….”

Now, I think that this can be done, but we must think about how we would do it. It will be very important, for example, in the countrysides of Africa, just as it is important in the cities of the United States, for people from these neighborhoods and communities to be very involved in this process. Therefore, young people from Africa should be paired with young people from America, and be trained together from the beginning. We should remember that they are significant communities of African-American youth that are in the United States, whose parents came from Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Senegal, and many other nations. Importantly historically black colleges and universities could be used, as well as high school campuses in the urban centers, as central coordinating points, to assemble volunteers that want to participate in such a program. More broadly, various land-grant colleges, community colleges, and churches, and other organizations already deeply involved in such outreach, need simply be encouraged by young people who want to assist in doing what perhaps only they can do—save the lives of their peers in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and elsewhere through demonstrations of hope and health.

First, we will need many community healthcare workers. We can take a page out of what was done in the American Civil War in 1861 in New York City, with what was called the Sanitary Commission. We just take some people in the community, give them some basic health education, and develop them as medical assistants and medical technicians. Most importantly, they will be very well known in their communities. They can communicate very well with the people in their communities. You can have supervisors of these community healthcare workers, who are also trained, and of course coordinate with nurses, nurse practitioners and doctors. But this gives you a far larger force to work with, which is what we need.

We can’t teach what we don’t know, and we can’t lead where we won’t go. We have to have tiers of people who are from the community, healthcare workers who understand the community and know the community, as well as immediate supervisors, to people with enough medical training, all the way up to nurse’s assistants, practitioners, doctors, and others, right up to the level of super-specialist. We often do too much special care, and not enough public health. We do not do enough of the basic public health which would do far more to maintain the health, more than 100 surgeons.

This is not an attack against specialization, but it is an assertion that we are in a condition like that of a world war, which requires something that Martin Luther King and others have often talked about—creative, nonviolent directed action, but in the field of health. And we need volunteers, just as the American civil rights movement had volunteers. They will be the backbone of this effort. In this case, we need to establish brigades and battalions of courageous young people, who may even risk their lives, but in a responsible way, to save the lives of others, both here and in other countries.

This is not, by any means, completely new. Many nations have tried elements of such programs, which have worked relatively successfully in the past, and members of the African Union , or WHO, are well aware of these measures. This, however, is a circumstance that requires the equivalent of a wartime alliance, but this is truly a wartime alliance for progress. Here we can count successes, not in the numbers of enemies killed through combat, but through the numbers of lives saved through healthcare. We will also be aided by the omnipresence of certain social media capabilities that can provide means of close coordination that would otherwise be unavailable.

The fight against this virus must have a human face. There is no section of our population we can afford to ignore. For example, our already-overcrowded and often abusive prisons will see an explosion of infections. Should such people who have been accused of a theft or other non-violent crime, or anyone else, for that matter, be given a de facto death sentence, or be put in harm’s way, solely because the rest of us have decided to forget who they are? What about the families that visit them? What about the children, or spouses, or parents attachéd to those people? And I believe that this can be a mobilization that replaces the image of young people as a problem, or a potential source of unrest, with the image that they are the healers, those dedicated to preserving life, not destroying it.

There may be more than 2 million American young men currently held in prisons for non-violent offenses who could be more than willing to become part of this solution, to help bring health both in their communities here, as well as to other nations. And it would only be in such an emergency as this, that this sort of bold thinking would be attachéd to an urgent, dire, but resolvable crisis.

I pray that this moment may find us equal to this challenge to our normal way of thinking. All the world is at stake, and all the world is in need. Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you very much, Dr. Elders.

We’re now going to hear from Dr. Ding Yifan, Deputy Director, Research Institute of World Development, of the China Development Research Center of China.

DR. DING YIFAN: Dear Friends,

It’s a pleasure talking with you on this very important, historical moment. The COVID-19 pandemic has caught the whole world by surprise. Not only have the economies been paralyzed and human life threatened, but all life habits have changed also. Moreover, in many countries, people have not been able to effectively curb the spread of the virus, because they have no experience. Although many institutions have tried to produce vaccines, but are now afraid that the vaccine would be short-lived because the virus evolves so quickly.

In the face of an epidemic, we humans are very vulnerable. If we’re not enlightened and work together to fight the virus, the time for the virus to spread will prolong, and the longer we will suffer. So, here, I’d like to highlight four points:

Firstly, when China’s epidemic broke out, many countries helped China and provided China with various materials for prevention and to fight the virus, in creating masks. Countries, such as Japan, have picked up sentences from ancient Chinese classics, and write on the boxes for transferring those materials to China, to show the close relationship and cooperation between East Asia area’s countries. Once the epidemic situation had been brought under control in China, and the situation became intensified in Japan and South Korea, China sent a lot of materials to Japan and South Korea, to help people there fight the virus.

Secondly, many such token stories have also been staged between Chinese and American companies. Once the epidemic situation got worsened in the United States, many Chinese companies had sent materials for prevention and to fight the pandemic in the United States, as well as masks, protective clothing, protective glasses, ventilators and even [s/l ratings] for nucleic acid detection. So this cooperation showed that our humanity in society is really a community of common destiny.

Thirdly, unfortunately, the political opinion and the political spirit in the United States have made China unintentionally a scapegoat. Radical Congressmen and Senators try to compete with the hoax in the Trump Administration to show off who has the hardest line toward China. These attitudes cannot help Americans fight the epidemic, on the contrary it can only exacerbate the mistrust between China and the United States, making cooperation even impossible between the Chinese and the American governments, within an obstinate pandemic.

Fourthly, in fact, the world economy has not come out completely from the last financial crisis in 2007, and then, a new crisis happened. The pandemic might make this crisis deeper and more difficult to deal with, because we are faced with a dilemma: Restoring the economy and preventing the virus from spreading. The largest economies in the world need to expand their cooperation and take joint measures to fight the virus, and to boost economic growth. We have to use a stimulus package not only to alleviate the problem of the population in trouble, but also to use this stimulus package to invest in infrastructure, not only in traditional infrastructure, such as highways, bridges, or telecommunications means, but also in the development of new infrastructure, such as means of prevention of epidemics for the masses, and the treatment of these masses in pandemics, also including the remote means to check the temperature of the masses.

Only by rebuilding trust among big powers can we unite and fight the coronavirus with success. Then we can bring humanity back to the harmonious development path again. So, I think we have to unite our forces or strengths in the middle of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, and then, we could try to find a way to common development, after the pandemic.

Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you very much Dr. Ding.

Our next presentation is by former Mayor DeWayne Hopkins, mayor of the town of Muscatine, Iowa. And he represents the China-Muscatine Friendship Society.

FORMER MAYOR DEWAYNE HOPKINS: Good day, everyone. My name is DeWayne Hopkins. I’m the former mayor of a small community in eastern Iowa, located right on the Mississippi River.

And I have a story to tell you. But in order to tell this story, where it begins I’m going to have to move the clock back in time to 1985. Back in that timeframe, the country of the People’s Republic of China, sent four individuals to Iowa. These individuals had never been in the United States before, but through the Sister Cities and Sister States organization, these individuals came right directly to Muscatine, Iowa. One of these individuals was Xi Jinping, and of course at the time, he was pretty young, and he was a provincial official in Hebei province.

Well, they came to Muscatine, and they toured some of our plants around town, and so on and so forth. They even enjoyed a barbecue with spareribs and corn on the cob and things of that nature. In any case, they spent three days in Muscatine, and then moved on to Des Moines, Iowa, where they met with then-Governor Terry Branstad.

Now, I’m going to fast forward a little bit to 2016. Our governor was on a kind of an agricultural mission trip to Beijing in the People’s Republic of China. And he was meeting with Xi Jinping, who at the time had moved up in the ranks to the position of Vice President. Xi Jinping just happened to ask Governor Branstad, because he had known him for that length of time from 1985 to 2016, he asked him how his friends Sarah and Roger Lande were. Well, Sarah and Roger Lande are residents of Muscatine. Roger is a retired attorney. Back in 1985, Sarah was the President of the Sister States organization here in Iowa. Well, Governor Branstad responded that they were in good health and everything was fine, but that’s what started the wheels in motion about a revisit to Muscatine from then-Vice President Xi Jinping. That happened on, I believe it was February 12th. He was on a trip from Washington, D.C., then to meet President Obama in Los Angeles, California. He thought he would have time to stop by Muscatine, Iowa, which he did.

We all greeted him on the porch of the Lande residence. We all went inside, and enjoyed snacks and conversation, and sort of rehashing old times, thus become the title “old friends.” So, a great number of his old friends — that is, Xi Jinping’s — were in attendance at the Lande residence, and they all had just a marvelous time. Xi Jinping’s time came about, he had to leave, and that was OK.

But a short time after returning to China, Xi Jinping suggested via email to Sarah Lande, that we engage a community in China about having a sister city relationship. So, that’s what started the wheels churning for that adventure. That city in China became Zhengding. The rest is kind of history. I went to China and visited with the folks in Zhengding; their mayor, Mayor Yang, came to Muscatine and visited with our folks. We sat down and signed a letter of intent to become sister cities. So, that’s kind of how that went.

As time went on, Xi Jinping became the President of the People’s Republic of China, and Sarah Lande is still in Muscatine, and they stay in contact every now and then. But it’s a relationship that started here in Muscatine, and it’s ongoing.

I will say that we have moved hopefully into the future, and we now have in our high school, four years of Mandarin language. We also have an orchestra that is fairly well-versed in the usage of Chinese instruments, which as you may know, are all stringed instruments. They have sent us some of these instruments, and we’ve learned to play them. And of course, every year, here in Muscatine, is a concert put on by an orchestra either from Beijing or from Shanghai. I believe we’ve done four of those already. And we’re done with this pandemic of the coronavirus, I look for more of those kinds of events to be scheduled.

That’s just another element of the relationship that we have with the People’s Republic of China. They’re outstanding musicians and they communicate with those in attendance at their concerts very, very well. It’s a pleasure to have them here. It’s a pleasure to know that they’ll be coming in the future, and we enjoy having them very much.

I guess, what I’m saying to you is, we’re a small community, and we have a friendly relationship with the People’s Republic of China: That isn’t going to change, and we really don’t care a lot about what they do in Washington, D.C., or what they do in Los Angeles, California. We have a relationship with the People’s Republic of China. They’re great people, they have a good sense of humor; and I wouldn’t mind having one of them as a neighbor.

[Mr. Hopkins then played a short clip from a very lively concert by the Chinese orchestra.]

SPEED: Just one correction: Former Mayor Hopkins misspoke: Actually, when Xi Jinping returned to Muscatine in 2012, he was the Vice-President, not the President at that time. And he came back, and that’s when the meeting was, and it was in 2012, not in 2016. We apologize, and the Mayor apologizes for that unintentional misspoken phrase.

Our final presentation is by Daisuke Kotegawa, Research Director at the Canon Institute, and former Executive Director for Japan at the International Monetary Fund.

“Recollection My Involvement in Economic Assistance”

DAISUKE KOTEGAWA: 1. In the mid-1980s, when I worked as a staff member of the World Bank, I had an opportunity to complain about the slow development of African countries despite a large amount of aid to Africa to a British and a French staff, both of whom had devoted their lives to economic development in Africa. Their answer was amazing. “Mr. Kotegawa. It is wrong to expect fast economic growth in Africa which can be compared to those in Asia and Japan. Because Africa is trying to achieve what humanity has done in 2000 years within 100 years.”

2. When I returned to Japan in 1987, I became the budget examiner in the Ministry of Finance in charge of the budget of the foreign economic assistance. We reviewed Japan’s basic policies regarding economic assistance to Africa, and we started to try to create a country that will become a model for development in Africa, that is, “Japan” in Africa. I was convinced that it was very important to create a Japan in Africa, because at my days at the World Bank, I realized that Asian countries found Japan as their model and hope, having come to believe that Asian countries can reach the level of Western countries if they work diligently like the Japanese.
3. The first step is to select the target country. The target country had to have a moderate economic scale, but small enough not to have internal contention such as tribal conflict. We chose Ghana, Cameroon and Malawi. As for Ghana, young and clean leader Rawlings were also a major factor. We poured all three kinds of economic aid into three countries: concessional loans with focus on the construction of economic infrastructure, grants focused on construction of social infrastructure in the medical and educational sector, and technical assistance with the aim of technology transfer through dispatching experts and inviting trainees.
4. A backlash from the former colonial powers was expected, and Japan, which had historically little relationship with African countries, lacked the know-how to build aid projects there. So, we made an arrangement with Crown Agents, a British aid agency, for consulting our projects in Africa. As a result, about one-third of its total annual income in the early ’90s came from Japan. Ghana, in particular, has achieved great economic growth and if we had continued to do so, a “Japan” in Africa could have been realized within 1990s.
5. However, having watched the success of such Japanese aid, the British and French began to be vigilant. Ms. Cresson, who became French prime minister in 1991, made such remarks as, “Japanese are yellow ants” and “The Japanese are enemies and are plotting to conquer the world without obeying the rules” and repeated such remarks as “Japanese economic assistance is Jurassic.” Against such criticism, Japan was forced to review its aid policy and had to reduce aid to Africa before Ghana became a Japan in Africa. Since then, proposals for UN Millennium 2000 Target, including the debt relief, which mainly targeted Japan’s yen loans, have been drafted mainly by the U.K., and Japan’s presence in the world of economic assistance has gradually been lost.
6. I think that there is a fundamental difference between Western concept of economic assistance and that of Japan. The underlining idea of Western aid is a charity. This leads to the emphasis on “humanitarian aid,” and the idea of economic independence of recipient country is scarce. On the other hand, the basic idea of Japan’s aid is recipient country’s economic growth and independence. This is the idea that flows to the root of Japan since the Meiji Restoration, which has been trying to catch up with and overtake the West, witnessing the plight of Asian colonies under imperialism.
7. On the issue of economic assistance policy, I had to fight with the Western countries wannabe scholars, critics, and mass media at home, as well as those abroad, with friends of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who had the same sense of mission. Mr. Ishikawa, who wrote several books at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was my greatest collaborator.
8. One day, a Japanese journalist came to me and started to criticize Japan’s aid policy. His argument was not original which echoed the well-known Western criticism of Japan. For example, he said that Japan built hospitals in developing countries, but only some wealthy people in the country can use such hospitals, and it is not for the poor general public. Or he said that Japan is building telephone network in developing countries where most people do not have a telephone, or that Japan has built international airports in the capital in order to advertise its aid. It would not benefit at all the general public in the developing country who did not have the chance to go abroad. He also took the example of the Philippines, claiming that “It is wrong that Japan has built a hospital for the rich in Manila. Sweden built apartments for the poor in the slums of Manila.” I asked him, “By the way, what would you be most worried about if you were asked by your company tomorrow to go to Manila next week?” He replied, “Whether I can call up Tokyo smoothly, whether is the airport there is fine, or whether there is a proper hospital.” So, I told him, ” What you said are exactly what foreign companies which make investment in the Philippines are concerned about. If there are no problems on such matters, overseas companies will build factories in the Philippines in search for cheap labor and hire people with low wages with minimal education. In this way, employment increases, and the gap between the rich and the poor decreases. I visited to the Smoky Mountain in Manila, which is the core of slum where Sweden built an apartment. The place is a garbage dump, and residents sleep on the bench on the pile of garbage and they protect themselves from rain by the roof made by tablecloth. It stinks very bad. People living there dig out what can be used from the pile of garbage and sell it in the city. The apartment built by Sweden became a slum again in less than six months. Because residents don’t have regular employments, and no income. It is not possible to maintain the apartment no matter how splendid the dwelling is. Japan’s aid help companies increase employment by building economic infrastructure such as railways, ports, airports, roads, power plants, and telecommunication networks with yen loans, creating preconditions for overseas companies to enter the country, and help provide facilities for basic education as a social infrastructure. Gradually, technology will be transferred from the foreign company to the local company, and the industry will grow in the developing country. Just as we were providing economic assistance to Asian countries with this way of thinking, the value of the yen doubled as a result of the Plaza Accord, and the relocation of factories to Asia began by Japanese companies that were no longer able to stand up to labor costs in Japan. The relocation began in Malaysia, where politics were stable and the power generation capacity built by yen loans was firm, and proceeded to Thailand, Indonesia, and China, and the so-called geese-type economic growth started in Asia. This steady economic development continued until the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s.

