STRATEGIC ALERT NEWSLETTER
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| | | The situation on the ground in Southwest Asia has dramatically worsened over the past days. Israeli forces have escalated their operations, bombing innocent Palestinian children and civilians under the protective umbrella provided by the United States, and the West as a whole. At the same time, fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensified, with Israeli airstrikes deeper into southern Lebanon, and counter-attacks from the Hezbollah, while the United States carried out a third air attack on alleged Iran-backed militia bases in Syria. If and when the conflict spreads to Iran, it will be too late to talk of a ceasefire, and perhaps even too late to stop a global war.
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The deliberate targeting of schools and hospitals by the Israelis on top of the ban on deliveries of fuel, food and vital medicine for weeks, has led to an outpouring of protest worldwide and the desperation of international aid agencies struggling to save lives. With 12,000 Palestinians reported dead, nearly half of them are children. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who is certainly not one to be provocative, pointed out to Reuters on Nov. 8, that “every year, the highest number of killings of children by any of the actors in all the conflicts that we witness is the maximum in the hundreds. We have in a few days in Gaza thousands and thousands of children killed.” While condemning the atrocious actions by Hamas, he warned of the need to distinguish Hamas from the Palestinian people. If not, “I think it’s humanity itself that will lose its meaning”, he said.
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Meanwhile, the ground and air assaults on Gaza’s hospitals have led the agencies charged with caring for the starving and the injured to cry out in despair. UNICEF stated Nov. 10 that the lives of the 1 million children in Gaza are currently “hanging by a thread…. Over the past 24-hours, medical care at Al-Rantisi and Al-Nasr children’s hospitals has reportedly almost ceased, with only a small generator powering the intensive care and neonatal intensive care units.”
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The International Committee for the Red Cross announced on the same day that Gaza’s healthcare system is “overstretched, running on thin supplies and increasingly unsafe”. It “has reached a point of no return risking the lives of thousands of wounded, sick and displaced people.”
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WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the UN Security Council Nov. 9 that “the health system is on its knees, with no medicine, no fuel”. Since the siege, only 600 trucks with aid have been allowed in, compared to 10,000 there would have been in the past. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk spoke to reporters after visiting Egypt’s Rafah border crossing on Nov. 8, saying “In Rafah I have witnessed the gates to a living nightmare”.
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| As heart-wrenching and stomach-turning as such a reality is, it is essential to avoid being carried away by one’s emotions, as the point was made at the most recent online discussion of the International Peace Coalition, which was co-founded by the Schiller Institute. It happened to take place on Nov. 10, which was the 264th birthday of Friedrich Schiller. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in her remarks to the many peace activists participating, stressed that in such situations, it is important to step back, and reflect on a workable solution to the crisis and the means to bring it about. For that, one must rise to act on the level of the Sublime, as portrayed by Schiller in all his writings. “We need to recognize the humanity of all human beings in the world, and to act decisively.” |
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| | | Clearly, the Biden Administration is the one government in the world (outside of Netanyahu’s) that could move the most decisively to ensure a ceasefire in Gaza and put an end to the carnage. The Administration has repeatedly refused to do so, completely blowing the cover off “Western values” and morality.
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In the United States at large, however, opposition to the policy is growing, notably including “non establishment” Jewish-American organizations. They have launched a “Week of Action” using civil disobedience to demand a halt to Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
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Within the administration as well, there is a lot of disagreement, although senior officials do not admit it openly. As CNN described it on Nov. 8: “Angst, unease and outrage are spreading through corners of the Biden administration as Israeli forces show no signs of letting up their relentless attacks inside Gaza and the civilian death toll in the besieged enclave – already in the thousands – continues to climb”.
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This is reflected in an open letter circulating among employees of the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), calling on the government to declare an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, which has gathered over 1,000 signatures. It states: “we believe that further catastrophic loss of human life can only be avoided if the United States government calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli hostages, and the restoration of water, food, fuel, and electricity to the people of Gaza by the State of Israel…. In the longer term, we call on the United States government to join the international community and human rights organizations in holding all parties, including the State of Israel, to international law, which includes ending Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and settlements on occupied land.”
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From Congress, over 100 staffers stopped work on Nov. 8 to hold a vigil for the 10,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, and demand that, as reported by Common Dreams, “their bosses listen to constituents and support an immediate Gaza ceasefire”. Previously, an open letter dated Oct. 19 and signed by hundreds of Muslim and Jewish congressional staffers had urged lawmakers to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.
