A sign at an organizing table in New Jersey manned by The LaRouche Organization yesterday posed these alternatives for Afghanistan, and by implication for the world: “Terror, War and Drugs; or Peace Through Development.” The first option would have a devastating impact on every man, woman and child in the world, given the fact that a destabilized Afghanistan will continue as the source of 80% of the world’s opium and as a training ground for ISIS and al-Qaeda. The second option—by following the proposal offered by Lyndon LaRouche even before George Bush launched the war 20 years ago—would allow Afghanistan to end its history as the “graveyard of empires,” and to become the hub for an expanded New Silk Road, with rail lines connecting the landlocked countries of Central Asia to the ocean via a north-south rail line through Kabul and Pakistan, as well as east-west connections following the ancient Silk Road.LaRouche’s proposals began with the necessity that all the countries in the region—Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and the five Central Asian nations, meet and cooperate with the Afghanis to assure development, to the benefit of all, as the only means by which the terrorism and the drugs could be eliminated. There are now, over this past week, developments which convey the very real potential that this is possible. The U.S. military withdrawal after 20 years of useless, destructive, deadly warfare, has sparked actions by all of the regional nations, which held a series of meetings this week largely focused on the urgency of bringing real development to Afghanistan. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Foreign Ministers’ Council, which includes China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as ten other nations as Observers or Dialogue Partners, met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on July 13-14. At the center of the discussions, including the sideline discussions, was the idea that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor could be extended, branching out from the rail line running from China through Pakistan to the Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. From Islamabad, the branch would pass through Peshawar, the Khyber Pass, to Kabul, then onward north to Tashkent, Uzbekistan and on to the Eurasian Land-Bridge lines connecting China to Europe. This plan was launched in February in a meeting of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan, called the Khyber Pass Economic Corridor. This and other development plans were also on the table at a July 15-16 meeting in Tashkent of the “International Conference on Central and South Asia Regional Connectivity, Challenges and Opportunities.” Dilshod Saidjanov, an Uzbek spokesman, told India’s Asia News International (ANI): “Economic development is the way to make Afghanistan stronger and probably more peaceful. Everyone wants better development in Afghanistan.” Pakistan has proposed the establishment of an “SCO Development Bank,” to further generate credit for these development projects. Will the U.S. join these efforts, or allow the “war party” which dominates both U.S. political parties and the media to act against them, under the evil lie that they are simply another expression of China trying to “take over the world.” A sliver of hope that the U.S. will take the sane approach of cooperation in development was seen in a State Department release on July 16: “Announcing the U.S.-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan-Pakistan Quad Regional Support for Afghanistan-Peace Process and Post Settlement.” These are indeed the nations through which the Khyber Pass Economic Corridor would pass. The announcement states: that “the parties intend to cooperate to expand trade, build transit links, and strengthen business-to-business ties.” Such a shift in the now-normal U.S. policies of sanctions, wars and regime change subversion should be strongly encouraged. Next week’s issue of Executive Intelligence Review will contain a package on this critical moment in Afghanistan, a moment in which the fate of the entire world could be determined, for good or for ill. An international agreement to cooperate with Afghanistan and its neighbors to transform the region into a central hub for the global New Silk Road process would also serve as a model for ending other crisis spots, in the war-ruined nations of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. This is the principle of the Schiller Institute’s “Coincidence of Opposites”—bringing seemingly intractable conflicts to an end by addressing the higher-ordered principle located in the common interests of all people, for peace through development. Such an optimistic approach may seem impossible, but the alternative is unthinkable. Humanity has risen up out of Dark Ages in the past, creating a Renaissance when nothing less will work. This moment must find a people with no less of the creative will required to build such a new Renaissance.

In response to reports that an Israeli firm is serving clients by embedding spyware in the mobile phones of their adversaries, Edward Snowden called for ending the "international spyware trade." And while the Biden administration called on its allies to join it in a campaign against alleged Chinese cyber warfare -- charges which, like its charges against Russia, are evidence-free -- it is considering monitoring private texts on SMS carriers to "deter misinformation"! Are you tired of the hypocrisy of this "brave new world"? Then join the Schiller Institute for online conferences on July 24 ("There Is No Climate Emergency"), July 31 ("Afghanistan at a Crossroads"), and August 14, which will take up Lyndon LaRouche's initiatives to overturn the City of London/Wall Street central bankers actions since August 15, 1971, when they created the global casino economy to protect the swindles of the floating exchange system.

