Mit navn er Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane. Jeg er leder af LaRouche-bevægelsen i Sydafrika. Jeg fremsætter ikke denne presserende appel som borger i mit land, men som talsmand for alle dem der nu sulter, eller snart vil sulte, i Afrika, og som ikke har nogen til at tale på deres vegne.

Lige nu sulter mange millioner af mine afrikanske landsmænd. De sulter takket være en bevidst fremtvungen underudvikling af mit kontinent – håndhævet af det britiske imperiums neokoloniale magt, der agerer gennem den økonomiske magt fra City of London og Wall Street – i kombination med både en global pandemi og græshoppeplage samt andre naturkatastrofer, der påvirker fødevareproduktionen på kontinentet. For at bruge et teknisk sprog lider de af ‘akut fødevareusikkerhed i fase 4’, et skridt væk fra ‘fase 5: sult’. Hvis man dropper den elskværdige jargon, sulter de allerede, mens millioner flere også vil stå over for sult, medmindre der hurtigt stilles mad til rådighed for dem.

‘Menneskeheden står over for den største krise, nogen af os nogensinde har set. Det er tid for de velhavende til at stille op for at hjælpe dem, der har mindst’. Denne advarsel kom den 17. september fra David Beasley, administrerende direktør for FN’s Verdensfødevareprogram. Han skrev, at 30 millioner mennesker nu er i fare for at dø af sult. De fleste af dem er i Afrika.

Jeg vil gerne understrege, at dette ikke er et spørgsmål om, hvad der vil komme til at ske – det sker allerede. Og medmindre der bliver gjort noget, og gjort noget snart, vil millioner og atter millioner af mennesker dø i de næstkommende uger og måneder, som David Beasley advarede om. Han talte allerede til FN’s Sikkerhedsråd i april og advarede om, at 300.000 mennesker om dagen kunne dø.

Alt imens forskellige velgørenhedsorganisationer og andre organisationer har slået alarm og appelleret om penge, er det spørgsmål, som vi står over for, hvis vi vil redde liv, at sikre omfattende mængder mad hurtigst muligt til sultne og sultende mennesker. I betragtning af beskaffenheden af infrastrukturen på kontinentet, og det faktum at meget af denne hungersnød forekommer i isolerede landdistrikter, ligger den distribution der må finde sted, langt ud over de enkelte regeringer og nødhjælpsagenturers midler.

Jeg tror, at vi må mobilisere verdens mest kompetente militærstyrkers logistiske kapacitet og udarbejde en strategi for at skaffe fødevareforsyninger fra fødevareproducerende nationer, såsom USA og Canada, og bringe dem direkte til dem, der har brug for det. Lad såvel ‘venner som fjender’ gå sammen i denne, den største af alle, humanitære bestræbelser. I sin seneste pavelige rundskrivelse, Fratelli Tutti (om broderskab og socialt venskab), skrev hans hellighed pave Francis, at det omsider er tid til at menneskeheden opgiver tanken om, at krig er berettiget – enhver form for krig, der koster menneskeliv. Dette er snarere en krig – eller mere præcist, en international kamp – for at redde det helligste af alt: menneskeliv.

Jeg appellerer til den amerikanske præsident, Donald Trump:

Tag denne udfordring op. Giv Amerikas landmænd missionen med at producere fødevarer til at brødføde de sultende, alt imens man tager de enorme ressourcer fra det amerikanske militær i anvendelse på denne barmhjertighedsmission, for at bringe mad til dem på mit kontinent, der har brug for det. Gør dette i din hustrus ånd, den elskværdige førstedame, Melania, som lovede at hjælpe Afrika og især dets børn på enhver mulig måde, da I besøgte kontinentet i oktober 2018. Tag ethvert skridt med nødforanstaltninger, der er nødvendige, for at få dette til at ske.

Dette burde være tilstrækkelig grund til at indkalde til det internationale stormagtstopmøde, som den store dame, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, formand for Schiller Instituttet, har opfordret til.

Vi kan redde liv, men det vil kræve en international indsats for at gøre det. USA har gjort det tidligere. Jeg mindes den store indsats for at bringe mad til de sultende mennesker i Europa efter 2. Verdenskrig, der involverede en mobilisering af det storsindede og gode amerikanske folk, der sendte disse CARE-pakker og madforsyninger.

Mine afrikanske søstre og brødre kan blive frelst, hvis viljen er der, og hvis folk kan se sig selv handle i en ånd af næstekærlighed (agapē), hæve sig over småligheder for at gøre noget godt og stort.

Den 13. oktober 2020

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.

1. Hvorfor et topmøde mellem USA, Kina, Rusland og Indien er så presserende netop nu

Helga Zepp-LaRouche leder en international dialog angående den øjeblikkelige nødvendighed af at bringe lederne af de ”fire stormagter” (USA, Rusland, Kina og Indien) sammen til et topmøde, for at håndtere pandemien, den finansielle nedsmeltning og økonomisk underudvikling. Udklippene er taget fra Schiller Instituttets internationale konference, d. 27. juni, 2020, med titlen: ”Vil menneskeheden blomstre eller gå til grunde? Fremtiden kræver et firemagts-topmøde nu”.

https://youtu.be/thQuRg-rzwE

2. Lad os gøre en ende på krig, hungersnød, fattigdom og sygdom

Ledere indenfor landbrug, økonomi og videnskab fører en diskussion angående den skrækindjagende fare, som konfronterer verden, i form af hungersnød, krig og sygdom, pga. ødelæggelsen af produktivt arbejde, over de seneste 50 år. Dette efterfølges af en diskussion om perspektivet for at implementere LaRouche-planen; en økonomisk strategi for at skabe 1,5 milliarder produktive arbejdspladser verden over. Talerne deltog i det andet panel af Schiller Instituttets online konference, d. 27. juni.

https://youtu.be/J_jKCa6GkW0

3. LaRouches internationale ungdomsbevægelse opfordrer til frikendelsen af Lyndon LaRouche

Skriv under på begæringen for at frikende Lyndon LaRouche: Frikend Lyndon LaRouche. Et kor af stemmer svarede på forslagene fra Theo Mitchell, tidligere statssenator fra South Carolina, angående hvad der kan gøres for at frikende Lyndon LaRouche og rette op på den uretfærdighed som er ude af kontrol i mange dele af verden. Lederne fra LaRouches internationale ungdomsbevægelse adresserede Schiller Instituttets konference, d. 27. juni, angående det presserende behov for at rekruttere den næste generation af ledere, der kan tænke på samme niveau som Lyndon og Helga LaRouche.

https://youtu.be/AUnaUpA2ylg

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Introduktion til Helgas tale:

DENNIS SPEED: Mit navn er Dennis Speed, og jeg vil byde jer velkommen til dagens internationale konference og webcast.

Vi vil begynde dagen med et videoudklip med den afdøde økonom og statsmand, Lyndon LaRouche, fra 2011. Han var hovedtaler på et panel ved en konference i Schiller Instituttet – det var i Tyskland – og navnet på panelet ved denne lejlighed var: ”At redde vores civilisation fra afgrunden: Klassisk kulturs rolle. En nødvendighed for menneskeheden.”

LYNDON LAROUCHE (uddrag): Hvad er det ved mennesker som gør, at de ikke bare er endnu en dyreart, klar til at blive slagtet (at uddø) når deres tid er kommet?

Svaret er et lidet kendt spørgsmål. De fleste mennesker har ikke den fjerneste idé om hvad svaret er! Rent faktisk er vores samfund styret af folk, der ikke har nogen som helst idé om hvad menneskeheden er! Det eneste de kan finde på, er en eller anden beskrivelse af et slags dyr, med dyriske karaktertræk af nydelse og smerte og lignende, som måske kontrollerer dette dyrs adfærd…

Navnet for den specifikke kvalitet, som vi kender fra mennesket, og som ikke eksisterer i nogen anden kendt levende art: Det er en egenskab af kreativitet, der er absolut enestående i menneskeheden. Og hvis man ikke er kreativ, og hvis ikke man forstår kreativitet, så har man endnu ingen billet til overlevelse! Fordi kreativitet vil ikke redde dig, medmindre du bruger den.

DENNIS SPEED: Lad mig sige noget om Schiller Instituttet, og hvad vi har gjort med denne række af tre konferencer, som begyndte i april dette år. Disse konferencer var viet til idéen om at skabe et firemagts-topmøde – Rusland, Kina, Indien og USA. Der er forskellige processer, der allerede har været i stand til at bevæge sig i denne retning. Faktisk er der, blandt de mange ting som vi vil snakke om i dag, et nyt forslag, som blev fremsat af Præsident Vladimir Putin fra Rusland, i denne retning [for et topmøde med de 5 permanente medlemmer af FN’s sikkerhedsråd: USA, Rusland, Kina, Storbritannien og Frankrig –red.]… Idéen om et firemagts-topmøde er ikke eksklusiv. Det betyder ikke at andre ikke kan involvere sig…

Lad mig også sige, for især folk i USA, at krisen, der har påkaldt sig folks opmærksomhed, som udstillet i den sociale og politiske krise i Amerikas gader, er blot ét udtryk for en bredere, international proces. Og det er grunden til, at vi i dag begynder med det første panel for at give dette bredere overblik, og tillade dig og andre at blive en del af en international operation for at forandre denne situation…

Helga Zepp-LaRouche er grundlæggeren af Schiller Instituttet – det var tilbage i 1984. Hun er selvfølgelig også hustru til den afdøde økonom og statsmand, Lyndon LaRouche, som døde i februar 2019. Hun spillede en vigtig, afgørende rolle i en række samtaler og dialoger med den kinesiske regering i perioden fra 1993 til 1996; som påbegyndte den proces, der blev til det vi nu kalder den Nye Silkevej. Og vi er glade for og stolte over at præsentere hende til jer nu, for at tage denne dialog op igen. Panelet som helhed har titlen: ”I stedet for geopolitik, en ny form for statsmandskunst”. Så, det er altid en ære at præsentere Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Efter denne svære start er jeg så meget desto gladere for endelig at have forbindelse til jer. Og jeg vil tale om alternativet til en mørk tidsalder eller faren for en ny verdenskrig. Og selvom det for de fleste på dette tidspunkt er utænkeligt, så…[manglende lyd] ….medmindre vi på relativt kort sigt lykkes med at erstatte det håbløst bankerotte finanssystem med et New Bretton Woods-system, nøjagtigt som oprindeligt tilsigtet af Franklin D. Roosevelt, det vil sige skabe et kraftigt instrument til at overvinde underudviklingen i den såkaldte udviklingssektor.

 Jeg ved ikke, om I hørte, hvad jeg sagde før, fordi der var nogle tekniske problemer, men jeg sagde, at selvom de fleste ikke kan forestille sig at det kan forekomme, så truer verdens nuværende orientering mod stadig flere konflikter, både internt i mange stater i verden, men også på et strategisk niveau, med at eskalere til en stor ny verdenskrig, en tredje verdenskrig, som på grund af eksistensen af termonukleare våben ville betyde udryddelse af den menneskelige art; det ”store drab”, omend det er ment på en lidt anden måde end vi netop hørte Lyn på dette videoklip.

 Selvom det er helt forbløffende, hvor mange vildledte mennesker der stadig mener, at COVID-19-pandemien enten ikke er værre end influenza, eller blot er en konspirationsteori af Bill Gates, er det langt mere sandsynlige perspektiv desværre, hvad epidemiolog Dr. Michael Osterholm har sagt: at vi stadig har en utrolig lang vej foran os. Indtil nu er 10 millioner mennesker blevet inficeret, en halv million er døde af COVID-19, og vi har stadig ikke nået toppen af den første bølge. De så godt som ikke-eksisterende sundhedssystemer i mange udviklingslande er allerede håbløst overbelastede. Pandemien har hensynsløst afsløret det faktum, at det neoliberale økonomiske system ikke kun afhænger af billig produktion i den såkaldte Tredje Verden, men har skabt slavelignende arbejdsbetingelser selv i USA og Europa, som det kan ses af udbruddet af virusset på de mange slagterier i Europa og USA.

 Den økonomiske nedlukning har sat fokus på skrøbeligheden i det der kaldes ”globalisering”. I USA forsvandt ca. 40 millioner job på tre måneder; på utrolig vis pumpede centralbankerne over 20 billioner dollars ind i det finansielle system, og forskellige regeringsstøtteprogrammer kunne dårligt nok dække de tidsindstillede bomber, der stadig tikker indtil udløbet af de kortvarige arbejdsprogrammer. IMF forventer i øjeblikket, at den globale produktion vil falde med 4,9% i år, og kun Kina forventes at have en stigning i produktionen på 2%, hvilket naturligvis er meget mindre end det plejer at være, men ikke desto mindre er voksende. Sektorer som flytrafik, forplejning, turisme, bilindustrien, har lidt store fald, nogle af dem på lang sigt, men også et stort antal mellemstore virksomheder frygter, at de ikke vil overleve en anden bølge og en anden økonomisk nedlukning. Resultatet ville være en enorm stigning i arbejdsløshed, fattigdom og prisdeflation, mens centralbankernes likviditetspumpe samtidig skaber hyperinflationsbobler. Redninger af store systemiske virksomheder og banker såvel som politisk eksplosive redningspakker vil være yderligere desperate muligheder for regeringer at gennemføre, men vil ikke kunne forhindre et sammenbrud af det globale finanssystem. Et styrt ned i kaos og anarki ville følge.

 I mellemtiden ville en fortsættelse af den nuværende politik ikke alene føre til øgede dødsfald som følge af pandemien, men vil absolut ikke gøre noget for at imødegå sultkatastrofen, som David Beasley fra Verdens Fødevareprogram advarer om snart vil tage livet af 300.000 mennesker om dagen.

 Dem der muligvis mente, at en mørk tidsalder kunne udelukkes i vores moderne tid, befinder sig i et realitetschok. Og sidst, men ikke mindst, den hedonisme, der udøves af demonstranter, der forveksler frihedsprivilegier med frihed, minder om flagellanterne og beskrivelserne fra det 14. århundrede, som de er fremstillet i Boccaccios skrifter og Brueghels malerier.

 På denne baggrund kan det forventes, at forsøgene – der oprindeligt blev anstiftet af de britiske hemmelige tjenester – på at fjerne præsident Donald Trump fra embedet ved et kup, rigsretssag eller mord – sådan var overskriften på den britiske publikation The Spectator, den 21. januar 2017 – eller ved et ”Maidan”-kup, som præsident Putin advarede om i 2016 – disse vil blive intensiveret. Iscenesættelsen af forargelsen som følge af mordet på George Floyd, foretaget af voldelige grupper finansieret af George Soros, er en del af denne kampagne. Årsagen til den ubarmhjertige fjendtlighed fra det neoliberale etablissement og de etablerede medier på begge sider af Atlanterhavet mod Trumps efter hans, for dem, uventede valgsejr, var, og er stadig, den intention han udtrykte i begyndelsen af sin valgperiode om at etablere gode forbindelser med Rusland og et godt forhold til Kina. Og selvfølgelig Trumps løfter om at afslutte sin forgængeres ”uendelige krige” og at bringe amerikanske tropper hjem.

 Hvad der derefter fulgte, var en tre og et halvt års heksejagt mod Trump. Krigsråbet “Rusland, Rusland, Rusland”, baseret på årsager, for hvilke der ikke eksisterer skyggen af bevis, blev efterfulgt af et forsøg på en rigsretssag, atter efterfulgt af det ikke mindre ondsindede krigsråb “Kina, Kina, Kina”, skønt der er lige så lidt hold i anklagerne mod Kina, som der var i Russiagate.

 I løbet af alt dette var repræsentanterne for det neoliberale system ikke så meget som et øjeblik parate til at overveje, at det var de brutale konsekvenser af deres egen politik for størstedelen af befolkningen på verdensplan, der udløste den globale bølge af social protest, der inkluderer Brexit og Trumps sejr, såvel som masseprotester over hele verden fra Chile til de ‘gule veste’ i Frankrig. Men denne elite er aldrig interesseret i at opdage sandheden, kun i at kontrollere den officielle politiske fortælling i overensstemmelse med Pompeos princip, som han forklarede i sin tale i Texas: ”Jeg var CIA-direktør. Vi løj, snød, stjal … vi havde hele uddannelsesforløb i det”.

 NATO’s officielle fortælling om Ruslands angiveligt stigende aggressivitet, beskyldningerne om “med magt at drage grænser i Europa igen”, nævner naturligvis ikke de brudte løfter, der blev givet til Gorbatjov, om at NATO aldrig ville udvide sine grænser helt til Ruslands grænser, og den forudgående farve-revolution, der kan beskrives som en krigshandling, og til sidst kuppet i Kiev med den åbne støtte fra Victoria Nuland, der udløste folkeafstemningen på Krim som reaktion.

 Kinas ”forbrydelse” er ikke kun, at man har løftet 850 millioner af sine egne borgere ud af fattigdom, og ved hjælp af en økonomisk politik, der er baseret på videnskabelige og teknologiske fremskridt og en befolkning på 1,4 milliarder mennesker, er blevet den næst mægtigste økonomiske nation, og på visse teknologiske områder, såsom højhastigheds-jernbanesystemer, nuklear fusion, aspekter af rumforskning og 5G-telekommunikation, allerede den førende. Derudover er Kinas tilbud om samarbejde omkring Den nye Silkevej og Bælte- og Vejinitiativet den første reelle mulighed for udviklingslandene siden kolonialismens tid for at overvinde fattigdom og underudvikling ved at bygge infrastruktur.

 NATO’s reaktion på, at Kina genvinder sin rolle som en førende nation i verden, en rolle den spillede i mange århundreder af sin 5.000-årige historie, har været global ekspansion til Indo-Stillehavsregionen. Dette er det stof, som verdenskrige er gjort af. Og alligevel er det nøjagtigt den retning, som NATO’s generalsekretær, Jens Stoltenberg, har angivet i sin oversigt for “NATO 2030”, som han netop præsenterede på en videokonference med Atlanterhavsrådet og den tyske Marshall-fond. Den tyske forsvarsminister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, deltog i et andet webinar sidste onsdag sammen med Anna Wieslander, direktør for Atlanterhavsrådet for Nordeuropa; Wieslander citerede under åbningen af begivenheden Lord Ismay, NATO’s første generalsekretær, der sagde, at formålet med NATO er “at holde russerne ude, amerikanerne inde og tyskerne nede”. Men AKK (som hun kaldes) forstod tilsyneladende ikke engang fornærmelsen i disse bemærkninger. Det geopolitiske scenarie for et globaliseret NATO, der åbent er designet til at orkestrere NATO til det britiske imperiums formål, baseret på Det britiske Statssamfund, Commonwealth, og som også ville indfange EU til at spille denne rolle, og endelig ville spille Indien ud mod Kina, må afvises totalt af alle, der har interesse i at opretholde verdensfreden.

 Præsident Putin har netop i anledning af 75-årsdagen for afslutningen af 2. Verdenskrig skrevet en slående artikel om forhistorien til Anden Verdenskrig samt forløbet af denne krig, og opfordret alle nationer til at offentliggøre alle de indtil nu hemmeligholdte historiske dokumenter fra den tid, således at menneskeheden, ved at studere årsagerne til den hidtil største katastrofe i menneskehedens historie, kan lære lektien for at undgå en endnu større katastrofe i dag. Putin skriver i en meget personlig tone; han taler om lidelsen i sin egen familie, om den enorme betydning som den 22. juni har for den russiske befolkning, dagen hvor ”livet næsten går i stå”, og hvorfor den 9. maj, årsdagen for sejren i Den store patriotiske Krig, hvor 27 millioner russere mistede deres liv, er Ruslands vigtigste mærkedag. Men den indirekte besked er også, at lige som Sovjetunionen besejrede Hitlers Tyskland med en gigantisk indsats, vil det russiske folk aldrig overgive sig til fornyede trusler. Ligesom Napoleon gennem en lang forsvarslinje blev ført ind i den ugæstfri russiske vinter, og hans hær til sidst blev så godt som udslettet, muliggjorde evakueringen i 1941 af befolkningen og industrikapaciteten mod øst, at Sovjetunionen kunne overgå nazisternes militære produktion på kun halvandet år.

 Men også Versailles-diktatets kortsynethed, støtten til Hitler fra medlemmer af aristokratiet og etablissementet på begge sider af Atlanterhavet, og frem for alt München-aftalen, der i Rusland simpelthen kaldes ”München-forræderiet” eller ”München-sammensværgelsen”, betragtes som den egentlige udløser af Anden Verdenskrig. Fordi det var ved den lejlighed, at ikke alene eftergivenhedspolitikken for Hitler, men hvor også den fælles opdeling af byttet fandt sted, såvel som den iskolde geopolitiske beregning, at fokuseringen af Hitlers Tyskland mod øst uundgåeligt ville føre til at Tyskland og Sovjetunionen ville sønderrive hinanden.

 Hvad er ifølge Putin det vigtigste budskab til nutiden ved studiet af Anden Verdenskrig? At det vigtigste var undladelsen af at påtage sig opgaven med at skabe et kollektivt sikkerhedssystem, der kunne have forhindret denne krig! Putins artikel slutter med en presserende påmindelse om topmødet for statsoverhovederne for de fem faste medlemmer af FN’s Sikkerhedsråd, som han har foreslået siden januar, og som netop skulle tage fat på disse principper for, hvordan man opretholder verdensfred og overvinder den verdensomspændende økonomiske krise.

 Det vigtigste aspekt i denne forbindelse er, at dette format vil sætte USA, Rusland og Kina omkring samme bord for at forhandle de principper, der skal danne grundlaget for international politik, hvis menneskeheden skal undgå at udslette sig selv! Og i går sagde Emmanuel Macron efter en lang telefonsamtale mellem Putin og den franske præsident, at han går ind for et Europa fra Lissabon til Vladivostok, hvilket ikke alene åbner perspektivet for en integration af Den europæiske Union, Den eurasiske økonomiske Union, Bælte- og Vejinitiativet, men også etablering af en fælles sikkerhedsarkitektur baseret på fælles økonomiske interesser.

 Hvis vi imidlertid skal imødegå de enorme udfordringer fra pandemien, den globale økonomiske krise og de dybe sociale chok, der i mange af verdens lande har ødelagt store dele af befolkningernes tillid til deres institutioner, er yderligere skridt nødvendige. Det er klart, at samarbejde mellem USA og Kina, som de to største økonomier, er uundværligt. Selv hvis dette i øjeblikket ser ud til at være en uovervindelig hindring, må det ekstremt anspændte forhold mellem USA og Kina erstattes af et samarbejde om menneskehedens fælles mål.

 Hvem, om ikke regeringerne i de stærkeste økonomier, de lande med den største befolkning og det største militære potentiale, skulle løse problemerne? Denne verdens ‘Boltons’ må fjernes fra disse regeringer og erstattes af ansvarlige mennesker, der er i stand til, i de kulturelle faser i deres respektive kulturer, at finde udgangspunkterne for samarbejde på et højere niveau. Benjamin Franklins beundring for den konfutsianske filosofi og Sun Yat-sens orientering imod den amerikanske republiks idealer er bedre rettesnore end Gene Sharps “Hvordan man starter en Revolution” eller Samuel Huntingtons forskellige skriblerier.

 Man skal definere et plan, hvorpå løsningerne på disse ganske forskellige problemer bliver synlige. Der er en filosof, født i det 15. århundrede, kendt i Rusland som Nikolai Kusansky, Nicolaus Cusanus, der udviklede netop denne tænkemåde: modsætningernes sammenfald, ‘coincidentia oppositorum’. Dette begreb udtrykker den grundlæggende kvalitet af menneskelig kreativitet, der gang på gang, og på stadig mere udviklede niveauer, er i stand til at finde løsninger på et højere plan, hvorved de konflikter, der er opstået på de lavere niveauer, opløses.

 Dette kan kun være den umiddelbare iværksættelse af et kreditsystem, der tilvejebringer den globale økonomi kredit til industrialisering, og dermed reel udvikling af alle nationer på denne planet. Hele min afdøde mand, Lyndon LaRouches, livsværk, blev primært viet til at nå dette mål; han udarbejdede sin første plan for industrialiseringen af Afrika i 1976, Oase-planen for industrialiseringen af Mellemøsten i 1975; derefter fulgte den 40-årige plan for Indien i samarbejde med Indira Gandhi, Operation Juárez, med den daværende mexicanske præsident, José López Portillo, for Latinamerika; en 50-årig udviklingsplan for Stillehavsområdet og derefter til sidst, efter Sovjetunionens sammenbrud, den ‘Eurasiske Landbro’, som en fredsplan for det 21. århundrede. Mange af disse projekter gennemføres i dag takket være Kinas nye Silkevej, og alle nationer i verden opfordres til at bidrage til denne ‘Verdens Landbro’! Dette er planen for oprettelsen af de 1,5 milliarder job, der er nødvendige i dag for at overvinde krisen! Det bør begynde med oprettelsen af et moderne sundhedssystem i hvert enkelt land for at bekæmpe de nuværende og fremtidige pandemier, hvilket ikke kun vil gavne fattige lande, men også de såkaldte udviklede lande, der kun kan undgå nye bølger af infektioner på den måde. De fleste lande har et stort antal arbejdsløse eller dårligt beskæftigede unge, der kan uddannes som medicinsk personale og indsættes til at opbygge sådanne sundhedscentre.

 Når millioner af mennesker er truet af sult, som Verdensfødevareprogrammet advarer om, hvorfor kan landmændene så ikke fordoble deres fødevareproduktion og få en ‘paritetspris’ (produktionspris –red.), der garanterer deres eksistens, tillige med hensyn til den forventede stigning i verdens befolkning til over 9 milliarder i 2050? Kan vi ikke betragte os selv som en enkelt menneskelig art og hjælpe med at opbygge menneskehedens fælles byggepladser med den samme solidaritet, som hele den kinesiske befolkning hjalp folket i Wuhan og provinsen Hubei? Er det ikke på tide, at vi stopper med at spilde billioner på militær oprustning, hvilket præsident Trump sagde, at han snart ville drøfte sammen med Putin og Xi Jinping, når vi kunne bruge disse ressourcer til at overvinde sult, sygdom og fattigdom og til at udvikle det kreative potentiale hos de nuværende og kommende generationer?

 Jeg tror det er på tide, at vi som en menneskehed, der står over for en hidtil uset katastrofe, tager det kvalitative skridt til at gøre det 21. århundrede til det første virkeligt menneskelige århundrede!

 Mange tak.

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…

Den 17. juni (EIRNS) – To positive initiativer skiller sig i dag ud fra den omsiggribende pandemi samt andre voksende kriser. Schiller Instituttets ungdomsafdeling ledte en multinational aktionsdag, som opfordrede lederne fra de fire magter – USA, Rusland, Kina og Indien – til at hæve sig over stridighederne og mødes for at igangsætte tiltag for det almene vel, i særdeleshed mht. infrastruktur indenfor sundhed og medicin for at bekæmpe COVID-19, og for at skabe produktivitet i det økonomiske system gennem ”LaRouche-planen” for 1,5 milliarder nye, produktive arbejdspladser, og alt som hører til. For det andet, i samme ånd, blev der i dag afholdt et møde mellem kinesiske og afrikanske ledere, under titlen ”Kina-Afrika-Solidaritetstopmøde mod COVID-19”, som blev ledet og adresseret af Præsident Xi Jinping og den Afrikanske Unions formand, Cyril Ramaphosa, blandt andre.

Det ekstraordinære topmøde skabte en ny ”Platform for medicinske forsyninger til Afrika”, for at alle afrikanske nationer de næste seks måneder kunne få adgang til diagnostiske og terapeutiske forsyninger for at bekæmpe pandemien. Ramaphosa, som i den senere tid har påpeget vigtigheden af rumforskning og kernekraft, lagde vægt på tiltag for at tilsidesætte ubetalelig gæld i Afrika i denne nødsituation, for at bekæmpe virusset.

Schiller Instituttets aktionsdag inkluderede henvendelser, gennem alle former for kommunikation, til hundredvis af individer og organisationer, som har muligheden for at påbegynde de nødvendige initiativer til et nyt økonomisk system, hvis akutte mål er fokuseret på infrastruktur til global sundhed, som overskriften på Schiller Instituttets begæring lyder: ”Forsvar Jordens allervigtigste ressource – mennesket!”

Planen for denne aktivering findes i dokumentet: ”LaRouche-planen til at genåbne USA’s økonomi: Verden har brug for 1,5 milliarder nye, produktive arbejdspladser”. Rapporten, produceret af LaRouchePAC, vil blive diskuteret lørdag d. 20. juni, kl. 20:00 (dansk tid) af landbrugsledere, fagforeningsledere og andre, ved LaRouchePAC’s ugentlige, nationale ”rådhus”, under overskriften: ”1,5 milliarder nye, produktive arbejdspladser verden over – hvordan USA’s arbejdsstyrke bringes tilbage til videnskabsbaseret produktion”. Dette er lyset, som skinner gennem det der ellers kan synes et håbløst mørke af uretfærdighed og lidelse, uden nogen vej imod en produktiv fremtid. Dette er en opfordring til handling.

Det modsatte til denne kampberedte tilgang til et samarbejde om et nyt økonomisk system, blev udstillet i dag i nye amerikanske udenrigspolitiske initiativer mod Syrien, i et modbydeligt skue af britisk imperialistisk geopolitisk taktik for regimeskifte. Det bliver gjort værre af, at sanktionerne bemyndiges og har den samlede støtte fra de neoliberale og neokonservative tosser, der tilføjede det som en paragraf i den seneste Lov for den Nationale Forsvarsmyndighed (National Defense Authorization Act). Udenrigsministeriet bekendtgjorde 39 nye sanktioner mod den syriske præsident, Bashar al-Assad, hans kone, mange familiemedlemmer og andre syriske ledere, hvilket forbyder nogen som helst form for økonomisk støtte til nationen. Dette sker efter at detaljer om den desperate situation med mangel på medicin og fødevarer i Syrien blev formidlet til FN’s Sikkerhedsråd den 16. juni, og gennem advarsler om truende hungersnød i Syrien fra FN’s administrerende direktør for Verdens Fødevareprogram, David Beasley, i et interview den 12. juni med dagbladet The National i de Forenede Arabiske Emirater. Mere end 9 millioner mennesker i Syrien har ingen fødevaresikkerhed (uden tilstrækkelig føde, enten grundet mangler eller forsyninger), og yderligere 2 millioner står på randen.

En del af dette billede inkluderer Libanon, tæt forbundet hermed, hvor banksystemet er brudt sammen. Libanon, en nation med 5 millioner mennesker, har taget imod 1,5 millioner syriske flygtninge. I de seneste dage bliver der taget skridt hen imod et ”nyt paradigme” i samarbejde med Kina, med en intervention for udvikling af infrastruktur og mulig understøttelse af Syrien gennem russiske og iranske initiativer.

Schiller Instituttets præsident, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, talte i sit ugentlige webcast i dag, om hvordan det ”ikke er tid til geopolitiske spil”. Ønsker man at skabe ”et regimeskifte i Syrien gennem hungersnød?”

Efter en detaljeret beskrivelse af situationen, samt andre af dagens udviklinger, såsom at Tyskland og USA ”driver fra hinanden”, sluttede hun af med at understrege den generelle pointe om, hvad der er brug for blandt nationer. ”Tyskland og USA bør arbejde sammen for at løse flygtningekrisen, opbygningen af Sydvestasien, overvindelsen af pandemien, samarbejde om industrialiseringen af Afrika – dette er den slags ting, som vi skulle stikke hovederne sammen om. Vi bliver nødt til at have et andet paradigme og en fuldstændig anden måde at tænke på. Fordi nationale interesser er fine – jeg går fuldt ind for nationale interesser, herunder Tysklands. Men som Friedrich Schiller har sagt mange gange, man kan ikke have nationale interesser, som er i konflikt med menneskehedens. Derfor bliver man nødt til at være en patriot og en verdensborger på samme tid.”

