Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche and her co-thinkers are mobilizing true leaders on every continent—those who thirst for the knowledge of universal principle, such as the doctors, the classical artists, the scientists, the statesmen, and perhaps most importantly, the YOUTH—to inaugurate an Age of Reason, by the successful transformation of Afghanistan, and of Haiti. The people of Afghanistan and Haiti, and of so many nations across the world, face famine, disease, war—but worse, they face the “depraved indifference” of the governments and people of the United States, European countries, and many others, who ignore known solutions to vicious suffering and death, who ignore the success of China in lifting 850 million people out of extreme poverty, who ignore the fifty-year economic forecasting record of the late American economist and statesman, Lyndon H. LaRouche. Together, let us raise up a force of impassioned people, dedicated to righting these wrongs once and for all, so that we may say, truly, “Never again!”
Oct. 20 (EIRNS) — Helga Zepp-LaRouche participated in the high-level International Academic Forum in China 2021, hosted by CASS, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, on the theme of “A New and Uniquely Chinese Path to Modernization,” which was held in Beijing on the 14th and 15th of October.
The conference opened with a speech by Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC (Communist Party of China) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee. He said: “Over the past 100 years, the CPC has led the people in pioneering a new and uniquely Chinese path to modernization and creating a new model for human advancement…. China will follow its own path, strengthen exchanges and mutual learning with other countries, and make greater contributions to the world with the new achievements of modernization.”
He pointed out that the forum is an important platform for the promotion for exchanges in philosophy and social sciences between China and the world. More than 100 scholars from various universities, thinktanks, and academic institutions from twenty nations participated.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, speaking as the president of the Schiller Institute,” titled her presentation, “A Chinese Contribution to Universal History Viewed from the Future.” She presented the great achievement of China’s transformation from a poor primarily agricultural nation into one of the world’s leading nations in science, industry, and culture. Her call for a dialogue on the highest level all cultures of the world elicited a very positive reaction from the panel moderator, who emphasized that the juxtaposition of both the greatest poets and thinkers of West with those of China demonstrates that while they represent very different cultures, the dialogue between them represents truly universal values. One could see this idea expressed in the song of the European Union (EU), Schiller’s and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
The questions that needed to be answered were also addressed: What steps must be taken to push the world into a community of a shared future and how can the knowledge produced in China more directly become part of world knowledge?
The end of the military campaign by the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan signifies the “end of an era,” as President Biden has stated, an era of so-called humanitarian interventionist wars. If one looks at the outcome of these wars of 20 years, it is devastating. More than a million lives were lost, more than 8 trillion dollars were spent, up to 70 million people were turned into refugees. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, were devastated. More than 70 percent of the people in Afghanistan, 90 percent in Syria and even more in Yemen are living now below the extreme poverty line. In all of these countries there is now a gigantic humanitarian crisis, threatening death to many more millions of human beings.
The first priority must be to save the lives of the people in the countries which were the targets of the „endless wars,“ and the international community is called upon to join hands in bringing real economic development to the entire region, starting with the creation of a modern health system in every single country, which in the time of this pandemic and the danger of future pandemics is the precondition to defeat this curse of humanity. That requires clean water, which is scarce in Afghanistan—a nation hit by droughts—and it requires electricity, of which Afghanistan only produces 600 MW in the entire country, the equivalent of one medium- to- large plant in the U.S. 18 million people are food insecure and 4 million are in danger of starvation in the coming winter.
President Biden is being criticized for the withdrawal of troops, but he did the right thing, and his promise of the “end of the era of the endless wars” also must mean the end of the freezing of financial means for Afghanistan; it must mean the end of the Caesar Sanctions for Syria; and the end of any sanctions during the time of the pandemic. It is the time for joining hands, especially, again, between the U.S. and Russia, as there were several periods in the history of both nations, were such a collaboration existed for the good of all humanity.
Let us therefore use the coincidence of the end of 20 years of war and the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 for the solemn commitment to regard terrorism, hunger, and underdevelopment as the enemies of mankind, and not each other. Let us replace the era of geopolitics with an era of achieving the common aims of mankind. It is not an idle hope that the human species, as the only one that has proven through its existence that creativity is that quality which can transcend all seeming limitations, will soon leave conflict, aggression, and war behind it, and that we become truly human. Let us be inspired by the lofty ideal of man as it is expressed in the great art of the composers, poets, painters, architects, and sculptors, such as the creator of this Teardrop Memorial, around which we gather today.
These last 20 years are hopefully the final chapter in the adolescence of humanity, to be followed by adulthood—in which people and nations relate to one another based on the creative potential of the other, thus bringing out in them the best they can be. To learn to think that way requires an elevated state of mind in all of us, to think from above, from that higher One of humanity which shows the way to a future, in which all nations and all people will create peace on earth and colonize the stars together.
— Helga Zepp-LaRouche
The following statement was jointly issued by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, and Guus Berkhout, emeritus professor of geophysics; initiator and co-founder of CLINTEL (Climate Intelligence).
We have bitter debates about just about everything: green energy, pandemic measures, political ideologies, tax policies, the refugee crisis, rising rents, erosion of fundamental rights, pension plans, government bureaucracies, the generation gap, women’s rights, etc. But what we fail to see is the big picture: namely, that we in the West are ruled by an increasingly powerful political establishment that is in the process of destroying everything we have built since World War II!
All the symptoms of a collapsing system are right before our eyes, if we care to see them: an economic system in which the balance between cost and benefit is totally out of balance, an accelerating hyperinflation that devours our earnings, a good healthcare system that only the rich can afford, an education system that teaches neither excellence nor moral values, an out-of-control woke culture that turns people against each other, a disastrous geopolitical confrontation policy against alleged rivals—and the list could go on and on!
All these manifestations of crisis have a common cause: We in the West are living under the dictatorship of a financial oligarchy, for which the common good is nonexistent, and whose sole interest is to maximize its own privileges. An oligarchy that needs “endless wars” to generate income for its military-industrial complex, and promotes the production and distribution of mind-destroying drugs, both illegal and legalized, the latter because the financial system would have collapsed long ago without the input of laundered drug money. And given that this system is now hopelessly bankrupt, the entire economic and financial system is now supposed to be converted to so-called green technologies in a final great coup—the Great Reset. Under the pretext of climate protection, the motto for this conversion is “Shifting the Trillions.” And it’s happening now!
The policies of the Green Deal (EU) and the Green New Deal (USA) mean that banks restrict their loans to investments in green technologies, and have long since subjected companies to an increasingly strangulating system of requirements such as taxonomy, the Supply Chain law, etc. At the same time, there is a method to the high energy prices: pushing prices above the pain threshold in monetary terms is supposed to manipulate the population into learning how to get along without meat consumption, heating, decent housing, travel, etc. This goes hand in hand with an image of man that sees every human being as a parasite polluting nature. While we know that CO₂ is essential to all life on Earth, the green policy trumpets: “The less CO₂ footprints left behind, the better.”
