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Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” a scientific investigation of the changes in geometric relations which take place during a phase change in nature, and the role of human cognition in recognizing and investigating those changes, provides the necessary guide to reflecting on the historic phase change taking place in the world today. Poe’s characters are two brothers whose ship is caught in a great whirlpool off the Norwegian coast. As the ship is pulled ever downward towards destruction, one brother recognizes the changed geometry which exists within this vortex, different from existed in the previous space, and creatively discovers the laws of this new paradigm, saving himself, while his brother, terrified, his mind in a haze, clings to the old paradigm and plunges to his death.The world will never return to the era from which we are now departing, into a new geometry. This is true of the pandemic, ending the era of privatized health care and the deprivation of health care for the poor nations of the world; it is true of the global financial system, horribly bankrupt for decades already and now racing into a hyper-inflationary or deflationary bust, a system which can not be saved; it is true of the era of endless wars unleashed by Tony Blair’s 1999 declaration of the end of national sovereignty, unleashing the Anglo-American“ regime change” wars; and, finally, the end of the delusion of the U.S. as the “unipolar superpower” and the “end of history.” Do not imagine that this means a better world will automatically result. The world could proceed as did the seaman’s frightened brother, clinging to delusions of the dying Empire, willing to submit to economic decay, war, pestilence and famine rather than reject the false axioms, to discover the new principles required to not only survive, but to build a more perfect world. The end of the 20-year disaster in Afghanistan provides the crucial test: Will the US break from the British Empire, and act on its actual self-interest, to see Afghanistan transformed from a maelstrom of terrorism, drugs, and perpetual war into a hub for regional and continent-wide development, restoring its ancient role as the “land of a thousand cities,” the crossroad of eastern and western civilization? The British Empire, like the dinosaurs, deserves nothing better than to become extinct. Tony Blair and other spokesmen for the Empire are bellowing their rage, like Shelly’s Ozymandius, that the United States has failed to obey their dictates—or as Blair so revealingly put it, that the Biden Administration has followed the "imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars."’ Ending such wars will, indeed, as Blair fears, mean the end of Empire. Perhaps the bloody ISIS terrorist bombs today in Kabul were aimed at stopping Biden from sticking to the Aug. 31 deadline for getting out, as the British and their assets in the US have demanded. Is it coincidence, or are the British still deploying terrorists to achieve their ends? This is the moment of truth for civilization. Lyndon LaRouche’s concept of the “Four Powers” required as a minimum force to end the Empire, is now before us. The four great cultures of Eurasia—China, Russia, India, and the United States (as the distilled representative of European culture)—can unite at this pregnant moment to make Afghanistan a model for ending the disintegration of nations around the world, suffering from the decades, or even centuries, of deprivation, poverty, and colonial slavery. From this, a new Bretton Woods financial system can be molded by the same Four Powers, and the grateful nations around the world which would join in the deliberations. From this, the replacement of the failed monetary system can be replaced with a Hamiltonian credit system to fuel the recovery of the collapsing western economies, driven by the export of the capital goods demanded everywhere to lift every nation out of poverty, becoming modern industrial nations. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has demonstrated the efficacy of such an approach. This is not just the moral thing to do; without it, disintegration and nuclear war are virtually inevitable. Mankind has faced such moments of peril in the past. In some, the failure to act led to descending into dark ages and depopulation. In some, people of vision and creativity led in forging a new Renaissance—Nicholas of Cusa in 15th-Century Europe; Zhu Xi in 12th-Century China, Harun al-Rashid in the 8th-Century Golden Age of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Gupta Golden Age of the 4th and 5th Centuries. The Confucian Renaissance taking place now in China gives hope for the future, but in the age of supersonic transport and the colonization of space, any true renaissance must be truly universal. This is precisely the message of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche over the past half-century, one which can and must be achieved—or as Helga Zepp-LaRouche often states, an era in which “we all can leave the age of immature adolescence behind us, and enter an era of adulthood, in which we concentrate on the common aims of mankind.”

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

Many questions were raised by viewers about our coverage this week of the hysterical British reaction to the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and Biden standing firm in that commitment, despite the attacks on him. Would the British unleash a terror attack to change the policy? Could they? It has happened before! Whether that happened yesterday, it is interesting that several viewers stated that there should be an investigation of whether the British played a role in the attack, noting that if they were so sure an attack was coming, why could they not prevent it?

