The Fed shows it has learned nothing from history, as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announces a new “Standing Repo Facility,” in a desperate attempt to avoid nightly waves of bank defaults. This continues 50 years of insane monetary policy. On August 15th, 1971 the Bretton Woods System was ended, creating a floating exchange system, and beginning our long descent into financial and physical-economic ruin. Lyndon LaRouche is the only economist who forecast this trajectory in the 1960s, and spent his life developing the policy solutions to reverse it. Join us August 14th in an online conference to examine LaRouche’s unique contributions. https://www.larouchelegacyfoundation.org/news/august-15
Putin’s Conference on Defeating COVID-19 by Outflanking the New Strains
Mar. 25 (EIRNS)–Russian President Vladimir Putin held a videoconference earlier this week on the scientific and industrial mobilization needed to expand COVID-19 vaccine production, and to attack the virus. By way of introduction, he said that their Sputnik V vaccine, now approved in 55 countries representing 1.4 billion people, would expand to 2.5 billion people shortly. He celebrated the latest contract with India for production of another 100 million doses, “the news of the day.” Now there are contracts for the production of 1.4 billion doses. For their own population, Russia is aiming for 139.6 million doses and, as of last week, have 40.2 million.
The Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said that production is ramping up. April should see 17 million more doses. They also have manufacturing agreements in 10 countries. Further, their new EpiVacCorona vaccine is planned for 11 million doses by July. It is designed to be able to hit a wide array of variants. The Healthcare Minister Mikhail Murashko reported on a new version of Sputnik V that can be stored easily at non-frozen temperatures (36-46 degrees Fahrenheit), important for far-flung parts of Russia; and a new Sputnik Light, for trials on 12-17 year olds. The concern there was not-so-much about mortality but about possible and unknown long-term damage to children form COVID-19.
The chairman of the board of Pharstandard, Viktor Kharitonin, reported that their ramping up to 200-300 million doses per year involved recruiting Russian exile scientists back to Russia for the war against the virus: “Over 20 percent of our scientists returned from the EU, the United States and Israel at our invitation and are now helping us develop a modern pharmaceutical industry…”
Gamaleya director Alexander Gintsburg highlighted talks last week, headed by Sergei Razov, Russia’s ambassador to Italy, with Italy’s Spallanzani Institute — “a counterpart of ours” in being the national regulatory institute. They agreed to produce a “draft memorandum of cooperation” to work with Spallanzani’s key resource, “the largest collection of newly emerged and isolated strains of COVID-19 pathogens in Europe…” Plasma samples from people vaccinated with Sputnik V are to be tested for “the neutralizing activity of the serum…” Denis Logunov, Gamaleya deputy director, who actually developed the vaccine, explained that, as with the flu virus, we “examine sera screening from vaccinated patient’s reactions to new strains. I consider this very important… We must not miss the important moment when the virus, for one, gets out of control and the existing vaccines may become even potentially ineffective. In terms of science, I consider this prospect the most important.”
UN Security Council Unanimously Pushes for Afghan Political Solution—
Aug. 4 (EIRNS)—In New York, the UN Security Council unanimously issued a press statement condemning deliberate attacks on civilians in Afghanistan and all instances of terrorism “in the strongest terms” on Aug. 3, while declaring its opposition to restoration of rule by the Taliban, reported The Associated Press. The council called on the Afghan government and the Taliban “to engage meaningfully in an inclusive, Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process in order to make urgent progress towards a political settlement and a ceasefire.” The council statement also expressed “deep concern” at the high levels of violence and reported serious human rights abuses in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s offensive. It urged an immediate reduction in violence.
It is noteworthy that the U.S., China and Russia (as well as the U.K. and France) all agreed with this perspective on Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani by phone yesterday to press for a political settlement and lecture Ghani on democracy and human rights.
Afghanistan Foreign Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar told TOLOnews in an Aug. 2 interview that the Taliban enjoys the support of foreign terrorists in Afghanistan. “The Taliban relies on the support of foreign terrorists and mainly aims to attack cities,” he said. “Afghanistan’s international allies hold the same opinion.”
“Two important encounters will take place in Doha (Qatar) in the coming days: One with our regional allies and the other with international allies in the format of the Extended Troika,” comprised of Russia, the United States, China and Pakistan, Atmar continued. “We are turning to the international community with a request to exert pressure on the Taliban so that this movement observes human rights. Up to now, the Taliban has been brutally assaulting civilians.”
