MORNING BRIEFING

Sunday, May 29, 2022

By Dns/CJO/KRN/PSU

Kyiv Is Losing, But NATO Says They’ll Blow Up the World Before They Let Russia Win

May 28 (EIRNS)—As reports came in from the war front last week, indicating that, after taking the port of Mariupol, Russia is methodically advancing westward in the Donbass region and that Ukrainian forces have had to retreat, the British have let it be known, yet again, that they will not allow Russia to win the war—even if it means bringing the world to the brink of a nuclear showdown. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss delivered a speech in Prague on Friday, May 27, in which she asserted: “We must ensure Ukraine wins this great fight for freedom,” adding that Ukraine was fighting not only for itself but for “freedom, sovereignty and the rule of law” in the Western countries. “If he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] succeeds in Ukraine, we will never feel safe again,” she said, according to a copy of the speech released by the U.K. Foreign Office, TASS reported. “We must respond with strength. Appeasement cannot be the answer.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, speaking to Bloomberg over the weekend, had to admit that Russia’s military progress in the Donbass was “I’m afraid, palpable.” He stated that it was therefore imperative that Ukraine’s Western allies send long-range MLRS rocket artillery systems to Ukraine, capable of striking deep into Russian territory. This dramatic escalation in weaponry would “enable [the Ukrainians] to defend themselves against this very brutal Russian artillery, and that’s where the world needs to go…. It’s absolutely vital we continue to support the Ukrainians militarily.”

The Biden administration has so far marched in lockstep with this kind of eyeball-to-eyeball provocative actions. As Col. Richard Black (ret.) stated in his dramatic remarks to the Schiller Institute’s May 26 “Dialogue among Experts: The Insanity of Politicians Threatens Nuclear War:”

“We have already assassinated a dozen [Russian] generals, and sunk the flagship of the Russian fleet. On May 13, 2022, Steny Hoyer, the Democrat House Majority Leader, said that we are now at war with Russia. During her visit to Kyiv in May, Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to wage war ‘until victory is won.’ Retired General Breedlove, the former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, and a close Biden military confidant, proposed landing U.S. forces and advancing two-thirds of the way through Ukraine to the Dnieper River. The U.K. has begun considering naval action to break Russia’s naval blockade in the Black Sea. This is an act which risks retaliation for the sinking of Russia’s flagship.”

Black continued: “Now, we’ve issued a gargantuan $40 billion check, ensuring a dramatic escalation of this totally unnecessary war. Some politicians have even begun preparing Americans for a suicidal nuclear war. Republican U.S. Senator Roger Wicker said we may consider sending U.S. troops into Ukraine, and that he would not rule out launching a nuclear surprise attack—a first strike, in nuclear parlance. In other words, we should consider launching a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack; one that would rain down nuclear bombs on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, killing millions of innocent men, women, and children.”

And yet for all its ferocity, this war will not be won or lost in the Ukrainian theater. The key lies elsewhere.

In the Q&A session of an EIR-sponsored seminar in Berlin on March 2, 2006, Lyndon LaRouche was asked about regional conflicts such as Iran, and the strategy for stopping escalation to a nuclear war.

“We have to consider the realities of the world,” LaRouche stated. “First of all, we’re not dealing with an East-West conflict—that’s a different position. That’s not the problem. That’s artificial. What there is, is an attempt to maintain an empire. The empire has existed. We don’t have nation-states. We say nation-states, that nation-states negotiate, but that’s not the way the world is run. The world is run by financial powers, a system which existed in Europe, which has been run by the British for years. And they still run it. They still coordinate it. That’s your problem. The question is to create again, on this planet, the right of nations to have true sovereignty.”

LaRouche continued: “You have to recognize that behind this whole thing, there’s a player. The nations are being played. The conflict is not just between nations. The conflict is between the imperial power, sitting in London, or centered in London, which is still controlling much of the world. And if you don’t break that power, if you don’t break it, you’re going to get Hell…. Look ahead to the future, on things that we should be doing. But break the power that is centered right now in London! Otherwise, if you don’t do that, you’re going to get Hell on this planet, and all your negotiations are not worth anything.”

On June 18-19, the Schiller Institute will hold an international conference to take up that challenge posed by LaRouche: to forge an international alliance to stop the danger of nuclear war by putting the London-centered financial system through bankruptcy reorganization, and building a new security and development architecture in its stead.

NEWS SUMMARIES

LEADING DEVELOPMENTS

Zepp-LaRouche Targeted by Ukraine’s NATO-Run ‘Disinformation Center’ (see slug)

Lavrov Lets Loose Against the West’s ‘Modern Version of European Colonialism’ (see slug)

Putin, Macron and Scholz Speak for 80 Minutes (see slug)

Reports of More Weapons Going to Ukraine (see slug)

German Lutherans Denounce NATO Confrontationism as Leading to Nuclear War (see slug)

ECONOMICS

Antonov Tells Washington, Blame Your Sanctions, Not Russia, for Food Crisis (see slug)

Finance Minister Siluanov: Russia Will Not Default (see slug)

India Is Increasing Its Purchases of Russian Oil (see slug)

Russian Chamber of Commerce Wants Interest Rates at 5% or Less (see slug)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

HSBC Executive Stuart Kirk Fired for Eviscerating Climate-Change Hysteria (see slug)

IBERO AMERICA

Brazil’s Lula Rising in the Polls Against Bolsonaro (see slug)

EUROPE

Finnish Foreign Minister in Washington To Discuss Finland’s Application To Join NATO (see slug)

Anti-Russian Sanctions Are a Failure (see slug)

German Using More ‘Dirty’ Coal To Replace Russian Gas in Sanctions Paradox (see slug)

The Italian Peace Plan, and Not Zelenskyy, Should Have Been the Focus at Davos (see slug)

Majority of Greeks Are Now Buying Less Food Because of High Prices (see slug)

RUSSIA

Russian Offensive Keeps Moving Forward in Donbass (see slug)

Russia Test-Fires Another Hypersonic Cruise Missile (see slug)

Peskov Underwhelmed by Zelenskyy Hints at Negotiating (see slug)

Ukraine Foreign Mercenaries To Be Tried by Donetsk People’s Republic (see slug)

Kissinger Blacklisted by Ukrainian Proscription Site (see slug)

World Health Organization Votes Down Ukrainian Resolution (see slug)

DOCUMENTATION

Manhattan Project Meeting: Is the Enemy Us, Or Only Our British Axioms? (see slug)

OPERATIONS REPORTS

Organizing Report [PDS] (see slug)

IN DEPTH

LEADING DEVELOPMENTS

Zepp-LaRouche Targeted by Ukraine’s NATO-Run ‘Disinformation Center’

May 28 (EIRNS)—The same NATO-run “Center for Countering Disinformation” that launched a broadside against Col. Richard Black last week for his ground-breaking interview with EIR’s Mike Billington (which now has upwards of 565,000 views), today published a nasty slander attack on Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Clearly upset at the leading role played by Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute in organizing support for a new international security and development architecture, as the only way to stop the drive for war, the CCD accuses her of spreading “Russian disinformation,” for exposing the culpability of NATO’s eastward march over three decades in provoking the current conflict in Ukraine.

The Center for Countering Disinformation, which functions out of President Zelenskyy’s National Security and Defense Council, was set up from the outset as a NATO-run “international hub” for information warfare. Their Instagram posting stated, in machine-translation from the original Ukrainian: “German politician and head of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche blames Western countries for the fact that their leaders have not listened to Putin. H. Zepp-LaRouche organized an international discussion on the New Security Architecture of the World and the Threat of World War III. The author discusses the Kremlin’s narratives about the fact that for ten years the world has been trying to dismantle Russia. In her words, the problem of the war in Ukraine is that ‘Germany and the EU have set their course towards NATO, the United States and Britain and are in a confrontation with Russia.’ H. Zepp-LaRouche has been pushing the rhetoric of Russia in the Western information space for over 10 years.”

The CCD has also published an attack on Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst and founder of the VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), who shared the podium with Zepp-LaRouche, Colonel Black and others at a May 26 Schiller Institute event to counter the war drive. [dns]

Lavrov Lets Loose Against the West’s ‘Modern Version of European Colonialism’

May 28 (EIRNS)—In an interview with RT Arabic on May 25, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov presented a systematic attack on the outlook of nations in the West that have led to the all-points assault against Russia. (https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1814963/)

“We know that our Western friends have many phobias, many complexes. They have a superiority complex, the infallibility complex, and I believe they also have some paranoia…. Any process that does not include the West, which the West does not control, they perceive as opposition, a challenge to their dominance…. It’s high time for them to kick this habit,” Lavrov stated.

“The insolence of the Anglo-Saxon alliance has no bounds, and we find confirmation of that every day. The West sends its envoys and emissaries every day to every capital without exception … to deliver ultimatums and to blackmail.” Most of the world is not capitulating to those threats, he stated. Speaking of most of the states in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Lavrov said: “Those nations don’t want to compromise their national dignity and run around as servant boys doing the chores on behalf of [the West].”

The West’s attitude, “is nothing new and is the modern version of European colonialism…. That’s the mentality of the Western states. They believe their security depends on the entire world and that thus they should rule the world.”

Lavrov added that the Ukraine crisis has the same roots, which is a Western disregard of Russian national security, Lavrov said. It simply ignored for decades Moscow’s objections to the enlargement of NATO in Europe, pushing Moscow towards the military option to curb the threat, he said. [dns]

Putin, Macron and Scholz Speak for 80 Minutes

May 28 (EIRNS)—The leaders of Russia, France and Germany spoke for 80 minutes by teleconference today, reviewing both the Ukraine crisis and the global food emergency. According to the Kremlin readout, President Putin briefed President Macron and Chancellor Scholz on the military situation on the ground in Ukraine and on the failure of the negotiations because of Kyiv. Putin also rejected the media lie that Russia is responsible for world food shortages, and explained that they are a result of wrong Western economic and financial policies. Russia is ready to help improve the situation with supplies of fertilizers and wheat from Ukrainian ports, noting that “Increasing the supplies of Russian fertilizers and agricultural produce will also help reduce tensions in the global food market, but that will definitely require the lifting of the relevant sanctions.”

The Kremlin added: “Special attention was paid to the progress on the negotiation track, which has been stalling through Kyiv’s fault. Vladimir Putin reaffirmed the Russian side’s openness to the resumption of dialogue. The President of Russia was critical of the continued dangerous practice of pumping Ukraine with Western weapons, cautioning against the risks of the country’s further destabilization and aggravation of the humanitarian crisis.” Both Germany and France have been among the nations sending such heavy military equipment to Ukraine.

