Geopolitics updates

West Sends Thimbles Full of Aid to India

May 6, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, India, United States

West Sends Thimbles Full of Aid to India

May 5 (EIRNS)–According to India Today, 3,000 tons of aid has arrived in the country so far. That may sound like a lot; but what it boils down to is that this nation of 1.4 billion people, with over 20 million cases of COVID which are growing at the rate of more than a million new cases every three days, has received a grand total of 1,656 oxygen concentrators, 20 large-sized oxygen concentrators, 965 ventilators, and an unknown number of pulse oximeters, Remdesivir packets and some PPE. The Indian government claims that, in some cases, the aid is still in transit. They added that the limited amount of the foreign aid also meant that splitting it up equally was not optimal; so the hardest-hit states were preferred.

This is hardly a serious response to a nation in peril from a global pandemic.

A particular problem is that India’s vaunted vaccine production capacity has been crippled by the Biden administration’s ban on export of vital components, which was only lifted a few days ago after major pressure was brought to bear on Washington. Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute of India, said that their production of Covishield (AstraZeneca) is now about 60-70 million doses per month, and is able to rise up to 100 million/month by July.

Vaccine doses are desperately needed, given that only 2% of the Indian population has been vaccinated. Last month the government announced that they were now fast-tracking vaccine approval, and on Monday Pfizer announced that they were in discussions with India on providing vaccines. Russia began sending in the first portion of three million doses in May of Sputnik V. And pressure continues to mount on Biden to release the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca warehoused, unused, in the US. That stockpile by itself would double the vaccination program in India this month – nowhere near what is actually needed in this emergency, but certainly helpful.

Afghanistan IG Blasts State & Defense Departments for Restricting Information on Afghanistan

October 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, General updates, Geopolitics updates, United States, World war danger updates

Oct. 30 (EIRNS)–John Sopko, the Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), blasted the State and Defense departments for their lack of cooperation with his office in remarks prepared for the Military Reporters & Editors Association Annual Conference yesterday. “U.S. agencies have not made honest reporting easy for SIGAR” or for the news media in reporting on the war in Afghanistan, he said. Sopko described efforts, some very recent, by the two departments to restrict the information available to the public in SIGAR’s reports, among them the fact that SIGAR has to put some information for its quarterly reports into classified annexes, all of which, he argued, should be declassified.

The State Department claims that its requests to restrict information is to protect Afghans who worked with the U.S. occupation but, Sopko said, “State was never able to describe any specific threats to individuals that were supposedly contained in our reports, nor did State ever explain how removing our reports now could possibly protect anyone since many were years old and already extensively disseminated worldwide.”

Sopko reported that he recently received a letter from the State Department asking that 2,400 items on the SIGAR website, attached to the letter in spreadsheet form, be redacted. “[I]t quickly became clear to us that State had little, if any, criteria for determining whether the information actually endangered anyone – and I think you will agree with me that some of the requests were bizarre to say the least.” Among them was a request that SIGAR redact the name of Ashraf Ghani from its reports. “While I’m sure the former President may wish to be excised from the annals of history, I don’t believe he faces any threats simply from being referenced by SIGAR,” Sopko said. He added that SIGAR’s own risk assessment found all but four of State’s 2,400 redaction requests to be without merit.

Sopko argued that the main reason why few people understand why the U.S./NATO-created Afghan government fell so quickly in August is because of the information that the State and Defense departments have withheld from release. This includes information compiled on the performance of the Afghan security forces since 2015. “This information almost certainly would have benefited Congress and the public in assessing whether progress was being made in Afghanistan and, more importantly, whether we should have ended our efforts there earlier,” Sopko said. “Yet SIGAR was forced to relegate this information into classified appendices, making it much more difficult for Members of Congress to access the information, and completely eliminating public and press access to and discussion of that information.”

The documents now known as the Afghanistan Papers were originally produced in Sopko’s office and they showed, among other things, that the private assessments of U.S. officials often contradicted their public statements on the “progress” the U.S. was making in Afghanistan.

SIGAR also released its latest quarterly report, yesterday, in which it found that more than $100 billion went down the drain when the government collapsed on August 15. The United States provided $89 billion in training and equipping the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and more than $17 billion “in on-budget assistance” to the Afghan government, according to the report. The net result of all of this expenditure is now zero as the government it was meant to support no longer exists.

Speaking at Victory Day Parade, Russian President Warns of Present Danger

May 10, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Russia, World war danger updates

Speaking at Victory Day Parade, Russian President Warns of Present Danger –

May 9 (EIRNS)—Speaking on the occasion of the anniversary of Victory Day on May 9th at the Victory Day Parade in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “The war brought upon us so many unbearable ordeals, grief and tears that it is impossible to forget. Those who are plotting new aggressions cannot be forgiven or justified….

