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Jason Ross

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Symposium on China-Japan Projects

Oct. 14 – Senior Chinese and Japanese government officials began a two-day symposium Sunday in Tokyo – the 14th Annual Tokyo-Beijing Forum- at which the degree of Japanese participation in the Belt and Road Initiative great projects program of China, is again the subject, reported {Japan Times}.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Oct. 25-27 will make the first state visit to China by a Japanese leader since 2011; this was announced by the Chinese Foreign Ministry Oct. 12. At the Tokyo meeting, Wei Jianguo, vice chairman at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, revealed that during Abe’s visit, about 1,000 people will attend a signing ceremony for more than 60 joint projects involving Japanese and Chinese firms.

“Those projects are all designed to jointly develop `third-country’ markets in countries outside of China and Japan,” reported {Japan Times}. “During the symposium, Chinese officials repeatedly urged Japan to jointly promote third-country development projects in what is seen by some as a push by Beijing for Tokyo to join its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, which is centered on massive infrastructure projects in Central Asia, Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.”

“Right now, the China-Japan relationship has a forward-looking momentum. High-level contacts have been maintained and exchanges in various areas have been strengthened,” Chinese Ambassador to Japan Cheng Yonghua told the symposium.


Progressive socialists appeal to UN over government repression and neo-Nazis’ terrorism

Oct. 3, 2018

Delegates to the XXXII Extraordinary Congress of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) voted up an appeal by the Congress to the United Nations Organization (UN), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and the European Parliament, in connection with government repression against the PSPU, terrorism carried out by neo-Nazis, and the threat of election fraud in Ukraine.

PSPU Press Service

To UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

The OCSE Office on Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)

The European Parliament

Stop terrorism and repressions! Defend democracy in Ukraine!

Appeal

Of the XXXII Extraordinary Congress

of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine

October 3, 2018

Dear members of human rights organizations, dear Members of the European Parliament,

The delegates of the XXXII Extraordinary Congress of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU), a systemic opposition party, urgently request that you investigate the political, informational, inter-ethnic, interconfessional, and socioeconomic processes taking place in Ukraine, in order to make an objective evaluation of their correspondence to the norms and principles of international law; the Ukrainian government’s fulfillment of its obligations with respect to defense of the rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens; and the correspondence of the current reform policy to European values.

We are forced to appeal to you because many facts, including ones concerning the opposition PSPU and its leaders, demonstrate that, in place of the promised European democracy in Ukraine, what is being carried out is political, moral, psychological, physical, and informational terrorism against opposition political parties and public organizations. Taking part in this terrorism are agencies of the state, as well as Nazi fighters who enjoy protection from Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. Under conditions of socioeconomic catastrophe and civil conflict, which has crossed the boundary into civil war, a way out, and into a peaceful democratic process, may be found in the process of honest, competitive elections of the President and Parliament of Ukraine, scheduled for 2019. Under current conditions, however, in which democracy and democratic procedures are absent, we believe that it will be impossible for the upcoming Presidential and Parliamentary elections to realize the fundamental democratic principle of the free expression of the will of the citizenry, because politically motivated repression is being carried out against opposition parties and politicians.

Our Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, in particular, has been a victim of such repressions. Specifically:

  1. On October 28, 2016, bandits, among whom were fighters from the Azov organization,seized the central office of the PSPU, the party’s documents, the party archive, its symbols, and the personal dataof party members. The editorial office of the party newspaper Predrassvetnyye ogni was seized simultaneously, including its computer equipment and archive. Property belonging to the party’s leader Natalia Vitrenko and to the editor-in-chief of Predrassvetnyye ogni Vladimir Marchenko was also seized: their large libraries, personal belongings, and computer equipment.

The criminal cases opened on this crime have practically not been pursued for two years. And this has remained the case despite court rulings, which obligated the raiders to remove impediments to the use of this office.

  1. The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has blocked the activity of our party(an opposition party!) by illegally failing to acknowledge (i.e., to register) the resolutions of three Congresses, so far, of the PSPU, which took place in 2015, 2016 and 2017. In compliance with the requirements of new Ukrainian laws, these Congresses amended the Charter and Program of the party and the membership of its leading bodies. Thus, since 2015 the PSPU has been deprived of the possibility of taking part in elections.

The Kyiv City Appeals Court, in a decision dated July 4, 2018, in case N82618543/17, ruled that the actions of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine with respect to the documents of the XXXI Congress of the PSPU were illegal. To this day, however, the Ministry continues to throw up obstacles to registration of the party’s documents, and the PSPU has been forced to conduct the present XXXII Extraordinary Congress, in order to fight for its right to participate in the upcoming 2019 Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Ukraine, and to conduct full-fledged, lawful political activity.

