EDITORIAL

‘You Either Drop Cluster Bombs, Or You Build Railways’

July 15—Two days before NATO’s Vilnius summit, the international Schiller Institute held a conference in Strasbourg, France, “On the Verge of a New World War, European Nations Must Cooperate with the Global South.” Some 14 nations attended the wide-ranging conference. One of the speakers was Diane Sare, independent candidate for the United States Senate in the State of New York. Another, of course, was the Schiller Institute’s founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

On The LaRouche Organization’s Saturday “Town Meeting” July 15, host Dennis Speed asked Sare about the August 6 day of actions, including a major rally in New York City, against NATO’s war and the threat of a thermonuclear World War III. The international day of action is being held on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. Sare responded:

Americans have to carefully consider how we have been divided based on single issues, obsessions about this or that minor matter. You should really consider the fact that the next few days or weeks could be our last, if we don’t change this. The cluster bombs are already on the ground in Ukraine. We have sent, apparently, 3,000 armored troops to Romania and Lithuania. There seems to be no limit, no stop, to what the NATO alliance is willing to do. That is extremely dangerous, and that is why we must make our voices heard. No one can afford to sit on the sidelines, sit on the couch, sit on your hands, close your mouth. José Vega has called for action in all 435 Congressional districts. I think that is urgent.

We have to create such a clamor that the world hears, and our elected so-called representatives are forced to represent our view.

On her weekly “New York Symposium” online program July 14, Sare interviewed Helga Zepp-LaRouche about the July 8-9 Schiller Institute conference mentioned above, and asked about the Global South’s resistance to NATO/G7 demands that developing countries join them to “defeat Russia.” Zepp-LaRouche explained:

The reality is, that it is the arrogance of power of the Western establishment, that they have not noticed that the policies of NATO and the West have completely boomeranged. They have caused a tremendous blowback, because when the sanctions were declared against Russia, which were supposed to bankrupt Russia in the short term, that did not happen. The Russian economy now is doing very well; they had an increase of 5.4% [annualized growth rate —ed.] in May, not exactly a bankruptcy. But more importantly, the countries of the Global South saw that, and they saw how the United States stole the assets of Russia—more than $300 billion. They said, wait a second here. Maybe if you put your assets in dollars, it’s not so safe.

Then the same thing happened with Afghanistan—$9 billion [stolen]—at a point when that country was about to starve.

So, the countries of the Global South started to say, it is no longer safe to trade in dollars. They started to trade in their national currencies, and there is now a gigantic “de-dollarization” going on; also, because, naturally, countries in the South have observed the banking crisis both in the United States and Switzerland.

So there is now a huge counter-reaction, going for a new international currency which is not based on monetary values; it’s going to be based on physical values. This is an idea which was promoted by my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, many years ago. He wrote an extremely important article called, “Trade without Currency,” which develops the idea that if you create a new stable currency, it has to be based on physical assets, on raw materials—gold being one of them, but also other raw materials. That’s what is now being negotiated among the countries of the Global South and Russia and China.

Given the fact that the Western financial system is still as fragile as it was a couple of months ago when the banking crisis was in full swing, the remedy would be, not to say that these countries of the Global South are against the dollar; but basically, to say that the United States should take the same protective measures, by reintroducing the Glass-Steagall banking separation, and that way cushion the currency against the casino economy excesses, and prevent that the eventual crash of the $2 quadrillion in outstanding derivative debt could come out in a big blow-out of the entire system….

But more in general, the countries of the Global South, because of the 10 years of collaboration with the Belt and Road Initiative, have really developed a completely new self-consciousness. They have received, for the first time, real economic development corridors, like railways. The Laos-Kunming fast railway system has been opened, and one of the conference participants—Michele Geraci—was recently travelling on that railway. He has a little video he showed, of how fast the train is going in China where the tracks are very well built; then how it is going in Laos—also extremely well—and then, how slowly the continuation of the train goes, for example, in Thailand and other places.

People got a very clear idea of what a tremendous leap forward it is, to have a fast train system. And Laos just happens to be the country in which the most cluster bombs were dropped, more than 50 years ago, by the United States. I think that shows you the difference; either you throw cluster bombs, or you build railways.

And I think that is the choice, where the so-called developing countries are clearly choosing the road of development.