Colonel Alain Corvez: A World against Violence and Extremism

Jacques Cheminade

Chairman of the Solidarity and Progress party, former French Presidential Candidate, France.

Audio

Let me start with something I had not planned to say; it is about Fidelio. It is my favorite opera, and the only one with a “happy end”. It is not like the other great plays, the best of them, where you leave the room thinking about the failure, the tragic end, of the hero or the heroine, and feeling challenged to do something better than they did. Here, in Fidelio, it is not a “happy end” because it leaves you in a state of individual comfort, a socially entropic comfort, it is happy because it shows that when you mobilize your courage and your mind, you, can overcome destiny – and that it is given to all of us to do so, because we are all human beings, like Leonora.

It is not only given to us, it is demanded of us: what Leonora has done for her husband she has done for humanity, leading the people on the stage to fight for a better world. The happy end is indeed in the future we have to create, especially in moments of life and death, such as our moment of history. Hence Fidelio’s happy end does not put us to rest, like in some sort of soap opera. On the contrary, it demands we tell the truth and fight for it, even if that means putting your life at stake, as Leonora and Florestan have done. It is as if Beethoven had composed for us, here and now, so that we be truthful.

So let’s be truthful and speak in plain, heavy words.

Europe, as it is, is a dying species, a walking shadow. There is no hope for a European Union that is based on the oligarchic principle of the disadvantage to all member states and peoples, and to the benefit of the City of London and Wall Street.

There is no hope for a European Union which not only spreads oppression to other countries, but oppresses its own constituencies and economies. Therefore our immediate mission, here and now, is to free Europe from its financial sharks and cultural millstones.

Ironically, it is the nations that were subjected to European rule that should now be the key to freeing us from our oppressors. I mean the BRICS, not as a group of nations turned inward, but as Narendra Modi said, as a concert of nations acting in their mutual interest and for the benefit of all their partners; opening the way, in the midst of the tragedy of our times, to a better future based precisely on the idea that development can only be mutual and based on the scientific achievements of human creativity. That is why we have organized this panel as an orchestra of interventions coming from various parts of humanity, a work in progress designed to play music opposed to the sound of competition and fury that prevails in our presently self-destructive world.

Look at what is happening before our eyes: the combined process of a barbaric epidemic of human crimes in South-West Asia and the spread of Ebola, potentially a new Black Death, is a threat to our entire civilization. These two “social killer” diseases are not limited to one region of the world; they are spreading into the developed sector, and into Europe in particular. The jihadists from Londonistan, Parisistan or other “istans” in Europe are ready to come back to Europe trained to rape and kill. Already, in France, one of them has called on all his brothers and sisters to kill French civilians at random, as “revenge against the air bombings of the Western armies”. We have played with fire, and that fire is now coming back to us.

According to the WHO estimate, which is probable underestimated, by next December, Ebola will be infecting 5 to 10 000 human beings per week and very soon 20 000, killing most of them for lack of adequate treatment in Africa. Under the rule of the British financial neo-colonialism, based on human triage, the African continent is the poorest and most exploited part of the world, a situation which is accepted, in one form or another, by all European countries. Not to speak of the policies of isolating the ill which, even if justified, are meant to hinder trade and economic development, adding hunger to disease. But Ebola does not stop at borders; we have created the danger of a breakout of this epidemic across continents. It has already infected medical assistants in the United States and Spain, and could spread into the poor layers of our own countries, which represent a growing proportion of the population due to destructive austerity policies, and then reach most of us should nothing be done to stop it.

I wanted to mention this, which has already been raised by previous speakers or will be developed more in depth throughout the conference, to stress that we are not faced with mere incompetence or an accident in history, but with the result of wilful policies from a European oligarchy which rules in the United Kingdom, in Brussels and among the leaders of all European countries. This system of power cannot be repaired or cured, it has to be changed.

You have been, or will be, confronted here with quotes of Prince Philip of Edinburgh or others, such as the infamous one in which he hopes to be reincarnated as a virus to reduce the world population. Others can be mentioned, such as John Holdren, Obama’s senior advisor on science and technology issues, or the famous French ecologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who, like his British colleagues, wished to reduce the world population to less than one billion human beings. This is criminal, but it is not a crime of only a few individuals. It is a crime embedded in the British imperial system and in the institutions of our European Union. Why? Because they are Malthusian. Their conception of man is that of a tamed animal; on top, are those meant to rule, and underneath, the rest are doomed to submit. Such a Malthusian thinking cannot conceive that “development” means a community of purpose, the common aims of humanity shared by those committed to fight for them, and not the criminal idea that you necessarily grow at the expense of others in a world of inevitably finishing resources. Europe therefore has to change to become an association of nation states committed to global world advancement.

Let us look at how Europe was generated since the end of World War II. It was based on three main rules: financial liberalism, free trade and the debasement of nation states. This culminated in the euro, a tool of self-induced destruction. As a result, for 2014 and 2015, we have zero growth rates – in fact negative physical rates – and the demand by Eurostat, the European Institute of Statistics, to include illegal activities in the Gross National Product of all members states. That means that prostitution, drug traffic, tobacco and alcohol smuggling will be laundered into the economy in order to increase the nominal GDPs and justify taking on more debt!

The estimated collapse of the purchasing power of the average wage earners in Europe since 2007 varies between 5% in France and Germany, to 50% in Greece! Two books written in French by Coralie Delaume, “Europe, the Disunited States”, and Robert Salais, “The rape of Europe” clearly make the point, measure by measure, that the present European Union has been deliberately organized to destroy the nation states and prevent the people from taking part in the real decision-making processes. We have been infected by the contrary — the absolute contrary — of a principled policy “of the people, by the people and for the people”, as it is enshrined in the marble of the American Constitution and in article 2 of the French Constitution.

This should not be a surprise if we consider where today’s European Union comes from. It is the creation of the Committee for a United Europe and of the American Committee for United Europe, organizations through which the British and American services channelled funds and “ideas” to the European federalists. The ideas were British, and the money was the dollar: the Committee was created by Allan Dulles, the head of the Wall Street branch of the American CIA and by Duncan Sandys, Winston Churchill’s son in law. They were the godfathers of that Europe, along with a Frenchman, Henri Frenay, the arch-enemy of Charles de Gaulle who organized the elimination of Jean Moulin, who served as the link between the Free French outside of France and the French Resistance inside the country. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, financed through the compensation funds of the Marshall Plan, created the cultural grounds to impose such a perverted Europe. Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman shared the job on behalf of their friends throughout Europe, including those active in the corridors of the Vatican. The original sin, so to speak, of the European Union lies therein, and the shape of the children corresponds to the wishes of those who cared for them.

