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Schiller Institute founder and President, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in a discussion on Afghanistan Oct. 29 on Islamabad TV, said that she is promoting the Schiller Institute’s proposed solution to Afghanistan, in terms she calls, “Operation Ibn Sina.” Zepp-LaRouche participated on the program from Germany, and has indicated that she will be filling out this “Ibn Sina” initiative very soon.She stressed at the outset that we are “at a watershed” time, in which the United States and other nations now holding back, must instead work closely with the Afghan government, which is the Taliban. Release the Afghan government’s funds, support stabilization and a future. The alternative is chaos, more opium production, mass death and terrorism. The TV broadcast was PTV World, hosted by Omar Khalid Butt, on his Views on News program, whose additional guests for the 42 minute discussion were Dr. Andrej Kortunov, Chairman of RIAC (Russian International Affairs Council) in Moscow, and Dr. Farah Naz, foreign affairs expert in Pakistan. Zepp-LaRouche explained her proposal, in her closing remarks, addressing the significance of Ibn Sina. “He was a doctor, who probably was born in what is today Afghanistan, and he was the most famous doctor until the 17th century, who wrote books which were studied in all of Europe. “So he’s a hero in the history of Afghanistan, and right now there is a huge health crisis: COVID—after the collapse of the previous government, more than 2,000 hospitals closed down. There are presently only 100 hospitals for 38 million people, and no medical supplies... “So I suggest that the international community, everybody who wants to be part of the solution, helps to build up a modern health system in Afghanistan, as the first step to stabilize the situation and give that the name ‘Operation Ibn Sina.’ “That can rally all the different ethnic groups inside Afghanistan because he is a figure of the national history and a hero, and he gives pride and also hope for a good, good future for Afghanistan. And building a modern health system can be the first step, because in order to have modern hospitals, you need energy, water, infrastructure….” Butt began his program by asking the guests to address all aspects of the significance of the crisis situation in Afghanistan, including “the geopolitical and strategic.” In opening the discussion, he showed the video clip of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov issuing a call at a Tehran conference (by video) earlier this week, that Afghanistan’s neighboring countries “not allow a military presence of U.S. and NATO forces which plan to move there after leaving Afghan territory.” Zepp-LaRouche denounced such a prospect as a continuation of the British Great Game, which is unacceptable. Dr. Naz put forward that chaos can well be “the larger goal” of Western circles, which see the rising of China as a threat to be stopped, and are perpetrating vast harm in the Afghanistan region “by design.” Zepp-LaRouche described the West as “in a real collapse phase,” and should shift, instead, to working with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In the immediate term, massive aid must be supplied to Afghanistan to prevent genocide. The same day at the Pakistan TV colloquy, the latest grim report on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was summarized by UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Aid, Martin Griffiths, in an AP interview. He said, “The needs are skyrocketing.” The Winter snows have started. The World Food Program, which had already been supplying daily food, not just supplemental aid, to four million people, is now facing this number rising to 12 million people. These are people completely dependent on receiving all their daily food, or they will die. In addition, another 12 million need supplemental food. Dr. Kortunov led off his remarks with three fundamental points: supply the food, act on the medical needs, COVID-19 in particular, and get fuel to people. Later in the dialogue, he forcefully made the additional point that, with the right policies and follow through, we could expect to see Afghanistan, this beautiful mountainous nation, be “the Switzerland” of Central Asia. There are the soils, the water, the location, the resources, the youth and all the other assets. The full PTV World broadcast can be reviewed here.

The Carney Ball We invite you to the Official 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference Opening Banquet, or as we like to call it “The Carney Ball.” We all know that organic, plant-forward, locally sourced, fair market, homemade food is far better for the planet than the high emission, fossil-fueled, industrial, meat-heavy system that is driving climate change. But let us be frank; time is running out, half measures will not get us to the IPCC targets. As Hans Schellnhuber, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire has insisted, the only way to successfully reduce our global carbon footprint, is to reduce the total number of global carbon footprinters. With this in mind, each Carney Ball menu item has been specially selected and guaranteed to cut down our carbon footprint, by at least two soles.Can’t Make it to Glasgow? Our international team of chefs and staff (some of whom really threw themselves into the project) are making all the recipes available for free online at SavethePlanetServeMan.com in the hope that you and others will host your own climate-conscious dinner parties. With thousands, perhaps millions of Carney Balls worldwide, we can take a real bite, out of the real problem, using methods which are delicious, even if they are necessary.

