EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2021

Infrastructure for World Health Security—Feasibility Shown in New Kunming-Vientiane Rail Success

Dec. 3, 2021 (EIRNS)—The importance of the Schiller Institute’s emergency Dec. 4 web conference “Omicron: Urgent Need for World Health System” is underscored by the continuing flow of reports of Omicron’s wide presence, even as its exact features are still under study. New cases are reported ranging from the boroughs of New York City, to Hawaii to Australia and points in between. The World Health Organization met today, and issued an advisory to redouble the defensive measures already prescribed to diminish transmission of other well-known variants of SARS-CoV-2. The occurrence of such a variant as Omicron was predictable, and was predicted early in 2021 by virologists, if no concerted world action were taken.

The needed action to combat the virus has been outlined repeatedly since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and collaborators, most recently in the Nov. 23 international call by Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon-General, directed to enlist medical experts to help provide leadership. There must be multinational collaboration for emergency measures to save lives—vaccination, treatment, humanitarian aid, and at the same time, steps for launching in-depth construction of infrastructure for health systems in all nations, to end the conditions fostering pandemics.

This is a new paradigm, which demands new economic and financial measures to carry it through. The LaRouche Four Laws, involving Glass-Steagall banking reorganization, plentiful and directed credit, and science drivers, are a core part of the mobilization required. The entire “Green” agenda is to stop such a mass regroupment of humanity.

The feasibility of this new paradigm is dramatically shown today, in the opening of the beautiful Kunming-to-Vientiane railway, from southwest China to the capital of Laos. This 1,035 km span was a technological feat, and along with that, it is a key part in the Pan-Asian railway, which will connect mainland Asia, through Indochina, all the way through the Indonesian archipelago. A large ratio of the total track runs on bridges and through tunnels in the mountainous tropics. It has the longest bridge in the world, which at one point is 54 stories high. Not only does fencing protect wildlife, but overpasses are built for elephant migration.

China’s President Xi Jinping today addressed the opening ceremony by video, stressing that Laos is no longer a landlocked country, but now will be a land-linked hub for the entire region.

The technological success and purpose of this grand new rail line demonstrate that the feats involved in establishing hospital systems for every nation, and the infrastructure platforms to support them—power, water, transport, and staff—are not insurmountable tasks, any more than the rail line was. What is required is to defeat what’s standing in the way—the dead financial system, now blowing out in hyperinflation and breakdown, and to put in place the new system prioritizing human beings, nations and development.

The ugly and very dangerous geopolitical side of the dead imperial networks was hyperactive throughout this past week, through three sets of multinational meetings. The shrill denunciations of China and Russia barely stopped at calling for war. NATO foreign ministers met in Riga, Latvia Nov. 30-Dec. 1; the OSCE met Dec. 1-2 in Stockholm; and the U.S.-EU Dialogue on China met in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2-3. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg outdid themselves to call for NATO to stand ready against likely “Russian aggression.”

Co-hosts of the U.S.-EU Dialogue on China, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Secretary-General of the EU’s European External Action Service Staffano Sannino denounced China for many imputed infractions, such as bullying Lithuania and mistreating Uyghurs. Speaking today at a Brookings Institution event on the Indo-Pacific, the pair praised the new U.S.-EU Dialogue on Security and Defense, which will meet in early 2022, and was announced by Blinken and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell.

Moreover, Sherman and Sannino said that the respective initiatives of Biden’s B3W (Build Back Better World) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Global Gateway are “complementary,” and will compete against China’s Belt and Road Initiative. What did they offer to show for this? Nothing. Sherman could only assert that together, they will exert “collective strength” because they will work in partnership with India and the Quad.

Even Victoria Nuland, now the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, got into the act. She addressed the Kiev Security Forum by video on Dec. 1, which happened to be on the second day of the NATO confab. Famous for her direct role in violent regime change of the Ukraine government in February 2014, Nuland said to Kiev: “All of the NATO allies were in solidarity with Ukraine today, and making clear that we are resolute in supporting your independence, and we are also resolute in sending the message to Moscow that if it moves again to internally destabilize Ukraine or use its forces to enter the country that it will be met with high impact economic measures the likes of which we have not used before from all of us,”

To cap things off, new sanctions were announced yesterday against Belarus targets, by the U.S., Britain, Canada and the EU, which congratulated each other for doing so.

Above all this din, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who met with Blinken on the sidelines of the OSCE conference, said very sternly that Russia is preparing proposals for how NATO must limit its expansion toward Russia. This is a follow-on to President Vladimir Putin’s Nov. 18 explicit statement that this must be done, given when he addressed a meeting of his foreign service officials.

This is the context in which multinational collaboration against the pandemic and famine is, at the same time, action to stop the geopolitical madness, now promoting confrontation to the point of war. Be sure to attend and make use of the Dec. 4 emergency Schiller Institute conference and ongoing mobilization.