Helga Zepp-LaRouche used the proceedings of two conferences this week — the EU summit and the BRICS summit — to highlight why the Schiller Institute Call for convening a conference for a New Bretton Woods is so essential. The neoliberal model is presently bankrupt, as bankrupt as the Soviet Union when it collapsed. Yet there is no competent voice even questioning the policies of the West at the EU summit; and the G7 and NATO summits at the end of the month will offer the same neoliberal, Green policies which have led to runaway inflation and physical economic collapse, and war against Russia.
In contrast, there was real deliberation at the BRICS summit. She urged viewers to read the speeches of Putin, Xi, Modi, Rhamaposa and even Bolsonero, to see the difference. She singled out the German government, and especially Economics Minister Habeck for ridicule, as an example of a government exhibiting no concern for the Common Good.
In reviewing the Schiller Institute conference from last weekend, she said that as bleak as the outlook would seem to be, it is at times like this that powerful ideas can take hold. Our job is to provide the necessary powerful ideas represented by the new call.
Finally, she spoke of the importance of the Sare campaign for U.S. Senator from New York as a means of providing the beautiful ideas needed to uplift people.
In his presentation, Dr. Ed Calabrese (U.S. ), Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Mass. Amherst, discusses the history of dosage and toxicology, along with how the “Linear No-Threshold” Model was applied to radiation. According to the model, there is no minimum safe dose that can be given to a patient without some negative effect arising. The exposure to even the tiniest amounts of radiation, or other kinds of chemicals, would produce cumulative genetic changes which could never be reversed.
The model’s supposed infallibility in the field of cancer-risk assessment and toxicology was actually disproven by Dr. Calabrese, who had went all the way back to the historical underpinnings of the model to discover serious research flaws, including even scientific misconduct by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences!
Once his research started to attract attention from the scientific community, he began receiving attacks from his own peers, some going so far as to invalidate his research on the basis of him not graduating from Harvard, or receiving a Nobel Peace Prize! He was called “stupid”, “inexperienced”, and someone who should never be taken seriously.
When asked what students needed to understand in order to produce the kinds of discoveries made by him, Dr. Calabrese said that the key wasn’t to start with so-called recent or up-to-date studies, but to go back to the original sources, experiments, and research, and then follow that all the way to the most recent studies. Lyndon LaRouche had a similar understanding of education, urging younger members of his movement to rediscover and replicate the original experiments of such great thinkers like Plato, Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Kepler, and others.
The June 18–19 Schiller Institute Conference, “There Can Be No Peace Without the Bankruptcy Reorganization of the Dying Trans-Atlantic Financial System,” featured critical views of the currently deteriorating U.S.–China relationship from the perspective of a prominent Chinese scholar and a well known leader within the Chinese-American community. Dr. Wang Wen, Executive Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies and Deputy Dean of the Silk Road School at Renmin University in China, spoke on the subject of “Why China’s Rise is Beneficial to the World.” In the course of his presentation, he makes clear that China’s leadership and its people have no desire to dominate the world. Instead, they desire a friendly relationship and win-win cooperation with the West, but will go to war if necessary to defend their national sovereignty and their right to develop.
Dr. George Koo, retired business consultant in U.S.–China trade and chairman of the Burlingame Foundation, on the topic of “U.S.–China Cultural Relations Are Critical to Prevent War,” speaking as a proud American voices his concern over the degeneration of the Western political class into a single fixation on money and personal power. He sounds the alarm bells over the current U.S. policy of containment and confrontation with China, which is leading to war, particularly over the issue of Taiwan independence. Dr. Koo expresses his hope that the Schiller Institute, through its international conferences, can serve as a vehicle to convince the American people that their government’s policy towards China must be changed to avert disaster.
Dr. Uwe Behrens, a logistics manager and author from Berlin, in his presentation “The Non-Rival Doctrine” debunks the fake “Xinjiang genocide” narrative coming from disgusting purveyors of disinformation such as German anthropologist and xenophobic nut job Adrian Zenz and shows how their lies are laundered through the Western mainstream media for the purpose of brainwashing people into hating China. He demonstrates that this anti-China strategy has its roots in the 1993 non-rival doctrine of then Vice President Dick Cheney based on the idea that with the fall of the Soviet Union, never again will any nation be allowed to grow powerful enough to challenge the hegemony of the United States. He thanks the Schiller Institute for organizing a conference that can be used as a platform to stop the dangerous escalation of confrontation by the West with China.
The kick-off speaker in the Food Producers Roundtable was Mike Callicrate from Colorado and Kansa, who is the founder and president of Ranch Foods Direct. He denounced the nonsense that, “America will feed the world—America can’t even feed itself!” Callicrate called for busting up the food cartels, and ending the financialization of food. He presented a model of region-serving production and processing. The speakers called for restoring Glass-Steagall, and breaking up the food conglomerates, as well as the biggest banks and other commodity cartels, or face mass hunger. They denounced the hopelessness of the green outlook that people and food production endanger the planet. They stressed family scale fishing and farming, for “generational knowledge” and commitment.
