Med formand Tom Gillesberg

30. april 2016 — Betragter man NATO’s forskellige aktiviteter over for Rusland såvel som de amerikanske styrkers over for Kina, så får man et billede af en politik, der er lagt an på indkredsning og provokation, og som i sidste ende egentlig kun kan munde ud i den store katastrofe. At lige netop den tyske regering nu vil udstationere tyske soldater som en del af NATO’s tusinde mand store bataljon i Litauen – 71 år efter Hitlers tilintetgørende nederlag under hans vanvittige felttog mod Sovjetunionen – det er en skandale.
Efter at præsident Obama allerede inden sit sidste besøg i Hannover havde tilkendegivet, at han ville kræve et større militært engagement og større økonomiske bidrag fra Tysklands side, havde forbundskansler Merkel intet bedre at tage sig til end »bag lukkede døre« at forsikre Storbritanniens, Frankrigs og Italiens regeringschefer på det såkaldte minitopmøde med præsident Obama i Hannover, at det tyske militær nok skulle bidrage til NATO’s fortsatte østekspansion. Endegyldigt skal denne mission med skiftende, kort udstationeret mandskab vedtages på det kommende NATO-topmøde i Warszawa i begyndelsen af juli, hvor en hel række yderligere offensive forholdsregler ligeledes skal sættes i gang mod Rusland.
På sikkerhedskonferencen i Moskva, der lige har fundet sted, advarede den russiske NATO-gesandt Alexander Grusjko om konsekvenserne af NATO’s konfrontationspolitik på dennes østflanke som for eksempel den såkaldte permanente tropperotation (hvoraf de tyske tropper kun skal udgøre en del), den fortsatte udstationering af tunge våbensystemer i forskellige østeuropæiske stater, uafbrudte manøvrer, vedvarende overvågning af luftrummet, og forstærkning af flådeenhederne i Østersøen og Sortehavet. Under den sidste episode i Østersøen, hvor russiske kampfly fløj hen mod amerikanske krigsskibe, der befandt sig godt 120 km fra den russiske enklave Kaliningrads kyst, påberåbte man sig fra amerikansk side den såkaldte »anti access/area denial« (A2AD) og hævdede, at Rusland forhindrer den frie adgang til militær hjælp til De baltiske Lande – hvor det i virkeligheden drejede sig om at stille spørgsmål ved Ruslands ret til at forsvare sig selv i umiddelbar nærhed af sine egne grænser.
Noget andet, der forberedes, er militære brigader, der skal sammensættes af tropper fra Bulgarien, Rumænien, Ukraine såvel som Litauen og Polen. Også udbygningen af det amerikanske raketforsvarssystem i Østeuropa fortsætter uforstyrret, selv om enhver begrundelse om, at dette forsvarssystem skal tjene som værn mod iranske raketter, er faldet bort med »P5+1«-aftalen med Iran. Det er nu helt klart, at det skal tjene til at udslette Ruslands mulighed for gengældelsesangreb.

Det kan kun forklares som et eksempel på kollektiv lammelse og hukommelsestab, at så godt som ingen i Tyskland stiller det spørgsmål, hvorfor Obamaadministrationen i de kommende år vil give en billion dollars (!) til at modernisere det samlede amerikanske kernevåbenarsenal – indbefattet de i Tyskland udstationerede taktiske kernevåben B61-12 – for (sammen med stealth-fly) at gøre det mere »indsatsegnet«, sådan som det for nylig fastsloges under en høring i det amerikanske senat af fru senator Feinstein. Alt dette finder stadig sted i et miljø, som militæranalytikere som Ted Postol eller Hans Kristensen betegner som farligere end højdepunktet af den kolde krig, altså Kubakrisen, hvilket fik personligheder som Mikhail Gorbatjov og den afdøde Helmut Schmidt til for ikke særligt lang tid siden til at advare mod en tredje verdenskrig.

Denne gang går fru Merkels og de karrieresyge militærpersoners imødekommende, vasalagtige troskab for vidt. Tysklands øgede deltagelse i NATO’s indkredsningsstrategi over for Rusland, hvor NATO rykker helt frem til Ruslands grænser, og ikke omvendt – den russiske udenrigsminister Lavrov talte om et »beskidt forsøg på at stille sandheden på hovedet« – , sætter selve Tysklands eksistens på spil, idet der intet vil blive tilbage af landet eller dets indbyggere, dersom en atomkrig virkeligt finder sted. Og ingen kan overbevise os om, at fru Merkel, fru von der Leyen (den tyske forssvarsminister) og forsvarsledelsen overhovedet intet skulle vide om dette.

Oven i NATO-operationerne mod Rusland kommer de amerikanske stridskræfters ligeledes eskalerende provokationer over for Kina – hvor USA slår på »den frie sejlret i havet« i Det sydkinesiske Hav, selv om Kina ikke en eneste gang har forhindret denne – de hermed begrundede krænkende overflyvninger af det kinesiske territorium, de omstridte øer og rev, forsøget på at udnytte krisen omkring Nordkorea til at udstationere det mod Kina og Rusland vendte THAAD-raketsystem i Sydkorea, og udsendelsen af yderligere 250 amerikanske specialtropper i Syrien uden tilladelse fra den syriske regering, uden mandat fra FNs sikkerhedsråd og uden den nødvendige bemyndigelse fra den amerikanske kongres, sådan som den amerikanske forfatning kræver det.

Alt dette er elementer af en yderst risikabel politik. Er den lagt an på at lokke Rusland og Kina i en fælde for at fremprovokere reaktioner, der så kan bruges som påskud for stort anlagte straffeaktioner? Drejer det sig om opmarch for et førsteangreb, der svarer til de forskellige doktriner såsom Prompt Global Strike eller Air-Sea Battle? Tror man virkeligt i fuldt alvor, at udgifterne til en ny oprustningsspiral i kombination med farverevolutioner vil fremkalde regimeskift i Moskva og Beijing, fordi landenes befolkninger vil rejse sig mod Putin og Xi Jinping? Alle disse varianter er vanvittige. I alle tilfælde risikerer man at udslette menneskeheden i en verdensomspændende, termonukleær krig.

Problemet er hveken Rusland eller Kina, men den neoliberale finanspolitik, der ligger til grund for en indbildt nødvendighed af at udvide den transatlantiske imperialistiske politik. Fastholdelsen af denne politik er i sidste ende grunden til, at der ikke er nogen, der taler om »årsager« til den flygtningekrise, der er resultatet af de på løgne begrundede krige i Sydvestasien, og af den politik, der har nægtet Afrika udvikling på grund af Den internationale Valutafonds berygtede kreditbetingelser. Det var denne politik, der åbnede en uudholdelig afgrund mellem rig og fattig i mange dele af verden, og som synes rede til at at ofre alt til gavn for få og på manges bekostning på højrisikospekulationens alter. Og netop denne politik er håbløst bankerot, sådan som de lige så afsindige debatter om »helikopter-penge« demonstrerer.

Bare tanken om, at vi her 71 år efter det fuldstændige nederlag for nationalsocialisterne, der bragte uendelige lidelser over den russiske befolkning såvel som mange andre lande – ikke mindst vort eget – atter kan deltage i en »Operation Barbarossa« mod Rusland, må tilbagevises med fuldt eftertryk, også i praksis. Når alle de for tiden planlagte optrapninger, indbefattet Ukraines og Georgiens tilbudte medlemskab som »associerede partnere« til NATO, hvilket Rusland for længst har betegnet som en rød linje – når det mulige NATO-medlemskab for Finland og Sverige og udsendelsen af enheder fra det tyske forsvar til Litauen besluttes på det kommende NATO-topmøde, så befinder vi os sandsynligvis på den direkte vej til Helvede.

Vi må benytte de to resterende måneder til at fremføre at alternativ, og et sådant er »Win-win«-sammenarbejdet med Rusland og Kina, uden hvilket intet af de problemer, der truer vor eksistens – krigsfaren, det truende finanskrak, flygtningekrisen eller terrorismen – vil kunne løses. Og vi kan ikke gøre det sande Amerika nogen større tjeneste end ved at stå fast på dette samarbejde.

Der er en udvej: Vi må sammen med Rusland, Kina og Indien udbygge Den nye Silkevej for at fremkalde en økonomisk opbygning af Sydvestasien og Afrika og for at genopbygge vor egen produktive økonomi; og vi må gøre det klart for Amerika, at vi ikke er rede til at begå selvmord for at opretholde et imperium, der for længst har forstrakt sig ved sin egen opførsel. Derimod indtager George Washingtons, Alexander Hamiltons, Abraham Lincolns, Franklin D. Roosevelts og John F. Kennedys Amerika en æresplads inden for den samlede menneskehed.

(Desværre kom videobilledet ikke frem p.g.a. en teknisk fejl, men der er lyd.)

Ambassadør Peter Taksøe-Jensen præsenterede sin udredning af dansk udenrigspolitik på Københavns Universitet den 2. maj 2016. Schiller Instituttet stillede et spørgsmål, om at i stedet for at betragte Rusland som værende på den anden side, at vi burde samarbejde med Rusland og Kina, om at forlænge Silkeven til Mellemøsten og Afrika, som en måde at forhindre terror, flygtninge, og en ustabil område. Ambassadør Taksøe-Jensen svarede således:

Jeg synes ikke — det er svært at ikke være glade for, at der er ført en fast politik overfor Rusland, når Rusland har besluttet sig for at ændre den europæiske sikkerhedsordning. Så at slå ind på et samarbejdspolitik nu, det vil ikke føre frem til, tror jeg, at vi vil få et mere sikkert eller stabil Europa end den politik vi har ført både i NATO og EU, og hvor Danmark har bakket fuldt op om det.

Men idéen om at prøve at udbrede vores samarbejde med Kina, og prøve at bygge økonomiske udvikling, og opbygge Silkevejen, det synes jeg bestemt giver mening, fordi hvis vi kikker på hvad der har bragt flest mennesker ud af fattigdommen, så har det været økonomisk vækst, og det synes jeg da er noget vi kan bidrage med, som en del af vores formål. Det har også den positive afledte effekt at det også er [på denne måde] at vi bekæmper fattigdom.

Med formand Tom Gillesberg

Kommer senere på dansk.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Addresses Seminar in Copenhagen,
April 18, 2016 [unproofed draft]