”Så det er denne ånd som Schiller Instituttet forsøger at vække til live. Dette vil være emnet på vores kommende konference, d. 27. juni”. Find indbydelsen til konferencen her:

http://schillerinstitut.dk/si/2020/06/invitation-til-konferencevil-menneskeheden-blomstre-op-eller-gaa-til-grundefremtiden-kraever-et-fire-magts-topmoede-nu/

Den 14. juni (EIRNS) – Tre dage før Donald Trump indtrådte som præsident for USA, den 20. januar 2017, fortalte Ruslands præsident Vladimir Putin sagligt på en pressekonference i Moskva, at den kommende amerikanske præsident, allerede før han havde aflagt embedseden, blev udsat for et kupforsøg i stil med regimeskiftet i Ukraine.

 ”Efter min mening”, udtalte Putin, ”er der flere mål; nogle er indlysende. Det første er at undergrave legitimiteten af den valgte præsident for USA… Det ser ud til, at de har trænet til dette i Kiev, og nu er klar til at organisere en ‘Maidan’ i Washington, for ikke at lade Trump indtræde i embedet. Det andet mål er at binde hænderne og fødderne på den nyvalgte præsident i forbindelse med gennemførelsen af hans løfter under valgkampagnen til det amerikanske folk og det internationale samfund”.

 Putin henviste klart til Trumps løfter om at etablere gode samarbejdsrelationer med blandt andet Rusland og Kina – et prospekt, som det dødsmærkede britiske imperium og deres amerikanske allierede betragtede som en eksistentiel trussel mod deres kontrol over planeten.

 I går, i et interview der fandt sted den 14. juni med Rossiya-1 TV, vurderede Putin den aktuelle situation i USA og udtalte sig atter ligefremt: ”Det der har fundet sted, er faktisk en manifestation af en slags dyb indre krise. Vi har observeret dette i lang tid, lige fra det øjeblik, hvor den nuværende præsident tiltrådte, da han vandt klart, demokratisk, men den tabende side udtænkte alle mulige slags eventyr – alt hvad der kunne rejse tvivl om hans legitimitet”.

 I takt med at USA og verden hvirvles rundt i en malstrøm af økonomiske, politiske og sociale kriser, er der ikke meget, som briterne frygter mere end udsigten til et firemagts-topmøde mellem lederne af USA, Rusland, Kina og Indien – som formuleret af Lyndon LaRouche i lang tid. Det var netop den meddelelse, som Helga Zepp-LaRouche, grundlægger og præsident for Schiller Instituttet, præsenterede på podiet ved et kinesisk-europæisk online-seminar den 12. juni mellem byer fra Zhejiang-provinsen (Kina) og Øst- og Centraleuropa: ‘Zhejiang Virtual Expo in Digital Service Trade—IT Telecommunication Technologies Services Session’.

 Zepp-LaRouches tale bar titlen ”Bælte- og Vejinitiativet i verden efter COVID-19: Udfordringer og muligheder og en opfordring til et nyt paradigme i internationale forhold”, og blev hørt under panelet: “Diskussion om den nye mekanisme for samarbejde mellem lande”. Uddrag følger:

 ”Udbruddet af coronavirus-pandemien har ændret verden på måder, som meget få mennesker havde forestillet sig for kun et halvt år siden. Det har blandt andet afsløret sårbarheden af en verden, der i flere årtier er blevet domineret af de finansielle institutioner i det nyliberale monetære system. Meget brutalt er det blevet udstillet, at privatiseringen af sundhedssystemet i de transatlantiske lande har efterladt disse samfund uforberedte med utilstrækkelig forsyninger af beskyttelsesmasker og tøj, ventilatorer, intensivafdelinger, testkapacitet, sporingsanordninger osv.

 ”I udviklingslandene er virkningerne af pandemien, som stadig vokser der, med fraværet af effektive sundhedssystemer katastrofalt, som vi nu er vidner til i lande som Brasilien og Chile. Ifølge ILO er 60% af den globale arbejdsstyrke beskæftiget i den såkaldte uformelle økonomi, hvilket betyder, at folk lever fra hånden og til munden, og den økonomiske nedlukning, der blev indført som et resultat af pandemien, truer umiddelbart selve eksistensen af disse mennesker. David Beasley fra ‘Verdens Fødevareprogram’ har gentagne gange advaret om, at som et resultat af krisen i fødevareproduktionen, der er blevet forværret af pandemien og græshoppeplagen, der nu rammer flere lande i Afrika og Asien, vil verden snart blive ramt af en hungersnød af ‘bibelske dimensioner’ og dræbe 300.000 mennesker om dagen, hvis der ikke gøres noget ved det på kort sigt.

 ”Det var ikke coronavirus, der forårsagede pandemien, det var manglen på reel industriel udvikling. Som de effektive foranstaltninger, der blev iværksat af den kinesiske regering i Wuhan og Hubei-provinsen, har vist, blev virusset bragt under kontrol; og hvis enhver nation på denne planet havde haft et lignende sundhedssystem, ville coronavirusset aldrig have forvandlet sig til en pandemi, eller i det mindste kunne det have været inddæmmet i meget stor udstrækning. Allerede i 1973 nedsatte min afdøde mand, økonomen Lyndon LaRouche, en biologisk arbejdsgruppe for at undersøge virkningen af IMF’s og Verdensbankens monetaristiske politik på sundheden og den forventede levealder i udviklingslandene. Denne arbejdsgruppe producerede adskillige store omfattende undersøgelser i 70’erne og 80’erne, som påpegede, at nedsættelsen af befolkningernes levestandard gennem generationer, forårsaget af IMF’s såkaldte ‘betingelser’, uundgåeligt ville føre til genoplivning af gamle sygdomme og udbruddet af nye, samt pandemier.

 ”Nu er ‘den store krise’ her, og vi har de samtidige kriser med pandemien, en større krise i landbruget, faren for hungersnød, og sidst men ikke mindst, endnu en krise i det finansielle system, der truer med at blive meget større end krisen i 2008. Det burde være klart, at en fortsættelse af den hidtil førte politik, kun kan føre til kaos, potentielt en global katastrofe og et dyk ned i et nyt mørkt århundrede, værre end det 14. århundrede i Europa …

 ”Der er et alternativt perspektiv! Krisen i hele det menneskelige samfund er så enorm, at kun en topstyret løsning kan fungere. Jeg har siden begyndelsen af det indeværende år opfordret til et topmøde med lederne af de fire vigtigste lande: Kina, Rusland, Indien og USA. Verden har brug for en løsning, der tager fat på alle de ovennævnte problemer med at etablere et helt nyt paradigme af relationer mellem nationer. Det første skridt bør naturligvis være at tackle den truende fare for et økonomisk sammenbrud ved at etablere et nyt kreditsystem i Bretton Woods-systemets tradition, som det var Franklin D. Roosevelts hensigt, nemlig at give store langfristede kreditter til industrialiseringen af udviklingslandene. For at bekæmpe pandemien må det første skridt være opbygningen af et nationalt sundhedssystem i hver eneste nation på planeten, for medmindre den underliggende årsag til underudvikling er afhjulpet, er der ingen garanti for, at der ikke snart vil komme nye virusudbrud, der fører til nye pandemier, hungersnød og plager. Opførelsen af et sådant sundhedssystem i hvert land kan være det første skridt til at skabe 1,5 milliarder nye produktive job…

 ”Et topmøde mellem præsident Xi, præsident Trump, præsident Putin og premierminister Modi kunne vedtage en sådan sundhedsnødplan, en ‘Sundheds-Silkevej’, og dermed reagere på det akutte behov for hele menneskeheden, og indføre en ny æra af samarbejde i menneskehedens historie”.

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

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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

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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

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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 8. juni (EIRNS) – Hvem stoppede fremgangen for den amerikanske borgerrettighedsbevægelse for 50 år siden, før den kunne fokusere på sorte arbejderes frihed fra nød og frygt? Hvorfor blev Dr. Martin Luther King dræbt, da han satte økonomiske rettigheder og en ende på Vietnam-krigen, hvor de blev sendt hen for at dø, i centrum af sin dagsorden? Hvorfor er forskellen på rigdom mellem husstande af henholdsvis sorte og hvide amerikanere i dag så meget større end den var for 50 år siden?

Og hvorfor har mere end 80 % af arbejdende amerikanere og 2,2 milliarder arbejdende folk verden over intet produktivt arbejde som de kan stole på? Hvorfor har en viruspandemi, for den sags skyld, fået lov til at smide 2,2 milliarder ud af arbejde i flere måneder, og true hundreder af millioner med hungersnød, specielt i Afrika? Hvorfor har næsten alle nationer i verden reduceret antallet af hospitalssenge og investeringer i den offentlige sundhedssektor i årtier, vel vidende at pandemier var på vej?

Kun den afdøde Lyndon LaRouche besvarede disse spørgsmål i mere end 50 år – siden han i 1967 advarede om, at det britiske imperiums banker ødelagde kredit- og investeringssystemet knyttet til Bretton Woods, og ødelagde hvad der var tilovers af præsident Franklin Roosevelts planer for udvikling efter 2. verdenskrig. I 1974 sagde han, at globale pandemier ville blive udslaget, hvis dette blev tilladt. Borgerrettighedsveteraner og afrikanske ledere blev tiltrukket til LaRouche, fordi han besvarede disse spørgsmål og ubønhørligt udfordrede det britisk imperiums systems ubegrænsede finansspekulation og dødelige nedskæringspolitik i den ”tredje verden” og ”fjerde verden”.

Det er derfor, at den tidligere ambassadør for Burundi til USA, Jacques Bacamurwanko, i sidste uge sagde om justitsministeriet og den slags: ”Fjern deres knæ fra Lyndon LaRouches hals”. Jacques Bacamurwanko fortsatte: ”De protesterende aktivister, efter det vederstyggelige mord på George Floyd af en politiofficer fra Minneapolis, burde fortælles, at det var det samme antiamerikanske system, som var ansvarligt for stranguleringen af Lyndon LaRouche Jr. Lyns hals blev bogstavelig talt lukket sammen af den samme bande af hvide racister (white supremacists –red.), der ikke ønskede, at han udøvede sin ret til at stemme, til at rejse frit omkring her eller i udlandet. Den gode nyhed er, at denne morderiske bande ikke lykkedes med at stoppe udbredelsen, vidt og bredt, af LaRouches frihed og idéer.”

I denne dybe krise er det tåbeligt at deltage i oprør, som tilsigter at tvinge Præsident Donald Trump ud af embedet, tilrettelagt af de samme britiske imperialistiske kredse og agenter, som har forsøgt at eliminere ham, siden før hans tiltrædelse. Denne krise kræver en dybtgående løsning; den kræver en fundamental ny økonomi, fuld af produktiv beskæftigelse, rumvidenskab og teknologi samt arbejde med kraftigere energikilder. En ny økonomi, som Sydafrikas præsident netop har opfordret til, ledet af en mobilisering af ny og højteknologisk infrastruktur.

LaRouche foreslog, at en gruppe af ledende nationer, med denne nye teknologi som mål, afholder et topmøde og skaber et nyt, globalt kreditsystem. Han sagde: ”Der er nu en uberegnelig krise i gang verden over… Dette er en krise som vil afgøre hvem der kommer til at kontrollere verden. Bliver det en gruppe af nationer, eller bliver det et genopstået Britisk Imperium, som aldrig rigtig forsvandt – som tager over fra USA og etablerer et verdensherredømme gennem globalisering?”

LaRouches politiske aktionskomités rapport: ”LaRouche-planen til at genåbne USA’s økonomi: Verden behøver 1,5 milliarder nye, produktive arbejdspladser”, er alternativet til den dybe krise, som verdens økonomier nu er gledet ind i. I løbet af de næste uger søger vi at organisere et højlydt, internationalt ”kor”, som Helga Zepp-LaRouche kaldte det, af stemmer der giver resonans for et topmøde mellem mindst, USA’s, Kinas, Ruslands og Indiens ledere, med mange andre velkomne, for at realisere denne forandring.

En international konference vil bringe dette kor til udtryk om tre uger fra i dag, d. 27. juni. I de samme tre uger må Londons forsøg på at ødelægge USA, gennem afsættelsen af en præsident, stoppes.

Dette er LaRouches revolutionære udfordring til sammenhobningen af City of London og Wall Street, som gennem spekulation har bortødslet menneskelivets værd gennem det sidste halve århundrede.

Den 28. maj (EIRNS) – ‘Executive Intelligence Review’ annoncerede i dag, at det stiller en separat 29-siders digital reproduktion af forsidehistorien af EIR-magasinet 29. maj 2020 til rådighed: “LaRouche-planen til genåbning af den amerikanske økonomi”: Verden har brug for 1,5 milliarder nye, produktive job.” Dette diskussionsgrundlag – der giver detaljerede oplysninger om den måde, hvorpå 50 millioner nye, produktive job kan skabes i USA som drivkraft til et globalt fremstød for industrialisering, som vil give produktiv beskæftigelse til 1,5 milliarder, for øjeblikket ledige mennesker, over hele verden – er begyndt at cirkulere blandt ingeniører, arbejdere, landmænd, videnskabsfolk, studerende og andre over hele landet. Det oversættes også til en række fremmede sprog, med henblik på at opnå bred cirkulation internationalt.

 Kernen i rapportens forslag er Lyndon LaRouches specifikation af, at en virkelig sund, anti-entropisk økonomi må have omkring halvdelen af sin arbejdsstyrke beskæftiget som produktive, vareproducerende arbejdere, og yderligere 5 % skal involveres i det videnskabelige og teknologiske arbejde, der er den kreative motor, som driver hele økonomien fremad. I det indledende afsnit af kapitel 6 i den nye undersøgelse, “America’s Space Mission: Youth’s Next Frontier,” (Amerikas rum-mission: Ungdommens næste grænseland) sættes der skarpt fokus på dette punkt:

 ”Amerikas rumfartsektor vil spille en afgørende rolle i at flytte 5 % af den amerikanske arbejdsstyrke til forskning og udvikling. Som specificeret af LaRouche, er dette nøglen til at øge produktiviteten for hele arbejdsstyrken. ‘Stigninger i produktivitet kommer ene og alene fra forbedringer i teknologi, der stammer fra grundlæggende videnskabelige opdagelser; jo højere hastighed hvormed grundlæggende fysiske opdagelser omdannes til praksis, jo større er stigningen i produktiviteten pr. indbygger og per kvadratkilometer areal ‘. (Lyndon LaRouche, 2. september, 2000)

 Denne anskuelse lokaliserer bedst betydningen af Amerikas forestående tilbagevenden til at opsende rumfartøjer fra sit eget territorium, en opgave der blev udsat fra i går, 27. maj, til lørdag 30. maj på grund af vejret. Amerikas øjne vender sig endnu en gang mod himlen. Som Nicole Mann fra NASA’s astronautkontor erklærede: ”Dette handler ikke kun om en opsendelse; dette er ‘startskuddet’ for Amerika. Det handler ikke kun om NASA; det er ‘startskuddet’ for Amerika, og det er enormt …. Det er det første store skridt på vores køreplan for Artemis-missionen til Månen, og i sidste ende til Mars”. Rummet er endvidere et domæne, der kræver internationalt samarbejde, som NASA-administrator Jim Bridenstine for nylig understregede, da han blev spurgt om det amerikanske forhold til Rusland: “Vores samarbejde er hævet over jordisk geopolitik”.

 Der er ikke meget andet, der er vigtigere end dette. USA og hele verden bliver ramt af en økonomisk, politisk og kulturel chokbølge, der er værre end hvad vi har set i nyere tid, advarede Helga Zepp-LaRouche i dag. Den kommer fra en forværret pandemi, massearbejdsløshed, en økonomisk sammenbrudskrise og en skræmmende optrapning i retning af krig mellem USA og Kina og USA og Rusland. Intet mindre end Lyndon LaRouches forslag om konkursomlægning af det nuværende finanssystem og oprettelsen af et nyt Bretton Woods, vil være i stand til fuldstændig at ændre denne globale dynamik, tilstrækkelig hurtigt. De uophørlige provokationer fra udenrigsminister Mike Pompeo, sammen med andre, der handler på vegne af det britiske imperiums geopolitik, dominerer i stigende grad det officielle Washingtons politik, og sætter Kina og Rusland under pres. Vi ignorerer deres stigende alarmerede advarsler om denne politiske tendens – til fare for os selv, udtalte Zepp-LaRouche. Tværtimod er det netop øjeblikket, hvor vi burde samarbejde tæt med Kina, Rusland, Indien og andre nationer om rumforskning, stoppe pandemien og genoplive verdensøkonomien med 1,5 milliarder nye, produktive job.

 Man kunne kalde det 5 %-løsningen.

Den 21. maj (EIRNS) – Den 29. januar i år sagde præsident Donald Trump om sin tidligere nationale sikkerhedsrådgiver John Bolton, som han havde fyret den foregående september: ”Hvis jeg havde lyttet til ham, ville vi være i 6. verdenskrig nu.” Og alligevel er Boltons kammerat Mike Pompeo stadig udenrigsminister, og gør alt hvad der står i hans magt for at drive nationen ind i en konfrontation med Kina og Rusland; en konfrontation, som kunne eskalere til en global atomkrig, enten ved forsæt eller ved et uheld. Mandag satte præsident Trump sin underskrift på et firesiders brev til Verdenssundhedsorganisations direktør, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, der indeholdt en samling af løgne om Kina (og om WHO), hvoraf mange er blevet offentligt dokumenteret som rene fabrikationer lanceret af britiske efterretningsnetværk.

 Den 19. maj blev et 16-siders dokument fra Det Hvide Hus udstedt og offentliggjort, igen med præsident Trumps underskrift, med titlen “USA’s strategiske tilgang til Folkerepublikken Kina”. Det hævdes i det indledende afsnit: “Beijing indrømmer åbent, at man forsøger at omdanne den internationale orden og tilpasse den til Det kinesiske Kommunistpartis interesser og ideologi.” Det siges om Bælte- og Vejinitiativet (BVI), at det er “designet til at omforme internationale normer, standarder og netværk for at fremme Beijings globale interesser og vision,” og at “USA vurderer, at Beijing vil forsøge at konvertere [BVI]-projekter til unødig politisk indflydelse og militær adgang.”

 Der er selvfølgelig en vis ironi her. Verden, især udviklingslandene, ved godt, at ophavsmanden til denne rapport, uanset hvem det måtte være, ikke udtaler sig om Kinas tilgang til udviklingsbistand gennem Bæltet & Vejen, men snarere de transatlantiske nationers mangeårige politik, “Washington-konsensus”. Denne “konsensus” – bedre benævnt “Wall Street-konsensus” – kræver, at hjælp af enhver art (og hjælpen inkluderer så godt som aldrig infrastruktur) absolut er afhængig af politisk underdanighed over for långiverne. De nationer, der vælger at afslå sådanne diktater, ville højst sandsynligt dele skæbne med Irak, Libyen og Syrien, men ville bestemt ikke modtage nogen hjælp overhovedet. En af de mest udtalte klager over BVI er faktisk, at Kina ikke stiller politiske betingelser, men imødekommer nationernes udviklingsbehov uanset regeringsform. Dette betegnes som “samarbejde med tyranner.”

 Desværre ser præsident Trump ud til at have accepteret tanken om, at det er nødvendigt at konfrontere Kina for at sikre hans valg til november. Han udsendte et tweet i dag, hvor han hævdede, at “Kina kører en massiv kampagne med misinformation, fordi de er desperate efter at få ‘søvnige’ Joe Biden til at vinde præsident-kapløbet.” Det er lige så uheldigt, at Beijings svar på de vilde påstande om at Kina er ansvarlig for COVID-19-pandemien har været at beskylde Trump-administrationen for, at bebrejdelserne mod Kina skal dække over egen mislykket respons på coronavirusset. Det er kun få uger siden, at Trump korrekt tilskrev skylden, ikke til Kina, men til det faktum, at de tidligere Bush- og Obama-administrationer nedlagde Amerikas offentlige sundhedsvæsen, “og efterlod skabet tomt”, som han sagde. Havde han holdt sig til denne sandhed, ville Kina sandsynligvis være enig.

 Den brutale kendsgerning er, at pandemien og nedlukningen har forværret den allerede alvorlige krise i det vestlige finansielle system (som også blev overleveret fra den mislykkede Bush-Obama-reaktion på krisen i 2009, da de reddede bankerne snarere end at reformere banksystemet med Glass/Steagall-reform, som Lyndon LaRouche havde insisteret på). De næsten 2 billiarder $ i udestående derivater og ‘altings-boblen’ på Wall Street kan simpelthen ikke reddes, til trods for centralbankdirektør Jerome Powells skvalder om “ubegrænset likviditet.” Coronavirus og det spekulative virus er lige dødbringende og en udfordring for hele menneskeheden. Intet mindre end hele den menneskelige race må engageres for at foretage de påkrævede revolutionære ændringer, både for at forhindre katastrofe og for at opnå et nyt paradigme for menneskeheden, som vores grundlæggende fædre, og Franklin Roosevelt og Lyndon LaRouche, forestillede sig og kæmpede for hele deres liv.

 Et fire-magts topmøde – med Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping og Modi – er det presserende, nødvendige udgangspunkt.

Den 18. maj (EIRNS) – USA’s centralbankchef, Jerome Powell, tydeligvis bekymret over et langvarigt finanskrak, har givet to store interviews indenfor fem dage, og vil i morgen vidne i Senatet, alt sammen for at sige at finansministeriets og Kongressens ”hjælp” med over 3 billioner $ ikke er nok til en ”genrejsning”. Powell fortalte CBS’ nyhedsprogram ”60 Minutter”, at USA vil opleve et kollaps i BNP på op til 30%, og 25% i arbejdsløshed gennem 2. kvartal. Dette vil ikke blive genoprettet, sagde han, før slutningen af 2021, og ikke uden ekstra billioner i lån og udgifter – og ikke uden en vaccine.

Powell ved at corona-pandemien imploderer en enorm ”altomfattende boble” med virksomhedernes gæld i centrum: Centralbankens nye Rapport angående Finansiel Stabilitet antyder ængsteligt dette.

Der er et deflatorisk sammenbrud i efterspørgslen; Powell og Wall Street venter, venligst, på en vaccine til at genoprette den, fordi de ingen idé har, om hvordan man ”skaber” efterspørgsel med kreditter til reel fysisk-økonomisk ekspansion eller store infrastrukturprojekter. Så de bliver ved med at opfordre Kongressen til at give penge til folk, delstater, byer, hospitaler – frem for alt til finansmarkederne – imens økonomien styrtdykker. Hvad Wall Street og City of London virkelig søger efter er en ny boble, en stor ”grøn finansboble”, anført af Larry Finks BlackRock, som leder de finansielle redningsaktioner af både USA og den Europæiske Union.

Den virkelige efterspørgsel er til stede, og yderst presserende.

Den 26. april forpligtede Ghanas præsident sit land til at bygge 88 lokale og regionale hospitaler i år, i distrikter hvor de ikke eksisterer, og at påbegynde bygningen af regionale hospitaler i de 6 nye regioner, som ingen har, for at redde menneskeliv fra pandemien, der nu spreder sig i udviklingslandene. Stort set hver eneste af dem har brug for det samme. Hvordan kan Ghana og den underudviklede del af verden gøre dette? Kun hvis de førende teknologiske nationer bliver enige om at iværksætte et internationalt kreditsystem, udformet til at finansiere eksport af kapitalgoder til, og økonomisk infrastruktur i, udviklingslandende. Titusinder af nye hospitaler er nødvendige. Mange, mange millioner af nye produktive job venter – og ellers, millioner af unødvendige dødsfald pga. COVID-19.

Sydafrikas energiministerium spurgte om hvorfra det kunne importere et dusin små og/eller modulære reaktorer, for at imødekomme det store energiunderskud. Det er i alle udviklingslande presserende at udfylde den enorme energimangel til at forsørge nye hospitaler og husholdninger. Mere end 1 milliard mennesker verden over har ingen adgang til elektricitet. Hvordan kan denne adgang stilles til rådighed, herunder kommercialiseringen af små modulære reaktorer, midt i en pandemi, for at redde menneskeliv fra denne pandemi? Ved at lederne fra mindst USA, Kina, Rusland og Indien mødes nu, for at genetablere et kreditsystem, som Franklin Roosevelts Bretton Woods-system.

FN’s Verdensfødevareprogram advarer om, at hvis ikke tabet af arbejdspladser, indkomst og fødevareproduktion, som sker i hele verden, vendes gennem nødforanstaltninger, da kunne lige så mange mennesker dø per dag, som er døde fra pandemien i hele verden indtil nu. Hvordan kan dette gøres uden en ny orden for selvforsyning af fødevarer i hver nation, og incitamenter til landmænd om at producere al den mad de kan?

Et Nyt Bretton Woods, rent faktisk udformet til at påbegynde hurtig industriel og landbrugsmæssig udvikling i det ”Globale Syd”, blev skitseret af den afdøde Lyndon LaRouche, som i årtier foreslog det sammen med store udviklingsprojekter. Nu skal det skabes, og Helga Zepp-LaRouche har opfordret til, at minimum de fire førende nationer afholder et topmøde og påbegynder dette. Hun har igangsat et ”Apollo-projekt” for et verdenssundhedssystem; og en global underskriftsindsamling for dette.

Tag en hvilken som helst anden tilgang til ”helbredelse” end denne livline for hele planeten, baseret på de store nationers samarbejde, og Wall Street vil kontrollere den og forvandle den til en ”grøn finansboble”.

Vær med i underskriftsindsamlingen; kræv et Nyt Bretton Woods, som forudset af LaRouche.

https://www.skrivunder.net/global_sundhedsinfrastruktur

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.

Den 12. maj (EIRNS) – For at bekæmpe den nye coronavirus-pandemi, og lykkes økonomisk bagefter, er der ingen ‘halve løsninger’, hverken geografisk eller med enkelte økonomiske sektorer — landbrug, produktion, skibsfart, sundhedsvæsen osv. Eller nation for nation — ikke engang USA eller Kina. Der er kun metoden med ‘hele’ verden, foretaget af samarbejdende suveræne nationer. Helga Zepp-LaRouche talte om dette til medarbejdere i dag, efter at have mødt et team der er gået i gang med at frembringe et økonomisk program så hurtigt som muligt, under arbejdstitlen: “Verden har brug for 1.5 milliarder nye produktive jobs”.

 Dette nye LaRouchePAC-program vil præsentere det fulde omfang af nødvendig agroindustriel aktivitet inden for en produktiv platform med energi, vand, transport, videnskab og uddannelse. Dets overordnede perspektiv er i tråd med nødvendigheden af, at de fire stormagter konfererer og griber til handling og samarbejde. De repræsenterer de store økonomier og menneskelige ressourcer. De stærke økonomier i Japan, Tyskland, Frankrig, Italien med flere er også nødvendige. Bekæmpelsen af pandemien og opbygningen af Afrika er en verdensprioritet.

 Programmet vil skitsere det nødvendige fokus for at tillempe den aktuelle diskussion om “genåbning”, test og alle andre aspekter af post-pandemisk planlægning, selvom den sydlige halvkugle først netop nu oplever den første bølge af pandemien. Endvidere, at udsigten til at virusset blusser op i løbet af de kommende to år erkendes. Også “sultpandemien” trænger sig på.

 Sæt dette overordnede synspunkt i kontrast til den store afledning af offentlighedens opmærksomhed væk fra spørgsmål om økonomisk beredskabsopbygning og omstilling, for i stedet at skyde skylden på præsident Donald Trump, hælde til diverse konspirationsteorier, og mest af alt, bebrejde Kina for at smitte verden og for alle andre genvordigheder. Hvad sker der, når dine høner holder op med at lægge æg, og brønden løber tør? Skyd skylden på Kina! Sjovt, men dødbringende.

 ”Vi er i krig lige nu”, med Kina, sagde Peter Navarro mandag på to store tv-stationer. Navarro er assistent for præsidenten, direktør for handels- og produktionspolitik og koordinator for loven om den nationale forsvarspolitik. Han sagde: ”Vi er i krig, tag ikke fejl af det. Kineserne slap en virus løs i verden”. Han sagde: “Det er ikke et spørgsmål om at straffe dem, det er et spørgsmål om at stille Kina til ansvar – at holde det Kinesiske kommunistiske Parti ansvarligt”.

 Optrapningen mod Kina inkluderer at presse præsident Trump til at forsøge at få ham til at modsætte sig Kina på alle områder, fra virusset til handelsforbindelser. Dette er klassisk britisk geopolitik med ‘os-imod-dem’, og de netværk der udøver presset kommer lige ud af det britiske imperialistiske efterretningssamfund.

 Zepp-LaRouche understregede i dag, “Det er tid for os til at fokusere på løsninger”. Vi er i en dramatisk situation. I løbet af de sidste to uger har vi – gennem centrale ideer og begivenheder – været i diskussion om dette med tusinder af mennesker, i betragtning af Schiller Instituttets konferencer, LaRouches nationale politiske gruppers initiativer, internationale konferenceopkald – alt sammen under pandemiske omstændigheder. Vi vil trappe op.

 Vi kan sige til folk: Lyndon LaRouche advarede igennem 50 år om, hvad vi står over for i dag. Faktisk kan man tage de selvsamme ord fra mange af hans advarsler fra dengang og erfare, at de passer, nøjagtigt, som om han talte om hvad der sker i dag. I 1997 sagde han én ting højt og tydeligt: ”Der er ingen grund til at nogen på denne planet, der er i stand til at arbejde, skal stå uden arbejde! Og ‘projektet’ [Eurasien/Verdens-Landbroen] er midlet.”

Den 7. maj (EIRNS) – På tærsklen til fejringen af 75-årsdagen for V-E-dagen, de allieredes sejr over fascismen i 2. verdenskrig den 9. maj, høres opfordringen til fornyet amerikansk samarbejde med især Kina og Rusland for at forhindre krig, bekæmpe den globale COVID-19-pandemi, og opbygge et nyt paradigme for sundhed og udvikling for alle folkeslag, i dag klart og tydeligt fra LaRouche-bevægelsen.

 Et uddrag af Helga Zepp-LaRouches hovedtale til Schiller Instituttets konference den 25.-26. april blev i dag sendt både som video og som afskrift på CGTN’s (China Global Television Network –red.) engelsksprogede webside og deres kinesiske Weibo.com (Kinas version af Twitter), og har allerede modtaget over 1 million visninger.

 I sine bemærkninger i det 2,5 minutters lange uddrag, kritiserede Zepp-LaRouche skarpt dem der nægter at samarbejde med Kina, men angriber landet i stedet, og noterede at ”tonen mod Kina er blevet meget skinger”:

 De vestlige demokratiers regelbaserede orden… synes nu på randen af sammenbrud, alt imens den hævder, at Beijing forfølger en “strategi for ubegrænset krigsførelse”. Faktum er, at det britiske imperiums liberale system er slået fejl med et brag. Hvordan kunne nogen i de såkaldte ‘avancerede lande’ – og vi ser nu med coronavirus-pandemien, hvor avancerede de er – antage i så meget som ét minut, at den brutale fattigdom i Afrika, Latinamerika og nogle asiatiske lande er selvforskyldte? Hvis Vesten igennem de sidste 70 år havde gjort, hvad Kina har gjort i Afrika siden 1960’erne, men især i de seneste 10 år, nemlig at bygge jernbaner, dæmninger, kraftværker og industriparker, ville hele Afrika kunne nyde godt af udviklingen, som man ser i dag i Sydkorea eller Singapore, eller endnu bedre. [Men] Afrika har som et resultat af denne [britisk imperialistiske] politik stort set intet sundhedssystem, ingen infrastruktur. Halvdelen af befolkningen har ikke adgang til ferskvand eller sanitet eller elektricitet, fordi det britiske imperium bevidst har undertrykt dem. Hvis man tager højde for den samlede effekt af denne politik, vil der fremkomme et tal på millioner af mennesker, hvis liv er blevet forkortet af sult og ubehandlede sygdomme.”