The Roundtable was titled, “Science and Culture to End Famine—Principles of Agriculture Productivity.” Bob Baker (Schiller Institute Agriculture Liaison) introduced the speakers. They included from Iowa, the Kehrli family livestock and crops producers, three generations, Wilbur, Ken and Kyle. Also from Iowa Jon Baker, cattleman and farm community banker. From California, Frank Endres, wheat and cattleman in the Sacramento Valley, longtime National Farmers Organization leader. James Benham spoke, who is the President of the Indiana Farmers Union, and on the National Board of the National Farmers Union. James Moore spoke from Sitka, who is past President of the Alaska Trollers Association.
I fully support the joint statement (see below) issued in response to the July 14 posting by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation accusing 72 prominent individuals from around the world as supposed promoters of “Russian Propaganda.” The head of the center, at the time the list was released, described these individuals, as well as all those calling for a negotiated solution to the crisis, as “information terrorists” who should be treated as “war criminals”.This is not only a direct security threat to those named individuals, but it also is a threat to free speech and civilized discourse everywhere in the world among those seeking solutions to the world’s crises that do not coincide with the dominant “narratives.”
For that reason, I call on the legislature and other elected representatives of the people in my country to open an investigation of these threats, and of those that are behind them.
Thirty-One Prominent Individuals Denounce Being Targeted as Putin Agents by Ukraine-U.S.-NATO
The following is a joint statement by the initial signers, listed below, in response to the July 14 posting by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation accusing 72 prominent individuals from around the world as promoters of “Russian Propaganda.”
Response to the Ukrainian black-listing
We, the participants in various conferences of the Schiller Institute, and other individuals named in the Ukrainian list, are accused of promoting “Russian propaganda” on a list posted by the “Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation,” which is officially part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, operating under the authority of the President.
In times of war, publishing such a list is tantamount to targeting individuals. It is all the more unacceptable that the list agglomerates the names of many speakers, representing top institutions from around the globe, with diverse opinions, who are involved in a dialogue, searching to arrive at peace in the interest of all.
To assume that such a wide array of speakers are all “Putin agents” and can’t think for themselves, can only be explained by a belief in conspiracy theories, or as mere vulgar propaganda, or both. The key question is whether the listed speakers are promoting viewpoints consonant with the truth.
Normally, this would be up to an audience to decide. But the U.S./NATO efforts to blacklist those that would offer any “alternative narrative” on Ukraine, until now, remains unchallenged.
So, hats off to Ukraine for providing a handy list of speakers who voice different ideas.
Those interested in finding out the truth will now be better able to compare the official story—the “narrative”—with an uncompromised critique, determine which can bear close scrutiny, and decide for themselves which analysis is closer to the truth.
Signers:
1) Ray McGovern: (U.S.), Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA-ret.), founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) 2) Kirk Wiebe: (U.S.), Member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and a former senior analyst with the National Security Agency. He’s also a partner in the prevention of crimes of the intelligence community with Bill Binney. 3) Sam Pitroda: (U.S./India), Innovator, entrepreneur and policy-maker, former advisor to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi 4) Col. Richard H. Black (ret.): (U.S.), Former Marine, former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon and former Virginia State Senator 5) Dr. Clifford Kiracofe: (U.S.), Former Senior Staff Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and President, Washington Institute for Peace and Development 6) Geoff Young: (U.S.), Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Congress from Kentucky, CD 6 7) Diane Sare: (U.S.), LaRouche independent candidate for U.S. Senator from New York 8) David T. Pyne: (U.S.), Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security 9) Alessia Ruggeri: (Italy), Spokeswoman of the Comitato per la Repubblica, trade unionist 10) Lt-Gen Leonardo Tricarico(ret.): (Italy), former Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force 11) Dr. jur. Wolfgang Bittner: (Germany), Author 12) Jan Øberg, PhD: (Sweden), Co-founder and director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, art photographer, peace and future researcher. 