E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 35, No. 34, August 26, 2021
Afghanistan: Engage with the New Government and Implement Economic Projects
While hysteria continues to be spread in the West over the “chaotic” withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of the country, a rational discussion of what needs to be done was organized on Aug. 21 by the Schil
ler Institute under the title “Afghanistan, An Opportunity for a New Epoch for Mankind”. Three main themes were struck repeatedly during the dialogue among the speakers: put an end to the “endless wars” paradigm completely; talk to the new Afghan government-in-the-making rather than demon
izing it; launch economic reconstruction projects as quickly as possible.
What has happened in Afghanistan, Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated in her opening remarks, is a resounding defeat for the policy of never-ending wars and geopolitical games (cf. more below). Indeed, the freak-outs of former British Prime Min
ister Tony Blair and other British representatives underscore just how much the withdrawal of U.S. forces after 20 years of war and destruction affords the opportunity to do away with the British Empire’s “master tool” of geopolitics (cf. below).
Joining Zepp-LaRouche on the round table were Lt. Col. Ulrich Scholz (ret.), a German military and philosophy expert; Pino Arlacchi the former head of the UN Office for Drug Con trol (1997-2002) and now professor at Sassari University in Italy; Hassan Daud from Pakistan, the CEO of Khyber Pak htunkhwa Province Board of Investment; Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and Nipa Banerjee, Professor at the University of Ottawa. This event followed the highly successful SI webinar of July 31, before the withdrawal, dur ing which a development overview for Afghanistan and the entire region was presented (cf. SAS 31/21).
What we don’t need now, stressed Pino Arlacchi, is “Tali banology”, i.e., speculating on the Taliban’s intentions and hypotheticals. Many others agreed, making the point the U.S. and Europe need to work together with other major powers of Russia, China, and India as well as immediate neighbors of Afghanistan – Iran, Pakistan, Central Asian nations -- on humanitarian aid and economic initiatives.
On the question of holding the Taliban new government ac countable, Ray McGovern raised the need for a truthful moni toring process on the ground, which could be provided, for
example, by the United Nations. He raised the specific exam ple of how the Special Inspector General for Afghan Recon struction, 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 pub lished in 2019 by the Washington Post, which was the “the one useful thing done by the Washington Post in the last 20 years,” McGovern said.
The features of economic development for the region were summarized by Hassan Daud, who noted that “when the Af ghanistan 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.
Tony Blair Blasts Biden’s “Imbecilic Decision” to Withdraw from Kabul
The British government has made clear from the beginning that it was against President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. For Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, the agreement with the Taliban, first made by then-President Donald Trump in Feb. 2020 was a “rotten deal”. In his inter
view in the Aug. 8 Daily Mail, he revealed that the U.K. tried to convince other NATO member countries to stay, even if the U.S. pulled out, but found no takers.
The criticism from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, post ed on his blog on Aug. 21, is even more harsh. He said of the withdrawal that “We didn’t need to do it. We chose to do it. We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’.” He laments in particular the reper cussions for the imperial designs of London: “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.”
(For those who may not remember, it was Tony Blair who inaugurated the era of “endless wars” in 1999, in a speech to the Chicago Council of World Affairs, who pushed the fabri cated intelligence that convinced then President Bush to de clare war on Iraq and who blithely committed UK troops to Afghanistan, when he was PM.)
All major British media reported Blair’s assessment, which is
shared by many who fear that the United States could make a decisive break with Britain’s imperial policy. The Sunday Times, in its coverage, went on to report 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 article cites an unnamed minister who denounced American “isolationism” and said that the gov
ernment would have to “revisit” its defense and foreign policy because Washington is no longer a reliable ally.
“America has just signalled to the world that they are not that keen on playing a global role,” the minister said. “The implications of that are absolutely huge” He also raised in teresting historical references: “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.”
Another freak-out came from Lt. Col. Richard Kemp (ret.), the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, who proposed that President Biden should not be impeached, he should “be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States’ armed forces.”
We note that in continental Europe as well, there has been similar criticism of the U.S. policy, albeit not so openly ex pressed.
Zepp-LaRouche: Western Strategy
Called into Question More than Ever Opening the Schiller Institute round table on Afghanistan on Aug. 21, Helga Zepp-LaRouche insisted that the key to stabi lizing the situation there is rapid economic development and thus the perspective of building a promising future free of war. “Afghanistan is among the ten poorest countries in the world already, it’s been hit by a terrible drought. One in three people in Afghanistan is food insecure. Then we have a pan demic, naturally. So, the worst thing that could happen is that some smart people -- or not so smart people -- in the West think in terms of financial warfare, saying, ‘OK, the military option is out, because you can’t win in Afghanistan. That has been proven by the British, the Soviets, and now NATO. So, why don’t we use financial warfare?’”
