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The potential to defeat the genocidal “green new deal” and “great reset” policies of the bankrupt trans-Atlantic Establishment is palpable and growing. That is what makes the global strategic situation “dangerous, polarized, interesting and hopeful—all of the above at the same time,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche asserted today.A growing number of powerful voices are being raised which, although still nodding in the direction of the green climate-change mythology, are digging in their heels against the idea of sacrificing millions or billions of people, especially in the underdeveloped sector, on the altar of Malthusian environmentalism. Yesterday it was the Indian Energy Minister and an angry editorial in China’s Global Times. Today it is Copenhagen Consensus President Bjorn Lomborg, whose op-ed was notably published in the semi-official China Daily, which argued: “Six billion not-rich people also want access to plentiful and cheap energy, lifting them out of hunger, sickness and poverty.” If the G7 nations try to deprive them of that, in the name of an illusory Green New Deal, “that will go badly,” Lomborg accurately warned. One wonders if President Joe Biden, or his Secretary of State Tony Blinken (whose recent speech on climate change seems to have been ghost-written by Greta Thunberg), have any understanding at all of the worldwide political and economic firestorm they are about to set off at the April 22-23 climate summit. Perhaps not; but it is likely that some of that strategic reality will be brought to the gathering by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who just announced that he will in fact address the virtual meeting—with a live speech that will simultaneously be broadcast on Russian national television. In that Thursday speech by Putin, and his much-awaited annual speech to Russia’s Federation Assembly a day earlier on Wednesday, April 21, Biden may well receive Russia’s response to the drastically deteriorating strategic situation, including last week’s U.S. declaration of economic warfare against Russia, which came on top of the overt military provocations against Russia taking place in the Ukrainian theater. Chinese President Xi Jinping also continues to make his views known. In addressing the Boao Forum for Asia today, Xi warned that “we must reject the cold-war and zero-sum mentality … and ideological confrontation in whatever forms,” and instead cooperate around projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative to help lift people out of poverty around the world, as the Chinese have so successfully done in their country. “‘By setting sail together, we could ride the wind, break the waves, and brave the journey of ten thousand miles.’ We may at times encounter stormy waves and dangerous rapids, but as long as we pool our efforts and keep to the right direction, the giant vessel of human development will stay on an even keel and sail toward a brighter future,” Xi stated. What is still missing is a loud outcry from political forces in Europe and the Americas, that we will not simply sit by and watch Malthusian genocide be implemented in the Congo, in Syria, in Yemen, in Venezuela and elsewhere. The greatest obstacle to be overcome to organize the population and leaders of the U.S. and the trans-Atlantic world in general, Helga Zepp-LaRouche stressed again today, is the moral indifference with which our culture has been corrupted. It is this indifference which is allowing the British Empire and its Wall Street allies to get away with, literally, murder. Mexico’s ambassador to the United Nations, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, hit the nail on the head in an op-ed published by Mexico’s El Universal yesterday: “I don’t know what is more alarming: the magnitude of the suffering which hunger causes in the world today, or the indifference with which those of us who don’t go hungry react to it.” He went on to denounce the toleration of children dying of hunger as no less a crime against humanity than “deliberately denying people access to food [which] constitutes a crime against humanity.” Our moral fitness to survive is indeed being tested, Zepp-LaRouche stated. Yet Western civilization does have the moral and intellectual resources required to defeat such indifference, and is capable of summoning them forth. That is what political organizing is all about. We have to evoke agapē, sometimes known as charity or love of mankind, which was the cornerstone for the Peace of Westphalia. It is the emotion or state of one’s soul that is inextricably woven into Nicholas of Cusa’s concept of the Coincidence of Opposites, which is the method of creative thinking that allows one to lift oneself above the moral indifference of the majority, and embrace a passionate commitment to the General Welfare—and then act on it. That method is the subject of the Schiller Institute’s upcoming May 8 conference on “The Moral Collapse of the Trans-Atlantic World Cries Out for a New Paradigm.”

Unbeknownst to most Americans, resistance is growing internationally to the scientific fraud and economic disaster known as the "Green New Deal" (GND). Furthermore, few are aware that the movement behind it was launched by a rabid opponent of human civilization, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, whose passion -- like that of those oligarchs who rushed in to support him -- was population reduction. In 2002, Nelson lamented that the environmentalist movement did not speak openly about reducing the world's population, which he said was the result of "McCarthyism" and "demagogic contrivance." Nelson, like most of those in power today trying to impose the GND globally, would prefer to cover up the British roots of Malthusian genocide, and its successful implementation of population reduction based on eugenics and British "race science", in Nazi Germany.

