Economic development updates

Nigerian President: Lake Chad Water Transfer Is Imperative

April 5, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General updates, World Land-Bridge updates

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?’

April 5, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal

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.”

Epidemiologists’ `Math’ Says Vaccinate More Before Any Boosters

August 22, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Healthcare, Healthcare

Epidemiologists’ `Math’ Says Vaccinate More Before Any Boosters–

Aug. 22 (EIRNS) — A low-key op-ed by two epidemiologists, “Boosters won’t stop the Delta variant: Here’s the math”, was published back on Aug. 15 in the Washington Post. While focused on the United States, if applied to the entire world’s population it appears to provide substantiation for focusing all available and contracted vaccine supplies on the basic vaccination of citizens before giving any booster shots. The premise of their analysis: “Many vaccinated people are asking whether it’s time to get a booster dose. But the math behind the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19 can help us see that it’s not.”

The argument: The basic reproductive number R0 or the original virus in this pandemic — the number of people likely to be infected by each infectious person if there is no immunity in the population — was 3; of the Delta variant, it is estimated at 6-9. Re is the effective reproductive number, which is R0 multiplied by the share of the population which is susceptible to the disease, and which must be kept at 1 or lower to keep the epidemic from spreading. The susceptible portion of the population can be expressed by [1-xv], where 1 is the whole population (or adult population), x is the percentage of people fully vaccinated and v is the vaccines’ effectiveness. Then the effective reproductive number of the virus, Re, is R0 times [1-xv]. This Re is a direct measure of how fast and how far the Delta variant infections, hospitalizations and deaths spread.

Taking the Delta variant’s R0 as 8 and the vaccine effectiveness as 85%, Re would be just 1.2 if the entire target population were fully vaccinated. At 52% fully vaccinated (where the United States is now), Re for Delta is about 4, worse than the original virus variant when no one at all was immune. If a booster shot is assumed to raise vaccine effectiveness to 95%, then Re with the currently vaccinated population, if they were all to be boosted, is still about 4.

But if 75% of the target population were to become fully vaccinated, the Re number drops below 3. If 85% were vaccinated, with no boosters, Re would be about 2.4, even having assumed an R0 value which is near the top of the range for the Delta variant.

In other words, there is a huge field for increasing x, the proportion of people vaccinated; relative to the small range for increasing v, the vaccines’ effectiveness, by booster shots; and this determines how the spread of the Delta variant of COVID can be arrested. It would seem to apply to the population of all the world’s nations, as well as to that of Americans.

The authors are Prof. Eleanor Murray, Boston Univ. School of Public Health; and her doctoral student Ruby Barnard-Mayers.

Schiller Institute Aug. 21 Afghanistan Conference: Rush the Economic Projects; Talk with The Government-in-Formation

August 22, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Economic development updates, General updates, Our conferences

Aug. 21 (EIRNS)–The Schiller Institute hosted an international webinar today, “Now, More Urgent Than Ever: Afghanistan—Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind,’ bringing together speakers with wide experience, from six nations—United States, Germany, Pakistan, Canada, and Italy. Three main themes were struck repeatedly in the dialogue: Toss out the “endless wars” paradigm completely, talk to the new Afghan government-in-the-making, and get economic projects going.

“Push for quick economic development,” was the advice by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her opening remarks. Saying that what’s happened in Afghanistan marks “the end of a system,” maybe not as big as the fall of the Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, but as portentous. There has been a deep-seated problem of conducting never-ending wars, and geopolitical games. This must stop, and it goes beyond Afghanistan as such. She stressed also that, “It is high time to change the axiomatic assumptions about Russia and China.”

Besides Zepp LaRouche on the panel, there were Lt. Col. (ret.) Ulrich Scholz (Germany), a military and philosophy expert; Pino Arlacchi (Italy), former head of the UN Office for Drug Control (1997-2002), now professor at Sassari University; Hassan Daud Butt (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment; Ray McGovern (U.S.) former CIA Analyst and co-founder of the VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), and Nipa Banerjee (Canada), Professor at the University of Ottawa. A question was taken up from Khalid Lattif, Director of an institute in Pakistan.

