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The pathetic attempt by UK Foreign Minister Truss to imitate her model, Margaret Thatcher, in her confrontation with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, fell flat, as she came off looking like an ill-prepared buffoon. At the same time, the French and Germans saw in a Normandy Four meeting in Berlin, that the Russians are right, that it is Ukraine -- NOT Russia -- that is blocking the fulfillment of the Minsk Accords. And the EU's version of a Green Build Back Better plan was hit by a blow from Senegal's President, who said Africans are more concerned about having electricity than in meeting the COP 26 agreement's demands on hydrocarbons.

Why is it that U.S. nuclear war exercises are good, as we are told they are "to secure our freedoms", but Russian exercises are described as a prelude to invade another country? Who has invaded more countries in recent years, the combined U.S./NATO forces, or Russia and China? Which alliance has used false flags as an excuse for war, organized Color Revolutions to carry out coups, and imposed sanctions to punish innocent civilians? The lying narratives must stop! The Schiller Institute will hold a joint event with the Russian International Affairs Council on Feb. 10 to discuss a solution to the crisis in Afghanistan. Join us: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/02/07/seminar-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-afghanistan-toward-a-long-term-solution/

The desperation evident in the succession of increasingly blatant lies, coming from Anglo-American spokesmen about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, demonstrates that they know their attempt to dictate the shape of the post-Cold War world is reaching an end. Each day, a new fabrication is produced, while in the background, a new Russian-China alliance has been cemented, calling for a new global security architecture which protects the interests of people in all nations. The issue of war or peace has never been so clear -- can the Anglo-American war drive be stopped?

The ability of the Empire to keep the world on a course of war and depression depends on their ability to control the narrative, through intense psychological warfare. Their most important weapon in this is to promote the belief in the "Magic of Money", to seduce otherwise intelligent people to seek personal security, rather than to mobilize to defend the Common Good. Join us to mobilize to bring down the Empire of the Mind, and replace it with the principles of the American System of physical economics, as developed by Lyndon LaRouche in his Four Economic Laws.

President Putin yesterday called out the War Hawks, who claim they are concerned with "protecting Ukraine's sovereignty." They are using this narrative, he said, as an excuse to draw Russia into an armed conflict, "to hamper Russia's development." A memo released by the White House last week actually stated this as the intention of the new sanctions regime they are drafting. Driving the war talk is not Russian military deployments, but the deepening panic that the Great Reset is in trouble, in large part because Russia and China will not surrender their sovereignty to a global dictatorship of central banks!

Jan. 28 -- On January 20, Jeremy Grantholm, founder of the asset management firm GMO, warned that a "superbubble", comprised of stocks, housing and commodities, will soon pop, wiping out $35 trillion in assets. This would be the fourth superbubble collapse in the last one hundred years, he said, citing stock bubbles which imploded in 1929 and 2000, and the housing bubble in 2008. He stated that: "...we face the largest potential markdown of perceived wealth in U.S. history." However, no one is listening, he complained, because superbubbles "are often the most exhilarating financial experiences of a lifetime." Among those not listening, he identified the U.S. Federal Reserve and the other central banks, which he reports do not "seem to recognize the danger. As if to prove his point, {Bloomberg Business} ran as its headline for its lead story on January 27, "America's Economy Is Booming", citing statistics which show a "better-than-expected" GDP growth in the latest quarter. Further down in the article was a mention of the decision taken at the Fed Open Market Committee earlier that day, to move ahead, finally, with "tapering", scaling back the Quantitative Easing program and raising interest rates. It reports ominously, "Traders are bracing for higher borrowing costs, with money markets now expecting almost five interest-rate increases from the Federal Reserve this year and another four from the Bank of England." This unacknowledged contradiction, of the disconnect between the "good news" of a growing GDP -- which measures monetary expansion and not goods production of the real economy -- and the fears of the effects of an interest rate spike, demonstrates precisely why the Fed and others cannot "recognize the danger." Backing Grantholm's view are a spate of articles and reports on the unsustainability of various forms of debt, especially of the danger of default among poor, heavily-indebted countries. David Malpass, President of the World Bank, warned that the "risk of disorderly defaults is growing....Countries are facing a resumption of debt payments at precisely the time when they don't have the resources to be making them." Larry Elliott, financial correspondent for the {Guardian}, elaborated on this in his January 23 column, writing that debt payments by developing sector countries have more than doubled since 2010, and will increase more if the Fed raises interest rates. In 2010, 6.8% of government revenues went to debt repayment; in 2021, this rose to 14.3%. There are fifty-four countries in a "debt crisis", and nearly 50% of that debt is owed to private lenders, that is, banks and investment funds -- including those where many people have placed their retirement and pension funds -- and another 27% to institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Further, reports proliferate of the accelerating rates of delinquency in personal debt, such as home mortgage payments and credit cards, while the website www.wallstreetonparade.com has been documenting that the Federal Reserve has been pumping trillions of dollars into the major private banks -- such as JP MorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Citibank -- since the 4th Quarter of 2019, through the Repo lending window, to prevent a collapse of corporate debt, or a chain-reaction default on derivatives. What Is "Irrational Exuberance"? At a time when stock valuations were soaring in the mid-1990s, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan delivered a speech to the free market fanatics of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on "The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society". In his speech, on December 5, 1996, he spoke of the overall favorable climate for continued appreciation of stock values, referring to a combination of low interest rates and low inflation. He then asked, "But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?" In attempts to untangle typical Greenspan Fedspeak, this was interpreted as a dismissal of such a concern, designed to continue to fuel speculation, while offering a cover in case the stock bubble did pop, as it had in October 1987 in the same week he became Fed chairman. The speech to the AEI came at a moment of euphoric belief in "American Exceptionalism" and the U.S. as the unipolar Superpower, bolstered by the "victory" in the Cold War, which U.S. leaders hailed as a result of the unparalleled strength of the U.S. military, and the limitless economic potential fueled by the wonders of a "free market" economy, which the U.S. was celebrating as the successful transition from a "heavy" industrial economy to a "new (weightless) economy". The "weightlessness" refers to an explosion of funds flowing into "new financial instruments", the vast majority of which had little or no tangible assets to back up their trading value. Greenspan's attempt to dismiss the dangers inherent in this shift should have been definitively shattered by events of the next years. In 1997, the speculative bubble in Asian stocks and real estate popped, as currency exchange speculators, led by George Soros, rushed in to rake in profits. In 1998, the collapse of the Russian GKO bonds led to a devalued ruble, default on domestic debt, a moratorium on foreign debt payments, and a near-collapse of leading U.S. banks, requiring a bailout fund organized by the Fed of more than $16 billion. This was largely due to the effort, run by western financiers, to impose on Russia an economic transformation through "shock therapy", which was a thinly-disguised looting operation, dismantling Russia's physical economy and making it dependent on raw material exports. The economic and demographic collapse which followed brought Vladimir Putin in as acting President in January 2000; he has devoted the last two decades to reversing that collapse, with an emphasis on rebuilding Russia's scientific tradition. Most devastating to Greenspan's attempt to dismiss the danger of this transition in the U.S. was the collapse of the dot-com bubble, which occurred beginning in the fourth quarter of 2000. He addressed this by creating a new bubble, with an emphasis on trading mortgage-backed securities and derivative transactions, which then collapsed spectacularly in September 2008. Greenspan, who left the Fed in 2006, admitted in October 2008 -- after the collapse of the housing bubble -- that he had "found a flaw" in his model, but offered an excuse. As a bubble develops, he rationalized, "almost everybody is bullish, expects the market to go up, and is fully committed....This is the reason," he explained, "why everybody missed September the 15th, 2008" referring to the day of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Not Everybody "Missed" It Among those who did not "miss it" was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who told the {Welt am Sontag} on August 1, 1999, that "many people are enthusiastic about the United States [economy]. But these people do not realize that the stock market boom is totally over-valued, and that there are psychopaths who are driving the stocks upwards." The most clear and consistent critic of the advent of the modern bubble economy was American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, who called attention to this in the late 1960s, then famously in his attack on the August 15, 1971 decision by President Nixon to take down the post-war Bretton Woods system. LaRouche, who was responsible for advances in understanding the method behind the success of the American System economic model, applied the scientific/philosophical approach of the German genius Gottfried Leibniz, to develop his conception of "physical economy". For example, as the Dow Jones stock average and profits from mutual funds were soaring in 1999, driven by wild investments in the tech bubble of the dot-coms, LaRouche wrote on August 14, 1999, that this "is not to be seen as a sign of prosperity, but directly the opposite. This so-called 'boom' -- in financial asset price hyperinflation -- is actually the highly-elevated fever that signals, and will bring about the financial system's approaching collapse." Shortly after he wrote this, the dot-com bubble began a rapid and deep unwinding. LaRouche's prescience was again seen in a July 25, 2007 webcast, when he stated that the present financial system, driven by the mortgage-backed securities bubble, "can not continue to exist under any circumstances, under any Presidency, under any leadership, or any leadership of nations. Only a fundamental and sudden change in the world monetary financial system will prevent a general, immediate chain-reaction type of collapse. At what speed we don’t know, but it will go on, and it will be unstoppable! And the longer it goes on before coming to an end, the worse things will get." Following the 2008 meltdown, he offered a specific approach to reversing the ongoing downward plunge resulting from the adoption of British neoliberal policies in the name of "share-holder values", which repeatedly create bubbles which benefit the super-wealthy, while devastating the real economy. He presented his idea for a global bankruptcy reorganization in an address to the Rhodes Forum on October 9, 2009. "I have picked out four nations [the U.S., Russia, China, India], as absolutely crucial, that they must cooperate, because with their cooperation, and with that of others who join them, it will be possible to take reorganization of the world economy, by eliminating financial derivatives—just cancel them; they're worthless paper, cancel them. Go back to the honest debt of nations, go to a commercial banking standard, and create new credit to replace the worthless old debt. By creating new credit, and launching physical production programs, in infrastructure and other terms, we could, by agreement among nation-states, prevent a general collapse, and actually launch a program of orderly recovery. And these problems that we now face could be solved." He continued: "The problem is, that the world is dominated by financier interests, which are essentially parasitical in character. Our industries, our agriculture, our infrastructure is decaying, worldwide—especially in the Americas, especially in North America, and especially in Western Europe. Western and Central Europe is a disaster area. They no longer have national security, economic security: They're dominated by the British, entirely, under the British system, which was established in the context of the breakdown of the Soviet Union and East German economy."At that point, the British succeeded, with the support of [French President François] Mitterrand, and with the support of George H.W. Bush, the President at that time, in imposing upon Germany, and other nations of Western and Central Europe, conditions which are destructive. And the Western European economy is generally bankrupt, today, hopelessly so. It could be reorganized, through bankruptcy reorganization, but presently the whole system of Western and Central Europe is hopelessly bankrupt, as other parts of the world are." The present crisis can only be solved by adopting LaRouche's unique approach, based on restoring the principles of "physical economy", and rejecting all forms of British, neoliberal monetary schemes. It is not just "Superbubbles" which are collapsing, but the entire system, which is built on the ideological delusions of those billionaire predators running it, and profiting from it.

