Schiller Institute Conference
Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind
Frankfurt, Germany
November 25-26, 2017
Summary of Proceedings
This report, filed and published in the prestigious European online subscription journal, "Strategic Alert Service" (SAS) provides an overview of the Schiller Institute Conference, entitled "Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind", held in Bad Soden, Gemrany on November 25-26,2017. It is posted here with permission. The entire conference will be available for viewing on the Schiller Institute You Tube channel, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoHwt4KyUk5Diy9gwbA5IL5J4q6SRtEhC .
Presenting to Europeans the prodigious opportunities offered to them by China's Belt and Road Initiative, and making the case for enhanced cooperation between China and Europe to develop Africa and South-West Asia were two major objectives of the international conference organized by the Schiller Institute on Nov. 25-26 in the greater Frankfurt, Germany, area. By all accounts, those goals were met.
For the 280 participants from over 30 countries committed to “fulfilling the dream of mankind”, it became clear that the “new paradigm” of win-win cooperation and mutual economic development is now unstoppable, despite the frenzied efforts of the trans-Atlantic geopolitical “elite” and their media to preserve their power.
Over the course of the two days, the failure of the European Union policy was demonstrated time and again by various speakers, most notably as regards Eastern and Central Europe and Africa, as we shall outline. Another underlying theme of the proceedings in Bad Soden was the unique and crucial contribution Lyndon LaRouche has made to the science of physical economy, and how his method, while scorned for over 40 years in the trans-Atlantic world, has been successfully applied, in their own way, by the Chinese, in particular under the leadership of President Xi Jinping and his New Silk Road project.
Of course, the mainstream media here claim that China is only pursuing its own attempting imperialist interests, the founder and chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, noted in the keynote address to the conference, but they cannot completely cover up the fact that Beijing's strategy has brought about stunning progress not only in China itself, but in all countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. She also stressed the importance of U.S. President Donald Trump's recent visit to China which, as he put it, has put the two leading economies of the world behind the objective of "extending peace and prosperity to all other nations".
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche began with a reference to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his notion that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, which is a “very fundamental ontological conception”. By that, Leibniz meant that our universe has a tremendous potential for development and that the role of mankind is to further that potential. And it is because the “old world order” does not allow for development any more, that the spirit of the New Silk Road has spread so quickly, under the impulse of China.
The Schiller Institute, she emphasized, has fought since its inception for a cultural and scientific renaissance in the tradition of the Coincidentia Oppositorum (coincidence of the opposites) of Nicholas of Cusa, whereby the One has a higher order of magnitude than the many which it unites; that notion, in turn, is coherent with the “harmony” of Confucius.
(We cannot do justice to the contents of the speech here, but the full version is available here.)
Helga Zepp-LaRouche was followed by Professor He Wenping, the director of African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who gave a very lively overview of the development of Chinese policy since Deng Xiaoping. The goals outlined today by Xi Jinping are to achieve moderate prosperity for all Chinese by 2020, as well as uplifting the living conditions of the rest of the world, and fighting corruption at home, within the Communist Party structures, which remains a big problem. She affirmed that China has said, "no" to military expansion, to a new colonialism, to any export of the Chinese model or ideological confrontations. The Belt and Road is no "China First" policy, she polemicized, but extends a win-win strategy to all other countries. In Africa, the Chinese approach is focused on 10 main areas of projects in infrastructure and production with the aim of creating millions of new jobs for the people living there.
Transforming the Middle East and Africa
Several speakers addressed the theme of an economic renaissance for Southwest Asia and Africa. Hussein Askary, the South-West Asia coordinator of the Schiller Institute, has just co-authored a report on the subject together with Jason Ross from the United States. Despite the wars and terrorism in the Middle East, and the wars, droughts, famines and diseases which have plagued Africa, Askary underlined, China's Belt and Road Initiative has the potential to transform and develop the region. There is nothing unealistic about this, he said, since African nations can now "leapfrog" over the problems that it took Europe centuries to solve and move directly into the newest technologies. Africa, Askary believes, can become the location of a "new Chinese miracle, with African characteristics."
His optimism was reflected in a heartening video greeting sent by the Yemeni Office for Coordination with the BRICS, founded by Fouad Al-Ghaffari, which is bringing LaRouche's ideas into Yemen, in spite of the horrors inflicted there by the Anglo-Saudi genocidal war against that nation. The video, prepared by Al-Ghaffari, featured a number of short statements, mainly from young men and women, who are confident that, with the help of the LaRouche movement, they will bring Yemen into the New Silk Road.
The integration of the New Silk Road project with Egypt's Transportation Plan 2030 was the subject of the presentation by former Egyptian Transport Minister, Dr. Saad Mohamed Elgioshy, who underlined the need the one hundred million Egyptians have for a modern railway grid, while the country's 15 seaports and land-sea connectivity need to to be modernized/improved, and the handling of freight has to be increased by about 50%.
The Consul General of Ethiopia in Frankfurt, Mehreteab Mulugeta Haile, spoke of the importance of China and the Belt and Road Initiative in transforming his country, and called on Europe to join China in the industrialization of Africa. Mrs. Moni Abdullah, the Executive Manager of an Egyptian firm, Pyramids International, reported on the development of the Suez Canal in Egypt, as opening the way for Egypt to participate in the Maritime Silk Road.
