Nov. 13 – With more than 40 containers, a cargo train bound for Xi’an, China departed Kouvola in southeastern Finland, on Nov. 10. It will take 17 days to run 9,000 km distance across the Eurasian continent, passing through Russia and Kazakhstan among other countries, before reaching its final destination in northwest China.
Goods packed in the containers are all made in Finland, ranging from machinery, timber, workwear, and ship components, according to Jari Gronlund, chief operation officer of Unytrade company. Founded just this past summer, Unytrade especially serves the newly-opened route, said Gronlund, who believes the only railway route linking the Nordic countries and China will open a new channel to bring more Nordic products to nations along the route.
Olli-Pekka Hilmola, logistics professor at Lappeenranta University of Technology, told Finnish national broadcaster Yle that a regular train connection from Kouvola to China would be important to the Finnish economy. Li Zhao, Assistant of the General Manager of Xi’an International Inland Port Investment & Development Group, explained that goods will be further transported to various markets in China from the terminus in Xi’an.
As planned, a total of five trains will run between Kouvola and Xi’an by the end of this year. At the same time, a train would depart from Xi’an to Kouvola every week. Li said the trips may start to increase if trade goes smoothly; hopefully a train of goods would be sent every day in the near future.
This is the third part in a three-part series. In Part I, we gave a road map for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic from a global standpoint. In Part II, we discussed the necessary health measures in more detail.
Providing the health measures in Chapter 1 will require major investments into manufacturing and into basic economic infrastructure. Here in Part III, we take up the physical, economic, scientific, and political changes needed to make these measures possible on a global scale. The inexcusable condition of the world, in which poverty still exists in the year 2020, must be remedied. This is eminently possible, as China’s experience in eliminating poverty over the past four decades has shown.
Infrastructure
The platforms of physical improvements we make to our surroundings provide the human species with a synthetic, nurturing environment far superior to the “natural” environment we share with the apes. By controlling water flows, draining swamps, irrigating fields, building canals, railroads and roadways, developing water and wastewater systems, creating electrical and communication grids, and improving the flora and fauna, the human species has a unique power to make this Earth a garden. This infrastructure includes such soft infrastructure as an educated and culturally uplifted populace. Much of the investment into eliminating poverty will be of the form of basic economic infrastructure. And the current coronavirus pandemic points to the particularly urgent need of health infrastructure. But can a hospital be built where there are no roads or electricity? What are the requirements for the provision of health services?
Production Requirements
Medical equipment
Numerous companies have expressed interest in retooling for the production of ventilators, from automakers to aerospace companies. The list includes:
Automakers General Motors (which will work with Ventec Life Systems to produce 10,000 units a week), Ford Motor Company (which has committed, with General Electric, to produce 50,000 by July 4), McLaren, Jaguar Land Rover, and the VW Group.
Aerospace companies such as Brazil-based Embraer, Europe-based Rolls Royce and Airbus, and the American firm SpaceX.
Current producers are ramping up production:
Philips is doubling production to 2,000 per week, and Getinge will increase production to 3,750 per week. Drager, Vyaire, and the Smiths Group are all working to produce additional ventilators for governments.
If all goes according to projection, the companies listed above would supply at least 300,000 ventilators by July. An April 9 Politico article reports that estimated demand solely from the United States and several Western European nations was for one million ventilators; the world’s needs will be higher.
PPE
3M intends to double its international production to 2 billion N95 respirators over the next year, and is presently producing about 100 million respirators per month.
Honeywell Industries has upgraded a facility in Rhode Island and is revamping its aerospace facility in Phoenix as part of their overall increase in production to 120 million per year.
Required Global Policy Changes
International Collaboration
The coronavirus pandemic now afflicting the world is only one of the deadly viruses we face. The financial virus chiefly centered in the City of London and in Wall Street has proven to be no less deadly over the past decades. The cultural virus infecting the addled minds of foolish politicians still fighting the Cold War threatens to wreck the potential for precisely the kind of collaboration required to defeat the other viruses.
A summit discussion involving President Donald Trump, President Vladimir Putin, President Xi Jinping, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is urgently required to achieve the cooperation needed in the short term to address the menacing health crisis. Such a summit is also the means by which, according to Lyndon LaRouche, a new and just economic system can be put into place globally.
The world must join forces as a single humanity to stop the impending mass-death in Africa, in particular, as the coronavirus spreads. Brigades of engineers, medics, and other skilled personnel from scores of nations must be mobilized, deployed and coordinated under the United Nations and African Union, and with full respect for the sovereignty of all nations. Building health and sanitation infrastructure, assisting in supplying necessary medical and protective equipment, and assisting with administration of health systems are among the urgent jobs at hand.
