Manhattan Project Dialogue with Harley Schlanger and Richard A. Black, and host Kynan Thistlethwaite
Saturday, November 9, 2024
KYNAN THISTLETHWAITE: Hello, my name is Kynan Thistlethwaite with the LaRouche Organization. We welcome you to today’s Manhattan Project Meeting. Today is Friday, November 8, 2024; we’re actually pre-recording the meeting. You’ll be viewing it tomorrow.
We’re coming right off the U.S. election. President-elect Donald Trump has come back quite resoundingly with a 5 million vote lead in the popular vote against Kamala Harris; something he did not achieve in prior elections. The American population has made their voices heard; specifically against the foreign policy on Ukraine and Southwest Asia. Also, accompanying that is the rapidly declining state of the U.S. physical economy.
Obviously, there are a lot of questions about how the incoming Trump administration will handle these issues, especially with foreign policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Russia, had congratulated Trump on his victory, and also made the point that he was willing to work with the administration on many issues, including the ongoing war in Ukraine. Regarding Trump himself, Putin said “[H]e was hounded from all sides, that they would not let him do anything. He was afraid to take a step to the left, to the right, to say an extra word..” Putin added, “I do not know what will happen now, I have no idea: this is his last term after all, so it is up to him to make his choices.” However, Putin said he had learned something about Trump when an assassin had tried to kill him in Pennsylvania. He said, “I can tell you, his behavior at the time of the attempt on his life, it made an impression on me. He turned out to be a courageous man. A man shows himself in extraordinary conditions—this is where a man shows himself. And he showed himself, in my opinion, in the right way: he showed his courage, as a man.”
This is quite significant, I think, and it represents on the whole many of the international responses that we’ve been seeing to the election. The point that I would stress, and which will be the main point of this discussion today, is that the U.S. population, acting in concert with the Global Majority, needs to act within the incoming weeks to ensure we enter a New Paradigm, which has been surfacing with organizations like the BRICS, as we’ll hear from one of our guests today, Richard Black. But it’s also showing itself in the global response to the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. I’m going to now show an overview by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, to the 75th meeting of the International Peace Coalition, today. She gave a sense of where things are going, so I’m going to play that for you.
[video: International Peace Coalition, No. 75, Friday Nov. 8, 2024; https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/ipc_meeting_20241108]
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello to all of you. Indeed, the recent days were quite eventful, and I think the 6th of November in particular will go into history as a milestone, because that was not only the day when Trump was re-elected as President of the United States, but you also had the fall of the so-called “streetlight coalition” government in Germany. Both those events obviously have a lot to do with the issue of peace or war.
What Trump has promised is to say that he would end wars and not start new ones. It for sure is at least for now a major disruption in the war machine, and you can see that who is who internationally. The British are completely freaked out and trying to create “Trump-proof effects” both in terms of Ukraine and in respect to the Middle East before Trump comes into office. If Trump indeed will make sure on his promise, will naturally be largely determined by what kind of a Cabinet he puts together; whether it will be people who will try to support his agenda of ending wars or not. We know from the previous Trump administration that he had such people who belonged actually to the neo-con camp as well. But, as Dennis just said, this does not depend on the U.S. domestic situation alone, because we are in a period of absolutely tectonic changes in the strategic picture.
Now before I say a few words about that, let me just say that the fall of the German government is a very positive development. It’s not yet completely out, because Scholz has said that he wants to postpone a no-confidence vote until the 15th of January. There is a lot of opposition which is pushing him to ask that question at the beginning of next week. But it is for sure very positive, because this was the worst government had in the entire postwar period. Scholz kicked out the Finance Minister, Lindner, and the supposed issue was that Scholz demanded that Lindner would lift the debt brake in order to send anywhere between €3 and €10 and €15 billion more euros to Ukraine. There are a lot of internal dynamics which the time is too short to go into. Lindner is no peace angel, because he was favoring to send the Taurus missiles instead of lifting the debt brake. But the tone of these two men fighting was as shrill as if you had two fishwives, two gossips having it out in the marketplace. The level was such an unbelievably low level it was unimaginable.
Why I am saying this was the worst government Germany had since World War II is that because of this Scholz government the German economy right now is in a freefall. Scholz clearly failed to protect the German population against the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines which delivered relatively cheap gas from Russia to the German economy which was really the main motor why the German economy did relatively well. As a result of the cover-up—and one can only call it a cover-up, because Seymour Hersh presented a very credible hypothesis of who was behind it—now Germany has to pay energy prices which are three times as high as in the United States, and they are forced to buy very expensive liquefied natural gas coming from Shell Gas in the United States. Naturally, this is plunging the German economy into a free fall. Then, they legalized cannabis. We see both from Holland and the United States what a legalization of drug policy does in terms of the increase in the crime rate, the cognitive effect on especially young people. And naturally they also made into legislation the so-called self-determination law. This means that from now on, every 14-year-old child can change their gender one time a year just by expressing a desire to do so; which obviously is completely detrimental to their well-being. I would make a long list, but just to give you an example, this is a government in which the only merit Scholz has had is that up to now he prevented the Taurus missiles being sent to Ukraine.
The alternative Chancellor candidate of the CDU opposition, Friedrich Merz, made a speech on October 11th in the Parliament saying that he is in favor of giving a 24-hour ultimatum to Russia to stop bombing infrastructure in Ukraine or else the Taurus will be sent in order to destroy all the supply lines of Russia into Ukraine. Naturally there are such unholy creatures in that party like Roderich Kiesewetter who said many times, “One has to carry the war deep into Russia. One has to destroy the ministries and air fields,” and on and on like that. Therefore, Germany is not yet out of the troubles, even if this government falls, because everything will depend on what will replace it; and what the vote will be in the upcoming election, which will probably be anywhere in the beginning of the new year.
The warmongers on the Atlantic side looking at the Biden administration, Baerbock from the German government, the British government, the think tanks, are all demanding now to send every possible weapon before Trump comes into office. They are in such a total contrast to where the majority of the world is actually moving, and we discussed the last time, about the meeting of the BRICS countries in Kazan. You had 4.7 billion people represented, constituting 57% of the world population, all going in a completely different direction. Because all of these countries of the Global South want to build a new world order based on equality, on sovereignty, on the Five Principles of Noninterference. That naturally is a completely different dynamic.
Now, I want to point to the speech which was just given by President Putin at their yearly Valdai Discussion Club, where they always have discussions about the security order, the architecture. Putin made a truly remarkable speech, and I want to give you some quotes with only one purpose—namely to encourage you to get the entire speech later after the meeting, because it is a remarkable speech. What Putin started off with was he said:
“We are witnessing the formation of a completely new world order, nothing like we had in the past, such as the Westphalian or Yalta systems.
“New powers are rising. Nations are becoming more and more aware of their interests, their value, uniqueness and identity, and are increasingly insistent on pursuing the goals of development and justice. At the same time, societies are confronted with a multitude of new challenges, from exciting technological changes to catastrophic natural disasters, from outrageous social division to massive migration waves and acute economic crises….
“There comes, in a way, the moment of truth. The former world arrangement is irreversibly passing away, actually it has already passed away, and a serious, irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the development of a new world order. It is irreconcilable, above all, because this is not even a fight for power or geopolitical influence. It is a clash of the very principles that will underlie the relations of countries and peoples at the next historical stage. Its outcome will determine whether we will be able, through joint efforts, to build a world that will allow all nations to develop and resolve emerging contradictions based on mutual respect for cultures and civilizations, without coercion and use of force. And finally, whether the human society will be able to retain its ethical humanistic principles, and whether an individual will be able to remain human.
“At first glance, it might appear that there is no alternative. Yet, regrettably, there is. It is the dive of humanity into the depths of aggressive anarchy, internal and external splits, the erosion of traditional values, the emergence of new forms of tyranny, and the actual renunciation of the classical principles of democracy, along with fundamental rights and freedoms….
“I have previously stated that we have reached red lines. The West’s calls to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, a nation with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, reveal the reckless adventurism of certain Western politicians. Such blind faith in their own impunity and exceptionalism could lead to a global catastrophe….”
I’m only giving you the most important quotes, so I’m jumping now to the point where he says: “In this context, I wish to emphasize once more: unlike our counterparts, Russia does not view Western civilization as an adversary, nor does it pose the question of ‘us or them.’ I reiterate: ‘You’re either with us or against us’ is not part of our vocabulary. We have no desire to teach anyone or impose our worldview upon anyone. Our stance is open….” And then he reiterates what principles Russia is supporting in terms of the new architecture. Then he ends with the following:
“The rise of nations and cultures that have previously remained on the periphery of global politics for one reason or another means that their own distinct ideas of law and justice are playing an increasingly important role. They are diverse. This may give the impression of discord and perhaps cacophony, but this is only the initial phase. It is my deep conviction that the only new international system possible is one embracing polyphony, where many tones and many musical themes are sounded together to form harmony. If you like, we are moving towards a world system that is going to be polyphonic rather than polycentric, one in which all voices are heard and, most importantly, absolutely must be heard. Those who are used to soloing and want to keep it that way will have to get used to the new ‘scores’ now.”
Now that I think is a very beautiful metaphor for the kind of world system which is in the process of being shaped. I have said previously, and we have discussed it also on this forum, that the question of peace is not just a question of not having war. But we have to work to eliminate the underlying reasons which are the geopolitical confrontation and the pretension of some nations that they have a legitimate right to impose their world outlook on other nations. Geopolitics was the cause of two world wars in the 20th century, and we have to make a gigantic leap in the historic development of mankind, namely to move to a New Paradigm, whereby the one humanity is put forward first, and all national interests are only legitimate insofar as they cohere with the interests of humanity as a whole.
It is the only way to solve the migrant crisis, the inequality which causes people to go by the millions, trying to leave their country and going to other countries where they hope to have a better life or survive. This is the reason why the Mediterranean has become a graveyard where people are drowning by the thousands, and why the Mexican-American border has become a place where many people have died as well, or on the way to reach that goal. That cannot be the situation, because you cannot keep a status quo where only a few people remain wealthy and rich—some extremely rich— and the Global Majority remain poor. You have to shift to a system whereby every nation on the planet has the right for their own development. The only way that we can prevent World War III from breaking out is by getting the countries of the collective West to work with the BRICS in the development of the Global South. That way, we create a world in which every nation can prosper. I think that is much closer than people think. We just got the information that at the state visit to China of Italian President Sergio Mattarella, he expressed great interest in joining this emerging new system free of the oligarchy and free of imperialism.
You have, right now, in Budapest the European Union [heads of state and government] meeting. There are several European countries—Slovakia, Hungary—are in full support of this new emerging system. A country which is not part of the European Union, Serbia, also is completely on the side of this new system. As you just heard, Italian President Mattarella is exploring such potentials. And in each European nation, you have parties and institutions that are in favor of it as well.
Whether the Trump administration becomes really a force for peace, in my view, depends almost entirely on what will be the attitude of the Trump administration to this new emerging Global Majority. Because when Trump left the White House four years ago, this did not exist, so the world has dramatically changed since he was in the White House the last time. If we can move the world to reach this new level of a New Paradigm, of a new security and development architecture in the interest of every country on the planet, then we can be very hopeful that peace can be arrived at.
I want to leave it at that. [end video]
THISTLETHWAITE: We’re going to go now to Harley Schlanger, a frequent guest on our program, and the spokesman for the LaRouche Organization.
HARLEY SCHLANGER: Thank you, Kynan; good seeing you again. I’m going to take up where Helga finished on this question that she posed, that peace is not just the absence of war; because that’s really the unspoken issue in the whole question of the Presidential race in the United States. It’s one thing to say you’re for peace, we see it on the one side with Kamala Harris, who had the Blinken line; which is, we want more humanitarian treatment to the people we’re committing genocide against. That’s not peace; that’s what was referred to as the peace of the grave. But on the other side, you see the potential from the BRICS for an emergence of a new economic development system which recognizes the legitimate security and development needs of other nations. Not just nations as entities, but as sovereign nations which have governments with a commitment to the improvement of their people through the involvement of people in the government. Not corporate cartels, not private interests, but citizens who make the decisions.
Now what we saw in the United States last Tuesday in the general election was a stunning rejection of the existing establishment. In a sense, it reflects the restlessness and anger in the population which was effectively marshaled by the campaign of Donald Trump. Many of my colleagues and contacts have been saying to me, “So, now you’re fully backing Trump? Is that what’s happened?” And the point is that the LaRouche Organization has, in our history, supported candidates based on principle; but has not made the idea of supporting one particular person—as in the case of Trump—as a solution. Even when LaRouche was running for President, we supported LaRouche, but what LaRouche represented was a point of inspiration for other people to act. So, my comments will be—I’m going to go through some numbers and figures just because it’s necessary to get a sense of the extent to which the whole world was turned upside down by this election. But the essential point is not that we have to support Trump; but that Trump should support the LaRouche policy. The way we’re going to make that work is by having the motto of the Sare and Vega campaigns: Elect Yourself! What we have to have is leadership in large numbers who understand the fundamental principles involved, the battleground between the oligarchy and a republic.
So, with that said, let me just go into a couple of aspects of the vote. The key thing here was that the Democratic Party, despite its name, is anything but democratic. The Democratic Party has slowly been committing suicide since the time of Jimmy Carter; when Carter was essentially elevated to the Presidency by the Trilateral Commission, by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Volcker. Carter’s policy was the Club of Rome policy, the Malthusian policy, anti-technology, and the Great Game. And Brzezinski, of course, was key to that, by targetting Afghanistan as an arena for luring the Soviets in to run a terror operation against them. The important thing is that from that period to the present, we’ve seen one administration after another functioning as an empire; in most cases, under the direction of the City of London and the Five Eyes direction from the intelligence community. But in particular increasingly, the United States has viewed itself, its establishment, as the sole superpower, as the leading force on the planet; the defender of the rules-based order, as Blinken says.
