Schiller Institute: Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind
Schiller Institute Conference: Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind
Nov. 25, 2017 (EIRNS)—A Schiller Institute international two-day conference, attended by guests from more than 30 countries, began this Saturday morning near Frankfurt, with a choral-instrumental performance of the Classical Chinese song “Jasmine Flower,” followed by the keynote given by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President of the Institute in Germany. She referenced Gottfried Leibniz’s “We are living in the best of all possible worlds,” as pointing to the developing potential of the universe, this being a challenge to mankind to overcome great evil by an even greater good. The New Silk Road strategy offers to overcome the manifest lack of development—this is what Helga’s husband Lyndon LaRouche (who was among the audience today) addressed with his proposals for the New World Order already 50 years ago; with Xi Jinping’s 2013 announcement of the New Silk Road as Chinese government policy, we see this idea becoming materialized, with the mid-May Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing and the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China not only proclaiming the elimination of poverty in China as a policy target but also a better life for the people of all countries.
The geopoliticians of the Old Paradigm claim all of that is just Chinese propaganda, but they cannot cover up the fact that their own system is crumbling, whereas the strategy of China is making rapid progress, with developing corridors, rail routes, diplomacy in Eastern Europe, Ibero-America, and Africa. And the recent Trump visit to China was highly important, since it connects the two leading economies of the world behind the objective of “extending peace and prosperity to all other nations” (using Trump’s own words while in China). This is seen as a sign of hope also by depressed regions of the United States, such as West Virginia, whose governor welcomed Trump’s diplomacy with China, that infrastructure and industry because will be rebuilt—and also in the regions that were devastated by the hurricanes.
The diplomacy Trump has with Xi and with Putin, Putin’s diplomacy with Xi, the meeting in Sochi between Putin and Assad, the African development projects in particular are signs of hope. As for Africa, tribute must be paid to Lyndon LaRouche who in 1980 already wrote that the Club of Rome genocide in Africa must be stopped by a new paradigm of policy based on the ideas of Leibniz and Hamilton, the combination of science and statecraft for the benefit of the creative individual’s contribution to the good of all. The development of population density and higher energy flux density, through an ongoing process of perfection in science, culture, beauty of the mind, technology transfer and development of labor force, will make sure that every infant born has the chance to be a creative contributor to mankind’s progress as a whole.
Europe in its present state is on the opposite side of things, but it could and should change by following Leibniz’s recommendations that because of affinities between the philosophy and culture of Europe and China, the “ren” of the latter being the same as the “agape” of Christianity, both can cooperate for the good of the world. Many aspects of this can be found in Xi’s policies. Europe is suffering from the post-Rooseveltian brainwashing campaign staged by the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which even the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung admitted recently created the left-wing liberalism of political correctness views that dominate Western thinking. This went along with Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” proclamation, with the McCarthy witch-hunt, the Truman Doctrine, Kennan’s “necessary lie,” that whole cartel of fake human rights and fake news, and the destruction of Classical music and arts which the Frankfurt School did with its attack on beauty and idealism, its cult of ugliness.
The Schiller Institute has always fought for a cultural and scientific renaissance in the tradition of the Coincidentia Oppositorum of Nicholas of Cusa, or the Harmony of Confucius, which say that the one unites all the many contributions for the good of all, it is like a contrapuntal fugue in music. A new Renaissance is necessary to undo the destruction done by the CCF, so that neo-liberalism will vanish as did the scholasticism of the Middle Ages.
Helga’s address was followed by the speech of Prof. He Wenping, director of African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, opening the first panel of the conference. Voicing her joy over the musical opening of this morning session, she then gave an overview of the development in Chinese policy since Deng Xiaoping, with the aim of achieving moderate prosperity for all Chinese by 2020 and a decent better life also for the rest of the world proclaimed as an aim of Xi Jinping’s policy. The latter’s anti-corruption strategy is one with the anti-poverty strategy, as it replaces the infamous “red envelope” by the right to education and medical treatment and improved living without former restrictions. An important principle of this policy is that the shoe fits the foot, and not the other way around, the economic development must serve the citizens, and not just the GDP figures but the quality of development, achieved by innovation-driven growth. It does not make sense to collect a lot of money until you turn 40, only o spend all of that money after 40 because you have ruined your health before.
