Author: Alicia

NASA introduced 12 new astronauts on Wednesday, June 7 at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. This year was a record year in the history of NASA, the twelve astronauts, five of whom are women, were selected out of a candidate pool of over 18,000 applicants. The astronauts will begin training for missions into Earth orbit and to deep space. The astronaut class of 2017 was the 22nd class of American space flight trainees since 1959.

Kesha Rogers, reporting for 21 Century Science & Technology, attended this very inspiring event. There, bringing greetings from Washington D.C. on behalf of President Donald Trump and the White House, was Vice President Mike Pence. Vice President Pence joined NASA leaders, including acting administrator Robert Lightfoot, and director of flight operations, in Houston, Brian Kelly, in announcing the new astronauts. Also attending were several elected officials, including Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Lamar Smith, Congressman Jim Bridenstine, and Governor Greg Abbot. Many other local officials and others representing congressional offices were also present. The presentation of the astronauts took place inside JSC’s Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, in front of a full-scale engineering model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

The following quotes capture the essence of Vice President Pence’s speech. The full speech can be found at NASA.gov.

“To the members of this new class of American astronauts, I say congratulations,” stated Vice President Pence. “ As American astronauts, you may yet return our nation to the moon. You may be the first to travel to Mars. You may have experiences that we can only imagine,” he said.

Vice President Pence in his speech made a promise that “NASA will have the resources and support you need to continue to make history, to push the boundary of human knowledge and to advance American leadership to the boundless frontier of space.”

“Under President Donald Trump America will lead in space once again, and the world will follow.”

Pence referenced President Donald Trump’s re-launching of a National Space Council, after more than two decades, which, the Vice President will chair. Pence said,“America needs national space council once again, explaining that, “twice before in our nation’s history, our nation has had a federal body charged with advising the President on national policy and strategy for space.” It was under the council’s watch that America put the first man in outer space, and put a man on the moon in less than a decade between.” Pence declared, “Our national space council will reenergize the pioneering spirit of America in Space.” He said, “ we must reorient our civilian space program toward deep space exploration, and provide the capabilities for America to maintain a constant presence in low Earth orbit and beyond.” He referred increased collaboration with commercial space industry, stating, “ the American spirit is as limitless as space itself, and by tapping the bottomless well of American innovation through increased collaboration with commercial space industries, we can cease opportunity that will benefit our nation and our people for generations to come.”

Pence summoned the inspiration of President John F. Kennedy as he stated, “ I know the path you have chosen is hard… But as President John F. Kennedy said not far from right here, back in 1962, “We know, you choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but rather, in his words “because the are hard.” Because that challenge is one you are willing to accept, unwilling to postpone.” That challenge as President Kennedy said, “is one we intend to win.” Vice President Pence affirmed, “Let me just say to these astronauts and all that are gathered here, “we will win.” He later continues, “As once again we reach out our hands to touch the heavens and raise our heads to gaze with wonder, at the stars, and the heroes that have courage to explore them. You twelve will be part of our vanguard. You’re the heroes, you’re the patriots. The trail blazers in the best American tradition.”

Following the ceremony with the new astronaut class addressed by Vice President Pence, Kesha was able to join other members of the media for one on one discussion with NASA representatives, speaking on behalf of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Orion spacecraft, and ISS. There was also time for a question and answer session with the astronauts. Some very exciting discoveries are being made in deep space exploration, and with ISS.

One important note from the event was that there is still no mention of a choice for NASA administrator and the emphasis on commercial space flight, really as a means of cutting corners and saving money, shows how desperately we require a national space mission, and true vision that which inspired the nation and the world under president John F. Kennedy.

Kesha Rogers at the naming ceremony in Houston, Texas

This is a moment in our nation’s history that Americans should be very proud about the great potential being unleashed, but, we have to truly harness that potential. We will only achieve our goal of returning America to greatness in space through increased international cooperation, including collaborating with China, as well as our other international partners. We must revive a a national mission in space exploration, which will secure the highest level of safety and responsibility to the lives of our astronauts, as they adventure on new discoveries, but will also increase the benefit of economic progress to our nation, as well as all nations around the world.

The first step is that we need to implement an economic recovery program for the United States which will immediately implement Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Law’s, starting with the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, followed by the implementation of a National Credit system. We need immediate investment in a national infrastructure platform, including a space platform for the advancement and discovery of new technologies, and new resources, that will advance the whole of human knowledge, and allow us to increase the standard of living of every person on earth. There can be no shortcuts to achieving our national goal in restoring America’s leadership in space. We cannot allow for Failure to become an option any longer in our commitment to space.

As one representative at NASA working on the ISS clearly stated, “No single nation is going to go on an exploration mission by themselves. We are going to go as a species.”

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), supported by Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), testified this evening to the House Rules Committee and asked it to “set up a fair debate on reinstating the  Glass-Steagall Act” in the House, to return a “healthier, more competitive, sounder banking system instead of rampant [Wall Street] speculation.” She said, “This rests on separating risky speculation from prudent banking…. Glass-Steagall separation.”

Kaptur told the Committee that the decades in which Glass-Steagall was the nation’s primary bank regulation “have been referred to as a golden era” of economic growth, plentiful lending credit, and fair interest paid to consumers on deposits. She said that nearly two-thirds of the community banks which served that era had disappeared since the 1990s when Glass-Steagall was eliminated, and the number of credit unions has been cut in half. Kaptur denounced the six biggest U.S. banks making $141 billion a year in profits while “Grandma Moses earns nothing on her CD.”

“Bernie Sanders campaigned on breaking up these banks,” Kaptur said. “So did Donald Trump. Both Parties’ platforms endorsed it, and the RNC wasted fewer words than the Democrats: `We support restoring the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act.'”

“Our nation has a chance to get this right before another looming financial crisis, perhaps anchored in corporate debt, hits,” Kaptur concluded. “Congress must not wait,  the chance to restore Glass-Steagall is now.”

The Rules Committee, on a GOP party-line vote, voted down the Kaptur-Jones amendment as part of the upcoming debate on the Republicans’ “Financial CHOICE Act.” Kaptur will be able to contest this again when the CHOICE Act comes to the House floor, perhaps this week. 

TRANSCRIPT

The Ideal of Highest Humanity, The Common Philosophical Foundations of Western and Asian Culture

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

The hope-filled vision of President Xi Jinping for a “Community of Shared Future for Mankind,” which he conceptualized along with Win-Win cooperation on the New Silk Road, has also been adopted in a Resolution of the UN Security Council, which means that it is officially, even if in any case so, now an overarching Principle which binds all nations of this world through a higher perspective. With this concept, for the first time a strategic initiative has been put on the agenda which can replace war-causing geopolitics with the ideal of a united Humanity. In the 3 ½ years since Xi Jinping proposed it in Kazakhstan in September, 2013, this idea has rapidly become widespread and inspired more and more nations, and particularly among less developed nations, has promoted a previously absent optimism that in the near future poverty can be overcome, and that humane conditions of life for all people on this planet can be created. Countless people from different nations and cultures perceive: We are standing at the beginning of a new epoch of Universal History!

