Jenny Burns

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

July 17—Not only will 2020 go down in history as the year in which the world was hit by the worst pandemic in 600 years, it may also be the year in which the Chinese economy overtakes that of the United States—and if things go wrong, it could also be the year in which humanity wipes itself out in a nuclear war. There is still time to take a different path, but it will require a dramatic change of course in international politics to avoid the trap of geopolitics, which led to two world wars in the 20th century.

The changing numbers are more than just economic data: after China’s gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 6.8% in the first quarter as a result of the pandemic—the first time this has happened since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976—the Chinese economy grew in the second quarter by 3.2%. Mei Xinyu, a researcher at the Ministry of Commerce, commented “China’s GDP for 2020 could be slightly lower than that of the United States.… But if the domestic chaos in the United States escalates, China’s whole-year GDP could exceed that of U.S. this year.” 

This probable development forms the background against which U.S. Attorney General William Barr just gave a fire-breathing talk about geopolitical confrontation at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum. That presentation definitely brought him into the ultra-Sinophobic company of Secretary of State Pompeo, Secretary of Defense Esper and FBI Director Wray.

For Barr, the phenomenal rise of China, which Deng Xiaoping initiated with his reform policy, that allowed China to lift 850 million of its citizens out of poverty, is not proof that the government is serving the common good, but rather it is only due to the Communist Party’s wish to prove that socialism is superior to capitalism. Barr could have asked these 850 million Chinese or U.S. citizens of color in Alabama and Mississippi for their opinions.

Barr calls China’s “Made in China 2025” program to become the world market leader in ten technological areas, such as artificial intelligence, robots, and telecommunications, the ultimate threat. This program of the People’s Republic of China was announced years ago. China has now achieved this status in some areas, such as 5G technology, high-speed rail and maglev systems, nuclear fusion technology, and aspects of space technology. These technological breakthroughs alone demonstrate the absurdity of Barr’s argument that China has only been able to accomplish all of its economic achievements by stealing them through industrial espionage or by influencing American companies.

China’s rise could have something to do with the fact that while this 5,000-year-old civilization has consciously revived its best cultural traditions, it is, at the same time, fostering innovation in production and excellence in education. It should come as no surprise that this successful combination, after 40 years of reform policy, has led to this nation of 1.4 billion people now claiming an equal rank among the world’s leading nations.

Definitely Not ‘The End of History’

The neoliberals’ calculation that China would also adopt the western model of democracy and free market economy when it joined the World Trade Organization has obviously not worked. Behind it was the idea of the “end of history” that Francis Fukuyama had expressed after the demise of the Soviet Union.

But instead of all states submitting to the dictates of the financial markets and the associated maximization of profits for the caste of speculators, there has been a tremendous counter-movement worldwide. Especially since China in 2013, with its offer of cooperation in its Belt & Road initiative—the New Silk Road—for the first time gave developing countries the chance to overcome their underdevelopment, and the poverty left behind by colonialism, through the development of infrastructure and industrialization. The secret services controlled by the City of London and Wall Street have increasingly characterized China as a threat.

China has repeatedly emphasized that it has no intention of replacing the United States as the sole superpower. China is, however, committed to international relations based on cooperation among sovereign states, which neither interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, nor attempt to change the others’ social systems.

When it became clear in March and April that China was not only much more able to curb the coronavirus pandemic, but also to get its economy going again faster than most western countries, the geopolitical attacks against China increased, but also against Russia. In his speech, Barr claimed that hackers associated with the People’s Republic of China were attacking American universities and companies with the intention of taking research results on vaccines and drugs against COVID-19. 

The British National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), for its part, claims that the Russian group APT29, also known as “Cozy Bear,” is trying to gain access to academic and pharmaceutical research facilities of all states that are researching vaccines.

The Roger Stone Case

An explosive turning point in this secret service war has now emerged from President Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of his former campaign advisor, Roger Stone. Stone submitted a Declaration from William Binney, the former Technical Director of the NSA, in his court case. Binney and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former U.S. intelligence agents, have provided forensic evidence that there were no Russian hacking attacks on the computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the leadership body of the Democratic Party, to account for the publication of extremely damaging information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign by WikiLeaks. Rather, these files appear to have been leaked by an insider using a thumb drive. This evidence challenges the entire basis for Russiagate and the three-and-a-half-year coup attempt against President Trump, as well as the charges against Roger Stone. 

