Europe SI activity

Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Paris and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO & ICESCO signs Schiller Institute petition

March 1, 2024by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Afghanistan, Cultural renaissance updates, Culture, France, France SI activity, General, General updates, Our initiatives (petitions, etc)

On Thursday February 29, 2024, in Paris, HE Mr Mohammad Homayoon Azizi, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Paris and UNESCO (on the right in the photo), added his signature to the Schiller Institute’s petition calling on the governments of the Western world to extend and strengthen cooperation in order to protect and preserve Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. H.E. Azizi added that he sincerely hopes that the 46th Session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, to be held in July this year in New Delhi, India, will contribute to strengthening relations in this field with his country. On the left, Karel Vereycken, representative of the Schiller Institute, warmly thanking the ambassador for his commitment.

Read and sign the petition here.

Humanity for Peace broadcast – No2 more Hiroshimas!

August 3, 2023by madeleine in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Europe SI activity, General, Global Diplomacy, Helga media coverage or interview, Helga Video, United States SI activity

Join us this Thursday (August 3rd) 3pm EDT (9pm CET) for a special No2Nato Humanity for Peace rally featuring just some guest speakers from across the globe who will be speaking at the Sunday 6 Aug rallies across the globe commemorating the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Unite with us demanding it to never happen again!

Schiller Institute Petition Quoted on DataBase Italia TV

March 26, 2022by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Economic development updates, Europe SI activity, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Italy, Italy SI activity, Media coverage of our activity, Our initiatives (petitions, etc)

MILAN, March 22, 2022 (EIRNS)—Three VIP signers, from Italy, of the Schiller Institute petition for a new security architecture, Alessia Ruggeri and journalists Luca La Bella and Gianmarco Landi, were on a program of DataBase Italia TV last night, entitled “The End of Globalization.” After describing the present situation in Ukraine as very different from how the mainstream media portray it, including the use of hypersonic missiles by Russia, which can put a quick end to the war and destroy the military potential of the neo-Nazi militias, host Landi quoted Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute petition for a new security architecture as the only alternative to the danger of a general war, and asked Alessia Ruggeri to talk about it, as she had already in a recent interview on the Schiller Institute petition published by DataBase Italia.

Alessia Ruggeri explained that it is a very important petition, which was signed by thousands of citizens and many VIP signers from all over the world, and which calls for the principle of the Peace of Westphalia to put an end to the geopolitical confrontation policy and the failed economic policies which led to this war. She emphasized that what is being shown on TV is not the real situation, and that people are not aware of the severe consequences of the boomerang sanctions which are hitting Italy, and other countries, much worse than the Russian economy. For example, she quoted the shutting down of all McDonalds restaurants in Russia, which was quickly converted into a Russian brand to save jobs.

She also reported many mail messages she receives about hoarding of pasta and oil in Italian supermarkets, noting that people believe that wheat is produced in Italy but is not—it comes from Russia and Ukraine. She reminded viewers (around 3,000 last night) that as a result of the failed economic policies of the West, many businesses are shutting down, but as a mother of two children and a trade unionist she called on small entrepreneurs, like the ones in Southern Italy, “not to give up hope, there is a possibility for a change.” The full program is available here.

Schiller Institute NYC Chorus Dedicates Concert to the “Spirit of the Elbe”

April 26, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Boston SI activity, Cultural renaissance updates, Denmark SI activity, Detroit SI activity, Europe SI activity, France SI activity, General, General updates, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Houston SI activity, Ibero-America SI activity, Music updates, New York City SI activity, Northern Virginia SI activity, Our cultural events, Our musical events, United States SI activity

April 25 (EIRNS) – The Schiller Institute NYC Chorus & with friends from Ibero-America and Europe broadcast an uplifting concert this afternoon, which was introduced as follows by Jen Pearl:

Good afternoon, and welcome to `Beethoven’s Credo: Believe in the Future, a World Without War.’ My name is Jen Pearl and I am the chair of the board for the Schiller NYC chorus.

On December 17th, 2019, Beethoven’s 249th birthday, our chorus, the SI NYC Chorus participated in an event at Carnegie of the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture, opening up what was supposed to be a year-long celebration of the Beethoven 250th year. We performed the choral movement of the Ninth Symphony there, with the preeminent Gerard Schwarz as conductor. We took as our objective to perform Beethoven’s great Missa Solemnis a year later.

Then we all know what happened. While many choruses and arts organizations were forced to pull back during the lockdown, the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus pushed ahead, despite the challenges, because we know how important it is to sing beautiful and profound music in times of crisis—music, which connects us at the higher level of humanity as a single immortal species. We managed to present virtual performances of the Kyrie and Gloria last December.

Today’s concert is truly special because it features another movement the Missa Solemnis.

And while we are excited and joyful about bringing you the Credo movement of the Missa Solemnis and other beautiful selections tonight, we are also performing this concert in the context of a world fraught with crises, including an increasing potential of world war and starvation in Yemen and Syria. The beauty of tonight’s program, which reflects the very best of mankind’s creativity, is also very much in direct contrast or dissonance with the very worst actions being done at the hand of human beings, right now as we speak, toward entire nations and populations of children.

Beethoven once said that, if people understood his music, there would be no war.

On this day, April 25th, 76 years ago there was an event that resonates powerfully still today with that sentiment, that mankind should not settle disputes with violence. This was the day during WW II that American and Soviet troops met from the east and the west at the Elbe River near Torgau Germany, south of Berlin, ensuring an early end of the war, and thus became known as `Spirit of the Elbe.’ We dedicate this concert to that spirit which is much needed today. So we will begin our concert today with this short video introduction.

Near the end of the concert, Jen Pearl made the following closing remarks:

Our final offering this evening is Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus. Mozart composed this motet in a perfect way to evoke from you the awe you would experience when seeing the body of Christ for the first time. Imagine what your reaction would be then as you listen, think of how Mozart evokes that in you!. Mozart’s opening words are `hail, hail true body. . .’ As with any great classical work, the singer and you, the audience, can relive the experience of that actual moment in history and therefore experience true immortality.

We are now in a moment of history, where we need to evoke that quality of empathy and immortality in ourselves in order to take all of mankind into our hearts and souls. As we referenced at the beginning, we invite you to join the chorus of voices that are calling for an end to these wars, sanctions, and starvation, particularly in Yemen and Syria. You can find Mrs. LaRouche’s urgent call in today’s program and I invite you to join us. Thank you, and now you will hear Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus.

Note the concert can be viewed at this link.

Movisol Conference on BRI in Milan

March 14, 2019by Jason Ross in Europe SI activity, Helga statement, article, transcript, Helga Video, New Silk Road / BRI updates, Our economic development events, World Land-Bridge updates

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.

Schiller Institute in Denmark testifies in Parliament

November 23, 2018by Jason Ross in Denmark SI activity, Our economic development events

Thursday, November 22, 2018, Schiller Institute in Denmark chairman Tom Gillesberg, accompanied by a 4-person delegation, gave testimony before the Business Committee of the Danish parliament, Folketing. We requested the 15-minute testimony in the hope that the recent series of serious bank scandals to hit the country, would increase the openness to our proposals for what needs to be done to prevent a new financial crash.

In fact, the committee members were in shock after hearing the whistleblower in the Danske Bank (Danish Bank) money laundering case speak at a hearing on Monday.

Tom Gillesberg reminded the committee of our 2007 election campaign forecast before the last crisis, and the deregulation that caused it, our proposals for Glass Steagall and other measures afterwards which have not been heeded, and warned of the coming crisis. Tom then presented The Schiller Institute’s comprehensive solution consisting of 1. Join the New Silk Road; 2. Create a New Bretton Woods credit system, and; 3. Implement LaRouche’s Four Laws.

There were two committee members present, one from Venstre, a liberal party, and one Social Democrat. They both had supportive comments about our role in the Danish political process, and asked good questions.

While we were waiting to give our testimony, the foreign minister came by and received a copy of our testimony, as did the business minister, who had spoken to the committee just before us.

In fact, the committee had sent our testimony request letter to the Business Minister Rasmus Jarløv, and asked for his comment to The Schiller Institute’s proposal for Glass-Steagall bank separation. The minister first explained what Glass-Steagall was. Then he stated that the EU had discussed bank separation after the last crisis, and that in 2014, the commission had introduced a proposal to separate certain trading activities from normal activity, but that this proposal was withdrawn. This was discussed in Denmark, but because he said that trading activity was not the cause of the crisis in Denmark, it was not adopted. Denmark responded by increasing requirements for bank capital solidity, and instituted procedures for the resolution of troubled SIFI banks.

As supplementary material, The Schiller Institute submitted an article in Danish about Glass-Steagall, and the section “Without LaRouche’s Four Laws, financial crash means chaos,” from the new Silk Road report, which is now available on the parliament’s homepage. The business minister has also been asked to comment on this material.