Britain’s Daily Express tabloid reports that COP26’s President Alok Sharma is very anxious about getting all countries, especially developing countries belonging to the G20, to agree to the 1.5° Celsius target which is a goal of COP26, “We have to get that,” Sharma says. But the problem is that there are 24 developing nations, among them China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Philippines and Malaysia, grouped in the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), that aren’t playing ball and don’t intend to be squeezed into an anti-development trap in the way that the depopulation fanatics are demanding. These nations for the most part don’t have well thought-out programmatic alternatives, but they have made clear what they don’t want.In a meeting last week, the ministers of the LMDC issued a strong statement criticizing rich countries for insisting on the need for a universal goal of net-zero by 2050. “This new ‘goal’ which is being advanced runs counter to the Paris Agreement and is anti-equity and against climate justice,” the Oct. 18 statement read. The LMDC argument is that they shouldn’t be forced into the same timeline as industrialized nations for cutting emissions, since they weren’t the ones that contributed to historic emissions—and may want to use fossil fuels for their own economic development just as wealthier nations have done. The green, Seattle-based media organization Grist points out that developed countries have delayed taking action for more than a decade in cutting their own emissions but now are demanding that the whole world commit to net zero. Sharma’s call to the G20 countries, some of which belong to the LMDC, to take action now and set a net-zero target, didn’t get the response he wanted. Instead they proposed that the rich countries first get on a fast track, and fully decarbonize by the end of this decade, and then “leave the remaining atmospheric space” for carbon emissions to the developing world. This is where the money issue comes in. According to Eddy Perez, international diplomacy manager of Climate Action Network Canada, the LMDC are issuing a clear call for the U.K. to ensure that negotiations are fair. “It can’t just be about mitigation pledges,” Perez remarks. “Keeping 1.5° C within reach requires urgently scaling up adaptation support and mobilizing trillions of dollars.” There is much criticism of the U.S. for failing to bring to Glasgow the climate change package that Joe Biden had promised, and demands that these richer nations have to both cut emissions and fork over the trillions of dollars needed by developing nations. Who’s going to buy that? This follows statements in the recent weeks by Russia, China and India that they are expanding, not contracting, the use of coal and other fossil fuels, to provide the energy needed for the development and livelihood of their citizens. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni spoke for all of Africa, when he wrote, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 24, headlined, “Solar and Wind Force Poverty on Africa“: “Africa can’t sacrifice its future prosperity for Western climate goals.” The ghouls and gremlins in London are not happy.

In a very long and extraordinarily well-developed article of indictment, written Oct. 17, independent journalist Glenn Greenwald exposed the operations of the so-called “House Committee on the Jan. 6 Insurrection” as illegal, unconstitutional, and a return to the practices of the House Un-American Activities Committee of the 1950s and ’60s and its ilk in the Senate. If the people of a nation are made sufficiently afraid, Greenwald points his theme, they may allow their most basic rights to be torn up and approve it, believing the only victims are “enemies.” What was once the Red Scare has been reincarnated as the extreme-right scare; 9/11 terrorism has been replaced by “Jan. 6 terrorism.”The article, is entitled, “Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting ‘Insurrection’ Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet.” The most egregious of those abuses is the Jan. 6 Committee’s issuance of “third-party subpoenas” for all the private communications, going back up to a year before Jan. 6, of many Members of Congress, all organizers of the Jan. 5 and 6 rallies even if they simply applied for permits, and an unknown number of others. “Third-party” means the Committee wants Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and various e-mail and wireless providers to give it the records, without notifying any of the targets. In fact, it instructs the third parties, if they feel compelled to notify a target, to call the Committee’s lawyers and say so—the Committee can then withdraw that particular subpoena so as not to force an illegal action by the third party provider, and so as not to be liable to be sued for violation of First and Fourth Amendment rights. As Greenwald reports, this twist shows they know that what they’re doing is illegal. For any body of Congress to “investigate crime” by private citizens is in violation of the Constitution, and Greenwald proves that extensively from Supreme Court jurisprudence through the 19th and 20th centuries. The only exceptions—in particular, doing so in order to help formulate new legislation—are ruled out by Reps. Adam Schiff and Bennie Thompson and other members, who state their purpose simply as “to find out what happened.” That has been expressly forbidden to Congress by Supreme Court precedents, as a violation of powers which exclusively belong to the Executive and the Judiciary. The 1950s McCarthyite committees did it, and were ruled to have acted unconstitutionally. At the extreme, this Congressional conduct becomes Bills of Attainder—orders to arrest issued by a legislature—prohibited by name in the Constitution. Another exposé by Greenwald in the past week is related. Mark Zuckerberg is the latest “authoritarian menace” indicted daily in huge features in the Washington Post and New York Times, and lashed by Members of Congress who are demanding that Facebook be a third-party surveillance agency for the government against dangerous non-conformists. This has been accomplished by a triumphal world media tour of “whistleblower” Frances Haugen and her “Facebook Papers.” And who is paying for this world tour, publicity, media appearances, etc.? That would be the billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who has funded The Intercept from its inception; whom Greenwald exposes as now a major funder of something called “Whistleblowers Aid,” whose darling “whistleblower” is none other than Frances Haugen, “bizarrely led by anti-Trump lawyer and social media #Resistance star Mark Zaid, who has been one of the most vocal critics of actual whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, both of whose imprisonment he has long demanded,” (emphasis in original).