  1. 3.Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are not making a proper investigation and are not calling to accountthe Nazis from the National Corps, S-14, and other rightwing radical organizations for violations of the law in regard to peaceful actions conducted by the PSPU. The violent attack on a peaceful, lawful PCPU demonstration on March 17, 2016 has also not been investigated. The prevention of the PSPU’s holding a peaceful action on May 9, 2016 has not been looked at.

Also not properly investigated is the terrorism committed by the National Corps against the party’s leaders—People’s Deputy of Ukraine (1995-2002) and candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine in 1999 and 2004 Natalia Vitrenko, and People’s Deputy of Ukraine (1990-2002) Vladimir Marchenko—when the militants attempted to break into their apartments on May 9, 2017. The police have refused to open criminal cases on instances of crimes by the neo-Nazis. Attempts to force the police to open such cases and conduct investigations, in accordance with court decisions, is de facto being sabotaged for political reasons. And this is happening despite the decision of the Kyiv Administrative Appeals Court, dated September 5, 2018, in case N826/6463/17, which ruled that the non-action of the National Police of Ukraine regarding these events was illegal.

The S-14 Nazis’ attack on the PSPU leaders outside the building of the Kyiv City District Administrative Court on April 26, 2018 is not being properly investigated.

There are many instances of thorough violation of European values and the rights and freedoms of citizens, as well as of preparation for falsifying the outcome of the elections. The question arises: Do such processes correspond to the values you declare and defend? Does this correspond to the norms and principles of international law and the responsibilities of the government of Ukraine to obey them?

We are counting on you. We are counting on you to read our Appeal, study the facts stated here, and others, and make public your evaluation of them.

Political rights are inalienable for every person, every citizen. Without respect for them, life will not change for the better.

Respectfully,

On behalf of the delegates of the XXXII Extraordinary Congress of the PSPU

Chairman of the PSPU Natalia Vitrenko


Successful Launching of the BRIX at Belt & Road Business Forum in Stockholm

First Silk Road cargo shipment from Sweden celebrated

“If you want to get rich, build a road first!” With this old Chinese proverb the moderator Hussein Askary opened the 2nd China-Sweden Business Forum, which was hosted by China-Sweden Business Council (CSBC) and the new association called the Belt & Road Executive Group in Sweden (BRIX) at the Grand Hotel Winter Garden in Stockholm on September 28, 2018. This year’s main theme of the Forum was the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). One hundred members and guests took part in the event.

AmbassadorIn his opening address, H.E. The Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Gui Congyou, received a spontaneous applause when he brought the news to the audience that the first New Silk Road cargo shipment from Sweden to China had been sent off the week before. A train with containers left the community Insjön in the county Dalarna for the long route via Gothenburg and Hamburg to Ganzhou International Port bringing high-quality wood for a furniture producer in the Jiangxi province in Southern China.

The authorities and media in Sweden have been oblivious to the BRI so far. But this Forum provided the insights necessary to change that attitude. The association BRIX that co-hosted the event was launched at the Forum to promote an open dialogue and greater awareness of the BRI and its benefits for Sweden in particular, and the world community in general.

One key aspect of the BRI is that it is not only about links to China, but an initiative to promote global connectivity. All nations of the world are invited to participate on their own terms in the BRI. Stephen Brawer, BRIX vice Chairman, in his presentation, pointed to a world map where all continents will be connected, in the future even with links reaching out to the Americas and Australia. He pointed to the September 3-4 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing where 53 African nations linked up with BRI to fulfill the African Union’s Agenda 2063 for a continent wide modern infrastructure network and eliminating poverty in the continent.

“to foster a new type of international relations” and “forge partnerships of dialogue with no confrontation and of friendship rather than alliance.”

The BRI should not be seen only as a “practical” transport system for trade, a U.K. strategy and PR senior adviser for Sino-European public relations, underlined that the BRI, since its launching by President Xi Jinping in 2013, also has a philosophical dimension of creating harmony, “to foster a new type of international relations”, and “forge partnerships of dialogue with no confrontation and of friendship rather than alliance”. She advised Sweden to establish institutions capable of developing long term BRI cooperation with China, just as the UK had done with an office for the BRI/related Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a regional cooperation mechanism called Northern Powerhouse, the all parliamentary China-UK group, and the government’s Permanent Envoy to the BRI.

