Helga Zepp-LaRouche Brings BRICS to U.S. Doorstep
by Gretchen Small
November 2014
 Helga Zepp LaRouche keynotes the seminar in Mexico. |
November 20, 2014 (EIRNS)--Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed an overflow crowd of more than 100 people, most of them youth, gathered in Mexico City for a seminar titled "A Life or Death Choice Between Two Systems: The BRICS and the Scientific-Economic Revolution That Will Change the World." Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche brought the message to this U.S. neighbor in the midst of political upheaval, telling them that the revolution centered around China's New Silk Road initiative and the BRICS nations' fight for development, is grounds for optimism for Mexico, and for humanity as a whole.
Civilization stands "at a cross-road, where the future fate of mankind is completely open," she stated. "The evil system of the British Empire, of Wall Street, of London, exists still. But in reality, they are finished already. It is only a question if they will be able to pull the world down with them, in a catastrophe or not. But there is the optimistic perspective, that of the new power center" around the BRICS countries and those countries associating with them, the majority of mankind, a new world economic order, which can usher in "a completely new phase in the history of civilization," in which humanity will "build and extend infrastructure into nearby space," through space colonization and space development.
The seminar was organized by the LaRouche Citizens Movement of Mexico (MOCILA), and webcast internationally by EIR to listeners in Spain, in at least 10 other Ibero-American countries (including at two universities in Colombia and a meeting in Guatemala City), and in the United States.
It took place in the midst of a London-led effort to trigger a "color revolution" to overthrow the Peña Nieto government of Mexico, which had dared reach out to China and the BRICS as allies against the Wall Street and London interests who run the drug trade. It took a political fight to even find a place in which to hold a conference on the BRICS in Mexico, and the very day it was held, anarchist forces were turned back by the police from Mexico City's international airport, which they were intent on occupying, preparatory to mass marches in the late afternoon.
Universities have been the center of turmoil, dominated by wild radicalism, but MOCILA organizers sparked great interest among serious thinkers with the bold posters announcing the BRICS seminar, which they plastered across several of Mexico City's biggest campuses. Two-thirds of the attendees at the seminar were university students (who paid to attend), including a contingent who came from Queretero--a city still four hours away from Mexico City until the planned high-speed rail line is built. Youth dominated the question-and-answer period.
 View full size Gabriela Cedillo presents the Chinese view of BRICS. |
 View full size |
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche was the main speaker on the first panel of the four-hour seminar. A Russian Embassy attaché scheduled to speak on the first panel had to send his regrets, due to illness. Gabriela Cedillo, General Coordinator of the Mexican edition of China Today, the magazine published in six languages founded by Sun Yat Sen's widow, Soong Ching-Ling, spoke, giving people a sense of the development revolution taking place in China, and the Chinese view of the BRICS as extending that to the world. China doesn't have only 5-year plans, but is planning for 50 years ahead, as seen in the Three Gorges dam, its rail system, its establishment of a presence in space. It has not been easy, it has been a fight, but it is on the right path. She invited Mexican students to study Chinese, and apply for scholarships to study in China--and join its space program; and Mexican companies to go sell to China.
Gerardo Castilleja of the MOCILA led the second panel, on Ibero-America and Mexico's relationship to the BRICS; Jose Carlos Soto of the Spain LaRouche Movement, spoke on saving Spain, and Southern Europe from destruction under the Troika, posing the relations between the BRICS as the model for a Europe freed from the Troika; and Dennis Small, of the U.S. LaRouche movement, spoke on the strategically decisive issue of getting the United States, too, to jump ship from the Titanic, and return to its own Hamiltonian roots by joining with the BRICS, exactly as Chinese President Xi Jinping has offered.
Underlying several of the questions was the difficulty people have in conceiving of governments and peoples who are acting out of love of humanity, concerned with securing the betterment of the other, as well as for themselves. Are the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) another type of geopolitical formation? Do the BRICS have a different kind of security policy, as well as economic? How can we protect the interests of Indians, women, and of the environment? All of which allowed for a profound discussion throughout the seminar of the oligarchic, bestial concept of Man, vs. the actual identity of the human species as the only willfully-creative species, based on love of mankind.