African nations must also be granted an immediate cancellation of their foreign debts; the world must choose life over debt.
Similarly, all sanctions, armed conflict, border disputes and the like must stop internationally. Much better to use those resources for the common battle of mankind against the coronavirus.
A Paradigm Shift
Lyndon LaRouche warned nearly fifty years ago that President Nixon’s August 15, 1971 takedown of the Bretton Woods system would lead to devastating economic effects that would result, in the end, in fascism. This is seen today in, among other places, the green outlook whereby people supposedly concerned about the world’s future act to deny energy development to the world, condemning millions to early deaths. Some few years later, in 1974 and 1975, LaRouche warned that worsening economic conditions would create the conditions for the rapid spread of diseases, including new diseases, threatening a biological holocaust. While it may seem that China and major developed countries are bringing the current pandemic under some form of control, what will the next months bring to the developing world if there is not a radical and sudden change?
To create an economy resilient in the face of such crises as the emergence of new diseases, requires enormous investments in basic economic infrastructure, as well as a reconceptualization of economics.
Lyndon LaRouche was adamant that economics is not about money, or about values that could be expressed in monetary terms. Rather, the secret of economic growth is the ability of the creative human mind to discover and develop new physical principles that expand the capabilities of the human species. As a rough measure of the value of a discovery, or of a cultural outlook, Lyndon LaRouche used the metric of increase of potential relative population density — a measure of what the population density could be, relative to the quality of land and improvements made to it. That is, how many people could be supported, per square kilometer, on the basis of a certain repertoire of discoveries, technologies, and culture? And what sort of culture could act to increase that value? That is the location of economic value.
In one of his last policy papers, Lyndon LaRouche demanded the immediate implementation of four laws that he said were necessary for the United States. They are needed for the world as well. First, a banking reform based on principles of the 1933 Glass–Steagall law, to deny speculative investment the protection of government while ensuring commercial banking could play its useful role. Second, national banking arrangements whereby governments can make long-term credit available for physical economic purposes, rather than for financial stability as has been the practice of the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank. Third, metrics for the application of the needed credit, based not on financial gain but on physical economic growth. Fourth, the new discoveries needed for human growth over the next fifty to a hundred years: nuclear fusion, space research, and fundamental breakthroughs in biology, to name three powerful examples.
By unlocking the true economic potential of our current repertoire of scientific discoveries and the potential to further expand it, poverty and hunger can be entirely eliminated within a generation, or even within a decade. Nuclear fusion power will change our relationship to energy, water, and resources. Fusion-powered rockets will keep us safe from any asteroids threatening to careen into our planet. Biological advancements will cure disease and allow for the rapid eradication of newly emerging threats. And, most importantly, the fear of large-scale international conflict can be overcome as we come to realize our common aims, here on Earth, and beyond!
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Nov. 14 -The first trial train with containers from China arrived on Monday, Nov. 13, at the cargo port in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. The train’s 11,000-km journey from the Chinese city of Dalian, via Russia and Ukraine lasted 17 days. The train was welcomed by Transport Minister Arpád Érsek, State Secretary for Finance and Government Envoy for the Silk Road initiative Dana Meager, and Chinese Ambassador to Slovakia Lin Lin. The number of such trains should gradually increase and next year their number might be as high as 500.
“The fact that goods travelling across Asia will be transported via the territory of Slovakia in order to get farther into Europe is a huge success and an excellent commercial opportunity,” said Minister Érsek, endorsing the idea of Bratislava becoming a key rail freight hub for Europe. “The transport capacities of Slovakia are today far from being fully utilized. I firmly believe that we are only at the beginning of successful cooperation,” he said.
In order to put an end to the inter-related novel coronavirus pandemic crisis and the financial crisis, it is necessary to face up to the real cause of these crises: the nearly 50-year global proliferation of British imperial policies, especially the doctrines of geopolitics and neoliberal economics. From this vantage point, Helga Zepp LaRouche provided an urgently needed overview of recent developments. There have been some useful steps taken to address the crises, but there is “wishful thinking of the neoliberal establishment” that we can very soon return to what was considered normal three months ago, which would be a very dangerous decision.
But the “elephant in the room” is that the refusal to end the colonial policies in the developing sector, as enforced by the IMF, has endangered the majority of people living there, and threatens to be the basis for a return of the Corona Virus to the northern hemisphere in the fall. A total transformation of the global health system is essential, which includes plans for retooling the machine tool sector and manufacturing as a whole, and ending privatization and a system based on speculative profit, to meet the needs for such a system. Similarly, the fiasco surrounding the firing of Capt. Crozier by an acting Naval Secretary who insists we are “at war” with China shows that the war danger remains, as long as war-hawks such as Pompeo remain in the administration, and fools such as Bolton can spew their filth through the media. (Modly subsequently resigned, but Pompeo and Esper have not!)
