Helga Zepp-LaRouche leads an international dialogue concerning the urgent need to bring the leaders of the “Four Powers” (U.S., Russia, China and India) together for a summit to address the pandemic, the global financial crisis and the danger of war. Excerpts are taken from The Schiller Institute international conference of June 27th, 2020, entitled, “Will Humanity Prosper or Perish? The Future Demands a Four Power Summit Now.”
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche —
The contrast could hardly be clearer. In Singapore, the historic summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un launched a process that, beyond the region itself, could guarantee world peace for the future; at the same time, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) rang in a new era in building a new world order based on trust, harmony and joint development. On the other hand, there was the disunited, antagonistic G7 summit, whose European heads of state and government then returned home, only to plunge into a new dispute over the flare-up of the refugee crisis, and to react to that crisis with remedies as heinous as they are useless. It is high time for a policy reorientation on the old continent! The immediate opportunity to do so is the upcoming EU summit on June 28-29!
Notwithstanding all the cynical comments from the usual suspects in the mainstream media, the groundbreaking summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un would never have been possible without the spirit of the New Silk Road, that has swept over Asia in particular in recent years. Indeed, the idea of economically including North Korea in the integration of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union was very much present at last year’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. And at the Panmunjom Inter-Korean summit in April of this year, South Korean President Moon Jae-in presented his North Korean counterpart with a USB stick containing detailed plans for the economic development of the North.
The White House, in collaboration with the National Security Council, had prepared a video envisaging the perspective of a modern, industrialized, prosperous North Korea—a high-speed rail system, a Chinese maglev, industrial parks, a country on the rise – which Trump showed the North Korean Chairman during their meeting before the final press conference. One can only recommend to those minds in the West that have already been “categorized” and stuffed full of prejudices by the media, to watch Trump’s press conference themselves in the archives. A sovereign U.S. President presented the outcome of the summit: the total nuclear disarmament of North Korea, in return for security guarantees, the lifting of sanctions and the pledge to make North Korea prosperous. In addition, he announced the immediate end of the U.S.-South Korean military maneuvers. That will save a lot of money, he said, and they are “very provocative” anyway.
The people of both Koreas reacted ecstatically to the live broadcast of the Summit and the press conference. President Moon repeatedly commented with enthusiastic applause. We in Germany should recall the elation at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall to get a sense of the effect on the population there.
Not only did China and Russia in particular conduct important background negotiations with North Korea in the run-up to the summit, but the Russian government has also pledged to assist in economic development, while the Chinese government promised to help provide security guarantees for North Korea. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed the importance of resuming the six-party talks for an internationally secured implementation of the agreement. China’s Global Times wrote that the North Korean economy is by no means as dilapidated as is often assumed: “North Korea has economic and geographic advantages to join the B&R, which will help the country realize its economic potential. It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. However, getting North Korea into the B&R initiative to promote economic integration may be easier than what people would have imagined.”
The almost simultaneous SCO summit, which India and Pakistan attended for the first time as full members, was opened by President Xi Jinping with the greeting that the future will be guided by the spirit of Confucius, whose birthplace is in the same Shandong Province as the conference venue in Qingdao. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the proceedings of the conference as the beginning of a new era in creating an international order based on mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, respect for diversity and joint development. That, he explained, would transcend the outdated concepts of the clash of civilizations, the Cold War, zero-sum games, or exclusionary clubs.
How different was the G7 summit in Canada! The photo showing Mrs. Merkel, German Chancellor, in a confrontational attitude toward Trump, surrounded by the other heads of state and government, is likewise an expression of the break-up of the geopolitically oriented post-war order, of the “G6 against 1” formation. But actually it was only the G4, because Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte do not agree on the continuation of sanctions against Russia. The disunity of the Europeans is clearly visible on the issue of the refugee crisis. It should be obvious for everyone that neither the idea of turning back refugees at the EU’s external borders, by whatever method, is practicable, nor will there will be unity in the EU before the upcoming summit on the basis of the “solutions” proposed so far.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer’s proposal to turn away refugees on the German border, if they are already registered in another EU member country, will tend to lead to the end of the EU’s Schengen agreement, and thereby to the destruction of the foundation of the monetary union. The idea of so-called detention camps in countries such as Libya, which has sunk into internal chaos as a result of President Barack Obama’s military intervention, is so barbaric that it draws the oft-cited “western values” once and for all ad absurdum.