13) Jens Jørgen Nielsen: (Denmark), former Moscow correspondent for the Danish daily newspaper Politiken, author of several books about Russia and Ukraine, a leader of the Russian-Danish Dialogue organization, Associate professor of communication and cultural differences at the Niels Brock Business College in Denmark. 14) Prof. Li Xing, PhD: (Denmark), Professor of Development and International Relations in the Department of Politics and Society, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and researcher at the Research Center on Development and International Relations, at Aalborg University in Denmark. 15) Ulf Sandmark: (Sweden), Chairman of the Schiller Institute in Sweden 16) Jacques Cheminade: (France), President, Solidarité & Progrès, political party in France 17) Dr. George Koo: (U.S.), Retired business consultant specializing in U.S.-China Trade and Chairman, Burlingame Foundation 18) Helga Zepp-LaRouche: (Germany), Founder, Schiller Institute 19) Jason Ross: (U.S.), Secretary-Treasurer, The LaRouche Organization and Science Adviser to Lyndon LaRouche) 20) Harley Schlanger: (U.S.) former spokesman for Lyndon H. LaRouche, spokesman for the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Organization 21) Earl Rasmussen: (U.S.) Executive Vice President, Eurasia Center 22) James Jatras: (U.S.), former diplomat, former advisor to U.S. Senate Republican leadership 23) Pedro Rubio: (Colombia), President, Association of Officials of the General Accounting Office of the Republic 24) Graham Fuller: (U.S.) former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, CIA, 25-year CIA operations officer, author of numerous books 25) Nebojsa Malic: (U.S.) Serbian-American, wrote for Antiwar.com for 15 years, and for RT America until it was closed down in March 2022 26) J. Michael Springmann (US), served in the United States government as a diplomat with the State Department’s Foreign Service, with postings in Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He left federal service and currently practices law in the Washington, DC, area. 27) Mike Robinson (UK), co-editor of “UK Column” 28) Mike Callicrate (US), Kansas; Owner Ranch Foods Direct 29) Tony Magliano (US), internationally Syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist 30) Daniel Estulin (Russia) Author and investigative journalist 31) Jeremy Kuzmarov (U.S.), Journalist and Author of Four Books on U.S. Foreign Policy 32) Dragana Trifković (Serbia), general director of the Center for Strategic Studies 33) Carlos Gallardo Neyra (Peru), President, Christian Democratic Party of Peru 34) Adrián Flores Konja (Peru), Former Dean of the Department of Administrative and Accounting Sciences, and Director of the Post-Graduate Program, National University of San Marcos, Peru 35) Caleb Maupin (U.S.), journalist, founder and director of the Center for Political Innovation
The following is a joint statement by the initial signers, listed below, in response to the July 14 posting by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation accusing 79 prominent individuals from around the world as promoters of “Russian Propaganda.”
Response to the Ukrainian black-listing
We, the participants in various conferences of the Schiller Institute, and other individuals named in the Ukrainian list, are accused of promoting “Russian propaganda” on a list posted by the “Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation,” which is officially part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, operating under the authority of the President.
In times of war, publishing such a list is tantamount to targeting individuals. It is all the more unacceptable that the list agglomerates the names of many speakers, representing top institutions from around the globe, with diverse opinions, who are involved in a dialogue, searching to arrive at peace in the interest of all.
To assume that such a wide array of speakers are all “Putin agents” and can’t think for themselves, can only be explained by a belief in conspiracy theories, or as mere vulgar propaganda, or both. The key question is whether the listed speakers are promoting viewpoints consonant with the truth.
Normally, this would be up to an audience to decide. But the U.S./NATO efforts to blacklist those that would offer any “alternative narrative” on Ukraine, until now, remains unchallenged.
So, hats off to Ukraine for providing a handy list of speakers who voice different ideas.
Those interested in finding out the truth will now be better able to compare the official story—the “narrative”—with an uncompromised critique, determine which can bear close scrutiny, and decide for themselves which analysis is closer to the truth.