Russian President Putin yesterday issued a public statement on the response of the U.S. and NATO to his demand for security guarantees. He said that "the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored." Meanwhile, the Brits threaten tougher sanctions, against anyone doing business with Russia! There is further confirmation of the European Union's war on people, in a report on how Green policy will reduce food production in many crops between 10% to 30%. This will drive up food prices further for more wealthy Europeans, but take food off the table for up to 400 million people in poorer countries, which will have to export their food to EU countries. Watch the Schiller Institute video, "Why Are Farmers NOT Allowed to Produce Food?"

As war mongering loonies from U.S. and U.K. intelligence and diplomatic circles keep foaming at the mouth about Russia's "invasion plans", saner voices are being heard. Even Ukraine's President Zelensky doubts U.S. intelligence reports of an imminent invasion, which has made him a target for the War Hawks who ran the 2014 Maidan regime change coup, as inadvertently revealed in an article in the {Washington Post}. With nuclear war as a real possibility if the war hawks are not stopped, it is time to place them in an asylum, and let diplomacy take over.

Harley Schlanger gave a presentation on Saturday, January 29, at the LaRouche Organization Manhattan Project. Here is the transcript from the presentation. THE BRITISH HAND BEHIND THE U.S./NATO WAR DRIVE HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, everyone. I want to just give a little bit more background on the reasonable nature of the Russian demand for a new security guarantee, and then look at that from the standpoint of the threats and the bullying that Helga was talking about, and then go back to the deeper question of what’s really going on here, who really is behind the war drive. Because it’s really very difficult to believe that the Russians have any intention to invade Ukraine, for reasons that were just explained by Helga. So, what’s going on here? Putin’s proposal was a highly reasonable one. After 30 years of broken promises, after 30 years of Western moves toward the Russian border, wars launched, regime-change operations carried out, psychological warfare inside Russia, blaming Russia for use of chemical weapons, and on and on. After 30 years of that, Putin basically said, look we want legally binding written guarantees on three major points, which you just heard from Helga. No further eastward motion of NATO. This was promised in 1990 and again in 1994, and it’s been violated ever since. No membership in NATO for Ukraine. There are a lot of reasons for this, but basically Ukraine is a divided country, there’s no unity inside the country. It’s not a secure country; there’s a corrupt oligarchy. Its membership in NATO would require overriding most of the requirements that exist for NATO membership. So, why the push to bring Ukraine into NATO? That gets to the third point. The danger of the deployment of offensive weapons in Ukraine on the Russian border, as Putin has said, within 5-7 minutes of Moscow launch time. So, the Russian proposal is, let’s go back to the end of the Cold War. Let’s go back to 1997 in particular, and write an agreement which will give security guarantees to Russia, which include a guarantee that Russia will not be the target of a surprise attack from the West. In response to this, we’re seeing, as Helga pointed out, Blinken going into the meeting with Lavrov a week ago, saying we’re not going to give in to your requests. We’re not taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table. You can’t tell us what to do. You don’t have a right to spheres of influence; no nation has a right to spheres of influence. Well, what kind of sophistry is that? The United States sphere of influence is the whole world. We have troops and bases in close to 100 countries around the world, many of which are far removed from the geographic location of the United States. This idea of sphere of influence—what about the Monroe Doctrine? This is where you see the sophistry, but it goes further, because they’re making very serious threats. In particular, there was a January 25th meeting at the White House, and a memo from this meeting was produced. What they said is, they defined what they mean by severe economic measures. They said they will hit Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize the economy. So, the sanctions that would be imposed—and there are some people who say these sanctions should be imposed preemptively, before Russia invades Ukraine. Well, the idea that you’re going to stop the industrialization or the modernization of the Russian economy? That’s economic warfare. That’s what’s being talked about in the White House. To deny Russia access to modern technologies. Well, the Russians are coming up with some of their own, like the hypersonic missiles, they’re working with the Chinese. But they say to prevent Putin’s intention to diversify from exporting oil and gas. This goes back to the argument that Russia is basically a gas station; that it makes all its money with the profile of a Third World country from raw materials. And let’s keep it that way so they can’t develop modern technology. That’s a wartime, aggressive prewar operation coming from the White House. Is that really what Biden intends? We don’t know. We hear this from Blinken, we hear this from spokesmen from the administration. Biden himself said the United States will not get involved in a war in Ukraine, but that our allies are totally united behind the U.S. desire to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty and democracy. Which as I pointed out before, is a joke, given that the sovereignty of Ukraine was violated by the United States and its allies, including people like George Soros and non-governmental organizations in the February 2014 coup. But the other question that’s coming up now: Is NATO really unified? Well, there’s a discussion between Macron and Putin where the main discussion topic was reviving the Normandy Four proposals for the Minsk Accord, which essentially is being violated by Ukraine. Ukraine signed an agreement in which they said they would negotiate with leaders of the breakaway republics, so-called. The Donbas region. But they refused to do it; they say they want to negotiate with Russia. But Russia says, this is part of your country. Instead of deploying half the Ukrainian army on the river facing the Donbas, why don’t you meet and discuss this with the leaders of the people who are demanding more autonomy? So, Macron said that he agrees with Putin that this process should be strengthened. What that means is that Germany and France, who are the other two signers besides Russia and Ukraine, must put pressure on Ukraine. Then you had a video conference between Putin and the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce, or the Russian-Italian Chamber of Commerce. A dialogue in which Putin said again, Russia has no intention to invade Ukraine. But mostly, they talked about trade issues. This did not sit well with the European Union, which initially tried to dissuade the Italians from having this, and then responded that this was an inopportune thing to do, given the Russian threat to invade Ukraine. There’s another group, the German Committee on East European Economic Relations, which wants to have a similar video conference with Putin. It’s apparently coming under pressure also. In their request, they cited former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who once said, “The highest good is the maintenance of peace.” This is what is the intent behind these kinds of discussions. We’re seeing the emergence in Germany of something very interesting. The old tendency towards Ostpolitik—Eastern politics—which goes back to the Willy Brandt administration from 1969 