EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2021

Schiller Institute Conference Keynote: ‘A Terrible End, Or A New Paradigm’

Nov. 13, 2021 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute two-day virtual conference began today with a keynote presentation by the founder and president of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche, under the title, “A Terrible End, Or A New Paradigm.” Zepp-LaRouche posed a thought experiment:

“It would actually be quite easy to solve almost any of the many problems we are confronted with today if the majority of the governments of the European nations and possibly even the United States administration would say, ‘OK, we messed up. We have to change our way of thinking. We committed a lot of mistakes. We neglected investment in basic infrastructure. We made policy favoring speculation over the real economy. We allow our farmers to be ruined at a time of a hunger crisis of Biblical dimensions. We should have known that we could not win the war in Afghanistan, which turned into an unmitigated disaster. We did nothing to overcome the poverty in Africa. We turned countries which were friendly and open to us, like Russia and China, unnecessarily into adversaries by pushing geopolitical provocations. We seem to be unable to get the pandemic under control, because we don’t want to reverse the privatization of the health system. And we only care about the rich countries in terms of vaccines. We neglected our great humanist cultures. We allowed the minds of our populations to be poisoned with a totally depraved entertainment industry. We allowed our youth to despair about the coming end of the world, by streamlining the media with pseudo-scientific propaganda about the climate. Because we recognize that we are about to drive the whole system against the wall, we change. And we join with the countries of the Belt and Road Initiative and work together with Russia, China, and other nations to solve all of these problems. Which we can, because together, we are the creative species.’

“It would be really easy, but is it likely to happen? Unfortunately not, because so far, despite one policy failure after the other, the establishments of the West have shown zero capability to recognize and admit their mistakes, and make the appropriate corrections. As a consequence, it is more likely that the entire trans-Atlantic system is about to disintegrate. Remember these sentences? ‘Our republic belongs today to the ten most powerful industrial nations in the world. To the roughly two dozen countries with the highest living standard.’ The man who spoke those words on October 6, 1989 was Erich Honecker. Twelve days later, he was out of office, and 34 days later the Berlin Wall opened up. At that time, Pope John Paul II warned that one should not draw the conclusion out of the demise of the communist system that the Western liberal system would be morally superior. And if anybody had any doubt, one should look at the horrible condition of the developing countries today.”

The title of the conference overall, with four panels, is: “All Moral Resources of Humanity Have To Be Called Up: Mankind Must Be the Immortal Species!” The first panel, in addition to Zepp-LaRouche, included Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva, the Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation Mission to the UN, who addressed the crisis in Afghanistan and the necessary international cooperation to prevent a humanitarian disaster. Also speaking was Dr. Andrey Kortunov, the Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), whose address was titled “Is There a Pathway for an Improved Relationship Between the U.S. and Russia?”

Three American speakers addressed the drastic state of U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations: Col. Richard Black, the former Chief of the Army Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon; Dr. George Koo, Chairman, Burlingame Foundation and a leader in the Chinese-American population; and Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst in the U.S. National Security Agency, and a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The panel opened with a powerful performance of Von ewiger Liebe, by Johannes Brahms, sung by soprano Lisa Bryce accompanied by Dura Jun.

The full conference is being streamed on the Schiller Institute website and panels are archived afterward.

The second panel today was titled “The Science of Physical Economy.” The Sunday panels, starting at 10:00 a.m. EST, are titled “There Are No Limits to Growth in the Universe,” and at 2 p.m. EST, “The Beauty of True Human Culture.”