As we forecast, the COP26 failed to do what they intended, which was to get agreement from the nations of the developing sector to give up their sovereign right to development in order to comply with the Malthusian demands made by the would-be global dictators running the show. The 2-day Schiller Institute conference, on Nov. 13-14, demonstrated that representatives from leading nations can generate, through dialogue, solutions to the multitude of crises created by the failed axioms of the unilateral world order. The presentations can be found at the schillerinstitute.com.
Mexico’s Ambassador to UN Denounces the World’s “Indifference” to the “Specter of Hunger” Which Haunts the Planet
April 20, 2021 (EIRNS) – Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s Ambassador to the United Nations, published an op-ed in the April 19 edition of El Universal under the headline “The Specter of Hunger Haunts the Planet,” in which he denounces the “indifference” of most people to this gravest of problems, which he suggests should be considered a crime against humanity.
Blaming the rise of hunger on wars, the pandemic, and climate change, De la Fuente cites the president of the World Food Program, David Beasley, to the effect that “if you don’t feed people, you will be feeding conflicts.” He notes that the “specter of hunger is again haunting the planet in at least 30 countries,” and adds: “It is obvious that far greater resources are needed than are available, but so long as we don’t admit that hunger is the main motive for the disorderly and irregular migration which occurs in our region, from south to north, I greatly fear that the containment measures that may be adopted will continue to be insufficient…”
De la Fuente adds: “I don’t know what is more alarming: the magnitude of the suffering which hunger causes in the world today, or the indifference with which those of us who don’t go hungry react to it… [Hunger] is something that is happening in real time in many places. If deliberately denying people access to food constitutes a crime against humanity, the simple idea of children dying of hunger anywhere should, at the least, weigh heavily on our conscience. The numbers available in the reports I have mentioned lead me to conclude that no, we are not dealing with a specter. We are dealing with an implacable reality.”
For once, Greta Thunberg got it right — there is a lot of “blah, blah, blah” coming from the COP26 summit. She’s wrong, however, when she says there is no action being taken. Yesterday’s announcement of a new financial alliance under the direction of former Bank of England Director Carney and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is a big step toward consolidating the “Great Reset”, designed to establish a global central banker’s dictatorship. Their intent is to inflate a new, Green financial bubble — to benefit the 450 financial firms which have signed up — while ensuring there will be no credit for the physical, productive sectors of the economy. Their big problem is in getting developing countries to give up their sovereignty and sacrifice their people in return for the crumbs being offered to them to do so.
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.
Nov. 10 (EIRNS)—Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche was interviewed by investigative journalist and author Daniel Estulin, the full 45-minute version of which was posted today here: https://vimeo.com/642101361. What follows is a transcription of the opening exchange.
Daniel Estulin: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us. This is Daniel Estulin and welcome to DanielEstulin.TV. Today we have an amazing guest. It’s an honor, an absolute honor—I’m a huge fan—to have her with us, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Lyndon LaRouche’s wife, a founder of the Schiller Institute and one of the foremost experts in the world on Nicholas of Cusa. Helga, thank you so much for joining us. Good afternoon.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be with you.
Estulin: Thank you. I want to start off asking you about your “Wake-Up Call” you just issued. Why the urgency and why now?
Zepp-LaRouche: Well, because I think the world is sitting on a powder keg. If you watch, for example, the tension rising between the United States and China, in particular, but also between the United States and Russia, it’s very clear that the war danger is very acute and very few people are actually warning of it, but the majority of the population has no idea. And people are concerned about energy prices, about not finding an apartment, about all kinds of issues which all have their merit. But most people overlook the fact that we are in a systemic collapse.
Out of that systemic collapse, which goes along with the hyperinflationary blowout of the system, which goes along with the new energy hoax, you know, the gas price hoax—these gas prices could go down immediately if there would be the political will to do so. All of this is the reflection of a systemic collapse. Obviously the overwhelming dynamic is the Great Reset shifting the trillions Green New Deal, trying to direct all investments into green technologies. That is basically based on an image of Man, which regards human beings as parasites, as CO₂ footprints, as just a burden to Mother Nature. And I wanted to counterpose that with an image of Man which, in my view, is in cohesion both with the image of Plato, the image of Christianity, of Judaism, of Islam and real science. Because I think that the human being is differentiated from animals in all other living beings by the power of creative reason. And that creative reason enables Man to again and again make discoveries of physical principles, which you call scientific progress. And when you apply that scientific progress in the production process through technologies, it leads to an increase of the living standard, increase of longevity, increase of population potential. And I think that that particular image of Man as a creative human being is in cohesion with the lawfulness of the universe.