But why is it so that many governments, heads of state, politicians, and broad-minded people recognize in an instant the enormous potential embodied in it, to define the common goals of Humanity from the standpoint of the future, while others state that hidden in the Belt and Road Initiative are the sinister intentions of China, replacing imperialism and colonialism with more of the same? How is it possible that the same factual object, namely that a concrete development concept for all of Humanity is being realized, only to be interpreted in such different ways? These opposing points of view obviously have to do with the different axioms of thinking from which the question is approached.

The former publisher of the {London Times} and one of the leading mouthpieces for the British Empire, Lord Rees Mogg, once criticized the thesis of Samuel Huntington that it will unavoidably come to a Clash of Civilizations between Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism. He advanced the notion that the real conflict would play out between the old values of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism, and the new values, those of the New Age, the neo-liberal society, modernity. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in his recent Annual Press Conference made a similar point regarding “the Values of the Free West,” which it relentlessly tries impose on all non-Western countries. “These are probably not the values espoused by the grandfather of today’s Europeans,“ said Lavrov, “but something new and modernized, a free-for- all, I would say. They are radically and fundamentally at odds with the values handed down from generation to generation for centuries in our country, which we would like to cherish and hand down to our children and grandchildren. When during foreign policy battles we and many others face a demand to accept these new post-Christian Western Values, including permissiveness and universality of liberal approaches to the life of the individual, I think it is indecent on a human level. But in terms of professional diplomats, it is a colossal mistake and a completely unacceptable overestimation of your influence on international relations.“

It is self-evident that the overcoming of Geopolitics and the notion of a Unipolar World, also the imposition of “Western Values“ must be replaced with a real dialogue of Cultures. But how shall a real understanding take place between philosophies and art forms from completely different cultures which are separated from one another by different languages, traditions, and customs? Does one need a Lingua franca or pop songs, in English, Arabic, Hindi, or Chinese, in order to understand one another?

Or is there something more profound, universal, belonging to all cultures, and without abusing in the least their uniqueness, which puts them in a position for a real exchange and allows reciprocal enrichment—a kind of cultural “Win-Win“ harmony?

Much confusion regarding this issue came into being because the characterization of foreign cultures is often not presented in a positive light, or at least objectively, as the historians and culture experts of colonial powers were always dependent on maintaining the Right-of- Interpretation, not only for their own, but also for foreign cultural histories. As a result many Europeans and Americans know little about the best of Asian cultures, while the Asians often only get to know the British interpretation of European history.

In European intellectual history for the last 2 ½ millennia two fundamentally opposed directions have been in conflict, which one could describe as a battle between the Oligarchical System and the “Republican“ System for the Common Good. The view of man of the first, associated with Sparta, Lycurgus, claims all privileges are for the ruling elite and denies to the broad masses the right to mental and material development, as they thus remain subjects easier to rule over; the second
considers all people as capable of potentially endless perfection, and sees it as the duty of the state to promote as best possible the creative capabilities of its citizens.

The most important of the various western versions of the Oligarchical model base themselves on a more less mechanistic comprehension of the world in the tradition of Aristotle, which does not allow real qualitative advancement.The progressive model, oriented on the common good, is based on the wise Solon of Athens, who saw the purpose of humanity in its progressive motion, but especially in Plato: thinkers in his tradition grasped humans, thanks to their creative Reason, continually capable of formulating adequate hypotheses on the lawfulness of the universe, which potentially lead to a limitless deepening of knowledge as well as development of humanity.

Naturally, with them variations and nuances emerge, as with the Manichean ideology that Good and Evil will always accompany each other, of the pre-Christian Weltanschauung, which have survived into the present in the modern Gaia cult. But in the end, all forms of appearance of the first system, Empiricism, Positivism, Scholastic, the deductive and inductive methods, the French and English Enlightenments, and for example Locke, Hobbes or Newton, up to the critical method of the Frankfurt School or the Deconstructionism of the Present, are variations of the Aristotelian tradition. Common for all is the idea, the essential source of knowledge is experience through the senses, Man is by nature evil, and must be controlled by repressive forms of government, and finally, the world is a closed limited system.

In contrast, the tradition drawing on Plato includes such diverse thinkers as Augustinus, Bonaventura, Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, Gotthold Ephrahim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, the Humboldt brothers, but also Albert Einstein, Vladimir Vernadsky and Krafft Ehricke, to name but a few prominent thinkers. These thinkers have in common a fundamental optimism about the role of man in the Universe, that human mental creativity is itself a power in the further development of the physical universe, and that there is a connection between the harmonic development of all human mental and spiritual capabilities, the positive development of the commonwealth or of the state, and the laws of the cosmos.

Virtually all progress of knowledge in the natural sciences or in great classical art in European civilization is uniquely thanks to the Platonic tradition. They are due to the capability of humans, not to be dependent on the random external influences, but through the Power of Reason to determine with scientific precision where the next, higher qualitative breakthrough to expand knowledge must take place.

It is easy to demonstrate that the viewpoint of the critics, who impune China’s policy of the New Silk Road with secret motives, is but a projection of their own geopolitical motives onto China. They think like the famous chamber valet, described by Hegel in his {The Phemonology of Mind}, who could only imagine the World Historic Individual in his underwear, as he must daily help him in dressing and undressing. They themselves are imprisoned by the “new values“ spoken of by Rees Mogg, or the “post-Christian values“ for Russia, rejected by Lavrov. They simply cannot imagine that there are people and even governments who are truly committed not only to the welfare of their own population, but also are for a harmonic development for all humanity. And they hate the moral claim arising out of this mentality, as it puts into question their alleged right to the principle, “Everything is Allowed.“

On the other hand, mutual understanding is easier to achieve when one turns to the philosophers and poets of the optimistic tradition, for then, a striking similarity among thinkers is found, and although they come out of completely diverse cultural circles, nevertheless come to the same insights about the nature of Man and the purpose of existence. The most auspicious example of this concordance is that of the philosophical and aesthetic principles of Confucius, whose influence has impacted many parts of Asia well beyond China for 2 ½ thousand years, with those of the great German Poet of Freedom, Friedrich Schiller, where both dedicated their life’s work to the ennoblement of mankind. An important similarity is also found in many aspects of other thinkers such as Mencius, Nicholas of Cusa, Gottfried Leibniz and Wilhelm von Humboldt.

Common to all these great minds was the tireless struggle with the question of how life together among humans can be shaped, such that the inherent creative capabilities within them can unfold in the best way, and brought into concordance with the world order such that Natural Law’s Right to Happiness can be attained by all of society.

For Confucius man is by nature good, everything bad is from a lack of development, and, he has the freedom and moral obligation to improve himself through an act of his own will. Everything depends on this inner power, as an external evil is by no way always an evil, but on the contrary a test of character through which he can emerge strengthened and with purer Principles. Schiller developed the same thoughts with his concept of the Sublime, a state of mind which one can attain when his identity is bound to universal ideas which go beyond his limited physical existence, and which yield not a physical, but better, moral certainty. Also Schiller emphasized Freedom of Will. “All other things must; man is the being who wills,“ said Schiller in his writing “On the Sublime,“ and, “The morally educated man, and only this one, is entirely free.“ Only the person, who has a beautiful character, who finds joy in exercising Justice, Well-being, Moderation, Steadfastness and Devotedness, and who doesn’t lose these qualities even when hit by an array of great misfortunes, is Sublime.