The Glasgow COP26 Summit, starting Halloween, is in more and more trouble to bring off its zombie jamboree for green death. Good news. But the unravelling of the financial and physical economy is so fast and bad, we face the question: What do we humans think and do? How do we meet emergency needs anywhere, and re-create nations and economies? Take the LaRouche, American System approach. Marcia Merry Baker, of the EIR Editorial Board, was on tonight's discussion.

The Green Reset policies of the bankrupt western financial Establishment have helped unleash a hyperinflationary price explosion, notably in the energy sector, coupled with a breakdown collapse of the global physical economy. This is coming on top of the already ongoing bankruptcy collapse of the entire Anglo-American financial system, which is now careening toward end-game.While most world leaders are still trying to figure out what hit them, or are frozen like deer in the headlights, Lyndon LaRouche explained the cause of the problem … over 21 years ago! In a September 2000 memo, LaRouche wrote: “Broadly, the current global inflation in petroleum prices threatens to be the detonator of a chaotic breakdown in many, if not all of the economies of the world… The underlying cause of the crisis, of which the petroleum-price crisis is but the presently leading political-economic consequence, is a general hyperinflation in financial asset-prices, which is now being expressed, at increasing rates, as a hyperinflation in commodity prices now following a trend similar to that suffered by Weimar Germany during the interval March-November 1923.” That being the cause, LaRouche also provided the cure, now needed even more urgently than 21 years ago. This week’s Fireside Chat was joined by EIR’s Dennis Small who discussed how to get LaRouche’s policies implemented immediately. And hear about what really happened in the Alexandria “Railroad” trial of Lyndon LaRouche and associates, and its connection to today’s blowout crisis.

The Wall Street Journal set off explosions yesterday with a report claiming that about two dozen U.S. military trainers, consisting of special operators and Marines, have been in Taiwan working with the Taiwanese military for at least a year. “The U.S. special-operations deployment is a sign of concern within the Pentagon over Taiwan’s tactical capabilities in light of Beijing’s years-long military buildup and recent threatening moves against the island,” the Journal claimed. “The special-operations unit and the Marine contingent are a small but symbolic effort by the U.S. to increase Taipei’s confidence in building its defenses against potential Chinese aggression.”In Taipei, officials were reported by Radio Taiwan International to be “coy” about the Journal report. Responding to questions about the report, Premier Su Tseng-chang thanked countries that share Taiwan’s values for their support. He says the government is doing all it can to defend its sovereignty and its people, and to maintain peace in the region. Meanwhile, Vice Defense Minister Po Hung-hui says that Taiwan’s military welcomes opportunities for international cooperation. However, Po declined to comment directly on the report of a U.S. military presence. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said “the U.S. should ... stop arms sales to and military ties with Taiwan to avoid seriously damaging China-U.S. relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. China will take all necessary measures to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.” “Why just two dozen members? Why secretly? The U.S. should send 240 servicemen publicly, in U.S. military uniform, and make public where they are stationed,” Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of China’s English-language Global Times, tweeted in response to the Journal article, concluding, “See whether the PLA will launch a targeted air strike to eliminate those U.S. invaders!”

