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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.

India Remains the Epicenter of the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

May 14, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, India

India Remains the Epicenter of the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

May 13, 2021 (EIRNS)—With record-breaking daily deaths, the total official COVID-19 death toll in India surpassed a quarter-million yesterday. The daily new cases continue to hover just under 400,000, with some experts forecasting that daily infections will peak at about a half-million sometime in June. The country now accounts for about half of all new COVID-19 cases and 30% of deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO has also designated the B.1.617 variant as a matter “of global concern,” given how highly transmissible it is. The Pan American Health Organization reported that the Indian variant has shown up in six countries in the Americas.

Numerous experts continue to report that the total infections and total deaths are probably 5-10 times higher in reality than the official numbers indicate. A large portion of the uncounted numbers remain in India’s countryside.

There is a major discussion going on inside India over how much to lock down and for how long. Dr. Balram Bhargava, head of the Indian Council of Medical Research, said in an interview yesterday that lockdown restrictions should remain in place in all districts where the rate of infection is above 10% of those tested, and that they should stay locked down for at least 6-8 weeks. Test-positivity rates above 10% now prevail in 75% of the country’s 718 districts, including major cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, and the tech hub of Bengaluru, according to Reuters’s May 12 report.

“The high positivity districts should remain (shut). If they come to 5% from 10% (positivity rate) we can open them, but that has to happen. That won’t happen in six-eight weeks, clearly,” Bhargava said in an interview. In Delhi, the positivity rate reached around 35% but has now fallen to about 17%, Bhargava said: “If Delhi is opened tomorrow, it will be a disaster.” Bhargava has been calling for a government-ordered lockdown in with a 10% positivity rate or higher since April 15. Prime Minister Narendra Modi preferred to leave the decision for states to decide, perhaps because of his concern that extensive lockdowns could lead to uncontrolled social explosions in the desperate population.

Absent an international joint attack on the root causes of the pandemic—50 years of global physical economic collapse, especially in the health and food areas—India, like most developing nations, is left with only two disastrous choices: don’t lock down and watch the pandemic spread like wildfire; or lock down, and drive millions of poor and unemployed or marginally employed people over the edge.

Mexico’s Amb. to UN Denounces World’s “Indifference” to the “Specter of Hunger” Haunting the Planet

April 21, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Mexico, World war danger updates

Mexico’s Ambassador to UN Denounces the World’s “Indifference” to the “Specter of Hunger” Which Haunts the Planet

April 20, 2021 (EIRNS) – Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s Ambassador to the United Nations, published an op-ed in the April 19 edition of El Universal under the headline “The Specter of Hunger Haunts the Planet,” in which he denounces the “indifference” of most people to this gravest of problems, which he suggests should be considered a crime against humanity.

Blaming the rise of hunger on wars, the pandemic, and climate change, De la Fuente cites the president of the World Food Program, David Beasley, to the effect that “if you don’t feed people, you will be feeding conflicts.” He notes that the “specter of hunger is again haunting the planet in at least 30 countries,” and adds: “It is obvious that far greater resources are needed than are available, but so long as we don’t admit that hunger is the main motive for the disorderly and irregular migration which occurs in our region, from south to north, I greatly fear that the containment measures that may be adopted will continue to be insufficient…”

De la Fuente adds: “I don’t know what is more alarming: the magnitude of the suffering which hunger causes in the world today, or the indifference with which those of us who don’t go hungry react to it… [Hunger] is something that is happening in real time in many places. If deliberately denying people access to food constitutes a crime against humanity, the simple idea of children dying of hunger anywhere should, at the least, weigh heavily on our conscience. The numbers available in the reports I have mentioned lead me to conclude that no, we are not dealing with a specter. We are dealing with an implacable reality.”

Beasley: 9 Million Died of Starvation in 2020; This Year Could Reach 30 Million

May 14, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, World Food Program

Beasley Describes, 9 Million Died of Starvation in 2020 and This Year Could Reach 30 Million –

May 13, 2021 (EIRNS)—David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program, in a speech May 7 in his home state of South Carolina, warned that the number of people who could die of starvation in 2021 could be 20 to 30 million. He reported that 9 million perished last year from lack of food, in contrast to the 3.24 million official 2020 world death toll from COVID-19, which, of course, is a vast undercount. His point was to call for intervention with food relief, but also to stress that the armed conflicts should stop.

Beasley spoke in his home county of Darlington, at the Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church in Lydia, which was founded in 1789.

He said, as reported by SCNow daily, “What happened in the past four years? Man-made conflict. And I say that in a gender way. It’s not woman-made. It’s man-made. It’s literally man-made conflict.” He singled out Syria, Yemen, and South Sudan for special attention as examples of dire emergency.

