This new 36 page booklet about the Schiller Institute movement provides the history of our three decades long fight against the prevailing trend toward cultural and political barbarism, and it will help you organize others to participate in creating the urgently needed Paradigm Shift. We can and must pull mankind from the abyss and make a new Golden Renaissance!
March 2014
The Schiller Institute has issued the following appeal for circulation and signature among scientific and artistic layers. If you feel addressed by this appeal, please sign it and send it in to the address below.
This appeal in PDF format, fits 1 letter-size sheet on both sides
Never since the beginning of human civilization has the danger been as great, that we will cause our own extinction as a species. Since November 21, a coup, long prepared by Western hands, has been activated in Ukraine, culminating on February 22 in an open putsch, forcing the legally elected President Yanukovych from office, and putting Rada (parliament) Chairman “Yats,” the darling of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, in power as Prime Minister. Throughout the country since then, armed bands of stormtroopers, comprised of right-wing radical, anti-semitic, anti-Russian elements, have been terrorizing elected officials and the population at large.
Photographs and videos are now circulating worldwide, documenting the brutality of these groups, who, with flags, symbols, and martial songs, flaunt their adherence to the Nazi tradition of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). And yet, the official line of the United States and the European Union continues to be that these are simply individuals who want to escape from Russian oppression and to join a free and democratic Europe.
Even western think tanks have admitted that without a friendly Ukraine at its doorstep, Russia cannot defend itself. The entire assortment of military doctrines, ranging from the stationing of U.S. missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, to the Prompt Global Strike doctrine, to the AirSea Battle doctrine in the Pacific, are all doctrines that no longer proceed from the old NATO doctrine of MAD—Mutual and Assured Destruction—but rather proceed from the utopia idea that in our nuclear age, a first-strike strategy can succeed in winning wars.
The first phase of such a planned war, is the creation of an enemy image. The intended adversary must first be demonized by means of an orchestrated media campaign—a tactic made famous by Dr. Goebbels and later refined by the British intelligence service. “To out-Goebbels Goebbels” has been the credo, then as now: People must be made to believe that snow is black. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the policy of “regime change” has been on the agenda for any government that refuses to knuckle under to the imperial order of globalization; and in every case, the Big Lie has been liberally applied.
Remember those Kuwaiti babies, brutally torn from their incubators by Saddam Hussein’s troops? or Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, which in 45 minutes could wipe out any location on Earth? or the great democratic sentiments of the anti-Qaddafi rebels in Libya? or the alleged proofs of Assad’s use of poison gas? And now? Today it’s President Putin who is the man-eating dictator, who throws poor, helpless oligarchs and blaspheming punk rock singers into prison—acts which, of course, completely justify nuclear confrontation. With an unprecedented campaign of lies, individuals and entire peoples are denounced, dissension sown, and the population indoctrinated and made confused with such persistence, that they finally adopt this enemy image as their own, take up the old Cold War rhetoric, and advocate hot war.
And, what then? If it does come to this threatened thermonuclear exchange with Russia and China, the majority of humankind is exterminated within approximately one and a half hours, and the dead will be the fortunate ones in comparison to those who will only perish some days later.
But mankind’s nature is not what we would be led to believe by the morally degenerate attitude of most national governments today, or by the stupefied state of the masses. Humanity is the only species which, by exercising its creative capacities, is capable of repeatedly pressing forward to attain deeper understanding of the laws of the physical universe, and of utilizing that knowledge for the improvement of humanity’s conditions of life. Human beings are also the only living creatures who can have a vision of the future, and who can shape that vision into a material power of ideas which creates that future.
It is precisely because we scientists and artists understand universal principles in science and art, and develop them further—in other words, that we seek the Truth—that in this dark hour of human history, we call upon the world public to fight to preserve peace, and, in this age of thermonuclear weapons, to abolish, once and for all, the very idea of resolving conflicts through warfare, and to drive out of office those politicians who, with their ideology of geopolitical confrontation, are putting the very existence of humanity at risk.
As the discoveries and compositions of Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz, Einstein, Planck, and Vernadsky, of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, of Dante, Shakespeare, and Schiller, of Brunelleschi and Rembrandt demonstrate, to name only a few, their creations are an expression of the immortality of the human soul, and of the potential immortality of the human species. We, the living, have the awesome duty to make our life’s work contribute to ensuring that the creativity of those great minds of the past, provide a foretaste of the potential for limitless possibilities with which the human species is endowed. The kind of international cooperation for the common aims of mankind which all scientists and artists have experienced at countless conferences, joint research projects, concert tours, and lively cultural exchanges, must provide the inspiration for solving all political, economic, and even military problems. As Nicholas of Cusa already wrote back in the 15th Century, peoples can only arrive at mutual understanding when they all bring forth their own scientists, artists, and philosophers.
For the sake of our love for humanity, as our expression of gratitude to all generations whose accomplishments have contributed to our present level of development, and as our sacred commitment to the immortal identity of the human species, we call upon the world’s people to put an end to the threat of our collective annihilation.
Signed: _____________________________
Please include your affiliation and contact information with your signature, and mail this to the address below.
Schiller Institute
Appeal to Artists and Scientists
PO Box 20244
Washington, DC., 20041-0244
EIRNS/Mike Billington
Helga Zepp-LaRouche in China, Feb. 23, 2014.
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I am very happy to be here in China, because when I was here in ’71, China was quite different then. And then I came back in ’96; there had been gigantic development. And having had the advantage of being here at a time when the Cultural Revolution was still a dominant factor, and then seeing how the development had occurred, I think I can appreciate a bit more than most people, what a gigantic leap China has really made.
And now I’m coming back here in a happy mood, on the one side, because I see that President Xi Jinping has adopted the New Silk Road, which is exactly what we have been proposing since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Now, the not-so-nice aspect of this present trip is, naturally, the fact that we are at a very dangerous moment, and I would like to speak a little bit more about the war danger, at the beginning, and then in the second part of my presentation, to talk about where I see solutions. But I think the recent developments in Ukraine in just the last two days, where the violence has completely exploded, demonstrates that we are potentially in a terrible crisis. Because, contrary to what Western media have been saying about what is going on in Ukraine, reality is quite different.
As you know, the recent escalation started when President Yanukovych did not sign the EU Association Agreement at the last EU summit in November, and then suddenly, these demonstrations erupted, and the Western media portrayed it as if this would be the disappointment of the freedom-loving Ukrainian people, who want to join Europe, and do not want to be under the dictatorship of Putin, and Yanukovych.
The reality is quite different. President Putin said that what had been activated was something which had been prepared for the presidential election of 2015, but has been activated earlier. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also pointed to the fascist character of these demonstrators, and if you look at the pictures from today and yesterday—people throwing Molotov cocktails against the police, occupying ministries and other buildings—these are not peaceful demonstrators (see this week’s cover story).
We know that what led to the Orange Revolution in 2004 was the result of 2,200 NGOs, which were deployed in Ukraine alone, financed and developed by such organizations as the National Endowment of Democracy, the IRI (International Republican Institute), the National Democratic Institute, which had groomed activists, who were selected on the basis of their anti-Russian profile. And many of these people were not ideologically motivated; they just got money. They were paid to do a job.
Naturally, the situation in Ukraine is complicated by the fact that the Western part of the population is traditionally more Catholic- and European-leaning, and the Eastern part is more Russian- and Orthodox-leaning; but that alone would not account for this present conflict.
What is different between the 2004 Orange Revolution and now, is the fact that we have the emergence of hardcore Nazi networks. The most well-known one is the Svoboda party of Oleh Tyahnybok, but there are also other groups like the Right Sector, who all are referring to the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, who helped the invasion of Ukraine by the Nazis in the ’40s. These are people who are hardcore Nazis. They have a party logo which is almost identical with the swastika; they’re singing the old Nazi songs. And I think that the only way to characterize this, is that this is a full-fledged Nazi coup, trying to create civil war in the country for a pretext, for later perhaps to intervene.
Now, if you look at the territorial position of Ukraine, it reaches far into the territory of Russia. Kiev at one point was the capital of Russia, and if Ukraine would come under the influence of NATO and the EU, Russia would not be defensible. This has even been the estimate of American think-tanks like Stratfor, because the distance between the Ukrainian border and Moscow is only 480 kilometers, and it is a flat stretch of land, which is very difficult to defend.
So, last week, the Russian Izborsk Club [see EIR, Feb. 21, 2014], which is a group of very influential intellectuals in which such people as Sergei Glazyev are members, and also Gen. Leonid Ivashov—had put out a memorandum appealing to the Russian government, to Western people, but also to the Chinese government, to understand the nature of what is going on. And they say that the aim of this is to drive the Russian population out of the Eastern part of Ukraine into Russia, to create a flood of immigrants; to then forcibly deny the Russian Black Sea Fleet access to the ports of Sevastopol and Odessa, which, strategically, would also cut off Russia from access to the Mediterranean and the Aegean. And then, basically, establish NATO bases in Ukraine, and place Ukraine under the influence of NATO.
