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Roscosmos Head Rogozin Calls for Global Cooperation Against Space Threats to the Planet

June 17, 2021by madeleine in Space updates

The head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, spoke yesterday at the Global Space Exploration Conference 2021 taking place in St. Petersburg from June 14-18, and he called for international cooperation to address the dangers posed by asteroids and comets that could collide with the Earth.

Rogozin is a close ally of President Putin, and his remarks were well-timed to issue a call for US-Russian cooperation right before the Biden-Putin summit. “There is no technology that would make it possible to change the trajectory and ward off the danger for our Earth,” Rogozin stated. “It is necessary to create these technologies, but not a single country will be able to do that alone. This is a common task to protect our planet… The most important task is how to protect the planet from hazardous collisions with celestial bodies that may ruin civilization.”

Rogozin’s call for cooperation to address threats coming from space, resembles Lyndon LaRouche’s long-standing policy proposal for the Strategic Defense of the Earth.

Space science and exploration, recent breakthroughs in controlled thermonuclear fusion are the science drivers for a growing and prosperous human race. Man is surely a galactic species, and the realization of that idea has profound implications for everything from education and healthcare, to the potential for new Beethovens and Mozarts. That issue of scientific and artistic creativity will be central to the upcoming Schiller Institute/ICLC conference.

For the Common Good of all People, not the Rules Benefiting the Few!

International Schiller Institute/ICLC online conference, June 26/ 27, 2021

RSVP today →

Italy and China Sign Groundbreaking MOU on Belt and Road Initiative

March 24, 2019by Jason Ross in New Silk Road / BRI updates, World Land-Bridge updates

[Photo source:  

Italy and China have signed the famous Memorandum of Understanding on Belt and Road cooperation Friday, together with 10 economic agreements and 18 institutional agreements (19 with the BRI MOU). The MOU is a milestone and is said to already be being studied by other countries that want to follow Italy.

The MOU says at the outset that

“The Parties will work together within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to translate mutual complementary strengths into advantages for practical cooperation and sustainable growth, supporting synergies between the Belt and Road Initiative and priorities identified in the Investment Plan for Europe and the Trans-European Networks, bearing in mind discussions in the EU China Connectivity Platform.”

With the MOU, Italy is the first large industrial economy to join the Belt and Road, as Chinese media proudly stress. The signature of the MOU occurred in spite of trans-Atlantic pressures and open hostility by Italy’s “partners” in the EU. Italian Minister for Economic Development Luigi Di Maio, who signed the MOU together with his counterpart He Lifeng, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated that

“today is for us a very important day, in which the Made in Italy is winning, Italian firms are winning. We made a step to help our economy to grow. Italy came first with China.”

The economic agreements include: a strategic partnership between the Italian Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and the Bank of China to finance Italian firms in China; a MOU between the Italian oil company ENI and the Bank of China for explorations in China; Ansaldo Energia signed two agreements, one to develop gas turbines with UGTC and another one for the supply of a turbine to Shanghai Electric and Benxi Steel; the Port Authorities of Trieste and Genoa signed an agreement with the construction giant CCCC. Cassa Depositi and the natural gas utility Snam signed a deal with the Silk Road Fund for investments along the Silk Road; the Institute for Foreign Trade signed a deal with Suning to create a platform to promote Italian lifestyle in China; and the Danieli group signed a contract with China Camc Engineering for the construction of a steel plant in Azerbaijan.

The institutional agreements, besides the MOU on the BRI cooperation, include cooperation on innovative startups and electronic trade, as well as cooperation between the two space agencies, agriculture and culture, health and media.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella told the business leaders that, once again, there is a “culture of growth.” He said, “we can have confidence in both countries” that there will be development. The Memorandum of Understanding has been worked on since last September, and the cooperation between Italy and China will not only facilitate our own development, but will “enable global growth.” He said that ‘the globalized world needs more consultations” between nations, in all areas, especially trade, space and culture.

