Mary Jane Freeman

Argentina Seeks China’s Help in Negotiations With the IMF; Talk of Joint Five-Year Infrastructure Plan

April 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Argentina, China, Economic development updates, Finance, General, General updates, Global Diplomacy

April 2 (EIRNS)–Argentine ambassador to China, Sabino Vaca Narvaja, has met with high level Chinese government officials in Beijing “to ask for that country’s support in the national government’s negotiations with the IMF, seeking an extension of payment terms and reduction in interest rates,” the daily Dangdai reported April 1, citing embassy sources. Dangdai generally reports on Sino-Argentine relations, and touches on China’s relations with other Ibero-American countries to a lesser degree.

The Telam news agency reported that Vaca Narvaja met with the Foreign Ministry’s director of the Latin American and Caribbean Department, Cai Wei, with whom he discussed President Alberto Fernandez’s desire to refinance the $45 billion standby loan contracted by former President Mauricio Macri in 2018. Further citing embassy sources, Dangdai reported that Vaca Narvaja’s meeting included a discussion of the invitation to President Fernandez to make a state visit to China, now scheduled for early May, during which he is expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to join the Belt and Road Initiative. A review of the two nations’ bilateral agenda, Dangdai noted, focused on a series of infrastructure investment projects which both governments prioritize and which would be integrated into a joint Five Year Plan. Especially interesting was the discussion on the use of national currencies for trade and investment, including “an evaluation of productive and industrial projects that could be financed in renminbi, a currency which could be used subsequently to meet foreign payments to China.”

It should be noted that the IMF’s 2018 standby loan, which was originally for $57 billion, but whose last tranche Fernandez refused to accept after he became President, was granted by then IMF Managing Director Christine “Lady Gaga” Lagarde largely for political reasons to prop up the sagging Macri government and the brutal austerity program he was implementing in hopes he might be able to be reelected. Argentine authorities are in fact conducting a criminal investigation into the fraudulent way the loan was contracted and used–most of it ending up as capital flight and vastly expanding the amount of debt Argentina cannot pay. The loan violated Argentina’s constitutional norms as well as the IMF’s own internal regulations. Macri himself, his two former Central Bank presidents and two former finance ministers, are all under investigation.

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy!

April 2, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Daily Beethoven — Sparks of Joy, General updates, Music updates

Beethoven: Spark of Joy – Piano concerto No. 3, Op. 37 in C-minor.

Beethoven premiered his third piano concerto in 1803 at a massive benefit concert, which also featured the premieres of his Second Symphony, the oratorio “Christ on the Mount of Olives”, and a reprise of the first symphony (premiered a year earlier). As the composer had been completing orchestral scores for the oratorio in the wee hours of that morning, there was no time for him to write out the piano score for his new concerto. Hence the great consternation of his page-turner, Ignaz von Seyfried, who saw nothing but “empty pages with here and there what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs, unintelligible to me, scribbled to serve as clues for him,” and had to rely on surreptitious nods from Beethoven to signal that it was time to turn the page.
In this concerto, composed in the C-minor tonality, Beethoven once again pays homage to Mozart, whose 24th piano concerto was also in C-minor and is considered to be his greatest.
Here, Seong-Jin Cho performs Beethoven’s third piano concerto, Opus 37, with the WDR Symphony Orchestra. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]

Now More Urgent Than Ever: Afghanistan Is an Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind

August 18, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Afghanistan, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Our conferences

~ Schiller Institute Webcast: Saturday, August 21, 12pm EDT ~

PDF of this invitation

Aug. 18 – With nearly all policy-makers and strategic analysts in the trans-Atlantic sector of the world in a clueless state of utter chaos and hysteria over the developments in Afghanistan, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today convoked an urgent international seminar for this coming Saturday, August 21 to pursue the only available solution to the crisis: peace through development. The seminar will continue the prescient discussion held by the Schiller Institute on July 31, with many of the same panelists, as well as new ones.

Zepp-LaRouche drew a crystal clear picture in a webcast interview yesterday, Afghanistan: Opportunity for a New Epoch.

“First of all, I do not agree with the hysteria of the Western media that this is the end of the world. The first thing that must be stated, is that it ends 40 years of war for the Afghani people, and if people have any sense of what it means to live in such a long war, all the suffering of the civilians, all the terrible things people had to endure, in terms of drone attacks, in terms of anxiety, I think, first of all, it’s very good that the war has ended.

