On the occasion of Holy Week and Easter, statesman Lyndon LaRouche more than once wrote of the mission of all mankind. On March 29, 2002, he addressed it in his, “Easter, A Time For Reflection,” a substantial work, beginning with the question, that “Now, in a time of great menace … How should all peoples, of whatever religious profession, from around the world, view the leading developments of these days?” What should we do? After in-depth consideration, he wrote, "To sum up the point to be emphasized on this occasion, consider the following:
“The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has a rich history, from Plato’s Socratic dialogues, through the role of the same Platonic notion of the term agapē expressed summarily by Paul’s I Corinthians 13, and permeating the Gospel of John. It is the concept, translated as promotion of the general welfare of present and future generations, in the U.S. Constitution, and, otherwise, the notion of doing good in service of the common good.”
Today his words ring out. The specifics of the “great menace” he spoke of, meaning crises of all kinds—economic, cultural, warfare—have worsened in the intervening years to the point of today’s ongoing pandemic and famines. Look at just the dimensions of the food and farm crises.
One year ago April, the UN Security Council received a briefing on the world hunger situation from World Food Program Director David Beasley, who told the diplomats that, unless emergency action were taken, the world would see “famine of Biblical proportions.” That is exactly what came to pass. Look at the 10 nations Beasley singled out at that 2020 UN briefing: Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria (northern), South Sudan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela. The total number of people in dire need of food in these combined areas right now is close to 120 million, according to the March 23, 2021 “Hunger Hotspots” report of the WFP, and UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It is so bad, in fact, that there are people in these 10 nations, plus another 20 nations, who all together lack food to such a degree, that up to 34 million people are at the point of starvation in the coming weeks.
At the same time, producers of food are being pressured into mass shutdown. Farmers in the world’s highest productivity foodbelts are under impossible conditions of low prices and green dictates, that unless corrected, will result in mass food shortages. On Good Friday/Passover April 2, thousands of farmers protested in the greater Paris area, after farm demonstrations otherwise took place in Lyon and elsewhere in the weeks before. In Germany, farmers also protested in February and March in Berlin, Munich and many other major cities, including holding vigils at targeted government offices, and bringing their tractors into the streets. In India, the farm protests continue for the fifth month.
But who is acting for the good? Who even knows that these unheard of, desperate situations even exist? It is the same with even the COVID-19 pandemic. Although most of the world by now does know full well, with great sorrow and loss, the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, who is making an “issue” of such fundamentals for health security, as getting electricity and safe water in Africa, stopping the closure of hospitals anywhere, and building more health infrastructure on an emergency basis everywhere? Break the vaccine blockades, and go full tilt for inoculation and all measures of public health.
The blackout of reality, and enforced indifference are key parts of the Green New Deal and Great Reset operations to demobilize the world into accepting mass depopulation. According to City of London/Wall Street/Silicon Valley/Big Tech and so on, you are allowed to care and comment only on saving the Earth from global warming. Nothing else.
But we can break this evil spell. The Schiller Institute conference process, and publications and organizing everywhere are critical. The development programs are essential, for example, for Southwest Asia, and for the North American Belt and Road Initiative, as presented at the March 20-21 Schiller Institute international conference.
Look at Africa. A week ago, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari issued a strong call for going ahead with the Lake Chad Water Transfer Project—the Transaqua plan—for the Lake Chad Basin and Central Africa—a necessary program championed for decades by LaRouche circles. Buhari met with Chad President Idriss Déby on March 27. Buhari’s press release stated, “It is imperative that there be water transfer to the Lake Chad from the Congo Basin, so that the people can resume their normal lives.”
Details will be forthcoming about the next Schiller Institute international conference, planned for May 8, five weeks from now. Helga Zepp LaRouche said in conclusion of the March 21 Panel on “Southwest Asia: Pivot for War, or Peaceful Development with the New Silk Road,” after a discussion of British geopolitics, that we need, "total development for the whole Eurasian continent, including the Americas, including Africa, so that everybody has an advantage. But this needs to be put on the table as a totality. I think the lesson out of the pandemic and now the famine, is that we have to organize—and that’s what the Schiller Institute really wants to accomplish—that we put this idea of overcoming underdevelopment for everybody, for every nation, on the agenda. Then, you can see that there would be an advantage, even for the United States, [for] which the biggest problem obviously is the military-industrial complex. But they could change; they could retool and produce some useful things.
“So, I think we need to have a world mobilization to have a new world economic order and the blueprint for it is the World Land-Bridge. That way, you overcome geopolitics.”