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Book Review

What a Courageous and Beautiful New World!

by Mohammed Aref
June 2016


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Mohammed Aref reviews the Arabic translation of The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge for Al-Ittihad, Abu Dhabi, UAE. This review is reprinted from EIR and is reprinted with permission. This review was translated from the Arabic by Hussein Askary.

May 12, 2016 —The Nicaraguan Canal will extend from the mouth of the Brito River on the Pacific Ocean to the mouth of the Punta Gorda River on the Atlantic Ocean. The maps for this 278 kilometer canal were prepared by American engineers 118 years ago, and Nicaragua launched its building in 2014. The canal project, which is expected to be completed in five years, includes two ports, an international airport, and cement and steel plants. It is one of the 27 such projects that make up the “World Land-Bridge network” through corridors, tunnels, and channels that connect the continents.

The deepest and longest rail tunnel is the Saikan Tunnel, which is 54 km long and 100 meters deep below the seabed, and connects the Japanese island Honshu to mainland Japan. But it will be surpassed by the Bohai underwater tunnel in China with a length of 100 km, which will be fitted with railways for high-speed trains between two Chinese industrial cities, Dalian and Yantai, with a population of 7 million people each. When completed in 2020, this tunnel will be the world’s longest.

And what a beautiful, new world that built the Bosporus Tunnel under the Istanbul Strait for railway connection between Asia and Europe, which currently transports 3 million passengers daily. It is 14 km long and includes the deepest immersed-tube structure in the world. The proposal to build this tunnel was made in 1869, but was not built until 2013, and is described as the Iron Silk Road, in reference to the Silk Road which linked East Asia to the Arab world and Europe more than a thousand years ago.

On the other side of the Islamic world, the world’s longest bridge is being built now, the Strait of Malacca Bridge, which will connect Malaysia to Indonesia, and will have a total length of 71 km.

And what a courageous world is being planned now, at a time when emotions are swelling about the million-man immigration across the Mediterranean. The map of the Italy-Tunisia Connection includes the construction of four artificial islands in the Mediterranean to connect mainland Italy to Sicily, and Sicily to Tunisia across 155 km of the Mediterranean Sea, through the world’s longest suspension bridge and five tunnels for passenger and cargo transport in both directions. While Washington is spending trillions of dollars to destroy physical and spiritual bridges between nations and peoples, the Egyptians dug the second Suez Canal in 2015, which will include a gigantic, world-class logistics hub. It will reduce the transit time of ships from eleven hours to three. The Egyptian people contributed $8 billion to finance this canal, which is considered a breakthrough in the financing of infrastructure through national credit rather than foreign credit.

The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge is the title of a book that includes 200 maps, and whose Arabic translation was launched at an event at the Egyptian Transportation Ministry under the auspices of Minister Saad El-Geyoushi in March. In the headquarters of the Suez Canal Authority, Hussein Askary, the Iraqi researcher, co-author of the book and the translator of the Arabic version, lectured on the concept of the “development corridors” that enrich nations, while the “economy of geopolitics,” which is based on enslavement and displacement, is staggering on the verge of collapse.

Although most of the authors of the book are Americans, the book itself is a guideline for a new world order in which Russia, China, and the BRICS will play the leadership role. The book relies on the “physical economics” developed by American economist Lyndon LaRouche, through which he challenges the “casino economy” whose “financial derivatives bubble” has reached $2 quadrillions (which means the number 2 with 15 zeros to its right) and could explode at any moment and put an end to the global financial system. LaRouche is a brave scientist and philosopher who ran for president of the United States four times. While current candidate Donald Trump is taking sides with the Zionist Lobby and the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), LaRouche exposed the latter in his campaigns, and in a book that eventually landed him in prison. While in prison, LaRouche wrote the book, So, You Wish to Learn All about Economics, which has been published in Arabic translation.

Translated from Arabic by Hussein Askary.