The German government’s readout on the call emphasized that both Scholz and Macron urged Putin to declare an immediate armistice and withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine. Euronews also reported that Scholz and Macron asked Putin to “free the captured Azovstal fighters”—i.e., the Nazi-emblazoned Azov Regiment and others who finally surrendered in Mariupol and are now being held by the Russians. [dns/ccc]

Reports of More Weapons Going to Ukraine

May 28 (EIRNS)—The New York Times, in its live update page for yesterday, reported that the Biden Administration has approved the transfer of multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine. The launchers are thought to be the truck-based HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), which could be armed with the M31 guided rocket. According to Wikipedia, the M31 has a range of up to 70 km. An unnamed official told the Times that the administration is seeking to make sure that the United States can reasonably make the argument that it is not providing Ukraine with the capability to strike deep into Russian territory.

According to the Times, each rocket carries an explosive load roughly equal to a 500 lb air dropped bomb and so a salvo of six such rockets, the maximum that a single HIMARS can fire, would have a devastating effect on the target. The intention, here, is clearly to create the impression of another game-changer coming to Ukraine.

As for other transfers in the weapons pipeline, the Russian website Avia.pro reported a rumor yesterday that Bulgaria had transferred to Ukraine up to 14 Su-25 attack aircraft, some of which had been modernized in Belarus as recently as a year-and-a-half ago. Rather than being flown in, they were reportedly transferred into Ukraine overland. Avia.pro suggests, however, that the effectiveness of the use of these attack aircraft remains extremely low, since strikes are delivered blindly from low altitudes so as to avoid Russian air defense systems.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported yesterday that the U.S. Army has signed a $687 million contract with Raytheon to produce a new batch of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to replace those sent to Ukraine. The contract for a total of 1,468 Stingers was awarded Wednesday (May 25), according to a document reviewed by Reuters. There was no timeline for completion of the work, but it was estimated delivery could take up to 30 months. There is currently only one production line for the Stinger, located in Arizona, and it produces at a very low rate. [cjo]

German Lutherans Denounce NATO Confrontationism as Leading to Nuclear War

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—The Wiesbaden-based Martin Niemöller Foundation, a senior institution of the Lutheran Church of Germany, has called for “immediate and serious” negotiations on a ceasefire in the Ukraine war. Only a ceasefire would form the prerequisite for being able to conduct negotiations on a peace agreement and a future peace order, the foundation said in Wiesbaden on May 27. The statement calls for solving the Ukraine issue in a broader context of East-West confidence-building and arms control agreements.

The foundation described the proposal by former Bundeswehr Inspector General Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.), who is also former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, to convene the NATO-Russia Council as “a promising way to change lanes from war to negotiations.” Withdrawing Russian troops while reducing sanctions could be the starting point for talks, he said.

Hopes for a victorious military peace in Ukraine with the help of Western weapons, military training and logistics are ill-founded, the foundation said. “It would push militarily overpowered Russia into a corner that could tempt it into even more dangerous, possibly nuclear, escalation steps.” For that reason, he said, the red lines on arms deliveries and military assistance should not be constantly moved forward. Nor should the Bundeswehr be upgraded with €100 billion, the statement says, calling for action on three main venues:

“With a view to a future peace settlement, a policy must be conceived now that is guided by the principles of the sovereignty of all states and their ‘common security’ developed in the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). We argue for a course correction in current war and security policy.

“The paradigm of arms race and bloc thinking must be rethought into a paradigm of disengagement and disarmament. There is a need to press first for confirmation and then, if necessary, further development of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM), Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), Unarmed Observation Aircraft (Open Sky), and Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaties.

“This year’s Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) must call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Rejection of the spirit, practice and policy of nuclear deterrence remains on the agenda. Armaments are already killing! The associated expenditure of resources hinders the fight against the ecological destruction of the Earth and against the hunger of millions of people.” (https://www.meine-kirchenzeitung.de/erfurt/c-aktuell/eine-erklaerung-der-martin-niemoeller-stiftung-ev_a34022) [rmo/rap]

ECONOMICS

Antonov Tells Washington, Blame Your Sanctions, Not Russia, for Food Crisis

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—Due to financial sanctions against Moscow, Russia exporters “often don’t have a chance to make shipments,” Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov said according to TASS. “They face blocked payments, denials of loans and insurance, problems with booking freight ships, purchase of farm equipment and even seeds,” he went on to say. “In addition, the U.S. continues to increase import taxes on our fertilizers,” he said.

“We urge a halt to shifting the blame. Russia is committed to its export obligations and is ready for negotiations to resolve this most serious problem, including through the UN.”

The food crisis was already there, originated by wrong Western policies, and the war in Ukraine has only exacerbated it. Food price increases “are associated with miscalculations and systemic errors in the macroeconomic policy—primarily financial and foreign trade policies—and energy and food policies of Western countries,” he said. “At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant disruptions of supply chains.”

“Freight costs have almost doubled. Naturally, all this could not fail but lead to a sharp increase in food prices. Wheat prices increased by a quarter over 2021,” he declared. [ccc]

Finance Minister Siluanov: Russia Will Not Default

May 28 (EIRNS)—Russian Finance Minister Antonov Siluanov stated on Friday, May 27: “Current statements about the default [on Russian foreign bonds] are out of touch [with the reality] at all. This is the default of Western countries before themselves. We have money. I reiterate we will make payments.” Siluanov was referring to the May 25 announcement by the U.S. Treasury that it would no longer permit Russia to make any foreign debt payments, since these would be in violation of American sanctions.

Siluanov went on to denounce the dollar, euro and other currencies as “toxic.” Speaking to students at a Moscow university, he said: “The American and European currencies are toxic for us. What should we do with them? What do we need them for? That is, we are selling our own wealth—gas, while getting candy wrappers, toxic candy wrappers. Who needs them?”

Russia has offered to pay its creditors in rubles if the U.S. prohibits payments in dollars, and the Bank of Russia central bank is arguing that there are “Currency Indemnity” clauses in some of its foreign bond agreements which permit payment in rubles, and their subsequent conversion into foreign currencies. But don’t hold your breath for these technicalities. According to RT, “Maximilian Hess, head of political risk and Russia specialist at Hawthorn Advisors, a London-based consultancy, said the International Swaps and Derivatives Association or international credit rating agencies could still declare Russia to have defaulted on its debts if ruble payments are made to non-residents, citing ‘problems with the convertibility’ of the Russian currency.”

The next bond due dates are June 23 and June 24. [dns]

India Is Increasing Its Purchases of Russian Oil

May 28 (EIRNS)—According to accounts in Bloomberg and RT, India has begun to increase its oil imports from Russia. India is a large oil importer, but heretofore has only purchased small quantities of Russian oil, and so it has been considered a natural to step in and purchase Russian oil that is not being sold in the West, due to sanctions. Russia’s Commerce Ministry reported that India purchased over 396,000 tons of Russian oil in March, a 15% rise from the previous month and a 40% increase on an annual basis.

Overall, Asian countries in April for the first time surpassed Europe as the largest importers of Russian oil, Bloomberg reported on Friday, May 27, citing Singapore-based analytics firm Kpler. Most of the Asian purchases have gone to China and India, which are receiving a significant 25% discount, according to press accounts. [dns]

Russian Chamber of Commerce Wants Interest Rates at 5% or Less

May 28 (EIRNS)—Vedomosti reported that Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation Elena Dybova is pleased with the recent decision of the Bank of Russia central bank to further reduce interest rates down to 11% from 14%, because it will induce optimism. “However, in order to develop import replacement, domestic production and long-term investment which the economy needs now, the optimal rate should be 5% at the most.” This is an argument that economist Sergey Glazyev has long made against the monetarist policies championed by Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina. [dns]

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

HSBC Executive Stuart Kirk Fired for Eviscerating Climate-Change Hysteria

May 28 (EIRNS)—According an op-ed in the Canadian Financial Post, Stuart Kirk was fired as the global head of responsible investing at HSBC Asset Management, a wing of the giant London-based global banking group. His crime? He delivered what the Post described as “a brilliant 15-minute presentation” to a Financial Times Moral Money conference on May 26 in London, with the topic “why investors need not worry about climate risk.”

As soon as he began his presentation to the financial executives, Kirk, a former FT journalist, highlighted his own “heresy” with a slide characterizing climate change as “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings that are always wrong.” Below that line were a list of climate investment perpetrators: Mark Carney, Henry Paulson, the United Nations, the Bank of England, the World Economic Forum (now holding its annual meeting at Davos).

Kirk complained that “there is always some nut-job telling me about the end of the world,” and “Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six meters underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”

He was fired within days, but Post columnist Terence Corcoran quoted a commentator who said: “He could be around a lot more in the future”; Corcoran chimed in to conclude his op-ed: “Let’s hope so. The investment world could use a new climate thought leader, and Captain Kirk could be the man.” (https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-climate-war-has-a-new-star-captain-kirk) [rss]

IBERO AMERICA

Brazil’s Lula Rising in the Polls Against Bolsonaro

May 28 (EIRNS)—One of Brazil’s leading polling groups, Datafolha, reported a new survey which indicates that Lula would win 48% of the first-round vote in the upcoming Brazilian presidential election, while current President Jair Bolsonaro would receive 27%. In March, the two leading candidates received 43% and 26%, respectively, although the new data reflect the fact that a number of other presidential contenders have since dropped out of the race. Former São Paulo Governor Joao Doria quit the race earlier this week, while ex-Judge Sergio Moro suspended his candidacy in early April. Former Ceara Governor Ciro Gomes is still in the running with 7% of the vote. In a second and final round, Lula would capture 58% of the vote, while Bolsonaro would take 33%, Datafolha found. [dns]

EUROPE

Finnish Foreign Minister in Washington To Discuss Finland’s Application To Join NATO

May 28 (EIRNS)—Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto was in Washington, yesterday, where he met with Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Not surprisingly, the Finnish and Swedish applications to join NATO were at the top of their agenda. “The United States fully supports Finland and Sweden joining the Alliance, and I continue to be confident that both countries will soon be NATO Allies,” Blinken said during their joint press appearance. Blinken declared, among other things, that the Finnish/Swedish applications reaffirm NATO’s Open Door policy. “That door will stay open, reflecting our belief that every country should have the right to choose its allies and partners and to pursue membership if it chooses,” he said. “That is not a provocation or a threat to Russia,” he claimed. “We say this often, but it bears repeating: NATO is and always will be a defensive Alliance [people in Serbia and Libya, having been on the receiving end of NATO bombs, might not agree—ed.]. NATO does not seek confrontation with Russia, but rather we aim to prevent it.”

“Finland’s accession to NATO would strengthen the security and stability of Northern Europe as well as wider transatlantic security,” Haavisto said. “Finland is a security provider and would further strengthen NATO as an Ally. We are very grateful for the unwavering and strong support from the United States for our NATO membership bid. We look forward to taking our excellent relationship to a new level as a NATO Ally.”

And to strengthen Finnish bona fides for joining the alliance, Haavisto condemned the Russian military operation fully according to the U.S./NATO narrative as a “war of aggression” in Ukraine. “Russia’s war in Ukraine is an attack against the entire European security order,” he said. “It’s a great breach of international law and a violation of the Charter of the United Nations. Russia is flagrantly violating international law in Ukraine. We need to ensure accountability for war crimes. Finland supports the investigation by the International Criminal Court, ICC, by granting financial support and by seconding experts.”