This goes with the principle of a peaceful diplomacy, saying “no” to military expansion, to new colonialism, to simple export of the Chinese Model or ideological confrontations; the Belt and Road is no “China First” policy, it is extending a win-win to all other countries, through policy coordination, connectivity not just between governments or businesses but also of peoples, the Chinese people will open up to other peoples. As for 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 Africans, Prof. He said.
Second speaker on this first panel was Dr. Saad Mohamed Mahmoud Elgioshy, former Transport Minister of Egypt, who spoke on the integration of his country’s Transportation Plans 2030 with the New Silk Road Project. The plans are ambitious, as 100 million Egyptians need a modern railway grid that replaces the very old grid, the country’s 15 seaports need a modernization, the land-sea connectivity has to be improved, the handling of freight has to be increased by about 50%. Egypt’s own plans comply with the principles of the New Silk Road: overcoming geopolitics, have a win-win approach and respect of sovereignty, improving cooperation to avoid duplicated efforts, create and work with new financial institutions.
Egypt wants cooperation with all countries but sees to the latter’s plans to comply with its national targets. There are the grand highway projects Cairo-Dakar (8,600 km) and Cairo-Cape Town (10,200 km), there is the Sino-African Railway Cooperation, the development of Egypt’s own desert regions will open these areas for people who have been so far confined to live in a small strip of land along the Nile only, the Qattara Depression project will connect with the Transaqua Project of using the tributaries of the Congo River, the Jonglei Canal project will benefit Egypt and Sudan. Former desert areas will be turned into breadbaskets,
The last speaker on the morning panel was Marco Zanni, Italian Member of European Parliament, speaking on a “Future for Europe after the Euro.” The European Union pretends to serve the interests of the Europeans, but its supranational structures serve only the rich elites, whereas the situation of the poor is continuously worsened—in southern Europe as well as in Germany, the vote results in the latter country showing that the citizens are growing more and more skeptical of the EU. The European Union and Europe are two different things, the EU cannot address the three main problems faced by the Europeans: 1) the economic-financial crisis; 2) the threat to internal security posed by terrorists; 3) handling the migration flows. The EU always claims there is no alternative to what it does, but there is an alternative to the asymmetries created between the EU member countries, but also between the people inside those countries.
The EU has not found a solution to the crisis of 2008-2010, it has invented the banking union and the bail-in procedure which are tools that only create even more instability, by robbing citizens of their savings and deposits. In the case of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank, the Italian taxpayers were robbed of €20 billion used for “stabilizing” the bank without solving the real problems. The same in the case of the two regional banks in the industrially important Veneto region. These are bad institutions operating in a framework that does not function. Instead, a separation of banks, the return to the real core of banking, is needed, and power has to be given back by the EU to the member states so that these are enabled to decide what is the best solution for them; one size made in Brussels cannot fit all. What is needed is public investment in the infrastructure which as everybody notes does not work in Germany, Europe has to be free of the EU supra-structures in order to become a real bridge between Asia and America, to end provocations against Russia and to cooperate with Africa, Zanni said.
From the audience, Liliana Gorini, head of the Movimento Internazionale per i Diritti Civili-Solidarietà (International Civil Rights Movement-Solidarity) reported on the campaign by her and political allies to change the policies of the bail-in which have robbed average citizens with small earnings of their pensions, with two suicides of such victims having created an outcry in the country. In a spirit of optimism though, this campaign to change things has addressed the fact that Glass-Steagall-type banking separation legislation has been debated in Italy for many years as the only alternative, and it has launched a petition now signed by 130 Italians from all political parties to be presented to U.S. Congress in January, calling for the 1933 Glass-Steagall law to be reinstituted. Gorini called on conference participants to sign the petition as well, to get the message to the United States that Europe wants the bank separation.