It is already now the case that the United States has frozen the assets of the Afghani central bank held in the Federal Re serve and other American financial institutions, which amount to over $9 billion. As for the European Union, it cut off all de velopment aid and government assistance on Aug. 17, pend ing “clarification of the situation”, after Germany had taken the same decision as concerns national development aid. In such a fragile situation, if the West were to decide to foment “a military uprising combined with financial warfare”, in the hope of creating chaos and somehow forcing the Taliban to leave power, “this would be the biggest foolishness you can possibly think of.”
The only one to improve the situation, in Zepp-LaRouche’s view, is to offer aid to Afghanistan, to the new government that will emerge from the ongoing talks, and avoid geopo litical gambles. During the discussion, she stressed that does not mean writing “a blank check” for the Taliban or blindly trusting promises that have been made, “Obviously, the Tali ban’s feet have to be held to the fire.” But to effect a political change, economic development and the prospect of regional integration in the Belt and Road Initiative, for example, need
to be provided. Rather than engaging in ideological debates, or analyzing the meaning of this or that word, she said, there are real and very serious problems to be solved, including by the Taliban.
Beyond Afghanistan, Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted that the current crisis is “a reflection of a very deep-seated problem in the way the West has been conducting these endless wars -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, the list is very long.” Western leaders need to seriously reflect whether this policy is viable, or whether the defeat in Afghanistan is not rather the Mene Tekel for Western civilization, meaning the writing on the wall of its own demise, such as described by Heinrich Heine in his poem on Belshazzar.
Is it not high time, Zepp-LaRouche asked in concluding her opening remarks, “to change the axiomatic assumptions about Russia, about China, about the Belt and Road Initiative? Because the offer to cooperate is still there, from the Chinese it’s there, from the Russians it’s there. So, I think we are re
ally in an incredibly dramatic situation, just as we discussed it three weeks ago, but in the meantime, events have proven that our discussion was absolutely prescient.”
Schiller Institute Assessments
in International Media
China’s international media organization CGTN produced a six minute video of excerpts from the keynote speech given by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to the July 31 Schiller Institute Confer ence on Afghanistan as a turning point in history. The CGTN video is titled: “Afghanistan: The Bright Future for the Com ing Cooperation of the Great Powers.” It can be found on their Opinion pages at https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-08- 20/Afghanistan-Bright-future-for-the-coming-cooperation of-great-powers-12QYAxWPJe0/index.html
On Aug. 20, Schiller Institute Southwest Asia Coordinator Hussein Askary was invited by Iranian PressTV to discuss Iran’s strategic relations with Russia and China under the new gov ernment in Tehran, as well as the future of Afghanistan and the Belt and Road strategy. The interview, in English, is avail able at https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2021/08/21/664878/ Iran%E2%80%99s-ties-with-China-&-Russia.
Supply Chain Legislation: Germany Sets Dangerous Precedent for the EU
On June 21, 2021, the German Bundestag passed the gov ernment’s proposal for introducing into the country’s indus trial supply chains strict ecological and social standards. The new law obliges all German companies and businesses to en sure that such standards (for instance concerning female and child labor) are respected in all the firms from which they import, or face fines and bans. Berlin is now pushing the rest of the European Union to adopt similar legislation as soon as possible.
Officially presented as only applying to large companies with over 3,000 employees from 2023 on, and those with over 1,000 employees from 2024 on, the law in fact also af fects the tens of thousands of their suppliers in small and me dium-sized firms. The latter are faced with receiving lengthy questionnaires by the major companies providing documenta tion of compliance with the new standards -- otherwise, their products will not be accepted. Since most of the smaller firms do not have the possibility (or the financial means) to provide
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT 2 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER n°34 / 2021
such documentation on the conditions existing in their partner countries, or to demand changes if they are unacceptable, the new law signifies the collapse of traditional supply chains and therefore of continued business for German firms in many parts of the world.
In sum, the new law is a severe blow to the functioning of international economic cooperation and to the industrial development of any nation in the world. Contrary to the sol emn objectives it proclaims against child labor and for the fair treatment of female workers, the intent is not really to to improve conditions for such people, but rather to advance implementation of the notorious “Green Deal” in the develop ing sector.
This became evident in testimony given by German Devel opment Minister Gerd Müller at the Bundestag in May 2020 during hearings on the new law. He stated there that it was important to prevent Africa from striving for the same level of development as Europe, because it would take three Earths, rather than one, to provide the amount of natural resources thus required. Müller endorsed a Europe-Africa Green Deal, which was subsequently proposed by Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen as well. The message to African coun tries is: It is in your best interest -- and that of mankind -- to remain underdeveloped!