The British Empire, after losing their American colony in the Revolutionary War, and failing to take it back through the British-sponsored Civil War, are now engaged in an open, deadly conspiracy to drag the United States into a suicidal war with Russia, which they imagine will help create their new “Global Britain”—a modern version of the Empire they never relinquished. “British brains and American brawn” has served them well over this past century and a half, dragging the U.S. into two World Wars launched by John Bull, and more recently a few “lovely little wars”—colonialist wars in Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia—serving no human purpose, costing millions of lives, unimaginable misery, and leaving the world today in a state of moral and cultural disintegration.Will the American people, and their European “allies,” sleepwalk into yet another world war, this time with thermonuclear weapons? That appears to be the intention of the government in Ukraine, put in place in 2014 by the Obama Administration with significant help from Gerorge Soros and the “regime change” experts at the National Endowment for Democracy. At the time, Obama gave Vice President Joe Biden the portfolio for overseeing the regime change against the elected government of Ukraine, working together with neoconservative killer Victoria Nuland, then the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, to put the overtly neo-Nazi followers of Hitler’s Ukrainian asset Stepan Bandera into power in Kiev. Now, Biden (or at least his senile current self) and Nuland are back, as President and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. They are pushing for Ukraine and its fascist leaders to be brought into NATO. Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk told the German press that Germany’s responsibility for the Nazi holocaust requires that it “must play a leading role in order for Ukraine to become a NATO member, and as quickly as possible, with no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts.’” Failure to do so will mean a new large-scale war in Europe, he implied. Consider the implication: Pay compensation for having allowed the Nazi Holocaust by placing Nazis in power in Ukraine, to provoke yet another war on Russia? Do the citizens of the Western world not recall that it was Russia that fought the vast majority of the battles with the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviet Union called it, and lost by far the greatest number of casualties among its citizens? Are they oblivious to the fact that Russia is watching NATO expand its nuclear-armed forces up to Russia’s borders, that the U.S. has unilaterally ended most of the arms limitation treaties, and that the NATO powers have appointed themselves superior to the UN Security Council, established to prevent another global war, by imposing sanctions without Security Council approval, and waging regime-change wars without Security Council approval? Ambassador Melnyk went further: If Ukraine is not accepted into NATO, he said, then the only option is “to arm by ourselves, and maybe think about nuclear status again.” Nazis armed with nuclear weapons. Who could allow it? As you will see below, the answer is British intelligence. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has been taking orders from MI6 Chief Richard Moore. In a two-hour meeting in London last October, described by Zelensky as being about “helping and protecting our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Moore and Zelensky set in motion plans for more U.S. and U.K. armaments for Ukraine, open support for Kiev’s Nazi militia assults on the Donbas, shutting down the remaining opposition press in Ukraine, and even reconsideration of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum by which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Citizens of good will in the U.S., the U.K. and the EU do not have the privilege to ignore this rush to thermonuclear obliteration. The LaRouche Organization and the Schiller Institute addressed the moment of civilizational crisis in the March 20-21 Conference, and will do so again on May 8. The war drive must be stopped. The wars and sanctions policies now threatening the death of millions in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, must also be stopped. To reverse the collapse of Western civilization, however, there must also be a full implementation of Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws, to put the bankrupt monetary system of Wall Street and the CIty of London out of our misery, with a New Bretton Woods Conference of the world’s leading nations, to restore the idea of peace through development, to build modern health systems in every part of the world, unite all nations in developing fusion power and in the exploration of outer space, and to restore beauty and classical culture to the western cultural wasteland. The task is huge, but nothing less can succeed, and never has it been more urgent.

As tensions remain high between Ukraine and Russia, the British announced they will send two naval warships into the Black Sea, replacing American ships which cancelled their visit. The Ukraine crisis is a classical British geopolitical operation. Evidence is emerging of the direct role played by MI6 chief Richard Moore in directing Ukraine's President Zelensky into the suicidal position in which he is placing his country. Are we prepared to risk a nuclear war on behalf of the "Special Relationship", in which the U.S. military provides the muscle to protect the City of London/Wall Street central banker's world order?

Dennis Speed introduces excerpts from Lyndon LaRouche's 1999 broadcast, "Storm Over Asia," noting that the subject of the LaRouche movement is to discover politics as an expression of current history, which is defined by a clash between different views of mankind.

U.S. military adventures have killed over a million people since the 9/11 attacks. American sanctions continue to starve, deny healthcare to, prevent the development of, and generally immiserate broad swaths of people around the world. And it could be far worse. Ongoing provocations against Russia threaten to unleash the kind of war that could lead to the nuclear-armed elimination of society as we know it. Why? To what end? Is Russia’s crime simply to exist as a powerful, independent force? What crimes has China committed that its very growth is seen as a threat?Hunger now menaces tens of millions of people, over a hundred million people have found themselves impoverished over the last year of Covid-19, and one billion people lack reliable access to clean water and sanitary facilities. Every year, some 800,000 children die of diarrheal diseases, themselves almost entirely preventable through sanitation and water infrastructure. Malaria claims the lives of 400,000 annually. Smoking and its effects are the cause of 8,000,000 annual deaths. The confirmed death toll of the Covid-19 pandemic has surpassed 3,000,000. But these figures exist only as comparisons against a base level of population and well-being that is itself far too low. Had the economic, scientific-technological, and cultural reforms proposed by Lyndon LaRouche (such as his Woman on Mars proposal of the 1980s) been adopted, we could today be enjoying a world in which poverty were a thing of the past, a lunar colony could be confronting humanity with the issue of the citizenship of those born on the Moon, and once-impoverished nations would be world leaders in fields of particular expertise. To take a narrower (and, as it may appear to most people in the world, a more parochial view), consider the United States, where in a recent year there were roughly 47,500 suicides and 19,000 homicides, of which 14,000 were murders and 1,000 were people shot and killed by police. Can a country that commits violence abroad achieve peace within? And can anything less than an impassioned commitment to bring our policies and culture increasingly into coherence with the creative dignity of the human individual bring justice to those deprived of their lives, or the opportunity to live in a way that contributes meaningfully to all of humanity? There’s a whole universe out there, full of beautiful mysteries, eager to share its wonders. Will humanity dethrone the currently leading powers of the trans-Atlantic world—primarily in the United Kingdom and the U.S.—to abandon the adolescent, anti-human geopolitics that guides prevailing “Western” policy, to adopt instead the promise of cooperation among governments each committed to the general welfare, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to discovery and progress? Lyndon LaRouche and his movement have warned for decades that the calamities inherent in the policy choices made since World War II, particularly since the assassinations of the 1960s and the undoing of the world order Franklin Roosevelt helped to shape, would confront the world in the form of economic fascism (today’s Great Reset and Green New Deal) and the threat of warfare to impose it. Charting a path out of the Dark Age we live in demands great things of us all. Will you rise to the challenge?