We think that the situation is even worse than that. Because first of all, you cannot see the effort for eastward expansion in respect to Ukraine apart from the eastward expansion of NATO, which has been going on since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the present situation, where you have the U.S. missile defense system set up in Poland and Romania. Just last week, NATO sent an Aegis destroyer to Spain, to the base at Rota. And the Russian government had made very clear, in a conference two years ago, where the Chief of the General Staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov had shown video animations that they naturally see as indicating that the U.S. missile defense system is not directed against Iranian missiles, but that the physical location of the system at the Russian border means it’s directed against Russia. And nobody has any doubt about that.
Now, this U.S. missile defense system is based on a first-strike conception, aimed to take out the second-strike capability of the Russian nuclear forces. And that has been stated by the Russian Chief of the General Staff; that they cannot accept the system to be built at stages 3 and 4, because there comes a point when Russia would become indefensible, and therefore, General Makarov even said, it may force Russia to go for a first strike, and it may come to the exchange of nuclear weapons in Central Europe [see EIR, May 18, 2012].
The additional aspect is the Prompt Global Strike doctrine, which is also a utopian conception which assumes that you can use traditional ICBMs, put non-nuclear warheads on them, conventional weapons, and then take out the weaponry—which again, is a first-strike conception.
Then, if you look at the world situation: the deployment of the Patriot missiles in Turkey, which were supposedly positioned with respect to Syria, but is really part of a forward deployment of NATO. Then you have to see, since the Asia Pivot policy of the U.S. Administration, the Air-Sea Battle doctrine is again a first-strike doctrine, which has even been admitted by American military analysts, with several articles discussing this problem. It is based on the illusion that it can take out the second-strike and other capabilities of any opponent, which in this case would naturally be China. The critics of this doctrine have noted that it is a doctrine which is, by its nature, causing a spiraling danger of a first strike, and a nuclear showdown.
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FIGURE 1
China’s Nuclear Second-Strike Capability
This map, published in all Chinese media in October 2013, shows the reach of China’s submarine-launched nuclear missiles in case of war.
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China has also, like Russia, made clear that it will not accept that. In October, there was, on one Monday, simultaneously, the publication of maps in all Chinese media showing that China has 70 strategic submarines which are located in the Pacific, which could launch a second strike, if China were be attacked, at the [U.S.] West Coast, and that the radioactive fallout would go all the way to Chicago. And that you would have a second strike through the North Pole, attacking the East Coast.
This has been stated very clearly, and also the fact that China has these strategic submarines in places which are not necessarily easy to detect. Therefore, the utopian character of all of this is that, if you think about the number of nuclear warheads worldwide, that they’re placed in so many different places—in submarines, in strategic bombers, in hidden places—then the idea that you can win a first strike without the danger of mankind’s extinction, is complete insanity and a criminal kind of thinking.
Now, that this is all related to the collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system, is really obvious. Some of these things have developed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, we proposed a Eurasian Land-Bridge, as a peace order for the 21st Century, and if that had been implemented, we would not be at this moment. But unfortunately, at the moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the neo-cons in the United States emerged in the old Bush Administration, and they decided that now was the time to go for a world empire. They wrote the New American Century doctrine, and one of the authors was Robert Kagan.
Now it happens to be that Robert Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, who, as was revealed in her discussion with U.S. Ambassador in Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt, was shown to be meddling in the internal affairs of Ukraine. The scandal was not her vulgar language; that’s her problem, how she behaves. The real scandal was that it was a complete admission that the United States government is fine-tuning, step by step, an intervention into who should be the government in Ukraine—which is a complete violation of the UN charter, of international law, of everything. But it is not surprising if you know that she is married to this neo-con, who has promoted this for a long time.
This has been in place for a very long time, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but what is advancing, and triggering, and speeding up this present development, is the condition of the trans-Atlantic financial system, which is about to blow out.
If you take it back to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, there was a general recognition by many people in the G8 and G20 countries, that the international financial system was disintegrating, and there was a tremendous panic. For a very short period of time, people were willing to consider reforms to rein in the speculation, to re-regulate the banking system, which had been deregulated since the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, but that shock lasted only a couple of days. And then the Too-Big-To-Fail banks, and the international financial institutions, reasserted their control of the governments, and two months later, at the G20 meeting in Washington, on the 15th of November, basically decided to deal with this problem in a different way—not through any reforms, but by just pumping money, quantitative easing, and using taxpayers’ money to make bailouts of banks.
In the five and a half years since the outbreak of the Lehman Brothers crisis, they have pumped in, in the United States, probably somewhere between—it’s very difficult to say, because there’s not total transparency—$25 and $30 trillion, through a combination of rescue packages and quantitative easing. And this money has accumulated in the system as a gigantic bubble. It exists in the form of derivative contracts, which now have gone up, according to our best estimate, to $1.4 quadrillion. A gigantic bubble.
And naturally, eventually, like in Germany in 1923, when you print too much money, if it be paper money or virtual money in the form of electronic money, eventually this creates hyperinflation. In 1923, in Germany, when the Reichsbank printed money to pay the war debt, and to pay the Versailles Treaty payments to the Allies, you could not see the inflation for four years. But then, when the French troops occupied the Rhineland, production stopped, and in half a year, the hyperinflation exploded, so that people were buying a piece of bread for 1 Reichsmark, then 100, then 100,000, then a million, then a billion, and at the end, they went with wheelbarrows to the baker before 12 o’clock, because at 12 o’clock the price was increased. Then by November, the whole thing ended, because it had become absurd.
This is now not only happening in one country, like it did in Germany, but it’s happening in the entire Eurozone, and in the dollar zone—which is obviously not only the United States.
Therefore, there was a debate for a very long time in the Federal Reserve, that there should be a reduction of the liquidity pumping of $85 billion per month, to $75 billion, to $65 billion; but there was a worry that you cannot really do that, because if you start to “taper,” then the danger is of a reverse leverage of this bubble, and that you could cause a new explosion of the system.
The Bank of International Settlements published, about two weeks ago, a very strong, stern warning, saying that the tapering should not occur, because it could lead to a complete blowout of the system. And that is exactly what is happening now: a collapse on the emerging markets. The currencies of Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Hungary, and others have taken a downward turn in the last period. And that is just the beginning.
The other problem is naturally that the Eurozone is in a terrible crisis. And I know that people in China have the idea that Europe is doing better, but I can tell you it is not doing better. Officially they are saying there is an improvement, and small growth of 0.5% or some such remarkable magnitude. But the reality is that, if you look at the figures, what is happening in Greece, in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal—the policy of the Troika, which has been the most brutal austerity imaginable—has led to these economies dying, and the population is dying.
The death rate in all of these countries is going up, and the birth rate is going down. Half of the pensioners in Greece are starving. The suicide rate is going up in all of these countries. Millions of people have no health care. The youth unemployment in Greece is 65%. In Spain it’s over 60%, and that, despite the fact that there has been a tremendous brain drain, because the young and educated people have left Greece and Spain, because they have no opportunities anymore. So the policy of the Troika is to destroy these countries, and, in our view, they’re doing it deliberately.
It’s not just incompetence, which is present also, but there is an intention behind it, to turn Europe into a feudal entity.
Now, the fact that this system is about to blow is the reason for the war danger. In a certain sense, it’s very difficult to explain. On the one side, there is an automatism. We are dealing with an empire, a global empire, where all these moves have been installed, and now there is a certain automatism, which is very, very dangerous.
This is the reason why my husband has been making the point—and you may think that this sounds very dramatic, but I can only report to you what he is saying—that the only way to stop World War III is the impeachment of Obama.
Many people had illusions about Obama. They thought he was the big Messiah. He promised change, he promised, “Yes, we can.” You remember all these nice slogans from the 2008 campaign. He even got the Nobel Peace Prize before he did anything. But I think many people, both internationally and domestically, have lost their illusions. And he’s committed several impeachable offenses. One of them is that he conducted war against Libya, without the approval of the Congress. He lied. He said this is just a humanitarian intervention, we will not put boots on the ground. But he did put boots to the ground; there were thousands of secret service agents and special forces on the ground, and whether they had boots or not, doesn’t really make a difference.
Then, immediately after the brutal assassination of Qaddafi, Mr. LaRouche said, the only way to explain what is happening is that we are on the course towards a Third World War. The real policy was regime change.
We came very close to that in the case of Syria. Because in Syria, it was not that the Assad government was shooting peaceful demonstrators which caused the escalation: It was part of the regime-change policy from the very beginning. And a lot of the rebels—al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and other such terrorist groups—were sponsored, on the one side, from the CIA station in Benghazi, Libya, which is now an issue of discussion in the Benghazi hearings in the U.S. Congress; but the main sponsor was Saudi Arabia, in particular the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar, who has been financing and running these terrorist networks in Syria.
