Why is it that U.S. nuclear war exercises are good, as we are told they are "to secure our freedoms", but Russian exercises are described as a prelude to invade another country? Who has invaded more countries in recent years, the combined U.S./NATO forces, or Russia and China? Which alliance has used false flags as an excuse for war, organized Color Revolutions to carry out coups, and imposed sanctions to punish innocent civilians? The lying narratives must stop! The Schiller Institute will hold a joint event with the Russian International Affairs Council on Feb. 10 to discuss a solution to the crisis in Afghanistan. Join us: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/02/07/seminar-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-afghanistan-toward-a-long-term-solution/

· February 6, 2022 “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the five nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council affirmed in a joint statement on Jan. 3 of this year. Since the use of nuclear weapons always involves the risk of using the entire nuclear arsenal, a percentage of which is enough to cause the extinction of the human species, the confirmation of this fundamental insight should actually have practical implications for the military strategy of all nuclear powers. Notwithstanding this joint statement, in the last week of January, the U.S. Strategic Command launched the Global Lightning exercise, designed to test the readiness of U.S. nuclear forces. Although this was a so-called “routine” maneuver integrated this year with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and thus aimed at a possible confrontation with China, in the context of heightened tensions between Russia and the United States and NATO, it can be seen as just another—but perhaps the most dangerous—element in the way that the West is playing with fire with respect to Russia and China. The timing of the maneuver coincided with hitherto unproven allegations by the United States and UK that Russia was planning a military attack on Ukraine between late January and mid-February, which the Russian government has repeatedly denied. The nuclear command-and-control exercise is based on the U.S. Strategic Command’s current nuclear war plan. Hans M. Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists, was able, under the Freedom of Information Act, to obtain the cover page of this plan, entitled Stratcom Conplan 0810-12, Strategic Deterrence and Force Deployment, Change 1. Kristensen, one of the most competent specialists in the field of nuclear strategy and weapons, explained to Newsweek that the Global Lightning exercise does not simply assume a nuclear first strike by one side or the other, but an extended nuclear war that will continue after the first exchange of strikes. Even though the individual components of this new war plan, which has been operational since April 30, 2019, are subject to the highest levels of secrecy, the outlines of this conception emerge. The assumption is that the United States and NATO would be able to survive a nuclear first strike by Russia or China, then retaliate, absorb further attacks, retaliate again, etc., in an ongoing military confrontation. This nuclear war plan includes not only nuclear weapons but various other lethal systems such as missile defense systems, directed energy weapons such as electromagnetic pulse weapons and lasers, cyberattacks, and Space Force attacks from space. Who would be able to survive such a prolonged nuclear war? The few people who can nest in deep underground bunkers? It makes the morbid fantasies of Dr. Strangelove look like a child’s birthday party. Last year’s Global Lightning maneuvers in April 2021 focused on a potential conflict with Russia; this year it was devoted to a possible confrontation with China. The Pentagon’s various strategy papers since 2017 had increasingly defined Russia and China as geopolitical rivals and adversaries, replacing the fight against global terrorism with great-power competition as a strategic priority. At the same time, the modernization of the nuclear triad begun by the Obama Administration continued and the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons was increasingly lowered by the stationing of low-yield warheads on Trident submarines, among other things. The Strategic Conflict Although there was little official comment, President Putin’s March 1, 2018 announcement was about Russia’s new nuclear systems. These included the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle (launched from an ICBM, it travels at 20 times the speed of sound and boasts excellent maneuverability that renders the American missile defense system essentially obsolete;" the hypersonic aeroballistic missile Kinzhal; as well as nuclear-powered cruise missiles, fast underwater drones and laser weapons—a shock to the western military establishment. Meanwhile, China has also developed its own hypersonic missiles with infrared homing technology, a capability that the American military may not have for two to three years. American satellite imagery has also located about 300 missile silos under construction in scattered locations across China, some of which may remain empty, but others would have nuclear missiles in a state of “launch on warning” to forestall a disarming surprise attack. This is broadly the strategic background against which Putin presented two treaties to the United States and NATO on Dec. 17, demanding that they be legally binding: no further eastward expansion of NATO, and no offensive weapon systems stationed on Russia’s borders; plus guarantees that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO. Unlike many trans-Atlantic politicians and media outlets, Gen. Harald Kujat, the former Inspector General of the German Armed Forces, believes that the gathering of some 120,000 Russian troops near the Ukrainian border—some of them, however, hundreds of kilometers away—is not indicative of an impending attack on Ukraine, but that Russia wants to demonstrate strength with this threatening backdrop in order to force negotiations with the U.S.A. and NATO on an equal footing. So far, the United States and NATO have refused to make any commitments on Putin’s key demands, and appear only willing to make what Russia considers secondary commitments on new disarmament talks. Putin has announced “military-technical measures” in the event of a definitive refusal. In view of the fact that the stationing of potentially offensive weapon systems in the vicinity of the Russian borders in connection with NATO’s eastward enlargement—this includes, for example, the Aegis missile defense system stationed in Poland and Romania—created a situation for Russia comparable to the stationing of Soviet missiles in Cuba, the question arises as to what these “measures” might look like. The American Russia expert Gilbert Doctorow suspects that they could include the stationing of nuclear-armed SS-26 Iskander-M short-range missiles in Belarus and Kaliningrad in order to threaten the NATO front-line states and eastern Germany in return. He further suspects Russia may plant sea-launched hypersonic Zircon nuclear-armed cruise missiles off the coast of Washington, D.C., which Russian experts have previously said could destroy the American capital so quickly the President would not have time to board Air Force One to escape. Theoretically, the Zirkon hypersonic missiles could, of course, also be used anywhere on the seven seas and are very difficult for conventional air defense to detect and intercept in view of their velocity—nine times the speed of sound—and