EIR’s Timothy Rush Addresses BRICS Press Meeting
July 7—EIR and Schiller Institute representative Timothy Rush was the only American invited to address an all-day, pre-summit “BRICS Press Meeting” held in the city of Niterói, Brazil (just outside Rio) July 4, one of many events organized on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit, although not part of the official proceedings. His message—that the United States could and must recognize that it faces only two choices: nuclear war or cooperating with the BRICS in offering economic development to the world—was welcomed by the meeting's participants.
Rush began his 15-minute contribution on the panel on “Development of Independent Networks for the Global South” by saying he felt that he was “among friends,” was well-received, and his call, nearing his conclusion, for people “not to despair about the United States!” was met with general appreciative laughter from the 50-60 people present, primarily journalists, from Brazil and other Global South nations.
Rush told the group that Indonesia’s President Sukarno rightly acknowledged the founding of the United States as the first anti-colonial revolution at the famous Bandung meeting of 1955. There is hope for a nation that could produce the likes of Washington, Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and the statesman and physical economist Lyndon LaRouche. His referenced FDR’s collaboration with Brazilian nationalist Getúlio Vargas on great projects to develop Brazil during World War II as the basis for FDR’s proposed form of the Bretton Woods System, as opposed to the version pushed by Britain’s John Maynard Keynes, drew home his point for the case of Brazil's own development as a global economic power.
Rush had introduced EIR as founded by the American statesman Lyndon LaRouche, who proposed in 1975 how to create an International Development Bank to replace the IMF system. He presented the LaRouche movement’s work today through its campaigns, from our call for the U.S. to join the BRICS, to our most current leaflet, warning of the danger of “Thermonuclear Fireworks” by July 4th. He read several paragraphs of that leaflet, emphasizing that the cause of the conflicts spreading throughout the world is one: the breakdown of the reigning international financial system and the fight over what systems will replace it.
Other participants in that panel were journalists from TV BRICS, Telesur, Sputnik, Prensa Latina, Al Mayadeen and HispanTV.
The final statement issued from the meeting, “Letter from Niterói: BRICS, a New World and Many Voices,” expressing participants’ fierce commitment to creating “a New International Information Order” to support the BRICS’ fight to “free humanity from the bonds” of today’s unipolar world of colonialism and poverty, notably included amongst its demands, was a point emphasized by Rush, referring to the proposal by Schiller Institute chairwoman, Helga Zepp-LaRouche:
“We also emphasize the need to adopt, at a global level, a New International Security and Development Architecture capable of defending the security interests and the right to development of all countries in the world.”