Immediately after his imprisonment was prevented by the President’s action, Roger Stone highlighted, in an interview on Fox, that he had tried to prove in court that Russiagate was a hoax by seeking a hearing on Binney’s evidence, but was prevented from presenting the full story by a corrupt judge. 

The explosiveness of this story lies not least in the fact that the identity of the supposed hackers of the DNC servers had been the basis for the Russiagate affair. This Russian hacker group called “Cozy Bear” was originally named by the CrowdStrike company as responsible for the hack attack, and has now been blamed for a new alleged hack attacks in search of vaccine research. 

The very public surfacing of the statement by Shawn Henry, CrowdStrike’s main cyber-attack expert, who admitted on December 5, 2017, to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, that CrowdStrike had no concrete evidence that any files ever left the DNC as the result of a hack, is another big factor. That testimony was only made public in May 2020. 

An additional element of the fraud of this outrageous conspiracy underlying Russiagate has now emerged from a British court, in a lawsuit against Christopher Steele. As the investigative reporter John Solomon reports,  the trial documents prove that the FBI was guilty of criminally deceiving the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court, by keeping silent on the fact that the person who ultimately commissioned the Russiagate story was Hillary Clinton. And that Steele closely coordinated his activities with Victoria Nuland of the State Department, who was a key figure in the Maidan coup against the Ukrainian government in February 2014.

Who Colluded with Whom

Taken together, all of these secret service operations that have been made public show that the “collusion” did not take place between Trump and the Russian government in 2016, but between the Obama administration’s secret service apparatus and the British secret service, first against presidential candidate Trump, and then against President Trump. And some of his cabinet members, who are now leading the campaign against China and Russia, have suppressed this information. Pompeo, at the request of President Trump, was personally informed by William Binney in detail about the forensic impossibility of the Russian hack attack story on October 24, 2017.

It remains to be seen whether Attorney General Barr will finally take action against the conspirators of the Russiagate affair, about which he has all the necessary information, or whether he will only advance the confrontation against China.

One thing is certain: the representatives of the old paradigm—the geopoliticians of the British Empire—will do everything possible to sabotage the summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council proposed by President Putin, by continuing to make such accusations against Russia and China. This summit has the potential to lay the foundation for a new paradigm—one of cooperation among the world’s major nations, the United States, China, and Russia—and that would be the end of geopolitical manipulation. As you read and hear the hate speeches against Trump, Putin, and Xi in the media, keep that in the back of your mind.

Internet Press Conference with Bill Binney — Thursday, July 23, 11 a.m. EDT

Is there actually a way to know, and to then prove, that the “Russiagate” story of the 2016 elections—a story which resulted in massive federal prosecutions, escalating international tensions, national paralysis, and a presidential impeachment trial—was completely false?

William Binney, a thirty-year veteran of the National Security Agency and its former technical director, will expose the continuing suppression by British intelligence agencies and their American counterparts of his evidence disproving the entire “Russiagate” story. “We can prove, that all the data that Wikileaks published from the DNC, that was downloaded on the 23rd and 25th of May, and also the 26th of August of 2016; all of that carried the signatures of being downloaded to a thumb drive or a CD-ROM, and physically transported,” Binney says. “So, we can prove that in a court of law. In fact, I put that in sworn affidavits that I submitted in the Roger Stone case and also in the General Flynn case. And the judges would not let my testimony in. I’ve been hard pressed to find anything (Russia) did in the 2016 election, let alone anything they’re trying to do in the 2020 election,” Binney said.

Roger Stone, speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox TV July 13 in the aftermath of the commutation of his jail sentence by President Donald Trump, stated: “I could have proved at trial, using forensic evidence and expert testimony from fellows like Bill Binney, former NSA counter intelligence expert…that no one hacked the DNC, that there was no online hack of the DNC… But I wasn’t allowed to present that defense, because Judge Jackson would not allow it.”