 En af de ledende “skingre røster”, som Zepp-LaRouche henviste til, tilhører udenrigsminister Mike Pompeo, der har overgået sig selv med ikke mindre end 90 presse-interviews i den sidste måned; interviews der alle bagvasker Kina med den ene løgn efter den anden, med det åbenlyse mål at forhindre præsident Donald Trump i at opbygge et forhold med venskab og samarbejde med Kina – og Rusland – hvilket han gentagne gange har anført som sit politiske mål. Pompeo har senest forlangt, at Taiwan fik lov til at deltage som observatør i WHO “og i andre FN-organer” – en provokerende krænkelse af USA’s mangeårige aftale med Kina om ‘One China’ -politikken.

 USA er konfronteret med de samme diametralt modsatte politiske muligheder i spørgsmålet om Rusland. Den 9. maj vil Schiller Instituttet være vært for en større internetbegivenhed for at fejre V-E-dagen, og atter hellige vores nation til en sådan samarbejdsalliance, som vi smedede med Sovjetunionen og andre under 2. verdenskrig. Imod dette hører vi, igen, den skingre stemme fra udenrigsministeriet, der udsendte en erklæring der angriber Rusland og Sovjetunionen angiveligt for at indføre ”totalitære regimer” efter 2. verdenskrig – en erklæring, der var underskrevet af udenrigsministrene for en række central- og østeuropæiske nationer, som arbejder tæt sammen med det britiske imperium. Og det blev gjort, til trods for at præsident Trump og den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin havde afgivet en fælles erklæring den 25. april, 75-årsdagen for det berømte møde ved Elben; en erklæring der mindede om, at “ånden fra Elben” er et eksempel på, hvordan vores lande kan tilsidesætte forskelle, opbygge tillid og samarbejde i forfølgelsen af en større sag.

 Præsident Trumps evne til at afvise den konfrontationspolitik, hvormed det britiske imperium har “oversvømmet zonen” omkring ham, blev kraftigt styrket i går, da justitsministeriet endelig besluttede at henlægge de fabrikerede anklager mod Michael Flynn i Russiagate-sagen. Som et telegram fra Associated Press skuffet bemærkede: “Dette træk er et lammende tilbageslag for en af den særlige rådgiver Robert Muellers mærkesager.”

 Men se ikke på dette som en tilskuer ville, i forventning om hvad præsident Trump dernæst vil gøre. Se i stedet situationen med Franklin D. Roosevelts øjne, Roosevelt, der da han blev nomineret til præsident i 1932, sagde:

 ”Ud af hver krise, enhver trængsel, hver en katastrofe rejser menneskeheden sig med en del større viden, højere anstændighed, renere formål. I dag skal vi have gennemgået en periode med slap tænkning, faldende moral, en æra af egoisme, blandt mænd og kvinder og blandt nationer. Giv ikke alene regeringerne skylden for dette. Tag selv en lige stor del af skylden”.

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.

Schiller Instituttets Konference Panel 4: “Videnskaben om fysisk økonomi”

Talere ved Panel 4, kl. 19 to 1:30 – ordstyrer: Dennis Speed

Dennis Small, USA; Schiller Instituttets formand for Latinamerika “LaRouches Arv: ”Grundlaget for den moderne videnskab om fysisk økonomi”

Sébastien Périmony, Frankrig; Schiller Instituttets repræsentant: “Når Afrika ser mod stjernerne”

Cédric Mbeng Mezui, Gabon; forfatter; finansekspert; tænketanken ‘FinanceAfrika’: “At lukke op for Afrikas potentiale – idéer af Alexander Hamilton”

Ramasimong Phillip Tsokoliban, leder af LaRouche Sydafrika: “Gør Afrika til et økonomisk lokomotiv til gavn for hele menneskeheden”

Ms. Yang Yan, politisk rådgiver, Folkerepublikken Kinas ambassade I Paris: “Fransk -kinesisk samarbejde i Afrika”

Bob Baker, amerikansk landmand, USA, Schiller Instituttets landbrugskoordinator; Joe Maxwell, tidligere guvernør i Missouri, medgrundlægger af ‘Family Farm Action Alliance; Tyler Dupy, Direktør for Kansas Sammenslutning af Kvægavlere; Frank Endres, Californien, medlem af National Farmers Organization i 63 år; Bill Bullard, Montana, direktør, R-CALF USA; Jim Benham, formand for Indiana Farmers Union og nationalt bestyrelsesmedlem af the National Farmers Union; Mike Callicrate, Kansas, uafhængig kvægproducent, “Føde for Fremtiden: At spise er en moralsk rettighed, en dialog med amerikanske landmænd”.

Prof. Mario Roberto Morales, professor, skribent og modtager af Guatemalas Miguel Angel Asturias Nationale Litteraturpris, 2007: “Den produktive versus den spekulative økonomi: Et synspunkt fra Centralamerika”.

Jack Lynch, konsulent, tidligere vicepræsident, First Midwest Bank of Illinois: “Genindfør Glass-Steagall”.

Daisuke Kotegaw, forskningsdirektør ved Canon Instituttet, tidligere embedsmand i det japanske finansministerium, forhenværende CEO for IMF i Japan: “Manglende reaktion på finanskrisen i 2008 forårsagede sammenbrud af det offentlige sundhedssystem”.

Ellen Brown, præsident, Public Banking Institute (USA): “Produktiv Kredit, Ikke rovgriske udlån”.

Omfanget af dette panel, omhandlende Lyndon LaRouches videnskab om fysisk økonomi, blev antydet af dets 16 velforberedte talere og spørgerunden med spørgsmål og diskussion. Panelet “foretog en 360 graders rundvisning set i perspektivet af LaRouches fire økonomiske love”, hvilket ordstyrer Dennis Speed fulgte til dørs med syv præsentationer af nuværende og tidligere formænd for amerikanske landbrugsorganisationer; adskillelige talere og forfattere fra afrikanske lande, der har været politisk aktive i Afrika; Kinas missionschef i Paris; den amerikanske kommercielle bankmand, der medvirkede til at få Glass-Steagall indført på valgprogrammet for det Republikanske parti i 2016; Amerikas mest kendte talsmand for offentlig bankvirksomhed; en professor ved Guatemala Universitet, samt lederne af Schiller Instituttet, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Dennis Small, Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane fra Sydafrika og Sébastien Périmon fra Frankrig.

Dennis Smalls åbningsoplæg præsenterede den aktuelle civilisationskrise med pandemi og finansielt, økonomisk sammenbrud inden for rammerne af Lyndon LaRouches grundlæggende og originale begreb “potentiel relativ befolkningstæthed”. Med en tale fra en konference i 1997 lod han LaRouche selv forklare, hvordan degeneration af den europæiske civilisation i det 14. århundrede førte til katastrofen med hungersnød og pandemi; for sidenhen at hævde, at – hvad der dengang i 1997 – var “afrikanske” økonomiske forhold – ville bringe denne realitet – afgjort inklusive pandemi – til verden som helhed, “medmindre vi kan udskifte det dødsdømte IMF-system.” Idet han citerede LaRouche, understregede Small, at “potentiel relativ befolkningstæthed”, udtrykt ved samfundets videnskabelige, teknologiske og kulturelle/uddannelsesmæssige kapacitet til at oppebære og berige voksende befolkninger, i stedet kan forfalde til niveauer under dens aktuelle befolkningstæthed, med den resulterende menneskelige katastrofe til følge. Han beskrev LaRouches forslag i 2014 om “Fire Love” – som de umiddelbare skridt til at vende katastrofen i forbindelse med den nuværende krise, og fremlagde Helga Zepp-LaRouches forslag til et ”nyt verdenssundhedssystem” for panelet.

Derefter fulgte fem præsentationer om den absolut nødvendige økonomiske udvikling i Afrika, med “potentiel relativ befolkningstæthed” som det implicitte emne. Sébastien Périmon drøftede etableringen igennem de sidste 20 år af ni nationale rumfartscentre og et afrikansk rumfartsagentur, som afgørende for kontinentets udviklingspotentiale, med satellitter, der hjælper med at forbedre landbruget, levering af uddannelse i landdistrikterne, sporer terrorister og græshoppesværme, kortlægger sygdomsudbrud, og viser de enorme muligheder for store infrastrukturprojekter, såsom Transaqua-projektet med genopfyldning Tchad Sø – “intet er mere lokalt end rummet”, sagde Périmony og påpegede, at ‘Space and Science Society’, der er centreret i Etiopien, har mere end 10.000 medlemmer. Cédric Mbeng Mezui, grundlægger af Gabons ‘Finansiering-af-Afrika-tænketank’, understregede Alexander Hamiltons principper for udvikling af national kredit, indenlandsk efterspørgsel samt forsyningskæder og industrialisering – han er forfatter til flere bøger, herunder ”Unlocking the Potential of Africa – Ideas by Alexander Hamilton”. Tidligere formand for Det sydafrikanske Nuclear Energy Corp., Dr. Kelvin Kemm, opfordrede alle der så med til at “tænke på hele verdenen under denne konference”.

Phillip Tsokolibane vendte tilbage til den oprindelige ide, der blev taget op af Dennis Small. ”Hvis Afrika realiserede sit fulde potentiale, ville det blive et økonomisk lokomotiv,” sagde han. ”Men dets potentielle relative befolkningstæthed er lav. På trods af FDR (Franklin D Roosevelt, red.) har den britiske imperialisme holdt Afrika underudviklet og slavebundet til City of London og Wall Street”. Faktisk understregede flere talere, at Afrikas enorme størrelse og landbrugsjord, med 1,3 milliarder afrikanere på et kontinent, der i arealmæssig udstrækning svarer til nationer og regioner med næsten 4 milliarder mennesker (Kina, Indien, USA, EU og andre), betyder, at dets potentielle relative befolkningstæthed i LaRouches forstand forbliver lav. Dette trykker afrikanernes faktiske befolkningstæthed og truer nu – som Small har advaret om – med at falde til så lavt et niveau, at det vil forårsage et stort antal unødvendige dødsfald. Således er den øjeblikkelige opbygning af et sundhedssystem, der sætter mennesket i første række, og økonomisk udvikling et spørgsmål om liv eller død for millioner. Tsokolibane betonede Zepp-LaRouches foreslåede ”globale sundheds-sikkerhedssystem”, der finansieres af en ny international udviklingsbank.

Den kinesiske diplomat i Paris, Yang Yan, beskrev hvordan Kina og Frankrig forsøger at kombinere Kinas produktionsevne med franske avancerede teknologiske kapaciteter med det formål at forbedre den økonomiske produktivitet i Afrika gennem investeringer. Hun understregede, at dette samarbejde “tilbydes andre lande og internationale organisationer for at bidrage til udviklingen af Afrika.”

De seks amerikanske landbrugsledere, der blev introduceret af Schiller Instituttets landbrugsekspert og organisator, Bob Baker, beskrev hvordan “det uafhængige landbrug i Amerika på nuværende tidspunkt er hinsides krisetilstand; det befinder sig i en katastrofe, ”siger Tyler Dupy, administrerende direktør for Kansas Sammenslutning af Kvægavlere. Da priserne på amerikansk og europæisk landbrugsproduktion har været ekstremt lave i flere år, og nu falder yderligere når fødevareforsyningskæder brydes op under pandemiske forhold, spurgte Baker: ”Har landmænd ret til at producere mad? Har Afrika ret til at brødføde sig selv?” Andre talere var tidligere viceguvernør i Missouri, Joe Maxwell; administrerende direktør hos RCALF, Bill Bullard; leder af Indianas landbrugsorganisation, National Farm Union, Jim Benham; Frank Endres fra National Farm Organization og Mike Callicrate fra Organisationen for Konkurrencedygtige Markeder. Alle krævede ‘paritetspriser’ – dvs. produktionspriser, der giver landmanden købekraft til alle de mange input og teknologiske krav til landbruget – gennemsnitlige landbrugspriser i dag ligger på 30% af ‘paritet’, og er lavere end under Den store Depression, sagde Endres, da landmændenes gennemsnitspriser lå på 64% af paritet. Den “potentielle relative befolkningstæthed” i amerikanske og europæiske landbrugs- og landdistrikter er høj på grund af avanceret teknologi, men er blevet voldsomt reduceret af årtier med udplyndring fra Wall Street og nedbrudte forsyningskæder, så de faktiske landdistrikter er ved at forsvinde, tvunget ud af produktivt landbrug og handel.

I sidste undersession af panel 4 beskrev Jack Lynch, tidligere chef for First Midwest Bank i Illinois, sine aktiviteter med at presse på for at få genindført Glass-Steagall i det republikanske program for præsidentvalget, baseret på Lyndon LaRouches prognoser for økonomiske sammenbrud siden 1999, efter Glass-Steagall blev ‘slagtet’. ”Vi er på randen” af endnu et økonomisk sammenbrud, sagde han, især i betragtning af de enorme porteføljer med derivater i de største af bankerne på Wall Street. Den tidligere administrerende direktør for IMF i Japan, Daisuke Kotegawa, beskrev hvordan store banker og hedgefonde, som skulle have været omorganiseret og deres aktiver nedskrevet efter nedbruddet i 2008, i stedet blev reddet på bekostning af sundhedssystemer, arbejdstagernes levestandard og små virksomheder. Og Ellen Brown, præsident for Public Banking Institute (Institut for offentlig Bankvirksomhed), præsenterede eksempler på regeringers direkte udstedelse af statskreditter i amerikansk historie, fra Pennsylvania-koloniens offentlige bank, påbegyndt i 1730 (og lukket i 1751 efter ordre fra den britiske kongemagt, der forbød udstedelse af amerikansk valuta), til Lincolns ‘Greenback’-politik. Hun bemærkede, at Lyndon LaRouche havde foreslået direkte udstedelse af nationalbankkreditter (Treasury currency issues) for 40 år siden – EIR genudsendte for nylig sin artikel fra 1981 om dette.

Ved afslutningen af panel 4 – og konferencen – bebudede Dennis Small planlægningen af en “international ungdoms-telefonkonference” med Helga Zepp-LaRouche om to uger, og den presserende nødvendighed af, i den igangværende mobilisering, at organisere endnu én i rækken af de mange bølger af ungdomsbevægelser, som Lyndon LaRouche har katalyseret over årtier. Zepp-LaRouche opfordrede alle, der lyttede med: ”Vi har ikke hørt om andre løsninger på denne krise end den fire-magtstilgang, vi fremfører. Gå ind i fuld mobilisering for dette forslag.”

FARMER DISCUSSION FROM PANEL 4

ROBERT BAKER: I want to thank the Schiller Institute and also Helga LaRouche for this opportunity to discuss this very important situation. The world now faces the biggest food crisis in history. That includes the United States. Where were we six months ago? In Europe, thousands of farmers had their tractors side-by-side in the streets of Berlin, Paris, Madrid; and month after month, they blocked up the cities of Europe and hundreds of miles of highways. In the United States last year, hundreds of farmers left their ranches and fields and went out to mass meetings in the farm belt. Why? The financial-economic system had gotten so bad, they were demonstrating for the right to produce food. It was the same in other parts of the world, where people from South Africa, South America, to the Middle East, were in the streets. They couldn’t afford to eat! In Africa, almost half of the whole huge continent has to rely on food imports, when, with the right technology, it could feed the entire world.

So, we already knew that we needed a new system. Then, bang! The new virus hit. Now, we absolutely are going to replace this evil, Wall Street, City of London system of speculation that has crashed, with a new productive system. And farmers have a special role to play in this, because they have authority as food producers. Food is a moral right. I’m very proud of this team of six agricultural leaders here today who are standing up for this. They stand with the farmers all over the world, but also are joining with cities who need food. And now, in the wake of the crisis, we are assisting the rebirth of a system of sovereign nations, each with their own self-sufficient food supply, so that no international bank or corporate monopoly will ever loot the food producers and working people again. This is a real harmony of interests, like Abraham Lincoln’s economic advisor Henry Carey called for.

Right now, you will hear from across the United States: the Midwest, from Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas, in the Mississippi River Basin; from high plains, Montana and Colorado; and from California. I myself am from Iowa, where most all of my family raise corn, soybeans, cattle, and hogs. In each message, you will hear different implied principles you must act on, like fair pricing, no more playing off one nation against another. No more mega food cartels; no more ripping off everybody at the grocery store. We have to take action. The worldwide hunger pandemic is a real danger along with the virus pandemic.

So, first, emergency action. Let’s intervene to save all agricultural capacity everywhere. Save the herds, the flocks, the crops, the farms, and the farm families on the land. Income supports if we have to, parity pricing,

, and no foreclosures on farms or agricultural businesses and more. Plus, get the food where it has to be. Commission and dedicate the tonnage of basic grains to the 36 countries completely dependent on outside supplies. Pre-stage it. Use the world food program proposal for humanitarian hubs, and make it work.

Secondly, over the longer term, start on the full measures for farm and factory production in every nation. No more out-sourcing food by the empire crowd. That means collaboration; that’s why we’re here today. It means everyone shall eat, and this is the future. This is why the culture that was discussed in the previous panel, this is very important as an aspect of returning culture to agriculture.

We now turn to the farmers’ reports. The first farmer is Joe Maxwell. Thank you very much.

JOE MAXWELL: I want to thank the Schiller Institute for allowing me to be here today, and I’m going to thank all of you all for joining us. I’m Joe Maxwell. I’m the co-founder of the Family Farm Action Alliance. I’m a fourth-generation family farmer in the United States. My farm is in the state of Missouri, and it’s about 100 miles west of the Mississippi River. Today, we’re all under a threat; a threat brought on by a pandemic — COVID-19. That threat is to our health, our families’ health, and our neighbor’s health around the world. It is also a threat to our economy, to our way of life. Men and women around the world have been laid off. Farmers and ranchers no longer have a market. Consumers are being gouged at the grocery store on prices. It is a threat to our way of life. That threat comes as much from the pandemic as it does from the monopolies that control the market and control our economy.

Over the last 30 or 40 years, the world has allowed, our governments have allowed a handful of corporations to control our food and our agriculture. They’ve done so in the name of efficiency, while many of us cried out about the flawed system they were building; the weaknesses in that system. We seldom were heard.

The threat brought on today in our economy is because our governments have allowed these global giants to exist. As an example: JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, just posted a 322% increase in revenues last quarter over a year ago in the same time period, while family farmers and ranchers and small businessmen and -women are going bankrupt around the world, they are pocketing an increase to the level of 322%. As a former lieutenant governor in the state of Missouri, I can tell you, we can have whatever kind of economy we want, but we have to have the policies to support it. This economy that has been captured by large monopolies is because our governments have allowed it to happen.

If there’s any good that can come of a pandemic of the scale we’re seeing around the world, it should be that we all join together with one voice, farmers and ranchers joining with labor, labor joining with farmers and ranchers, small businessmen and -women standing up with farmers, standing up for the workers in the plants. Standing together, lifting one voice, and demanding a paradigm shift; a shift in our economy. Stripping it from the hands of corporate giants like JBS, and putting it back in our hands. This economy belongs to the people, and we have a right to demand change; if any good can come of a pandemic.

BILL BULLARD: Hello, I’m Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, which is the largest producer-only trade association that exclusively represents United States cattle farmers and ranchers. The United States cattle industry is the largest segment of American agriculture, generating about $67 billion annually from the sale of cattle and calves. Because it’s the largest, and because cattle producers are widely dispersed among all 50 states, our live cattle industry is arguably the most important cornerstone for all of rural America.

However, our cattle industry is shrinking, and shrinking fast. In less than half a lifetime, we’ve lost over half a million cattle producers. Four of every ten cattle producers in business in 1980 are gone today. Our cattle herd size has shrunk by 15%; reducing the size of our mother cow herd by more than 5 million animals. We’ve lost 75% of our independently-owned cattle feeding businesses. This contraction of our industry’s live cattle supply chain coincides with a massive consolidation and concentration that has occurred within our industry’s marketing structure. One-fourth of our nation’s local and regional livestock auction yards have disappeared, and a number of beef packing plants have declined where just four large companies control the slaughter of about 85% of the 25 million or so fed cattle that America harvests each year.

Our live cattle supply chain is also contracting because of failed trade policies. For the past 25 years, they have facilitated the importation of cheaper, undifferentiated beef and cattle without affording the United States cattle farmers and ranchers to distinguish their domestically produced beef from cattle from those cheaper imports. It was only for a brief moment in history that US cattle producers were afforded a mandatory country or origin label on beef products, which, for that brief moment, allowed them to compete in their own market. Our United States cattle industry is the only livestock sector left in America that still has the critical mass of competitive marketing channels remaining for which to begin rebuilding a robustly competitive industry. Our hog, poultry, and sheep industries have been skeletonized to the point where because they are now comprised of so few participants, they will have to be rebuilt from scratch. The skeletonization I speak of, of course, is vertical integration; and that kills competition. The US pork and poultry industries are now controlled from egg to plate or birth to plate by multinational meat packing conglomerates.

Our live cattle industry is the multinational meat packers last frontier to conquer. But we won’t let them conquer our industry. We’re fighting back on many fronts. In our US Congress, we are seeking reforms to rebuild our broken markets by prohibiting meat packer conduct and practices that have created a fundamental imbalance in the marketplace between cattle producers and packers. In our Executive Branch, we are seeking reforms to trade policies that now disadvantage cattle producers and favor multinational corporations. In our Judicial Branch, we are enforcing our US anti-trust laws in an historic class-action lawsuit against the four largest beef packers, alleging that they have unlawfully colluded to depress producer prices while inflating their own margins and profits.

R-CALF USA will continue fighting for America’s cattle farmers and ranchers until we win. With that, thank you, and good bye.

TYLER DUPY: My name is Tyler Dupy, and I’d like to thank you for inviting me to address you today. It’s inspiring to see how a little ingenuity and hard work can bring so many great minds together virtually during this COVID pandemic.

There’s a divide between consumers and food production, and it’s widening at this time. As corporate food production grows to a scale never imagined, independent agriculture is shrinking. Nutrition has become a byproduct of food, where television programming dedicates 24-hour networks to the entertainment of watching someone prepare a full meal without any reference of where the food is actually grown, or how it’s actually harvested. Agriculture is the true face of food and fiber, and must engage the consumer with food facts, not fiction.

Independent agriculture is beyond crisis at this point. We are in the midst of a calamity of unprecedented proportions. Cattle ranchers and farmers face adversity on a daily basis; but what we face on a non-weather front are legislative and regulatory policies promoting corporate interests so greedy that the decks are stacked against us. Agriculturists find it not difficult, but nearly impossible, to find access to financing. In most sectors, the food production and chemical companies control the inputs and financial resources. Federal regulations make traditional banking a near impossibility. When it comes to marketing our commodities, the speculative nature of the futures markets cause ripples throughout the industry. Traders in Chicago and New York fill their pockets to the brim, while the producers walk away completely empty-handed. We must take calculated steps today to prevent the further contraction of the farming countryside and the ultimate vertical integration of food production model. Soon corporate America will control all food and food production. We’re on track for a real-world Hunger Games mentality, where food is the reward for oppressor compliance.

Thank you. I appreciate your allowing me to speak to you today.

FRANK ENDRES: Thank you for the opportunity, and I would also like thank Helga LaRouche and also the Schiller Institute for giving us the time to give our views. A little bit about myself — we farm here along with my two sons on our ranch here in the west side of the Sacramento Valley in northern California. We raise cattle and grain on our farm and ranch here.

There’s a lot of concern now in the news about our food security, and this has been brought about because of the COVID-19 epidemic that we’ve had. So, I’d like to talk a little bit about the food security issue. What that is, is today one of the things that’s leading to the concerns about our food security is the loss of farmland. Over 5000 acres a day are being converted from food production to shopping malls, schools, parking lots, and housing, etc. A new additional threat is the large acreages of prime farmland that is being sought after for solar panels. This is leading to a threat to our loss of farmland now. An aging farm population. Under the age of 35, is only 5% of the farm population, while at the other end of the spectrum, at age 65 and over, comprises over 65% of the farm population. Another threat, and probably the biggest threat now to our food security is low commodity prices. What it is, is the way the farm income is figured, allows a huge theft to occur on our nation’s farms and ranches. This is happening because the price the farmers are receiving today is compared to the price he received a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. This has nothing to do with it. A price the farmer or anybody else receives, has to be compared to everything that he has to buy to operate his business today. In addition to that, he also has to have an additional allowance for living expenses. That is what parity is all about. In terms of the producer’s purchasing power or parity, average farm prices today at 30% of parity, are lower than during the Great Depression in 1933, when farm prices then were at 64% of parity. Farmers and ranchers today have lost over 70% of their purchasing power. The only way to make up for this loss is to borrow more and more. This has led to a suicide rate now among farmers that is exceeding the rate of the 1980s.

In conclusion, I would like to say that at least once in a person’s lifetime, a person really needs a doctor, a lawyer, a clergyman. But three times a day, a person needs a farmer who is a food producer. With that, I’d like to conclude and say that is also true in many nations around the world, that there is a threat to their food security also, and this needs to be corrected. I thank you.

JAMES BENHAM: My name is James Benham. I’m the state president for the Indiana Farmer’s Union. I also sit on the national board for the National Farmer’s Union. I’m a farmer; I raise corn and soybeans. I’ve raised tobacco in the past, and when that became not politically correct, we all got out of that business. But I want to talk a little bit about the problem we’re having with agriculture today, and I’m going to probably refer more to what’s going on in the United States than other countries, but I’ll try to do my best to include the world as best as possible. I also want to thank the Schiller Institute and Helga LaRouche for inviting me to participate here today. They do a great job for everyone, and we need to support them any way we can.

I want to talk a little bit about two viruses that we got. Obviously the one we’re all dealing with right now is the coronavirus, which is devastating to the world, and it has really cost billions and trillions of dollars around the world in lost jobs and revenue and opportunities. And the Wall Street virus that we have, and it’s ongoing; it’s every day. It was there yesterday, it’ll still be there tomorrow; they just continue to bleed us by their speculation and how they feel about the markets. The farmers have no control of the price — it goes up and down like a yo-yo. The supply and demand theory we used to have under that speculator issue is gone with the wind. It’s all about dollars and cents and how they best see that fits into it. So, I guess you get down to this point here where Glass-Steagall — we’ve been fighting for that for a while. We need to bust Wall Street monopoly banks and get that process back to where farmers understand what to borrow and how to borrow money and get the money in the hands of the people who need to have it.

And over the long term here, how are we going to fit the needs of the people around the world? That brings us to, what do our people need to eat? What are we looking to produce for them? The biggest problem I see is, we have a responsibility across the US and Africa and elsewhere, we got the opportunity to have food on a regular basis, and to keep us from having food shortages. You know, it gets brought right now back to the coronavirus here in the States. This crisis is an opportunity for us to look at long-term food and agriculture systems solutions. That includes looking to price-fixing, which we have, and other abuses by the market power of the meat packing industry as well as to bring in the supply and demand on milk in line with demand. It’s no secret that the shortages that we incurred is because we’ve closed down half our food system. The other half that’s in our grocery stores, where folks buy their local needs for the week, cannot compete now. That “just-in-time” program that we’ve all be accustomed to doesn’t fit our needs today. On the other hand, we don’t have enough farmers to service these amount of products; nor do we have the processing facilities to meet the demand in each crisis. We have one or two plants here in the United States that have had a coronavirus issue in it; they shut that processing plant down for a month. Well, that’s a big shortage. And the demand for beef is going up, that shut the market down on the beef. So, farmers are getting suffered through no cause of their own, and they have nowhere to go with all this product that they’ve got on hand. So, a lot of them, as far as the vegetables and such, are plowing it down; farmers are euthanizing their animals because they can’t afford to feed them.

To make matters worse, I’ll give you just an example. The farmer’s share, once it goes from the farmer to the consumer, for example, a pound of bacon, the retail price is $5; the farmer’s share is 63 cents. You want to look at wheat. Wheat is something we do around the world. Here, a loaf of bread is two pounds; the retail price is $3.99, the farmer’s share is just 12 cents. You can go on forever. For those of you who like to drink beer, for a six-pack of beer, the retail is $9.99; farmer’s share is 4 cents. So, those things are just unheard of

.

It’s time that we need to make a change. We need to work together as a global industry, and try to figure out how to develop food prices that work for everybody around the world, and that are a fair and equitable chance and get rid of the speculative issues. Thank you so much. God bless you all, and hope this is helpful.

MIKE CALLICRATE: As we sit here today with this COVID issue, I think it’s really pulled the curtain back on the failures of our industrial food system. Today, there’s never been more money in the food business. Consumers have never paid more for food. And the producer of that food, whether they’re a farm worker, or a food processing worker, or the farmer or rancher himself, have never received so little of what that food dollar represents at the consumer level. So, I think this is a good time to maybe talk about and begin to implement the alternative food system; the one that is more local and regional. With Ranch Foods Direct, we’ve been doing this for about 20 years, and I was really forced into it 20 years ago when I couldn’t sell my cattle anymore. I decided, well, we can litigate, we can legislate, but why don’t we do something else? Why don’t we also build the alternative pathway to the consumer? Which is what we have here today with Ranch Foods Direct.

Now, we raise our animals in St. Francis, Kansas; we process them there. We process them into carcasses; they’re shipped into Colorado Springs where they’re cut up and sold directly to consumers. We’ve really built the system, and it’s been really hard. We’ve run into all kinds of barriers, and all kinds of challenges; but we’re still around. I really think the timing is right today, to build this out in other parts of the country. As long as that rural community can connect with that urban community, this kind of thing can be done and replicated around the world, really. But I think it has to be done with the objective of increasing income to the farm and ranch gate; increasing a fair living wage to the worker.

When you think about that today, and the pork plants that are shut down because they had so many COVID cases, why are these people getting sick? Well, they work in very close quarters; they eat in very close quarters; they ride in the same car together; they live multiple families to apartments. Why are they doing that? Because they’re not paid; they’re not paid a living wage and they’re really living in the shadows. Most of them aren’t legal citizens, so they’re afraid. I’m saying, let’s make it better for everybody; from the farmer and the rancher to the worker, and for the consumer to get good healthy food, as opposed to the highly processed stuff that makes the packer and makes the processer and makes the retailer a lot of money; but it shortchanges the producer and the consumer.

So, I think now is the time. We need to build that today. But we’ve got to get some regulations that fit that model. And we’ve got to get a government that is friendly to the idea. That is probably going to be one of the biggest challenges, because this thing has to be financed by everyone; not just on the back of a farmer, not just on the back of a rancher, and certainly not on the back of the workers that are processing that food before a consumer gets it. It has to be financed by everyone. And right now, the people on the farms and the ranches have really no money. They have been plundered and pillaged for so long. They’ve given up their equity; they can’t make any money because they don’t have fair markets to sell in. We’ve really got to step up here as a society and finance this thing and build it and support it.

DENNIS SPEED: We’ve just concluded our section from the American agricultural belt. Do we have any further words from you, Bob, at this point?

BAKER: I would just summarize that what you heard was from six of the leaders of the US agricultural sector. But they are very concerned about this because we have turned a corner in terms of the degree to which the farm producers cannot withstand it. As was mentioned, such consolidation into big farming units. A recent report indicates that the 40 largest pork producers in the United States, produce 66% of the pork. They estimate they’re going to average losing $18 million apiece in this crisis. So, we’re staring to see now plans lined up to euthanize thousands and thousands of pigs. There are plans lined up to euthanize millions of chickens. That is just unheard of when you have such food shortages around the world. This is why when Helga and our organization speak of a paradigm shift, we have to have a shift back to idea of man in the image of God. What is the purpose of all these mechanisms of economics? It’s not to make money. It’s to create an environment of economic production, and also utilize the idea of creating an environment that increases and stimulates the creative potential of every single human being all through their life in various ways. Thus, the discussion on culture that we had this morning.

