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Schiller Institute Conference:

The Win-Win Solution: One Belt, One Road

Saturday, February 4th, 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
New York City

Video index:

Dennis Speed introduces Helga Zepp-LaRouche 0:00

Keynote Address by Helga Zepp-LaRouche 2:15

Questions and Answers 38:08

Dennis Speed introduces Dr. Patrick Ho 52:06

Presentation by Dr. Patrick Ho 54:27

Helga Zepp LaRouche responds to Dr. Patrick Ho's presentation 1:56:02

More Questions and Answers 2:03:45

Invitation to this event

Main Conference Page

 

Transcript of Question and Answer Session

 

SPEED: Thank you, Helga. I understand we may have a couple of questions for Helga because of scheduling issues for some people. Is that the case? OK, let's take two questions. Is there someone who had one? OK, good.

DIANE SARE: Hi. As you know, I'm Diane Sare from the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee, and one of the directors of the Schiller Institute Chorus; and you partly began to answer my question, but I suspect it affects many Americans here who are being dismayed by watching our friends who we knew to be intelligent, compassionate people getting completely swept away into the hysteria being generated by the media against Trump. While they may have legitimate things they disagree with, when you say, "Where were you when Obama killed 200 people in Somalia in a drone attack? Where were you when Hillary Clinton was gloating over the murder of Qaddafi? Where were you when all these people drowned in the Mediterranean?" -- which you referenced.

So, I was thinking about what is the weakness where you would have people consider themselves to be so self-righteous in their hysterical ranting about this, and oblivious to what they had just been tolerating recently? I began to get an answer on the front pages of the newspapers. One today at the front page of the travel section of the [New Jersey] Bergen Record, they are advertising a new form of cruise. It's called "clothes optional"; and I read a little bit of this article, and it's basically like orgies. It's an advertisement for going on a cruise where everyone is naked; and the kind of things they said were available on this ship, I'm not going to repeat in case children ever watch this. I thought, "Oh, my gosh! This is really... this is hideous!" And I sort of imagined something from the Roman Empire, and the ship just sinking out of its own hysteria and insanity. The other thing was a front-page article in the New York Times yesterday about a growing trend of pregnant women who are smoking pot because it alleviates their morning sickness. And the fact that there are study upon study saying that this promotes growth problems and brain damage and so on; here, it's being promoted on the front of the New York Times as a legitimate way to get through your pregnancy and to hell with your children.

So, it struck me very hard that one big part of the problem of how people who nominally appear to be rational, can be so easily swept into this insanity is because of the culture of this country. I think you created the Schiller Institute to address that directly, so I really wanted to get your thoughts.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think I want to refer to a press conference that Mr. Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, recently gave where he blasted the defense of so-called Western values by saying that these values, which are supposedly the basis of Western democracy and human rights and so forth, are really not the values which were transmitted from generation to generation. They have become completely degenerate; sexual permissiveness, everything goes. It is exactly those Western values, Russia opposes; and China is also opposing, because Xi Jinping is promoting a renaissance of Classical Confucian values and ideas and Classical culture.

I think that is a very important component; because as you say, if people are in this totally degenerate culture where really everything goes. There is no more limit to what is allowed in terms of violence, in terms of sex; it turns people into something worse than beasts. I have never seen a tiger or a donkey or a dog engaging in these kinds of activities you are describing. They may eat another animal when they are hungry, but then they stop; they don't go into perverse sexual pleasures, so it's worse than bestial. I think we have to have a complete rejection of that, and recognize that this is not in cohesion with the dignity of the human mind.

And that is why we need not only a New Silk Road perspective of cooperation among the nations of the world, but we need a dialogue of cultures on the highest level; where European classical culture -- which happens also to be American culture -- Chinese, Indian, other cultures, Italian, Spanish, should all revive the high phases of their cultures and dialogue on that basis. That is an absolutely important part; because if you don't change the culture and the thinking and the morality of the people, all of this will not work. It is very clear that the Schiller conception -- and that is why we call the Schiller Institute, Schiller Institute -- the Aesthetical Education of Man is what has to occur, together with this economic reform. In the sense of Schiller, we can ask, how is it that we are still barbarians? If Schiller would be alive today, he would say, "You have become worse in the last 200 years." So, let's reverse that. [applause]

SPEED: We have one other question we'll take now; and just so people know, there will be a question and answer period later for other questions.

Q: [translator] Hello, everyone. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Helga, again; and we are very thankful for your invitation to be here and to share very important thoughts. Please meet a member of our Russian delegation, Mr. [name inaudible 45.08] , who has a PhD in soil fertility science and our representative.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to share my ideas with you here. I would like to propose to you a special program which could serve the development of American-Russian relations, for the better, and not only American-Russian, but with other countries as well. The main goal of all mankind can only be reached if we unite ourselves for the sake implementation of the goal of mankind as a whole.

We have been thinking for a long time, what idea could unite us? And we have come to the conclusion that for the implementation of the main important goals for mankind, it could be implemented only by some countries. For one side, Russia owns very varied resources; from the other side, America owns technologies, technical resources, and other countries, and we have worked out a special program which can serve for the restoration of the land to fight desertification, to bring fertility to the desert. This program will give the opportunity to create millions of work places, then this program will give the opportunity to create conditions for production of different products, different kinds of food in the countries where they have no fertile soil. This program will also give the opportunity to decrease flows of migrants.

