“In the Spirit of Schiller and Beethoven: All Men Become Brethren!” December 7-8, 2024
Jason Ross: Welcome to Panel 3 of the Schiller Institute’s Dec. 7–8, 2024 conference, “In the Spirit of Schiller and Beethoven: All Men Become Brethren.” I am Jason Ross, science advisor to the Schiller Institute and moderator of this panel, on the theme “The Science Drivers of Physical Economy Today.”
We begin with a musical offering, Beethoven’s beautiful song Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel sung by Schiller Institute Musical Director John Sigerson with accompanist Margaret Greenspan.
[Musical offering]
Ross: Next up, we bring you 1998 remarks from Lyndon LaRouche on the difference between humans and animals, and on what an idea really is. Following LaRouche, we will hear from our truly distinguished panel.
Lyndon LaRouche: The Greek Classical art, unlike the Archaic art, Archaic Greek or Archaic Egyptian art, forces you to see an in-betweenness.
For example, take the case in modern, or relatively modern Classical art. Leonardo da Vinci did a famous painting, “The Virgin of the Grotto,” in which there are two sources of light depicted in the painting. One is the light of the sun; there’s another light, equally strong. And, therefore, in understanding this, when you look at this painting, the mind is forced to say, “How do I reconcile what Leonardo did?” It’s like a world of two suns: one light, the sun; another light. And the two lights are defined in a very ingenious way.
You find the same thing with Raphael Sanzio, in the Vatican Apartments, where he painted these famous frescoes. And you find that you have to stand in two positions to see the fresco. You see one thing when you stand close to it at a certain distance, and if you go another discrete distance away from it, to see the thing as a whole, you see a different picture. The mind must put these two contradictory images together. You see the same thing in the museum, with the so-called Transfiguration of Raphael Sanzio. If you look at it closely, you get one image; if you stand back, you see the transfiguration, a completely different image. The mind must put the two things together. All art is based on that. This is called ideas, and that’s what we want to get to here: ideas.
Again, I’ve written it out, and put it on this form. What the Greeks mean by an idea, and the difference from the Archaic art, is that the Archaic art represents a sense-perception. The Greek Classical art, or the paintings by Raphael or Leonardo da Vinci, represent ideas. There’s a difference. One is an image based on the senses, which is what you get on television, isn’t it? Television entertainment is based on no ideas, but sense-perception: blood, violence, and sex. You see it, you feel it, you sense it: “Man, that’s real!” But it’s not.
Whereas, an idea is something else. The term “idea” means a principle. For example, the common case of a principle is a scientific principle. The idea of gravity. Did you ever “see” a gravity? Did you ever actually feel one? No, you didn’t. You may have thought you did, but you didn’t. Did you ever see a principle of nature? Did you ever shake hands with it, smell it, lick it, touch it, sniff it? No, you didn’t. But, these are ideas, and they are valid, and they tell us something. They tell us that principles control the universe. Something you can’t smell, you can’t see, you can’t touch. You can’t lick it, you can’t taste it, and yet it controls the universe. It’s called a principle. It’s called an idea. All art, great art, is based on ideas, which have nothing to do directly with the senses. Artistic ideas come from contradictions in the senses, as Classical art comes from dissonance, from contradictions, from the development of forcing you to find an idea, to find an irony, a metaphor, an idea. Scientific principle: ideas.
This is where we get to the part about the difference between monkeys and people….
There are four steps to forming an idea, and I’ve reduced it to the form which occurs in science. In science, you have, as we have this contradiction, this ontological paradox, this difference between the image of an economy, from the standpoint of money, from the standpoint of financial accounting, which is fraudulent. But they still collect bills on that basis. Then you have the other conception of economy, which is based on physical production, and things which are essential to physical production, such as education, health care, and science services. So, you have two images of economy. The fact that the two somehow intersect, means that there’s an irony here, there’s a contradiction, there’s a metaphor; and you’ve got to explain that metaphor, to understand how an economy works.
Or, there’s another thing, which is that you have a principle in so-called physics, or mathematical physics, called entropy, which says, in effect, that any mechanical system will run down. If an economy is a mechanical system, and all financial accounting is based on mechanics, the principles of mechanical interaction, how can you have a financial system which generates profit? How can it? Every system, mechanical system, if it continues long enough, runs down. Now, if something runs down, how does it produce more? Every mechanical system always produces less. Therefore, by definition, no economy which corresponds perfectly to a financial accounting system, could possibly have a profit.