“History demands that we learn from it. Unfortunately, attempts are made to deploy a large part of Nazi ideology and the ideas of those who were obsessed with the delusional theory of their own supremacy,” stressed the Russian President.

With Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon at his side, Putin asked for a minute of silence to commemorate the “blessed memory” of all those who died in the war and to “mourn the veterans who have passed,” after which he continued: “This year, we celebrate 80 years since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. June 22, 1941, is one of the most tragic dates in our history. An enemy attacked our country and invaded our land to kill and to spread death and pain, horror and immeasurable suffering. This enemy not only wanted to overthrow the Soviet political system but also to destroy us as a state, as a nation and wipe our peoples off the face of the Earth.

“We responded to the invasion by the Nazi hordes with a united, formidable and unstoppable determination to repel that invasion, to do everything in our power for the enemy to be defeated and for the criminals and murderers to receive inevitable and just punishment.” His complete address is posted to the website of the Russian Presidency.

Did Geopolitics Sink Portugal’s Sines Port Expansion Project for Now?

May 6, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal, New Silk Road / BRI updates, World Land-Bridge updates

Did Geopolitics Sink Portugal’s Sines Port Expansion Project for Now?

May 5, 2021 (EIRNS)—At the close of the April 6 deadline for submitting bids to construct a new, huge container terminal at Portugal’s Sines Port, not a single bid had been entered. Port authorities blamed the fiasco on the drop in world shipping from the pandemic, and are talking of launching another offer with more “flexible” conditions when “market conditions” are better. The chairman of the port’s board of directors José Luís Cacho assured that the port expansion will happen, calling the possibility of a two-year delay “almost irrelevant.”

Most likely more than pandemic effects were involved. Portugal and China have been working for several years to use the planned “Vasco de Gama” terminal at Sines’s excellent deep-water port, just south of Lisbon on the Atlantic coast, as a key Belt and Road Initiative hub, connecting the westernmost point of the Eurasian rail network with the Maritime Silk Road in the Atlantic, thereby facilitating trading connections with the Americas and the Western coast of Africa. The Schiller Institute supported the plan as key for developing the Americas, and Portugal pinned its own industrial expansion on the project, envisioning proudly a return to its historic role as a leading center of maritime development. In late 2018, Portugal signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China on the Belt and Road, becoming one of the few countries in Europe willing to counter pressure from Washington and the EU.

The Anglo-American nexus moved in. The U.S. Embassy organized multiple visits of U.S. gas companies promising big investments to build up Sines’s LNG facilities. The Portuguese government welcomed investments from all serious bidders, but in September 2020, U.S. Amb. George Glass told the Portuguese daily Expresso that Portugal is inevitably “part of the European battlefield between the United States and China,” and Portugal now had to choose between its American “friends and allies” and its “economic partner” China. Among other threats, Glass stated that if Portugal awarded the Sines terminal contract to China, the U.S. would pull out of its LNG investments there.

Keeping the pressure on, former British diplomat John Dobson published an op ed in the Sunday Guardian of India on Dec. 5, 2020, picked up in Portugal, stating that the fight over Sines was an “economic flashpoint” between China and the U.S., similar to the military flashpoint building up in the South China Sea. “So will it be America’s huge LNG terminal, or China’s huge container port?,” he wrote. “Whoever is the winner, the geopolitical consequences will be massively significant.”

Some Countries: No Vaccines … and a Lack of Electricity or Refrigeration

May 10, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Healthcare, Healthcare

Some Countries with No Vaccines … and a Lack of Electricity or Refrigeration–

May 9 (EIRNS)—According to the World Health Organization, as of this week, Chad, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Eritrea, Tanzania and Haiti have not even received vaccines for their medical personnel. AP explains: “Delays and shortages of vaccine supplies are driving African countries to slip further behind the rest of the world in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout…” While the Farcha hospital in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, has 13 ventilators, along with oxygen from Doctors Without Borders and KN95 masks from the Chinese, none of the medical personnel have been vaccinated. Already, nine health care workers at the hospital have been infected, including cardiologist Dr. Mahamat Yaya Kichine, who explained: “I think that if there is a possibility to make a vaccine available, it will really ease us in our work.”

A key bottleneck in Chad, and elsewhere, is the lack of sufficient cold storage facilities. For example, Haiti is scheduled to receive 756,000 AstraZeneca doses via COVAX, but problems with basics such as electricity and refrigeration have delayed their arrival.

