General updates

WHO Briefers Angry at Lack of Health Infrastructure in the War vs. COVID-19

July 8, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Healthcare

WHO Briefers Angry at Lack of Health Infrastructure in the War vs. COVID-19

July 6, 2021 (EIRNS)—The World Health Organization’s Mike Ryan and Maria Von Kerkhove answered questions for the public on Monday and allowed some of their frustration and anger to show. First on Monday: While new cases worldwide have stabilized, they have done so at an uncomfortably high level; this, in fact, reflects a dangerously unstable situation. While new cases in the Americas declined (13%), they raced upwards in Africa (15%) and Europe (28%). This last week had twenty countries undergoing sharp rises. Basically, the point of impact simply shifted. The two WHO specialists cited three interacting factors: uneven vaccination levels, the spread of the Delta variant, and social relaxing.

Then the anger: The WHO teams are fighting on the front lines. We’re really humanitarians, and we won’t give up. But the vaccines aren’t coming as they should, or even as promised. “The cavalry is not coming.” This destroys morale. So, people then give up, go back to work and accept what fate will bring them. What is needed is to build and invest in systems now—don’t wait for the next surge. A system involves: surveillance systems, testing in place, isolation, clinical care, contact tracing or at least cluster investigations and such; so that we can find out where the enemy is and go after it. Those systems need to be built now, and the wealthier West is not even doing it for their own populations. Their admonitions are an echo of Helga Zepp LaRouche’s 2020 call for a new global health platform for each country.

Ryan stressed that there were enough vaccines in the world right now to inoculate all the “at-risk” categories and the medical personnel. Kerkhove stressed that enough is known about the workings of the coronavirus to design a comprehensive war plan against it. It seems that the first 18 months of the battle finds the immaturity of political culture is no match for the reality of the virus.

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy!

March 5, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Daily Beethoven — Sparks of Joy, Music updates

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy – Four hands are better than two, Op. 6 piano sonata

With an opening theme that resembles the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven’s Opus 6 sonata for piano four hands is a rarely heard gem. Due to its brevity and relative ease of execution, it’s generally thought of as a work for piano students, but in the hands of brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen it’s a delightful frolic. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]

More British Provocations Signal the Panic Gripping Those Running the Empire

July 8, 2021by Malene Robinson in General, General updates, Harley Schlanger Daily Update

While British Foreign Minister Raab threatens China over its unwillingness to submit to the City of London’s Rules-Based Order, the largest financial institutions are granted exemptions from the new minimum global corporate tax praised by Biden. If a company is a corporation based in the City of London, Wall Street or Silicon Valley, it is exempt from the new taxes. The blowhards demanding subservience to the new global order are deploying regime change operations and military threats against nations which don’t accept the arbitrary rules the Davos billionaires have created for everyone, but themselves! The imperial order is dying, help us put it out of its misery, by creating a new, just order based on principles of international law.

— harleysch@gmail.com

Mexico Seeks Energy Security

March 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, Finance, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Mexico, United States

Mexico Stands Firm: Texas Shows We Are Right To Put Energy Security Before Profit

March 3 (EIRNS)—In the middle of the Texas energy crisis, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked leaders of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to brief the nation on how that crisis proves that his policy to restore national energy self-sufficiency and a national electricity grid regulated by the government, fed by all energy sources, emphatically including fossil fuels, is urgent, and its opponents are dead wrong.

The climate mafia has launched war against AMLO’s “vision of energy sovereignty” and mandate for fossil fuels to be used before subsidized and unreliable wind and solar. “No other G20 country has such abnormal or retrograde energy policies as this government. It’s not going to advance us toward our climate goals,” one leading climate activist told the London Guardian in mid-February. International energy “investors” are preparing lawsuits against AMLO’s new Electricity Law to drive out the speculators, which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies last week and is expected to pass the Senate shortly. Rating agencies are preparing to lower Mexico’s credit rating, if it becomes law.

The CFE team, led by its chairman, Manuel Bartlett, who has been outspoken against the wind and solar energy frauds, detailed how the selling off of Mexico’s public sector electricity generation and distribution to a bunch of unregulated international speculators under the previous two administrations were the cause of the blackouts in Mexico when the cold wave hit, as happened in Texas. The officials pointed to the absurdity that Mexico, an oil producer with plenty of its own natural gas, now found itself with 64% of its national electricity powered by natural gas imported from Texas. Mexico was knocked out when the cold wave hit because the pipelines from Texas froze, and after that Texas stopped all export of natural gas because its wind and solar “renewables” failed, they
reported.

The CFE managed to cover 75% of the gap from the loss of natural gas imports by activating 11 hydroelectric plants, coal plants fed by mines which the López Obrador government had recently reopened, diesel supplied by the state oil company PEMEX at low prices, existing reserves of natural gas and purchase of some shiploads of the latter—at the wildly-high speculative prices on the international markets. Officials stressed that they could only do these things because under the energy sovereignty policy, thermoelectric plants which were under-utilized, nonetheless were maintained, against just such an emergency.

