EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY AUGUST 10, 2023

Zepp-LaRouche Tells Webcast, The Colonial Era Is Coming to an End

Aug. 9, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The following are the introductory remarks by Schiller Institute founder Helga-Zepp-LaRouche during her Aug. 9 weekly strategic webcast.

We are in a truly historic, changing world: I have said, we are experiencing a change as you only see once in a thousand years. And what I mean by that is that the epoch which started with colonialism around 1500, which has lasted now 600 years, is definitely coming to an end. And we are now on the verge of a new era of mankind, which either will lead to the nuclear annihilation in a Third World War, if the present war danger is escalating; or if that can be avoided, I think we will see a period of cooperation among nations on an equal footing, where no one nation will be dominant, but you will have a partnership of sovereign nations working for the common good of all.

Now, some people may think that is utopian, but it’s actually what is underway, and I think the BRICS summit which will take place over Aug. 22-24 in Johannesburg in South Africa will be an event leading to “tectonic changes” in the world situation. These are the words of the South African ambassador to the BRICS Anil Sooklal, who announced such a change to come. And that’s also obvious to anybody who has watched these developments in the recent period. The Foreign Minister of South Africa, Ms. Naledi Pandor said that 23 nations of the Global South have applied formally to be part of the BRICS, about 20 or more have informally announced their interest to do so in the future; 67 leaders of the Global South, including the other 53 nations of Africa, have been invited to attend the BRICS summit.

So this will be a quite incredibly important event. President Xi Jinping of China not only will attend in person, but he also will have a state visit to South Africa before the summit on Aug. 22.

I think there will be dramatic changes coming out of this summit.

And it is my absolute hope, and that is what our whole effort in organizing has been, that the Western countries should not see this as a threat, which unfortunately, most of them have done so far. It’s not a threat: It’s an opportunity! It’s an opportunity to cooperate and establish, finally, the end of colonialism, to establish a relationship among nations in which people start to treat each other as equals. And I think that that is a genie which cannot be put back in the bottle, because the countries of the Global South, in the tradition of the Non-Aligned Movement of Nehru, of Sukarno, of Tito, of Nasser, all these people who were founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, they are now in a certain sense grown up, because they have gone through incredible battles.

When they attempted to establish a new world economic order in 1950s, in 1960s, in the 1970s, they were always answered by coups, destabilizations. But now, the world is changing: Because economic growth right now is no longer taking place in the G7—they are clearly falling behind. Economic growth is happening among the most developed countries in the Global South: Naturally, China is in the lead...

So I think in that sense, we are at a total crossroads. Naturally, the war danger is looming, because as it becomes clearer that the war in Ukraine cannot be won conventionally, at least, for sure, the NATO side will not win, because all these weapons, and more weapons and more weapons are leading to the slaughter of the Ukrainian people. They are being destroyed, and the casualty figures that are coming out are absolutely horrendous.

That is why our peace demonstration this past Sunday in front of the United Nations in New York City was so absolutely crucial... We should mobilize not only to stop the war, but to get the whole world to cooperate with the new emerging economic order, and then we can solve all problems.