There are those now coming forward who recognize that the system has failed, as for example former Banque de France Deputy Director Peltier, who called for a New Bretton Woods, and Tremonti from Italy and Sinn from Germany, who warned that the bailouts underway will unleash hyperinflation. Helga called on our viewers to register for the April 25-6 Schiller Institute conference, to be participants in changing the agenda, to join us in creating a more humane human race.
Nov. 14 – On Nov. 12, the second China-Russia crude oil pipeline project, which took only 456 days to build, was finally completed, Asia Times reported, citing a report from the Chinese publication 21st Century Business Herald. Built by those countries’ two biggest oil producers, China National Petroleum Corp. and Rosneft, the 940 km pipeline from Mohe to Daqing, both in Heilongjiang, will have an annual capacity of 15 million tons. According to the planned volume of pipeline transportation between China and Russia, after the completion of construction, Russian oil transported to China’s northeast by land-based crude oil pipelines will double from 15 million tons to 30 million tons per year.
The first oil pipeline of the China-Russia crude oil pipeline project, from Skovorodino to Mohe, moved 100 million tons of oil from Russia to China between 2011 and May 19, 2017, according to TASS. The second oil pipeline will further improve the safety and reliability of China’s crude oil supplies and make up for old Chinese oil fields like Daqing, Liaohe, which will promote the old industrial bases in northeast area and the steady development of the national economy.
Global Times cited Zhang Hong, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, that “importing oil from Russia also has great benefits for China because, first, diversifying oil import sources can reduce the risks of regional politics on domestic economic security. Second, in terms of geography, importing oil from Russia is more convenient than getting it from distant sources like Saudi Arabia.”
10:00 a.m. U.S. EDT; 16:00 CET. The following times are U.S. EDT.
Panel Moderator: Dennis Speed
10:00 — Opening Remarks & Introduction Dennis Speed, Schiller Institute
10:15 — Keynote Address Helga Zepp-LaRouche Founder and Chairman, Schiller Institute
10:55 — H.E. Dmitry Polyanskiy, 1st Deputy Permanent Representative The Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations
11:10 —H.E. Ambassador Huang Ping Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in New York “For a Better Future: Proposed Principles Needed to Ensure Peaceful and Productive Relations Between China and the United States”
11:25–12:00 — Q&A with Zepp-LaRouche and representatives of Russia and China
12:00 — Jacques Cheminade Chairman, Solidarité et Progrès, former French Presidential Candidate “A Europe Not To Be Ashamed Of”
12:20 — Michele Geraci Economist from Italy, former Undersecretary to the Development Ministry in Rome
12:35–1:15 — Q&A with Zepp-LaRouche, Cheminade, and Geraci
1:15 — Helga Zepp-LaRouche “Introducing the LaRouche Legacy Foundation”
1:30–2:00 — Q&A continued
Panel 2: For a Better Understanding of How Our Universe Functions
3:00 p.m. U.S. EDT; 21:00 CET. The following times are U.S. EDT
Panel Moderator: Jason Ross
3:00 p.m. — LaRouchePAC Science Team: Megan Beets, Benjamin Deniston, Jason Ross “In Defense of the Human Species”
3:40 — Jean-Pierre Luminet, PhD Astrophysicist; emeritus researcher at National Center of Scientific Research “The Role of ‘Free Invention’ in Creative Discovery”
4:00 — Michel Tognini Astronaut; Association of Space Explorers founding member “Friendship Between Astronauts: An Exemplary Precedent for International Cooperation”
4:15 — Walt Cunningham Apollo Astronaut “Apollo 7: An Astronaut’s Reflections”
4:30 — Marie Korsaga, PhD Astrophysicist, Burkina Faso “The Necessity of Science Education for African Youth”
4:45 — Sen. Joe Pennacchio New Jersey State Senator, 2008– “Making Nuclear Fusion a Reality”
4:50 — Will Happer, PhD Professor Emeritus of Physics, Princeton University “The Inside Story of Contemporary Science”
5:05 — Guangxi Li, MD, PhD Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing “Chinese Medicine Treatment of COVID-19”
This concert playlist features artists who will speak on the culture panel on Sunday. Panelist Eugene Thamon Simpson performs Spirituals by Hall Johnson, panelist John Sigerson sings a Schubert song, and the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus performs the Beethoven Mass in C, under the direction of John Sigerson, with a full orchestra tuned to C=256 Hz.