to 1974. Where the discussion was of a change in relations through rapprochement, détente, negotiations. This, of course, was something that was very antithetical at the time to the British-U.S. control over NATO, although Nixon himself then launch certain discussions with Russia. These are a little more murky, but in any case, this tendency is now re-emerging in Germany in spite of the vitriolic tendency of the war party in the Greens who are in the Cabinet. I’ll just review very quickly this Zelenskyy-Biden call, because it gets to the question that I want to go into in more depth, which is: Who is trying to sabotage a peaceful resolution? A reporter from CNN named Matthew Chance, who by the way just happens to be a British subject. We haven’t investigated this enough yet, but that in itself is telling. He apparently either made up a source, or found a source who told him something that was not true. That Biden said to Zelenskyy during the meeting that the Russians will come in and sack Kiev; there will be harmful impact, and you better be prepared for that. It was also said from a CNN editor that Biden said that Russia will definitely invade when the ground freezes. A Zelenskyy spokesman denied that Biden said that. A National Security Council official named Emily Horn said that CNN is citing anonymous sources who are spreading falsehoods about the call. Why should we be surprised that something like this comes from a British subject through CNN, which is a totally disreputable psychological warfare operation rather than a news network. This comes at a moment when the U.S. is talking about withdrawing the family members of diplomatic personnel in Kiev, which a Ukrainian former Defense Minister mocked by saying, “They’re safer in Kiev than they would be in Los Angeles or any of the other cities in the United States under siege.” Zelenskyy himself said this kind of talk is causing panic. It creates the perception that there’s a war underway. He said, “That’s not the case.” Also, Zelenskyy in his response said this is harming Ukraine’s ability to get foreign aid, which they need. They need $4-5 billion in aid to stabilize the economy. Well, maybe instead of asking for billions of dollars of weapons, they should see if they can get new loans. But why are they in trouble? Why do they have such a large debt? When the coup took place in February 2014, one of the first things the new government of oligarchs did was to bring in the International Monetary Fund, which imposed a form of shock therapy on Ukraine. The idea of a transition to a free market economy, which drove the living standards down, shut down a lot of industry in Ukraine, and created a problem that the loans that they had taken previously could not be covered. They had to borrow more, and now they’re one of the 54 nations that is heavily indebted that the World Bank and others say could be headed toward a debt default which could trigger a global financial crisis. So, if you put this together, what you see is Ukraine, which was always a difficult country because of the ethnic divisions, because of the post-Soviet period, and so on, was worsened by the coup by bringing in the IMF, and by making the demand that it be brought into NATO to increase the tension that exists already between the Russian population in eastern Ukraine and the majority so-called Ukrainian population in Kiev, which includes in very important positions in its defense and security forces open neo-Nazis who are out to kill Russians. That’s the situation on the ground at present. Let me just do a little bit of brief background on why it’s important that this is a British-initiated story. Because it comes at the same time that the British intelligence agencies put out a report saying that they have evidence that the Russians are trying to pull a kind of reverse Maidan; a coup in Kiev to put in a pro-Russian president to replace Zelenskyy. This was heavily covered in Europe, heavily covered in the United States. When the Ukrainians said they don’t believe it, and the person British intelligence named as the target, or the one who would be brought in by the Russians, when he denounced it and denied it, those stories were never covered. But the fact that the Russians supposedly were organizing a coup was given heavy coverage. Now, what’s the British interest here? Many people say, well, you LaRouche people always talk about the Brits, but Britain is a collapsed country. The United Kingdom is no longer very significant. Well, it is still a nuclear power, but more importantly, the British Commonwealth is a political force in the world. The City of London is the dominant financial force in terms of setting the policies. People who are focussed on Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum in Davos, their policies for the Great Reset come from the City of London. Klaus Schwab is not an original thinker; he works closely with Mark Carney, the former director of the Bank of England who is the person overseeing for the United Nations the Green New Deal and the Great Reset. So, this is a British operation. But, what’s the British interest here? This goes back to the 19th century, what was known as the Great Game, which is the background to the Afghan war. But more importantly, the overall strategy of empire is called geopolitics. And I’m not going to go through the history of that, Mackinder; I’ve done that before, you can find that on YouTube. But the important conception behind British policy from the 1890s to the present, is the greatest threat to the ability of the British and now the United States to dictate the terms of the post-Cold War order, would be the same threat that they had in 1900: That of Eurasian integration. And by that, they mean Western Europe, France, Germany, Italy, the countries of Eastern Europe uniting economically with Russia, with China, with the Asian countries. Because that would undermine the power of the City of London. Why? Because of what you just heard from Lyndon LaRouche before. The City of London bases its supremacy on monetarism, on neo-liberalism, on the ability to speculate, and in opposition to investing funds into physical economy. That’s always been the fighting issue between the American colonies and the new American republic against the British Empire. The Brits are for free market policies, free trade policies. The United States was founded on policies of protectionism, investment in physical economy, and in favor of industry based on science and technology as opposed to looting and predatory policies based on speculation, which is the core of monetarism and has been from the time of the British East India Company in the 18th century. Let’s look at the recent history of this to get a sense of the British role in controlling U.S. policy. I’m going to look very quickly at two prominent British figures, who themselves were just spokesmen for the City of London and the oligarchy, but are known for their policies. Let’s look at that. First, you have Margaret Thatcher, who in 1983 in an ongoing fight that the City of London was having with people who were saying the City has too much power, she came down along with high court on the side of the City of London. The result was what was called the Big Bang, which was a deregulation policy which did away with much of the control that the government had over the banks and the financial institutions. This opened the door for a bigger speculation that goes back to the 1971 decision by Nixon to end the Bretton Woods system. The next step in this was 1983 in Britain. Ronald Reagan took leadership from Margaret Thatcher on this, and the Reagan economic policy, even though there was somewhat of an economic impact from the big spending on defense, nevertheless in October 1987 we had giant stock market crash, which had been forecast by LaRouche earlier that year. Why did that happen? Because of the shift to a