Megan Dobrodt, President, Schiller Institute (U.S.A.): “Why the Universe Needs More People”
In his annual conversation with the Russian people, Russian President Putin emphasized that the world is changing, and one of the most important changes is that no nation, or group of nations, can dictate policy, under the umbrella of enforcement of a self-interested “Rules-Based Order.” He reiterated that Russia is open for dialogue, for cooperation, but its sovereignty cannot be challenged. He stated that he hopes Russia’s partners in the west understand this, and will cease the provocations and sanctions, for the sake of peaceful and mutually beneficial cooperation.
In reviewing the just-concluded conference of the Schiller Institute, its founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the ongoing provocations of London-based imperial interests as a dynamic for war. With the explicit intent of NATO’s Global 2030 policy to encircle Russia and China, to ensure that the Great Reset and Green New Deal can be successfully consolidated, we brought together leaders from all parts of the world to build an effective anti-Malthusian resistance to defeat this imperial design.
She emphasized the special importance of a change in the method of thinking, by adopting the concept introduced by Nicholas of Cusa of the “Coincidence of Opposites” — which was demonstrated in each of the four conference panels — as necessary to win this fight. As the crises facing humanity escalate, she pointed to the fact that many more people are looking at Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas, as a hopeful sign that the New Paradigm can be brought into existence.
As the Texas Deep Freeze has exposed the deadly consequences of mixing the low energy-flux-density policies of the Green New Deal with the neoliberal policies to deregulate and privatize electricity production, to increase the profits of private corporations, the “air space” surrounding Mars is full of inspirational promise for scientific discoveries to define the future.
We are also seeing the first hints that the Biden administration may move away from the British geopolitics of Pompeo and his allies, who undermined the potential of the Trump administration for friendly cooperation with Russia and China. In her weekly dialogue, Zepp LaRouche said that it is still too early to determine if the new administration may act to end the endless wars of the Bush and Obama years, but there were signs from Biden’s talk to the Munich Security Conference that change is possible. It is also becoming more evident that the insistence of the Schiller Institute that the fight to overcome the COVID pandemic requires a global commitment for a new standard of health care for all countries is being taken seriously, though the commitment to provide vaccines to poor countries is still lagging among the relatively rich nations.
Over the weekend, World Food Program Director David Beasley sent out a tweet, reiterating his frequent call on billionaires to step up to meet the $6 billion more needed this year to roll back hunger and prevent starvation. But this time he named names. He included in his tweet the June 26 CNN video story, “Bezos vs. Branson: Billionaires Battle Over Being First in Space.” Beasley tweeted June 26:
“Hey, Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, so excited to see you compete on who gets to space first! BUT, I would love to see you TEAM up together to save the 41 million people who are about to starve this year on Earth! It only takes $6 billion. We can solve this quickly!”
The financial worth of these three, according to Global Citizen: Branson, $6.3 billion; Musk, $165.9 billion; and Bezos $192.6 billion.
Foreign and Development Ministers of the Group of 20 and representatives of UN agencies met today in a one-day summit in Matera, Italy, hosted by Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio as Italy is currently the rotating president of the group. Several of the ministers appeared in person, but China’s, Russia’s, Brazil’s, and other ministers attended virtually. The major emphasis of the summit, whose unimaginative title was “People, Planet, Prosperity,” was combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as food insecurity, famine, poverty, disease, and promoting “sustainable development,” and “sustainable” health systems–especially for Africa. Di Maio said in the closing press conference that the G20 has a special responsibility to help Africa to emerge from a “difficult period.” This must be done in such a way, he said, that people won’t feel the need to leave their countries and migrate to Europe.
The “Matera Declaration on Food Security, Nutrition and Food Systems,” announces a number of initiatives for addressing the developing sector’s most urgent problems, but all are couched in terms of “sustainability,” respecting biodiversity and gender equality, and adapting “agriculture and food systems to climate change.” The statement ends with a call for a “global mobilization” to solve these problems, while it presents none of the solutions that might actually yield results. This document cries out for the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Organization’s programmatic proposals for building a global health system, bankruptcy organization of the global financial system, and reconstruction of the world’s economies with major infrastructure projects.
During the conference itself, there was much rhetoric about “multilateralism,” loudly advocated by Secretary of StateTony Blinken, who had the audacity to say that the U.S. is leading the multilateral effort for vaccine distribution, to which Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi tweeted in response that “multilateralism is not a high-sounding slogan, let alone gift-wrapping for the implementation of unilateral acts.” In his public statements, Wang called for an end to the “zero-sum game” in foreign relations. For example, he said, in fighting the pandemic it is to everyone’s benefit that those nations which have vaccines and vaccine capacity lift their export restrictions. Forget about ideology, and get to work on stabilizing vaccine production and supply lines, he said. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas ignored that advice when he complained that Russia and China are only using their “vaccine diplomacy” for political leverage in the countries they aid. “We must openly discuss the fact that we do not think much of their vaccine diplomacy,” he harrumphed.
