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Friedrich Schiller Birthday Concert: Awakening the Mind and Heart

November 23, 2018by Jason Ross in New York City SI activity, Our musical events

by Dennis Speed

When the G-20 meeting opens in Buenos Aires on November 30, will Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fantasia for Piano, Orchestra and Chorus, Op. 80, be the piece chosen for the opening ceremony? It would be well recommended. That piece was the center of the Schiller Institute’s Friedrich Schiller Birthday Celebration Concert, held in New York City on Sunday, November 18.

The Fantasia, Beethoven’s earlier study for what he would later compose as the Ninth Symphony, also referred to as the “Choral” Symphony, would prompt a far different, far more productive political deliberation at that upcoming conference—involving Presidents Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping, among others—than was sadly witnessed at the Nov. 11 Paris Summit. In Paris, despite the gravity and importance of the occasion—the commemoration of the end of World War I, a conflict resulting in 40 million deaths and casualties, followed by another 50 million deaths in the ensuing Great Flu Epidemic of 1918-1920—the pre-pubescent snit of the erstwhile host, President Emmanuel “Micron” Macron, prevented any war-avoidance discussions from taking place.

Dennis Speed, speaking on behalf of the Schiller Institute at the beginning of the Schiller Birthday Celebration Concert, began:

Ludwig van Beethoven once made the statement: “If people understood my music better, there would be no war.” Confucius is sometimes quoted to the same effect. He stated, “When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war.” One week ago today, an opportunity to commit humanity to a new vision of a world without war was lost. The gathering last week in Paris, on the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, bringing together 60 heads of state, failed to focus humanity on the common aims of mankind, as it might have. Friedrich Schiller’s famous comment regarding the French Revolution, that a great moment has found a little people, need not have been applicable to that occasion. [And] It need not be applicable to this moment, or any future moment in time. Man, as Schiller tells us, is greater than his destiny.

Speed also referred to a passage in The Federalist, No. 1, written by Alexander Hamilton. After the American Revolution successfully challenged and beat the British Empire, Hamilton wrote, in The Federalist, No. 1:

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

The New York Concert

Many comments received from the more than 400-person audience and the 160-strong orchestra and chorus indicate that the process of dialogue about the nature and function of great ideas in a time of crisis, conveyed through great drama and music, has taken a significant step forward among those continuously involved in this enterprise in recent months.

While political partisanship has made serious discussion in New York City very difficult, the highly diverse audience that assembled at St. Bartholomew’s Church to hear African-American Spirituals, Johannes Brahms’ “Dem dunkeln Schoss,” and the Beethoven Mass in C Major, op. 86 and Choral Fantasia, op. 80, were able collectively to listen to the results—as composed by Beethoven—of a 70-year dialogue involving J.S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, about the nature and future of not only music, but the nature and future of mankind. It was this “musical masters in dialogue” principle, including Schiller as part of that dialogue, that was presented as the model for what might be recommended, if not replicated as the standard of discourse required in this most divisive time in our nation.

One observation, communicated by an audience member the following day, usefully characterized, not merely the recent concerts performed by the Schiller Institute New York City Chorus, but the three-year long succession of such performances given, more than fifteen in all, throughout the city:

One aspect of … something which has now become characteristic of these NY concerts … is, presenting in a manner that catches the audience off-guard. From the [June 2017 Schiller Chorus performance at the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture-sponsored] Carnegie Hall concert, begun with a singer singing her way slowly across the stage, to last night’s provocative opening presentation followed by the quiet entrance of the pianist who simply began playing, a variety of such surprises, sometimes leaving the audience wondering whether or not it should applaud, and rather preferring not to, have been well employed.

Readings from Friedrich Schiller’s works, recited by actor Dikran Tulaine, were interspersed with the musical selections throughout. The program began with Schiller, followed by Bach, then two Spirituals—each separated by the words of Schiller and William Shakespeare, then Brahms’ “Dem dunkeln Schoss der Heil’gen Erde,” and the Choral Fantasia, also preceded by a reading from Schiller. Following the intermission, the entire Beethoven Mass in C Major, prefaced by Schiller, was performed. As always, the Schiller Institute performed at the Verdi tuning of C=256 cycles, the proper tuning for Classical composition, sometimes erroneously characterized as “lower” tuning.

Remembering Maestro Morss

Importantly, the concert was dedicated to the memory of Maestro Anthony Morss, who had worked with the Schiller institute for thirty years, before his death in August of this year. Morss, who had served as the Music Director for the New York State Opera Company, the Verismo Opera, the Eastern Opera Theater of New York, the Lubo Opera Company of New Jersey and other companies, was one of the earliest proponents of returning to the Verdi tuning. In 1990 he conducted a concert performance of the Beethoven opera Fidelio at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, which definitively proved that the modern opera orchestra could accommodate the proper tuning.