maneuverability in flight. So it is only logical that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock on Jan. 20, 2022 showed only 100 seconds to midnight. That’s only about a minute and a half until the nuclear apocalypse. Even though, since the escalation of the Ukraine crisis, after a deep sleep of almost 40 years, the anti-war movement has issued a whole series of appeals, public calls and open letters—most recently from 100 organizations in the U.S.A. demanding that President Biden de-escalate the tensions with Russia—the enormous extent of the threat has by no means penetrated the public consciousness. Uncertainty about the Causes But even among most Westerners who recognize the imminent danger, there is a lack of clarity about the underlying causes of the existential danger to human existence. They are to be found, on the one hand, in the systemic character of the crisis of the neoliberal financial system, which has now entered its hyperinflationary final phase; and on the other hand, in the claim of the financial establishment in the City of London, Wall Street and Silicon Valley to a unipolar world in which only the power interests of this establishment determine what shall happen in the “rules-based order.” The dilemma now arises from an opposing dynamic. Since the paradigm shift of August 1971, prophetically recognized by Lyndon LaRouche—when Nixon effectively ended the Bretton Woods system by abolishing fixed exchange rates and thus paving the way for speculative profit maximization—there has been an increasing shift in the trans-Atlantic world away from investments in the productive physical economy and towards speculation in increasingly exotic derivative-based financial products, of which the most recent folly is “shifting the trillions” into the Green New Deal. From the standpoint of the physical economy this policy—of making investments in industries with the lowest possible energy-flux density—ultimately represents an extensive destruction of capital, just like investments in the military production of weapon systems and the army. The fact that this effect is usually not recognized has to do with the confusion about monetary values, money vs. real wealth, and the illusion that the share values ​​of listed companies say something about the productivity of the economy. Of course, it is in the interest of the yacht-owning billionaires, some of whom have long since acquired condominiums in deep-seated bunkers in Australia and elsewhere, that the bubble economy be sustained for as long as possible, even as the proportion of the population that is impoverished continues to increase, and the middle class shrinks. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and the trans-Atlantic establishment, despite all warnings—for example from Pope John Paul II—succumbed to the fantasy of having “won” the Cold War, and interpreted the “end of history” to mean that the whole world must now subject itself to the neoliberal rules-based order, there was no longer any need to keep any promises made to Russia not to expand NATO eastward. The whole spectrum of instruments for cementing the unipolar world was used: regime change, either through color revolutions or “humanitarian” wars against all governments that held other values. Victoria Nuland publicly boasted that the State Department had spent $5 billion on NGOs in Ukraine alone, which initially led to the 2004 “Orange Revolution.” When President Yanukovych refused to join the EU Association Agreement in late 2013, not least because the EU is fully linked to NATO in terms of treaties and security, the not-so-democratic side of the rules-based order came to the fore in the form of the Nazi Maidan coup of February 2014. This did not result in any annexation of Crimea by Putin, but rather a referendum by the people of Crimea, who wanted to withdraw from Kiev’s fascist policies. Even then, Putin stated that the West was actually concerned with containing Russia and that, if not in Ukraine, they would have found another excuse for doing so. The decisive hardening towards Russia and China became visible, in 2017 at the latest, in the changed language in the security doctrines of the Pentagon and the characterization of these two countries as “enemies” and “autocracies.” While the Western institutions initially reacted to the announcement of the New Silk Road by Xi Jinping in September 2013 with an extensive blackout for an amazing four years, these institutions have now reacted to this largest infrastructure project in human history as if it were an existential threat—namely to the unipolar world! Virtually all sanctions that have been imposed anywhere in the world unilaterally, i.e., without UN Security Council resolutions, ultimately had the chief purpose of preventing China’s economic rise and Russia’s regaining the status of world player. The transcript of the Jan. 25 background press briefing by two unnamed White House officials shockingly reveals this intention. They present a whole spectrum of “serious economic measures”—starting at the highest level of escalation—to thwart Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy, by denying him access to all modern, advanced technologies, such as AI, quantum-computers, and any technology related to defense or aerospace, to prevent him from “diversifying” the economy beyond exporting oil and gas. The objective is the atrophy of the Russian economy. This policy, formulated in incredibly brutal language, is nothing more than a continuation of Jeffrey Sachs’ so-called “shock therapy” of the 1990s, which had the explicit aim of reducing Russia from the status of a superpower at the time of the Soviet Union to that of a commodity-exporting Third World country. That policy was then, as it is now, a declaration of war—the only difference being that Putin is not a pathetic figure like Boris Yeltsin, pampered by the West for geopolitical motives, but a brilliant strategist who knows how to defend Russia’s interests. The no less hateful tirades against China, which can be heard today from court scribblers of the Empire, as well as from former Maoists of the SDS era who have now risen to top positions in the Green Party, cannot change the outstanding success of the Chinese economy, which recorded a growth rate of over 8% in 2021 despite coronavirus. China has done more for human rights than any country of the so-called Western community of values, lifting 850 million people out of poverty domestically— including the Uyghurs, who now enjoy vastly better living standards and faster-than-average population growth—and offering many developing countries for the first time the chance to overcome poverty. The silence of the same circles on the largest of all humanitarian catastrophes, triggered by Western sanctions in Afghanistan, in which one million children are starving and a total of 24 million people are at risk of dying this Winter, seals their complete discrediting. Joint Statement by Putin and Xi If various authors have warned that the campaigns against Russia and China could lead to even closer ties between these two countries, then rest assured that this is exactly what has now happened during Putin’s visit to the Olympic Games in China. However, there is an urgent need to remove the ideological spectacles and recognize the extraordinary opportunity presented for the whole world by the joint declaration of Presidents Putin and Xi in this extremely dangerous world situation. The 16-page document entitled, “Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era and Global Sustainable Development,” calls for replacing