As unfolding developments in Afghanistan have captured most people's attention, Federal Reserve officials will hold their annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming confab on Friday, during which they will confer on how to proceed with the Great Reset swindle without tipping off too many people as to their real intent. While they engage in "Fed-speak" on such topics as "transitory inflation" and "tapering", what they really are doing is consolidating a global central banker's dictatorship, to hand the biggest banks and financial institutions control over fiscal, i.e., spending policy. The only way to counter this drive for depopulation, is to mobilize for the implementation of LaRouche's "Four Laws", to revive physical production as an alternative to a bankrupt neoliberal speculative system.

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

When President Joe Biden made it clear in his afternoon statements to the press following his virtual meeting with the G7 nations, that he was sticking to his August 31 Afghanistan pullout deadline, a somber pall appeared over 10 Downing Street, Porton Down, and Gee Street in Clerkenwell, home of the Tavistock Institute. The dismayed Nigel Kim Darroch, Baron Darroch of Kew, said," It is going to take quite a long time for the West as a whole—because it is a Western failure, a Western disaster, this is not just the UK and the US—to recover from all this, to recover our reputation." He of “flooding the Trump zone” fame had to reckon with the hard truth that the multiple attempts to stop Biden from carrying out the promised Afghanistan withdrawal had not worked, and that the public relations stunt known as “Global Britain” had just been revealed to be “Windsor castles made of sand.”Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former Joint Chiefs of Staff head from October 2007 till September 2011—that is, under both Bush 43 and “Bush 44,” Barack Obama—confessed that he, Obama, and that entire administration had been wrong, and Joe Biden had been right, about whether or not to “surge” in Afghanistan with 40,000 troops in 2009. Biden had opposed the surge, suggesting 10,000 troops who would fight terrorism at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and otherwise train the Afghan military. Biden “had it right back then…I give him credit for that,” Mullen said. He is the first to exercise the conceptual option of what Ray McGovern has called “metanoia.” When Metanoia (“Beyond-Thought”) was personified, it was often as a goddess, cloaked and sorrowful, who inspired both regret and reflection, leading to repudiation of wrong judgements. Those who have been afflicted by chronic misjudgment of current history for the past several years due to “the pestilence of partisanship,” particularly after Lyndon LaRouche’s September 2012 observations on the post-Cheney/Obama “Bush 43/44” death of the political party system in America, are baffled by the present moment. Caitlin Johnstone, in an August 22 article entitled “Bush-Era War Criminals Are Louder Than Ever Because They’ve Lost the Argument,” observed: "After the US troop withdrawal established conclusively that the Afghan ‘government’ they’d spent twenty years pretending to nation-build with, was essentially a work of fiction, thus proving to the world that they’ve been lying to us this entire time about the facts on the ground in Afghanistan, you might expect those who helped pave the way for that disastrous occupation to be very quiet at this point in history. But, far from being silent and slithering under a rock to wait for the sweet embrace of death, these creatures have instead been loudly and shamelessly outspoken. “The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has posted a lengthy essay by the former Prime Minister. who led the United Kingdom into two of the most unconscionable military interventions in living memory. Blair criticizes the withdrawal as having been done out of ”obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’." Blair has long believed and practiced through Responsibility To Protect the idea that Global Britain must be vigorously defended down to the last American. But those that refuse to understand the British “Babylonian priesthood special relationship” to the United States, “can’t touch this,” and remained intentionally unenlightened. A statement written by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on the situation said: “The SCO member states reaffirm their intention to assist Afghanistan in becoming a peaceful, stable and prosperous country, free from terrorism, war or drugs, and are ready to join international efforts to stabilise and develop Afghanistan with the central coordinating role of the UN.” Afghanistan joining the Belt and Road Initiative is the pathway forward, and the United States, using the very real need for a world health platform, can turn its attention to joining these nations while simultaneously retooling and re-employing its own nation for that battle. Over two-thirds of the American people want the war to end. The Presidency has moved to honor that desire, and to complete that policy in Afghanistan. As for the evacuation’s chaos: has anyone considered that the fact that factions in the United States turned down the offer to coordinate efforts in Afghanistan, including evacuation efforts, with the Russians, and possibly others, contributed to the instability? Or that an announced and implemented anti-Covid-19 world health initiative, begun months ago, along the lines of what Helga Zepp-LaRouche had proposed in conference after conference since June 2020, would have also helped to “pre-stabilize” the conditions of withdrawal in Afghanistan prior to evacuation? Even now, and for a small percentage of the $2 trillion known to have been spent in the war in the past 20 years, the United States could help win the peace in Afghanistan, through a world health platform construction program involving all the nations of the area. Lyndon LaRouche said, in a 1991 interview given in prison: “Whether I remain in prison or not is essentially at the pleasure of the President, or the Presidency. The legal grounds for removing me from prison, by removing the sentence, by removing the conviction, exist…. The evidence exists. As to whether that evidence and that procedure will be acted upon, will be up to the political pressures acting upon the Presidency. I am here because the President wishes me here, and for no other reason. If the President were to change, then I probably would—the law would be allowed to release me from prison.” LaRouche, who campaigned as a Presidential candidate more than any other individual, realized that the institutional powers of the United States Presidency were of a different nature than the compromised capabilities of a prime minister. When the power of the Presidency of the United States is deployed for the good, it is immense, the greatest in the world. Biden’s completion of the withdrawal that Trump started, despite British-inspired Pentagon and State Department pressures to do the opposite, is, if completed, an example of that.

