Helga Zepp-LaRouche spoke with a group of supporters and members of the Schiller Institute on Monday:

Let me greet all of you.

Actually, I’m a little bit distraught, because if you look at the world situation, it’s really going from bad to worse. We have a very worrisome escalation between Ukraine and Russia, which is really not just Ukraine, it’s actually really NATO, and this is a whole conflict which, if things go wrong, could really lead to war. And that is not an exaggeration. I don’t want to focus on that; I just want to identify it as one of the many problems of the world.

Then, also the situation between the United States and China over Taiwan, in particular, is also heating up tremendously.

But I want to focus on something else:

As you know, the pandemic is not under control at all. If you start with Germany, for example, this country is in a complete turmoil, pandemonium, because obviously for more than a year, the EU and the German government made many mistakes. I think if you look at Vietnam, which is a country which has a larger population than Germany, about 98 million, they had something like between 30 and 50 deaths altogether. In Germany now, they’re talking about a possibly lockdown until the end of the year, because it’s long gone that you could do what Vietnam did in the beginning, containing it with quarantine, contact tracing; now you have a complete, out-of-control situation, and the infection rate is going up despite a lockdown. The same in France and many other European countries.

Brazil: The variants in Brazil are a reason for worry for the whole world. Naturally the South African and British variants are also a big factor in the increase in the infection rate. But Brazil is for sure the most dangerous situation, because what most doctors are now concerned about is that if this is not getting under control soon, which means you have a vaccination and health measures, and modern medical treatment in every country, you could have new variants which make already-injected vaccinations not effective, obsolete. In any case, this can take a dynamic which some people have not even thought about, and the big accusation now is that the rich countries are hoarding vaccines, that they have 60% of the vaccines, while the African population has less than 1% of the people are vaccinated so far.

Then you have the famine: The famine which is absolutely reaching a point where I could—and I will show you some short video, shortly—but before I do that, the thing that makes me so upset, and I’m not a political lightweight, or lily, or I don’t collapse quickly. But what gets to me is that, there is an unbelievable genocide going on against so many countries: You have a collapse in Yemen—20 million people in Yemen are in danger of dying; 90% of the population in Syria, according to the Catholic Nuncio Cardinal Mario Zenari, are living below the poverty level, have not enough medicine, have not enough to eat—and nothing is happening! You know, at the so-called Syrian donors’ conference which just took place on March 30, they collected a few billions, but it only goes to the countries around Syria which have taken some of the refugees, it goes to the NGOs, it goes to the opposition of the Syrian government, but it is not going into the reconstruction of Syria, which would be the only way to stop it.

Now, this Catholic Cardinal has made a very, very urgent appeal, which has gotten very little resonance, but he said that unless there is a radical shift, there is the danger of mass death in the Syrian nation. And that is why I want to focus on that alone, because I think the Schiller Institute is one of the few organizations—I mean, there are other organizations that are doing incredible work, like Caritas Internationalis, and many others—but we need a change! We need a change in politics. For example, in the United States, there is the so-called Caesar’s Act, which had been voted up in Congress and signed by Trump in 2020, which basically says any country which does not respect to the sanctions on Syria and the Syrian government will be sanctioned themselves, and that is the biggest mechanism why actually there is nothing happening right now.

As you know, we have initiated last year, the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, which was the idea that you need to create an organization which starts to do things to change that, you know, it’s supposed to help to bring medical supplies to the developing countries, food aid; naturally, it is clear that a little, private organization, and it is still little—hopefully it will grow—can only do a symbolic act. We can only make clear what should be done, what should be taken up by the governments, and we hope to be a catalyst to do so.

But I think that we need to broaden this. So far, we are only doing things for the education of young people in the United States. This is on a good way. We are also planning to get a project for Mozambique, now that’s on a good way, too. But I think the situation is reaching a point where we absolutely have to shake up the world, much, much more, and I’m asking all of you who are participating in this discussion that you become active with us. Because I think what is happening right now is by far not enough, and I think my late husband, many years ago—I think it was in 1988 on the occasion of a meeting of the Club of Life in Munich, he warned, and this was at that time in the context of the AIDS virus, he warned that the world could collapse. And I think that if we do not change our ways, the moral indifference of mankind not being able to react to something which is happening in front of our eyes, you know, that lack of moral fiber in us, may be the reason why we cannot stop the things which bring about the destruction of civilization of a whole.

So my words now are really a cry out: Are there not more people who understand that we have to absolutely, dramatically change the way how things go, that we have to change geopolitics, that only if the major countries work together and not fight each other in proxy wars, in places like Southwest Asia, because innocent people are paying a price!

So, I would like to show you the little video clip, which is excerpted from a longer video, which was produced by David Beasley, the director of the World Food Program. It’s a 40-minute documentary, and I just want to show you 2 minutes of it, and I want to encourage you that tonight or later, you watch the whole documentary. It is very difficult to watch because it gets to you very much. But I think people have to confront the reality that that is what is happening. So if you could please show this clip:

(A video excerpt from The Hunger Ward shows an obviously malnourished 10 year old girl receiving treatment in an Aden pediatric malnutrition ward.)

Now, I don’t think any child should have such thin arms, and Dr. Beasley described that these children, or some of these children were dying in front of his eyes and he couldn’t do anything about it, because there were no materials to stop it. So I think we should really try to wake up the world and get a change in the policy, and I think we should not only put the Africa nations on our agenda, but I think—you know, people have forgotten about Syria and Yemen, and I think we have to change that. So I want to leave it at that and hear if you have anything you want to say.