Lies and Truth about Ukraine

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Executive Intelligence Review March 11, 2022 Vol. 49 No. 10

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‘Stop Global Britain’s Green War Drive’ Economic Policy of the Peace of Westphalia LaRouche on Russia’s Role in History

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

Founder: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (1922–2019) Editor-in-Chief: Helga Zepp-LaRouche Co-Editors: Marcia Merry Baker, Michael Billington, Stephanie Ezrol, Paul Gallagher Managing Editor: Stephanie Ezrol Editorial Staff: David Cherry, Charles Notley Technology: Marsha Freeman Transcriptions: Katherine Notley Ebooks: Richard Burden Graphics: Alan Yue Photos: Stuart Lewis Circulation Manager: Stanley Ezrol INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORS Asia: Michael Billington Economics: Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher Ibero-America: Dennis Small United States: Debra Freeman INTERNATIONAL BUREAUS Berlin: Elke Fimmen Copenhagen: Tom Gillesberg Lima: Sara Madueño Melbourne: Robert Barwick Mexico City: Gerardo Castilleja Chávez New Delhi: Ramtanu Maitra Paris: Christine Bierre Stockholm: Ulf Sandmark United Nations, N.Y.C.: Richard Black, Leni Rubinstein Washington, D.C.: William Jones Wiesbaden: Rainer Apel ON THE WEB e-mail: eirns@larouchepub.com www.larouchepub.com www.executiveintelligencereview.com www.larouchepub.com/eiw Webmaster: John Sigerson Editor, Arabic-language edition: Hussein Askary EIR (ISSN 0273-6314) is published weekly (50 issues), by EIR News Service, Inc., P.O. Box 17390, Washington, D.C. 20041-0390.

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Lies and Truth About Ukraine

EI R Contents

www.larouchepub.com Volume 49, Number 10, March 11, 2022

II. International 24 Emergency Food Relief and Production Contingencies, or Else World Famine

Cover This Week

by Marcia Merry Baker

Contrary to Western assurances in 1990 that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward, it is now at Russia’s western border, a situation unacceptable to Russia’s security.

27 China Briefs 29 Ibero-America Briefs

III. History and Culture 31 The Economic Policy that Made the Peace of Westphalia Brejnev

LIES AND TRUTH ABOUT UKRAINE 3 EDITORIAL The LaRouche Organization’s Mass Pamphlet: ‘Stop Global Britain’s Green War Drive’

I. Strategic 5 AN URGENT MESSAGE Lies and Truth About Ukraine

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

10 P REFACE TO GLAZYEV’S BOOK Behind Russia’s Catastrophic Liberal ‘Reforms’: A Fatal Pattern of Policy-Shaping Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. September 17, 1999

13 P art Two: No, Putin Is Not Exaggerating No Way to Hide: C-14 Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

by David Shavin

17 INTERVIEW: Alexander Rahr The Truth About the War Danger Between the U.S.-NATO and Russia

by Pierre Beaudry

51 THE EVIL OF

BERTRAND RUSSELL

The Science of Strategy: Durable Survival Lies in the Complex Domain 63 E DITORIAL Russia Can Be the Major Nation First to a GoldReserve Credit System

by Paul Gallagher

The LaRouche Organization’s Mass Pamphlet: ‘Stop Global Britain’s Green War Drive’

by Mike Billington March 3—The LaRouche Organization today released now covers the entire waterfront of finance: a 64-page pamphlet under the title: “Stop Global Britbanks, insurers, pension funds, export credit ain’s Green War Drive.” There is an irony in the title, agencies and asset managers. It comprises more which is essential for all citizens, of all nations, to than 450 leading financial institutions from 45 grasp, so as to become what Friedrich Schiller called a countries. Its members have committed to man“patriot of one’s nation and a citizen of the world.” aging their assets, which total more than $130 That irony is that the hysteria being riled up against trillion, in line with achieving [a limit in the rise Russia over its military operation in Ukraine is intendof global temperatures of no more than] 1.5˚ ed to blind the world to the actual war being fought on a Centigrade…. New loans and investments from global scale, against the entire world’s population. The GFANZ members will not only fund green projevidence is not hidden—it is literally ects such as renewable power, but EDITORIAL being shoved in your face every day, will also go where the emissions every hour, in the form of economic are—in sectors such as autos, steel, decay and hyperinflation, driven by the demand that cement—and back those companies with plans the human race commit genocide against itself by shutto decarbonize, while withdrawing capital from ting down fossil fuels, shutting down nuclear power those companies that aren’t moving fast enough. plants, denying modern technology to the already im[emphasis added] poverished and starving former colonial nations—all to “save the planet” from carbon.

This plan to destroy development internationally Regardless of the easily-demonstrated scientific was rejected by Russia, China, and India, among othfact that carbon has essentially nothing to do with the ers, knowing that their economic progress, as well as climate, the Green New Deal is the new religion of the that of all developing nations, depends on fossil fuels royals and the billionaire bankers and speculators who (and more advanced forms of energy, such as nuclear gather every year at the World Economic Forum in Dafission and eventually fusion). That was the last straw vos, Switzerland—to celebrate their demonic power to for Charles and the Lords of the City of London—“Off impose Malthusian genocide on the world’s population with their heads!” through their control of credit. Mark Carney, a former This is, of course, what Lyndon H. LaRouche Governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of warned of over the past fifty years. The financial oliEngland, and a hitman for Prince Charles and the roygarchy runs the world economy and the governments als, proudly described their plan for genocide in a Nov. of the western world. The decisions of war and peace 13, 2021, Guardian op-ed: are made by the banking elite, while the militaryindustrial complex is but a subset of that imperial In April [2021], we launched the Glasgow Fistructure. nancial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which That is why the British and the United States were March 11, 2022

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Lies and Truth About Ukraine 3

so ruthlessly driving NATO’s military forces up to Russia’s border, while a similar process is taking place in the Pacific against China. They would prefer there be no world war, for which there would be no winner, and very possibly human annihilation, but—in their eyes—better war than bankruptcy! Economic warfare is nonetheless war, what they so quaintly describe as the “financial nuclear option,” or the “mother of all sanctions.” Quite openly, from the White House and European policy locations, have come explicit declarations of the intent to destroy the Russian economy, while planning the same for China.

Isn’t it interesting that Russia’s military operation is described as a war crime, justifying the total destruction of the Russian economy? Did we ever hear this about the “shock and awe” wars against Iraq, Libya, or Syria, none of which had any legal or moral justification? Amid all the screaming and wailing about civilian deaths in Ukraine (after all, they look “just like

4

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us”), where is the outrage and mobilization to alleviate the suffering of 24 million Afghan citizens now being intentionally starved to death as Joe Biden steals their money?

Mankind is at a precipice. It is heading rapidly into a new Dark Age. We can arrest this folly, but only with a total transformation, a new strategic architecture for all nations, which also ensures the right to development for all. This is the intention of the Schiller Institute petition, “Convoke an International Conference to Establish a New Security and Development Architecture for All Nations,” which you should sign and circulate. This is also the intention of the LaRouche Organization pamphlet referenced above: “Stop Global Britain’s Green War Drive.” Contact us to get multiple copies to distribute, and to organize your fellow men and women. Your life depends on it.

The petition is available here.

The pamphlet is available here.

EIR

March 11, 2022

I. Strategic AN URGENT MESSAGE

Lies and Truth about Ukraine

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche This is an edited transcript of a special webcast by Helga Zepp-LaRouche recorded on February 28, 2022. Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche is the founder and Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute. The full video is available here.

I’m speaking to you because I want to give you an extremely important message.

As you know, since a few days, Russian troops are in Ukraine, in a military operation.

As a reaction, the West has imposed very, very harsh sanctions on Russia, which are going to have incredible effects, not only on Russia, but also on the whole world. President Putin ordered the military to put the RusEIRNS/Richard Magraw sian nuclear deterrence forces on high alert.

Carrying the flag of a united Germany, Helga Zepp-LaRouche joins in the Any further escalation of this situation has the national jubilation at the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. danger of things going completely out of control, and in the worst case, it will lead to a nuclear exof the human species.

To understand how we got to this point, one has to change, and World War III. If that happens, the chances are that nobody will survive; it could be the extinction look at the recent history of at least the last 30 years. We have been sleepwalking from a point, which was incredibly hopeful, into a worsening of the situation— step by step, step by step—and most people were completely indifferent to what was happening.

You should remember that in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, (many of today’s young people were not even born then, and don’t have a very good idea of this period), there was a moment of incredible historical potential. A peace order could have been built because the enemy was gone, or about to go. The Soviet Union did not represent a threat anymore. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed to the democratization of the Eastern European countries. This was what we Jean-Pierre Dalbéra called a “star hour of humanity,” one of those rare moRoland Dumas, then France’s Foreign Minister (shown); Jack ments when you can shape history for the better.

Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the USSR at the time; and The Soviet Union did not represent a threat then, Germany’s then Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and therefore, it was quite normal that the U.S. Secrehave all confirmed the promise made in 1990 that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East.” tary of State then, James Baker III, on Feb. 9, 1990, in a March 11, 2022

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Lies and Truth About Ukraine

5

discussion with Gorbachev, promised that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg now says that such a promise was never given. But that’s not true. Jack Matlock, who was U.S. Ambassador in Moscow at that time, has stated many, many times that, indeed, there was such a promise. There is a video with former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in which he confirms the same thing. Just a few days ago, the then-French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas gave an interview in which he confirmed this, saying that the promise was made. A new document has also appeared in the British Archives confirming the promises to the Russians.

There is overwhelming evidence that such a promise was made. And therefore, when Putin says, now, that he feels betrayed, there is the actual evidence to back that up. When Putin came to Germany in 2001, and he addressed the German Bundestag, in German, it was full of offers, full of hopes to build a common European house, to have cooperation. He talked about the German people, the people of culture, of Lessing, of Goethe.

There was the potential to really even undo what happened in the 1990s with Yeltsin and the shock therapy.

A Fatal Unipolar Fantasy

At that time, unfortunately, what had happened is that certain circles in Great Britain and in the United States decided to build a unipolar world. Rather than building a peace order, they said that now there is the opportunity to build an empire based on the model of the British Empire, based on the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States, which was then called PNAC, the Project for a New American Century.

Slowly, step by step, they started to go for regime change of everybody who didn’t agree with that—for color revolution, for eventually what they called humanitarian interventionist wars. We got the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were based on lies; the incredible lying to the UN Security Council in the case of Libya; the attempt to topple President Bashar al-Assad in Syria; wars which have caused millions of people to die, millions of people to become refugees and have a destroyed life.

Ukraine, from the very beginning, was big in the calculation. There were altogether five waves of NATO expansion. In 2008, at the summit in Bucharest, it was 6

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

promised that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO, which, from the standpoint of Russia is really not acceptable. Rather than having NATO not moving “one inch to the East,” it moved 1,000 km to the East!

It’s sitting now in the Baltic countries, at the border of Russia. But, Ukraine becoming part of NATO would mean that offensive weapons systems could reach Moscow in less 5 minutes, and make Russia, de facto, indefensible.

You have to understand that that is the vital security interest of Russia, which, if NATO would include Ukraine, it would violate that interest. That is why all this discussion that the Ukrainians have the right to choose their own alliance is really not true! It’s stated as a principle, in all the official documents, that you cannot have the security of one country at the expense of the security of another country, which would be Russia, in this case.

So what happened was that when the EU tried to include Ukraine in the EU Association Agreement at the end of 2013, Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s President at that time, recognized that that was unacceptable, because it would have opened up Ukraine’s ports on the Black Sea to NATO, so he pulled out of the agreement.

And then, immediately, the demonstrations in the Maidan began. It is always said these were only democratic people—sure, there were democratic people who wanted to be part of Europe and part of the West. But from the very beginning, there were elements supported by several intelligence services since World War II, including the networks of Stepan Bandera, who had cooperated with the Nazis during World War II. Stepan Bandera actually became an agent of MI6. His networks had offices in Munich and were part of the antiBolshevist bloc of nations. They were kept by the intelligence services; the MI6, the CIA, the BND; for use in case of confrontations with the Soviet Union. These networks were mobilized in the Maidan as part of a regime change operation, a color revolution, and then finally the coup. The United States, according to the U.S. State Department’s Victoria Nuland, had spent $5 billion, including building up NGOs to manipulate the population to think that if they joined the EU, they would be rich like Germany overnight, which was never in the cards.

The 2014 Coup in Ukraine

So the coup happened, and with the coup in February 2014, networks came to power which were exEIR

March 11, 2022

tremely repressive against the use of the Russian language and against the Russian population. That was why the people of Crimea voted to be part of Russia. It was not Putin who annexed Crimea, it was a measure of self-defense of the Russian-speaking people in Crimea to have a vote in a referendum. And the people in East Ukraine decided to declare independent republics for the very same reason.

Now, the Minsk agreement was supposed to be a negotiation to give these independent republics more autonomy within Ukraine, but the Jacques-Louis David Ukraine government never Russia has suffered massive, deadly and destructive foreign invasion twice since the French pursued that. Germany and Revolution, by Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée in 1812, and by Hitler’s Wehrmacht in France, which were part of the 1941. For Russians, the defense of their country is not an abstraction.

Normandy discussions with Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China Ukraine and Russia, never put any pressure on the on International Relations Entering a New Era. Putin Ukrainian government. So these talks did not go anywas trying to test out if there would be a willingness of where at all. In the meantime, you had more and more European nations, of Germany and France, whose maneuvers around Russia, and this escalated to the Chancellor Scholz and President Macron both went to point that in November, there were maneuvers even Moscow. But he came to the conclusion that there was flying planes to test and reheare a nuclear attack on no willingness to stand up against the continuous push Russia, flying as close as 14 miles from Russia’s border.

by NATO and by the United States, to keep up the enRussia’s Proposed Security Guarantees Ignored circlement of Russia.

Now, it was that feeling of increasing encirclement Russia Remembers Hitler and Napoleon which is the reason why Putin declared on December War is very bad. It is the most horrible thing which 17 of last year, that he wanted written security guarancan happen. But you have to understand that if you put tees for Russia, from the United States and NATO, that the core security interests of Russia into jeopardy, well, they would guarantee, in a legally binding way, the sethat’s what you get! You have to understand the history curity of Russia, including that NATO would not of Russia. expand any further to the East, Ukraine would never Russia faced massive foreign invasions twice in relbecome a member of NATO for the reasons I mentioned atively modern times. The first time was by Napoleon earlier, and offensive weapons would not be put on the in 1812, who if you know history, had an enormous border of Russia. army, and executed a large scale, wide-ranging assault Putin did not get an answer. The United States and of Russia. The plan to defeat Napoleon involved luring NATO responded on secondary issues, like a certain his army far into Russia’s vast expanse, forcing him to agreement to go back into arms negotiations, but he did draw a long supply line, while destroying everything not get an answer to the core demands. And that is why, before him on the way in, to basically make it impossifor example, I think Russia and China have now moved ble for him to have any requisition of food and other into a very close strategic alliance, which happened on materials. The Russians even allowed the burning down February 4, with the signing of a Joint Statement of the March 11, 2022

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of their capital city, Moscow, to make sure there was nothing with which Napoleon could survive the winter, so he had to make the decision to retreat in the winter through the snow. And when Napoleon’s troops finally crossed back over the Niemen River, there were only a few people from a previously gigantic army. This was a traumatic experience for Russians.

Then, Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. For the Russians this experience is deeply ingrained in their DNA, one can say, because they lost 27 million people! And for them, defending Russia is most important—it’s a life-and-death question.

So, what is happening now, is that when all of this escalated, Russia said, we absolutely draw a red line.

When these red lines were not respected, which Putin stated very clearly, he said he would take a “militarytechnical reaction.” I don’t think Russia has the intention of occupying Ukraine; I think Russia wants to have some neutralization; they want to have a de-Nazification.

Frankly, with the present combination—sure, Zelenskyy was democratically elected—but the Azov Brigade is still there as part of the defense forces, you have still in the parliament, a lot of right-wing elements. Zelenskyy has changed from a peace-loving or peace-promising Pres­ ident, into somebody who is completely a tool, not even daring to bring up Minsk II, because he feels under threat that if he goes for Minsk II, he will be toppled or worse.

It is a situation in which we have to accept the fact that de-Nazification is not Russian propaganda, but it has a real element to it. It’s a complete scandal that Western nations with all their talk about so-called freedom-loving Western values: rules-based order, democracy, human rights—will not face the truth. This verbiage has become a little bit stale after all these interventionist wars, and especially what was done, and is being done in Afghanistan. People are being left to die as a conscious policy, because people knew what would happen if there would be such a hasty withdrawal leaving the people of Afghanistan with absolutely nothing.

Germany On a War Footing

So, we are in a very, very dangerous situation.

On Sunday, an epochal shift happened. Germany, which has good reasons to say never again do we want war because we had two world wars on our soil. And in the living memory of almost everybody, especially the older people, we have the stories of our parents and grandparents in our ears of what war does when it is on one’s own soil!

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Lies and Truth About Ukraine

So, on Sunday, there was an earthquake, which is I think an absolute catastrophe. Chancellor Scholz made a government declaration in the parliament, de facto turning the German government into a war cabinet.

There is a plan to beef up the Bundeswehr, creating a special fund of €100 billion for this year alone. The government wants to increase military spending and already is sending weapons to Ukraine, which really does go against the principle Germany had held on to. Until now the idea was to never send weapons into crisis areas.

So, all of this is happening. The German population is in a complete state of brainwashing. In France, it’s not very different. But in Germany it’s much worse. And people on the scene, who know both situations, reported that it can only be compared to the shock the American people had after 9/11. I was in the United States at that moment, and I remember, you couldn’t talk to anybody, because people were completely crazy, hyped up, whipped up, and this is now the situation in Germany.

When I heard the speech of Chancellor Scholz yesterday, it reminded me of the horrible speech of Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm, Emperor Wilhelm II, on Aug. 6, 1914, when he announced that Germany was preparing for what became World War I. And we all know that at the beginning of World War I, nobody expected that it would be four years in the trenches, back and forth, back and forth, meaningless killing. And at the end, a whole generation was destroyed. And it ended with the Versailles Treaty, which was an unjust treaty that created the preconditions for World War II.

A New Peace of Westphalia

What do we do now?

Our only chance is to get an immediate international mobilization for an international security architecture which must take into account the security interest of every single nation on the planet, including Russia, including China, the United States, the European nations, and all other nations on the planet. The model for this is the Peace of Westphalia Treaty of 1648. That treaty came about because 150 years of religious war in Europe, the culmination of which was the Thirty Years’ War, had led to the destruction of everything: One-third of all assets of people, of villages, of animals—so that eventually, people came to the conclusion that if they continued the war, there would be absolutely nobody left to enjoy the victory.

For four years, from 1644-1648, people sat together EIR

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working out a treaty which established very important principles. The most important principle was that peace can only be won if an agreement were to take into account the interest of the other. There were other principles, such as, for the sake of peace, foreign policy must be made on the basis of love. Crimes on either side must be forgotten, because otherwise there would never be an agreement. And the principle had to established that in the reconstruction of the economy after the war, the state must have an important role. That led to cameralism in economics.

This Treaty of Westphalia was the beginning of international law, and it is reflected today in the founding Charter of the United Nations. It is that model which must be taken now for nations to sit together, to define the principles of a just order which will allow the peaceful coexistence of all nations.

The equivalent of the cameralistic principles of the Peace of Westphalia must be that this new security architecture combination, must address the real cause of war, the pending collapse of the Western financial system, which has been about to blow long before this situation with Ukraine developed, but which will be aggravated now by the sanctions and all the consequences.

Development for All Is the Path to Peace

That new security architecture must apply those measures which Lyndon LaRouche defined already many years ago, namely, that there must be an end to the casino economy, because that is what is driving this confrontation. There must be a global Glass-Steagall banking separation agreement. We must have a national bank established in every single country in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton. And there must be a New Bretton Woods system, which establishes a credit system for long-term development to uplift the developing countries through industrial development.

And all of that must focus on the pressing issue of the Covid-19 pandemic. We need a health care system in every nation on the planet. Without a modern health care system in every country, this pandemic and future pandemics will not go away. We need an increase in world food production, because we have a famine of biblical dimensions as David Beasley from the World Food Program is continuously saying. And we need to have an effort to overcome poverty in all countries where poverty threatens people’s lives, in Africa, in many Latin American and Asian countries, even pockets in the United States and in Europe.

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EIR

The framework to accomplish all of this is the offer

by China for the United States and Europe to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative, maybe to join the Build Back Better program of the United States and Global Gateway of the European Union. To look at it not as competition but as the chance for cooperation.

Because only if the nations of this world work together economically, to the benefit of all, do you have the basis of trust to establish a security architecture which can function.

The Schiller Institute has issued a call for such a conference to bring about a new international security and development architecture. I’m calling on everyone to promote that idea, to get many people to sign on to this call, to get people to write articles, comment about it, create an international debate, that we do need a new paradigm. Because any continuation of geopolitics of the so-called “enemy image” of one or the other, can only lead to a catastrophe, and if it comes to that, there will be nobody left to even comment about it, because it will be the end of humanity.

So, I’m calling on you: Join our mobilization, because it is your life and the future of all of us.

GENOCIDE RUSSIA AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

Russia in the 1990s: “The rate of annual population loss has been more than double the rate of loss during the period of Stalinist repression and mass famine in the first half of the 1930s . . . There has been nothing like this in the thousand-year history of Russia.”

—Sergei Glazyev Paperback, with a preface by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Economist Dr. Sergei Glazyev was Minister of Foreign Economic Relations in Boris Yeltsin's first cabinet, and was the only member of the government to resign in protest of the abolition of Parliament in 1993. He is now an advisor to President Putin. $ Now available in PDF format from the LaRouche Publications Store.

20

Order online: https://store.larouchepub.com/product-p/eirbk-1999-2-0-0.htm

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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September 17, 1999 PREFACE TO GLAZYEV’S BOOK

Behind Russia’s Catastrophic Liberal ‘Reforms’: A Fatal Pattern of Policy-Shaping

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Lyndon LaRouche wrote this essay as the preface to the book, Genocide: Russia and the New World Order (October 1993August 1998), A Strategy for Economic Growth on the Threshold of the 21st Century, by Dr. Ser­gei Glazyev, published in English translation by EIR News Service in December 1999. Dr. Glazyev is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and is currently the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macro­ economics, Eurasian Economic Com­ mission. On February 19, 2019, he wrote a Russian language eulogy for LaRouche, saying: “Lyndon LaRouche has left us.

He was a titan of thought, a man of incredibly encyclopedic knowledge, great soul, and love for humanity.”

Russia might outlive Thatcherism.

At the time the English edition of Dr. Sergei Glazyev’s book goes to the printer, we have reached the point of successive economic collapses of not one, but, now, both of the principal superpower alliances which had dominated the post-Franklin Roosevelt world. At the present moment, there is no scientific way of foretelling on which week the present International Monetary Fund-dominated world financial system will collapse, but it is nonetheless certain, that that system is doomed, and that soon.

For the period immediately ahead, we can be certain of only two facts about the world economy as a whole.

First, we may be certain, as many leading bankers and others are certain today, that the present, hopelessly bankrupt IMF system, is at the brink of either one, or a series of precipitous systemic, fatal, chain-reaction 10

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

implosions. Only the exact date and choice among several probable detonators of that general collapse remain uncertain. Second, we know, that either the present world financial system will be put into bankruptcyreorganization, that by joint action of some of the world’s leading nations, or the system will simply disintegrate of its own accord. In the latter case, the result will be the unleashing of a virtually global, economic chaos. A collapse of the latter sort would plunge most, or all of the world into something echoing Europe’s mid-fourteenth-century “New Dark Age,” perhaps for decades to come.

