Discussion followed the main presentations of Panel 1 at the Schiller Institute International Conference, on June 27, 2020, “Will Humanity Prosper, or Perish? The Future Demands a Four-Power Summit Now,” and included questions submitted from all over the world.

This is an edited transcript of the discussion among panelists Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute; Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former Surgeon General of the United States; Dr. Kildare Clarke, a long-time New York City emergency room director; and Boris Meshchanov, Counselor, Russian Federation Mission to the United Nations; with co-moderators Dennis Speed and Diane Sare.

Panel 1 was titled, “Instead of Geopolitics: The Principles of Statecraft.” Zepp-LaRouche opened the discussion.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: We wanted to have this conference to show a way for governments to work together; to show how people can support that, and in this way help to create an environment in which the urgent need for a new world economic order, a new financial system, can be put on the table.

I’m very encouraged, because what Dr. Jin did is very much our approach. You need a dialogue of cultures; you need to look for those ideas which resonate in the other culture even if the predicates are different. I think he did an excellent job in doing that.

I think the fact that Mr. Meshchanov chose to focus on Africa is a sign of the times. The fate of the African continent will decide if we are morally fit to survive. We must work together as nations to help to overcome the dangers affecting all of us: the new locust plague, growing famine, and the pandemic. Can we put aside all kinds of geopolitical and contrary interests and really work together in the common task of getting humanity into a different era?

I was very happy with what Dr. Elders said. This idea of calling on the youth is right. They must play an important role: It’s their future, it’s their world. Young people always like to talk to other people from other countries and work together. That is leverage we can use to influence governments to go in the direction that they need to.

Very delightful was what Mayor Hopkins demonstrated, because it really beats back the idea that small communities can’t do much. He has demonstrated that it can be done, and the fact that the great community of Muscatine has a relationship to Xi Jinping, is just a very bold and very good example. At the end, when he blended in these musical performances, it touched off exactly what needs to be touched off—namely, love between different cultures. Different cultures are not a threat, they are actually an enrichment once you start to know them and to encounter them.

I also want to thank Mr. Ding Yifan and Mr. Kotegawa, both of whom are long-term acquaintances of ours. This was a powerful, and useful, demonstration of how you can work together on different levels and set an example.

Dennis Speed: Counselor Meshchanov, please give us your reflections on this question that came in: “What is President Putin’s thinking in calling for a P5 summit [a summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council], and how does this compare with Mrs. LaRouche’s proposal?”

Boris Meshchanov: Thank you for the opportunity to speak and deliberate on these acute and intelligent problems of the current moment. And thank you for your question.

At the United Nations, we have been involved in organizing the summit even before the pandemic. We’re still looking forward to having it under the new circumstances. We proceed from President Vladimir Putin’s own statements earlier this year from Jerusalem, where he proposed a summit of the United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members. The rationale for organizing the summit is to [avert] new sprouts of hate and discrimination between people and peoples.

The United Nations, and the permanent members of the UN Security Council, [share] the responsibility for preserving civilization. These countries are expected to set an example for other states in this regard. So, such a summit would demonstrate loyalty of countries to their responsibilities—countries that combatted Nazism and fascism, 75 years ago.

This is how we see it, and how we see the objectives of this summit. We believe that this current moment has, unfortunately, contributed. Borders and discrimination and inequality between countries are getting worse. That is why we selected the issue of Africa for our presentation at this Schiller Institute event. We are strongly convinced that, as one of the previous speakers has stated—it’s a commonplace saying at the UN—no one is safe, if someone is not safe.

Reflecting on my colleagues’ presentations, I was highly impressed by our friend from Muscatine’s [Mayor DeWayne Hopkins’s] presentation on the cultural links between the peoples of the United States and China. My previous consular posts in Greece and Mongolia were associated with promoting direct links between people, between human beings. It’s very timely now to speak about culture, about eternal values that unite peoples, which can overcome the politicizing trend in international economic relations.

To conclude, to speak of Africa, many thanks to [Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane], our colleague from South Africa, a member country of the BRICS association, an association that we’re trying to build on principles of dignity and respect for sovereignty, and promoting independent ways of making decisions. That is the only way: a new multipolar world, capable of saving humanity from new conflicts and new wars.

