E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 35, No. 16, April 22, 2021
Urgent Call from Helga Zepp-LaRouche: End the Sanctions, Stop the Genocide in Syria and Yemen!
The Schiller Institute (SI) is circulating an urgent response from its founder, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, to an appeal issued on March 23 by Apostolic Nuncio to Syria Cardinal Mario Zenari, on the acute humanitarian emergency in Syria. That emergency, the SI release stresses, is the direct result, after nine years of war, of the murderous sanctions imposed by the U.S. State Department and irresponsibly supported by a number of other governments, most emphatically the Brit
ish. Putting an end to those sanctions, taken under the so called “Caesar Act”, would alleviate the mass starvation and poverty now engulfing Syria, As Cardinal Zenari states, it is time to pursue a pathway of Peace through Development, and to reject outright the moral indifference which increasingly threatens to unleash a similar scale of calamity throughout the planet.
In her weekly Schiller Institute webcast discussion on April 14, Zepp-LaRouche demanded that the world come to the aid of the Syrian people. The nearly one decade of war, the unjust sanctions, and the COVID-19 pandemic have created an abso
lutely intolerable condition of suffering for the Syrian people, 90% of whom now live below the poverty level. Similar horrors confront Yemen, she noted, where the ago nizing reality of hunger is conveyed in the powerful documen tary Hunger Ward, referred to by the head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, who saw children dying before his very eyes in the hospital, whom he was unable to help (cf. SAS 15/21).
The Western world claims to be carrying out humanitar ian interventions. But there is nothing “humanitarian”, Zepp LaRouche pointed out, in starving children and shutting down hospitals and medical care. Especially when done on the basis of fraudulent narratives cooked up by British and American regime-change advocates, in and out of government. “This must stop and the Caesar sanctions must be lifted,” she said. “And all the members of the U.S. Congress who do not lift these sanctions make themselves complicit in every death that occurs in the region.”
(The infamous Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which came into force on June 17, 2020, imposes draconian sanc tions not only on the Syrian government and businesses, but
against any foreign entity involved in trade with Syria. The explicit purpose is to strangle the country economically and prevent reconstruction. The law is named after a mysterious Syrian defector with the codename “Caesar”, who provided thousands of photographs of what he claimed were victims of government brutality, but provided no proof of their au
thenticity, which has been effectively refuted in the majority of cases.
Zepp-LaRouche concluded: “This has reached the point where either the world wakes up and we start to remedy this, or we will not survive, because of our own moral failure as a human species. I call on you: Work with the Schiller Institute. Work with its Committee on the Coincidence of Opposites, which is working to get aid programs and reconstruction. I appeal to you: Get in contact with the Schiller Institute and respond to the call by Cardinal Zenari.”
Watch Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s webcast:
https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2021/04/14/video-cardinal zenari-time-is-running-out-to-end-the-sanctions-against-syria/
Cardinal Zenari: “Time Is Running Out for the Syrian People”
Roman Catholic Cardinal Mario Zenari, the representative of the Vatican in Syria since the beginning of the Syria war, is sued his appeal on March 23, at a virtual event organized by the Catholic charity Caritas Internationalis. “Peace, I repeat, will not come to Syria without reconstruction and without economic recovery,” he said. “But how long will Syrians have to wait? Time is running out. Many of the people have lost
hope. Urgent and radical solutions are needed.” While the bombs and rockets have not fallen for some months, now, “the terrible ‘bomb’ of poverty has exploded, which, according to latest figure of the United Nations, in exorably affects about 90% of the population that are living below the poverty line,” he pointed out. In addition to the steep devaluation of the Syrian pound, the price of food has significantly increased. “At the bakeries, people queue to try to get limited subsidized bread that is available. The same scene for petrol all around the country. … The people call this difficult time an ‘economic war,’ worse than that of previous years,” he said.
According to Caritas, one third of the population has fled the country and 12.4 million people do not have reliable ac-
cess to food and heating. Moreover, 2.4 million children have no access to schooling.
For Cardinal Zenari, the “present political deadlock” between the parties in the Syrian conflict must be overcome through “mutual and reciprocal [steps], step by step from the Syrian government and the opposition and key international players.”