speculative economy under Thatcher. Nigel Lawson, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher when the Big Bang took place, and after the 2008 crash, in a moment of candor, said that the crash of 2007-8 was an unintended consequence of the Big Bang. Thatcher’s policy, as I said, was adopted by Reagan, Bush. In 1999, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the United States is right there with the United Kingdom, that is Wall Street and Silicon Valley with the City of London, as a deregulated money center for monetarism and neo-liberalism. Also with Thatcher was the neo-con policy of war, the fight to protect the Empire. There’s a really interesting story: In 1991, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the question was, would the United States do anything or not? Margaret Thatcher was staying with the U.S. Ambassador to Britain in Aspen, Colorado for a vacation. She was visiting the U.S. Ambassador to Britain in Colorado, and George H.W. Bush, the President of the United States, flew to Aspen to meet with her to discuss what should be done about Saddam. She made this famous comment to him, “Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly.” She encouraged him to invade. Later, she said it more colloquially, she said she “stiffened his spine” at that meeting. Just of interest, the Ambassador to Britain that she went to visit was Raymond Seitz, who had spent three years before being the Ambassador to Britain as the Executive Assistant to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a British monetarist to his core. So, that’s the Thatcher policy—neo-liberalism, neo-con, U.S.-British Empire must set the rules of the rules-based order. The next step in that was Tony Blair. Blair was also a neo-liberal and a neo-con. His neo-liberalism was called the Third Way, democratic socialism, but also free-market policy. Blair always represented the City of London. He was just given the Noble Order of the Garter, the highest honor that you can get from Queen Elizabeth. Blair’s policies were deregulation and neo-liberal economics: Tear down the role of the government, make everything a stakeholder society, shareholder values. That’s what Klaus Schwab is talking about now. LaRouche was attacking this back in the 1980s, when it started with Thatcher, but under Blair, the impact was especially profound with the Clinton-Gore administration, where Bill Clinton signed on, and this goes back again to the ’80s when Gore set up the Democratic Leadership Council which said Democrats have to move to the center, shouldn’t be left wing, and so on. They fully embraced the deregulated economic system. In fact, Clinton, under the influence of Robert Rubin, signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, which took away any prohibition against speculation for the commercial banks. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which opened the door to the crash of 2007-2008, as Nigel Lawson said. William Black, who is a very prominent columnist, analyst, former bank regulator, said that the Third Way pretends to be a center-left policy, but is actually completely a creation of Wall Street. He called it a “false flag operation” of Wall Street. That’s what Clinton embraced; that’s what Obama was full-fledged. That’s why Obama bailed out the banks in 2008 instead of listening to LaRouche and putting them through bankruptcy reorganization. On the war question, Blair is the same as Thatcher. Blair is the outspoken proponent of getting rid of the idea of the principle of Westphalia, which is that you must recognize the security interests of other nations. You must act toward other nations as you wish they would act toward you: no interference in the internal affairs of other nations. That was signed in 1648 as the Peace of Westphalia. Blair in 1999 said, “no, no, no, no, no, we can’t have that anymore.” There’s too much evil that has to be taken on, that’s why we have to get rid of the Westphalian principle. What he put forward instead was the idea of Responsibility to Protect, which is essentially a justification for regime-change coups. This was brought into the United States by people like Samantha Power (who by the way is a Brit) and others who insisted that the Clinton administration get involved in the Balkan war, in which the U.S. and NATO bombed Yugoslavia. And especially regime change in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, and in Ukraine. In April 2002, there was a meeting at Blair’s country home, Chequers, which included Lord Boyce, the Chief of the Defense Staff; it included Richard Dearlove, the Chief of MI6; and Sir John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee. They met to discuss Iraq. This was in April 2002, just after the U.S. and NATO invaded Afghanistan. Then on April 6th and 7th, four days after this meeting, Blair flew to Crawford, Texas to the Bush ranch, and had two days of meetings with Bush, Jr. in which they discussed Iraq. Less than a year later, the U.S. invaded Iraq. But before the invasion, in September of 2002, Sir Richard Dearlove provided the original dodgy dossier =, which claimed Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction, getting yellow cake uranium from Niger in Africa, and that this was to show that Saddam Hussein had a capability, according to that report, to hit the United Kingdom with nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons within 45 minutes whenever they decided to do it. This was cited by the United States when they went to the United Nations to get support for the invasion of Iraq, in the February 2003 discredited presentation by Sir Colin Powell. There’s more you could go into on this British question. The Syrian chemical weapons charges which came from the White Helmets, which were essentially a British operation working for the overthrow of Assad. You had the Skripal affair, the claims from Porton Down, the British chemical weapons lab, that Putin was deploying agents to kill off Russian defectors with a highly poisonous chemical. Same thing against Navalny. And then the most recent example again being this British report, at the height of the tension over whether Russia is going to invade or not, claiming that Russia had a plan to overthrow the Zelenskyy government and put in a pro-Russian government. I want you to think about this question, because this British question is real. The British Empire’s power is the power of shifting the narrative, of creating new narratives, and of invading your mind to convince you that the greatest threat to peace and security in the world is the demon, Vladimir Putin, and the authoritarian dictator Xi Jinping in China. And not the fact that, under British direction, the United States has taken the lead in shifting the world to a neo-liberal economic system, which is responsible for poverty, for absolutely unsustainable debt, putting us on a pathway toward an economic crash, and at that same time, one war after another, and now targetting Russia and China. So, what’s the lesson from all this? Join with the Schiller Institute. Find out how the world really works. This was Lyndon LaRouche’s great contribution to humanity. Not just being able to find out who the bad guys are, but to provide an understanding of how the human mind is the battlefield, and that the British are highly sophisticated in their ability to shift the way you think; including the development from Silicon Valley of social media networks and so on, the spy operations and so on. The running of Russia-gate; on and on and on. This has to end. The United States has to stop being a dangerous ferocious beast on a British leash. That’s why the hope is that we can pull back from this situation with Ukraine. But more importantly, move toward a new security arrangement for the world, which does not start from the City of London and Washington and NATO. That’s what I wanted to present today.