Dr. Kildare Clarke: I agree a lot with Dr. Elders. The problem for me is that I recognize that we’ve got to fundamentally change the educational system in this country if we really want to get out of the problems we are facing. We cannot continue to have groups upon groups, planning groups and proposals—we’ve got to act emergently.

We’ve got to change educational systems; we do not have to wait until he tries to get to high school or college, before he knows that he’s going to go to medical school. These things can begin in the elementary school. You’ve got to expose people. When people are exposed, they get interested. We are selectively excluding a large part of the population who can become excellent healthcare workers. They might not start in medical school. They could be assistants, learn, understand what it takes to get there, and go back to school. But if we do not expose them now, we’re going to lose a whole generation of excellent physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, because we don’t think it is okay to educate them now.

Dr. Joycelyn Elders: This conference has been excellent in bringing up some problems that we all have. One of the things we all have to know is, whatever we’re talking about doing, you can’t do it unless you’re healthy. So, I feel very strongly we’ve got to have healthy populations, and we’ve got to start early.

I agree with Dr. Clarke. I always tell people that children are half as tall as they’ll ever be, by the time they’re three. They know half as much as they’ll ever know, by the time they’re four. Hope, will, and drive has been determined by the time they’re five. So, we’ve got to start early. Children can’t be what they can’t see. So, we’ve got to make sure that they’re exposed, and we can start them early. They don’t have to start out being a brain surgeon, but they can start out being what they can be.

Most of all, we’ve got to keep them healthy. We need to make sure people are healthy, educated, motivated, and have hope for the future. That’s where we can start. Every country can start with that. We’ve got to start with health. And we’ve got to educate them. You can’t keep an ignorant population healthy. So, we’ve got to start with educating the population, and we’ve certainly got to start with doing everything we can to keep them healthy. We have to know that we’ve got to have trust and global solidarity. If we don’t trust each other to do the things we need to do, we can’t get it done. We have to go out and work in the communities. Find out what the communities need, rather than giving them what we think they need.

I especially enjoyed the talk of Mr. Kotegawa, from Japan, on the things they were doing. Sometimes you think you’re doing exactly what a country needs—going into Africa and doing what they needed—but maybe they needed something else. Involve the African nations to find out what the nation feels that they need, and help them develop what they think they want and need. We may have to start in our small communities, starting out with the young people; training them to be community health workers. Later, they grow up to be nurses and nurse-practitioners, physicians, and then to being super-specialists.

We want to improve the health of the world, because we all know this coronavirus has taught us that any time one country is not healthy, all the rest, we’re all, at risk. So, we’ve got to make sure that we help every country to be healthy and improve their health. We’ve got to start with the young people who are going to determine what the world’s going to be. We have to do everything we can to train them to be the best that they can be.

I never fail to go to an old Chinese proverb, “The society grows great when old men and old women plant trees under whose shade they know they’ll never sit.” The Schiller Institute is trying to pull nations together in solidarity, globally, so that they can plant trees for the bright young people of the future to sit under.

Zepp-LaRouche: My heart is moved by what you are saying, because it is that kind of human spirit which is needed now to move mountains. And these mountains need to be moved quickly, because the dangers are many. So, I’m very happy that you are saying what you are saying.

Diane Sare: Mr. Meshchanov has been involved in cultural affairs. St. Petersburg was the location of the premiere of Beethoven’s sublime work, the Missa Solemnis. I know the chorus there must have been excellent, because our chorus is working on it, and it’s very difficult. This being the Year of Beethoven, and Beethoven being a composer who I think really embodies the love of mankind as a whole, I think it would be something if we could figure out how to commemorate it, if not this year because of the COVID, then as soon as possible.

Ambassador J. Ayikoi Otoo, High Commissioner of Ghana to Ottawa, Canada: I think the suggestion for four leaders to meet to brainstorm on the effects of the pandemic in order to find universal solutions is a brilliant one. But, with President Trump reeling under pressure for not having taken the pandemic seriously, and with this leading to several deaths, with President Trump pushing the blame on China and making derogatory remarks about China—can you see these two leaders working together? Considering the fact that President Trump recently withdrew from a Zoom conference organized by leaders of the EU and China on the subject of the raising of money to fight the pandemic worldwide, what are the prospects for the four leaders, whom you cite, to come together?