And this program will also give the opportunity to become so-called bloodless weapon to fight terrorism. When we create all those conditions, every person in my opinion, will think first of all, whether to pick up a gun or to pick up another tool to produce something for his livelihood. Thus we can propose to mankind, to all the countries to produce different foodstuffs, vegetables, and grains in those countries where it is now actually impossible. In my opinion, this program will push the world to the life of creativity, not to destructiveness. [applause]

Thank you.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I'm very happy to hear what you are saying, because this is exactly the philosophy which has been guiding our efforts since really more than 40 years. I would like to invite you to send us more elaborated version of your program. We have many means by which we should talk about which countries should be interested; obviously the United States should be the first place to get people interested and to invest in this program. But we are also talking to many Arab countries, we're talking to African countries, and I think this is exactly what is one of the things which could give an inspiration to turn the deserts into green agricultural lands and woods and farms and gardens -- I think that is exactly the kind of vision which inspires people and gives them back the hope for a future which they have lost.

So I would like to invite you to give us your papers, get in contact with us concretely, and then we can determine what is the most fruitful cooperation between us. [applause.]

SPEED: Thank you, Helga. ...

[Dr. Patrick Ho's presentation]

 

[After Dr. Ho's powerpoint presentation, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche gave a response which included an important proposal.]

SPEED: Helga, before we begin with Q&A, I want to see if you want to respond to what you've heard.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: This is a very exciting perspective, but I would actually like to propose, Patrick, that we organize a big event, maybe an international conference, because I think that the knowledge about Chinese culture, but also about Western culture, is really not known to the other side sufficiently.

And for example, I was in China one time, and I was looking for scholars on Nikolaus of Cusa who is the most important scholar and great mind of the 15th century in Europe. And I only found one professor who was familiar with Nikolaus of Cusa. And this is typical, because what you said about the difference between Western values and Chinese values, I think that because of the British influence in the universities -- all over the world, but also I think in China for some time -- many times people mistake humanism for liberalism. And that is really not true.

We are not talking about the Aristotelian tradition. We are not talking about certain traditions in Europe which then led to certain forms of the Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment, the English Enlightenment, which as you correctly said, is centered very much on the role of the individual and liberalism and so forth.

But that is exactly the tradition which was rejected by what we regard as the positive tradition of the pre-Socratic, Plato, Augustine, Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz, Schiller; and in science it goes to Riemann, Einstein and similar thinkers. So there is a much huger fight in the tradition of European civilization than most people really know. And it was the entire progress of science, of culture, of Classical culture comes in the rejection of liberalist tradition. The oligarchy has employed a conscious warfare trying to get people off the idea of human creativity.

And, for example, I compared, as well as did some other members of the Schiller Institute, we compared the idea of Confucius and Mencius with certain ideas and philosophers of the West, and there is a much greater unity. For example, this Nikolaus of Cusa whom I mentioned, he has conceptions which absolutely correspond to the Li and the concept of Ren in Confucius; such as, he has this idea -- if Li is "to do the right thing in the right place at the right time" [as Dr. Ho had earlier mentioned], Nikolaus of Cusa has this idea that each microcosm, each human being, can only fully develop if you contribute to the harmony of the macrocosm by developing all the other microcosms and vice versa. And that is exactly the "win-win cooperation" among human beings. This is the idea which went into the Peace of Westphalia: that peace is only possible if you respect the interests of the other.

And Leibniz, you know, Leibniz was so responsive to Chinese philosophy, because he himself was a continuation of this Nikolaus of Cusa, and he had this idea that each human being is a monad, each human being contains in his own creative mind the entirety of the universe, and concordance is only possible if there is a harmonious development of all of these faculties; and his is what led into the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of happiness, which is not "happiness" from the standpoint of luck, but it is exactly the fulfillment, the development of all potentialities which are embedded in the human being. So this embedded in the human being.

So, this tradition in European philosophy which we call humanism, is totally opposed to liberalism, and it is much, much more in cohesion with Confucianism than is generally recognized.

The problem with Western books and Western university teaching, is that it has been occupied for a very long time by the people who won the wars, by the oligarchy, by the people who try to suppress this creativity in the population. And I think we would do the second Renaissance a very big favor if we would organize a symposium working out these parallels much, much more. And I think this actually crucial for the understanding of the people from the different cultures.

