PANEL 2

Second Discussion Session

This is the discussion among panelists and audience following the second part of Panel 2, “The Strategic Crisis Facing Humanity,” of the Schiller Institute’s March 20-21, 2021 international conference, “The World at a Crossroad: Two Months into the Biden Administration.” Presentations in this part of the panel were on potentials for a “North American Belt and Road Initiative” in Mexico, Central and South America, and on

the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor of the Belt and Road Initiative. The moderator was Harley Schlanger of The LaRouche Organization. The discussion began with a comment by Dennis Small of EIR.

Harley Schlanger (moderator): We’re now going to take some questions and answers, and a lot of the emphasis has been on young people and change in policy, and what we can do with youth, so let me start. This question is actually for Dennis Small and Alejandro Yaya: “Do you think there will be international political resistance to [Argentine] President Alberto Fernández’s intention of signing a memorandum of understanding with the Belt and Road this coming May when he travels to China? Any thoughts for what to do about it? And what are the prospects for Mexico and Brazil, to also sign up with the Belt and Road Initiative?”

Now, before you answer—Dennis, I’ll start with you—but Alejandro, because we’re translating consecutively you have to pause after every couple of sentences so the interpreters can do a proper translation.

So, Dennis, what about the memo of understanding and the opposition to it?

Dennis Small: Well, I think that the trip of Alberto Fernández to China offers tremendous opportunities, because reality is crying out to the heavens for a change. There are countries that can’t get vaccines, under the current world system, and their populations are dying. You have an economic system which has created poverty. When they look at China, they say, “If China can do it [eliminate poverty], why not we?”

You have a situation where countries are being threatened with the destruction that goes along with unemployment and extreme poverty, and they look to another part of the world, and they say, “Why do we have to suffer what we’re suffering?” Reality is a very harsh taskmistress under these circumstances, and it creates a huge driving force for a shift, in countries such as Argentina and Mexico. It has very little to do with ideology. Argentina is not socialist or Marxist; Mexico not at all. But they are countries that realize that it is time for a major change, and they also realize that the United States can and must be brought on board.

I do think it is the case that there will be opposition. I think that Wall Street and the City of London will do everything imaginable to try to stop this from happening, because what is at issue is not simply a diplomatic relationship between Argentina and China, or Argentine-Mexican relations: What is at stake here is the whole game, which is the replacement of the existing system with a new one, and especially with people who are turning to the United States and saying, “Please, come on board.”

But, I’d be very interested to hear what Alejandro, and also what Daniel Marmolejo has to say about this question, on the question of how to make sure that these countries can proceed in the way that they decide what is best for them in terms of international diplomacy.

Moderator: Alejandro?

Alejandro Yaya: First of all I’d like to say that I agree 100% with what Dennis had to say. In my humble opinion, speaking about Argentina, as soon as Argentina and Mexico consolidate full strategic alliance, all the old enemies will reappear. And therefore, the key to everything in this, is that our strategic alliance has to be integral, and not just a coincidental thing. Because many of our fellow citizens are ingenuous. They are not aware of what my Mexican colleague [Simón Levy] was talking about, of the role of “soft power.”

Therefore, the key, in my humble opinion, is that the essential aspect is education, mainly, additionally because that will help strengthen both the commercial and the cultural ties. Because in the world of investments, of companies, of industries, it’s far more costly to take technology to a country if the local manpower is not qualified, is not skilled. So in the 21st Century we need to have skilled manpower locally.

And in conclusion, I would say that mankind was not made to be a beast of burden. What would happen if we were to free up all the technologies available in the world, and we have all of these uneducated people? Education is the only way to bring about the full development of nations. Thank you very much.

Moderator: Now, Daniel, if you want to comment on that, you can, but there’s another question directly to you: “Given the conservative strategies which try to indoctrinate our youngest citizens, who are ignorant of the recent neoliberal history of these nations, is there any chance they could succeed in stopping or reversing the actions of the Presidents of Mexico and Argentina, such that neoliberalism would return again?”

Daniel Marmolejo: First of all, let me thank you for that question and say that, in the electoral process in Mexico in 2018, the largest number of votes came from young people, in three states. The democratic bonus in Mexico is in large part oriented toward the youth, and many of our social projects are directed to benefit them. This is totally contrary to what the neoliberals would like to do, and the power of the media, who are actually in free-fall in Mexico right now.