While thanking Caritas and other international relief orga nizations for their emergency efforts, Cardinal Zenari under scored that a long-term solution requires enabling the Syrian people to “regain peace and begin the reconstruction” of their country. Cardinal Zenari’s full statement can be read at: https://www.exaudi.org/feature-cardinal-zenari-urgent radical-solutions-needed-for-syria/.
U.S. Sanctions Policy Is Warfare
by Other Means
The roll out of new sanctions against Russia by the Biden Administration on April 15 is an example of how economic warfare has become a key component of a bankrupt U.S. for eign policy, aided by an Anglo-American intelligence commu nity which has lost its mind. The sanctions included expelling ten diplomats, blacklisting six Russian technology companies, sanctioning 32 entities and individuals, and prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from participating in the primary mar ket for ruble or non-ruble denominated bonds issued after June 14, 2021, by the Russian government and its financial institutions. This clearly constitutes a declaration of financial warfare against Russia, with the explicit purpose of triggering
capital flight and wreaking havoc on the Russian economy. The Executive Order issued in Biden’s name declares that recent alleged Russian actions “constitute an unusual and ex traordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.” Russia is accused, among other things, of undermining free elections in the U.S. and elsewhere; engaging in cyber-warfare; threatening the secu rity of countries important to U.S. national security; occupy ing Crimea and threatening Ukraine’s borders; offering to pay bounties to Taliban fighters who kill Americans; and poisoning Aleksey Navalny.
There are two aspects to this order that have left many observers shaking their heads in disbelief. First, given that the charges against Russia repeated over and over throughout the four years of the Trump presidency were proven to be fabrications concocted by opponents of strategic cooperation between Presidents Trump and Putin, these new accusations are an obvious escalation of the attempt at regime change in Moscow. Second, the new policy was announced two days after a Biden-Putin phone call, during which the U.S. Presi dent made similar allegations, but concluded by proposing a summit between the two “in the coming months”. Did he ex
pect his summit proposal to be unaffected by the already-then planned new sanctions? Putin’s spokesman Peskov has stated that the summit may not take place, due to the outrageous flight forward in Washington.
A Biden Administration spokesman explained that the Ex ecutive Order is designed to seriously undermine the Russian economy, by removing U.S. investors from the “main market that funds the Russian government”. That, he said will cause borrowing costs to rise, capital flight, and a weakening of the currency, which will have “an impact on Russia’s growth rate...[and] an impact on Russia’s inflation rate.”
The use of sanctions – as in the cases of those against the people of Syria under the Caesar Act (cf. above), Iran, or Chi na -- is intended to enforce the “rules-based order”, by inflict ing maximum pain on any nation which rejects the unilateral demands of Washington and London. But they often have the opposite effect, that is, they strengthen the resolve of the people of the targeted nations to defend their governments, while seeking an alternative to the existing financial order.
Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to the Executive Order by raising the possibility of a coor dinated effort by targeted nations to move toward a new financial system, “to reduce risks associated with sanctions and potential expenses for economic operators. In particu lar, gradual steps should be taken to move towards de-dol larization of national economies and transition to payments in national or alternative currencies, as well as to stop using international payment systems controlled by the West. Russia has been working actively to that end. We see great prospects for cooperation in that field with all interested international partners.”
China vs. U.S.: When Is a “Recovery” Real? Although the GDP figures for the U.S. for first quarter are only expected on April 29, a comparison can already be drawn between the US and the Chinese “recoveries”. China’s econo my grew 18.3% year on year in Q1, which projects to a yearly growth of over 8% this year, confirming IMF estimates. The U.S. economy is expected to grow 6% this year, also accord ing to the IMF. Therefore, two powerful recoveries, driving the world economy, right? Not quite.
