General updates

End Sanctions, Create a New Paradigm

End Sanctions, Create a New Paradigm –

May 9 (EIRNS)—“It seems to me that if mankind is going to survive or not as a species, are we going to go extinct or not, really depends on whether we can overcome being victimized by imperial thinking—divide and conquer—and letting ourselves be in this camp, hostile to the other camp. Or, can we somehow evoke in ourselves and in others this quality of the inner self-development in cohesion with the lawfulness of the creation of the universe?

“It seems to me that this is a method which absolutely must be applied now. I think that on the question of somehow overcoming this geopolitical confrontation, or especially the divisions of identity politics which are increasing divisions by the day—we have to somehow find this inner mechanism, this inner idea which makes us all human belonging to the one human species. Given the pandemic, and the fact that we are really in an unbelievable crisis—a moral crisis, a political, medical, military crisis, an economic crisis, a financial crisis—that we have to start somewhere where we address this question of what makes us all human, and that is the sacredness of every human life on this planet…. And I think we will be able to do that, because I think human beings have the potential to be human.”

With these words Helga Zepp-LaRouche opened the second panel of the Schiller Institute conference “The Moral Collapse of the Trans-Atlantic World Cries Out for a New Paradigm,” an event which brought together speakers from the United States, Europe, South America, Syria, Afghanistan, and Japan. Confronted with the deadly realities of the threat of nuclear war, of pandemic and famine, and of the neo-Malthusianism that has infected the minds of so many and stymies their acting against the very real threats to humanity as a whole.

Barbaric sanctions—murder conducted in the name of “human rights”— are a disgusting tool used to crush countries into submission. The Saudi blockade of Yemen, the U.S. extension of deadly sanctions on Syria—these are clear expressions. But what of the sanctions demanded by the likes of supposedly “progressive” people?

What of the Green demand that nations not develop, not utilize their resources, and not have growing populations?

Whether sanctions take the form of U.S. opposition to a government (think Syria, Russia, Iran), or the Great Reset’s opposition to an atmospheric gas (CO2), the effect of their implementation is to crush development and deprive people of their lives, livelihoods, and futures.

We must not be moral failures! A world in which an accident could result in the unleashing of a barrage of hundreds of nuclear missiles and thousands of warheads, absolutely devastating civilization is not a world that can be tolerated, nor one suitable to the inherent dignity of the human individual.

Share the Schiller Institute conference and rise to the level of thought and action the present demands and the future deserves. (There is a brief 1 min. lag in start of the video.)

West Sends Thimbles Full of Aid to India

May 6, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, India, United States

West Sends Thimbles Full of Aid to India

May 5 (EIRNS)–According to India Today, 3,000 tons of aid has arrived in the country so far. That may sound like a lot; but what it boils down to is that this nation of 1.4 billion people, with over 20 million cases of COVID which are growing at the rate of more than a million new cases every three days, has received a grand total of 1,656 oxygen concentrators, 20 large-sized oxygen concentrators, 965 ventilators, and an unknown number of pulse oximeters, Remdesivir packets and some PPE. The Indian government claims that, in some cases, the aid is still in transit. They added that the limited amount of the foreign aid also meant that splitting it up equally was not optimal; so the hardest-hit states were preferred.

This is hardly a serious response to a nation in peril from a global pandemic.

A particular problem is that India’s vaunted vaccine production capacity has been crippled by the Biden administration’s ban on export of vital components, which was only lifted a few days ago after major pressure was brought to bear on Washington. Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute of India, said that their production of Covishield (AstraZeneca) is now about 60-70 million doses per month, and is able to rise up to 100 million/month by July.

Vaccine doses are desperately needed, given that only 2% of the Indian population has been vaccinated. Last month the government announced that they were now fast-tracking vaccine approval, and on Monday Pfizer announced that they were in discussions with India on providing vaccines. Russia began sending in the first portion of three million doses in May of Sputnik V. And pressure continues to mount on Biden to release the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca warehoused, unused, in the US. That stockpile by itself would double the vaccination program in India this month – nowhere near what is actually needed in this emergency, but certainly helpful.

