Public Discussion

This is an edited transcript of the public discussion following the presentations to the Development Panel of the April 9, 2022 Schiller Institute Conference, “To Establish a New Security and Development Architecture for All Nations.” Participating were panel speakers Dennis Speed, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and Princy Mthombeni, joined by Mirwais Popal of the Peace National Front of Afghanistan, with Jason Ross, Science Liaison of the Schiller Institute, as moderator.

Jason Ross: Daud Azimi was unable to join us, but in his place is another member of the Peace National Front of Afghanistan, Mirwais Popal. Helga, your reflections on this panel as a whole?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I’m very inspired by the presentation by Princy, because I fully agree with what Xi Jinping said at a BRICS conference in South Africa [July 25-27, 2018], that the future of Africa is the brightest, because the average age of the people there is very young, and by the year 2050, Africa will have 2.5 billion people. If we move in the direction as Princy was saying, and all these young people will get a good education, and then we will have to create many, many millions of jobs—hundreds of millions of new, productive jobs. I think that—and I don’t want to say this in any way negative to China—but I think Africa has the potential to be the new China with African characteristics.

So, I’m very encouraged by what she said, because I do think that if some of the so-called Western countries are losing somehow the fiber—and sometimes I think they do that—well then, let’s take the torch of development elsewhere and then maybe Africa and Asia, in the spirit of Bandung will be the bearers of a future hope for all of mankind, including Europe and the United States.

Ross: Let me start questions with a couple of them that came in on the world health system. One from Norway: “Every human being on our planet is entitled from the time they take their first breath until their last, to good food, proper clothing, proper housing, medical care, and basic education. These needs we all share, no matter our race, nationality, etc. How can we secure these rights for everyone on the planet, to eradicate poverty and give every person the liberty to pursue their own happiness, which is the real reason that we exist?”

Dennis Speed: Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech called the Four Freedoms, and in that speech he talked about Freedom from Want. He gave this speech, because he wanted to correct what he knew was already a problem—this was during the course of the war, and of course that war would take, depending on who you listen to, between 60 million and 100 million people, depending on how you count it; 27 million people in the Soviet Union alone. But he recognized that the war was actually caused by the imperial systems that had existed—we’re talking about Portugal, France, Britain—and he wanted to eliminate this. This was, of course, a big source of his fight with Churchill. Well, he didn’t live to do that.

But this idea of Freedom from Want, a central component of what he called the Four Freedoms, is the last of the freedoms to be ever invoked, or brought up. Whenever you’re hearing about any of these conferences about human rights—the United States, Britain, various other countries love to do conferences about human rights—they never talk about the Four Freedoms, and the notion of Freedom from Want as being, as Roosevelt had defined it, essential to preventing the outbreak of another world war.

I would submit that I agree, first of all, with the premises that the questioner puts forward. But I would also submit that it was precisely the rejection of Roosevelt’s idea about what the postwar world was going to be, and the triumph, unfortunately, at least temporarily, of the British and other imperial views, including the cooptation of the United States against that outlook. And I think that what we have to do is to fight, to overturn that unfortunate turn of events.

Ross: I’d like to turn to Mirwais Popal, to get your thoughts on how it would possible to create development in the world, so that every person has the requirements for a life that they deserve, and in particular, if you have anything to add on the issue of health care, or of Afghanistan’s situation in that.

Mirwais Popal: [via interpreter] Hello, good evening. In the case of Afghanistan this is so acute. We have this continuing war-like situation in Afghanistan which is forcing people to flee from the situation. You’ve all seen the pictures of refugees coming into Europe. This shows very much the necessity to do something about it. Despite the fact that the situation is known, the international community has done nearly nothing. They have even frozen Afghanistan’s funds, and half of that money is supposed to be going to the victims of 9/11. At this time, only $34 million per month is being used to support aid for Afghanistan. That is really a drop in the bucket. It’s really nothing and it has to be changed.