Signers:
1) Ray McGovern: (U.S.), Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA-ret.), founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) 2) Kirk Wiebe: (U.S.), Member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and a former senior analyst with the National Security Agency. He’s also a partner in the prevention of crimes of the intelligence community with Bill Binney. 3) Sam Pitroda: (U.S./India), Innovator, entrepreneur and policy-maker, former advisor to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi 4) Col. Richard H. Black (ret.): (U.S.), Former Marine, former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon and former Virginia State Senator 5) Dr. Clifford Kiracofe: (U.S.), Former Senior Staff Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and President, Washington Institute for Peace and Development 6) Geoff Young: (U.S.), Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Congress from Kentucky, CD 6 7) Diane Sare: (U.S.), LaRouche independent candidate for U.S. Senator from New York 8) David T. Pyne: (U.S.), Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security 9) Alessia Ruggeri: (Italy), Spokeswoman of the Comitato per la Repubblica, trade unionist 10) Lt-Gen Leonardo Tricarico(ret.): (Italy), former Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force 11) Dr. jur. Wolfgang Bittner: (Germany), Author 12) Jan Øberg, PhD: (Sweden), Co-founder and director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, art photographer, peace and future researcher. 13) Jens Jørgen Nielsen: (Denmark), former Moscow correspondent for the Danish daily newspaper Politiken, author of several books about Russia and Ukraine, a leader of the Russian-Danish Dialogue organization, Associate professor of communication and cultural differences at the Niels Brock Business College in Denmark. 14) Prof. Li Xing, PhD: (Denmark), Professor of Development and International Relations in the Department of Politics and Society, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and researcher at the Research Center on Development and International Relations, at Aalborg University in Denmark. 15) Ulf Sandmark: (Sweden), Chairman of the Schiller Institute in Sweden 16) Jacques Cheminade: (France), President, Solidarité & Progrès, political party in France 17) Dr. George Koo: (U.S.), Retired business consultant specializing in U.S.-China Trade and Chairman, Burlingame Foundation 18) Helga Zepp-LaRouche: (Germany), Founder, Schiller Institute 19) Jason Ross: (U.S.), Secretary-Treasurer, The LaRouche Organization and Science Adviser to Lyndon LaRouche) 20) Harley Schlanger: (U.S.) former spokesman for Lyndon H. LaRouche, spokesman for the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Organization 21) Earl Rasmussen: (U.S.) International Consultant 22) James Jatras: (U.S.), former diplomat, former advisor to U.S. Senate Republican leadership 23) Pedro Rubio: (Colombia), President, Association of Officials of the General Accounting Office of the Republic 24) Graham Fuller: (U.S.) former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, CIA, 25-year CIA operations officer, author of numerous books 25) Nebojsa Malic: (U.S.) Serbian-American, wrote for Antiwar.com for 15 years, and for RT America until it was closed down in March 2022 26) J. Michael Springmann (US), served in the United States government as a diplomat with the State Department’s Foreign Service, with postings in Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He left federal service and currently practices law in the Washington, DC, area. 27) Mike Robinson (UK), co-editor of “UK Column” 28) Mike Callicrate (US), Kansas; Colorado, Bd of Directors of Organization for Competitive Markets, Owner Ranch Foods Direct 29) Tony Magliano (US), internationally Syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist 30) Daniel Estulin (Russia) Author and investigative journalist 31) Jeremy Kuzmarov (U.S.), Journalist and Author of Four Books on U.S. Foreign Policy 32) Dragana Trifković (Serbia), general director of the Center for Strategic Studies
Mike Billington: This is Mike Billington with the Schiller Institute and the Executive Intelligence Review. I’m here today with Ambassador Chas Freeman, an esteemed diplomat and one of the most knowledgeable people regarding Chinese issues in the nation. Do you wish to say anything else about your position?
Amb. Chas Freeman: I’m a retired diplomat and defense official with views that differ from those of the establishment.
Mike Billington: Indeed. Thanks. Well, the great mystery now, as everybody knows, is will she or will she not? Will Nancy Pelosi, who is now in Asia, stop in Taiwan? The itinerary she put out actually does not list Taiwan, but it’s still expected, nonetheless, that she will stop there. As you know, Xi Jinping told Biden in their phone call on Thursday, “Those who play with fire shall perish by it.” And the former Global Times editor Hu Xijin said that if she goes to Taiwan, it would be considered an invasion and that the PLA had the right to confront them or even shoot them down. And yet the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, said that the military would protect her if she flies in. What do you expect if she does go?
Amb. Chas Freeman: I think she will go, And I think that has now been confirmed by officials in Taiwan as well as in Washington. The expected date is August 4th, probably flying in from Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. This is an act of extreme irresponsibility on the Speaker’s part. US-China normalization is linked to American respect for One China, a position that Taipei and Beijing traditionally held, from which Taipei has now departed, with enthusiastic support from much of the American political establishment.
I don’t think Hu Xijin speaks for the Chinese government. I don’t think the Chinese government is eager to provoke the United States, as the United States seems eager to provoke China. But any consequence from this will most likely fall on Taiwan. The speakers visit, in other words, instead of enhancing Taiwan’s security, is likely damaging it, threatening it, and leading to an escalation in tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Exactly what the Chinese will do, no one knows. They have many, many options, political, economic and military. It’s clear that the speaker put herself in a position where she could not not go. She equally put Taiwan in a position where it could not not welcome her. And she put the Chinese government in a position where it could not not do something escalatory. The sad reality is that the White House and the military in Washington both see this trip as damaging rather than helpful. But the White House has not had the courage to block Mrs. Pelosi’s travel. So we will see what happens, probably on Thursday.
Mike Billington: This has been true on other issues with President Biden as well. In several calls between President Biden and President Xi Jinping, Biden has assured the Chinese President that the US honors the One China policy, and it will not encourage Taiwan to declare independence. And yet his administration continues to do the opposite. And Chinese leaders have to repeatedly say that if the US followed what Biden said in the phone calls, things would be okay. Who is running policy in the US?
