Author: Alicia

Thursday in the ancient amphitheater in the historic Syrian city of Palmya, the Russian Mariinsky Theater Orchestra gave a beautiful concert, titled, “With A Prayer for Palmyra—Music Revives the Ancient Walls,” whose impact is already uplifting millions internationally. The event was dedicated to the memory of those who have lost their lives to the terrorists.

In particular, to the memory of Dr. Khaled al-Assad (1934-2015), the Syrian archaeologist, who was custodian of the Palmyra antiquities for 40 years, and was publicly beheaded last August by IS, after refusing to give them access to still more statues to destroy; and to the memory of the young Russian special forces officer, Aleksandr Prokhorenko, killed in mid-March, after calling in Russian airstrikes on his own position, when he was surrounded by IS during the battle for Plamyra. He has been posthumously named a Hero of Russia, and his body was returned home today.

The orchestra’s conductor Valery Gergiev led the program, with principal players Pavel Milyukov, violin, and Sergei Roldugin, ‘cello, the latter the artistic director of St. Petersburg’s House of Music. Also in the official Russian delegation was the Director of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky. Representatives from China, Zimbabwe, and Serbia attended.

The Classical program featured Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne, the First Symphony by Sergei Prokofiev, and by modern Russian composer, Rodion Schedrin (widower of the famed Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya), an excerpt from his opera, “Not Love Alone.”  When Gergiev introduced the pieces in the program, he pointed out that Prokofiev wrote his symphony “in homage to the great masters of the past—Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven,” whose work expresses “optimism and hope.”

At the opening of the event, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave greetings live by video from Sochi. He spoke out against terrorism, and expressed appreciation for the concert, which he called a “sign of gratitude, remembrance and hope.” He said, “I see this as remembrance for all victims of terror no matter the place and time of crimes against humanity, and, of course, of hope not just for the revival of Palmyra as a cultural asset of the whole of humanity, but for modern civilization, from this horrible fate of international terrorism.”

Putin thanked the musicians and support participants. “Today’s action involved major inconvenience and dangers for everyone, being in a country at war close to where hostilities are still ongoing. That has demanded great strength and personal courage from you all. Thank you very much.” Gregiev is a close associate of Putin, and ‘cellist Roldugin, a good friend.

Conductor Gergiev spoke before the music—in Russian and English. He said, “We protest against barbarians who destroyed wonderful monuments of world culture. We protest against the execution of people here on this great stage,” referring to the public mass killings by the Islamic State last November in the amphitheater. Gregiev is Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic, as well as conducting the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra.

The audience filled the amphitheater. Along with local Syrians, and military personnel from both Syria and Russia, dignitaries included Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, who has led the commitment to rescue and restore Palmyra antiquities. He was moved to tears by the event.

Thanks to superb amplification and recording, the concert itself, and also views of the striking setting of the Palmyra ruins, are now available widely internationally, after the live broadcast. In Russia, the event is the lead news of the day, and the video is fast reaching the world over.

RT’s broadcast of the “With A Prayer for Palmyra—Music Revives the Ancient Walls” living memorial in Palmyra.

In just a few words spoken over a few minutes on Tuesday evening, Lyndon LaRouche spelled out starkly what he himself has long known, and what every successful architect of victory has known,— but what others refuse to face.  He showed that victory is only possible through doing the things that have never been done before,— indeed never even thought of before.  Based on a totally new original insight.

You can only win by doing what all the smart people knew was absolutely impossible.  This is the story of the Inchon Landing of September 15, 1950.  MacArthur had told the nay-sayers, namely the entirety of the US high command, that “the very arguments you have made as to the impracticalities involved” confirmed his faith in the plan,— “for the enemy commander will reason that no one would be so brash as to make such an attempt.”  MacArthur finished his statement (like LaRouche, he knew when to finish), by whispering, “I can almost hear the ticking of the second-hand of destiny.  We must act now or we will die…”

But LaRouche’s leadership has long been on a profounder level than even the genius MacArthur’s.  Better to think back to MacArthur’s friend Gen. Charles de Gaulle.  In his memoirs, De Gaulle recalled the moment in 1940 when all the French officials had turned their back on his struggle against the treasonous “French” government at Vichy.  “I felt like someone approaching the ocean,” he wrote, “preparing to swim across.”