Nikolaus of Cusa said, the only reason why people from different cultures can understand one another, is because they each produce scientists and artists who develop universal principles and once you have an understanding of these universal principles, you can communicate. This is why musicians of different nations can be in one orchestra; or why scientists come to the same conclusions about scientific discovery, exactly as you developed with the binary system. I think that there are much more treasures to be found both for the West and learn from China, as well as the Chinese people understanding not the liberal teaching of history and philosophy of ideas, but really going to the original sources as they were and as they were drivers of focus in the West. So, I'm very excited and I hope you can organize something along these lines. [applause]

[end of Helga's response to Patrick Ho's presentation]

 

SPEED: OK, let's go right to questions. And please state who you are and try to be brief. We will try to extend the period of questions as much as we can, but we're looking at approximately 30-40 minutes

Q: Good afternoon. I have a concern, not a question, but a profound concern, that we are aware of this problem but we're not doing anything about it. The Silk Road is a long road and it needs a long planning and we have a long-term problem associated with this road. Are we doing anything related to the Muslim world, extremism in the Muslim world related to this road? Are we preparing a road for the extremists to come and use that road, number 1? Number 2, look, the steps of China: They go, they make friends, and they go back. And what we are doing here is this, that we are putting a negative picture of the United States, very negative, by how? Like, by personal view is this, that Donald Trump made the right decision but he's taking wrong steps and media are after him and this is sending a very bad signal message around the world in 56 Islamic nations that "we hate you" and we are constantly in a fight, bulling with them. Which is wrong, which is wrong, absolutely wrong. Like, for example, saying people from Syria, Muslims they should not come, Christians should come to the United States. That's a wrong way of saying! That's a wrong way of doing! Because that is sending a bad signal, a bad pictures around the world!

So we are not planning yet, or do we have any plans how we will combat if something negative happens on this road, which is China is coming with great enthusiasm, with great alacrity -- fine! But we will be sharing that road, we are also superpower, what will be our command on the road? Are we going to be just submissive to China, and China will lead all the time, or will we be standing there with dignity? Thank you very much.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think Patrick will for sure say something, but let me just say from my experience: I think this worry about "being submissive" to China is not confirmed. I mean, take for example, Africa. I have talked to many, many African leaders, people of all walks of life, and they all say what China is doing -- sure, China is pursuing its own interests in Africa, but it is also providing for the interests of the different African nations. So don't be afraid. You know, I have studied this matter for the better part of my life, over 40 years, and I have truly come to the conclusion that China does mean it when they say "win-win."

Concerning the Muslim world, I think the only way to come to peace and end terrorism, is the expansion of the Silk Road into the entire Middle East, or Southwest Asia. Because look at this region. We heard before the Russian gentleman talking about the desert: All of this region is a desert. The desert goes from the Atlantic coast of Africa, all the way to the Arabian Peninsula, to Iran, into China. It is a huge strip of desert which is growing. Now, if you want to create a livelihood for the people living in the Middle East or in Southwest Asia you have to develop water; you have to develop nuclear power, we have to have large-scale desalination, we have to access the aquifers, we have to redirect the rivers, we have to tap into the moisture of the atmosphere, you have to have a complete change, turning these deserts into beautiful gardens.

Now that cannot be done if you only do it by one country or the Muslim world alone. It only will function if all the big neighbors, Russia, China, India, Iran, Egypt, hopefully Germany, hopefully France, Italy and the United States, they all must give hands to each other and say, "We have a commitment to rebuild Iraq, to rebuild Syria, to rebuild Yemen." Yemen right now is one of the big victims of this whole policy; there's a terrible genocide going on in Yemen, which should stop!

And I think that that is why I am saying, that if we can convince President Trump to accept the Chinese offer to build the infrastructure in the United States together with China, but also to develop Southwest Asia and Africa -- have a joint mission along the lines that every country should be a King, every country should have its fulfillment and harmony. I think that then we can do it.

And I think that that is the only way how we can end terrorism, because, sure you have to end this militarily against ISIS; but then how do you dry out the environment for recruitment of the jihad? You have to give young people an incentive to become scientists, teachers, to , to study and have a family and a future. And that can be only done if there is a promise by the leaders of the world that that is exactly what they will do. And then it will be not long-term, because I am very impressed about the speed with which China is developing all these projects. In Germany, the Berlin airport has been being built for 100 years, and it is being postponed every year, and it will take another year, and another year. The Chinese go in and they build it in no time! The maglev line between Pudong and Shanghai was built in 22 months, over swamps.

So I'm very optimistic that all of this can change the world within a year or two, not solve all problems, but people will have hope that there is a future, if we can convince Trump to go along. And I want you to help in that as much as you can.

DR. HO: I think one of the moist notable misinterpretations of this Silk Road is that it is a project. It's not a project. It's a vision. It's a proposal.

The difference between a project and a vision: A vision is like a star, it can never be reached! But like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them! We go towards the North Star, we go according to the stars; not in the process of reaching the stars, but going in the direction. Vision is a direction. Vision is the possibilities. Visions are options. It's not a project. Projects have roadmaps, have timelines, you know they're built in parts, they have plannings. This is not a project. It's just a proposal put up by the Chinese. It's not put up by Xi Jinping; he was the one who announced it, to put together. It was a combination, an accumulation of 5,000 years of Chinese wisdom, and the wisdom of all our Chinese friends as well.

Building a Silk Road is like building a Great Wall. How many years did it take to build the Great Wall? It's not built overnight. It's not built over 10 years! It's not built over a person's lifetime. It was built over 500 years, 600 years. Do you know how Great Walls have been built? About 2,500 years ago, when China was warring states, there were about six or so different warring states occupying China; each of them had to face the Mongols from the West. So all these warring states had to fight among themselves and also to wall out the Mongols, OK? The Mongols on the back, and the friendly enemies in the front. So they had to build walls to wall out the Mongols so they can fight the Chinese, OK? [laughter] These what Chinese do, they fight among themselves.