The truth is, this is old wine in new bottles. It is exactly the same austerity policy of Hjalmar Schacht, Germany’s Reichsbank president and economics minister just before World War II. This is cannibalization of the labor force. Whoever thinks this comparison is exaggerated, should watch the film Hunger Ward about Yemen, featuring the World Food Program’s David Beasley, or consider the death rate of children in Haiti.
What does Klaus Schwab say about this in his book Stakeholder Capitalism? He complains that African countries like Ethiopia successfully fought extreme poverty (p.154):
“It reveals the central conundrum of the combat against climate change. The same force that helps people escape from poverty and lead a decent life is the one that is destroying the livability of our planet for future generations. The emissions that lead to climate change are not just the result of a selfish generation of industrialists or Western baby boomers. They are the consequence of the human desire to create a better future for himself.”
Here it is in black and white. According to this logic, increasing the death rate by increasing poverty is the best thing that can happen to the climate! Life does not matter to the elites of Schwab.
If we want to escape the looming catastrophe, we must rebuild society completely on very different principles. This is our positive message, being a message of a hopeful future with prosperity for all:
1. Human life is inviolable. Man is the only species endowed with creative reason, which distinguishes him from all other living beings. This creative capability enables him to continually discover new principles of the physical universe, which is called scientific progress. The fact that the human mind, through an immaterial idea, is able to discover these principles, which then have an effect in the material universe in the form of technological progress, proves that there is a correspondence between the lawfulness of the human mind and the laws of the physical universe.
2. Just as the spatial expanse and anti-entropic evolution of the universe are infinite, so is the intellectual and moral perfectibility of the human mind. Therefore, every additional human being is a new source for further development of the universe and for the solution of problems on Earth, such as overcoming poverty, disease, underdevelopment, and violence. Taking care of each other is key in this ongoing development. It is the combination of creativity and empathy that transcends mere day-to-day exigencies.
3. Scientific and technological progress has a positive effect in that, when applied to the production process, it increases the productivity of the labor force and of industrial and agricultural capacities, which in turn leads to rising living standards and a longer life expectancy for more and more people. A prosperous physical economy is the precondition for the positive development of the common good, providing not only the elites, but all people with quality food, clean water, affordable and modern health care, quality education, modern communications and, above all, cheap and sufficient energy with high energy flux densities. Inherently safe third-generation nuclear energy and the future use of thermonuclear fusion are indispensable for securing mankind’s energy supply for an unlimited time. Unreliable energy systems and increasing energy prices are the mother of inflation. Poverty starts with energy poverty.
4. The purpose of the economy has nothing to do with profit, but with the happiness of people, in the sense meant by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, i.e., that people are able to develop all the inherent potentials they have into a harmonious whole, and thus contribute to the best possible further development of mankind. Or as the wise Solon of Athens said: The purpose of mankind is progress. It is the duty of good government, through its policies, to provide for the happiness of its citizens in this sense, beginning with universal education for all, the goal of which must be to foster beautiful character through education and the development of an ever-increasing number of geniuses. This perspective is in accordance with Vladimir Vernadsky’s conviction that the physical universe must inherently evolve in such a way that the share of the noösphere increasingly grows in relation to the biosphere. To be more specific, growth should be two-fold, creativity for the material necessities and empathy for the immaterial needs. Taking care of each other and our natural environment is presented in our slogan: “Prosperity for all,” in which all refers not only to us in the here and now, but also to future generations.
5. Man’s true destiny is not to remain an earthling. His identity, as the only known species endowed with creative reason, is to explore space, as we did with planet Earth. What space pioneer Krafft Ehricke called the “extraterrestrial imperative,” or in a certain sense, the new educational effect of space travel on man, requires mankind to truly “grow up,” that is, to cast off his irrational impulses, and make creativity his identity, which has so far only been the case for outstanding scientists and artists of classical culture. In this phase of evolution, of love for humanity and love for creation, generated by recognition of the magnificence of the physical universe, it will have become natural that mankind takes care of all aspects of humanity, the planet, nature, and the universe at large with great care, because the fabricated contradiction between man and nature will have been overcome (new stewardship). Man does not exist in opposition to nature; he is the most advanced part of it. This is what Schiller called freedom in necessity, and is the concept that Beethoven placed above his Grosse Fugue: “Just as rigorous as it is free.”
This lofty idea of man and everything he has built, is what is threatened by the Hjalmar Schachts, Klaus Schwabs, the power-hungry political leaders, and the profit-hungry business leaders of the world. This is a wake-up call, addressed to all people, to resist the danger of a new evil. Let us prevent a return to the past, when an evil elite impoverished mankind and told us to be happy with such conditions.
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
September 5—The catastrophic failure of NATO in Afghanistan, and with it the policy of 20 years of wars of intervention, couldn’t be more dramatic. It is not only that the war was lost; it is paradigmatic for the whole spectrum of misconceptions of the Western liberal system. It is therefore to be welcomed when President Biden announces that the withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the end of the entire era of the use of American military power with the aim of “remaking” other countries. But if this reorientation only means that we will no longer busy ourselves out in the boondocks with the “endless wars,” but instead will concentrate all forces on the “new challenges”—namely the confrontation with Russia and China—then the lesson from this shameful disaster has not been learned and we are embarking on an even worse catastrophe. But the wound is still fresh, the shock of defeat has shaken the whole Western world and the chance exists for a completely new approach.
A Brown University project to ascertain the costs of U.S. wars since September 11th, for which we are about to mark the 20th anniversary, has calculated that the total costs for the military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc. are $8 trillion and at least a million people have lost their lives. This breaks down to $2.3 trillion for the Afghanistan war, $2.1 trillion for the Iraq/Syria war zone, $355 billion for military operations in Libya, Somalia, etc., $1.1 trillion for Homeland Security programs, and $2.2 trillion for the upcoming care of U.S. veterans who were deployed in these wars, a large number of whom suffer from secondary physical and mental illnesses. At least 15,000 U.S. military personnel and roughly the same number of international NATO troops were killed. Around 70 million people are refugees from these wars. Hundreds of thousands of troops were deployed, an unknown number of civilians perished, and the majority of the troops were essentially occupied with protecting themselves in a hostile environment. They had just as little idea of those people and their culture at the beginning of the 20 years, as at the end of it, as was known to the public no later than with the publication of the Afghanistan Papers in 2019.
The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is appalling. World Food Program Director David Beasley, who visited Afghanistan last week in August, announced that 18 million Afghans are starving—more than half the population—and 4 million are at risk of starvation next winter without massive help. The WHO fears a medical disaster in view of the scarcely existing health system in the midst of the COVID pandemic, and only around 1 million people are vaccinated so far. Can the people of Western countries have any idea what kind of suffering the Afghan population has had to go through in the past 40 years of war, and must still endure at this point in time?