In an interview with Chinese journalists, Italian President Mattarella spoke at length about the ancient bonds between Italy and China and the future perspective for cooperation. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, and this partnership is “built on solid foundations, inspired by natural convergences between two very ancient civilizations,” Mattarella was quoted by Xinhua.

Mattarella underscored the “growing and fruitful interaction between our peoples, who are so similar in terms of industriousness and creativity.”

Xi’s visit is an expression of the “solidity of the bond and the mutual respect” between Italy and China, he said.

After some lip service to transparency and openness, Mattarella said that on the cultural front, the heritage of both Italy and China “arouses admiration everywhere in the world,” and this heritage could be a great development driver. He referred to the mechanism of forging twinning relationships between the two countries’ World Heritage Sites.

Speaking of how the Italy-China partnership contributes to a better and more stable world, the President said that Italy is committed to safeguarding peace and rules-based multilateralism, and is pleased to see the two sides have consensus on that.

The Italian press agency ANSA reported that Mattarella expressed the wish that, with the visit of President Xi, “agreements, ideas, projects can come out, in which the Italian-Chinese partnership could develop further, including for a larger benefit of the collaboration between Europe and Asia, which needs an ever bigger volume of sustainable investments in infrastructure, to ensure a future of well-being and peace for all peoples of the two continents.”

Italian PM Conte Outflanks EU in Parliament Speech on China Policy

March 21, 2019by Jason Ross in New financial order updates, New Silk Road / BRI updates

In the foreign policy debate in the Chamber of Deputies Tuesday morning, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte judoed all critics of the upcoming agreement between Italy and China on the Belt and Road by describing the upcoming MOU as so pro-European that it complies with EU guidelines and principles and values as “nobody has so far done in Europe.”

Conte said that the EU “will be strengthened by the Italian approach.” The MOU is not a treaty but a “programmatic agreement outlining targets in the framework of the BRI, which is a large project of international connectivity that Italy has expressed interest for, already back in 2016.” Italy’s interest “is legitimate” and responds to its “national interests.” Italy wants to increase its export in a “market of giant dimensions,” increase investments in infrastructures and “enjoy the natural economic advantages of the New Silk Road.”

The negotiations for the MOU have lasted many months and the text is “fully in line with the EU strategy.” Furthermore: “Nobody in the EU has done as much as we have” to advance EU policy vis-à-vis China. The MOU promotes European principles of mutual advantages, reciprocity, intellectual property, level playing field, etc. “Our approach to the BRI is the most far-sighted and effective ever adopted in the EU.”

In his reply, after a debate in which the opposition distinguished itself in hysteria, infantilism and incompetence, Conte reiterated the “finalities” of the MOU with China:  “First, balance trade relations. Our exports to China are far behind exports of our partners in the EU. Second, the BRI is a big project of infrastructure connectivity which offers opportunities to our companies. We have leading companies in know-how and technology which will be able to participate. Third, the BRI is of such a significance as to redefine major trade routes and we don’t want to miss any chance to be part of them. Fourth, protecting our strategic infrastructure is a primary, non-negotiable objective.”

UAE’s Sarah al-Amiri on the “Hope” Mars Mission

February 13, 2021by madeleine in General, Space updates

The following are the closing remarks of an 18-minute presentation given in 2017 by Sarah al-Amiri, today the chair of the UAE’s Space Agency, on “A Mars Mission of HOPE.” The UAE Space Agency just succeeded in placing an orbiter around Mars.

“… And it’s called Hope for a reason above and beyond the science that it is contributing. Today our region, the Middle East, is filled with turmoil. It is a region that is going through a few of its darkest hours. And what we are doing at the Hope Emirates Mars mission is providing a message. The Middle East is made up of over 50% youth. This project Hope is being run by a team that is under 35, a team that is made up of 34% women. The average age is 27. An entire nation is putting its hope on a team of youth, and presenting a message to the region. 

“This mission is also called Hope, because we are contributing to the global understanding of a planet’s data. We are going above and beyond the turmoil that is now defining our region, and becoming positive contributors to science. Science to me is the most international form of collaboration. It is limitless. It is borderless. And it’s run by passions of individuals for the benefit of human understanding. 