(Yet he did swim across!)

This is almost impossibly difficult, but it can be done.  It must be done, even if you can never say in advance how to do it. It has been done.  And Lyndon LaRouche, in particular has done it repeatedly and successfully.  He debated and soundly defeated the chosen representative of the British system in 1971.  Impossible! Then, later, through the Strategic Defense Initiative, he transformed the incoming U.S. Reagan Administration into the instrument of what would have been a new world system of peace and dramatic human progress.  The British tried to assassinate Reagan, and went all-out to destroy LaRouche.  They jailed him, but couldn’t destroy him,— although his influence was effectively contained for years.

Yet even under this attack, LaRouche and his wife Helga succeeded in laying the basis for the Eurasian Landbridge/Silk Road policy and the BRICS, without which humanity would have no prospect for the future.

Beginning in October, 2014, LaRouche set out again to accomplish the impossible.  He outflanked the resistance, and founded a new organization in Manhattan on a new basis, prominently including Classical choral work and competent Classical musical performance, and linked to a live dialog with LaRouche.  It seemed impossible; for years, every previous attempt had failed.  But it is demonstrably succeeding, and spinning off new organization on a new basis in Northern California, in Boston, and in a special way in Houston, Texas, where LaRouche leader Kesha Rogers has vigorously and effectively taken up the fight to revive the Space Program.

In the referenced Tuesday discussion, LaRouche also specified that, “Right now, the question is, how will Russia and China survive this situation? Because if they don’t survive this situation, there’s not going to be a civilization; it just won’t happen.  Now, this depends upon maneuvers and things of that nature on the part of the leading parties; that’s the only chance.  You cannot use deductive methods; they don’t work.  They can’t work under these circumstances.  You actually are going to depend largely on a contributing factor in which Russia and China are going to play a controlling role.  If they cannot successfully do that, then I think the case for humanity is poor; more than poor.  In other words, it is not just this piece of equipment out there; it has to be the way in which this thing is orchestrated.  And the orchestration has to come chiefly — chiefly, from Putin and from China; chiefly.  And it will have to an act of choice, chiefly; and it will be so clever, that it will take the enemy forces off their heels, before they can really come to an understanding of what they’re being threatened by.

“It can be done; this kind of thing can be done.  But it has to be done; or it doesn’t work.”

These thoughts touch on the most profound issues we know: one hopes that this account is truthful as far as it goes; it is not complete.

Get active with LaRouchePAC.

The German economic online journal Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten published a lengthy interview with Claudio Celani Sunday on the issue of the euro and alternatives to it. DWN identified Celani as “a journalist and co-editor of the EIR Strategic Alert Newsletter, and vice-chairman of MoviSol, the Italian wing of the LaRouche movement.”

DWN headlined the interview “Endgame: The Euro Could Become the Target of Speculators,” and began by asking Celani, “Has the European crisis been overcome? What is your view of the euro?” He replied, “The euro crisis has not been overcome. I think, rather, that the euro will not last much longer. The euro has really been a dead currency from the start. Its introduction was a geopolitical idea, completely decoupled from credit and the real economy. It is a purely monetary currency, which has never been able to work.

“Only the persisting expectation of nominal growth in the European Community postponed rigor mortis until 2008. It became clear no later than with the outbreak of the financial crisis: If the economy must [be sacrificed] to support the currency, and not the other way around, the currency is dead.”

Following many questions on George Soros’s potential speculations against currencies and potential attack on the euro, including the role of drug and mafia money in the Wall Street/London hedge fund casino, Celani was asked, “Haven’t the banks become dependent on central bank money?”

“Soros was a forerunner of the financial casino of the world of hedge funds, derivatives transactions, etc.,” he told DWN. “By now, all banks are in hedge funds, derivatives bets, etc. The 2008 crisis did not put the brakes on this; the situation has gotten even worse.

