This article appears in the September 23, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this article]
International Briefs
Ramaphosa to Biden: Don’t Tell Africa What To Do with Russia, or Development
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, following a meeting with President Biden at the White House Sept. 16, told the press that the U.S. must not try to “punish” African nations by pressuring them to cut ties with Moscow. He pointed to the disgusting bill passed by an overwhelming majority in the House and now before the Senate, the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, saying the measure “will harm Africa and marginalize the continent…. We should not be told by anyone who we can associate with.” He insisted that South Africa follows a non-aligned policy among world powers.
These remarks to the media were not mentioned in the read-outs of either nation on the meeting.
Ramaphosa spoke separately with the Congressional Black Caucus during his visit and again criticized the anti-Russia bill. South Africa is “concerned [about] the possible implications for the African continent if the ‘Countering Malign Russian Activities Bill’ were to become U.S. law,” he said, adding that it could have “the unintended consequence of punishing the continent for efforts to advance development and growth.” He said both the U.S. and Russia were “strategic partners” of South Africa, and that Congress must not “punish those who hold independent views,” especially at a time when “President Biden has sought to engage African countries on the basis of respect for their independence and sovereignty.”
Protests Mount in Europe Over Economic Breakdown and EU Malthusian Murder
Street actions, declarations, strikes, tractorcades, and other protests are expanding in many European countries against economic breakdown and government culpability. The new EU energy plan, proposed by the European Commission, to be discussed Sept. 30 by EU energy ministers, was a dud from the moment of its issue Sept. 14 by EC President Ursula von der Leyen. The Sept. 8 energy plan issued for the UK by the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, likewise. The premise of these proposals is that people must endure austerity, even bear the burden of “heat or eat” hardship, to defend “democracy” in Ukraine. Meantime, the EU Green Deal directives are going ahead, to cut fertilizer, chemicals, cropland area, and more, shutting down farming and food.
The EU has proudly announced that it will officially shoot itself in the foot in December, when most imports of Russian crude oil will be banned, and that it will then shoot itself in the other foot in February, when all oil products will similarly be prohibited. This timing places the cuts at the height of the winter in the Northern Hemisphere. According to the International Energy Agency, the cuts will amount to some two million barrels of Russian oil a day.
A national revolt is coming out of eastern Germany. The Dessau Declaration movement, under the initiative of the Chamber of (Skilled) Crafts in Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt, has a national petition, with thousands of signatures, declaring that Germany must end the sanctions on Russia, pursue negotiations in Ukraine, and end the sacrifice of the economy under the bankers’ “save the planet” fraud. On Sept. 10-11, a meeting of the presidents of the Chamber of Crafts from many German states, including Berlin, Brandenburg, Thuringia and others, denounced the “short-term actions” of the German government, and issued a memorandum saying that the phase-out of nuclear and coal must stop, and that measures must start for the long-term support of skilled-crafts businesses.
On Aug. 28, a 2,000 person protest rally took place in Dessau. It was followed on Aug. 31 by many national farmers’ protests in major cities, including Mainz, Stuttgart, Magdeburg, Potsdam and others. Then on Sept. 10, thousands demonstrated in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria. On Sept. 15, farmers staged an action in Prague, handing out bags of free apples and potatoes, saying that people better eat Czech-grown food now, because soon there won’t be any. These farmers are part of a network also representing farmers in Poland and elsewhere. In the UK, major strikes are set to resume in the rail, postal, docks, and other sectors—in the days after the royal funeral.
China Sets Timetable and Path for Commercial-Scale Fusion Power
The Chinese government on Sept. 14, became the first to lay out concrete steps for achieving the large-scale introduction of fusion power, through the interim development of the fission-fusion hybrid, as promoted by physicist Edward Teller during the 1980s, and the SDI program of Lyndon LaRouche and President Ronald Reagan at that time.