And yet, if we look at the history of mankind, we find that mankind, whose potential population density on this planet, as approximating that of an ape, was never more than 3 million people on this planet; if mankind were an ape, which is what Prince Philip claims to be, then at no time could there have been more than several million living human individuals on this planet, in the past two million years of the ice ages. At no time. That’s the ecological potential of an ape, or an ape-type species.
How did we get to several hundred million people, living individuals on this planet, during the medieval period? How did we get to 5 billion people on this planet recently? Obviously, we’re not apes. Obviously, we grow. This growth in population depended upon technological progress of various kinds, also artistic progress. Man’s increased power over nature depended upon the growth of income, standard of living, lessening morbidity rates. You can’t educate a child to the age of 25 if the parents are dying of morbidity rates, at the age of 30-35, can you? You can’t maintain such a society. Therefore, there had to be more. There had to be improvement, there had to be increase. This is no entropic system; this is no mechanical system; this is no financial accounting system. It doesn’t explain anything.
There’s some source of some increase of man’s power over nature, which intersects the process of production, which accounts for this progress. [end video]
Ross: We thank Lyndon LaRouche. I will now give a short introduction to the topic, and we will then hear from our first two speakers—Jacques Cheminade and Her Excellency Naledi Pandor—followed by a short Q&A session including Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. We will then move on to the other outstanding speakers in this panel and have a general discussion process. You can participate in that discussion by sending questions to questions@schillerinstitute.com. If your question is directed to a particular speaker, please indicate that.
Allow me to reflect on what we just heard from Lyndon LaRouche to introduce the topic under discussion.
Scientific thought plays an irreplaceable role in economic development. Unique to the human species among all known life, scientific thought is the fundamental source of economic value. It also plays a unique cultural role in bridging differences between societies through a shared investigation of the universe common to us all. Principles are universal.
Through the use of technologies and energy sources that increase the quality and quantity of power applied to the productive process, our unique and beautiful species has improved the effective powers of our labor by many orders of magnitude. From the use of fire that first separated us from the animals, through the use of water and wind in ancient times, to the steam engine, the chemical revolution, the use of hydrocarbons and nuclear power today, we now stand poised to make the breakthrough to the next economic platform that will define a new era of human civilization: nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion liberates, per mass of fuel, 1 million times more energy than hydrocarbons. Nuclear fusion is what powers the Sun.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1974 founding of the Fusion Energy Foundation. It was co-founded by Lyndon LaRouche in New York City. Until its 1986 shutdown by the federal government—later overruled in a higher court—the Fusion Energy Foundation was the leading promoter of funding for research into the development of fusion power, and it was a key opponent of the Malthusian ideology that was becoming increasingly dominant, and used to prevent economic development and enforce backwardness.
But this limits-to-growth concept, this lie, was not developed in the 1960s; we need to go much further back. Look back to the Greek story of Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and gave it, and knowledge itself, to mankind. This gift of reason was opposed by the god Zeus, who opposed his loss of power. Scientific humanity was a threat to Zeus’ unique role as the God of Olympus, as the master of all. This is the oligarchical cultural problem that still remains today.
Moving to more modern times, the British Empire has been the leading promoter of the Malthusian outlook. Malthus made the preposterous claim that population growth would unavoidably exceed any potential improvements in agricultural productivity. There are limits to growth, said Malthus, so society should stop trying to get rid of poverty, since there are simply limited resources; and instead, should rid itself of poor people by encouraging them to die earlier.
That was the outlook of the Club of Rome, which published in 1972 a report called The Limits to Growth. Lyndon LaRouche wrote his own book, There Are No Limits to Growth in the next decade.
While animals do have a fixed carrying capacity, a maximum population for a given environment, there are no such limits to human growth. This is because the universe is an inexhaustible source of new paradoxes to provoke us to make new discoveries and therefore new technologies.
By rejecting Malthusianism, we can increase our power over nature, to improve it and ourselves. Our truly human future lies not in terrestrial conquest or hegemony, but in the shared exploration of space and the advancement of our common understanding of nature’s marvels.