“The ratios no longer have any correspondence, as in Deutsche Bank with a current share capital of scarcely EU20 billion, EU1.7 trillion in assets and EU52 trillion in derivatives exposure! The case of other `systemically relevant’ banks is no different. The crash of the system is unavoidable.”

“What is the way out?” DWN asked. “Helicopter money, as the ECB is apparently considering seriously now?”

“No,” Celani said: “Helicopter money will make the situation worse. We have to reject the failed model of the universal bank and re-introduce the bank separation system of Glass-Steagall. As long as the commercial banks and investment banks stay under the same roof, it will be impossible to let bankrupt institutions fail. But if we separate the two, and decouple the real, goods-producing economy from the financial casino, we can save the former.

“For this purpose, MoviSol has directly sponsored or drafted a whole series of legislative proposals for bank separation in the Italian Parliament since 2012. At this moment there are seven bills in the Senate and at least four in the Chamber of Deputies, and these are sponsored by nearly all parties. But the legislature — as in most European countries — is so subordinate to the Executive, and ultimately to the EU, that they have made sure that these do not come up for debate.

“But, restructured commercial banks need opportunities for investment. In other words, credit for investment must not only be offered, but also demanded. The key word here: Public infrastructure programs.”

DWN responded that “the EU already has projects, the so-called Juncker Plan. What about that?”

“The Juncker plan is not adequate. The EU Commission has just announced setting the first part of the plan in motion and that it should bring EU76 billion in investments. But in reality, there are only EU10 billion from the EU there; the rest has to come from private investment.

“But above all, there is no strategy, no overall plan. Only isolated projects are funded, and mostly small ones which can have no essential macroeconomic effect.

“Instead of this,” Celani concluded, “the EU should take part in the Chinese project for a ‘New Silk Road’ and make appropriate sums available for investments in infrastructure corridors. The reconstruction of Syria and other countries in the Middle East and Africa can be part of this strategy. This could be financed through a development bank, which, in turn, requires rethinking the entire economic policy of the EU.”

Just as both Russia and India have done over the past months, China has now adopted new laws restricting the free play of foreign NGO’s, to the wild protest of the western “color revolution” networks.

According to Xinhua, the law, passed by the National Parliament of China Thursday, after several readings over the past 18 months, will require foreign NGOs to secure approval from the Ministry of Public Security, and register with the police, to set up representative offices on the mainland; and the NGOs must have an official Chinese partner organization. The law takes effect on Jan. 1.

Xinhua reports that the bill mandates that:

* Overseas NGOs operating on the mainland without approval will be punished.

* NGOs shall not undermine the country’s unity, security or ethnic solidarity nor harm the interests of the state, the public or the legal rights of citizens and other groups.

* They will be banned from engaging in or sponsoring commercial and political activities or engaging in or sponsoring religious activities.

* Financial reports, including sources of funding, will be audited and published.

* Foreign NGOs will not be considered legal entities, and therefore it will be against the law to recruit Chinese members, unless approved by the State Council.

* NGOs will have their registration certificates withdrawn if they are found stealing state secrets, spreading rumors, sponsoring political activities or any other activity that harms state security and interests. Staff directly responsible for the offences may face police detention or criminal prosecution.

The final law dropped restrictions on overseas colleges, hospitals and science and engineering research institutes, which had been included in earlier drafts.  The NY Times Saturday captures the freakout in the West: “This latest move is also part of a wider global trend in which powerful nations, including Russia and India, are cracking down on non-government organizations and consolidating power in the state.” BRICS, anyone?

Xi Jinping, who is leading the transformation of the world in a new paradigm based on development and the common aims of mankind, is, according to the NY Times, taking China back to the bad old days: “Mr. Xi makes loud pronouncements about ideology, and is expected to enact other sweeping security laws. He has departed sharply from the direction of several of his predecessors, who for decades guided China in seeking out foreign expertise to modernize society.”