Listen to the whining coming from mouthpieces for the City of London imperial financial swindlers, such as war criminal Tony Blair, or former Ambassador Kim Darroch, who said it will take "quite a long time...to recover from all this, to recover our reputation." The truth is that Boris Johnson's "Global Britain" is a cover for continued British imperial looting, which depends on U.S. military backing to succeed. With the G7 leaders unable to convince Biden to remain in Afghanistan, they are preparing other traps -- such as Ukraine -- to keep the U.S. engaged in "forever wars." Instead, the U.S. must break with geopolitics and neoliberal trade and economic policies, and join with other nations to build up the capabilities of physical goods production, based on scientific and technological progress, to address mankind's needs for the next fifty years.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche delivered a thoroughly composed analysis of how the world has changed since August 15, 2021, when the Taliban marched into Kabul, and the U.S. and NATO left. “A whole system is coming to an end. The policy has failed.” All the lives lost, the chaos in the country, and the money spent—and stolen—served the interests of a greedy elite, but benefited no one else. She reported on the prescience demonstrated by participants at the Schiller Institute conference on July 31, and then the solutions presented in the follow-up conference on August 21. The solution begins with a rejection of neoliberalism and imperial geopolitics. Biden’s rejection of the demand by Boris Johnson and the Europeans that the U.S. remain in Afghanistan longer has provoked hysteria among the war hawks responsible for the catastrophe, typified by Tony Blair. It is now up to the Americans and the Europeans to join with Afghanistan’s neighbors to forge a durable peace, based on economic development. This means the West must junk the delusion that the “Rules-Based Order” must be accepted by all nations.

Why did we get into a 20 years’ war in Afghanistan? The British Prime Minister told us the United States had to. Tony Blair came to Chicago two years before that war started, and said the United States has to “protect” people from undemocratic governments London doesn’t like, by taking those governments out. The term “regime change” was born.Clinton agreed? Did anybody say no? Lyndon LaRouche did. He called it restoring the British Empire with U.S. forces. Nine months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. LaRouche warned a major terror attack was coming in the United States to push the country into “emergency government,” and into war. That was Jan. 3, 2001. But the 9/11 attacks were launched from Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden. Didn’t everybody agree on that? LaRouche knew better. He said on radio, as those attacks were ongoing, that some other force, not Osama bin Laden, “let down the American security screen” and punctured it to make those attacks possible. Again—to push the country into “emergency government” and set it up for endless war. Does anybody agree with that? All the families of the victims of 9/11 gradually got the evidence that a foreign government—the Saudi Kingdom—helped take down that security screen for the hijackers. The 20 years’ commemoration of 9/11 is coming up, and those families wrote to President Biden: “Don’t show up! unless you declassify the FBI report on these Saudi operations first.” He may do it. And LaRouche said the Saudis would not have done that without a wink from the British. So what did we do in Afghanistan? Pushed out the Taliban government the U.K. wanted gone. Blair again. He told his Parliament it was “for the protection of our [British] people and our way of life, including confidence in our economy”; and he told “W” Bush it would be just “a short-lived exercise.” The “Blair Doctrine,” the regime-change war policy, is the failure here. And he was found by a Commission of Inquiry to have faked WMD intelligence about Iraq. But the U.K.’s top military institute is still inviting Blair to speak on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. So Biden pulled American forces out. For doing that, the former British commander in Afghanistan, a Lt. Col. Richard Kemp (ret.), demanded that the American President be, not just impeached—court-martialed as a traitor. You can read what he and Blair and other hysterical British officials said, below. Biden a traitor to what? To “Global Britain,” they said. Watch out for Tuesday’s G7 meeting, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is chairing it. The British say: They will push the United States to stay and expand in Afghanistan. And they want Biden out.What’s wrong with them? This “Global Britain, and London world financial center, all depends on American muscle being directed by British brains. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche says, without U.S. muscle, "Global Britain" is just a pea-brain. Then the United States should get out? More than that. This is the chance to throw the table over and reconstruct instead of bombing, and instead of sending U.S. troops there to confrontations with China and Russia. Let engineers go in and build in that whole region, invest in developing it. Every country in that region agrees that Afghanistan, now, is where the United States and the other great powers could finally start to cooperate in new infrastructure projects and exports of capital goods and machinery. By flipping the war script that way, maybe the United States could get finally get some justice, for what the British banks did to poor Richard Nixon and the U.S. dollar 50 years ago, on Aug. 15, 1971.