So what I wanted to accomplish—together with Guus Berkhout—we wanted to accomplish is, to, on the one side, basically say all these many concerns should be seen in a larger context. That we are in danger of sleepwalking into a new catastrophe, and counterpose that with the most beautiful conception of the image of Man, which comes from the humanist tradition of European civilization going back to classical Greek, the Italian Renaissance, to Friedrich Schiller, from whom the Schiller Institute is named. And I thought it was important to reduce the very complex world picture to these two fundamental points: the existential danger in which we are, but also the optimism which comes from realizing what human beings are.
WFP President Beasley Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Venezuelan Government To Address Soaring Hunger
April 20, 2021 (EIRNS) – The World Food Program will begin supplying school lunches to 185,000 impoverished pre-school and special-needs students in Venezuela this year, with the goal of providing daily meals to 1.5 million children by the end of 2023. That was the accord reached in a memorandum of understanding that the WFP signed this week with President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, during a trip to that country by WFP president David Beasley.
Hunger and starvation are not problems happening only “over there” in Africa or Syria. They are here – right on America’s doorstep, in Central and South America, including Venezuela.
Hunger in Venezuela has been skyrocketing in recent years, thanks largely to the killer sanctions imposed on that country by Washington (Republicans and Democrats alike). The WFP conducted a field study which estimated that, in 2019, 32% of the population suffered food insecurity and required assistance. Of those, 2.3 million were facing “severe food insecurity.” It is much worse today.
The hunger is due not so much to food shortages as such, but to the out-of-control inflation and forced devaluations, which are a result of financial warfare and denying Venezuela the ability to sell its plentiful oil exports in the dollar-dominated markets. The bolivar today trades at 1.069 {million} to the dollar; in December 2019 it stood at 55,00 to the dollar.
Internal food and other prices are set mainly in dollars, such that “the average wage which the majority of workers receive is less than five dollars per month, while chicken costs $2.40 dollars per kilo,” according to AP. An economic think tank linked to Venezuelan trade unions reported last December that a family of five with two adults earning the minimum wage did not have “even enough to purchase one breakfast a month.”
Beasley also traveled to Guatemala and Honduras in Central America, and reported that hunger had quadrupled in the past two years in that region, which now has 8 million people going hungry. Of those, 1.7 million are in the “emergency” category, meaning they required urgent food assistance to survive. He tweeted from Guatemala:
“15% of the people @WFP surveyed in Central America say they’re making plans to migrate in 2021—that’s 6 MILLION people! BUT, they also say if they have food security & livelihoods, they want to stay home!! Otherwise, they will do what we would all do to take care of our children.”
The tech moguls behind YouTube do not want you to participate in this weekend’s Schiller Institute (SI) online conference. Citing a flimsy pretext related to a webcast from January 2021 (10 months ago!), they have imposed a one week ban on posting or live-streaming by the SI, on the eve of what is shaping up to be an extremely significant event. Given the deepening of the global strategic crisis, and the increasingly important role of the SI in exposing the corruption behind the crisis, and in mobilizing alternatives, you don’t want to miss it. You can still register for the conference at the schillerinstitute.com, and get information on how to streamline it at info@schillerinstitute.com.
Syria Times Publishes Interview With Helga Zepp-LaRouche
May 7 (EIRNS)–The Syria Times on May 7th published an interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche with a very nice picture of a smiling Helga. In replies to three main questions, she was able to explain her reasons for founding the Schiller Institute and the role it had been playing to develop programs for a just, new world economic order and to promote a worldwide renaissance of classical culture based on a dialogue of civilizations. In that context, the Institute has developed policies for various parts of the world, including Southwest Asia. She underlined her husband’s original “Oasis Plan” and the more recent “Phoenix Plan” for rebuilding Syria. She also attacked U.S. Middle East policy since the Bush Administration. She highlighted the upcoming conference on Saturday which would also have a presentation by Dr.. Bouthaini Shaaban from Syria, an adviser to President Assad. The full coverage is here.
