Executive Intelligence Review, Volume 45, Number 9, March 2, 2018

- Cover

- Masthead

- PDF Table of Contents — Volume 45, Number 9, March 2, 2018

- I. Along the New Silk Road

- SEEING THE NEW SILK ROAD FROM THE FUTURE Who Has Grasped What the New Silk Road Really Is? by Flavio Tabanelli

- PARKLAND, FLORIDA COULD BE THE TURNING POINT It’s Time for America to End the Half Century of Humiliation by Diane Sare

- CHINA AND WEST VIRGINIA Transformation of the Ohio Valley, While Other States Anticipate by Marcia Merry Baker

- Trump’s Warm Relationship with China’s President Defies the War-Hawks by William Jones

- II. The Folly of Geopolitics

- ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST ‘Old Paradigm’ Defenders Target China At Munich Security Conference

- REPORT FROM GERMANY Does Chancellor Merkel Want to Intervene Militarily in Syria? We Need a Global Security Architecture! by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

- III. LaRouche on the Mystery of Life

- THE SUBJECT OF PRINCIPLE Project ‘Genesis’ by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (March 14, 2008)

- EDITORIAL Keynes or von Hayek? by Robert Ingraham

Prometheus of Today

Editor-in-Chief and Founder:

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Editorial Board: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. , Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Robert Ingraham, Tony Papert, Gerald Rose, Dennis Small, Jeffrey Steinberg, William Wertz

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Technology: Marsha Freeman

Books: Katherine Notley

Ebooks: Richard Burden

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Photos: Stuart Lewis

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INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORS

Counterintelligence: Jeffrey Steinberg, Michele Steinberg

Economics: John Hoefle, Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher

History: Anton Chaitkin

Ibero-America: Dennis Small

Russia and Eastern Europe: Rachel Douglas

United States: Debra Freeman

INTERNATIONAL BUREAUS

Bogotá: Miriam Redondo

Berlin: Rainer Apel

Copenhagen: Tom Gillesberg

Houston: Harley Schlanger

Lima: Sara Madueño

Melbourne: Robert Barwick

Mexico City: Gerardo Castilleja Chávez

New Delhi: Ramtanu Maitra

Paris: Christine Bierre

Stockholm: Ulf Sandmark

United Nations, N.Y.C.: Leni Rubinstein

Washington, D.C.: William Jones

Wiesbaden: Göran Haglund

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EIR Contents

www.larouchepub.com — Volume 45, Number 9, March 2, 2018

Cover This Week

Goya’s painting, “The Colossus,” conveys the idea of Prometheus.

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PROMETHEUS OF TODAY

I. ALONG THE NEW SILK ROAD

3 SEEING THE NEW SILK ROAD FROM THE FUTURE

Who Has Grasped What the New Silk Road Really Is?

by Flavio Tabanelli

9 PARKLAND, FLORIDA COULD BE THE TURNING POINT

It’s Time for America to End the Half Century of Humiliation

by Diane Sare

12 CHINA AND WEST VIRGINIA

Transformation of the Ohio Valley, While Other States Anticipate

by Marcia Merry Baker

18 Trump’s Warm Relationship with China’s President Defies the War-Hawks

by William Jones

II. THE FOLLY OF GEOPOLITICS

20 ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

‘Old Paradigm’ Defenders Target China at Munich Security Conference

27 REPORT FROM GERMANY

Does Chancellor Merkel Want To Intervene Militarily in Syria? We Need a Global Security Architecture!

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

III. LAROUCHE ON THE MYSTERY OF LIFE

30 THE SUBJECT OF PRINCIPLE

Project ‘Genesis’

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

March 14, 2008

51 EDITORIAL

Keynes or von Hayek?

by Robert Ingraham

I. Along the New Silk Road

SEEING THE NEW SILK ROAD FROM THE FUTURE

Who Has Grasped What the

New Silk Road Really Is?

by Flavio Tabanelli

Flavio Tabanelli of Bologna is a leader of the International Schiller Institutes. This article, which has been translated from Italian, is featured in the March issue of the Italian magazine Galileo.

wikimedia commons

February 2018—Credit is like a newborn baby: both of these are anticipations or advances of wealth, and imply a constant and industrious intention toward the future, for the common good.

The New Silk Road is the initiative taken by a nation, by China, in assuming the responsibility to develop each newborn baby, and to “protect the credit.” It is the pivot of all Chinese foreign policy, including as it does an open invitation to every other nation to share, each in its own way, in that responsibility. This is an epochal project, advanced with courage, which is derived from the decision to take as its point of departure the construction of the future, free from the mental schemes of geopolitics, cold war, and so-called “zero sum” economics. (As recently stressed by Hua Chunying, spokeswoman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.)

When a baby is born, she or he passes directly into the infinity which encompasses everything and all of us, largely ignoring the troubles about which adults fidget so often—thanks to their own political shortsightedness. So we should see, in the New Silk Road, an opportunity to collectively build a durable peace based on rejecting prejudices concerning the purported finiteness of resources and of the world itself—prejudices which frequently have been the true, although artificial, historical causes of crises. Once absorbed by national cultures, these prejudices often are expressed in wars, as tragic as they are senseless.

The New Silk Road is like the hypothesis of the quanta of energy whispered by Planck in the ears of the late 19th Century’s physicists, while almost all of them were “selectively deaf,” in insisting that everything fundamental had already been discovered. Fortunately, some of them were able to listen to him.

To understand such an epochal project, which has already been funded on the scale of ten post-World War II Marshall Plans, we can either rely on the explanations of the Chinese government and the institutions which are engaged in this major effort, or on its detractors, who turn to sophisms or invent double and hidden Chinese purposes—or we can rely on the vision of the international movement which inspired this project more than thirty years ago, and has repeatedly visited China over two decades in order to further a dialogue among civilizations.

I prefer to devote the next paragraphs to the latter and third source, to whom I’ve been so close for all these years of battle to “exit from the international financial crisis,” even before its 2007-2008 eruption. The wider public needs to complement the inspiring ideas of the New Silk Road with the information which is within reach, but so hard—at the moment—to “separate from the chaff.”

The New Silk Road in its Full ‘Geometric Dimensions’

The actual epochal transformation is representable in terms typical of the “market” or of “billionaires’ affairs,” but only as a projection of a process characterized by a higher number of dimensions. One has to be aware of that. Many criticisms made against it, for example, can be made believable only inside such a dimensional limitation.

In my own experience, it is best to situate the Chinese initiative in the domain of history, or—better said—in the “simultaneity of eternity,” where the principles manifest in our species, which alone is capable of cognition, are located. My experience is that of a person who speaks about this in every context, whether appropriate or made so. For instance, I have manned the sidewalks with posters to trigger discussions with passers-by, portraying the choice of principle compelled by the New Silk Road, between geopolitics and war on the one hand, and the adhesion to the new paradigm of mutual development and peace on the other.

Those who study the geological ages, find traces of enormous and traumatic transformations undergone by our planet. It was still only the fifth day of creation, and thus nothing was imputable to man, yet we see:

Mountains where before oceans heaved;

Woods where before there were silent deserts, and the reverse;

Icy bridges between continents or valleys now divided by seas or mountain ranges;

Snowy expanses for millennia, where before broad-leaved plants thrived, which now are known only by paleontologists;

The birth and the drift of continents; and

Mass extinctions, and also phases of new speciation.

Left: Vladimir Vernadsky ; right: Painting of Dmitri Mendeleyev by Ilya Repin.

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The Quality of the Human Species

Historians who study the process from the sixth day onwards, relying on the gifts of speech and writing, exult every time that they verify one of those great moments when our human kind was able to itself overcome by willfully progressing, using wise concentrations of spiritual and physical forces, when we could foresee and act upon a future direction for ourselves, to realize a perspective of greater prosperity and more advantages, than those given by the practice of war.

Great scientists and educators have stressed the prodigies brought forth by our creative species, without hiding the errors that we are nevertheless capable of committing.

Baby at play by Thomas Eakens.

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Maria Montessori spoke of “supranature,” in referring to the presence and action of our species in this world. She insisted that the child can be “the teacher of man,” even during the raging of the two world wars. She entrusted the building of peace, to education—an education which would respect the sovereignity of the “absorbent mind” of the child and its instinctive modes of learning.

We should recall Vladimir Vernadsky, who emphasized the role of the noösphere in his tripartition of the world into the sphere of inert matter, sphere of living beings, and sphere of cognition. Vernadsky emphasized the lawfulness, in the order of the universe, of what Man adds to the world, particularly economic infrastructure, which development in Russia was an object of his teacher Mendeleyev’s dedicated effort. For Vernadsky, Man is a “geological force,” but a force with the advantage of not being blind like the aforementioned geological upheavals preceding man’s emergence.

Writing under the pen-name “M. Ilyin,” Ilya Yakovlevich Marshak (1896-1953), another Russian chemist, boldly committed himself to encouraging children to devote their lives to science. Even if stained by Stalinism, his books popularizing science have the same inspiring quality as Jules Verne’s novels. The preface of his How Man Became a Giant (1948) is poetic:

On earth, there exists a giant.

With such arms that it can lift a locomotive without any effort.

With such feet that it can walk a thousand kilometers in a day.

Eyes that see the invisible, and ears that hear what is being said on another continent.

So strong that it drills straight through mountains from one side to the other, and stops waterfalls in mid-course.

According to its will, it rebuilds the earth, plants woods, connects seas, and waters the deserts.

Who is this giant?

This giant is Man.

But how did it happen that Man became a giant, the master of the Earth?

These are the theme and the purpose of this narration.

How Man Became a Giant is the title of this old book for children. “How Did Man Became Impotent?” could be the question to formulate for today. Many of us do not grasp that we really represent a “supranature”: yet, science and technology allow us to create materials, states and conditions which do not exist and may never have existed in nature. An example? In research reactors for nuclear fusion, we bring plasma to far higher temperatures than those measured in the stars. And we do it “in our backyard.” This is no random example: China is now demonstrating seriousness and determination in the search for controlled fusion.

Chinese students in a class, conducted from space, by Wang Yaping aboard the Shenzhou 10 space mission.

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By ignoring this creative quality expressed in every one of us, and by thus ignoring the reality that (in European mythological terms) Prometheus revealed the secret of fire to us; we expose ourselves to Zeus’ deceptions and to a sense of impotence in relation to events, and we further expose ourselves in many tragic ways to the renunciation of our own humanity.

Optimistic International Relations

The essential feature of our species, on the contrary, leads us to directly recognize a new historical phase with the emergence of the New Silk Road—after the enthusiasm-filled phase of man’s first Moon landing. Optimism is now coming back forcefully. We see this in the active idea that development holds the main key to solve every problem, as China’s President Xi Jinping emphasized at the “Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation” in May. Clearly the New Silk Road isn’t what many see—and often criticize—with mere businessmen’s glasses. The Beijing Review reported that Dong Manyuan, vice-president of the Chinese Institute for International Studies, reports that “the idea of common development advocated by the Belt and Road Initiative, based on the principle of construction through consultation, is very appealing.”

The problems that humanity must deal with have been planetary in scale for a long time. Without depending on any form of world government, we must invite nations to compare and discuss important ideas: how to participate in mankind’s Promethean power, and sharing in the fruits of creativity for the common good within the noösphere as defined by Vernadsky. That noösphere focuses on the intervention in and over nature, both the abiotic domain and the biosphere.

The great advances made by technologies which are available today or have been “left in the drawer” (in the case of sectors dumped after decades of austerity), show that problems like so-called natural disasters or poverty, are exclusively issues of political will or lack of will.

This said, the way must be cleared for the broader conception of the New Silk Road, which under its initial name, the “Eurasian Land-Bridge,” was proposed to the world by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche’s movement, in response to the collapse of the Soviet system. Two pillars of that Soviet system which should have been kept as the backbone of a plan of international cooperation are efficient national educational institutions—freed from ideology—and the industrial apparatus, wholly converted to serve civilian needs. The spirit of the Eurasian Land-Bridge proposal is still the same, and is now embodied in the New Silk Road initiative. This is now called “One Belt, One Road,” encompassing two main paths for infrastructural development: the “belt” of maritime transport to and from the Horn of Africa and the east African coast, as well as the more traditional “road” of terrestrial transport between Europe and Eastern Asia.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, front right, with other non-governmental representatives, participating in the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, May 2017.

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The “spirit of the New Silk Road” is already transforming this whole geometry. Other roads have been added: the Polar route, and branches on other continents, Africa and the Americas, of what the LaRouche movement calls the “World Land-Bridge.” In yet other dimensions, there is cooperation in space exploration and deep-sea exploration, and also cooperation in web protocols and rules to strenghen communications in the service of the dialogue between civilizations.

It is thus evident that the advantages for transport and commercial exchanges are only minor aspects of the intended purpose, or—as we said—a projection of the first and also ultimate purpose, the emancipation of humanity. Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, confirms that the creation of platforms for international cooperation can push forward the industrialization of countries which have been left behind in the age of globalization. Ndubuisi Christian Ani, researcher at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies in Addis Ababa, reports happily that the Belt and Road Initiative is “totally in line with Africa’s much-desired need for infrastructure and economic development.”

After many years of waiting by Africans and by the Italian company Bonifica SpA—waiting caused by years of skillful sophistries equivalent to “cover-up” and dissipation of energy—one company, PowerChina, the big Chinese company which built the Three Gorges Dam, has now joined the project to solve the problem of the Lake Chad region.

Italy and the New Silk Road

I agree with the contributions of other authors on these pages [of the Italian magazine Galileo], that Italy, our country, is too shy in keeping itself away from this development.

We should denounce the fact that the then-Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, while making a pro forma declaration in favor of cooperation with China, nevertheless refused the financial aid that China had offered us (being aware that our peninsula is the “stable link with the European hinterland”) to help build the long-proposed Messina Strait Bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Subsequently, he shut the project down, claiming lack of funds.

This is an example of the magic trick of the disappearance of “true money” (an expression for real-economy productive credit, used by a former president of the General Confederation of Italian Industry), which is the mirror-image of the manipulation of popular opinion with the bogeyman of unsustainable “costs.”

Current Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni Silveri has substituted the Northern Italian ports, which are much more active and believed to be more cost-effective than those of Sicily and Southern Italy, for the transit of cargoes passing through the two Suez canals. But he has not protected those ports from probable competition from other routes of the New Silk Road project’s articulation. By so doing he has continued to indulge in the drift that is moving Italy away from the New Silk Road.

Why not start, instead, from the perspective of the railroad pioneer Luigi Negrelli, of economist Carlo Ilarione Petitti di Roreto, and even more, that of Cavour, who believed that Italy should have prepared in advance, with a well-balanced system of seaports, for the first moment of the envisaged excavation and opening of the Suez Canal in 1869?

Container freight train en route from China to Duisburg, Germany.

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The New Silk Road as a Dialogue Between Civilizations

The theoretical elaboration by Beijing builds on the Peace of Westphalia, which was achieved after several years of negotiations, and was focused on respect for national sovereignty. China wants to play an international role using three powers: culture, conviction, and responsibility, as outlined by Xi Jinping, and asserting categorically that it rejects the practice of “regime change” and foreign interference. “Our leaders emphasize the concept of the ‘Three No’s’,” said Shi Ze, director for International Energy Strategy Studies and Senior Fellow of the China Institute of International Studies.

“First,” he explained, “we do not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations; second, China does not seek to increase its so-called ‘sphere of influence’; and third, China does not strive for hegemony or dominance. That is, we are all equal partners.” Dr. Shi was speaking at the international conference on the 30th anniversary of the Schiller Institute, founded and directed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche. That conference also featured the participation of Enzo Siviero on the theme of “Mediterranean bridging.”

As Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the “Silk Road Lady,” assessed last November at the international conference of the Schiller Institute, the dialogue between the highest expressions of the two cultures, the western and the Chinese, is progressing. The New Silk Road can really be the “new model for international relations.”

“This is not the first time” she declared, “that Europe has been in bad shape.” She recalled the challenge launched by Gottfried W. Leibniz, in a memorandum dated 1670, in which he criticized Europe’s “badly established trade and manufacturing; . . . an entirely debased currency; . . . the uncertainty of law and the delay of all legal actions; in worthless education . . . in an increase in atheism in our morals, which are, as it were, infected by a foreign plague; . . . in the bitter strife of religions; all of which . . . weaken us, and, . . . may in the end completely ruin us. . . .” Helga LaRouche said Leibniz recognized that Europe needed a merger of the Chinese ancient natural theology and European culture. In the preface of his Novissima Sinica (in English, The Latest from China), Zepp-LaRouche said that Leibniz recognized that there was a strong affinity between Christianity and Confucianism . . . and the latter had much more to offer than any other known belief system of his time.

“He asserted,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche added, that “we need the Chinese to send missionaries to Europe, so that we can learn from them the natural religion that we have almost lost,” referring to the fact that “there is in China a public morality, admirable in certain regards, conjoined to a philosophical doctrine, or rather a natural theology venerable by its antiquity, established and authorized for about 3,000 years, long before the philosophy of the Greeks.” (See http://newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com/media/helga-zepp-larouche-new-silk-road-new-model-international-relations/)

To Protect the Credit

I could have invited readers to reflect upon the striking statistics already achieved by this diplomatic and economic policy, but I prefer to base our reasoning on its qualitative features. Even in the field of financing of infrastructure, China has been able to build on western wisdom forgotten by the West. Chinese banks have generated credit in the same order of magnitude as the European Central Bank’s “Quantitative Easing,” but Chinese credit has emphasized productive activities. China boasts a regime of banking separation similar to the Glass-Steagall law introduced in the United States by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, to effectively respond to the Great Depression. While China is now wisely emulating that extension of federal credit, as did Roosevelt’s New Deal, some mouthpieces of the bankrupt circles of the trans-Atlantic region, such as the Financial Times and Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), have cast suspicion on the financing of infrastructure projects by China.

Like the New Deal and every other historical experience of economic policy free from arbitrary “external constraints,” the New Silk Road disproves, as it proceeds, every pessimistic forecast. With the impetus of such self-nourishing processes, like life itself, it repeats the “miracle.” The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.

Thus far, the EU has hindered some advances, for instance in the cooperation between China and the Balkan countries, the EU has thrown up bureaucratic problems, claiming violations of European rules on financing and building infrastructure: this, after tens of years of deafness to the dreams of Serbia, Bosnia, and their neighbors. Priority is being given to papers in dusty files, rather than to a changing reality. This “paralysis of legality” reminds me of my discussion many year ago with the director of a nuclear plant. “Why couldn’t Italy,” I asked him, “seek nuclear agreements with Japan, which builds nuclear plants in three years, while we must allocate for fifteen years of construction?” “Because their safety standards differ from Europe’s,” he answered. But how is it possible now, that China’s President Xi and French President Macron are happily signing nuclear agreements? Because he who wants to, can, do it.

Eradicating Poverty and Raising Living Standards

Speaking of France, what is now known as the Canal du Midi was built for quicker transportation of goods between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic, and to better cope with future regional droughts. It seems that the potential rise in the standard of living of the people, one of the most important effects of public investments, was almost “unexpected,” and some even tried to impede it. The high wages and innovative working conditions (rainy days off, paid Sundays and holidays, and sick leave) drained so much labor from the countryside, it provoked discontent among the landowners.