Russia, however, will not be passive in the face of NATO expanding ever closer to Russian territory. “We will use military technical means to ensure our security [amid NATO’s expansion]. We have a quite sufficient arsenal to 100% guarantee our defense capacity and our security,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel, reported TASS. He stressed that Russia’s position in this sphere “has never been changed.” He recalled that Moscow has repeatedly said that NATO’s “absolutely unmotivated expansion” runs counter to Russia’s vision of how European security should be enhanced. “First of all, it should be done by means of the establishment of a collective security system rather than by relying on instruments inherited from the Cold War era,” he said. [cjo]

Anti-Russian Sanctions Are a Failure

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—An article in the Greek economic daily Naftemporiki reports on the failure of sanctions against Russia since the “measures have not ended the war and have not hampered Russian military operations so far—that is, they have not helped Ukraine.” They add that most countries refuse to back sanctions especially China, India, countries in Africa, Asia and South America. “Even Washington seems to have put a ‘brake’ on new sanctions against Russia, in view of the by-elections for Congress next November. With more than $4 a gallon of gasoline, and in the summer of high-traffic, Americans may want to punish Democrats in the election and President Joe Biden to face a hostile Congressman in the last two years of his term.”

As for the Russian economy they point out that the “ruble has recovered—it is in a stronger position than before the war against the dollar, inflation is lower than in the EU Baltic states for example and the recession should be relatively mild” while Russia is benefiting from higher gas and oil prices.

Meanwhile Europe and developing countries are being hit with higher energy and food prices. Furthermore, sanctions dividing the European Union will be exposed at the May 30-31 Summit.

“The conclusion: Sanctions have failed so far. None of the desired goals has been achieved. The effects are mainly on Europe, and the people of the Old Continent have been overwhelmed by a kind of ‘war fatigue,’ as German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has admitted.” [dea]

German Using More ‘Dirty’ Coal To Replace Russian Gas in Sanctions Paradox

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—Whereas the “Green Reset” remains on the agenda of the German Greens and the government, the precarious situation that sanctions on energy imports from Russia have created for the country’s industry and citizens is leading to plans to suspend the planned closure of coal power plants. This involves 2.1GW of capacity originally scheduled for October 2022, and another 0.5GW scheduled for 2023. Additional 4.3GW of coal power capacity will be kept on the grid until 2024 and even 1.6GW of oil power capacity, plus another 1.9GW of lignite power plant capacity already turned off the grid that willl be reopened.

If the total exit from gas made sense anyway, reviving Germany’s nuclear power capacity would be the best option in terms of efficiency and safety—but the government would rather prefer to use “dirty” options like coal and oil, keeping the date for the final exit from nuclear at the end of 2022, and also keeping 2030 as the date for the final exit from coal. [rap]

The Italian Peace Plan, and Not Zelenskyy, Should Have Been the Focus at Davos

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—Jürgen Hübschen, former German military attaché in Baghdad and frequent participant to BüSo events in the past, wrote in his blog that the World Economic Forum should have dedicated its meeting to the Italian peace proposal instead of inviting Zelenskyy and disinviting all Russians:

“In my view, it would have been more opportune to have as the central issue of this year’s forum the Peace Plan proposed by Italy, because it is not a question of who should win or not lose this war, but of putting an end to it.”

In an assessment of the current situation, Hübschen then quotes from an interview that former Chilean ambassador to China Jorge Heine, now a professor at Boston University, to the weekend Süddeutsche Zeitung for May 21-22. There, under the title “The Other View of the War,” Heine expresses himself, among other things, as follows: “About the Ukraine war it is said that it is unique. And therefore it needs extreme measures. Well, I would say look at what has happened in Yemen over the past 8 years. 250,000 people have died there as a result of the war. Most by Saudi Arabian weapons, supplied from NATO countries. There is no attempt to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia or to exclude it from the SWIFT system. On the contrary, the country is supported by NATO countries. This is another reason why sanctions against Russia are seen as hypocritical elsewhere. They are implemented only because the war is taking place in Europe. What happens elsewhere doesn’t matter.”

The U.S. goal of seeking “regime change” through its proxy war on Russia and weakening Russia so that Moscow will never again be in a position to allegedly start such a war, is not at all shared by most states around the world. In this regard, Jorge Heine states in the interview, “The West seems united, that is correct. That means the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and a few other countries. But, if we look to Africa, Asia and Latin America, the states there disagree with much of what is being said and done in this war. The invasion [sic] of Ukraine should be condemned unequivocally. But in the Global South, there is a feeling that the economic situation is bad enough. And if the sanctions are implemented as the West imagines, more people will die of hunger in Asia, Africa and Latin America than in the war in Ukraine.” (https://sicherheitsbulletin.wordpress.com/) [ccc/rap]

Majority of Greeks Are Now Buying Less Food Because of High Prices

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—A nationwide survey in Greece by Ierax Analytics, revealed that the majority of Greeks are buying less food and less nutritious food because of the high prices. According to the founder of Ierax Analytix, Haris Lalatsis, the increase in prices has greatly affected the eating habits of most respondents (75%) as reported by the Greek economic daily Naftemporiki.

In the last six months, according to the survey, 66% of respondents said they buy less food due to inflation and the change is seen mainly in people over 50 years old, 75% of whom responded that way, while the corresponding proportion of young people 18-30 years is 57%. In addition, 67% of respondents, compared to the previous six months, now look more closely at the price of food regardless of age. Even those who are financially comfortable now seem to look at prices more than before (75%).

Lalatsis points to the continuous increases in energy, inflation and materials along with the pandemic, as having sharply reduced the disposable income of households compelling them to turn to cheap food. [dea]

RUSSIA

Russian Offensive Keeps Moving Forward in Donbas

May 28 (EIRNS)—Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has been personally leading troops from Chechnya participating in Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, reported yesterday that fighters from Chechnya have seized full control of the line of contact with Ukrainian nationalists in Severodonetsk, blocking exits from the city. “The first neighborhoods of the well-fortified city have already been cleared of enemy units,” he said on Telegram. Severodonetsk is an important city of some 100,000 in western Lugansk province.

The Ukrainian side has basically confirmed Kadyrov’s account, with their own spin. Lugansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Russian troops had entered Severodonetsk, but claimed that Ukrainian forces were still defending it. “We will have enough strength and resources to defend ourselves. However, it is possible that in order not to be surrounded we will have to retreat,” Gaidai said on Telegram, reported Reuters.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov announced this morning that joint operations of units of the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian forces fully liberated Krasnyi Liman, about 50 km west of Severodonetsk. “Missile troops and artillery hit 57 command posts, 618 areas of concentration of forces and military equipment, 42 Ukrainian artillery and mortar units in firing positions, two batteries of Grad multiple launch rocket systems,” he said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said yesterday that prisoner interrogations have revealed that the Ukrainian military leadership is lying about its own casualties, such as by labeling troops killed in action as deserters instead. One prisoner reported being ordered to help dig a 50-meter trench for the burial of 50 soldiers killed in action. “There were people whom I knew among them. Later I learned that those I knew in person were listed as deserters or missing,” he said in a video posted by the Defense Ministry. “It turns out, the command has been hiding the losses, while brazenly lying to friends and relatives.” [cjo]

Russia Test-Fires Another Hypersonic Cruise Missile

May 28 (EIRNS)—The Russian Defense Ministry told reporters today that the Admiral Gorshkov frigate fired a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile from the Barents Sea at a sea target located in the White Sea, according to an account in TASS. The ministry noted that the shooting was part of testing new types of weapons. “According to objective control data, the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile successfully hit a sea target located at a distance of around 1,000 km,” the ministry said.

Although only an exercise, the test was clearly a “shot across the bow” of the U.S., U.K and NATO in general, to remind them of Russia’s retaliatory capabilities if the conflict continues to escalate under NATO direction. [dns]

Peskov Underwhelmed by Zelenskyy Hints at Negotiating

May 28 (EIRNS)—Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was clearly underwhelmed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s latest hints that he is considering negotiating with Russia. Zelenskyy stated May 27 that President Vladimir Putin was the only Russian official worth talking to, and that if Putin came to his senses and “if he is able to realize” what the reality is, “then, probably, we may try and go the diplomatic way, unless it is too late.”

Said Peskov: “The Ukrainian leadership constantly makes statements that contradict each other, which makes it impossible to fully understand its intentions and whether it is ready to take a sober approach and acknowledge the real state of affairs.” [dns]

Ukraine Foreign Mercenaries To Be Tried by Donetsk People’s Republic

May 28 (EIRNS)—Two British and one Moroccan mercenaries fighting in Ukraine will be tried and could face the death penalty in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Prosecutor General’s Office of the D.P.R. announced on May 27 that “The materials of the case have been transferred to one of the republic’s courts for consideration which could result, taking wartime into account, in the application of capital punishment—the death penalty—to the accused.” The Prosecutor General’s Office specified that the investigation had confirmed that Brits Shaun Pinner and Andrew Hill, along with Moroccan Ibrahim Saadoun, were involved in crimes under three articles of the D.P.R. Criminal Code: the “commission of crimes by a group of persons,” the “forcible seizure of power or forcible retention of power,” and “mercenarism.”

In early May, Andrew Hill published a video in which he said that after coming to Ukraine he realized “it was hell” there. He also claimed that the foreign mercenaries he was fighting with were “really bad people and sadists…. I understand everything has been done wrong and I hope for leniency from the Donetsk People’s Republic,” he said. [dns]

Kissinger Blacklisted by Ukrainian Proscription Site

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—The infamous Ukrainian website Myrotvorets has blacklisted Henry Kissinger for “participation in Russia’s special information operation against Ukraine.” Kissinger, who turned 99 this week, is charged with “propaganda, blackmail and encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine” because of his speech in Davos. In that speech Kissinger stated: “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome. Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante.”

Myrotvorets is “managed by the government intelligence agency SBU and is affiliated with the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine” according to Wiki in Italian. It has “connections” to both SBU and Interior Ministry according to Wiki in German and is “allegedly curated” by the SBU and “promoted” by Interior Minister advisor Anton Harashchenko according to Wiki in English.

Myrotvorets (“Peacemaker”) is known for publishing proscription lists. Among others, in April 2015 they published the home addresses of Ukrainian writer Oles Buzina and former Rada MP Oleg Kalashnikov just days before they were assassinated. [ccc]

World Health Organization Votes Down Ukrainian Resolution

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—A resolution denouncing Russia submitted by Ukraine was voted down at the 75th session of the World Health Assembly on May 26 in Geneva, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO).

