After 20 years of coverup of the real story of what was behind the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S., Pres. Biden has ordered the declassification of documents which have been hidden by government agencies, especially the FBI. LaRouche said, as the attacks were happening, that Osama Bin Laden would be blamed, but he is a “controlled entity…not an independent force.” Yet, the truth about the role of the Saudis and U.S. intelligence in creating and deploying Al Qaeda has been buried, to protect the guilty. Join us this Saturday at 2 PM EDT for a forum, “9/11/2021: The Path Forward from September 11, Afghanistan and the Surveillance State.”See Helga Zepp LaRouche’s statement, “Can the West Learn? What Afghanistan Needs Now”
Indian Power Minister Insists, the World Cannot Stop Africa from Developing
April 7 (EIRNS)—The International Energy Agency (IEA) press release claiming a consensus reached at the March 31 IEA-COP26 Net Zero Summit on “accelerating clean energy transitions” is deceptive. While note was taken by some media of the words of warning given there by India’s Minister of Power, New and Renewable Energy Raj Kumar Singh, watching Singh’s presentation makes visible the fury building in developing countries against being told they have no right to develop.
Singh spoke for the continent of Africa, and he did so with such forcefulness that IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol began, politely but insistently, trying to cut him off halfway through his remarks.
True, Singh calmly reported the great advances India is making in building up the percentage of renewables in its energy mix, and his government’s agreement that the climate threat is real. But what followed was outrage that the developed world, which “has occupied almost 80% of the carbon space already,” now makes “pie in the sky” promises to get to net zero carbon emissions by some decades from now, while demanding developing countries cut their carbon emissions. Here his tone changed:
“Now, in order to give space for others to develop, you have to think of the whole continent of Africa! You have 800 million people in Africa who do not have access to electricity. It’s not about us. We will achieve whatever has to be achieved because we get investments. But it is about those countries…. They have to develop! That development will require more steel, in huge quantities; that development will require more cement, in huge quantities. They also want to build skyscrapers. They also want a high standard of living for their people. And you can’t stop it!…
“You have to give space to those countries, whose present per-capita consumption is less than one-fifth of the world’s consumption, whose present emissions are one-sixth of world emissions. You have to give them space to develop. You need to understand [here, he hit the table for emphasis] that if they consume more steel, they will make [emphasis* more steel; if they consume more cement, they will make [emphasis] more cement; if they consume more plastics, they will make [emphasis* more plastics—and all that is made with carbon.”
By then, Birol had stepped up his “thank you, thank you” interruptions, but Singh insisted on talking over him to make one last point: “you” insist that we go for carbon capture and storage, yet are these technologies proven? And they are very expensive!
India does not intend to sacrifice its own domestic energy supply, either. That same day, India’s Environment Ministry issued an order extending the compliance deadline for Indian coal-fired power plants to meet tougher emissions guidelines, by up to two more years. The measure was supported by the Power Ministry, because the costs of retrofitting emissions scrubbers on existing coal plants are prohibitive.
According to the Oct. 4 issue of the Economist magazine, the mouthpiece for the City of London financial interests, “The Age of Fossil Fuel Abundance is Dead”, scarcity will worsen, prices will rise, and there is nothing you can do about it. Really? Resistance to their depopulation policies is growing, as LaRouche’s warnings from the early 1970s have proven to be deadly accurate. Thirty-five years ago, on Oct. 6, 1986, the “Get LaRouche” task force raided his home, sending 400 armed personnel to kill him. They failed then, and have been unable to kill his strategic and economic method, which is shaping the resistance to their intent to use artificial shortages to kill billions of people.
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
September 5—The catastrophic failure of NATO in Afghanistan, and with it the policy of 20 years of wars of intervention, couldn’t be more dramatic. It is not only that the war was lost; it is paradigmatic for the whole spectrum of misconceptions of the Western liberal system. It is therefore to be welcomed when President Biden announces that the withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the end of the entire era of the use of American military power with the aim of “remaking” other countries. But if this reorientation only means that we will no longer busy ourselves out in the boondocks with the “endless wars,” but instead will concentrate all forces on the “new challenges”—namely the confrontation with Russia and China—then the lesson from this shameful disaster has not been learned and we are embarking on an even worse catastrophe. But the wound is still fresh, the shock of defeat has shaken the whole Western world and the chance exists for a completely new approach.