Amb. Chas Freeman: It’s very clear that the President is not speaking forthrightly on this issue. Just as in Israel, where he visited recently, he extolled the virtues of the two state solution, which is now physically impossible due to Israeli actions backed by the United States. In the case of Taiwan, the United States once had a diplomatic agreement with the Chinese on how to handle the issue, but this has been salami sliced away. Now we are left with no way of dealing with the issue other than the military, which is why the US military is preparing to protect the speaker. After all, she is the third in line for the presidency and a very important figure in the Congress, which is supposed to be the dominant branch of government under the American Constitution. The military obviously have a requirement to protect her, even if she does something terminally foolish as she is now doing.
Mike Billington: The Taiwan division at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which I would say is probably the leading government linked think tank for the Chinese, had a meeting in which they said, “Don’t say we didn’t tell you,” and noted that this was what was said before the 1962 border war with India and also before the 1979 incursion into Vietnam, and perhaps they said that before their entry into the Korean War. I’m not sure of that. But can the US ignore the warning this time?
Amb. Chas Freeman: They did say that before the entry into the Korean War. It does not imply immediate action on their part, but it does suggest that we have come to a turning point on this issue, in which the probability of military conflict has been boosted. And Speaker Pelosi will have to take the responsibility for that.
Mike Billington: I think you probably agree the US provoked Russia to the point that they moved into eastern Ukraine. You said in your last interview with us that if Russia moved — this was before February — into Ukraine to defend their compatriots in the Donbas, that China might use that as an opportunity to forcefully reunify China. What level of provocation do you think would drive them to move in militarily now?
Amb. Chas Freeman: I think the issue of Ukraine and the issue of Taiwan do have something in common in that the primary lesson we should take from what has happened in Ukraine is that if you defy the forcefully expressed objections of a great power to your actions, you do so at your peril, and the peril of those who you purport to protect. Russia was provoked into what it did in Ukraine, which does not justify what it did in Ukraine. It was unjustified, but provoked. A similar possibility exists in the case of Taiwan. The Chinese, however, will not be as impetuous as Vladimir Putin was. He sent his troops over the border without having first briefed his generals on his intentions, without preparing the logistical support for the invasion that he mounted, and without addressing the morale of the troops by explaining to them what they were being sent in to do. So that was impetuous, probably a last minute decision after the effort by the Russians to negotiate an understanding on NATO’s enlargement and Ukraine, but failed and was rebuffed by the United States. In the case of Taiwan, the Chinese have had decades, since 1995,1996, when they first began to prepare seriously for military conflict with Taiwan, after the United States breached our agreement with them and allowed the then president in Taipei, Lee Teng-hui, to visit the United States. That was also a congressional initiative opposed by the then Clinton administration, the executive branch. This, too, is a congressional initiative, or at least one by the Speaker. So the danger is that the Chinese will redouble their efforts and make a firm decision to use force against Taiwan. Not that they will use force immediately. They will not do so until they are confident they are ready and can win. Whether the United States stands in their way or not, they assume we will. So that is their planning guidance. This is not a story that began yesterday and it will not end tomorrow.
Mike Billington: You’ve pointed to the 2005 Chinese anti-secession law as defining when Beijing would consider using force to reunify China. One of those conditions is that: “all possibilities of peaceful unification are lost.” Have those conditions been met in your mind?
Amb. Chas Freeman: That’s a judgment for the Chinese to make. Many in Beijing, I think, believe that those conditions have now been met, and that is what makes this moment so very dangerous.
Mike Billington: Clearly Taiwan would be absolutely destroyed in any war between the US and China, regardless of who won, if there was such a thing as winning. Is this not enough to prevent such a disaster, from within Taiwan, not wanting to see that kind of destruction as we see now in Ukraine?
Amb. Chas Freeman: One of the problems that Beijing faces is that having cried wolf so often, having warned Taiwan, so often, its warnings are now heavily discounted. Many people in Taiwan simply refuse to imagine that there could be a resumption of the Chinese civil war. It wasn’t so long ago, however, that there were active air battles in the Taiwan Strait and artillery exchanges between the forces of the mainland and Taiwan. It ended only on January 1, 1979, when the United States and China normalized relations. So the Chinese have a problem — if they don’t do something escalatory, the value of their political military pressure on Taiwan will be diminished. They don’t have much choice, in my view.
Mike Billington: The trade between Taiwan and the mainland is huge. I think it’s almost $200 billion, and there are huge Taiwan investments within the mainland. What voice does the business community have? Certainly they would want to prevent any kind of a provoked military confrontation.
