In Suspense—Be Prepared for Big Things Ahead

There is a sense of the world being ‘in suspense’ right now, pending the events of the July 7-8 meeting of the Group of 20 in Hamburg, Germany. This is certainly not because there are grounds for presuming a miracle will drop from the sky to save the day. The likelihood is for a formal papering-over of rotten splits and policies. But there are individuals and powers in action, to force a change for the good.

There is no time to lose; dangers are great. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said recently at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, “we must not—have no right to—waste our efforts and time on squabbles, feuds and geopolitical games.” This was cited last Friday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a Moscow event (the Primakov Forum), who warned, “What we need are wise and balanced approaches…”

This is urgent right now, regarding the situation with North Korea, where the U.N. Security Council was meeting yesterday, under the chairmanship of China. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin just recently mandated their Foreign Ministers to issue a policy statement on what to do towards a good resolution.

President Xi is doing his part in the countdown to the Group of 20. In Germany, on July 4, he released a signed article, carried in the mainstream media, titled, “To Make the World a Better Place.” This came in advance of his meeting yesterday with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German leaders. Xi stated that the “Belt and Road Forum for international Cooperation, recently held in Beijing, is aimed at stepping up the synergy of development strategies and connectivity” among nations, and that, “It chimes with the theme of this year’s Hamburg Summit, ‘Shaping an Interconnected World.’ The Belt and Road Initiative and G20 cooperation could complement and reinforce each other…” Xi said that China hopes to work with all parties at the Hamburg Summit for global growth.

In Xinhua’s Chinese-language coverage of the ensuing hot debate in Germany over Xi’s remarks, Helga Zepp-LaRouche was quoted, described as, “Germany’s well-known Schiller Institute think tank chairman and founder.” She strongly endorsed Xi’s efforts to build a “community of common destiny,” and she, too, stressed the importance of the BRI International Cooperation Summit. Further, Zepp-LaRouche said, “The development of Africa is one of the important issues of the G-20 Summit. China has really solved the refugee problem at the source, through investment and construction of railways, dams, power stations, industiral parks and training of the African labor force. If Europe wants to solve the refugee crisis in a humane way, it should be involved in ‘building all the way.'” (Translated roughly from the Xinhua news wire, which has also appeared in Sina, on CGTN, and on the site of the Chinese Ministry of Defense.)

The lack of action in the spirit of the the Belt and Road, is showing up dramatically in many situations. Look at New York City. On Monday, July 10, starts the “Summer of Agony,” when there will be planned outages of track at Penn Station, to make overdue repairs, but there is no overview plan for the entire region, nor associated contingency measures for the population. This time next week could be fraut with chaos, hysteria, and suffering.

Yet the Federal Department of Transportation just pulled its representative off the board of the “Gateway Project,” a program of merit, to build new crossings of the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan. The proposed 2018 Federal budget also has no funding for Portal Bridge works, the lone Hackensack River crossing that handles all the north-south rail from New Jersey into Manhattan.

Internationally, look at the food situation. On July 3, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released a statement that world hunger is on the rise. The emergency needs in Yemen, Nigeria, and South Sudan, and elsewhere, are the most severe since World War II.

On July 7, as the G20 opens, there will also be an international conference, co-sponsored by the Schiller Institute, in New York City, on “Food for Peace: The New Name For Peace Is Economic Development,” where participants, including diplomats, agriculture experts, and U.S. farm representatives, will confer on solving emergencies, and moving ahead to a world of food in abundance, and a “common destiny” of development. One farm organization leader’s conference statement says, “We have no idea of the wonderful advances ahead, if we get on track with deliberate development policies, and get off the track of the lies that we are to ‘trust the market forces…'”

The means to this are at hand: LaRouche’s “Four Laws.”