DSC_4887The typical misunderstandings of the BRI in Swedish business circles were dissected by Ali Farmandeh, chairman of the CSBC. The BRI is much more than Chinese production of Swedish goods. Furthermore, he stressed, “the New Silk Road is also not something far away, as many in the northern corner of Europe think. Among the 70 nations that have joined the BRI, there are also neighbors in Europe, who are already building their parts of the world connectivity network, projects where Swedish businesses can take part immediately.”

Working with China is sometimes challenging to the old world due to cultural differences, as Ying Wu, a former Student of Royal Technical School (KTH) in Stockholm and now CEO of SinceUs, explained in the final presentation at the Forum. Turning many Swedish business habits upside down, she brought many insightful and humorous examples of problems she has met in assisting Swedish clients to enter and expand in the Chinese market of 437 million e-commerce shoppers. She presented the case study of a Swedish brand Airnum, which she had helped bring from unknown to a bestselling brand in just one year.

These opportunities for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) are important to make well known as best practices for further understanding in Sweden of the importance of the BRI and the opportunities for innovative businesses it opens up in so many countries worldwide.

The Swedish Wood products have a long tradition of being in the forefront of reaching out to new markets, since the industry was established in a big way as a pure export industry in the second half of the 19th century. A Swedish sawmill in Dalarna becoming a first explorer of the New Silk Road routes through Eurasia is very good news for the whole Swedish industry that is curious about the tremendous growth of new markets, cities and new industrial parks stimulated by the BRI.

Further information:

www.brixsweden.com

info@brixsweden.com


Concerning the Fate of the Nation

The following talk was given to an audience in Detroit, Michigan, on Saturday, September 29th.  It is being specially released for distribution at the United Nations, for the purpose of inoculating responsible diplomats, elected officials, members of the press and representatives of NGO and other organizations against being “bamboozled” into supporting the ongoing attempted coup against the Presidency of the United States and its duly elected representative, Donald Trump. 

Urgent matters of war and peace, including the danger of thermonuclear conflict, are being successfully addressed for the first time in recent history, in an extraordinary diplomatic process involving Russia, China and the United States. This is best expressed in the momentous developments involving the ending of the 65-year-old Korean conflict, and the advance of a treaty between Russia and Japan to end the Second World War. These developments are due to the Trump Presidency, and are the first substantive victories in a campaign to reverse the doctrine of “preventive war” first launched by Great Britain’s Tony Blair “Responsibility To Protect” speech at the Chicago Board of Trade in 1999. Similar actions have been proposed for other areas of the world, but are being prevented through the means, “legal and otherwise,” detailed in the presentation by author Barbara Boyd below. The Presidencies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama advanced that war agenda, which, had it not been interrupted by the Trump administration, would have inevitably led to a thermonuclear World War Three.

Anyone, anywhere in the world, not actively supporting the ongoing process involving the Trump Administration’s successful campaign to break with the Bush and Obama-era “preventive war” policies, as implemented in Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011), for example, reveals himself or herself to be an advocate of that “preventive war” policy, including “winning thermonuclear war,” as expressed in the “Prompt Global Strike” doctrine adopted by both the Bush and Obama Administrations. Responsible persons and observers in the international arena were reminded of this very real danger of “ultimate war” by the March 1 address of Vladimir Putin to the Russian Federal Assembly. Anyone calling for the impeachment of the President of the United States, at this time, is either a foolish or witting advocate of the impending self-extermination of the human race, through war. All responsible persons on the planet, regardless of political affiliation, or “personalized” view of Donald Trump, must therefore act to prevent such a foolish course of action.

The fairy tale of collusion by Trump with Russia to win the election, was also concocted against the Trump Presidency, well before Trump was even elected, by British Intelligence operatives, particularly “former agent” Christopher Steele and his controllers, including MI6’s Sir Richard Dearlove. This has been thoroughly exposed in previous LaRouche PAC publications readily available. There is, in short, no factual basis for any continued support for that lie, which will, as documents are declassified, become clear even to the morally opaque. The visceral prejudice voiced against President Donald Trump is not based on his faults. One can have many policy disagreements with his administration without claiming that it is illegitimate—which would mean that the U.S. Constitution itself were illegitimate. 

The truth is, that the treasonous “anti-Trump” opposition—as opposed to legitimate disagreement, expressed both outside and inside the United States—is fueled by banking and financial interests that are dead set against a US–Russia–China–India partnership dedicated to removing the shadow of British colonialism, and British shadow banking from the planet. As the Trump–Kim “Singapore Model” successfully negotiated and essentially resolved the decades-old Korean conflict, could not the same be done in Southwest Asia, including in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Israel, and Palestine? True, each situation is different; but, who thought a year ago, at the United Nations, that the Korean situation would have been resolved as it has, along with the cooperation that is emerging between Japan and Russia?