That Facebook exercises enormous power over discourse and social interactions cannot be denied. The House Antitrust Committee considers the social media giant—along with Google, Amazon, and Apple—as monopolies, in violation of the essentially dormant antitrust laws. From this standpoint, calls for regulating the social media giants might seem to be a useful way of preventing these giant players from exerting outsized influence over speech and thought. But the vast majority of regulations and regulatory powers sought by the Congress and Biden Administration would achieve precisely the opposite effect, consolidating the monopoly status of these firms, preventing the rise of competitors, and using that power to censor speech that offends the revealed Truth of the would-be tyrants.Enter Frances Haugen, a telegenic and seemingly informed “insider” acting as a courageous “whistleblower” to inform a shocked country of the terrible effects of Instagram and Facebook. The crime of Zuckerberg? He “has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful and polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach.” The New York Times summarized her testimony as “calling for regulation of the technology and business model that amplifies hate.” The London Economist enthuses that her testimony may bring together the U.S. Senate, “united against a common enemy and promis[ing] Ms. Haugen that they would hold Facebook to account.” Haugen’s supposed act of whistleblowing appears as though coordinated by a PR firm to advance the growing calls for censorship over speech. Over the last three years, the percentage of U.S. adults who align with or lean towards the Democratic Party who want tech companies to take more steps to “restrict false info online” rose from 60% to 76%. And the percent among that demographic who want the U.S. government itself to restrict “misinformation” online soared from 40% to 65%! Nearly two-thirds of the people in this grouping now oppose the tradition of free speech, enshrined in the First Amendment, defended by the old ACLU that supported the rights even of neo-Nazis to rally, and attacked by Sen. Joe McCarthy who attempted to make certain political views essentially illegal. Today, the Congressional committee investigating the events on Capitol Hill on January 6 is pursuing a broader and broader scope of investigation reminiscent of McCarthy’s vile actions of the 1950s. Will those called to testify be asked, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a supporter of Donald Trump?” Increased regulation of the social media space would not only be an obvious violation of the First Amendment, based on a series of court rulings that when the government compels private actors to censor speech, it is effectively the same as the government doing so directly (and unconstitutional). Furthermore, it would make the monopoly powers yet more entrenched, by creating an enormous barrier to entry. Developing a comprehensive comment/posting moderation workflow is enormously expensive, and would be absolutely impossible for new entrants that could compete with Facebook and Google, which are playing in the internet space the role assumed by the legacy media. Breaking up the monopolies, demanding that Congress not legislate speech codes (either directly, or through the indirect means of threats), and reforming the Section 230 protections offered to social media companies in a way that distinguishes between truly free platforms and those that censor—these would be useful paths forward. But the intention of glorifying the testimony of Haugen, lauded by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) as “a 21st century American hero” is precisely the opposite—designed to promote “getting tough on Facebook” in a way that would both strengthen its monopoly power and force a greater censorship of political viewpoints.

The density of crises facing every nation on Earth right now has never been greater, especially now, as a hyperinflationary breakdown stares us in the face. The most passionate and agapic statesmen and women are needed if we are to pave a path forward. This is why orienting ourselves toward the frontiers — space exploration, thermonuclear fusion, and other new scientific revolutions — is absolutely essential for our nation and the world today. Megan Dobrodt of The LaRouche Organization's Science Team discussed this and the release of our new pamphlet: "The Coming US Economic Miracle on the New Silk Road."

What are the lessons for today, taught by Dante Alighieri 700 years after his death in September 1321? How did he consciously create the Italian language, not just to free Italy from the oligarchy which dominated at that time, and establish the basis for a sovereign nation-state dedicated to the principle of the general welfare – but to breathe a spirit of impassioned poetic imagination into all of history, religion, statecraft, economics and science? How has his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise in his Divina Commedia, become a universal metaphor for Schiller’s assertion that mankind is “born for that which is better?" At this week's Midwest Meeting, Tim Rush and Denise Ham discussed this and Dante's importance for us today.English poet Percy Shelley, in his In Defense of Poetry demonstrates his understanding of the power of Dante and the power of poetry: “A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.” “Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarism. He was the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning, … of that starry flock which in the thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy as from a heaven into the darkness of the benighted world. His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth and pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor. All high poetry is infinite… A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight; and after one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.”

Last night, Paul Gallagher of Executive Intelligence Review discussed the difference seen in the relatively devastating hurricanes over the past week. Contrary to most discussion about these, it was not man-made "climate change" which was the issue here, but rather man-made "sanity-change" which caused us to not learn the lessons of the necessity for adequate flood control and infrastructure. In this respect, consider the Afghanistan pivot as a decision point in world history, as Helga LaRouche pointed out 2 months ago, which can be influenced by the heavy power of ideas. Lyndon LaRouche's spectre looms large over the planet today, and is a force we should all learn to wield.

Mike Billington addresses the dramatic "phase shift" in history taking place, as the Afghan crisis marks the utter failure of the "regime change" era of the British Empire and their assets in the US, but also the opportunity it presents for Lyndon LaRouche's concept of the Four Powers to unite for global development on the model of China's Belt and Road Initiative. He will focus on the intense hysteria in the United Kingdom, terrified that the Empire could indeed come to an end were the US to break from the Empire's grip, join with China and Russia in the development of Afghanistan, and by implication the rest of the world, as LaRouche's new paradigm becomes the necessary reality for human progress.

