Oct. 31 (EIRNS)–Schiller Institute Chair Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her weekly webcast yesterday reported that more than 2,000 hospitals in Afghanistan had closed during the fighting in that nation. Even more shocking, only 100 hospitals, most lacking medical supplies and adequate personnel, remain for 38 million people.
Mrs. LaRouche called on her audience to mobilize immediate emergency aid to be sent from the United States, Europe and the whole world; China has already done so. She called the needed supply action, “Operation Ibn Sina,” after the famous Persian doctor born in today’s Afghanistan, considered one of the greatest scientists of the Islamic Golden Age, and the father of modern medicine. Of the 250 books Ibn Sina is estimated to have written, 40 deal with medicine, including The Book of Healing, and the Canon of Medicine (which became a standard medical text at medieval universities until about 1650).
In a cynical juxtaposition to this heroic effort to save the nation of Afghanistan, police estimated last summer that the current “Climate Summit” in Glasgow could cost “several hundred million pounds,” nearly half a billion U.S. dollars. COP 26 will be the largest summit the U.K. has ever held, with up to 200 leaders expected. Better they stay home and focus on Operation Ibn Sina instead.
Beethoven: Spark of Joy – HIs Mass in C, God’s Grace Comes to Those Who Act for Posterity
Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II, the long-time patron of Franz Josef Haydn, commissioned a new mass setting each year for his wife’s name-day. In 1807, the commission fell to Beethoven, who, in his own words, “treated the text in a manner in which it has rarely been treated”. The great masses of Bach and Mozart are structured somewhat like operas, whereas Beethoven’s mass is powerfully symphonic, with the soloists treated as a unified quartet, inextricably interwoven with the choir. Esterhazy was not pleased, but the next performance, at Prince Lichnowsky’s residence, received a more positive response. After its publication in 1813, one commentator wrote that the mass conveyed “a childlike optimism that in its very purity devoutly trusts in God’s grace, and appeals to him as a father who desires the best for his children and hears their prayers”.
On November 18, 2018, the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus performed Beethoven’s Mass in C at the beautiful St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]
Experts Speak Out Against Suicide in the Name of Climate –
Oct. 31 (EIRNS) – Quite a number of seasoned experts on power, carbon, and weather are challenging the premises of the Suicide on the Clyde in Glasgow. Among those who have not yet participated in Schiller Institute and LaRouche Organization events, are Bjorn Lomborg, Robert Bryce, and Richard Lindzen.
Swedish economist Lomborg was quoted in Manila Times: “You’ve probably seen the latest alarming headlines: Rising sea levels from climate change could flood 187 million people out of their homes. Don’t believe it. That figure is unrealistic — and it isn’t even new. It appears in a new scholarly paper, whose authors plucked it from a paper published in 2011. And what the earlier paper actually found was that 187 million could be forced to move in the unlikely event that no one does anything, in the next 80 years, to adapt to dramatic rises in sea level.
“In real life, the 2011 paper explained, humans ‘adapt proactively,’ and ‘such adaptation can greatly reduce the possible impacts.’ That means ‘the problem of environmental refugees almost disappears.’ Realistic assumptions reduce the number to between 41,000 and 305,000 — at most, less than 1/600th of the figure in those headlines.
“Sober scientific findings get less attention than alarming and far-fetched scenarios…. We have more knowhow and technology than ever to build dikes, surge barriers and dams, expand beaches and construct dunes, make ecosystem-based barriers like mangrove buffers, improve building codes and construction techniques, and use land planning and hazard mapping to minimize flooding….”
Bryce, a regular Forbes contributor on energy and power, spent two days with no power in Texas in February. He testified Oct. 27 at the House Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on the American power grid. Whereas from 2000-2007 there were fewer than 100 blackouts in any year around the country, in the past three years there have been 220, 278, and 383 blackouts as interruptible sources have been pushed out and onto the grid. “These policies are not just wrongheaded, they are deeply dangerous,” Bryce told the Committee. “Banning the use of liquid and gaseous fuels will reduce America’s energy security because it will concentrate our energy risks on a single energy network, the electric grid. Furthermore, they would require an electric grid with more than two times the capacity of today’s grid. That’s a largely fanciful notion given that the electric grid is faltering under existing demand.” His Forbes piece is here.
Richard Lindzen is emeritus Professor of Meteorology at MIT. He is quoted, also in Manila Times by author Yen Makabenta. After explaining that the demanded “climate mitigation” measures will have no effect on climate, Lindzen says: “Consider what the climate system actually is. This system consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid, and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and re-emission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2 percent perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds, ocean circulations, and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multi-factor system, what is the likelihood that the climate (which itself consists of many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomalies) is controlled by a 2 percent perturbation in the energy budget due to just one of the numerous variables, namely CO2?
“Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic…. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.”
