As the danger of war is again being ramped up, and plans for consolidating a new phase of a financial empire committed to deadly austerity against the majority of the world's population are being implemented, it is essential to keep focused on who and what is running that empire, and the policy solutions which can assure its defeat. Our commitment is to both provide the intelligence as to who are the real enemies, and what policies can defeat them -- based on Lyndon LaRouche's proven expertise as a forecaster and as a physical economist.
By Harley SchlangerDec. 6 -- On December 9-10, the Biden administration will convene a "Summit for Democracy", with the announced intent "to renew democracy at home and confront autocracies abroad." The themes to be addressed are 1.) "Defending against authoritarianism"; 2.) "Addressing and fighting corruption"; and 3.) "Promoting respect for human rights."
Globally, does democracy—rule by the people—include all people, or only the manipulated opinions of those who reside in nations possessing enormous military, logistical, and informational power? If the world took a vote, would it endorse current U.S. policy?Following the video summit between Presidents Biden and Putin—which comes just days after a flurry of breathless claims that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine, the United States on Dec. 9 will open its “democracy” summit, in which that word will be twisted to mean whatever the purveyors of color revolutions wish it to mean. Hysterical and numerically impossible claims about Russia mounting an army to invade Ukraine sound like the intended outcome of a scheme under which Ukraine, with U.S. and other military or at least (im)moral support, launches an attack to retake the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. Were these regions to request (and receive) Russian support, the entire operation would be reported as though it were an unprovoked Russian attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty. This would parallel the situation in Crimea, in which a complex situation created following a coup backed by the U.S. and U.K. was presented as a simple matter of a Russian invasion of that peninsula. How should Russia respond to such an action by Ukraine? And how should you act today to prevent such a situation from unfolding? The ongoing assault on China comprises several flanks: hypocritical claims of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, promotion of a drive for Taiwan independence, and attacks on the upcoming Olympics beginning in February 2022. These destructive strategies of conflict are coming from the supposedly “democratic” leaders of the trans-Atlantic world, who have left a disaster in Afghanistan and cruelly deny the humanitarian and development assistance that nation so desperately needs. An op-ed in Al Jazeera, written by an international group of supporters of Afghanistan, sums it up: “The Afghan people should not be denied vital healthcare and be abandoned without food because the international community sees economic starvation as the only available tool to influence the Taliban regime. The international community is effectively punishing Afghan civilians for the actions of a regime brought upon them by force.” The op-ed concludes, “The international community that 20 years ago promised to support Afghans in their pursuit of peace, prosperity and human rights has a moral obligation to stop its freefall towards starvation and death. And the time to act is now.” Is “democracy” practiced by murdering the people of Afghanistan? Are the “democratic rights” of the people of Russia supported by pursuing a reckless policy that threatens military engagement? Are the aspirations for “freedom” of the Chinese people advanced by stirring up trouble for them and their country, to prevent its growth? The paradigm that drives this cruelty and fosters the cultivated indifference that tolerates it must be replaced. But how? The economic success of China’s development and its willingness to bring its infrastructural know-how, hard capabilities and financing to projects around the world through its Belt and Road Initiative is a promising reference. The ongoing Covid situation presents an opportunity to address the pitiful state of health infrastructure in much of the world, including significant portions of what are considered to be “developed” countries. Can an initiative to partner with long-suffering Afghanistan to develop a modern health infrastructure in that nation force a rethinking of national goals and serve as a catalyst to bring into being a new paradigm of statecraft? Will the conflict between what is promised under a Green New Deal, and the physical economic despair that that policy’s implementation would necessitate, be used to provoke a deeper understanding of power density and infrastructure platforms? The answers to these questions lie in our hands. Lyndon LaRouche and his movement have, over decades, developed, fought for, and succeeded in realizing policies capable of reversing economic collapse and inflation, cultural decay and division, geopolitics, and scientific stagnation. Will you ensure that those efforts succeed?
As a virtual summit has been confirmed between Presidents Biden and Putin, taking place on Pearl Harbor Day, the psy-war push against Russia has escalated. According to intel and military officials, media and think tankers, Russia will likely soon invade Ukraine. They are mapping out a strategy to "punish" Russia if this happens, to mobilize world opinion against Putin. Don't fall for it. It is a classical distraction operation, to take your mind off inflation, energy shortages, and the collapse of the health care system, among other reasons.
Diane Sare, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate from New York, issued a campaign statement pointing to the hypocrisy of the United States holding a "Summit for Democracy" while her state is depriving its residents of the opportunity to vote for a candidate of their choosing, through nearly impossible ballot access requirements for candidates independent of the two-party system. The LaRouche Organization agrees with Sare's criticism, which opens with a quote from Matthew: Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew 7:5)Sare writes that on December 9-10, 2021, "U.S. President Joe Biden will host a virtual 'Summit for Democracy' with the noble-sounding goal of 'providing a platform for leaders to announce both individual and collective commitments, reforms, and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad.'" "As an American candidate for the United States Senate from the State of New York, and as a long-time associate of the politically-persecuted American statesman and economist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.," she continues, "I am writing to urge the participants, and the uninvited nations, to look behind the flowery phrases on the State Department’s webpage at the actual state of affairs within the United States, and to consider that this 'platform' may be more like the platform beneath the feet of unfortunate souls waiting to be hanged." Sare's campaigning over the past year and a half has included "over 50 weekly symposia on various urgent topics, including homelessness, food shortages and famine, Afghanistan, education, election reform, nuclear power, water management, and more, with panel participants from among leading national and state experts including medical doctors, scientists, prisoner rights advocates, farmers, housing association leaders, teachers and others." "If I am denied ballot access," she stresses, "the voting public will have no opportunity to express their opinion on these important policies." At the time of her writing, Sare tells us that "of the several candidates supposedly challenging Schumer, I am the only candidate who has filed any report with the Federal Elections Commission. Thus, as of this time, if I am excluded from the ballot, there will be no opposition in this very important U.S. Senate election." She concludes: "Perhaps some courageous individual will ask their American hosts at the upcoming 'Summit for Democracy' about the question of ballot access in American elections, as well as the case of Julian Assange, and the case of former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. If the summit hosts were sincere, these clearly un-democratic matters would be at the top of the agenda as issues to be happily rectified." The full statement is available on Sare's campaign webpage.
The Schiller Institute sponsored a conference today to address the extreme health emergency facing the world as a whole. The pandemic is out of control in many parts of the world, while mass starvation of millions is now before the world’s conscience in Afghanistan, Haiti, Yemen, Syria and more. Titled: “Omicron: The Urgent Need for a World Health System,” the conference featured presentations on the situation and what actions are required, followed by intense discussion. Participants included Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, along with two other American physicians and a Canadian doctor, an Italian labor union leader, two representatives of The LaRouche Organization, and the moderator, Dennis Speed of the Schiller Institute.The conference opened, appropriately, with an exerpt from a report written by Lyndon LaRouche in 2001 titled “National Program Against Germ Warfare,” issued during the anthrax terrorism after the 9/11 attack, in which he located national biological defense as a matter of public sanitation, including access for all to clean water, adequate energy, and transportation, in addition to the required number of hospitals and medical professionals, emphasizing especially those facilities and staff which “serve those sections of the population which are relatively indigent, and are therefore the most likely radiators of infectious diseases.” He said that it is “public sanitation which remains the first line of defense of the population against normal epidemic disease, and also biological warfare attacks.” He called for a “crash program” to “restore those medical and infrastructural defenses that were taken down, piece by piece, during the approximately quarter-century since the enactment of the original HMO legislation,” referring to the beginning of the “privatization” of health care in the early 1970s. “If we do not do that,” he continued, “whatever might happen to you and your family as a result of a biological warfare attack should be considered now as virtually a ‘done deal.’” No one hearing those words from 20 years ago can fail to have a sense of dread, that LaRouche’s warning, having been ignored by the institutions of power over these past two decades, has now wrought a horrible result for mankind as a whole. In the U.S., where over 250 hospitals have been taken down over the past three years as “unprofitable” by the Wall Street insurance companies which now run our healthcare system, nearly 800,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19. By comparison, China, with three times the population, has constructed over 1,000 hospitals over the same time period, applied full public health measures immediately upon any outbreak, and as a result, has had fewer than 5,000 people die of the virus. This is one death in China for every 160 in the United States. Moreover, a disproportionate number of those deaths in the U.S. fell on the poor, especially the racial minorities, due to their average lower standard of nutrition and health care. This set the stage for a troubled but intense discussion of the crisis, with an emphasis on the now-proven fact that the failure to address the horrendous conditions of poverty and healthcare in the poorest countries has led—as Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned of, at the very beginning of the pandemic—to new variants developing in the those areas where the immune systems are most compromised, then coming back to haunt the wealthy nations which have hoarded the vaccines and otherwise ignored the desperate need for modern health systems in every country. Thus came delta, and now omicron. Zepp-LaRouche reviewed the out-of-control fourth and fifth waves of COVID-19 sweeping through Europe today, with triage now taking place in the understaffed and overcrowded hospitals in several of the richest nations on Earth. She reiterated the call of the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, which she co-founded with Dr. Joycelyn Elders in June 2020, for the world to unite in cooperation to build a modern health system in every country, and proposed starting in Afghanistan, where over 24 million people are facing immediate death this winter by freezing, starvation, COVID-19 and a near total lack of medical facilities. All the while, the United States maintains sanctions, and withholds Afghan assets under the hypocritical and genocidal charge that there are “human rights” abuses under the new government! Zepp-LaRouche motivated her naming of her effort as “Operation Ibn Sina,” after the 11th- century philosopher, poet and medical genius, who is a native son of the greater Afghanistan region. Above all, she said, the center of this global effort must be the image of man as unique and sacred in the universe. Dr. Elders reviewed the open letter which she has sent out to virologists and other medical professionals worldwide to launch an educational campaign, to inform citizens everywhere of the basic truths of the pandemic, noting that the failure of governments to do so has caused vast confusion and vulnerability to frightening conspiracy theories and fear of vaccines. Dr. Walter Faggett, former Chief Medical Officer of the District of Columbia Department of Health, who is a leader of the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, described the success of the Committee in recruiting young people in the minority wards of D.C. to become public health volunteers, getting training at Howard University where he also teaches. The task of the youth was to bring the truth about the virus and the benefit of vaccines to the Black population, where there is a legacy of distrust in medical institutions dating back to the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” and other racist studies. He said that since February, when the project started, the vaccination rate in those wards increased from 4% to 40% (still too low, he noted), and that the rate of new cases and COVID-19 deaths in the Washington, D.C. region is now one of the lowest in the country. Dr. Randall W. Maxey, a nephrologist, former president of the National Medical Association and founder of the Black Health Trust, presented his study of the far higher number of serious COVID-19 cases and deaths among those with higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and obesity—which, not surprisingly, correspond to the regions of large Black and Latino populations, what he called the “tragic smile” along the coasts and along the far Southern border of the U.S. He blamed racism for the rich countries hoarding vaccines from the nations of Africa, where he has had extensive experience. He described new innovative means he has developed for reaching large numbers of people virtually and identifying those with certain especially chronic diseases. Dr. Richard Denton, the North American Co-President of the International Physicians Against Nuclear War, described the work of his organization and the Rotary Clubs in overcoming fear of polio vaccines in nations of Africa and Central Asia, noting that the number of polio deaths was reduced to two this year (in Afghanistan and Pakistan). He described his work with the Taliban in Afghanistan in creating conditions for the vaccination of many Afghan citizens, Marcia Merry Baker from The LaRouche Organization and the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, addressed the global food crisis, stating emphatically that there is not enough food being produced, while farmers are under attack internationally, with farmers out on the streets protesting in large numbers, in India, Germany and elsewhere. She called for cooperation among farmers, workers and others to address the global famine now threatening over 40 million people with death by starvation. Alessia Ruggeri, the Chairwoman of an association of small and medium enterprises and a trade union leader in Sicily, Italy, presented her strong support for Operation Ibn Sina, noting that the Taliban has announced assurances for women’s rights, including the right to choose a husband and for widows to have equal rights to an estate. She later offered her full support for Marcia Baker’s call for an alliance of productive forces to achieve the required paradigm shift. She noted that there is much talk of ecological issues which ignore the needs and interests of labor and farmers, and called for international unity for industrial and agricultural production. The LaRouche Organization’s Jason Ross pointed to the fact underlying all the presentations: the massive and increasing poverty in the world as the primary cause of the health crisis and the threatening famine. China has demonstrated that poverty can be eliminated through infrastructure development, while the Belt and Road Initiative is the model for bringing such development to all nations. The Green Financiers who claim human beings are the problem must be crushed if we are to bring modern health systems, including the necessary clean water, electricity and connectivity, to every nation. In closing, Helga Zepp-LaRouche said that she had mixed feelings—both hopeful and worried. The combination of the global economic crisis, with old and new diseases emerging, the worsening hyperinflation, the danger of global wars between the US and Russia and/or China, threaten a New Dark Age for mankind. On the optimistic side, the dangers are bringing doctors and others together globally, recognizing that only through global cooperation can the crisis lead to a new paradigm for mankind.