Let me say something about the state of affairs in the European press and in economic institutions.

On the European press: Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the leading dailies in Germany, recently admitted that “I’ve been educated to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public” and described how he was under the influence of the CIA. He said that most corporate media journalists in the United States and Europe are on “so-called non official cover”, working for intelligence agencies. I quote him: “I think it is especially the case with British journalists, because they have a much closer relationship. It is especially the case with Israeli journalists. Of course with French journalists.…The German and American media try to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia.…I am very fearful of a new war in Europe”.

Well, now you understand why all these people either never publish a word about us or, when they cannot ignore us, they call us “a cult” or use other slanderous characterizations which evolve over time. These are character assassins, working on behalf of the assassins, period.

As for economics, French behaviorist economist Jean Tirole just got the equivalent of the Nobel prize for economics. To make it short: he has always claimed that the “concept of a systemic crisis is meaningless” and that to regulate hedge funds or derivatives is impossible, “let’s leave that to irrational idealists”. After teaching at Princeton and MIT, he has now founded, with 60 million euros from the French state and from French banks, the Toulouse School of Economics and the Advanced Study Institute in Toulouse, which both promote among other things the concept they themselves call “mutually assured delusion” (MAD). That is, after all, a good term to characterize the present “European groupthink”.

Let us now put our choice in blunt terms. Will Europe and Spain be the bridge for bringing the positive development of Eurasia into Africa, or will they rather be the bridge over which the death march of Ebola reaches the center of Europe? Will Germany, France, Italy and other European countries regain their humanist impulse, or will they continue to spread the contrary on behalf of the British Empire? Are we determined to throw the idiocy of geopolitics and deductive thinking into the river, and to once again become explorers and discoverers? Are we ready to jump out of the false economic dilemma which opposes the Keynesian monetarism of money forgers (monetarist diarrhoea), to the orthodox cult of “tight money” and wealth grabbers (monetarist constipation)? French and German politicians may recognize themselves in this toilet room of world politics.

These are the real questions in the real world.

What was Europe in 1411? A region with a level of development relatively much lower than that of China and India. Out of the ten major cities in the world, only one was European – Paris — with at most 200,000 inhabitants, while Beijing had at least 600,000. Even in 1792-1793, Lord Macartney described the power and the number of the Chinese as a threat for the developing British Empire, suggesting that something had to be done about that, because there were really too many of them on Earth.

So what made Europe successful after 1411? In real terms, the Renaissance and its revolution in science and art, the Renaissance of Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz, the Renaissance of Leonardo and Beethoven, of Rembrandt and Bach. The idea of a homo universalis, a human being developing above the animal species, not because of his power to dominate, but because of his capacity to create and to awaken his self-conscience.

Unfortunately, instead of sharing that capacity, Europe, under the rule of its oligarchy, betrayed its own sense of universality, and the Empires used the potential created by the Renaissance on their own behalf, against other regions of the world. Looting, destruction and bestiality took over, and the technological applications of scientific discoveries were not used to launch an era of mutual development, but rather to gain power and possessions. What was developed in the United States, based on the best of European tradition – i.e., the Leibnizian principles of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and not life, liberty and property – was destroyed during the late 20th century, after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

As Europeans and Americans, our mission is to recover the founding principles enshrined in the American Constitution, and for us, in Europe, to recover the principles of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. That is precisely what Tony Blair called to eliminate in his famous Chicago speech in 1999, which was to be followed by the so-called war against terrorism, which is nothing but a war to terrorize people and to pit all against all.

The Peace of Westphalia was based on three main commitments:

* The forgiveness of past offenses, including what was considered as the main offense, debt incurred to finance wars;

* the advantage of the other, to prevent wars from breaking out and making gains at the expense of the other;

* the upholding of the principle of national sovereignty based on mutual respect.

And that is what has been sold down the river by the current European Union, which is neither European nor a Union.

So where are we going to find the impulse for our recovery? Among those who have respected our principles better, although imperfectly. I mean, yes, the BRICS, or in the words of Modi: “Let’s make development a mass movement, just like Mahatma Gandhi made the freedom movement a mass movement.” Such is the paradox of the present moment of history: we have lost our principles in Europe and the United States, and the only way to recover them is to be inspired by the dynamic of the BRICS, which was created as a defense against our mistakes and our crimes, against the oligarchic financial oppression which propagates murder and destruction of the entire social fabric. But to do that, to act for the common good, we have to free ourselves once and for all from the British oligarchy and its back-up troops.

That does not mean that we Europeans have nothing to bring to the wedding basket. I do not believe, like the school of British historians, the Gibbons and the Toynbees, in the fatality of a decline, in the continuity of a great degeneration. I believe that the more the danger grows, the more what saves is at hand, provided that we mobilize ourselves for the future of humanity, beyond Europe itself. And if Europe has done anything worth remembering since the end of World War II, it is to have made peace among European nations, even though it was on the basis of a compromise with the oligarchy. Now, we have to clean up our act at home and rid ourselves of the oligarchic infection. You cannot organise a peaceful home, with cockroaches and beetles inside. It is time to clean our houses and to act, not for ourselves, but for the advantage of other people. We need to disinfect ourselves and to leap forward together with one impulse, not only to join the BRICS but to inspire the development of the future. Our immediate challenge is not only to prevent horrible things from happening, but to make good things happen, derived from new principles.

A historical example gives me hope – in fact it is not one, but two. First that of Anton Wilhelm Amo, a young African gentleman from Ghana who was adopted circa 1707 by the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbütell and treated as a member of the family. He went to the universities of Halle, Wittenberg and then Iena, studying logic, metaphysics, physiology, astronomy, history, law, theology, politics and medicine. He mastered six languages: English, French, Dutch, Latin, Greek and of course German. In 1729, he wrote a memoire on De Jure Maurorum in Europa, where he demands the right for blacks to be treated the same as other Europeans. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg, in 1734. His remarkable thesis, On the absence of sensation in the human mind and its presence in our organic and living body, is against Cartesian dualism and develops a Leibnizian conception of humanity based on the discovery of principles and the elaboration of ideas beyond sensual perception. He returned to his birth place when Germany became repressive, and died under custody in a Dutch fortress in Ghana. Abbot Grégoire praises him in his « Notices des nègres et des mûlatres distingués par leurs talents et leurs ouvrages », on the intellectual achievements of black authors, and he was also a reference for Kwame N’Krumah, the first president of Ghana.

The other case in the 18th century is that of Abraham Petrovich Gannibal, a black child adopted and freed by the Russian Czar Peter the Great, who had a glorious career in Russia as an engineer and officer, married into the nobility and had generations of descendants, among them his great-grandson Aleksandr Pushkin. These two cases prove that when European individuals decide to respect the advantage of the other, such things can happen, and it is a ray of light from the past into the future. Today, we are far from having extended to all Africans such recognition of their humanity, and it is a challenge for us all to achieve that, as an expression of our rebirth. When we let them die, we murder our own humanity by doing that to them.

Because Europe, as they have tried to impose it upon us, has no future; it is finished as a financial powerhouse located on a limited region of the world under British tutorship, but the nation-states composing Europe have to be revived, like voices in a chorus or instruments in an orchestra: sovereign in serving the advantage of all.

Let’s think about it as a matter of life and death. It is a matter of life and death, and we all have to understand the danger better that in the written words that I am reading for you. Death: if we keep behaving as we are, our destiny is to die. Either we could all die in a world war, or Ebola could kill us, or we could be destroyed by the coming waves of murderous austerity breaking over us all. It is here and now and the result would be the same: a planned mass extermination. Peace: let’s think of all European nations joining together to contribute. Life: that means, first, to stop once and for all the confrontation against Russia and China, and second, to launch a credit policy to build the infrastructure or better said the platform for world peace.

Think of it as a European choir, a chorus of nations, from the Atlantic to the Urals, a Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok and the Sea of China. Germany bringing its steel and machine tool capabilities, together with Switzerland and Austria, France its atomic energy and aerospace capacity, and both France and Germany uniting with Russia, China and the United States in a space project, for which researchers and engineers expect us to mobilize, from Darmstadt to Toulouse.

Think of the north of Europe — Sweden, Denmark and Finland — as a bridge towards the East. Think of the south as a bridge towards Africa, over Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Think of all the nations of Europe that I did not mention as well. It is a combination with an incredible potential for peace, it is one of the keys to open the gates of the future, but we fail to use it with our culture of death and deadly inaction, our entropic non-action, our sin of omission and pessimism. European nations can only survive if they commit themselves to giving up their bad social habits, practices and opinions of the past hundred years, and to mustering the optimism needed to reject a culture of death. To be human is not to look at yourself in a mirror like a narcissistic oligarch, but to look at yourself from the standpoint of the future, improving the condition of mankind.

Europe has no future in its perverted form, but it does have the right to claim it as an assembly of wise minds in sovereign Republics. Here we are, in this room, and I am sure we are going to be enriched by the next speakers with thoughts coming from the future.

Let us then free ourselves from the deadly embrace of the City of London, Wall Street and the British Empire, and say and mean the following:

Long live a new Silk Road around the whole Earth!

Long live free Europe; long live Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Sea of China!

Long live free Germany!

Long live free France!

Vive les Etats-Unis de Franklin, Lincoln, Roosevelt et LaRouche, Vive les Etats-Unis libres! Long live free United States!

We may all breathe freely the open air, provided we put our lives at stake on behalf of Humanity’s future. It is in our hands, it is in our hands because it is our mission. And the people, if we challenge their pessimism and set an example for them, are waiting to come onstage.

Ass. Prof. Milena Nicolic

Higher Education Institute for Applied Studies, Belgrade, Serbia

Dragan Duncic

Republic Agency for Spatial Planning, Belgrade, Serbia

Audio

In her introductory remarks, Prof. Nikolic congratulated Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche and her husband on the 30th anniversary of the Schiller-Institute. She also conveyed the best wishes from her father, Professor Milan Bacevic, who was prime minister of special planning, when this idea, the Danube-Morava-Varda/Axios agency waterway and Silk Road economic belt, came up, and he gave new life of this project after 100 years.

Mrs. Nikolic spoke then (in Serbian) about the historical aspects of the project, followed by Mr. Duncic, who presented the multi-functional and technical characteristic of this canal (in English).

For the purpose of publication, they presented the following, joint paper.

The Danube-Morava-Vardar/Axios-Aegean Sea waterway and the Silk Road Economic Belt

by Ass. Prof. Milena Nicolic and Dragan Duncic

Since we know that 2/3 (two thirds) of Earth’s surface is covered with water, and that 70% (seventy percents) of human organism consist of water, it is clear that water is one of main elements of life.  The availability and accessibility of drinking water has affected the disposition of people on mainland, and that is the reason that first human settlings have developed in valleys of some of greatest rivers on Earth. Ancient civilizations have recognized the importance of water and so they developed various methods of its usage in order to create better living conditions.  One of those methods was building the irrigation system.

The oldest canals found until now were built for irrigation purposes in Mesopotamia around 4000 BC in the territory that in this present day belongs to Iraq and Syria.  Indus Valley Civilization, the ancient India, around 2600 years BC had a developed irrigation system with a system for storage, while in Egypt, canals date back to the period of 2332-2283 years BC, when the canal was built to bypass the cascade on the Nile, near Aswan.

In ancient China, large canals for river transport were established in the period of 481-221. BC, and the longest one in this period was Hong Gou (Canal of wild geese), which connected six countries. Shortly after this period, the Great Canal of China was built and it is still the longest canal. It is 1794 kilometers long and it was built to transport rice from the fertile areas around the Yangtze River in order to bring food to Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty and his palace and troops. The Canal was used not only for the grain transportation, but also as a connection and unifier of the country. That is why it was a powerful political symbol and a target for invaders. At the beginning of the forties of the 19th century, during the First Opium War, the British occupied the intersection of the canal and the Yangtze, and thus cut the supply of grain and tax revenues for Beijing.

In the Middle Ages, water transport was cheaper and faster than road transport because the roads were in very poor condition, and it offered the ability of transporting bulky loads. The first man-made canal of Christian Europe was the Fossa Carolina, which was built in the late 8th century, under the personal supervision of Charlemagne. This was also the first channel that had merged basins of the Rhine and the Danube in order to exchange goods between the Rhineland and Bavaria. According to some sources, the main reason for the construction of this canal was the need to enable Charlemagne’s warships to return from the Danube to the Rhine river. Tendency to connect the Danube and the Rhine basin was continued as well during 19th century, when the Ludwig’s canal, also known as the Danube-Main channel, was built. This waterway was narrow and had a large number of locks, so it soon became  abandoned due to the development of the railway. However, the basins of the Rhine and the Danube were finally connected after the construction of the Rhine- Main-Danube Canal.

Development of trade and the need for transportation of large quantities of bulky and heavy loads have created the need for the use of waterways and so all major ports became the most important trading centers. In the 18th century, during the Industrial Revolution, in Europe began construction of navigable canals everywhere where natural environment allowed it and where capital was invested.

In the period after the Second World War, maritime transport had reached over 70% of cargo in international trade, the average tonnage of ships was increased. In this sense, the strategic importance of countries that had access to the sea became much greater. However, the development of marine traffic was greatly influenced by channels (Suez, Panama, Corinth, Kiel channel) and the straits (Gibraltar, the Bosphorus, Dardanelles, Bab-el-Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the passage of Malay and Singapore, etc.) which shorten the marine corridors for thousands and tens of thousands of kilometers. Beside this, connecting the countries that have no natural outlet to the sea with significant ports and maritime transport corridors is of great geo-strategic importance and is a goal of many countries.

Construction of the canals has played a significant role in promoting maritime and river traffic. The Suez Canal was dug in 1869, and after the reconstruction in the 1980s, it is able to let pass large oil tankers from the Persian Gulf. Another major channel in the maritime transport is the Panama Canal which connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and that way significantly shortens the sail. The construction of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, the Danube became the backbone of a single waterway that connects the North and the Black Sea, or in other words, the port of Rotterdam to Constanta. This created a new trade route between the countries of North, Central and Western Europe, and a direct connection to the Black Sea, which also means the connection with the Suez Canal and the Middle and Far East. Before that, ships used the route across the Mediterranean Sea, around the Iberian Peninsula, which lasted around 8 days longer and was significantly more expensive.

The Mediterranean Sea has a unique global position because of significant geostrategic points – the Suez Canal, Gibraltar and the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and it represents a bridge between the Arab countries, North Africa and the European Union. Geostrategic and geopolitical importance of Turkey was also increased by linking the North, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, since they have control over the Bosphorus, which is a key point on the fairway and has no alternative for the time being. Most of the ships from the Far East enter the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal and sail straight to Genoa, Marseille, Barcelona and Valencia. The ports in the northern part of the Adriatic Sea – Koper in Slovenia, Trieste, Venice and Ravenna in Italy are also important points. But, Black Sea also created the link with Ukraine and Russia. In geo-strategic sense, Black Sea is important as a natural border between Europe and Asia, or, in other perspective, their bond.

Development of river transport is largely determined by natural environment. In this respect, the great opportunities for the development of river transport are countries with navigable rivers or those that have built channel system. The geostrategic position of the Pannonia Plain and the Sava-Danube connection with the Morava basin, which is linked with Vardar and, further, with the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean, is a unique system of valley-lowland zones of Europe. By linking all of them, a great waterway could be created, one that would connect North, South and Central Europe, thanks to the Pan-European Corridor 7, the Danube, and the existing waterway Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. There are two channels in Romania – Sulina Canal and the Danube-Black Sea Canal, which connect the RMD system with the Black Sea. Beside the obvious economic importance, the construction of these channels had indirectly influenced the increasing importance of Romania as a candidate for joining the European Union, since it became a key point to connecting Europe and Asia. In this sense, the geopolitical importance of the Serbia could also change if they (we) build a proper connection between the Danube River and the Mediterranean Sea (and further to the Suez Canal and the Middle and Far East). That connection would be shorter and economically more profitable than the existing one.

System of valleys of the Great, the West and the South Morava rivers represents the backbone of the spatial structure of central Serbia. Geopotentials that are crucial for the development of Serbia, economic activity, the concentration of population, development of urban agglomerations, agriculture, with strong economic axis, are concentrated in this area.

Morava River basin covers 42% of Serbian land, where approximately three million people live, and its water potential at the confluence is 45% out of the total water resources of Serbia.

The importance of enabling navigation through Morava river was recognized even back in 1841, when this topic was brought to public after four postal ships sailed to Ćuprija and when it was proposed that “Morava should be measured and the possibility of navigation considered” – this was published in “The Serbian newspaper”. After that, a “French – Serbian Society of navigation” was formed and it operated during the period of 1844-1864, organizing the navigation on the Danube, Sava and Morava. Serbia has tried to make Morava navigable in 1867, when the detailed examination was conducted in order to test its capabilities. Afterwards, a special small steamer named “Morava” was built for particular tests and measurements of the Velika Morava river, from the confluence to Ćuprija. The expedition started in 1869, and it was led by Anta Aleksic, an engineering officer. At the beginning of 20th century there was formed a proposal to build a waterway that would connect the Danube with the Aegean Sea. In this regard, they tried to obtain funding for the project from England and Germany. At that time, the waterway from the Danube, across the Morava River, to the Aegean Sea was called the “line of European economic gravity in relation to Suez.”

In the past 100 years, there have been written numerous articles, studies and analysis of the possibilities of navigation on the River Morava, as well as its importance for Serbia, but due to lack of investments, no project was developed up to this day. In 1973, some experts of the United Nations wrote a report on fairway Morava-Vardar / Axios, and The design institute “Ivan Milutinovic” – PIM developed a study on “The addition of the conceptual design – fairway Morava-Vardar / Axios”, in which they showed the technical characteristics of the future waterway.

According to the results from the Conceptual design the fairway Danube-Morava-Vardar / Axios -Aegean Sea would be 650 km long. Through the pan-European Corridor VII (Danube), and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, it would be the shortest link between the Northern and Western Europe with the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, the Middle East and the Suez Canal. Compared to the existing waterway through the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, it would be shorter by 1,200 km, which would mean 3 days less at the sea. Beside the traffic function and better navigability, the construction of the waterway Danube-Morava-Vardar-Aegean Sea would have a multifunctional character and multiple importance for Serbia.

The project is compatible with the project of building HPP on the Velika Morava, whose preparation is underway. All dam locks on the waterway could be used for the construction of hydroelectric power plants and electricity production. The area of ​​the Great, South and West Morava has been under threat of torrents, flooding and erosion for decades, which affects the surrounding high quality agricultural land, some of the most important infrastructure facilities and settlements. By regulating the river flows for the waterway the problems of irrigation, drainage and protection from high water in the entire area of the river could be solved. Waterway would also improve the tourism offers of Serbia, by developing nautical tourism, fishing and others.

Development of river / canal traffic continues today because of indisputable advantages compared to other methods of transport: lowest transportation costs, smaller investments per ton of built-in capacity and minimum energy consumption, which emphasizes its ecological significance, as well. Due to the overload of the Panama Canal, in recent years there has been a discussion again about the idea of ​​connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through Nicaragua. In 1952, the Russians dug a channel to connect the Volga and the Don rivers, and thus connect the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. It is used for transportation of coal, ore, building materials and grain. According to data from 2004, 10.9 million tons of material had been transported through this channel, and in recent years it is estimated that cargo traffic is about 12 million tons per year. Lately, Russia has been planning to expand its river and canal traffic, due to overloading of the previously mentioned channel. The idea is to build a parallel channel of greater capacity that will connect the Caspian and Black seas. China has recognized the importance of the construction of such canal and of opening the new, alternative waterways. For the construction of the canal in Nicaragua there has been signed a concession agreement with a company from Hong Kong, for construction of the canal Eurasia in Russia there has been signed a protocol of cooperation with the Chinese company, while for the project of the Danube-Morava-Vardar-Aegean sea the Chinese national company has developed a comprehensive plan report on Morava valley, which considers the possibility of regulating the Morava river and thus making it navigable.

The aspiration to connect the East and West, China and Europe dates back to the old days, before Christ. Over time, the foundations of occasional contact of Eastern with Western civilizations had developed the ancient Silk Road, about 6500 kilometers long, which was used for goods (spices, silk, glass, ivory, precious stones, etc..) transportation, religion expansion, interchange of cultural achievements and knowledge. The decline of the importance of mainland Silk Road began with the rise of the Chinese overseas trade. Travelling by the seas proved to be cheaper, safer and faster. In this sense, the digging of the Suez Canal was of fundamental importance for connecting China, India, the Middle East and Europe. This important maritime route is a modern alternative to the ancient Silk Road, and the opening of the waterway that would link the North and the Mediterranean Sea through the center of the Balkan Peninsula is an important strategic project not only for Serbia, but for all the countries of North, Western and Central Europe and the Middle and Far East.

The Project of regulating the Morava River basin in Serbia and the construction of the waterway Danube-Aegean Sea are compatible with the two main tendencies of modern society – connecting countries and natural and water resources conservation. According to data from the Central European Development Forum, by 2025 two thirds of humanity will feel a serious lack of water, so the multifunctional and integrated approach to water resources management is a duty of every responsible society.

Mrs. Pei Hua

Director of Research Division, CSCLF (China Soong Ching Ling Foundation)

Audio (Chinese/中文)

Mr. Chen Bo

Deputy Director of the International Division Department, CSCLF, Beijing, China. 

Audio (English)

Mrs. Pei Hua

Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning!

Let me begin by thanking Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche for inviting China Soong Ching Ling Foundation to the Schiller Institute’s 30th Anniversary Conference. I feel deeply honored to have this opportunity to listen to the invaluable insights and speak and exchange with you at this enlightening conference.

As Confucius said, “at thirty, I stood firm”. For a person or an organization, thirty years of age is of great significance. So, on behalf of China Soong Ching Ling Foundation, my colleague, Mr. Chen Bo and I have come from Beijing to you, to express warm congratulations on the Schiller Institute’s 30th Anniversary Conference and pay tribute to the Schiller Institute for its relentless efforts in safeguarding the right of mankind to progress and development.

We are here to learn from the Schiller Institute and the participating colleagues, experts and scholars from various countries and NGOs. Yesterday and today, Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the participants have shared views on the “New Silk Road and China’s Lunar Program”, world peace, and the new era and new paradigm of human society. The discussions have not only benefited us with stimulating ideas but also inspired us with new perspectives. With such new perspectives, we will think further about the historical and cultural values of the ancient Silk Road that originated in China and extended all the way throughout the world, and about the “One Belt and One Road” proposal made by President Xi Jinping (i.e. the Silk Road economic belt and the 21st century maritime silk road”), its far-reaching historical significance and great relevance for the development of China and the world and the huge contribution it will make to peace and wellbeing of mankind.

We are here also for enhancing mutual understanding and friendship through the bond of the Silk Road. As an ancient Chinese saying goes, “though born a thousand li apart, souls which are one shall meet”. At the end of last August, China Soong Ching Ling Foundation invited Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche to attend the Cultural Roundtable Conference on “One Belt and One Road” and visit the Jiayuguan Great Wall and the Mo Kao Grotto at Dunhuang along the ancient Silk Road. And the day when the Roundtable was closed coincided with Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s birthday. We had the honor of spending a wonderful and unforgettable time with her in Lanzhou University. In early September, she travelled to Beijing, where she visited the former residence of Madam Soong Ching Ling and talked intensively with leaders of our Foundation on “One Belt and One Road” to explore possible cooperation areas. Now in mid-October, less than two months after Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s visit to China, the Schiller Institute is holding the conference on “the new Silk Road and China’s lunar program” in celebration of its 30th anniversary, which will bring together the world, Germany and China, match ideas to music and link classics with modernity. A highlight of the thirty years’ excellence of the Schiller Institute, this conference represents how Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s connects her deep thinking on human development with her China Silk Road experience and also continues the bond between the Schiller Institute and China Soong Ching Ling Foundation forged through the Silk Road. Thanks to this conference and the Silk Road, we are gathered here to meet friends, old and new, for enhanced mutual understanding, contacts and friendship.