We Need a New Paradigm for Humanity

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, thank you very much for this
kind introduction.
Dear Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: I would like to
start my presentation with showing you a point of view which may
be unusual to discuss the strategic situation, but I think it is
quite adequate.
This is a time-lapse video where you can actually have a view
from space. This is the kind of view normally only astronauts,
cosmonauts, taikonauts have. They all come back from their space
travel with the idea that there is only one humanity, and that
our planet, which is very beautiful and blue; however, it is very
small in a very large solar system and an even larger galaxy, not
to mention the billion galaxies out there in our universe.
With that view comes, naturally, the question of the future.
Where should mankind be in 100 years from now, in a 1000 years,
in 10,000 years? Well, you have to exercise your power of
imagination. In 10,000 years, we probably are well beyond having
colonized the Moon, we have completed very successful Mars
missions, we will have a much, much better understanding about
our solar system, our galaxy, and we will have gotten a much
deeper understanding about the principle of our universe.
Just think, that it took 100 years before modern science
could confirm that Einstein's conception about gravitational
waves was correct. Ten thousand years of the past human history
has brought tremendous progress. But just think that this growth
can go on, exponentially. And since there is no limit to the
creativity and perfectibility of the human species, in 10,000
years we can have a wonderful world.
So, let's look from that view, into the future, to the
present, to have the right perspective.
Yesterday, the {New York Times}, in the Sunday edition, had
an article saying "The Race Escalates for the Latest Class of
Nuclear Arms," portraying in detail that the United States, and
Russia, and China are developing new generations of smaller and
less destructive nuclear weapons, which would make them more
useable. They quote in the article James Clapper, the Director of
the National Intelligence of the United States, that the world
has now entered a new Cold War spiral, where, basically, totally
different laws and rules govern, than it used to be the case with
Mutual Assured Destruction.
The previous NATO doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction
proceeded from the assumption that the destructive power of
nuclear weapons is so horrible, because it will lead to the
annihilation of the human race, that nobody in their right mind
would ever use it. And therefore, it was a deterrence that these
weapons would never be used.
This is now no longer valid. What they are now discussing,
openly, on the front page of the {New York Times}, is that what
we, for a very long time, only we and a few of military experts,
have said, namely, that these modernized tactical nuclear
weapons, like the B12-61, in combination with stealth bombers,
with hypersonic missiles, can actually lead to the winning of a
nuclear war.
Ted Postol and Hans Kristensen, very respected military
analysts, have detailed at great lengths, why the idea of a
limited nuclear war is completely ludicrous, and it is the nature
of the difference between thermonuclear weapons and conventional
weapons, that once you enter a nuclear exchange, that it is the
logic of such a war that all weapons will be used, and that will
be the end of mankind. We are closer to that possibility than
most people dare to even consider, because if they would, they
would not remain so passive as they are now.
This is why I want to make emphatically the point–and this
is the purpose of conducting meetings like this seminar and many
other conferences we are engaged in–that we have reached a point
in human history where geopolitics must be superseded with a
completely new paradigm. And that is why I started with the view
from space. We need a new paradigm, basically saying goodbye to
the very idea of geopolitics, which has caused two world wars in
the 20th century. That new paradigm must be completely different
than that which is governing the world today.
We have, right now, rising tensions in the South China Sea.
Policymakers and the neighboring countries are extremely worried
about what will happen in the period between now and the trial in
The Hague. You have the largest maneuver around North and South
Korea right now, where people in the region are extremely worried
that the slightest provocation could lead to an exchange of
nuclear weapons.
You have the NATO expansion up to the Russian border.
Countries like Poland and Lithuania are asking to have these
modernized nuclear weapons located on their territory, even that
makes them prime targets.
The United States is continuing to build the anti-ballistic
missile system which, supposedly, was against Iranian missiles,
but after the P5+1 agreement has been reached, it is obvious this
was always a pretext and the aim was always to take out the
second strike capability of Russia.
Then you have the entire region of Southwest Asia, still
being a terrible destruction and consequence of failed wars.
North Africa is exploding. You have new incidents between NATO
and Russia, all of a sudden in the Baltic Sea, which was, up to
now, a calm region where there are no conflicts, or, there have
been no conflicts.
In the Middle East briefing, discussing President Obama's
trip to Riyadh on the 21st of this month, they say that this trip
will open up a new page of NATO in the relationship to the Middle
East, that what Obama will try to establish is a new relationship
between NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
So, we have a situation where the {New York Times}, also
yesterday, and I'm quoting these papers to say that these are not
some opinions of us, but this is now the public discussion, that
what is really at stake in the South China Sea is not so much the
fight around some uninhabited reefs and cliffs, or some tiny
islands, but it is the American effort to halt China's rise. And
not only China's rise, but that of Asia. China, Asia arising; the
trans-Atlantic region is in decline.
Just now, we are heading towards a new financial crisis, and
all signs are, that we are going into the same kind of crash like
2008. Already since the beginning of this year, $50 billion
corporate defaults were taking place, which is on the same level
like what happened in 2009.
What the United States is trying to assert under this
conditions, where the trans-Atlantic world is in decline or
marching towards collapse, to insist that nevertheless a unipolar
world must be maintained. The problem is, that unipolar world,
effectively, no longer exists. But still, what carries American
policy to the present day, is the Project for the New American
Century, the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine, which is a neocon idea
which says that no country and no group of countries should ever
be allowed to challenge the power position of the United States.
In the age of thermonuclear weapons, the insistence to maintain a
non-tenable world order could very quickly lead to the
annihilation of civilization.
It is a fact: China has made an economic miracle in the last
30 years which is absolutely breathtaking. And it is continuing,
despite all the media rumors about China's economic collapse.
India has by now the largest growth rate in the world; it's above
7%. Many other Asian countries have explicitly formulated the
goal for themselves to be developed countries in a few years. The
Chinese economy right now is rebounding. They just announced that
in the next five years China is going to import $10 trillion
worth of imports. They will invest $600 billion worth of
investments abroad. Every day 10,000 new firms are being created
in China.
So, if you look at the development, especially since
President Xi Jinping announced in September, 2013 in Kazakhstan,
that the New Silk Road, the One Belt One Road, is put on the
agenda. In the Two and a half years since that time, more than
sixty nations have joined with China in this development. They
have created the New Silk Road, the Maritime Silk Road; these
nations have created a whole set of alternative
economic-financial institutions, such as the AIIB, which, despite
massive pressure from the United States not to do so, immediately
was joined by sixty founding members. The New Development Bank
also started just now its functioning. The New Silk Road Fund,
the Maritime Silk Road Fund, the Shanghai Cooperation Bank, and
many more. All of these were created because the IMF and the
World Bank had not invested in the urgently required
infrastructure.
These banks are now engaged in very, very impressive, large
projects. For example: China invested $46 billion in the
China-Pakistan corridor. When President Xi Jinping recently went
to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran, consequently Iran,
fool-heartedly, declared that they are now part of the One Belt
One Road, New Silk Road development. Greece is now talking about
that after China is investing in the Port of Piraeus, that Greece
will be the bridge between China and Europe. The 16+1, that is
the East and Central European countries, just declared that they
absolutely want to participate in China helping to build a fast
train system in these countries. Those projects which the EU has
not bid, China is now building. Part of it is, for example, the
Elbe-Oder-Danube Canal, which will connect the waterways of these
countries. When President Xi recently was in the Czech Republic,
President Zeman announced that the "Golden City" of Prague will
be the gateway between the Silk Road and Europe. Also, Austria
and Switzerland are now fully on board and see the benefits of
their country's joining with the New Silk Road.
When President Xi Jinping at the APEC meeting in October
2014 offered to President Obama to cooperate in all of these
projects in a "win-win" perspective, he not only proposed
economic cooperation, but he put on the agenda a completely new
model of international relations exactly designed to overcome
geopolitics. The new model is supposed to be based on the respect
for sovereignty, non-interference into the internal affairs of
the other country, respect for the different social system the
other country chooses to adopt. It would really be, in a certain
sense, a fulfillment of the principles which are laid out in the
UN Charter anyway.
How was the Western response?  Very, very ambiguous.  The
United States in spite of this, never really responded to
President Xi's offer.  They keep insisting on an unipolar world.
For example, in the TPP, like in the TTIP for Europe, it is said
very, very clearly, the U.S. sets the rules of trade for Asia and
not China.  Recently, the American Defense Secretary Ash Carter,
and also NATO commander General Breedlove, declared the enemies
#1 of the United States are, first, Russia, second, China, third,
Iran, fourth North Korea, and only fifth terrorism.
Now that is in spite of the fact that many other statesmen,
such as United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign
Minister Steinmeier, and many others, have recently also stated,
that all crucial problems of the world cannot be solved without
the cooperation of Russia, and China.  For example, the P5+1
agreement with Iran, would never have come into being without a
constructive role of {both} Russia and China . Without Putin's
very intelligent intervention in the military situation in Syria,
this situation could not have come to the potential of a
political solution.
Also, apart from the military pressure, there is massive
pressure on the new institutions such as the AIIB and the New
Development Bank, to {not}  be outside of the casino economy but
to follow the "international standards."
Now, in these times of the Panama Papers, of the various
LIBOR scandals, of the money laundering of many of these banks,
it is a sort of laughable thing, what should be these
"international standards" of the Western financial system.
Now, let's be realistic.  At the IMF/ World Bank meeting
which just concluded in Washington over the weekend,  behind the
scenes there was complete panic, but nobody dared to speak about
it openly,  behind the scenes people were talking, what former
IMF boss Strauss-Kahn has said repeatedly, publicly, that we are
heading towards the "perfect political storm."  That if one of
the too-big-to-fail banks collapses, it will lead to a crisis
much, much worse than 2008.
At the recent Davos Economic Forum, the former chief
economist of the BIS William White said that the world system is
so utterly overindebted, that there are two roads only possible:
Either you have an orderly writeoff of the debt, like in the
religious Jubilee, so that you just say "these debts are not
payable," and you write them off, or it will come to a disorderly
collapse.
Now, the situation is all the more urgent, because unlike
2008 when everyone was talking about the "tools" of the central
bank, like interest rate reduction, rescue packages, bailouts,
all of these tools don't function any more. As a matter of fact,
when the competition for more zero interest rate, or even
negative interest rate, when into high gear in the last month,
when, for example, the Bank of Japan or the central bank of
Norway, or the ECB declared a zero interest rate policy, or even
a negative interest rate policy, it boomeranged!  It had the
opposite effect:   Rather than leading to more investment, in the
real economy, it led to a deflationary escalation of the
collapse.
When Mario Draghi, the chief of the ECB, recently announced,
"yeah, yeah, we have a discussion about helicopter money."  And
Ben Bernanke echoed it and said, "yes, now we need helicopter
money," meaning electronic printing of {endless} amounts of
worthless money, virtual money, they de facto announced that the
trans-Atlantic financial system is absolutely in the last phase.
Because after helicopter money comes only evaporation.
But this is only the most obvious of the crises.  Another
one, which is in a different domain, but equally systemic is the
refugee crisis in Europe.  Now,  I supported Chancellor Merkel
when she initially said, we can manage that,  we can give refuge
to these people, and for the first time, I was  saying "this
woman is doing the right thing."  I know there was a lot of
international criticism, but she acted on the basis of the Geneva
Convention on refugees, but it was the right thing to do.  But
the reactions from the other European countries, revealed an
underlying, basic flaw of the EU, a flaw which was not caused by
the refugees, but it was revealed by the first serious challenge,
that in the EU, as it has been conceptualized in the Maastricht
Treaty going up to the Lisbon Treaty, there is no unity, there is
no solidarity; and with the collapse of the Schengen agreement
which allows free travel within the internal borders of the EU,
the closing of the so-called Balkan routes, to prevent refugees
from coming, the basis for the European common currency is also
gone, because without the Schengen agreement, the possibility to
have the euro last is extremely dubious.
Now, with the recent response by the EU to basically have a
deal with Turkey, I mean, this is beyond the bankruptcy of the
whole EU  policy if you can top it.  At a point when the Russian
UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, presented the UN Security Council
with evidence that the Turkish government, is continuing up to
the present day to supply ISIS with weapons and other logistical
means, to then say, we pay Turkey EU6 billion, for what?  To have
them receive refugees; and Amnesty International has already
said, there is no guarantee that these people will be protected,
but rather that Turkey is sending them back to the war zones,
like Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
So, if you look at the pictures of Idomeni, where the
Macedonian police are using tear gas against refugees who are
absolutely desperate; if you look at the fact that Greece is now,
rather than having refugee camps which would somehow process
these unfortunate human beings, they have, on pressure of the EU,
been turned into detention centers.  Pope Francis was just in
Lesvos, together with the Greek Patriarch Bartholomew, and this
Patriarch said, the present EU policy on the refugee crisis, is
the completely bankruptcy of Europe.  The Doctors Without Borders
left their job in Greece, because they said they cannot be
accomplices to the murderous policy of detention, where the
police decide who is a patient and not doctors.  Instead of
protecting the people running away from wars and persecution,
they are now being treated as criminals.
Immediately, days after this disgusting EU-Turkey deal, it
turned out that it's a complete failure, the so-called "European
values," human rights, humanism, well–they're all in the
trashcan, because now the refugees, obviously still fleeing for
their lives, go to Libya trying to get into small boats to Italy.
And just yesterday the news came that another 400 people drowned
in the Mediterranean.  And this will keep going on.  And it will
haunt the people who are refusing to change their ways.
Now, there is a new element in the situation which may cause
sudden surprises, and that is a program which was presented by
CBS, a week ago Sunday, in the so-called "60 Minutes" program
portraying the coverup, of the U.S. governments from Bush to
Obama, of the famous 28 pages omitted in the publication of the
official Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 by the U.S.
Congress; and as many people have said, and was said in this
program, this pertains to the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11.
Yesterday, {all} the U.S. talk shows, and all the U.S. media,
pointed their finger to the coverup of the Bush administration
and even to the present day of the present government, that there
is a coverup of criminal activity.
Now, the Saudi Arabian government reacted very unnerved, and
this was again reported in the {New York Times}, that they would
sell off $750 billion in U.S. Treasuries, if the U.S. would allow
a bill that would allow Saudi Arabia to be held responsible in
court, for their role in 9/11.  Now, that's not exactly a sign of
sovereignty, but of despair.  There are several U.S. Senators,
among them Mrs. Gillibrand from New York, who demand that this
whole question of the Saudi Arabian role in 9/11 must be on the
agenda when President Obama goes to Riyadh this week.  Which in
any case, may not happen, but it will not be the end of the story
because the genie is now out of the bottle.
OK:  How do we respond to these many, many crises? Well,
there is a solution to all of these problems.  The trans-Atlantic
should just do exactly what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in 1933, in
reaction to the  world financial crisis at the time.  Implement
the full banking separation — Glass-Steagall — and the whole
offshore nightmare which is being revealed in the Panama Papers,
and remember, that this firm Mossack Fonseca is only the fourth
largest of such firms, and 11 million documents still need to be
read through, and processed.  But we have to go back to the kind
of international credit system, as it existed in the Bretton
Woods system, before Nixon ended the fixed exchange rate in 1971,
opening the gate for  floating exchange rates and especially the
creation of offshore money markets for the unlimited creation of
money and other illegal operations as it now is coming out.
Then we need a writeoff of the absolutely unpayable state
debt, which has accumulated and ballooned after the bailouts of
2008 and afterwards. And we have to basically get rid of the
toxic paper of the whole derivatives markets, because they are
the burden which is eating up the chance for the investment in
the real economy.
Then, we need a Marshall Plan Silk Road; and the only reason
I'm  talking about a Marshall Plan, despite the fact that China
is {emphatic} that they do not want a Cold War connotation to the
New Silk Road, it gives people in the United States and Europe a
memory, that it is very possible to rebuild war-torn economies,
as it happened in Europe after the Second World War.
Now, with the ceasefire which was negotiated between Foreign
Ministers Kerry and Lavrov, you have now a still-fragile, but you
have the potential for a peace development in Syria, and soon
other countries in the region.  But it is extremely urgent, that
the peace dividend of this ceasefire is becoming visible for the
people of the region, immediately.  That is, there has to be a
reconstruction and economic buildup, not only of the territory
and the destroyed cities, but the entire region, has to be looked
at as one:  From Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, from the North
Caucasus to the Persian Gulf.  Because you cannot build
infrastructure by building a bridge in one country.  You have to
have a complete plan for the transformation of this region, which
mainly consists of desert.
Now, the idea is to have a comprehensive plan, greening the
deserts, building infrastructure, creating new, fresh water from
desalination of ocean water, of tapping into the water of the
atmosphere through ionization, and various other means. And then
build infrastructure corridors, new cities, and give hope to,
especially, the young people of the region, so they have a reason
not to join the jihad, but to become doctors, to become
engineers, to care for their family and their future.
Now this is not just a program any more, because  when
President Xi Jinping visited Iran about two months ago, he put
the Silk Road development on the agenda for this region.  So, all
you need to do, is extend the Silk Road, and the first train has
already arrived in Tehran; you have to continue to build that
road, from Iran, to Iraq, to Syria all the way to Egypt.  Other
routes should go from Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to India. From
Central Asia to Turkey to Europe, and this obviously can only
work because the problem is so big, that all the neighbors of the
region, Russia, China, India, Iran, Egypt, but also the countries
which are now torn apart by the refugee crisis such as Germany,
Italy, Greece, France, and all other European countries must all
commit themselves to work on such a Silk Road Marshall Plan for
the reconstruction and economic buildup of the Middle
East/Southwest Asia, {and} all of Africa, because the economic
situation is equally dire in that continent.
The United States must be convinced that it is in their best
interest to cooperate in such a development, and stop thinking in
terms of geopolitics.  Now, the United States should only be
encouraged to cooperate in the development of these regions, but
the United States needs {urgently} a New Silk Road itself.
Because if you look at the condition, not only of the financial
sector in the United States, but especially the physical economy;
if you look at the social effects of the  economic collapse, like
the rising suicide rates, in all age brackets of the {white}
population, and especially rural women in the age between 20 and
40, the suicide rate is quadrupling and even beyond.  This is a
sign of a collapsing society.
Now, China has built as of last year, 20,000 km of fast
train systems.  Excellent, top-level technology fast-train
systems;  it wants to have 50,000 km by I think the year 2025.
How many miles of  fast train as the U.S. built?  I don't any.
But if the United States would join the New Silk Road and
participate  in the economic reconstruction, as Franklin D.
Roosevelt did it with the Tennessee Valley Authority plan, with
the Reconstruction Finance Corp. in the '30s, the United States
could very, very quickly be a prosperous country, and could again
be regarded by the whole world as "a beacon of liberty and a
temple of freedom," which was the idea of America when it was
founded.
So, the whole fate of the whole world will depend if we all
succeed to get the United States to go back to its proud
tradition of a republic, and stop thinking like an empire,
because that cannot be maintained in any case;  because all
empires in the whole history of mankind always disintegrated when
they became overstretched and collapsed.  There is not one
exception to this idea.
Now, therefore, let's go back to the idea from the
beginning:  Let's approach all problems in the present from the
idea, where is the future of mankind?  Where should mankind be?
Do we exist, or will we destroy ourselves.  And that requires a
change in paradigm, which must be as fundamental and thorough,
like the paradigm shift from the European Middle Ages to the
modern times.  And what caused that shift was such great figures
as Nikolaus of Cusa, but also Brunelleschi, Jeanne d'Arc, and
many others; but what they introduced was a rejection of the old
paradigm–scholasticism, Aristotelianism, all the wrong ideas
which  led to the destruction of the 14th century, and they
replaced with a  completely {new} image of man, man as an {imago
viva Dei}, which was a synonym for the unlimited creative
potential and perfectability of the human being.  It led to a new
image of man which created a blossoming of science, of modern
science, of the modern sovereign nation-state;  it made possible
the emergence of Classical arts.
And that is what we have  to do today:   We have to stop
thinking in terms of geopolitics, and we have to focus on the
common aims of mankind.  Now, what are these "common aims of
mankind"?  It is, first of all scientific cooperation to
eradicate hunger, poverty, to develop more and more cures for
diseases, to increase the longevity of all people.  We have to
study much more fundamentally, what is the principle of life?
Why does life exist?  How does it function?  What, really, is the
deeper lawfulness of our universe?  And that must define the
identity of human beings, which is unique to the human species.
And I have an idea of the future, which will be full of joy.
Because we will discover new principles in science and in
classical art, and we will create a new Renaissance.  As the
Italian Renaissance superseded the Dark Age of the 14th century,
what we have to do today, is we have to revive the best
traditions of all great nations and cultures of the world; and
make them known to the other one.  Have a dialogue of the most
advanced periods of Chinese, of European, Indian, African, other
cultures, and revive–and that is being done in China,
already–the great Confucian tradition, which is in absolute
correspondence with the best neo-Platonic humanist ideas of
Europe.  We must revive the great Vedic tradition in India, the
Gupta period; the Indian Renaissance of the late 19th to the 20th
century.  We must revive the Abbasid Dynasty of the Arab world;
the Italian Renaissance; the Andalusian Spanish Renaissance, the
Ecole Polytechnique in France, the great German Classical period.
The great Italian method of singing in Verdi tuning and the bel
canto method.  And if all of these riches of all the different
countries become the common good of all children of this planet,
and everyone can learn universal history, other cultures as if it
would be their own, I can already see how humanity can make a
jump, and how we can create the most beautiful Renaissance of
human history so far.
I think everybody who is thinking about these questions, has
a deep understanding, that we are at the most important crossroad
in human history. And it is not yet clear which way we will go,
but it is clear to me, that we will {only} come out of this
crisis if we mobilize the subjective emotional quality, which in
the Chinese is called {ren}; and the European equivalent, you
would call {agapë}, love.  And we will only solve this problem if
we are able to mobilize a tender, maybe even {passionate} love,
for the human species.  [applause]

Schiller Instituttet og Executive Intelligence Review holdt et seminar mandag den 18. april 2016 på Frederiksberg på engelsk.