How is it that ideologues in the U.S. and Europe are driving the world, step by deliberate step, down the path of extinction by nuclear war and hardly anyone in those countries has bothered to object? On the other hand, all of the ingredients for a new paradigm are there, as seen in the policies proposed by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche for decades, solutions involving cooperation among nations for the common interests of all humanity: a new global health system to end the threat of future pandemics, a mobilization to double world food production and end the famine, agreements to build the World Land-Bridge of development corridors to end poverty for good, science driver missions for fusion power and space colonization, and a new financial architecture to support humanity’s interests—rather than that of financial swindlers.With those solutions available, why is there such a knee-jerk reaction from the political classes in the other direction—toward war and famine? And why does the population tolerate it? Why are we still barbarians? Consider the deadly weapon of sanctions: The “Caesar Sanctions” deployed against Syria are warfare by economic means, destroying the lives of people in Syria. Likewise the new sanctions against Russia, as is made explicit: the stated goal is to increase the velocity of debt distress in Russia, to increase borrowing costs, to slow down economic growth, to cause inflation. It is impossible to pretend that economic sanctions are not a part of military warfare. When somebody dies of suicide because they lost their job and can no longer support their family, or of starvation because there isn’t enough food—that is a death just as surely as when somebody is killed by a missile or a bomb in Yemen or in Syria. It is a death as surely as if there were military conflict between the United States and Russia directly. These sanctions are warfare—they are murder. People of the United States must stand up and end the killing that is being committed in their name. In a statement earlier this week, Helga Zepp-LaRouche demanded, “This must stop and the Caesar Sanctions must be lifted. And all the members of the U.S. Congress who do not lift these sanctions make themselves complicit in every death that occurs in the region.” She further stated that all sanctions should be banned as a violation of human rights. Unless the ideology of geopolitics—of viewing Russia’s independence and China’s growth as a threat—is overturned, we run the risk of sparking what will become the war that ends humanity. Americans, in particular, have a critical role to play in changing U.S. policy, to prevent it from blowing up the world. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche has stressed, what we face now is not a collection of separate events, but a profound civilizational crisis. This is our test: Do we, as a civilization, have the moral fitness to survive? “This has reached the point where either the world wakes up and we start to remedy this, or we will not survive, because of our own moral failure as a human species. I call on you: Work with the Schiller Institute.” The Schiller Institute’s May 8th Conference will be a crucial inflection point in turning these policies around, and our organizing between now and then—including recruiting many new members to the Schiller Institute—will be indispensable in ensuring that we are alive and in one piece, as a world, by that time.

"Humanitarian Sanctions" Are Killing Syrians, While New Sanctions Threaten To Crash The Russian Economy: They Must Be Overturned! April 16 -- As the Biden administration is recklessly expanding the sanctions regime which has become the routine response from Anglo-American officials to any government they accuse of violating the "rules-based order", Helga Zepp-LaRouche issued a call to end this practice, beginning with lifting the "Caesar Sanctions" against Syria. Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, released a statement on April 15, as an "Urgent Call to Stop the Genocide in Syria and Yemen: The Moral Collapse of the Western System Cries Out for a New Paradigm". Her call, which is intended to alert the world to the deliberate mass murder imposed on the Syrian people through the Caesar Sanctions, coincided with the announcement by the White House of new sanctions against Russia, the most damaging of which is an assault against Russia’s ability to issue ruble-denominated debt, with the stated purpose of triggering massive capital flight and wreaking havoc on the Russian economy.By prohibiting American companies and financial institutions from purchasing Russian public debt offerings as of June 14, 2021, a senior administration official admitted that the intent of this latest attack is to destroy the Russian economy: “This is the main market that funds the Russian government… Removing U.S. investors as buyers in this market can create a broader chilling effect that raises Russia’s borrowing costs, along with capital flight and a weaker currency. And all of these forces have a material impact on Russia’s growth and inflation outcomes.” Biden justified the measures, which included the expulsion of ten diplomats and other sanctions, by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” purportedly posed by Russia. His Executive Order also threatens to impose additional measures in the future: “We are prepared, going forward, to impose substantial and lasting costs” on Russia if they do not behave as they are told. The new sanctions against Russia are a response to allegations of Russian hacks against the networking software company, SolarWinds, and "interference" in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. As is so often the case in such allegations, no hard evidence has been produced to back these charges, which come from anonymous sources in the intelligence community, producing the same type of false narratives which have been exposed as blatant lies presented in the "Russiagate" case against Presidents Trump and Putin. Schiller Institute Intervention In her statement, Zepp-LaRouche points to an intervention by Apostolic Nuncio to Syria, Cardinal Mario Zenari, who has alerted the world to the acute humanitarian emergency that has been deliberately imposed upon Syria, in the aftermath of nine years of war, through murderous “sanctions” measures imposed by the U.S. State Department and irresponsibly supported by a number of other governments, most emphatically the British. Instead of acting to increase the poverty and death rates of Syrians, Cardinal Zenari urgently calls for an end to sanctions, and to pursue a pathway of Peace through Development, in reversing the moral indifference which increasingly threatens to unleash this scale of calamity throughout the planet. In her weekly Schiller Institute webcast discussion on April 14, Zepp-LaRouche demanded that the world come to the aid of the Syrian people. As Cardinal Zenari has stated, more than 90% of Syrians are below the level of extreme poverty, and many are in danger of losing their lives due to famine. The last decade of war, the unjust sanctions, and the COVID-19 pandemic have created an absolutely intolerable condition of suffering for the Syrian people.Similar horrors confront Yemen, where the agonizing reality of hunger is conveyed in the powerful documentary “Hunger Ward,” referred to by the head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, who saw children dying before his very eyes in the hospital, and he was unable to help. There is nothing “humanitarian” Zepp-LaRouche stated, in starving children and shutting down hospitals and medical care, based on fraudulent narratives cooked up by British and American regime-change advocates, in and out of government. “This must stop and the Caesar Sanctions must be lifted. And all the members of the U.S. Congress who do not lift these sanctions make themselves complicit in every death that occurs in the region.” Zepp-LaRouche continued: “This has reached the point where either the world wakes up and we start to remedy this, or we will not survive, because of our own moral failure as a human species. I call on you: Work with the Schiller Institute. Work with its Committee on the Coincidence of Opposites, which is working to get aid programs and reconstruction. I appeal to you: Get in contact with the Schiller Institute and respond to the call by Cardinal Zenari.” What Are The Caesar Sanctions? Having failed in efforts at regime change in Syria, which were launched by the Obama-Biden administration through their support of "moderate rebels", who conducted a bloody civil war in the country, Trump's Secretary of State Pompeo mobilized international support for regime change through economic strangulation. To do this, a bill was introduced in the Congress, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which imposed sanctions on Syria. It passed in June 2020. It was called the "Caesar Act", named after a mysterious figure who claimed to have been a photographer employed by the Syrian Ministry of Defense to take photographs of victims killed in the civil war. Described as a "defector", he delivered more than 58,000 photographs to the Syrian National Movement (SNM), which is funded in part by Qatar, to oppose the Assad government. The SNM then turned the photos over to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which produced an 86-page report in 2015, which included more than 28,000 photos. The report, titled "If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria's Detention Facilities", was used to push the sanctions through the Congress. In a detailed exposure of the fraud behind this report, investigative journalist Max Blumenthal from the GrayZone outlines how the usual cast of characters from the human rights mafia were involved in using this falsified report for the purpose of regime change. 1) "Caesar" was brought before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a private session in April 2014, and again in a public session in August of that year, to present the "evidence" of Syrian government murders. According to HRW, their investigators "meticulously verified dozens of stories" of civilians they claimed to have been tortured and murdered by Syrian government officials.

