Author: Alicia

Speaking June 19 at the 18th world congress of the International Economics Association in Mexico City, Alicia Barcena, Executive Secretary of the UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), urged the nations of the region to look toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as an example of the economic cooperation and regional integration that Latin America and the Caribbean need, if they are to overcome profound problems of poverty and inequality.

The BRI, she said, “is a very powerful proposal—one of investment, connectivity, of reviving the Silk Road. We as Latin Americans should think in those terms.”

Barcena, who attended the May 14-15 BRI Forum in Beijing, and has worked closely with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, called for a “rethinking of capitalism, “to forge a new economic model and “a new paradigm… I’m not saying substitute [for capitalism]; all I’m saying is that capitalism and hyperglobalization have brought us social, political and environmental problems that are unsustainable.”

The UN official also warned that nations must abandon short-term thinking and look years ahead into the future. “Where do we want Mexico to be in 10 years?” she asked her audience.

In her Mexico City remarks, Barcena was echoing themes of her May 14 speech in Beijing, in which she emphasized that Latin America and the Caribbean “have a historic opportunity to deepen ties with China and the rest of the Asian economies,” and that, “at this critical crossroads of human history, Latin America and the Caribbean cannot be left behind…. We look to China for its guidance and support,” she said. “The BRI Forum hands us a civilizing proposal of connectivity and shared prosperity… the BRI represents a renewal and a profound commitment to fundamental values for our global economic and social wellbeing.” She called on the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean “to embrace the potential that the Belt and Road Initiative offers, to redefine capitalism through the equality and dignity of human beings.”

A number of interesting Chinese scholars were invited to the Heritage Foundation for a forum titled “China’s Emerging Role in the World and U.S.-Chinese Relations.” The first panel was led off by Justin Yifu Lin, a former senior economist at the World Bank and presently the director of the Center for New Structural Economics at Peking University. He went through the development of the Chinese economy since the 1970s, when China was one of the poorest countries of the world, giving the comparative figures with the African countries, which were much better off. In those days, he said, 91% of China’s production was consumed domestically, while today trade is 50% of GDP. He underlined that China had not accepted the usual shock- therapy/privatization recipes of the so-called “development economics,” but had adopted a gradualist, pragmatic approach to reform. China prohibits the free flow of capital in the capital accounts, Lin said, but has initiated a series of free trade zones, first in Shanghai, and now in Shenzhen, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Fujian. “But it still prohibits foreign investment in the state-owned enterprises.” China initiated the Belt and Road, Lin said, because, as a rising nation, it felt it had a responsibility to the rest of the world, and instead of extending “gifts,” it decided to extend development cooperation. “China now produces half the infrastructure that is built in the world and is shifting much of its holdings in Treasury bills into infrastructure loans,” he said. As most of the BRI recipients are poor countries, he noted, they will achieve very high growth rates initially, thus securing the loans.

Lin was followed by the Cato Institute’s James Dorn, who went on about how private property is necessary for development and the institution of the “rule of law”. Dorn also quoted from some Daoist writings to prove that the laissez-faire principle of Adam Smith also existed in Chinese culture. Ironically, free- market enthusiast Dorn also publishes articles by Justin Lin.

The next panelist was Wen Yi, the Assistant Vice President and senior economist at the Federal Reserve in St. Louis. He effectively refuted Dorn’s free-market analysis with the real history of the growth of commerce and capitalism, starting from the Renaissance, during which the monarchs (or the magnates) promoted the development of trade. He also pointed to the function of infrastructure investment as a spur to commerce, in this instance, through the construction of canals. Later on this was pushed further into a second industrialization through the government-supported construction of railroads. Wan Yi had earlier contrasted China’s development with the attempt to achieve development “take-off” by other development countries who, unlike China, had adopted the “free market model” — with catastrophic results. He also went through the long process to achieve “human rights” here in the United States, through the 100 years’ fight to eliminate slavery, the struggle of women’s right to vote, up until the recent Congressional legislation that apologized for the treatment meted out to Native Americans, just to underline that such processes don’t always occur overnight. While no one on either panel went after China on the human rights issue, this may have been an attempt on his part to parry any such moves.

During the Q&A, when EIR talked about the development of the BRI going forward, underlining the perspective of it becoming the centerpiece of US-China relations, all the panelists got very excited, underlining how important they considered it, in spite of their somewhat diverse viewpoints.