In the case of the 1989-1991 disintegration of the Comecon and Soviet Union, it is arguable that many among the contributing causes for that collapse were of a voluntary nature. Which were those mistaken choices of action and inaction, by the Soviet leadership, is still being debated; but, the fact that some grave errors of choice occurred, is not debatable. At bottom, whatever those voluntary errors of leadership were, the essential fact is, that the collapse of the system was ultimately not simply the result of some isolable bad individual decisions; the bad decisions were the outcome of a pervasive systemic flaw within the decision-making characteristics of the system within which particular decisions were made.

The same judgment must be passed on the presently collapsing world financial system: the so-called “IMF system.” After all secondary questions are taken into account, the reason the present world financial system is now disintegrating, is simply that any system of the special functional characteristics described by my EIR

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“Triple Curve,” the characteristics of the decisionmaking of the present IMF system, must cause that system to disintegrate.

Systemic Reasons

Therefore, we must say, that the reasons for the presently ongoing collapse are of a systemic, rather than an accidental nature.

For example, it was President Richard Nixon’s follies of August 1971, which launched what has been demonstrated to have been an inherently ruinous “floating-exchange-rate monetary sys­ EIRNS/Richard Magraw tem,” the present IMF system. It might seem that Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche with Sergei Glazyev any of Nixon’s successors among the leaders of (right) at a Moscow press conference and webcast, June 28, 2001. the G-7 nations, could have, theoretically, reversed the 1971-72 blunders of Nixon, George Shultz, et al. In planet’s orbit, essentially systemic, not the result of fact, they did not do so; instead, the later decisions made, several isolable policy-decisions on direction made simply made things much worse than Nixon’s blunder along the way. had done. When one takes into account the pow­erful Thus, in both doomed cases, the fallen Soviet interests which usually control the election and downfall system, and the presently doomed IMF system, the of governments, perhaps the bottom line is, that those ultimately inevitable doom of the system lies in what officials simply lacked the ability to make anything other may be viewed as the characteristic behavior of the than foolish decisions on these matters of long-term species—the characteristics of that species of system. trends in monetary, financial and economic policies.

The Human Ability To Change The reasons the Atlantic powers did not reverse the The rabbit who is killed by the automobile, had the terrible monetary-policy blunders of 1971-1976, lie in physical ability to avoid that risk; it was the characteristic the systemic, policy-shaping characteristics of the of the rabbit’s nature, to choose the new decision which dominant factions within that social formation fairly then doomed it to serve the pleasure of the waiting identified as the London-led “Atlantic establishment.” crows. The skilled hunter relies upon his or her It was not any one policy which has steered the present knowledge of the inhering follies of the intended prey’s IMF system from the folly of August 1971 to the fatal inhering behavioral traits, just as the skilled military “derivatives bubble” crisis of today. The fault behind the onrushing doom of the world’s present financial sys­ tactician regularly outflanks his unwitting intended tem, lies not with individual policy-decisions, but in an prey. Animal species can learn, but they can not improve ultimately fatal pattern of policy-shaping innovations. upon the axiomatic assumptions which govern their Typical of what have proven to have been the most behavioral propensities. The doom of any lower species crucial among such follies, were those introduced by is, therefore, systemic, rather than the accidental result the trans-Atlantic powers under the influence of the of the animal’s isolated decisions. long reign of the Mont Pelerin Society’s British Prime The doom of social and political systems, lies not in Minister Margaret Thatcher. any one or several among the decisions leading into that That point should be repeated. The fault lies not in doom. Human beings, and therefore societies, have the any particular decision, as such; the fault lies in the ability to change the characteristics of a society’s mass social and ideological characteristics of today’s behavior. The cause of the collapse of a society, is, “Atlantic establishment,” just as the collapse of the rather, those flawed, axiomatic habits of decisionSoviet system flowed from the ideological and related making which the system itself stubbornly refused to characteristics of its establishment. The fault lies in the change. So it was with the Soviet system; so it has been habituated, ideologically charged pattern of changes of with the 1971-1999 pattern of decision-making by the decision, an ordering of changes which shape the IMF’s establishment. “planetary” orbit of the net effects so produced. We say, Therefore, in examining the self-inflicted doom of therefore, that the fatal trajectory of events is, like a once-powerful political systems, we must focus on both March 11, 2022

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the similarities and qualitative differences between the lower animal species and human beings. The difference lies in the rational options always implicitly available to human beings. Therefore, the crucial issue is, the potential of societies, using reason, to survive, by recognizing and correcting the follies of their own seemingly built-in, axiomatic assumptions.

The analogy for such fatally flawed decisionmaking by the two presently doomed systems, is the problem posed by the way in which the mathematician’s adoption of any specific set of definitions, axioms, and postulates, dooms that mathematician to adopt only those theorems (e.g., policy-decisions of practice) which are consistent with his (often unwitting) axiomatic assumptions. If his opinions are shaped, like theorems, by the wrong set of definitions, axioms, and postulates, every crucial theorem he develops will be wrong. Such errors are systemic, and neither accidental, nor transitory in nature.

If that kind of policy-shaping error is adopted by a society, that society is ultimately doomed by its stubborn acceptance of its own “generally accepted ideas.” This defines what we must regard as the true cause of a systemic collapse, as distinct from a temporary collapse which might be caused by a series of accidental mistakes in choice of policy. That is the difference between a systemic economic crisis, such as the present world crisis, and a mere temporary, cyclical crisis in an otherwise successfully ongoing economic system.

A Concert of Action

So, Dr. Sergei Glazyev and I, as others, have been impelled to study the systemic, rather than merely accidental reasons for the apparently imminent doom of both the Soviet system and its neo-liberalismdominated Russian successor. For me, that is the most important implication of his book. On the problems and options presented to Russia’s economy today, he is an exceptionally qualified insider. Such Russian specialists must sort out what was valid in the former Soviet system, and distinguish that from the causes of the systemic collapse of both that system and the doomed liberal experiment which followed.

Similarly, I, like any serious patriot of the presentday economies of the USA or western continental Europe, must define both the virtues and follies of postFranklin Roosevelt U.S. economic systems.

We have come to the point, that the present IMF system is hopelessly doomed to an early end. Either we change the system fundamentally, or we must expect a 12

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plunge deep into a prolonged period of vast devastation.

That catastrophe few nations, if any, were likely to survive. To prevent that, we must act, very soon, to change the system systemically. We must sweep aside, and replace, many of what have become, over the interval 1971-1999, the most passionately adored among the post-1971 changes in the present world financial, monetary, and economic system.

To save civilization, we must act immediately, to change the present world system in a most sudden and radical way. Otherwise, all of us are berthed on a sinking world-economic Titanic, with no lifeboats available.

To make such radical and sudden changes, two preconditions must be satisfied. First, the USA must find a powerful array of accomplices among nations of the world. These nations, acting in concert, must make those sudden and sweeping changes, which eliminate immedi­ ately the present IMF system, and introduce its healthy replacement. Second, we could not bring such agreement about in a timely fashion, unless the authority of suc­cess­ ful precedents from the pre-1971 period could be invoked as proof of what might work to replace the presently doomed, post-1971 evolution of the IMF system.

The nations which must be brought together to make such a quick decision, must be a group of sovereign nation-states representing a majority of the world’s population. This includes, together with the President of the USA, the sovereign governments of Dr. Glazyev’s Russia. China, India, at least some nation from western continental Europe, plus other states of Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas likely to rally to the same effort.

On this account, the lessons of the successful experiences of those nations’ past must be taken into account. Dr. Glazyev’s role, his background as a professional economist, and his several important roles as a leading youthful, upcoming figure of a Russia whose participation is essential to the USA and other prospective partners, make his knowledge and opinions of special included importance to all those, in every nation, who must be assembled to establish the urgently needed new world monetary system.

On both sides of the former divide, I, for example, for the USA, and Dr. Glazyev, for example, for Russia, these are the types of issues which serious policyshapers must consider, in searching for happy ways out of the presently threatened common doom of both former strategic systems. The English-speaking reader, including, one would hope, President William Jefferson Clinton, should view Dr. Glazyev’s book with that thought in view.

EIR

March 11, 2022

Part Two: No, Putin Is Not Exaggerating

No Way To Hide: C-14 Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

by David Shavin There are various neo-Nazis in the military, internal security, and policing sectors of post-2014 Ukraine. A full treatment of this problem was published as a feature in the February 7, 2014 issue of EIR, including the article, “Western Powers Back Neo-Nazi Coup in Ukraine.”

Here it is useful to add to the portfolio the file of Yevhen Karas, the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi group, “C14.” Recently, Karas usefully punctured some of the consoling delusions about the role of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine—euphemistically referred to as “radical nationalists,” the “far right,” etc. Particularly punctured were the delusions that deny the key role of these neo-Nazis in the violent overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine, in taking over the Maidan in 2014, and in carrying out killings, intimidation and repression—all on the part of those in the West exploiting Ukraine in an all-out violent confrontation with Russia. At some point, your neighbors may wish to ask themselves, “Do I hate the Russians enough to embrace neo-Nazis and risk thermonuclear war?”

Karas: The West Supports Us Because We Have Fun Killing

In a panel discussion on Feb. 5, 2022, available here, Karas began to explain why they had “been given so much weaponry” by the West. Without blinking, Karas says that it is “because we perform the tasks set by the West, because we are the only ones who are ready to do them. Because we have fun, we have fun killing and we have fun fighting….”

He exposes a lot in a little over two minutes explaining that their paramilitary groups are the chosen vehicle of the British-Polish-Turkish alliance with Ukraine, “because we have started a war that has not been seen for 60 years.” (And, indeed, the continual and relentless warfare waged against civilians in the Donbas had pre-empted the Minsk peace arrangements, keeping the war alive.) He then goes on to make fun of the cover story that Ukraine was simply re-joining its brothers in March 11, 2022

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Yevhen Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 organization.

CC/VoidWanderer

Europe. Instead, Ukraine should simply forget about some narrow goal of joining with Europe. Rather: “We are a huge powerful state, and if we come to power, it will be both joy and problems for the whole world.”

Then he partly explained what he meant, by describing what really happened, contrary to the Western narrative, in the 2014 coup: “Maidan was the victory of the nationalist ideas.” For Karas, the only nationalists are the neo-Nazis. “Nationalists were the key factor there, and, clearly, at the frontlines.” Even if we were only 8% of the participants, we accomplished 90% of what was done.” That is, their violent actions hijacked the Maidan. “If not for nationalists, that whole thing would have turned into a gay parade.”

No ‘Neo-Nazis’ Here! We’re Just Enemies of Jews and Russians

Karas’s C14 grouping was founded by Oleh Tyahnybok in 2010 as the youth group of the far-right Swoboda party. (“Swoboda” itself is the re-branded name of Ukraine’s “Social Nationalist” party— correctly suggesting their common ideology with Germany’s “National Socialist,” or Nazi party.) C14 Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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Nazis in World War II. Then, the actual police played the soft-cop, pointing to the C14, and simply telling the ribbon-wearers, “There are warriors here.” Off come the ribbons. As Karas proudly puts it, “That is, to some extent, we act as a detonator.” It doesn’t always have to come to beatings.

Separately, C14 confirms its thuggish “mafioso” tactics. It has actually advertised its services as a “muscle-for-hire” group, writing that, if you provide contributions and indicate your “enemies,” C14 will make sure that your enemies will find life is more difficult for them.

More recently, Karas has taken pains to explain how he and C14 are not really “neo-Nazi.” It is just that their main “confrontations” seem to be with “nonUkrainian ethnic groups that controlled Oleh Tyahnybok, founder of the C14 in 2010 as the youth group of Ukraine’s Ukraine’s political and economic forces.”

Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine (SNPU), which was rebranded as And, he continues, they just happen to be Swoboda in 2004.

Russians and Jews—so, he and C14, he itself employs Nazi insignia, including a very obvious complains, get confused in the public’s eye with neoversion of the swastika.

Nazis. “We don’t consider ourselves a neo-Nazi C14’s militia training led to the deployment of its organization, we’re clearly Ukrainian nationalists.” forces to the Maidan in the winter of 2013-2014 and to Evidently, the distinction is that they speak Ukrainian, the undermining of any constitutional compromises. not German—for these purposes, a distinction without More recently, it has received government funding for a difference. However, the larger point is that there’s “national-patriotic education not even any desire to make a projects.” Also, as of 2018, the real defense; rather, this “winkKiev municipal government had and-nod” arrangement helps, hired C14 to ‘police’ the streets, further conveying the “de facto” ar­rangement in today’s Ukraine, where it has received notoriety of a country that has been for its joyous physical methods hijacked. against gypsies and homosexuals.

Karas has denied that C14 Why the ‘14’ Name? uses illegal means in its “policing” However, if they walk and and other activities. However, talk like Nazis—and in addition, when it is pointed out that its are actually named after one— beatings of victims is illegal, he they might be Nazis. It turns out doesn’t miss a beat: “Beating a that the curious “14” in their person is probably one-tenth of chosen title is an homage to the our actions.” Then he proceeds to infamous “14 Words” of Ameri­ explain some of the nine-tenths. can Nazi, David Eden Lane. The For example, C14 threatenes latter trooped through various physical force against citizens groups, including the KKK and who were wearing St. George the Aryan Nation, before taking ribbons on the May 9th Timeline.com (fair use) David Eden Lane, American Nazi, 2007. an oath to The Order, sworn to celebration of victory over the 14

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March 11, 2022

deliver “our people from the Jew and support from being provided and bring total victory to the to Ukrainian neo-Nazis. In Aryan race.” There, he drove the March 2018, the $1.3 trillion getaway vehicle in the 1984 omnibus spending bill passed in murder of Alan Berg, a Jewish the Congress and signed into radio commentator in Denver, law stipulates that “none of the Colorado. Members of The Order funds made available by this act ran militaristic training camps. may be used to provide arms, To finance their scheme to training or other assistance to “liberate the Pacific Northwest the Azov Battalion.” One of the as a homeland for whites” against sponsors of the ban, Rep. Ro what The Order and similar Khanna, stated: “White groups call ZOG, the Zionist supremacy and neo-Nazism are CC/Aleksandr Andreiko Occupation Government, the Yuri Biryukov, aka Phoenix, served as an adviser unacceptable and have no place group evidently funded them­ to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and to in our world.”

Ukraine’s Minister of Defense. selves via armored car hijackings Efforts today to cover up this and counterfeiting. From prison, truth about the neo-Nazis are Lane ran, with help from his wife, his “14 Word Press,” transparently false. In a March 1 article in Politico, which, among other things, published his muchDaniel Fried of the Atlantic Council (funded by NATO, circulated, fourteen-word rallying cry: “We must the U.S. State Department, and military contractors) secure the exist­ence of our people and a future for claimed to have decoded Putin’s call for “denazification.” white children.”

Fried writes that today the term means “the replacement C14 is not the only number trick amongst Ukrainian (probably killing or arresting) of Ukraine’s proneo-Nazis. Aside from the “magical” power Western, democratically elected leaders of “14,” there is also “88”—a coded version with a Kremlin puppet.” Fried writes this of “Heil Hitler” (as “H” is the eighth letter of with no intent at irony, seemingly oblivious the alphabet). Of note, Yuri Biryukov, a to the neo-Nazis’ key role in the 2014 former aide to the Ukrainian Minister of overthrow of a democratically-elected Defense, posted “1.4.8.8.” on his Facebook government, and the “caught on tape” page. Biryukov, aka “Phoenix,” whose conversation of the State Department’s businesses include an IT company in the Victoria Nuland speaking with the U.S. United States, stepped forward in March Ambassador to Ukraine, in which she is 2014 to financially support the Ukrainian assigning positions in the new Ukraine military. He later bragged that he was one of government. the first to go to the Maidan, on Dec. 1, 2013.

Fried further explains that Putin believes that “Ukrainians don’t really exist Neo-Nazi Role Too Hard To Hide as a people…, but if they do, they’re Nazis.

Putin’s targeting of the neo-Nazis has Even by Putin’s standards, that’s CC/Inkscape’r provoked no little verbal diarrhea in the Azov Brigade Insignia. grotesque.” Indeed, there is something West. The generic defense of Azov and grotesque here—but Putin’s been clear all other neo-Nazis, when the charge is brought up, is that, along, that the well-funded and totally protected Nazis as a small percentage of Ukraine and of the Maidan in Ukraine, however small in number, have held the protesters, they have had no effect or influence upon the country hostage, and that Ukrainians are more than otherwise healthy democratic Ukraine. Neo-Nazis are capable of governing themselves and choosing their in many countries, they add, and those in Ukraine are own leaders, if those who ran the coup in Ukraine were even less significant than those in the United States. not holding the country hostage. Even by the Atlantic In fact, however, Jewish groups, even U.S. Council’s standards, Fried’s offensive defense is congressmen, have taken steps to stop Western arms grotesque.

March 11, 2022

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Zelenskyy’s Flight-Forward: Toying with the Holocaust

Despite the outbreak of Western media use of the one-liner, “Zelenskyy is Jewish,” so as to brush aside any investigation of the neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine, Zelenskyy is on record in saying that Judaism plays almost no role in his life, and many other factors are much more important. So, in his new role thrust upon him as defender of the Jewish faith, he went flightforward, treating the horrendous Nazi genocide during World War II at Kiev’s Babyn Yar as a fit subject for the cheapest of lying.

Zelenskyy issued a tweet: “To the world, what is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating...” How could this be understood as anything but, “the Russians bombed the site of the Nazi mass murder of Jews, five people were killed there, and the Russians are about to escalate the genocide…” His tweet did what it was calculated to do, setting off a wave of horrific images, triggering a visceral gut reaction around the world, not to be erased.

However, there simply was no bombing of Babyn Yar. As the chairman of the Babyn Yar Memorial Center’s advisory board, Natan Sharansky, explained: A missile targeted a broadcast tower and hit it. There was damage from the flying debris to the nearby sports complex. (He didn’t say it, but there was probably also damage to two other nearby establishments, a hamburger restaurant and a motorcycle repair shop.)

However, the Babyn Yar “site,” different from the Babyn Yar Memorial, encom­passes hundreds of acres.

And there are also three cemeteries—including a Jewish cemetery—closer to the broadcast tower than the Memorial. Sharansky: “The bomb was of course targeting the radio tower.” Nothing of the Memorial was damaged, and a close-by synagogue, Sharansky said, was “not damaged… The building that was damaged [the former sports facility] was not… part of the museum.”

In fact, hours before the single missile was fired, the Russian Defense Ministry had publicly warned the neighborhood that “the technological infrastructure of the SBU [Ukraine’s Security Service] and the 72nd main PSO [Psychological Operations Unit] center in Kyiv will be hit with high-precision weapons. We call on … Kyiv residents” not to get close to the 370-foothigh broadcast tower. No one did, and no civilians died or were wounded.

At the Babyn Yar site, there is a report of debris 16

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having hit the nearby cemetery; but it is worth noting that the desecration of Jewish cemeteries had become quite routine in post-2014 Ukraine. For example, the destruction of the monument on top of the mass grave of 800 Jews, murdered by Nazis and local collaborators in Lysychansk, Ukraine, was destroyed in December 2021—and when repaired, destroyed again in January.

Despite the protest of the Director General of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, Eduard Dolinsky, not a peep was heard from Zelenskyy.

‘Snow Is Black’

It was shortly after the attack on the tower that Zelenskyy went flight forward with the type of Nazi “Big Lie” technique, made infamous by Josef Goebbels. In Goebbels’ time, indelible film images, hard to expunge, were set loose amongst the German population, of Jews as vermin scampering amongst precious grain supplies. The image is different today, though fully as operative, as most of the West swallows the inverted image that Putin’s precise military objective of denazification is a revival of the Nazis—a clinical example of Bertrand Russell’s famous brag, that really effective control of populations could be managed when one could convince them that “snow is black.”

Western populations, conditioned for decades to being oblivious to the physical and psychological horrors of actual genocidal policies taking place today—notably in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen and in Afghanistan—now are allowed an orgasm of righteousness against the Russian military actions in Ukraine, where, as British General Sir Richard Barrons told BBC News, the people being killed were not Arabs or Afghans, but “people who live and look like us.”

Various warnings over the recent years (particularly 2014-2021) regarding the neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine had been made by the Israeli government, by U.S. Congressmen, by the American Jewish Committee, by the Simon Wiesenthal Institute, by the Anti-Defamation League, and others. These same voices are now largely silent, as the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are to become “our neo-Nazis,” lamentably necessary for the geopolitical confrontation with Russia. How is this any different from the excuses in the 1930’s, of those in the West aiding and abetting the rise to power of the Nazis, including the military build-up of Nazi Germany? One might ask, how did that work out? Would repeating those mistakes in a nuclear world be the thing to do now? davidshavin@larouchepub.com EIR

March 11, 2022

INTERVIEW: Alexander Rahr

The Truth About the War Danger Between the U.S.-NATO and Russia This the edited transcript of an interview conducted February 17, 2022 by Harley Schlanger with Alexander Rahr. Mr. Rahr is an historian, a business consultant, and research director of the German-Russian Forum. He’s written extensively on Russian-German relations, on Russian history, and he’s often interviewed in the German media. Among other affiliations, he’s a member of the Valdai Discussion Club, a Moscowbased think tank and discussion forum. A full video of the interview is available here.

Harley Schlanger: Hello! Welcome to our program, Alexander Rahr.

Rahr: Thank you, Harley, for inviting me.

Schlanger: Today, February 17, we’re one day past the date that Western intelligence said Russia would invade Ukraine. That there was no invasion makes this another shining moment, for many from Western intelligence. But the situation between Russia and NATO remains tense. There have been some promising diplomatic initiatives, but the anti-Russian narratives continue, the ongoing military exercises, the buildup of troops in Europe, and so on. Where do you think things stand now?

The Military-Security Situation in Europe

Rahr: It’s a very difficult and very dangerous situation, in which we are now. We are not in a war. I must say, I don’t believe that either Russia will invade, or there will be serious provocations against Russia, from the Ukrainian, from the Western side. I think there will be no fighting on the battlefield. [While Rahr’s hope that war could be avoided has proven wrong, his overall assessment is a welcome departure from the psychological warfare presented as “analysis” in the western mainstream media. —editor] But I think the asymmetric war, the propaganda and information war, will intensify and this is where we are now in the 21st century. The victory will belong to those forces who are able to convince other societies, other countries, that March 11, 2022

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Alexander Rahr

Schiller Institute

they have the truth, and if they succeed in destroying the image of the opponent, they also become victors.

This is the situation now.

So far, Russia has, of course, in my view, the better arguments than the Western side, because the Western side is on the defensive, and simply, in many ways, lies—that “Russia will invade, Russia will invade, and if Russia does invade, then we will cut off Russia from the West, economically and financially.”

The Russian point is actually not aggressive; in my point of view, it’s very simple. Russia is not threatening the West. Russia is simply saying, “We don’t want to have NATO further moving to our borders. Please understand us: We feel encircled by NATO, and we propose that we go back to that kind of agreement, which we signed together—Moscow and Brussels, 1997, when Yeltsin was still President of Russia.”

On the broader military and security situation in Europe: According to the document signed in ’97, no military infrastructure, neither of Russia nor of NATO, should in any way be installed in Eastern Europe; or, for example, at the borders between Russia and Ukraine. Russia hopes to convince the West to return to that point of view, to this agreement, because then we might stop talking about wars. We are talking about maybe new possibilities to understand each other, and at the end, to start building a common space, a common security space from Lisbon to Vladivostok—inLies and Truth About Ukraine

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cluding, if maybe the United States, from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

But on the basis of the OSCE (the Organization of Cooperation and Security in Europe), which has been so far forgotten! The OSCE has existed since 1975; according to the Russian argument, this organization should become a second security pillar for the architecture of Europe, next to NATO. OSCE should come back, and become even more important, because Russia and Ukraine, other countries, are members of this OSCE structure. They are not members of NATO. And inside the OSCE, can be discussed more broadly and more democratically and pluralistically, all issues of European security, because we are all the same, we are all mutually interested in that.