 The audience at the seminar in Mexico City. See photo album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ismonvel/15844664115/in/set-72157649392081591/ |
International Videoconference with Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Mexico City, Nov. 20, 2014
A Life or Death Choice Between Two Systems:
The BRICS and the Scientific-Economic Revolution That Will Change the World
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Hello. I'm very happy to send you my greetings this way, and not only to you in Mexico, but also to the people watching and listening in Argentina, in Chile, in Colombia, in Perú, in Guatemala, in Spain, and probably many other countries.
We are right now as a civilization at a cross-road, where the future fate of mankind is completely open. We still could end up in a global world war, which would lead to the extinction of civilization. That danger is still very acute and it is there. But the reason why I'm nevertheless extremely optimistic, that there is a chance to avoid that, and not only to avoid it, but to begin a new era of civilization, something completely different, much more in coherence with the dignity of man, and that has to do with the developments of the BRICS countries and many countries which have joined that combination of nations.
Now, right now, it is extremely dangerous, because the provocations by President Poroshenko in Ukraine to not only cut the population of east Ukraine off from humanitarian aid, schools, pensions, funding of hospitals, in a clear effort to provoke Russia to respond, and then entangle Russia into a war, possibly with NATO; Poroshenko even said it explicitly, that a war with Russia, is not to be excluded. Now, I think the only answer to that should be, that the international community must come out and denounce what Poroshenko is doing, who came to power through a coup in Kiev, which had the help of many Nazis and his government is riddled with Nazis to the present day, and that was the result of a long-term manipulation, especially by the British, by the United States, by NATO, by the EU, and unfortunately, also, by the German government. So I think the only answer can be that the international community denounces what Poroshenko is doing, and absolutely should stop the sanctions against Russia, because they were all based on lies, and blatant provocations, and therefore any country, especially in Europe, which wants to survive, should stop this policy and look at the perspective which exists for everybody else, in the form of the BRICS countries.
Now, the world, fortunately, has changed, and the power combination is no longer what it used to be, as far back as four months ago. It started, really, more than a year ago, when [Chinese] President Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road: That was the idea to combine the old, ancient trade routes between China and Europe through Central Asia, and this alone was already a very fantastic perspective, because the ancient Silk Road connected not only countries and nations, but at the time, it meant to overcome tremendous challenges of the desert, of the seas, and it led to big leap forward in the evolution and development of civilization at that time. And today, it would mean even more, which I will talk about as I go alone.
Then, the next step was that Xi Jinping, in November of last year, added to that, the conception of the Maritime Silk Road, which again, was the idea to combine all the countries of the Pacific and increase trade through building of ports, and sea routes, and just integrate all of South Asia and Southeast Asia much, much more.
Then, the next, very big step in the evolution of the new system, was the summit which took place in May between President Putin and Xi Jinping in Shanghai, where they concluded about 48 major economic cooperation agreements, and the famous 30-year gas deal, which was already a major, major event, because it meant that from there on, Russia and China were bound in a strategic partnership, which is there to stay.
Then, the next really qualitative step, occurred when the BRICS countries met in July in Fortaleza in Brazil, where they concluded major deals and especially, they decided to build a new financial institution, the New Development Bank, a bank entirely devoted to the financing of projects and no longer to speculation; and they also created the Contingency Reserve Arrangement, the CRA. Both of these institutions with $100 billion initial funding, and that CRA is supposed to defend all countries participating in it, against speculative attacks from the vulture funds, from the hedge funds, and similar institutions.
Now, on the occasion of that BRICS conference, Xi Jinping on 16th of July summarized the spirit of this effort. He said, "History teaches us that the law of the jungle is not the pathway for the coexistence of humanity. All nations should follow the same principle of trust, learning from each other, work together in collaboration to the common advantage, and create a harmonious world, lasting peace, for the general welfare."
Now, Western countries have a very hard time to imagine that there is a group of nations whose leaders are actually really working for the common good. However, in history that idea has a philosophical tradition in the works of Nicholas of Cusa, the great thinker of the 15th century, the founder of the modern nation-state, and of modern science; who had this idea that concordance in the universe, on the planet, can only be possible if all microcosms develop harmoniously to one macrocosm. Now, if you apply that to the nations, there can be only peace on the planet, if all nations have the maximum potential development, and take it as their interest to develop the other nations in the best possible way and vice versa. And that idea, by the way, went into the Peace of Westphalia, which ended 150 years of religious war in 1648, and that really was also the basis of international law and the UN Charter.