Next Thursday, The Schiller Institute in Denmark is holding a seminar entitled, “The World After the U.S. Mid-term Elections: Glass-Steagall bank separation and a New Bretton Woods credit system can make the New Silk Road become the World Land-Bridge,” with a live-video presentation by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, a presentation by Hussein Askary, and a pre-recorded presentation by Paul Gallagher.

Schiller Institute delegation to Parliament.

Schiller Institute’s Full Testimony Before Danish Parliament’s Business Committee

I am Tom Gillesberg, Chairman of the Schiller Institute in Denmark. Thank you for allowing us to come.

The Danish public has had a sudden awakening to the true state of the Danish financial world. For many years, Danske Bank (Danish Bank) has been deeply involved in money laundering, and both the bank’s management and the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority failed completely, after they became aware of the problem many years ago. It has also been revealed, that other major SIFI banks (Systematically Important Financial Institutions) in Denmark have colluded in tax evasion, and have failed in their fight against fraud and money laundering. Finally, many of the Danish banks, as well as their international colleagues, have contributed to the looting of the Danish and foreign treasury funds through fraudulent dividend tax rebates (also known as Cum-ex). All of this shows, that it is not a matter of individual problems, or individual bad apples, but is a systemic problem in which the entire banking and financial world is impregnated with uncontrolled greed, putting its own financial gain above the law, and the general welfare. The policy of deregulation, and allowing the financial world to control itself, has failed. This was actually already evident in connection with the meltdown of the international financial system in 2007-2008.

I, and other activists from the Schiller Institute, warned about this already in 2007, when I ran for parliament with the slogan: “After the financial crash – Maglev across the Kattegat” (here or a footnote: the body of water separating the island of Zealand, where Copenhagen is located, and Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city on the Jutland peninsula). But our warnings were ignored. Then, after the crash in 2008 – where only a Danish government guarantee covering all financial institutions prevented a meltdown in the Danish banking world – when we suggested how to clean up the financial world through the implementation of Glass-Steagall bank separation, which would separate the wheat from the chaff in the process – separate normal banking activity, important to the society, from the casino economy – there was again an institutional refusal to listen, in Denmark, and the rest of the Western world. They would not put an end to the unhealthy behavior in the financial world that had created the collapse in 2008. If entire financial sector had not been deregulated, and Glass-Steagall banking separation abolished in the U.S. in 1999, we would have avoided the financial crisis.

But then, the focus was to save the banks, and all other players in the financial world, with bank packages and quantitative easing, at the expense of the real economy and the living standards of ordinary people. Therefore, today, we are facing a coming financial crisis, which is potentially far worse than the one we experienced in 2008. The Danish measures of letting banks and mortgage companies increase their capital solidity (with customers’ money), will not prevent a new crisis. Without a separation of the activities in the financial supermarkets, as in 2007-2008, we still have no fire doors that can prevent fire in a part of the financial world from spreading to the entire financial house.

The imminent financial collapse

There are many ticking bombs under the international financial system. In the wake of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s rate hikes, there are more and more warnings about a coming meltdown of the $3.5 trillion sized U.S. corporate debt market, where more and more unsecured loans are being repackaged and resold in many different disguises – similar to the bad U.S. mortgage loans in 2007-2008. This has been accompanied by a fall in the stock markets, and a sharp fall in economic growth in the U.S. and Europe. The Bank for International Settlements warned of this dangerous development in its annual report in July, and the Bank of England did something similar in October. Then, the IMF’s explicit warning of falling corporate bond markets came in the IMF blog on November 12th.

A collapse of the mortgage debt market will have greater consequences than the collapse of the U.S. subprime loan bubble in 2008. Once the crisis is triggered, it will hit the banks around the world, and behind the polished surface, they have become even bigger, and even more bankrupt than they were in 2008. Like the upbeat to the 2007-2008 crisis, there has also been a collapse and capital flight from the so-called “emerging markets,” and the gigantic, unregulated market for financial derivatives can implode at any time.

The Solution

There is no Band-aid solution that can fix this, but the Schiller Institute and the international LaRouche movement have proposed a coherent solution for how we can surgically remove the speculative cancer tumor, and create credit for productive investments, both internationally, and here Denmark.