Initially pay was 20 shillings per day, twice that in agriculture. Riquet cut it to 15, then to 12 per day.

France was too heavily dependent on agriculture, as Colbert well knew. The effect of higher wages for the diggers should not only have been expected, but budgeted. If this historical reconstruction is true, France chose to reduce the pay of the workers instead of raising that in agriculture, triggering the first economy of high wages.

Beijing aims at lifting all the remaining 30 million poor Chinese from poverty within the current five-year plan (by 2020). One can safely assume that they will make it, whereas by that time, poverty in Europe will have increased. By fully collaborating with the countries that are participating in the New Silk Road initiative, and re-defining our future as a nation without the Troika ( European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank) on our back, we could reverse the direction of the current economic decline. Only ambitious capital- and scientific idea-intensive national programs—drafted while looking back fifty years from the future—will make the immediate creation of tens of millions of jobs possible. We have suffered for too long: the New Silk Road is already four years old and we should no longer wait.

PARKLAND, FLORIDA COULD BE THE TURNING POINT

It’s Time for America to End

The Half Century of Humiliation

by Diane Sare

Xinhua/Monica McGivern

Participants at a vigil for the victims of the shooting Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Feb. 15, 2018.

Feb. 25—On Feb. 16 President Trump hosted an extraordinary listening session with family members and students who lost friends and loved ones in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida mass killing, and other horrific school shootings since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999. The high school students, while clearly profoundly traumatized, were extremely articulate and thoughtful, and what they demanded was, “never again.” They called for an open dialogue where no proposal would be banned from discussion, and agreed that the solution would be complex and involve several factors. The fact that the President of the United States was the host of such a dialogue is reason for hope that “never again” can become a real prospect.

Might the Parkland tragedy be the turning point for America? Will this latest in a long series senseless deaths spark a deeper reappraisal among Americans as to what has gone wrong with our country?

If one looks at the ongoing horror of mass killings in the United States, together with the drugs, violence, degradation, and pessimism that are engulfing the younger portion of our population, it is patently obvious that simple, specific laws and rules will not be victorious over such all-encompassing crises within our culture. The problem—and the solution—go much deeper.

Two years ago, at the weekly LaRouche PAC Manhattan Town Hall meeting with Lyndon LaRouche, Mr. LaRouche said the following in response to a question about doing something to memorialize the first responders who willingly gave their lives on September 11, 2001.

We need to do something a little stronger: We have to set up some kind of memorial, a living memorial for people who died in that case. That would do something. Because the United States so far has failed to do anything about that—a few handfuls of people have been concerned with that. But we have to get the humiliation expressed by the people as a whole, for their failure to defend life, human life, when that life was needed.

At the moment LaRouche made those remarks, most listeners blithely ignored the word “humiliation,” not wishing to examine their own thoughts and actions since that fateful day—although we did create such a “living memorial” consisting of a series of performances of the Mozart Requiem and several African-American Spirituals on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. That action led to the passage of JASTA (the Justice against Sponsors of Terrorism Act), and an overwhelming override of murderous Barack Obama’s veto of that bill. But under the Obama Presidency, and more significantly, with the denial by the American people of the evil he represented, that was not enough to change the direction of our nation.

Yet, the question remains: Why did Lyndon LaRouche use the word “humiliation”?

youtube

Kaitlyn Strada speaking at a press conference about the loss of her father on Sept. 11, 2001. Standing left to right: Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), Terry Strada, and Justin Strada.

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EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

Sept. 11, 2016 performance of Mozart’s Requiem for 9/11 victims, by Schiller Institute chorus and orchestra at the St. Joseph Co-Cathedral in Brooklyn, New York.

A Lesson From China

Chinese President Xi Jinping in his May 4, 2014 “Youth Day” speech to the young people of China said,

Since the Opium War of the 1840’s, the Chinese people have long cherished a dream of realizing a great national rejuvenation and building China into a strong, democratic and harmonious modern socialist country—the highest and most fundamental interests of the nation. And that’s what 1.3 billion people are striving for.

China used to be a world economic power. However, it missed its chance in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent dramatic changes, and was thus left behind and suffered humiliation under foreign invasion. Things got worse especially after the Opium War, when the nation was plagued by poverty and weakness, allowing others to trample upon and manipulate us. We must not let this tragic history repeat itself.

The construction of a strong, democratic and harmonious modern socialist country is our goal and responsibility—for the nation, for our forefathers and for future generations. Therefore, we should maintain our willpower, intensify our faith, and walk unswervingly along the road towards our destination.

China has stood up. It will never again tolerate being bullied by any nation. Yet it will never follow in the footsteps of the big powers which seek hegemony once they grow strong. Our country is following a path of peaceful development. . ..

Chinese leaders refer to the period from the 1840s Opium War to the 1940s end of the Japanese occupation

of China as the “Century of Humiliation.” The living memory of that horrible period, during which tens of millions of Chinese people were killed, either by the Japanese invaders or British-pushed opium addiction, has become the source of resolve to move forward and ensure that such conditions will never again be imposed upon the Chinese people.

In the last 30 years, China has lifted 700 million or more people out of poverty, and built some of the most spectacular bridges, tunnels, and high-speed rail corridors, with a precision and rapidity which defy the imagination of those still living in the bankrupt western world. There are record numbers of Chinese children studying Classical music and science, and an optimistic spirit of generosity pervades modern Chinese culture. President Xi has vowed to abolish poverty in China by 2020, and worldwide by 2050.

wikipedia

President Kennedy with his brother Robert, 1963.

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Recovering America’s Soul

Any effort to build a better future for America’s youth—or for our nation as a whole—must begin with the same sense of vision and determination as is now being exhibited in China. To start down this new path, the first requirement is to recognize the “Half Century of Humiliation” that the American people have been living through since the murder of President John Kennedy in 1963.

Virtually every policy, every hope for a better future which Kennedy fought for, has been abandoned since his death. Instead, we have become a nation with no moral purpose, and one dominated by British and Wall Street interests who have dismantled and obliterated our once proud leadership in science, industry, and technology. They have raped our nation. We have become a people who fled in terror from the murders of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King—and the cover-up of those murders—into a haven of pleasure seeking, entertainment and money. Much like the Chinese at the time of the Opium Wars, we welcomed our own cultural and moral enslavement—not thinking about what America used to be.

Now, however, we find ourselves at a turning-point. With the rejection of Hillary Clinton in the November 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, and in a world dominated

by the stupendous economic progress of China’s Belt

and Road Initiative—together with the strategic war avoidance of Putin’s Russia—we find ourselves at a moment when the world is irrevocably changing and great opportunity exists. It is precisely at such a moment that it becomes possible for the people of the United States to look back upon the last approximately 50 years, starting with the British-directed assassination of President Kennedy, and to begin to awaken themselves, as if from a deep slumber, to recognize that this is the moment to recover what has been seemingly lost—and to resolve never to return to such a state of depravity that we tolerate conditions wherein our own children are targets of mass killers.

When the British-run coup against President Trump has been ended, and individuals like “former” MI6 Agent Christopher Steele and Robert Mueller are behind bars, when our greatest philosopher-statesman Lyndon LaRouche has been fully exonerated, his Four Laws are the law of the land, and American children are becoming rocket scientists and classical artists, we will look back upon America’s “Half Century of Humiliation,” and resolve to care for the education, liberty, and happiness of our children and grandchildren in such a way as to ensure the ongoing progress of mankind as a whole, in the development of our galaxy and the universe beyond.

CHINA AND WEST VIRGINIA

Transformation of the Ohio Valley, While Other States Anticipate

by Marcia Merry Baker

Feb. 26—Behind the scenes, work is underway in Appalachia to implement the $83.7 billion gas infrastructure and industrial deal signed Nov. 9, 2017 in Beijing, between China Energy Investment Corp. and West Virginia Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher. Many leaders involved see it not only as an “oil and gas,” and chemical program, but as a development driver to spur economic activity throughout the entire Appalachian region, which otherwise has decayed to the point of social breakdown. Moreover, there are implications for upgrading the U.S. national power profile. [go to box: The 2017 Trump-Xi $253 Billion of Big Deals for China-U.S.A.]

The engagement by China in projects and trade deals to increase economic activity in the United States, is the character of the entire quarter of a trillion dollars worth of business accords struck last Fall in what can best be described as a “friendship” package between the United States and China. The accords were signed during the “state visit-plus” by Pres. Donald Trump to Beijing in November, hosted by Pres. Xi Jinping.

Since then, the follow-on activity adds impetus to the motion in the United States for a policy shift, for the U.S. government to turn away from the deadly casino economics dictated by Wall Street/City of London interests to a real development approach to restore productivity across all sectors—infrastructure, industry, agriculture, transportation, and vital services.

The 37 business deals signed in November, totalling over $253 billion, included both statements of intent, and contracts for Chinese investment into projects, and purchases of U.S. products, both immediately and over the next 20-plus years. The accompanying map and key give highlights.

As the specifics on the map show, the deals covered many regions and types of manufacturing, agriculture, and energy (aircraft, electronics, soybeans, beef, oil, gas and chemicals). Energy is the biggest sector, involving collaboration in three top energy states. Over two-thirds of the total of $253 billion are for Chinese promotion of oil and gas infrastructure and sales: West Virginia ($83.7 billion), Alaska ($43 billion), and Texas ($32 billion). The projects include a new 800-mile gas pipeline in Alaska, a 700-mile pipeline in Texas, and in West Virginia, new underground gas storage, pipelines, and a petro-chemical industrial center.

There are three outstanding aspects to these 2017 China-U.S. deals, in terms of importance for the momentum of the United States into a new paradigm of economic practice and foreign relations.

White House

President Donald J. Trump and President Xi Jinping exchange greetings Nov. 11, 2017 at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam.

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First, the personal friendship cemented between the two leaders amounts to an open door for the United States to join in the New Silk Road for development, which would benefit all nations. President Trump strongly reiterated his positive view of China, at his White House Feb. 23 press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Trump said, “My relationship with Xi is extraordinary. I like him, and I think he likes me. . .” He continued, “Our relationship with China has never been better. I think we can have a good relationship with China and I hope that my relationship to President Xi will allow that to happen.” (See article, p. 18.)

Secondly, the increased economic activity in the United States associated with the China-U.S. 2017 deals, has sparked a sense of optimism in otherwise bleak parts of the country hard hit by economic decline and pessimism. Following the November announcements, regional leaders addressed this explicitly. West Virginia Governor Jim Justice called the $83.7 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between his state and China Energy, “incredible.” He said at a press conference that “this is the right thing for our citizens. It gives us hope, it gives us jobs, it gives us real life.” Alaska State House Speaker Bryce Edgmon said of his state’s $43 billion MOU with Sinopec and Chinese Investment Corp. (CIC): “A pipeline project will bring jobs, investment, and perhaps most importantly, a renewed sense of hope that Alaska’s best days are ahead of us, not behind.”

Thirdly, the new deals imply improved prospects to lift energy production and usage modes to higher levels for the United States, China, and worldwide. China’s new collaborative projects for gas infrastructure in North America are part of its international involvement in the high-tech development of fossil hydrocarbon resources, while at the same time, China is fully backing the expansion of nuclear fission power, and as early as possible, fusion energy. With this policy, the nuclear age can supercede the fossil fuel era altogether, not just in fuels and energy, but as a fundamental advancement in chemistry, medicine, and biology, in all respects.

U.S. Energy Information Administration

The extensive Marcellus and Utica shale basins are prominent, running southwest-northeast, from eastern Tennessee to New York, with shale drilling concentrated in the tri-state Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia region.

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Appalachian Gas Industry Development

The gist of the China-West Virginia MOU is for China Energy to fund and help develop a storage facility for natural gas liquids, the “Appalachian Storage and Transfer Hub,” a petrochemical processing capacity, cracker plants (to make polypropylene and other gas-input products), a web of gas pipelines, and a gas index for market trading. Centered in West Virginia, this would serve the larger Appalachian region, in particular the tri-state area of West Virginia, southeastern Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. It would be the second biggest petrochemical complex in the United States, after the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast. The zone of concentration is expected to be in the Ohio Valley for reasons of both geology and transportation. The American Chemical Council estimates that the optimum number of cracker plants could be five.

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West Virginia University

Above the map is the cover of a report released in August, 2017 on prospective locations for an Appalachian gas liquids storage hub. The blue line is the Ohio River, starting at Pittsburgh in the northeast, and in the far southwest, joined by the Kanawha River. Red lines demarcate possible sites in the Ohio Valley, dependent on underlying geomorphology. Download the report: https://aongrc.nrcce.wvu.edu/files/d/b0b6b967-5911- 4bbe-957f-0b149851224f/ngls-study-report-ilovepdf-compressed.pdf

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Appalachian Gas Hub

Coherent with this perspective, there are some other delimited initiatives. A cracker plant is already under construction on the Ohio River northwest of Pittsburgh, built by Royal Dutch Shell and Goldman Sachs. It is expected to open in 2020. Farther down the Ohio River, a site for another cracker plant has been designated in Ohio, in Dilles Bottom, in Belmont County.

The American Chemical Association projects that 100,000 new jobs will be created by establishing this new gas hub and petrochemical capacity. In Charleston, the state capital, there is great anticipation. It includes optimism for parlaying the positive sense about the future into national action. Some lawmakers are preparing to introduce a resolution calling on Congress to re-institute a national Glass-Steagall banking and credit system.

No big specifics on the “Appalachain Hub” are as yet forthcoming in West Virginia, but those working on it say there is intense activity. They describe it as the “preliminaries” phase. For example, as the state’s legislature nears closing its session, there is a push to get through a new law making approval for gas drilling easier, to secure gas flow for the new industrial development.

In January, an important step was achieved when Federal Energy Department approval was given for the Appalachain Development Group (ADG) to proceed to apply for a $1.9 billion Federal loan guarantee towards work on the hub project. The ADG is a new joint venture, formed days after the China-West Virginia accord last Nov. 9. Among its partners are entities based at the University of West Virginia, where people have worked with China on hydrocarbon technologies for the last 15 years.

The Appalachian region is now a leading shale gas production area on the continent, accounting for 25% of U.S. gas production. Long known for its coal resources, the region also has oil, extraction of which (in Ohio and western Pennsylvania) began over a century ago. Appalachian shale gas extraction became commercially successful with the innovation of horizontal drilling, using hydraulic fracturing—fracking—as of the mid-2000s. It takes place in the extensive Marcellus and Utica shale basins. The location map shows the major gas and oil shale plays in North America as of 2011.

At present, the Appalachian gas is piped out for use elsewhere. Since the 2014 opening of the Appalachia-to-Texas Express (ATEX) pipeline, some Marcellus and Utica ethane goes 1,200 miles to the Gulf Coast, to Mont Belvieu, Texas for chemical processing. Otherwise it flows out in various directions for U.S. fuel supply, and LNG export. There are several new eastward pipelines in the works.

Ethane is mainly used to produce ethylene, which in turn is used by the petrochemical industry to produce all kinds of plastic products.

West Virginia University

Dr. Brian J. Anderson, Director of the West Virginia University Energy Institute, and Professor in Chemical Engineering at WVU.

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Planners in West Virginia, in particular at the Energy Institute at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown, have envisioned for some time that the Appalachian gas should not just be exported to other states or abroad, but should be processed within the region for industrial purposes. Institute Director Brian Anderson brings out the point dramatically, saying that the Appalachian ethane gas gets piped to Texas from the present hub at Houston, Pennsylvania (in southwestern Washington County). Then from Southeast Texas, the gas comes back processed as polypropylene, to the same region where the gas originated. Anderson estimates that 70% of all the polypropylene used in the United States is consumed within 700 miles of Pittsburgh (western Pennsylvania). He says that this cross-hauling is no good for Appalachia or the nation.

Anderson further stresses that energy logistics involve “infrastructure” which should be built up for the national good, just as much as should the types of infrastructure we usually think of—bridges, roads, railroads, canals, and dams. There should be a coherent web of gas and oil pipelines, storage, and processing capability.

Gas for Industry, Nuclear for Power!

At present, the national energy logistics picture is chaotic as well as insufficient, and wrongfully anti-

nuclear. Since gas was deregulated in the 1980s—along with rail, electricity, health care, and other vital hard and soft infrastructure, the gas and oil supply lines are more and more inadequate. For example, during the cold snap last month, New England was so short of gas, given the limited pipeline capacity from the Marcellus shale basin, that Boston Harbor received some of the first LNG to be shipped out of Yamal in the Russian Arctic. A procedure was worked out to allow the deal to be steered through the anti-Russian sanctions hysteria, to make the delivery possible.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, courtesy of Georgia Power/Flickr/cc

Construction scene from the Alvin W. Vogtle Nuclear Generatiing Station, in Georgia, where the only two new nuclear reactors in the U.S. are being completed—Units 3 and 4. They are co-owned by Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities. Federal regulators are shown during an inspection.

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On a deeper policy level, what is required is to resume nuclear power development. Use hydrocarbon resources for petrochemical manufacturing, and utilize high-tech coal and existing gas-power, to carry out the industrial build-up to go nuclear as fast as possible. The United States, once the leader of nuclear power research and commercial development, is now going backwards to more primitive, lower-energy-dense sources of wind, solar, and biofuels, while phasing out even coal. The U.S. goal, as of the 1960s, was for “1,000 by 2,000,” that is, 1,000 nuclear plants by the year 2000. Instead, the peak so far has been a mere 104, and now there may be only 97 commerical nuclear reactors by the year 2020. Only two new nuclear power plants are under construction in the United States at present. The share of nuclear in the United States overall power supply is heading in the direction of dropping from 20% down to barely 7% in the coming years.

China, in contrast, has 60 new nuclear plants under construction, and, unless the United States changes course, China will surpass U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2030.

A New Ohio Valley

West Virginia Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher, who has been back and forth to China throughout the past year, and returned from his most recent trip in late January 2018, strongly speaks of the “transformative” impact on the state and region from collaborating with China on gas infrastructure and industry. On Feb. 22, the engineering-design company he co-founded, The Thrasher Group (based in Bridgeport, West Virginia) co-sponsored a conference titled, “Emerging Opportunities — Ohio River Valley Conference.” The event was held in Wheeling, West Virginia, at the heart of the Upper Ohio Valley, and one of the centers of the formerly industrialized region, along with Weirton and other once thriving steel towns. The sold-out event was attended by major oil and gas firms, along with engineering and planning experts.

The CEO of the Thrasher Group, Chad Riley, who addressed the conference, stressed the goal of overall transformation in remarks on local Fox TV news Feb. 22, saying, “If anywhere near the potential of what could happen to us, does, it would be transformative. I think that it would be a positive impact for the community. But the community would also have to get ready. I think it would lead to infrastructure that would need to be done. It would lead to new housing, and hopefully, an influx of new people—population, that provides good paying jobs, and a nice quality of living for the people in the tri-state area.”

As it is, the state of West Virginia is experiencing an absolute population decline, as are the counties in adjacent states in the Upper Ohio Valley. In the Upper Ohio Valley, for example, a net loss of some 3,000 people was estimated, from 2015 to 2016, for the six northernmost counties in West Virginia, and four eastern Ohio counties. In West Virginia itself, the absolute population number fell from 2015 to 2016 by nearly 10,000. For those staying in place, the rates of suicide, death-by-overdose and other indicators of social breakdown, are terrible.