When you put that all together with what’s going on around the world, it becomes very clear that this is getting focussed more clearly in terms of the two forces that are at work. You’ve got one pushing economic bail-outs of big Wall Street speculators and bank monopolies that are bigger than ever dreamed. Then you see war hawks pushing, trying to create good guys and bad guys around the world. The idea is, let’s pull the world together around the idea that we are created with a creativity. That’s what we have economics for; that’s why we increase the cultural and focus on that, and not just focus on making money in a market.

SPEED: Bob, I have a question for you that you are not expecting, and I want you to say something to our audience about the relationship of the present President of China to Iowa and to the United States.

BAKER: Well, President Xi came to the United States and stayed in Iowa for a while, and lived in Muscatine, Iowa. They have now developed, as a result of that, President Xi got very well acquainted with US agriculture; the advanced technologies that are used. Today in US agriculture, it’s literally what I call astronaut farming, because the technologies used in the space program are sitting in the tractor cabs of every farmer in the United States and many parts of the world. But the degree of that technology, President Xi realized, and now has had many occasions to work with US farmers and especially Iowa farmers, because he met a lot of contacts there. A lot of that is now being transferred and utilized in the most sophisticated way in China. Drones, GPS, advanced irrigation and sciences. The key thing is, it demonstrates as we see in Muscatine where they have put together a China-Iowa Friendship Society and have had many exchanges of people. The Chinese orchestras have toured through the Midwest and vice versa. This really demonstrates the speed at which we could bring the nations of the world together around the idea of mutual development. But it left a very big impression in terms of the agriculture sectors. Now we see that the ambassador to China is the former governor of Iowa. So, it’s a tremendous thing to consider the need for food, because it actually accentuates the need for all the things that are faceted in being a human being. That’s what Lyndon LaRouche really focussed on throughout all his writings. The idea of developing the creative potential of the human being. That’s really something that you can see manifest itself through the magnitude of lifting the poor people in China out of poverty at a scale that’s never been seen in history.

Talere på panel 2: Jason Ross, ordstyrer, LaRouches videnskabelige Team; Megan Beets, LaRouches videnskabelige Team; Ben Denniston, LaRouches videnskabelige Team; Jean-Pierre Luminet, ph.d., astrofysiker, forsker emeritus ved National Center for Scientific Research; Michel Tognini, astronaut, Association of Space Explorers, stiftende medlem; Walt Cunningham, Apollo Astronaut; Marie Korsaga, ph.d., astrofysiker, Burkina Faso; senator Joe Pennacchio, New Jersey State, sponsor af Fusion Energy Resolutionen; Will Happer, ph.d., professor emeritus i fysik, Princeton University; Guangxi Li, M.D., ph.d., Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing

Videoarkiv af Panel 2, se https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQlZ-2CcXiY.

Panel 2 i Schiller Instituttets historiske konferences bar titlen: “For en bedre forståelse af hvordan vores univers fungerer”. Det var en vidtrækkende international drøftelse om anvendelse af menneskelig kreativitet, videnskab og teknologi til forbedring af menneskehedens vilkår gennem samarbejde mellem nationer. Ordstyrer Jason Ross åbnede med at sige, at spørgsmålet om at skabe et globalt sundhedssystem, som grundlægger af Schiller Instituttet, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, har opfordret til, burde overvejes mere bredt som en del af et strategisk forsvar for menneskeslægten. Ross optrådte sammen med sine kolleger fra LaRouche PAC’s Videnskabelige Team, Megan Beets og Benjamin Deniston, der uddybede Lyndon LaRouches perspektiv for, hvordan man udfører denne målsætning.

Deniston henviste til det russiske forslag fra 2011 om et ‘strategisk forsvar af jorden’ (SDJ), hvilket var en åbenlys reference til det forslag, som præsident Ronald Reagan fremsatte i 1983, kaldet Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Lyndon LaRouche er kendt for at være ophavsmanden til denne Reagan-politik og for at have foretaget ‘bagdørsforhandlinger’ med Sovjetunionen for at opnå en aftale. Men andre mennesker kæmpede også for deres egen version af SDI – ofte for at undergrave LaRouches forslag. Deniston definerede LaRouches SDI som et videnskabs-drivende program, ligesom John F. Kennedys Apollo-projekt, der skulle hjælpe med at udvikle begge nationers svigtende økonomier, og, i processen med samarbejdet at afslutte den geopolitiske kløft, der blev påtvunget af den britiske ‘del og hersk’-operation. Denne reference til betydningen af internationalt samarbejde og at skubbe grænserne for menneskelig viden blev et kritisk tema for panelet. Et videoklip præsenterede Lyndon LaRouches egen beskrivelse af konceptet.

Megan Beets udviklede, hvordan SDJ-konceptet ville involvere aspekter af rummets indflydelse på vejret og klima samt et forsvar imod store soludbrud og solpletter. Beets og Deniston tog også andre spørgsmål vedrørende asteroide- og kometforsvar op, langvarige cyklusser i solsystemet og galakserne og hvordan disse spiller ind på arters uddøen, samt hvordan det kan spille ind på livscyklussen af vira. Ross påpegede endvidere, at dette at tolerere at blive holdt som gidsel af et virus eller af en fejlslagen økonomisk politik virkelig er et spørgsmål om tragedie – at undlade at befri os for fejlslagne aksiomer.

Jean-Pierre Luminet, Ph.d., astrofysiker og forsker emeritus ved Frankrigs Nationale Center for Videnskabelig Forskning, tog spørgsmålet om videnskabelig tænkning op i sin præsentation: “Frie Opfindelsers Rolle i kreativ Opdagelse.” Luminet leverede sit syn på videnskabens udvikling fra oldtiden til Kepler, Einstein og moderne teorier, men understregede, at gennembrud mere var beslægtet med kunstneriske udtryk.

Luminet blev efterfulgt af to tidligere astronauter, Michel Tognini og Walt Cunningham. Tognini er brigadegeneral i det franske luftvåben, og tidligere astronaut hos både CNES og ESA, og kan tælle tilsammen 19 dage i rummet på den internationale rumstation, ombord på både Columbia og Soyuz. Tognini er et stiftende medlem af Association of Space Explorers (Selskabet af Rumforskere, red.), der har medlemmer fra 38 lande, og han redegjorde for nogle af sine oplevelser i sin præsentation: “Venskab mellem astronauter: en eksemplarisk præcedens for internationalt samarbejde.” Tognini blev fulgt af den tidligere NASA-astronaut Walt Cunningham, der fløj på Apollo 7-missionen. Cunningham beskrev, hvordan han på radioen lyttede til opsendelsen af Alan Shepard, og efter at have kørt ind til siden for at høre nedtællingen, udbrød “Lucky S.O.B.!” (‘lucky son of a bitch’, eller ‘heldige kartoffel’, red.) 18 måneder senere delte han kontor med Shepard.

Astrofysiker Dr. Marie Korsaga fra Burkina Faso behandlede spørgsmålet om ”Nødvendigheden af videnskabsuddannelse for afrikansk ungdom”. Hun beskrev det faktum, at 40 % af Afrikas befolkning er under 15 år, hvilket vil være eksplosivt i de kommende år – godt eller dårligt, afhængigt af om denne ’skat’ opdyrkes med uddannelse og økonomisk udvikling. Hun delte også sine refleksioner vedrørende kvinder inden for videnskab i Afrika, hvor hun desværre er en af få.

Senator fra New Jersey (2008 – nu), Joe Pennacchio, gentog Korsagas appel om en fremtid for ungdommen i sin præsentation: “Making Nuclear Fusion a Reality” (Gør fusionsenergi til virkelighed). Pennacchio er ophavsmand til et lovforslag i New Jersey, der kræver udvikling af fusionskraft. Han sagde, at han kæmper for fusionskraft for de kommende generationer.

Will Happer, professor emeritus i fysik ved Princeton University, som også har tjent i præsident Trumps nationale sikkerhedsråd, gav sine indsigter vedrørende kampen om klimaforandringer, og beskrev den som en “kultreligion”, eftersom dens tilhængere endog nægter at debattere det. Happer beskrev, hvordan mange videnskabelige opdagelser er sket gennem ”uheld”, idet forskere har fundet, at deres eksperimenter ikke gav de forventede resultater, hvilket tvang dem til at komme med et højere ordens begreb om universets love for at forklare det uventede resultat. Dette fremprovokerede en hel del diskussion under den livlige spørgerunde.

Dr. Kildare Clarke, en læge fra New York, delte sin indsigt i implikationerne af afviklingen af det offentlige sundhedssystem i USA gennem privatisering. Dr. Clarke har i årtier arbejdet med LaRouche-bevægelsen om dette spørgsmål, der går tilbage til den af LaRouche ledede kamp for at redde D.C. General Hospital fra lukning i 1990’erne.

Clarke blev efterfulgt af Guangxi Li, M.D., ph.d. fra det kinesiske akademi for medicinske videnskaber i Beijing og ved Mayo-Klinikken. Li præsenterede sin succes med at bruge traditionel kinesisk urtemedicin i behandlingen af COVID-19 i tidlige stadier, som han beskrev som anderledes end andre virale lungebetændelser.

Det historiske panel afsluttedes med en spørgerunde, der berørte spørgsmål op om vigtigheden af, at internationalt samarbejde skaber muligheder for unge til at deltage i videnskabelige gennembrud og gøre en ende på de mislykkede aksiomer, der har bragt os til kanten af denne faktiske mørke tidsalder.

Panel 2: For a Better Understanding of How Our Universe Functions Saturday, April 25, 2002 With Jason Ross, Megan Beets, and Ben Deniston

[incomplete transcript] JASON ROSS: Hello! Welcome back to this Schiller Institute International Conference. This is Panel 2 in the afternoon on Saturday. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can find a link to the conference webpage in the video description. My name is Jason Ross, and I am a many-year collaborator with Lyndon LaRouche and the lead co-author on the Schiller Institute’s recent draft program on addressing the COVID-19 pandemic entitled, “LaRouche’s Apollo Mission to Defeat the Global Pandemic; Build a World Health System Now!” This panel will be a real treat. We are going to bringing together astronauts, astrophysicists, and other top scientists, as well as a physician, to gain a deeper insight into the role of science in the advancement of the human species and a deeper idea about the essence of what science itself actually is. After the presentations, and perhaps during them, there will be time for discussion. You can participate in that discussion. You can do so by sending your questions or brief thoughts to us at questions@schillerinstitute.org. We will definitely not be able to address every question that comes our way. We have received 50 or so, so far this morning. Apologies is we are not able to get to your question. We will be forwarding them to speakers afterwards so that they can respond if they’d like to. If your question is directed towards a particular one of the panelists, please indicate that in your question. We will begin with a discussion of the global health system that Helga Zepp-LaRouche had brought up in her keynote, considered from the broadest possible perspective — the strategic defense of the human species. The speakers for this first presentation will be Ben Deniston, Megan Beets, and myself. We’re also seeing Michele Tognini, who will be speaking after that. Ben, Megan, and I titled our talk “In Defense of the Human Species”. At present, the planet is being plagued by a tiny piece of RNA — just 30,000 base pairs long — that’s causing pandemonium, keeping us hostage in our homes. Just this tiny bit of RNA in a drop of oil with some protein sticking out. With all of the uncertainty that there has been around this disease — about how to treat it, how to prevent it, what measures are appropriate, what measures aren’t, controversy about masks. There’s a lot of ideas going around that aren’t correct, and we’ll discover that in due time. But, let’s talk about not just the missed opportunities to prevent this disease in particular, but what about the missed opportunities not to more quickly start producing masks, but what have we done over the past decades that has left us susceptible to a world in which we are held hostage by a virus? Over 50 years ago, human beings left the Earth and set foot on the Moon; forever expanding the horizon of the possible. Seventy-five years ago, the atom yielded to scientific thought, offering a bounty of energy many orders of magnitude greater than what could be provided by molecular or chemical means, such as coal, oil, gas. And definitely beyond what can be provided by physical means such as windmills or waterwheels. Over 100 years ago, human minds became aware of the existence of a new astonishing world of quantum phenomena, and began to forge ideas to comprehend and make use of this domain, as well as the realization that what we thought were space and time, energy and matter, were not distinct categories, but had a connection between them that was previously unknown. Over 400 years ago, Johannes Kepler created modern physical science through his faith in the power of human ideas to comprehend the causes of nature. Stepping beyond appearances, he hypothesized for the first time what made the planets move. So, how could such a species be held hostage by a virus? For that, we have to examine not the great successes of science, including those just mentioned, but the failures of science and of culture more generally that have allowed us to be prey to false and ugly axioms of thought that have plagued us for millennia. The most crucial concepts we have as human beings are those respecting our humanity; what we are as a human species. What we are capable of, and what our relationship to nature is. Consider two contrasting outlooks of the human species. On the one side, there is the view that the human mind is made in the image of God, and therefore coheres with creation in such a way that our ideas have the power of physical forces to unlock ever-improving knowledge of the world around us. Or, the idea that the human mind does not really exist. Free will is a delusion, as our brains — being biochemical in nature — are governed by the laws of physics; which we will one day be able to explain, at least in potential. We’ll be able to explain our thoughts and decisions. Human thought can be replicated by a mechanical system; true artificial intelligence is possible. One view says that human beings are a remarkable species. Unlike any other form of life, we can improve our living from generation to generation; increasing in number and in quality. We can improve nature beyond the state that it happens to have at the present. On the other view, some people say that humanity is a horrible species. That what sets us apart from all other life is that we destroy ecosystems, drive species to extinction, and destroy the planet with our excessive numbers. We must end growth and return to nature, according to these people. One view holds that we create resources by the power of our minds. Whereby uranium, which was just a rock, becomes a useful fuel by the fact that we have learned how to unlock its atomic, nuclear potential. On the other side is the view that we are consumers of resources. That we gorge ourselves in a relentless pursuit of material comfort. One view is that humanity is the most beautiful species. That the world needs more people. The other view is that humanity is the worst species, and that the world should have fewer people. Most of us have varieties of both types of these thoughts echoing in our minds to some degree. Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute maintain the first outlook of growing creativity and beauty, of growing humanity. That this is true in science, in culture, and in art. Recognizing the conflict between these two paradigms, Lyndon LaRouche saw the coronavirus coming. Not in its particulars, but as a potential. And he said what to do about it. The Schiller Institute saw this coming in potential, and we said what to do about it. Today, we have the coronavirus on our minds, but we are susceptible every day to a variety of horrors against which we and the Earth have no current defense. Other viruses, the dangerous drawdown of ground water, a comet striking our planet, the Sun throwing off a coronal mass ejection and destroying half of our planet’s power grid. Or even the seemingly simple task in some of the developed countries of having clean water and proper sanitation for the over 2 billion of our fellow human beings who lack reliable access to improved water and sanitation. Or insects; consider the plague of locusts currently spreading. In the immediate sense, we need a global health system; a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But we need much more. We must go beyond a group of medical experts with a few technicians that can be sent around the world. We need the resources, the commitment, and the intention to ensure that around the world, we have the global economic infrastructure required for a robust health infrastructure. Talking about handwashing where there is no running water is a cruel joke. Telling people to stay at home when they rely on their daily work to pay for their daily bread; this simply doesn’t function. How do we address the fact that the world is in this condition? We have put forward a preliminary proposal on how to do this. It is posted on the Schiller Institute site, and you can find it by searching for its title — LaRouche’s Apollo Mission to Defeat the Global Pandemic: Build a World Health System Now! But, let’s now seem to leave behind our worldly cares. Let’s reflect on our fundamental beliefs about the human species, and let’s do it from the standpoint of the heavens; full both of promise and of peril. Let’s look down on ourselves from that standpoint to get the broadest sense of what would be a strategic defense of the Earth, a strategic defense of the human species.

BEN DENISTON: Thanks, Jason. The term “Strategic Defense of Earth” specifically was first floated in the Russian press in 2011, for people who are not familiar with it. It was absolutely a direct reference to the Strategic Defense Initiative, the SDI, which was the Reagan-era proposal for a joint missile defense system between the US and the USSR to end the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction [MAD]. For many people around the world, Lyndon LaRouche is perhaps most famously known for his leading role in promoting his notion of the SDI. Also, his key position as a back channel between the US and Soviet governments at the time. However, while that is somewhat known, and Mr. LaRouche is somewhat famous for that, not everyone shared the same idea for how the SDI was supposed to be implemented. It is critical for us to emphasize Mr. LaRouche’s unique conception for his SDI program, and illustrate how this core principle is as valid today with the Strategic Defense of Earth, as it was in the 1980s. This policy is derived from a scientific principle, a scientific assessment expressing the current stage of the long-term development of the human species. Mr. LaRouche’s SDI program was not merely about defensive systems to prevent thermonuclear war. It was also about establishing the necessary political and economic policies to ensure lasting stable peace; to ensure durable survival generations into the future. There’s probably nothing better than to let Mr. LaRouche state this in his own words. We have a brief clip from an address Mr. LaRouche in September 2000 — 20 years ago now — to a Schiller Institute conference.

LYNDON LAROUCHE:

This is the policy which became known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. Now, the important thing is to understand what the original SDI was. Contrary to the idiocy which you hear in the press today about missile defense–what you hear in the press is idiocy, by people who are worse than idiots; they don’t know anything about missile defense…. I said, what we have to do is something completely different. We do have the ability to devise systems, new kinds of physical systems, which could deal effectively with thermonuclear missiles — that is, render them effectively, technologically obsolete, down the line. But that was not the extent of my proposal. The proposal was that, instead of having the Soviet Union and the United States engage in this crazy chicken game, called SALT I and ABM, why don’t we find a way out of the conflict itself? How? Because the Soviet economy, like the U.S. economy, is collapsing. The present policies of the U.S. economy, the present policies of the Soviet economy, ensure a {collapse} of those economies, physical collapse. So, why don’t we change the policy? Why don’t we go back to the space program of Kennedy, and let’s do what we proved with Kennedy? Remember, according to the estimates that were made in the middle of the 1970s, the United States got more than a dime of additional GNP out of every penny the United States invested in the space program, the Kennedy space program. The point is, that since increases in productivity come directly, only, from improvements in technology derived from fundamental scientific discoveries, the higher the rate you convert fundamental physical discoveries into practice, the greater the rate of increase of productivity per capita of population, and per square kilometer of area. The problem of both the Soviet system and our own, although in different degrees, I said at the time, was that the United States was not generating a rate of net growth in physical productivity, sufficient to maintain the economy. Therefore, we needed a program for forced draft, science-driven technological progress, with some mission, like the Moon mission, but as a byproduct of that mission, such as the Moon mission, we would generate spillovers in terms of technological progress, by such a crash, to put the United States economy back on the plus side, in terms of net growth. The Soviet economy does not work for similar reasons, different, but similar reasons. Therefore, if the Soviet Union, with its vast military-scientific technological capability, were to put that capability, in cooperation with us, in global technological progress, and if we focussed upon developing countries — South America, Africa, Asia — to do what Roosevelt proposed be done for these countries, had he not died, then the benefit of such a program would put — two things: would put the two economies back on the plus side, together with Europe; and it would also be a way of creating a global agenda which would solve the conflict problem. Now, that was the SDI, in original form….[end video]

DENISTON: So, obviously today we no longer have a conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, but as we’ve been discussing in this conference, other geopolitical tensions have clearly emerged. LaRouche’s core policy, {his SDI policy} is just as valid and necessary today. As Jason discussed in his opening, mankind has seen tremendous growth over the past few hundred years, and that is a relatively miniscule amount of time compared the history of our planet, our Solar System, the biosphere, our galaxy, and so on; a very short period of time. And only in the past 100 years has mankind entered into a new historical phase, in which the same technological capabilities and scientific discoveries which have brought tremendous growth and tremendous progress, have also created a new historical situation, in which mankind now technologically has the capability to annihilate itself through war and conflict. Mankind can no longer allow, not just full-scale military conflicts among nations as we’ve seen before, but we can no longer tolerate the political and economic preconditions which lead to those conflicts, as Mr. LaRouche outlined. So, an historical change is needed, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has led the discussion in raising the need for a shift to a New Paradigm, as she has defined it. But, this relatively new historical period mankind finds himself in, defined by this new capability, comes with another more profound aspect. What do we really know about life on this planet, in our galaxy, and in this universe? We can know one thing for certain, the vast majority of all species of animal life that have existed on this planet, are no longer here. Estimates are that over 99% of all species of animal life that have emerged on this planet in our evolutionary record, have gone extinct — over 5 billion species, gone. Interestingly, we have evidence that this extinction process, this evolutionary process is not simply a planetary process, or even Solar System process, but somehow involves our Galaxy as well. 500 million years of records of species origination and extinction exhibit a cyclical pattern that matches our periodic changing relation to our Galaxy. There are very interesting studies pointing at this, indicating that the evolution of life on Earth is somehow also expressing some galactic influence, or is expressing some form of galactic process. This extinction principle is an undeniable fact of the evolutionary development of the biosphere. Under that principle alone, with no other intervening factors, you can guarantee that all existing species of animal life on the planet today are also going to go extinct at some point in the future, as the evolutionary process continues. There’s only one scientific exception that we know of, one distinction, one form of life that expresses anything distinct from and transcending this principle of the biosphere. That is the existence of mankind, uniquely expressing a distinct power of creativity, as Lyndon LaRouche has uniquely defined a scientific understanding of human creativity. This is not seen in any form of animal life. The same science and technologies which give us the ability to destroy ourselves in conflict — the potential to wipe out our entire species on this planet — also provides the ability for mankind to be the only species on this planet which transcends and moves beyond the limits of the biosphere; which defeats the extinction principle. As Mr. LaRouche used to often say, mankind is the only potentially immortal species, if he chooses to fulfill that destiny. So, in the spirit of LaRouche’s SDI, years later, decades later, we are discussing the evolution of that same core policy, now in the form of the Strategic Defensive Earth. A policy to erode the economic and political causes underlying conflict through joint science-driver and technology sharing programs focussed on addressing the common threats facing all mankind. So, just as the SDI was designed to unite the leading powers of the planet against the common threats of thermonuclear missiles, the Strategic Defense of the Earth is intended to unite mankind against the common threats which all inhabitants of this planet inherently face: from space weather, to asteroid strikes; from cosmic climate change, to comet impacts; from pandemics, to catastrophic earthquakes and volcanism, mankind is unavoidably united in dealing with the dangers inherent to living on this small planet, subject to the influences of our Solar System, and Galaxy beyond.

MEGAN BEETS: I’d like to pick up from here, and I’d like to begin by talking for a little bit about the weather. We tend to think of the weather — including dangerous extreme weather events — as a local phenomenon. If we’re a bit more astute, we realize it is actually a planetary phenomenon, with weather events on one part of the globe affecting those on another. In reality, there is nothing local or even merely planetary about the weather. Our Earth and the other planets in the solar system swim in an environment created by the Sun. One feature of that environment is the solar wind, which is a constant flux of charged particles streaming out from the Sun, which creates the interplanetary magnetic field, and modulates Earth’s magnetic field. Why is this important? Because the Sun is a dynamic body; it is changing! And we are mere babies in our understanding of it. For example: Approximately every eleven years, the Sun goes through a cycle of increasing and decreasing activity, during which time the polarity of the Sun’s magnetic field completely flips. We track the solar cycle by the number and polarity of sunspots, which if we pull up the first slide [Fig. 1], you can see as the dark areas on the Sun’s surface, which are sites of intense magnetic activity. Here [Fig. 2], you see a chart of the number of sunspots over time going back to the early 1600s when they were first observed, showing a clear 11-year cycle of maximum and minimum. However, not every solar cycle is the same, and there are longer-period cycles of very low lows, called Grand Minima, in which almost no sunspots appear for a prolonged period, and very high highs, periods of Grand Maxima. What I want to talk about here for a moment is, I want to talk about the periods of solar maximum, when the Sun is its most active. Two space weather phenomena that occur as part of this intense activity of the Sun are solar flares and coronal mass ejections. If we go to the next slide [Fig. 3], we see on the left here, an image of a solar flare from NASA’s SDO satellite; and on the right, you see a coronal mass ejection. Solar flares are intense flashes of energy occurring on the Sun’s surface which release bursts of electromagnetic radiation. Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are often associated with solar flares, and as opposed to the flares, they fling large clouds of plasma, charged particles, out into space; some of which are directed at the Earth. While the energy from flares can disrupt radio communications on and near the Earth, CMEs are something much more dangerous. When a CME strikes Earth, it can induce an oscillation in the Earth’s magnetic field, causing a geomagnetic storm. These storms can be mild, and they create the auroras, which are lovely. But, they can also be severe. And if they’re severe, they have the potential to induce currents in electrical infrastructure. They can blow out transformers, causing black-outs in the electrical grid of an entire hemisphere of the Earth which receives the CME strike. With our current capabilities, we would not have the ability to repair that for several months, or possibly {years}. In 1859, a large CME struck the Earth, called the Carrington Event, with there were reports of auroras visible near the equator. There were reports of telegraph systems catching on fire, blowing out, glowing with induced current even though they weren’t hooked up. If a CME of that magnitude struck the Earth today, we could expect sweeping and long-lasting black-outs for which we are not prepared. Another effect of CMEs is a phenomenon called Forbush decreases. This is when intense magnetic activity from the Sun temporarily blocks the normal influx of cosmic rays from the galaxy. If we look at the slide [Fig. 4] here, we see two sudden drops in cosmic ray flux, labelled there as the Forbush decreases, as the result of two geomagnetic storms which you see in the red there on the top. These occurred in March 2011. Initial studies that were done, indicate that the resulting change in ionization of the atmosphere and the change in associated latent heat release can, in turn, increase the temperature differential with the ground. This can affect convection currents and potentially increase and intensify cyclones. This is believed to have happened in the case with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The phenomenon of the atmospheric ionization caused by increased galactic cosmic ray flux has been studied and demonstrated to create an increase in cloud cover on the Earth. The galaxy increasing and modulating cloud cover on the Earth. This is a major factor in cycles of global temperature. In fact, there is a very interesting correlation between the 140 million-year cycle of our solar system’s transit in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, which are regions of relatively high cosmic ray flux. There is a correlation between that cycle and the long-term cycles of warming and cooling of the planet, which you see in the slide [Fig. 5] here indicated as the icehouse Earth periods. Not only is the Sun acting to control our planet’s weather, but now we have to ask the question, what is, in turn, modulating the activity of our Sun? What is occurring in the galactic environment in which our Sun swims?

DENISTON: So, following on that thread of these unique threats that all inhabitants of this planet face, another existential threat, for which we currently have no protection, is the inevitability of future asteroid and comet impacts with the Earth. Much of the world was given a rather rude and surprising awakening to this reality in 2013. I think many of you have probably seen this footage and remember it, with the surprise explosion of a very small asteroid in the atmosphere above Chelyabinsk, Russia. No one knew this small asteroid was on a collision course with the Earth prior to its impact, because we’ve only been able to locate and track a relatively small percentage of the asteroids in the inner Solar System environment. Significant efforts have been made to track most of the larger asteroids, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of unidentified, untracked, medium- and smaller-sized asteroids that are out there by all current estimates. These are asteroids larger than the one that exploded over Russia which we just saw, which could devastate an area on the smaller end of the size of a city, or in the more medium range, up to the size of a nation or a continent. Furthermore, even if we found an asteroid which was on an impact trajectory with the Earth; say it was going to impact a few years from now, and we knew it was coming. We have no defense systems, we have no demonstrated capability to divert such a threatening object and ensure the defense of the Earth from that collision. A related threat also comes from long-period comets, which are distinct from asteroids because they spend the vast majority of their time not in the inner Solar System, but in the farthest outreaches of the outer Solar System, far beyond our detection capabilities. Although long-period comets are significantly less frequent, they’re generally much larger and far more difficult to detect, and extremely challenging to divert. We’ll just play an animation briefly of one example of this. This is data from an actual event that occurred in 1996. This comet was discovered less than two years before making a close pass by the Earth. If that had been on an impact trajectory, there is nothing we could have done. That could have been an extinction event right there. Just an example of how difficult these challenges can be from comets. While most of the potential threats posed from near-Earth asteroids are thought to be limited to local to continental scale effects, an impact with a long-period comet would likely be a global extinction event; threatening the entire existence of humanity on this planet. In line with this Strategic Defense Initiative perspective, efforts can be taken to build up mankind’s defensive capabilities against these threats, taking us directly back to LaRouche’s SDI principle. The same joint science-driver programs to expand mankind’s capabilities in space generally, for the defense of the Earth, are the same programs that can generate the economic and political growth on this planet needed to erode and address the underlying causes of conflict and warfare, as Mr. LaRouche discussed. As Mr. LaRouche stated in his 1984 LaRouche doctrine, which Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche had quoted from earlier in her keynote address today, the most important program, LaRouche says in that document, is a multi-generational Moon and Mars colonization project, driven by fusion technologies. While at the same time expanding technology sharing and capital goods export policies throughout the less developed regions of the planet. Again, ensuring the preconditions for durable peace and durable survival are met, and the causes underlying future conflicts are removed before those conflicts can arise. Again, this Strategic Defense of Earth perspective forces us to see our common place in our Solar System, within our Galaxy, and locate our actions on this relatively small planet from that perspective.

BEETS: To continue that line of thought, I’d like to read a quote from Vladimir Vernadsky, who was a Russian bio-geo-chemist. In the opening section of his 1927 writing, {The Biosphere}, he says, “The history of the biosphere is … sharply distinguished from that of the rest of the planet, and the role it plays in the planetary mechanism is quite exceptional. It is as much, or even more, the creation of the Sun as it is a manifestation of terrestrial processes.” One area of study I’d like to raise that could give us unique insight into the role of extraterrestrial factors in shaping the biosphere and the evolution of life on Earth is viruses. Viruses are a relatively new object of study for humanity, not discovered until the end of the 19th Century, and not imaged until the 1930s with the invention of the electron microscope. However, since that time, what has become undeniable is that viruses are inseparable from life. They are pervasive throughout the biosphere and are known to infect every type of organism. To give a quick sense of the ubiquity of viruses on the planet: there are millions of virus particles in a single teaspoon of seawater. Billions of viruses float in the air currents high above your head in the atmosphere. Even inside the human body, just has we have a microbiome of trillions of bacteria living inside us, we and other living things also have a virome with likely trillions of little viruses living inside us as a regular part of our organism; some of which are an essential part of our immune system. Viruses also play an important role in a phenomenon called horizontal gene transfer. We normally think of gene transfer as happening from parent to offspring. Horizontal gene transfer transfers genetic material from one organism to another unrelated organism, and it’s incorporated into the genome of that next organism. This has been known for some time to occur regularly in single-celled organisms — bacteria and so forth. But studies in the past decades have shown this to have occurred between many types of much more complicated organisms, including fungi, plants, and animals. While specific figures on this are still being debated, some suggest that upwards of 100 genes in the human genome were transferred there at some point long ago by viruses. Some of these genes are very important ones dealing with metabolism, reproduction, and immune system response. This idea completely disrupts the typical textbook view of the “tree of life” with its separate, parallel branches. And posits a notion of evolution which is much more interconnected and complex. So, now I’d like to take up that idea and look at it in the context of the solar system and the galaxy. First is some very interesting research that was begun and presented in the 1980s by Dr. Robert Hope-Simpson among others, on the seasonal pandemics of influenza A, which, like many other seasonal phenomena that we’re all familiar with, which are connected with Solar radiation, breaks out somewhat simultaneously in the winter in the Northern Hemisphere, migrates across the tropics to the Southern Hemisphere for their winter, and then returns the following winter to the Northern Hemisphere. One element that interested researchers was the rhythm of outbreak of new strains of influenza, which, if we look back over the 20th Century, shows an interesting, even if not perfect, correlation with the eleven-year Solar cycle, as we see on the slide here [Fig. 6]. Here you see pandemics from the 1940s to the 1970s, mapped on top of the cycles of solar activity. If we look back over a longer period of time, 300 years, we see the possible fingerprint of a larger process [Fig. 7], perhaps a galactic driver. Not only do pandemics tend to occur more frequently during periods of solar maximum, but as you see here, indicated by the peaks of the blue curve, they tend to cluster around periods when solar maxima are more intense. We also have the anomalous years of pandemic during solar minimum. Studies were done which showed a very interesting fact, which is that these years were also years during which the Earth received a higher influx of cosmic radiation from galactic sources, due to — among other causes — bright supernovae. But a question mark left by these researchers was, what is the mechanism? This is unanswered. It is known that viruses can be activated and deactivated by certain frequencies of light. It’s also been observed in many astronauts on the International Space Station, that virus infections that were latent would suddenly become active again. While all of this research is still quite preliminary, and requires further investigation, it is undeniable that the anomalies that I’ve hinted at here point to a higher causality. A modulator of the development of life on Earth which is beyond earthbound chemical reactions. I think that it’s safe to say, having spent only 20 of the past couple millions of years that human beings have been on the planet, just 20 of those years being able to study life outside of the Earth environment, as we have on the ISS, we are mere infants in our understanding of the science of life. In the 1980s, Lyndon LaRouche called for massive investment into research in the field of optical biophysics: electromagnetic radiation as part of the physics of living processes — moving beyond a mere chemical approach to life. This is not an option. As we move civilization more and more off of the planet, off into the Solar System, we are going to be forced to deal with life in the cosmic environment, interacting with galactic processes in a relatively unmediated way. This demands a new and collaborative approach to the science of life.

ROSS: So, to bring a conclusion to these thoughts that we’ve been elaborating, we’re going to return our thinking to the immediate situation, and reflect on just how much work is needed to bring our institutions and our ideas and outlooks into coherence with the perspective that we just heard. For example, how effective is the current idea of the Department of Defense? Can current missiles defend us against asteroids? No. Can bombs save the life of your mother, if she is unable to receive adequate treatment and is dying of COVID-19-induced hypoxia? No. We will develop one or more vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 virus, but what will be the form of a vaccine against asteroids? How can we inoculate ourselves against anti-human, ugly patterns of thought that are both widespread and tragic? How can tragedy be overcome in a durable and ongoing way? Well, Lyndon LaRouche insisted, and Helga very strongly stated in the first panel, that an essential step towards creating a healthy culture on this planet is to achieve of the leaders of the United States, China, Russia, and India, to shape a truly new paradigm of international relations. We do have to work out a global approach to COVID-19, and we have to work out an international system that will go beyond just making sure we have enough ventilators and PPE. But to achieve the economic and cultural development required to completely eliminate poverty — 100% worldwide — and provide for the hygiene, the sanitation, the health and the optimism, and the science of the next chapter of the human experience, the world urgently needs a new paradigm for international collaboration on science, defined by the defense and growth of society, and without the poison of ugly and old ideas. Life sciences research cannot rely on the largesse of a few billionaires who happen to enjoy investing money in it. Consider the billions made off of the misery inflicted by opioids, and the relative paucity of money invested into studying diseases of plants and animals, many of which could potentially start threatening us next week. We could have another outbreak. Government funding has to be dramatically increased, so that the benefits can be public. Basic research is needed. Our progress in learning more about and improving our mastery over the universe; that is the truest sense of defense in the broadest scale. We must ensure that, as we move ahead, this is a shared mission of mankind. The three of us will be available during the Q&A period, if you have questions about any of the content we just discussed. And we’re going to move on now, to our next speaker, after, again, just briefly mentioning, the first volume of the {Lyndon LaRouche Collected Works}, which is available at the LaRouche Legacy Foundation website, https://www.larouchelegacyfoundation.org/ Megan Beets is one of the co-directors of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation and helped make this possible. Our next speaker is Dr. Jean-Pierre Luminet. He is a French astrophysicist, writer and poet. He’s well-known internationally as a specialist on black holes and cosmology, in particular. He worked as Research Director, and is now an Emeritus Researcher, at the prestigious CNRS in France, the National Center for Scientific Research. Dr. Luminet will be addressing some of the questions raised in this last presentation about errors in science in scientific method itself. The title of Dr. Luminet’s talk is “The Role of ‘Free Invention’ in Creative Discovery.” Here’s Dr. Jean-Pierre Luminet.

JEAN-PIERRE LUMINET: Hello. At the beginning of the 20th century, the poet and philosopher Paul Valéry wrote in his Notebooks, “Events are the foam of things, but it’s the sea that interests me.” The aphorism is dizzying. He says everything about what the physicist is looking for, underlying the dry body of equations. The poet seeks likewise under the velvet cloak of his words. Symbolizing depth, the sea enfolds what is essential. But what are the essentials? For the ordinary scientist, this is the “reality” of the world — if the expression makes sense. But for the theoretical physicist, as for the artist and the creator in general, is not the true reality of the world the life of the spirit, which maintains its distance from the fleeting effects of external events? In Valéry’s mind, the depth of the sea’s vitality is rich enough to accommodate the most tenuous and ephemeral manifestations of the experience. “A little foam, a candid event upon the dark of the sea,” he still notes. The contrast between the sea and the foam expresses the striking discrepancy between the unity associated with the permanence and the happenstance associated with evanescence. In other contexts, such as the one I’m currently working on — namely, modern theoretical physics, which seeks to unify the laws of gravitation and quantum mechanics — it rather reflects a complementarity by which the constituent parts are no longer off-kilter, but coherent. I take as an example a brilliant hypothesis put forward by the great physicist John Wheeler in the 1950s. The most creative minds often function by analogy. Wheeler imagines that at the microscopic level, the very geometry of space-time is not fixed but in perpetual change, agitated by the fluctuations of quantum origin. It can be compared to the surface of a rough sea. Viewed from far above, the sea looks smooth. From a closer distance, we begin to perceive motions agitating the surface, which still remains continuous. But, closely examined, the sea is tumultuous, fragmented, discontinuous. Waves rise and break, throwing off drops of water that then fall. Following this analogy, space-time would appear smooth on our scale, but when scrutinized at an ultra-microscopic level, its “foam” would be come perceptible in the form of ephemeral and transient events: elementary particles, micro-worm holes, even entire universes. Just as hydrodynamic turbulence creates bubbles by cavitation, space-time turbulence could constantly bring forth, from the quantum vacuum, what we consider to be the reality of the world. All of this is superbly poetic; however, this does not imply that it’s physically correct. Fifty years after its formulation, Wheeler’s concept of the “quantum foam” is still debated; other approaches to “quantum gravity” have been developed, offering different visions of space-time at its deepest level — the sea — and of its manifestations at all scales of size and energy — the foam. Although none of these approaches, like the string theory, loop quantum gravity or non-commutative geometry, have yet come up with a coherent description, these various theories have at least the merit of showing how the scientific investigation of nature is a tremendous adventure of the mind. Deciphering the fragments of reality under the foam of the stars is to detach oneself from the limits of the visible, to free ourselves from customary deceptive representations, without ever forgetting that the fertility of the scientific approach is watered from underground by other disciplines of the human spirit such as art, poetry, music, and philosophy. This brings us back to Paul Valéry. The prescience of his words does not surprise us when we acquaint ourselves with his background. Curious about everything, Valéry was particularly interested in how great scientists worked mentally. He himself was full of ideas, and in order not to let any of them escape, he was always filling the pages of his notebooks. Several times during the 1920s, he met Albert Einstein, whom he admired, and who admired him. The mischievous father of the theory of relativity later recalled public debate at the Collège de France in Paris in the presence of Paul Valéry and the philosopher Henri Bergson: “During the discussion,” he recounts, “[Valéry] asked me if I got up at night to write down an idea. I replied, ‘But as far as ideas go, you only have one or two in your life.'” When it was Einstein’s turn to question another poet, Saint-John Perse, about how he worked, the explanation he received did not fail to satisfy him: “But it is the same as for the scholar. The mechanism of discovery is neither logical nor intellectual…. It begins with a leap of the imagination.” In his acceptance speech for the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature, Saint-John Perse called it the “common mystery.” Einstein later spoke out about the essential role of imagination in scientific creativity. At this stage, it is fascinating to consider the bet made on the free invention of fundamental concepts to interpret the world. Einstein already believed that the principles of a global theory could not be adduced from experience alone or from the scientific method alone, in the strict sense of the term. Einstein said: “We now know that science cannot arise from the immediate experience alone and that it is impossible for us to build the edifice of science without availing ourselves of free invention, whose usefulness we can only verify in hindsight, in light of our own experience. My conviction is that we are able, through a purely mathematical construction, to find concepts, as well as laws that connect them, capable of unlocking the doors to the understanding of natural phenomena.” To take on the question of Valéry’s poetic statement, in its potential, but also within its limits, in the face of the field of equations that escape our common language — this must be the aim of a true scientific culture, which is in total opposition to the fashion of the day, consisting rather in accumulating tables of figures, formulas, code, protocols, and misleading statistics, and cramming them into skulls of young people eager to learn and to understand. A true scientific culture must boldly choose not to shrink from acknowledging the dizzying mystery of the world that surrounds and forms us. By accepting its strangeness, the public — especially the young — will benefit by gathering up some form rocks, at least for the time of a movement of the universe. As the great Johannes Kepler wrote to a fellow astronomer in 1605, “This is how we progress, by feeling our way, in a dream, much as wise but immature children.” Along with some other great innovators in the history of science and ideas, Kepler, too, offers an instructive model on how to conceive of the world in a way that opposed received opinion. In 1975, the philosopher Paul Feyerabend published {Against Method}, a book whose central thesis, supported by many historical examples, is that not only is the classical scientific method not the only valid way to acquire knowledge, but that applying it too strictly blocks creativity and innovation. Science is essentially an anarchist undertaking, in the sense that the origin of our scientific ideas can come from everywhere: from art, literature, poetry, philosophy, and even from myth. Anarchism, in theory, would thus be more humanist and more likely to encourage progress than doctrines based on law and order. I will not, however, go so far as to approve of the extreme attitude of Feyerabend’s disciples, who say that “everything is good,” “everything is equally valid”; which leads to absolute cultural relativism, which would, for example, put on the same level of value a Schubert melody and a Madonna song. As in all things, wisdom is about taking the right path between the two. But among the proponents of the strict scientific method, to the exclusion of any other form of thought, why ignore or pretend to ignore that the creative imagination of scientists undeniably appeals to mythical images? For example, the generating principles present in all cultures — Desire, the Tree, the Egg, Water, the Void, Chaos — clearly appear as archetypes of cosmogonic thought; namely, primitive and universal symbols belonging to the collective unconscious, to use [Carl] Jung’s terminology. The term “archetype” was first used by Kepler himself: “The traces of geometry are printed in the world, as if geometry were a kind of archetype of the world,” he wrote in 1606 in his treatise “On the New Star” — {De Stella Nova}. Certainly, the work of the great creators in the field of fundamental physics rarely reveals the philosophical background that underlies it. At first reading, we are often tempted to see extreme rationalism and a fundamentally skeptical position. In fact, behind the critical mind of the inventive physicist often hides a deep interest in everything related to the obscure regions of reality, and those of the human imagination, which are apparently opposed to the concept of reason. The work of epistemological reflection of Wolfgang Pauli, who is also one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, exerts skepticism towards skepticism itself, in order to track down the way knowledge is constructed, before we come to a rational understanding of things. The influence of archetypal representations on the formation of scientific theories is undeniable. As seen with Albert Einstein’s statement, the theoretical physicist cannot be satisfied with a purely empirical view according to which natural laws could only be established on the basis of experimental material, subject to a strict protocol. Rather, one has to consider the role played by the decisions we make during the process of observation and the role of intuition. The bridge that connects the initially disordered experimental material is located in original images that pre-exist in the collective unconscious. These archetypes are not linked to rationally formulated ideas. Rather, they are forms or images with strong emotional content, which are not captured immediately by thought. The “Kepler case,” to which Pauli devoted a book, is exemplary in this respect. Pauli takes the example of Kepler’s adoption of the Copernican system. According to him, the persuasive power of the Copernican system holds sway above all for Kepler because of the correspondence he finds there with the Trinitarian symbol, the archetype of Christian thought. This conception of knowledge of nature, according to which the unitary order of the cosmos is not initially formulable rationally, refers us, in its essentials, to Plato and to the neo-Platonism of Plotinus and Proclus, but with an essential difference. In Plato, the original images are immutable and exist independently of human consciousness (Plato uses the term “soul”). Immanuel Kant’s use of the concept of the {a priori} form of sensibility, applied to the geometric framework, is equally objectionable. It led him to argue that Euclid’s postulates were inherent in human thought. However, the archetypes of psychology are not fixed; they can evolve in relation to a given situation of knowledge. The cosmologist seeks to describe this indefinite expanse of space using a geometric model. Several models are possible; the description obtained depends in particular on the degree of sharpness with which physical space is analyzed. In fact, for a long time, Euclidean space was the only space known to mathematicians. (It was still the case at the time of Kant, before we discovered the non-Euclidean geometries.) In addition, human beings have an instinctive tendency to interpret their sensory perceptions by means of Euclidean geometry. It has been shown that the semi-circular channels of our inner ear, which detect acceleration of the head in three perpendicular planes, construct a mental space whose local structure is Euclidean. So, it took a singular intellectual work to understand that Euclid’s postulates were not the only possible ones. To say whether space has three or eleven dimensions, whether it is finite or infinite, flat or curved, simply connected or multiply connected, etc., is far from obvious. Indeed, it’s usually counter-intuitive! In this case, the idea must necessarily pre-exist the sensory experience. Therefore, we must indeed place what Einstein called the free invention of theories at the heart of the process of discovery. After all, as the poet Novalis wrote: “Theories are like fishing; it is only by casting into unknown waters that you may catch something.” For several decades, the Schiller Institute has adopted, among other goals, the mission of promoting this fruitful way of thinking about the world, and I am glad to have been able to share it with you. Thank you very much for your attention.

ROSS: For our next speaker, we’re going to be hearing from a French astronaut, and given the time in France, we’re very glad he’s able to be on with us this late. And I’d also like to make sure that everybody knows that if you have a question for our next speaker, please email it in right away, so we’ll be able to have a short dialogue with him before it gets too late. Michel Tognini is a French test pilot, engineer, and former astronaut at the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) the French Space Agency. He’s also the former head of the European Astronaut Center of the European Space Agency, and one of the founding members of the Association of Space Explorers. He has logged a total of 19 days in space aboard the Soyuz, the MIR station, the Space Shuttle Columbia and the International Space Station. What an impressive international space presence! His presentation is entitled, “Friendship Between Astronauts: An Exemplary Precedent for International Cooperation.”

MICHEL TOGNINI: Hello everybody and thank you for inviting me to speak about cooperation between astronauts and cosmonauts. I will ask you to give the next slide, please. We are going to talk about a brief history of space, and the cooperation between us and what we did in space. So, next slide; and next as well. So, if we look at what we did in the beginning, we had the first flight of Sputnik, in 1957. It was a big surprise all over the world, because the nobody was expecting this Sputnik to flight in space, except the Soviets at the time. And as you see very well, the Sputnik as it is designed, it is metallic and it was making a big because it was a tool to be seen and to be heard all over the world, which was propaganda tool in space. Next, in 1961 was the first human flight of Yuri Gagarin. It was the first time that a human left the Earth to go to space. He made one orbit around the Earth, which only is one hour and 40 minutes. And he landed safely. That was the beginning of human space exploration. Then, humans have been to space regularly, have been to the Moon, and they go to the International Space Station. If we consider all the flights made from Gagarin up to today, we have spent roughly 150 years in space. Next slide: Other important dates as well are: 1962: John Glenn, the first American went to space. As you can see, in the beginning was Russian, and then American. 1963: The first female in space was Valentina Tereshkova. She was Russian. 1965: The first space walk, Alexei Leonov went up in a spacecraft, in space, and then he went outside of the spacecraft with a spacesuit, to spend a little bit, like 15 minutes, in a space walk. 1969: You all know, the first humans on the Moon, with Armstrong and Aldrin. 1981: The first Space Shuttle flight. The Space Shuttle flew roughly 30 years. 2001: The first tourist in space, Denis Tito, who was American. His dream was to fly in space, and he had to pay for his mission. So that was a way to demonstrate that the human space missions are safe enough to be flown by tourists. 2003: Yang Liwei, the first Chinese in space. We call them taikonauts. 2012: The first SpaceX mission, that was the mission made by Elon Musk, a private company going into space with a dream and with a goal to send humans to space. And I can tell you, 2012, when he started, nobody believed he that he would send a human into space, but this year, in May 2020, he will send the first human mission to the Space Station. 2017: China announces its planes to return to the Moon, to exploit the soil of the Moon. Next slide: You can see on this slide, the fact that Russians and Americans are the different paths for space flight. The Russians had the classical rocket, called Soyuz and the classical capsule. They made the progressive evolution of the rocket and capsule, in order to fly, almost the same rocket and the same capsule, but much more modern, and they had seven space stations called Salyut, from 1 to 7; they had the Mir space station that was used also to do the first flight between the Space Shuttle and the first docking of the Space Shuttle to a space station. And they tried to land a human on the Moon, but they could not have a [inaudible 1:12.34]. On the other side, the Americans had the Mercury for 1 person, Gemini for 2 persons, Apollo for 3 persons to go to the Moon, and to go to the space station called Skylab. They went to the Moon six times safely, and successfully. They had the Space Shuttle. So, it was more, for the Americans a zig-zag path. And we can say that at the time, when you see the two red and white columns, it was a kind of a confrontation between American and Russian. But, there was a flight called ASTP, Apollo-Soyuz Space Mission in 1975, where Soyuz went to space; an Apollo spacecraft went to space. They docked in space. When they docked, they opened the door, they shook hands, they gave each other gifts, and they started a very strong friendship. Next Slide: This shows you the crew of this Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. In green you have the Russian, in light brown you have the Americans. And in this five [inaudible 1:13.51], two persons, one American, one Russian became very good friends. This first mission was made because of the good friendship between two persons. And usually when I make a speeches, I ask people in the room to tell me who the two persons. I will tell you today, because you cannot speak to me: The two persons are Tom Stafford, an American fighter pilot, test pilot and astronaut; and on the right side is Alexei Leonov, who was also the first man who made a space walk. He was also a very courageous space, fighter pilot. And these two persons became friends, on this mission, before the mission, when they met in 1972, during the mission that was very successful, and also after the mission. And the pictures right after show you the two men, as they could be today. Next slide: You can see, on the left, Tom Stafford; on the right, Alexei Leonov, after 45 years of true friendship. I can tell you that every year, Tom Stafford went to visit Alexei Leonov in Russia to spend a few days with him on vacation. And every year, Alexei Leonov went to America to spend a few days with his friend Tom Stafford. And even sometimes, when the relationship between the two countries were slightly heavy, the two governments asked them to try to solve the problem. Unfortunately Alexei Leonov passed away a few months ago, so this friendship is no more. But the next slide will show you that we continue this friendship, as you can see, in space. We have today the space station, and these are young people on the space station: on the left side, you have the Russian cosmonaut, on the right side is an American astronaut. They fly in space: They have been flying long duration flights in space for 20 years now, and they have a very strong relationship and they have a good trust, because they can each cut the other’s hair, and this has led to what we called the ASE, which “Association of Space Explorers,” which was created 35 years ago. This Association of Space Explorers includes {38} different countries and this was created in 1985 in France. Since then we meet every year in a different country in the world. Next slide: To show you that we went from confrontation to cooperation, slightly. The confrontation gave very good speed to the space program. You remember when John Kennedy asked the country to go to the Moon. NASA went to the Moon in eight years, which is very, very fast. But, there was less emphasis on scientific content. Today we cooperation, which is slower evolution, but more focused on science, and we do have cooperation, among five partners, which are NASA, the Russian, European, Japan, and Canada. And also, we try slowly to have China and India with us, to have seven partners in space. Next slide: In this case, you could have a pattern to fly in space with seven different space agencies, and the seven space agencies would have seven tasks, to go to the Moon or go to Mars. On this slide, you could see that one space agency could be in charge of the launch site, the second space agency could be responsible for the access to low-Earth orbit, what we call LEO; the third space agency would be in charge of MTFF, which is a low-Earth orbit small space station; the fourth space agency would be in charge of the transfer, with a tug, from low-Earth orbit to the Moon orbit; number five would be the MTFF on the Moon; number six would be the descent to the Moon; and number seven would be in charge of the lunar base. You can see on this diagram that we can share all the activities between the whole world to have a common goal of going into space together. Next slide: I show what we did achieve with the space station. The first mission was in 1988. What we did in this mission is a real Apollo-Soyuz mission, with a left module which you called LTB, launch from Baikonur, on a Proto rocket. The right module was node number 1, launched on the space shuttle from Kennedy Space Center, and the two were docked together with the robotic arm from Canada. That was the beginning of the building of the space station Next slide: This shows that we put a third module called Salis [ph] module. Inside you have oxygen, you have life, therefore there was Soyuz on the back, in order to bring people into space. That was the beginning of the Space Station, with three persons on board. And the next slide shows you the complete Space Station with the Space Shuttle on the top, the U.S. part on the top part of the picture; the tray with the solar panel on the side; and on the backside you have the Russian side and you have the European ETV that was able to fly five times in space, in order to be paid for the launch of Columbus, that you can see on the left front side of the station. The next slide shows you one of the current positions of the space station. You can see that you have two Soyuz’s, two Progress’s and we can congratulate the Russians, as today they launched a Progress which is like Soyuz but automatic; and they had the re-cut of the docking time, because they were going from the ground to the space station in less than 3.5 hours. So that’s the shortest time to go to space. And you can see on the left side the Dragon insignis; these are made by private companies. And the Beam is an inflatable structure, in order to have less weight and less volume from Earth to space. Next slide: So the first mission was 1 hour and 40 minutes, which was the one with Gagarin. We slowly made an evolution on the direction of the space flights, to go for 1 hour, to 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, and then 6 months. All the flights today are six month duration. Some flights have been 1 year. The record was 14 months with Valery Polyakov. So we knew that we could cope with the fight that we lost muscles, we lost [inaudible 1:21.07] in space. We can do exercise every day, two hours of exercise to compensate for this loss. In parallel, we understood that the difficulty was the psychological behavior, so we did some studies on the ground with Mars 500, 18 months on the ground with 6 international people, in order to simulate a flight to Mars, and also a flight on Hawaii with one French person, one year on that mission completed. It was also to test the psychological behavior in this long period of confinement. And the good is to have the best knowledge of human behavior in space, in order to make a trip the Moon, to Mars, or to an asteroid. Next slide: The goal is to make a long duration flight and to stay in space longer and longer, and also to be able to make operations in space, like repairing a satellite, or doing a space walk, or building some structure, like we did with the space station. But, because we’re in space, we use the fact that we’re in zero G to do science, like the control of muscles during long flight, or study on the risk of kidney stones during long flight. Next slide: And this also is an application of what we could do in space, we’re starting to do it, in the growth of protein crystals. You see on the top left picture, what is protein crystal growth on Earth, and the one on the right side is the one in space. Because you are in zero G, the spatial protein is bigger so you can have better presentation of the disease, and you can make some special medicines, much more precisely because of that. Next slide: shows you also the impact of space missions, which is education. When Kennedy initiated the Apollo program, we had the top record of students going for PhDs, physical science, and engineering diplomas. We had the same in France. When we have the French astronauts playing in space, still don’t want to study more science to better understand what’s going on in space, and better understand what space science. And the space station we have today, which is a real success, we can say that all the building of the space station was successful, all the flights were successful; there is permanently on the space station at least one American and one Russian and they do work very well together. This cooperation program is between Russia, United States, European Canada and Japan. In Europe, 10 countries participate in this program, so altogether, 15 countries work together. It was a program made for joint science together with the participation of Russia in a great way. And the next slide, will be my last: which is slogan of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.” This is why we go to space, and this is also why we want to increase our knowledge there, today. Thank you very much.

ROSS: Thank you very much, Michel Tognini. If you have time, there are a few questions that came in for you. I can combine it into one question so you answer them together. One of the questions was, someone was saying that it seems like you had a very unique background, for being involved in the U.S. and the Russian space agencies. They wonder what the biggest lesson you learned for advising the future would be, based on that. Another question asks about how countries should work together to do the Moon-Mars program — this is an American and she says: This seems like it’s too big for America to do alone! Should we work with other countries? And a Serbian, a member of the executive board for the Serbian Office for Space Sciences asks about international cooperation for space. This person writes: “I am a strong advocate that outer space should be considered as a common heritage of mankind, as the UN conferences also say. In this light, and being a space developing country, we are facing problems as well as many other countries to join the Space Club. I would like to hear your opinion on how we can rethink the global approach to outer space activities, policies and research.”

TOGNINI: I will try to reply to the question, what did I learn from this cooperation with Russia and with NASA? I learned humility. And I think humility is really important for an astronaut, from people on Earth, and also for the consideration that life is very fragile. As someone said before, we could be hit by a comet or an asteroid any time, and we need to have a plan to fight against an asteroid or a comet. And the only way to fight this danger is to work together. In the Association of Space Explorers, where we have several different countries joined together and different astronauts from these countries, we have a plan to study every year, the way to deflect an asteroid from Earth. Today, it’s an automatic program, but in the future, we will try to make it maybe a human program. And the second question is how to go to the Moon and Mars. I strongly believe that slowly, we need to cooperate together, even with China and India, because they have very good potential for a program in space. And the example of the International Space Station is an example that could be applied to the whole world. If we could succeed in the International Space Station, we are obliged to succeed if we include China and India together. So I believe in it. And, for the case of Serbia, you know Serbia could participate in a space program, whether it is with Russia or it with ESA, the European Space Agency. It’s a pretty good organization, it’s a pretty good will. But if a country wants to participate in space, at {any} level, even at 1% of the budget, it’s possible to do it.

ROSS: OK. Thank you very much, thank you for joining us. We know it’s late there, and we’re very happy to have had your participation. Thank you, Michel Tognini.

TOGNINI: Thank you very much, and good evening to all of you.

ROSS: We had sent in, not as a question, but actually as an interesting comment, a statement that was made today by Presidents Trump of the United States and President Putin of the Russian Federation, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Meeting on the Elbe, which Dennis mentioned in his introduction to this conference. I’d like to read their joint statement:

“Joint Statement by President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Meeting on the Elbe “April 25, 2020, marks the 75th Anniversary of the historic meeting between American and Soviet troops, who shook hands on the damaged bridge over the Elbe River. This event heralded the decisive defeat of the Nazi regime. “The meeting on the Elbe represented a culmination of tremendous efforts by the many countries and peoples that joined forces under the framework of the United Nations Declaration of 1942. This common struggle required enormous sacrifice by millions of soldiers, sailors, and citizens in multiple theaters of war. “We also recognize the contributions from millions of men and women on the home front, who forged vast quantities of war materials for use around the world. Workers and manufacturers played a crucial role in supplying the Allied forces with the tools necessary for victory. “The ‘Spirit of the Elbe’ is an example of how our countries can put aside differences, build trust, and cooperate in pursuit of a greater cause. As we work today to confront the most important challenges of the 21st century, we pay tribute to the valor and courage of all those who fought together to defeat fascism. Their heroic feat will never be forgotten.”

ROSS: That is the joint statement by Presidents Putin and Trump. For our next speaker we’re going to be hearing from an American astronaut: Walt Cunningham is a retired American astronaut, who served as Lunar Module Pilot on the 11-day Apollo 7 mission, the first Apollo that brought human beings into space. During the flight, the three-member crew did exercises in docking and lunar orbit rendezvous, completed eight successful tests and maneuvering ignitions of the service module propulsion engine, measured the accuracy of performance of all spacecraft systems, and provided the first effective television transmission of onboard crew activities. Among his many decorations and honors, Walt Cunningham is a recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal; an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and a fellow of the American Astronautical Society. In preparation for this conference today, we asked him about his historic flight and the contributions that flight made to fulfilling the vision laid out by President Kennedy, and to making the Apollo Moon landing missions that came after a success. Let’s hear Walt Cunningham’s presentation: “Apollo 7: An Astronaut’s Reflections.”

Q: What did you have to do to qualify to become an astronaut?

CUNNINGHAM: My personal assessment is, you really shouldn’t be there unless you’re willing to stick your necks out a little. It took me years after that to fully put into the right perspective on this with fighter pilots. I have to tell you, in my book I have a section in there on the day that I decided I was going to apply to be an astronaut. That morning, actually I was getting my college degree in my mid-20s. I had not been to college. I joined the Navy out of high school, managed to pass the two-year test, became a fighter pilot. Smart enough to go in the Marine Corps instead of the Navy, which I never regret. [laughs] But I was going to college trying to get a degree that year, and I was driving in the morning, because I was working at the RAND Corporation, and I was driving that morning, and they were going through the countdown for Alan Shepard. It was 1961. And he was on the East Coast, and I’m driving along in my car, and we didn’t have all those freeways out in L.A. at that time, I was going to UCLA. It got down to the last four or five minutes, and I had to pull over to the side of the road and park, so I could hear what was going on. I couldn’t even keep driving. It got down, I remember the count — 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, lift-off — and I caught myself screaming out, “You lucky SOB!” [laughter] And that was the time — I felt like I was alone; I looked around to make sure, there was no one parking that was looking at me–and that was when I decided that that was what I was going to do, I had good background for it. And 18 months later, I was sharing an office with Alan. It was like joining a very unusual, unique kind of life at the time. That’s evolved the way a lot of these kinds of things do. When we first had human beings sail around the world, that’s the difference from how they evolved into consistent kinds of systems out there in the oceans.

Q: What did you think about President Kennedy’s challenge to land on the Moon? What went through your mind?

CUNNINGHAM: It’s interesting now as time goes on. I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure a lot of the other people feel the same way, too. As you get older and you get more mature, you can put in perspective some of these things that at the time you never even thought about; you just took it for granted. When he was making his speech, I remember that was before I had been selected by NASA. I got selected the first time I applied. But I can remember when he was saying that, I just thought, “it was a good speech.” Now, it’s something that goes down in history, and I think it’s because at the time, our minds were not working quite the same way. You’ve got to let your mind mature in order to get the perspective on what’s going on historically. It was a unique period in our history, for the people here with that kind of an activity to move to. If you go back 500 years, and you look at the first time they set out to sail around the world? I have to tell you, I think they started off with about 240 people, and there were 4 ships. When they finally made it, a year and a half or two years later, there were 18 of those original people still alive. And they had made it around the world. They were willing to pay the price. They moved our society forward. We felt a lot of pluses going out in society after that. That was 500 years ago. The society in the world benefits from being willing to stick your neck out, but not doing it wildly. You’ve got to be committed to what you’re trying to accomplish. I’m sure I feel I can speak a lot more about that now than I ever did at the time, because you’ve got to get wise.

Q: What was it like to be one of the first in space?

CUNNINGHAM: I think that they’ve said that 25% or 35% of people had a reaction to zero Gs, throwing up the first day and stuff like that. But they were all committed; they would all go on, anyway. The amount of weight that was lost by those folks — ours was the longest Apollo mission I think; there might have been one more mission slightly longer. I think the most anybody lost weight on our mission was 10 pounds, something like that. The attitude of the people in those days was different than the attitudes today because we were all military fighter pilots. Whether the world likes it or not, it takes a certain attitude on that to justify having those kinds of activities from one country to another. But I have to tell you this: One of the reasons that our mission was such a success — first off, it’s gotten a lot of criticism because Wally Schirra at the time had a cold. But I have to tell you this, everything that Wally needed to do operationally, he did it anyway. It was a problem with the verbiage back and forth, because he was recovering from a cold. As a matter of fact, he let the ground think that we all had a cold. We didn’t have colds. I didn’t cough once. Donn Eisele I think once or twice may have coughed, but we were juniors; he was a very serious guy. And whether we like it now at this stage, I think he did a very good job. He was a {good pilot} in my opinion. At the time, that flight, I think it surprised him, because it was an 11-day mission, and they added four different objectives to that mission. The ground, I’m sure, had lots and lots of reservations as to whether we would make 11 days; they did it. I can remember the last couple of days, we had some time on our hands, because we didn’t have a lot of film left. Now they take pictures all over the place. Our total film for the whole 11 days for 3 of us using the camera, was 500 pictures! Now, they might do that with one pass around the Earth. The world doesn’t realize that 53% of the Earth’s surface is covered by clouds. Whether we like it or not, most of the Earth is ocean, out there. Back in those days — and even today — they’re almost totally dependent on air-to-ground communication. Now they’ve got essentially pretty much 100% air-to-ground communication. But what we had for air-to-ground communication was 4% of our time. And you had to be directly able to contact it. They say, “Oh, gee, that was horrible!” No, we thought that was good, because we had so many things to d, that we felt it was good when we weren’t getting pushed to do other things. But we did need a certain amount of information. It was 4% or 4.5% of the time we had communication. You’re looking and talking to me at my age — I’m 88 years old. I’ll tell you this, I thought we had a great mission, I really do.