I allocated to my Japanese colleagues to join the Belt and Road Initiative as proposed by China, especially when they proposed the establishment of AIIB, and also with the United States. Because I thought the cooperation among these three countries are the best mix to build up economic infrastructure in the developing countries. Because, in my view, the Chinese have a shortfall in their capacity to build up the new projects, which is actually the major part of the advantage for Japanese bankers as well as American bankers.

So United States and Japan can draw up a kind of blueprint for economic development and China should be in charge of financing and also actual construction of those projects. And after the completion of those projects, Japan would like to take the lead in maintenance and the rehabilitation of those completed projects, if they are needed. Because this is the kind of area that Japanese companies are quite good at.

So I believe this is the best way of collaborating, for these three countries for the future of this globe.

Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you very much, Dr. Kotegawa.

We’re about to go to the questions and answers. What we’re going to do is to allow the panelists who are with us live, to have some cross-talk, to discuss things and to respond to what they have all heard. Not everyone is with us live.

And just prior to doing that, I’d like to introduce my colleague Diane Sare, who has something to say.

DIANE SARE: Right now, we are going to have a greeting from the leader of the LaRouche Society in South Africa by video — Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane.

RAMASIMONG PHILLIP TSOKOLIBANE: From the Republic of South Africa, I offer my greetings to those of you gathered virtually around the globe for this important conference. My name is Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane, and it is my great honor to lead the LaRouche Movement in South Africa.

The matters upon which you are deliberating will determine whether or not mankind survives our turbulent times. Around the globe, people are in the streets, rising up to protest the intolerable injustice of the dying neo-colonial order that has enslaved all of us. It is a deadly monetarist order that values pieces of speculative financial paper above human life. The collapse of this global British financial empire is certain. What will replace it is not. What must be brought into being is a New World Economic Order based on the unleashing of the greatest power in the universe: the power of human creativity to build on this planet a world of hope, peace, and posterity, where we will be truly, finally free.

We shall extend our dominion beyond Earth into the vast expanse of the universe beyond. This was the mighty dream of the great Lyndon LaRouche, who taught us that the final conjunctural crisis of the old evil British Empire was coming, and that we must, as revolutionaries, be prepared to seize the moment to shepherd the great change for the good.

As we deliberate today, we must remember the teachings of Mr. LaRouche. It is now truly his time, a time in which troubles can be turned into opportunities. To do otherwise, would be to allow those evil people, who lorded over us as the masters of the old empire, to continue their rule in an even more brutish and deadly form. A global fascist order whose policy intention it is to kill more than three-quarters of all people on Earth — that is, if they don’t stumble into a general thermonuclear war that kills all of us. As the COVID-19 virus slashes its deadly path across my continent, which will leave tens of millions dead in its wake, if not more, we see the results of the British Empire policy of enforced underdevelopment, combined with the equally deadly famine and attempts to start wars here and around the globe. We can count more millions murdered through the Empire’s policy.

It does not have to be this way. LaRouche’s policies and programs for development and jobs point the way to the future. For Africa, it is go with LaRouche, or die with the old neo-colonial empire. Africa wants to lead, and we have, with some help, the means to survive and prosper. My country, the only full-set economy on the continent, can help produce both the machinery and the machine tools required for the industrialization of Africa. We can help train the hundreds of millions of new productive workers that will be needed. We have one of the most advanced nuclear energy industries on the globe, which is under constant attack from London.

So, it is our future and the future of billions of Africans to come, that this conference is discussing. Best wishes for the success of your deliberations.

Panel 1: Questions & Answers

SPEED: Thank you very much, Phillip Tsokolibane.

So, now we’re going to go to our live panelists: That will be Helga Zepp-LaRouche, I see Dr. Elders who is there; and Mr. Meshchanov is there — great.

I just want to first ask any of the panelists if they have any response or any thoughts about what they’ve heard? Helga, I’d like to start with you.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think the reason why we wanted to have this conference is to show a way how governments can actually work together; how people can support that, and in that way help to create an environment where the absolute urgent question of a new world economic order, a new financial system can actually be put on the table.

I’m very encouraged, because what Dr. Jin did is very much our approach; that you need a dialogue of cultures. That you need to look for those ideas which resonate in the other culture even if the predicates are different. I think he did an excellent job in doing that.

I think the fact that Mr. Meshchanov chose to focus on Africa is a sign of the times, because I believe that the fate of the Africa continent is really what will decide if we are morally fit to survive. If we cannot get our act together and work together as nations to help to overcome the dangers coming from the locusts, the famine, the pandemic, I think that this is the most crucial focus. Also, to put aside all kinds of geopolitical contrary interests and really work together in the common task of getting humanity into a different age, really into a different era.

I was very happy with what Dr. Elders said, because I think this idea to call on the youth; that they have to have an absolutely important role, because it’s their future, it’s their world. Young people always like to talk to other people from other countries and work together, so I think that is one of the leverages how we can influence the governments to go in the direction in which they need to go.

Naturally, very delightful was what Mayor Hopkins demonstrated, because it really beats back the idea that small communities can’t do much. He has demonstrated that it can be done, and the fact that the great community of Muscatine has a relationship to Xi Jinping, it just is very bold and is a very good example. I think especially in the end, when he blended in these musical performances, it touched off exactly what needs to be touched off — namely, love between different cultures. Because different cultures are not a threat, they are actually an enrichment once you start to know them and to encounter them.

I also want to thank Ding Yifan, who is an old acquaintance of ours going back to the 1990s, and so is Mr. Kotegawa. So, I think this was really a very powerful and very useful demonstration of how you can work together on different levels and set an example.

SPEED: Counselor Meshchanov, I have a particular thing I’d like to ask you, because we had a question which is going to come your way, and also your speech very much dealt with the question of Africa. But one of the questions that came in, I think you can maybe answer as you give us your own reflections is: “What is President Putin’s thinking in calling for a P5 summit [Five-Power summit], and how does this compare with Mrs. LaRouche’s proposal?”

MESHCHANOV: Thank you for your question, but first off, thank you for inviting us. Again, thank you for the opportunity to speak and deliberate on very acute and intelligent problems of the current moment.

Actually, at the United Nations, we have been involved in organizing the summit even before the pandemic, and we’re still looking forward to having it under the new circumstances. We proceed from our President Vladimir Putin’s own statements earlier this year from Jerusalem, when proposing the summit of the United Nations Security Council Five. The rationale for organizing the summit is not to miss, as he said, new sprouts of hate and discrimination between people and peoples.

According to our President, the country’s founders, the United Nations, and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, that the responsibility for preserving civilization lies with them. These countries are called upon to become an example for other states in this regard. So, such a summit would demonstrate loyalty of countries to their responsibilities; countries that combatted together back to back against Nazism and fascism, back 75 years ago. [http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62646]

So, this is how we see it, and how we see the objectives of this summit. We believe that this current moment unfortunately has contributed to this rationale, because borders and discrimination and inequality between countries are getting worse. That is why we have selected the issue of Africa for our presentation at this event of the Schiller Institute. Because we are strongly convinced that, as one of the previous speakers has stated, and it’s commonplace in the United Nations, no one is safe, if someone is not safe.

Reflecting on my colleagues’ presentations, I was highly impressed by our friend from Muscatine’s presentation on the cultural links between the peoples of the United States and China; specifically because my previous posts were somehow associated with promoting direct links between people, between human beings, in consular posts in Greece and Mongolia. It’s very timely now to speak about culture, about eternal values that unite peoples and actually can overcome the politicizing trend in international economic relations.

We also, to conclude, speak of Africa, and many thanks to our colleague from South Africa, a member country of the BRICS association, an association that we’re trying to build on principles of dignity and respect for sovereignty, and promoting independent ways of making decisions. That is the only way our new multipolar world is capable of saving humanity from new conflicts and new wars. Thank you.

SPEED: Thank you very much. Dr. Elders, we’re going to ask you for your comments, but I also see someone who is a colleague of yours, who I think is up there on the screen. If I’m not mistaken, that is Dr. Kildare Clarke from New York City. I know Dr. Clarke has sort of a short time, and he’s been waiting in the queue. Dr. Clarke, is there something you’d like to say, before we hear from Dr. Elders?

DR. KILDARE CLARKE: I would like to say a lot, and I don’t think I probably have the time here. So, for the 4 o’clock youth meeting, I hope I can get by. I agree a lot with Dr. Elders. The problem to me is that I recognize that we’ve got to fundamentally change the educational system in this country, if we really want to get out of the problems we are facing. And we cannot continue to have groups upon groups, planning groups and proposals — we’ve got to act emergently. We’ve got to change educational systems; we do not have to wait until he tries to get to high school or college, before he knows that he’s going to go to medical school. These things can begin in the elementary school. You’ve got to expose people. When they are exposed, they get interested. We are selectively excluding a large part of the population who can become excellent healthcare workers. They might not start in medical school. They could be assistants, learn, understand what it takes to get there, and go back to school. But if we do not expose them now, we’re going to lose a whole generation of excellent physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, because we don’t think it was OK to educate them now….

SPEED: I need to tell you, Dr. Clarke, your audio is bad. I think we got the basic thrust of what you were saying, which is you were pointing out that the entire educational system has to be changed. If you didn’t know this, we’ve been having some technical problems all morning. Dr. Elders, were you able to make out what he was saying?

DR. ELDERS: Yes.

SPEED: Dr. Clarke, I’m going to ask you to let her respond, and also get her reflections, because I think she knew clearly what you were getting at. So, Dr. Elders?

DR. ELDERS: I thank first of all, the Schiller Institute for putting on this conference. I think it’s been excellent in bringing up some problems that we all have. One of the things we all have to know is, whatever we’re talking about doing, you can’t do it unless you’re healthy. So, I feel very strongly we’ve got to have healthy populations, and we’ve got to start early. I agree with Dr. Clarke. I always tell people that children are half as tall as they’ll ever be by the time they’re three. They know half as much as they’ll ever know by the time they’re four. Hope, will, and drive has been determined by the time they’re five. So, we’ve got to start early. Children can’t be what they can’t see. So, we’ve got to make sure that they’re exposed, and we can start them early. They don’t have to start out being a brain surgeon, but they can start out being what they can be.

And most of all, we’ve got to keep them healthy. All human beings feel that the three things that they need to be, more than anything else, they need to feel that they can be successful. We need to make sure they’re healthy, educated, motivated, and have hope for the future. I thought, that’s where we can start, and every country can start with that. What we’ve heard about what we’re doing for countries, but we’ve got to start with health. And we’ve got to educate them. You can’t keep an ignorant population healthy. So, we’ve got to start with educating the population, and we’ve certainly got to start with doing everything we can to keep them healthy. We have to know that we’ve got our trust and global solidarity. If we don’t trust each other to do the things we need to do, we can’t get it done. We have to go out and work in the communities. Find out what the communities need, rather than giving them what we think they need.

I especially enjoyed the Counselor from Japan’s talk on the things that they were doing. Sometimes you think you’re doing exactly what a country needs. Going into Africa and doing what they needed; but maybe they needed something else. Involve the African nations to find out what does the nation feel that they need, and help them develop what they think they want and need. And we may have to start in our small communities, starting out with the young people; training them to be community health workers. Later, they grow up to be nurses, and nurse-practitioners, physicians, and then to being super-specialists. But we want to improve the health of the world, which we’ve got to do, because we all know this coronavirus has taught us that anytime one country is not healthy, all the rest, we’re all at risk. So, we’ve got to make sure that we help every country to be healthy and improve their health. We’ve got to start with the young people who are going to determine what the world’s going to be. We have to do everything we can to train them to be the best that they can be.

I never fail to go to an old Chinese proverb that says that “The society grows great when old men and old women plant trees under whose shade they know they’ll never sit.” To me, this institute, what you’re trying to do with the Schiller Institute is pull the nations together in solidarity, globally, so that they can plant trees for the bright young people of the future to sit under. Thank you.

SPEED: Helga, do you have anything you’d like to say at this point, either to Dr. Clarke, or in response to this?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: No, I just feel very — my heart is moved by what you are saying, because it is that kind of human spirit which is needed now to move mountains. And these mountains need to be moved quickly, because the dangers are many. So, I’m very happy that you are saying what you are saying.

SPEED: So Dr. Clarke, we’re going to move on, because we have other questions. But I need to know if you will be able to join us for the later panel, when we will have a panel of youth. That’s going to be later this afternoon. I don’t know if your schedule allows it, but it would be important.

DR. CLARKE: I’ll make myself available.

SPEED: And we have to do something about your audio over there on the other side, too. Thank you.

Diane, we’re going to come back to you now. Do you have something for us?

SARE: Yes. I have a question from the Ambassador from Ghana to Canada. But I actually wanted to bring up one thing, since it turns out Mr. Meshchanov has been involved in cultural affairs, which is to express my desire that at some point, somehow, the city of St. Petersburg, which apparently had an absolutely phenomenal chorus, was the location of the premier of Beethoven’s sublime work, the Missa Solemnis. I know the chorus there must have been excellent, because our chorus is working on it, and it’s very difficult. This being the Year of Beethoven, and Beethoven being a composer who I think really embodies the love of mankind as a whole, I think it would be something we have to figure out how to commemorate, if not this year because of the COVID, then as soon as possible.

So now, having said that, I have a question from Ambassador J. Ayikoi Otoo, who is the High Commissioner from Ghana to Ottawa, Canada. He writes:

“I think the suggestion for four leaders to meet to brainstorm on the effects of the pandemic in order to find universal solutions is a brilliant one. But, with President Trump reeling under pressure for not having taken the pandemic seriously, and with this leading to several deaths, with President Trump pushing the blame on China and making derogatory remarks about China — Can you see these two leaders working together? Considering the fact that President Trump recently withdrew from a Zoom conference organized by leaders of the EU and China, on the subject of the raising of money to fight the pandemic worldwide, what are the prospects for the four leaders, whom you cite [I think he’s referring to Mrs. LaRouche], to come together?”

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: First of all, I want to make one important correction in your question, because it may be true that President Trump was not picking up on the warnings coming from China quickly enough, but neither did the European countries. They also lost precious time. But I want to emphatically make the point that this pandemic would not be a pandemic if there would have been a good health system in every country. And that is a provable fact because, in Wuhan and Hubei province, the Chinese were able to contain it, to put strict quarantine, and then after two months it was under control. That approach, if you had a similar health system in every country in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, in Europe, you could have stopped this from becoming a pandemic. Therefore, I think it’s very important to say that the blame of all this is the neo-liberal system which prevented the building up of infrastructures and health systems in the whole world.

This was a point made by my late husband already in 1973. He warned, and actually set up a biological holocaust taskforce to investigate the effects of the IMF policies at that time. And in the following years, of the so-called IMF conditionalities, which prevented developing countries from investing in their health systems, because they were forced to pay their debt burden first. These conditionalities actually created the condition that the pandemic even could arise. Naturally, the predecessors of Trump, such as the Bushes, such as Obama, they did much more to contribute to create the conditions than President Trump in his admittedly slightly delayed reaction. So, I just wanted to correct that, because it’s very easy to say it’s the guilt of Trump, but he definitely did not cause the problem 50 years ago.

I think that unfortunately, I believe that this situation will get so much worse. I think the surges which you see now in more than two dozen states of the United States, you see it in Brazil, in India. In general, it is estimated that this is not even a second wave; this is still the first wave which has not yet peaked. Several of the American epidemiologists and virologists said it’s no point to talk of a peak; the peak is not yet here.

So, I fear that the kind of collapse which we are seeing right now in terms of the effects of the economic shutdown, is also just the beginning. I think the situation will worsen in the short-term, long before the election takes place in November, and that the kind of social ferment which exists right now — which in part is due to the murder of George Floyd and others, but it’s also naturally manipulated and taken over by people who just want to create social trouble in the same way like President Putin warned that Trump would be faced with a “Maidan.”

