This article appears in the March 26, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Schiller Institute’s International Conference
Is Both Deep and Broad: ‘A Breakthrough’
[Print version of this article]
March 21—The LaRouche movement broke new ground with a two-day international conference that ended today, at which government and professional leaders from the United States, Russia, China and many developing nations joined with Schiller Institute representatives in four panels. They were able to discuss in detail not only the current strategic crisis and the prospect for bringing the major nuclear powers into economic and scientific cooperation instead; but also the movements and projects for economic progress in many developing nations across South Asia and South America; and bring in the voice of youth studying LaRouche’s economics.
Moreover, the entire conference was opened by “Reversing the Cultural Wasteland: The Urgency of a New Renaissance,” an hours-long series of performances and discussions of music, poetry and statecraft.
This conference had been preceded by nearly two months of intensive international circulation of EIR’s Special Report, The Great Leap Backward: LaRouche Exposes the Green New Deal. This was essential to the presentations because the drastic economic regression of the so-called Green Deal, which will enrich financial oligarchies at the expense of the loss of human lives, is the threat that underlies those of war and famine. This circulation will expand again this week with republication of the Report in condensed form as a mass-circulation printed pamphlet of The LaRouche Organization.
We pay attention in this issue to the second panel, “The Strategic Crisis Facing the Human Race.” It brought together government representatives from the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and the Syrian Arab Republic, and scientists, economists, diplomats, and journalists from the United States, Mexico, Argentina, France, and Pakistan.
‘We Risk Losing Civilization’
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and President of the Schiller Institute, opened by warning that the Biden Administration’s open confrontation with Russia, the mobilization of NATO to “pivot” to Asia as well as against Russia, and the ongoing bipartisan demonization of Russia in the United States and Europe, threatened nuclear war. NATO, she said, lost its raison d’être in 1991 and must be replaced by a new security architecture, “or we risk losing civilization.” This was magnified by the powerful presentation of Col. Richard Black, a former State Senator, in a later panel.
Consul General Huang Ping, from the Chinese Consulate General in New York City, and First Secretary Alexey Boguslavskiy of the Russian Federation Mission to the UN, followed with sober presentations of those nations’ approaches to resuming dialogue and even cooperation with the United States, if the constant attacks on them on every front can be stopped in turn, and their right to development—“the most fundamental human right”—can be respected.
Next, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Media and Political Advisor to the Syrian Presidency, gave a passionate discussion of the destruction of her country over the last 10 years by NATO—which again, was strongly seconded by Colonel Black. Zepp-LaRouche noted in the later discussion that Dr. Shaaban’s presentation to a Schiller Institute Conference in Germany in 2016 had been quite optimistic, in great contrast to the destruction of the nation that has taken place since then.
Dr. William Happer, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University and a leading American opponent of what he calls the “religious crusade” of climate-change hysteria, presented a devastating scientific debunking of it. We urge readers to study his presentation, below in this issue.
The second half of the panel—not published in this issue—put a spotlight on the emerging movement for development in Ibero-America, grounded on the current revival of integration of the patriots and governments of Mexico and Argentina, centered on what Alejandro Yaya of Argentina called “the industry of industries—space science.” Dennis Small of EIR, and Simón Levy and Daniel Marmolejo of Mexico, all joined Yaya in discussing, in depth, an emerging youth movement in Ibero-America: for space science, for education, for creating, now, a future of science, economic growth and Ibero-American integration.
Poetry and Power
As noted, the two-day conference opened with a more-than-three-hour presentation on the wisdom and joys of Classical culture and science, which itself began with the recording of a 1986 rousing performance of Beethoven’s Sonata Opus 96 by violinist Norbert Brainin, the former first violin of the Amadeus Quartet, and pianist Carlo Levi Minzi, for Lyndon LaRouche’s 65th birthday. It was the first of several discussions and performances of Beethoven’s music, he just having passed his 250th birthday. And the panel featured announcement of the first, Spring 2021 issue of the Schiller Institute’s new cultural quarterly, Leonore, by its editor Anastasia Battle.
The extraordinary tensions having developed from the recall of Russian Ambassador Antonov after President Biden’s staged “killer” insult to President Putin, and around the meeting of American and Chinese officials in Alaska that day, meant that Helga Zepp-LaRouche had to address the strategic situation by modifying and amplifying her keynote to the music and science panel. She titled it, “Will Human History End in a Tragedy or Continue with a New Paradigm?” and it is published in this issue, introducing a large part of the second, strategic panel of the conference.
Zepp-LaRouche quoted a 2007 paper from her late husband Lyndon LaRouche describing the “fourth phase space”—a combination of classical art, science and statecraft, forming, if political leaders will enter it, a single subject that is the true substance of history. Every major culture generated its own Renaissance, with each contributing to the development of human culture—the fourth phase space. Through universal history—which sets us apart as a human species—a dialogue of these different cultures provides a concrete means of solving the present crisis.
