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Xi Jinping Visit to Saudi Arabia to Be “Epoch Making” in China-Saudi Relations

Dec. 6, 2022 (EIRNS)—Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Saudi Arabia today for a state visit and also to attend two important summits—the Gulf-China Summit for Cooperation and Development, to include 14 leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the first ever Arab-China Summit for Cooperation and Development. He will be there through Dec. 9.

Xi was received with much pomp, his plane escorted into the King Khalid airport in Riyadh by six jets of the Saudi Royal Air Force, greeted warmly by Prince Faisal bin Bandar Abdullaziz, Governor of the Riyadh region, and by Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah. The warmth with which he was greeted and lavish ceremonies that will be part of his visit stand in stark contrast to last July’s visit by U.S. President Joe Biden, who met Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman with a fist bump and later snarled, without success, that Saudi Arabia should increase oil production and improve its human rights record.

Robert Jordan, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and diplomat in residence at Southern Methodist University, described the U.S.-Saudi relationship as a “slow-moving train wreck and we shouldn’t be surprised to see consequences of that.”

In contrast, speaking at today’s Foreign Ministry briefing, spokeswoman Mao Ning described Xi’s visit as “the largest and highest-level diplomatic event between China and the Arab World” since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. “It will be an epoch-making milestone in the history of Arab-China relations.”

Holding the summit, she said, was “a joint strategic decision to strengthen coordination and solidarity under the current circumstances….We hope to jointly act on the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, advance on high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and contribute to the peace and development of the Middle East and the world at large.”

Ms. Mao Ning had similar remarks on the upcoming China-GCC summit and on talks with the Saudi leadership. China and Saudi Arabia have a shared focus on development strategies, she said. Xi will have in-depth discussions with King Salman bin Abdullaziz al Saud and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammad bin Salman and elevate the current strategic partnership to a higher level. [China Foreign Ministry announces import of the visit: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/202212/t20221207_10986586.html ]


French “Food Production to Come to a Halt”

Dec. 7, 2022 (EIRNS)–“Food production to come to a halt” was the title of an article published by Le Figaro back in Sept. Unfortunately, what seemed unbelievable for many yesterday, has become reality today. After heavy industries, such as the rare French zinc, aluminum, and glass producers –hit by impossible energy price spikes and artificially kept alive government support– agro-food processors are now on the chopping block.

Yesterday, the French canned food specialist Cofigeo which has a €300 million turnover, announced it will “temporarily” shut down 4 of its 8 factories in France as of Jan. 2, which represent about 80 % of its production. Consequently, 800 of the 1200 employees of Cofigeo will receive an agreement of partial activity of long duration (APLD).

The decision is an answer to “the dramatic increase in energy costs (gas and electricity needed for cooking and sterilization of dishes), which will be multiplied by 10 from the beginning of the year,” said the group in a statement. “It will go from 4 million to 40 million euros overnight,” Mathieu Thomazeau, its president, told Le Figaro.

This is a thunderclap in the food sector and other food groups could be in great difficulty in January. Everybody has warned this would happen but the government refuses to listen. Already in September, Le Figaro reported that “After the prices of electricity and natural gas supplying dairies, sugar factories and canneries in France have risen by 350% and 380% respectively in one year, the first cracks in the food industry are showing up.” At that time, dairy manufacturers warned that power cuts could lead them to throw milk away. The French giant dairy industry Lactalis’ energy bill reaches 1 billion euros per year. That of the Breton group Sill (Petit Basque, Malo …) has jumped 800% since 2021. In sugar factories, the fear of winter load shedding has led sugar producers to launch their beet harvesting and processing campaigns earlier, even if this means sacrificing yields.

Besides soaring energy costs, the other worry is that production lines simply will grind to a halt for lack of products coming from farms. In field vegetables (green beans, peas, etc.), due to the drought, harvests have melted by up to 50% this year. As a result, canneries that process and package them are now receiving only half of their needs. Already, some of them are only working three days a week. Enough to fear shortages on the shelves before the next harvest of 2023. In recent days, the fragile balance of the sector has become even more tense, with major risks of disruption on fertilizers for the next crop year. European fertilizer factories have stopped production of 50% of their products and have severely limited their production of ammonia due to the prohibitive price of gas. This raises the risk of shortages for the coming winter. To avoid total collapse, many sectors (milk, meat) plead to be recognized as “trades of general interest” and be exempted from energy rationing.


