Two stories in the last days provide new insights into the deadly and corrupt practices of operatives of the “Deep State”. Yahoo News exposed planning undertaken by then-CIA Director Pompeo to kidnap or assassinate Julain Assange, for the “crime” of exposing the dirty wars run by the military/intelligence/corporate establishment that Pompeo wanted to protect. And two Presidents of regional Federal Reserve branches resigned, when reports were published of their personal trading of financial instruments which were affected by the Fed’s Quantitative Easing policy. The defenses offered by Pompeo and Fed chair Powell are unconvincing, as they move to cover-up the bigger crimes they are trying to keep hidden.
As unfolding developments in Afghanistan have captured most people’s attention, Federal Reserve officials will hold their annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming confab on Friday, during which they will confer on how to proceed with the Great Reset swindle without tipping off too many people as to their real intent. While they engage in “Fed-speak” on such topics as “transitory inflation” and “tapering”, what they really are doing is consolidating a global central banker’s dictatorship, to hand the biggest banks and financial institutions control over fiscal, i.e., spending policy. The only way to counter this drive for depopulation, is to mobilize for the implementation of LaRouche’s “Four Laws”, to revive physical production as an alternative to a bankrupt neoliberal speculative system.
Ingenuity Helicopter Successfully Dropped to Mars Surface by Perseverance Rover; Will Fly 4/11
April 5 (EIRNS)–NASA was proud to announce that late on Saturday, April 3, the Perseverance rover successfully dropped the small helicopter Ingenuity four inches down to the surface of Mars where it will remain until April 11 when it is expected to take its first flight. The four-pound, solar-powered helicopter, had been attached to Perseverance’s “belly,” where it was kept warm by the rover’s nuclear-powered system, space.com reported April 4. Now that it is detached from Perseverance, the helicopter is using its internal battery to power its heater, to keep it warm through the frigid Martian nights. Bob Balaram, NASA’s chief engineer for the Mars Helicopter project, explained that the heater will protect key components “such as the battery and some of the sensitive electronics from harm at very cold temperatures.”
Ingenuity is designed to test technologies for future flying vehicles on other planets; it carries two cameras to document its flights, which the Perseverance rover will also observe. The data from its first flight on April 11 will reach NASA on April 12. Provided all goes well, Ingenuity will then perform several longer flights over Jezero Crater (where Perseverance landed) over the next 31 Martian days. Space.com reports that each flight should reach no higher than 16.5 feet, and will be conducted over a 300-foot-long (90 m) flight range.
Dr. Osterholm: Coronavirus Has a “Category 5 Hurricane Status” Globally
April 5 (EIRNS)–Speaking on Fox News Sunday and Meet the Press April 4, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, an adviser to President Biden on the COVID-19 pandemic, made the obvious point in terms of the global nature of the coronavirus pandemic and warned that people had better pay attention. Overall, he said, “we’re in a category 5 hurricane status with regard to the rest of the world. We’ll see in the next two weeks the highest number of cases reported globally, since the beginning of the pandemic. As for the United States, we’re just at the beginning of the surge.” Osterholm, who runs the Minnesota-based Center for Infectious Disease and Research Policy (CIDRAP), said he agreed with the remarks made last week by Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to the effect that the situation in the United States was not at all under control–she reported she felt a sense of “impending doom”–adding that Americans weren’t being realistic about the spike in new cases nationwide. Moreover, he warned, that spike was being driven by the COVID variant B.1.1.7, the British strain.
Dr. Osterholm elaborated: “We are the only country in the world right now experiencing this increasing number of cases due to this variant, and at the same time opening up, not closing down. The two basically are going to collide, and we are going to see substantially increased numbers of cases.” He especially warned that the variant is now hitting children much harder than previous strains. “It infects kids very readily.” More broadly, he pointed to reports of surging cases around the country, especially in the Upper Midwest where “they’re just beginning to start the fourth surge.” Look at what happened on April 3 in Michigan where there were a record number of 8,400 cases in one day. “That should have been a wakeup call to everyone.” It’s also the case, he pointed out, that there are more people between the ages of 30 and 50 who are being hospitalized and seen in ICUs
Other states with similar reports of increased cases include Ohio, Minnesota, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, head of Ohio’s Health Department, warned that “Ohio remains in a race against a virus that is now more contagious and right back on our heels.”