The Times notes that this will be particularly difficult for certain groups: “Beijing is already suspicious of foreign and Chinese non-government organizations that receive funding from outside sources deemed politically suspect, like the National Endowment for Democracy and the [George Soros’s] Open Society Foundations.” Lyndon LaRouche commented: “Hooray!” 

Former British Prime Minister and Her Majesty’s evil little helper Tony Blair gets a cool £41,000 a month as a retainer fee from the PetroSaudi oil company according to a series of documents seen by the Guardian. The documents show he was paid because he used his influence to help the company enter the Chinese market; the company is owned by Prince Turki bin Abdullah, the son of the late King Abdullah, who was ruler when these transactions occurred in 2010. According to the contract, the company was not allowed to reveal Blair’s role without permission, for fear that he might be targeted by the City regulator, over concerns Blair was advising on deals for investors for a corporate function, which required oversight by the regulator; this Blair did not have, and thus, he was conducting business, that he was not authorized to conduct.

Blair began lobbying for PetroSaudi in the summer of 2010, and according to emails seen by the Guardian, by the end of the year he had arranged a meeting between the chairman of the China National Petroleum Corp., one of the largest companies in the world, and PetroSaudi in Saudi Arabia.

While the documents from PetroSaudi show they had pressed for him to “help deliver transactions, not just make the intros,” there is no evidence that Blair carried out any transactions, and the Guardian writes that there was nothing illegal in any of these talks. Nonetheless it is not clear if Blair is still receiving the retainer fee of £41,000 a month, perhaps for other services. Nor is it explained why such a well-placed company needs Blair for introductions to the Chinese. Or was the money for something else?

The Guardian quotes Blair’s spokesman as having said, “his role was made known to the regulators…and he has never undertaken any activity other than making introductions. He does not do ‘deals.'”

An estimated 350,000 people gathered on the streets of Buenos Aires Friday in a march and demonstration organized by the four major trade union federations to denounce President Mauricio Macri’s brutal austerity policies, demand that he declare a “job emergency,” and not veto a bill that has already passed the Senate that would halt all firings and force companies to double severance payments of those they do fire.

Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner praised the “marvelous” demonstration, warning that “it would be good if those who mistreated our Fatherland … realized once and for all that, while our people are peaceful and calm, they are not stupid. They just want to be allowed to work in peace…. Part of our Fatherland once again took to the streets of Buenos Aires because [people] aren’t afraid, and because, above all, they want a future.”

Argentina’s labor movement, which for years has been divided into squabbling factions, is now coming together in opposition to the policies that have already led to 140,000 firings in four months. The powerful teamsters, metalworkers, construction and state-sector unions led the march, joined by other citizens, social groups and political parties. The message delivered by the heads of the two factions of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and the heads of the two factions of the Argentine Labor Confederation (CTA) was that there would be intensified social conflict and a national strike unless Macri changes his economic policies, and doesn’t attempt to veto the job emergency bill.

Macri and his chief of staff Marcos Peña tried to do damage control, claiming that government and workers share the “same concerns and agenda.” But in an April 29 press conference, Peña called the job emergency bill “counterproductive,” as “excessive protection of employment” would only force 40% of workers into the informal economy. A very defensive Macri is making appearances in several cities around the country vowing to create hundreds of thousands of jobs through public works projects.

As the U.S. pursues its war-mongering gunboat diplomacy in the South China Sea, Chinese President Xi Jinping is attempting to create a peace order in Asia. Speaking to the Foreign Ministers Beijing meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building in Asia (CICA) on April 28, President Xi called on those present to follow through and make the vision of a security governance model with Asian features a reality.

CICA was established in 1992 as a forum for dialogue and consultation on security issues in Asia. It has 26 member countries and 12 countries and international organizations as observers. President Xi had first made the proposal for a new regional security cooperation framework based on the CICA at the 2014 CICA Leaders Summit.