The second session dealt with the foreign policy perspective as China looks forward to the upcoming 19th Party Congress in the fall. Professor Jia Qingguo, the head of the School of International Relations at Peking University, gave a sober estimate of the foreign policy perspective. Since the founding of the PRC, he said, there have been two periods in China’s policy. Between 1949 and 1970, it went from competition to integration. Prior to the 1970s China tried to destroy the Western-based world order, which it considered unjust. After the PRC received UN membership and after the Nixon visit to China, China decided to integrate into the world system and shape it to its benefit. As the 21st century developed, it began to establish itself as an active player in that system.

“With China’s rise as a major power it also developed global interests,” Jia said. “And yet China today is not the China of the past, but not yet quite the China of the future,” he said. “China is a rich country and a poor country at the same time, a confident country and a wary country at the same time.” “Everyone wants to know what China wants,” he said, “but China doesn’t know itself what it wants. Therefore, its foreign policy is sometimes incoherent and inconsistent.” He continued, “Recent experience shows China becoming more proactive. It has stepped up its efforts to contribute to the international order. And Chinese leaders have been assessing the situation,” Jia said.

Professor Jia noted that China’s recent attempts to cool down the problems in the South China Sea and to underline the importance of the BRI were attempts to stabilize the world international order.

“China will make greater efforts to promote US-China relations. This reflects the need for a stable environment before the Party Congress,” he said. After the Congress, he said, “China will become more active than passive. They will work to preserve the world order and their policy will become more consistent and coherent. They will work for more security cooperation and better relations with the U.S.” “China will not strive to become a global leader,” Jia said, “but it will exert leadership in those particular areas where it feels more at home.”

by Diane Sare

On Tuesday, “top experts” on New York City infrastructure were assembled to participate on two panels at the “Crain’s 2017 Real Estate Conference,” ironically titled “Don’t just think big. Build big.” There was nothing big about what was presented there, except the gap between what was projected by the speakers and what reality is likely to be.

While admitting that the one-hundred-year-old rail, water, and other infrastructure is now being subjected to the stress of supporting many more people than it was originally built for and is reaching the end of its reasonable life expectancy, no one spoke of the potential looming chaos coming as early as July 10 when Penn Station tracks will be undergoing urgently needed repairs. Nor did anyone say what everyone knows: Since the entire transportation grid is already over capacity, there is no redundancy to allow for rerouting the number of passengers who need to get into the city. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is frantically trying to speed up needed repairs on the region’s bridges and highways, in anticipation of a surge in automobile traffic resulting from closed rail lines, which could exacerbate the already hazardous condition of the crumbling roadways.

Because about 1.5 million people travel into Manhattan to work every weekday, the disintegration of the transportation grid is merely the most obvious of the crises. Look deeper, and one will find water mains that are the same age, or older than the subway tunnels, rats scampering merrily across neighborhood streets, record numbers of homeless people being placed in substandard housing, literally killing them, and many other crises. New York City has been looted by Wall Street and London, literally to the breaking point, where closing anything for maintenance or repair threatens to collapse something else.

The first thing that is required, is to face this harsh reality and dispense with the foolhardy notion that just creating new glitzy buildings with bigger windows will allow human beings to survive. While not all of the speakers at the aptly named “real estate” conference were narrowly focused on big windows, one left the conference with the distinct impression of having witnessed a group of supposedly well-educated grown ups playing in a sandbox where they made up their own rules and the outside world was not to be considered.

It is also necessary to recognize how the world has changed, even in the past four years, with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is transforming large regions of the planet by increasing connectivity, and elevating the standard of living for billions of people, with high speed rail and water transportation corridors, among other great projects.

For example, a proposal was made by Jamie Torres Springer, Senior Principal, HR&A Advisors, to convert Rikers Island into more space for the already overloaded LaGuardia Airport. It wasn’t clear from his remarks if the shortfall of “75 flight operations per hour” was the current statistic, or a projection for the year 2030, when 30 million more passengers are projected to be flying into New York, but whichever it is, converting Rikers Island from a “penal colony,” as he aptly called it, into runways, would only add 30 more flight operations per hour—i.e. less than half of the demand. Springer also correctly stated that the waste-water treatment facilities in the region are over 100 years old and that billions of gallons of raw waste overflow annually. He proposed modern waste-water treatment facilities for this location as well. He closed by summing up the cost of this initiative: $22billion, which he calculated could be covered largely by private investments and increased airline revenue, leaving about $5 billion to be covered with public funds, although he didn’t express it exactly in that way.