Your Choice: Unlimited Fusion Power—Or Unlimited War

Nov. 30 (EIRNS)—China’s Science and Technology Daily reported Nov. 28 on the status of the Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology (CRAFT) being built at the Hefei University of Science and Technology. China, the report makes clear, is serious about meeting its goal of generating continuous fusion energy by 2028, for use in a hybrid fission fusion power plant, and generating fusion energy directly for the electric grid by 2035. Materials and technologies needed to control fusion reactions are already being tested at CRAFT, a giant complex which will be fully completed by 2024, as part of the broader fusion project based out of the university, which is home to the superconducting EAST, or Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Plasma Physics.

This is great news for everyone worldwide. The phenomenal leap in humanity’s power on Earth and in the Solar System that will flow out of mastering controlled thermonuclear fusion reactions has been known for decades. Lyndon LaRouche founded the Fusion Energy Foundation in 1974 to promote its advance, and by the time the U.S. government shut it down in 1987, the foundation’s monthly magazine, Fusion, was one of the most popular science magazines in the United States.

The development of a full-scale fusion powered-economy has taken as long as it has for purely political, not technical or scientific reasons. The Malthusian, imperial oligarchy has been its mortal enemy, but when people understand the almost limitless progress which fusion power and its associated technologies can bring, Malthusianism is finished.

China is not only committed to developing fusion, but is bringing other nations in, to share in the development. Twelve days ago, China’s Institute for Plasma Physics announced that one of the institute’s four working tokamaks had been dismantled, packed carefully into six containers, and is now ready to be shipped to Thailand in mid-December, where it will be reassembled and put to work at the Thailand Institute of Nuclear Technology!

China is donating the tokamak to Thailand, along with training the Thai scientists and engineers who will run it. When officially launched in the first part of next year, scientists and engineers from across the Southeast 

Asian countries will be able to receive there the training they also need to run future fusion experiments and reactors in their own countries. 

That act is a microcosm of a world order befitting humanity.

Imagine what progress could be made in improving the lives of every human being on this planet, were the United States, Japan, France and Germany—for example—to do likewise.

Instead, the as-yet-unshaken commitment of the Anglo-American powers and their European cohorts to their dog-eat-dog view of humanity continues to threaten the annihilation of the human species itself. Not satisfied with the devastation their war against Russia has brought upon the world (Ukraine emphatically included), are preparing for “the big one,” as U.S. Strategic Command head Adm. Charles Richard puts it: a war against China.

Today, the Pentagon released its annual “China Military Power Report,” declaring that China’s determination to complete “the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation by 2049” is what makes China a threat to the U.S. The day before, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency announced that it has established a “China mission group” to integrate all work done by the DIA on China, because China represents “an existential threat to the long-term success of the United States.” 

The U.K. neocon thinktank, the Council for Geostrategy, has launched a campaign for His Majesty’s government to elevate its operations against China in the Himalayas region to the level of its commitment to its maritime Indo-Pacific “tilt.” Included in its recommendations, is fostering the India-China border conflict. Countering China was high on the agenda of the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting on its second day. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Secretary of State Tony Blinken declared before the meeting began today, that NATO is committed to standing together against China, as Stoltenberg bragged that NATO had been training and equipping Ukraine’s armed forces since 2014.

The U.S. military, for the third time, made an ostentatious show of one of its ballistic missile submarines, this time at the U.K.’s military base on Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Likewise, U.S. Strategic Command reported that earlier in November, it had carried out an exercise, Spirit Vigilance 2022, demonstrating that eight stealth bombers could taxi out and take off at once from a Missouri airfield. 

And they complain that Russian and Chinese strategic bombers flew a joint patrol over the Sea of Japan and the South China sea today? 

Where this is heading, is very, very frightening—and completely unnecessary. Human beings were made for something better; to cooperate in the development of each other, and taking joy in it. Let the citizens of the world take heart and join with the Schiller Institute in establishing a world order worthy of the principle that human beings are capable of governing themselves on behalf of all others. 