For such negotiations, nations need to know that the President of the United States can deliver on his intentions. This President has proven his intention to stop war. A “Four Powers” agreement, proposed by the United States, for world economic development, to include Russia, China, and India (as well as Japan and other nations where appropriate) simultaneously resolves the American debt and employment crises, prevents war, enriches many other nations, and advances the goals of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative in ways completely congruent with the “Make America Great Again” mission of the Trump Presidency. That done, any legitimate contenders against Trump, or his Presidential legacy, will have to offer their alternative to this vision of the world, in the proper way: in the electoral arena.

Recognizing the puzzling picture that American domestic politics may present to outside observers, the following report is supplied. The author states:

“Many have told me that there is much confusion in the international community about the situation in the United States and the Trump Presidency.  They are bombarded every day with the British and EU generated propaganda image of Donald Trump: an unhinged bully, an abuser of women, a racist tearing mothers from babies, and, most of all, an authoritarian personality who loves other such alleged monsters. I will tell them that the LaRouche movement is not defending everything Donald Trump says or does; but, it does support the unprecedented opportunity this Presidency represents by attacking and seeking to change the institutions which have enslaved the world in the wake of the death of Franklin Roosevelt. That opportunity will be lost, however, if Trump’s battle against failed globalist institutions is not lifted to the higher level found in the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche.

“I would also ask my international friends, at the same time, why they fell for the positive image of Barack Obama floated endlessly by the same propagandists now attacking Donald Trump… Obama’s disdain for the forgotten men and women of the United States, people destroyed by the Wall Street bailout, which he supported before he was President, and implemented after he was President. He echoed the hatred expressed by Hillary Clinton for the working men and women and those in the middle classes in the United States—“deplorables,” tribalists, people unworthy to engage in public discourse, when he said, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” It was Barack Obama who killed people throughout the world in sanitized targeting sessions every Tuesday, using CIA-produced baseball cards for easy reference.  It was Barack Obama who mocked the black citizens of Flint, Michigan whose water had been poisoned with lead. It was Obama who told a South African assembly of students in Johannesburg that if they sought to possess the same automobiles and air conditioners—that is, to consume the same amount of electricity and the world’s resources—as existed in Europe or the United States, “The planet would boil over.” It was Barack Obama who signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law in 2012, mandating indefinite military detention of anyone anywhere in the world, without charges or trial.

“Trump, because he was completely outside the establishment, had to use the leftover intellectually bankrupt shards of the Bush and Obama Administrations to form his government.  That is why you very often see Trump declaring one thing and his government sticking to simple extensions of the views of Bush and Obama—that, and the insurrection which has been run against the President since he began his term. Those citizens of European and other nations who have suffered through regime-change operations should readily understand what this is all about.

“The way to help the Presidency of the United States make the breakthrough it needs is by defeating the coup and building the movement around Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws. Further, we need a New Bretton Woods monetary system to create the breakthroughs in science and technology which will put humankind on its next development platform. If we don’t defeat the coup here, God help the United States and the rest of the world, because you will have put the anarchy and insanity, which I describe below, into power, in the most powerful nation on earth.”


Prominent leaders endorse LaRouche’s New Bretton Woods

The following list of elected officials, scientists, professors, military leaders, musicians, authors, labor leaders, and more have endorsed the Schiller Institute’s petition, The Leaders of the United States, China, Russia, and India Must Take Action!  To read the full petition, or add your own signature, click here.

Elected Representatives active or former federal, state, and local elected officials

Government Officials active or former military, diplomats, ambassadors, etc

Organizational Leaders leaders in labor, agriculture, industry, and business organizations

Political, Religious, or Social Leaders 

Leaders in the Arts and Sciences scientists, technologists, professors, and musicians

 


We, the undersigned, appeal to President Trump, President Putin, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi, to convoke an emergency summit in order to create a New Bretton Woods global monetary system.