What really happened on 9/11? Why did the U.S. go to war in Afghanistan, and remain for 20 years? Why in Iraq, in Libya? Who is the Patriot Act supposed to protect? Is it not important to note that the same networks in the U.S. responsible for these wars and violations of American liberties are the ones who have benefited most from these failed policies? And are the ones most hysterical about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan? NOW is the time to answer these questions, so Americans will never again die, and kill, to preserve the British Empire, the City of London, and the U.S. Military Industrial Complex. harleysch@gmail.com

British Retired Officer Wants To Court-Martial Biden for Afghanistan Decision In the aftermath of the collapse of the idea of “Global Britain,” it’s not surprising that there would be Brits joining the calls in Washington for Biden’s removal from office. Lt. Col. Richard Kemp (ret.), CBE, who once commanded British troops in Afghanistan, said in a Sunday TV interview that Biden should be court-martialed for “betraying the United States of America and the United States’ armed forces.” Kemp apparently doesn’t understand that under the American constitutional system, there is no military authority that can court-martial the President. Or perhaps he does and is actually calling for a military coup in the United States. “I don’t say this lightly and I’ve never said it about anybody else—any other leader in this position. People have been talking about impeaching President Biden,” Kemp told Fox News host Mark Levin. “I don’t believe President Biden should be impeached. He’s the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces who’s just essentially surrendered to the Taliban: He shouldn’t be impeached. He should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States armed forces.” Kemp predicted China, which along with Russia “has all but recognized the Taliban” as the new government of Afghanistan, will join with neighboring Pakistan and Iran to further “enrich themselves by plundering” the war-torn country. China is also poised to use Afghanistan’s wealth of minerals and natural resources as a way to “hit against the West,” Kemp claimed. “So the whole world just became vastly more dangerous. The U.S. government—President Biden humiliated the United States. He humiliated the United States Army,” Kemp argued. “I think the consequences of what’s just happened and what’s still happening are absolutely devastating for the whole of the Western world.” Observer Commentator: Biden Has Left Global Britain ‘Impotent and Friendless’ Andrew Rawnsley, Chief Political Commentator of the Observer, writes in a commentary posted yesterday that Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” has been exposed as “impotent and friendless” by Biden’s decision-making on Afghanistan. The Anglo-American special relationship was declared to be “warm and friendly” after Biden took office and made his first phone call to Boris Johnson, but “Now we know differently,” Rawnsley laments. “When it came to the calls that mattered over Afghanistan, Mr Johnson’s capacity to influence Mr Biden was less than that of the president’s dog,” he continues. “The withdrawal of what remained of the NATO presence in Afghanistan was dictated by abrupt and unilateral decisions made in Washington. Ministers privately admit that not only did they fail to see a resurgent Taliban coming, they have been reduced to second-guessing what the United States will do next.” The reaction of Conservatives in the House of Commons was intense. “Where is Global Britain on the streets of Kabul?” Theresa May angrily demanded of Johnson in Parliament last week. “I have never heard so much fury so ferociously expressed by Conservative MPs about the behaviour of the U.S. Behind their hot anger was a cold fear: the foreboding sense of an impotent Britain friendless in a frightening world,” Rawnsley writes. The future of “Global Britain” seems to be left hanging. “If we are entering an era of American disengagement, the questions are acute for a Britain that chose to estrange itself from the liberal democracies in its neighborhood at the same time as the U.S. was becoming a less dependable partner,” Rawnsley writes near the end. “Some plausibly conjecture that the future is a new world disorder in which the great powers jostle for predominance and norms of international conduct are trampled underfoot. This will be a rough place for a country in the north-east Atlantic with lots of vital interests around the globe, but not the means to safeguard them by itself and no one it can count on as an all-weather friend….” “‘Very well, alone’ did good service for Winston Churchill as a wartime rallying cry in 1940. British impotence in Afghanistan demonstrates that it is an utterly hopeless strategy for survival in the 21st century,” he concludes.