Schlanger on Caesar Sanctions Posted by Russian International Affairs Council
April 19: An article by Harley Schlanger, just written for LaRouche publications on Helga’ Zepp-LaRouche’s call to revoke the Caesar Sanctions, and how the U.S. Congress was incited to pass them, has been posted on the RIAC (Russia International Affairs Council) site. In addition, the RIAC tweeted the article to its 9,500 Twitter followers. RIAC is a institution of the Russian Foreign Minister, and is directed by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Here is a link to the Tweet.
May 10 (EIRNS) – Schiller Institute Southwest Asia representative Hussein Askary reported to EIR that Syrian media is publishing a news item today in which it is made obvious that Syrian government spokesperson Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban used the Schiller Institute conference as a platform to single out the British as instrumental in the propaganda and psychological war against Syria. Dr. Shaaban usually directs her criticism for the military and economy devastation visited upon Syria, at the United States and Saudi Arabia; seldom at Britain. This link is for the English version of the circulating story in Syria Times. The Arabic version was published in several Arabic newspapers and websites, Askary reports.
May 10 (EIRNS) – The central bankers’ “regime change” plotted at the August 2019 annual bankers’ summit – senior partner central bank and junior partner government Treasury teaming up to print vast amounts of currency and direct its spending – has been carried out since that time, and now has triggered the start of a hyperinflation.
Bloomberg’s Commodity Price Index is up 62% from April 2020 to April 2021. These are spot market prices, which means not every buyer is paying them. But, nothing like this has been seen since January 1980, at the end of the 1970s “stagflation” and when Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chair was already crushing the economy to stop it – 10-year Treasury interest rates were then 13%, not 1.5% as now.
Wall Street and the City are very happy, so far, about this rapid inflation in various forms of producer prices, which their corporate clients are passing on to households across the world whose wage income – at best – is stagnant. At “regime change” leader BlackRock, Inc., its global head of thematic investing Evy Hambro enthused on Bloomberg Television May 8, “There’s still quite a lot of room to go. What we’re really doing is we’re testing the upper ranges of commodity markets to work out what the new price range is going to be.”
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s global food price index rose in April to 120.9, which represents a 30.7% increase in one year. Food inflation last reached this level in 2011. Corn wholesale prices have surged the most, averaging 142% in the past year. Otherwise, sugars and oils are rising in price most quickly. Economists will “explain” that food prices both to the farmer and at the supermarket have been deflating during most of the 21st Century. But that is not the point: A hyperinflationary policy of printing currency and avoiding productive investment has triggered a sudden and rising inflation, as EIR forecast it would last in the Fall and the EIR Alert in late Summer. This inflation is getting started, and it will not be “transitory” unless the policy is changed radically.
In the United States, the price of the median home purchase is 18% higher than one year ago. While rental inflation had fallen quite low during the pandemic (though the lowest-income renters faced the most inflation!), it is now ready to take off. Two very large rental owners, Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, are raising rents by 8-11% on all new leases and re-leases.
The April Consumer Price Index, defanged of inflation in every way Federal Reserve and Labor Department economists have been able to devise in 35 years of effort, will be published May 12. It tends to shape Americans’ “expectations” of inflation. That survey by the New York Federal Reserve Bank showed today, for example, that Americans expect home price inflation to be 5.5% in the coming year – when it is already 18% for the median home!
May 6 (EIRNS)–Under the title: “Biden’s Taiwan Policy Is Truly, Deeply Reckless,” the New York Times Opinion writer Peter Beinart warned on May 5 that the Administration’s policy is bringing us very close to war, and quotes experts that the war would become nuclear. He also quotes military experts that the U.S. could not win such a war — simply driving home that such a war would likely become nuclear by a desperate and crazy U.S. leadership.
Beinart writes: “Like the Trump administration before it, the Biden team is now progressively chipping away” at the One China policy, which has prevented war over these past decades.
He notes: “Last summer, Democrats removed the phrase `one China’ from their platform. In January, Mr. Biden became the first American president since 1978 to host Taiwan’s envoy at his inauguration. In April, his administration announced it was easing decades-old limitations on official U.S. contacts with the Taiwanese government. These policies are increasing the odds of a catastrophic war. The more the United States and Taiwan formally close the door on reunification, the more likely Beijing is to seek reunification by force.”
Beinart quotes Harvard’s Graham Allison: “No Chinese national security official I have ever met, and no U.S. official who has examined the situation, doubts that China would choose war over losing territory it considers vital to its national interest.” He quotes Fareed Zakaria: “The Pentagon has reportedly enacted 18 war games against China over Taiwan, and China has prevailed in every one.” He notes: “Within 500 miles of the island, mainland China boasts 39 air bases. The United States possesses two. To come to Taiwan’s aid, U.S. forces would need to cover huge distances, and China has built an arsenal of advanced anti-ship missiles, sometimes called “carrier-killers,” which are designed to make such a rescue mission hideously costly.”