Morss spoke at many Schiller Institute events, and in the 1990s was a vocal defender of the then-incarcerated Lyndon LaRouche, whose writings, particularly LaRouche’s musical writings, Morss closely read. Maestro Morss’ weekly presence at the Schiller Institute choral rehearsals was an essential component of giving the chorus the confidence that an amateur grouping could aspire to, and achieve, the highest standards of musical performance. Conductor John Sigerson’s tribute to Morss at the concert is presented below.

The performance of the Choral Fantasia was a first for the Schiller Institute in the United States. While associates of LaRouche had performed the piece in Detroit in December of 1979, a return to presentation of the piece, one of the best possible introductions to the Ninth Symphony, had only recently become possible. Beethoven himself conducted the piece in its premiere on December 22, 1808, at a fundraising concert that he had organized for himself. Other pieces first performed at the same concert were the Fourth Piano Concerto, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, and sections of the Mass in C Major. Beethoven saved the Fantasia for the concert’s end and improvised the entire piano opening to the piece on the spot. Its final words, “Only when Love and Power are wed / Does Man deserve God’s favor” resonated deeply with the audience, both then, and now.

Several attendees, in messages sent to the Schiller Institute the day after the concert, remarked on the “pin-drop quiet” concentration in the audience throughout the entire first part of the concert. One person commented:

Piano soloist MyHoa Steger during Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia.

The highlights in the music were [the Spiritual,] “Anyhow,” and the Choral Fantasia … [Pianist My-Hoa Steger] “aced” it. The difference in the orchestra was clear. You could turn off the sound, and just watch them, and tell it was a great performance … The Bach [played by pianist Yuting Zhou] was very well done. The prelude contains the chromatic scale used in the 3-year-later Musical Offering. The fugue features the diminished 7th leap of the same King’s theme. The fugue subject is similar to Handel’s “And with his Stripes” and “Kyrie” from Mozart’s Requiem…

And this short message gives another window into the effect of the performance:

Even though we had to slip out between acts (my daughter and I came straight to the concert from a film shoot that ran long, and we very much needed to feed her!)—we all felt so uplifted by both the beautiful music and the uncanny timeliness of Schiller’s poetry.

It was also so moving to witness a volunteer chorus—to think that so much talent lies in so many people in this town, who one likely passes by on the street, in the subway, etc. without knowing. ….. It was astonishing…. last evening’s beautiful show has shifted my perception in ways I am still very much processing.

Bringing Schiller to Americans

Those that have followed the evolution of the Schiller Institute New York City Chorus since it was founded (following the death by strangulation of New Yorker Eric Garner in 2014), or have been part of the chorus’ growth from its first December 20, 2014 performance of excerpts of G.W.F. Handel’s Messiah, know that there are hundreds of people, almost all of them non-professionals, who have been involved in the subsequent performances. Some of the coordinators of the chorus, however, remarked that there seemed to be a greater depth of seriousness in the group than before.

In part, this may have been due to an insistence, beginning five weeks before the concert, that choral members must get to know the up-to-then unstudied Schiller. So, readings of Schiller’s poetry and a few of his prose pieces were organized. Additionally, some of New York’s many cultural organizations became excited to know that a Schiller celebration was occurring, and that the idea of promoting the generalized reading of Classical literature as a way of rejuvenating competent language-usage in general, was being advanced. The idea that an enthusiastic, voluntary return to literacy could be promoted through a fifteen-hundred-person citywide chorus, captured their imagination.

This approach seemed to provoke particularly “deep thinking” on the question of aesthetical education from younger persons in attendance.

One young student wrote:

[ 1 ] ( Zhi Hui) refers to “wisdom” in Chinese. But the two characters each have different meanings. [ 2 ] is intelligence, while [ 3 ] means wise. It’s easy to get [ 4 ]. Everybody at my school has it. But not everyone has [ 5 ]. It’s like a seed buried in one’s heart since we are born, and needs to be inspired and discovered, as we grow up. We call it [ 6 ] (Hui Gen). [ 7 ] means root, but it’s also reasonable to interpret it as seed, because they each have roots deep in each person’s mind, and they sprout when they feel like it. Some people have [ 8 ], some do not; some [ 9 ] can bloom, some do not.

Actually, the word [ 10 ] is a Buddhist word, but it has been adopted into Chinese language and has become an important part of us. To better interpret this word, one can read a small story about the difference between people with it and those without it. The story is in the “Succession of Sixth Patriarch.”