“We are pleased to state that out of the 183 WHO member states that attended the session and that have voting rights, only 88 states supported Ukraine’s resolution. Ukraine and its allies failed to mobilize even half of the votes in their support, although, as far as we know, they had put unprecedented pressure on other countries prior to the session and during it,” a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said according to TASS.“There is an evident tendency for the world community to look more and more soberly at the situation in and around Ukraine, unwilling to sacrifice multilateral cooperation in the crucial areas for all humankind,” the statement declared.

The resolution “was designed to isolate our country and exclude it from the WHO work. Regrettably, the document was adopted owing to the consolidated support of the European countries that had initiated a resolution of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe on May 10, which was aimed at terminating cooperation with Russia in the WHO European Region,” the ministry stressed. [dea]

DOCUMENTATION

Manhattan Project Meeting: Is the Enemy Us, Or Only Our British Axioms?

Manhattan Project Dialogue with Richard A. Black of the Schiller Institute, Michelle Rasmussen, and host Dennis Speed [partial transcript]

May 28, 2022 (EIRNS)—Dennis Speed opened the Manhattan Project meeting with a comparison between the mass shooters in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas and the possessed men, “demoniacs,” who begged Jesus to rid them of their demons, whereby Jesus sent the demons into a herd of pigs, known as the Gadarene swine, that stampeded over a cliff into the sea: Who, then, are our enemies? The shooters, the “demoniacs,” or the demons that possessed them? From that standpoint, Speed played selections from the two Schiller Institute conferences in the U.S. on May 26, and in Denmark and Sweden on May 25. He then invited his two guest speakers, the Schiller Institute representative to the United Nations Richard A. Black and Michelle Rasmussen, the Vice President of the Schiller Institute in Denmark, who had moderated the May 25 conference. Their discussion is transcribed here.

DENNIS SPEED: While the observations made by all the speakers were very important at the conference, the conference was intended to begin a dialogue, and there was a moment in the questions and answers at this conference on Thursday, where Helga Zepp-LaRouche asked the question posed primarily to Ray McGovern and Col. Richard Black (ret.), but also to others of the participants who were no longer online, and she felt that her question was not answered. And what that question had to do with is: How do you get the United States, as well as other nations, but the trans-Atlantic world, to deal honestly with the new relationship that has now emerged in the world, involving not only Russia and China, but actually, the majority of the world’s nations. And this has happened in various forms, and we’re going to speak about this in just a minute.

But in order for us to get a kind of an approach to that question, we’ve now given an overview for you of the various points of view at that conference and have said some things and said some things about the overall context, certainly some things which would startle most, concerning the issue of Ukraine and so on. But to bring the discussion to the next level, I’ve asked two people to join us today, and they are Michelle Rasmussen, vice president of the Schiller Institute in Denmark, who was instrumental in organizing the Wednesday conference on why Finland and Sweden should not join NATO, and Richard A. Black, Schiller Institute representative at the United Nations. We’re going to start with you, Richard, for any comment, both in terms of what you’ve heard, but more importantly, your own view of this question that Helga posed, and what the nature of the answer to it is.

RICHARD A. BLACK: Thank you, Dennis. I want to give you a report on a third conference which occurred this week, which I believe is epoch-making, and part of an international dialogue process among heads of state and government and key individuals globally, including leadership of the Schiller Institute. The meeting was also on May 26 of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) at the Kyrgyz Republic. The Eurasian Economic Union itself is a small organization of five nations: Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Kyrgyz Republic. But what occurred at this meeting, which was keynoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, was I believe epoch-making, because at this meeting, there were nations and organizations far beyond the Eurasian Economic Union, and the topic of it really was the creation of a new world, as LaRouche would put it, a much better Earth’s next 50 years.

Putin’s keynote was, I would say, epoch shaping, and I’ll go through that in a couple of moments. And in a certain sense, it’s the fulfillment of a forecast or a prophecy that Lyndon LaRouche made about 18 years ago, which was published in a book of his essays, called Earth’s Next Fifty Years. The specific essay, the major paper, was from 2004, and he entitled it, “Toward a Second Treaty of Westphalia: The Coming Eurasian World.” In it, he says: “The subject to which we have been moving is the urgency of promoting among both Asians and non-Asians alike, an informed sense of those means of self-development needed to establish the kind of understanding needed for a permanent community of fruitful cooperation among what we may distinguish today as the natural successor to the intent of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia: That is, a community of sovereign nations dedicated to promote, each, the advantage of the other.” This is from “The Coming Eurasian World,” Lyndon LaRouche, December 2004.

The events of this week, at both the conferences which Dennis has been reporting on, and which Michelle will report on, and the First Eurasian Economic Forum in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, brings to my mind the opening line of a John Keats sonnet, “Great spirits now on earth are sojourning:” Something extraordinary has now been unleashed, and that is the creation of a new set of relations among nations, and a new economic world order, and that was the topic of the First Eurasian Economic Forum. President Putin, in his speech, began by saying that the current major trend in the world is that the world development will move into the Asia-Pacific region. He said that we in Russia, have done everything we can to ensure the sovereignty of nation-states and the sovereignty of Russia. And he focussed on an idea that Lyndon LaRouche had developed over the decades from LaRouche’s first visits to Russia in 1994. And Putin said this, in response to the blitzkrieg of sanctions being rained down on Russia and anybody that deals with Russia. Putin said on Thursday:

“What is important for the country, for its development—I have already said this and I will repeat it—are the engineering centers and research centers that are the basis of our own development. This is what we must think about and what we must work on both within the EAEU and in a broad sense with our partners—those who want to cooperate with us. … [L]ife itself has now forced us to invest there,” in the engineering centers and the research centers. [http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68484] Now, this is a key shift in Russia, wherein the Academies of Sciences have been left greatly underfunded over the last number of years.

Putin described a Greater Eurasian Partnership, and he said, as he ended his speech, something quite striking. He said: “It would be no exaggeration to say that Greater Eurasia is a big civilizational project. The main idea is to create a common space for equitable cooperation for regional organizations. The Greater Eurasian Partnership is designed to change the political and economic architecture and guarantee stability and prosperity on the entire continent….” So this idea of a civilizational project, a shift in the direction that humanity is going, away from the wars, imperialism, hyperinflation, destruction of the Global South, this was what was focussed on by President Putin, quite, quite sharp, and quite congruent with the outlook being expressed by the Chinese leadership Premier Li Keqiang, President Xi Jinping.

There were six panel discussions, in addition to a plenary session and executive meeting. At one of the plenary sessions, the title was “Interaction between the Eurasian Economic Union and Promising International Partners,” at this dialogue, you see the way this relatively small organization has now branched out and is encompassing, now, really, a majority of the world’s nations. Among the speakers were, very importantly, the head of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Ambassador Zhang Ming, one of China’s senior ambassadors; formerly was the Ambassador of China to the European Union, and an extremely senior figure in the Chinese hierarchy. In addition to Ambassador Zhang, who I’ll get to in a moment, was the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia; the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Integration and Macroeconomics Minister Sergei Glazyev, and a longtime collaborator of Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute; the Minister of Trade and Industry from Vietnam; the Russian ASEAN Business Council chief; the head of the Russia Africa Partnership Forum; and Vice Minister for Trade and Investment of Venezuela.

So what came together was a working executive group to discuss leaving the failed neoliberal economic system, in current collapse. How do we create a new one? What is its shape?

Now, what was quite extraordinary is that Ambassador Zhang said the following—mark this closely—“The population of the SCO is over 3 billion people, this is half the population of the Earth…. Using our resources, we should cooperate with the world and promote the domestic market…. Changes in the world are of a colossal nature, but they also provide new opportunities for development. As important participants in the global process, the Eurasian Economic Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization should unite. Only by joining forces, we will be able to build a new world order.” Now, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization includes India, Pakistan, China, Russia, and many others in Eurasia. And Sergei Glazyev over the last several years has said, although my role in the Eurasian Economic Union is kind of an engine of ideas, our group of five nations is too small to launch a new world system. It would have to be done by an organization of much broader expanse and power, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, represented on May 26 by Ambassador Zhang Ming.

To give you a further sense of the dialogue—this is a living, breathing, life-and-death fate. Remember, the policy of NATO, London and Washington, is to crush Russia and destroy China: And that’s not an inference, that’s their stated policy of Brussels, London and Washington. And the response of the world is: No, humanity is not going in that direction.

The director of the Eurasian Economic Union Mikhail Myasnikovich said, “In my opinion, not only trade and payments in national currencies should be on our agenda. We need to discuss the construction of an independent monetary system, an independent currency system. The world is changing fast. A qualitatively new system of axes, priorities and values in international economic, political and humanitarian relations is taking shape.”

So, while the discussions of the Schiller Institute involving dozens of diplomats, leading experts, led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, as Dennis was just reporting, while that was going on, this discussions among heads of state and government, at this meeting, major agreements were signed with Iran, Indonesia, Venezuela. President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, an EAEU observer state, sent a video address. This was not a small, Asian meeting. And to give you a bit of background, this is a certain conjunction point in a very intensive process that has gone on through the winter, and sprint. In March, there was a meeting of Glazyev’s group at the EAEU with the team from the Chongyang Institute of Financial Studies at Renmin University, our friend, Dr. Wang Wen. And the dialogue at that March meeting, headed up by Sergey Glazyev and Wang Wen was how to create a new monetary system based upon the productive development of populations, and the transfer advanced technology, energy-intense technology to the Global South. And there were all kinds of reports in the media, speculating about the importance of this discussion. The discussion in March was extremely concrete: What are the features of the new monetary system? How do we run trade based upon national currencies? How do we evaluate currencies based upon productive potential, referring to LaRouche’s conception of currencies based on a basket of commodities and the productive power of labor. [“On a Basket of Commodities: Trade without Currency,” https://larouchepub.com/lar/2000/lar_commodities_2730.html] That occurred in March. It was a private meeting, but described in much of the Asian press.

In April there was a meeting in Moscow of the so-called Sparrows Hill Group, and this likewise was headed up by Glazyev, and had business leaders, academics, economic experts; additionally, the Deputy Speaker of the State Duma of Russia and one leaders of the main parties in the Duma. So you had executive members of the Russian government, with civil society, expert economists, talking about “we must have a new monetary system, now.” For Russia, it’s a matter of life and death; for humanity, it’s a matter of life and death.

What has come to the fore this week is a very expanding process whereby the great sovereign powers of Russia, China, India, are making their move, and if we can get a negotiated process going in Ukraine, if we can avoid nuclear annihilation, which is a likely possibility if that can be avoided, what is taking shape are the details and the advanced conceptions of a new set of international relations. Interestingly, in Moscow last month, at the Sparrows Hill meeting, the discussion was Hamiltonian economics: Directed credit, the augmentation of heavy industry, guaranteeing of a certain income for the labor force: It could have been lifted straight out of the economic writings of Alexander Hamilton.