So, it definitely has absolutely elements of that as well. I think this will get worse, and that means our intervention in the United States, but also around the world will be absolutely crucial. Because it is my absolute conviction that if you have more examples like that of the Mayor of Muscatine, people who just start relationships and create an environment which counters the absolutely malicious lies in the mainstream media and the crazy talk by such people as Marco Rubio or Menendez, or such people who just are completely irresponsible in what they say. There should be a standard of truth that you shouldn’t say things which are made up; but some of these people have lost all hesitations to just, for their own purposes, lie.

So, I think it’s very important that this is being countered by a lot of citizens. And I think if we can get this initiative, which I proposed with this taskforce to find solutions on the level of the coincidence of opposites, that can become an important factor, because the idea that you have to replace geopolitical confrontation with cooperation to solve this pandemic and all the other problems together, must become the steamroller in the population. I also think that if there is a chorus of countries — from Africa, from Latin America, from other places — and individuals of positions, who demand that the problems of humanity are so big that they only can be solved by the leading countries; the most powerful economically, the most powerful militarily, and those countries which have the most population, that they must get together. Because where else should the solution come from?

I think if we all work together, we can orchestrate an environment where these ideas are being picked up, and all the advantages which lie in that may convince even those countries which seem to be at loggerheads right now, to actually come together and work together, because it will benefit them more than to keep the confrontation going.

SPEED: Thank you. Our next question is from Isaiah K. Koech, Counsellor for the Kenyan High Commission [embassy] in Ottawa, Canada. I think this question will be largely for Helga and for Mr. Meshchanov.

“Whereas there is advocacy for the world’s powerful countries to meet in the ‘Four-Power’ Summit to discuss solutions that would mitigate global crises, how sure are we that the powerful leaders will incorporate issues that directly affect African countries? (This question is based on the premise that the Four-Power Summit will not have any representation from the African continent which is equally large and full of potential).”

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, Mr. Meshchanov, if you want to go first?

MESHCHANOV: OK. With this, I will try to briefly focus on several questions posed before, starting with a positive conversation of our colleague referring to cultural links. We would like to reiterate our deep understanding that culture is stronger than politics, and we are availing of this opportunity to thank the Schiller Institute for issuing brilliant chorus song in Russian associated with Victory Day in May, which we would highly encourage everyone to see a brilliant and bright presentation of cultural links and culture bridging gaps between our countries. We are deeply appreciative of this work by the Schiller Institute. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcLGy8yIOVM&t=5s]

And of course the Year of Beethoven deserves to be commemorated. Our embassies, consulates, and missions all over the world are open, especially in these difficult times, to any proposals of collaboration in the cultural sphere. So, thank you very much for your remarks.

As for the four leaders summit proposal by the Schiller Institute, we believe it’s a great idea, and not contradicting the Russian President Vladimir Putin. I would like once again to reiterate the idea of five countries, specifically the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, was issued and proposed in association with the 75-year anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War — the Second World War, talking globally. It is addressing the idea of recollecting the common responsibility of our countries for preventing discrimination, hated, hatred on borders between countries, bearing in mind the responsibility lying with these specific countries, which are founders of the United Nations, and winners in the Second World War.

So, that was the rationale to reiterate, but that doesn’t prejudice against deliberating on any alternative forums. I’m speaking in my personal capacity of course now, but that reminds me of the rationale behind the establishment of the BRICS association, which somehow started back in the 1990s from the ideas of our outstanding and well-known academic and diplomat, and former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Yevgeny Primakov, who tabled the idea of Russia, India, and China collaboration and systemic cooperation, meetings, and summits. That was sort of an idea that could also be taken into consideration, because our great predecessor Mr. Primakov foresaw the rising role of India, and the rising role of African countries, as a natural process of moving forward the multipolar world after the collapse of the bipolar system. That is why we strongly believe in multilateralism, multilateral forums.

Coming to the third question of the United States and China, and the possibility of cooperation, and all the controversies and conflicts that we see now. We also do not have very smooth and easy relationships with the Western world and the United States, as you are, of course, aware. But still we try to find mutual interests; that we did even under the Cold War situation back many decades. Now, something that contributes to finding solutions is the pressure of business circles, investors, diasporas, cultural links, parliamentary relations. Even being oppressed by coercive measures by several Western countries, we stick to the policy of cooperation and collaboration with our Western partners. China is also objectively interested in developing relationships with the United States, as well as the United States cannot do without China in the modern economic system. That is why we are sort of optimistic on U.S.-China reconciliation.

To focus briefly on African countries, we believe that the development of the African continent recently, not only in terms of economic growth, but also diversifying trade and investor partnerships, and maturing political collaboration between African countries, will contribute to their capability of speaking in one voice. That probably opens good perspectives of African countries joining the global governance system which is going to be revisited and reformulated. As I also stated in my presentation, our country has always spoken on raising involvement of African countries in any global forums. It should be inclusive, not exclusive.

With this, I thank you.

SPEED: OK, very good. Helga, do you have anything?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I would like to add that there is probably not any problem globally, both regionally and economically and otherwise, which could not be solved if the geopolitical confrontation between the United States, Russia, and China in particular, would be eliminated. Because the entire game plan of what we call the British Empire, which is really the City of London, Wall Street, the financial institutions which are behind the neo-liberal system; their entire ability to keep the rule over the world’s institutions depends on the geopolitical game to divide the United States and Russia and China. People don’t realize that it is exactly the same forces financial, media, political, who are behind the coup attempt against Trump; who are behind the anti-Russia campaign; and who are behind the anti-China campaign. Once you realize that, you have a completely different view, and the reason why my husband originally many years ago picked up on the idea of Prime Minister Primakov, and added the United States to this combination of Russia, China, and India was the recognition that you need a combination of states which are powerful enough to be stronger than the City of London and Wall Street. Once these four, or especially those three, get together, then you can solve any other problem. I have said many times, this summit is not going to be only one summit. Because the problems are so deep and many, that you probably need a whole summit process, where you start to put the kinds of mechanisms like for a New Bretton Woods system into motion; you start to take care of the cultural question, the health system. So, I look at it more that once you have this format, that the presidents of those countries start to cooperate to solve the common problems of mankind, you can develop it to become an integrative process where naturally other countries, other continents, other states are absolutely welcomed to support that process. But I think it’s important to first put together the core of power which can actually change the world, and not just have it like many conferences where you have a democratic kind of back and forth and nothing gets accomplished. I think this is also why President Putin wants to keep the veto power in the Permanent Five countries so that it doesn’t degenerate into just a debate where no results can be accomplished. It should be open; we are organizing that countries such as Japan or Germany, Italy, France, countries from Africa. They should absolutely support that. The best thing is to it now; to add your voice that such a summit must take place, and I think it can be done. I think it’s absolutely doable, but we need a worldwide mobilization to accomplish it.

SPEED: We’re getting a lot of questions, and that’s very good. But we have the problem that we lost some time at the beginning of the broadcast. So, what we’re going to do here is, first of all, we’re going to encourage people to keep going with the questions. Several of them are with respect to the coronavirus pandemic and related matters. The next panel, which will begin at 1:30 p.m., will continue to cover that, and we will try to refer some of the questions there. Also, we certainly will refer all of your questions to any of the panelists to have them answer.

We’re going to take two more questions, one of which will come from me, and then the other one will be from Diane. We’ll then ask the panelists to conclude.

This is a question from Dr. Abdul Alim-Muhammad of Washington, D.C.; well-known to the Schiller Institute, and very important in our work over the years. This one, I believe, is for both Dr. Elders and for Helga: “How can the rest of the world learn and benefit from the Chinese and Cuban collaboration in flattening the curve of the epidemic centered in Wuhan? How can those lessons be applied here in the United States and elsewhere, like Brazil and countries in Africa, to flatten the curve? Why isn’t Cuba’s interferon alpha-2B available to save American lives? Should there be an international standard of criminal public health neglect?” Then, he just appends to this “The Crime of Tuskegee”; he’s talking about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. “Was the deliberate withholding of known effective treatments to suit a racist agenda? Is history repeating on a global scale?”

So, that’s his question. Either Dr. Elders or Helga, whichever would like to start.

DR. ELDERS: I think we all realize that we have a global pandemic now. But as in all pandemics, we’ve got to have the right leaders if we want to come out of this, and I think what the Schiller Institute is doing, we’ve got to have the kind of leaders who are willing to lead. And they have got to make the sacrifices and do the things that they need to do to lead and move forward. Our public health system has not been well funded. We’ve got to invest more in our public health, but when we think of public health, we’ve got to always remember, that public health is not just about individuals. It’s about the whole community; it’s all of us. We’ve all got to be involved, and you can’t keep our people healthy if we don’t educate them to be healthy. I think that that’s an important issue that all of our communities have to be aware of. The reason? I won’t say the reason, I don’t know the reasons. Some of the reasons why we in the United States, our curve is not flattened as well as that in China and some of the other countries is because of our culture and the education of our people. We’re not willing to do the things; we know we need to do them, but we just didn’t do them. Like our social distancing, which we could do. Handwashing. Wearing a mask. Then, everybody wanted to get back, and start socializing again. So, these are things the Chinese were willing to do and did. They enforced it, and we did not do it. That was partly related to our leadership, that we’ve not done.

If we think about the Tuskegee Institute, I think that was a public health, leadership mistake. We’ve worked through that now. I do not feel in any way that anybody was trying to take anything away or trying to not provide therapy or treatment. And I do not feel that we’re not trying to do everything we can now to make sure we do what we can to eliminate the coronavirus. But we do not have a vaccine; we do not have adequate medications. All we have are the public health issues that we know we need to follow in order to get it done. We’ve got to educate our people. The reason why we’re seeing more problems in our very low-income, less well-educated people is because of what’s happened. We know that we’ve got to address those issues if we’re really going to make a difference.

And I think the same is true for Brazil. I think Brazil is behaving much like America; we’re not doing the things we know we need to do.

SPEED: OK. Helga, do you have anything, or should we continue?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I just would like to add briefly that if people remember, in January, when China started to take these very rigid measures — quarantining people, tracing contacts, cutting out social contact by allowing families to go shopping only once every three days and only one member of the family — all of these things. There was a huge freak-out in the West, saying “This is a dictatorship! See how horrible! They’re violating human rights again.” But in reality, what helped them to contain is aided by a deep cultural difference between Western and Chinese culture. In the West, it was a big accomplishment that the rights of individuals were held high. This is a good thing, but unfortunately, this individuality became excessive. People mistook freedom with liberties and hedonism. What Dr. Elders just said, people wanted to go back to the beaches, they wanted to go back to partying. You have these really insane behaviors which are an expression of such exaggerated individuality. While the Chinese culture — and all Asian cultures, for that matter — have traditionally much more focus on the common good as the primary thing. And that the individual right is sort of subsumed under the right of the community and the cultural good. The individual cannot prosper if the community does not prosper. I think this is a cultural difference which I think is very much worth to study. Because we will come out of this pandemic with the need to adjust some of our values. They may not be exactly what people tout to be the so-called “Western values”; because these Western values — that’s a whole other subject. But I think we have to really think how we can give humanity principles for our durable survival. And that is part of this process that we are trying to do with these kinds of conferences; that people start to really reflect and say, “How can we become a species of rationality and creativity, and not compete with some piggies who are trying to get to the trough the quickest?” I think it’s really a fundamental question of identity, of moral values, which has to be addressed.

SPEED: OK. Last question for this panel will be from Diane Sare.

SARE: This question is from Dr. Katherine Alexander-Theodotou of the Anglo-Hellenic and Cypriot Law Association. It is in four parts.

“1. What do you suggest to do in an effort to bring the European nations together to reflect on democracy, basing the institutions on democratic lines, creating a real democratic union, including Russia? The vast culture of the civilization of Europe will be the fortress of prosperity and peace.

“2. How can the Schiller Institute assist? The Schiller Institute can assist by continuously advocating unity, cooperation, education, and preventing the undermining of nations’ sovereignty of Europe by others ruled by undemocratic institutions such as Turkey, threatening the sovereignty of its neighbors such as Greece and Cyprus.

“3. There is a need for European health policy and coordination of the health authorities in order to have common standards of health policy and provide competent healthcare to the peoples of Europe.

“4. There is the question of slave populations throughout Europe, especially in the U.K., where there are almost 1 million people living for almost 15 years with no identity, as they are immigrants [I think she means no legal identity] whose voice is being suppressed by the immigration laws. There are also others in other European countries. How can we stop this system of slave labor?”

Those are the questions.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think this present EU needs to be changed, because I think the EU has developed into a gigantic bureaucracy which is very little in touch with the interests of its member states. I could cite you a whole list of examples for this. I think we have to really think how to integrate Russia. I think one of the lessons Putin said in his article was that there was a failure before World War II to develop an integrative security system. I’m quite interested — I’m putting it carefully — I’m quite interested about the report that between Putin and Macron in a long phone conversation yesterday, Macron said that he stands for a Europe which goes from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which obviously would mean that you really talk more about the Eurasian Economic Union, the Belt and Road Initiative integrated into one body. I think I’m a firm believer in the principle of sovereignty. I think this present crisis has demonstrated that in any case the EU did nothing. It was the nations which jumped in and recognized that you need food security in a nation; you need sovereign control over your production of medicine and health equipment.

Nicolaus of Cusa, who I quoted earlier, was the first one to develop the concept of why only a sovereign nation-state which has a reciprocal relationship between the government and the governed, which I think is the only way how you can guarantee how the common good is being defended; especially under conditions of crisis. So, I think this present EU, which is trying to attach itself to a NATO globalization, to play all kinds of geopolitical games, is not necessarily the vehicle with which Europe should be reformed. Maybe that should be the subject of a whole other webinar, because this is a very complicated question. But I think an alliance of sovereign nation-states in the spirit of de Gaulle would make much more sense to represent the interests of all the people.

As for the slave labor, I think that has come out, that this present neo-liberal system depends not only on the exploitation of cheap labor in countries like Bangladesh or some other countries, but that you have slave labor conditions inside the Western countries. Like in Germany, where it’s now seven or eight slaughterhouses which have all Romanians and people from other East European countries, who are living in horrible conditions. They have become the breeding ground for COVID-19 break-outs, because there is no health system, no social distancing is possible. I think taking care of the health system is the first precondition for everything to function, exactly as Dr. Elders says. If you are not healthy, you cannot do anything. So, protection of the health of the citizens has to really start in every country, not just in some.

SPEED: All right. So, we’re now at the conclusion. We’ve got about one minute per person for responses. I’d like to get kind of a summary idea. We’ll start with you, Mr. Meshchanov, if you have any remarks that you’d like to make in conclusion.

MESHCHANOV: Thank you. I had some technical problems, and unfortunately couldn’t catch the last part of the discussion. But now, wrapping up what has been laid out in this very important discussion, I see in an optimistic way what is happening. Meaning that when the situation is up-ending, and this is something that has been happening in any crisis in history, the word crisis derives from the Asian-Greek word of krisi, which means taking decisions; taking choice. So, we need to take the right decision, the right choice; and I fully support Mrs. Helga LaRouche’s statement on changing values after this crisis. We believe that in this crisis, constructive forces such as the Schiller Institute and many others in our country as well, are heard better. That’s probably one of the systemic significances of this crisis. Briefly, speaking on our President’s article, which you have repeatedly referred to, Mr. Putin underscores in his article devoted to the 75th anniversary of the war end, the Munich conspiracy. That is something that he starts with, but he finishes his article by underscoring the significance of cooperation, collaboration, and shared responsibility of great powers. That is why we are optimistic on this future cooperation which sometimes crises and great systemic catastrophes can contribute to.

SPEED: Thank you, Counselor. Dr. Elders, any concluding remarks?