Russian Academy of Sciences Linked Sites Publish Schiller Institute Paper on Prospects for a Fusion Energy Economy

Nov. 26 (EIRNS)—Websites associated with Russia’s Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION RAS) have just published the address, titled, “Prospects for a Fusion Energy-Based Economy for the BRICS Nations and Partners,” by Richard A. Black of the Schiller Institute. The address was given at the Oct. 25-26 conference on “Scientific-Technological and Innovative Cooperation of BRICS Countries,” organized by the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research. The conference heard an address also on Oct. 25 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche on prospects and principles for a new international credit system, as designed by Lyndon LaRouche. The Russian websites which have published the paper are “Greater Eurasia: Development, Security, Cooperation” and “The Club of Subjects of Innovative and Technological Development.”  The INION of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which published the speech, is a section of the RAS. Taras Muranivsky, who headed the Schiller Institute in Moscow for many years until his death in 2000, was associated with that section of RAS, and Lyndon LaRouche had addressed it in 1994. 


Over a Million Mexicans March in Support of AMLO’s Government

Nov. 28, 2022 (EIRNS)–President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called a march in Mexico City on Sunday, Nov. 27, to which he would give a report on his government, four years in. An estimated 1.2 million Mexicans turned out, according to the official report by the (pro-AMLO) head of the Mexico City government, Claudia Sheinbaum.

It was a real show of force by AMLO against the neocon-led destabilization of his government. The crowd was very large and very festive, full of mariachi bands and people doing traditional Mexican dances as they marched, with delegations from around the country participating with their signs identifying their city or region. The slogans chanted were simple: “AMLO, you are not alone;” “It is an honor to be with Obrador;” and “Mexico is my party.”

The Schiller Institute was present, using the occasion to advise Mexicans of the nuclear war danger facing the world. As people gathered for the march to start, organizers gave megaphone briefings and distributed 2,000 leaflets next to their very big banner reading, “Citizens of the World: Unite. Stop Nuclear War! For a New World Economic Order. The Schiller Institute,” which they then carried as part of the march. While some were taken aback by the Schiller Institute’s message in the midst of this great fiesta, many people listened carefully to the briefings and were happy to take a leaflet. Many took videos and photos of the banner.

Unlike the march organized against him by the ultra-right opposition three weeks before, which saw perhaps 60,000 in a rich area of the city, when AMLO began his hour and a half speech, Mexico City’s giant Zocalo central square was full. The President began by noting his happiness that the majority of people participating in the march were young people. He reviewed his administration’s efforts, in particular, to “put the poor first,” and push aside the oligarchy’s grip on the government.

The President told the march that Mexico’s foreign policy is one of “non-intervention, self-determination, cooperation for development, and the peaceful solution of disputes; we act on the basis of the ideal of universal brotherhood.”

He also delivered an implicit warning to the rightwing opposition being mounted against him. Mexico is a “sanctuary of freedom” and the right to freedom of speech and dissent today, he said. “For example, here, in Mexico City, a few days ago, without any obstacle, the most famous personalities of the world’s ultra-right held their summit here.” He then added: “We never again wish to apply Article 33 of the Constitution, and we do not want anyone to call anyone a pernicious foreigner.” He did not say, but everyone knows, that Art. 33, which states that “foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country,” grants the President “the power to expel from national territory any foreigner, according to the law, after a hearing.”


China’s Covid Crisis, 1,400 Times Better Than the U.S.’s on a Good Day

Nov. 28, 2022 (EIRNS)–The reality of the COVID-19 situation in China is that new cases/day in China increased from Oct 28 (1,168) to Nov 21 (26,115), and then leveled off in the last week (27,620 yesterday). This very high level (for China) is the equivalent of around 6,500/day in the US, about a sixth of what is reported to be going on in the U.S. today — and the US figure, due to the non-reporting of home testing, is a massive undercount.

Further, since China is testing and tracking so closely, their medical results are even that much more impressive. COVID-19 deaths in China, zero for many weeks, zoomed to 6 in the last week. Compare this to the US in the last week losing around 2,000 people to the virus and Germany around 1,000. Per population, this would be equivalent in China to 8,600 and 17-18,000, respectively; making the performance of the U.S. over 1,400 times worse, and that of Germany 2,800-3,000 times worse — not quite the same ballpark.

What are called two sub-variants (BA.F and BA.5.1.7) of Omicron’s BA.5 variant broke out a month ago. Both sub-variants evade immunity, both from previous infections and from vaccines; and both sub-variants spread faster. So, by November 11, China’s CDC and their Center for Disease Control and Prevention updated their control protocols with 20 adjustments, and ten days later the spread seems to have stabilized.