Amb. Chas Freeman: There are almost 3 million Taiwanese living and working on the mainland at any given time, so this is a relationship that is in many ways very intimate, a relationship among Chinese on both sides of the strait. There are many people in Taiwan who do business with the mainland and who have no desire to see that disturbed by the outbreak of conflict. But there are also people in Taiwan who are passionately committed to the idea of self-determination for the island, it’s separation from China, and they happen to be in power. The Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, has an independence plank. Its leader, historically, although she’s very cautious now, was openly committed to independence. The fact that that is the case is what has essentially ended political dialogue across the strait and replaced a gradual process of accommodation with a rise in tensions.
Mike Billington: You recently quoted John Quincy Adams, who said that the American hearts would be any place where the standard of freedom and independence is brought up, but that she “does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” It is certainly the case that the anti-China mob in both parties and in the media here are trying to make China out to be a monster. Is China a monster?
Amb. Chas Freeman: I don’t think China is a monster in any respect. It’s been around for 4000 or 5000 years, is really the only example of a pre-modern society that has successfully perpetuated its existence over millennia. On the other hand, China has conditions that are radically different from those that we in the United States understand. It has 14 land borders, sea borders with Japan and South Korea, and with Taiwan, defeated in the unfinished civil war. And, of course, the U.S. Seventh Fleet is off the Chinese shores. The United States is now conducting at least 2 to 3 intrusive patrols along China’s borders daily, which accounts for the fact that the Chinese are reacting in dangerous ways more frequently, in my view. But China also faces other challenges. It has about one third of the arable land of the United States, much less water than we do. It has over four times the population, which it must feed on those meager resources. It’s actually the largest producer of food in the world. Notwithstanding that, it’s very efficient. But it’s always on the edge.
Chinese history is full of instances of mass death through starvation, political upheaval or foreign invasion. So the Chinese attitude toward their government is, they want a can-do government. They want a strong government that will take responsibility for maintaining order and ensuring the well-being of their families. In the United States, we have a margin of error that’s so large, we want a government that does nothing, or as little as possible. “That government is best, which governs least,” said Thomas Jefferson. No Chinese would ever say such a thing. So there is a clash of ideology, of political theory, political culture, which is built into this relationship. I think it is understood in China that the United States has been uniquely blessed with resources, space, separation from the rest of the world by oceans, benign neighbors, only two of them with land borders. And the Chinese are well aware that they share none of these blessings. That causes a lot of misunderstanding between the two countries, and it causes some Americans to see China as anathema.
Mike Billington: The US imposed massive sanctions on Russia, even though they have turned out to be far more damaging to the West really than on Russia. But they have also apparently blinked recently. They did agree to a grain deal between Russia and Ukraine on exporting grain, which began today. They reversed the sanctions on shipments to Kaliningrad. Europe is very divided over the gas policies. And Blinken did place a call to Sergei Lavrov on Friday. Most of the world has not supported the sanctions policy. Do you think the US can be brought to relent and to end the sanctions regime in Russia and elsewhere, and to negotiate with Russia and China?
Amb. Chas Freeman: Judging by other examples, the answer is no. There’s been no give on maximum pressure on North Korea or on Iran, for example. The sanctions have an almost unbroken record of failure to achieve the political results they ostensibly aim at, namely a change in policy. In this case, a change in Russian policy. But they do have a history of enormous collateral damage. At the moment, the sanctions that the West imposed without, I think, adequately considering the collateral damage they might cause, the knock-on effect, is radically restructuring the global energy market in ways that were not intended. It is radically restructuring the global food market in ways that were not intended.
I would make one correction to your question, Mike. The grain deal was brokered by the UN with the help of Turkey. The United States and others were not involved. Russia agreed to it. In fact, Russia had consistently offered a path through the alleged blockade of Ukrainian ports for food shipments. The problem with the food shipments actually began not with the blockade, but with the Ukrainians prudently mining their own harbors to prevent the Russians from entering them. The minute they did that, insurance companies canceled the insurance on ships that were in the harbor or attempting to enter it or leave it, and the trade shut down. So regardless of whether there is or is not, or has or has not, been the alleged Russian blockade, the first thing that has to happen is some measure of demining. I gather that has taken place sufficiently in at least one port to allow a ship to depart. Whether that ship will ever return or not for more grain is, however, an open question. This is a war zone. The ships that were stuck there have no desire to return and get stuck again. There’s no assurance that they wouldn’t be, and it’s inherently dangerous, no matter how good a pilot is, to traverse a minefield. So this is a very tenuous agreement not reached by the West with Russia, but by the UN on behalf of the Global South, brokered by Turkey and agreed to by Ukraine reluctantly.
Mike Billington: Let me ask you about the move for what is proudly called “decoupling” of the US and Chinese economy. What do you think of this, and what will be the effects?