Inkl. en diskussion om EIR’s specialrapport Den Nye Silkevej Bliver til Verdenslandbroen

Introduktion:Tom Gillesberg, formand for Schiller Instituttet i Danmark

Musik:
Fischerweise af Schubert
Ritorna Vincitor! fra Aida af Verdi
Leena Malkki, soprano fra Sverige
Dominik Wijzan, pianist fra Poland

Teksterne på originalsprogene med engelsk oversættelse 

Video: Introduktion og musik

Talere: Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Instituttets internationale præsident, kendt som “Silkevejsdamen” (via Skype video)

Video: Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Audio: Introduktion, musik og Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Afskrift: Et nyt paradigme for menneskeheden: Afskrift af Helga Zepp-LaRouches tale 

Forlæng Verdenslandbroen ind i Mellemøsten og Afrika: Hussein Askary, EIR’s Mellemøstredaktør, som lige har oversat den arabiske version af rapporten.

Den Nye Silkevej og den iranske rolle; Hr. Abbas Rasouli, først sekretær på Irans ambassade i Danmark.

Video: Hussein Askary og Hr. Abbas Rasouli.

Audio: Hussein Askary og Hr. Abbas Rasouli

Afskrift: Forlæng Verdenslandbroen ind i Sydvestasien og Afrika: Afskrift af Hussein Askarys tale 

Afskrift: Den Nye Silkevej og Irans rolle: Afskrift af Hr. Abbas Rasoulis tale

Mere om Den Nye Silkevej og Verdenslandbroen på dansk:

Specialrapport: Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Den Nye Silkevej fører til menneskehedens fremtid! Oktober 2014
Den kommende fusionsøkonomi baseret på helium-3. En introduktion til en kommende EIR-rapport om Verdenslandbroen.

Nyhedsorientering december 2014: Den Nye Silkevej bliver til Verdenslandbroen; Introduktion v/Helga Zepp-LaRouche

BYG VERDENSLANDBROEN FOR VERDENSFRED
Helga Zepp-LaRouche var taler ved et seminar for diplomater, der blev afholdt i Det russiske Kulturcenter i København den 30. januar 2015, med titlen: »Økonomisk udvikling og samarbejde mellem nationer, eller økonomisk kollaps, krig og terror? Den Nye Silkevej bliver til Verdenslandbroen«. Nyhedsorientering febr. 2015.

Nyhedsorientering maj 2015 – Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Tale ved seminar i København: Den Nye Silkevej Kan Forhindre Krig

Tema: Den Islamiske Renæssance var en Dialog mellem Civilisationer, af Hussein Askary

Genopbygningsplan for Syrien: Projekt Fønix: Diskussionspunkter om Syriens genopbygning

Link: Homepage about the EIR report The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge
The English, Arabic and Chinese versions of EIR's report are available from EIR and The Schiller Institute in Denmark.
Prices for the 400-page report:
English: printed 500 kr.; pdf. 300 kr.; Arabic: printed 500 kr.; Chinese: pdf. 300 kr.
Please contact tel. 53 57 00 51 or 35 43 00 33, or si@schillerinstitut.dk

Invitation:
Terror in Europe, and elsewhere. Waves of refugees leaving countries racked by war and economic ruin, from Afghanistan to Africa. Threats of financial crash in the trans-Atlantic region. Dangers of escalating confrontation and war against Russia and China.  Is there any hope for the future?

The Schiller Institute and Executive Intelligence Review, led by the ideas and efforts of Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, have been working for decades to create a paradigm shift, away from "geopolitics," to a new era of cooperation between sovereign nations, based on an ambitious infrastructure-driven economic development strategy — a plan for lasting peace through economic development.

In 2013, this New Silk Road and Eurasian Land-Bridge strategy was adopted by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who called it the “One Belt, One Road” policy, which now includes agreements with 60 countries. In addition, the economic development alliance among the BRICS countries, and the establishment of new credit institutions, constitute an alternative in the making.

In December 2014, EIR published a ground-breaking special report in English, The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, the sequel to its 1996 report, which elaborates the new set of economic principles needed for world economic development. The Chinese version was issued in 2015.

Now, if there is to be a solution to the heart-wrenching suffering of the people of the Middle East and Africa, and the effects of the crisis in Europe, the New Silk Road must be extended to those regions, on its way to becoming the World Land-Bridge. The recent negotiations led by U.S. Secretary of State Kerry (despite opposition from other factions in the Obama administration), and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, regarding Iran and Syria, have also helped to create the political preconditions for such a new “Marshall Plan” to immediately come into effect.

There are already moves in that direction. An example of “win-win” cooperation was demonstrated during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran, where he confirmed China’s support for real economic development in the region, backed up by $55 billion in loans and investments.

And on March 17, the Arabic version of EIR's report was presented in Cairo by Egyptian Transportation Minister Dr. Saad El Geyoushi, and EIR Arabic desk chief Hussein Askary, who translated the report, at a well-attended launching at the Ministry. An expanded chapter on proposals to rebuild Southwest Asia is included.

The Copenhagen seminar will present the vision of a new paradigm, instead of geopolitics, terror, war and economic collapse.  Mustering the creative efforts of populations collaborating to rebuild their nations, is the only way forward.

We hope that you will be able to attend this important seminar, and join in the discussion about how this alternative can be brought about.

Links:

Introduction to the arabic-version of EIR's report by Helga Zepp-LaRouche (in English, Arabic and Danish)

Here are links to information about EIR's March 24, 2016 Frankfurt seminar, co-sponsored by the Ethiopian consulate, including the speeches of Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Hussein Askary.

Report about the Frankfurt seminar 

Helga Zepp-LaRouche's speech

Hussein Askary's speech 

Homepages:
Danish: www.schillerinstitut.dk
English: www.newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com
www.schillerinstitute.org
www.larouchepub.com/eiw
Arabic:  www.arabic.larouchepub.com/
Other languages: Click here

Med formand Tom Gillesberg

Med formand Tom Gillesberg:

22. marts 2016 – Idet han udtrykte sin dybtfølte kondolence over for det belgiske folk, har den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin »kraftigt fordømt disse barbariske handlinger« samtidig med, at han forsikrede »det belgiske folk om Ruslands absolutte solidaritet med det belgiske folk i disse svære timer«, sagde talsmand for Kreml, Dmitry Peskov, i dag, iflg. en rapport fra Sputnik. »Præsident Putin har allerede sendt kondolencetelegram til Kong Philippe af Belgien i forbindelse med civile dødsfald i en række bombesprængninger i Bruxelles«, sagde Peskov til reportere.

»I takt med, at flere og flere mister livet, og vi mister kostbar tid, begynder folk at forstå, at denne politik med dobbelte standarder mht. bedømmelsen af terroraktiviteter, er en politisk blindgyde«, sagde talsperson for det russiske Udenrigsministerium Maria Zakharova kort tid efter, at der begyndte at indløbe rapporter om angrebene i Bruxelles, rapporterer BRICS Post. »De kan ikke støtte terrorister i én del af verden uden at forvente, at de også vil dukke op i en anden del.«

Med en anklagende finger rettet mod NATO for at forsømme forsvaret af sin egen baghave, og med et udfald mod NATO’s generalsekretær Jens Stoltenberg, tweetede chefen for Ruslands parlamentskomite for udenrigsanliggender, Alexey Pushkov, at NATO-chefen har tilladt »folk at sprænge sig selv i luften lige under hans næse«, mens »NATO var optaget af at bekæmpe den imaginære, russiske trussel«, rapporterer Newsweek.

Se også: Putin: Rusland er forpligtet over for fredsproces i Syrien; fortsat militær årvågenhed over for terrorisme 

19. marts 2016 – Efter at der nu er gået flere dage, siden den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin gav meddelelse om den delvise tilbagetrækning af russiske militærstyrker fra Syrien, er de mere generelle principper, der ligger bag dette træk, ved at blive åbenbare for relativt kompetente iagttagere. Fyodor Lukyanov, redaktør for Russia in Global Affairs, skrev i går en artikel i Huffington Post, hvor han går mere i detaljer med, hvorfor og hvordan, Putins strategi i Syrien har lagt fundamentet for en politisk afgørelse. Putin har gjort det, han sagde, han ville gøre lige fra begyndelsen, bemærker Lukyanov. Han bemærker desuden det fundamentale skel mellem det russiske og vestlige verdenssyn: »Fra Moskvas standpunkt kan kun støtte til legitime regeringer, selv de ikke-demokratiske, i det mindste sinke det overvældende kollaps af det regionale sikkerhedssystem og understøtte generel stabilitet. Alle ambitioner om at forbedre den måde, nationer regeres på, fører til ukontrolleret socio-politisk eksplosion og nedtagelse af institutioner, hvilket er den bedste måde at skabe et vakuum for terrorisme på. Den vestlige fremgangsmåde er den modsatte: autoritære og dermed ’onde’ regeringer bør erstattes af demokratiske, ’gode’ regeringer. Det er derfor, det russiske mantra lyder ’rør ikke ved det, der er tilbage’, alt imens det vestlige mantra er ’diktator må væk’. Dette er grunden til, at Ruslands fremgangsmåde over for Syrien var at styrke staten, i modsætning til de amerikansk anførte operationer for regimeskift.«

I henseende til at skabe betingelserne for en politisk afgørelse har Moskva ændret betingelserne på jorden. »Oppositionen har ikke længere noget håb om at vinde militært, og det samme gælder for regimet efter en eventuel exit af russiske tropper [selv om en iagttager påpeger, at der har været meget få russiske tropper på jorden, mens luftstøtte til den syriske hær fortsætter, -red.]. Moskva ønsker ikke at blive et gidsel for Damaskus’ politik, der søger at bevare status quo«, skriver Lukyanov.  »Men det er kun få i Moskva, der mener, at det nuværende syriske regime vil holde længe uden ændringer. Syrien har brug for dybtgående reformer for at genoprette staten. Og Moskvas beslutning om delvis at trække sig tilbage er også et signal til de syriske myndigheder om, at Rusland ikke vil gøre deres arbejde for dem.«

Krigen mod ISIS må nu vende sig mod en krig på jorden, ideelt set med en forenet indsats fra både regeringens og oppositionens styrker. »Men dette kan kun opnås gennem en politisk proces«, skriver Lukyanov. »Ved at intervenere i oktober viste Moskva oppositionen, at den ikke kan forvente at vinde denne krig«, konkluderer Lukyanov. »Ved nu her i marts at trække nogle styrker ud, sender Rusland det samme signal til regimet: det kan ikke forlade sig på russisk militærmagt for at vinde en total, militær sejr.« Syrien vil forandre sig, men det vil blive et Syrien, hvor Moskva kan indgå med alle parter, og dette vil give mulighed for en politisk afgørelse.

Den tidligere officer i MI6, Alistair Crooke, skrev også en artikel i Huffington Post og fremfører, at Ruslands tilbagetrækning ikke så meget er en tilbagetrækning, som det er en rotation af styrker, idet russiske styrker aktivt støtter den syriske hær dér, hvor den er i kamp mod ISIS. Men hvad så siden, man ønsker at kalde det, så er det »et temposkift, der med overlæg bruges til at metastasere politikken, til med et voldsomt stød at vælte politikken af sporet og ud på nye veje«. Efter Crookes mening kunne en kickstart af forhandlinger mellem parterne i konflikten være mindre vigtig for Putin end at fremtvinge reelt samarbejde fra USA’s side, men han har under alle omstændigheder opnået begge dele. »Putins tilbagetrækning – eller rotation – har utvivlsomt galvaniseret den politiske ramme på forskellig vis. Det lægger pres både på Damaskus og på de oppositionsgrupper, der deltager i Genève-forhandlingerne – med mindre hele den russiske luftstyrke af en eller anden grund skulle blive tvunget til vende tilbage«, skriver Crooke. »Mere end noget andet, pålægger det USA det ubehagelige ansvar at standse sine allieredes (Tyrkiet, Saudi-Arabien og Qatar) bevæbning og finansiering af deres stedfortrædere i denne krig.«

Crooke fortsætter med at sige, at der er en fælles tråd, der løber igennem både krisen i Ukraine og Syrien for Putin: at undgå en konfrontation med NATO og Vesten, men han antyder, at et arrangement i stil med Minsk-aftalerne ikke ville passe til Syrien. Syrien var før jihadiernes ankomst ikke en sekterisk nation, så den form for føderalisme, som Rusland gerne ser i Ukraine, ville ikke fungere i Syrien. Men den virkeligt interessante del af Crookes rapport er indikeringen af, at det intense, russiske arbejde for at skabe våbenstilstand på jorden – flere end 40 sådanne lokale våbenhviler er blevet underskrevet – i realiteten er en flanke imod saudiernes potentielle sabotage i form af den Høje Forhandlingskomite. »Hvis Genève-processen slår fejl, vil vi få en proces fra bunden og op at se i stedet«, skriver Crooke. Han burde have sagt det ligeud: denne indsats er en flanke imod den saudisk sponsorerede Høje Forhandlingskomite. »På basis af disse aftaler, af hvilke nogle er blevet forhandlet af FN og andre af den syriske regering, vil lokale valg sluttelig blive afholdt. Dernæst regionale valg. Dernæst valg til parlamentet. Forfatningen vil blive revideret. Og sluttelig vil præsidentvalg blive afholdt under international overvågning. Kort sagt, så ville syrere – både hjemme og i eksil – sluttelig træffe beslutning om deres egen styrelse.« For at dette skal kunne lade sig gøre, er det dog afgørende med tillid mellem USA og Rusland. Der er intet andet valg på bordet nu, hvor regimeskift er taget af bordet.

17. marts 2016 – Den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin holdt i dag en tale i Kreml ved en ceremoni for præsentation af statsmedaljer til dem, der deltog i den militære operation i Syrien. Flere end 700 officerer, mænd og kvinder fra luftstyrkerne, styrker på jorden og flåden, deltog i ceremonien i Skt. Georgs Sal sammen med repræsentanter fra den militær-industrielle sektor.

Præsident Putin bekræftede, at russisk militærstøtte til Bashar al-Assads regering vil fortsætte, og at den russiske flygruppe hurtigt kunne deployeres tilbage til Syrien, om nødvendigt.