Binney, whose work has been featured in documentaries such as PBS Frontline’s “United States of Secrets” and the movie “A Good American,” was the designer of the “ThinThread” security system, which could well have prevented the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center from occurring, had he and his associates not been deliberately prevented from deploying it. “But the problem also was that it was a system that would’ve uncovered all of the criminal activity of our government employees and our secret intelligence agencies, and also others in the world, too,” Binney said. Instead, “universal surveillance” capabilities that he personally designed to protect Americans from terrorist attack were deployed after 9/11 to illegally monitor virtually every citizen of the United States in possession of any electronic device.

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Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise across sections of the United States, leading to crisis conditions in the South and Southwest, in particular. Arizona, Texas and Florida together reported about 25,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday. In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) adopted statewide mask-wearing as daily deaths hit an all-time high. In Mississippi there are mandatory mask-wearing orders in 13 counties, and Gov. Tate Reeves (R) urged people to wear them statewide.

In Georgia, hospitalization has risen above earlier peaks from April, and there is concern that they may run out of critical care beds soon in a number of counties. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that “shares of open critical care beds in regions surrounding Athens, Dublin, Macon, Marietta, Savannah and Tifton have dipped into the single digits…. Disease experts at Georgia Tech and elsewhere have warned that Georgia is running out of time to prevent surges of cases that have overwhelmed hospitals in Florida, Arizona and other states that eased restrictions.”

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) added to a list totaling 22 states whose visitors will be required to quarantine for 14 days if they visit the tri-state region. Out-of-state travelers arriving in New York airports from those states face a $2,000 fine and a mandatory quarantine order if they fail to fill out a tracing form.

DC, Maryland and Virginia are all once again “trending up” in the last week as lock-downs have been eased, prompting warning from VA Gov Ralph Northam (D) on wearing masks in public. “Hospitals in [DC] have been running at just short of 80 percent capacity — a threshold that could trigger additional restrictions or measures to handle a surge of coronavirus patients,” according to the {Washington Post}.

The situation in nursing homes continues to be a dangerous hot spot in many states. The New York State Department of Health produced a report on nursing homes, tracking the source of spike in infections/deaths to the lack of testing: “approximately 37,500 nursing home staff members, or one in four of the state’s approximately 158,000 nursing home workers, were infected with COVID-19 between March and early June 2020… It is likely that thousands of employees who were infected in mid-March transmitted the virus unknowingly—through no fault of their own—while working, which then led to resident infection,” the NYSDOH report stated.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a virtual meeting with the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan andTajikistan. This follows by several days a similar conference held with these countries by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an attempt to move them away from their cooperation with China. Pompeo didn’t have much to offer in the way of incentives, however, and both the geographical closeness and the friendly relations between these countries and China makes it unlikely that they would break with China. Wang Yi underlined the importance of the Belt and Road Initiative for these land-locked countries.

Wang noted that China attaches great importance to the development of strategic partnership with the Central Asian countries, firmly supports all countries to follow the path of development in line with their national conditions, supports each country in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and supports the development of each country by itself

Wang called for establishing a traditional Chinese medicine center and cooperating in research on  vaccines, and ensuring fast access for personnel on both sides, establishing green channels for the transportation of goods to ensure the safety and stability of the supply chain, expanding the scale of cross-border e-commerce, and accelerating the construction of the “Digital Silk Road.”

The parties agreed to promote the alignment of the Belt and Road Initiative with the development strategies of Central Asian countries, build interconnected partnerships, deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields, carry out effective investment cooperation, and jointly promote the recovery and development of the economy, and they issued a joint statement to that effect.  The countries also agreed to expand high-tech cooperation areas such as e-commerce, smart cities, artificial intelligence, and big data technology applications to jointly build a partnership in the digital economy. One of the key points was to make Central Asia a transportation hub for Eurasia. In the statement the foreign ministers also agreed that while responding to the pandemic, there should be no discrimination, stigmatization, racism and xenophobia. They also reiterated their cooperation in fighting the “three forces”, terrorism, separatism and extremism.