In view of this almost unimaginable tragedy, it is downright absurd and deliberately misleading that in the context of the “endless wars” one still speaks of “nation-building.” What was built in Afghanistan when half the population is starving? If the U.S.A. and other NATO members had invested only 5% of their military spending in the real economic development of Afghanistan, this horrific debacle would never have occurred.
Modern Health System and Agriculture
So far it has not been apparent that there is any real rethinking in the United States or Europe. Because this would not mean merely that one is willing to “talk to the Taliban,” but that one is correcting the entire premise of the policies of the last 20 years. If Biden is serious about ending the entire era of the wars of intervention, then U.S. troops must finally comply with the vote of the Iraqi Parliament, which demanded their withdrawal in January 2020. Then the murderous Caesar Act sanctions of the U.S.A. against Syria must be ended immediately, which to this day contribute to holding over 90% of the population to a standard of living below the poverty line. Beyond that, especially during a pandemic, we must end the policy of sanctions against all countries; they have no UN mandate, and they only strike at the poorest sections of the population and often kill them.
What the U.S.A. and the European nations have to do now, if they ever want to regain credibility with respect to “values” and “human rights,” is to offer real help to the Afghan government that is being formed, e.g. by building a modern health system. One of the things that is urgently needed now is a whole system of modern hospitals, in connection with a system for the training of doctors, medical professionals and a training program for young people who can help the population in all rural areas to familiarize themselves with the hygiene measures required in a pandemic. With the help of partnerships, such a system could be linked to medical centers in the United States and Europe, as is already in place with other countries in the developing sector.
In view of the famine, in addition to the airlift that David Beasley of the WFP is setting up from Pakistan, which can bring food into Afghanistan, a comprehensive offer of agricultural support is needed urgently. If we are to stop the farmers from falling back to the cultivation of poppy plants for the production of opium out of sheer necessity, then the development of agriculture, integrated into the general economic structure, must be supported. With the agreement concluded with the Taliban in 2000, the former UN drug commissioner Pino Arlacchi demonstrated that the abolition of drug cultivation is possible and that the religious convictions of the Taliban can be met.
Provided that the sovereignty of Afghanistan and the new government is absolutely respected, and it is guaranteed that such aid in building up agriculture is not mixed with a political agenda, various pilot projects based on the model of Jawaharlal Nehru’s green revolution could be started with the regions that are ready to do so. There are committed young and older farmers in the United States and Europe who would be willing to participate in such a peace mission to improve agricultural production in Afghanistan in such a way that the famine can be permanently eradicated. In view of the repeated droughts, such programs would of course have to go hand in hand with irrigation programs and general water management.
An Aid Coordinator Who Is Trusted
It must first and foremost be about helping the Afghan people in a gigantic emergency that they did not cause themselves, and this is only possible if a basis of trust is established with the new government, regardless of all ideological reservations. The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites therefore proposes that the U.S. and European governments choose the person to coordinate such an aid program, who has shown in the past that such a policy can work: namely, Pino Arlacchi. It would guarantee that Afghanistan’s sovereignty would be respected and that no attempt would be made to impose Western standards, since he has already won the Taliban’s trust in the past.
Such a redefinition of policy towards Afghanistan naturally also means completely turning away from thinking in geopolitical categories, rejecting the idea of politics as a zero-sum game in which the rise of China and Asia are automatically understood as the decline of the West. With his visit to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the new head of government, Abdul Ghani Baradar, signaled that his government is counting on cooperation with China and the integration of Afghanistan into the New Silk Road. The Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, has proposed an international conference for the country’s economic development to discuss which projects must have absolute priority in order to overcome the emergency.
If the West has learned anything from the millennium defeat in Afghanistan, then it must cooperate impartially with Russia, China, and neighboring countries in Central Asia, Pakistan, Iran and India in building not only Afghanistan, but all of Southwest Asia. The slogan “to end the endless wars,” which got Tony Blair so excited, is not imbecilic—what is imbecilic is the policy of colonial wars of intervention he proposed. This was not only moronic, but criminal and murderous, and has destroyed the lives of millions of people or plunged them into unspeakable suffering. The architects of this policy should be held accountable.
But if the cycle of violence and revenge is to be overcome, then a new policy must be on the agenda: The new name for peace is development, as Pope Paul VI once said. Afghanistan is the one place where the United States and China can begin a form of cooperation that can be a baby step toward strategic cooperation putting humanity’s common goals in the foreground. Ultimately, its realization indicates the only way that the end of mankind in a nuclear Armageddon can be prevented.
In any case, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer does not seem to have learned anything from the “severe defeat,” if all she can think of is the demand for “more military independence for the EU.” The “lack of skills” of which she speaks does not only refer to the failure of European resistance to the U.S.-driven withdrawal from Afghanistan. If the self-induced decline of the West is to end, we need an honest analysis of why the neo-colonial liberal social model has failed, and above all we need a renaissance of our humanistic and classical culture. Our attitude towards the construction in Afghanistan is the test case of whether we are able to do so.
This article was translated from the front-page lead of the German weekly newspaper Neue Solidarität* for issue No. 36, Sept. 9, 2021. https://www.solidaritaet.com/neuesol/2021/36/hzl.htm*
July 16 (EIRNS)—A commentary from Helga Zepp-LaRouche, responding to “COVID Resilience Rankings” determined by Bloomberg, was published by CGTN today. Zepp-LaRouche lambasts the Bloomberg report, which gave the U.S. higher marks than China, in which she states, “Essentially this ranking is a demonstration of the thesis, that one can prove anything with statistics, as long as you define how the statistics are constructed. While most of the nominal facts of the listed rankings appear to be factual, the accompanying article in the section ‘Containment Formula’ belies the overall purpose and bias hidden behind the statistics. Here the worry is expressed, that the ‘underperformance of some of the world’s most prominent democracies’ as compared with ‘authoritarian countries like China’ has raised questions about the ability of democratic societies to cope with pandemics.”
Zepp-LaRouche continues: “The reality shows a quite different story. In Wuhan, China, it demonstrated that the prioritization of society’s well-being over individual liberty was very successful. The Chinese approach after the containment in Hubei Province to test, isolate, quarantine, continues to spot cases to the present day and has resulted in only 4,636 deaths to date. In the U.S., on the other hand, more than 600,000 people lost their lives with many people suffering from long-term COVID debilitating effects.” The full opinion article is here.
July 13 (EIRNS)—Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the following interview to China Plus radio’s World Today broadcast today. China Plus is the official English website of China Radio International. The interview is the second news story starting at 12:55 minutes
CRI: Welcome back. The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed China’s resolution on the contribution of development to the enjoyment of all human rights, at the 47th session, which emphasizes the right to development and that the aim of development is to improve the developing of the people. For more, we are now joined on the line by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, a Germany based economic and political think tank. Thanks for joining us Dr. LaRouche.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, hello! How are you?
