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Helga Zepp-LaRouche delivered a thoroughly composed analysis of how the world has changed since August 15, 2021, when the Taliban marched into Kabul, and the U.S. and NATO left. “A whole system is coming to an end. The policy has failed.” All the lives lost, the chaos in the country, and the money spent—and stolen—served the interests of a greedy elite, but benefited no one else. She reported on the prescience demonstrated by participants at the Schiller Institute conference on July 31, and then the solutions presented in the follow-up conference on August 21. The solution begins with a rejection of neoliberalism and imperial geopolitics. Biden’s rejection of the demand by Boris Johnson and the Europeans that the U.S. remain in Afghanistan longer has provoked hysteria among the war hawks responsible for the catastrophe, typified by Tony Blair. It is now up to the Americans and the Europeans to join with Afghanistan’s neighbors to forge a durable peace, based on economic development. This means the West must junk the delusion that the “Rules-Based Order” must be accepted by all nations.

Why did we get into a 20 years’ war in Afghanistan? The British Prime Minister told us the United States had to. Tony Blair came to Chicago two years before that war started, and said the United States has to “protect” people from undemocratic governments London doesn’t like, by taking those governments out. The term “regime change” was born.Clinton agreed? Did anybody say no? Lyndon LaRouche did. He called it restoring the British Empire with U.S. forces. Nine months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. LaRouche warned a major terror attack was coming in the United States to push the country into “emergency government,” and into war. That was Jan. 3, 2001. But the 9/11 attacks were launched from Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden. Didn’t everybody agree on that? LaRouche knew better. He said on radio, as those attacks were ongoing, that some other force, not Osama bin Laden, “let down the American security screen” and punctured it to make those attacks possible. Again—to push the country into “emergency government” and set it up for endless war. Does anybody agree with that? All the families of the victims of 9/11 gradually got the evidence that a foreign government—the Saudi Kingdom—helped take down that security screen for the hijackers. The 20 years’ commemoration of 9/11 is coming up, and those families wrote to President Biden: “Don’t show up! unless you declassify the FBI report on these Saudi operations first.” He may do it. And LaRouche said the Saudis would not have done that without a wink from the British. So what did we do in Afghanistan? Pushed out the Taliban government the U.K. wanted gone. Blair again. He told his Parliament it was “for the protection of our [British] people and our way of life, including confidence in our economy”; and he told “W” Bush it would be just “a short-lived exercise.” The “Blair Doctrine,” the regime-change war policy, is the failure here. And he was found by a Commission of Inquiry to have faked WMD intelligence about Iraq. But the U.K.’s top military institute is still inviting Blair to speak on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. So Biden pulled American forces out. For doing that, the former British commander in Afghanistan, a Lt. Col. Richard Kemp (ret.), demanded that the American President be, not just impeached—court-martialed as a traitor. You can read what he and Blair and other hysterical British officials said, below. Biden a traitor to what? To “Global Britain,” they said. Watch out for Tuesday’s G7 meeting, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is chairing it. The British say: They will push the United States to stay and expand in Afghanistan. And they want Biden out.What’s wrong with them? This “Global Britain, and London world financial center, all depends on American muscle being directed by British brains. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche says, without U.S. muscle, "Global Britain" is just a pea-brain. Then the United States should get out? More than that. This is the chance to throw the table over and reconstruct instead of bombing, and instead of sending U.S. troops there to confrontations with China and Russia. Let engineers go in and build in that whole region, invest in developing it. Every country in that region agrees that Afghanistan, now, is where the United States and the other great powers could finally start to cooperate in new infrastructure projects and exports of capital goods and machinery. By flipping the war script that way, maybe the United States could get finally get some justice, for what the British banks did to poor Richard Nixon and the U.S. dollar 50 years ago, on Aug. 15, 1971.

What really happened on 9/11? Why did the U.S. go to war in Afghanistan, and remain for 20 years? Why in Iraq, in Libya? Who is the Patriot Act supposed to protect? Is it not important to note that the same networks in the U.S. responsible for these wars and violations of American liberties are the ones who have benefited most from these failed policies? And are the ones most hysterical about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan? NOW is the time to answer these questions, so Americans will never again die, and kill, to preserve the British Empire, the City of London, and the U.S. Military Industrial Complex. harleysch@gmail.com

British Retired Officer Wants To Court-Martial Biden for Afghanistan Decision In the aftermath of the collapse of the idea of “Global Britain,” it’s not surprising that there would be Brits joining the calls in Washington for Biden’s removal from office. Lt. Col. Richard Kemp (ret.), CBE, who once commanded British troops in Afghanistan, said in a Sunday TV interview that Biden should be court-martialed for “betraying the United States of America and the United States’ armed forces.” Kemp apparently doesn’t understand that under the American constitutional system, there is no military authority that can court-martial the President. Or perhaps he does and is actually calling for a military coup in the United States. “I don’t say this lightly and I’ve never said it about anybody else—any other leader in this position. People have been talking about impeaching President Biden,” Kemp told Fox News host Mark Levin. “I don’t believe President Biden should be impeached. He’s the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces who’s just essentially surrendered to the Taliban: He shouldn’t be impeached. He should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States armed forces.” Kemp predicted China, which along with Russia “has all but recognized the Taliban” as the new government of Afghanistan, will join with neighboring Pakistan and Iran to further “enrich themselves by plundering” the war-torn country. China is also poised to use Afghanistan’s wealth of minerals and natural resources as a way to “hit against the West,” Kemp claimed. “So the whole world just became vastly more dangerous. The U.S. government—President Biden humiliated the United States. He humiliated the United States Army,” Kemp argued. “I think the consequences of what’s just happened and what’s still happening are absolutely devastating for the whole of the Western world.” Observer Commentator: Biden Has Left Global Britain ‘Impotent and Friendless’ Andrew Rawnsley, Chief Political Commentator of the Observer, writes in a commentary posted yesterday that Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” has been exposed as “impotent and friendless” by Biden’s decision-making on Afghanistan. The Anglo-American special relationship was declared to be “warm and friendly” after Biden took office and made his first phone call to Boris Johnson, but “Now we know differently,” Rawnsley laments. “When it came to the calls that mattered over Afghanistan, Mr Johnson’s capacity to influence Mr Biden was less than that of the president’s dog,” he continues. “The withdrawal of what remained of the NATO presence in Afghanistan was dictated by abrupt and unilateral decisions made in Washington. Ministers privately admit that not only did they fail to see a resurgent Taliban coming, they have been reduced to second-guessing what the United States will do next.” The reaction of Conservatives in the House of Commons was intense. “Where is Global Britain on the streets of Kabul?” Theresa May angrily demanded of Johnson in Parliament last week. “I have never heard so much fury so ferociously expressed by Conservative MPs about the behaviour of the U.S. Behind their hot anger was a cold fear: the foreboding sense of an impotent Britain friendless in a frightening world,” Rawnsley writes. The future of “Global Britain” seems to be left hanging. “If we are entering an era of American disengagement, the questions are acute for a Britain that chose to estrange itself from the liberal democracies in its neighborhood at the same time as the U.S. was becoming a less dependable partner,” Rawnsley writes near the end. “Some plausibly conjecture that the future is a new world disorder in which the great powers jostle for predominance and norms of international conduct are trampled underfoot. This will be a rough place for a country in the north-east Atlantic with lots of vital interests around the globe, but not the means to safeguard them by itself and no one it can count on as an all-weather friend….” “‘Very well, alone’ did good service for Winston Churchill as a wartime rallying cry in 1940. British impotence in Afghanistan demonstrates that it is an utterly hopeless strategy for survival in the 21st century,” he concludes.