So, with time, one fraction overcame the other fraction and there would be a remodelling of the sharing of the territories; and when there was the reshuffling of the territories, when one province overcame the other province and inspected the territories and they looked at the walls, they had built a piece of wall here, a piece of wall there, -- hey, why don't we link the two walls together? So we linked the two walls together, and that's the redundant wall that's broken down.

So that went on for another, maybe, dynasty or so, and they fought among themselves at the end, and then there's a reshuffling of all the powers, and they looked at the walls, and they are not happy with the walls that the previous dynasty built, so the modified the walls again. So they built it after 500 years! There finally came the Qing Dynasty who unified all these warlords, and looked at all the walls that were built by the previous warlords, and say, "this is useless, it's broken down, this is redundant, there's a gap here, let's link them up."

So, all of a sudden the Wall was built, linked up! It was not built overnight, over the intuitions or conceptions of one person, or a few persons. So, in other words, Xi Jinping would not come out and say, "I want to build a Silk Road from here to there, and so many stops, and with so many different miles, and let's do that." He never said that.

He said, this is a vision, from here to there, from here to there. This is our vision. China has all the facilities. We will contribute to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and we have all these developmental excess capacities in use, if you want to build something, we talk together!

And China never imposed building something on other people's territory because China wants it -- never without an invitation from host country. So if there's a country, you need something that they would build: You talk to China; China we'll work out a plan, work out a financial scheme, work on a plan that we can build it, and then it will get built. And then, maybe through generations afterwards, these can all be linked together.

And you can do that even without going through China. Kazakhstan had built a street rail from somewhere to somewhere, but it was financed by Spain. They call it the Spanish Railroad in Kazakhstan, and it's part of the thing that goes from China to London, it's part of the link. It's not built by Chinese, it's built by Spanish money in Kazakhstan. So you can do whatever you want with it!

If you want China's help, you know, talk to China. China will help you out. We'll work out with you the specifics for your country, the specifics for the needs and specifics for the projects. And nobody has ever to bow to anybody! Not even to China. That's the beauty of this scheme, is that nobody has to take second place.

Q: Hi my name's C.Z. I'm a partner at Helix Capital, we're a global private institutional investment group. My question is I think fairly relevant to today's discussions, because we live in -- well, the new administration specifically is moving very quickly in terms of a lot of decisions. And Donald Trump has announced that he's planning to pull out of the Paris climate accord agreements, so in relevance to today's energy discussions, which unfortunately we didn't get too deeply involved with, this is actually one of the last, I would say, similar agreements where China and the U.S. can actually collaborate on, so I was actually a little bit disappointed by the announcement.

So, for Dr. Ho, this question: How do you foresee that these two countries can actually collaborate on significant endeavors in the coming four years, when you're pulling out of something so significant? And what is your suggestive stance? Thank you.

DR. HO: Very good. That's a million-dollar question. In Obama's administration, Obama seems to strike a very good accord over the climate change, and there's platform that China and the United States really work hand in hand together very well. They got together very well.

But now with our new President there, and he just threw this climate change obligations out of the window, but I don't think we would do anything very, very drastically by rescinding the United Nations, the FCCC, the Framework Constitution for Climate Change. That's binding, but I think he would have a lot of repercussions if he really wanted to pull out of that. But, that being said, I think he could do a lot of things to bypass and to circumvent all the requirements of climate change, and that being said, I think what he really wanted to do is to -- not that he is against climate change that much, but the regulatory limitations of climate change on economic development, especially on energy development that he was most against. So, as long as he could get those regulations deregulated, so as to liberate the vigor of the energy industries in America, I think he would be happy with that, without going against the grain of climate change.

But back to your question: What platform can China and the United States can work together? I think there are many! I think we're striking at one, is to build infrastructure around the world. I mean, it's time we concentrate on building infrastructure. The United States itself needs a lot of renovative work on old infrastructure; and those who will build new infrastructure. When was the last time the United States has ever built any infrastructure? When was the last time? It was 80 years ago! It was in Eisenhower's time, it was the Interstate. That was the last time. But even the Interstate is all worn down and with potholes and it's all out of date now. And since that time, the U.S. has not invested anything on infrastructure. Sorry to say.

So it's time to go back to investing in physical assets, and coming down to physical economy rather than living out of debts, credits, and virtual economy. I mean, that's what infrastructure and the Belt and Road Initiative is really calling out for, is a new model of economic growth. Because the world has shifted so much towards a virtual economy, shifted too much over credit spending, and it's time to go back to the basics of physical economy, of physical assets.

Q: [follow-up] I speak for everyone here, when I think that hopefully everything will work out over here. Thank you.

DR. HO: Infrastructure is one. Space exploration is another one, that China and the U.S. can work...

Q: [follow-up] It's much easier said than done, but yes, hopefully everything will work out. Thank you.