The Energy Institute’s Anderson makes reference to this when calling for infrastructue across the board in West Virginia. Not only broadband is lacking in our rural areas, he says, but in large parts of our state, people don’t even have refrigeration.

With information from Robert Baker, Tim Rush, and Kennedy Hart. marciabaker@larouchepub.com

The 2017 Trump-Xi $253 Billion of Big Deals for China-U.S.A.

Feb. 26—In November 2017, commitments totaling $253.5 billion were made by China for 37 big deals and commitments for U.S. imports, and investments into U.S. economic activities, over the period 2018 to 2038. President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping witnessed the Nov. 9 signing ceremony in Beijing on Trump’s “state visit plus.” The map illustrates some of the announcements, signifying the good will they carry for future collaboration and benefit: Over half are in the energy and petro-chemicals sector. “Sino-U.S. Ties at New, Historic Starting Point,” was the headline on coverage of the accords, by “China Watch” (China Daily, Nov. 29) in Washington, D.C.

Gas, Oil, and Petrochemical Industry

West Virginia: $83.7 billion in projects for the development of shale gas in the tri-state region, involving pipeline infrastructure, a new storage hub in the state, and petro-chemical manufacturing. China Energy Investment Corp., Ltd. signed a Memorandum of Understanding with state Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher for plans covering 20 years. The idea is that this region will become the second petro-chemical center of the United States, after the Gulf Coast.

Alaska: $43 billion of investments to build a new 800-mile gas pipeline, and agreements for China to import Alaskan LNG were signed as a Letter of Intent by Sinopec, the China Investment Corp., and the Alaska Gasoline Development Corp., a state sponsored entity. Bank of China is ready to provide financing. The pipeline will run from the North Slope southward to the Kenai Peninsula.

Texas: A $32 billion package of new and already agreed-upon deals was set, involving the energy sector. Among the elements: a 700-mile pipeline from the Permian oil and gas fields in West Texas to the Gulf Coast; a new storage facility on the Coast, as well as expansion of the existing Limetree hub in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Houston-based American Ethane Co. signed a $26 billion contract with China’s Nanshan Group for supplying ethane gas over a 20-year period.

Aviation and Electronics

Washington: $37 billion to Boeing Co. (headquarters, Chicago) from orders and investments by China Aviation Supplies Holding for 300 aircraft over the coming years. Boeing’s largest factory is in Everett, Washington, which, with factories in other states, will produce 260 narrow-body 737s, and 40 wide-body 787s and 777s.

California: $12 billion in orders to Qualcomm were made by three Chinese firms for the purchase of semi-conductors over the next three years. The buyers are Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo. Qualcomm, headquartered in San Diego, outsources most of its production, meaning that some of the work to fulfill these orders, may come from China itself.

Indiana: $3.5 billion in deals were made by General Electric Co. with Chinese buyers, for GE to supply aviation and power generation components. Headquartered in Boston, GE has factories in many states, including, especially, engine manufacturing sites in Indiana, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Alabama.

Agriculture

Illinois: $5 billion in increased commitments by China to buy U.S. soybeans over the 2017-2018 marketing year were made between Chinese buyers and the U.S. Soybean Council (based in Missouri). The top five U.S. soybean producing states are Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Indiana. The letters of intent called for an additional 12 million metric tons, over the levels of U.S. soybean exports to China already expected.

Montana: A $300 million deal was made between the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the Chinese giant e-retailer, JD.com, for the company to invest $100 million in a new feedlot and packing plant in the state, and to buy $200 million worth of cattle, for marketing Montana brand beef in China. This deal came on top of a growing volume of U.S. beef exports to China, which were resumed in Summer 2017 after China had banned U.S. beef imports since 2003, over disease concerns. The export approval came after the April 2017 Mar-a-Lago meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping.

by Marcia Merry Baker

[back to text]

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Trump’s Warm Relationship with China’s President Defies the War-Hawks

by William Jones

President Trump welcomes China’s President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, April 6, 2017.

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Feb. 26—Let them howl! The riffraff of the fake-news media and Washington think-tanks were chewing the rug in rage last week, after the conclusion of President Trump’s joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Feb. 22. They had wished that the visit of the Australian PM might bring the recalcitrant President on board a tougher policy toward China.

Instead, the President went off script to praise what he called his extraordinary relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While complaining that the Chinese were “killing us on trade,” he also made clear that he did not intend to launch any war—even a war of words—against China. “But we’ve developed a great relationship with China, closer probably than we’ve ever had,” Trump said, “and my personal relationship, as Malcolm can tell you, with President Xi is, I think, quite extraordinary. He’s somebody that I like, and I think he likes me. With that being said, he likes China and I like the United States. But a lot of things are happening. It’s going to be a very interesting period of time. But we have to straighten—and as much as I like and respect President Xi—we have to straighten [out] the trade imbalance.” There may be tough negotiations ahead, but no war against China.

Human beings would have been overjoyed to learn this, but not the fake-news press. A reporter asked about Defense Secretary Mattis’ characterization of China as “a revisionist country,” a reference which is also included in the recently released National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. “As far as General Mattis is concerned,” Trump replied, “he has that view, and a lot of people have that view. China’s tough; they’re getting stronger. They’re getting stronger to a large extent from the money they made from having poor leadership in the United States, because the United States leadership has allowed them to get away with murder. With that being said, I think we can have a further great trading relationship with China. Hopefully that’s going to work out. And hopefully the relationship I have with President Xi will make that happen. Only time will tell.”

Even Australian Prime Minister Turnbull had to “eat crow” when the President said that Turnbull could confirm President Trump’s excellent relationship with President Xi. “I can confirm that President Trump and President Xi see eye-to-eye in every respect,” Turnbull told reporters, “and it’s very clear in the meetings that I have attended in the East Asia Summit and APEC, the respect they have for each other—and I think it’s the single most important relationship, between China and the United States. It’s clearly very respectful, very frank, very clear-eyed.” Turnbull added, “For our own part we see China’s rise as being overwhelmingly positive for the region and for the world.”

Then he checked himself and went into his usual attack on China, although he moderated its tone. “The critical thing, of course, is that the rule of law be maintained. There are people who want to paint the United States and its allies like Australia as being against China in some sort of rerun of the Cold War. That is not appropriate. That’s not accurate. What we need to ensure is the rules of the road, the rule of law, the rules-based system where big countries can’t push around little countries.” He then added the old standard argument that it was only under this “rule of law” that the countries of the Asia-Pacific have been able to develop.

The truth of the matter is that the Asia Pacific was able to develop because it was useful to the British-steered “Western” powers to have stable regimes that could provide a bulwark against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Countries such as South Korea and Japan were allowed to deviate from the “rule of law” known as the British free trade system, to adopt Hamiltonian policies and build up their own economies for the purpose of containing communism. When China joined that system after Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening up” of 1978, it followed the same path for its own development.

But the “rule of law,” maritime and otherwise, had already been imposed by the British and their Americans puppets after the Second World War. China was one of the victors of that war as well, but, because of its internal turmoil and civil war, and a certain racism in the Anglo-American camp, it had no say in crafting those rules in the Asia-Pacific region or anywhere else. Nor was China even able to reassert its pre-war territorial claims in the South China Sea. The recent provocative intrusions by American, and now possibly by Australian and Japanese vessels, into territory claimed by China in the South China Sea, can only be seen as a continuation of the arbitrary decisions made by the Anglo-American victors at the end of the war.

China is calling for a more inclusive rule of law, not based on Cold War alliances, but rather on the notion of creating a “community of shared future” in the region. China is also focused on eliminating poverty through the great projects of its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure-building program. And while this program is inclusive and open to all, including the United States, it nevertheless remains a target of the British and of allied U.S. neocons, who feel it undermines the post-war Anglo-American “stewardship” of the Asia-Pacific region.

Will the close personal relationship between President Trump and President Xi actually allow them to overcome the problems in the area of trade, or on other issues? The outlook is good, but obstacles continue to arise. The negotiations on economic issues between the United States and China have not advanced very far since the creation of the Security and Economic Dialogue, one of the four high-level dialogues created by President Trump and President Xi to build closer relations between the two nations. China could certainly reduce the trade deficit of the United States by purchasing more goods from the United States. But what China needs most are high-tech products, generally placed off-limits by the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR). There is a limit to how much beef and soybeans China can buy from the United States. Some of the high-tech items China wants are exclusively available from U.S. companies, whereas China can produce its own beef and soybeans if need be. At the same time, China’s tremendous breakthroughs in science and technology during the last few years have provided grist to the mill of those who would like to impose even more restrictions on high-tech export to China.

As raging British-controlled neocons struggle to upset the warm relations between the two Presidents, Washington’s CSIS think-tank has just produced a ludicrous Utopian report by Mark Cancian, “Coping With Surprise in Great Power Conflicts.” It reads more like a Tom Clancy thriller than a strategic assessment. Cancian, a veteran of a decade in the Office of Management and Budget, depicts a variety of fanciful dangers, including a Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack on the U.S. homeland by China prior to an invasion of Taiwan, the assassination of a U.S. President, and other ridiculous scenarios. Chinese scholar Guo Xiaobing, in an article in China’s Global Times, made the relevant remark that the report appears to be more “mirror-imaging” than reality, given that the type of scenarios depicted by Cancian in that report could have been taken straight out of the CIA’s Cold War playbook. And FBI Director Christopher Wray, who’s FBI ignored the warnings about the Florida school shooter, has issued hyped-up alerts that China is using its students in the United States as spies—which has already raised an outcry against such “profiling” from U.S. universities and Chinese-American organizations.

The contrast between the war-mongering of the Anglophile “political establishment,” and the attitude of the U.S. President could not be greater. Anyone with any sense can understand that the relationship between the United States and China is the most important relationship in the world. And the fact that the two leaders have this “extraordinary relationship,” offers the most hope for the greatest number of people. The Chinese President has put forward the notion of “a community of shared interest for humanity,” and a relationship between nations that is just, inclusive, and non-intrusive into the other country’s internal affairs. The close relationship between the two Presidents must therefore become a collaborative partnership on concrete projects that are of mutual benefit for both countries and for the world. The American electorate, which rejected the candidates—and the policies—of the “political establishment” in electing Donald Trump as President in 2016, deserves no less.

II. The Folly of Geopolitics

ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

‘Old Paradigm’ Defenders Target China At Munich Security Conference

Feb. 23—This is an edited transcript of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s weekly New Paradigm webcast of Feb. 22. She was interviewed by Harley Schlanger.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger with the Schiller Institute. Welcome to this week’s international webcast with the Schiller Institutes’ Founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

It’s clear that the geopoliticians have gone into flight forward in the last days: they’re reacting not to a military or economic threat from Russia or China, but to the collapse of their system. We saw that in the discussion process at the Munich Security Conference which took place last weekend in Munich. There were warnings about Russia and China, and there was also a pushback from Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov and also China. Helga, I suggest we start there, to look at where things are now going.

Left: MSC/Kuhlmann; right: MSC/Mueller

Left: Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, at the Munich Security Conference, Feb. 17, 2018; right: Mme. Fu Ying, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, National People’s Congress, China, at the Munich Security Conference.

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Helga Zepp-LaRouche: The Munich conference has had this orientation for a long time, but this time, they were really in a heightened state of hysteria. The whole discussion was dominated by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of the so-called 13 Russian spies, whom he had conveniently discovered—it was an old story—but he rediscovered it just in time for the Munich conference. That story very much dominated the discussion there, building anti-Russian hysteria that is really taking on very dangerous dimensions. The propaganda and hostilities against China are also growing to an unprecedented level. To fully understand this, I strongly suggest that our listeners not just listen to the press clips, but read the actual speeches, https://www.securityconference.de/en/activities/munich-security-conference/msc-2018/statements-and-speeches/ and https://www.securityconference.de/en/media-library/munich-security-

conference-2018. I think that the two most interesting speeches were from Mme. Fu Ying of China and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Mme. Fu Ying, who is a leading foreign policy spokesperson from China, made a very calm, very good intervention. She repeated that China is not exporting its own model, but is helping developing countries accomplish their own development with their own models. China is motivated by the idea of building a community for the shared future of mankind.

I suggest you also listen to what the Foreign Minister of Russia said. His speech was very hard-hitting. He reminded his listeners that this Munich Security Conference was taking place in Munich, where 80 years ago the 1938 Munich Agreement agreed to the partition of Czechoslovakia. That Munich Agreement was the prelude to World War II. He added that at the Nuremberg trials, when the main criminals of the Nazi period were put on trial, those being tried said that the aim, then, was to keep Russia out of Europe. We see this being repeated again in what is going on today. If you look at the policies of the EU and NATO, how they have tried to break any Russian ties to the Balkans or Eastern Europe, then you see that they have learned absolutely nothing from history and that the danger of nuclear war is now very high.

The former NATO Military Committee Chairman and former Bundeswehr Chief of Staff, Gen. Harald Kujat, warned of an accidentally triggered nuclear war. This subject—that we could end up in war from all of this—has at least some thinking people extremely worried. Foreign Minister Lavrov, directly addressing his German audience, also reminded people of the constructive role that the Soviet Union, and Russia later, played in the process of the German reunification. It was very clear, at that time, that security architecture had to exist that would guarantee the security of both the East and the West. But what followed instead was NATO expansion to the Russian border. Documents have now been made public, which prove that that the Russians were, in fact, promised at the time that this NATO expansion would not happen. That expansion was a clear violation of the commitment made then.

White House

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (left) with Vice President Michael Pence.

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Lavrov then reviewed the role of the EU in the Ukraine crisis: it was the EU Association Agreement being pushed on Yanukovych at the end of 2013, which forced him to make a choice between either the East or the West, which then triggered the Maidan and the coup. Lavrov accused the EU of having given support to that coup, which we know was the case. Remember Victoria Nuland bragged that the State Department had spent $5 billion to support the NGOs and the color revolution and regime change in Ukraine. In conclusion, Lavrov spoke about the necessity of a new security architecture, including Russia, China, the United States and the EU. And I think that that is a discussion which urgently must be put on the table because we are on the brink of World War III: such new international security architecture is of the utmost urgency.

Schlanger: The Ukraine situation is now heading toward a very explosive potential. President Poroshenko just announced that he agrees with the call from the parliament, pushed through by the extreme right, the neo-Nazi grouping, for the Donbass reintegration plan. What is the danger here? It looks as though this is heading toward a new, escalated confrontation.

Vitrenko web page

Natalia Vitrenko

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Zepp-LaRouche: It means that the Minsk Agreements, and the Minsk process, are practically dead. It can be revived, but as of now, if Poroshenko wants a military solution to reintegrate Donbass, that threatens the immediate possibility of an all-out war with Russia. This is extremely dangerous. We’ve seen the police were just standing by, doing nothing in the recent period, during neo-Nazi attacks on Russian institutions in Kiev. There is, in addition, the incredible, human rights violation against Natalia Vitrenko, who is the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, which is one of the major opposition parties in Ukraine. Her request to register her party according to the new rules of the Ukrainian government for party procedures was just rejected without any explanation. In response, an Italian Member of the European Parliament, Marco Zanni, filed a request to the EU asking why they are not pursuing this case, given the fact that it’s a clear violation of EU rules. We have to see what comes out of that. But I think that the situation in Ukraine is becoming the worst, most dangerous hot spot in the world: that makes it all the more clear that new relations with Russia as General Kujat was demanding, are absolutely important if you want to maintain the existence of civilization and peace in the world.

Schlanger: In the last few days, there were attacks by these neo-Nazi gangs on the Russian Cultural Center and attacks on Russian banks, and that situation is coming to a head. The other aspect of this Ukraine situation is the connection to Christopher Steele, the British operative in the midst of the U.S. so-called “Russiagate.” Steele was very much involved in communication with Victoria Nuland. I think it’s worth going through that, Helga, just to give people a sense, that there is one enemy operation, which has many tentacles.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, it is directly British intelligence. It’s not about a “former” MI6 agent, but it is an MI6 operation, and it involves the Foreign Office of Great Britain itself, as we saw in the case which was launched by one of the Russians who were accused of hacking, who took the Steele case to court. The Foreign Office intervened directly to block any revelations coming from Steele, their operative. Now, that is an incredible story. It means the British have intervened, not only in the coup against the Yanukovych government, but also in the coup against President Trump. That whole Russiagate is, as some people amusingly say, a big “regurgitated nothingburger.” There is absolutely no substance to it. We should note the fact that in the continuous investigations coming from the two Houses of Congress, under the leadership of Rep. Nunes (R-Calif.) and Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa), the focus is still on the coup-plotters who were involved with the British in this coup. In recent developments, House Intelligence Chair Rep. Nunes sent out letters to several top officials of the existing or former government, asking very pointed questions—when did you know first about the Steele dossier? Did you discuss it with anyone else? Did Obama know about it? When did he know? And these individuals have to answer these questions by March 2. It’s not a long-term investigation; it’s in a hot phase now. It’s not yet decided how this coup will go. If the Congress has the courage to go after those Obama intelligence officials who colluded with Great Britain, a lot of people will not only lose their positions, they will end up in jail, as some judges are now already demanding.

Schlanger: You brought up the relationship of this Steele dossier to the Russiagate story. The new development is that Obama himself is being named, as is Brennan, the former CIA Director. Mueller released the indictment of these 13 so-called Russian spies, on the eve of the Munich conference. EIR has a new article on this. What can you tell us about this latest fraud?

Zepp-LaRouche: This is a case which will never go to trial because it names people who are living in Russia. It’s also an old case; it was already discussed in 2014. Since there is no extradition treaty between the United States and Russia, the trial will never take place. Mueller knows he doesn’t have to provide any evidence for any of his accusations. It’s a very convenient way to keep beating the drums of anti-Russian hysteria. It’s a big, big “nothingburger” as many people have pointed out. But, it is a fraud against the population and will have incredibly dangerous effects if you keep building this kind of enemy image of Russia and China. People should understand, this has nothing to do with Russian hacking, or Russian collusion—as a matter of fact, there have been several people, including a leading member of the Russian Duma, who have said that there are 102 well-documented cases of the United States meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. The number of coups and regime-change operations are fairly well known. At a minimum, one could fairly say that both sides are doing it. But the United States has a very long record of having intervened in the internal affairs of other countries in multiple ways.

This needs to be understood as pre-war propaganda. Many people easily fall for things which are constantly repeated in the mainstream media. They should think twice.

Russia and China are building a completely different model of international relationships, explicitly based on non-interference and respect for the social systems of other countries. This propaganda creates a terribly dangerous scenario. These lies are, in fact, a preparation for war, and that is what people really must get straight.

Schlanger: On that point, former CIA Director Woolsey was asked in an interview, if it were true that the United States is engaged in attacks on other nations’ elections? And he hemmed and hawed, and then he said: Well, yes, we do it, but we do it for their benefit. In other words, the United States tries to overthrow governments for the benefit of the people that are under those governments. You mentioned the Russian and Chinese policies that are moving ahead. There was a very interesting conference in Vienna in the last couple of days, on expanding the Silk Road through Vienna as a hub: this would connect Southern Europe, Eastern Europe—where’s the rest of Europe in this?

