Beethoven: Sparks of Joy – Four hands are better than two, Op. 6 piano sonata
With an opening theme that resembles the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven’s Opus 6 sonata for piano four hands is a rarely heard gem. Due to its brevity and relative ease of execution, it’s generally thought of as a work for piano students, but in the hands of brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen it’s a delightful frolic. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]
Mexico Stands Firm: Texas Shows We Are Right To Put Energy Security Before Profit
March 3 (EIRNS)—In the middle of the Texas energy crisis, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked leaders of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to brief the nation on how that crisis proves that his policy to restore national energy self-sufficiency and a national electricity grid regulated by the government, fed by all energy sources, emphatically including fossil fuels, is urgent, and its opponents are dead wrong.
The climate mafia has launched war against AMLO’s “vision of energy sovereignty” and mandate for fossil fuels to be used before subsidized and unreliable wind and solar. “No other G20 country has such abnormal or retrograde energy policies as this government. It’s not going to advance us toward our climate goals,” one leading climate activist told the London Guardian in mid-February. International energy “investors” are preparing lawsuits against AMLO’s new Electricity Law to drive out the speculators, which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies last week and is expected to pass the Senate shortly. Rating agencies are preparing to lower Mexico’s credit rating, if it becomes law.
The CFE team, led by its chairman, Manuel Bartlett, who has been outspoken against the wind and solar energy frauds, detailed how the selling off of Mexico’s public sector electricity generation and distribution to a bunch of unregulated international speculators under the previous two administrations were the cause of the blackouts in Mexico when the cold wave hit, as happened in Texas. The officials pointed to the absurdity that Mexico, an oil producer with plenty of its own natural gas, now found itself with 64% of its national electricity powered by natural gas imported from Texas. Mexico was knocked out when the cold wave hit because the pipelines from Texas froze, and after that Texas stopped all export of natural gas because its wind and solar “renewables” failed, they
reported.
The CFE managed to cover 75% of the gap from the loss of natural gas imports by activating 11 hydroelectric plants, coal plants fed by mines which the López Obrador government had recently reopened, diesel supplied by the state oil company PEMEX at low prices, existing reserves of natural gas and purchase of some shiploads of the latter—at the wildly-high speculative prices on the international markets. Officials stressed that they could only do these things because under the energy sovereignty policy, thermoelectric plants which were under-utilized, nonetheless were maintained, against just such an emergency.
López Obrador then drew the lessons out: What just happened in Texas makes clear that it is not possible to give equal treatment to private foreign companies, he stated. The state needs to control the energy production and national electricity grid as an integrated whole. Under the previous governments, the energy sector was being taken apart, sold off in pieces, and looted. “It is important to recognize that these two public companies [Pemex and the CFE] do not have profit as their purpose, but to guarantee electricity service, and at fair prices, also, because we are going to continue fulfilling our commitment to not increase electricity prices, even with the speculation and increases in gas prices which are occurring in Texas and the United States.”
U.S. Infrastructure Gets Report Card: C-
March 3 (EIRNS)—The American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2021 Infrastructure Report Card. Although the grade improved to a C-, up from a D+ in 2017, the investment gap—the funding required to get all infrastructure to a “B” rating—has grown from $2.1 trillion over ten years to $2.6 trillion over ten years. The ASCE estimates that continuing failures to invest adequately in infrastructure will cost $10 trillion in GDP over the next two decades, which is double the shortfall in spending over that time period!
These figures only include repairing current technologies of infrastructure. For example, you may be surprised to hear that the nation’s rail system got the highest infrastructure grade, B, despite the utter absence of high-speed rail. For a real mission to build U.S., and the world’s, infrastructure read and circulate EIR’s The LaRouche Plan to Reopen the U.S. Economy: The World Needs 1.5 Billion New, Productive Jobs starting with healthcare.
China to Biden Team: It Is ‘Evil’ To Try and Prevent Any
People’s Right To Pursue a Better Life.
March 3 (EIRNS)—China’s Global Times responded strongly to a report issued March 1 by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which accused China of undermining U.S. national interests through coercive and unfair trade practices and promised to use all available tools to pursue “strengthened enforcement” of China’s existing trade obligations. In other words, as the Global Times yesterday took due note, “the Biden administration has repeatedly said it is reviewing the previous administration’s China policy, but recent messages emanating from Washington suggest that the new administration is keeping the hardline stance against China. The Trump administration’s strategic goal of containing China will be inherited, and only the means of dealing with China may be adjusted.”
It is “understandable” and even “reasonable” that Washington would seek to maintain its leading position in technologies, and to protect its intellectual property rights, the editors of this official daily correctly assert. China does not protest U.S. policies towards China which aim at promoting U.S. development and increasing U.S. strength, but containment smacks of the “barbaric geopolitical games” of the 19th and early 20th century.
“We are in the 21st century…. Be they Americans, Chinese, Latin Americans or Africans, all people have the right to pursue a better life…. [P]olicies targeted at preventing China’s continuous development and even pushing China’s economy backward are evil. They pose a direct harm to the interests of the 1.4 billion Chinese people, depriving the natural right of the Chinese people to seek a better life….
“Restricting China from the perspective of intellectual property rights protection is different from jeopardizing China’s scientific and technological research and development capabilities. The former is part of the intellectual property rights protection regime, while the latter is an evil result of the geopolitical mentality.
“China has 1.4 billion people, more than the West combined, and much more than the population of the major Western countries combined. China’s development is the grandest project of the global human rights cause, and China’s development needs a relatively friendly international environment, including fair conditions for trade and technology exchanges…. It is malicious to take tough measures to suppress the ability of developing countries, and to tell large countries like China that ‘you deserve to be poor’….
“This kind of malicious policy cannot be followed up in a broad and lasting way in the 21st century. We hope the U.S. ruling team can see clearly the general trend, stop talking about human rights when it is trying to deprive the sacred rights of 1.4 billion Chinese people…. At last, we have to say that such evil is doomed to failure in the 21st century.”
{Source: “Policies Containing China’s Development Malicious: Global Times Editorial” https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1217096.shtml }
Yemen Donors Conference Raises Even Less Money for Yemen Humanitarian Relief than Was Provided Last Year
March 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—The UN donors conference which convened yesterday to raise funds for relief efforts in Yemen, cosponsored by Sweden and Switzerland, failed to raise even half of the $3.85 billion that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed for. Pledges amounted to a total of $1.7 billion, even less than the $1.9 billion that was donated in 2020. Guterres called for countries to “consider again what they can do to help stave off the worst famine the world has seen in decades.” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who is on a week-long visit to Yemen, also called the outcome of the conference “disappointing,” warning that the lack of funding would cause huge cuts to Yemen aid. “The shortfall in humanitarian aid will be measured in lives lost,” he said.
The Saudis pledged $430 million; the U.S. promised $191 million, reportedly a decrease of $35 million from last year. The reduction in aid is attributed to the pandemic, corruption allegations, and concerns the aid might not be reaching its intended recipients in territories controlled by the rebels.
The Houthi leadership dismissed the conference, saying that such donor meetings only aid the aggressor countries and not the people of Yemen. “Conferences help aggressor states to identify themselves as obliging, not hostile or aggressor states which must end the siege and aggression,” said Houthi spokesman Mohammad Abdul-Salam, reported Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. He stressed in a twitter posting that stopping the aggression and lifting the blockade is the biggest help Yemen can ever receive. “The best services that the Saudi-led coalition provides to Yemen are nothing but daily airstrikes, brutal siege, the blockade of oil products and the closure of Sana’a International Airport, and the human consequences thereof.”
Tulsi Gabbard Slams Unconstitutional U.S. Regime-change War in Syria
March 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—In a series of tweets on Feb. 28, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard addressed the Biden administration’s unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria, but also addressed the broader issue of the U.S. regime-change war in Syria, carried out through an alliance with Al Qaeda, al-Nusra/HTS terrorists. This alliance, she warned, combined with draconian sanctions and embargoes, is “similar to what the Saudi-U.S. alliance did in Yemen.”
Her tweets are as follows:
“I’m glad some of my former colleagues in Congress are speaking out against the recent unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria—but they’re ignoring the bigger issue: the regime change war the U.S. continues to wage in Syria using al-Qaeda/al-Nusra/HTS terrorists as our proxy ground force, who now occupy and control the city of Idlib, imposing Sharia Law and ‘cleansing’ the area of most Christians & religious minorities.
“The Biden Administration continues to use the U.S. military to illegally occupy NE Syria to ‘take the oil’ as Trump so crassly but honestly put it, violating international law. A modern-day siege of draconian embargo/sanctions similar to what the Saudi-U.S. alliance employed in Yemen is causing death & suffering for millions of innocent Syrians depriving them of food, medicine, clean water, energy & warmth, and making it impossible for the Syrian people to try to rebuild their war-torn country.”
Biden Drops a `Green’ Hammer on American Industry
March 1 (EIRNS) – The Biden White House on Feb. 26 announced that it would multiply the “price of carbon” by more than seven times, to $51 per ton of CO2, for all cost-benefit analyses of industrial technologies – and was likely to more than double that again after “further analysis”. The “carbon price” set by the Federal government since the Bush 43 Administration in 2004 is not a purchase price but rather the price assumed for all use of carbon in materials – energetic, chemical, industrial, agricultural – whose use can form CO2, and is supposed to govern the valuation of bids for government contracts of all kinds. Obviously it would also then affect the valuation of industrial and agricultural products and even the valuation of capital goods and/or entire companies for investment.
The Biden Administration’s proposed price announced by the Department of Energy under new Secretary Jennifer Granholm is supposed to be the price that greenhouse gas emissions impose on society. The $51/ton of CO2 is not only seven-plus times the Trump Administration’s “price”, but double that of the Obama Administration. And it is likely soon to be adjusted to the “price” the Andrew Cuomo government of New York State adopted in 2020, which is a range of $79-125/ton.
A UC-Santa Barbara Environmental Science assistant professor, Tamma Carleton, responded giddily, “A new social cost of carbon can tip the scales for hundreds of policy decisions facing the Federal government. Any policy, project or regulation that lowers emissions will now have a higher dollar value.” And any decision to use carbon products, a lower one. This will hit all industries, not just the energy and power production sector.
Beethoven: Sparks of Joy — Three nations on Mars; Beethoven’s triple concerto.
The space agencies of three different countries – the United States, China, and the United Arab Emirates – have successfully arrived at Mars and begun a promising collaboration for the advancement of human knowledge and power.
In that spirit, we have today’s selection: Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for violin, cello, and piano. The soloists are cellist Mischa Maisky, his son Sascha on violin, and his daughter Lily at the piano. Enjoy! [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]
UK Proposes Climate Change Have UNSC Veto
March 1 (EIRNS) — In typical “snow is black” fashion, the United Kingdom is attempting to declare the “fake news” Climate Change hoax as the biggest threat to global security, today. To argue their case, London resurrected the 90 year-old serial Malthusian Sir David Attenborough, who addressed the UN Security Council on Feb. 23. Although the virtual meeting was opened with a keynote by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, it was clearly organized by the UK — which held the rotating chair of the UNSC during February — and was intended as a primer for the COP 26 Climate talks, now (re)scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November, 2021.
Chaired by Boris Johnson, who presented the issue as “a matter of when, not if,” the central feature was an 8 minute video by Attenborough, who — speaking as a member of the “public” — likened the crisis to that of World War Two (“the Great War that took place during my youth”). Unlike WWII, however, {this} crisis is one “which should unite us,” said the voice from the crypt, since the threat is not rising global fascism, but “rising global temperatures!” Growing threats of wars, collapsing food supplies (from both land and sea), all was the product of our species’ failure to address Climate Change. “No matter what we do, it’s too late … and the poorest among us are(now certain to suffer,” Sir David told the united global security representatives. Climate Change is, he said, “{the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced}” and only by recognizing this can we unite to avoid the worst. [emphasis added]
Also addressing the ministers was young Sudanese “activist” Nisreen Elsaim, who has been chosen as chair of the UN Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. A very well-briefed Elsaim gave “on the ground” affirmation to the destruction that the elders had warned of.
Beethoven: Sparks of Joy — the master’s climactic Op. 111 finishes his use of the sonata form.
Although Beethoven would go on to compose other works for solo piano, the Opus 111 is Beethoven’s climactic finish to the sonata form. With the first movement, he reduces the C minor key to its bare elements (think of the Pathétique) and produces a work of incredible power and passion. The second movement, innocuously called “Arietta,” takes the form of variations on a simple theme in C major, but these variations transcend anything that has ever been done on the piano.
Here is an thoughtful performance by Mitsuko Uchida. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]
"It is Through Beauty,
That One Proceeds to Freedom"
— Friedrich Schiller