On the ground, heavy fighting reportedly continues in both Herat in western Afghanistan and in the southern province of Helmand. Several airstrikes were reportedly launched by Afghan and U.S. air forces since Tuesday night (Aug. 3), according to security sources. The commander of the Army’s 215 Maiwand Corps, Gen. Sami Sadat, called on residents in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand, to evacuate their homes as the army was preparing for a large-scale operation to clear the city of the Taliban. However, as of the latest reports, the army had not made much progress beyond controlling government buildings.
Schiller Institute’s China Petition in Chinese Media
Mar.25 (EIRNS) — The Schiller Institute petition denouncing the attacks on China signed by 30 leading experts, was reported in the Chinese media. The China Global Television Network, published an article on the petition but did not name the signatories. Then China Central Television republished the CGTN article. This was followed by a report in CCTV on the French Schiller Institute’s French translation of the petition with a summary in Chinese. Below is the CGTN article in full. Also see links at the end.
China experts urge cooperation, not confrontation with China
The West should do better to respond to an offer of cooperation from China rather than seek confrontation, and find a common way to solve the crises challenging all of humanity, according to a declaration published on Tuesday by the Schiller Institute, a political and economic think tank based in Germany.
The declaration, which was signed by over 30 experts, including the institute’s founder and president Helga Zepp LaRouche, denounced what it said was an intensifying international campaign against China.
“For some time, an international anti-China campaign has escalated, where think tanks, mainstream media and strategic reports of all sorts paint a picture of China and its alleged intentions which is simply not true and is extremely dangerous. An enemy image is being projected that in the worst case leads to war,” it said.
All signatories to the declaration have had “direct experience with China, be it that we have lived or worked there, or from repeated travel over longer periods of time.”
Based on their experience and witnesses, they said the Chinese people are “fundamentally more optimistic about the future than the West” after the nation’s successful poverty eradication campaign. And “trust in government is substantially greater,” which is illustrated and strengthened by the effective way China brought COVID-19 under control.
The statement also said that China has been making progress in science and technology as well as innovation, urging the West to “do better to respond to the offer of cooperation, than seeking confrontation.”
Aug. 4 (EIRNS)—China is experiencing a resurgence of COVID, particularly of the new delta variant, and is implementing more stringent measures to deal with it. Most seem to have developed through imported cases, at the airport in Nanjing and in the south Yunnan province at the Myanmar border. But the provinces of Zhejiang and Henan, where there has been major flooding recently, have also been hit with new cases. The city of Wuhan is also again in the process of conducting nucleic acid testing on its 11 million people in order to avoid a replay of the terrible 2020 outbreak.
The State Council announced on Aug. 3 that COVID-19 prevention and control would now be “the top priority” for local governments. “Airports, harbors and land borders should be closely guarded to prevent imported COVID-19 cases. International travelers and cargo should be strictly separated from spaces where local people can enter,” Sun Chunlan, a member of the Political Bureau said in her comments at the press conference announcing the new measures.
“People that are most prone to infection should be placed in quarantine immediately. Regional investigations targeting close contacts should be completed within 24 hours,” she said. Sun required nationwide scrutiny of in-hospital infection control measures. “Hospitals that fail to meet the standards should carry out rectification or even suspend operations,” she said. There are now four high-risk areas for the COVID outbreak and 150 medium-risk areas. The country has already distributed 1.7 billion doses of the vaccine.
Aug. 4 (EIRNS)—Governors Ron DeSantis (FL) and Greg Abbott (TX) are adopting policies in their states worthy of the Flagellant cult of the 14th century. They have each instituted a statewide ban on mask mandates and they have prohibited school districts from requiring masks in schools. Texas has even started fining teachers who dare to ask their students if they are vaccinated, or ask those who are not to mask. In Florida, counties are being threatened that their funding will be pulled if they issue mask mandates, and already that led to Broward County withdrawing its mask mandate.
As a result of this medieval lunacy, among other causes, one-third of all new COVID cases nationwide come from those two states.
DeSantis has also angrily denounced the suggestion that those who are not vaccinated and not masking or social distancing are responsible for getting sick. He insisted: “In Florida, there will be no lockdowns. There will be no school closures. There will be no restrictions and no mandates.”