“Today, I’d like you all to do something with me. I want everyone to lift up their finger and cover a region of the sky. Look up at your finger. The region of your fingertip that is blocking the sky. The Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at a region that small, and it came up with this image. This image, the dots of light that you see—they’re not stars. They’re galaxies. There are hundreds of billions of stars in each one of those dots in that small region of sky that we look at. Each hundreds of billions of galaxies contains billions of stars. Each star, imagine how many Goldilocks zones [where water can exist on a planet] exist around them. How many planets could possibly exist around those? And how many possibilities of life that could possibly exist in this small portion of the sky? And today, I’d like you all to imagine, what is the positive contribution that you’re doing right here—on this unremarkable planet, in this unremarkable solar system, in this unremarkable galaxy, that justifies how infinite the possibilities are in this small image, and how positive and infinite your contribution is on this infinitesimal planet.”

Watch the full presentation here.

Feasibility Study for Panama High-Speed Railway Released

March 18, 2019by Jason Ross in New Silk Road / BRI updates, World Land-Bridge updates

President Juan Carlos Varela presided over a ceremony Friday for the release of China Railway Design Corporation’s feasibility study on the Panama City-David high-speed railway line agreed upon as part of Panama’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative. The study found that building the proposed 391.3 km railway from the capital to David, a city near the Costa Rican border, is economically and, as the President emphasized, socially viable—and that it is feasible to extend it into Central America.

hsr-panama

The railroad will provide “unprecedented integration of the country, and will empower the country’s logistical platform,” Varela said at the ceremony. The study took into consideration its future extension into Costa Rica, which would “facilitate trade of products between our [Central American] countries, which face great challenges in the area of logistics,” he stressed.

“Such a railway has been the dream of Panamanian leaders for 100 years, and therefore I hope that future leaders will take it up and make it a reality, always thinking of Panama first,” Varela added.

Panama will elect a new President on May 5, and Varela had previously announced that it will be up to his successor to undertake the project. By ensuring the feasibility study was released with proper promotion now, Varela is placing Panama’s participation in the Belt and Road, with the great potential it represents for transforming the country’s poorer regions, at the center of that campaign. (He cannot run again because of term limits.)

The CRDC, assisted by Panamanian government agencies, universities and private consulting companies, estimates that it will take six years to complete the railway, at a cost of $4.1 billion, involving 6,000 employees, direct and indirect, to build it, and 2,900 to operate and maintain it once built.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade Interviewed on China’s CCTV-13

March 18, 2019by Jason Ross in Helga media coverage or interview, Media coverage of our activity, New financial order updates, New Silk Road / BRI updates

Interviews with Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade appeared on a newscast by CCTV-13 reporting on U.S. reactions to the just-concluded National People’s Congress. CCTV journalist Wang Guang reported on the reaction of U.S. think tanks to the ideas presented during the Two Sessions with regard to U.S.-China trade and the Belt and Road Initiative.

The broadcast then shifted to an interview done with Helga at the Morristown Schiller Institute conference. Zepp-LaRouche said:

“I personally think it is the most important strategic initiative, because it is a concept with which you can overcome geopolitics. Geopolitics has been the cause of two wars in the 20th Century, and the idea that you can not have blocs of countries or nations against nations, but that you have what Xi Jinping always calls the ‘community of the shared future of humanity,’ that you put the one humanity first, is a strategic concept which allows you to overcome the divisions which existed in previous centuries.”

This was followed by Cheminade, who said,

“The Chinese way is to a world integration through common development, what President Xi Jinping calls a ‘win-win’ system. So that is a future. The Chinese want a world development. They don’t want to impose their model, but they don’t want the other models to impose upon them.”

Helga’s clip was also aired on CCTV Plus, an English-language CCTV site, on a program entitled “Foreign Experts Applaud Development Concepts.”