American statesman Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly identified a U.S. commitment to help Haiti develop as a moral imperative for the United States, a test of what kind of nation the United States and its people want it to be in the world. Excerpts of two such statements follow, the first from 2004, the second from 2010, in the wake of the unprecedented earthquake disaster. Both still stand as guidelines for how to approach Haiti today, and his 2010 admonition about that no “patch the system” approach will work, being equally applicable to Afghanistan now: the goal of assistance must be to secure “a nation’s ability to maintain itself.”In March 2004, LaRouche was asked about the Haitian political crisis of the time in an interview with a New York state radio program. LaRouche answered: “…The United States has a relationship with Haiti, going back to our struggle for independence. Haiti has been essentially destroyed many times over. I mean, the country is destroyed, even compared to the adjoining region of the island. We have done the worst with that area. It’s not a problem with [recently ousted President] Aristide, or this guy, or that guy. The problem is, the United States has never accepted, in recent times, its moral responsibility to help the Haitians put their country back together again. That is our responsibility. We keep blaming them. “The way we treat the Haitians who are fleeing from that territory into Florida—it’s horrible! It’s wrong! We have to take a positive moral attitude on this thing, and we have to work with the nations of the region, to say —and to tell the Haitians—‘We are determined that you should have your independence, and you shall have development, and you shall have medical care, and the ability to live.’ “We do it not only for the Haitians, we do it for ourselves. We do it, because we want to be the kind of country that does that kind of thing: Where a great injustice exists, we are the kind of country that will offer to help…. “Remember, Haiti established itself as a Republic, which at one point was modeling itself on the idea of the United States. So, this got it special hatred…. Of course, the problems that are occurring in other parts of the Caribbean are not much better; but they’re not quite as bad, either. And the Haitian thing, is the thing that really sticks in my craw: This is the worst example of a rotten policy from the United States. There are other policies that are bad, but this is the absolute worst. “In my view, you always go to the worst case, to set a policy. In your own country, you look at the poorest layer of our population, and say, ‘Will this policy work for their children and grandchildren?’ And if it works for the poorest ones, justly, then it’ll probably work for everyone—as Franklin Roosevelt defined that: Always go to the ‘forgotten man.’ Take the person who’s the greatest victim, of injustice or neglect, and start there; and prove that you are really for the general welfare of people, by showing you’re willing to face that problem. Look it in the eye, and talk about curing it.” https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2004/eirv31n12-20040326/eirv31n12-20040326.pdf The following was LaRouche’s initial call for the U.S. to commit to a 25-year development treaty with Haiti, from a Jan. 30, 2010 webcast, only weeks after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake had killed, maimed, left homeless or displaced close to a third of the nation’s people: “What should be done is the following, in my view. First of all, the government of the United States should make a contract with the government of Haiti. And the contract is for the reconstruction of the economy and system of the nation of Haiti…. “You cannot apply a band-aid to Haiti. And you cannot bring in many other countries, because the objective is, if the country is going to be viable, coming out of this mess, you have to have a sovereign Haiti. So, the contract has to be essentially, a United States treaty agreement, a treaty agreement to re-establish the efficient sovereignty of the nation of Haiti, after the destructive effect of this and preceding difficulties. “What’s the big deal, after all? It’s a small nation, of people who have been subjected to all kinds of terrible history; who have been promised this, and betrayed, and promised that, and betrayed, and promised and betrayed. Never delivered. It’s in a group of national territories which has also tended to be somewhat of a mess, in one way or the other. So, therefore, it’s a model approach. We say, ‘Okay, we make a contract with the government, as a treaty agreement, between the United States and Haiti, to assure the rebuilding of their country, in a form in which it will actually be a functioning country which can survive.’ “It’s going to take a quarter-century to get that job done. You’ve got to change a lot of things. But the one, the most important thing to change, is the attitude which presently prevails, around the world in dealing with things like this. It’s called ‘fix-it,’ ‘patch the system.’ My view is, you have to leave a viable system behind. Don’t patch it and walk away. Make a contract and say, ‘Well, you’re a small country. We can absorb the burden. We’re going to work with you, under the protection of the United States, to make sure you come out of this successfully.’ Not merely successfully, in the sense of solving the immediate crisis, which was done before; it didn’t work too well. We have to follow through: We have to think about a nation’s ability to maintain itself, not to be maintained from time to time because of internal crises, or because of an act of nature. “And that’s the kind of relationship we should have with nations, so let’s go back and have it. We used to do this, you know, in the immediate post-Civil War period in the United States. We used to have ex-military, from both the Confederate Army and the Union Army, travel overseas, as to Egypt, to build up the system of that country. Until the British got us kicked out of there, we did a fine job, and then the British turned it into something else. “But in our Constitutional structure, in our tradition, a country right next to ours, Haiti, just a few drops across the street, is in terrible condition, as part of a divided island territory, where problems tend to run across the border. Help them! Not just because you want to help them, but because you want to reaffirm a standard of morality in international affairs. And our commitment must be, to make sure we’re not just going to promise something—we’re going to get it done. And if we get it done, and it’s successful, it will be good for all of us.” https://larouchepub.com/lar/2010/webcasts/3705jan30_qanda.html