A New European Security Architecture

Schlanger: Let me come back to a couple of points you made, which I think are important for people to understand. About President Putin’s insistence on signing legally binding documents, which would be security guarantees for Russia: Many officials in the West, and media especially, say that this is just an excuse for an invasion of Ukraine, to expand the so-called Russian Empire. Why do you think Putin is sticking to his demands for these security guarantees? And how important is it for Russia to build a new security architecture? Maybe a Helsinki 2?

Rahr: Let me dwell briefly on the Western narrative, the Western view, because it’s also important to see not only the Russian, but the Western view.

The Western view says, “We should build a strong Eur­ ope in the trans-Atlantic world in a trans-Atlantic framework, with Ukraine, with Georgia, but without Rus­sia, because Russia is not allied to us, because of Rus­sia’s different mentality, because of Russia’s different history, because of Russia’s different norms and values.”

I think this is not quite substantive and does not justify the split between the West and Russia, but nevertheless, this is a narrative of the West. And what the West also doesn’t want to accept is that Russia is the biggest country in Europe, on the European continent, from the size of its population, from the size of its territory; it has all the necessary resources—not only gas and oil, but many, many other things for its existence, for its prosperity, which Western economies really severely need. Russia wants to belong to Europe, but not as a member of NATO or the European Union.

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The Russian position is that you can have your zone of influence: “You have already created the zone of influence, dear colleagues of the West, by enhancing NATO and the European Union. What we want is to build on the European soil, on the European territory, our own security arrangements, and have, for example, the Eurasian Union as partner, maybe strategic partner, of you, of the European Union or NATO, with the same rights on deciding the future of the European architecture.”

The West is denying Russia the right to have its own zone of influence or its own organizations in Europe, because from the Western point of view, these organizations only serve the secret aim of Russia to reinstall itself as an empire on the European continent—which I think is not true. The Russians do not want to have the old empire back. It’s not possible to get it back. They can’t pay for this. They don’t have the means to establish a former empire. But what they want to have is a secure role, as one of the decision-making countries, within the concert of other European states. I think this is legitimate.

But the problem is, Harley, that these two completely different aims and understandings of Euro­pean security are now crashing against each other. The West is denying Russia its right to have a say, or an institutional influence on Europe, and Russia says, “We will not accept the NATO structures of Western influence.

It’s further encircling us Russians, moving toward territories we regard, not as ours, as they say, but as territories, which belonged formerly to Russia, and for cultural reasons, in many ways, are also very closely connected to Russia—I mean, Eastern Ukraine, Belarus, and that’s all.”

The Efficacy of Diplomacy

Schlanger: What you’re talking about, in terms of the Western view is, in a sense, the post-Cold War, unipolar world where everyone is supposed to respond to the Anglo-American, or U.S.-NATO policy. Now there’s an interesting paradox here, which is that Germany does seem to be in the middle of this. I’d like to turn to the German situation, because we just had a very significant visit by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Moscow, to meet with Putin; this was following France’s President Emmanuel Macron. Just initially, what’s your assessment of the Scholz-Putin meeting?

Rahr: Let’s be very realistic, Harley. Let me start by saying, very shortly, that we just were discussing the EIR

March 11, 2022

or the European Union—will also have a stable place in a joint common European house.

This is important to understand because this means that Germany, till the end, will always stress a common line for a trans-Atlantic world. It will, nevertheless—we have seen this over decades—try at the end to mend fences also with Russia. A German political slogan—it’s not only a slogan; I think it’s also a kind of mentality Bundesregierung/Kugler of the German class towards RusGerman Chancellor Olaf Scholz (left) with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow, sia—says that we cannot build a Feb. 15, 2022.

Europe against or without Russia.

Russian concept of Europe, with the possibility of We have to try to build a common Europe, for all the Russia building institutions, and the Western view. But 21st Century and the 22nd Century, together with Rusthe Western view on Europe is also twofold. Or I would sia. And this is a clear difference to what you hear in say, there is a split inside the West, of how to see the London or Washington about the future of Europe. concept of a future Europe. What do I mean?

A Common European Space Let’s look at what the American and British think Schlanger: Well, Alexander, what you just detanks, the media, and politicians are demanding and scribed perfectly, what you call the 20th-century view saying: They want this unipolar world, which you just is the extension of old British geopolitics, imperial mentioned. That is true, but they want a Europe which geopolitics into the 21st century, the idea that there can is part of a trans-Atlantic world. This forces the Anglonever be allowed a Eurasian integration that would inSaxons to have countries like Ukraine, the Baltic states corporate parts of Europe. This goes back to Halford as buffer states against hostile Russia—from their point Mackinder, as you know. What you’re pointing to is of view. I understand this view, as in the interest of very important because it seems as though the mood in the United States and Great Britain, to have Germany Germany is not for war. I just wonder what you think. controlled, next to France and other allies in Europe.

Is there support for Germany to play a mediating role, And this is a Europe which, yes, it’s mainly a Europe, as neither with the Anglo-Americans nor necessarily which belongs, in my view, in the 20th century, not in with Russia, but to help create this unified space? the 21st century. But this is, in the minds of many old Cold Warriors, who today design the policy in London, Rahr: In my view, this is one of the priorities of in Washington, and in certain other cities of the West.

German politics—to try to develop this concept of a But there is a different view, that of Germany and common European space. I remember that we were the France, and also the German leadership and the French Europeans, not only Germany, I mean also Italians, leadership who always stress that they are trans-AtlanFrance, the Benelux countries, Spain. We were very ticists, and they obey the consensus which exists inclose 20 years ago, developing the concept of a common side the trans-Atlantic world; and they obey also the European space. Brussels and Moscow organized many leadership of the United States, in many ways, because summits, annual summits on this issue. Four different it’s also good for European security. You know all that. spaces had already been institutionalized as one space But at the same time, the German and the French elite, for security, one for culture, one for economy, one for wish to develop a concept of a common European information and media cooperation: All that had alspace from Lisbon to Vladivostok, in which counready been established. tries like Russia, the Central Asian states, Belarus, and What happened then? Numerous new conflicts, Ukraine—countries which are not members of NATO which led basically to the development of the re-emerand probably will never become members of NATO March 11, 2022

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kremlin.ru

French President Emmanuel Macron (right) with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow, Feb. 7, 2022.

gence of the old or a new Cold War. Who was behind that? I don’t know, but I guess, as you said, the United States, from its geopolitical interests, is not so much in favor of a close cooperation between Berlin, Paris and Moscow. It was seen during the Iraq War of 20022003, when Paris and Berlin, together with Moscow, opposed the British-American war in Iraq—seriously opposed it. And that already led alarms to ring in the United States, where the American leadership, the student said, “Well, these old Europeans want a different Europe, than we want.”

The American side then stuck much closer to the new Europeans, to the new countries which entered NATO and the European Union, in the beginning of the 21st century: Poland, Czechia, the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria. These became the true allies of the United States. The problem with these countries was that they had already their animosities, their problems with Russia due to the common history under communism, where they felt they had been deprived of their freedom, their orientation toward the West, which they had, probably also in in the last century, but they couldn’t do all that because they were under communist rule.

But that would pass. The world has changed. Nevertheless, for the elites in many of these East European countries, these ghosts of communism still exist, and are reflected in their policy, their attitude towards Moscow, a very hostile attitude towards Moscow. And these countries established a kind of policy within the West, which then led to more alienation towards Russia. Because they told the Germans and the French, “We know who the Russians are. The Russians are not partners, they are enemies.”

And so due to NATO expansion, due to the fact that new member states from the former Warsaw Pact 20

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countries, with a very negative view of Russia, entered NATO and the European Union, these two organizations, NATO and the European Union, which were in the ’90s, in the beginning of the century, friendly with Russia, became more and more also opponents of Russia; and Russia, of course, became an opponent to the West. That led to numerous new conflicts, which at the end, led to the historical split between the West and Russia, in which we live today. I think this conflict will be very difficult to solve.

In the West are forces which would like to change the situation, to correct the security architecture of Europe. Many in the German establishment and the French establishment are not only dreaming but talking about this, seriously talking about this, making proposals— not offering a capitulation of Ukraine or something like that, but simply a new understanding with Russia: “We can freely talk about this. We can build Europe on the basis of the OSCE,” as I said before.

Then, France and Germany could say that their veto against NATO membership of Ukraine, which is still on the table since 2008—since the summit of NATO in Bucharest in 2008 with then-American President George W. Bush who wanted to get these countries overnight into NATO. And his two most important allies in the West, Paris and Berlin said, “No! We don’t want that! Because this will destroy our relationship with Russia. And this will possibly lead to a war with Russia. We don’t want that.” So, the Germans and the French still stick to this position. They want NATO; they maybe want Ukraine closer to the European Union. But they don’t want to have Ukraine as a member of NATO, because they understand that this immediately will lead to permanent conflicts and maybe even to military actions with a nuclear power like Russia. Nobody wants that.

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which exists, including the pipeline through Ukraine to the West, including, all these contracts which have been signed, they exist for 50 years. What was the real sense behind them? Germany wanted to bind Russia together with the European economy, and to bind, of course, the German business with Russian business.

If you have this intertwined, if you have interdependencies between these two blocs, the European-EU bloc and Russia-Eurasian bloc, then war is excluded! Because people will make money, will want to support each other, and will want to have more cooperation, not less. And there is a goal to, maybe, NATO build more out of this energy alliance.

NATO Secretary General, Lord George Robertson (left) with President So, it is in the interest of Germany and the George Bush at a bilateral summit in Prague, Czech Republic, Nov. 20, 2002. interest of the Europeans to have more infraA European Energy Alliance structure projects between Russia or Asia and the EuSchlanger: Now, just to stick with this question of ropean Union, for many different reasons. First of all, geopolitics for a moment: As you know, Lyndon Lathe European Union cannot explore gas on its own soil Rouche has always said that since the assassination anymore. In past decades, it was possible; now there of President John F. Kennedy, the United States has are simply no gas reserves in Europe. So, we need to increasingly functioned as a dumb giant on a British import 90% of the gas we need from outside the Euroleash, and U.S. policy and London policy have generpean Union, from outside sources, and the infrastrucally been in concert. The British, of course, think that ture with Russia is there! There are pipelines through it’s American brawn and British brains. But one quesUkraine, through Belarus and Poland, under the Baltic tions the concept of British brains when you look at Sea, Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2, and the Turkish what a mess the United Kingdom is.

Stream.

Here’s the other question that comes from this: Right That all fits into the whole framework, which we now, besides the problems that Scholz has with the Greens in his cabinet—the Greens have become a pro-war party—is pressure from NATO. There’s increasing pressure around the Nord Stream 2. It’s obviously in the interests of Germany to have the Nord Stream 2 open and functioning, but the United States and the British argue that Nord Stream 2 would be giv­ing Putin a tool to blackmail Europe. What do you think about this? How important is Nord Stream 2 for Germany and for Scholz?

Rahr: The whole energy alliance is very important for Germany, from the economic, from the commercial, and from the political point of view. I will talk about Nord Stream 2 in a second, but the whole energy alliance, the whole infrastructure March 11, 2022

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gazprom.ru

A view of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline terminal in Lubmin, Germany in 2011.

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need, in order to be energy secure in Europe.

This is a logic. These are commercial and economic projects, and we need this. But there are certain countries—for example, Poland—in the European Union, which has said openly that they do not want to have anything to do with Russia, because Russia is an enemy of the West. They question the whole German narrative that we need more cooperation with Russia, to build in Europe a peaceful society.

The Poles have a different view. Some other countries have a different view. The United States brings the argument that the Germans are naïve: They are allowing Ruskremlin.ru sia to earn a lot of money on the European In Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping soil, and this money is being spent for the declare the basis of their partnership in a Joint Russia-China Statement, military buildup in Russia. Well, the mili- February 4, 2022. tary buildup of Russia is smaller than the buildup of the United States or of NATO on the whole. order to feed our economy. This gas will come from So, this is not the argument.

Russia, from Norway, maybe from Qatar, from the The real argument is that the United States wants to United States, but it should all be developed here in the sell to Europe their own liquefied gas, which it has in civilized way. Nord Stream 2 is important, especially great volume. And I think that this is also legitimate. now, because it provides the new necessary assets and The United States should try to conquer the market in amounts of gas which Europe needs more and more for a civilized way and develop the same kind of commerits prosperity, for getting out of this COVID crisis in cial ties with the European Union, as the Russians have which we are still in, in order to develop the European for decades—but in a fair kind of arrangement, in a fair economies. kind of competition, and not by sanctions, not by trying The Rise of Russia and China to kill the opponent, physically, the Russians, so that Schlanger: I’d like your thoughts on the outcome they will be out of Europe. This, I think, is very unfair. of the February 4 Putin-Xi Jinping summit. Many of It’s geopolitics, which is very dangerous, and it will the war-hawks are extremely agitated about it. They’re lead to nothing. talking about this as a tectonic shift. While there are We need to commercialize the issue, to understand others who are more thoughtful and less ideological, one very important thing: That due to the fact that we, in who are saying, “This is good. It’s the end of the postGermany, in the European Union—and also the United Cold War unipolar era.” What do you think?

States, but this is an American problem—I’m talking about Europe, we all want to have a green economy, in Rahr: I think that we don’t have the right and the 15, 20, at least in 20 years, a full green economy, withgood strategies in the West. We had them a couple of out the dirty energy, like oil, gas and coal. We want to years ago, and I remember when I was working for become objectively climate neutral, and free from all Radio Free Europe in the ’80s, we had brilliant anathis gas in the atmosphere. lysts—people who were so well informed about geoSo, we desperately need to establish good relations politics—historians, who understood the world. Right with Russia, because we will be stopping the buying now, the problem of our think tanks, is in our mindset, of coal, stopping the buying of oil, and we don’t want here in the West, that we are only focused on human anything to do with atomic energy. Before we get the rights and on liberal values. This is not enough to unenergy from the Sun, from solar energy, from batteries derstand the world. We have to understand the interests or from wind energy and so on, that will take a lot of which are ruling the world. In this sense, we have to time—years, maybe decades to come. invest more time, more knowledge in analyzing the inIn the meantime, our clear energy target is gas in 22

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March 11, 2022

terests of a country like Russia, of China, of India, of the Arabic world—if they have, of course, interests; but they will have interests very soon, if they become more united, and so on and so on.

Europeans are becoming also more selfish in developing their own interests, different to those United States. We see this clearly over the past years. So, I would appeal to our think-tank communities, to our intellectuals, to just accept one important thing: That Russia and China have interests, which they will fight for in the future.

These two countries, Russia and China, were weak 20 years ago. Now they are very strong. They are players in a multipolar world, and we cannot stop them, not by force, not by conviction. Whatever we do, they are there, and we have to find arrangements, how to rebuild, correct the world order, in the sense that everybody will be happy. I think it is possible to unite and not to quarrel all the time.

Russian diplomacy, I tell you, is not being seen in the West. But it is nevertheless true, that Russians have understood that the main drivers for the world economy are not coming from Europe anymore. They are in Asia. So, Russia is oriented more and more towards

Asia, not only China, but also India, Vietnam, South Korea. It’s building its relations with Asia, because it understands that it, Russia, has to become part of the Asian future, of the Asian success story.

Asia will economically overcome Europe in the next 10, 20 years. China will be as strong as the United States. This is fact, not invention: This will happen. The more we try to understand that our solutions for cooperation should become peaceful and that we should do things in dialogue, and not in confrontation, the better for the world, the better for the world society, and the better for the global system.

Schlanger: Alexander, I’d like to thank you for this discussion. It has been very provocative. I think our viewers and our readers will be very shocked in some ways to see the coherence of what you just presented because they’re so used to the narratives coming from the think tanks, as you say, which are all tied to the corporate cartels, the military-industrial complex.

Thanks again for joining us, and I hope we can have another discussion like this sometime soon.

Rahr: Thank you, Harley. I enjoyed it.

New EIR Offprint Special Report Now Available

The Great Leap Backward: LaRouche Exposes the Green New Deal Executive Intelligence Review has released this Special Report to warn of the extreme danger to mankind represented by the Green New Deal, also called “The Great Reset” by the leaders of the Davos World Economic Forum.

Already being implemented, this plan is taking over the direction of national economies from sovereign governments, using the power of central banks and the too-big-to-fail private financial institutions, cutting off credit to fossil fuel power generation and to industrial and agricultural enterprises claimed to emit too much carbon.

Meanwhile it is creating a new huge bubble in the “sustainable fuel” sector, hoping to prop up the increasingly bankrupt financial system.

Stopping it by returning to a Hamiltonian American System credit policy, requires an understanding which is the purpose of this report.

March 11, 2022

EIR

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Special Report is available in soft cover printed copy for $30 plus shipping, or as a PDF for $20 (requires e-mail address). https://store.larouchepub.com/product-p/eirsp-2021-1-0-0.htm

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II. International

Emergency Food Relief and Production Contingencies, or Else World Famine

by Marcia Merry Baker March 6—The stoppage of grain, oilseeds, and fertilizer from the Ukraine-Belarus-Russia agriculture zone is a world-scale emergency, amidst pre-existing global shortages and hyperinflation of both farm outputs and inputs. The mass suspension of food supplies results from sanctions imposed by the U.S./UK and EU, from the strife in the Black Sea Basin, and other, related geopolitical disruptions.

For wheat, Russia and Ukraine together are the largest exporters in the world. For fertilizers, Russia and Belarus together are in the top ranks.

Already, prior to the Russian military operation in Ukraine, U.S. sanctions forced Lithuania to U.S. Embassy, Kyiv shut off rail transit of fertilizer from Belarus to Russia and Ukraine together are the world’s largest exporters of wheat. the Baltic seaport of Klaipeda, early in 2022. Here the UkrLandFarming Lokhvytsia Silo Complex in the Poltava Belaruskali, one of the world’s largest fertilizer Region of central Ukraine. exporters, was a major supplier to Brazil, India and China, now cut off.

Hungary, have suspended wheat exports. France has The immediate impact of all this hits the wheat exportable wheat, but a limited amount. Italy, a supplier import-dependent nations of the Middle East/North of processed wheat foods to Libya, for example, has Africa (MENA) region, many of whom are 70-80% now cut back its pasta production, because its wheat reliant on wheat from Russia and Ukraine, which now supply from the Black Sea is cut off. is suspended. Several secondary suppliers, e.g., The emergency is not at all confined to the 18 MENA nations. Turkey is 87% dependent on Russia and Ukraine for wheat imports; other nations will be affected. Nor is the emergency confined to wheat. For example, India has been obtaining over 75% of its sunflower oil imports from Ukraine, the world’s largest sunflower producing and exporting nation. The prices of foodstuffs and farm inputs are skyrocketing.

No Reserves

CC/DOMANTAS

The Baltic seaport of Klaipėda, Lithuania, a major shipping point for Belarus fertilizer, until stopped by U.S. pressure February 1.

24

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

Moreover, the sudden and prospective food shortages of all kinds are an instant crisis because of EIR

March 11, 2022

the lack of alternative supplies worldwide. This is the direct result of the policy of decades of deliberately disallowing reserves, as ordered by the 1995 World Trade Organization (WTO), whose rule is that national food and commodity stockpiles “distort trade.” By that, they mean the trade dominated by the Big Food and agrochemical transnationals, associated with Wall Street and London, not food exports and imports in the interest of the nations involved.

The stockpile issue also reflects that the volume of world food production is way below need. By the rule of thumb that each person should have half a ton of grains (of whatever kinds, per cultural preferences), produced WFP/Esther Ouoba yearly for consumption directly and indirectly Since 1995, WTO policy has forbidden national food reserves. Now, (through the animal protein chain), and for millions face starvation unless there is emergency food aid, as is shown here being unloaded from a World Food Program helicopter in Mansila, reserves, disasters, spoilage, etc., the world Burkina Faso, June 26, 2021. grains output (all kinds) should be well over 4 billion tons a year, but it is not even 3 billion. For food aid dependent in 43 countries. reference, the rank order of global production of the It is urgent that collaboration take place among three major grains is: corn/maize, wheat, and rice. The leading agricultural nations and farming experts to rank order of their volume traded (in recent times) on mobilize for both emergency relief—making best use world markets, is: wheat (205 million metric tons, mmt), of the severely limited supplies, and for cranking up corn/maize (200 mmt), and rice (50 mmt). Production production in the crop cycles of the Northern and and supplies are set to plunge, given fertilizer shortages, Southern Hemispheres. fuel price hyperinflation, and all other disruptions.

Wheat Shock Even before the pandemic and its disruptions, over Russia and Ukraine together have, in recent years, 800 million people out of the world’s 7.8 billion, lacked accounted for 25-30% of the annual world wheat traded enough food. Now that figure is higher, and of those, internationally, providing near 45 mmt, out of the total more than 258 million are “marching toward starvation,” global export trade of 205 mmt. The two countries as David Beasley, the Executive Director of the World together account for 75% of all the sunflower seed oil Food Program, has warned. These people are completely traded internationally, an important component of global edible oils, which are in short supply. Ukraine accounts for 19% of the world corn/maize traded internationally.

The situation of Egypt epitomizes the wheat shock. Egypt is wheat importdependent, but comparatively well-positioned relative to neighboring nations, because it has at present an estimated nine months of wheat on stand-by. But it has to continue to purchase wheat to maintain that buffer. Normally, Egypt relies on Russia and Ukraine suppliers for 75% of its wheat, and over 10 bids usually come in when Egypt issues a tender. However, its tender of Feb. 26 (for late March-April USAID/Luigi Crespo delivery) had to be cancelled, because only Nations that export foodstuffs must now mobilize for large-scale food relief and crank up production. Shown, a cargo ship’s hold filled with wheat for Iraq. one bid came in, which is invalid under March 11, 2022

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Egyptian law. A follow-up tender, deadline Feb. 28, did get three bids (two from French firms, and one— unusually, from the United States), but there is no basis for hope for future purchases. The situation in other African and Southwest Asian nations is acute.

Wheat prices are soaring worldwide. The price of wheat has jumped 55% since before the Russian military deployment into Ukraine. The expense to line up relief food for Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and 43 nations worldwide, where emergency supplies are a matter of life and death, is a horror story.

Grim World Crop Prospects

new Russia-China agreement went into effect for Russian wheat to go to China (lifting all former restrictions), which was announced Feb. 24, after the Feb. 4 in-person meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping.

Emergency Mobilization

The lowered forecasts coming in for the 2022 crop year are frightening. World wheat output was expected down by at least 10 mmt, even before the Black Sea disruption and new rounds of sanctions took place.

Drought still extends over much of the North American winter wheat belt (planted last Fall, and starting up this Spring). The current harvest in the soybean belt of

The world fertilizer supply picture is a disaster.

Prices for the various types have tripled or worse, over the past 18 months, and shortages—no matter the price—are ever more frequent.

This runs parallel to the hyper­ inflation and breakdown in energy supplies, since natural gas is a feedstock for certain nitrogenous fertilizers. Farming is slammed in multiple ways by soaring prices for diesel, propane, electricity as well as natural gas. Besides fueling CC/Ashley Dace machinery, power is needed to dry The suspension of imports of grain, oilseeds, and fertilizer from Ukraine, Belarus, and crops, for transportation, water Russia by U.S./UK/EU sanctions only exacerbates the world-scale food shortage management, for other farm pur­ emergency. Shown: the grain terminal of England’s Port of Tilbury on the Thames. poses, and for food processing.