CRI: I’m good, thank you. So, the resolution stresses that development and the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. How do we understand those?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: First of all, let me express my congratulation. I think this is an excellent development, because hopefully this will inspire a very productive discussion everywhere around the world, what is the right definition of human rights. And I think the interdependence between development and human rights and freedom, you can see best if you look at the lack of development. Because then you have poverty, and you have still on the planet, 2 billion people who have no access to clean water, more than 800 million are and you have no freedom if you have all day to try to get a little bit of water and a little bit to eat, just to try to stay alive, so you have no freedom under these conditions. So therefore, I think development is very clearly the precondition for both human rights with freedom.
CRI: Yes, but that is very different from the Western explanation for human rights, which all starts with the ballot box and has everything to do with individual freedom. How did it get the different priorities when it comes to the human rights issue?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well first of all, I think one has to see that the label isn’t always consistent with the content. Many things which have the label “democracy” and “human rights” have quite some different content, and in the case of the Western parliamentarian system, or unfortunately even the presidential system in some countries, is more a plutocracy, where the money of the multinationals and the big banks determine who gets a seat. Also, I think if you look at the overemphasis of individual freedom it has degenerated into a notion, everything is allowed, and the common good is regarded as a suppression of these individual freedoms.
Now, if you have a crisis, like in the case of COVID-19, you can see what the consequences of this is. China and some other Asian nations took strict measures for the common good, and it worked well, and then also the individuals profited because they were rid of the pandemic earlier; while in the West you had a back and forth, people were even protesting against having to wear masks, regarding that as an intrusion in their personal freedom, and they had to pay a much, much bigger price.
CRI: Well, representatives from countries including Venezuela, Cuba, and Pakistan also made speeches to appreciate China for delivering those draft resolutions and stressed that development should be the focus of every country, especially developing countries. But why is the resolution getting support from these countries?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, it’s very simple: Because in the entire post-World War II period, the IMF conditionalities prevented real development in the developing sector. They were told, you have to pay your debt first before you can invest in infrastructure or health, and the result was a blatant underdevelopment and incredible poverty. So, China, even before the Belt and Road, invested in railways in Africa and other infrastructure, but especially with the Belt and Road Initiative and the COVID crisis, it became very clear that these countries regarded the help from China—which was denounced as “vaccine diplomacy” by some Western media—but these developing countries regarded the attitude of China as a life-saver for them. So, it’s no surprise that they would support it.
CRI: And I think you earlier mentioned about what should be the right definition of human rights. And another question is who gets to pick what the most basic human rights should be? And have you got a feeling that this has been heavily guided by a small number of mostly Western nations which has led to a general bias in favor of the civil, political liberties over economic, social, and cultural rights?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes. You can see that right now very clearly in the case of the so-called “identity policy.” For example, between the EU Commission and countries such as Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, there is a big tension right now, whereas in the East, they have rejected the effort by the EU Commission to impose the values of the Western liberal European countries.
So, I think what needs to be put up front again, is the Five Principles of peaceful coexistence and the idea of non-interference in the different social systems, because they are, due to customs, traditions, cultural heritage and these must be respected.
CRI: In 2019 a study by the Center for New American Security—that is a Washington-based think tank—says that China’s actions in the UN were part of this effort to redefine how such institutions are run and shift away from Western concepts of democracy and human rights. What is your thought on those?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, China has been the leading nation for centuries, and only in the 18th and 19th centuries, because of the colonialist attacks and Opium Wars by the British, you know, that that was diminished. But now, China is again the second largest economy in the world. The lifting of poverty of 850 million people represents a tremendous civilizational contribution, and therefore, I think, it is absolutely correct that China should have a major role in this discussion.
CRI: OK, but do you feel the widespread back and forth surrounding human rights issues around the world currently has been highly politicized? And sometimes it has even been used as a tool for political purposes and sometimes as an excuse to put pressure on other countries or even invade other countries?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes. These notions, human rights and democracy, have become like a two by four: You can smash any argument into the ground. So, I think this double standard needs to be corrected. Those people in the West who support sanctions under conditions of the COVID-19 crisis against such countries as Syria, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela—I think altogether 30 countries—I mean, this is a violation of human rights if you ever have seen one. Or, if you look at how Assange is treated, or what happened to Snowden, all these people just did the right thing, and they have been treated in an absolutely horrible way. So, this double standard should be stopped.
CRI: What are the consequences of such double standards or politicizing such human rights issues? Is it like shifting our focus away from the real human rights problems?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, it poisons the atmosphere, and it degenerates the idea of human rights, which is actually a beautiful idea, and makes it a victim to geopolitical reasons.
Now, the Schiller Institute is upholding this concept of the “New Name for Peace Is Development.” This comes originally from Pope Paul VI in 1967 in his Encyclical Populorum Progressio, where he coined that idea that the “new name for peace is development.”
And this is very important right now, concretely in Afghanistan. Look, for example, NATO spent there 20 years for absolutely nothing, and now the question is what’s to come out of Afghanistan? Will you continue the geopolitical war? Or, will you have an agreement among all neighbors, like Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and have real development? The real development would mean to extend the New Silk Road, the Belt and Road Initiative into Afghanistan, but also into Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the whole region. And then you can have peace. So this is not an abstract academic notion, this is an extremely actual issue, that the idea that real peace does require development, that that is a precondition without which nothing will function.
CRI: OK, thank you Dr. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, a Germany-based political and economic think tank.
PDF of this statement
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
July 10—After the hasty withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan—U.S. troops, except for a few security forces, were flown out in the dark of night without informing Afghan allies—this country has become, for the moment but likely not for long, the theater of world history. The news keeps pouring in: On the ground, the Taliban forces are making rapid territorial gains in the north and northeast of the country, which has already caused considerable tension and concern in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and they have captured the western border town Islam Qala, which handles significant trade flows with Iran. At the same time, intense diplomatic activity is ongoing among all those countries whose security interests are affected by the events in Afghanistan: Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, to name only the most important.
Can an intra-Afghan solution be found? Can a civil war between the Afghan government and the Taliban be prevented? Can terrorist groups, such as ISIS, which is beginning to regain a hold in the north, and Al-Qaeda, be disbanded? Or will the war between Afghan factions continue, and with it the expansion of opium growing and export, and the global threat of Islamic terrorism? Will Afghanistan once again sink into violence and chaos, and become a threat not only to Russia and China, but even to the United States and Europe?
If these questions are to be answered in a positive sense, it is crucial that the United States and Europe first answer the question, with brutal honesty, of how the war in Afghanistan became such a catastrophic failure, a war waged for a total of 20 years by the United States, the strongest military power in the world, together with military forces from 50 other nations. More than 3,000 soldiers of NATO and allied forces, including 59 German soldiers, and a total of 180,000 people, including 43,000 civilians, lost their lives. This was at a financial cost for the U.S. of more than $2 trillion, and of €47 billion for Germany. Twenty years of horror in which, as is customary in war, all sides were involved in atrocities with destructive effects on their own lives, including the many soldiers who came home with post-traumatic stress disorders and have not been able to cope with life since. The Afghan civilian population, after ten years of war with the Soviets in the 1980s followed by a small break, then had to suffer another 20 years of war with an almost unimaginable series of torments.