»Hvis det bliver nødvendigt, vil Rusland være i stand til at forstærke sin gruppe i regionen i løbet af få timer til en størrelse, der kræves i en specifik situation, og at bruge alle de tilgængelige muligheder«, sagde Putin. »Det er ikke noget, vi ville ønske at gøre. En militær eskalering er ikke vort valg. Derfor regner vi stadig med begge siders sunde fornuft, med tilslutning fra både de syriske myndigheders og oppositionens side til en fredelig proces.«

Den primære opgave for den tilbageværende russiske styrke i Syrien »er at overvåge våbenhvilen og skabe betingelser for en intern, politisk dialog i Syrien«, sagde Putin, inklusive elementer fra luftforsvaret for at forsvare dem. Han bekræftede også, at Rusland har hjulpet med at genoprette det syriske luftforsvars kapacitet, der tydeligvis er et meget skarpt budskab til Tyrkiet og andre magter, der stadig kunne have ambitioner i stil med Sykes-Picot i Syrien. »Vi går frem fra fundamentale, internationale normer: ingen har ret til at krænke et suverænt lands luftrum, i dette tilfælde Syrien«, sagde Putin. »Vi har, sammen med den amerikanske side, skabt en effektiv mekanisme for at forhindre hændelser i luften, men alle vore partnere er blevet advaret om, at vore luftforsvarssystemer vil blive brugt imod ethvert mål, som vi vurderer som en trussel mod russisk militærpersonel«, fortsatte han. »Jeg vil gerne understrege: ethvert mål.«

Russisk støtte til den syriske regering vil fortsætte i form af finansiel hjælp, forsyninger af udstyr og våben, hjælp til uddannelse og opbygning af syriske bevæbnede styrker, støtte til rekognoscering og hjælp til hovedkvarterer til planlægningsoperationer.

Mod slutningen af sin tale mindede Putin atter om Ruslands lektier fra Anden Verdenskrig, der har formet hans syn, som Lyndon LaRouche har påpeget, selv om Putin endnu ikke var født. Han bemærkede, at de nyeste russiske våben bestod prøven, ikke på øvelsesområder, men i ægte kamp. »Livet selv har vist, at de er en pålidelig garanti for vort lands sikkerhed«, sagde han, og dernæst, »Vi bør holde os de trusler for øje, der kommer, når vi ikke gør tingene til tiden; vi bør huske lektien fra historien, inklusive de tragiske begivenheder fra begyndelsen af Anden Verdenskrig og den Store Patriotiske Krig, den pris, vi betalte for fejltagelser i militæropbygning og planlægning, og manglen på nyt militærudstyr. Alt bør udføres til tiden, hvorimod svaghed, sjusk og forsømmelse altid er farligt.«

Foto: Den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin sammen med udenrigsminister Sergej Lavrov (venstre) og forsvarsminister Sergej Shoigu (højre). 

Alt dette er et mål for det faktum, at det transatlantiske område er dødt; og det vil kun begynde at vende denne død omkring, hvis der finder en revolutionær, fundamental forandring sted i politikken. Denne alternative politik gennemføres i det eurasiske og asiatiske Stillehavsområde, anført af Kina, af Rusland, og er reflekteret i den måde, hvorpå præsident Putin har navigeret den strategiske situation.

Så den store trussel kommer fra det faktum, at et døende Britisk Imperium – der er uigenkaldeligt dømt til undergang – kæmper for sit liv og forsøger at bevare noget, der ikke længere kan bevares.

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Engelsk udskrift: I denne uge får vi en opdatering fra Kesha Rogers i Texas, som anfører en politik for en genoplivelse af det amerikanske NASA-rumprogram; Jason Ross fortsætter sagaen om Gottfried Leibniz; og Jeffrey Steinberg giver os Lyndon LaRouches analyse af betydningen for fredsprocessen i Syrien af de seneste udviklinger, med den russiske militære tilbagetrækning.

– DELIGHT IN CREATING SURPRISES! –

International Webcast March 18, 2016

MATTHEW OGDEN: Good Evening! It's March 18th, 2016. My name
is Matthew Ogden, and I would like to thank you for joining us
for our weekly Friday evening broadcast, here, on
larouchepac.com. I'm joined in the studio tonight by Jeffrey
Steinberg from {Executive Intelligence Review}; and Jason Ross,
from the LaRouche PAC science team; and we're joined via video by
Kesha Rogers, multiple-time candidate for Federal office from the
state of Texas, and leading member of the LaRouche PAC Policy
Committee.
All of us had a chance to meet with Mr. LaRouche, both in
person and via telephone connection (in the case of Kesha),
earlier this morning. Mr. LaRouche had some very definite and
specific ideas which he wished for us to convey. Mr. LaRouche was
{emphatic} when we met with him earlier today, that the global
agenda right now is being set by Russia and by China, and their
allies. He said that the initiative in creating the future and
shaping present global policy, lies with those two countries,
strategically — in the case of Russia, as is very clear with
what is occurring in Syria right now; and economically and
scientifically — in the case of China.
You can see very clearly that the outdated and archaic
methods of the trans-Atlantic system are proving to be impotent,
both in the case of resolving the current grave crises which are
facing mankind as a planetary species right now, but also
impotent in setting the agenda and fulfilling and laying out the
vision for the future of mankind. The mission which has been
undertaken by China, in terms of their objective to explore the
far side of the Moon — something which is going to be unfolding
over the coming two years — exemplifies the necessary identity
which mankind must have in order to affirm and to fulfill our
true nature as a creative species.
Mr. LaRouche stated that something that we should develop,
in dialogue with him and with each other, is to think about the
open questions, the unanswered questions about how is mankind, a
species, reflective of a much larger, and as yet not fully
understood, creative characteristic of the galactic system as a
whole. This is a relationship which Johannes Kepler drew out in
very unique detail in terms of his discoveries about our {Solar}
System, but we have many, many large and unanswered questions of
what is the role of the human species in our relationship to the
galactic system as a whole, and then the complex of galactic
systems as a much, much larger whole.
Mr. LaRouche said that this mission to explore the "dark
side" of the Moon, so-called, is a pathway in order to begin to
understand even the opening of the questions along these lines.
The dark side of the Moon, his hypothesis was, is where you can
find some of the shadows of this much larger system, have insight
into it, and also to begin to understand mankind's role as
reflective of these broader creative processes which are involved
in these great astronomical systems.
This is the spirit of the United States at our best. Our
republic was founded on these kinds of unique ideas, as we've
discussed here in previous weeks. The role of the great
philosopher and scientist Gottfried Leibniz is a major
contributor, a "founding father", or "founding grand-father" of
our republic. This is something which I know Jason Ross has
presented multiple times and is in the process of having a series
of developing classes on that subject; and I'm sure we'll be part
of his discussion later today.
But also, this is what you can see in a great statesman,
such as Abraham Lincoln — very, very much so. Franklin
Roosevelt; and John F. Kennedy. Tragically, that spirit in the
United States has deteriorated drastically. We see now that the
leadership does indeed lie with China and with Russia; and this
is something which Kesha Rogers, who is joining us here today,
wrote about in an editorial which is appearing in this week's
edition of the {Executive Intelligence Review} magazine. Kesha's
editorial is titled, "To Save the United States Economy, Revive
the Space Program."
Kesha and I had a brief conversation earlier this afternoon.
I know she has some broader ideas to develop on this subject, so,
without further ado, I would like to hand over the podium to
Kesha Rogers.

KESHA ROGERS: Thank you, Matt. I think I'd like to start,
first of all, by continuing to develop what has and must be the
focal point by which we come to understand the necessity for the
revival and the defense of, not just the American and U.S. space
program, which I have continued to be a leader in championing the
development and the necessity of our space program and what it
truly represents for the progress of all mankind. But just on the
editorial that I wrote, I think, to understand it, it's not just
from the standpoint of looking at the economic conditions of the
United States and some practical applications to economics that
the space program will provide; but we also have to look at it
from the standpoint of is, the space program as a true conception
of real economic value. This is what's actually missing from our
thinking and what has been attacked by the current Wall
Street/British imperial system, is that economic value is based,
from {that} standpoint, on monetary value and not on the creative
powers and progress of the human mind.
The real question at hand right now, is to bring about — as
we're seeing and will be developed further in these discussions
today — a new conception of what is the identity and what is the
purpose of mankind. I have continued to use the example and the
works of the great pioneer of space flight, space pioneer Krafft
Ehricke; and looking at his conception of mankind as a
space-faring creature, as the understanding of mankind's
"extra-terrestrial imperative," as that which must be identified
and understood.
If you look at the conditions of the space program and why
it's so important, you take the example, for instance, of what
China is doing now, as completely rejecting this monetarist
policy; that the space program is not how much money you're going
to put into pet projects and specific projects. It is creating
something that's never been created before, to actually create a
new conception and identity of mankind, from the standpoint of
the idea of acting on the future.  That's what this idea and what
is being developed, for instance with China in their
investigation of the far side of the Moon.
People may look at this, "Well what is this going to
benefit us? How is this going to improve the economic conditions,
in terms of monetary value, or any of this?" But that is the
wrong way to look at it; because the problem right now is that
what you have seen is two different opposing conceptions of the
view of mankind. One coming from the trans-Atlantic system,
coming from a collapsing imperial system that has been based on
money and monetary value that is dying; and the other is
represented by what Russia and China are doing. And as Matt
emphasized and what I developed in my recent writing, was that
this was the mindset of the great leaders of our nation,
represented by the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, of Franklin
Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, [and] John F. Kennedy. It wasn't just
on the creating of new projects per se, but on a whole new
different conception of the identity of mankind.
And so, you take for instance, the example of what we
accomplished in the United States, of landing a man on the Moon
— the idea that Kennedy put forward, that by the end of decade
we would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth.
What was the vision and intention behind that? Was it just the
idea that we would go and plant our flag on the Moon? This would
be some short-term gratification and so forth? Or, was it a
forward-thinking outlook, in terms of the direction of mankind in
recognizing what Krafft Ericke, the great pioneer of space
flight, recognized, that mankind was not just a creature of the
planet Earth. We were not just a part of, as he called it, a
"closed system," and so it was our responsibility to go out and
to do what no other animal had the capability of doing; of
actually conquering and developing, coming to understand what is
the purpose of mankind and what is the development of mankind in
the universe as a creature of our solar system and of the galaxy
as a whole.
One thing that I thought was very insightful, is that Krafft
Ericke wrote about the understanding of the Renaissance, the
Classical Renaissance, as an achievement of human progress. And
also the Classical Renaissance is something that contributed to
the development of what became our space program and what was the
intention that guided the direction of space travel and the space
program.
I'll just read a quick quote from what he expressed on this
idea. He says, "The development of the idea of space travel was
always the most logical and most noble consequence of the
Renaissance ideal, which again places man in an organic and
active relationship with his surrounding universe and which,
perceived in the synthesis of knowledge and capabilities, its
highest ideals."
So you look at this from the standpoint of Krafft Ericke
understanding that the Renaissance that was guided by the
scientific breakthroughs which I'm sure you'll hear a lot more
from my colleague Jason there, of Brunelleschi, or the
breakthroughs that came about from the works of Kepler. That the
idea of mankind, is to create something fundamentally new,
something that had never been created before, and increasing the
relationship of mankind to the Universe.
Now that's economic value! That is not what is being
discussed when you look at these debates going back and forth
from the standpoint of these Congress Members to the space
community, and what budgets are being cut and should not be cut.
But the reality is, as I stated before, we have to have, in the
defense of the space program, a new conception of the direction
of mankind. That means we're removing all limitations to
progress, all limitations that are put on mankind's ability to
continue to understand how to make new discoveries in the
principles scientifically of what's out there. Why should we
actually investigate the Solar System? What is our mission in
doing so? And it's not about a money-making short-term
gratification. And so, I think this emphasis that Krafft Ehricke
put on the renaissance as an ideal of looking at why we have, as
a human species, an extraterrestrial imperative, is really a
continued expression of what you're seeing coming from China; not
just in their space program, but in the development of the
win-win strategy of cooperation for all mankind, for every nation
to come to join together. And to further the progress of
addressing the necessary challenges to the economic condition of
the planet by actually recognizing that the solutions do not lie
right here on planet Earth.
So, I think that's the conceptions I wanted to get across;
and what I hope to have further discussion on as we continue this
fight to identify what is the real mission of the space program,
and how we come to rid the world immediately of this current dead
system that's keeping us from advancing in the way that we should
be.

OGDEN: Thank you very much, Kesha; and I can recommend that
people read what you've written in the current edition of
{Executive Intelligence Review}. I also know that you're planning
on making a video statement — which will be posted on the
LaRouche PAC website and available for people — developing some
of these ideas a little bit more in detail.
So, if people have been watching this website, you know that
Jason Ross has also been working very closely with Kesha to
develop some of these ideas with their implications from the
standpoint of a scientist, whom I hope you are becoming more
familiar with by now — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. As we
discussed last week on this webcast, I think if you begin to
consider this question which Kesha just laid on the table for us,
about how do you create a future for mankind. How do you initiate
the creation of something which is completely new, as we move
into the future? Now, this can never be done through the
replication of the past; there's no precedent for a discovery. A
discovery is something which is always new, and is created {de
novo} and is introduced, which changes the course of human
history. Obviously, there is a lineage that goes back to
Gottfried Leibniz, and many Leibnizians who have lived since him:
Karl Gauss; Bernhard Riemann; Albert Einstein; and I would even
include Mr. Lyndon LaRouche in that lineage.
So, without further ado, I'm going to ask Jason to elaborate
a little bit more; picking up on what Kesha just left off on.