The Moral Collapse of the West Cries Out for a New Paradigm Download a PDF of the statement The Schiller Institute is circulating an urgent response from its founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche to Apostolic Nuncio to Syria Cardinal Mario Zenari, who has alerted the world to the acute humanitarian emergency that has been deliberately imposed upon Syria, in the aftermath of nine years of war, through murderous “sanctions” measures imposed by the U.S. State Department and irresponsibly supported by a number of other governments, most emphatically the British. Action to end the so-called “Caesar Sanctions” imposed upon Syria will not only help halt the mass starvation and poverty now engulfing that nation, but will also benefit the rest of humanity. It is time to pursue, as the Cardinal states, a pathway of Peace through Development, and to reject outright the moral indifference which increasingly threatens to unleash this scale of calamity throughout the planet. In her weekly Schiller Institute webcast discussion on April 14, Zepp-LaRouche demanded that the world come to the aid of the Syrian people. As Cardinal Zenari has stated, more than 90% of Syrians are below the level of extreme poverty, and many are in danger of losing their lives due to famine. The last decade of war, the unjust sanctions, and the COVID-19 pandemic have created an absolutely intolerable condition of suffering for the Syrian people. Similar horrors confront Yemen, where the agonizing reality of hunger is conveyed in the powerful documentary, “Hunger Ward,” referred to by the head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, who saw children dying before his very eyes in the hospital, and he was unable to help. There is nothing “humanitarian” Zepp-LaRouche stated, in starving children and shutting down hospitals and medical care, based on fraudulent narratives cooked up by British and American regime-change advocates, in and out of government. “This must stop and the Caesar Sanctions must be lifted. And all the members of the U.S. Congress who do not lift these sanctions make themselves complicit in every death that occurs in the region.” Zepp-LaRouche continued: “This has reached the point where either the world wakes up and we start to remedy this, or we will not survive, because of our own moral failure as a human species. I call on you: Work with the Schiller Institute. Work with its Committee on the Coincidence of Opposites, which is working to get aid programs and reconstruction. I appeal to you: Get in contact with the Schiller Institute and respond to the call by Cardinal Zenari.”

Why are we hearing so little in the western media about the real danger of war between the U.S. and Russia, coming from the provocations of Washington, Brussels and Kiev? What can citizens due to counter the effect of the War Hawks making policy in the White House and the U.S. Congress? And how can we maintain pride in our nation, when the War Hawks are pushing the world toward new wars?

The White House announced a series of sanctions against Russia today, the gravest of which—because of what it portends—is an attack on Russia’s ability to issue ruble-denominated debt, with the stated purpose of triggering massive capital flight and wreaking havoc on the Russian economy.By prohibiting American companies and financial institutions from purchasing ruble- denominated public debt as of June 14, 2021, a Senior Administration Official briefed the press on background today, the U.S. intends to provoke “a negative feedback loop”: “This is the main market that funds the Russian government… Removing U.S. investors as buyers in this market can create a broader chilling effect that raises Russia’s borrowing costs, along with capital flight and a weaker currency. And all of these forces have a material impact on Russia’s growth and inflation outcomes.” Biden justified the measures, which included the expulsion of ten diplomats and other sanctions, by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” purportedly posed by Russia. His Executive Order also threatens to impose additional measures in the future: “We are prepared, going forward, to impose substantial and lasting costs” on Russia if they do not behave as they are told. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded to the measures: “We have repeatedly warned the United States about the consequences of their hostile steps, which are increasing the confrontation between our countries to dangerous levels.” She also noted that such U.S. actions bring into doubt “the practicability of the use of the dollar and the reliability of Western-controlled payment systems,” according to an account in Sputnik. On April 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told IRNA press agency that, in light of the killer economic sanctions being imposed on countries like Syria, Yemen, Iran and Venezuela, Russia would be “stepping up efforts to reduce risks associated with sanctions,” and that “gradual steps should be taken to move towards de-dollarization.” Biden’s moves today could well accelerate the process of the BRICS and associated countries moving to dump the dollar altogether in self defense, possibly detonating the entire trans-Atlantic financial system. The big winner of a combined blowout of the financial system and war-like confrontation between the United States and Russia, and between the U.S. and China, would be the British Empire. The Ukraine and Taiwan provocations against Russia and China, respectively, continue to create the grave danger of military confrontation as well. Add to that the worsening pandemic and the famine threatening hundreds of millions, and we have what Helga Zepp-LaRouche has referred to as a civilizational crisis of an unprecedented nature. To wake up the world to that danger, to shake people out of the moral indifference which breeds pessimism and inaction, Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute today issued an “Urgent Call to Stop the Genocide in Syria and Yemen; The Moral Collapse of the Western System Cries Out for a New Paradigm.”

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

To participate LIVE at 9pm EDT, dial (712)770-5505, and then enter the access code 536662#. Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated this week: “I think it is dawning on more and more relevant people that we are looking at a potential complete and utter failure of civilization...The old paradigm is crashing, but if we do our job right, a new paradigm can be won." Join us tonight to discuss the plan to replace the wretched policies of Prince Philip and the old paradigm (eg. Biden’s Green Infrastructure bill and the International Monetary Fund’s proposed “Debt for Death” swap) with a new paradigm, which defines economic development as the basis for peace.

In her April 14 weekly dialogue, Helga Zepp LaRouche warned of a "moral collapse of the western system", which is pushing the world toward war and genocide, and called upon people to join her in a "complete activation" to address this collapse. In the last days, other voices are being heard, echoing her urgent warning of the danger of war between the U.S. and NATO against Russia, which could result from provocations by Ukraine; between the U.S. and China, over Taiwan and the South China Sea; and of the genocide occurring in Yemen and Syria, as a result of TransAtlantic policies. There is a solution, she said, which depends on our viewers joining our mobilization, to prevent "a plunge into a Dark Age." Send you comments and questions to me at harleysch@gmail.com and I'll respond to the best during tomorrows broadcast. -Harley

While it is welcome news that President Biden called Russian Pres. Putin yesterday to propose a summit between the two "in the coming months", his foreign policy team continues a provocative push against Russia in Ukraine, while the U.S.-initiated "Caesar Sanctions" are increasing the death toll in Syria. Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp LaRouche has called for an urgent mobilization against the genocidal consequences of the war drive against Russia from Ukraine, and to lift the sanctions against the Syrian people.

On March 16, the Permanent Representative of India at the United Nations, Ambassador T.S. Tirumarti spoke out against the humanitarian disaster related to the U.S. imposition of sanctions against Syria, the so-called Caesar Sanctions. Tirumarti said the sanctions should be “relaxed,” calling on the international community to act “with a sense of urgency” to help the Syrian people. He said there is an “urgent need to increase humanitarian assistance to all Syrians throughout the country without discrimination, politicization, and any preconditions.”The sanctions, which were a part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, went into effect on June 17, 2020, and have plunged more than 90% of all Syrians below the poverty level. With the full backing of Secretary of State Pompeo, the U.S, Special Envoy for Syria Engagement, James Jeffrey, exposed the hypocrisy of U.S. policy in his explanation of the actual intent of the Act. While insisting that “We’re not demanding total victory, we’re not saying that Assad has to go,” Jeffrey said that the goal of the Act is to “make it clear to anyone who wants to rebuild Assad’s Syria that that cannot happen without Caesar sanctions,” until there is a government in Damascus that carries out US demands with what Jeffrey described as “real eagerness.” He later clarified that anyone, or any nation which engages in economic activities in Syria is “a potential sanctions target.” The sanctions were drafted in response to a collection of photos compiled by a defector of Syrians who were allegedly victims of the brutality of the Assad government. It was delivered to the opposition group, the “Syrian National Movement”, which passed it on to Human Rights Watch, (HRW) which released it in an 86-page report, “If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities.” Critics of the report point out that, of the 28,000+ photos included, only a “couple dozen” could be confirmed by HRW activists, who claimed to have “meticulously verified dozens of stories” of people who died in Syrian detention centers. Many of the others were Syrian soldiers murdered by terrorists, or victims of assassinations and bomb attacks done by terrorists. In passing the bill, no significant voice in Congress was raised about victims of U.S. torture in Iraq or Afghanistan, or about the civilian toll of the “War on Terror,” or about the millions whose lives are endangered by the sanctions. Also of note is that the publisher of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who published classified U.S. documents reporting on torture and other atrocities carried out by U.S. military and security forces occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, was not hailed as a “hero” — as the defector and HRW activists have been — but is left to rot in a jail in London, awaiting extradition to stand trial in the U.S. Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the LaRouche Organization are demanding that the sanctions be lifted immediately.