Such propaganda is also a key theme in preparations for the upcoming “Climate Summit” COP26 in Glasgow later this year. But it has run into fierce opposition, particularly on the question of fossil energy sources, in many nations, such as India, that are not willing to sacrifice their legitimate right to economic development to the anti-industrial goals of the Eu
ropeans. In the same way, they are unlikely to accept the new standards for supply chains imposed arbitrarily and unilater ally. However, it is mainly up to industrial companies in Ger many and Europe, particularly the smaller, independent ones, to wage the political battle needed against such measures. .
Toyota Throws Cold Water
on E-Mobility Utopia
Toyota, the world’s number-one maker of motor vehicles and the first to produce batteries to provide vehicle mobility when it introduced the Prius hybrid 20 years ago, continues to op pose attempts to mandate fully-electric vehicles by 2030, 2035 or any other date. Company executives, from CEO Akio Toyoda on down, describe such mandates as impossible both with regard to the vehicles themselves or the electric power to charge them.
In late July, Toyota’s North America chief Chris Reynolds presented Congressional leaders with some uncomfortable truths. According to a Forbes account, he told them that Toyota’s maximum capacity for battery production would supply 1.6 million hybrid vehicles annually, but only 28,000 fully electric vehicles per year, which is a huge difference. Sec
ondly, the carbon emissions from producing those 28,000 fully electric vehicles would be greater than the emissions from producing 1.6 million hybrids, according to Reynolds. His main point reportedly was that the battery capacity isn’t there and won’t be there, and that other auxiliary production requirements will be prohibitive. For example, not the 8,000 charging stations which is the current U.S. target, but several hundred thousand charging stations and much more electric generating capacity would be necessary in order to have half of all vehicles be electric by 2030.
This reality has already been presented in publications by EIR, including the report Great Leap Backward: LaRouche Crushes the ‘Green New Deal’ Fraud (https://store.larouche pub.com/product-p/eirsp-2021-1-0-0.htm).
Climate Change: IPCC Systemic Bias Exposed in New Study
The evidence presented in a new peer-reviewed study shows unequivocally that the “code red” for humanity pronounced by UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres after reading the latest report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is ludicrous grandstanding and panic mongering. The new paper, published in the journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA), finds evidence of systemic bias in UN data selection to support the climate-change narrative. The RAA journal is published by IOP Publishing, on behalf of the National Astronomical Observatory of China and the Chinese Astronomical Society.
The conclusions drawn by the 23 experts from 14 coun tries involved in the study are that the IPCC considered only data that fit a certain narrative, and that global temperature changes since the mid-19th century are mostly due to natural cycles (http://www.raa-journal.org/raa/index.php/raa/article/ view/4906). Statements by some of the co-authors of the study:
The lead author of the study, Ronan Connolly of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES), stat ed that “The IPCC is mandated to find a consensus…. However, science doesn’t work by consensus…. I fear that by effectively only considering the datasets and studies that support their chosen narrative, the IPCC have seriously hampered scientific progress into genuinely understanding the causes of recent and future climate change. I am particularly disturbed by their in ability to satisfactorily explain the rural temperature trends.”
Willie Soon, who works at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES), has also been research ing Sun/climate relationship since 1991 at the Harvard-Smith sonian Center for Astrophysics (U.S.A.): “We know that the Sun is the primary source of energy for the Earth’s atmo sphere. … My own research over the last 31 years into the behavior of stars that are similar to our Sun, shows that solar variability is the norm, not the exception. For this reason, the Sun’s role in recent climate change should never have been as systematically undermined as it was by the IPCC’s reports.”
Víctor Manuel Velasco Herrera, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Geophysics at the National Autonomous Universi ty of Mexico (UNAM): “This paper is very special in that all 23 co-authors set aside our research directions and specialties to produce a fair and balanced scientific review on the subject of Sun-climate connections that the UN IPCC reports had mostly missed or simply neglected.”
Richard C. Wilson, Principal Investigator in charge of NASA’s ACRIM experiments: “Contrary to the findings of the IPCC, scientific observations in recent decades have dem onstrated that there is no ‘climate change crisis.’ The con cept that’s devolved into the failed CO₂ anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) hypothesis is based on the flawed predic tions of imprecise 1980s’ vintage global circulation models that have failed to match observational data both since and prior to their fabrication.”
Nicola Scafetta, professor of climatology at the Naples Federico II University and speaker at a recent Schiller Institute
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT n°34 / 2021 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 3
webinar: the IPCC report “is partisan and over-pessimistic, based on a selection of the most alarmistic studies. It ignores the entire rest of scientific literature that gives a less alarming interpretation of climate changes and emphasizes natural ef
fects over anthropic ones”.