Beijing approved construction of the world’s largest pulsed-power plant, with plans to generate nuclear fusion energy by 2028. The reactor, Z-FFR, will be a Z-pinch hybrid fusion-fission reactor. The Z-pinch is a plasma confinement system that uses an electric current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses it. The hybrid concept tackles significant engineering challenges, i.e., materials, power conditioning equipment, and achieving certain physical conditions, without having to solve all scientific issues.
According to media reports, a presentation on the project was given by Peng Xianjue, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, described as China’s top nuclear weapons scientist. He explained that the 2028 hybrid reactor will not feed power to the grid, but will be used primarily to support the nuclear fission industry by reprocessing so-called “nuclear waste,” and processing thorium and natural uranium ore for fuel. By 2035, a full-scale fusion reactor will be producing energy for the grid.
Russia and China are the only nations pursuing this pathway.
Petro Government in Colombia Moves To Legalize Cocaine
The stated intention of the new Colombian government of Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, is to legalize marijuana and cocaine. “It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed,” Petro said in his inaugural address this month. His government will put an end to “prohibition” and start a government-regulated cocaine market, according to Felipe Tascón, Petro’s drug czar.
Colombia is the world’s largest cocaine producer by far, and is reportedly the source of more than 90% of the drug seized in the U.S. Cocaine was directly responsible for an estimated 25,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. last year. Colombian coca cultivation has tripled in the last decade, according to U.S. figures.
With the United States leading the charge internationally for drug legalization, especially beginning with the Obama administration’s de facto green light to legalize marijuana, the British-controlled Dope, Inc. apparatus in country after country is following suit. Colombia is the latest, and perhaps most significant country yet to follow this evil path.
Using arguments taken straight from the George Soros handbook for drug legalization, Tascón argues:
“Drug traffickers know that their business depends on it being prohibited. If you regulate it like a public market … the high profits disappear, and the drug trafficking disappears.… What’s fundamental is to change the way this is addressed: it’s not a problem of the drugs, but of the problems that the prohibition of drugs has created for us.”
Tascón also proposes a pro-drug alliance with the “leftist” governments of Peru and Bolivia and eventually Brazil (presuming a victory by Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s upcoming presidential elections)—although it is by no means clear that those governments agree with Petro’s approach. As the Colombian daily El Espectador reported,
“The historical coincidence [of those governments] could become the starting point to put an end to the prohibitionist paradigm and advance towards regulation, Felipe Tascón believes. He also adds the governments of Mexico (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) and Honduras (Xiomara Castro).”
From there, Tascón hopes such a regional bloc could force a renegotiation of international drug conventions at the UN.
U.S. Creates ‘Afghan Fund’ With Assets Stolen from Afghanistan
The U.S. government, the government of Switzerland, and “international partners” have set up a new “Afghan Fund” to take $3.5 billion of the $9 billion the U.S. illegally seized in November 2021 from national and private assets of Afghanistan, and combine it soon with similar Afghan monies seized in Europe. It will then make U.S.-approved disbursements outside of the control of the Kabul government, which the U.S. proclaims will benefit the Afghan people. The U.S. is retaining the remainder of the $9 billion as a contingency fund to pay claims of 9/11 victims, should they win court suits, despite some of them denouncing this intention as immoral.
The U.S. State Department release of Sept. 14 gave details and quoted Deputy Treasury Secretary Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, saying that returning Afghanistan funds to that country is “untenable” because the Taliban government is corrupt. Adeyemo’s credentials for this kind of action include his having been the first president of the Obama Foundation, and a stint at BlackRock.
The funds will be used to pay for Afghanistan’s arrears to international banks, services such as the SWIFT interbank system, electricity imports, and other costs suiting the fund managers. The Afghan Fund accounts will be kept in the Bank for International Settlements, the globalist institution infamous for its imperial origins.
Afghanistan suffers greatly from the impossibility of obtaining financial services, providing currency regulation, and other national functions since the seizure of the $9 billion, largely of its central bank assets.