Economic development updates

Facing U.S. Sanctions Threat, El Salvador Turns to China and Russia for Support For Its Sovereign Development

May 21, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Economic development updates, El Salvador, General, General updates, Global Diplomacy, New financial order updates, Russia, World Land-Bridge updates

May 20, 2021—All over the world, nations are beginning to recognize that an alternative to the dying Old Order of geopolitics, colonialism, and usury is coming into being, with sovereign nations joining together for mutual development. Central America is no exception to this process.

“We are very enthusiastic about strengthening the relationship with Russia, we are facing a world with new challenges and opportunities, and we want to take advantage of those opportunities,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele told Russian Ambassador Alexander Khokholikov yesterday, in receiving the new Ambassador’s credentials. Bukele noted that El Salvador recognizes “the importance of Russia in the world.” Khokholikov responded in the same spirit, assuring him that the Russian government also wishes to increase cooperation. “We are going to work bilaterally and multilaterally,” he said, “because that is how it should be to maximize mutual benefit, both of Russia and El Salvador.”

Today China’s Embassy in El Salvador issued an important communiqué, reiterating that the agreement signed with El Salvador for China to oversee the construction of four development projects requested by the Salvadoran government spells out that China is covering the costs of the projects. President Bukele immediately posted the communiqué to his Twitter, much followed by others in the region, as well as Salvadorans at home and abroad.

The Biden administration, which has supplied neither vaccines nor economic development aid to the region, is publicly threatening to overthrow the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras if they break with the old order.

This is being done in the name of “fighting corruption” in Central America. The State Department included in its list of corrupt officials in those countries which it released on Tuesday, for example, two top Bukele administration officials: the President’s Chief of Cabinet, Carolina Recinos, and Minister of Security and Justice Rogelio Rivas. The charges are preposterous: Recinos is accused of engaging in “significant acts of corruption during her term in office” (no further details), while Rivas’s alleged “significant acts of corruption” were supposedly that he “awarded his own private construction company several noncompetitive and unadvertised contracts to build police stations and other buildings that fall under his official capacity and inflated the cost of materials.”

American Democratic Congresswoman Norma Torres, head of the Central American Caucus in the House of Representatives and a close ally of Vice President Kamala Harris, proclaimed on Tuesday as she released the list: “I will be relentless in demanding accountability from our government – if we know someone is corrupt, I expect our government to use all levers at our disposal, including sanctions, visa restrictions, withholding support to deter future acts of corruption, and dismantling the systems that allow corruption to occur.”

The Significance of The Belt and Road Initiative

November 26, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, BRI - Belt & Road, China, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Helga media coverage or interview, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Media coverage of our activity

The Significance of The Belt and Road Initiative – Zepp-LaRouche contributes to dialogue

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)–On this eighth anniversary of the announcement by China’s President Xi Jinping, of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI,) which he made in Kazakhstan Nov. 19, 2013, calling it then, One Belt, One Road, President Xi spoke at the symposium on the project, discussing in detail its many achievements and continuing intent, functioning as the modern-day Silk Road, for the common good of all.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute President, and long known in China and internationally as the “Silk Road Lady,” for her advocacy of the concept, gave three interviews today, on the occasion of the BRI anniversary. She appeared on CGTN TV, in two interviews, one on Global Business, and another on the Dialogue Weekend program; and she was interviewed on her weekly Schiller Institute webcast, titled, “Most of the World Is Hungry for Change.” See transcript of both interviews here.

Beginning in the early 1990s, she and her husband Lyndon LaRouche, promoted the idea of the “World Land-Bridge,” of development corridors. The latest books they issued on this were two volumes (2014 and 2018) of the “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” along with “Extending the New Silk Road to West Asia and Africa” (2017.) These presented details, region by region, for world economic development.