This thinking is reminiscent of considerations concerning the differences between thought and language, and the power of the ironic juxtaposition of thought to text, of notes to music, and the higher unity of poetry and music that was required for Beethoven, or any composer, to usefully add anything to the poetry of Schiller. Brahms’ “Dem dunkeln Schoss” uses eight lines taken from Schiller’s “Song of the Bell,” but in an apparently completely different way than they are used in the broader context of that poem, in order to commemorate the death of his great friend, Robert Schumann. In this way, Brahms demonstrates that, while no poem is ever able to actually be translated into another language, no great poem is ever limited to a single meaning.

It is also possible to take a section of a poem, find the music contained within it, and voice that music in the service of purposes not anticipated by the poet, but yet in full accordance with the substance of the Idea for which the poem’s words are but a shadow-echo.

The conceptual resonance of the chorus was notable in the complete Beethoven Mass in C Major, a piece infrequently performed, which is, however, an essential work for understanding his spiritual development. One listener remarked:

From a purely musical point of view I found the performance to be astounding. There are simply no words to describe the feelings that I had regarding Beethoven’s music. The interpretation was flawless, although a bit on the scholarly and spiritual/religious side. The last most likely being influenced by the spirituality of Schiller’s work.

Indeed.

As has happened before in the Schiller Institute Chorus performances of this piece, the last section, the Agnus Dei’s “Dona nobis pacem” brought together all that had been presented through the entirety of the program. Soloists Indira Mahajan, Linda Childs, Everett Suttle, and Costas Tsourakis received many compliments from the audience, many of whom have seen them perform at other of the Schiller concerts, or in other musical programs around the city.

Schiller Institute Chorus Directors Diane Sare and John Sigerson, post concert.

The conductors, John Sigerson and Diane Sare, have succeeded in creating a core ensemble of 70-80 singers, all of whom are increasingly clear that the mission of the chorus is to destroy the idea of “entertainment” as the primary focus of art. It is the re-creation of the intent of the composer, as conveyed through the medium of Chorus, which is the mission of the chorus. Re-creation of great ideas, whether in scientific or in artistic experiment, not entertainment, is the cultural backbone, the heartbeat, of social change in our time. Their participation in these artistic experiments qualifies the members of the chorus to “lift ev’ry voice” of deliberation on all things, including the immediate direction of this country as a force for good in history, to the world-historical stage, rather than petty gossip.

It is the aesthetical education of the population and its Presidential process that is the indispensable mission which the Schiller Institute has taken another important step forward in performing. That is not the pursuit of entertainment, but, rather, the pursuit of Happiness, as the Founders would have understood that principle.

A Schiller Institute version of the concert is under production and will be available soon. Other coverage of the concert can be found here.

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.

Schiller Institute Representative Addresses High Level Conference in Beijing

November 13, 2018by Jason Ross in China SI activity, Media coverage of our activity, New Silk Road / BRI updates

On Oct. 29, Hussein Askary, Southwest Asia Coordinator of the Schiller Institute, addressed the Belt and Road International Food Industry Conference, sponsored by China People’s Daily, Global Times and China Food News and supervised by the official state Belt and Road Portal. The conference addressed the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China's development model on food security in China and globally. The main panel was opened by such senior officials as former Director of the State Council Office of Poverty Alleviation Liu Jian, who also earlier served as deputy Agriculture Minister. He was followed by the former spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and member of the Public Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sun Yuxi, who is currently Member of the Public Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Hussein Askary, in his speech, first outlined the past 24 year' efforts of the Schiller Institute to promote the global connectivity now associated with the New Silk Road and the Eurasian-African Land-Bridge. He expressed his and the Schiller Institute’s gratitude to President Xi Jinping for launching the BRI in 2013, which has “already changed the world, ushering in a new set of international relations based on economic cooperation and mutual development, which will have great implications for food security in the world.” That would not have been possible, Askary stressed, “without China’s amazing industrialization process of the past three decades.”

He went on to review the immense positive changes in the living conditions of the Chinese people, including the increase in food production and consumption, with a more diversified diet for the people. However, this new diet, with greater emphasis on proteins, is a more capital-intensive process. “You can expect that this process will be replicated in every country and part of the world that the BRI reaches, with the increase in living conditions and, consequently, in food consumption.” Askary reviewed the UN-produced “Hunger Map of the World” showing that 800 million people lack adequate food today. However, the most hungry nations, especially in Africa and West Asia, are now joining the BRI to alleviate this terrible situation, and "we have to imagine how much land and technology will be required to achieve this goal". With the world population poised to double by 2050, only such massive initiatives as the BRI can address this challenge, Askary concluded. The conference, including Askary’s speech received wide coverage in Chinese media, including postings of Askary’s speech in full on several websites. According to China Daily, the “Belt and Road” Food Industry International Summit is a world-class food industry conference with the participation of the food industry and the food industry related trade associations, industry associations, well-known enterprises and social organizations.” (The official website of the conference, that of The Belt and Road Global Chambers of Commerce and Associations, is http://www.msdnba.com/topics?id=15.html)