With that, let us hear from our speakers.
Our first speaker is Jacques Cheminade. Jacques is a former candidate for President of France, having succeeded three times in gathering the required 500 signatures of French mayors to earn his spot on the ballot. He is the president of the French political party Solidarité et Progrès. He’s a wise thinker with a polemical approach, he speaks to us today on this subject:
“The Science Driver for the New Paradigm of Physical Economy”
[as delivered]
Jacques Cheminade: Our mission is to get mankind off the trajectory towards thermonuclear extinction. It means peace, not as an agreement between two periods of war or merely to stop the war, but to base our fight on scientific and technological progress to enable all nations and the entire human species to survive. The commitment to scientific progress is at the center of the physical preconditions for the survival of mankind as a whole, to generate in all of us the certainty that future generations are going to be better than ours. We need to share this principle in our subjective interventions to foster the necessary hope and confidence in the powers of creative reason; such a power, against the vicious narratives of the oligarchical warmongers, is the unique weapon to inspire our human brothers to join together in our cities to demonstrate for the cause of peace, to transform frightened fugitives into self-asserted millions of demonstrators.
The following speakers are going to present on this panel the consequence of not intervening, our mutual nuclear annihilation, and instead the joy to create a new paradigm of development if the nations of the West join with the BRICS to ensure the rapid industrialization of our whole planet and create billions of qualified jobs required to achieve such a task. Among the Ten Principles Helga Zepp-LaRouche, presented for discussion for a new international security and development architecture, the last one defines our challenge:
“The basic assumption for the new paradigm is that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of its mind and the beauty of his soul, and being the most advanced geological force in the universe, which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion, and that the evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome”
This is the very source of science, the crucial fact referenced in the Christian principle of “the divine spark of reason” inhering in each of us as sovereign individual creative person. Lyndon LaRouche, in his February 8, 1993, “History as Science”, refers to “Gottfried Leibniz stunning discovery of the characteristics points of affinity between Christianity and the Confucius tradition within the language-culture of China.” The point here is what we have in common and what us, in our Western countries, can and should bring to the “community for a shared future of mankind.”
What we have in common is what Helga Zepp-LaRouche stresses: the innate goodness potential of all human beings, expressed in the West by Platonic Christianism against the evil gnosticism and nominalism, both reduced to sense-perceptions, and in China, by the original Confucian tradition against both misguided Taoism and legalism. In both cases, it is in total opposition to what Third Reich jurist Carl Schmitt calls the need to have an existential enemy to assert one’s own sense of identity. This evil belief that you have for ever an existential enemy until you destroy it leads “logically” to war. Chinese culture, with its win-win concept and Western culture, as expressed in the Treaty of Westphalia and the Evangiles [Gospels], share a similar, ontologically optimistic, conception. It is not only the very basis to conceive a lasting peace, it expresses the unavoidable interdependency of morals motivation and scientific practice. Some may answer: but it is science that made the Chinese invent the powder for canons and the West to develop and launch two atomic bombs on civilians.
Well, as for the West it is the perversion of science. Why? Because is nothing is done for the good, evil emerges and controls the results of science for the sake of a power against another! A commitment to develop the not yet developed countries, as a Roosevelt or a de Gaulle conceived it, would have prevented the temptation to throw atomic bombs in 1945 for geopolitical reasons, to humiliate Japan and threaten the “communist Russia.” Geopolitics is based on a policy to dominate the other and get rid of your existential enemy, not to reach a higher level of relations, peace, cooperation. That’s why for the sake of peace you have to reject forever geopolitics.
For us in the West it means to recover our historical purpose, as expressed in the Golden Renaissance. We can’t join the New Paradigm with empty hands or, worse, with empty minds. We should recover what we have lost since the two barbarian wars that took place in Europe and the colonization of territories and minds: to recover the method of Plato, of Socratic hypothesizing given by the Renaissance that which it lacked, the Christian notion of imago viva Dei, fostering the Platonic conception. It would require of course much more than 15 minutes to share what it is, and I recommend that you investigate Lyndon LaRouche’s “History as Science,” but at least a flavor of it is necessary to make successful our march towards peace, now. The method of Plato is based on hypothesis, as opposed to the “hypothesis non fingo” employed by Isaac Newton. We do not know because of sense-certainty. We know because we make hypothesis—change of axioms—validated by crucial experiments. The scientific method is a method of successive changes, embodied in a higher hypothesis, the historical perspective of the internal history of scientific discovery. Rather, science has been replaced by syllogism, mere deductions, and its practice by the administration of subjugated people and objects.