There are shortages and high prices of farm chemicals as Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina will be drastically well, for weed and pest control. On Feb. 14, Bayer lowered by drought. Paraguay’s soybean harvest is declared force majeure, and suspended contracts to expected to be down by half. deliver the herbicide, Round-Up, because of the shortage The vulnerability to drought, and to other disasters, of glyphosate. is the direct consequence of the lack of construction of Add to this picture the huge impact of sanctions and water and disaster-defense infrastructure over the last other actions against Russia and Belarus. Russia has 50 years of the Wall Street/London casino economy, been a foremost producer and exporter of all types of which favored speculation, not production. Now this NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) and other stupidity is further promoted under the banner of the crop nutrients. Belarus provides 20% of the world’s Green Reset. It is actually a depopulation policy. potash. Not just the volume, but the reasonable prices This snapshot of facets of the crisis in world food have made fertilizer from these two nations invaluable and farming indicates what must be addressed and in global food output. Now all that is disrupted. forced into public, expert discussion, for action On March 4, the Russian Commerce and Industry solutions. An emergency mobilization is needed now to Ministry issued a directive, asking the Russian fertilizer enlist the forces necessary to set the agenda and carry companies to cease exports and favor homeland out the emergency relief and production measures. This farmers, to guarantee maximum agriculture output. is urgent, and fits into the framework outlined by the This backing of domestic production is extremely February Schiller Institute call for a new security and valuable, but the lack of Russian fertilizer inputs to development architecture for the world. world agriculture is a blow. Note that on March 1 the marciabaker@larouchepub.com 26

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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March 11, 2022

China Briefs

Biden Sends Former U.S. Government Officials to Taiwan President Joe Biden sent a delegation of former U.S. government officials to Taiwan, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Michèle Flournoy. The delegation met with Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen on March 2. Speaking at a press availability with Tsai, Adm. Mullen said that maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is “not just a U.S. interest, but also a global one.” Then turning to Tsai, he said, “We come to Taiwan at a very difficult and critical moment in world history. As President Biden has said, democracy is facing sustained and alarming challenges, most recently in Ukraine…. Now more than ever, democracy needs champions.”

In her comments, Tsai said that Taiwan would continue to bolster its defenses against China adding that she considered the resistance of the Ukrainian people to be an inspiration. “As a member of the international community, Taiwan not only expresses severe condemnation, but also participates in international sanctions against Russia and initiates humanitarian assistance to Ukraine,” she said. “Now is the time for democracies in the world to unite, and Taiwan cannot be absent.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted to the Mullen visit on March 1 in its regular briefing. “The Chinese people are firmly determined and resolved to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Wang Wenbin, the Foreign Ministry SpokesMarch 11, 2022

EIR

man. “The attempt by the U.S. to show support to Taiwan will be in vain, no matter whom the U.S. sends. China urges the U.S. to abide by the one-China principle and stipulations in the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, stop all forms of official interactions with Taiwan, and handle Taiwan-related issues in a prudent manner, lest it should further undermine the larger interests of China-U.S. relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

As Mullen and his cohorts left Taiwan on March 3, former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was arriving. Having lost much of his potbelly (no doubt with plans to run for higher office), he was awarded the Order of Brilliant Star with Gold Cordon by the Taiwanese president.

Pompeo also said that the United States should take immediate steps to give Taiwan diplomatic recognition. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin was quick to reply on March 4: “Mike Pompeo is a former politician with bankrupt credibility. His lunatic remarks will lead nowhere.”

Ukraine Asks China To Mediate Ukraine-Russia Dispute The Chinese and Ukrainian Foreign Ministers, Wang Yi and Dmytro Kuleba, spoke on March 1 by telephone, at the latter’s initiative, according to China’s Foreign Ministry. According to Reuters, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported afterwards in a statement that Kuleba had asked Wang to use China’s ties with Russia to stop its invasion, and that Wang had replied that China was ready to make every effort to help end the war through diplomacy.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry readout, Kuleba briefed Wang on the outcome of the first round of talks with Russia, and “noted that although the negotiations were not smooth, the Ukrainian side still maintains calm and is willing to move forward with the talks. He said that China has played a constructive role on this issue,” and that Ukraine “looked forward to China’s mediation efforts for the ceasefire.”

Wang, for his part, said China “calls on Ukraine and Russia to find a solution through negotiations and supports all constructive international efforts that are conducive to a political settlement,” while stressing “that China has always believed that the security of one country should not be achieved at the expense of the security of other countries, and that regional security cannot be achieved by expanding military blocs.”

In separate calls with European counterparts on February 25—with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, and Emmanuel Bonne, diplomatic counselor to French President Emmanuel Macron— Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized five points that characterize China’s position on Ukraine.

These included: First, respecting and safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries under the UN Charter; Second, a country’s security cannot come at the expense of harming others’ security, and regional security cannot be guaranteed by reinforcing or expanding military blocs; Russia’s legitimate demands on security should be taken seriously; Third, all parties in Ukraine must exercise necessary restraint in order to Lies and Truth About Ukraine

27

prevent the situation from deteriorating or even getting out of control, and that large-scale humanitarian crises have to be prevented; Fourth, diplomatic efforts must be carried out and Ukraine should be a bridge of communication between the East and the West, instead of being the frontline of confrontations between major countries; Fifth, the UN Security Council should play a constructive role in resolving the Ukraine issue and regional peace and stability as well as the security of all countries should be put first.

Wang said China always opposed the citing of Chapter VII in Security Council resolutions to authorize the use of force and sanctions. He said that China is a major country with the best record in this regard, having never invaded other countries or launched proxy wars, never sought spheres of influence, or engaged in any military bloc confrontation.

Wang Wenbin Attacks U.S. Manipulation of Media on Xinjiang Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin scored comments made

by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his video address to the UN Human Rights Council on March 1, in which Blinken again repeated the phony accusations of genocide in Xinjiang.

“Over the past 60-plus years,” Wang said, “the population in China’s Xinjiang region increased fourfold and the Uyghur population grew from 2.2 million to about 12 million. The accusation of “genocide” in Xinjiang is a flat-out lie of the century. Those who make this accusation are totally unethical.”

Wang also scored the Goebbelslike control of the “narrative” on Xinjiang by the U.S. government. “I also 28

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

noted media reports that revealed the specific U.S. measures to formulate Xinjiang-related propaganda strategies and spread negative information about Xinjiang in an organized manner,” Wang said. “They include encouraging U.S. academic institutions, think tanks and non-governmental organizations to constantly fabricate so-called research reports about Xinjiang and publish related books.

News agencies overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) are instructed to produce fake news reports and “propaganda materials” about “genocide” and “forced labor” in Xinjiang in dozens of languages and hype up religious and sensitive topics.

In the meanwhile, the USAGM coordinates with media networks in US allied countries to reprint and push such ‘products’. The U.S. online media also chip in technologically through weakening and blocking true information about Xinjiang released by the Chinese side while providing technical assistance for anti-China forces to spread false information related to the region. Such efforts are also financially supported by the U.S. government.”

New legislation working its way through the U.S. Congress calls for half a million dollars to be spent on journalists willing to write articles trashing China!

Wang Yi Says BRI Is Willing to Work with Build Back Better World Speaking at an anniversary event on February 28, commemorating the 1972 visit of President Nixon that led the way to the establishment of relations between China and the United States, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang again reiterated that the BRI was willing to cooperate with U.S. President

Biden’s planned “Build Back Better World” project.

“The two countries can join hands to provide more vaccines for Africa and the rest of the developing world, with a view to building a shield for immunity and contributing to a global victory against COVID-19,” Wang said.

“We need to maintain macroeconomic policy coordination, inject greater confidence and resilience to the global economy, and bolster solid recovery from the pandemic. We can work together to address the climate crisis, protect nature, and realize green, low-carbon and sustainable development worldwide. China is open to U.S. participation in the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative. We are also ready to consider coordinating with the Build Back Better World initiative of the United States to provide more quality public goods for the world.”

China Unearths Earliest State Academy from 374 BC The ruins of ancient China’s first government-run institution of higher learning, the Jixia Academy, built in 374 BC, have been discovered in the Linzi District of Zibo City in eastern China’s Shandong Province. Founded by the State of Qi during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), the Jixia Academy was a state institution of higher learning which performed multiple roles, serving as research institute, university, and think-tank. It existed for more than 150 years.

The Academy was founded some years after the death of Confucius and not many years from the founding of Plato's Academy in Athens in 387 BC. The philosopher Mencius (died 289 BC) spent time at the Jixia Academy. It became the model for later academies to follow.

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March 11, 2022

Iberoamerica Briefs

Former Brazilian President Rousseff: NATO Expansion Left Russia No Choice In a lively, wide-ranging Feb. 26 interview with Brazil247 TV, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff— ousted in August of 2016 by a colorrevolution coup organized by London and Wall Street bankers—gave an historical tour de force, explaining the West’s betrayal of Russia. She spoke of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, leading to the expansion of NATO right to Russia’s borders and the U.S.-orchestrated 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine. The interview appeared under the headline, “Coup in Ukraine and NATO Expansion Explain the War.” She documented the promises made to Russia by former Secretary of State James Baker III, among others, that NATO would not move “one inch” to the East.

At the end of the Cold War, she said, the policy in terms of NATO was, “the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down.”

Rousseff asserted that in the years following1999, it was clear that NATO went from being a “defensive to an offensive organization.” She pointed to the role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, which she said were “backed by the U.S. and the NSA,” repeating clearly, “the National Security Agency,” which she described as an agency that “complements the CIA in destabilizing nations.” When Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych made the decision to drop an association agreement with the EU, he became the victim of what Rousseff called a “hybrid war,” including the Maidan coup, responsibility for March 11, 2022

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which, she said, rests with former U.S. President Barack Obama.

Rousseff detailed the West’s ignoring President Putin’s recent demands for legally binding security guarantees from the U.S. and NATO. Russia then found no other way to make itself heard than to deploy troops into Ukraine. But now would be the time, she said, to go back to the negotiating table. “The solution must be multilateral,” she insisted. “War won’t resolve the conflict.

Why? Because it’s a political conflict.”

What’s good about diplomacy is that it can create a solution “in which neither side loses.” Any solution must be multipolar, she repeated, “because the unipolar world is finished.” The interview in Portuguese can be seen here.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro Met with Putin: Economic Cooperation on the Agenda Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro began his Feb. 16 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow by announcing that Brazil feels “a sense of solidarity with Russia.

We have good prospects for cooperation in various areas, specifically defense, oil and gas, and agriculture. Our government ministers are also holding meetings. I am confident that my visit to Moscow is a signal to the whole world that our bilateral relations have good prospects for growth…. We are ready for cooperation, and I would like to express confidence that this visit and our meeting will be quite productive.”

Putin said the two countries, both members of the BRICS economic bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), are “working proactively at in-

ternational venues. [Brazil] is the leading trade and economic partner of Russia in Latin America.”

The U.S. State Department was not amused. It had tried to get Bolsonaro, an economic liberal, to cancel the planned trip to Russia. When that didn’t work, it instructed him to focus on confronting Russia on Ukraine. An unnamed State Department official told the Miami Herald prior to the trip: “The U.S. and many other nations are deeply concerned about the destabilizing role that Russia is playing and its ongoing threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. As democratic leaders, the United States and Brazil have a responsibility to stand up for democratic principles and the rules-based order. We hope Brazil will take this opportunity to reinforce this message in their conversations in Moscow.”

Since Bolsonaro ignored these instructions, State Department mouthpieces like Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, historic bastion of Rockefeller business interests in the Americas, have warned there will be “consequences” for such disobedience. He told the Miami Herald, “It’s not helpful to the international community to go over and lend at least rhetorical support to a dictator who’s threatening his neighbors.”

Brazil’s Monitor Mercantil Reports on Schiller Institute’s Call One of Brazil’s most respected financial and political newsletters, Monitor Mercantil, reported March 2 on the Schiller Institute’s call for a new secuLies and Truth About Ukraine

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rity architecture, under the headline, “Danger of War and an Explosion of the Speculative Bubble; Institute Defends a New Treaty of Westphalia.” It concludes by telling readers that the Schiller Institute is asking for support for its petition, and provides the link to the Portuguese-language version of the call.

The article quotes key sections of “the manifesto published by the Institute founded by Helga ZeppLaRouche,” including this: “The City of London and Wall Street, the owners of that bankrupt system, are desperate to destroy any functioning alternative to their system—such as Russia’s and China’s alliance around the Belt and Road Initiative, which now incorporates nearly 150 nations—and the financial Establishment has openly stated that this is what is at stake.... [The Schiller Institute] calls for establishing an entirely new paradigm that would guarantee the security and economic development of all nations on the planet…. The economic system has to be completely reorganized in order to ensure that result.”

Schiller Institute Petition Featured in Mexican Alt-Media Interview “El Mercurio, Now or Never,” an alternative media YouTube channel with a subscriber base of 132,000 extending across the Spanish-speaking world, promoted its Feb. 28 interview with the Schiller Institute’s spokesman Dennis Small, under the title, “The Nuclear Button Has Been Activated, It Is Time to Negotiate New Rules.” Over 1,000 people were watching the 54minute interview by the end of the live broadcast, and over 10,000 views were registered by evening.

Host Antonio Valdez urged his listeners to read and sign the Schiller In30

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stitute petition, which he has done. In the three hours after the broadcast, more people had signed the petition, from Spain, Mexico, and other IberoAmerican countries. Valdez posted a link to it in the “Description” section of the video, which included this characterization: “Dennis Small asserts that, behind the very real danger of global war is the explosion of the trans-Atlantic financial system. A speculative bubble of nearly $2 quadrillion in financial derivatives and debts that is already exploding. A world-wide hyperinflationary process has been unleashed, along with a collapse of the physical economies of the Western nations. London and Wall Street, the owners of the bankrupt system, are desperate to destroy any functioning alternative to their system, such as the alliance of Russia and China around the Belt and Road Initiative, which now includes almost 150 nations, and the trans-Atlantic financial Establishment has already openly stated that that is what is at stake.”

IMF Deal Goes to Argentine Congress for OK, Gov’t Coalition Divided Argentina has signed a $45 billion, 30-month Extended Fund Facility agreement with the IMF, to roll over the $57 billion standby agreement signed by neoliberal President Mauricio Macri in 2018. It must now be approved by Congress to become law, but there is no guarantee this will happen, given divisions within President Alberto Fernández’s ruling Front for All (FdT) coalition. Facilitated by Macri’s close friend and then IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, the 2018 agreement was a political loan granted solely to prop up Macri’s neoliberal economic policy and ensure his reelection. The loan violated the IMF’s own

internal regulations, and is widely considered illegal. It is currently under investigation in the Argentine justice system.

But President Fernández and the IMF insist this agreement is different from the country’s previous 22 IMF bailouts, as it is “pragmatic” with “realistic” goals and doesn’t impose austerity or demand pension or labor reforms. It is needed, Fernández says, to stabilize the economy and create some breathing room so the economy can grow.

In Argentina, the IMF is hated, rightly so, and under current conditions of global economic disintegration, no IMF loan can be considered good. That’s why President Fernández’s recent agreement to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is so important. It offers an opportunity for Argentina to not only build its own urgently needed infrastructure and develop economically, but also to focus on what the BRI can mean for all of Ibero-America. This is particularly so, if Mexico and Brazil join with it to focus on regional economic, political, and scientific cooperation with China.

Critics of the IMF deal are missing this crucial point. As the agreement’s most vocal opponent, Maximo Kirchner—son of former President and current Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—resigned his position as head of the FdT bloc in Congress in late January, because he disagreed with the terms of the agreement being negotiated. In a March 4 video he argued that Macri’s $57 billion loan immiserated the Argentine people and should not be repaid. All true, but Kirchner forgets that this is not a local problem.

Argentina’s economic disasters were caused by the henchmen for a global parasitical casino economy. They will be resolved only by creating a global new economic architecture that values human life.­ EIR

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III. History and Culture

The Economic Policy that Made the Peace of Westphalia

by Pierre Beaudry This is a newly edited version of an article, originally published in EIR, on the history of the famous treaty that established the modern idea of cooperation and non-intervention among nations (EIR Vol. 30, No. 21, May 30, 2003). British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech in Chicago in 1999, in which he declared that the era of the Treaty of Westphalia was over, opened a period of unceasing wars by major powers on smaller nations. The principles of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia are needed now more than ever.

Author’s Introduction to this Republication March 4, 2022—Power never smashes itself in anger on the reef of righteousness. Power is agapē, the love of God and humanity. As the Apostle Paul demonstrated in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, agapē is generous and never envious; it is never righteous nor vengeful; it is patient and always merciful, and forgives easily. Agapē gives and never takes. Because of all of these qualities of leadership, agapē has no place of its own, and has no need of one, because it builds its home and takes its residence in others, as others take their happiness and rest in it. It is for these reasons that the power of the Peace of Westphalia is able to endure the rages of others, and it never traffics with them for some popularity. Thus, the secret of this Peace of Westphalia is to internalize, ahead of time, what other people are thinking, or are afraid of thinking, about themselves and their fellow man, and to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The Treaty of Westphalia says it explicitly, that it abolishes all competition, pretentions, and advantages over others, and “forgives the sins of the past by leaving all wrongs that have been committed to perpetual Oblivion.” Such is the beauty of power when it is proportional with reason, and such was the commitment March 11, 2022

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of France in 1648, in the Peace of Westphalia, pledging to entertain a good and faithful, neighborly relationship with all nations. Such is the beauty of proportion between power and reason that Leibniz had identified as the basis for his idea of the Republic, and for which the recognition and remembrance of others grow unceasingly.

This is also what Rabelais meant when he said that gratuitousness, that is, what is given with benevolence, is the only living power that does not decrease and perish with time. It can only increase as time passes, because it decreases hatred in the same proportion that it increases love. Therefore, this principle of agapē represents the best that Western civilization has to offer: the idea of power found in the Athens of Solon in the 6th Century B.C., the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in 33 AD, the Council of Florence in 1439, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and the adoption of the American Constitution in 1787. This is how the idea of power became the power of an idea. The question is: Is the world ready to accept such an idea for the benefit of future generations yet to come?

May 30, 2003—In view of the currently collapsing world financial system, which is tearing apart the Maastricht Treaty, European governments have a last opportunity to abandon the failed Anglo-Dutch liberal system of private central banking and globalization, and organize the new Eurasian axis of peace centered on Russia, Germany, and France. To solve the collapse as sovereign nation-states with a common interest, their historical foundation is the 17th-Century Peace of Westphalia, which began “the era of sovereign nation-states” and is now attacked by all the new imperialists and utopian military strategists.

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The then unique principles of the 1648 Treaty that finally ended 125 years of religious warfare in Europe, enshrined the benefit or advantage of the other—the common good—in the statecraft of sovereign nations. Two men—France’s Cardinal Jules Mazarin and Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert (on coin)—were most responsible for this opening of the principles of nation-building.

credit—dirigism—aimed to create sovereign nationstates, designed by France’s Cardinal Jules Mazarin and his great protégé Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert’s dirigist policy of fair trade was the most effective weapon against the liberal free trade policy of the central banking system of the maritime powers of the British and Dutch oligarchies.

Similarly, it is only with a return to the Peace of Westphalia’s principle of “forgiving the sins of the past,” and of mutually beneficial economic development (see box, Principles of Westphalia, Article I), that the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be solved on the basis of two mutually-recognized sovereign states.

In the Peace of Westphalia, Mazarin’s and Colbert’s common-good principle of the “advantage of the other” triumphed over the imperial designs of both France’s Louis XIV and the Venice-controlled Hapsburg Empire.

In the 18th Century, the same principle brought the posthumous victory of Gottfried Leibniz over John Locke in shaping the American republic’s founding documents—the victory of “the pursuit of happiness” and the principle of the general welfare—over Locke’s “life, liberty, and property.”

Today, that principle has created the Eurasian LandBridge policy, as designed by U.S. Presidential precandidate Lyndon LaRouche, and as expressed in the economic development policies of China and some 32

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other Asian powers. This aims at “transport corridors of development,” spanning Eurasia from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bering Strait, and from the North Sea to the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia.

How Mazarin Looked Toward Westphalia

By the early 1640s, after witnessing so much abuse by the Hapsburg Emperor’s feudal authority against the peoples of the small and war-devastated German states, and realizing that the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War were leading toward the destruction of civilization, Cardinal Jules de Mazarin acted to shift the attention of Europe away from Venetian-manipulated religious conflicts that had become an endless cycle of vengefulness of each against all. He sought to base a peace on the economic recovery and political sovereignty of the German Electorates and States, to move them toward freedom and away from the tyranny of the Emperor, and from Venice’s intrigues.

In 1642, six years before the signing of the Peace of Westphalia was to end the Thirty Years’ War, Mazarin sent a negotiating team to Münster to begin working on his peace plan. The two French plenipotentiaries, Claude de Mesmes Comte d’Avaux, and Abel Servien, were his close associates. The mission was to use the power of France to intervene between the Emperor and the German Electors and princes in such a way that the EIR

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Emperor would be forced to relinquish his overpowering authority and France would facilitate an economic program for the German states by helping them rebuild their territories.

This result could not be achieved, however, unless France, as the most powerful nation outside of the Empire itself, were to be given the role of guarantor of German freedom on their own territory—a status of mediator that would give Mazarin’s French plenipotentiaries a friendly and indirect right to intervene inside the government of the Empire. This had to be done in such a way as not to give umbrage to the German princes, who would have rejected any form of direct foreign intervention. Indeed, what would be the benefit of replacing an Austrian imperial power by a French one?

Mazarin directed his plenipotentiaries to make their presence necessary, primarily along the Rhine River, by engaging in the only form of French expansion that would correspond to Mazarin’s principle of “the advantage of the other,” and that was, to engage in a productive economy of fair trade and commerce. Thus, Mazarin began to play an entirely new and unique role inside the Empire by increasing German freedom in trade and commerce along the main waterways of the Empire.

The Rhine River, running through very fertile lands, had long been the target of Mazarin’s predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu, who, as the First Minister of Louis XIII, had waged 14 years of war to acquire key territories along the High Rhine, with the presumption that the Rhine River was a God-given “natural border of France.” This foolish idea stemmed from the days of the Roman Empire, that is, from the same imperialist outlook that was to be Louis XIV’s folie des grandeurs, and was to become the pretext for Napoleon Bonaparte’s mad imperial conquests, a century later. The imperial Roman historian Strabo had concocted the geopolitical delusion whereby “an ancient divinity had erected mountains and traced the course of rivers in order to define the natural borders of a people,” whereby, consequently, the Rhine River had to be viewed as a natural border of France.

The Rhine: Boundary, or Corridor?

However, that was not the view of Mazarin. He saw the Rhine River as a great economic project rather than a way to grab more territory. It was a natural March 11, 2022

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communication canal within German territory, a corridor of development. But it was unfortunately being commercially misused by river princes, who were going against their own best interests by imposing such outrageously expensive tolls, that tradesmen preferred using alternative routes, which had become more to the advantage of the Venetians, the Dutch, and the English, than to the German people themselves. This had to be changed.

According to the German historian Hermann Scherer, The expansion of Amsterdam and of the Dutch market had given the last blow to the ancient commercial greatness of the German principalities. The Rhine River and later the Escaut, were closed to the German people; an arbitrary system of rights and tolls was established, and that became the end of wealth and prosperity in the heart of Europe. The defection of many Hanseatic cities from the interior, and the diminishing foreign trade of the Hanse, destabilized internal commerce and the relationship between the northern and southern regions of Germany. Add to this, the interminable wars, the religious conflicts and persecutions, and on top of all of this, the addition of customs barriers established under all sorts of pretexts, and for which the smallest princes of the empire added a cost as if it were an essential attribute of their microscopic sovereignty.1 Each region was measuring its “sovereignty” by the power to raise Rhine customs fees. The interruptions of trade traffic between southern and northern Germany were bringing the German economy to a halt. This became particularly disastrous for Braunschweig and Erfurt, while Frankfurt-am-Main and Leipzig prospered, thanks to their annual fairs.