For Confucius, the education of personal character is achieved in addition to literary studies through the six, “free arts,“ learning the rituals, music, archery, charioteering, writing, and mathematics. For him poetry and music play the most important role as they broaden the imagination and power of conception. Schiller writes about this in his critic about “Bürgers Poems:“In a time when our mental powers have been compartmentalized and their effectiveness scattered, as a necessary consequence of the expanded scope of our knowledge and the specialization of professions, poetry is virtually unique in its power to reunify the soul’s sundered forces, to occupy heart and mind, activity and wit, reason and the power of imagination in harmonious alliance, and, as it were, to restore the entire
human being within us.“

According to Lun-Yü from the translation of Richard Wilhelm, Confucius focused on his students in the following way: “My young friends, why are you not engaging yourselves with poetry (Shi Ging)? Poetry is congenial to stimulate the imagination, she lets us view life as in a contemplative mirror thus cleansing our emotions; she awakens social nobleness, she arouses anger against injustice and deceitfulness, she permits the emergence in families and the state of intentions for moral actions. And otherwise, broadens our knowledge of whole organic world, namely the names of birds, and animals, herbs and trees.“

Likewise in Lun-Yu, Confucius recommended: “He who wants to be a scholarly person should read poetry in order to develop in himself a soul oriented to Truth and Beauty, then read the moral laws in order to stay on the true path, and then learn music to be able to harmonically ensoul himself.

Between Confucius’s highest ideals on the intellectual, moral, and aesthetically educated person, the Junzi, and Schiller’s concept of the “Beautiful Soul,“ there exists an intimate inner connection. In “Grace and Dignity“ Schiller writes: “We call it a beautiful soul, when moral sentiment has assured itself of all emotions of a person ultimately to that degree, that it may abandon the guidance of the will to emotions, and never run danger of being in contradiction with its own decisions. Hence, in a beautiful soul individual deeds are not properly moral, rather, the entire character is.“, and further, “It is thus in a beautiful soul, that sensuousness and reason, duty and inclination harmonize, and grace is its epiphany.“ In Confucius, it is said this person “can follow the wishes of his heart, without infringing on proportion.“

For Confucius this development of the individual, up to the highest Ideal of the intellectual, moral, and aesthetically educated person, the Junzi, the noble, was the precondition for a well structured state. “When the personality is well-educated, only then is the home administered; when the home is administered, then the state can be ordered; when the state is ordered, only then can the world have peace.“ “Once humanity is in order, thus will also Heaven and Earth and the whole procession of Nature come to order, all disruptions of the course of Nature are but the result of disorder among Man and the faulty development of character in the ruler.“ Exactly the same, Schiller drew the conclusion for the failure of the French Revolution caused by the Jacobin Terror that a great historical moment has found a little people, where the objective potential for a transformation existed but the subjective moral preconditions were missing. From now on, any improvement in
the political realm can only happen through ennoblement of the individual.

And also with him, this is also the precondition for the well-being of the state. In the 4th Aesthical Letter, “Every individual man, one can say, carries by predisposition and destiny, a purely ideal man within himself, to agree with whose immutable unity in all his alterations is the great task of his existence. This pure man, who gives himself to be recognized more or less distinctly in every subject, is represented through the state;“ and Schiller adds, this congruence should not come to pass, in that the state represses the individual, but “that the individual becomes the state, that the man in time ennobles himself to the man in the idea.“

It is also clearly the idea of a more perfect future, which guides action in the present. This clear vision also gives the criteria for making an educated prognosis about the future. As Confucius says on that, the path to the highest Truth leads to clearly recognizing the future. In the book, Proportion and Mean, Zhong Yong, 2.5 he speaks of the duty of man to search for Truth, as “Who seeks Truth, chooses the Good and stays with it.“ The path of the highest truth makes possible that man can recognize in advance, if a kingdom is about to flourish, then there are favorable signs, but if a kingdom is about to collapse, then there are ominous signs.

Nicholas of Cusa, who founded modern natural science with his new scientific method of thinking at the level of the Coincidence of Opposites, conincidentia oppositorum, and also precise measuring, and likewise conceptually made the decisive step for formulating a representative system of nation states, is prior to Schiller the philosopher who has the greatest affinity to Confucius. He had the same idea, that the Sage can recognize the future, on the basis of a recapitulation of the overall development of the universe to his time, through prior knowledge in his mind of that which he seeks. Without this prior knowledge one knows neither what is the proper question, nor if that which is found is really what was sought.

For Schiller too, it is the inner educated ideal of a better future, with which he acts on reality, in that he gives it direction towards the Good. In the 9 th Aesthetical Letter he demands that this ideal must be fully educated in the heart before it can befall to encounters with the “dubious society“ of reality. “Live with thy century, but be not its creature; give to thy contemporaries, but what they need, not what they praise,“ and with this Schiller demands the same inner moral independence as Confucius, which can only be achieved with a completely human education of character.

It thus matters not merely to realize in oneself the highest ideal, but to actively contribute to the betterment of society. Likewise true knowledge is not won by mere contemplative observations, but by active transformation of society. Confucius says about this in the book “The Great Learning,“ Da Xue, “The highest knowledge is that reality is impacted. Only when it engages reality has knowledge reached its heights, as then, ideas become true; when the ideas are true, only then is consciousness just; when consciousness is just, only then will the person be educated; when the person is educated, first then is the home regulated; when the home is regulated, only then are states well governed; when the state is well-governed, only then is there peace in the world.“

With Nicholas of Cusa the same idea is expressed so, only when all microcosms are developing in the best possible way, can harmony in the macrocosm come into being. At the same time this development is not static, as the further education of one, engages like a fugal counterpoint in the development of the other and leads to a harmonic development of the totality. Such Cusa-like thinking, albeit in a Confucian way, emerges from the words of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi when he says the Belt and Road Initiative is no Chinese solo act, but a symphony, performed by all nations.

Schiller in his later years occupied himself with the question how the resolution of inner conflicts, both in the single individual, as in society, could be portrayed in poetry, and whereby the “voluntary unification of inclinations with the law, to the pinnacle of moral dignity of a more refined Nature“ is nothing less than “the Ideal of Beauty applied to the real world.“ He depicts here the Ideal that reality should strive for, in the sense of Percy Shelly, that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

And why should it not be conceivable that Mankind becomes adult, that we cease to attack each other like uneducated four year olds, or to express it otherwise, to arrest the development of Humanity in senseless geopolitical conflicts? Why should it not be within our immediate grasp, to eliminate poverty from this world, to make possible universal education for all children, with that making the Beautiful Soul the goal of education, as Wilhelm von Humboldt did, but also Confucius?