So, at a certain point, the U.S. military attack was about to happen. On the Friday night before the attack was to start, we got information from well-placed contacts in the United States, that the U.S. military attack was supposed to occur in the night between Sunday and Monday. And then on Saturday, about noontime, we got another report saying that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey had made a last-minute intervention at the White House, telling Obama that he could not start a war where you do not know how to end it. This, and the fact that the American population was against this war, and that Congress was against this war, changed the opinion of Obama, so that he then asked the Congress for a vote on the matter, and it became clear that the votes were not there, and the agreement with the Russians on the chemical weapons gave Obama a way out. This is how, at least for the time being, the military intervention was stopped. Had Congress voted, they would have voted no.
But, as you can see with the developments in Ukraine, this has not changed the general character of the problem.
The impeachment of Obama is now being considered by more and more Congressmen, who have made up a list of the many impeachable crimes. For example, that Obama is disregarding the separation of powers by making recess appointments. In his recent State of the Union Address, he said, I will not go to the Congress if the Congress has a different opinion—I don’t care. That has caused a lot of people to say, this has to be stopped.
Obviously, people are also afraid to take that step, but there is a growing momentum for such an impeachment. In the light of the escalation toward thermonuclear war, it is absolutely essential that the United States return to its character as a constitutional republic. Obviously, this is a matter for the Americans to decide.
But I think the other necessary thing to do, is to stop the casino economy. Because what is driving this present crazy development of globalization, is the fact that globalization has become a monster, where people, entire continents, are sacrificed. The rich are becoming richer. Recently there was a study published by Oxfam, which stated that 85 individuals in the world own as much as 3.5 billion people. And that means in practice, that Africa, for example, is a dying continent. This globalization has consequences: It is not just a moral issue; it means people are dying.
For example, you have, right now, every week, thousands of people getting into tiny boats, trying to flee across the Mediterranean from Africa to what they perceive as a safe haven in Europe. Half of them are drowning. And this is well known. But they take the risk nevertheless, because the war, the hunger, the disease in Africa is such that they prefer to take a 50% chance that they will survive rather than stay where they are. I wrote a poem about this problem, about Lampedusa—that’s the island in Italy where people flee to. It is a synonym for a completely morally bankrupt system. If you cannot treat people in such a way that this is eliminated, civilization is lost.
It would be so easy to stop this. We have all the technologies to make Africa a growing continent, to eliminate poverty in half a year! If the whole world would say that we will stop hunger in Africa, we will build ports, railways, agriculture, irrigation, this could be stopped in half a year, maybe even less. And for me, this is a big moral issue: that this world order must not stay the way it is.
This is what we propose for the United States as a recovery program today, which would mean to re-implement Glass-Steagall, and we have organized in the last two to three years about 80 Congressmen, 11 Senators, and legislatures in about 28 states out of the 50, where resolutions for Glass-Steagall have been introduced and/or passed. And I can actually say that there is growing ferment from the lower level of mayors, of city councils, of state legislatures, because they feel the brunt of the collapse, much more even than the Congress.
We have organized in Europe important forces for Glass-Steagall. In Italy, we have several laws before the parliament, and in other countries we have mayors supporting it, and legislation being discussed.
So, if this happens, if Glass-Steagall could be implemented, it will end the investment bubble; because if the investment banks no longer have access to the assets of the commercial banks, and no longer have rescue packages from the taxpayers, they would have to bring their books in order, and declare insolvency.
Then, however, we would need to have a new credit mechanism, which also existed at one time in American history, in the form of the American System of Economy, introduced first by Alexander Hamilton, who was the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, and who created a national bank, and the idea that the only institution which has the power and right to create credit, is the sovereign government, and not the private banks.
This was then repeated by Lincoln, by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it was done also by Germany after 1945, which created the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, based on Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation, to give credit lines for well-defined projects.
Now in the case of the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War, this led to what became famous as the German Economic Miracle, because Germany, which was a complete rubblefield at the end of the Second World War, through that method of state credit financing reconstruction, became, in a few years, the economic miracle which was admired by the whole world.
So, what we propose, therefore, in this crisis which is now upon us, that we overcome it by establishing a Glass-Steagall system, and by the creation of credit by the sovereign governments in each nation. And then we can agree on what we used to call the Eurasian Land-Bridge, and which we proposed, as I said, in the first place, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, in order to combine the industrial and population centers of Europe with those of Asia, through development corridors.
World Land-Bridge View full size |
When we made this proposal, we looked at the map and the geographic conditions of the Eurasian continent, and it turned out that the best geographical locations for such corridors, were the Trans-Siberian Railroad; the old Silk Road; and other lines, like from Kazakstan all the way to India, to Indonesia; another line from Iran to Turkey, and from there to Europe. But in the meantime, since we proposed this for the first time really in 1989, and then worked on it in ’91, and in the 23 years since, we have completed this program into something which we now call the World Land-Bridge, which is the idea to have several infrastructure projects which would get the world economy out of this crisis.
For the United States, we have proposed something which is called NAWAPA, the North American Water and Power Alliance, which will be the biggest water-management project that ever existed in history. It’s based on the idea of taking the water which now flows unutilized in Canada and Alaska into the Arctic, to take these waters through a system of canals and river systems, and pumping stations, along the Rocky Mountains, all the way to Mexico. And if you ever have been in the United States, travelling by air from the West Coast to the East Coast, you see that California is green, then comes a strip of desert states, and then you have the Rocky Mountains, passing to the Plains of the Midwest, and further to the green East Coast. And this program would turn these desert states into the most lush agricultural and forested areas, because it’s also an intervention into the biosphere.
Because if you start irrigation in a desert area, you have the possibility to plant vegetation. This vegetation then evaporates water, creating clouds, and the clouds bring rain. Then, you have a cycle of water recycling, and only after three or four such cycles, this water ends back up in the ocean, but you have improved the biosphere through what Vladimir Vernadsky called the noetic capability of man. You create new weather systems, you improve your entire environment.
For Mexico, this is vital, because they have now great starvation. They have deserts with a terrible situation—this would improve it.
Then our idea is, you combine this NAWAPA project, which would immediately create 6 million jobs; it would help to overcome the depression in the United States. You combine that, then, with the building of a tunnel under the Bering Strait, which is this short strip between Alaska and Siberia. This is a project which has been put on the agenda by President Putin, since he became President again, and they have decided to build that, no matter what the intention on the U.S. side may be.
The next connection is to develop the Arctic region of Siberia. The region of Eastern Siberia is the richest area of raw materials. You find there all the raw materials, all the elements, which are in Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table, but naturally, they’re under permafrost conditions, so you cannot just go there and mine them, because if it’s minus 50°C, it’s not so pleasant to work there. So, therefore, you need to develop cosmodromes, new cities which are suitable for human beings to live there; and that, in a certain sense, is also very good, because you need to develop these kinds of technologies as a test for space colonization. If you build such cosmodromes in Siberia, this is exactly what you will need when you colonize the Moon, or later, other planets. So, it’s a step in the next evolution of civilization.
And then, naturally, we want to connect this with the Eurasian Land-Bridge, which we proposed in great detail in many reports, and extend that to Southern Europe, because Southern Europe needs an urgent development plan, to include the Near East and the Middle East/Southwest Asia.
Now, this is another problem we have to solve, because right now the region from Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way to the Caucasus, to the Mediterranean, Syria, to Northern Africa, Central Africa, is a region which is completely destabilized. We have terrorist networks, which have spread, ever since the Trilateral Commission decided to build up the mujahideen in the 1980s in Afghanistan, against the Soviet Union. This terrorist network has grown and spread. In Chechnya, in Dagestan, in Pakistan, in Northern Africa. And it’s a real problem, because it is now being financed by the drug trade from Afghanistan, which has increased 40-fold since NATO moved into Afghanistan 12 years ago.
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FIGURE 3
The Ancient Silk Roads (Land-Based and Maritime)
Creative Commons
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The good news is, that with the adoption of the New Silk Road policy by President Xi Jinping, this is now on the agenda. This is, in our view, the best development which could have occurred, because you need to put an alternative on the table. The New Silk road which connects China to Central Asia, could potentially be extended into Central Europe and Eastern Europe, as this was presented by Prime Minister Li Keqiang when he visited Romania and met with 15 heads of state. There, he proposed that China build a high-speed-train system in Eastern Europe, and this is what the EU is not doing. They cancelled all transport corridors which had already been agreed upon by the EU Transport Ministers in a meeting in 1994 in Crete, but then, because of the stupid austerity policy, all of these were canceled.
Russian Presidential Press and Information Office
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Moscow, March 22, 2013. Russians are enthusiastic about the prospect of working with China to develop Central Asia.
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I know that there was a concern by China as to how Russia would react to China’s developing Central Asia, and also building infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe. And I’m very happy to tell you that my recent communication from our best contacts in Russia, have indicated that they think that that is the best way for China and Russia to cooperate, on these projects. And they have said that the developments in Ukraine have made very clear, that there needs to be a change in policy. And developments in Sochi had the same effect. What they mean by that is not the Olympic Games, but the fact that the investment in the Sochi region transformed an entire region, through infrastructure and other developments, as a model of what can be done everywhere else.
EIRNS/Bill Jones
Zepp-LaRouche at a maglev station in China during her recent visit.
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So, therefore, we are optimistic that there are solutions, because we can extend this Eurasian Land-Bridge into Africa, into Latin America, and have a World Land-Bridge, where you can travel in a very short period of time—maybe in 20 years, with a maglev train, like the one you have between Pudong and Shanghai—from Chile, all the way across the Bering Strait, to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, or through the maritime Silk Road into Indonesia, and that we have a completely different conception of foreign relations, and how people can be together.
Now, we have to do a couple more things. If we want to get out of this crisis, we must consciously take the next step in the evolution of civilization. We need to say good-bye to certain accepted axioms, like the idea of solving conflict through war. Because in the time of thermonuclear weapons, to have the idea that you can solve conflict through war, means you risk the extinction of civilization. If it ever would come to nuclear war, within one and a half hours, all of mankind could be dead, and extinct. And since that is not acceptable, we have to say good-bye to the idea of geopolitical thinking.
We should not think, “this is German interest,” “this is Chinese interest,” “this is American interest,” but we must consciously define the next higher level of reason, where the common aims of mankind are what motivates us all. And the common aims of mankind are many. For example, to make thermonuclear weapons obsolete, which was already the idea in 1983, when President Reagan adopted the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was a proposal by my husband, which he had developed, and about which he had back-channel discussions for one year with the Soviet Union, with their representatives in the United States, which was in agreement with the National Security Council of the United States. And for one year, this was discussed, and at one point, the answer came from Moscow, no, we don’t want that.
Nevertheless, President Reagan in March 1983, made it official policy of the United States, and even offered to the Soviet Union to apply the technologies based on new physical principles, which would result from such a program, in the civilian sector, where Russia had the most bottlenecks.
Now, this was a completely different conception than what is generally thought, and had nothing to do with a “Star Wars” scenario, which the Western media tried to make of the SDI proposal. Rather it was a grand design to get rid of nuclear weapons through technologies based on new physical principles, and then have, out of this increase in productivity in the civilian economy, a gigantic technology transfer to the Third World. The idea was to dissolve the blocs, to dissolve NATO, and to dissolve the Warsaw Pact, and really reorganize world affairs. And we were very close to that.
There was a disruption, because the Soviet government and the Bush faction in the Reagan Administration moved to sabotage it. But getting rid of thermonuclear weapons is an absolute necessity, because they imply the possibility of mankind’s extinction.
There are other problems to solve jointly, like getting a joint fight against terrorism. The fight against drug traffic. Drug traffic is a big problem for Russia. [Russian anti-drug chief] Victor Ivanov has declared the drug traffic to be the national security issue number one, because every year 100,000 people are dying from the drug traffic.
Then there are other problems, like the defense of the planet Earth against asteroids, comets, and meteors. One year ago, in Chelyabinsk, the meteorite, asteroid shower, occurred. This was not on the radar screen of the U.S. NASA, ESA, nor of the Russian government, and it showed how vulnerable our planet is to the impact of such objects, which right now, we have no technological possibility to defend against. We must work together internationally to develop the technology to divert such objects once their orbit shows that they’re heading in the direction of the planet.
We have to improve our prognosis of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, which after Fukushima, the Russian, Italian, and other scientists have focussed on, and I have heard from our friends in Russia that they are making big progress in their ability to forecast earthquakes and tsunamis.
There are other things to be accomplished. The other most promising development, apart from the announcement of the New Silk Road, was the Chinese landing on the Moon, where the Jade Rabbit started to operate, with the idea that this would be a step in the direction of mining helium-3 on the Moon, as a fuel for a future fusion economy on Earth.
CNTV
China’s Chang’e-3 lander on the Moon, December 2013. The landing is a step in the direction of mining helium-3, as a fuel for a fusion economy on Earth.
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EIRNS
Zepp-LaRouche talks with Xu Dazhe, the head of the Chinese Space Agency, during a forum in Washington in January 2013.
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This is the absolute next step, because in the evolution of mankind, we have to go from lower to higher energy-flux densities. Because, as Mr. LaRouche, who developed the idea of physical economy, has pointed out, as compared to monetarism, the increase of energy-flux density in the production process is the law of the universe. With each energy-flux density level, you have a corresponding relative population density. And therefore, we are strongly opposed to solar and wind energy, which can fill minor functions here and there, but which cannot serve as the basis of an industrial society, because if you would transform the entire energy production to these low-energy-flux-density levels, it would only support a population of 1 billion people. But we have presently already 7 billion. And we urgently need to go to the fourth generation of nuclear fission reactors which are inherently safe, the pebble-bed reactors, high-temperature reactors, and to a nuclear fusion economy, and beyond.
So, therefore, one of the next joint cooperation tasks for civilization must be the joint development of a crash program for fusion power, collaborative space colonization, and in general, to move the identity of mankind to a different level. We are not beasts. Mr. LaRouche has made a very big emphasis on the fact that the human species, unlike all other living species on the planet, is the only species which has creativity, which has cognitive powers, which can, again and again, improve the conditions of life for all citizens, and especially, we can shape the future. We are not victims of simply continuing the past, but we are the only living creatures capable of having a vision of what the future should be, and capable of moving to get the future implemented through our own action.
So, therefore, we are emphatic that we must combine economic program with a cultural renaissance; that we cannot stay in popular culture, because with globalization, the culture has become, particularly in Europe and the United States, decadent and degenerate. If you look at the youth culture in Europe and in the United States, I can tell you it is satanic. Many of the pop varieties are openly bestial and satanic. And it has bred a culture of violence, where in the United States now, you have school shootings every second month. You have meaningless murder on the streets, for no good reason, because people are just crazy.
We are approaching a Dark Age, like in the 14th Century, when the Black Death was raging, and people became completely crazy. You had self-flagellants, you had witchhunts, you had a real collapse of civilization. And if you compare what is happening in the culture today in Europe and in the United States, you see we are already in a Dark Age.
How many people in Europe know and love Classical music culture? They are rapidly becoming a minority. And therefore, we need to do the same thing which was done in the transformation from the 14th to the 15th centuries, when the Golden Italian Renaissance was consciously created by a few people, who went back to the great Greek tradition of the Classics, of Plato, of the tragedians, and by reviving Plato and Dante, they created the Golden Renaissance of Italy. And we must do the same thing today.
EIRNS/Bill Jones
Helga Zepp-LaRouche in China. She proposed a Dialogue of Cultures, where each country would draw on its best traditions from the past: “We have to build a new Renaissance, and create a civilization on this planet which is really worthy for man to live.”
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We have proposed for a long time, a Dialogue of Cultures, where each country would go back to its best tradition, which in the case of Germany, would mean to revive the German Classical culture of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schiller—even Goethe has a little place—and also in science, we have to go back to Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz, Gauss, Riemann, Einstein, Planck, Vernadsky. In the case of China, you have such a rich culture of 5,000 years. There were many periods which contributed much to world culture, and I think one was really the Song dynasty, where a lot of beautiful things were happening in art and culture.
We have to revive that, and out of this revival, we have to build a new Renaissance, and create a civilization on this planet which is really worthy for man to live.
These are, in short, our ideas, and we are really fighting to implement them; not just to have a nice vision, but to make it happen.
This article appeared in the January 24, 2014 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. We post it here with the permission of the publisher.
By Dennis Speed
I was Twenty-three years old at the turn of the century. It was a time of brave expectations. Many believed that a new epoch was at hand—that the dawn of the twentieth century would prove to be a turning point in the affairs of men. They cited recent scientific advances and predicted a future of great social progress. The era, they said, was approaching when poverty and hunger would at last disappear. In the way people make fervent resolutions at the start of a new year, the world seemed to be resolving at the start of a new century to undergo a change for the better. Who then foresaw that the coming decades would bring the unimaginable horrors of two world wars, concentration camps, and atomic bombs?
Pablo Casals,
Joys And Sorrows
Those capable of foresight—and for civilization to survive, the American population must become so capable—will recognize the truth in Casals’ observation. Yet, it is our duty to shape the future, and thus to know it. To paraphrase another slain U.S. President: We are now engaged in a 150 years war, testing whether any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, as is the United States, can long endure. Assassinations against American Presidents, have been the preferred criminal method of choice, for dealing with the problem of the American Cultural Exception. So it was with John Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Dr. Martin Luther King.
To respond to the challenge of reproducing and increasing the power of foresight for civilization’s survival in the short and long term is the unique mission of the Schiller Institute, a mission which the Institute brought to the City of Boston on Sunday, Jan. 19. The Schiller Institute Chorus, augmented by additional singers and an orchestra largely comprised of volunteers from the New England Conservatory of Music, presented Mozart’s Requiem in its entirety to an audience of 1,200 at Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross, performed exactly 50 years to the day, of a 1964 Solemn High Requiem Mass specially requested by the Kennedy family.