The very geographic situation of Germany required precisely the opposite: that it free itself of the burden of customs barriers and open all of its internal miniborders for anyone who wanted to trade in and out of the country, at low cost, not only north-south, but also 1. Hermann Scherer, Histoire du commerce de toutes les nations depuis les temps anciens jusqu’a nos jours, Tôme seconde. Paris: Capelle, Libraire-Editeur, 1857, p. 548.

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FIGURE 1

Three Centuries’ Canal and River Development Initiated by Mazarin and Colbert

Source: EIRNS.

Three centuries of development, and integration by canals, of river transport in Europe, stemmed from the initiatives and public credit projects of France’ s Cardinal Mazarin and Jean-Baptiste Colbert in the 17th Century. This development allowed the Peace of Westphalia, the founding treaty of the era of sovereign nation-states, to take hold and end 125 years of religious warfare. These river corridors of development featured the east-west infrastructure canal projects of the Grand Elector (1669) and of his son, Frederick the Great—known today as the Mittelland Canal.

east-west. Such were the conditions that Mazarin was attempting to address during the 1640s negotiating period of the Peace of Westphalia.

Fair Trade on Europe’s Rivers

Mazarin conducted a thorough study of the entire river system of the Hapsburg Empire, including the region of Poland. He established a complex intelligence network from among his German allies, to report back 34

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to the French negotiators who were involved in the preliminary negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia in Münster, and to inform them of how many German cities would be willing to increase their freedom within the Empire, by collaborating with France.

Mazarin examined closely the potential for a northsouth expansion of trade and commerce of goods being produced along all of the rivers of the Empire (see Figure 1).

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First, farthest east, on the northeastern border of the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire, Mazarin studied the potential of the Vistula River going through the Polish regions of Silesia, Mazovia, and Eastern Prussia (today Poland), and emptying into the Baltic Sea near Gdańsk.

That river provided for Gdańsk all of the riches coming from all of these regions, and could make it the major port city of Poland.

Second, he wrote of the Oder River—which also empties into the Baltic Sea—that if all of the commerce from the Brandenburg, Silesia, and Pomeranian plains were to flow into the city of Szczecin, it could transform that city into a major international port city.

Third, the Elbe River, which starts in Bohemia (today the Czech Republic) after having gone through Saxony and Brandenburg, then flows into the North Sea northwest of Hamburg. Mazarin noted that most of the goods coming from the provinces of Lower Germany also flowed northwestward past Dresden, Magdeburg, and Leipzig. Those cities could improve their economic situation by offering commercial houses for transshipment of regional goods to foreign countries.

Fourth, Mazarin was given a report that the Weser River, which also flows through the fertile regions of Middle Germany, could be provided with a number of canals acting as import and export channels, to make the city of Bremen on the Weser into a significant port.

Fifth, Mazarin saw another expansion of northsouth trade by way of the Ems River, which crosses Westphalia, and brings all of the trade and commerce from Münster and the North Rhine region into a northsouth axis opening to the North Sea. Sixth, and farthest west, Mazarin studied the Rhine River as the most economically viable communication channel among Switzerland, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, connecting Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Mainz, Bonn, and Cologne, and carrying a great amount of trade from Alsace Lorraine, the Swiss Counties, BadenWürttemberg, and the Rhineland Palatinate, to its exit into the sea through the cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

Mazarin saw that the surest way to bring about peace was to develop the general welfare of the German people, by developing, for their greatest advantage, the cities located at the mouths of these rivers or along them. Thus, those war-torn regions of the Empire could be rescued and rebuilt, by creating new infrastructure.

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Dutch mercantilist control over key cities of the Baltic and North Seas.

In 1642, Mazarin summoned his negotiators at Münster to announce and circulate everywhere that the precondition to the peace negotiations was to forbid the creation of new tolls along the Rhine River. The proposition was written as follows: From this day forward, along the two banks of the Rhine River and from the adjacent provinces, commerce and transport of goods shall be free for transit for all of the inhabitants, and it will no longer be permitted to impose on the Rhine any new toll, open birthright, customs, or taxation of any denomination and of any sort, whatsoever.

Because the injunction included the mention “and from adjacent provinces,” it proposed to bring fair trade and economic expansion deeper into the heart of Germany.

Centuries of Canal Building

Under the protection of the French, as the guarantor of the Peace of Westphalia, the different princes of the Empire were able to establish a whole series of houses of commerce in Huningue, Strasbourg, Mannheim, Frankfurt an der Oder, Coblenz, and Cologne. Thus, Mazarin’s plan to build the economic basis for the nation-state of Germany began to take shape. With goods produced in France, Lower Bavaria, Upper Palatinate, Swabia, and so forth, the river communication system began to revive the economies of the cities of Huningue and Strasbourg, as well as to give access to Switzerland and to the extended parts of Austria.

The economic development was to go farther by access to the seventh and longest river in western Europe, the Danube, expanding the import-export trade of goods to and from Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia, and all the way East to the mouth of the Danube in the Black Sea. As early as 1642, Mazarin had singled out 28 primary cities along the Danube River alone. It is from this standpoint that a new understanding began to emerge from the rubble of war in Europe, capable of creating thousands of jobs and new markets along the main rivers of the Empire. It was under Mazarin and Colbert that the idea of a Rhine-Main-Danube canal Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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began to be considered as a feasible project, a corridor of development only completed three centuries later, connecting the North Sea to the Black Sea.2 By the time a number of Electors and princes began to realize that Mazarin’s project was entirely to their advantage, and decided to modify their allegiance to the Emperor, war had reduced the German people from 21 million to only 13 million as of 1648. Without peace, European civilization was going to be destroyed.

On the other hand, the Venetians saw that Mazarin was accelerating the process of negotiation in Münster, and that his economic initiatives with the German Electors were beginning to gain some momentum.

Venice and the Hapsburgs saw the paradox—the more you increase economic freedom within the Empire, the more you are destroying that Empire itself—and smelled danger. The more the German leaders were won over to the principle of “the advantage of the other” (especially since they were “the other”), the closer they were to replacing the predatory Empire with nation-states. This principle had such a corroding effect on the minds of the Venetians and the Hapsburg Emperor that they were ultimately forced to accept the conditions set by Mazarin for the Peace of Westphalia, which was signed on Oct. 24, 1648, in Osnabrück for the Protestants, and in Münster for the Catholics.3 2. The Mazarin plan for developing rivers and canals inside Germany made its way across the empire, and was finally realized in the reigns of the Grand Elector, Frederick William I (1620-88), the founder of the German nation-state, and his successor, Frederick II, the Great (1712-86). According to Scherer, op. cit., it was Frederick II who fully succeeded in creating a real internal economic system centered on a series of canals connecting the rivers from east to west. After Frederick William I built the great trench that connected the Oder and the Elbe rivers in 1668: “Frederick II continued the canal works of his predecessor. In Westphalia, the Ruhr was made navigable, and an outlet was created to the saline Unna. The canal of Plauen established the most direct connection between the Elbe, the Havel, and the Spree; the Finow canal connected the Havel and the Oder; the Bromberg canal connected the Oder and the Vistula. These navigable channels soon gave a tremendous impulse to the commerce of the steppes and to the neighboring provinces with the basin of the Elbe, Silesia and Poland, and thus contributed greatly to the rise of Berlin as a commercial city.” (Scherer, op. cit., p. 581) These canal routes correspond today to the different sections of the Mittelland Canal crossing Germany west-east, connecting all of its main rivers from the Rhine to the Vistula and linking the main cities of Bonn, Münster, Osnabrück, Hanover, Braunschweig, Magdeburg, Berlin, and the Polish city of Bydgoszcz (Bramberg).

3. See Pierre Beaudry, “Peace of Westphalia: France’s Defense of the Sovereign Nation,” EIR, Vol. 29, No. 46, Nov. 29, 2002, pp. 18-33.

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Colbert and the Birth of Political Economy Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83) was, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest political economist and nation-builder of the 17th Century, and his ideas and influence have determined the entire course of development of all modern nation-states, including the United States of America, since the Treaty of Westphalia.

Initially promoted as Steward of the Household of Cardinal Mazarin, Colbert later became Comptroller General of the Finances of France during most of the reign of Louis XIV. Colbert was the first world leader to successfully apply the new principle of Westphalia to economics, the which would later be followed successively by Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Henry C. Carey, Friedrich List, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Colbert’s seminal contribution to a humanist republican conception of political economy was initially reflected in France’s historic fight to liberate the peoples of Europe from the predatory control of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, and from the central banking role of the Venetian and Dutch oligarchies.

Colbert applied the principle of the Peace of Westphalia—that is, the principle of “the advantage of the other”—to a grand design of economic development of France itself.4 For Colbert, the most important asset of the common good, and the most powerful enemy of war itself, was the development of infrastructure projects. Colbert carried the principle of benevolence of Cardinal Mazarin into large-scale economic development projects. If he was the farsighted forerunner of Leibniz, 4. This principle of benevolence has its political roots in the policy of France’s Henry IV and the Duke of Sully, in the aftermath of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day religious massacre of 1572. As Sully had emphasized to the King later: “Your intention must be to truly seek all of the means to have them [potentates] live in peace and tranquility among themselves, constantly soliciting them to establish a peace or a truce, whenever there should be contention or diversity of pretentions; and always to endeavor to put forward, with whomever you are dealing, your generous resolution whereby you wish everything for the others, and nothing for yourself” [emphasis added]. Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de Sully, Memoires des sages et royales oeconomies d’estat, domestiques, politiques, et militaires de Henry le Grand, par M.M. Michaud et Poujoulat, Tôme deuxième, Paris, chez l’editeur du commentaire analytique du Code Civil, 1837, p. 151.

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The Industrial Commonwealth Policy

of Franklin, and of LaRouche, it was because his towering figure stood on the shoulders of Jeanne d’Arc, King Louis XI’s creation of the nation-state of France, King Henry IV (1589-1610), Henry’s minister the Duke of Sully, and Cardinal Mazarin. All were the most powerful enemies of British-Dutch-Venetian free-trade and “central bank” liberalism.

The very name of Colbertism, dirigism, still rings as anathema in the ears of the British-Dutch oligarchies today. In fact, any economic outlook organized by a strong centralized government that favors the common good through great public works, stems from Colbertism, and is anathema to British-Dutch monetarism, especially to the Dutch East India Company.5

Jean-Baptiste Colbert did not come from a noble family, as many historians have falsely claimed. He was the son of Nicholas Colbert and of Marie Pussort, she of a merchant family, who had traded in Reims and in Lyon from 1590 to 1635. This period was the turning point for French economic development, with the upsurge of manufacturing under Henry IV and his great advisor, the Duke of Sully. Nicholas’ brother, Odart Colbert, was a trader in Troyes, working with an Italian banker partner located in Paris, by the name of GioAndrea Lumagna, with whom he had developed an excellent trade in draperies, bolting-cloth, linen, silk, wines, and grains, which they produced in France and traded in England, the Low Countries, and Italy.

5. Since the discovery of America and of maritime routes to India, the control of sea-lanes and the monopoly of world trade by global merchant companies have been the main interests of a few maritime financial oligarchies. They have been centered most prominently, during successive periods of history, in the cities of Venice, Amsterdam, and London, whence they wielded the power of their central banking interests over most of the national economies of the planet.

The 17th-Century Dutch East India Company was such a commercial house. It was created on March 20, 1602, for the purpose of establishing a monopoly of trading in the Far East. The new company was placed under the control of the Duke, William of Orange, in Amsterdam, and was composed of 60 administrators elected by the shareholders— that is, by themselves—to form a General Estates that became the real, behind-the-scenes government of Holland. It was a kind of parliamentary group composed of six different chambers, located respectively in Amsterdam, Middelburg, Delft, Rotterdam, Horn, and Enkhuisen.

Their control mechanisms were not unlike the European parliamentary system of today, under the Maastricht Treaty and its central banking arrangement. The general business of international trade was put into the hands of a smaller group of seven directors who would meet, several times a year, in Amsterdam, to determine the number of ships to send out, the period of their voyage, the times of their departure and return, and their specific destinations and cargoes. The directors’ executive orders had to be obeyed to the letter, with the strictest of discipline.

According to its charter, which was later copied by the British East India Company, the Dutch Company was the only one authorized to trade with the East Indies, and no one else from Holland was allowed to engage in any such trading for his own personal benefit. In fact, no other Dutch ship was allowed to take the route of the Cape of Good Hope, or Cape Horn, without the permission of the Dutch East India Company.

Furthermore, it had the exclusive right to establish colonies, coin money, nominate or eliminate high functionaries of government, sign treaties with other nations, and even make war against them. This Hobbesian trading arrangement was so powerful that it had life-anddeath control over all of the sea-lanes of the world, and of the colonies the Company looted for their labor and products. Holland was no longer a country with a company, but a company with a country.

In his Histoire du Commerce de toutes les Nations, the 19th-Century German historian Hermann Scherer described the monopolistic socalled free trade of the Dutch Company. In 1602, after expelling the

Portuguese by force from the Molucca Islands in Indonesia, the men of Admiral Warwyk’s 14 ships occupied the most important islands, especially Java, and made exclusive contacts with the indigenous tribes, for the complete control of spice production and trade of the entire region, that is, to the exclusion of any other country.

Scherer reported: “They [the Dutch East India Company] made war on nature itself, by letting her grow her goods exclusively where they intended to have complete control, and by destroying crops everywhere else. A company order restricted the growth of nutmeg trees on the island of Banda; another imposed a ban on cloves on the island of Ambon. In all of the other Molucca Islands, trees had to be burnt and slashed, and any new plantation was forbidden under threat of severe punishment. Treaties were agreed upon with the indigenous people, which sometimes had to be imposed by force of arms. The Islands were closed to foreign ships, and contraband was watched for, day and night.

The whole thing was organized in order to maintain a complete monopoly, and to prevent any price fluctuation in Europe.” (Scherer, op. cit., p. 259.)

After a few years of success that had surpassed all of its anticipations, the Dutch East India Company was transformed into a new colonial and political empire. The Dutch Company even made war against British colonial interests in Jakarta. The British knew precisely what the Dutch were up to, and they wanted a piece of the action. In 1618, Adm. Jean Koen fought the British in Jakarta. The city was burnt to the ground and the British were forced out permanently. The city was rebuilt in 1621, under the old Dutch feudal name—Batavia—and became the center of all of the Dutch operations in the Far East. Batavia then became known as the Pearl of the Orient. Such a monopoly expanded into India, into Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1658, into Malacca (Malaysia), Les Isles De Sonde (Sunda Islands), the Celebes (Sulawesi), Timor, Borneo, Sumatra, and then beyond, into Thailand, Taiwan, China, and Japan.

Since the shareholders of the company were the ones fixing the prices, the “little green men under the floorboards of the stock exchange,” in Amsterdam, kept improving the differences between the cost of buying cheap spices and selling them dear, which brought them a profit of 200-300% per annum. In his History of Dutch Commerce, historian M. Lueder estimated that during 137 years, from its founding in 1602 until 1739, the Company had bought for a total of 360 million florins, and sold for a total of 1,620 million florins: a spoiling of nature, and of the general welfare of the people of Holland and of the Far East.

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Jean-Baptiste worked for a few years in Lumagna’s bank until 1649, one year after the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, when Lumagna became the personal banker of Mazarin and recommended that Colbert become the Cardinal’s Steward of the Household. The meeting of such great minds foreshadowed a true French revolution.

Looking at Colbert from British and some American history books, one would become convinced that he was a mercantilist free trader. But anyone identifying Colbert as a mercantilist has to be either totally ignorant or a British agent, at best. The British hated Colbert precisely because he was not a mercantilist; he was feared because he was a humanist nation-builder.

Colbert’s policy was to undertake and fund, from the royal coffers of Louis XIV, all forms of industry, mining, infrastructure, canal building, city building, beautification of the land through Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Roads), and Arts et Métiers (Arts and Crafts), including the promotion of all aspects of science through the creation of the Royal Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Christian Huygens.

Thus, clearly, Colbert’s idea of “the advantage of the other” was aimed at benefitting future generations.

It precluded primarily the idea of competition, a politically correct term for enmity.

Colbert’s industrial protectionist system is generally known for four major reforms that marked the beginnings of the modern industrial nation-state: 1. He organized and funded a system of industrial corporations and infrastructure projects that provided job security for all types of skilled and non-skilled labor, that is, workers of all types of arts et métiers; 2. He established protectionist measures for all standardized French clothing products, such that no dumping of foreign goods was allowed in France, except at very high cost. Colbertism became synonymous with protectionism; 3. He funded and supported population growth, considering that war and ignorance were the two main causes of population reduction. He believed that the “government had to take care of its poor,” and that its role was to foster the increase of the population density of the nation; and 4. He accompanied industrial measures with a reform of civil justice that became the first Civil Code of France, lasting 130 years until it was destroyed by the imperialist code of Napoleon at the turn of the 18th Century.

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and determination, and with the full backing of the King of France. In other words, the entire Colbertian system of nation-building was based on state-controlled industrial development, combined with carefully selected and productive private initiatives.

Colbert cared for the nation as a farmer cares for his farm: The entire territory of France was meant to become the land where the common good was to grow unimpeded. He protected it, showered it with public funds, enriched it, and let others reap its beautiful fruits.

He cultivated the common good by weeding out the privileges of aristocracy. He encouraged new industries and funded population growth by creating tax incentives and special bonuses for married couples. He put protectionist barriers all around France, against British, Dutch, and Belgian dumping. In one word, Colbert became the champion of skilled labor and the sworn enemy of the commercial aristocracy, which had been living off its privileges, as the feudal aristocracy had done during the past centuries.

So, Colbert re-established the priority of the “common good, the ‘Commonwealth’ of Louis XI.” The following case suffices to make the point.

During the 1660s, there persisted a three-centuryold privilege that dated back to the shameful 1358 edict of King Charles V, that stated that the laws of commerce “are made to profit and favor each craft rather than the common good.”6 Colbert turned this on its head, instituting his first Edict on April 8, 1666, which was made to secure all of the manufactures and factories of the kingdom for the benefit of the common good. From that day on, Colbert wrote hundreds of measures and regulations until the entire garden of France began to bloom again, after the devastation of the religious wars.

From 1666 on, Colbert not only asserted total control over the production of all French clothing goods, but he instituted a master’s degree for the work force, in order to improve the quality of all manufac­ tured products.

Colbert invested about £5 million a year from the coffers of the King in new manufacturing endeavors.

This money went for improvements in technology, for improving skills of the workers to raise the quality of the products, and for incentives to population growth. A lot of the new technologies were imported from Italy, Holland, and elsewhere, to improve the quality of 6. Pierre Clement, Lettres, instructions, memoires de Colbert, Tome IV. Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1867, p. 216.

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tapestries, linens, silks, etc.; but most of the improvement was done on location. Historian Pierre Clement reports that Colbert— stopped at nothing in order to fortify the new establishments; each dyeing manufacturer received £1,200 of encouragement; the workers who married girls of the locality where they were employed, would receive a bonus of 6 pistoles, plus 2 pistoles at the birth of their first child. All apprentices were given £30 and their own tools at the end of their apprenticeship.

Lastly, the tax collectors were ordered to give a tax exemption of £5 for those employed in certain more privileged manufactures.7 Colbert further established that all workers who married under the age of 20 were exempt from taxes (tailles and other public charges) for a period of five years, and four years if they married at 21. The very same advantages were extended to older workers who had 10 children, including those who died in combat.

As of July 1667, all workers who had 10 children could receive a pension of £1,000 a year, and £2,000 a year if they had 12 children. After 16 years of such a regime, from 1667 to 1683, the French population had reached a level of 20 million, the largest national population in all of Europe. The policy was called Colbert’s “revenge of the cradles” (revanche des berceaux). The same policy was established in the French colony of Canada.

Colbert’s Reform of Justice

The reform of the civil justice system, in 1669, was one of Colbert’s greatest and most enduring achievements. It was so efficient and complete that it became accepted as the Civil Code of France for a period of 138 years, until the feudalist faction of the French oligarchy replaced it with the Code Napoleon in 1807, and turned France, one more time, back to a fascist imperial police state. The Code Napoleon rules France to this day.

In the spirit of Mazarin, Colbert was able to launch a great offensive against the very powerful aristocracy of France, and go against all odds; that is, against both public opinion and backward local prejudices, to implement his reforms. He established a most sweeping 7. Clement, op. cit., p. 235.

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reform of justice, succeeding in accomplishing what even the great Sully before him had attempted, but was not able to do. Colbert systematically extirpated venality (the practice of buying public offices and profiting from them). He established a system of state counsellors to replace the old civil order of Roman law, and totally transformed the traditional, regional, customary law. One of his most effective administrators and collaborators was the King’s Counsellor to the Parliament of Toulouse (Court of Justice), the famous mathematician, Pierre de Fermat.

As early as the reign of Louis X le Hutin (1314-16), judicial offices had been sold to the nobility at a minimal fee paid to the King, but they brought incredible profits to the office holders. This was done as a matter of course, under the absolutely trusting, axiomatic assumption that “the monarchical system was based on honor and that the nature of honor is to have for Censor, the entire universe” (Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Law). This being the case, why should anyone raise an eyebrow about the “honesty” of any member of the Court to whom the public good was entrusted? As Montesquieu himself argued, after all, “No one believes he is lowering himself by accepting a public function.”

However, the heart of man being everywhere the same, Colbert understood very well that, under any government, at any time, the honor of fulfilling the duties of an office of state can always be mixed with a certain amount of personal interest, which brings justice to tilt its balance to one side rather than the other.

For example, public opinion had it, in those days of the monarchy, that the rich were not only better off, but also better educated than the rest of the population, and because of that, they had more dignity and impartiality; and since paying for their public office was a way to bring in money for the King, they demonstrated themselves less venal than others, and therefore should not pay any taxes; because the investment of their capital was obviously benefiting the kingdom more than could the people with less money, and whose contribution to the common good was less than their own, and should therefore be made to pay taxes more readily. And, that is the way the balance of justice tilted for centuries.

The most famous example of abuse of public trust during that period was known as the Fouquet Affair, the scandalous case of the Superintendent of Finances of Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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Principles of Westphalia The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War, the last of wars that had drowned Europe in blood in battles over religion. It defined the principles of sovereignty and equality in numerous sub-contracts. It became the constitution of the new system of states of Europe. We paraphrase the two key principles: Article I begins: A Christian general and permanent peace, and true and honest friendship, must rule between his Holy Imperial Majesty and his Holy AllChristian Majesty, as well as between all and every ally and follower of the mentioned Imperial Majesty, the House of Austria ... and successors.... And this Peace must be so honest and seriously guarded and nourished that each part furthers the advantage, honor, and benefit of the other.... A neighborliness should be renewed and flourish for peace and friendship, and flourish again.

(In other words, peace among sovereign nations requires, according to this principle, that each nation develops itself fully, and regards it as its self-interest to develop the others fully, and vice versa—a real “family of nations.”)

King Louis XIV. In November 1661, Colbert forced Nicolas Fouquet to be brought before the tribunal for having stolen an immense fortune from different public offices, and from the treasury of the King.

Acting as a central banker, and borrowing for the King and Mazarin—to whom bankers were told not to lend any money—Fouquet had been playing the interest rates game in his favor; and since he had all of the controls to blur the differences between public and personal interests, he was able to hide a huge fortune, until Colbert got a whiff of it. In one instance, Fouquet had managed to reassign to his own bank account the value of a loan that was never made, but for which the State “repaid” him £6 million. During the last four months before his trial, he had managed to siphon off a total of £4 million in amounts of between £10,000 to £140,000 that he stole from the different tax-farms of the Charente, PiedFourche, Lyon, Bordeaux, the Dauphine, etc. Fouquet had even prepared himself a fortified refuge in Belle-Isle, in case of disgrace.