Zepp-LaRouche: I want to make one important correction in your question. It may be true that President Trump didn’t pick up on the warnings coming from China quickly enough, but neither did the European countries. They also lost precious time. But I want to emphatically make the point that this pandemic would not be a pandemic had there been a good health system in every country. That is a provable fact because, in Wuhan and Hubei province, the Chinese imposed a strict quarantine, and after two months it was under control. That approach, if you had a similar health system in every country in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, in Europe, could have stopped this epidemic from becoming a pandemic.

Therefore, I think it’s very important to lay the blame for all this on the neo-liberal system which has prevented the buildup of infrastructures and health systems in the whole world.

This was a point made by my late husband already in 1973. He warned, and set up a biological holocaust taskforce to investigate the effects of the IMF policies at that time. In the following years, the so-called IMF conditionalities prevented developing countries from investing in their health systems, as they were forced to pay on their debt burden first. These conditionalities created the conditions for the pandemic to arise. Trump’s predecessors, the two Bushes and Obama, did much more to contribute to create the conditions than President Trump in his admittedly slightly delayed reaction. So, I just wanted to correct you on that, because it’s very easy to say it’s the guilt of Trump, but he definitely did not cause the problem fifty years ago.

Unfortunately, this situation will get so much worse. Surges are now occurring in more than two dozen states of the United States, in Brazil, in India. In general, it is estimated that this is not even a second wave; this is still the first wave which has not yet peaked. Several American epidemiologists and virologists have said there’s no point in talking of a peak in cases and deaths; the peak is not yet here.

I fear that the collapse we are seeing right now in terms of the effects of the economic shutdown, is also just the beginning. I think the situation will worsen in the short term, long before the election takes place in November, and the social ferment which exists right now—in part due to the murder of George Floyd and others, but it’s also manipulated and taken over by people who just want to create the kind of social trouble President Putin warned Trump would be faced with—a “Maidan.”

The demonstrations definitely have elements of that. I think this will get worse, and that means our intervention in the United States but also around the world will be crucial. It is my conviction that we could use more examples like that of the Mayor [Hopkins] of Muscatine—people who just start relationships and create an environment which counters the malicious lies in the mainstream media and the crazy talk by such people as Senators Marco Rubio or Bob Menendez, or people who just are completely irresponsible in what they say. There should be a standard of truth that you shouldn’t say things which are made up; but some of these people have lost all hesitations to just, for their own purposes, lie.

It’s very important that this be countered by a lot of citizens. If we can get the initiative going, which I proposed with this taskforce, to find solutions on the level of the coincidence of opposites, that can become an important factor, because the idea that you have to replace geopolitical confrontation with cooperation to solve this pandemic and all the other problems together, must become a steamroller in the population.

I also think that if there is a chorus of countries—from Africa, from Latin America, from other places—and from individuals in high positions, who realize that the problems of humanity are so big that they only can be solved by the leading countries—the most powerful economically, the most powerful militarily, those countries with the most population—who then demand that these leading countries get together, it will happen. Where else can the solution come from?

I think if we all work together, we can orchestrate an environment where these ideas are picked up, and all the advantages which lie in them may convince even those countries which seem to be at loggerheads right now, to come together and work together, because it will benefit them more than keeping the confrontation going.

Isaiah K. Koech, Counsellor in the Kenyan High Commission [embassy] in Ottawa, Canada: Whereas there is advocacy for the world’s powerful countries to meet in a Four-Power Summit to discuss solutions that would mitigate global crises, how sure are we that the powerful leaders will incorporate issues that directly affect African countries?

Meshchanov: I will try to briefly focus on several questions posed before, starting with a positive conversation of our colleague referring to cultural links. We would like to reiterate our deep understanding that culture is stronger than politics. I take this opportunity to thank the Schiller Institute for performing the brilliant chorus song Tri Tankista in Russian, associated with Victory Day in May, which we would highly encourage everyone to see—a brilliant and bright presentation of cultural links and culture bridging gaps between our countries. We are deeply appreciative of this work by the Schiller Institute.

And of course the Year of Beethoven deserves to be commemorated. Our embassies, consulates, and missions all over the world are open, especially in these difficult times, to any proposals of collaboration in the cultural sphere. So, thank you very much for your remarks.

