Lift Sanctions Against Russia Immediately!

The following urgent call was issued July 19 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute.

Only a fool can’t see it: The sanctions against Russia only harm Russia marginally, but they threaten to permanently destroy entire key areas of industry and agriculture in Germany and all of Europe! Farmers in many countries are therefore taking to the streets with their tractors, supported by taxi and truck drivers, because they know that, very soon, we will not have enough to eat in Europe, either. Our life savings are being eaten up by inflation, which has also been exacerbated by the sanctions. The collapse into social chaos is imminent!

And for developing countries, the sanctions mean starvation for hundreds of millions of people!

And why all this? Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is right: The Ukraine conflict is not a local or regional war; the entire West is already waging a world war against Russia via Ukraine to “ruin Russia,” as [German Minister of Foreign Affairs] Ms. Baerbock says. Ukraine is just the means by which Russia is to be crushed for geopolitical reasons, as recently, openly demanded by U.S. Congressmen. And next, China, whose economic rise is to be contained at all costs, is to be “decoupled.”

And who benefits from this insane policy that can only end in World War III?

• First, NATO and the military industry, which always need new wars to keep the well-oiled profit machine running.

• Second, the speculators of the City of London, Wall Street and other financial centers, whose speculation drives food and energy prices sky-high and who don’t care if millions die to pay for their mega-profits.

• Third, the green Malthusians, who are of the opinion that fewer people means a smaller carbon footprint, and that would be better for “the climate” anyway. Or people like Davos boss Klaus Schwab, who thinks the main problem for the climate is the impulse of people to want to overcome poverty!

• And fourth, a political establishment composed of a mixture of these first three elements, which has proven utterly incapable of getting anything right, whether it is fighting the coronavirus pandemic, supporting the rail network, or ensuring the supply of skilled workers that industry requires. Instead of reflecting on the fact that it is their ideology-driven politics that is the reason we are facing total economic collapse today, they are already constructing a new narrative that either Russian President Vladimir Putin is to blame for everything, or that right-wing or populist circles are now taking advantage of the crisis, blahblahblah.

But in their seemingly boundless arrogance, these self-righteous advocates of the “rules-based order” overlook the fact that the rest of the world isn’t so stupid, and that they realize it’s all about maintaining an ultimately still-colonial world order that defends the privileges of billionaires and millionaires at the expense of the majority of the human species. The acting President of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has condemned the sanctions against Russia, saying that their ultimate goal is to tumble the Third World into the abyss and force it “to its knees.”

Our industry and agriculture are in danger of being irrevocably destroyed, while Russia, China and most of the countries of the Global South have no choice but to band together and create a new financial, economic, and monetary system that will defend their interests. This new system is emerging, explicitly excluding speculation and promoting the real economy, growth, and poverty alleviation through investment in scientific and technological progress.

China, and not the “rules-based democracies,” is reacting to the fact that, according to the UN, 1.7 billion people do not have enough to eat. China, together with the World Food Program, will set up a global humanitarian emergency stockpile, from which the world’s food reserves and their distribution will be mobilized through seven strategically placed centers to fight and overcome the world hunger catastrophe with all their might.

There is an obvious way the Gordian knot can be [cut] with one swipe; gas and oil can flow again; fertilizer and pesticides can be delivered again; food can get back to where it is urgently needed! The sanctions against Russia, but also all the other countries against which they have been imposed for years for geopolitical reasons—Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen—must be ended immediately! Sanctions, under the conditions of world hunger, pandemic, and hyperinflation, mean genocide for the developing countries, and suicide for our industry and agriculture!

Sanctions are not the just retribution by the morally superior “democracies” for the crimes of “autocracies”; they are a brutal form of warfare against the respective populations of the sanctioned states with the aim of making their living conditions so intolerable that they rise up against their respective leaderships and overthrow them. But the victims are always the people, no matter whether they be in Russia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, or Germany!

Therefore, it is necessary to:

• Immediately end all sanctions not supported by the UN Security Council!

• Achieve comprehensive cooperation between all nations of this world for a new, just world economic order!

• Have cooperation, not confrontation!

• Double food production worldwide!