Michele Geraci, former Undersecretary of State at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, said in an interview with CGTN that there is a lot of talk about multilateralism, but if it means that 200 nations do their own thing, and there is retrenchment, this doesn’t work. It hurts production, people-to-people contact, international education, etc. What is needed is real collaboration, he insisted.
Di Maio and other Italian participants pointed out that in terms of protecting health, Rome is home to a number of international food organizations–World Food Program, Food and Agriculture Organization, etc.–and that they and Italy will host the July 26-28 World Pre-Summit of the Food Systems meeting that will be held at the UN in September. As this news service has pointed out, the Rome affair in July is terribly organized as a gathering of “stakeholders” — women, youth, climate, and biodiversity groups, etc. — and that its solutions are nature-based, not focused on ending famine. This is precisely the World Economic Forum/Davos model announced by Charles Schwab last January.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi was the keynote speaker at a Monday event titled the Lanting Forum on Promoting Dialogue and Cooperation and Managing Differences, focused on the restoration of civil and productive relations between China and the US. Wang Yi pointed to the following extensive list of divisive, and in many cases illegal, policies implemented by Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
Wang urged the new Biden Administration to:
Stop smearing the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese political system;
Stop supporting separatists in Taiwan;
Stop interfering in China’s sovereign affairs in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
End the unreasonable tariffs;
Lift the sanctions;
Abandon the irrational suppression of Chinese tech companies;
Lift the restrictions on educational, cultural and media institutions;
Support research exchange.
Seeing the list in one place provides a shocking sense of the madness and criminality of the Pompeo belief that the US could abandon international law and decency to act as a global dictator.
The Global Times coverage of the event noted that President Biden had stated in his speech to the G7 and the Munich Security Forum last week, “We cannot and must not return to the reflexive opposition and rigid blocs of the Cold War.” They also took note that Biden has already taken several steps to reverse some of the Trump-Pompeo anti-China policies (although reports on these steps were largely blacked out of the US press): He paused the ban on Wechat and Tik Tok, the Chinese apps; he withdrew the order for universities to disclose financial arrangements with the Confucius Institutes; and he sponsored a dialogue between the leading epidemiologists of the two nations, Dr. Fauchi and Dr. Zhong Nanshan, who have spoken by phone about cooperation in the fight against COVID-19, and will meet at an international conference on March 2.
Lyle Goldstein had never been afraid to “sail against the current” with regard to his vision of a sane U.S. defense policy, and it is hoped that his view is also shared by a number of U.S. defense intellectuals, who have some awareness of how the world is changing. In his latest article, entitled “The Indo-Pacific Strategy is a Recipe for Disaster,” Goldstein scores the malarkey dreamed up by U.S. policy planners based on the notion that the U.S. has now entered a period of intense rivalry with China and with Russia.
Goldstein goes back to a 1992 strategy document that asserted that the goal of U.S. policy was “to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge” and to maintain the continuity of “the unipolar moment.” He also notes that the DoD declassified, long before it was normal, the U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Paciific, which built on the same basic notion. “The authors of the Trump administration’s framework were evidently so pleased with the work that they thought it necessary to declassify it before leaving office and share it with the public, even though the general custom is to wait 30 years before declassification,” Goldstein writes. “But surely they also intended that the document might constrain and direct the Biden administration’s approach to U.S. strategy heads.”
“The strategy represents a fusion of neoconservative and neoliberal thinking and may satisfy large segments of the foreign policy elite, orchestrating the design for a new cold war—this time focusing on China,” Goldstein writes. And what are the problems that this strategy represents? While harping a lot on the “alliance of democracies”, the strategy is meant to include countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore, all of which fall into that category only with great effort. Even with South Korea and Japan, traditional U.S. allies, he argues, it will be difficult for them to follow in the wake of a U.S. man-of-war heading for China.
More serious, he notes, is the situation with changing the policy toward Taiwan. “The island has befuddled American strategists for decades and their clever solution has been ‘strategic ambiguity,’ balancing a general acceptance of China’s claim with a subtle hint of deterrence in the hope that the complex issue could be settled peacefully. The newly declassified strategy overtly codifies the deterrence aspect without even the slightest nod to Chinese claims—something acknowledged by American presidents going back to Franklin Roosevelt. The attempt to shift the policy during the Trump Administration put the U.S. on a clear collision course with China.
“Some Americans seem to welcome that possibility, but they are not well informed about the military balance and likely scenarios. The truth is that the United States could very well lose such a war, a fact admitted in early 2021 by a senior Air Force official, and there is no telling whether nuclear weapons would be used or not.”
And then there is India. Goldstein notes that India’s military potential is not what it is cracked up to be and that any attempt to promote trouble on the India-China border could lead to a disaster for India similar to that in 1962. And promoting an Indian presence in the South China Sea, he notes, has already led to a major Chinese naval build-up. He also notes the folly for India in pushing a major military build-up with so much of its domestic needs crying for attention.
“In the end,” Goldstein writes, “the Indo-Pacific framework proved long on rhetoric and ideology, but failed to grapple seriously with the underlying changes in the regional balance of power that must occasion a new U.S. strategy based on realism and restraint. The Biden administration should not overlook the former strategy’s foundational weaknesses. The new team would be wise to junk the old strategy and start fresh.”