So that idea is today the guiding principle of the BRICS countries. Now, what has erupted in that spirit is an enormous amount of projects. After the BRICS conference, there was also a meeting between the heads of state of the BRICS with the Unasur heads of state, and the leaders of Celac, and they all have agreed on such a number of projects that if they are all implemented, and that has already started, it will transform all of Latin American, completely in a few years. For example: there is nuclear cooperation among many countries, between China, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, India, Bolivia and many others more. There is the building of a second Panama Canal through Nicaragua with the help of the Chinese. Also China is helping to build a transcontinental railway in all of Latin America, starting with a railroad from Brazil to Perú.
And essentially, what has happened with this geometry is that enormous optimism erupted and that countries who were trying to build projects for decades, and who were not allowed to do so because of the IMF conditionalities, now are proceeding, with the help of the BRICS, with the help of the new financial institutions which are being built, so this is a completely new phase in the history of civilization.
And that has taken another big jump forward in the last three weeks: Because three weeks ago, there were the midterms elections in the United States which led to a smashing defeat of Obama, and that in a certain sense, while it has not solved the problem of the United States, because now you have the even-more problematic Republicans, who are taking over both Houses of Congress by January, but there is something going on in the United States, as well, too. However, that defeat of Obama has also, in a certain sense, symbolized the downfall of the United States, and also the shrinking of Europe, which is sort of a colony of the present Washington government.
Now, that became very clear at the recently concluded APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] meeting in Beijing. Because what happened there was basically was that both Obama and -- the Europeans were not there -- but in the following G20 meeting in Australian, also the Europeans were really sidelined, because they have really nothing to offer. The Europeans and the United States have a system which is based entirely on monetarism, and that system, which has been denounced, by the way by Pope Francis, who has said that this economic system, you have to apply the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shall not kill," to that economic system, because it does kill. As a matter of fact, this system which is entirely built on profit and has only enriched a few while impoverishing the many, it has been a system where now 85 individuals on the planet, earn as much wealth as 3.5 billion people! Now, Pope Francis also basically said that a system which has only the aim of profit should really be changed, and that was his message to the G20 meeting.
Now, at the APEC meeting, it was very clear that that dying monetarist system is on the way down. It was the original intention of President Obama to not even allow the Chinese Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or the Silk Road to be discussed at the APEC Meeting! But in the seven days leading up to the summit of the APEC Leaders, the dynamic completely changed. Xi Jinping, step by step, presented the Chinese initiatives -- the New Silk Road, which is a program to, -- really, what it means is that China who has undergone the largest development of any country on the planet in the last 30 years, it has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and China has gone in these 30 years a long way. In the beginning, it made some mistakes by producing cheap labor for export for the United States and Europe, but step by step it has overcome that. And also the period where China was only copying from other countries -- everybody who has ever made an industrial revolution, copied from other countries, including the United States; I would say they are doing it till today, with the NSA spying which European industrialists, for example, are very upset about, so people shouldn't make too much fuss about copying -- but China has successfully also left that period behind, because now it is based on an innovation-based society and industry, and in many areas, it is the leader in the world.
So that was presented by Xi Jinping, and also the new Silk Road development fund, which China is financing with $40 billion, and a the following ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], it also announced that it will spend $20 billion in getting the Maritime Silk Road off the ground.
So there is a tremendous optimism and that led to a situation where basically all the other countries sort of flocked China, and the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, the FTAAP, was the dominant free trade model, and even Obama, when he made his speech, said the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was originally intended to exclude China, would be only the stepping-stone to the more inclusive Chinese model.
Now, China therefore has taken leadership, and it has taken leadership not only in all these economic infrastructure initiatives, but it also has taken leadership in the space program. Now, China made a tremendous breakthrough with its lunar mission last December, the Yutu landing on the Moon, and it has accelerated further mission since, with the idea to very soon bring materials back from the Moon to Earth, like mining helium-3, and then use that for a fusion economy on the planet Earth. That is a fantastic perspective, because once we can use helium-3 for fusion processes on the planet Earth, that means that mankind will be able to have energy security, raw materials security, and we will completely get out of the perspective of quarrelling over supposedly scarce resources.
In the recent agreements between Russia and China, Russia and India, they also all agreed to collaborate in space, where there was the sensational breakthrough India had, with having its first Mars orbiter. India in that way became the first nation to have an object orbiting Mars on the first effort, and that, too, about 10% of the cost an equivalent project of NASA had cost at the time.