What we need to do from that perspective is, we need to broaden the spectrum of possibilities that has been created by what we refer to as the “fourth transformation” of the Revolution in Mexico, and to re-establish the links that were established in what is known as the “winning decade” of Latin America. As I explained in my presentation, we propose to shake ourselves free from the supranational control of [Facebook CEO] Mr. Zuckerberg. Therefore, with the presence of Alejandro Yaya, here, from Argentina, I would like to propose that as a result of this meeting, we have a full exchange of views to establish such a social network, with a common philosophical, humanist and Latin American view, as part of the efforts moving forward.

Now, with regard to Helga’s effort [which] could have a relationship with improving relations with China and having them involved: The Data Center which we are talking about constructing, or at least the first of the three, could very well proceed on the basis of Chinese technology. This is how, from a practical standpoint, countries that speak the same languages, that face the same challenges, can work together to bring about the kind of extension of the New Silk Road in the concrete case here we’re talking about of cooperation with China in these kinds of technological areas.

So, to close out the thought, if we’re talking about 120 million people who live in Mexico, to that we have to add about 40 million or so Argentines, and the Mexican population in the United States is another 30 million people, then we’re talking about a potential language group of 200 million people, who within a short period of time of a couple of years are capable of establishing a technological arrangement or technological strategy to free ourselves from the supranational control of Zuckerberg and other supranational media interests.

Finally, let me just say that the approach of President López Obrador of Mexico is that we are not in any fights with anybody, and with regard to the United States in particular, he has proposed joint strategies for human development for the benefit of both nations. Thank you very much.

Moderator: Thank you, Daniel.

Helga, here’s a question for you from the first part of the panel this afternoon: “Given the opposition to the so-called ‘deep state’ networks in U.S. agencies, in intelligence, State Department, Defense Department, and so on, is it possible that a dialogue between Biden and Putin could take place? And what can be done to overcome the opposition of the unilateralists in the U.S., United Kingdom and NATO institutions, to ensure that such a dialogue would take place?”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Given the fact that I and this organization, we have been in this fight now for really half a century, and I was just, when Mr. Yaya was talking, I was thinking about the collaboration of my husband with [then Mexican President José] López Portillo, after which he developed the Operation Juárez idea. This was the idea to integrate Latin America through infrastructure projects, and basically if that would have been done 40 years ago, the whole situation in Latin America, in all the countries would be completely different. You wouldn’t have this kind of poverty, like in Haiti,—that’s not Latin America, but the Caribbean—[and] Central America. But I think we have now reached a situation where because of the pandemic, the famine, but also the New Silk Road, the world is much, much more connected than it was 40 years ago.

And I really think that if all the countries that are now fighting for their existence are making their voices heard, in the United Nations, the UN General Assembly, and any other South-South, Global South organizations—I think we have to create an international environment. Because it’s very obvious that these fights cannot be fought in any one country alone. We have to try to educate people: This is why we are issuing these reports, why we are doing the research, why we are conducting conferences like this one. But I think one really needs to think strategically, to combine what is happening in the international fora, as well as the mobilization of populations.

The ideology of the establishment, the neoliberal establishment, and especially this idea to implement the Great Reset: I mean, this will increase the difference between the governments pushing these rotten policies, and the self-interest of the population in every single country.

So either this ends up in chaos, or we can build the kinds of networks—and I fully agree also on that point with Mr. Yaya, that an integral approach is required, and networking is required, and that the more people activate themselves for the alternative, which would be a global New Silk Road, the World Land-Bridge. The report we published in 2014, and then subsequently follow-up reports, these are like blueprints. If there would be the political will, this could be started to be implemented and constructed today. I think we are at the point where we have to have the popular demand for all of that, and more people get organized in such a movement, the quicker we can win.

But I think the oligarchy is so discredited, and you can see the rumoring and the murmuring in the populations in the base; sometimes it ends up in violent clashes, but there is a complete disagreement between some governments pushing these policies, and the interests of the people. And that is a unique historic moment, which gives dangers, but also opportunities.

