RESOLUTION
Zepp-LaRouche Appeals
To Nations in Time of Crisis
In the spirit of deliberations at an international EIR seminar held July 26 in Wiesbaden, Germany, attended by parliamentarians, economists, and legal experts from France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, the U.S.A., Niger, Zimbabwe, Jordan, and Germany, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, president of the international Schiller Institute, has published the following resolution for worldwide circulation and endorsement. Titled "Make the Dream of the American Revolution Come True!" it is addressed "To All the Nations of the United Nations and the Presidential Candidates in the American Election Campaign."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed. — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...." So reads the American Declaration of Independence of 1776.
And Martin Luther King reminded the world on August 28, 1963 in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech: "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise, that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned."
But the American Revolution and the establishment of a republic in the New World was not only a "Beacon of Hope and Temple of Liberty" for America alone, but it represented a perspective for a future in which imperialism and colonialism would eventually be overcome, for the entire world. The plan of John Quincy Adams, for an international "community of principle" of fully sovereign republics, which would, notwithstanding, be bound together by the common aims of mankind, was the noble fulfillment of the idea of the international law of the people, as it was established by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Unfortunately, today, it is obvious that America has kept this promise over recent years just as little for the international community, as King complained it did for the citizens of color in his time. But a unique opportunity, and perhaps also the last chance, currently presents itself, with the American Presidential campaign, to infuse the ideals of the American Revolution, of John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, with new life.
An Unprecedented Threat
Never in its entire history has humanity been threatened by greater dangers than now. We are experiencing the end phase of a systemic crash of the global financial system, whose hyperinflationary effects have already led to hunger riots in more than 40 nations, and are massively threatening the living standards of the majority of the population in the so-called industrialized nations as well. The system of unrestrained free trade associated with globalization has utterly failed, and threatens to plunge the world into a state of chaos which threatens the lives of many millions, if not billions of people.
While, during the 1950s and '60s, the idea of UN Development Decades still prevailed—that is, the perspective that the underdevelopment of the developing countries would be overcome in each decade, step by step, in order to reach, as soon as possible, the level of the industrialized nations—sometime, in the middle of the 1960s, a paradigm-shift set in, in which the talk was no longer about overcoming underdevelopment, through the construction of infrastructure, industry, and agriculture, but of "overpopulation," "appropriate technology," and "sustainable development." Instead of producing harvests for the welfare of their own populations, the developing countries had to produce, more and more, so-called "cash crops" for export, in order to pay off their foreign debt, which had been constantly increased through the conditionalities of the IMF.
In the industrialized nations, this paradigm-shift led increasingly away from production, toward speculation. In Europe, this has taken the form of turning previous cooperation among sovereign nation-states into a free-trade nightmare, run by a supranational Brussels bureaucracy, while tying the hands of governments, under the disastrous Maastricht-Lisbon treaties. Through so-called "outsourcing" to the countries with low-wage production, the productive small and medium-sized industries and the highly skilled jobs in the industrialized nations were destroyed in many places, while the real income in the low-wage countries could not cover the real cost from the standpoint of physical economy. Through this policy of free trade, important capacities in industry and agriculture have been destroyed over the last 40 years. A small section of the population in all countries became obscenely rich, while about 80% of the population in all countries became ever poorer. The situation escalated more and more, to the point against which Gandhi had written in reference to the British colonial masters: "Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles."
The model of globalization and free trade has been proven a failure, which has been demonstrated, not the least, by the final collapse of the Doha Round of the WTO trade negotiations in Geneva. Therefore, it is of the greatest urgency that we again put on the agenda, the ideas which had been proposed earlier, for example, by the Non-Aligned Movement at the Sri Lanka conference in 1976, in the so-called Colombo Resolution, that is, the demand for a new, just world economic order, which affords all people and all nations on this planet a humane life in freedom, and the pursuit of happiness, as it is demanded in the Declaration of Independence.
The Last Chance
The upcoming General Assembly of the United Nations, which begins this year on Sept. 26, in New York, is perhaps the last opportunity to put the interests of humanity as a whole, and not that of a few speculators, on the agenda. If courageous leaders of several nations comport themselves like those outstanding personalities, such as former Foreign Minister of Guyana Fred Wills, did in 1976, or the former President of Mexico, José López Portillo, did in 1982, then the reconstruction of the world economy after the crash of the system can be set in motion in sufficient time.
What mankind needs today, are individuals who have the vision and the love for the idea of the international community, to put the question of a new, just world economic order on the agenda. This resolution is a call to leading representatives of all nations, to work toward this goal. And the more that forces appeal to the three Presidential candidates who still find themselves in the race, to honor the promise of the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence for all nations on this planet, the greater the chance that America can return to the positive role which it played in the times of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