In each interview today, she stressed the urgency for Western nations to rethink, and give up geopolitics and neo-colonialism, which have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, worsening famine and persisting pandemic. Nations have been deliberately kept in poverty. These conditions, and induced strife, have produced mass migrations. She said on her webcast, “We have to have a re-thinking. Germany, the United States, other European countries should stop this geopolitical confrontation and say, ‘We have a pandemic, we have a mass famine, we have a refugee crisis of Biblical dimensions, and we must join hands and build infrastructure, hospitals, schools, industry, agriculture in all these countries…’.” She stated, “Let’s just build infrastructure, let’s build up Africa, this is the natural thing, and the Chinese are doing the natural things, and we should stop bickering about it, because we should take the moral lesson from the Chinese in this respect.”

President Xi Jinping reported that as of August, 2021, 170 nations had, in various ways, cooperated with the BRI. Now today, in terms of combatting the pandemic, 110 of these nations have received some of the 1.7 billion doses of vaccine.

Zepp-LaRouche drew attention in her webcast, to the fact that the same principle is involved in what China calls its “Belt and Road Health Initiative,” and what the Schiller Institute is campaigning for, in calling on nations to collaborate in building a world health system. This means facilities, staff, water, power, food, infrastructure.

We have a moment of special opportunity now. A week ago in Glasgow, COP26 ended as FLOP26. It was a failure for its organizers—the gaggle of royals, banksters, billionaires and the like, who want nations to agree to commit suicide, “to save the planet.” A critical number spoke out against this in Glasgow, and their view was again re-stated yesterday in Abuja, Nigeria, by Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. He said simply, while standing alongside visiting U.S. Foreign Sec. Antony Blinken at a joint press conference, that Nigeria is “a gas-producing country…and we’re looking to gas to help to address our energy needs.” So, he called on Blinken to do something to stop the international financial institutions from refusing to lend to fossil fuels development. Nigeria has the right to use its resources and develop.

Now it is the time for all humanity to step forward and take the lead. Zepp-LaRouche replied to CGTN reporter Michael Wang’s question about her opinion of the BRI at a time of uncertainties in the world: “I think it is, for sure, the most important strategic initiative on the planet right now. Because—you say, `uncertainties’—these uncertainties show right now in the form of hyperinflationary tendencies—you see the energy prices skyrocketing, food prices, and we may actually head towards a hyperinflationary blowout of the entire system. At such a moment, to have the Belt and Road Initiative, which focuses entirely on the physical side of the economy, can actually become the absolute, important savior for the world economy as a whole. So, I think the existence of the Belt and Road Initiative is the most important initiative on the planet.”

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New Xinhua Video on the BRI Features African & Ibero-American Leaders, Schiller Institute Rep

November 26, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Brazil, BRI - Belt & Road, China, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Media coverage of our activity, Pakistan

New Xinhua Video on the BRI Features African & Ibero-American Leaders, Schiller Institute Rep

Nov. 20 (EIRNS)–“Xi Urges Continuous Efforts to Promote High-Quality BRI Development” is the headline of a new Xinhua print and video release, dated 11/20/21, which features short statements from Zimbabwe President Mnangagwa, former Brazilian President Temer, and think tankers including the Schiller Institute’s Richard A. Black on the success of the BRI in uniting over 140 countries and 30 organizations in global manufacturing and development.

In the 10-minute English-language Xinhua video, Black, identified as the Schiller Institute representative at the UN, is shown in a recent video interview describing a unique feature of the BRI: a great economic power, China, has extended its arms worldwide to all nations — including those nations which are poor and are small — and deals with those nations as equals. This is an aspect of a win-win strategy of rapid, mutual economic benefit. (The article with the embedded video is found here.)

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Are We Deserving of the Future’s Gratitude?

May 20, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, COVID-19, Economic development updates, Finance, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, World war danger updates

May 19 (EIRNS)—Educating and Challenging the Resistance to Malthusianism and War Grow; Challenge Axioms To Create the Alternative

The legitimacy of a government in the eyes of history — its “mandate from Heaven” — is to promote the common good of its people and of humanity in general. Which governments in the world today can be said to deserve this legitimacy?