Franco Persio Bocchetto, from the Italian firm Bonifica which first developed the concept of Transaqua project to restore Lake Chad, showed that this dream is about to become reality, as a Memo of Understanding was signed this year between the Lake Chad Basin Committee and PowerChina, and a feasibility study is underway. Moreover, the founding director of the China Africa Advisory, Dr. Alexander Demissie, who had just arrived from China, went through the long-term effects of China's Belt and Road Initiative on African countries. He also addressed a point that Hussein Askary had insisted upon in his presentation, namely, that China’s alleged “land-grabbing” in Africa is a myth, and European companies are much guiltier of that than the Chinese.
On a similar theme, José Mulenda Zangela read a short message explaining the work of the Support Committee for the Great Lakes Region in Africa, which he chairs. Dr. Kelvin Kemm, the CEO of Nuclear Africa in Pretoria, who was not able to attend, sent an upbeat message to the conference underlining that South Africa is ready for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
Two Americans, who were unable to attend personally, sent greetings. George Lombardi, the former social media adviser to Donald Trump, contrasted the actual person to the caricature of him presented by the media. In reality, there is "tremendous popular support for Trump," who has the backing of American workers and businessmen (but not of Wall Street).
That view was seconded by Roger Stone, a former advisor and “long-time friend” of Donald Trump, who thanked the Schiller Institute for its work in exposing the "regime-change coup underway in the U.S.," which aims to prevent peaceful cooperation with Russia and China.
Will Europe Remain at the Rear of Strategic Developments?
The current status of Europe from the standpoint of the future, was taken up by a number of Europeans. Former French Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade, in his speech on what "Europe should contribute to the New World Paradigm”, who denounced the current European Union as “a tool of a one-world monetarism, ruled by money fakers like Mario Draghi through the euro and the financial institutions of the fake Europe and NATO”. We must free ourselves from the ruling financial oligarchy, he stressed, and revive the best of our European traditions, in culture as in science, while increasing cooperation with the rest of the world.
Marco Zanni, an independent Member of the European Parliament from Italy, strongly denounced the supranational structures of the EU which only serve the elites, and not the people. He called for a strict separation of banks, and public investments in infrastructure, as well as for member states to recover their sovereignty, since the “one size fits all” model of Brussels does not work.
Dr. Natalia Vitrenko, chairwoman of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, began by observing that the "existing world order is past its time”, with the conflicts it has created in the Middle East, Ukraine, and North Korea, and its highly unstable speculative financial system. She then provided a shocking first-hand report from the front lines of battle against fascism, demonstrating the total collapse of living standards, production, and social parameters in Ukraine since the coup in 2013/2014. A summary of her report is given in this week’s issue of our newsletter.
Dr. Jasminka Simic, author, editor, and journalist from Serbian RTV, Belgrade, went through the projects in Serbia which have already been achieved in the context of Serbian-Chinese cooperation, while also regretting the obstacles to such collaboration raised by the EU. The win-win policy, she said, could also be the way to avoid such artificial dilemmas as to what side a country like Serbia should be on, that of Western Europe or of Russia.
Prof. Mariana Tian from the Institute for Historical Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who is also an expert on Chinese culture, presented an overview of the long-overdue infrastructure projects for the entire Balkans region, including Corridor VIII and the great potential to develop the area from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. Unfortunately, Brussels has not come through on development promises, and even blocked the South Stream gas pipeline project from Russia to Bulgaria.
Another indication of the widespread support for the Silk Road in Europe came from Dr. Fernanda Ilheu, the president of the New Silk Road Friends Association in Lisbon, who sent a message to the conference.
Energy and Economics
The concluding portion of the Schiller Institute conference delved into the scientific and technological matters. Guo Wentao, from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, presented the highest currently available form of power: the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. It has numerous safety features which make it meltdown-proof, a simple design that could allow for low-cost and speedy construction, and a very convenient form for its fuel. China currently has one such reactor, the HTR-10 test facility in Beijing, and a 1,000 MW design is currently in the final stages of construction and fuel assembly in Shidao Bay.
Jason Ross, from the Schiller Institute in the United States, then raised the urgent need to replace the failed economic outlook of the trans-Atlantic sector with the superior physical economic method of Lyndon LaRouche, whose discoveries have guided the development of what has become the new paradigm now sweeping the globe. From the fact that less than 0.2% of U.S. economists were even close to forecasting the 2007-2008 blowout, we can conclude that economists are without a doubt the most failed profession in existence (a further report is available in the accompanying SAS).
Prof. Helmut Alt of the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen, then took up the devastating effects of Germany’s policy of shutting down nuclear power and ramping up investments in wind and solar energies, known as the “energy transition”. With a great deal of humor, he showed how absurd the reasoning behind that decision was and is. To top it off, he polemicized, even if Germans reduce their CO2 emissions, it will have no meaningful impact on the global climate, or help the small islands that fear the rise of the oceans.
Jason Ross read a short contribution from Michel Tognini, a former astronaut at the French National Center of Space Studies and former head of the European Astronaut Centre at the ESA, who made a strong plea for greater cooperation among all Earthlings on space research, rather than competition.
There was a great deal of discussion with the panelists, many of whom expressed their thanks to the Schiller Institute its crucial input, with special gratitude given to Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
The participants passed two resolutions. The first one notes that there are nearly 120 million people living in poverty in the EU, according to Eurostat’s own statistics, and appeals to European governments to ensure that they are all lifted above the poverty line by the year 2020, by accepting China’s offer to join in the Belt and Road Initiative. The second resolution concerns the tragic situation in Yemen, and calls for an immediate ceasefire by all parties, the lifting of the blockades, a return to the national reconciliation process, and international assistance for a large-scale reconstruction program.