What imago via Dei, instead, and the associated capax Dei bring forth is that the sovereignty of the individual human person, the microcosm, is the agency through which all humanity is endowed to change the macrocosm, and such a change in the macrocosm only becomes through a change for the better of all elements of the microcosm. It is the second principle of Helga Zepp-LaRouche: “to alleviate poverty in every nation of the planet, which is easily possible, if the existing technologies are being used for the benefit of the common good.” It is this this macrocosmic accountability of each microcosm, as an intention, for each nation and each human being, that defines the good, the policy upon which the continued survival of civilization absolutely depends. Assuming that direction for all humanity—to change the macrocosm, capax Dei—is the answer of Christian Platonism to the existential challenge of our times, the willful shaping of the past, present and future history of mankind. Capax Dei is the individual, sovereign person’s capacity to participate in the work of the creation—by means of actions which are products of creative reason motivated by agapē, love for the Creator and humanity, the “lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe being in correspondence and cohesion.” That unique capacity of a singular individual to change the macrocosm, neither the wisdom of Confucius, nor the scientific genius of Plato and the non-Platonist Christian can fully accomplish. It is the capax Dei, as a universal process of continuing creation in the mind of a sovereign individual, an axiomatic revolutionary change as a universal process of continuing creation, which is the gift from the Golden Christian Platonist Renaissance, expressed in human dedicated persons to be at the highest level of their creative powers, as Nicholas of Cusa, Gottfried Leibniz, Albert Einstein and Lyndon LaRouche.
This of course is not a competition but matter for inspiration, joyful inspiration. Christian Platonism is a crucial step for all humanity, not an asset of European thinking. It is valuable if it is shared and it has the potential to be shared with all human beings.
Let me bring one example of such a capacity. African countries do need fair conditions of development, respect for their sovereignty, water management, hospitals and schools. But they also require an inclusion in the most advanced technologies, in a dynamic project of change as China successfully did. As Cheikh Anta Diop and Lyndon LaRouche both stated, African countries don’t need to be considered as poor countries to assist, but in the Spirit of Bandung, provided with the means to leap-frogging stages of development. Consider that African space industry represents more than $22 billion, that 17 African nations have invested in 58 projects of satellites and 9 of them have been conceived, manufactured and assembled in Africa. This is key for agriculture, public health, education and, of course, creating jobs in the sectors of engineering, mechanics and research. Each country needs a science driver in key sectors. For example, nuclear energy is potentially key to secure the electrification of the continent, but also to create nuplex centers of industrial development and investigative dating about the archaeological material from the very early human occupation of the continent. On January 2023, the African Union has inaugurated the African Space Agency in Egypt. France and South Africa, together with the Senegalese society of space studies and the Turkish Space Agency, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to develop space infrastructure in both nations. Such investments for peace, as they are proposed in the Schiller Institute study under the titled “Development Means Billions of New Jobs. No Refugees. No War,” platforms of development creating basis for an increase in the potential powers of labor. The collaboration of Western countries and the Global Majority, according to the approach that is going to be defined in this panel, is the best investment for peace. It is the only alternative, at a world level, to nuclear war.
You can see in this picture the joy of learning of these young girls in center of cooperative studies located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Let’s be inspired by their smiles, by their joy, and stop to loot their country and instead build dams—the Inga Dams project—and nuclear SMRs to foster centers of economic development available when these young girls are going to become adults. The emergence of Africa is their future but it is also ours, for a continuing process of world peace.
We have to stop thinking in terms of power relations and instead of inclusive cooperation to bring a better world to our future generations. We owe to all of them a better world, not proxy wars always close to degenerate in our human annihilation: a better world. We are caught in a trap with nuclear teeth. It is time to get out of our somnambulism and put all of us back on the track of the science of human history of our future.
Ross: Thank you, Jacques Cheminade.
Our next speaker, I’m deeply honored to introduce is Her Excellency Naledi Pandor. Mrs. Pandor has held several ministerial positions in the government of the Republic of South Africa, including in the fields of education and science and technology. Her most recent position was as the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation for the Republic of South Africa.
Her topic: “How Should the South Respond?”
Your Excellency, you have the floor.
[as delivered live]
H.E. Naledi Dr. Pandor: Thank you very much to the Schiller Institute and particularly Dr. Helga Zepp-LaRouche for inviting me to be part of this important conference. I should have spoken yesterday on the global issues panel, and I will try to reflect on some of the remarks of Mr. Cheminade today.
Our world today is experiencing a most profound and disruptive level of toxic politics, dominated by aggressive self-interest and neglect of the value of global cooperation. Multilateral bodies such as the United Nations have not been able to respond decisively. And the most powerful organ of the United Nations, the Security Council, is held hostage by great power competition and uneven use of the veto. Many commentators have referred to the past five years as a most toxic geopolitical environment, testing international relations and fraying long-established bonds that helped to avoid a world war for more than five decades. The period is also viewed by some as an inflection point; a period that offers up room for a new collective of progressive ideas that will seek to put people rather than interests first.
There is hope that the South will step up. The concept of “South” is a contested one, as the region does not have a coherent connected grouping of nations with a shared hegemony such as exists with nations of the North. So, we are still grappling with the meaning and unity of the South. There are, however promising signs of the emergence of new formations and policy perspectives. For example, South Africa has shown a positive commitment to international law, and to the United Nations system through its approach to the International Court of Justice in the effort to end the ongoing war against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. South Africa, in doing this, placed human rights and concern for those who suffer harm at the forefront of its foreign policy actions.
This was reminiscent of former President Nelson Mandela, who played a key role in several peace initiatives on the continent of Africa; and who shaped South Africa’s foreign policy as one that is based on the concern for others, on the promotion of human rights, and on international solidarity. So, “I care for you, because you care for me.” This relates to a very ancient African philosophy of Ubuntu, which means “I am human because you recognize in action my humanity.”
A second positive development is the increased maturing of the BRICS forum into an expanded body that seeks a more inclusive approach in global politics and international partnerships. BRICS has emerged as a positive forum in that it seeks to discuss new ideas on key issues such as science, innovation, trade, international financing, and the development of the South. The establishment of the BRICS New Development Bank and its early success give further hope for the creation of new institutions and new practices.
One of the realities, while we certainly agree with Mr. Cheminade on the critical importance of science and innovation, is that grant funding to Africa rarely includes funding for research, funding for innovation capacity, funding for advancing science on the African continent.
We also believe that devoted attention to United Nations reform and democratization of the Security Council is another positive opportunity that we should use to reshape world relations. The General Assembly meeting of last September committed to advancing reform processes, and to making the Security Council more effective, more efficient, more democratic, and more representative.
Lastly, I believe the task of the next five decades is certainly the adoption of workable strategies for the fundamental transformation of Africa. Our continent has to address the difficult challenges of inequality, poverty, and joblessness. Africa has a significant impatient youth population, eager to achieve a prosperous, democratic empowering Africa. The global community should therefore work closely with our African Union to advance implementation of our African blueprint for development, Africa Agenda 2063. In this blueprint, we set out the critical areas of development; including water, renewable energy resources, infrastructure and logistics for intra-African trade, agriculture and food security. And we require that our partners should provide support to the continent to enhance capacity for implementation of this development agenda. We don’t need new plans; we need to make sure that existing plans are effective and that they work to the good of Africa, to the good of all humanity in the South.
We believe that the South can be a source of progress, of peace and security. Countries of the South should embrace democracy, the practice of human rights, and respect for international law as key guarantees of the means to end the toxicity of power competition that has truly eroded human relations. In fact, the erosion of respect for human rights, of respect for international law poses a very serious threat to the practice of science, because undemocratic governments hate the honesty of scientific research; hate the opportunity of innovation. And thus, it is incumbent on all of us to adopt the ideas set out in the Schiller Institute development framework to really ensure that all the aspects of human endeavor which advance human progress are embraced by governments in the South as well as governments in the North. We should encourage a new human relation across the world; one that is devoted to empowering all human beings and ensuring that we develop a more prosperous, a more engaged, a more skilled humanity able to address the fundamental problems that confront all of us. Because alongside the problems, we have a human capacity—an ingenuity—of problem resolution; and we need to unite in drawing that capacity together and ensuring that we use international relations to resolve the problems of the world.
I look forward to the deliberations on our contributions. Thank you very much.
Ross: Thank you, Naledi Pandor. We will now move onto a brief discussion period including Her Excellency Pandor, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and Jacques Cheminade. I’d like to ask Helga for starters, if you have anything that you’d like to bring up in response to what you’ve heard this morning or this afternoon.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, I want to express to you, Your Excellency Dr. Pandor, my deepest happiness that you give us the honor to be in our conference, because we have been following what you have been doing, and noticed the fact that the South African government has taken over the moral leadership for the world, which the West in this period seems to have abandoned. So, you also already in your remarks answered what I was planning to ask you. But let me restate my question to you. Yesterday, we discussed the strategic situation, which several people, including Scott Ritter, myself, and others characterized as the most dangerous period in all of history; even more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis, for the very fact that we seem to be heading like almost a train without stop signs towards a nuclear catastrophe. This was underlined by a remark made by Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan at the CSIS meeting on the 20th of November just now. He stated that in order to keep U.S. hegemony, they regarded it as legitimate to use nuclear weapons. However, he said they should keep a certain amount of them in order to be able to fight off future adversaries. This implies the ridiculous idea that you can win a regional or limited nuclear war and then keep going afterwards, which is obviously not the case. Because as Ted Postol and others have convincingly argued, if you come to a nuclear war, the likelihood that it is ending all life on the planet is very high, if not certain. So, the question therefore is, what can we do to get off this incredibly dangerous track?
I have been thinking about this for a very long time, and if you look at the relationship between the United States and China, NATO and Russia, it seems to be almost hopeless. The United States’ Kurt Campbell, who is the Undersecretary of State, recently stated that China represents the largest threat in the history of the United States ever. In Germany for example, Defense Minister Pistorius talks about making Germany “war ready.” Europe is in a process of militarization.
I think the only hope which exists to avoid certain catastrophe, which would mean the end of the human species, is to convince the Western nations to stop the confrontation with the Global South. The Global South is already, according to Cambridge statistics, 85% of the human population; that’s the Global Majority by far. And if we could do something to convince the Europeans and even the United States to cooperate with the BRICS, for example, in the development of Africa, in the development of Latin America and Asia, in order to industrialize, to help the Southern Hemisphere to finally overcome the remnants of colonialism; which would be also in the interest of the West because it would the only human way to solve the migrant crisis.
So, I wanted to ask you, can we not enter some kind of a dialogue to put this on the agenda? To move from confrontation to cooperation in such a strategic impact way that it really solves this problem? That would be my question to you.
Dr. Pandor: Well, thank you very much; a very complex question. The first response would be, I think, that what we need are mature, rational leaders. Scientists such as Mr. Cheminade was referring to. If you don’t have that level of logic and rational thought, you then really resort to the illogic that you can hold sway at all times. And I think this is an extremely wrong approach; it excludes so much of the world from being part of advancing the world in a positive fashion to a future in which all of us are prosperous, all of us feel that the world makes a difference and actually recognizes our needs and our capabilities. So, what we need are mature leaders who can have a very complex discussion about how the most powerful economies—which are the United States of America, China, and then Europe to some degree—who they relate to each other in a positive fashion. And I’m sure that with proper discussion, with an openness toward arriving at a positive outcome, they would be able to resolve the current tensions among themselves.
I think the notion of preparing for war is a very poor example of leadership. What we should be preparing for is using our innate abilities in order to advance the world. We’re at a point where many countries hold very worrying and lethal weapons. I come from South Africa, which is a country that agreed to destroy the nuclear weapons that it had had the opportunity to build in the apartheid era. One of the first decisions of the new government headed by Nelson Mandela was that we would be anti-the holding of nuclear weapons. And that while we have nuclear scientific capability, it would be put to peaceful purposes and not be directed to weaponizing South Africa against any country in Africa or any part of the world.
So, I believe that what we need is fresh thinking. We need a civil society, and particularly intellectual organizations to be more visible and vocal in presenting alternative perspectives on how we should we view the world, and setting out from research clear examples of what we can anticipate should we go the route of a negative confrontation between the most powerful in the world. This will harm all of us. If the great powers are able to reach a rapprochement, it will allow for enhanced development; particularly of the most poor countries of the South. It will set the world on a very new trajectory and would offer an opportunity for real change and independence that we’ve not had since the beginnings of the end of imperialism and colonialism on the African continent.
So, this environment, while toxic, offers a new opportunity to engage in a very different way through international relations in building new partnerships among all the various regions of the world. But it is the most powerful who must make the decision to do something positive. Otherwise, they are going to generate a reaction which will lead to the destruction of the world and increased world instability as we are seeing from week to week in different parts of the world today.
Ross: Thank you very much. I’d like to ask Jacques Cheminade, is there anything you would like to bring up with our distinguished guest?
Cheminade: Your Excellency, I want to ask you a question that responds both to what we are fighting for, and what Helga and you have said. Don’t you think that the mobilization of the diasporas of the Global South inside the countries of Europe and the United States can be a very good way to educate our own nations with these people who, as we meet them in the streets of Paris and we meet them in other countries, are more advanced in political, in knowing what’s happening in the world, are more advanced than our own people? So, don’t you think that with the mobilization through the diaspora we can organize something together?
Dr. Pandor: I certainly think that that’s a possibility, because to achieve the [video blip] détente through the Schiller Institute, you do need us as humanity to embrace the idea that we should be working more closely together. It also requires us to embrace diversity, and this is something that democratic South Africa has done. The recognition of unity and diversity is a core part of the Constitution of South Africa. Because we realized that racism, prejudice, and hatred of others due to orientation or culture or religion is actually a negative for a society. What we needed to do to build a nation that could work together is to embrace the notion of unity in diversity. So, I think certainly working more closely with the diaspora, making those who are strangers in our countries feel welcome, tapping into their expertise and their understanding of the world from which they come. But also, having them contribute to development in their countries; developing models for example such as for South Africa, many of our trained medical professionals work in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. There’s no contractual provision that they could spend part of their time working in our country—South Africa or another part of Africa. So, what we’ve done as countries of the North is, we have denuded Africa of critical skills and haven’t work to develop a more inclusive arrangement that would ensure a sharing of these skills. So, really we need a new ethos, a new approach to development; a new approach to international relations; a new approach to interaction and cooperation among ourselves as citizens of the world. We also have to embrace the notion of a dependency between all of us. That wherever I come from, whatever my race, whatever my gender, if we work together, it can be to the good of all. Isolation or exclusion doesn’t help us to create a better world.
Ross: Hear, hear! I’d like Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, is there anything else that you would like to add at this point before we move on with our panel?
Zepp-LaRouche: No, I think Dr. Pandor, you have given us a lot of food for thought and follow-up. I’m looking forward to strengthen that kind of collaboration, because I think that I would only emphasize the role of the Global South a little bit more, because in Bandung at the first conference of Africa, Asia, where Chou Enlai and Nehru and Sukarno agreed on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, they also noted that if it ever comes to a nuclear war, the South will be affected as much as the North. It may be a couple of weeks later, but eventually, they will die as well. I think that fact gives the Global South right now the moral integrity and right to speak out more strongly. Because I think their voice is much more reasonable than what we have seen in the West in the recent period, which I think is undergoing a tremendous cultural crisis.
Therefore, I would encourage you and other leaders from the Global South to take an even more strong role to address the situation. That’s my thought.
Dr. Pandor: Thank you very much for that, Dr. Helga. I just wish to complete by saying that I wish to remind all those in the North that they made an incredible contribution to us achieving our freedom in South Africa. Because they all agreed that they would become part of the international solidarity campaign against apartheid. It was the international push alongside our own national struggle that really made such a major difference to us achieving freedom. I think we need to revive international solidarity for all people who suffer harm and oppression today. The world showed in the instance of apartheid that we could work together; that the United Nations could be drawn together, could establish a committee against apartheid that would ensure that the name of Nelson Mandela was kept alive; that apartheid would be declared a crime against humanity.
So, what I think we should be doing now is saying to the world, “When we work together on positive objectives, there is a great deal that we can achieve, and we can even defeat evils such as apartheid.
Ross: Thank you so much for your participation in our conference today. This was Her Excellency Naledi Pandor, former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation for the Republic of South Africa.
We will now move on to our next speakers. Our next speaker is Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Postol is widely considered to be one of the nation’s leading experts on missiles, on nuclear weapons. Today, he will share with us his analysis on the characteristics and capabilities of the Russian Oreshnik missile.
“Characteristics and Capabilities of the Russian Oreshnik Missile”
[as delivered, via video]
Prof. Ted Postol: Well it’s a pleasure to be here giving this talk. I will try to keep it brief, but I’ll try to provide information that I hope will be helpful to debate the meaning of the new Oreshnik missile. [1] We have a lot of information at this point. It’s not everything, but I think I can say with some degree of confidence that we have a general picture of this missile, and along with—although the details could change—I do not think the general conclusions about the capabilities and characteristics of this missile will change. So in that regard, we have enough to be able to talk about this in a way that I think can be useful to those who are attempting to understand the implications of this new missile.
[2] With that in mind, let me show you a little data that could be helpful. In particular we have photographs of some of the debris from the missile and I will very shortly show you some of the images, and I’ll very quickly get to an image of what I think the front end of this missile looks like.
[3] So, we saw images of this missile in display by the Ukrainians. This image is good because it gives you a rough sense of size, with this man standing next to the debris.
[4] And in this particular photograph or image from a videoframe, the big circle on the right designates the probable nose of a canister. So let me very quickly describe the characteristic of the missiles. It has six canisters. Each of these canisters has its own propulsion, and the six canisters, which I’ll show you shortly, on top the missile, are each carrying six submunitions. And we know that there were six canisters, and we are sure there are six submunitions, because we have videoframes of the clusters of submunitions arriving six at a time; so there was spread over about 7 seconds. There were six clusters or six submunitions, I’ll show you images of them coming in; and they arrived over an interval of about 7 seconds.
[5] So if you want to look at greater detail, this is the back end of the canister. Basically, the back end of the canister contains a pressure chamber, spherical in shape, and inside that pressure chamber, there’s some kind of mechanism for generating high pressure gas. The gas is hot, but it’s certainly not close to as hot as the gas from a rocket engine, but it doesn’t need to be. And the gas is then released through six venturis, each of which controls, feeds a nozzle. In this particular diagram, we can see one of the nozzles in the upper right of the venturi, attached to one of the venturis; the others have been knocked off by impact. And the rocket nozzle can swivel in the x and y direction.
[6] And in combination with the other five motors, the vehicle can be nudged—and I underscored “nudged”; these are not high thrust—into an orientation that is desired along a direction of motion over probably periods, intervals of hundreds of meters, so very small businesses, so the canisters can deploy the submunition as chosen by the targeteer.
[7] If we want to take a look at what the front end looks like, the upper diagram shows you a notional image, or diagram that I put together, of the six canisters; they are in two tiers. The dimensions of the canister we have a rough estimate of—they’re about 1 meter, or .9 meters each—and we know from statements made by the Russians that the first stage of this rocket is derived from some form of long-range missile. Basically it’s an RS-26, or RS-27, or an RS-25; and the diameter of those missiles, the first stage of those missiles is around 2 meters, 1.9, 1.8 meters, somewhere in that range. And so I have just arbitrarily—not arbitrarily—but assumed a 1.8 meter diameter, which works perfectly with the observed debris. And then I just packaged the submunitions: I postulated a submunition of the weight consistent with what we conclude is the lifting weight of a single rocket stage. So, a single rocket stage derived from an ICBM; it doesn’t mean it’s an ICBM; an ICBM has three full stages. And I flew it to see if it could achieve a certain range, the range required to reach Dnipro, the target area, from a Kapustin Yar, which is about 800 and 1,000 km. So the munitions are roughly the right size, the submunitions. They could be a little bit bigger or smaller depending on what they’re made of; we don’t know what they’re made of. We have a reasonable estimate of their weight, which is important, because the weight and the velocity at impact determine the power of the explosive event they produce. So exactly what they’re made of is not really important. What is important is their weight and their speed at impact, and this we do know.
[8] I won’t go through this, but basically we know that the impact speeds probably about Mach 10; for those people who want these slides just write me a note