Join The Anti-Malthusian Movement To Defeat the “Green New Deal”

April 20, 2021by Malene Robinson in General, Green New Deal, Harley Schlanger Daily Update

Unbeknownst to most Americans, resistance is growing internationally to the scientific fraud and economic disaster known as the “Green New Deal” (GND). Furthermore, few are aware that the movement behind it was launched by a rabid opponent of human civilization, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, whose passion — like that of those oligarchs who rushed in to support him — was population reduction. In 2002, Nelson lamented that the environmentalist movement did not speak openly about reducing the world’s population, which he said was the result of “McCarthyism” and “demagogic contrivance.” Nelson, like most of those in power today trying to impose the GND globally, would prefer to cover up the British roots of Malthusian genocide, and its successful implementation of population reduction based on eugenics and British “race science”, in Nazi Germany.

UN Official Warns of Economic Collapse and Food Insecurity in Afghanistan

October 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Agriculture, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, World war danger updates

Oct. 30 (EIRNS)–In New York, UN humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths told The Associated Press in an interview that the G20 leaders should worry about Afghanistan because its economy is collapsing and half the population risks not having enough food to eat as the snows have already started to fall. Half the Afghan children under age five are at risk of acute malnutrition and there is an outbreak of measles in every single province which is “a red light” and “the canary in the mine” for what’s happening in society, he said.

Griffiths warned that food insecurity leads to malnutrition, then disease and death, and “absent corrective action” the world will be seeing deaths in Afghanistan. He said the World Food Program is feeding 4 million people in Afghanistan now, but the U.N. predicts that because of the dire winter conditions and the economic collapse it is going to have to provide food to triple that number — 12 million Afghans — “and that’s massive.”

“So, the message that I would give to the leaders of the G 20 is worry about economic collapse in Afghanistan, because economic collapse in Afghanistan will, of course, have an exponential effect on the region,” he said. “And the specific issue that I would ask them to focus on first, is the issue of getting cash into the economy in Afghanistan — not into the hands of the Taliban — into the hands of the people whose access to their own bank accounts is not frozen.”

CLINTEL Challenges IPCC Conclusions to Its Chairman

October 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, Environmentalism updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal

Oct. 28, 2021 (EIRNS) — Fresh from challenging the Schachtian axioms of the COP26 conference in a joint statement with the Schiller Institute, CLINTEL (the Climate Intelligence group, consisting of nearly 100 scientists, engineers, and professionals disputing the apocalyptic nature of climate change) has pointed out the numerous discrepancies between the IPCC’s full report and its Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). These are sufficient to challenge the conclusions and proposed actions to be taken, nominally based on the AR6, “The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report,” but actually based on the Summary for Policy Makers, drawn up by working group 1 [WG1]), which, CLINTEL alleges and demonstrates, misrepresents the latest objective climate science in six key areas.

Attention: Dr Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC, c/o WMO, 7bis Ave de la Paix, CP2800, CH-1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland.
Critique of the AR6 WG1 Summary for Policymakers (SPM):

Dear Dr. Lee,
We have now carried out an interim review of the AR6 WG1 Summary for Policymakers (SPM) and believe that it misrepresents the latest objective climate science in six key areas:

1. It is not “unequivocal” that human influence alone has warmed the planet; the observed modest warming of ~1°C since 1850-1900 has occurred through some as yet unresolved combination of anthropogenic and natural influences.

2. The new “hockey-stick” graph (Fig SPM.1), when analysed in detail, is a concoction of disparate indicators from various time periods over the last 2,000 years, which together fail to recognise the intervening well-established temperature variability, for example of the Roman and Medieval Warming periods and of the Little Ice Age.

3. The incidence of so-called “extreme weather” events is erroneously misrepresented in the SPM compared to the more accurate depictions in the draft main report, which latter identify no statistically-significant trends in many categories over time.

4. Developments in the cryosphere are also misrepresented in the SPM, particularly noting that there is virtually no trend in Arctic sea ice in the last 15 years.

5. Likewise, developments in the ocean are erroneously misrepresented in the SPM; in particular, the likely modest GMSL [global mean sea level] rise to 2100 does not point to any “climate crisis.”

6. The CMIP6 [Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase] climate models are even more sensitive than the already overly-sensitive CMIP5 models of AR5, and ignore peer-reviewed scientific evidence of low climate sensitivity. The models lead to invalid conclusions on ECS [climate sensitivity estimates] and “carbon budgets”; the likely global temperature increase to 2100 does not indicate a “climate crisis.”

These concerns are summarised in the table overleaf and are then analyzed in more detail in the pages that follow. Our more detailed analysis will follow in due course.

We regrettably conclude that the SPM is erroneously pointing to a “climate crisis” that does not exist in reality. The SPM is inappropriately being used to justify drastic social, economic and human changes through severe mitigation, while prudent adaptation to whatever modest climate change occurs in the decades ahead would be much more appropriate. Given the magnitude of proposed policy implications, the SPM has to be of the highest scientific standards and demonstrate impeccable scientific integrity within the IPCC.

