To protect a bankrupt financial system, the City of London and its allies in the Military-Industrial-Complex in the U.S. and NATO are demanding an end to sovereign governments, insisting that nations submit to their Great Reset -- which is a global central banker's dictatorship. Russia and China will not submit, putting us on a pathway to war in Ukraine and Taiwan. But such wars cannot be won, and could trigger nuclear war. The alternative was developed by Lyndon LaRouche: put the predatory financial institutions into bankruptcy, establish a New Bretton Woods financial system, and apply his Four Economic Laws to revive the American System of Physical Economy.

As war preparations hit a feverish pace, driven by the usual false narratives from the Military-Industrial Complex war hawks, there are other warnings being stated quietly, hoping you are not paying attention. These have to do with the Fed's decision to "fight inflation" by raising interest rates, a strategy that risks triggering a wave of defaults of 54 mostly poor, heavily-indebted countries -- including Ukraine -- but also of debt-ridden zombie corporations, banks, insurance companies, etc. If you suspect there might be a connection between the war drive and the systemic financial collapse of the economy, you are right.

Harley Schlanger, a spokesman for the Schiller Institute and The LaRouche Organization, gave the following presentation at the Schiller Institute Conference on January 22, “A Difference in Leadership – Can a War with Russia Still Be Averted?”, following presentations by Russian Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy and Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. HARLEY SCHLANGER: What I will show is that the U.S. official position -- that Russia is the cause of the problem, and Russia has to back down, Russia has to move back its troops and so on -- is either based on ignorance of history, or an arrogant view of the U.S. as the unilateral enforcer of a “rules-based order.” What I intend to show is that it’s the latter.Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said the other day, that ignoring Russia’s legal concerns over the eastward expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and a deployment of forces, including weapons, near the Russian border, will have the most serious consequences. In stating this, he was repeating the formulation that I think is the most clear from President Putin, from his annual press conference on December 23rd. I want to read the quote from President Putin: “Our actions will not depend on the negotiation process, but rather on unconditional guarantees for Russia’s security concerns. In this connection, we have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the U.S. that has come to our home with its missiles, and is already standing on our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?” In listening to that, it’s very striking the similarity to the argument made to the American people on October 22, 1962 by President Kennedy, as to why he had to adopt a quarantine—which was actually a blockade—of Cuba, to stop the import of further Soviet missiles, during the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here’s what Kennedy said in that speech to the American people: “In the world today, due to the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the swiftness of ballistic missiles, any substantially increased possibility of their use, or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.” He talked about the build-up of the Soviet Union’s missiles in Cuba, and added:“In an area well known to have special and historical relationship to the United States,” and I might add parenthetically, exactly as Ukraine does with Russia today, “the sudden clandestine decision to station strategic weapons outside of Soviet soil, is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.” I think you’ll see in his language, something very similar to what President Putin is saying today, which is why many people, including Helga, have called this a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. I want to give you a quick view of what the idea of a “unipolar world” is, and what it means. The people who argue for the U.S. to be the main power, start from the standpoint that we’re “democratic,” we’re “good.” Therefore, when we deploy missiles, it’s for the good. As Dr. Andrey Kortunov (of the Russian International Affaires Council) told us: when the Russians deploy the missiles, since they are “bad,” these are “bad missiles” and have to be opposed. From that standpoint, we have to look at where this idea comes from. The underlying issue today, which is called into question by President Putin’s insistence on legally binding security guarantees, is that the construct of a unipolar world is dead. The whole idea that there’s only one nation on the planet which, because of its immense military power and economic power, can dictate the rules to the rest of the human race, and use satraps such as the European Union and NATO to help enforce it, no longer applies. The Western financial system is collapsing. There’s a further point, though. In reality, this idea never really existed, except in the minds of those who enforced it and tried to convince the rest of the world that it had no choice but to accept it. They believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union left them with no military obstacle to impose their unilateral decisions on strategic and financial matters. We’ve talked about this before. Helga brought it up again this afternoon. What is the “rules-based order”? Well, for the unilateralists, it’s the rules that sustain their control over the global economy. This goes back to a merger during the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, and actually before that. It occurred during the Reagan administration with the emergence of the Democratic Leadership Council taking over the Democratic party with its so-called “Third Way,” which became the approach of the Clinton administration. The idea of the neoconservatives and neo-liberals essentially joining as an American force to impose this unipolar world. In particular, it was the neo-cons who were the most arrogant, with their Project for a New American Century, in which they insisted that the United States had emerged as the only power on the planet. Therefore, they created a narrative to explain why everyone else has to march to the tune of the United States. The narrative starts with, “We won the Cold War.” Second, the victory in the Cold War was one of “democracy” and the “free market.” The third point: This means that every nation must submit to those who won the Cold War, because we’re the good guys; we did what was right. The fourth point, which is usually not expressed, is that this means there’s no more sovereignty, no morePeace of Westphalia, as Tony Blair blatantly stated repeatedly in trips to the United States. The idea that there’s a common good is no longer acceptable. The idea that there should be no interference in other nations’ internal affairs, which was part of the Peace of Westphalia, is no longer valid. That the “common good” is whatever the unipolar power insists on. I want to give you a sense of what the so-called “democratic order” that this “rules-based order” has done in the world in the last 30 years.

From the moment last Friday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced that they had met and agreed that the U.S. would provide a written response to Russia’s urgent security concerns, the British have been working overtime to make sure that nothing of the sort ever happens—or at least that whatever written response Blinken provides will be a further anti-Russian provocation.First, there are the stepped-up direct military deployments: another American planeload of sophisticated weapons for the pro-Nazi Kiev government; the transfer of Ukrainian rocket launchers and other heavy weapons to the conflict zone with Donbas; and the Pentagon confirming that President Biden had instructed them to put 8,500 U.S.-based troops on heightened alert for potential deployment to Europe, based on a briefing on “military options” presented to him by Defense Secretary Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Milley. Those options included sending up to 50,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe—steps which the Russians will read as a direct military threat. Then there are the British psy-ops: British intelligence reached a fact-less finding that Russia intended to topple the Kiev government and put in their own puppet (denied by the Russian government); an anonymous diplomat in Beijing reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping had asked Putin to hold off on invading Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics (denied by the Chinese and Russian governments); and yet another round of anti-Russian bravado by Blinken (there will be “massive consequences” for Russia if a “single additional Russian force” enters Ukraine) and by Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States (“you’ll always find the U.K. at the forward end of the spectrum” in going after Russia). “What is clear,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche reported today, “is that we are in an extremely dangerous situation and, given the number of lunatics in leading positions and also the absolute certainty of miscalculation based on wrong epistemological approaches, I think the only conclusion we can have out of this present situation is that we have to go into an all-out anti-war mobilization, waking up especially the American public, because that is the main force which is uninformed about what the danger of the situation is.” Russia expects an answer this week, she continued, and that answer cannot fail to address their existential security concerns by putting in writing guarantees that NATO will cease its eastward expansion up to Russia’s borders. But at this point, everything indicates that the U.S. will do nothing of the kind. If that is the case, Zepp-LaRouche warned, then we are in a showdown for a countdown to Russia’s activation of “military technical measures” of their own—which could include the deployment of hypersonic Zircon missiles on submarines within five-minutes flight time of both American coasts. For an anti-war mobilization to be successful, however, it must not simply issue pronouncements against war, but it must address two key policy points: 1) identify who is behind the war drive, and why (the collapsing trans-Atlantic financial empire); and 2) present a program to build a durable peace—based on the policies of global economic reconstruction encapsulated in LaRouche’s Four Laws. As then-presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche summarized the matter nearly 40 years ago, in the opening sentence of a March 30, 1984 “Draft Memorandum of Agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”: “Article 1: General conditions for peace. The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) The unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation-states, and b) Cooperation among sovereign nation-states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all.”

With the sounding of a “Russian coup coming in Ukraine” siren by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Jan. 22—to push the British demand to hit Russia now with the financial super-sanctions that were supposed to be threatened to deter war—it has become clear that there is no “unity of the NATO allies and partners” on dealing with Russia in the Ukraine missiles crisis.Rather, there is a British drive to force Russia to invade Ukraine or capitulate; a beleaguered but definite German opposition to the British war drive; a French President who wants to negotiate but is trying to look good and get re-elected; and a weak American President who would like to avoid war. If war, even world war, comes, it will be war imposed on the weakened American Presidency by the City of London and Britain. Not a second Crimean War, but a war for revenge against Russia and China for resisting and ruining the grand Glasgow global climate summit in November, leaving the British ministers who ran that summit in angry tears as it ended in failure. That included Prime Minister Boris Johnson, “BoJo” the nasty clown, who is discredited and inches from a no-confidence vote by his own Conservative Party MPs. “His resolve has hardened” against Russia, his spokesman announced on Jan. 22. The New York Times coverage of the new fake was headlined, “Britain Pursues More Muscular Role in Standoff with Russia on Ukraine,” although it’s always U.S. muscle Britain uses. Even the nervously hyper-aggressive U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not respond to the newest British war fable, beyond “We’re taking that seriously,” when it was thrown at him today by “Face the Nation’s” anchor Margaret Brennan, who raved as if she had taken some British meth with her coffee before the program. Against the London-Kiev demand that the supposed financial super-sanctions be imposed on Russia tomorrow, Blinken noted the obvious, “We’re using them as a deterrent. You would lose their deterrent effect.” He did not include the equally obvious, “and push Russia toward war”—the British intent. Blinken repeatedly stressed