The Schiller Institute hosted an international webcast on Saturday, August 21, “Now, More Urgent Than Ever: Afghanistan—Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind,” bringing together speakers with wide experience, from six nations—United States, Germany, Pakistan, Canada, and Italy. Three main themes were struck repeatedly in the dialogue: Toss out the “endless wars” paradigm completely, talk to the new Afghan government-in-the-making, and get economic projects going.“Push for quick economic development,” was the advice by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her opening remarks. Saying that what’s happened in Afghanistan marks “the end of a system,” maybe not as big as the Fall of the Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, but as portentous. There has been a deep-seated problem of conducting never-ending wars, and geopolitical games. This must stop, and it goes beyond Afghanistan as such. She stressed also that, “It is high time to change the axiomatic assumptions about Russia and China.” Besides Zepp-LaRouche on the panel, there were Lt. Col. Ulrich Scholz (ret.) (Germany), a military and philosophy expert; Pino Arlacchi (Italy), former head of the UN Office for Drug Control (1997-2002), now professor at Sassari University; Hassan Daud (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment; Ray McGovern (U.S.) former CIA analyst and co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and Nipa Banerjee (Canada), Professor at the University of Ottawa. A question was taken up from Khalid Latif, director of the Center of Pakistan and International Relations (COPAIR). The co-moderators of today’s event, Dennis Speed and Diane Sare, pointed out that today’s discussion is a continuation of the dialogue of the July 31 Schiller Institute event, “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History After the Failed Regime-Change Era,” and several of the same individuals are involved. Sare noted the importance of the Schiller Institute in restoring the dialogue process, saying that, “people are losing the ability to have a dialogue” these days. Instead, we have ideological hysteria, as seen right now, with the fixation on accusations and blame over the logistics of the Kabul evacuation process, with no vision for the people and the future. Within two weeks of the Schiller Institute’s July 31 event, presenting a development overview for Afghanistan and the region, the 20-year U.S./NATO military action came to an end. The Taliban took over Kabul. Today there were meetings in Kabul among Taliban political director Abdul Ghani Baradar, former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation head Abdullah Abdullah, and others toward an eventual formation of a government, to be announced some time shortly after Aug. 31, when the evacuation period concludes. What we don’t need now, said Arlacchi, is “Talibanology”—speculating on their intentions and hypotheticals. Many others agreed, making the point that the intentions to be focused upon, are those of the major powers: What do the U.S. and the European Union intend to do? Will they, for example, work together with other major powers of Russia, China, and India as well as immediate neighbors of Afghanistan—Iran and Pakistan, and the Central Asian nations to the north, on humanitarian aid and economic initiatives? One in three of the 39 million people in Afghanistan are food insecure. There are dozens of thousands of internally displaced people, and thousands fleeing the nation. All this, with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing. Arlacchi reported his own past experience on a wool factory project in Kandahar Province, involving successful negotiations with the Taliban governor. In the July 31 dialogue, Arlacchi reported on the success in nearly eradicating all opium poppy cultivation over the period 1998 to 2000, through his UN program, in conjunction with the Taliban. Opium production then roared back after the U.S./NATO 2001 invasion. Arlacchi said emphatically today, “We should start to make plans on narcotics elimination” right now. On the question of accountability of the Taliban new government and projects, Ray McGovern raised the point that you can and should have a truthful monitoring process, which could come, for example from the United Nations. He raised the specific example of how the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, set up by Congress some years back, actually kept truthful accounts on what the U.S. and NATO were doing in Afghanistan, which documented that U.S. officials were lying about progress there all along. Prof. Banerjee strongly agreed on this point. These Inspector General documents were published in 2019 by the Washington Post, described by McGovern as “the one useful thing done by the Washington Post in the last 20 years.” Principal author Craig Whitlock, has just released his new book, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. The features of economic development for the region were summarized today by Daud, whose Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Pakistan borders Afghanistan, which has “national endowments, minerals, water, hard-working people.” He stressed that, “when the Afghanistan government is strong and stable, it can reach out to China,” and work with the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in which it already has observer status. It can become “a crossroads of the region.” In the past, this very region was referred to as a “land of a thousand cities,” Zepp-LaRouche stated in concluding the discussion. The idea of the New Silk Road, is again to create conditions for hundreds and thousands of new cities—science centers, and beautiful, modern new cities. The old paradigm is crashing down, not just in Afghanistan. War can no longer be a means of solving problems.