Q: What advice would you give to young people today who want to go into space?

CUNNINGHAM: I would not consider myself of giving the real overall best answer. I’m still stuck in that world of how important it is to be the world’s greatest fighter pilot — mentally, at least. But the other things, it’s a different way of living, and the public today has been educated now for 50 years, most of them. Well, I can’t even say most of them, but many of them want that opportunity to do that. Of course, now they’re selling tickets to people to ride a spacecraft up there. And I’m sorry, I can’t look positively at all that stuff. I know it’s got its positive side, but I live in a different world. And I think that they’re fortunate, if they become one of today’s astronauts. But to do that, you better perfect yourself in the skills it takes. There’s a lot of different skills that it takes today. There’s a pretty good number of doctors, for example, who have been up there. That’s good. They’ve had a number of ladies — there have been a couple of lady pilots, incidentally, that I thought were pretty doggone outstanding. They did a real good job.

Q: How do you think about taking risks and doing what sometimes seems almost impossible?

CUNNINGHAM: You have to have the attitude that comes automatically if you’re a major league fighter pilot. One of the best fighter pilots, or at least, and I’m specific about this, at least believing you are. The best kind of attitude when you go in to attack somebody else, rightly or wrongly, you have to have the kind of confidence that says you’re going to come out ahead, and you’re willing to pay whatever price it takes {to get that done.}

ROSS: That was Walt Cunningham, an astronaut on Apollo 7, the first Apollo to take human beings into space. Let me give you a sense of who’s coming up: I’ll introduce our next speaker in a moment. Follow our next speaker will be a State Senator who is a big supporter of nuclear fusion; a physics professor who has received two Presidential appointments to national scientific positions; a Chinese physician, speaking about their experience with COVID-19; and a New York City physician, who’s going to speak about what it’s like in the current hotspot here. Our next speaker, Dr. Marie Korsaga is from Burkina Faso and she holds a doctorate in astrophysics and specializes in the study of dark matter. She is West Africa’s first female astrophysicist and seeks to share her love of science, and its importance, more broadly, through expanding science education in Africa. Dr. Korsaga has entitled her presentation, “The Necessity of Science Education for African Youth.” Please go ahead, it’s fine: We’re having some audio difficulty, so I’m going to dub your video into English myself, rather than the interpreter. Please, Dr. Korsaga, go ahead.

Dr. MARIE KORSAGA: [as translated] My name is Marie Korsaga, I am an astrophysicist and originally from Burkina Faso. My research focuses on the distribution of dark matter, and visible matter in galaxies. In simple terms, it must be said that visible matter, that is to say, ordinary matter made up of protons, neutrons, electrons, everything that is observable with our devices, represents only about 5% of the universe — the rest is invisible matter, distribute as follows: 26% dark matter and 68% dark energy. Dark matter, with its gravitational force is used to explain the fact that galaxies remain close to each other, while dark energy causes the universe to expand faster over time. So we cannot speak of understanding the universe if we only know about 5% of its constituents. So, to understand our universe, that is to say, to be able to account for its formation and evolution, it is essential to understand what dark matter and dark energy are. Dark matter, as its name suggests, is something that you cannot see with even the most sophisticated telescopes. So far, no dark matter particles have ever been detected, nevertheless, we feel its presence thanks to its impact on gravity. The purpose of my research is to study how dark matter is distributed inside galaxies in order to better understand the formation and evolution of our universe, and therefore, the origin of life on Earth. Beyond my research, I am interested in the development side of astronomy in Africa. For this, I work at the Office of Astronomy for Development on a project which consists in using astronomy as a factor of development almost everywhere in the world, but especially in the developing countries, by supporting projects related to education, educational tourism and so on. Speaking of education, it is important to remember that according to the African Union, Africa has the youngest population in the world, with more than 40% of its young people under the age of 15, which will produce a demographic explosion in the next 10 years. This population growth has disadvantages, but also advantages. The downside is that if measures are not taken, such as access to quality education for boys and girls, especially in science, these young people, instead of becoming a source of development for the continent, risk, rather to be a source of socio-economic political instability and conflict, which will further plunge the continent into misery. However, the advantage of this population growth is that through a well-developed education system, this demographic growth, if accompanied by strong measures both on the side of public policies and the private sector, will be a great source of sustainable development, at the economic and political level of the continent. For this, it is very important to make significant investments in the field of education, with a focus on innovation, science and technology. It should be noted that today, African graduates mainly graduate from the literary and human sciences fields. STEM students — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — represent only 25% of the workforce on average, according to the World Bank. In addition, women are underrepresented in these areas. Take my case: I am the first woman to obtain a doctorate in astrophysics in Burkina, and even in West Africa. It may sound flattering, but it reveals a rather disturbing diagnosis, despite being a light of hope. Indeed, even if the region has a dozen doctorates in the field, there are almost no women among them. Unfortunately, this shows that we are still a long way from achieving gender parity in science, and there is still much to do. This requires a change in mentalities and the accessibility of science to women, especially among the underprivileged. It is not unknown that a career in astrophysics requires a course in physics, which is not obvious for women in our societies where the majority of people think that the scientific fields are dedicated to men, and that women must go to the literary streams. This has the effect of discouraging women from opting for long studies, especially in the scientific fields, and even if they opt for them, they tend to give up at the first obstacles, due to the lack of encouragement. Today, I can say that I have broken this barrier, at my level, and I would like to take advantage of the privilege to inspire and encourage as many young girls as I can, to opt for it. It is true that today there are efforts being made by several governments to break these stereotypes with, for example, the NEF, the Next Einstein Forum in Rwanda, which is a platform for popularizing science, and which offers opportunities for students through scholarships of the network of women in science, called OWSD, the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World, which gives opportunities to girls and women in STEM fields. However, there is still a lot to do, because the representation of women in science is far from being reached. Beyond research, I intend to contribute to the training of young people in science in Burkina Faso, and in Africa in general, by giving courses at universities, and also supervising masters and PhD students. I also plan to take action to popularize science education in general, and astrophysics in particular in countries where access to science is limited. This will serve to motivate young girls and boys, especially young girls, to take up scientific studies. There are also other future actions that I plan to undertake, in collaboration with other researchers, namely the establishment of scientific schools in Africa, particularly dedicated to women; the organization of workshops to enable female scientists to speak about their inspiring work, and cultivate self-confidence. The creation of an astronomy club for children, etc. In addition to being fascinating as a science, astronomy can also be used as a development tool through, for example, education and tourism. The International Astronomical Union understands this and is making a lot of effort to address this development component in developing countries, and working to achieve a Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. The typical example, in Sub-Saharan Africa is the case of South Africa, where the installation of telescopes in localities has not only facilitated the popularization of science and the creation of jobs for young people, but also has boosted the economy, and the development of infrastructure in these localities. The current context in which we, notably the COVID-19 pandemic, reminds us of how important science must occupy our lives and our education system. This importance must convince the African authorities that it is more than necessary to devote a large part of national budgets to the support and the promotion of studies and of scientific research, because investment in human capital remains a secure means for the growth of a country. Above all, we must understand that to get our continent out of underdevelopment, we will have to review our way of executing these programs, focusing on education, training in science, technology, and innovation, especially space science, could not only increase our human potential, which is a source of sustainable development, but also enable the management of our natural resources and thus impact the economy in the continent. Africa has an immense amount of natural resources, essential to the development of industry. It is necessary to arrive at a point where these resources are exploited, first for its development, by women and men trained on the continent and with compatible techniques. Thank you for offering me the opportunity to share my thoughts on the necessity of education in science in Africa. Thank you.

ROSS: Thank you, Dr. Korsaga. Sorry we had a little bit of trouble. We will be taking questions for Dr. Korsaga — send your questions in now. We will be taking them in a short moment. Our next speaker is Sen. Joe Pennachio. He has served in the New Jersey State Senate since 2008, and previously served in the state’s General Assembly from 20012008. Senator Pennachio has a far-reaching vision and has been an outspoken advocate for the development of nuclear fusion energy. Senator Pennacchio sponsored a hearing in the New Jersey State Legislature last May entitled: “What Are the Prospects and Requirements for the Early Development of Fusion Energy, and What Are the Implications for the U.S., New Jersey, and the World?” This hearing pulled together leading scientists — from the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, as well as from several New Jersey technical corporations that are working on fusion, including in collaboration with ITER [International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor] project in France. A link to the video of that hearing that Senator Pennachio held will be included on the conference webpage. Following the hearing, Senator Pennacchio introduced an important group of six interrelated bills to support and attract businesses on fusion, to call on the federal government to offer greater support for this necessary new technology, and one, which passed the Senate this February, finances research positions for fusion energy and plasma physics, as part of this effort. In his introduction to his hearing he said that even with the estimate that we could have a sustainable fusion reaction by 2025 and commercial applications by 2050, he said “in my humble opinion, that is not soon enough.” He then concluded: “The problems that we have … for instance, in space travel–we have to get a new propulsion system that can overcome those challenges–one of the ways to allow intergalactic and interplanetary travel in the future. Imagine the benefits that men and women can reap from its development…. Myself, and the other legislators in this building–we need to know how we can help that; how can we nurture and help this game changer come into being.” Let’s now hear from New Jersey State Sen. Joe Pennacchio, serving New Jersey’s 26th District.

SEN. JOSEPH PENACCHIO: I’m New Jersey State Senator Joseph Penacchio.

Q: At the close of your hearing, there was a group of high school students there who had attended, as well as people from universities, and you said that the development of fusion — you said that the hearing was for them as much as for anybody, and that the development of fusion would fundamentally change their lives. What is your vision for the next 50 years for those young people, the next two generations, if we achieve fusion? If we get a commitment to actually achieve fusion today?

SENATOR PENACCHIO: Well, I don’t know if the word is “if.” From what I’ve been reading it’s not “if” but “when.” They’ve actually set up parameters and dates within the five years, 2025, they will actually have a sustainable fusion reaction, and then 25 years after that they think they can have the first commercial application of fusion. I think that more or less parallels what happened with nuclear fission, and the application and development of that. I would hope that, if you put a concerted effort into it, if we share our knowledge with knowledge that’s going on around the world, especially with the tokamak reactor and all the countries that have signed onto that [ITER] consortium, I would hope that it would be sooner than that. And it’s as much for their future as it is for mine. I’m 65 years old: My future is not measured in too many decades, if God is willing. But their future is measured in an awful lot more decades than I am. So again, imagine a clean, safe, renewable energy source, where we don’t have to go to war with each other to get it, and we don’t have to worry about breathing in some of the gases which may be harmful in the production of those energies.

Q: The idea that you have put forward, also, that you said in the hearing that politicians always think they’re responsible for the good things, but your position is that actually, it’s scientists who have changed history. I’d like to ask you to talk about that; and also, the influence of the ideas of the American Revolution which was very committed to science, from Ben Franklin on, — Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and then, of course, someone whose picture is all over your office, Abraham Lincoln. So, I’d like you to comment on that, on the question of the American System, the commitment to science and the relationship between political leadership and scientific advance: What is the responsibility of politicians to advance that, and what is the role of the citizens to make sure that that is done?

SENATOR PENACCHIO: Well, the evolution of our lives, the fact that they’ve gotten better has been through science. It wasn’t politicians that got rid of cholera and typhoid and smallpox and polio: It was science. It wasn’t politicians that got us to the Moon, it was science. But it was politicians that challenged us, and that redirected some of those resources that way, we {can} go to the Moon, we {can} fight off these infectious diseases. We can improve and lift the spirits of {all} Americans and all humankind! So my job as a politician is to form public policy and to act as catalyst for some of those good things that science can do. And part of that process is economic, of course, and we think that by generating that enthusiasm for fusion, we could also cultivate a resource in the state that we haven’t seen, since Princeton first got themselves involved with fusion. So, it’s a win-win-win for all those around us. For some reason we abrogated that responsibility to Paris and their tokamak reactor. And being the selfish New Jersey politician that I am, I’d like to see us get it back. The good news is that, as with the tokamak reactor and the ITER, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, that a consortium put together, I would hope all of this material, all this science is shared, in real time: That way we can push this forward and make it a reality for those children that were attending that meeting that day, Susan. [end video]

ROSS: Wonderful. Thank you, to Senator Pennachio. Now, what I’d like to do, is pose to Marie Korsaga, two questions that are related to your presentation. The first comes from Ahmed Moustafa, who is the director of the Asia Center for Studies and Translation in Dakar, Senegal. He asks: “How should we reconsider the current educational pedagogic systems worldwide, according to this pandemic? What lessons must be realized?” One other question comes from Benoit Douteau [ph] from France, who asks: “How can we in Africa use the coronavirus pandemic to develop nuclear energy, infrastructure and industry in the next decade?” So the questions are about changes in the educational system, in pedagogical technique, as well as how to use the current problem as an opportunity to create growth in Africa. And I’d like to ask Dr. Korsaga, because we might be having some troubles with our translation facilities, if she could respond slowly to the question.

KORSAGA: [translated] To respond to the first question, I would say that to improve the quality of education, we must improve the Africa laboratories, scientific laboratories. Theoretical studies are more common due to a lack of material supplies and this must be rectified. We must also encourage students and provide them opportunities to be able to really extend their education and fulfill it to a higher level. We must also include facilities and tools to help women pursue their studies and feel more comfortable in the educational environment. On the second question, about the coronavirus pandemic, we don’t yet have full scientific abilities to deal with the coronavirus, and in their absence, we’re relying on governmental techniques, such as staying at home, washing your hands, or disinfecting them. Scientists are performing studies, they’re simulating the reaction of the virus with different drugs they’re considering, they’re studying the propagation of the virus with methods of modeling.

ROSS: OK, and then she’ll be available for more questions later. Thank you, Dr. Korsaga. Our next speaker is Prof. Will Happer: He has a long and distinguished scientific career. He is a Princeton University Professor of Physics Emeritus. Will Happer received his physics PhD at Princeton and began his career at Columbia University (where he became the director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory), before joining the physics faculty at Princeton in 1980. In 1991 he was appointed by the President to serve as Director of Energy Research in the Department of Energy, where he oversaw a research budget of some $3 billion annually, which included much of the federal funding for high energy and nuclear physics, materials science, magnetic confinement fusion, environmental and climate science, the human genome project, and other areas. He then returned to Princeton as a physics professor until his retirement in 2014. From September 2018 to September 2019, Dr. Happer again served in an appointment by the President. He was the Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director of Emerging Technologies on the National Security Council. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. And he is happy to speak with us next.

WILL HAPPER: I’m Will Happer, and I’m a retired professor of physics at Princeton University, where I worked for many years. I still have an office there, thanks to the trustees of Princeton University. Before that, I spent many years New York City at Columbia University in my youth, and my children were born there. I’m trained in nuclear physics and atomic physics. I’ve done a lot of work on laser physics. I’m probably best known for inventing the sodium guidestar, which most modern telescopes use to compensate for atmospheric turbulence so you can get better resolution of galaxies and other astronomic objects. My career has been a mixture of theory and experiment. I’ve done a lot of experiments. I’ve spent a good fraction of my time in working on spin-polarized gases, spin-polarized nuclei, and one result of that was that we learned to polarize helium-3 and xenon-129 in such large quantities that there was enough that you could breed them, and then you could look at people’s lungs with magnetic resonance imaging machines, that was impossible before. And so that’s developed into an interesting diagnostic technique in medicine, still going on today. We actually did a little start-up company based on that, which was successful, and helped to launch the careers of some of our former students and post-docs. So, I guess, I would say, I’m a classical physics nerd: I like physics, I like quantitative things, I like things that you can model. I want them to be models that can be believed!

Q: You were requested by the Trump Administration to organize a panel to evaluate the claims of climate change, but that committee never functioned. What happened?

HAPPER: Well, it’s not a very complicated idea. Almost any other important science or technology, or effort of our country has been carefully reviewed. Especially in defense, for example, before we buy something, we have what’s called a “Red team review,” where people intentionally try to poke holes in say, this weapons system, or this theory, or that. And then the proponents have to defend it. And you know, often they get through with A-plus certification. I defended what I’m trying to do, you got these people at their best, they couldn’t poke any holes in it, so I’m stronger than when I started. And so, if climate is really so good, why are they afraid to stand up and defend what they’re doing, to be questioned, answer questions — everyone else has to do that, why are they different? So, they were absolutely outraged to think that anyone would like to audit what they were doing. Everybody else gets audited, but they’re free from audits. And so, it was a political issue. They called in all of their friends in the Senate, you know, and all across America — “how dare this evil Trump Administration us. We’re the greatest scientists who ever lived on the planet, and we’re saving the planet. And here are these guys are trying to ask us about how we calibrate this thermometer, you know? How dare they do that!” That was the situation. And then I think the President understood, but there were many, many other issues at the time, and it just didn’t seem like this was the right one to pick up. He was probably right.

Q: [2:16:24 no text]

HAPPER: What it tells you is that scientists always have to be very self-critical, you should always be questioning yourself, you should be questioning your colleagues. Have you thought about this? Could it have been caused by this, rather than what you claim it’s caused by? And that’s what does not happen in climate. Climate is completely impervious to criticism. You cannot criticize it. It’s like denying some religious belief. In fact, it’s interesting: The language that they use is all religious. “You’re {denying} climate..”. Well, what does “denying” mean? Why are you using that word in connection with a scientific field? So, it has all the trappings of a religious cult, and that’s what it has become for many people. There are exceptions; there are honest climate scientists, but they’re deluded by many cultists.

Q: What is your view of the nature of scientific research? How do you think fundamental discoveries in science are made?

HAPPER: A lot of people don’t realize how important accidents have been in the development of technology and science. You know, politicians think that we will set up a big program, we’ll spend a lot of money and we’ll have a war on cancer, and we’ll cure cancer. I remember when that happened — that was back in the ’70s, and we spent a lot of money and cancer’s still here! We’ve made a little progress, thank goodness. But that’s not the way that you solve a really hard problem. It’s usually solved because of some accidental discovery: Take nuclear energy, for example, fission energy. It was obvious there was a lot of energy involved in nuclear transformations, from the first discovery of the nucleus by Ernest Rutherford. And when Rutherford was asked, “Are you ever going to get power?” He says, “Anyone who says they’re going to get a power out of nuclear physics, they’re talking moonshine.” I think that was the word he used, “moonshine.” And he was right, because, at the time, no one knew there was there was such a thing as a neutron. But, a few years after he had made this statement, the neutron was discovered — accidentally — they thought, at first, it was some odd gamma-ray, penetrating gamma-ray, so it took a long time to realize that this was a new elementary particle that was not charged, and so, could easily interact with nuclei — there’s no Coulomb force to keep it out. So that was the first accident. And then Enrico Fermi was very quick to use the neutron for studies of nuclear physics, and he and his team in Rome did lots of exciting work in those first few years. He got the Nobel Prize for making what he thought were transuranic elements. He deserved the Nobel Prize, he was such a good guy, but it was a mistake! You know, what he was really doing was causing fission of uranium, and it wasn’t until Lise Meitner and her team in Berlin started doing chemistry on this irradiated nuclear uranium, they realized it’s not transuranics at all. It’s barium, and intermediate weight nuclei, that have been formed when the uranium nucleus splits. Again, an accident. And so, those two accidents, the accidental discovery of the neutron and the accidental discovery of fission made nuclear power possible, not only weapons, but civilian power, too. That has not happened for fusion. I think it may happen: Somebody will make an accidental discovery, which will make what seems like a very, very difficult engineering problem right now, suddenly feasible. And so, I’m all for supporting work on fusion. But you have to be realistic that it won’t help to increase the budget by a factor of ten, if you don’t have a good, new idea!

Q: What areas of scientific research most excite you today?

HAPPER: Well, of course, satellites have been very important for climate science, because we have the best data available now, from satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures, satellite measurements of cloudiness, satellite measurements of the radiation budget of the Earth; all of that’s good stuff, and I’m 100% for that. That’s a part of climate science that we can be proud of, and I think it doesn’t get enough support. Of course, that’s focused on the Earth, not on other planets, but, the way other planets’ climate systems work is interesting, too. You know, Venus is quite different from Earth, most of that is because it’s quite a bit closer to the Sun, so it gets twice as much insolation as Earth does. But there are interesting systems on the other planets: Jupiter has an amazing climate system, you know, clouds, the great red spot. So, there are a very rich set of targets out there for bright young people to work on, for NASA’s exploration satellites to help with. So, all of that’s very good stuff. I think if you ask, what is the fundamental question out there, it’s really dark matter. You know, there’s this huge part of the matter in the universe that nobody knows what it is. And it’s obviously there, from not very subtle experimental observations: You know, how fast galaxies rotate about their center — they rotate much too fast, because of some of this missing mass, the dark matter. And then there’s the dark energy. So, I think those are the fundamental frontiers. And there, too, I think this is probably a puzzle that will be solved by a lucky accident. You know, we should do our best to design experiments, but keep our eyes open for accidents. I think that’s how it will be cracked. If you don’t talk about space, I think the other huge area, if I were a young person, I would look very carefully at, biology, biophysics, biochemistry. We see, just in the case of COVID, if we were nimble, we could have had a vaccine or an antidote. And I would guess the time will come when we will be able to respond to new viruses very, very quickly, and nip them in the bud. We can’t do that today, but that’s certainly something that I believe could be done in the future. But it won’t happen automatically: People need to work on it, there have to be accidents happening. There, too, there have been accidents. I think many of your listeners may know about the CRISPR revolution, that was, again, an accident in biology that discovered this CRISPR mechanism for gene editing. But it was because some smart people looked at data and realized, there’s something funny about this, it doesn’t fit the usual paradigm, and they worked it out. So, I think there’s plenty of room for smart young people who are willing to work hard, to make a big difference to the human condition — and to have a good time doing it, you know, solving problems. [end video]

ROSS: That was Prof. Will Happer, Professor of Physics Emeritus from Princeton University. If, like me, you found several of the things he said surprising, or you’d like to ask him about them, please send in your questions, to questions@schillerinstitute.org. Professor Happer will be available for the Q&A shortly, as are Ben Deniston, Megan Beets, and Marie Korsaga. Our next presentations, before we get into that Q&A are about the treatments of COVID-19, and we’re going to be hearing from two physicians who are involved in this. First we’ll hear from Dr. Kildare Clarke who is a physician practicing in New York City, about what the situation is like at what is currently Ground Zero for the coronavirus.

DR. KILDARE CLARKE: I’m Kildare Clarke. I’ve been a doctor for many, many years, too many to even remember! However, I got very involved with the Lyndon LaRouche movement, which was a very important thing for me to do that point in time, due the fact that they were looking at the injustice which goes on in healthcare delivery, on the closing of various hospitals, turning over those spaces to private entities at the expense of the patients which we were taking care of. We warned them, back then! and with many protests, many demonstrations, even down to the Washington, D.C. General Hospital, where Dennis [Speed], myself, Lyndon LaRouche, and many of others went to protest the closing of that hospital. Despite our loss — because they did close the hospital — we have never given up that mission. Because healthcare is the {number one national product} of the world. Just to give you an example: If every person in this world is sick, nothing moves! So therefore, our national product is the healthcare of everyone, and that’s where our focus must always go first, because we can think about politics. Anyhow, the powers to be think it is best for them to look at healthcare as a numbers game, like widget, which you play on Wall Street. But people’s lives are not widgets; they’re human beings. Without them, there is no world. And it is incumbent upon us, as healthcare providers to make that message go through loud and clear! We might have to give up a lot! We might be fired from our jobs, we might be thrown in prison! But it’s a cause which is so indelible in my mind, that we must do it, and do it for the good of society. It’s not a personal thing, it’s for the good of society. [end video]

ROSS: I think Dr. Clarke put the moral terms of the necessity for a world health system very clearly in what he just said. Our next and final speaker for this panel is Dr. Guangxi Li. And the Schiller Institute would like to thank the CGTN Think Tank in helping to make Dr. Li available. Dr. Li is an MD-PhD at the China Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing and he is with the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. His most recent paper, published on April 11 in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, is “Association between Hypoxemia and Mortality in Patients with COVID-19.” He will speak with us today about an aspect of the Chinese response to COVID-19. His title is “Preventing Acute Lung Injury — Essentials of COVID-19 Treatment.” Following Dr. Li’s remarks, we will be able to have more Q&A with all of the panelists I mentioned before.

DR. GUANGXI LI: Hello everyone. I’m Guangxi Li. I’m from the Academy of Chinese Medical Science. Today, my topic will focus on the Chinese medicine treatment of COVID-19. So, we all know the COVID-19 outbreak since January of this year has now spread all over the world, and it’s certainly a pandemic for humanity. We are fighting COVID-19 with different approaches. But in China we do have traditional Chinese medicine theory and a history of Chinese medicine, we are fighting different kinds of viruses and pandemic using only herbs. It’s really, really effective, and we have quite a lot of experience with that. So today, I would like to share some of our successful cases. We also have some data, and we are going to publish these data soon. Let me share this [slide show] screen first: [“Preventing Acute Lung Injury — Essentials of COVID-19 Treatment” Guangxi Li MD] My topic today is “Preventing Acute Lung Injury — Essentials of COVID-19 Treatment.” [Slide: “Clinical Presentation”] As we all know most patients who suffer from COVID-19 will have very mild symptoms, or even they may not have any symptoms. They are asymptomatic patients. In terms of our experience there are several stages: The first stage is the incubation period, that’s about 1-14 days. The second week of the disease is the most important window for us to prevent acute lung injury. That’s the fever period. That’s Day 1 to Day 7. Basically the first week of the disease onset. The patient will usually have mild fever to severe fever, so 37.5°Celsius to over 39.1°C. So, one patient may only have a very mild fever, then they stop at that line, and then other patients may develop a quite severe fever. The third stage is acute lung injury period. So if we cannot treat a fever, when the patients may develop acute injury, even in [alveoli? 3:10]. Now we need some kind of [inaudible 3:18] approach, especially when we need to intubate patients. And later on, if the patient can overcome this difficult stage and they will come to the current period, so that’s after two weeks. [Slide: “Whole Map of Treatment”] Basically, this is a whole map of the treatment using Chinese methods. What we need to do, is we need to start treatment early. There are several indications for the severe cases. Here, the high temperature increase, and dry cough increase, and the patient develops dyspnea, and that means the patient may go down the road of acute lung injury. So that’s a very dangerous indicator. So that’s what we need to do. We need to treat the patient early, it’s not too late. Once we start when a patient has already developed acute lung injury, then we treat them for what’s really a very long treatment period, and the mortality is high. So the best, if we want to get some good outcome, we need to intervene at the early stage. [Slide: “Very Early Stage: Control Transmission”] So, the very early stage is what we need to do. Also we need to control transmission. So, test, test, test. Then we can find out who has the virus, and then we isolate the patients. That’s what we have done. [Slide: “Fever Window”] So, the fever window is very, very important, as I said before. Right now, we don’t have any confirmed antiviral drug that really works on these patients. So, if they have persistent fever, the patients may develop very severe, and they’re falling off the cliff. So, the best way, what we’ve seen is the Chinese medicine. [Slide: “ALI Prevention”] Regarding Chinese medicine, we actually don’t want to kill the virus, from the Chinese philosophy. We want to regulate our immune response to the virus, to attack the virus. Basically the virus actually can be killed by ourselves. The major reason why the patients die, because the virus causes very strong cytokine storm. And then the cytokine storm will kill us. So this is what we use. Here is a formula what we use for our patients [on slide]. Basically, the first important medication is the ginseng. Using the current Western medicine we tested, isn’t really helpful to decrease cytokine storm, by regulating ourselves to attack the new virus. [Slide: “ALI Prevention”] And then we monitor patients’ fever progression. We monitor their oxygen saturation. We monitor their cough and shortness of breath. So, we can prevent the acute lung injury. [Slide: “Rescue Therapy”] So, if we could not cure the patient at an early stage, and the patient may develop ARDS, then we use some kind of ventilator, even ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation]. [Slide: “Early Stage (Day 1-7) Fever Reduce”] [Slide: “Early Stage Case — Fever & Fatigue”] There are some kind of cases I would like to discuss. Here is a patient, 76 years old, he had a fever for 2 days, and you can see [CT video], here is the CT scan, and you can see the moderate bilateral lung infiltrate. We used medicine to treat him. And then you see four 4 days later, we had another CT scan and the patient with not much better symptoms. Here is another CT scan for him. We noticed that this disease is quite different from other pneumonias. The infiltrate could disappear in a very short period of time, if we treat patients in time. So the patient, even though he had quite a lot of co-morbidities, and other complications, but he still recovered in about 1 week. He did not get any Western medicine treatment, no antiviral drug, no antibiotics. There are some other cases, but I will not discuss too much. [Slide: “Fever Persistent (after 3-7 days) Early ALI”] [Slide: “Persistent Fever — Early ALI”] And here, the patients if the fever is persistent, maybe after a week, the patient could start to develop acute lung injury. Here is another case, I would like to discuss. The patient who is marathon runner, and after he got acute lung injury and you can see the bilateral infiltrate. And when we used the Chinese medicine, it stopped the fever, the patient could recover after the Chinese medicine; but it doesn’t work with the Western medicine. [Slide: “Coughing & Dyspnea (Second Week) Early ARDS”] [Slide: “Early ARDS — Coughing & Dyspnea”] In this case, the patient really had acute lung injury, even he had already developed lung injury, how it [s/l shake up 9:27]. This is another case. Once the patient had the acute lung injury, his O2 was about 65 and his saturation only 81. Obviously, it’s very severe acute lung injury. And what we did is, we used Chinese medicine, and nothing else, some kind of trapping and fashion, all this stuff to stop the coughing. And the patient recovered after 1 week of Chinese medicine treatment. And you can see the CT scan is very severe: Almost 90% of his lung was infiltrated, it was damaged. [Slide: “Treatment Summary”] So, the basic stuff I want to summarize, the mechanism of this COVID-19 is the development of acute lung injury. If the patient doesn’t acute lung injury, that’s [inaudible 10:26]. The only patients we need to treat are those who develop acute lung injury. You can see this last figure from the {New England Journal of Medicine}, talking about the acute lung injury. The right side is abnormal alveolus after an attack of COVID-19. Recently, you could see those patients, where the alveoli were broken, and we have quite a lot of infusions, and there was [s/l flattening?], it’s worse here. So then we need to treat patients at the early stage, so that’s why we use the Chinese medicine to stop the fever and stop the inflammation, and stop the cough. After that, with some patients maybe, we still need oxygen support on a respirator support. We should not use any antiviral drugs or antibiotics. [Slide: “Questions & Discussion”] So that’s what my talk is. Thank you. I would like to take any questions. [end video]

Panel 2 CONCLUSION: For a Better Understanding of How Our Universe Functions

Saturday, April 25, 2002 With Jason Ross, Megan Beets, and Ben Deniston

Question & Answer Session

ROSS: Thank you Dr. Li. We’re now at our discussion period and we’ve got a fair amount of time available — I don’t know if that’s true for all speakers, but currently available for questions are myself, Ben Deniston, Megan Beets, Marie Korsaga, and Professor Happer is being connected, as well.