The Chinese figures are based on physical (real) growth, whereas those of the U.S. are based mainly on financial val ues, or a bubble about to burst. The main factor driving Chi nese growth in Q1 is foreign trade, which helps to sustain the economy globally. Total imports and exports of goods surged 29.2% year on year to 8.47 trillion yuan. But more than GDP and trade, the real indicator for a healthy economy is the liv ing conditions of the population. In 2020, despite the pan demic, China eliminated absolute poverty and plans to create 11 million new jobs in 2021, whereas poverty has increased in the U.S., as in the entire western world. Currently, 25 mil lion Americans are either unemployed or have dropped out of labor force statistics.
Another key factor in evaluating the health of a national economy is credit. Despite an unprecedented expansion of central bank liquidity, the total amount of loans outstanding of the “Big 4” commercial banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo) has not grown since late 2008, nearly 13 years ago, remaining at $3.6 trillion. The deposits of those four megabanks have doubled during that time, to $6.3 trillion total, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s “quantita
tive easing” programs.
Thus, half of the deposits of these four are being used by their investment-bank trading desks for speculation in stock, bond, swaps, repo and other derivatives markets. At JPMor gan Chase, it is a good deal more than half, with just under $2.3 trillion in deposits and only $1.01 trillion in lending to the economy, according to zerohedge.com.
The entire U.S. banking system has reached the unprec edented condition where deposits are 107% of lending. But that’s because the percentage for these four alone is over 200%! This makes the urgent case for a Glass-Steagall
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(bank separation) reform and an international credit system geared to productive investments, as advocated by Lyndon LaRouche.
Germany: the Greens Aim for the Chancellery to Save the Green Deal
The EU Green Deal is threatened with failure unless the Green Party wins the German chancellorship in the September gen eral elections. This is stated by the Green Party spokesman in the European Parliament, Sven Giegold, in an April 19 email to supporters. In the current negotiations among the Euro pean Commission, the Parliament and the EU Council, the German government has not only blocked the parliament’s demand of reducing greenhouse emissions by 60% instead of 52%, but “also in agricultural policy and on the rules for sus tainable financial investments, the blockers are getting their way”, Giegold wrote. The main blockers, he says, are “the German government with ministers Scheuer [Transportation] and Altmaier [Economy]”.
As the EU Green Deal now stands, the threats of a veto from member governments have resulted in leaving gas, nu clear power and agriculture out of the taxonomy rules that are to be announced on April 21, while subventions for “non carbon-free” activities have not been totally eliminated. That, in Giegold’s view, “endangers the entire Green Deal”.
Therefore, he has called for a mobilization to ensure a vic tory for a Green Chancellor in September, who could “flip the majority in the Council of EU member states” in terms of cli mate policy. That won’t be too late, Giegold wrote, because it will correspond to the phase of negotiations on the CO2 price as well as stricter emissions rules on automobiles, buildings and chemicals.
Indeed, the Green Party leadership chose its chancellor can didate on April 19: Annalena Baerbock is not only supportive of radical Malthusian/green agenda, but also of an anti-Russia and anti-China foreign policy. She has called for stopping the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and for sanctions against China over Hong Kong.
To win the chancellery, the Greens need to receive more votes than the CDU/CSU, which they are now trailing in the polls, at 20-23% against 28-29% for the Christian Demo crats. The Greens, predictably, have announced that climate policy will be at the center of their campaign. As for the CDU/ CSU, an acceleration of the vaccine campaign is indispensable to avoid a defeat.
The EU Taxonomy Rules Promise Chaos However, a CDU/CSU victory is no guarantee for sanity. Last February, the Finance Ministry of the Merkel government is sued a report entitled Shifting the Trillions which endorses in principle all the goals of the so-called Green Deal (cf. SAS 9/21). Even in a milder form, the implementation of the Green Taxonomy will imply a shift of large sections of society in a totalitarian direction.
It will create an enormous bureaucracy, indoctrinated with the “climate change” ideology and empowered with real life and death decisions for companies in terms of deciding who has access to credit and who does not. NGOs will become the watchdogs with blackmailing power, and since “human rights” are a factor in the “sustainability” rules, a flood of arbitrary litigations will ensue.
