Megan Dobrodt

As the year 2020 draws to a close, let us fervently hope and diligently work, that the new year, will bring about a great transformation for the health and well being of all humanity. This year has seen a sea of troubles, starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already killed over 1.7 million people worldwide; which has exacerbated a famine crisis in large parts of the world and which according to World Food Program director David Beasley, now threatens the lives of 270 million people; which has created mass unemployment and increasingly desperate conditions throughout the globe.The COVID pandemic is not under control. We are now seeing new and more infectious strains of the coronavirus, like in Great Britain, which is creating economic chaos. This catastrophic situation can be remedied but it requires the urgent mobilization of the population, including emphatically the implementation of public health measures, that have proven to be effective in containing the virus. We cannot simply wait for the vaccines to be administered. This emergency requires that nations work together to accomplish these solutions. Pandemics don’t discriminate. Any nation, any region, any group of people not treated in the course of this pandemic will come back to harm us. The following measures should be undertaken by national, regional and local governments. Community organizations, universities, medical institutions, religious groups, and others can begin to implement aspects of this immediately. This will spur broader action and save lives in the interim. Public health measures should be strictly adhered to and enforced. These measures were recently reiterated by Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, appearing on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” December 20th: “We need to wash our hands, wear a mask, watch our distances, keep our household gathering small.” Get vaccinated. While this cannot be a mandatory requirement and is not without legitimate questions and concerns, it is highly recommended, as the best option, at present, to beat the COVID pandemic. Rapidly recruit, train and employ thousands of young people to work as community health care workers to educate people regarding the public health measures cited above and to overcome “vaccine hesitancy and fear,” and where viable to assist medical personnel with vaccine administration. Conduct mass testing, especially in areas of “vulnerable populations, i.e., the elderly, the impoverished, and “hot spots,” etc. This should be done with a rapid test, so that people get results immediately. This testing should be done regularly, once per month, until the area has 65-70% vaccinated population. Testing sites should be established in areas where the vulnerable populations live, i.e., neighborhood churches, supermarket parking lots, etc. Mobile medical/clinic vehicles should be utilized, wherever possible, to reach out-of-the-way areas. Isolate and quarantine infected individuals. A safe, secure environment should be provided where people can recover and receive good food and medical treatment, while doing so. Begin public protocols immediately on promising prophylactic treatments, including Alpha-interferon and Vitamin D-3 supplements. These promising treatments and their results have generally been unreported. This may also address and build trust among the medically underserved communities, who have in many cases legitimate concerns about their general health conditions, independent of COVID-19. Get everything moving as rapidly and on as large a scale as possible. What would it take to get everyone in the U.S. and in most of the world vaccinated and COVID-free by Independence Day, July 4, 2021? In this regard the expertise of the U.S. military including the National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers, should be utilized. It is often said that hindsight is 20/20. Let the year 2020 be remembered as the year the population woke up, realized our past mistakes, and changed, in order to create a better and healthier world for all mankind.