It was clear from the start that this war could not be won. Implementation of NATO’s mutual defense clause under Article 5 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was based on the assumption that Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime were behind those attacks, which would thus justify the war in Afghanistan.
But as U.S. Senator Bob Graham, the Chairman of the Congressional “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,” repeatedly pointed out in 2014, the then-last two U.S. presidents, Bush and Obama, suppressed the truth about who had commissioned 9/11. And it was only because of that suppression that the threat to the world from ISIS then became possible. Graham said at a November 11, 2014 interview in Florida:
“There continue to be some untold stories, some unanswered questions about 9/11. Maybe the most fundamental question is: Was 9/11 carried out by 19 individuals, operating in isolation, who, over a period of 20 months, were able to take the rough outlines of a plan that had been developed by Osama bin Laden, and convert it into a detailed working plan; to then practice that plan; and finally, to execute an extremely complex set of assignments? Let’s think about those 19 people. Very few of them could speak English. Very few of them had even been in the United States before. The two chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, have said that they think it is highly improbable that those 19 people could have done what they did, without some external support during the period that they were living in the United States. I strongly concur…. Where did they get their support?”
This question has still not been answered in satisfactory manner. The passing of the JASTA Act (Justice Against State Sponsors of Terrorism) in the U.S., the disclosure of the 28 previously classified pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry report into 9/11 that were kept secret for so long, and the lawsuit that the families of the 9/11 victims filed against the Saudi government delivered sufficient evidence of the actual financial support for the attacks. But the investigation of all these leads was delayed with bureaucratic means.
The only reason the inconsistencies around 9/11 are mentioned here, is to point to the fact that the entire definition of the enemy in this war was, in fact, wrong from the start. In a white paper on Afghanistan published by the BüSo (Civil Rights Movement Solidarity in Germany) in 2010, we pointed out that a war in which the goal has not been correctly defined, can hardly be won, and we demanded, at the time, the immediate withdrawal of the German Army.
Once the Washington Post published the 2,000-page “Afghanistan Papers” in 2019 under the title “At War with the Truth,” at the latest, this war should have ended. They revealed that this war had been an absolute disaster from the start, and that all the statements made by the U.S. military about the alleged progress made were deliberate lies. The investigative journalist Craig Whitlock, who published the results of his three years of research, including the use of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and statements from 400 insiders demonstrated the absolute incompetence with which this war was waged.
Then, there were the stunning statements of Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Afghanistan czar under the Bush and Obama administrations, who in an internal hearing before the “Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” in 2014 had said: “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan—we didn’t know what we were doing. … What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking…. If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction … who would say that it was all in vain?”
After these documents were published, nothing happened. The war continued. President Trump attempted to bring the troops home, but his attempt was essentially undermined by the U.S. military. It’s only now, that the priority has shifted to the Indo-Pacific and to the containment of China and the encirclement of Russia that this absolutely pointless war was ended, at least as far as the participation of foreign forces is concerned.
September 11th brought the world not only the Afghanistan War but also the Patriot Act a few weeks later, and with it the pretext for the surveillance state that Edward Snowden shed light on. It revoked a significant part of the civil rights that were among the most outstanding achievements of the American Revolution, and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, and it undermined the nature of the United States as a republic.
At the same time, the five principles of peaceful coexistence, which are the essence of international law and of the UN Charter, were replaced by an increasing emphasis on the “rule-based order,” which reflects the interests and the defense of the privileges of the trans-Atlantic establishment. Tony Blair had already set the tone for such a rejection of the principles of the Peace of Westphalia and international law two years earlier in his infamous speech in Chicago, which provided the theoretical justification for the “endless wars”—i.e., the interventionist wars carried out under the pretext of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), a new kind of crusades, in which “Western values,” “democracy” and “human rights” are supposed to be transferred—with swords or with drones and bombs—to cultures and nations that come from completely different civilizational traditions.
Therefore, the disastrous failure of the Afghanistan war—after the failure of the previous ones, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the Libya war, the Syria war, the Yemen war—must urgently become the turning point for a complete shift in direction from the past 20 years.
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the very latest, an outbreak that was absolutely foreseeable and that Lyndon LaRouche had forecast in principle as early as 1973, a fundamental debate should have been launched on the flawed axiomatics of the Western liberal model. The privatization of all aspects of healthcare systems has certainly brought lucrative profits to investors, but the economic damage inflicted, and the number of deaths and long-term health problems have brutally exposed the weak points of these systems.
The strategic turbulence caused by the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, offers an excellent opportunity for a reassessment of the situation, for a correction of political direction and a new solution-oriented policy. The long tradition of geopolitical manipulation of this region, in which Afghanistan represents in a certain sense the interface, from the 19th Century “Great Game” of the British Empire to the “arc of crisis” of Bernard Lewis and Zbigniew Brzezinski, must be buried once and for all, never to be revived. Instead, all the neighbors in the region—Russia, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Turkey—must be integrated into an economic development strategy that represents a common interest among these countries, one that is defined by a higher order, and is more attractive than the continuation of the respective supposed national interests. This higher level represents the development of a trans-national infrastructure, large-scale industrialization and modern agriculture for the whole of Southwest Asia, as it was presented in 1997 by EIR and the Schiller Institute in special reports and then in the study “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge.” There is also a comprehensive Russian study from 2014, which Russia intended to present at a summit as a member of the G8, before it was excluded from that group.
In February of this year, the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan agreed on the construction of a railway line from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, via Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul, Afghanistan, to Peshawar in Pakistan. An application for funding from the World Bank was submitted in April. At the same time, the construction of a highway, the Khyber Pass Economic Corridor, between Peshawar, Kabul and Dushanbe was agreed to by Pakistan and Afghanistan. It will serve as a continuation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a showcase project of the Chinese BRI.
These transportation lines must be developed into effective development corridors and an east-west connection between China, Central Asia, Russia, and Europe as well as a north-south infrastructure network from Russia, Kazakhstan and China to Gwadar, Pakistan on the Arabian Sea, all need to be implemented.
All these projects pose considerable engineering challenges—just consider the totally rugged landscape of large parts of Afghanistan—but the shared vision of overcoming poverty and underdevelopment combined with the expertise and cooperation of the best engineers in China, Russia, the U.S.A., and Europe really can “move mountains” in a figurative sense. The combination of the World Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) New Development Bank, New Silk Road Fund, and national lenders could provide the necessary lines of credit.
Such a development perspective, including for agriculture, would also provide an alternative to the massive drug production plaguing this region. At this point, over 80% of global opium production comes from Afghanistan, and about 10% of the local population is currently addicted, while Russia not so long ago defined its biggest national security problem as drug exports from Afghanistan, which as of 2014 was killing 40,000 people per year in Russia. The realization of an alternative to drug cultivation is in the fundamental interest of the entire world.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the risk of further pandemics have dramatically underscored the need to build modern health systems in every single country on Earth, if we are to prevent the most neglected countries from becoming breeding grounds for new mutations, and which would defeat all the efforts made so far. The construction of modern hospitals, the training of doctors and nursing staff, and the necessary infrastructural prerequisites are therefore just as much in the interests of all political groups in Afghanistan and of all countries in the region, as of the so-called developed countries.