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Article II says: On both sides, all should be forever forgotten and forgiven—what has from the beginning of the troubles, no matter how or where, from one side or the other, happened in terms of hostility—so that neither because of that, nor for any other reason or pretext, should anyone commit, or allow to happen, any hostility, unfriendliness, difficulty, or obstacle in respect to persons, their status, goods, or security itself, or through others, secretly or openly, directly or indirectly, under the pretense of the authority or the law, or by way of violence within the Empire, or anywhere outside of it, and any earlier, contradictory treaties should not stand against this.

Instead, the fact that each and every one, from one side and the other, both before and during the war, committed insults, violent acts, hostilities, damages, and injuries, without regard of persons or outcomes, should be completely put aside, so that everything, whatever one could demand from another under his name, will be forgotten to eternity.

—Prepared by Pierre Beaudry from the French and Latin original texts.

In 1661, the government brought him to trial, where he was found guilty of massive embezzlement. All of his goods were confiscated, he was condemned to exile, and then later imprisoned for life in the fortress of Pignerol.8 8. Historian Pierre Clement wrote that when Mazarin died, “leaving France in a state of peace on the outside, freed from the factions on the inside, but tired out, without resources, and scandalously exploited by any man who had 100,000 ecus to lend to the Treasury at 50% interest, Colbert, who had long followed with diligence the progress of corruption, who knew all of its ruses and weaknesses, and who was revealing them to Louis XIV—Colbert whom the King consulted first in secret, because the need he had of him was so great—necessarily had to be brought into the Council and occupy the first place.

His special skills, his antecedents, his character, his hard work, the important fortune of Mazarin that he administered so wisely during 15 years, but most of all the modesty of the functions he had held under the Cardinal [Mazarin], everything pointed him toward Louis XIV.” (Pierre Clement, op. cit., p. 94.

In his article, “Colbert’s Bequest to the Founding Fathers,” historian Anton Chaitkin appropriately likened Colbert’s 1661 bold intervention to a real coup d’état (EIR, Vol. 19, No. 1, Jan. 3, 1992, pp. 20-21).

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A Coup d’État Against the Oligarchy

In March 1661, the 23-year-old King Louis XIV replaced Nicolas Fouquet with Colbert as the Superintendent of Finances. If Louis XIV was so upset by corruption, it was not because of moral indignation, but because it was taking place under his watch. Colbert recognized that fact and did not miss a moment in applying the principle which Alexander the Great used to get his (indifferent) generals to act effectively.

Never was there as effective and universal a minister as Colbert, during the entire history of France. Formed at the school of Sully and Mazarin, Colbert served during 22 years successively as the Superintendent of Buildings, Controller General of Finances, Secretary of State of the Maison du Roi, Secretary of State of the Navy, Minister of Trade and Commerce, and last but not least, the equivalent of a Minister of Sciences and Technology. He made profound reforms in all of these public domains, including criminal justice, commerce, police, fine arts, water and forestry.

After the scandalous trial of Fouquet, Colbert became a popular hero, and was given the green light for the creation of a Chamber of Justice that he had already proposed to Mazarin, in 1659. This Chamber of Justice was composed of the presidents and top counsellors of the Parliaments of Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, etc. In all, 27 judges were commissioned by Colbert to clean up the biggest financial mess the nation had ever seen.

Colbert’s edict, which circulated in every city of the kingdom, stipulated that all of the financial officers of the nation who had been at their posts since 1635 were required to establish a justification for all of their legitimate goods, including their inheritances, the acquisitions they had made, and the amounts given to their children for anything from weddings to acquisition of offices. If the information was not given to the attorney general within eight days, all of their goods and properties were to be confiscated.

Colbert established all sorts of means to force the truth out into the open. The edict stipulated that the King would reward an accuser with the value of onesixth of the fine given to anyone convicted of fraud, financial abuse, or embezzlement. On Sunday, Dec. 11, 1661, as well as on the following three Sundays, Colbert had all of the curates of the Paris churches make the announcement that the parishioners, under threat of excommunication, were obliged to speak out about all known financial abuse in their parish.

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The first operations of the Chamber of Justice created total panic throughout Paris. Friends of Fouquet, such as François Vatel, Braun, and Jean Herauld Gourville, left for London; others were tried and sentenced. After a few financiers were sent to the Bastille, the whole nation began to realize that Colbert really meant business. Then a lot of people began to be identified to the Chamber of Justice.

After Colbert made a public showcase of this insane system, the idea of buying a public office became so unpopular that people circulated a Colbert quip that said: “Each time the King creates an office, a new idiot is created to buy it.” The reforms were so sweeping that in only a few years, a total of £419 million was recovered from the income of venal offices, and no fewer than 40,000 noble families were affected by this axiomatic change.

All of those funds were then invested in Colbert’s program of development of new industries. Slowly, but surely, the balance of justice began to tilt back toward the common good.

The Royal Academy of Sciences

The greatest achievement of Colbert was the creation of the Royal Academy of Sciences and its technological projects. This was not just another academic teaching institution, but rather, a research center for scientific and technological development that had the mission of creating innovations in specific areas of scientific activities: to improve economic development in the fields of astronomy, chemistry, optical physics, geometry, geography, industrial engineering, canal building, agriculture, and navigation.

Each area was to be oriented toward technological advances through the application of new discoveries of physical principles. This Colbertian Academy of Sciences became the model institution from which Gottfried Leibniz later created his academies in Berlin and St. Petersburg.

In 1662, Colbert’s good friend and collaborator, the Toulouse Counsellor of Parliament and mathematician Pierre de Fermat, joined Blaise Pascal, Gilles de Roberval, Pierre Gassendi, and a few others, to form the core of a society that met regularly, and in private with Colbert in the Royal Library, until the time the Academy was to be officially located in the Louvre Museum in 1699. Scientists and mathematicians from all over Europe were invited to join the new institution—all of whom had been challenged, in 1658, by the young Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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LoC

A method of accurately determining longitude, derived at Colbert’s Royal Academy of Sciences, advanced the geographic knowledge of Europe. New geodesic studies resulted in improved maps and sailing charts. The first truly accurate map of France and its provinces, in 1744 (above) was the work of three generations of work by the Cassini family. At left, Louis XIV visiting the astronomy room of the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Sébastien Le Clerc I, 1671

Pascal into discovering a geometric construction for determining the characteristics of the cycloid curve.

The offers of salaries and pensions were very attractive, and the prospects of collaborating with the best scientists of Europe were even better. Colbert sent out personal invitations to the Dutch astronomer and geometer Christian Huygens, one of the few to solve Pascal’s cycloid problem; the Italian astronomer and civil-military engineer Gian Domenico Cassini; the young Danish astronomer who was to establish the speed of light, Ole Rømer; the German mathematician Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus; the German astronomer Johann Hevelius; the Florentine geometer Vincent Viviani; and even the British mathemagician Isaac Newton. Huygens, Cassini, and Rømer immediately accepted the invitations; others accepted a little later.

On Dec. 22, 1666, Huygens was nominated as President of the Royal Academy.

Colbert believed that the most important means of securing the future of France was to persuade the young King to fund and support great scientific and 42

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technological projects that would both increase the power of the nation internally, and extend its contributions abroad.

There were several great projects of note. One was an accurate method for the determination of longitude, a project as old as the Platonic Academy of Alexandria, following through the astronomical discoveries of Erastosthenes and Hipparchus. This caused a major advance in the geographic knowledge of Europe by improving the accuracy of maps and sailing charts through the introduction of new geodesic studies (the Cassini maps), a precursor to the revolutionary study that Carl Gauss made two centuries later. This effort resulted in the first accurate knowledge of the Earth’s geography. Parallel to it, was the creation of the Paris Observatory, and the successful precision grinding of very powerful telescope lenses, designed and handpolished by Huygens himself.

The second and most far-reaching scientific breakthroughs came with new discoveries in the field of optical physics, especially the revolutionary discovery of principle by Rømer in the determination of the finite speed of light; by Huygens in the discovery that light propagates in spherical waves; by Fermat in EIR

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Continental Challenge to the ‘Sea Powers’

Sergent-Marceau

Colbert presents plan for the Canal royal en Languedoc to Louis XIV in 1668.

demonstrating the principle of least-time in light refraction; and by Leibniz with the revolutionary application of his least-action principle to optical processes by means of his calculus.9 A third project, involving the special collaboration of Huygens and Leibniz, was the development of a steamboat invented by Denis Papin.10 In 1673, Leibniz built a working model of a calculating machine with the collaboration of the Royal Librarian Pierre de Carcavy, and Huygens. It became such a success that he was immediately asked to build three models, one for the new Observatory, one for the King, and one for Colbert.

After Colbert died in 1683, a new witch-hunt began against the Protestants of France, and the Academy suffered greatly when, in 1685, under the revocation by Louis XIV of the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed freedom of religion for Protestants since Henry IV, Ole Rømer and the other “undesirable Protestant,” Christian Huygens, were forced out of the country. The Academy survived for a hundred years under Fontenelle, Condorcet, and Lavoisier, but was ultimately destroyed in 1793 by the Jacobin counter-revolution.

9. See G.W. Leibniz, “The Discoveries of Principle of the Calculus in Acta Eruditorum,” eight unpublished translations by Pierre Beaudry.

10. Philip Valenti, “Britain Sabotaged the Steam Engine of Leibniz and Papin,” EIR, Vol. 23, No. 6, Feb. 16, 1996, pp. 18-23; see also Fusion, Vol. 2, No. 4, Dec. 1979.

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But the most immediate and powerful industrial result of Colbert’s Academy project, was the realization of the greatest hydraulic engineering masterpiece of the era—the Languedoc Canal.

The Canal Royal en Languedoc (built 1667-81), known also as the Canal du Midi, was a typical example of how Colbert, and his engineer protégé, Pierre-Paul Riquet, realized the Mazarin principle of the Peace of Westphalia. In fact, the Languedoc Canal represented, for several hundred years, the most advanced form of hydraulic technology in the world, and the most economical route for the transport of merchandise between the northern nations—Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Northern Germany, Belgium—and the southern nations of Italy, Greece, Venice, the Balkan States, Turkey, Africa, and the Orient. The construction of the canal provided a short-cut route of 240 kilometers (145 miles) across France, saving 3,000 kilometers represented by the sailing around Spain; and an economy of taxes, by avoiding the Hapsburg Empire’s tolls at the choke point of Gibraltar.

Had the British and Dutch monopolies of the time been reasonable in their trade negotiations with France, this fair-trade system would have also brought down their costs of goods.

As far as external commerce is concerned, Colbert always extended the same fair trade policy to all nations, including the liberal free-traders Holland and England.

But neither the liberal Dutch nor the English accepted Colbert’s policy of fair trade. That is why Colbert had to send his toughest ambassador to London: his own brother, Charles Colbert de Croissy, the same who had served Mazarin as ambassador to Vienna in 1660.

After a number of tough negotiating years, in which Charles Colbert was forced to make a certain number of sacrifices, an amusing point of contention came up that could serve as a precursor to the antics of Lewis Carroll in his book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In 1669, Colbert reminded his ambassador “not to be duped” by British pretentions on the high seas; the issue related to the British Admiralty requesting the right to be saluted first on all of the seas of the globe.

In a letter dated July 21, 1669, Colbert wrote his brother a note in which he stated: As far as the Ocean is concerned, even though they [the British] are the more powerful, we have not, until now, come to the view that their Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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pretended sovereignty has been recognized; therefore it pertains to the common good of the two nations, and of the interests of the two kings, to establish this parity on all of the seas.... As for the treaty on commerce, the ideas of Lord Arlington are very reasonable, since they tend to establish a reciprocal treatment between the two Kingdoms.

Colbert ended up recommending that “salutes” be considered optional; but the liberal free-trade policy of England remained on a steady course.

The control of sea-lanes by the financial oligarchies of maritime powers such as the Venetians or the BritishDutch East India company monopolies, was being challenged by Colbert’s emphasis on a dirigist continental infrastructure project, as the growth principle for economic development of sovereign nation-states. The same principle is applicable today, with the LaRouche Eurasian Land-Bridge concept, in which all European governments see the benefit of Asiatic nations as the natural outlet for export of their technologies. The proposed agreements for the extension of the German-Chinese magnetic-levitation Transrapid train, already commercialized in Shanghai since Jan. 1, 2003, are a prime example of this type of fair trade, technology-sharing policy.

Economics of Generosity: The Languedoc Canal

The Languedoc Canal Project was the greatest project of the 17th Century: a triumph of engineering skills, built by a self-made geometer-engineer, PierrePaul Riquet. This Herculean task, which had been deemed impossible since Roman times, was a gigantic water infrastructure work that Charlemagne himself had dreamed of building. In 1516, François I had asked Leonardo da Vinci’s advice on the feasibility of a canal in that region of France. Leonardo actually spent his last years in Amboise, studying possible canal connections between the Loire and the Seine Rivers.

Other studies had been made for a canal through the Languedoc region during the reigns of Charles IX, Henry III, Henry IV, and Louis XIII. It was not until Colbert that a solution, to what had become known as the impossible Canal du Midi, was discovered.

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First, coming out of the Thirty Years’ War, this canal project corresponded to a greatly needed change of strategy and of political economy for the entirety of Europe. As we have said, the crossing of France by canal, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, provided French and allied ships with a strategic by-pass of Gibraltar, an area that had become very dangerous, and quite costly, during the interminable wars with Spain and the Austrian Hapsburg Empire.

Second, the canal set the example for joint public and private infrastructure development projects along waterways of any nation, providing improvements for land-locked areas, and opening them up to increasing exchange of cultures with other regions and other nations. Moreover, both the King and Riquet were to receive a regular income stream from low-fee tolls. The canal was going to pay for itself in a very short period of time, and provide a small margin of profit, enough for repairs and for the introduction of new technologies.

Riquet made it explicit that he had no intention of building the canal for the purpose of financial gain.

Thus, the Peace of Westphalia trade and commerce studies, made earlier by Mazarin for the benefit of the seven river regions of the Hapsburg Empire, became a renewed focus of interest. The canal was going to create the greatest import-export capabilities ever imagined for that time.

Third, the canal provided for an extraordinary increase of economic activities in the Province of Languedoc itself, where Upper Languedoc wheat production could be shipped easily eastward to the wheat-starved Lower Languedoc region. In exchange, the Lower-Languedoc production of excellent wines could be easily shipped westward, while the linen and silk goods of Lyons could also travel the same route.

This corridor also provided the entire region from Toulouse to Beziers with the development of new olive groves, vineyards, greater expansion of granaries in the Lauragais region, new trading companies and gristmills, and prospects for mining. The more farsighted citizens of Castelnaudary, for example, even paid Riquet to divert the canal toward their town. Riquet also projected the creation of new towns along the canal route.

Fourth, and not least, the entire course of the 240-kilometer canal was going to be carved into one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, and was going to be covered with 130 arched bridges built by the “beautifying engineers” of the Ponts et Chaussées.

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something is beautiful, it is useful!

Riquet’s ‘Parting of Waters’ Paradox

However magnificent the idea was, and however great the advantages were anticipated to be, all of the proposals to link the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea with a canal, during a period of 1,000 years, were demonstrated to be totally impracticable, and plans presented by the best engineers in the world, were rejected each time..

There were two ostensible reasons why this project was considered to be impossible. One was that the two rivers flowing respectively into the Atlantic and the Mediterranean—the Garonne and the Aude—could not be connected because of difficulties of terrain between them; and the technology to raise any great quantity of water upwards of 190 meters above sea level did not exist. The other reason was that there was no other visible source in this quasi-desert region of Provence that could provide the canal with the required amounts of water.

However, there was a third and more profound and subjective reason. All of the canal plans were rejected because none of them reflected the necessary discovery of principle that would make it work. Just as Filippo Brunelleschi had discovered the physical geometric principle of the catenary for the erection of the “impossible” dome of the Florence Cathedral, Riquet had discovered the required physical geometric principle that solved the problem of the “impossible” Languedoc Canal.

Pierre-Paul Riquet (1604-80) was a descendent of a Florentine family by the name of Arrighetti, changed to Riquetty, and then to Riquet. His father, the Count of Camaran, who was a public prosecutor for the Crown, educated his son in public management and got him a post in the administration of Beziers in the Languedoc region. As a young man, Riquet attended the council meetings of the Counts of Languedoc with his father, at several of which there were presentations of canal projects “linking the two seas.” After witnessing several unsuccessful debates on the question, Pierre-Paul Riquet became passionate about finding a solution to this “impossible problem.”

Since Riquet did make the discovery, and built the canal, the following description must hold some truth, with respect to the discovery which must have happened in the mind of this great man.

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anomaly in the form of a simple question must have struck him: “How can the flow of a canal go in two directions at once?” In a way, it was a very simple question; but none of the other engineers over centuries, who had looked instead for ways to connect up the river courses of Languedoc, seemed to have approached the problem quite this way.

That the question was vital to Riquet, is shown by the fact that he had a drawing made, sometime after his discovery, to commemorate a pedagogical recon­ struction of his principle. It showed himself demon­ strating to the Commissioners of the King and of the States, the solution to the problem that he had called— in a reference to the Moses miracle at the Red Sea— “the parting of the waters.”

The drawing simply shows how a stone, placed before the water rising from the Fontaine La Grave, on the Plateau de Naurouze, divided the stream of water into two opposite directions, one part flowing west, toward the Atlantic Ocean, and the other flowing east, toward the Mediterranean Sea. Riquet’s paradox had become a metaphor for what he then began to call the “canal of the two seas.” He had generated a solution in principle to the “impossible” canal.

The “canal of the two seas” became his life’s mission. Year in and year out, Riquet experimented, created model projects on his own land, and studied different locations around Montagne Noire, travelling the distance many times, searching for the solution to the source of water that would connect the two seas. If the illustration of the “parting of the waters” showed the principle, the fulfillment of that principle was going to be another matter altogether.

There was only one ideal spot in the entire expanse between the two seas where Riquet’s principle could be applied, and that had to be precisely at the highest point that divided the entire region between West and the East. And when Riquet found that unique spot, there was no source of water at that location.

The Engineering Task

It was not until the ripe age of 58, after serving the government of Colbert as a Controller of the Salt Tax (gabelle) in the region of the Languedoc for 20 years, that Riquet confirmed his hypothesis by conducting a crucial experiment. By that time, he had enough of a personal fortune to invest in his “grand design,” as he called it. Riquet asked Colbert to let him resign, and to hire him as chief engineer of the canal project. Colbert Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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FIGURE 2

The Languedoc Canal, Great Project of the 17th Century

Source: EIRNS.

The Languedoc Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean Seas across southern France, built between 1667 and 1681, had been a dream for centuries. Solving the “impossible” paradox of creating a water source that could flow in two directions— eastward and westward—it was the greatest civil engineering project of the 17th Century. It contributed to shifting commerce from “free-trade” control of the sea lanes toward fair-trade development in the interior of the continent. The project became a model for much larger continental projects such as the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal built during the 20th Century.

agreed, and got his Toulouse Counsellor, Pierre de Fermat, to authorize the project that was going to be built in his jurisdiction.

Riquet was able to solve his paradox by demonstrating how the result of its resolution was going to express itself in the increase of man’s mastery over nature, in a 46

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definite increase in man’s potential relative populationdensity. He knew beforehand, that the construction of the canal would create an expansion in markets inward and outward, which would result especially in the increase of French production of wheat, wines, and fabrics being exported toward England, Sweden, EIR

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FIGURE 3

The Transaqua Project

EIRNS/John Sigerson

The same nation-building principle applied to a proposed infrastructural great project today: the plan to create a canal to recharge the disappearing Lake Chad in Africa’s Sahel, by draining part of the catchment area of the Zaire River’s great flow. The urgent project will not be done without the kind of public credit strategy pioneered by Colbert, known since then as “dirigism.”

Germany, Holland, Italy, Greece, and so forth.

A Languedoc teacher, Philippe Calas, living today near Béziers, shows on his website called “Le Canal du Midi en Languedoc,” how Riquet tackled the different engineering problems. He writes: But there was one overwhelming problem facing all of these would-be canal builders: how to supply such an engineering work with water?

One part of the route represented no such problem. The section from Toulouse to the Atlantic could be achieved by the canalization of the River Garonne, navigable along this stretch. But from Toulouse at one end of the canal proper, to March 11, 2022

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sea level at the other (Mediterranean end), the canal would have to rise to a summit of 190 meters. How could enough water be found to keep the canal flowing at a constant rate, and at what point should this water be supplied to it in order to distribute it evenly to the western section flowing toward Toulouse and the eastern section flowing towards Béziers?

And who would be foolish enough to think that such a fantastic source of water could ever be found in the quasi-barren mountains of the Languedoc?

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of the State of Languedoc how the whole system would work. At that occasion, on Nov. 27, 1664, Riquet wrote to Colbert, saying: But in this case [the drainage trench experiment], I am putting at risk both my fortune and my honor, and they won’t fail me. In fact, it seems more reasonable that I shall acquire a little more of one as well as of the other, when I come out of this successfully. I hope to be in Paris during the month of January next.... And then, Monseigneur, I shall have the honor of telling you, in person, and in a better fashion, all my sentiM. Strīķis ments on the subject. And you will find The beautiful Languedoc Canal is still in regular use, 341 years after its them reasonable because I will have es“impossible” construction. Its revolutionary features included lining the canal tablished precise propositions that will with trees to stabilize its banks. Here, a section of the canal at Carcassonne, consequently be in accordance with Languedoc-Roussillon. your wish; and in which case I shall the solution, and was won over to the project. Colbert follow my natural inclination of frankness and always appreciated the character of a man who could not freedom, and without quibbling. be shaken from a true discovery, and he knew he could absolutely count on Riquet to bring the great work to On May 25, 1665, Riquet was in Paris meeting with success, if he gave him the necessary backup. The Colbert, who gave him his patent papers securing him engineering task was to assemble enough water in a in his rights of ownership. Two months after, on the last catch basin—from what today would be called a day of July, Riquet wrote Colbert, filled with the “catchment area” of subsurface water—and at the excitement of Archimedes coming out of his bathtub. highest elevation, which could supply all of the necessary His experiment was a total success! He wrote: water to flow with gravity continuously into a westward slope toward the Atlantic and into an eastward slope Many people will be surprised to see how little toward the Mediterranean, each in a controlled manner. time I have taken, and little expense I have used.

Riquet found several hidden springs and streams in As for the success, it is infallible, but in a totally the vicinity of Montagne Noire, less than halfway new fashion, that no one ever thought of, includbetween Carcassonne and Toulouse, which could ing myself. I can swear to you that the pathway I supply a reservoir to be built at Saint-Ferriol. This have now discovered had always been unknown reservoir of water had to hold a large enough supply of to me, regardless of all the efforts I had made in water to feed the canal all year round, including during attempting to discover it. The idea came to me in periods of extreme drought, which occurs regularly in Saint-Germain, which is quite far away, and my Provence. The reservoir was also to be supplemented musing proved me right about those locations.11 by three additional sources—the Sor River, the Alzau By 1666, after Riquet had developed extensive stream, and the Fresquel River. A series of secondary feasibility studies and established the financial basins had also to be constructed, to control the conditions for the construction of the entire canal, he deliveries of the many flows. got permission from Colbert to begin the first phase of Canal and Ports du Midi construction. The entire project was going to be built in In his first testing experiment, Riquet spent £200,000 11. Pierre Clement, op. cit., p. 305. to build a drainage trench demonstrating to the Council 48

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three phases, and be financed both by the State and through private means (Riquet’s).

Phase one, which was to be financed entirely by Riquet himself, included the hydraulic work of a catch basin—the Saint-Ferriol reservoir at the foot of Montagne Noire—with a capacity of 6 million cubic meters of water, the largest man-made lake ever built up to that time; and the building of the Toulouse-Trebes section of the canal going west toward the Atlantic.