SPEED: Well, I know of at least two people that may have an answer to that. Helga, do you want to say anything about this now?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, just very briefly. This whole climate change question is a very complicated question and the good thing about the space program is that it teaches people again that the human species is not living in an Earth-bound system. I think that the perspective of space exploration, especially with the lunar missions of China going to the far side of the Moon next year, will open up totally new perspectives, also on the real sources of climate change, because the view of the Galaxy, the view of the Solar System, I think that we are on the verge of getting totally new insights of our entire physical universe. And I think we have not reached the final question on the origins of climate change, but that there is a great room for improvement of our knowledge coming from space exploration. I want to leave it at that.

SPEED: OK, Jason why don't you go, and then I have someone in the audience we may ask to comment on these matters.

JASON ROSS: It's tough to figure out what to ask, there's so many topics that came up. I was thinking about bringing up Chinese investment corporations' proposal to reinvest some of its Treasury holdings into U.S. infrastructure as another means of collaboration between the two countries.

But since you brought up Leibniz, I really wanted to ask you a question about the basis for collaboration between countries. You brought up Leibniz and the Yi Jing. Leibniz was at that time the top scientist in Europe, he was involved in trying to unify the churches, he had developed the calculus, he was a scientist, he was an economist; and in that controversy about China, Leibniz said that being very doctrinaire about the rites of Confucianism, or the rites of Christianity should not be an excuse to stop the collaboration, and that the West had much to learn from China.

In particular, he said that the "natural theology" of the Chinese, that is, a sense of the Heavens and our relationship to it that accords with reason, he said was more developed in China than in the West. Although, he said, the West had Christianity, which was truth via Revelation, so he contrasted those two, and he said that truth should always be reasonable.

So, what I wanted to ask you about, was, you know, the basis for the legitimacy of a government is in promoting the welfare of people. Leibniz also on the Kang Xi Emperor, he said, yes, he's a very powerful Emperor, but most importantly, he is a good person, and therefore he has the right to rule, and he's doing something useful.

So what I wanted to ask you was, if you could say more about other bases for unification or collaboration between people in order to create a Renaissance. You had just mentioned the space program very recently. You know, China's work on the EAST tokamak, which is leading in the world -- what are some other bases to move humankind as a whole forward in ways that we've never been before that you can see collaborating on?

DR. HO: I would say four things: First of all is, sustainability. The world is sustained by three things. No. 1 is food; the second one is energy; the third one is drinkable water. Right now, we all know about what food can do to poverty and undernourishment. And now we are now into realizing the importance of energy, so we're fighting for energy right now. Last century, we were fighting for food; the colonization, the British imperialism, the two World Wars were all for food. All about food, fighting about salt, and tea and opium, and whatever, it's for food!

And now, we're fighting for what? In the Middle East we're fighting for oil, gas, nuclear, whatever -- for energy.

And mark my words, by the end of this century, we'll be fighting for water, drinkable water.

But we can work on the three things, making them sustainable for human development and human progress, but what is the future for human mentalities? It's AI, artificial intelligence. OK? It's something that we can work together.

SPEED: I want to here interpolate one person, for my own, because otherwise I'm going to explode! [laughs] Tom, I think you might want to say something here, just on this question climate change. Could you do that, just so we have that on the record? I saw your hand up before.

TOM WYSMULLER: I'm Tom Wysmuller, and I do lecture all over the world on climate. One of the suppositions that I heard the questioner make was that Donald Trump might be doing the wrong thing in getting out of the Paris agreement. I happen to think he's doing the right thing.

And the reason I think it's the right thing, is that some of the dangers that the Paris agreement tries to prevent are nonexistent. And the one I'm talking about is the one that most of the people in this room were exposed to, about a month or so ago, and that is that there is a relationship between CO2 and sea level rise. Because sea level rise is the great danger that the Paris accord is trying to prevent. And I think, with hard, verified, validated, data that I showed in my slides, you see that there is really is no connection between sea level rise, which is happening -- and the sea level rise you see happening is decidedly linear, all over the world. That there's a slight rise in places that are tectonically inert, where the Earth doesn't move up or down near where they are.

But it is still linear. Over the last 150 years, we have CO2 accelerating at a massive rate! Since 1880, 38% increase, which is a very rapid acceleration. And by the way, no signal visible whatsoever, in the linear rate of sea level rise.

If the best the Paris agreement can hope to do, is reduce CO2 by 1%, maybe even 2%, that we don't have an instrument that can measure the effect of that in sea level rise, when we can't even see what a 38% in CO2 can do to sea level rise.

Now, people complain that, well, the oceans are a big buffer and they won't rise that rapidly. Well, therein is the solution: Since the oceans aren't rising that rapidly, you don't need to spend billions of dollars fighting climate change, when instead, you could put high-speed rail in the United States; you could patch up the highways; you could create a grid in Africa that can pull millions of people out of poverty! That's where the money should be spent. And the $1 billion of American taxpayer money, that President Obama in his last days in office sent out of the country, to places in Africa where the intent is not to allow them to put in electricity, coal-powered plants, thorium nuclear, or any other way to basically create sufficient energy, which was the #2 item in Dr. Ho's talk about what's important. That is crippling the world!

