PANEL 2

No ‘Return to Normal’; Only a Paradigm Shift
Can Address Existential Crisis

by Janet G. West

May 8—The second panel “The Method of the Coincidence of Opposites: Only a United Worldwide Health Effort, Without Sanctions, Can Reverse a Worldwide Pandemic,” of the May 8th Schiller Institute Conference brought together leaders from United States, Europe, and South America to address the triune crises of war, famine, and the pandemic.

Dennis Speed, the moderator, used two video clips to situate the discussion within the overarching danger of war, and to address how wars come on. First was a clip from Lyndon LaRouche’s 1999 broadcast, Storm Over Asia, in which he emphasized that Russia will fight back if pushed to the wall, “there lies the danger.” Too many act under the delusion that they can do as they please overseas, but “it won’t come here.” If London and Wall Street’s control of U.S. policy persists, the likelihood will increase, that Russia will fight back to the point of thermonuclear war.

Then a clip from a recent interview with Rear Adm. Marc Pelaez (USN, ret.), who had been a commander of a nuclear submarine during the cold war, on the character of the decision to go to thermonuclear war. Pelaez said that if he had received an order to launch, he would have done so. “The deterrent must be credible,” he said, “My submarine’s capabilities could take out every major city in the United States east of the Mississippi. And, that’s just one submarine!” But, if you did it, “you knew that you’d have nothing to come home to.”

Solving the Unsolvable

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder, made the opening remarks, in which she referred to the crisis in civilization in 1453, with the fall of Constantinople, when the Ottoman Empire captured the Byzantine Empire’s capital, effectively crushing it. The population was savaged by the invaders, and many died. Nicholas of Cusa was faced with the challenge to address this crisis, and how to resolve the enormous hatred of one side for the other in such a way as to come to a higher-level solution. The result of that inspiration was his dialogue, On the Peace of Faith (De Pace Fidei), in which representatives from many nations and faiths came to speak with God in a dialogue as to how they could live in peace.

After a series of questions of seemingly contradictory ideas, and the responses of God, the conclusion was that there is only one truth—that the Universe is lawful, and that all mankind carries the Divine Spark within them; that all human life is sacred. So, she continued, the seemingly diverse perspectives and problems can only be addressed from a higher principle, and this was the Coincidence of Opposites; that the development of the other becomes the primary interest of oneself. It is from this standpoint that she reiterated her call for the creation of a world healthcare system, to start the building of the needed infrastructure in all nations, and that all sanctions have to be eliminated. And, to do that, we must address the moral collapse, particularly within the United States.

The Standard:
‘Moral Excellence’

Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General, spoke to the idea of reviving the “standard of moral excellence”—to do more than what we think we’re capable of doing; to not give up until the goal is accomplished. This standard of moral excellence isn’t just a nice ideal—it’s a necessity. She ran through the statistics: over 2 billion people don’t have access to fresh water; over 2.5 billion experience food insecurity, and 270 million people face potential famine. About 1.2 billion people don’t have access to electricity, and without electricity, you can’t overcome sickness and disease, asserting that the pandemic is a result of the failure of morality, not the failure of medicine.

Since the Declaration of Independence speaks to Inalienable Rights including, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Dr. Elders said that we must now include the access to the means of life—clean water, abundant food and cheap electricity be available to all nations, for without these things, there is no way to have healthcare or life. She called the current policies “the suicidal economics of indifference,” and concluded by calling on all to get involved, to re-acquire the “standard of moral excellence,” and stressed that apathy is the worst pandemic of all.

Dr. Khadijah Lang (U.S.), the Chairman of the National Medical Association (NMA) Council on International Affairs and President, Golden State Medical Association; and Marcia Merry Baker, an expert in physical economics, and member of the EIR Editorial Board, provided the successes and challenges facing the provision of medical care, food, water, and sanitation internationally. Dr. Lang discussed the past work of the NMA in deploying teams and medical supplies to Mozambique, in cooperation with authorities there, to provide health care, and contribute to the training of surgeons. She described the harsh conditions in East Africa, with the recent locust plague, which destroyed crops, followed by successive crises, all of which hit Mozambique hard. When COVID-19 hit, it was devastating because then people could not even go out to get food.

The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, members of the NMA and the Schiller Institute are gathering donations—funding and physical goods—for a “pilot” shipment to go to Mozambique within the next few weeks, combining, medicines, supplies, water purification tablets and food resources. This effort, though small, shows what can be done when people come together for the good of humanity, and how this can inspire full-scale action.

Marcia Merry Baker addressed aspects of this scale-up. The world map of hunger shows 270 million people acutely short of food, and 34 million may die of starvation over the coming months, without emergency aid. Farmers in some of the world’s most high-output regions—the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Argentina—are being squeezed out of operation, by low prices and green dictates, when that production is urgently required. Billionaires including Bill Gates, who is the biggest owner of farmland in the U.S. are shutting down agriculture production.