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 Gathering in Moscow on Building the New Paradigm

October 28, 2018by Jason Ross in Helga media coverage or interview, Russia SI activity

The Chairwoman of the international Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented an overview of the current strategic situation and the perspectives for the future in a speech given in Moscow on Oct. 24 at the 23rd International Academic Conference: “China, Chinese Civilization and the World: Past, Present, and Future”. The event was organized by the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Posing the question as to whether human society is capable of an efficient of self-government, Helga Zepp-LaRouche listed the “multiple crises” plaguing the world today: the imminent crash of the trans-Atlantic financial system, unprecedented polarization inside the United States, false flag operations in Syria, drug epidemics, the global migration crisis, terrorism and Nazism, and the increasing disunity in the EU.

While these challenges may seem unrelated, Zepp-LaRouche said, they must be understood as products of the “old paradigm” of thinking. To solve them, one must be aware of the principles defining the new epoch taking form.

She went to identify two “game changing” topics which create “totally opposite pathways for the future”. First, is the “monumental battle” in the United States to determine whether the coup attempt against President Trump will succeed and he will be driven out of office, or whether the perpetrators of that coup, which aims to prevent him from establishing good relations between the U.S. and Russia, will instead be prosecuted. “If Trump can consolidate his position, despite the many hawkish tones coming from the U.S. now, there does exist the potential that he will be able in the second half of his first term to improve relations with Russia and return to his initial positive attitude towards China.”

The second related issue, Helga Zepp-LaRouche went on, is the need to overcome the “Thucydides Trap,” i.e., the apparent conflict “between the power dominating the world up to now, the U.S., and the rising power, China,” by defining a solution over and beyond the specifics of either of them to address the fundamental interests of all nations and “thus shift the level of thinking to a higher plateau.” To avoid such a “Thucydides trap”, she stressed, the U.S. needs to be integrated into the organization of the new world order.

Such a higher plateau of thinking was defined by Zepp-LaRouche’s husband, Lyndon LaRouche, several years ago, when he proposed that the U.S., Russia, China and India, with the support of others, set up a New Bretton Woods system, that is, an international credit system to finance economic development, emphatically including that of developing nations. “The basic conception for such a new credit and economic system already exists in principle in the Belt and Road policy of President Xi Jinping,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche said. Today, it must be expanded and consolidated to respond to the needs of all mankind as a species, such as becomes evident in the field of space exploration.

Sylvia Olden Lee – A Musical Tribute To A Beautiful Soul.

October 20, 2018by Malene Robinson in Boston SI activity, Music updates, Our musical events tagged Boston Schiller Chorus, Classical music, Opera, Spirituals, Sylvia Olden Lee

The Schiller Boston Chorus hosted a centennial celebration concert honoring master musician and teacher, Sylvia Olden Lee. We also marked the birthdays of patriots President’s John F. Kennedy (100th) and John Quincy Adams (250th) in this concert of African-American Spirituals, Verdi, Mozart, solo, ensemble, choral music and more held on October 15th in Dorchester, Mass, at the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. Thank you to the Boston Neighborhood Network for filming the concert. All performances were at the Verdi tuning of C=256.

The program included selections from Life of Christ by Roland Hayes, Robert Schumann’s entire Dichterliebe and operatic arias performed by local artists, Brian and Ana Landry and Christina DeVaughn among others.

Program PDF

Find out more about the Schiller Boston Chorus!

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.

Schiller Institute’s Stephan Ossenkopp Interviewed by Chinese Media

April 3, 2018by Jason Ross in Germany SI activity, Media coverage of our activity, New Silk Road / BRI updates

March 31, 2018 – The German-language {China.org} journal interviewed “German China expert Stephan Ossenkopp” two days ago, on the question of the U.S. Import tariffs against China. He said that the continuous, successful and most of all peaceful rise of China is making those western elites nervous that do not want to give up their hegemony in international trade regulations. Punitive tariffs and investment bans will however not change this historic trend. The time of unilateral global systems is past, he said.

The time of unilateral global systems is past

The enormous trade deficit of the USA viz. China is the result of a paradigm change of the US economy away from investments in innovative infrastructure and production, but into speculative financial products, Ossenkopp explained. If Trump really wants to make America strong again, he should reactivate the Glass-Steagall Act, end the disastrous Wall Street speculation and revitalize his infrastructure and space program with a focus on technologically advanced industrial production.

Trump, Ossenkopp added, should utilize the chances offered by the Silk Road initiative, to bring the USA back on the right track with investments in the real economy.

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