The time to celebrate the Christmas message of “Peace On Earth and Good Will Towards Men” comes at a moment in history in which such peace and good will is desperately needed, but sorely lacking. The death rate of the pandemic is reaching record rates in many parts of the non-Asian world, while the death rate by starvation is threatening to reach Biblical proportions over the coming months if vast emergency measures are not put in place immediately. The necessary cooperation between the world’s major nations—especially between the two largest economies of China and the U.S.—is non-existent.Indeed, the President of the United States allowed a posting on his Twitter account today— a video by one of the fanatics from the Falun Gong cult’s newspaper Epoch Times—which declares that communism is taking over America through the Chinese Communist Party, calling for Americans to fight like the 1776 revolutionaries—not against the actual British enemy of the American System, but against China. The fact that nearly the entire world is looking to China for development through infrastructure, through the Belt and Road Initiative, is described as an effort by China to take over the world, to take over America’s supposedly “God-given right” to be the unitary super-power: American “exceptionalism.” The LaRouche Movement, as of Dec. 23, has formed a new organization, called simply “The LaRouche Organization,” whose purpose is to address this global existential crisis facing mankind in its entirety, as was the intention and the life’s work of Lyndon LaRouche—read, “Who We Are.” We call on all people of good will to go to the new website this Christmastime, sign up to receive our updates, to listen to Harley Schlanger’s daily “Morning Briefing” video update and Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s weekly strategic webcasts, and to contribute your time, and your efforts, and your creative powers to mobilize for the new paradigm so desperately needed in the New Year. Donald Trump will remain President until January 20 even if the effort to expose the vote fraud fails in the Supreme Court, and much can, and must, be done in these coming weeks. He came to office calling for an end to the Bush-Obama regime-change wars, for being friends with Russia and China, for restoring the nation’s industrial and scientific orientation, and he can use this coming month to act on those principles—to reject the lunacy of the Pompeo-led McCarthyism against China, just as he threw out the war-party generals at the Pentagon last month and began removing our troops from those evil wars. Our first and most urgent task in the Christmas spirit is to take the emergency measures required to stop the famine. You can read and support Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Oct. 29, 2020 call to achieve that goal, the “Statement To Form the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites (Coincidentia Oppositorum).” There may be no Santa Claus this year for most of the world’s people, but a message to restore humanity, peace, and beauty to the world will be the greatest gift we can bring humanity.

While the media focus on President Donald Trump’s remarks on the COVID relief bill, almost no media even mention that he also posted a 14-minute address on the significance of the vote fraud last night, never mind the content of what he said.“My fellow Americans. Today I want to explain to you why I am so determined to pursue every legal and constitutional option available to stop the theft of the presidential election. As President, one of my most solemn duties is to protect your sacred right to vote,” he began. He called the fraud the worst in the history of the country, and told Americans he would present them the facts they need to know to understand how the landslide vote he had received was turned into a Biden victory through unprecedented fraud. He reviewed the patterns that demonstrate that it is “historically, mathematically, politically and logically impossible” that Biden won the election. He summarized the four types of fraud employed to rig the election: officials in key swing states brazenly violating state laws in order to change election procedures and eliminate safeguards, without consulting state legislatures; the record numbers of absentee ballots recorded in key swing states with historically low rejection rates of those ballots (he cited Georgia’s rejection of 6.4% mail-in ballots in 2016 compared to a rejection of “a tiny percent of 1%” this year), and the elimination of voter verification criteria; the sworn affidavits from hundreds and hundreds of poll watchers testifying to seeing ballot stuffing or back-dating, pristine mail-in ballots with no folds, etc.; and use of Dominion voting machines all over the country, but no satisfactory answer given of how those machines allowed 6,000 votes to be switched from Trump to Biden in one Michigan county. Arizona state senators have subpoenaed those machines for a forensic examination; he called on other state legislators to do the same. We caught them by surprise in 2016, and from that moment, they had four years to work out how to rig the election, President Trump stated. The rigging of the 2020 election was only the final step by the Democrats, media and Big Tech “to overthrow the will of the American people and to destroy our movement, by any means possible, any means necessary.” If this egregious fraud is not fully investigated and addressed, 2020 will forever be regarded as illegitimate and the most corrupt election in the history of the country. The fate of our democracy depends upon this fight. Now is the time for the American people to raise their voice and demand this injustice be immediately corrected. (President Trump’s full address is posted on his Facebook page.)