The most crucial question for Confucius and Schiller was educating Love of Mankind, which Confucius valued higher than life itself, more important than Fire and Water, and which Schiller called, “the most beautiful phenomenon in the soul-filled creation, the omnipotent magnet in the spiritual world, the source of devotion and the most sublime virtue,“ where man becomes all the richer when he loves. For Confucius, the Love of Mankind was the highest morality, making possible all other ethical values, as in Lun-Yü, where Confucius says, “All deeds of man must be embodied with it, otherwise they are worthless.“ To this belongs also that man must have compassion for one another. For Lessing, the most compassionate human was also the best, as he is ready to act on the foundation of all civil virtues and demonstrate all manners of generosity. It is told of Confucius he never satisfied his hunger when eating next to a man in mourning, as he didn’t want to enjoy his meal, when another suffered.

Likewise in Lun-Yü Confucius emphasizes how important it is for a state to continually cultivate its citizens for Love of Mankind, otherwise it is doomed. Confucius said: “To lead a people lacking education into war, is to guarantee their doom.“ The analogy for the present is obvious and requires no commentary.

For both, Confucius and Schiller, cultivation of the individual and society by means of aesthetic education, whereby Art, which itself must attain the highest standards, plays the most important role. Schiller demands from poets as from artists generally, to elevate themselves to the highest moral and aesthetic heights, before he practices his art. “The task of ennobling that personality to the highest degree, of refining it into the purest, most splendid humanity, is the first and most important business he must address, before he may venture to stir members of the elite. There can be no greater value to his poetry, than that it is the perfected imprint of a truly interesting disposition of a truly interesting, perfected mind.“

In his poem “The Artist“ Schiller assigns artist a responsibility for civilization: “The dignity of Man into your hands is given, Its keeper be! It sinks with you! With you it will be risen!“ The same idea is found in Confucius in particular regarding music: “Music rises from the heart. When the emotions are touched, they are expressed in sounds, and when sounds take definite forms, we have music. Therefore, the music of a peaceful and prosperous country is quiet and joyous, and the
government is orderly. The music of a country in turmoil, shows dissatisfaction and anger, and the government is chaotic.“ “The music of a destroyed country shows sorrow and remembrance of the past and the people are distressed. Thus we see music and government are directly connected to one another.“

In a very beautiful treatise on music, Confucius writes: “When the likes and dislikes are not properly controlled, and our conscious minds are distracted by the material world, we lose our true selves in the principle of reason, and nature is destroyed. Where man is constantly exposed to the things in the material world which affects him, and does not control his likes and dislikes, then he becomes overwhelmed by the material reality, and becomes dehumanized, or materialistic. When a man becomes dehumanized or materialistic, then the principle of reason in nature is destroyed, and man is submerged in his own desires. From this arise rebellion, disobedience, cunning, and deceit, and general immortality. We have then a picture of the strong bullying the weak, the majority persecutes the minority, the clever ones deceiving the simple-minded, the physically strong going for violence, the sick and the crippled not being taken care of, and the aged and the young helpless and not cared for. This is the way of chaos.“

“So music is connected with the principles of human conduct. Therefore, the animals know sounds, but they do not know tones. He who understands music, comes very near to the understanding of of Li, and if a man has mastered both Li and music, we call him virtuous, because virtue is the master of fulfillment.“

“Truly great music shares the principle of harmony with the universe. When the soil is poor, things do not grow; and, when fishing is not regulated according to the seasons, then fishes and turtle do not mature. When the climate deteriorates, animal and plant life degenerates, and when the world is chaotic, the rituals and the music become licentious. We find, then, a type of music that is rueful without restraint, and joyous without calm.

Therefore, the superior man tries to create harmony in the human heart, by a rediscovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music prevails, and the people’s minds are led towards the right ideals and aspirations, wee may see the
appearance of a great nation. Character is the backbone of our human nature, and music is the flowering of character.“

How can it be possible, that between a philosopher from China, who lived almost 2 ½ thousand years ago, and a German poet, who was active 200 years ago, can show such a similarity of ideas and methods? Naturally, Schiller knew Confucius, dedicating to him the poem, “The Sayings of Confucius,“ which ended with the lines:

Restless forward you must strive,
Never tired standing still,
If thou wilt see perfection;

Must unfold in breadth,
Shall the world shape you;
In the depths you must rise,
Let nature show itself to you.
Only perseverance leads to the goal,
Only fullness leads to clarity,
And in the abyss lives the truth.

The inner affinity between Confucius and Schiller is because both are inspired by the same ideal of a sublime humanity, and which they were deeply convinced would be achievable in the future as the true identity of Mankind despite intermittent setbacks.

Already a hundred years earlier Leibniz– taking note of the fact that the Emperor Kang-shi came to similar mathematical results, drew the conclusion that there must be universal knowable principles—and more generally recognized this same affinity between Chinese and European culture, writing:

“By a unique decision of destiny, as I believe, it is so that the highest civilization and the highest technical civilization of mankind are now collected, as it were, at two extremes of our continent, in Europe and in China, which like a Europe of the East, adorns the opposite end of the earth. Perhaps the highest Providence pursues the goal, whereby the most civilized and at the same time most distant peoples are reaching out their arms, and all found between them, gradually leads to life filled by Reason.“

Even though the Europe of today unfortunately doesn’t keep actual its cultural high points, instead turning to, using the words of Lavrov, “post-Christian“ values, nonetheless the ideas of Plato and classical Greece, the Italian Renaissance and the German Classics belong to European culture, which with the new paradigm of the New Silk Road and the Dialogue of Cultures bound with it, can at anytime be made alive again with a new Renaissance. If each nation and each culture makes alive again their highest cultural achievements and best artistic traditions in their populations, presenting themselves to other nations and cultures their best aspects, it is certain a new Renaissance will come, seizing upon and working with the best from Universal History, but beyond that enthusiastically creating things new, corresponding to Mankind achieving maturity.

Schiller foresaw:

No one be like the other, though like be each to the highest! How to achieve that? Each one be in his person complete.

The British have declared openly that aggressive war may be illegal under international law — but not in the United Kingdom! The Guardian of London reports today that, in a case brought against Tony Blair by victims of Blair’s illegal Iraq War, charging that Blair knowingly lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and then launching an aggressive war against a nation in no way threatening the U.K., the Queen’s Counsel Jeremy Wright has intervened to dismiss the case, arguing both that Blair is immune from prosecution and, most incredibly, that aggressive war is not a crime under British law. There you have it.

Just yesterday the Sunday Times of London claimed to be speaking for the US government (from “sources” in the U.S. military) to say that President Trump is about to launch a preemptive war of aggression against North Korea, fantasizing that such an attack could take out North Korea’s entire nuclear weapons capacity. Any sane person knows that an attack on North Korea would unleash a war that would not only rain terror across Asia, but almost certainly provoke a world nuclear holocaust. In fact, Trump himself and his National Security Advisor Gen. McMasters on Sunday said that pressures against North Korea would stop short of military action.