Ross: There are a couple of questions that have come in on energy policy, on nuclear in particular. One of them is about big monetary institutions like BlackRock and others that are making an effort to use finance and environmental and sustainability and governance goals to prevent the construction of fossil fuel plants, to support green energy. But from this, is usually excluded nuclear power. Princy Mthombeni, you addressed many of these in your presentation, many of the claims that are used to say nuclear power is inappropriate, especially for African countries. Do you have anything to say to the efforts to prevent nuclear from being developed in the world?

Nuclear Power and Human Rights

Princy Mthombeni: Yes, I have a lot to say when it comes to that, because, really, if the world is serious about mitigating climate change, they would not be selective in the technologies that are available and are suited to achieve that. And therefore, really, it makes me question the agenda in this whole climate change thing, to say, is it really honest? Are we really having honest and scientific discussions when it comes to mitigating climate changes? Or, is it really one of those global agendas of dominance.

If you want clean air, or if you want a world where climate change is mitigated, therefore, you would include nuclear as part of the energy mix, especially if, really, the development of our economies matter. Because, at the end of the day, what I have seen happening is that, we have the people who are more focussed on mitigating climate change, while they are neglecting developmental issues, which I find as hypocrisy. That’s just my take on it.

I also saw a comment about African leaders being corrupt. It’s on the chat. So I just want to also touch on that, to say, corruption does not come in race. Anyone can be corrupt, anywhere else in the world. And secondly, the comment that says, African governments cannot handle nuclear: we have a nuclear power plant in South Africa. We have been working with nuclear development in Africa since 1965. South Africa is an African country: It is about to build another nuclear power plant. So therefore, if this country is able to handle nuclear power plants, any country anywhere else in Africa can be able to also achieve it.

Lastly, government officials do not manage nuclear power plants. There are processes that the governments have to undergo in order for the International Atomic Energy Agency to assess the readiness of the country in terms of building nuclear infrastructure. When you get assessed, you don’t just get a license handed over to you. So, it’s not government officials handling nuclear power plants, but scientists and engineers under the guidance of regulatory authorities, including the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Ross: Dr. Koo addressed this issue of corruption a bit in Panel 2, but I think one of the things it brings up, you know, is when people talk about “corruption,” they often mean administrative corruption. But think about the amount of corruption of intent that exists in such institutions as the World Bank, the IMF, NATO. What is the intent of these institutions? What about corruption at that level?

Let’s ask a question on that, and pose it to whomever would like to take it. This comes from Étienne in France, who writes, “I’m watching the conference, and I’m surprised that in a discussion about putting humanity on a path toward progress today, we have not spoken more about a real enemy, who is sabotaging economies in every country, even pushing a new world war. By this I mean, the Malthusian- and eugenics-oriented oligarchy, historically pivoted around the British monarchy, and pushing depopulation today through a climate goal, global war, economic catastrophe. Can we be rid of them, and be happy to build a multipolar world?”

Speed: The whole idea of the world health platform Helga Zepp-LaRouche put forward, at the time she put it forward, was often misunderstood by people. It was a very important—rather brilliant, actually—flank against the Malthusians. By the way, the Malthusians also run the climate change process: I mean, you’re talking about the fact that the fundamental opposition is to the development, growth of prosperity, particularly of black Africa. And that is not any exaggeration at all. That’s something that was expressed and has been expressed over the course of the last hundred years, by many, whether we’re talking about Lothrop Stoddard of the United States, who wrote the book The Rising Tide of Color against the White World Supremacy, and who was the originator, by the way, of the term Untermensch, as in Untermenschen [subhumans]. That did not originate in Germany, that originated in the United States.

So, whether we’re talking about people like that, or about Winston Churchill, the famous great patriot—race patriot by the way. That’s been the case for a long time.

Now the problem is, and often has been, that many have become angry about that, and many in different parts of the world, black, brown, yellow, and so forth, have been angry about this, but there’s something different in what China has done, and there’s something different in what was just proposed, what we just heard.