That set the stage for Dennis Speed, in “The Poetic Principle—Why and How Americans Must Return to Classical Culture,” to revisit the power of a President who truly wielded classical poetry to govern, Abraham Lincoln. It was well illustrated by Lincoln’s use of the memory of King Claudius’ soliloquy in Hamlet—“O, my offense is rank; it smells to heaven”—to describe the Civil War so profoundly in his Second Inaugural Address. Speed also employed two discussions of singing by Lyndon LaRouche, Negro spirituals, a Schubert Lied and other readings of Lincoln to demonstrate the power and beauty of truth in that “fourth phase-space” of LaRouche.
Liliana Gorini, chair of the Italian LaRouche Movement, MoviSol, then gave a presentation on Dante Alighieri, marking the 700th anniversary of his death, demonstrating that the development of a national language is profoundly connected to the concept of a nation state. More, she continued the presentation of that combining of art, science and statecraft, showing that Dante—like Giuseppe Verdi centuries later—became a national hero of Italy both as a poet and as a political leader. He gave, in fact, that national language to the Italians.
Diane Sare, Independent candidate for Senate from New York and LaRouche movement leader, demonstrated the principle of the sublime with “Beethoven in the Garden of Gethsemane.” Carolina Domínguez, guiding the Mexican LaRouche Movement, beautifully presented an education program for youth and encouraged everyone to sign and circulate her petition to teach LaRouche’s ideas in universities across the world.
This panel was concluded by Schiller Institute American president Megan DoBrodt’s presentation on the “Three Mars Missions and the Galactic Species.”
A Hopeful Demand for Economic Development
The dynamic third panel, on Sunday morning, generated a surprising degree of response from the online audience, both to moderator Diane Sare and directly to panelists as it went on. It dealt with the crises and potentials of Southwest Asia, including its prospects for peaceful development in the context of the New Silk Road. The panel included nine representative speakers, from across the region—Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan—and from Europe, and its keynote was delivered by Schiller Institute Southwest Asia Coordinator Hussein Askary, who spoke on “Justice for the Nations of Southwest Asia.” Askary, an Iraqi by birth, is organizing in several of these countries—and in the Swedish business community where he now works—for great infrastructure projects bringing the Belt and Road Initiative through Southwest Asia and into Africa.
Southwest Asia—which the British Empire misnamed “the Middle East”—is a region of 500 million, most of whom are young people that need a constructive perspective as an alternative to the geopolitics that has held the region hostage to crises, regime change, and wars. The alternative to the wars was outlined by Lyndon LaRouche during his visit to Iraq in 1975, also during his 2002 visit to Abu Dhabi. The LaRouche economic model has found active supporters in war-torn Yemen’s Sana’a government and its youth, as well as among young Iraqis and now in the Iraqi parliament. The Five Seas initiative of Syria before the war pointed in the right direction of regional cooperation, as does the Iraq-China agreement signed years ago but not yet implemented due to destabilizations of Iraq. The Schiller Institute through Askary has helped launch an Iraqi movement for that implementation, and immediately for full development of the Faw Port.
The Institute also made a proposal for “Operation Phoenix” for Syria and to recreate “Arabia Felix” (Yemen) as an important player for mankind’s progress. The geopoliticians’ wars against Syria, Iraq, Yemen must be ended; instead the United States, China and Russia must cooperate in the recovery and development of Southwest Asia as a whole.
Hisham Sharaf, the Foreign Minister of Yemen, stressed that his nation is not demoralized despite six years of war and blockade, with medicines prevented from reaching the country to fight COVID-19, and with the UN donors’ conference yielding just half of the needed amount to stop starvation. The Yemenis are optimistic that peace can be reached, and not on conditions dictated by the Saudi, British and U.S. aggressors. The reconstruction of Yemen will occur in the framework of the New Silk Road, to which the Yemenis will be active contributors.
Then Haidar Al-Fuadi Al-Atabe, Member of the Iraqi House of Representatives, emphasized the importance of activating the Iraq-China Agreement, which aims at restoring Iraq’s infrastructure, creating employment for the young generation, and overcoming Iraq’s dependency of revenues from its oil production. Al-Atabe thanked the Schiller Institute and Askary for opening up this possibility in a time of great difficulties for Iraq. He emphasized that in carrying out projects in Iraq, China predominantly trains and employs Iraqis; therefore, tens of thousands of youth would benefit from major projects such as water projects and the Faw Great Port and railway lines connecting it with other parts of the country. The United States and other powers must cooperate in this reconstruction and respect Iraq’s equality and sovereignty, he said.