“Carbon farming,” not food farming, is now pushed by these financial networks. Farmers are supposed to sell “carbon credits” to big corporate speculators. We must prevent and reverse this erosion of agriculture by instituting parity pricing for farmers and ranchers, breaking the monopoly of the agri-business, food processing giants, and expanding production by independent, family-scale farms. The world needs infrastructure-building: In Mozambique, river basins—like the Zambezi and Limpopo, await TVA-style transformation. The beautiful coastline awaits sea walls and levees, to protect against the frequent hurricanes.

Overcoming the COVID Crisis Everywhere

Video clips were shown of German farm leaders done on site at the big tractorcade protests earlier this year. Rainer Seidl, a leader of the Land Creates Connection (Land schafft Verbindung, LsV), was interviewed February 7 at the Bavaria demonstration. He spoke out against the Green Deal Farm-to-Fork restrictions, and the cartel control of the food chain, including supermarkets. Alf Schmidt, an independent farm leader, spoke at the Berlin rally March 23. They both scored the new Green Deal program to “save the insects, not people,” which calls for sharp cuts in pesticides, and other farm inputs, and low prices for their output. They expressed the sentiment: “give us a fair price for our production, and we can feed the world!”

Pastor Robert Smith, the Chairman of the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention, spoke to the conference from Michigan, under the title of “‘Physician, Heal Thy Self’: Saving a Nation in Crisis Through Love.” He recounted the trial of facing the many deaths in his own community from Covid, and the strength required to refresh ourselves with the springs of love, springs that are a God given core of our humanity.

Luis Vasquez spoke from Peru, presenting, “Do Not Forget: The Global Concentration Camp Oven Is Now Nuclear.” A long-time member of the of the Schiller Institute, he began by recounting that he and his wife were recently ill with the new variant of COVID-19, and had it not been for help from their family, it were unlikely that they would’ve survived. Suffering the devastation wrought by neo-liberal economics, their nation now has no services, no schools, no transportation, and getting COVID-19 is equivalent to a death sentence. In all of Lima, there are no available ICU beds with oxygen respirators; any ICU bed has a wait list of up to 300 people. A cylinder of oxygen costs $1,000; a small refill costs $200. “If you can’t pay, you die. This is a holocaust … the extremes have been reached … we are in a global concentration camp.”

We can look to the wrong economic decisions being made since 1974 as the instigators of this current tragedy; the world economy is a casino on the edge of bankruptcy. We must mobilize our R&D capabilities in every country; we know that we can accomplish these things because man is creative. We are all interlinked now, and concern for others is not just moral, but scientifically true.

Dr. Walter Faggett (U.S.), Former Chief Medical Officer, Washington D.C. Department of Health, and currently co-chair of the D.C. Ward 8 Health Council, addressed the successes they’ve seen in coordinating cooperation between community organizations, churches, universities and community health workers in increasing the rate of COVID-19 immunization in D.C. He was joined by Ms. Genita Finley (U.S.), 2nd year Medical Student and designer of the Mississippi Delta Medical Extension School Program, who discussed how her program was successful in bringing more students into the healthcare track, and in helping them to overcome issues of a sense of identity of not being “smart enough” to be a healthcare worker. The Mississippi Delta is one of the greatest concentrations of rural poverty in the nation.

A Dialogue of Creativity

Antonio Sánchez of the International LaRouche Youth Movement spoke both on Venezuela and Chile, and how the U.S. sanctions are devastating the Venezuelan economy, which in turn affects other countries of South America. He discussed some of the statistics—for example, 95% of Venezuela’s income is from their oil exports (and is largely in U.S. dollars); assets on deposit in other countries are frozen; wages have collapsed by 24-fold. Both Chile and Venezuela are reeling from the economic collapse and the effects of COVID-19. The only way to solve this is from the highest level and extensive cooperation between nations with needed infrastructure for power and water development.

The lively and extensive question and answer discussion centered around the question of how to overcome the policies that led to these crises, and how youth can get involved and contribute. There was general agreement that everyone—every nation—is now faced with these crises, and that everyone must be involved in some way with the solution and the Coincidence of Opposites. There are many opportunities for the youth to become active with this effort. Fundamentally, the only way to change the direction of humanity is to change our way of thinking.

Time and again, Helga Zepp-LaRouche brought the discussion back to man’s creative abilities and underscored how imperial policies rely on the strategy of “divide and conquer” and to manipulate populations against one another. But, if we recall how large the Universe is—citing the famous speech by Sarah Al Amiri, pointing up to the heavens, and remarking how no matter where your finger points in the sky, there are billions of galaxies, we can reflect on man’s ability to solve problems. Mrs. LaRouche stressed that there are no limits to man’s creativity. These crises can be solved through the Coincidence of Opposites.

She passionately appealed to the participants and the viewers, saying that mankind has come so far in a very short period of time (geologically speaking); nuclear war will annihilate our species. Is the work of all those human beings that came before us, for nothing?! Was the Renaissance for nothing?! Was the work of the American Founding Fathers for nothing?! She closed the conference saying that we can expect to see a dramatic worsening of the world situation., but the crisis can be an opportunity to change the paradigm. We must make the Coincidence of Opposites a defining institution, and we must invoke a higher and new morality among people if mankind is to survive.