President Xi Awards Highest Science Award to Two Scientists, Including the Developer of China’s Pebble-Bed Reactor

November 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Power & Energy, Space updates

Nov. 3 (EIRNS)–The National Natural Science Award was given in a ceremony on November 3 at the Great Hall of the People by President Xi Jinping to Gu Songfen from the China Aviation Industry Corporation and Wang Dazhong from Tsinghua University. Professor Gu was the first to develop an original design for a Chinese jet fighter in the 1950s. He was also instrumental in pushing China at an early date to move into the area of stealth technology and artificial intelligence.

Professor Wang Dazhong was the chief designer of spherical nuclear fuel elements, which are essential for fourth generation pebble-bed high-temperature reactors. He was leading the work on the first demonstration reactor at Tsinghua University at a time when the world was moving away from this technology. As a result of his work, China has now constructed two commercial pebble-bed reactors in Shandong province, the first of which is to be connected to the electricity grid before the end of this year. With the lead in this technology, China is prepared to become a major producer of these reactors for export.

Afghanistan IG Blasts State & Defense Departments for Restricting Information on Afghanistan

October 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, General updates, Geopolitics updates, United States, World war danger updates

Oct. 30 (EIRNS)–John Sopko, the Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), blasted the State and Defense departments for their lack of cooperation with his office in remarks prepared for the Military Reporters & Editors Association Annual Conference yesterday. “U.S. agencies have not made honest reporting easy for SIGAR” or for the news media in reporting on the war in Afghanistan, he said. Sopko described efforts, some very recent, by the two departments to restrict the information available to the public in SIGAR’s reports, among them the fact that SIGAR has to put some information for its quarterly reports into classified annexes, all of which, he argued, should be declassified.

The State Department claims that its requests to restrict information is to protect Afghans who worked with the U.S. occupation but, Sopko said, “State was never able to describe any specific threats to individuals that were supposedly contained in our reports, nor did State ever explain how removing our reports now could possibly protect anyone since many were years old and already extensively disseminated worldwide.”

Sopko reported that he recently received a letter from the State Department asking that 2,400 items on the SIGAR website, attached to the letter in spreadsheet form, be redacted. “[I]t quickly became clear to us that State had little, if any, criteria for determining whether the information actually endangered anyone – and I think you will agree with me that some of the requests were bizarre to say the least.” Among them was a request that SIGAR redact the name of Ashraf Ghani from its reports. “While I’m sure the former President may wish to be excised from the annals of history, I don’t believe he faces any threats simply from being referenced by SIGAR,” Sopko said. He added that SIGAR’s own risk assessment found all but four of State’s 2,400 redaction requests to be without merit.

Sopko argued that the main reason why few people understand why the U.S./NATO-created Afghan government fell so quickly in August is because of the information that the State and Defense departments have withheld from release. This includes information compiled on the performance of the Afghan security forces since 2015. “This information almost certainly would have benefited Congress and the public in assessing whether progress was being made in Afghanistan and, more importantly, whether we should have ended our efforts there earlier,” Sopko said. “Yet SIGAR was forced to relegate this information into classified appendices, making it much more difficult for Members of Congress to access the information, and completely eliminating public and press access to and discussion of that information.”

The documents now known as the Afghanistan Papers were originally produced in Sopko’s office and they showed, among other things, that the private assessments of U.S. officials often contradicted their public statements on the “progress” the U.S. was making in Afghanistan.

SIGAR also released its latest quarterly report, yesterday, in which it found that more than $100 billion went down the drain when the government collapsed on August 15. The United States provided $89 billion in training and equipping the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and more than $17 billion “in on-budget assistance” to the Afghan government, according to the report. The net result of all of this expenditure is now zero as the government it was meant to support no longer exists.