A source with a life-long experience in coal-fired power plants commented that the implementation of the taxonomy will mean “the end of economic cooperation with countless countries, in particular China (example EU-Hong Kong sanc
tions)”. How is “the small awning manufacturer from West phalia supposed to ensure that the fabric he uses doesn’t vio late some rules [on CO2 or human rights] somewhere along the line?” The German manufacturer could be punished be cause, say, he gets his fabric from Romania, and the Roma nians got the yarn from Myanmar. What if the owner of the spinning mill hit his wife, who worked for the company, and kicked the janitor in the behind? And if he also supports the generals? That’s the end of it for the German entrepreneur...
How the EU Could Intervene
to Calm the Ukraine Crisis
Given the rapid escalation of the international crisis over Ukraine, directly pitting NATO forces against Russia’s military might, the European Union should be promoting a strategy of de-escalation and conflict solution that takes into account the reality on the ground. That includes the fact that Crimea will remain Russian, for solid historical reasons, and that the reintegration of Luhansk and Donetsk will only be possible if substantial autonomy is granted to both predominantly Russian-speaking regions. In addition, the EU needs to end its conspiracy of silence over the ultra-nationalist coup in March 2014, and the influence of powerful neo-nazi currents on the governments since then.
Militarily, no heavy military equipment should be delivered to Ukraine, which would be stationed along the boundaries with the two “rebel” regions, as well as with Crimea, and President Zelensky’s demand to join NATO should be categori
cally rejected.
The United Kingdom, it appears, prefers to join with Wash ington in escalating the tensions. Thus, it is sending warships into the Black Sea and building up air surveillance over the same sea (carried out from a base in Romania), when even the Americans called off the planned deployment of warships there for the time being. Russian leaders have repeatedly warned that NATO’s expanded military naval and air presence increases the danger of direct confrontation with Russian forces in the area.
The British are particularly active in strengthening confron tationist moves in Ukraine itself, with the MI6 apparently carrying out special operations on the ground. Already last October, President Zelensky held a meeting in London with Richard Moore, the director of MI6. An extensive report on the meeting was run on the 112.International news site (which opposes the Kiev government). It was, however, first leaked in the British press, at which point, Zelensky publicly confirmed to it, but refused to give any details.
China Takes on Machinations
of Western Intelligence Services in Xinjiang One of the most often heard claims by the anti-China forces in the West is that Beijing has set up “concentration camps” in the western province of Xinjiang, to repress opposition to the central government among the Muslim population. In re sponse, Chinese officials have been increasingly pointing to the forces behind such propaganda in the Western intelligence community, or a portion of it, who hope to destabilize the
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT n°16 / 2021 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 3
country through operations in Xinjiang, just as they are trying to do in Hong Kong. Among the “usual culprits” are the U.S.- based National Endowment for Democracy, which provides financial support to the separatist forces in Xinjiang, as well as the Australian Institute of Strategic Policy, not to mention the ubiquitous BBC, whose main “Xinjiang reporter”, John Sudworth, abruptly fled the country a short time ago for fear of being sued for libel by Xinjiang enterprises about which he had written. Countless other mainstream media in Europe mindlessly repeat the same narrative.
China’s Foreign Ministry, however, has taken them on. Thus, on March 26, its spokesperson Hua Chunying began her press conference by showing a video clip of a speech given in August 2018 by U.S. Col. (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief-of-staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell. In his speech, Wilkerson, who has since become an outspoken critic of American foreign policy, revealed the machinations of western intelligence services in South-West Asia. He said outright that one of the reasons the U.S. was in Afghanistan “is because there are 20 million Uyghurs [in Xinjiang].” If the CIA, he continued, “wanted to mount an operation using those Uyghurs like Erdogan has done with the Kurds in Syria against Assad,” the best way would be “to form unrest and to join with those Uyghurs in pushing the Han Chinese and Beijing from internal rather than external places.” (We note that at the same press conference, Mrs. Hua welcomed the Schiller Institute call of experts for a dialogue with China – cf. SAS 13-14/21.)