Robert O’Brien, President Trump’s National Security Adviser, and Matthew Pottinger, the Deputy National Security Adviser, traveled to Paris on Monday for a three-day trip to meet with European officials on China and other foreign policy issues, according to {Politico}. The meetings were to draw in security and foreign policy officials from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, and overlap a European foreign ministers meeting Monday. From the U.S. side, the discussion on China was to be presented by Pottinger, including on Huawei. After individual meetings on Monday, O’Brien and Pottinger will meet in a group with the European officials on Tuesday and Wednesday. “Ambassador O’Brien looks forward to conducting in-depth meetings in Paris this week with his counterparts from France, UK, Germany and Italy to address a range of national security challenges including China, 5G, Russia, Afghanistan, Middle East/North Africa and Covid response and recovery,” said NSC spokesman John Ullyot.

  O’Brien had an op-ed published Monday morning, “Trump will continue to punish China for its horrifying anti-Uighur campaign,” continuing the worst name-calling and blame escalation of which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Caesars of the Senate have been capable. The op-ed was characterized by this line: “According to recent reports by the Associated Press and the Jamestown Foundation, the CCP is using forced birth control…” etc. These, apparently, are the intelligence sources available to the National Security Advisor. He otherwise claimed that the 1950s Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, and the Hong Kong security law are a chain of linked and closely related events.

China’s {Global Times} made clear its view of these events. The U.S. has failed in its attempts to enlist the European Union countries in an effort to sanction and cut trade with China, the lead unsigned editorial in {Global Times} July 12 stated:  the U.S. has “not achieved what it wished in its attempts to rope in the European Union against China.”. The editorial cites German Energy Minister Petr Altmaier’s statement to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “It has always been the policy of the Western international community, including the EU, that international trade relations cannot be based solely on how democratic a country is,” noting Germany is “not the world’s headteacher of morality.” Germany took over the EU’s rotating six-month presidency July 1.

While the U.S. and EU are allies with solid bonds, {Global Times} says, “Anyone who believes the U.S. can woo Europe to confront China like it confronted the former Soviet Union will be utterly wrong.”

The world has changed, says {Global Times}: “Now economic security is most vital for Europe. Military security is still important, but Europe is rarely threatened militarily—it is more than absurd to call China a security threat to Europe. Since China provides `irreplaceable market resources for Europe,´ decoupling  from China goes completely against Europe’s interests.  The U.S. “not only suppresses China, but also squeezes Germany’s economic development; the U.S. allows no competition and is “puffed up with arrogance.” U.S. attempts to woo other countries on dealing with China will “fall flat. Some countries play “flip-flop.”

Iran and China have drafted a broad economic and security partnership that will make possible billions of dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other economic areas, Farnaz Fassihi and Steven Lee Myers reported July 11 in the {New York Times}. Such a deal was  first proposed in 2016, when President Xi met his counterpart, Hassan Rouhani.

Schiller Institute Southwest Asia Director Hussein Askary, who spoke last week at a major China-Mideast/North Africa forum in Beijing, commented that such a China-Iraq oil-for-technology agreement could become a game-changer in the region if the very similar agreements previously offered to Iraq and on the table with Lebanon right now, also take shape.

An 18-page agreement, of which the {Times} says it has a copy, details what will be a “vastly expanded” Chinese participation in banking, telecommunications, ports, railroads, and dozens of other projects, in exchange for which China would receive a regular, heavily-discounted supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years. China imports about 75% of its oil, and is the world’s largest oil importer.

Military cooperation will increase between China and Iran, including training, exercises, weapons development and intelligence sharing in the pending agreement labeled “final version” and dated June 2020. China has not disclosed any terms of the agreement, and it has not yet been submitted to Iran’s Parliament, according to the {NYT}.

The Chinese investments in Iran are said by the {NYT} to total $400 billion over 25 years. The expansion of military assistance, training and intelligence-sharing will be viewed with alarm in Washington, the {NYT} writes, pointing out that U.S. ships already tangle regularly with Iranian forces in the crowded Persian Gulf. China also offered to build the infrastructure for a 5G telecommunications network, and to offer Iran the new Chinese Global Positioning System, {Beidou}. The authors write that China’s broad investment program in Iran “appears to signal Beijing’s growing impatience with the Trump administration after its abandonment of the nuclear agreement; China had repeatedly called on the administration to preserve the deal, which it signed, and has denounced the U.S. use of unilateral sanctions.