Iraq Plans Eight Nuclear Reactors, Looks to Russia for Help

June 15, 2021by madeleine in Economic development updates, General, Power & Energy

Iraq is seeking to build eight nuclear power plants by 2030, to eliminate its endemically bad electricity footprint, a product of destruction by the Children of Satan — most recently of George Bush’s 2003 Iraq War destruction, but going as far back as the 1981 bombing of the (almost complete) Osirak nuclear reactor by Israel. The oil-rich country, OPEC’s second-largest producer, is seeking to go nuclear partly under pressure from global green de-carbonizers, who are trying to raze all oil production from the planet.


According to {Bloomberg News}, who interviewed Kamal Hussain Latif, chairman of the Iraqi Radioactive Sources Regulatory Authority, “Iraq is seeking to build eight reactors capable of producing about 11 gigawatts, [and seeking] funding from prospective partners for the $40 billion plan and pay back the costs over 20 years.” Iraq has been in contact with both Russian and South Korean officials about a deal, they say.


Detailing the sorry state of electricity in Iraq, {Bloomberg} notes that Iraq currently has 18.4 GW capacity, which includes 1.2 GW imported from Iran. They estimate “normal” demand to be 28 GW — exceeding 30 GW in the “torrid” summer months. By 2030, Iraq’s demand is expected to rise to 42 GW, so the 11GW nuclear that they are seeking is right in step with demand.

The bright future with nuclear fission and fusion power will be discussed at the upcoming Schiller Institute conference.

For the Common Good of all People, not the Rules Benefiting the Few!

International Schiller Institute/ICLC online conference, June 26/ 27, 2021

RSVP today →

Webcast—Neocons Move to Box Trump In, While Italy Points Toward the New Paradigm

March 15, 2019by Jason Ross in Helga Webcast, New Silk Road / BRI updates

The ongoing battle between two paradigms was center stage in Italy this week, as the conference cosponsored by Movisol and the Lombard Region, demonstrated the potential for the Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) to break the power of the London-run geopoliticians in Europe. Helga Zepp LaRouche’s report on the conference, at which she spoke, and was joined by Michele Geracci, an Undersecretary of the Italian Finance Ministry and head of the government’s China Task Force, highlighted the significance of the upcoming trip of Xi Jinping to Italy, and the signing on an MOU for Italy to join the BRI. If Italy and fifteen other EU member nations can participate, for mutual benefit, with the BRI, what of France and Germany? Why are the EU bureaucrats and the London neo-liberals so distressed by this development?

Contrast this potential to the hysteria coming from EU bureaucrats, from NATO officials such as Gen. Scaparroti, and from U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo, which is part of a neocon contingent trying to rein Trump in. Helga presents a clear picture of how the neocons are moving, aiming at sabotaging the trade talks with China, denuclearization of North Korea, and pushing for regime change in Venezuela, to force Trump to move away from his campaign promises.

She appealed to viewers to use the mobilization to exonerate Lyndon LaRouche as a means of bringing down the war party, which is continuing its efforts to destroy the potential of the Trump presidency.

Diplomacy by Example: Ibero-America Shares Its Vaccine Production

June 15, 2021by madeleine in Healthcare

The first 400,000 doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine produced by Argentina and packaged by Mexico were delivered by the Mexican Air Force over the weekend to Bolivia, Paraguay and Belize: 150,000 each for the first two; 100,000 for the latter, much smaller country. Another 811,000 doses, now ready for injection, were shipped back on commercial airlines to Argentina, for its use. Mexican Foreign Ministry officials report some 500,000 vaccines should be shipped to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala “shortly,” and others after that.