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From among their “bosses”, a resolution with the same demand has been co-sponsored by 17 Democrats in the House of Representatives, and 13 Senators have called for a “cessation of hostilities”. That is a very small percentage, but their number is expected to increase, as pressure from the voters grows.
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| As for the majority of Congressmen, after Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American Representative, severely criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Gaza, she was censured for “promoting false narratives”... |
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| | | As the man-made induced de-industralization of Europe is advancing in leaps and bounds, the tide is turning on Ursula von der Leyen's insane “Green Deal” policy. While the political earthquake in Germany's key state of Hesse may be a harbinger of things to come in Berlin (cf. below), other pieces of the EU green agenda are also falling apart.
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* On Nov. 9, the European Parliament approved postponement of the stringent “Euro 7” emission guidelines -- by two years for cars and four years for trucks. Along with the regulation, the “Ursula majority” in the European Parliament, i.e., the coalition that had elected von der Leyen as European Commission President, broke apart. The decision to postpone Euro 7 was voted by a majority of the People’s Party and the Liberals, as well as one-third of the Socialist factions, joining in with the opposition conservatives and nationalists.
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* Another defeat for the von der Leyen agenda is expected on Nov. 21, when the European Parliament is expected to vote on the “Re-use” new packaging regulation, which would ban, among other things, paper cups for drinks consumed inside bars and restaurants, sugar sachets, plastic bottles for hotel shampoos and shower gels, and certain packaging in which fruit and vegetables are sold. They are supposed to be replaced with washable and reusable packaging.
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The Italian packaging industry and several farmers associations that have entirely converted to the previous standard of a single-use recycling system over the past years, have mobilized to stop that regulation. A group of 40 Italian members of the European Parliament from all political parties has joined the mobilization and committed to build a nonpartisan majority to block the new regulation proposal in the European Parliament.
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* The third development does not, strictly speaking, concern the EU agenda, but it does by implication. Switzerland has decided to prolong the life of its four nuclear power plants for as long as their safety can be maintained. They now account for 40% of the country’s electricity. While a referendum held in 2017 voted for phasing-out nuclear power, the current energy insecurity has prompted a rethinking, to avoid a huge black hole in the national energy supply. Furthermore, it is said that the potential for expanding so-called renewables has been exhausted.
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Belgium and Finland are also planning to extend the lifespan of their NPPs. Finland recently completed a new one and is planning another, as are Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovenia.
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| * Last but not least, one of the pillars of the EU system, the so-called single energy market, has started to crumble, spreading panic among hedge funds and the entire financial industry, which has milked it for big profits in the past years. The German government has announced a five-year plan to subsidize energy costs for industry, designed to set the price for manufacturers at €70 per Mwh, for a cost of 28 billion until 2028. Apparently, the Commission has given a green light (or not yet given a red light), so that Italian producers now demand the same treatment. According to the daily La Verità, the Commission is rejecting an Italian request to postpone a total liberalization of the energy market in Italy. |
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| | | Ever since the drastic losses for the Greens, SPD and FDP in the state parliament elections of Bavaria and Hesse on Oct. 8, analysts have been speculating about the inevitable consequences it would have on the federal government, a coalition of the same three parties. Talk has been rife of a cabinet reshuffle, and even a replacement of the coalition is not ruled out. Indeed, momentum is growing in the FDP party base for quitting the government entirely, which is blamed for the electoral debacle in Bavaria (cf. SAS 45/23).
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Now, another scenario for replacing the ruling coalition has emerged in the discussion: a “Grand Coalition” between the Christian Democrats (CDU-CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), perhaps enhanced by the FDP. This became public when the acting CDU Prime Minister of Hesse, Boris Rhein, stated Nov. 10, that he would not continue his coalition with the Greens, but seek to partner with the SPD. That means that the Greens are out, together with some of their pet projects, such as unrestricted migration, radical ecologism harming the farmers' interests, gender policies, and preference for climate policies. The latter is at the bottom of the 10-point list of policy agreements between the CDU and SPD in Hesse, while the other three rank much higher. This, of course, only concerns the State of Hesse, but it could be a prelude to forming a new government without the Greens at the federal level as well – possibly well before the next scheduled national elections in the Autumn of 2025.