Zepp-LaRouche: In the government program of the new Austrian government, there is a whole paragraph saying that the Austrian government should work, and will work, with the New Silk Road perspective of China. If you look at the German government, they say, “No, no, we should ask the EU.” So, if you want to be polemical about it, you could say that this time the Germans should listen to an Austrian for a change! Because the Austrian policy is actually very good: This took place in the context of an international railway forum in Vienna, where an agreement was signed between the Austrian and the Russian Railways, to extend the broad gauge railway from Vienna to a little town in Slovakia, which will be 400 km, but then connects with the broad gauge Russian railway, from Vienna, all the way through Russia to China. That is the precondition for Vienna to become a hub for the New Silk Road. This is very good, because it will greatly influence all of Austria’s neighbors in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans. This is very good.

Switzerland is moving in a similar direction, as are Belgium and the Netherlands, working on cooperation with the New Silk Road. In France, there has been major motion in this direction after the state visit to China by President Macron in January. He asked China to help France not repeat the mistakes of its colonialist policy in Africa, which I thought was really remarkable, and a clear shift in the French policy. The only places which clearly stand apart are Brussels (EU headquarters), and Berlin. The British are playing a double game as usual. They want to make London the financial center of cooperation with China, but Prime Minister Theresa May, when she was recently in China, did not sign an agreement to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative.

It’s a very rocky process, but you have a lot of interest among chambers of commerce. The head of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce said that he was extremely happy that the new Austrian government responded so quickly to the demand by industry for such cooperation. Even in Germany, there are many local, midsize companies and chambers of commerce which all have discovered that it would be in their very best interest to play a leading role in this type of cooperation.

www.bundeskanzlerin.de

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (center) with Wolfgang Schäuble (right).

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Because of the continuing difficulty in forming a new German governing coalition—the SPD, the German Social Democratic Party, is in a free fall in the polls, they’re now registering 15% in the polls! Can you imagine that? Many people are extremely worried that the Social Democrats in Germany may suffer the same fate as Social Democrats in other European countries, basically to vanish. Naturally, this is not good. There’s a big revolt in the CDU, the Christian Democratic Union party, against Merkel. They have brought in newer members and younger people, who, unfortunately, are no better than Merkel in this respect.

We are in a deep crisis: The European Union is in a crisis. We have Italian elections coming up in the first week of March, which may also produce an ungovernable situation, like the very difficult situation in Germany right now. So, I think we are going to be in rocky times until there are enough people willing to think in completely new ways, to move to a New Paradigm of win-win cooperation, abandoning geopolitics and the zero-sum game idea, where one must lose when the other wins. We can, instead, have relationships of win-win cooperation for a new world economic order. Until enough people realize that, and understand that we have to leave geopolitics behind, we are really in an existential danger.

Schlanger: Helga, when I was reading the documents coming from that Feb. 20-22 Vienna conference which focused on the Eurasian Corridor and the New Silk Road, it reminded me of the proposal that you made for the Productive Triangle, at the time of the fall of the Communist governments of Eastern Europe. At that time you specified the area between Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, as the triangle from which the spiral arms of rail could go. This is still a great potential: it is a blueprint for connecting to the New Silk Road, and it seems so obvious. So, why is it that these governments, especially the government in Germany, are still clinging to what they know doesn’t work—the EU policies of austerity and bailouts?

Zepp-LaRouche: I don’t know. What are the motives of Mrs. Merkel? That’s the 64 million euro question! I mean, people really don’t know. I think one simple explanation is that all of these parties want to maintain the status quo. What has become so absolutely, nakedly blatant in these discussions in Germany, trying to form a coalition government, is that there is no content, no vision, no idea where Germany should be in 50 years—nothing resembling what Xi Jinping presented at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October, namely, a vision going forward to 2050. These negotiators, of the so-called Grand Coalition—which is not so grand anymore, because the numbers are shrinking—are just trying to get positions in the next government for themselves! And that is now being publicly discussed because it’s obvious.

So, I think what is needed is people who have a vision of the future; people who can abandon the idea that you have to defend a banking system which only makes the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. The statistics show that the 40% of the people in the lower income brackets in Germany, in the last 20 years, have become significantly poorer! We have a lot of people who only have part-time jobs; they can be laid off without any advance notice and without an official reason. Many, many people are stuck in these very precarious living conditions. Those leaders saying we have to keep the status quo are completely oblivious to the wellbeing and the common good of their own populations, never mind Africa or the Middle East, or other nations of the world.

We have an establishment which is really—in a certain sense it reminds me of the dinosaurs—they don’t want to give up their old geopolitical thinking, they don’t want to recognize the fact that we are facing another financial blowout which could be much, much worse than the one in 2008. A public debate is very urgently needed: what future should the world have? What future should each country have? How do we order the relations among our nations in such a way that mankind can have a bright future? Such discourse is utterly absent from the mainstream media, and it is also not very well developed in any other forums.

Schlanger: You’ve spoken quite a bit about the breakdown in culture. I’d like to bring this to the question of what just happened in Florida with another mass shooting at a high school. We’re seeing another horrific aspect of what you were describing, the killing of the future, and the destruction of youth. This is happening not just in these kinds of massacres, but also as part of the drug epidemic, the so-called “social network” phenomenon and the destruction of thinking. You and the Schiller Institute have been out front on this for a long time, addressing the collapse of the culture, of which the video games and social networking and merely a part—but the overall collapse. When you talk about a dialogue, what are the elements that should be brought in positively, to move this situation from where we stand now?

Left: Painting of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Siffred Duplessis, 1785; right: Confucius.

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Zepp-LaRouche: We need to go back to the highest level of culture in each nation. Now, in the United States, it is natural to think of Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, among others—these people played leading roles in periods when the United States had a positive vision of its role in the world. John Quincy Adams, for example, had a foreign policy approach which is pretty much like that of China today. Benjamin Franklin was an absolute, enthusiastic student of Confucius, and he used the Confucian philosophy to develop his own system of morality! These are the kinds of discussions which would really help. In Germany, we are very blessed to have a very rich culture: We have had many, many thinkers, from Nicholas of Cusa to Kepler and Leibniz; we had many composers of Classical music, from Bach to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and many others. We have had fantastic poets, like Schiller, Lessing, Heine, Mörike, and again, many others. Italy was at the center of the Golden Renaissance. Spain had the Andalusian Renaissance. We had the Baghdad Caliphate—Baghdad used to be, in a certain period, during the Abbasid Dynasty, the most developed city in the world! Then you had the centuries when China was the leading nation in terms of science and culture.

We have to activate the best potential of each nation, because this is about to be lost. How many pupils in the United States today read the Federalist Papers? How many have the kind of imagination to think about building infrastructure in the way it was done in the Lincoln period and then later again, in the 20th Century? People have to start constructing a vision for the future, building on the best tradition of their own nation, and then engaging in an active dialogue with other nations. I’m absolutely certain that if that were to be done, a new Renaissance would absolutely be possible.

We will, however, have to shed a lot of the present, populist culture. We have to get rid of this idea that “money makes money.” We have stop wasting our time with speculation and playing video games, because people are really losing their creative potential! That potential can be regained by studying Classical music, Classical poetry, reading philosophers like Plato, Cusa, and Leibniz, reading their original works, not commentaries, reading the original works. Go back to the sources, as the humanists have always said. Then I think it would become quite possible to create a new Renaissance of thinking. A new just world economic order, the New Silk Road, the Belt and Road Initiative, in the final instance, will only succeed if it is accompanied by a Renaissance of Classical culture.

China is doing that; reviving their 5,000 years of history. I had the good fortune to visit some of the places in Dunhuang, the beautiful Buddhist excavations near Chongqing, and many other aspects of Chinese culture in museums and other sites. There is a tremendous effort by China to revive the best of culture, making it accessible to as many people as possible, and encouraging the spread of Confucianism inside China in every pore of the society.

The West should have something similar: We have great thinkers in our heritage, but they’re not being revived and they’re not cherished. This is an urgent question to be addressed. If we don’t want to have more horrific events like the Florida school shooting, the weapons discussion is important, but more important is the question of how do we give people the inner strength, the sense of inner beauty to prevent them from going in that direction? You have many troubled people who definitely could be saved if there were a serious effort of aesthetical education, education to develop the moral beauty of their character. This is why you need the classics and not modern versions of poetry and drama that celebrate brutality and irrationalism. Only if you have the highest ideal of man, man as a beautiful soul with a beautiful character, can the education system inoculate people against such horror. And I really hope that people will join with us in this effort.

Schlanger: I think in that light, we also have to address the drug question, the opioid epidemic, and as well, the whole money-laundering apparatus, which fosters not only drugs, but also terrorism. In the interest of furthering this discussion Helga, I recommend people go to the Schiller Institute archives and read your writings on this, because you’ve given numerous speeches about how we can invigorate the process of people discovering their own creative potential. I think with that we can end this week’s webcast. Thank you very much for joining us Helga.

Zepp-LaRouche: Let me invite you, our listeners, to register for the new class series, which is sponsored in the United States by LaRouche PAC. This is an in-depth course, where people can study the New Paradigm. Harley taught the class on geopolitics last week. There will be another ten sessions, including discussion sessions. This is an invaluable opportunity for people to study these ideas in depth. So I strongly encourage that our listeners participate in that class series.

Schlanger: OK! Good-bye.

REPORT FROM GERMANY

Does Chancellor Merkel Want

To Intervene Militarily in Syria? We Need a Global Security Architecture!

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chairwoman of the German Political Party

“Civil Rights Movement Solidarity” (Büso)

Feb. 24—There can only be one explanation for the internationally coordinated hysteria against Russia and China: an enemy image is being systematically crafted to provide legitimacy for a further arms buildup and the encirclement of these two countries, and to stifle every impulse to cooperate with the New Silk Road Initiative.

In the face of the escalating demonization of these two countries, everyone should pause for a moment, and instead of mindlessly repeating the prejudices against Russia and China, look at the history of wars: the reason for the promulgation of the alleged threat posed by Russia and China is prewar propaganda, aimed at producing popular consent for a coming war. The great war could be triggered either by the military action against the Donbass, which has now been decided by Kiev, or by the EU’s military interference against the Syrian government, which Chancellor Merkel just called for in her recent government statement.

Imagine that Schwabing [a district in the northern part of Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria—ed.] was occupied by thousands of ISIS fighters who held the civilian population hostage—partly in cages—and bombarded schools, hospitals, and markets in Munich from Schwabing. Or imagine Schöneweide in relation to Berlin. This is roughly comparable to the situation in which the Syrian government finds itself with regard to the East Ghouta suburb of the capital, Damascus, where fighters of the al-Nusra Front, currently known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, have been ensconced since 2013 and have taken the civilian population hostage.

The pro-jihadi White Helmets are lavishly funded by the UK, Obama’s USAID, and Dutch, French, Danish, and Japanese governments.

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Former British Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain, Peter Ford, commented on the situation to RT.com as follows: “A naive viewer might imagine that Assad was just bombing civilians for the hell of it, because the jihadi fighters are totally absent from the picture. And the pictures are literally provided by the jihadists themselves.” Ford was referring to the White Helmets organization, which has close links with al-Qaeda, and whose origin is attributed by Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, to former British officer James Le Mesurier, who operates in the intelligence community.

The White Helmets have received a total of $100 million from the UK Defence Ministry, USAID, and the Dutch, French, Danish, and Japanese governments. In addition, the White Helmets provided the alleged evidence of the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, which prompted President Trump, on the advice of the British government, to launch air strikes last April on the night between the two days of the summit of Presidents Xi and Trump in Mar-a-Lago. Fortunately, this attempt to sabotage the summit failed. At a Feb. 2, 2018 press conference, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis stated that there is no evidence of the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons.

At the UN Security Council meeting today, the West rejected a resolution proposed by Russia that would allow Syria to continue to fight the jihadists despite a temporary ceasefire, and instead presented a resolution blaming the Assad government and granting protection to the insurgents. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov concluded that the West had returned to “Plan B,” the overthrow of the Assad government and the partition of Syria—a clear violation of UN Resolution 2257.

The fact that Ms. Merkel could embrace the British propaganda line in this context, which in the short term could lead to a military conflict between NATO and Russia should EU countries intervene in the Syrian war, is alarming in the extreme. Merkel and French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron, in a joint appeal to Vladimir Putin, called on the Russian president to intervene to enforce a pause in the siege. It is significant in this context that President Trump, in obvious contradiction to the position of the State Department, emphasized that the task of the U.S.A. in Syria is to defeat ISIS and then go home.

The geopolitical and interventionist neocons of the West, on the other hand, are currently outdoing themselves with pre-war propaganda, and have apparently made Britain’s post-World War II demand “to out-Goebbel Goebbels” their own. One of Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany Joseph Goebbels’ maxims was this insight: “The most brilliant propaganda technique will not succeed unless a fundamental principle is taken into account—it must be limited to a few points and must be repeated again and again.”

Obviously, this principle is guiding the various think-tanks, from Australia to the U.S.A. and Europe, that are currently depicting Russia and China as an acute threat. A particularly lunatic example has just been provided by the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with a report entitled “Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts,” warning the United States of a surprise attack by Russia or China. That Russia could launch a surprise attack on the Baltic states, as it says, is one of the trademark utopian fantasies of the Rand Corporation.

The fact that Russia has absolutely no self-interest in staging such an act of aggression, does not disturb the scribblers of this pamphlet.

Another such “surprise” is alleged to arise from the so-called “Thucydides trap,” namely, that a rising China might call into question the status quo of the United States as the dominant power. What the CSIS study conceals, in Goebbelsian fashion, is the fact that the threat in this case originates not from China, but from the geopolitical faction of the West—against whom no less a figure than the former head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, had repeatedly warned that it is precisely this “Thucydides trap” that had to be prevented by all means.

It is a fact that China, with its population of 1.4 billion people and its highly successful economic policy geared to scientific and technological progress, is becoming the strongest world power. Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambassador to Washington said, in a speech in New York last year, that there had been sixteen cases in history in which an ascending power replaced the one which had hitherto been dominant. In twelve cases, this led to war, while in four cases, the replacement was peaceful. But China does not want to repeat the model of those twelve cases, he said, nor does it want to replace the United States as the dominant power. Instead, he went on, China proposes a new concept of “win-win” cooperation, and a new model for cooperation among the major powers: cooperation for the common future of humanity.

China has had unprecedented success with its New Silk Road Initiative—joined by more than 70 countries—because for the first time, China’s assistance in financing infrastructure and industrialization projects gives them the perspective of overcoming poverty and underdevelopment. This is proof of the superiority of the Chinese model. The American blog warisboring.com made an apt commentary under the heading “China’s Belt and Road Will Change the World”: “For all the bombs and boots on the ground we’ve launched in the last century, China is close to conquering the world without firing a shot, and you would never know from following the U.S. press.”

The reason for this is very simple: the cooperation with the New Silk Road is a completely new concept of international relations, which brings mutual benefits to all partners while respecting their sovereignty, in accordance with the UN Charter.

Gen. Harald Kujat

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The former Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, the German army, General Harald Kujat, has warned in the past few days against “nuclear war by mistake.” Other experts are also warning that the growing importance of artificial intelligence, digitization, cyber warfare, hacking, etc., has dramatically increased the risk of a military conflict by miscalculation. Kujat appealed to Merkel to call on Trump to urgently resume talks with Putin.

Will Merkel do this? Her demand in her policy statement that the EU should play a bigger role in the Syrian conflict, while ignoring the role of al-Qaeda terrorists, speaks against it. And that should worry every single citizen of Germany.

In his speech to the Munich Security Conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for a new international security architecture, to include all the major powers: Russia, the United States, China, and the EU. This is the urgent need of the hour, given the many hot conflicts that can quickly get out of hand. If the United States and Europe pick up on China’s offer of cooperation with the New Silk Road, and all nations work together in win-win cooperation on the economic development of the world, then this will also provide the economic basis for a common security structure. The survival of the human species will depend on whether enough people can rise to this higher level of reason, to a truly new paradigm of thinking.

Visit WorldLandBridge.com

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III. LaRouche on the Mystery of Life

March 14, 2008

THE SUBJECT OF PRINCIPLE

Project ‘Genesis’

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Here, reference is made to the work of the circles of Carl Woese, et al., particularly to “Collective Evolution and the Genetic Code”[fn_1] of Kalin Vetsigian, Carl Woese, and Nigel Goldenfeld of the Department of Physics and Microbiology and Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Ill. 61801, May 16, 2006.

My critical contribution here is limited to certain very important issues of epistemology which have been posed implicitly by the pattern of an underlying assumption in the method employed there by Carl Woese and his associates. This present report emphasizes a return of attention to that argument of mine, which is rooted in the cognitive implications of Bernhard Riemann’s work, which I presented in my “Vernadsky & Dirichlet’s Principle,” of Executive Intelligence Review for June 3, 2005.

Among those at EIR who continue the contested themes of issues which occupied attention among the circles of the Fusion Energy Foundation (FEF) of the 1970s and 1980s, the work of Carl Woese et al. has been seen as a refreshing change of pace from the radically reductionist approaches to living processes which became popularized both during the 1930s, and more so during the post-World War II aftermaths of a certain radically empiricist influence on scientific practice. The latter has been a practice typified by what has become known as the Cambridge Systems Analysis school of the followers of not only the eccentric Ernst Mach, but, most emphatically, Bertrand Russell et al., as, for example, at the Laxenberg, Austria International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

The topic of this report is, that the piece by Woese et al., referenced here, with its otherwise commendable emphasis on dynamics, errs in one important feature of method. It errs by seeking to argue the arguments bearing on matters of physical principle, within an implicitly hostile set of currently hegemonic statistical methods; they have apparently overlooked some essential matters of principle, principles which, however, stand outside the territory in biology staked out by them for the purpose of their report.

Therefore, my criticism here is not focussed upon the details of their reports on experimental findings within their implicitly assumed choice of sub-domain of the biology of living processes as such. My attention is focussed here on principles which they do not bring into play. They do not confront the problematic features which arise in any effort to build arguments in which it is presumed, implicitly or otherwise, that the role of mankind within biology, must be bounded by a certain commonplace assumption respecting statistical method of practice. It is also crucial that they omit the relevant issues of the ironical nature of the reciprocal interrelationship between, and interaction of the Biosphere and Noösphere. For my purposes, those omissions tolerate a mistaken presumption, a fallacy of composition, the assumption, which I believe is contrary to their intention, that scientific knowledge may be permitted to be built up in proofs which proceed from unproven, merely a-prioristic presumptions, such as those underlain by the persisting influence of Euclidean and Cartesian geometry upon widely employed statistical methods.

This might be mistaken by those authors for “nit-picking” by me. It is not, as the unfolding of my argument here will show.

SOHO-EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

“Let there be light, and there was light.” For the Pythagoreans, as Kepler pointed out, “fire”—the Sun, not the Earth—was at the center of celestial rotation. Prometheus’ gift to mankind was also “fire”—access to scientific knowledge. Thus, does man obey the injunction of Genesis to transform the universe; or as V.I. Vernadsky said, the Noösphere transforms the Biosphere.