two points: “We have rallied allies and partners across Europe in a very intense way in recent days”; and “We are also responding to some of Russia’s concerns in further talks, and we expect them to respond to our concerns.” The Russian Embassy in London stressed today that the British were outside the process of negotiation with Russia: “The U.K. Foreign Office continues with a series of provocative statements on the situation around Ukraine…. These rallying cries come against the background of an obvious deterioration of British expertise on Russia and Ukraine. …The words by Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss about Ukraine having suffered from various invaders, ‘from the Mongols to the Tatars,’ is one example. Then came the ‘news’ of Russia intending to establish a puppet regime in Kiev led by a former Ukrainian MP—one that happens to be under Russian sanctions for being a threat to national security,” referring to Yevheniy Murayev. Germany does not want to allow the British war drive to succeed. Its Navy Chief Vice Adm. Kay-Achim Schönbach was forced to resign by media attacks, when he stated that what Putin “wants is respect. And my God, giving someone respect is low cost…. It is easy to give him the respect he really demands—and probably also deserves.” It is now widely reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked to Washington for consultations with President Biden and declined to go until some later time. Germany will not permit Baltic nations to which it has sold German weapons to pass them on to Ukraine, and the breakneck British shipments of lethal weaponry are having to be flown over Danish airspace because the U.K. does not dare ask Germany for flyover permission. The Biden Administration is about to respond in writing to Russian President Putin’s proposed agreements to keep NATO missiles and warfighting arrangements out of Ukraine and off Russia’s border—“and stating our concerns” about Russia, Blinken said today. The United States has decided it wants Russia to agree not to publish these responses, most likely because such publication will either infuriate the warmongers around BoJo’s government and inside the City of London, or cause more doubts in Germany, France, and perhaps other “allies and partners.” The most important question now is, what will American citizens do to direct their flailing government toward solving the most important problems facing humanity? That requires cooperation with at least Russia and China as a means to reverse the American industrial economy’s decline toward “green” suicide, and involve the United States in building new public health systems and infrastructure development programs around the world. London’s Malthusian policy of deindustrialization by war can’t be tolerated.

This is translated for publication in EIR from Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s lead article in the January 27, 2022 issue of Neue Solidarität Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—After the hectic diplomacy of this week—Annalena Baerbock in Kiev and Moscow, Antony Blinken in Kiev, then in Berlin to meet with the foreign ministers of the United States, France, Great Britain and Germany, Blinken’s meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and finally the meeting of foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov and Blinken in Geneva—the danger of a world war which could annihilate mankind has not been averted. After the last meeting, Lavrov stated that he expected to receive a written answer from the U.S. and NATO next week concerning the legally binding treaties demanded by Russia, which provide that NATO will not expand further east to Russia’s borders, that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO, and that no offensive weapons systems will be placed on the Russian border. Blinken referred to further talks with “allies and partners in the coming days,” after which Western concerns and ideas could then be shared with Russia.However, if the U.S. position remains what Blinken, according to RT, told journalists after his meeting with Lavrov—namely that there is no room for compromise on Moscow’s main demand, and that a non-negotiable principle of America and its allies is that the Ukrainian people have the right “to write their own future”—then the very short fuse threatens to burn very quickly. Indeed, the formulation used by Blinken is just a sophistical way of referring to Ukraine’s entry into NATO, which is part of the Anglo-American narrative on “Russia’s aggressions.” But for any honest historian, as well as for everyone who looks at a map, the facts are clear: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was not Russia that moved its borders some 1,000 km westward from the border of the then-Warsaw Pact to reach somewhere in France around Lille, but it was NATO that advanced to the east by 1000 km. Thus, it clearly broke the verbal commitments given to Gorbachev by the George H.W. Bush administration, and especially by then-Secretary of State James Baker III, that NATO would not move “one inch to the east.” A closer look shows that the methods used by NATO to add 14 new member states in Eastern and Central Europe and in the Balkans were not always the most subtle. According to the Western narrative, it was the desire for freedom that pushed these countries into NATO. But the reality is different. After the shock therapy of Jeffrey Sachs and the brutal policy of privatization, with no concern for the social consequences, had drastically impoverished the populations of the former Comecon, a massive network of NGOs was set up with thick checkbooks, with the aim of effecting a paradigm change in favor of the West. In 1990, at the time prior to German reunification and during the upheavals in Eastern Europe, this author personally experienced how the first democratic attempts of self-organization by the people in the East were cold-bloodedly smothered and replaced by compliant opportunists, often enough in positions of government. “Corruption is good” became the motto in many places—then at least we know whom we can trust. So much for the principle of “letting peoples choose their own future.” The latest example just came from the—failed—attempt to carry off a color revolution in Kazakhstan, with the use of “Maidan techniques” as Vladimir Putin correctly pointed out. If Putin is now demanding—in the context of what German Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.) told DLF radio/TV was not in preparation for a military attack, but rather as a threatening backdrop (i.e., the redeployment of about 100,000 Russian troops closer to the Ukrainian border although some of them are still hundreds of kilometers away)—legally binding written assurances that NATO will neither be extended further eastward to the borders of Russia, nor will ever accept Ukraine as a member, then this is simply a way of expressing that for Russia a red line has been reached. Given the fact that there are already 10,000 NATO troops in Ukraine, including some 4,000 U.S. troops, that private mercenary outfits are training Ukrainian military units in eastern Ukraine for false-flag operations, that the U.K. is supplying offensive lethal weapons to Ukraine, that U.S. and British warships and fighter jets are provoking incidents in the Black Sea aimed at providing the reconnaissance aircraft with information about Russian military capabilities—what conclusions is Russia supposed to draw from all these and many other policies? In reality, NATO is already operating practically in Ukraine, but formal NATO membership would definitively confirm that it was no longer possible to defend Russia’s fundamental security interests. Even as the abovementioned diplomatic talks were ongoing, the British broadcaster Sky News reported that the U.K. had deployed 30 members of its “Special Operations Brigade” to Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops on anti-tank weapons that were also supplied by the British. According to the military spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic, more than 460 tons of various lethal weapons, including 2,000 NLAWs (anti-tank missiles), have recently been delivered by nine C17 aircraft to Ukrainian forces stationed on the line of contact with the Donbas, which include a considerable number of radical nationalists. Whether these weapons are defensive or offensive in nature depends, as always, on the specific combat situation. Shortly after Moscow presented the two treaties to the United States and NATO on Dec. 15, Putin announced that Russia would respond to their rejection with “appropriate military-technical retaliatory measures.” In a Jan. 15 article in National Interest magazine, David T. Pyne, currently working for the Task Force on National and Homeland Security (a Congressional Advisory Board), cited Brussels-based U.S. analyst Gilbert Doctorow’s interpretation of what these “military-technical retaliatory measures” might entail. Doctorow assumes that it means the additional deployment of Russian nuclear-capable SS-26 Iskander-M short-range missiles to Belarus and Kaliningrad, which would threaten NATO front-line states and eastern Germany. Moreover, the new nuclear-armed Tsirkon sea-launched hypersonic cruise missiles could be stationed off the American coast near Washington. Earlier statements from Russian officials noted that such missiles could destroy the American capital faster than the President could escape on Air Force One. Therefore, if the U.S. and NATO reject Russia’s demands for security guarantees, there is a real probability that we may have to deal very soon with a double Cuba crisis, but without a John F. Kennedy as U.S. President. Rather, we have a President Biden whom the war hawks in his entourage openly refuse to respect and who “correct” him if he says he does not seek war with Russia. It should be clear to all thinking persons that in the event of a war waged with nuclear weapons—be it “limited” or not—no one in Germany would survive. For our new Foreign Minister Baerbock, it is obviously not clear, otherwise she would not fall into NATO jargon in such a synchronized manner with “dear Tony” as she just did at the Berlin press conference. The Greens have completely morphed into a war party. And if someone begins pondering, like former Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, what nuclear options there might be against Russia, then they should seek therapy against suicidal and homicidal thoughts. Under such circumstances, Germany’s membership in NATO can no longer be defended. We immediately need a new international security architecture that takes into account the interests of all countries, explicitly including those of Russia and China. If we have learned anything from history, it is that only those treaties that include the interests of all the states involved, such as the Treaty of Westphalia, can be the basis for lasting peace. Peace treaties that do not do so, such as the Treaty of Versailles, contain the opening salvo for the next war, as we in Germany should have painfully learned. NATO, which unnecessarily excluded Russia from the European house after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and has since increasingly become an offensive alliance, not only no longer corresponds to Germany’s security interests, but has become the primary threat to Germany’s existence. We need a new security architecture that overcomes the geopolitics responsible for two world wars in the 20th century, one that defines the common goals of mankind as its fundamental principle. And this includes, first and foremost, the elimination of the primary cause of war—which is the imminent collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system—and the creation of a new credit system, a New Bretton Woods system, that vanquishes poverty and underdevelopment everywhere in the world. All peace-loving people in the world are called upon to enter into an open dialogue on this issue.

The Schiller Institute today sponsored a critical forum under the title: “A Difference In Leadership: Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” Speaking from the Russian Mission to the United Nations, Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, presented the stark reality of the current rush to war by Western leaders. “It seems,” he said, “that our Western colleagues are blinded by the so-called ‘victory’ in the Cold War, and continue to live these memories and try to talk from the position of superiority, and impose double standards. They blame us for the presence and movement of our troops on our own sovereign territory, while claiming that everything they do on NATO territory is nobody’s business. This will no longer work.”Helga Zepp-LaRouche posed the higher order approach to the crisis: “I suggest very strongly that we need a new security architecture, which has to reflect on the basic lessons of history. You have to look at treaties which did lead to peace, and those which didn’t. A good example for the first is the Peace of Westphalia, where after 150 years of religious war, especially the Thirty Years’ War, people realized that nobody would be the winner of the continuation of the war. So, they agreed on the famous principles of the Peace of Westphalia, the most important being that you have to take into account the interest of the other if you want to have peace. Every time that was done—and this Peace of Westphalia, by the way, was the beginning of international law and what constitutes the UN Charter today—that leads to peace. The other example is the Versailles Treaty, which proclaimed that Germany was the only guilty party in World War I, which was not true. For sure, it was not just. It put burdens on Germany to pay not only the cost of war, but reparations, which was completely overburdening the German economy. So, the Reichsbank started to print money; that led to the hyperinflation; that contributed to the Depression. Naturally, the deep sense of injustice which the people coming out of this had, led to the rise of the Nazis and the actual takeover by the National Socialists which led to World War II.” Harley Schlanger, a spokesman for The LaRouche Organization, reviewed the arrogance of the neoconservatives and the neoliberals who believed that the West had “won” the Cold War, and that this gave them license to impose their imagined superior system of “democracy and free market economies” on all nations, by military means if necessary. He posted a chart of the illegal and genocidal wars waged against nations—Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, and then the coup against Ukraine in 2014—against nations which were no threat to anyone, wars based on fraudulent charges which are acknowledged now to have been manufactured to justify the wars. This included the “shock therapy” imposed on Russia itself, in an attempt to reduce a great scientific and industrial nation into a “raw material exporter” with impoverished and declining populations. When Vladimir Putin reversed that destruction, he was labeled an “autocrat,” while both parties in the U.S. united behind the war policy. The era of unilateralism and a unipolar world is now finished, Schlanger asserted, as the China-Russia cooperation in nation building, for themselves and the 140 nations which have joined the Belt and Road Initiative, are no longer taking orders, and will no longer allow color revolutions or neo-colonial wars and oppression. Paul Gallagher, EIR Economics Editor, then dissected the destruction of the “American System,” which had been restored by Franklin Roosevelt through Glass-Steagall bank regulation and the post-war Bretton Woods system. The destruction began with the 1971 decoupling of the dollar from gold by the Nixon Administration, turning the banking system into one based on speculation rather than production. With the collapse of the speculative bubble in 2008, Lyndon LaRouche’s proposal to restore American System policies was rejected in favor of mass money printing to save the banks, creating the greatest “everything bubble” in history. The effort to sustain the $275 trillion bubble through the Green New Deal, run by the same bankers responsible for the bubble itself, by shutting down fossil fuels, many industries and farms, would result in mass depopulation of the world, already evident globally, and even within the United States. Here again, the emergence of Russia, China and the Belt and Road Initiative demonstrates that the unipolar world run by the City of London and Wall Street no longer can dictate this destruction on the rest of the world, with the danger that they may choose to launch a nuclear war rather than joining as an equal partner in a new world order. Richard Black, the Schiller Institute representative to the UN, followed up Ambassador Polyanskiy’s call for ending the forced division of the world into warring blocs, to seek those things which unite us rather than divide us. He reviewed LaRouche’s work with the scientific community in Russia, in the tradition of that nation’s great scientific geniuses, calling on the citizens of the Western nations to organize their political leaders and candidates to force their governments to give up their phobias, and cooperate in the great tasks facing mankind as a whole. A rich discussion and Q&A followed. You are encouraged to watch this crucial and productive forum, and to act on the ideas there presented.

Once again, a fraudulent report has been produced by British intelligence to push the U.S. into war, this time with Russia over Ukraine. Using the usual tactics -- anonymous sources, promoting fake intelligence, asserting devious schemes by Russia -- they may be reacting to a sense of reluctance in Washington, by Biden, and some NATO countries, to plunge into World War III. That the U.S. has now announced that it will respond to Putin's demands for "legally-binding security guarantees" may have spooked the Brits into "ramping up preparations" for war. A thorough background report was produced in a Schiller Institute video seminar on Jan. 22, "Can War with Russia Still Be Averted", available HERE.

This question, “Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” is the title of the Schiller Institute’s International Dialogue Saturday, January 22 at 2 pm (ET) for the purpose of strengthening the forces to stop the dangerous brinkmanship of the U.S., the British Empire and NATO against Russia and China, and make way for a complete shift toward a world security system based on the principle of the mutual benefit of all, most assuredly, the economic benefit of all.The results of today’s important meeting in Geneva between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, do not change this focus, only heighten it. The meeting ran for 90 minutes, with remarks before and after by the officials. There is expected follow-on to the talks—with a rough time frame of the next week to 10 days; but at any time, expect sabotage from enemies of this process of engagement. In brief, Blinken, who said that President Biden had asked him to meet with Lavrov, said that after today’s talks, he will go back and consult with NATO, and allies, plus Congress, and “we will be able to share with Russia our concerns and ideas in more detail and in writing next week, and we agreed to further discussions after that.” TASS reported that Blinken said that the U.S. and Russia will meet again, after Moscow scrutinizes Washington’s security proposals next week. However the Foreign Ministry threw cold water on that report, saying there are no plans for a meeting, until Russia receives an “article-by-article” reply to its demand for security guarantees. Otherwise, Blinken stuck to the assertions in his litany of accusations and demands, admonishing Russia to de-escalate its force placement, not invade Ukraine, etc. Lavrov said of Blinken’s remark that the U.S. will respond in writing to Russia’s “concerns,” that, “I believe it would be right to make this reply public and I will ask Antony Blinken, so that they do not object.” He said there was no arrangement for another meeting between himself and Blinken. Among many other points, Lavrov said that the U.S. repeats its charges against Russia “like a mantra” and pointed to Western “hysterics” when it came to Ukraine. Especially noteworthy was the inclusion of China in what is at stake. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement at the time of the talks which said, “It is high time that our American colleagues understand that Washington’s dual containment policy towards Moscow and Beijing is completely outdated and offers no good prospects for the U.S. The Americans would do more good for themselves and the entire world if they abandoned their arrogant claim for global dominance and engaged in an equal and honest dialogue with Russia, China and other major players in order to search for balanced solutions to pressing global security and development issues.” Ominously, hostile initiatives have been conducted against Russia all during the period of today’s Geneva talks. Yesterday, Blinken’s State Department and the U.S. Treasury issued sanctions against four individuals in Ukraine, on charges that they are instruments of the Russian FSB. Two of them are members of Parliament, and of the opposition party to the Zelenskyy government, and one of them a media company operator. Thus, once again, the U.S. warhawks—while singing of democracy, are interfering blatantly in another nation’s internal politics. More military personnel and armament are flowing into Ukraine from individual NATO countries. In the U.S., the hype over Russian “aggression” is at fever pitch, and even more shrill because it is bipartisan. A call for “pre-emptive sanctions” on Russia by the U.S.—before Russia has a chance to aggress!—was made this week by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst (IA), appearing as a CNN guest of rabidly Democrat Anderson Cooper. On the eve of today’s Geneva meeting, the State Department posted three fact-sheet type write-ups to defame Russia, that qualify the agency as akin to the Ministry of Truth, in George Orwell’s 1984, which was noted by Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. Just consider the names of one of the documents, “Russia’s Top Five Persistent Disinformation Narratives.” One of the narratives that the U.S. finds Russia guilty of, is to say Western culture is decaying. The State Department reports that Foreign Minister Lavrov has even accused U.S. schools of teaching that Jesus Christ was bisexual. This is madness gone wild, and very dangerous. Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in her weekly strategic webcast on Jan. 20 that, “I think the danger of war is what people should be concerned with.” But she further stated that the concern should be “from the standpoint of the dynamic [whose] directionality goes very clearly in the direction of the Belt and Road cooperation, because many nations see it much more to their advantage to economically cooperate, rather than have geopolitical games.” In this way, the BRI alliances and projects are anti-war policies. Look at the urgency of action to support Afghanistan in that way, as part of a greater development zone from Central and South Asia, westward across the war-torn Southwest Asia, into the Horn of Africa. Just this week, on Jan. 19, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was in Moscow for discussions. China and Iran are implementing their 25-year cooperation agreement. In Pakistan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is proceeding. In the war-devastated Horn of Africa, China has recently committed to the “Initiative of Peaceful Development,” involving rail, port, power and other infrastructure programs. Add to this the thrust of “Operation Ibn Sina” in this region, and elsewhere internationally—the drive for a health care platform with full economic support, called for by Zepp-LaRouche—and the end of war is a given. However, in complete opposition to all of this, came the mass-murder bombing today in Yemen—the heart of this extended region, by Saudi Arabian-led forces. The wave of bombings has killed at least 200 people, and injured many more, including a strike on a prison in Sadaa, north of Sana’a, where the death toll is 150 so far. This amounts to a “shock and awe” crime, timed exactly with today’s Geneva U.S.-Russia meeting. The Yemen mission director for Doctors Without Borders Ahmed Mahat called the prison strike a “horrific act of violence.” Moreover, the main communications tower in Sana’a was deliberately bombed, knocking out all internet service, whose import could mean that, without communications, the Saudis will perpetrate more heinous crimes. Fouad Al Ghaffari, the leader of the ALBRICS Youth Parliament in Sana’a, sent a message by text to the Schiller Institute this morning, “We condemn the terrific aggressive murder attack on Sada’a Prison, and destroying the internet connection in Yemen that violates the right to information and may hide a massive attack at any moment!” Attend the Jan. 22 International Dialogue conference, “Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” and activate with the Schiller Institute.

Join us LIVE on Saturday, January 22 at 2pm EST. “The war danger is greater than ever, and we are on the verge of World War III,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned today. “We are now down to the wire and things will have to break one way or the other in the days ahead.” Although there is a growing chorus of voices calling for sanity in the U.S. and Europe, the control of U.S. policy by the insane British and their American war party confederates has not been broken. Furthermore, Zepp-LaRouche stated, the descent into war is being driven by the systemic breakdown of the trans-Atlantic financial system, which is now going out of control, as Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly explained.There is a second dynamic underway in the world, which is the emerging realignment of nations of all continents around China and Russia, and the Belt and Road Initiative as an alternative to the policy of Malthusian depopulation being promoted by the dying trans-Atlantic system. If the United States remains hostile to this policy alternative, and continues to defend the City of London and Wall Street’s bankrupt system, then the world will in all likelihood careen toward thermonuclear war in the short term. If the U.S. joins with the Belt and Road, as Lyndon LaRouche advocated from the outset, then the prospects for peace and development are excellent.

Today could prove to be a fateful day for history as U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet to discuss the security proposals Russia formally introduced in writing, just over one month ago. Speaking to an audience in Germany on Thursday, Blinken said, “I don’t expect a breakthrough.” But a breakthrough is what is needed to pull humanity back from the brink of nuclear war.In the United States, former member of Congress and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard denounced the White House and Congress — on both sides of the aisle — for hiding from Americans the immense danger of ongoing provocations against Russia. Tucker Carlson interviewed a guest who warned that the “U.S. is sleepwalking towards conflict” with the other biggest nuclear power on the planet. Meanwhile, the U.S. legacy media are in overdrive mode to demonize Russia (while still keeping the pressure on China). They claim that nothing less than democracy and goodness itself are at stake, and that only an enormous display of anti-Russian might can save all that is good in the world from the Russian menace. Time is running short to avert catastrophe. The U.S. has participated in tyrannical overreach around the world — twenty years in Afghanistan, the murderous Iraq War, the murder of Qaddafi and consequent chaos in Libya, the destruction of Syria, and the 2014 coup in Ukraine that has since been used to demonize Russia. This tyranny in the name of democracy knows no shame. And that same tyrannical overreach is increasingly occurring domestically. The failed vote on ending the filibuster for a partisan voting bill was intended not so secure that bill’s passage. Its purpose is more aligned with the declaration that domestic terrorists — that is, people with unorthodox opinions — must be denied rights. It is of a piece with the spreading censorship of non-Atlanticist views on social media. Do you oppose war with Russia? You must be in Putin’s pocket. In fact, you should be prosecuted for treason. Do you oppose war with China? A CCP spy must have gotten to you. Do you support affordable energy capable of powering a growing human population at higher standards of living? You are supporting ecocide, and should be tried for your crimes. Have you revealed inconvenient truths? Ask Julian Assange how the UK and US treat practitioners of press freedom — a virtue they hypocritically claim to promote around the world. A new security architecture is needed, one that both ends attempts at unipolar hegemony, and that recognizes that peace is not merely the absence of conflict. What are to be the economic, social, and scientific-technological contours of that peace? Whatever may be presented as the outcome of today’s Blinken-Lavrov discussions, the world needs the analysis and direction of the LaRouche Organization and the Schiller Institute — to be presented at an event tomorrow, “Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” Learn more on Saturday at 11am PT, 2pm ET, 8pm CET, on schillerinstitute.com

The comments made in Berlin yesterday by Tony Blinken on the continuing war tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine show a dangerous detachment from reality. In stating before his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov today, "I don't expect a breakthrough," he is demonstrating the delusional attitude of much of the Trans-Atlantic leadership, which is willing to risk a nuclear war, rather than take President Putin's demand for national security guarantees seriously. Lavrov will likely call his bluff -- then how will Mr. Blinken respond?

These days, when someone offers you a “narrative,” expect a lie. The new (annual) book out this month from Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum, whose Davos sessions are this week (virtual,) is titled: The Great Narrative (The Great Reset Book 2). Health care itself has been one of the deadliest examples of lying narratives for over half a century. Take the case of how the principle of public health embodied in the 1940s Hill Burton Act, was subverted by “managed” care and privatization. There’s more to this story, even involving Tony Blair’s health care hitman, who came to the U.S. to help design Obamacare. Marcia Merry Baker, of the EIR Editorial Board, joined the discussion this week.

David T. Pyne published an article in the Jan. 17 issue of the conservative National Interest under the headline “Biden’s Opportunity for Peace in Eurasia.” In it, Pyne warns that “bilateral U.S.-Russia negotiations broke down this week after the U.S. delegation reportedly refused to offer Russia any concessions or recognize any of its legitimate security concerns, most importantly in Ukraine,” and that as a result, the crisis between the two countries is in danger of spiraling out of control, towards a thermonuclear war. (On Jan. 18, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke by phone, and agreed to a hastily-arranged meeting between them in Geneva on Jan. 21.)Pyne is a former U.S. Army combat arms and HQ staff officer with an MA in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, whose website describes Pyne as “an authority with regards to the U.S., Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals, U.S. and Russian missile defense systems and the increasing threat posed by Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons.” We quote the opening section of Pyne’s article, which speaks for itself: “In late December 2021, Russian president Vladimir Putin threatened that the rejection of Russia’s proposed security agreements with the West would be met with ‘appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures.’ Gilbert Doctorow, a Brussels-based political analyst, has translated this to mean the deployment of additional Russian military equipment including nuclear-armed SS-26 Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles to Belarus and Kaliningrad to threaten NATO’s frontline states and eastern Germany. He also speculated that it might refer to a possible deployment of nuclear-armed Zircon sea-launched hypersonic cruise missiles off the coast of Washington, DC, which Russia has previously stated could be utilized to destroy the U.S. capital before the president could escape on Air Force One. “When Russia’s other weapons of mass destruction are added to the mix, the stakes for bilateral negotiations between the United States and Russia could hardly be any higher. Russia has also threatened these retaliatory military-technical measures in response to the United States enacting much stricter economic sanctions against it. Of course, if the United States and NATO were to move their troops to the Ukrainian border in response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, it would almost certainly provoke a Russian attack upon NATO’s frontline member states where these troops are stationed, potentially starting a third world war. Thus, that is one Russian “redline” that must not be crossed. Furthermore, any Russian invasion of Ukraine and/or outbreak of war between the United States and Russia in Europe could be shortly followed by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and a North Korean invasion of South Korea—all but ensuring that the United States would be unable to effectively counter any of these aggressions. “Unfortunately, bilateral U.S.-Russia negotiations broke down this week after the U.S. delegation reportedly refused to offer Russia any concessions or recognize any of its legitimate security concerns, most importantly in Ukraine. In response, Russia has stated it has no plans to resume bilateral discussions with the United States to end the crisis and is continuing to escalate its preparations for war. At this point, the only way to give Russia a face-saving solution to the Ukraine crisis would be for the Biden administration to offer a significant concession such as the suspension of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.” Pyne ends his article by calling for the U.S. to change policy and instead forge “comprehensive peace agreements with Russia and China,” adding that they “would not be without challenges.” They would however, Pyne states, “provide an unprecedented opportunity for Biden to secure his presidential legacy as a transformational peace president while also serving to safeguard vital U.S. national security interests.”

In the last days, and in the next days ahead, decisions are being made which will determine whether mankind has the moral capacity to survive. In her weekly dialogue, Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented a dramatic tour d'horizon, weaving together an analysis of summit meetings, troop deployments, and positive economic developments around the Belt-and-Road Initiative, communicating both the tremendous danger of the present, and, importantly, a pathway out of that danger.She emphasized that the bluster of Blinken in Ukraine is not completely in step with the pronouncements of Biden. She also emphasized that Putin has been clear on why Russia requires strategic guarantees, and that some in the West, such as David Pyne, Gilbert Doctorow and Gen. Kujat, are openly discussing that. You have the delegation of seven knucklehead Senators blustering after a trip to Kiev, demanding that Biden toughen up, with one — whom she referred to as Sen. Wicked — saying that Putin must be given a bloody nose. At the same time, the Iranian President was in Moscow, signing a 20-year deal, and the Chinese and Syrians finalized a Memo of Understanding for collaboration on the BRI. Finally, she spoke movingly of the Schiller Institute conference on January 15 on Afghanistan, which contrasted the present threat of millions starving, with the axiom-busting decision by India to ship wheat to Afghanistan, traveling through Pakistan.