With the US under total British Occupation how would anyone honestly think about implementing the New Bretton Woods System today. The stunning clarity of Franklin Roosevelt and his team leaves the actual method by which it can and must be done! It really is truly stunning! Listen in to this week's Fireside Chat featuring Gerry Rose from Executive Intelligence Review.

As many of us sit stunned by the condition of our country and the world, we must be at least asking ourselves how it got so bad. How have we allowed such a drastic plunge both culturally and economically? What's the driving force of destruction? As we search, we will undoubtedly confront the hypothesis of evil, or at least apathy. This week's Midwest Meeting featured Denise Ham and Carl Osgood. They looked at Dante Alighieri and his commitment to lift the people of Italy out of the cultural depravity surrounding them through the development of a unified language and the concept of a modern nation-state dedicated to the general welfare, such as the US once was. Tune in for a journey through Dante's Commedia, traveling from Hell to Heaven, to help grasp what will be necessary of us all in a moment such as ours - one equally gripped by both hope and despair.

Ancient astronomers, geometricians, and poets from the Vedic hymns to Dante to Edgar Poe have continually posed the question: Is there intelligent life on Earth? Joel DeJean discussed this question on the LaRouche Fireside Chat, along with discussing the recent flyby of the planet Venus of the Solar Orbiter and Bepicolumbo spacecraft, as well as why the recent IPCC report on global warming is just hot air.

Aug. 5, 2021 — A new Standing Repo Facility has been created by the Federal Reserve with an authorization of $500 billion subject to unlimited increase by Federal Reserve System Chairman Jerome Powell. The Fed announced the facility July 28 and activated its operation July 29, indicating some urgency to cope with a liquidity problem in the interbank lending market, according to economists Pam and Russ Martens in their “Wall Street on Parade” column of July 28.In September 2019 the Fed suddenly confronted a serious freeze-up in the interbank lending market and was forced to make emergency liquidity loans to the primary dealer banks which burgeoned up to hundreds of billions a day. There were many calls then for a standing repo facility, which was not created. Now it is set up, and will make repo loans not only to primary dealer banks, but to hedge funds, private equity funds, money-market mutual funds.... And, there is a second Standing Repo as well, for “foreign and international monetary institutions.” So, the situation has clearly gotten much more unstable and contagious. The Federal Reserve has crammed the big banks with $4.5 trillion more in reserves just since the restart of QE in October 2019; those banks are crammed with trillions in new deposits while they have withdrawn loan and lease credit, net, from the economy, doubling their speculative securities assets the while. Equally ominous, although the Martenses did not report it July 28: The Fed embarks on these new facilities to pump in liquidity, after about six weeks of reverse repo operations—where the Fed makes overnight loans of Treasuries in exchange for cash loans from banks; i.e., it soaks up liquidity from the banking system—which have run as high as $1 trillion/day! This indicates it is dealing with, or perhaps lurching around in, real volatility stemming from the very masses of deposits and stock-price gains it has caused to appear. Worst of all, in the view of the Martenses, is that the Fed announced the Standing Repo Facility on the afternoon of July 28, when it had been called for that morning by the G30 Working Group on Financial Markets, headed by the consummate bad actor in a financial crash, Tim Geithner. Geithner, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, “sluiced out $29 trillion to bail out the Wall Street banks” in 2008, as the Martenses wrote. The Standing Repo Facility will be operated by the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