One year after his October 1962 defiance of that faction of “principalities and powers,” including Britain’s Lord Bertrand Russell, that dared to believe that nuclear war against the Soviet Union was not only conceivable, but winnable (the Cuban Missile crisis), John Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. His assassination, along with that of his brother Robert, and of Martin Luther King, has hung “like a dead hand upon the brain of the living,” until now. Four generations have been unable to shake off their effects. That is because there is only one reliable method for doing so: People must be elevated above and beyond their own pre-selected, limiting self-expectation. People require, not “the facts” of “what really happened,” but the fire of insight needed to reverse our unending national trauma. No preaching, slogans, or imprecations will cause a terrorized people to have courage. Only their own voices, heard as through the mirror of a great artistic performance, can move the despairing to a higher place, a mountaintop where their souls, much to their surprise, actually live.
Conductor and Schiller Institute Music Director John Sigerson, in an interview with a reporter from The Pilot, newspaper of the Boston diocese, was asked whether the Schiller Institute believes that “Classical music can create a change in our culture.” Sigerson’s answer to this was “No.” Rather, he asserted, it was the juxtaposition of the “musical” with the “non-musical,” in this case several excerpts of speeches by JFK, heard at precisely selected points in the Requiem, that would allow members of the audience to be provoked to change their minds, and thus hear the music. Sigerson said: “The JFK speeches alone wouldn’t work, and the music alone wouldn’t work. It’s the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the two that works,” this by creating an unexpected cognitive discomfort and tension for the audience.
The Schiller Institute has employed for the second time—the first being in Vienna, Va., on Nov. 22, the 50th anniversary of the President’s assassination—the spiritual and therapeutic power of the MozartRequiem to restore the power of cognition to Americans. As Schiller Institute Founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in her remarks, such a Classical revival is necessary to inspire Americans to take up Kennedy’s mission again, even as the world currently stands at the edge of thermonuclear war.
Master of Ceremonies Matthew Ogden provided a prelude to the music, using a selection of speakers, messages, and quotations to allow everyone in the audience equal access to the depth of meaning contained in the moments they were about to experience, “not in time, but in the Idea,” as Nicholas of Cusa says. For those two and one-half hours, the “virtual reality” brainwashing that accounts for the toleration of a Nietzschean “all is permissible” popular “culture” was interrupted. Those who might have objected that “it’s too long for the audience to concentrate” were once again proven wrong. It was essential that they be prepared to listen, and not merely hear, the Mozart composition. But why?
In the words of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, “As far as music is concerned, there is nothing about which the so-called ‘public’ knows less than about its own mind. Above all, there is one prior condition needful to the listener—whether as an individual or as an audience—if he is to formulate a judgment of real value: and that is, he must have enough time.” This essential pre-condition having been met before a single note was sung, the audience was thus pre-organized to respond at a higher level than it would otherwise have been capable, even with the best musical performance.
There was more to the audience preparation, however. This audience was assembled through a thorough, consistent political intervention and fight. This audience recruitment was the result of an intense organizing effort conducted over about six weeks or so. There was a successful “outreach” campaign throughout the Boston metropolitan area. One portion of the audience had come because of ads in theBoston Globe and other news outlets. The Pilot was cited by many as their source of news. Several Boston schools and colleges were represented, along with senior centers and various community organizations. Leaflets and posters were distributed in Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French. Several foreign consulates attended the concert, as well as state representatives from Maine and Rhode Island. There were messages from Michael D. Higgins, President of the Republic of Ireland; Boston City Councilman Steven Murphy; and from Nicholas Di Virgilio, tenor, the only surviving soloist from the 1964 concert (see below for his remarks).
Many who attended recalled having been at the 1964 performance: it must be remembered that for the then-largely Catholic Boston, Holy Cross was their local church. Ray Flynn, former Boston Mayor, and later, Ambassador to the Vatican, who had also attended the 1964 performance, expressed the sense of gratitude and true happiness that the citizens of Boston felt for the thoughtfulness that went into ensuring that the historic nature of the occasion did not go unrecognized (see box).
The Schiller Institute Chorus, soloists Ron Williams (baritone), William Ferguson (tenor), Heather Gallagher (mezzo-soprano) and Nataly Wickham (soprano), and the largely New England Conservatory of Music-based freelance orchestra constituted for Sunday’s performance, accomplished its primary task: to present the Mozart Requiem as a single, unified Idea. The unity of effect of the performance allowed the words of President Kennedy, the which worked to punctuate and underscore Mozart’s presentation of the idea of immortality, to pose a dialogue about the nature of immortality’s triumph over death with each audience member, as well as the audience as a whole. Maestro Sigerson also noted that the performances of the “Recordare” and “Benedictus” sections of the piece, both set for vocal quartet, were “of a piece” with the entirety, and were delivered with the exact meaning that Mozart intended them to convey.
The performance was conducted at a tuning of A=432, nearly a quarter tone lower than most modern performances, and is a standard feature of Schiller Institute musical practice. While this is sometimes referred to as the “lower” tuning, that designation is imprecise. It is the propertuning; it is merely “lower” than what is currently practiced as the wrong, “higher” tuning. The tuning range for music is perhaps more clearly stated as middle C=256 cycles per second, which yields an A=427-432. The C=256 is the tuning at which the Mozart Requiem was composed, designed, and intended to be heard.
The next day, The Boston Music Intelligencer, self-described as a “virtual journal and essential blog of the classical music scene in greater Boston,” ran an extensive positive review under the headline, “JFK Remembered in Musical Tribute,” characterizing it as “a polished traditional performance.”
One of the supporters of the Schiller Institute, conductor Anthony Morss, who has worked with, and conducted experiments demonstrating the reasons for insisting on what is also referred to as, “the Verdi pitch,” supplied an essay that appeared in the concert program intended to provide some background on the matter (see below).
The necessity of art—not only its moral, but physical necessity—was stressed in the brief and precise remarks directed to the audience by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
“It is necessary to commemorate the celebration of Mozart’s Requiemwhich was performed for John F. Kennedy, 50 years ago in this cathedral. It is urgent to evoke again the divine spirit of beauty of Mozart’s composition in order to reconnect us with the better world which both Kennedy and Mozart represent,” she said. Zepp-LaRouche insisted, along with the “Poet of Freedom” Friedrich Schiller, after whom the Institute, which celebrates its 30th year in 2014, was named and founded by her, that death is swallowed up in the victory of the power of musical immortality as Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven exemplify, and as the power of the Kennedy Apollo Project also demonstrates. Kennedy’s optimism allowed every American, and, with the successful landing of the human species on the moon, everyone on the planet, to know, by demonstration, that the mind, though contained in a body, is not that body; the mind has no physical limits (see box).
Zepp-LaRouche’s reference to “reconnection to a better world” highlighted the inevitable and necessary Ideas that were not merely evoked, but provoked, by the performance. And, it must needs be so: Kennedy’s appreciation for and promotion of the Classical arts and of Classical artists was at the very foundation of his Presidency, though this has been largely ignored in these intervening years. Who, for example, would even today recognize these as the words of JFK, given on the occasion of a commemoration of the poet Robert Frost at Amherst College, October 26, 1963, less than a month before his death?
“Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost…. it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
There were some key differences between the 1964 and 2014 performances. In 1964, it was an astonishing step to include the Mozart Requiem in the context of the Catholic Solemn High Requiem Mass ceremony—the first time that that had ever been done in the United States.
There was another important difference. In the case of this performance-commemoration, 50 years of erosion of the thinking capacities of the American people, particularly by means of the cacophonous obscenity known as “popular entertainment”—including in the form of the post-2000 American Presidencies—required a uniquely insightful rendering of the music by the performers.
It is essential to note, that the chorus was composed of non-professional Schiller Institute singers, many of whom are involved in daily organizing work with both Helga and Lyndon LaRouche. Initially, many Boston-based semi-professional and professional singers had volunteered to be part of the performance, but withdrew because of a campaign denouncing the Schiller Institute, carried out by certain local members of the Democratic Party to intimidate singers. Some refused to listen, and thus “qualified” themselves to participate. Importantly, not only did the local organizers of the event, composed primarily of former members of the LaRouche Youth Movement who were assisted by an experienced and older group of LaRouche Political Action Committee organizers, not attempt to conceal in any way “who they were.” In fact, the organizers insisted that everyone they speak with fully understandwhy it was that only the Schiller Institute, and Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, out of everyone in the United States, had insisted that this 50th anniversary commemoration take place.
To answer that question, we pose a seemingly unrelated question, actually identical to the first.
Why was Kennedy, despite his flaws, seen as exceptional by people who were often critical (and sometimes pitiless) judges of human character, such as Charles de Gaulle, Douglas MacArthur, and Eleanor Roosevelt? Posed another way: Why did Kennedy embody for these severe critics of human character, as well as for many “normal Americans,” an efficient deployment of the U.S. Presidency on behalf of furthering the progress, not merely of the United States, but of mankind?