And I just want to conclude by reminding people what Russia has contributed over many hundreds of years, since the founding of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1724, to the outlook of Lyndon LaRouche. This is a paper by LaRouche from October-November 2001: “The case of Russia’s character as a distinctively Eurasian nation, is a case in point. The role which Russia is potentially capable of playing in the currently unfolding history of mankind, is the role which should be adduced from the appropriate apprehension of the character of a Russia under the law of the general welfare, as a distinct personality of distinguishing characteristic intentions. Russia will be able to act effectively as a nation, to the degree it is able to direct and sustain its efforts under the governance of a properly selected intention consistent with its personality as a well-defined quality of sovereign nation-state. That definition of Russia’s role as a nation of science, is an essential, integral feature of its nature and efficient historical role as a sovereign nation-state personality, at this juncture in world history.” [“The Legacy of Mendeleyev and Vernadsky: The Spirit of Russia’s Science,” EIR, Dec. 7, 2001; https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2001/eirv28n47-20011207/eirv28n47-20011207_023-the_legacy_of_mendeleyev_and_ver-lar.pdf] This is from Lyndon LaRouche’s paper, “The Legacy of Mendeleyev and Vernadsky: The Spirit of Russia’s Science.” And what we saw this week at this pivotal meeting of the First Eurasian Economic Forum in the Kyrgyz Republic, was a discussion of physical economy as Lyndon LaRouche has defined it, and I believe a reassessment of Russia’s identity as a nation of science, that is, of physical economic power, capable of helping to transform, with China and hopefully with the United States, a devastated Global South.

So I think from these three conferences that occurred this week, we have a tremendous work ahead of us.

SPEED: OK, thanks a lot, Richard. And I see we have Michelle with us, Michelle Rasmussen, the Vice President of the Schiller Institute in Denmark, and also has a unique view of the United States. Anything you’d like to say Michelle, at all. Of course, we’re very interested in the May 25 conference that happened that was primarily being organized from Europe which preceded the conference we had here; and also anything else you’d like to tell us.

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Thank you very much Dennis, and thank you for inviting me to be on the program.

After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, there was a dramatic shift in defense policy in Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

In Denmark, there was a national defense compromise involving five of the parliament’s parties, including to hold a referendum June 1, this coming Wednesday, about abolishing the Danish European Union defense cooperation opt-out. What this has to do with is that the only way that Danish voters approved the EU Maastricht Treaty was after four opt-outs were negotiated, including that Denmark would not participate in EU military activities. Now, as a measure to increase militarization, they want to abolish this opt-out, and the voters on Wednesday have to decide Yes or No.

But, as Dennis said, and what we heard from the excerpt from LaRouche earlier, the only way to understand a single factor, is by understanding the whole. Lyndon LaRouche was a truly a master at this. So, we wanted to make an intervention to approach the Danish discussion from the highest level, and for that, we started to organize a seminar.

Just then, the Swedish and Finnish governments announced their decision to apply for NATO membership, so we made it into a joint seminar, sponsored by the Schiller Institutes in Denmark and Sweden entitled, “We Need A New Security And Development Architecture For All Nations, Not a Strengthening of Geopolitical Blocs,” subtitled “NO in the Danish June 1 Referendum” about abolishing the EU Defense opt-out, and “NO to Sweden and Finland joining NATO.”

The idea was to broaden the space dimension, by discussing the entire international strategic situation, and to broaden the time dimension, to go back in time to answer, how did we get here, where we’re actually facing the possibility of nuclear war? And going forward in time: How do we avoid an escalation of the current war, even to nuclear war? And going further ahead in time, how can we prevent that future conflicts from leading to war?

Lyndon LaRouche always said that the future determines the present. So the goal must be to establish a new international security and development architecture. That determines what we have to do now.

My personal view is that the Schiller Institute’s role is not to defend this war, because the war is a tragedy, but to make it very clear how we got to this tragic result, including, emphatically the responsibility on the Western side, and what we have to do to prevent a worse tragedy. As it turned out, our initiative for May 25th seminar coincided with your May 26th seminar, becoming, in effect, a two-day international conference, centered first in Europe, and then in the U.S., with Helga Zepp-LaRouche giving the keynotes at both events. Our Danish-Swedish seminar had at least 72 people directly in the Zoom meeting, and there were 450, who saw the live stream, with 2,500 more seeing it afterwards.

The speakers, in addition to Helga were:

Jens Jørgen Nielsen, whom you heard the clip from. He has degrees in the history of ideas and communication, and was the Moscow correspondent for the major Danish daily Politiken in the late 1990s; he is author of several books about Russia and Ukraine, a leader of the Russian-Danish Dialogue organization, and an associate professor of communication and cultural differences at the Niels Brock Business College in Denmark. His remarks addressed the background leading up to the current conflict.

Then we had a speech on “Why We Need a New Security Architecture,” and also going into depth about the question of Sweden and Finland joining NATO, by Jan Øberg, peace and future researcher, and art photographer, with a PhD in sociology; he is a visiting professor in peace and conflict studies in Japan, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland. He is the founder and director of the independent Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, in Lund, Sweden, as well as being an author.

Then, there was a speech on “Chinese Proposals for a New Security and Development Architecture: Xi Jinping’s April Proposal for a New International Security Architecture: The Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative.” This speech was by Prof. Li Xing, PhD. Professor Li is the director of Development and International Relations Institute; and he’s also in the Department of Politics and Society, Faculty in Humanities and Social Sciences, Aalborg University, in Denmark, and he is also an author.

The speech “Why Sweden and Finland Should Not Join NATO,” was given by Ulf Sandmark, chairman, the Schiller Institute in Sweden, and I gave a short report on “Why Denmark Should Not Intensify Its Geopolitical Military Engagements.”

I want to tell you a little about the organizing process on the Danish side: When we decided to have the seminar our outreach coordinator Preben and I mapped out a strategy. Preben has perfected a technique of extracting emails from any text, and we sent out hundreds of invitations. This helps to create of field of intervention, over and above those who actually registered.

We invited governments to participate through their embassies. We invited all embassies in Denmark, and those covering Denmark from other countries, plus all embassies in Norway, Sweden, Finland and two of the Baltic countries, plus all Turkish embassies in Europe. The embassy registrations started ticking in by themselves. And we also contacted diplomats whom we already knew.

Some registrations came from an organizing strategy invented by another activist before a previous seminar. He proposed that instead of sending invitations by e-mail, we should drive around to areas in Copenhagen where there is a dense concentration of embassies, and ask for drop-in meetings. We did this before the previous two seminars—one was an international webcast, and the other was a special seminar that we had here in Denmark in October about the critical situation in Afghanistan; and we actually got drop-in meetings with many diplomats along the way.

The result this time was that 25 embassies registered from different Nordic and Baltic countries, and at least 11 of them did participate in the Zoom seminar, and we have sent the recordings to the rest.

With politicians, we sent email invitations to all Danish and Norwegian MPs and to many Danish city council members. We also sent invitations to academic institutions, defense college, think tanks, peace groups, and, of course urged our own Schiller members and contacts, asking them to organize for it. Some speakers also shared the invitation.

The invitation was posted to the websites of the Schiller Institute in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and the U.S.

And the U.S. Schiller Institute sent a mass e-mail, and there was also organizing by some European and U.S. members.

Afterwards, we got some interesting responses: One significant response came from Dr. Li Xing, one of the speakers. He wrote afterwards:

“What I wish to express, myself, is the fact that the seminar he is very good and very conducive to promote what used to be in the West a good intellectual tradition historically derived from the Renaissance, the Enlightenment movement, and religious reform. I came from China to study in Denmark, and I thought that the values and the intellectual exchange were so conducive. There were the values of freedom of research, freedom of speech, freedom of thinking, freedom of press; to be open-minded to different interpretations, to different aspects and perspectives; to be critical of the so-called”mainstream opinions,” “the only truth,” and to be critical to any given authoritative discourse; to accommodate different approaches and methods, and to tolerate opposite ideas and understandings.

The West had tremendous self-confidence after the Cold War, because its sentiment of triumphalism prevailed. But right now, facing the rise of China, the rise of the BRICS, and the rise of emerging powers, together with an assertive Russia, such self-confidence it is being lost, especially during the period of the Ukraine war. The most serious loss is the disappearance of the above intellectual traditions.” That was Li Xing’s response.

The other speakers were very happy for the combination of speakers and the important exchange in the seminar.

So, as Dennis laid out, these two conferences, and also the EAEU Forum that Richard just spoke about, where we had no direct involvement, will kick off the organizing process for the bigger Schiller Institute June 18-19 online conference.

So, please: Help to make this the biggest and most significant conference ever: The world situation demands nothing less.

SPEED: Thank you Michelle. And now I’ve got a few things for you and Richard, and there’s one thing I want to make sure to have the two of you address, because there have been responses just before, and just after the conferences. Good responses, and then, some not so good. Here’s one, and it’s from an organization called the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation, and they were very worried about Col. Richard H. Black, and his April 26 interview with EIR and the Schiller Institute. Here’s what they had to say:

“”The other day, several English-language media outlets published an interview with R. Black, in which the former U.S. senator [sic] said that Russia could not afford to lose the war with Ukraine, because, in his opinion, Russia’s defeat would mean that ‘NATO will move to the borders without hindrance. from Russia.’ Interestingly, the expert did not mention Finland and Sweden, which border Russia, and it was because of the aggression of a neighbor that they decided to become members of the Alliance….

“We warn you! Such statements of the ‘expert’ are an element of the information and psychological operation of the enemy, which is trying to convince the West of the futility of helping Ukraine.”

Now, this is a group run out of the Ukrainian President’s National Security and Defense Council, and is apparently coordinating its ongoing work with various countries from NATO. I’d just like to get a response from both of you to that.

And then I got something extra special for you, Richard. But first, if you have any thoughts about this, especially, Michelle, given the reference that they made to Finland and Sweden.

BLACK: Well, clearly, the puppet Ukrainian government, which is being victimized by London and Washington, is hysterical and frightened, because Colonel Black, who speaks with limitless authority on the matters which he address, his interview has upwards of 500,000 views internationally. It’s being picked up by websites all over the world. And the truth is gripping people, and shifting, potentially, world and U.S. opinion. I found their statement, which I read earlier, somewhat threatening and I think it indicates that they’re quite concerned that the universal narrative of the Ministry of Truth run out of London, the narrative is not being accepted. And if you look at our series of conferences over the recent period, more and more individuals are speaking out, and one of the characteristics of the Thursday conference is that you had two, extraordinarily distinguished American veterans, Col. Richard H. Black, and Ray McGovern, with decades and decades of experience in ideological battle, and physical battle, speaking out clearly and with arguments that cannot be avoided.

So I think the Ukrainian outfit is quite concerned and we’ll escalate from here.

RASMUSSEN: Well, the question is really how you deal with the current situation. For example, in terms of Sweden and Finland joining NATO: Sweden and Finland have been neutral countries, especially Sweden, for a couple hundred years. Sweden has seen its role more as negotiating peace between different factions. We’ve all heard about the Oslo Agreement in Oslo, Norway, where the Norwegians were instrumental in getting the Palestinians and the Israelis to make a very important agreement in 1993, when Clinton was President.

