Schiller Institute International Conference
June 27, 2020

Will Humanity Prosper, or Perish?
The Future Demands a
‘Four-Power’ Summit Now

Leaders and Youth Examine Every Aspect of a Crisis Summit for World Recovery

Note: We present here the edited transcripts of the first of three panels of the one-day Schiller Institute conference. Reports on the remainder of the conference will be published in future issues. The videos of the conference are available here.

 

In a day-long conference with some two dozen presenters and discussants across its three panels, the Schiller Institute on June 27 thoroughly examined the emergency summit process that major nations’ leaders will have to launch, in order for the human species to survive the multiple, reinforcing crises of pandemic disease, economic collapse and famine.

This is the third in a series of conferences that began with an April 25-26 event. Conference host Dennis Speed noted that, “These conferences were devoted to the idea of the creation of a Four-Power summit—Russia, China, India, and the United States,” and the creation of a New Bretton Woods global credit system.

Current and former government officials from Russia, the United States, China and Japan, as well as constituency and youth activists, discussed the many actions to enable humanity to prosper which could come from such a summit process beginning now, and also talked about their own responsibilities to trigger and amplify that process. The full contents of the first panel are presented in this issue of EIR, and a fuller presentation of the remainder of the conference—fuller than the following notes—will appear in upcoming issues.

The second panel focused on the LaRouche PAC “1.5 billion new, productive jobs worldwide” proposal. U.S. farm leader Mike Callicrate, of the Organization for Competitive Markets, emphasized that the entire structure of current food production characterized by huge multinational cartels dominating processing and distribution, must be broken up, both to allow much more food production, and to return farming to prosperity and create many more high-technology farmers around the world. This is analogous to the urgent matter of breaking up the major international banks by Glass-Steagall legislation, one of the supports of a New Bretton Woods system insisted on by Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Former Trinidad and Tobago Senator and political economist Dr. Kirk Meighoo announced that his party is developing a platform of 150,000 new productive jobs in that nation of 1.3 million, and that the Caribbean nations had to become “producers, not just receivers.”

The third panel opened with a video clip of Lyndon LaRouche addressing a group of young people. He said, “You are part of the ‘no future world’ culture that your parents have given you. You know this. Now what are you going to do about it?” Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted that everyone participating comes from different cultures, yet we are all here because of Lyndon LaRouche—calling to mind that among his many qualities, his love for mankind was his greatest. Retired State Senator Theo Mitchell of South Carolina, an honorary member of this movement, briefed the panel on his joining the fight with Lyndon LaRouche many years ago, and the urgent need for LaRouche’s exoneration.

Daniel Burke was the first of the young speakers from all over the world. He compared the idea of an arbitrary “Thrasymachus authority” with the consent of the governed, asking, “But what do you do when your people have become degenerates?” He was joined by other young leaders from Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Tanzania, Morocco, France, Yemen, and the United States. Their presentations all addressed science education, with LaRouche’s emphasis on the Platonic method of Kepler and Vernadsky.

The problems of the unreality of the social media culture as an economic domain—of youth aspiring to become “influencers” just by selling popular consumer products—generated a useful dialogue. One of the questions posed, Why are you so dismissive of the “gig” economy? Is it really immoral for people to try to make money to survive? The panel responses were compassionate and truthful: “You’re worth more than that. When you die, what will you have contributed? We have to redefine mankind.”