Now, what does this mean? It means the United States, on behalf of corporate cartels—that means the American people, you, are part of a society that survives through predatory looting of the poorest countries in the world. As those poorer countries have less and less ability to produce surplus wealth to go the center; that is, to the Anglo-American banks, the looting intensifies. But at the same time, the debt levels in the mother countries keep growing, and the need for more loot increases. So, what we’re seeing now is a self-cannibalization of the populations of the Western governments. That’s what really was the ultimate dynamic on display last Tuesday. You had a candidate for the Democratic Party who was a synthetic figure. You can go through the whole history, and you’ll find that there’s just not that much to her. She’s been promoted, partly because of the unique ethnic, racial background; partly because she was picked up by the California Democratic Party as a figure. But you could see in her campaigning that she couldn’t put two sentences together, and that she had to read a script. More importantly, she didn’t have to go through the kind of fight that’s necessary to test the mettle of a candidate. She was given the nomination.
This is not new in the Democratic Party. For many years, the Democratic Party did everything possible to try to destroy Lyndon LaRouche, who was a candidate for President as a Democrat repeatedly. They did everything they could to keep him off the ballot, to suppress his vote; eventually running an operation to put him in prison. But LaRouche’s fight paved the way for the emergence of an independent movement outside of the Democratic Party, outside of the Republican Party. What Trump represented was not a traditional Republican, but one who in a sense created a realignment with his campaign.
Now, what was the issue there; what was the fight? Well, in 2016, Bernie Sanders took on Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee ran an operation to suppress and defeat his campaign. This became the basis of Russia-gate, which was then concocted by the Clinton campaign in conjunction with British intelligence to try to destroy Donald Trump. And to prevent him, if he did win the election, from doing anything. After four years of that, and four years of Trump in office fighting off the so-called Deep State, what happened was that you had an attempt to have an open primary in 2020 for the Democrats, and it was shut down. Biden was selected, and the others were not allowed to run. In 2024, what happened? It became clear that Biden had cognitive disabilities that would preclude him from serving as President. Well, those cognitive disabilities were in evidence from the day he walked in as President. So, they chose Harris, and tried to create an artificial image of her as a candidate of joy and hope and a transitional figure to the future. But she couldn’t answer questions. And the most important question she couldn’t answer was “How will you govern differently than Biden?” She said, “I don’t know that there’s anything that I would do differently.” That answer not only didn’t inspire people, it drove them away.
At the same time that was going on, you had this attempt to portray the United States as a force for freedom and democracy in the world. Defending the rights of the Ukrainian people against the barbaric Russians; and at the same time, defending the heroic Israelis from the would-be genocide of the Palestinian captives of the Occupied Territories. So, you have these two wars going on. What was the policy of the Biden-Harris administration towards these wars? Support of Ukraine to weaken Russia; and defense of Israel not just to protect Israel, but to disrupt the emerging coalitions that were developing in the Global South. If you look at Gaza, you look at that area on a map, this is an area where there are a number of countries that have joined the BRICS: Ethiopia; Egypt; the United Arab Emirates; Iran; Saudi Arabia is still questionable but we’ll see.
In the midst of this fight for sovereignty in the Global South, the Russians and the Chinese have played a special role—and I’m sure Richard will talk about this a little bit when he comes on to talk about the BRICS movement. The essential factor here is that the rest of the world is developing an attitude toward the Anglo-American banks that the American people developed toward the establishment here. We don’t want any more of your policy; we’ve had it; we’ve had enough. So, when you had an establishment in the United States telling people who can’t afford food, can’t afford housing, can’t afford to take care of their children that there’s a great economic recovery and that the reason they don’t know it is because they’re racists, they’re white nationalists, they’re misogynists and so on. And when they tried to attack Trump for that, it caused people to scratch their head and say, “But I’m not a racist, I’m trying to protect my family. I’m trying to take care of things.” The media was deployed to convince the population; they called Trump a misogynist, they called him a Nazi, they called the new Hitler. And why did they do that? What people saw is that they did that because he didn’t bow down to them; he didn’t accept their arbitrary authority.
So, in the election, you had a shift in the demographic characteristics of the vote. It was the largest percentage of Hispanic votes for the Republicans—almost 50% for Trump. The African-American population was in double digits; I think it was close to 14%. But also, you had working people; the old FDR-JFK Democrats voting for Trump. What was left for the Democratic Party? Well, scared women who were scared by the media that they’re about to be the victim of misogyny, and the donor class, who pumped $1 billion into the Harris campaign. But they couldn’t sell it; they couldn’t convince the population to vote for her. So, you had this shift where the Democratic Party has increasingly allied itself with the neo-cons in the Republican Party; but the neo-cons in the Republican Party are being squeezed out by Donald Trump. He’s squeezing them out in part by recruiting people who used to be Democrats.
So, this is the phenomenon that we should take a look at, and realize that this represents the potential for change. Because the vote was somewhat extraordinary; it’s not extraordinary the huge numbers that Trump won by, but he won every one of the swing states that the media were trying to say were too close to call. He won the popular vote. The first time a Republican has won the popular vote I think since 2004; and he won the electoral vote. So, he’s the new President. The Republicans took the Senate; they’re probably going to take the House.
The problem is, the Republican Party is not the solution, and neither is Donald Trump himself. The real test for Trump now—as Helga has pointed out—will be if he will stick to his pledge to end the Ukraine war. Talk to Putin and work that out. That’s something that we have to fight for. I saw something interesting this morning. I saw Marco Rubio, who Trump destroyed in the 2016 campaign as one of the neo-con Bush Republicans. And there was Rubio, and what did he say? “We’ve got to end this war in Ukraine.” How does that become an issue for someone like Rubio? Because the spending that’s going into Ukraine, the hundreds of billions, as well as the $25-30 billion going into Israel, is being diverted from necessary investment in the physical economy of the United States. With the amount of money that’s gone into Ukraine, you could build hospitals and power plants in virtually every country in Africa. Instead, it’s going to kill and destroy.
That’s where we have to get the breakthrough in the population. As Helga said, peace is not just the absence of war. Peace is when people understand that they have a mutual benefit from uplifting other countries; from acting in the interest of others. And what that is a reflection back to is something that is almost 400 years old, called the Peace of Westphalia. It was the agreement that ended the Thirty Years War in 1648; based on the idea of sovereign nations have a right to make their own decisions about their future without interference of other countries. And more importantly, through trade and shared intellectual and cultural values, working together for mutual benefit. That’s what must become the basis of a new security architecture and a new development architecture. If the Trump Presidency were to embrace that as its approach; that is, to look at Africa as a continent of the enormous potential that it is. It’s not just the raw materials they have. The greatest raw material in Africa is the young population that’s looking for an opportunity to do something with their future.