geopolitical confrontation with economic cooperation as the basis for a common security policy. Both nations are calling on NATO to refrain from further expansion plans, to move beyond Cold War thinking, and to enshrine the long-term security guarantees that Russia is demanding. The role of international organizations such as the G20, BRICS, APEC and ASEAN should be strengthened, they say. Russia will cooperate in realizing China’s proposed “Global Development Initiative” and emphasizes the importance of the concept of the “community of a common destiny for mankind.” Let’s think back to the hundred seconds before midnight on the doomsday clock: Who can deny that we are an indivisible community of destiny? In recent weeks, more level-headed voices have spoken out in favor of a new pan-European security architecture including Russia and Ukraine, which could be enshrined in a new Helsinki agreement. However, in view of the complexity of the world situation, the threat to world peace affecting all states, and the inseparability of the security of all, it is necessary to go beyond Helsinki and create an international security architecture that encompasses the security interests of all states on Earth. This architecture must be based on the principles of the Peace of Westphalia; i.e., it must guarantee the interests of all states and, above all, their right to economic and cultural development. The maintenance of world peace presupposes a total and definitive renunciation of Malthusian politics, and requires undivided access to the achievements of scientific and technological advance for all nations. This new order— the prerequisite for the survival of the human species—requires a new paradigm of thought that must draw upon the best traditions of all cultures at the highest humanistic level. We have a choice: Either we keep the clock ticking until the last of the hundred seconds has struck, and then there will be no one left to comment on the result; or, we can remember that we are the only known creative species in the universe, and shape our common future together.

"A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" Schiller Institute International Online Conference, two panels Saturday, February 19, starting 10 a.m. EST The Schiller Institute will hold an international online conference on Saturday, February 19 to reassert that very sane declaration by the five nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council, which they affirmed in a joint statement on Jan. 3 of this year. The conference will also present a {solution} to the current crisis: the establishment of a new security architecture that guarantees all nations the right to security, and to economic and cultural development. To do that, a dialogue about the causes and the cures of the current crisis is urgent.In the last week of January, the U.S. Strategic Command launched the Global Lightning exercise to test the readiness of US nuclear forces under a nuclear war plan, operative since 2019, based on the assumption that the United States and NATO would be able to survive a nuclear first strike by Russia or China, then retaliate, absorb further attacks, retaliate again, etc., in an ongoing military confrontation. President Putin had announced Russia's new nuclear weapons systems in 2018, including the Avangard hypersonic missile, the hypersonic cruise missile Kinzhal, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, fast underwater drones, and laser weapons. This was an enormous shock to the western military establishment. But President Putin was responding to the 2004-2014 color revolutions and so-called "humanitarian" wars against all governments who opposed having their own nations looted. The $5 billion spent on NGOs in Ukraine alone is well known, which eventually became the Nazi Maidan coup of February 2014, on Russia’s very doorstep. On Dec. 17, 2021, Putin presented two draft treaties to the United States and NATO, insisting that there be no further eastward expansion of NATO (especially into Ukraine), and no offensive weapon systems stationed on Russia's borders. Given the lack of serious response so far, Putin has announced "military-technical measures" in the event of a definitive refusal.One American expert has written that he thinks Russia’s “military-technical measures” may include deploying sea-launched hypersonic Zircon nuclear-armed cruise missiles off the coast of Washington, D.C., which Russian experts have previously said could destroy the American capital so quickly the President would not have time to board Air Force One to escape. More and more people are waking up to the fact that there are only the proverbial hundred seconds before midnight left on the Doomsday Clock.To stop the clock, the causes of war must be addressed: 1) The hyperinflationary final phase of the trans-Atlantic neoliberal financial system; and 2) the deadly fantasy of the financial establishment in the City of London, Wall Street and Silicon Valley that they can impose their "rules-based order" in their eternal unipolar world.The root causes trace back to the shift of August 1971, prophetically recognized by Lyndon LaRouche, when Nixon effectively ended the Bretton Woods system by abolishing fixed exchange rates and thus paving the way for speculative profit maximization. This caused the increasing shift away from investments in the productive physical economy and towards speculation in increasingly exotic derivative-based financial products, and now "shifting the trillions" into the Green New Deal.From the standpoint of the physical economy, this policy of driving investments into industries with the lowest possible energy-flux density ultimately represents an extensive destruction of capital, just like investments in the military production of weapon systems. Far too many people are confused about monetary values, as distinct from real wealth. They have bought into the illusion that the share values of listed companies say something about the productivity of the economy – which they do not.Some more level-headed voices have spoken out in favor of a new pan-European security architecture including Russia and Ukraine, in a new Helsinki agreement. However, in view of the complexity of the world situation, the threat to world peace affecting all states, and the indivisibility of the security of all, it is necessary to go beyond Helsinki and create an international security architecture that encompasses the security interests of all states on earth.Just such a proposal is elaborated in a recent article published by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche: “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture!” This architecture must be based on the principles of the Peace of Westphalia; i.e., it must guarantee the interests of all states and, above all, their right to economic and cultural development. The maintenance of world peace requires a total and definitive renunciation of Malthusian politics, and requires universal access to the achievements of scientific and technological advance for all nations. This new order— the prerequisite for the survival of the human species—requires a new paradigm of thought that must draw upon the best classical traditions of all cultures at the highest humanistic level.Who can deny that we are an indivisible community of destiny?We have a choice: Either we let the clock tick away until the last of the hundred seconds has struck, and then there will be no one left to comment on the result; or we can remember that we are the only known creative species in the universe, and shape our common future together.

