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Italian Endorsements of Schiller Institute’s Operation Ibn Sina

MILAN, Nov. 23, 2021 (EIRNS)—Alessia Ruggeri, chairwoman of UPI Italia, an association of small and medium-sized enterprises, and a renowned trade unionist in Sicily, today endorsed Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s proposed “Operation Ibn Sina” for Afghanistan with a press release which was published today in Il Corriere di Sicilia, a daily read in all of Sicily and is expected to be published in the next days in other Southern Italian papers. {Read the article here.} The press release is entitled “Helga Zepp-LaRouche launches Operation Ibn Sina to save the Afghan people” and reads:

“The Committee for the Republic, through its spokeswoman Alessia Ruggeri, endorsed the Ibn Sina initiative of the Schiller Institute. ’I believe that the world is experiencing a quite sad political, economic and social moment, with the complicity of mainstream media. We have to regain the lucidity and ability to intervene in support of a right cause. The Afghan people are paying the price of international geopolitical strategies which deny their inalienable rights guaranteed by the UN Charter.

“ ‘I therefore accept with great honor the invitation of the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites to be a part of it and give a significant European contribution,’ Alessia Ruggeri concludes, thanking Liliana Gorini, chairwoman of Movisol, an Italian political party inspired by Lyndon LaRouche.

“Also the lawyer Roberto Zappia endorses the appeal in support of the Afghan people, first exploited for the affirmation of the territorial and political hegemony of the world powers and subsequently abandoned to the voracity of the finance and to its cynical ruthless logics.”

The press release goes on to quote Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Operation Ibn Sina from the recent Schiller Institute conference and Dr. Joycelyn Elders on the recent activities of the Committee Coincidence of Opposites, particularly in Africa. {See Dr. Elders’ call, Open Letter to Virologists and Medical Experts.}


New Xinhua Video on the BRI Features African & Ibero-American Leaders, Schiller Institute Rep

New Xinhua Video on the BRI Features African & Ibero-American Leaders, Schiller Institute Rep

Nov. 20 (EIRNS)–“Xi Urges Continuous Efforts to Promote High-Quality BRI Development” is the headline of a new Xinhua print and video release, dated 11/20/21, which features short statements from Zimbabwe President Mnangagwa, former Brazilian President Temer, and think tankers including the Schiller Institute’s Richard A. Black on the success of the BRI in uniting over 140 countries and 30 organizations in global manufacturing and development.

In the 10-minute English-language Xinhua video, Black, identified as the Schiller Institute representative at the UN, is shown in a recent video interview describing a unique feature of the BRI: a great economic power, China, has extended its arms worldwide to all nations — including those nations which are poor and are small — and deals with those nations as equals. This is an aspect of a win-win strategy of rapid, mutual economic benefit. (The article with the embedded video is found here.)

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Are We Deserving of the Future’s Gratitude?

May 19 (EIRNS)—Educating and Challenging the Resistance to Malthusianism and War Grow; Challenge Axioms To Create the Alternative

The legitimacy of a government in the eyes of history — its “mandate from Heaven” — is to promote the common good of its people and of humanity in general. Which governments in the world today can be said to deserve this legitimacy?

In welcoming ambassadors from two dozen countries to Russia, President Putin identified, in his own way, the fundamental principle that Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has emphasized is required for human survival — agapē: “The epidemic has proved a real test for such universal human values as solidarity, mutual assistance, and love for humanity…. It is possible to ensure peace, stability and sustainable global development only through the efforts of the entire international community…. We are convinced that everything must be done to prevent the tragedy of World War II from repeating itself, so that its lessons will not be forgotten. All of us must cherish the priceless experience and spirit of allied relations during the struggle against common challenges and threats…. We must ensure the well-being and prosperity of all human beings.”

The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, which Zepp-LaRouche co-founded, insists in its recent statement that “Health security is possible anywhere, only by provision everywhere of sufficient public health infrastructure and medical treatment capacity. This, in turn, depends directly on expanding water, power and food, which is associated with building up industrial capacity, as well as providing for adequate transportation, housing and other basics.”

Against this humanist outlook stands the imperial, Malthusian model for society. It is represented in its more historical form in the City of London and Wall Street — whose increasing power over the nominally sovereign governments of the trans-Atlantic world recalls the earlier “privatization” of the British government under the British East India Company. And it has also adopted a new guise in the “synthetic left” which calls for an end to development and a redefinition of progress in identitarian and environmentalist terms — of “progressives” who think there should be fewer people, “progressives” taken in by uncontextualized appeals to effectively support fascist policies under the rubric of defending human rights.

This Malthusian monster seeks to implement a worldwide Great Reset that will reduce the potential human population of the world: dramatically increasing the physical cost of providing and consuming energy (through drastically reducing the use of hydrocarbons while demanding greatly expanded mining to produce rare earth elements necessary for batteries and motors) while pointlessly and perilously heightening the danger of deadly military conflict with Russia and China, to prevent any other paradigm from taking hold. Rather than moving for the development of low-income nations in Africa, the Malthusian beast seeks to pay these nations not to develop, by essentially allowing developed nations to pay for carbon offsets, which would be transferred to poor nations to leave their resources (at least those for domestic consumption rather than export) in the ground.

But human beings are resource creators, not merely resource consumers. The climate change catastrophism promoted today as a new secular (or Satanic?) religion, like such earlier studies as the 1980 Global 2000 Report, relies on the same old discredited Malthusian theorizing that has led its predecessors to make terrifying forecasts that were soon falsified by reality.

Human beings are resource creators, not merely resource consumers. Every new “mouth to feed” is associated with a new “mind to educate.” It is the ability of each human individual to make enduring contributions to human history that demands peace and development throughout the world.

It is for the sake of past, present, and future humanity that this view of the human individual be brought forward to guide policy, rejecting the depraved outlooks that would tolerate Israeli murder, Green destruction of productivity, and the drive to draw the United States into war with Russia and China.

Will we become deserving of the praise of the future?


Putin Tells Ambassadors, the Pathway to Peace Lies Through ‘Love for Humanity’

May 19 (EIRNS)—Welcoming new ambassadors from 23 countries yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the unstable international situation, which as he observed, “is even becoming more complicated.” He named the crises facing the world’s nations: the coronavirus pandemic, the deterioration of the system of strategic stability and arms control, terrorism “rearing its ugly head once again,” growing problems in the sphere of international information security, the risks of drug trafficking and organized crime, decades-old regional conflicts in Afghanistan and Libya becoming aggravated, and now the dramatic escalation in the Middle East.

Putin then, in his own way, invoked the principle of agapē without which Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has recently insisted humanity may not survive as a species, as the way out for all nations. Putin told the Ambassadors:

“The epidemic has proved a real test for such universal human values as solidarity, mutual assistance, and love for humanity….

“I repeat once again: It is possible to ensure peace, stability and sustainable global development only through the efforts of the entire international community. We are calling for well-coordinated work by states, permanent members of the UN Security Council and all concerned countries. As you know, Russia has recently celebrated the anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War that started 80 years ago, on June 22, 1941, when the Nazis treacherously attacked our Motherland….

“We are convinced that everything must be done to prevent the tragedy of World War II from repeating itself, so that its lessons will not be forgotten. All of us must cherish the priceless experience and spirit of allied relations during the struggle against common challenges and threats. We must remember the consequences of policies pandering to nationalism and xenophobia, and we must jointly elaborate a positive and unifying agenda to forge a more equitable and democratic multipolar world order. We must ensure the well-being and prosperity of all human beings.”


The Great Task of Real Infrastructure: Modern Healthcare Systems in Every Nation

The Great Task of Real Infrastructure: Modern Healthcare Systems in Every Nation

May 17 (EIRNS)—The great building task for the industrialized and industrializing nations is clear. Building modern hospital and well-staffed healthcare systems in every nation on Earth will meet such an urgent need to preserve human life—one that cannot be met by any other attack on the pandemic—that it alone deserves the name of an infrastructure platform for the further progress of the human race. And it is an agreement among the most technologically advanced and economically developed nations which can launch such a global mission, and which is no less ambitious than a Moon-Mars mission, necessarily involving the same beneficial effects of technological breakthroughs.

If this task is taken up, as proposed by the Schiller Institute and Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, 10 MW of new power will be needed to supply every set of hospitals with 1,000 beds, provide a lot of fresh water to them, heat and light the housing for their staff—hundreds of gigawatts of new power, and widely distributed throughout the developing nations in particular. World food production will effectively have to double since “food is health,” to quote Committee leader Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Approximations of Tennessee Valley Authority-scale development projects will evolve from the projects undertaken for the best of disease monitoring, testing and above all modern treatment capacities.