Join us LIVE on Saturday, Dec. 4 at 1pm EST. Only if we develop a full international, in-depth response to the escalation warnings from epidemiologists, virologists and infection disease specialists as advocated by the Schiller Institute beginning in March 2020, and repeated by former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Joycelyn Elders just a few days ago, can we stop the growing death, economic despair and that has wrecked so many human lives. Join us in this conference, and recruit others to join the mission.
The importance of the Schiller Institute’s emergency Dec. 4 web conference “Omicron: Urgent Need for World Health System” is underscored by the continuing flow of reports of Omicron’s wide presence, even as its exact features are still under study. New cases are reported ranging from the boroughs of New York City, to Hawaii to Australia and points in between. The World Health Organization met today, and issued an advisory to redouble the defensive measures already prescribed to diminish transmission of other well-known variants of SARS-CoV-2. The occurrence of such a variant as Omicron was predictable, and was predicted early in 2021 by virologists, if no concerted world action were taken.The needed action to combat the virus has been outlined repeatedly since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and collaborators, most recently in the Nov. 23 international call by Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon-General, directed to enlist medical experts to help provide leadership. There must be multinational collaboration for emergency measures to save lives—vaccination, treatment, humanitarian aid, and at the same time, steps for launching in-depth construction of infrastructure for health systems in all nations, to end the conditions fostering pandemics. This is a new paradigm, which demands new economic and financial measures to carry it through. The LaRouche Four Laws, involving Glass-Steagall banking reorganization, plentiful and directed credit, and science drivers, are a core part of the mobilization required. The entire “Green” agenda is to stop such a mass regroupment of humanity. The feasibility of this new paradigm is dramatically shown today, in the opening of the beautiful Kunming-to-Vientiane railway, from southwest China to the capital of Laos. This 1,035 km span was a technological feat, and along with that, it is a key part in the Pan-Asian railway, which will connect mainland Asia, through Indochina, all the way through the Indonesian archipelago. A large ratio of the total track runs on bridges and through tunnels in the mountainous tropics. It has the longest bridge in the world, which at one point is 54 stories high. Not only does fencing protect wildlife, but overpasses are built for elephant migration. China’s President Xi Jinping today addressed the opening ceremony by video, stressing that Laos is no longer a landlocked country, but now will be a land-linked hub for the entire region. The technological success and purpose of this grand new rail line demonstrate that the feats involved in establishing hospital systems for every nation, and the infrastructure platforms to support them—power, water, transport, and staff—are not insurmountable tasks, any more than the rail line was. What is required is to defeat what’s standing in the way—the dead financial system, now blowing out in hyperinflation and breakdown, and to put in place the new system prioritizing human beings, nations and development. The ugly and very dangerous geopolitical side of the dead imperial networks was hyperactive throughout this past week, through three sets of multinational meetings. The shrill denunciations of China and Russia barely stopped at calling for war. NATO foreign ministers met in Riga, Latvia Nov. 30-Dec. 1; the OSCE met Dec. 1-2 in Stockholm; and the U.S.-EU Dialogue on China met in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2-3. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg outdid themselves to call for NATO to stand ready against likely “Russian aggression.” Co-hosts of the U.S.-EU Dialogue on China, U.S.Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Secretary-General of the EU’s European External Action Service Staffano Sannino denounced China for many imputed infractions, such as bullying Lithuania and mistreating Uyghurs. Speaking today at a Brookings Institution event on the Indo-Pacific, the pair praised the new U.S.-EU Dialogue on Security and Defense, which will meet in early 2022, and was announced by Blinken and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell. Moreover, Sherman and Sannino said that the respective initiatives of Biden’s B3W (Build Back Better World) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Global Gateway are “complementary,” and will compete against China’s Belt and Road Initiative. What did they offer to show for this? Nothing. Sherman could only assert that together, they will exert “collective strength” because they will work in partnership with India and the Quad. Even Victoria Nuland, now the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, got into the act. She addressed the Kiev Security Forum by video on Dec. 1, which happened to be on the second day of the NATO confab. Famous for her direct role in violent regime change of the Ukraine government in February 2014, Nuland said to Kiev: “All of the NATO allies were in solidarity with Ukraine today, and making clear that we are resolute in supporting your independence, and we are also resolute in sending the message to Moscow that if it moves again to internally destabilize Ukraine or use its forces to enter the country that it will be met with high impact economic measures the likes of which we have not used before from all of us,” To cap things off, new sanctions were announced yesterday against Belarus targets, by the U.S., Britain, Canada and the EU, which congratulated each other for doing so. Above all this din, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who met with Blinken on the sidelines of the OSCE conference, said very sternly that Russia is preparing proposals for how NATO must limit its expansion toward Russia. This is a follow-on to President Vladimir Putin’s Nov. 18 explicit statement that this must be done, given when he addressed a meeting of his foreign service officials. This is the context in which multinational collaboration against the pandemic and famine is, at the same time, action to stop the geopolitical madness, now promoting confrontation to the point of war. Be sure to attend and make use of the Dec. 4 emergency Schiller Institute conference and ongoing mobilization.
