HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:
BRICS Nations Revive Dr. King's Dream:
Economic Justice Is an Inalienable Right
[PDF version of this trancript]
This is the keynote speech to a Jan. 17 conference, by the founder of the international Schiller Institutes.
I'm here to talk to you about a beautiful vision of a world without war and terrorism.
Now, that sounds like a very unlikely proposition at this point, where we are at the verge of World War III. Even Gorbachov has recently expressed that very clearly. Many others are seeing it. And the world is torn apart right now by a wave of terrorism, and it is also not so easy to imagine how to get rid of this barbaric development.
But it is within reach. And the potential to get the world back in shape, in order, does exist.
It exists in the form of the beginning of a new world economic order which has been built over the past one and a half years by the BRICS countries, the CELAC countries of Latin America, some Asian and African countries. But in order for this vision to become truthfully the realistic perspective for the future, it is absolutely mandatory that we change the course of the United States, in particular, and of Europe. Because only if the United States joins with the BRICS, and does not regard China, India, and the other BRICS nations as a geopolitical threat to their, or your, or our geopolitical interest—. It must be absolutely clear that in the time of thermonuclear weapons, war cannot be a means of conflict resolution, unless we want to commit suicide.
War and terrorism are the two evil twins of our time, which, in an incestuous way breed each other. You have terrorism; then you have the war on terrorism, which creates more terrorism, which creates more need for more wars. Then you have more terrorism—and it goes on like that until the danger of World War III.
It should be understood, probably forever, but especially at our present time, that war and terrorism are the tools of an imperial system, a system which has increased the gap between rich and poor in a completely insane, perverse way, a system which has created a situation where the top rich people—85 people—own as much wealth as half of humanity, 3.5 billion people. This system is one which Pope Francis has called the system which kills, and he has demanded that one should apply the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," to exactly this system.
Restore the Real American Republic
And here in Manhattan, you have, in one sense, the headquarters of that system, shared with the City of London, in Wall Street. But you also have the beginning of the American Republic, and the American Constitution, which were represented by Alexander Hamilton, and the idea that the sovereign government has the right to create its own credit for the common good, and that that must serve only the prosperity of the nation.
New York has also been the beginning of the U.S. republic, and its institutions. And Wall Street, from the very beginning, was the enemy of the American model. It was always the bridgehead of subversion for the British Empire, all the way through. It financed always the wrong people, including in the Civil War, when it financed the Confederacy.
It was associated with the idea to undo the American Revolution, and to return the American colonies back to the control of the British Empire. And today, the enemies of the idea of America as a republic, are on a rampage, and some of them are having lunch or dinner with the representative of the British Empire who is visiting the United States: Tony Blair.
The fate of the world will depend on which of these two traditions will prevail. And we have assembled here today, to launch from this meeting a process to return America back to be a republic, and implement the policies of Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, and become the United States again, a republic in an alliance of perfectly sovereign republics.
The good news in all of this, is that Wall Street is about to blow up. And the even better news is that an alternative to this system is already in place.
But the Wall Street too-big-to-fail banks are about to blow, and so is the Eurozone.
On Thursday of this week, the Swiss National Bank gave up their pegging to the euro, and that was because it was not maintainable any more after Switzerland had already spent $500 billion to prevent the upvaluation of the Swiss franc; and in expectation of very stormy things to come this coming week, the Swiss sort of pulled the emergency brake, and decided to let the parity float.
Now, on Thursday of this coming week—and this was what the Swiss National Bank anticipated—the European Central Bank will, in all likelihood, go for the most gigantic Quantitative Easing, and buy state bonds without limit. They will do what [ECB President] Mario Draghi had already announced two years ago, when the euro was in deep trouble: He said that he would do everything to save the euro. And everything means printing money without limit.
On the 25th, that is, next Sunday, you will have the Greek election, and all the indications are that the opposition parties, Syriza and the Independent Greeks, will win a majority, and they have already announced that in that case, they will cancel the Memorandum of the Troika, the Memorandum which forced the Greek population to suffer the most unbelievable pain, austerity, increase of suicide rates, increase of death rates. And right now, you have a popular uprising in Greece against that. And if these opposition parties win, then that will be, in all likelihood, the beginning of the demise of the euro, because if the EU Commission capitulates to the demands of Syriza, to abandon the austerity, that will spread like wildfire to Italy, to Spain, to Portugal, and to France, and probably many other countries.
And if they don't, then the ultimatum also will probably mean that Greece will leave the Eurozone, and that will also spread like wildfire.
Now, Wall Street is not better off, because the too-big-to-fail banks, which are already now at their last gasp of desperation, have speculated and invested in shale gas and oil, and they have accumulated about $1 trillion in debt, which was supposed to be repaid at a price of oil of $80, $100, or $120 per barrel, and not $45, where it is right now. And on top of that, they have amassed about $20 trillion of derivatives outstanding in various forms.
This has created a situation like the secondary mortgage crisis in 2007, where, because of the collapse of housing prices, many people were sitting on mortgages which were much higher than the [current] price of their house, and that led to the blowout of the secondary real estate market, which then, in turn, led to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the potential vanishing of the system.
That means the trans-Atlantic financial system is about to go under. And given the fact that that system has about $2 quadrillion in outstanding derivatives, there is no way that that money can be paid, not through bailout, and not through bail-in. And that is why we are on the verge of World War III.
The War Danger
Because the collapse of the trans-Atlantic system is the real trigger for the war danger. The obvious trigger is the crisis in Ukraine, but in reality, what we are looking at is a geopolitical confrontation with Russia, with China. And when Gorbachov, who is liked in the West, but not so much in Russia, is now defending Putin, in a dramatic turn of his views, and warning that if it comes to a war over Ukraine, it will lead to a large war where atomic weapons will be used, and that will lead to the extinction of civilization, then I can only say that that is absolutely the case.
What we have right now is a U.S. military posture, and that of NATO, which is operating on a first-strike doctrine. They have expanded NATO eastward, [up to the borders of] Russia. The United States has adopted the so-called Prompt Global Strike doctrine, which is a first-strike doctrine. The global U.S. missile defense system is a first-strike system. And the United States is in the process of modernizing its entire nuclear arsenal, for the same purpose.
A report was issued this past week in Washington, where the International Security Advisory Board, which advises the State Department, and which consists of former government and military officials, said: Oh, it's so terrible. We have to acknowledge the fact that we have an adversarial relationship with Russia, and naturally the immediate reason is Ukraine and Crimea. And now the biggest danger is that either side miscalculates the intention of the other. It's a big concern, because Russia believes that the United States wants to change the government in Russia, and that we are working towards a first-strike capability. Naturally we are not, the report says, but if we just say so, they will not believe us.
Now, the Russians still have the greatest nuclear arsenal outside of the United States, enough to destroy the United States in one afternoon.
That is the case, and Russia is not imagining these threats—they are very real. And therefore, over the Christmas period, Russia, in response to this, made a new Russian military doctrine, in which they say that they preserve on their side, the right to use nuclear weapons to defend against a U.S. first strike. They are investing in new strategic submarines. ICBMs are being put on trains, so that they are not easily targeted. They are, on their side, modernizing their nuclear capabilities, and their targeting acquisition.
The December issue of The Nation had an article by Mr. [Theodore] Postol, where he described in great detail the first-strike posture of the United States, and said that it is a fundamental mistake of those who have done that, to assume that it is possible to neutralize a second nuclear strike of an opponent. Because there is a fundamental difference between a conventional war, where you try to destroy as much as you can of the enemy, and then the enemy is defeated; but in a nuclear war, you cannot do that. And he makes a sophisticated calculation why, in any case, the Russians have 6 minutes left to launch their capabilities, once they see that they're attacked. And that means extinction.
How It Came About
How is it possible that, 70 years after the end of the Second World War, we are indeed on the verge of World War III? What went so horribly wrong that we are at this point?
To answer this question, we have to go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even before, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because since that time, you have had two fundamentally opposite, competing conceptions about where the world should go.
On the one side, people may remember that the fall of the Berlin Wall was greeted with gigantic joy by the German people, and everybody was convinced at that time, that that would be the great historical chance of 1989. After all, communism was defeated—at least in the Soviet Union and in the Warsaw Pact—and there was actually no reason why one should not go for a peace order for the 21st Century. The enemy of the Cold War was gone. It had ended peacefully. There were no tanks. There was no big catastrophe. So, why not go for a new order among the nations of the world?
Now, Mr. LaRouche, whom you just heard (see below), had the vision already in 1984, that the Soviet Union would collapse in five years, because if they would stay with their then-existing military policy, their economy would collapse. So it came to us as no surprise, and Mr. LaRouche and I gave a press conference in Berlin in 1988, one year before the Wall came down, where he predicted: Soon, Germany would be unified, with Berlin as the capital, and then we could start to develop the countries of the East.
So, when the Wall came down, we immediately proposed the economic integration of Eastern and Western Europe, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in '91, we proposed a Eurasian Land-Bridge, the idea to connect the populations and industrial centers of Europe, with those of Asia, through development corridors, in order to develop the land-locked areas of the Eurasian continent, and bring them up to the level of those nations which are on the sea or the ocean.
That proposal was indeed a very realistic proposal. However, as you know, it was rejected, because you had Bush Sr. in the United States, you had Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, François Mitterrand in France, and they started a process which is the reason why we are on the verge of World War III today. They developed the doctrine of preventive war—which, by the way, was not invented as a reaction to Sept. 11, as people normally say; but already in May 1990, Paul Wolfowitz went to the then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and proposed something which was indeed a preventive war doctrine against Russia.
In May 1990, German President Richard von Weizsäcker was still giving a speech in the parliament in Germany, in the Bundestag, talking about the Great Chance of '89; but what he obviously did not know, is that that option was already gambled away.
What this looked like appeared in an article in the New Yorker magazine on the first of April 1999. [It explained that] the Bush Administration basically announced that they would not allow any other nation, or group of nations, to ever become a great power. At the same time, the CIA published a study, which only partially was made known, in which they said that Russia, despite the fact that the Soviet Union had collapsed, still had more raw materials and more skilled labor than the United States, and therefore it was advisable to discourage the industrial development in Russia, in order to eliminate a future competitor on the world market.
And we all know what happened. Economists like Jeffrey Sachs and others went to Russia, and the Eastern European countries, and applied shock therapy, which succeeded to reduce the industrial capacity of Russia, from '91 to '94, down to only 30% of what it had been.
At that point, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was one of the Cheney people, wrote a book, From Containment to Global Leadership, in which he advertised that the United States should take preemptive steps to preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future, and be willing to use force, if necessary, for that purpose. Now, "indefinite future"—that sounds even better than the Thousand Year Reich of the Nazis, who only wanted to have 1,000 years; but indefinite rulership, that is really remarkable.
So, in 1992, the Defense Planning Guidance was published, which was the same preemptive war doctrine, and then some excerpts of this doctrine were published in the New York Times. Sen. Joe Biden, who was then the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "Oh no, this is a new Pax Americana. This is an American empire." Now, unfortunately, Vice President Biden today is pushing exactly the same policy.
What that doctrine included was permanent U.S. dominance over all of Eurasia, U.S. global domination, and regime change against many countries that would oppose this—like Iraq.
The Case of Iraq
Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was already on the agenda before Bush Jr. became President in January 2001, because the Project for a New American Century published, in September 2000, a 90-page paper, where the section about Iraq said that the U.S. had sought for decades to play a permanent role in Gulf security, and the need for a substantial U.S. presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Before the famous second Gulf War, there was the meeting between U.S. Amb. April Glaspie, after Kuwait had started to steal some of the oil from Iraq, and when Saddam Hussein indicated that he would make efforts to regain that, and occupy Kuwait, Ms. Glaspie signaled that that was okay—the U.S. would not get involved in inner Arab relations—and Saddam Hussein proceeded.
That was the pretext for a war, Operation Desert Storm, where General Schwarzkopf at the time announced that they would bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age—and so they did.
Then came a cease-fire resolution, UN Resolution 687, which was adopted by the UN Security Council in April 1991, which, among other things, demanded that Iraq should give up the weapons systems which had been supplied by the United States to Saddam Hussein, in the decade before, for the war against Iran.
The sanctions alone had absolutely catastrophic consequences. The so-called oil-for-food program had the consequences, that, in one year, 550,000 Iraqi children under five years of age died. From '91 to 2003, 1.5 million additional people died, for lack of food and medicine. And it turned out that Madeleine Albright, who was at that time UN Ambassador, gave an interview in '96 about this to "60 Minutes" on CBS, and she was asked, is the death of half a million children an appropriate price for maintaining the embargo? And she said, we think the price is worth it.