For all these reasons, the future development of Afghanistan represents a fork in the road for all mankind. At the same time, it is a perfect demonstration of the opportunity that lies in the application of the Cusan principle of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites. Remaining on the level of the contradictions in the supposed interests of all the nations concerned— India-Pakistan, China-U.S.A., Iran-Saudi Arabia, Turkey-Russia—there are no solutions.
If, on the other hand, one considers the common interests of all—overcoming terrorism and the drug plague, lasting victory over the dangers of pandemics, ending the refugee crises—then the solution is obvious. The most important aspect, however, is the question of the path we as humanity choose—whether we want to plunge further into a dark age, and potentially even risk our existence as a species, or whether we want to shape a truly human century together. In Afghanistan, it holds true more than anywhere else in the world: The new name for peace is development!
The conference “Italy on the New Silk Road” organized by Movisol (LaRouche’s movement in Italy) and the Lombardy Region (state legislature) in Milan Wednesday, was a success, with Undersecretary Michele Geraci (of the Task Force China in the Italian government) opening it and emphasizing the importance of the MOU which Italy will sign with President Xi Jinping on March 22 in Rome, of the benefits for Italy of this cooperation with China, including for the development of the Italian Mezzogiorno.
Undersecretary of the Task Force China in the Italian government, Michele Geraci and EIR’s Claudio Celani.
Geraci was followed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who explained the more profound meaning of this important development for the rest of the world, the realization of the New Paradigm for which Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have been working for the last 30 years. See a full text of Helga’s remarks below.
There was a short message from Sen. Tony Iwobi, the first Nigerian parliamentarian elected for the Lega, about the historical significance on the Transaqua project, which was then described in detail by Engineer Bocchetto of Bonifica, which is working on the feasibility study with China.
Geraci, Celani, Zepp-LaRouche and Movisol leader, Liliana Gorini.
Liliana Gorini, chairwoman of Movisol, concluded the conference by thanking the Lombardy Region, which had helped to organize it, and dedicating it to Lyndon LaRouche, who is known in Italy not only as the “visionary” of the New Silk Road, as former Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti defined him Tuesday in Corriere della Sera, but also as the main promoter of Glass-Steagall and LaRouche’s Four Laws, and reminding people how many parliamentarians who had heard him speak at the Italian Finance Committee at the Parliament in Rome in 1998, admitted years later that he was completely right.
TRANSCRIPT OF HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE’S REMARKS
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: It is in one sense quite amusing to see what high waves the possibility of Italy signing the MOU with China is causing right now. Because, when Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road in 2013 and then proceeded to make treaties in the meantime, I think it’s with 112 countries, an enormous growth developed, six major industrial corridors, the Belt and Road Initiative became very quickly the largest infrastructure project in history, ever. And the strange thing was that for about four years, in the mainstream media in the United States and Europe, there was practically no reporting about this.
And then, all of a sudden, in an obviously coordinated way, the major think tanks of Europe and the United States started a series of attacks, studies, that China is causing countries to fall into a debt trap, that it’s just an effort to replace the United States as the dominant force in the world, to become Chinese imperialists, that the Belt and Road projects are not viable, that China is an authoritarian system and Xi Jinping is a dictator. So all of a sudden, you had a barrage of attacks on this concept.
The funny thing is, if you would ask and listen to the leaders of the countries cooperating with the Belt and Road, like the Africans, the Asian countries, the Latin American countries, they would be full of praise and say that with the Chinese cooperation, they have for the first time, the opportunity to overcome the underdevelopment and poverty they had suffered as a result of Western colonialism, and 70 years of IMF conditionalities, which prevented them from having exactly that kind of development. And they were full of praise, calling China a friend — so you get a completely opposite view.
I have come to the conclusion that everything in the Western mainstream media are saying about China is fake news, and just a lie. And it comes from the fact that many people in the West simply have lost the ability to imagine that any country, let alone China, could promote something which is, indeed, for the common good of all of humanity. When Xi Jinping talks about the “shared community of the common future of mankind,” or the “community of destiny,” he means it! And isn’t it obvious that in the time of thermonuclear weapons, in international space travel, of conquering all the problems of the world, that we have to think about the one humanity first, before we talk about national interests? As a matter of fact, the concept of a win-win cooperation for the Belt and Road Initiative, it has all the economic aspects which are beneficial to all the countries that have participated.
But it is much more than that: Because from the standpoint of the evolution of mankind, if you take a step back, and don’t take a look at the conflict between Marseille and Trieste, which I understand is obviously very important for the Italians, but if you look at the larger point of view, isn’t it natural that infrastructure development would eventually open up all continents and connect them?
So now, all of a sudden, you have this eruption of anti-China propaganda, but it comes from the fact that we are now at a point where something is happening, which has already happened 16 times in history, namely, that the up-to-now dominant power is being surpassed by the up-to-now second largest power. And in history this has led 12 times to war, between those two competing power, and 4 times it was just that the second power surpassed the dominant power without war. China has emphasized many times, they don’t want, obviously, to follow the 12 examples where this conflict would lead to war, but they also don’t want to simply replace the United States in the role of the leader of an unipolar world, but that they want to build a completely new system of international relations based on sovereignty, on respect for the different social system, on non-interference, and actually proposing a completely new system of international relations.
So, the big question strategically is you have the conflict between the United States and Russia, which is obvious, because of the cancellation of the ABM Treaty, then the Russian reaction to that, and now the cancellation of the INF Treaty — so there are many who think that we are actually close, in worse strategic crisis than during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, because of the relations between the United States and Russia. But if you talk to some strategic insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, they easily admit that the much more dangerous conflict is actually the one between the United States and China: Will the United States accept the rise of Asia, and the Belt and Road Initiative is just the obvious expression of that? Or, is what was said by the RAND Corporation a couple of months ago, that it’s better to have the war with China now, than in 10 years, because the casualties will be less?
Well, obviously, this is something we have to change, and I think that the best way to change it is, indeed, to bring in this reality of a new paradigm of thinking altogether: We have to leave geopolitics. We have to leave the idea that there can be a legitimate interest of one country, or a group of country, against another bloc of countries, because this was what led twice to world war in the 20th century. As a matter of fact, I think the potential to overcome this conflict is absolutely there. I know in Europe, many people are fainting when you mention the name of President Donald Trump, but President Trump is not seeking confrontation with Russia — as a matter of fact, he wants to have an improved relation with Russia, which he proved in the summit with Putin in Helsinki. And despite the present trade tension, President Trump always talks about President Xi Jinping as his very good friend, and China being a great country and that he wants to actually have a good relationship between the United States and China.