The Schiller Institute hosted an international webcast on Saturday, August 21, “Now, More Urgent Than Ever: Afghanistan—Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind,” bringing together speakers with wide experience, from six nations—United States, Germany, Pakistan, Canada, and Italy. Three main themes were struck repeatedly in the dialogue: Toss out the “endless wars” paradigm completely, talk to the new Afghan government-in-the-making, and get economic projects going.“Push for quick economic development,” was the advice by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her opening remarks. Saying that what’s happened in Afghanistan marks “the end of a system,” maybe not as big as the Fall of the Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, but as portentous. There has been a deep-seated problem of conducting never-ending wars, and geopolitical games. This must stop, and it goes beyond Afghanistan as such. She stressed also that, “It is high time to change the axiomatic assumptions about Russia and China.” Besides Zepp-LaRouche on the panel, there were Lt. Col. Ulrich Scholz (ret.) (Germany), a military and philosophy expert; Pino Arlacchi (Italy), former head of the UN Office for Drug Control (1997-2002), now professor at Sassari University; Hassan Daud (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment; Ray McGovern (U.S.) former CIA analyst and co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and Nipa Banerjee (Canada), Professor at the University of Ottawa. A question was taken up from Khalid Latif, director of the Center of Pakistan and International Relations (COPAIR). The co-moderators of today’s event, Dennis Speed and Diane Sare, pointed out that today’s discussion is a continuation of the dialogue of the July 31 Schiller Institute event, “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History After the Failed Regime-Change Era,” and several of the same individuals are involved. Sare noted the importance of the Schiller Institute in restoring the dialogue process, saying that, “people are losing the ability to have a dialogue” these days. Instead, we have ideological hysteria, as seen right now, with the fixation on accusations and blame over the logistics of the Kabul evacuation process, with no vision for the people and the future. Within two weeks of the Schiller Institute’s July 31 event, presenting a development overview for Afghanistan and the region, the 20-year U.S./NATO military action came to an end. The Taliban took over Kabul. Today there were meetings in Kabul among Taliban political director Abdul Ghani Baradar, former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation head Abdullah Abdullah, and others toward an eventual formation of a government, to be announced some time shortly after Aug. 31, when the evacuation period concludes. What we don’t need now, said Arlacchi, is “Talibanology”—speculating on their intentions and hypotheticals. Many others agreed, making the point that the intentions to be focused upon, are those of the major powers: What do the U.S. and the European Union intend to do? Will they, for example, work together with other major powers of Russia, China, and India as well as immediate neighbors of Afghanistan—Iran and Pakistan, and the Central Asian nations to the north, on humanitarian aid and economic initiatives? One in three of the 39 million people in Afghanistan are food insecure. There are dozens of thousands of internally displaced people, and thousands fleeing the nation. All this, with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing. Arlacchi reported his own past experience on a wool factory project in Kandahar Province, involving successful negotiations with the Taliban governor. In the July 31 dialogue, Arlacchi reported on the success in nearly eradicating all opium poppy cultivation over the period 1998 to 2000, through his UN program, in conjunction with the Taliban. Opium production then roared back after the U.S./NATO 2001 invasion. Arlacchi said emphatically today, “We should start to make plans on narcotics elimination” right now. On the question of accountability of the Taliban new government and projects, Ray McGovern raised the point that you can and should have a truthful monitoring process, which could come, for example from the United Nations. He raised the specific example of how the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, set up by Congress some years back, actually kept truthful accounts on what the U.S. and NATO were doing in Afghanistan, which documented that U.S. officials were lying about progress there all along. Prof. Banerjee strongly agreed on this point. These Inspector General documents were published in 2019 by the Washington Post, described by McGovern as “the one useful thing done by the Washington Post in the last 20 years.” Principal author Craig Whitlock, has just released his new book, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. The features of economic development for the region were summarized today by Daud, whose Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Pakistan borders Afghanistan, which has “national endowments, minerals, water, hard-working people.” He stressed that, “when the Afghanistan government is strong and stable, it can reach out to China,” and work with the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in which it already has observer status. It can become “a crossroads of the region.” In the past, this very region was referred to as a “land of a thousand cities,” Zepp-LaRouche stated in concluding the discussion. The idea of the New Silk Road, is again to create conditions for hundreds and thousands of new cities—science centers, and beautiful, modern new cities. The old paradigm is crashing down, not just in Afghanistan. War can no longer be a means of solving problems.

Crush the Green New Deal!