A Brown University project to ascertain the costs of U.S. wars since September 11th, for which we are about to mark the 20th anniversary, has calculated that the total costs for the military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc. are $8 trillion and at least a million people have lost their lives. This breaks down to $2.3 trillion for the Afghanistan war, $2.1 trillion for the Iraq/Syria war zone, $355 billion for military operations in Libya, Somalia, etc., $1.1 trillion for Homeland Security programs, and $2.2 trillion for the upcoming care of U.S. veterans who were deployed in these wars, a large number of whom suffer from secondary physical and mental illnesses. At least 15,000 U.S. military personnel and roughly the same number of international NATO troops were killed. Around 70 million people are refugees from these wars. Hundreds of thousands of troops were deployed, an unknown number of civilians perished, and the majority of the troops were essentially occupied with protecting themselves in a hostile environment. They had just as little idea of those people and their culture at the beginning of the 20 years, as at the end of it, as was known to the public no later than with the publication of the Afghanistan Papers in 2019.
The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is appalling. World Food Program Director David Beasley, who visited Afghanistan last week in August, announced that 18 million Afghans are starving—more than half the population—and 4 million are at risk of starvation next winter without massive help. The WHO fears a medical disaster in view of the scarcely existing health system in the midst of the COVID pandemic, and only around 1 million people are vaccinated so far. Can the people of Western countries have any idea what kind of suffering the Afghan population has had to go through in the past 40 years of war, and must still endure at this point in time?
In view of this almost unimaginable tragedy, it is downright absurd and deliberately misleading that in the context of the “endless wars” one still speaks of “nation-building.” What was built in Afghanistan when half the population is starving? If the U.S.A. and other NATO members had invested only 5% of their military spending in the real economic development of Afghanistan, this horrific debacle would never have occurred.
Modern Health System and Agriculture
So far it has not been apparent that there is any real rethinking in the United States or Europe. Because this would not mean merely that one is willing to “talk to the Taliban,” but that one is correcting the entire premise of the policies of the last 20 years. If Biden is serious about ending the entire era of the wars of intervention, then U.S. troops must finally comply with the vote of the Iraqi Parliament, which demanded their withdrawal in January 2020. Then the murderous Caesar Act sanctions of the U.S.A. against Syria must be ended immediately, which to this day contribute to holding over 90% of the population to a standard of living below the poverty line. Beyond that, especially during a pandemic, we must end the policy of sanctions against all countries; they have no UN mandate, and they only strike at the poorest sections of the population and often kill them.
What the U.S.A. and the European nations have to do now, if they ever want to regain credibility with respect to “values” and “human rights,” is to offer real help to the Afghan government that is being formed, e.g. by building a modern health system. One of the things that is urgently needed now is a whole system of modern hospitals, in connection with a system for the training of doctors, medical professionals and a training program for young people who can help the population in all rural areas to familiarize themselves with the hygiene measures required in a pandemic. With the help of partnerships, such a system could be linked to medical centers in the United States and Europe, as is already in place with other countries in the developing sector.
In view of the famine, in addition to the airlift that David Beasley of the WFP is setting up from Pakistan, which can bring food into Afghanistan, a comprehensive offer of agricultural support is needed urgently. If we are to stop the farmers from falling back to the cultivation of poppy plants for the production of opium out of sheer necessity, then the development of agriculture, integrated into the general economic structure, must be supported. With the agreement concluded with the Taliban in 2000, the former UN drug commissioner Pino Arlacchi demonstrated that the abolition of drug cultivation is possible and that the religious convictions of the Taliban can be met.
Provided that the sovereignty of Afghanistan and the new government is absolutely respected, and it is guaranteed that such aid in building up agriculture is not mixed with a political agenda, various pilot projects based on the model of Jawaharlal Nehru’s green revolution could be started with the regions that are ready to do so. There are committed young and older farmers in the United States and Europe who would be willing to participate in such a peace mission to improve agricultural production in Afghanistan in such a way that the famine can be permanently eradicated. In view of the repeated droughts, such programs would of course have to go hand in hand with irrigation programs and general water management.
An Aid Coordinator Who Is Trusted
It must first and foremost be about helping the Afghan people in a gigantic emergency that they did not cause themselves, and this is only possible if a basis of trust is established with the new government, regardless of all ideological reservations. The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites therefore proposes that the U.S. and European governments choose the person to coordinate such an aid program, who has shown in the past that such a policy can work: namely, Pino Arlacchi. It would guarantee that Afghanistan’s sovereignty would be respected and that no attempt would be made to impose Western standards, since he has already won the Taliban’s trust in the past.
Such a redefinition of policy towards Afghanistan naturally also means completely turning away from thinking in geopolitical categories, rejecting the idea of politics as a zero-sum game in which the rise of China and Asia are automatically understood as the decline of the West. With his visit to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the new head of government, Abdul Ghani Baradar, signaled that his government is counting on cooperation with China and the integration of Afghanistan into the New Silk Road. The Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, has proposed an international conference for the country’s economic development to discuss which projects must have absolute priority in order to overcome the emergency.
If the West has learned anything from the millennium defeat in Afghanistan, then it must cooperate impartially with Russia, China, and neighboring countries in Central Asia, Pakistan, Iran and India in building not only Afghanistan, but all of Southwest Asia. The slogan “to end the endless wars,” which got Tony Blair so excited, is not imbecilic—what is imbecilic is the policy of colonial wars of intervention he proposed. This was not only moronic, but criminal and murderous, and has destroyed the lives of millions of people or plunged them into unspeakable suffering. The architects of this policy should be held accountable.
But if the cycle of violence and revenge is to be overcome, then a new policy must be on the agenda: The new name for peace is development, as Pope Paul VI once said. Afghanistan is the one place where the United States and China can begin a form of cooperation that can be a baby step toward strategic cooperation putting humanity’s common goals in the foreground. Ultimately, its realization indicates the only way that the end of mankind in a nuclear Armageddon can be prevented.
In any case, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer does not seem to have learned anything from the “severe defeat,” if all she can think of is the demand for “more military independence for the EU.” The “lack of skills” of which she speaks does not only refer to the failure of European resistance to the U.S.-driven withdrawal from Afghanistan. If the self-induced decline of the West is to end, we need an honest analysis of why the neo-colonial liberal social model has failed, and above all we need a renaissance of our humanistic and classical culture. Our attitude towards the construction in Afghanistan is the test case of whether we are able to do so.
This article was translated from the front-page lead of the German weekly newspaper Neue Solidarität* for issue No. 36, Sept. 9, 2021. https://www.solidaritaet.com/neuesol/2021/36/hzl.htm*
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:
As genocidal Malthusians move ahead with plans to impose a global Green dictatorship at the upcoming COP26 conference in Glasgow, the LaRouche Organization has drafted a plan which presents a human alternative. “The Coming U.S. Economic Miracle on the New Silk Road” demonstrates what scientific and technological optimism, driven by courage and imagination, can accomplish, using as examples the history of infrastructure development in the U.S., and the current miracle of poverty elimination in China. Watch last Saturday’s “Manhattan Project” discussion to see how the Davos and allied psychopaths can be defeated — Returning to the American System: The Coming U.S. Economic Miracle on the New Silk Road
We begin with a brief review of the fraudulent posturing coming from the Federal Reserve, which is trying to convince us there is nothing wrong with the continued voluminous flows of funny money to prop up collapsing valuations of worthless financial instruments. LaRouche’s famous Triple Curve Collapse Function instructs us otherwise. (see link below)
As for Friday’s questions, we take up what changes in thinking are necessary to escape an ongoing depression collapse, and sleep-walking into World War III: In particular, answering the question, “Aren’t Russia and China really our enemies?”
This link will provide a good start to study LaRouche’s Triple Curve Function:
The Principles of Long-Range Forecasting, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (Apr. 17, 1998) (larouchepub.com)
Recent developments prove that the LaRouche movement was absolutely right in insisting that the globalist swindlers pushing the Great Reset and Green New Deal can be defeated. An alliance of nations, including Russia, China, India, Pakistan and others, is emerging, and its leaders are making it clear that they will not give up their right to sovereign economic development, by submitting to the fake science behind “net zero carbon” policy. The Malthusian insistence that “overpopulation” is the problem — which has been repeatedly disproven by advances in science and technology — is being rejected, and can be relegated to history’s trash bin. Will the American people insist that the United States, which was the first to defeat the Malthusian Empire in our War of Independence, take its rightful place as a leader among nations in the fight for economic development?
Putin Warns West It Has Gone Too Far: Do Not Cross Our Red Lines, But Let’s Work Together on Mutual Development
April 21 (EIRNS)—International media, for once, did not censor the “bottom line” of the grave warning delivered to those in the West who treat Russia as an adversary by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his annual Address to the Federal Assembly today. For our readers to take in the full weight of Putin’s warning and contrasted approach offered, a much fuller extract of the foreign policy part of his speech is provided here:
“The meaning and purpose of Russia’s policy in the international arena—I will just say a few words about this to conclude my address—is to ensure peace and security for the well-being of our citizens, for the stable development of our country. Russia certainly has its own interests we defend and will continue to defend within the framework of international law, as all other states do. And if someone refuses to understand this obvious thing or does not want to conduct a dialogue and chooses a selfish and arrogant tone with us, Russia will always find a way to defend its stance.
“At the same time, unfortunately, everyone in the world seems to be used to the practice of politically motivated, illegal economic sanctions and to certain actors’ brutal attempts to impose their will on others by force. But today, this practice is degenerating into something even more dangerous—I am referring to the recently exposed direct interference in Belarus in an attempt to orchestrate a coup d’état and assassinate the President of that country. At the same time, it is typical that even such flagrant actions have not been condemned by the so-called collective West. Nobody seemed to notice. Everyone pretends nothing is happening.
“But listen, you can think whatever you like of, say, Ukrainian President [Viktor] Yanukovych or [Nicolas] Maduro in Venezuela. I repeat, you can like or dislike them, including Yanukovych who almost got killed, too, and removed from power via an armed coup. You can have your own opinion of President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko’s policy. But the practice of staging coups d’état and planning political assassinations, including those of high-ranking officials—well, this goes too far. This is beyond any limits.
“Suffice it to mention the admission made by the detained participants in the conspiracy about a planned siege of Minsk, including plans to block the city infrastructure and communications, and a complete shutdown of the entire power system in the capital of Belarus! This actually means they were preparing a massive cyberattack. What else could it be? You know, you cannot just do it all with one switch.
“Clearly, there is a reason why our Western colleagues have been stubbornly rejecting Russia’s numerous proposals to establish an international dialogue on information and cyber security. We have come up with these proposals many times. They avoid even discussing this matter.
“What if there had been a real attempt at a coup d’état in Belarus? After all, this was the ultimate goal. How many people would have been hurt? What would have become of Belarus? Nobody is thinking about this.
“Just as no one was thinking about the future of Ukraine during the coup in that country.
“All the while, unfriendly moves towards Russia have also continued unabated. Some countries have taken up an unseemly routine where they pick on Russia for any reason, most often, for no reason at all. It is some kind of new sport of who shouts the loudest.
“In this regard, we behave in an extremely restrained manner, I would even say, modestly, and I am saying this without irony. Often, we prefer not to respond at all, not just to unfriendly moves, but even to outright rudeness. We want to maintain good relations with everyone who participates in the international dialogue. But we see what is happening in real life. As I said, every now and then they are picking on Russia, for no reason. And of course, all sorts of petty Tabaquis are running around them like Tabaqui ran around Shere Khan—everything is like in Kipling’s book—howling along in order to make their sovereign happy. Kipling was a great writer.
“We really want to maintain good relations with all those engaged in international communication, including, by the way, those with whom we have not been getting along lately, to put it mildly. We really do not want to burn bridges. But if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn or even blow up these bridges, they must know that Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, swift and tough.
“Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time.
“At the same time, I just have to make it clear, we have enough patience, responsibility, professionalism, self-confidence, and certainty in our cause, as well as common sense, when making a decision of any kind. But I hope that no one will think about crossing the ‘red line’ with regard to Russia. We ourselves will determine in each specific case where it will be drawn.”
Putin reminded his live audience and those listening that Russia already has “standing on combat duty” the advanced hypersonic and other weapons systems he had announced in March 2018 (the Avangard, Kinzhal hypersonic missiles), the anti-ship Tsirkon hypersonic missiles will follow soon, and the Sarmat super-heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles are scheduled to go on combat duty in late 2022, while development proceeds on the Poseidon and Burevestnik combat systems.
That reminder of reality delivered, Putin reiterated Russia’s January 2020 offer to negotiate and hold a summit of the P-5:
“As the leader in the creation of new-generation combat systems and in the development of modern nuclear forces, Russia is urging its partners once again to discuss the issues related to strategic armaments and to ensuring global stability. The subject matter and the goal of these talks could be the creation of an environment for a conflict-free coexistence based on the security equation, which would include not only the traditional strategic armaments, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarines, but—I would like to emphasize this—all offensive and defensive systems capable of attaining strategic goals regardless of the armament.
“The five nuclear countries bear special responsibility. I hope that the initiative on a personal meeting of the heads of state of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which we proposed last year, will materialize and will be held as soon as the epidemiological situation allows.”
The way forward lies in “broad international cooperation … on the basis of mutual respect,” Putin outlined in closing his remarks on foreign relations. Thus, Russia has assisted the settlement of regional conflicts, as in Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, and participates in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organization. “There are new, interesting projects” in our common projects in the Eurasian Economic Union,” Putin declared, “such as the development of transport-and-logistics corridors. I am sure they will become a reliable infrastructure backbone for large-scale Eurasian partnership … [as] practical instruments for resolving national development tasks.”
Argentina To Produce the Sputnik V Vaccine, the First Ibero-American Nation To Do So
April 21 (EIRNS)—In an April 20 press release, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, announced that its partner, Argentina’s Laboratorios Richmond, had produced a test batch of 21,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, the first Ibero-American nation to do so. Samples will be sent to Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which first developed Sputnik V, where they will undergo quality control tests, and once those are completed, Richmond will plan to gear up for mass production by June if all goes well. Quoted in the press release, RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said that Argentina was the first Ibero-American nation to approve emergency use authorization of Sputnik V, and now, thanks to technology transfer to Richmond labs from RDIF and its partners, production has begun. “The vaccine produced in Argentina can then be exported to other nations of Central and South America,” he said.
In remarks to Telam news agency, government sources cautioned that the next steps in the production process will be “complex and challenging,” explaining that “as this is a biological process, there could be some delays and difficulties until we reach optimal levels…. We’re betting on [producing] the best vaccine in the world, but in the short term, let’s be cautious.” A medium-term perspective would be “for year’s end to produce 100% of the vaccine,” the officials said.
Marcelo Figueiras, CEO of Laboratorios Richmond, stressed he is proud to have the support of the RDIF “that trusted in our scientific and technical platform to produce the Sputnik V vaccine in Argentina. We celebrate this recognition that we will reward with work, commitment and professionalism, to facilitate availability of the vaccine in the shortest possible time for Argentina and the entire Latin American region,” the daily Página 12 reported him as saying in its April 20 edition. President Alberto Fernández expressed his great pride in this achievement, expressing that “Argentina has become the first country of the region to launch the production of Sputnik V thanks to the partnership between RDIF and Laboratorios Richmond. Sputnik V is approved in more than 10 countries of Latin and Central America and production in Argentina will help facilitate deliveries to other partners in the region. It will be a great opportunity to advance in the fight against the pandemic,” not only for Argentina but for the entire region.