Former Virginia State Senator, Col. Richard Black (ret.), made this same point so forcefully, as an American patriot who profoundly rejects what U.S. policies have done to Southwest Asia, particularly Syria, that his presentation had people from Southwest Asia texting in that he should be the American representative to that region. Colonel Black was particularly blunt in naming the gross violations of international law which British and U.S. spokesmen call “enforcing the rules-based international order”—by piracy of ships on the high seas, theft of oil and food resources by invading forces, conducting wars of aggression, etc., all the while preaching “rules-based order”! This madness must be stopped, Black declared.
Shakeel Ahmad Ramay, the Director of the China Center at Pakistan’s Sustainable Development Policy Institute, spoke on the progress of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; and Dr. Ziad Ayoub Arbache, economics professor at Damascus University, described “Syria after 10 Years of War.” An ambitious “Five Seas Plan” of infrastructure and industrial development developed in 2006 has been completely blown aside and the nation economically destroyed, with 80% of its economic assets now under the control of either the United States or Turkey.
French Leaders’ View
Half-way into Panel 3, moderator Diane Sare drew attention to Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s statement regarding the LaRouchePAC no longer representing Lyndon LaRouche or his views; it is available to read on the Schiller Institute’s website. Later in the Q&A period, Helga read out her Call to China Experts, issued several weeks ago, as a document that as many people as possible should sign, to denounce the McCarthyite China scare in Europe and America, and to get the truth about China’s constructive policies out.
Ambassador Michel Raimbaud, former French Ambassador in Arab, African and Ibero-American countries, and also former director of the French Bureau for the Protection of Refugees (OFPRA), spoke as Colonel Black had about Syria as a clear “victim of international aggression” conducted by powers like the United States and Britain in ways falling under the Nuremberg Tribunal’s definition of “wars of aggression,” causing 250,000 deaths and 12 million refugees among Syria’s population. The ultimate catastrophe was prevented only by the military assistance of Russia, he said.
And Jacques Cheminade, President of the French political party Solidarité et Progrès, concluded the panel by presenting a “Call to Action,” to change the course of policies which he said have put the survival of mankind as a whole at stake. He mentioned the policies being demanded by LaRouche co-thinker candidates in upcoming Bundestag elections in Germany: building a functioning health system in every country; having a Glass-Steagall restructuring of the global financial system; a new system of productive credit; the creation of 1.5 billion new jobs.
The Challenge of Famine and Pandemics
The final conference panel discussed still another area of urgent action, that of the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, launched in 2020 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, to mobilize national and international work to spread modern health systems, double food production, and organize a health corps among youth. Dr. Elders noted at the outset that the U.S. Public Health Commission should be a vanguard for what should be the activities of 80-90% of U.S. military forces, given today’s crises.
Marcia Merry Baker, Co-Editor of EIR, presented an overview of the famine, the necessity of producing much more food, and the work of the Committee, which already involves many leading American health professionals, and organizers of American farmers. She was joined by Dr. Khadijah Lang, President of the Golden State Medical Association and Chairman of the National Medical Association (NMA)’s Council on International Affairs; Dr. Walter Faggett, Former Chief Medical Officer of the District of Columbia Department of Health; Dr. Shirley Evers-Manly, nursing school dean and chair of the Global Health Committee of the National Black Nurses Association; Mike Callicrate, Kansas/Colorado cattleman and founder of Ranch Foods Direct; Nicole Pfrang, Secretary-Treasurer of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association; Bill Bullard, President of R-CALF USA; James Benham of Indiana, National Board Member of the National Farmers Union; and Bob Baker of the Schiller Institute.
Two Committee initiatives were reviewed. Dr. Faggett reported on a program in Washington, D.C. for training and deploying youth as community health care workers, especially related to COVID-19 vaccination. He said that this has worked well in Buffalo, N.Y., and they see it as using Dr. Elders’ model for “youth brigades.” Dr. Lang reported on a collaborative effort to send a representative aid shipment to Mozambique, where the NMA, until the 2020 pandemic, has had ongoing work combating malnourishment, malaria, and other problems. There has been locust devastation to crops there, and there are more than half a million internally displaced people. Dr. Lang gave some specifics on what can be done with water tablets, staple foods (corn meal, rice), and other matters. Some 950,000 people are food-insecure, and there was an extensive discussion of what American and European high-technology farmers and ranchers could do to bring scientific agricultural know-how to African farmers.
Mike Callicrate and Jim Benham, backed by Bob Baker and the other farm leaders, emphasized that to solve the world food crisis—the UN Food and Agriculture Organization had warned of this shortfall just days before—it is essential to organize to break up the huge food cartel companies, and “build the infrastructure of local farm utilities.”
Closing the entire conference, Helga Zepp-LaRouche expressed a crucial overview. The overriding necessity, she said, is for a global Glass-Steagall breakup of banks and multinational financial creations, and a “new Bretton Woods” international credit system. But “the population is numbed” by conflict, and thus all of the other initiatives, knowledge, and cultural inspiration presented during the conference are vital to try to bring people to take the totality of the current world crisis into account.
The conference in its entirety is posted on the Schiller Institute’s website here.