1. We must join the New Silk Road

While most of the economy in the western world has been lagging for the last 10 years, and most people have experienced a falling standard of living, China has continued to experience strong economic growth, and has been able to lift more and more people out of poverty. The 2008 crisis was used to launch massive infrastructure projects, so China now has more kilometers of high-speed trains than the rest of the world combined. New towns, water projects, power stations and other infrastructure have been built, which make it possible to take care of a growing population, with an increasing standard of living.

In 2013, China’s President Xi Jinping launched this development policy on and international level with the Belt & Road Initiative, also known as The New Silk Road, which, today, is 12 times larger than the U.S. Marshall Plan after World War II, and over 60 countries are now participating. Denmark ought to be a prominent part of this development agenda, especially in Africa and South-West Asia.

2. A New Bretton Woods Credit System

On November 30, the G20 summit will occur in Argentina, and the Schiller Institute has suggested that the summits between President Trump, Xi Jinping and Putin be used to establish a new Bretton Woods credit system, in cooperation with India’s Prime Minister Modi. A new version of the old fixed-exchange system, established after World War II, but now, to create long-term credit for the development of all nations. This is the only thing that can prevent the ongoing disintegration of the current City of London and Wall Street-based financial system from leading to chaos and possible war.

3. LaRouche’s Four Laws

In Denmark, we can now prepare measures that can protect our economy against the upcoming financial tsunami. The Schiller Institute has proposed Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws, a conceptual script to turn our economy away from financial speculation, and back to physical economy, and scientific and technological progress:

1. The enactment of Glass-Steagall bank separation of the Danish financial sector, where we clear out, and reorganize the banking system and divide normal banking activity from financial speculation. The financial supermarkets must be separated into normal banks, investment banks, mortgage business and insurance, each on its own. Banks and other financial institutions must be divided and reduced in size, so they no longer constitute a systemic risk, and the government deposit guarantee will only apply to normal banks;

2. We must create government credit for productive investment in the economy;

3. We must channel part of this credits into major infrastructure projects, and other things, that can increase productivity, and energy-flux-density in the economy, and create the next, higher economic platform for Denmark, such as a Kattegat bridge and a national maglev network, and fixed connections between Helsingør (Demark) and Helsingborg (Sweden), and under the Fehmarn Belt (to Germany).

4. We must invest heavily in research and development of the areas that create future technologies, such as nuclear power, fusion energy, space research, etc. The biggest mistake we can make, is to believe that we can leave these questions to the financial world. It has proven that it has neither the moral compass, nor the necessary solutions, to ensure our future. Therefore, the state must now assume its responsibility, and establish the necessary laws and regulations that can safeguard the general welfare, and the future of Denmark, and the Danish people. In light of the recent bank scandals, there is a broad public backing for doing just that.

Thank you.

The Schiller Institute’s New Silk Road Dossier in French Presented in Paris

November 13, 2018by Jason Ross in France SI activity, General, Our economic development events, World Land-Bridge updates

The French edition of the Schiller Institute report “New Silk Roads Becomes the World Land-Bridge Vol II,” was presented on Nov. 6 at a Paris seminar. Among the 100 participants were representatives of 10 embassies from Europe, Africa and Eurasia, Chinese and Russian media, strategic analysts, and African associations particularly interested by the industrialization perspective for their continent.

This dossier will help to counter the negative propaganda about the New Silk Road promoted by many of the national think tanks and media in France, including the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), which just published a very hostile report. While the French government is open to participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, it is so far only involved in small joint projects in the area of artificial intelligence, and a couple of joint projects in Namibia and Cambodia.

Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche opened the seminar, followed by representatives of the French Schiller Institute who gave brief outlines on the contents. Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted that the Schiller Institute’s dossier, with its development projects for Africa, the Middle East, and the rest of the world, offers the solutions to the major crises of today, including the threat of a new financial crash, the refugee flows, and world peace. In the same vein, the Belt and Road Initiative, based on the principle of win-win cooperation, proposes an alternative to geopolitics, which seeks to impose the interests of one country or group of countries (empire) on others. Zepp-LaRouche drew a parallel between Xi Jinping’s idea of a “shared community of principle for the future of humanity” and the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa of the “coincidence of opposites”, where humanity is thought of as a “One”, which is of a higher magnitude than the “Many”.

Odile Mojon went through the 40-year historic role of Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche in the emergence of this Eurasian perspective, going back to the fights of the non-aligned movement in the 70s and the 80s and up to the emergence today of the BRICS group and China's New Silk Road. Karel Vereycken presented the secrets of the Chinese development model, which has nothing to do with British free trade, but much more with centralized long-term planning that regulates the market, such as guided the New Deal in the US and the French planning tradition.