Developments in the United Kingdom over the last 48-72 hours indicate how, in a systemic breakdown crisis, worsening of any one aspect of the crisis triggers a further breakdown everywhere else. The out-of-control new strain of the virus in England caused Europe-wide measures to cut all travel with the U.K.; which led to huge lines of thousands of trucks unable to leave England for continental Europe; which caused panic buying and shortages in stores in the U.K.; and all of this nine days before the Brexit break between the U.K. and Europe is scheduled to go into effect.There is clearly much that is not known about the new virus strain in the U.K., but government officials have already reported some alarming facts The Guardian reported today that the British government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, said the new variant was first seen in mid-September in London and Kent. By December, it had become the “dominant variant” in London; and by the week ending Dec. 9, it had accounted for 62% of cases in London, 59% of those in eastern England, and 43% in the southeast, Vallance reported. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Dec. 20 warned, “It is going to be very difficult to keep it [the new strain] under control until we have the vaccine rolled out. We know with this new variant you can catch it more easily from a small amount of the virus being present.” Most European countries shut down all travel from the U.K. over the last 48-72 hours. One result, the Guardian reported: “Britain said 632 trucks were stacked up on the M20 motorway in Kent, southern England, and 2,188 at nearby Manston Airport, now being used as a giant lorry park. The government said additional toilets and food vendors were being arranged, after the Road Haulage Association raised concerns about drivers’ welfare.... ‘The plan was to stock up [on milk products] in the next 10 days so [that] if there is a Brexit problem there are stocks for January,’ said Alexander Anton, the secretary general of the European Dairy Association. ‘Now you can’t find a transport company to send a driver to the U.K.’ ” One of the results was that there was some panic-buying in British stores: “shoppers stripped shelves in some supermarkets of turkey, toilet rolls, bread and vegetables,” according to one press account. After a direct appeal from Boris Johnson, French authorities agreed to reopen France’s borders to passengers from England on Dec. 23, so long as they could show a negative COVID test that is less than 72 hours old The European Union also recommended that members loosen the border controls, to allow at least some freight through, and allow Europeans stranded in the U.K., to return home for Christmas.

In opening the Vaccination Kick-Off at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke of the “great pride” and “gratitude” which he and other Americans have for the role played by the NIH in developing the COVID-19 vaccines “which will save thousands and thousands of lives and help bring this dark chapter to an end.” NIH’s contribution was not limited to its participation in developing specific COVID-19 vaccines under Operation Warp Speed, but included many prior years of work dedicated to developing mRNA vaccine technology when many thought it was “a longshot,” he reported.Azar then drew the broader point which is at the heart of the American System of Economics: “Once we have defeated this pandemic, I believe that both the success of Operation Warp Speed and the mRNA platform technology pioneered by NIH and BARDA [Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] should reinvigorate our optimism about the frontiers of medical science and how we can bring the public and private sectors together to tackle our toughest challenges. “When I look back on my time at HHS, putting together Operation Warp Speed will be one of my proudest memories, not only because OWS vaccines will save lives, but because they have reminded Americans to think big. When the government and industry charge together toward a really bold goal, we can achieve unbelievable things.”