Crush the Green New Deal!

The unhinged explosion recorded in the Sunday Times of London by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair against U.S. President Joe Biden, over American forces’ withdrawal from 20 years’ war in Afghanistan, has underlined just what an opportunity Afghanistan represents, to replace poisonous British geopolitics with economic development and peace. Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche emphasizes that we owe this to humanity, which needs the development cooperation of major powers which could be launched in and around Afghanistan. That country stands in economic relation to its region and to South Asia, as America’s Deep South did to the United States as a whole before Franklin Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority transformed it.But Blair’s outburst reminds us, we owe it as well to America’s history of struggle against the British Empire and its centuries of exploitation of nations as its colonies and Commonwealth “partners.” Tony Blair began America’s era of endless “regime change” wars with his 1999 speech to the Chicago Council of World Affairs. He declared the Treaty of Westphalia principle dead, and demanded a new era of NATO war against developing nations for the “right to protect” (as in the “protection” the mafia once offered on the streets of Chicago and many other cities). Blair’s foreign intelligence service MI6 hoked up the dodgy dossiers of phony “intelligence” which launched George W. Bush’s Iraq War, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had “stiffened the spine” of Bush’s father for his Desert Storm. London needs American NATO muscle to run the world financially from London, frequent economic crashes and all. Geopolitics, the doctrine that one country’s or alliances interests are always pursued by screwing others, is British doctrine. And so Blair bellowed to the Times about America’s “imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars,’” which he feared would relegate “Global Britain” to “the second division.” His tuneless shrieking was accompanied by a chorus of other British notables, named and unnamed by the newspaper. We have just passed the 50th anniversary of Aug. 15, 1971, when the U.K. government, the Bank of England and the City of London banks forced a fatal decision by Richard Nixon which shaped all of economic and human history for the worse since then. That was the ending of the dollar’s link to its gold reserve basis. It was the replacement of Franklin Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods monetary system with floating-exchange-rate system which set off a half-century of more and more unhindered pure speculation, more and more frequent financial crashes of debt bubbles fostered by central banks. Working people around the world earn 12% less of economic output as a result; but London has re-emerged as the world’s financial center. The end of Bretton Woods produced “Britain’s Second Empire” as proven in the documentary of that name. On that 50th anniversary we celebrated the contributions of the late statesman Lyndon LaRouche with an international conference. He was the only economist in the world who both forecast, in the 1960s, the British-engineered breakup of Bretton Woods, and stood against it when it happened, forecasting eventual economic depression collapse and pandemics as its result. But we also intend to reverse it, bringing about the launch of a New Bretton Woods credit system geared to capital goods exports from the major technological powers to the underdeveloped nations, for the great projects of economic development which are the precondition for peace. Afghanistan’s Ambassador to China Javid Ahmad Qaem told Global Times July 16 “The only place where they could really cooperate, and at least there could be a starting point to cooperate between these rivals, if I can call them that, is Afghanistan,”—referring to China, the United States and India, but could have included Russia. If this opportunity for development and peace is taken, that New Bretton Woods credit system is in sight.

The individual who is among the most culpable for ongoing geopolitical confrontations which could lead to nuclear war, the Queen's Privy Council member Tony Blair, blasted Joe Biden for his "obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars'." Blair was not criticizing the way the U.S. left, but ending the war, saying that leaving Afghanistan shows the West has "lost its political will." Clearly, this apologist for endless imperial wars has not lost his commitment to unleash genocidal catastrophes. Not surprisingly, Dick Cheney's war hawk daughter Liz agrees with Blair, telling NBC News that proof the U.S. should not have withdrawn is that British parliamentarians and NATO officials are furious about the U.S. withdrawal! Keep in mind that when Blair talks about commitment, the British have been playing the Great Game in Afghanistan on-and-off since the 1830s -- with consistently disastrous results.

The British press is in a complete state of hysteria, as evidenced by the headlines reported in the BBC’s own blog. “Blair Attacks Biden’s ‘Imbecilic’ Retreat as Kabul Chaos Ceepens,” blares the Sunday Times. The Telegraph notes Blair’s attack on Biden, adding the subhead: “America shuts Kabul airport as Raab forced to turn to China and Russia for help in Afghanistan.” And on and on.Blair, a member of the Queen’s Privy Council, rounded on Biden (as the Sunday Times puts it). “We didn’t need to do it,” he wrote yesterday. “We chose to do it. We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’.” Biden used the term when he announced the withdrawal. Blair said: “For Britain, out of Europe and suffering the end of the Afghanistan mission by our greatest ally with little or no consultation … we are at risk of relegation to the second division of global powers.” The Sunday Times reports that “Ministers have warned that Britain will have to tear up its foreign policy after the debacle in Afghanistan, amid flaring tempers about America’s decision to cut and run.” The paper cites an unnamed minister who denounced American “isolationism” and said that the government would have to “revisit” the recent review on defense and foreign policy because the United States was no longer a reliable ally. “America has just signaled to the world that they are not that keen on playing a global role,” the minister said. “The implications of that are absolutely huge. We need to get the integrated [policy] review out and reread it. We are going to have to do a hard-nosed revisit on all our assumptions and policies.” Then the imperial “old sow” was let loose: “The U.S. had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the First World War. They turned up late for the Second World War and now they are cutting and running in Afghanistan,” was this minister’s conclusion. The tensions have reportedly extended to the troops on the ground in Kabul. Military sources have also told MPs that as tensions rose last week, there were clashes with the U.S. on the ground and “heated words” between British and U.S. commanders at Kabul airport, including one “stand-up” row.