The question is, here, after the Ukraine war, leading politicians in Denmark, in Sweden and in Finland, decided that the way to deal with this, is to up the militarization, to have Sweden and Finland become members of NATO at this time, this has to be seen, as a tremendous provocation to Russia. If NATO moves into Finland, with Sweden right behind it—if NATO moves into Finland, with advanced weapons, maybe even stationing nuclear weapons, what are the Russians going to do? Is this going to increase or decrease the possibility of solving conflicts peacefully? In Denmark, a week before the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, it was announced that Denmark would start negotiations with the United States for a bilateral defense treaty, which is expected to have, for the first time in peacetime, permanent stationing of foreign troops in Denmark, meaning American troops permanently stationed. And at that time, one week before the outbreak of the Ukraine war, and I personally was at the press conference and asked a question to the Prime Minister—but at that time another journalist asked the Prime Minister, what about the stationing of nuclear weapons on Danish soil? And the Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who is the leader of the one party Social Democratic government, she said, “no, absolutely not. No talk about stationing nuclear weapons here.” The next week, at the press conference, when this national defense compromise was announced, including the referendum I spoke about, and also increasing the Danish defense budget to 2% of the GDP, had been asking for, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party—in Europe “liberal” does not mean left leaning; in Europe, it means more kind of small government, against big government, right wing—in any case: The two parties were asked, if the United States in these bilateral negotiations want to station nuclear weapons in Denmark, what do you say, and both of them said: “Oh, we’ll just have to talk about that.” In other words, they’re open for this possibility. If we have stationing of offensive weapons, and maybe nuclear weapons, is this going to be an increase in the ability to lessen tensions or increase in tensions? And will it add to the threat of nuclear war or decrease the threat of nuclear war? And this is one of the main reasons that we are saying that Sweden and Finland should not join NATO. And even though the governments have announced their intentions to apply, there still can be political mobilization to stop it.

But as I said, and as we began this meeting with, we have to look at these national questions in the greater perspective: What do we have to do to create a new security architecture with economic development, which would include Russian, and China, and India, and lay the basis for peaceful coexistence.

SPEED: Let me just let people know that the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, which will hereby be referred to as the Ukrainian Center for Disinformation, has also apparently attacked Helga Zepp-LaRouche today and Ray McGovern yesterday. I don’t have the exact quotes of what they said. To be clear, they have coordinated their actions with various ambassadors and other members of the EU and NATO in these discussions.

But now, Richard, I want to come to something, given this discussion that we just had, it was a little bit more of a deep dive. I want to get your response to this, because you were emphasizing in your report on the EAEU conference that occurred on Thursday, involving the Eurasian Economic Union and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you referenced that Russia sees itself as a “scientific nation,” and has been developing along that line. But there’s a very specific thing I want to get your reaction on: This week, Executive Intelligence Review came upon a report that had actually been written in 2020 by the Rand Corporation, called “Whose Story Wins: Rise of the Noösphere, Noopolitik, and Information-Age Statecraft” and it has a longer title referring to the study of the work on the noösphere of Vladimir Vernadsky. They coin a silly term called “Noopolitik” which is supposed to supersede Realpolitik, but there’s a particular feature, I want to get your response to, since you’re acquainted from your work at the United Nations with some of these operations. [https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA237-1.html]

Here’s what they have to say:

“Far away, as a result of Vladimir Vernadsky’s early work on the biosphere and noösphere …, noos-related concepts have grown in stature in Russia more than has been recognized….

“Other spin-offs from Vernadsky’s thinking include the Galactic Research Institute and its Foundation for the Law of Time, along with an online activity it organized in 2012, the First Noösphere World Forum. These (and other) New Age activities might not matter for thinking about American information strategy and diplomacy, but they do indicate the influences Vernadsky and his Russian scientist colleagues have had, not only in Russia but also in odd circuits around the world. In particular, the far-right radical Lyndon LaRouche became a devotee of Vernadsky’s ideas, which are still promoted by his followers.”

A little later in that document, they state this: “This has aroused speculations about whether Putin’s ideas for a ‘Third Way’ and ‘managed democracy’ might mean that he aims to install a noocracy—a term from Plato, reiterated by Vernadsky, that means ‘rule of the wise’—for authoritarian mind-manipulating purposes.”

Now, my idea is not that you necessarily need to comment in any detail about the absurd document, but I thought it might—besides giving you a chuckle—give you an opportunity to say a little bit about this matter and our relationship as an organization to this matter.

BLACK: My response is: It’s time to take out the garbage. I mean, this is all gobbledygook. There’s a whole series of lies being perpetrated by British intelligence as to what Michelle was addressing a minute ago: The whole idea that Russia is a threat to Sweden and Finland is absurd on the face of it! Russia has no intention, whatsoever of moving West. Russia is not the Soviet Union—that was 30 years ago! Russia is a different state, a democratic state, a state with an independent central bank, a state with its own economic problems.

What Russia is interested in doing is moving East, that is, developing Siberia. And in fact, it is doing that as part of the reconstruction plan that Putin has outlined. When President Putin went to India in December, he signed 15 industrial and scientific deals with India companies and the government for the industrial development of Siberia, which has never been developed.

So what you’re dealing with is a series of lies and axioms which only have credibility in Europe or America, because people are so badly educated and so depressed. So they don’t have the energy to resist and they don’t have the knowledge to resist.

On this question of going from Vernadsky to Putin the Autocrat, it’s absurd! This goes to the question of universal culture—not Russian culture, not American culture, Schiller’s idea of universal culture. Russia has contributed, immensely, to mankind’s knowledge of the relationship between man and the universe. Mendeleyev, his discovery of the harmonic laws of the elements, the beauty of creation itself. Vernadsky made breakthroughs from the standpoint of the relationship between physical nature and the nature of the human mind, and the connection between the two and the connection of the superior role of the human mind within the universe as a whole. These are contributions to universal culture.

And what’s going on now, from the Rand Corporation on down, is a lying demonization of Russia, the creation of a Feinbild, an enemy image, in order to allow nuclear war to proceed. So basically what you just read is garbage, it’s propaganda, and most of the nations of the globe know it.

SPEED: Yeah. Let’s turn to something more rooted in reality, and I want to direct this initially to you, Michelle, but for reasons which will be very clear. There are several questions around the fact that we referenced the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings at the beginning of this show, and we have one thing from Erica in Alabama. I just want to say a little bit about this: Erica and her husband Scott Muhammad run something called the Tuskegee Memorial Garden, which they created because of the shootings that have happened in that area, and other areas. What they’ve done is create an area where they plant trees as memorials for those who have been killed in violence. But they are trying to bring together the parents of those murdered, and the parents of the murderers, and they’ve done this on several occasions. And what happens on these occasions, is that people realize that first of all, they’re often even related: That is, literally related. There are other kinds of revelations that happen. The main thing that occurs is that the idea of trying to get at something that heals, the relationship, in which the parents are either mystified by what the children have done, or feel completely guilt-ridden and at the same time don’t know what to do about it.

So they’ve been doing this for about two years. Recently, they themselves became the target of people shooting at them in this apartment complex. But the issue of the question, the thing being posed here, is that you referenced that the war is indeed a tragedy. And we also see that in the case of these recent shootings, that no one actually deals with what the cultural factor is. People talk about “guns” or they talk about some other way of passing a piece of legislation, and it’s clear that that doesn’t change what’s in the human heart. And so, the issue is, how to change the culture that produces this kind of effect, and the relationship between the culture, that is the actual activity, the day-to-day lives of people, and these broader international questions of war and peace.

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: It’s actually interesting. I’m reading both a biography and a book that was published on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. One of the things that he stresses is that the inner motivations, the private life—this is also something that LaRouche always stressed—is that the private life of people and what they do in society, they have to be in coherence. One of the things that Mahatma Gandhi was always striving to work with himself, to reform his spirit so that he would not just be thinking about the material things, just thinking about himself, his career, and thinking about the sensual pleasures, but was thinking about humanity. This is also what LaRouche stressed. That we have to have a culture where we’re thinking about love not only of our relatives, but love of strangers, of what we call in Greek agapē. In Danish, the word is næstekærlighed, which means love of the next person. The question is, and this is what the Schiller Institute has been so adamant about, why we have culture as such an important part of our activities: Because, how can you use culture to raise the moral level of the individual to be a Good Samaritan, as Schiller says, not just because it’s your duty, but because it’s something you don’t even think about, that you do. If we have a culture of violence, if we have movies that are elevating violence as great entertainment—Helga has many times spoken against the violent video games—but also, in our day-to-day relations with our co-workers, with people in school, if the passion is how to beat out the other one instead of a joyous collaboration, these personal attributes, then have a great consequence of the direction of our society.

And this can also be a key of peaceful relations and a strategy for getting more peaceful relations, if we, as Helga many times has said, if we investigating and reading about other cultures, if we start listening to music of other cultures, reading philosophy of other cultures, the history of other cultures, looking at the art and the poetry, that this uplifts us to the point that we are not fearful of the others. We’re not fearful of the strangers, but we are embracing them, and we are joyful that there is a mosaic of different cultures, which just enriches us.

SPEED: Thank you, Michelle. Richard, do you have any comment?

RICHARD BLACK: This precious idea that Michelle is talking about, about acting on behalf of all humanity, acting for the benefit of the other, this has a certain currency in international affairs. China’s policy of win-win collaboration with well over 100 nations around the globe, expresses a very, I think, profound philosophical idea. That if one’s self or one’s nation develops your powers of insight and production and contribution, this is a universal contribution and by its nature, it’s collaborative with other individuals and other nations.

So, the hallmark of China’s diplomacy now is win-win cooperation. Of course, the cynics of the U.S. Eastern Establishment and the London press all mock this, as Jesus was mocked. But I was very interested to see that Ray McGovern made this a centerpiece of his discussion in terms of policy, about the outstanding approach of China now in pursuit of peace, which is win-win collaboration. Ray McGovern said, yes, this is the way to go. The well-known economist in Texas, James Galbraith, recently wrote a piece analyzing China’s economy. He said they are doing a fabulous job. And the more fabulous they do, the more enraged and outraged the West becomes. The new ambassador from China to the U.S., Ambassador Chin, is spending almost all his time touring America. As you know, Dennis, he was in Iowa, meeting with farmers and political leaders and civic groups. He was in Atlanta touring factories; he was just on the West Coast meeting with citizens’ organizations, promoting this idea that there is such a thing—and it’s the most profound thing—of universal interest.

Part of the work of the Schiller Institute absolutely is to give currency to this idea that there is a universal good, and each nation has a special characteristic capability to make a contribution to that universal good.