Listen to the whining coming from mouthpieces for the City of London imperial financial swindlers, such as war criminal Tony Blair, or former Ambassador Kim Darroch, who said it will take “quite a long time…to recover from all this, to recover our reputation.” The truth is that Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” is a cover for continued British imperial looting, which depends on U.S. military backing to succeed. With the G7 leaders unable to convince Biden to remain in Afghanistan, they are preparing other traps — such as Ukraine — to keep the U.S. engaged in “forever wars.” Instead, the U.S. must break with geopolitics and neoliberal trade and economic policies, and join with other nations to build up the capabilities of physical goods production, based on scientific and technological progress, to address mankind’s needs for the next fifty years.
The individual who is among the most culpable for ongoing geopolitical confrontations which could lead to nuclear war, the Queen’s Privy Council member Tony Blair, blasted Joe Biden for his “obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’.” Blair was not criticizing the way the U.S. left, but ending the war, saying that leaving Afghanistan shows the West has “lost its political will.” Clearly, this apologist for endless imperial wars has not lost his commitment to unleash genocidal catastrophes. Not surprisingly, Dick Cheney’s war hawk daughter Liz agrees with Blair, telling NBC News that proof the U.S. should not have withdrawn is that British parliamentarians and NATO officials are furious about the U.S. withdrawal! Keep in mind that when Blair talks about commitment, the British have been playing the Great Game in Afghanistan on-and-off since the 1830s — with consistently disastrous results. harleysch@gmail.com
Ten Nations Most at Risk for Starvation
Apr. 4 (EIRNS)–It was a year ago April 21, when World Food Program Director David Beasley briefed the U.N. Security Council that widespread famines “of Biblical proportions” would take place, unless action was taken. This has come to pass. The 10 countries at the top of the list in Spring 2020, according to the April, 2020 “Global Report on Food Crises,” issued by the WFP were: Yemen, DRC, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria (Northern) and Haiti.
Now today, these very same countries remain at the top of the list of 23 nations, listed in the March 23 “Hunger Hotspots” report released by the WFP and Food and Agriculture Organization, as an appeal for emergency action. Here are the particulars for these nations given under the heading, “Number of People in High Acute Food Insecurity in Hotspot Countries:” The number of people is given in millions for each nation: DRC (19.6,) Afghanistan (16.9,) Yemen (16.1,) Nigeria 13.0, in 15 states and the Federal capital,) Ethiopia (12.9,) Syria (12.4,) Venezuela (9.3,) South Sudan (7.2,) Sudan (7.1,) Haiti (4.4.
The total number in these top 10 nations of those in acute food security is 118.9 million.
The other 13 nations on the same list have a total of 27.8 million people in dire need, bringing the combined number to 147 million. The 13 nations are: Guatemala, Honduras, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Central African Republic, Niger, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Mali, El Salvador, and Liberia.
The WFP release on the “Hunger Hotspots” report.
Nigerian President: Lake Chad Water Transfer Is Imperative
April 4 (EIRNS) – Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari forcefully relaunched the Lake Chad Water Transfer Project, known as Transaqua, in a meeting with visiting Chad President Idris Deby on March 27.
Buhari reminded everyone that about 30 million people are adversely affected by a shrunken Lake Chad, which is now just about ten per cent of its original size, and “It is imperative that there be water transfer to the Lake Chad from the Congo Basin, so that the people can resume their normal lives.” This was reported in an official press release from the Presidency.
“He added that with inter-basin water transfer, farming, fishing, animal husbandry would resume, and curtail irregular migration of youths, who now brave the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea, to get into Europe, seeking greener pastures,.” says the statement by Buhari’s special media advisor Femi Adesina.
