Speakers include

• Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President of the International Schiller Institute, Germany
• Zhang Jun, Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University in Shanghai, China
• Charles Liu, Senior Fellow of the Taihe Institute, China
• Ole Döring, Professor at Foreign Language Studies College of Hunan Normal University

In the current geopolitical environment, Western leaders are moving away from referring to
China as a “partner” and emphasizing China more as a “rival”.
For example, the EU Commission recently promoted “de-risking” to reduce Europe’s alleged
dependence on China in certain economic sectors. The United States “decoupling” strategy
seeks to cut China off from technology supply chains. And the German government has declared
China a security risk and is working on a plan to impose import and export controls, investment
barriers and other sanctions on China.

China, on the other hand, emphasizes that if countries want to reduce risk, they should trade
more with China. What are the options and potentials of both views?
Western sanctions against Russian energy commodities and goods have already shown the
opposite effect and have largely backfired on Europe. Will Western leaders learn from this failure
and prevent another serious miscalculation?

In reality, China is the world’s most important market and production center, and its Belt and Road
Initiative is bringing infrastructure development to the majority of countries in need. Will the West
reflect on this fact and create a new paradigm of peaceful win-win cooperation?
Since the mainstream Western “narrative” leaves no space for such a debate, we want to provide
a platform for a broad alliance of international thinkers, entrepreneurs, and policy strategists to
have a public conversation.

Dec. 14, 2022 (EIRNS)–Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak said Russia will increase the share of nuclear power in its grid from 20% to 25% by 2040. In an article for the Energy Policy magazine on Tuesday, reported by RT, “Novak wrote that the growing trend of expanding the use of civilian nuclear energy can provide a powerful impetus to further improve the industry in Russia and build up its export potential. `Russia is already a leader in the global nuclear industry, possessing colossal technological and scientific potential in this area,’ Novak wrote.”

Novak said that nuclear is currently 20% of Russia’s total energy mix, “whereas in the European part [of Russia] it is almost 40%, this being the biggest source of clean energy in the country.” He also said that Russia’s share in the global market of low-power nuclear reactors would reach 20% by 2030.

Dec. 14 (EIRNS) — The Dec. 5 experimental result at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) raises the issue of the fourth of Lyndon LaRouche’s four laws, and his Fusion Energy Foundation (FEF)’s approach to the most important scientific frontiers.

The result reported in an Energy Department/National Nuclear Security Agency press conference Dec. 13, followed by a technical panel of NIF team leaders, was an ignited plasma fuel with an output power gain of 50% over the input laser power–not 20% as had been reported in media leaks Dec. 12. This was a very large improvement over the August 2021 shot, which was a {huge} (25x) improvement over any previous experiments there. Moreover, Dec. 5 was the first net gain in the worldwide history of fusion power R&D.

The energetics of the experiment – which also make clear fusion energy will not be commercialized with this kind of set-up – were given as: “wall outlet power” for the laser array, 300 megajoules; laser input power delivered to the target fuel, 2.05 megajoules; output from ignited fuel, 3.15 megajoules. All in part of a nanosecond. (Note extremely low 0.6% power efficiency of the laser array.)

The key innovation which has probably advanced the NIF experiments of the past two years more than any other – namely, the use of an electric coil to surround the laser-imploded fuel pellet {with a strong magnetic field as it explodes} – was never mentioned by any director or team leader in the 75-minute presentation of the results. This, despite a {Physical Review Letters} article on just that subject published Nov. 4, 2022. The lead author and the innovation’s originator, John Moody, wrote, “The application of an external 26 Tesla axial magnetic field to a D2 gas-filled capsule indirectly driven on the National Ignition Facility is observed to increase the ion temperature by 40% and the neutron yield by a factor of 3.2 in a hot spot with areal density and temperature approaching what is required for fusion ignition.” This was written {before} the Dec. 5 experiment’s much better result.