The answer to this is posed as follows.
A statement from his Jan. 20, 1961 Inaugural Address, differentiated Kennedy then, and differentiates Kennedy now, from all the Presidents who have served after him: After listing all of the tasks his Administration will aspire to accomplish, including “a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself,” Kennedy observed:
“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
Kennedy forecasted his “willed fate” truthfully, and acted accordingly. Despite all the things he did not live to accomplish, in that thousand days, Kennedy managed to save the world from nuclear destruction, and send to, and put the human race on the Moon. The capacity to access the revolutionary principle embedded in the American Constitution and its Declaration of Independence, on which the Lincoln and Kennedy Administrations built their respective commitments and contributions to American progress, has simply not emanated from the Presidency as the guiding policy outlook of any U.S. Administration since Kennedy’s assassination.
In fact, today, the opposite commitment now exists, in the form of the Obama Administration, and the predecessor Bush Administration, and must be reversed by an American people made culturally competent to do so.
That is the reason that the Schiller Institute was uniquely qualified to propose, organize, and perform the Nov. 22 and Jan. 19 Kennedy remembrances. We refuse to submit to voluntary amnesia. There is a connection between courage and intelligence. Kennedy lived up to his own studies of courage under adversity. None of us can do less.
“From the past, man obtains the insights, wisdom and hope to face with confidence the uncertainties of the future.”
– John F. Kennedy’s remarks to the centennial of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1963, three days before his death
It is fitting that 50 years later we commemorate the spirit of cultural and economic progress that John F. Kennedy’s leadership represented for America and the world. With this spirit, President Kennedy confronted and sought to overcome the terrifying prospects of global war, poverty, and human degradation that faced our nation and the world during his time. In the intervening years, these existential problems have come to threaten mankind in even greater magnitude, but the national mind that had joyfully embraced the challenge to conquer the Moon, has been supplanted by a spirit that belittles the sacredness of the human individual and the power of human creativity.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem is a most fitting tribute to John F. Kennedy, as Mozart’s work communicates the same optimism and belief in man’s infinite progress to which President Kennedy dedicated his life. The spark of optimism which marked the Kennedy era, though dimmed, is still present among us because it is embedded in the very fabric of our nation from its founding.
Let us honor the memory of John Kennedy by not only reflecting on what was, and what could have been, but on how our culture has changed, and how we must now recommit ourselves to its renewal.
The concert will be performed by the Schiller Institute Chorus along with an orchestra and soloists assembled for the occasion by the Schiller Institute. The performance will be at the natural “Verdi tuning” of A=432 Hz.
The Schiller Institute was founded in 1984 on the initiative of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, wife of the American statesman and physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, for the purpose of reviving the paradigm of Classical culture and reasserting the right of all humanity to material, moral, and intellectual progress. It is named after Friedrich Schiller, the “Poet of Freedom” whose ”Ode to Joy” is immortalized by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony.
The Schiller Institute announced today that it will present “A Remembrance of President John F. Kennedy and Recommitment to the Principles of His Presidency, Featuring a Performance of W.A. Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626” on Friday, November 22, 8:00 p.m., at St. Mark Catholic Church in Vienna, Virginia.
The concert will be performed by the Schiller Institute Chorus along with an orchestra and soloists assembled for the occasion by the Schiller Institute. The performance will be at the natural “Verdi tuning” of A=432 Hz, in keeping with the Schiller Institute’s decades-long campaign to return to the tuning which has been demonstrated to maximize the beauty of the singing voice and of fine musical instruments.
Admission is free: first come, first seated. More information can be obtained at: requiemconcert@schillerinstitute.org, or (703) 771-8390. For directions to St. Mark Catholic Church, see http://www.stmark.org/directions/.
In its flyer for the concert, the Schiller Institute elaborates on why it is holding this event at this time.
“From the past, man obtains the insights, wisdom and hope to face with confidence the uncertainties of the future.”
—President John F. Kennedy’s remarks to the centennial of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, November 19, 1963—three days before his death
November 22, 2013, will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It is fitting on that solemn occasion to commemorate the spirit of cultural and economic progress with which Kennedy confronted, and sought to overcome, the terrifying prospects of global war, poverty, and human degradation that faced our nation and the world during his time. In the intervening years, these existential problems have come to threaten mankind in even greater magnitude, yet our national spirit of progress has been replaced with cultural pessimism and indifference. The great economic, scientific, and cultural projects begun then have long ago been dismantled, and their memory buried and all but forgotten. The national mind that joyfully embraced the challenge to conquer the Moon has been supplanted by a spirit that belittles the power of human creativity and accepts the inevitability of economic decline.
Therefore, to properly honor the memory of John Kennedy, not only must we reflect on what was, and what could have been, but on how our culture has changed, so that we can recommit ourselves to its revival. The spark of optimism which marked the Kennedy era, though dimmed, is still present among us, because it is embedded in the very fabric of our nation from its founding, having its roots in the great Renaissance thinker Nicholas of Cusa, in such works as his Concordantia Catholicaand De Docta Ignorantia.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem is a most fitting tribute to Kennedy. It expresses Mozart’s passion for the concept of Man which he saw, in his time, as forming the basis for the establishment of the American republic, that Kennedy would come to promote and defend, and because the young genius Mozart pitted his creations directly against the same regressive social forces which arranged the assassinations of the President, his brother, and Martin Luther King.
An honest performance of Mozart’s work communicates the same optimism and belief in man’s infinite progress to which Kennedy, following in Franklin Roosevelt’s footsteps, dedicated his life, in resolute opposition to those who wish to drastically reduce the world’s population through perpetual warfare and denial of basic needs, and in affirmation of that which distinguishes him uniquely from the beasts, namely his creative capacity to discover new, yet-unthought universal principles.
The Schiller Institute was founded in 1984 on the initiative of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, wife of the American statesman and physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, for the purpose of reviving the paradigm of Classical culture and reasserting the right of all humanity to material, moral, and intellectual progress. It is named after Friedrich Schiller, the Poet of Freedom whose Ode to Joy is immortalized by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony. The institute has sponsored many international conferences devoted to promoting the idea that a dialogue among cultures can only be fruitful when it focuses on each culture’s noblest expression.
For more about the Schiller Institute and its activities, seehttp://www.schillerinstitute.org and also http://newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com.
This statement by the President of the Schiller Institute was distributed at the opening of the 68th UN General Assembly in New York.
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
President of the Schiller Institute
We all know that the current economic order in the world only allows a very small percentage of the population to live a life of luxury, that only a relatively small percentage live decently, that many languish in inhumane poverty, while what Pope Francis called “hidden euthanasia” is widespread.
Only a few people know that, just a few weeks ago, mankind avoided by a hair’s breadth the danger of extinction in a thermonuclear war, because that would have been the consequence of an escalation following a military strike against Syria.
Both of these dangers, which threaten the very existence of the human species, are ultimately the result of the economic system of globalization, in which “anonymous decisions” — signed by high-level officials — sacrifice man’s unique dignity and his life to mammon, the god of lucre.
The diplomatic initiative around Syria raises the hope that the danger of a regional and possibly world war has been once again averted. But as urgent as war avoidance is, it is not enough. If we, as a species, are to have a future, we need a real perspective for peace, a completely new paradigm, that leaves behind for once and for all the geometry of solving crises through war, and replaces it by defining the common goals of mankind.
Is it not in the interest of all people on this planet to ensure energy security and raw material security as quickly as possible, and by so doing to overcome an essential cause of hunger and of the war danger? Is it therefore not in the interest of all people and all nations to launch the best possible crash program for the use of thermonuclear fusion, along the lines of the “Manhattan Project” for developing the atomic bomb during the Second World War, but this time for peaceful purposes and for the good of all mankind?
Likewise, it is high time to put the legitimate demand of the Non-Aligned Movement for a just world economic order back on the agenda. Such a new order could begin with the proposal of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the latest SCO conference, to build the new Silk Road as the basis for peaceful cooperation among all the countries along that route. This proposal is totally in line with the proposal for a Eurasian Landbridge that the Schiller Institute advanced in 1991, in reaction to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. That concept has been expanded, in the meantime, to an international Landbridge to bring people together, which has gained many friends and supporters throughout the world. Such a worldwide infrastructure and development program would hoist us onto the next higher economic platform where hunger and underdevelopment could be eliminated forever.
If the nations united in the UN General Assembly decide to replace the profoundly immoral and unjust system of globalization by an order allowing an alliance of sovereign Republics — in the tradition of John Quincy Adams — to work together in the common interests of mankind, our civilization can enter, consciously, into the next phase of evolution.
Why should that not be possible? We are the only creatures who, thanks to human creativity, can consciously improve the basis of our existence through scientific and technological innovation, and thus raise our living standards and life expectancy. Likewise, we are the only species which can scientifically determine with precision where the next step of research into the physical order of creation must lie, to ensure the continued existence of our species in the universe.