To celebrate the Schiller Institute’s 30th anniversary conference and pay tribute to the Schiller Institute’s efforts to promote the brilliant pearl of culture – German classic music, China Soong Ching Ling Foundation has prepared this model of ancient Chinese chime as a gift for the Institute. Chime is a percussion instrument of ethnic Han Chinese in ancient China, with its origin in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC – 771 BC) and its prime time in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770BC – 221 BC) (including the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period), the Qin Dynasty (221 – 206 BC) and the Han Dynasty (206BC – 220AD). China was the first country to produce and use chimes, which speaks to the achievements of Chinese bronze craftsmanship and tonality in ancient China. It embodies the great wisdom of ancient Chinese and the splendor of China as an ancient civilization. The second part of Wanzhang of The Mencius has this: ‘In Confucius we have what is called a complete concert. A complete concert is when the large bell proclaims the commencement of the music, and the ringing stone proclaims its close. The “large bell” refers to chimes. We hope that the Schiller Institute at the age of thirty will make comprehensive achievements, like a complete concert, in promoting ancient music and traditional culture, advancing cooperation among countries and regions along the Silk Road and facilitating scientific and technological progress. It is also our hope that our two organizations will work together to enhance exchanges between the Chinese and German civilizations and between Eastern and Western traditional civilizations, including classic music.

Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche and her husband Lyndon H. LaRouche, together with the Schiller Institute they founded have long been committed to today’s world economic restructuring and reconstruction of international order. They attach great importance to the position and role of Asia and China, in particular, in realizing their proposed new global governance paradigm. That’s the philosophical foundation behind Madam Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s high appraisal of the new Silk Road and China’s lunar program and her efforts to promote global understanding of these two remarkable projects. She once said something to the effect that to enhance win-win cooperation among countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, China proposed the new Silk Road, presenting a completely new perspective and like the ancient Silk Road, the new Silk Road will facilitate flows of ideas, goods, culture and science and more importantly it is open and invites all countries in the world to participate. China Soong Ching Ling Foundation deeply endorses her perspective and understanding of the new Silk Road.

The Schiller Institute’s 30th anniversary conference presents a good opportunity for the people of vision to get together, exchange views and share wisdom, with a shared interest in world peace, human progress and the building of the new Silk Road. We are fortunate to get acquainted with you and wish to take this opportunity to tell you something about Soong Ching Ling and the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation. We have some slides to show you with some pictures to help you know about Soong Ching Ling and walk you through the Foundation and the former residence of Soong Ching Ling.

Now I would like to ask Mr. Chen Bo to introduce these slides. Thank you very much!

Mr. Chen Bo

We are China Soong Ching Ling Foundation (CSCLF), a non-governmental organization (NGO). In memory of Soong Ching Ling, a great lady of the 20th century and the former Honorary President of the People’s Republic of China, the foundation was founded after her name in May 1982.

Our Objectives are Peace, Reunification and Future：Peace—Promoting International Friendship and Safeguarding World Peace；Reunification—Developing Exchanges across the Taiwan Straits and Promoting Reunification of the Motherland；Future—Caring for the Future of the Nation and Developing Children’s Work；Our Missions are to carry forward the great thinking and spirit of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching Ling, and fully explore their academic and cultural values; to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with well-known international institutions, charitable organizations and friendly individuals; to make close contacts with the relatives and descendants of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching Ling and unite with all patriots at home and abroad so as to widely attract talents and intellectual resources; to promote exchanges and cooperation with Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau at all levels in various fields; to develop welfare and charity projects so as to raise funds through various approaches, care for people’s livelihood, help people in need and build a harmonious society; to build more public service facilities beneficial to the development of children and welfare of women and start some other related activities.

Peace is one of the three objectives of CSCLF. In the past 30 years. CSCLF, taking peace as the theme and children as messengers in the cross-cultural exchanges, has established friendly cooperation with over 30 countries across five continents. CSCLF has continuously kept regular mutual exchanges with over 10 countries and regions for 20 years through the SCL International Youth Camp in China, the Asia-Pacific Children’s Convention in Fukuoka in Japan, the International Festival of Children’s Art in Ukraine, and the Winnipeg Folk Festival in Canada, etc. By so doing, we have helped Chinese children to learn about the world and foreign kids to better understand China.

Since its founding, CSCLF has received tens of thousands of foreign friends, including heads of state, current and former politicians, ambassadors and their spouses, and world celebrities. In addition, CSCLF has also organized many delegations to visit the United States, Canada, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, France, Austria and Italy for signing agreements, attending forums and conducting friendly exchanges. All these visits have produced good impacts.

For many years, CSCLF has conducted fruitful cooperation with UNDP, UNICEF and WHO, and famous corporations, such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonalds, Nokia, Toyota and BMW, etc. in the fields of culture, education, health, medical services, science, technology and environmental protection. Such cooperation has effectively promoted the process of the internationalization of welfare and charity undertakings of CSCLF.

All the slides in PDF format:  Download

Robert Barwick

Executive Committee member, Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Audio

I would like to present to you, two entirely different visions of the future of Australia, and therefore of the role Australia will play on the world stage, for better or for worse.

First I shall sketch my nation’s present trajectory, and then the future to which we in the LaRouche movement in Australia, the Citizens Electoral Council political party, are committed. And I’ll report on some of our exciting progress.

At present, Australia’s ruling layers are committed to the plans of the Anglo-American oligarchy – centred on the British Crown – for endless war, disguised as a so-called “war on terror.” They are deep into confronting China and Russia, even if that threatens a thermonuclear showdown in the near term. They share the agenda of imposing fascist police states to control the population. And all of this is set against the backdrop of the worst financial and economic collapse in history, and the decimation of the world’s population by old and new epidemics.

The British Crown has exploited Australia for its geostrategic goals, especially since our head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, personally sacked the elected, pro-development, pro-sovereignty Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. I’ll summarize three aspects of this:

• Making Australia into a miniature City of London or Wall Street;
• Australia’s role as what a recent prime minister called a “deputy sheriff”, for the Anglo-American war build-up in the Asia/Pacific region;
• Serving as the original spawning ground for the now worldwide movement for mass genocide, which masquerades as “environmentalism”.