Lyndon LaRouche today pointed to Vladimir Putin, working with China and potentially with the U.S. under President Trump, as the necessary point person for bringing about a sane resolution to the Korea crisis. In fact, Putin had arranged the seed crystal of a solution over the past decade, establishing a new port facility in North Korea’s northeast region of Rason, and shipping Russian coal through that port into South Korea, in league with both private and state-owned entities in South Korea (Hyundai Marine, the state steal company POSCO, and the state rail company KORAIL). This cooperation on joint development by all the countries of the region is the necessary precondition for resolving the political and strategic crisis on the Korean peninsula, and leading to eventual reunification. The recently impeached former President of South Korea Park Geun-hye, by capitulating to Obama’s drive for military confrontation with China, had shut down every constructive policy between Seoul and the North Koreans, while also agreeing to the highly provocative deployment of THAAD missiles in the South — a serious destabilization of the balance of power against both China and Russia.

LaRouche had played a crucial role back in 1992 in steps to resolve the festering Korea crisis, under President Kim Dae-jung, when on September 18, 2002, the DMZ fences were opened up and reconstruction of the rail connections between North and South Korea were restored. LaRouche had authored the concept of a “New Silk Road” in 1992, building high speed rail connections “from Pusan to Rotterdam.” President Kim adopted the concept, calling the Korean rail plan the “Iron Silk Road,” saying: “When the Trans-Korean Railway is linked with the Trans-China or the Trans-Siberian Railway, a train leaving London could reach Seoul and Pusan via Paris, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia or China.”

But that was the era of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who moved in to crush any cooperation between North and South Korea, by falsely declaring North Korea to be secretly building nuclear weapons. The IAEA inspectors were then thrown out, and the North did in fact begin a nuclear weapon program, now having 10-20 nuclear bombs. After observing what Bush and Cheney did to Iraq, and what Obama did to Libya, when those two nations voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons programs, only to be bombed back to the stone age, there is zero chance that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons program, unless the US also agrees to end its threats of military strikes and regime change.

Will Trump follow orders from London, or will he live up to his campaign promises to be friends with both Russia and China, in order to end the British Empire’s divisions of the world into warring factions, especially East Vs. West? The potential now exists to realize LaRouche’s call for a new paradigm, based on development of all nations through the New Silk Road.

This depends heavily on the capacity of the American people, and their leaders, to identify the British Imperial hand in driving a wedge between the US and its natural partners in Russia and China, even if it provokes a global nuclear war. Civilization depends on truth and sanity at this turning point in history. As a poster at a LaRouche Political Action Committee rally in Manhattan on Sunday said: “Get Trump Back On Track — Maglev, Not War.”

The British have declared openly that aggressive war may be illegal under international law — but not in the United Kingdom! The Guardian of London reports today that, in a case brought against Tony Blair by victims of Blair’s illegal Iraq War, charging that Blair knowingly lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and then launching an aggressive war against a nation in no way threatening the U.K., the Queen’s Counsel Jeremy Wright has intervened to dismiss the case, arguing both that Blair is immune from prosecution and, most incredibly, that aggressive war is not a crime under British law. There you have it.

Just yesterday the Sunday Times of London claimed to be speaking for the US government (from “sources” in the U.S. military) to say that President Trump is about to launch a preemptive war of aggression against North Korea, fantasizing that such an attack could take out North Korea’s entire nuclear weapons capacity. Any sane person knows that an attack on North Korea would unleash a war that would not only rain terror across Asia, but almost certainly provoke a world nuclear holocaust. In fact, Trump himself and his National Security Advisor Gen. McMasters on Sunday said that pressures against North Korea would stop short of military action.

Lyndon LaRouche today pointed to Vladimir Putin, working with China and potentially with the U.S. under President Trump, as the necessary point person for bringing about a sane resolution to the Korea crisis. In fact, Putin had arranged the seed crystal of a solution over the past decade, establishing a new port facility in North Korea’s northeast region of Rason, and shipping Russian coal through that port into South Korea, in league with both private and state-owned entities in South Korea (Hyundai Marine, the state steal company POSCO, and the state rail company KORAIL). This cooperation on joint development by all the countries of the region is the necessary precondition for resolving the political and strategic crisis on the Korean peninsula, and leading to eventual reunification. The recently impeached former President of South Korea Park Geun-hye, by capitulating to Obama’s drive for military confrontation with China, had shut down every constructive policy between Seoul and the North Koreans, while also agreeing to the highly provocative deployment of THAAD missiles in the South — a serious destabilization of the balance of power against both China and Russia.

LaRouche had played a crucial role back in 1992 in steps to resolve the festering Korea crisis, under President Kim Dae-jung, when on September 18, 2002, the DMZ fences were opened up and reconstruction of the rail connections between North and South Korea were restored. LaRouche had authored the concept of a “New Silk Road” in 1992, building high speed rail connections “from Pusan to Rotterdam.” President Kim adopted the concept, calling the Korean rail plan the “Iron Silk Road,” saying: “When the Trans-Korean Railway is linked with the Trans-China or the Trans-Siberian Railway, a train leaving London could reach Seoul and Pusan via Paris, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia or China.”

But that was the era of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who moved in to crush any cooperation between North and South Korea, by falsely declaring North Korea to be secretly building nuclear weapons. The IAEA inspectors were then thrown out, and the North did in fact begin a nuclear weapon program, now having 10-20 nuclear bombs. After observing what Bush and Cheney did to Iraq, and what Obama did to Libya, when those two nations voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons programs, only to be bombed back to the stone age, there is zero chance that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons program, unless the US also agrees to end its threats of military strikes and regime change.

Will Trump follow orders from London, or will he live up to his campaign promises to be friends with both Russia and China, in order to end the British Empire’s divisions of the world into warring factions, especially East Vs. West? The potential now exists to realize LaRouche’s call for a new paradigm, based on development of all nations through the New Silk Road.

This depends heavily on the capacity of the American people, and their leaders, to identify the British Imperial hand in driving a wedge between the US and its natural partners in Russia and China, even if it provokes a global nuclear war. Civilization depends on truth and sanity at this turning point in history. As a poster at a LaRouche Political Action Committee rally in Manhattan on Sunday said: “Get Trump Back On Track — Maglev, Not War.”

The British are taking full credit for the U.S. criminal attack on Syria last week; for “persuading” President Trump to turn against Assad and the Russians; and for deploying US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow on behalf of the British Empire to tell the Putin Administration it must get out of Syria or face war. This last claim — that Tillerson is London’s puppet in his visit to Russia Tuesday and Wednesday — is not at all certain, and may be a total lie, but there is no end to British officials and British press whores (including those in the U.S.) trying to dictate to Tillerson that he must fill that role.

In fact, the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Italy, which concluded today, was a set back for the British scheme. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson demanded new sanctions against Russia, claiming they were complicit in the supposed Syrian chemical weapons attack. But both the European and Japanese representatives rejected this outright, demanding instead that a UN investigation must first determine the facts surrounding the chemical weapons incident. The British fallback is that they will provoke another fake incident in Syria and dupe Trump again into another military blunder.