It’s interesting that in the course of the discussion, this business about African corruption comes up, and then people say, “Africa can’t handle nuclear power.” I’d like to call attention to one individual by the name of Cheikh Anta Diop, a physicist from Senegal, who ran the Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of Senegal in Dakar. Faced with this sort of unspoken and spoken racism, he took the Theory of Relativity of Einstein, and translated it into Wolof. He did this, because, his argument was, that he wanted to demonstrate that it was possible for a profound set of ideas to be translated into an African language, and that in fact, Africa need not speak English or French or Spanish as a primary language, including in scientific affairs.

Diop was also a fierce proponent of advanced technologies in nuclear power in particular, including thermonuclear fusion. And in his book Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State [1960], he explicitly described thermonuclear fusion and the fact that if that were achieved, as a result of the development of nuclear fission, that you could have a situation where power could be generated for literally thousands of years.

It’s these kinds of ideas which are hated by various of these oligarchies, including people like Prince Charles and others who talk about a Great Reset or talk about the idea of putting the world on a “war-like footing” to reduce the “carbon footprint.” Well, I know a lot of these people think carbon is dirty and black, and they think that that black footprint should be reduced.

I happen to believe that the world is a lot better than that. I think that what we’ve heard and seen coming from China, in particular, what we’ve heard, and also coming from Russia and other countries, and their commitment to a forward approach, means that we can defeat the Malthusian disease. And I think the importance of what was done with the world health platform as Helga first put it forward, was to bring in an attempt to bring that into play, in a way which does not threaten people: It’s nonviolent, it’s creative, and it’s direct, and it’s necessary.

Zepp-LaRouche: Let me just add to that. If you look at the way how the refugee question is being discussed right now, in Europe, there was a wide reception, open arms, for the Ukrainian refugees, by countries like Poland, which only a few weeks ago, had in the most brutal way turned back refugees coming from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Some Western politicians said, “Oh, the Ukrainians are so much like us,” meaning white.

I think that there is an unexpressed, underlying racism—Malthusianism—which comes down to the same thing sometimes. Why is it that the Afghan crisis is not being discussed? I think it was David Beasley from the World Food Program, who said that the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan was the biggest one on the planet. And that takes into account the equally horrible situation in Yemen, the absolutely, still horrendous situations in Syria, and Haiti, which we discussed.

So I think that in not discussing these issues, including emphatically Afghanistan, maybe people don’t mind. What other conclusion should you come to, but that they take this into account, since some people think there are too many people anyway. “Overpopulation” was a famous invention by David Rockefeller III, which I encountered in 1974 at the Bucharest World Population Conference. I mean, there is an underlying idea that there are too many people, and if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse takes care of that—death, war, disease, and famine—then, so be it.

That is why we are doing what we are doing, and why we want to have, and need to have, an international movement of people who basically express the will and the right to development for the majority of the human population, and that happens to be the countries of Africa, of Asia. It’s something we are in the process of changing, by broadening the discussion, and one of the good things is that we can discuss these things with people from all continents in the same way. We are breaking through an utmost controlled environment of the mainstream media in the Western countries, which is completely in lockstep. We heard earlier about the huge censorship. The only way how to break through that is to broaden the discussion to the whole international community.

LaRouche’s Strategic Defense Initiative

Ross: I have a question that is specific to you, Helga, and then I’d like to go around and have everybody weigh in with their reflections. This question is about Lyndon LaRouche’s conception of the Strategic Defense Initiative as an earlier precedent of the idea of the Coincidence of Opposites, in the sense of a proposal for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to work together on missile defense.

Could you describe how that policy plays a role as an idea today, and also its similarity to the Treaty of Westphalia. And if you like, if you could say anything about how it was crushed as a concept at that time?

Zepp-LaRouche: The idea was generated by Lyn, by my late husband. We had a scientific magazine, called Fusion, which had at its high point 150,000 subscriptions, which for a scientific magazine is a lot. And in that capacity, we studied all kinds of technological developments, including the development of defensive beam weapons, of laser weapons.

