Feb. 5—The Schiller Institute has won a victory with its conference of Feb. 4. We brought together 25 highly qualified and experienced speakers from 16 nations around the world, all focused on success of the initiatives of the Pope and the President of Brazil, as well as Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, for negotiated peace to stop a spiral of escalation toward nuclear world war. But the conference also distinctly represented Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s principle that any such presentation to a worldwide audience must be “two-thirds devoted to the solution,” which is development. As Guyana’s former President David Ramotar, one of the half-dozen high-level representatives of Latin American and Caribbean nations, said, “Broaden this opposition to the war! The Global South must have a place at the table in a new international development architecture.”
The conference’s first panel represented a successful fight by LaRouche independent candidate for Senate Diane Sare and other speakers to expand and broaden the upcoming Feb. 19 Washington demonstration against NATO’s war; to “bring back a fighting anti-war movement,” as Nick Brana, Chairman of the People’s Party said. The second panel represented the entirety of the Global South with speakers from African, South American, Asian, European nations insisting on development as the name for peace. And it was keynoted by Jacques Cheminade who has a leadership role, with his small party, in moving the French mass anti-austerity demonstrations toward the new international development order that Lyndon LaRouche spent his life preparing.
We can report more developments today toward weakening NATO’s war with Russia—including another sharp intervention directed at Sen. Chuck Schumer, AOC, and Rep. Jamal Bowman—although the push for confrontation and war with China by a “Global NATO” is escalating. But the organizing of a worldwide movement for a new architecture for economic development of all nations has to expand rapidly. Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s ten principles for that movement are being discussed internationally. In response to a comment from a Nigerian entrepreneur in the first panel’s Q&A discussion, she said:
“Well, I’m glad that the gentleman from Nigeria brings up the need for a new security and development architecture because it’s not enough to be against the war. It’s not enough to ban nuclear weapons—and I have come to the point that I am for banning nuclear weapons, because of the tremendous killing power of weapons of mass destruction. However, the situation is more complicated than that: Because if we do not eliminate the cause of why we have this war danger, and that is the pending collapse of the financial system, and in response to the weaponization of the dollar, you have the emergence of a new international currency, and that means we are in the most crucial danger period, until we get to a new security and development architecture.
“And I think I’m very hopeful that, for example, if this peace club that [Brazilian President] Lula is talking about, if such a group of nations would put this on the agenda, I think this is the answer to all problems of the time. Because the developing countries, the Non-Aligned Movement, are having a renaissance right now; they’re picking up on the fight to end colonialism. The Spirit of Bandung has reemerged. And I think it’s really high time that we move to a new world economic order which allows for the development of all people on this planet, eradicates poverty, eradicates under-development. And, you know, the ‘new name for peace is development.’ This was the phrase created by Pope Paul VI in 1967 in his encyclical Populorum Progressio, On the Development of Peoples, on the need for all people to develop. And I think that’s the only basis for peace: Development for everybody.
“So I would hope that, in this conference, but in the next period, among the people who are fighting for peace, there should be a serious discussion, because to be against the war is the very first step. If people are not waking up to that, forget it! But then, the question comes, how do we eliminate, for good and permanently, the reasons for war? And that can only be a system of justice, where each sovereign nation has the right to choose its own path of development, but has all the credit that they can develop; and that requires a serious discussion. And I think that’s my very urgent concern, to add this question of the new security and development architecture in the debate.”