Once again -- Surprise, Surprise! -- CNN is caught lying to promote a war. CNN "reporter" Matthew Chance said that Pres. Biden told Ukraine's Pres. Zelensky that Kiev could be "sacked" by invading Russian forces, while CNN "reporter" Marquardt said Biden told Zelensky that a Russian invasion "is virtually certain." A spokesman for Zelensky said the first report, which cited a Ukrainian official, is "completely false", while a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council, Emily Horne, told CNN that "anonymous sources are ‘leaking falsehoods'”. Help us get out the truth -- share these Daily Updates, and subscribe to our Daily Alert!

Secretary of State Blinken used the occasion of the release of the U.S. response to Putin's proposed treaties to repeat the accusations of Russian aggression, and reiterate that Russia will face a harsh response if Russia invades Ukraine. Putin insists upon written security guarantees because the U.S. has broken numerous promises, financed and organized Color Revolutions and regime change coups, and launched aggressive wars, all supposedly to defend "human rights" and "democracy." In reality, the hypocritical and bloody foreign policy of the U.S. since the end of the Cold War has not been to secure peace or benefit the American people, but to defend the geopolitical interests of the City of London and its allies on Wall Street. What is needed is not further militarization in Europe, but diplomacy aimed at achieving mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

To protect a bankrupt financial system, the City of London and its allies in the Military-Industrial-Complex in the U.S. and NATO are demanding an end to sovereign governments, insisting that nations submit to their Great Reset -- which is a global central banker's dictatorship. Russia and China will not submit, putting us on a pathway to war in Ukraine and Taiwan. But such wars cannot be won, and could trigger nuclear war. The alternative was developed by Lyndon LaRouche: put the predatory financial institutions into bankruptcy, establish a New Bretton Woods financial system, and apply his Four Economic Laws to revive the American System of Physical Economy.