He was followed by Chris Ward, Senior Vice President and Chief Executive, Metro New York, of the American multi-national engineering firm, AECOM, who spoke about the potential for development in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn. Ward showed a shocking photograph of the damage suffered in that area from Hurricane Sandy, but only spoke about addressing the threat of future super storms from the limited standpoint of Brooklyn and Brooklyn’s shore-front property.

It was not mentioned that in 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers had dedicated a conference to discussing four possible storm barrier options for the New York City Harbor area, and not one of them was built, which would have greatly alleviated this disaster, and, obviously, a sane leader would be moving to get one or a combination of them built immediately.

All of the other speakers were at best similarly limited, or at worst completely delusional, expressing wild-eyed fantasies about glorious modern glass towers, and the money that can be made by renting them out to other similarly fantasy-ridden tenants, apparently whether or not one is even able to travel to them, or there is a basic sewage and water treatment plan in place to handle the new towers.

There are two major factors which have led to this sorry state of affairs, where generally well-intended adults were reduced to making sandbox-sized plans. First, the legacy of Bertrand Russell and the destruction of science over the last century, which has replaced actually scientific creative thought with linear deductive methods, which have nothing to do with an actually developing universe, as best understood and explained in the writings of Lyndon LaRouche.

Second, the problem that Glass-Steagall has not yet been reinstated, and the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche, namely establishment of a national bank and a system of Hamiltonian credit to fund those activities, such as fusion research and development, which will allow the American people to make a leap to a new platform of physical economy. Therefore, everyone starts his projection based on what he or she thinks can be paid for by the very practices which have already caused one big crash in 2008, and are about to cause another one any minute.

For example, as this author asked the panel, what impact would the development of high-speed rail have on the New York Metropolitan area? If Boston is a 40 minute train ride away, and Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia also? That is, if you can go from Washington, D.C. to midtown Manhattan quicker than you can currently travel from Fort Lee (New Jersey), to Fort Washington, New York, over the George Washington Bridge? And this is not even a bold future projection, since such trains already exist, over tens of thousands of miles of them, in China. We should be thinking about the next breakthrough beyond that. No one had an answer.

However, since such high speed rail could be built to service the busy east coast corridor of the United States, this does allow us to consider what would otherwise perhaps be unthinkable: maybe the only way to actually recreate New York City is to move a portion of the city to a nearby location. That is, build a new city. For example, the New Jersey Pine Barrens take up 22% of the entire land mass of that state. Even only a fraction of that, could sustain a new city of a million people or more. On a magnetically levitated high-speed train, they could travel to work in Manhattan in 15 minutes. One of the speakers proposed a “Staten Island City” of 300,000. Why not? Given the terrible overload on all of New York City’s infrastructure, leaving no redundancy for shifting anything, it might actually not be possible to build what is needed without, at least temporarily, relocating part of the population elsewhere. People could have the option of returning to the modernized city later, or more likely, many of them might prefer their new location.

What Planet Are You On?

Just about a mile away from this conference, another conference was being held at the Asia Society, entitled, “China and the U.S.: One Belt, One Road, and a 100-Day Plan” which was co-sponsored by the Asia Society Policy Institute and the China Center for international Economic Exchanges. The panel of very high level Chinese guests, including Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai, was introduced by a somewhat transformed former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who had obviously been positively affected by his own participation in the Beijing Belt and Road Conference one month ago.

The first Chinese speaker, The Honorable Tung Chee Hwa, gave a short history of U.S.-China relations beginning with Nixon’s 1972 visit. He closed by graphically citing the transformation of China from Oct. 1, 1949 when life expectancy was 35 years, and only 20% of the population was literate, to today, 68 years later, with 600 million Chinese lifted out of poverty, life expectancy is now 76 years, and literacy is over 95%. Both Tung and Ambassador Cui emphasized the importance of U.S.-China relations, not only in economic terms, but also that win-win collaboration creates the basis for peace and war avoidance, even in difficult cases, like that of North Korea.

China has not only self-transformed itself, but is in the process of transforming the entire Eurasian and African Continents. Ultimately, the Belt and Road Initiative will be successful only if the North American continent becomes part of it. Otherwise, imagine a great ocean liner, now finally able to access Port Elizabeth through the recently elevated bridge at Bayonne, only to be unable to unload or load precious cargo because the rail connection to Detroit has broken down. It is obviously in the mutual self interest of both China and the United States that the horrendous breakdown of our physical economy be quickly addressed.