The unhinged explosion recorded in the Sunday Times of London by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair against U.S. President Joe Biden, over American forces’ withdrawal from 20 years’ war in Afghanistan, has underlined just what an opportunity Afghanistan represents, to replace poisonous British geopolitics with economic development and peace. Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche emphasizes that we owe this to humanity, which needs the development cooperation of major powers which could be launched in and around Afghanistan. That country stands in economic relation to its region and to South Asia, as America’s Deep South did to the United States as a whole before Franklin Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority transformed it.But Blair’s outburst reminds us, we owe it as well to America’s history of struggle against the British Empire and its centuries of exploitation of nations as its colonies and Commonwealth “partners.” Tony Blair began America’s era of endless “regime change” wars with his 1999 speech to the Chicago Council of World Affairs. He declared the Treaty of Westphalia principle dead, and demanded a new era of NATO war against developing nations for the “right to protect” (as in the “protection” the mafia once offered on the streets of Chicago and many other cities). Blair’s foreign intelligence service MI6 hoked up the dodgy dossiers of phony “intelligence” which launched George W. Bush’s Iraq War, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had “stiffened the spine” of Bush’s father for his Desert Storm. London needs American NATO muscle to run the world financially from London, frequent economic crashes and all. Geopolitics, the doctrine that one country’s or alliances interests are always pursued by screwing others, is British doctrine. And so Blair bellowed to the Times about America’s “imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars,’” which he feared would relegate “Global Britain” to “the second division.” His tuneless shrieking was accompanied by a chorus of other British notables, named and unnamed by the newspaper. We have just passed the 50th anniversary of Aug. 15, 1971, when the U.K. government, the Bank of England and the City of London banks forced a fatal decision by Richard Nixon which shaped all of economic and human history for the worse since then. That was the ending of the dollar’s link to its gold reserve basis. It was the replacement of Franklin Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods monetary system with floating-exchange-rate system which set off a half-century of more and more unhindered pure speculation, more and more frequent financial crashes of debt bubbles fostered by central banks. Working people around the world earn 12% less of economic output as a result; but London has re-emerged as the world’s financial center. The end of Bretton Woods produced “Britain’s Second Empire” as proven in the documentary of that name. On that 50th anniversary we celebrated the contributions of the late statesman Lyndon LaRouche with an international conference. He was the only economist in the world who both forecast, in the 1960s, the British-engineered breakup of Bretton Woods, and stood against it when it happened, forecasting eventual economic depression collapse and pandemics as its result. But we also intend to reverse it, bringing about the launch of a New Bretton Woods credit system geared to capital goods exports from the major technological powers to the underdeveloped nations, for the great projects of economic development which are the precondition for peace. Afghanistan’s Ambassador to China Javid Ahmad Qaem told Global Times July 16 “The only place where they could really cooperate, and at least there could be a starting point to cooperate between these rivals, if I can call them that, is Afghanistan,”—referring to China, the United States and India, but could have included Russia. If this opportunity for development and peace is taken, that New Bretton Woods credit system is in sight.

The individual who is among the most culpable for ongoing geopolitical confrontations which could lead to nuclear war, the Queen's Privy Council member Tony Blair, blasted Joe Biden for his "obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars'." Blair was not criticizing the way the U.S. left, but ending the war, saying that leaving Afghanistan shows the West has "lost its political will." Clearly, this apologist for endless imperial wars has not lost his commitment to unleash genocidal catastrophes. Not surprisingly, Dick Cheney's war hawk daughter Liz agrees with Blair, telling NBC News that proof the U.S. should not have withdrawn is that British parliamentarians and NATO officials are furious about the U.S. withdrawal! Keep in mind that when Blair talks about commitment, the British have been playing the Great Game in Afghanistan on-and-off since the 1830s -- with consistently disastrous results.

The British press is in a complete state of hysteria, as evidenced by the headlines reported in the BBC’s own blog. “Blair Attacks Biden’s ‘Imbecilic’ Retreat as Kabul Chaos Ceepens,” blares the Sunday Times. The Telegraph notes Blair’s attack on Biden, adding the subhead: “America shuts Kabul airport as Raab forced to turn to China and Russia for help in Afghanistan.” And on and on.Blair, a member of the Queen’s Privy Council, rounded on Biden (as the Sunday Times puts it). “We didn’t need to do it,” he wrote yesterday. “We chose to do it. We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’.” Biden used the term when he announced the withdrawal. Blair said: “For Britain, out of Europe and suffering the end of the Afghanistan mission by our greatest ally with little or no consultation … we are at risk of relegation to the second division of global powers.” The Sunday Times reports that “Ministers have warned that Britain will have to tear up its foreign policy after the debacle in Afghanistan, amid flaring tempers about America’s decision to cut and run.” The paper cites an unnamed minister who denounced American “isolationism” and said that the government would have to “revisit” the recent review on defense and foreign policy because the United States was no longer a reliable ally. “America has just signaled to the world that they are not that keen on playing a global role,” the minister said. “The implications of that are absolutely huge. We need to get the integrated [policy] review out and reread it. We are going to have to do a hard-nosed revisit on all our assumptions and policies.” Then the imperial “old sow” was let loose: “The U.S. had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the First World War. They turned up late for the Second World War and now they are cutting and running in Afghanistan,” was this minister’s conclusion. The tensions have reportedly extended to the troops on the ground in Kabul. Military sources have also told MPs that as tensions rose last week, there were clashes with the U.S. on the ground and “heated words” between British and U.S. commanders at Kabul airport, including one “stand-up” row.