RASMUSSEN: May I just add one sentence? Back to the idea of tragedy: Of course, the greatest playwrights—from Aeschylus to Schiller to Shakespeare—wrote tragedies. Why did they write tragedies? It was not because they were misanthropists, it’s not because they wanted to have people suffer, who watch these tragedies. They wanted to have people learn from the tragedies, of what not to do, what we could have done differently to avoid the tragedy. In our time, both in terms of what you’re speaking about—the school shootings and the tragedy of the war in Ukraine, the tragedy of the other wars that we’ve had, Afghanistan, etc.—the tragedy will be if we do not learn from the tragedy. We must learn from the tragedies and do something different next time. The tragedy will be, if we don’t learn from the tragedy.

SPEED: Richard, this question is from Greg Witherspoon, and he asks, “St. Louis was once some years ago going to be a center for Chinese investment to redo the area as a transportation hub for water, high-speed rail, and the trans-shipment of goods throughout the United States, because of its central location. This goes back about 15 years now. It was stopped, and nothing was done. This is the same area—St. Louis and East St. Louis—where Ferguson happened.” That was the killing and riots that happened some years back. “Nothing has changed here. Is there some way to use the candidacies for office since it is 2022, an election year in the United States, to resurrect some of these sorts of projects?”

BLACK: That’s an excellent question. Absolutely, it’s been the case of many years now that the Chinese government and Chinese companies have offered to bid on major infrastructure projects—St. Louis, Boston, high-speed rail up and down the East Coast. At each point, it’s been blocked by Wall Street. I was at a public meeting a few years ago where a collaborator of ours, this was the topic. How could you rebuild America’s totally collapsed infrastructure? This collaborator of ours, who happened to be a filmmaker, got up and said, “Look, China owns trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury bonds. Couldn’t they be in some way converted into an infrastructure bank with the United States, and the U.S. and China together could invest in rebuilding America’s infrastructure?” One of the people on the panel was the very ancient Hank Greenberg, the head of the AIG Insurance Group. He jumped out of his chair and said, “No! Absolutely not! We’re not going to allow any investment by China in the United States.” This is the Anglo-American genocidal elite. These are the people who continue to write off Central America, South America, and Africa. That’s the enemy.

But it is absolutely the case that it would work instantly. Remember, President Xi Jinping offered to Obama to join the Belt and Road Initiative in its early years. Xi has made the offer again and again. It would work in a flash, in an instant. What’s required in the United States is that we have to have a bigger movement with large numbers of people who are influential who are speaking out, and political campaigns. Here in the New York area, Diane Sare is going to be filing for U.S. Senate in hotly contested election. She’s already been giving interviews internationally, and thousands and thousands of people have signed a petition and again and again have said to her petitioners, “Thank you! God bless you for what you’re doing!” So, with our campaign in Texas with Joel Dejean running for Congress, and Diane Sare, it’s being met with great relief, excitement, and enthusiasm. So, what’s required is a mass movement behind the candidates, and leading intellectuals like the ones we saw speak at these two conferences this week, organized in Denmark and the U.S.. This is what we have to organize, and we have to put our heads together on how to accelerate that in the cauldron of the threat of an imminent nuclear annihilation.

SPEED: Michelle, this is from one of our young organizers, José. “I came around on the idea of the revival of Classical culture, and also did a broadcast on December 16, 2020 in honor of Beethoven. I know that you have composed music. I briefly met the composer Alma Deutscher at Carnegie Hall in 2018, and I think young people should take up the challenge to do what Beethoven and others did. What do you think about this?”

RASMUSSEN: Absolutely! In fact, I am continuing my own studies about the teaching method that Alma Deutscher was schooled in, which helped her to be able to compose such beautiful music. For those who don’t know about Alma Deutscher, she is a British young woman; her father was Israeli, her mother is British. Now, the family moved to Vienna, the capital of Classical composition. But in any case, she started composing music at the age of four. Her father tried to get a composition teacher for her, and basically got laughed at, until he found a book that was written about a method called Partimenti in Italian. This was a method which was used to train orphan boys in Italy from about the 1600s until the 1800s, to learn to compose as a craft, as you would teach carpentry or masonry. They learned to compose music, but they had a special pedagogy, which started with singing for three years, and then they learned to start composition based on being given a bass line. Then from this bass line, the task was, how can you invent one or more beautiful horizontal voices that interweave with the given bass line to produce a beautiful polyphonic piece of music. Polyphonic means many voiced music. So, you’re given one voice, and then you learn how to compose one or two or three additional voices to make a beautiful whole. This method is now being revived, also due to the way that Alma Deutscher’s music has brought tears to the eyes of many people, both because she was so young, but also because she composed beautiful music in the Classical tradition. And she has been courageous enough to make a polemic against ugliness in art, and a kind of mission for the composition of beautiful music. This is something that, just like anybody can learn to sing, anybody can learn to compose music. It’s not esoteric, hidden knowledge, but the whole idea of this movement is to make this pedagogy apparent so that people can use it. There may be other things in addition to this, it might not be the only thing, but it is one pedagogical method for encouraging every child and every adult not only to sing, but to compose beautiful music.

SPEED: OK. We’re pretty much at the end of the program. What I’d like to do is to introduce something because of the theme of the overall program, which is, “Is the Enemy Us, or Only Our British Imperial Axioms?” I ask both of you in your concluding statements to respond to something we’ll put up on the screen from Lyndon LaRouche. It was from a document that he wrote back in October 1977 called “NATO in Caesar’s Foolish Footsteps.” He said:

“It is that British ideology, as it permeates Anglo-American and NATO policies, and as that same mental disease continues to impair the judgment of America’s policymaking strata, which we confront….

“During the 18th century, the forces of evil centered around the British ruling Guelph monarchical house and the heirs of the evil nominalists, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, occupied themselves in the study of the fall of the Roman Republic and the emergence of the Roman Empire. This study was directed to the purpose of adducing from the study of the Roman Empire a political art by which the British monarchy and its accomplices could develop a global rule of Pax Britannica as the intended successor to the Pax Romana….

“The anti-humanist or bestialist outlook is properly called bestialist because, like Thomas Hobbes or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it denies any qualitative distinction between man and the lower beasts. It denies any fundamental importance for scientific knowledge—and, most frequently, has stated that qualitative advances in scientific knowledge have been virtually exhausted, as Bertrand Russell and John Dewey insisted during the 1920s….”

So, I wanted to get your responses to this as we summarize, because obviously Lyn writing this 45 years ago, talking about NATO and Caesar’s foolish footsteps, and then identifying this as a disease, but placing it from the standpoint of the conception that mankind and the flaw that it represents. I think that that’s an important idea for us to flesh out as we try to get people ready for the next three weeks and what they’re going to be doing to build this conference. So, I guess I’d like to start with you first, Richard, and then go to Michelle.

BLACK: It’s clear that America and Europe need a Renaissance. The contrast between what goes on in America and in Western Europe, for example, and what’s going on in China is embarrassing, astounding, amazing. What about the China miracle? The unbelievable expansion of their economic and scientific capability, which expands by the month. Their eradication of 850 million cases of extreme poverty; the elimination of extreme poverty in all of China? Their breakthroughs in one area of science, one after the other, including agriculture, and the transfer of technology to the global South? What’s happening here in America? The shutdown of nuclear power; the banning of petrochemicals; the destruction of science in the schools; the elimination of music and art in the schools. What we’re looking at, if you look at the world as a whole, back to our initial conception, yes, we have done this to ourselves. As Michelle’s friend indicated, he came to the West because of the ruined reputation in the West for free discussion, the power of ideas, open dialogue, open-ended contention in the fight for truth. The problem is, he came to the West a little bit too late, when we decided to shut ourselves down, or at least the elites did.

I just want to emphasize the fact that the tremendous economic advance and success of China today has an important cultural and aesthetic aspect, and as we’ve discussed at various locations, since 2008 in China there has been a big emphasis on aesthetic education for very young students in China. That means Classical Western music; it means Classical Chinese music; it means a revival of Confucius, who was attacked and banned during the Cultural Revolution. Really, among some of the elites in China, typified by its President, there is a call for an aesthetical upshifting of the entire society. This is part of the secret to the tremendous productivity of Chinese science and the Chinese economy. That’s what America had been known for in the Revolutionary War generation, John Quincy Adams, the period all through the 1800s America was envied and loved for that capability. It saw it’s light again in the decade-plus under the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and that’s something we’ve lost. If we don’t reverse it, we may lose the world as a whole. That defines a very urgent task for us; a certain kind of spiritual task I would say.

SPEED: Thank you, Richard. Michelle?

RASMUSSEN: It all really comes down to an image of man; an image of humanity. The question of security is, do we approach the relationship between nations from the standpoint of the bestial view of man that it is that nations are at war with each other, people are always at war with each other, people are fundamentally egotistical, greedy, ambitious—the bestial view of man. Or, do we have a positive view of human beings with a creative spark of reason? That human beings can create beautiful music; human beings can create beautiful poetry, artwork; can create new scientific discoveries? The question is, do we have political leaders who operate based on the one view of man or the other? Do we have an electorate which allows their political leaders, or chooses their political leaders on the basis of one party beating the party, coming out on top? Or, do we have the idea of collaboration for the benefit of all?

One thing I would like to stress is that one of the most basic ideas of the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche movement has been the slogan “Peace through economic development.” That we cannot just have defense organizations like NATO which see the world as us and them; but it’s the power of economic cooperation, the whole vision and Lyn and Helga had after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, finally, we have the chance to have economic development amongst and between all the countries that before had been severed by an Iron Curtain, and before that by Nazism and fascism. But here, finally, we had the opportunity to have joint Eurasian economic development. As Lyn always stressed, the economic development in our part of the world should be used as a motor for economic development in Africa, Asia, South America.

So, it is really up to us to be on a mission for expressing this higher viewpoint, this higher image of man. Then, developing political and economic strategies that embody that higher image of humanity. It’s nothing less than that that will be able to steer us clear in these stormy waters.

SPEED: All right. Michelle Rasmussen, Richard Black, I want to thank you very much for being with us today. I think we’ve addressed at least in part the concerns that have only begun to be addressed by what Helga has wanted to do with these conferences.

I want to say a few things in conclusion now today, for those who may have joined us during the broadcast or were not there at the beginning when we referenced the agony and tragedy of the two shootings in the United States; one in Buffalo, one in Texas. Many things are coming out about these; details are emerging. But the details don’t really matter; what matters is to look at the phenomenon. This has been going on for 23 years in the United States, but there’s something else to be looked at.