We need to look at that Paris agreement, say international cooperation is great, but, let's put that money to where it really can help humanity. [applause]

Q: First of all, Dr. Ho, thank you very much for a very comprehensive discussion today. Again, I was going to ask one thing, but then I thought of asking something different as well. I thought it was very ironic that in your presentation you had demonstrated and something I think we know, that China has not been involved in conquest, China has not forced any of its policies, inventions, principles, throughout the course of known history, on other nations. And yet, it seems that China has had possibly had the greatest impact on the greatest amount of nations on the globe. So I think that says something about the counterintuitive nature of power and also of the human mind, that people will seek, naturally, the human mind seeks for things of a higher power. And therefore, if you have to impose something on someone by force, it demonstrates exactly the principle that that's not something of a higher power and therefore not optimally useful.

But on just the topic of a few things that were mentioned: It seemed that there was an underlying theme of the issue of scarcity, the issue of as you just mentioned, drinking water may be at a premium within the next decades.

And I just wanted mention one that that we're fortunate enough to learn through this organization as well, things that are intimately scientifically going on in China: The Chinese space program for example, which within the next decade is planning to, very soon, going to the dark side of the Moon looking to mine helium-3 which will be used to power fusion generators. And I think the idea is that looking at these sources of energy production that have an ever-increasing higher energy throughput, and if we continually, in our human minds, if there's no scarcity in our human minds and we continue to develop ever higher forms of energy throughput in our production, then we won't have to worry about scarce resources.

And maybe that's the greatest benefit of all for the future, in terms of the One Belt, One Road project. So, I'm wondering if you would please comment on that? Thank you.

DR. HO: I think you rightfully pointed out the facts of what China really wants, because in Chinese we have one saying, "Being a big country is easy." A big country, you just have to have a big GDP and there's a big country. A lot of people, wealthy, happy -- you know, being a big country is easy.

"But being a strong country is more difficult." A strong country requires ways and means to protect itself, and to generate a sense of security for its people. But that's not the end for China. For many countries, being a strong country is good enough. For China, it's not. If you look at Chinese history, China has been a strong country all along, but it's not satisfied with being a strong country. China wants to be a great country.

What makes a country great? Is soft power. It's attractiveness. It is the things that it does and it represents that commands respect, without instilling fear. And that's soft power. And that's what China wants.

China never tried to be a hegemon. It does not want to conquer people, but they want to be great! They want to command respect, by helping people, by sharing what they have, and that's what we strive to become a great country. That's what Xi Jinping wants.

SPEED: Before we go to the next question let me announce what we're doing: We're going to take the next three questions which are in line there. That'll pretty much conclude us; we'll be at 2:15, so we're extending it by 15 minutes....

Q: [Patrick Servidio] Good afternoon, Helga and Dr. Ho. This is going to be very short: Dr. Ho, your presentation on Chinese history was excellent. And I've been around many birthdays. My teaching of China was about fireworks, dragons, kung fu, fortune cookies, and so on. I just realized what my mission is today: To rediscover China by the way of passing it on through education. Because the average person has no clue what is going on. And I mean, this is 2017, and back when I was in grade school, this is all I remember of China. And the last time you were here, I learned more than in the whole time that I was Patrick. So, what's on my plate right now is to give people the right direction and tell them, the countries are in a unified development of infrastructure. And you have to open your minds, you have to forget about the past, because it is the past. Now we have a new world paradigm and it's all about freedom and the right to live. And with that, I end. [applause]

DR. HO: Thank you, thank you. I totally agree with you and you're very passionate about what you talked about. And I'm impressed, I'm touched. Thank you very much.

PHIL RUBINSTEIN: My name is Phil Rubinstein. I think that maybe this question is a little bit for both, but I think from the standpoint that I've gotten from working with Lyndon LaRouche is that ultimately sustainability comes through the creative powers of the human mind and the ability to communicate that to other people--that what we really are constantly in need of, is great scientific discovery at the most fundamental level, great cultural artistic development coming from a sort of communication amongst cultures.

Now, one of the problems we have in the United States and in the West is environmentalism, that indeed there is a clamp-down on real scientific development. I'm not completely sure this is understood from the Eastern standpoint. For example, Germany, which was one of the great scientific nations, has a completely anti-nuclear policy--they're shutting down their nuclear plants, but it's really an anti-science policy. In the United States, similarly, we're shutting down nuclear plants. Living standards, we actually have a higher death rate than we did before, which is almost unheard of.

In China, for example, when they had the Three Gorges Project, many environmentalists in the West were opposed to this. They thought this was another example of Western influence in terms of development and growth, and in fact, at that time viewed China as a problem because it was so big--how are you going to feed all these people at the right level? And always this Malthusian outlook has been proven wrong, that is, we do figure out how to grow more food if we have that kind of scientific development.

I'd like to ask the question--. First of all, it's also worth noting that the people who, as Helga mentioned, the British, the people who brought in an anti-science outlook -- Bertrand Russell, was very much in favor of the backwardness of China when he was there in the 1910s and 1920s. I'd like to know what the view is of this environmentalist, what I would call at least, "anti-science" aspect of the West? What the view of that is from the standpoint of the Chinese, and your own standpoint? And what this may or may not do for the ability to work together?