As for the four leaders’ summit proposal by the Schiller Institute, we believe it’s a great idea, and does not contradict President Vladimir Putin. I would like once again to reiterate that the idea of five countries, specifically the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, was proposed in association with the 75-year anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War—the Second World War, talking globally. It addresses the idea of recollecting the common responsibility of our countries to prevent discrimination and hatred on the borders between countries, bearing in mind the responsibility of these specific countries, which are founders of the United Nations and the winners in the Second World War.

That was the rationale for my reiteration, but that doesn’t prejudice against deliberating on any alternative forum. I’m speaking in my personal capacity of course now, but that reminds me of the rationale behind the establishment of the BRICS association, which started back in the 1990s from the ideas of our outstanding and well-known academic, diplomat, and former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Yevgeny Primakov, who put on the table the idea of Russia, India, and China collaboration and systemic cooperation, meetings, and summits. That was sort of an idea that could also be taken into consideration, because our great predecessor Mr. Primakov foresaw the rising role of India, and the rising role of African countries, as a natural process of moving forward the multipolar world after the collapse of the bipolar system. That is why we strongly believe in multilateralism, multilateral fora.

Coming to the third question: of the United States and China, and the possibility of cooperation, with all the controversies and conflicts that we see now. We do not have very smooth and easy relationships with the Western world and the United States, as you are, of course, aware. But still we try to find mutual interests. We did so even under the Cold War situation, going back many decades.

Now, something that contributes to finding solutions is the pressure of business circles, investors, diasporas, cultural links, parliamentary relations. Even being oppressed by coercive measures by several Western countries, we stick to the policy of cooperation and collaboration with our Western partners. China is also objectively interested in developing relationships with the United States. As well, the United States cannot do without China in the modern economic system. That is why we are sort of optimistic on a U.S.-China reconciliation.

To focus briefly on African countries, we believe that the development of the African continent recently, not only in terms of economic growth, but also in diversifying trade and investor partnerships, and maturing political collaboration between African countries, will contribute to their capability of speaking in one voice. That probably opens good perspectives of African countries joining the global governance system which is going to be revisited and reformulated. As I also stated in my presentation, our country has always spoken positively on raising involvement of African countries in any global fora. It should be inclusive, not exclusive.

Zepp-LaRouche: There is probably no problem globally, neither regionally, economically, nor otherwise, which cannot be solved if the geopolitical confrontation between the United States, Russia, and China in particular, is eliminated. The entire game plan of what we call the British Empire—which is really the City of London, Wall Street, the financial institutions behind the neo-liberal system—its entire ability to keep the rule over the world’s institutions, depends on the geopolitical game to divide the United States and Russia and China. People don’t realize that it is exactly the same forces—financial, media, and political—behind the coup attempt against Trump, who are behind the anti-Russia campaign, and who are behind the anti-China campaign. Once you realize that, you have a completely different view.

My husband, many years ago, in picking up on the idea of Prime Minister Primakov, added the United States to the combination of Russia, China, and India. He recognized that you need a combination of states which is powerful enough to be stronger than the City of London and Wall Street. Once these four, or especially Russia, China, and the U.S., get together, then you can solve any other problem.

I have said many times, this summit is not going to be only one summit. Because the problems are so deep and many, you probably need a summit process, where you start to put the mechanisms like for a New Bretton Woods system into motion; you start to take care of the cultural question, and the health system.

The way I look at it, once you have this format, once the presidents of those countries start to cooperate to solve the common problems of mankind, it can be developed to become an integrative process where other countries, other continents, other states are absolutely welcomed to support the process. But I think it’s important to first put together the core of power which can actually change the world, and not just have it like many conferences where you have a democratic kind of back and forth and nothing gets accomplished. I think this is also why President Putin wants to keep the veto power in the Permanent Five countries so that it doesn’t degenerate into just a debate where no results can be accomplished.

The summit process should be open; we are organizing to include countries such as Japan or Germany, Italy, France, countries from Africa. They should absolutely support that. The best thing is to do it now; to add your voice that such a summit must take place. I think it can be done. I think it’s absolutely doable, but we need a worldwide mobilization to accomplish it.

Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, Washington, D.C.: How can the rest of the world learn and benefit from the Chinese and Cuban collaboration in flattening the curve of the epidemic centered in Wuhan? How can those lessons be applied here in the United States and elsewhere, like Brazil and countries in Africa, to flatten the curve? Why isn’t Cuba’s interferon alpha-2b available to save American lives? Should there be an international standard of criminal public health neglect?