A new nuclear technology platform is waiting to be put in factory production to supply this huge project: small modular nuclear reactors. NuScale, the only company with a prototype approved by regulators thus far, is being offered the cooperation in production it needs by the Canadian firm Prodigy Clean Energy, while other Canadian companies and provinces develop their own small modular reactor (SMR) projects. Prodigy intends to build SMR marine power stations in shipyards. The Danish company Seaborg Technologies plans to fit ships with small nuclear reactors, to send power to countries across the developing sector, and believes it can start providing that power by 2025, according to Neutron Bytes blog May 14. This is a 100 MW molten salt-cooled reactor. NuScale’s target for 60 MW operating reactor modules is 2026. Russia is already capable of producing small floating nuclear reactors.

All the other target dates can be brought forward as soon as the technologically leading nations—China, the United States, Russia in particular—agree to jointly generate credit for the modern health systems to care for pandemic victims.

Standing against this mission for humanity, is the new Malthusianism which wants to sacrifice human life to “the planet” and a myth that human science and technology are impotent and destructive. As made clear already in 2019 in an article in the medical journal The Lancet by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 5 billion people who don’t have modern healthcare can’t have it because “if we do it in a model that has been developed in rich countries, it will break the climate—and we can’t afford that.”

Nor are we, say the Green New Dealers, permitted to double world food production to cope with widespread food insecurity and famine—and food is health. According to the investors’ group FAIRR, “The oil in the ground was being mispriced. It doesn’t have value. It’s obsolete, and therefore it’s stranded. The same is going to happen for agriculture and animal agriculture.”

The same Green New Dealers nonetheless think we should scour the Earth for vast, now unknown supplies of rare and strategic minerals and metals, in order to build billions of completely unneeded electric vehicles over the next three years—and they call their charging stations “infrastructure”!

Scrapping the Green New Deal, we can build a real new infrastructure platform for the world’s people and the economies of nations, as the Schiller Institute proposes to the Global Health Conference in Rome this week.


Bolivian President Arce: Only a Global Solution Can Defeat COVID Pandemic

May 16 (EIRNS)–Speaking May 13 at an international forum organized by his foreign ministry, Bolivian President Luis Arce Catacora emphasized to his audience that the only way to defeat the coronavirus pandemic is through a global program, which, as his government has been emphasizing, must address the issue of vaccine inequity. For example, he said, Bolivia has purchased vaccines, but isn’t getting enough doses delivered because “production is circumscribed to specific countries,” or because some countries have restricted exports of vaccines for different reasons. “We’re not criticizing this,” he said, “but let’s be clear that we’re headed straight for disaster, because this is happening even to countries that have the ability to pay for vaccines…. Since the pandemic is a global evil, the solution must be global, and to get out of this, we all have to act; otherwise, no one will be safe….It’s as if there were an apartheid in which the weakest [countries] are being condemned and killed,” EFE news service reported him as saying May 13.

The Foreign Ministry forum, entitled “Waiving Patents and Considerations on Intellectual Property in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” was focused, as the title indicates, on calling for suspending vaccine patents and intellectual property to ensure transfer of technology so that developing nations can produce vaccines. Officials from the UN Development Program, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and diplomats from South America and India, among others, attended. This is a campaign that Bolivia began two months ago and has vowed to take to every international forum and multilateral organization for debate. It should be seen as a useful adjunct to the urgent proposal of the Schiller Institute and the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites to build a global healthcare system and new economic order to competently address the pandemic. A foreign ministry press release estimates that the majority of vaccines produced in 2021 will be insufficient to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population, due to vaccine hoarding by the industrialized nations, and thus vaccinations of poorer nations’ populations aren’t likely to be completed before 2023.

Domestically, Arce has launched a campaign to inoculate all eligible Bolivians as soon as possible and is working closely with Russia and China to obtain vaccines. By the end of next week, Bolivia will have received 500,000 doses of Sputnik V vaccine and one million doses of China’s Sinopharm and is making arrangements to obtain Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines as well. On the occasion of the most recent Sputnik V arrival on May 15, in the company of Russian ambassador Mikhail Ledenev, he remarked that “we have to step on the accelerator…these vaccines are the doses of hope for many people…thanks to the diplomacy among nations, above all with Russia and China, Bolivians will continue with the vaccination campaign,” the Bolivian Information Agency (ABI) reported him saying. Pointing to the difficult situation the world is facing because of new waves of COVID, he warned, “if our nations don’t take action and ensure an equitable distribution of doses, we’ll see many more waves, placing humanity at ever greater risk.”