All of a sudden, we realized that the main author in Russia stopped publishing. We started to investigate, and we saw that the Soviets at that point were developing a point-defense system for Moscow. At the same time, you had the [1979] mid-range missile crisis, where Pershing IIs and SS-20s were only a few minutes apart from each other in NATO and the Warsaw Pact. These systems were permanently on high alert, because the warning time was so short, that if one side would have seen even one of these nuclear missiles on the radar screen, it could have led to an automatic launch, because otherwise it would have been too late.

The world was living, literally, under the Damocles Sword of a nuclear extinction, very much like now. The only difference was, at that time we had a very powerful peace movement, and many, many people were extremely aware that we were on the verge of World War III. For example, Helmut Schmidt, who was Chancellor of Germany at that time, repeatedly said we are on the verge of World War III, and he blamed in particular [President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski, who—one of our contacts told us—Helmut Schmidt once kicked out of his office in Hamburg, saying the policies he was pushing were threatening the existence of mankind.

So, it was a very hot situation. My husband looked at the situation, and said that the greatest danger to world peace comes at the moment when one side is about to develop weapons based on new physical principles, making the nuclear weapons of the other side potentially obsolete. That this could create a situation whereby the one side would be tempted to use these weapons while they still would work.

This was a situation which in many ways was extremely dangerous—I would say, not as dangerous as now, but very, very dangerous; so, my husband developed the idea that the West should cooperate with the Soviet Union in the development of these new weapons systems based on new physical principles. This was a very elaborated scheme whereby four systems of such weapons would have been developed: One, to basically target the missiles when they were in the boost phase, when they’re still relatively slow; then two systems to catch the missiles in trajectory, and then a fourth, point-defense system, which basically meant it would be 100% secure, that you catch every missile. And more important, that for the first time, a system was possible which would have been cheaper in the defense than in the offense. So, you would have basically worked out against the possibility of an aggressive system.

This was a revolutionary proposal. We went around and had conferences in Washington, in Rome, in Paris, and in Bonn (the capital of West Germany was then in Bonn); we were in discussion with the entire military of Europe! I remember, we had several events in Bonn with people from the Defense Ministry, with all kinds of generals from France. The French were very skeptical, because they immediately recognized that it would have destroyed their system of défense tous azimuts [total defense], but they were very interested, because they saw it was workable.

In this context, my husband developed contact with the National Security Adviser of President Reagan, [William Clark, Jr.], who encouraged us to have back-channel discussions with the Soviets, which we did for one full year. And there was a serious discussion: What would they do if the United States and the Soviet Union would together make investments in technologies which make nuclear weapons technologically obsolete. It went back and forth, and then, after one full year of such back-channel discussions, we got the answer from Moscow, which was, “No!” Why? Because the estimation was that the development of such systems would help the West more than the Soviet Union.

But that was not the end of it. This was in February 1983. One month later, on March 23, President Reagan appeared on American TV and announced something to be the official American security policy, which he called the Strategic Defense Initiative. Immediately, all hell broke loose! Some of our experts were called by the TV networks, they were interviewed. There was turmoil on both sides in Washington—a certain faction completely went wild. The same happened in Moscow.

There were many, many slanders in the Soviet media, calling my husband a “troglodyte,” calling me “Teutonia” [laughs], with pictures associated. In any case, this was not what the media made out of this—“Star Wars.” They said this is an effort to militarize space, which it was not. As a matter of fact, it was an absolutely revolutionary proposal. President Reagan had understood the concept and even offered to the Soviets that the United States would help the Soviets to apply these new technologies in the civilian economy to boost the productivity of that civilian economy, because that’s where the Soviets had bottlenecks, which you could see. For example, 40% of their agriculture product would rot because they didn’t have the infrastructure to get it to market.

The idea that you would take a technological leap which would create a completely different platform, would have actually saved the Soviet Union. But at that point, there were other plans, like the Ogarkov Plan, why this was rejected.