While he’s being connected, I’ll just make an announcement that Lyndon LaRouche Collected Works, Vol. 1 is available at larouchelegacyfoundation.org

I see Professor Happer is now with us, thank you so much for joining us. Several questions came in for you based on the speech you gave, and so I’d like to combine a couple of them, and maybe just chat for a minute.

One of the things that you brought up in your talk was about the role of accidents in making discoveries, even if you weren’t really intending to — that they sort of come up. You had said at the end of your talk that it might be possible one day, to be able to rapidly react to a virus that arises, be able to create antibodies or antidotes quickly; but that making that breakthrough might require a fortunate accident.

I was wondering if you could say more about the role of accidents in scientific discovery. And also the apparent contrast between the ability to have a science-driver program, like when Kennedy said “We going to the Moon,” — how do you see the relationship between having a crash program to really try and make a scientific discovery, versus the serendipitous nature that some of them take?

HAPPER: Well, frankly, you can have focused research programs and they can do some good. But the really big breakthroughs historically have usually been some accident or another. For example, the discovery of X-rays was a complete accident: Roentgen was perceptive enough to recognize something strange was happening in his laboratory, and he worked hard and he turned it into modern X-ray technology. It was an accident that fission was discovered. Nobody predicted fission: It was thanks to Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn that when they tried to repeat Enrico Fermi’s experiments, transuranics, and did some chemistry on it, they did not find what they thought should be there. They thought there should be neptunium and plutonium transuranics; that’s what Fermi got the Nobel Prize for. But in fact, that wasn’t what he was doing. He was splitting the nucleus, and Meitner and Hahn were smart enough to demonstrate that. The radioactivity really associated with barium not with plutonium.

So there are many cases like that, where the initial breakthrough is just completely unexpected. The other extreme of that is you take something like the semiconductor industry, you know, Moore’s Law, that has been systematic investment in better and better equipment, higher resolution, photolithography, better photoresists, better control of the equipment — that also works. But it’s a different type of scientific progress than the type that I think will be necessary for example to solve the controlled fusion problem: I think that will be solved by an accident.

Another example of that is not practical, but I think you know that the low-hanging fruit in physics and cosmology today is what is the nature of dark matter? What is it that makes galaxies rotate a lot faster than they really should be rotating? And people are desperately trying to figure out what it could be, trying to build detectors that would detect weakly interacting particles, hereto-unimagined — this, again, I think will be a problem that will be solved by a lucky accident and some perceptive person who can tell the difference between an important accident and just the usual mistakes that are made in experiments. I hope that’s enough.

ROSS: Another one of the panelists from this discussion would also like to ask a question. Ben, are you there? Ben Deniston, go ahead.

DENISTON: Glad to be here with all the guests we’ve had, and glad to speak to you Mr. Happer: One thing I wanted to ask, you’ve discussed and other people have discussed the benefits of higher levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere, and I’ve found that to be some fascinating areas of science to look at, just how our biosphere responds to some of these things. And when I’ve discussed that with other people, what I find is that there seems to be more of a gut reaction, even from scientists, about that that doesn’t seem to fit a certain narrative; and oftentimes, in the most fundamental sense there tends to be a narrative that human activity is inherently problematic for the planet and human activity inherently causes problems and catastrophes and any idea that it could be good just doesn’t fit this perspective. And people tend to think about science as “objective,” “fact based,” kind of like a cold just-follow-the-facts process, when in reality it seems like we have these narratives and dogmas that do play a substantial role in affecting where science goes and doesn’t go, and what areas of science which could be incredibly beneficial and interesting, including various factors of natural causes of climate change are actually affected by this. So, I’d definitely appreciate any thoughts you have on that reality of this social aspect and these narratives in science, and the affect that has; and where we can go to get past some of that.

HAPPER: I think science has always been much more subjective than scientists would like you think, and people have been disputing science since Galileo and long before, over the nature of this aspect of science or that. And the idea that scientists are somehow different from other human beings who have prejudices and who have infatuations or are mistaken frequently, that’s just not true. Scientists have all those faults, and it’s been demonstrated generation after generation. An example is continent drift: You remember that this was originally proposed by a very good, very bright German, but he was not trained in geology, so his ideas — it was Alfred Wegener — he was an excellent scientist and he was just dismissed out of hand, especially by American geologists. And I remember, even when I was a graduate student in the early ’60s, he was still being dismissed. But he was completely right. And now, nobody would even think to question continental drift, it’s a real fact. But it wasn’t easy for the first proposers and first disciples who made headway: You didn’t get tenure, for example, if you believed in continental drift in the 1950s.

Coming back to your question, people don’t like to admit that CO₂ is a benefit to the world. It actually clearly is: The geological history is completely clear, and I think the most compelling thing is that if you go to greenhouse operators, they routinely double, triple, quadruple the amount of CO₂ in their greenhouses, and not because they’re involved in the debate over climate, but because they want to make money! And if you grow cucumbers or if you grow decorative flowers in a greenhouse with more CO₂, you get a better product, and you get a better price. You have to pay for the CO₂ — it’s not cheap — but it’s a good investment.

And so, here we’re getting this free CO₂ that’s enriching the entire planet, and we should be very grateful for that. But of course, it doesn’t fit the narrative, and what can I say? It’s the human condition.

ROSS: Dr. Happer, in your short talk here, you mentioned dark matter. Another speaker we have on the panel who’s not appearing on the screen right now, but we have with us, Marie Korsaga: She recently received her doctorate in astrophysics looking at dark matter. And I’d like to pose a question to her, and then return to ask you a question, Professor Happer.

Dr. Korsaga will answer this one in English, I believe. The question is from [inaudible 2:53:16] who asks that since gender divisions in enrollments are more pronounced in STEM than they are in other areas of education, what can be done by Africa states to encourage girls to study space sciences. And congratulations for setting the ground for future girls to study astrophysics.

That’s a question for Marie Korsaga, and then we have another question for you, Will Happer.

KORSAGA: To answer this question, I’m really not an expert to the method, but my opinion is that girls need to be inspired from a young age, and for that they need role models. That’s why it’s important to encourage girls and women to pursue scientific studies, by allowing them to have more access to science, for example, during meetings in organizations, or meetings and workshops.

And also what I would like to say, we need more scientific schools for girls, to have access, and give them opportunities like scholarships to pursue in STEM studies. And what I would also like to say, is may be if the government would give more opportunities, and to give more opportunities for girls in science, like having interactions between girls and women who already have science backgrounds, so they can see them as role models, and then they will be inspired to continue and pursue scientific studies.

ROSS: Thank you Dr. Korsaga. I’d like to pose a question to Will Happer now. Professor Happer, one of the earlier speakers on this panel who is not able to join us for the Q&A — he’s in France — Dr. Jean-Pierre Luminet, who’s an astrophysicist, he in his presentation had contrasted the necessity for free invention, and he used quotations from Einstein about this; he spoke about the method of Johannes Kepler; and he contrasted the role of free invention in being able to actually create concepts to improve our understanding of physics — he contrasted that with the too-strict implementation of what’s called the “scientific method,” which he believes is too formal, really, to bear the greatest kinds of fruit.

Do you have a response to this distinction that Jean-Pierre Luminet had laid out in his talk?

HAPPER: OK, well, unfortunately, I didn’t hear the talk because I had some trouble signing in. But I agree with what you describe, that the scientific method is often a straitjacket that hinders progress. It certainly hinders these accidental discoveries if you take it too literally. It is important eventually to make sure this brilliant idea you think you’ve had, it really is a brilliant idea, and most people I know have lots of brilliant ideas of which maybe one in ten really is brilliant, you know. And so it takes a little while to sort out which ones really are important. But they don’t come from following some textbook. They come from God knows where, but they come to prepared minds, to people who are prepared to recognize some important new idea.

ROSS: Good, thank you. I’d like to ask one more to Dr. Korsaga. Here is the question that came in from someone in New York. He says, “The great historian and physicist, Cheikh Anta Diop, wrote in his 1978 short book on Africa that advanced technologies such as thermonuclear fusion must be pursued in African nations and astronomical observatories and elements of space exploration are needed to be put online as rapidly as possible, to allow African states to enter the 21st century on the same footing as other parts of the world.

This did not occur. In what way do you think we must act to encourage, in particular young people, the people that Professor Happer and others expect to make the new breakthroughs, how do we encourage them despite the many hardships that may exist?

KORSAGA: Thank you for this question. It’s an interesting one. What I can say is, to encourage them is before we need to create more opportunities, and also we need to let them know the importance of these sciences, these scientific programs for Africa, for the development of Africa, and the impact of these in Africa.

And what I also want to add, is when you take space science, astronomy and others, even if it’s not the other impact related to different kinds of studies like taking, for example, a program for astronomy, you need to develop competence in engineering, mathematics and physics, and all those skills are useful for the development for the country in many sectors. So I think we need to give all this information to young people in Africa, to let them know the importance and the positive impact of these scientific studies.

ROSS: Thank you Dr. Korsaga.

The next question goes to Will Happer, and this is a question that another one of our panelists wanted to ask you. Megan Beets, go ahead.

BEETS: Hi Dr. Happer. Earlier in the presentation that Jason, Ben and I gave, we discussed some of the common threats to the planet including space weather events like CMEs, asteroid strikes and so forth, and something that I raised as part of my presentation was the fact that our planet is in a galactic system. And what I specifically wanted to ask you about is the weather system. You’ve had people live Nir Shaviv, Henrik Svensmark, and others demonstrate that cycles of our Solar System’s motion through the galaxy and the influence of galactic cosmic rays in the atmosphere play a big role in modulating weather on Earth. So I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about that, and also if you have any thoughts on why that outlook is so rejected and resisted today?

HAPPER: I’m a big admirer of Henrik Svensmark and Nir Shaviv. They’ve done absolutely very beautiful work, very interesting work. They’re still working hard on actual experiments to see how cloud nuclei form in the atmosphere in response to cosmic rays, so they don’t just make theories, they actually do measurements. As they pointed out, the Earth and the Solar System drift in and out of the spiral arms of our galaxy and so this modulates cosmic ray backgrounds on a long-term basis over maybe tens of millions of years. And there’s some evidence that that has played a role in the climate of the Earth, if you take these very long periods into account.

So, if you don’t know about their work, I do recommend it to you. Nir Shaviv in particular has written some very accessible summaries of the ideas. It’s good physics, good astronomy — and, they may be right! I don’t know whether they’re right or not, but it looks better than many of the establishment theories of what is controlling climate which are clearly — those theories are clearly not working very well.

ROSS: Dr. Happer, we’ve got some more questions that have come in for you — well, we have many questions on many topics: There are about 20 questions about COVID, ranging from implanting microchips when you get a vaccine, to digital identity cards, to vitamin C, to masks being bad for you. We’re going to leave those aside for now, and stick with some of the topics of the speaks that we have actually available for the Q&A. We will forward those to two physicians that we heard from earlier to see if they have any responses.

The next question that came for you is sort of a combined topic about national science objectives: This is sort of three questions put together. One is that Trump has called for international collaboration in space exploration as the U.S. plans to return to the Moon by 2024. U.S.-Soviet cooperation in space science has had a long and productive history. Recently, Putin has outlined a bold plan for multi-nation work to finally realize thermonuclear fusion as an inexhaustible energy source, says the questioner, and they’d like to know what the pathway is to realize those potentials?

I’d like to combine that with another question that came in, about the social role of science and of scientists.

Another question was about Trump’s approach towards science and how it may be related to the work of, I believe his great-uncle, who is Prof. John Trump, who I believe was at MIT doing work during World War II. If you have any thoughts — those are sort of two different questions there — but about the cultural aspect of a commitment to science and how we could learn from working with others internationally?

HAPPER: I think international collaboration, to the extent that it provides career paths for young people is very good. For example, the Russians did us a big favor by launching Sputnik, in the United States, because science was languishing until that point, and it woke many people in the U.S. up to realize that there are a lot of smart people all over the world, not just in the United States, not just in Europe. There were smart people in Russia and China, even Africa. So, it was time for us to pull up our bootstraps and start moving again.

I think programs like this that inspire young people are important, programs that give them a career path forward, something they can do that gives them some self-respect. And I’m convinced that we will solve a number of problems because of the young people of the future having smart ideas, good ideas, and these accidents that I mentioned before, they don’t have to come to young people, but they often do. So having some kind of a goal, even if you don’t reach the goal often it doesn’t matter, because you’ve discovered something else that you didn’t expect to discover. And perhaps the type of joint efforts on controlled fusion or on space exploration with other countries will help us to do that. I’m all in favor of that.

ROSS: I’d like to switch to one more question to Dr. Korsaga. We’d like to ask you to give some of your thoughts about how you believe the question of dark matter may be resolved? I know this was the topic of your PhD dissertation: Where do you think the future will lead us in exploring this phenomenon?

KORSAGA: My thought is first to state that dark matter for the moment it’s a hypothetical matter. We cannot observe this matter. But we can feel it through gravity. So, knowing more about this matter will help us to understand form and evolve with time. But if you take a galaxy, you can notice that the rotation that the velocity as a function of the radius, the way it rotates, it’s faster compared to the visible matter inside. When I’m talking about visible matter, I’m talking about the stellar components inside the galaxy, and also the gas components.

So, if we take these components, we can notice that the rotation, the way the galaxy is rotated is faster, compared to the rotation that we can only get when using the visible matter inside. So to understand how the galaxies rotate, we need to include the dark matter inside, to describe the rotational core of the galaxies.

So knowing this dark matter will help us to understand both the distribution and how the quantity of dark matter inside galaxies, and then to understand how the galaxy rotates, ends to better inform the formation in evolution and to better understand the universe.

One interesting thing to also notice, is that when we observe a galaxy at a certain distance, which are galaxies far from us, the luminosity that we collate is disturbed by the dark matter. And so, we call this the gravitational lens, and this gravitational lens can help us have a knowledge on how the dark matter is distributed, and the real quantity of the dark matter inside the universe. So knowing our universe, it’s very, very important to understand the behavior of dark matter.

And when I’m talking about visible matter inside the universe, it only represents 5%, and the dark matter is five times the abundance of the visible matter. So we cannot say that we can understand how our universe is forming in time and evolving, if we only know 5% of the constituent. So knowing the dark matter will be an opportunity for us to understand the formation and evolution the galaxies and also the universe, and then, to go back, to understand the formation our planets and the appearance of life on Earth.

ROSS: Hmm! Thank you.

There are several more questions that came in, one in particular to Professor Happer about his work on developing the guidestar approach for adaptive optics. I first wanted to ask Professor Happer if you would like to add anything on the topic that Dr. Korsaga just addressed, of dark matter, before we move on?

HAPPER: I think she did a very nice job explaining that. It’s obvious there’s dark matter there, because galaxies are rotating too fast, if you don’t assume dark matter. So it’s clearly there, but the question is, what is it? Is it little particles; at one time people thought maybe it was dwarf stars that were too small to be seen. There is not much support for that any more. But it’s a wonderful mystery, and it’s a big effect. I would love to be the one to discover it — I don’t expect to be, but I encourage young people to take that as one of their goals.

And I do agree with Dr. Korsaga about the importance of role models for young women. It’s very hard for women in physics and astronomy to get started, at least in the United States, you don’t get much support from your peers. If you’re a young woman in middle school or high school and you show an interest in math or science, people make fun of you. And unless you have tremendous strength of character and you have family support, you often just give up before you’ve even had a chance to try something. One of my good friends was Sally Ride, the first female astronaut in the United States — I’m sorry Sally died far too young — but she was a tremendous inspiration to many young women, and I hope that she still is. And I hope that Dr. Korsaga will be an inspiration one of these days to a new generation of young women: So, good luck to you!

KORSAGA: Thank you very much!

ROSS: And I want to thank Dr. Korsaga: She’s joining us from Burkina Faso and it’s getting a little late there.

KORSAGA: I’m studying in South Africa.

ROSS: Oh, you’re in South Africa, OK! Well, it’s still pretty late, though. Well, I want to thank you for joining us. And if you can stay on, that’s great, and if not, we wish you a good night, and thank you being with us.

Dr. Happer, Ben had a question for you about your development of the guidestar approach.

DENISTON: I definitely appreciate your taking the time: I was just curious if you had any favorite discoveries or areas of investigation that had been dependent on and built upon this ability to see through the atmosphere more clearly for astronomy, which you’re guidestar system contributed to.

HAPPER: Yeah. Well, it certainly played a major role in defining the properties of the black hole in the center of our galaxy, because it allowed people like Claire Max and Professor Malkin [ph] as UCSC to measure stars that a very, very close to the galactic center with infrared telescopes, and the additional resolution you could get from the USIP GuideStar was a key part of this, so I’m pleased that it had that application.

Of course, it has applications also in laser propagation. If you try to project a lot of laser power through the atmosphere, if you don’t correct for the atmospheric turbulence, you just can’t get much power onto target. And there it’s routinely used also.

So there have been uses. It was heavily classified for 10 years, so we couldn’t talk about it, but again, thanks to Claire Max it has been declassified since the early ’90s, and has proved its worth in astronomy.

ROSS: I’d like to ask one final question, and Professor Happer if you want to stay on for it — I’ll pose the question and let you decide. I’d like to ask all of our panelists to respond to it. This came in: “What do you believe is the one axiom that is most holding back scientific progress? What do you think is the post pernicious false belief that’s holding us back in our creativity?”

HAPPER: I wasn’t aware that we were being held back, actually. It seems to me we’ve made good progress! [laughter]

ROSS: Wow! OK. Well, thank you very much then. If you have anything that you’d like to say in summary, Professor Happer, and then, our other panelists and we’ll wrap up the panel. Is there anything else you’d like to say to our viewing audience?

HAPPER: I think the main thing I want to say, is that especially young people should keep their courage up. People often give up too soon, and so if you’re a young scientist, or you want to be a scientist, don’t be easily discouraged if people say you can’t do it, you usually are being misled. You can do it, if you keep trying. There’s this great quote from Faust [quotes in German] “Whoever keeps trying, we can save.” That’s good advice: It was good advice then, it’s still good advice today.

ROSS: Thank you very much, and thank you for joining us on this panel, Dr. Happer.

There are still dozens and dozens of questions that came in, and if you asked a question and we haven’t answered it, there are literally dozens that we didn’t get to that were sent in just for this panel.

So, Megan or Ben would either of you like to share any concluding thoughts with our audience today?

BEETS: Yes, I can say a few things: first, on your question about the axioms holding back science, there are probably many things to name. One thing I think is extremely important, and which was addressed in part by Dr. Luminet earlier, is the false belief that what we know about the universe from our own creative mental processes, cannot be applied when we look at the physical world outside of our skins. And I think this is an idea which really came to prominence in the 20th century, and I think that it should be eliminated: Because things we learn, for example, from our experience in Classical musical composition, especially the compositions of Beethoven, these can help us investigate the paradoxes having to do with time, that absolutely apply to our investigation of the physical universe. So that’s one thing I would put out, is something which is extremely important, and I’ll reference people to the work of Johannes Kepler as somebody who is exemplary as not having this problem, and his discoveries certainly speak for themselves.

But, just in a final summary word, in terms of what we presented today, I think the main message I’d like people to take is that coming out of this crisis we must have a new paradigm, not only in economic policy and many other things we spoke of this morning, and will continue to speak of; but scientific collaboration must be defined by this optimistic outlook for cooperation around these common aims: Humanity must be allowed to pull together and apply the best talents from among us from all over the world, to solve these real threats to human civilization. The only solution to these problems is progress: Scientific leaps forward, and that intention really does have to guide our scientific collaboration coming out of this period of crisis.

ROSS: Ben, do you have anything you’d like to say in conclusion.

DENISTON: I endorse everything Megan said. [laughter] She sums it up very well. When we were discussing with Helga Zepp-LaRouche about the formation of this panel and some of the content, she made the point that we want to be very clear that we’re having this COVID pandemic; if it wasn’t COVID, it could have been a surprise asteroid, surprise comet, this is just — in a certain sense the best thing that can come out of this crisis is taking that as a warning to get this shift we’re talking about, to get nations united against these common, larger threats, and not go through just the tragic fate of failing to get beyond this geopolitical perspective and end up going extinct, like many other, as we discussed, over 5 billion other species have gone before. It’s on us to decide not to go.

So the best thing that can come out of this crisis is using this as a motivation to ensure that we do make the changes needed and go with LaRouche’s program, as we’ve discussed, addressing not just the technical ways to avoid war, but addressing the underlying causes that lead to conflict, and finding the solutions in mutual, shared progress, that is uniquely human. Without that, as Mr. LaRouche spent his life defining, there’s no durable survival. So shared progress is the guarantee of durable survival.

ROSS: I’ll say something in conclusion and then we’ll have some closing announcements.

As Ben just said, building on Megan, this conference takes place at a time where we have this COVID pandemic taking place, and it could have been any number of other disasters to which we’re susceptible. That susceptibility is what we must take on.

And I’d just like to say one thing about the search for enemies, that unfortunately people are being pushed into right now: People are being told that China has lied about the coronavirus, that China created the coronavirus, etc., these kinds of things. There is no evidence that any virologist takes seriously that this was a manmade virus, that it was deliberately created in China, etc. There are also people who find fault with the performance of various governments. Michele Geraci had mentioned how Italy could have learned more from China’s experience in dealing with the coronavirus. I believe that’s clearly the case in the United States.

When people make the mistake, however, of looking for somebody to blame, they ignore the overall environment in which these decisions get made, and I’d like to read a quote from LaRouche to end things off here. It’s from a paper that he wrote, so I can’t play a video, but it’s about his view of what is the real essence of tragedy. Take, for example, a Shakespearean tragedy such as Hamlet: Many people learn from their literature teachers that the tragedy is in Hamlet himself, that he failed to do what he should have done.

LaRouche takes a different view about where the tragedy is located. So, I’ll read this paragraph from his 2000 essay, entitled, “Politics as Art.” https://larouchepub.com/lar/2000/2745_politics_as_art.html

In it, Lyndon LaRouche wrote: “The principle underlying all competent composition and performance of what is known as Classical tragedy, is based upon the historical evidence it reflects. That principle is, that, in real life off stage, entire cultures, excepting those destroyed by natural causes beyond man’s present ability to control, have been usually destroyed by the fatal defects inhering within that prevailing popular culture itself, as the U.S., as a nation, is being destroyed, like the ancient pagan Rome of the popular arena games, by no single factor as weighty as the effect of what is called ‘popular entertainment’ today.”

So he says that most cultures have been destroyed by the “fatal defects inhering within that … popular culture.” What we need to do, and which this entire conference has been addressing on the highest level, is, what is a new paradigm? What is a new cultural outlook that we can adopt internationally, in discussion with each other, to replace the tragic one, in which we are susceptible to what we are currently experiencing, and overcoming that, with a real victorious, and enduringly growing future?

I’d like now to wrap things up. I’d like to thank our speakers today: Dr. Jean-Pierre Luminet, Michel Tognini, Walt Cunningham, Dr. Marie Korsaga, Sen. Joe Pennachio, Prof. Will Happer, Dr. Guangxi Li, Dr. Kildare Clarke.

Before the panel that begins tomorrow morning at 11 a.m., which is going to be a panel on culture, we do have a playlist of some cultural experiences for you, to enjoy and learn from before that panel begins. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoHwt4KyUk5BLyjo-lYI1akY_m95R12QD] You’ll find that on the conference website.

I’ll just make one final reminder about the Collected Works of Lyndon LaRouche which are available and you can purchase online at https://www.larouchelegacyfoundation.org

Den 13.april (EIRNS) – Finansfolk, hvis aktiver bliver reddet af centralbankerne verden over, ved, at døden truer dem som tvinges til at betale for disse. Kig for eksempel på artiklen om investeringer i dag, skrevet af den “formidable Wall Street-skikkelse” og Davos-mand, Scott Minerd, milliardær og chef for Guggenheim Investments, som fortalte sine klienter, at COVID-19 vil komme til at hærge udviklingslandene – som han, i den sædvanlige hånlige finans-jargon, kalder ”spirende markeder” (”emerging markets”) eller bare ”EM’er”.

”De spirende markeder vil snart rammes hårdt af den globale pandemi,” skrev Minerd. ”Pandemien vil blive efterfulgt af en mangel på varer og mad, og social uro. Før virusset ramte dem direkte, var EM-lande allerede blevet negativt påvirket, gennem faldende priser på råvarer og de økonomiske følger af Kinas og andre dele af udviklingssektorens nedlukning. De fleste EM-lande har et meget skrøbeligt sundhedssystem, ikke engang i nærheden af det nødvendige antal hospitalssenge og respiratorer, overfyldte byer og slumkvarterer, og et stort antal arbejdere i økonomien, der er dagligt lønnet eller arbejder i den uformelle del af økonomien og ikke kan arbejde hjemme fra. For mange EM-lande vil denne pandemi hurtigt stige fra en sundhedskrise til en humanitær krise, og slutteligt til en solvenskrise. Politisk stabilitet vil være den sidste dominobrik til at falde.”

Og Minerd fortsætter derefter med at rådgive klienter om relevante investeringer! Faren for at meget store antal af mennesker dør i udviklingslandene er reel for disse mennesker – og for os. Men for bankerne på Wall Street og i City of London: De bliver reddet fra et utvivlsomt komplet sammenbrud af det monetære system, som de har spillet på de sidste 50 år. USA’s centralbank har trykket 5 billioner $ indtil nu, i et ”ubegrænset” regi, for at opkøbe værdiløse aktiver og låne penge til spekulative finansfirmaer, imens kun en tredjedel af dette tilbydes i lån til kommuner og andre virksomheder.

En anden skribent, Jonathan Tepper, Prevatt Capitals IT-direktør, skrev i dag i Londons Financial Times: ”At udlåne til potentielle insolvente firmaer er slemt nok, men at købe virksomhedsobligationer og ’ETF’er’ i de sekundære markeder, er tvivlsomt i lovens øjne, under afsnit 13 af centralbanklovgivningen… Det gør heller intet for at hjælpe med at finansiere økonomien, og hjælper blot investorer, som allerede har købt virksomhedsobligationer. Det er et paradis for spekulanter.

”De, som åbenlyst nyder godt af programmet for opkøb af skrotobligationer (’junk bonds’), er de ”over-gearede”, private investeringsgrupper og usunde låntagere. Dette er ingen overraskelse. Chefen for den amerikanske centralbank, Jerome Powell, tilbragte mange år i Carlyle, den private egenkapitalgigant.”

Imens får amerikanere, under tilstande med uhørt massearbejdsløshed, 1.200 $ hver. De kan få lov til at udskyde deres realkreditlån og skattebetalinger, men må afbetale stort senere – mens Capital One-banken har fået fortalt af banktilsynsmyndigheder, at de bare kan lade være med at betale et ”afdrag” på 1 milliard $ på tab fra deres spekulative investeringer. Uretfærdigheden for ”EM’erne” er også trådt i kræft for de amerikanske og europæiske befolkninger, hvor minoritetsborgere med generelt dårligere sundhedsforsikringer samt de ældre udgør 80-90% eller mere af dødsfaldene.

De sidste 50 års monetære kasinosystem med flydende valutakurser, som har skabt skamløs rigdom, reallønnedgang og fattigdom, og et udbredt malthusiansk syn på menneskelivet, er nu blot et vrag. Men centralbankerne, anført af USA’s Federal Reserve, insisterer på at ville reparere det. ”Vi kan forhindre deflation!” sværgede Federal Reserves næstformand, Richard Clarida, i dag. Hvis de gør dette, vil det blive gennem en dødelig hyperinflationær eksplosion.

Dette pilrådne system må og skal erstattes fuldstændigt af et nyt kreditsystem, gennem samarbejdet mellem de førende teknologiske nationer, begyndende med skabelsen af et globalt sundhedssystem, som kan forhindre massedød i udviklingssektoren. Dette nye system vil blive indvarslet på Schiller Instituttets internationale konference, der vil blive afholdt den 25.-26. april, online, over internettet.

Lørdag den 4. april 2020. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Instituttets stifter og internationale præsident, Jacques Cheminade, LaRouche-bevægelsens leder i Frankrig og fhv. præsidentkandidat samt Hussein Askary, Schiller Instituttets koordinator for Sydvestasien, talte om USA i forbindelse med LaRouche-bevægelsens mobilisering for at vedtage Lyndon LaRouches økonomiske politik globalt, for at tackle den udprægede mangel på udvikling rundt om i verden. Der er ingen ‘nationale’ løsninger på COVID-19 eller finansielle kriser som sådan, alene globale løsninger.

 HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Goddag. Jeg synes det bliver meget tydeligt nu, at vi befinder os midt i, eller i begyndelsen af, hvad der ser ud til at blive den værste krise i menneskets historie. Det står allerede klart, at sundhedssystemerne i Europa – i Italien og Spanien – i USA ikke slår til. Der er ikke nok medicinske forsyninger, ansigtsmasker, respiratorer, læger, sygeplejersker, intensiv-enheder. Det står også meget klart, at denne pandemi – pandemi betyder, at det er en verdensomspændende epidemi – spreder sig meget hurtigt til udviklingslandene. Man kan være sikker på, at hvis den rammer lande som Haiti, eller de 55 afrikanske nationer eller store befolkede nationer i Asien, vil situationen blive endnu værre. Det er meget tydeligt, at de ikke har tilstrækkelige medicinsk forsyninger; de har ikke engang et sundhedssystem. De har ikke rent vand. Idéen om at isolere sig selv og vaske sine hænder betyder intet, for sådan noget findes ikke for mindst halvdelen af befolkningen. Og det betyder, at denne ting er ved at komme helt ud af kontrol.

Så formålet med denne konference og dette møde i aften er at starte en kampagne for at sætte ét enkelt spørgsmål på dagsordenen. Det er, at vi er nødt til at reagere på dette som en enig menneskehed, og at vi må droppe alle andre dagsordener. Vi er nødt til at opbygge et verdenssundhedssystem; vi er naturligvis nødt til at geare op for at forsvare folket i USA, i de europæiske lande. Men i betragtning af det faktum at det er en pandemi, vil dette ikke være tilstrækkeligt. Denne virus vil mutere; den vil vende tilbage, og den vil vende tilbage i bølger, og i stigende grad ødelægge vores reelle produktion. Det vil have en alvorlig indvirkning på fødevareproduktionen. OECD (Organisationen for Økonomisk Samarbejde og Udvikling) har allerede fremsat erklæringer om, at de forventer, at den økonomiske effekt vil være en reduktion af den industrielle produktion i OECD-landene på 30%; man vil få millioner af arbejdsløse. Derfor er vi nødt til at have et komplet skifte i dagsordenen for udelukkende at producere for en effekt; nemlig at opbygge et sundhedssystem i hvert eneste land i verden med den samme energi, den samme lidenskab, de samme midler.

Præsident Trump har indført undtagelsesloven ‘National Defense Production Act’. Guvernør Cuomo har opfordret til en hidtil uset mobilisering af alt sundhedspersonale – læger, sygeplejersker, omskoling, uddannelse af unge. Dette er skridt i den rigtige retning, men det skal ledsages af en opbygning af den industrielle produktion for at producere alle de nødvendige midler til at bekæmpe denne pandemi. Det betyder hospitaler i hvert land; det betyder beskyttelsesdragter, ansigtsmasker, respiratorer. Hele industrien skal indrettes med dette for øje, indtil vi har besejret denne pandemi.

Der er ingen måde, hvorpå centralbankernes likviditetspumpe vil kunne fortsætte igennem denne mobilisering. Der er mennesker der siger, at dette kommer fuldstændig uventet, at dette er et komplet chok. Altså, vi kan bevise, at dette ikke er tilfældet. Lyndon LaRouche advarede siden 1971 om, at dette ville ske, da han advarede om konsekvenserne af, at Nixon forlod Bretton Woods-systemet. Siden 1973 og 1974 advarede han i særdeleshed om, hvad den økonomiske effekt af de betingelser som IMF og Verdensbankens politik pålagde udviklingssektoren ville være. Og han advarede om, at pandemier ville blive resultatet. Hele hans livsværk var at advare om den kendsgerning, at monetarisme – denne anden dødbringende virus som Dennis talte om – ville resultere i pandemier. Man kan ikke sænke levestandarden på hele kontinenter over længere tid uden at fremme lavere livsformer i biosfæren til at tage over; nemlig vira.