LIVE NOW!Schiller Institute International Conference – July 31, 2021Watch HereSaturday, July 31, 10:00 am EDT; 16:00hrs. CETModerator: Dennis Speed (U.S.), The Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder and President of The Schiller InstituteKeynote Address: “Afghanistan: The Bright Future for the Coming Cooperation of the Great Powers” Pino Arlacchi (Italy), Sociology Professor at the Sassari University, Former Executive Director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and former European Parliament Rapporteur on Afghanistan“Eradicate Opium in Afghanistan, Develop Modern Agriculture, Build the Nation, Now” H.E. Ambassador Hassan Shoroosh (Afghanistan), Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Canada“The Way Forward for Afghanistan” H.E. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva (Russian Federation), Deputy Permanent Representative at the Mission of The Russian Federation to the UN “Russia’s Outlook for Afghanistan and Eurasia” Dr. Wang Jin (China), Fellow with The Charhar Institute“Afghanistan and the Belt and Road Initiative” Question and Answer SessionRay McGovern (U.S.), Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA-ret.), Co-Founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)“The Real Interest of the United States in Asia” Hassan Daud (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment “The Perspective from Pakistan: The Role of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for Afghanistan Reconstruction.” Hussein Askary (Sweden/Iraq), Southwest Asia Coordinator for the Schiller Institute“Put Afghanistan on the Belt and Road to Peace!” Discussion PeriodWe welcome questions during the conference. Please send them to questions@schillerinstitute.orgSupplementary material by Executive Intelligence Review (EIR)—Special Report Offprint: ‘Will Afghanistan Trigger a Paradigm Change?’PDF of the invitation“After the hasty withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan—U.S. troops, except for a few security forces, were flown out in the dark of night without informing Afghan allies—this country has become, for the moment but likely not for long, the theater of world history.”—Helga Zepp-LaRouche, July 10, 2021 We face an extraordinary moment, of further descent into chaos, or the beautiful potential of Afghanistan becoming the seed-crystal of a new era of international cooperation so desperately needed in the wake of growing disease and famine worldwide. Afghanistan was once a hub for the ancient Silk Road, the connection between the great cultures of Asia and those of the European side of the Eurasian continent. The entire Central Asian region was once known as “a land of 1,000 cities”, showcasing advanced technologies in oasis cities, including Merv, Balkh, Kabul, and Kandahar, with large-scale underground irrigation systems. Water development will once again be crucial, and the agricultural potential is great.In the past weeks, most of Afghanistan’s neighbors have come together, in an attempt to forge a commitment to end the nightmare suffered by the people of Afghanistan, a nightmare also suffered by the military forces of many nations drawn into needless combat in the service of a British-centered oligarchy fostering the growth of drug trafficking and terrorism in the entire region. Just as the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of an era—the division of the world into nuclear armed blocs hostile to one another—so also the utter failure of the 20-year misadventure of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, and in the other failed colonial wars in Southwest Asia, poses the question: Can the great nations of the world cooperate in the transformation of Afghanistan, and the other war-torn nations, into modern economies, participating in co-operative development through the New Silk Road process, exemplified by China’s Belt and Road Initiative? Leading voices, from veterans’ groups and whistleblowers, to experts on the danger of global narcotics plague and on international political relations, will join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in dialogue, to impel the United States and Europe to join the growing international cooperation that is coming together. We can use this opportunity to make the turn from 50 years of failed policies, and instead to embark on the path required to achieve a new paradigm for mankind. Watch Here

This week's Fireside Chat featured an exciting presentation from David Shavin of Executive Intelligence Review, on the history you were never told about the plot to develop Afghanistan. Think Afghanistan has always been a lifeless desert that is plagued by corruption and sectarian fighting? Think again.The Helmand Valley Authority (HVA), modelled on the US's TVA project, was launched in 1952 to develop a key area of Afghanistan's territory. As with the TVA, the HVA project involved a top-down development of the whole region, centered upon electricity, irrigation, and flood control. But it also included improvements in farm equipment and practices, canals that helped reclaim the desert lands. Grain and cotton flourished and they became the core of the nation’s economy. Also, the agricultural developments in the 1950’s pushed Helmand's opium production aside – though that was revived in the 1990’s. Unfortunately, as the US turned away from it's identity after Kennedy's assassination and Nixon's pulling the plug on the Bretton Woods System, our nation wasn't the only thing that began to go fallow fall apart. Some of the same infrastructure the US helped to construct in the 1950's fell into disrepair and was eventually added to a target list to bomb during our "war on terror" after 2001. Let's change this ugly turn of events and make Afghanistan a true turning point in history.

It is no doubt that throughout the years and throughout the world, not a soul can resist the overwhelmingly jubilant tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." But why? What does it mean for a composer to strike such a universal chord? Most people today think that we can separate the artist from his creations, as they praise degenerates like Richard Wagner while neglecting the fact that he was a raging anti-Semite. Ludwig van Beethoven on the other hand was of a completely different character, and that can be heard in his music. In this week's Midwest Meeting, David Shavin, musician, researcher, and editor at EIR, presented Beethoven and his unrelenting commitment to the ideals of the newly founded American Republic, as well as his passion to bring that same love of mankind to a Europe utterly dominated by oligarchism.