He also pointed to the ripple effects from the pandemic lockdowns. “Now, because of COVID, the economic ripple effect, particularly when Western society shuts down its economy or at least turns the engines down, the economic ripple effect into low-income, middle-income, developing nations is catastrophic. And so, the number is now 270 million people literally marching to the brink of starvation.”

On the well-known warning by Beasley, that we are facing a famine catastrophe of “Biblical dimensions,” he chose to recount the backstory to that phrase, which he used in April 2020, in briefing the UN Security Council. As he has often repeated, it was Tony Blair, who urged Beasley to go to the UNSC, when Blair heard Beasley’s strong language.

WFP’s Beasley Signed a MoU with Venezuela: Addresses Soaring Hunger

April 21, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, Economic development updates, Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, Venezuela, World Food Program

WFP President Beasley Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Venezuelan Government To Address Soaring Hunger

April 20, 2021 (EIRNS) – The World Food Program will begin supplying school lunches to 185,000 impoverished pre-school and special-needs students in Venezuela this year, with the goal of providing daily meals to 1.5 million children by the end of 2023. That was the accord reached in a memorandum of understanding that the WFP signed this week with President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, during a trip to that country by WFP president David Beasley.

Hunger and starvation are not problems happening only “over there” in Africa or Syria. They are here – right on America’s doorstep, in Central and South America, including Venezuela.

Hunger in Venezuela has been skyrocketing in recent years, thanks largely to the killer sanctions imposed on that country by Washington (Republicans and Democrats alike). The WFP conducted a field study which estimated that, in 2019, 32% of the population suffered food insecurity and required assistance. Of those, 2.3 million were facing “severe food insecurity.” It is much worse today.

The hunger is due not so much to food shortages as such, but to the out-of-control inflation and forced devaluations, which are a result of financial warfare and denying Venezuela the ability to sell its plentiful oil exports in the dollar-dominated markets. The bolivar today trades at 1.069 {million} to the dollar; in December 2019 it stood at 55,00 to the dollar.

Internal food and other prices are set mainly in dollars, such that “the average wage which the majority of workers receive is less than five dollars per month, while chicken costs $2.40 dollars per kilo,” according to AP. An economic think tank linked to Venezuelan trade unions reported last December that a family of five with two adults earning the minimum wage did not have “even enough to purchase one breakfast a month.”

Beasley also traveled to Guatemala and Honduras in Central America, and reported that hunger had quadrupled in the past two years in that region, which now has 8 million people going hungry. Of those, 1.7 million are in the “emergency” category, meaning they required urgent food assistance to survive. He tweeted from Guatemala:

“15% of the people @WFP surveyed in Central America say they’re making plans to migrate in 2021—that’s 6 MILLION people! BUT, they also say if they have food security & livelihoods, they want to stay home!! Otherwise, they will do what we would all do to take care of our children.”

Syria Times Publishes Interview With Helga Zepp-LaRouche

May 8, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Color Revolutions, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Helga media coverage or interview, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Media coverage of our activity, World war danger updates

Syria Times Publishes Interview With Helga Zepp-LaRouche

May 7 (EIRNS)–The Syria Times on May 7th published an interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche with a very nice picture of a smiling Helga.  In replies to three main questions, she was able to explain her reasons for founding the Schiller Institute and the role it had been playing to develop programs for a just, new world economic order and to promote a worldwide renaissance of classical culture based on a dialogue of civilizations. In that context, the Institute has developed policies for various parts of the world, including Southwest Asia. She underlined her husband’s original “Oasis Plan” and the more recent “Phoenix Plan” for rebuilding Syria. She also attacked U.S. Middle East policy since the Bush Administration. She highlighted the upcoming conference on Saturday which would also have a presentation by Dr.. Bouthaini Shaaban from Syria, an adviser to President Assad. The full coverage is here.

“Depriving the Poor of Energy Is Bad Climate Policy,” China Daily Op-Ed Warns

April 21, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal, Power & Energy

“Depriving the Poor of Energy Is Bad Climate Policy,” China Daily Warns in Lomborg Op-Ed

April 20, 2021 (EIRNS) – The President of the Copenhagen Consensus, Bjorn Lomborg, penned an op-ed published by China Daily yesterday, which contains a strong argument along the lines we have been hearing recently from Indian officials and others: They pay lip-service to the green paradigm, and then insist that those policies cannot possibly be imposed on the developing sector. Some quotes from Lomborg:

“To tackle climate change, rich countries are promising to end fossil fuel use in 29 years. As this becomes excruciatingly costly, the G7 is now thinking about making the world’s poor pay for it. That will go badly… Despite green protestations, rich people still get 79 percent of their energy from fossil fuels. Ending that will be hard, socially destabilizing and surprisingly ineffective. Besides, it will also destabilize rich countries… As climate policies reduce growth further, this will threaten long-term social coherence as people realize their children won’t be better off and pensions will wither. Moreover, the cuts will matter little for the environment.”