This reservoir was going to supply the water for the entire work.

The second phase, to be financed by the State, included the canal section from the reservoir to the fishing village of Cette (today called Set), on the Mediterranean.

The third phase, also to be financed by the State, included the creation of a major seaport facility at Set. Moreover, the canal presented several extremely difficult engineering feats, such as having to go through the Malpas Mountain in an excavated tunnel of 173 meters in length, and then pass as an aquaduct for several hundred yards over the Ord River. The entire project originally contained 75 locks, took 14 years to build, and cost the royal treasury more than £7.7 million, not including the £4 million invested by Riquet personally. Louis XIV and Jean-Baptiste Colbert inaugurated the canal at Set, on May 24, 1681.

Although Riquet, who died eight months earlier, had not lived to see his masterpiece of engineering completed, he had lived and communicated to others the joy of immortality, and was comforted in the knowledge that he had brought a great contribution to mankind. At the turn of the 18th Century, the famous military engineer and admirer of Riquet, Marshal Sébastien de Vauban, made some important improvements and a number of significant additions to the canal. Today, the canal is still in operation, for both trade and tourism.12 12. Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban (1633-1707), was a Marshal of France and a military engineer who had studied Leonardo da Vinci and especially the great works of Pierre-Paul Riquet. A member of the Academie des Sciences, Vauban distinguished himself by establishing the most advanced form of modern fortification, surrounding France with a defensive shield by rebuilding more than 300 fortified cities and creating 37 new ones. (The post-Vauban Fort McHenry, located in Baltimore, Maryland, is a typical Vauban fortification.)

Vauban was a Colbertian economist who was preoccupied mostly with improving the conditions of labor, and who considered that “work is the principle of all wealth.” Louis XIV unjustly disgraced him, but it was in honor of Vauban that Saint-Simon created the French word patriote.

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Riquet also broke new ground in fostering “the advantage of the other” by providing exceptional benefits for his own workers. The Canal Company had a 12,000-man workforce, divided into 240 brigades of 50 men each. These represented the best-paid workers of the period for this type of construction work. Riquet had gotten from Colbert a royal order to pay, for the security of his workers, a salary of £10 a month per worker, which included modest living quarters, Sundays and religious and national holidays off, plus complete medical coverage and full disability in case of injury or death. The royal order also stipulated that “those who present themselves must be fit to do the work, not incapacitated in any way, and must not be younger than twenty years of age or older than fifty.” Riquet’s enemies were very upset, because other workers in the region of Languedoc began to demand similar working conditions.

Riquet’s royal charter for the protection of his labor force was the first of its kind in the history of Europe, guaranteeing the equivalent of good “union wages and conditions.”

The Principle of Discovery

How was Riquet’s canal plan going to guarantee success, when all of the others had failed? How can you guarantee that the LaRouche project of the Eurasian Land-Bridge will succeed, when all free-trade proposals have failed miserably? The answer to these questions lies in the fact that both Riquet and LaRouche understand the principle of discovery.

The irony of Riquet’s discovery was that, while everybody else was trying to use the waters of two rivers whose flows were contrary, and could not be made to climb up to 190 meters above sea level, Riquet solved the problem by tapping the waters of far-away desert streams—up to 65 kilometers away from the canal’s path—and sent them flowing into the only spot from which “the parting of the waters” could send the flows down in two directions at once! The idea was brilliant and the fruit of a true genius.

It is amazing how apparently unsolvable problems get resolved, when they are viewed from above the domain of sense perception. Riquet’s project was so successful, that when Marshal de Vauban visited the site a few years after its completion, he remarked: “There is, however, something missing here: there is no statue of Riquet.”

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In May 1788, a year after visiting the south of France, the United States’ Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson, sent some notes about the construction of the Canal of Languedoc to George Washington. Jefferson wrote: Having in the Spring of the last year taken a journey through the southern parts of France, and particularly examined the canal of Languedoc, through its whole course, I take the liberty of sending you the notes I made on the spot, as you may find in them something perhaps which may be turned to account some time or other in the prosecution of the Patowmac [Potomac] canal.

Jefferson’s acute interest in the Canal du Midi is one more example showing how the economics of the Peace

of Westphalia had found its manifest destiny in America.13 Under Colbert’s policy, France once again embraced the “principle of benevolence” that Louis XI had institutionalized from the sublime courage of Jeanne d’Arc. The so-called “religious wars” which had decimated Europe for over a century and a quarter, were stopped and overcome. Never, during such a short period as the Mazarin-Colbert reforms, had so much evil been defeated by such a simple and effective principle as “the advantage of the other,” or the common good. Without it, the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, and the era of sovereign nation-states which it launched, would not have been possible.

13. Roy and Alma More, Thomas Jefferson’s Journey to the South of France. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1999, p. 157.

In this special issue, we take on the question of “What is an Aesthetical Education?” This is an incredibly important and challenging question, but one that must be taken up. We want to examine different people and nations who have either attempted or successfully created this type of educational system.

We have a very wonderful composition for you to work through. Here are a few highlights:

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by Lyndon LaRouche Shaping a More Beautiful Mind

by Richard A. Black The Cult of Ugliness, Or Beauty As A Necessary Condition of Mankind A Taste of the Sublime Comes from the Most

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche Unexpected of Places An Interview with Heartbeat Opera’s Ethan Heard Foundation for the Future

by Leni Rubenstein

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Anastasia Battle, Editor-in-Chief, Leonore EIR

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THE EVIL OF BETRAND RUSSELL

The Science of Strategy: Durable Survival Lies in the Complex Domain The February 5, 2022 Manhattan Project webcast, three days after the anniversary of the death of Bertrand Russell, featured presentations by Jason Ross, science advisor to the Schiller Institute, and Anastasia Battle, the editor of Leonore magazine. The video of the entire program is available here. Lyndon LaRouche’s 1984 article, “How Bertrand Russell Became an Evil Man,” is available here .

There was a time just after the last war, when the Americans had a monopoly of nuclear weapons, and offered to internationalize nuclear weapons by the Baruch Proposal. I thought this an extremely generous proposal on their part, one which it would be very desirable that the world should accept. Not that I advocated nuclear war, but I did think that great pressure should be put upon Russia to accept the Jason Ross: Bertrand Russell Baruch Proposal, and I did was called by Lyndon LaRouche think that if they continued to the most evil man of the 20th Cenrefuse it, it might be necessary Bertrand Russell tury. Why? How did he do that? actually to go to war. At that Much of the impact of Bertrand time, nuclear weapons existed Russell is probably unknown to you, even though he’s only on one side, and therefore, the odds were, had a big impact on your life. Bertrand Russell, who the Russians would have given way. I thought lived from 1872 to 1970, was supposedly a peacenik, they would. and supposedly a socialist. He was supposedly someone who wanted to eliminate the threat of war from the The interviewer then asked, “Suppose they hadn’t planet. Indeed, he did say that he wanted to eliminate given way?” Russell: “I thought and hoped that the war, but he only said that once the Soviet Union had Russians would give way, but of course, you can’t developed nuclear weapons. threaten unless you’re prepared to have your bluff Before that, when the United States was the only called.” bearer of nuclear armaments, he had actually supported So, here’s a man unrepentantly over a decade later a preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union to saying that it was the right outlook to have at the close create a one-world government. In 1959, he was interof World War II to create a single world government viewed by BBC about his advocacy of a preventive nuwith a monopoly on the use of force, and to threaten the clear war. He was asked, “Is it true or untrue that in Soviet Union with nuclear extinction if it didn’t go recent years, you, Bertrand Russell, advocated that a along with it. That’s a wicked outlook, obviously, but preventive war might be made against communism, this is only part of his entire outlook. First, I’ll give a against Soviet Russia?” He responded: few more quotes to give a sense of his social and political outlook. Then, I want to look at how his view of sciIt’s entirely true, and I don’t repent of it now. It ence has done so much damage to our ability to make was not inconsistent with what I think now. discoveries and breakthroughs today.

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In 1923, after World War I, before World War II, Bertrand Russell wrote his Prospects of Industrial Civilization, where he talked about the threat that population growth posed to his idea of a socialist utopia.

to some people to be progressive, liberal, future-oriented, Earth-friendly. The Green New Deal is exactly a continuation and implementation of what Bertrand Russell had dreamed of and demanded.

The Green New Deal is an Socialism, especially inimposition of a zero or negternational socialism, is ative technological growth only possible as a stable regime on the world under system, if the population the guidance and control of is stationary, or nearly a supranational oligarchy. so. A slow increase In this case, implemented might be coped with by largely not only through naimprovements in agritional governments, but cultural methods, but a through international finanrapidly increas­ing pop­u­ cial organizations that will NASA la­­­­­­tion must reduce the An African family gathers around a low-tech, low-energy put out criteria for investwhole population to solar oven demonstration in 2018. ment. If this isn’t a Green penury. The white popuinvestment, it isn’t allowed; lation of the world will soon cease to increase. it isn’t Green development, it isn’t allowed. The counThe Asiatic races will be longer, and the Negroes tries of the world, they say, simply cannot build more still longer before their birth rate falls sufficoal plants. So, a desperate country in energy poverty, ciently to make their numbers stable without with a low lifespan? Too bad. You’re going to have to help of war and pestilence. Until that happens, develop using renewable, intermittent, low energy-denthe benefits aimed at by socialism can be only sity power sources. partially realized, and the less prolific races will It should actually be extremely obvious that this is have to defend themselves against the more prosimply the newest form of colonialism. That’s what the lific by methods that are disgusting, even if they Green New Deal is internationally. are necessary.

Unlike in the immediate post-World War II period, where there was a need to maintain some level of techRussell’s World Government nological superiority to keep up with the Soviet Union, I don’t think that even needs comment. So, this is after the fall of the Soviet Union, the view was that with the charming Bertrand Russell. His view of single that threat gone, the unipolar world established, that world government is, they would have weapons insame anti-technology, anti-growth outlook that had spectors, they could go and ensure that no other naprevented the growth of the Third World in a disgusting tions were developing nuclear weapons. They would way, could now as well be turned more directly against be in a position of attempting to halt technological the supposedly developed world; against the nations of progress all around the world out of a fear of losing the trans-Atlantic. That’s where we find ourselves that advantage in weaponry. What kind of world would today. that create? It would create one where technology What I’d like to speak about now is how Russell’s itself is a threat to a ruling oligarchy. In order to preoutlook goes along with artificial intelligence, which is vent that threat of technology development, growth to certainly artificial; it’s not intelligence. How it has human population would have to be actively supshaped our view both of what computers can do in this pressed. kind of mystical way, but also damaged our view of In those terms, it sounds sinister, evil. But when exwhat human beings can do. And how Russell’s work in pressed in Green language, those same ideas may seem mathematics, science, and philosophy has dramatically 52

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hindered the hypothesis-generating potential of our species.

ing north on the Earth would, on reaching the North Pole?

Riemann had said that the Fakery entire Euclidean outlook was So, let’s get into that. In wrong, in that it made assump1895, Bertrand Russell was tions about the world that we working on a mathematics live in, without making them scholarship at Trinity College, based on something physical.

Cambridge. He wrote an “Essay More on Euclid in a bit. on the Foundations of GeomeI want to now contrast what try.” In 1895, Russell said that Bertrand Russell did, with actual the idea of curved space—that geniuses like Albert Einstein space is not flat and has a differand Max Planck. So, as a timeent curvature in different line: places—was absolutely imposIn 1895, Bertrand Russell sible; entirely out of the ques- Mathematician Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866). had basically said that the next tion. He said that the idea that decade’s greatest discoveries— space may have a different characteristic in the very the quantum by Max Planck and relativity by Albert small than it seems to take on at the macro scale was Einstein—Russell said in 1895 that those were both imabsolutely impossible and implied a contradiction. This possible, that no such discovery ever could occur. Of was only ten years before Albert Einstein in 1905 had course, it did. his miracle year and published his work on special relaIn 1903, Russell had written his Principles of Mathtivity. ematics, having the same title as Isaac Newton’s big So, Bertrand Russell, in his supwork, where Russell attempted to posed work as a mathematician ditransform mathematics, and by imrectly attacked the tradition of scienplication all of science, into a branch tific hypothesizing that Lyndon Laof logic. Logic explicitly cuts itself Rouche has identified as the real off from reality, in taking as its subtrain of discoveries that have adject nothing about the external vanced human economy and human world, nothing about principles, understanding. Specifically, in this magnetism, agriculture, none of case of Russell, attacking the work that! It takes as its topic, the way that of Bernhard Riemann. I don’t want sentences are formed, and you arrive to say much more about him here, at logical conclusions from them. except by way of reference, that RieRussell said that was actually all that mann, in his 1854 habilitation disscience was. Science was nothing sertation, laid out how the general but logic, and he tried to prove that. concept of curvature that was apThat’s what he was doing in 1903. plied to surfaces could also be apMeanwhile, in 1900 Max Planck plied to space itself. That is, space discovered the quantum, that in the itself isn’t necessarily flat. That the very small, the universe is not idea that two parallel lines would go Physicist Max Planck (1858-1947). smooth, that there is not continuity, on forever without ever meeting, but that there’s something of the dismakes an assumption about the space in which you are crete in the very small, and energy comes in “pieces,” extending these lines. not of any quantity imaginable, but in very discrete This isn’t about your imagination of what geometry chunks. is. Make it a physical question: What truly happens if In 1905, Albert Einstein showed that absolute space you go billions of light-years, what will happen to those does not exist, that absolute time does not exist; that lines? Would they end up crossing, as two lines pointtwo events in the universe maybe could not be said March 11, 2022

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either to have been at the same time or which one was before the other, that it could depend on the motion of an observer who was considering these events. Simultaneity, as a concept itself—the distinction between matter and energy—was broken, expressed in Einstein’s most famous formula of all time, I think, e=mc2, relating energy and mass. This is what Einstein did in 1905.

And this has been the whole history of human science. None of the great breakthroughs have ever been logical. What Einstein came up with was illogical—the idea about how space and time worked, Einstein’s conclusion was totally different. It wasn’t in addition; it was a revolution. It overthrew and forced a reconceptualization of all of those axioms, all of that understanding of physics. When Mendeleyev developed the understandSymbolic Logic ing of the periodic system of the Bertrand Russell thought that elements, he didn’t add on to physthe greatest discovery of mankind, ics. He really overthrew it with an Ferdinand Schmutzer so far, had been symbolic logic, entirely new language, an entirely Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in compared to Planck and Einstein, 1921. new idea of what an element is, a who were actually advancing physnew idea of what existence means, ics and our ability to do things in the world. or what a physical element is. It doesn’t have physical In 1910-1913, Russell worked on a book, Principia characteristics anymore. It has chemical susceptibiliMathematica, now with the same Latin title as Newties to form compounds that have physical characteriston’s Principia. In it, he tried to show at great and extics, but chemistry is not physical characteristics. haustive length, that mathematics—again, he’s getting There’s something else there. These are revolutions. into physics by implication with The Complex Domain this—is nothing but logic, someThe idea of the complex domain thing that a computer could do, goes back to Plato. something that really could be autoPlato, in his Republic used an mated. analogy of a cave, of people living in Two years afterward, Albert Eina cave—it was kind of a strained stein develops general relativity. analogy, but these people are someSo, the approach by Russell is how tied up against a rock bench in a seen today in efforts to create gencave. Their heads are fixed, they can eral, artificial intelligence systems, only look forward, and they see the the hope that eventually we’ll be able wall of the cave—it’s a cave, it’s not to have an AI system that’s able to flat, it’s rocky. Behind you is a fire, perform the truly creative tasks of the it’s wood burning, so the flames are human mind. This is something that’s flickering. Between the fire and not actually possible. The proof of behind you, pass people, holding obthe impossibility of making knowlAlfred Eisenstaedt jects, puppets, who knows what? edge into a form of logic, this proof was done in 1931 by Kurt Gödel, Mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906-1978). Casting shadows on the wall. The people are speaking. You, stuck who used Bertrand Russell’s lanagainst the wall, might believe that the shadows are guage to prove that Bertrand Russell, and his goal, was speaking, as the sound echoes. In other words, your hopeless and foolish; that any logical system was unable entire sensorium is not observing what’s going on to decide the truthfulness of true statements that could behind you, which is people walking around, a fire, be made in it. In other words, you can’t know with logic. you’re inside a cave, they’re holding these objects.

There’ll be things you’re never going to discover logiYour understanding of reality comes only through these cally, never be able to know or prove logically.

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irregular shadows cast by an Isaac Newton, Serial Fraudster uneven fire.

So, the crushing of hypothAnd that analogy is accurate esizing, as done explicitly by to our ability to understand the Isaac Newton, who opened up world. Our senses don’t show his Principia Mathematica by us reality. After all, our senses, saying “I do not frame hypoththey’re not connected to the eses.” “I don’t make hypotheworld out there. All of our ses, I’m not hypothesizing!” senses are in our body, right? If “Hypothesizing, that’s a dirty you see something, what is ocword! I’m just telling you like curring is an interaction with it is. I’m just writing out mathyour eye and your nervous ematically, how to explain system. You heard something what we see. I am not saying out there? OK, we’re able to anything about why it works understand things that way, but the way that it does.” in terms of what your sensoNewton, considered to be rium truly is, something hapthe great discoverer of univerpened in your ear. Your earsal gravitation, if he was asked drum wiggled; the hairs inside “How do objects pull on each your ear jiggled. This creates other?” what he described is something in your nervous the result: that things accelerate system.

Mathemagician Isaac Newton (1643-1727). toward each other, objects Our sensorium is not realdo—but in terms of what was causing that, what would ity. And even when we extend that sensorium, say, make all of that happen? No answer to that—not an through telescopes where we’re able to look all out in the idea. It really was a relationship, even if it’s called a celestial sphere and look with great accuracy, and where “force” it was an empirical type of claim, about how do is a planet, and what does this star look like? Let’s look objects end up changing their motion as a result of this more closely at the Moon. When you’re doing these gravitation. things, you don’t observe reality itself; you’ve essenThe last thing is to give some ideas of applying this tially created something like a huge eyeball with very principle in economy or in politics. In economy, there good vision. And whatever is causing the motion of these are two really big errors. One of them is thinking that celestial bodies is projected onto that celestial sphere, as money explains the economy, or that there’s such a thing if you were in that cave, and projections were being as monetary economics. That phrase itself is a contradicmade on the wall. tion, because money cannot understand the value of To understand those shadows, to understand those technology. If you make a fundamentally new scientific projections on the wall of the cave, on the celestial breakthrough, how can you value that in monetary sphere, requires that you go beyond the senses, that terms? you go beyond finding relationships among the things Money is a scalar. It relates to the present, prices, and that you see, and go beyond empiricism, to hypothethings like that. If you unlocked the potential to comsize causes to say why are things occurring the way pletely transform our relationship to nature, our potenthat they are. tial population density; if you’ve transformed the carryAnd those hypothesized causes are not part of the sening capacity of human beings on the Earth, how many sorium. By their nature, they’re not. Gravitation. This dollars is that worth? It’s an unanswerable question. Beisn’t something that you sense. The least-time principle cause what you’ve just done is to change what a dollar of how light bends as it goes from air into water, or could possibly do. The development of nuclear science through different kinds of glasses, or plastics, lenses— unlocked an enormous potential of energy to us: Urathe way that that operates, the fact that light takes the least nium, no longer just a yellow rock, now an amazing time to get from one part of its path to another, this prinfuel. Transformations like that, you of course can’t unciple is nothing observable. It’s very much a human idea.

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derstand them in money terms in the systems analysis—they have a transcendental value.

The other issue is in looking at the physical world, in thinking that physical production is where value lies in an economy. It just isn’t. Physical production is also part of a real shadow, of a projection of a process that involves, of course, labor, the productive powers of labor, but most fundamentally involves improving the productive powers of labor, through the development of new machine tools, through the development of new technologies, through the discovery of scientific principles. Economic value lies there.

It’s created by the mind. It is put into practice, socially, through the organization of the development of infrastructure, physical production, new physical production techniques. But the real goal of economy is fostering the development of a culture, a scientific and cultural outlook that is able to hypothesize new principles, to implement them socially, and to bring more and more and more people into that joyful opportunity to play a role in advancing human knowledge. And then coming to understand how that knowledge was created.

Physical Geometry

Euclid is known as “that geometry guy.” He wrote books about circles, and squares, and triangles, and spheres, and all of this. He compiled the known geometric discoveries of his era and pulled them together in a systematic way, and presented these as having dependencies on each other. In other words, from the axiom, “I’m able to prove this; and from this I can prove this, and from this I can prove this.”

There’s something to that. I don’t want to completely denigrate that.

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Through the discoveries of scientific principles and technologies, the minds of men and women have transformed what is otherwise just a yellow rock into the fuel to power civilization. Left: nuclear fuel rods are assembled for a light water reactor.

A chunk of uranium ore.

educational approach, and by implication, your discovery approach, you are stealing from the students NRC the most crucial part, which is, how were those things discovered in the first place? Discovery and proving are extremely different things.

Bertrand Russell said there was nothing more “delicious” than his first encounter with Euclid, that this made such an impression on him, it was like falling in love for the first time, or maybe he said it was like “making love” for the first time. He was really into this approach.

LaRouche was quite the opposite. To him, what was most crucial was not geometry, shapes existing on the basis of geometric concepts, but it was always physical reality, and it was the power of the mind: How are ideas created?

In blowing apart the Euclidean approach, Riemann not only blew apart Euclid’s geometric axioms, but that entire approach to thinking through knowledge, and, implicitly, the method of discovery in education.

Will principles be understood as the result of our hypothesizing? Or are they going to be presented sort of as a generalization, as a basic understanding?

What Russell did was to attack the idea and the existence of the human mind. He did that by trying to Geometer Euclid of Alexandria (c. 325 B.C. – c. 265 B.C.) kill people, which reduces human EIR

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beings. He did it by explicitly saying there should be two systems of education, one for the ruling class, where creativity is encouraged, and then one for the peons, where thought is discouraged, and that people in the lower class, who seem like they might become geniuses can be given a choice of joining the upper class, or, if they rebel and stick to their lower-class roots, you’ll have no choice but to execute them. This is really what Russell said.

Against that, we’ve got the human potential of finally throwing off oligarchy and organizing ourselves through an understanding of that creative potential in every single human being—every human being—and that this is the basis for thinking through our relations with our fellow human beings in our countries, between countries and so on; and that this has to be the greatest goal of a dialogue among civilizations, to be able to advance to that next level of economic growth and wellbeing, where we can be thinking of economic output 10 times beyond what it is today per capita in the world— not some small improvement—an order of magnitude leap, through nuclear fusion, through fundamental new science. And that’s the scale that our ambitions have to be at, in order to be human.

And that means throwing away and making fun of, repudiating, and crushing the legacy of Bertrand Russell.

Frightened Fraudsters

Anastasia Battle: I want to underline a number of things that Bertrand Russell actually tried to do, because there’s an irony there. Here’s a man who’s calling for global governance, talking about mass depopulation, who wants to control the world with this global government, to use nuclear weapons and things like that, while at the same time, he’s thought of amongst the “educated circles” as being a “peace activist” and loving humanity. So, what happened there? What’s going on?

I want to take a quote, from Bertrand Russell himself. This is from his 1951 book, The Impact of Science on Society. He wrote: Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific technique which still await development.

Two great men, Pavlov and Freud, have laid the foundation. I do not accept the view that they are in any essential conflict, but what structure will be built on their foundations is still in doubt. I think the subject which will be of most imporMarch 11, 2022

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tance politically is mass psychology…. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.” Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part…. It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.

The subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship…. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at.

First, that the influence of home is obstructive.

Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark grey.