You may recall that, in 2010, the InterAcademy Council carried out an independent review of the IPCC procedures at the request of the then UN Secretary-General and IPCC Chairman. Among its recommendations were that reviewers’ comments be adequately considered by the authors and that genuine controversies be adequately reflected in IPCC reports. The AR6 SPM inspires little confidence that these recommendations have been put into effect.

We conclude that the AR6 WG1 SPM regrettably does not offer an objective scientific basis on which to base policy discussions at COP26. It also fails to highlight the positive impacts of slightly increased CO2 levels and warming on agriculture, forestry and human life on earth.

Yours sincerely,
Guus Berkhout, President of CLINTEL (https://clintel.org),
Jim O’Brien, Chair of the ICSF (www.ICSF.ie).

Zakharova Warns of Pitfalls of Western ‘Sanctions War’

May 5, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Color Revolutions, Economic development updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Russia, Stop the Sanctions, United States, World war danger updates

May 4, 2021 (EIRNS)–“Diplomacy is being replaced by sanctions,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned in an interview with RT Television yesterday, and this is “undermining mutual trust and darkening the prospects for normalizing relations” between Russia and the collective West.

“The vicious practice of imposing unilateral political and economic restrictions, especially the extraterritorial application of such measures, is an infringement on the sovereignty of states and interference in their internal affairs aimed at keeping, at any cost, their [imposers’–ed.] dominant position in the global economy and international politics, which they are gradually losing,” she charged.

She discussed various measures which Russia is taking to defend itself: consolidating its national financial system, searching for new international partners, diversifying foreign economic ties while developing advanced, competitive domestic industries which lay the basis for substituting domestic products for what was previously imported. New legal mechanisms are being worked on, and legislation “providing for measures to counter new potential unilateral steps by the United States and other countries” is being drafted.

RT asked several questions about ways Russia might protect itself from restrictions on its access to Western financial systems. Zakharova noted that cutting Russia off from the SWIFT system for international settlement of payments “is so far considered a hypothetical scenario.” That said, work is underway on reducing Russia’s dependence on the dollar, a discussion that has been underway for at least a decade, she noted. She referenced that the 2007-2008 crisis “called into doubt the sustainability of the world currency system based on the supremacy of one national monetary unit.”

Zakharova made clear that such discussions are not taking place just in Russia, as finding ways to secure “the independence and sustainability of the financial system to external threat is increasingly becoming a priority for any state.” Russia will not be driven by the “hostile foreign policy” of others to shut out the outside world; it is discussing measures that can be taken with regional neighbors, the BRICS, and others.

Once again, Zakharova, as other high-ranking Russian officials have consistently been doing, proposed that Western nations change course, and come to the table to reach agreements which defend everyone’s interests: “We have repeatedly made it clear that we did not start this sanctions war, but we are ready, at any point, to do our part in order to end this pointless confrontation, in which there will not be and cannot be any winners…. We strongly support a broad international discussion of ways to counteract the illegitimate unilateral measures. We are confident that a systematic dialogue should help reduce the business community’s concerns regarding the uncertainty and instability in global affairs, which are provoked by the West’s one-sided and inconsistent policy.” The RT coverage can be found here.

The Foreign Ministry carries the transcript of the interview on its website.

Economist Writes ‘the Most Dangerous Place on Earth’: Taiwan

May 5, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Color Revolutions, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, World war danger updates

May 4, 2021 (EIRNS)--In its May 1 cover article, the Economist wrote with satisfaction about the dangerous strategic condition created with respect to Taiwan. The outgoing head of the Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, had told Congress in March that he worried about China attacking Taiwan as soon as 2027. The {Economist} notes the unique position of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which leads the world in the production of advanced semiconductor chips, with technologies and production processes years ahead of those of either the U.S. or China. The British rag also exults in recent changes from what had been the status quo of the ambiguous state of U.S. support for a one-China policy while in effect guaranteeing Taiwanese independence. With a growing independence movement in Taiwan, strengthened by reporting on Hong Kong, will China remain at bay?

“Nobody in America can really know what Mr. Xi intends today, let alone what he or his successor may want in the future…. Mr. Xi’s appetite for risk may sharpen, especially if he wants unification with Taiwan to crown his legacy.” To prevent this, the Economist calls for action: “America requires weapons to deter China from launching an amphibious invasion…. China must be discouraged from trying to change Taiwan’s status by force even as it is reassured that America will not support a dash for formal independence by Taiwan.” Rather than achieving an actual resolution of the dispute, through a true detente and discussion, the British magazine suggests an effort to “sustain ambiguity,” maintaining the state of conflict while acknowledging that “The risk of a superpower arms race is high.” The full article is here.

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