[Referencing the infamous 1932-1972 Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male] Was the deliberate withholding of known effective treatments done to suit a racist agenda? Is history repeating on a global scale?

Dr. Elders: I think we all realize that we have a global pandemic now. But as in all pandemics, we’ve got to have the right leaders if we want to come out of this, and I think what the Schiller Institute is doing, we’ve got to have the kind of leaders who are willing to lead. And they have got to make the sacrifices and do the things that they need to, in order to lead and move forward. Our public health system has not been well funded. We’ve got to invest more in our public health, but when we think of public health, we’ve got to always remember, that public health is not just about individuals. It’s about the whole community; it’s all of us. We’ve all got to be involved, and you can’t keep our people healthy if we don’t educate them to be healthy. I think that that’s an important issue that all of our communities have to be aware of.

The reason? I won’t say the reason, I don’t know the reasons. Some of the reasons why our curve is not flattened in the U.S. as it has in China and some of the other countries is because of our culture and the education of our people. We’re not willing to do the things we need to; we know we need to do them, but we just aren’t doing them. Like social distancing, which we could do. Handwashing. Wearing a mask. But everybody wanted to start socializing again. So, these are things the Chinese were willing to do and did. They enforced it, and we did not. That was partly related to our leadership, that we’ve not done it.

About the Tuskegee Institute study, I think that was a public health, leadership mistake. We’ve worked through that now. I do not feel in any way that anybody was trying to take anything away or trying to not provide therapy or treatment. And I do not feel that we’re not trying to do everything we can now to make sure we do what we can to eliminate the coronavirus. But we do not have a vaccine; we do not have adequate medications. All we have are the public health measures we know we need to follow. We’ve got to educate our people. The reason why we’re seeing more problems in our very low-income, less well-educated people is because of what’s happened. We know that we’ve got to address those issues if we’re really going to make a difference.

I think the same is true for Brazil. I think Brazil is behaving much like America; we’re not doing the things we know we need to do.

Zepp-LaRouche: In January, when China started to take very strict measures—quarantining people, tracing contacts, cutting out social contact by allowing families to go shopping only once every three days and only one member of the family—all of these things, there was a huge freakout in the West: “This is a dictatorship! See how horrible! They’re violating human rights again.”

In reality, helping China to contain COVID-19 is a deep cultural difference between Western and Chinese culture. In the West, it was a big accomplishment that the rights of individuals were held high. This is a good thing, but unfortunately, this individuality became excessive. People mistook freedom for liberties and hedonism, what Dr. Elders just spoke about—people wanting to go back to the beaches, wanting to go back to partying. These really insane behaviors are an expression of such exaggerated individuality.

While the Chinese culture—and all Asian cultures, for that matter—have traditionally focussed much more on the common good as primary, the individual right was subsumed under the right of the community and the cultural good. The individual cannot prosper if the community does not prosper.

This cultural difference very much deserves our study, because we will come out of this pandemic with the need to adjust some of our values. They may not be exactly what people tout to be the so-called “Western values.” Western values—that’s a whole other subject. We have to think hard to come up with principles for humanity’s durable survival. That is part of what we are trying to do with these kinds of conferences—that people start to reflect and say, “How can we become a species of rationality and creativity, and not compete with some piggies who are trying to get to the trough the quickest?” It’s a fundamental question of identity, of moral values, which has to be addressed.

Dr. Katherine Alexander-Theodotou, Anglo-Hellenic and Cypriot Law Association:

1. What do you suggest doing to bring the European nations together to reflect on democracy, basing the institutions on democratic lines, creating a real democratic union, including Russia? The vast culture of the civilization of Europe will be the fortress of prosperity and peace.

2. How can the Schiller Institute assist? The Schiller Institute can assist by continuously advocating unity, cooperation, education, and preventing the undermining of nations’ sovereignty of Europe by others ruled by undemocratic institutions such as Turkey, threatening the sovereignty of its neighbors such as Greece and Cyprus.

3. There is a need for European health policy and coordination of the health authorities in order to have common standards of health policy and the provision of competent healthcare to the peoples of Europe.

4. There are populations living in slavery throughout Europe, especially in the U.K., where almost a million people have been living for almost 15 years with no identity, as they are immigrants [with no legal identity] whose voice is being suppressed by the immigration laws. There are also others in other European countries. How can we stop this system of slave labor?