Sunday, April 26
11:00 a.m. U.S. EDT [17:00 CEST]
Panel 3: Creativity as the Distinctive Characteristic of Human Culture: The Need for a Classical Renaissance
11:00 a.m. U.S. EDT; 17:00 CET. The following times are U.S. EDT
11:00-11:15 — Beethoven, “An die ferne Geliebte,” op. 98 John Sigerson, tenor, Margaret Greenspan, piano
11:15 — Lyndon LaRouche “I Have Insisted That Music Is Intelligible!”
11:20 — Helga Zepp-LaRouche Founder and Chairman, Schiller Institute
11:40 — William Warfield “A Poetic Musical Offering”
11:45 — Willis Patterson Bass-baritone, professor emeritus / Associate Dean of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance “The Presence of the Classical Principle in Folk Music”
12:10 — John Sigerson Music Director for the Schiller Institute, co-author of A Manual on the Rudiments of Tuning and Registration “The Physical Power of Classical Poetry and Music”
12:30 — Dr. Eugene Simpson Professor emeritus of Voice and Choral Literature, Rowan University of New Jersey; Founding Curator of the Hall Johnson Collection “Hall Johnson and the Dvorak Dream: From Spiritual to Art Song”
1:00 — Diane Sare Founder and co-director, Schiller Institute NYC Chorus “On the Employment of Chorus in Politics”
1:25 — Conference Greetings, Gregory Hopkins Founder and Artistic Director, Harlem Opera Theater.
1:30 — Teng Jimeng, PhD
Beijing Foreign Studies University
1:45 — Discussion and Q&A
Panel 4: The Science of Physical Economy
Sunday, April 26, 3:00 p.m. U.S. EDT [21:00 CEST]
3:00 p.m. U.S. EDT; 21:00 CET
The following times are U.S. EDT.
Panel Moderator: Dennis Speed
3:00 — Dennis Small United States; Schiller Institute Director for Ibero-America “LaRouche’s Legacy: Foundation of the Modern Science of Physical Economy”
3:30 — Sébastien Périmony France; Schiller Institute representative “When Africa Looks to the Stars”
3:45 — Cédric Mbeng Mezui Gabon; Author; Financial sector expert; Think Tank FinanceAfrika “Unlocking the Potential of Africa – Ideas by Alexander Hamilton”
4:00 — Phillip Tsokolibane Leader of LaRouche South Africa “Make Africa an Economic Powerhouse to Benefit All Mankind”
4:15 — Ms. Yang Yan Political Counselor, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Paris “Franco-Chinese Cooperation in Africa”
4:25 — Six American Farm Leaders Bob Baker, Virginia; Schiller Institute agriculture co-coordinator Joe Maxwell, Missouri; former Missouri Lt. Governor, co-founder of Family Farm Action Alliance Tyler Dupy, Kansas; Executive Director of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association Frank Endres; California, member of the National Farmers Organization for 63 years Bill Bullard; Montana, CEO R-CALF USA Jim Benham, Indiana; State Pres. of Indiana Farmers Union, 20 Yr. National Board member, National Farmers Union Mike Callicrate, Kansas; Colorado, Bd of Directors of Organization for Competitive Markets, Owner Ranch Foods Direct “Feed the Future: Eating Is a Moral Right. A Dialogue With American Farmers”
4:55 — Prof. Mario Roberto Morales Professor, writer, and recipient of Guatemala’s “Miguel Angel Asturias” National Prize for Literature, 2007 “The Productive vs. the Speculative Economy: A View from Central America”
5:05 — Jack Lynch Consultant; former Vice-President, First Midwest Bank of Illinois “Reinstate Glass-Steagall”
5:15 — Daisuke Kotegawa Research Director at Canon Institute; former Japan Ministry of Finance official; former Executive Director for Japan IMF “Failure to Address Cause of 2008 Financial Collapse Caused Public Health Collapse”
5:20 — Ellen Brown President, Public Banking Institute (USA) “Productive Credit, not Predatory Debt”
In providing an overview of the devastating crisis facing mankind, Helga Zepp LaRouche reminded viewers that “Systems are manmade”, and can be changed when they break down. Her husband warned as early as 1973 that the global neoliberal system brought into existence when Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system, with its cheap labor, cheap raw material policies, and the speculative casino economy which emerged, would lead to new global pandemics. If you lower living standards, he said, lower life forms will take over.
Today’s dual virus attacks, from the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse of the financial system, confirm the accuracy of LaRouche’s warnings. What makes the situation worse is the moral arrogance of the West. Those pushing Green “solutions” today would condemn mankind to a genocide far worst than that of Hitler.
