“Securing World Peace Through
Embracing the Common Aims of Mankind”
Schiller Institute Conference
Saturday, September 10, 2016, 12 noon – 4:30 pm
New York City
Conference Page: Program and Video Links
Conference Report Press Release
Media Advisory Announcing Conference
TRANSCRIPT
Richard Black Bashar Ja'afari Walter Jones
DENNIS SPEED: My name is Dennis Speed and on behalf of the Schiller Institute I want to welcome you to today's conference, " Securing World Peace Through Embracing the Common Aims of Mankind." The Schiller Institute was begun in 1984, and prior to that, on Sept. 27th, 1976, one of the founders and collaborators of the Schiller Institute, the late Fred Wills, then the Foreign Minister of Guyana spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations, representing the United Nations Security Council, on Sept. 27, forty years ago, and put forward, one of the earliest expressions of the development policies of Lyndon LaRouche, the economist and statesman. His wife, Helga, founded the Schiller Institute in 1984, and we're all happy and proud to have been associated with those decades-long efforts.
We're going to begin first with a video statement from Helga LaRouche, the founder and chairman of the Schiller Institute.
The Historic Paradigm Shift
VIDEO
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HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello. Dear Conference Participants: Naturally, Mr. LaRouche and I would have preferred very much to be in person at your conference, but we transmit greetings this way, because we are presently in Europe and we have very important things to do there.
So let me nevertheless give you a message of very good news. Because much unnoticed by the mass media in the United States and in Europe, the world has changed in the recent days for the better. There were a couple of international conferences in Asia. The first one in Vladivostok with very prominent participation of President Putin, of Prime Minister Abe of Japan, President Park of South Korea; and the focus of this meeting was to conclude very, very large economic projects and the economic integration of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Silk Road/Belt and Road initiative. Now that means huge development of the Far East, the economic integration of all of these Asian countries for peaceful cooperation. There was even discussion of a possible peace treaty between Russia and Japan, which has not happened since 70 years, so this is very, very important.
But then, even more important was the G20 summit which just took place in China, in Hangzhou. Now, China had a very, very ambitious plan with the G20 summit. They had prepared in depth for over a year, through numerous conferences on the level of various ministers, think tanks, various groupings, and the intention was to transform the G20 from an alliance of countries which would just want to talk about crises, like the 2008 financial crisis, into an alliance of countries who would form a body for global governance, to jointly take care of the issues of this Earth. And they succeeded in doing that.
You may not have heard about it in the mass media, or if so, with a nasty spin, but what really happened is that Xi Jinping, in already a business leaders' meeting, the so-called B20, and also at the actual G20 meeting, pronounced a plan for putting innovation into the center of the global economy; and most importantly inviting especially developing countries and emerging countries to fully participate in the benefits of science and technology, of innovation, in order not to hold up the development of these countries.
Now, this has completely changed the dynamic in the world because now you have the situation where much of Asia — and this was continued at the following ASEAN summit — is working together for peaceful cooperation in a "win-win" perspective, through basically adopting the Chinese model of economy.
All of you who have ever been in China, will confirm that China has undergone the most unbelievable economic transformation of any country on this planet. Forty years ago, or 45 years ago, China in the Cultural Revolution was completely backward, poor, people were miserable, and then, starting with the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, China started to put a lot of emphasis on intellectual development of its own labor force, of innovation, of leapfrogging; and over a long time, the period where China was just copying technologies from other countries has really stopped, and China is now the vanguard in space technology, in fast trains, in electronics, in various forms of other advanced science and technology areas.
And China has offered to the rest of the world to participate in this Chinese economic miracle in a "win-win cooperation" by developing the New Silk Road/Belt and Road initiative to the whole world as a global development perspective.
This idea has such an attraction that, for example, following the G20 meeting, at the ASEAN conference, all the ASEAN countries basically agreed to the Chinese agenda by putting to an end the conflict over the South China Sea, by saying that in the future all territorial and other conflicts will be solved through negotiation and dialogue. There will be cooperation in terms of fighting for security issues, such as fighting against terrorism, developing other means to develop each other. And so therefore, this whole threatening conflict over the South China Sea is really ended.
This is wonderful news! And it shows that if you put a development perspective "in the interest of the other" on the agenda, that there is no problem on this planet which cannot be solved. This means that we have now, for the first time, the possibility to really move to a new paradigm. Obviously, the problems of the developed sector, of the United States and Europe remain gigantic and so far there was not really a resolution of the fact that the banking system is as threatened right now as it was in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. For example, Deutsche Bank has now the same cost for CDS, credit default swaps, for collateral derivatives insurance as Lehman Brothers had in 2008; which means that speculators are betting on the possibility of the collapse of Deutsche Bank. The interest rate policy, zero interest rate, negative interest rate of all the central banks which have applied that, has come to an end. The options are out; what more do you want to do than negative interest rates? Where banks and customers have to pay money to put their money into the bank, instead of getting interest. The whole quantitative easing has created, really, a hidden hyperinflation, and "helicopter money" is really the end of the rope.
So therefore, the efforts to implement Glass-Steagall, which are going on in the United States, and in Europe right now, must be implemented, and we have to organize Europe and the United States to simply join in this perspective of joint development. The United States has to go back to the reforms of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Europe has to go back to the policies as they were, for example, with Adenauer and de Gaulle; and then all the problems can be solved, because the New Silk Road gives not only an economic development perspective, but also has created already an alternative banking system: The AIIB, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank, the New Silk Road Fund, the Maritime Silk Road Fund, the Shanghai Cooperation Bank, and many other such institutions, which really apply Hamiltonian economics by having a credit policy instead of monetarist policies.