The desperation evident in the succession of increasingly blatant lies, coming from Anglo-American spokesmen about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, demonstrates that they know their attempt to dictate the shape of the post-Cold War world is reaching an end. Each day, a new fabrication is produced, while in the background, a new Russian-China alliance has been cemented, calling for a new global security architecture which protects the interests of people in all nations. The issue of war or peace has never been so clear -- can the Anglo-American war drive be stopped?

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945, announced on Jan. 20 that for the third year in a row, their Doomsday Clock remains fixed at 100 seconds to midnight. “Steady is not good news,” said Sharon Squassoni, a professor at George Washington University and a member of the group. “We are stuck in a perilous moment—one that brings neither stability nor security. Positive developments in 2021 failed to counteract negative, long-term trends,” she said.The clock was originally only concerned with the threat of nuclear war, but has recently included the politically correct issues of climate change, disruptive technologies and biological hazards, including sections of their report on these issues. They even bring up Jan. 6. The organization’s website says: “Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet.” This year’s report begins by saying the new administration in the U.S. raised hopes of decreasing the danger, with the extension of New START, talks between the U.S. and Russia, and revived talks on the JCPOA. However: “U.S. relations with Russia and China remain tense, with all three countries engaged in an array of nuclear modernization and expansion efforts—including China’s apparent large-scale program to increase its deployment of silo-based long-range nuclear missiles; the push by Russia, China, and the United States to develop hypersonic missiles; and the continued testing of anti-satellite weapons by many nations. If not restrained, these efforts could mark the start of a dangerous new nuclear arms race.” They express hope that the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review will reduce the danger of a nuclear war. They would not be pleased by the new reports by William Arkin and others elsewhere in this briefing.

Feb 5—At 4:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon (Feb. 4), the following headline appeared on the Bloomberg News website: “Russia Invades Ukraine.” Note that it was then midnight in Moscow, and that President Vladimir Putin was not in the country, but in Beijing. For a full 30 minutes, this headline remained on the website, before it was finally removed, with Bloomberg News posting an attempted apology: “We prepare headlines for many scenarios and one of those headlines was inadvertently published at around 4 p.m. ET today on our website. We deeply regret the error.”Error? For months the Western media, with Bloomberg News right up front, have peddled the lie that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “imminent.” The U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines briefed NATO leaders in October that the invasion would come in the last weeks of January or the early weeks of February. Day after day the lie was peddled that over 100,000 Russian troops were poised for the invasion on the Ukraine border, despite denials by not only Moscow, but even by Kiev! Error? Keep in mind that Sir Michael Bloomberg made his billions with a software which provided information on every trade taking place in the world in microseconds. “The chance that this was an accident is essentially zero,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche exclaimed today. “There must be a Congressional investigation immediately.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not say whether or not it was an accident, but in any case, “This is a perfect demonstration of how dangerous the situation is when provoked by the endless aggressive statements that come from Washington, London and from other European governments. This is probably also a great demonstration of how such messages can lead to irreparable consequences.” Who is Sir Michael Bloomberg? Not only is he “Mr. Wall Street,” with his computer software used in virtually every financial institution, but he is also “Mr. Green New Deal,” taking great pleasure in the fact that he personally financed the campaign that shut down half of the U.S. coal mines, and also served as the United Nations’ Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions. At the Glasgow COP26 climate conference in November he announced a new effort aimed at closing a quarter of the world’s 2,445 coal plants, as well as stopping efforts underway to build 519 new coal plants by 2025. As any African leader will tell you, this means poverty and death for Africa. The fact that it is Michael Bloomberg, who is the operative in this war-mongering ploy, further proves the point emphasized for the past 50 years by Lyndon LaRouche and EIR: It is the collapse of the Western financial system (now apparent to all but the morally blind) which is the driving force for war, not the fake geopolitical accusations about “aggression” or “human rights abuse.” Not coincidentally, this incident comes on the same day that Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met in Beijing, releasing a communiqué, titled “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development.” To understand the profound importance of this historic document, it is instructive to read what a leading mouthpiece for the British Empire and the City of London, the Daily Telegraph, has to say about it. Under the headline, “Russia and China Rise from Their Knees To Challenge U.S. Dominance,” The Telegraph writes: “The message here is anything but routine. At a moment of immense international tension, Russia and China are asserting the arrival of a new geopolitical era. From now on, the dominance of the U.S.-led global West will no longer be taken for granted—or tolerated.” It is quite interesting that they dropped the usual phrase, “U.S.-led international order,” effectively acknowledging that the U.S. is no longer the “world’s only superpower,” but at best the leader of the “West.” The Telegraph continues: “After decades of humiliation, the world’s autocratic superpowers have risen from their knees and will now up-end the inequitable post-Cold War world order.” But they add, we are now entering “a long and frosty Cold War Two.” They also effectively acknowledge that the multiple efforts to turn Russia and China against each other have failed: “The hope that Mr. Xi might be persuaded to restrain his ally or remain aloof—or conversely that Mr. Putin could be enlisted to help contain China—has been dashed.” Unstated, but implied, is that all that is left for the dying British Empire is war, both military and economic warfare, in order to return Russia and China to their knees. Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed this utopian insanity in an article to be released soon, “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock—We Need a New Security Architecture!” This is a reference to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has kept its annual Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight for the third year in a row. Zepp-LaRouche insists that the new security architecture, demanded by both Russia and China, must include all nations; must include the right to development for all nations; and must end forever the Empire’s Malthusian paradigm. On February 19 the Schiller Institute will sponsor a virtual conference on this existential strategic crisis. It is essential, Zepp-LaRouche declared, that people everywhere recognize the incredible potential of this moment. Arriving at the brink of extinction is waking people up, causing them to look to see who has been lying and who has been telling the truth—and most important, who knows the necessary solution. This is the LaRouche Moment in history.