In other words, the U.S. can not win such a conventional war. Beinart notes: “Some of America’s most experienced China experts — including former ambassador to Beijing J. Stapleton Roy and Chas Freeman, who served as Richard Nixon’s interpreter on his 1972 trip to China — believe such a conflict would risk nuclear war. He adds that, according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 85 percent of Republican leaders support defending Taiwan militarily, but “only 43 percent of Republicans among the public agree.”
He concludes: “What’s crucial is that the Taiwanese people preserve their individual freedom and the planet does not endure a third world war. The best way for the United States to pursue those goals is by maintaining America’s military support for Taiwan while also maintaining the “one China” framework that for more than four decades has helped keep the peace in one of the most dangerous places on earth. Hawks will call this appeasement. So be it. Ask them how many American lives they’re willing to risk so the United States can have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.”
Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at The Newmark School of Journalism at The City University of New York, and is editor-at-large of the “progressive” Jewish Currents..
Global Times Editorial Defends Developing Nations’ `Industrialization’ against Climate Geopolitics
April 19 (EIRNS) — The unsigned editorial in the April 19 Global Times, “To deal with climate change, China-US cooperation is important and sensitive,” takes the global anti-Malthusian resistance shown by India and others to another level. The developing nations’ 2009 resistance to population reduction and genocide, effective in Copenhagen then, is revived.
The unsigned editorial (indicating a Politburo statement) begins with reserve, pointing out that it is “fair to say that China and the U.S. have communicated quite effectively and achieved some results. China has not yet announced plans for its top leader to attend the climate summit; analysts are waiting for things to become clearer.” The editorial likewise points out that “the general environment among the big powers is not good. The U.S. wants to show leadership by working with China and Russia to address the climate challenge, while it is also obstructing China and Russia in other spheres. That is not what normal relations among great powers should be like.”
But then the principles of economic development against environmental extremism become very clear indeed. “UN climate action involves the fundamental interests of humanity, and the specific arrangement for reducing emissions concerning all countries’ major development interests,” says Global Times. “The developed countries have completed industrialization, while developing countries are still in the process of industrialization, and some have just started this process…. People’s living standards are still low in these countries, and it is particularly important to create more resources to improve people’s livelihoods through further industrialization.” The article states that the U.S. has used its power to force more obligations on countries, while taking benefits.
“In an extreme scenario, if the world is about to promote carbon neutrality today, then the world’s economic development pattern will be perpetuated as it is today. The development gap between the developed and underdeveloped countries will become permanent.” The newspaper reminds that while the American elite fight over many issues, they agree on U.S. hegemony. “The current U.S. administration is trying to play the role of a leader and thus squeeze developing countries’ room for growth, as the previous U.S. administration desired.
“China and the U.S. are both the largest emitters; the two countries have huge differences in population and economic development, but the U.S. wants China to take more responsibilities in reducing emissions. It is worth observing the relation between such [environmentalist] pressure from the U.S., and the U.S.’ geopolitical move to pressure China.”
It concludes: “We should promote that the common interests of humanity are jointly defined by the interests of people from all countries, rather than by a handful of countries that want to monopolize this definition.”
Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche suggested today that the editorial has a clarity that would not have come without the LaRouche movement’s organizing and reports exposing the Green New Deal. She called it the strongest statement since the 2009 announcement of the G77 nations that they would not sign the Copenhagen “suicide pact” of population reduction.
May 5 (EIRNS)—Having withstood the first wave of the Covid-19 attack in 2020 rather commendably, India’s Modi administration declared “victory” and virtually ignored the threat waiting around the corner — the second wave of the virus attack. India is now paying dearly with lives and general chaos caused by global pandemic.
On May 4, WHO figures indicated India accounted for nearly half of the COVID-19 cases reported worldwide in the past week. The WHO said in its weekly epidemiological report that India accounted for 46% of global cases and 25% of global deaths reported in the past week. New daily infections in the country numbered 382,315 on May 5, health ministry data showed, the 14th straight day of more than 300,000 cases. Officially, India has reported more than 3,500 deaths every day throughout the last week.
On May 4, Allahabad High Court (AHC) in Uttar Pradesh observed that the death of Covid-19 patients just because of the lack of oxygen in hospitals, which is widespread throughout the country, is a criminal act and is “no less than a genocide.” The AHC stated that the authorities- in-power are responsible for not taking measures to ensure maintenance of the oxygen supply chain.