The co-moderators of today’s event, Dennis Speed and Diane Sare, pointed out that today’s discussion is a continuation of the dialogue of the July 31 Schiller Institute event, “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History After the Failed Regime-Change Era,” and several of the same individuals are involved. Sare noted the importance of the Schiller Institute in restoring the dialogue process, saying that, “people are losing the ability to have a dialogue” these days. Instead, we have ideological hysteria, as seen right now, with the fixation on accusations and blame over the logistics of the Kabul evacuation process, with no vision for the people and the future.

Within two weeks of the Schiller Institute’s July 31 event, presenting a development perspective for Afghanistan and the region, the 20 year U.N./NATO military action came to an end. The Taliban took over Kabul. Today there were meetings in Kabul among Taliban political director Abdul Ghani Baradar, former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation head Abdullah Abdullah, and others toward an eventual formation of a government, to be announced some time shortly after August 31, when the evacuation period concludes.

What we don’t need now, said Arlacchi, is “Talibanology”—speculating on their intentions and hypotheticals. Many others agreed, making the point that the intentions to be focused upon, are those of the major powers: What do the U.S. and the European Union intend to do? Will they, for example, work together with other major powers of Russia, China, and India as well as immediate neighbors of Afghanistan—Iran and Pakistan, and the Central Asian nations to the north, on humanitarian aid and economic initiatives? One in three of the 39 million people in Afghanistan are food insecure. There are dozens of thousands of dislocated people, and thousands fleeing the nation. All this, with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing.

Arlacchi reported his own past experience on a wool factory project in Kandahar Province, involving successful negotiations with the Taliban governor. In the July 31 dialogue, Arlacchi reported on the success in nearly eradicating all opium poppy cultivation over the period 1998 to 2000, through his UN program, in conjunction with the Taliban. Opium production then roared back after the U.S./NATO 2001 invasion. Arlacchi said emphatically today, “We should start to make plans on narcotics elimination” right now.

On the question of accountability of the Taliban new government and projects, Ray McGovern raised the point that you can and should have a truthful monitoring process, which could come, for example from the United Nations. He raised the specific example of how the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), set up by the U.S. Congress some years back, actually kept truthful accounts on what the U.S. and NATO were doing in Afghanistan, which documented that U.S. officials were lying about progress there all along. Prof. Banerjee strongly agreed on this point. These Inspector General documents were published in 2019 by the Washington Post, described by McGovern as “the one useful thing done by the Washington Post in the last 20 years.” Principal author Craig Whitlock, has just released his new book, titled, “The Afghanistan Papers; a Secret History of the War.”

The features of economic development for the region were summarized today by Daud, whose province in Pakistan borders Afghanistan, which has “national endowments, minerals, water, hard working people.” He stressed that, “when the Afghanistan government is strong and stable, it can reach out to China,” and work with the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in which it already has observer status. It can become “a crossroads of the region.”

In the past, this very region was referred to as a “land of 1000 cities,” Zepp-LaRouche stated in concluding the discussion. The idea of the New Silk Road is again to create conditions for hundreds and thousands of new cities—science centers of all kinds. The old paradigm is crashing down, not just in Afghanistan. War can no longer be a means of solving problems.

One in Three ‘Food Insecure’ In Afghanistan

August 22, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Agriculture, Economic development updates, General updates

One in Three ‘Food Insecure’ In Afghanistan–

Aug. 21 (EIRNS)–One in three people in Afghanistan is “food insecure,” that is either with insufficient, or unreliable daily food, or both, according to the World Food Program Representative in Kabul this week, Mary-Ellen McGroarty. She spoke with AFP, and attributed the situation to strife, displacement of people from their homes, and bad weather, which she called “climate change.” There are 39 million people in the country, with masses more displacement currently taking place.

The Afghan wheat crop was down 40% this last crop year, under very dry conditions. The price of wheat in the country today is up 24% over the price averaged over the prior five years. Livestock have also been badly affected.

The WFP curtailed its operations since the Kabul changing situation since Aug. 14, but intends to ramp up again. The WFP is putting out the word that resources are needed. The WFP gave out food and aid in Afghanistan in the past week to 400,000 people overall, it was reported Aug. 20 by WFP official Frances Kennedy, to TASS. But there is a need for full-scale operations. She said, of the Afghanistan situation, “In the first six months of this year, WFP delivered food and nutrition assistance to 5.5 million people. WFP needs US$200 million urgently to continue its operations until the end of the year.”