February 4—On the occasion today of the opening of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in China, President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin attended the opening ceremony, held extensive talks, saw to the announcement of 15 economic and policy deals, and issued a “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development.”The 16-page document opens with an assessment of the world situation—crises and potential—then proceeds through four areas of strategic concern, giving specifics. The statement is a leadership call to action for humanity, not a call to “take sides” in deadly geopolitical games. Most of all, it is grounded in commitment to economic advancement as the basis for security. The place in dire need for immediate, concerted world action, is Afghanistan. The death toll mounts by the hour among the children, from malnutrition, cold and illness, all of which can be prevented. On Feb. 2, the Afghan Ambassador to India Farid Mamundzay made a point of saying how many nations have “turned their back” on Afghanistan at this time of desperate need. But he otherwise singled out India with appreciation, for having sent six tons of medicine, and other supplies, and new funds, and for the Indian wheat donation that will start to be trucked across Pakistan to Afghanistan, beginning Feb. 10 to 12. A full 50,000 tons should be delivered within a month. There are other individual donations coming in, but the scale-up and mobilization are lacking. Moreover, there is the fundamental requirement for the U.S. and Europe to free up the Afghanistan government’s $9.5 bil in funds they have wrongfully frozen, so the country can function. Yesterday, in the U.S. House of Representatives, an amendment on that topic was raised, but didn’t pass. As the Schiller Institute tweet said at the time the amendment was taken up, “Don’t do to Afghanistan what the British Empire did to the Irish, letting them starve, or emigrate! BREAKING: Progressives [in Congress] to force vote on Biden’s policy of arbitrarily starving Afghanistan to death. BUT: The House voted it down! Shame on you!” In the China-Russia document’s opening section, it notes—without naming names—that there are nations and figures which take “unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force; they intervene in the internal affairs of other states, infringing on their rights and interests, and incite contradictions, differences and confrontation, thus hampering the development and progress of mankind…” The first of the four areas discussed by the statement in detail, is that “democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of States…” It is wrong that “certain states” attempt to impose “their own ‘democratic standards’ on other countries,” and act to “establish blocs” that go against genuine democracy. Secondly, “development is the key driver in ensuring the prosperity of nations,” and thus, security. “It is vital to enhance partnership relations” to further development. China and Russia commit to further cooperation between the Belt and Road Initiative and the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union.) Russia will participate in the “Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative (proposed by China) under the UN auspices.” Thirdly, the longest section, which addresses “serious international security challenges,” contains the emphatic statement that, “The two sides (the term used in the statement for Russia and China) oppose further enlargement of NATO and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologized cold war approaches…” Also, “The Chinese side is sympathetic to, and supports the proposals put forward by the Russian Federation to create long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe.” The two sides also, “stand against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region…” And, “The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan.” The fourth section identifies the United Nations as having a “central coordinating role in international affairs,” and calls for cooperation, not confrontation among world powers. The role of the G20, BRICS, APEC, ASEAN and WTO (to undergo “reform”) are discussed at length. The two sides “advocate expanded functionality of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure.” Affirmation is stated for the recent “Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear Weapons States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races,” and steps for the drawdown of nuclear weapons and risks are discussed. These are only selected points of the joint statement, but the significance is clear. This is a welcome initiative that throws into stark relief the dangerous geopolitics in play over Ukraine from the U.S./UK/NATO ploys, and their depraved, deliberate inaction which is killing people in Afghanistan. The Schiller Institute’s role as an active platform for getting out the truth, and fostering the dialogue for the needed policies is critical. An international conference is planned for later this month. The sense of what can be done was included in a statement issued today by Senatorial candidate for New York, Diane Sare, on the eve of street rallies Feb. 5 in New York City and several dozen other towns around the country, to protest the Washington/UK/NATO war drive. In the statement entitled "Truth is the First Casualty of War" Sare wrote, "Lyndon LaRouche’s widow and founder of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, has advanced an alternative to this path toward annihilation. The fulcrum is the fate of the people of Afghanistan, who are currently condemned to a tortuous death of starvation and disease because of sanctions and the decision by the United States and European banks to freeze their funds in the wake of the abrupt exit by the United States. Right now, over 7 million children are starving, with one million near death. “The United States, Russia and China, could combine to lead an effort involving the surrounding nations, to not only supply desperately needed humanitarian aid, but to build a fully operational modern healthcare system in that war-ravaged nation. This would require new infrastructure to deliver water and electricity along with modern transportation systems. Obviously, the Taliban would have to be in the center of the negotiations, but they have already opened talks with many of these nations, and have nothing to gain through the suffering of their people. “This initiative, called by Zepp-LaRouche ‘Operation Ibn Sina (Avicenna),’ after the brilliant Islamic scholar and physician born in this region over 1200 years ago, is the opportunity to build trust between the major powers, now perilously close to war, while preventing the imminent death by starvation of as many as 23 million people. By embracing ‘Operation Ibn Sina,’ the United States could avert nuclear war, and save the lives of millions in Afghanistan. Action is urgently needed now. As poets have understood better than politicians, universal law dictates that the fate of these starving children is likely to become your own, sooner than you might imagine."