Brotherhood Over Geopolitics: El Salvador and Honduras Set an Example

Brotherhood Over Geopolitics: El Salvador and Honduras Set an Example –

May 14, 2021 (EIRNS)–Last weekend, seven Honduran Mayors petitioned the president of neighboring El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to send anti-Covid-19 vaccines to their municipalities, because their people are dying. El Salvador has the highest rate of vaccination in Central America (10%), because President Bukele made getting vaccines a priority early, including from China, which donated 150,000 doses on top of two million doses contracted. Honduras, however, has been able to vaccinate 0.56% of its 10 million people, most with only one shot, and whether needed second doses will arrive in time is in still in doubt.

The Honduran mayors were immediately invited to El Salvador to meet with Bukele, the Health Minister and others. Less than two days after their visit, early on Thursday morning, seven, big, blue trucks marked “COVID-19 Vaccine” left San Salvador and headed to Honduras, carrying 34,000 vaccine doses—donated. Salvadoran officials decided that despite their own needs, because they have doses contracted in their pipeline, they should help out their neighbors.

From the moment the convoy of trucks and police escort crossed into Honduras, to when each truck arrived in its designated municipality, crowds were gathered along their route. People cheered, waved the flags of both countries and signs saying “Thank you President Bukele!,” as passing vehicles honked approval. When one truck arrived after dark at its final destination, it was met by people lining the street, waiting to shake the hand of the drivers; visibly moved, the Salvadoran drivers slowed way down to shake as many as they could. In another town, a Honduran doctor videotaped a message of thanks to President Bukele in front of a hospital. One mayor gave a lovely speech hailing this act of friendship as a step towards restoring the single Central American nation which had existed for a short time after Independence.

The Honduran Foreign Ministry tweeted when the decision was announced on May 11:
“The donation of 34,000 vaccines doses announced today in San Salvador shows that it is possible to put health before geopolitics, and that there is no deadlock where there is brotherhood. In the name of Honduras: many thanks to our brothers. We appreciate the support and reciprocity which we have received from El Salvador and other countries to help obtain vaccines which otherwise have been denied to Honduras because of the politicization of the pandemic.” 

Honduras is now taking steps at various levels of government to establish some ties with China. Honduras still maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which–like its protector, the United States–has not made any vaccines available. The Association of Honduran Mayors (AMHON) sent a letter this week to President Bukele in the name of all the country’s 298 municipalities, requesting that El Salvador help them with contacts and procedures so that Honduras can purchase vaccines from China. The Honduran National Congress passed a motion yesterday calling on the Executive Branch to secure anti-COVID vaccines from vaccine-producing nations such as Russia, China, India, Cuba “and even [!] the United States,” specifying that a trade office be established in China, “among other countries,” in order to facilitate this work.


Global Health Security Requires Medical Infrastructure in Every Country—Major Industrial Nations Must Collaborate Now!

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May 14 (EIRNS)–The following statement was released today by the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, for the Global Health Summit in Rome, May 21, 2021, and for general circulation.

The only way that the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic can be stopped, is by re-thinking the solution. We must have modern health care systems in every country. This means infrastructure for public health, and for medical care delivery at modern standards, to all populations. One model for this is the U.S. Hill-Burton Act (“Hospital Survey and Construction Act of 1946,”) whose principle was to state how many hospital beds per 1,000 residents must be in each locality (at that time, 4.5), and deploy accordingly to build them, including modern equipment and staff.

Look at instances of our ability to do this today. The 1,000-bed Huoshenshan hospital was built in 12 days in Wuhan in 2020. In the U.S., multiple field hospitals were built in record time last Spring by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. We must do this simultaneously around the world.

This means that all countries must work together to accomplish this. We must put aside tensions and conflicts for the time being.

There are new strains of the SARS CoV2 that are showing up, that are more aggressive, and more transmissible. These can make vaccines obsolete. “Many of these variants show enhanced transmission and, in some studies, enhanced disease,” was the report in April by Dr. Dan Barouch, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School, who helped develop the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. He said that the variants, “also have the property of being able to partially evade antibodies, and therefore raise the specter as to whether they may reduce vaccine efficacy.” We are in a race against time.

Thus, our response to the pandemic seen in these terms is a question of existential importance to the human species. It requires the cooperation of all major industrialized nations. A new paradigm of coordination among the United States, China, Russia and others is central.

