New Silk Road Economic Development Hits Depressed D.C.

EIR gave a needed shock to Washington, D.C. today with a packed, 3-hour forum and discussion at the National Press Club, “Ending Permanent War and Financial Panic: Glass-Steagall and the Global Silk Road.” Among many other guests, 35 embassy personnel from countries around the world heard and debated presentations by Schiller Institute Founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche and former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.

The mission was to present the immediate, tangible alternative to the trans-Atlantic crisis of economic decline and endless wars. This in a depressed and war-weary U.S. capital voting to cut retirement benefits and healthcare services while raising taxes on an economically sinking population. Zepp-LaRouche and Senator Gravel made clear that by a trans-Atlantic restoration of Glass-Steagall, linking up with China’s New Silk Road development policy, and ending Barack Obama’s disastrous presidential role, the U.S. and European crises can be turned into recovery.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the organizer and author of EIR‘s in-depth special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” which has been endorsed by numerous economic institutions in China and published as a widely-circulating book in Chinese. Mike Gravel is the Senator who broke Washington’s code by reading the Vietnam War “Pentagon Papers” to the Senate in 1971, and in 2007 challenged Barack Obama at a Presidential debate by naming him, with great foresight, a candidate of war, including nuclear war.

Gravel is challenging his colleagues in today’s sleepwalking Congress to open up against Obama’s murderous secret drone wars, his unauthorized perpetual wars in the Mideast, North Africa, and war confrontations with Russia and China. He told the forum that he is working with Lyndon and Helga LaRouche because he supports the conceptions of the New Silk Road global infrastructure development, and the way the LaRouche’s organize for them. He said: “We’re in a ‘Guns of August’ situation: We need the approach of a Marshall Plan to the New Silk Road.”

Helga LaRouche, describing the intensifying refugee crisis in Europe, created by Obama as the direct effect of his wars, called this “a period of the burning shirt,” when leaders’ shirts are on fire with crisis, and “a new era of the common aims of mankind” can be initiated.

Amid an hours-long discussion and debate, guests got EIR special reports and subscriptions to the EIR Alert service. Zepp-LaRouche and Gravel, and Lyndon LaRouche, were interviewed by American and foreign media.

Lyndon LaRouche, in a later discussion after the forum, focused on the central importance of its mission orientation. He said: