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Lyndon LaRouche delivered remarks in November 2007 to a Los Angeles conference sponsored by the Institute of Sino Strategic Studies. These remarks were presented by Mr. LaRouche, and translated into Chinese, for a conference titled, “Forum on the U.S.-China Relationship and the Peaceful Reunification of China.” In the excerpt that follows, LaRouche concludes that developing an awareness of the common interest of the people of the U.S. and Asia is “a crucial factor in world history at this juncture.” Emphasis is in the original. Fortunately, monetary-financial systems can be replaced. In the long term, it is the choice of the ruling form of social system on which the design of the physical economy is based, which is essential. When we take into account the knowledge which we have available to us today, the following rule applies: whenever a powerful combination of national governments can arrive at a suitable agreement to change a failed financial-monetary system, a solution for any modern financial crisis can be found.Therefore, my leading point in this report today, is that: Specifically, were the government of the U.S.A. to propose cooperation on a suitable reform, to an initial sponsoring group made up of the governments of the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India, it would be possible to bring the present international crisis under control, and, therefore, to rally a majority of the world’s nations to join in measures which would stabilize the world system, and provide the foundation for a general economic recovery. The last general recovery of the economy of the U.S.A. and western and central Europe, was initiated within the United States under President Franklin Roosevelt. The death of President Roosevelt was a great loss to humanity; but, despite his death, although the policy-changes made under his successor were, generally, a big mistake, the U.S. economy continued to prosper under the continued benefit of the then deceased President Roosevelt’s policies until the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 (despite the bad policies introduced under President Truman). The effects of the 1964 U.S. entry into the long war in Indo-China, like the more recent, very foolish wars which were launched by the Tony Blair and George W. Bush governments of the United Kingdom and the U.S.A., have led, successively, into the wrecking of the international monetary system in August 1971, and a general physical-economic decline in the economies of Europe and the Americas. This decline over, approximately, the 1968-2007 interval, has led into the consistently worsening physical-economic situation in those nations up to the present time. The decline in those economies of Europe and the Americas, has had many contributing causes, but it was chiefly the result of the introduction, beginning 1971-1972, of a presently continuing, ruinous, pro-Malthusian type of global floating-exchange-rate monetary system. Despite some important trends for improvements in some leading national economies in Asia, the per-capita level of net physical-economic strength in the world as a whole has collapsed. Thus, despite the improvements for a significant portion of the total economy in some leading nations of Asia, the deficit in development for the largest fraction of the populations is critical, at the same time that the productive powers of labor in western and central Europe, and in North America, continue to collapse catastrophically. Therefore, the needed development in even progressive economies in Asia, requires a mobilization of the physical capital and technology needed to raise the level of basic economic infrastructure and physical productivity throughout Asia and Africa, and also in the dangerously decadent, present form of the national economies of western and central Europe and of the Americas. The most crucial among the urgently required actions to be taken jointly a group of nations led by the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India, are the following. The present world monetary-financial system must be placed in a prevalent, juridical status of reorganization in bankruptcy. This means that: As provided by the U.S.A.’s Federal Constitution, all central banking systems heretofore independent of sovereign governments, are placed under the sovereign powers of the relevant constitutional government. This means that: The government, through an institution equivalent in authority to the constitutional design for a Federal Treasury Department elaborated by U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, will assure that: under rules for reorganization in bankruptcy, those payments authorized either specifically or categorically by the Federal authority will be treated in a normal fashion, as prior to placing the old monetary-financial system into receivership, but subject to supervision in the matter of regulating the retirement of outstanding capital-financial obligations. The included objective of these reforms of a system in bankruptcy, is to maintain, and to elevate the level of existing essential levels of employment, payment of ordinary pensions, and so forth, and production of essential goods and services, this with a view to accelerating rates of growth of net physical output, per-capita, and per-square-kilometer productivity of the economy. The physical-economic recovery and net growth of these economies, per capita and per square kilometer of total territory, requires an emphasis on the application of physical improvements in basic economic infrastructure, and the use of capital-intensive investments in basic economic infrastructure as the physical-economic driver for the other forms of production in the economy. The success of such intentions by governments, and others, demands a fixed-exchange-rate system not much unlike the design for the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate system under President Franklin Roosevelt. In other words, the needed reforms must be premised on the equivalent of a pervasive science-driver policy for the economies and territories as a whole. The possibility of success for such required programs, depends to a very large degree on two global considerations, considerations which bear on each part of the world, and the world’s necessary development viewed as a whole. The first, is development and refinement of raw materials supplies. The second, is science as defined in terms of fundamental, universal physical principles. The two are functionally inseparable: there can not be sustained development of needed raw materials supplies without emphasis on fundamental physical-scientific progress measurable in terms of characteristic energy-flux density of modes of production. The realization of those crucial objectives demands a clearly defined shift from what has been, hitherto, the strategic advantage of maritime powers over the quality of power of continental interiors. For most of a period reaching as far back into the times prior to the last glaciation in the northern regions of the northern hemisphere, ocean-going and related development of maritime power has been economically and strategically at a great advantage over the economies of inland habitations. This began to be changed with the so-called “geopolitical” implications of the appearance of the transcontinental railways of the U.S.A. Since that time, the related clash of maritime powers, such as those of the British Empire, with the nations and peoples of continental Eurasia and the U.S.A. had been dominated, strategically, by the challenge to this domination, which had been represented by the victory of President Abraham Lincoln’s U.S.A. That victory had been the root of the reaction against the U.S. success, a reaction reflected as Prince of Wales Edward Albert’s launching of the 1895-1945 war of Japan against China, and by those related imperialist wars of the 1905-1945 interval, which illustrate the challenge which continues in either similar or relevant other expressions still today…. 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.

Jan. 1, 2022: This section of a paper written by Lyndon LaRouche near the opening of this century (Oct. 7, 2002), made clear to all who would open their mind and reason, the gulf between the science of physical economy, and mere monetary economics. Let this century see the former, using LaRouche’s teachings and writings, extinguish the latter. Piercing the Veil of Sense-Certainty Now, I come to the issue of economics as such, by which I signify physical economy, not financial accounting. On this point, the pivotal, systemic quality of difference between Classical and Romantic cultures, is their contrasted views of the matter of sense-certainty. In contrast to both the Classical Greeks since Pythagoras, and the greatest scientific minds of modern European science, the relatively inferior cultures are gripped by the delusion that what is real is that which the senses imagine that they see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. When that childish error of assumption by relatively brutish cultures, such as the Roman Empire’s, is taken into account, it should [not -ED] be difficult to pin-point those pivotal accomplishments of the superior Classical Greek scientific thought, which are summed up in Plato’s Republic, notably, on this account, in his use of the allegory of the Cave. Such an understanding of this problem, is the indispensable starting-point for any scientifically competent body of thought respecting economy. The senses are living organs of our bodies, which reflect, about as faithfully as shadows do, the impact of the experiences which the senses as such can never “see” directly. Science is the practiced accumulation of discovery of what are practically provable to be universal physical principles, principles which can not be seen directly by the senses, but which correspond to those efficiently existing forms of action which increase man’s power in and over the universe, yet are acting from beyond the veil of sense-certainty. Take as an example, the matter of gravitation. Consider, as an obvious choice of illustration, the uniquely successful method of the only original discovery of a principle of universal gravitation, by Johannes Kepler. The continuation of that erroneous Aristotelean method revived and dictated by the decadent Roman Empire, prompted not only Claudius Ptolemy, but also Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, to devise schemes which sought to explain sense-perception of the astronomical heavens (normalized sensual observations) according to Aristotelean principles. Kepler, adding more precise measurements to those of Brahe, showed empirically that the planetary orbits were elliptical, not circular, and did not represent uniform motion. Both the entire system of Aristotle, and also the empiricist hoaxster Galileo, were forever discredited by that single discovery of Kepler’s. This paradox discredited, in fact, all astronomy based on the simplistic view of sense-perception, and led to Kepler’s discovery of universal gravitation, and thus to the founding of the first comprehensive approach to constructing a mathematical physics. Kepler showed, thus, the existence of a universally efficient principle of action, operating as if from behind the shadow-world’s veil of mere sense-perception. Gravitation, like all universally efficient physical principles, is not an object of sense-perception. It is not something which can be merely “learned,” as learning and symbolism are associated with sense-certainty; it can only be known, as an universal hypothesis validated by appropriate experimental methods of proof. As Plato emphasized in his dialogue on the doubling of the square, and as Leibniz and Gauss, among others, showed, our knowledge of these principles is dependent upon proof of their unique power to enable us to change willfully the real world, such as that of nuclear microphysics, which is acting from beyond the mere shadows that real world projects upon our sensorium. This same view of physical science was already characteristic of Classical Greek scientific thought, as from Archytas and Plato through Archimedes and Eratosthenes. Typical are the Classical Greek topics of constructing a square double another square, doubling a cube by construction, and the powerful implications of the series of the five Platonic solids. This was a conception which became temporarily lost to European civilization wherever the relatively brutish, corrosive influence of Romanticism prevailed. These are the same points on which Carl Gauss caused a revolution in modern mathematical physics, founding the concept of the complex domain, in his 1799 report of his discovery of the first valid form of a fundamental theorem of algebra. Plato, in his Theaetetus dialogue, associated this complex domain with the domain of the physical powers, beyond sense-perception, by which things impossible within sense-certainty geometry, were brought into existence, as shadows, within the shadow-world of sense-certainty. Leibniz, similarly, in his discovery of the fundamental principle of a science of physical economy, gave the Platonic name of powers (Kraft) to the effects of application of discovered physical principles to improve the practice of economy. Gauss employs the same notion of powers in defining the complex domain. The Leibniz-Bernouilli proof that the catenary, the characteristic reflection of the complex domain, expresses a principle of universal least-action, is the most efficiently simple demonstration of Leibniz’s physical principle of the infinitesimal calculus, opposite to the famous conceits of Carl Gauss’s adversaries Lagrange and Cauchy. The use of Socratic method, to adduce the efficient existence of those powers called universal physical principles, as acting on our senses from beyond the veil of sense-certainty, is the essential, experimentally defined demonstration of the fundamental difference between the human individual and the lower forms of life. No other species is capable of willfully increasing, again and again, its potential relative population-density. This difference is expressed as the increase of the relative potential population-density of the human species, above the millions possible among species of higher apes, to the billions of today. The potential of the human species, not only to generate an individual’s discovery of an efficient principle of action from beyond the veil of sense-certainty, but to induce the replication of that act of discovery in succeeding generations, is the essential species of action which separates human cultures scientifically from the attributed cultures of the lower forms of life. The general expression of this is the resulting increase of the potential relative population-density of mankind, as measurable per capita and per square kilometer of surface area. Through this cognitive mode of individual and collective reaching beyond the veil, man not only improves his individual power over nature as he finds it, but changes his environment, as by scientific revolutions, and by means of development of capital investment in physical improvements of conditions of production, such as basic economic infrastructure, It is by the maintenance and enhancement of such willful improvements in human knowledge and physical-capital improvements, that the productive powers of labor are maintained and also improved. In the science of physical economy, the mind looks at the shadow-world of sense-certainty from a vantage-point beyond the veil of sense-certainty, and measures the performance of economy in physical, rather than merely financial terms, accordingly. Useful Versus Toxic Money In a sound nation-state system, as under the U.S. Federal Constitution, the power to create and regulate all forms of monetary currency, is restricted to the sovereign power of the state; no monetary power external to regulation by the state is permitted. The properly governing objective of those acts of creation and regulation, is to control the behavior of the effects of circulation of money, that for the purpose of fostering results which will coincide with desired intentions of physical-economic goals serving the maintenance and improvement of the general welfare. That constitutional restriction draws a line of separation between useful and usuriously toxic forms of that purely symbolic, empty form of existence called “money.” The significance of this argument is illustrated most simply, by considering two of the most common expressions of popular but intrinsically psychopathic opinions concerning money. The first, is the delusion that there is a natural rate of interest on loaned money. The second, is that the proper rate of interest on any particular lot of loaned money, is determined by an (actually non-existent) “law of supply and demand.” First of all, contrary to those marginal minds who babble about a non-existent magnitude called “utility,” the investment of money as such will not increase the level of wealth produced by society. Paper remains paper, and, within the bounds of the real world, paper values tend more readily to burn than to breed. Improvement—i.e., physical growth, increased physical productivity, physically improved product—occurs solely through physical investment in the production of those physical effects which tend to increase the average level of the physical-productive powers of labor in the society as a whole. The state, with its unrestricted sovereign authority for the creation and circulation of its currency, must shape the rules of credit and monetary circulation in ways which tend to foster the physically desired long-term physical effects. The emphasis must be as much, or even more, than on the short-term effects. The most difficult challenges are posed by matters lying within the categories of medium- to long-term capital cycles. To define competent policy bearing upon these cycles, one must always consider the physical cycle as primary, and bring the financial reflection of that physical cycle into conformity with the physical valuation. The most elementary type of long-term economic cycle is measured in generations: the investment which must be made, cumulatively, in the development of the newborn infant into an educated, economically efficient young adult, a generation later. For example, the cost and prices of production and exchange, must reflect the incurred physical cost of that investment in the development of a new generation of a certain productive potential. The variation in quality of the physical investment by society in any one generation, were better estimated in terms of the gains in per-capita physical productivity of society over a minimum of two generations, approximately fifty years, and, still more reliably, three generations. The essence of any effective leadership of a nation, is to be measured as the intellectual power of foresight and will, to set effectively into motion today, future generations’ achievement which could not be realized within the bounds of a single generation. In President de Gaulle’s France, this was expressed by the notion of indicative planning of long-range investment priorities. Such “indicative plannning” was the basis for the U.S.A.’s “economic miracle” of 1861-1876, of President Franklin Roosevelt’s recovery program, and the stunning technological benefits, for the economy as a whole, of the Kennedy “crash” space program. Apart from the society’s investment in the typical family household’s development of its successive generations, we must consider several exemplary, other types of long-term cycles of physical investment. There is investment in basic economic infrastructure, such as systems of general transportation, power generation and distribution, water management, land reclamation, sanitation, education, and health-care systems. These involve cycles to be estimated and measured in spans of two or more generations. There is, typically, private capital investment in local productive capacity, as of agriculture and manufacturing. There are also two very special categories of individuals’ activity, in scientific discovery and productive entrepreneurship as such. With the latter pair of capital cycles, science and productive entrepreneurship, we touch most directly on the most crucial features of a modern economy: the sovereign role of the cognitive powers of the individual person in generating progress. Although only some entrepreneurs employed in production perform their function of economic leadership as scientists, all effective entrepreneurship among farmers and manufacturers touches upon the same role of leadership exerted through the sovereign powers of the individual mind so reflected, if in a relatively diluted, and also indirect form. The essential feature of increases in physical productivity in production of agricultural, manufactured, and related physical goods, is the impact of variations in the practiced rate of investment in fundamental scientific progress, and that progress’s determining control over the potential rate of technological progress. These overriding scientific-technological determinants of the boundaries of increased productivity, are expressed mathematically as physical powers, as the Gauss-Riemann domain defines the physical meaning of the mathematical complex domain, contrary to Gauss’s reductionist adversaries Lagrange and Cauchy. No existing financial-accounting system, or methods derived from the reductionist, ivory-tower notions of “systems analysis,” by such clones of Bertrand Russell as Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann, can competently assess such aspects of the physical-economic processes. Financial accounting, systems analysis, and other “ivory tower” misconstructions of economic analysis of real economies, will always, and always does produce wrong-headed policy directives, that as a consequence of the lack of correspondence of such simple-sense-certainty-based mathematical schemes to the real universe within which physical economy actually exists. Put the usually questionable role of the corporate absentee-ownership to one side for a moment. Focus upon the example of the owner-operated small- to medium-sized manufacturing firm whose essential contribution to the society’s economy is either generating, or, more frequently producing technological advances in product and process designs. Compare this entrepreneur’s truly Classical role in society with the contribution of those discovered universal physical principles which Plato, Leibniz, and Gauss, for example, define as the physical powers of the mind to change the real world which exists beyond the veil of sense-certainty. In the latter example, the scientific discoverer, the characteristic physical-economic activity of that individual, is the power unique to the sovereign creative powers of the human individual, to generate valid working definitions of universal physical principles. In the case of the referenced type of entrepreneur, we have a case best understood by comparison with that of the scientific discoverer. Power, as used by me here, has the same connotations as Plato’s use of the equivalent term in his treatment of the construction of the doubling of the square, Leibniz’s use of power (Kraft) in defining a science of physical economy, and the physical meaning of the use of the notion of powers in both Gauss’s 1799 report of his discovery of the fundamental theorem of algebra, and Riemann’s definition of the physical-experimental significance of powers within the concluding portion of 1854 habilitation dissertation. Physical Science and Society The development and use of these qualities of the sovereign cognitive intellect of the individual person, is the underlying, unifying principle of all competent economics knowledge. The modern republic, typified by the intent of the Preamble of our historically exceptional Federal Constitution, is intended to develop our economy as an instrument through which to bring those creative powers of the sovereign human individual into play, as the reigning feature of our medium- to long-range policy decisions. We must recognize that there exists no populist, or other sort of reductionist social or other system, by means of which those specific kinds of fruits of the individual intellect could be generated “collectively.” The function of the proper political design of a republic, is to create the combined social and physical preconditions, under which the development of the creative powers of every individual (as Plato, Leibniz, and Gauss defined “powers”) is fostered, and in which those with developed such sovereign creative powers of the individual mind, from whatever prior station in life, are steered into opportunities to supply society as a whole with the performance of those functions which the creative scientist, entrepreneur, and workman bring to the social-economic process. There is no way to calculate arithmetically the value of such persons and their work; we must rely on producing such persons, and affording them the circumstances to do their work. We measure economic growth, not in simple arithmetic magnitudes, but in powers. Each such power is expressed in the form of a discovery of a universal physical principle. (Physical principles include those Classical-artistic and other social principles for which an efficient, specific physical effect may be demonstrated experimentally. These principles are discovered in the same way in which universal physical principles of abiotic and biological processes are demonstrated. The restriction is, that only those artistic and related social principles which conform to Classical principles can be defined as principles in this manner.) It is the accumulation of the combined transmitted, and new discovery of such principles, as powers, which defines human progress scientifically. Therefore, the most profitable form of national economy is known to be the type of science-driver program which U.S. President Kennedy motivated. Therefore, we must never permit today’s generally accepted definition of a financial-accounting system, or its derivatives, to determine our government’s economic policies. It is the generation, transmission, and application of the discovery of such powers, which is the sole mode of action by which the characteristic productivity of a society (e.g., an economy) is effected. These powers define the physical action, performed on the universe, by means of which the increase of the productive powers of labor may be measured in a meaningful way. Ultimately, there is no valid definition of profit, unless we mean the term “profit” as it might be applied to measuring the performance of a national economy considered as an indivisible unit. Neither an individual human being, nor an economy, actually exists as the sum of its separable parts.