Russia and China are flanked to the west and the east by the threat of military conflict in the flashpoints of Ukraine and Taiwan. Warnings of a supposedly impending attack upon Ukraine by Russia are used as an excuse by NATO leaders to push for the stationing of troops and weapons in Ukraine. President Putin has made it clear that this would absolutely cross a red line for Russia. And the statement earlier this week by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Japan and the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily in the case of an invasion by the Chinese mainland was met with extremely forceful condemnation from the PRC.On Tuesday, Putin explained the threat posed to his country: “The Russian Federation also has certain apprehensions regarding the large-scale military exercises held near its border, including unscheduled ones, like the recent Black Sea drills during which strategic bombers, which are known to carry precision and possibly even nuclear weapons, made flights within 20 kilometers of our border.” With NATO expanding towards Russia over the last twenty years, including the placement of supposedly defensive BMD systems in Poland and Romania, with equipment also capable of launching Tomahawk and other missiles, Putin warned that an absolute red line comes from missile threats in Ukraine. "I will repeat this once again that the issue concerns the possible deployment in the territory of Ukraine of strike systems with the flight time of 7—10 minutes to Moscow, or 5 minutes in the case of hypersonic systems. … “So, what should we do? We would need to create similar systems to be used against those who are threatening us. … [W]e have held successful tests, and early next year we will put a new sea-launched hypersonic missile with a maximum speed of Mach 9 on combat duty. The flight time to those who issue orders will also be 5 minutes.” “Why are we doing this?” Putin asked. “The creation of such threats for us is the red line.” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the OSCE Foreign Ministers meeting in Stockholm that NATO’s involvement in Russia’s immediate vicinity (most notably Ukraine) would “have the most serious consequences and will force [Moscow] to take retaliatory measures.” The monster of armed conflict within Europe has returned. China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Hua Chunying reminded Japan: “During its colonial rule over Taiwan for half a century, Japan committed numerous crimes, over which it has grave historical responsibilities to the Chinese people. No one should underestimate the strong resolve, determination and capability of the Chinese people to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Those who dare to pursue the old path of militarism and challenge our bottom line will find themselves on a collision course with the Chinese people!” And it’s not just war! The ideological drive that seeks to use the threat of military conflict to destabilize development and control the growth and sovereignty of nations independent of the Anglo-American slime mold is the same force promoting the explicitly Malthusian agenda of the Great Reset. A pandemic is running wild across much of the world, with vaccines unavailable in sufficient quantities to meet the demands and needs of lesser developed countries. But instead of solving this problem, and developing an in-depth health infrastructure, the world is told it must mobilize tens or even a hundred trillion dollars of investment to prevent relatively minor changes in the climate. This anti-human paradigm requires urgently to be replaced with a new paradigm of growth and development. The deadly Covid pandemic itself provides an opportunity. By shining a light on our extreme lack of unpreparedness, both against emerging viruses and in terms of health infrastructure overall, it points the way to using the need to have modern, advancing health care for all people, as a driver for shaping infrastructural, industrial, educational, and cultural development overall. Join the Schiller Institute this Saturday for a discussion of how the full development of health infrastructure can serve as a driver to sweep away anti-human Malthusianism and geopolitics, replacing it with an approach coherent with the dignity of each human individual.
Like it or not, the emergence of the Omicron variant has called the issue: Either the pandemic is defeated everywhere, or it will be defeated nowhere. What some thought was “Africa’s problem” is now yours as well.When the pandemic first hit in 2019, Helga Zepp-LaRouche quickly called for an international crash program to build modern health systems in every country in the world, along with the full-set human and physical infrastructure needed to make that possible – from energy, to water, to food, to modern transport, to the education and training of skilled professionals. That call has since been taken up by the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites and its co-founder, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who on Nov. 23 issued an open letter to virologists and medical experts around the world: “The world’s healers must step up now, to do the job that has not been done. We must educate the people so that Science may supersede superstition, hope may conquer despair, and concern for all humanity overturns a self-destructive concern for just a select few of humanity.” This week, Dennis Small of EIR's Ibero-American editor, joined the Fireside Chat for a discussion on the strategy for defeating the pandemic.
When you look at the chaos and disintegration that characterizes the state of the world today, you are seeing the result of the application of British imperial neo-liberal policies. Forget the standard concepts of "liberal" and "conservative" that people choose to adopt. Radical libertarianism has been used since the 17th century as the doctrine which justified the British Empire, and today's flailing Trans-Atlantic world. The intent of the unilateralists of both U.S. parties is to double-down on the neoliberal paradigm, backed by U.S. and NATO military force. Unfortunately for them, this power is no longer uncontested -- therefore, by asserting their right to a unipolar world, they risk plunging us into a war of annihilation of the human race. The good news: they are weaker than ever, as their system is imploding; and the economic/political/scientific alternative developed by Lyndon LaRouche, which enabled him to forecast their demise, can be the basis for a new Renaissance. Join with us today, to send the Malthusian unilateralists to a resounding, universal defeat! International Schiller Institute Conference "Omicron: Urgent Need for a World Health System"
There is no such thing, either in nature, in politics, or in culture (particularly in good Classical composition,) as “equilibrium.” There is no such thing in successful global policymaking as a “balance of forces,” a “balance of terror,” or an “Earth in the balance.” There is also no such thing as “peace,” if one means by that, the “absence of tensions.”There is peace through development. The idea “peace through development,” as manifest in Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, or the slain American President John F. Kennedy’s June 1963 American University speech proposing a joint American-Soviet exploration of space not even one year after the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, represents a type of “isochronic” action, that can take the form of a physical force, as with the technologies based on new physical principles, that were the true goal of the “beam weapons” program of LaRouche in the 1980s. Such “heavy ideas” may proposed as a policy statement, whereby a leader and the society he or she represents, upshifts, or proposes to upshift the development of the entire human race, through some specific action, in that instant in time, which is “infinitely dense” with the potential for permanent change. Those conscious of their responsibility to discover, propose and implement the specific measures that can link that society’s momentary actions to the permanent survival of mankind, can allow “average citizens” to discover, with increasing perfection the historical necessity and reason for the existence of that nation, that leader, and that society. Lacking such, that society is morally unfit to survive, and will not survive for long. Is that to be the fate of the present day trans-Atlantic world, including the badly misguided United States? Speaking in an interview on November 22, regarding the 30th anniversary of his film “JFK” and his recent release of an hours-long documentary, “JFK Revisited,” filmmaker Oliver Stone noted that had it not been for JFK and RFK, unhinged military factions in the United States would have, in Stone’s view, launched, or attempted to launch, nuclear war against Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just over a year later, President Kennedy was slaughtered in Dallas. Not only is there no way, according to Stone, that the official “narrative” of