It is expected that by 2040, two billion people will be living in Africa, a huge part of them young people who need education, a job and more generally, a perspective for the future. What the African continent needs is massive investment in infrastructure, industrial capacities and agriculture, of precisely the type that China has made in the last 10 years. China thus helped reduce poverty in Africa from 56% in 1990 to 43% in 2012. At the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017, Xi Jinping explicitly and repeatedly proposed to Angela Merkel to cooperate with the New Silk Road in Africa. The German government, for its part, has repeatedly spoken of a “Marshall Plan for Africa,” but other than the usual green “sustainable” projects, detention camps, and the securing of the EU’s external borders, nothing has been forthcoming.
The new Undersecretary of State in the Italian Ministry of Development, Professor Michele Geraci, has just published a memorandum for cooperation between Italy and China, in which he identifies eleven sectors in which Italy has an existential interest to cooperate with China. Among other points, the paper states: “Africa and the migrants? Who can help Africa? China.” Geraci reports that China has invested the most in Africa and thanks to China, poverty in Africa has started to decrease for the first time. “China offers Europe and Italy in particular, an historical opportunity to cooperate for the social-economic stabilization of Africa, which we should absolutely not miss. Therefore, we must strengthen cooperation between Italy and China in Africa.”
If the Merkel government is still in place when this article appears, there is a very good way by which the present crises can be overcome – from the migrant crisis to the government crisis and the EU crisis. Taking the example set by the Singapore Summit—that real change is possible, and that the past does not determine the future—the German government should ensure that the agenda of the upcoming European Union summit on June 28-29 be quickly changed. EU cooperation with China’s New Silk Road initiative for the development of Africa should be made the sole subject on the agenda, and Xi Jinping or Wang Yi should be invited to attend, as well as some African heads of state who are already cooperating with China.
If the EU summit, the Chinese government representative, and the African representatives then pronounce in a joint declaration the commitment to undertake a joint crash program for a pan-African infrastructure and development program, and promise all the young people of Africa that the continent will overcome poverty in a short time, such a declaration, due to the participation of China, would have all the credibility in the world in Africa, and would change the dynamic in all the countries towards definite hope for the future, and thus would immediately effect a change in the migrant crisis. It would also free the EU from its current crisis of legitimacy, and give the European nations a mission which would place the unity of Europe on a great new level.
Will the heads of state and government of Europe manage to follow the example of Trump and Kim Jong-un? The prospect of developing Africa together with China, would also give President Trump the urgently needed opportunity to overcome the otherwise looming spiral of trade war, and to balance the [U.S.] trade deficit by increasing trade, primarily through investment in joint ventures in third countries.
The crisis in Europe, the migrant crisis, the crisis of the German government—they have all assumed such dimensions, that the opportunity for a change of course in policy can absolutely be seized. Needed now, are the people to make it happen.
March 15, 2018— During the present UN Human Rights Council Session in Geneva, Elke Fimmen of the Schiller Institute addressed a seminar on „Human Rights in Yemen: Sanctions“ on March 13th in Geneva. The seminar was sponsored by the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence (ODVV) and jointly organized with INSAN for Human Rights and Peace.
The 1.5 hrs seminar was chaired and moderated by Dr. Hassan Fartousi, researcher in international law at the Universiyt of Geneva. Speakers included human rights activists Mohammad Abo Taleb and Abdullah Alkebsi from INSAN, who showed the horrible effects of the illegal , Saudi-coalition imposed sanctions for the population, including the impossibility to seek medical care abroad, with the internal health system being destroyed. Andrew Feinstein, executive director of Corruption Watch UK, called for an end to the illegal arms supply by the UK (BAE etc.) and the USA.