With the Ukraine crisis careening rapidly towards a strategic showdown, President Joe Biden called President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to propose that the two leaders hold “a summit meeting in a third country in the coming months to discuss the full range of issues facing the United States and Russia,” according to a White House read-out. The intent would be for “the United States and Russia to pursue a strategic stability dialogue on a range of arms control and emerging security issues.”Even as Biden was speaking with Putin, his emissary, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, was in Brussels egging on Ukraine into a flight-forward demand to join NATO immediately, which all sides know is a tripwire for Russia. At the same time, the U.S. has deployed two warships into the Black Sea, which Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described as a provocation “designed to test Russia’s nerves.” He warned that U.S. military support for Kiev is turning Ukraine into a “powder keg,” and that “if there is any aggravation, we of course will do everything to ensure our security and the safety of our citizens.” What more is behind the Biden-Putin phone call is unclear at this writing. But two things are clear: 1) that the Ukraine flashpoint and the broader war danger are driven by the systemic collapse of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, which has also unleashed a pandemic, famine, and mass unemployment across the planet; and 2) that no solution for any single crisis will work, unless the entire civilizational collapse is addressed and reversed. “I think it is dawning on more and more relevant people that we are looking at a potential complete and utter failure of civilization,” Schiller Institute founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated today. “You cannot respond to any one crisis, or collapse, or danger, as an individual phenomenon; you have to really address the entire picture as one. Because either we can catalyze some moral response from people who are willing to recognize that what is going on is a civilizational collapse, or else I think we are on a short road to disaster.” Zepp-LaRouche added: “I find it quite remarkable that this subject of a civilizational failure is becoming an issue among numerous important people, the most recent one being UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who yesterday reviewed the global response to the COVID-19 crisis and the situation of world famine, poverty, and unemployment, and he told a gathering of the UN ECOSOC that no element of the multilateral response has gone as it should. He said that last year more than 3 million people died of Covid, 120 million have fallen into extreme poverty, and the equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs have been lost. And the crisis is far from being over. He said that the crisis is ‘putting multilateralism to the test, and so far, we have failed.’ He added that a complete paradigm shift was needed.” Zepp-LaRouche went on to draw a moral line in the sand: “You have these absolutely incredible pictures of children dying right before the world’s eyes in Yemen and elsewhere, but that doesn’t stop the richest people in the world from having made a $5 trillion increase in their wealth in the last year. How can a Bezos or a Gates or all of these other creeps like Soros, how can they live with themselves, when they know that their mass of wealth is built on the corpses of so many millions of people? I think we should say it that way,” she insisted. She urged LaRouche movement organizers to not be diplomatic, but to get under people’s skin. “I think anybody who sees the combination of the war danger escalating, the famine killing millions of people in several countries, COVID raging—they must react. And against this, the leading elites are showing they are utterly incapable of dealing with this crisis.” “But I’m convinced that this fight can be won,” Zepp-LaRouche concluded, “because it beats the alternative.” The old paradigm is crashing, but if we do our job right, a new paradigm can be won, she stated. But to do that, “I think that the moral question needs to be addressed.”

In her weekly dialogue, Helga Zepp LaRouche made an impassioned appeal to viewers to join with her in addressing the dangerous moral collapse which characterizes virtually every western government, including the United States. This collapse poses a threat to everyone, as the crisis in Ukraine continues to build toward a war between Russia and the forces of the U.S. and NATO. The possibility of a Biden-Putin summit is a positive development, but at the same time it was announced, his foreign policy team was voicing full support for the fanatical extremist wing of domestic forces in Ukraine, which is pushing to cross the "red line" announced years ago by Moscow, that of placing NATO troops on the Russian border of Ukraine. She also emphasized the urgency of lifting the so-called Caesar Sanctions against the people of Syria, citing the appeal of Cardinal Zenari to end the sanctions. There is nothing "humanitarian", she stated, in starving children and shutting down hospitals and medical care, based on another fraudulent narrative cooked up by U.K.-U.S. regime change networks. We must insist that every policy maker who does not speak up against this fraud is complicit in every death which occurs in Syria, and in Yemen.