Meanwhile, both President Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry reported today that the terrorists in Syria are now moving chemical weapons into four critical locations, to “forge another pretext for accusing the Syrian Government of using chemical weapons and triggering new US airstrike.” The Defense Ministry “warned against such inadmissible steps.” Putin said that this is a rerun of 2003, when the Bush Administration claimed the Iraq government had chemical and nuclear weapons, in order to justify an attack, “which ended with the destruction of the country, an increased terrorist threat and the emergence of ISIS on the international scene — no more, no less.”

“The British Empire has been the enemy of mankind for a long time,” Lyndon LaRouche said today in response to the British campaign. “Shut down the British System! The US is a NATION — always has been a nation, despite some troubles, so we must not submit. We can do it — organize with OUR instruments to shut this down. We’re Americans! Don’t give in. Nations in Asia are involved, some people in Europe. They have RIGHTS — these bastards have no rights.”

He added: “The people of the world, we represent them. Not everyone agrees with that, but we have the authority to determine what the relationship among peoples must be. Policies like these must be cancelled, and people who perform them must be punished. Do that, and we win. Anything else, we lose. Shut them down, the Brits in particular.”

Numerous American patriots are warning that the madness coming out of the Trump Administration this past week totally contradicts everything that Trump had been committed to throughout his campaign, from “no more world policeman,” to being friends with Russia, and to being President of the US, not the world. What they miss, in nearly all cases, is the open, public role of the British and their assets in the U.S..

One blatant example: The Guardian in London, openly threatened Syria with the “Libya treatment,” claiming that Tillerson would “offer the Putin regime a bald choice, between cutting Bashar al-Assad loose… or continuing to back him, and risking a Libyan-style outcome.” They add: “The Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was violently deposed and killed in 2011 by rebels, lent air support by NATO powers, including the UK.” This British sewer did not bother to mention that Libya, a prosperous and relatively peaceful nation until the British and their Saudi cohorts armed Wahabbi terrorists to provoke a civil war, with Obama’s blessing, has now become a terrorist Hell, at the center of the millions of people driven out of their homes as refugees across the region.

It is of note, however, that Tillerson pointed to that Libyan disaster on Sunday as the reason the the US (if Tillerson is in fact speaking for the government) will not force a regime change upon Syria. His meetings in Moscow Wednesday will be crucial in determining the direction of this dangerous process.

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued a Memorandum to President Trump today which begins: “We write to give you an unambiguous warning of the threat of armed hostilities with Russia — with the risk of escalation to nuclear war,” signed by 24 former leading intelligence officers from U.S. government and military intelligence institutions. VIPS, set up in January 2003 by intelligence officers who saw that then President Bush was being lied to about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, write: “Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us… there was no Syrian ‘chemical weapons attack,'” but that the Russians and Syrians are telling the truth that a terrorist chemical weapons facility, believed to be a traditional weapons depot, was bombed, causing the disaster. They call on Trump to call on Tillerson to set up an immediate summit with Putin, to “prevent relations with Russia from falling into a state of complete disrepair.”

LaRouche concluded that  we are witnessing “treason against the US from the inside, using forces inside the government to destroy that government. No British institution has the right to meddle in American affairs. Obama is an example of this evil. Mankind has to learn to fight, to shut down things that are wrong. The British Empire is wrong — with some good people hiding under their skirts. People must have the guts to do what must be done. The time has come to crush this thing. Get this nation and other nations to agree to that.”

The British are taking full credit for the U.S. criminal attack on Syria last week; for “persuading” President Trump to turn against Assad and the Russians; and for deploying US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow on behalf of the British Empire to tell the Putin Administration it must get out of Syria or face war. This last claim — that Tillerson is London’s puppet in his visit to Russia Tuesday and Wednesday — is not at all certain, and may be a total lie, but there is no end to British officials and British press whores (including those in the U.S.) trying to dictate to Tillerson that he must fill that role.

In fact, the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Italy, which concluded today, was a set back for the British scheme. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson demanded new sanctions against Russia, claiming they were complicit in the supposed Syrian chemical weapons attack. But both the European and Japanese representatives rejected this outright, demanding instead that a UN investigation must first determine the facts surrounding the chemical weapons incident. The British fallback is that they will provoke another fake incident in Syria and dupe Trump again into another military blunder.

Meanwhile, both President Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry reported today that the terrorists in Syria are now moving chemical weapons into four critical locations, to “forge another pretext for accusing the Syrian Government of using chemical weapons and triggering new US airstrike.” The Defense Ministry “warned against such inadmissible steps.” Putin said that this is a rerun of 2003, when the Bush Administration claimed the Iraq government had chemical and nuclear weapons, in order to justify an attack, “which ended with the destruction of the country, an increased terrorist threat and the emergence of ISIS on the international scene — no more, no less.”

“The British Empire has been the enemy of mankind for a long time,” Lyndon LaRouche said today in response to the British campaign. “Shut down the British System! The US is a NATION — always has been a nation, despite some troubles, so we must not submit. We can do it — organize with OUR instruments to shut this down. We’re Americans! Don’t give in. Nations in Asia are involved, some people in Europe. They have RIGHTS — these bastards have no rights.”

He added: “The people of the world, we represent them. Not everyone agrees with that, but we have the authority to determine what the relationship among peoples must be. Policies like these must be cancelled, and people who perform them must be punished. Do that, and we win. Anything else, we lose. Shut them down, the Brits in particular.”

Numerous American patriots are warning that the madness coming out of the Trump Administration this past week totally contradicts everything that Trump had been committed to throughout his campaign, from “no more world policeman,” to being friends with Russia, and to being President of the US, not the world. What they miss, in nearly all cases, is the open, public role of the British and their assets in the U.S..

One blatant example: The Guardian in London, openly threatened Syria with the “Libya treatment,” claiming that Tillerson would “offer the Putin regime a bald choice, between cutting Bashar al-Assad loose… or continuing to back him, and risking a Libyan-style outcome.” They add: “The Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was violently deposed and killed in 2011 by rebels, lent air support by NATO powers, including the UK.” This British sewer did not bother to mention that Libya, a prosperous and relatively peaceful nation until the British and their Saudi cohorts armed Wahabbi terrorists to provoke a civil war, with Obama’s blessing, has now become a terrorist Hell, at the center of the millions of people driven out of their homes as refugees across the region.

It is of note, however, that Tillerson pointed to that Libyan disaster on Sunday as the reason the the US (if Tillerson is in fact speaking for the government) will not force a regime change upon Syria. His meetings in Moscow Wednesday will be crucial in determining the direction of this dangerous process.

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued a Memorandum to President Trump today which begins: “We write to give you an unambiguous warning of the threat of armed hostilities with Russia — with the risk of escalation to nuclear war,” signed by 24 former leading intelligence officers from U.S. government and military intelligence institutions. VIPS, set up in January 2003 by intelligence officers who saw that then President Bush was being lied to about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, write: “Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us… there was no Syrian ‘chemical weapons attack,'” but that the Russians and Syrians are telling the truth that a terrorist chemical weapons facility, believed to be a traditional weapons depot, was bombed, causing the disaster. They call on Trump to call on Tillerson to set up an immediate summit with Putin, to “prevent relations with Russia from falling into a state of complete disrepair.”