Accompanying the vaccines to La Paz, Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights declared in a joint press statement with Bolivian Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta,  that “we are one people, one community,” and we are most happy that we are able to help. Mayta agreed that “we are a single brotherhood.” He thanked Mexico, assuring Delgado that when Mexico needs help,Bolivia will be there for Mexicans, too.
Mexico’s Deputy Foreign Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean, Maximilian Reyes Zúñiga, reported in a June 13 {El Economista} oped he headlined “Latin American Solidarity; A Diplomacy of Results,” that Mexico will be sharing the Chinese Cansino vaccine which it is preparing to produce and its own “Patria” vaccine, now in Phase II trials, with the rest of the region. He then delivered a pointed message to those like the Biden administration and other G-7 nations who have been ignored the needs of other nations:

“We are not just fulfilling a commitment made. This also entails our vision of solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean, a diplomacy of results which places the common good before the egotistical interests which often dominate international relations. By helping others, we help ourselves. Mexico trusts in the power of leading by example, and that our actions will benefit not only the people who receive the vaccines, but that they will be a powerful image so that other countries do the same and also act in solidarity.”

The need for a world health system will be discussed at the upcoming Schiller Institute conference.

For the Common Good of all People, not the Rules Benefiting the Few!

International Schiller Institute/ICLC online conference, June 26/ 27, 2021

RSVP today →

UAE’s Hope Mission: Mars Is “a Collaborative Project for the Entire Human Race”

February 11, 2021by madeleine in General, Space updates

The website of the United Arab Emirates’s Space Agency answers the question, “Why Are We Exploring Mars?” succinctly:

“The red planet has captured human imagination for centuries. Now, we are at a junction where we know a great deal about the planet, and we have the vision and technology to explore further. Mars is an obvious target for exploration for many reasons. From our pursuit to find extraterrestrial life to someday expand human civilization to other planets, Mars serves as a long-term and collaborative project for the entire human race.”

In a fascinating interview with Space.com on Feb. 8, the day before orbital insertion, UAE Space Agency chair and Minister for Advanced Sciences Sarah al-Amiri described how Hope was designed for its mission as “the very first holistic weather satellite of Mars,” mapping the dynamics of Mars’s weather system throughout the entire day, in every region of Mars, over the course of an entire Martian year, through the combination of its three key instruments, shifting its orbit (from closer in to further out), and monitoring Mars’s lower and upper atmosphere, and the interactions between them.

“Our objectives from the get-go,” she emphasized, “are to ensure that Hope’s science is complementary to other missions and [therefore] usable to various science groups, and also new in nature so that it can continue the vast exploration efforts by different nations about Mars.”

Hope is a product of national determination and international cooperation which exemplifies how other developing countries and regions can also leapfrog into being space-faring nations. The UAE is a young nation—founded only 50 years ago—but its founder, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, recognized that “money is meaningless if not mobilized for the good of man,” the country’s oil wealth “valueless without national human resources qualified for and capable of building up the country” through science and industry.

It was that understanding that led far-sighted leaders of the UAE to invite physical economist Lyndon LaRouche to deliver the keynote address to a two-day regional symposium on “The Role of Oil and Gas in World Politics,” at the UAE’s Zayed Centre in June 2002, and to develop both nuclear power and space programs.


Space Agency chair al-Amiri argues that the purpose of UAE’s space program is that of “stimulating a lot of change within the U.A.E.’s economy that today more than ever should have a solid foundation in science. The best way to do that, from what we have been experimenting with as a nation, has been an exploration mission to space.”

To develop its Earth-orbit satellite program in the 2000’s, the UAE turned to South Korea to jointly design and build its first two satellites, then launched from Kazakhstan. Its Space Agency was founded in 2014, and the goal of sending a probe to Mars by 2021, the 50th anniversary of the nation’s founding, adopted quickly thereafter. By 2018, the UAE space team was able to design and build a satellite itself. To meet the tougher technical challenges of building a spacecraft for another planet, the UAE Space Agency partnered with three U.S. universities: the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Arizona State University, and the Space Sciences Lab at the University of California, Berkeley campus. Hope was then launched to Mars on a Japanese rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center!

A veteran of NASA Mars missions, now based at Northern Arizona University who worked on the design of one of Hope’s instruments, Christopher Edwards, told the Wall Street Journal that the Hope mission “is like nothing I’ve ever experienced in the spacecraft program so far. There’s a huge training aspect to it and a huge collaborative aspect that is like nothing else.”

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