those world-shattering events can be true; it is also true that, despite the existence of laws that had required the release by now of all or most of the files related to that assassination, that was, once again this year, not done. Some, probably including President Vladimir Putin of Russia, might persuasively argue, that at this moment, the danger of thermonuclear war is either as close now, or even closer, than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Specifically, Putin stated recently that Russia developed hypersonic weapons in order to efficiently counter the emerging danger of thermonuclear attack. “The Russian Federation is concerned to an extent over major military exercises carried out near its borders, including in the Black Sea just recently, when strategic bombers were flying just 20 kilometers away from our border, armed with precision weapons and potentially even nuclear weapons. All this poses a threat to us,” he said Nov. 30. Today Putin has also said that he now must “insist on the elaboration of concrete agreements that would rule out any further eastward expansion of NATO and the deployment of weapons systems posing a threat to us in close proximity to Russia’s territory. We suggest that substantive talks on this topic should be started. I would like to note in particular that we need precisely legal, juridical guarantees, because our Western colleagues have failed to deliver on verbal commitments they made.” The possibility of, as well as opportunity for strategic miscalculation, or the eruption of an unchecked “flight forward” impulse from another nation, like Ukraine, could, even in the short term, trigger a form of confrontation that would spiral out of control far more quickly than the credulous would expect. As dangerous, the still-prevalent idea, that “international affairs” are incidental to the day-to-day life among citizens of various nations, who think they are “faced with more pressing problems,” is the debased quality of thinking that prevents the trans-Atlantic world from mobilizing the moral fitness to survive in the face of well-known threats, let alone the unusual challenges of the pandemic, including the unknown mutations and evolutions of the coronavirus. China has given the world extraordinary good news, thanks to researchers who have identified an invariant part of the virus found in all presently-known mutations of the virus strain. An antibody called monoclonal antibody 25B5 appears to neutralize COVID-19 without mutations as well as “variants of concern” (VOCs.) This potential breakthrough may turn out to be as important in its ability to inspire a crash international program of joint research in order to resolve the coronavirus problem, as it may be in treating the disease. This is the sort of effort, given our campaign “calling all virologists and epidemiologists” as announced in the Joycelyn Elders letter, that would radiate as a form of cultural optimism. That would do more to reverse the rise in drug overdoses, suicides and serial/mass meurders in Europe and the United States than multiplying those nations’ police and detention capabilities a hundredfold. Speaking of isochronicity: Operation Ibn Sina, named for a renowned Islamic scholar and genius who saved countless lives through the radiating influence of his medical ideas and solutions over more than 600 years, also challenges insipid popular-cultural sterotypes, for example the caricature of the “violent, angry Muslim bomber.” The idea of an international health platform; the building of tens of thousands of hospitals and 10 million hospital beds worldwide; the creation of 10 million doctors, physician’s assistants and nurses; the emergency construction of the necessary water, sanitation and transportation infrastructure to supply medicines and food to those that are most in need; the provision of power by an additional 200 gigawatts of energy-capacity, largely nuclear, and largely provided to the poorest areas of the world, since they are those most likely to be the source of origin for lethal, treatment-resistant undetected infections, demonstrates that the eradication of poverty, something pioneered recently most successfully in China, is the world’s true first line of defense. But the inner life of that proposal is the change in the identity of each of us toward “the other,” a change in the mind of each and all of the ostensible adversaries that must drop their mutual animosities in order that the human race mutually prosper. That is the spirit that was seen in the November 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall, which was not merely “political realignment,” but the sudden evaporation of “the impossible.” Words failed the pragmatic politicians of the time all over the world. Only Beethoven and Schiller, and ideas of that type were able to speak to the hearts of the world’s people. In her Wednesday webcast Helga Zepp-LaRouche said, “I think the most important news, in this respect, is coming from the World Health Organization. They just announced that they are working on a global accord for pandemic prevention and response, and that should be announced by 1 March. Now, that is very late, but it means there is time to influence the global record, and that has been our concern from the very beginning.” Forty-five years ago, Lyndon LaRouche said: “Our approach depends absolutely upon applying our energies, on very short notice and in a concentrated way, at certain momentarily crucial points of current developments. Without the conceptual approach we employ, it would be more or less impossible to pre-determine which such points of access for intervention have the potentiality of translating a very small amount of concerted physical effort into a relatively massive shift in the overall political economic situation. Without that same specialized method, it would be virtually impossible to predefine the kinds of intermediate results which are the short term, direct goals of such interventions…. We have developed the capability … to direct our relatively tiny physical resources for activity to crucial points of the political-social process to such a fact that—with increasing scale and influence—we are frequently able to so alter the course of events on a national and sometimes a global scale from the course events would have otherwise followed. Because we are essentially alone, entirely dependent upon our own resources, because we have learned that there exists no other force which would duplicate our rule if we did not exist…, every major development within nations of the world as a whole forces us to place that on the agenda as a matter whose outcome will be significantly affected by either our effective intervention or failure to act.” Not October 1962, but November 1989, is our choice, not because we have the resources, or the “connections,” but because we have the isochronic power of creative reason, as that is expressed in the Operation Ibn Sina approach to “peace through development.”
U.S.officials and their British allies used the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Latvia to whip up war-time hysteria against Russia, relying on a fabricated narrative of a Russian military buildup in Ukraine to issue threats. Repeated bleating about "violations of the Rules-Based Order" may sound sweet to members of the Military-Industrial Complex, and resonate with Ukraine's corrupt oligarchs, but only serve to convince Russian leaders that they need to be prepared to defend their nation. Putin asked for a written agreement of promises made in 1990 of no eastward expansion of NATO. Chatham House lies that it is a "myth" that such promises were made, despite documentary evidence confirming the pledge. Will we allow them to lie us into a devastating World War III?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche's prescient comments in March 2020 about the danger that the COVID pandemic will get out of control if we fail to build a modern health-care system in every nation to combat it, has proven to be prescient, as nations are now facing the 4th and 5th waves, and new variations are emerging, especially in the poorer, former colonial nations. In her weekly webcast today, she pointed to geopolitics and neoliberalism as twin diseases in the Trans-Atlantic nations, as the ideological problems which have led to the breakdown of the system. This is seen not only in relation to health care, but the dangers of new wars targeting Russia and China; hyperinflation, which is eating into peoples' savings; and the likelihood of blackouts throughout Europe this winter, due to the idiocy of the Green New Deal.But this breakdown of the system offers those who can think outside the blinders of geopolitics and neoliberalism an opportunity to intervene, to overcome the errors -- some of which were introduced deliberately -- which now threaten humanity. She urged viewers to join the Schiller Institute this Saturday at 1 PM EST, for an emergency session of the Manhattan Project, titled "The Urgent Need for a World Health System".