In this spirit, a grouping was formed in June, 2020, called the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, to further such international collaboration on large-scale response to the crisis. Co-initiated by Helga Zepp LaRouche, founder and President of the Schiller Institute, and Joycelyn Elders, M.D., former U.S. Surgeon General, the Committee acts on the principle of the “coincidence of opposites” put forward by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), which pursues acting on the common good, and deters pitting sub-groups against each other.

The Committee has two pilot projects underway, embodying this principle concretely, in order to promote major government and institutional action. In Washington, D.C. in Ward 8, a team—involving youth leaders–is working to reach full COVID-19 vaccination rates, and initiate ongoing public health measures in the largely poor community. In Africa, a Committee shipment will arrive soon in Mozambique of combined medical, health, water, food and seed supplies, to make the point that both emergency and overall development measures are urgent at all points of need on the globe.

Health security is possible anywhere, only by provision everywhere of sufficient public health infrastructure and medical treatment capacity. This, in turn, depends directly on expanding water, power and food, which is associated with building up industrial capacity, as well as providing for adequate transportation, housing and other basics. Of necessity, collaboration among nations to deal with these tasks means deliberating on how to provide credit, and otherwise deal with the unstable, unjust financial system. Guidelines for a new paradigm for economic development were presented in a report “The LaRouche Plan to Reopen the U.S. Economy; The World Needs 1.5 Billion New, Productive Jobs,” (May 29, 2020, EIR, Vol. 47, No. 22)

Global Health Infrastructure

The following are summary elements of what is required for health security. For details, see, “LaRouche’s ‘Apollo Mission’ to Defeat the Global Pandemic: Build a World Health System Now!” from April, 2020, by the Schiller Institute.

Hospital systems. There is currently a huge deficit of hospital beds. Today’s world total of 18. 6 million beds needs to be nearly doubled to some 35 million, along with staff and equipment. This calculation is based on the metric set in the post-WW II U.S. “Hill Burton Act,’ for 4.5 beds per 1,000 residents in the community, in order to provide treatment for both routine and surge circumstances. After the U.S. approached this 4.5 beds per 1,000 standard in 1980, the level then dropped back to 2.8 today, due to privatization and deregulation of U.S. health care. The ratio is 0.7 for the nations in the category of “Heavily Indebted Poor Countries.” For example, South Asia is 0.7. Nigeria has 0.5 beds per 1,000, which has one fifth of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa.

A mobilization is necessary for building strategically located military-style field hospitals, in conjunction with vaccination campaigns, while at the same time, moving to launch longer-term construction of durable hospitals, continuing the crash mobilization mode. E.G. In Ghana, there is the national plan for multiple 100-bed hospitals. Depending on the number of beds in each new hospital, the world faces a need for 35,000 new facilities, especially in Africa, Ibero-America and Asia.

Health corps. Vast numbers of doctors, nurses, public health and related staff—technicians, pharmacists, veterinarians, dieticians, administrators, etc. are required worldwide. Meeting this need demands the spectrum of training, ranging from many more teaching hospitals, to thousands of youth training programs for invaluable community health service, beginning with today’s pandemic emergency. 
Water and sanitation. One fully-equipped hospital bed requires plumbing for at least 110-120 gallons of water a day. Every nation must have adequate water and sewerage. Today more than two billion people lack access to safe water, sanitation or both. The deployment of temporary sanitation facilities (which could be mass-produced and then distributed) will be a stop-gap measure, while durable improvements in infrastructure are constructed. Building largescale water management systems, for example, comprehensive river basin development in Africa and South America, along with littoral desalination—nuclear powered, as soon as possible—will end the extremes of drought and flooding, and provide millions of skilled jobs in the process.

Electricity. Modern medical treatment, including inoculation, is not possible without reliable, ample electricity, which of course is essential at large facilities. A large, modern hospital can use, roughly 19 million kilowatt hours per year of electricity for its many power requirements, including scanning and data devices, refrigeration, oxygen provision, ventilation, as well as lighting, cooking and cooling.

Science and technology. There must be an expansion of both basic research and development of technologies against diseases, including those affecting animals and plantlife. This is best done by collaboration among R and D institutions throughout the world. We must advance our understanding of viruses, such that in the near future we can do more than react to each new outbreak. In the immediate term, full collaboration on mass inoculation, and on anti-viral treatment regimens are essential to save lives.