The China Investment Corporation has relocated from Toronto to Manhattan. It estimates that the United States needs about $8 trillion in infrastructure spending. They have already expressed an intent to invest $50 billion. But how? If we had a national banking system, that money could go into the bank and be lent out for great projects, with a multiplier effect.

How would the Chinese look at the Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston corridor? With high-speed rail, these cities are not isolated fiefdoms, but part of one powerful region of the United States. From that standpoint, how should this area be developed? That would give us the proper perspective on how to solve the transportation disaster which is going to hit New York and New Jersey within the next three weeks. No smaller a perspective than that should even be considered.

What the participants at the Crain’s conference put forward would cost about $45 billion. Imagine spending $45 billion on infrastructure whose function would be obsolete by the time it was completed!

What Universe Are You In?

In a recently republished 2010 paper, entitled, What Your Accountant Never Understood: The Secret Economy, Lyndon LaRouche addresses exactly what New Yorkers, and all Americans, for that matter, urgently need to consider, if they wish to survive: that Money per se not only has no value, but is not the metric of anything, except as a “medium of assigning uttered credit at a fair approximation of anticipated net physical cost (including a charge, over incurred direct cost, for sustaining a justified rate of margin for progress of the physical economy as a whole.)”

The point is that the progress of mankind, as measured by potential relative population density (how many people could be comfortably sustained per given area) and increasing energy-flux-density (which is what allows for increasing population growth with a higher and higher standard of living, as measured in physical terms).

What defines human economy is the anti-entropic nature of the universe, and the role of human creativity as part of that. That is why it is natural for human beings to wish to colonize space, and “do the other things,” as President Kennedy said, “because they are hard.” These things challenge us to become better than we are, and when we each become better, mankind becomes better. This is why an ambitious space program, and a crash program to develop thermo-nuclear fusion as a reliable source of power are so important to the successful survival and development of our species. It is also why participation in Classical music performance, Classical drama and beautiful (as distinct from ugly, violent or pornographic) art must be a significant part of our society.

Let us imagine Gulliver returning to his home in a manned colony on a distant planet, after travelling to present day Manhattan. How would he describe us? How would we rather be known?

While Qatar has indeed financially, politically, and logistically supported terrorist groups and extremist preachers and violence inciters, the recent campaign to hang out Qatar as the sole supporter of terrorism, is not only absurd, but dangerous. The fact that this campaign is spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, the single most dangerous supporter of so-called Islamic terrorism, and the cradle of Wahhabi-takfiri jihadism in the world, makes it even more surreal and dangerous. The fact that this campaign followed U.S. President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with the heads of state of 50 Muslim nations on May 21 to declare a total war on terrorism and extremism, has made Saudi Arabia look like the leader of the global war on terrorism, and put it above any suspicion. This will make most of the world’s nations blindsided and vulnerable to Saudi-backed terrorism that is completely coordinated, and has been for decades, with British intelligence institutions. It is often coordinated with American intelligence agencies, either by them turning a blind eye to these activities, or fully participating in them. This is what happened under President Obama in invading Libya and attacking Syria through actively backing the same Islamic terrorist groups, like Al-Nusra Front, Jaish Al-Islam, and others that Qatar is now accused of supporting, and by allowing ISIS to grow and become a major actor in the region and the world.

The British-Saudi involvement in the attacks on the U.S. in September 11, 2001, is well-known, although not yet thoroughly investigated, pending the implementation of the JASTA [Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act] law by U.S. courts to bring Saudi officials to American courts.

Many of the Qatar-based 59 individuals and 12 groups that were listed as terrorists on June 7 by Saudi Arabia and its allies, the U.A.E., Egypt, Bahrain, like Islamist preacher Sheikh Ahmed Al-Qaradhawi, were frequent visitors of Saudi Arabia and received ample support from it until recently. While Egypt and the Libyan governments have legitimate reasons to support the listing of Qaradhawi and Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. are playing a sinister game. The latter two are actively supporting the Yemeni branch of the MB, Al-Islah Party, which is heavily involved in the war against Yemen in the Saudi-led coalition.

Saudi Arabia is also a strong supporter of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, who are the main native Syrian terrorist group, after Al-Nusra and ISIS. Saudi Arabia had indeed listed the MB as terrorists in 2014, but continued to selectively support its different branches in accordance with the British-Obama agenda of regime-change and destabilization in the whole region.

This whole situation should be seen in the larger, correct context, in order to understand and deal with this non-local crisis.