DR. ELDERS: This has been one excellent conference, and I think what is talked about is how in all conferences we need to trust each other, we need to learn to work together, and that our cooperation and trust is going to do more to overcome this virus and the health of our people than anything else. The more we squabble among each other, the more this virus grows, divides, and spreads. So, the first thing is, we want to improve our economy, educate our people. We’ve got to first do everything we can to keep them healthy. We just can’t develop an excellent working society unless we have a healthy society. We know how; and it’s time we began to use the knowledge we know and make our leaders stop squabbling about where, when, and how it started. Let’s look at what we can do to make a solution. We need to get all nations that we can involved, so we can all work together to try and make a healthy global world. That’s how I feel we’re going to also address our economy.

SPEED: Thank you. Helga?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I would like to bring people’s memories back to what we saw in the beginning — the video of Lyn; who focussed very much on the fact that we are the creative species. At least, the only one which has been discovered in the universe so far. I think if we strengthen that quality of our species which distinguishes us from all other ones, the creativity, then also the question of trust will be easy. Because a human being who relates to the creativity of another one, doesn’t have prejudices. At best, you have a wish to increase the creativity of the other one for the common good of all of humanity. I think it is that rethinking of trying to make people better people, to make them do more good, to really get rid of all of this hedonistic decay of our culture which prevents people from being creative. Because if people just want to go partying and get drunk and have dope, they are ruining that which makes them human. I think may be hopefully one of the outcomes, because I believe absolutely that we need a renaissance of cultural values, of Classical culture. That we all have to learn to think like Beethoven, and to think like Lyndon LaRouche. Then we are best equipped to deal with this and any other problem.

SPEED: Thank you. I want to thank all of the panelists who were with us today. We’re going to conclude this first panel. But I think we managed to soldier through all of the difficulties that may have some metaphorical importance to what we’re going to have to do in the world as a whole to make this dialogue work as well.

Den 22. april (EIRNS) – Bortset fra reel krig, ser vi en optrapning af ekstreme diplomatiske beskyldninger, juridiske kneb, og militære provokationer, der udgør et angreb på internationalt samarbejde, netop når der er allermest brug for et sådant mod pandemien, og mod den underliggende monetaristiske og malthusianske virus. Tag ikke fejl, dette er ikke blot en eller anden vedblivende britisk geopolitik, gennemført af en flok tosser. De farlige fjendtligheder, fokuseret på det afgørende forhold mellem præsidenterne Donald Trump og Xi Jinping, er tilrettelagt for at forpurre det dybgående potentiale ved Schiller Instituttets internationale politiske arrangement denne weekend – og mobiliseringen omkring dette, hvilket er et uundværligt element for at forandre den samlede verdens dagsorden i en positiv retning. 
 
Vores væsentlige rolle er at øge vores egen rækkevidde og rekrutteringsproces. 
 
Kort sagt er der, hvad angår Kinas og USA’s forhold, som blev fejret i New York City i går ved en (virtuel) ankomstceremoni for flere fly med medicinsk udstyr fra Kina, en række parallelle tiltag i gang for at forsøge at smadre den venskabelige dynamik mellem Trump og Xi. Udenrigsminister Mike Pompeo afholdt i dag en pressekonference, hvor han langede ud efter Kinas kommunistiske Parti og Verdenssundhedsorganisationen for at dække over kilden og spredningen af SARS-CoV-2-virusset. I går aftes medvirkede Trumps rådgiver, Peter Navarro, chef for Kontoret for Handels- og Produktionspolitik og koordinator for den Nationale Forsvarslov, på Fox News for heftigt at angribe og anklage Kina for ”fire drab”: for at ”masseproducere” Wuhan-virusset i et laboratorium; for at gemme det i ugevis, bag Verdenssundhedsorganisationens ryg; for at ”støvsuge” antivirus-medikamenter op; og for at sende ”forfalskede” versioner til USA. Han påstod også, at den amerikanske befolkning troede på hans nedrige nonsens. 
 
I går blev Missouri den først stat til at anlægge erstatningssag mod Kina for angivelig dårlig håndtering af virusset. I dag meddelte Mississippi, at de vil gøre det samme. Listen fortsætter, og inkluderer militær konfrontation. USA’s flåde har tre skibe i det Sydkinesiske Hav, i nærheden af et kinesisk overvågningsfartøj. 
 
Alt imens, verdens pandemi og økonomiske sammenbrud kræver overvejelser og handling – ikke løgne og aggression. For eksempel modtog FN’s sikkerhedsråd en briefing fra David Beasley, den administrerende direktør af Verdens Fødevareprogram, angående det øjeblikkelige behov for komplette og pålidelige mængder af basisfødevarer, opdelt til 36 lande, der er fuldstændig afhængige af dette for at overleve. Han advarede om en ”hungersnødspandemi” blandt 265 millioner mennesker. 

Gennemfør dette: Der er eksperter, i de internationale kulisser, til at rådslå om at realisere denne fødevarelivline – fra at sikre landbrugsproduktionen på begge hemisfærer, til transportlogistikken. Det samme må ske for alle grundlæggende områder – industri, energi, vand, transport, brændstof. Dette er den grundlæggende understøtning af de pandemiske nødforanstaltninger, og for det globale sundhedsmæssige sikkerhedssystem, som må oprettes. 

Den 13. maj (EIRNS)—Der har været et voksende antal alvorlige advarsler fra forskellige kilder, der advarer, at hvis vi, som nationer og individer, ikke forandrer tingenes gang, kunne det føre til ”den store”. Men dette er en alvorlig fejltagelse, betonede Helga Zepp-LaRouche i dag, i sit ugentlige internationale webcast. Problemet, sagde hun, er at folk fokuserer på aspekter af krisen—såsom pandemien, finanskrisen, den globale hungersnød, krigsfaren—men ikke ser den overordnede årsag: at vi befinder os i et sammenbrud under opsejling i 50 år. Der findes ingen løsning til nogle af problemerne uden at adressere alle kriserne på én gang.

Selvom det er tåbeligt at sælge konspirationsteorier, der bebrejder Kina eller Præsident Donald Trump for pandemien, er det lige så tåbeligt at bebrejde coronavirusset selv. Virusser vil altid dukke frem, men det faktum at der er en pandemi er ene og alene pga. 50 års systematisk afmontering af de offentlige sundhedskapaciteter i de trans-Atlantiske nationer, forbundet med afindustrialiseringen, som forringede arbejde og levestandard. Føj hertil legaliseringen af stoffer og opioider, og andre aspekter af kulturens nedværdigelse. Endnu værre var fornægtelsen af modernisering og industrielt fremskridt i udviklingslandene, som efterlod Sydamerika og Afrika sårbare for et holocaust ikke set mage til i århundreder.

FNs Verdensfødevareprogram (World Food Program) advarer om 300.000 dødsfald dagligt, indenfor et par måneder, fra virusset og hungersnød, hvis ikke nødforanstaltninger i fattige lande tages nu—en proces som er fuldstændig afhængig at et tæt samarbejde mellem verdens to største økonomier, Kina og USA. Et John Hopkins-studie, udgivet i Lancet, d. 12. maj, som undersøgte pandemiens potentielle konsekvenser i 118 lav- eller middelindkomst-lande i hele verden, advarede at over de næste måneder, kunne en ekstra 1,15 millioner børn under 5 år, og 56.700 mødre, der lige har født, dø af akut underernæring og andre undgåelige årsager, som et resultat af sammenbruddet af et allerede sårbart sundhedssystem i disse lande—6000 børn og 344 mødre hver dag.

Det er det britisk imperiale system, som har nedgraderet det Hamiltonske, amerikanske system, baseret på en forøgelse af produktiviteten, til et, baseret på maksimeringen af ”aktieværdier,” forbundet med ondskabsfulde nedskæringsbetingelser, som er den egentlige årsag til pandemien.

Der findes ingen ”tilbage til det gode gamle,” hvor verden var før pandemien eksponerede det eksisterende systems forfald. Hvis ikke de britiske og amerikanske krigsmagere bag massepsykosen mod Kina og Rusland bliver erstattet med en ny agenda, baseret på et øjeblikkeligt samarbejde mellem Rusland, Kina og USA, og andre villige nationer, for at adresserede det samlede omfang af denne globale krise, som Lyndon LaRouche gjorde dette gennem hele sit liv, så er menneskeheden i sandhed konfronteret med spørgsmålet, om vi er moralsk egnede til at overleve.

Schiller Instituttets konferencer over internettet, som fejrede mødet mellem amerikanske og sovjetiske tropper ved Elben, d. 25. april, og som fejrede Befrielsen, d. 9. maj, demonstrerede muligheden for en sådan global anstrengelse: En Sundhedssilkevej, for at adressere pandemien; genetableringen af det partnerskab, som sejrede over fascismens trussel i 1930erne og 1940erne, for at adressere den genopstående fascisme i dag; at forene landmænd verden over for at gendrive ”karteliseringen” af fødevareproduktion; skabelsen af 1,5 milliarder produktive arbejdspladser, ved at genrejse de udviklede økonomier og ved at udvikle de forhenværende koloniserede nationer. Alt dette er nu indenfor vores rækkevidde, eftersom alle mennesker er tvunget af denne krise til droppe deres illusioner og falske aksiomer, og at aktivere deres kreative potentiale for at adressere denne civilisatoriske krise.

Med momentum for løsninger fra Schiller Instituttets konference i sidste weekend, tog Helga Zepp-LaRouche sigte på det kollapsende britiske imperium, med en skarp kampplan for at realisere det Nye Paradigme for civilisationen. Blandt punkterne hun udpegede var: Om den globale fødevarekrise, sagde hun, at Donald Trump traf den rigtige beslutning i at anvende Defence Production Act for at holde slagterierne åbne, men en ende på karteldannelse og en tilbagevenden til paritetspriser (produktionspriser til landmænd –red.) er blandt de kritiske tiltag, som må tages for at sikre fødevaresikkerheden for alle; Det farlige anti-Kina-hysteri, i det øjemed at skabe et fjendebillede som en forløber til krig, er en videreførelse af den samme britisk anførte sabotage af Trumps løfte om at bryde med Bush- Obamas geopolitiske doktriner og opnå et fredeligt samarbejde.

Skønt det rammer begge amerikanske partier, er det specielt vanvittigt blandt republikanske senatorer som Lindsey Graham og Tom Cotton; Den igangværende frigivelse af dokumenter fra statsadvokaten i Mullers sag imod general Michael Flynn har et stort potentiale for at afsløre hele svindelaffæren fra krigsfraktionen, som stod bag Russiagate;Den farlige udvikling mod ”glidebanen”, der bygger på den grundantagelse, at der er nyttesløse spisere, og at deres død kan være et positivt resultat af coronavirusset – eksemplificeret ved den tidligere tyske finansminister Schaubles utrolige udtalelse om, at beskyttelsen af liv ikke nødvendigvis er af højeste værdi – må absolut vendes.

Til slut fremhævede hun vigtigheden af Schiller Instituttets yderst succesfulde konference, især det smukt iscenesatte panel om at skabe en ny renæssance. Krisen vi står overfor i dag, sagde hun, er ikke kun strategisk og økonomisk, men moralsk. Vores arbejde består i at handle for at forbedre karakteren af folk, som beskrevet af Schiller i hans diskussion af den æstetiske uddannelse af mennesket.

Den 23. marts (EIRNS) — Ofte er den største hindring for at løse et problem en forkert identifikation af dets årsag. Dette er især tilfældet i tider med stor social og økonomisk uro, i et ‘faseskifte’, som i dag. De gamle ‘spilleregler’ er ophørt med at fungere, inklusive dem der syntes at forklare årsag og virkning under normale omstændigheder. Alligevel falder mange, selv velmenende, mennesker tilbage til gamle, dysfunktionelle måder at tænke på hvordan verden faktisk fungerer.

Hvorfor er der en global coronavirus-pandemi? Det er ikke fordi “kineserne kan lide at spise levende flagermus”; det er ikke fordi et eller andet skummelt efterretningsagentur frembragte et biologisk våben i et hemmeligt laboratorium et sted (selvom det giver stof til eftertanke, at folk som prins Philip åbent taler for et sådant malthusiansk folkemord); og det er ikke fordi dette er “naturlige fænomener”, der altid vil være der, og som man bare skal lade køre deres løb.

Verden bliver hjemsøgt af en coronavirus-pandemi i dag af netop de grunde, som Lyndon LaRouche advarede om, og ikke andre: en tilbagegang i menneskehedens potentielle relative befolkningstæthed til niveauer, der ligger konstant og dramatisk under den faktiske befolkning. LaRouche specificerede, at dette vil forekomme som et resultat af finansielle og økonomiske politikker, der favoriserer spekulation over videnskabelige og teknologiske gennembrud og tilhørende udvidet fysisk-økonomisk produktion. I en tale den 17. januar 1998 til en konference med Schiller Instituttet i Virginia advarede LaRouche:

”Vi er på kanten af det største økonomiske sammenbrud i den europæiske civilisations historie siden det fjortende århundreder, hvad der blev kaldt ‘en ny mørk tidsalder’, en del af en proces hvor ca. halvdelen af Europas befolkning blev udslettet gennem sygdom og hungersnød og forskellige former for vanvid. Højdepunktet var, som i dag, et sammenbrud af det finansielle banksystem, det såkaldte lombardiske banksystem. I denne periode forsvandt halvdelen af kommunerne, Europas sogne. En tredjedel af Europas befolkning forsvandt i løbet af en ret kort periode på grund af sygdom og hungersnød og strid. Vi er på randen af sådanne ting, ikke kun i Asien, ikke kun i Sydamerika, men her i selve USA. Ikke i det næste århundrede, men i år.”

I samme tale sagde LaRouche: ”Se jer omkring. Tag ikke en begivenhed ad gangen og prøv at forklare den. Se på processen.”
Det dødbringende coronavirus, der truer den menneskelige art, og den lige så dødbringende finansielle kræft på 1.800 billioner $, der har metastaseret over hele det transatlantiske finanssystem, er en del af den samme proces – de er virkninger, der er produceret af den samme årsag, og derfor underlagt den samme løsning.

Lyndon LaRouche opfordrede engang til politisk at begrave Wall Street og London City så dybt, at man ikke engang ville være i stand til at lugte stanken. Denne begravelse har et navn: den kaldes Glass-Steagall – konkursbehandling af et kræftsygt transatlantisk finanssystem for at indefryse de spekulative aktiver, samtidig med at de vigtige funktioner i de kommercielle banker relateret til befolkningen og væsentlig fysisk produktion opretholdes.

Samtidig med denne foranstaltning, som Lyndon LaRouche formulerede i sine berømte ‘Fire Love’, er det nødvendigt at etablere hamiltoniske nationale kreditsystemer [efter Alexander Hamiltons principper] til finansiering af reel udvikling; oprette et nyt Bretton Woods-system til i fællesskab at fremme globale infrastrukturprojekter med høj produktivitet som f.eks. ‘Verdens Landbroen’; og fremme avanceret videnskabelig forskning inden for områder som fusion, rumforskning og optisk biofysik. Dette argument blev sammenfattet i bemærkninger af hans enke, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, den 21. marts:
”Det er nødvendigt at gå ind for Glass-Steagall; nu! Tøv ikke! Udsæt det ej. Præsident Trump lovede i valgkampen 2016 mange gange, at han ville gennemføre Glass-Steagall, og nu er øjeblikket inde til at gøre det.

”Hvad dette betyder, er at nøjagtigt de samme foranstaltninger, som dem der blev taget af Franklin D. Roosevelt i 1933, må iværksættes igen. Min afdøde mand understregede altid: ‘Der skal ikke ændres noget’. Argumenterne om at markederne i dag er mere komplicerede, og at der er brug for derivater, afviste han kategorisk. Grundlæggende ville det betyde, at der opstilles brandmure mellem forretningsbanker og investeringsbanker; og at forretningsbankerne sættes under statsbeskyttelse, så de kan fortsætte med at udstede kreditter til realøkonomien, de små og mellemstore virksomheder, handel, detailhandel, alle disse ting, der er væsentlige for den reelle økonomi. Men investeringsbankerne skilles fuldstændigt fra. Det betyder, at investeringsbankerne ikke længere skal have adgang til forretningsbankernes opsparingskonti, og at de ikke skal reddes med skatteydernes penge.