 

Elected Representatives
(active or former federal, state, and local elected officials)

Senator Richard Black (USA) • Sitting Virginia State Senator (Republican, District 13)

Hon. Gianni Tonelli (Italy) • Sitting member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Lega Nord party

Prof. Ivo Christov (Bulgaria) • Sitting Member of the Bulgarian parliament for the Socialist Party, member of the Foreign Policy, and Science and Education committees

U.S. Senator Mike Gravel (USA) • Two-term Democratic senator for the state of Alaska (1969-1981); famously read classified Pentagon Papers at a Congressional hearing to expose failure of the Vietnam War policy

Dr. Natalia Vitrenko (Ukraine) • Chair of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine; member of parliament with the Socialist Party of Ukraine (1995-1998) and then with the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (1998-2002)

Congressman Cornelius Gallagher (USA) • Democratic Congressman representing New Jersey (1959-1972)

Viktor Marchenko (Ukraine) • Former member of parliament, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine

Dr. Kirk Meighoo (Trinidad & Tobago) • Former Senator, Trinidad & Tobago; member of the advisory board of the Caribbean Integrationist

Senator William “Bill” Owens (USA) • Former Massachusetts State Senator (1975-1982, 1989-1992), Democratic party

Souad Sbai (Italy) • Former member of Italian National Parliament

Commissioner Robert Van Hee (USA) • Sitting County Commissioner, District 4 Redwood County, Minnesota

Councilwoman Elena Fontana (Italy) • Former City Councilwoman, Italia-Montichiari (Brescia)

Mayor Henry Gonzalez (USA) • Former Mayor of South Gate, California, founder and former President of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement

Guy N. Martin (USA) • Former Mayor pro tem of Conroe, TX; Attorney in TX;  Former Financial Advisor for AG Edwards

 

Government Officials
(active or former military, diplomats, ambassadors, etc)

General Edwin de la Fuente Jeria (Bolivia) • Former Commander-in-Chief, Bolivian Armed Forces

Dr. Julio C. Gonzalez (Argentina) • Former Technical Secretary to the Argentine Presidency

Major General (ret) Kostas X. Konstantinidis (Greece) • Co-founder of the Non Governmental Organization “Amphiktyonia of Ecumenical Hellenism”

Alain Corvez (France) • Advisor on international strategy

James George Jatras (USA) • Former diplomat; former adviser to Republican Senate leadership

Jacques Bacamurwanko (Guinea) • Former Ambassador of Burundi to the USA; now serving as Capacity Building Expert (Chef du Département “Suivi-Evaluation”) National Capacity Building Secretariat in Guinea

Ambassador Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos (Greece) • Former ambassador;  former Secretary General of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation

Vasant Bharath (Trinidad & Tobago) • Former Minister of Trade, Industry and Investment

 

Organizational Leaders
(leaders in labor, agriculture, industry, and business organizations)

Daisuke Kotegawa (Japan) • Research Director, Canon Institute; Former Executive Director for Japan IMF

Dr. Walter Formento (Argentina) • Director, Center for Economic and Political Research

Jean-Pierre Gerard (France) • Former member of the Council of Monetary Policies of the Banque de France; entrepreneur

John Lampl (USA) • Vice-President (retired) of the AFL-CIO, North Dakota; former District President of North Dakota Democratic Party

Rich (John R) Anderson (USA) • Former director of the National Cattlemen’s Association; former member of the Texas Republican Executive Committee; former County Chairman of the Republican Party

Trustee George Bioletto (USA) • International Association of Machinists, Long Beach, CA

Francis Kelly (USA) • Farm Bureau in Wyoming; county chair in the Republican Party

Tate Ulsaker Nelson (New Zealand) • International Trade Consultant; founder of Direct Info

Denys Pluvinage (France) • President of Apopsix Editing company

Jean-Michel St. Jean (USA) • Haitian National Congress, Inc.

 

Political, Religious, or Social Leaders

Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany) • Founder of the Schiller Institute; founder and chairwoman of the German Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party (BüSo) (Civil Rights Movement Solidarity)

Fouad Alghaffari (Yemen) • Head of the Preparatory Committee of the New Silk Road Party in Yemen; President of the Yemeni BRICS Youth Cabinet

Reverend Andrew Ashdown (UK) • Anglican Priest; author, The Very Stones Cry Out; leader of the first British community group to visit Aleppo following the beginning of the Syrian conflict

Ellen Brown (USA) • Attorney; chairman of the Public Banking Institute; author of twelve books, including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution

Ali Rastbeen (France) • President of the Geopolitical Academy of Paris

Chris Fogarty (USA) • Former Vice President of the Friends of Irish Freedom; author of The Mass Graves of Ireland: 1845-1850 and Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it Perfect

Fred Huenefeld, Jr. (USA) • Louisiana State Democratic Party Committee

Jacques Cheminade (France) • President of Solidarité et Progrès

Tom Gillesberg (Denmark) • Chairman of The Schiller Institute in Denmark

Liliana Gorini (Italy) • Chairwoman of Movimento Internazionale per i Diritti Civili – Solidarietà (MoviSol)

Antonio “Butch” Valdes (Philippines) • Founder of the Philippines LaRouche Society; Initiator of the Citizens National Guard, Philippines

Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane (South Africa) • Leader of LaRouche South Africa

Abdus Sattar Ghazali (USA) • Editor, American Muslim Perspective; former News Editor of Daily News, Kuwait; former correspondent of Associated Press and the Daily Dawn of Pakistan

Michael P. Collins (USA) • Author of Saving American Manufacturing and The Manufacturer’s Guide to Business Marketing; writer for Forbes Magazine and Industry Week

George/Vladislav Krasnow (USA/Russia) • Russian American Goodwill Association

Mike Robinson (UK) • Editor, UK Column, Plymouth, UK

Dr. James Hufferd, (USA) • 911 Truth Grassroots Organization, Adel, Iowa

Mary Sullivan (USA) • Irish American activist, Chicago, Illinois

 

Leaders in the Arts and Sciences
(scientists, technologists, professors, and musicians)

Dr. Eduardo M.A. Peixoto (Brazil) • Ph.D. and Prof. of Chemistry, University of São Paulo; former Superintendent of Technical Consultancy, Nat’l Development Bank (BNDES); former Brazilian representative to WHO

Dr. Jorge Alberto Montenegro (Argentina) • Professor of International Trade, FASTA University

Professor Bong Wie (USA) • Vance Coffman Endowed Chair Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University; founding director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Collaboration

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Knorr (Germany) • Professor of Nuclear Energy Technology, Technical University of Dresden (TUD); Director of the Institute for Energy Technology of the TUD; President of the Kerntechnischen Gesellschaft; Board Member of the German Atomic Forum; Board Member of European Nuclear Society

Gian Marco Sanna (UK) • Founder of the Geminiani Project, focused on restoring the original classical music tuning of 432 hz; leader of the Camerata Geminiani

Dr. Rainer Sandau (Germany) • Technical Director Satellites and Space Applications, International Academy of Astronautics (IAA)

Chief Scientist Wayne Moore, Ph.D (USA) • Accel Algorithmics; NASA (ret.)

Tom Wysmuller (USA) • NASA (ret.); meteorologist

Professor Lilya Takumbetova (Russia) • Retired Associate Professor at Bashkir State Pedagogical University

Professor Cathy M. Helgason, M.D. (USA) • Retired Professor of Neurology University of Illinois College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois

Roger Boyer (USA) • Retired principal science and engineering technician at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC)


Bilateral Economic Agreements Are Made at FOCAC 2018

Sept. 4, 2018  — With over 50 African countries represented at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit, there was an opportunity for these countries to sign bilateral economic agreements, make political statements in support of the Belt and Road Initiative, and have bilateral meetings among the leaders. The following are a few reported in the African media.

* A Chinese consortium comprising The Dongfang Electric manufacturing company and Shanghai Electric, and the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy, signed a $4.4 billion agreement to build a clean-coal power station in Egypt, China Central Television reported. It will be located 500 miles from Cairo and made up of six units with a total capacity of 6.6 gigawatts. Construction is planned to be completed in six years.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi held meetings with heads of Chinese firms operating in Egypt.
* Nigerian President Muahammadu Buhari heads a large delegation of ministers, governors, and heads of parastatals who have been negotiating agreements on behalf of their states and ministries on the sidelines of the summit. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. has been assured by China National Petroleum Corp. that it is committed to securing up to 85% of $2.8 billion needed to build the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) pipeline project, a statement from the corporation on Monday disclosed. The pipeline would enable connectivity between the East, West, and North that is currently non-existent. Funders would include the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, and
Infrastructure Bank of China, with Sinosure, China’s Export Credit Agency, providing insurance cover. The remaining 15% will be provided by the contractors.

* The President of Namibia, Hage Geingob, acting chairman of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), appealed to China’s investment community to support the SADC region in developing its manufacturing, infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and tourism sectors. Geingob said that, due to their extensive knowledge in industrial development and technology, Chinese will help SADC in realizing its dream.

* The Namibian delegation is negotiating a deal for the  Chinese to finance a new national airport, while elevating their relations to that of a Strategic Partnership.

* Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa said, at the summit, that the BRI is important to support Zimbabwe’s plan to be a middle-income country by 2030.
“Zimbabwe was only lucky,” he said, to the extent that 800 to 1,000 years ago there was trade between the Munhumutapa Kingdom and China when we imported porcelain and silk from here and in turn you got our ivory. But today the Road and Belt Initiative has taken everybody onboard so that our economies can talk to each other, so that our economies can help each other modernize and mechanize. We are getting connected and benefiting from each other.”