What my husband proposed was an absolutely revolutionary idea, because it was the idea that both the West, the United States, but also Europe, would develop together with the Soviet Union, these new systems. It would create an absolute jump in the productivity of the economy, and that would then be used to make a joint, huge technology transfer to the developing countries, so you would stop using the developing countries as proxies for wars for the superpowers; and at the same time, the proposal included the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, to overcome the blocs, and have instead a peaceful cooperation for overcoming the underdevelopment of the developing sector, in a joint operation.

Now, this was an absolute vision, in overcoming the Cold War, of overcoming the bloc formation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. At least for eight months this was officially the policy of President Reagan.

In the Cold War you had two military blocs, that were—you know—the high point was the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we came very, very close to an actual nuclear war, which was only avoided due to the wisdom of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, who had a much better understanding then than that between the United States and Russia today. But it was the thinking that you overcome a seemingly impossible conflict by establishing a higher level of joint development.

That thinking was actually the same idea, or the same principle which guided us, when we proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge, when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, to integrate the Eurasian continent through a development perspective by building corridors which would unite the population and industrial centers of Europe with those of Asia. That was also sabotaged because some people thought the crushing of Russia into a Third World raw materials exporting country was better than allowing the development of the Eurasian continent.

This same idea was later implemented by China with the Belt and Road Initiative, so it is absolutely moving forward.

And naturally, what we are proposing today with an international security architecture is the same idea, that peace can only occur through development and that you create something which is in the benefit of all and therefore, you create a higher level of cooperation than would exist on the level where the conflicts appear. It’s all really one tradition.

The IDB, which I mentioned earlier, the International Development Bank idea of my husband from 1975 had the same basic concept.

In a way, if you study the work of our movement for the last 50 years, it has been absolutely consistent. Sometimes the tactic changed because of the changed circumstances, but our commitment was all the time the same: that we absolutely have to overcome the underdevelopment of the developing countries as the absolute basis for peace in the entire world.

In Conclusion—Energy, Health Care, Industrialization

Ross: Let’s now move on to concluding statements. Let me first just pose to Princy another couple of questions that came in for you, but feel free to respond in general to whatever thoughts you’d like to share with our audience.

This comes from somebody associated with the University of Lagos, and the founder of what seems to be a consulting firm. They ask: “What are your thoughts on improving energy access in Nigeria, in the absence of cost-reflective tariffs for public power supply services?” That’s a very specific one.

And then, on overall energy access being a human rights issue: Which of the following qualities should guide Africa toward reducing energy poverty? Safety, cleanliness, durability, availability, affordability? What’s important in crafting an energy policy?

Mthombeni: To answer the second question first, I think that all those should be taken into consideration. Affordability and environmentally friendly or environmentally acceptable, cost-effective, all those should be taken into consideration. However, my take is that—I will make an example with COVID-19—we’ve had a pandemic, and because it was a pandemic, people’s lives mattered even more than the cost issues. We found ourselves as different governments having to get vaccines—very expensive vaccines—in our countries. To me, the issue of access to energy in Africa has become pandemic, and it should be treated exactly like that.

I don’t think people’s lives really should be prioritized or should be compared to— There’s no [assignable] value to a human life. That’s just my take. In the name of “affordability,” are we saying about people who cannot afford access to electricity, that they should die?

And really, I grew up, especially in school, having to hear stories that a kid died in their house, just because of a candle light, or because of charcoal burning. Those are stories that we hear, and somewhere, somehow, they become “normal.” And whenever issues of energy access or issues of climate change are discussed, those are things that we tend to ignore, which to me, are also important.

While the cost-effective should be taken into consideration in deciding on the energy choices that the Africans need, but also, I always say: If people say it is expensive, why don’t we choose our capital wisely? Because if you get a nuclear power plant that you are going to operate for even 100 years, as opposed to getting a plant that you consider cheap but you only operate for a few years, and the same plant will not be able to give you electricity when you most need it. So it’s a matter of choosing the capital cost wisely.