China’s international news agency, China Global Television Network (CGTN), produced a six minute video of excerpts from the keynote speech by Helga Zepp-LaRouche at the July 31 Schiller Institute Conference, “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History After the Failed Regime-Change Era.” The CGTN video is titled: “Afghanistan: The Bright Future for the Coming Cooperation of the Great Powers.” It is certain that leading circles within the U.S., including within the Biden Administration, are watching closely as prominent figures from Russia and China speak at Schiller Institute conferences, and present LaRouche’s ideas in their media and institutional websites.They are watching, and some are listening and learning. Others are chewing the rug, and working with the U.K. to prevent what they see as the greatest danger to their Empire—the United States coming together with Russia and China to address the world’s existential crisis in all its facets—the danger of nuclear war; the pandemic; famine in multiple locations; the cultural decay across the Western world; and the financial bubble threatening to either explode or break out in an even more destructive hyperinflation. The ending of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, then, is not a disaster, as portrayed in the Western press. It is an opportunity for a great change in the course of human history. Mrs. LaRouche says in the video: “It should be obvious, even to the most incurable warmongers on the planet, that in Afghanistan, no military solution can succeed. In that sense, there must be a recognition that all such endless wars, like in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and so forth, belong to a paradigm of geopolitical thinking that has utterly failed. That means that the geopolitics of the British Empire, of the ‘Great Game,’ of the Arc of Crisis of Bernard Lewis and Zbigniew Brzezinski—must be outlawed forever. And there should be an agreement among all neighbors of Afghanistan that geopolitical manipulation must be ended and replaced by the application of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.” Zepp-LaRouche also points to the fact that even Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who generally sounds as mad as Mike Pompeo on all things Chinese, “during his recent trip to India stated that the U.S. government sees a positive role for China in the economic development of Afghanistan.” She pointed to the statement by the Afghan Ambassador to China, “who recently said that Afghanistan is the one place where the United States and China can actually cooperate, since they have common interests such as the suppression of terrorism and the elimination of opium production.” Zepp-LaRouche concludes: “In this sense, Afghanistan is at a crossroad. Not only for Eurasian integration, but also at a crossroad for universal history where we all can leave the age of immature adolescence behind us, and enter an era of adulthood, in which we concentrate on the common aims of mankind.” Recall that Biden held a high profile summit with President Putin, and spoke for hours on the phone with President Xi Jinping. Recall also the Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman held extensive discussion with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the Deputy Minister responsible for U.S.-China Relations, then chaired a major summit with top military and diplomatic leaders from Russia and the U.S. Afghanistan was a leading item on the agenda at both meetings.These leaders are abundantly aware that the ideas expressed by Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche, and the wealth of ideas in the voluminous writings of Lyndon LaRouche which have been translated into Chinese and Russian, are ideas taken extremely seriously in Moscow and Beijing, as they are increasingly around the world. What direction will the U.S. take at this turning point in human history? The American people are finally beginning to throw off their delusions, their smug confidence that life as usual will go on no matter what they do. As their economy unravels under the Malthusian “Green New Deal”; as the reckless printing of trillions of dollars to bail out the bankrupt financial system without any real economic growth begins to drive inflation to the point of explosion; as their children are being offered legalized drugs and encouraged to change their sex; and as they contemplate the very real threat of nuclear war from the anti-Russian and anti-Chinese hysterics in both political parties—a real resistance is mounting, and is increasingly turning to LaRouche. Afghanistan is at peace—for now. The Taliban today, unlike the Taliban of the 1990s, is working in close cooperation with Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and others in the region. Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, in addition to pledging no retaliation and for women to continue working and studying in schools, also told CGTN that “the people of Afghanistan need help of other countries. They should come forward and help in the health sector and also infrastructure and education. They can come to explore our natural resources. This is a general invitation to all countries, and we appreciate any country that they help us at this crucial time of our history.” Will the U.S. and Europe accept this offer, to work with China’s Belt and Road to build the country they have destroyed, the country President Ashraf Ghani admitted suffered from a 90% poverty rate? Will this approach serve as a model for rebuilding Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen? Join the Schiller institute on Saturday, Aug. 21 at noon EDT for a follow-up conference to the July 31 event, under the title: “Now More Urgent than Ever: Afghanistan Is an Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind,” at this link.