JASON ROSS: Thanks, Matt. Well, I think if you consider how
to conceptualize the value of the kinds of programs that Kesha
was discussing that we're promoting today, you reach a
contradiction if you try to approach them from a monetarist
standpoint. That is, the kind of economics that's generally
taught today, the kind of economics practiced as a religion —
well, I was going to say as a religion on Wall Street; the
primary religion on Wall Street is stealing — but, in general,
the basis of thinking is that economy is about money; we can
measure things in terms of money. How much is somebody willing to
pay for something? That's how valuable it is. That isn't. Money
doesn't measure different qualities; money doesn't measure the
future potential that something is able to create. And if you
base money on how much somebody's willing to pay for something,
you don't distinguish between things that are good and useful
versus bad and vices. People are willing to pay for heroin;
people are willing to pay for other opioids if they're addicted
to it. Does that mean that those drugs, as used by those people,
are valuable, or worth something because they're willing to pay
for them? Quite the contrary. So, we need a different way of
thinking about how we can measure economic value if we're going
to be human economists, instead of Wall Street magicians or
Satanists.
So, the reason we have economy is that we aren't animals;
animals don't have economies. Animals don't change what they do
from generation to generation; they don't improve, they don't
develop. We do. We create a new kind of time for ourselves. In a
very real way, humanity is a totally new and totally distinct
force of nature from anything else. Over geological time,
geologists describe to us how the Earth has changed, or how a
planet has formed; this is over hundreds of millions of years.
Over evolutionary time, perhaps tens of millions of years, we're
able to see transformations in the kinds of life that exists on
the planet. Over biological time, we have short-term periods of
the life of an organism, of its respiration, very much tied to
the daily cycle of the Earth, for example. And with humans, we
have a different kind of time. We create time. The flow of
history isn't always the same speed.
During the Dark Ages, when not much happened, you might say
that human time slowed down. And with the Renaissance, and with
the ability to discover more about nature by having a more
powerful way of thinking about it, and a more powerful conception
of us as human beings interacting with it; you could say that
time sped up. We create a certain time in that we create new eras
of humanity; not in the way that geology or evolution does, but
willfully by developing new principles that if we were animals,
you would say this is a whole new type of life all together. Life
moving from the oceans onto land; that's a totally different
quality of life. Life having developed photosynthesis and using
the Sun as a power source; that's a totally different kind of
life. But we're still human beings after the discovery of the
combustion engine, for example; the use of heat-powered
machinery. We create in ourselves the change that's comparable
only to large-scale evolutionary changes when we look at life in
general. So, we're distinct.
Now, how do we understand this? Both how do we understand
that world around us that we act on and interact with; and how do
we understand our thoughts about it and our ability to progress
and use the practice of science itself? What sort of terrain is
it? What sort of world is it? The physical world and the mental
world.
Well, here's where I'd like to take up some concepts that
Mr. LaRouche has been bringing up recently about Bernhard Riemann
and about Gottfried Leibniz, and a bit about Einstein, too, who
got the verification of his hypothesis of gravity waves announced
very near his birthday this year — which was on Monday. So,
let's think about it. Is the terrain that we're operating on, one
which is steady and indifferent to our actions? Or, is it one
where what we do and what we discover and how we interact with
it, changes that world around us in a way that the world is not
fixed; either in ourselves or in our understanding of it? And,
that is the case; we transform the world in changing our mental
understanding of it. The math that we use in understanding how do
we conceptualize that world; that changes our interaction with
it, and we're a force of nature. We change the operation of the
forces of nature by improving our understanding of the world
around us and of ourselves and our ability to discover such
things. How can we possibly think about that quality of change?
As a couple of other examples, think about the difference
between what you might say is a fixed object — let's say iron
oxide. Iron oxide is basically rust; it's a mineral that's rust.
It's reddish brown, it's not terribly useful; but with the
development of metallurgy, instead of being a deposit of some
compound, it's now a resource. It's an ore from which we can
create iron and steel. The substance itself, did it change
chemically? It did in terms of the potential of what we could do
with it. And remember, we're a force of nature; we changed what
it was. It has to be thought of that way.
Or, what's the value of a technology? How does it change
over time? In the 1400s, windmills were a great invention; they
were somewhat new on the scene. They allowed pumping water, they
allowed grinding grain. That's excellent; that's a breakthrough.
Are windmills valuable today for making electricity? I don't
think so. Consider helium; helium is an interesting element. It
was first discovered in the Sun, not on Earth. It was discovered
in the Sun by the kind of light that came from the Sun when that
light was broken up into a rainbow with a prism, and certain
bands of the absence or presence of color were the clue that
there was a new element out there named helium, after Helios, the
Sun. That element, what's it used for? You might think of it's
being used to fill up balloons for children; you might think of
it being used as a gas for cooling for physical purposes or for
experiments. It's also, as Helium-3, an ideal fuel for fusion.
So, this substance transforms its meaning based on our developing
understanding. How can we think about this?
Well, let's take the example of Bernhard Riemann. In 1854,
Bernhard Riemann delivered a presentation and a paper on the
subject of the hypotheses that underlie geometry. That might
sound like a dry title; it might sound like it has nothing to do
with physical economy or anything that we'd want to be doing
right now. But this paper is very important in the view of Lyndon
LaRouche for his own development and as a way of understanding
economics. So, let's say why. Very briefly, Riemann points out
that our conception of space itself and of the way things operate
in space is taken for granted. The ideas that we use to
understand it, they don't really come from experiments per se, or
from physical theories; they come from our thoughts about space.
For example, the idea that space has no particular
characteristics of its own; that was the view of Isaac Newton.
Newton said space is uniform, it's out there; things occur within
space. Space is there first, it's just space; it has no
characteristics in particular. Newton said the same thing about
time; that time flows on uniformly. That's what time is; it's
really not much of a definition, or an understanding.
Geometric ideas that people had, for example, are the idea
that if you add up the angles in a triangle, you get 180 degrees.
Now, if you're drawing triangles on flat paper, yes that's true;
if you draw them on a curved surface like a sphere, it's not
true. Triangles on a sphere have more than 180 degrees in them.
If you then ask, "What if I draw a triangle in space?"; that's a
tough question. When we connect points in space, is the space
between them flat, is it curved? How could we discover that, and
what would be the basis of it having a curvature if it wasn't
flat?
What Riemann does, is he discusses through all the possible
ways that this could come about. He discusses in general,
curvature — both of surfaces and of space; how a space could be
curved. He works out in general how you could do that; but he
can't answer the question. He says, to answer the question,
"What's the nature of the space, and which processes unfold?";
you have to leave the department of mathematics and you have to
go to the physics department. You can't answer questions like
that just be pure reasoning; you got to have a hypothesis —
"What physically makes space?" And in this way, he's coming back
to the view of Gottfried Leibniz, who, just to say very briefly,
Leibniz and Newton totally disagreed on a number of subjects.
People may have heard of the dispute over their invention of the
calculus; did Leibniz steal it from Newton, or vice versa? But
there's a lot more there.
One of the major disputes they had was about space. Newton's
view was that space and time were absolute; and Leibniz's view
that space was a way of understanding co-occurrences. The
relationship of things that are here at the same time — that's
space; and for Leibniz, time was the evolution of things, how
things change. But time didn't have its own existence. Now,
that's precisely what Einstein took up in his theories of
relativity; he did what Riemann said had to be done. He didn't
finish the job; but he did what Riemann said had to be done.
Einstein overthrew, in a very specific way, the outlook of
Newton; Einstein showed that space was not flat, that it was bent
in special relativity, that it was curved in general relativity.
And very importantly, the basis of its shape, the basis of how
things interact over distances — that sense of space — was
based not on what a mathematician might imagine, but on what a
physicist hypothesizes. Einstein hypothesized an equivalence
between different observers that the laws of nature shouldn't
depend on whether you're moving; something that Leibniz also said
very explicitly. Einstein considered that light moved at the same
speed to any observer; something he had been pondering since he
was a pretty young man. And he hypothesized that gravitation
would transform the shape of space; that straight lines wouldn't
be straight to the extent that gravity is affecting them. This is
what was seen with the experiments about the position of stars
around the eclipse of the Sun, performed earlier during
Einstein's life; and it's seen in the recent verification of
gravity waves.
So, most people acknowledge that Einstein, OK, this is
physically important; this is a scientist, he discovered things.
What does it have to do with this other point, though, about
understanding humanity, and our role in economy, and our creation
in economy? Well, what Riemann did was, he made it possible to
say that human discovery is a force of nature; it reshapes
nature, it transforms our understanding about the objects around
us. And the basis of that world outside of us, can't be
considered independently of our increasing knowledge about it.
What we know about the world around us changes it, in that it
changes our ability to interact with it.
So, if we're looking for a real idea of what economics is,
throw away any sense of monetarism that says money made in a
whorehouse is just as valuable as money made in a steel plant;
and instead say, "How do we foster scientific discovery? How do
we foster its social implementation through technologies that
physically improve our power over nature and our ability to
provide improving standards of living and promote the general
welfare of human beings?" If this is our basis of economics,
fostering that kind of outlook, then I think we can say that
Gottfried Leibniz was the first physical economist in that sense.
I'll just reference to the show on Leibniz from earlier this
week, and one of the documents I cited there; Leibniz's paper on
the creation of a society for science and economy in Germany. And
I think if you read that paper, you'll be astonished at how
Leibniz pulls together both promotion of discovery, how that
works, what kind of thoughts are needed, how people should work
together, and how to implement those thoughts to improve people's
lives to the betterment of mankind. And that really has to be the
basis of our economics.
One simple rough measure, proposed by LaRouche to measure
this, is the potential population density. How many people can be
supported in a given area? That's a measure that is fixed for
animals. For a certain kind of environment, the number of deer
that can live there; deer don't change that. Human beings do. And
as a rough measure of economic progress, we could take that
value. What's the potential population that we're able to
support? The ability to use these thoughts is one that is not
being expressed in the trans-Atlantic at present. In our
discussion today, Mr. LaRouche talked about the positive impact
that Riemann had had on Italian science. Riemann had
tuberculosis, and spent a good deal of time later in life — he
didn't live that long — but later in his short life in Italy;
where thoughts from Riemann influenced the development of
hydrodynamics, stretching all the way into the time of airplanes
and the consideration of getting out into space.
Today, this overall outlook is best represented by Russia,
and especially at present, by China. So, this doesn't have to be
a purely Chinese development; this is clearly something that we
can take up as a mission for ourselves to contribute to here in
the United States and in the nations around the globe. And we've
got very special and precious people in the past that we can look
to for insights in how to make the next breakthroughs in
developing our understanding of what it is to be human, the basis
of human culture, and how best to advance human economy.

OGDEN: Thank you very much, Jason. Now, as Jason just
mentioned, and as I said in the beginning, really right now you
do see the initiative — the economic and the scientific
initiative — being taken by China to lead mankind into the
future; especially with the space program. You also see the
initiative being taken by Russia; and this is very clearly
illustrated this week with the actions that have been taken by
Russia in Syria. The strategic initiative lies in Putin's actions
there. As Mr. LaRouche emphasized, Putin is setting the agenda;
he is constantly on the flank. You can see this going back to the
chemical weapons, where Putin took the initiative to say fine, we
will help Assad dismantle these chemical weapons. It can be seen
with the decision to intervene, a few months back, by Putin into
the situation in Syria; and then with the pull-out that happened
earlier this week. What's clear is that every step along the way,
Putin's actions have caught Washington and Obama by surprise;
constantly breaking profile. And this is what's called "taking
the flank" in a military sense. There's clear precedence, as Mr.
LaRouche always uses the example, of Douglas MacArthur's actions
in Inchon. You always, always act on the surprise.
Now, this was illustrated I think just anecdotally very well
in an article that was published March 15th — Tuesday of this
week — in the {New York Times}, with a very apropos headline
which read "Putin's Syria Tactics Keep Him at the Fore, and Leave
Everyone Else Guessing". I just want to read the first paragraph
of that article, actually, because I think it just describes very
vividly what we mean by this:
"President Vladimir Putin's order to withdraw the bulk of
Russian forces from Syria seemingly caught Washington, Damascus,
and everyone in between off guard; just the way the Russian
leader likes it. By all accounts, Mr. Putin delights in creating
surprises."
So, this is the subject of our institutional question for
this week; which Mr. LaRouche had some very specific words to say
in response to, which I'm going to let Jeff elaborate on for us.
But let me just read the text of this question to start off.
"Mr. LaRouche, as you know, earlier this week, at the start
of the Geneva Peace Talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin
announced that he ordered the withdrawal of some of the Russian
military forces in Syria. The withdrawal of Russian fighter
planes began the next day and has continued. A residual force
will remain at the naval base at Tartus and at the air base in
Latakia. How do you view Putin's decision? How might it impact
the Russian, American, and United Nations efforts to bring the
Syrian war to an end, now underway in Geneva?"

STEINBERG: Of course, we've taking up the bulk of this
week's report with a discussion about man's extraterrestrial
imperative; the need for man to get off of the planet Earth,
because man was never an Earthbound creature. So, we're at a
point right now where Mr. LaRouche was delighted in our
discussion earlier today at the prospect of over the next two
years, China going through the preparations for the launching of
an orbiter that will be hopefully landing on the back side of the
Moon. And will for the first time, give mankind a window into the
Solar System and the Galaxy beyond. And this is something of
enormous importance and enormous excitement, because it puts this
nature of man as an extraterrestrial creature capable through
creative discovery, of not remaining Earthbound, but of exploring
the near Solar System and beyond. And it reminds me that
virtually every astronaut and cosmonaut who has travelled in
space, has remarked at one point or other, that having the
vantage point of looking down on Earth, you become at one point
overwhelmed with the fact that so much of what goes on, on the
planet of Earth, is trivial relative to the challenges that are
very obvious when you look at man from the standpoint of man's
ability to explore the Universe and make these kinds of
discoveries. And it was that approach that actually informed our
discussion about the Syria situation per se. Because as Matt
said, Russian President Putin has demonstrated once again that he
has a certain understanding that at the core of grand strategy is
always the idea of continuously moving; continuously flanking;
continuously confusing your adversaries by constantly being on
this kind of offensive.
So, we do have the developments of the past days, where at
the very moment that the Geneva second round of peace talks were
beginning, President Putin announced a draw-down of the Russian
military forces inside Syria. And in fact, the very next morning
— Tuesday morning of this week — the first Russian bombers and
other air force equipment and personnel began leaving. Now, the
Russians are there still; make no mistake about it. Russia has
established a fundamental change in the situation on the ground,
which is both a military shift and a shift at the diplomatic
table taking place right now in Geneva. Russia has a permanent
naval base fully established and more secured than at any time
previously at the port of Tartus; and it has now a major air
force facility in the Latakia province. And more recently this
week, yesterday President Putin issued a statement where he said,
if the circumstances change, if the peace process does not go
forward, then Russian forces can be reinforced in Syria, not in a
matter of days, but in a matter of hours. And quite clearly, the
infrastructure is in place for that to happen.
But Mr. LaRouche wanted to make a larger and much more
fundamental point about what is going on here. What he emphasized
is that you can't lose sight of the fact that the war is still
going on. We don't know how things are going to play out; what we
do know, is that there has been a change of conditions. In fact,
there was a major change of conditions beginning on September
30th of last year, when the major Russian military presence
began. And when the situation systematically shifted from that
point on, and yet at the same time, certain leading political
figures around the world — the spokesman for the Jordanian
government; Steffan de Mistura, the UN representative for Syria
— they all said, "We're not surprised by President Putin's
announcement this past Monday." In the case of the Jordanians,
the chief of staff of the Jordanian military, the chief of staff
of the Syrian military, were both in Moscow last October; and
they met with Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, they met with
President Putin. And they were told quite clearly that the
Russian mission was not a permanent mission; but was a limited
mission in both size and in time duration. And that when the
circumstances reached the point where it was feasible to reach a
diplomatic solution to the Syria crisis, that the Russian forces
would begin to be withdrawn.
As Matt pointed out with the {New York Times} coverage,
people in the West were scratching their heads, because they
refused to take note of the fact that Putin is a strategic
thinker. And very often, what he says — in most cases, in fact
— is exactly what he intends to do; but he's not going to do it
in a predictable fashion. He's going to do it in a way that will
catch you by surprise. And the biggest surprise is that most
political thinkers in the West, most officials in government in
the West, are ignorant and prejudiced. So, their own prejudices
prevent them from understanding how Putin thinks about these
things. Their own prejudices prevent them from understanding
because they're incapable of thinking in this kind of a strategic
fashion. Now the problem is, that we're still in a state of
warfare; and that state of warfare will continue until certain
things occur that go way beyond the borders of Syria.
Until the British Empire ceases to exist, there will be a
condition of warfare on this planet. We see it, not necessarily
in the form of warfare that most people think about — soldiers
shooting, artillery pieces firing, bombers dropping bombs. Look
what's happening right now in Brazil. The British Empire is
waging a war against the new emerging Asia-Pacific-centered
global system. They're trying to destabilize Brazil, which is a
founding member of the BRICS. There's a similar effort underway
to destabilize the Zuman government in South Africa; because
South Africa is the latest country to join in the BRICS
initiative.
So, there are all kinds of problems going on; you can't look
for a simply linear expectation or projection of what's going to
happen by the situation now ongoing on the ground in Syria or in
Geneva. Another example: President Obama is taking a series of
measures that will lead unavoidably — unless they're reversed —
to a major confrontation between the United States and China. We
had a report earlier this week from David Ignatius in the
{Washington Post}, who is very often a kind of reliable leak
sheet for what's going on inside the administration. And the
Obama administration is preparing for confrontation with China
over the South China Sea; they're waiting for a ruling from the
World Court in the Hague on a complaint filed by the Philippines.
So the United States is preparing contingencies for poking China
in the eye, for carrying out new provocations against China. The
sanctions that President Obama announced this week, ostensibly
against North Korea, are in fact sanctions against China; they go
way beyond what was agreed upon by China and the United States at
the United Nations.
So, if you take all of these factors into account, and if
you think of them as a process, not simply as a series of
discrete events, then you get a very clear idea of what Mr.
LaRouche means when he says that the planet, in general terms, is
in a state of war. Now, ultimately what this state of warfare
comes down to, is the fact that you have a new emerging
Asia-Pacific-centered future. It's defined by the economic
initiatives of China, by the One Belt-One Road policy, and most
emphatically by China's systematic plan for collaborating with
other nations on the kind of space exploration that once was a
hallmark of American policy; but has not been abandoned.
President Obama has spent the last seven years systematically
taking down and dismantling America's space capability; and Kesha
is leading the fight to reverse that process.
Over the last 15 years, if you look at the Bush/Cheney
administration followed by the Obama administration, the United
States has been under British occupation. Both Bush/Cheney and
Obama were each, in their own way, governments that were at the
beck and call of the British Empire, of the policies of the
British financial oligarchy operating through Wall Street. And as
the result, the United States, really the entire trans-Atlantic
region, is dead. Germany was once a great prospering economy; the
result of the "economic miracle" that Franklin Roosevelt
envisioned for the post-World War II period; no replay of
Versailles, but a completely different approach. Germany has now
been destroyed by the policies largely coming from the British
Empire. All of continental Europe is hopelessly and irreversibly
bankrupt; and Mario Draghi's announcement of an expansion of
quantitative easing and a zero interest rate policy is a
reflection that certain people are desperate over the fact that
Europe is doomed, that the United States under present
circumstances. We've talked in recent months on this broadcast
about the death rate increase in the United States; the true rate
of unemployment; the epidemic of heroin addiction and heroin
overdose deaths; the declining life expectancy in the United
States. These are all measures of the fact that the
trans-Atlantic region is dead; and will only begin to reverse
that death if there is a revolutionary, fundamental change in
policy. That alternative policy is being carried out in the
Eurasian and Asia-Pacific region; led by China, led by Russia,
reflected in the way that Russian President Putin has navigated
the strategic situation.
So, the great threat is coming from the fact that a dying
British Empire — which is irreversibly doomed — is lashing out
and is trying to preserve something that can no longer be
preserved. There was a time when the British Empire could impose
petty tyrannies on countries around the world and achieve a
certain limited degree of stability. That's over with. All of the
efforts within the framework of the mindset of the British
Empire, the mindset of the Obama administration, the mindset of
virtually all European leaders — the French probably the worst
of the bunch on the continent — is doomed; it doesn't work. Yet,
there is an opportunity; and opportunity for all of mankind in
what's going on in the Asia-Pacific region, led by China, by
Russia. India is clearly stepping in to play a significant role
in this new emerging combination, cooperation among nations for
purposes that go beyond national interests, but address the
interests of all of mankind. Egypt is fully established as
orienting towards that new Asia-Pacific combination.
So, this is the larger picture; this is the framework for
judging the initiative taken by President Putin this week. And it
must be judged from the standpoint of the global consequences;
and not just simply the consequences for the immediate
negotiations around Syria. Although his actions this week have
certainly greatly improved the possibility of bringing that
five-year tragedy to an end.