This man had a certain understanding of how the human mind works and used it for an evil purpose to control you, to control how you think, control what you think, even some of the things that you say. We had a lot of fun on campus at the University of Washington, where we had posters out: One picturing Bertrand Russell that says, “I know what you think—because I made you that way.” With other longer quotes, like the one I just read you, posters of what he actually said. And then just a long list of probably 20 things of all the evil things he did.

Fake Philosophers

We completely flipped out the Philosophy Department, who were coming up to us, saying “Oh, you can’t say that! You’re taking it out of context. That’s not what he really meant.” And then you start reading the whole quote from his book, or something—we actually had printouts of this stuff—and it was even worse in context, than what people were trying to make excuses for!

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[laughter] It was even worse!

So, we really ticked off these students in the Philosophy Department, because they didn’t want to let it go. They even tried to steal our posters! They [the posters] were getting knocked over, people were yelling at us. But what ended up happening is that students who were coming up during this, and listening to what we were talking about, started asking questions, they started to get it.

What Bertrand Russell was attacking—and this is important to communicate—is that the way that we give you the arsenal to defend your own mind from this kind of assault, is through Classical culture. That’s why Mr. LaRouche really emphasized this, because this is how the human mind actually functions. Classical culture isn’t just some like fancy, French décor, or having some nice, framed pictures or something like that, or going to the opera in some big dress. But it’s how does the human mind work, and how do you provoke it to form a unique thought? And that’s been seriously taken away at this point.

Question: You’ve said that humanity is defined in its ability to go beyond sense reality, sense perception, but you critique Euclid’s geometry for its not being based in the physical. What is this physical geometry, such that it is neither directly based in sense reality, nor in the total abstractions of Euclid?

Ross: I made two complaints about Euclid. One was that he made assumptions about space that he didn’t know if they were true or not. Two specific examples: first parallel lines. Euclid claims that if you have a line and you have a point not on the line, both are in a plane.

So, you have to have a plane, first. But if you have a line in it, and then a point not on that line, you can make parallel lines. You’ll have two lines, always the same distance apart, and that never touch. He’s made the assumption there that you have a plane. Or, if you have two lines that seem like they’re in the same plane, that the space that they would continue to move in would actually be a plane, as opposed to, say, a very large sphere. Now, does he know whether space itself curves or not? He doesn’t know! He just made an assumption.

He says that all triangles have angles that add up to 180°. If they’re on a flat plane, that’s true. But if you draw triangles on the surface of the Earth, you have more than 180° in them. You might say, well, that’s be58

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cause the Earth is curved. But if you draw a triangle in space—if you draw a huge one—how do you know if space is curved or not? So that was one of the issues with Euclid, is that he made those assumptions about space that are unjustified.

Riemann

The second complaint of mine was that he expressed things in terms of truth coming as a deductive process from axioms, as opposed to how the discoveries were actually created in the past.

In terms of going beyond that, Riemann says that you have to first identify that you’re making those assumptions; and second that the only way to resolve those questions, the only way to know what the shape of space is, is not going to be from thinking about it, and imagining how mathematics might be. It’s going to be from looking at physics. In other words, understanding better what governs the relationships of things in space.

Look at what’s happening in a space, to understand what it’s like. What is the nature of the relationships between different processes that unfold within it? That’s the way you understand something. In an economics space, the value of any physical object in the economy— a screw, a piece of wood, or something like that—depends not on the object itself, but on the real terms, on what you do with that. Are you going to use those building supplies to build a whorehouse? Or are you going to use those to help build a school, or a clinic, or a scientific laboratory? If you’re doing plumbing, are you repairing the plumbing for a hedge fund, that’s making the world worse overall? Or are you repairing the plumbing at one of those other institutions, a school, or a clinic? And what’s the school teaching? You would ask.

There’s no self-evident value in the shape of a space without understanding what governs the way processes evolve and unfold in it. There’s no self-evident value of things in the economy, without asking, in what process it is playing a role. The value of everything and everybody in the economy, depends on what kind of future we are creating. For example, if by succeeding in our political aims, we end this threat of civilization-destroying, world-ending thermonuclear war with Russia, with China. If we scrap that. If instead we embark in cooperation with these other countries, and with India and others for development to completely eliminate poverty on this planet, we will transform the value of everything that everybody is doing in this country and around the world.

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This is the kind of thinking that Euclid and Russell—well, certainly Euclid and Descartes—prevent, by creating objects with self-evident properties, with the nature of their interactions seen in terms of the objects themselves, as opposed to what’s the nature of the space in which they’re interacting.

How do we change the curvature? How do we change the shape of the political, the social space that we’re in right now? How can we organize to have that as our goal? In doing that, we won’t change individual people.

What is our goal in terms of reshaping the kinds of basic axioms, the domain of thought overall? That’s what I would say on that.

wouldn’t bank on that.

I think that it exists—there is a part of both of them, and it would be wrong to say one or the other. It’s sort of like you’re having a discussion with two people, sometimes you end up with an idea that comes out of that dialogue—did it come from one person or the other? No, each person had their thoughts, and they contribute to it, but that dialogue itself as a form of thinking ends up creating ideas that aren’t going to happen from people just kind of musing on their own.

The dialogue is the principle there.

I think that’s part of the scientific approach: The way you’ve got to think about it, is that we’re in a Principles dialogue with the universe! And as Question: If I’m not wrong, we do that, we have things that we Jason, you said that human beings say, OK, least-time flight, springs create principles that we use as our work this way, and energy and tools to then advance our species. matter are separate, there’s a conBut is it not the case that principles servation of energy—we have all pre-exist humanity, rather than that these thoughts, and we have a diathey are created from our mind? In logue, then, with the universe. And other words, wouldn’t these princiit says—it’s always giving us some ples exist with or without humankind of hint that we’re wrong, if we ity? ask it the right kind of question.

That’s the opportunity to adRoss: Well! That’s a fantastic vance that dialogue and come back Joseph Karl Steiner question! I got two to come back at Ludwig van Beethoven in 1820. Did he with something better: “OK, uniyou with. One of them bears on the create, or did he discover his music? verse, according to Einstein, there’s relationship between science and actually an enormous amount of culture. Did Beethoven create the Ninth Symphony, or energy potential in the nucleus; in fact, we have an idea did he discover it? The second one I want to ask you is: of how much that is. We’ve got some ideas about that.

Our principles aren’t right! They’re always of a proviLet us know what you think about them.” And you ask! sional character. What Einstein did with relativity, it You do experiments. You know, we had the nuclear exreally overthrew—it required everything that seemed periments. You learn a little bit more and have a dialike a principle before to be reconsidered, everything logue. The universe says, “No, that’s wrong,” or, “Okay, we thought we knew about physics—everything I can here’s how that turns out.” How are you going to exthink of that we knew about physics, all had to change plain it? How do you make that out? to take into account that new framework that Einstein I think it has to be looked at that way, and the idea created. of, are the principles created or are they discovered, I If you ask, “Were the principles discovered, were think that they are both. But they’re discovered in the they already there and we found them, versus did we sense that our activity makes the discovery possible, create them?” I think if we were to say, “Oh no, they are and they’re created by the fact that, it’s not only us there, and we discovered them,” how is that if the things that’s playing a role in their creation, but in that diawe discovered weren’t even true? You’d have to say, logue process with the universe. maybe we have never discovered a principle, since we And then, I would also pose for more thought the always find a little bit more over time. Unless some of issue of the difference between the cultural discoveries the things we found will never be overturned, but I or cultural truth, and scientific advancement. I defiMarch 11, 2022

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nitely don’t know if anybody really thinks Beethoven discovered the Ninth Symphony, but is there something about music that he did discover; is there something true about music or about communication, and that discovery is exemplified in the composition of his Ninth Symphony?

Beyond Sense Perception

Question: The way we describe human senses implies that the five senses somehow exist in themselves, and without thought. And yet, humans, and in some ways even higher animals, can’t “sense” anything without having a conception about the content or meaning of what is being sensed, and how the individual sensing something must respond to what is being sensed. If that were not the case, then it would not be possible to sense something wrongly, as perhaps, the people in the cave do. Or in another way, the individual response to a sense would have to be right, or the response would ultimately threaten the individual’s existence. (Left-handed people might be very—pun intended—sensitive to this.) Can you address this, please?

Ross: OK! We have our senses—when we first start to get working with our senses, we’re in the womb.

Vision isn’t going to be doing a whole lot, but sound already is; you can hear things, and so on. When babies are born, it takes a while to be able to make sense, to try to figure out how to use these eyes, to figure out what is going on. There’s impressions, the nerves are getting hit with things, to try to transform that, and figure out what’s actually going on out there.

Yeah, the kid is making hypotheses, making thoughts. The kid is figuring out, “Oh, I can make this thing move, because this hand is under my control, and I can bump this thing, and I can change where it is— haha! That’s so cool! I just did something! I changed that thing, whoa! I knocked this thing on the floor!” So, yeah, when you look at the world, you always have your hypotheses about it, and that’s why, if that wasn’t true, you could never see anything wrongly, or you could never interpret anything wrongly.

This comes up with the problems in memory. Definitely the problems in memory. Something happens, you ask witnesses what occurred, you get five different stories from five different people. They all saw the thing happen—but, did they actually remember it? Are they filling in aspects that are plausible, that maybe they

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don’t really remember, but their mind recreated it, when thinking back about the past? So memory also comes into this, in addition to the senses themselves.

But I’d ask, “How do we extend this to an extended sensorium?” We have off-the-shelf our five senses, or maybe more, but we have the definite five very clear ones that we know about. But what about our extended sensorium? When you create some apparatus, and you’re in the chemistry lab and you’re measuring the temperature of something, you’re using your eyes to look at a thermometer. But really, you’re using the thermometer as an extended sensorium; we’re saying, OK, how does this mercury, or whatever is in the thermometer, how does it change its size based on its temperature, figuring out how to use that to discover, but once you’ve got it, you’ve now got temperature as now something we can measure in a more specific way of whatever the thing is we’re looking at.

I think that raises, really clearly, the issue of interpretations. Because unless you are really trying to do nothing but measure temperatures themselves, or measure exactly where a planet is seen in the sky, and there is a field to that, but usually, you’re trying to figure out what’s going on—and then, you’re right, you’re always making a hypothesis. You’re trying to make sense of those sense impressions.

Truly Human Perception

In terms of how that’s done, there’s a big difference, I think, between how we do that, and how machinelearning does that. When we do that, we have a model of the world that goes beyond the things that we’re sensing. Like trying to teach a car to drive. When people are first learning to drive, it really only takes a few dozen hours to be able to drive a car somewhat safely, enough to get a license to drive. Whereas these machine learning things for cars, they’re doing millions of hours of real or simulated driving, and they still make mistakes. It’s so much harder there.

I think that shows the difference in the approach between our creation of hypotheses of how the whole world works, versus trying to drive a car based on just where do I see things, as opposed to having an idea of how physics works, how people work, what’s a pedestrian likely or unlikely to do, when they’re standing near that crosswalk—all that kind of thing.

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as a way of thinking about what happens if you try to understand the world just in terms of the senses, which is ba­sically what happens with the machine learning approach.

Question: How does a mathematician with such a bad track record—Bertrand Russell—maintain such a hold over policy? Would it be fair to call him a modernday Aristotle?

gets used as a credential, to say, “I’m a deep thinker.”

But then you look at all the stuff that he’s said, these quotes that we read, how does someone like that still get regarded as a philosopher or have his bust up in a Philosophy Department somewhere. (Well, what else does the Philosophy Department do, to be honest? How great are they?)

The Empire of the Oligarchical Mind

But these things don’t only happen on their merits.

People are promoted for political reasons. We see a lot Ross: Hmm! How did Russell get such a big influof it today, and it’s the same as the case for Russell. He ence? You know, he is not alone. Let’s come back to represented a political current in Britain, he was a that, but let’s look at other people who have a big pospokesman for an oligarchical litical influence today who you outlook, and part of his promotion would say should have clearly was to promote that oligarchical been discredited and laughed off outlook. the face of the Earth, namely, all of the neocons who are part of Question: Well, I think that George Bush’s circles who have principles are created intentionnow been welcomed with open ally. If it were the case that there arms into the Democratic Party were an infinite set of monkeys by virtue of their saying Trump writing on a set of typewriters, was bad. So, the architects of the would they incidentally write a Iraq War are being rehabilitated.

Shakespeare play? Of course not.

Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, Lynne It would just be an infinite jumble Cheney are being rehabilitated. of letters. Creation requires a conBush himself being rehabilitated! scious effort to want to discover a People that you would think have Bertrand Russell, advocate for peace—the principle through your creation. no business ever making another peace of the grave. political statement—ever—and Question: What’s the fault in combatting Bertrand then, they get airtime, they get play.

Russell’s “snow is black” thought experiment, with an Is it possible that this also occurred in the past; that obstinate holding to the sense-perception, or sense realpeople with certain viewpoints were deliberately proity that snow is white? moted in order to inject those viewpoints into popular thought, and to shape popular culture and conventional Battle: I think the analogy that Jason used about the wisdom? cave. When you’re trying to take somebody out of the Russell’s success was not the fruit of his vast learncave, just telling them over and over again, “Look, you ing, his remarkable wit, and his great insights. He also don’t get it. You’re in a cave, man! There’s shadows played a political role and was promoted for that reason. going on…,” people don’t really want to hear it. Just In terms of what he did—I’m not the biggest Russell telling them over and over again what the truth is, isn’t expert in the world, but I don’t find him that impressive, going to be the solution to working them out of it. You to be honest. The way he got his big reputation was with actually have to provoke them to gain access to their this work, the Principles of Mathematics and then the own thinking process, their ability to form a thought, enormous Principia Mathematica that he wrote in and that’s where the question of using irony, pointing 1910-1913. It’s an enormous, absurd tome; it’s exout somebody’s axioms, what their underlying assumptremely difficult to work through. It looks extremely tions are; and getting them to see that the way they’re erudite. After many, many pages into it, he says that he thinking has been wrong. has now proved that 1+1=2. That’s the sort of thing that March 11, 2022

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Otherwise, if you’re trying to drag somebody out of that cave, they’re going to be kicking and screaming; they’ll probably bite you. I mean, literally, I’ve been on deployments where somebody was so upset at our posters, they actually ripped it off, and started trying to eat it—that’s just an image to put in your mind, that sometimes when you get under people’s skin, it can be really emotional. You’ve got to be prepared for those things.

We get that kind of question a lot: “Can I just tell somebody the truth?” Yes, you should always tell the truth. But there’s also a way to tell the truth, such that somebody can be provoked to discover it, if you hear the difference.

Ross: Yeah, how do you get somebody to discover something? You can say things that are true, and if you do a terrible job of it—it’s like, telling people “WAKE UP!!” Is that ever effective? Screaming at people to “wake up!” “Wake up, you liberal!” or “Wake up, you Nazi!” that shouldn’t get you anywhere.

If Dr. Tony Fauci gets on TV and says one more time, “The vaccines are safe,” is that going to convince somebody that doesn’t already believe that? No!!

Now, going through it, and making fun of Dr. Robert Malone, OK, that can be fun. Anastasia, you pointed out some of the funny things that, if the vaccines were meant to kill people, why weren’t they all being given to Africa, right away? Ironies are the kind of thing that wake people up! You can say something that’s true— that’s fine. But the point is, you’re talking to somebody.

How do you have a true discussion, where you have to listen to people, and then help make ironies on it.

We’re Not Monkeys

That’s the thing. let’s say one of those monkeys— you’re the zookeeper, you’re put in charge, you give them the typewriter—writes a Shakespeare play. Is the monkey going to know it wrote a Shakespeare play? Is it going to act it out with the other monkeys? It wouldn’t even know if it came up with it anyway! And I will say that they actually did try this: Somebody gave a bunch of monkeys a typewriter, and they basically hit one letter a bunch of times, pooped on it, and broke it. [laughter] Dennis Speed: Anastasia, you realize that Bertrand Russell was born in 1872. When he was 42 years old, World War I started. World War II started when he was 67. He was talking about bombing Russia with nuclear 62

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weapons in 1946, first at the age of 74, and then again defended it, as Jason pointed out, at the age of 87, in 1959. He intervened in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, didn’t do Kennedy much good with that. And then, Beatle Paul McCartney, about four years ago, talked about how Bertrand Russell had briefed the Beatles on why the Vietnam War was wrong, which was the first time they became political. As you probably know, there’s a six-hour documentary about the Beatles, which everybody’s watching right now.

Now, that’s quite a record, apart from what we’ve already gone through about the cultural impact. So when you went out and did your human experiments, you already talked about some of the reactions, and as you are the editor of our magazine Leonore, what’s your view of how this kind of a character should be sent up, and sort of embalmed, permanently?

Battle: [laughs] Well, for one, I think that everybody should go out and have some fun on their campuses—even if you’re not going to school, we should just have some fun going after these people! I wouldn’t have thought that the Philosophy Department would have tried to stage a theft of our posters! Obviously, we’re getting under somebody’s skin!

We’ve had a lot of fun, showing that it’s directly Bertrand Russell’s thinking, which shows the continuum through the Green New Deal! That’s what this is!

And if we can get people to understand where their own thoughts come from, and then offer them this new culture that we can create, the aesthetical education, give people the solution, the desire to not only climb out of the cave, but to help others climb out of the cave. This is a really fruitful time right now because so much of what people thought of as being the reigning ideology of thinking in the United States, or abroad, has failed!

It’s obviously failed! We’ve got 23 million people starving in Afghanistan, alone! Directly being pushed into death by people who are supposed to be the greatest humanitarians of the 21st century—it’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous!

We should point out more of these kinds of ironies.

Just put yourself into this Classical culture, so you can train yourself, to hear how other people are thinking, to activate your own mind, so you can help others pull themselves out of this situation. And I think in a very short amount of time we can have a serious movement, of especially young people who are thinking in this way and are self-activated to do this all over the world.

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EDITORIAL

Russia Can Be the Major Nation First to a Gold-Reserve Credit System

by Paul Gallagher March 4—Jamie Dimon’s bank’s economics staff has confidently predicted that the multiple layers of extreme “nuclear” economic sanctions slammed on Russia by the trans-Atlantic treasuries and central banks, will shrink Russia’s GDP by 30-35%. The JPMorgan Chase CEO has been in the limelight pontificating on just how to keep the Russian banks out of the SWIFT interbank system. The recent economic forecasting record of his bank’s economists is atrocious. Leaving that aside, and looking instead at the ultra-bloated speculation (“balance”) sheets of JPM and the other London- and Wall Street-centered banks, it would seem that U.S. GDP could be wrung out by a good 25% while getting real physical-economic growth started. But physical-economic growth is not what is in store for the NATO nations now, only very rapid growth in the prices of everything.

The Wall Street Journal ran a column March 3 headlined “If Russia’s currency reserves aren’t really money, the world is in for a shock,” saying: Sanctions have shown that currency reserves accumulated by central banks can be taken away.

With China taking note, this may reshape geopolitics, economic management and even the international role of the U.S. dollar.

The London Financial Times followed with an article on the same subject March 4. Both the dollar and the euro have just been used to steal hundreds of billions from Russia’s national reserves. That will mean that March 11, 2022

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central banks in scores of countries will try to replace dollars and euros with gold and other currencies in their own reserves, lest they be stolen by an angry and arrogant London and Wall Street, like those of Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and now a G20 power, Russia.

Already with the 2014-15 sanctions on Russia and many others—the share of dollars in central bank reserves around the world has dropped from more than 70% earlier this century, to about 58%—mostly to the benefit of the euro. Now that will accelerate, and the euro will be just as much a theft risk in a nation’s reserves as the dollar.

NATO Countries Impose Economic Austerity on Themselves

The NATO nations now look like they will impose severe economic austerity on their own peoples, with raging inflation, the waste of large military spending increases, and much more rapid elimination of fossil fuels for heat, power, agricultural chemicals, steel production, and so forth. They will be driven by those who have spearheaded the “extreme sanctions” on Russia from the beginning—Boris Johnson’s UK government and the European Commission headed by Ursula von der Leyen.

Having, as they think, destroyed the Russia-China partnership as the economic development alternative in the world, their policy will be to subject their own— and developing countries’—populations to the Green Deal, with a vengeance. The bans NATO has imposed Lies and Truth About Ukraine

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on Russian exports have already exploded the oil price to $115-120/barrel in a week; the natural gas price in Europe to more than 2,000 euros per thousand cubic centimeters; the price of Australian coal by 100%; the price of wheat by 30%; and on through the list of fertilizers, pesticides, edible oils, nickel, and steel, and so on. All these prices had already been increasingly inflating for two years prior to this crisis.

What will NATO power Turkey do, for example, with an inflation rate already officially at 56%/year and 75% dependent on wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine which it now cannot get? The Turkish lira without war or sanctions has actually dropped much further, relative to the dollar and euro, than the Russian ruble.

This fatal policy thrust of “Great Reset” austerity may get displayed immediately in the “economic resilience” summit on energy independence and de­ fense which French President Emmanuel Macron proposes to hold as early as March 10 in Versailles.

Immediately the economic prospects clearly look dire for Russia, and for those countries which depend on its food exports, particularly Turkey, Egypt, and a dozen African and South Asian nations. Russia under the “nuclear option” sanctions is in a very similar position to Abraham Lincoln’s Union government in 1861: Having little external debt but virtually no international credit; very little domestic credit capacity with its banks impaired; limited reserves; dependent on key imports such as, in Russia’s case, machine tools which it now cannot get; suffering inflation from devaluation of its currency; and having to fight both economic and actual war.

Russia has already taken some defensive steps against capital flight and against the changing of rubles into foreign currencies. The Russian Central Bank is also requiring that importers immediately change 80% of their import revenues to rubles to provide liquidity to Russia’s banking system. In addition, it more than doubled its main discount rate to 20% from 9.5%, and Russian private banks even raised their savings interest rates a point above that in order to hold ruble deposits.

But having gold reserves under its effective control of close to $200 billion (about 20 trillion rubles equivalent currently), the Russian government can do something similar to the Lincoln Administration’s “Greenback” currency and credit policy. It can—as 64

Lies and Truth About Ukraine

Lyndon LaRouche advised the U.S. government amid rampant inflation in 1981—issue gold-backed bonds for new productive capacity and infrastructure, and for maintaining existing productive capabilities which are crucial for the world, such as advanced nuclear power facilities. If these bonds are goldbacked, with a reasonable maturity and include small denominations, they can bear a much lower interest rate than 20% and effectively form a new ruble currency issue.

Were Russia to be able to do this, it would provide needed relief to nations all over the world, which are in shock at the economic chaos and austerity they face; to India; and to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Schiller Institute Call for a New Security Architecture

The Schiller Institute’s call for an international conference for a new security architecture, emphasizes that this new agreement must be based on a new economic policy of development of all nations, through the cooperation of the major economic powers in particular. The core of that policy was laid out by the late economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche as “four laws,” beginning with Glass-Steagall bank separation and national banking as U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton defined it, in every country. “Hamiltonian” national banking emphatically included the Lincoln Administration’s credit issuances through its “Greenback” and bank currency acts— which also legislated strict bank separation as in the later Glass-Steagall Act. Such an action by Russia to begin to rescue itself from NATO warfare, would provide an opening for joint creation of infrastructure and industrialization credits with China, India, and developing nations; and these could include positive exchange controls to prevent currency collapses and facilitate long-term lending.

As China has re-emphasized in a statement by its Foreign Minister Wang Yi on February 28 concerning the Belt and Road Initiative, so the new economic policy agreements which the Schiller Institute calls for, must be open to, and seek the cooperation of, the United States in particular. For that to happen, will require that the Biden Administration come to see the British-led imperial rage and revenge obsession of the European NATO countries as the potentially fatal mistake that it is.

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March 11, 2022

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