Will Germany’s Next Government
Be With or Without the Greens?
Despite a massive amount of positive coverage in media and international think-tanks, the chancellor candidate of the Green Party, Annalena Baerbock, is still not all that popular, with just a few weeks left until the Sept. 26 election. As a result, a media mobilization is on to prevent the option of a coalition government without the Greens -- formed by the CDU, SPD and FDP.
CDU candidate Armin Laschet is being blamed for the recent flash flood catastrophe and the bureaucratic delay of relief measures in North Rhine Westphalia, of which he is now gov ernor. In addition, increasing coverage is given to those Chris tian Democrats who would rather have the leader of the Ba varian CSU Markus Söder become chancellor, even though he lost the nomination earlier this year. Under German election law, the chancellor is not elected by direct vote of the citizens, but by the newly-elected Bundestag. Therefore, according to one scenario, Laschet would remain the lead candidate until election day but then be replaced by Söder. Unlike Laschet, the Bavarian leader has come out repeatedly in favor of a coalition with the Greens, and might be able to rely on their votes in the Bundestag to clinch the chancellorship.
Current opinion polls give Laschet a popularity rating of only 12% as chancellor, behind Annalena Baerbock at 15%, and SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz who has risen to nearly 30% following a recent spout of positive coverage in the mainstream media. A side effect of that is that the SPD list generally is nearly equal to the CDU in the most recent polls, and ahead of the Greens. Thus, Scholz might hope to get the chancellorship with the support of the Greens, and then form a coalition with them and the FDP, against the CDU/CSU. The Greens would be a strong partner in such a government, en suring that the Green Deal and Great Reset become the main governmental agenda.
In fact, the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BüSo) is the only political force in Germany resolutely opposed, on a prin cipled basis, to the green agenda.
In-Depth: The Push to Turn the U.S. Into a Parliamentary System
On August 24, the Lieutenant Governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, will be sworn in as governor, replacing An drew Cuomo, who has served in that office since 2011. Cuomo was elected governor three times, by solid margins (60% or more in two of the elections), but has now been forced to resign due to charges of sexual harassment, which have been allegedly corroborated in a report filed by the state’s Attorney General. He resigned, rather than dispute the charges, which he denies, saying his accusers have en gaged in a political hit job.
During his tenure, Cuomo has been one of the most pow erful elected officials in the country. His relatively sudden demise points to a potentially significant sea change in U.S. politics, the shift away from the Presidential system estab
lished by the constitution and based on executive authority, to a European-style parliamentary system, run by parties con trolled by financial and other corporate entities, in which the parties, acting on behalf of their oligarchical patrons rather
than the voters, determine who will be the leader. On Sept. 14, Californians will vote on whether to recall their governor, Gavin Newsome, who received 62% of the vote in 2018. Should he be recalled, the new governor will be selected from among some forty candidates, whose names will appear on the ballot below the “Yes” or “No” for recall. It is possible that the winner in the most populous state in the U.S. could be elected by less than one-third, or even one quarter, of the votes cast.
But the most significant example of the shift underway is the assault on the Presidency. President Donald Trump was impeached twice after his election in 2016. Though he was not convicted and therefore not removed from office, his ability to conduct the business of the Executive branch on behalf of the American people -- the most important re
sponsibility of the President -- was drastically reduced by the (absurd and unfounded) charges that he had not been legitimately elected, but placed in office by “meddling” by Russia’s President Putin.
Today, in the aftermath of the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, there is growing momentum for the impeach ment of President Biden, who acted with authority to fulfill the intention of Donald Trump to end one of the “endless wars” -- which Trump had been unable to do.
For Lyndon LaRouche, the question of the Presidential sys tem is directly related to the ability of the Executive branch to run the economy as a “credit system”, in which money is issued by the government, and that credit can be monetized in the form of currency. Under the Hamiltonian credit system, and the operation of a National Bank, with credit directed to improvements in physical production, the U.S. emerged as the most powerful physical economy on earth.
LaRouche repeatedly stated that it is the prospect of a re turn to the Presidential system, under his direction, with a commitment to a credit system rather than an imperial mon etary system, which drove the City of London and its allies in the U.S. into a murderous rage against him. It was the prospect that Trump could be induced to junk the monetary system of the City, Wall Street and the U.S. Federal reserve, and move toward LaRouche’s policies, which was behind Rus siagate, as there was never a shred of evidence of Trump “col lusion” with Putin. Instead, pro-British neoliberal networks inside the Trump administration worked with members of both U.S. parties to reduce the power of elected Executives, while simultaneously undermining the sanctity of the U.S. electoral system. More reports on this dangerous process will be forthcoming.
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