LaRouche concluded that  we are witnessing “treason against the US from the inside, using forces inside the government to destroy that government. No British institution has the right to meddle in American affairs. Obama is an example of this evil. Mankind has to learn to fight, to shut down things that are wrong. The British Empire is wrong — with some good people hiding under their skirts. People must have the guts to do what must be done. The time has come to crush this thing. Get this nation and other nations to agree to that.”

American Statesman Lyndon LaRouche condemned the British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and others pushing the for regime change in Syria as liars today, when briefed on the London Guardian’s warning that,

“According to one G7 source, Tillerson plans to offer the Putin regime a bald choice, between cutting Bashar al-Assad loose and being rewarded with a thaw in relations with the west; or continuing to back him, and risking a Libyan-style outcome. The Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was violently deposed and killed in 2011 by rebels lent air support by Nato powers, including the UK.

“Whitehall sources say Britain has been instrumental in helping to persuade the US to support the idea that Assad – and his family – must be removed from power before progress can be made. Johnson is pushing for the strongest possible conclusion, including the threat of targeted sanctions against Syrian and Russian military commanders – a proposal he judges more likely to win support than wider economic penalties against Moscow.”

To which Mr. LaRouche replied, “Don’t respond to these allegations, denounce them, it’s a program of lying, to destroy civilization as such. The British Empire has been the enemy of mankind for a long time — shut down the British System.

“Policies like these must be cancelled, and people who perform them must be punished. Do that, and we win. Anything else, we lose. Shut them down,
the Brits in particular. No British institution has the right to meddle in American affairs. Obama is an example of this evil.”

The following article by William Jones will appear in the upcoming issue of EIR.

The summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was intended to provide the basis for a close relationship between these two major countries in resolving their differences and working together for the advancement of humanity. The sudden decision by the U.S. President to bomb Syria on the bogus pretext of Syrian use of chemical weapons, did not, however, disrupt the negotiations. While the Chinese delegation must have been totally taken aback by this major military operation in the midst of this important meeting, they decided not to skip a beat after President Trump informed President Xi about the bombing after the state dinner on the evening of April 6. The meetings continued with the Chinese delegation the next morning as scheduled and were concluded by early afternoon.

The chemistry between the two leaders was good. They had already established a good rapport previously through their mutual correspondence and their phone calls. There were many smiling faces during the pauses with the press during the breaks in the more serious discussions. President Trump said that the two leaders had developed and “outstanding” relationship and that “lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away”. President Xi also was quite pleased with the reception his delegation, which included four Politburo members, had been given by the President. The Summit, he said “held a uniquely important significance for the Sino-U.S. relationship.”

“President Trump made excellent preparation for our country’s representatives and gave us a warm reception,” Xi said. “We recently have had in-depth and lengthy communications to this end and arrived at many common understandings, the most important being deepening our friendship and building a kind of trust in keeping with the Sino-U.S. working relationship and friendship.”

President Trump also had most of his cabinet with him at the summit, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. President Xi also extended an invitation to President Trump to visit China this year, which President Trump readily accepted. President Xi also invited the U.S. President to join the Belt and Road Initiative.

The two presidents also established a new and cabinet-level framework for negotiations, the United States-China Comprehensive Dialogue, which will be overseen by them. This mechanism will replace the previous U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which was criticized by the Trump people as being a “talk-shop” with no practical results.  With the new format they hope to realize concrete results within a short period. The Dialogue will have four pillars: the Diplomatic and Security Dialogue; the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue, the Law Enforcement and Cyber-security Dialogue, and the Social and Cultural Issues Dialogue.

The two presidents had discussed the important issues of trade and have decided to develop a 100-day action plan on trade with China which would have “way-stations of accomplishment along the way”, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. There was also a discussion regarding investment and eliminating the obstacles that remained in achieving a genuine bilateral investment treaty between the two countries  Secretary Tillerson also indicated that there had been a longer discussion on the North Korean nuclear program, with a renewed commitment by both sides to a denuclearized Korean peninsula and increased cooperation in convincing the North Koreans to give up their program although there was no “package arrangement” on the topic, he said. Tillerson said that President Xi shared the U.S. view that this situation has reached a very serious stage.

While the summit seemed to have achieved the limited goals it had set of establishing a good working relationship between the leaders and conducting a thorough discussion of the issues on which the two countries were divided, the shadow cast by the attack on Syria still remains. Some Chinese analysts have already expressed the suspicion that the operation was timed to underline the determination of the United States to use, military action, if necessary, against the DPRK, if the threat remains, thereby putting pressure on China to take a harder line against its North Korean neighbor. Although no one should be so foolish as to think that conducting any kind of military strike against the DPRK, in contrast to Syria, could be done without immediate retaliation from North Korea. The unilateral exertion of U.S. power in the Middle East also sent the subtle message that  the “major power relationship” sought by China, a relationship of equality, was still a distant goal.

The response of the Chinese Foreign Ministry to the strike was unusually muted. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on April 8 reiterated that China opposes the use of chemical weapons “by any country, organization or person for any purpose and under any circumstance.” At the same time, she said that the matter deserved a thorough UN investigation in order to really determine who was responsible “and on the basis of solid evidence, reaching a conclusion which can stand the test of history and facts.”

At the moment, “history and facts” seem to be both in abeyance with regard to the pretext for the military strike. President Trump should heed the words of the American philosopher, George Santayana, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And it looks like this could well become a repeat of the George W. Bush rush to war, again based on bogus “weapons of mass destruction” if the path embarked on is not quickly reversed. And no doubt, Chinese military strategists will be closely following the development of this sudden shift by the U.S. President in order to ferret out the significance for them—and the consequences  of this very erratic  and dangerous—military escalation.

On April 7th, just hours after Donald Trump had ordered an attack on the Syrian base of Al Shairat, French Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade and long-time collaborator or Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, met with Lebanese President Michel Aoun at the Baabda presidential palace, to talk, quite the contrary, about “peace through development” for the whole region. Christine Bierre, in charge of this region for Cheminade’s movement, also attended the meeting.

Following a 30-minute interview, Cheminade made the following remarks to the press gathered at the Presidential palace.

“I have come to Lebanon in the spirit of a Free Lebanon, over and above all political factions, as one should always consider such things in France, and to show the role Lebanon can play in the Middle East and in world affairs. For a long time now, in particular since February 1989, General Aoun has been very important in this respect because he has always shown great political courage in that respect and great independent mindedness, nurtured by his political courage.

“Today, I have come here to say that France must do everything to support the cause of Lebanon, and in particular to make sure that Europe and France contribute much more aid to the political and economic refugees coming to Lebanon and to those in Lebanon who receive the refugees and who sometimes live less well than they do. France must do all in her power to deal with that question. We know that there are between 2 and 2.5 million refugees in Lebanon, for a population of 4.5 million inhabitants. We must absolutely do something to help Lebanon.