China’s international news agency, China Global Television Network (CGTN), produced a six minute video of excerpts from the keynote speech by Helga Zepp-LaRouche at the July 31 Schiller Institute Conference, “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History After the Failed Regime-Change Era.” The CGTN video is titled: “Afghanistan: The Bright Future for the Coming Cooperation of the Great Powers.” It is certain that leading circles within the U.S., including within the Biden Administration, are watching closely as prominent figures from Russia and China speak at Schiller Institute conferences, and present LaRouche’s ideas in their media and institutional websites.They are watching, and some are listening and learning. Others are chewing the rug, and working with the U.K. to prevent what they see as the greatest danger to their Empire—the United States coming together with Russia and China to address the world’s existential crisis in all its facets—the danger of nuclear war; the pandemic; famine in multiple locations; the cultural decay across the Western world; and the financial bubble threatening to either explode or break out in an even more destructive hyperinflation. The ending of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, then, is not a disaster, as portrayed in the Western press. It is an opportunity for a great change in the course of human history. Mrs. LaRouche says in the video: “It should be obvious, even to the most incurable warmongers on the planet, that in Afghanistan, no military solution can succeed. In that sense, there must be a recognition that all such endless wars, like in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and so forth, belong to a paradigm of geopolitical thinking that has utterly failed. That means that the geopolitics of the British Empire, of the ‘Great Game,’ of the Arc of Crisis of Bernard Lewis and Zbigniew Brzezinski—must be outlawed forever. And there should be an agreement among all neighbors of Afghanistan that geopolitical manipulation must be ended and replaced by the application of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.” Zepp-LaRouche also points to the fact that even Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who generally sounds as mad as Mike Pompeo on all things Chinese, “during his recent trip to India stated that the U.S. government sees a positive role for China in the economic development of Afghanistan.” She pointed to the statement by the Afghan Ambassador to China, “who recently said that Afghanistan is the one place where the United States and China can actually cooperate, since they have common interests such as the suppression of terrorism and the elimination of opium production.” Zepp-LaRouche concludes: “In this sense, Afghanistan is at a crossroad. Not only for Eurasian integration, but also at a crossroad for universal history where we all can leave the age of immature adolescence behind us, and enter an era of adulthood, in which we concentrate on the common aims of mankind.” Recall that Biden held a high profile summit with President Putin, and spoke for hours on the phone with President Xi Jinping. Recall also the Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman held extensive discussion with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the Deputy Minister responsible for U.S.-China Relations, then chaired a major summit with top military and diplomatic leaders from Russia and the U.S. Afghanistan was a leading item on the agenda at both meetings.These leaders are abundantly aware that the ideas expressed by Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche, and the wealth of ideas in the voluminous writings of Lyndon LaRouche which have been translated into Chinese and Russian, are ideas taken extremely seriously in Moscow and Beijing, as they are increasingly around the world. What direction will the U.S. take at this turning point in human history? The American people are finally beginning to throw off their delusions, their smug confidence that life as usual will go on no matter what they do. As their economy unravels under the Malthusian “Green New Deal”; as the reckless printing of trillions of dollars to bail out the bankrupt financial system without any real economic growth begins to drive inflation to the point of explosion; as their children are being offered legalized drugs and encouraged to change their sex; and as they contemplate the very real threat of nuclear war from the anti-Russian and anti-Chinese hysterics in both political parties—a real resistance is mounting, and is increasingly turning to LaRouche. Afghanistan is at peace—for now. The Taliban today, unlike the Taliban of the 1990s, is working in close cooperation with Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and others in the region. Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, in addition to pledging no retaliation and for women to continue working and studying in schools, also told CGTN that “the people of Afghanistan need help of other countries. They should come forward and help in the health sector and also infrastructure and education. They can come to explore our natural resources. This is a general invitation to all countries, and we appreciate any country that they help us at this crucial time of our history.” Will the U.S. and Europe accept this offer, to work with China’s Belt and Road to build the country they have destroyed, the country President Ashraf Ghani admitted suffered from a 90% poverty rate? Will this approach serve as a model for rebuilding Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen? Join the Schiller institute on Saturday, Aug. 21 at noon EDT for a follow-up conference to the July 31 event, under the title: “Now More Urgent than Ever: Afghanistan Is an Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind,” at this link.

With the US under total British Occupation how would anyone honestly think about implementing the New Bretton Woods System today. The stunning clarity of Franklin Roosevelt and his team leaves the actual method by which it can and must be done! It really is truly stunning! Listen in to this week's Fireside Chat featuring Gerry Rose from Executive Intelligence Review.

The Schiller Institute will hold a dialogue among leading officials on August 21, at Noon EDT, on "What Just Happened in Afghanistan?"

As many of us sit stunned by the condition of our country and the world, we must be at least asking ourselves how it got so bad. How have we allowed such a drastic plunge both culturally and economically? What's the driving force of destruction? As we search, we will undoubtedly confront the hypothesis of evil, or at least apathy. This week's Midwest Meeting featured Denise Ham and Carl Osgood. They looked at Dante Alighieri and his commitment to lift the people of Italy out of the cultural depravity surrounding them through the development of a unified language and the concept of a modern nation-state dedicated to the general welfare, such as the US once was. Tune in for a journey through Dante's Commedia, traveling from Hell to Heaven, to help grasp what will be necessary of us all in a moment such as ours - one equally gripped by both hope and despair.