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A growing number of citizens would favor a change of government, as confirmed by an opinion poll published past week by the “Deutschlandtrend” special of the television channel ARD: 41% of those polled, are for early elections, while only 32% want the current government to remain in power. Although 62% of SPD supporters now say they are against a change, that percentage is expected to shrink in the coming weeks.
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| After all, the chairwoman of the SPD in Hesse, Nancy Faeser, is Interior Minister of the federal government, and she approved the establishment of a coalition with the CDU there. It is hard to imagine that she could have okayed the expulsion of the Greens without at least the tacit consent of SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as both of them are well aware of the political repercussions it will have for the Greens in the Scholz cabinet. Just a few days before the Oct. 8 election, Prime Minister Boris Rhein had stated that his political agenda included a return to nuclear power and to the development of thermonuclear fusion -- an absolute red cloth for the Greens! To what extent the SPD in the future Hesse cabinet would be willing to reverse its long-standing opposition to nuclear power remains to be seen, but it would undoubtedly influence a possible “grand coalition” in Berlin. There have been several closed-door meetings between SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz and CDU chairman Friedrich Merz, the real contents of which have not been made public. In the present Bundestag, CDU-CSU and SPD have a clear majority, with 403 seats against 331 for all other parties combined... |
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| | | A number of French diplomats are urging the Elysée to take a more balanced position in Southwest Asia, and regret France’s loss of influence in the Global South. The growing dissent among diplomats had already been reported by Le Monde on Nov. 8, in an article headlined “French Diplomatic Corps Is Frustrated by Emmanuel Macron’s Choices on the Middle East”. It notes that the “tensions are discreet, never openly expressed, but very real. Emmanuel Macron’s stance on the war between Israel and Hamas is causing irritation, not to say strong reservations, within the French diplomatic establishment.”
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Such pressure clearly contributed to Macron’s decision to come out in favor of a ceasefire at the humanitarian conference held in Paris on Nov. 9. He, and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar are the only western leaders to have supported such an approach.
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Unsurprisingly, as Le Monde confirms, the most criticism is coming from the staff of the North Africa and Middle East department in the Foreign Ministry. “Their frustration is heightened by the fact that, internally, the conflict is fueling the traditional rift with those who hold a very Atlanticist, pro-Israeli line. But the rebellion goes further. Dozens of diplomats are worried about the Group’s unqualified support for Israel. They fear a profound impact on France’s image and security in the years to come, and are calling for an immediate ceasefire.”
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An article by Georges Malbrunot in Le Figaro of Nov. 13, reports on the joint memo from several French ambassadors to the Middle East, who “regret Paris’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s an unprecedented gesture in the recent history of French diplomacy in the Arab world.”
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According to a diplomat quoted by Malbrunot, the ambassadors “assert that our position in favor of Israel at the start of the crisis is misunderstood in the Middle East, and that it is at odds with our traditionally balanced position between Israelis and Palestinians”. Furthermore, they note France’s “poor image in the Arab world”.
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| Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has also been active, giving many interviews and very strongly calling for France to condemn Netanyahu’s campaign of revenge and rather seek justice. |
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| | | Before participating in the Ibn-Sina Forum in Kabul (cf. below), the former Executive Director of the UN Office on Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODC), Pino Arlacchi, attended the XVI Eurasian Forum in Samarkand Nov. 3-5. On the sidelines of the event, he gave an online interview to Ottolina TV, where he touched on various subjects, including the collapsing Western paradigm, China’s foreign policy, and the suicidal course and the built-in failures of the European Union.
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To begin with the last point, the big question for Europe is whether it will follow the United States in its decline, as its current “vassal” behavior would seem to indicate. To avoid that, Arlacchi is convinced that the EU as such must undergo a profound change. The current European system, he said, “is based on the effort to create the United States of Europe”, which cannot work. The reasons he gives will be familiar to readers of our newsletter:
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“It cannot work because: 1. We are no longer in the era of large federations; 2. Europe is made of single states that can very well share common areas, coordinate among themselves, without needing a common government. This is so true, that a large part of national policies are the same. There is no need to create this supranational power, this bureaucracy that can make terrible errors and can be much more easily conditioned than the governments of single countries.
