Article Search

Afghanistan can become stable, and its enormous potential for growth can be leveraged to the benefit of Afghans and the world at large, through helping to shape a new paradigm on this planet.But even after two decades of U.S.-led warfare, attempts to destabilize the nation and region continue. The U.S. government has frozen the nearly $9.5 billion in assets of the Afghan central bank and halted shipments of cash to the nation. The International Monetary Fund has suspended Afghanistan’s access to IMF resources, including $440 million worth of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) reserves. A cash shortage is developing in Afghanistan, where it is used for most purchases. Germany has announced a halt to all financial aid to the country, which will affect ongoing infrastructure projects. FaceBook-owned WhatsApp has shut down a Taliban help hotline, as well as other Taliban-linked channels, in a decision attacked by aid workers as “absurd.” Are these decisions temporary, due to uncertainty of who runs the country? Or are they being used to foster ongoing chaos in a nation already suffering decades of warfare, a nation lying at a strategic crossroads — bordering or closely concerning Iran, China, Pakistan, Russia, and three of the Central Asian republics? As has been the case for over a century, the British game of geopolitics seeks to ensure that there is no world rival to their dominance, exerted today through the “special relationship” with the United States. A new “Northern Alliance” has announced its emergence in Afghanistan, seeking Western military support. What will it receive? The Belt and Road Initiative, which is overturning the world’s economic and strategic chessboard through a paradigm of infrastructure development and productivity growth, achieving, at China’s initiative, a policy that parallels the World Land-Bridge concept developed by Lyndon LaRouche, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and their collaborators. Into this dynamic Afghanistan can be integrated, with results that would be stunning in terms of how rapidly they could transform the region, which can hardly be said to have benefited significantly from the over $1 trillion spent on military adventures there. The antidote to chaos — in addition to identifying its origin — is growth! This Saturday, the Schiller Institute, founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, will convene an urgent international seminar to pursue the solution of peace through development. The seminar will continue the prescient discussion held by the Schiller Institute on July 31, with many of the same panelists, as well as new ones. Zepp-LaRouche explained on Wednesday: “I do not agree with the hysteria of the Western media that this is the end of the world. … I think it is, on the contrary, the real chance to integrate Afghanistan into a regional economic development perspective, which is basically defined by the Belt and Road Initiative of China. There is a very clear agreement of Russia and China to cooperate in dealing with this situation. The interest of the Central Asian republics is to make sure there is stability and economic development; and there is the possibility to extend the CPEC, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, into Afghanistan, into Central Asia. So, I think it’s a real opportunity, but it does require a complete change in approach.” Expressing her view of the proper role of the United States, Zepp-LaRouche said, “John Quincy Adams said that the United States should have alliances of perfectly sovereign republics, and this is now the moment to really do that. The idea is to not oppose China linking Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative, but rather see it as an opportunity to cooperate, and stop this geopolitical confrontation which can only lead to catastrophe. … That’s the kind of discussion which we have to catalyze.” The event will be this Saturday at noon EDT (6pm CEST), available at schillerinstitute.com

In the year 2021, we must succeed in creating the new international paradigm Lyndon LaRouche fought for throughout his life, and which his movement continues. On the global scale, there is an enormous battle being fought out in numerous fields of action—a battle to replace, finally, the oligarchical system that has existed, with ebbs and flows, through human history, a system that exists most prominently today in the form of the British financial-intelligence empire of the City of London, Wall Street, and the Five Eyes intelligence agencies. That oligarchical system’s greatest individual opponent over the recent half-century was Lyndon LaRouche, who identified his enemy with a powerful precision, and organized leaders and people around the world for his perspective and policy proposals. That work was conducted in collaboration with his movement and most notably with his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who leads present efforts to create a new paradigm in the world, in coherence with her late husband’s outlook.The great challenge to that oligarchical system is seen most clearly today in the nation of China, which, by rejecting the British economic orthodoxies to which many trans-Atlantic nations have adhered like barnacles to a sinking ship—and operating instead in a way that reflects many aspects of the LaRouche perspective—has eliminated absolute poverty within its borders, developed a growing technological capability approaching world leadership in several domains, and offered a hand to other nations around the world to collaborate on win-win partnerships in infrastructure, manufacturing, and trade. This is not China attempting to beat the “West” at the imperial game of geopolitics; it is a different way of approaching international relations. The signing of the EU-China trade and investment agreements, which Helga Zepp-LaRouche called “a major breakthrough for the world,” expanding the potential to see the rest of the world as useful partners, rather than as threats. Italian economist and China expert Michele Geraci expressed his view that “the main merit of this agreement is that it will help to bring China on western standards, especially regarding their policies of access to the market and respect for intellectual property.” Working out agreements is the way to address such frictions and difficulties. Unfortunately, a poison was also injected into the agreement, a poison similar to that included in recent U.S. legislation: proposals for radical reductions in CO₂ emissions, in a supposed effort to prevent catastrophic climate change. The suicidal (and murderous) policy of the Paris Climate Accord and the Green New Deal was attacked early, often, and frequently with great humor by President Donald Trump, who stood alone among leaders of the world’s most powerful nations in withstanding the Green cult’s evangelization efforts. Trump’s great potential as a force to restore America’s potential as a manufacturing powerhouse rather than a haven for financial parasitism, and as a partner—not an enemy—of Russia and China, earned him the wrath of the British Empire, which opposed his candidacy, did everything possible to destroy or take over his presidency, and acted to deny him re-election. Over the past four years, this took the form of Russiagate and the Ukraine impeachment hoax from without, and the form of such miserable creatures as Chinagate-Kung Flu-promoter Mike Pompeo from within. Today, as Trump’s campaign continues its valiant, necessary, and correct fight against the epidemic of election fraud, opportunists see the chance to inject the absurd lie that China stole the election from Trump. Such people are no friends of Trump, or of the potential his presidency holds. In less than a week, at the momentous January 6 joint session of Congress, Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, will count electoral votes and the Congress will debate objections to be raised by Representatives and at least one Senator, Jeff Hawley. Given the slim Democratic majority in the House, it is not impossible that such a challenge could succeed, if Covid prevents the attendance of some members, and proxy voting is not reinstated. What actions will state legislatures take? What will the courts do? Is the unexpected possible on January 6? Addressing the global fight, through fighting for the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche, identifying Britain’s role in the Russiagate coup, fighting for the freedom of Assange and Snowden, to reject the surveillance state and the criminalization of free speech that go hand in hand with social media censorship, and raising the level of discussion to the international fight, provides the best vantage point for Trump’s ability to be an effective (and possibly still-in-office) leader.

The legitimacy of a government in the eyes of history — its “mandate from Heaven” — is to promote the common good of its people and of humanity in general. Which governments in the world today can be said to deserve this legitimacy? In welcoming ambassadors from two dozen countries to Russia, President Putin identified, in his own way, the fundamental principle that Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has emphasized is required for human survival — agape: “The epidemic has proved a real test for such universal human values as solidarity, mutual assistance, and love for humanity…. It is possible to ensure peace, stability and sustainable global development only through the efforts of the entire international community…. We are convinced that everything must be done to prevent the tragedy of World War II from repeating itself, so that its lessons will not be forgotten. All of us must cherish the priceless experience and spirit of allied relations during the struggle against common challenges and threats…. We must ensure the well-being and prosperity of all human beings.”The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, which Zepp-LaRouche co-founded, insists in its recent statement that “Health security is possible anywhere, only by provision everywhere of sufficient public health infrastructure and medical treatment capacity. This, in turn, depends directly on expanding water, power and food, which is associated with building up industrial capacity, as well as providing for adequate transportation, housing and other basics.” Against this humanist outlook stands the imperial, Malthusian model for society. It is represented in its more historical form in the City of London and Wall Street — whose increasing power over the nominally sovereign governments of the trans-Atlantic world recalls the earlier “privatization” of the British government under the British East India Company. And it has also adopted a new guise in the “synthetic left” which calls for an end to development and a redefinition of progress in identitarian and environmentalist terms — of “progressives” who think there should be fewer people, “progressives” taken in by uncontextualized appeals to effectively support fascist policies under the rubric of defending human rights. This Malthusian monster seeks to implement a worldwide Great Reset that will reduce the potential human population of the world: dramatically increasing the physical cost of providing and consuming energy (through drastically reducing the use of hydrocarbons while demanding greatly expanded mining to produce rare earth elements necessary for batteries and motors) while pointlessly and perilously heightening the danger of deadly military conflict with Russia and China, to prevent any other paradigm from taking hold. Rather than moving for the development of low-income nations in Africa, the Malthusian beast seeks to pay these nations not to develop, by essentially allowing developed nations to pay for carbon offsets, which would be transferred to poor nations to leave their resources (at least those for domestic consumption rather than export) in the ground. But human beings are resource creators, not merely resource consumers. The climate change catastrophism promoted today as a new secular (or Satanic?) religion, like such earlier studies as the 1980 Global 2000 Report, relies on the same old discredited Malthusian theorizing that has led its predecessors to make terrifying forecasts that were soon falsified by reality. Human beings are resource creators, not merely resource consumers. Every new “mouth to feed” is associated with a new “mind to educate.” It is the ability of each human individual to make enduring contributions to human history that demands peace and development throughout the world. It is for the sake of past, present, and future humanity that this view of the human individual be brought forward to guide policy, rejecting the depraved outlooks that would tolerate Israeli murder, Green destruction of productivity, and the drive to draw the United States into war with Russia and China. Will we become deserving of the praise of the future?

Yesterday, we at The LaRouche Organization held a day-long live-stream event commemorating the second anniversary of the passing of Lyndon LaRouche. A memorial concert celebrating LaRouche’s life opened the event, which incorporated speeches, videos, and debate appearances by LaRouche himself, as well as reminiscences from his dear colleagues over the years—including his wife and collaborator Helga Zepp-LaRouche. The event took place against a dramatic world backdrop, in which the gross and manifest disparities between the narrative world and the real world demand press freedom to burst through the attempted control imposed by the legacy media and Big Tech companies. For example, the story of a U.S. Capitol Police Officer being killed by fire-extinguisher-wielding Trump “insurrectionists” is false. The supposedly unparalleled evil of Trump’s urging his supporters to “fight like hell” is belied by the mountain of footage presented at the impeachment trial, of Democrats using similar language. Other videos presented by Trump’s defense team showed the false framing of his Charlottesville “fine people” language, and the rank hypocrisy of Democrats expressing feigned outrage about challenging the results of an election.Firings and shamings for uttering secular blasphemy—“regardless of intent,” in the words of the New York Times—create a chilling effect on speech and encourage self-policing of thought itself. Lies about a Chinese plot to ensnare the world in debt are promoted to prevent the establishment of a new economic paradigm in the world. Project Veritas, a news outlet that specializes in undercover investigations, is the latest victim of the ongoing purge from Twitter of voices unwelcome to the Silicon Valley-Wall Street-intelligence slime-mold. And the Biden Administration’s decision to appeal the British decision to not extradite Julian Assange continues the assault on press liberties that Barack Obama advanced with his use of Espionage Act prosecutions. (Even Obama didn’t prosecute Assange.) Meanwhile, what is offered as the comforting balm of all things good and holy is actually the unsavory embrace of the British Empire’s “Great Reset”/”Green New Deal,” designed to reduce the world’s population, quickly, in the name of combatting climate change. Executive Intelligence Review’s powerful report, “The Great Leap Backward,” is now available to subscribers and will soon be available for individual purchase in both print and electronic form. To identify the incorrect axioms of one’s narrative world, to free oneself to better understand the real world, requires not only a creative method of resolving paradoxes—a method fostered by a hands-on, creative education based on recreating past discoveries—but also the staying power to do the long and hard work required to make that real world a better place. In his 1979 autobiography The Power of Reason, Lyndon LaRouche wrote about the great effects that can be achieved by an impassioned commitment: “As I gauged myself against great minds during my adolescent philosophical project, and have done so in reading and related experiences constantly ever since, and as I have had the opportunity to gauge myself against key figures of this century, including leading figures in various parts of the world among my contemporaries, I know the measure of existing men and women, those who are considered outstanding as well as others. In my own work, I know that my experience is that which on a relative scale of things is one of greatness. I know what the realized pinnacles of human potential development are in our time and, to large measure, in earlier times. I have, essentially, matched them. “Thus I can address a concerned parent, or a child, and inform them of the nature of greatness as it is experienced from the inside. “Apart from those exciting moments in which a valid new discovery of some exceptional usefulness ... there is no melodramatic glory in the process of greatness. Mostly, from moment to moment, greatness has outwardly an ordinary, homely appearance. “Greatness is reflected in particular in small decisions made from moment to moment. It is not seen often as capacity for occasional ‘big and important’ acts of melodramatic potential. It proceeds in a succession of little, moment-by-moment decisions, whose cumulative effect is to steer one’s development and the cumulative effect of one’s actions in a certain way, so that after a passage of time, something important, something cumulatively important has happened.... “It is the persisting, growing determination to stubbornly pursuing a determination to reach that which may be seemingly impossible, yet necessary.... “Greatness is a quality of concentration span which is sustainable across decades, which can alter its steps without changing its course or objective.... “At many points, from childhood on, there were always persons who seemed to be walking the same sort of homely steps I walked. yet, in most cases, they have fallen behind somehow along the way.... “It is the difference ... between the person whose steps are governed by a commitment to a course and a destination, and one whose course and destination are usually the unforeseen consequence of decisions one at a time concerning individual steps. “From moment to moment, both persons’ steps are usually equally ordinary, equally homely in overall character.” There are many moments of greatness in Lyndon LaRouche’s life—major breakthroughs in thought, diplomacy, science, music, and policy. Such singularities are driven by an ongoing commitment, including seemingly small steps. Too often, attempts at political organizing are held back by a concern that they will not be big enough, or are too small to achieve their intended aim. But where will you be led by a decades-long commitment? What will guide your steps today? Next year? The Schiller Institute is taking a step today to deflate the narrative world containing arch super-villains Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping while presenting a compelling vision for a future real world, in a forum entitled “Worsening U.S.-Russian Relations—Reverse Them with a New Paradigm, or Face Nuclear War,” chaired by LaRouche’s closest collaborator, Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Please join us.

The U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan brings to an end 20 years of a misguided military operation and places squarely on the table the difference in outcomes achieved through geopolitics and through cooperative development. We never should have been in Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks were not organized by a group of 19 individuals coordinated from a cave. The hijackers drew on external support during their time in the United States, and it came not from Osama bin Laden operating in Afghanistan, but from Saudi Arabia. There was no military mission to achieve in Afghanistan.But it served as the first in a new series of wars, based on a new paradigm of geopolitics that flouted international law and asserted a Responsibility to Protect that demanded military action to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations based on the flimsiest (and most easily faked) of pretexts. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche writes in her Afghanistan at a Crossroads: “The strategic turbulence caused by the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, offers an excellent opportunity for a reassessment of the situation, for a correction of political direction and a new solution-oriented policy. The long tradition of geopolitical manipulation of this region … must be buried once and for all, never to be revived.” The world is not a zero-sum “Great Game.” Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan expressed the potential for U.S.-Chinese cooperation: “The biggest challenge for the United States is not China. It is in the United States itself. Its strategy toward China must avoid forming a vicious circle of misleading and misjudgment. As long as we uphold the concept of a shared destiny for all mankind, the issues between China and the United States will not be fundamentally opposed and irreconcilable, and a path of peaceful coexistence and cooperation will be found.” Finding the path towards cooperation requires thinking of the future, drawing us to look, as Hussein Askary expressed it on Saturday’s LaRouche Organization event, not at the mud under our feet, but towards the stars over our heads. International cooperation on the physical infrastructural development of the broader region will bring benefits to Afghanistan and its neighbors that far surpass what could be achieved without that integration. This will require engineering. It will require technical support. And it will require stable financing. This is an opportunity to bring neighbors to the table and to draw on expertise around the world. The how-to book has quite literally already been written—by EIR and the Schiller Institute—in the form of a program for trans-national infrastructure and large-scale industrialization and agricultural technology deployment. “For all these reasons,” Zepp-LaRouche writes, “the future development of Afghanistan represents a fork in the road for all mankind. At the same time, it is a perfect demonstration of the opportunity that lies in the application of the Cusan principle of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites…. In Afghanistan, it holds true more than anywhere else in the world: The new name for peace is development!” It is only by abandoning geopolitics and adopting domestic policies to launch an economic renaissance and crush the power of finance, that the United States could qualify itself to play a useful role in the world. America’s urgently needed missions will be the subject of an upcoming pamphlet from The LaRouche Organization. The work of the greatest recent American thinker on the issue of development—Lyndon LaRouche—is the topic of a LaRouche Legacy Foundation August 14 online seminar, on the occasion of “The 50th Anniversary of LaRouche’s Stunning Forecast of August 15, 1971.”

The rapidly shifting situation on the ground in Afghanistan gives increasing urgency to developing an understanding of the work of Lyndon LaRouche, who laid out, with increasing insight, his vision for the Earth’s next fifty years, and beyond. As the delta Covid variant lays bare the inadequacy of health care throughout the world, we see the profound need to develop a platform of productivity capable of sustaining billions more people with standards of physical and cultural life adequate to the creative potential of the human race.The second panel of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation’s event “So, Are You Finally Willing to Learn Economics?” took up the topic of LaRouche’s vision of “Earth’s Next Fifty Years,” with a view towards the efforts led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to realizing those revolutionary objectives. Moderator Megan Dobrodt, Secretary-Treasurer of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation Board of Directors, launched the panel with a video of the LaRouches’ close friend and collaborator, Norbert Brainin, the lead violinist of the legendary Amadeus Quartet. Brainin began a 1995 master class in Dona Krupa Castle, Slovakia, by introducing the concept of Motivführung, or “motivic thorough-composition,” an approach to classical composition developed by Haydn and refined by Mozart and Beethoven, of thorough composition according to principle. Brainin explained to the class that he often talked about Motivführung with professional colleagues and students who recognized the term, but that the only person who understood it completely was Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche often said that Brainin had introduced this concept to him, but he recognized it as a universal process for developing, not only great music, but natural and human compositions of any kind. Knowing this, Brainin explained that true classical composers are “scientists.” This was followed by a recording of LaRouche addressing the issue of human creativity at the July 3, 2011 European Schiller Institute conference. He asserted that human beings were the only known creative species, and explained that “classical artistic culture” can be transferred “to the department of physical science,” in the words of Riemann. LaRouche explained that he determined to build a movement, when he realized that no one but himself understood the disaster the financial disruptions of the 1960s were creating. He started by visiting universities and discussing his ideas. He briefly identified his understanding of his fundamental principle: “You get a demonstration of that in the department of Classical artistic composition, in which the mind is experimenting with the attempt to discover principles, and expresses the yearning for that experimental result as the incentive of creativity for the human mind. That is creativity. It is getting outside the ordinary habits, or habituation, of life….” He concluded with the simple statement, “It’s not magic: It’s really humanity.” The first guest on the panel was Jacques Cheminade, a long-time LaRouche associate, President of the Solidarité et Progrès party in France, and a former Presidential candidate. He described how, as a French diplomat, he first encountered LaRouche at an event in Manhattan and, while studying LaRouche’s writing, was confronted with a New York Times supplement in which he saw a photo of French soldiers in World War I with the caption, “Once again triage—Who’s going to live? Who is going to die?” Several pages later, there was a picture of an Ethiopian mother and child with their “skin floating off,” with the caption, “Who will be fed and who will die?” This led him to decide that, despite his prospects as a young diplomat, “Well, these are my people, even if to join them I have to pay a dear price.” He described his collaboration with LaRouche in writing a book, in French and English, titled France After de Gaulle (La France après de Gaulle), promoting the idea of getting France back on the path of republican development as characterized by General Lafayette’s engagement with the American Revolution. Maurice Allais, the only French citizen ever to win a Nobel Prize in Economics, wrote Cheminade a letter on November 27, 2009 saying that he was “fully associating myself to LaRouche’s efforts to generate a wide public debate to radically rebuild the credit system and the international monetary system,” and authorized Jacques to make this public. Former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, Cheminade said, also shared LaRouche’s economic outlook. In 1983 LaRouche and his wife Helga led a Club of Life event in Paris. The Club was founded by Mrs. LaRouche as a counter to the radically Malthusian Club of Rome. The Paris event was attended by world-famous oncologist Georges Mathé, resistance heroine Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, and de Gaulle’s associate, World War II hero, General Jean-Gabriel Revault d’Allonnes. All of these later wrote to request freedom for LaRouche, when he was politically incarcerated in 1989. LaRouche’s universal appeal was demonstrated by support from leading members of the French Communist Party as well as the Secretary of State under President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Pierre Christian Taittinger. Following Cheminade, two representatives from Argentina, Roberto Fritzsche and Eduardo Fernandez, used discoveries of the great Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky to explain LaRouche’s concept of “relative potential population density” in relation to “energy flux density” and improvements in living standards. Man’s role in this complex was explained in relationship to Vernadsky’s concept of three realms of existence: the lifeless lithosphere; the living biosphere; and the realm of cognition called the noösphere. Man is the master of all three, and, as LaRouche has explained, also participates in a fourth realm, that of cognition that we can recognize in the design and growth of the Universe, but, as yet, do not know its source in the way we know how humanity can discover concepts and “laws” of the Universe. They use Vernadsky’s calculations and more advanced knowledge to demonstrate that, with new energy sources which are on the horizon, the Earth could support a human population of 3 trillion. This was followed by greetings from Carlos Gallardo, President of the Christian Democratic Party of Peru. Harley Schlanger, also a long-time leader of the LaRouche movement, followed with an ironically revealing behind the scenes report on the origins of Richard Nixon’s disastrous August 15, 1971 announcement. It happened that on January 23, 1983, a dozen years after the event, John Connally of Texas, who had been Secretary of the Treasury under President Nixon, was present as his, Connally’s, possessions were being sold off at a bankruptcy auction, and agreed to an interview. Schlanger asked about the Aug. 15, 1971 decision, and Connally proudly declared it to have been his decision, and a great success. When Schlanger challenged him with LaRouche’s declaration that the decision was the cause of the subsequent disasters, which were, among other things, the cause of Connally’s personal demise, he became despondent, and eventually slinked away. Daisuke Kotegawa, formerly a top official in Japan’s Ministry of Finance and Japan’s Executive Director at the IMF, sent a greeting backing LaRouche’s distinction between investments in the real economy as opposed to speculation, and called for restoring Glass-Steagall. Fred Huenefeld, an agricultural economist who has served in multiple government positions in Louisiana, and a long-time board member of the Schiller Institute, gave an animated description of his years of agitating for LaRouche’s ideas and hounding the U.S. Congress to wake up. Former South Carolina State Senator Theo Mitchell, a leader in the Democratic Party and a board member of the Schiller Institute, discussed his work to expose the FBI’s misjustice in the prosecution of LaRouche and in the “Fruhmenschen” campaign which targeted Black elected officials, including himself. The concluding section, on LaRouche in the Universities, gave youth leaders of the LaRouche movement an opportunity to discuss their commitment to getting LaRouche’s work into universities and elsewhere. Gretchen Small, a leader of the Ibero-American branch of the LaRouche movement and President of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation Board of Directors, began this session with video segments of the notorious 1971 City University of New York debate between LaRouche and top Keynesian economist Abba Lerner, in which LaRouche induced Lerner to admit that Nixon’s economic policy, and his own, were in keeping with those of Hitler’s Reichsbank governor and Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht. Sidney Hook, a leading academic “philosopher” of the day and an intelligence community operative responsible for stifling unwanted discussions, told a LaRouche supporter after witnessing LaRouche’s impact on the downed champion, Lerner, that LaRouche would never be permitted another such contest. The first youth speaker was from the Philippines, Carlos “Itos” Valdes, the son of Carlos “Butch” Valdes, the founder and leader of the Philippine LaRouche Society and many other organizations. Itos Valdes gave a sincere and moving description of how his understanding of the movement changed his life, beginning in childhood with his family’s involvement in the LaRouche movement, and continuing with his organizing others through the ideas of Plato, Leibniz, FDR and LaRouche Carolina Dominguez, an extraordinary leader of the movement in Mexico and throughout Ibero America, spoke about the campaign to make the work of LaRouche available throughout the university system, and presented videos of young colleagues from Mexico and Colombia. She described the problem by exposing an economics professor who said the purpose of education was to help students become part of the wealthy 50%, rather than to lift the poor 50% out of poverty. José Vega of the Bronx closed the presentations with a video he had made discussing LaRouche’s policy for the next 50 years, including his idea of a “Space Civilian Construction Corps” modeled on FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, to recruit youth to participate in a revitalized space program. The prepared presentations were followed by a profound discussion among the participants on the significance of what had been done and what must urgently be accomplished. One comment by Jacques Cheminade briefly highlighted the secret to LaRouche’s success. He said he was delighted to see three generations of LaRouche Youth Movements in action: the early 1960s campus recruit, Paul Gallagher; people in their 40s and 50s who were recruited by LaRouche in the 1990s-2000s, now playing a leading role in the movement; and those in their early 20s who are ripening as a highly effective force. The full conference can be viewed at the LaRouche Legacy Foundation website.

Escalating tensions with Russia, driven by Ukraine’s suicidal push for NATO membership, U.S. encouragement, and the U.S. military itself, threatens—despite President Biden’s reaching out to President Putin for an in-person summit—to explode into war, nuclear war. A provocative visit of former U.S. government officials to Taiwan adds more fuel to the fire of China’s cross-strait relations. Economic lending into the real economy by U.S. banks withers, even as they are showered with money. Inflation accelerates, and a blowout of the trans-Atlantic financial system is inevitable. Death by starvation stalks the impoverished inhabitants of war-zones Syria and Yemen. Will these crises culminate in what would become nuclear conflict, a devastation of the human race, or will a new paradigm overthrow the oligarchical structures that drive conflict? What flanks can you create to achieve that happier outcome?In her weekly Schiller Institute webcast discussion, Helga Zepp-LaRouche responded to the urgent call to the world by Apostolic Nuncio to Syria, Cardinal Mario Zenari, for the world to come to the aid of the Syrian people. More than 90% of Syrians are below the level of extreme poverty, and many are in danger of losing their lives due to famine. The last decade of war, the unjust sanctions, and the Covid pandemic have created an absolutely intolerable condition of suffering for the Syrian people. Similar horrors confront Yemen, where the agonizing reality of hunger is conveyed in the powerful documentary “Hunger Ward,” referred to by the head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, who saw children dying before his very eyes in the hospital, and he was unable to help. In both Syria and Yemen, the results of supposedly “humanitarian interventionist” wars—and there is nothing humanitarian about them!—conducted under the guise of defending the people from murderous governments, are genocidal. Was U.S. military intervention in Syria driven by Assad’s chemical weapon murder of the people there? No, that was not the reason, and the claims about the attacks were not true. As Col. Richard Black (USA, ret.) has explained, the plan for regime change in Syria was developed ten years before the 2011 destabilization, as part of a policy of regime change in the entire region, comprising Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya. The narrative about the causes of the war is completely wrong. But even leaving that aside, start from the current humanitarian situation: “When you have a people about to die, and the world does absolutely nothing, that means the people watching that are morally unfit to survive. And I’m crying out to you to help us make a mobilization to get rid of the ‘Caesar’ sanctions and to have the immediate reconstruction of Syria.” In contrast, the so-called donors’ conference in Brussels raised a few billion dollars, but it was an absolute charade. The funds will not go to the Syrian government, but rather to neighboring countries that have taken in refugees, to NGOs, and to opposition groups. But, as Cardinal Zenari says, without a reconstruction, there will be no end to the misery. Peace through development is the only way out of the crisis. And we know how to do this! The Schiller Institute has worked for half a century on plans for the development of Southwest Asia, dating back to Lyndon LaRouche’s 1975 “Oasis Plan” proposal. Since then, the LaRouche movement has developed a plan for Syria (“Project Phoenix”), a plan for Yemen (“Operation Felix”), all in the context of bringing Southwest Asia into a development paradigm of the New Silk Road/Belt and Road Initiative. Against this potential stands the Caesar sanctions, based on a lie. Photographs supposedly showing victims of torture carried out by the Assad government were used as evidence to push through this brutal sanctions policy. But these photographs were mainly of Syrian soldiers killed by al-Qaeda-linked groups! This is not the first time such fabrications have been presented. Saddam Hussein’s forces were accused of ripping babies out of incubators in Kuwait. This was used to start the 1990 Iraq War. Then we had the “yellowcake” and other supposed evidence of Saddam Hussein’s program to create weapons of mass destruction—again, all lies. Then we had the lies from the White Helmets about the supposed use by Assad of chemical weapons. Zepp-LaRouche demanded: "This must stop and the Caesar sanctions must be lifted. And all the members of Congress who do not lift these sanctions make themselves complicit in every death that occurs in the region…. “This has reached the point where either the world wakes up and we start to remedy this, or we will not survive, because of our own moral failure as a human species. “I call on you: work with the Schiller Institute. Work with its Committee on the Coincidence of Opposites, which is working to get aid programs and reconstruction. “I appeal to you: get in contact with the Schiller Institute and respond to the call by Cardinal Zenari, which has not been covered much at all by the Western press, which alone should show the one-sidedness of the media, which we must overcome.” Will you answer the call? Become a member of the Schiller Institute and work to make its vision a reality.

Feb. 24—“Before we finally and irrevocably reach the point of no return in mankind’s history — the point at which a global, thermonuclear war obliterates the human species — we must act swiftly to correct the absolute disaster that the imperial policy of the EU and the United States has created in Ukraine, and in relation to Russia and China. And we must especially eliminate the roots of this civilizational crisis, before the point of no return is reached.” So wrote Helga Zepp-LaRouche in a March 8, 2014, article. Eight years later, her analysis is absolutely spot-on.The failure of NATO and the United States to respond seriously to Russia’s December 2021 security demands has led to a situation where President Putin felt that he had no choice but to launch a “special military operation” in Ukraine to achieve its demilitarization and denazification, before the situation in Ukraine, including increasing quantities of materiel and foreign military service members, created an absolutely unbearable security threat. The literally Nazi menace in Ukraine, installed in that coup, was exposed in a powerful expose published by Executive Intelligence Review in February 2014: “Western Powers Back Neo-Nazi Coup in Ukraine.” The roots of the civilizational crisis driving the mad rush towards conflict with Russia and China is the collapsing the trans-Atlantic financial system, and the hysterical intent to use military threats and “green” blackmail to maintain the unipolar supremacy of the trans-Atlantic elite. As stated in the Schiller Institute’s February 23 petition — which is drawing an increasing number of signatures — “behind this very real danger of war, and the cause of that danger, is the blowout of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system…. The City of London and Wall Street, the owners of that bankrupt system, are desperate to destroy any functioning alternative to their system — such as Russia and China’s alliance … — and the financial Establishment has openly stated that this is what is at stake.” Will that establishment’s mad demand for submission be overcome, to be replaced by a new paradigm, a new security and development architecture for all nations? The answer lies in our hands. Join the LaRouche movement’s work to demand the immediate convocation of an international conference like that which crafted the Peace of Westphalia. The petition is available in English here.

Feb. 20—FLASH: The Elysée Palace released a statement early Feb. 21 Paris time, stating that President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are prepared, in principle, to meet in a summit over Ukraine. The statement indicates that this follows the initiatives of President Emmanuel Macron to promote the “security and strategic stability in Europe.” The text states, “Presidents Biden and Putin have both accepted the principle of such a summit,” contingent on there being no invasion of Ukraine by Russia. No response from Washington nor Moscow is known by EIR at the time of this Alert.The title and theme of the keynote given by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche, “Long-Term Survival: A New International Security Architecture,” at the Institute’s international conference Feb. 19, provides the way to look at key events in today’s fast-breaking, dangerous situation. There will be no “long term” for humanity, without curbing and ending the dangerous push by the U.S./U.K./NATO bloc for confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, to the point of igniting nuclear conflagration. We are called to act in the short term. Similarly, without short-term action, the deadly march of famine and disease are reaching the point of mass kill-off, and the end of any “long-term” survival for humanity, as of our present-day ranks of 7.8 billion people. On the war push, the weekend updates include the following. Today, French President Emmanuel Macron held calls with President Putin, Ukraine President Zelenskyy, and President Biden. In Washington, Biden met in the Situation Room of the White House for a special National Security Council (NSC,), with an expanded, in-person attendance, including heads of the Departments of Defense, Treasury, and State, the CIA, the NSC, and other agencies. The two-hour session, according to the read-out, concerned dealing with alleged Russian aggression against Ukraine. Before the meeting, Secretary of State Tony Blinken went on three Sunday morning network news programs to stress Biden’s announcement Feb. 18, that “intelligence” confirms that Putin has “made the decision” to attack Ukraine, unless diplomacy prevails. Blinken repeated that he will meet in person with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Feb. 24, in Europe, if “Russia does not invade Ukraine” before that time. The G7 will also meet Feb. 24, hosted by Germany, current G7 chair, for the purpose of heads of state and government to discuss “the geopolitical situation related to the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border.” This was announced Feb. 18, and also a joint G7 statement was issued Feb. 19, subtitled, “Russia’s threatening military build-up around Ukraine.” In the Donbas, escalated shelling and violence are continuing. Today, the Foreign Ministry of Belarus announced that certain of the joint exercises with Russia called “Union Resolve,” which were to have ended Feb. 20, will instead be continued, given the increased tension. Yesterday, President Putin, joined by Belarus President Lukashenko, observed a successful exercise of the nuclear-capable triad of air, submarine and ground missile launching. On the pandemic and famine front, the situation worsens. Look at the resurgence of well-known diseases, recently controlled, if not conquered. In Africa, Mali is the latest location of polio spreading; the African Union has announced plans to combat it, but resources are desperately short. In Afghanistan, measles is spreading, in addition to the impact of COVID-19. On COVID-19 itself, WHO Executive Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Feb. 18, of the “dangerous narrative that the pandemic is over,” saying it is not true. “Not when 70,000 people a week are dying from a treatable and preventable disease…. Not when 83% of the population of Africa is yet to receive a single dose of vaccine. Not when health systems continue to strain and crack under the caseload. Not when we have a highly transmissible virus circulating almost unchecked, with too little surveillance to track its evolution.” Plus, conditions are ideal for the emergence of “more transmissible, more dangerous variants.” For the world food supply, there are huge shortfalls, from the combined impact of general hyperinflation, lack of infrastructure (covered up as “climate change”), cartel domination, and lack of concerted government action. There are absolute shortages in fertilizers, herbicides and fuels, among other key inputs. Beside the fact that the world 2022 wheat harvest is expected down by 10 million metric tons, the 2022 oilseed harvest will be down for the fourth year in a row. The South American Soybean Belt of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina projects its harvests, starting soon, will be down by millions of tons. In China, major soy-processing facilities run by the cartels—Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Cargill etc—have just announced temporary closures for several weeks, because of hyperinflation and short soy supplies. Chinese leaders can be expected to do something about this. But millions will die, in the “market democracies” of the dying Western casino system, unless we force nation-serving measures, as Lyndon LaRouche laid out in his development-economics programs so clearly. These are the situations requiring a vision for a new architecture for “long-term security,” and the courage for short term, emergency action. We can take up the call sounded in the Schiller Institute Feb. 19 conference, “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock—We Need a New Security Architecture!” During the conference, in one of the video clips of Lyndon LaRouche, he spoke about the nature of man being to solve problems. Doing it, he said, brings joy. We have the opportunity for great joy right now, given the severity of the problems. A note of hope was sounded today at the close of the Beijing Winter Olympics. The music at the beautiful ceremony featured the Ode to Joy, by Ludwig van Beethoven and Friedrich Schiller.