In welcoming ambassadors from two dozen countries to Russia, President Putin identified, in his own way, the fundamental principle that Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has emphasized is required for human survival — agapē: “The epidemic has proved a real test for such universal human values as solidarity, mutual assistance, and love for humanity…. It is possible to ensure peace, stability and sustainable global development only through the efforts of the entire international community…. We are convinced that everything must be done to prevent the tragedy of World War II from repeating itself, so that its lessons will not be forgotten. All of us must cherish the priceless experience and spirit of allied relations during the struggle against common challenges and threats…. We must ensure the well-being and prosperity of all human beings.”

The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, which Zepp-LaRouche co-founded, insists in its recent statement that “Health security is possible anywhere, only by provision everywhere of sufficient public health infrastructure and medical treatment capacity. This, in turn, depends directly on expanding water, power and food, which is associated with building up industrial capacity, as well as providing for adequate transportation, housing and other basics.”

Against this humanist outlook stands the imperial, Malthusian model for society. It is represented in its more historical form in the City of London and Wall Street — whose increasing power over the nominally sovereign governments of the trans-Atlantic world recalls the earlier “privatization” of the British government under the British East India Company. And it has also adopted a new guise in the “synthetic left” which calls for an end to development and a redefinition of progress in identitarian and environmentalist terms — of “progressives” who think there should be fewer people, “progressives” taken in by uncontextualized appeals to effectively support fascist policies under the rubric of defending human rights.

This Malthusian monster seeks to implement a worldwide Great Reset that will reduce the potential human population of the world: dramatically increasing the physical cost of providing and consuming energy (through drastically reducing the use of hydrocarbons while demanding greatly expanded mining to produce rare earth elements necessary for batteries and motors) while pointlessly and perilously heightening the danger of deadly military conflict with Russia and China, to prevent any other paradigm from taking hold. Rather than moving for the development of low-income nations in Africa, the Malthusian beast seeks to pay these nations not to develop, by essentially allowing developed nations to pay for carbon offsets, which would be transferred to poor nations to leave their resources (at least those for domestic consumption rather than export) in the ground.

But human beings are resource creators, not merely resource consumers. The climate change catastrophism promoted today as a new secular (or Satanic?) religion, like such earlier studies as the 1980 Global 2000 Report, relies on the same old discredited Malthusian theorizing that has led its predecessors to make terrifying forecasts that were soon falsified by reality.

Human beings are resource creators, not merely resource consumers. Every new “mouth to feed” is associated with a new “mind to educate.” It is the ability of each human individual to make enduring contributions to human history that demands peace and development throughout the world.

It is for the sake of past, present, and future humanity that this view of the human individual be brought forward to guide policy, rejecting the depraved outlooks that would tolerate Israeli murder, Green destruction of productivity, and the drive to draw the United States into war with Russia and China.

Will we become deserving of the praise of the future?

Putin Tells Ambassadors, the Pathway to Peace Lies Through ‘Love for Humanity’

May 20, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Color Revolutions, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, Russia, World war danger updates

May 19 (EIRNS)—Welcoming new ambassadors from 23 countries yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the unstable international situation, which as he observed, “is even becoming more complicated.” He named the crises facing the world’s nations: the coronavirus pandemic, the deterioration of the system of strategic stability and arms control, terrorism “rearing its ugly head once again,” growing problems in the sphere of international information security, the risks of drug trafficking and organized crime, decades-old regional conflicts in Afghanistan and Libya becoming aggravated, and now the dramatic escalation in the Middle East.

Putin then, in his own way, invoked the principle of agapē without which Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has recently insisted humanity may not survive as a species, as the way out for all nations. Putin told the Ambassadors:

“The epidemic has proved a real test for such universal human values as solidarity, mutual assistance, and love for humanity….

“I repeat once again: It is possible to ensure peace, stability and sustainable global development only through the efforts of the entire international community. We are calling for well-coordinated work by states, permanent members of the UN Security Council and all concerned countries. As you know, Russia has recently celebrated the anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War that started 80 years ago, on June 22, 1941, when the Nazis treacherously attacked our Motherland….

“We are convinced that everything must be done to prevent the tragedy of World War II from repeating itself, so that its lessons will not be forgotten. All of us must cherish the priceless experience and spirit of allied relations during the struggle against common challenges and threats. We must remember the consequences of policies pandering to nationalism and xenophobia, and we must jointly elaborate a positive and unifying agenda to forge a more equitable and democratic multipolar world order. We must ensure the well-being and prosperity of all human beings.”