Amb. Chas Freeman: The United States and China both have benefited enormously from globalization, meaning the proliferation of supply chains across international borders. The net result of the decoupling will probably be to slow the growth of both the Chinese and the American economy. Part of the decoupling is a ban on Chinese researchers in labs or at universities working on subjects which the powers-that-be in Washington consider sensitive. That is definitely going to retard progress on key technologies in the United States. If you go into an artificial intelligence, or A.I., lab anywhere in the United States, you’ll find that something like 60% of the workforce there is foreign, about half of them Chinese, the other half largely Indian. The banning of those Chinese researchers just sends them back to China, where the government is investing approximately three times as much as the United States in developing advanced electronic technologies. The only competitors that the Chinese have are Taiwan, of course, which has over 90% of the world’s chip market, and South Korea, which is investing something like six or seven times what the United States is in boosting its semiconductor industry. So the decoupling is basically injurious to everyone, unlikely to do anything other than produce greater competition internationally for the United States, and will probably retard, rather than secure, our international technological primacy.
Mike Billington: The hyperinflationary crisis in the Western financial system, which has been aggravated by the sanctions regime on Russia but was already beginning before that, has really forced almost everybody to recognize that we’re heading into an extremely serious economic crisis throughout the trans-Atlantic. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has issued a call, as we have for decades actually, but at this moment of crisis, for a new Bretton Woods conference, which would include Russia and China, as well as the U.S., to deal with what should be obvious to everyone as a very, very serious crisis in the Western financial system. Do you have any hope or expectation that such a thing could be brought about?
Amb. Chas Freeman: No, I do not. The political conditions for that do not exist. There’s no indication at all that the current administration in Washington understands or practices diplomacy in its traditional sense. We’ve seen that with the breakdown in Ukraine. We’ve seen it with the breakdown over the so-called JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal. We’ve seen it with the impasse with North Korea. We’ve seen it with the deterioration in relations with China. I don’t think the political conditions exist.
On the other hand, one of the effects of the sanctions and other fallout from the Ukraine war is the de facto restructuring of the global financial system. Five ASEAN countries have now agreed to direct settlement of purchases through QR codes. Iran and Russia have agreed to, not just swaps, but a similar arrangement for the use of Russian credit cards in Iran, bypassing SWIFT, the Western operated Belgian entity that usually clears global transactions through the dollar. Similarly, the BRICS are in the final stages of devising a transnational currency to replace the dollar for purposes of trade settlement. And of course, they are expanding their membership. So what we’re seeing is an evolution toward bilateral and plurilateral trade settlement mechanisms that avoid the dollar. And it’s very likely that we are on the path to a future in which the dollar will no longer have the near monopoly position it does in trade settlement, but will be merely one of many currencies in which trade is settled.
I want to just add that the issue of what is a reserve currency and what is not is actually derived from the question of what trade can be settled in and what it cannot be. But the two are quite different. People talk about the dollar as a reserve currency, but that sort of misses the point. The real strength of the dollar is backed by Saudi Arabia, which in 1974 agreed to denominate the world energy trade in dollars, something that OPEC has grudgingly followed despite objections from some of its members like Algeria and Iran. As long as the dollar continues to be the unit of account for the energy trade and other commodities, the United States will retain our so-called exorbitant privilege. But the minute the Saudis and others begin to accept currencies other than the dollar in exchange for their commodity production, the dollar will collapse and we will see a massive devaluation of it, comparable to the one that occurred in 1971, when the U.S. went off the gold standard and dollars were no longer exchangeable for gold. This is a process that is occurring, in which a rational response would indeed be some sort of international effort to negotiate a transition. But I don’t see the political basis for that.
Mike Billington: Sergei Glazyev, who’s now one of the leaders of the Eurasian Economic Union, and Wang Wen, at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, have held a series of seminars on this issue, on the question of putting together some alternative currency to the dollar for international trade. Do you have a sense of how that’s moving forward?
Amb. Chas Freeman: I understand it is moving forward, but primarily in the context of the BRICS discussions that I mentioned. The last BRICS summit launched an active effort to implement those ideas. They have not yet been implemented, and indeed the details remain somewhat obscure. But I think there’s no question that there is an active effort underway to accomplish exactly what Wang and his Russian counterpart suggested.
Mike Billington: The Ukrainian Centre on Confronting Disinformation, which is funded by the NATO countries, recently issued a list of 78 prominent international figures whom they described as Russian propaganda agents, and declared them to be “information terrorists” and “war criminals.” Thirty of those 78 had spoken at Schiller Institute conferences, and you also have spoken at Schiller Institute conferences. What are your thoughts on this hit list?
Amb. Chas Freeman: It’s a sign of the times. If you don’t have a serious argument, resort to smearing those who disagree with you. This is detestable. It is a rebuke to the very ideas of free speech that are essential to Western democracy. And it should be condemned.