Why did no one mention this? Perhaps it is irrelevant to the reason for existence of this ICF program at Livermore: To analyze U.S. nuclear warhead performance without nuclear weapons tests. The program will get $641 million in the Fiscal 2023 NDAA –by Chuck Schumer’s efforts according to him–while most fusion R&D now depends on private funds.

If a serious national fusion energy development program were launched, this successful step in “hybridization” of magnetic and inertial confinement fusion would be of great importance. (One might say the idea is “as old as the FEF,” or older.) But apparently not, if improving U.S. warheads for possible nuclear exchanges with other powers is the reason for the United States government funding fusion research.

Other institutions involved in the NIF work at LLNL are: DoE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Nevada National Security Site; General Atomics; academic institutions including the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University; international partners including the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

Ralph Bosshard, a retired Swiss lieutenant colonel, served in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) in 2014, where he was a senior planning officer. His duties took him to Kiev, Mariupol, and Dnepropetrovsk, among other places. Until 2017, he served as a special military advisor to the Swiss Permanent Representative to the OSCE and the Swiss Ambassador in Kyiv. From 2017 to 2020, he served as an operations officer in the OSCE High-Level Planning Group, which planned a military peacekeeping operation in the South Caucasus. He kindly provided EIR with his assessment on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. In doing so, he points to the physical realities of conducting such an operation, and then points out the resulting, devastating paradox: When NATO countries blame Russia for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, they are telling the world that Russia has seabed warfare capabilities far superior to those of NATO! Still he considers that “a Western authorship is much more plausible than a Russian”.

The copyright is held by the author and the full article cannot be published without his permission.

Examination of the feasibility of an act of sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines off Bornholm confirms that a Western authorship is considerably more plausible than Russian. Nevertheless, stories about a Russian false-flag operation continue to circulate in Western media. This does not seem credible. However, if the Russians were in fact responsible for the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2, that should give rise to the greatest concern in Western capitals.

It has been bandied about, among other things, that the Russians had already mined the gas pipelines during the construction phase, to be able to then destroy them at any time. Apart from the lack of logic of such an event, there are some technical arguments against it.

A first counterargument is that explosives age chemically. This aging process causes explosives to decompose over the years to such an extent that an explosion is no longer guaranteedⁱ. But the opposite can also occur: stockpiled explosives can explode years later due to the slightest environmental changes. In planning the destruction of underwater pipelines that have a life span of 50 years, this may well be a problem. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE, in its so-called stockpile management projects, has accumulated much experience with stockpiled ammunition, which can explode at the slightest incident and is accordingly dangerous to handle. In armed forces that are experienced in dealing with permanent blast sites, such as the German Armed Forces, the Austrian Armed Forces and the Swiss Armed Forces, the maintenance of such blast sites was ensured by professional formations, such as the Wallmeister organization or the Fortress Guard Corps. An explosive charge attached to a pipeline already under construction would require regular maintenance, including replacement of the explosive if necessary. This can be complex.

Control and maintenance of pipelines underground is handled by so-called “pigs”ⁱⁱ. These are autonomous devices that travel back and forth inside the pipes and monitor the condition of the pipe with various measuring devices. However, the deployment of a so-called pig several hundred kilometers away from where it was inserted is a technical challenge that should not be underestimated. But if such a maintenance pig inserted an explosive charge in the Nord Stream pipelines from the inside, the damage pattern would reveal that immediately. However, whether a truly independent investigation of the sabotage act will ever take place is very much up in the air.

Another technical challenge involves the detonation of an explosive charge in a place so difficult to access as underwater pipelines, because the detonators (blasting caps) also undergo aging processes, so that they no longer function reliably years after they were produced. An electrical ignition cable several hundred kilometers long would also require regular inspection and maintenance. The idea that a pipeline could be destroyed decades after it was built, from a blast site several hundred kilometers away, by hitting a button so to speak, is naïve.