Mnangagwa said, “We are happy that this is a country that has never colonized anybody, who today is giving us a helping hand to grow. As a matter of fact, China is helping us to become a middle-income country. As a result of that helping hand we leapfrog and go into a modern economy. Left alone it will take us more years to develop with our domestic investment, but given the technology, given the assistance, the financial know-how, we leapfrog and become an important cog in the global economy.”


China Will Integrate Belt and Road with African Development Plans

Sept. 4, 2018  — The second day of the FOCAC Summit in Beijing consisted of a round-table chaired jointly by  President Xi Jinping and President Cyril Ramaphosa, and a series of side forums dealing with individual issues. Speaking at the concluding press conference of the summit, President Xi Jinping underlined the motif: “We will synergize China’s Belt and Road Initiative with African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the national development strategies of African countries.”

Xi said, “Together we will better uphold the common interests of China and Africa, boost the strength of developing countries, and make the world a more balanced and better place for everyone to live in.”

Xi also had words of wisdom for other “international partners” of Africa. “We hope that Africa’s international cooperation partners could learn from each other, leverage their respective strength, build synergy, and jointly contribute to peace and development in Africa,” Xi said. He thanked President Ramaphosa for his close cooperation over the last few months in preparing for the summit, and welcomed President Macky Sall of Senegal as the new African co-chair of FOCAC. President Ramaphosa reiterated his strong support for the BRI: “…[t]he China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative provides the African continent with great opportunities. African countries all collectively accept and praise the initiative, hailing it a best way to address Africa’s challenges.” He pointed out that China and African countries agreed to work more closely together and share technologies and achievements, and listed a series of projects, including the China-Africa cooperation center for ocean science and blue economy, the China-Africa research center for the development of green agriculture, the China-Africa energy technological cooperation center, and the China-Africa geo-science cooperation center.

President Sall, in turn, expressed that he is “happy” over being able to co-chair FOCAC, and said he saw “great prospects” in coming years with more engagements with the private sector. “We will push our relationship to a higher level,” he said, calling the present period of China-Africa relations, a “golden age.”


Indian Scholar: The Belt and Road Came from Lyndon and Helga LaRouche

Aug. 28 -Mahmud Ali, an Indian scholar currently at the Institute of China Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, posted an article on LinkedIn titled “America’s Foundational Contributions to China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI)” on Aug. 27. He ridicules the “disdain” from Western officials and media towards the Belt and Road Initiative, and stating that the slanders are “repeated {ad nauseam},” especially in the U.S. But, he continues, the concept “originated in America, with U.S. visionaries envisaging, promoting and advancing the cause of a united Euro-Asian economic space, as early as the late 1980s, before politicians and their assorted advisors had begun considering the possibility of the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the end of the Cold War. It was that American intellectual spark, nurtured by a few farsighted men and women, which illuminated the new world of possibilities. Without it, and direct intervention by governments and multilateral agencies based in America and its allies, there would probably be no BRI today.”

Then, under the subhead “American Prophets Imagine a New Silk Road,” he writes that despite the geopolitical thinking of most people in the West, based on the concepts of Halford Mackinder, “Western thinkers operating outside state-funded national security establishments envisioned a non-competitive, indeed collaborative, vision of the future. One of them, the U.S. politician and co-founder, with his wife Helga LaRouche, of the Washington-based Schiller Institute, Lyndon LaRouche, promoted such a vision, with some success in influencing segments of trans-Atlantic opinion. In October 1988, LaRouche briefed the media in West Berlin on ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Reunification of Germany,’ prophesying the collapse of COMECON economies, and urging food-support to Poland so that a majority of Germans on both sides desired reunification. In December, he assigned a group of Schiller Institute specialists to examine prospects for establishing a Paris-Berlin-Vienna productive triangle. In January 1990, Schiller Institute published LaRouche’s book on a proposed 320,000 sq.km. European economic area comprising a population of 92 million concentrated in 10 large industrial areas, from which he envisaged infrastructural corridors, linked with high-speed railways, radiating in all directions, providing a basis for upgrading living standards across Eurasia.”

Ali goes on to describe Schiller Institute conferences and {EIR} articles between 1991 and 1996 (noting that LaRouche was then in prison), when Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented her speech at the May 7-9, 1996 “Symposium on Economic Development along the New Euro-Asia Continental Bridge” in Beijing on May 8, 1996, titled “Building the Silk Road Land-Bridge: The Basis for Mutual Security Interests of Asia and Europe.”