Ideen er at starte en mobilisering på verdensplan, en mobilisering som fuldstændig vil ændre paradigmet. Vi har opfordret til et topmøde med de vigtigste lande i verden – USA, Rusland, Kina og Indien – at de må holde et topmøde for at ændre systemet; at blive enige om at få en ny verdensøkonomisk orden, der skaber mulighed for, at ethvert land på denne planet kan overleve. Der er bevægelser i denne retning. Netop i dag talte præsident Trump i telefon med Macron, den franske premierminister, og de blev enige om at fremskynde et lignende forslag fremsat af præsident Putin i begyndelsen af januar, hvor de fem faste medlemmer af FN’s Sikkerhedsråd straks skal indkalde et hastemøde og enes om øget samarbejde mellem FN’s nationer om at gå i denne retning.

Schiller Instituttet indkalder til en international internetkonference den 25. og 26. april. Længe før omfanget af pandemien stod klart, var målet med Schiller Instituttets konference at formulere et program, der kan hjælpe med at forme diskussionen for topmødet mellem disse stormagter. Vi er nødt til at have en drastisk aksiomatisk ændring. Der er allerede mange diskussioner, som er nyttige og skal understøttes; såsom ophævelse af alle sanktioner for at give alle lande mulighed for at bekæmpe pandemien. At holde en øjeblikkelig våbenhvile; at stoppe for alle militære handlinger, men der er brug for mere. Der er brug for en massiv mobilisering med opbakning fra mange mennesker og mange organisationer, for fuldstændig at ændre dagsordenen.

Der findes en vellykket model for, hvordan coronavirus blev besejret, i det mindste midlertidigt; det var hvad Kina gjorde i Wuhan og Hubei-provinsen. Det vil sige, at man må have total testning; man bliver nødt til at have identifikation af de mennesker, der tester positivt, man må isolere dem og sætte dem i karantæne. På den måde kan infektionskæden brydes, og virusset kan besejres. Problemet er, at det har vist sig, at det ikke er muligt at gentage denne model i den transatlantiske verden, simpelthen fordi testudstyr ikke er tilgængelige, fremstillingsvirksomhederne var ikke klar endnu. De vestlige regeringer bortødslede den varslingstid, som de fik gennem den kinesiske intervention.

Men det må der nu sættes fart i, ved hjælp af den form for mobilisering som jeg talte om. Den apokalyptiske dimension af hvad vi står over for vil stå meget klar inden for kort tid. Al forvirringen, alle de falske nyheder om, at coronavirus kun ville være som en slem influenza, al denne misinformation vil fortone sig. Der vil være en åbenhed over for at diskutere et helt nyt paradigme.                     

Der er også behov for at gøre det meget klart, at bagmændenes ideer, de folk og kræfter der er ansvarlige for, at vi endte i denne situation i første omgang, ikke må sejre. I dag er der for eksempel en artikel af Henry Kissinger i Wall Street Journal med overskriften “Coronavirus vil for evigt ændre verdensordenen”. Vi skal huske, at Kissinger måske ved, at timen er ved at være inde, hvor den gamle verdensorden uopretteligt og for evigt forsvinder. Men vi må ikke glemme, at det var Kissingers politik med NSSM 200 (National Security Study Memorandum 200 er et amerikansk dokument om befolkningsreduktion, red.) der blev aftalt i 1974, og som var en stor del af denne morderiske malthusianske affolkningspolitik mod udviklingslandene.

Dette memorandum, som først blev offentliggjort i begyndelsen af 1990’erne, sagde, at befolkningen i visse udviklingslande må reduceres og kontrolleres, fordi der er store ressourcer, som alle er i USA’s strategiske interesse. En anden af ‘gerningsmændene’ var den onde politik fra Romklubben, der begyndte at sprede denne idé om, at der er grænser for vækst, og at man er nødt til at gå over til en økonomi med nulvækst. En løgn som straks blev tilbagevist af Lyndon LaRouche, der skrev en meget vigtig bog med titlen ‘There Are No Limits to Growth’ (Der er ingen grænser for Vækst). Det var også John D. Rockefeller III’s politik, der på FN’s befolkningskonference i Bukarest samme år – 1974 – begyndte at tale om overbefolkning, befolkningseksplosion og andre sådanne malthusianske ideer.

Disse mennesker er mordere. Hvis I ønsker at se beviser, så se på hvad Jeremy Warner skrev den 3. marts i Daily Telegraph, hvor han sagde, at der er en fordel forbundet med coronavirus. Det er, at den frasorterer de ældre. Det er klart, at Warner er på linje med prins Philip, der på en offentlig konference om religion sagde, at han ønsker at blive reinkarneret som en dødbringende virus, så han bedre kan hjælpe med at reducere verdensbefolkningen. Eller lyt til hvad Sir David King, den ledende videnskabelige rådgiver for både Blair- og Brown-regeringerne, der åbent sagde, at de ældre må ofres af hensyn til økonomien. Disse malthusianeres synspunkter må bringes for en ny Nürnberg-domstol, fordi det helt klart gælder for dem, at de vidste eller burde have vidst, hvilke konsekvenser deres politik ville have for Den tredje Verden.

Selv den tyske hærs tænketank, Det Tyske Institut for Forsvar og Strategiske Studier, har netop fremsat et krav om en tilbundsgående undersøgelse af, hvordan verden så blindt kunne gå ind i katastrofen. En sådan undersøgelse er allerede foretaget. Den har vi foretaget igennem de sidste 50 år. Lyndon LaRouche advarede igennem et halvt århundrede om, at nøjagtigt dette ville ske. Også i det tyske parlament var der, i 2012, i forbindelse med SARS-pandemien, et scenarie på den såkaldte modi-SARS – hvilket betyder modificeret SARS – der sagde, at en mulig pandemi kunne nå frem til Europa, USA og Asien. Mærkeligt nok udelod de Afrika, så hvis man taler om pandemien og man udelader Afrika, er det meget underligt. Men det blev også ignoreret.

Hvad der er brug for nu, er en hidtil uset – og jeg mener virkelig hidtil uset – mobilisering. Jeg opfordrer jer alle til at deltage i at opbygge en alliance af mennesker, der vil deltage i Schiller Instituttets konference den 25. og 26. april. Og jeg vil have jer til at nå ud til mange organisationer og mennesker i Nordamerika, Europa, men også Latinamerika, Asien, Afrika. At nå ud til FN-organisationer, til ngo’er, til Verdenssundhedsorganisationer med det ene formål: At vi er nødt til at geare op for at opbygge et Silkevejs-sundhedssystem i alle lande. Vi må opnå en damptromleeffekt af mennesker, der straks kræver hospitaler, ICU-enheder, men også mad. Fordi der allerede er fare for, at denne pandemi ledsages af en fødevaremangel på grund af sammenbrud af dele af fødevareproduktionen, fra de berørte mennesker, osv.

Men hvis vi samtidigt ønsker at opbygge et nyt sundhedssystem på verdensplan, er det meget tydeligt, at det ikke kan gøres med den nuværende kasinoøkonomi. Så er der brug for Lyndon LaRouches fire love. Det vil være nødvendigt med en global Glass/Steagall-bankopdeling for at finansiere et sundhedssystem i alle lande. Vi har brug for en nationalbank i hvert land, og disse nationalbanker skal være tilsluttet et Nyt Bretton Woods-kreditsystem. Resultatet af dette må også være et helt andet sæt af værdier. Absolut ikke den liberale orden og ‘Oplysningstidens’ værdier, som Kissinger beder om, men hvad vi i stedet har brug for er en tilbagevenden til humanistiske værdier, til ideen om menneskeheden som én menneskehed. At vi sætter de fælles interesser for menneskeslægten foran de nationale interesser, og at vi kommer ud af dette med et helt nyt paradigme for kærlighed til menneskeheden og et nyt system for internationale relationer, der sætter samarbejde over konfrontation. Hvis vi alle er forenede i denne ånd, tror jeg, at vi kan forvandle denne forfærdelige krise til en chance for hele menneskeheden ved at ændre paradigmet til at blive virkelig menneskeligt, som en menneskelig art.

Den 4. april. Præsident Trump har modigt initieret en nødtvungen kontrol over USA’s økonomi, gennem dirigistiske metoder, der i sin tid var kendt som det ”Amerikanske System” til politisk økonomi, opdaget og implementeret af Alexander Hamilton og hans tilhængere, specielt Mathew og Henry Carey, og deres tyske medarbejder, Friedrich List. Trump har opildnet både erhvervslivets og militærets ledere, samt institutioner, til at pålægge den amerikanske industri og infrastruktur en fordringsbaseret økonomi, for at imødekomme de akutte behov fra en befolkning konfronteret med en eksistentiel krise uden sammenligning i den moderne historie. Han gør dette i åbent samarbejde med Rusland og Kina, på trods af den hylende modstand fra de neo-konservative og neo-liberale, der kontrollerer de politiske partier og den korrupte presse. Trump har haft lange, produktive samtaler med præsidenterne Vladimir Putin og Xi Jinping gennem den seneste uge, og pga. hans anstrengelser kommer de første to fragtfly, medbringende medicinske forsyninger til at hjælpe med at redde amerikanske liv, fra Rusland og Kina.

Man ville næppe erfare dette ved at følge de offentlige amerikanske nyhedsmedier. I stedet læser man i Bloomberg at ”efterretningstjenesterne” har sendt en hemmelig rapport til præsidenten, der viser at Kina lyver om dødsfaldene i forbindelse med coronavirusset i Kina, imens den Europæiske Unions udenrigspolitiske kontor tordner om at Putin spreder misinformation om virusset ”for at undergrave Vesten og skabe en ny verdensorden.”. På samme tid forsøger hårdkogte hoveder i det militær-industrielle kompleks at hive præsidenten ind i nye krige mhp. regimeskifte i Iran og Venezuela, med formålet at provokere en konfrontation med Kina og Rusland.

Trump svarede utvetydigt igen på ”efterretningstjenesternes” svindel. Spurgt om Rusland havde vundet en ”propagandasejr”, ved at sende medicinske forsyninger, svarede Trump, ”Jeg er ikke bekymret for russisk propaganda. Det vil måske redde mange liv.”. Og om Kinas angivelige løgne om antallet af COVID-19-ofre, sagde han, ”Jeg er ikke en revisor fra Kina… Vi ved det virkelig ikke. Hvordan ved vi hvorvidt de under-rapporterede?”. Han udtrykte klart, at ”vi ikke har modtaget” en sådan efterretningsrapport, ”men vi havde et fantastisk opkald forleden nat [med Xi Jinping]. Vi samarbejder om en masse forskellige ting, inklusiv handel.”.

Men alligevel kræver både republikanske og demokratiske ledere en økonomisk, og sågar en militær, konfrontation med Kina! I et brev til Udenrigsminister Mike Pompeo (hvis verbale stormløb mod Kina snart gerne måtte efterlade ham uden arbejde), bebrejdede republikanere fra Repræsentanternes Hus Kina, for COVID-19-krisen, og forlangte ”tilbageslag” for deres angivelige underminering af verden, og for at forårsage ”ubeskrivelige lidelser.”. Den republikanske Senator Rick Scott opfordrede sågar til en kongresundersøgelse af chefen for Verdenssundhedsorganisationen (WHO), Dr. Tedras, fordi WHO’s ros af Kinas beslutsomme indgriben (karantænemetoden i Wuhan) angiveligt viser at Tedras er en marionet af Kinas kommunistiske parti!

Ironien er, at præcis de dirigistiske metoder, som Præsident Trump genoplever, er præcis de samme som den kinesiske regering brugte til at skabe de sidste 40 års mirakel, hvorved de er blevet verdens førende nation i high-tech-infrastruktur, og bringer nu denne teknologi til resten af verden gennem Bælte og Vej-Initiativet. Dette er ingen overraskelse. Det er ikke ”socialisme” versus ”kapitalisme,” men nærmere om det Amerikanske System versus det Britiske System. Kineserne har været tilhængere af Friedrich List og Henry Carey siden Sun Yat-sens tid. Lists dokumentation af Storbritanniens brug af ”frihandels”-dogmet, for at fastholde sine koloniers tilbageståenhed, er almen viden for hver eneste kinesiske økonom, ligesom Hamiltons protektionistiske politik, nationalbankspolitik, og et fokus på infrastruktur, som nøglen til industriel og videnskabelig fremgang. Måske kunne nogle af vores Havard-ideologer lære noget om det Amerikanske System fra Xi Jinping.

Faren forbliver at Wall Street udløser en multi-trillion redningsaktion af den næsten to tusind billioner store derivatboble—nu værdiløs spillegæld. ”CARES”-loven, underskrevet af præsidenten, der tildeler $2,2 billioner i støtte til borgere og erhvervsliv, som er ramte af nedlukningen af store dele af økonomien, er både berettiget og nødvendig, såvel som præsidentens forslag for et $2 billioner stort program for infrastruktur. Men skjult i processen, er de mere end $4 billioner, der går til centralbanken (Federal Reserve) for at redde finansboblen—et hyperinflationært initiativ som vil undergrave enhver fremgang i den reelle økonomi, og hurtigt vil tilintetgøre dollaren.

Den eneste vej frem er de komplette Fire Love, fremlagt af Lyndon LaRouche efter krakket i 2008. For at opildne denne nations patrioter, og borgere i hele verden, for at realisere denne politik, skal  det størst mulige antal personer organiseres til at deltage i Schiller Instituttets online-konference den 25.-26. april.

Den 1. april. Da Helga Zepp-LaRouche gav et overblik over den fatale krise som menneskeheden står overfor, påmindede hun seerne om at “Systemer er menneskeskabte”, og kan forandres når de bryder sammen.

Hendes mand advarede, så tidligt som i 1973, om at det globale neoliberale system, der kom til da Nixon afsluttede Bretton Woods systemet, med dets politiske holdninger til billig arbejdskraft, billige råmaterialer og den spekulative kasino-økonomi, ville lede til nye globale pandemier. Hvis du sænker levestandarder, vil lavere livsformer tage over, sagde han.

Vores nutidige dobbelte virusangreb, fra coronavirus pandemien til kollapset af finanssystemet bekræfter præcisionen afa LaRouche’s advarsler. Det som gør situationen værre, er Vestens moralske arrogance. De som promoverer Grønne “løsninger” i dag, ville dømme menneskeheden til et folkemord meget værre end Hitlers.

Der er dog en reel modstand mod disse politikker. Hun beskrev den passion, som udvistes af nogle unge mennesker på et ungdomskonferencekald med hende i tirsdags, hvor mere end 70 personer engagerede sig i diskussioner om hvordan man skal gå fra det kollapsede system, til et Nyt Paradigme ved at mobilisere med agape og de magtfulde ideer som vores bevægelse har.

Samtalerne mellem præsident Trump og hans modparter i Kina og Rusland repræsenterer et træk i den rigtige retning – bidrag med os i at organisere vores internationale konference for at sikre at disse ideer bærer frugt. Ben (Schiller Instituttet) http://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/

Schiller Institute New Paradigm Webcast, April 1, 2020 With Helga Zepp-LaRouche

– Systems Are Manmade — – – You Can Change Systems When One Breaks Down –

HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute. Welcome to our webcast with our founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. It’s April 1, 2020. We’re clearly in the midst of one of the most profound crises in modern history with the combined effects of a financial system that’s blowing out, and as well with the expanding pandemic of coronavirus. It’s clear that the old way of thinking no longer works. So, Helga, what’s your assessment, especially with the situation in the United States seeming to be heading out of control?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: It is an unprecedented crisis, and I think none of us has experienced anything like that in our lifetime. Maybe it was like that in the world wars, but it quickly is developing such a seriousness of the situation. I think that reality dawns on some people belatedly, but it is unavoidable, because the elements are that not only the coronavirus is hitting the United States and Europe, but it will really be extremely bad for the developing sector. We will come to that in a second. But I think first to start with the United States, yesterday’s White House coronavirus taskforce meeting, which was given by President Trump and his health advisors [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and [Dr. Deborah] Birx was really completely sober and sobering. What they basically said is that if everything is being done right now, maybe the number of deaths can be reduced to 100,000 or 240,000 people. But if things go wrong, it may be 1-2 million. Right now, it does not look like this is going to be an easy job. If you look, for example, to situations like New York and New Jersey where you have the hotspots, with the highest infection rates exponentially growing right now, it is quite desperate. Despite Governor Cuomo trying to get sufficient ventilators for the expected outbreak, he said he was only able to get 2500 ventilators in two weeks from now from China, but that he is lacking 15,000. Obviously all the other states in the United States were in a bidding war to get ventilators until FEMA took it over, and is now organizing it centrally. Ventilators are in the critical phase of the coronavirus infection, that which is lifesaving. If there are no ventilators, then these people will just die. It is a very serious situation. For an industrialized country, it has unbelievable social consequences. For example, they let out the prisoners in Rikers Island, a famous prison, and they are now, because they have no other place to go, hanging out in Penn Station where they get food deliveries from the guardian angels. Then, you have 114,000 homeless children in New York alone, who used to get meals in the schools. So, you have all kinds of social consequences which really show the underlying problem of the lack of infrastructure investment, the privatization and dismantling of the health system over the last decades; all of that is now really coming to a point of complete crisis. There are incredible efforts being made to retool some of the industries, there is an air bridge which has been established with many planes from China and other Asian countries — 50 planes all together. There were yesterday, the first Russian airplane coming to the United States delivering medical support. So, there is an incredible mobilization going on, but it is also very clear that this is a pandemic, and you will have mass unemployment. Some people are saying that the unemployment in the United States may go up to 30%; so this is really an unbelievable crisis.

SCHLANGER: Helga, you talk about the crisis affecting the United States, and how desperate it is. What are we seeing now in countries like Africa? India has got a total lockdown; Indonesia is now in the midst of a developing crisis. This is obviously much more dangerous in the developing sector.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: If you think that the United States is a very well industrialized country — or, at least it used to be. If you go to Africa or the other developing areas of the world, supposedly developing, not so developing countries, it will be really very bad. You have some countries like South Africa, Kenya, Lagos is completely overwhelmed already, where you don’t have that kind of a health system. And you have already infectious diseases; you have HIV, tuberculosis, famine, malnutrition. This is really a powder keg. The head of the World Health Organization [WHO], Dr. Tedros, said that both in the United States and in Africa, the next two weeks will tell how bad the crisis will be. But so far, there is a certain delay factor, because of the poor transport connections of the African continent to the rest of the world, it arrived relatively late. But now it’s there, and there is the absolute danger that this will spread. You have half of the world de facto locked down; that’s incredible! You have India, a country of 1.3 billion people, in a lockdown. But that obviously is relative, because many day workers — people who just work for a day’s pay in big cities like Delhi — are now all fleeing these big cities, because they don’t earn any money, and they have absolutely no reserves. So you see these pictures where these poor people get on crowded buses, where they are absolutely not in a position to keep social distance, and then they are trying to rush home to their rural areas. But there is no health system. Despite the fact that Prime Minister Modi had quite some success with the “Clean India” campaign, and the “Modi Care” where he tried to improve the health care system, naturally this is all not enough. You have places like Jakarta in Indonesia — 10 million people in one city. Half of the people don’t have access to clean water. A similar situation is in many developing countries, including Mexico, including Peru. So, we are really looking at an unprecedented world crisis. The danger is that this will overwhelm the health systems; there is not enough production possible. The winter, which is now developing in the Southern Hemisphere, will favor the spread of the virus. You really will probably see many millions of people dying. I think this makes very clear that we need urgently a completely different system. Nothing will be like it was before. I think we have to go into a mass mobilization internationally; which the Schiller Institute is already engaged in, to establish a new world economic order. We have called for that for a very long time, but immediately in this situation it requires a summit of the most important powerful countries: China, Russia, India, the United States. They have to establish a new system. What we need is a completely new system. All the rules of the liberal economy, of the neo-liberal model, the cheap labor markets, the out-sourcing, all of that has to be replaced; and it has to start with the immediate building of a world health system where a decent health system is being built up in every single country. That must be the beginning of an industrial revolution for the whole world. Nothing short of that will do. That means we need a New Bretton Woods system, and a new credit system to finance that. If you agree with that, then help us in this mobilization, because what is at stake are the lives of many millions of people, and maybe yourself.

SCHLANGER: Over the last few days, President Trump had discussions with President Xi Jinping of China and President Putin of Russia. Do you see this as a positive step towards the idea of a summit? These are bilateral discussions, but so far we haven’t seen a response to your call on the level needed.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think it’s a step in the right direction. The fact that Trump and Xi Jinping re-established contact, that there were discussions between the health ministers, that the United States started to accept this air bridge, that Trump started to discuss with Putin. All of these things are very positive, but they fall short. Also, the proposal by UNCTAD [UN Conference on Trade and Development], which proposed to have $2.5 trillion for building up the health sector in the developing sector, is a step in the right direction. $1 trillion is for debt write-off, $1 trillion is for Special Drawing Rights from the IMF, $500 billion is for a world health Marshall Plan. That is very positive, but when you count that, it’s still proverbial peanuts; because to build up a world health system needs much more than $500 billion. That’s for all the developing countries, not just for one country. It’s for the entire 180 or so developing countries; if you divide it, it’s just not enough.

SCHLANGER: There’s a lot of talk about the time lag in doing the emergency mobilization, getting the equipment, and other things. To me, the real time lag is the almost 45 years since your husband first sounded the warning in 1974 that a shift in the financial system to a neo-liberal new kind of colonial system would lead to this kind of pandemic. People obviously weren’t listening. The idea that there was no warning is completely false, isn’t it?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: The first memorandum that the economic financial policies of the IMF and World Bank would lead to pandemics, he issued in 1973. Then in 1974, he initiated a Biological Holocaust Taskforce, which presented their findings of a study at the end of 1974. I was just rereading a report which he also initiated in 1985, which is one of several large studies which absolutely predicted why this would happen. There is a connection between the biological sphere — the biosphere — and the economy. If you lower the living standard and the energy of the system of the economic society, then lower forms of life of the biosphere just take over. He compared it at that time, and I think this is a very fitting image for today, he said that the cheap labor orientation towards the developing sector and keeping development down in the so-called Third World, has to be compared to Schachtian economics in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. He said a lot of deaths in the concentration camps came from forcing the people sitting in these camps to do hard labor. They would have to do work for 2-3000 calories, but they would only get food for about 1000 calories. Then it was just a question of time before they would die of over-exhaustion. That is a fitting image, because if you lower the living standard of the developing countries unnecessarily by denying them infrastructure, like the World Wildlife Fund did in all their campaigns to ruin the prospects for dams, for industrial development, just blocking development with phony arguments of ecologism. What you do then is you reduce the ability of people to withstand diseases. You lower their immune system, you make them susceptible to pandemics, and this is exactly what we see today. That was clear; we discussed it in no uncertain terms. He said, these policies would have more consequences than the genocide of Adolf Hitler. I absolutely want to repeat that. When you see people today who are indifferent, who say “I don’t care. What do I care about Africa? What do I car about Latin America?”; these are people who are morally the equivalent of Nuremburg criminals. If you remember at the Nuremburg trials, the judges said, you either knew or should have known, about what was going on in the Third Reich. And concerning the condition of the developing sector, the exact same thing can be said. The people who are pushing no development, who are more concerned about the little snail in some corner than millions of people, these are people who are criminal. And that criminality absolutely has to stop. We have to start rebuilding the world. And every life in Africa, in Latin America, and in Asia is as precious as any child in Germany, or in the United States or any other place. I am consciously using this rather stark language, because this complacency and this arrogance of the Euro-centrists, or the American-centrists has to stop. We are at a point of moral and economic breakdown crisis of the whole world. We need a new system, and that has to be mobilized, and it has to be gotten through. If we don’t do that, we are risking our humanity either physically — because it is not yet clear if it doesn’t lead to war as a consequence of conditions of a breakdown crisis — or it leads to our moral demise. I really think that we have to absolutely change this. We have to allow industrial development in every single country in the world, and we have to have a decent living standard. It is very easy, because China has shown the way, that you can bring infrastructure development as the precondition for development to every country. It is up to us in the so-called Western countries in Europe and the United States to absolutely change our ways.

SCHLANGER: I think it’s also important going back to Lyn’s warnings in the early 1970s that he identified individuals who were committed to population reduction, knowing this would happen. We’re seeing some of these same kinds of comments. You had mentioned before, people talking about “Oh, isn’t it wonderful! There are now blue skies!” There are people who are cheering on the demise of the elderly and the so-called “useless eaters”, aren’t there?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: There is the flagship magazine of the British Empire, which is just coming out with that line today — {The Economist}. They say, isn’t it wonderful that the economy is coming to a grinding halt? No CO2 emissions. We just have to make sure that after this crisis, we are not going back to normal. There are some other criminal people who call themselves economists, who also say that if this crisis stops and is over, we have to rebuild the economy and it has to be all based on climate protection. We have discussed the reasons why the Green ecology is exactly what caused this crisis; and if we would go back to the same policies which have caused this crisis, then we clearly do not have the moral fitness to survive.

SCHLANGER: Helga, you’ve been talking about the rebuilding of the whole world health system. You had a conference call yesterday morning with young people, where you called on them to take responsibility for the organizing process to do this. What is your sense of the ability to mobilize youth today to take on this task?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think this was very encouraging, because this was the first such international youth call, and it had about 70-75 young people from all over the world; from the United States, Mexico, Peru, Pakistan, Africa, Europe, China. I think the discussion really reflected that these young people are morally absolutely committed to make sure that they have a future. The idea that every country has the right to have a decent health system is obvious. They are committed to bring this message to a lot of other young people, to the universities. They are committed to spread it other organizations, especially in the developing sector. All of them are really tuned in to the approach that you need the world leaders of the most important countries to change the system. I think this is important, because people have not really thought about it. You cannot sit out this crisis; you cannot just wait until it’s over. This is a pandemic, and it may come back in waves. It is intersected with the breakdown of the financial system, the collapse of the physical economy. The only to get out of that is to have a completely new system. Most people have not spent much thought on whether that is necessary or possible, or they say you can’t do that. Yes, you can do it. Systems are man-made; they are not built in the physical universe. They are man-made, and you can change the system. If the old system is not suitable for the common good of the people, then it has to be replaced. We have specified many times what that must look like: You need a global Glass-Steagall banking separation, you have to end the casino economy; you have to protect the commercial banks; you have to create a national bank in every country; you have to connect these national banks in a New Bretton Woods system which provides cheap long-term credit for clearly defined development projects. Then you have to have international cooperation. I think among the young people in particular, the idea that cooperation has to replace confrontation is a very easily understood idea. There were several especially young women — which made me especially happy, because I’m all for woman-power — and they especially emphasized that the passion which needs to be mobilized for that is agape. The change which has to occur must be based on a love for humanity. In this discussion, you could get an inkling of what the kind of new system will be like; namely, that the geopoliticians will be out. The people that think you can start endless wars just to make profit, this is an obsolete idea of troglodytes. The future must belong to young people who organize the world in different ways, in the interests of each country and vice versa. That was actually a very hopeful call, and I would urge people to get in contact with us to see how they can join it.

SCHLANGER: When you talk about troglodytes, look at what’s going on in Europe with the European Union; the battles that are going on around the continuation of the neo-liberal policies. This is in complete contrast to what you’re discussing with the young people, the complete absence of agape. Catch us up a little bit on what’s going on in the EU.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: It’s almost a question of the past to talk about the EU. It’s really right now a question mark as to how long this construct will remain in place. There is no solidarity; there is a big feud right now between Germany and Italy, France, and the other southern European countries. It’s a little bit on the wrong issue; namely, this issue of Eurobonds, which I think is not a good idea. It’s still in the realm of banking bail-out. Just to mention in parentheses, the Federal Reserve just yesterday opened their repo credit facility to all other central banks. That means basically that they intend to help each other to bail each other out. The Federal Reserve earlier had allocated $4 trillion for the bail-out of the U.S. banking sector which was characterized by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie as the biggest transfer of wealth from the ordinary people to the very rich and the bankers. This is part of the Eurobonds, so I’m not in favor of the Eurobonds. The conflict which has arisen between Germany and Holland and Austria on the one side, and these other countries on the other side, pertains to a real issue. That is that obviously the countries of the south — especially Italy and Spain, and increasingly also France — are really suffering an incredible exponential growth rate of this virus, and they have demanded some finance mechanism organized by the EU, which was blocked by Germany in particular and Holland and Austria. So, what these countries are saying is, this is the ugly face of Europe. The tone becomes quite nasty. For example, the Italian media and I think also Prime Minister Conte were saying that if that would have been the attitude of the other European countries at the 1953 debt conference in London, where half of the German debt was forgiven, which obviously was an extremely important factor in the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War, if that had not been done, then Germany would still live on the garbage piles. So, the tone is becoming nasty, and everybody — Italy, Spain, Serbia — all say that they got more help from China, from Russia, from Cuba, even the small country of Albania was sending 30 health personnel to Italy to help. You can really see who is your friend, and who is completely only motivated by other reasons. This will remain, and I think this anti-China campaign which is coming from Pompeo, from {Foreign Affairs} magazine, from the Council on Foreign Relations, who are all still in this absolutely vicious campaign against China, I think that will vanish. Because people in this crisis see who is helping, and who is not. I think the situation in Europe maybe in a week or two weeks when we talk next time, the EU may not exist. That’s not a bad thing, because it was a bad construction from the very beginning. It could not work. It never existed. There is no European people. There are many nations and many cultures, but the European bureaucracy is an evil structure which is not in correspondence to the interests of their own members. The sooner it is replaced by something else — either a Eurasian alliance of sovereign states from the Chinese Sea to Vladivostok to Lisbon — or some other kind of new alliance of sovereign republics working together for a new world economic order. That does not mean that European countries cannot work together, but they should not be under the tutelage of some supranational structure. I think we will see big changes in this coming period. It requires the active intervention of as many state citizens as possible. So, please get in contact with us and help us to try to change the agenda on a large scale.

SCHLANGER: Toward accomplishing that goal, the Schiller Institute is going to have an international conference April 25-26. Just give us a little bit of a sense of what you hope to come out of that conference with.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: We had to shift that conference which was planned for sometime, to be an internet conference, because you can’t have physical conferences at this point. But in that lies also an advantage; namely, that you can reach much larger audiences. Therefore, people should start to register for that conference, because then you will be also supplied with additional information and materials you can read ahead of time to be prepared to participate as a more active person in this conference. What we will try to do is, we will try to discuss the issues at that conference which we think should be taken up these large governments. So, we will try to inform the population on the needed changes in the strategic alliance, the needed cultural changes, the need to go to a Classical renaissance of art and music. We will discuss the frontiers of science; what is necessary to defeat not only the coronavirus, but to really get a completely different sense of space medicine, of breakthroughs in optical biophysics in redefining what life is. What do we need to know to be able to combat such problems much better? And naturally, what must be the principles of physical economy when we rebuild the world economy. So, you should definitely get in touch with us, register for the conference, and be part of it.

SCHLANGER: I would encourage everyone to join this mobilization with a very simple thing. Share this webcast! Pass it around! Get your friends to watch it. Then, go to the Schiller Institute website, the LaRouche PAC website, and study these ideas. It’s these ideas which were generated from Lyndon LaRouche back in the 1960s and 1970s that are not only valid, but represent universal principles. It’s through a return to those kinds of principles that we can restore mankind. Helga, thank you very much for your comments and for joining us today. As you always say, hopefully we’ll see you next week.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, let’s do something to move mankind in a better direction.