So the attacks on Italy, coming from the White House — the [i]Financial Times[/i] mentioned this Garrett Marquis — is not representing the same view as Trump. It comes from a faction of the neo-con which are unfortunately also in the Trump Administration, but the factional situation in the United States is very divided. You have the Democrats and the neo-cons trying to get Trump out of office with Russiagate, but on the other side, I think President Trump has proven a tremendous sustainability against the efforts to drive him out of office, and his supporters are absolutely backing him, and the chances that there will be a second Trump Administration are actually very, very high.
Now one of the accusations against China and the Belt and Road Initiative is that it would divide Europe. I think everybody knows Europe is divided already, without China: You have the North-South conflict because of the EU austerity policy, which impoverished, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, gave no development to the East European countries, so they are now happy to cooperate with the Belt and Road initiative, because the EU did not provide these things. Now, the second area of division is obviously the migrant issue, where you have the division between East and West — the East European countries do not want to have any part of the proposed quota system of the EU.
Now, what Italy is actually doing in this context is really a role model, because the kind of cooperation between Italian firms and Chinese firms in the development of Africa is actually the only human way to address the refugee question.
So you have right now 13 countries which have already signed the MOU with China; you have, now with Italy, the first G7 country (which is really overrated, because the G7 is no longer that important as compared to the G20, for example). And you have many ports — Mr. Geraci said, if actually all the ports of Europe which are already wanting to be a hub between not only the New Silk Road over the land route, but also hubs to the Maritime Silk Road, Portugal and Spain becoming the hub for all the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries around the world. So there is a completely changed attitude developing very quickly.
Now, also even in Germany and France, the two countries which are now trying to put the brakes on the most, apart from the EU Commission, there are many cities which are absolutely recognizing their self-interest to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative. You have three states in Germany — Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria, and Brandenburg — which all the time have huge delegations back and forth; you have many cities whose mayors are complete fans of cooperation with China, and it is an increasing dynamic, which is growing more rapidly than you would think.
So, if you would ask my prognosis, I think the perspective of unifying Europe, not necessarily under the EU bureaucracy, but in the conception of de Gaulle, more like a “Europe of the Fatherlands” uniting with China, with Russia, with the Belt and Road Initiative, the Eurasian Economic Union [EAEU], and European countries, to cooperate fully in this new paradigm is absolutely there.
Well, I think that that is also the only way how Europe can impact the strategic situation: Because if you had a united Europe of the Fatherlands cooperating with the Belt and Road Initiative, including Germany and France, that would be the best way to get the United States to also give up their opposition — which I said, is not Trump himself, but these other forces — and get the United States to join the new paradigm. And I think this is the [i]only[/i] hope we have to avoid a catastrophe where we would end in World War III with nuclear weapons, meaning the extinction of civilization. So in that sense, what Italy is doing right now, is of the greatest historical importance, because Italy, with what you are doing, with the MOU but also with the joint ventures with China in Africa, can become the role model for all the other European countries.
But the New Silk Road is not just an economic concept. Obviously, infrastructure, investment, all of this is extremely important, as the backbone, but it has a much more, and not so well-known cultural/moral dimension, which I think is best expressed in the fact that the Chinese thinking is actually based on the Confucian theory, namely, that you absolutely must have harmony among all the nations, developing all in a harmonious way. And when some think tanks say that there is now a competition of systems between the Western liberal model and the state-guided model of the Chinese state economy, well, what they really mean is, China has developed its whole policy based on a Confucian orientation, which means that the state is also in charge of the moral improvement of its population through the aesthetical education. As a matter of fact, Xi Jinping has said repeatedly, that he puts the highest emphasis on the aesthetical education, because the result of this is the “beauty of the mind” and the “beauty of the soul.”
So the problem is, the reason why some people in the West regard that as a competition, is because Western neo-liberal and liberal philosophy has moved away from that conception: We are no longer humanists. We are no longer thinking as during the Italian Renaissance or the German Classical period, but we have replaced that with a liberal thinking of “everything is allowed,” every degenerate form of culture is allowed, everything goes — I don’t want to elaborate that, but if you look at the violence, the pornography in the entertainment, we don’t have to worry. We will lose that competition of the systems, simply because we are not taking care of our future generations, but allowing them to completely morally decay.
And that is why I think that we have to understand that the only way how Europe can persist in the coming future is not through military power — what Mr. Macron is proposing is ridiculous — but we will preserve our European culture [i]only[/i] if we return to the greatest tradition of our own history, meaning reviving the spirit and the ideas and principles of the Italian Renaissance, of the Ecole Polytechnique of France, of the German Classical music, literature, and poetry. Only if we rise again to our best traditions can we persist in the coming world.
So I think that the cultural dimension of the New Silk Road is as important, if not more important, than the question of economics.
I would be happy to take any questions. Thank you.
To offer solutions through a new global health initiative.
By Helga Zepp-LaRouche, The Schiller Institute, Founder and Chair
(To add your name to endorse the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites click here.)
The combination of crises we are now facing has reached such unprecedented proportions that it seems to exceed the psychological limits of what is bearable. Health experts throughout the world are warning that it may take another nine months before all nations can be supplied with a vaccine — and even then, the availability is not guaranteed. In the meantime, another one million people may lose their lives due to COVID-19.
But a much greater number of lives are threatened by the famine now spreading in developing countries, as a result of the decline in agriculture, and the collapse of the so-called informal sector of the economy. Many countries are already torn apart by preexisting social tensions that the pandemic has now exacerbated. This dynamic could massively grow in the coming months.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has reported a huge drop of 10.7% in global labor income in the first nine months of this year, which amounts to 3.5 trillion dollars, and a loss of up to 500 million jobs by the end of the year. In the advanced economies, the bankruptcies, short-hours, and layoffs that jeopardize the existence of so many, were at least temporarily attenuated by government relief programs. But most developing countries are totally unable to fund similar programs. In the so-called “lower-middle income” countries, the income loss amounted to 23.3% in the second quarter, and 15.6% in the third quarter, and the forecasts for the fourth are much more pessimistic.
Considering that more than half the population in sub-Saharan African countries did not have well-balanced and sufficient nourishment even before the outbreak of COVID-19, the news reported by Vice.com that food prices in all of Africa have risen by 250%, is truly catastrophic. As the head of the World Food Program (WFP) David Beasley has warned for months now, a famine of “biblical proportions” threatens to kill up to 300,000 people per day. Phillip Tsokolibane, Schiller Institute collaborator in South Africa, has issued an urgent appeal for an international mobilization to fight starvation in Africa. “It is not a matter of what will happen – IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING.”
It is clear that faced with such a tragedy, only governments working together can implement the emergency programs needed to save the lives of many millions. However, unfortunately, the past months have shown that geopolitical confrontation with Russia and China is on the West’s agenda, and not cooperation, and, to name just one example, of the 5 billion dollars that the WFP urgently requires, it has only received 750 million. What is to be done? Shall we stand by, and watch the tragedy play out before our eyes?