This is where LaRouche’s idea of physical economy comes in. There’s a direct connection between the idea of the Peace of Westphalia and the principles behind it, and physical economic advances. It’s there in the question of scientific discovery, the applications of the new scientific discoveries to technology to increase the productivity of labor. This will then increase the total productive value of a society to allow for improved standards of living. That’s LaRouche’s economics; the idea of potential relative population density and energy-flux density. That’s physical economy. That’s what Putin is undertaking with the BRICS. That’s what the Chinese had done with the Belt and Road Initiative. That’s what the Global South is asking for.
Is that a threat to the United States? Is that a threat to Europe? No, the threat to the United States and Europe is the ideology of the empire. We saw that in Germany this week, when the government collapsed because of its attempt to apply a Green transition policy at the same time it’s fighting a war against Russia. It doesn’t work. As in the votes for Trump in the United States against the establishment, we’re seeing the same thing in Germany with the emergence of new parties that are fighting to bring down the coalition government that serves the interests of Wall Street and London.
So, I look at this Tuesday election as the opening of a new chapter. But it’s a chapter in a book that was written by Lyndon LaRouche back in 1975 in his International Development Bank pamphlet. This is an idea whose time has come. And ideas are always out there, but the question of having them realized depends on people who embrace them, and use them to inspire in others a decision to act for the general welfare, and to make their nation not a collection of rich individuals, but a society which acts in the interest of the others. That’s the message from the election. The American people woke up and rose up in a rejection of the existing establishment. And the establishment hasn’t figured it out yet; they’re still trying to figure out what they can do to stop it. What’s their policy? War.
So, if we want to avoid World War III, the way to do is to forge the basis of a real sustainable peace; which is through economic development and cooperation. That’s a brief summary of the results of the election. I’ve just written an article that will be out this week that goes through some of the nuts and bolts in terms of percentages and votes, but that’s really not the whole story. The real story is this cognitive leap of people who decided to reject the consensus imposed by the narrative of the establishment. That’s where there’s a lot of hope for the future, and not just in the United States, but worldwide.
THISTLETHWAITE: Thank you, Harley. I just wanted to highlight one thing in terms of interesting responses we got to the results. This was from Bernie Sanders, the independent in Vermont. He criticizes the Democratic Party for abandoning the working class. He said, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” Then he added, “Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all-out war against the Palestinian people, which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.” So, I just wanted to add that there.
SCHLANGER: Actually Kynan, if I could make just one quick point on that. The biggest mistake Harris made besides deciding to run for President, was when she said, “I will not be silent on Gaza.” What did she say about Gaza? Nothing. She had the Blinken line that we want to kill people in a more humanitarian way. Meanwhile, while preaching humanitarianism, ceasefire, and peace, providing 2000-lb. bombs to the maniacal Netanyahu government, who have killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians. This had an effect on young people, because young people saw children get blown apart while Harris and Blinken were touring—Harris on campaign, and Blinken touring the world—talking about the great democracy of the rules-based order. That kind of hypocrisy really drove a lot of people out of the Democratic Party. And it’s a good sign.
THISTLETHWAITE: For sure. We’re going to go now to Richard Black, who has a very exciting report for us. He just came back from Russia; he was at the BRICS meeting. I’m very excited to hear about it, and I’ll give you the floor now, Richard.
RICHARD BLACK: Thank you, Kynan. Helga LaRouche in the course of the last year has been doing interviews, looking forward to the summit of the BRICS which occurred in late October in Kazan, Russia. Helga set a very high standard for what should be accomplished at that BRICS summit. She said, “What I would like to see in Kazan, is not simply a set of new policies agreed to, but the launching of a New Paradigm of international relations; a new way of thinking.” She offered that as a suggestion in interviews internationally.
So, I’m going to give you a report from that standpoint of what we in the Schiller Institute have been looking to, and trying to help to create. The BRICS International School is a three-day intensive series of presentations and dialogues that has been held each year in Russia since 2017. It was launched by a branch of the Foreign Ministry of Russia, the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research. It started with 40 young people from around the globe in 2017. This year, there were 85 young people and professors from all over the globe. This was October 1-3, and I had the honor of being invited to speak, and I spoke on the first panel on the first day about the BRICS and the coming world being brought into being.
The young people—college students, graduate students, some young diplomats—were from every corner of the globe: Ecuador; Brazil; Laos; Vietnam; Indonesia; Yemen; Egypt; South Africa; Cameroon; Nigeria; completely diverse. But what characterized all of them was a tremendous intellectual fervor that we are on the cusp of something new. They were hungry for ideas; very open for discussion. And, as I’ll tell you in moment, they were very excited by the principles that I presented.
We were discussing this morning that this generation—in their 20s and early 30s—this is a time of tremendous accomplishment for young people who have a mission and who are using their powers of reason to make a contribution which is historic. I think of John Keats, the great poet, giving us timeless works of beauty, all before his death at the age of 24. Einstein I think was 26 when he revolutionized our notions of what is time, energy, matter; what’s their relations. Sun Yat Sen had just been a student and launched the first shots in the revolution to overthrow the dynasty in China; he was age 29. So, far from this being young people trying to find their way, what I saw in the crowd of 85 there, was young people who were extremely optimistic, and looking for the spiritual, mental, emotional tools in order to be able to change history. Their sense was, we are in the middle of changing history.
So, this had all been organized by the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research. There have been many meetings leading up to the Kazan summit in late October; and this BRICS School for three days was one of those meetings. In the course of the run-up to the school, the Foreign Ministry produced this book, which says, BRICS and the New Global Financial and Economic Order. In here are several articles that we wrote and published in EIR on the LaRouche principles for a new monetary system. At the BRICS School, I made sure that every one of the participants received Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles for a New Security and Development Architecture,” either in Russia or English. So, this was a big topic of discussion.
What I presented in about 20 minutes as best as I could, is the idea that truthful principles are what must be seized by the mind in order to move history in a direction for the progress of man, and that this is the case over millennia. As Harley outlined, I talked about the principles of the Peace of Westphalia; moving into the 20th Century, Gandhi’s notion of nonviolent direct action; the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement coming out of the historic conference of African and Asian leaders in Bandung in 1955; Lyndon LaRouche’s role returning from World War II after he served in India and saw the murderous bestiality of the British Empire; and LaRouche’s pledge to himself as a young man coming back from the war, that somehow he would organize something in America which could have a global impact to solve the horrors of imperialism and colonialism; all the way up to Helga’s release a couple of years ago of her “Ten Principles for a New Security and Development Architecture.” So, what I presented was essentially quite simple. That’s it not a question of this or that treaty, this or that monetary arrangement, but the principles based upon a notion of man. That man is good and is endowed with creative reason which is perfectible; and he has a beautiful soul which is also perfectible. That that’s the nature of humanity as a whole. That was the presentation.