Sebastien Périmony went through the rapid industrialization occurring in Africa as a result of Chinese investments, a situation that is creating panic in France whose market shares plunged from 11% to 5,5% between 2000 and 2017, while the Chinese share rose from 3% in 2001 to 18% last year. Périmony debunked the “debt trap” campaign designed to discredit Chinese initiatives, and concluded by presenting a few large infrastructure projects like the Trans-Sahelian Noukchott-Ndjamena railway, which would give France an excellent opportunity to engage with China in joint African projects.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche in Paris: “It’s now or never for the New Silk Road”

November 8, 2018by Jason Ross in France SI activity, General, Helga Video, Our economic development events, World Land-Bridge updates

On the occasion of the release of the French version of the Schiller Institute’s report “The New Silk Road becomes the World Landbridge,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche presents the urgency of making this new paradigm a reality.

Image credit: Getfunky Paris, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eiffel_Tower_and_Pont_Alexandre_III_at_night_(banner_esVoy).jpg

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Addresses Institut Mandela Conference in Paris

July 15, 2018by Motoki Kasai in France SI activity, Helga statement, article, transcript

PARIS, July 10 – Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche was invited on July 6 to address the Institut Mandela for the African Economic and Consular Days in Paris.

Madame Zepp-LaRouche was invited on the subject “Partnership, Inclusive Growth and Infrastructure in Africa” following the publication of her call to the European Union to apply the model of the Singapore summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un to a European development project for Africa. Her appeal, “History Is Now Being Written in Asia! The EU Summit Must Follow the Example of Singapore!” has been being circulated in the African networks in France, as well as throughout Europe.

The video of her remarks is available HERE and the transcript is below.

The first panel presented the “Singapore spirit” with the participation of the Ambassador of Eritrea, speaking on the end of the war with Ethiopia and the economic perspective of the biggest free trade zone in Djibouti, for real cooperation in the region.

Following her presentation was Ghana’s Minister Plenipotentiary and Deputy Head of Mission Bonaventure Adjavor at the Paris Embassy, who developed the concept of a new era for Africa—a new era of manufacturing from raw materials, and no longer merely exporting them. He used the example of cocoa, of which Ghana and Ivory Coast have 80% of world production, all of which goes for export. But he described that cocoa can be a primary material for manufacturing many products, including brandy, body lotion, chocolate, etc., and that the policy of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s government is to do that.

President Akufo-Addo, then newly elected, is famous for his public lecture to visiting French President Emmanuel Macron during their joint press conference on Dec. 4, 2017, in which Akufo-Addo said Africa “can no longer continue to make policy for ourselves … on the basis of whatever support that the Western world or France, or the European Union can give us…. We have to get away from this mindset of dependency. … Our concern should be what do we need to do in this 21st century to move Africa away from being cap in hand … to have a mindset that says we can do it … and once we have that mindset we’ll see there’s a liberating factor for ourselves.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche then spoke, defining the long-term perspective for Africa and the world, presenting the World Land-Bridge report and the physical project for Africa within the framework of the Belt and Road dynamic, as in Ethiopia with the high-speed train. She also presented the other projects the Schiller Institute has developed or promoted including the Transaqua project, and the extension of the World Land-Bridge into Africa via a tunnel between Spain and Morocco and/or between Sicily and Tunisia.

The audience was very challenged by the optimistic vision of Africa, as Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche showed the photograph of Africa from space at night, as it is now, and as it would be, all lit up, in 2050.

All 40 people in the room and on the panels were members of institutions, such as the International Organization of La Francophonie, and lawyers, entrepreneurs, public relations, etc.

The next speaker was the president of the Efficiency Club, formed by the Diaspora and first pan-African economic network of Europe. They are trying to stop the flow of remissions from the diaspora to Africa just to help their families survive. He developed the necessity to create a network of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) throughout the continent to provide jobs and not just subsistence on money.

Then a final panel was very interesting, with one of the panelists bringing in the economics of Alexander Hamilton, and how Africa has to go with this manufacturing economy. He also mentioned that Colbert had called Huygens and Cassini to France to develop a real science academy, and asserted that Africa has to do the same today. Many contacts were made … our time is now.

The Institut Mandela is dedicated to the strategic mission of Africa’s emergence as well as the “open society” values of peace through “intellectual diplomacy.” Its proposals are conveyed to public policymakers, the international community, private actors, and civil society, so that they can make visionary decisions. Its fundamental mission is to reorganize intellectually and institutionally the African countries.