In response to the 14th century Dark Age, which was characterized by catastrophes similar to those of today, Nicholas of Cusa, the inventor of modern science and the sovereign nation-state, and the great thinker of the 15th century, developed a new method of thinking, the Coincidentia Oppositorum, which represented, as he emphasized, an entirely new approach to solving problems. It was the idea that the human mind, in the living image of the Creator, is able to define the higher level on which all seemingly unsolvable contradictions can be resolved. According to Nicholas, the human mind is able to think of the One, which is of a higher power than the Many. In a similar way, Albert Einstein observed that problems cannot be solved on the level on which they were created.
Thinking in terms of the coincidence of opposites is the method that must be applied to solve the crisis that threatens all mankind today. We have to define a solution that meets the existential needs of all relevant individuals and interest groups on an equal basis. Concretely, this approach is readily applicable in regard to the pandemic.
It is the young people of this world whose future is most threatened by the combination of the pandemic and the economic crisis, although they were in no way responsible for them. Therefore, we need to develop prospects for them that both address the real problem, and give them a concrete task. We will only be able to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, and similar future pandemics, if a modern healthcare program is established in every single country of the world, one which corresponds, in principle, to the Hill-Burton standard in the U.S., the German and French healthcare systems before their privatization drives, or the system which proved to be so successful in Wuhan, China.
The first step in that direction could be taken by setting up partnerships between, for example, university clinics, hospitals, and medical faculties in the U.S. and European nations, and similar institutions in Africa. To build a modern healthcare system, not only medical capacities, such as hospitals, infrastructure, water, electricity, etc. are needed, but also a large number of well-trained medical personnel.
In that regard, such partnerships should train young people in the U.S., Europe and African countries, some of whom are unemployed, firstly, to become, medical auxiliaries, and then medical personnel, on the model of Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The very first step is to train young people so they can be deployed into the communities, or villages, and show the population the public health measures needed to fight the pandemic. In Tuskegee (Alabama), Tennessee, St. Louis (Missouri), and other places in the U.S., such cooperation with local institutions is already in place, which also involves clinics and local police forces in the various confidence-building measures, such as home visits, which is of extraordinary importance, given the overall uncertainties of the population, and the (often massive) campaigns against wearing masks, the rejection of vaccines, etc.
In the African partnership projects, the joint training and deployment of American and European youth aid workers with African youth, also requires confidence-building measures that can be carried out by medical personnel, as well as representatives of churches, or disaster-control organizations. Such programs should first focus on the distribution of medical supplies, and easily transportable food, such as powdered milk, dried and canned meat, etc., and then be expanded, as quickly as possible, to include training in infrastructure building, farming and industrial projects.
In the social flashpoints in American cities or European suburbs, where violent street fights have recently occurred for various reasons, and where young people are exposed to a wide array of dangers, such as drugs, alcohol, gang crime, internet addiction and a degraded counterculture, such training opportunities would be just the alternative they need to find a socially necessary and future-oriented task. In the U.S., such creative non-violent direct action would be in the historic tradition of the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It should be remembered that Amelia Boynton Robinson, the civil rights activist who had brought Dr. King to Selma, Alabama, and who was beaten up by the police, and left for dead on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, during the infamous “Bloody Sunday” in March 1965, was the Vice President of the Schiller Institute for 25 years.
This is not the place to discuss the complexity of the social flashpoints, be it in the American cities where violence has broken out, in particular in the aftermath of the murder of African-American George Floyd, or in the French suburbs, where the effects of the pandemic dramatically exacerbated the long-standing social unrest. Although those social conflicts are undoubtedly instrumentalized by certain forces for their own political ends, it is nonetheless urgent to eliminate the real causes of the despair and uprooting of the young generation. Such an initial training to become medical auxiliaries, in many cases, can be the entry point for further professional training as a nurse, doctor or medical scientist.
In this moment of extreme polarization and violence in the streets the Committee of Coincidence of Opposites will also reconnect to the nonviolent tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, who defeated the British Empire in India, with that method and the Civil Rights Movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who were able to bring otherwise totally opposed political forces together in direct civil action.
This committee should bring together people with various qualifications, who can demonstrate in an initially small, but well-designed, example, how to approach the problem, in such a way that it can also be used as a pilot project for the large-scale government programs, that will hopefully follow soon after.
While it is urgent to train enough medical personnel worldwide to build a world health system, it must go hand in hand with overcoming the hunger pandemic. It is a crime against humanity that, as a result of the hunger crisis, massively compounded by the pandemic, literally many millions of people in developing countries are at risk of starvation (one of the most excruciating forms of death, according to former UN commissioner for Human Rights Jean Ziegler), while in the U.S. and Europe, farmers are struggling for their economic survival. Some have had to kill their herds, because the cartels have created slave labor-like conditions in the meat processing industry, leading to the repeated emergence of COVID-19 clusters. It is also unacceptable that the farmers, who produce vital sustenance for the entire society, are driven into bankruptcy by the maximum-profit policy of the banks and cartels, and by ideological, so-called “green” constraints.
Farm representatives should therefore join these medical teams to organize the emergency delivery of appropriate foodstuffs to crisis zones, and to begin training other young people to develop agricultural capacities in developing countries. Together with African farmers, they could begin to set up modern agriculture, which, of course, requires the development of infrastructure, water and electricity supplies, etc. There are enthusiastic young and older farmers in the U.S., Germany, France or Italy, who, in such a crisis situation, would consider it part of their mission in life to help overcome an unprecedented emergency with such a program.
The U.S. and Europe need an association of retired medical workers, concerned individuals, and social and religious organizations, to work together on this committee, in order to set up this training project. Part of their task is also to raise the donations needed from international and medium-sized firms, from board members who understand not only that these projects are a humanitarian necessity, but that it is also in their own best interest to maintain a livable world.
As soon as these projects take on a concrete form, they will spark the kind of enthusiasm that all great pioneer projects can generate, despite the seriousness of the situation, and they will give future prospects to many young people who would otherwise be dragged into social revolts and violent activities.
As mentioned, such a private initiative (direct civil action) in the tradition of the non-violent actions of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. cannot, by itself, solve the gigantic challenge before us. But it can provide a practical example of how people of good will can intervene in an otherwise desperate situation, and point to the required solution. These concrete examples will then encourage governments, or put pressure on them, to join forces and create, through a new credit system, the framework to permanently overcome underdevelopment in the developing countries.
In that way, the idea of Nicholas of Cusa, that a solution can be found on a higher level that takes into account the interests of all those involved, would find a concrete application today. This initiative will contribute to the fight against the pandemic, it will define a meaningful task for young people, and it will help to improve acute emergency situations in economically disadvantaged regions in the U.S. and Europe, as well as African countries. It will also highlight the vital importance of agriculture in times of famine, and save people from starvation. In a situation where many people feel powerless in the face of the catastrophe of the century, the committee will give every individual the opportunity to contribute something to overcoming the crisis.
To add your name to endorse the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites click here or for more information call 917-475-8828.