Harley Schlanger, a spokesman for the Schiller Institute and The LaRouche Organization, gave the following presentation at the Schiller Institute Conference on January 22, “A Difference in Leadership – Can a War with Russia Still Be Averted?”, following presentations by Russian Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy and Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. HARLEY SCHLANGER: What I will show is that the U.S. official position -- that Russia is the cause of the problem, and Russia has to back down, Russia has to move back its troops and so on -- is either based on ignorance of history, or an arrogant view of the U.S. as the unilateral enforcer of a “rules-based order.” What I intend to show is that it’s the latter.Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said the other day, that ignoring Russia’s legal concerns over the eastward expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and a deployment of forces, including weapons, near the Russian border, will have the most serious consequences. In stating this, he was repeating the formulation that I think is the most clear from President Putin, from his annual press conference on December 23rd. I want to read the quote from President Putin: “Our actions will not depend on the negotiation process, but rather on unconditional guarantees for Russia’s security concerns. In this connection, we have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the U.S. that has come to our home with its missiles, and is already standing on our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?” In listening to that, it’s very striking the similarity to the argument made to the American people on October 22, 1962 by President Kennedy, as to why he had to adopt a quarantine—which was actually a blockade—of Cuba, to stop the import of further Soviet missiles, during the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here’s what Kennedy said in that speech to the American people: “In the world today, due to the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the swiftness of ballistic missiles, any substantially increased possibility of their use, or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.” He talked about the build-up of the Soviet Union’s missiles in Cuba, and added:“In an area well known to have special and historical relationship to the United States,” and I might add parenthetically, exactly as Ukraine does with Russia today, “the sudden clandestine decision to station strategic weapons outside of Soviet soil, is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.” I think you’ll see in his language, something very similar to what President Putin is saying today, which is why many people, including Helga, have called this a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. I want to give you a quick view of what the idea of a “unipolar world” is, and what it means. The people who argue for the U.S. to be the main power, start from the standpoint that we’re “democratic,” we’re “good.” Therefore, when we deploy missiles, it’s for the good. As Dr. Andrey Kortunov (of the Russian International Affaires Council) told us: when the Russians deploy the missiles, since they are “bad,” these are “bad missiles” and have to be opposed. From that standpoint, we have to look at where this idea comes from. The underlying issue today, which is called into question by President Putin’s insistence on legally binding security guarantees, is that the construct of a unipolar world is dead. The whole idea that there’s only one nation on the planet which, because of its immense military power and economic power, can dictate the rules to the rest of the human race, and use satraps such as the European Union and NATO to help enforce it, no longer applies. The Western financial system is collapsing. There’s a further point, though. In reality, this idea never really existed, except in the minds of those who enforced it and tried to convince the rest of the world that it had no choice but to accept it. They believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union left them with no military obstacle to impose their unilateral decisions on strategic and financial matters. We’ve talked about this before. Helga brought it up again this afternoon. What is the “rules-based order”? Well, for the unilateralists, it’s the rules that sustain their control over the global economy. This goes back to a merger during the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, and actually before that. It occurred during the Reagan administration with the emergence of the Democratic Leadership Council taking over the Democratic party with its so-called “Third Way,” which became the approach of the Clinton administration. The idea of the neoconservatives and neo-liberals essentially joining as an American force to impose this unipolar world. In particular, it was the neo-cons who were the most arrogant, with their Project for a New American Century, in which they insisted that the United States had emerged as the only power on the planet. Therefore, they created a narrative to explain why everyone else has to march to the tune of the United States. The narrative starts with, “We won the Cold War.” Second, the victory in the Cold War was one of “democracy” and the “free market.” The third point: This means that every nation must submit to those who won the Cold War, because we’re the good guys; we did what was right. The fourth point, which is usually not expressed, is that this means there’s no more sovereignty, no morePeace of Westphalia, as Tony Blair blatantly stated repeatedly in trips to the United States. The idea that there’s a common good is no longer acceptable. The idea that there should be no interference in other nations’ internal affairs, which was part of the Peace of Westphalia, is no longer valid. That the “common good” is whatever the unipolar power insists on. I want to give you a sense of what the so-called “democratic order” that this “rules-based order” has done in the world in the last 30 years.