Nursing unions from 28 countries have called on the United Nations to support a temporary waiver on patents for COVID-19 vaccines, and warned of a “crisis of global vaccine apartheid” that could lead to more new variants like Omicron and Delta spreading around the world. In a letter sent on Monday, the unions accused the European Union, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Singapore of “protecting the profits of big pharmaceutical companies at the expense of public health,” by opposing the so-called TRIPS waiver backed by around 100 nations.As of late September this year, 73% of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines had been given in just ten countries, the letter said, adding that rich countries had obtained 7 billion doses of the vaccines. That compares to just 300 million doses available to people in low-income nations. The unions, which represent around 2.5 million healthcare workers worldwide, urged the UN’s special rapporteur on physical and mental health, South African doctor Tlaleng Mokofeng, to take action on what it called “the crimes of the governments of some of the world’s richest countries.” In October 2020, South Africa and India began to press the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to approve a waiver of parts of the multinational Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, in order to improve access to vaccines in poorer countries. Supporters of the proposal at the WTO argue that a waiver would temporarily lift the patents on the world’s COVID-19 vaccines, making them easier and cheaper to produce. A WTO conference due to discuss the TRIPS waiver was postponed on Friday due to the Omicron outbreak. Failure to back the measure would mean “the violation of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” the letter coordinated by organisations Global Nurses United and Progressive International alleged. On average, only two fifths of health and care workers worldwide are fully vaccinated against the virus, the letter said. In Africa and the Western Pacific, that rate falls to fewer than one in 10. The WHO estimates that between 80,000 and 180,000 healthcare workers may have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. In recent days, the spread of the Omicron variant—first detected in South Africa—has prompted some world leaders to express support for the proposal. On Friday, U.S. president Joe Biden said the variant showed why it was important to secure the waiver quickly. “The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations,” Biden said in a statement. On Saturday, Norway’s foreign minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, suggested that the country’s new government would break with the previous administration’s opposition to opening up vaccine patents. “No one is safe until everyone is safe. Six percent of the population in African countries is vaccinated. The proportion of vaccinated must go up for everyone’s sake. For their sake, but also for ours,” she told Norway’s Verdens Gang newspaper. Signers of the petition include leading nurse/health care unions from Australia (Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation), Brazil (Federação Nacional dos Enfermeiros), Canada (Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec), Costa Rica (Asociación Nacional de Profesionales en Enfermería [A.N.P.E.]), Curacao (Curaçaose Bond Van Werknemers in Verplegende en Verzorgende Instgellingen), Dominican Republic (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Enfermería), Greece (Pan-Hellenic Federation of Nursing Staff (PASONOP), Guatemala (Sindicato Nacional de los Trabajadores de Salud de Guatemala), Honduras (Asociación Nacional de Enfermeras/os Auxiliares de Honduras), India (United Nurses Association), Ireland (Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation), Israel (Israeli Nurses Association), Italy (Nursind), Kenya (Kenya National Union of Nurses), Malawi (National Organisation of Nurses and Midwives of Malawi), New Zealand (New Zealand Nurses Organisation), Paraguay (Asociación Paraguaya de Enfermería), Philippines (Filipino Nurses United), Portugal (Sindicato dos Enfermeiros Portugueses), Rwanda (Rwanda Nurses and Midwives Union), South Africa (The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa [DENOSA]), South Korea (Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union), Spain (Sindicato de Enfermería [SATSE]), Sri Lanka (Government Nursing Officers’ Association), Taiwan (Taiwan Nurses Union), Uganda (Uganda Nurses and Midwives Union), the United States (National Nurses United), and Uruguay (Sindicato Unico de Enfermería del Uruguay [SUEU]).
Amidst talk of a person-to-person summit between Presidents Biden and Putin in early 2022, U.S. officials are unleashing wild charges that Russia may invade Ukraine in January or February. The prospect of a summit was raised during a visit to Moscow by CIA Director William Burns. At the same time, U.S. spokesmen are calling on NATO allies to build up forces on Russia's borders to "deter" Putin, and the U.S. committed to NATO expansion to include Georgia and Ukraine as members in the near term, at a meeting in Latvia. Who benefits from the schizophrenic quality of U.S. policy, when cooperation from the two nuclear superpowers is more urgent than ever?
Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders has drafted an open letter to virologists, medical professionals and those in the front lines of the battle to save lives, to join in an "international, coordinated and integrated educational campaign to establish a sane approach" to address the continuing threat from COVID 19 and the potential of future pandemics. The politicization of the disease has stoked panic and hysteria, heightening polarization, which has undermined adopting a competent approach to public health. The takedown of the health care system in the industrialized world -- typified by privatization and disastrous legislation such as Obama-care -- left nations unprepared to deal with a pandemic. Dr. Elders' statement can be found at the link below; Read it, discuss it, and join us in circulating it. Open Letter to Virologists and Medical Experts Around the World to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic | The Schiller Institute
Nov. 28 (EIRNS)—South Africa’s Minister for Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe, speaking at an African Energy Week conference in Cape Town on Nov. 9, denounced the demand to phase out fossil fuels, and explicitly denounced the cutting off of credit for fossil fuel investment, calling for an Africa-wide financial institution to assure funding for energy development. Although Mantashe did not refute the fake science behind the Malthusians’ demand to curtail carbon emissions, he unmistakably denounced the anti-development intent of the COP26 demands.As reported in South Africa’s FIN24 today, Mantashe said of the demands to curtail fossil fuels: “This is a sign of unsettlement by the rich countries, where we are converted into conduits of ideas of developed economies. Our continent collectively, and her individual countries [are] made to bear the brunt for heavy polluters. We are being pressured, even compelled, to move away from all forms of fossil fuels, including resources such as gas, which have been regarded as key resources for industrialization…. I think Africa must get together to develop a strategy to deal with this reality. Africa must seize the moment, we must indeed position Africa oil and gas at the forefront of global energy growth.” Mantashe insisted that the development of Africa should be piloted by the continent itself, and it should not be “coerced to take missteps,” arguing that the demands were “hollow.” “We’ve noticed with interest that when Britain, when China, when India, when Australia ran into energy crises, they all appealed to coal generation to give them more energy. You will notice that, but when they talk to us they say stop using coal immediately. That is the issue that we must discuss without fear.” The state of affairs in South Africa is indicated by the fact that (1) President Cyril Ramaphosa has not fired Mantashe as a result of the latter’s campaign for Africa to “seize the moment and defend hydrocarbons (and nuclear)”; and (2) there is no big campaign in the press attacking Mantashe, although the press has gone after him in the past as best they could.