“I think it is, on the contrary, the real chance to integrate Afghanistan into a regional economic development perspective, which is basically defined by the Belt and Road Initiative of China. There is a very clear agreement of Russia and China to cooperate in dealing with this situation. The interest of the Central Asian republics is to make sure there is stability and economic development; and there is the possibility to extend the CPEC, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, into Afghanistan, into Central Asia. So, I think it’s a real opportunity, but it does require a complete change in approach.”

Zepp-LaRouche continued: “This is an epochal change… I think that if the European nations and the United States would understand that this is a unique chance, if they cooperate, rather than fight Russia and China and their influence in the region, and if they join hands in the economic development there… then this can become a very positive turning point, not only for Afghanistan, but also for the whole world.”

Zepp-LaRouche made a special appeal to the United States in remarks earlier in the day on Aug. 17: “The United States must go back to the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers and the initial period—such as John Quincy Adams–that the aim of the United States is not to chase foreign monsters, but to build alliances. John Quincy Adams said that the United States should have alliances of perfectly sovereign republics, and this is now the moment to really do that. The idea is to not oppose China linking Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative, but rather see it as an opportunity to cooperate, and stop this geopolitical confrontation which can only lead to catastrophe.

She concluded: “That’s the kind of discussion which we have to catalyze.”

Here is the video archive link of the July 31, 2021 Schiller Institute conference on “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History after the Failed Regime-Change Era”

Those speakers included:

Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder and President of The Schiller Institute; Pino Arlacchi (Italy), Sociology Professor at the Sassari University, Former Executive Director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and former European Parliament Rapporteur on Afghanistan; H.E. Ambassador Hassan Shoroosh (Afghanistan), Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Canada; H.E. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva (Russian Federation), Deputy Permanent Representative at the Mission of The Russian Federation to the UN; Dr. Wang Jin (China), Fellow with The Charhar Institute; Ray McGovern (U.S.), Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA-ret.), Co-Founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Hassan Daud (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment; and Hussein Askary (Sweden/Iraq), Southwest Asia Coordinator for the Schiller Institute.

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy!

April 1, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Daily Beethoven — Sparks of Joy, General, General updates

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy – Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 19

What was published as Beethoven’s second piano concerto was actually composed between 1787 and 1789 while Beethoven still lived in Bonn. He took it with him to Vienna, probably premiered it at the Burgtheater in 1795, and wrote a different finale for a 1798 performance in Prague. It was an important display piece for the young composer’s virtuosity at the keyboard.
Appropriately, the 12-year-old Harmony Zhu performed this concerto with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Arie Vardi, demonstrating impeccable technique as well as maturity well beyond her years. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]

Implement LaRouche’s 2010 Rebuilding Program in Haiti Now: The 2021 Earthquake Can Not Be Allowed To Be A Further Descent into Hell!

August 18, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Haiti, New Silk Road / BRI updates, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, United States, World Land-Bridge updates

Had American statesman Lyndon LaRouche’s program to rebuild Haiti been implemented, in response to the devastating Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed between 250,000 and 300,000 people, this impoverished nation would not be suffering the level of death and destruction so far wrought by the August 14 earthquake that measured 7.2 on the Richter scale. And the carnage will become much greater as a series of tropical storms hit, which are expected to be rolling in, perhaps one after another.

As of August 17, reports are that 1,900 people are dead, 10,000 injured, and 37,000 homes have been destroyed. Homes, schools, supermarkets, and roads were leveled in the southern and western parts of the country. People are terrified. They have once again been abandoned by the United States and its international partners, left to perish in extreme poverty, disease, and misery.

Lyndon LaRouche immediately responded to the 2010 earthquake by calling for an emergency reconstruction program for Haiti, to which, he said, the U.S. had a special responsibility. He called on the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to first deploy to rescue and relocate up to 1 million homeless Haitians from Port-au-Prince to higher ground before the rainy season arrived and unleashed a dangerous health and sanitation crisis for these destitute citizens; he then proposed a comprehensive program to focus on building infrastructure—for sanitation, water management, irrigation, earthquake-proof housing, transportation, agriculture, etc.