The following is an edited transcription of an interview conducted with Dr. George Koo, by Michael Billington on December 29, 2021. Dr. Koo is one of the leading Chinese-American writers and organizers in regard to U.S.-China policy and on the conditions of Chinese-Americans in the United States, especially the persecution over these last years of Chinese-Americans and Chinese in the U.S.EIR: This is Mike Billington with the Executive Intelligence Review, the Schiller Institute, and the LaRouche Organization. I’m here with Dr. George Koo. Would you like to say a few words about your own history, Dr. Koo, when you came to the U.S., your education and your career? Dr. Koo: Thank you. And Mike, thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be with you. I started a draft of my autobiography, and my working title is Best of Both Worlds. By that, I mean, of my first 11 years in China, which was in, probably, one of the worst periods of Chinese history—war torn China—I was fortunate. I never saw a single Japanese soldier, and I never lived under the Japanese occupation with all its brutality and inhumanity. What happened was, my parents graduated from, and were affiliated with, Xiamen University. The leaders of that university, in their wisdom, knew that the Xiamen Harbor was too strategic to be {not} occupied by the Japanese troops. So in 1937, they picked up and moved roughly 200 miles into the interior part of Fujian province. China is very mountainous, so 200 miles is actually quite an appreciable distance away from Xiamen, and as a consequence, the Japanese never saw the strategic need to occupy the area, a very small hamlet called Changting. I was born there, and because of that, I actually had a very nurturing, peaceful upbringing by my parents. I was actually a couple of years ahead of my class in the grammar school. When the war was over and we moved back to Xiamen, I went back a year, because all my fellow students were five years older than I was, because they were interrupted by the war. When I came to the U.S., I had graduated from sixth grade, which gave me a nice foundation—not only the Chinese language, but also an appreciation of the Chinese culture and Chinese history. I was fortunate. My father had already gotten a fellowship from the nationalist government. They used some of the war reparations from Japan to send some of their students to continue their graduate education after World War Two, and my father was among them. He was in Seattle already, continuing his graduate studies. He was trained as a marine biologist, and was in the University of Washington to study fisheries. In 1949, a lot of these divided families—where the scholar was in the U.S. for further education but the family stayed behind on the mainland—they all had to make a crucial decision, whether they were going to leave the U.S. and go back to China, or they were going to try to get their families to come to the U.S., or they would face an uncertain period of separation. We were fortunate—we were able to emigrate to the U.S. in 1949. I was eleven at the time, didn’t know a word of English, but the Seattle public school system was really, really outstanding. We didn’t feel that we had to go to a private school, so I was brought up through the Seattle public schools. I caught up with my English by the time I graduated from high school. I was fortunate enough to get a partial scholarship and work program to attend MIT. I went to MIT for my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. I got married—my wife was similarly a Chinese-American who came to the U.S. when she was, I think, six years old. We met at MIT in graduate school. I joined Boeing, worked at Boeing on their Saturn project, and subsequently joined Allied Chemical, continuing my graduate studies, and got my doctorate degree at Stevens Institute of Technology. That’s pretty much the early part of my career. I joined SRI [formerly the Stanford Research Institute] in conducting what is called industrial economic research. From there, I joined Chase Bank and subsequently Bear Stearns to work on China Trade Advisory Business. For an appreciable period of time, I was helping American businesses doing business in China, establishing business relationships and also negotiating joint venture contracts, cooperation, and so on. From that basis, I developed a very basic understanding of China, how China works, where they’re coming from. As we got later into the relationship, I could see that there was a tremendous gap in understanding between China and the U.S., and I sort of took upon myself the role to help bridge the understanding between the two countries. That’s when I began to write about U.S.-China relations. This is, I guess, what we’ll talk about today. Confrontation Is Lose-LoseEIR: A lot of that I didn’t know. I’m glad to learn that about you. You spoke at the Schiller Institute conference on November 13. Your presentation was called “The Survival of Our World Depends on Whether the U.S. and China Can Get Along.” You noted there that the Chinese economy, by certain kinds of accounting, is now larger than that of the U.S., and that the U.S. response has been, as you said, to “push China’s head underwater rather than trying to compete on its own.” I concur with you on that. What would you say is the economic and technological impact of that policy, both on China, and also on the U.S.? Dr.Koo: It’s unfortunately a zero-sum approach that the U.S. is taking First, it assumes that by taking this approach the U.S. will win at the expense of China, and that China will lose. But what will actually happen, of course, in a zero-sum approach, is that each side will try to endeavor to win at the expense of the other. The eventual outcome is lose-lose—both sides lose. It’s arguable whether China will lose more than the U.S., and the reason I say that is because, China has a much more vibrant, healthy trading relationship with virtually all parts of the world compared to the U.S. So, economically, they have a lot more reach and flexibility. Second, it goes without saying that China has a very complete, robust manufacturing base, which we do not. We have already emptied out our manufacturing base, and for Trump to impose a tariff barrier and presume that that will bring the manufacturing base back is very wrongheaded. It shows his, I guess, ignorance on the basic principles of economics. I don’t find, and I don’t expect, that very many manufacturing firms will come back unless the economics is basically favorable. And as you know, the justification for the tariff barriers was that it was going to be “free money” coming to the U.S. Treasury, and the Chinese exporters were going to pay for it. And of course, that was far from reality. The reality is the increased prices the American consumers end up paying, so it’s not free money; it’s coming out of one pocket and going to the other. That just raises the cost of living. There’s no question that by separating or attempting to separate the two economic spheres of influence, if you will, that both will lose. I’m not at all sure that the U.S. will come out ahead in a lose-lose outcome. Ambassador BurlingameEIR: You are also the head of something called the Burlingame Foundation, which is named after Anson Burlingame, the American diplomat in China who actually ended up representing China. Could you discuss a bit about his career, when there was an attempt by the U.S. to establish good relations with China, which was at that time under the boot of the British? Dr. Koo: About 13 years ago I happened to catch, in a very small local newspaper that covers the city of Burlingame, that the Burlingame Historical Society wrote about the life of Anson Burlingame—that’s the first time I heard about him, and that the city of Burlingame was named after him. So I read up on it. I was fascinated because, here is somebody who was a dedicated abolitionist, anti-slavery, who placed the highest importance on human rights and human dignity, and was one of the founders of the Republican Party and an energetic, vigorous supporter of Abraham Lincoln, and helped get Lincoln elected. He worked so hard that he lost his own re-election as a congressman from Massachusetts. So, Lincoln offered to appoint him as an ambassador, first to the Austria-Hungary Empire. But the Austrian government didn’t want Burlingame—Burlingame was very vocal about the suppression of the Hungarians by the Austrian emperor, so he was persona non grata from the get-go. So then Lincoln appointed him to be ambassador to China. He left the U.S. in 1861, but he took his time, landed in Hong Kong, and travelled up through China gradually so that he could learn more about the Chinese culture, the Chinese people, the Chinese history. By the time he got to Beijing, it was already 1862. He made his stand very clear: that China’s sovereignty was to be respected, that he was not there to carve up China for the U.S., unlike the British and other Western powers that were based there. He was very outspoken on what was fair in how to deal with China from a U.S. point of view. In fact, when some American was accused of murdering some Chinese nationals while he was Ambassador, he had him arrested, presided over his trial, and accepted witnesses from China—Chinese witnesses, which was unheard of if you were a British court or a French court or some of the others. He then pronounced him guilty and sentenced him to be executed. (I think he never got executed, because he escaped, but that’s a different story.) All of that very much impressed the regent behind the throne. His name was Prince Gong, Gong Qing Wang in Chinese. Prince Gong was so impressed with Anson Burlingame and his integrity that when Burlingame was all set to return to the U.S.—that would have been 1867—Prince Gong went to see him and said, “Mr. Burlingame, we need to go to the Western countries and try to renegotiate the various unequal treaties that have been imposed upon us. We have a team all set to go, but we need someone of international stature to lead this group. Would you be willing to lead it?” Burlingame immediately accepted the appointment, wrote a letter to his boss, the Secretary of State, William Seward, and said, “Hey, I’m coming back, but I’m coming back as an Ambassador from China,” and that’s what happened. He came to the U.S. in early 1868, took the train that the Chinese had helped to build, the Transcontinental Railroad, celebrated all along the way, got to Washington, and negotiated a treaty called—in shorthand—the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. That treaty recognizes the mutual sovereignty, the equal rights of citizens from one country living in the other, the mutual rights to emigrate from one to the other. It was the first treaty that China enjoyed with the Western countries of that kind, and that set a different relationship between the U.S. and China that had lasting effects, even though the Chinese exclusion laws of 1882 canceled the Burlingame Treaty. One of the lasting effects was the Chinese Educational Mission that was organized, I think, starting in 1871. This mission was organized by a guy by the name of Rong Hong, or in Cantonese, Yung Wing. He had been brought over [to the U.S.] earlier by American missionaries, and was a graduate of Yale. When he went back to China, he was entrusted by the Manchu government to be the intermediary between the U.S. and China. He brought a munitions plant—a turnkey plant—from the U.S. to China, and convinced one of the senior officials there that China should send young boys somewhat like himself to the U.S. to get a U.S. education. Through a lot of effort on his part, he convinced families, mostly families in the Guangzhou area, to send 120 boys to the U.S. to be educated. Thirty boys a year were sent over a four-year period. The first batch landed in 1871. They were all 12, 13 years old, if you can imagine. They ended up in Connecticut, in New England; they were being hosted mostly by Christian families in their area and educated in American schools. Some of them became old enough to attend college, such as MIT, Yale—a lot of them went to Yale because of Rong Hong—and Columbia—and some others of the best schools on the East Coast. It only lasted four years. The third- and fourth-year batches of young kids never got to finish or attend college, because the internal politics of China became very negative, watching these young Chinese kids becoming “too Americanized,” and losing their Chinese roots and Chinese culture. So, they brought them back and interrupted their education. Nevertheless, this group of Western-educated young Chinese later on went on to have a tremendous influence, especially after the fall of the Manchu dynasty and in the Republican government. One of them, who was actually an outstanding baseball pitcher and hitter when he was in the U.S., was appointed Ambassador to Washington. He got to be good friends with Teddy Roosevelt — he was the one who convinced Roosevelt, by the time he got to be President, that the indemnity funds which the Chinese were paying to the U.S.1 could be better used by sending them back to train and educate Chinese in the American system of education. Some of that money funded the building of Tsinghua University that we now know in Beijing, and also funded some of the outstanding students from China to be educated in the U.S.2, starting in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, including my father-in-law, by the way. He was sent to get a bachelor’s degree from MIT, a master’s from Pennsylvania, and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Harvard. Boeing’ chief engineer, Wong Tsu, was one of that batch. He went to Boeing, designed the first sea plane, which the U.S. Navy bought, and that got Boeing started. Then Wong Tsu went back to China. There’s a whole list of people which that particular mission created. Now back to Burlingame. After he successfully negotiated the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, he then took the Chinese delegation and went to Europe. He visited the British, the French, and others, trying to convince them that they should do the same. Of course, none of those countries were interested in recognizing China on an equal sovereignty basis. But they also didn’t want to antagonize somebody of Burlingame’s stature. So, they just sort of fobbed him off and stalled. Eventually he ended up in St. Petersburg in February of 1870. There he contracted pneumonia and died within four days. He was a few days short of his 50th birthday when he died in the service of China. This story, by the way, is pretty much forgotten in the U.S. especially, but also in China. But one of the young reporters that he befriended on his way to China was a beginning reporter by the name Sam Clemens, who later on, as you know, became Mark Twain. And Mark Twain wrote probably the best eulogy on Anson Burlingame when Burlingame died. So the reason for me and some of the others to start the Burlingame Foundation was really to remind the people of the world, especially in the U.S. and China, that there was a point in time in history when the relationship between the two countries was really exemplary, and we would like to see it go back to that basis again. Sun Yat-sen and the American SystemEIR: Yes, indeed. As you know, Dr. Sun Yat-sen was not educated in the United States, exactly, but he and his brother went from the Guangzhou area to Hawaii to work, where he was taken under the care of a missionary family who were part of the Henry Carey School, who had studied the American System of economics developed by Alexander Hamilton. When Sun Yat-sen then came back to China and ended up organizing the Republican movement that led to the overthrow of the dynasty in 1911 and the establishment of the Chinese Republic, his organizing was based on what he called the Three Principles of the People, which was based on the ideas of Abraham Lincoln, who said “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” In particular, Dr. Sun understood and taught the American System as it was invented by Alexander Hamilton. He even understood the factional differences within the United States, that Thomas Jefferson, although he wanted independence, was a follower of the British laissez faire system, including slavery, and so forth. This was Sun Yat-sen’s legacy. But that, too, is generally unknown in the United States. So, I’m wondering what you think about the impact of Sun Yat-sen in China and in the United States, how that is impacting things today, because it’s clear that the Chinese economists who are leading the miracle in China today are very, very familiar with this tradition. Dr. Koo: Yes, I think it’s fair to say that the influence of Sun Yat-sen, or in Chinese, Sun Zhongshan, continues to be a legacy that is still admired and studied, even in today’s China, even though he was not a leader of the Communist Party movement. However, while he was alive—and unfortunately, he didn’t live very long after the revolution—he wanted to accommodate both the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party), and the Communist Party, and wanted them to work together, which was not to be, as we know. No question that his Three Principles is taken directly from Abraham Lincoln; he was an unabashed admirer of the American System and democracy as defined by the U.S. To a large extent, I think, as you said, the Communist Party, since the founding of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] very much did follow Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine along the way. One of Hamilton’s principles was the protection of homegrown industries through tariff barriers, and we saw China do that. They did protect their homegrown industries—they called them the pillar industries. They would protect them from competition, up to a certain point. But they also understand that there is an endpoint to when protective barriers, tariff barriers, cease to be working in their own interests. A lot of other emerging countries don’t understand that. Once they set up the tariff barriers, they don’t seem to have the ability or the wherewithal to remove these barriers, and the long-term consequences of having tariff barriers forever is to keep your own homegrown industries protected, but never competitive, because they’re not able to compete in the open trade situation. Now, we know that China has surpassed that handicap, because once they joined the WTO, and Premier Zhu Rongji started to remove the protection, it’s a sink or swim situation for the Chinese companies. Those that didn’t make it, that sank, were absorbed in the Chinese economy. Fortunately, I think the Chinese economy grew fast enough to take up the slack of the under- or unemployed as a result of having to face world competition. War Over Taiwan?EIR: Let me address the strategic crisis that we’re living through now between the U.S. and China. Ambassador Chas Freeman, who was the interpreter for Richard Nixon on his famous 1972 visit to China and who went on to have an esteemed diplomatic career, is a China scholar and expert. In an interview with EIR last month, said he thought that the U.S. had gone beyond the “red line” of China vis-à-vis the Taiwan situation, beyond the “One China, Two Systems” policy, by backing up the Democratic Progressive Party’s [DPP] policies in Taiwan, calling for independence. The U.S. appears to be sleepwalking into war both in the Russian and the Chinese situations, which could be, of course, disastrous for mankind. Dr. Koo: Right. EIR: You’re very familiar and knowledgeable about the developments in Taiwan. What do you think about how Taiwan got to the point that they’re now being used as a lever for a very evil policy? Dr. Koo: Unfortunately, the party in power in Taiwan, the DPP, probably doesn’t see the situation the way you just enunciated. I think they’d like to see themselves as a tail trying to wag the dog. Unfortunately, the Biden administration, like the Trump administration preceding it, is encouraging them on that line of thinking. By that, I mean, they are encouraged to push the line in the sand, if you will. I think we’ll have to go back to when the DPP came to power, with Chen Shui-bian their first elected President.3 It’s a very strange politics in Taiwan. Chen Shui-bian was elected because there was a bullet that made a right turn and grazed his belly on the night before the election, and also hit his vice president candidate in the knee. It created such an uproar that he successfully got enough sympathy votes to put him over and got him elected. Once he was elected, he changed the core [school] curriculum for grades K-12 and disconnected the Taiwan history from that of the mainland, so that the Taiwan kids growing up no longer know that they’re a part of the Chinese culture, Chinese history, and that their characters and poems and literature came originally from China. So the disenchantment, or this disaffection, of the Taiwan people started with Chen Shui-bian, or perhaps even from Lee Teng-hui, when Lee Teng-hui was President.4 Gradually, the people in Taiwan have become more and more detached from any sense of affiliation with the mainland. That’s a very important factor that’s happening here. The other thing is that the DPP has very successfully convinced the people of Taiwan that they are infinitely better off than what’s going on in mainland China, despite the fact that, if they were fortunate enough to go to Shanghai and go to other places, they could see for themselves what a difference it is. In fact, the elites, the better educated, better motivated, which is maybe a couple of million of the young Taiwanese people, are living and working in mainland China, establishing their careers there. A lot of them are working for Taiwan companies that are based in mainland China. They know the difference, but when they go back to Taiwan on home leave, they can’t even talk about it, because the local Taiwan folks would hoot at them and heckle them, and don’t believe what they’re saying. So there’s a dichotomy here between Taiwan and mainland China. Beijing feels that time is on their side. Eventually, the people in Taiwan will recognize that it’s in their benefit to be part of China and not to be trying to be the fifty-first state of the United States of America, which will never happen, even though the DPP seems to be deluded in that sense and that feeling. Is Taiwan a spark? I think Taiwan could be a spark for a war and conflagration if that’s what the United States wants. If the U.S. pushes to the point where Beijing feels that they have to respond, then we will have a disaster in our hands. But as you know, the way the situations are being portrayed by our mainstream media and by our politicians is totally distorted. Whether it’s about Taiwan, about Xinjiang, about Afghanistan, about any part of the world where we have troops and we have bases. Somehow, we’re there to save the world and the Chinese and the Russians are there to destroy the world. Whereas in actual fact, it’s just the opposite. U.S. Destabilization in Hong KongEIR: You mentioned Hong Kong. I know you’ve been very active in business, as well as just knowledgeable about Hong Kong for a long time. As you know, in 2020, just as there were rioters in the streets across the United States burning down shops, shopping centers, attacking police and so on, the same thing had been going on in Hong Kong the year before, where masked, black-clad young people were driven to go out and set fires and attack police and so on. And yet this was called, in the U.S. press, in regard to he Hong Kong riots, “peaceful protests for democracy.” So, what is your view of the role of Hong Kong today in regard to China, as well as in its relations with the West? Dr. Koo: I’m glad you brought it up, Mike, because this is a classic example, a fabrication and distortion, of what’s going on in Hong Kong. The riots in Hong Kong started in 2019. It all started because a young Hong Kong couple went to Taiwan and the boyfriend murdered the girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time, and cut up her body and put it in a suitcase, and then went back to Hong Kong by himself. And because there were no extradition treaties between Taiwan and Hong Kong, he basically went home scot-free and was free to roam around the streets. The law enforcement couldn’t do anything about it. So, that brought home the point and the need to have an extradition treaty between Hong Kong and rest of the world. In fact, at the time, Hong Kong was one of the few territories or countries that did not have extradition treaties, neither with Taiwan nor with Beijing. So when the Chief Executive of Hong Kong started to enact an extradition treaty, the opposition, the “democracy movers” of Hong Kong, objected, created a riot, and insisted that they must not have this extradition treaty, because, they claimed, that with it they could be extradited, they could be arrested and be sent to Beijing at any time, and they would be threatened. That really created the unrest and the riot. What we found out afterwards, is that those protesters were being funded by the NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a CIA-funded arm whose mission is to create unrest, instability, and disturbance anywhere in the world, in countries where the power that reigns is not to our liking. That’s what happened in Hong Kong. The media not only considered it a democracy movement—one of our leaders, the Speaker of the House, as a matter of fact, publicly said, “What a beautiful sight that was!” Well, when the riots happened in the United States, I didn’t find anybody saying that they were a beautiful sight. It was clearly destruction and lawlessness and so on. So today what we have in Hong Kong, we now have an extradition treaty in place, we have a pledge of allegiance to the Beijing government in place, and we have a voter turnout to elect a batch of legislators for the Hong Kong government. All three things are cause for the Western media to criticize and say this is lack of democracy in Hong Kong. Well, let’s look at it, OK? The voter turnout was very low, was 30%, to elect the legislators. This just happened. Well, guess what? The normal turnout in New York City is 26%. So, do we say New York City is lacking democracy? Well, maybe it does lack democracy, but certainly you won’t find mainstream media reporting it on that basis. The Pledge of Allegiance? Well, it seems to me, we, in school, pledge allegiance to the flag all the time, and nobody complains about it as being an illegal maneuver. So, we’re looking at double standards, and it’s always to the benefit of us looking good and China looking bad. Pompeo and BBC Lies About the UyghursEIR: Perhaps the most extreme example of that was when Mike Pompeo began saying that China was guilty of genocide in Xinjiang against the Muslim Uyghur people, while anybody who would travel to Xinjiang would know how absurd that is. But nonetheless, it’s repeated in every newspaper, in the Congress, and in the White House. What can you tell us about the actual economic and social conditions of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang? Dr. Koo: There is a purpose to Mike Pompeo and his successor, [Antony] Blinken, and the media coverage to emphasize, “human rights violations in Xinjiang,” to the point that now Biden is actually forbidding Americans from buying cotton from Xinjiang. What is the purpose? Well, the purpose is to keep the Uyghurs in Xinjiang poor and underemployed. And why do we do that? Because wherever there’s instability, that’s what we want. That’s how we, the United States, maintain control. We thrive on instability anywhere else in the world. I’ll give you an example of a distortion. CGTN, which is the China Global Television Network, had a documentary that covered why China had recruited young Uyghur women to go to work in factories and in cities in other provinces. The idea of employment is income for her, skills for her to make a decent living, raise her living standard to the point that she could even afford to get her parents to move from Xinjiang for a better living. Uyghur women in Xinjiang do not get the proper education, they tend to stay home, marry young, have kids, and never have a chance to improve their living standard. The documentary also showed that the first time that she had to leave home to go to a faraway city in China, she was crying, because this was the first time that she was going to leave home. Well, BBC took that documentary and skillfully cut and pasted so that it comes out with the message: “See? Beijing is exploiting slave labor again, forcing these young women to leave home to work for peon wages somewhere else.” The same goes with picking cotton in Xinjiang: “Look at all these poor women picking cotton in Xinjiang.” Well, actually most of the cotton nowadays in Xinjiang is done by machines, and the machines are sold by John Deere, a very well-known American company. There’s so much fabrication and distortion going on. Mike Pompeo was actually very open compared to Blinken. Mike Pompeo said: “We lie, we cheat, we steal”—came right out in the open. Blinken does the same thing, but he’s a little smoother, so he doesn’t say, “We lie, we cheat, we steal.” But that’s what he does. He talks about, “China needs to follow the rules-based international order.” What is the rules-based international order? Well, if you listen to Blinken, it turns out the “rules-based international order” is whatever he says it is, not by the United Nations or by a multipolar type of definition. And of course, he has continued to parrot the Xinjiang human rights violations. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this guy by the name of Adrian Zenz, a German right-wing nut who’s been to Xinjiang maybe once, many years ago, and continues to spout all this fabrication about what’s going on in Xinjiang. You also have this Australian research institute [Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ASPI—ed.] that continues to fabricate reports one after another about what’s going on in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. We have a deliberate effort on the part of Washington and on the part of Western media to blacken China for no other purpose than to justify attacking and making everything negative, so that the American people are thoroughly, thoroughly brainwashed. It’s not possible for the American public to make a separate judgment. We don’t have any politicians of stature willing to come out and say, “Hey, we are going down the tubes if we continue on this path, because we’re going to come out lose-lose. Our economy is going to go in the tank. We’re not going to be benefiting from any collaboration, and we’re not going to solve any of the global problems like the pandemic, like climate change,” and so on and so forth. So, I am very, very sad about where we are at this point. I applaud the Schiller Institute and Helga LaRouche and all the effort that you guys are doing, trying to get the message out. You probably have a better listenership in China and Russia and elsewhere. And somehow, we need to get your voice louder here in the United States. Democracy for the PeopleEIR: Well, of course, their argument is that America is good, and China and Russia are bad because we are a “democracy” and they’re an “autocracy.” In fact, as you know, Biden just held the so-called Democracy Summit, trying to create an alliance of countries who are deemed by the U.S. to be “democratic” against those that are “authoritarian.” In fact, the question of what democracy is, is a very interesting and important discussion, and the Chinese have been talking about that. How would you describe democracy in the U.S. compared to democracy in China? Dr. Koo: I think in the U.S., we are very flexible as to what democracy really is. If you’re a country on our side, you have democracy. If you’re against us, you have no democracy. Now, what is the example of our democracy? Let me count the ways: Our democracy is where the two Parties bicker, nitpick, and get nothing done. We don’t look at the global issues, the bigger issues of what’s good for our country. We don’t move on infrastructure. We don’t invest in health care. We don’t really care much about education that we talk about. We care about who gets elected. We care about, how to maneuver the election mechanism so that the other side has a disadvantage and we have the advantage. We have people who violate the Constitution and the rule of law, and they’re still walking free, and we don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. These are some examples of democracy as we practice in America. We also have democracy exercised in that if you live in the ghetto and if you’re Black, you don’t have a chance; you’re presumed guilty of everything we accuse you of, and it’s up to you to prove innocence. And that goes, by the way, for the Chinese-American scientists in this country. We can talk about that a little bit later. But democracy has become a very handy-dandy label, to blacken anybody that we don’t like and to pat ourselves on the back because we are supposed to be a democracy. Now, I can’t explain fully what China means by democracy, but I do know that they respect the human life of every person in their country. They have spent a great amount of effort alleviating poverty for their remote poor, for the villagers who live in some of the worst situations and worst conditions. Admittedly, it may be a propaganda film, but I saw some films of Xi Jinping walking up these muddy trails to visit remote villages to find out how they’re living and how they’re doing. Do they have enough to eat? Do they have warm clothes to wear? Do they have enough blankets, and so on and so forth. He would hold little village conversations with the people and ask them what problems do they have and what issues do they have that they would like to bring up? This is almost unheard of here. Here, when a politician comes to visit and have a town hall meeting, they usually have their hand out because they’re looking for political donations. This whole country’s election is run on money, and if you’re not in a position to write a big check, your voice really doesn’t count. So, there’s a very different way of practicing and exercising democracy, and we’re just kidding ourselves in this country that we all have “one man, one vote” type of equality. Russia and Sun TsuEIR: Before I ask you more about the persecution of the Chinese and Chinese-Americans, let me ask about President Biden. As I’m sure you know, at this moment, the crisis over Ukraine is extremely intense, and yet meetings have been set up between the U.S. and Putin and the representatives of Russia to attempt to deal with this crisis, to guarantee some security for Russia. In fact, it was announced today that Biden is going to talk to Putin tomorrow [Dec. 30]. He also has had several long discussions with Xi Jinping. Do you see this President as having the intent or the ability to try to override this extreme anti-Russia, anti-China hysteria within the press and the Congress, and even within his own administration? Dr. Koo: I’m doubtful that he could, because the situation that Russia and the U.S. is in, didn’t happen overnight. The NATO organization, for example, has been pushing and pushing, collecting members eastward, if you will, from Western Europe to the neighboring countries of Russia. And of course, this threatens Russia and Putin. And finally, Putin had to do something that will catch the attention of the West. The way he did that—I learned this from one of the analysts from China—is really in accordance with Sun Tzu’s Art of War. You negotiate from power and from strength. By amassing Russian troops on the border of Ukraine, it’s sending a very unequivocal message, which is that if we don’t get the reasonable settlement of cease-and-desist of the encroachment by the West, we have the upper hand. We can go in and take the eastern Ukraine at will, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And that’s the fact. I think that’s what the Pentagon realizes and understands. Whether Biden can effectively settle anything remains to be seen, because what Putin really wants, he’s made it very clear—he basically says, “Hey NATO, you need to sign a document that says you will cease and desist and not continue to expand your sphere of influence.” I think maybe some of the EU countries would be willing to go along, but NATO obviously is controlled by the U.S., and whether that’s going to happen remains to be seen. FBI Witch-Hunt Against Chinese in AmericaEIR: It’s very dangerous. So, on the persecution, you know that we’ve been very involved in documenting and opposing the effort by the Department of Justice and the FBI—starting actually a long time ago, but especially under Christopher Wray and the Trump administration and continuing today, with Wray still Director of the FBI—basically accusing anybody who is Chinese working in America, or Chinese-Americans who have any contact with China, are thereby automatically suspected of being spies. There have been some atrocious operations attacking leading scientists, who were helping to solve cancer and other diseases, who have been accused of spying, lost their jobs, lost their laboratories, and so forth. I know you’ve been an outspoken opponent of this, so I’d like you to say what you think needs to be said about that whole crisis in America today. Dr. Koo: Again, for Chinese-Americans or ethnic Chinese and to some extent, Asians—because our FBI and our government officials don’t always tell the difference between one Chinese and another Asian—so we’re all being tarred. The system of justice, as applied to us, is justice on its head. You are guilty until you prove you are innocent. It’s very, very difficult to prove a negative, as we all know. When a federal prosecutor comes after you, they have infinite resources in supporting them. You can be driven to poverty from the mounting legal defense bills. Frequently, the hapless Chinese scientists basically have to cop a plea just to get out from under the pressure and get out from the financial ruin that they face. This actually goes all the way back to J. Edgar Hoover. The bias against Chinese started from him. We had a “Chinese expert,” Paul Moore, not long retired now from the FBI, who basically said, if you see three Chinese at a cocktail party, they’re probably talking about the espionage and the intelligence that they’ve gathered. Just any three Chinese, or maybe Asians, could be guilty of spying. This guy used to be the carpool buddy of Robert Hanssen. They used to go to work together. Robert Hanssen, if you don’t remember, or don’t know, was indeed the biggest double agent for the Soviet Union before he was finally caught and sent to jail. He [Moore] never smelled a rat sitting next to Robert Hanssen, but he could see three Chinese standing on the corner as spying for China. Moore also promulgated the “grains of sand” theory of espionage. What is “grains of sand”? Well, we have hundreds of thousands of Chinese in this country, and they are loyal to China. They gather any little tidbits of information and they send it to Beijing. The implication is that there’s a supercomputer in the basement of some building in Beijing, cranking through all this little intelligence, through this computer, and out the other end comes the design of the multi-headed missile. That’s the kind of logic that we are facing from the FBI and the Department of Justice. There are even FBI agents that came right out and admitted in their testimony that they lied because they had to fill their quota of cases against Chinese-Americans. I think the long-term implication of this kind of bias is that we are going to lose. And the reason is, because the greatest source of STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—graduates are coming from China. It’s proven through history that they have made tremendous contributions to American technology, American science, and also as American professors and teachers raising the next generation of students. So we are cutting our own nose to spite our face, because we are discouraging them from coming. And they are indeed not as enthusiastic about coming to the U.S. More and more of them—I saw as many as 80% of the Chinese students who come in and graduate are now going back to China, because it’s just too damn risky for them to stay here and work here. The Belt and Road in AmericaEIR: And all the time, the U.S. also is criticizing China for going out to the rest of the world with their development policy, what they learned in transforming their own country from poverty to one of the greatest economies in history. They are taking that to the rest of the world through the Belt and Road Initiative, which you’ve praised often, for trying to convey to other poor countries that the trick to getting out of poverty is building infrastructure and actually creating the conditions for a modern industrial country. You can only think that the attacks on the Belt and Road are coming from those who want to keep the world poor and divided and to keep China down. Dr. Koo: Right. EIR: Here in the U.S., our infrastructure is a disaster. We just passed a small infrastructure bill, which will barely dent the deficit we have. What can we do to get the U.S. to accept Chinese investment in U.S. infrastructure, which they wanted to do before this hysteria began? And even more important, how can we get the U.S. to recognize that it’s in its own interest to work with China on developing the real physical economies of nations in Africa and Asia and South America? Dr. Koo: I think, Mike, you made an important summary statement, which is, what can we do to convince the American people it’s in our interest to work with China? There are plenty of examples of the benefit that can accrue. For example, the Hamilton Bridge, which is the extension of the George Washington Bridge that goes over the Harlem River. That bridge was refurbished and rebuilt by a Chinese construction company that was based in New Jersey. That came within budget and on time. It employed American workers. Some of the management came from the China side, but the workers, the employment was good employment for the American workers. And that happened a few years ago. I wrote about it maybe two years ago. Another example? The subway cars in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles are being replaced by Chinese subway cars. These are coming from China, partially in kits, and are assembled in the U.S. The U.S. plant, I think, is outside Springfield, Massachusetts, and there may be another one being built outside of Chicago. The idea was, the state-of-the-art design and the siding and some of the important keys are being provided by China. But the inside air-conditioning, some of the other units, and so on are being provided locally, sourced in the U.S. The content of these cars is about 60% local content, meaning U.S. content, or more than 60%. So, it does qualify, according to the rules of satisfying being made locally. It’s a win-win situation, because these subway cars are state-of-the art. They’re quieter, they’re safer, and they’re more economical. Their prices are lower than third-party sources. In point of fact, in the United States, we no longer have the capability of making these subway cars, so we have to outsource. The other outsources are more expensive than the Chinese source. When the first car was delivered in Boston, there was a big hullabaloo, a source of celebration. The next targets the Chinese were looking at were New York and Washington. Then the politicians got into the act, and they said, “No, no, no, we can’t do that, because the Chinese could put in all these listening bugs in the subway car and spy on us while the cars are rolling into work.” Can you imagine you and I having a conversation? “Hey, Mike, how are the Yankees doing? You know, do you think they’re going to win the pennant this year?” And that goes to Beijing as espionage? How about that? The Common GoodEIR: I think one of the primary issues which exemplifie why the world has to work together, is the out-of-control pandemic, this COVID pandemic. As I think you probably know, Helga Zepp-LaRouche and former U.S. Surgeon General in the United States, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, have formed something they call the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, an idea taken from the 15th-Century genius Nicholas of Cusa, who was largely responsible for the Renaissance in Europe. Cusa said that to overcome conflicts between religions or ethnicities or nations, you have to think of the higher principle of the common needs and desires of mankind as a whole. This pandemic cannot be cured unless it’s cured everywhere, as we’ve seen by these variants coming back to bite us, because we refuse to build modern health care delivery systems in most countries and we’ve even hoarded vaccines from Africa and elsewhere. Zepp-LaRouche and Dr. Elders are calling for is that we must build a modern health system in every country in the world, which would include not just the hospitals and doctors, but clean water and electricity, of which many countries have none. This is certainly the kind of aim that the Belt and Road Initiative is targeting. Do you think this health issue is a means whereby we can overcome this division and geopolitics and get the world to come together for the common aims of mankind? Dr. Koo: Whether we get to the point you just summarized, will require a significant change in attitude in the United States. In China, people seem to naturally understand what’s for the greater good is more important than my individual druthers, my individual “exercise of freedom.” But that’s not the case here in the U.S. We even have people who object to vaccination because it’s an infringement on their personal freedom. If we have the inability to recognize what is the greater good in our own country, we will have even greater difficulty recognizing what is the greater good in solving the problem on a worldwide, global basis. We’re lucky in the sense that we are richly endowed in water compared to many other places in the world. Therefore, it’s hard for us to appreciate the importance of water elsewhere, whether it’s in Africa or Asia or elsewhere. We are so concerned and care about where we come down on these issues, we don’t even think about the fact that these issues affect all of us and not just in our little circle, our little world of the United States. So, I think the task ahead is a monumental one for the organization, unfortunately. Confucius in AmericaEIR: Maybe we should look back to Ben Franklin, who, as you probably know, was a great admirer of Confucius and the meritocracy system in China, and wanted to bring this idea of the common good—or the general welfare, as our Constitution calls it—into the U.S., in building the United States. But as you said, this has been lost in the process of so-called libertarian individual freedom. Dr. Koo: Right. It’s way overdone. EIR: Do you think we can teach Confucius to the American people? Dr. Koo: Well, we’re throwing them out. You know, these Confucius Institutes are being thrown out rather than being welcomed at this point. And again, they’re being victimized by the biases that we have here. I mean, we have this Senator from Arkansas [Sen. Tom Cotton—ed.] who says, “Hey, we can’t let the Chinese in unless they want to come to study Shakespeare.” And I added, well, they could go to Oxford and Cambridge to study Shakespeare, not come to the University of Arkansas. Maybe they can study how to be a top football team in the AP poll in Arkansas. EIR: Are there other issues you’d like to address to our audience and to the readers of EIR? Dr. Koo: Well, Mike, it’s really nice having this conversation. I just feel so disappointed on the path the United States is taking at this point. We seem to be insatiable in wanting to pick fights. We seem to need a common adversary to justify our military budgets. There is only one issue that has overwhelming bipartisan support in this country, and that is increasing the military budget. You have to ask, the American people need to ask: Why do we need an increased military budget? We can blow the world apart many times over with what we’ve got. What’s the point of intimidating everybody else? By intimidation, we think that we have other countries on our side. Actually, most countries fear us but do not like us, and do not admire what we’re doing. That’s why I’m so glad we’re having this conversation. I just wish that we can help turn some people around, and encourage not just thought leaders, but politicians, to understand what’s at stake and start to speak out on what would be sensible and in the interests of our country. EIR: Thank you very much; I appreciate this discussion. I think it should have ramifications throughout our country and hopefully around the world, that we can change America. I thank you again for doing our interview. Dr. Koo: It’s been a pleasure. Mike, thank you for inviting me.

This coming year is going to be one in which a lot of very crucial strategic issues will come to a head, where humanity is being confronted with choosing a path; either a path to solutions which will bring mankind into a New Paradigm, or a path to Hell. That is why I want to officially declare 2022 the year of my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, because it is his 100th birthday. There is no more adequate way to celebrate this great man and the incredible richness of the works he had produced, than to declare 2022 the year of Lyndon LaRouche. I already can promise that we will conduct many meetings, conferences, and seminars. We will publish the second volume of his collected works—by the LaRouche Legacy Foundation. We will do everything possible so that the solution which Lyndon LaRouche offered to the strategic situation, to the economic crisis, to the cultural crisis; that these solutions will be on the table for every responsible government and parliament around the world to consider. I think this will be a very fruitful endeavor, so I invite all of you to join with us in the celebration of Lyndon LaRouche for the entire year.

Tonight’s Fireside Chat reviews elements of the year 2021 from the standpoint of the just released new edition of the Leonore Magazine No. 2 and its editorial, "To What End Do We Educate?" Leonore's Anastasia Battle will join David Shavin and Dennis Speed for the discussion.

In her weekly dialogue, Helga Zepp-LaRouche proposed that we make 2022 the Year of Lyndon LaRouche. In doing so, we are not only commemorating the 100th year of his birth, but offering a pathway for solutions to the unresolved crises, which threaten humanity at the end of 2021.Zepp-LaRouche reviewed the chronology which we have compiled of the events of the last thirty years of U.S.-Russian relations, which have come to a head today. The present crisis has been deepening for thirty years, with broken promises and betrayal, a continuing series of provocations, which led President Putin to insist that written, legally-binding guarantees of security must be adopted; and that the upcoming meetings, which began with yesterday’s discussion between the two Presidents, and continue with three meetings beginning January 9, must produce results. Otherwise, the world is on a pathway to Hell! She also emphasized the shame of the West in regard to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. To allow the present situation to deteriorate is to engage willfully in genocide. The Committee of the Coincidence of Opposites is taking leadership in mobilizing for not just a solution for Afghanistan, but to address the continuing danger explicit in the absence of a modern health system in every nation.

As Presidents Biden and Putin spoke for nearly an hour by phone Thursday, with war-hawks throughout the NATO countries’ governments and think-tanks demanding complete NATO encirclement of Russia, the problem these two leaders should be talking about was expressed in a news headline: “With famine looming over Afghanistan, millions struggle for every meal.” (NBC News, Dec. 30). What does it profit the United States if it gain the encirclement of Russia and China with bases and missiles, and completely lose its soul by letting hundreds of millions die of starvation and pandemic? The sanest experts are warning: Even as you reach for that encirclement and impossible military superiority, you are likely triggering a war which will go nuclear and destroy civilization!Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche has repeated again on Dec. 29 in addressing a commemorative event: President Biden should accept the draft treaty proposed by President Putin and agree that Ukraine, on Russia’s border and part of it for centuries, will not join NATO. Long-time CIA analyst and founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Ray McGovern, agreed. And on “The Critical Hour” radio broadcast Dec. 27, McGovern brought out that no media or officials are mentioning that 10,000 of the Russian troops who had moved closer to Ukraine in November have now been withdrawn back away from it, and called this a critical part of a negotiation that should be leading to a resolution of the standoff in January. Danish Russia expert Jens Joergen Nielsen, in an interview with EIR today, said he would tell Biden, “It is wise for you to engage with Putin, because the alternative is war.” And retired German Bundeswehr Inspector General Harald Kujat, on radio today, said the security of the NATO nations will be improved if Ukraine is not admitted. But this is not merely a discussion of “strategy,” but of the common aims of humanity, for which the United States was a powerful and leading force. In 1988 Lyndon LaRouche, after five years of “strategic” crisis in which he had forecast the dissolution of the Soviet Union while others forecast it would invade Western Europe, went to Berlin and publicly proposed a “Food for Peace” solution, in which the Western nations would develop the agriculture of Poland so that it could feed itself, and the Soviet Union would accept the unification of Germany. No one else thought these possible, but they occurred then; and promises were made to Mikhail Gorbachev that unified Germany would be the last NATO state; promises then broken by NATO to lead to today’s U.S.-Russia standoff. LaRouche widened his proposals in a “Food for Peace” conference in Chicago in December 1988—“Who will give us this day our daily bread?,” he asked on behalf of hundreds of millions, just weeks before he was imprisoned. Now, a modern healthcare system must be built in Afghanistan; its financial reserves released from U.S. sanctions; and food aid and food production made possible. President Putin proposed this as well, during the current negotiations with the Biden Administration, on Dec. 23. This is a matter for American, Russian, and Chinese collaboration for the common welfare of mankind, or millions will starve in the post-war destruction of that country. Therefore, accept the non-alignment of Ukraine. Take the path out of this potentially thermonuclear standoff into collaboration against pandemic and famine; on to the exploration and colonization of space; on to the development of nuclear power and fusion energy technologies. Those should be the missions of great powers, not to encircle and intimidate each other until the irreversible, unsurvivable war breaks out.

Every year for the last five years, the Schiller Institute has led a solemn memorial ceremony to mark the tragic death on Dec. 25, 2016, of Russia’s fabled Alexandrov Ensemble, along with humanitarian workers and others, in a plane crash near Sochi, Russia. Over the years, the ceremony has been held at the Tear of Grief monument in Bayonne, N.J.—a monument gifted to the people of the United States by the government of Russia in honor of the fallen victims of 9/11—and each time it has been moderated by a representative of the City of Bayonne Fire Department, and it has heard from an official Russian representative at the United Nations. Every year, the enduring friendship of the Russian and American people has been its message and song.This year was no different, in those regards. And yet the ceremony held today carried with it a special urgency for action, given the extraordinary danger of thermonuclear war now facing the planet in the form of a kind of “reverse Cuban Missile Crisis” between the United States and Russia, as Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche put it in her remarks read to the event. Can such a threat be defused, and its causes degraded? Perhaps. Yesterday the State Department announced that the dates have now been set for three meetings to address the Russian government’s demand for written security guarantees to stop the relentless eastward drive of NATO up to its very borders, and the positioning of defensive and offensive strategic weapons in those countries. High-level Russian officials will meet with their U.S. counterparts on Jan. 10—preceded by another direct conversation between Presidents Biden and Putin on Dec. 30. On Jan. 12 there will then be a Russia-NATO meeting to also address these security matters. And on Jan. 13, Russia will meet with the OSCE. Substantive progress must come from these talks, including the signing of the two draft treaties that Russia has already proposed to the United States and NATO. Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks read to today’s Alexandrov Ensemble memorial, sends the requisite message: “In the name of the Schiller Institute, I send you my thoughts on the anniversary of the tragic loss of the members of the Alexandrov Ensemble and a number of other Russians on their way to Syria five years ago. In the artistic work of that choir was and is expressed that quality which makes us human. “Unfortunately, our species finds itself right now in an incredible danger, in which the world is faced with a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis, to which the President of your country has reacted in an unmistakable fashion: He insists, rightfully, that the promises given to Russia around the time of the German Unification, that NATO would not move eastward, closer to the borders of Russia, and which were broken repeatedly, now belatedly be restated in a written and legally binding form—at least as it concerns Ukraine and Georgia. Indeed the history of the last 32 years is a history of an unbelievable series of lies and deceits to create a narrative to justify the vilification of Russia—to what end? “The Schiller Institute fully endorses the demand by Russia that these treaties must be signed, and that the world must be pulled back from the brink of the abyss. We must shift all efforts to solve the great catastrophes of a pandemic out of control; a famine of biblical dimensions; the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet, in Afghanistan; and to eradicate poverty for billions of people. We must reach a new paradigm of our civilization, or we may not exist. “Let us revive the spirit of the cultural contribution of the Alexandrov Ensemble to mobilize the strength in ourselves to create a more human civilization!” Watch the video of the event here.

Today Putin and Biden will have a discussion, aimed at a de-escalation of the crisis over Ukraine, which has been provoked by U.S.-NATO actions and over-heated rhetoric. This occurs at a moment of accelerated collapse of the western financial system, the spread of COVID to the point of a dramatic reduction of life expectancy in the U.S., and growing political, social and cultural instability in nations of the TransAtlantic region. In response, the institutions of the Larouche organization are upgrading our intelligence product, to provide the answers you need to organize others out of the dangerous condition of sleepwalking in the midst of a civilizational crisis.

It all goes back to November 20, when CIA chief, Avril Haines, briefed NATO ambassadors in Brussels on intelligence reports that Russia had massed 10,000 troops at the border with Ukraine and was planning an invasion.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen has degrees in the history of ideas and communication. He is a former Moscow correspondent for the major Danish daily Politiken in the late 1990s. He is the author of several books about Russia and the Ukraine, and a leader of the Russian-Danish Dialogue organization. In addition, he is an associate professor of communication and cultural differences at the Niels Brock Business College in Denmark.The Schiller Institute released a memorandum entitled “Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III,” on December 24th. In the beginning, it states, “Ukraine is being used by geopolitical forces in the West that answer to the bankrupt speculative financial system, as the flashpoint to trigger a strategic showdown with Russia, a showdown which is already more dangerous than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and which could easily end up in a thermonuclear war which no one would win, and none would survive.” Jens Jørgen, in the past days, Russian President Putin and other high level spokesmen have stated that Russia’s red lines are about to be crossed, and they have called for treaty negotiations to come back from the brink. What are these red lines and how dangerous is the current situation? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Thank you for inviting me. First, I would like to say that I think that the question you have raised here about red lines, and the question also about are we sleepwalking into a new war, is very relevant. Because, as an historian, I know what happened in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War — a kind of sleepwalking. No one really wanted the war, actually, but it ended up with war, and tens of million people were killed, and then the whole world disappeared at this time, and the world has never been the same. So, I think it’s a very, very relevant question that you are asking here. You asked me specifically about Putin, and the red lines, because you can have the point of view — I heard that the Clintons, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, and many other American politicians, claim that we don’t have things like red lines anymore. We don’t have zones of influence anymore, because we have a new world. We have a new liberal world, and we do not have these kinds of things. It belongs to another century and another age. But you could ask the question, what actually are the Americans doing in Ukraine, if not defending their own red lines? Because I think it’s like, if you have a power, a superpower, a big power like Russia, I think it’s very, very natural that any superpower would have some kind of red lines, because you can imagine what will happen if China, Iran and Russia had a military alliance, going into Mexico, Canada, Cuba, maybe also putting missiles up there. I don’t think anyone would doubt what would happen. The United States would never accept it, of course. So the Russians would normally ask, why should we accept that Americans are dealing with Ukraine and preparing, maybe to put up some military hardware in Ukraine? Why should we? And I think it’s a very relevant question. And basically, the Russians see it today as a question of power, because the Russians, actually, have tried for, I would say, 30 years. They have tried. I was in Russia 30 years ago. I speak Russian. I’m quite sure that the Russians, at that time, dreamt of being a part of the Western community, and they had very, very high thoughts about the Western countries, and Americans were extremely popular at this time. Eighty percent of the Russian population in 1990 had a very positive view of the United States. Later on, today, and even for several years already, 80 percent, the same percentage, have a negative view of Americans. So something happened, not very positively, because 30 years ago, there were some prospects of a new world. There really were some ideas, but something actually was screwed up in the 90s. I have some idea about that. Maybe we can go in detail about it. But things were screwed up, and normally, today, many people in the West, in universities, politicians, etc. think that it’s all the fault of Putin. It’s Putin’s fault. Whatever happened is Putin’s fault. Now, we are in a situation which is very close to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which you also mentioned. But I don’t think it is that way. I think it takes two to tango. We know that, of course, but I think many Western politicians have failed to see the compliance of the western part in this, because I think there are many things which play a role that we envisage in a situation like that now. I think the basic thing, if you look at it from a Russian point of view, it’s the extension to the east of NATO. I think that’s a real bad thing, because Russia was against it from the very beginning. Even Yeltsin, Boris Yeltsin, who was considered to be the man of the West, the democratic Russia, he was very, very opposed to this NATO alliance going to the east, up to the borders of Russia. And we can see it now, because recently, some new material has been released in America, an exchange of letters between Yeltsin and Clinton at this time. So we know exactly that Yeltsin, and Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian minister of foreign affairs at this time, were very much opposed to it. And then Putin came along. Putin came along not to impose his will on the Russian people. He came along because there was, in Russia, a will to oppose this NATO extension to the East. So I think things began at this point. And later on, we had the Georgian crisis in 2008, and we had, of course, the Ukraine crisis in 2014, and, also, with Crimea and Donbass, etc. And now we are very, very close to — I don’t think it’s very likely we will have a war, but we are very close to it, because I think that wars often begin by some kind of mistake, some accident, someone accidentally pulls the trigger, or presses a button somewhere, and suddenly, something happened. Exactly what happened in 1914, at the beginning of World War I. Actually, there was one who was shot in Sarajevo. Everyone knows about that, and things like that could happen. And for us, living in Europe, it’s awful to think about having a war. We can hate Putin. We can think whatever we like. But the thought of a nuclear war is horrible for all of us, and that’s why I think that politicians could come to their senses. And I think also this demonization of Russia, and demonization of Putin, is very bad, of course, for the Russians. But it’s very bad for us here in the West, for us, in Europe, and also in America. I don’t think it’s very good for our democracy. I don’t think it’s very good. I don’t see very many healthy perspectives in this. I don’t see any at all. I see some other prospects, because we could cooperate in another way. There are possibilities, of course, which are not being used, or put into practice, which certainly could be. So yes, your question is very, very relevant and we can talk at length about it. I’m very happy that you ask this question, because if you ask these questions today in the Danish and Western media at all — because everyone thinks it’s enough just to say that Putin is a scoundrel, Putin is a crook, and everything is good. No, we have to get along. We have to find some ways to cooperate, because otherwise it will be the demise of all of us. Michelle Rasmussen: Can you just go through a little bit more of the history of the NATO expansion towards the East? And what we’re speaking about in terms of the proposed treaties that Russia has proposed is, firstly, to prevent Ukraine from becoming a formal member of NATO, and secondly, to prevent the general expansion of NATO, both in terms of soldiers and military equipment towards the East. So can you speak about this, also in terms of the broken promises from the western side? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes. Actually, the story goes back to the beginning of the nineties. Actually, I had a long talk with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, in 1989, just when NATO started to bomb Serbia, and when they adopted Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into NATO. At this time, I had a long talk with Gorbachev. You should bear in mind that Gorbachev is a very nice person. He’s a very lively person, with good humor, and an experienced person. But when we started to talk, I asked him about the NATO expansion, which was going on exactly the day when we were talking. He became very gloomy, very sad, because he said, ‘Well, I talked to James Baker, Helmut Kohl from Germany, and several other persons, and they all promised me not to move an inch to the east, if Soviet Union would let Germany unite the GDR (East Germany) and West Germany, to become one country, and come to be a member of NATO, but not move an inch to the East. I think, also, some of the new material which has been released — I have read some of it, some on WikiLeaks, and some can be found. It’s declassified. It’s very interesting. There’s no doubt at all. There were some oral, spoken promises to Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not written, because, as he said, ‘I believed them. I can see I was naive.’ I think this is a key to Putin today, to understand why Putin wants not only sweet words. He wants something based on a treaty, because, basically, he doesn’t really believe the West. The level of trust between Russia and NATO countries is very, very low today. And it’s a problem, of course, and I don’t think we can overcome it in a few years. It takes time to build trust, but the trust is not there for the time being. But then, the nature of the NATO expansion has gone step, by step, by step. First, it was the three countries Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, and then, in 2004, six years later, came, among other things, the Baltic republics, and Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. And the others came later on — Albania, Croatia, etc. And then in 2008, there was a NATO summit in Bucharest, where George Bush, president of the United States, promised Georgia and Ukraine membership of NATO. Putin was present. He was not president at this time. He was prime minister in Russia, because the president was Medvedev, but he was very angry at this time. But what could he do? But he said, at this point, he said, very, very clearly, we will not accept it, because our red lines would be crossed here. We have accepted the Baltic states. We have retreated. We’ve gone back. We’ve been going back for several years, but still, it was not off the table. It was all because Germany and France did not accept it, because Merkel and Hollande, at this time, did not accept Ukraine and Georgia becoming a member of NATO. But the United States pressed for it, and it is still on the agenda of the United States, that Georgia and Ukraine should be a member of NATO. So there was a small war in August, the same year, a few months after this NATO summit, where, actually, it was Georgia which attacked South Ossetia, which used to be a self-governing part of Georgia. The incumbent Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili did not want to accept the autonomous status of South Ossetia, so Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Russian soldiers were deployed in South Ossetia, and 14 of them were killed by the Georgian army. And you could say that George W. Bush promised Georgian president Saakashvili that the Americans would support the Georgians, in case Russia should retaliate, which they did. The Russian army was, of course, much bigger than the Georgian army, and it smashed the Georgian army in five days, and retreated. There was no help from the United States to the Georgians. And, I think, that from a moral point of view, I don’t think it’s a very wise policy, because you can’t say ‘You just go on. We will help you. – and not help at all when it gets serious. I think, from a moral point of view, it’s not very fair. But, actually, it’s the same which seems to be happening now in Ukraine. And in Ukraine, even though there was, what I would call a coup, an orchestrated state coup, in 2014. I know there are very, very different opinions about this, but my opinion is that there was a kind of coup to oust the sitting incumbent president, Viktor Yanukovich, and replace him with one who was very, very keen on getting into NATO. Yanukovich was not very keen on going into NATO, but he still had the majority of the population. And it’s interesting. In Ukraine, there’s been a lot of opinion polls conducted by Germans, Americans, French, Europeans, Russia and Ukrainians. And all these opinion polls show that a majority of Ukrainian people did not want to join NATO. After that, of course, things moved very quickly, because Crimea was a very, very sensitive question for Russia, for many reasons. First, it was a contested area because it was, from the very beginning from 1991, when Ukraine was independent — There was no unanimity about Crimea and it´s status, because the major part of Crimea was Russian-speaking, and is very culturally close to Russia, in terms of history. It’s very close to Russia. It’s one of the most patriotic parts of Russia, actually. So it’s a very odd part of Ukraine. It always was, a very odd part of Ukraine. And so I have no doubt at all that the majority of the people in a conflict, where the first thing the new government did in February 2014, was to forbid the Russian language, as a language which had been used in local administration, and things like that. It was one of the stupidest things you could do in such a very tense situation. Ukraine, basically, is a very cleft society. The eastern southern part is very close to Russia. They speak Russian, and are very close to Russian culture. The western part, the westernmost part around Lviv, is very close to Poland and Austria, and places like that. So it’s a cleft society, and in such a society you have some options. One option is to embrace all the parts of society, different parts of society. Or you can, also, which afterwards is what happened, one part could impose its will on the other part, against its will. And that was actually what happened. So there are several crises. There is the crisis in Ukraine, with two approximately equally sized parts of Ukraine. But you also have, on the other hand, the Russian-NATO question. So you had two crises, and they stumbled together, and they were pressed together in 2014. So you had a very explosive situation which has not been solved to this day. And for Ukraine, I say that as long as you have this conflict between Russia and NATO, it’s impossible to solve, because it’s one of the most corrupt societies, one of the most poor societies in Europe right now. A lot of people come to Denmark, where we are now, Germany and also to Russia. Millions of Ukrainians have gone abroad to work, because there are really many, many social problems, economic problems, things like that. And that’s why Putin –, if we remember what Gorbachev told me about having things on paper, on treaties, which are signed — and that’s why Putin said, what he actually said to the West, ‘I don’t really believe you, because when you can, you cheat.’ He didn’t put it that way, but that was actually what he meant. ‘So now I tell you very, very, very, very clearly what our points of view are. We have red lines, like you have red lines. Don’t try to cross them.’ And I think many people in the West do not like it. I think it’s very clear, because I think the red lines, if you compare historically, are very reasonable. If you compare the United States and the Monroe Doctrine, which is still in effect in the USA, they are very, very reasonable red lines. So much more than — I would say that Ukraine, many of the Ukrainians, are very close to Russia. I have many Ukrainian friends. I sometimes forget that they are Ukrainians, because their language, their first language, is actually Russian, which is also close to Russian. So those countries being part of an anti-Russian military pact, it’s simply madness. It cannot work. It will not work. Such a country would never be a normal country for many, many years, forever. I think much of the blame could be put on the NATO expansion and those politicians who have been pressing for that for several years. First and foremost, Bill Clinton was the first one, Madame Albright, from 1993. At this time, they adopted the policy of major extension to the East. And George W. Bush also pressed for Ukraine and Georgia to become members of NATO. And for every step, there was, in Russia, people rallying around the flag. You could put it that way, because you have pressure. And the more we pressure with NATO, the more the Russians will rally around the flag, and the more authoritarian Russia will be. So we are in this situation. So things are now happening in Russia, which I can admit I do not like, closing some offices, closing some media. I do not like it at all. But in a time of confrontation, I think it’s quite reasonable, understandable, Even though I would not defend it. But it’s understandable. Because the United States, after 9/11, also adopted a lot of defensive measures, and a kind of censorship, and things like that. So it’s what happens when you have such tense situations. We should just also bear in mind that Russia and the United States are the two countries, which possess 90 percent of the world’s nuclear armament. Alone the mere thought of them using some of this is a doomsday perspective, because it will not be a small, tiny war, like World War II, but it will dwarf World War II, because billions will die in this. And it’s a question, if humanity will survive. So it’s a very, very grave question. And I think we should ask if the right of the Ukraine to have NATO membership, which its own population does not really want, is it really worth the risk of a nuclear war? That’s how I would put it. I will not take all blame away from Russia. That’s not my point here. My point is that this question is too important. It’s very, very relevant. It’s very important that we establish a kind of modus vivendi [an arrangement allowing people or groups of people who have different opinions or beliefs to work or live together-ed.]. It’s a problem for the West. I also think it’s very important that we learn, in the West, how to cope with people who are not like us, because we tend to think that people should become democrats like we are democrats. And only then will we deal with them. If they are not democrats, like we are democrats, we will do everything we can, to make them democrats. We will support people who want to make a revolution in this country, so they become like us. It’s a very, very dangerous, dangerous way of thinking, and destructive way of thinking. I think that we in the West should study, maybe, a little more what is happening in other organizations where the West is not dominating. I’m thinking about the BRICS, as one organization. I’m also thinking about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where Asian countries are cooperating, and they are not changing each other. The Chinese are not demanding that we should all be Confucians. And the Russians are not demanding that all people in the world should be Orthodox Christians, etc. I think it’s very, very important that we bear in mind that we should cope with each other like we are, and not demand changes. I think it’s a really dangerous and stupid game to play. I think the European Union is also very active in this game, which I think is very, very — Well, this way of thinking, in my point of view, has no perspective, no positive perspective at all. Michelle Rasmussen: Actually, today, Presidents Biden and Putin will speak on the phone, and important diplomatic meetings are scheduled for the middle of January. What is going to determine if diplomacy can avoid a disaster, as during the Cuban missile crisis? Helga Zepp-LaRouche has just called this a “reverse missile crisis.” Or, if Russia will feel that they have no alternative to having a military response, as they have openly stated. What changes on the western side are necessary? If you had President Biden alone in a room, or other heads of state of NATO countries, what would you say to them? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: I would say, “Look, Joe, I understand your concerns. I understand that you see yourself as a champion of freedom in the world, and things like that. I understand the positive things about it, but you see, the game you now are playing with Russia is a very, very dangerous game. And the Russians, as a very proud people, you cannot force them. It’s not an option. I mean, you cannot, because it has been American, and to some degree, also European Union policy, to change Russia, to very much like to change, so that they’ll have another president, and exchange Putin for another president. But I can assure you,’ if I speak to Joe Biden, ‘Joe Biden, be sure that if you succeed, or if Putin dies tomorrow, or somehow they’ll have a new president, I can assure you that the new president will be just as tough as Putin, maybe even tougher. Because in Russia, you have much tougher people. Many blame, actually — I would say even most people in Russia who blame Putin, really blame him because he’s not tough enough on the West, because he was soft on the West, too liberal toward the West, and many people have blamed him for not taking the eastern southern part of Ukraine yet. He should have done it.’ So I would say to Biden, ‘I think it would be wise for you, right now, to support Putin, or to deal with Putin, engage with Putin, and do some diplomacy, because the alternative is a possibility of war, and you should not go down into history as the American president who secured the extinction of humanity. It would be a bad, very bad record for you.’ ‘And there are possibilities because I don’t think Putin is unreasonable. Russia has not been unreasonable. I think they have turned back. Because in 1991, it was the Russians themselves, who disbanded the Soviet Union. It was the Russians, Moscow, which disbanded the Warsaw Pact. The Russians who gave liberty to the Baltic countries, and all other Soviet republics, and with hardly any shot, and returned half a million Soviet soldiers back to Russia. No shot was fired at all. I think it’s extraordinary.’ ‘If you compare what happened to this dismembering of the French and the British colonial empires after World War II. It was very, very civilized, in many ways. So stop thinking about Russia and as uncivilized, stupid people, who don’t understand anything but mere power. Russians are an educated people. They understand a lot of arguments, and they are interested in cooperating. ‘There will be a lot of advantages for the United States, and also for the West, and also the European Union, to establish a kind of more productive, more pragmatic relationship, cooperation. There are a lot of things in terms of energy, climate, of course, and terrorism, and many other things, where it’s a win-win situation to cooperate with them. ‘The only thing Russia is asking for is not to put your military hardware in our backyard. I don’t think it should be hard for us to accept, certainly not to understand why the Russians think this way. And they should think back to the history, where armies from the West have attacked Russia. So they have it in their genes. I don’t think that there is any person in Russia who has forgot, or is not aware of, the huge losses the Soviet Union suffered from Nazi Germany in the 1940s during World War II. And you had Napoleon also trying to — You have a lot of that experience with armies from the West going into Russia. So it’s very, very large, very, very deep.’ Michelle Rasmussen: Was it around 20 million people who died during World War II? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: In the Soviet Union. There were also Ukrainians, and other nationalities, but it was around 18 million Russians, if you can count it, because it was the Soviet Union, but twenty seven million people in all. It’s a huge part, because Russia has experience with war. So the Russians would certainly not like war. I think the Russians have experience with war, that also the Europeans, to some extent, have, that the United States does not have. Because the attack I remember, in recent time, is the 9/11 attack, the twin towers in New York. Otherwise, the United States does not have these experiences. It tends to think more in ideological terms, where the Russians, certainly, but, also, to some extent, some people in Europe, think more pragmatically, more that we should, at any cost, avoid war, because war creates more problems than it solves. So, have some pragmatic cooperation. It will not be very much a love affair. Of course not. But it will be on a very pragmatic — Michelle Rasmussen: Also in terms of dealing with this horrible humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, and cooperating on the pandemic. Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yeah. Of course, there are possibilities. Right now, it’s like we can’t even cooperate in terms of vaccines, and there are so many things going on, from both sides, actually, because we have very, very little contact between –. I had some plans to have some cooperation between Danish and Russian universities in terms of business development, things like that, but it turned out there was not one crown, as our currency is called. You could have projects in southern America, Africa, all other countries. But not Russia, which is stupid. Michelle Rasmussen: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that, because you wrote two recent books about Russia. One is called “On his own terms: Putin and the new Russia,” and the latest one, just from September, “Russia against the grain.” Many people in the West portray Russia as the enemy, which is solely responsible for the current situation. And Putin as a dictator who is threatening his neighbors militarily, and threatening the democracy of the free world. Over and above what you have already said, is this true, or do you have a different viewpoint? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Of course, I have a different point of view, because I think, well, Russia for me, is not a perfect country, because such a country does not exist, not even Denmark. Some suppose it is. But there’s no such thing as a perfect society. Because societies are always developing from somewhere, to somewhere, and Russia, likewise. Russia is a very, very big country. So you can definitely find things which are not very likable in Russia. Definitely. That’s not my point here. But I think that in the West, I think, actually for centuries, we have — if you look back, I have tried in my latest book, to find out how Western philosophers, how church people, how they look at Russia, from centuries back. And there has been kind of a red thread. There’s been a kind of continuation. Because Russia has very, very, very often been characterized as our adversary, as a country against basic European values. Five hundred years back, it was against the Roman Catholic Church, and in the seventeen eighteen hundred it was against the Enlightenment philosophers, and in the 20th century, it was about communism. And it’s also split people in the West, and it was also considered to be a threat. But it is also considered to be a threat today, even though Putin is not a communist. He is not a communist. He is a conservative, a moderate conservative, I would say. Even during the time of Yeltsin, he was also considered liberal and progressive, and he loved the West and followed the West in all, almost all things they proposed. But still, there’s something with Russia, which I think from a philosophical point of view is very important to find out, that we have some very deep rooted prejudices about Russia. And I think it plays a role, because I hear, when I speak to people who say ‘Russia is an awful country, and Putin is simply a very, very evil person, is a dictator.’ ‘Have you been in Russia? Do you know any Russians?’ ‘No, not really.’ ‘Ok. But what do you base your points of view on?’ ‘Well, what I read in the newspapers, of course, what they tell me on the television.’ Well, well, I think it’s not good enough, because — And I understand why the Russians — I very often talk to Russian politicians, and other people, and what they are sick and tired of, is this notion that that the West is better. We are on a higher level. And if Russians should be accepted by the West, they should become like us. Or at least they should admit that they are on a lower level, in relation to our very high level. And that is why, when they deal with China, or deal with India, and when they deal with African countries, and even Latin American countries, they don’t meet such attitudes, because they are on more equal terms. They’re different, yes, but one does not consider each other to be on a higher level. And that’s why I think that cooperation in BRICS, which we talked about, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, I think it’s quite successful. And I don’t know about the future, but I have a feeling that if you were talking about Afghanistan, I think if Afghanistan could be integrated into this kind of organization, one way or another, I have a feeling it probably would be more successful than the 20 years that the NATO countries have been there. I think that cultural attitude plays a role when we’re talking about politics, because a lot of the policy from the American, European side, is actually very emotional. It’s very much like, ‘We have some feelings — We fear Russia. We don’t like it,’ or ‘We think that it’s awful.’ And ‘Our ideas, we know how to run a society much better than the Russians, and the Chinese, and the Indians, and the Muslims, and things like that.’ And I think it’s a part of the problem. That it’s a part of our problem in the West. It’s a part of our way of thinking, our philosophy, which I think we should have a closer look at, and criticize. But it’s difficult, because it’s very deep rooted. When I discuss with people at universities and in the media, and other other places, I encounter this. That is why I wrote the latest book, because it’s very much about our way of thinking about Russia. And that’s why the book is — it’s about Russia, of course, but it’s also about us, our glasses, how we perceive Russia, how we perceive not only Russia, but it also goes for China, because it’s more or less the same. But there are many similarities between how we look upon Russia, and how we look upon and perceive China, and other countries. I think this is a very, very important thing we have to deal with. We have to do it, because otherwise, if we decide, if America and Russia decide to use all the fireworks they have of nuclear [armament] power, then it’s the end. You can put it very sharp, to put it like that, and people will not like it. But basically, we are facing this, these two alternatives: Either we find ways to cooperate with people who are not like us, and will not be, certainly not in my lifetime, like us, and accept them, that they are not like us, and get on like as best we can, and keep our differences, but respect each other. I think that’s what we need from the Western countries. I think it’s the basic problem today dealing with other countries. And the same goes, from what I have said, for China. I do not know the Chinese language. I have been in China. I know a little about China. Russia, I know very well. I speak Russian, so I know how Russians are thinking about this. What the feelings are about this. And I think it’s important to deal with these questions. Michelle Rasmussen: You also pointed out, I think, that in 2001, after the attack against the World Trade Center, I think Putin was the first one to call George Bush, and he offered cooperation about dealing with terrorism. But I think you’ve written that he had a pro-Western war worldview, but that this was not reciprocated. Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Afterwards, he was criticized by the military, and also by politicians in the beginning of his first term in 2000, 2001, 2002, he was criticized because he was too happy for America. He even said, in an interview in the BBC, that he would like Russia to become a member of NATO. It did not happen, because there are many reasons for that, but he was very, very keen –. That’s also why he felt very betrayed afterward, and in 2007, at the Munich Conference on Security in February in Germany, he said he was very frustrated, and it was very clear that he felt betrayed by the West. He thought that they had a common agenda. He thought that Russia should become a member. But Russia probably is too big. And if you consider Russia becoming a member of the European Union, the European Union would change thoroughly, but they failed. Russia did not become a member. It’s understandable. But then I think the European Union should have found, again, a modus vivendi. Michelle Rasmussen: Way of living together. Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yeah, how to live together, because they joined — It was actually a parallel development of the European Union and NATO, against Russia. And in 2009 the European Union invited Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, to become members of the European Union, but not Russia. Even though they knew that there was really a lot of trade between Ukraine, also Georgia, and Russia. And it would have interfered. But they did not pay attention to Russia. So Russia was left out at this time. And so eventually, you could say, understandably, very understandably, Russia turned to China. And in China, with cooperation with China, they became stronger. They became much more self-confident, and they also cooperated with people who respected them much more. I think that’s interesting, that the Chinese understood how to deal with other people with respect, but the Europeans and Americans did not. Michelle Rasmussen: Just before we go to our last questions. I want to go back to Ukraine, because it’s so important. [Jens Jørgen Nielsen wrote the book, “Ukraine in the Field of Tension-ed.] You said that the problem did not start with the so-called annexation of Crimea, but with what you called a coup against the sitting president. Can you just explain more about that? Because in the West, it’s like everybody says, ‘Oh, the problem started when Russia annexed Crimea.’ Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Well, if you take Ukraine, in 2010 there was a presidential election, and the OSCE monitored the election, and said that it was very good, and the majority voted for Viktor Yanukovich. Viktor Yanukovich did not want Ukraine to become a member of NATO. He wanted to cooperate with the European Union. But he also wanted to keep cooperating with Russia. Basically, that’s what he was like. But it’s very often claimed that he was corrupt. Yes, I don’t doubt it, but name me one president who has not been corrupt. That’s not the big difference, it’s not the big thing, I would say. But then in 2012, there was also a parliamentary election in Ukraine, and Yanukovych’s party also gained a majority with some other parties. There was a coalition which supported Yanukovych’s policy not to become a member of NATO. And then there was a development where the European Union and Ukraine were supposed to sign a treaty of cooperation. But he found out that the treaty would be very costly for Ukraine, because they would open the borders for European Union firms, and the Ukrainian firms would not be able to compete with the Western firms. Secondly, and this is the most important thing, basic industrial export from Ukraine was to Russia, and it was industrial products from the eastern part, from Dniepropetrovsk or Dniepro as it is called today, from Donetsk, from Luhansk and from Kryvyj Rih (Krivoj Rog), from some other parts, basically in the eastern part, which is the industrial part of Ukraine. And they made some calculations that showed that, well, if you join this agreement, Russia said, ‘We will have to put some taxes on the export, because you will have some free import from the European Union. So, of course, we don’t have an agreement with the European Union. So, of course, anything which comes from you, there would be some taxes imposed on it.’ And then Yanukovich said, ‘Well, well, well, it doesn’t sound good,’ and he wanted Russia, the European Union and Ukraine to go together, and the three form what we call a triangle agreement. But the European Union was very much opposed to it because it didn’t want –. Even though you could say the eastern part of Ukraine was economically a part of Russia. Part of the Russian weapon industry was actually in the eastern part of Ukraine, and there were Russian speakers there. And the European Union said, ‘No, we should not cooperate with Russia about this,’ because Yanukovich wanted to have cooperation between the European Union, Ukraine and Russia, which sounds very sensible to me. Of course, it should be like that. It would be to the advantage of all three parts. But the European Union had a very ideological approach to this. So they were very much against Russia. It also increased the Russian’s suspicion that the European Union was only a stepping stone to NATO membership. And then what happened was that there was a conflict in, there were demonstrations every day on the Maidan Square in Kiev. There were many thousands of people there, and there were also shootings, because many of the demonstrators were armed people. They had stolen weapons from some barracks in the West. And at this point, when 100 people had been killed, the European Union foreign ministers from France, Germany and Poland met, and there was also a representative from Russia, and there was Yanukovich, a representative from his government, and from the opposition. And they made an agreement. Ok. You should have elections this year, in half a year, and you should have some sharing of power. People from the opposition should become members of the government, and things like that. But all of a sudden, things broke down, and Yanukovich left, because you should remember, and very often in the West, they tend to forget that the demonstrators were armed. And they killed police also. They killed people from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and things like that. So it’s always been portrayed as innocent, peace-loving demonstrators. They were not at all. And some of them had very dubious points of view, with Nazi swastikas, and things like that. And Yanukovych fled. Then they came to power. They had no legitimate government, because many of the members of parliament from these parts of the regions which had supported Yanukovich, had fled to the East. So the parliament was not able to make any decisions. Still, there was a new president, also a new government, which was basically from the western part of Ukraine. And the first thing they did, I told you, was to get rid of the Russian language, and then they would talk about NATO membership. And Victoria Nuland was there all the time, the vice foreign minister of the United States, was there all the time. There were many people from the West also, so things broke down. Michelle Rasmussen: And there have actually been accusations since then, that there were provocateurs who were killing people on both sides. Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And what’s interesting is that there’s been no investigation whatsoever about it, because a new government did not want to conduct an investigation as to who killed them. So, it was orchestrated. There’s no doubt in my mind it was an orchestrated coup. No doubt about it. And that’s Russian –. That’s the basic context for the decision of Putin to accept Crimea as a part of Russia. you should say, but normally you would say, in the west, that Russia simply annexed Crimea. It’s not precisely what happened, because there was a local parliament, because it was an autonomous part of Ukraine, and they had their own parliament, and they made the decision that they should have a referendum, which they had in March. And then they applied to become a member of the Russian Federation. It’s not a surprise, even though the Ukrainian army did not go there, because there was an Ukrainian army. There were 21,000 Ukrainian soldiers. 14,000 of these soldiers joined the Russian army. And so, that tells a little about how things were not like a normal annexation, where one country simply occupies part of the other country. Because you have this cleft country, you have this part, especially the southern part, which was very, very pro-Russian, and it’s always been so. And so, of course, you could say that you — there’s a lot of things in terms of international law, you can say about it. But I have no doubt that you can look upon it differently, because if you look it at from the point of people who lived in Crimea, they did not want — because almost 80-90 percent had voted for the Party of the Regions, which was Yanukovych’s party, a pro-Russian party, you could say, almost 87 percent, or something like that. They have voted for this party. This party had a center in a central building in Kiev, which was attacked, burned, and three people were killed. So you could imagine that they would not be very happy, well, to put it this way. They would not be very happy with the new government, and the new development. Of course not. They hated it. And what I think is very critical about the West is that they simply accepted, they accepted these horrible things in Ukraine, just to have the prize, just to have this prey, of getting Ukraine into NATO. And Putin was aware that he could not live, not even physically, but certainly not politically, if Sevastopol, with the harbor for the Russian fleet, became a NATO harbor. It was impossible. I know people from the military say ‘No, no way.’ It’s impossible. Would the Chinese take San Diego in the United States? Of course not. It goes without saying that such things don’t happen. So what is lacking in the West is just a little bit of realism. How powers, how superpowers think, and about red lines of superpowers. Because we have an idea in the West about the new liberal world order. It sounds very nice when you’re sitting in an office in Washington. It sounds very beautiful and easy, but go out and make this liberal world order, it’s not that simple. And you cannot do it like, certainly not do it like the way they did it in Ukraine. Michelle Rasmussen: Regime change? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yeah, regime change. Michelle Rasmussen: I have two other questions. The last questions. The Russian-Danish Dialogue organization that you are a leader of, and the Schiller Institute in Denmark, together with the China Cultural Center in Copenhagen, were co-sponsors of three very successful Musical Dialogue of Cultures Concerts, with musicians from Russia, China, and many other countries. And you are actually an associate professor in cultural differences. How do you see that? How would an increase in cultural exchange improve the situation? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Well, it can not but improve, because we have very little, as I also told you. So, I’m actually also very, very happy with this cooperation, because I think it’s very enjoyable, these musical events, they are very, very enjoyable and very interesting, also for many Danish people, because when you have the language of music, it is better than the language of weapons, if I can put it that way, of course. But I also think that when we meet each other, when we listen to each other’s music, and share culture in terms of films, literature, paintings, whatever, I think it’s also, well, it’s a natural thing, first of all, and it’s unnatural not to have it. We do not have it, because maybe some people want it that way, if people want us to be in a kind of tense situation. They would not like to have it, because I think without this kind of, it’s just a small thing, of course, but without these cultural exchanges, well, you will be very, very bad off. We will have a world which is much, much worse, I think, and we should learn to enjoy the cultural expressions of other people. We should learn to accept them, also, we should learn to also cooperate and also find ways –. We are different. But, also, we have a lot of things in common, and the things we have in common is very important not to forget that even with Russians, and even the Chinese, also all other peoples, we have a lot in common that is very important to bear in mind that we should never forget that we have a lot of things in common. Basically, we have the basic values we have in common, even though if you are Hindu, a Confucian, a Russian Orthodox, we have a lot of things in common. And when you have such kind of encounters like in cultural affairs, in music, I think that you become aware of it, because suddenly it’s much easier to understand people, if you listen to their music. Maybe you need to listen a few times, but it becomes very, very interesting. You become curious about instruments, ways of singing, and whatever it is. So I hope the corona situation will allow us, also, to make some more concerts. I think it should be, because they’re also very popular in Denmark. Michelle Rasmussen: Yeah. As Schiller wrote, It’s through beauty, we arrive at political freedom. We can also say it’s through beauty that we can arrive at peace. Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Michelle Rasmussen: The Schiller Institute and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, its founder and international president, are leading an international campaign to prevent World War III, for peace through economic development, and a dialogue amongst cultures. How do you see the role of the Schiller Institute? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Well, I know it. We have been cooperating. I think your basic calls, appeals for global development, I think it’s very, very interesting, and I share the basic point of view. I think maybe it’s a little difficult. The devil is in the details, but basically, I think what you are thinking about, when I talk about the Silk Road, when I talk about these Chinese programs, Belt and Road programs, I see much more successful development that we have seen, say, in Africa and European countries developing, because I have seen how many western-dominated development programs have been distorting developments in Africa and other parts of the world. They distort development. I can see — I’m not uncritical to China, but, of course, I can see very positive perspectives in the Belt and Road program. I can see really, really good perspectives, because just look at the railroads in China, for instance, at their fast trains. It’s much bigger than anywhere else in the world. I think there are some perspectives, really, which I think attract, first and foremost, people in Asia. But I think, eventually, also, people in Europe, because I also think that this model is becoming more and more — it’s also beginning in the eastern part. Some countries of Eastern Europe are becoming interested. So I think it’s very interesting. Your points of your points of view. I think they’re very relevant, also because I think we are in a dead end alley in the West, what we are in right now, so people anyway are looking for new perspectives. And what you come up with, I think, is very, very interesting, certainly. What it may be in the future is difficult to say because things are difficult. But the basic things that you think about, and what I have heard about the Schiller Institute, also because I also think that you stress the importance of tolerance. You stress the importance of a multicultural society, that we should not change each other. We should cooperate on the basis of mutual interests, not changing each other. And as I have told you, this is what I see as one of the real, real big problems in the western mind, the western way of thinking, that we should decide what should happen in the world as if we still think we are colonial powers, like we have been for some one hundred years. But these times are over. There are new times ahead, and we should find new ways of thinking. We should find new perspectives. And I think it goes for the West, that we can’t go on living like this. We can’t go on thinking like this, because it will either be war, or it’ll be dead end alleys, and there’ll be conflicts everywhere. You can look at things as a person from the West. I think it’s sad to look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and those countries, Syria to some extent also, where the West has tried to make some kind of regime change or decide what happens. They’re not successful. I think it’s obvious for all. And we need some new way of thinking. And what the Schiller Institute has come up with is very, very interesting in this perspective, I think. Michelle Rasmussen: Actually when you speak about not changing other people, one of our biggest points is that we actually have to challenge ourselves to change ourselves. To really strive for developing our creative potential and to make a contribution that will have, potentially, international implications. Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes. Definitely Michelle Rasmussen: The Schiller Institute is on full mobilization during the next couple of weeks to try to get the United States and NATO to negotiate seriously. And Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called on the U.S. and NATO to sign these treaties that Russia has proposed, and to pursue other avenues of preventing nuclear war. So we hope that you, our viewers, will also do everything that you can, including circulating this video. Is there anything else you would like to say to our viewers before we end, Jens Jørgen? Jens Jørgen Nielsen: No, no. I think we have talked a lot now. No, only I think what you said about bringing the U.S. and Russia to the negotiation table, it’s obvious, I think that it should be for any prudent, clear thinking person in the West, it should be obvious that this is the only right thing to do. So of course, we support it 100 percent. Michelle Rasmussen: Okay. Thank you so much, Jens Jørgen Nielsen. Jens Jørgen Nielsen: I thank you.

Vladimir Putin’s statement during his marathon press conference of Dec. 23 that “the first thing to do here is to unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets, the money it had in foreign, primarily American, banks, in order to provide the required assistance to the Afghan people. Otherwise, the country could plunge into famine; there will be grave consequences that will affect the neighboring states as well,” should be read as not necessarily identical to, but congruent with, Russia’s proposals concerning stopping the extension of NATO farther eastward. Putin’s statements represent a summary rejection of the Malthusian military outlook characteristic of both trans-Atlantic policies, each of which is based on population reduction in a different way. That same outlook was fought at the COP 26 Halloween Summit, and must now be fought in the worldwide war against pandemics. The Schiller Institute proposal, the pro-life, pro-development “Operation Ibn Sina,” to provide food, water, and medical treatment and supplies, now, is the proper springboard for immediate action and follow-up in Afghanistan, once funds were indeed released.This is the season of Hope. We don’t know, but have been told, and pass on for corroboration to any who can help verify the rumor, that signs have begun to appear in offices in and around Washington, including at the State Department, Pentagon, the House of Representatives and Senate, among other locations—even the CIA and FBI. They read, “WARNING: Marijuana and other drugs can severely compromise your ability to operate government machinery.” Perhaps with the assistance of the newly-launched James Webb telescope, signs of intelligent life can once again be spotted somewhere near the Washington Beltway. The return to sanity, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in deliberative exchanges with nations such as China and Russia, might be the greatest present that the world could expect to receive from the United States at the beginning of the New Year. The appearance yesterday in the New York Post of an article entitled “Top Russian official likens Ukraine standoff to Cuban Missile Crisis” has broken the near-blackout in American media on the reality of the ongoing strategic confrontation between Russia and China on the one hand, and the United States on the other, which is most advanced at the moment in Ukraine. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, no stranger to the United States (he served in the Russian consulate to Washington from 2002-2006 and is fluent in English), “has compared Moscow’s standoff with the West over a possible invasion of Ukraine to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the tense 1962 confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union that led the world to the brink of nuclear war.” More of Ryabkov’s remarks, as well as those of Sergei Lavrov and President Putin appear below. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, a co-founder of the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS,) has asked why the United States agreed so quickly, as reported by Ryabkov yesterday, to meet with Russia on Monday, January 10, the first day after the end of Russia’s Christmas season. McGovern called attention to an address given to the Russian military by Putin two weeks after his December 7 phone discussion with Biden, in which Putin reported: “Incidentally, during our conversation he [Biden] actually proposed appointing senior officials to oversee [Russian concerns over U.S. missile deployments in Romania, Poland, and possibly Ukraine]…. It was in response to his proposal that we drafted our proposals on precluding the further eastward expansion of NATO and the deployment of offensive strike systems in the countries bordering on Russia." The Russian proposal was drafted as a response to an initiative proposed by the United States President. It is no”ultimatum." The chronology is significant. The Washington Post printed the story, “Russia planning massive military offensive against Ukraine involving 175,000 troops, U.S. intelligence warns” on Dec. 3, with the New York Times following suit on Dec. 5. Russia’s head of foreign intelligence, Sergei Naryshkin, had already responded a week earlier, on Sat., Nov. 27, to assertions made the day before by Karen Donfried, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, about a planned attack on Ukraine. At that time, according to Reuters, “U.S. President Joe Biden said he was concerned about the situation in Ukraine…and added that he will ‘in all probability’ speak with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Vladimir Putin.” The Putin-Biden conversation then occurred on Dec. 7, followed by the release of the Russian proposal, and its being reported in the New York Times on Dec. 17: “Russia Lays Out Demands for a Sweeping New Security Deal With NATO.” The Post further reported, “Asked if he was exaggerating by comparing the Ukraine situation to the stalemate over the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Sergei Ryabkov said, ‘No, not too much,’ Russian media reported Monday…. ‘We are not bluffing. These are our real proposals. The West’s awareness of this needs to be facilitated and we are going to make every effort to achieve it,’ Ryabkov, who is known for his over-the-top rhetoric, said in an interview with a Russian foreign affairs magazine….” LaRouche Organization forces know that since the 1970s, on several occasions, the impending danger of thermonuclear war precipitated dialogues involving "“East” and “West” in which this organization played a decisive, if marginal role. Lyndon LaRouche’s personal backchannel negotiations with the then-Soviet Union over the course of the Fall of 1981 through early 1983 resulted in the “miracle” of the Strategic Defense initiative (SDI) policy being adopted by President Ronald Reagan over the fierce opposition of the globalist forces against which FDR, LaRouche, and in this instance Reagan had campaigned for decades. Now, in the face of one of the greatest threats in humanity’s history—the inaction in response to the emergence of increasingly treatment-resistant bacteria and viruses worldwide, something to which LaRouche called attention as a threat five decades ago—Helga Zepp-LaRouche proposed a World Health Platform, as an international strategic intervention, to be organized by a “Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites.” She also indicated how a tactical-strategic instance of the application of this “Coincidence of Opposites” principle, as in Afghanistan’s “Operation Ibn Sina,” would provide the means to supersede war, famine, and disease. At the ongoing 30th anniversary meeting of the heads of state of the nine nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS,) Putin, addressing the coronavirus pandemic as the number one issue on the agenda, introduced Russia’s Chief Sanitary Physician, Anna Popova, to brief people on the current worldwide situation. “Considering the proximity of our states, the commonality of epidemic threats and the level of integration, one of our key tasks is to build a unified system for epidemic response and relief,” she said. Putin himself spoke about “joint scientific activities, the development of medications and preventive drugs, as well as exchanges of test kits and means of overcoming this disease.” Lyndon LaRouche’s Fall, 2001, “National Defense Against Germ Warfare,” in the section subtitled “National Defense As Sanitation,” identified something with which Putin is familiar, and that any sane head of state should quickly learn: "The most important principles of national defense against bacteriological and related forms of warfare, were consolidated as knowledge in the experience of World War II and the war in Korea. Those lessons were featured in the adoption and implementation of the Hill-Burton legislation adopted shortly after the close of World War II…. “We must situate the role of the medical profession, both in care for the sick and in other ways, as an essential, subsumed feature of public sanitation….” Once again, by returning to the outlook of the United States of Franklin Roosevelt, the true self-interest of a United States facing tens, if not hundreds of millions of cases of infectious disease in the short term, can be re-established by organizing the worldwide symposium proposed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Dr. Jocelyn Elders, and extending that to the world as a whole as rapidly as possible. That way lies hope, and humanity’s immediate way forward.