There has been a lot of talk about how Beijing, of course, has a pollution problem, but I think the Chinese perspective is to defeat it with scientific development in the main. I don't know if it is so clear how anti-science and anti-cultural development the West has become, and that that's really what it makes look as bad as it did; but prior to that, we had people like Lincoln, people like Leibniz, we had people like Nikolaus of Cusa. We don't have that kind of thinking outside of Lyn in the West at the point, and I'd like to ask how that appears to you or other Chinese? And I think I'll leave it at that.

HO: I don't know how to comment on that, but I can tell you how the Chinese think about it. They never thought about anti-science this, or anti-this, or anti-that. The Chinese are very pragmatic people, and I think the Chinese have always been swarmed by problems of survival. People have to live, people have to eat, and people have to survive. Without surviving for this generation, there is not going to be a next generation, if this generation is not going to survive. We are very pragmatic people.

Of course, after we've solved the present problems, and we have to anticipate tomorrow's problem; but today's problems rank first. We have to live through today in order to face the problems that we have tomorrow.

It is a very roundabout way of answering your questions, but I think it will do. [laughter]

SPEED: Helga, do you have something to say?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I just want to say that the Green plague in Germany is really unbelievable. It's not just the Green Party; it's all the parties, except the party that I'm leading, which are Green. The Greens are anti-Russia, the Greens are anti-China, the Greens are anti-Trump, the Greens are anti-science. It's the real foot soldiers of the British Empire. We have published a lot about it and I would like you to look at it.

Otherwise, I just want to say that if you look at only the last 10,000 years of human history--I mean just think about the enormous progress mankind has made from let's say from the Stone Age to today. And Mr. LaRouche has developed a very important principle, which is the relation of the energy flux density used in the production process and the connection to the relative potential population density which can be maintained with that level of energy flux density. If you go only to alternative energies, you have to reduce the population to 1 billion, and that's what the Greens are proposing.

Since Dennis mentioned the class [on Lyndon LaRouche's economics] which will start next week, I want to reiterate that Lyndon LaRouche's physical economic theory really addresses this in a very profound way, and just think where should we be in 10,000 years from now? I think that we can be absolutely optimistic that human creativity will open up questions which we don't even now know how to ask, and I'm totally convinced that human creativity will define us to be a completely more developed species in 10,000 years that we cannot even imagine now. And that vision should guide us and drive forward profound discoveries in science and in the arts. [applause]

Q: Grace and Peace everyone. My name is J.B. I'm with the Nation of Ancient One Public Interest Resource Club. First of all, I'd like to thank Mr. Ho and the Russian gentleman (I forget his name) for their gracious humanitarianistic views and offerings. It's very ambitious and I'm glad I came--I came down from Connecticut. I'm glad I came to hear this.

But I would remiss not to point out some certain things just in context with what Mr. Ho brought up about the history of China, and how they came together as a people to be where they are now to offer this gracious humanitarian offering as a people and humanity. But here in America, as it stands right now, there's a serious divide. It's polarized, maybe even more than polarized. You have the elites and the rich and you have the poor, and it's getting wider and wider. So there's no cohesive unity here for which this offering you have would be dispensed fairly--as it stands right now--where it would benefit the entire population of this country. The reason why I'm saying I would be remiss is because you have let's just say, for example, the Native Americans at Standing Rock, who are recognized, those nations that are recognized as a separate sovereign nation of their rights and their privileges, and basically their land is being infringed upon for corporate benefits. So, you have a lot of things that would interfere with the implementation of this gracious offering that your country and the Russian guy are offering.

My question is: I noticed in your presentation you had made reference to a people-to-people type of offering, the way this would be done. So, my question is: What would be the nature of that, the methodology of that, and the application of that for your win-win proposal? And how that's going to be in relation to the political nature of what's going on with the division in this country, and how people are not being included, and what you have to offer?

Just say for argument's sake, and I'm speaking hypothetically, this does come to fruition, there's going to be a bunch of people that's not going to benefit, because there will be those in a position to gain the most from it and then preclude anyone who doesn't have the political clout or will to get a part of that. My question would be, in the event that you're able to implement this, or bring this proposal to fruition, what would be the methodology, the nature, and the application of that, in light of the fact that this country is still suffering from its divisiveness, where people would possibly be left out?

HO: The Belt and Road Initiative is not designed to solve individual countries' domestic problems, but it could be used that way. The people-to-people type of exchange that we're talking about, is the meat and bone of this Silk Road, this Belt and Road Initiative. The skeleton was laid down initially in the formative stages with infrastructure building, infrastructure that's skeleton. Infrastructures are usually state-led, they're by big enterprises, and usually discussed and negotiated between states, and with big enterprises coming in. But after those were done, the only limitation are how many, how much of these infrastructures one can build. Maybe this generation and the next generation, the infrastructures will be built. Then what follows next? What follow is the people-to-people interactions and people-to-people gelling together, and they form the muscles and the flesh of this Belt and Road Initiative.