OGDEN: Thank you very much, Jeff. I would just add, the
initiative being taken by these countries also very much has to
do with the decades-long work Mr. Lyndon LaRouche and Mrs. Helga
LaRouche have undertaken. The One Belt-One Road policy that China
has adopted, is the Eurasian Land-Bridge policy which the
LaRouche movement uniquely championed in the beginning of the
1990s. Now, you have an evolution of that to the World
Land-Bridge; and this is what is documented so thoroughly in the
350-page Special Report that was issued by {Executive
Intelligence Review} called "The New Silk Road Becomes the World
Land-Bridge". One very exciting announcement, because you
mentioned Egypt, just this week there was a very high-level event
which was sponsored by the Transportation Ministry in Cairo;
featuring a LaRouche collaborator, Hussein Askary, to announce
the formal publication of the Arabic language of this full,
350-page World Land-Bridge Special Report from {Executive
Intelligence Review}.
So, you can see that at the very highest levels of
government around the world, this is what is shaping the
discussion; the initiatives that the LaRouche movement have taken
for decades. And one final note along those same lines, as we
announced last Friday, Mrs. Helga LaRouche just got back from a
very important trip to India; at which she was one of the
featured speakers in a very prominent, very high-level dialogue
— the Raisina Dialogue. And if people have not seen it yet, a
wonderful half-hour interview that Jason Ross conducted with Mrs.
LaRouche was posted on the LaRouche PAC website earlier this
week. So, if you haven't watched that yet, I would really
encourage you to watch it; and to just think about everything
that has been said here today. Think about these initiatives that
are being taken by some of the world's leading countries to
create the future; and think about the role that the LaRouche
movement has played over years and decades in shaping the
possibility of these initiative being taken today.
So, thank you all very much for joining us here today. I'd
like to thank Kesha Rogers for joining us over video; and I would
like to thank Jeff and Jason here in the studio. Please stay
tuned to larouchepac.com. Good night.

Med formand Tom Gillesberg:

Lyd:

15. marts 2016 (Leder fra LaRouchePAC) – Den vestlige verden var forbløffet i mandags, da præsident Vladimir Putin annoncerede begyndelsen på en tilbagetrækning af Ruslands militære styrker i Syrien – lige så pludseligt og uventet, som han indledte interventionen sidste september. Men Vestens overraskelse skyldes ikke Putin, men den kendsgerning, at stort set ingen i Vesten forstår, hvordan Putin tænker. Han er måske den største strategiske tænker siden general Douglas MacArthur, en fremtids-tænkning af en kvalitet, som i svær grad mangler i USA og Europa i dag.

I en tale, der blev vist over Tv, sagde Putin, der optrådte sammen med sin udenrigsminister Sergei Lavrov og sin forsvarsminister Sergei Shoigu, at missionen stort set var gennemført, og at terroristernes offensiv imod den syriske stat var blevet knust og ved at blive drevet tilbage – en betydningsfuld sejr over terror på internationalt plan. Han bemærkede, at, mens terroristernes styrker, som hans vestlige venner støttede, vandt frem, var disse vestlige venner ikke interesseret i fredsforhandlinger, men havde nu ombestemt sig til at gå med i fredsindsatsen. Han gjorde det klart, at den russiske støtte til den syriske hær imod ISIS og al-Nusra ville fortsætte – en indsats, som de kompetente ledere inden for USA’s militær og udenrigstjeneste støtter.

Flere politiske og militære kilder har informeret EIR om, at der finder intense diskussioner sted bag scenen, langs den linje, som samarbejdet mellem Kerry og Lavrov har lagt, og som vil blive afsløret i de nærmeste dage.

Lyndon LaRouche påpegede i dag, at denne succesfulde flankeoperation, som Putin udførte i Syrien, og som afslørede Obamas støtte til terrorister gennem hans venner i Tyrkiet og Saudi-Arabien, har lagt sig som en forhindring for det britiske imperieapparat internationalt og hjulpet Putins venner andre steder til at forsvare deres strategiske interesser – især Xi Jinping i Kina. Kineserne er nu i færd med at forberede et program, der skal lægge skat på spekulative, finansielle transaktioner – ikke for at tjene penge, men for at forhindre spekulanternes aktiviteter. Hedgefonde vil blive afkrævet bevis for, at genforsikrings- og valutatransaktioner er baseret på reel handel eller reelle investeringer og ikke er til spekulative formål – og har sendt spekulanterne ud i hysteriske anfald.

Hvorfor tolererer amerikanere ødelæggelsen af deres økonomi, politikken med evindelige krige og en valgkampagne, der er langt værre, og farligere, end en klovneforestilling? Svaret skal søges i troen på penge – det faktum, at alting måles ud fra monetære værdier og matematiske formler snarere end ud fra realøkonomiens og det menneskelige samfunds fremskridt. USA’s, Europas og Japans økonomier flyder med likviditet, med penge, men det er alt sammen fiktivt. Realøkonomien er i frit fald – med infrastrukturen, der forfalder, industrien, der kollapser og massearbejdsløshed – hvilket driver et stadigt større antal arbejdende mennesker til selvmord gennem narko, eller på anden vis.

Kina og Rusland og Indien har opbygget et nyt paradigme, gennem BRIKS, AIIB og Den nye Silkevej, baseret på principper, som amerikanere engang antog som deres. Amerikanere og europæere må atter engang antage konceptet om et fælles mål for menneskeheden, baseret på den succesfulde fremgang for menneskeheden som helhed, eller også se på, at Vestens nuværende imperieherskere leder verden til Helvede.

Foto: Den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin holder en tale ved den officielle ceremoni for afsløringen af statuen af den russiske digter Alexander Pushkin i Seoul, Korea. 13. november, 2013.

Interviewet, som EIR's Tom Gillesberg lavede, fandt sted den 15. marts 2016 i København. Ambassadøren talte på persisk, som blev oversat til engelsk.

English:
Interview with Iran's ambassador to Denmark, H.E. Mr. Morteza Moradian about Iran's relations with Russia and China, and Iran's role in the New Silk Road, after the P5+1 agreement with Iran. The interview was conducted on March 15, 2016 in Copenhagen, Denmark by EIR's Copenhagen Bureau Chief Tom Gillesberg. Ambassador Moradian spoke Farsi, and his statements were translated into English.

Audio:

Interview with H.E. Mr. Morteza Moradian, the ambassador from the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Kingdom of Denmark, about Iran’s relationship with Russia and China, and Iran’s role in the New Silk Road, from a vantage point after the P5+1 agreement with Iran. The interview was conducted on March 15, 2016 in Copenhagen, Denmark by EIR’s Copenhagen Bureau Chief Tom Gillesberg. Ambassador Moradian spoke in Farsi, and his statements were translated into English. Video and audio files are available at: http://schillerinstitut.dk/si/?p=12299
EIR: Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview, to give us an opportunity to hear what Iran’s views are on some extremely important questions, not only for Iran, but, I think, for the whole Middle East region, and, also, for the world. When Chinese President Xi was in the Islamic Republic of Iran, there was a lot of discussion with President Hassan Rouhani, and others, and agreements signed, aimed at reviving the ancient Silk Road, which the Chinese call the "One Belt, One Road."  Greek Prime Minister Tsipras was also in Teheran, and spoke about Greece's role as a bridge between Europe and Iran.
After years of war and lack of economic development, many countries in Southwest Asia are completely destroyed. What is urgently needed is the extension of the OBOR/New Silk Road policy for the entire region, as well as the Mediterranean countries — a Marshall plan, but without the Cold War connotations.
Do you see a potential for that, and if so, what are your ideas about it?
H.E. Mr. Morteza Moradian: In the name of God, the compassionate and merciful, I would also like to thank you for arranging this session for me to be able to air my views on the issues of the region, and others. Both Iran and China have high ambitions regarding transportation issues. I think that there is extreme potential for economic development, arising from the idea raised by the Chinese president. Iran is situated at a very important juncture from a transportation point of view. This has nothing to do with the issues of today or yesterday, but it is an historical issue. Iran, and the region around it, are located along a very, very important corridor.
If we look at the important corridors in the world, there are three important ones. We can see that the North-South corridor, and the East-West corridors, all pass through Iran. The important thing is that transportation corridors necessarily need lead to the growth of economic development, and also, when economic development takes place, what follows that is peace and stability. Our country, and all of the countries of western Asia, are trying to find and develop these transportation routes. In this regard, the idea raised by China can have important consequences for the region. Just to sum it up, this idea of reviving the old Silk Road, would have a very positive influence on development.
As far as Iran is concerned, Iran enjoys a very good position in regard to all forms of transportation – air, sea and land. Iran has always followed up on the issue of reviving the old Silk Road, with China. We now see that the Chinese idea, and the Iranian idea, are now meeting at some point. I think that within the framework of two very important agreements, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and, also, the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), we can have very, very good cooperation. I will give more explanations later about the importance of the SCO and ECO cooperation. These are both in our region, and they can have cooperation with each other.

EIR: You have personally been involved in your country's relations with, especially, Russia and China — two countries which are playing leading roles in today's world, with Russia taking leadership in the fight against Daesh/Islamic State, and China pursuing an inclusive, multi-national, economic development strategy, which is an alternative to the transatlantic monetarist policy leading to economic collapse. Now, starting a new chapter after the sanctions against Iran have been lifted, how do you foresee the future of Iranian relations with Russia, and China, and what benefits will that bring to Iran and the rest of the world?

Ambassador Moradian: As you pointed out, I think the conditions are now conducive for good cooperation and development. During the years of the sanctions, we had extensive relations with China. There is now about $50 billion of trade between Iran and China. This has fluctuated some years, but it is between 50-52 billion dollars. China is the biggest importer of Iranian oil. We also had extensive relations with Russia during the years of the sanctions. It's natural, now that the sanctions have been removed, that the relationship between these three nations would develop further.
The important point that I would like to point out is that the three countries have common interests, and common threats facing them. We are neighbors with the Russians. We have common interests with Russia regarding the Caspian Sea, transportation, energy, the environment, and peace in the world. So, we have quite a number of areas where our interests coincide. Other there areas where we have common interests are drug trafficking, and other forms of smuggling, combating extremism and terrorism, and, also, our views on major international issues converge.
We also have quite a number of common interests with China. They include energy, in the consumption market, reviving the Silk Road, combating terrorism, the transportation corridors, and, also, in the framework of the SCO –- quite a number of areas where we have common interests. China needs 9 million barrels of oil on a daily basis. As I said, our trade relations amount to about $52 billion.
Iran enjoys some very important factors. First of all, it has enormous amounts of energy resources. Its coastline along the Persian Gulf runs up to 3000 kilometers. We are neighbors with 15 countries in the region. So these are very, very important points for Iran to be in the hub. I think that cooperation between these three powers, namely Russia, China, and Iran, can ultimately lead to stability and peace in the region. So the four areas — the combination of economics, trade, energy and transit — these are areas that can lead to the ideas that I mentioned. I think that effective cooperation between these three powers can lead to peace and stability, important in western Asia, and in the Middle East.
The revival of the old Silk Road, at this juncture of time, would be very meaningful. During the recent visit to Iran by the Chinese president, the two sides agreed to increase the volume of trade between the two countries, in the next 10 years, to $600 billion.
Also, in the recent visit to Iran by President Putin, there was also agreement on Russian investment in Iran. It has to be said that our trade relations, economic relations, with Russia is not as much as it should be. But among the topics discussed when President Putin visited Iran, was to make sure that the volume of economic cooperation increases between Iran and Russia.
Just to sum up our relations with Russia and China regarding economic cooperation, we think that with Russia, it is not enough, and we want to increase that. With China, it has been very good, but we still want to develop that further. Overall the situation is promising.
You are well aware that from the point of view of stability, Iran is unique in the region, and that actually prepares the ground for this cooperation to continue.