”Da nogle af disse produkter er komplicerede, fordi pensionsfondene og andre legitime ting, der hører til folks livsopsparing, i mellemtiden er vævet sammen med derivaterne og hele kasino-aspektet i det finansielle system, er der derfor brug for en ‘timeout’; alt må indefryses, og så skal en statskommission undersøge, hvad der er legitimt i disse aktiver, og de skal skilles ud og beskyttes. Det vil være kompliceret, men det må og skal gøres.

”Derfor vil der, hvis investeringsbankdelen af det finansielle system elimineres, naturligvis ikke være tilstrækkelig med likviditet. Og det er grunden til, at hr. LaRouche sagde, at dette er tidspunktet, hvor man må genoprette et hamiltonisk banksystem, man er nødt til at oprette en nationalbank – ikke blot i ét land, men praktisk talt i alle lande – og så er man nødt til at forbinde disse nationalbanker gennem faste valutakurser. Der må indgås langsigtede aftaler om investeringer i veldefinerede genopbygningsprojekter; genopbygning af sundhedssektoren, beskyttelse og genopbygning af suverænitet indenfor landbrugsområdet for at rekonstruere krigshærgede regioner som Sydvestasien. Årsagerne til at det afrikanske kontinent og andre lande på den sydlige halvkugle er så sårbare må én gang for alle afhjælpes; hvilket betyder, at man for alvor må begynde at industrialisere disse lande, landene i Afrika og landene i Latinamerika og Asien, og man er nødt til at hjælpe dem med at opbygge infrastruktur som en forudsætning for industriel produktion og udvikling af landbrug.

”Og på den måde skaber man betingelserne for at skabe et tilstrækkeligt sundhedssystem i alle lande. Alt dette skal gøres samtidig, og det vil naturligvis ikke gå glat, men hvis ikke man går i denne retning, er der ikke alene fare for, at coronavirus kommer tilbage og hærger, men der er absolut intet til hinder for udbrud af nye vira og nye sygdomme.

“Og derfor er dette en absolut nødvendighed, at vi retter fejlene begået igennem de seneste adskillige årtier, især de sidste 30 år med deregulering af markederne og at give spekulanterne ret til alting og skære ned på den almene velfærd.”
Dette var Lyndon LaRouches anbefalede politik for at udrydde årsagen til de problemer, vi står overfor.

Den 23. februar (EIRNS) – Med verdens opmærksomhed – med rette – fastholdt på COVID-19-epidemien, samt faren for at den, til trods for Kinas samlede bestræbelser på at begrænse den, kunne vokse til en fuldgyldig global pandemi, bliver de presserende nødvendige skridt for at stoppe den truende græshoppeplage, der nu spreder sig over Afrikas Horn og dele af det sydlige Asien, ikke taget, og er knapt nok på radarskærmen hos de fleste af verdens nationer.

Dette til trods for den kendsgerning, at den ultimative årsag til begge disse truende hhv. sundheds- og sultkatastrofer er den samme: det [sidste] halve århundredes sammenbrud af den fysiske økonomi og levestandard for størstedelen af verdens befolkning, som et resultat af det britiske imperiums politik for finansspekulation og plyndring – et problem som Lyndon LaRouche på enestående vis har drøftet.

Hvis det ikke var for det britiske imperiums geopolitiske politik for overlagt folkedrab, ville det være relativt let for en gruppe af nationer i fællesskab at tackle den øjeblikkelige græshoppekrise på Afrikas Horn – som trods alt har været kendt i flere måneder. Og dog har FAO kun været i stand til at skaffe 22 millioner af de 76 millioner dollars, der er nødvendige for den mest elementære sprøjtning fra luften og andre foranstaltninger, som er nødvendige for at stoppe sværmene af græshopper, og redde de afgrøder hvis ødelæggelse nu truer med at presse 30 millioner mennesker over tærsklen fra sult til hungersnød. Sådanne kortsigtede nødforanstaltninger ville sidenhen åbne for mere grundlæggende forskning og gennembrud inden for optisk biofysik, fusionsenergi og andre områder, der er nødvendige for at tage fat på de underliggende problemer i den fysiske økonomi.

Som Lyndon LaRouche gentagne gange advarede om, har mennesker, der tillader at en sådan behandling af Afrika og andre fattige regioner fortsættes, mistet den moralske egnethed til at overleve.

Dette tog LaRouche op i en knusende bredside mod malthusianisme, i en artikel fra december 1981 med overskriften: “Det økonomiske behov for at øge den menneskelige befolkning”, som blev bragt første gang i ugemagasinet EIR den 21. februar 2020:

”Denne vidt udbredte folkemorderiske praksis med støtte fra indflydelsesrige kredse og enkeltpersoner kombineret med den almindelige befolknings uhyrlige tolerance af en sådan virksomhed må betragtes som en afspejling af det faktum, at befolkningers og førende institutioners moralske habitus i dag er kvalitativt værre end i 1930’erne og 1940’erne. Det foreliggende problem er ikke kun spørgsmålet om at forhindre folkedrab; tolerancen for en [malthusiansk affolknings]politik som ‘Global 2000’ i dag må ses som endegyldigt symptomatisk for en civilisation, der må reddes fra tabet af den moralske egnethed til at overleve.”

Igennem næsten et halvt århundrede har LaRouche identificeret arten af denne folkemordspolitik, som nu skaber truslen om en ny bølge af globale plager og pandemier, samt den påkrævede løsning. I en artikel den 7. maj, 1985 med titlen: “Rollen for økonomisk Videnskab ved projicering af Pandemier”, skrev LaRouche:

”Betingelserne for økonomisk bestemte pandemier kan enten være det tilfælde, hvor det gennemsnitlige forbrug bliver bestemt af et fald i potentiel relativ befolkningstæthed til under niveauet for [opretholdelse af] den eksisterende befolkning, eller i særlige tilfælde, at udviklingen i husholdningernes ‘markedskurv’ falder under energiniveauet i systemet for en stor del af befolkningen. Vi er mest bekymrede over indvirkningerne på sundhedstilstanden, når den ernæringsmæssige kapacitet per indbygger falder under et [givet] relativt biologisk minimum, og også effekten af sammenbrud af sanitære forhold og andre relevante aspekter af den grundlæggende økonomiske infrastruktur for betingelserne for en underernæret befolkning.

”Den første antagelse om at dødelighedsprocenten vil stige ved underernæring, kræver ingen særlig undersøgelse udtrykt på sproget for økonomisk videnskab som sådan. Det er det andet alternativ, at den underernærede befolkning kan blive en grobund for udbrud af epidemiske og pandemiske sygdomme, som kræver særlig opmærksomhed.

”Det er blot nødvendigt at beregne faldet i befolkningspotentialet i retning af sådanne tærskel-niveauer, og tage i betragtning hvor længe sådanne omstændigheder historisk set skal stå på, før en ny stigning i pandemier er under opsejling, for at forudse hvornår, hvordan og hvor en fortsættelse af udviklingen fra 1974 i pengepolitikken og den økonomiske politik sandsynligvis vil skabe sådanne frembrud.”

Som der argumenteres i begæringen, der opfordrer præsident Donald Trump til at rense Lyndon LaRouches navn: Eftersom LaRouches politik for at erstatte Wall Street og City of Londons dødbringende udplyndring med en retfærdig Ny økonomisk Verdensorden for universel, højteknologisk udvikling ikke er blevet iværksat, er hundredvis af millioner mennesker over hele verden forblevet i fattigdom og snesevis af millioner omkommet unødvendigt. Det har kun været pga. Kinas nylige politiske tiltag, der meget ligner dem, som blev foreslået af LaRouche for snart 50 år siden, at folkedrabet er stoppet – i det mindste på store dele af planeten.”

Med frikendelsen af præsident Trump i den falske rigsretssag og med hans nylige heftige angreb mod justitsmordene på Roger Stone, Rod Blagojevich og i andre sager, er tiden nu inde til, at Trump endelig tager skridt til at rense Lyndon LaRouches navn og hans ideer.

 

Den 20. februar (EIRNS) – Efter at have brugt godt 300 millioner dollars på annoncer til sin forsinkede opstart i den demokratiske præsidentkampagne, gik Mike Bloomberg onsdag aften op i røg i Nevada, da han optrådte i sin første tv-debat. Bare over de sidste uger har han købt 2 milliarder annoncer på Facebook og Google – ca. 30.000 annoncer i minuttet. Dette konstruerede portræt af ‘Mussolini Mike’, sammen med et par pæne fraser, løftede hans meningsmålinger fra 4% til 19%, praktisk talt i løbet af natten og bragte ham på linje med Bernie Sanders – indtil nationen så ham ’i aktion’ på scenen i går aftes.

Det større problem er, at de andre kandidater – selvom de tilsyneladende midlertidigt har glemt Donald Trump i deres hektiske indsats for at angribe Bloomberg – nægtede at angribe kernen i det onde, som den rigtige Mike Bloomberg repræsenterer. Kun hvor det passede ind i deres ”identitetspolitiske” ideologi, udfordrede de ham – at han er milliardær, hans kvindehad, hans racisme. Men der blev ikke sagt et ord om hans nedgørelse af landmænd og maskinførere som tankeløse idioter, der kun kan putte frø i jorden eller bruge en skruenøgle. Kunne det tænkes, at de alle grundlæggende er enige med Bloomberg i det? Når alt kommer til alt ser de ud til at dele Hillary Clintons opfattelse af, at Trump-basen kun er dumme arbejdere, ”den sørgelige flok”. De udfordrede heller ikke hans opfordring til aktiv dødshjælp, at der må spares penge ved at nægte at behandle mennesker over en bestemt alder med medicin. Er det muligt, at de også er enige med ham i det?

På et enkelt spørgsmål er der ikke tvivl om andet, end at hele banden af demokratiske kandidater er fuldt ud enige – at verden snart vil brænde op på grund af global opvarmning, hvis vi ikke lukker for den industrielle udvikling i ind- og udland, stopper alle nationer fra at producere energi med fossile brændstoffer, og i denne proces reducerer verdens befolkning til et niveau, der betragtes som acceptabelt af prins Charles og prins Philip – et sted under 1 milliard. Her finder man Bloombergs virkelige akkreditiver som en tilhænger af folkedrab, forpligtet til at tvinge hele det vestlige finanssystem til at afskære kredit til alt, hvad der har et ”kulstofaftryk”.

Trump har med rette latterliggjort klimakulten – i går ophævede han den vanvittige grønne politik om at nægte vand til landmændene, alt imens ferskvand går til spilde og ledes i havet.

Og så er der Kina. Mens Trump indgår handelsaftaler med Kina og roser både deres reelle utrolige fremskridt, og deres leder Xi Jinping, er både demokraterne og republikanerne slaviske i gang med at føre konfrontationspolitik imod Kina, velvidende at det hurtigt kan føre til krig. På sikkerhedskonference i München var der ikke pause mellem Nancy Pelosi og Mike Pompeos fordømmelse af Kina for stort set alle problemer i verden.

I pjecen, med titlen “Er Mike Pompeo moralsk egnet til at være udenrigsminister?”, der nu cirkuleres internationalt af EIR, spørges der: “Handler Mike Pompeo imod USA’s interesser ved at spille med i ‘The Great Game’ for krig og splittelse, inspireret fra London?

Præsident Trump konstaterede, at hvis han havde lyttet til sin tidligere nationale sikkerhedsrådgiver John Bolton, “ville vi befinde os i 6. verdenskrig nu.” Dette gælder lige så vel for Mike Pompeo – hans daglige løgne og trusler mod Kina, ‘Bæltet og Vejen’, deres videnskabelige kapacitet og intentioner, viser at han tror på den britiske geopolitiske tankegang – enten regimeskifte eller krig. Trump identificerede korrekt denne mentale sygdom ved at erklære Irak-krigen som den største fejl i historien, og ved at sværge på at få landet ud af disse uendelige krige og at etablere venlige forbindelser med Rusland og Kina.

For at Trump kan bruge sine betydelige forhandlingsevner, må han tillades at indkalde til et hastetopmøde med sine venner Xi Jinping og Vladimir Putin, for at sætte en stopper for de ”uendelige krige” og samarbejde om at afslutte de adskillige plager, som menneskeheden står overfor i dette kritiske øjeblik: terrorisme, coronavirus og græshopper, der truer millioner i Afrika og Asien. Ved at stå sammen i bekæmpelsen af disse trusler imod menneskeheden kan disse store ledere også iværksætte de påkrævede politiske nødforanstaltninger for at opbygge verdensøkonomien, for sammen at vove sig ud i rummet og igangsætte en kulturel renæssance, der trækker på historiens store epoker i Kina, Indien, den arabiske verden, Afrika og Europa.

 

Af Helga Zepp-LaRouche, skrevet til det tyske avis Neue Solidarität, # 33, dateret 15. august, 2019. 

Den 10. august – Nyheden er ude: I henhold til den seneste IPCC-rapport er Jordens tilstand katastrofal, men vi har stadig en chance. Alt hvad vi skal gøre, er at lytte til den 16-årige klima-hovedfigur Greta Thunberg fra Sverige, ‘Extinction Rebellion’ og Dennis Meadows. Vi skal ikke alene skamme os over at flyve, men også over at spise kød – eller mad generelt – at køre biler, rejse, opvarme vores hjem, og – for at komme helt til bunds i det – over, at vi eksisterer i det hele taget. fordi det var bedre for klimaet, hvis vi ikke gjorde! Og så selvfølgelig, hvis du endnu ikke skulle have bemærket det: sne er sort! 

Enhver der mener, at det transatlantiske etablissement og dets videnskab og medie-PR-lobbyister er blevet vanvittige har en pointe. Men der er en mening med galskaben: De apokalyptiske teser fra det såkaldte ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (IPCC) om påstået ondartet cyklus af ‘ikke-bæredygtigt’ landbrug, global opvarmning og ekstremt vejr er beregnet på at indoktrinere befolkningen til frivilligt at opgive forbrug, acceptere højere skatter for at subsidiere pengestrømme ind i grønne investeringer,  at acceptere diktatoriske regeringsformer og – hvilket, der nu siges rent ud – at acceptere en massiv reduktion af verdens befolkning. 

IPCC-rapporten er faktisk gammel udgæret vin på nye flasker, og argumentet er i sidste ende baseret på en – såvel forenklet som falsk– teori af Thomas Malthus. En teori, der hævder, at menneskeheden multipliceres med en geometrisk rate, mens ressourcerne og fødevareproduktion kun multipliceres med en lavere aritmetisk hastighed. En af de førende neo-malthusianere, Al Gore, tilføjede lidt sødemiddel til denne vin, idet han indrømmede, at Malthus naturligvis ikke kunne have forudset, at menneskeheden ville gøre forbedringer inden for landbrugsteknologi og derfor kunne øge mængden af mad, der kan produceres på Jorden, enormt. Men – og nu fremkommer eddiken i vinen – for at undslippe dette ‘malthusianske dilemma’, indgik mennesket, ligesom Dr. Faust, en pagt med djævelen, og forpligtede sig til videnskabelige revolutioner. 

Så vore dages neo-malthusianere, inklusiv IPCC, arbejder ud fra nøjagtigt denne idé. Resultaterne af moderne landbrug, som har muliggjort, at i det mindste en betydelig del af menneskeheden har fået en forbedret, proteinrig diæt, bliver bagvasket: kødforbrug, såvel som resultater af videnskabelige fremskridt, får skylden for klimaændringer, og verden kan kun reddes, hvis vi opgiver kørsel, flyvning, opvarmning og airconditionering. Og verdens befolkningstal bør ikke længere stige, men skal indskrænkes. Så tilbagevenden til befolkningstal og levestandarder som i de førindustrielle tider: hestevogne til de rige, cykler eller gang til fods for de andre, og sunde kartofler og hirsegrød, der denne gang bliver udråbt som en vegansk diæt. 