Good advice from a defense scholar with great experience. Goldstein set up the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. But his article was published in a lesser known internet site, the “lawfareblog.” It is hoped that it will be transmitted further. For although Lyle Goldstein may be a lone voice, in a cacophony of disparate—and mostly outlandish—voices, it does remain the voice of reason, and therefore deserves to be heard.
Read the full article: https://www.lawfareblog.com/indo-pacific-strategy-recipe-disaster
NATO is not addressing “Russian aggression” sufficiently. It is out-of-control and Britain, within the NATO construct, must lead the way in countering it. So writes Henry Jackson Society fellow Robert Clarke in a June 23 paper — apparently written just before the incident with the HMS Defender the same day — published in the {UK Defence Journal}. Clarke claims that Russia, with restrictions imposed on some waters of the Black Sea around the Crimean peninsula and the Sea of Azov, is working to isolate Ukraine from NATO. “Britain is doing the right thing increasing maritime patrols in this increasingly important region, as {HMS Defender} alongside the Dutch frigate {HNLMS Evertsen} from the U.K.-led Carrier Strike Group begin to patrol the Black Sea over the coming days in support of NATO ally Ukraine,” Clarke writes. In his mind, it seems, Ukraine is already a member of NATO.
In light of Russia’s recent behavior, “the U.K. should seek to incorporate the Black Sea region as a geostrategic priority. This must include joint maritime patrols with both Ukrainian and NATO allies. The joint patrol conducted with the Dutch frigate {HNLMS} Evertsen in the coming days is a good example of this bilateral engagement,” Clarke writes. “Building from this, the U.K. should develop a more permanent and consistent leadership presence, ultimately within a NATO framework. Both French and Dutch navies have recently been deployed or are soon to deploy to the Black Sea, with Turkey a major regional actor and close NATO ally.”
Clarke concludes: “As the U.K.-led Carrier Strike Group deployment fulfils the vision of a Global Britain as the eminent European naval power, it is to this strategic corner of southern Europe which the U.K.’s and NATO’s attentions must turn, in order to counter an increasingly assertive and emboldened Russia.”
Read the article in the {UK Defence Journal}.
The otherwise nondescript nation of Gabon made history last week as the first African country to “get paid” to preserve its rainforest. At the end of an arduous, four-year process of “conforming,” on June 24, the Norwegian government distributed a $17 million payment, with the fantastic sum of $150 million still in the wind. The payment was allocated under the UN-initiated Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI). While not technically a part of UN Climate czar Mark Carney’s over-hyped “climate offset” scheme, this deal provides a window into the process, and will likely serve as a model.
In June of 2017, under the CAFI program, the nation of Gabon signed a Letter of Intent with the nation of Norway, and the Multi Partner Trust Fund of the United Nations Development Program, under which Gabon would agree to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% below the 2005 level, as well as agree to perform a series of “milestones”– which ultimately saw Gabon creating 13 “national parks”– effectively locking up the vast majority of its land area, prohibiting logging and other access to resources. Only at the end of the long process would Gabon get paid. That final “millstone” was passed in 2019, with an announcement at the Climate Action Summit in New York. For all its efforts and sacrifices, Gabon would receive $150 million over the next 10 years (assuming continued compliance). Last Thursday’s $17 million payment was the first evidence that its years of sacrifice would amount to anything at all.
First established in 2015, the CAFI brought together European governments, specifically Norway, France, Germany and the UK, along with six central African (rainforest) countries, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central Africa republic, Cameroon, and both “Congos.” The “rationale” behind CAFI was the reduction of carbon emissions. The year before had seen Norway sign a deal promising $150 million to Liberia, a model which CAFI then extended across the mid-section of the entire continent. In 2019, timed with the signing of Gabon in New York, a similar deal worth $65 million — between France and the Republic of Congo — was announced in Paris. There are likely similar efforts afoot in South America and the Indo-Pacific, the other “rainforest regions” of the world, which need to be investigated.
However, the idea that Africa needs to {reduce} its carbon emissions is farcical on the face of it, something which is slowly dawning on African leaders, as more and more evidence of this type of exploitation emerges. Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions are 4% of the global total, yet CAFI used that global mantra to convince these six LNI (Low National Income) countries to mortgage their future with the promise of mere pennies.
The other hidden force at play here is the elusive “carbon market.” Norway, which now “owns” the Gabonese forests for the next ten years, now has an amount of carbon offset equivalent to 3X the national output of the entire United Kingdom. (The Gabon deal is celebrated for “setting a floor price of carbon” at $10 per certified ton.) Could Norway, for example– at some date in the future– put this “asset” (or a derivative based on it) up for sale, to be bought by a carbon-belching airline or steel foundry? If they did, and got a higher price for it, would Gabon see any of the profits?
These are the questions currently weighing down the heads of Mark Carney and friends in Davos, Switzerland. The weight may yet draw them down to Hell.