In 1995, an infamous position paper by Katherine West of Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, or Chatham House, said that the British Commonwealth had to be the core of a new British Empire – “an informal financial empire”, as she put it. Within that, she called for building up Australia as a “bridgehead into Asia”. Accordingly, thousands of major British firms have set up their Asia/Pacific headquarters in Australia, while the city of Sydney has been turned into a major subsidiary of London and Wall Street. Each of our Big Four banks ranks among the world’s top 50 banks in size, and they dominate the country’s economy.

Fifty years ago, agriculture and manufacturing accounted for half of our gross national product; today, they are at less than 10%. Financial services have risen from 10% of GDP in 1980, to over 20% today.

The Big Four banks are largely owned by City of London and Wall Street interests. Our population is only 23.5 million, but the Australian dollar is the fifth most traded currency in the world. And we have the biggest mortgage debt bubble in the world, measured per capita, which is managed by the Big Four banks.

This year, Australia chairs the Group of 20. Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his London- and Wall Street-owned Finance Minister Joe Hockey have declared two priorities for adoption at the Brisbane G20 summit next month. The first is the Anglo-American policy of “bail-in” – confiscation of creditor and depositor funds to rescue bankrupt megabanks, as in the Cyprus model.

Their second G20 emphasis is the so-called Global Infrastructure Initiative (GII), which is actually nothing of the kind. Tony Abbott styles himself “the Infrastructure Prime Minister”, but his initiative is a sneaky counterproposal to the new Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), led by China.

Abbott and Hockey have an extraordinary track record of privatizing and looting federal and state infrastructure on behalf of private financiers. While the AIIB plans to spend $50-$100 billion per year on new infrastructure projects, just initially, the Abbott/Hockey plan is to set up a Global Infrastructure Centre, solely to promote so-called Public Private Partnerships (or PPPs) – a program pioneered worldwide by Australia’s Macquarie Bank.

The PPP model is pushed by the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD and the Long Term Investors Club here in Europe (the latter, the LTIC, is also big in Australia). Their line is that since governments allegedly no longer have any money to build infrastructure, the private sector must do it. And whatever is built, or – much more often – acquired through privatization, is to be run on a “user pays” basis, exemplified by the high tolls on roads around Sydney that are operated by Macquarie Bank.

LaRouche’s science of physical economy teaches that infrastructure produces productivity, boosting the economy as a whole. Governments invest in it, for the public good. But for the PPP promoters, the entire reason for possessing infrastructure is to derive a money income stream from it.

Even an understated estimate from the Asian Development Bank, says that Asia needs $750 billion of infrastructure investment annually. But, as The Australian newspaper reported Oct. 9: “The Australian initiative would not invest in new projects and would instead focus on learning from joint ventures between governments and investors” – that is, PPPs – “how to make it faster and cheaper to raise funds” from the private sector.

The BRICS want to build nations, while Abbott and Hockey demand that the G20 adopt the Crown’s policy of looting them.

On the military side, Australia now serves as headquarters for U.S. President Obama’s infamous “Asia Pivot”, the British-directed plan for a military showdown with China. The U.S. and British military presence is expanding rapidly. (Slide 1) This map is from a 2012 issue of our New Citizen newspaper. The gold dots show the relentless Anglo-American military build-up in the Asia-Pacific, with upgrades of existing bases and the creation of new ones. (Slide 2) Here is what our own investigations discovered about the build-up of facilities within Australia. You need to see it up close for the detail, but it includes new and upgraded Navy bases, air bases, signals intelligence, and training grounds.

In the middle of the continent, circled in red because it’s being upgraded, is Pine Gap, the signals intelligence base that helps guide drones in the Middle East and is a crucial link in the American worldwide ballistic-missile defence system, to enable an Anglo-American first strike against China and Russia. Already during the Cold war, Pine Gap was so important in Anglo-American nuclear war planning, that Australia was a target for Soviet nuclear missiles.

Hardly any government leaders on Earth can have outdone Tony Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, in their outrageous denunciations of Russia and President Vladimir Putin, as they have defended the Anglo-American provocations in Ukraine.

Regarding Australia’s service as the test tube for creation of the genocidal “environmentalist” movement, suffice it to say that Prince Philip personally, in 1971 to 1976, chaired the Australian Conservation Foundation – a branch of his World Wildlife Fund – and midwifed the creation of the first Green Party in the world, in the Australian state of Tasmania. It became a model for the establishment of the Green Party in Germany. (Slide 3) We published a special issue of the New Citizen to that subject, in 2011, which will soon be reissued as a pamphlet. It includes thorough documentation of how the Crown and its Privy Council created the modern environmentalist movement, out of the British Eugenics Society of the 1930s.

Now let’s shift to happier subjects: first, what we in the CEC in Australia have done to frustrate the enemy’s plans, and – alongside our associates in the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche movement globally, and now the BRICS – to defeat that enemy once and for all; and then word about the role Australia should play in this new, just world economic order.

I shall go in reverse order, through our fights against green fascism, the Asian Pivot, and the build-up of Australia as an Asian branch office of London and Wall Street.

Ever since the CEC opened our national office in Melbourne in October 1992, launching as a national political party, we have been in a direct, personal battle with the Australian lackeys of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, one of whom said way back then, that he feared that “The LaRouche movement will become the most disruptive political force ever seen on the Australian continent.” We have battled against the Crown’s policies, and in favour of a vision of what our nation could become, once freed from its current rulers and from the slavish ideology accepted by far too many Australians even today.

We issue the New Citizen approximately quarterly, usually in several hundred thousand copies, and produce mass-circulation pamphlets on special topics as needed .

(Slide 4) This New Citizen, “Carbon Trading is Hitler-Style Genocide,” came out shortly before the Copenhagen Climate Summit of 2009. Our prime minister at the time, Kevin Rudd, was a leader in the Crown’s international drive to made that meeting adopt radical cutbacks on carbon emissions, further wrecking the world economy. Initially, 60% of Australians believed that carbon emissions cause global warming. We put out 500,000 copies of this newspaper and mobilized our base. Within months, Rudd had been ousted by a revolt within his own party, on this very issue. Shocked Members of Parliament reported that they had been bombarded with over a million phone calls and emails on the matter.