Et nærmere kig på finansieringen af Greta Thunberg, ‘Extinction Rebellion’ (“XR”) og ‘FridaysForFuture’ afslører, at [klima-]bevægelsen finansieres af de rigeste mennesker på Jorden. Blandt grundlæggerne og i periferien af  ‘Climate Emergency Fund,’  CEF findes Rory Kennedy, datter af Robert Kennedy og Aileen Getty, datter af afdøde John Paul Getty, sammen med “filantropen” Trevor Neilson, hvis karriere har omfattet forskellige former for samarbejde med Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros og Ted Turner. Ifølge Guardian, har CEF allerede overført EU 500.000 til XR, som snart vil blive efterfulgt af “ti gange så mange” penge. Breitbart offentliggjorde også interne dokumenter fra XR, der afslørede yderligere fem- og sekscifrede donationer fra Soros, den europæiske ‘Climate Foundation’, ‘Tides Foundation’ og Greenpeace ‘Furka Holdings AG’, blandt andre. 

Sådanne beløb er selvfølgelig ‘peanuts’ for medlemmer af ‘jetsettet’, der sædvanligvis rejser med privatfly, helikoptere og mega-yachter. Åh jo, og Greta har netop indledt en af disse nautiske ture til Amerika – “for at spare flybrændstof.” Og XR’s Aktions-håndbog, dette er ikke en øvelse, blev af Penguin Publishers generøst frigivet til publikation måneder før den oprindelige udgivelsesdato. 

I det mindste gør disse finansieringskilder det klart, at dette er et “falskt” oprør. Det er ikke en græsrodsbevægelse, men Greta-hype og XR er resultatet af en velorganiseret propagandakampagne, der bruger moderne argumentation til at skabe et politisk klima, hvor etablering af et fascistisk diktatur accepteres som uundgåeligt. 

En af forfatterne til den computermodel-baserede undersøgelse {Limits to Growth} (Grænser for Vækst) fra 1972, Dennis Meadows, afslørede for nyligt overraskende nok dette i en artikel i den franske avis Libération. Han skriver, at klimaændringer og udtømning af fossile energiressourcer ødelægger grundlaget for den nuværende model for det industrielle samfund, og at flygtningestrømme og hungersnød vil øge kaos, og at en ting, der kan læres af historien er: at hvis folk har valget mellem ‘lov og orden’ og frihed, vil de altid vælge ‘orden’. Vore personlige friheder er allerede begrænsede, og denne tendens vil fortsætte. Og alt imens dette ikke vil løse de problemer, der skabte kaos, vil den politiske magt og den økonomiske formue for dem, der støtter autoritarisme mangedobles på kort sigt. 

Et kig på historien afslører en anden dimension af den indeværende propagandakampagne. Dette er ikke første gang, at det finansielle oligarki har reageret på en systemisk økonomisk og monetær krise ved at støtte fascistiske bevægelser og etablere autoritære diktatoriske regimer. Den internationale finansiering af nazisterne blev foretaget af daværende guvernør for Bank of England Montagu Norman og Brown Brothers Harriman – Harriman-klanens bank – der også støttede den eugeniske bevægelse i USA. Det er en veldokumenteret kendsgerning (”Eugenik er en ideologi, der anser det som et politisk anliggende at kontrollere fordelingen af arvemateriale i menneskelige befolkninger). (Eugenik kaldes også arvehygiejne eller racehygiejne” – red. ref. Wikipedia)  

Historien gentager sig selv, men aldrig på samme måde. Hvad der dengang var eugenikkens racisme, er i dag den inhumane doktrin om påstået overbefolkning, som af ideologer som Julian Huxley i 1946 blev omformuleret  til at være en afstikker af eugenikken. Fordi denne betegnelse blev miskrediteret af nazisterne, vil en “radikal eugenisk politik i mange år være politisk og psykologisk umulig.” I dag er det angiveligt denne overbefolkning, der ødelægger vores Lebensraum (”livsrum”, et udtryk, der blev brugt af nazistiske geopolitikere) – Jorden. 

På daværende tidspunkt var denne ideologi grobund for fascistiske chok-tropper, der så deres voldshandlinger retfærdiggjort ved en formodet trussel fra enten “kommunister” eller “ikke-ariske” mennesker.  

Og hvis nutidens planet, som påstået, virkelig kun har 18 måneder tilbage, hvorfor skulle en ung mand på 17 eller 19 år så ikke gøre alt for at bekæmpe den tilsyneladende årsag – det industrielle samfund – med brug af alle tilgængelige midler? 

De samme medier, der rapporterer om hvert eneste pip fra Greta som om det var Einsteins opdagelse af den generelle relativitetsteori, er tavse om en passage i teksten til manifestet fra den mistænkte morder fra El Paso, hvor 22 mennesker for nyligt blev dræbt og 26 såret. Det afspejler i det mindste ikke præsident Donald Trumps politik, men i høj grad hans modstanderes politik. Den pågældende passage siger: ”Den amerikanske livsstil giver vores borgere en utrolig livskvalitet. Imidlertid ødelægger vores livsstil miljøet i vores land. Decimeringen af miljøet er skabelsen af en massiv byrde for kommende generationer. De store selskaber fører an i ødelæggelsen af vores miljø ved skamløst overforbrug af ressourcer. … Jeg vil bare sige, at jeg elsker folk i dette land, men de fleste af jer er bare for forbandet stædige til at ændre livsstil. Så det næste logiske trin er at mindske antallet af mennesker i Amerika, der forbruger ressourcer. Hvis vi kan slippe af med tilstrækkeligt mange mennesker, så kan vores livsstil blive mere bæredygtig.”  

Den største fejltagelse i dette menneskesyn, fra Malthus og alle neo-malthusianernet til stakkels Greta, er, at det er baseret på det oligarkiske billede af mennesket, der betragter menneskemasserne som parasitter, forurenere og endda et slags dyr – og på baggrund af dette synspunkt synes man, at decimeringen af dem selvfølgelig vil være en god ting. 

Men dette er ikke, hvad folk er. Mennesket adskiller sig fra alle andre skabninger derved, at det gennem dets indfødte kreativitet kontinuerligt opdager nye principper for det fysiske univers og ved hjælp af videnskabelige og teknologiske fremskridt, er i stand til helt at omdefinere de ressourcer, som menneskeheden har brug for til at overleve. Rumfartslande som Kina, Rusland, Indien, U.S.A. og i dette tilfælde endda Europa med Den Europæiske Rumorganisation (ESA) demonstrerer, at menneskeheden er ved at skabe en helt ny økonomisk platform, i den forstand, som Lyndon LaRouche har defineret det. Ideen om en “Månelandsby”, en permanent industrialisering af Månen, som udgangspunkt for et fremtidigt Mars-projekt og interstellar rumfart, omdefinerer alt hvad mennesker tidligere har haft af forestillinger om “ressourcer” på Jorden. 

Den eksistentielle fare for menneskeheden i dag ligger ikke i en nært forestående klimakatastrofe, men snarere, blandt flere andre ting, i en forkert reaktion på cykliske klimaændringer. Men frem for alt består den i den måde, hvorpå det neoliberale oligarki, i samme tradition som i 1930’erne, reagerer på den nye globale finans– og monetære krise: Ved at støtte fascistiske bevægelser og forsøge at etablere et diktatur – selvom det denne gang er et øko-diktatur. 

Det samme britisk-dominerede oligarki, der, ligesom de gjorde dengang, tyr til geopolitik, destabilisering af påståede modstandere, såsom det nuværende forsøg på at svække Kina og Rusland gennem “farverevolutioner” og om muligt at gennemføre regimeskifte der. At [det tyske parti] De Grønne er lydige instrumenter for denne geopolitik er blevet demonstreret tilstrækkeligt af den tyske Grønne leder Joschka Fischers støtte til NATO-krigen mod Jugoslavien i 1999, såvel som ved de Grønnes støtte til en indsættelse af de tyske væbnede styrker i den Persiske Golf.  

Hvis vi har lært noget fra historien, er det ikke at lade disse begivenheder sejle deres egen sø, hvis vi vil forhindre en eskalering til en tredje verdenskrig. Vi har et presserende behov for en tilbagevenden til det kristent -humanistiske billede af mennesket, der betragter mennesket som et væsen med uendelige udviklingsmuligheder intellektuelt og moralsk ! Selv om dette er en mindretalsopfattelse, som ifølge den kinesiske kunstner/aktivist Ai Weiwei ikke nyder respekt i Tyskland, er det stadigvæk i overensstemmelse med menneskehedens realitet i universet. 

– zepp-larouche@eir.de 

Som mange deltagere i og iagttagere af verdensbegivenhederne for længst har opdaget, så er størstedelen af de gængse nyheder »fake news«, der primært har til formål at aflede opmærksomheden fra de store problemer, som verden står overfor, og frem for alt de løsninger, der findes til dem: Det nye paradigme, som LaRouche-bevægelsen og Schiller Instituttet har kæmpet for i næsten et halvt århundrede, og som Kina med russisk og international opbakning har præsenteret som Bælte & Vej Initiativet. Med Trumps succesrige møde med Putin ved G20-topmødet i Hamborg er muligheden for en aktiv amerikansk deltagelse i dette russisk-kinesiske samarbejde for fred ved at blive en reel mulighed. Den manglende dækning af disse revolutionerende begivenheder kan dette nyhedsbrev forhåbentlig være med til at råde bod på – inklusiv nyheden om den danske støtte til Bælte & Vej Initiativet, som Karen Ellemann udtrykte på statsministerens vegne (se bagsiden) ved den historiske konference i Beijing den 14.- 15. maj, og som de danske medier har forbigået i tavshed.

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Det er bestemt sandt, at tiden for den unipolære verden er forbi, men multi-polaritet er stadig ikke løsningen, for det indbefatter stadig geopolitik, der var årsag til to verdenskrige i det 20. århundrede, og denne geopolitik er stadig i operation, i Nordkorea, i Syrien og i Ukraine.

Vi må derfor finde et højere niveau. Vi må få verden frem til at blive det, præsident Xi Jinping altid kalder »et samfund for menneskehedens fælles fremtid«. Et stort skridt i denne retning kunne være mødet mellem præsident Trump og præsident Putin, der mødes i dag for første gang som præsidenter. Dette er selvfølgelig et meget vigtigt skridt, for mellem præsident Trump og præsident Xi Jinping er der allerede etableret en meget positiv relation, så det er meget, meget afgørende, hvad der kommer ud af Trump-Putin-mødet. For de spørgsmål, vi må løse, er presserende og dramatiske.

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Videoklippet med Helgas tale kan ses her, start 15:45 min.: 

 

Fremragende! Og nu, fusionskraft og den Nye Silkevej.

Trump fortjener respekt og støtte for at kæmpe imod denne klimaforandrings-afskrækkelse, for dette er ikke bare et eller andet politisk spørgsmål; denne beslutning konfronterer en koordineret, global kampagne, kørt af de højeste niveauer af det anglo-hollandske oligarki. Vi har nu muligheden for at gøre en ende på dette program i Malthus’ tradition og vende tilbage til vækst og udvikling, hvis præsident Trump følger op på det ved at tilslutte sig det nye, globale paradigme for udvikling, som anføres af Kinas politik for udvikling, under den Nye Silkevej.

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Titelfoto: Rismarker i Vietnam.

10. nov. 2014 – Idet han citerer to seniorforskere, dr. Jauhar Ali og Li Zhi-Kang, sagde korrespondent ved Asia Sentinel, John Berthelsen, at verden muligvis var på randen af at opleve endnu en ris-revolution. Berthelsen sagde, at sorten Green Super Rice, som er udviklet i fællesskab mellem Kinesisk Akademi for Landbrugsvidenskaber og Internationalt Institut for Forskning i Ris (IRRI) i Filippinerne, har potentiale til at ernære millioner af mennesker, som nu sulter.

Målet er at tilplante 20 mio. hektarer om yderligere ti år, iflg. dr. Ali, som er regional projektkoordinator i IRRI. Til næste år vil så meget som 1 mio. ha jord i Asien og Afrika blive tilplantet med den nye sort, som er blevet produceret ved kompliceret krydsning og tilbagekrydsning for at producere mange sorter, som er mere resistente over for salt, skadelig påvirkning ved tørke og sygdomme, og som kan give et afkast, der er højere en gennemsnittet, uden brug af gødningsmidler eller pesticider og således er mere sikre for miljøet, sagde dr. Ali til Berthelsen i et nyligt telefoninterview.

Artiklen siger, at der er tilplantet henved 25.000 ha i Vietnam og yderligere 5.700 ha i Filippinerne. Endnu andre sorter, som giver et afkast langt over de konventionelle sorter og tilskynder landmænd til at bede om flere, er blevet plantet i Indien, Bangladesh, Indonesien og andre lande. De 5.700 ha, som tilplantes i Filippinerne, forventes at producere 90.000 tons ris. »På dette tidspunkt gik det op for dem, at de havde guld til deres rådighed«, sagde Ali iflg. Asia Sentinel.

Forskning for at producere Green Super Rice – som ikke involverer genmanipulering, hvilket gør sorten acceptabel for anti-GMO-aktivister – begyndte i 1998 med lanceringen af et internationalt, molekylært avlsprogram for ris, som oprindeligt involverede flere end 18 lande og 36 institutioner. Sluttelig reducerede finansielle begrænsninger programmet til blot at udgøre IRRI og det Kinesiske Akademi, sagde Asia Sentinel.

Forbruget af korn af alle slags overstiger nu mængden af den globale produktion, og svælget kan ikke indhentes. At tillade en fortsættelse af denne politik – som dikteres af det imperiale finanskartel –, som har ført til denne katastrofe og til, at mindst en milliard mennesker verden over allerede sulter, er ikke en realistisk valgmulighed. Løsningen er et omslag – og det hurtigt – til Glass-Steagall.

 

Af Marcia Merry Baker. EIR, 13. maj 2013 – Mængden af verdens årlige forbrug af korn (alle slags) – til direkte menneskelig fortæring, foderandel til dyrehold, sædekorn til året efter, biobrændstof, spild o. s. v. – overstiger nu mængden af den globale produktion; svælget kan ikke indhentes. Det betyder præcis, hvad du tror: Vi har et problem. Den politik, der ligger bag dette, er vanvittig. At tillade at den fortsætter betyder, at der ikke er noget håb for den milliard mennesker i verden, der allerede lider af sult, og at der ikke er noget håb om en fremtid nogetsteds.

Figur 1 giver et situationsbillede af krisen i kornproduktion kontra kornforbrug; det blev publiceret den 9. maj af FN’s Fødevare- og Landbrugsorganisations »FAO’s korte oversigt over udbud og efterspørgsel af kornsorter«. Afdelingen rapporterer, at verdens totale produktion af korn (alle sorter) for 2012-13 forventes at blive 2,306 metertons, hvilket er mindre end de 2,332 mmt, som forbruget forventes at blive. Det er ikke første gang nogensinde, at der er en sådan ubalance, men med praktisk talt ingen reserver, ingen udveje, og ingen ændringer i politikken, har det dødbringende betydning.

Dårligt vejr i adskillige vigtige landbrugsområder (som FAO rapporterer det) er en medvirkende faktor til sæsonmæssige underskud. Men sårbarhed over for ekstreme vejrforhold inden for nutidigt landbrug har været et overlagt aspekt ved »det fri markeds« regime, som i årtier er blevet prakket verden på af globale finansielle, varemæssige og politiske netværk, der bedst kendes som Det britiske Imperium. De har en plan, der går ud på fødevareunderskud og affolkning.

Dette kom for nylig til udtryk i en rapport fra december 2012 fra Londons Kongelige Institut for Internationale Affærer (Chatham House) med titlen »Ressourcefutures«, som afgjorde, at den »nye normalsituation« ville bestå af prischok, der stammede fra overbefolkningens pres på knappe ressourcer, for hvilket der ikke findes nogen løsninger. Regeringer må danne en »koalition af betroede« – en R30 (Ressourcer 30), der skal rationere knapheden.