Lomborg continued: “Six billion not-rich people also want access to plentiful and cheap energy, lifting them out of hunger, sickness and poverty. They are more concerned about economic growth that will create welfare and resilience against disease and even climate change… The main effect of carbon tariffs is to shift the economic burden of developed-world climate policies to the developing world… [provoking] profound resentment with a rich world that claims to implement climate policies to help, but in reality shifts the costs onto the world’s poor… Depriving the world’s poor of the twin drivers of development, abundant energy and free trade, is unacceptable.”

Afghan Authorities Set Up a Military Base in Badakhshan Province To Fight Drug Traffickers

November 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates

Nov. 2 (EIRNS)—PARIS, Nov. 2, 2021 (Nouvelle Solidarité)— According to Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, Taliban officials in Badakhshan Province have confirmed that they have set up a military unit to combat drug traffic. Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, the Taliban’s deputy governor in Badakhshan, said that they had set up a military organization to provide security in Badakhshan and fight drug trafficking. He added, “The smuggling of drugs from Badakhshan cannot be ruled out, because we have a common border [with Tajikistan] and it is possible.”

In the past, says RFE/RL, there has been a similar body in the Afghan government that has worked with the Tajik authorities to combat drug trafficking. However, with the advent of the Taliban, there are no diplomatic ties between the two countries, and it is unclear whether there is any contact or cooperation between the two sides. Afghanistan’s northern border is one of the main transit routes for drugs to Russia and Europe. 

Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, which shares a long border with Tajikistan, is one of 22 provinces in Afghanistan where opium poppy has been grown and large quantities of opium have been harvested in the past two years. This opium was processed in drug factories in the same region and turned into heroin.

Russia’s Lavrov at the UN: Not “Might Is Right” but “Right Is Might”

September 29, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, China, Cuba, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Libya, Nicaragua, Syria, United States, Venezuela, Yemen

Russia’s Lavrov at the UN: Not “Might Is Right” but “Right Is Might”—

Sept. 28, 2021 (EIRNS)—Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used his address at the United Nations on September 25, to make clear the important difference between international law and the reality behind the sophistry of a “rules-based order.” International law is a principle based upon “right is might”—not “might is right.” The latter is behind the “selfish interests” of the “so-called ‘rules-based order’ concept that the West is persistently introducing into political discourse as opposed to international law.” The U.S.’s “Summit for Democracy” makes democracy into a wedge to get into countries’ internal affairs, but there can be no challenging the undemocratic reality outside of countries, such as NATO. Talk of democracy—such as the U.S.’s “Summit for Democracy”—is a cover for interfering into sovereign countries and has no reality for relations between countries, where the undemocratic military weapons of NATO are not to be brought up. “The use of unilateral restrictive measures” against Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, “violate the Charter-based principle of non-interference in internal affairs of sovereign states… undermines the prerogatives of the Security Council,” and even ignores the UN call “to suspend them at least for the period of the pandemic.”

Lavrov said that it was now time to stop the “policy aimed at undermining the UN-centric architecture” and choose the path of “rejecting any confrontation and stereotypes,  and joining efforts to address key tasks of humanity’s development and survival. We have enough instruments for this.” He enumerated them. President Vladimir Putin has proposed a P5 summit for a “frank discussion on global stability issues.” As there were “great expectations” for the “prospect of the Russian-American dialogue” on arms control, per the U.S.-Russian summit at Geneva, this could work. He referenced Biden’s extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty as encouraging. Russian proposals on addressing the cyberwarfare problem was a basis for common agreement, where concerns can be examined “in a transparent manner, relying on facts.”

“In Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and in other hotbeds, all external actors must show an understanding of the cultural and civilisational specifics of society, reject politicization of humanitarian aid, and assist in the creation of broadly representative bodies of authority that would involve all major ethnic, religious and political forces of the relevant countries. Guided by such an approach, Russia has been constructively engaged in the promotion of the Afghan settlement via the extended Troika and the Moscow format.” He added, “It was with great interest that we perceived the Global Development Initiative proposed by President of China Xi Jinping, which resonates with our own approaches.” Lavrov finished with a twinkle: “In conclusion, I would like to propose a hashtag #UNCharterIsOurRules.”

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