Feb. 3—The days of UK-U.S.-NATO hegemony are over. Will that oligarchical reign end in the hell of thermonuclear obliteration by thousands of hydrogen bombs? Or will it be overcome by the people of the U.S. and other trans-Atlantic nations throwing off their self-imposed shackles, to demand a new mission of progress and growth for all people of the planet?With every passing day, the potential to organize people out of their day-to-day activity grows. This potential takes force from the gathering danger of war—thermonuclear war—that could be unleashed by design or by what would be called, in the realm of events, “an accident,” but which would simply be an included feature of the UK-NATO-U.S.-created geopolitical environment against which Russia is raising its just and insistent demands. (In a recent example, Boris Johnson promises Ukraine the noose-like “support” of his nation’s military and diplomatic “assistance.”) This opportunity for change is fed by the economic collapse brought on by the twin factors of a relentless financialization of the economy—whereby a shrinking productive layer is squeezed harder and harder still to extract growing wealth for the oligarchy and its pathetic lackeys—and the direct and intentional destruction of the physical potential of the economy, under the guise of achieving “green” goals. But the greatest impulse towards an enlivened sense of human potential—and the accompanying impulsion to cast off injustice—comes from visions of the future: development initiatives crafted by the LaRouche movement over decades, China’s meteoric growth and its Belt and Road Initiative, Russia’s rock-solid commitment to multipolarity and sovereignty, and the electrifying moments of inspiration sparked by scientific discovery and works of cultural beauty. In Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on Friday, the next level of their collaboration in the fields of economy, science, medicine, and security cooperation. China has conquered extreme poverty within its borders, and it has addressed a threat of terrorism in its western Xinjiang region in a way far superior to the treatment of Afghanistan at the hands of the West, whose spokespeople cry alligator tears for the suppression of Muslim Uyghurs while murdering the people of Afghanistan through starvation brought on by withholding that nation’s rightful financial resources — not to speak of the refusal to provide the additional development collaboration that should be provided by its repentant erstwhile occupiers. The interests of the people of the U.S., of Canada, of Ibero America, of Europe, lie not with the grotesque geopolitical system of the Anglo-American oligarchy, but in repudiating that outlook in exchange for the joy of collaboration, of international friendship, of joint work to expand humanity’s powers in outer space and our mastery of the subatomic domain. The war-time propaganda of the legacy media and the social media censors must be defeated. The LaRouche Organization and the Schiller Institute play the key international role in bringing together the shared interests of Russia, China, India, and the United States, and identifying the deadly axioms that cause people to choose their own doom. The future is human, not green!

The ability of the Empire to keep the world on a course of war and depression depends on their ability to control the narrative, through intense psychological warfare. Their most important weapon in this is to promote the belief in the "Magic of Money", to seduce otherwise intelligent people to seek personal security, rather than to mobilize to defend the Common Good. Join us to mobilize to bring down the Empire of the Mind, and replace it with the principles of the American System of physical economics, as developed by Lyndon LaRouche in his Four Economic Laws.

Ever wonder why you keep thinking the the things you do, despite knowing those thoughts are wrong? Or perhaps, why do our political leaders seem to keep making the same mistakes over and over again? Tonight, we are going to discuss how the most evil man of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell, convinced you "snow is black" but also, to celebrate his death by being a creative human being. Join Anastasia Battle of Leonore and Diane Sare of the LaRouche Movement National Executive Committee to discuss!

President Putin yesterday called out the War Hawks, who claim they are concerned with "protecting Ukraine's sovereignty." They are using this narrative, he said, as an excuse to draw Russia into an armed conflict, "to hamper Russia's development." A memo released by the White House last week actually stated this as the intention of the new sanctions regime they are drafting. Driving the war talk is not Russian military deployments, but the deepening panic that the Great Reset is in trouble, in large part because Russia and China will not surrender their sovereignty to a global dictatorship of central banks!