Speaking at Victory Day Parade, Russian President Warns of Present Danger

May 10, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Russia, World war danger updates

Speaking at Victory Day Parade, Russian President Warns of Present Danger –

May 9 (EIRNS)—Speaking on the occasion of the anniversary of Victory Day on May 9th at the Victory Day Parade in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “The war brought upon us so many unbearable ordeals, grief and tears that it is impossible to forget. Those who are plotting new aggressions cannot be forgiven or justified….

“History demands that we learn from it. Unfortunately, attempts are made to deploy a large part of Nazi ideology and the ideas of those who were obsessed with the delusional theory of their own supremacy,” stressed the Russian President.

With Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon at his side, Putin asked for a minute of silence to commemorate the “blessed memory” of all those who died in the war and to “mourn the veterans who have passed,” after which he continued: “This year, we celebrate 80 years since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. June 22, 1941, is one of the most tragic dates in our history. An enemy attacked our country and invaded our land to kill and to spread death and pain, horror and immeasurable suffering. This enemy not only wanted to overthrow the Soviet political system but also to destroy us as a state, as a nation and wipe our peoples off the face of the Earth.

“We responded to the invasion by the Nazi hordes with a united, formidable and unstoppable determination to repel that invasion, to do everything in our power for the enemy to be defeated and for the criminals and murderers to receive inevitable and just punishment.” His complete address is posted to the website of the Russian Presidency.

Iran-Kyrgyzstan Rail Corridor Discussed

September 26, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, China, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Kyrgyzstan, New Silk Road / BRI updates, Uzbekistan, World Land-Bridge updates

Sept. 25 (EIRNS)–During a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this week in New York, Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Kazakbaev congratulated Amir-Abdollahian on his appointment as Iran’s top diplomat, and proposed a direct flight between Bishkek and Tehran. Kazakbaev also expressed willingness to use the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas’s capacity for transit cooperation.

The Kyrgyz Foreign Minister said his country’s internal conditions are better than ever for the presence of Iranian economic activists, calling for the two countries to work together on cooperation within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union. He also said Kyrgyzstan is ready to cooperate in the construction of a railway corridor between the two countries.

The Iranian government has already proposed some time ago to Central Asians, the value of making effective use of Iranian ports and the development of the Uzbek-Turkmenistan-Iran-Oman transport corridor. This could connect to the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway line being built, as well as to the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Iran corridor. A part of this latter project, there are connections for the Afghan cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat with the Iranian port of Chabahar.

Did Geopolitics Sink Portugal’s Sines Port Expansion Project for Now?

May 6, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal, New Silk Road / BRI updates, World Land-Bridge updates

Did Geopolitics Sink Portugal’s Sines Port Expansion Project for Now?

May 5, 2021 (EIRNS)—At the close of the April 6 deadline for submitting bids to construct a new, huge container terminal at Portugal’s Sines Port, not a single bid had been entered. Port authorities blamed the fiasco on the drop in world shipping from the pandemic, and are talking of launching another offer with more “flexible” conditions when “market conditions” are better. The chairman of the port’s board of directors José Luís Cacho assured that the port expansion will happen, calling the possibility of a two-year delay “almost irrelevant.”

Most likely more than pandemic effects were involved. Portugal and China have been working for several years to use the planned “Vasco de Gama” terminal at Sines’s excellent deep-water port, just south of Lisbon on the Atlantic coast, as a key Belt and Road Initiative hub, connecting the westernmost point of the Eurasian rail network with the Maritime Silk Road in the Atlantic, thereby facilitating trading connections with the Americas and the Western coast of Africa. The Schiller Institute supported the plan as key for developing the Americas, and Portugal pinned its own industrial expansion on the project, envisioning proudly a return to its historic role as a leading center of maritime development. In late 2018, Portugal signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China on the Belt and Road, becoming one of the few countries in Europe willing to counter pressure from Washington and the EU.