In January-February of this year, the first wave of Covid-19 had waned in India and the official numbers showed a 90 percent drop from the peak of 96,000 per day in September 2020. The daily death toll dropped from 1,200 to 80. A sense of triumphalism began to emerge, led by a pack of cheerleaders close to Prime Minister Modi who unleashed vigorous political campaigns in five states going to the polls in March-April. On February 21, the senior leaders of the ruling party, BJP, thanked Prime Minister Modi for his “visionary leadership” that effectively weathered the Covid attack. Addressing the annual conference of Delhi Medical Association on March 7, Modi’s Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan triumphantly declared : “We are in the end game of the Covid-19 pandemic in India.”
By April 4, the second wave of Copvid-19 attack became evident, when daily new cases exceeded the peak load of September 2020. Other than banning exports of vaccines at the end of March, the Modi administration did not take any new measure to either ramp up vaccine production or the production and supply chain of oxygen. Foreign vaccine developers that applied for authorization were told to carry out bridging trials that would take a few months before emergency use authorization could be given. The dam broke loose in mid-April.
It became evident on April 15 that India’s fragile health infrastructure, under the second attack of Covid-19, had collapsed. Oxygen shortages were causing deaths at hospitals throughout India and the vaccination rates dropped from about 3.5 million jabs a day to below 2.5 million, reflecting a looming vaccine crunch.
From one million active cases a week during the last peak, India already has 3.2 million active cases, and the peak lies somewhere in the future. The second wave of Covid-19 has hit India like a tsunami and the Modi government is wholly paralyzed, leaving the people unprotected to face this deadly wave.
Oct. 30 (EIRNS)–Schiller Institute founder and President, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in a discussion on Afghanistan Oct. 29 on Islamabad TV, said that she is promoting the Schiller Institute’s proposed solution to Afghanistan, in terms she calls, “Operation Ibn Sina.” Zepp-LaRouche participated on the program from Germany, and has indicated that she will be filling out this “Ibn Sina” initiative very soon.
She stressed at the outset that we are “at a watershed” time, in which the United States and other nations now holding back, must instead work closely with the Afghan government, which is the Taliban. Release the Afghan government’s funds, support stabilization and a future. The alternative is chaos, more opium production, mass death and terrorism.
The TV broadcast was PTV World, hosted by Omar Khalid Butt, on his Views on News program, whose additional guests for the 42 minute discussion were Dr. Andrej Kortunov, Chairman of RIAC (Russian International Affairs Council) in Moscow, and Dr. Farah Naz, foreign affairs expert in Pakistan.
Zepp-LaRouche explained her proposal, in her closing remarks, addressing the significance of Ibn Sina. “He was a doctor, who probably was born in what is today Afghanistan, and he was the most famous doctor until the 17th century, who wrote books which were studied in all of Europe.
“So he’s a hero in the history of Afghanistan., and right now there is a huge health crisis—COVID-19. More than 2000 hospitals have closed down…
“The international community—everybody who wants to be part of the solution, [must] help to build up a modern health system in Afghanistan, as the first step to stabilizing the situation, [therefore] give that the name, Ibn Sina.
“He can rally all the different ethnic groups inside Afghanistan, because he’s a figure of the national history, a hero; and he gives pride, and also hope, for a good future in Afghanistan.
“And building a modern health system can be the first step, because to build a modern system, you need energy, water and infrastructure…”
Deadly Great Game
Butt began his program by asking the guests to address all aspects of the significance of the crisis situation in Afghanistan, including “the geopolitical and strategic.” In opening the discussion, he showed the video clip of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov issuing a call at a Tehran conference (by video) earlier this week, that Afghanistan’s neighboring countries “not allow a military presence of U.S. and NATO forces which plan to move there after leaving Afghan territory.”
Zepp-LaRouche denounced such a prospect as a continuation of the British Great Game, which is unacceptable. Dr. Naz put forward that chaos can well be “the larger goal” of Western circles, which see the rising of China as a threat to be stopped, and are perpetrating vast harm in the Afghanistan region “by design.” Zepp-LaRouche described the West as “in a real collapse phase,” and should shift, instead, to working with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In the immediate term, massive aid must be supplied to Afghanistan to prevent genocide.
The same day at the Pakistan TV colloquy, the latest grim report on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was summarized by UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Aid, Martin Griffiths, in an AP interview. He said, “The needs are skyrocketing.” The Winter snows have started. The World Food Program, which had already been supplying daily food, not just supplemental aid, to four million people, is now facing this number rising to 12 million people. These are people completely dependent on receiving all their daily food, or they will die. In addition, another 12 million need supplemental food.
Dr. Kortunov led off his remarks with three fundamental points: supply the food, act on the medical needs, COVID-19 in particular, and get fuel to people. Later in the dialogue, he forcefully made the additional point that, with the right policies and follow through, we could expect to see Afghanistan, this beautiful mountainous nation, be “the Switzerland” of Central Asia. There are the soils, the water, the location, the resources, the youth and all the other assets.
The full PTV World broadcast can be reviewed here.