LaRouche also recommended that the U.S. sign a 25-year treaty with Haiti, “a treaty agreement to reestablish the efficient sovereignty of the nation of Haiti, after the destructive effect of this and preceding difficulties. We make a contract with the government, as a treaty agreement, between the United States and Haiti, to assure the rebuilding of their country, in a form in which it will actually be a functioning country which can survive.” Those proposals are available here.

President Barack Obama rejected LaRouche’s proposals, and instead removed crucial economic and military aid, encouraging what became known as the “Republic of NGOs” — a large unwieldy network of foreign NGOs that had a lot of money to throw around but did nothing of any real substance.

Years later, in 2017, when China’s Southwest Engineering Municipal Design Research Institute joined with the Haitian firm Bayti Ayiti to propose a $30 billion program to completely rebuild Haiti, with $4.7 billion to rebuild the capital, Port-au-Prince, with sanitation infrastructure, housing, and transportation, the IMF reportedly stepped in—EIR was told at the time—to make sure the proposal went nowhere.

On March 10, 2010, EIR published a 20-page package which detailed the programmatic solutions Haiti required and identified those monetarist political forces committed to keeping in place the Malthusian economic policies that had made Haiti so vulnerable to disaster, and which remain in effect today. That package is available here.

Blinken Sheds Crocodile Tears for Syrians Forced into Poverty by US Sanctions

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Color Revolutions, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Russia, United States, World war danger updates

March 30, 2021 (EIRNS)–The UN Security Council held its monthly meeting on Syria yesterday, focusing heavily on the humanitarian situation. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who chaired the virtual meeting, delivered a statement about the worsening humanitarian situation in Syria without once referring to the economic sanctions that the US and its European allies have imposed on the country that have worsened living conditions for millions of Syrians. “While today’s session is focused on the humanitarian crisis in Syria, it’s important to note that the only long-term solution to this suffering is through a political settlement and permanent resolution to the conflict, as outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 2254,” Blinken said, “But even as we work to that solution, we can’t lose sight of the urgent needs of the Syrian people that we’ve heard described so eloquently today. It’s clear that these needs – including having enough to eat and access to essential medicine – are not going to be met by the Assad regime.”

Blinken followed this posturing with the demand that the UNSC authorize the opening of two border crossings in the northeast and northwest into areas of the country that are not under the control of the government. “We have a responsibility to ensure Syrians have access to lifesaving assistance, no matter where they live,” he said. “Given that goal, there was no good reason at the time for the council’s failure to reauthorize these two humanitarian crossings.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin, who delivered the Russian response, minced no words about the roles of the US and Turkish occupying forces in creating the current conditions that prevail in all parts of Syria. “It is paradoxical, yet true — a significant deterioration in the life of the Syrian population has been observed precisely within the past year, when a significant reduction in violence was achieved on the ground,” Vershinin stressed, reported TASS. He also drew attention to the fact that “the most difficult situation is developing in the regions not under the control of Damascus in the northwest, north and northeast of Syria, the responsibility for which, let me reiterate, is with the de-facto occupying countries and local authorities.”

Vershinin accused Western powers of openly discriminating against the areas of the country controlled by Damascus, including with respect to deliveries of humanitarian supplies, the return of refugees, and efforts to control the COVID19 pandemic. “It is done in a bid to undermine Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, due to political motives,” he said.

Then there’s the matter of unilateral US and European sanctions, which are greatly hindering the economic reconstruction of Syria. “The reaction of Washington and Brussels to the call of the UN secretary general to ease and lift unilateral sanctions amid the coronavirus pandemic was, on the contrary, to tighten in an unprecedented way the restrictions adopted bypassing the UN Security Council, including the introduction of the infamous Caesar Act in June 2020,” Vershinin said. “Unfortunately, the honorable representative of the US and other Western colleagues spoke about a lot of things in today’s speeches but for the US and EU sanctions and their dramatic negative effect on ordinary Syrians.”

Vershinin also pointed out the US looting of Syrian oil and wheat. “Reports continue to come in that American convoys are trucking out oil and grain from Syria to Iraq daily. The information [we] receive suggests that 300 oil tank trucks and more than 200 cargo trucks with grain had crossed the Syrian-Iraqi border by March 23 since the beginning of the month,” he said. “It turns out while Syrians are suffering from acute shortage of basic products, including bread and petrol, a wide stream of Syria’s smuggled natural resources is flowing from the Trans-Euphrates region controlled by the US, while the country is simultaneously suffocated with unilateral sanctions which essentially are a form of collective punishment,” he underlined.

Prior to the US and Russian (and other) statements, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock reported that the need for aid has jumped 20% from last year and humanitarian organizations coordinated by the U.N. are seeking an estimated $4.2 billion to reach 12.3 million Syrians inside the country. He said another $5.8 billion is required for support to countries hosting Syrian refugees in the region. “We need more money, not less, if we are to avoid a further deterioration — the consequences of which could be dramatic and widespread,” Lowcock said.

Henrietta Fore, head of the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said Syria’s worst economic crisis is “plunging 90% of the population into poverty, and across the country nearly 90% of children now require humanitarian assistance.”

Video of Doctor Susan Moore While Dying from Mistreatment

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in General updates, Healthcare, Our conferences, The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

March 30, 2021 –During the Q & A session of Panel 4: “The Challenge of Famine and Pandemics — The Coincidence of Opposites or Mass Extinction?” at the the recent Schiller Institute conference, there was an extensive discussion of triage and the treatment of poor and non-white patients, which have been exacerbated under conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Shirley Evers-Manly, who had described the mounting cases of mistreatment and triage taking place in hospitals and elsewhere in the US against poor and minority patients during this pandemic, subsequently referenced the following video made by a black medical doctor, Dr. Susan Moore, in an Indiana hospital. Suffering from Covid-19, Dr. Moore describes how she was denied medicine, and told to go home despite being severely ill — even that she was to be sent home at night. Dr. Moore makes a passionate appeal, not simply for herself but for all those who “don’t know how to fight for themselves.” Dr. Moore died a few days after making this video. Twitter coverage and video.

Syria Coverage of Sen. Black in English

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Media coverage of our activity, Our conferences, World war danger updates

March 29 (EIRNS)–The Syrian official English-language daily Syria Times published a short review of what it considers the main points of former Virginia state Senator Richard Black’s speech at the Schiller Institute international conference on March 21. The daily then links to the video of the speech. I have asked them to link to the Schiller Institute conference page. The coverage can be found here.

South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, Pledges Lunar Lander by 2030

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General updates, Space updates

Mar. 29 (EIRNS)–The lunar initiative was made by Moon in a speech March 25 at the country’s Naro Space Center. He also stressed the push to give more support to commercial space enterprises, but distinguished between their contributions in space services, such as launch vehicles, the importance of building a space industry, versus the long-term government exploration programs.
“We will actively push for challenging space exploration projects that build on the foundation achieved by developing a Korean launch vehicle,” Moon said. “By 2030, we will achieve our dream of landing on the Moon by using our own launch vehicle. The technological prowess, experience and confidence that will be gained from exploring the Moon, the first step in space exploration, will provide a solid foundation for space development.” This stress on an indigenous rocket is a result of an engine failure during a satellite launch, on a rocket with a Russian stage, which led to years of recriminations.
Last month, the government pledged to spend 615 billion won ($553.1 million) on the space program this year. Given South Korea’s industrial capability it would seem that putting more resources into the space program could accelerate the lunar program.

Media Starts Catching on to Biden’s Ridiculous Vaccine Hoarding

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, General updates, Healthcare

Mar. 29 (EIRNS)–For two months, the Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine policy has been to grab as many vaccines as possible and turn away any and all requests for help. Then in March, various statements, either from President Biden or his White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, made clear that America would consider requests after every American is taken care of. It’s been left unclear whether that’s every adult who would roll up their sleeve (around 200 million) or, literally, every American (330 million) or somewhere in between. However, this last week has seen several articles beginning to question the ugly and counterproductive stance. One can pretend that viruses don’t mutate and create new strains that will outflank one’s vaccines, but it is a silly conceit.
One of them, for example, an Axios’s article by Dave Lawler, used vaccine production figures from Airfinity, and compared production vs. export of vaccines: the United States produced 27% of the world’s vaccines and exported 0% of their production; China, 33% and 62% of that exported. (With this week’s plan to ship 4 million doses to Mexico and Canada, the U.S. climbs to about 1.5%.) India and Russia also had significant export figures. Biden’s prime tool has been to invoke the Defense Production Act to keep our ammunition away from allies and foe alike. One European diplomat expressed surprise that there was so little domestic opposition to Biden’s ‘Americans first’ approach. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, summed it up: “The question really is, what is the threshold that’s going to satisfy the administration enough to allow the exporting of those doses?”

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