The Schiller Institute is preparing a conference at the end of this month with experts who are passionate about Afghanistan’s prospects of becoming, not only a rapidly developing nation, but the pivot of economic development in South Asia, and even the catalyst in a change of relations among the major powers. Our conference will be aimed as a spark, with many nations already meeting in the Central Asian region to discuss next steps after the NATO withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.The Schiller Institute’s meeting will be held at a true turning point of 21st Century history: The major powers and the regional neighbor countries alike need to eliminate terrorist threats and remove the scourge of Afghan heroin fed by decades of war; and this opens the possibility of development of healthcare and education, transport routes and power and water, with international cooperation in contributing capital goods. As Afghanistan’s ambassador to China, Javid Ahmad Qaem, expressed it in an interview with Global Times July 16, “The only place where they [China, India and the United States] could really cooperate, and at least there could be a starting point to cooperate between these rivals, if I can call them that, is Afghanistan.” The people of the United States and the European NATO members need this development more than Afghanistan does. As NATO forces have done to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya since the 1990s, so have we, in America and Europe, done to ourselves. Our industrial economies and our labor forces have been left to crumble and become impoverished while we trusted the endlessly deployed fighters and their spectacularly expensive equipment to make us “number one” in the world. We admired Wall Street speculating on decaying economic infrastructure until it has fallen apart. Only six months ago the United States electric grid could not keep scores of Americans from dying of cold in long blackouts, while millions of others huddled in misery during a freezing Polar Vortex. This past week Germany’s and Belgium’s flood control infrastructure was washed away in floods which have killed hundreds despite nearly a week of precise warning. America has done nothing for 25 years to counteract a steadily intensifying drought which is threatening to turn the West back into uninhabited desert. “Climate change” hysteria is not a policy to save the planet, but a threat to reduce the human race and push it back centuries in productive capacity. Between now and the meeting on Afghanistan’s development, the Schiller Institute on July 24 holds a combative conference with scientists, engineers and others to defeat the Green New Deal, stop power blackouts and prevent the wholesale shutdown of power supplies and industry. (“There Is No ‘Climate Emergency’—Apply the Science and Economics of Development To Stop Blackouts and Death”) The withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan is no setback if it is taken as an opportunity to make the contributions American technology can make to the progress of developing countries. Instead of tolerating think-tanks’ and Defense Secretaries’ talk about “winning” endless and fruitless wars, we can devote ourselves to the arts of peace against pandemic and famine, and rebuild our own economies into the bargain.

The doublespeak media leaders of the United States, New York Times and CNN for example, made clear yesterday their hope that hundreds of Germans will have died in the natural disaster to make it possible for Green Party co-leader Annalena Baerbock to rally and win the Chancellorship. The Times headline—“Germany Floods: Climate Change Moves to Center of Campaign as Toll Mounts”—is sufficient to give you the idea.The lead article in Neue Solidarität spoke instead to reality: “Gegen die Launen der Mutter Natur, hilfts nur der Ausbau der Infrastruktur!” (The Takedown of Infrastructure Helps the Moods of Mother Nature) That article says: "The worst flood to date in Central Europe, the so-called Magdalene flood in July 1342, occurred long before CO₂ levels rose in the atmosphere. At that time the water was in the cathedrals of Würzburg and Mainz, the cities on the Rhine, Main, Weser and Elbe were overrun by floods, and thousands of people were killed…. “The reconstruction of infrastructure must be used to rebuild the businesses hit by the floods, so that the people in the region can get back their jobs and thus their livelihoods. The goal must be that the people affected should be better off after the reconstruction than before the disaster…. “Whether such natural events, which are always to be expected, turn into catastrophes depends above all on whether people have created the necessary infrastructure in time to enable them to cope with them. We do not need a vague ‘climate protection,’ but rather concrete measures to protect people.” Touring the flood area, Chancellor Angela Merkel fell headlong into a torrent of climate hysteria, featuring the absurd statement, “The German language hardly knows any words for the devastation that has been caused here.” She might have tried Nachlässigkeit, German for “negligence.” The government apparently had meteorological warnings beginning July 12-13 that heavy rains were likely to cause serious flooding in tributaries of the Rhine-Meuse River systems, but the warnings were turned into public service bulletins largely through certain apps rather than all-points alerts. Large numbers of people did not evacuate, despite being in known danger of inundation. Moreover these tributary rivers are, from EIR reports, not dredged or canalized, nor are the dams on them maintained. But to Merkel, the storms’ force “had something to do with climate change. We have to hurry, we have to get faster in the fight against climate change.” So Europeans in the Rhine and Meuse watersheds cannot expect in this government’s “recovery” package, any improvements in the flood-control and water management infrastructure, but only faster bans on energy sources and faster increases in their electric bills. The floods in the Elbe River system in the East of the country in 2002 followed a full week of heavy rains, and were more devastating and much more widespread than these; they spread across Eastern Europe and even into Russia. Perhaps global warming became even more extreme by 2002 than it had been back in 2021, when there were already hardly any German words to describe it? The situation is exactly the same in the North American West, where a gradually intensifying drought condition has been known to be developing for 25 years, with no action ever initiated to build “great projects” of water transfer infrastructure from wet regions of the continent, nor to build power plants capable of desalination along the surrounding oceans and seas of water. Instead, “global warming” (now “climate change”) is pronounced the reason that nothing can be done but sacrifice to “save the planet.” Helga Zepp-LaRouche, federal chairwoman of the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party in Germany, said that the European Union’s so-called climate-change recovery package “could only have been devised by people who have no interest in people, who do not care about the development of the developing sector, but who want to continue the colonialist system.” Mark Carney, the UN’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance and former Governor of the Bank of England, proposed buying CO₂ emission rights from developing countries — provided that they renounce economic development and the expansion of agriculture. There is already an agreement between Norway and Gabon, in which Gabon has committed itself to forgoing economic development of its rainforests — which cover 90% of the country’s area. For this they will get a ridiculous €150 million over ten years! Said Zepp-LaRouche: “I find that absolutely disgusting and I hope that the legitimate will of the majority of people in the world will prevail instead, to claim their right to development.”