EIR: There is already progress on extending the New Silk Road from China to Iran. On February 15, 2016, the first freight train from Yiwu, China, arrived in Teheran. The 14-day-trip covered over 10,000 km. (about 6,500 miles), travelling through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, saving 30 days compared to the former route. What are the plans to extend this line, and how will that improve economic relations along the New Silk Road? And what new agreements were just made between Iran and China to develop the New Silk Road?
Ambassador Moradian: President Rouhani has very clear views on the Silk Road. In fact, President Rouhani is a specialist in transportation routes and communication. He believes that the basis for development lies in the development of transportation infrastructure. He and the Chinese president have talked over the revival of the Silk Road on a number of occasions.
There was a discussion that deviated from the main subject of the Silk Road, being propagated during the past few years. That was the idea of the new Silk Road, or the American Silk Road, so to speak, and it was not based on an historical issue. Basically, they wanted to bypass Iran, and deviate the route to bypass Iran, in effect. No one can fight against economic and geographical realities on the ground. When the route through Iran is the shortest route, and the cost effective route, then nobody can go against that. And because the Chinese ideas were more realistic, then Iran and China were able to come to some sort of understanding on the development and revival of the Silk Road.
There is also emphasis on the development of sea routes. We witnessed good investment by the Chinese in this regard, in the recent years. China has invested heavily in Pakistan, in the Gwarder port.
If I want to just come to the issue regarding Iran, then I can go through the following issues. The railroad between Khaf in Iran, and Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan, is an important connection. The Khaf-Herat section has been completed, but the Herat-Mazar-i-Sharif section is still to be constructed. I think this is an important route that we believe, in my opinion, China would be advised to invest in. Also, within the framework of Danish development aid to Afghanistan, I think a portion of funds to the Herat-Mazar-i-Sharif railroad link would be an important factor.
If this route between Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif were to be completed, then from there, there are two routes — one leading to Uzbekistan, and the other leading to Tajikistan, and that can be an important connection. At the moment, China is making good investments in both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, in order to establish the links. In fact, the link between China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, is one of the most important links of the Silk Road. And there is a missing link between Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, as I said, and I hope that the countries concerned, especially China, can help establish that link. Over the past two years, the corridor between Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran has now borne fruit, and is now connected. In fact, the train that you mentioned, that arrived in Teheran, actually came through this route, and this corridor has extreme potential. I hear that quite a number of countries in the region are interested in joining this corridor. We have another corridor linking Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Oman, which is called the fourth corridor. And this has also come into operation over the past year-and-a-half.
We also have other corridors, which I call subsidiary corridors. All of these subsidiary corridors can actually enhance and complement the main East-West Silk Road. One very important corridor, that you are aware of, is the North-South corridor, and a section along this corridor is now under construction — the connection between the city of Rasht, and Astara on the Caspian coast. In fact, we have reached agreement with Azerbaijan on the connection between the two cities of Astara in Iran, and Astara in Azerbaijan. This corridor also needs some investment, and we hope that countries like China can help us in developing this.
Just to sum up regarding the corridors, there are two routes which need investment: Herat to Mazar-i-Sharif; and Rasht to the Asteras in Iran and Azerbaijan.
Regarding the third part of your question, about the agreements reached by Iran and China during the Chinese president's visit in Iran, 17 agreements were signed during the visit. The areas included energy, financial investment, communication, science, the environment, and know-how. Specifically, on the core of your question about the Silk Road, the two countries agreed to play a leading, and a key role, in the development and operation of this link. They agreed to have cooperation on infrastructure, both railroad and road. For example, electrification of the railroad link between Teheran and Mashhad, is part of this connection of the Silk Road that was agreed to. The other important thing is cooperation on the port of Chabahar in Iran. The two sides agreed to have cooperation in this, and the Chinese agreed to invest in Chabahar. Regarding industry and other production areas, they agreed that the Chinese would cooperate and invest in 20 areas. Regarding tourism and cultural cooperation, the two sides also agreed to develop cooperation in this regard, within the framework of the Silk Road. I think you can see that within the framework of the Silk Road, there are quite important agreements between the two countries.

EIR: Building great infrastructure projects is a driver for economic growth, and increasing cooperation among nations. Now, after suffering under the sanctions, Iran has an opportunity to build up its infrastructure, as is going on, in cooperation with other countries, to help create the basis for Iran to play in important, stabilizing role in the region.
The P5+1 agreement also cleared the way for Iran's peaceful nuclear energy program, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was just signed with China, to develop peaceful nuclear energy. What were the highlights of the agreement, and what are the plans for Russian-Iranian civilian nuclear cooperation?
Ambassador Moradian: Between Iran, Russia, and China, there has been good cooperation through the years regarding the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
32:36
Because of the reneging of the Western governments, the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant was left unfinished, and after the Russians agreed to pick up the pieces, we reached an agreement, and were able to develop, and make this very important plant operational. The cooperation between Iran and Russia on peaceful nuclear energy has been very constructive. All of Iran's atomic activities have been under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As we have had no deviation from our peaceful nuclear program, after 10 or 12 years, the Western countries, the P5 + 1, finally came to the conclusion that Iran's nuclear program has always been peaceful. I believe that they knew this at the beginning, as well. This was just a political game. We have also had some kind of constructive cooperation with China over the past two decades on peaceful nuclear energy. During the recent visit to Iran by the Chinese president, an agreement was also signed in this regard. In the implementation of the cooperation agreement, China, Iran and America are also the three countries forming the committee for the implementation of the agreement. It was agreed during the recent visit that China will reconfigure the Arak heavy water plant. The Chinese and the Iranians have also agreed to have cooperation on the building of small-scale nuclear power plants. This, I think, is very important for Iran, in terms of producing electricity, and the Chinese welcome this. We have also signed a number of agreements with China on the construction of a number of nuclear power plants in the past. Iran, because of its extensiveness, has always welcomed cooperation on the development of peaceful nuclear energy for the production of electricity, and other things. In fact, based on the cooperation agreement between Iran and the P5+ 1, there will be agreements with a number of the members of the P5+1 regarding the nuclear issue.

EIR:  You already mentioned the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), linking India, Iran, and Russia with Central Asia and Europe. Is there anything more you would like to say about this project, and the benefits that are envisioned?

Ambassador Moradian: I explained about the corridors in my previous answers, but the North-South corridor is one of the most important corridors in the world. If this corridor were completed, it would be very effective in three most important areas — it would be a contributing factor in security, speed, and cost. This corridor starts in Finland, comes through Iran, then on to the Persian Gulf, from there to India, and then towards Africa. If we look at the present route now, it takes 45 days, but if we use the North-South corridor that I just mentioned, this would reduce the time to 20 days. The route will be 3,000 kilometers shorter. This can be a very important factor from a world economic point of view.
We are faced with realities, with situations, that nobody can ignore. For this reason, during the past few years, Iran has made endeavors, extensive efforts, to actually complete what I call the subsidiary corridors. Right now, in Iran, we have 10,000 kilometers of operational railroad lines. For our present government, the further development of railroad links is very important. We have plans to build another 10,000 kilometers in the future. It is my view, that in the next couple of years, we will see a revolution in transportation.
There are some missing links, which we think should be completed as soon as possible. As I said, from our point of view, the section between Rasht and Astara is very important, and it has to be completed very soon. In fact, during the recent visit of the Danish foreign minister to Teheran, this issue was also brought up. The Iranians announced that if the Danes are prepared to do so, they would be welcome to invest in this section. And we have that link to the Chabahar port. If this port is developed to utilize its full capacity, then this will serve as an important link in the North-South corridor. In the Persian Gulf we also have an island called Qeshm, which has an extreme potential. In fact, because Qeshm, itself, also has gas, and has a strategic location in the Persian Gulf, it can play an important role in the North-South corridor. We are seeing that various countries, like China, Japan, and South Korea, are interested in entering into these areas. In fact, there was a seminar on shipping in Copenhagen, a couple of weeks ago, and I said that to the Danish participants there, that this condition is conducive to involvement for mutual benefit. The benefits to be accrued from the North-South dialogue are global. Iran is making all efforts to complete this corridor.

A lot can be said about the North-South, and East-West corridors. Just to point out, very briefly, on the East-West corridor, some very important developments have taken place. We have had good negotiations with the Turkish side. One of the most important links in the East-West corridor, is the link between the cities of Sarakhs and Sero. Sero is located on the border with Turkey, and the Turks and the Iranians are now in very extensive negotiations to develop this route. The other route is the railway link between Iran and Iraq, and this is also being constructed on an extensive level. As I said, the subsidiary corridors – the one from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan to Iran; and the one from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Oman – are now operational, and we are also planning on development, and making other subsidiary routes operational.

EIR: What about cooperation on water desalination, and nuclear fuel?
Ambassador Moradian: Iran is faced with a shortage of water. We have quite a number of projects for water desalination in the Persian Gulf. In fact, one of the main reasons that we wanted nuclear power plants in the Persian Gulf, was to use that energy to desalinate water. Currently, a number of Iranian companies are engaged in this. One of the very big projects came on stream during the past couple of years. Regarding the desalination plants, there is good cooperation between Iran and foreign countries. I think that this is another area where Danish companies can enter into the competition. President Rouhani made a trip to the city of Yazd, in the center of Iran, and he said there, that transfer of water from the Persian Gulf to the center of Iran, to the city of Yazd, is one of the important projects that the government has in mind.
Regarding nuclear fuel, within the framework of the P5+1 agreement with Iran, it envisages extensive cooperation between Iran and  these countries on nuclear fuel. Iran is now one of the countries that have the legal right to enrich uranium, and this has been recognized. So, based on the capacities that Iran has, we can exchange nuclear fuel. Within this framework, we have exchanged quite a lot of fuel with the Russians, and we have cooperation plans with China on the heavy-water plant in Arak.

EIR: Can you speak about cooperation on fighting terrorism and drug trafficking?
Ambassador Moradian: On the issues of combating extremism and terrorism, and trafficking with drugs, and otherwise, there is extensive groundwork for cooperation. The development of extremism, and the instability that follows, is extensive in the CIS countries, and part of China. Iran has extensive experience and knowledge about combating terrorism, and in this regard, Iran can cooperate with those countries regarding this menace. Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of narcotic drugs. In fact, unfortunately, after Afghanistan was occupied by the ICEF coalition, led by America, the level of production of narcotic drugs in Afghanistan has increased extremely violently.

EIR: While the British in the Danish troops were in the Helmand province, I think the production went up about 20 times.

Ambassador Moradian: Exactly. In that region, Helmand, in particular, there was an incredible increase in the amount of production. In fact, in combatting smuggling drugs to come to Iran, to this side, Iran has been a sturdy wall, and we have unfortunately lost quite a number of our security forces in that region, bordering on 4,000. Just something on the sideline which is very important. In fact, Iran is on the frontline in combatting drugs. When Europe talks about helping other countries stem the tide of immigrants to Europe, I think that stemming the tide of narcotic drugs coming to Europe, also requires the same sort of agreements. Iran is very active in combating and preventing drugs coming this way, and the death penalty, the capital punishment we have for the warlords of the drug traffickers, is, actually, in the pursuit of this policy of trying to prevent drugs from reaching outside of the region. Just imagine if Iran would stop cooperating, stop combatting these drug traffickers? The road would be an open highway, and just imagine how much drugs would then come across. There already exists very good cooperation between Iran, China, and Russia on combating drug trafficking. We have had multi-lateral sessions in the field of combating drug trafficking. I think that within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Iran can play a leading role in combating drug trafficking, extremism and terrorism. In the recent session of the SCO, it was agreed that after the sanctions were lifted against Iran, that Iran's status would be lifted from an observer to a full member. In the next session, which is planned in Uzbekistan, I think that this issue will be raised.

EIR: I think we have covered a lot of very many essential things. Is there anything else that you would like to say to our readers?

Ambassador Moradian: I would like to refer to a few points in this interview, which is about the cooperation between Iran, China, and Russia. The cooperation between Iran, Russia, and China is very important. The more this cooperation increases, the more it can help peace and security in the region. The revival of the old Silk Road is a very important issue. Within the framework of the revival of the Silk Road, the strengthening of the SCO cooperation, and the ECO cooperation is very important. In fact, the cooperation between ECO and SCO is also very important, and has to be developed.
Other very important issues that I would just like to briefly mention are — the first thing is that Iran's full membership in the SCO is important. In fact, in the area of security, SCO needs Iran’s experience and influence in this regard. The next thing is that cooperation within the framework of the SCO, can enhance security and peace in the region.
The next thing, is that China must make more investment in Iran. In order to actually develop the Silk Road, it has to invest more in Iran. China must also make more investments in the port city of Chabahar, and also in the Iranian island of Qeshm.
The other point I would like to mention, is that the Eastern SWIFT (financial transaction network) is also an important idea. I think that the important countries in the East, like China and Russia, should have an alternative financial connection. And the other thing is, the monetary exchange between these two countries is important. What I mean by this, is that these countries can conduct their transactions in the local currencies of the Iranian Rial, the Chinese Yuan, and the Russian Ruble.
The other thing I would like to point out, is that China is the number one country in the world that needs energy, and Iran is one of the leading producers of such energy. But the important point to be born in mind here, is Iran's independence in its decision making regarding its energy resources — oil and gas. In fact, if you look at its record, Iran has never played games with its energy policy. Any country that wants to have economic cooperation with Iran, must take this aspect into consideration, and it is an important consideration. Other countries in our region do not operate in this way.
Finally, I am very pleased that this opportunity arose for me to air my views on economic development in the region, and very important issues that will have global consequences. Thank you.

EIR: Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

End

14. marts 2016 – I et møde i dag, der blev udsendt på Tv, med forsvarsminister Sergei Shoigu og udenrigsminister Sergei Lavrov, meddelte den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin, at han havde udstedt ordrer på at påbegynde en tilbagetrækning af Ruslands »hovedstyrke« fra Syrien, med start den 15. marts.

»Jeg mener, at de opgaver, der blev pålagt Forsvarsministeriet, generelt er blevet opfyldt. Det er grunden til, at jeg giver ordre til, at en tilbagetrækning af det meste af vores militære gruppe fra Syrien, skal påbegyndes med start fra i morgen«, sagde Putin iflg. TASS’ dækning af mødet. Med en lykønskning til de russiske officerer og soldater for deres arbejde tilføjede han, »Med det russiske militærs deltagelse er det lykkedes syriske tropper og patriotiske styrker i Syrien at vende tidevandet i kampen imod international terrorisme og tage initiativet i praktisk talt alle retninger.« Putin sagde, at de russiske luft- og flådebaser, der er etableret i Syrien, ville fortsætte med at operere »på en rutinemæssig måde«.

Putin havde adviseret den syriske præsident Bashar al-Assad forud for sin meddelelse om ordren.

Det var sandsynligvis ikke noget tilfælde, som kilder bemærkede til EIR, at meddelelsen kom, samtidig med, at FN-forhandlingerne i Genève om en våbenhvile og en politisk afgørelse i Syrien begyndte. Putin sagde, »Jeg håber, at beslutningen i dag vil være et godt signal til alle parterne i konflikten. Jeg håber, at beslutningen i betragtelig grad vil forøge tilliden hos alle deltagerne i processen. Jeg beder det russiske Udenrigsministerium om at intensivere Ruslands medvirken i organiseringen af fredsprocessen til løsning af problemet i Syrien.«

Ligesom med alle strategiske initiativer, som Putin har taget, syntes også beslutningen og ordren fuldstændig at have taget Obamas Hvide Hus på sengen. En repræsentant for det amerikanske Udenrigsministerium, den pensionerede general John Kirby, der holdt en pressebriefing her til eftermiddag, sagde, at et spørgsmål fra en reporter var det første, han havde hørt om denne udvikling.

10. marts 2016 (Leder fra LaRouchePAC) – Under en diskussion den 9. marts med LaRouchePAC’s Komite for Politisk Strategi karakteriserede Lyndon LaRouche kampagnen for at bryde BRIKS-gruppen op som følger:

»Det er britisk. Se på omstændighederne. Der er visse kendsgerninger her, der er meget klare. For det første står briterne bag alt dette, og briterne triumferer over den fordærvelse, de har været i stand til at indføre i USA og i den amerikanske befolkning. Det er et faktum. Når man lige har fordøjet dette, så må man se på, hvad det er for problemer, der findes i Europa, og så bliver man virkelig lidt skræmt, for man ser hele områder af Europa, der disintegrerer for øjnene af os, og især dem, der er på den forkerte kurs.

Det, Putin gør, er virkelig godt; det er meget effektivt – det er rigtig godt. Og det er succesfuldt, og det hænger sammen med Kina og andre former for operationer omkring dette, der bygger det op. Så det er en god situation for os mht. tingenes udsigt. Der er ikke noget problem her. Der er bekymring, men ikke noget virkeligt problem.

Vores problem ligger hovedsageligt i USA. Det er den kendsgerning, at USA’s befolkning er blevet gjort sindssyge, voldsomt, af Bush-familien, og nu af Obama. Det har været en degeneration. Disse ting er så åbenlyse, at det må siges højt, fordi det er så åbenlyst. Kongressen er i et forfærdeligt rod.

