The Schiller Institute (SI) has taken the lead in mobilizing to save the people of Afghanistan. After finally ending four decades of war, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and left the nation in chaos, the war hawks of the Trans-Atlantic region took out their anger by adopting policies to “punish” the Taliban, which in reality are killing innocent civilians. There is now a growing recognition of the evil this represents; also the possibility that collaboration among Russia, China and the U.S. can not only end the suffering, but create a basis for further collaboration. Join the SI online seminar today, “To Stop the Killing of Afghanistan”: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/01/16/live-event-stop-the-murder-of-afghanistan/
Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s description that we are “sitting on a powder keg” regarding relations between the U.S. and Russia was confirmed following the conclusion of talks Wednesday. A Russian spokesman said there is no “unifying, positive agenda” between Russia and NATO, as the West is choosing a Cold War containment strategy. A sudden outbreak of war is increasingly possible, as long as relations are defined by the imperatives of imperial geopolitics, i.e., divide the world into competing blocs, with the unipolar power of the U.S./NATO dictating terms. One flank, where cooperation is possible, is collaboration to rebuild Afghanistan. Join us, Jan. 17, at 11 AM EST, for our online seminar “To Stop the Murder in Afghanistan” (register here: https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/20220117-conference).
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” –Mark 8:36
The head of the United Nations World Food Program, American David Beasley, has fought to bring to the world’s attention the now-unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a nation which has known nothing but war and internal conflict for more than 40 years. The rapidly worsening multiple crises in that nation–lack of food, lack of health care, lack of a sovereign national credit system, lack of production–demand immediate solutions in the next weeks, if the world wishes to avoid the unnecessary, unwarranted deaths of millions– many of them children, who have clearly offended no one. Over 20 million people are presently at risk. Geopolitical rationalizations for continuing inaction, from “taking cautious steps to not allow the Afghanistan government to exploit our good will” to “demanding that other countries step up,” will do almost as much to take the lives of the innocent, through depraved indifference, as the coming famine
Several of us have been outraged by the callous indifference expressed in the worldwide, persistent inequality of efficient distribution of medical care, not merely in the selective availability and affordability of life-saving medicines, but in the widening disparity in available basic facilities and capabilities. Whole continents, such as Africa, are stigmatized as “disease farms” because of deplorable economic conditions that are conveniently perpetuated but then never actually improved. That happened in the 1980s with HIV/AIDS, and is happening today with COVID-19. The clearly man-made Afghanistan disaster is an opportunity to reverse that syndrome. . A crucial first step would be the release of the $9.5 billion of assets of Afghanistan’s central bank, which are currently being held in the United States.
Why? That nation, familiar to the United States, Russia, China and several NATO countries, as well as the five other states that border it, has a clearly urgent, largely war-induced set of problems that could be quickly resolved, and offers a test case for how to actually uproot war, through multinational cooperation involving even real and/or imagined enemies working together for a common good. This Afghanistan initiative has been called “Operation Ibn Sina” after the great Islamic physician known for centuries as “the father of modern medicine” and who comes from that general vicinity. In contrast, it is perhaps the lack of exactly such initiatives that begin with compassion for, and cooperation with others, that has allowed COVID-19 to grow from being a relatively controllable epidemic to a pandemic, and is causing that pandemic to worsen by the hour. That would not be the first time that the vice of selfishness had doomed mankind. Historian Barbara Tuchman, in “The March of Folly,” warns us: “A phenomenon noticeable throughout history, regardless of place or period, is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.”
We who have devoted our lives to acting upon the conviction, so eloquently enunciated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” say that there is no injustice like famine, no crime worse than slowly snuffing out the life of a child through neglect, through depraved indifference. Though the need is equally important everywhere, the time to change “the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests,” and those of humanity, is now. The world can–must– choose one place, this Christmas season, to begin a march in the opposite direction, and prevent the slaughter of the innocent upon the altar of a geopolitical folly that would sacrifice both conscience and true self-interest for the aura of power.
Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former United States Surgeon General – On behalf on the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites
December 23, 2021
Dr. Walter Faggett, pediatrician, Col. U.S. Army (ret.), former Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health of Washington D.C., professor of medicine Howard University
Dr. Bennett Greenspan, Founder Family Tree DNA
Ernest Johnson, President of the Louisiana NAACP, civil rights attorney
Barbara Kamara, former Associate Commissioner, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for the National Head Start Program (Carter Administration); former Director of Early Childhood Education, Washington DC, for 22 years
Dr. Khadijah Lang, pediatrician, Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the National Medical Association, President of the Golden State Medical Association, the California branch of the NMA
Now is the perfect time for the people living in the Trans-Atlantic nations to come to their senses, and throw out the ideological insanity embodied in neoliberal, and neo-conservative policies. The security dialogues with Russia this week provide an opportunity to move away from geopolitical confrontation with Russia; hyperinflation, supply-chain breakdowns, and unsustainable debt expose the fallacy of radical free market/free trade policies; and winter has shown why the Green New Deal must be dumped. So let’s get to work, and organize a new paradigm, based on the body of work done by statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche.
Jan. 5 (EIRNS)—Today a 30-second video was issued by David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP) on Afghanistan, showing both hungry children, and also food delivery, with the text: “The situation in Afghanistan may have faded from the front page, but don’t let Afghan families fade from your mind. 8.7 million people are on the brink of starvation. Read that again: 8.7 million people are on the brink of starvation. What we do today has the power to change the fate of more than 23 million people. Act now.” Beasley’s immediate message, tweeted with the video, is for WFP donations. He wrote, “The Year 2021 has been a catastrophic year for the people of Afghanistan. Millions of Afghans are counting on WFP for life-saving food this winter. Help us help them.”
However, Beasley’s imperative about keeping in our minds what is important about Afghanistan—the value of human life—is what applies across the board to the crises we now face. Think it through. We are capable of mobilizing the physical resources and logistics to stop mass death in Afghanistan. It takes concerted action. The Schiller Institute will host another conference in mid-January (date to be determined soon) on action in Afghanistan.
Look at the pandemic in the same way. The same principle applies. In China, concerted action has kept the COVID-19 case rate and death toll very low, with massive testing and contact tracing, as well as localized lockdowns. In contrast, the pandemic virus is now surging in multiple locations elsewhere in Asia, in the trans-Atlantic, the Americas and Africa. On Jan. 4, the daily case count was 2.594 million cases officially reported worldwide (a big undercount), of which 35%, 885,500 cases, were in the United States alone.
The Schiller Institute/Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites is preparing an emergency statement of action points required to save lives and roll back the virus. The outline and principle are the same as in prior statements, but with measures specific to the unfolding events. (Prior statements: “LaRouche’s ‘Apollo Mission’ To Defeat the Global Pandemic: Build a World Health System Now,” April 11, 2020; ‘Global Health Security Requires Medical Infrastructure in Every Country—Major Industrial Nations Must Collaborate Now!” May 14, 2021, submitted to the Global Health Summit in Rome; “Open Letter to Virologists and Medical Experts Around the World To Address the COVID-19 Pandemic,” by former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, Nov. 23, 2021; and others.)
There are initiatives in the needed direction. Yesterday, for example, the importance of rapidly expanding medical staff, by calling back into action retirees, was stressed by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, when he declared an official state of emergency. There are many measures that are clearly bipartisan and nonpartisan, overriding the non-stop partisan shouting going on in the U.S. For example, use the Defense Production Act, as was done under Trump, to get all needed items, from material for construction of hospitals and medical materials, to COVID-19 therapeutics in quantity. Ramp up production of antiviral medications and all kinds of monoclonal antibodies, currently scarce.
Mobilizing for emergency action and a world health platform, with a focus on Afghanistan, are entirely consistent with the drive to stop the nuclear war danger. The meetings set for next week, on the initiative of Russia, are critical for that: Jan. 10 in Geneva, between the U.S. and Russia; Jan. 12 in Brussels, between NATO and Russia; and Jan. 13 in Vienna, with Russia and the OSCE. But there are countermoves underway.
Circulate everywhere the Schiller Institute Memorandum, Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III?
