EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

‘Peace and Development—A Call of the Times’

Sept. 18, 2021 (EIRNS)—The Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche, on Sept. 5, issued the statement, “Can ‘The West’ Learn? What Afghanistan Needs Now!” Aspects of the concepts she presented are now getting attention internationally. In Pakistan, multiple media are covering the Sept. 16 Kandahar Dialogue event online there, at which Zepp-LaRouche, and Hussein Askary, Schiller Institute Southwest Asia representative, spoke, on what must be done in Afghanistan and at large.

On Sept. 17th, at the Annual Silk Road Conference (online), hosted by the Central Asian Productivity Research Center, diplomats, area specialists and others, replied to questions by backers of the Zepp-LaRouche statement—on stopping sanctions and releasing frozen funds belonging to Afghanistan and other countries, and on linking up with the Belt and Road Initiative. Honorable Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in Chicago, Mr. Zhao Jian, spoke of concrete programs, to create a beautiful transformation along the trade routes of the Silk Road. It will be a “new paradigm,” he said, and quoted President Xi Jinping that, “Peace and development are the call of the times.”

Responding to the call for action in Afghanistan, which requires both immediate humanitarian aid, and launching infrastructure development, at the same time poses the necessity to admit to, and act on the rapidly declining conditions of life and productivity in the trans-Atlantic.

Look at the situation in the U.S. sphere in the Americas. Well before the latest, devastating earthquake which hit Haiti on August 14, Haitians were fleeing the unlivable conditions persisting there for years. At this very moment, Haitians make up a big portion of the surge of migrants from Mexico into the U.S., and thousands are huddled in open conditions at the border. It is reported that on Sunday, Sept. 19, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will commence airlifts to transport these desperate people back to Haiti. To what?

“We’ve got to help these people,” were the words of David Beasley, World Food Program executive director, who has been in Haiti since Sept. 16, seeing to food and other aid distribution. He tweeted videos out each day. In Maniche, he personally visited the housing wreckage, tweeting, “these families need our support to recover and rebuild.”

That is the question: Why not act sanely, with humanity and do something?

Look around us at the consequences of tolerating the green insanity, on top of decades of “traditional” casino economics. Not just soaring electricity and fuel prices and blackouts are occurring (where you have any electricity at all), but there are chain-reactions of breakdowns underway. Take the food supply. A tractor breaks down in the field during harvest, the farmer finds out, no spare part is available until who knows when. In Britain, two fertilizer plants shut down this week, because the price of their feedstock, natural gas, has spiked so high. Then the British poultry sector announced that, because of this, their output will go down 10-20% this year, among other reasons, because they will lack the byproduct from the fertilizer company, to process their chickens and turkeys. And on and on.

It is against this backdrop that the crazed, new geopolitical configurations should be seen—both the military—AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States), and the Quad (Australia, Japan, India, U.S.); and the economic alignments—the “Global Gateway” of the EU, and most triumphalist of all, Global Britain, the renewed British Empire. None other than CEO Robin Niblett of Chatham House today issued forth to pour praise on AUKUS and the new Global Britain. He wrote: “[I]n in helping Australia resolve this conundrum, the British government has revealed the versatility of its new foreign policy. Part of the reason U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson eschewed the concept of a formal foreign policy and security treaty in the post-Brexit deal with the European Union (EU) was to pursue freely new ventures such as the recent ‘G7-plus’ summit in Cornwall, and enhanced cooperation among the Five Eyes allies. AUKUS reveals that this approach can produce real results.”

To repeat: There is no substitute for real economic development and a world community of sovereign nations. Intervening to back Afghanistan is answering the “call of the times—peace and development.”