Elke Fimmen, who was introduced as representing the LaRouche-Movement in Germany, spoke about the genocidal and illegal sanctions, imposed on top of the original UN Resolution #2216 of 2015 for weapons embargo against a few individuals, which has been used as a pretext for a full war of aggression and blockade of airports such as Sanaa and the important ports like Houdeidah, through which food, fuel, medical and others crucial items are imported, on which Yemen is fully dependent. The guarantee of full humanitarian assistance and safety of individuals as demanded in the original UN-resolution has been fully violated.
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have paid with their lives during the three year war of agression, led by Saudi-Arabia, the UK and USA and there will be complete catastrophe, if this is allowed to continue, as clearly stated in the January 2018 UN Humanitarian Response Plan on Yemen.
The report presents in shocking detail the deteriorating situation in all sectors, and concludes that the lack of basic goods, particular fuel by further blockade of commercial imports will result „in a crisis of dimensions that would be beyond the humanitarian community’s response capacity“, if the ports cannot be opened for all imports. So, nobody can claim, he or she „didn’t know“.
The sanctions, killing the Yemen population have become an integrated part of the military operations by the Saudi coalition and are used as warfare tactic with the use of hunger and epidemics. To deliberately destroy a people’s past, present and future, thus denying its existence in human history, fulfills the definition of genocide as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Elke cited the November 2017 Schiller Institute Bad Soden resolution on Yemen, which had called for an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of the blockades, the return to the national reconciliation process and dialogue for a political solution (without interference by outside forces, but under the UN umbrella and with sponsorship of Russia, China and the United States as guarantors of its implementation); and most importantly, to assist Yemen in „a rapid and large scale reconstruction process focussed on infrastructure projects to regain the livelihood of the nation, and the integration of Yemen into the Belt and Road Initiative“ to create a future.
The seminar was attended by around 40 participants and was transmitted live TV-stream to Yemen.
The same morning, another seminar had adressed the situation of journalists in Yemen, and reported that another effect of the blockade is that any foreign journalists, who had been invited to come to Yemen , cannot travel there and report the truth of the ongoing genocide there. This Thursday, there will be another event on the Human Rights situation in Yemen, concluding three weeks of interventions in Geneva.
July 5 — Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS on July 4 that there are no negotiations now and there have been no negotiations with the United States for Russian participation in an expanded G7 meeting, as proposed by President Trump in May, specifically because the proposal excludes China. He reiterated, perhaps more strongly, what Russian diplomats had said when the idea was first proposed: “The idea of the so-called expanded G7 summit is flawed, because it is unclear to us how the authors of that initiative plan to consider the Chinese factor. Without China, it is just impossible to discuss certain issues in the modern world.”
U.S. ambassador to Russia John Sullivan had told RBC TV the day before that Washington was “engaged with the Russian Foreign Ministry and with the other G7 governments about whether there is an appropriate role for Russia at the G7.”
Russia is instead working on its proposal for a summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Ryabkov said. “This is a completely different format. We believe that work in that format, including on the most pressing current issues, is optimal…. We have submitted appropriate proposals to other partners in the P5, and we are waiting for their reaction.”
President Trump announced in May the U.S. proposal that the G7 meeting be expanded to include Australia, South Korea and India, in addition to Russia. According to Reuters, Australia has accepted the U.S. invitation to take part.
The contrast could not have been greater. While the dysfunctional nature of the dying G7, or G6, or G5 (!) — a remnant of British geopolitics which has dominated post-war policies — was on full display in Canada, an alternative global system was moving ahead in Qingdao, China, with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting, based on the “win-win” outlook of China’s New Silk Road policy. And while the destabilized leaders of the increasingly irrelevant G7 were left to whine about President Trump abandoning them — both figuratively and literally — Trump’s extraordinary summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was a reflection of his orientation to Eurasia, as its success is in part due to his collaboration with leaders of China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.
And what do people living in the Transatlantic region know about this new Eurasian dynamic which is shaping the future? Unfortunately, since most of the officials of the “mainstream” political parties of the West continue to act in the interests of the geopolitical doctrine created by the British Empire, and the media spew forth Fake News to back it up, few are aware of the reality of the great global transformation underway.