On the Ground Saboteurs

It would be significantly safer to produce the electricity required to detonate an electric detonator at a safe distance from the blasting site with a blasting machine, for example by means of a hand crank. For this, an electric detonator would have to be put into the explosive at a prepared location beforehand and connected to the blasting machine with a cable. This also requires the physical presence of the saboteurs on site.

The variant of remote detonation by a radio transmitter or a cell phone would, of course, also have to be considered. However, in the cold water at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, the required accumulators and batteries discharge quickly. And electromagnetic waves do not penetrate deep enough into the waters. Submariners are aware of reachability problems of submerged submarines, and even the long waves used for submarine communications do not penetrate to depths of 70m and more. For this variant, a relay would have had to be set up near the scene of the crime before the sabotage operation, to ensure the connection between the trigger and the detonation site.

All these considerations suggest that the acts of sabotage at the two gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 were carried out on site. Given the distance between the crime scenes, the same group of persons could conceivably be responsible for both acts of sabotage. However, the shortest connection between the two locations crosses a Danish Navy maritime training area. The physical presence of a ship, a submarine or a submarine drone is much easier to ensure from NATO territory than from the Russian Navy bases in Kaliningrad oblast, 300 km away. If, however, the Russian Navy did manage to overcome all these technical and tactical obstacles and to approach the scene of the crime undetected, then carry out extensive preparatory work there, trigger the detonation and depart again undetected, this would be quite an accomplishment, which should set off alarm bells in Western capitals.

Deployment of submarines and submarine drones

All these problems can be avoided if one simply places a large explosive charge weighing a few hundred kilograms on the pipeline from a submarine or a submarine drone. Transporting such a charge undetected through 300 km of NATO-controlled waters, however, is not that easy. If the Russians had succeeded to do that, then virtually every underwater infrastructure of NATO countries would be jeopardized, including the gas pipeline “Baltic Pipe”ⁱⁱⁱ that just opened a few days ago, as well as all underwater communication cables, as well as numerous electricity lines.

Map: Sumarine Cables around Europe
Source: submarine cable map, https://www.submarinecablemap.com/.

This would also drastically change the image of the allegedly incompetent Russian armed forces, which Western sources have amply spread in recent months, and at the same time cast a negative light on the naval forces of the NATO countries and candidate countries involved. It is possible that Seabed Warfare has now arrived in Europe, and the question arises as to whether we are on the eve of an unprecedented wave of sabotage targeting the undersea infrastructure on Europe’s periphery, that cuts the continent off from gas and telecommunications. If that occurs, in the West’s war against Russia, events on the front lines in eastern Ukraine will suddenly be irrelevant.

Bottom line

Anyone who objectively examines the feasibility of an act of sabotage against the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines off Bornholm must come to acknowledge that Western authorship is considerably more plausible than Russian authorship. If, however, the USA, Denmark, Poland and perhaps other NATO allies were responsible, Germany in particular would have to draw the consequences.

One may now ask what the purpose is of the speculation and conspiracy theories circulating in Western media in recent days around the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines. The aim may simply be to surround in fog the obvious and most plausible version of a U.S. authorship. In the future, one would do well to consider Western communications with a certain degree of skepticism.

iThe author experienced this himself in destroying unexploded ordnances.

iiSee Andree Büchner, Harry Hauck, Hans Langenhagen, Jörg Voigtlände: Inspektionsmolch für Pipelines, Jahresbericht 1996 Zentralabteilung Forschungs- und Informationstechnik, Abridged version, online at https://www.hzdr.de/FZD/TT/Molch.pdf. See home pages of commercial suppliers in the branch, eg. Cryotainer, online at https://www.cryotainer.com/de/dienstleistungen/molchen-von-rohrleitungen and ARS Betriebsservice, https://ars-bs.com/leistungsspektrum/pipelineservice-betriebsfuehrung/molchung/durchfuehrung-von-reinigungs-und-entleerungsmolchungen.

iiiSee the die entsprechende Mitteilung der Europäischen Kommission unter https://germany.representation.ec.europa.eu/news/gas-von-norwegen-nach-polen-eu-geforderte-baltic-pipe-eroffnet-2022-09-27_de.