Moderator: The next questions are for Richard and also one for you, Helga. The question was asked: “Given what you and Dr. [William] Happer presented, is there any prospect for opposition in the U.S. Congress to defeat the Green New Deal?” That’s for Richard.

And for Helga: “Will the Greens come to power in next September’s elections in Germany?”

Richard Freeman: I would like to locate this in a special way, because we’re simultaneously—as Helga identified right off the bat—we are literally edges from a nuclear war, if some people do things foolishly; and we also have the biggest financial crisis in 400 years, not just since 2007-2008. The thing has built up and built up. Just since 2009-2010, which was the end of the financial crisis, we have added, in the United States, $9 trillion worth of debt or new monetary emissions by the Federal Reserve. This is going on in every major country around the world: Paper it over, paper it over.

The process, however, is this thing is going to break down. It is breaking down. That’s why they want to form into a green speculative bubble $30-$50 trillion—that may only buy the financial system two more weeks; maybe two more months.

But the issue here, and this is the last phase of what I reported earlier, is what Lyndon LaRouche called Schachtian economics. When the dollar went off the gold reserve system in 1971, Lyndon LaRouche put out a statement and he emphasized time and again, “Schachtian economics.” I want to identify that, because this is the end-game of the Green New Deal, and that is, that under [Hjalmar] Schacht, who was both the Finance Minister at one point and the Governor of the Reichsbank, and he was then a minister plenipotentiary, but he was in the Hitler government from 1933 to 1943.

When this process got worse and worse, what they started to do was ferocious austerity against the population. And what they did is they tried to transfer wealth from the population, raising rents, cutting food, cutting other things, and transfer it into the account of protecting a financial bubble which existed in Germany at that time. And they kept doing that. And what they did ended up in the concentration work camps, where people were worked—people need anywhere from 1,600 to 2,600 calories a day. They were given 800 calories a day and worked. When they became skin and bones and could not work in those concentration camps any more, they were gassed.

Now, I’m not saying that’s happening tomorrow, but that’s what they’re going toward. Because they cannot support the bubble, no matter what they do! And if you take out industry and agriculture, you’re going to be trying to support a population with even less to support them in terms of what’s needed for human existence, than you have today. And that’s the danger: If this thing is not stopped, it’s not going to stop with just taking windmills down, which are horrible. This is going to stop with literally “Schachtian economics.”

Can we defeat it? I believe we absolutely can. The problem is, the media try to create the impression that there’s no opposition, or that the opposition is disjointed; or they won’t let the opposition be heard—as was said: the empire of Facebook and so forth. But there is a reality, and the population can see through [to] this reality. And if we do our job mobilizing, and showing the true consequences and don’t have any illusion—this is not an environmental question of keeping the water clean and the sky clear; everybody’s for that. That has nothing to do with it. It’s radical population reduction. It’s eugenics. It’s extermination.

If we bring that clearly to people, yes, I believe absolutely: If we pose the questions of human civilization and survival, people will respond. They are responding. We just have to study this thing, and the response will be in the building of the land-bridge, as Helga keeps emphasizing.

Two points on that, really quickly: We’ve got to build a universal health system. If we build it in Ibero-America, which needs it; if we build it in Africa, which needs it; in Asia, not only do we need to build hospitals in the modern sense, but we have to build water infrastructure and you have to build electricity. You just can’t have that. And that starts the development process of the entire land-bridge, because that will then start the machine-tool plants in those countries and other factories in those countries, steel plants, and that means industrialization.

And the second point: I think this Mexico-Argentina idea is excellent, and I would just add—and I’ve talked to Dennis about this—if we were to take the United States, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico and China, and concentrate on building that portion alone, that will lead to a million manufacturing jobs in the United States. It will also change the world. Add in now Argentina, add in what can be done with the trans-oceanic canal, that’s the process that we offer as the alternative to the Green New Deal.

But, yes, it absolutely can, if we take the leadership.

Moderator: And Helga, to you, on the upcoming election and what you intend to do to make sure the Greens don’t come to power?

Zepp-LaRouche: It’s really obvious that the oligarchy would really love a Black-Green coalition in Germany, but that would be the absolute end of Germany as an industrial nation.