There is a new paradigm developing in the world, which is led by Russia, China, and their allies in the BRICS nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Economically, it is represented by the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, which is revolutionizing the world economy. Politically and militarily, Russia’s intervention in Syria since September 2015, brought an end to the Anglo-American regime-change doctrines. The Anglo-Saudi-Qatari-American forces (including all the above terrorist groups) that have wreaked havoc in the West Asia and North Africa, at least since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the outbreak of the orchestrated “Arab Spring,” are now losing their foothold and most of their positions. ISIS is being systematically eliminated in Iraq and Syria right now by two sets of coalitions: 1. The Russia-Iran-Hezbollah-backed Syrian National Army inside Syria, in addition to a U.S.-backed (under Trump) mix of Kurdish-Arab forces in eastern Syria. 2. By Iranian-backed Iraqi army and militias on the ground in Iraq, with certain aerial support from the U.S. Air Force.

Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have entangled themselves in a real quagmire in Yemen, in a war which has created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the history of this country, committing war crimes and supporting the same terrorist groups mentioned above in the fight against the national army in Sana’a and its allies the Ansarullah movement (Houthis). The Saudi-U.A.E.-led coalition have achieved nothing of their goals in Yemen, and are unable to withdraw. On the other hand, the EU and the Western world generally are witnessing one of the greatest financial and economic crises since the 1930s.

The fact that President Trump has been contemplating, even if remotely, joining Russia and China in shaping a new economic and political order, is giving nightmares to the imperialist factions in the U.S., and in Britain and its satrapies in the Gulf. With the Middle East being the easiest region in which to start wars, the Saudi move is ill-boding.

During Trump’s Riyadh summit with the Muslim leaders, Iran was declared as the main source of terrorism and instability in the region and the world. The Saudi deputy Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman claimed in May 3 that Iran intends to take control of the holy sites in Saudi Arabia and that his country would instead take the fight into Iranian territories. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, during his visit to France, in June 7, vowed to punish Iran. That very day, a group connected to ISIS attacked the Iranian Parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, the worst act of terror in Iran in more than two decades. Iranian officials immediately pointed the finger at Saudi Arabia as being the recruiter of the terrorists, although Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said later that it was still too early to judge whether Saudi Arabia had a role in the attacks.

The intention seems to be to draw the U.S. into another disastrous conflict in the region on behalf of its allies, and prevent any collaboration between the U.S. and Russia. Another potential consequence of a dramatically escalated state of war in the Gulf, could lead to a complete disaster for the Asian economic giants China, Japan, South Korea, and India, who heavily depend on daily oil and gas shipments from the Gulf. Between 80% and 85% of all the approximately 17 million barrels of petroleum that pass through the tiny Strait of Hormuz daily, sails to the countries above. Qatar and Iran are the largest producers and exporters of natural gas to Asia, besides Russia. Any disruption of that flow could mean an unimaginable crisis for these countries and the world economy. This is one of the greatest economic blackmail operations the Anglo-American forces have been holding against Asia.

The summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be held in Astana, Kazakhstan, June 8-9, with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in attendance, among heads of state of the other member nations, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In the course of the summit, India and Pakistan will be formally admitted into the SCO.

India and Pakistan together represent 1.5 billion people, and with their addition, the SCO “will now represent the voice of three billion people—half the world’s population,” India’s ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, P. Stobdan, told Sputnik.

Leading into the summit, Xi Jinping was in Astana Wednesday for a state visit with his counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbayev, during which the two will discuss enhancing their bilateral economic, trade, cultural, and security cooperation.

In an opinion piece he penned for the Kazakh daily Aikyn Gazeti, published today under the headline “May China-Kazakhstan Relationship Fly High Toward Our Shared Aspirations,” Xi recalled that it was in Kazakhstan that he first announced the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. Since then, he pointed out, the project has developed into “an open and inclusive platform of cooperation and has become a global public good well received by the international community.”

The Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese President said, offers “unprecedented historic opportunities,” and pointed to the success of May 14-15 Belt and Road summit in Beijing. He added that he will discuss with Nazarbayev joint cooperation in building the Belt and Road, to “synergize our development strategies…and work together to implement the outcomes of the Belt and Road Forum.” Xi and Nazarbayev will also participate in a video event to discuss cross-border transportation and “promoting connectivity under the Belt and Road Initiative.”

On the sidelines of the summit, Xi Jinping will meet with President Putin to discuss a wide range of matters related to regional and international issues, as well as their bilateral agenda. The situation on the Korean peninsula will be a key topic of discussion. India’s Foreign Ministry has said that a meeting between Modi and Xi is “possible,” but nothing has yet been confirmed.