This transcript appears in the February 4, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this transcript]
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE
Address to the National Assembly of the Christian Democratic Party of Peru
This is an edited transcript of the address delivered by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the international Schiller Institutes, to the National Assembly of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) of Peru, Saturday, January 22, 2022, on the occasion of the 66th anniversary of its founding. The occasion included the PDC’s announcement that it was officially adhering to the philosophical principles and economic policies of the international Schiller Institutes. A video of Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s address is available here.
Dear Friends of the Christian Democracy in Peru,
It is a great honor and pleasure to send these greetings to your national conference.
I think you are all aware that we are at an extremely important moment in history, in which world peace is not safe. We are still in an acute danger zone of a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis over the situation in Ukraine and the continued expansion of NATO eastward toward the Russian border. This has been going on despite promises made to Russia during the time of the German reunification in 1990-1991, when the promise was given to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would “not move one inch eastward.”
But NATO has moved 1,000 km to the east; fourteen countries have joined NATO. And right now, you have a very fragile situation in which the media are saying that Russia will soon attack Ukraine, which Russia has denied. The situation is extremely volatile. A small sign of hope comes from the discussions which just took place in Geneva between the United States and Russia, in Brussels between NATO and Russia, and in the OSCE discussions in Vienna. Diplomacy might possibly replace confrontation and new arms control discussions could then actually start in earnest.
But the real reason behind this geopolitical crisis is that the systemic crisis of the neoliberal economic system is coming to a head. My late husband Lyndon LaRouche issued a forecast 50 years ago, in 1971, when President Richard Nixon decoupled the dollar from the gold-reserve standard and replaced fixed exchange rates with floating ones, saying at that point that if the world were to continue on that course of monetarism, sooner or later, the world would be faced with the danger of a new depression, new fascism, and even the danger of a new world war, unless a new financial system and a new credit system would be implemented with a new, just world economic order.
I think the countries of the developing sector are more acutely aware of this problem than anybody else. We now have the danger of a hyperinflationary collapse. You see it in the prices of energy, of food, of basic raw materials. The worst humanitarian crisis is now happening in Afghanistan, where after the withdrawal of NATO in August and the takeover by the Taliban, the Western countries cut off the aid to Afghanistan, because they didn’t like the Taliban. However, they all knew then that 75% of the budget of Afghanistan came from international aid! And when that money was cut off, the economy of Afghanistan was immediately plunged into absolute chaos.
The United Nations is warning dramatically, again and again, that there are eight million people right now, who are in immediate danger of starvation. They’re dying of hunger and freezing right now as you hear my words. The United Nations World Food Program has also warned that there is the danger that 23 million people may not outlive this winter if there is not a dramatic change in this situation. More than 90% of the people in Afghanistan do not have enough food. They are food insecure, have not enough medicine or no medicine at all, and this is in the middle of a pandemic; 98% of the people are in danger of permanently becoming extremely poor, at a starvation level.
Operation Ibn Sina
Now, this is why I have called for what I call Operation Ibn Sina, in reference to the great physician who lived 1,000 years ago. Ibn Sina was the father of modern medicine; he was the one who first discovered quarantine. So, Operation Ibn Sina is a symbol for what we must do: We have to build a modern health system in every single country on the planet, starting with Afghanistan, but not limiting it. Every country must have access to modern medicine, modern hospitals, and this is obviously only possible if you have electricity, if you have clean water—2 billion people in the world have no access to clean water; that has to be immediately reversed. We need basic infrastructure. And this building of a world health system must become the beginning of overcoming underdevelopment and poverty in the world, for good, forever.
The year 2022 is the year when my late husband would have celebrated his 100th birthday. That’s why I have said that the year 2022 must become the Year of LaRouche. It is the year when all the beautiful plans that he developed in his lifetime must be realized. In the 1970s, he had already developed a plan to develop Africa through a large infrastructure program, as the precondition for industrial development. He worked together, as you all know, with López Portillo, the President of Mexico, on what he called Operation Juárez, which was the idea that all of Latin America must be integrated and must have a coherent infrastructure program, as the precondition for agriculture and industry to develop. This program of Operation Juárez is more important today than ever before.
He also worked with Indira Gandhi: We worked with her on a 40-year development program for India, which was the idea that you needed, at that time, in 1979, about two generations to reach a modern development state for the nation of India.
After 1991, he proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge. This has become the basic idea that is now being carried out by China with the Belt and Road Initiative. We published the study, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge.”
Now, this is the hope: China and close to 150 nations have signed memoranda of understanding to cooperate in the Belt and Road Initiative. That is where the development of the world is taking place right now. And we, the LaRouche movement, and the Schiller Institute have made it our commitment to try to convince the United States and Europe to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative, and not oppose it for geopolitical reasons. This is the program to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, and to create a decent living standard for every person on the planet.
Creative Reason in the Year of LaRouche
Now, this is the obvious task and challenge for us. It should not be accepted as self-evident that several billion people have to live in poverty! Poverty eradication is the absolute demand of this coming year. The reason we can be optimistic about the human species finally accomplishing that is, as my husband said many times, that the human species is the only species which has the ability of creative reason. We can do what no animal species can do, we can make fundamental discoveries about the physical principles of the universe, and when we apply those principles as technologies in the production process, it leads to an increase of the productivity of the labor force and of the productive forces.
And that is how to increase living standards and life expectancy, and to create the conditions for an improvement of the general welfare. It is the principle of physical economy, and not monetarism, which we have to bring back to the world economy.
This coming year, we will see a worsening of the crisis, because there is no way that this casino economy will last forever. It will come to a point of crisis. We need to put all forces of the world together, people of good will, to implement the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche: The first of which is a global Glass-Steagall banking separation. The speculation of the derivatives casino has to come to an end forever, and the economy must again be put to the service of the people.
The second is: We need a National Bank in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton in every single country, and when these National Banks among the different countries work together, then that can create a New Bretton Woods credit system which will provide credit lines for long-term investment and the kind of infrastructure program which Latin America needs as do parts of Asia and Africa, and even parts of Europe, which are not yet developed.
Now, this can be done. And I think we should be optimistic that this coming year is going to be the year when that is going to be put on the table, because the crisis will demand it.
I had the good fortune, together with my husband, to visit your country in 1987. I have the most beautiful memories of that visit, and I think Peru is a great nation, which has an absolutely great population. And I wish you the best possible future, for your country and for the great success of your conference. And I look forward to our collaboration, so that we together bring humanity back from the abyss, from a catastrophe, and start to create a new paradigm in international relations, and start a new, more optimistic chapter in the history of humanity.
All my greetings to you.