Oct. 1, 2022 (EIRNS)– The following statement was released on Sept. 30 by Natalia Vitrenko, and was received by the Schiller Institute. We hope to have more details soon on the outrageous violations of due process and “democratic” norms by the Ukrainian Presidency, Ministry of Justice, SBU and Supreme Court in this case.

Message to members of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU), members of the Central Committee of the PSPU, and friends all over the world:

On 27 September 2022 in Kyiv, the Administrative Appeals Court of the Supreme Court of Ukraine partially satisfied the PSPU’s Appellate Complaint, by deleting from the ruling of the 8th Administrative Appeals Court in Lviv, dated 23 June 2022, a part of the abhorrent charges, while allowing the decision on banning our party to stand.

I believe that this not only is a politically motivated punishment of our party, but it tramples on all the foundations of European democracy. The principle of the supremacy of law, enshrined in the Constitution and in conventions, has been trampled—a principle that consists of lawfulness; legal certainty; the prohibition of arbitrary actions; guaranteed access to due process, provided by independent and fair courts; respect for human rights; the prohibition of discrimination; and guaranteed equality before the law.

The PSPU’s Appellate Complaint smashed to pieces the ruling by the court of the first instance, showing that it was unlawful and baseless. Our opponents, represented by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine (MinJust) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) failed in its suit, its written answers to the PSPU’s Appellate Complaint, and its oral arguments before the Supreme Court, to refute a single legal substantiation of the invalidity of their accusations against our party.

The Supreme Court’s 27 September decision was handed down by a panel of judges chaired by S. Ukhanenko, in whom the PSPU, during the court session, officially presented grounds for no-confidence and for a transfer of the case to the full Court.

The decision to ban the PSPU was political and discriminatory in nature, rather than juridical, because the motive for banning the Party was based on political accusations, not on any legal substantiation of violations of the Constitution of Ukraine or the European Convention on Human Rights by the PSPU.

I cite here one of the accusations by the MinJust, supported by the SBU, in their Statement of Claim: “The Party protests against Ukraine’s joining NATO and the EU, against the rehabilitation of OUN-UPA [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army] fighters, declares fidelity to Eastern Slavic culture and canonical Orthodoxy, and envisions Ukraine in an inter-state union with Russia and Belarus.”

It is absolutely obvious to any honest human rights organization or any European jurist, that such politically motivated accusations as those, made by the Ukrainian government, are inadmissible as the basis for banning parties, under the Constitution of Ukraine (Art. 37), the European Convention on Human Rights (Art. 11, p. 2), European Court precedents, or the Venice Commission of the OSCE.

From the very beginning, when their party was founded in 1996, the Progressive Socialists offered Ukraine a strategy for domestic and foreign policy, based on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine (1990) and the Declaration of the Rights of the Nationalities of Ukraine (1991), which were passed by the Ukrainian Parliament, and which defined the essential nature of national sovereignty after the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine had been supported in the All-Ukraine Referenda of 17 March 1991 and 1 December 1991.

In the setting of the tragedy of the disintegration of the USSR, only the principles declared by the people of Ukraine—namely, a neutral, non-bloc status for the country; the impermissibility of the sale of land and the looting (in the form of privatization) of economic capacities belonging to the entire nation; equal rights for the citizens of Ukraine regardless of ethnicity, faith, language preference or cultural tradition; and Ukraine’s entry, on an equal footing, into a new inter-state union with the republics of the former USSR—offered a guarantee of peaceful coexistence with the former Soviet republics and the successful development of Ukraine as an independent, sovereign state. They provided Ukraine with territorial integrity within its 1991 borders and a guarantee of security from all leading countries in the world.