The Anglo-American nexus moved in. The U.S. Embassy organized multiple visits of U.S. gas companies promising big investments to build up Sines’s LNG facilities. The Portuguese government welcomed investments from all serious bidders, but in September 2020, U.S. Amb. George Glass told the Portuguese daily Expresso that Portugal is inevitably “part of the European battlefield between the United States and China,” and Portugal now had to choose between its American “friends and allies” and its “economic partner” China. Among other threats, Glass stated that if Portugal awarded the Sines terminal contract to China, the U.S. would pull out of its LNG investments there.

Keeping the pressure on, former British diplomat John Dobson published an op ed in the Sunday Guardian of India on Dec. 5, 2020, picked up in Portugal, stating that the fight over Sines was an “economic flashpoint” between China and the U.S., similar to the military flashpoint building up in the South China Sea. “So will it be America’s huge LNG terminal, or China’s huge container port?,” he wrote. “Whoever is the winner, the geopolitical consequences will be massively significant.”

Some Countries: No Vaccines … and a Lack of Electricity or Refrigeration

May 10, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Healthcare, Healthcare

Some Countries with No Vaccines … and a Lack of Electricity or Refrigeration–

May 9 (EIRNS)—According to the World Health Organization, as of this week, Chad, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Eritrea, Tanzania and Haiti have not even received vaccines for their medical personnel. AP explains: “Delays and shortages of vaccine supplies are driving African countries to slip further behind the rest of the world in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout…” While the Farcha hospital in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, has 13 ventilators, along with oxygen from Doctors Without Borders and KN95 masks from the Chinese, none of the medical personnel have been vaccinated. Already, nine health care workers at the hospital have been infected, including cardiologist Dr. Mahamat Yaya Kichine, who explained: “I think that if there is a possibility to make a vaccine available, it will really ease us in our work.”

A key bottleneck in Chad, and elsewhere, is the lack of sufficient cold storage facilities. For example, Haiti is scheduled to receive 756,000 AstraZeneca doses via COVAX, but problems with basics such as electricity and refrigeration have delayed their arrival.

Join The Anti-Malthusian Movement To Defeat the “Green New Deal”

April 20, 2021by Malene Robinson in General, Green New Deal, Harley Schlanger Daily Update

Unbeknownst to most Americans, resistance is growing internationally to the scientific fraud and economic disaster known as the “Green New Deal” (GND). Furthermore, few are aware that the movement behind it was launched by a rabid opponent of human civilization, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, whose passion — like that of those oligarchs who rushed in to support him — was population reduction. In 2002, Nelson lamented that the environmentalist movement did not speak openly about reducing the world’s population, which he said was the result of “McCarthyism” and “demagogic contrivance.” Nelson, like most of those in power today trying to impose the GND globally, would prefer to cover up the British roots of Malthusian genocide, and its successful implementation of population reduction based on eugenics and British “race science”, in Nazi Germany.

UN Official Warns of Economic Collapse and Food Insecurity in Afghanistan

October 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Agriculture, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, World war danger updates

Oct. 30 (EIRNS)–In New York, UN humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths told The Associated Press in an interview that the G20 leaders should worry about Afghanistan because its economy is collapsing and half the population risks not having enough food to eat as the snows have already started to fall. Half the Afghan children under age five are at risk of acute malnutrition and there is an outbreak of measles in every single province which is “a red light” and “the canary in the mine” for what’s happening in society, he said.

Griffiths warned that food insecurity leads to malnutrition, then disease and death, and “absent corrective action” the world will be seeing deaths in Afghanistan. He said the World Food Program is feeding 4 million people in Afghanistan now, but the U.N. predicts that because of the dire winter conditions and the economic collapse it is going to have to provide food to triple that number — 12 million Afghans — “and that’s massive.”

“So, the message that I would give to the leaders of the G 20 is worry about economic collapse in Afghanistan, because economic collapse in Afghanistan will, of course, have an exponential effect on the region,” he said. “And the specific issue that I would ask them to focus on first, is the issue of getting cash into the economy in Afghanistan — not into the hands of the Taliban — into the hands of the people whose access to their own bank accounts is not frozen.”

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