Saturday, January 22, 2022

Helga Zepp-LaRouche made a video address to the National Congress of Peru’s Christian Democracy, which was translated into Spanish and played at their conference on Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022. Here are her remarks:

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Dear Friends of the Christian Democracy in Peru:

It is a great honor and pleasure to send these greetings to your national conference. I think you are all aware that we are at an extremely important moment in history, where world peace is not safe. We are still in an acute danger zone of a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis, over the situation in Ukraine, and the continued expansion of NATO eastward, toward the Russian border. This has been going on despite promises made to Russia during the time of the German unification in 1990-1991, where the promise was given to Gorbachev that NATO would “not move one inch eastward.” But NATO has moved 1,000 km to the east; 14 countries have joined NATO. And right now, you have a very fragile situation where the media are talking about that Russia would attack Ukraine, which Russia has denied. In any case, the situation is extremely volatile. And a little sign of hope comes from the discussions which just took place in Geneva between the United States and Russia, between NATO and Russia in Brussels, and in Vienna in the OSCE discussions, that maybe diplomacy will replace confrontation and that new arms control discussions can actually start in earnest.

But the real reason behind this geopolitical crisis is that the systemic crisis of the neoliberal system is coming to a head. My late husband Lyndon LaRouche has made a forecast 50 years ago, in 1971, when President Nixon decoupled the dollar from the gold-reserve standard, and replaced fixed exchange rates with floating ones. My husband at that point said, if the world continues on that course of monetarism, sooner or later, the world would be faced with the danger of a new depression, new fascism, and even the danger of a new world war, unless a new financial system, and a new credit system would be implemented with a new, just world economic order.

I think the countries of the developing sector are more acutely aware of this problem than anybody else, that we have now the danger of a hyperinflationary collapse. You see it in the prices of energy, of food, of basic raw materials. And the worst humanitarian crisis, of the many, is naturally happening in Afghanistan now, where after the withdrawal of NATO in August and takeover of the Taliban, when the Western countries cut off the aid to Afghanistan, because they didn’t like the Taliban, but everybody knew at the time that 75% of the budget of Afghanistan came from international aid! And when that money was cut off, all of a sudden, the economy of Afghanistan was plunged into an absolute chaos.

Now, the United Nations is warning dramatically, again and again, that there are 8 million people right now, who are in immediate danger of starvation. They’re dying of hunger and freezing right now as you hear my words. The United Nations World Food Program also warned that there is the danger that 23 million people may not outlive this winter if there is not a dramatic change in this situation, and that over 90% of the people in Afghanistan have not enough food, are food insecure, have not enough medicine or no medicine at all, in the middle of a pandemic, and that 98% of the people are in danger of becoming permanently extremely poor, which is a starvation level.

Now, this is why I have called for, what I call Operation Ibn Sina, in reference to the great physician who lived 1,000 years ago, who is the father of modern medicine, who was the one who first discovered quarantine, as a symbol that we have to build a modern health system in every single country on the planet, starting with Afghanistan, but not limiting it: Every country must have access to modern medicine, modern hospitals, and this is obviously only possible if you have electricity, if you have clean water—2 billion people in the world have no access to clean water; that has to be immediately reversed. We need basic infrastructure. And this building of a world health system must become the beginning of overcoming underdevelopment and poverty in the world, for good, forever.

2022 is the year when my late husband would celebrate his 100th birthday, and that’s why I have called that the year 2022 must become the Year of LaRouche. It is the year when all the beautiful plans which he developed in his lifetime must be realized. He developed already in the 1970s a plan to develop Africa through a large infrastructure program as the precondition for industrial development. He worked together, as you all know, with López Portillo, the President of Mexico, on what he called Operation Juárez, which was the idea that all of Latin America must be integrated and must have a coherent infrastructure program as the precondition for agriculture and industry to develop. This program of Operation Juárez is actual today than ever before.

He also worked with Indira Gandhi: We worked with her on a 40-year development program for India, which was the idea that you need, at that time, in 1979, about two generations to reach a modern development state for the nation of India.

After 1991, he proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge. This has become the basic idea which is now being carried out by China with the Belt and Road Initiative. We published the study, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge.”

Now, this is the hope, because, the fact that China and about 150 nations have signed memorandums of understanding with China, to cooperate in the Belt and Road Initiative is where the development of the world is taking place right now. And we, the LaRouche movement, and the Schiller Institute have made it our commitment to try to convince the United States and Europe to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative, and not oppose it for geopolitical reasons. This is the program to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, and create a decent living standard for every person on the planet.

Now, this is the obvious task and challenge for us, because it should note be self-evident and accepted that several billion people are living in poverty! Poverty eradication is the absolute demand of this coming year, and the reason why we can be optimistic about the human species finally accomplishing that is because, as my husband said many times, the human species is the only species which has the ability of creative reason: We can do what no animal species can do, we can make fundamental discoveries about physical principles of the universe, and when we apply those principles as technologies in the production process, it leads to an increase of the productivity of the labor force and of the productive forces. And that is the way how to increase the living standard, the life expectancy, and to create the conditions for an improvement of the general welfare. It is the principle of physical economy, and not monetarism, which we have to bring back to the world economy.

This coming year, we will see a worsening of the crisis, because there is no way how this casino economy will last forever. It will come to a point of crisis, where we need to put all forces of the world together, people of good will, to implement the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche: The first of which is a global Glass-Steagall banking separation, the speculation of the derivatives casino has to come to an end forever, and the economy must again be put to the service of the people. The second is, we need a National Bank in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton in every single country, and when these National Banks among the different countries work together, then that can create a New Bretton Woods credit system which will provide credit lines for long-term investment and the kind of infrastructure program which Latin America needs in the same way as parts of Asia and Africa, and even parts of Europe, which are not yet developed.

Now, this can be done. And I think we should be optimistic that this coming year is going to be the year where that is going to be put on the table, because the crisis will demand it.

Well, I had the fortune, together with my husband, to visit your country in 1987, and I have the most beautiful memories of that visit, and I think Peru is a great nation, which has an absolutely great population. And I wish you the best possible future, for your country and the great success for your conference. And I look forward to our collaboration, so that we together bring humanity from the abyss of a catastrophe and start to create a new paradigm in international relations, and start a new, more optimistic chapter in the history of humanity.

All my greetings to you.