LaRouche’s ‘Apollo Mission’ for a World Health System and the Economy

We face a situation of world collapse. What is required is a comprehensive solution, not just good ideas, however welcome and just. The needed perspective is presented in the newly released Schiller Institute document, “LaRouche’s ‘Apollo Mission’ To Defeat the Global Pandemic: Build a World Health System Now!” whose focus is on saving lives, in the course of which, the mobilization involved will establish the agro-industrial and infrastructure capacity for a new economy. It will not be a futile attempt to “go back to work” in any of the ways that led up to the breakdown crisis to begin with.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and president, commenting on this yesterdat, stating that there are worthwhile developments, such as calls for debt moratoria for impoverished nations, but they do not, standing alone, add up to the comprehensive shift in the system that is required.

Making this shift happen is the aim of the April 25-26 internet conference, “Mankind’s Existence Now Depends on the Establishment of a New Paradigm!” Mobilizing for maximum attendance from every continent is itself contributing to the mass movement to change the course of history.

One welcome initiative comes today from Africa. Out of Ethiopia cargo planes took off as part of an operation called “Solidarity Flights,” transporting protective gear and medical equipment for health caregivers and patients, to be delivered to every country in Africa. The equipment was donated by the Jack Ma and Ali Baba Foundations Initiative, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The mission is jointly run by the World Food Program, World Health Organization and the African Union, out of a new “humanitarian hub” in Addis Ababa. The volume of the aid is small, but the significance of the initiative is great. The plan is to set up other such hubs elsewhere in the world. What’s lacking is full funding.

The worldwide transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is causing nightmare conditions at multiple locations, even before it has fully spread throughout the Global South. Today in India, where COVID-19 is progressing relentlessly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation, announcing another three weeks of lockdown and encouraging his countrymen to withstand the restrictions, in order to slow the virus while more medical facilities can be mustered.

Elsewhere in Asia, the leaders of the ASEAN+3 nations—the 10 ASEAN nations plus China, Japan, and South Korea—met online summit, and pledged to be mutually supportive in measures to combat the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

There is a dramatic economic crisis in the U.S., where 18 million people have filed for unemployment help in just the past three weeks. Food supply lines are running out; agriculture capacity is at stake. Every day, for example, farmers have dumped an estimated 5% of all their milk output down the drain, for lack of a place to sell and decent price to sell it at. An immediate factor is the drop of 12-15% in public demand after stay-at-home orders in mid-March. But well before the virus ever arrived, 3,000 U.S. dairy farmers were forced out of operation in 2019 alone, due to the systemic conditions of chronic low prices to farmers and ranchers, concentration of processing, and refusal of the Federal government to buck the Wall Street/City of London networks, and act in the public interest.

With different particulars, the same holds true for all other areas of life and production, from housing, to transportation, to water, power, disaster defense, and certainly to healthcare, and basic science. The lack of basics in the face of the virus is most extreme in Africa, parts of South and Central America and parts of Asia.

Zepp-LaRouche stressed yesterday, that we cannot defeat the virus under the existing economic system, which is bankrupt. We must restore Glass Steagall banking reorganization, clean out the bad gambling debts, set up Hamiltonian banking with plentiful credit for priorities, and engage in international cooperation—a New Bretton Woods in these terms.

Such a clear perspective—guided by the direct policies and proposals of Lyndon LaRouche—is the content of what must be planned for both fighting the pandemic and for creating the post-pandemic economic system. It stands in contrast to this week’s contrived flare-up of conflict between President Donald Trump and state governors, about who has authority to issue “back to work” orders—a classic British Empire mind-game of playing everyone off against each other, or, “let’s you and him fight.”

Our focus in these troubled days is to bring maximum participation in the Schiller Institute April 25-26 international conference, and pre-event organizing. “Tough times never last. Tough people do,” Zepp-LaRouche quoted today, from the U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad, who spoke on radio from Beijing to Des Moines April 12. He said the motto had guided him as Iowa governor through the 1980s farm crisis, and will guide us all together today.