Nations which are democratic republics rise to meet great challenges by the mobilization of their citizens in a crisis, each as a creative individual, moved by the patriotic desire to act for the general welfare of the nation and all its citizens. Their exemplary model for 230 years has been the United States of America. Whatever great goals leaders can set—as U.S. President John F. Kennedy did, for example, during his brief Presidency—the citizens of a great republic can achieve.The COVID-19 pandemic has become a very serious crisis, especially in a year of troubles in which it has helped to trigger famine in some large areas of the world, mass unemployment all over the world, and been used completely to distort an election crucial to the United States and all those countries affected by its policies. Just during Dec. 21, the first day of this winter, nearly 800,000 people were confirmed infected with this coronavirus and nearly 14,000 died; and nearly two-thirds of both the cases and the deaths were in the republics of North and South America. True, about 30,000 people every day are dying from famine—starvation—in the African Sahel nations and Southwest Asia. But not only is COVID catching up to that toll; it is triggering it by provoking border closures and shutdowns of transportation and processing of food. In a normal year, about 75 million people die from all causes around the world—COVID and famine alone look to claim 20-25 million in 2021. President Donald Trump’s friend David Beasley, director of the World Food Program, says it could be many more than that. And unemployment? About 500 million people around the world, who were working informal types of jobs, have lost all work during 2020. Where are the U.S. and European economies heading? Downward. And yet, the citizens of the greatest democratic republics of North and South America and Europe are not mobilizing in this crisis to stop the pandemic—let alone, to restart their economies, break up their giant speculative banks and companies, rally support for their scientists and their space programs. The United States is not stopping its COVID epidemic the way Vietnam did many months ago! Germany is not matching Thailand in beating COVID, let alone South Korea or China. Britain and France can’t hold a candle to Belarus, not to mention the Czech Republic. Hospitals in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, even Brazil are beyond full while those of Japan, Australia, New Zealand have plenty of beds. Where is the fighting spirit of citizens of the great democratic republics of the world, including the United States? Where is the national unity celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, just 18 months ago? The “floodwaters don’t discriminate” mobilization spirit of the “Cajun Navy” to save the general welfare in hurricane floods just a few years ago? The upsurge of citizens against the Wall Street bailout in 2008? The people of most Asian and some Eastern European countries are not fearing or bickering with each other over COVID—they’ve put it behind them. Basic, long-known measures of public health practice for highly communicable diseases have worked for them—because they were willing to say, “I’ll do this for everybody else, I’ll do it for the country.” We have large areas of the world to recover economically, including building ourselves modern economic infrastructure and much better public health systems and workforces domestically and in developing countries. Lyndon LaRouche’s movement has said since 2014: Break the Wall Street and London banks up; replace their speculations with a national credit institution. Build high-technology new infrastructure. Launch the human missions to the Moon and Mars, and a crash program for fusion energy and new industrial technologies using lasers and plasmas. LaRouche promised to give you a job rebuilding the world. We have to save people—all people—to do it.

If you believe the popular gossip that you have to choose between bringing the economy to a halt to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, or “reopening” the economy and letting the disease rip, you’re being snookered—once again—by the British financial crowd that brought you both catastrophes in the first place: the City of London and their Wall Street sidekicks.As Lyndon LaRouche warned four decades ago, and the LaRouche organization restated explicitly as early as February 2020, the then-emerging pandemic was caused by 50 years of catastrophic British economic policies which had brought the world’s Potential Relative Population Density well below the actual population on the planet. The solution to both crises does not lie in some trade-off between the two, but in a single global solution to both, revolving around the application of LaRouche’s famous Four Laws. This was elaborated by EIR in its May 2020 “The LaRouche Plan To Reopen the U.S. Economy: The World Needs 1.5 Billion New, Productive Jobs.” Consider a recent indication of the problem. As China was announcing that it had fully eliminated absolute poverty in the country, and that they had created 11 million new urban jobs in the period January-November of 2020 (meeting their annual target a month early), a new study of poverty in the U.S. reported that the poverty rate rose sharply in the five months from June to November, from 9.3% to 11.7%, with 7.8 million more Americans falling below the poverty line. According to the study released Dec. 16, of the 7.8 million new poor, about 2.3 million are children under 17. Continuing widespread unemployment, combined with the end of government support in late July, were cited as the two key causes of the problem. The average unemployment payment was over $900 per week from March to the end of July, and after that it dropped by two-thirds, down to an average $300 per week. The federal poverty line is $26,200 for a family of four. James X. Sullivan, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, who co-authored the study with Bruce D. Meyer, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, stated: “We’ve seen a continual rise in poverty every month since June.” Predictably, things are worse for Blacks (up 3.1 percentage points, or 1.4 million people since June) and for Americans with high school degrees or less (up 5.1 percentage points, or 5.2 million people). These are the people who tend to work in low-wage restaurant, travel and retail positions. The GAO recently reported that many states now pay gig workers and self-employed workers unemployment aid that is below the poverty level. Back to China: President Xi Jinping stated that innovation is the “primary driving force” of the economy. And Xinhua, in reporting on the November data, stated: “China needs scientific and technological solutions, more than ever, to boost economic and social development. In the first 11 months, the output of high-tech manufacturing sectors increased 6.4 percent, markedly outpacing the overall growth in industrial output.”