Afghanistan can become stable, and its enormous potential for growth can be leveraged to the benefit of Afghans and the world at large, through helping to shape a new paradigm on this planet.But even after two decades of U.S.-led warfare, attempts to destabilize the nation and region continue. The U.S. government has frozen the nearly $9.5 billion in assets of the Afghan central bank and halted shipments of cash to the nation. The International Monetary Fund has suspended Afghanistan’s access to IMF resources, including $440 million worth of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) reserves. A cash shortage is developing in Afghanistan, where it is used for most purchases. Germany has announced a halt to all financial aid to the country, which will affect ongoing infrastructure projects. FaceBook-owned WhatsApp has shut down a Taliban help hotline, as well as other Taliban-linked channels, in a decision attacked by aid workers as “absurd.” Are these decisions temporary, due to uncertainty of who runs the country? Or are they being used to foster ongoing chaos in a nation already suffering decades of warfare, a nation lying at a strategic crossroads — bordering or closely concerning Iran, China, Pakistan, Russia, and three of the Central Asian republics? As has been the case for over a century, the British game of geopolitics seeks to ensure that there is no world rival to their dominance, exerted today through the “special relationship” with the United States. A new “Northern Alliance” has announced its emergence in Afghanistan, seeking Western military support. What will it receive? The Belt and Road Initiative, which is overturning the world’s economic and strategic chessboard through a paradigm of infrastructure development and productivity growth, achieving, at China’s initiative, a policy that parallels the World Land-Bridge concept developed by Lyndon LaRouche, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and their collaborators. Into this dynamic Afghanistan can be integrated, with results that would be stunning in terms of how rapidly they could transform the region, which can hardly be said to have benefited significantly from the over $1 trillion spent on military adventures there. The antidote to chaos — in addition to identifying its origin — is growth! This Saturday, the Schiller Institute, founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, will convene an urgent international seminar to pursue the solution of peace through development. The seminar will continue the prescient discussion held by the Schiller Institute on July 31, with many of the same panelists, as well as new ones. Zepp-LaRouche explained on Wednesday: “I do not agree with the hysteria of the Western media that this is the end of the world. … I think it is, on the contrary, the real chance to integrate Afghanistan into a regional economic development perspective, which is basically defined by the Belt and Road Initiative of China. There is a very clear agreement of Russia and China to cooperate in dealing with this situation. The interest of the Central Asian republics is to make sure there is stability and economic development; and there is the possibility to extend the CPEC, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, into Afghanistan, into Central Asia. So, I think it’s a real opportunity, but it does require a complete change in approach.” Expressing her view of the proper role of the United States, Zepp-LaRouche said, “John Quincy Adams said that the United States should have alliances of perfectly sovereign republics, and this is now the moment to really do that. The idea is to not oppose China linking Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative, but rather see it as an opportunity to cooperate, and stop this geopolitical confrontation which can only lead to catastrophe. … That’s the kind of discussion which we have to catalyze.” The event will be this Saturday at noon EDT (6pm CEST), available at schillerinstitute.com

LaRouche independent candidate for US Senate from New York Diane Sare confronts Chuck "killer" Schumer with his crimes. August 18, 2021.

Two weeks before the fall of Kabul, the Schiller Institute presented a dialogue on how the U.S./NATO failure in Afghanistan can be turned into the basis for a New Paradigm of peace and development for the world. Events since then have shown how prescient the speakers were, especially in emphasizing that there is no military solution to end the "endless" wars. While the war hawks yearn for more war and unresolvable conflicts -- and the booty they can steal for their corporate war machine -- it's time for them to shut up, and get out of the way. This Saturday, August 21, the Schiller Institute will sponsor a follow-up event, on how to replace the era of failed regime change wars, with one of mutually beneficial cooperation. You can watch the event here.

With nearly all policymakers and strategic analysts in the trans-Atlantic sector of the world in a clueless state of utter chaos and hysteria over the developments in Afghanistan, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today convoked an urgent international seminar for this coming Saturday, August 21 to pursue the only available solution to the crisis: peace through development. The seminar will continue the prescient discussion held by the Schiller Institute on July 31, with many of the same panelists, as well as new ones.Zepp-LaRouche drew a crystal clear picture in her weekly strategic webcast yesterday: “First of all, I do not agree with the hysteria of the Western media that this is the end of the world. The first thing that must be stated, is that it ends 40 years of war for the Afghani people, and if people have any sense of what it means to live in such a long war, all the suffering of the civilians, all the terrible things people had to endure, in terms of drone attacks, in terms of anxiety, I think, first of all, it’s very good that the war has ended. “I think it is, on the contrary, the real chance to integrate Afghanistan into a regional economic development perspective, which is basically defined by the Belt and Road Initiative of China. There is a very clear agreement of Russia and China to cooperate in dealing with this situation. The interest of the Central Asian republics is to make sure there is stability and economic development; and there is the possibility to extend the CPEC, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, into Afghanistan, into Central Asia. So I think it’s a real opportunity, but it does require a complete change in approach.” Zepp-LaRouche continued: “This is an epochal change…. I think that if the European nations and the United States would understand that this is a unique chance, if they cooperate, rather than fight Russia and China and their influence in the region, and if they join hands in the economic development there … then this can become a very positive turning point, not only for Afghanistan, but also for the whole world.” Zepp-LaRouche made a special appeal to the United States in remarks earlier in the day on Aug. 17: “The United States must go back to the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers and the initial period—such as John Quincy Adams—that the aim of the United States is not to chase foreign monsters, but to build alliances. John Quincy Adams said that the United States should have alliances of perfectly sovereign republics, and this is now the moment to really do that. The idea is to not oppose China linking Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative, but rather see it as an opportunity to cooperate, and stop this geopolitical confrontation which can only lead to catastrophe.” She concluded: “That’s the kind of discussion which we have to catalyze.” The video archive of the July 31, 2021 Schiller Institute conference on “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History after the Failed Regime-Change Era” can be found here: The speakers included: Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder and President of The Schiller Institute; Pino Arlacchi (Italy), Sociology Professor at the Sassari University, former Executive Director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and former European Parliament Rapporteur on Afghanistan; H.E. Ambassador Hassan Shoroosh (Afghanistan), Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Canada; H.E. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva (Russian Federation), Deputy Permanent Representative at the Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN; Dr. Wang Jin (China), Fellow with The Charhar Institute; Ray McGovern (U.S.), Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (ret.), Co-Founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Hassan Daud (Pakistan), CEO, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province Board of Investment; and Hussein Askary (Sweden/Iraq), Southwest Asia Coordinator for the Schiller Institute.

As the usual lying media, intelligence and military officials, and politicians debate "Who Lost Afghanistan?", the people of the U.S. and the E.U. must demand full accountability for those responsible for the Afghan debacle. This begins with a commitment to end the idea of imposing a unilateral Rules-Based Order backed by U.S. and NATO military force. We must never again demand that nations surrender their sovereignty to that order. And it should include a commitment to aid the government that is constituted there in a process of economic development, with full cooperation among Afghanistan's neighbors, along with Russia, China and the U.S. It is not adequate for American officials to admit "We didn't have the foggiest idea" of what we were doing there -- we must overcome the damage by doing what should have been done years ago, recognizing that peace comes from development, not war.