Zepp-LaRouche: The current EU needs to be changed, because it has developed into a gigantic bureaucracy which is very little in touch with the interests of its member states. I could cite you a whole list of examples. We have to work out integration of Russia. I think one of the lessons Putin writes of in his article was that there was a failure before World War II to develop an integrated security system.

I’m quite interested—I’m putting it carefully—I’m quite interested in the report that, in a long phone conversation yesterday between Putin and Macron, Macron said that he stands for a Europe “from Lisbon to Vladivostok,” which would mean integrating the Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative into one body. I’m a firm believer in the principle of sovereignty. In this present crisis the EU has done nothing. It was its member nations that recognized the need for food security and sovereign control over production of medicine and health equipment.

Nicholas of Cusa, who I quoted earlier, was the first to explain why only a sovereign nation-state with a reciprocal relationship between the government and the governed, can guarantee defense of the common good, especially under conditions of crisis. Today’s EU, which is trying to attach itself to a NATO globalization scheme, playing all kinds of geopolitical games, is not necessarily the vehicle with which Europe should be reformed. Maybe that should be the subject of another webinar, because this is a very complicated issue. But I think an alliance of sovereign nation-states in the spirit of Charles de Gaulle would make much more sense to represent the interests of all the people.

As for the slave labor, this present neo-liberal system depends not only on the exploitation of cheap labor in countries like Bangladesh and other countries, but slave labor conditions exist inside the Western countries themselves. In Germany, for example, seven or eight slaughterhouses employ Romanians and people from other East European countries, who are living in horrible conditions. They have become the breeding ground for COVID-19, because there is no health system, no social distancing possible. I think taking care of the health system is the precondition for everything to function, exactly as Dr. Elders says. If you are not healthy, you cannot do anything. So, protection of the health of the citizens has to start in every country, not just in some.

Dennis Speed: I want to thank all of our panelists who were with us today. We’ll now conclude this first panel with concluding remarks from each panelist.

Meshchanov: I see in an optimistic way what is happening. Up-ending has happened in every crisis in history. The word “crisis” derives from the Ancient Greek word krisi, which means making a decision, making a choice. So, we need to make the right decision, the right choice. I fully support Mrs. Helga LaRouche’s statement on changing values after this crisis. We believe that in this crisis, constructive forces such as the Schiller Institute and many others in our country as well, are heard better. That’s probably one of the systemic significances of this crisis.

Speaking on our President’s article, to which you have repeatedly referred, Mr. Putin underscores in his article devoted to the 75th anniversary of the war’s end, the Munich conspiracy. That is something that he starts with, but he finishes his article by underscoring the significance of cooperation, collaboration, and shared responsibility of great powers. That is why we are optimistic on a future cooperation to which sometimes crises and great systemic catastrophes can contribute.

Dr. Elders: This has been one excellent conference. We talked about how in all conferences we need to trust each other, that we need to learn to work together, and that our cooperation and trust is going to do more to overcome this virus and promote the health of our people than anything else. The more we squabble with each other, the more this virus grows, divides, and spreads.

So, the first thing is, we want to improve our economy, educate our people. We’ve got to first do everything we can to keep them healthy. We can’t develop an excellent working society unless we have a healthy society. We know how, and it’s time we began to use the knowledge we know and make our leaders stop squabbling about where, when, and how it started. Let’s look at what we can do to make a solution. We need to get all nations that we can, involved, so we can all work together to try and make a healthy global world. That’s how I feel we’re going to also address our economy.

Zepp-LaRouche: I would like to bring people’s memories back to what we saw in the beginning—the video of Lyndon LaRouche—who very much focussed on the fact that we are the creative species, at least the only one discovered in the universe so far.

I think if we strengthen that quality of our species—our creativity—which distinguishes us from all the others, then trust will be easy. A human being who relates to the creativity of another human, doesn’t have prejudices. At best, you have a wish to increase the creativity of the other one for the common good of all of humanity: to make people better people, to make them do more good, to really get rid of all of this hedonistic decay of our culture which prevents people from being creative. If people just want to go partying and get drunk and have dope, they are ruining that which makes them human.

Hopefully one of the outcomes, will be a renaissance of cultural values, of Classical culture. When we learn to think like Beethoven, and to think like Lyndon LaRouche, we are best equipped to deal with this and any other problem.