Beethoven: Sparks of Joy – String Trio, Opus 9, No. 2
The Opus 9 no. 2 string trio differs from its siblings in its quietly introspective character, with Beethoven’s melodic genius fully on display, especially in the second and fourth movements.
Here it is in full score, performed by the Grumiaux Trio. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]
The discussion of the repeal of the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which was nearly unanimously passed in 2002 by the U.S. Congress to justify the invasion of Iraq, while long overdue, shows how the U.S. foreign policy continues to be dominated by British geopolitical doctrine. The Brits deploy all sorts of False Flags and psychological warfare to control policy options and manipulate popular opinion. As the Schiller Institute’s Helga Zepp LaRouche has emphasized, to end the era of regime change wars, geopolitics must be repudiated definitively!
Aug. 3, 2021 (EIRNS)—One of the criticisms leveled against the climate models used to terrify the world with the unfathomable horror of a change of 1.5 degrees by the turn of the century, relates to how modelers deal with uncertainties.
The entire Earth is a very complex system to model, and our understanding of many of its processes—wind patterns, rainfall, ocean circulation—is incomplete. This means that models cannot claim to be based purely on fundamental physics and well-known laws of nature, the way a simple physics demonstration used in a classroom would.
Instead, each of the uncertain values that is incorporated into the final model has some “wiggle room” in the specific value given to it.
If there are only a few uncertainties, the model as a whole will have only a few adjustment points, and there may be a very small range of setting the uncertain parameters that results in the model accurately producing past data, against which it can be verified.
But if there are many “knobs” on the machine, so to speak, there can be many ways of adjusting them such that the model matches the past relatively well (given the extremely incomplete data, no one expects perfection), while offering wildly different predictions for the future.
Climate models have many free parameters, many knobs to adjust, such that their matching past data says little about their ability accurately to predict the future. In this sense, you can get the underlying climate data to confess anything you’d like about the future, including out- of-control warming.
The Executive Director of the CO₂ Coalition recently wrote about the origin of climate models: “The father of these models was Cold War military theorist John von Neumann, who wanted to see if we could cause drought in the Soviet Union. He failed, thank goodness. Von Neumann joked, ‘with four parameters I can draw an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.’”
Professor Will Happer uncovered a 2010 paper by Jürgen Mayer et al. (DOI: 10.1119/1.3254017) that does just that. They use a Fourier coordinate expansion with four complex parameters to successfully parameterize a shape resembling an elephant. And adding a fifth causes the trunk to move around as its path is traced.
(Unlike the cases in climate models, in this case there was no data against which to validate the parameters, so the authors were completely free to set them as they pleased.)
What can a climate modeler achieve with hundreds or thousands of free parameters?
August 3, 2021 (EIRNS)—On June 23 of this year, at the Asia and Pacific High-Level Conference on Belt and Road Cooperation, presided over by China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, 28 nations joined in launching the China Initiative for Belt and Road Partnership on Covid-19 Vaccine Cooperation. The statement announcing this initiative stressed that international cooperation and solidarity are key to fighting the pandemic, that “people and their lives” must be put first, and that no one is safe until everyone is safe. It emphasized that vaccines must be equitably distributed and that there must be “open, fair and non-discriminatory international cooperation on vaccines.”
A number of other recommendations for the BRI vaccine cooperation initiative included facilitating joint vaccine research, development and technological exchanges; promoting partnerships between vaccine producers and developing countries for joint vaccine production, to scale up global production; encouraging regional and multilateral development banks to provide more concessional financing to developing countries for their vaccine procurement and production; and “strengthening Belt and Road cooperation on connectivity to ensure cross-border flows of vaccines.”
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry yesterday, in less than two months the BRI vaccine initiative has yielded impressive results, reaching cooperative agreements with several of the initiative’s 28 co-sponsors on a total of 775 million doses of vaccines, including in the form of concentrates, of which 350 million doses have been delivered. In addition, Chinese companies have started joint production with four co-sponsors of this initiative, whose names were not specified, and are discussing joint production “with other interested countries.” In today’s foreign ministry press conference, spokesman Wang Wenbin reported that China has provided vaccine assistance to over 80 countries and vaccines to 40 countries, also reporting that China is collaborating with other developing nations to mass produce the vaccine. It was also announced today that the World Health Organization has granted emergency use authorization to China’s Sinovac vaccine. (The full initiative statement is detailed here.)
The 28 countries include: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Fiji, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