This explains the hatred of our party on the part of world imperialism and Ukrainian nationalism (fascism). They always fought against us, because we openly opposed the model of peripheral, colonial capitalism, imposed upon Ukraine by the IMF [International Monetary Fund], and we opposed privatization, the creation of an oligarchy, financial speculation, the cheap-labor model, capital flight, labor flight, the sale of land, the extermination of the Russian language and languages of ethnic minorities, the rewriting of history, debasement of the Soviet people’s victory in the Great Patriotic War, and making heroes of collaborationists from the OUN-UPA, and were against government agencies’ unleashing of terrorism against the canonical Orthodox Church.

I am proud of our Party and of every rank-and-file member, because we have been the only party in Ukraine to propose a scientifically based, comprehensive program of reforms for the country. I am certain that the implementation of our program would have prevented the current tragedy of the war, destruction of the economy, dying out of the population, and territorial losses.

Neither I, the leaders of our party organizations, nor the members of the PSPU ever called for a violent overthrow of the constitutional order or for violence of any sort. The goals and activity of our Party abided by all the norms and principles of democracy. Neither the MinJust nor the SBU offered a single piece of evidence to the contrary in court. We were prepared to achieve our goals through competition in elections. In the fight against us, however, terrorism, fakery, raider takeovers, slanders, and threats were employed.

The Party nominated me as a candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine four times—in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2019. Those in power allowed me to take part in the elections only in 1999 and 2004. In 1999, when some of the attributes of democracy still remained in Ukraine, the power of our ideas and the population’s support of them were so great, that sociological polls forecast that I would defeat the incumbent President L. Kuchma in the second round.

But the terrorist attack on me, 2 October 1999 in Krivoy Rog, when two RGD-5 grenades were thrown at me and my entourage, was used by my opponents to frighten the voters, and I was deprived of victory. Victory was stolen from our Party through vote fraud in the parliamentary elections of 2002 and 2006. But popular support for the ideas and actions of the PSPU were very high at that time, because when we entered the Supreme Rada of Ukraine as a caucus in 1998, we had showed our fighting qualities, task-orientation, and commitment to principle. The members of our Party who were elected to local self-government bodies carried on the same kind of self-sacrificing fight.

I am grateful to every member of the PSPU, who fought in our ranks selflessly and with all their heart to save Ukraine and transform the world. I am also grateful to the millions of people who supported our sacred struggle by voting for us. A deep bow to you all!

The position of our Party was always an impediment to the ruling governments’ ability to loot the country, mercilessly exploit the population of Ukraine, and conduct domestic and foreign policies in the interests not of their own people, but of the West’s imperialists.

Under the Constitution of Ukraine, responsibility for peace and for the lives, dignity, and health of the citizens lies with the institutions of state power, headed by the President.

Failing to meet its responsibilities and engaging in detestable mind control, the government of Ukraine issued a piece of fakery in the form of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine dated 18 March 2022, implemented by the President of Ukraine with his Decree dated 19 March 2022, to suspend the activity of several parties in Ukraine, including ours. And in order to prevent us from defending our rights, freedoms, and legal interests in civil and administrative courts, the 8th Administrative Appeals Court of Lviv ruled on 20 May 2022 to freeze the PSPU’s bank account. This deprived us of the possibility of contesting in court, as untruthful, the NSDC’s decision, the Decree of the President of Ukraine, and the entire “evidence” base submitted to the court by the MinJust and the SBU.

In violation of Article 55 of the Constitution of Ukraine and Article 6 of the European Convention, we were deprived of access to the court, because of the impossibility for the PSPU to pay the court fee from its bank account. Our purpose would have been to refute, on the basis of our own lawsuits, the false information submitted by the MinJust and the SBU as the basis for banning the PSPU.