Each week, Helga Zepp LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, provides a succinct and dramatic presentation, designed to put her viewers on the stage of history. In these weekly webcasts, she has provided both an overview of events, from the top-down, and a method of analysis, which give her viewers an opportunity to play a part in this transformation. Don’t miss her presentation this week, with your host Harley Schlanger, and make sure to inform as many others as possible, that this is their opportunity to break out from under the bubble of lies and disinformation, so they may catch the New Silk Road Spirit.
A new study in India has raised hopes that the coronavirus may be significantly less lethal than thought (at least in India) and that achieving herd immunity through infection could be a viable strategy, but the enormous shortcomings of the study make such conclusions mere wishful thinking.
Coverage in the {Hindustan Times} is typical. An article headlined “15% Population May Have Virus Antibodies, Says Private Lab Data” begins “Thyrocare, a private diagnostic laboratory shared data from 60,000 antibody tests across 600 pincodes [postal codes] that it conducted over 20 days. Of those 15% tested positive for antibodies.” This figure suggests that far more people have already contracted and cleared the coronavirus than previously thought, and that the danger per infection is therefore significantly lower.
But such antibody tests have enormous problems, as has been seen in the article by Stanford Professor John Ioannidis, reported on in this publication some months ago, or the April 22 press conference by California doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, which received unmerited attention. The trouble with these studies is the selection of who goes to be tested.
People who think they’ve already had COVID-19 — due to symptoms or known exposure — are more likely to seek out antibody testing. Without a more randomized sampling, the resulting figures will be too high.
In contrast with levels of 15% or 20%, the Indian Council of Medical Research found that less than 0.73% of people sampled — chosen randomly across 83 districts — had antibodies in late April. The {Journal of the American Medical Association} published on July 21 an article describing antibody screening in blood samples taken for other reasons (cholesterol levels, general health checkups, etc.) from March 23-May 12. They found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 1% of samples from the San Francisco Bay area and in 6.9% of samples from New York City. While these levels are much higher than the number of confirmed cases, they do not support the wishful thinking that we are near herd immunity, or that the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 are low.
June 19– Japan’s daily {Yomiuri Shimbun} reported that the revised version of the Japanese government policy on “infrastructure exports” promotes cooperation with China for the first time, writing: “The government will pursue cooperation with China over infrastructure development in other countries amid plans to increase support for projects related to the Belt and Road, a massive economic initiative promoted by Beijing.
“Tokyo hopes to further facilitate the ongoing improvement in Japan-China relations as it seeks to increase business opportunities for Japanese companies. It is in the process of identifying joint projects with China based on such factors as the transparency.
“A revised version of the government’s basic policy on infrastructure exports, which was released earlier this month, referenced promoting cooperation with China for the first time. The inclusion follows an agreement between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in May in which they pledged to set up a joint committee comprised of both public and private sector officials to coordinate economic cooperation in third countries.
“Abe plans to visit China as early as this year and convene a new forum attended by both public and private sector representatives. Through the forum, the government hopes to
discuss the details of joint projects with China. Tokyo hopes to realize reciprocal visits between the leaders of Japan and China after achieving progress through talks.”
The article also quotes some government and ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) officials nagging against cooperation, pushing the usual arguments against China, e.g. its alleged hegemonism, which the government “sought to fend off.”
The outcome of this tumultuous period of history depends upon the establishment of an agreement among major nations, namely the Four Powers: the United States, Russia, China, and India. Such international economic cooperation is the unique basis for a new security architecture, for peace. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, keynoted the NYC Schiller Institute’s June 9 conference in Manhattan. Zepp-LaRouche was joined by Dmitry Polyanskiy, First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN from the Russian Federation, video greetings from Xu Wenhong, PhD, Deputy Secretary General of Belt and Road Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and LaRouchePAC’s Jason Ross.
