FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Zepp-LaRouche: War Danger Is ‘Acute’: World Needs a Leibnizian 'Pursuit of Happiness' Policy
Jan. 25, 2018 (EIRNS)—In her weekly international webcast today, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the very "acute" war danger provoked by the crazed neoconservative sectors in the U.S. and Europe, who are willing to blow up the world—take the situation in Ukraine, for example—rather than give up their imperial policies. She reminded people again of the warnings made by former Defense Secretary William Perry, regarding the so-called "false alarm" in Hawai'i in which he pointed out that "we are minutes away, because all the nuclear arsenals are 'launch on warning.'’" And then, Zepp-LaRouche pointed out, there is the "really terrible" new National Security Strategy, which identifies Russia and China as the U.S.'s most dangerous security problems, even worse that terrorism.
"So, I think a change of this policy is really urgently needed," she concluded.
Add to this the looming financial blowout, of which the former chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, William White warned this week in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. "We have said it many times," Zepp-LaRouche noted,
"but it's good to hear it from at least one prominent economist, and he blames the quantitative easing for that coming crash, basically saying this policy of pumping money has created a 'Catch-22' because the central banks really cannot forever continue with the zero interest rate policy and the quantitative easing,"
yet White warns that even the slightest increase in interest rates could also trigger a crash.
One would think Zepp-LaRouche said, that at the current meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, where there are 2,500-3,000 top bankers, government officials, CEOs, etc., someone might propose a solution. But so far, only Chinese representative Liu He, said to be the most influential advisor to President Xi Jinping, gave a decent speech, warning of the problems in the financial system. All others, Germany's Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, had nothing useful to say.
Contrast this to which the Chinese are doing, Zepp-LaRouche said. China has now officially stated that the country has only 30 million poor people left, while Europe has 90 million.
"Why can't Europe say, like China, that poverty is going to be eradicated by 2020? And obviously, for the United States, that should be done as well."
"I think we have to have the commitment to have a decent living standard for all human beings on this planet, and this is not just a question of justice, this is also the question that the human potential which is being wasted when people are hungry, and people cannot develop their creative potential because they are poor, and for their livelihood they have to go to three jobs a day, or other conditions ... the human potential which can be developed once everybody has a decent living standard, we have to have an idea that we need a new paradigm of a completely different thinking.... Obviously, it is much more sensible to have a meaningful life, being a scientist, being an artist, being a good teacher, have the fulfillment of your life by contributing to the continued development of mankind as a whole, with whatever potential you have, whatever share you can contribute."
There must be a "rethinking," Zepp-LaRouche intoned, to eliminate the idea that money controls the world and "that money is what makes you happy." This has to be replaced by other ideas, like the Leibnizian idea of the pursuit of happiness, which is in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, and Leibniz did not mean making a lot of money.
"What Leibniz meant by happiness, was the idea that the creative potential of each person has to be guaranteed and must be realized. And I think with the New Paradigm pushed with the Belt and Road Initiative, and Xi Jinping has said many, many times that this is not just 'infrastructure,' but that there is a cultural dimension to the Silk Road and a space dimension to the Silk Road, and this all pertains to the creative potential of human beings.
"We need to have a political discourse of where the future of humanity should be in 50 years, in 100 years from now, and do we not want to become adult, as a species, where people treasure other things than just material things? I think people should think about the fact that we are at the crossroads where, if we do our job right, right now, and bring the United States and European nations into collaboration with the New Silk Road, then we can have a completely new era of civilization, probably in our lifetimes."
Zepp-LaRouche pointed out that what China is doing today is in fact the implementation of the plans which she and her husband, statesman Lyndon LaRouche, had pushed at the beginning of the 1980s. Look at what China is doing to develop Africa, and now it is offering similar opportunities to the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean which are enthusiastically looking forward to collaborating with China on the Belt and Road Initiative. In the early 1980s, LaRouche collaborated with Mexican President José López Portillo, and produced the Operation Juárez report outlining a development perspective for the entire Caribbean/Latin American region.
"The Chinese model of economic transformation, of turning poor countries into countries where people have a future, and also a future orientation in advanced areas, like joint space exploration, space research, this is a very positive development and it is the leading dynamic in the world, and nothing will derail that, except if some people cause nuclear war. But short of that, I don't think anything will stop this."