“I’ve been engaging with the relevant stakeholders in Africa and beyond, on why we need to recharge Lake Chad. Nigeria will benefit more, but it is also advantageous to everyone,’’ President Buhari added.
Chad President Idris Deby said that the recharge of Lake Chad is of importance not only for the whole of Africa but for the entire world. He counseled the Nigerian President to consider convening an international summit to move the idea forward.
At the end of February 2018, member states of the Lake Chad Basin Committee adopted Transaqua, the project drafted by a group of Italian engineers led by Dr. Marcello Vichi over 40 years ago, as the only feasible solution to the Lake Chad crisis. Eventually, the Italian Environment Ministry and the Lake Chad Basin Commission signed an MoU for a 1.5 million Euro grant to finance a feasibility study for the project. At the end of 2019, Italian senator Tony Iwoby provided for doubling that fund with an entitlement in the 2021 national budget. However, the study has never taken off, allegedly because the African side did not take action, despite the Italian Ministry of Environment having given green light to the proposed Terms of Reference. It is not excluded that some LCBC member states underwent pressures from European neocolonial circles who have long undertaken a stealth opposition against Transaqua.
Meanwhile, last November 2020, former EU Commission Chairman and former UN envoy for the Sahel Romano Prodi confirmed his full support for Transaqua and for a possible international coalition to build Transaqua, involving the UN, the EU, the OAU and China.
President Buhari’s new intervention is hopefully giving new impulse to the project
Big Farmer Protests in Paris — ‘France, Do You Still Want Your Farmers?’
Apr. 4 (EIRNS)–Paris (Nouvelle Solidarité) –”France, do you still want your farmers?” These were the words used to describe the protest organised on Friday in the Greater Paris region by the French agricultural union FNSEA. Over the last weeks, despite the COVID-19 lockdown and restrictions, thousands of farmers and French farm organizations pulled out their tractors, notably in Clermont Ferrand and Lyon, to protest EU policies that put them “in danger of disappearing.”
In Germany also, farmers were in the streets in mid-March to protest their impossible conditions.
At the center of the French protest are the latest EU outlines to reform the Common Agricultural Policies (CAP,) a regulated production mechanism established by De Gaulle in 1962 to boost production and food security, which has always been attacked by London, and has been gradually destroyed and diluted.
With the EU’s “Green New Deal”, the proposed reform of the CAP implies new legislation aimed at taxing the use of nitrogen fertilizer. The new Climate and Resilience Bill, which farmers describe as a “punitive and unfair” nitrogen fee, would “stigmatize” the use of chemical fertilizer without providing any alternatives, said the FNSEA, France’s largest farm union. The union says the new legislation ignored the changes already taking place in farmers’ practices and would reduce farm incomes without giving a “real response” to current climate issues.
The potential fertilizer fee coupled with the Egalim Law (requiring French producers to themselves collectively negotiate prices with large distributors), which has put agriculture output prices well below production costs, could be disastrous to farmers and their families. At the same time the CAP reform in its current form requires farmers to make vast efforts to initiate an agro-ecological transition that most of them consider unworkable, and farmers are venting their frustration. A Senate report published on March 17 noted the “immense distress” among French farmers, due in particular to the “low level of agricultural income and the feeling of denigration” of the profession by “constant agri-bashing.”
For the farmers, the protest is also about sending a message “to our fellow citizens alerting them to the urgency of saving French agriculture” without which “our food autonomy and the preservation of our national quality production” cannot be guaranteed. The farmers called for a CAP “for farms, not firms,” that “has the ambition to have many farmers, in all territories and in all lines of production.”
On October 25, 1971, the People’s Republic of China was recognized by the UN General Assembly as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations,” and the UN vote removed the representatives of Taiwan from the United Nations. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the PRC’s role at the UN, Xinhua conducted a video interview with Schiller Institute representative at the UN, Richard A. Black. He discusses the economic development policies of the Charter, and the power of China’s BRI both as a fulfillment of the UN Charter, and as a global driver for peace and stability. The 4-minute interview is out on Xinhua‘s Twitter feed and can be viewed here. The written article is available here.