The United States/NATO occupation of Afghanistan, the latest, long trail of fruitless wasting of blood and treasure in that suffering country, is now ending. There is an alternative start to peace through economic development which could now succeed, if the sine qua non which Lyndon LaRouche made clear years ago goes into action. The great powers in the region—China, Russia, and India—along with the United States, must cooperate, not with their special forces but with their engineers and their credits, to support that success.This was proposed by LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review in special reports already in 1997. It was sabotaged by regime-change wars throughout the region. Proposed again by Russia in 2014—an Afghan region development concept reported by EIR in its 2014 special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge”—it was again sabotaged by Russia’s expulsion from the G8 after the Ukraine coup d’état. Behind this was the British intelligence Bernard Lewis Plan, adopted by Zbigniew Brzezinski as Carter’s National Security Advisor, to use this region as an “Arc of Crisis” permanent weapon of war and terror against Russia and China. The Belt and Road Initiative, initially a Chinese land-bridge infrastructure project across Eurasia but now involving more than 100 countries, offers economic development advantages and prospects to Afghanistan, including the Taliban, if major nations in the region cooperate on them. The obvious question is why the U.S./NATO occupation persisted for so long in blocking the government of Afghanistan from negotiating on the Belt and Road, when it clearly was open to this and in desperate need of development as we show here. Railway-technology.com, the Belt and Road News, and The Diplomat have all recently reported on the agreement reached in February 2021 by the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for a railway to be built at an estimated cost of $4.8 billion from Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s most northerly major city and its capital, through Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul, Afghanistan, to Peshawar, Pakistan. Uzbekistan—the initiator of the plan, according to The Diplomat—proposed to ask the World Bank to make a loan for this fund, and that request was made in April. Moreover, a Peshawar-Kabul-Dushanbe highway project was recently agreed upon between Pakistan and Afghanistan representatives. As a Pakistani planned project, called the Khyber Pass Economic Corridor as an offshoot of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, this plan dates to March 2015, when a feasibility study was begun. If the rail and road developments are combined, effectively a north-south transportation and economic development corridor begins to be launched running from the main Eurasian Land-Bridge on the north, to the Indian Ocean on the south. This is true even though the core Kabul-Peshawar stretch through the Khyber Pass runs east and west. Tashkent will connect the corridor north through secondary rail lines to the dry port of Khorgos, Kazakhstan, on the main Eurasian Land-Bridge rail line from Lanzhou Port in China to Russia and Europe. Peshawar, via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), will connect the corridor directly to Pakistan’s growing port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea—and of course, back into China’s southern industrial heartlands. Mazar-e-Sharif in the extreme north of Afghanistan is the only Afghan city with rail connections now, largely into Uzbekistan. Within Afghanistan itself, this rail-road corridor would turn the northeast quadrant of the Afghanistan Ring Road into a protected part of that international corridor; and through Mazar-e-Sharif, it would connect the Tajik capital Dushanbe which lies to the east of that corridor. The major economic powers must turn from tensions, charges and confrontations, and cooperate for this potential to finally allow peace and development in Afghanistan. The rail line from Peshawar to Tashkent and potentially north to Russia will have serious logistical-engineering challenges, which only the Chinese rail-building companies can solve. The World Bank loan will only be made if the United States agrees to support the plan, and then the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) can become involved in providing additional credit. And development along the corridor will require a lot of new electric power, which can best be nuclear plants engineered by Russia’s world-leading nuclear exporter Rosatom. These are only the beginning of the needs for power, water management, transportation, and urgently now, healthcare. They are the way out of the constant “Arc of Crisis” warfare LaRouche first exposed in his 1998 classic video lesson, “Storm Over Asia.”

The Midwest LaRouche Organization hosted Independent LaRouche Candidate for Senate in NY, Diane Sare, for this week's zoom conference call to discuss the imminent hyperinflationary blowout of the Trans-Atlantic financial system. The Federal Reserve has 10 times more "assets" on its balance sheet today than it did in 2008, and double what it had one year ago. The big banks are holding twice as much in deposits as they are lending. Moreover, counting drug money and prostitution in the GDP will only make matters worse, and obliterate our already disintegrating cities. Happily, there is a growing revolt against the "great reset" and Green New Deal, not only in the United States, but all over the world. Not one thing is happening which Lyndon LaRouche did not accurately forecast and the solutions he proposed will work. The upcoming conference of the Schiller Institute is the rallying point for everyone who wishes to ensure a peaceful and prosperous future. Register for the Schiller Institute Conference here.