The proposed partnership between China and Iran has sparked a “fierce debate” from nationalist factions within Iran, the paper says. Foreign Minister Zarif, who traveled to Beijing in October 2019 to negotiate it, faced hostile questioning from the Parliament when he returned to Iran last week.

This is the edited translation of the July 11 lead article by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, written for the July 16, 2020 issue of the German weekly Neue Solidarität.

Mankind is currently confronted with an unprecedented challenge: Do we have the moral fitness to survive? The all-important question hinges on whether enough of the main actors on the world stage are able to raise their thinking to a higher level of reason in time, or whether they will cling to their respective ideologies and patterns of action. In the latter case, the extreme tension arising from the combination of the escalation of the corona virus pandemic, the decline of the physical economy, the systemic collapse of the financial system, and growing geopolitical confrontation among major powers, threatens to lead to a breaking point, which could degenerate into social chaos and a new world war.

What is needed now is not a multitude of small steps and measures to deal with all the different crises, but a veritable Grand Design, the realization of a vision for mankind’s future with a comprehensive solution, one taking into consideration the interests of all mankind. This window of opportunity is relatively short term. In January of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a summit of the heads of state of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom have already agreed to have such a summit. Putin emphasized that the purpose of this summit, 75 years after the end of World War II, must be to establish a peace order—to ensure that such a catastrophe will never again happen.

The dramatic crisis of the pandemic and the ensuing plunge of the real economy, combined with the danger of a systemic financial collapse worldwide, present a unique opportunity to lay the basis for a new world economic order based on a New Bretton Woods system. A Bretton Woods system in accordance with the original intention of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods system, can overcome underdevelopment in the developing countries, and provide the foundation for peace by improving the living standards of all people on this planet.

In a July 8 webinar interview with the Center for the National Interest, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov underscored the essential role of such a summit as an alternative to scenarios with unpredictable consequences:

“We have conveyed our proposals on the agenda to our partners. They include key issues affecting global politics, security, and economy….

“The world needs to establish a democratic system of relations that would envisage the principle of indivisible security, equal opportunities for development and search for the balance of interests of participants of international communication.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in a July 10 address to the Primakov Readings forum, stressed that one of the items on the agenda for the P5 summit must be the inadmissibility of nuclear war:

“We … are particularly concerned about the Americans’ refusal to reaffirm the fundamental principle that there can be no winners in a nuclear war, and, consequently, it must never be unleashed. Of course, we will promote this subject—the inadmissibility of a nuclear war, the impossibility to win it—in the context of the upcoming summit of the five as well.”

Ambassador Antonov also quoted the speech by Putin at the June 24 parade to celebrate Victory Day:

“We understand how important it is to strengthen friendship and trust between nations and are open to dialogue and cooperation on most pressing issues on the international agenda. Among them is the creation of a common reliable security system, something the complex and rapidly changing modern world needs. Only together can we protect the world from new dangerous threats.”

A Global New Deal

The unexpected announcement by U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of his intention to implement an investment program in the tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt, that is, a New Deal (even if the cited sum of £5 billion is only a small first step in the right direction) provides a very useful common thread among the other four heads of state, all of whom have referenced Roosevelt in positive terms in the past.

What is needed today is precisely Roosevelt’s program in full: Glass-Steagall bank separation, an industrial development plan on a global scale this time—a New Deal for the entire world—and a credit system, a New Bretton Woods. One of the first steps should be international cooperation to develop a worldwide health system, i.e., a modern health system in every single country up to at least the standard that China demonstrated in Wuhan in fighting the outbreak of the pandemic.

This summit, which must take place in September at the latest, will in all likelihood be the last chance to establish a basis of trust for a strategic orientation of international relations among nuclear powers that can set the course for overcoming the global economic crisis. If this opportunity is missed, not only does the toxic tone that has been struck between the United States and China in particular, threaten to escalate into an irreparable conflict, but the looming danger of a second wave of the pandemic followed by renewed economic shutdowns could completely shatter social peace in many of the affected countries.

The Leibniz Institute for Economic Research (IWH) in Halle has warned that the effects of the first lockdown in Germany will lead to a wave of bankruptcies, which in turn will create difficulties for numerous savings banks, and for banks with receivables in the hundreds of billions. Such a new banking crisis would then be followed by an even deeper recession, the institute warns. And Germany is still in a comparatively strong position.