On Dec. 17, 2021, Russia publicly presented two draft treaties for urgent adoption—one with the United States, one with NATO—which addressed Russia’s existential security concerns regarding the inexorable eastward expansion of NATO and the placement of threatening weapon systems on its borders. Russia demanded immediate written responses to their urgent proposals, in order to brake the rush to war emanating from the West.On Jan. 26, the U.S. and NATO did provide private written responses to Russia. But on Feb. 1 Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a press conference: “Let me note that we are closely analyzing the written responses received from the U.S. and NATO on January 26. However, it is already clear … that the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored.” Putin then turned the tables on the entire matter: He told the press that the U.S. and NATO weren’t really concerned with Ukraine’s security, but were using that issue as a kind of bear trap, as an excuse to launch all-out economic warfare against Russia in order to destroy its economy and prevent the country’s industrialization. “Its main task is to hamper Russia’s development…. Ukraine just serves as a means to achieve this goal … by drawing us into some kind of armed conflict.” The next day, Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov announced that Putin will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb. 4, making it clear that the two countries are deeply allied on both economic and security matters. The two Presidents will issue “a joint statement on international relations in the new era and global sustainable development … [that] will reflect the shared views of Russia and China on the most important global problems, including security issues,” Ushakov reported. Helga Zepp-LaRouche today welcomed the emphasis on the underlying economic crisis behind the war danger, and also on the needed total international economic transformation required to forge a durable peace. Recent threats from American and especially British officials of their intention to totally wipe out Russia’s ability to industrialize and develop, are finally waking people up to the reality Lyndon LaRouche warned about for decades. Zepp-LaRouche stated in her Jan. 28 weekly webcast: “The language of this is so brutal, it’s basically saying: Look, we managed with the shock therapy in 1990s, with Jeffrey Sachs in the Yeltsin period, to turn a former superpower into a raw materials producing, third world country, and now we will deny Russia the right to industrialize, by applying such measures. Now, that is a form of a declaration of war already! How can you deny a country to develop industrially?… If you read the language, how this is written, it portrays a mindset which is the mindset of a party declaring war already.” Zepp-LaRouche continued: “We’re sitting on a powder keg: The reason for all the war danger is the fact that the financial system is about to blow up. There are many reports that the so-called ‘emerging markets,’ which is a synonym for the developing countries, that they may have a huge debt crisis if there is the slightest ‘tapering’ of interest rates by the Federal Reserve. So the urgency to go with LaRouche’s Four Laws, and really go in a completely different direction, rebuilding the world economy by having actual development, starting with a world health system, is of the greatest urgency.” Zepp-LaRouche took note of the fact that, in many countries around the world, there are the beginnings of some significant opposition to the war drive, and even to the economic policies that are causing it: some people are becoming conflicted and uneasy, and rightly so. “This is an opportune moment to focus the growing war anxiety in many nations around the world, against the British,” Zepp-LaRouche stated, “who, after all, are the policy authors of the global drive towards superpower warfare. This could ruin their capability for good.” Zepp-LaRouche again drew attention to the unspeakable genocide underway in Afghanistan, where half the population is in danger of starving to death over the winter, in large measure due to the illegal freezing of the country’s assets abroad and the merciless economic sanctions being imposed on the country. Those most immediately threatened include 1 million children who are so malnourished that, were they in a developed country, they would belong in hospital ICU facilities. This is a crime against humanity underway before our very eyes, and it is being committed by the same British and American financial interests that are behind the war drive against Russia and China.

Jan. 28 -- On January 20, Jeremy Grantholm, founder of the asset management firm GMO, warned that a "superbubble", comprised of stocks, housing and commodities, will soon pop, wiping out $35 trillion in assets. This would be the fourth superbubble collapse in the last one hundred years, he said, citing stock bubbles which imploded in 1929 and 2000, and the housing bubble in 2008. He stated that: "...we face the largest potential markdown of perceived wealth in U.S. history." However, no one is listening, he complained, because superbubbles "are often the most exhilarating financial experiences of a lifetime." Among those not listening, he identified the U.S. Federal Reserve and the other central banks, which he reports do not "seem to recognize the danger. As if to prove his point, {Bloomberg Business} ran as its headline for its lead story on January 27, "America's Economy Is Booming", citing statistics which show a "better-than-expected" GDP growth in the latest quarter. Further down in the article was a mention of the decision taken at the Fed Open Market Committee earlier that day, to move ahead, finally, with "tapering", scaling back the Quantitative Easing program and raising interest rates. It reports ominously, "Traders are bracing for higher borrowing costs, with money markets now expecting almost five interest-rate increases from the Federal Reserve this year and another four from the Bank of England." This unacknowledged contradiction, of the disconnect between the "good news" of a growing GDP -- which measures monetary expansion and not goods production of the real economy -- and the fears of the effects of an interest rate spike, demonstrates precisely why the Fed and others cannot "recognize the danger." Backing Grantholm's view are a spate of articles and reports on the unsustainability of various forms of debt, especially of the danger of default among poor, heavily-indebted countries. David Malpass, President of the World Bank, warned that the "risk of disorderly defaults is growing....Countries are facing a resumption of debt payments at precisely the time when they don't have the resources to be making them." Larry Elliott, financial correspondent for the {Guardian}, elaborated on this in his January 23 column, writing that debt payments by developing sector countries have more than doubled since 2010, and will increase more if the Fed raises interest rates. In 2010, 6.8% of government revenues went to debt repayment; in 2021, this rose to 14.3%. There are fifty-four countries in a "debt crisis", and nearly 50% of that debt is owed to private lenders, that is, banks and investment funds -- including those where many people have placed their retirement and pension funds -- and another 27% to institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Further, reports proliferate of the accelerating rates of delinquency in personal debt, such as home mortgage payments and credit cards, while the website www.wallstreetonparade.com has been documenting that the Federal Reserve has been pumping trillions of dollars into the major private banks -- such as JP MorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Citibank -- since the 4th Quarter of 2019, through the Repo lending window, to prevent a collapse of corporate debt, or a chain-reaction default on derivatives. What Is "Irrational Exuberance"? At a time when stock valuations were soaring in the mid-1990s, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan delivered a speech to the free market fanatics of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on "The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society". In his speech, on December 5, 1996, he spoke of the overall favorable climate for continued appreciation of stock values, referring