EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY AUGUST 29, 2023

Two Sides—The Choice for the Future Is Now

Aug. 28, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—We are in the period in which the direction of history will be decided. Following the breakthroughs of last week—the BRICS expansion, NDB promise for development credit, India’s Moon landing—the world has before it an historic choice. There is the side of the BRICS: progress, science, justice, peace and a future. Or there is the side of the current collective West: decadence, colonialization, warfare and worse.

In this evaluation put forward today by Schiller Institute founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche, she made the point once again, that the goal of the Schiller Institute is to succeed with collaborators, so that the Global North will join the side of humanity. Her international Appeal from Aug. 20 is circulating, “Appeal to the Citizens of the Global North: We Must Support the Construction of a new Just World Economic Order!”

The upcoming Schiller Institute international conference will be the opportunity for dialogue on these strategic matters. It is the weekend of Sept. 9, online, with registration open now, on the theme, “Let Us Join Hands with the Global Majority To Create a New Chapter in World History!”

Following that, on Sept. 21, the UN International Day of Peace, there will be actions around the world, with a focus on the demonstration at the United Nations in New York City.

The contrast between the “two sides” is dramatic. On the side represented by the Aug. 22-24 summit of BRICS heads of state and government, the BRICS-Plus, the China-Africa Leaders Dialogue, and the Aug. 23 landing on the South Pole of the Moon by India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, there is now another achievement representing benefit to all humanity: Exciting new fusion energy R&D results have been achieved by China, another BRICS member.

It was announced yesterday that the Huanliu-3 (HL-3) tokamak in Sichuan Province has achieved for the first time the desired high-confinement mode (H-mode) of operation, with a stable plasma current of 1 million amperes. This current, 1 mega-ampere, is the minimum plasma current required to achieve nuclear fusion. It is the threshold towards achieving the level of plasma current at which a tokamak reactor could run and produce net power.

The other, dark side facing humanity is that presented by the West, with its self-imposed decline in energy availability, social breakdown, warfare and war economy. Today’s Western economic system is monetarism and speculation at the expense of people. There are no missions for the common good—projects for infrastructure, space, science—inspiring the young and serving the population now and in the future. Instead, there is only living-for-the moment, bizarre entertainment, induced self-fixation (body decoration, gender flux, novelty, “fashion”) to the point of madness, dope and death.

Zepp-LaRouche outlined the case of Germany, her homeland, which is in drastic economic contraction, from falling electricity supplies, to railway malfunction, to decline in basic manufacturing and agriculture production. There are double-digit reductions in core industrial output of chemicals and machine tools. On Sept. 27, the leaders of these sectors will have a crisis meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz to demand emergency action. They want drastic changes to reduce energy prices, and the end of the crazed green regulations, and more.

It is time to get things straight. The Western news blackout and distortion of the significance of the BRICS and scientific advances by India and China are in large part, to prevent the populations in the West from knowing anything, because they would be ready to join in with the initiatives of leadership for a better life and future. The info-wars coverage in the U.S. capital of last week’s world-class BRICS events by the Washington Post is indicative and grimly ludicrous. After burying the “story” of the BRICS proceedings in South Africa inside the back pages, the Post then ran a ridiculous article crafted by a Bloomberg hack, “BRICS Shows It’s Little More Than a Meaningless Acronym,” lying that “Their doings and sayings ranged from the semi-farcical to the meaningless.”

The truth is, as Zepp-LaRouche put it today, the BRICS process is the “motor for the future,” and there is great excitement about it among the Global Majority. We need to connect everyone with that optimism. It’s time to go all in.

There is one additional event of note last week, concerning initiatives to stop the threat of nuclear war from the persisting Global NATO provocations. The President of Hungary Ms. Katalin Novák had a number of important meetings on what can be done to get peace talks started for Ukraine. She visited at some length with Pope Francis at the Vatican Aug. 25, on the efforts to get talks going. This follows President Novák’s visit to Kiev two days earlier, where she spoke to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on this. On Aug. 21 she conferred in person on the necessity for peace talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during his visit to Budapest. There is no detailed, dramatic outcome, but the diplomacy is important.