That’s just my take. Now, as to the first question: That post on Facebook that I saw today actually reflected African countries that use electricity the most, and Nigeria was not there! Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa, it was really surprising. Because, when you look at Nigeria—I have had engagements with their officials who, it was funny to hear him say, when I asked, “How many people have access to electricity in Nigeria?” he couldn’t tell me! And then, he was saying, “It depends on what you mean about access to electricity.” I’m like, “It doesn’t depend on anything: how many people have access to electricity 24/7?” He said, “Some people may have electricity for a few hours a day.”

I’ve never been to Nigeria, but from what I gather, most people really use generators. Those who use generators, by the way, are those people who can afford generators, because they’re expensive.

So, I really believe that the countries like Nigeria should prioritize giving access to energy to all people. It’s even good that they do have natural gas, which I believe that they intend to expand on that. But I’ve also heard on the news that they are taking into consideration building a 4 GW nuclear power plant, which is really good.

And lastly, yes, Nigeria does need an energy mix. That includes both nuclear and renewables.

Ross: Let’s turn now for concluding thoughts, first to Mirwais Popal.

Popal: [via interpreter] Talking about energy needs, obviously, this is one of the major problems for Afghanistan, which has practically no energy sources of its own. All the energy has to be imported. And though it does have water, and that water could be harnessed with hydro-power plants, but in the 20 years of occupation, nothing was done to do that. Therefore, the country doesn’t have the energy that it needs. And so, it’s obvious, for future development, Afghanistan has to develop its energy production, whether it’s hydro-power, or renewables, or whatever.

Another problem is that there are many countries that would like to invest in Afghanistan, but one of the obstacles to that is that the government of Afghanistan is not recognized, and therefore, many of these investors, they just have no one really to turn to that is recognized internationally as representing Afghanistan. And that is another obstacle that has to be dealt with, so that we can use these investors and they can come into the country and help build it up.

The situation is completely absurd because when the Western powers left the country, they left military equipment in the value of $85 billion in the hands of the Taliban. And now they don’t recognize the Taliban government; they have created a situation where there is ungovernability, and that increases the influence of even more radical groups like Islamic State.

Another aspect is in Pakistan, where there is also Taliban, and they are in a war against the Pakistani government. Pakistan is a nuclear weapons power and has 100 million inhabitants. If that situation is not rectified, then the whole region is threatened with destabilization even further.

The problem for the last 20 years was that the Western powers have based the administration of Afghanistan on strengthening the different ethnic communities within Afghanistan, and now there’s talk about dividing the country up into separate entities among the four largest of these ethnic entities. That would create a new civil war, like in the 1980s, when the whole country was completely destroyed, because you have the Taliban, representing the biggest ethnic group, and they wouldn’t agree to that; and then the whole country would be thrown into a war situation.

Speed: I happen to have on my bookshelf, this book, The Industrialization of Africa. This was done by Helga’s Fusion Energy Foundation in 1978 in Germany.

It’s interesting to think over where we are today and what we see in terms of this proposal for a world health platform, what it relates to. Helga already referenced her 1974 intervention in Bucharest against the Rockefellers, John D. Rockefeller and his plans for depopulation. I think she got chased around that conference, if I’m not mistaken, by Margaret Mead, who was carrying a kind of stick that she was going after Helga with! That same Margaret Mead, a year later, became the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. So, what happened in America was that the Malthusians got control of that.

We didn’t give up. Against the Malthusian organization, the Club of Rome, Helga founded the Club of Life organization, which explicitly campaigned for the ideas of Pope Paul VI and others, that “development is the new name for peace,” and that the more people you had the better: That human beings are the primary resource that exists in the universe, because we’re capable of reinventing ourselves, and in fact, discovering and inventing resources as a whole.

The Schiller Institute was founded in 1984, as was an attempt to try to educate particularly the American State Department about the proposals that, for example, Lyndon LaRouche had made, but the basis upon which he was making those proposals. Now, as you can see from the product that is there now, that project didn’t work.