National political leaders across much of the world are making, and being solicited by their media combines to make, alarmist statements and to spread panic about a new variant of the COVID virus, about which scientists know very, very little thus far. Not one of those leaders, at least not those of the so-called “advanced” economies, has yet found the honesty to acknowledge the truth that the emergence of dramatically altered variants confirms. The failure of these “economically advanced” nations to spread vaccines, modern health facilities and public health capacities as rapidly as possible throughout the underdeveloped countries, was humanly negligent, morally indifferent and deadly foolish. It invites the virus, circulating freely among the billions of unvaccinated, to create new forms and again threaten the entire world with death and economic destruction.A few, like former British Prime, and currently WHO Ambassador for Global Health Financing Minister Gordon Brown, have stated this truth in clear terms since Nov. 26 when the “Omicron” variant of COVID was identified. But governments in Europe, in particular, have preferred to spread panic about some new “African threat,” or “force of nature,” to hide the specter of their own negligence in dealing with this world pandemic for nearly two years. They do not know, at this point, that this particular, Omicron variant is capable of threatening such a new COVID world pandemic. But they spread panic by suggesting that it is. They are led—as in “Green Deal” fakery—by clownish British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has banned travel from 10 African nations (so far), and said, “Our scientists are learning more hour by hour, and it does appear that Omicron spreads very rapidly, and can be spread between people who are double vaccinated. There is also a very extensive mutation which means it diverges quite significantly from previous configurations of the virus, and as result, it might—at least in part—reduce the protection of our vaccines.” Thus Boris, embellishing his Black Africa scare, invents what “his scientists” do not, in fact, know at this point—the South African Medical Association chair has made that clear—and in doing so, he gives false ammunition to anti-vaccination agitators around the world. The European CDC and others join him. What national governments do know, they will not acknowledge, although an honest acknowledgement of it even now, could change everything for the better. They have flip-flopped and posed before their own populations, as Boris Johnson has, on how much vaccination is “enough,” on “herd immunity” nonsense, on hospital capacities and staffing needs, on masking mandates; and ignored the need to protect the entire world against a global pandemic like this one. And if they do not admit that now and reverse their negligence, a COVID variant to truly panic about, will arrive. The sane worldwide collaboration of virologists to provide accurate and responsible public health advice to populations about the COVID pandemic, called for by former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, is really urgently needed now. Being circulated by the Schiller Institute, Dr. Elders’ statement says, "I am calling upon virologists and medical experts throughout the globe to undertake an international, coordinated and integrated educational campaign to establish a sane approach to deal with this and potentially future pandemics…. “• What is public health and how must we join forces to implement tried and tested basic public health measures, including sanitation, clean water and nutritious food, and the provision of preventive and ameliorative medicines, including vaccines, essential to defeating this pandemic? “• What is the comparative efficacy of the various vaccines and other measures now deployed in different nations and regions in preventing serious illness and death? “• How do we provide adequate numbers of hospitals, health facilities and medical personnel in every nation, including the systematic recruitment of youth community health workers to assist now, as the pandemic is brought under control?…. “What the world now requires, to address the ensemble of diseases we could be facing, is the establishment of a modern healthcare system in every nation, including food, clean and safe water, electricity, decent housing, sanitation, roads and other infrastructure.” We can add here, that it is just as certain, that the sanctions which deprive Afghanistan of currency, remittances, electricity and functioning hospitals since August 15 guarantee the immiseration and death by starvation this winter, as well as another wave of desperate migration. Here also, the Schiller Institute’s alternative, having the United States and others release Afghanistan’s national reserves to its government, and integrating it into the Belt and Road Initiative for economic development, is clear and urgent.
With the deepening daily of profound crises involving pandemic disease, hyperinflation and a lunatic attack on efficient energy production, why are the Trans-Atlantic War Hawks acting to starve Afghan children, and provoke Kiev to launch an offensive against the ethnic Russian region of eastern Ukraine? At a time when cooperation, to enact policies for mutual benefit, is most urgent, the western unilateralists are again showing their murderous face. The failure to remove power from the hands of the Military Industrial Complex is an existential threat to us all.
Nov. 26 -- On October 22, one month before the 58th anniversaryof the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, President Biden issued a memo announcing a "postponement" of the public release of classified documents related to the assassination, which occurred on November 22, 1963. The reason given in the memo is "to protect against identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or the conduct of foreign relations...." It set a new prospective date for release on December 15, 2022. The delay was attributed to the COVID pandemic, which purportedly limited the manpower available to review the documents!
Nov. 26 (EIRNS)—Despite the flop at the Glasgow COP26 event and the unfolding energy and inflation crisis, the ECB goes ahead with its “shifting the trillions” agenda. In focus, is the global system of law which should allow suppression of fundamental rights to favor the climate agenda. As keynote speaker at the European Central Bank Legal Conference in Frankfurt this week, ECB Executive Board member Frank Elderson argued for an evolution of fundamental rights into climate rights. A chapter of his speech is “ECB: From Fundamental Rights to Climate Rights.”Elderson mentioned several cases in which courts have ruled against governments and corporations for climate crimes or omissions, to argue that such litigations will increase and will become extraterritorial, asserting, “The protection of the environment as a global right that transcends borders, leads to the assertion of claims with an extraterritorial nature.” In conclusion, “Just as the financial risk implications of climate change place it squarely within the mandates of central banks and supervisors, the fact that climate rights branch off from the tree of fundamental rights places them squarely within the mandates of the courts. I am confident that courts around the world will take inspiration from each other to ensure that climate rights—and I would say environmental rights, too—are being served by our legal system in the same way as any other human right. In this context, I trust that everyone will continue working together—and within their mandate—to develop solid legal foundations to address the challenges of climate change.”