The Institut’s activities revolve around six research areas:
Security and Development, Emergence of Africa, Geopolitics and Geostrategy of raw materials, Africanization of democracy, Prospects of African governance, Energy and Environment.

The Mandela Prizes are awarded annually to personalities or institutions to acknowledge their laudable actions in favor of Africa and peace, in the spirit of Pan-Africanism.

Transcript of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

There is a profound reason for optimism for the African continent, because with the rise of China, and especially the New Paradigm which emerged with the Belt and Road Initiative, the world has been changing, especially in the last five years with an incredible speed. What China has done with the New Silk Road is to develop a new model of relations among each other, and it is an initiative which is open to all nations of the world.

So this map is actually a map of uniting all continents through tunnels and bridges, and as we can see, African development is an integral part of this world development.

What has happened is that with the offer to have a win-win cooperation, where according to the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, already 140 nations are participating, in various degrees, the spirit of the New Silk Road has actually captured the imagination of many countries in Africa, in Asia, and in Latin America, who see for the first time the concrete possibility to overcome poverty and underdevelopment in the short term.

In the last ten, but especially five years, what China has done is to create development potentials after centuries of colonialism and decades of IMF conditionalities, which were designed to prevent African and Third World development in general.

With this new change in the strategic situation there is the absolute perspective of turning Africa into a global powerhouse.

There has been a study published last November, that Africa is going to be the next factory of the world, and the Russian International Affairs Council, RIAC, just put out new figures showing the positive role of China in the development of Africa.

In 2000, the total trade between China and African states was $10 billion only. In 2014, the China was already Africa’s main trading partner, with a trade volume of $200 billion, and in 2017 China gave additional loans of more than $100 billion.

(Next) Naturally, this is the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway, which was built with Chinese help; it’s 750km long, and it now allows also to bring food aid to areas which are hit by drought which was not possible before. And this is just the very beginning. China also has developed a China-Africa Development Fund, which is financed by the China Development Fund, and also many of the other state banks of China have been involved in direct investments. Over the last decade, China took part in the creation of more than 100 industrial zones, 40% of which are already operational. They have helped to build 5,756km of railway, 4335km of motorways, 9 ports, 14 airports, 34 power stations, 10 large and 1,000 small hydroelectric power stations, and by the end of 2016, it had this number.

This coming September, there will be a big China-African Union summit which obviously will take this relationship to a new level.

There is a fundamental change, because previously the Western countries refused to invest in a real way in Africa, but with the second largest economy of the world, there is now the chance for African nations to replicate the Chinese model of development, each in their own African way. But nevertheless, in terms of the infrastructure and industrial development they can take China as a model, which after all, in the last 40 years had an incredible transformation, from being a very, very underdeveloped country, to now being an absolutely breathtaking, dynamic economy.

This is the positive side. On the other side, we are confronted with unprecedented challenges: Terrorism, financial turbulence, migrants, and a large percentage of the 68.5 million refugees worldwide are migrating from Africa, trying to get through the Sahara, many of them dying of thirst; or drowning in the Mediterranean, where in the last years, thousands if not tens of thousands of people have drowned.

Since the refugee crisis escalated in Southwest Asia and Africa in 2015, it became very clear how deeply disunited the European Union is. And especially in the recent weeks there was a total government crisis in Germany, which nearly ended the political career of Chancellor Merkel. There was demonstrated a complete erosion of the EU: No unity, no solidarity, tensions between France and Italy, total tensions between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. And it is also very clear that they could not come up with any solution, because all they could propose at the recent EU summit was a complete brutalization of the migrant issue: They want to militarize Frontex, to supposedly keep the refugees out of the EU, which is sort of a maritime border police, and there were event proposals to use the German army or even NATO, to put the refugees into “disembarkment camps,” as they call them, either within Europe or in North African states, all of which already have rejected to be the hosts of such camps.

And Pope Francis has compared these camps to the concentration camps of the Nazi period.

So, what has happened to “Western values”? What about human rights? What about democracy? These are barbarian proposals, and they’re not only inhuman, but they also will not work. They will not work: They all the time talk about that one needs to look at the root causes for the refugee crisis, but they never do.