China has pledged to send food, reported the Afghani Ambassador Javid Ahmad Qaem, on Aug. 18, in a CGTN interview. He said that he is working on finding transportation for it to reach his country. Given the air carrier problems in Kabul, he is seeking train transport via Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which for food, in any case, is far less costly than air cargo.

Also, Amb. Qaem said that the WHO has promised to get a million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Afghanistan.

US-China Ag Dialogue: ‘Be Happy Together With Others, Rather Than Trying To Be Happy Alone’

April 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, China, Economic development updates, Finance, General updates, Global Diplomacy, United States

Apr. 2 (EIRNS)–On April 1, the third of four high level US-China Agriculture Dialogues took place, lasting almost 3 hours, titled, “Agriculture Education Dialogue: Together, how can the U.S and China transform agriculture?” The dialogue brought together the Deans and Presidents of Peking Univ., Nanjing Agricultural Univ., China Agricultural Univ., Zhejiang Univ., with UC Davis, Ohio State, the Tuskegee Institute, Oklahoma State and Iowa State Univ. The overall sponsor was the Missouri-based US Heartland China Association (USHCA). The topic was the state and future of agricultural education — extension services for the farmers themselves in China and the US, and educating students for careers in agriculture.
Among the standout presentations, Prof. Sun Qixin of China Agricultural Univ., discussed the recent 40 year history of Chinese and American colleges exchanging students and training students together — he called this of “strategic importance.” Quoting President Xi, he explained the identity of food security and poverty alleviation for both China and for the whole world. He said that China’s development policy was to make sure that “we have a good environment for the Chinese people — China will never be a threat to other countries.” Quoting Mencius, he said, “It is better to be happy together with others, rather than trying to be happy alone.” He said that Yuan Longping is a friend of his, and that he had met with Dr. Borlaug in 1992 and in 2002.

Prof. Huang Jikun of Peking Univ. stressed the many hundreds of ag science scholarly papers written jointly by Chinese and American researchers — written in both English and in Chinese — the authors pursuing food science with a single universal purpose.

Prof. Kevin Chen, of the China Academy of Rural Development at Zhejiang Univ. described how the Chinese government has 1 million farm extension workers, serving 200 million farm families with small farms, many with aging farmers. He reported that only 40% of the farms have access to the internet — a problem to be solved. They have formed NAECP — the “National Cloud Platform for Grassroots Ag Tech Extension in China.”
            Among the Americans, Dr. Walter A. Hill, the Dean of the College of Ag, Environment, and Nutrition Sciences of Tuskegee University, made the greatest contribution. He framed his talk on the notion from WEB DuBois of “double consciousness” — seeing oneself and the world from “two sets of eyes,” one’s own and those of the oppressor. He said, “We need the brilliant young minds discussing China trade.” He reported that 90% of American farms are small farms, and most are losing money…” Speaking of the high quality of American Land Grant colleges (compared to the Ivy League), he said, “Big is not better. It’s the smaller that can produce the geniuses.” He called on Chinese universities to collaborate with Black colleges: “Let’s get Chinese to come here (to Tuskegee), and to work with us in a new way — I challenge you!”
            Stressing the rich common history of US-China collaboration in education, Prof. Zhu Jing, Dean at the Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU), reminded the audience that NAU was founded in 1921 by American ag economist and agricultural missionary for the American Presbyterian Mission, John Lossing Buck.
            The American speakers uniformly stressed sustainable agriculture and CO2 emission reduction (“climate-smart agriculture’). The world food crisis in the former colonial sector and the famine was not discussed, and only Prof. Sun discussed the China miracle of eliminating all extreme poverty in China. What was documented was a very deep 100 year history — continuing into the present — of the China-US joint passion for and science of food production improvement and expansion. The Dialogue was introduced by Chris Chinn, the Missouri Director of Agriculture, and by Tom Peterson, the Commissioner of the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture.

Argentina Seeks China’s Help in Negotiations With the IMF; Talk of Joint Five-Year Infrastructure Plan

April 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Argentina, China, Economic development updates, Finance, General, General updates, Global Diplomacy

April 2 (EIRNS)–Argentine ambassador to China, Sabino Vaca Narvaja, has met with high level Chinese government officials in Beijing “to ask for that country’s support in the national government’s negotiations with the IMF, seeking an extension of payment terms and reduction in interest rates,” the daily Dangdai reported April 1, citing embassy sources. Dangdai generally reports on Sino-Argentine relations, and touches on China’s relations with other Ibero-American countries to a lesser degree.