Mike Billington: As you know very well as a Chinese scholar, the Chinese character for “crisis” combines the characters for “danger” and for “opportunity.” It is certainly the case that people around the world are recognizing the extreme danger of the strategic crisis heading for war, perhaps nuclear war, and are also feeling the impact of the economic crisis. Do you sense that the citizenry around the world is responding? Are they adequately driven to try to force a change towards sanity?
Amb. Chas Freeman: Just a minor corrective — there are actually two characters to the Chinese word “crisis,” it’s not one. But yes. This is the origin, I presume, of — I think it was Rahm Emanuel’s observation — that one should never fail to make use of a crisis or let it go to waste. I’m sorry to say that I believe the general reaction internationally and certainly in my own country, the United States, is one of despondency and a sense of impotence and frustration as the equivalent of a tragedy in the true Greek sense unfolds. Everyone can see where this is likely to go. The protagonists nonetheless proceed on course. And the chorus is unheeded. So this is a moment in which, indeed, people should be giving voice to their objections to a course of action which unnecessarily risks a war, possibly a nuclear war. And among other things, as you pointed out earlier, the certain destruction of both Taiwan’s democracy and its prosperity. I wish I could say that I see effective, popular response to the dangers we face, but I don’t.
Mike Billington: Thank you. Do you have any last thoughts that you’d like to leave for our listeners?
Amb. Chas Freeman: No, I’ve probably already hung myself enough.
On July 23, members of the Schiller Institute’s youth movement from a half- dozen Ibero-American nations joined an international mobilization in defense of Dutch farmers under the heading “World Day of Action for Agriculture, Science and the Future.” In Mexico City, Schiller Institute youth leader Carolina Dominguez introduced the day’s activities in a video now available online, appearing with a large banner publicizing the Dutch farmers’ mobilization call, entitled, “The World Is Going Dutch,” showing another sign that asked “Do you like to eat? Let’s defend those who produce your food!” and a picture of the World Land-Bridge. The video included clips of organizers holding other banners, followed by individual videos prepared by eight youth members and supporters in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
In her introduction, Dominguez explains: “The videos you’ll see from around Ibero-America as part of this mobilization are from young people who are worried about what we’re going to do about the future. These videos are for you—the farmers, producers, fishermen and others—because despite the fact that the financial system is bankrupt, that you’re being strangled with restrictions, and that the whole system is in a state of collapse, you keep feeding the population, you keep providing us with food to eat.
“You are not alone! The Schiller Institute is the spearhead for all those voices that can’t be with you in person, but our leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called for a new, just financial system that will include collaboration on infrastructure projects among farmers, scientists and educators.” See Documentation for the full text of the video.
Kansas State Sen. Mike Thompson spoke to Bob Baker in a July 22 interview for the Schiller Institute and EIR, reporting on how the Central States came to be facing electricity blackouts, from the shift to low-energy density wind and solar. A meteorologist, he is the Chairman of the Kansas Senate Utilities Committee. He reviewed the science, not the green ideology, on how to understand the episodes of high heat and drought now afflicting some of the planet, and how we should be building water and other infrastructure. The interview will be in the next issue of EIR, cover date July 29, and the video posted on the Schiller Institute site soon.
Thompson said, “We’ve got some big energy policy issues. A lot of it has been driven by the fact that there has been a steady disinformation campaign about the climate, for decades, and now we’re making horrible energy policy based on that … part of the reason that the Energy Information Administration is saying that we’re going to see electric rates double, if not triple, across parts of the country, is because of the increased reliance on renewables: wind and solar.”
Thompson went through some of the weather patterns of drought and high heat. The current U.S. heat wave, “is not unusual. It’s not uncommon, and it’s driven by largely the Pacific Ocean patterns that we have in place right now, and the Atlantic Ocean patterns; there are multi-decadal patterns of abnormally warm and cold pools of water; the locations of those pools of water—and they’re vast areas of the Earth—determine the general weather pattern flow across North America. And the one we’re stuck in right now, helps to amplify a big high-pressure dome over the western part of the United States, which is locking this heat wave into place.”
He stressed that, “there’s a general misunderstanding of the difference between environment and climate and what actually drives the climate,” and debunked the CO₂ demonization.
He gave specifics on the Central States, which right now faces a summer version of the 2021 Texas Freeze, when the state had blackouts. “Here in the state of Kansas, we have 4,000 wind turbines right now, and on a day like today, where it’s close to 100°, we have virtually no wind. So we’re all totally reliant on coal and natural gas, today, and the little bit of nuclear we have.
“And there’s no sign that we’re going to go toward reliability. As a matter of fact, the public utilities here are talking about retiring more coal plants. There are nuclear plants being retired across the United States—Palisades up in Michigan is one of the more recent; Diablo Canyon in California, they’re retiring a couple of those. In ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council in Texas, they retired over six coal plants and went whole-hog into wind with over 30,000 MW of wind down there.”