Aug. 17 — In an article for Affari Italiani, Italian economist and China expert Michele Geraci blasted the Western failure on Afghanistan and explained that China will now adopt a peace-through-development approach. All the so-called Western values have evaporated overnight in Afghanistan, Geraci wrote. And this goes not only for the U.S., but for NATO, the EU, and Europe as well, as this is seen as “an indistinguishable whole” in Asia and globally. “The real winner of our disaster is China, which has won its easiest game, doing nothing, as always. A wise strategy based on two pillars: 1) no military intervention abroad, and 2) economic cooperation for development. In other words, China prefers the Silk Road approach to that of the tank route. An approach that favors the development of infrastructure, transport and investments over that of war. And it is an approach that was the basis of the MOU Silk Road that Italy itself signed in 2019, during the first Conte government, so that we too could participate in the development of countries with investments and provide prosperity to people, rather than betray them and send our soldiers to their deaths. China is smart and will not fall into the trap of military intervention, the pious hope of the West, but will enter into trade agreements with the new Afghan government, thus adding another transit point toward the Indian Ocean and the ports of Pakistan, also exploiting the Pashtun presence on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan which was already economically firmly integrated with China. India is already far away and too busy with serious internal problems to have a big say. Indeed, fortunately for itself, it will be kept out and then, when the time is right, it will also bury the hatchet with China, when it has understood that it will not be able to count on any economic contribution from the West.” But not only will India, all other Asian countries draw a lesson that they cannot rely on the West. This goes for Taiwan, as well as for Japan, Korea, etc., which will presumably not fall into the trap of being used as a pawn against China. https://www.affaritaliani.it/esteri/afghanistan-meglio-la-via-della-seta-che-la-via-dei-carri-armati-753993.html?refresh_ce

The most important lesson from the chaotic retreat of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan is that we must end the era in which geopolitics determines foreign policy. The present nervous uncertainty surrounding Afghanistan is not simply the result of an intelligence failure, of Trump's negotiations with Taliban, or a mistaken decision by Biden: It is the result of the domination of U.S. and western thinking, for the last fifty-plus years, by the intentionally deadly principles of British imperial geopolitics! Will we use the crushing defeat of geopolitics as an opportunity to reject the axioms of a global imperial power, and replace them with the prospect of cooperation for development, which is the true legacy of the American revolution? For more details on what is now possible, contact us to order from the Executive Intelligence Review, “Will Afghanistan Trigger a Paradigm Change?”

Contrary to President Joe Biden’s self-justification today—“Our mission has never been nation-building” in Afghanistan—there is no conceivable reason for the military and military engineering forces of a major nation to stay in an underdeveloped country for such a long period of time unless they are on a mission to help build that nation, help it industrialize with the infrastructure for sustained economic development. What did the United States military forces under General MacArthur do for a decade and a half in Japan after World War II, if not to at least assist in relaunching the modern industrialization of that country after the disaster of war? What about assistance in South Korea’s building itself as an industrial power after war?Those times are long past when the United States was almost unique in being capable of providing such assistance. Now it must be done in cooperation with the other major economic and technological powers; and an Eurasian effort is already underway, China’s Belt and Road Initiative with projects in scores of countries. And the United States, until now, clearly has not been in Afghanistan to help build up a nation. The U.S. withdrawal is not the defeat of a campaign “for democracy,” which the NATO occupation never was. No, it is an opportunity which must be taken, with whatever government has popular backing, to foster the building of power, modern healthcare, water systems, transportation corridors—“TVA”-type development—in a country whose collapsed economy holds back the connectivity and development of an entire region. The Schiller Institute, led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, organized a day-long conference just two weeks ago on exactly this subject, “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History after the Failed Regime-Change Era,” with panels of real experts and representatives of other Asian nations who knew the country. The best of it was previewed in a special offprint report from Executive Intelligence Review, “Will Afghanistan Trigger a Paradigm Change?” The Schiller Institute will now be bringing many of the same experts and representatives back together to update their discussion of economic development in light of the new circumstances. One of them, Hussein Askary, today said on his Twitter feed, “It is fully possible to reach peace and stability in Afghanistan by integrating it into the Belt and Road Initiative. The regional and global context today is different from 1994” when the Taliban had previously taken power. This is already very much the approach that China and the Central Asian nations around Afghanistan are taking, and the approach Russia will take. The British may wax hysterical, as some of their Tory Parliament leaders did today, about sending Her Majesty’s very colonialist forces back into Afghanistan on their own to put things back in order! The British UN Ambassador may lament, as he did in today’s UN Security Council special session, that “what is happening in Afghanistan is a tragedy.” Shaken European ambassadors from the Irish to the Dane may have echoed him, but they are all clinging, sadly, to the beaten remains of a geopolitical policy of British origin which has been a disaster to the United States and the world. It is a good thing that the policy of regime-change wars is ending. It is that policy only which has failed, and it was never in the interest of the United States. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche stressed today, what is in American interest is to “join hands and go for reconstruction.” The NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan is a situation full of opportunity to do just that. The Schiller Institute’s July 31 conference on peace through development in the Central Asian region is now the vehicle for a drive to organize that development through joint offers by nations capable of exporting high-technology capital goods and substituting Afghanistan’s opium traffic. And the Institute will now update that vehicle for the greater opportunity which now exists.