This is very good news. Because this is something Mr. LaRouche and his movement have been fighting for, for over 40 years. This is exactly what Mr. LaRouche proposed in 1975 with the International Development Bank which was the idea that the IMF should be replaced by an international development bank which would organize the technology transfer about $400 billion per year, to overcome the underdevelopment of the developing countries.
This was totally adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement in 1976 in the famous Colombo conference in Sri Lanka. At that time, the effort to bring a just world economic order into being suffered a tremendous setback: You had the destabilization of the leaders who had taken that cause as theirs. For example, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was destabilized; Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka was driven out of office; Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown and killed eventually.
However, the LaRouche movement kept fighting for that. The idea to develop the underdeveloped countries of the world, because we cannot simply live with such injustice as we see in Africa right now And so, Mr. LaRouche proposed in 1982, the famous Strategic Defense Initiative, which was adopted by President Reagan in 1983 and it was official U.S. policy for about eight months. And the core of that policy was exactly the same idea which was formulated a little bit later by Mr. LaRouche as the protocol of the superpowers which was essential the idea to dismantle the military blocs, give up NATO, give up the Warsaw Pact, and then through a science-driver program, developing the additional productivity to have an gigantic transfer of technology to the developing countries to overcome their underdevelopment forever.
Stop treating the Third World as proxy countries for wars, and have a joint development perspective. And this was naturally also the idea when we proposed in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Eurasian Land-Bridge/New Silk Road, which was the idea to connect the industrial and population centers of Europe, with those of Asia, through development of corridors. We campaigned for that for 25 years, through having hundreds of conferences.
And therefore, we were extremely happy when Xi Jinping in 2013 in Kazakhstan, put the New Silk Road back on the agenda. And now, after three years this has exploded in terms of creating a completely new paradigm of development, of a real effort to overcome the poverty of large parts of the world.
For example, like Africa right now: Africa is in a terrible condition, this is why people are in the thousands drowning in the Mediterranean trying to get to Europe, or dying of thirst in the Sahara by trying to cross the desert.
Now the German Development Minister Gerd Müller just gave a passionate speech in the German parliament by saying that what is happening in Africa and also other developing countries is that they're being torn apart by something which be compared to early forms of capitalism, where the rich become richer, where 10% own and use 90% of all resources; where 80% of all Africans don't have access to electricity; and this is creating an unbearable condition. And he called then for a New Marshall Plan for development for Africa and other developing countries. And obviously, the correct way to go is the expansion of the New Silk Road to Africa, to the Middle East, to reconstruct the war-torn countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and the adjoining regions.
This can be done now, and it just requires that we get the United States off the idea that they have to insist on a unipolar world, because that unipolar world is no longer existing: After the G20 summit everybody in the whole world can see the "pivot" of Asia that Obama tried to do, to exert American influence in Southeast Asia and these regions did not function. The ASEAN took the side of China. The TPP effort as Obama said in the Washington Post, the United States "sets the rules" of trade and not China.
It didn't work: The speakers of both Houses, the Congress and the Senate, said the TPP will not come onto the agenda this year; and the two Presidential candidates have already said that they oppose TPP. So, it's dead. And TTIP, the free trade agreement for Europe is also already declared dead by the French government, by the German economic minister.
So there is really right now a new possibility to use the G20 Summit to set up a new set of rules of trade, of cooperation, of the "win-win" perspective among countries. And I think if we can get the United States in the short term to join this chorus of nations for beauty, for cooperation, then the world can really experience a new paradigm in the very short period of time. The reason why I say, "beauty" is because the Gala preparation evening, before the opening of the G20 Summit, was a marvelous dialogue of cultures, very much like what we are trying to do with the concert series this present weekend, at the anniversary of 9/11; where it started with very beautiful Chinese folk songs; it had a beautiful scene from Swan Lake ballet of Tchaikovsky; and finally culminated with a very beautiful performance of parts of the Ode to Joy based on the poem of Friedrich Schiller and the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. And I think it was very wisely chosen by the Chinese government, to take the Ode to Joy, where the text at one point proclaims "All men become brethren," "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" as the cultural expression of this idea of a "win-win cooperation" of all of civilization.
So, my basic message to you is really one of absolute optimism. I'm not saying that all problems have been solved. We still have existential problems; we still have a war danger; we still have the danger of a financial blowout possibly this Fall. But, the alternative is already established by a powerful group of nations who altogether represent the majority of mankind, more than 4 billion people.
And we have to get the United States off geopolitics; we have to get the EU which is disintegrating anyway after the Brexit, we have to get these countries off geopolitics and organize the people of the United States and Europe to join a new paradigm which starts with the idea that mankind is one and that people can and should be patriots, but they should also be world citizens at the same time. And as the great poet Friedrich Schiller said, "It is not a contradiction to be a patriot and a world-citizen."
And it is really the time that we understand that the solutions for mankind can be only on the highest level of reason, and not on some side order or some geopolitical supposed interest of one nation against another nation or group of nations.
I'm absolutely confident that we can make that jump and create a new paradigm; and while you are going to listen later in the day to beautiful music by Mozart commemorating the deaths of the people who died in 9/11, I think we can give their lives back and make it immortal, by saying we will have a solemn commitment to bring the United States into this new paradigm, and then their lives will have contributed something immortal, and they will be in our minds forever.