China Points to Promethean Nature of Space Exploration–“To Light Up Human Civilization”

May 19, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Space updates

China Points to Promethean Nature of Space Exploration–“To Light Up Human Civilization”

May 18 (EIRNS)—At Monday’s Foreign Ministry briefing, spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to a comment about the fact that NASA and Russia had congratulated China for landing its first rover on Mars, with a report about the many congratulations it had received from many other countries around the globe. He also referenced President Xi Jinping’s congratulatory message which pointed out that the Mars landing marked an important step in China’s interstellar exploration–from the exploration of the Earth-Moon system to interplanetary exploration.

In very poetic language, reminiscent of western myth of Prometheus giving fire to mankind, Zhou then said: “The Chinese people have a long-cherished space dream. From Shenzhou, Chang’e and Yutu to Tiangong and Tianwen, these beautiful names are the crystallization of their infinite longing for the distant stars and unknown space. The Mars rover of Tianwen-1 is named Zhurong after the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology. Fire brought warmth and brightness to the ancestors of humankind, and fire lit up human civilization. Naming China’s first Mars rover after the god of fire signifies igniting the flame of China’s inter-planetary exploration, inspiring those working in this field to surpass themselves and pursue space dreams.

“The universe is also a dream for all humankind. China has always committed itself to peaceful use of space, carried out relevant international exchange and cooperation and shared outcomes in space exploration. With the spirit of seeking benefits for all mankind, China will continue to advance international cooperation in an open and inclusive manner and make greater contributions to the lofty cause of exploring the mysteries of the universe and promoting peace and development for mankind.” (His full remarks are here.)

Compare this beautiful explanation to the pathetic commentary from that NATO outpost in the U.S., the Atlantic Council, in the Fast Thinking daily nuggets it puts out, today entitled, “Mars With Chinese Characteristics.” What does China’s achievement on Mars “mean for the great-power space race?” it asks. “What are the military implications?” It then consults one of its “space experts” who pontificates that Beijing will “continue to challenge U.S. superiority” in space, and warns that if China “pioneers activity beyond low-Earth orbit…the trajectory of U.S. security and prosperity in space comes into question,” calling for the US to lead a NATO-style force into space. (The entire Fast Thinking daily item is here.)

Mark Carney: Africa Will Get Rich with Carbon Offsets by Rejecting Development

May 19, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal

Mark Carney: Africa Will Get Rich with Carbon Offsets by Rejecting Development

May 18, 2021 (EIRNS)–Speaking at “The Road to COP26: Opportunities, Challenges and the African Transition to Net-Zero” on April 22, Mark Carney spelled out his plan for mass death in Africa and the occupation of Africa by Green police — the modern version of colonial occupiers.

From Carney’s answers to a question about Africa getting funds from “carbon offsets,” he said that the “carbon offset market” will be set up by the end of the year. Africa will get rich, he said, by providing these offsets to western companies who want to buy “offsets” for their carbon emissions. Carney said he was impressed by the “incredible service that is provided by the existing national capital in Africa, and the opportunity from emissions reduction, and to grow that through reforestation.”

What does the madman mean? By not developing its resources, and by not cutting down any trees — in fact, reforesting existing agricultural lands — Africa will be paid huge sums in “carbon offsets.” So, by not developing, they will get money for “development,” remaining forever without modern infrastructure, industry, or agriculture.

Carney: “90% of demand from carbon offsets will come from advanced economies, and 90% of supply will come from the developing economies, including Africa. This is a market which could scale rapidly to $100 billion per annum.”

Of course, the “advanced economies” could not trust the ‘wogs’ to live up to their promises, so a new kind of colonial overlords will be required. Says Carney: “Of course, there must be integrity around the offsets, and a degree of permanence of these offsets, with verification and monitoring of that permanence. This is a private market, so the offsets will be bought by private companies, like Microsoft. They are not going to make these commitments unless they know that in Rwanda or other places in Africa these offsets are permanent.”

Who, one may ask, will have the responsibility to “verify and monitor” that no African country breaks it’s business-contract to not develop its resources or clear forests to build factories, farms, or new cities? The Green colonial masters will be more than willing to perform that important task.

The Great Task of Real Infrastructure: Modern Healthcare Systems in Every Nation

May 18, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Healthcare, Healthcare, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

The Great Task of Real Infrastructure: Modern Healthcare Systems in Every Nation

May 17 (EIRNS)—The great building task for the industrialized and industrializing nations is clear. Building modern hospital and well-staffed healthcare systems in every nation on Earth will meet such an urgent need to preserve human life—one that cannot be met by any other attack on the pandemic—that it alone deserves the name of an infrastructure platform for the further progress of the human race. And it is an agreement among the most technologically advanced and economically developed nations which can launch such a global mission, and which is no less ambitious than a Moon-Mars mission, necessarily involving the same beneficial effects of technological breakthroughs.

If this task is taken up, as proposed by the Schiller Institute and Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, 10 MW of new power will be needed to supply every set of hospitals with 1,000 beds, provide a lot of fresh water to them, heat and light the housing for their staff—hundreds of gigawatts of new power, and widely distributed throughout the developing nations in particular. World food production will effectively have to double since “food is health,” to quote Committee leader Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Approximations of Tennessee Valley Authority-scale development projects will evolve from the projects undertaken for the best of disease monitoring, testing and above all modern treatment capacities.

A new nuclear technology platform is waiting to be put in factory production to supply this huge project: small modular nuclear reactors. NuScale, the only company with a prototype approved by regulators thus far, is being offered the cooperation in production it needs by the Canadian firm Prodigy Clean Energy, while other Canadian companies and provinces develop their own small modular reactor (SMR) projects. Prodigy intends to build SMR marine power stations in shipyards. The Danish company Seaborg Technologies plans to fit ships with small nuclear reactors, to send power to countries across the developing sector, and believes it can start providing that power by 2025, according to Neutron Bytes blog May 14. This is a 100 MW molten salt-cooled reactor. NuScale’s target for 60 MW operating reactor modules is 2026. Russia is already capable of producing small floating nuclear reactors.

All the other target dates can be brought forward as soon as the technologically leading nations—China, the United States, Russia in particular—agree to jointly generate credit for the modern health systems to care for pandemic victims.

Standing against this mission for humanity, is the new Malthusianism which wants to sacrifice human life to “the planet” and a myth that human science and technology are impotent and destructive. As made clear already in 2019 in an article in the medical journal The Lancet by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 5 billion people who don’t have modern healthcare can’t have it because “if we do it in a model that has been developed in rich countries, it will break the climate—and we can’t afford that.”

Nor are we, say the Green New Dealers, permitted to double world food production to cope with widespread food insecurity and famine—and food is health. According to the investors’ group FAIRR, “The oil in the ground was being mispriced. It doesn’t have value. It’s obsolete, and therefore it’s stranded. The same is going to happen for agriculture and animal agriculture.”

The same Green New Dealers nonetheless think we should scour the Earth for vast, now unknown supplies of rare and strategic minerals and metals, in order to build billions of completely unneeded electric vehicles over the next three years—and they call their charging stations “infrastructure”!

Scrapping the Green New Deal, we can build a real new infrastructure platform for the world’s people and the economies of nations, as the Schiller Institute proposes to the Global Health Conference in Rome this week.

South Africa’s DIRCO Posts ‘China’s Shared Future for Mankind’

May 18, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in BRICS updates, China, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, New Silk Road / BRI updates, So. Africa

South Africa’s DIRCO Posts ‘China’s Shared Future for Mankind’

May 17 (EIRNS)—A lengthy op-ed from March 29 for the Independent Online (IOL) website, highlighting the benefits to Africa from its recent relationship with China was posted on March 30 on South Africa’s website for the Department for International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), the country’s foreign ministry. The op-ed is by DIRCO’s Deputy Director-General for Asia and the Middle East Anil Sooklal, who holds the rank of ambassador. He is South Africa’s Sherpa to the BRICS, the G20, and IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa), and the IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation). The article is headlined “China’s Shared Future for Mankind.”

Striking a very non-combative but distinctly pro-China tone from the start, Ambassador Sooklal begins with the story of China’s “idea of a community with a shared future for mankind,” from their first appearance on the world scene in 2013, with the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, writing, “The concept, or what is now considered as a vision, calls for the fostering of international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation, and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.”

China recognizes that this vision of “shared future” runs across the grain of the existing uni-polar order, the ambassador says, and they have not chosen confrontation, but rather doubled down on the multi-polar vision. “While there is greater convergence among countries and regions, there is also a worrying trend towards increasing political divergence in the international community. This does not augur well for the promotion of global peace, security, economic growth and development, and hence for China, working with the major players and other countries has become all the more important towards sustaining economic globalization, maintaining the system of global governance and ultimately promoting a community of shared future, based on equal opportunity and access to economic wealth, development and growth.”

The foreign ministry’s posting of the ambassador’s op-ed contributes to South Africa’s internal discussions and orientation as it struggles to emerge from the pandemic. Watching from their cockpit at the “top” of the African Global South, its decision and direction will have a major effect on the entire Sub-Saharan third of the huge continent. In the month since it was written, the explosion of the Mozambique terror has shaken the region, and in the days following, South Africa announced that it would order COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia. The appearance of Sooklal’s article on the foreign ministry website is an indication of the internal fight currently raging, and also an indication of which way many would like to see it go.

Bolivian President Arce: Only a Global Solution Can Defeat COVID Pandemic

May 17, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Agriculture, Bolivia, China, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), Russia, The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

May 16 (EIRNS)–Speaking May 13 at an international forum organized by his foreign ministry, Bolivian President Luis Arce Catacora emphasized to his audience that the only way to defeat the coronavirus pandemic is through a global program, which, as his government has been emphasizing, must address the issue of vaccine inequity. For example, he said, Bolivia has purchased vaccines, but isn’t getting enough doses delivered because “production is circumscribed to specific countries,” or because some countries have restricted exports of vaccines for different reasons. “We’re not criticizing this,” he said, “but let’s be clear that we’re headed straight for disaster, because this is happening even to countries that have the ability to pay for vaccines…. Since the pandemic is a global evil, the solution must be global, and to get out of this, we all have to act; otherwise, no one will be safe….It’s as if there were an apartheid in which the weakest [countries] are being condemned and killed,” EFE news service reported him as saying May 13.

The Foreign Ministry forum, entitled “Waiving Patents and Considerations on Intellectual Property in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” was focused, as the title indicates, on calling for suspending vaccine patents and intellectual property to ensure transfer of technology so that developing nations can produce vaccines. Officials from the UN Development Program, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and diplomats from South America and India, among others, attended. This is a campaign that Bolivia began two months ago and has vowed to take to every international forum and multilateral organization for debate. It should be seen as a useful adjunct to the urgent proposal of the Schiller Institute and the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites to build a global healthcare system and new economic order to competently address the pandemic. A foreign ministry press release estimates that the majority of vaccines produced in 2021 will be insufficient to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population, due to vaccine hoarding by the industrialized nations, and thus vaccinations of poorer nations’ populations aren’t likely to be completed before 2023.

Domestically, Arce has launched a campaign to inoculate all eligible Bolivians as soon as possible and is working closely with Russia and China to obtain vaccines. By the end of next week, Bolivia will have received 500,000 doses of Sputnik V vaccine and one million doses of China’s Sinopharm and is making arrangements to obtain Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines as well. On the occasion of the most recent Sputnik V arrival on May 15, in the company of Russian ambassador Mikhail Ledenev, he remarked that “we have to step on the accelerator…these vaccines are the doses of hope for many people…thanks to the diplomacy among nations, above all with Russia and China, Bolivians will continue with the vaccination campaign,” the Bolivian Information Agency (ABI) reported him saying. Pointing to the difficult situation the world is facing because of new waves of COVID, he warned, “if our nations don’t take action and ensure an equitable distribution of doses, we’ll see many more waves, placing humanity at ever greater risk.”

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