There was a UN study in which they also showed that the number of children who had psychological trauma, psychological ills, anxiety, state of horror, increased to several hundred thousands per year.
Now, at that time, the Schiller Institute initiated a Committee To Save the Iraqi Children. This was a proposal by our friend, the Russian professor [Grigori] Bondarevsky, and we created this committee with His Beatitude Rafael I Bidawid, the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church of Babylon; Dr. Hans Köchler from the IPO organization in Austria; Amelia Boynton Robinson; Massimo Pini, a Swiss parliamentarian; Ramsey Clark, and others. And we organized an airlift. Milk powder from America, from dairy farmers, 5 tons; 3 shipments of 16.5 tons of medical supplies. We transported 22 Iraqi children to Germany to be treated; 48 hospital beds, 10 operating tables, 67 wheelchairs, and so forth.
But the martyrdom of the Iraqi people continued.
In the meantime, the Schiller Institute continued to organize seminars for the Eurasian Land-Bridge in hundreds of cities, among them at a big conference in Beijing in 1996.
Then we created a Women's Commission for the New Silk Road, which was the idea to bring peace to the war-torn area of the Middle East, through development, by extending the Eurasian Land-Bridge into the Middle East. We said in the text: "Iraq is one of the central countries in the New Silk Road. If one wishes to change the dynamic in the entire Gulf, in the Middle and Near East, and eliminate the looming danger of the world for good, there is no better way than to build the Southern Tier extension of the New Silk Road from China, through Central Asia, to Iran, Iraq, to the Near East, and from there, branching out into Africa, on the one side, the Balkans, on the other side; and in the other direction, the Southern Tier of the New Silk Road must go from Iran to India, and from there integrate all of Southeast Asia."
At that point, our words were not heard, because the powers-that-be had other conceptions.
1996 was the same year in which Richard Perle announced the "Clean Break" policy for Benjamin Netanyahu, which was the idea to undo the Oslo Accord of the Clinton Administration.
But, in '97, the Asia crisis hit—and although the Chinese government had already declared the Eurasian Land-Bridge to be the long-term perspective for China until the year 2010, the Asia crisis almost caused a meltdown, and it led then to the Russian GKO crisis in '98, and state bankruptcy. At that time President Clinton called for a new financial architecture, but he was watergated as a result.
In '99, Larry Summers repealed Glass-Steagall; and then deregulation of Wall Street, and the European banking system, went on without restraint.
The 9/11 'Reichstag Fire'
On the 3rd of January 2001, Mr. LaRouche made a famous webcast, where he said that the incoming Bush Administration would be confronted with so many problems of the financial system, that they would go for a new "Reichstag Fire," in order to create the precondition for a police state. That was three weeks before Bush Jr. came into the White House.
When September 11 happened, Mr. LaRouche coincidentally was giving a live interview to a radio program in Utah, the Stockwell Show, where he said, this attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would not have been possible without complicity of criminal elements of the United States Administration.
Now, we will hear later in the afternoon a special presentation about the need to release the 28 pages, so I will not go into this here; but those 28 pages give you a window on what really happened behind the scenes, and when these pages are published, that will do a lot to undo what went wrong.
But continuing on this trail: This was not the end of it. In 2003, you had the discovery of the "Axis of Evil," Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea. Supposedly Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Supposedly it was building a nuclear weapon, and had the ability to reach every city on the planet within 45 minutes. Supposedly Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaeda.
That was all due to a memorandum of MI5, and condoned and organized by Tony Blair.
We know what happened. The Iraq War did occur, based on lies, throwing the nation of Iraq into more turmoil.
In the meantime, the terrorist network spread, which had started with Zbigniew Brzezinski playing the "Islamic card" against the Soviet Union, in Afghanistan, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, these networks spread—to Central Asia, to Chechnya, to Dagestan, to Xinjiang in China, Pakistan. And the virus of Wahhabism, which had been the true responsible for 9/11, spread. And Article 5 of NATO was invoked, because supposedly this was al-Qaeda. And the war in Afghanistan happened.
Next came the war against Libya: The United States, the British, and the French, supported Islamicist radicals in Libya to topple and murder Qaddafi. And after they had thrown the country into complete hell, they started to fight against the same terrorists. In the meantime, this would not prevent them from using them, to start the effort to topple Assad.