As war preparations hit a feverish pace, driven by the usual false narratives from the Military-Industrial Complex war hawks, there are other warnings being stated quietly, hoping you are not paying attention. These have to do with the Fed's decision to "fight inflation" by raising interest rates, a strategy that risks triggering a wave of defaults of 54 mostly poor, heavily-indebted countries -- including Ukraine -- but also of debt-ridden zombie corporations, banks, insurance companies, etc. If you suspect there might be a connection between the war drive and the systemic financial collapse of the economy, you are right.

Once again, a fraudulent report has been produced by British intelligence to push the U.S. into war, this time with Russia over Ukraine. Using the usual tactics -- anonymous sources, promoting fake intelligence, asserting devious schemes by Russia -- they may be reacting to a sense of reluctance in Washington, by Biden, and some NATO countries, to plunge into World War III. That the U.S. has now announced that it will respond to Putin's demands for "legally-binding security guarantees" may have spooked the Brits into "ramping up preparations" for war. A thorough background report was produced in a Schiller Institute video seminar on Jan. 22, "Can War with Russia Still Be Averted", available HERE.

The comments made in Berlin yesterday by Tony Blinken on the continuing war tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine show a dangerous detachment from reality. In stating before his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov today, "I don't expect a breakthrough," he is demonstrating the delusional attitude of much of the Trans-Atlantic leadership, which is willing to risk a nuclear war, rather than take President Putin's demand for national security guarantees seriously. Lavrov will likely call his bluff -- then how will Mr. Blinken respond?

The systemic collapse of the world financial system, driven by speculative gambling by City of London/Wall Street banks and financial institutions, and underwritten by the world's private central banks, is why the U.S./NATO powers are risking a war with Russia over Ukraine. In the 4th Quarter of 2019 alone nearly $20 trillion were required to roll-over short-term loans, to prevent a wave of defaults. That's what triggered the present inflation, and is the impetus for the war drive against Russia and China, both of which refuse to surrender their sovereignty to allow for the bailout of speculative swindlers.

While it appears in the visible realm that no accord was reached in the Russian talks with the U.S. and NATO last week, there are developments which suggest that at least some in the West realize that President Putin is serious that his demands regarding Ukraine must be addressed. Blinken is in Kiev today, Berlin tomorrow, then will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov Friday. Yesterday, German Foreign Minister Baerbock met with Lavrov, as the new Scholz government in Germany is putting itself forward as a mediator. The next days will go a long way toward determining whether there is a step back from a possible nuclear World War III.

The War Hawks behind the foolish endless wars, who continue their destruction with sanctions and freezing funds belonging to the people of Afghanistan -- which threaten the lives of millions due to starvation -- have been engaged in a dangerous escalation against Russia. While some pundits say that Putin has made his point, and "de-escalation" will occur, the cause of the problem remains: NATO, the tool used by the neocons against Russia. The best way to de-escalate, says Helga Zepp-Larouche, is to disband NATO, and cooperate in a global financial bankruptcy reorganization

The Schiller Institute (SI) has taken the lead in mobilizing to save the people of Afghanistan. After finally ending four decades of war, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and left the nation in chaos, the war hawks of the Trans-Atlantic region took out their anger by adopting policies to "punish" the Taliban, which in reality are killing innocent civilians. There is now a growing recognition of the evil this represents; also the possibility that collaboration among Russia, China and the U.S. can not only end the suffering, but create a basis for further collaboration. Join the SI online seminar today, "To Stop the Killing of Afghanistan" -- register here: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/01/16/live-event-stop-the-murder-of-afghanistan/

Jan. 14 -- A week of summits scheduled to resolve the deepening tensions over Ukraine between Russia and the United States and NATO did not succeed, based on the initial press briefings and read-outs produced by the participants. The talks came after two video calls between Presidents Biden and Putin, and were centered on U.S. charges of an impending invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, and the Russian's insistence on receiving written, legally-binding treaties from the U.S. and NATO, agreeing to no further eastward expansion of NATO, including a prohibition on placing sophisticated weapons and ABM systems in Ukraine.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche's description that we are "sitting on a powder keg" regarding relations between the U.S. and Russia was confirmed following the conclusion of talks Wednesday. A Russian spokesman said there is no "unifying, positive agenda" between Russia and NATO, as the West is choosing a Cold War containment strategy. A sudden outbreak of war is increasingly possible, as long as relations are defined by the imperatives of imperial geopolitics, i.e., divide the world into competing blocs, with the unipolar power of the U.S./NATO dictating terms. One flank, where cooperation is possible, is collaboration to rebuild Afghanistan. Join us, Jan. 17, at 11 AM EST, for our online seminar "To Stop the Murder in Afghanistan" (register here: https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/20220117-conference).

Has there been any progress in the ongoing talks between U.S. and Russian reps? The best that can be said is that it's good they are talking, but statements issued by them show that the Russians have not received the agreement they are seeking, as the U.S. continues to insist it will not accept Russian "red lines" on NATO expansion and arms to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the attempt at a "Color Revolution" coup in Kazakhstan has been thwarted by decisive action by the CSTO allies of the nation. "Russia will not allow a 'Color Revolution'", Putin stated yesterday, after revealing that "Maidan technologies" -- a reference to the methods used in the 2014 coup in Ukraine -- had been employed in Kazakhstan.