In 1985, the following year, I remember that we did a demonstration in Washington, D.C. And for this demonstration, many of the people who still survived from the American Civil Rights movement joined us for that demonstration, and the theme was, as we called it, “We Have Dream: Feed Africa and Build the Beam,” referring to the laser technologies that were the actual subject of what this “beam weapons” proposal that Helga went through at great extent there, was all about. It was all about trying to create a revolution in the capabilities of production and of creativity of humanity. And by making a defensive system that was cheaper than the cost of killing one another, it made it impossible that that system could not be understood.

When you look now at this idea of a world health platform, look at the health of the trans-Atlantic sector; compare, for example, what was done in China in the early days of the spread of the coronavirus in particular, or what’s going on there, now, compared to the fact that we’re looking at an acceptance of millions of people dead.

For example, in the United States itself, we talk about a “new normal.” What’s “normal” about that? No, that’s a new abnormal! And the concept is, that we’re saying that the billions of people on the planet that require not only to be kept secure against disease, but more importantly, health care: They require to be able to have a prosperous, long life, because that long life is where you get the greatest value out of not just “the labor force” from the standpoint of the number of hours they work—no.

It’s the knowledge, it’s the creativity, it’s the development of these capabilities, the development of the capability to undo your own axioms, to actually learn how to learn, to learn that the things that you believe at any one moment are subject to being revolutionized, not because you’re being brainwashed, but because, actually, you’re discovering something at a profounder level, and you’re discovering it from other cultures and other people. And that you don’t have to be afraid of the world because you’re ignorant of the world. This concept, the concept around the idea of health, mental health, as well as the physical wellbeing of humanity, is what’s posed by the idea.

Clearly, there’s an urgent situation in every respect. Helga mentioned the Four Horsemen—war, famine, pestilence, and disease—some people also include “death” as one of the Four, since pestilence and disease are similar things. But the concept is that you have to have a love of humanity, a notion of humanity that sees it as being naturally good, and, in fact, the most advanced part of the natural world!

Louis Pasteur once said, “Disseminate laboratories. It is there that humanity becomes greater, stronger, and better.” That’s exactly the idea: the great laboratory of the human mind, and the great laboratory of our time is, can we manage to pull ourselves together, as a single idea, as a single culture, and use the best of humanity in the ways in which it was meant to be done.

And so, I just want to point out to people that the idea of the world health program, and the details of it are something we can discuss; they’ve been in many documents in many different ways, and actually, also, it’s a very complex thing which has to be really figured out. So, it poses a way that everybody can collaborate, can “come to the table,” as they say, and especially with all their differences.

We’ve heard a lot of differences all day today. Some people are upset that we were hearing all these differences. Frankly, it’s precisely by hearing the differences and reconsidering what you think you know, that we ourselves become better and can improve. That’s the only clear pathway forward, something that Lyndon LaRouche always taught any of us that met him: That exactly at the point you believe that you have reached the limits of your knowledge, recognize that that means you’ve only begun to learn, and you have to recommit, sort of rebuild everything in the way in which you’re thinking. Because there’s a completely new world outside of you, outside of what you know, and it’s better than the one that you’ve inhabited.

Ross: I’d like to acknowledge some of the other questions that came in. We’re not going to be able to answer them here, but I just want to share what kind of things we’ve been getting in:

There was a question about universal basic income; there was a question about the national credit system, as opposed to the Wall Street system; there was a question about the Belt and Road Initiative; there was a question about building a Bering Strait connection between Alaska and Siberia; there’s a comment that came in from another person from Nigeria, saying they’re in support of the call for a formation of a Schiller Institute movement; there’s a question about how a world health care system would be different from something administered by the WHO, which the questioner doesn’t hold in high esteem; so that’s just a sense of some of the other questions that came in.

Princy, if you have just one other short comment you’d like to make, please take a minute now, if you’d like to. And then, we’ll turn to Helga for the conclusion of the conference [see separate article].

Mthombeni: In conclusion, I would like to say to the world: Africa is the next global powerhouse of the future. And it is up to the world on whether they want to join, or they want to be left behind. To my nuclear community: I invite you all to come and help us build more nuclear power plants in Africa. Thank you.