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

The Schiller Institute will hold a dialogue among leading officials on August 21, at Noon EDT, on "What Just Happened in Afghanistan?"

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

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

LaRouche independent candidate for US Senate from New York Diane Sare confronts Chuck "killer" Schumer with his crimes. August 18, 2021.

Two weeks before the fall of Kabul, the Schiller Institute presented a dialogue on how the U.S./NATO failure in Afghanistan can be turned into the basis for a New Paradigm of peace and development for the world. Events since then have shown how prescient the speakers were, especially in emphasizing that there is no military solution to end the "endless" wars. While the war hawks yearn for more war and unresolvable conflicts -- and the booty they can steal for their corporate war machine -- it's time for them to shut up, and get out of the way. This Saturday, August 21, the Schiller Institute will sponsor a follow-up event, on how to replace the era of failed regime change wars, with one of mutually beneficial cooperation. You can watch the event here.

With nearly all policymakers and strategic analysts in the trans-Atlantic sector of the world in a clueless state of utter chaos and hysteria over the developments in Afghanistan, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today convoked an urgent international seminar for this coming Saturday, August 21 to pursue the only available solution to the crisis: peace through development. The seminar will continue the prescient discussion held by the Schiller Institute on July 31, with many of the same panelists, as well as new ones.Zepp-LaRouche drew a crystal clear picture in her weekly strategic webcast yesterday: “First of all, I do not agree with the hysteria of the Western media that this is the end of the world. The first thing that must be stated, is that it ends 40 years of war for the Afghani people, and if people have any sense of what it means to live in such a long war, all the suffering of the civilians, all the terrible things people had to endure, in terms of drone attacks, in terms of anxiety, I think, first of all, it’s very good that the war has ended. “I think it is, on the contrary, the real chance to integrate Afghanistan into a regional economic development perspective, which is basically defined by the Belt and Road Initiative of China. There is a very clear agreement of Russia and China to cooperate in dealing with this situation. The interest of the Central Asian republics is to make sure there is stability and economic development; and there is the possibility to extend the CPEC, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, into Afghanistan, into Central Asia. So I think it’s a real opportunity, but it does require a complete change in approach.” Zepp-LaRouche continued: “This is an epochal change…. I think that if the European nations and the United States would understand that this is a unique chance, if they cooperate, rather than fight Russia and China and their influence in the region, and if they join hands in the economic development there … then this can become a very positive turning point, not only for Afghanistan, but also for the whole world.” Zepp-LaRouche made a special appeal to the United States in remarks earlier in the day on Aug. 17: “The United States must go back to the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers and the initial period—such as John Quincy Adams—that the aim of the United States is not to chase foreign monsters, but to build alliances. John Quincy Adams said that the United States should have alliances of perfectly sovereign republics, and this is now the moment to really do that. The idea is to not oppose China linking Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative, but rather see it as an opportunity to cooperate, and stop this geopolitical confrontation which can only lead to catastrophe.” She concluded: “That’s the kind of discussion which we have to catalyze.” The video archive of the July 31, 2021 Schiller Institute conference on “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History after the Failed Regime-Change Era” can be found here: The speakers included: Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder and President of The Schiller Institute; Pino Arlacchi (Italy), Sociology Professor at the Sassari University, former Executive Director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and former European Parliament Rapporteur on Afghanistan; H.E. Ambassador Hassan Shoroosh (Afghanistan), Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Canada; H.E. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva (Russian Federation), Deputy Permanent Representative at the Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN; Dr. Wang Jin (China), Fellow with The Charhar Institute; Ray McGovern (U.S.), Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (ret.), Co-Founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Hassan Daud (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment; and Hussein Askary (Sweden/Iraq), Southwest Asia Coordinator for the Schiller Institute.

As the usual lying media, intelligence and military officials, and politicians debate "Who Lost Afghanistan?", the people of the U.S. and the E.U. must demand full accountability for those responsible for the Afghan debacle. This begins with a commitment to end the idea of imposing a unilateral Rules-Based Order backed by U.S. and NATO military force. We must never again demand that nations surrender their sovereignty to that order. And it should include a commitment to aid the government that is constituted there in a process of economic development, with full cooperation among Afghanistan's neighbors, along with Russia, China and the U.S. It is not adequate for American officials to admit "We didn't have the foggiest idea" of what we were doing there -- we must overcome the damage by doing what should have been done years ago, recognizing that peace comes from development, not war.