“Depriving the Poor of Energy Is Bad Climate Policy,” China Daily Warns in Lomborg Op-Ed
April 20, 2021 (EIRNS) – The President of the Copenhagen Consensus, Bjorn Lomborg, penned an op-ed published by China Daily yesterday, which contains a strong argument along the lines we have been hearing recently from Indian officials and others: They pay lip-service to the green paradigm, and then insist that those policies cannot possibly be imposed on the developing sector. Some quotes from Lomborg:
“To tackle climate change, rich countries are promising to end fossil fuel use in 29 years. As this becomes excruciatingly costly, the G7 is now thinking about making the world’s poor pay for it. That will go badly… Despite green protestations, rich people still get 79 percent of their energy from fossil fuels. Ending that will be hard, socially destabilizing and surprisingly ineffective. Besides, it will also destabilize rich countries… As climate policies reduce growth further, this will threaten long-term social coherence as people realize their children won’t be better off and pensions will wither. Moreover, the cuts will matter little for the environment.”
Lomborg continued: “Six billion not-rich people also want access to plentiful and cheap energy, lifting them out of hunger, sickness and poverty. They are more concerned about economic growth that will create welfare and resilience against disease and even climate change… The main effect of carbon tariffs is to shift the economic burden of developed-world climate policies to the developing world… [provoking] profound resentment with a rich world that claims to implement climate policies to help, but in reality shifts the costs onto the world’s poor… Depriving the world’s poor of the twin drivers of development, abundant energy and free trade, is unacceptable.”
Sept. 28, 2021 (EIRNS)—“China’s Epic Journey from Poverty to Prosperity,” in English a 72-page white paper, was released today by China’s State Council Information Office, giving their account as to how they were able to pull 770 million people out of deep rural poverty and to build the world’s largest social security system. Portions of it were summarized by Global Times.
The achievement of “moderate prosperity” (xiaokang) was achieved by attacking the biggest weakness of the society, the vast rural poverty. With a national mission, a strong central government, and a willingness to invest in projects that made sense over time, though they may not turn a profit overnight, they accomplished the work. And in doing so, they claim that the achievement not only helped China but contributes to peace and development, and so is the foundation for common prosperity. It is now the basis for China’s interaction with the rest of the world, centered around the offer of the Belt & Road.
With the profound experience of accomplishing a worthwhile national goal, China’s leader have their eyes on another 30-year goal: By mid-century, they mean to go beyond “xiaokang” to become “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.” (That’s correct—“beautiful” is a key part of the mission task!) Midway, the 2035 goal includes a per-capita GDP of at least $20,000 (the World Bank standard of ‘moderately developed’). Global Times on Tuesday interviewed several key players in developing the intermediate 2035 goal. The former vice director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, Tian Yun, identified rural revitalization as the key for the 2035 goal, and vital rural-urban connectivity. Urban jobs were necessary for converting migrant workers to the economic and cultural benefits of cities. So, modernization and industrialization are actually the road for rural revitalization. As the director of the China Agriculture Industry Chamber of Commerce, Sun Wenhua further developed the point: China has accelerated a new type of relationship between industry and agriculture, including efficient transportation infrastructure systems, and the two-way flow of goods and peoples. Finally, Bai Wenxi, chief economist of Interpublic Group of Companies, is cited: “To narrow the wealth gap and tackle imbalance development, China has a strong central government, which has the power of mobilization, and all levels of local governments are empowered by the staunch ability of implementation, and those are what makes China [able] to mobilize the whole country to achieve its goals, to make great progress.” His example made the point: The sending of experts to rural areas to assist in the assimilation and mastery of new technologies of production was a key expenditure of manpower and talent, although, “Those policies won’t have visible economic benefits in the short term.” But they are necessary, and it’s the role of strong centralized leadership that can make such long-term commitments work.