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The typical such mistaken presumption is, that the build-up of knowledge must occur, statistically, through a succession of, first, the chemistry of non-living processes, second, then continued through the domain of the Biosphere, and, thence, continued by implication, into, third, the uniquely specific differentia exhibited by the human species. My approach proceeds, as I show here, in the opposite direction: from the Noösphere, downward, to the Biosphere, and, thence, to, statistically, the relatively simplistic, subsumed, reductionist’s view of the Periodic Table of elements and their isotopes.[fn_2]

Unfortunately, today’s prevalent use of statistical method of interpretation of evidence itself, which I challenge here, has tended to be taken in the usual practice of that profession as some magical authority over nature, the authority of that statistical mysticism inherent in a-priori mathematical methods, such as those of those reductionist forms of Sophistry known as Euclidean and Cartesian geometry.

Worse, today’s practice is usually dominated by that axiomatically irrationalist doctrine of modern philosophical Liberalism which is derived from the precedent of the medieval irrationalist William of Ockham. I refer, with emphasis, to the continuing, hereditary influence of the doctrine of the founder of modern European Liberalism, Paolo Sarpi. This is what was established in the form of what became Anglo-Dutch Liberalism and its impact on practiced scientific method, as by Descartes, de Moivre, D’Alembert, Leonhard Euler, and Joseph Lagrange. Even worse, today’s practice is dominated by the radically positivist versions of that Liberalism, the degenerate form associated with the emergence of the successive influences on the subject by Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell on mechanics, and by the even more radical extremes of Russell’s Principia Mathematica.

If there is one most crucial fact shown by science to date, it is that the universe is neither Euclidean, nor anything resembling that.[fn_3] I protest against the use of a perverted notion of what are inherently arguments premised upon presumptions of an a-prioristic, digital statistical consistency, arguments derived from such arbitrarily chosen ideological origins, and then employed without regard for the bias expressed by those assumptions, which, in turn, are adopted as a standard for “objectively” interpreting physical-experimental evidence. This is typified by what is, presently, the greatest, most prevalent, single ideological barrier to academic or comparable progress in scientific thinking and in crafting economic policy today.

My Method in Physical Economy

My principled approach to the subject which I present here, addresses the fallacies inherent in the use of the inherently reductionist, so-called statistical methods, as, most emphatically, when such methods are used in treating the subject of what is the inherently willful characteristic of that which drives human behavior, as if the lack of those relevant distinctions respecting the role of human behavior might be an appropriate omission in any treatment of other, lower types of living processes.

The most important feature of anything when it is first encountered, is what it is not. Thus, the effect of the omission of the Noösphere’s indispensable authority for defining the subsumed Biosphere of today, is the problem which, for example, threatens the referenced line of work by Vetsigian, Woese, and Goldenfeld. On this account, I define the proper choice of method in any competent branch of practice of physical science itself, as in the special branch of physical science represented by the subject of economy, as reflecting a willful treatment of the relevant subject-matter from the standpoint of willful human behavior, on the presumption that such subjects cannot be simply predictable in categorically statistical (e.g., a-priori, as in Euclidean) or similar ways.[fn_4]

Russian-Ukrainian scientist Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1863-1945) defined his conception of the Noösphere in Riemannian terms: a vital correction to the work of Woese et al.

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Since the time of the discovery, by very ancient celestial navigators, of that power for change of the stellar universe, which is therefore the intrinsic power defining the reality within which we dwell, we must recognize that any branch of competent science, since actual science was developed out of the practice of celestial navigation, has always been the practice of the continuing of that process of discovery; thus, there is the discovery of those principles whose process of accumulation implicitly defines the mind of the human individual. In other words, to sum up the conclusion to which those considerations must lead us: we must proceed in today’s science from the generative, Riemannian standpoint of V.I. Vernadsky’s Noösphere, downwards, which are the true fundamentals, toward the functionally subsumed subjects of the Biosphere and inanimate nature.

So, from this standpoint, we should situate the treatment of sub-human biology, the Biosphere, under the higher authority to which it is subject, a higher authority which exists only in the relatively higher realm of the Noösphere. As I show in this report, it is those features of the Noösphere which are lacking in the Biosphere, which should be the preferred choice in defining the principles within which existence of the Biosphere is situated ontologically.

Therefore, I point to such examples of mistaken approaches, as are typified either by the denial of an efficient universal physical principle of life per se, as by radical positivists and their like, or, by the comparable attempt to adduce the origins of the cognitive powers specific to mankind from the biology of animal life.

Today, those who have actually grasped the higher order of meaning which permeates the specifically human process of successful discovery, know that universe to be, in principle, as Leibniz argued for a universal physical principle of least action, and as Albert Einstein, similarly, recognized the universe to be: a dynamic, analog form of Riemannian universe, not a neo-Cartesian statistical (digital) universe. Contrary to the hoax of the famous “Second Law” of Clausius, Grassmann, Kelvin et al., ours is a universe which exists, for our powers of discovery, as a boundlessly finite universe, a self-contained, anti-entropic, universal process of continuing creation—as the famous aphorism of Heracleitus claimed.

This is the same point which was exemplified, for us in modern European civilization, as Einstein emphasized the exemplary significance of Kepler’s uniquely original discovery of gravitation, by a succession of discoveries of universal principles which are, each and all, typified by Johannes Kepler’s uniquely original discoveries founding the science of modern astrophysics.[fn_5]

Therefore, the encompassing premise in my argument bearing on the referenced aspect of the work of Woese et al., is not only located within Academician V.I. Vernadsky’s uniquely original discovery of a universal physical principle known as the Biosphere, but also in Vernadsky’s associated recognition of the existence of the Noösphere as being, also, a strictly dynamic, distinct universal phase-space, which is also to be defined experimentally in Riemannian terms. In addressing matters of living processes, the emphasis is upon the precedents of physical chemistry treated by the Riemannian method adopted by Academician V.I. Vernadsky; as I have shown successfully for a science of physical economic forecasting, which are the same Riemannian principles, of the Noösphere.

It may appear to some that the Noösphere is a product of the Biosphere. True, the Biosphere loans material to the Noösphere, and vice versa; but, it is the Noösphere which contains, and acts upon the Biosphere. It is the Noösphere which transforms the Biosphere, not only in materials, but in what the Noösphere compels the Biosphere to contain, or to produce, by both deductions and additions to the repertoire of the Biosphere’s substance and action.

Thus, my own contribution to that latter array, is to be found in my premising an actual science of physical economy, the standpoint which I have employed for the special case of long-range forecasting and related purposes, since the late 1950s, on those same implications of Bernhard Riemann’s argument which were first boldly stated in their core in his 1854 habilitation dissertation.[fn_6] My own views on the significance of Riemann’s work for physical economy, views which were outgrowths of a notion—a “spark”—discovered by me to this effect in 1953, have continued to be the foundation, since that time, for my original 1950s development of a science of physical-economy, a branch of science which is in the continuing tradition of Leibniz’s emphasis on dynamics, as opposed to Cartesian and related methods. This is, thus, a continuation of work of founding of a physical science of economy, as accomplished by Gottfried Leibniz over the course of his relevant work during the span of 1671-1716. This method has been the basis for what has proven to be, uniquely, a, happily, virtually faultless series, of superior quality, of long-range economic forecasts, that since the late 1950s.

The crucial, and pivotal fact on which my own discovery in this matter depends, is expressed in a specifically dynamic manner (i.e., analog: Leibniz-Riemann), as distinct from wrongly assumed digital (e.g., Euclidian-Descartes) characteristics of human potential population-density, as, thus, absolutely distinct in effect from the concept of ecological potential population-density expressed by lower forms of life. The human individual is potentially, uniquely capable of re-inventing the human species in a qualitatively more advanced form of functioning, through transcendental, qualitative up-shifts of a Classical mode in the potential relative population-density of the human species.

Thus, the shifting dependencies of the ascending quality of economies, successively, from burning of wood, of coal, of petroleum, of nuclear-fission power, and upwards, typify characteristic, phase-space stages of successive, upward evolution of human cultures, a willfully driven, qualitative development of the species of action which does not occur in any merely ordinary living species. It is man’s seizing knowledge of that “fire” which Olympian Zeus forbade be given to mankind, which defines the human species in its true distinction from all lower forms of life.[fn_7]

In other words, the actual existence of the human species, with its characteristic form, as dynamic, is derived from a specific (i.e., noëtic) quality of the human mind, a quality which does not exist within any lower form of life (e.g., in the Biosphere). The principle of human life neither exists in lower forms of existence than that, nor can it be derived from studies of the non-human, as if “pre-human,” aspects of the Biosphere. The Biosphere generates the potential for effective action by the Noösphere; but, the realization of such potential occurs only within the Noösphere itself.

Focus upon the fact that the increase of the absolute magnitude of the proportions of the composition of the Earth’s mass represented by the combined Biosphere and Noösphere, as a percentile of the total mass of our planet, when this is considered in light of the evidence that the Noösphere is expanding more rapidly than the Biosphere as such, indicates the existence of a universal physical principle, the cognitive powers of the individual human being, which is not willfully expressed in any lower form of life than the human individual.

The included point here, as it is amplified in the subsequent chapter of this report, is that the principled character of the Biosphere’s function is itself transformed qualitatively by the action of the Noösphere, such that the Biosphere no longer has fixed sovereign characteristics, because those characteristics themselves are being continuously transformed by action of the Noösphere. This pertains not merely to the array of elements of which the Biosphere is composed, but to the principles which generate the selected elements, both old and newly created, of the Biosphere’s evolution under the reign of the Noösphere. The evolution of isotopes, their roles, and their relative quantities, as with those of specific importance for living processes, as through the role of nuclear-fission of late, could not occur otherwise.

That distinction, is what is to be called the function of human potential relative population-density, as increased per-square centimeter of cross-section of mode of power employed, drives a (potential) per capita and per square kilometer increase of potential human occupation of a large territory (or, of a continent or of the planet as a whole). This fact is relatively obvious to even merely competent modern studies; but, the way in which this effect is generated, takes us outside the bounds of the way the topic of “scientific method” as such is usually visualized in today’s classroom and elsewhere. The crucial point to be emphasized, is: the Noösphere is derived from a universal physical, cognitive principle of human life, a power of organization which does not exist within the species of the lower forms of life, such as the higher apes.

The progress of the human species, relative to other species, lies in a principle which is characteristic of the human species, but not others. Therefore, rather than the “bottom upwards” habit of attempting to obtain the transition to a relatively higher cardinal state of a multi-phase-space process, such as attempted transition from abiotic to Biosphere, or Biosphere to Noösphere, we must not proceed in terms of the factors of the previously existing (lower) state; rather, we must treat the “teleological” transition as effected by action as if bestowed from the higher state upon the relatively lower one as Vernadsky emphasized the ordering of the relative mass of the abiotic, Biosphere, and Noösphere. In other words, the form of increase of the potential relative population-density of the human population, has the (dynamic) mathematical-physical form of the pre-determination of the present potential by types of changes (as by human discovery of a higher principle) which correspond to what had been introduced as a future systemic level of potential, rather than something manifest as a statistical determination of a future state, as a consequence of a current one.

The development of this potential in the human species, determines the effect of that upon the entire domain of the Biosphere. And, so forth, and so on.

I explain the significance of this phenomenon.

Carl Woese et al.

Therein lies the essence of my original discovery in the domain of a science of physical economy. However, my discovery is not merely that; there are much more profound implications of this, implications which should not be overlooked in an appropriate re-reading of relevant features in the identified work of Carl Woese et al.

It will be clear to those associated with the work of Carl Woese et al., that my choice of reference to their work in making the crucial point presented here, was prompted by my satisfaction with the dynamic implications of such passages in the referenced work as: “. . . Specifically, we will herein model the evolution of translation, the codon table, the constraints therein, the universality of the code, and the decoding mechanism, not as a sum of parts but as a whole. . . .” In other words, dynamics, as defined by Leibniz against Descartes, and, defined later, by Riemann.

So far, so good; that is consistent with Riemannian dynamics. However, the question remains here: what is the organization of the whole process of development which accounts for the efficient, actual generation of qualitatively higher orders of dynamic states—higher states on principle, such as the fact that the human being represents a higher quality of principled physical state than any lower form of life?

The idea of the need to discover a solution for that question, is readily seen to be expressed in the upward evolution, as through realized application of higher physical principles, in physical-economic processes. The latter are, of course physical-economic processes, but those examples can not be other than crucially relevant for understanding other dynamic models of living processes, or the effects of human physical-economic evolution upon the two lower phases of our planet’s internal processes.

The answer, in the case of “social” models, as distinct from the organization of behavior in the animal kingdom (as with models such as mankind living within Kepler’s astrophysics), is that the universe is intrinsically anti-entropic, contrary to the Clausius, Grassmann, Kelvin cult of a “second law of thermodynamics.” However, as Vernadsky’s work has forced the fundamentally principled distinctions among the abiotic, the Biosphere, and the Noösphere to our attention, there are qualitative distinctions of universal principle among those sectors of the universe to be taken into account. As the history of the changes in relative mass of abiotic, Biosphere, and Noösphere components of the upper regions of Earth show, entropy, as a phenomenon, is a subsumed expression of the superior influence, anti-entropy, within which the apparent entropy appears, and under which it must be defined. Before there could be death, there must, first, be life.

The conclusive argument to such effect, is located in the case of mankind’s increase of the potential relative population-density of human populations, which is accomplished only through those noëtic processes of discovery of higher order physical and kindred, Classical artistic, principles, processes which echo the process of creation typified by Johannes Kepler’s uniquely original discovery of the role of gravitation in the ordering within the Solar system.

The human being is distinguished from any animal species by the set of relationships defined as a reflection of its twofold characteristic. On the one hand, it has a body, like that of an animal; at the same time it is an absolutely different form of existence than any of the great apes, which are mammals, by the existence of a human mind which is not located within the confines of the apparent mental life of an animal. This distinguishing difference is conveniently identified as the human “spirit” or “soul,” which has none of the characteristics of any known form of animal life, except as animals develop as appendages of mankind.[fn_8]

Yet, a naive use of the term “spirit” or “soul” not only misses the crucial point, but has promoted widespread, absurdly mystical speculations. The human “soul” is very much an efficient part of the physical universe, that in the sense of the famous Genesis 1, but not as the term “physical” is still customarily employed in reductionist terms of reference. That “soul” is the actual personality of the human individual, that in the sense provided by Plato. It is an expression of an efficient phase-space within the universe at large, and expresses, in the guise of the Noösphere, a human individual’s power to change that universe willfully.

The biological domain, the domain of the Biosphere, is contained within, and is subordinate to that Noösphere. This is to be understood as the expression of the Noösphere’s power to contain and modify the characteristics of the Biosphere. With mankind’s appearance, the Biosphere thus loses its independent functional characteristics (if, indeed, it ever had them); the Biosphere becomes, in every way, a phase-space contained within the Noösphere.

Therefore, we treat the subject of the Biosphere here in those terms of reference. We present the case to be argued here by the method of successive conceptual approximations.

That, so described thus far, is my subject here.

1. The Relevant Fallacy of

Sense-Certainty

The crucially distinct feature of human behavior is, that, unlike animal behavior, human behavior is inherently not subject to the conceptual approach inhering in presently conventional ranges of today’s proffered statistical-ecological models. Nor is animal behavior ordered in a way which is independent of the effect of changes in the higher, human, reign of the Noösphere. It is also fair to say that “choices” of animal behavior are, relatively speaking, “event-driven,” where the crucially important, higher cognitive functions of actually intelligent, as distinct from “knee-jerk” practices among human beings, are concept-driven, rather than “event-driven.”[fn_9]

Therefore, the way to design the lure for an animal, or a foolish U.S. voter, to bring about that individual’s contribution to its self-inflicted ruin, is to rely on the intended victim’s behavior being “event-driven” (e.g., “fact-driven”) as, for example, the pathetic credulities of believers in “Malthusian” models, such as the “Global Warming” hoax. Otherwise, what is typical of intelligent human behavior, especially creative-scientific or Classical-artistic behavior, is “teleologically”-driven human creative insight, in the sense of a Classical (e.g., Platonic) form of hypothesis.

Abaca/Sara Jaye Weiss

Human behavior, unlike animal behavior, is not subject to the malthusian conceptual approach inhering in Al Gore’s “Global Warming” frauds. Here, Gore addresses a UN conference on environmentalism in 2005.

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To the extent that human populations may, at some time, seem to show relatively fixed (e.g., “traditional”) ecological potentials, apparently like those which might be attributed to be characteristic of animal populations, such as knee-jerk proposals for the fraudulent, Malthusian policies of former Vice-President Al Gore, et al.: such decadence by the Malthusians and their present-day “Global Warming” frauds, is itself evidence that the related cultural matrix of that inherently stagnating society which such frauds as Gore’s express, is inherently an abnormal (i.e., pathological) model, one specific to that half-witted trend within the relevant part of the general population.[fn_10] Whereas, a healthy organization of society is not a fixed system, but upward-evolutionary (e.g., increasing potential relative population-density), and, thus, committed to scientific, Classical-cultural, and technological progress for its own sake.

Thus, speaking parenthetically, since, as I have already emphasized here, the Biosphere is bounded systemically by the Noösphere, the crafting of the environment through the evolution of the Noösphere, shapes the selected course of regulating both the external boundaries and internal development of the Biosphere (defines the changes in rules). This functions to the effect that the dynamic “forces of evolution” within the Biosphere, are not independent of the Noösphere; but, are themselves shaped by the development in the Noösphere.[fn_11] Thus, it is essentially an error to attempt to develop a simply biological model for the Biosphere as such, even a truly dynamic one: thus making the error of assuming that the higher, controlling force of the Noösphere were not the increasingly significant source of the conditions to which the evolutionary (Riemannian) dynamic of the physical geometry of the Biosphere is subject.

For example, consider some relevant history:

Prometheus is punished by Zeus, for the “crime” of providing mankind with knowledge of universal physical principles, in violation of the Olympian “zero-growth” policy.

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The Decadent Olympian Model

In the history of the ancient through modern cultures gathered around the Mediterranean Sea, the culture of typical cases of stagnating, or degenerating societies, is typified by the model depicted by the “zero growth” policy expressed by the character of the Olympian Zeus, of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Under Zeus’ inhuman, tyrannical policy of zero-technological growth, the ordinary people, like the helots of Lycurgus’ Sparta, or the neo-Malthusian dupes of the U.S.A. and Europe since 1968, are forbidden access, if only ideologically, to the possibility of the gaining of knowledge of universal physical principles (e.g., “fire,” nuclear-fission power, etc.). The effects of an implicitly neo-Malthusian cultural pathology of those who can be defined ideologically as “68ers” and their dupes of younger generations, are typified by the archetypical case of Aeschylus’ account of the evil of the Olympian Zeus, an Olympus which is a model case which becomes, thus, key for understanding both the characteristic systemic-cultural problems and the origins of these problems which have been the continuing threats to civilization from within modern trans-Atlantic culture itself.

For example, in the so-called “code” of the Emperor Diocletian, who crafted the political system from which the Byzantine Empire emerged, the rich and powerful lusted and reveled, while the mass of the thus degraded population knelt, and accepted a quasi-“Malthusian” social system of what was virtually “zero technological growth.” This set the pattern for serfdom, or worse, as a system. This affected the development of the organized behavior of that society as a system. That, in turn, generated an effect, which, in turn, made the factually obvious, implicit rules for dynamic “channeling” of the self-evolution of the Biosphere in that phase of the planet’s life.