The faster transmission rate impacted the actions required to both test and track. Some local officials over-reacted with too general, and sometimes unnecessary lockdowns; some did not move hard enough. So, Chinese health officials have sent teams to the regions to work out the bumps in the process. As Wang Liping, from China’s CDC, put it: “Epidemiological investigators, transport staff and nucleic acid testing personnel should cooperate and exchange information, so as to grab the golden window of opportunity of 24 hours to prevail over the virus.” In China, six deaths are a national emergency.


Egeland Warns Europe Faces Hundreds of Thousands Of Ukrainian Refugees This Winter

Egeland Warns Europe Faces Hundreds of Thousands Of Ukrainian Refugees This Winter

Jan Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said in an interview with Euronews that there will be hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees this coming winter. “It is really a choice between freeze or fleeing,” he said. “Therefore, very many people are voluntarily fleeing… Europe has to prepare for hundreds of thousands of new refugees this winter, from Norway in the north to the southern European countries.”

“We’re in a race against the clock,” Egeland said. “I’ve been travelling all through the south and the east of Ukraine … and every city you go to is dark and people are freezing.”


For World Peace: STOP THE DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR ~ 2nd Seminar of Officials

For World Peace

STOP THE DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR

 Second Seminar of Current and Former Elected Officials of the World

Date: Thursday October 27, 2022

Time: 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. (EDT)

Place: Conference Room E, Chamber of Deputies, Mexico City; and via Zoom (with English-Spanish simultaneous interpretation)

Eight months into the war between Russia and Ukraine, with the active role of the United States and NATO, there are many dead and wounded, great destruction of all sorts of property, and very damaging economic and social consequences in Europe and the whole world, creating shocks which are worsening the very profound problems of the world economy, with consequences of a worsening crisis and greater unemployment, poverty and hunger.

It is known that this war can have far more serious consequences than what we are already suffering, including massive destruction and a crisis of global proportions never before seen, because it can lead to a confrontation with nuclear weapons between Russia and the United States and NATO.

Among the growing voices calling for a sensible approach, we highlight that of Pope Francis, calling for a negotiated, peaceful solution.

The undersigned political and social leaders, current and former legislators, and other elected officials from various countries, urge Russia, Ukraine, the United States and NATO to reach an agreement which, first of all, rejects the growing loose talk about the possible use of nuclear weapons and reaffirms the fundamental commitment of the Reagan-Gorbachev Formula of 1985, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” To be lasting, such an agreement must also establish a new international security architecture that recognizes and respects the legitimate security interests of all the planet’s nations.

We recognize and emphasize that Russia, like the United States, NATO, Ukraine and all countries, has legitimate security concerns which must be taken into account and become one of the cornerstones of the new security architecture. A return to the successful principles of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia – respect for sovereignty, commitment to the good of the other, and forgiveness of debts that make true economic development impossible – is the kind of architecture we seek today.

The common good of the One Humanity is the obligatory premise for the good of each and every nation. In that way, among all the nations of the world we will be able to help build an organization of citizens in collective global action, and establish ourselves that way as a force to influence the international policy debate.

We call on people of good will around the world – notwithstanding our diverse and natural differences – to participate in this process of deliberation and search for peaceful solutions, including a thorough examination of the alternative economic policies to replace speculation, which has generated so much poverty and suffering, with a system of production and progress to meet the needs of a growing world population.

We reject all attempts to limit, intimidate, or prohibit such a deliberative process. And we call on the United States, NATO, Ukraine and Russia to advance in the direction that we present in this respectful call.

SIGNATURES:

  1. Donald Ramotar (Guyana); former President (2011-2015), former member of parliament (1992-2011, PPP)

2. Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany); founder, Schiller Institute

3. Jorge Robledo (Colombia); former Senator (2002-2022, Partido Dignidad)

4. María de los Ángeles Huerta (Mexico); former Congresswoman (2018-2021, MORENA)

5. Dr. Kirk Meighoo (Trinidad & Tobago); former independent Senator (2004, United National Congress)

6. Dr. Rodolfo Ondarza (Mexico); former Representative, Mexico City Legislative Assembly (2015-2018, PT)

7. Diane Sare (U.S.); candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York (2022, independent/LaRouche)


Tulsi Gabbard Tells Americans to Wake Up to Nuclear War Danger, Threats to Freedom of Speech

Oct. 12, 2022 (EIRNS)–Former Democratic presidential pre-candidate Tulsi Gabbard is using the flurry of political attention generated by her announcement that she has walked out of the Democratic Party, to raise the alarm bells on those two strategic points.