to a combination of low interest rates and low inflation. He then asked, "But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?" In attempts to untangle typical Greenspan Fedspeak, this was interpreted as a dismissal of such a concern, designed to continue to fuel speculation, while offering a cover in case the stock bubble did pop, as it had in October 1987 in the same week he became Fed chairman. The speech to the AEI came at a moment of euphoric belief in "American Exceptionalism" and the U.S. as the unipolar Superpower, bolstered by the "victory" in the Cold War, which U.S. leaders hailed as a result of the unparalleled strength of the U.S. military, and the limitless economic potential fueled by the wonders of a "free market" economy, which the U.S. was celebrating as the successful transition from a "heavy" industrial economy to a "new (weightless) economy". The "weightlessness" refers to an explosion of funds flowing into "new financial instruments", the vast majority of which had little or no tangible assets to back up their trading value. Greenspan's attempt to dismiss the dangers inherent in this shift should have been definitively shattered by events of the next years. In 1997, the speculative bubble in Asian stocks and real estate popped, as currency exchange speculators, led by George Soros, rushed in to rake in profits. In 1998, the collapse of the Russian GKO bonds led to a devalued ruble, default on domestic debt, a moratorium on foreign debt payments, and a near-collapse of leading U.S. banks, requiring a bailout fund organized by the Fed of more than $16 billion. This was largely due to the effort, run by western financiers, to impose on Russia an economic transformation through "shock therapy", which was a thinly-disguised looting operation, dismantling Russia's physical economy and making it dependent on raw material exports. The economic and demographic collapse which followed brought Vladimir Putin in as acting President in January 2000; he has devoted the last two decades to reversing that collapse, with an emphasis on rebuilding Russia's scientific tradition. Most devastating to Greenspan's attempt to dismiss the danger of this transition in the U.S. was the collapse of the dot-com bubble, which occurred beginning in the fourth quarter of 2000. He addressed this by creating a new bubble, with an emphasis on trading mortgage-backed securities and derivative transactions, which then collapsed spectacularly in September 2008. Greenspan, who left the Fed in 2006, admitted in October 2008 -- after the collapse of the housing bubble -- that he had "found a flaw" in his model, but offered an excuse. As a bubble develops, he rationalized, "almost everybody is bullish, expects the market to go up, and is fully committed....This is the reason," he explained, "why everybody missed September the 15th, 2008" referring to the day of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Not Everybody "Missed" It Among those who did not "miss it" was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who told the {Welt am Sontag} on August 1, 1999, that "many people are enthusiastic about the United States [economy]. But these people do not realize that the stock market boom is totally over-valued, and that there are psychopaths who are driving the stocks upwards." The most clear and consistent critic of the advent of the modern bubble economy was American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, who called attention to this in the late 1960s, then famously in his attack on the August 15, 1971 decision by President Nixon to take down the post-war Bretton Woods system. LaRouche, who was responsible for advances in understanding the method behind the success of the American System economic model, applied the scientific/philosophical approach of the German genius Gottfried Leibniz, to develop his conception of "physical economy". For example, as the Dow Jones stock average and profits from mutual funds were soaring in 1999, driven by wild investments in the tech bubble of the dot-coms, LaRouche wrote on August 14, 1999, that this "is not to be seen as a sign of prosperity, but directly the opposite. This so-called 'boom' -- in financial asset price hyperinflation -- is actually the highly-elevated fever that signals, and will bring about the financial system's approaching collapse." Shortly after he wrote this, the dot-com bubble began a rapid and deep unwinding. LaRouche's prescience was again seen in a July 25, 2007 webcast, when he stated that the present financial system, driven by the mortgage-backed securities bubble, "can not continue to exist under any circumstances, under any Presidency, under any leadership, or any leadership of nations. Only a fundamental and sudden change in the world monetary financial system will prevent a general, immediate chain-reaction type of collapse. At what speed we don’t know, but it will go on, and it will be unstoppable! And the longer it goes on before coming to an end, the worse things will get." Following the 2008 meltdown, he offered a specific approach to reversing the ongoing downward plunge resulting from the adoption of British neoliberal policies in the name of "share-holder values", which repeatedly create bubbles which benefit the super-wealthy, while devastating the real economy. He presented his idea for a global bankruptcy reorganization in an address to the Rhodes Forum on October 9, 2009. "I have picked out four nations [the U.S., Russia, China, India], as absolutely crucial, that they must cooperate, because with their cooperation, and with that of others who join them, it will be possible to take reorganization of the world economy, by eliminating financial derivatives—just cancel them; they're worthless paper, cancel them. Go back to the honest debt of nations, go to a commercial banking standard, and create new credit to replace the worthless old debt. By creating new credit, and launching physical production programs, in infrastructure and other terms, we could, by agreement among nation-states, prevent a general collapse, and actually launch a program of orderly recovery. And these problems that we now face could be solved." He continued: "The problem is, that the world is dominated by financier interests, which are essentially parasitical in character. Our industries, our agriculture, our infrastructure is decaying, worldwide—especially in the Americas, especially in North America, and especially in Western Europe. Western and Central Europe is a disaster area. They no longer have national security, economic security: They're dominated by the British, entirely, under the British system, which was established in the context of the breakdown of the Soviet Union and East German economy."At that point, the British succeeded, with the support of [French President François] Mitterrand, and with the support of George H.W. Bush, the President at that time, in imposing upon Germany, and other nations of Western and Central Europe, conditions which are destructive. And the Western European economy is generally bankrupt, today, hopelessly so. It could be reorganized, through bankruptcy reorganization, but presently the whole system of Western and Central Europe is hopelessly bankrupt, as other parts of the world are." The present crisis can only be solved by adopting LaRouche's unique approach, based on restoring the principles of "physical economy", and rejecting all forms of British, neoliberal monetary schemes. It is not just "Superbubbles" which are collapsing, but the entire system, which is built on the ideological delusions of those billionaire predators running it, and profiting from it.

Russian President Putin yesterday issued a public statement on the response of the U.S. and NATO to his demand for security guarantees. He said that "the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored." Meanwhile, the Brits threaten tougher sanctions, against anyone doing business with Russia! There is further confirmation of the European Union's war on people, in a report on how Green policy will reduce food production in many crops between 10% to 30%. This will drive up food prices further for more wealthy Europeans, but take food off the table for up to 400 million people in poorer countries, which will have to export their food to EU countries. Watch the Schiller Institute video, "Why Are Farmers NOT Allowed to Produce Food?"