This has all morphed into ISIS, which has become strong in Iraq and Syria, and a war against ISIS is being declared—whose creation is the result of the previous policies. But naturally, the United States is not doing it alone. It is doing it with its good allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, countries which are under high suspicion of financing the very same terrorists against whom this war is being fought.
Now, today, you have "good terrorists" you are using for regime change, against the governments you don't like. Tomorrow you find out these are the "bad terrorists" you have to make war against. In the meantime, the Wahhabists' madrassas [schools] and charities are recruiting more people from the United States, converts, from Germany, from France, from Belgium, training them in Syria and Iraq, and then sending them back to commit atrocities like we just saw in Paris against the Charlie Hebdo magazine.
This has to end! Because this has become an absolute nightmare, and it is a nightmare which will destroy civilization for good, if we don't stop it. And this is why the publishing of the 28 pages is the absolute key. And it is absolutely key because, only if the truth comes out about what happened, can there be a remedy.
An Emerging New World Order
But that is not good enough. Because in the meantime, in the last one and a half years, a completely different model of world order has emerged.
When Xi Jinping announced one and a half years ago in Kazakhstan, that he would build a New Silk Road in the tradition of the ancient Silk Road, he referred to this [video from NHK/CCTV documentary].
I can only advise you to go to the Internet and look at some of the documentaries about the ancient Silk Road, because 2,000 years ago, the ancient Silk Road was an effort to unite the nations and the cultures of Europe with those of Asia. And it led to a tremendous exchange of goods, but, more importantly, of technologies of silk-making, of porcelain production, of gunpowder, of printing, book printing, and many of the most advanced technologies of the time were exchanged, and led to an increase of the well-being of the people at that time. So when Xi Jinping announced that he would build, in the tradition of the old Silk Road, the New Silk Road, we were extremely happy. I jumped that high and said, "Wow! Now China is going with the policy of the Schiller Institute, the Eurasian Land-Bridge, the New Silk Road which we had advertised since the end of the Soviet Union."
In the meantime, an unbelievable development has taken place, because in the six months since, you had breathtaking developments, starting with the announcement by Xi Jinping in November 2013 to also build the ancient Maritime Silk Road; then in May, you had the summit between Russia and China in Shanghai, concluding large cooperation treaties. And then, in July 2014, you had the Fortaleza conference of the BRICS, and then afterwards, with many other countries, summits between the BRICS countries, the CELAC, the ASEAN, and so forth and so on.
A Stunning Array of Projects
In this period, a breathtaking development has taken place, [a revival of] projects which have completely been blacked out by the Western media or are slandered, like the building of a new Nicaraguan second Panama Canal, which is being slandered as being environmentally damaging; but that it will bring up the living standards of the Nicaraguan population they do not mention, because this canal, which will be 278 km long, will connect the Pacific with the Atlantic oceans, immediately deploy 50,000 workers, build two ports, an international airport, numerous industries, and it will, since it was begun in December 2014, be completed in five years and transform Nicaragua into a modern nation.
Then, an unbelievable number of cooperation agreements between Russia and Nicaragua; Putin visited there and they agreed on agricultural production; that Nicaragua will have a GLONASS system, which is a Russian GPS system; numerous technological cooperation agreements. Putin also made ten agreements with Cuba, building an international airport, nuclear power plants. Russia and Argentina: cooperation for nuclear energy; air and space industry; communications; nuclear plants; desalination. Argentina and China: between President Xi Jinping and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, they concluded an all-inclusive alliance, 19 agreements—nuclear energy, infrastructure, communications, transport. China gave several credits for these projects.
China is building a transcontinental railroad from Brazil to Peru. Bolivia is the most exciting example, where from a coca-growing country, now Bolivia is seeking a transcontinental rail connection from Brazil to Bolivia to Peru. Russia and Bolivia are cooperating on the development of nuclear energy, naturally, for its peaceful use; the education of its workforce, hydropower. Bolivia and China: cooperation for space technology, satellites. Russia and Brazil: Gigantic cooperation with Brazil, increase of trade, nuclear energy, machine tools. Brazil and China: building together infrastructure, science exchange, space cooperation, sale of Brazilian planes to China, and science and technology exchanges.
China and India have agreed on 10 major projects between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, to develop the thorium reactor, the high-temperature reactor, a pebble-bed reactor; high-speed train systems; a huge corridor linking China-India-Myanmar, Kolkata and Kunming, and also other projects of the New Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road.
Russia and China have 48 large agreements, among them, floating nuclear plants for large-scale ocean-water desalination; also energy supply for large industrial parks, for example, to supply energy to oil-drilling stations in the ocean; a pipeline from Siberia to China. They concluded a deal for gas supply for 30 years; high-speed train systems,s uch as Moscow-Kazan will be built immediately.
China-ASEAN had a summit in Myanmar in August; then there was a huge machine-tool Maritime Silk Road exhibition in Nanning, China in September with the participation of 4,600 firms.
The BRICS have started a program for education and exchange of young scientists. They're building many new universities and high schools. Modi has said that the BRICS alliance is for the first time an alliance among countries which is not based on their present capacity, but on their joint future potential, and that the big advantage of India is that 60% of all Indians are under the age of 35, and they will be the main export of India to countries which have demographic problems—like Germany and Italy, for example.
Modi has revived, at the recent summit of the South Asian nations [SAARC], 30 large water projects which had originally been agreed upon by Indira Gandhi, but which were not built because of her and her son's assassinations. Now these water projects will tame the waters flowing from the Himalayas, and normally causing gigantic floods in Bangladesh and other countries, and bring it for the use of agriculture and hydropower.
Similar developments have happened in Egypt. Egypt is doubling the Suez Canal. There is intensive cooperation between Russia and Egypt in nuclear energy, agricultural production.
Russia and South Africa: Russia is supporting the building of a nuclear industry in South Africa, while China is helping South Africa to get back control over large steel plants which they had lost to British control in the meantime. Li Keqiang, the prime minister of China, was in Africa, and announced that it is the Chinese intention to connect all African capitals through a system of high-speed trains.
This is a reality, and I only can mention some of the projects, but if you look at it in detail, it is mind-boggling what these countries are doing right now. And this is an alliance of countries to stay.
Just a few days ago, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov gave an interview to Xinhua where he said that Russia will use its chairmanship of the BRICS, which will start in April, to transform the BRICS from a "dialogue-based forum" into a "full-blown mechanism of interaction on key issues of global economy and politics." That at the summit of BRICS in the Russian city of Ufa in July, where also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will meet, they will bring "reform of the international and economic system" on the table, "strengthen the legal framework of international relations, make greater use of the complementary nature of their economies" in order "to accelerate the development" of our countries, "to improve industrial and technological cooperation," decide on new projects, "energy, mining, metallurgy, agro-industry, telecommunication, high-technology" projects, expand the capability of the BRICS in the social sphere, research activity, health-care systems, youth development, and information policies.
They also will cement and consolidate the new financial institutions, the New Development Bank, which will finance all of these projects, together with the AIIB and the New Silk Road Development Fund; they are creating the Contingency Reserve Arrangement, which is a pool to defend member countries against speculative attacks and in the event of a global crisis. They deepened the integration of their states, and they strengthened their trade and investment capabilities, and Russia, in particular is actively cooperating on these issues with China. [He said] that the BRICS, together, will increase their economic cooperation strategy until 2020; they will create a business council, an economic bloc of participating countries, and they want India and Pakistan to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and do joint celebrations at the upcoming victory over the Nazis in World War II.
The End of Geopolitics
That means there is a completely different world out there. The BRICS countries, CELAC, the ASEAN countries, and a growing alliance of other countries are building a just new world economic order. And it is based on fundamentally different conceptions, not on global dominance, not on the idea that there is one, dominating, remaining superpower, which is ruled by, not a Washington Consensus, but in reality, the submission of everybody who believes in this Washington Consensus to the rule of Wall Street and London.
The New Silk Road conception is built on a completely different conception, and every country is invited to participate, not as a geopolitical interest against other geopolitical interests, but as one, unifying conception for all of mankind. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly elaborated the principles on which the New Silk Road is being built. He said: It is a mutual development concept, non-confrontational. It has mutual respect and dialogue. It has respect for the choice of social system of the other. It is supporting the strategic interests of the other. It show absolute respect for the sovereignty of each. It is an absolute rejection of any form of hegemony.
And in 2014, at the Sixth Strategic and Economic Dialogue Conference between the United States and China, China proposed a new model for relations among larger states, and the emphasis was on the need to have good and stable relations between the United States and China, which must be an anchor of stability in the whole world, and that both states are responsible for the fate and the common future of the world. And at the APEC meeting in Beijing in October, Xi Jinping offered to President Obama that the United States and other major nations should join all of this: the New Silk Road, the AIIB, the New Development Bank.
Now, all the Western think tanks—at least all of them I know—and the mainstream media, and a large part of the Congress, which is naturally controlled by this Washington Consensus—which means Wall Street money, the famous "dark money" which bought the recent midterm election—they all say, "Oh no, China is an imperial force, this is all not true, China has evil motives, they pursue their own interests." Typical was an article in the German paper Die Welt on the 7th of July, with the headline, "The Mega Empire Reaches Out to the Whole World."
What China and the BRICS countries do, is what the United States used to do, when it was still a healthy, sane nation. After the War of Independence against the British Empire, Alexander Hamilton created exactly that kind of a credit system, that kind of banking and economy; he outlined in his famous reports to Congress what became known worldwide as the "American System of political economy." In the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, he wrote: "To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted." And that connection between the inventions of the mind, the creative power of the mind, and the increase of the physical production process of labor, that is the kernel of the American System.
That is what China today does, and that has led to this phenomenal development of the last 30 years. What China did in that period, is exactly what the United States and Europe and several other countries did. And that is the basis for the BRICS alliance today, which is going for a science- and education-based economy, a science-driver. That is how China developed from the complete devastation of the Cultural Revolution 40 years ago, and could accomplish in 30 years, just 30 years, what the United States and Europe did in 200 years. So that is why China today is the leading space nation in the world, and why, working together with India and Russia in space, they are today the leaders.
The Westphalian Principle
Now the idea of respect for the interest of the other, happens to be also the principle of the Peace of Westphalia [1648], out of which international law grew. That Peace of Westphalia ended 150 years of religious war in Europe. It is that spirit of the Peace of Westphalia, which was based on the ideas of Nicholas of Cusa—Nicholas of Cusa said that the aim of any civil order is concordantia, harmony. It's a precondition for the common good to develop. This harmony is based on the development of all in their mutual interest.
Human society, according to Nicholas, is part an image of a harmonious cosmic order which the Creator has built within the universe, and which only functions if it realizes that order. To seek concordance is also the task of each individual in his or her political activity, and it can only be based on a consensus omnius, that is, the consensus of all, not on the basis of submission under the rule of the strongest. Each individual has to learn to serve the whole as a part, but also respect the other as the embodiment of the same right. Nicholas develops this in the Concordantia Catholica.
Now, if you look at Confucius, you find exactly the same ideas. Confucius has the conceptions of ren, which is agape, love; and li, which is exactly this idea that each individual has to fulfill his or her place in the universe; that this is the best possible way for the universe to function.
A similar idea is also Confucius's idea of harmony which must exist in society. He says, "the road to this harmony is the development of each individual to become a human being with a very high morality, to become a junzi, a noble person. And Confucius said legislation, law, is not the power to create junzi; it is only through the moral example of leadership—which happens to be the same idea as Schiller's Aesthetical Education of Man, as the only way the state can function and blossom. "The moral example of leadership must inspire the population through example, and if the leadership is moral, then the population will develop automatically the kind of shamefulness to reject evil and to seek perfection and self-perfection." Now, our society has become a completely shameless society. Everything goes, and that is a sign of a dying culture.
Nicholas of Cusa wrote in De Venatione Sapientiae (The Hunt for Wisdom), that in all forms of existence in the cosmos, there is an inner dynamic to be in the most perfect form. And in the universe exists an order, a natural desire of all things to develop their essence in commonality with the other species in the optimal way, in such a way that it develops from vegetative forms, to higher forms of mental conscience and human creativity, as a reflection of the Creator. And this is the highest reflection of this principle in the universe, and that is, in a sense, the purpose and goal of the universe.
The Challenge Facing Europe and the USA
This is what this Manhattan Project is really all about. Because, when Lyndon LaRouche, my husband, called for this Manhattan Project, it was the idea that New York, and Manhattan in particular, must play a very special role, in turning the United States around. If mankind is to exist, as I said in the beginning, it is absolutely mandatory that the United States and Europe join the BRICS dynamic.
Europe right now is being torn apart. You have those who follow the Washington Consensus, the expansion of NATO, the encirclement of Russia, the provocations by backing Nazis in Ukraine—and that's 70 years after the Second World War ended. It is a shame on Mrs. Merkel, and I really want you to spread that shame wherever you can.
However, there are others: The new Foreign Minister of the EU, Federica Mogherini from Italy, just prepared a new report to the EU foreign ministers, demanding a renewal of the relationship with Russian. The French Ambassador to Russia, Jean-Maurice Ripert, just said, France does not want Europe to split from Russia. I have no problem with the concept of Eurasia, he said. Russia must be a bridge between Europe and Asia.
In Greece, with the coming election on Jan. 25, if Syriza and the Independent Greeks win, they will cancel the sanctions, and they will not go for a renewal of the sanctions against Russia. The German coordinator for Russian policy, Gernot Erler, just gave an interview where, on the one side, he proved his utter ignorance about the true policies of China; but, he said that if there is a military solution for the crisis in Ukraine which is being pushed not only by some people in Europe but also from overseas, then that will lead to the horror scenario Gorbachov outlined.
And we have a problem in Germany: We have to get rid of Merkel, if Germany is to survive.
The European nations now have a gigantic crisis as a result of the developments in the Middle East. Every day you have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of refugees coming in little boats from Africa, but now mostly from Syria and Iraq. And many of them drown—half of them drown! And even if they know 50% drown, they still come, to flee from the horrors of these countries, from the Hell of their home countries. And these drowning people are turning the Mediterranean into a sea of death.
Recently, traffickers in human beings lured several hundreds of women, children, pregnant women, into old cargo tankers, which were already on the garbage pile, and they used them one last time, to put hundreds of such poor people on the boat to just leave them, then, in the middle of the Mediterranean, without navigation, without water, food, waiting to die or be saved—whatever.
That stream of refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa naturally increases the xenophobia in Europe, and you may have heard about the large demonstrations against foreigners, and racial conflict.
Now, what is the situation of the United States: The long list of war, unjust wars, wars based on lies, breeding terrorism, are not in the interests of the United States, and there are reasonable American diplomats who have made speeches in Washington, saying that even from a narrow American interest, these wars have caused hatred among people against America, and America has lost power in the world as a result.
Now, therefore, for the United States to join hands with the BRICS, with Russia, China, India, Iran, and Egypt, to develop Southwest Asia as an extension of the New Silk Road, a program which can only be realized as part of the World Land-Bridge, and a program which we have extensively presented, already in 2012, with concrete projects, water management, greening the deserts, building new infrastructure, building new cities, where now there is death and starvation—that would eliminate poverty and therefore the breeding ground of terrorism.
I think the people in the United States, from my experience, tend to completely underestimate the depth of anti-Americanism in the world as a result of three Bush administrations and six years of Obama. Wars which were based on lies, on millions and millions of people killed, their lives being destroyed—and I only mentioned the case of Iraq, the wars, and the embargo, but if you think about the situation in Syria, in Libya, in Afghanistan, so many people killed, traumatized, so many soldiers, American soldiers and others, killed, injured, traumatized, being destroyed for the rest of their life. And naturally, the families of the victims of Sept. 11.
To overcome such gigantic pain of so many people, to overcome such a million-fold crime, war crime, requires an equally, or even bigger, extraordinary good, to replace it.
The precondition for that is to end the casino economy of Wall Street, to immediately help to implement the Glass-Steagall law, to go for a Hamiltonian National Bank, eliminate the unpayable derivatives and toxic debt, reorganize the remaining debt in a National Bank as the basis for a new credit system, exactly as Alexander Hamilton did. And therefore, in this tradition of Hamilton, New York must become the launching pad from which the United States can be reconstituted as a republic.
New Yorkers are famous in the whole world—that New York is the capital, really the intellectual capital, of the United States. It is a city which is a true melting pot, where you have representatives of almost every nation on this planet. And each of them brings a unique contribution to the very specific idea of New York, and therefore, New York is the synonym for one humanity.
New Yorkers are proud to be more intelligent, more thinking, and more creative than most Americans, and therefore, I think that is the perfect precondition to launch from here a nationwide movement to join the BRICS, to create a new era of civilization, and end the bestial era of war and terrorism forever.
And in that good spirit of John F. Kennedy in his famous [Berlin] speech: Let me join you as a New Yorker.