The discussion in the trans-Atlantic neo-liberal establishment is shaped by the assumption that, under these circumstances, a sharp decline in international stock markets of at least 20-30% and the increase in death rates from a second wave of the pandemic will be blamed on President Donald Trump. And it will guarantee that establishment’s intention to ensure his defeat in the November elections. Given the relentless campaign which the forces of the British Empire have carried out for three and a half years in their coup attempt—from the “Russiagate” fraud to the impeachment proceedings, and the current statue-smashing frenzy—the City of London and Wall Street would be more likely than not to let such a sharp decline in the stock markets happen.

Although in the early stages of the outbreak of the corona virus pandemic, President Trump had praised the Chinese government’s vigorous actions in the city of Wuhan and Hubei province, and stressed his friendship with President Xi Jinping, he shifted positions tentatively as of April 18 and then definitively as of April 30, to blame China for the spread of the virus worldwide. This assertion was first made by the former heads of MI6 Sir John Sawers and Sir Richard Dearlove, and the London-based Henry Jackson Society which, in a blatant provocation, challenged China to pay $9 trillion in reparations! It has been rejected as unfounded even by American medical experts. A WHO delegation is currently in Wuhan to investigate the origins of the virus and the chronology of the pandemic.

The British Empire on the Ropes

The same British Empire forces behind the coup against President Trump consider his intention to establish good relations with Russia, as well as his initially positive relationship with President Xi, to be a deadly threat to their geopolitical interests—having increasingly endeavored to curb the rise of China for years now. That is the motive behind the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy paper, which defines China and Russia as the top strategic rivals in the “Great Power Competition.” Defense Secretary Mark Esper underlined this political orientation in a July 7 “Message to the Force,” saying that China should be made the “pacing threat” in “all of our schools, programs, and training.”

The British Empire’s policy—marked by the British East India Company and its colonial policies, the Opium Wars against China, Prince Philip’s World Wildlife Fund and Mark Carney’s Green New Deal today—has been based on Malthusian population reduction. From this standpoint, China’s New Silk Road policy—which for the first time offers developing countries the chance to overcome underdevelopment—makes it a “strategic competitor.” And, of course, there is competition between these systems.

Looking at the world from above, it is clear that cooperation between the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, is indispensable if mankind is to overcome this pandemic and other impending pandemics, as well as hunger, poverty and underdevelopment in the so-called Third World. From the standpoint of the British Empire, i.e., of the oligarchical financial interests that rely on maximizing profit for their caste, and population control for all others, since the time of the British East India Company’s Parson Malthus, the poisoning of the U.S.-Chinese relationship is a top priority.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has just warned that the United States’ withdrawal from the disarmament treaties has significantly increased the risk of a global nuclear confrontation. And he has said that he hopes this escalation will not reach the point of no return. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, for his part, has expressed his concern that U.S.-China relations have hit their lowest point since the establishment of relations between the two nations.

The summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council proposed by President Putin is likely, for all the reasons mentioned here, to be the last chance to put a completely different program on the agenda, in order to prevent the development of the escalating effects of the pandemic, hunger, economic collapse, and a financial crash from running their course. If that course is not shifted, the war danger resulting from the rapidly ensuing chaos may become unstoppable.

All people of good will, and all countries worldwide, should consider it to be in their own interest to support the success of this summit to the utmost.

Schiller Institute Southwest Asia Coordinator Hussein Askary addressed a high-level China-Arab webinar organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) on Friday, July 10. The event’s title was “International Webinar: China-MENA Cooperation Under the COVID-19: Traditional Friendship & Common Future” (MENA: Middle East and North Africa). The speakers included the top leadership of CASS and keynote speakers were Prince Turki bin Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz (Chairman of King Faisal Research Institute, former Saudi Ambassador to London and Washington, and former Director of Saudi Intelligence), and former Prime Minister of Egypt Essam Sharaf. Several former Arab Ambassadors to Egypt and Chinese ambassadors and envoys to the MENA region also spoke in the webinar, followed by academicians from both China and the Arab countries. The webinar came just a week after the China-Arab Ninth Ministerial Meeting Chaired by Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Most of the Arab academicians were from the United Arab Emirates Al-Sharjah University.All the speakers agreed on the importance of China-Arab cooperation to both combat the COVID-19 pandemic and achieve economic development, peace and stability in the region. Even cooperation between the U.S. and China in the Middle East was called for by some speakers, including Askary and an American professor at the National Defense College in the U.A.E.