Then, he writes: “In January 1997, Lyndon LaRouche addressed a Washington conference, urging the Clinton Administration to sponsor a New Bretton Woods system, reorganizing the world economy to prevent disruptive boom-bust cycles, and recognize the global merit of the Eurasian Land-Bridge program. Reinforcing and explaining her husband’s persistent thematic refrain, Helga LaRouche published a commentary titled, `Eurasian Land-Bridge: A New Era for Mankind,’ which was widely circulated across the Atlantic by the Schiller Foundation [sic].” He adds that Helga LaRouche addressed a second conference in Beijing in November 1997. “By then,” he continues, “railway connectivity between coastal China, Central Asia and Russia was a reality; Europe beckoned.”

He next reports on a conference in India organized by Schiller representative Ramtanu Maitra, with leading figures from Russia, China and India, where they “established a Triangular Association with the goal of promoting Indo-Russian-Chinese cooperation in forging a shared vision of Eurasia’s post-Cold War future of peace, progress and prosperity. The effort failed for a combination of distractions and difficulties: fallout from the Asian Economic Crisis, the September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington and America’s subsequent Global War on Terrorism, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then, the Great Recession. Nonetheless, seeds had been sown in the febrile post-Cold War intellectual hotbeds. Ideas analysed at Schiller’s many conferences and events began gelling into policy-frameworks in early 21st century.”

Ali then reviews other Western interventions into Central Asia, including a number of “bilateral investment treaties” the U.S. signed with coutries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, aimed at capturing the energy resources and breaking them away from Russia and China, and the so-called “New Silk Road Initiative” sponsored by Hillary Clinton (based on keeping Central Asia out of Russia and China influence), and the Lower Mekong Initiative, also by the U.S. State Department.

However, Ali makes a point that the U.S. initiatives were both “much more modest” than the LaRouche plans, or of Xi Jinping’s plan announced in September 2013, and that the U.S. “more candidly advertised their geopolitical drivers.” On the other hand, he concludes, “Beijing emphasized its economic, indeed geoeconomic focus.”


Uruguay to Announce Formal Entry into Belt and Road Initiative

Aug. 3, 2018-The office of Uruguayan president Tabare Vasquez has announced on its website that it will formally join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to be announced officially during the Aug. 20-27 “Uruguay Week in China” to be celebrated in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Guangzhou and Conqing.

Although the Uruguayans claim they are the “first” Ibero-American nation to officially join the BRI, both Panama and the Dominican Republic, which established diplomatic relations
with China during the past year, also claim to be the “first” in joining the BRI. Undoubtedly there will be many more “firsts”!

Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry and the Uruguay XXI trade promotion office are organizing the “Uruguay Week in China” event, and foreign minister Nin Novoa will lead the delegation
participating in it. Uruguay XXI’s director, Antonio Carambula, stressed that during the Aug. 20-27 events, “we will be presenting Uruguay as a nation of great investment opportunities
…. but also thinking of the possibilities of expanding to the rest of the region,” according to the montevideo.comwebsite.

Following the August events, Uruguay will send another large delegation to Shanghai, to attend the Nov. 5-10 China International Import Expo, hosted by the Chinese Commerce Ministry and the Shanghai municipal government. This is a huge affair, at which representatives of at least 100 countries are expected to attend. Several Ibero-American governments and companies have already committed to attending, and the Chinese continue to organize for this aggressively around the world.

(Chinese imports are in fact growing significantly faster than its exports now; a 21% annual pace in the first half of 2018, as opposed to 10% annual rate of growth in exports.) Also taking place in November in the city of Zhuhai is the China-Latin America-Caribbean Business Forum, which Uruguay hosted last year, and is another very large event including Chinese and Ibero-American businessmen and government officials. Later in November, Carambula announced, the “icing on the cake” will be Chinese president Xi Jinping’s state visit to Uruguay following the G20 meeting.


Global Silk Road Forum Will Be Held in Astana in July

April 1 -On July 3-4, 2018, Astana, Kazakhstan, will host the forum “Global Silk Road,” Director of the International Secretariat G-Global Serik Nugerbekov confirmed. “This forum is devoted to the 5th anniversary of the One Belt, One Road initiative and the 20th anniversary of Astana,” he told the round table “Kazakhstan and China in the New Epoch of Interaction” at the Kazakh Embassy in China, Kazinform reported on March 28. He said that the Global Silk Road Forum agenda will include a forum to bring together the mayors of cities along the Silk Road, for further communication and cooperation.

“We thank the scientists of the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation and 30 other countries for the support. We propose to continue the trend of bringing representatives of different fields together for cooperation,” Nugerbekov said, {Global Times} reported today.

There is also a proposal that the Silk Road Science Academy created in Kazakhstan will seek to unite experts of the Silk Road countries engaged in various fields.


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