The Telam news agency reported that Vaca Narvaja met with the Foreign Ministry’s director of the Latin American and Caribbean Department, Cai Wei, with whom he discussed President Alberto Fernandez’s desire to refinance the $45 billion standby loan contracted by former President Mauricio Macri in 2018. Further citing embassy sources, Dangdai reported that Vaca Narvaja’s meeting included a discussion of the invitation to President Fernandez to make a state visit to China, now scheduled for early May, during which he is expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to join the Belt and Road Initiative. A review of the two nations’ bilateral agenda, Dangdai noted, focused on a series of infrastructure investment projects which both governments prioritize and which would be integrated into a joint Five Year Plan. Especially interesting was the discussion on the use of national currencies for trade and investment, including “an evaluation of productive and industrial projects that could be financed in renminbi, a currency which could be used subsequently to meet foreign payments to China.”

It should be noted that the IMF’s 2018 standby loan, which was originally for $57 billion, but whose last tranche Fernandez refused to accept after he became President, was granted by then IMF Managing Director Christine “Lady Gaga” Lagarde largely for political reasons to prop up the sagging Macri government and the brutal austerity program he was implementing in hopes he might be able to be reelected. Argentine authorities are in fact conducting a criminal investigation into the fraudulent way the loan was contracted and used–most of it ending up as capital flight and vastly expanding the amount of debt Argentina cannot pay. The loan violated Argentina’s constitutional norms as well as the IMF’s own internal regulations. Macri himself, his two former Central Bank presidents and two former finance ministers, are all under investigation.

Now More Urgent Than Ever: Afghanistan Is an Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind

August 18, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Afghanistan, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Our conferences

~ Schiller Institute Webcast: Saturday, August 21, 12pm EDT ~

PDF of this invitation

Aug. 18 – With nearly all policy-makers and strategic analysts in the trans-Atlantic sector of the world in a clueless state of utter chaos and hysteria over the developments in Afghanistan, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today convoked an urgent international seminar for this coming Saturday, August 21 to pursue the only available solution to the crisis: peace through development. The seminar will continue the prescient discussion held by the Schiller Institute on July 31, with many of the same panelists, as well as new ones.

Zepp-LaRouche drew a crystal clear picture in a webcast interview yesterday, Afghanistan: Opportunity for a New Epoch.

“First of all, I do not agree with the hysteria of the Western media that this is the end of the world. The first thing that must be stated, is that it ends 40 years of war for the Afghani people, and if people have any sense of what it means to live in such a long war, all the suffering of the civilians, all the terrible things people had to endure, in terms of drone attacks, in terms of anxiety, I think, first of all, it’s very good that the war has ended.

“I think it is, on the contrary, the real chance to integrate Afghanistan into a regional economic development perspective, which is basically defined by the Belt and Road Initiative of China. There is a very clear agreement of Russia and China to cooperate in dealing with this situation. The interest of the Central Asian republics is to make sure there is stability and economic development; and there is the possibility to extend the CPEC, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, into Afghanistan, into Central Asia. So, I think it’s a real opportunity, but it does require a complete change in approach.”

Zepp-LaRouche continued: “This is an epochal change… I think that if the European nations and the United States would understand that this is a unique chance, if they cooperate, rather than fight Russia and China and their influence in the region, and if they join hands in the economic development there… then this can become a very positive turning point, not only for Afghanistan, but also for the whole world.”

Zepp-LaRouche made a special appeal to the United States in remarks earlier in the day on Aug. 17: “The United States must go back to the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers and the initial period—such as John Quincy Adams–that the aim of the United States is not to chase foreign monsters, but to build alliances. John Quincy Adams said that the United States should have alliances of perfectly sovereign republics, and this is now the moment to really do that. The idea is to not oppose China linking Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative, but rather see it as an opportunity to cooperate, and stop this geopolitical confrontation which can only lead to catastrophe.

She concluded: “That’s the kind of discussion which we have to catalyze.”