He told the foreign ministers,“A stable and developing Asia is a blessing, while a turbulent and declining Asia would bring nothing but trouble to the world. Asia’s security architecture should fit regional conditions,” he said, noting that CICA would be the ideal framework for developing such an architecture. Xi reiterated that China is firmly committed to pursuing the peaceful development path, maintaining international order with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter at its core, fostering a new type of international relations of win-win cooperation, and building a community of shared future for all.

Xi’s proposal received much praise and support from the delegates. He encouraged the Asian nations to scale up exchanges and communication to create a fertile environment to establish regional security governance. China will chair CICA for the next two years and “will work with other parties to raise CICA’s profile in regional security and development affairs,” Xi said.

Speaking at a CPC Political Bureau Study Group on the history of the ancient Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road on April 29, President Xi Jinping said that he hoped that the Belt and Road Initiative would be of benefit to all countries, as well as to China. President Xi has initiated these study groups in order to invite experts in to the Politburo to more intensively examine questions of importance for the nation, on which they must make decisions.

The expert for the Friday meeting was Prof. Li Guqiang from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

President Xi also addressed the group on the topic. “The construction of the Belt and Road is our multi-directional proposal in the new economic circumstances to create an important mutually beneficial, win-win platform. We must approach it from a higher standpoint, adopt a broader vision in assimilating and drawing lessons on the basis of historical experience. We must use creative ideas and innovative thinking to create a sound basis for our work and in order to allow the people of all the countries along the Road to experience concretely the benefits of the Road and Belt. The Political Bureau is this time studying this topic, most importantly to grasp the historical culture of the ancient Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road, to sum up the historical experience in order to push forward the construction of the Belt and Road under new circumstances and to draw lessons from this historical experience.

“When the Belt and Road was proposed, it aroused great interest in many layers and had reverberations around the world, and every side responded. The reason for the strong response was primarily that the proposal corresponded to the demand of the times and each country quickened its desire for development, which has deep historical roots and its basis in humanity. Viewed from our circumstances, this proposal is in accordance with the demands of our country’s economic development, but is also conducive to drive the development of our neighboring countries. The Belt and Road arouses the sense of history in our neighboring countries. The ancient Silk Road was a corridor of trade, but even more a corridor of friendship.  With the friendly contacts between the Chinese people and our neighboring peoples, we are step-by-step approaching a condition of peace and cooperation, a flourishing of tolerance, of learning from each other, of a mutual benefit and win-win spirit that characterized the ancient Silk Road.

“We have initiated the Belt and Road, but building the Belt and Road is not only our task. It cannot be viewed as only the means of our development, but we must use our development as a critical turning point to allow more countries to get on our express train and to help them realize the goals of their own development. It must be to the benefit of our country but also to the benefit of other nations. We must adopt the principle of justice before benefit, achieving justice then benefit, not eager for success and immediate benefit, not conducting short-sighted actions. We must plan the project as a whole taking into consideration our own interests and the interests of the countries along the way, which may be somewhat different, and seek for more junctures in our mutual benefits and engender in the countries along the Belt and Road our enthusiasm.”

Xi also urged Chinese companies to value not only economic returns from their investment projects in foreign countries but also their reputations as law-abiding and responsible entities.

Although for some time, Chinese scientists have been lobbying for a mission to land astronauts on the Moon, during celebrations April 24 for National Space Day came the first announcement of such a plan from a high-level space official. Lt. Gen. Zhang Yulin remarked at a conference celebrating China’s first Space Day that China plans to land astronauts on the Moon by 2036. Zhang is the deputy commander of China’s Manned Space Program, which posted his remarks on its website on April 28. He is also deputy head of the Central Military Commission’s Equipment Development Department.

China must “raise its abilities and use the next 15 to 20 years to realize manned lunar exploration goals,” Zhang said,”and take a firm step for the Chinese people in breaking ground in the utilization of space.” He also noted that the project would, more broadly, support the scientific and technological development of the country. Zhang’s comments follow President Xi Jinping’s Space Day comments that his “China Dream” is tied to China’s “Space Dream.”

