EDITORIAL

Our Humanity Will Be Our Cure:
The Statecraft of Durable Survival

We report here on LaRouche PAC’s internet Town Hall Meeting of April 11, 2020. The meeting presented Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call—in light of the now unfolding COVID-19 pandemic—for the creation of a worldwide health system that is fully modern in terms of infrastructure and qualified staffing. Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche keynoted the meeting, speaking from Germany. She was joined by Ramasimong Philip Tsokolibane, the leader of the LaRouche movement in South Africa, speaking from Evaton, near Johannesburg; LaRouche PAC leader Kesha Rogers, speaking from Houston; Professor Dr. Mario Roberto Morales, speaking from Guatemala; and Harley Schlanger, who prepares and presents LaRouche PAC’s daily video briefings. The meeting was moderated by Diane Sare in Manhattan. We present here only the briefest of reports; the full video of the event may be viewed here.

Taking place on Holy Saturday, at a time of a grave international crisis, the April 11 international webcast began with a reading of excerpts from a 2002 document by Lyndon LaRouche, “Easter: A Time for Reflection,” an offering which today resonates in its message. LaRouche writes:

What meaning shall you then assign to the notion, that Christ came to save humanity from something awful? Consider the awful historical evidence which situates the events celebrated in the Christian’s present Holy Week. To discover that meaning, you must set aside the popular misconceptions of words such as “spiritual,” and situate the personality of Christ in a way which all of the greatest scientists have taught us to do, by their example, and as I show you, once again, now. They have taught us, as Socrates did, and as the great Moses Mendelssohn has done, that mankind’s universe is essentially a spiritual world. They have taught us, that the challenge to each of us, is to see it as a real universe, an efficient reality which unmasks the illusory shadows of sense-certainty....

In the domain of physical science, the essential function of the term “spiritual,” originates in proof of a fundamental difference between man and beast. The rigorous definition of that term of science was introduced to European civilization by Plato, who demonstrated the meaning of the term through his Socratic dialogues. All success in the progress of modern physical science, was set into motion through modern Europe’s rediscovery of that significance of those dialogues; dialogues which typify what are otherwise known among qualified theologians as “spiritual exercises.” ...

It is the power of discovery and communication of such principles, a power unique to the human individual, which defines the nature of mankind....

Such is the nature of man, and such must be the ordering of social relations among all persons.

We Are All ‘Brothers and Sisters’

The primary theme running throughout the webcast was “that we are all in this together,” that this is not a time for nation to turn against nation, for culture to turn against culture, or for the toleration of an oligarchical Malthusian policy of triage and mass murder against the poorest and most defenseless nations of the world. This is a global war against the COVID-19 pandemic, and only by nations working together, helping each other and rectifying injustices of the past, will this fight be won.

Ramasimong Philip Tsokolibane, in the greater Johannesburg area, the leader of the LaRouche South Africa movement, described in horrifying detail the conditions which now exist both in his own nation and throughout the African continent. Still in the early phase of the pandemic, already 52 of the 54 African nations have reported more than 10,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 500 deaths from the virus, according to the World Health Organization’s report of April 7.

Without a massive intervention, it is likely that the spread of the virus will explode across the continent. Additionally, Tsokolibane reported on the recent resurgence of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the devastating locust plague now raging in East Africa. The people of Africa are extremely vulnerable in facing this crisis. Poverty, hunger and malnutrition are rampant. Seventy percent of Africans are without electricity, and Africa possesses only one doctor for every 5,000 people (compared to 20 doctors per 5,000 in Europe).

Tsokolibane pointed to the financial and economic policies of the British Empire, the World Bank and the IMF—which have crippled Africa with a debt cycle of usurious, never-ending loans that have deliberately stymied in-depth development—as the root cause for the conditions in Africa today. As a result, he stated:

We do not have hospitals, we do not have hospital equipment. This was done deliberately through the policy of depopulation. Maybe they were planning for such days—when we need that infrastructure, it won’t be there; people will just die.... In South Africa, the policies that have been implemented all along killed our culture, killed our infrastructure—especially in health.... These are the policies of the IMF.

Asked by Helga Zepp-LaRouche if he had a message for the people of Europe and the United States, Tsokolibane replied:

To think about us as brothers and sisters. They mustn’t [wait to] get a call from Heaven that asks them, “Where are your brothers?” African countries are crying that we are facing all these crises. They don’t have to wait for us to ask. They’ve got their ambassadors, high commissioners, in every country, more or less, in Africa. I think those ambassadors are in our countries specifically for such things—to know what’s happening. Yes, we cry that we need help, but at times they just give promises. They come up with pledges, but those do not materialize. So, one can think that all they want is for Africa to die. But if you have bread, why don’t you give your brother or sister a piece of that bread? Because we are human beings, we are not just cattle to be driven to the slaughtering house. So, please, please help us!

Ending Oligarchical Economics

Picking up on the theme introduced by Tsokolibane, Professor Mario Roberto Morales of the University of San Carlos in Guatemala presented a graphic picture of the oligarchical nature of Guatemalan society and Guatemala’s economy, and how that oligarchy is maintained in power with the collusion of the World Bank and international financial institutions. He described how the people of Guatemala are only able to survive day-to-day from the money sent back into the country, by the huge number of illegal Guatemalan immigrants in the United States sending funds to their family members back home.

Guatemala currently reports 120 positive cases of the coronavirus, but as in the case of the African nations, the amount of testing done so far has been minuscule, so the true spread of the virus is unknown. Also identical to many African nations, the impoverished population has very limited access to health care, or no access at all, so there is nothing standing in the way of an explosive increase in transmission and mortality.

Professor Morales stated that what is urgently required is a more free capitalism—a capitalism of equal opportunities—a new system in which capital serves material, physical activity, and not capitalism based on unpayable loans and domination by international corporations.

One Humankind

Pointing to the conditions described by Professor Morales and Philip Tsokolibane, Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated that the only solution to this horrific picture is to “build up a world health system, a decent health system in every single country.” She called for a world-wide standard of health care modeled on the U.S. Hill-Burton standard of 1946, with regard to the number of hospitals per geographic region, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people, the number of doctors and trained hospital staff per 1,000 people, as well as a dramatic increase in life-saving hospital equipment, such as the ventilators so urgently required right now.

To accomplish this will require more than doubling of the current number of hospital beds world-wide, and even a far greater increase in terms of the numbers of ventilators and other necessary equipment. Mrs. LaRouche stated that this is only possible with a centralized approach in every country, an approach focused on building up industry and agriculture. This must be done in tandem with an immediate retooling and expansion of the industries of the industrialized countries.

More fundamental, Zepp-LaRouche stated, is the urgency of “a summit of the Presidents of the four largest powers—the United States, Russia, China, and India—and all other countries called upon to join the efforts to change the world system.” The world needs a new credit system, one based on the principles of Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws, a New Bretton Woods system that will replace the current speculative financial operations of the casino economy with long-term, low-interest credits for the physical-economic upgrading of the developing countries. With this approach, she stated, “we can overcome confrontation and war as a way of conflict resolution, and find a new way for all nations to work together for the one species, the one humankind.”