The IMF and the World Bank, in a new report issued March 26 on their planned “lending” activities, have taken the people-killing effects of the global “Green New Deal” (or “Great Reset”) to an even nastier level. The report is called “World Bank/IMF Support for Debt Relief under the Common Framework and Beyond” and its first paragraph says, “We need to make sure we do not lose sight of green and inclusive reforms because of … a looming debt crisis.” It makes clear that what debt suspension has been granted to developing countries during the pandemic economic collapse, will now depend on “debt for climate swaps,” where they have to trade closing their fossil fuel power plants, for example, in exchange for the debt relief. The big central banks and Wall Street giants have already been muscling private investment internationally and nationally to get out of coal and oil power and heating, carbon-based industry, and mechanized agriculture and go exclusively into primitive “green” technologies. This is supposed to meet “zero carbon” goals for economies and “save the planet.” Now, the IMF and World Bank are going to grab government-to-government lending to developing nations and push it toward the same “zero carbon” goal. They’re going to put “green” conditionalities on all the lending and debt relief those developing countries can get, and make them “swap” debt relief or credit for shutdowns of coal plants that many developing nations depend on for electric power and heat, for chemical fertilizer use that could upgrade their farm yields, and more. These global financial agencies say to the government lenders of G20 countries, “allow continued access to concessional resources [low interest loans or debt relief] to finance priorities for green, resilient, and inclusive development,” and that’s all These nations are buried in debt after more than a year of pandemic deaths, COVID lockdowns, border closures, trade breakdowns, crop failures. The World Bank itself thinks 150 million more people have fallen into extreme poverty in 2020-21. The real “swap” here is: You reduce your country’s population; the IMF will reduce your debt. This directly attacks if we understand it—the United States, Europe, the other major technological powers like China, Russia, India, Japan. Capital goods exports to these developing nations, for infrastructure development projects in these developing countries, are where the new, productive employment will come from in a United States with 25 million people still on unemployment benefits or dropped out of the workforce. Capital goods exports like modern hospital and clinic systems to fight the pandemic and vaccinate; electric power and freshwater supplies for them; machinery and inputs for productive family farming. Infrastructure projects like water management and flood control projects in river valleys, electrified rail connectivity, modern ports. This is where real recovery of productive employment and productivity will come from, in the leading nations which shelve the IMF and World Bank—and the Federal Reserve for that matter—and create a new credit system for the purpose. Such a recovery will never come from hyperinflationary money printing in the many trillions and multi trillion-dollar support for the big Wall Street and City of London-centered banks, even if the Fed and ECB keep up that printing until it explodes. The policy which stands over us as the deadly enemy of productive development and recovery, is the Green New Deal. There are poles of resistance to it developing, a “worldwide anti-Malthusian resistance,” as when India last week said “No” to Joe Biden’s climate ambassador John Kerry, who came to demand a “zero carbon pledge” from them. EIR News Service and The LaRouche Organization (TLO) are working to organize that anti-Malthusian resistance, and TLO’s mass-circulation pamphlet exposing the Green New Deal as “The Great Leap Backward” goes into second printing next week. Any group or individual that wants to stand up for the scientific creativity and technological progress of the human race, will want to use it.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche spoke with a group of supporters and members of the Schiller Institute on Monday: Let me greet all of you. Actually, I’m a little bit distraught, because if you look at the world situation, it’s really going from bad to worse. We have a very worrisome escalation between Ukraine and Russia, which is really not just Ukraine, it’s actually really NATO, and this is a whole conflict which, if things go wrong, could really lead to war. And that is not an exaggeration. I don’t want to focus on that; I just want to identify it as one of the many problems of the world. Then, also the situation between the United States and China over Taiwan, in particular, is also heating up tremendously. But I want to focus on something else:As you know, the pandemic is not under control at all. If you start with Germany, for example, this country is in a complete turmoil, pandemonium, because obviously for more than a year, the EU and the German government made many mistakes. I think if you look at Vietnam, which is a country which has a larger population than Germany, about 98 million, they had something like between 30 and 50 deaths altogether. In Germany now, they’re talking about a possibly lockdown until the end of the year, because it’s long gone that you could do what Vietnam did in the beginning, containing it with quarantine, contact tracing; now you have a complete, out-of-control situation, and the infection rate is going up despite a lockdown. The same in France and many other European countries. Brazil: The variants in Brazil are a reason for worry for the whole world. Naturally the South African and British variants are also a big factor in the increase in the infection rate. But Brazil is for sure the most dangerous situation, because what most doctors are now concerned about is that if this is not getting under control soon, which means you have a vaccination and health measures, and modern medical treatment in every country, you could have new variants which make already-injected vaccinations not effective, obsolete. In any case, this can take a dynamic which some people have not even thought about, and the big accusation now is that the rich countries are hoarding vaccines, that they have 60% of the vaccines, while the African population has less than 1% of the people are vaccinated so far. Then you have the famine: The famine which is absolutely reaching a point where I could—and I will show you some short video, shortly—but before I do that, the thing that makes me so upset, and I’m not a political lightweight, or lily, or I don’t collapse quickly. But what gets to me is that, there is an unbelievable genocide going on against so many countries: You have a collapse in Yemen—20 million people in Yemen are in danger of dying; 90% of the population in Syria, according to the Catholic Nuncio Cardinal Mario Zenari, are living below the poverty level, have not enough medicine, have not enough to eat—and nothing is happening! You know, at the so-called Syrian donors’ conference which just took place on March 30, they collected a few billions, but it only goes to the countries around Syria which have taken some of the refugees, it goes to the NGOs, it goes to the opposition of the Syrian government, but it is not going into the reconstruction of Syria, which would be the only way to stop it. Now, this Catholic Cardinal has made a very, very urgent appeal, which has gotten very little resonance, but he said that unless there is a radical shift, there is the danger of mass death in the Syrian nation. And that is why I want to focus on that alone, because I think the Schiller Institute is one of the few organizations—I mean, there are other organizations that are doing incredible work, like Caritas Internationalis, and many others—but we need a change! We need a change in politics. For example, in the United States, there is the so-called Caesar’s Act, which had been voted up in Congress and signed by Trump in 2020, which basically says any country which does not respect to the sanctions on Syria and the Syrian government will be sanctioned themselves, and that is the biggest mechanism why actually there is nothing happening right now. As you know, we have initiated last year, the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, which was the idea that you need to create an organization which starts to do things to change that, you know, it’s supposed to help to bring medical supplies to the developing countries, food aid; naturally, it is clear that a little, private organization, and it is still little—hopefully it will grow—can only do a symbolic act. We can only make clear what should be done, what should be taken up by the governments, and we hope to be a catalyst to do so. But I think that we need to broaden this. So far, we are only doing things for the education of young people in the United States. This is on a good way. We are also planning to get a project for Mozambique, now that’s on a good way, too. But I think the situation is reaching a point where we absolutely have to shake up the world, much, much more, and I’m asking all of you who are participating in this discussion that you become active with us. Because I think what is happening right now is by far not enough, and I think my late husband, many years ago—I think it was in 1988 on the occasion of a meeting of the Club of Life in Munich, he warned, and this was at that time in the context of the AIDS virus, he warned that the world could collapse. And I think that if we do not change our ways, the moral indifference of mankind not being able to react to something which is happening in front of our eyes, you know, that lack of moral fiber in us, may be the reason why we cannot stop the things which bring about the destruction of civilization of a whole. So my words now are really a cry out: Are there not more people who understand that we have to absolutely, dramatically change the way how things go, that we have to change geopolitics, that only if the major countries work together and not fight each other in proxy wars, in places like Southwest Asia, because innocent people are paying a price! So, I would like to show you the little video clip, which is excerpted from a longer video, which was produced by David Beasley, the director of the World Food Program. It’s a 40-minute documentary, and I just want to show you 2 minutes of it, and I want to encourage you that tonight or later, you watch the whole documentary. It is very difficult to watch because it gets to you very much. But I think people have to confront the reality that that is what is happening. So if you could please show this clip: (A video excerpt from The Hunger Ward shows an obviously malnourished 10 year old girl receiving treatment in an Aden pediatric malnutrition ward.) Now, I don’t think any child should have such thin arms, and Dr. Beasley described that these children, or some of these children were dying in front of his eyes and he couldn’t do anything about it, because there were no materials to stop it. So I think we should really try to wake up the world and get a change in the policy, and I think we should not only put the Africa nations on our agenda, but I think—you know, people have forgotten about Syria and Yemen, and I think we have to change that. So I want to leave it at that and hear if you have anything you want to say.