Askary opened his speech by referring to the vision developed over the past three decades by “the great American economist” Lyndon LaRouche, Helga Zepp-LaRouche and associates in the Schiller Institute, which have now evolved into the World Land-Bridge. Askary showed the map of the World Land-Bridge, stating that it is necessary to bring the Americas and the United States into this vision. He praised the announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative by President Xi Jinping as “a turning point in world history.” Askary then, referred to the massive potential for development through peaceful economic development in West Asia and Africa. Since, the theme was Chinese-Arab cooperation against and post COVID-19 pandemic, Askary brought up the “correlation” between infrastructure development and creating a global health care system drawing from speeches by Xi and WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a report by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and concluding with the recent study conducted by the Schiller Institute on creating a global healthcare system. Askary ended his remarks by showing the participants copies of the Schiller Institute reports on the New Silk Road in both Arabic and English, offering to send copies as gifts.

The Schiller Institute’s founder and Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, participated yesterday in a live panel discussion on China Radio International’s “World Today” program (http://chinaplus.cri.cn/podcast/detail/1/228714) on the issue of “Can German Chancellor Angela Merkel Save the EU?” The other panelists were Dr. George Tzogopoulos, Senior Research Fellow, International Center for European Studies, Greece; Dr. Wang Yiwei, Director of the Center for European Studies, Renmin University; and Chen Weihua, China Daily EU Bureau Chief.

Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks stood out for demanding an urgent structural reform of the entire global system; many of the other participants centered their presentations on changing certain conditions or pondering various options within the existing framework. Dr. Tzogopoulos said painful reforms and austerity conditions should not be part of the planned EU recovery fund, because citizens cannot stand it any longer. Furthermore, he argued that the EU would opt for “strategic autonomy,” and not always follow the U.S.’s advice, but keep good relations to China alive. Dr. Wang said it would be difficult to close the gap between Europe’s north and south, the poor and the rich, which posed a great challenge for Germany’s EU presidency. He also said the Juncker Plan did not work, and Russia constitutes no threat to the EU. Mr. Chen said that the new leadership of the EU was upholding dialogue and negotiations with China, in contrast to the decoupling approach of the U.S..

Zepp-LaRouche located the main problems in the geopolitical confrontation against Russia and China, blasting, among other things, plans by the German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to send ships to the South China Sea, and the discussions of an EU army. Instead “an entirely different approach” is needed, along the lines of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s win-win cooperation and non-interference approach, which places the one humanity ahead of narrow national interests. The EU’s current policies are regrettably focused on bailing out bankrupt financial markets, instead of setting up a much-needed investment fund for all of Europe. Merkel’s approach of wanting to deepen integration, creating an EU finance ministry and a European state, are not a viable option and are already finding ample opposition within many countries, Zepp-LaRouche argued. The system is in much worse condition than was mentioned by other speakers, she reiterated; and a likely second pandemic wave could cause a systemic collapse, just as the Green New Deal would destroy what is left of German industry.

When the discussion turned towards U.S.-EU relations, Zepp-LaRouche said that some of President Donald Trump’s actions had to be seen from the standpoint of the ongoing coup against him by an international intelligence services apparatus, and that a worsening of relations with Russia, China and other countries could happen in the short term, especially in the light of troop redeployments to Poland and the Indo-Pacific, and the push to globalize NATO. She emphasized we could even be on the road to World War III, unless a complete paradigm shift to stop geopolitics, and to build the “community of shared interest of mankind,” as proposed by President Xi Jinping, is achieved. The P5 meeting proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin must discuss the urgent principles needed for long-term survival of mankind, she said. China-EU cooperation should focus on solving the world’s problems, building a modern world health system according to the “Wuhan standard,” and industrializing the developing countries.