So, I have a proposal how this can be changed: I call it the “Singapore Summit model.” We all have witnessed the very historic summit between President Trump and President Kim Jong-un of North Korea recently in Singapore. And it is very clear that it {is} the New Silk Road Spirit which has changed the environment in Asia, which made this summit possible in the way it took place, and it is also an example of how you can change, within a few months, a relationship of complete adversity and the potential trigger of a large nuclear war, which was the situation between the United States and North Korea, and turn it into cooperation. This agreement now includes the denuclearization of North Korea, in exchange for the promise from the United States, China and Russia to help to develop North Korea economically, and turn it into a prosperous nation.

My proposal was that the EU should have changed the agenda of their just-concluded summit, invite Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the African heads of state who already have successfully cooperated with China; and then present a comprehensive crash program for the development of the infrastructure in Africa. (Next slide) Where the presence of Xi Jinping would give this credibility, because China has delivered on development, and the idea would be to present such an integrated, continental transport plan, a trans-African transport network, which already has been proposed by Foreign Minister Wang Yi in 2014, and reiterated in 2016.

If these leaders, the Europeans, the Africans, and the Chinese leader would say that it is our intent to make a crash program for such a development, then this would be a signal to the young people now running away, risking their life in drowning in the Mediterranean, or ending up in a concentration camp, to participate in the economic buildup of their own country.

At the recent visit of French President Macron in Ghana, Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo basically told Macron that, we don’t need your development aid crumbs; what we need is a real investment. And he called on the youth that they should not try to get to Europe, but that this energy these young people have should be used to build up the country. This would require training centers, very much like what Franklin D.

Roosevelt did with the New Deal, the CCC program, training especially young people in the Civilian Conservation Corps; and then, such a summit, making such a declaration of intent, could be like the Singapore Summit, a complete turnaround.

I think we have to use, also, Xi Jinping’s notion of “sustainability.” Not to mean “appropriate technologies,” which in reality means no technology, and not sustainability which means only green solar and wind, but it means total infrastructure and industrialization as the new definition of sustainability.

African nations do not have to repeat all the levels and phases of the industrialization of the Western countries, but like China they can leapfrog to the most advanced technologies, such as focussing on high-speed trains, on magnetic levitation, on the fourth generation nuclear power. Party of this plan should be, first, a regional infrastructure investment bank, like the AIIB for Asia,— like an African Infrastructure Investment Bank—and that should be parallelled with national credit mechanisms, or national banks, to have the internal financing of the infrastructure.

Secondly, there should be an integrated network of high-speed trains, waterways between rivers and lakes, the full development of hydropower projects, the fourth general of nuclear electricity generation, and desalination of large amounts of ocean water for irrigation. Also, as the Ambassador of Ghana already said this morning, there should not be the export of raw materials, at least not only, but high-end petrochemical and metallurgy, semi-finished and finished products upgrade the value chain in the country.

In addition, there should be a Green Revolution, not in the sense of the Greenies of Europe, but in the sense of the Green Revolution of Jawaharlal Nehru, who transformed the agriculture of India in this way. You need disease- and drought-resistant plants, modern food-processing, and addition, you need certain large-scale projects, such as (next slide) the tunnel through the Strait of Gibraltar which is an eminently doable project, because a feasibility study has already been concluded; a state treaty between Spain and Morocco does exist, so one could start to build this immediately. Also, a bridge or a tunnel, as we see in the picture on my right, between Sicily and Tunisia, which could be built, with a couple of islands in between, and integrate the European development with that of Africa. And naturally, also a high-temperature reactor in South Africa should be promoted.

(Next slide) The biggest infrastructure project ever, in the history of Africa, is Transaqua. In February of this year, there took place a big conference in Abuja, with the presidents of all of the countries of the Lake Chad Basin, who concluded that the only way to save Lake Chad, which now has dried out to about 10% of its original size, and fill it up through the water from some of the tributaries of the Congo River, from a 500 meter height, and then, through gravitation, you could bring this water all the way to Lake Chad, and not only have an inland shipping lane for all the participating countries, hydropower, large amounts of water for irrigation and refill Lake Chad. This would transport up to 100 billion cubic meters of water annually, and as I said, Lake Chad would again have the size of 25 square km — now it’s only one-tenth of that. This has been adopted by this Abuja conference and then a treaty was concluded between PowerChina, which is a large, Chinese engineering firm — which is famous for having built the Three Gorges Dam, so they are very knowledgeable and experienced in making such big projects together with the Italian engineering firm Bonifica. The Italian government at that conference, announced that they are paying EU1.5 million to have a feasibility ready in one year; and this is also a perfect model for a tripartite cooperation among African nations, China, and in this case, a European nation, Italy.