Ray McGovern wrote that he believes the willingness of President Biden to engage in diplomacy with Putin is perhaps the result of being awakened to the "profound shift in the world correlation of forces" due to the deepening of the China-Russia alliance. A series of meetings is now scheduled in January, to address Putin's concerns over the continuing eastward expansion of NATO. The War Hawks are boldly proclaiming that the west must not give in to Putin, willing to risk war to preserve their commitment to the fraudulent idea of a Rules-Based Order. This insanity, based on loyalty to British geopolitics, must be rejected by an awakened citizenry -- join us to bring down the globalists of the Military-Industrial-Complex, and end their dangerous utopian delusions.

According to the latest available reports, talks between Russia and the United States, and Russia and NATO will begin before mid-January, on the texts of the two draft agreements on security guarantees presented by Russia to the U.S. and NATO on Dec. 15. January 12 in Geneva is under consideration for the NATO-Russia talks, and before that, possibly January 10, for the bilateral U.S.-Russia meeting. This is critical diplomacy, which Russia has initiated. But also critical to stopping the countdown to World War III is the activation of citizens everywhere against the policy of brinksmanship and encroachment against Russia and China.A barrage of warnings has come from Russia in the past 36 hours. President Vladimir Putin told Rossiya-1 TV on Dec. 26, that the talks dare not have a “destructive agenda” in which the United States and NATO, “will indulge in endless talk about the necessity of negotiations, but will do nothing but pump a neighboring country with state-of-the-art weapons systems and build up threats to Russia, and we will have to do something with these threats.” Putin explicated the meaning of the “red line” which he has set. He said, “I want everyone both in our country and abroad, our partners to clearly understand: the matter is not in a line we don’t want anyone to cross. The matter is that we have nowhere to step back.” He stressed, “They have driven us to such a line, excuse my language, that we have nowhere to move.” He pointed to the risks of new missile systems deployed at a distance of four to five minutes’ flight to Moscow. “Well, where are you going to go now? They have simply driven us to the state when we must say: stop!” Putin went on, that this is the reason Russia’s initiative on security guarantees was made public for all nations to see. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke sternly on Dec. 26, saying that January “is when it will become clear whether the Americans are ready to give a substantive response, or they will opt for protracting the process and for seeking to initiate a policy of years-long talks.” We need “an urgent, concrete solution….” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said today, in an interview published today in the Russian Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn (Foreign Policy) journal, among other points, that, “when we say that NATO facilities and all kinds of activities which are provocative for Russia need to be rolled back to the positions that existed in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed, we are not bluffing.” Reviewing these remarks and other developments today, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche stressed that our job is to make sure that a large portion of people in every country possible, understands what is going on. We are in a countdown of extreme danger, with no “wiggle room” left. We are “close to a point of no return.” The Schiller Institute posted a rush memorandum, “Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III?” on Christmas Eve, for circulation during the holiday period. This is currently being updated as an even more comprehensive dossier of the actual chronology of what created the dangerous strategic showdown with Russia. Zepp-LaRouche stressed the need to make known the extreme danger, and also that there are solutions. The best anti-war policy involves working together on common, urgent tasks, and that means a modern health system in every nation. Look at the Afghanistan emergency in that way. Afghanistan “is a branching point.” Either there will be the necessary interventions to save lives and save the nation, or it will be an “unmitigated disaster … that marks a decay into barbarism.” We will lose all of our humanity, knowing what is coming and not doing anything about it. Acting on this, and on other humanitarian crises, as well as on the war danger, is one and the same task, as the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites addresses. The situation is grave. The Russian leaders are speaking out in unmistakable terms. If we co-mobilize with a growing number of people, we can bring about MAS—mutually assured survival.

Assuming that NATO has not crossed the "red line" delineated by the Russians in Ukraine, it appears there will be talks by mid-January to take up Russian President Putin's insistence that new treaties be adopted to prevent further eastward expansion of NATO. Given evidence that the U.S. has repeatedly violated pledges made in the past to Russian leaders, and that the War Hawks are pushing for tighter encirclement of Russia, what is the likelihood of a positive outcome to this crisis? It is necessary that citizens of the western nations intervene against the Military-Industrial-Complex of their nations, if the danger of war is to be averted. The chronology of events on the Schiller Institute website provides you with the intelligence you need to intervene.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Rossiya-1 TV on Sunday, could not have been clearer in his language to a national audience, as to what a red line actually is. “I want everyone both in our country and abroad, our partners, to clearly understand: the matter is not a line that we don’t want anyone to cross. The matter is that we have nowhere to step back. They have driven us to such a line, excuse my language, that we have nowhere to move.” Referring to his repeated emphasis on the risks of new supplies of missile systems, deployed at a distance of four- to five-minute’s flight from Moscow. “Well, where are you going to go now? They have simply driven us to the state when we must say: Stop!”He further stated that this is also why Russia’s Dec. 15 initiative on security guarantees was made public on Dec. 17. “Our proposal is open and clear. We want people in Russia, in Ukraine, in Europe, and in the United States to understand our idea that we want to implement during this negotiating process…. It sets certain limits for all participants in this [negotiating] process. But we have only one goal—to reach agreements ensuring the security of Russia and its people now and in the long-term perspective.” Then Putin made the effort to pre-empt some of the games used to preclude serious negotiations: “They will indulge in endless talk about the necessity of negotiations, but will do nothing but pump a neighboring country with state-of-the-art weapons systems and build up threats to Russia. And we will have to do something with these threats.”

“The Extraterrestrial Imperative is a driving force in the natural growth of terrestrial life beyond its planetary limits. As such, it is an integral part of the obviously expansionistic and growth-oriented pattern of life’s evolution. This drive caused life to grow from infinitesimal beginnings into a force that encompasses and transforms an entire planet through its biosphere. More basically, the Extraterrestrial Imperative expresses a ‘first message,’ a primordial imperative, bred into the very essence of the universe, driving the evolution of matter from simplest forms (elementary particles) to highly complex structures (e.g., the intelligent brain). A vast amount of cosmic energy is released by stellar matter in the initial phase of this process—the transformation of hydrogen to helium and heavier elements—and bound up in the later phases, involving the formation and evolution of living matter. By these roots, it is possible to identify the Extraterrestrial Imperative as a basic principle that can be derived from a consistent interpretation and generalization of recurring phenomena common to evolutionary processes.”These words were written in 1971 by Krafft Ehricke (1917-84), the German-American visionary and rocket scientist. His concept of Extraterrestrial Imperative asserted that it was the responsibility of humanity to explore space and exploit the resources of the Solar System, in order to sustain the development of the species. There are no external “limits to growth,” Ehricke insisted, because while the Earth is a “closed system,” the exploration of space opens the entire universe to humanity. For Ehricke, as for his friend Lyndon LaRouche, human creativity has no limits. This concept received a great boost and an inspiring confirmation on Christmas Day, 2021, with the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, a project which involved the work of over 10,000 people from over 14 countries over 25 years. The telescope will be fully functional in June 2022, provided there is success in achieving the extraordinarily complex process of reaching its orbit 1 million miles away from Earth, while opening the apparatus through “50 major deployments … and 178 release mechanisms to deploy those 50 parts,” according to Webb Mission Systems Engineer Mike Menzel in a video titled “29 Days on the Edge.” The telescope will look back in time as much as 13.5 billion years. Perhaps it will discover the secret of the Star in the East on a Christmas Day 2021 years ago. But this burst of progress, and the human optimism and creativity which created it, is confronted by a dark reality on Earth, where multiple crises pose the question of whether or not the human race has the moral fitness to survive. In addition to an out-of-control pandemic, a hyperinflationary explosion and economic disintegration in much of the world, the U.S. and NATO are confronting both Russia and China with thermonuclear war. Certain madmen believe that the U.S. is still the “only superpower,” that their warped view of “liberal democracy” is indeed the perfected “end of history,” and that their threats will force these two great historic nations, both armed with nuclear weapons, to do the bidding of the would-be lords of the world. The Schiller Institute released an emergency Memorandum on Dec. 24, titled “Are We Sleepwalking Into Thermonuclear World War III?”, with a timeline demonstrating how this economic and strategic crisis point came to be, and why it is the responsibility of every citizen on Earth to work with us to stop it. Circulate this Memorandum everywhere.