Pang Zhihao, of the China Academy of Space Technology, described the challenges for China’s space program to carry out such a lunar landing. First, a heavy-lift launch vehicle, on the order of the Saturn V Moon rocket, has to be designed, developed, man-rated, and tested. “To send our astronauts to the Moon, we will need a mighty rocket capable of lifting a payload of at least 100 metric tons into low Earth orbit,” he explained.”That is why our scientists have begun to develop the Long March 9.” This new vehicle is expected to have a payload capacity of 130 metric tons, and be ready to fly around 2030. A new crew capsule, larger and more capable than the Earth-orbital Shenzhou craft, will have to be developed. Creating new space suits, appropriate for walking on the Moon, is underway, and techniques for descent to the lunar surface, a soft landing, and the ability to launch from the lunar surface and to rendezvous and dock with an orbiter for the trip home, all are required.

China’s ongoing projects are laying the basis for the manned lunar mission, officials have stressed. The rendezvous and docking missions in Earth orbit with the Shenzhou capsules have laid the foundation for the more demanding lunar-orbit rendezvous needed for the manned mission. Next year’s Chang’e-5 mission, to return lunar samples to Earth, will demonstrate the high-velocity Earth return that the lunar manned mission will require. Similarly, the landing of Chang’e-3 and its companion Yutu rover on the Moon, was good practice for extraterrestrial landing techniques.

Over the next 15 to 20 years, Zhang said, all of these capabilities will be developed. 

“71 years after the crushing defeat of Hitler in his demented military campaign against the Soviet Union,” the chairwoman of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche wrote in an article dated April 29, Angela Merkel’s recent decision to deploy German soldiers to Lithuania is simply “scandalous”.

“After President Obama had signaled ahead of his latest visit to Hanover, that he expected a greater military engagement and funding from Germany, Chancellor Merkel found nothing better to do, than to assure the Bundeswehr’s contribution to NATO’s expansion to the East ‘behind closed doors’, during the mini-summit with the leaders of Great Britain, France, Italy with Obama in Hanover.”

Indeed, the “permanent rotating mission” of the 1000-man battalion that Germany will be part of, is expected to be finalized at the NATO summit in Warsaw in July, together with a number of other offensive measures against Russia. All of this is clearly building to a Third World War.

But this time, she warns, “the over eagerness of Mrs. Merkel to comply and the vassal-like careerist military” have gone too far. “Germany’s increased involvement in NATO’s encirclement strategy against Russia, which is moving NATO close the borders of Russia and not the opposite–Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke of an “unscrupulous attempt to turn things on their head”—has put Germany’s existence at stake, because in the event of a nuclear war, nothing will remain of Germany and no one will survive. And no one can convince us that Mrs. Merkel, [Defense Minister] Mrs. von der Leyen and the Bundeswehr leadership are not perfectly aware of that.”

Zepp-LaRouche then reviews the provocations against China, the sending of U.S. soldiers into Syria, all on the backdrop of the financial collapse in the trans-Atlantic system, before coming back to the question of Germany as such.

“71 years after the total defeat of the national socialists,” she wrote, “which inflicted untold suffering on the Russian population, but also on the populations of other countries—including our own, the idea that we could be part of a new Operation Barbarossa against Russia must be rejected in the strongest terms and in practice. If the escalations now planned—including NATO’s granting of “associate status” to Ukraine and Georgia, which has long been defined as a red line by Russia, or the potential NATO membership of Finland and Sweden, or the deployment of German soldiers to Lithuania—are adopted at the upcoming NATO summit, we will in all likelihood end up on the direct path to hell.

“Therefore, we must use the remaining two months to launch the alternative. That means the win-win cooperation with Russia and China, without which the current life-and-death problems—war danger, financial crash, refugee crisis, terrorism—cannot be solved. And we could not show greater friendship to the real America than by insisting on such cooperation.

“There is a way out. We must build the New Silk Road together with Russia, China and India, to ensure the economic development of Southwest Asia and Africa and the reconstruction of our own productive economy, and we have to make it clear to America that we are not willing to commit suicide to save an empire, that overstretched itself long ago. However, for the America of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, the international community has reserved a place of honor.”