TASS Interviews Schiller Institute’s Black on P5 “No Nuclear War” Declaration
Jan. 6, 2022 (EIRNS)–{The following is the full text of an article published today by Russian news agency TASS, based on an interview with Richard Black of the Schiller Institute.}
Expert: The Statement of the Nuclear “Five” Means Countries Can Resolve Shared Challenges; Schiller Institute Spokesman, Richard Black, Believes Countries Can Work Together to Avoid Nuclear War and Guarantee Stable Development
NEW YORK, January 6. / Corr. TASS Grigory Sapozhnikov /. The statement by the leaders of the nuclear “five” (Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States and France) indicates that the countries can work together to resolve strategic problems and crises of an extraordinary and unexpected character. This opinion was expressed in an interview with a TASS correspondent by the representative of the Schiller Institute in New York, Richard Black.
“The statement of the ” five” countries of the UN Security Council is positive in two aspects. First, it is a confirmation by all five countries of the earlier joint statement by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. as has been also stated more recently by Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. Secondly, the statement of “the five” of the Security Council demonstrates that it would be possible for those countries to act together to solve other most urgent and complicated strategic problems concerning the life and death of civilization.
According to the Institute’s spokesman, Russian President Putin immediately has put on the agenda the need to stop “the current slide into a nuclear confrontation between the US and NATO on the one side, and Russia on the other.” Black stressed the importance of the required signing — by the US and the North Atlantic Alliance — of draft treaties on legally binding security guarantees, demanded by President Putin. “The draft agreements proposed by the Russian President are a call for action in the immediate days ahead,” Black said.
Black generally regarded the “five” statement as a step in the right direction. The “five” can now work “on special extraordinary problems, such as the situation in Afghanistan and the fight against the pandemic,” he said. Countries can cooperate both to prevent nuclear war and to ensure stable development. The question is, he said, “Will they cooperate?” {The article is found here.}
Helga Zepp-LaRouche raised the question today as to whether the rioters rampaging through the streets of cities in Kazakhstan are being deployed on behalf of a Color Revolution designed to derail the upcoming talks between officials of the U.S. and NATO with their Russian counterparts. She said she had been expecting something like this — we don’t know yet if it is, but we will investigate. A leading Russian analyst said he’s hopeful that some positive changes may result from the upcoming meetings, pointing out that engaging in a dialogue is in itself some progress, especially after the hostile rhetoric of the recent years. He said the statement of the P5 members of the U.N. Security Council that “nuclear wars cannot be won, and should not be fought,” is a “good first step”, but must be followed by specific commitments — such as cooperation in rebuilding Afghanistan.
There are many lies being spread by financial talking heads in the media about what is behind the inflation that is eating up your paycheck and savings. What is not being discussed is how the flow of an unprecedented volume of trillions of dollars to the biggest banks, to cover their speculative losses, is the actual driver of hyperinflation. This is a scandal! As Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup are rolling over tens of billions in overnight loans from the NY Fed — of which they are the majority shareholders — there has been a cut-off of credit to firms engaged in physical economic activity. This began before COVID and Green New Deal legislation. It must be ended by re-enacting Glass Steagall banking separation.
The Permanent 5 members of the UN Security Council announced their agreement that “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”, in a statement issued on January 2. To realize this ideal, the practice of geopolitics, which underlies today’s obsession with the “Rules-Based Order”, and justifies the use of threats and military force to protect it, must be definitively rejected. The alternative to geopolitics is the adoption of the strategic, economic and cultural approach developed by Lyndon LaRouche, which is why Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called for 2022 to be the “Year of LaRouche.”
The torchlight march of neo-Nazi militia through Kiev on New Years Day exemplifies why Russian President Putin is demanding written, legally-binding security guarantees from the U.S. and NATO. These forces, which were at the heart of the February 2014 regime change coup, and proudly trace their lineage to Nazi SS collaborator Stepan Bandera, are calling for the liberation of Crimea from Russia, and crushing the movement for autonomy in eastern Ukraine. They represent a threat not only against Russia, but against Ukraine and NATO, as they are engaging in provocations against Russia. As JFK declared in his October 1962 speech announcing a blockade of Cuba against Russian ships, no country can tolerate “in an area well-known to have a special and historic relationship to the United States…a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo…” The provocations against Russia, using Ukraine as a tool, is what Putin is reacting to today.