The reality of what the United States does, rather than what the United States says, is most reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable and impressionable—that is, its youth. It’s also the case, as all of us who were youth know, that young people know who you really are, and they look at how you really behave. In the United States, just under 1000 children are murdered each year. That shows something about our thinking as a nation. The evil that is practiced in killing and murder in faraway lands, is the evil that is also found in the American household. And if nothing is changed, America will be eaten by its own children. That’s not because they are the evil in the same way that the possessed that Christ drove the devils out of were not the enemy, they were possessed. They were what was called demoniacs, as they were called. At the same time, the good that has been invented by the United States, which is after all, the longest continuous democratic republic in the world, is in its founding documents and its invention of what’s called the science of physical economy. Now, it’s not the originator of it, that was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1672. But it was the follower of Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, who advanced that here in the United States through his inheriting of Leibniz’s intelligence and scientific networks. Leibniz died in 1716; Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706. By the age of 16 in 1722, Franklin had embarked upon creating what became known as the American Revolution. It was a conscious conspiracy to do that which was launched originally in Boston, but then became rooted in the city of Philadelphia in 1722. That American Revolution boasted the most successful intelligence network in history, run by Benjamin Franklin, but featuring and advanced particularly by George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette, and others.

The four Hamilton reports are the primary statement of the revolutionary, anti-colonial, and pro-development outlook which was an American outlook that was in fact adopted at the Bandung Conference of 1955 in Indonesia by what was then called the Third World. That was over the objections of British intelligence agents John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who happened to run the State Department of the United States and its CIA. The outlook that we see being expressed by the Jake Sullivans and Blinkens and others is essentially the bastard child of that John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles betrayal of the American System and of the American intelligence community. The arrogance of the Georgetown set, the Dumbarton Oaks set, that they and not the British were the real power, has to be laid to rest. Winston Churchill recognized that the real empire was the “empire of the mind” as he called it.

What we have to do is, we have to cause this country to abandon our British imperial axioms, and then we will once again be Americans; we will once again be free. On the basis of that, this country can enter into alliance and collaboration with Russia, China, India, and others in a way that is not only win-win from some economic standpoint, but win-win for humanity and civilization as a whole.

I want to thank everybody for joining us for today’s Manhattan Town Meeting. We want to encourage you all to work with us over the next three weeks for the upcoming June 18-19 Schiller Institute conference. We want to also obviously recognize veterans of the wars, of the just wars that the United States and other nations have fought, this being Memorial Day weekend. We want to thank you all for being with us today, and hope to see you again here next week. [dhs/rab] [mr_]

“ONE FIST ACROSS FIVE CONTINENTS” OPERATIONS BULLETIN

SUNDAY, MAY 29, 2022

Organizing Report May 25

LaRouche Economic Solution Brought Into Committee for the Republic ‘Empire Salon’ Meeting on Restructuring U.S. Government Debt

Wed. night, May 25, the Committee for the Republic, which last month held its regular monthly “Empire Salon” on opposing the Ukraine War with Rep. Thomas Massie, held its meeting in Washington at the Metropolitan Club on the question of restructuring U.S. government debt, with the question raised of possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The meeting exposed the fact that the opponents of empire and endless war, as represented by members of the Committee, which was formed by former Ambassador Chas Freeman after the Iraq 2003 war, see an economic crisis, but see it as the monetary unsustainability of U.S. government debt, as opposed to the economic breakdown of the real physical economy both in the U.S. and worldwide, and see no feasible solution within this limited viewpoint.

The two law professors who were the speakers at the meeting admitted that to solve the problem they saw required “thinking outside the box,” and one of the speakers praised Hamilton as having successfully restructured U.S. government debt. This opened the door for Paul Gallagher to bring reality into this meeting, by making a comment online, shown at the big screen at the meeting, that the issue was not to put the U.S. into bankruptcy, but to make credit available for development, instead of waging nuclear war. Jerry Belsky, in person at the meeting, spoke about the LaRouche economic solution and the Schiller Institute call for an international conference to restructure the world economy, starting with Glass-Steagall to eliminate the derivative speculative bubble, which could solve the real problem of the bankruptcy of the entire global financial system, and to use the Hamiltonian idea of using credit to create real development, to back up Paul’s comments. One Individual immediately raised the question to the speakers of what they thought of using Glass-Steagall to eliminate the derivative bubble, and numerous people came up to Jerry after the meeting to express their thanks for what he said, and to want to know more. Even one of the academic speakers, who had praised Hamilton, without fully understanding his policies, was very interested, and asked when we were having our conference, which Jerry had mentioned. The other speaker, even though disagreeing with Glass-Steagall, admitted “we had to think outside the box, and was glad to hear of the Institute’s project.”

The meeting was introduced by its Chairman John Henry, who said that the skyrocketing $30 trillion government debt of the U.S. could not be sustained, which is why we had to work out a Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring. He further said that this debt was directly linked to imperial endless wars, and was being propped up by $2 trillion in borrowing just in the last two years. “This debt was an albatross around the neck of future generations,” he said, and “the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” he said. His main point was that the taxes necessary to pay for the debt of an empire fighting endless wars would never be voted up by a population, if actually put to a vote, so instead of constitutionally declaring wars, and then asking people to pay the taxes to fight them, the empire simply printed money to fight unconstitutional wars. He said the Bank of England was created at the onset of the British Empire and the Federal Reserve was created at the onset of the American Empire, as it prepared for World War I, when its debt increased 30 times.

The two University of Virginia Law professors, Edmund Kitch and Julia Mahoney, who had written a paper “Restructuring United States Government Debt: Private Rights, Public Values, and the Constitution” (which has yet to be read), spoke about the current unsustainability of continuing to issue U.S. government debt, having distributed a handout with a series of sheets on the U.S. Treasury Daily statement of its debt obligations. and a graph showing the massive increase in U.S. debt since 1997, but the question they could not answer was: What do we do about this?

Though they had no concrete answers, and only spoke about the question of money and debt, not the real physical economy, Professor Kitch insisted we had to “think outside the box,” and Professor Mahoney gave a history of when the U.S. reorganized its debt, citing Hamilton in a positive way for having successfully restructured U.S. debt, but citing FDR in a negative light for going along with other nations in taking the the U.S. off the gold standard, which eliminated the gold clause in debt agreements. Debt could be restructured, however, and even written off was the obvious conclusion. The question of Chapter 11 bankruptcy was raised once again and endorsed by Committee for the Republic Vice Chair Bruce Fein.

All sorts of ideas were proposed and discussed by members of the audience, such as just printing money to get full employment (“Modern Monetary Theory,” with which Abba Lerner, by the way, was associated), which was dismissed as a worthless theory by one so-called “expert” brought in on Zoom, raising taxes to reduce the deficit, but this was dismissed as politically impractical in an election year, the old saw of “just cutting spending” and letting retirees invest their pensions in the market to get a higher return than through social security, which was brought up by a Tea Party supporter. None of these proposals were really seen as feasible, which led to the discussion of declaring Chapter 11.

At this point Paul Gallagher was brought in on Zoom shown on a big screen. He had been furiously making the only comments in the chat, correcting the professor who had discussed Hamilton for various mistakes she had made, and also posting the link to Lyn’s Operation Juarez. Finally, the Chairman John Henry asked Paul if he would like to ask a question. Paul identified himself as the economics co-editor of EIR, and asked, “Why are you talking about restructuring U.S. government debt, when so many nations in the post-Bretton Woods 1982 debt bomb period needed restructuring, and the U.S. is not one of them”? Any nation that goes through such restructuring is in a more limited position to issue credit for development, whereas the U.S. is in the best position of all nations to issue credit for development of the underdeveloped nations. The key issue is for the U.S. to change its NATO war policy which threatens to blow up the world in nuclear war, and instead issue the credit for development that is necessary for other nations. Why are you not discussing this?

Edmund Kitch answered Paul in a very defensive way, saying that his goal was more limited, how to restructure debt, as Paul said other nations needed to do, because we couldn’t continue the way we were going.

Jerry Belsky was finally called toward the end to make a comment and he said, backing up Paul, he represented the Lyndon LaRouche Organization and the Schiller Institute, saying to the speakers that they talked about “thinking outside the box’ and referred to Hamilton. The idea, which needs to be discussed that the debt of the U.S. government is minor compared to the fact that the entire global financial system was bankrupt, with $2 quadrillon of derivative debt, and a new global system needs to be created using Hamiltonian principles.

Hamilton, he said, didn’t simply restructure the debt, but turned the debt into credit through the National Bank, to increase the productive powers of labor. A little bit of debt was a blessing, Hamilton said, if we provide the means to pay it. If we issue debt as credit, as Paul said, he continued, in manufacturing and infrastructure, and into fusion, we can easily repay that debt, as we put millions of people back to work. We have to issue the credit to deal with the real physical economic problems worldwide of lack of food, fertilizer, and even baby formula. He then said that there is a discussion going on worldwide about establishing a new economic system, and that the people who want to stop this new system are threatening nuclear war. Both Russia and China, he said, are discussing ideas about a new system similar to Hamilton’s. The Schiller Institute is calling for a global conference to establish a new system, and that the first step in doing this, he said, would be to use the Glass-Steagall law to wipe out the speculative derivative bubble. He then announced that the Schiller Institute would be holding an international conference, inviting circles from Russia, China, and India, and other nations to discuss this idea. He ended by making the point that this was not simply an internal matter for the U.S. Either the dollar was going to be restructured, or it was going to be destroyed, and he didn’t want to see it destroyed.

Right after he finished, the next questioner got up and asked the professors, what they thought about using Glass-Steagall to wipe out the derivative bubble. Professor Kitch thought the questioner was with the Schiller Institute, and responded by saying his view was that he didn’t think Glass-Steagall made much of a difference, and therefore, shouldn’t be part of the regulatory structure, but then he admitted, he could learn more from us, since as we had said, we have to think outside the box, and and was glad to hear of the project of our institute.

After the event, several people came up to Jerry and thanked him for what he had said. One woman, a “producer,” gave Jerry her contact info, saying she wanted to know more. The person who asked the question about Glass-Steagall, was laughing, telling Jerry, “I never thought I would be agreeing with Lyndon LaRouche.” A person sitting nearby, asked also, laughing, “Is that THE Lyndon LaRouche?” One of the speakers, Professor Mahoney, who had praised Hamilton for restructuring the debt, had been listening very intently when Jerry had talked about Hamilton, and after the meeting, asked Jerry when our conference was going to be.

A person with the Eurasia Center, who knows Bill Jones very well, and had traveled with him to China, asked how Bill was, and when he heard about our next conference, asked if he could be one of the speakers! A person who worked at the Treasury, but was soon leaving to be a motivational advisor to executives, asked Jerry to explain his solution. A friend of his, a German professor from Dublin, who was here for a cryptocurrency conference on a gold-based currency, wanted to discuss our ideas further, why we opposed such private currency, but actually deeper issues about education and culture, and he was very open to our ideas about Schiller.

Everyone talked to at the meeting received a copy of Lyn’s Four Laws, the Schiller Institute petition, and an announcement of the next day’s Thurs Conference on Security Experts Warn; The Insanity of Politicians Threatens Nuclear War.

Here is a YouTube address of the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO9Xr7kxJy4

Paul is at https://youtu.be/NO9Xr7kxJy4?t=4142 and Gerry at https://youtu.be/NO9Xr7kxJy4?t=4749 [pds][gb_]

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