The following is the introductory section of a Schiller Institute memorandum issued Dec. 24, “Are We Sleepwalking Into Thermonuclear World War III,” which is available in full on the Schiller Institute website.You are being lied to. Russia is not planning to invade Ukraine. Putin is not a “bad actor” out to recreate the Soviet Empire. Ukraine is not a fledgling democracy just minding its own business. As a summary review of the documented record shows, Ukraine is being used by geopolitical forces in the West that answer to the bankrupt speculative financial system, as the flashpoint to trigger a strategic showdown with Russia, a showdown which is already more dangerous than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and which could easily end up in a thermonuclear war that no one will win, and none would survive.Consider the facts as we present them in the abbreviated timeline below. Russia, like China, has been increasingly subjected to the threat of being destroyed by two distinct kinds of “nuclear war” by the bellicose and bankrupt U.K.-U.S. financial Establishment: 1) “first-use nuclear action,” as stated most explicitly by the demented Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS); and 2) the “nuclear option” in financial warfare, measures so extreme that they would be tantamount to laying financial siege to Russia to try to starve the nation into submission, as is being done against Afghanistan. Russia has now announced, for the whole world to hear, that its red line is about to be crossed, after which Russia will be forced to respond with “retaliatory military-technical measures.” That red line, it has made clear, is the further advance of U.S. and NATO military forces up to the very border with Russia, including the positioning of defensive and offensive nuclear-capable missile systems a scarce 5-minutes flight time from Moscow. Russia has presented two draft international treaties—one with the United States, the other with NATO—which would provide legal guarantees that NATO’s eastward march will stop, that Ukraine and Georgia in particular would not be invited to join NATO, and that advanced weapons systems will not be placed at Russia’s doorstep. These are neither more nor less than the verbal guarantees given to the Soviet Union in 1990 by the duplicitous Bush and Thatcher governments, guarantees that have been systematically violated ever since. They are neither more nor less than what President John F. Kennedy demanded of Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which was successfully defused by the deft back-channel negotiations of JFK’s personal envoy, his brother Bobby Kennedy, out of sight of the pro-war military-industrial complex. It is urgently necessary that the United States and NATO promptly sign those proposed treaties with Russia—and step back from the edge of thermonuclear extinction. What we chronicle below has been happening, step by step, while most people around the world were asleep at the switch. It is time to wake up, before we sleepwalk into thermonuclear World War III. The Military Component The past 30 years of strategic relations between the U.S. and NATO on the one side and Russia on the other is littered with broken promises, beginning immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. Already in February of 1990, then-Secretary of State James Baker was in Moscow promising Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that in the wake of German reunification, which was to come about later that year, that if U.S. troops remained in Germany, there would be no expansion of NATO “one inch to the east.” But it wouldn’t take long before the Department of Defense would be plotting exactly that, with the process getting fully underway during the administration of President Bill Clinton. The first round of post-German unification expansion of NATO came in 1999 with the admission of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, followed in 2004 by all three Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Four more Balkan countries joined in the years following, bringing NATO’s membership up to 30 countries. In the middle of that process, during the George W. Bush Administration, the U.S. also began to dismantle the system of strategic arms control assembled during the Cold War, beginning with the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty. The Trump Administration accelerated the process by withdrawing the U.S. from the INF Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty, leaving only the New START treaty, which was extended by President Joe Biden shortly after he took office, as the only nuclear arms control treaty remaining between the U.S. and Russia. The turning point in the current war danger came in 2014. The ongoing efforts to pull Ukraine into the EU common market through the Ukrainian-European Association Agreement, were rejected as untenable by Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych government in late 2013, when it became clear that it would de facto associate Ukraine with NATO and grant European goods unlimited access to the Russian market. Yanukovych’s turn against the EU led to the “Euromaidan” protests by proponents of aligning Ukraine with the European Union, which in January 2014 escalated into deadly clashes as these demonstrations were taken over by pro-Nazi elements, including those associated with the figure of Stepan Bandera, the notorious Ukrainian Nazi who worked closely with Hitler during World War II. In February, the violence escalated, and Yanukovych was driven from office, and the new government began to adopt strong measures against the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine, especially in Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. All of this was done with full backing from London and Washington, with U.S. State Department official Victoria Nuland playing a prominent role. EIR published a detailed fact sheet and several in depth reports in its February 7, 2014, issue. The fact sheet is available at this link. On March 16, 2014, a referendum was held in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the local government of Sevastopol, asking the populations whether they wanted to join the Russian Federation or retain Crimea’s status as a part of Ukraine. In Crimea, 97% voted for integration into the Russian Federation with an 83% voter turnout; in Sevastopol there was also a 97% vote for reintegration into the Russian Federation with an 89% voter turnout. There was no “Russian military invasion of Ukraine,” nor forcible changing of any borders. All throughout this time period, Moscow protested NATO’s eastward march, but to no avail. “Despite our numerous protests and pleas, the American machine has been set into motion, the conveyor belt is moving forward,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his dramatic March 1, 2018 Address to the Federal Assembly, in which he publicly announced the new generation of strategic weapons that Russia had under development, at least two of which, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle for ICBMs and the Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile, have since been introduced into service.

Remember the energy hoaxes of the 1970s, when alleged boycotts by OPEC oil producers were the excuse given by Kissinger and Schlesinger for soaring gas and oil prices? The same kind of fraud is being perpetrated again, by the politicians run by corporate cartels; only this time, it is not only being used to drive up prices, but to provoke a highly-dangerous military confrontation between the Trans-Atlantic countries and Russia. Putin exposed this in a national televised press conference last week. Did you read about it or hear about it in the western mainstream media?????

Dec. 25 — Following a flawless launch today at 7:20 a.m. EST of the James Webb Space Telescope from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana, Greg Robinson, NASA Webb program director told a press conference: “The world gave us this telescope, and today we give it to the world.” Indeed, the building and crafting of this precision instrument has involved over 10,000 people from over 14 countries, working together over 25 years.NASA tweeted, “We have LIFTOFF of the @NASAWebb Space Telescope! … the beginning of a new, exciting decade of science climbed to the sky. Webb’s mission to #UnfoldTheUniverse will change our understanding of space as we know it.” Using optics that can see in the infrared spectrum, this new “gift” to humanity will examine every aspect of our cosmos history, including a look at first galaxies formed 13.5 billion years ago, as well as the atmospheres of exoplanets, and hopefully answer questions about how planets formed and evolved. It also will observe the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The Webb telescope is “unequaled in size and complexity,” the Indian web daily NDTV reports. To give the reader a sense of Webb’s magnification power, “#JWST can see the heat signature of a bumblebee in the distance of the moon,” Dr. John Mather Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, Tweeted. During the next “29 days on edge” the Webb will perform a series of complex tasks to ready itself for gazing into the deep space of our Universe. On day three its five-layer sunshield will begin to unfurl. It is “the size of a tennis court,” CNN reports. By day five the sunshield is expected to fully deploy, a process using 107 release mechanisms. Then two weeks into its flight the primary mirror will deploy, and its 18 hexagonal mirrors are to align into “precise positions using 126 actuators,” Florida Today reports. Once all the readying tasks are done, Webb will fire its thruster to travel to its destination, nearly 1 million miles from Earth. Reflecting the “simultaneity of eternity” and man’s role in developing the Universe, it is noteworthy that the Webb telescope’s destination is what is known as the Lagrange 2 point. Its new home is so named after Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange who in 1772 discovered five unique points of equilibrium between the forces of gravity of the Sun, Earth and the Moon. This L2 point will allow for the Webb to remain in an orbit with Earth, the Sun and the Moon on the same side as its solar shield while being close enough to Earth for communications. Webb project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan pointed to the lasting import of this “gift” when he said, “Webb will probably also reveal new questions for future generations of scientists to answer, some of whom may not even be born yet.”

On Christmas Day, 1776, George Washington restored hope and optimism within the struggling colonies and the bedraggled Continental Army that the British yoke could be removed and a free nation could be established as a beacon of hope for all mankind. It meant that Christmas celebrations had to be replaced with a stealth surprise attack, crossing the ice-filled Delaware River, in order to win a victory and restore confidence that the colonies could defeat the British.Today, Christmas Day 2021, the Schiller Institute has released a timeline with a stern warning contained in its title: “Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III?” While Christmas is a time to give blessings and prayers for Peace On Earth and Goodwill Towards Men (Luke 2:14), we, like George Washington before us, must recognize that there can be no peace or goodwill if the current descent into war and a new dark age are not addressed and reversed, immediately. How can we celebrate the birth of the child Jesus as a savior of mankind while the trans-Atlantic nations are denying the means of subsistence to millions of children facing starvation in Afghanistan, in Yemen, and other nations as well? How can we honor the Prince of Peace while our political leaders are threatening economic destruction and even nuclear war on Russia and China? President Vladimir Putin reflected this same sentiment during his four hour annual year end press conference Dec. 23. “Mr. President,” he was asked, “what should we prepare for? What is a realistic outlook, and since the word ‘war’ has been said out loud, have we estimated the probability of war even as the result of a provocation?” Putin answered by reviewing the history of Ukraine, which was created as a nation as part of the Soviet Union in 1922-24, including regions which were historically Russian, and with majority populations which spoke Russian. With the collapse of the U.S.S.R., these Russian citizens were stranded outside their own country, both in Crimea and the Donbas, but Russia accepted this—until the U.S.-backed neo-Nazi coup against the elected government in 2014. Putin said he could not turn his back on the Russian people in Crimea who voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, but when the people of the Donbas formed independent republics, he negotiated with Kiev, and with the Western powers, to not use military force against them, while peace was negotiated. But now, Putin said, “we hear: war, war, war,” with preparations to use military force against the Donbas, while “under the cover of these new weapon systems [delivered by the U.S.], radicals may well decide to settle the Donbas issue, as well as the Crimea issue.” Most revealingly, Putin concluded his answer: “This is a serious matter. I have just spoken about our plans for infrastructure development, social policy, and healthcare. But what does it all mean if we end up in the conflict you are asking about? This is not our choice, and we do not want it.” There are some positive steps, however tentative, indicating that some in the West are trying to pull back from the brink. A ceasefire was negotiated in Ukraine by the OSCE, working with representatives from Kiev, the Donbas and Russia. Talks are planned for early January between Russia, the U.S. and several European states on the security demands presented by Russia, as well as strategic stability. Putin said that “the overall response we have been seeing has been quite positive. Our American partners are telling us that they are ready to launch this conversation…. Both sides have appointed representatives.” Also indicating some steps toward sanity, the UN has agreed to lift sanctions on humanitarian aid to be delivered to Afghanistan over the next year, while former Afghan President (during the occupation) Hamid Karzai, told CNN that the world must work with the reality on the ground, meaning the Taliban government, and to “bring Afghanis together.” Asked about Taliban “atrocities,” Karzai said there were atrocities on all sides—Americans bombing villages, Taliban suicide bombers. Now there must be peace: “we must plan for the future.” He added that there had been some small aid during the war—some roads, some education facilities and so fourth, “but under the name of a war against terorism, it has been a disaster for us.” He asked for a “relationship of respect and understanding” between Afghanistan and the U.S. While we mobilize to prevent war, to reverse the financial and economic collapse, to provide modern health systems to all nations, to build independent and productive nations worldwide, to restore classical culture—these are all One, and will only be achieved as a One, a new paradigm for mankind. Let us celebrate Christmas with that dedication, that commitment to truly achieve Goodwill Towards Men.

Dec. 24, 2021 — The former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai (2001-2014) said on CNN Dec. 23: “The reality on the ground is that the Taliban are now the de facto authorities in the country.” He welcomed the UN Security Council action, temporarily removing the block of sanctions from the delivery of aid, saying that it is “maybe not enough, but it is a start.”Karzai became the President of Afghanistan in December 2001, following the U.S./NATO invasion. Asked whether the international community should work with the Taliban, he said: “Definitely there will be instances when they have to work with the reality on the ground.” And he was clear, the Taliban is the reality on the ground. When challenged on the UN report on instances of executions and charges of torture and atrocities by the Taliban, Karzai would not countenance such divisive techniques: “The issue of atrocities is unfortunately a part of our lives. Atrocities have been committed on all sides.... The suffering from atrocities is on all sides.” He recounted multiple examples on all sides, especially the bombing of villages by Americans and suicide bombings in cities by Taliban; and concluded that Afghanistan has been suffering for some other peoples’ designs. That has to stop. Now we must plan for our future. That is the way forward. The Taliban must invite Afghans back and must dialogue and collaborate with them. Some of the Taliban leadership had contacted him when they arrived in Kabul city. Now they need to bring security to Afghan lives, and that includes psychological security. We must “do all that is necessary to bring Afghanis together.” Pressed to criticize the withdrawal of the Americans, he admitted: “If that had been done honestly,” it would have been different. The rush to the airport, it was a disaster, “an insult to the Afghani people.” While it is appreciated that the Americans did bring some roads, education, in some form, electricity along with lots of other assistance, but under the name of a war against terrorism, it has been a disaster for us. “We want to be friends with the United States. We want to be allies. The United States is a great country.... But we want this to be a relationship of respect and understanding of two sovereign countries.”

Over the past weeks, leading US diplomats and intelligence professionals have come to the LaRouche Organization to sound the alarm that the nation is careening toward a nuclear war. They granted interviews to EIR precisely because they recognize that this organization has to unique potential to bring the world together. Leading Chinese economists, a leader from the Chinese-American community, and an Afghanistan Central Bank official have also stepped forward for interviews. Mike Billington, of EIR magazine, will review these messages, and the necessary solutions to stop the war danger and restore sanity and development in the world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin today held his annual in-depth press conference, during which he made the point emphatically that the two proposals he presented last week to the United States and to NATO, for the purpose of discussion and agreement on spelling out terms of security, are not optional. He said evenly of the U.S. reaction, “We have so far seen a positive reaction. U.S. partners told us that they are ready to begin this discussion, these talks, at the very start of next year.” But he pointed out that NATO had “cheated” Russia, with eastward expansion, and Russia needs immediate security guarantees.Putin said that there have been “five waves” of NATO movement of forces eastward toward Russian borders. This forward deployment is now at a threatening phase, and must be de-escalated and contained. Imagine, he said, if foreign forces placed missiles in Canada and Mexico. That is how it is now against Russia, with NATO in Poland and Romania. The reality of President Putin’s point—with the presence of British and U.S. personnel and weapons in Ukraine, and many other deployments, is evident to anyone, “with eyes to see.” The Schiller Institute will soon issue a concise history of the military and economic moves against Russia by the U.S., UK and NATO, and make the record irrefutably clear. This is to further the mobilization for sanity to prevail against what otherwise will be inevitable war—perhaps triggered “by accident.” People everywhere are called upon to exert leadership for the urgent, common good of peace and economic development. The same need for leadership initiative is presented by the urgent situation in Afghanistan, for which there are important updates. On Dec. 22, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted up Resolution 2615, which opens the way for humanitarian aid to get around the raft of sanctions maintained by the U.S., UK, and the principal UNSC Resolution 2255 (from 2015,) and to flow into Afghanistan to avert mass death. At present, 95% of the population are in worsening poverty, 23 million of 38 million are marching toward starvation, and 9 million are in famine, as reported by the World Food Program’s David Beasley. The new measure exempts from sanctions, humanitarian aid (medicine, food, fuel, clothing, logistics and staff, remittances, cash transfers for necessities—where a market exists to purchase them), and so on, for one year. Donation announcements are coming forth from other nations, among them, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia. Today, the World Health Organization announced aid for a key hospital in Kandahar city, capital of Kandahar Province, in southern Afghanistan. The WHO tweeted, “Mirwais Regional Hospital in war-affected Kandahar Province has received 13 types of life-saving equipment to treat patients of mass casualty events in the region…. Who stands with the people of Afghanistan. Currently the world’s largest humanitarian emergency, Afghanistan is contending not only with COVID-19, but also acute watery diarrhea (AWK), dengue, measles, polio and malaria.” None of this aid reaches the scale required, nor does it involve concerted action among the major powers, which is sorely needed. Nevertheless, both the aid, and the UNSC unanimous vote yesterday, count a great deal right now, in terms of forward motion. On Monday, the UNSC turned down the prior draft version of the Resolution, when China and Russia voted against it, because the measure called for case-by-case judgment of each aid initiative on whether it could have a waiver from the sanctions. This would be an unworkable accommodation to sanctions that should not be there in the first place. A new text was drafted, which passed on Wednesday. Moreover, the U.S. Treasury Department then issued a statement yesterday, confirming that it will honor and apply the new UNSC measure (with provisional language), which gives some assurance that aid and related commercial activity (e.g., shipping of grain, water chemicals, etc.) can go on without U.S. retaliation. The Treasury unit, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is an economic hit squad, issued guidelines on how they will follow the UN Resolution. This adds some confidence, since otherwise, the word of the U.S. is no longer trusted. The moral necessity for action to save Afghanistan was strongly set at the Dec. 19 extraordinary session of the Council of Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, overriding several internal contradictions. The follow-on developments include a meeting earlier this week between Uzbek leaders and Afghan acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, in which the tri-country rail project connecting Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan was discussed. It is notable that the OIC Council of Ministers has welcomed Uzbekistan’s offer that the city of Termez would become a new hub for transport of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. The breakthrough required, is for the $9.5 billion in Afghan funds to be released from wrongful withholding by U.S. and European authorities and go towards stabilizing national functioning and development by Afghan institutions. The “Operation Ibn Sina” called for by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche, lays out the road map for what must be done to construct a modern health system and build up the infrastructure platform to sustain it. The new 4-minute video issued by the Schiller Institute makes the point clearly, and adds to the worldwide campaign. It is titled, “Will You Allow Genocide Against the People in Afghanistan? Unfreeze the Funds.” This Christmas and holiday period is exactly the right time to get active; be a force for the good!