(Slide 5) Let’s turn to the Asia Pivot, which Barack Obama announced in 2011, including a new U.S. base in the northern Australia port of Darwin, as part of the build-up against China. Aware that Obama was continuing the infamous call by Dick Cheney for a pax Americana, under which none would ever be allowed to challenge Anglo-American power again, we named the danger: the world was heading toward nuclear war. We issued 400,000 copies of this New Citizen, to show where the policy really came from. We blanketed every military base, think tank, government office, police station, university and every other key institution we could find.

Until then, almost no one else in Australia was warning about the growing nuclear war danger. Then came a big break, when former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, as well as a handful of academics, also started to raise the alarm. On Sept. 25, 2012, Fraser made a scathing speech against the Asian Pivot. He warned, “Any use of nuclear weapons between the United States and China would be a global humanitarian catastrophe, and any armed conflict between nuclear-armed powers risks nuclear escalation. So conflict – and provocation that might lead to it – must be prevented at all costs.”

As the war danger increased, at the end of 2012 we issued another New Citizen on the subject (Slide 6). It featured new warnings by Lyndon LaRouche and the continued outspokenness of former Prime Minister Fraser, who had now stated publicly that the march of U.S. BMD systems toward Russian borders was making war more likely. We put this issue out also in Chinese (Slide 7); almost 4 percent of our population, around 1 million people, are Chinese immigrants and their descendants.

(Slide 8) This year Malcolm Fraser released his book, Dangerous Allies. He wrote that Australia must finally establish its own, independent foreign policy, and stop being subservient to foreign powers – whether the British Empire, or a United States under an imperial outlook. He called for previously unthinkable measures for war-avoidance, like shutting down American access to Pine Gap. Such stunning proposals have helped to ignite a serious debate on security issues, in Australia.

Taking on Australia’s role as an outpost of the City of London and Wall Street, is our crucial mission, because it is the certainty of a near-term systemic global financial collapse that drives the confrontation policy against Russia and China. Therefore the LaRouche movement in Australia has waged a relentless fight for the past two years, against bail-in and in favour of Glass-Steagall banking separation.

(Slide 9) In June 2013,  a small article appeared in the Australian Financial Review, titled “Shareholders, creditors must pay if banks fail: BIS”. Hardly any readers understood that Aesopian language for bail-in. We launched an emergency investigation of the plot to impose bail-in, which the government denied was even being considered.

(Slide 10) We published an expose based on our findings – half a million copies of this New Citizen – and escalated our campaign to subject the Big Four banks to Glass-Steagall. We organized a task force beyond anything we had ever done before, to contact every member of each of the 2500 local councils in Australia, along with influentials in many other fields, and call on them to sign on to our campaign for Glass-Steagall. Nearly 500 signed. We took out on a full-page ad on December 13 in the nation’s largest newspaper, The Australian, featuring those signatures and headlined “Don’t seize our bank accounts – Pass Glass-Steagall!”

(Slide 11) We then escalated with10 thousand copies of a pamphlet called “Glass-Steagall Now!” Our lobbying of the Parliament, from our Melbourne head office and by CEC members around the country, had such an impact that the chief organizer of bail-in, Treasurer Joe Hockey, was forced by a senior member of the Australian Senate to send his top aide to discuss Glass-Steagall and bail-in with two CEC Executive Committee members and a distinguished international visitor, who was our guest at the time!

In the meantime, Hockey in December 2013 had announced a so-called Financial System Inquiry, with the obvious agenda of further deregulating Australia’s banking system for the benefit of the Big Four. This FSI received 280 submissions from the public during a first round of hearings, but after our mobilization, an unprecedented 5000 submissions poured in for the second round. Among them was a blunt statement by former Prime Minister Fraser, saying that Australia should reject “bail-in” and “instead … fully separate retail banking from the speculative activities of investment banks, which the Glass-Steagall law did in the United States so successfully from 1933 until its repeal in 1999.”

(Slide 12) During two decades, the CEC has written and campaigned for positive proposals on reviving our nation’s physical economy, inspired by the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche. Our program for national recovery is anchored by great infrastructure projects, like the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme. Built between 1948 and 1974, it was named by the American Society of Engineers as “one of the seven engineering wonders of the modern world.”

Our friend and a veteran of the Snowy Scheme, the late Prof. Lance Endersbee helped us draft several programs: one for 18 great water projects to transform Australia, which has the world’s second largest desert after the Sahara, into a land of oases. (Slide 13) We have a nuclear power program, as Australia has the world’s largest reserves of uranium and second largest of thorium. Our plans include further development of high-speed shipping, where we are already a world leader; (Slide 14) a high-speed rail network to unite our vast continent; redevelopment of our formerly world-class machine-tool sector, including so we can export capital goods to Asia; and a program to send Australians into space. Australia already has one of the greatest food-production potentials in the world. (Slide 15) Professor Endersbee’s high-speed Australian Ring Rail program, together with high-speed shipping, be able to deliver Australian agricultural projects or machine-tools to any major port in Asia, in one to four days.

Finally, I would like to say that, like all thinking Australians, I was greatly moved by the landing of China’s Jade Rabbit rover on the Moon and the success of India’s Mars Orbiter Mission. Though we have largely abandoned our space program, Australia was one of the first nations in the world to be involved in space technology, and two Australians have flown in space, through the American space program.

Despite British oppression and frequent sabotage, optimism and a spirit of exploration run throughout the history of Australia. This is reflected in the history of our own organization, which grew out of two sources. One was the efforts of our National Secretary Craig Isherwood and his wife Noelene in organizing a rural political movement in the late 1980s. The second impetus was the CEC’s meeting the American LaRouche organization. And that happened because Australia had the highest level of Fusion magazine subscriptions per capita, of any country in the world except possibly the United States. Australians are great travellers. Throughout the 1980s they had signed up as members of the Fusion Energy Foundation at airports all over the world. By the end of that decade, our future American colleagues said to themselves, “How come all these Aussies are so optimistic? We had better go find out.”

So, here we are again, with fusion power on the agenda once more. With the BRICS developments of 2014, we are determined to lead Australia to its rightful place in a truly human new world economic order.