The Greens are now, already, saying what they want to do: They want to forbid people from building single houses. That’s not so popular. They want to increase the gasoline price, they want to get rid of all parking lots, so that people don’t use their cars any more; and there’s a whole bunch of such measures which will get people increasingly mad, and we just have to make sure that people understand that the whole Green issue is a completely manufactured ideology, with the aim, exactly of the oligarchy, the British Royal Family, which has been involved in that for more than a century.

And it’s really time that we get more people activated, because I know that what Dr. Happer said, that there are many scientists who absolutely agree—I know one of them in Germany, who told me that he was involved in a study which proved that the grapes in vineyards along the highways would grow much better, the wine would be better, and he was threatened that if he should publish that, he would lose his job, his career; so there is a lot of this stuff going on. And people have to just develop more courage and fight for the truth. And obviously that’s what we are committed to do.

Moderator: I have one more question, that can be taken up by Alejandro, or anyone else who wants to take it up. It’s from Sebastián Lacosta from Colombia, an activist with the Schiller Institute. He writes: “What can be done so that many more young people who want to contribute to a change through ideas, have an introduction to different cultures, with a focus on scientific and technological development?”

Alejandro?

Yaya: In my humble opinion, what we have to do first and foremost is simply awaken in youth that capability of astonishment, and don’t let anybody at all take that from them. Secondly, to deal with these youth as men and women who are responsible for the future, to explain to them, they are not in the present based on their adolescent impulses, but they are actually the leaders of the future.

The other really important thing is not to just leave things just at the level of ideas, but to do things, to make things and do things. Well, we as professionals in the high-technology field, we were told it can’t be done, and we astutely showed that it could be done.

The other point is that the development of all of the capabilities of these youth, not just in science, for the so-called “hard sciences,” but also in art, in culture, in poetry. This transforms them into full, thorough human beings, and that makes them far less permeable to those who would promote the ideas which would bestialize them. Because in that way, we are educating truly free human beings.

Moderator: Daniel, do you want to comment?

Daniel Marmolejo: Yes. Thank you very much. But first of all, I think that what we have to say is that we’re all young, we are all youth, because we are very concerned about the world. Because the other point is that in a country like Mexico, with the issue of the drug problem and President Calderón’s so-called “war,” what occurred was the irrationalization of conscience. This violence led to the tearing apart of the social fabric itself, and to the loss of at least an entire generation. Our mission, with our proposed cooperative model, and the creation of a humanist social network, is to give youth an ability to participate in these projects.

Finally, President López Obrador has made his political life an extraordinarily open one, as has never happened before. The problem of COVID-19 and the dehumanization which has occurred, has led to a disorientation among youth. It is the role of politicians and politics, and of citizens in general, to establish new strategies for the involvement of youth. Let us agree that this is a very challenging generation which could face even greater conflicts in the future. For those of us who are 50 years old or more, it is our obligation to strengthen these future generations, and the requirements for action are immediate, are now.

Thank you.

Moderator: And Dennis, you’ve done some work with the building of a youth movement throughout Ibero-America. Do you have any comments on this?

Small: Well, I can certainly emphatically agree with both Alejandro and Daniel, that youth is not a matter of chronological age, it’s a question of state of mind. All you have to do is listen, again and again, to Lyndon LaRouche—just think back to that video of him that you watched, where he was presenting ideas with the kind of enthusiasm and vigor and optimism that we normally characterize or think of as characterizing only youth.

But it is emphatically the case, that the real issue, in my view here, is how to unleash in the entire population a sense of the kind of very reasoned, well-founded optimism about the prospects about the future, which can transform our current actions, to have the impulse and drive necessary to bring about the necessary changes.

It’s not an objective problem. How can anyone, sitting through this panel and this discussion today, listening to the statements of the representative of China, listening to the views presented by the Russian diplomat, including his very funny joke about the Arctic; how can one possibly listen to the cry of anguish coming from Syria, from Dr. Shaaban, and not realize that it is absolutely possible to build a different kind of world? It’s not a problem of its being objectively difficult—it’s not.

What happens is that people get dragged down by the pessimism that’s induced in them, from being led to believe that you have to choose among the options presented to you, and only those. In other words, to respond like an animal to a prompt, related to pleasure and pain.

The key, in my view, is what Carolina [Domínguez] discussed in the earlier [Panel 1] discussion, which is to take the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, the curriculum of these ideas, to open up to the youth of our nations, whether they be 30 years old, or 50 years old, 70 years old, the sense that it is absolutely possible to come up with an idea that’s outside the box, to think in terms of the coincidence of opposites, to think in terms of our actual potential as human beings. Because from that standpoint, although the horrors of the world are actually far worse than most of us care to imagine except in our terrible nightmares, the potential for a solution is, in fact, immediately at hand.

The kind of optimism that comes from thinking like the young man that Lyndon LaRouche always was, that’s what’s most contagious, and that’s the way in which a very small number of people, committed to this idea, from around the world, can in fact bring about a new renaissance. Nothing less is going to work, but that is absolutely possible. And I, for one, come away from this discussion, convinced yet again, of how absolutely possible this is, if we dedicate ourselves to making sure that we think like Beethoven, think like youth, think like Lyndon LaRouche.

Moderator: Helga, we’re going to wrap up the panel. Any comments from you?

Zepp-LaRouche: When I listened to Dr. Shaaban today, I compared what she said to our Schiller conference in Berlin in 2016, where she was completely optimistic, and I just thought what is being done to these countries, like Syria—10 years of war, you know, what has the civilian population of Syria committed as crimes that they’re being punished like that?

Or take the situation in Yemen. Or you can name a whole bunch of countries in Africa. I think that anybody who has left a sense of agapē for mankind has to have a passionate commitment that we will change this order, until every human being on this planet has a place to fulfill their potentials, every child has the chance to have access to universal education. And I think that that is now coming to—we have to evoke this agapē for mankind in a lot of people.

I fully agree with Dennis. I think the potential breaking point for this system is much, much closer, and the difference is, you have the New Silk Road, you have the Belt and Road Initiative, you have the Schiller Institute, you have a movement of people who, unlike in the ’30s when you did not have such a thing, you had Roosevelt, but you didn’t have that kind of an international combination to defeat fascism.

Because that is really what we’re looking at: This is a new form of fascism, and I agree with Richard. The only point I would make is the concentration camps are already there! What do you think is happening with the mothers in Africa who have babies? Or Dr. Beasley, he went to a hospital in Sana’a in Yemen, and he said that the children in the hospital were dying in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t do anything about it, because there was nothing there, no medicine, no food; that the skin of these children was like parchment; and they weighed a ridiculous number of kilos, before they passed away.

I think these are concentration camps already! They may not be in the form as they were with the Nazis, but the condition of some countries of this world—and you know, these are crimes. And I remember what Sen. Konstantin Kosachev, the Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council in Russia, said when he yelled out in anger, “What about the 500,000 people who died as a result of these actions, since 2001?”

This has reached the point of such injustice crying out to Heaven, that I think we have to get the world mobilized to really replace that. And I think the NABRI [North American Belt and Road Initiative] proposal is something which will address the interest of all Latin American countries, of the United States, and it is a bridge-building for collaboration between the United States and China, because that is the one strategic, difficult question which we have to solve, because it’s not enough to sit back and say, “The Green New Deal will destroy the neoliberal system.” I’m afraid that that will bring about the most dangerous point, of a nuclear war, because unlike the Soviet Union, which relatively peacefully dissolved in 1991, I do not think that the NATO countries which are geared up fully for the permanent wars, also potentially for the big war, that they will give up peacefully.

So we have to somehow find a way of convincing all of these elements, through different approaches, that we have to find the solution on the higher level, where all the interests, all the real interests of the people, are being responded to—and that is a difficult task. That requires a lot of real strategic thinking, collaboration, networking, but especially getting people really upset about the incredible injustice which is happening, which is really genocide. And people have to wake up! This is happening now, and let’s come out of this conference with a renewed commitment to accomplish exactly that.

Moderator: Thank you Helga, and thank you to all the panelists. I think this is a panel that has to get out widely. The discussion for the whole afternoon was compelling, passionate, and truthful. And we have to get this out.

I would encourage you to join us again tomorrow, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. We have two more panels coming up.

And join the Schiller Institute! Take seriously what’s been presented here, and become members and work with us. So thank you, and see you tomorrow.