The Earth is not a closed, entropic system with finite resources. Our solar system and our galaxy are only a tiny part of the universe, which develops itself anti-entropically. What is wonderful about our order of creation is that there exists a verifiable concordance between the laws of the macrocosmos — the universe — and of the microcosmos — our creative reason — which is expressed in the physical power of our immaterial ideas.
What we need today more than anything else is tender love for mankind, an audacious vision for the future which looks at our planet from the perspective of astronauts and cosmonauts who see no borders, but only one mankind, while at the same time looking to the stars.
Friedrich Schiller said as much in his poem, and Ludwig van Beethoven in his 9th Symphony put those words to music:
Every man becomes a brother
Take this kiss throughout the world!
Brothers, o’er the stars unfurld
Must reside a loving father.
Our tormented mankind needs courageous leaders, committed to the mission of leading the world out of the danger zones of destruction into a better future, which is within reach!
The following resolution was adopted on April 14, at the conclusion of a two-day conference by the Schiller Institute, which was dedicated to the creation of a New Paradigm to Save Civilization.
“We, gathered here near Frankfurt, Germany, representing countries from all continents, give our full support to the immediate voting up of a Glass-Steagall Act in the United States, both in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in line with the bill introduced by Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Rep. Walter Jones called the “Return to Prudent Banking Act” (HR 129).
“We are all convinced that it is a matter of life or death, and that it is only a Glass-Steagall Act in the United States that can stop the genocidal policies of the worldwide monetarist system. It is the necessary weapon to break the chains of the British Empire. In a word: It is either Glass-Steagall, or chaos and genocide.
“We in our respective countries are committed to lead that fight for a Glass-Steagall principle, both in the United States and within each of our nations. Glass-Steagall is only the first step. We must also replace the present monetary system with a public credit system in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, based on national banking, in order to finance reconstruction of the world economy. That implies each country’s sovereignty over its own currency.
“If mankind is to have a future, we must end the present policies of conflict resolution through war, and agree on the common aims of mankind, such as overcoming poverty on Earth, and defending the planet against the very real dangers from outer space through the policies of the Strategic Defense of Earth.
“The immediate implementation of Glass-Steagall, however, is the absolutely irreplaceable mandatory first step, without which none of the other objectives has any chance of realization.
“Our common development is the new name of peace and the only alternative to thermonuclear war.”
It is difficult to gain a visceral sense of the immensity of energy involved in an asteroid or comet impact on Earth. Although asteroids and comets can range anywhere from meters to many kilometers in diameter[ref]All sizes of comets or asteroids will be given in the length of the diameter of the object, unless otherwise noted. E.g., a “1 km asteroid” refers to an asteroid with a diameter of 1 km across.[/ref] (imagine Mt. Everest falling from the sky!), the actual effect of an impact is greatly enhanced by the enormous speeds involved. The total kinetic energy released in such a collision is the product of the mass of the impactor multiplied by the square of the velocity, and the impact speeds range from 10 to 70 km/second, or 20,000 to 150,000 miles per hour![ref]For comparison, a typical passenger jet travels at around 500-600 mph (~250 m/s); the speed of sound (at sea-level) is about 770 mph (343 m/s); and the fastest jet ever flown (unmanned) was NASA’s X-43A scramjet, which reached mach 9.8, which is 7,500 mph or 3.1 km/s.[/ref]
For example, take two notable cases: 1) the impact of an extremely large object, ~10 km, creating the 180 km diameter Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, formed around 65 million years ago, which may have helped put an end to the dinosaurs; and 2) the Tunguska event in Siberia, Russia, in 1908, which, though believed to have been caused by a much smaller object, only about 30-50 meters across, resulted in local devastation. These two significant cases will help provide a sense of a range of possible scenarios.
Based on studies of Mexico’s Chicxulub crater, it has been estimated that a roughly 10 km object, hurtling at around 20 km/s (~45,000 mph), slammed into the Earth ~65 million years ago. Though the exact details of the effects are left to models and simulations, we can certainly get an idea of the scale of destruction: mega-tsunamis[ref]Megatsunami is a term used to describe a tsunami that has wave heights which are much larger than normal tsunamis. They originate from a large scale landslide or collision event, rather than from tectonic activity. A recent example is the 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami, near Alaska, which resulted in a wave hundreds of meters high, the largest known in modern times.[/ref] thousands of meters high; an expanding cloud of boiling dust, vapor, and ash; rock and other surface material ejected out of the atmosphere, raining back down over a huge area, redhot from its atmospheric re-entry; and shock waves that trigger volcanic eruptions and earthquakes around the entire globe.
To give a rough sense of scale, the energy released by such an impact is estimated to be in the range of 100 million megatons of TNT, 20,000 times larger than public estimations of the entire global thermonuclear weapons stockpile (see table I). In addition, besides the immediate effects of collision, an impact this large would launch so much dust and debris into the atmosphere that a dust cloud would cover the entire planet, blocking out the Sun for years: the impact winter, only one of many possible long-term, global effects.
Fortunately, the Chicxulub case represents an extreme, and relatively rare threat. Such large impacts, though more destructive, are much less frequent than smaller impacts. As will be expanded shortly, our neighborhood in the Solar System is populated with many asteroids and comets; however, the frequency of impact by these objects, generally, is inversely proportional to their size. Nevertheless, while a big object, in the range of 1 km or larger, can create massive global damage, even a relatively small object, can cause significant damage.
One often-cited example of an impact thought to be caused by a smaller object is the Tunguska event, in which a sudden explosion leveled roughly 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometers in Siberia, Russia. Though some mystery and debate still surrounds this 1908 case, the most well-supported theory is that the blast was due to a comet or asteroid exploding as it impacted the atmosphere, disintegrating before it could hit the Earth’s surface, and generating a massive blast wave.[ref]Though the Tunguska event drew and has continued to draw intense interest and study, no unambiguous, single impact crater has been found. For example, there is some evidence that it could have been generated by a massive release and explosion of natural gas from underneath the Siberian crust. In any case, we investigate the asteroid-impact theory in this report.[/ref]
Setting aside any lingering debates on the subject, studies have been conducted to determine what size asteroid or comet could have flattened 80 million trees over a region the size of a major metropolitan area. The results of these studies have shown that an object only 30-50 meters across could have generated such a blast wave.[ref]See, Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Peter T. Bobrowsky, Hans Rickman, Springer, Feb 21, 2007 – 546 pages.[/ref]
In order to put the range of threats further into perspective, this table presents a comparison of the levels of energy released from various types of events, both manmade and natural.
It is also highly important that we determine the physical composition of the interplanetary bodies. Some of the deeper implications of this will be discussed in the sections on defense options and exploratory missions, but here we must note that not all of these objects are structurally similar. Some are almost solid iron-nickel, some solid rock, while many others are loose piles of smaller objects held together by their gravity (sometimes referred to as flying rubble piles).
The next question is, where do these objects come from? Our solar neighborhood is much more populated than you may realize. Here, we concentrate only on two specific classes of objects: near-Earth objects and long-period comets. The classical image of our Solar System, four inner planets, then the asteroid belt, followed by four outer planets, while true, does not present the full picture. As Johannes Kepler indicated, and as Karl Gauss proved, there is a major discontinuity between Mars and Jupiter separating the inner from outer planets, which is the home of the majority of the asteroids in our Solar System. However, in addition to this “main belt” of asteroids, there are other populations of asteroids and comets. Some share Jupiter’s orbit. Some dwell in between Saturn and Uranus. Many populate the area of the inner planets, including around Earth.
The most successful way to further investigations of the ordering of the entire Solar System will be an elaboration of the methodological approach of Kepler and Gauss, the great minds who discovered the ordering of the Solar System. Instead of starting from pairwise interactions, we must investigate the Solar System as a single, harmonic system, taking a top-down view of the orbital systems and subsystems. Ultimately, applying those methodological considerations will be the key to improving our understanding of the orbits, and determining well into the future what bodies may threaten our planet.
Consider, first, a class of objects known as near-Earth objects (NEOs). This class of potentially threatening objects are mostly asteroids, but include some short-period comets.[ref]The comets included in the near-Earth objects grouping (sometimes referred to as short-period comets) have dramatically different orbits than the long-period comets mentioned above. Some of these short-period comets can have orbits that are similar to that of asteroids, and constitute a small part of the total near-Earth object population.[/ref]
The defining character of NEOs is that they orbit the Sun in paths that are either in the same general region as the Earth’s orbit, or can even cross the Earth’s orbit on a regular basis, raising the possibility of a collision with the Earth at some point in the future.
Though not all NEOs pose a threat to the Earth, a large number could. Of these, a number have orbits which come within 0.05 AU of the Earth’s orbit, and are large enough to cause damage to the Earth. These are referred to as potentially hazardous objects (PHOs).[ref]AU stands for astronomical unit, the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. It is used as a standard measure of distance in the Solar System. Also don’t be fooled by the image above, as bodies in the Solar System orbit within a thin volume, not a flat plane. Two orbits that may look like they intersect, when drawn on paper, may not, because one could be above the other.[/ref] This particular class of objects are of great concern for government agencies and scientific organizations all over the world, who have set out to find and track them, in order to identify potential threats, and to give advanced warning time to prepare defensive actions if needed.