Interestingly, I got a very sharp response from some of my fellow panelists, who were distinguished Russian scholars on BRICS studies. One of the panelists said, no, no, the Treaty of Westphalia was not important. Although it ended decades of war in Europe, there were conflicts going on around the globe; therefore, it was not significant. Not that it makes much sense, but he was quite unnerved by what I presented. Another well-known scholar said, the Non-Aligned Movement is not important; that was back then in the 1940s, ’50s, and 60s. It was in opposition to the Soviet Union and to the U.S. Now, the BRICS is completely different, and it’s not quite sure which way it will go. So, there was a sharp contrast between a real focus and excitement about this idea of principle, about the idea of ruling ideas which need to be truthful to move humanity forward. This really grabbed the imagination of many of the young people in the room, and clearly irked a number of the scholars who were somewhat stuck in the geopolitical realm of the past period.
What happened the next day at the school, was that the entire morning was devoted to a presentation by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. He gave a very sharp briefing for about half an hour on the danger of global war, given the policies coming from the West, and outlined the BRICS as a pathway away from that conflagration. Then, he took what must have been 50 minutes of questions from all the students. Most of the questions were connected to the idea of how will my nation develop; how can my nation fit in, in the picture that you’re outlining? His answers were stunning, methodical, extensive. Every question was answered; there was no censorship, there was no limitation, there was no editor editing the questions. It was a real dialogue. The young people were quite excited to be having a real-time dialogue with one of the directors of the Russian Federation, and also he was the top person, the so-called Sherpa for Russia in the whole Russian BRICS Presidency.
We have a couple of photographs which I think people might enjoy seeing. This is a group of Vietnamese students and their professor and a few others that joined, who demanded that we take a group picture. I think you can see from their smiles, they were all very happy. I, being the only American speaker, probably was in about 50 selfies with students from all over the globe. There was tremendous excitement about hearing an American view which took the whole world into consideration. This one was taken the following day; this is the second day of the conference. After Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov finished his presentation, the moderator said, “OK, time for a picture. Why doesn’t everybody come up?” So, Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov plopped down on the stage, sitting down. All the young people rushed up to get close to him. There were all kinds of discussions, and there were about 20 photographers snapping pictures incessantly.
What can I say? The level of intellectual excitement was great. One of the mottos of the BRICS School was “Be inspired together,” which I think was quite appropriate. Remember, these are postgraduate students, graduate students, young diplomats. This is the cadre of the BRICS; that is, they know it’s up to them to implement the policies that we’ve been talking about over the next 5, 10, 50 years. That wonderful sense of mission; that sense of freedom to battle evil and to do good, I must say, was clearly manifested by dozens among the young people who were there. Nations that are totally embattled: Iran; Yemen; the situation in South America, Ecuador. So, that was the character of the first two days.
As an example in terms of a new method of thinking, a new set of possibilities, you saw in Kazan, on the sidelines of the major presentations, President Xi of China and Modi of India, had a personal meeting for several hours on defining a win-win collaborative relationship immediately going forward. This hadn’t happened for five years; the border between them has had military clashes which were extremely dangerous. But in the context of the thinking that the BRICS has brought into being, it allowed India and China to come together and say, “Wait a second; rather than seeing each other as opponents, maybe that’s a trick. Maybe we can see each other as potential collaborators in moving something bigger forward.” This is that new method of thinking; this is what Helga Zepp-LaRouche again and again describes to audiences of the Coincidence of Opposites method of thinking of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa of the 15th Century. When you see opposition, war, contention, two sides are obviously irreconcilable; there’s no solution. Well, there is a solution if you take a leap above and think in terms of the One; the one humanity, the one universe which defines all of us. As President Xi has been saying, we’re all in one boat, and therefore we have to figure out the best course of that boat as a single unity. This is the method, from what I’ve seen in meeting with many senior diplomats over the last several years. That when I often as a test of the thinking of the diplomat that I’m meeting with here in New York, I’ll say, “You saw that the Chinese brought together Saudi Arabia and Iran, and what seemed irreconcilable out of the several months of discussions with China the direction of the discussion, Saudi Arabia and Iran re-established diplomatic relations and are on a pathway of collaboration.” So, I asked the diplomat, “Did you expect to see this? Did you think it was possible?” And universally, every single diplomat that I’ve posed this to, including senior diplomats in their 60s, 70 years old, they all say, “No; never thought I would see it.”
But in this BRICS process, this way of thinking where you proceed from the one humanity, this is redefining the way many nations are thinking. The reconciliation of Egypt and Syria; again and again; Palestine—the 14 factions among Palestinians were brought together by China, and made resolutions to unify around a single mission to save the Palestinian people. Again and again what you see is a new method of thinking being brought to the fore. The Chinese think about it in their own way, from the standpoint of the fundamental axiom of universal harmony defining the individual soul, the individual family, the individual city, humanity as a whole. This is an approach that has defined Chinese civilization for 2500 years now since the age of Confucius; which is approximately the same time when Socrates was teaching and Plato was writing his dialogues.
So, it’s these principles which go back 2500 years to Confucius and Plato up into the 15th Century of Cusa. Then you have an efflorescence against colonialism typified by the fights in the 20th Century, exemplified by Mohandas Gandhi. These are the ideas that seemed, from what I saw, seemed to grip the young people; that something brand new is happening in humanity as a whole. Where we go forward is that the BRICS have a bank called the New Development Bank. It’s been relatively small so far. It’s headed up by an extraordinary woman—Dilma Rousseff—who had been President of Brazil. She was a freedom fighter in Brazil under the military dictatorship. She’s an extraordinarily visionary woman; very tough. She’s been the head of the New Development Bank, the BRICS bank, over the last year and a half. Her term is over officially in July, and it was set for Russia to choose the next head of the bank. But you see how Putin is thinking; it’s flag after flag after flag. Putin said in the course of the Kazan summit, “Well, maybe it’s not such a good idea for Russia to choose the new head, given the global controversies and contentions. Why don’t we ask Dilma to stay on? She’s done such a magnificent job.”
Not coincidentally, just before that, President Xi had bestowed on Dilma Rousseff the highest civilian medal that the Chinese could bestow on a foreigner. At the same time, Putin, by the end of the Kazan summit, said, we’re talking about certain new ideas, certain new initiatives. A new investment platform, a new grain trading platform, a new platform supported by Africa nations of a geological platform to unpack the riches underneath the Earth, and other platform connected to nuclear medicine, transport, etc. This idea of a new investment platform leads us in the direction of taking the New Development Bank and expanding it massively. Figuring out the details for how to do that, to undertake vast projects in the Global South, in Africa, in South America, where transformation can occur very quickly.
You see in the leaderships in Africa, in Latin America, in Southeast Asia a tremendous optimism based on reality. A lot of this comes from the achievements in the recent period of the Chinese leadership. From 2015 to 2020, as I think most of you have read, China embarked on a plan to eliminate all—100%—of extreme poverty. They employed 250,000 engineers, economists, farmers, experts of all kinds, spread out throughout their nation of 1.4 billion people. Geographically, it’s about the size of the United States. In village after village, province after province, all kinds of changes were made to give people employment, expand agriculture, build new cities, massive housing. It took them 5-6 years, and by 2020, China announced they had eliminated 100% of extreme poverty. Nobody disputed them: Not London’s The Economist; not the New York Times; not Le Monde in Paris. No one, no enemy of China denied what they had done. This act, of eliminating poverty in a short period of time, a nation that a few decades was universally impoverished; this has grabbed the attention of leaders in every continent of the former colonial sector.
Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, who has spoken at length at Schiller Institute conferences, just ended his term a few months ago. Right now, Russia has no ambassador in America; it’s a certain signal to Washington. “We’re about to downgrade our hopes for what we can expect from you. Right now we have secondary diplomats running the embassy.” Before Ambassador Antonov left, he contacted EIR and said, I have an essay that I’d like you to publish. We published it, and it was not pro forma. What was the content? He called for a new movement to end neo-colonialism; that is, the conditionalities, the economic strangulation, the Malthusian policies of the IMF and the World Bank. So, here you have this very distinguished diplomat, a man of tremendous integrity, whom I have had the opportunity to speak with many times. And Ambassador Antonov, before leaving Washington and returning to Russia, writes an essay saying, what we’re doing is not enough. We need a new movement. He didn’t call for a policy; he didn’t call for a document; he didn’t call for a conference to have a talk chat. He said, we need a new movement; things are not moving fast enough. We need a new movement to end this neo-colonialism. So, there is an energy and a mission which you see in leaders such as President Putin, President Xi, Ambassador Antonov, which is also suffusing the outlook of what we used to call the Third World. Now, as Helga outlined the numbers, it is the Global Majority.
And Putin has been unrelenting. In every speech I’ve seen him give over the last two years, he’s said what we’re going in forming a new monetary system for development, is non-West; but it’s not anti-West. Any nation can join; this is not an exclusive club. NATO members can join, if they join with mutual respect from the standpoint, as Harley mentioned, with the idea of the benefit of the other, as was in the content of the Treaty of Westphalia. The contending forces that were ripping Europe apart, agreed that they would act for the honor and benefit of the other, and through mutual economic development. This is what President Putin has been stating publicly again and again. It is the case. A shift in policy in the United States would be in the twinkling of an eye accepted by the forces of the group of the Global South.
So, this idea of global development, the necessity of progress, the transfer of the most advanced science from the North to the oppressed Global South; this has been the mission, as most of you may know, of Lyndon LaRouche for the last 50-60 years. And it’s coming into being. Our friend, Georgy Toloraya, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who has been the Executive Director of the Russian BRICS Committee, has been doing interview after interview outlining this idea and this mission. He was recently on Channel 1 Russian national TV. He said, if we look at America, Lyndon LaRouche is the kind of statesman we are looking to deal with. This has been the orientation of all of the BRICS nations again and again. We are open to the West; we’re creating an alternative system based upon mutual benefit, but we would like the West to join—Europe and the United States. So, all of the propaganda that’s out there, worrying about de-dollarization and BRICS as a competitor? It is not a competition.
China is successful because it’s using principles of science and poetry. There has been a program in Chinese education which I’ve looked at over the last years. Aesthetic education of young people: Classical poetry; Classical music; Confucian studies. And at the same time, China is involved in a revolution of thinking about economic policy. I’m going to be writing a paper on this, which will be coming out soon. This discussion we’re having today will be published in Executive Intelligence Review in a different form next week. But China is undergoing a conceptual revolution. In September 2023, President Xi came back from a tour of one of China’s provinces. He said, even with our economic successes so far, this is not adequate. We have to think; we need a new theory of productive forces in order to move forward. Remember, we’re talking about 1.4 billion people in China. There has been an intense discussion at the highest level publicly in China on what would be the approach in order to augment new productive forces. It is very much focused on this generation of young thinkers in their 20s and 30s. And what’s been stated in the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of China, called Quishi—Seeking Truth—said that the key to an upshift in China’s economy will be focused on rapidly expanding the rate of new original and disruptive innovation. Increase the rate of original and disruptive innovations in basic science. If that’s not an American idea, I don’t know what is. This is exactly the idea put forward by Alexander Hamilton in the founding of the nation, where he says the key to manufacture and production is the fruits of the human mind realized in the productive process. Or the great scientific advisor, the physicist Vannevar Bush of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said that the key to a successful peace—this goes to what Harley was developing before—the key to a successful peace coming out of World War II is that new principles and new conceptions in the realm of pure science have to be the mission of the nation; and that will propagate through society to allow unending progress. This is a theme again and again that has worked in history. It’s what China is doing. Their breakthroughs in quantum computing; life sciences in space; thermonuclear fusion; seed science. It’s quite extraordinary. So, China is in the process of a revolution; taking their old ideas and saying they’re not good enough, we need a new conceptualization, a new set of ideas. It’s not coincidental that LaRouche’s writings have been studied in China since at least the mid-1980s to my knowledge. Occasionally, you’ll read in Global Times or China Daily quotes from leaders of their Academy of Sciences, who say, “We look to Lyndon LaRouche as a Confucian mentor.” Not just as a Confucian, but as a Confucian mentor.
So, there’s an intellectual revolution going on globally, only typified by what the Chinese are doing. The flanking operations one after the other by President Putin. The whole BRICS Presidency passes January 1st to Brazil. And Lula is a tough customer. He came up through the ranks as a trade union organizer. He’s a tough President; he’s been assaulted by the monetarists and the British, and he’s persevered. It was his very smart decision to appoint Dilma Rousseff the head of the BRICS bank, the New Development Bank, several years ago. So, you’re going to have an initiative for peace in Europe and the Ukraine conflict; the principles put forward jointly by Brazil, by Lula and President Xi in China. You’ll have a commitment from Lula starting January 1st to put investment platforms together to allow increased trade within the BRICS countries, and investment; development, development. So, there is an amazing development, lawful but shocking to those stuck in the world of geopolitics. What is geopolitics? What is the British view? Man is a beast. Someone has to be on top, the rest have to be on the bottom; that’s the law of the universe. The battle of each against all—Hobbes; Bentham; Locke. This geopolitics can be put to rest.
I think Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s offer or suggestion to the leaders going into Kazan that they launch not merely a set of vacuous agreements, but rather a New Paradigm of international relations based on new fundamental principles. As Helga said earlier in her presentation today, Putin discussed about looking again at the very principles upon which we proceed. So, my evaluation is that Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call for the launching of a New Paradigm in Kazan has a launch point, has a start. And we have to make sure that the United States is brought in. That’s our job as American citizens, and given the upheaval, the flux in politics in America, everybody is talking about not Democratic, not Republican. We need independent voices. We have to mobilize tremendously to give an education, let’s say, in LaRouche economics to the new incoming President so he does the right thing.
THISTLETHWAITE: Thanks a lot, Richard. That’s a lot. But all of it is really exciting. I have a couple of questions, but first I just want to bring in Harley to see if he has any response so far.
SCHLANGER: I think the important thing is, if you have this background presentation from Richard, it becomes clear what President Putin is doing in the Valdai Discussion Group when he said he’s ready to talk to Trump. This is statecraft, where you have leaders who actually function on this higher level; on the cognitive level. If Putin is able to communicate with Trump on that level, I think there is a real opportunity for us to forge the kind of peace that we’re talking about.
Now, the other side of this, of course, is that the Russians are very clear on where the problem comes in. It’s certainly not Biden; Biden is somewhat of a ghost-like figure right now. But it’s coming out of Britain. The U.K. is still pushing and pulling and using every angle they have to continue this war. One of the key questions is going to be, are we going to be able to keep the neo-cons out of the Trump administration?
I just want to report a very important column written by Roger Stone today on Pompeo. He points out that Pompeo is an enemy; he points out that Pompeo was preparing to assassinate Julian Assange. That Pompeo was undermining Trump in the first term. This kind of intervention is absolutely crucial if we’re going to be able to get done what has to be done. And Roger showed a lot of courage; it makes a lie out of people who say he’s just an old dirty trickster from the Nixon days. He is also operating on a level of statecraft, and that’s very important.
BLACK: I’d like to add one thing, which is that in Trump’s last administration, he began negotiations with China on what was called the Phase One trade deal. A big part of this was very large, continuous soybean sales of American farmers to China. It was a long negotiation; probably took about a year or so. China’s top and brilliant economist, Liu He, was involved in all these negotiations. And it ended in a massive trade agreement between China and the U.S., with a big ceremonial press conference in the Oval Office. I remember quite clearly, President Trump was sitting there. Liu He was right behind him. The U.S. Cabinet was there. Chinese experts were there. And Trump gave a speech: He said, “This agreement that we’re signing today is not just about trade, this is much, much bigger. What this is doing, it opens up a new pathway for collaboration. So, I think what we’re doing today is quite historic.” So, that was Trump sitting in the room with China, talking about China-U.S. collaboration.
So, Trump has that capability, and as Harley is saying, we have to make sure that that happens.
THISTLETHWAITE: Yeah, I agree. And I think that’s ultimately the big question: What is the population going to do, to ensure this administration goes in the right direction.
I had a question, which was based on Putin’s remarks to the Valdai Discussion Club, in which he was talking about the BRICS process as being “polyphonic,” which is a complete contrast to how you would normally hear it described. So, he described it as “polyphonic”—and which is a contrast to how you normally hear it described—“multipolar,” “polycentric,” those are the usual terms. But in describing it as “polyphonic,” he was saying that each nation in this process, like in a musical composition, they have something to contribute, and they’re not competing for hegemony over one another, but that they’re equals in contributing to this overall process.
So, Richard, I wanted to see if you had any reflections on that, and maybe if you can discuss the idea of “polyphony” a little bit more, because I know LaRouche had discussed that before, too.
BLACK: Well, that’s a very truthful and elevated idea, that Putin is putting forward. There is a great intellectual upsurge around the creating of a new world, and Putin is reflecting that. This idea of a dialogue of civilizations, in which the pinnacles of culture of each civilization—Russian, Islamic, the American civilization defined by the principles of Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin, the European Renaissance, the point that we’ve made for so many decades is that if you examine the first principles of each of these civilizations, which proceed from the standpoint of the goodness of man, those principles are congruent, and that’s what Putin is reflecting in his very beautiful metaphor of polyphony.
But there are many, many voices. In the last days, there have been excellent articles released, connected to the Valdai Club, connected to the Brazilian economist Paulo Nogueira Batista, Jr., who outlined the next steps for advanced trade and investment among the BRICS. Sergey Glazyev, Academician and collaborator of LaRouche, has put forward some excellent papers about the opportunities that are created now with the election of Donald Trump. Dr. Wang Wen, of the Chongyang Institute of Financial Studies at Renmin University has been in intense dialogue with Russian intellectuals for several years now. There has been seminar after seminar, involving members of the Russian State Duma. There’s been a certain layer of intellectuals from Brazil, from China, from Russia, all debating, can we launch a New Paradigm? And it’s very exciting to hear that kind of thinking that globally, we need a great chorus to move humanity forward as a whole.
So, it’s quite, quite hopeful. Personally, my view is that, in the May-June period, right after Putin was reelected, he went quickly to Beijing, and President Xi Jinping and Putin had a walk of several hours by themselves, each with an interpreter, but with no advisors; and they strolled through one of these magnificent imperial gardens, and they talked for several hours. Now, Putin is not someone who I usually think of as a philosopher; President Xi clearly is. So, my guess would be that some very profound discussion on the question of the nature of man, on the direction of history for the next 100 years was the focus of that discussion. And that’s the kind of process that’s been going on, and Putin has been rising to the occasion. So, I think what his discussion at the Valdai Club represents.
You may have strata of bureaucrats in each of these countries, who are stuck and can’t think, but what I see, is that at the very top, President Lula of Brazil, Dr. Pandor [former foreign minister] in South Africa; Xi and Putin functioning on a very, very high, as Harley mentioned, level of statecraft. So we better seize the opportunity as it’s being presented.
THISTLETHWAITE: Harley, do you have anything you want to add?
SCHLANGER: I think what Richard said is accurate, and insightful. I would add Foreign Minister Jaishankar of India as one of those thinkers as well. When you look at what’s happening, in terms of outflanking the geopolitical operation, before the BRICS summit, the Chinese and the Indians made great progress in overcoming the border conflict. And this is something which was an intention of Xi Jinping, as a way of breaking the potential for a British imperial operation to break up the BRICS. India is targetted, very heavily. Blinken has made several trips there, to tell them, “we’ll give you weapons, you don’t have to buy weapons from Russia. We’ll be your partner, you should join the Quad.” And the Indians are saying, “we have a tradition of nonalignment, so butt out. Don’t tell us what to do,” and that’s what Dr. Pandor from South Africa said, when Blinken tried to lecture her on “democracy.”
So you better get used to the fact that the rest of the world is asserting itself in a way that has been suppressed. And the good thing about it is, that they’re thoughtful, and that they’re considerate. And this is what has been missing in the West. There’s no empathic statesmen in countries like Germany or France, or certainly in the United States. There may be junior people in the State Department, but most of them, if they had had any guts, would have already resigned. So, we should look at these countries, and see this principle that Helga Zepp-LaRouche talks about, of ultimately, in diplomacy, love of mankind and recognition that all human beings are good and potentially creative. That’s the basis for peace. And that’s a lesson we’ve got to learn.
BLACK: It’s not that easy to get Americans to take the whole world into their heart. The typical American is so focussed on Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, rich versus poor, really stuck in America as if America was the whole world. And part of our job, the three of us and others, is to come up with the creative pedagogy, to get under Americans’ skins and get them to think about a whole world, all as one, and America as the contributing part of that—that is, the real America, as Diane Sare and Jose Vega have been stressing.
So that’s the trick. When I would tell people, “don’t go to Disneyland, don’t visit the Grand Canyon, go to Russia, go to China. There are group tours you can go on, you don’t have to know the language; you won’t get arrested, the police won’t follow you, and your eyes and your mind will open up.” There’s nothing like talking to someone, face-to-face, nose-to-nose, from a completely different culture, and you find that they’re human in exactly the way that you are human. And you don’t have to be a diplomat to do it.
When I was in China, we traveled around for about a month, and we went to many of the small places which did not have many American tourists. And wherever we went, young people would come up to us, to practice their English. One young fellow saw me, I think he was 8 years old: He began talking, and demanded that we take pictures. He was so excited to see somebody from the United States! So, he wasn’t a diplomat; he was an 8-year-old, but that was emblematic of the excitement of the Chinese to see that someone is visiting them from halfway around the world.
The same thing in Russia. You go to Russia, and it is a real culture shock! Moscow, as people know, is beautiful. At night, it’s all lit up, it’s spotless, it’s beautiful, the architecture—you see massive cathedral, after cathedral, after cathedral. Clearly, Christianity is a big part of the thousand-year-old Russia.
So, get a passport, go overseas, open your mind. That’s my message to all of my American friends.
SCHLANGER: One other point there, is that identity politics, which is used to divide Americans, is a form of geopolitics on the local level.
BLACK: Absolutely!
SCHLANGER: And that’s something that hopefully we can overcome, in terms of the period moving ahead after the election on Tuesday.
THISTLETHWAITE: Richard, what you just brought up about informing people in the rich American intellectual tradition and the American System, it just brought back to me when I was in China as a part of the Schiller Institute delegation there, last year. And our reaction, at first, was “Wow, this country is so beautiful.” They actually maintain their infrastructure. You don’t have to worry about getting mugged at night, when you’re roaming the streets. It was a real culture shock. And that was the main thing we were expressing to our hosts. But we decided to change that, and actually tell them about our rich history, too, from the moment of our Revolution up to people like John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, who actually defined our system. And that completely changed everything. They had a really great response to that. They just evoked that memory, what you were just saying.
I think we’re going to end now. I actually wanted to play a clip of Lyndon LaRouche: This was about 1994, just when he had been released from prison, and this is also after his trip to Russia, in which he talked with a lot of economists and scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and gave lectures. And I wanted to play it just to give people a sense of how LaRouche’s ideas are informing this process that’s emerging with the BRICS now, in this new security and development architecture, so I’m going to play it, and I’ll ask for your responses, and we’ll end there.
[video: “Lyndon LaRouche and the Russian-American Strategic Partnership for Global Development” 1994]
LYNDON LAROUCHE: My view is this; If we look ahead to the future of humanity, and look beyond the sinking of the Titanic, we have an obvious way of reorganizing the world, which is the alternative to going to death, or hell under a UNO world dictatorship. And that is, to do what the British have always feared: Do the geopolitical utmost. Let’s foster rails from Brest to Vladivostok. Let us foster the development of the Silk Route railroad in China. Let us foster collaboration among two sections of Asia: One define the northern section of Eurasia, from the Atlantic to Vladivostok; then devise the southern part of Asia, which is China, the Asian Rim, and South Asia.
Now, integrate the two, in the logical way in which they should be integrated, which means that you are now in the area of the world’s majority of its population: This now includes the basins of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The basin includes the East Coast of Africa. The basin includes the West Coast of the Americas. This is where the world’s future population will be concentrated. If we’re developing physical economy, these are the trade routes.
So therefore, Europe, the center of the engine of high-technology production. Move that eastward and southward, through rail links, using maglev and high-speed rail, not old types of rail, for economy. Involve countries in cooperation with their reduced circumstances, to build up this system of infrastructure. Using this infrastructure building to spin off the other industries which are needed: Because you need the infrastructure for the industry, and the building of the infrastructure is the initiative, the catalyst for developing the industry.
We should commit ourselves to such a policy, to such cooperation among sovereign nation-states, and let the imperialists who drowned this world in war, for a century, let them go hang. Let Margaret Thatcher go take her broom and fly to Moon, or Mercury, or the Asteroid Belt, where she’d probably be much happier. Let her take George Bush as her pet cat on the rumble seat of the broom!
And let us proceed to do that which has been forbidden, which is in the vital interests of our country: To foster this kind of development in Eurasia and in South Asia, and to use cooperation with that, as the way to rebuild the world economy.
My function in this picture, as I see it, is that Russians have drawn me in to a position of an Academician, in the Russian system, particularly on the basis of economic science, but also on other things. I was invited for four days to Moscow, to meet with various parts of the Ministry of Economics, and the Academy of Sciences, which is in a sense a home-base for me, at this point, in part. We had extremely serious discussions, including a discussion on the principles of physical economy, with the Pobisk Kuznetsov on the Thursday evening of the final day I was there. Obviously, I have responsibilities which flow from this. My answer to those responsibilities is manifold, but in this particular case, it’s what I’ve indicated to you, here.
But we must have a global, strategic perspective. We cannot pull into ourselves and sit in America, and watch the world go to hell, and wait and see what happens afterward, when the smoke clears. We have to have a global strategic perspective: I propose the global strategic perspective is the obvious one. Yeltsin has proposed, which I think is more than a Yeltsin proposal—it’s a Russian proposal—has proposed that Chancellor Kohl take the lead in catalyzing railroad building, as a way of approaching the situation. I concur, it should be done.
China has proposed, and has given additional information on the Silk Road: They wish to build it. They have indicated reasons for building it. They have indicated a perspective: We should endorse it.
We should endorse the idea of Eurasian cooperation, using Central Europe as a generator of technology to help catalyze the development of the rest of the region. We should propose, with Japan, a South Asian policy, from China-Southeast Asia-South Asia. We should draw representatives of this region of the world into cooperation, both through private means and other, in order to encourage a discussion out of which a policy and a policy-consensus may arise, or at least the basis for a policy-consensus.
The United States government needs that. The Russians need it. If we introduce something in which the Russian people, and Russian leaders, intelligentsia can recognize that what is being proposed is in the vital interests of their nation, I think as in other cases, they will find that they can translate that into results. I think that without such a policy, the world is plainly going to hell.
Thank you.