Here is the video archive link of the July 31, 2021 Schiller Institute conference on “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History after the Failed Regime-Change Era”

Those speakers included:

Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder and President of The Schiller Institute; Pino Arlacchi (Italy), Sociology Professor at the Sassari University, Former Executive Director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and former European Parliament Rapporteur on Afghanistan; H.E. Ambassador Hassan Shoroosh (Afghanistan), Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Canada; H.E. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva (Russian Federation), Deputy Permanent Representative at the Mission of The Russian Federation to the UN; Dr. Wang Jin (China), Fellow with The Charhar Institute; Ray McGovern (U.S.), Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA-ret.), Co-Founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Hassan Daud (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment; and Hussein Askary (Sweden/Iraq), Southwest Asia Coordinator for the Schiller Institute.

Implement LaRouche’s 2010 Rebuilding Program in Haiti Now: The 2021 Earthquake Can Not Be Allowed To Be A Further Descent into Hell!

August 18, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Haiti, New Silk Road / BRI updates, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, United States, World Land-Bridge updates

Had American statesman Lyndon LaRouche’s program to rebuild Haiti been implemented, in response to the devastating Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed between 250,000 and 300,000 people, this impoverished nation would not be suffering the level of death and destruction so far wrought by the August 14 earthquake that measured 7.2 on the Richter scale. And the carnage will become much greater as a series of tropical storms hit, which are expected to be rolling in, perhaps one after another.

As of August 17, reports are that 1,900 people are dead, 10,000 injured, and 37,000 homes have been destroyed. Homes, schools, supermarkets, and roads were leveled in the southern and western parts of the country. People are terrified. They have once again been abandoned by the United States and its international partners, left to perish in extreme poverty, disease, and misery.

Lyndon LaRouche immediately responded to the 2010 earthquake by calling for an emergency reconstruction program for Haiti, to which, he said, the U.S. had a special responsibility. He called on the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to first deploy to rescue and relocate up to 1 million homeless Haitians from Port-au-Prince to higher ground before the rainy season arrived and unleashed a dangerous health and sanitation crisis for these destitute citizens; he then proposed a comprehensive program to focus on building infrastructure—for sanitation, water management, irrigation, earthquake-proof housing, transportation, agriculture, etc.

LaRouche also recommended that the U.S. sign a 25-year treaty with Haiti, “a treaty agreement to reestablish the efficient sovereignty of the nation of Haiti, after the destructive effect of this and preceding difficulties. We make a contract with the government, as a treaty agreement, between the United States and Haiti, to assure the rebuilding of their country, in a form in which it will actually be a functioning country which can survive.” Those proposals are available here.

President Barack Obama rejected LaRouche’s proposals, and instead removed crucial economic and military aid, encouraging what became known as the “Republic of NGOs” — a large unwieldy network of foreign NGOs that had a lot of money to throw around but did nothing of any real substance.

Years later, in 2017, when China’s Southwest Engineering Municipal Design Research Institute joined with the Haitian firm Bayti Ayiti to propose a $30 billion program to completely rebuild Haiti, with $4.7 billion to rebuild the capital, Port-au-Prince, with sanitation infrastructure, housing, and transportation, the IMF reportedly stepped in—EIR was told at the time—to make sure the proposal went nowhere.

On March 10, 2010, EIR published a 20-page package which detailed the programmatic solutions Haiti required and identified those monetarist political forces committed to keeping in place the Malthusian economic policies that had made Haiti so vulnerable to disaster, and which remain in effect today. That package is available here.

South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, Pledges Lunar Lander by 2030

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General updates, Space updates

Mar. 29 (EIRNS)–The lunar initiative was made by Moon in a speech March 25 at the country’s Naro Space Center. He also stressed the push to give more support to commercial space enterprises, but distinguished between their contributions in space services, such as launch vehicles, the importance of building a space industry, versus the long-term government exploration programs.
“We will actively push for challenging space exploration projects that build on the foundation achieved by developing a Korean launch vehicle,” Moon said. “By 2030, we will achieve our dream of landing on the Moon by using our own launch vehicle. The technological prowess, experience and confidence that will be gained from exploring the Moon, the first step in space exploration, will provide a solid foundation for space development.” This stress on an indigenous rocket is a result of an engine failure during a satellite launch, on a rocket with a Russian stage, which led to years of recriminations.
Last month, the government pledged to spend 615 billion won ($553.1 million) on the space program this year. Given South Korea’s industrial capability it would seem that putting more resources into the space program could accelerate the lunar program.

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