Before going into the current estimations of the NEO population, how to observe and track them, as well as defense options, we must first identify a second class of potentially threatening objects, long period comets (LPCs). The orbits of these comets are completely different from those of NEOs. Whereas NEOs spend their entire life in the inner Solar System, long period comets spend the vast majority of their lifetime out in the farthest depths of the Solar System (often well beyond the orbit of Pluto.) The extreme ellipticity of some of these distant creatures can take them on rapid trips through the interior of the Solar System, and possibly across Earth’s orbit.
These create a number of significant problems for defending the Earth. First, the key to planetary defense is early detection. While we have had success in detecting NEOs which populate the inner region of the Solar System, it is basically impossible, with present technology, to see the vast majority of these long period comets when they are farther away. Not only does this dramatically shorten warning times, but, since the majority of these comets take hundreds of thousands of years to complete a single orbit around the Sun (some even take millions of years), we know little to nothing about the nature of the long period comet population. In addition, from what we do know, they are often very large, and can have impact speeds of up to about 70 kilometers per second (over 150,000 mph), significantly greater than asteroids.[ref]Remember that the energy released on impact goes up with the square of the speed. To give one example, the 70 km/second impact speed of a comet, going three and a half times faster than the 20 km/second impact speed of an asteroid of the same size, would deliver over 12 times more energy.[/ref]
Currently, compared to NEOs, we see far fewer long period comets passing our region of the Solar System, so it is expected that their impacts with the Earth are much less frequent. However, they have hit the Earth in the past, and if one were on a future impact trajectory, its great speed, large mass, and undetectability until close to the Earth would make it a particularly dangerous global threat. These are the type of bodies that could eliminate all human civilization with one impact.
There is also reason to believe that the population of long period comets which pass into the interior of the Solar System is not completely random. The current hypothesis is that these long period comets may originate from an extremely distant spherical structure surrounding the Sun, at the farthest reaches of the Solar System, known as the Oort cloud. Presently we do not have the observational capability to see comets that far away (a 10 km object at 10,000 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun is hard to spot), but it is thought that the number of large comets (larger than 1 km) in the Oort cloud is in the range of trillions.
Since they extend so far beyond the Solar System, these comets become sensitive to galactic factors. Other stars coming close to our Solar System can perturb the Oort cloud, changing the orbits of potentially millions of comets. Beside individual influences, at these distances, the gravitational effect of the Sun is less dominant and the general gravitational field of the galaxy begins to have an influence—an effect which varies as the galaxy evolves, and as our Solar System travels through it.
Even though our current scope of understanding regards these galactic processes as having slow, long-term effects, they are the type of considerations that mankind must begin to take into account at this stage. First and foremost, there is still little in the way of solid knowledge about these outer regions of the Solar System, and much less known about our Solar System’s relationship with our galaxy and how those galactic changes affect us here on Earth. There are many theories and models, but as we are reminded by the fact that recent readings from the two 35-year old Voyager spacecraft continue to surprise the scientific community, we cannot assume that we understand these neighboring regions, or the solar-galactic interactions, until we go out and investigate.
If there is some doubt as to why mankind has an imperative to understand our solar and galactic environment, let long period comets draw for us a larger neighborhood.
While our current capability to defend against the threat of long-period comets is limited, the state of our knowledge of near-Earth objects is less uncertain.
Due to their close orbits, near-Earth objects can be observed and tracked with Earth-based and space-based telescopes. Following on a few decades of observation programs, astronomers have developed a significant catalogue of known near-Earth objects. Depending on how well and for how long each individual NEO is observed, computer models can be used to extrapolate each NEO’s orbit and trajectory, years or decades into the future.[ref]Obviously, the more observations of an object we have, and the better those observations are, the better the forecast will be. Still there are certain subtle effects which require greater investigation, such as composition, spin rates, and non-gravitational effects, such as an uneven heating/emission action referred to as the Yarkovsky effect. Moreover, there are questions about the methodology of the computer models themselves: they generally rely on only a few dozen large bodies to model the field through which the others pass.[/ref] These multi-decade extrapolations are crucial, since the key to defense against a potentially threatening asteroid is having as much advanced warning time as possible.
Presently, we are far from having discovered and tracked every NEO, and that must be done. The limited population that has been characterized by current surveys has been used to extrapolate statistical estimations of the expected total NEO populations. For example, in September 2011, a NASA-led team published updated estimations of NEO populations based on the data obtained from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope.
Since then, various estimates continue to be refined as increasing amounts of data from Earth-based telescopic surveys are received. One of the more recent available estimates was released in April of 2012, and presented by the head of NASA’s NEO program, Lindley Johnson, at a May 2012 Workshop on Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.[ref]http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/2011_AG5_LN_intro_wksp.pdf ; April 17, 2012, Alan B. Chamberin (JPL).[/ref]
As is clear in table 2, we have been rather successful in identifying most of the larger NEOs. Of the discovered populations, some fit the specific category of potentially hazardous objects, meaning that their orbits come close to or even directly cross the Earth’s orbit. Currently, 152 of the discovered 850 near-Earth asteroids larger than 1 km are classified as PHOs, although none are expected to collide with Earth over the coming century. This is important, since 1 km is a rough division line between objects which would create truly global effects if they struck the Earth, and objects whose impact would produce a local or regional effect.
Still, this leaves the vast majority of medium and small-sized objects undiscovered: ~80% (over 21,000) of the middle-sized NEOs, ranging from 100 to 1000 meters; and ~99.5% of smaller NEOs, 30-100 meters (recall that the Tunguska-sized event is associated with objects in the range of 30-50 meters).
Any of these undiscovered objects could already be on a short-term collision course with Earth, unbeknownst to us. Some are guaranteed to be, at some point in the future. We are still essentially flying blind through our populated region of the inner Solar System.
Further analysis has provided estimations of the frequency with which various sized NEOs and comets impact the Earth.[ref]For example see, Catastrophic Events Caused by Cosmic Objects; 2008, Springer; Chapter 2, “Size-frequency distribution of asteroids and impact craters: estimates of impact rate.”[/ref] As implied by the NEO population estimates referenced above, and as indicated in the graph on the preceding page, there is a direct relationship between the size of the NEO, the population level, and the impact rate.
These estimations of NEO populations and impact frequencies are still approximations, and should only be taken as temporary reference points, paving the way for more rigorous investigations. We cannot entrust human lives, or potentially human civilization, to betting on statistics which purely extrapolate from past events. They can be utilized in limited applications where useful, but only on the path to obtaining a principled—causal—understanding of the system. This requires both a dramatic expansion of our observational systems and our space-faring capability generally, as well as renewed methodological approaches to understanding the organization of the Solar System, and its relationship with the galaxy. Reliance on statistical extrapolations from the past leaves mankind completely blind to unexpected shifts away from present trends, driven by the development and evolution of the Solar System and galaxy—a process driven by future changes.
Friedrich Schiller once wrote: “it is through Beauty, that one proceeds to Freedom” He speaks not of mere physical beauty, but the deeper beauty of the mind, a mind rendered more beautiful through its ability to both perceive itself, and to articulate its inner, most noble aspirations. This is the gift and the right that we must give to young people all around the world, who are the future of humanity. We owe this to both them, and the poets, of all forms of Art and Science that gave us Classical culture, not as a set of rules, but rather of principles of thought, leading humanity to a better, more productive, happier life.
This May 13, 2012, at the Stern Auditorium of Carnegie Hall, a concert was performed by master pianist Tian Jiang. Over 1700 students, parents and teachers from over 80 public schools in the New York City area, most of whom have never been inside of Carnegie Hall, and many who have never heard Classical music, participated in the joy that the mind experiences when the beauty of human emotion and human intellect become one. In a program of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin, spanning almost two centuries in composition, and almost two and a half hours in performance, there were riveted silence, prolonged applause, and standing ovations from a crowd who the popular opinion of today deems “unable to comprehend or become interested in classical music”. Even two and three-year -old toddlers in the audience listened quietly in attention throughout the entire performance of Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor, Beethoven’s “Appassionata”, and Brahms “Handel Variations”.
In the aftermath of this concert, we received numerous letters from teachers, parents and students, asking for more of such opportunities for this sustenance for the mind and soul. We therefore considered: why not make true Dr. Martin Luther King’s desire and intent, as expressed in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”
The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture is issuing a call to all Classical and Classically trained musicians around the world, to donate time and to participate together with us, in the performance and teaching of great Classical composition in the strictest of Platonic aesthetics, in the best of Schillerian sentiments, to the youth of the world. Let us, in all major cities of America and beyond, revive the practice of Classical Culture, for the betterment of mankind and for the love we bear our children and all children.
— Lynn Yen
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