Now the only positive development coming from Europe in the recent period, has been the magnificent breakthrough of the Rosetta and the Philae lander, landing on the comet "Chury" [comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko], which is a program which took ten years, and Rosetta had to travel 7.1 billion kilometers to arrive at this comet, where the aim is to find out about the origins of the universe, about the evolution of life and similar questions.
Why are these space breakthroughs so exciting? First of all, they are complete refutation about the lies and insanity of the ecology movement and their oligarchical masters like the World Wildlife Fund, the Club of Rome, Prince Philip and the British Empire in general, who all have claimed that we are living in a closed system with scarce resources and therefore sustainable development is the only way mankind can live. Now that obviously is a complete lie, because obviously we are not living in a closed system, we are living in an anti-entropic, developing universe with completely different principles.
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Members of the audience ask questions at the seminar in Mexico City. See video or See photo album. |
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The great German-American scientist and rocket specialist Krafft Ehricke developed this idea of space colonization as the next phase in the evolution of mankind. He had the idea that originally, in the evolution of the universe, life developed out of the oceans with the help of photosynthesis, to the continents, and then developed species with ever-higher energy-flux density in their metabolism; and then, when the human being arrived, these human beings developed very quickly by being first settled along the oceans and rivers, then eventually developing infrastructure, canals like Charlemagne was the first one to really propose the building of canals between rivers, roads, then with the development of the railroad, that infrastructure was conquering more and more of the continents' inner development, and with the new perspective of the New Silk Road, which by the way we proposed, when the Soviet Union collapsed, first in the form of the Productive Triangle, and then after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, we proposed a New Silk Road to connect the European industrial and population centers with those of Asia, and we called it the New Silk Road Eurasian Land-Bridge.
Now, this is now on the agenda, and when that project is built, it will be a World Land-Bridge, which will bring prosperity to all corners of the world, and it will overcome the underdevelopment of all landlocked areas which still exist in the different continents.
But then, that phase of evolution will be concluded, and then, the natural next phase of evolution is to build and extend the infrastructure into nearby space, and another word for that is space colonization and space development.
In a certain sense, like the ancient Silk Road, the New Silk Road will also exchange the most advanced technologies. In the time of the ancient Silk Road, it was silk producing, papermaking, gunpowder, porcelain technologies, and today, it will be the exchange of nuclear energy, fusion technology, space research and travel, and the whole world, the whole planet will transform to become more and more a knowledge-based economy. And then, everybody can see that the fantastic conception of Vladimir Vernadsky is absolutely provable: Namely, that there is a fundamental difference between human beings and animals, that mankind is the only species capable of again and again discovering things which are completely new, which nobody even could think about before, which nobody did before, and that is a process where we are really now at a crossroads of really taking off.
Just think, the last 10,000 years of human history, since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years, is a very short period of time if you compare it with the age of the universe at large. But the development which took place in these 10,000 years is just absolutely enormous. For example, an object of the of what used to be a hand axe or a biface [a stone age hand axe or cutting tool], today, has the size of a smart phone; and with that smart phone you can do all kinds of things, you can have international video conferences, you can do research, you can do enormous things -- now just think, from the hand axe to the smart phone, the same size of an object, but how much technology has gone into that? And now think, if we keep doing this kind of development, where will mankind be in 100 years from now? In 1,000 years? In 10,000 years? That makes obvious that Vernadsky's conception, that the evolution of the universe from the inorganic to the biological sphere, to the noösphere, is developing in such a way that the noösphere will become more and more dominant over the biosphere, and that human creativity is going to be what will dominate and be prevalent in the entire universe.
Therefore, we have to define the present from the standpoint of the future, because we already can see now what mankind will be capable of in the coming hundreds and thousands of years, and that we are still in the embryonic phase of civilization, and that we must become adult now.
Now, it is also clear that this new world economic order, which is emerging very, very quickly, with the help at the center of China, Russia, India and the BRICS countries, absolutely must be combined with a new cultural Renaissance and the aesthetical education of man. It is based on an image of man that each human being, each new baby which is born on this planet has the potential to become a genius. Not a genius in the form of a person who's just doing strange things, but a genius who is a beautiful soul, a person for whom, according to Friedrich Schiller, passion and duty, freedom and necessity, are the same thing, because there will be no contradiction any more to a person doing joyfully what contributes to the future development of mankind, and what he likes to do! He will not do his duty as a task which he doesn't like, but he will find his identity or her identity, in the creativity, and that will become the identity of the entirety of mankind.