A quick survey of today's world indicates that most people in the so-called advanced sector are indifferent in the face of mass murder being perpetrated in their names, or feel impotent to do anything about it. There is no question that the sanctions policies imposed by western governments are killing people; yet regime change wars continue, while the War Hawks are creating provocations against Russia and China which could lead to hot wars, and a global Green New Deal is being implemented to destroy the physical economy needed to sustain life. There is now a great potential to build a global anti-Malthusian movement, to take power away from the neo-con/neoliberal killers, and instead initiate a process of real economic development. Join with the Schiller Institute, and our Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites -- this is a fight for justice which we must win!

President Biden’s “climate ambassador” John Kerry will take his pitch for “zero carbon” to China this week, after a visit to India last week which would thankfully have to be called a failure. India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Energy Minister Raj Kumar Singh said Kerry could have his general global carbon reduction goal but India would not let any specific “zero carbon” demand be applied to India or any other developing country; those nations need development and industrialization. As politely as they may have put it to him, Kerry knew he didn’t get what Biden or Prince Charles and the central bankers wanted, and India has made itself one flagbearer for a worldwide anti-Malthusian resistance.Kerry is selling Malthusian poison, telling nations that the United States, U.K. (sponsoring the COP26 “climate summit” in November) and the IMF and World Bank and big central banks want them to remove carbon and carbon dioxide-forming processes from their economies by a date certain. This is insanity, dooming industry, electric power, and any agriculture beyond dirt farming. Life is a carbon dioxide-forming and -consuming process! This is nothing other than a dream of the oligarchical 1% to get rid of huge numbers of the 99%. Now Kerry will peddle his poison in an intended meeting with his Chinese special envoy for climate change Xie Zhenhua—if the visit isn’t called off due to extreme tensions over Taiwan. He is trying to pitch “cooperation on climate change” as a pressure valve in Biden’s general confrontation posture against China; and get China to attend Biden’s planned “climate summit” on April 22-23, at which a huge failure is much to be hoped for and organized for. “We must cooperate with China on climate,” Kerry told India Today on April 9. The Foreign Ministry said only that China “is looking at it” referring to the summit invitation. But Malthusianism is no offer to moderate a war confrontation; it is the same thing as the war confrontation, which is now at an intense, “pre-war” crisis point in Europe where Biden’s administration is trying to provoke Ukraine into a war with Russia with the threat of world war all over it. Kerry has not, so far. If the United States and NATO nations lock themselves into a Malthusian “Green New Deal” policy which is deadly destructive to their own economies, they will mark any major power which resists such deindustrialization and economic regression as an increasingly dangerous adversary to be brought down. Just so was Britain determined to bring down Germany by drawing it into World War I. Notice that Kerry hasn’t even got Russia on his itinerary. Biden sent Putin a pro-forma invite to the April 22-23 Malthusians’ summit, but is trying to force Russia and Ukraine into a conflict where NATO, he thinks, will prevail. But it also works the other way. If Russia, India, China become seen as poles of a global anti-Malthusian resistance to the suicidal Green New Deal; if American resistance is being organized as it is, by The LaRouche Organization; then the refusal of any of these major nations to go along with Kerry’s poison will become a major reason for elected officials in the United States and Europe to resist unilaterial economic suicide. Support for confrontation with Russia and China will decline if they refuse the Green New Deal, war become less likely despite the Biden Administration, and real economic recovery will be possible by international cooperation. The LaRouche Organization’s mass pamphlet exposing “The Great Leap Backward,” soon to go to a second printing, is the electric spark for that global anti-Malthusian resistance in the United States.

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, lawyer for Lyndon LaRouche, and a leader in the fight against injustice, has passed away. As we celebrate his life, let us be inspired by his courage, and his impassioned devotion to principle. Such inspiration is necessary today, as we must mobilize to defeat the evil intent of the little people in charge of the Biden administration and NATO, who operate on behalf of the establishment, representing the interests of corporate cartels. They are engaged in a dangerous provocation in Ukraine, and an all-out effort to prevent economic development of the poorer nations in the world.

The Biden administration is engaging in aggressive, thumb-in-your-eye provocations against Russia and China, almost as if to force them to respond around Ukraine and Taiwan and thereby have an excuse for war. And predictably, various U.S. media outlets are turning around and blaming Russia and China for the escalating tensions.For instance, the Wall Street Journal yesterday published an article by Ann Simmons which leads with the following whopper: “The recent deployment of Russian troops along Ukraine’s border and Moscow’s indication that it could intervene in the event of a full-scale war in eastern Ukraine are dimming hopes for a peaceful resolution of the conflict that has festered for seven years and cost thousands of lives.” No mention of the fact that the latest Russian actions are in response to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s fast-track drive to join NATO, clearly egged on by Washington and London. The Journal article then reviewed recent statements by Russian President Putin against the NATO drive, as well as comments by Dmitry Kozak, deputy chief of staff of Russia’s Presidential Executive Office, “who warned on Thursday that Moscow would be forced to defend its citizens living in eastern Ukraine in the event of all-out war, and said this would be ‘the beginning of the end for Ukraine’,” the Journal reported. The article then quotes Russian defense analyst Konstantin Sivkov: “If the United States of America and NATO begin to support Ukraine and strike at the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Russia will certainly enter a military conflict.”