López Obrador then drew the lessons out: What just happened in Texas makes clear that it is not possible to give equal treatment to private foreign companies, he stated. The state needs to control the energy production and national electricity grid as an integrated whole. Under the previous governments, the energy sector was being taken apart, sold off in pieces, and looted. “It is important to recognize that these two public companies [Pemex and the CFE] do not have profit as their purpose, but to guarantee electricity service, and at fair prices, also, because we are going to continue fulfilling our commitment to not increase electricity prices, even with the speculation and increases in gas prices which are occurring in Texas and the United States.”

U.S. Infrastructure Deficit

March 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General updates

U.S. Infrastructure Gets Report Card: C-

March 3 (EIRNS)—The American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2021 Infrastructure Report Card. Although the grade improved to a C-, up from a D+ in 2017, the investment gap—the funding required to get all infrastructure to a “B” rating—has grown from $2.1 trillion over ten years to $2.6 trillion over ten years. The ASCE estimates that continuing failures to invest adequately in infrastructure will cost $10 trillion in GDP over the next two decades, which is double the shortfall in spending over that time period!
These figures only include repairing current technologies of infrastructure. For example, you may be surprised to hear that the nation’s rail system got the highest infrastructure grade, B, despite the utter absence of high-speed rail. For a real mission to build U.S., and the world’s, infrastructure read and circulate EIR’s The LaRouche Plan to Reopen the U.S. Economy: The World Needs 1.5 Billion New, Productive Jobs starting with healthcare.

U.S.-China Diplomacy: Needs to Aim for Unity

March 4, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, New Silk Road / BRI updates, United States, World Land-Bridge updates, World war danger updates

China to Biden Team: It Is ‘Evil’ To Try and Prevent Any
People’s Right To Pursue a Better Life.

March 3 (EIRNS)—China’s Global Times responded strongly to a report issued March 1 by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which accused China of undermining U.S. national interests through coercive and unfair trade practices and promised to use all available tools to pursue “strengthened enforcement” of China’s existing trade obligations. In other words, as the Global Times yesterday took due note, “the Biden administration has repeatedly said it is reviewing the previous administration’s China policy, but recent messages emanating from Washington suggest that the new administration is keeping the hardline stance against China. The Trump administration’s strategic goal of containing China will be inherited, and only the means of dealing with China may be adjusted.”

It is “understandable” and even “reasonable” that Washington would seek to maintain its leading position in technologies, and to protect its intellectual property rights, the editors of this official daily correctly assert. China does not protest U.S. policies towards China which aim at promoting U.S. development and increasing U.S. strength, but containment smacks of the “barbaric geopolitical games” of the 19th and early 20th century.

“We are in the 21st century…. Be they Americans, Chinese, Latin Americans or Africans, all people have the right to pursue a better life…. [P]olicies targeted at preventing China’s continuous development and even pushing China’s economy backward are evil. They pose a direct harm to the interests of the 1.4 billion Chinese people, depriving the natural right of the Chinese people to seek a better life….

“Restricting China from the perspective of intellectual property rights protection is different from jeopardizing China’s scientific and technological research and development capabilities. The former is part of the intellectual property rights protection regime, while the latter is an evil result of the geopolitical mentality.

“China has 1.4 billion people, more than the West combined, and much more than the population of the major Western countries combined. China’s development is the grandest project of the global human rights cause, and China’s development needs a relatively friendly international environment, including fair conditions for trade and technology exchanges…. It is malicious to take tough measures to suppress the ability of developing countries, and to tell large countries like China that ‘you deserve to be poor’….

“This kind of malicious policy cannot be followed up in a broad and lasting way in the 21st century. We hope the U.S. ruling team can see clearly the general trend, stop talking about human rights when it is trying to deprive the sacred rights of 1.4 billion Chinese people…. At last, we have to say that such evil is doomed to failure in the 21st century.”

{Source: “Policies Containing China’s Development Malicious: Global Times Editorial” https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1217096.shtml }

Yemen: Crime Against Humanity – Change It!

March 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, World war danger updates

Yemen Donors Conference Raises Even Less Money for Yemen Humanitarian Relief than Was Provided Last Year

March 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—The UN donors conference which convened yesterday to raise funds for relief efforts in Yemen, cosponsored by Sweden and Switzerland, failed to raise even half of the $3.85 billion that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed for. Pledges amounted to a total of $1.7 billion, even less than the $1.9 billion that was donated in 2020. Guterres called for countries to “consider again what they can do to help stave off the worst famine the world has seen in decades.” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who is on a week-long visit to Yemen, also called the outcome of the conference “disappointing,” warning that the lack of funding would cause huge cuts to Yemen aid. “The shortfall in humanitarian aid will be measured in lives lost,” he said.

The Saudis pledged $430 million; the U.S. promised $191 million, reportedly a decrease of $35 million from last year. The reduction in aid is attributed to the pandemic, corruption allegations, and concerns the aid might not be reaching its intended recipients in territories controlled by the rebels.

The Houthi leadership dismissed the conference, saying that such donor meetings only aid the aggressor countries and not the people of Yemen. “Conferences help aggressor states to identify themselves as obliging, not hostile or aggressor states which must end the siege and aggression,” said Houthi spokesman Mohammad Abdul-Salam, reported Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. He stressed in a twitter posting that stopping the aggression and lifting the blockade is the biggest help Yemen can ever receive. “The best services that the Saudi-led coalition provides to Yemen are nothing but daily airstrikes, brutal siege, the blockade of oil products and the closure of Sana’a International Airport, and the human consequences thereof.”

Gabbard Scores Biden’s Air Strikes

March 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Color Revolutions, General updates, Geopolitics updates, World war danger updates

Tulsi Gabbard Slams Unconstitutional U.S. Regime-change War in Syria

March 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—In a series of tweets on Feb. 28, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard addressed the Biden administration’s unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria, but also addressed the broader issue of the U.S. regime-change war in Syria, carried out through an alliance with Al Qaeda, al-Nusra/HTS terrorists. This alliance, she warned, combined with draconian sanctions and embargoes, is “similar to what the Saudi-U.S. alliance did in Yemen.”

Her tweets are as follows:

“I’m glad some of my former colleagues in Congress are speaking out against the recent unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria—but they’re ignoring the bigger issue: the regime change war the U.S. continues to wage in Syria using al-Qaeda/al-Nusra/HTS terrorists as our proxy ground force, who now occupy and control the city of Idlib, imposing Sharia Law and ‘cleansing’ the area of most Christians & religious minorities.

“The Biden Administration continues to use the U.S. military to illegally occupy NE Syria to ‘take the oil’ as Trump so crassly but honestly put it, violating international law. A modern-day siege of draconian embargo/sanctions similar to what the Saudi-U.S. alliance employed in Yemen is causing death & suffering for millions of innocent Syrians depriving them of food, medicine, clean water, energy & warmth, and making it impossible for the Syrian people to try to rebuild their war-torn country.”

How Continued Adherence to British Imperial Geopolitics Caused the Afghan Debacle

July 6, 2021by Malene Robinson in General, General updates, Harley Schlanger Daily Update

As news reports feature the threat of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces, some voices in the U.S. Congress are questioning why we are leaving! The real question should be, “Why were we there for 20 years? Why did we waste more than $1 trillion and several thousand American lives on a war the Pentagon knew was unwinnable?” The followup question to that should be, “Why are we still using British geopolitical strategies to conduct our foreign and military policies? When will we learn our lesson — as Lyndon LaRouche always insisted — that the British Empire is our republic’s only true enemy?”

Chinese Scientists “Reinvent” the Potato to Feed More People

July 6, 2021by madeleine in Agriculture, General, General updates, Scientific research studies

In a groundbreaking experiment, Chinese scientists led by Huang Sanwen, a researcher with the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen (AGIS) (a city just north of Hong Kong), under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), used a genome design to transform potato breeding, and developed “pure and fertile potato lines” with genome-editing technologies

Their study, titled “Genome Design of Hybrid Potato,” was published online in one of the world’s leading academic journals, {Cell}, on June 24.

Unlike other crops that are propagated from seed, the potato is a tuber crop which is propagated by cloning. This results in long breeding cycles, low reproduction efficiency, and makes the potato plant more susceptible to disease and insect attacks.

CGTN reported that “Huang and his team initiated the “Upotato Plan” in 2015, aiming to replace vegetative reproduction with hybrid seeds via genome design and improve potato breeding speed and reproduction efficiency.

“‘We must first solve the problem of self-incompatibility, which is that potatoes do not produce seeds after self-pollination. Through material selection and gene editing, we have successfully tackled the problem and produced seeds,’ said Huang.

“‘Meanwhile, we have also discovered how to improve plant health and output. By genome design, we eliminated harmful mutations, aggregated good genes and finally cultivated the potato variety called ‘Upotato NO. 1.’ After testing, it has shown excellent performance…

“We now only need 2 grams of potato seeds for a one-mu land, compared to 200 kilograms of seed potatoes before, which greatly reduces the planting costs.” (There are about 15 mu to one hectare.)

Their work has been recognized by their international peers, with one scientist from the European Academy of Sciences commenting, “This work is very important because it’s relevant to feeding the planet.”

Genome design of hybrid potato

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