On April 23, I interviewed Col. Richard Black (ret.), on his view of the inhuman sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Syria, to provoke a change in regime there. Col. Black, the former chief of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, was blunt in his condemnation of this policy, which he described as “brutal” to the extent it makes him ashamed of what the U.S. is doing. He called on all citizens, especially leaders of religious institutions, to join with the Schiller Institute’s mobilization to end the sanctions. Today’s Update is of the last exchange we had. You can see the full video here.
Col. Richard Black, former Chief of the Army Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and later the Virginia Senate, spoke with the Schiller Institute about his disgust with the policy makers who are killing people in Syria with the “Caesar Sanctions”. Black, who has traveled to Syria and been active in pursuing peace and economic reconstruction there, following a devastating civil war — in which the U.S. armed and trained Jihadist militia forces — said it sickens him that leaders of the U.S. think mass murder of civilians is justified to carry out a regime change. He denounced the idea of “humanitarian” sanctions, as well as members of both parties of Congress who support them. He said the American people must understand that this is a tragic situation, which is being conducted in their name, and must reject the idea of using sanctions. He called on religious leaders and religious institutions of all persuasions to get involved in the mobilization to end the Caesar Sanctions.
Related material:
While the prospect of a June summit between Presidents Putin and Biden is becoming more likely, such a meeting alone will not guarantee peace, unless the underlying axioms embedded in the idea of a “Rules-Based Order” are rejected. This idea is a modern iteration of the geopolitical outlook imposed by the British Empire, at the end of the 19th century, which led to two World Wars in the last century and is pushing humanity to the brink of a possible nuclear war today. It is now possible to achieve a New Paradigm in relations, based on the concept that, through cooperation among the great powers, peace can emerge from a mutual commitment to sovereign economic development — but must be preceded by a rejection of the arbitrary imposition of a corporatist banker’s Great Reset or Green New Deal.
The Schiller Institute conference on May 8 offered a proof of principle that people can be mobilized by an appeal to the higher humanity which resides in all humans. Helga Zepp LaRouche reviewed the many dangers facing mankind: of war — including a real possibility of nuclear war; famine, created by sanctions and deliberate refusal to fund development; of an out-of-control pandemic, as in India, and many other nations lacking a modern health care system; and of the devastating effects of growing inflation, which destroy people’s life-work and the ability of families to survive.
But she pointed to the dialogue which occurred during the two panels, which demonstrates a willingness to grapple with profound questions, and to the role of the Schiller Institute in creating a forum for building support for solutions. She also highly recommended a video of Minister Louis Farrakhan performing the Beethoven Violin Concerto, as an example of how an act of creativity can inspire the quality of agape needed to break free of the Darwinian world imposed by those oligarchs who she characterized as possessed of “dead souls.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT schiller@schillerinstitute.org
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute Founder and Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to the Syrian Presidency, Lead Off May 8 International Conference
The historic May 8th Schiller Institute International Conference, “The Moral Collapse of the Trans-Atlantic World Cries Out for a New Paradigm,” brought together leaders of institutions and governments from around the world to address the exceedingly dangerous global strategic crisis: a rush to confrontation between the world’s nuclear powers; a pandemic threatening to expand with a vengeance; mass starvation threatening dozens of millions in Africa and Asia; and a financial bubble of unprecedented scope which is already beginning to fissure. The conference was keynoted by Schiller Institute founder and Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and it is excerpted below. The full two panel conference, with 19 speakers from Europe, Asia and the Americas, and two extended discussion sessions, is available at https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2021/05/07/conference-the-moral-collapse-of-the-trans-atlantic-world-cries-out-for-a-new-paradigm/, and the full program is appended to the end of this release.
Interviews and/or video clips can be made available for your use.
Lift All Unilateral Sanctions!
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche, and many of the speakers, developed in devastating detail, the danger of war over Ukraine; and highlighted the illegal and deadly unilateral sanctions policy of the U.S., pointing especially to Syria and Yemen. She emphatically called for overturning the Caesar Sanctions on Syria and lifting all unilateral sanctions amidst the devastating food crisis threatening the death of millions. The pandemic spike in India is an indication of the danger of the threat to all of a myriad of new mutations.
The first panel was joined by, among other speakers, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to the Syrian Presidency, speaking on the topic, “Restore International Law: Respect Syria’s Perfect Sovereignty” and Col. Richard H. Black (USA-ret.), former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division, on “The Immorality of Sanctions: The Case of Syria.”
Dr. Shaaban was the second speaker. She thanked Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche for the keynote address saying, “I thought while you were talking that I would love to carry this speech and circulate it the world over, because it is the antithesis of what Western colonial powers are doing. And I would like to say to you how I read that you, Helga, and the Schiller Institute look at humanity. You see humanity, see all of us as global brothers and sisters, while the imperial and colonial powers have always treated us or looked at us as second- or third- or fourth- or fifth-class citizens of the world. They continue to do that because they are only interested in looting our resources, and in making money for themselves while depriving our people of our own resources. I think your idea is great…. Thank you, Helga, for inviting me, always. I think this is the time to make the Schiller Institute a leading narrative, your narrative, to be a leading narrative in the world. I think most people everywhere need this, and want this, and are ready to join party with you and work with you for this noble cause you have been embracing for the last 50 years. Thank you very much.”
Zepp-LaRouche: “The March of Folly: Can Mankind Still Extinguish the Now-Lit Fuse of Thermonuclear War?”
She said in part:
“We are conducting this Schiller Institute conference with an urgent appeal to as many people as possible to help to change the direction in which the political situation is going right now. Because we are on a course which, in a very short period of time—much shorter than most anybody probably realizes—we are on a course of the potential extinction of civilization. It’s not clear where the greater danger comes from: the danger of thermonuclear war, the danger of the pandemic going out of control in combination with world famine, or with the neo-Malthusian virus which has beset the brains of so many people. It is not clear if these neo-Malthusians are more eager to destroy industrial society or if they are simply willing instruments in aiding geopolitical confrontation with Russia and China.
“Let’s start with the danger of thermonuclear war: it’s not just one trigger point, one strategic crisis. It is the overall tension between the United States, the so-called Global Britain, NATO, and also increasingly the European Union with Russia and China. It’s becoming so big that any one of the crises around the globe could become the trigger point. It could be a crisis with Russia over Ukraine going out of control, or with China over Taiwan.
“It is alarming, and it should alarm all of you, now that more and more people, even such unlikely ones, as Henry Kissinger—who has been not exactly a friend of our organization (which has everything to do with his infamous NSSM-200 paper which he wrote when he was National Security Advisor in 1974), and that he was the enemy and adversary of everything Lyndon LaRouche and his movement stood for—but even Kissinger is now warning that the tension between the United States and China is becoming so all-engulfing for the whole world, that it could lead to an Armageddon-like military clash, extinguishing mankind ‘in a finite period of time.’ This he said about a week ago.
“Then the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, in February, informed the Pentagon that they should change the likelihood of nuclear war from ‘not likely’ to ‘very likely.’ He repeated that before the Congress. On May 6, the New York Times had an article by Peter Beinart, who said that the Biden policy towards Taiwan is truly reckless, that we are very close to war, mainly because the Democrats had abandoned the One-China policy last year.
“If it would come to such a war, given the fact that China has 39 air bases around the region of Taiwan, the United States has only two, the United States would lose any conventional war, and if it would think of using regional nuclear weapons, the danger is that it would go into an all-out global nuclear war….
“On March 21st, Adm. Philip Davidson, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, said we must be absolutely prepared to fight and win such a war, should competition turn into conflict. Then, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. John Aquilino, who will replace Admiral Davidson, said we are much closer to such a war ‘than most think.’ And H.R. McMaster, the former National Security Advisor to Trump said the most dangerous time in his view is the period between the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party later this year, and the Winter Olympics in Beijing next year. So, that is, indeed, very close.”
Convene a P-5 Summit
“What is to be done? There is a solution, but it is important to take all these problems at once. Because when you have a systemic crisis such as I have described, it is not enough to solve a little of this and a little bit of that crisis. We have to create a completely different system. President Putin, in January 2020, called for an urgent meeting of the Permanent Five Members of the UN Security Council. I think that is what must absolutely happen now. Such a summit should be called because of the danger of World War III, a pandemic out of control, a world famine, the danger of a blow-out of the financial system, and it must lead to an immediate implementation of the following program.
Build Modern Health Systems Everywhere
“Given the pandemic, the only way to stop that and future pandemics, is to create a world health system, which means a modern health system in every single country. Because if you don’t stop the pandemic in even the poorest country on the planet, it will come back; there will be new variants, new strains, which eventually could make obsolete the vaccines which already have been distributed. So, we are in a race against time. We should do in every single country, what was done in Wuhan when the pandemic broke out. Build hospitals! This can be done with the Army Corps of Engineers, with aid organizations. In one week, one can build a hospital for 1,000 people. Then, these modern hospitals need well-educated doctors, nurses. You need lots of clean water; 2 billion people in the world have no access to clean water. You need lots of electricity; this cannot be done without infrastructure. So, the building of a modern health system in every country can and must be the beginning of overcoming the underdevelopment of the developing countries for good.
“We have to have a program of global poverty alleviation, exactly as it was intended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he called for the Bretton Woods Agreements, which were never fully implemented because of his untimely death. But now, we need exactly that. It must start with global Glass-Steagall banking separation, which then must be followed by the creation of a Hamiltonian national banking system in very country. We need a credit system, which then can become a New Bretton Woods system. Then we can finance the extension of the New Silk Road into Southwest Asia.
“The solution to overcome the death and starvation in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and other crisis areas is obvious. When President Xi Jinping was in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt in 2015, he offered to extend the New Silk Road into the entire region. That program—and the Schiller Institute has worked on a comprehensive program for the entire region—can be implemented if, in such a P-5 UN Security Council meeting, it is agreed, and then the neighbors of Southwest Asia—Russia, China, India—all work together, and the United States and European nations agree to cooperate in the reconstruction of this region that has been destroyed by these endless wars. This will then extend the New Silk Road with international cooperation from other countries. Japan, and South Korea and other nations should all be involved in the reconstruction of Africa.
A Human Future of Discovery and Development
“Geopolitical confrontation can then be replaced with crash programs for the development of thermonuclear fusion power, in which major breakthroughs have occurred recently. Rather than extending geopolitical confrontation into space, we should have international cooperation to build a village on the Moon, and soon a city on Mars.
“The Hubble Telescope has discovered that there are at a minimum 2 trillion galaxies. I would like you to really put your mind on that thought, and then think how stupid it would be that we, as a human species, who are the only species which can potentially be the immortal species because of our creative reason, that we would destroy ourselves in thermonuclear destruction. I think we should have the ambition not to be more stupid than the animals, because there is no animal species which would ever conduct such behavior.”
The full program:
Schiller Institute International Conference, May 8, 2021
The Moral Collapse of The Trans-Atlantic World Cries Out for a New Paradigm
PROGRAM
Panel 1: “The March of Folly: Can Mankind Still Extinguish the Now-Lit Fuse of Thermonuclear War?”
Welcoming Remarks: Harley Schlanger (moderator)
Keynote Address: “Is Mankind the Immortal Species, or Worse than Animals?” – Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President, the Schiller Institute
“Restore International Law: Respect Syria’s Perfect Sovereignty” – Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to the Syrian Presidency
“The Immorality of Sanctions: The Case of Syria” – Col. Richard H. Black (ret.), former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division
“Unilateral Economic Sanctions: Immorality and Arrogance of Great Powers” – Prof. Dr. Hans Koechler, University Professor of Philosophy, Austria; President, International Progress Organization
“Global Governance—An Answer from China and Russia” – Prof. Dr. Wilfried Schreiber, World Trends Institute for International Politics, Potsdam, Germany
“A Perspective for the Economic Development of Afghanistan in the Setting of the New Silk Road” – Sayed Mujtaba Ahmadi, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Afghanistan, Canada
“Reflections for a New Foreign Policy” – Prof. Eric Denece, Director, French Center for Intelligence Research
“The Obama Sanctions Sabotaged Japan-Russia Development” – Daisuke Kotegawa, former Ministry of Finance official; former Director for Japan at the IMF
“Sanctions Against Syria, Conflict with China: Who Benefits?” – Caleb Maupin, U.S. journalist and political analyst; founder, Center for Political Innovation
DISCUSSION SESSION
Panel 2: “The Method of the Coincidence of Opposites: Only a United Worldwide Health Effort, Without Sanctions, Can Reverse a Worldwide Pandemic”
Opening Remarks – Dennis Speed (moderator), with excerpts from Lyndon LaRouche’s 1999 video, Storm Over Asia and from a recent interview with Rear Adm. Marc Pelaez (ret.), former nuclear submarine commander
Introductory Remarks – Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President, the Schiller Institute
“Join or Die: Why A World Health Platform Protects Each of Us” – Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former Surgeon General of the United States
“Report on Mozambique Pilot Aid Project—Toward World-Scale Mobilization” –Dr. Khadijah Lang, Chairman, National Medical Association Council on International Affairs; President, Golden State Medical Association; and Marcia Baker, Editorial Board, Executive Intelligence Review
“Do Not Forget: The Global Concentration Camp Oven Is Now Nuclear” – Luis Vasquez, Schiller Institute, Peru
“Report: The Coincidence of Opposites Committee Work in Washington, D.C. and the Mississippi Delta” – Dr. Walter Faggett, former Chief Medical Officer, Washington D.C. Department of Health; Co-Chair D.C. Ward 8 Health Council; and Ms. Genita Finley, second-year medical student, Howard University; designer, Mississippi Delta Medical Extension School program
“German Farm Protest Leaders: ‘Green Deal’ Cuts Farmers, Food, and People!” –Rainer Seidl, farm leader, Land Creates Connection (Land schafft Verbindung), video Feb. 7, Munich; and Alf Schmidt, independent farmer, video March 23, Berlin
“ ‘Physician, Heal Thy Self’: Saving a Nation in Crisis Through Love” – Pastor Robert Smith, Jr., Pastor, New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan; Chairman, Foreign Mission Board, The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
“They Knew or Should Have Known: The Cases of Venezuela and Chile” –Antonio Sanchez, Chile, International LaRouche Youth Movement
DISCUSSION SESSION
Greetings and Messages to the Conference
Dr. Ivan Timofeev, Director of Programs, Russian International Affairs Council; head of the Euro-Atlantic Security Program, Valdai Club
Augustinus Berkhout, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, Delft University of Technology; Member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Ray Flynn, former Mayor of Boston; former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican
Fouad Al-Ghaffari, President, BRICS Youth Parliament of Yemen
Mike Gravel, former U.S. Senator, Alaska; past U.S. Presidential Candidate
As Greater Israel fanatics move to expel Palestinians from their East Jerusalem neighborhood, the predictable response has occurred: Hamas militants fire rockets into Israeli cities, while Israeli jets bomb Palestinian homes in Gaza. Despite calls for de-escalation, fighting continues. As this flash-point has been ignited, Cold Warriors with backgrounds at the NSC and RAND Corporation promote “Decisive Nuclear Retaliation” against Russia — which they describe as our eternal enemy — in a podcast of the Military Industrial Complex’s Atlantic Council. Has nuclear war become “thinkable”?
HarleySch@gmail.com
WFP’s Beasley Promotes ‘Hunger Ward’ Documentary on Malnutrition in Yemen
April 9 (EIRNS)—A new documentary was released online today on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, titled “Hunger Ward,” after which release World Food Program Director David Beasley and filmmaker Skye Fitzgerald, held a live discussion (see hungerward.org).
The new half-hour film focuses on the terrible plight and death rate of malnourished children in Yemen, featuring coverage at the Sadaqa Hospital in Aden, the nation’s largest hospital; and the Aslan Clinic, the largest malnutrition treatment center in northern Yemen. The scenes and the words of the medical directors—Dr. Aida Alsdeeq in Aden and Nurse Mekkiah Mahdi at the Aslan Clinic—are gripping. The film also shows the sad horror of the wreckage of a Saudi missile strike against a funeral gathering in Yemen, with shoes of dozens of the dead still scattered in the rubble of the ruins. The postscript states simply that Saudi Arabia, with U.S. backing is still making war on Yemen, and that France, Germany, other nations, and the Houthis are complicit.
Beasley has given this documentary advance publicity to mobilize world attention on the growing famine in Yemen and internationally, which he spoke about on April 7 in a virtual forum at the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware. Speaking to a student audience, Beasley repeatedly stressed that the warfare must stop, and famine is “man-made.” He said that in the next ten days, he will visit Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, and if possible, Venezuela, because of the worsening food situations here.
Beasley gave the Delaware students a status report on world hunger today, and how it is increasing. He said that when he came into office in 2017, there were 700 million hungry globally, and 80 million on the brink of starvation. That number on the brink increased to 135 million just before COVID-19 began. Today, that number is 270 million. Out of this number, 34 million are nearing the point of starvation. He called it phase 3 to 4 (on the UN scale called IPC—Integrated Phase Classification: No. 1, real, but minimal food insecurity; 2, stressed; 3, crisis; 4, emergency; 5, famine).
Beasley went into a “breakdown by country,” according to the IPC scale. This includes, for example, 19-21 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at Phase 4; and 19 million in Afghanistan at Phase 3 to 4. “Syria is imploding”; Haiti is in crisis, he said.
Beasley called for $5 billion for world anti-famine work, on top of the ongoing anti-hunger funding. “We have a vaccine for starvation … it’s called food,” he stressed. In the Q&A, when one student asked about nutritious food, Beasley said, in essence, that, of course, that is necessary, but he explained to the young questioners the fact that “food for survival” is now the issue before us. He declared that the WFP budget was covered at $5.9 billion in 2017, then in 2020 rose to $8.9 billion, but said that is not enough. This year it needs to be in the $15 billion range. He recognized that the U.S. increased its contribution to the WFP from $1.9 billion four years ago, up to $3.47 billion. He identified that while Washington is typically “fighting over everything, with rinky-dink concerns,” there has been a bipartisan agreement on food aid. He scored the billionaires who watch the deaths happen: “I get upset … in 2020 a new billionaire was created every 17 hours.” There were 493 new billionaires created last year. “And all I need is $5 billion.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche emphasizes the urgency of lifting the so-called Caesar Sanctions against the people of Syria, citing the appeal of Cardinal Zenari to end the sanctions. There is nothing “humanitarian”, she stated, in starving children and shutting down hospitals and medical care, based on another fraudulent narrative cooked up by U.K.-U.S. regime change networks. We must insist that every policy maker who does not speak up against this fraud is complicit in every death which occurs in Syria, and in Yemen.
Daniel Ellsberg, who courageously released the Pentagon Papers 50 years ago, which exposed the lies of the military and intelligence community which led to the disastrous war in Vietnam, insisted that there be a public discussion NOW of whether we should risk a nuclear war over Taiwan, Ukraine or Syria. He reported on a RAND Corporation document — still classified — which reveals that John Foster Dulles favored a nuclear strike against China during the Taiwan crisis in 1958. Ellsberg called for whistleblowers to come forward today, to “Let us know what the inside plans are,” so they can be countered before a new, devastating war can be unleashed.
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.