The dramatic developments surrounding the Taliban takeover of Kabul expose the failure of this regime-change war, and the previous ones since WWII. The war was wrong from the beginning, as the continuing investigation by the 9/11 families into who was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks are uncovering, and as Lyndon LaRouche warned that day, but more needs to be done. And there was never a viable war plan.Some western political leaders are reacting thoughtfully. German CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet stated that this was the biggest failure of NATO, ever. Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod called for reflection and soul-searching. Helga Zepp-LaRouche pointed out the special responsibility that the U.S. has, in President John Quincy Adams’ words, to not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. Now, as presented in the July 31, 2021 Schiller Institute video conference, “Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History after the Failed Regime-Change Era,” there is a potential for a new era of real nation-building in Afghanistan, and the rest of the world, if the Western nations cooperate with the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative, along with Afghanistan’s neighbors, and drop their geopolitical goals of preventing China and Russia from playing leading roles in the world. Many Afghan development plans are already on the drawing boards, and there is great humanitarian need, starting with building a modern health system, other infrastructure and agricultural alternatives to opium production. There will be great pressure on the Taliban from the outside, with offers of economic development contingent upon how they act.

The rapidly shifting situation on the ground in Afghanistan gives increasing urgency to developing an understanding of the work of Lyndon LaRouche, who laid out, with increasing insight, his vision for the Earth’s next fifty years, and beyond. As the delta Covid variant lays bare the inadequacy of health care throughout the world, we see the profound need to develop a platform of productivity capable of sustaining billions more people with standards of physical and cultural life adequate to the creative potential of the human race.The second panel of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation’s event “So, Are You Finally Willing to Learn Economics?” took up the topic of LaRouche’s vision of “Earth’s Next Fifty Years,” with a view towards the efforts led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to realizing those revolutionary objectives. Moderator Megan Dobrodt, Secretary-Treasurer of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation Board of Directors, launched the panel with a video of the LaRouches’ close friend and collaborator, Norbert Brainin, the lead violinist of the legendary Amadeus Quartet. Brainin began a 1995 master class in Dona Krupa Castle, Slovakia, by introducing the concept of Motivführung, or “motivic thorough-composition,” an approach to classical composition developed by Haydn and refined by Mozart and Beethoven, of thorough composition according to principle. Brainin explained to the class that he often talked about Motivführung with professional colleagues and students who recognized the term, but that the only person who understood it completely was Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche often said that Brainin had introduced this concept to him, but he recognized it as a universal process for developing, not only great music, but natural and human compositions of any kind. Knowing this, Brainin explained that true classical composers are “scientists.” This was followed by a recording of LaRouche addressing the issue of human creativity at the July 3, 2011 European Schiller Institute conference. He asserted that human beings were the only known creative species, and explained that “classical artistic culture” can be transferred “to the department of physical science,” in the words of Riemann. LaRouche explained that he determined to build a movement, when he realized that no one but himself understood the disaster the financial disruptions of the 1960s were creating. He started by visiting universities and discussing his ideas. He briefly identified his understanding of his fundamental principle: “You get a demonstration of that in the department of Classical artistic composition, in which the mind is experimenting with the attempt to discover principles, and expresses the yearning for that experimental result as the incentive of creativity for the human mind. That is creativity. It is getting outside the ordinary habits, or habituation, of life….” He concluded with the simple statement, “It’s not magic: It’s really humanity.” The first guest on the panel was Jacques Cheminade, a long-time LaRouche associate, President of the Solidarité et Progrès party in France, and a former Presidential candidate. He described how, as a French diplomat, he first encountered LaRouche at an event in Manhattan and, while studying LaRouche’s writing, was confronted with a New York Times supplement in which he saw a photo of French soldiers in World War I with the caption, “Once again triage—Who’s going to live? Who is going to die?” Several pages later, there was a picture of an Ethiopian mother and child with their “skin floating off,” with the caption, “Who will be fed and who will die?” This led him to decide that, despite his prospects as a young diplomat, “Well, these are my people, even if to join them I have to pay a dear price.” He described his collaboration with LaRouche in writing a book, in French and English, titled France After de Gaulle (La France après de Gaulle), promoting the idea of getting France back on the path of republican development as characterized by General Lafayette’s engagement with the American Revolution. Maurice Allais, the only French citizen ever to win a Nobel Prize in Economics, wrote Cheminade a letter on November 27, 2009 saying that he was “fully associating myself to LaRouche’s efforts to generate a wide public debate to radically rebuild the credit system and the international monetary system,” and authorized Jacques to make this public. Former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, Cheminade said, also shared LaRouche’s economic outlook. In 1983 LaRouche and his wife Helga led a Club of Life event in Paris. The Club was founded by Mrs. LaRouche as a counter to the radically Malthusian Club of Rome. The Paris event was attended by world-famous oncologist Georges Mathé, resistance heroine Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, and de Gaulle’s associate, World War II hero, General Jean-Gabriel Revault d’Allonnes. All of these later wrote to request freedom for LaRouche, when he was politically incarcerated in 1989. LaRouche’s universal appeal was demonstrated by support from leading members of the French Communist Party as well as the Secretary of State under President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Pierre Christian Taittinger. Following Cheminade, two representatives from Argentina, Roberto Fritzsche and Eduardo Fernandez, used discoveries of the great Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky to explain LaRouche’s concept of “relative potential population density” in relation to “energy flux density” and improvements in living standards. Man’s role in this complex was explained in relationship to Vernadsky’s concept of three realms of existence: the lifeless lithosphere; the living biosphere; and the realm of cognition called the noösphere. Man is the master of all three, and, as LaRouche has explained, also participates in a fourth realm, that of cognition that we can recognize in the design and growth of the Universe, but, as yet, do not know its source in the way we know how humanity can discover concepts and “laws” of the Universe. They use Vernadsky’s calculations and more advanced knowledge to demonstrate that, with new energy sources which are on the horizon, the Earth could support a human population of 3 trillion. This was followed by greetings from Carlos Gallardo, President of the Christian Democratic Party of Peru. Harley Schlanger, also a long-time leader of the LaRouche movement, followed with an ironically revealing behind the scenes report on the origins of Richard Nixon’s disastrous August 15, 1971 announcement. It happened that on January 23, 1983, a dozen years after the event, John Connally of Texas, who had been Secretary of the Treasury under President Nixon, was present as his, Connally’s, possessions were being sold off at a bankruptcy auction, and agreed to an interview. Schlanger asked about the Aug. 15, 1971 decision, and Connally proudly declared it to have been his decision, and a great success. When Schlanger challenged him with LaRouche’s declaration that the decision was the cause of the subsequent disasters, which were, among other things, the cause of Connally’s personal demise, he became despondent, and eventually slinked away. Daisuke Kotegawa, formerly a top official in Japan’s Ministry of Finance and Japan’s Executive Director at the IMF, sent a greeting backing LaRouche’s distinction between investments in the real economy as opposed to speculation, and called for restoring Glass-Steagall. Fred Huenefeld, an agricultural economist who has served in multiple government positions in Louisiana, and a long-time board member of the Schiller Institute, gave an animated description of his years of agitating for LaRouche’s ideas and hounding the U.S. Congress to wake up. Former South Carolina State Senator Theo Mitchell, a leader in the Democratic Party and a board member of the Schiller Institute, discussed his work to expose the FBI’s misjustice in the prosecution of LaRouche and in the “Fruhmenschen” campaign which targeted Black elected officials, including himself. The concluding section, on LaRouche in the Universities, gave youth leaders of the LaRouche movement an opportunity to discuss their commitment to getting LaRouche’s work into universities and elsewhere. Gretchen Small, a leader of the Ibero-American branch of the LaRouche movement and President of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation Board of Directors, began this session with video segments of the notorious 1971 City University of New York debate between LaRouche and top Keynesian economist Abba Lerner, in which LaRouche induced Lerner to admit that Nixon’s economic policy, and his own, were in keeping with those of Hitler’s Reichsbank governor and Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht. Sidney Hook, a leading academic “philosopher” of the day and an intelligence community operative responsible for stifling unwanted discussions, told a LaRouche supporter after witnessing LaRouche’s impact on the downed champion, Lerner, that LaRouche would never be permitted another such contest. The first youth speaker was from the Philippines, Carlos “Itos” Valdes, the son of Carlos “Butch” Valdes, the founder and leader of the Philippine LaRouche Society and many other organizations. Itos Valdes gave a sincere and moving description of how his understanding of the movement changed his life, beginning in childhood with his family’s involvement in the LaRouche movement, and continuing with his organizing others through the ideas of Plato, Leibniz, FDR and LaRouche Carolina Dominguez, an extraordinary leader of the movement in Mexico and throughout Ibero America, spoke about the campaign to make the work of LaRouche available throughout the university system, and presented videos of young colleagues from Mexico and Colombia. She described the problem by exposing an economics professor who said the purpose of education was to help students become part of the wealthy 50%, rather than to lift the poor 50% out of poverty. José Vega of the Bronx closed the presentations with a video he had made discussing LaRouche’s policy for the next 50 years, including his idea of a “Space Civilian Construction Corps” modeled on FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, to recruit youth to participate in a revitalized space program. The prepared presentations were followed by a profound discussion among the participants on the significance of what had been done and what must urgently be accomplished. One comment by Jacques Cheminade briefly highlighted the secret to LaRouche’s success. He said he was delighted to see three generations of LaRouche Youth Movements in action: the early 1960s campus recruit, Paul Gallagher; people in their 40s and 50s who were recruited by LaRouche in the 1990s-2000s, now playing a leading role in the movement; and those in their early 20s who are ripening as a highly effective force. The full conference can be viewed at the LaRouche Legacy Foundation website.