That is why we put so much emphasis on Classical culture because we must, when we reject the dying monetarist system, we should also reject the terrible pop culture which goes along with globalization, which tends to turn human beings into beasts, or at least into stupid morons.
What we have to do instead, we have to revive the best traditions in culture of each nation, like for example, China has a wonderful, ancient history of 5,000 years, and 2,500 years of Confucianism, and that philosophy is presently guiding the policies of Xi Jinping -- I have absolutely no doubt that that is the case.
India: India has an equally long tradition and is also one of the cradles of civilization. It has a very rich philosophical history of the Vedic tradition, the Upanishads, the beautiful drama writing in the Gupta period, the wonderful Indian Renaissance which lasted from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century and produced such fantastic poets as Rabindranath Tagore.
You have Russia, which has extraordinary poets like Pushkin, scientists like Mendeleyev and Vernadsky. In Spain, we have Cervantes, Goya; in Italy, Dante, Leonardo, Brunelleschi. Germany, we have the wonderful ideas and traditions of Nicholas of Cusa, Kepler, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller.
And we have to revive all of this high phases in our cultures, and then have a dialogue of civilization, where each of us, each nation relates to the highest expression of the other, and that way we can create a new Renaissance, which goes even beyond what existed so far. And then we will have a completely new paradigm of civilization, and the beginning of that is already happening.
Now, that it is why I am absolutely certain that there is also hope for Mexico. Despite the terrible perils and degenerations which we have seen in the last over 30 years since the time of López Portillo, where drugs, kidnapping, crime has really taken over much of life in Mexico, however, because there are very positive developments in Central and South America, they can help to influence from the outside, what is occurring in Mexico right now. And therefore, we can be hopeful that through a combination of help from the outside and strong leadership from inside Mexico, an early redirection of developments can occur.
Now, don't focus on the United States right now. The United States has to sort themselves out, themselves, and you know, there are forces who are really trying very hard to change the direction of the United States. What you should do, is focus on South America, on Brazil, on Cuba, because when Lyn, 32 years ago, worked together with López Portillo on Operation Juárez, that idea, which was very much like what is happening right now, despite the fact that López Portillo started to implement it, could not succeed, because at that time, the governments Brazil and Argentina, did not support López Portillo.
Today, you have a different dynamic, because right now, the governments of Brazil, -- well, they're part of the BRICS -- and Argentina, and I'm convinced that the way things are going now, Argentina will very soon join the BRICS, so therefore, you have a completely different dynamic in all of Latin America. And also look at what Cuba does: Cuba is a very small country; it has not so many inhabitants, but right now, it is providing a magnificent leadership in the fight against Ebola, which puts larger and richer countries to shame, because they have moved with medical supplies and all kinds of medical help in, when nobody did it, and this is really a leadership by Cuba which should be taken as a model.
Now, we are working hard -- when I say, "we," I mean the LaRouche movement -- we are working very hard to change the United States from the inside. And there, both in the Democratic Party and even in the Republican Party, people who recognize that there is no good reason why the United States should not cooperate with the BRICS and given the fact that Obama has lost and that there are big upheavals right now occurring because of the collapse of the U.S. economy, the drought in the Southwest, changes can come very quickly. But we also work with European countries to get them to join.
At the final press conference between Xi Jinping and Obama in Beijing, Xi Jinping told Obama, he said: Look, I invite the United States to join the BRICS, to join the New Silk Road, to join the New Silk Road development fund, and this is also open to every other country which wants to participate.
And we are going to change Europe, get Europe to stop the confrontation with Russia, stop the sanctions which is ruining Europe much more than it is Russia, because for Russia, it's almost a blessing in disguise, forcing more close ties between Russia, China, India, and all other countries of the BRICS and Asia; while the German industry, the French and Italian industry, they are collapsing as a result of this totally immoral and wrong policy.
So we are right now at a crossroads: The evil system of the British Empire, of Wall Street, of London, exists still. But in reality, they are finished already. It is only a question if they will be able to pull the world down with them, in a catastrophe or not. But there is the optimistic perspective, that with the new power center, basically cornering on Russia, China, and India, in an in a larger context, the BRICS countries, and those countries which are now associating with the BRICS, the majority of mankind is already building a new world economic order. And so there is all reason for optimism, and therefore, I want to conclude with a line from Schiller's poem, Ode to Joy, which was the basis for the composition of the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven: "All men will become brethren," there is only one mankind.