Now what that was talking about is trade, commerce; we're not talking about bigtime enterprises. The Belt and Road, of course, in the beginning will be involving the Fortune 500, with state-owned enterprises, because you know they need to bulldoze for the big projects. But after that, the Fortune 500 is done, there's the Fortune 5,000, the Fortune 50,000, the Fortune 5 million! And there are these small enterprises, the garage back shop operations back in Oklahoma, they look at the television and say "What big markets the Chinese markets are offering. How can we get there? How can we sell our products to China?"

Well, it's through this bridge, the Belt and Road Initiative, we can do that. We can have a platform to get the small- and medium-sized, and also the individual enterprises to get together, and they will formulate links between nations and among peoples.

We're talking about having think tanks to work together. We're talking about having religious groups work together, cultural groups that work together, youth groups that work together, women's groups that work together. These are the basis of people-to-people interaction and they really will be facilitated when we have the infrastructures that connect these countries together. Well, that's the vision. There's our hope. That's the best way to do.

Q: [followup] I'm glad you qualified that, because that was one of the things that I was thinking of, whether it would be done through religious groups or private little companies, that may not have multinational kinds of resources that they would be able to engage with your proposal from a limited standpoint, without the capital from Wall Street to say, "Hey China, I want you to build a factory for me, so that I can expand;p or perhaps even an NGO-type of thing?" Would you be amenable to that?

SPEED: Excuse me. Helga may have an answer to this. And if not, I certainly do. Helga, do you have something to say?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think that in the beginning people always think that there is somebody being left out, but the experience of the three years of the New Silk Road--in the beginning people in Central Asia thought they were left out because the railway is being built from East to West and others wanted it to be built from North to South. In the meantime, the integration of the New Silk Road Belt and Road initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union of Russia is progressing, and these countries realize that through this international integration, everybody is benefitting because you are reaching a completely different economic platform, where every rule is being redesigned, and so I am very optimistic that all of these problems really can be solved in a much shorter time than people think.

But this is an end of an era. This is not just an economic program: They are talking about a new paradigm which completely introduces new principles about what humanity is. And I think that that is something people have to--because most people have not really thought about it, what do they want the world to be like in 100 years? And that is exactly the vision we have to talk about.

SPEED: Thank you. We are at the conclusion of our event and I just want to take the opportunity to, of course, thank the speakers and we'll say something about that in a minute.

But just in response to what you said, the legacy of Barack Obama has destroyed the capacity of the American people often to express naturally the optimism which was characteristic of the United States. Now, there is no way for China or for India or for Russia or for any other country to deal with a problem which Americans have brought upon themselves.

A long time ago when I first met Lyndon LaRouche, this must be 1971, one of the things he said, which I watched provoke people in the audiences that he would speak to; back then there were a lot of Black Power and Black Nationalists and other groups that existed, and I was associated with these groups; and one of the things that he used to say is that if you really want to understand how to overturn slavery, you must attack the slave. And I remember the first time I heard this, and I remember being simultaneously deeply shocked, deeply offended, and deeply relieved--all three things at once.

The issue of our time and the issue of the cultural vision that you heard, and that in particular Helga has stood for in her founding of the Schiller Institute, is also called to mind for me because there was once a conversation I had with her. It was in 1992 and it was in November; and it was in Wiesbaden, actually it was in Ingelheim, I think it may have been there. And what happened was the issue of the African American Spiritual came up, she said, "What do you think about these songs? You know, I've heard that these are supposed to be slave songs, but I don't hear any slavery in these songs." I said a few things back, and I was sort of, "well, no, I don't like them." We talked about it, and this was another time in which I took great umbrage, and then began to think about it. And we had another individual present, Rev. James Bevel, at the time, he was explaining something about these songs. But the reason I bring it up to you is, there is no slavery in the African American Spiritual. But there is a sense of slavery in what's called "hip-hop." [pauses] Oh, yes!

So, the issue here is for us to actually move the United States away from where it is, the task of our movement, and of the Schiller Institute, in specific, is to liberate people from the self-imposed chains that prevent them from understanding that they are their own saviors. I'm not speaking here religiously, but as was said in the play William Tell, "Yes, we can seize our power, snatch our inalienable rights from the Heavens, and God will help us with our right arm," so to speak.

So, we have a proposal. It's very clear. It's all written out. As Patrick said, it is a vision. Both of these, of course, are available in the back where you can find out about them [holds up English and Chinese copies of EIR special report]. But let us be very clear as JFK said at the end of his Inaugural Address, "God's work on Earth must truly be our own." I think that's exactly where we see this dialogue so powerfully. And so I just wanted to say that, and thank Helga in particular, in the most profound way for what she actually has done, not just today, but in the shaping of the entire approach, the vision that the Schiller Institute had in 1984, and has in the way in which we have described it here today.

I want to thank everybody for coming today and again, you can see us for the class and for all the other information. But I think we should go out from here and work on behalf of this vision. We invite you to do that. Stay in touch with us, and we'll be calling on you very soon. Thank you. [applause]

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Keynote Address by Helga Zepp LaRouche

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Summary of Presentation by Dr. Patrick Ho

Presentation by Dr. Patrick Ho

Helga Zepp LaRouche responds to Dr. Patrick Ho's presentation

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