This model of Diocletian and his successors, was a variant of the Delphic model of Lycurgus’ Sparta. It had been, and remained a variant of what was known as the “oligarchical model,” a Delphic model which had been temporarily defeated by Alexander the Great, but was to be established, under the hegemony of the murdered Alexander’s Ptolemaic successors, up into what was to emerge later as the rise of the process leading into the process of formation of what was on the way to becoming the Roman Empire from about 200 B.C.,[fn_12] and would be continued, in principle, in Europe and adjoining regions of west Asia under the Byzantine system, and under the still worse, successor system under the hegemony of the Venetian financier-oligarchy and its instrument the Crusading Norman chivalry.[fn_13]

The principal exception to that oppression, is to be seen during the reign of Charlemagne; the death of Charlemagne opened the way for the hegemony of the system of domination by (temporarily) a decadent Byzantium, and, then, later, the imperial Venetian financier-oligarchy with its chronically crusading Norman instruments.

Looking more deeply into these chronic problems of the presently continuing European form of the oligarchical model, the pro-oligarchical model of most of the reigning local governments centered on the Mediterranean, most of the time, we have the following notable points of relevant emphasis bearing on the external conditions affecting the evolution of the human parameters of the Biosphere itself.

Actual science developed out of the practice of ancient celestial navigation, as the apparent motion of the stars provided ocean-voyagers with the only possible method of determining their own location. Shown is an Egyptian ship depicted in the Tomb of Menna (c. 1422-1411 B.C.).

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Celestial Navigation

What became known as European culture was rooted in a widespread maritime culture dated from deep within the last great age of glaciation, so far, in the northern Hemisphere. The leading cultures emerging in the historical Mediterranean from that time, were maritime cultures, cultures whose more or less remote ancestors had (apparently seasonally) migrated across very long distances, and did so continuously over many thousands of years. The practice of navigating by study of the differentiated pattern shown by the Sun, Moon, Planets and Stars, sailing by the stars, has been the obvious root of the proper use of the term “universal,” the only valid meaning of “science,” especially as this term is to be applied to physical science, especially as this was defined for modern times by the manifold role of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in launching the modern history of European civilization with the Fifteenth-Century Renaissance, and with the prompting by Cusa’s testament, of Christopher Columbus’ famous first trans-Atlantic voyage of discovery.[fn_14]

Much of the experience from that long period of glaciation and the earlier portions of its aftermath, remains to be defined. Yet, it remains increasingly clear, that the great floods and ancient rivers flowing from the melting of the glaciation correspond to a period, since about 17,000 B.C., since which the levels of the oceans had risen, by about 2000 B.C., by about 400 feet. However, what is clear about the outcome of this change, is the still visible evidence, today, of the role of oceanic maritime cultures in colonizing areas often fortified against the populations of the nearby interior. To be brief, here, this led into a period, during the Seventh Century B.C., when the Etruscans, Ionians, and Egypt (e.g., Cyrenaica) became allies against the tyranny of Tyre. This development, based chiefly on a renaissance in Egypt of that time, defined the process of synthesis which formed the root of European maritime culture, and the subsequent development of European civilization.

The crucially relevant point on which I am focussed in these references to such historical matters here, is that it was the trans-oceanic maritime cultures, the cultures reflected in the great discoveries of Johannes Kepler, which had discovered the secrets of celestial navigation; but, these cultures had tended to degenerate into a form of oligarchical rule over the strains of human population from inland regions.

There were, in fact, two principal strains of oligarchical culture affecting the Mediterranean from historical times. One, emphatically land-based, and principally a reflection of emerging cultures of the Asian interior, and the other, the Mediterranean-centered maritime culture. During the interval following the Peloponnesian War, during the adolescent and adult life of Alexander the Great, the two systems of oligarchical rule, the Mediterranean and Asian, were fused to form what has been the generic form of the European cultural oligarchical model of medieval and modern times, that typified by the financier-oligarchical rule of the British Empire of today.

Thus, with the late Sixteenth, and Seventeenth-Century triumph of the new Venice faction of Paolo Sarpi and his followers over the pro-Aristotelean old-Venice faction, the defeat of the continental European powers in the wars of France’s Louis XIV, through the February 1763 Peace of Paris, brought about the emergence of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal faction of Paolo Sarpi’s heritage, as the hegemonic, oligarchical form of imperial maritime culture, chiefly Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier-imperialism, of Europe and most of the world beyond, during most of the time since that point. The emergence of the U.S. Federal republic as seen in admiration for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, from among many nations, is what is to be seen as having been the principal design for a successful challenge to Anglo-Dutch global imperialism since that time, to the present date.

The Ontological Infinitesimal

For the subject of this present report, which is essentially a matter of physical science, more than politics otherwise, the relevant pro-Classical argument can be fruitfully selected and adopted from the treatment of that kind of distinction between “naturally” and socially generated catastrophes, as proffered by Plato in his Timaeus. For the purpose of this present discussion, I focus attention on the effect of catastrophes induced by a failure of a society to progress in ways which, at the least, overcome the attrition inherent in any, scientifically, “zero technological growth” system, that through the qualitative advances in the scientific-technological practice on which the society’s resistance to decadence always depends.

Since the developments typified in the content of the revolutionary work of Vernadsky and Einstein through, approximately, the time of their deaths during, and in the aftermath of several years during and following the 1939-1945 “World War,”[fn_15] we are properly obliged to recognize the subject-matter of “physical universe” as being represented by three distinct, but nonetheless inseparable qualities of phase-spaces: 1.) The “ordinary” abiotic, 2.) The Biosphere, and 3.) The Noösphere. Following the line of work by Academician V.I. Vernadsky, the principled physical distinctions among these phase-spaces are to be located systemically (experimentally) in their common domain, that of the practice of physical chemistry in the footsteps of those such as Louis Pasteur, D.I. Mendeleyev, William Draper Harkins and Vernadsky.[fn_16] However, the three identified phase-spaces are also interacting, and evolving dynamically as a set: the one shaping the conditions which shape the evolving existence of the other.

The method by which these phase-spaces are to be distinguished, is, essentially, that method of modern European science which is subsumed by the legacies of Nicholas of Cusa and Johannes Kepler. In this method, the notion of the existence of universal physical principles as defined by the common features of the method of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Fermat, Leibniz, Riemann, et al., is only conditional, but nonetheless crucial. That distinction which I have defined in sundry locations as the principle of the ontologically infinitesimal character of the infinitesimal of the Leibniz calculus,[fn_17] provides a model definition of all true universal physical principles, principles such as Kepler’s uniquely original discovery of universal gravitation, and Albert Einstein’s related emphasis on an unbounded, but finite universe of universal physical principles.

All valid universal principles are expressed in detail, as Kepler defined the principle of gravitation, in the form of their characteristic experimental expression as “ontologically infinitesimal.”

The appearance of this discovery of what became known later as Leibniz’s principle of the “ontologically infinitesimal,” by Cusa, also marks the moment of birth of modern science as modern science, including the science which must be employed to define the principles of the subsumed Biosphere and abiotic domains.

That discovery, as presented by Cusa, marks the rebirth of the same principle implicit in the work of the Pythagoreans and Plato. Cusa, recognizing a systemic error in Archimedes’ quadrature of the circle and parabola,[fn_18] first presented the principle of the comma, from ancient Sphaerics, into the practice of modern European civilization. This notion by Cusa was the foundation of competent development of modern science, as from the discovery of the principle of gravitation by Kepler, the notion of a principle of least action associated with a discovery by Fermat, and the first development of a calculus, by Leibniz, based on the notion of the ontologically infinitesimal expression of universal physical principles, as those are rightly premised on the previously stated principle of Kepler for this purpose.

Briefly consider the crucial historical implications of the immediately foregoing statements.

For example: the essential experimental basis for Einstein’s celebrated insistence that the universe as a whole is conceptually finite, has ancient roots traced implicitly to times prior to the practice of Sphaerics by the Pythagoreans:

Sphaerics, as a legacy of very ancient practiSce of celestial navigation, as with the maritime cultures existing under the conditions of widespread glaciation, toward which the planet is threatened, again, over the long haul ahead, is obviously the relic of seasonal and otherwise repeated celestial navigation over distances as long as thousands of miles; only under those conditions could mankind have discovered the qualitative changes, as distinct from, and opposed to the conception of apparent simple (cyclical) repetition, a discovery which were necessary for the discovery of a reigning principle of qualitative, progressive change in the composition of the navigator’s and calendar-builder’s celestial array.[fn_19] Astrophysics was, necessarily, the beginning of actually scientific knowledge—of the notion of the actually universal, and, thus, of the Sphaerics which the Pythagoreans and others adopted from Egypt-Cyrenaica. That typifies the deep roots of humanity’s acquisition of that quality of universal knowledge which is the only practice worthy of the name of science. [jump over box: Einstein on Kepler]

Einstein on Kepler

Max Planck gives a medal to Albert Einstein in Berlin, June 28, 1929.

Here are excerpts from an essay by Einstein, in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Kepler’s death. It appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung on Nov. 9, 1930.

In anxious and uncertain times like ours, when it is difficult to find pleasure in humanity and the course of human affairs, it is particularly consoling to think of the serene greatness of a Kepler. Kepler lived in an age in which the reign of law in nature was by no means an accepted certainty. How great must his faith in a uniform law have been, to have given him the strength to devote ten years of hard and patient work to the empirical investigation of the movement of the planets and the mathematical laws of that movement, entirely on his own, supported by no one and understood by very few! . . .

One can never see where a planet really is at any given moment, but only in what direction it can be seen just then from the Earth, which is itself moving in an unknown manner around the Sun. The difficulties thus seemed practically unsurmountable.

Kepler had to discover a way of bringing order into this chaos.

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[jump back before box: Einstein on Kepler] Since the ancient Classical Greeks, as these are typified efficiently by the Pythagoreans and Plato, the modern European standard for the definition of science was set by Nicholas of Cusa, that done in a series of his works typified by his De Docta Ignorantia. A competent form of universal modern science was established by the crucial discoveries of principle developed by Cusa’s avowed follower Johannes Kepler. As Einstein emphasized on this same account, modern physical science in its full span, is lodged under the developed form of the work of Bernhard Riemann, but is rooted as a body of physical-scientific practice in the achievements of Kepler. It is with the argument by Einstein, that the concept of physical science was returned, full cycle, to that development of astronomy by ancient celestial navigators, as Bal Gangadhar Tilak emphasized in his review of a relevant selection of combined ancient and modern sources.[fn_20]

The distinction to be made is between the naive view of science as a fallacy of composition in design of merely repeatable experiments, as in the hoax of Clausius, Grassmann, et al., and science as a discovery of patterns of progressive (i.e., anti-entropic, rather than merely cyclical) change of the conditions of experiment under the impact of the discovery of relevant, long-ranging, universal physical principles. [jump over box: Kepler on Aristotle’s Sabotage of Astronomy]

Kepler on Aristotle’s Sabotage of Astronomy

Johannes Kepler, the founder of universal modern physical science.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) refuted Aristotle’s geocentric cosmology, and charged that Aristotle held science back for nearly two millennia, until the advent of Copernicus, by rejecting the Pythagorean idea that the Earth moves in an orbit around the Sun (“the fire”). Kepler’s full document was published in 21st Century Science & Technology, Winter 2001-02, in a translation by George Gregory. Here are excerpts.

[The Pythagoreans] spoke in a veiled way; by fire they understood the Sun, and I agree with them, that the Sun is in the center of the world, and never moves away from this place, and that, on the other hand, the Earth moves once in one year around the Sun, that is, it revolves around the center position of the world, as otherwise also five other wandering stars [that is, the planets]. . . .

[Aristarchus of Samos (310-ca. 230 B.C.) was accused of blasphemy and threatened with death for endorsing a heliocentric system.] On account of this fear, and on account of the reputation of Aristotle, who rejected this teaching (although he did not yet fully understand it), this teaching was suppressed, and particularly because it was difficult to understand, it was nearly forgotten for 1,800 years. . . .

I am as little satisfied with Aristotle, when he thinks it is sufficient to have asked why the Earth remains at the center of the world, and to answer, that nature assigned this position to it. For it is entirely uncertain, and not conceded by me, that the Earth is in the middle of the world; and were it so, it would be so indeed on account of nature, but in the same way that all things are on account of nature. But one is not satisfied to know that things are according to nature, but one asks why they are that way and not some other way, and what means nature used to bring this about. . . .

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[jump back before box: Kepler on Aristotle’s Sabotage of Astronomy] The latter view is forced upon competent observers today, by the way in which relative potential population-density of the human species has been shaped, uniquely, for the human species: by the effects of willful progress of human practice to higher states of potential relative population-density, that through discovery and adoption of those higher principles of change which Aeschylus’ Olympian Zeus forbade. As I have already emphasized here, this development within the Noösphere reshapes the physical geometry of that Biosphere in ways which are to be seen as the effects of the changes which are effected in, and radiated from the higher realm of the Noösphere.[fn_21]

In the span of the known history of the known cultures centered on the Mediterranean, the kind of society which that Olympian Zeus’s policy prescribed, is known to scholars as “the oligarchical model,” under whose reign most people are reduced to the likeness of cattle by imposition of rules of no-change (“zero growth”) which are reflected, typically, in Malthusian fads, and fascist political systems today. This oligarchical model has been the persisting origin of the degenerative crises, such as the present one, which mankind has experienced in known history.

Riemann & the Principle of Hypothesis

Thus, the implication of the revolutionary advance in physical science introduced by Bernhard Riemann, as first introduced in his 1854 habilitation dissertation, has led to the recognition that we must consider our universe as finite, that in the specific sense of being “finite but unbounded”—“self-bounded.” This quality of finiteness, is expressed by mankind’s expanding knowledge of sets of discovered universal physical principles, as each such principle is to be defined by the model of Kepler’s discovery of gravitation.

A true universal principle is never itself an object of the senses, but is a principle which is shown, experimentally, as Kepler proved the case of gravitation in his The New Astronomy and the Harmonies, combined, as underlying (i.e., confining) the physical geometry of the relevant universal class of actions.

For that reason, the universe is known to be finite in the sense that any such universal physical principle is self-bounded (and therefore not externally bounded) as to relative magnitude “1,” and that its local expression, as an efficiently acting universal physical principle, is therefore that of an ontologically infinitesimal quality of that action upon its subjects, as the work of Kepler’s Harmonies shows. Thus, we have, contrary to the empiricists and positivists, Leibniz’s derivation of the ontologically infinitesimal calculus from Kepler’s discovery of universal gravitation.[fn_22]

Thus, since the time since the immediate post-World War II period, since the deaths of Vernadsky and Albert Einstein, evidence from the domains of physical chemistry has defined three clearly defined domains: First, and lowest, the abiotic domain; second, the Biosphere; and third, the subsuming power of the Noösphere. These domains are familiar to us by comparing the known patterns of growth of the latter two domains, the Biosphere and Noösphere, relative to the portion of the Earth’s crust which is apparently not a product of physical-chemical changes done by living processes. Generally, the Biosphere and its residues are growing, in ratio to the mass of the crust, and the mass of the Noösphere (human activity and its specific products) relative to the Biosphere.

Vernadsky rooted these distinctions in methods of a Riemannian practice of physical chemistry. Those methods, with their suitable enrichment, should be considered the implied authority to which I refer in this report. [fn_23]

The distinctions include the specifications, that: 1.) Without the principle of life, there is no development of the Biosphere within the Earth as a whole; 2.) Without human cognitive activity, there is nor further development of the Noösphere within the Biosphere. From the standpoint of physical chemistry, those distinctions signify the notion of man and woman as made in the likeness of the Creator, relative to the Biosphere.

Hence, the “teleological” feature of the universe so defined. Without a universal principle of life, there is no biology; without a universal principle of human creative reason, lacking in all lower forms of life, there is no Noösphere. Thus, the abiotic Solar system (and beyond) is necessary for the expression of life, and living creatures are a necessary precondition for expression of the distinctive quality of human life; but, the principle of the Noösphere subsumes all. We must think of these principles as universal physical principles in the same sense as Kepler’s uniquely original discovery of universal gravitation, but as of the quality of a different such universal principle. All three principles, including gravitation, share the character of being immortal as principles.

“Sense-Uncertainty”

The root of the functional quality of mental disease called reductionism, is the notion of “sense-certainty”: that is to say, the notion that we are obliged to accept certain fancifully false notions of space, matter, and time, such as definitions, axioms, and postulates, without further investigation, this on the premise that this represents acceptance, a-priori, of the stubbornly persisting evidence of our sense-perceptual apparatus as such. This systemic error is met in ancient through modern European traditions as the basis for that variety of Sophist method associated, successively, with the doctrine of Aristotle, as this variety of Sophism is echoed by the followers of Aristotle in the celebrated Euclid’s Elements.[fn_24]

We do not know the actual time and place of the crucial breaking-point in mankind’s experience, at which actual science displaced the pathetic worship of “sense-certainty.” We do yet know that what is to be rightly seen as the history of science today, which can be identified as emerging in the time and place in the history of man’s discovery of astrophysics, whatever were exactly that time; it became, thus, apparent to ancient masters of celestial navigation who recognized that the starry skies above did not represent a simple system of repetitive cycles, but expressed the existence of a universe in endless qualitative development, from relatively simpler to more complex, higher-order (anti-entropic development of) systems of the universe as a whole. This fact has been made clear to those among us who actually think according to that realization of the implications of Bernhard Riemann’s fundamental revolution in physical science, a realization which is best represented today by the fundamentals of the work of Academician V.I. Vernadsky and Albert Einstein. Thus, no longer can science be considered competent, if it proceeds on assumptions based on interpretation of experience of what is esteemed as being contained within the abiotic. Competent science always looks from the top of the evolution of the changes within the universe, to the lower qualities of its organization. Competent science today is premised on Einstein’s conception of a Riemannian universe of Kepler and Kepler’s precedents, proceeding always from the foundation of science found only in those cognitive powers of the individual human mind whose typical achievements are sampled in the Riemannian universe, as that has been defined in exemplary fashion by Vernadsky and Einstein.

The great curse of prevalent modern science dogma, is that it is essentially empiricist, or, in its far more degenerate expressions as either positivism, or, even worse, existentialism.

Thus, competent science today proceeds from the origin expressed by the specifically creative powers of the human individual mind. Science must define itself as our knowledge of the universe as the progress of man’s power to control, and to develop his universe; this shows us what the universe demands of us, and what it will tolerate from us as the practice, expressed through man’s power in and over that universe, as that power is increased in such expressed terms as systemic increase of the potential relative population-density of the human species.

2. Anti-Entropy: The Principle of Creation

Thus, the secret of our universe is, that only beasts, or bestialized human beings, such as, in the worst cases, Malthusians like former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, fail to recognize that, among all living species, mankind, and only mankind, is creative by its true, willful nature. For the competent human individual, there is no law of “entropy” in this universe, but only the misleading appearances represented as effects of a cultivated habit of stupidity, or worse, among some unfortunate people, sometimes very many people. For that faulty habit, do not blame humanity indifferently; blame some relevant people, including those wretched Sophists, such as those of the legendary press which were responsible for the policy behind the minting of thatNew York Times style book which has ripped the true Pythagorean comma of human creativity from its pages.

The crucial theme here can be summed up in a single statement, thus: The universe, viewed, properly, top-down, is the habitat of the reign of the Noösphere!

Strelka (left) and Belka, Soviet dogs who orbited the Earth in 1960—the first animals to survive orbital flight. LaRouche agrees with Soviet space scientists of that time, that dogs are more intelligent than chimpanzees. But there’s something essential here that Al Gore fails to grasp.

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Dogs, Apes & Humans

Those who recall the U.S.A. vs. Soviet rivalry in “the space-race” of the 1950s and 1960s, may also recall a debate, whether dogs were more intelligent than chimpanzees (the Soviet policy). Frankly, dogs won that contest. The crucial fact of the matter, is that dogs have a better potential for relevant qualities of seemingly human-like intelligence than adult chimpanzees. (Any dog-lover also familiar with the traits of the adult chimpanzee, can be attracted to this fact.) To settle the issue, it were sufficient to consider a candid debate of this matter, between a trainer responsible for managing adult male chimpanzees, and the proud and insightful human companion of a pet dog.

Let us seem to cheat just a bit, but that only for a pedagogical purpose. Let us compare adult pet male chimpanzees with adult dogs raised as household pets. We really are not cheating in doing this. When we compare the behavior of animal species, we must consider the relevant qualities for humanity of the adult representative of the species, as by comparing adult male chimpanzees who had been pets as “children,” with the adult development of the household puppy when it has become an adult.

Actually, contrary to the opinion of some children and adults, a dog does not develop actually human intelligence; the pet dog acquires what might be described as an “echo” of human intelligence.[fn_25] Here, the dog out-classes the chimpanzee. The pet dog develops what appears to be something resembling a human form of personality; that dog tries to simulate (“imitate”) the personality of a human being, perhaps regarding its owner as representing, in ethical and family terms, the kind of authority due its mother, father, or human sibling.[fn_26] The relevant distinction was noted by the Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who reported this kind of apparent simulation of human intelligence among animals. Thus, the Noösphere “educates” the Biosphere.

For purposes of an introductory, exploratory discussion of such matters, we might say that the dog’s simulation of what seems to have been the behavior of the higher order of living species, the human individual, is “programmed,” although—God forbid!—never “digitally” programmed. Cusa compared God to the “soul” of man, as man to the “soul” of the animal, that in appropriate terms of reference.

The content of those preceding paragraphs is to be treated as a necessary, brief, playful, but nonetheless valid, introductory discussion, that as a matter of providing a background orientation for the discussion of the “hard point” which I am about to introduce thus.

The Folly of Sense-Certainty

Among all known species existent within our Solar system, the form of human mental performance which is specific to the conception of the ontologically infinitesimal principles of physical science, such as Kepler’s discovery of gravitation (and also of the discovery, as by J.S. Bach, of true Classical artistic composition), is unique, among all species, to human individuals. Thus, to the extent that the human brain might be considered, wrongly, by some, as merely a higher order of development of animal brains, that assumption leaves no basis for a truly noëtic intellectual creativity of the quality expressed by the modern cases of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Kepler, Fermat, Leibniz, Riemann, or of J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven, creativity which is not so encountered in the biological mental-perceptual apparatus of the brain-function of mammals in general.

The clue which points toward a solution for the relevant mystery, may be found through examining a certain systemic quality of paradox in Kepler’s discovery of the harmonic organization of the Solar system. The specific quality of that discovery, by Kepler, which has driven even many serious, if somewhat misguided scientists into a fury, is that Kepler’s solution involves the principled, musically defined, Lydian, Florentine bel canto faculty of hearing. Whereas, as a matter of contrast, the scientist who was heavily indoctrinated in the Sophistry of Aristotle-Euclid, will tend, with rare exceptions, to react with his or her own personal performance of some sort of a “freak show,” when confronted with the implications of the indispensable function of hearing, as Kepler was confronted: when confronted with the paradox which threatens the peaceful contemplation of any merely visual conception of organization of space-time.

“Tuning” is an extremely useful piece of scientific pedagogy for the purpose of defining the experimental subject, when confronting that acutely paradoxical fact. It is a related fact, that all evidence available indicates, that there is nothing intrinsic to the apparent physiological organization of the brain-function of the mammals which accounts for the unique role of the individual human mind in reproducing the phenomena of the Noösphere. There is something, related to the notion of “tuning,” as defined by Kepler’s discovery, and by J.S. Bach, which accounts for this unique species of experimental fact.

The relatively more obvious point made by that sort of “thought experiment,” is that a sane reaction to Kepler’s treatment of the paradox of harmonics in defining the measurable effect of the principle of gravitation, compels the seasoned experimentalist to accept the fact that his, or her own sense-perceptual apparatus is an array of instrumentations, to such effect that the sundry “meter readings” from that inborn array of experimental apparatus must be treated as just that. So, what seems almost self-evident, almost Euclidean or Cartesian, if only one of the human senses is being considered, may be transformed into the inducing of a state of stark confusion in the mind of the unwitting, when two, or more, different human senses, such as sight and hearing, are being applied to define a single common image of the common experimental subject.

For example:

In the relatively simpler case, the naive student “believes” it to be more or less self-evident, that astronomical space is defined by discrete objects, such as planets, moons, and sundry forms and sizes of intra-Solar-system particles, each and all appearing to float when such phenomena are assessed as being within a background-medium of what is presumed to be, in its own nature, as Cartesian empty space. Similarly, the Max Planck-hating dupes of Ernst Mach, such as Ludwig Boltzmann, may proffer a childish misreading of what he considers, on principle, as reducible, conceptually to a percussively organized gas system.

In these cases, the experimental validity attributed to the mechanistic representation, is to be recognized as the result of interpreting what may be, within limits, experimental phenomena viewed in terms of a mechanistic fantasy derived from the a-prioristic, mechanistic methods of Aristotle and Euclid. As long as ideologues continue to interpret the evidence, axiomatically, on reductionist presumptions, they may be self-satisfied with their formulations. This may continue until they are faced with the experiment which presents what they must view as profoundly anomalous results, as Riemann’s 1854 habilitation dissertation shows, or as Kurt Gödel, in 1931, demonstrated the fraudulent character of Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica.[fn_27]

Such childish Euclidean-Cartesian fantasies as those of the followers of Mach and dupes of Russell, are precisely the source of the confusion of the physicist experiencing a banshee-fit when being presented with Kepler’s harmonic composition of the gravitational, wrongly presumed “action-at-a-distance” field of the Solar System,[fn_28] or in that domain of Planck’s work which the radically reductionist dupes of the positivists (e.g., radical empiricists) such as Mach, or one like Bertrand Russell, misidentified as quantum “mechanics.” At that point, a few words from a Kurt Gödel or Albert Einstein are sufficient to send the radically reductionist cult-followers of Mach, Russell, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, et al., into howling fits worthy of the dismay which might have been expressed, at the close, among the suffering characters of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau.

The alternative to reductionist fantasies of “sense-certainty,” is to consider physical space-time as a true continuum of existence-in-motion. That means that the exclusion of the notion of something existing which must yet be moved, in favor of the accepting the realization of that “motion,” motion otherwise recognized as action in the sense of a continuing process of development, must be accepted as the intrinsically ontological quality of existence. This means dynamic existence, not in the sense of the reductionist’s nonsense word “thermodynamics,” but as in the method of the ancient Pythagoreans and Plato, or the modern followers of Cusa, Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Fermat, Leibniz, Riemann, et al.

Rejection of sense-certainty does not mean rejecting the role of our senses; rather, we must recognize that the senses are indispensable in the two respects indicated here below. What must be rejected, for the sake of competent science, is the hedonist’s blind faith in “sense-certainty.”

Library of Congress

Helen Keller’s accomplishment in overcoming both deafness and blindness, shows that cognition is not based at all upon sense-certainty. Here, she is exploring the shape of a statue.

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Firstly, we must appreciate the implications of not only Helen Keller’s plight, but her accomplishment in overcoming what might have seemed her hopeless situation. Her achievement does not justify deprecating those senses whose use she lacked; but, rather, appreciating the importance of the new instruments of cognitive method and apparatus which science develops, new instruments which enable mankind to explore such otherwise forbidden realms as the universe and sub-atomic space-time.

Second, although the relatively competent expressions of modern science have demonstrated, afresh, that the picture of the real world given to us by the senses as such is not the real world, but is, at best, only a faithful shadow of reality: nonetheless a shadow on whose assistance we depend for guiding our investigations into the real world of the unseen. The most significant outcome of recognizing this irony, is that we must learn to discard all forms of naive sense-certainty, such as the a-prioristic Sophistries of Aristotle, Euclid, and Descartes. We then learn to use those senses, both those given to us by birth, or instruments we adopt as supplements to the senses, to discover more and more of the nature of the actual universe which we inhabit, and, in that manner, and in that process, discover the most precious among all of the secrets of science, the true identity of ourselves, and our place in this Riemannian universe at large.

Riemann Again

In treating the mental disorder called “sense-certainty,” we must take into account, from the outset, that the problem of sense-certainty as it has confronted us in European culture, persistently, since approximately the death of Plato, is a product of the rise of what is known as the form of European Sophistry attacked by Plato’s dialogues. This means attacking, specifically, the form of Sophistry which ancient, medieval, and modern Sophistry have inherited from Aristotle and such among his notable followers as Euclid.

I repeat: there is crucially significant, surviving evidence to the effect, that the great trans-oceanic maritime cultures whose experience is reflected to us from the ancient Egypt known to Solon, the Pythagoreans, and Plato, possessed a scientific method, identified as Sphaerics, which was largely free of those fallacies of sense-certainty which I have ridiculed in the opening pages of this present chapter of the report. Also, we must recognize, that there have been traces of the scientifically healthy, pre-Euclidean scientific world-outlook radiated by Plato, as by currents of Judaism and Christianity typified by Philo and the Apostle Paul, at various times and in various locations, over the course of ancient and medieval European times prior to the great work of Nicholas of Cusa in founding modern science.

In all modern European history, there was a great struggle, from the time of Kepler, Fermat, and Leibniz, until that of Riemann, during which a lunatic, so-called Cartesian and Newtonian view of science, that of the a-priorism of Aristotle, Euclid, Galileo, and Descartes, was made prevalent, either through the imperial influence of the Habsburg and other Inquisitions, or by the influence of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal imperium; until Riemann broke open the doorway to truth with his 1854 habilitation dissertation.

On this account, it must be recalled, that the echoes of Cusa, Leonardo da Vinci, and Kepler, were expressed in the mid-Seventeenth Century of France, under the leadership of Cardinal Mazarin, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and Gottfried Leibniz, until this progress was interrupted by the emerging primacy of a modern Liberalism which emerged during the Anglo-Dutch Liberal wars leading into the February 1763 launching of the neo-Venetian form of the world’s presently continued, British empire-in-fact. So, despite the later great Eighteenth-Century Renaissance led by Abraham Kästner, Gotthold Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn, Friedrich Schiller, and the Monge-Carnot Ecole Polytechnique, the Jacobin Terror and the reign of the predator Napoleon Bonapart, crushed, once again, the new, late Eighteenth-Century Classical Renaissance.

That tyranny of the Habsburg Inquisition of Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada, on the one side, and that of the Anglo-Dutch Liberalism of Paolo Sarpi and his followers, on the other, had already established the massively corrupting influence of Paolo Sarpi’s system of Liberalism over science, art, and politics. The British imperial tyranny over the Vienna Congress’s Europe, and the British deployment of the early-Nineteenth-Century Spanish monarchy’s continuation of British John Locke’s earlier promotion of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade, continued to dominate science until the circles of that great organizer Alexander von Humboldt succeeded in unleashing the great revolution in physical science of Wilhelm Weber, Lejeune Dirichlet, and Bernhard Riemann. Once more, that same Liberal sophistry dominates our modern European culture, with its schools, universities, and popular opinion, still today.

It was upon the signal contributions of the later geniuses, such as the great, later achievements of such exceptional geniuses as Vernadsky and Albert Einstein, on which the net progress of science has chiefly depended. During the entire sweep of the 1854-2008 interval to date, the uttering of Riemann’s 1854 habilitation dissertation, has become the great long wave of revolution on which the greatest net achievements of science have, subsequently, thus far depended.

Thus, as great as was the revolution which Bernhard Riemann launched in his 1854 habilitation dissertation, there was nothing essentially new to European civilization’s science in the great principle through which Riemann shattered the darkness of Euclidean superstition. Once the 1854 habilitation dissertation is understood, its origins, its outgrowths, and its implications for now, were, already, essentially grounded in fact.

Since Riemann’s habilitation dissertation, the principal source of moral rot in modern physical science, has been that great hoax, called “thermodynamics,” as crafted by the scientifically and morally decadent circles of Clausius, Grassmann, and Kelvin. This corruption is typified, to the present date, by what has become that implicitly mass-murderous, Machian hoax and fraud of modern mechanics, the hoax named “The Second Law of Thermodynamics.”

That much said this far, the considerations which I have outlined up to this point in the report, have taken us, repeatedly, during the preceding pages, up to the verge of the great conclusion standing before us: the notion of the ontological infinitesimal.

The Noösphere as Such

The development of the concept of the Noösphere has depended essentially on the insight into that evidence from that approach to physical chemistry by Mendeleyev and Harkins, which Academician Vernadsky summarized in the middle of the 1930s. Although there is often a temptation by some reporters to locate the discovery of a principle of life by Pasteur, rather than crucially significant phenomena expressed by living processes, Pasteur himself rejected a precocious conclusion in the matter; he did so correctly, on the premises of his knowledge of what a proper scientific method must require as adequate proof.[fn_29] We, still today, must show similar caution in stating claims pertaining to the Noösphere; however, as much of what we know to have been proven respecting the implications of the proven existence of the Noösphere must be accepted, despite deeper issues yet to be defined.

Today, as I have emphasized the implications of the questions implicitly posed by the referenced work of Woese et al., we must be concerned with a higher order of challenge, the Noösphere, as Vernadsky clarified the questions respecting the Biosphere. Living processes express a different physical chemistry than non-living processes, thus defining a specific phase-space known as the Biosphere. Then, how shall we approach the higher order of subject, the Noösphere?

We know that the Noösphere has been discovered by (actually) Academician V.I. Vernadsky. We also know from crucial experimental evidence, that the Biosphere is dominated functionally by the Noösphere: that to such effect that the Noösphere contains the Biosphere functionally, such that no generalizations respecting the Biosphere can exclude the superior role of the Noösphere.

We must recall, that the proof of the discovery of the hypothesis by Vernadsky was supplied by the evidence of the growth of the accumulated mass generated by the Biosphere’s phase-space as products specific to the effects and residues of the masses of living processes. The growth of the Biosphere, so defined, relative to the phase-space generated as supplied by non-living processes, supplied the proof needed, even though we have yet to receive a competent experimental definition of “historical” origins of life as such.

The same standard required to define the Biosphere is to be applied to the case of the Noösphere, with one very distinct qualification. Crucial is the evidence on which any competent science of physical economy depends: that the percentile of the mass of our planet representing products of human cognitive activity not otherwise produced by the processes of the Noösphere itself, has been increased through, chiefly, the effects of scientific and related advances in the goals and technologies of human societies.

The crucial fact thus emphasized, is that this increase of the relative mass of the Noösphere, is, uniquely, the now well-defined product of what is termed noësis. This pertains to activities, which are expressed uniquely by their ontologically infinitesimal expression (as I have already emphasized at earlier points of this report), as those processes of discovery of true universal physical principles which have no place in the reductionist methods of ancient Sophists such as Aristotle and Euclid, or in modern empiricist and related practice.

This distinction of the Noösphere confronts us, at least typically so, with its evidence of the paradoxical type of case, an anti-entropic case, in which the future determines the present.[fn_30]

For example: in the case of the Biosphere, we have had the relative advantage of being able to define the Biosphere by reference to the higher state of organization in the universe which contains the definition of the Biosphere, the Noösphere. We can not approach the subject of the Noösphere with such an available kind of advantage. The paradoxical effect is more or less limited to the fact that it is the discovery of a principle which often serves as the cause of a qualitative change in the quality of effect of human action (for example) on the universe. This, in turn, confronts us with the factual existence of the discovery of a necessary truth of practice (i.e., Classical Platonic hypothesis), this even before the relevant, new experimental principle of action was discovered negatively.

NASA-JPL-Caltech/R. Gehrz

The Crab Nebula presents an array of paradoxes to the scientist. It is rapidly changing, even pulsating—yet it is presumed to be immensely large. The changes that occur in its structure take place synchronously throughout it, seemingly like waves propagating at a velocity faster than the speed of light! Such anomalies drive the reductionists and Cartesians crazy.

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To illustrate the existence of such points: such an anomaly is suggested, although not otherwise known to have been proven, yet, by the evidence of the ostensibly anomalous ordering of certain kinds of changes which occur in the Crab Nebula.

Take, for example, the related fact that it was Fermat’s remarkable, unique discovery of the principle of least action, which prompted Leibniz to overthrow the authority of Huyghens’ cycloid, and to base a universal physical principle of least action on the analog functions which led to this revolution in defining the notion of actual physical principles.

These and related considerations lead us toward three great paradoxes.

First, that the greatest moments of scientific discovery are those in which a revolutionary change in the future change of the ordering in our universe of practice appears to some human mind as an inevitable consequence of evidence, a universal principle, yet to be employed in practice. How has this been possible?

Second, what is the mysterious, yet undeniable power of the individual human mind’s design which permits an individual human being, but no animal, to make such a type of valid discovery of the necessary change in principled modes for shaping of the future?

Third, how does the individual human mind manifest such a unique power, with no precursor for this in the Biosphere as such?

Is it some principle of “tuning?” Has the development of the human mental-biological apparatus taken the human species to a point at which it is “tuned into” a higher power in the universe, a higher power which is not only expressed as truly anti-entropy, as defined by the great Eighteenth Century mathematician Abraham Kästner, but a supreme universal physical principle of anti-entropy? So, Philo of Alexandria condemned the Aristotlean’s theological insistence on the self-inflicted, permanent impotence of the Creator, and did so on the basis of the strongest quality of argument in evidence against such an absurd theology, and, implicitly, against an absurd, Aristotelean, Claudius Ptolemy-like misconception of science.

There are two cases of such crucially significant behavior. In one case, there is the universe in the large, as governed by an anti-entropic principle driving the universe into successively higher qualitative states of organization as a universe. In the other case, as posed in Genesis 1, mankind acts upon its place in the universe to similarly anti-entropic effect. In the other aspect of the matter, we have the evidence that the human mind has a potential quality which, by sheer weight of definition, is not a product of its biology as we define biology today, but the “tuning” of the human form of thinking to agreement with cognitive powers which have never been shown to exist in lower forms of life. Yet, as is shown by the growth of the Noösphere, relative to the Biosphere, this power of the human mind is fully efficient within our universe.

As Nicholas of Cusa presented the case, as our Creator of the universe is to man, so man mimics that Creator in man’s spiritual power over, and obligation to caring for dogs.

The more modest point to be proffered in this context, is the evidence that the universe is intrinsically anti-entropic, and that the obligation which mankind must meet if mankind is to survive, is to act in the way the Creator of our universe has governed. We are properly “tuned” to be creatures devoted to the service of anti-entropy, such that those who express a contrary view, such as the Malthusians and former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore today, are therefore evil in what they do in service of entropy.

With respect to the great question which has been the subject of my report here, we are in a predicament with practical implications like those confronted by Louis Pasteur on the matter of life. We do not have the true solution; but, we must not avoid the implications for the present practice of science, of the unanswered, stubbornly persisting question which it would be incompetence to avoid. In science, until we pose the question, as I have proposed we do here, we will never begin to discover the answer.

[fn_1]. See http://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10696.

[fn_2]. Distinguishing those isotopes of the table which are tuned specifically to living processes.

[fn_3]. Cf. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. “My Early Encounter With Leibniz: On Monadology,” LPAC, Jan. 22, 2008, also in EIR, Feb. 22, 2008; and his “A Strategic Economic Assessment: That Doomed & Brutish Empire,” EIR, March 14, 2008.

[fn_4]. Hence, the intrinsic folly in method which underlies the habitual failures of the prevalent types of economic statistical forecasters.

[fn_5]. As I have pointed out in various earlier locations, the idea of science, such as the Egyptian-Pythagorean practice of Sphaerics, is derived from that notion of universal which, as a concept, has depended upon a very long span of empirical development of calendars derived from the cumulative evidence of very many generations of development of long-ranging celestial (oceanic) navigation by maritime cultures, as under the conditions of the approximately 200,000 years during which glaciation dominated large portions of the northern hemisphere, a glaciation toward which Earth is signaling a threat to return now.

[fn_6]. The principal such distractions from this fact of Vernadsky’s originality are to be found in the kinds of misguided, “fundamentalist” or kindred religious fervor, notably those forms which adopt either the dubious speculations of the “Piltdown” co-hoaxster and reductionist mystic Teilhard de Chardin, or, what are clearly recognizable elements of the ancient pagan’s Delphic cult of Gaea, in seeking to bring the mighty Creator of the universe down to Earth, so to speak. Teilhard’s relevant work touches, if only deceptively, upon the names of valid conceptions, that to such effect that the errors of many of his putatively more orthodox critics are worse mistakes than his own. It is in the systemic features of his applications of his conception of noësis, that the essential error of his explanations is more clearly shown. The source of the confusion lies in Teilhard’s attempt to reconcile the idea of creativity with what is called, unfortunately, a “Classical” Christian doctrine, where the attractive aspects of his work appear; his attempt to reconcile that with an axiomatically reductionist (i.e., Aristotelean or quasi-Aristotelean) form of cosmogony, is the root of his confusion. Teilhard’s minting of the term “Noösphere” was acknowledged by Vernadsky; Teilhard named the baby, but Vernadsky conceived and delivered it.

[fn_7]. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, line 7, [greek expression], which Herbert Weir Smyth translates: flashing fire, source of all arts.

[fn_8]. I address this, and Cusa’s treatment of the same subject, within part of chapter 2 of this report.

[fn_9]. Concept-driven” as in recognition of a relevant principle of nature, or of current social processes. Thinking which walks in the footsteps of the discovery of universal gravitation by Kepler, Fermat’s discovery of the principle of least action, Leibniz’s uniquely original (e.g., 1676) discovery of the principle of the calculus, or Riemann’s 1854 habilitation dissertation.

[fn_10]. It is fair, and necessary to say that former Vice-President Al Gore’s “global warming” hoax, is essentially a fascist economic model in the footsteps of the Haileybury Society’s Thomas Malthus, Mussolini, and Hitler, or, the Olympian Zeus of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, or Friedrich Nietzsche’s dogma, since the model could not be institutionalized as a national, or world system except by what are easily recognized as fascist political means. Thus, essentially, like the H.G. Wells who stated his fascist commitments openly, Wells’ accomplice, Bertrand Russell was even more frankly, rabidly fascist than a Mussolini or Hitler.

[fn_11]. Compare the case of the displacement of marsupials by arriving mammals, as the Australian “historical” model attests. While kangaroos, for example, may persist, most of the marsupials are replaced, niche by niche, by placental types which caricature the marsupial types, leaving such oddities as the Platypus and a certain well-known, large-pouched publisher lingering as leftovers from the set of egg-laying species.

[fn_12]. The deaths of the celebrated correspondents Eratosthenes and Archimedes, marked the onset of a clearly marked decline in European culture in the period beginning the Roman victory in the Second Punic War.

[fn_13]. It is notably relevant, that the ancient Greek model of later European imperialist designs, is to be seen, to modern times, at the existing site of the Delphic cult of Apollo-Dionysos. Arrayed around the site of the temple itself, there are “chapels” representing the treasuries of ancient Grecian cities. Following the path downhill to the relevant nearby port location, we recognize the ancient Delphic model for not only the Lombard League of European “New Dark Age” notoriety, but the presently posed renewal of a proposed world empire of city-state usury proposed by those who, today, demand the form of globalization proposed by such creatures as that self-proclaimed, Forty-Billion-Dollar fossil, New York Mayor Bloomberg.

[fn_14]. It was Nicholas of Cusa’s proposal for trans-oceanic development of contacts of Europe across the Atlantic and into the Indian Oceans, which explicitly guided Christopher Columbus’s scientific knowledge of the feasibility of crossing the Atlantic. Columbus acquired this knowledge through a reading of the testament of Cusa, which was lodged with the executor of Cusa’s testament resident in Portugal at that time. Approximately two decades later, Columbus succeeded in fulfilling that intended design by Cusa.

[fn_15]. Vernadsky died in January 1945, Einstein in April 1955.

[fn_16]. And also, implicitly, in that work of Max Planck which was so viciously attacked by the German and Austrian followers of the radical reductionist Ernst Mach, during the period of the 1914-1917 warfare.

[fn_17]. In defiance of the common, empiricist Sophistry of de Moivre, D’Alembert, Leonhard Euler, Joseph Lagrange, Laplace, Cauchy, Clausius, Grassmann, et al.

[fn_18]. I.e., Cusa’s exposure of the systemic error in Archimedes’ quadrature of the circle.

[fn_19]. Compare Philo of Alexandria’s denunciation of the theology of Aristotle’s method, and the echo of Philo’s denunciation of Aristotle for astrophysics by Kepler. Note, as most notable, Kepler’s exposure of the specifically Aristotelean fraud central to Claudius Ptolemy’s fixed system.

[fn_20]. I.e., Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas (1893) and Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903).

[fn_21]. Consider the impact of what are largely “transuranic” istopes of specifically biological significance, a present line of development which echoes Vernadsky’s impact on Russian geological science since the visit of Prince and later Czar Peter the Great to the site of the Freiberg academy (near Dresden).

[fn_22]. As in the authentic discovery of a quantum principle by Max Planck (the adversary of the Machian positivist ideologues) later, Kepler’s discovery of the organization of the system of gravitation of the Solar system, depended upon rejecting a purely visual (sense-perceptual) notion of the organization of the Solar system, by making the ontologically paradoxical juxtaposition of the notion of visual and aural sense-perception (“sight” and “sound”). There is no “empty space” in the organization of nature in the very small or very large. The hysteria exhibited, in defense of a childish blind faith in sense-certainty, by what were otherwise leading scientists, on the subject of the indispensable role of harmonics in defining universal gravitation, has continued to be a crucial, leading barrier to the progress in physical science today. The wild attack on Max Planck by the German and Austro-Hungarian dupes of Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell, during and following World War I, should be compared with the common, and usually wildly lying hysteria against Kepler on the same account of “sense-certainty.” In both cases, Kepler and Planck, the crucial issue is ontological: the refusal of the opponents to realize that the human sense-readings are merely the reactions of instruments which present us what are, so to speak, the mere shadows of reality: this to such effect that the paradoxical evidence of sight and sound, rather than the evidence of one alone, must be treated as, for example, Kepler did in defining the harmonics of gravitation itself, and Planck in his great discovery.

[fn_23]. The argument, by Vernadsky, to which I referred in my “Vernadsky & Dirichlet’s Principle,” op. cit.

[fn_24]. Essentially, the main body of content of the Elements is in the form of systemic reification of hypotheses and theorems which had been defined earlier by, notably, the circles of the Pythagoreans and Plato. As the relevant principle was most famously clarified by Archytas’ purely constructive demonstration of the duplication of the cube, Classical Greek physical science, as in the Egyptian-Pythagorean Sphaerics echoed in the work of Thales and Heracleitus. The characteristic of that Classical physical science of the Pythagoreans and Plato, was the same notion of underlying physical principles as expressed essentially by the experimental methods associated with the concept of the same ontologically infinitesimal represented by Kepler’s discovery of the harmonic, rather than naive visual-space-like basis for a measurable value of organization of the Solar system. Our various specific sensory powers are of the quality of instrumentation of our experience, presenting our minds with what are the shadows which reality prompts as perceived sensations. The contrast of two opposing qualities of perception, such as vision and hearing, was indispensable for Kepler’s discovery of the quantifiable principle of gravitation. However, although this principle of anti-Euclidean geometry was already clear to such predecessors of Riemann as the great Eighteenth-century mathematician Abraham Kästner (and, actually, if secretly, Carl Gauss), it was not until Bernhard Riemann’s explicit expulsion of all reductionist method from physical science, that the problem had been placed in clear focus for modern science.

[fn_25]. My wife and I have “owned” a number of dogs: several Irish Setters, two Great Pyrenees, and one West Highland White Terrier. There are “breed” characteristics, but there are also developed “personalities,” which are manifest as expressed “insight” specific to the dog and to the household into which it is assimilated while a puppy.

[fn_26]. We had a Great Pyrenees, who accepted a West Highland White Terrier as a puppy of the family, but seemed, over years, to grow increasingly troubled by the fact that that puppy never seemed to be growing up.

[fn_27]. Kurt Gödel, “On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems,” (1931), in Kurt Gödel Collected Works, Vol. I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 144-195.

[fn_28]. The case of the Crab Nebula should, therefore, drive him wild!

[fn_29]. LaRouche, “Vernadsky & Dirichlet’s Principle,” op. cit.

[fn_30]. This has been the “secret” of my unique, current success as the most successful long-range forecaster in economics.

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EDITORIAL

Keynes or von Hayek?

by Robert Ingraham

Feb. 23—It is time to free the minds of the American people from the shackles of British Economics. This is not an academic issue, to be confined only to the classroom. Over the recent decades, America—together with most of Western Europe—has become a shell of its former industrial, technological and scientific greatness, while poverty, drug addiction and homelessness have spread unchecked.

Unfortunately, Congressional, as well as popular, debates on economic policy are now almost always, at best, uninformed, and usually based on wildly false assumptions and ignorance. There is an ongoing phony confrontation between “left” and “right” with heated assertions from both sides—while the actual fundamental issues are almost never discussed. One hears the opposing sides yapping at each other all the time: “privatization” versus state ownership; regulation versus deregulation; tax cuts versus tax increases; “freedom” versus “socialism.” That is the debate as it is presented to everyone, and the only choice you are given is to pick a “side.” But is that really true?

Today, many believe—erroneously—that there is a fundamental principled difference between those who believe in “less government” and those who believe in “big government.” This is often represented as a debate between “personal freedom” versus “statist” control, with the “Austrian School” of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek representing the former, and John Maynard Keynes the latter.

For those who believe in such a schema, or even worse, have chosen sides in this “debate,” there is only one thing that can be said: You have been fooled. You are the victim of a massive swindle, the intention of which is to hide from you the nature of real physical economics. You have been given a contrived choice between two London-created pessimistic ideologies, neither of which will lead to an improvement in the human condition.

Adam Smith

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Sucking on Britain’s Teat

In 1758, Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, followed in 1776 by his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Although some readers may react with outrage, it must be stated, unequivocally, that these two works present a moral philosophy and a system of economics absolutely hostile to the intention of the American Revolution. If you worship Adam Smith, you understand neither George Washington, nor the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble.

All of Smith’s economics proceeds, lawfully, from a pessimistic, bestial view of the human condition. Smith is explicit that he views humankind as a swarm of creatures governed by selfish, sensual impulses, greed, and the “pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain,” to use his own words. For Smith, the purpose of a monetary and commercial system is to increase human pleasure, and that increase in pleasure can be accomplished only through the accumulation of “wealth,” which he defines strictly in monetary terms, i.e., through profits derived from financial speculation or through the trade in monetarily denominated goods. This is the basis for Smith’s notion of the “great mercantile republic,” whereby, through buying and selling commodities and financial contracts (i.e., “buying cheap and selling dear”), monetary wealth might be accumulated.

This deliberate mis-identifying of “money” with “wealth” is not an error that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton or John Quincy Adams would have fallen into. Read Lincoln’s 1858 lecture, “Discoveries and Inventions,” where he is explicit that the sole source of all actual human wealth—all human happiness—lies in the power of the human mind to make new discoveries, i.e., to create revolutionary breakthroughs which transform human productivity and enhance human progress.

middle: lse; right: cc/Ludwig von Mises Institute

Left to right: John Maynard Keynes , Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises

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The United Kingdom has always been an empire based both on oligarchical rule and a monetary notion of wealth. Following Adam Smith, in the early to mid-18th Century, London became the center for what is sometimes called “British Liberal Economics,” often identified with the likes of Jeremy Bentham, Parson Thomas Malthus, James Mill, Mill’s son John Stuart Mill, and Richard Cobden. It is precisely that 19th century British Liberalism which is the common mother to the siblings Keynes and von Hayek.

The primary issue of true economics is the necessity to increase human productivity, to increase mankind’s mastery over the planet, and to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Where is that imperative to be found in either Keynes or in the Austrian School? Nowhere! Yet, that imperative is the basis for all human progress, and indeed the continued survival of the human species. Instead, Keynes and von Hayek both start with the identical ironclad axioms postulated by Smith: 1) Man is a creature governed by his sensual passions, and 2) Those impulses can be satiated only through an accumulation of wealth (money). All that von Hayek and Keynes disagree on is the method by which that oligarchical diktat might best be realized. It is a debate over method, not intent.

Deluded fools sometimes argue that the pursuit of such monetary “wealth” might collectively benefit the Common Good. That was certainly Smith’s argument, one he copied from Bernard Mandeville’s 1714 Fable of the Bees. Victims of that outlook might be advised to begin reading the New Testament, for nowhere in that book will they find postulated the idea that accumulated evil can produce good. Only a fool would buy into an argument grounded in such moral turpitude.

In 1931, Friedrich von Hayek responded to the 1930 publication of John Maynard Keynes’ A Treatise on Money, with a series of lectures at the London School of Economics, delivering a critique which eviscerated Keynes’s work. Down to the present day, that debate between Keynes and von Hayek—a debate which occurred within the imperial British establishment—has been dictated throughout academic circles as the only acceptable basis for discussing economic and monetary policy. This is the only choice you are given—between Keynes and von Hayek, or some variation—and the subservience of both men to the financial empire based in London is never mentioned.

Mathematics & Madness

Even worse, flowing from the influence of David Hilbert, Bertrand Russell, and John von Neumann, we now live in the era of “mathematical economics,” one wherein the “monetary” theories of Keynes, von Hayek, et al. have been merged with the linear mathematical methods of Russell. Money and the accumulation of monetary wealth are the goal, and ever more sophisticated mathematical formulas are the means to achieve that goal. At the center of this is statistical probability theory, another subject about which both Keynes and the Austrians (through the person of Richard von Mises, Ludwig’s brother) wrote major works.

Wikimedia Commons

Commodity speculation: Houston oil traders’ office.

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Although it is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note that on the subjects of money, mathematics, and probability theory, much of the oligarchical ground-work goes back to earlier centuries, to individuals such as Bacon, Newton, Hobbes, Locke and Hume; and even earlier these matters were subjects of intense deliberation in Amsterdam, the financial capital of the Dutch Empire. The roots for all of this flow from an anti-human imperial oligarchical outlook, stretching back over centuries.

The belief in money and the various schemes to manipulate it in order to accumulate “wealth,” is most assuredly a form of mental illness. It is no different from the fever which takes control of the “card counter” in Las Vegas, or the “day trader,” who plugs in a mathematical formula to make a killing in the market. The lottery ticket buyer with his or her “system” falls into the same category. Yet, this is the methodology now hegemonic on Wall Street, in government agencies, in university classrooms, and throughout most of the general public.

Creating Something New

If you want to truly understand how a given society can willfully progress to a future higher level, it is necessary to begin with Gottfried Leibniz’ writings on Physical (not “monetary”) Economics. The next step is to read Alexander Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures. Studying the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt also helps. Finally, take up the study of Lyndon LaRouche’s writings, perhaps beginning with So You Wish to Learn All About Economics, or http://store.larouchepub.com/product-p/eirbk-1984-3-0-0-kindle.htm

Man is the only creature capable of altering his relation with nature; the only creature capable of willfully increasing its per-capita population density; the only creature which progresses. None of this has to do with the manipulation of money.

Left to right: George Washington, portrait by Gilbert Stuart; Alexander Hamilton, portrait by John Trumbull; Abraham Lincoln

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To again reference Abraham Lincoln, the secret to human progress (and happiness) is to be found in his 1858 lecture, “Discoveries and Inventions.” Our ability to make scientific breakthroughs and to use those breakthroughs to accomplish an upward (sometimes revolutionary) shift in the condition of the human species, is unique to mankind, and it is the real subject of economics. It is the only real subject of economics. The issue is human creativity, which generates just such potential progress. Such creativity, such progress is the only basis for optimism, for actual sanity, because it is the only approach which is future-oriented.

Today, there is a great deal of debate about “private versus public” investment, and controversies around issues such as “tax cuts.” The lunacy of much of the chatter surrounding these matters is revealed by the reality that almost all those involved accept the monetarist axioms of economics which were created in London. Take the example of Gross Domestic Product as a supposed measurement of national economic wealth. This actually originated in a 1665 writing of the British aristocrat Sir William Petty, titled Verbum Sapienti. Therein, Petty attempted to define the national wealth of Great Britain by assigning everything in the country a monetary value: land, sheep, salt, housing, ships, etc.—even people. But what does that get you? What truth does it contain? How do you get from there into a better future?

There is only one yardstick for judging correct versus incorrect economic policy. Are the initiatives you are taking (as a nation) and the projects you are funding, going to produce an effect of increasing the productivity of the nation? Will this increase energy utilization per-capita? Will this increase potential relative population density? Will this have the effect of uplifting the conditions and cognitive potential of the population? Will this benefit our posterity?

Any other approach is sterile, dead, and fraudulent. Don’t get fooled (i.e., be foolish) into right versus left scenarios. If the government can get the job done, good. If the private sector can get the job done, good. If selective tax cuts work, do it. If selective tax increases work, do that. If government regulations serve a useful purpose, keep them; if, instead, they are used—as in the case of the Environmental Protection Agency—to enforce a Malthusian agenda, get rid of them. The only goal is upward progress. Break out of the Keynes-versus-von Hayek mental prison of monetarism.

This is precisely where the issue of Hamiltonian Public Credit comes in. Public Credit is not European Central Banking. It is not the Federal Reserve. It is precisely, the elected representatives of the American people, acting through a government-chartered corporation, to ensure that the surplus wealth of the nation is put to constructive work to develop infrastructure, science, technology and other projects which will carry the nation into the future. Hamilton’s system of Public Credit is the only approach which has been historically proven to be capable of accomplishing that goal.

There is daunting work to be done to “Make America Great Again.” We need to build great projects. We need an economic approach which will succeed. We need to build for the future, not simply make money.