The blocking of our bank account also deprived the PSPU of the right to hire the services of a lawyer. Vladimir Marchenko and I were forced to conduct the entire, exhausting legal battle ourselves. He represented the interests of the PSPU before the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court refused to accept as evidence the Statement of the CC PSPU “Ukrainian Democracy Needs to Be Defended by the Supreme Court against the Government’s Dictatorship,” or the statements of Chairman of the PSPU, People’s Deputy of Ukraine [Member of Parliament] in 1995-2002 N. Vitrenko “I Defend Peace, Socialism, and Democracy, Not War, Nazism and Capitalism,” of First Deputy Chairman of the PSPU, People’s Deputy of Ukraine in 1990-2002 V. Marchenko “The Supreme Court Is the Last Hope for Defending Democracy against the Arbitrary Actions of the MinJust and the SBU, and against the Establishment of a Dictatorship,” of Member of the CC PSPU, Deputy of the Mykolaiv Regional Council in 2006-2010 Larisa Shesler “Relations between Ukraine and Russia. I Have a Right to My Opinion,” and of Member of the CC PSPU, Deputy of the Romny Municipal Council in 2002-2010 and outstanding athlete of our time Sergei Gavras “I Bear Witness before God, the Court, and History. Testimony of a Champion.” The Court was in a panic over the inability of the MinJust and the SBU to refute the evidence presented in these declarations, regarding the true goals and activity of the PSPU.

In contrast, the Court deemed worthy as evidence fabrications from the Internet, submitted by the SBU, without any investigation of the primary sources or confirmation of their truthfulness. The Court also accepted, without evidence, some distorted fragments of interviews of N. Vitrenko and L. Shesler and the attribution to the PCPU of financing terrorists, propagandizing in favor of war, and justifying the actions of the Russian Federation.

The Supreme Court, in politically motivated discrimination against the PSPU, denied all 19 of the motions made by our Party, including the ones on access to evidence of the activity of the OUN-UPA; on confirmation of any violations of law on the part of the PSPU, established by the judges; on the illegality of the Decree of the President of Ukraine dated 19 March 2022; on asking the Constitutional Court for a determination of the constitutionality of that Decree; and others. Brought to light in court was the monstrous position of the MinJust and SBU, that Ukraine refuses to fulfill its obligations under the UN Charter (Article 25), and therefore to obey the UN Security Council resolution on the Minsk Accords. In addition, the refusal to adhere to the Charter and Judgment of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.

The Supreme Court undertook no investigation at all of whether the norms of law were legally applied by the Lviv court in banning the Party. The Court allowed Vladimir Marchenko only 20 minutes to present our case. It did not allow argument, citing the fact that the Court was considering the banning of the Party using a simplified procedure. Think about that: banning a party, with the institution of the party being a foundation of democracy in general and European democracy in particular, using a simplified procedure! Without proper investigation of the evidence or application of the norms of law!

It will be interesting to see what conclusion the Venice Commission draws regarding democracy in Ukraine, based on the example of the banning of the PSPU.

I am convinced that neither those in power in Ukraine, nor the Supreme Court, have succeeded in defeating our ideas or proving the illegality of our activity. Their ban on the Party is not the period at the end of a sentence, but a comma. History acquits us. The true guilty parties in the tragedy of the war will be named. Truth and justice will prevail.

Toward victory, always!

Natalia Vitrenko,

People’s Deputy of Ukraine, 1995-2002,

Doctor of Economics, Academician

30 September 2022

Dr. Fred Wills, former Foreign Minister of Guyana,andExecutive Board Member of the Non-Aligned Movement (1975-1977), regularly employed the words of classical poets to express his thoughts and convey the broader context of contemporary events. On December 20, 1986, Wills delivered these lines as part of a type of eulogy on the death and life of Hulan E. Jack, former Manhattan Borough President, to console the cadre of the LaRouche movement for their loss of this cherished friend and associate. In reflection. LaRouche’s centenary birthday provides another fitting occasion to hear Will’s recitation of the words of Greek elegist Callimachus on Heraclitus, his friend.

A Recitation: Callimachus on Heraclitus