Thanks to an admission by former Treasury Secretary John Connally, made nearly 17 years after Nixon moved to break the Bretton Woods system, we know that the real perpetrators were not the former Texas Governor, but global operators George Shultz and Paul Volcker. Their manipulation of Connally and Nixon launched the world financial system toward its present demise, by downgrading the power of sovereign governments to invest in the physical economy. Instead, increasing power was put into the hands of central bankers, who today are running a disintegrating casino economy, based on floating exchange rates. The "inside story" of how this happened confirmed Lyndon LaRouche's late 1960s forecast of an intention to impose Schachtian/fascist austerity regimes, while turning productive industrial and agricultural centers into decaying rust heaps. For more on this, watch "So, Are You Finally Ready to Learn Economics" at the LaRouche Legacy Foundation website.

This is the transcript of the presentation delivered by Harley Schlanger to the August 14, 2021 conference of the LaRouche Legacy Foundation The conference was titled "So, Are You Finally Ready to Learn Economics?", and was dedicated to inspire the study of the rich body of work done by Lyndon LaRouche. In particular, it was to commemorate LaRouche's late 1960s forecast of the coming end of the Bretton Woods monetary system, which was launched with the decision to break the relationship of the dollar to gold, done by Richard Nixon on August 15, 1971; and LaRouche's subsequent forecasting of the accelerating devolution of the world financial system, which was done by the same oligarchs who persecuted LaRouche, in a vain attempt to eliminate his influence. You can watch the proceedings here: www.LaRoucheLegacyFoundation.com John Connally On August 15, 1971: Shultz Did It! An Eyewitness Account Of The Decision-Making Process Behind The Take-Down Of The Bretton Woods System by: Harley SchlangerAccording to the vast majority of journalistic and historical accounts of the process leading up to the Aug. 15, 1971 decision to sever the relationship between the dollar and gold, the most forceful advocate for this action was Treasury Secretary John Connally. Wikipedia, for example, says that Connally "presided over the removal of the U.S. dollar from the gold standard," and reports that President Richard Nixon "relied heavily on the advice of Connally" in reaching that decision. Economic historian William Greider, in his book, "Secrets of the Temple", writes that it was Connally, along with Paul Volcker, who "engineered the most fundamental change in the world's monetary system since World War II." Connally, a former Governor of Texas, who had built a reputation as a tough, no nonsense wheeler-dealer in the best tradition of "independent", rugged Texans, had just been appointed Treasury Secretary by Nixon, as the dollar crisis was peaking. Though he had limited experience in, and knowledge of, international financial policy, it is said that Nixon admired him greatly, and especially respected him for his self-confidence and commanding presence.