On Nov. 26, the Foreign Ministers of Russia, India and China—the RIC cooperation organization—held an online video-conference meeting which produced an agreement among these three powerhouse nations on a set of substantive strategic policy issues: the need for a coordinated global fight against COVID-19; the urgency of international aid for Afghanistan, to stop the looming starvation in that country; the need to jointly fight against the drug trade and related terrorism; and the need to organize a new system of international relations based on win-win cooperation.Given the serious tensions between India and China over recent years, which the British have manipulated and exacerbated to keep India out of the Belt and Road Initiative, the RIC results were a significant strategic advance. Also yesterday, the Foreign Ministry of India announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to India Dec. 6 for his first in-person summit in two years with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Their agenda will be quite broad, and will include cooperation on major infrastructure projects; partnership in nuclear, space and defense sectors; and deepening India’s ties with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). What London and Washington most fear is that the Putin-Modi summit could play a useful role in helping India get on track for in-depth cooperation with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Although still tentative, these Asian-centered developments point in the right direction for the planet. In the West, however, a new Olympic record of policy failure on top of policy failure is being set almost daily. Right on the heels of the COP26 fiasco, the world is now being struck by a new COVID-19 variant—the Omicron variant—which scientists fear could be about to break through the existing vaccine protection. And if it is not Omicron, if we get lucky and dodge this bullet, it will be the next variant, or the one after that. The point is, the slow and woefully incomplete vaccination of the entire world, along with the lack of modern health systems in every nation, has left us vulnerable to such a disaster. What is happening is exactly what Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned would happen, if we did not adopt the necessary policy of universal vaccination and a world network of advanced health systems in every nation. These are precisely the policies promoted by the Open Letter to virologists and other medical experts by former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, and by Zepp-LaRouche’s Operation Ibn Sina. It may be five minutes to midnight, but it is not too late to adopt these policies, and get the United States and the nations of Europe on a sane policy path. As Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly emphasized in his call for the formation of Four Power Alliance to replace the current bankrupt international system, the United States has to join with Russia, India and China in that effort. LaRouche’s Nov. 18, 2008 international webcast was forcefully clear on that point: “Now, you have two ways to go: Either you collapse the world, with starvation and mass death, and those effects. Or, you put the thing through bankruptcy reorganization. And how do you do that? Well, what I specified is very elementary: I have four nations in mind that can take the lead on this thing. And the four nations, which together, represent the greatest consolidation of power on this planet: These nations are the United States, Russia, China, and India, as joined by other nations, which join in the same deal. We put the world through bankruptcy reorganization. How do we do it? We use the U.S. Constitution to do that…. “Now, if the United States says, that we are going to back up our dollar, and enters into an agreement with Russia, China, and India, to join us, with other countries, in doing the same thing, to put the world through bankruptcy reorganization, in which we will cancel most of the outstanding financial obligations: It has to happen. Otherwise, no planet! If you try to collect on quadrillions of dollars of outstanding claims, from whom are you going to collect, by what means, and what’s the effect? It is against natural law, to collect on that debt! How many people are you going to kill, to collect that debt? How many countries are you going to destroy, to collect that debt?”
A shipment of 50,000 tons of wheat and life-saving medicines is currently making its way from India to Afghanistan, across Pakistan. On Nov. 22, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan personally announced approval for the transit, which otherwise is prohibited, because in recent times, only exports from Afghanistan to India could cross Pakistan, but not the other way around, due to the enmity between India and Pakistan. Now, for a common humanitarian project, India and Pakistan have set their enmity aside.This is just one instance, not grand, but it is in the direction—the spirit—of Operation Ibn Sina, called for by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche in October. She calls for a multi-nation, all-out response to the Afghanistan dire situation, by providing emergency aid, and infrastructure-building, with healthcare capacity in the forefront, and an immediate return of the financial assets to the nation of Afghanistan. This is in the interest of all throughout the region, and worldwide. This perspective is urgent for the 38 million in Afghanistan, 95% of whom are without reliable food, as well as lacking water, shelter, fuel and power. The same driving spirit is needed to address the world hyperinflationary breakdown and pandemic, as well as to provide relief for all places of extreme need, including Haiti, Yemen, Syria, Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. Institutionally, this spirit is expressed in a new white paper released today by China, on the eve of the Nov. 29-30 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which meets every three years, and will be held this year in Dakar, Senegal, as well as online. President Xi Jinping will address the Forum by video Nov. 29. Today’s document is titled, “China and Africa in the New Era: A Partnership of Equals.” The hallmark of the report’s message is how the Belt and Road Initiative serves the mutual benefit of Africa and China, and all participating nations. The need for major multinational collaboration against the pandemic could not be more conspicuous than in the latest turn of events on the pandemic virus. Today, a new SARS-CoV-2 variant has been designated a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization, which dubbed it Omicron. First identified in recent weeks in South Africa, which has proficiency in genetic mapping, the virus has since shown to have been present in many places in Africa, and has travelled outside Africa, showing up in Hong Kong, Israel and Belgium. Among features of concern about Omicron, are mutations of its protein spikes which may allow it “to escape,” as the epidemiologists say, the current vaccines. These and other traits are still under scrutiny. The first reaction in the trans-Atlantic countries today was to “pull up the drawbridge, and fill up the moat” to fend off Omicron by banning travel to eight designated African countries. Whatever justifiable role travel bans and lockdowns may have, what is needed overall is what was spelled out Nov. 23 by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders in her call “Open Letter to Virologists and Medical Experts Around the World to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic.” However, the pathological commitment to geopolitics is still blinding the trans-Atlantic to reality of all kinds, and what must be done. Worse, it hardens people to not give a damn. Look at the latest of what is called the “migrant crisis”—in the Americas and in Europe, which is really a terrible expression of the breakdown of the West. The recent decades of multiple R2P wars and forced austerity have inevitably uprooted millions of people, now roaming in desperation to find some place on Earth to be able to live and work in peace. Look at the English Channel. On one day this month, 1,000 people tried to cross from France to land in Britain. On Wednesday, Nov. 24, this week, 27 people died when their boat capsized, and meanwhile, the same day France interdicted 671 people, preventing them from attempting the crossing. So far this year, 25,000 have sought asylum in the U.K., after crossing the English Channel, and thousands more have entered by other means. On Sunday, Nov. 28, there is to be an emergency meeting of certain European officials. But now a feud is in play between Britain and France. After Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron yesterday, with proposals including that France should take back Channel-crossers, then today, Macron disinvited British Home Minister Priti Patel from the Sunday meeting. Macron denounced the Johnson letter. No one is addressing the causes of the collapse and desperation. This brings us again to the need for activation of people, wherever their location, to exert leadership for the policies that will end this quickening hell. Helga Zepp-LaRouche spoke of this in her Nov. 24 strategic weekly Schiller Institute webcast. After reporting on the latest dismal government-formation process in Germany, with very bad policies, she made the general point: “I can only say, people have to wake up and start to fight for a different policy. And that can only be peaceful cooperation with Russia and China, the development of the developing countries—Africa, Southwest Asia, together with the Belt and Road Initiative of China. So the alternatives are there, but we need a population which is really becoming active….”