The latest Western attacks involve the boycott of cotton produced in Xinjiang, under the pretext that “forced labor” is used in the cotton fields. Numerous delegations in the last couple of weeks have traveled there to investigate the claims, including a high-level delegation from the Shanghai Coopera
tion Organization, which included many diplomats from Mus lim countries. And they discovered nothing amiss. Something like 70% of Xinjiang’s cotton is harvested by machinery. Many
Uyghurs themselves are cotton entrepreneurs. Now, a boycott is envisaged on photovoltaic cells produced in Xinjiang, under the same claim of “forced labor”. Thus, two sectors have been targeted which are mainstays of the local economy and the livelihood of those the Westerners claim to be defending!
Bur for different reasons, according to a report in the April 18 Global Times. While the cotton boycott was launched by the political anti-China forces, the campaign against the pho tovoltaic industry “appears to be pushed by forces within the PV industry that have been overwhelmed by Chinese firms, including those in Xinjiang, for years, in an apparent ill at tempt to use politics to crack down on what they can’t com pete with in the market,”
A CNN Director Spills the Beans:
Our Expertise Is Propaganda
Deliberate manipulation of popular opinion by the mass media is nothing new. But it’s always useful to have that reality con firmed by someone high-up on the inside. Especially when it’s the technical director of a news network that claims to be the most influential in the world.
An undercover reporter from the right-wing Project Veritas recently recorded a conversation with CNN’s Technical Direc tor Charlie Chester, in which he made some whopping admis
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sions on how his network manipulates fear and prejudice. We can only present a quick overview of some the most contro versial points:
* Donald Trump: “I 100% believe that if it weren’t for CNN,” he would not have been defeated. In addition to political issues, the network consistently played up alleged medical (or mental) problems Trump had, while selecting only images of Joe Biden jogging and displaying excellent health and agility.
* Cimate change: After “our focus to get Trump out of office... our next thing is going to be climate change aware ness,” Chester explained. “We’ll beat to death” the pandemic story, but that will be over at some point. “Climate change can take years, so they’ll [CNN will] probably be able to milk that quite a bit.... Be prepared, it’s coming. Climate change is going to be the next COVID thing for CNN.”
That will likely involve “constantly showing videos of decline in ice, and weather warming up, and like the effects it’s having on the economy”. When the Veritas Journalist asked if it will just be a lot of fear for the climate, Chester replied: “Yeah. Fear sells.”
* COVID: Chester described how CNN uses the COVID-19 pandemic to keep viewers hooked on the screen. (That, we would add, is certainly what a TV viewer or newspaper reader experiences on a daily basis here...).
“It’s fear. Fear really drives numbers”, that is higher TV rat ings. “Fear is the thing that keeps you tuned in.” He went on to explain that the network’s president Jeff Zucker insists that the death toll be kept on the ticker screen, as it’s “the most enticing thing we had”.
* Manipulated Interviews: CNN reporters basically “tell the person what to say”, by “leading them in a certain di rection before they even open their mouths.”For Chester, “there’s an art to manipulation…Inflection, saying things twice -- there’s little subtleties to how to manipulate people... I mean, it’s enough to change the world, you know?”
* Racial Matters: Charlie Chester also admitted that CNN is heavily involved in manipulating the race problem, by re porting only incidents implicating white people in violence against Blacks or Asians. Specifically, the network aims to support the Black Lives Matter movement and censures the news accordingly. (The effect, of course, is to provoke division and mistrust among all groups, while promoting more racial violence).
Mark Your Calendar!
The Schiller Institute will hold an international online conference on the afternoon and evening of May 8, which you are invited to attend, on the theme
“The Moral Collapse of the West Cries out for a New Paradigm”. Simultaneous translations will be provided over Zoom. More information on schillerinstitute.com.
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Published by: E.I.R.GmbH, Postfach 1611, 65006 Wiesbaden Tel.: 0611/73650, Fax: 0611/7365101, Email: eirna@eirna.com Verantwortl. f. d. Inhalt: Dean Andromidas, Claudio Celani Yearly Subscription: EUR 3000/ ISSN 0936-7527
© E.I.R. GmbH Alle Rechte vorbehalten, auch die des Nachdrucks von Auszügen, derphotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung, Printed in Germany
n°16 / 2021
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