“The way to help in a decisive manner is to allow the refugees to return to their countries, in particular to Syria, and to create conditions of peace in Syria, through economic development and reconstruction. We did this in France after World War II, with public credit and a commitment to the future. Today we need credit for the development of Syria so that the Syrians can go back to their country and live there. With time, and that time must be as short as possible, that is the only way to establish peace through mutual development in the Near and Middle East.

“What happened today at dawn, the missiles fire from an American vessel at an important Syrian base is something that will no doubt worsen what is happening here. It was carried out before an international investigation into what really happened in Syria could occur, and it is a decision by President Trump, to go far beyond what Obama did in 2013, when Obama stopped before launching missiles.

“In my opinion, there has been, in a totally premature manner, a violation of the sovereignty of one nation by another one. I think this is very serious, it does not help peace in the Near and Middle East in any way, and we must very quickly, without losing time in useless debates, say that this intervention in the internal affairs of a state must stop and create the conditions for peace through mutual development in the future. From that standpoint, Lebanon and the Lebanon of General Aoun must play an absolutely fundamental role that France must recognize.”

In further media coverage during the day, Jacques Cheminade came back to the hypocrisy and cynicism of those in France and the Western camp who are calling for a coalition against Assad. “I am not for a coalition against Bashar Al Assad,” he told the correspondent of the French national all-business BFM TV, “but in favor of stabilizing the situation in Lebanon. Some preach and preach morality; the reality is that those doing the moralizing are the ones who organized the military intervention in Libya with the consequences we know, and who allow Yemen to be bombed by Saudi Arabia. They even give the Saudis more intelligence to be able to better bomb Yemen and after that, they give lessons on morality to the entire world. I find that to be of the utmost hypocrisy and cynicism.”

Cheminade told Radio France Internationale (RFI), “Politics is not being nice to someone’s face and cynical behind his back. Politics is what General de Gaulle did, which is to try by all means to reach détente, entente and cooperation” among all nations.

Finally, Cheminade expressed his concern with the serious problems Lebanon is facing today due to the war against Syria. To a question by a Lebanese journalist following his presentation at Baabda, Cheminade answered that he talked with President Aoun “about pressing France and Europe for more help to urgently improve the sewer system currently in a catastrophic state due to the occupation by too many people, of a country of only 4.5 million inhabitants. President Aoun said Europe had begun to help, but Cheminade said that aid must go much further, indicating that France’s world-class water companies should be brought in to contribute to solve those problems.

“Lebanon could become a powder keg,” he warned, in his interview to BFM TV, and for that reason “the refugees must be able to go back to Syria and the conditions created for them to do so, rather than creating dissensions and tensions through interventions like that of Trump.”

An article in the April 8th issue of the main French-language Lebanese daily l’Orient le Jour also reported that Cheminade was in Lebanon to “to support a Free Lebanon … beyond its political divisions,” pay homage to Aoun’s “political courage” and “independent mindedness” and call for more aid to Lebanon to solve its domestic difficulties due to the refugee crisis. On BFM TV, Cheminade warned that Lebanon could become a “powder keg,” which means “creating the conditions for Syrians to go back home and not to create “dissensions and tensions by intervening like Trump has done.”

Lebanon is exemplary, he said, “because there have been all these family quarrels, with killings and murders; it’s almost Shakespearean, with the Hariris, the Geageas, the Frangiehs, the Gemayels, etc. But Aoun came and succeeded in creating unity among those people who thought towards the future of the country. It is that attitude that we must have throughout the whole region.”

Cheminade concluded his trip to Lebanon in discussion with a few Frenchmen, and potential voters, who attended a meeting that the candidate organized that evening.

Lyndon LaRouche today warned that there is a British-run coup d’etat in process against the Trump administration in the United States, which threatens to parlay the stupid and dangerous April 6 air strike against Syria, into a full-fledged thermonuclear confrontation with Russia and China.

It’s the British bastards who duped President Trump into attacking Syria, with their lies and false intelligence, LaRouche charged. We have to destroy the British system and all their interests in the U.S., he stated. We have to rally the U.S. to get back on the trajectory that Trump had begun to chart for the country, of cooperation with Russia and China around American System economic policies, including a return the FDR’s 1933 Glass-Steagall principle.

Trump and Putin should immediately hold a summit meeting to address the crisis, LaRouche said, and thereby short-circuit the whole British operation. LaRouche strongly endorsed the comments this weekend by veteran German statesman Willy Wimmer, former Secretary of State of the German Defense Ministry, who warned that “people are afraid of a global war, a Third World War,” and argued that “the current dramatic situation offers an opportunity for the Russian and U.S. heads of state to meet as soon as possible.”

There can be no doubt that the British are behind last week’s shocking about-face of Trump’s policy. Top British officials are crowing openly over their achievement to date. For example, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon published an op-ed in the April 9 Sunday Times of London, bragging that “the British and American governments have been in close contact at all levels before and after the strikes… U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called me to share their assessment of the regime’s culpability. Together we reviewed the options they were considering.”

On April 8, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had also claimed that he was coordinating everything with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, including Johnson’s theatrical cancellation of his scheduled trip to Moscow. “I discussed these plans in detail with Secretary Tillerson,” Johnson boasted. “He will visit Moscow as planned and, following the G7 meeting [in Lucca, Italy on April 10-11], will be able to deliver that clear and coordinated message to the Russians.”

Today’s Sunday Times elaborated, in an article accompanying the Fallon op-ed, what that message would be: “Britain and America will this week directly accuse Russia of complicity in war crimes in Syria and demand that Vladimir Putin pull the rug from Bashar al-Assad’s blood-soaked regime.” Fallon further wrote: “By proxy, Russia is responsible for every civilian death last week,” adding that Putin must now get with the program, by agreeing to the overthrow of the Assad government.

The chances of Putin going along with this British demand, are zero. The chances of the situation spiraling into a thermonuclear confrontation—either in the Middle East or around the Korean peninsula—are significantly greater than zero, so long as the British are calling the shots.

Having induced Trump to attack Syria based upon their lies, the British are now also orchestrating a storm of opposition to President Trump in the Obama wing of the Democratic Party, calling for Trump’s impeachment because of the Syria caper. Trump’s actions this week have also weakened him politically among his own base of supporters, both in the U.S. and internationally, who are shocked and dismayed at what he did—which adds grist to the British mill.

The current situation is extremely dangerous, LaRouche emphasized, and can lead to war in the short term. And it is being brought about entirely by the British, and nothing else. We have to destroy that British imperial system. The citizens of the United States must rally themselves against this British coup. No intelligent person will accept what the British are up to; the only people inside the United States who will back the British, LaRouche said, are brain-drained people who are traitors to the U.S.

We have to come down like a hammer on this, in order to stop the British coup to take over the Trump administration, and the related drive to war. The Schiller Institute’s two-day conference this coming April 13-14, on “U.S.-China Cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative and Corresponding Ideas in Chinese and Western Philosophy,” will present the policy alternative which is capable of destroying the British Empire, permanently.