In her appearance on Joe Rogan’s show, a podcaster and comedian whose podcasts average about 11 million viewers per episode, Gabbard focused on the imminent danger of nuclear war with Russia, which she argued is not provoked by Vladimir Putin, but by the United States and some European nations in NATO which are using the Ukrainian military and people as ‘chess pieces’ with the aim of regime change in Russia.

The military-industrial complex is happy to send all those weapons to Ukraine, but, she asked, “if we vote to send these billions of dollars to Ukraine, is that strengthening our national security or undermining it?”

She charged: “What we’re seeing now is essentially a proxy war. The US is engaging in a proxy war with Russia using Ukraine essentially as their military.” US leaders pushing to prolong the Ukraine war have “put us in the most dangerous position we the American people and the world has ever been in, in that a nuclear war could break out in a week.”

She dismissed the idea that nuclear war could be limited: “Whether they‘re tactical or strategic nukes, it doesn’t matter, there is no way to win this. That would spark a nuclear war, World War Three, and the result of that is the destruction of the world as we know it…. People need to know that this is the reality we are facing. Our leaders have pushed us and led us to the brink of nuclear war. They have their own bunkers and way to protect themselves. There is no shelter for the American people.”

Rogan and Gabbard discussed how Hawaiians discovered in 2018 when a “false” incoming missile alert was set off over the island that “there’s no place where you can take your loved ones and your kids to be protected not only from the blast, but the fallout, the lack of food and water….” They broadcast for viewers the absurd Public Service Announcement put out by New York City authorities in July, which told viewers they would be safe if they did three things in case of a nuclear attack: (1) Get inside. (2) Stay inside. (3) Stay tuned in. In outrage, the two asked stay tuned to what?

Instead, Gabbard insisted: “The United States and some of these European NATO countries are fuelling this war and need to provide the leadership to bring about a negotiated outcome. That is what needs to happen here to prevent the destruction of the planet and life as we know it. They’re not doing that and they are failing the American people and putting us in this position of not knowing where we’re going to be in the event this kicks off.”

In her appearance on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson show the same night, Tulsi tied the failure of American people to stand up against this imminent danger of nuclear war to witch-hunt against anyone breaking with the official narrative:

“The whole environment of fear that those in power, these elitists in power, have fomented to where people are afraid to speak the truth… They’re afraid to exercise their right to free speech because, hey, you might lose your job, you might be canceled, you might be trashed. And God forbid in Washington, you might not be invited to the cool kids parties. You might not be as popular,” Gabbard charged. So rather than “taking a stand standing up for peace … we have too many people who are war-mongers subservient to the military-industrial complex… with no mind to the costs and consequences of their decisions which are actively pushing us to the brink of nuclear holocaust…”

The 15-minute clip of the nuclear discussion in Gabbard’s appearance on the Rogan show had over two million views within 24 hours of its posting on his YouTube channel https://youtu.be/rAfwpfUBw1M


Putin Offers Europe Option to Freezing in the Dark: Just Open the Nord Stream Tap

Oct. 12, 2022 (EIRNS)–Russian President Vladimir Putin did not beat around the bush. Addressing the annual Russia Energy Week today, he opened: “Such direct and transparent communication is essential now, when the global economy in general, the fuel and energy sector are in the middle of, let me be direct, an acute crisis due to unstable price dynamics of energy resources, an imbalance in supply and demand, and the overtly subversive actions of individual market participants, who are guided solely by their own geopolitical ambitions, resort to outright discrimination in the market, and if that does not work, they simply destroy the infrastructure of their competitors.

“In this case, I am of course talking about the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. There is no doubt that this is an act of international terrorism, the purpose of which is to undermine the energy security of the entire continent. The logic is cynical: to destroy and block cheap energy sources, hence depriving millions of people, industrial consumers of gas, heat, electricity and other resources and forcing them to buy all this at much higher prices.

“The attack on the Nord Streams has set an extremely dangerous precedent, which shows that any critical piece of transport, energy or communications infrastructure is under threat, regardless of its location, management or whether it lies on the seabed or on land.” 

CNN‘s failed to cover most of Putin’s opening, but they did note his energy offer to Europe: “Russia is ready to start such supplies. The ball is in the court of the EU. If they want, they can just open the tap… if, together with our European colleagues, we take the decision to supply gas through the remaining one link of Nord Stream 2. Apparently it still remains operational; unfortunately we are not allowed to test it.” [Putin’s speech can be found here.]


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