In response to the devastating situation in Afghanistan and the clear focus the LaRouche movement has placed on turning Afghanistan into a crossroads of development, Bernie Sanders — who plays the role of a principled fighter for justice on TV — has been forced to take a stand.One day after the Schiller Institute's Jan 17 conference "Stop the Murder of Afghanistan," the Vermont senator tweeted: "Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. I urge the Biden administration to immediately release billions in frozen Afghan government funds to help avert this crisis, and prevent the death of millions of people." Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. I urge the Biden administration to immediately release billions in frozen Afghan government funds to help avert this crisis, and prevent the death of millions of people.— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 18, 2022 Afghanistan's central bank funds — which belong to the people of that nation — be released immediately. The leading powers of the world — particularly those NATO nations that helped to create its present disastrous state — must join forces to support Afghanistan in building a proud future. Learn more in Helga Zepp-LaRouche's recent presentation on Operation Ibn Sina and its namesake.

Perhaps the most certain thing about the world today is the immense uncertainty about the future. Will geopolitical games targeting Russia and China cross the line—even if unintentionally—thereby triggering a nuclear holocaust that would destroy human civilization for generations? Would anyone be so mad as to allow that to occur? Or will the trans-Atlantic financial power centered in the City of London and Wall Street be forced to its knees and put through bankruptcy, as a new paradigm of growth is inaugurated worldwide, led by the mission of ensuring health, purpose, and growth in all nations?While there are no guarantees that humanity will choose a sane path, there are many reasons to hope that the latter outcome will come to pass. The success of the Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the LaRouche movement in forcing the issue of Afghanistan is seen in the spate of reports and actions from the International Crisis Group, the United Nations, and even the New York Times and Financial Times. The ICG has issued an extensive report on the situation, denouncing efforts to cause the Taliban to fail, which would bring “famine … migration … terrorism, and … drugs.” The bitter pill of Taliban success must be swallowed, and the lives of Afghanistan’s people put ahead of ego. Funds are desperately needed, and there is no way around working with the current de facto government. Otherwise, tens of millions risk famine and death. Will Afghanistan—a crossroads of trade—prove to be a crossroads of history, a branching point in the axioms animating human behavior? The dangers are immense. It seems that Joe Biden does not personally want to risk nuclear war, but does he control his administration? Russia insists on formal, written responses to the security concerns it has raised with the U.S. and NATO, and talks continue, even as NATO nations say that Russia’s demands are absolutely unacceptable. The answer is up to you. Choose to forge a new future, to give a meaningful direction to the Earth’s next fifty years. Today, join the Schiller Institute’s seminar “To Stop the Murder of Afghanistan” and commit yourself to acting on the famous words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The New Year has the potential to start with a significant shift in the direction of sanity, with the series of meetings next week—held with the U.S., NATO, and the OSCE—to directly discuss with Russia its emphatically stated security concerns. Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called on the U.S. and NATO to sign the agreements put forward by Russia, to completely change the world strategic trajectory, which otherwise inexorably leads to what would invariably become nuclear war of global dimensions.Why is the world on such a deadly path, and why are there not enormous protests in cities all across the trans-Atlantic to oppose this deadly course? The Anglo-American financial-military-information oligarchy has no intent of allowing its system of domination to be overthrown by the meteoric economic (and increasingly political) rise of China and the committedly independent sovereignty of Russia. Its anti-growth destructive paradigm demands sacrificing civilization, now on the altar of purported green gods to avert a rumored cataclysm in the future. With the refusal of such nations as India, Russia, China, and Nigeria to “follow the séance” by entering suicidal agreements during the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, more direct, and brutal means are being called to the fore. The sensible course of affairs would be to dissolve NATO, whose raison d’être vanished several decades ago, or at least to limit and undo its Eastern expansion. Consider Finland, which borders both Russia and NATO-member Norway, and whose President Sauli Niinistö had helpfully offered last spring to host a 2025 conference in Helsinki on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe, as a forum for talking through strategic tensions. Niinistö, in comments echoed by that country’s prime minister, has announced that Finland would not rule out joining NATO. This Anglo-American oligarchy, intent on maintaining a rules-based-order in which it makes the rules, is cynically indifferent to the human suffering it causes, whether through war, medical neglect, or the brutal, genocidal treatment of Afghanistan, which is being denied access to its own resources. But this oligarchical model, so powerfully critiqued in dramatic form by Verdi in his opera Rigoletto, can be overcome! As the locus of economic power in the world moves to Asia, the trans-Atlantic world must develop a new role. As Lyndon LaRouche expressed the need for a new type of cooperation already in 2007, the "medieval legacy of predatory power of usury has gained such power that it can not be defeated except through a concert of clearly defined, mutual self-interest among a combination of powerful nation-states. “That is the common interest which we in the U.S.A. and China, share at this juncture. That is the crucial importance of those within the U.S.A. who typify that common interest of the people of the U.S.A. and Asia. It is our awareness of this common interest, which is therefore a crucial factor in world history at this juncture.” Flashes of opportunity for such cooperation can burst forth, powering a mighty engine of growth. How will you catalyze that change? Will we make 2022, the centennial of Lyndon LaRouche’s birth, the “Year of LaRouche”?