Hvis man indser disse ting, og man laver en liste med en sammenligning af det ene mod det andet, finder man ud af, at tingene ikke står så dårligt til i det ene kvarter, men at de er forfærdelige mht. USA og den amerikanske befolkning. USA er i en tilstand af desperation. Desperation, fordi de accepterer spekulativ investeringsbankvirksomhed, men de accepterer ikke Glass-Steagall, der automatisk ville hjælpe udviklingen. Sådan står det til. Vi har i virkeligheden ikke noget andet problem end dette. Vi har Wall Street, som er rådden, FBI er råddent, og en masse mennesker er ikke andet end de rene svindlere. Og vores befolkning er på både kunstig vis, men også aktivt, blevet demoraliseret. Demoraliseringen af den amerikanske befolkning er en meget farlig ting.

I Sydamerika ser man også, at udsigterne er ved at blive forfærdelige. Det behøver de ikke at være, men det er de. Så vi må virkelig samle vore tanker og ikke udbrede sygdomme, der ikke er virkelige.

LaRouchePAC-leder Kesha Rogers er ved at komme tilbage, og det er vigtigt. Hendes rolle med udgangspunkt i Texas, og i baggrunden dernede, er meget styrkende mht. hele situationen.

Wall Street og Washington ved, at Dodd/Frank-loven har været en total fiasko. De ved det! De er rædselsslagne. Folk har tendens til at være bange; en meget stærk frygt. Men det bliver bare til hysteri. Det politiske system er råddent: der var nogle styrkeområder, men det meste af det er råddent. Demoralisering er nøglespørgsmålet; situationen er forfærdelig, men der er noget, der er værre: demoralisering. Og demoralisering kan selvfølgelig ikke bekæmpes, med mindre der er reel styrke bag; man kan ikke bare bluffe det.

Dette er en ekstremt dødbringende situation. Spørgsmålet er, om hele USA’s økonomi vil kollapse, før balladen virkelig begynder. Kina befinder sig i en god situation; Putin er i en god situation, relativt set, og der finder en opbygning sted i visse dele af planeten.

Vi har endnu ikke fået kontrol over tingene. Vi har udsigter, men ingen kontrol. Og denne kontrol må vi selv levere.«

Rachel Brinkley (fra LaRouchePAC Policy Committee, -red.) fra Boston sagde, at befolkningen er rasende over, at økonomien er i færd med at kollapse, og at ingen gør noget ved det.

LaRouche svarede:

»De tror ikke på, at de kan gøre noget ved det; det er derfor. De tror på, at det er noget, der overgår dem; ikke noget, som de gør.

Jeg håber på, at vi kan bryde igennem med noget her, for der er gennembrud i ting, der er internationale faktorer. Men jeg har ingen præcise beviser, så jeg er lidt forsigtig. Jeg mener, at der er muligheder; helt bestemt i Kina og Rusland og så fremdeles, er der gode tegn. Men en stor del af det transatlantiske område og relaterede tilfælde er en stor katastrofe. Det vil formentlig vedblive at være en katastrofe, endda forværrende. Så vi står ved et punkt lige nu, hvor vi ikke har nogen præcis konklusion om noget som helst; vi har en masse tilkendegivelser.

Det kommer til at handle om globale faktorer; jeg tror ikke, der er mange chancer i lokale områder; jeg tror, at globale faktorer er de eneste, der virkelig er signifikante. For se på økonomien, se på moralen osv., som vi ser generelt. Der er intet at hente her. Der er visse udviklinger, der omfatter nogle af problemområderne og giver folk en vis fornemmelse af et optimistisk syn. For situationen er ikke så dårlig, som mange mennesker tror, hvis den blev håndteret korrekt. Eller den er værre – hvilket er mærkeligt. Man har noget, som folk tror, vil være godt for dem, når det er ubrugeligt. Men de får også undertiden et frisk pust af at se frem til noget.

Det er vores job at blive ved med at kæmpe og opbygge ting, som vi kan opbygge. Vi ser ingen mirakler lige nu, undtagen når vi en gang imellem får en smule fordel – og det må man arbejde videre med. Og der kommer nogle lyspunkter her og der.«

Titelfoto: Lyndon LaRouche fortsætter med at arbejde for Det britiske Imperiums afslutning og for udløsningen af menneskehedens kreativitet.

.

Med formand Tom Gillesberg

7. marts 2016 – Kinas landbrugsminister, Han Changfu, talte i dag om Ruslands og Kinas planer om et samarbejde omkring opdyrkning af Ruslands enorme fjernøstlige distrikt. Han talte på en pressekonference på sidelinjen af den Nationale Folkekongres’ årlige møde i Beijing.

Kinesiske firmaer er allerede aktive inden for landbrug på mere end 600.000 ha i det fjernøstlige område. Nu vil der, sagde Han, blive kinesisk-russisk samarbejde for at udvide dette gennem fælles landbrugsmæssig forskning og udvikling, samt uddannelse i agronomi og dyrkningsmetoder. Han opfordrede flere kinesiske landbrugsvirksomheder til at blive involveret.

Det russiske, fjernøstlige distrikt, der udgør to tredjedele af USA, har store, frugtbare områder og en befolkning på kun 6,3 million (omkring to tredjedele af den amerikanske stat New Jersey).

Foto: Sceneri fra Amur regionen, der har grænser mod Kina, ikke langt fra hovedbyen Blagovesjtjensk. Denne region med sit areal på 363.700 km² (Danmarks er 43.094 km²) og en befolkning på ca. 810.000 er blot en lille del af Ruslands enorme fjernøstlige distrikt.

Tom Gillesberg til Folketingets Udenrigsudvalg den 1. marts: Vi står netop nu med en enestående mulighed for at sikre, at den langvarige mareridtsagtige proces med krig og ødelæggelse, der har præget Mellemøsten i årtier, og som har spredt sig til Europa og resten af verden i form af terror fra Islamisk Stat og en flygtningebølge, der er ved at løbe Europa over ende, kan bringes til ophør og erstattes af et nyt paradigme for fred gennem fælles økonomisk udvikling.

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6. marts 2016 – På trods af USA’s og NATO’s offentlige kritik af Ruslands »upræcise« bombning i krigen i Syrien, er NATO tilsyneladende, bag lukkede døre, fuld af beundring for de russiske luftoperationer. I en rapport om en artikel i det tyske magasin Focus påpeger Sputnik en klassificeret NATO-rapport, der indrømmer Ruslands overlegne præcision og effektivitet, samt det russiske militærs høje, professionelle niveau; den konkluderer, at virkningen af de russiske piloters luftangreb er højere end alliancens. Det hemmelige dokument siger, iflg. Focus, at 40 russiske kampfly, udstationeret på den russiske base i Latakia, udfører op til 75 sortier om dagen og hver gang leverer præcise og effektive luftangreb, alt imens NATO-styrker, der har 180 kampfly, kun er i stand til at ramme 20 mål om dagen.

En rapport for et par dage siden på SouthFront-websitet påpeger de russiske luftstyrkers demonstration af evner i Syrien, som NATO og Vesten ikke havde forventet. Disse evner kommer som resultat af både nye teknologier og nyt udstyr, samt en opgradering af mandskabet. I kølvandet på krigen i Georgien i 2008, rapporterer SouthFront, blev enheder fra de russiske luftstyrker (VKS) konsolideret og reorganiseret, og russiske piloter begyndte at få flere flyvetimer.

Rapporten sagde, at de russiske luftstyrker demonstrerede de følgende evner i Syrien:

* Evnen til at deployere og opretholde en styrke på 100 kampfly i flere måneder under vanskelige forhold, og evnen til at opretholde en høj rate af kampmissioner.

* Evnen til at fungere i en kompleks rekognosceringsangrebsmåde, der muliggjorde efterretningsdata fra forskellige kilder, inkl. fly, satellitter, droner og agenter, at blive konverteret til data for angrebsmål og således endda gøre det muligt, at mobile mål, såsom fjendtlige kolonner af tropper og forsyninger, hurtigt kan angribes.

* Evnen til at udføre tæt luftstøtte, så vel som også afbrydelse og undertrykkelse på slagmarken imod en fjende, der opererer skjult.

* Evnen til at kunne operere under alle vejrforhold, og på alle tider af døgnet.

* Evnen til at bruge præcisionsstyrede våben.

* Evnen til at integrere langtrækkende luftvarslingsfly såsom A-50 samt efterretnings- og jordovervågningsfly, såsom Il-20 og Tu-214R, i operationernes overordnede koncept.

* Evnen til at bruge droner i stor skala som en del af en integreret luftoperation.

Der er evner, som de ikke har demonstreret, såsom de organiserende angrebspakker for at gennembryde et luftrum, der er kraftigt forsvaret, men dette har NATO heller ikke gjort. »Alt tyder på, at det russiske VKS ikke vil hvile på laurbærrene, men i stedet vil fortsætte med at opbygge deres styrkeområder og fjerne svagheder, således, at det vil blive en endnu mere kapabel styrke i den næste konflikt, det må udkæmpe«, konkluderer SouthFront.

https://southfront.org/russia-defense-report-russian-
aerospace-forces-in-syria-and-beyond/

3. marts 2016 – I en artikel, offentliggjort i det russiske magasin Global Affairs og oversat i dagens RT, påpeger den russiske udenrigsminister Sergei Lavrov, at »i løbet af i hvert fald de forgangne to århundreder har ethvert forsøg på at forene Europa uden Rusland, og imod Rusland, uvægerligt ført til svære tragedier, hvis konsekvenser altid er blevet overvundet gennem afgørende deltagelse fra vort lands side«.

Idet han skitserede næsten 1000 års historie, påpegede Lavrov Ruslands rolle i stabiliseringen af Europa. »Som efterfølger til Det byzantinske Imperium, der ophørte med at eksistere i 1453, indledte Rusland en naturlig ekspansion mod Ural og Sibirien og absorberede disse enorme territorier. Det udgjorde allerede dengang en stærk, afbalancerende faktor i de europæiske, politiske kombinationer, inklusive den velkendte Trediveårskrig, der affødte det westfalske system for internationale relationer [Den Westfalske Fredstraktat], hvis principper, og her primært respekt for staternes suverænitet, stadigvæk i dag er vigtige«, bemærkede Lavrov. Men Europa var fjendtlig over for Ruslands opkomst. I begyndelsen af det 18. århundrede lykkedes det Peter den Store at anbringe Rusland i kategorien af Europas førende lande på lidt over hans regeringstids to årtier. »Siden da har man ikke kunnet ignorere Ruslands position. Ikke et eneste europæisk spørgsmål kan løses uden Ruslands mening«, skrev Lavrov.

Senere, bemærkede Lavrov, i perioden efter Anden Verdenskrig, »havde vi en praktisk chance for at hele Europas splittelse og gennemføre drømmen om et fælles europæisk hjem, som mange europæiske tænkere og politikere, inklusive præsident Charles de Gaulle af Frankrig, helhjertet tilsluttede sig. Rusland var fuldstændig åben over for denne mulighed og fremlagde mange forslag og initiativer i denne sammenhæng.«

»Desværre traf vore vestlige partnere et andet valg. De satsede på at udvide NATO mod øst og fremskyde det geopolitiske rum, som de kontrollerede, tættere på Ruslands grænser. Dette er essensen i de systemiske problemer, der har forbitret Ruslands relationer med USA og Den europæiske Union. Det er værd at bemærke, at George Kennan, arkitekten bag USA’s politik for inddæmning af Sovjetunionen, i de senere år af sit liv sagde, at ratificeringen af NATO’s ekspansion var en ’tragisk fejltagelse’«, påpegede Lavrov.

Lavrov påpegede, at en holdbar løsning på den moderne verdens problemer kun kan opnås gennem seriøst og ærligt samarbejde mellem de ledende stater og deres associerede for at adressere fælles udfordringer i den aktuelle sammenhæng, og skrev: »Vore fremgangsmåder deles af de fleste lande i verden, inklusive vore kinesiske partnere, andre BRIKS- og SCO-nationer, samt vore venner i EAEU, CSTO og CIS. Med andre ord, så kan vi sige, at Rusland ikke kæmper imod nogen, men kæmper for løsningen af alle spørgsmålene på et ligeværdigt og gensidigt respektfuldt grundlag, der alene kan udgøre et holdbart fundament for en forbedring af internationale relationer på lang sigt.«

Foto: Ruslands udenrigsminister Sergei Lavrov.

29. februar 2016 – Generalløjtnant Sergei Kuralenko, chef for det russiske militære koordinationscenter i Latakia, sagde i går, at, ikke alene var der indløbet rapporter om, at Tyrkiet havde skudt ind over grænsen ind i Tel Abyad, men også, at skønsmæssigt 100 militante kæmpere var krydset over grænsen fra Tyrkiet og ind i Syrien for at tilslutte sig et ISIS-angreb på landsbyen. Tel Abyad, der ligger omkring 70 km øst for Kobani, blev tilbageerobret af det kurdiskanførte Folkets Beskyttelsesenheder (YPG) og hermed allierede arabiske militser i juni måned 2015. Den russiske rapport kom tilsyneladende fra YPG, der hævdede at have slået ISIS-angrebet tilbage.

Den russiske viceudenrigsminister Sergei Ryabkov udstedte i dag en ligefrem advarsel til, og om, Tyrkiet. Det er meget farligt, at Tyrkiet »ikke har forladt ideen om angreb hen over grænsen … for at skabe visse zoner på syrisk territorium langs den tyrkiske grænse«, sagde Ryabkov. »Vi har tidligere set eksempler, hvor følelserne rent faktisk løb af med dem, der traf beslutningerne i Tyrkiet.« Hvis dette skulle ske under våbenstilstanden, »kunne det udvikle sig til en tidsindstillet bombe, der ville afstedkomme, ikke en forsinket, men en omgående handling. Jeg ønsker at advare mine tyrkiske kolleger imod dette«, sagde han.

Unavngivne tyrkiske regeringsfolk benægtede, at de skulle have beskudt Tel Abyad; men i dag indrømmede andre derimod, at der var blevet skudt hen over grænsen ind i Azaz og hævdede, at deres mål er ISIS og ikke de kurdiske YPG-styrker, der er omfattet af våbenstilstanden.

Den saudiske udenrigsminister Adel al-Jubeir anklagede også Rusland og den syriske regerings luftvåben for at overtræde våbenstilstanden og sagde, at Riyadh diskuterede spørgsmålet med internationale magter. Under en pressekonference med den danske udenrigsminister [Kristian Jensen] i Riyadh sagde al-Jubeir, at der ville foreligge en »Plan B«, hvis det blev klart, at den syriske regering og dens allierede ikke var seriøse mht. våbenstilstanden, selv om han ikke kom med nogen detaljer. Virkeligheden er den, at saudierne ikke har magt til at gennemtvinge nogen Plan B.

Foto: Den saudiske og danske udenrigsminister, hhv. Adel al-Jubeir og Kristian Jensen, under den fælles pressekonference i Riyadh, 28. februar 2016.  

En delegation fra Schiller Instituttet, med formand Tom Gillesberg som ordførende, havde foretræde for Folketingets Udenrigsudvalg. Hør talen og se diasbilleder:

Vi står netop nu med en enestående mulighed for at sikre, at den langvarige mareridtsagtige proces med krig og ødelæggelse, der har præget Mellemøsten i årtier, og som har spredt sig til Europa og resten af verden i form af terror fra Islamisk Stat og en flygtningebølge, der er ved at løbe Europa over ende, kan bringes til ophør og erstattes af et nyt paradigme for fred gennem fælles økonomisk udvikling.

Dias til mødet: