In his annual Angelus new year’s message, Pope Francis called on wealthy nations to alleviate the debt burden of the poorest countries. “The first to forgive debts is God, as we always ask Him when we pray the Lord’s Prayer…” he said. “And the Jubilee asks us to translate this forgiveness on a social level, so that no person, no family, no population is crushed by debts.”
The Pope’s envoy to Damascus made a similar call in the case of Syrian reconstruction. “The international community is reacting cautiously to the fine promises from Syria; but if that means that it wants to wait even longer before providing support and lifting the sanctions, then I say no!” said Cardinal Zenari. “I have a big request for the international community: get down to work in Syria! This is a very, very fragile peace for Syria, a very delicate moment.”
How can “a Syria that is destroyed, with a collapsing economy, with damaged infrastructure, with half of the hospitals not functioning, with destroyed schools, with people starving, with no electricity” find peace? “If we want peace in Syria, we have to ensure development! The new name for peace is development, to help Syria stand on its own two feet and walk.” (Emphasis added.)
A new security and development architecture is urgently needed for the world, a jubilee to free the poor from crushing odious debt, and to free everyone to develop and grow. This means ending the tyranny of the green ideology that blocks development, shortens lifespans, makes electricity unreliable and unaffordable, and promotes a culture whereby the beautiful human species is considered as an abomination, an unwholesome aberration in otherwise ideal nature. It means liberating the world from the attempted tyranny of an Anglo-American elite intent on maintaining a hegemonic unipolar world—an impossible task, but one which could sink the entire planet when it founders.
In this, the United States makes a mockery of the advice from John Quincy Adams two centuries ago:
“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be,” Secretary of State Adams told the Congress in 1821. “But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” The U.S. is “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all,” he said, but “She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own … she would involve herself … in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.” (Emphasis added.)
Can the United States return to his vision? “America’s glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration.”
American statesman Lyndon LaRouche writes in his 2002 piece “Continue the American Revolution!”:
That principle of natural law signifies, that no government has the moral authority to reign, except as it is efficiently committed to promote the general welfare of all of its population and that population’s posterity. No government has the moral authority to lead other nations, unless it is as zealously devoted to the general welfare of the community of nations, as to its own. This quality of government, the general-welfare principle, which was adopted as the fundamental constitutional law of the U.S.A., in the Preamble of the Federal Constitution, defines the only moral form of government. This is a form of government which has repudiated such abominations as the Roman Empire; whereas, contemporary U.S. utopians, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington, base their perverted model of soldier and state, on their intention to establish a form of government, by beasts, reigning over hunted or herded human cattle.
We are not beasts, we are not cattle. The time for humanity to leave its adolescence has come.
Join the discussion of the jubilee of odious debt and the path to a new security and development architecture in the deliberations of the International Peace Coalition.