Hvad har Obama-regeringen at sige angående de kommende udsigter for høsten? »Gør jer ingen bekymringer. Såningen, vejret og afgrøderne bliver alt sammen godt. De tomme beholdere bliver fyldt op.«

 

Oksekøds- og mælkesektoren hårdt ramt

Virkningen af underskud af korn på verdensplan betyder, at forsyningen af animalsk protein i fødekæden vil være blandt de første fødevaretyper, der vil opleve et kraftigt fald. Mangel og priser, der skyder i vejret, på majs, hø, soja og andre foderemner til dyr rammer kød- og malkekvægfarmere hårdt, midt i en tørke i det sydvestlige Nordamerika, det nordlige Australien, New Zealand og andre steder.

Antallet af kvæg er faldet voldsomt i Texas, Oklahoma og Kansas. I det nordvestlige Queensland i Australien holdt kvægopdrættere et »krisetopmøde« den 7. maj. Her og andre steder får ranchejerne at vide, at det nuværende system med »markederne« må herske, hvilket betyder, at producenterne står over for den kendsgerning, at de priser, de får, er lavere end deres produktionsomkostninger. Verdens eksportforsyninger af mælk er skrumpet ind til ingenting. I New Zealand – som udgør en vigtig kilde til mælkeprodukter til eksport – har tørketilstande haft en drastisk negativ virkning på mængden af mælk, der produceres. Verdens eksportlagre er nu praktisk talt nede på nul for sødmælkspulvers vedkommende, såvel som for skummetmælk og smør.

I Californien, den største mælkeproducerende stat i USA, er over 350 højtydende, mælkeproducerende landbrug lukket i løbet af de seneste par år, hvilket efterlader knapt 1500 i alt, hvoraf mange har problemer. Sidste efterår protesterede californiske mælkefarmere i Sacramento. Den 1. maj afholdt Delstatskongressens Landbrugskomite en høring; den 20. maj har Californiens Departement for Fødevarer og Landbrug planer om at afholde endnu en høring om krisen.

 

Glass-Steagall og videnskab  

Det, der kræves, er et radikalt omslag væk fra den politik, der bragte os til dette kritiske punkt – de seneste fem årtiers globale udflytning af kilderne til fødevarer og alle andre former for spekulative pengemarkeder inden for landbruget, i stedet for at fremme fødevaresikkerheden i nationens tjeneste gennem kredit til programmer for forbedringer i forhold til jord, vand og energi, fastsættelse af priserne til farmerne baseret på deres faktiske omkostninger, og generel støtte til landbrug og forarbejdning i familieregi.

Rent umiddelbart er der behov for at genindsætte Glass/Steagall-banksystemet med det formål at genetablere kredit til familiefarmerne og opbygning af landbrugsinfrastruktur. I samme ånd kan kortfristede nødforanstaltninger for at redde familielandbrug lanceres omgående gennem bevillinger, kredit og gældsmoratorier. Selv om der er knaphed på fødevarer, kan der findes ressourcer, der kan distribueres til områder, hvor nøden er hård.

Krisesituationen for farmere og ranchejere i Australien er typisk for det, der sker, med forskelle i enkelthederne, i landbrugsområder over hele verden. Den australske hvede- og oksekødssektor trues af ruin; begge er af afgørende betydning for den aktuelle, globale fødevareforsyning, såvel som for den hjemlige. Den medfølgende erklæring, der er udgivet den 10. maj af Borgernes Vælgerråd (CEC), giver et overblik over detaljerne.

Lederen af de vestaustralske (WA) hvedefarmere Jean Robinson stiller op til valg til den føderale forsamling i september på et CEC-program for at samles om omgående forandring. På et massemøde for WA-hvededyrkere i Merredin den 10. april cirkulerede der en anmodning, som hun offentliggjorde i april, hvis punkter med få ændringer kan anvendes i et hvilket som helst område, hvor der i dag er landbrugskrise:

»Forholdsregler bør omfatte:

1.     En total adskillelse af almindelig bankvirksomhed med indsættelse og udlån af indskud fra risikabel, spekulativ bankaktivitet. En total adskillelse kan kun opnås gennem strukturelle ændringer som i den succesrige amerikanske Glass/Steagall-lov fra 1933.

2.    Et gældsmoratorium for at reorganisere den ubetalelige gæld med henblik på at befri fødevareproduktion fra åger.

3.    Oprettelsen af en ny Commonwealth National Credit Bank efter forbillede af den originale Commonwealth Bank og/eller Statsejede Regeringsbanker, der vil lede offentlig kredit over til langfristede investeringer i strategisk vigtige industrier såsom landbrug, og til det desperate behov for fysisk, økonomisk infrastruktur. Dette må ske for at genoplive Australiens kollapsende industrielle basis og økonomi.« (»Resolution til redning af vore farme«, april 2013).

I Robinsons politiske erklæring til fordel for en forøgelse af den fysisk-økonomiske produktive kapacitet ligger der ifølge dens natur også det synspunkt, at landbrugets produktive potentiale er ubegrænset, takket være videnskaben. Beviset for dette princip for ris’ vedkommende er blevet gennemgået af dr. Robert Ziegler, direktør for International Rice Research Institute, i en spændende præsentation i december 2012 i Washington D.C., som er dækket i dette nummer af EIR (se nedenfor).

»Ris-eksemplet« modbeviser grundigt den imperiale, ’grønne’ påstand, som er lutter løgn, at verdens befolkningstal har »toppet«, at forekomsten af ressourcer er endegyldig, og at Jorden kun kan reddes ved at »administrere knapheden» og acceptere affolkning.

I USA kan man konstatere et fremstød imod ødelæggelsen af landbruget i den beredvillige aktivering hos de medlemmer af delstatskongressen med baggrund i landbruget, hvor de forlanger, at Kongressen tager skridt til at genindsætte Glass-Steagall.  De 18 stater, der hidtil i år har vedtaget en resolution for dette, omfatter Minnesota, Montana, Louisiana, South Dakota og andre landbrugsstater; i South Dakota blev en resolution vedtaget i begge kamre; og i Indiana blev en resolution fremlagt og vedtaget i Underhuset samme dag, den 11. april.

 

Omfanget af kornkrisen  

Den mængde af verdens totale kornproduktion (alle slags korn), der er nødvendig for at der kan være anstændig ernæring til alle, er i grove træk det dobbelte af de 2,003 metertons, der er vist på Figur 1. Dette kan sagtens opnås gennem forbedrede betingelser med hensyn til sikkerhed for vandforsyning, frugtbar jord og beskyttelse i forhold til ekstreme vejrforhold, såvel som genforbedrede planter og dyr.

Men i øjeblikket ser man bag ved situationsbilledet på Figur 1 mange problemområder for alle typer korn og fødevarer.

En del af den aktuelle nedgang i verdens produktion af korn stammer fra den indvirkning, som vejret har haft på den amerikanske hvedeproduktion. Mere end halvdelen af vinterhvedebæltet i de sydlige højsletter er fortsat ramt af tørke; oven i dette har området været ramt at sen forårsfrost. Høsten her, som finder sted senere, i juni, forventes at blive 23 % mindre end sidste år i henhold til det amerikanske landbrugsministeriums første beregning for denne høstsæson, som blev udgiver den 10. maj. De vestligste amter med hvededyrkning i Kansas er katastrofeområder.

På landsplan kunne amerikansk vinterhvede (hårde, røde arter) opleve en nedgang på gennemsnitlig mindst 10 %. FAO’s globale prognose for hvede i 2013 er 695 metertons, hvilket er mindre end de 701 metertons i 2011.

Dette års verdenshøst af majs er usikker på grund af forsinket såning både i USA og Kina. Vådt og koldt vejr har forsinket såningen af afgrøderne i Iowa og Illinois – hjertet af majsbæltet. I Iowa er kun 8 % blevet sået, langt under sidste års 62 % (et gunstigt forår). Dette er den seneste start i Iowa siden 1995.

Økonomen Todd Davis fra Illinois’ landbrugsdepartement sagde i midten af april: »Der er ikke en stødpude af majs til rådighed, der kan imødegå vejr- eller andre produktionsrelaterede problemer for dette års afgrøder. Såningen vil begynde i Midtvesten i løbet af de næste par uger, og hvis den seneste rapport bliver til virkelighed, viser den, at slutlagrene vil blive de mindste siden 1995-96.« (Fra De føderale Landbrugsdepartementer, 10. april, 2013. (Rapport online fra »Landbrugets Stemme«.)

marciabaker@larouchepub.com

12. maj, 2013 – Ugunstige vejrforhold forsinker såningen af majs i både USA og Kina, hvilket føjer usikkerhed til en i forvejen livsfarligt utilstrækkelig fødevareforsyning og landbrugskapacitet i verden. Usikkerheden omkring majs og andre afgrøder kommer på et tidspunkt, hvor de amerikanske lagre af majs og soja er drastisk lave, afgrøder, som i de senere år har været har været en afgørende eksportvare, men hvor der nu sker en stor omdirigering af majs til fremstilling af brændstof under Obamas/Londons politik for folkemord. Manglen på rigelige mængder af dyrefoder til en overkommelig pris er en hovedfaktor i den totale, globale nedgang i produktionen af animalsk protein.

FN’s Fødevare- og landbrugsorganisation udgav i denne uge en rapport om det fortsatte fald i verdens lagre af kornsorter af alle slags (hvede, ris, majs og andre kornsorter). FAO anslår lagrene af kornsorter ved udgangen af 2013 til at udgøre 505 mio. metertons, hvilket er 3 % lavere end lagrene ved årets begyndelse. Økonom ved staten Illinois landbrugsafdeling Todd Davis sagde midt i april: »Der er ikke en stor stødpude af majs til rådighed til at imødegå vejrproblemer eller andre produktionsrelaterede problemer for dette års afgrøder. Såning begynder i Midtvesten i løbet af de næste par uger, og hvis den seneste rapport bliver til virkelighed, så viser den, at lagrene ved årets udgang bliver de mindste siden 1995-96. (Kilde: American Farm Bureau Federation, den 10. april, 2013. »The Voice of Agriculture«, rapport online.)

Forholdet af rådighedslagre for majs er lavt, med 6,8 %, hvilket refererer til den mængde majs, der er tilgængelig, (oplagret på landbrug, i kartellernes kornsiloer o. s. v.), i relation til det forventede forbrug (alle formål) det år. Faktisk er det muligt, at der INGEN LAGRE vil være tilbage i august, før høsten i år begynder.

Forholdet af de amerikanske rådighedslagre af sojabønner er endnu lavere end for majs’ vedkommende, med 4,1 %. Selv vurderingen fra USDA (april, 2013) er, at der kun vil være, hvad der svarer til 15 dages forsyning af sojabønner til rådighed den 1. september.

Vådt og koldt vejr i majsbæltet har forsinket såningen. Kun 12 % af majsmarkerne var tilsået ved begyndelsen af maj, hvilket er en fjerdedel af gennemsnittet over fem år. I Iowa, den største majsstat, er ku 8 % blevet tilsået, et fald på 62 % i forhold til sidste år (et favorabelt forår). Dette er den seneste start på såningen i Iowa siden 1995. Såningen af soja i USA er ligeledes forsinket. Kun 2 % af sojamarkerne var tilsået pr. den 5. maj, sammenlignet med gennemsnittet over fem år på 12 %, og i kontrast til sidste års 22 %, et favorabelt forår. De amerikanske landmænd og deres udstyr kan måske klare udfordringen og få høsten i hus. Måske sker der et mirakel, og vejret bliver perfekt for afgrøderne i år. Eller også gør der ikke.

Hvad siger så Obama-regeringen? »Lad være med at bekymre jer.« Landmænd vil, selv med forsinkelserne, tilså så enormt et areal som 97,3 mio. acres, at selv om udbyttet pr. acre er forringet p. g. a. sen såning, fugt og kulde, så vil den totale høst ikke desto mindre blive rekordstor, og beholderne fyldt op. USDA’s prognose pr. den 10. maj for arealer, tilsået med majs, siger, at dette vil blive det største tilsåede areal i USA siden 1936.

 

Kilde: www.larouchepac.com

Af Marcia Merry Baker. EIR, 15. januar, 2011 – Den globale fødevarekrise, der i øjeblikket forværres, er ikke en gentagelse, der ikke var til at forudse, af »episoden« i 2008 med fødevareoptøjer og lidelse; det er den fortsatte politik for folkemord. Bagom chokpriserne på fødevarer, er fødevarerne der ganske enkelt ikke! Hvis spekulationen på fødevarepriserne blev fejet bort natten over – som den burde -, så ville krisen stadig være der.

I øjeblikket er den globale kornproduktion endnu lavere end det niveau, som det nuværende forbrug befinder sig på – og dette niveau er i sig selv langt under den mængde af fødevarer, der behøves; dette, plus den kendsgerning, at korn går tabt til biobrændstof, betyder, at afsavnene er forfærdelige og bliver værre. Priserne på andre hovedartikler – olier, sukker, grøntsager – er, sammen med korn, gået ind i en hyperinflationær fase. Spekulationen sætter rekord. Over en milliard mennesker har ikke nok at spise og sulter. Men dette er kun begyndelsen, med mindre det bliver stoppet nu.

»Hvem æder dig?« er det spørgsmål, som Lyndon LaRouche stiller. Svaret skal findes i årtierne med malthusiansk miljøbevægelse og globalisering, hvor produktionspotentialet bevidst er blevet modarbejdet. Alt imens er varekontrol og spekulation blevet fremmet og beskyttet til fordel for det neo-britiske imperium, der står bag denne politik. Det er planen med denne praksis. Planen er folkemord, understregede LaRouche.

Selv nu, med hensyn til fysisk produktion og mulighederne for den bedste udnyttelse af knappe forsyninger, kan situationen vendes, gennem det internationale samarbejde i LaRouches foreslåede Firemagtsinitiativs ånd (USA, Rusland, Kina og Indien i alliance om skabelsen et nyt, internationalt kreditsystem). En ny, enorm fødevarekapacitet kan lanceres med Det nordamerikanske Vand- og Elektricitetssamarbejde (NAWAPA) og lignende, prioriterede, storstilede projekter på alle kontinenterne.

Uden en sådan udvikling vil vægtstangen imidlertid fortsat hælde over mod hungersnød. I det følgende nævnes de fremherskende træk.

 

Dræbende miljøbevægelse og globalisering

De to moderne metoder, der bruges til at sabotere fødevareproduktion og således igangsætte et folkemord, er miljøbevægelsen og globaliseringen.

Miljøbevægelsen. Idet man operer under det falske flag, der hedder bekymring for »miljøet« og »fastlagte ressourceforekomster«, har man i årtier forhindret nødvendig infrastruktur til vand, energi, kunstig vanding, jordforbedring, fødevaredepoter, skadedyrskontrol og transport. Udstrakte landområder har med fuldt overlæg fået lov til at blive elendige som følge af saltdannelse, udtømning af de vandførende jordlag, ødelæggelse af jordens frugtbarhed o. s. v. Endnu andre områder, såsom »Den store, amerikanske Ørken«, ligger brak.

Med svindelnummeret om global opvarmning er nationer under hårdt pres for at »tilpasse sig« klimaforandringer ved at ødelægge sig selv med vanvittig, lavteknologisk energi, lavt vandforbrug, primitive landbrugsmetoder og »lav kulstofaktivitet«.

Globalisering. Selve nationalstatssystemet er blevet ødelagt under globaliseringen – det høflige navn for fascisme, der bruges til at få nationale regeringer til at opgive deres suverænitet, underkaste sig afhængighed af fødevareimport, flydende kurser, spekulation, fødevarekartellernes kontrol og verdensdiktatur over selv videnskab og teknologi, inklusiv uretfærdige patentrettigheder på fødevarer i sig selv. Berømte navne på fødevarekarteller omfatter Cargill/Monsanto, DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, BASF, ADM, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Yara, JBS, og et par stykker til.

Denne politiske praksis er blevet implementeret i næsten et halvt århundrede af et netværk af personer og institutioner, centreret i London. Fremtrædende medlemmer af disse ødelæggelsens gerningsmænd er miljøagenter såsom Verdensnaturfonden, som Englands Prins Philip, der gentagne gange har stillet krav om affolkning, var med til at grundlægge i 1981. I 1981 sagde han: »Befolkningstilvæksten er på længere sigt sandsynligvis den alvorligste trussel mod overlevelse. Hvis den ikke holdes i tømme, venter der os en større katastrofe – ikke blot for naturen, men også for mennesker. Jo flere mennesker, der er, desto flere ressourcer vil de konsumere, desto mere forurening vil de skabe, og desto mere vil de kriges. Vi har intet valg. Hvis vi ikke af egen fri vilje kontrollerer det, vil det blive ufrivilligt kontrolleret gennem en stigende forekomst af sygdomme, hungersnød og krig.« (People, 21. dec., 1981)

Hans »Londonsynspunkt« er blevet vidt udbredt i De forenede Nationer, og er manifest tilstede i f. eks. projektet Millenium Development Goals (MDG), der blev tilskyndet i 2000 og fremmet af sådanne personer som FN’s vicegeneralsekretær Mark Lord Malloch-Brown og George Soros. MDG’s definition for udviklingen er et »rimeligt« forbrug af en fastlagt forekomst af ressourcer.

Dette er sagens kerne. Eftersom »naturlige« ressourcer er, og altid har været, menneskeskabte – forstået på den måde, at det er menneskelige gennembrud inden for forståelse og anvendelse, der omdanner forekomster i universet til »ressourcer« – er det at dekretere, at forekomsten af ressourcer ligger endegyldigt fast, det samme som at dekretere menneskehedens ødelæggelse.

Promoveringsmekanismen for dette neo-malthusianske synspunkt strækker sig over alle slags medie- og anden relateret virksomhed, fra Lester Browns karriere til National Geographicog, inden han faldt fra ærens tinder, Al Gore.          Deres stående mål er, som Lester Brown gentager i sin artikel Foreign Policy fra 10. jan., 2011, at reducere befolkningstallet og underbyde de fysiske midler til vor fremtidige eksistens. Brown beskriver befolkningstilvæksten som en af de »skyldige«, der driver fødevarepriserne i vejret. »På et eller andet tidspunkt vil denne ubønhørlige befolkningstilvækst begynde at bebyrde både landmændenes evner og Jordens begrænsede ressourcer af jord og vand«, skriver han. Han kalder det »et glimt af gode nyheder«, at befolkningstilvæksten er faldet til under 1,2 % sidste år, et fald fra 2 % i 1970. Han går ind for lavteknologisk landbrug og »alternativ« energi.

 

LaRouche i 2008: Fordobl fødevareproduktionen!      

I april 2008, under de voksende fødevareoptøjer og prischok, lancerede LaRouche en kampagne imod dette folkemord gennem fødevarekontrol og udstedte et krav om at »Slå WTO ihjel« og lancere et fremstød for at imødegå behovet for fødevarer. Helga Zepp-LaRouche indledte en international mobilisering for en fordobling af verdens fødevareproduktion så hurtigt som muligt, så vel som for at opfylde det akutte behov.

Det forår fremkom der erklæringer og strategier fra adskillige ledere og regeringer, inklusiv Council on Rice Trade Cooperation (Kina og nationerne omkring Mekong-flodbækkenet), samt fra de eurasiske giganter Indien, Kina og Rusland. Blandt støtterne til fremstødet for en fødevarefordobling var prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Indiens tidligere landbrugsminister, der hjalp med for første gang at gøre Indien selvforsynende med korn i 1974. I maj 2008 meddelte den japanske premierminister, Yasuo Fukuda, at regeringen forpligtede sig til at fordoble produktionen af ris i Afrika inden for ti år. Dette ville betyde 30 mio. metertons, en stigning fra de nuværende 15 mia. mt (malet ris).

Alle disse bevægelser betød, at et politisk momentum var under opbygning for potentielt at bryde med miljøbevægelsens og globaliseringens ødelæggelse, og for en forpligtelse til at skabe et nyt finanssystem, der tjener udviklingen. En bevægelse imod Det britiske Imperium var ved at samle styrke under fødevarekrisen i 2008.

Under og efter en konference, der afholdtes den 3.-5. juni [2008] i Rom af FN’s Fødevare- og Landbrugsorganisation (FAO) med titlen »Konference på højt niveau om fødevaregaranti«, blev af »Det brutale Imperium« imidlertid slået tilbage gennem alle dets institutioner og sorte operationer for at bevare sin magt. En nul-handlings ’Taskforce på højt plan om Fødevarekrisen’ blev oprettet. FAO-direktør Jacques Diouf anslog det delfiske tema: Jo, verdens fødevareproduktion skulle fordobles – om 50 år! Denne 50-års formel blev globaliseringstilhængernes refræn.

Typisk for denne pseudo-videnskabelige dobbeltsnak var temaet i magasinet Science fra 10. februar, 2010, »Sikkerhed for fødevareforsyning: En udfordring om at brødføde 9 milliarder mennesker« (om 50 år). Artiklens ti britiske forfattere, der omfattede embedsmænd fra U.K. Office of Science, konkluderede: »Al optimisme [med hensyn til at brødføde 9 mia. mennesker bæredygtigt] må dæmpes af den enorme udfordring at gøre fødevareproduktionen bæredygtig samtidig med en kontrol med udslip af drivhusgas og bevarelse af svindende vandforsyninger, såvel som at opfylde Årtusindskiftets mål for Udvikling (MDG) om at gøre en ende på sult… «

 

Gates og filantrop-fascisterne

Bill Gates er personligt i fortroppen for folkemordere, der giver sig ud for at være fortalere for landbrug. Hans Milliardærklub fungerer som en klike af filantrop-fascister. I maj 2009 indkaldte Gates til et privat topmøde i New York City om temaet affolkning, med deltagelse af Warren Buffet, George Soros, David Rockefeller jr., Ted Turner, Michael Bloomberg og mange andre, i præsidenten for Rockefeller University’s hjem. Dækningen af det hemmelighedsfulde møde i Londons Sunday Times citerede Gates’ tale i februar det år i Californien om, hvordan han ønsker at »lægge loft« over verdens befolkningstal for evigt. Han nævnte et mål, der hedder 8,3 mia. mennesker, men dette tal vil blive langt lavere, med mindre det stoppes.

Gates har været ekstremt aktiv i promoveringen af en politik for at underbyde fødevareproduktionen. Hans gaver og projekter arbejder imod store infrastrukturprojekter af national betydning og kræver i stedet, at »husmandsbrug« indgår i landbrug i private/offentlige, neoplantage-funktioner. Frem for alt går han ind for patentrettigheder til fødevarekartellerne og Verdenshandelsorganisationen (WTO).

Han har oprettet nye centre, hvorfra der kan udføres politiske angreb på vegne af London-dagsordenen: I 2006 oprettedes Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation og Rockefeller Foundations »Alliance for en Grøn Revolution i Afrika (AGRA). I 2008 sponsorerede Gates oprettelsen af Det globale Landbrugsinitiativ i Rådet for globale Affærer i Chicago, som et forslag til Kongressen. I efteråret 2009 udgav Gates en bog med titlen Millioner af brødfødte: Beviselige successer inden for landbrugsudvikling, for at fremme sin falske kampagne for fødevarer.

I oktober 2009 holdt Gates hovedtalen til uddelingen af Verdens Fødevarepris i Des Moines, Iowa. I april 2010 kundgjorde han, sammen med finansminister Tim Geithner, præsident Obamas Globale Landbrugsinitiativ, der skulle ledes af en gruppe nationer plus Gates Foundation.

Aktører, der repræsenterer Gates og fødevarekartellerne, sidder på høje poster i Obama-regeringen. Dr. Rajiv Shah, med otte år på bagen i Gates Foundation, blev udnævnt til øverste videnskabelige rådgiver i det amerikanske landbrugsministerium (USDA) i juni 2009; i november 2009 blev han flyttet over til at være leder af udenrigsministeriets Amerikanske afdeling for international Udvikling (USAID).

En videnskabsmand med forbindelse til Monsanto, dr. Roger Beachey, blev udnævnt til videnskabelig rådgiver for USDA. Den aktuelle chefforhandler for landbrugsaffærer i Afdelingen for amerikanske Handelsrepræsentanter er Islam A. Siddiqui, udnævnt af Obama som en Kongresferieafløser i juni 2010 (Siddiqui var en del af staben hos en handelsorganisation, der repræsenterede Monsanto, DuPont, BASF, Syngenta og andre kæmpeselskaber i landbrugskartellerne).

Det er ikke så mærkeligt, at der mangler mad.

 

Maden er der ikke!

Det er et situationsbillede af knaphedens barske virkelighed, at der er et stadig stigende underskud i den kornmængde, der årligt konsumeres, i forhold til den faldende mængde, der produceres – et underskud, der skriver sig i omegnen af 59 mio. metertons i den nuværende årshøst.

Den forventede, globale kornproduktion for i år (2010-11) er på 2182 mia. metertons (en nedgang fra 2242 i 2008-09, og 2231 i 2009-10), hvilket i sig selv er et godt stykke under det »totale forbrug« af korn i verden i dag på 2241 mia. metertons.

Dette er USDA’s forventede produktionsmængder fra deres månedlige rapport af 12. jan., 2011 (Overslag over den globale forsyning og efterspørgsel af landbrugsvarer WASDE-490-8), som, selv hvis det rammer ved siden af, viser, at vægtstangen hælder over mod hungersnød.

For at imødegå alle de behov for næringsmidler hos verdens nuværende 6,9 mia. mennesker, og der kommer flere til, skal der produceres mindst 4 mia. tons korn nu, dels til direkte forbrug og dels til det indirekte forbrug til dyrehold til produktion af animalsk protein.

Med den lave og stadig faldende produktion skrumper lagrene imidlertid i øjeblikket ind, og man forventer, at det bliver værre:

Hvede: Den forventede årlige produktion er faldet med 6 %, fra 683 mia. mt i sidste års høst til sandsynligvis 646 mia. mt i år (2010-11). Et resultat i denne størrelsesorden er langt under det aktuelle forbrug på 665 mia. mt. Lagerstatus ved årsafslutningen forventes at falde med mindst 10 %, fra 198 mia. mt til 178 mia. mt.

Blandt de førende hvedeeksporterende lande – USA, Frankrig, Canada, Rusland og Australien – er der enten betydelige tab af landbrug, en stærk efterspørgsel på knappe lagre, eller begge dele.

·       Rusland eksporterer slet ingen hvede i betragtning af tørken sidste sommer. Ukraine har i øjeblikket forbud mod eksport. Rusland har øget sin hvedeimport.

·       Frankrig oplever svindende lagre, og må i marts måned muligvis vælge mellem at forsyne hjemmemarkedet på bekostning af eksporten.

·       Australien er i øjeblikket ramt af oversvømmelse. Selv om Queensland kun tegner sig for 5 % eller så af Australiens hvedehøst, så har ethvert tab en indvirkning

Majs. Den forventede årlige produktion af ubehandlet korn, inklusiv majs, byg, rug og andre kornsorter, er faldet med mere end 2 %, fra 1108 mia. mt (i sig selv et fald i forhold til året før), til 1084 mia. mt. Dette årlige produktionstal er langt under det årlige forbrug af majs på 1123 mia. mt. Den endelige lagerbeholdning forventes at falde med 20 %, fra 199 mia. mt til 159 mia. mt for året 2010-11, men forventes at falde yderligere.

USA, der er verdens førende avler og eksportør, er nu på vej til at bruge helt op til 40 % af sin majshøst til biobrændstof (etanol).(Se Figur 1) Kina, der har forpligtet sig til princippet om, at Kina skal være selvforsynende med fødevarer, men som har behov for at importere til sine sikkerhedsreserver, er begyndt signifikant at importere majs. (Kina er stadig afhængig af at importere 80 % af sit forbrug af sojabønner).

Ris. Status over lagre og produktion ved årets afslutning ligger langt under behovet. Produktionen af ris lå på 441 mia. mt i 2009-10 og forventes at stige til 452 mia. mt i år, men det udgør lige netop det nuværende forbrug, ikke mere. Lagerstatus forventes kun at være på samme niveau som nu, omkring 94 mia. mt.

·       Vietnam, en af de tre førende, ris-eksporterende lande, forudser et fald i eksporten til 5,5 mia. mt i år, fra 6,8 mia. mt sidste år.

·       Indonesien og Filippinerne forsøger at træffe aftaler for nødopkøb af ris, i betragtning af den globale knaphed på ris.

·       Sri Lanka valgte at frigive ris fra sine lagre af bufferreserver i december for at lægge en dæmper på en potentiel spekulation i de knappe forsyninger.

 

Kæmpeprofit på knaphed.

Det månedlige Fødevareprisindeks fra den 5. januar viser rekordhøje priser på fødevarer.(Figurerne 2-3) Det samlede prisindeks for 55 fødevareemner steg i december måned for sjette måned i træk og nåede det hidtidig højeste niveau nogensinde (i forhold til grundlinjen i 2002-04), idet niveauet overgik det højeste punkt i 2008, der ansporede til optøjer i 30 lande. Majs, sukker, vegetabilsk olie og kød lå foran i prisstigningerne.

Rapporten viser, at 2006-priserne kredser rundt om 120 i indekset, med stadig stigene priser i løbet af 2007, der nåede et toppunkt på 213,5 i juni 2008, hvorefter kurven knækkede. Men denne stigning, der fandt sted i løbet af et helt år, er blevet opnået og overgået i år med 214,7,på blot seks måneder, og stiger fortsat.

Priserne på majs- og hvedeoptioner er steget med 50 % i forhold til sidste år. I december købte Mexico optioner for 4,2 mio. tons importvarer på Chicagos handelsbørs til levering næste efterår.

De nationale regeringer forsøger at lægge en dæmper på inflationen i fødevarepriserne. Indien, der nu står over for den højeste inflation i fødevarepriserne, har udstedt forbud mod eksport af ris og hvede og indført andre forholdsregler. Fødevarepriserne stiger med tocifrede rater. For eksempel er prisen på løg – en basisvare – steget med 33 % i forhold til året før. I Indonesien koster peberfrugter mere end 40 % mere, end de gjorde sidste år på denne tid.

Spekulanterne er klar til det afgørende øjeblik. Mængden af optioner i handelen med fødevarer steg med 23 % i 2010 i forhold til 2009 på Chiagos Handelsbørs (CME). Obama-regeringens London-styrede politik med kæmpemæssige finansielle bailouts og vægring ved at forbyde spekulation sender bølger at varme penge ind i børshandelen med landbrugs-futures.

Hver dag sidste år skiftede i gennemsnit 908.021 futures og option-aftaler i landbrugsvarer hænder på CME, sammenlignet med 737.063 i 2009. November 2010 satte rekord med 1,26 mio. handlede aftaler. December, der udviste et lille fald, lå stadig 36 % over mængden af handeler i samme måned året før.

I december 2010 appellerede Den amerikanske Fødevareindustri-sammenslutning om at gribe ind for i det mindste at påbyde en stillingsbegrænsning for mæglerne. Chefdirektør Joel Newmann udpegede »Wall Street-banker« som dem, der hældte enorme pengesummer ind i varemarkedet og forårsagede ruin af faktiske fødevarefunktioner.

Sluttelig er der de kæmpeprofitter, som kartellerne for vare- og handelsselskaber har offentliggjort. I denne måned rapporterede Cargill, at deres fortjeneste var steget med 74 %, en kæmpestigning, i perioden juni-december, første halvdel af deres regnskabsår, i forhold til samme tid året før. Tallene var 1,53 mia. dollar, en stigning fra 878 mio. dollar året før.

I løbet af de første 24 timer af den spekulationsmani, der opstod, efter at USDA den 12. januar udgav sin rapport om den globale fødevareknaphed, steg aktierne for Monsanto, DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, ADM og andre i det imperiale netværk, der har forpligtet sig til at profitere på folkemord.