Panel Two of the International Schiller Institute conference in NYC, June 9, 2018. Speakers include Dennis Speed, Northeast Coordinator, Schiller Institute — “The LaRouche Method: Seed-Crystal of a New Culture,” James George Jatras, former U.S. Diplomat and former Adviser to Republican Senate Leadership — “The Urgency of a Trump-Putin Summit,” and Richard Black, Virginia State Senator — “The Strategic Importance of Victory, Peace and Development in Syria,” followed by a lively Q&A.
Join us at 2pm on Saturday, July 25 for a discussion between Bill Binney, Dennis Small and Mike Billington.
Is it true that the arc of the moral universe is long, but bends towards justice?
Thirty-seven years ago, Lyndon LaRouche was involved, with the full knowledge of the National Security Council, in a back-channel negotiation with the Soviet Union. That process led to the Reagan Administration’s thermonuclear war avoidance policy the termed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI.) Despite the fact that the senior director of the National Security Council, Norman Bailey, had met with LaRouche, and, as reported by the Washington Post in 1985, had “described LaRouche’s organization as “one of the best private intelligence services in the world,“ LaRouche was put through a federal prosecution by the United States Justice Department. Former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark described the persecution of LaRouche and his movement as constituting “a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge.”
That LaRouche prosecution from the years 1986-1994 and after, was the seed-crystal for the succeeding decades-long abuse of power carried out, under the guise of “national security,” through illegal surveillance, biased prosecutions, and judicial railroads. This was ultimately done not only against many innocent American citizens, but also against the United States Presidency itself, largely through the actions of British intelligence services and their American assets, as in the thoroughly discredited “Russiagate hoax. The recent visit of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to London, where he said, “it’s great to be back in London to reaffirm the special relationship we share with our closest ally,” illustrates the problem.
Now, through the courageous actions of “good Americans” such as William Binney, the former Technical Director the National Security Agency (NSA), it becomes possible to expose the snake-pit of corruption, duplicity and sedition that has prevented the policies of war-prevention and economic growth of Lyndon LaRouche. This is what is now preventing the Presidency from advancing the General Welfare of all American citizens through economic cooperation with other nations, particularly Russia and China, in the pursuit of peace through economic development and scientific progress.
Join us on Saturday at 2pm, as Bill Binney and friends continue their dialogue with the American people and others who wish to create a new just paradigm.
Feb. 13 — In the Jan. 29 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, an article titled “What if China Really Is Exempt from the Laws of Economics?” very aptly captures the consternation/ constipation imposed on the intellectually impoverished proponents of standard academic economics by the astounding development of China. Author Michael Schulman gets far more points for candor than he does for historic insight. He seems thoroughly oblivious to the simple fact that the U.S. industrial base was built entirely by economic dirigism, never mentioning Alexander Hamilton. He devotes zero attention to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
However, what he does say would be hilarious, if the consequences of his outlook were not so dire: “But recently, my faith in the corpus of collective wisdom has been shattered. By China.” He elaborates: “The more I apply my rules of economics to China, the more they seem to go awry. China should be mired in meager growth, even gripped by financial crisis, according to my maxims. But obviously, it’s not. In fact, much of what’s going on right now in that country runs counter to what we know–or think we know–about economics. Simply, if Beijing’s policymakers are right, then a lot of basic economic thinking is wrong—especially our certainty in the power of free markets, our ingrained bias against state intervention, and our ideas about fostering innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Schulman bemoans the fact that the role of the CPC in the Chinese economy is more central than ever, but, even worse (for his ilk), that no disaster, but only sustained real growth has resulted from that top-down intervention. He inserts some politically correct caveats and qualifiers, to the effect that maybe some catastrophe is lurking off stage, but pretty much admits that he can’t discern it.
So, it’s therefore time to overhaul your failed axioms, right? Sorry, like Linus, Schulman isn’t ready to ditch the security blanket just yet: “I’m clinging to my maxims…but thanks to China, I’m prepared to edit them.”
A more open admission of intellectual bankruptcy would be hard to imagine.
The whole article: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-24/what-if-china-is-exempt-from-the-laws-of-economics