“Food is medicine.” David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program reported May 7 that nine million people died from starvation in 2020, more than the official death toll of 3.24 million from COVID-19. “Food is the best vaccine against chaos,” he stressed, early in the pandemic. It is urgent to provide the $5 billion requested by the WFP for extra 2021 food relief, over and above current levels of aid. There are over 270 million people in acute need of food, and another 600 million with food insecurity. Ten nations are in terrible famine—with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other African nations in the lead, as well as Yemen, Syria, Haiti and other locations. In addition, interventions must be made to support independent family farming in many of the most highly productive agriculture regions in Europe, North America, Australia and South America, whose output is vital, but where the family farmer is being driven out of operation by the transnational food monopolies. Modern agriculture must be rapidly developed in Africa and elsewhere. The goal is to double food production, to ensure nutrition and health for all.

The Global Health Summit is the responsible representation of the world population in this moment of a crisis of Biblical dimensions. This meeting must not end without a decision to start a process of worldwide international cooperation for a crash program to build a modern health system in every single country on the planet, including the necessary infrastructure to sustain that system.


India Remains the Epicenter of the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

India Remains the Epicenter of the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

May 13, 2021 (EIRNS)—With record-breaking daily deaths, the total official COVID-19 death toll in India surpassed a quarter-million yesterday. The daily new cases continue to hover just under 400,000, with some experts forecasting that daily infections will peak at about a half-million sometime in June. The country now accounts for about half of all new COVID-19 cases and 30% of deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO has also designated the B.1.617 variant as a matter “of global concern,” given how highly transmissible it is. The Pan American Health Organization reported that the Indian variant has shown up in six countries in the Americas.

Numerous experts continue to report that the total infections and total deaths are probably 5-10 times higher in reality than the official numbers indicate. A large portion of the uncounted numbers remain in India’s countryside.

There is a major discussion going on inside India over how much to lock down and for how long. Dr. Balram Bhargava, head of the Indian Council of Medical Research, said in an interview yesterday that lockdown restrictions should remain in place in all districts where the rate of infection is above 10% of those tested, and that they should stay locked down for at least 6-8 weeks. Test-positivity rates above 10% now prevail in 75% of the country’s 718 districts, including major cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, and the tech hub of Bengaluru, according to Reuters’s May 12 report.

“The high positivity districts should remain (shut). If they come to 5% from 10% (positivity rate) we can open them, but that has to happen. That won’t happen in six-eight weeks, clearly,” Bhargava said in an interview. In Delhi, the positivity rate reached around 35% but has now fallen to about 17%, Bhargava said: “If Delhi is opened tomorrow, it will be a disaster.” Bhargava has been calling for a government-ordered lockdown in with a 10% positivity rate or higher since April 15. Prime Minister Narendra Modi preferred to leave the decision for states to decide, perhaps because of his concern that extensive lockdowns could lead to uncontrolled social explosions in the desperate population.

Absent an international joint attack on the root causes of the pandemic—50 years of global physical economic collapse, especially in the health and food areas—India, like most developing nations, is left with only two disastrous choices: don’t lock down and watch the pandemic spread like wildfire; or lock down, and drive millions of poor and unemployed or marginally employed people over the edge.


Beasley: 9 Million Died of Starvation in 2020; This Year Could Reach 30 Million

Beasley Describes, 9 Million Died of Starvation in 2020 and This Year Could Reach 30 Million –

May 13, 2021 (EIRNS)—David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program, in a speech May 7 in his home state of South Carolina, warned that the number of people who could die of starvation in 2021 could be 20 to 30 million. He reported that 9 million perished last year from lack of food, in contrast to the 3.24 million official 2020 world death toll from COVID-19, which, of course, is a vast undercount. His point was to call for intervention with food relief, but also to stress that the armed conflicts should stop.

Beasley spoke in his home county of Darlington, at the Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church in Lydia, which was founded in 1789.

He said, as reported by SCNow daily, “What happened in the past four years? Man-made conflict. And I say that in a gender way. It’s not woman-made. It’s man-made. It’s literally man-made conflict.” He singled out Syria, Yemen, and South Sudan for special attention as examples of dire emergency.

He also pointed to the ripple effects from the pandemic lockdowns. “Now, because of COVID, the economic ripple effect, particularly when Western society shuts down its economy or at least turns the engines down, the economic ripple effect into low-income, middle-income, developing nations is catastrophic. And so, the number is now 270 million people literally marching to the brink of starvation.”

On the well-known warning by Beasley, that we are facing a famine catastrophe of “Biblical dimensions,” he chose to recount the backstory to that phrase, which he used in April 2020, in briefing the UN Security Council. As he has often repeated, it was Tony Blair, who urged Beasley to go to the UNSC, when Blair heard Beasley’s strong language.


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