This will be not a long-term project. The leading engineer of PowerChina announced at the conference that they are confident that they can finish this project in 12 years, and it will be an industrialization in the heart of Africa which can have complete transformational character.

(Next) People’s Daily already last August wrote an article about this, giving credit for this Transaqua project to the LaRouche movement and the Schiller Institute, because, we over the last three decades worked in many conference, advertising this to many people, and finally got the connection between PowerChina and Bonifica; and it’s now a state treaty between China and Italy. (Next) They emphasize in particular the role of our efforts in that.

This is, as I said, one of the results of our decades’ long work to help to industrialize Africa. (Next) This is a book which has a total plan for the industrialization of Africa which we already wrote in 1976, and this book was published in 1978.

So as you can see, this is not pouring from the heaven, but this movement, from the very beginning of the ideas of my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, stood for the industrial transformation of the southern hemisphere, simply because it’s the only way how you alleviate poverty, and create a good living standard for all the people.

(Next) In 1980, with the Lagos Plan of Action was published, my husband wrote a commentary to it, which already then was a very important conceptual approach how to tackle this problem of underdevelopment, by creating a continental infrastructure plan, new cities, science cities, and the education of the youth in particular. And we campaigned for this, for over really four decades;

(Next) The total work of this went into “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” which we published in 2014, after Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road. And just about one week ago, we put out the World Land-Bridge report second edition, which has an updated plan for how to do this.

We conducted many conferences in Sudan, for the five countries around the Nile, how they could work together on development. And I also addressed an economic summit in Abuja in 1997.

In Europe we conducted many campaigns with the headline “The Future of Europe Lies in Africa.”

I think the application of the Singapore model is quite possible: Because the new Chancellor of Austria Sebastian Kurz, who is for one-half year the president of the European Union Council, has announced that he wants to conduct an EU-Africa summit before the end of the year. Now, Austria, while having a hard line on the migrants, on the other side, has in their coalition document of the two coalition parties in the government, a whole chapter that Austria wants to become the hub for the New Silk Road. And there are also many Central and Eastern European nations, Balkan nations, Southern European nations that all want to be the hub — for example, Spain and Portugal want to be not only the terminus of the Eurasian Silk Road towards the West, but they want to be the hub to the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries around the world.

If they all cooperate on the New Silk Road this would be the way to do this, and since the refugee crisis will not go away, until you change, fundamentally, the policy towards an industrialization of Africa, I think this crisis can be turned into an chance. What the Schiller Institute is doing right now, and I would encourage all of you to help and do the same, is to have a full mobilization of all European nations and in Africa, which agree to actually put pressure on behalf of this perspective; and present the EU at this upcoming summit with the concrete outline of the necessary investments, with the participation of China, but also involve other countries, like India, Japan, even the United States, and do likewise. That if one approaches it like China — China builds a high-speed train, and I saw it with my own eyes, from Lanzhou to Urumqi in half a year — by doing it, by not simply building it one step after the other, but by starting to build it at 10 different places or even 20 different places. (Next slide) So if you had such a concrete plan you could start building it at many places at the same time.

We have outlined what projects could be in these two reports — we published one full report which is called “Extending the New Silk Road to West Asia and Africa,” which has many of these projects in it.

(Next slide) The left picture is, if you look at the electrification by night, this is how Africa is now. If one would go in the direction I just suggested, to extend the New Silk Road to Africa through a collaborative effort of all nations, then the African night sky could like the righthand picture, which is about equivalent of what you would see in the United States or Europe.

So, I think that this would turn Africa into a modern, prosperous continent, where all citizens would enjoy a safe, and happy and long life. So if we all act together in the spirit, Africa will be the new China with African characteristics.

Excellent Coverage of Schiller Conference by GBTimes

July 6, 2018by Motoki Kasai in Europe SI activity, Media coverage of our activity, New Silk Road / BRI updates

The Finnish-based private pro-China media outlet GBTimes ran excellent coverage of both days of the Schiller Institute conference in Bad Soden, Germany June 30 & July 1, 2018. Under the title “China’s Belt and Road Initiative Has Found a New Friend in the Schiller Institute,” Rosalie Falla reported on several aspects of the opening speech by Helga and the speech by Dr. Xu Jian of the China Institute of International Studies. The following day Falla published, “China’s deal with Italian firms will rescue Lake Chad,” summarizing the details of the great Transaqua project, a continental water project championed by the Schiller Institute and featured at the conference, and now under negotiation by African leaders, and Chinese and Italian firms.

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