Yet, there is a real resistance to those policies. She described the passion of some young people on a youth conference call with her on Tuesday, as more than 70 people engaged in a discussion of how to go from the collapsed system of today, to a New Paradigm, by mobilizing with agape, and the powerful ideas of our movement. The conversations between President Trump and his counterparts in China and Russia represent a move in the right direction—join us in organizing for our international conference, to make sure these ideas come to fruition.
SCHILLER INSTITUTE ANNOUNCEMENT: HELGA ZEPP LAROUCHE WEEKLY WEBCAST
Thursday, November 16
6 PM CET, Noon EST
To say that President Trump’s Asia trip was an historic success may be an understatement! Though the highlight was his visit to Beijing and meetings with China’s President Xi Jinping, his meetings with other leaders, including his exchanges with President Putin, were productive. In every event, he made explicit that the days when the U.S. acted as the enforcer of a unipolar empire are over.
Don’t be depressed or confused by the honking of the geese of the old establishment, with their lies and slanders against Trump and those who met with him. These are only the hysterical squawks of those whose collapsing world order is in its death throes. They cannot succeed in stopping the momentum of the new dynamic unleashed in the world. Let them squawk — we have to do our job, to ensure that they are defeated, and that the New Paradigm fully emerges.
What now? Where do we go from here? Join Helga Zepp LaRouche on this week’s webcast, as she will provide an update on the strategic significance of Trump’s trip, and outline where we go from here.
If you missed last weeks webcast be sure to watch it.
Nov. 14 – Xinhua reported Nov. 13 on third quarter 2017 results for the Chinese economy, as presented by Zhang Liqun, researcher with the State Council’s Development Research Center.
The year-on-year overall growth rate in China for the first three quarters of 2017 was 6.9%, which was higher than expected. Most interesting is that “the high-tech and equipment manufacturing sectors posted stellar growth in the first three quarters, with output up 13.4% and 11.6% respectively,” Xinhua reported. Investment in high-tech manufacturing rose even more dramatically, by 18.4%, up from 11.7% for the same period in 2016. Job creation is correspondingly strong: China created almost 11 million jobs in the first three quarters of 2017—300,000 more than the same period last year. Official unemployment in Chinese cities stands at 3.95%, the lowest level since 2008.
The Xinhua article also quoted the chief economist at the Bank of China, Cao Yuanzheng, who said that it is of vital importance to contain financial risks, including “countering debt, shadow banking and asset bubbles.” Even Moody’s had to admit, in a recent research note, that “a stronger policy focus on financial sector regulation should continue to restrain the growth of shadow banking activities, help mitigate asset risks for the banks, and address some key imbalances in the financial system.” On poverty reduction, which is the central concern of President Xi Jinping and the entire national leadership, Vice Premier Wang Yang presided over a meeting of the State Council’s group on poverty reduction on Nov. 13. Wang emphasized that they had to be focused on “enhancing a sense of mission and crisis awareness, and targeting problems to fulfill the Party’s promise to the Chinese people and the international community,” Xinhua wrote. (The fact that Wang presented this policy as a commitment to the international community is especially notable.) Wang added that to meet these goals it was necessary to train local authorities, “stressing the importance of carrying out research and investigation, and averting formalism.”
Economic sanctions mean a death sentence for millions of people, as needed medical supplies, electricity, clean water, food, infrastructure, tools and other life saving essentials are prohibited, as is the economic access required for development. Whether in Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Gaza, Cuba, or elsewhere, innocent people suffer and die unnecessarily, while the strategic impact of sanctions on the targeted country is the opposite of what is supposedly intended.
Now, with the worldwide financial blowout, the rapid spread of COVID-19, and the locust plague devastating some nations’ food supplies, the time has come for urgent policy changes. Full cooperation is required among all nations, and a global solidarity must replace old-style British Empire geopolitics and genocidal policies.
Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche on March 18 called for closing down the financial markets for several days, to have time to enact urgently needed reforms, beginning with a (global) Glass–Steagall banking reorganization, a prerequisite for carrying out a bankruptcy reorganization of the present financial system, and ending the “geopolitical” system. Respect for sovereignty must be reestablished, and ending sanctions is a necessary step towards such a new system of international affairs.
A summit meeting of President Donald Trump, President Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi — and possibly others — can start the process of replacing this degenerate system with a New Paradigm, based on the policies developed by the late American statesman and physical economist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., which he called his “Four Laws.”
Peace through economic development, the “American System” policy, must once again become the U.S. government’s approach to the world.