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“Therefore, we really need to rethink the basis of the European idea. We have created absurd institutions from the European standpoint: the European Court of Human Rights is the most scandalous example. The rulings of this court are not worth the paper they are written on. European countries have a very strong system to defend citizens’ rights: They are the most advanced in the world. What was the need to create this court? It was Soros who created the institution, which is paradoxical: 40% of its members are not judges, not even lawyers; they are former Soros activists who have been pushed by the Eastern European countries where Soros is strong, and have ended up in the court. The court issues abnormal rulings, very often against Italy, always against Russia, and against the weakest ones in the system.”
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| At the conference in Kabul, where he praised the Afghan authorities for the eradication of opium poppy cultivation, Arlacchi called on Europe and other donor countries to help consolidate this success. |
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| | | The Ibn Sina Research and Development Center sponsored an extraordinary conference in Kabul on Nov. 6-8, focused on the rapid economic development of the country (cf. SAS 45/23). Over 500 people attended, including officials from the ministries of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and a wide spectrum of Afghan and international experts (including 80 women). Day-long workshops took place on Nov. 7 in eight basic areas: agriculture and water, health, energy, industry and labor, credit and national banking, transportation, education, and culture.
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Marcia Merry Baker was part of the seven-member delegation of the international Schiller Institute which participated in the workshops. She filed the following report, which is taken from an article to be published in Executive Intelligence Review.
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The Kabul conference comes in the midst of progress on certain major, transformational infrastructure and related development projects already initiated by the I.E.A. government over the past two years, despite the acute lack of resources and the perpetration of sanctions against Afghanistan by the Western anti-development nations, and their seizure of $9 billion in Afghan national bank assets.
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Among the outstanding examples of development initiatives: First, the Qush Tepa Canal for irrigating 550,000 hectares, now one-third constructed in northern Afghanistan. This will enable the nation to be self-sufficient in grain when it is completed, perhaps by 2027. Secondly, the Wakan Corridor highway construction is underway, in the far northeast, to the China border, replacing an unpaved, treacherous route with a modern roadway. Third, national opium poppy cultivation went down 95% over the 2022-2023 crop season.
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Thus, the remarkable conference discussion adds to the focus and momentum of the orientation already in progress for development, under I.E.A. initiative. This process is rightly seen as that which can make “an economic miracle.” Though there has been no formal announcement, it can be said Afghanistan now ranks in the forefront, even a model in many respects, of the impetus for development expressed by the Global Majority internationally.
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Mr. Fatah Raufi, the Moderator of the three-day conference, is a founding member and one of the co-leaders of the Ibn Sina Research and Development Center, sponsor of the Kabul conference. He and fellow Afghan emigres, Daud Azimi and Mirwais Popal, soon after August 2021, initiated active discussion and support for their homeland to further its economic development in every way possible. They have worked together tirelessly on this shared goal.
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Among their principal collaborators was the Schiller Institute, whose founder and chair Helga Zepp-LaRouche had already issued a call in October, 2021, for an international “Operation Ibn Sina” effort to support emergency health care, food and interventions to relieve the immediate hardship, and to build the economy of Afghanistan at that time.
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The 11th century namesake, Ibn Sina, is the universally esteemed and beloved physician and thinker, whose family is from the northern Afghanistan region. This great Islamic figure inspires hope at a time of deep suffering after 40 years of terrible, wrongful occupation and warfare in Afghanistan.
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| In November, 2022, collaborators in the Operation Ibn Sina effort issued a 90-page report on economic development in Afghanistan, done in conjunction with the Schiller Institute, for circulation as a pre-conference discussion document, among friends of Afghanistan, inside the nation, and the world over. In the ensuing months, the Ibn Sina R & D Center was formed. |
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| | | The First Saudi-African Summit was held on Nov. 10 in Riyad, Saudi Arabia, with the principle aim of mapping out a path for cooperation in ensuring the economic development of the African continent. The event is an example of the new paradigm of cooperation taking hold in the Global South, led by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The Summit's host, Saudi Arabia, has been offered membership in the group, to take effect in January, along with Egypt and Ethiopia, which also participated in the summit.
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Given the crisis in Gaza, this, of course, became a crucial subject of discussion. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman stated that "We condemn what the Gaza Strip is facing from military assault, targeting of civilians, the violations of international law by the Israeli occupation authorities”. The joint statement adopted calls for an end to military operations in the occupied Palestinian territories and for the protection of civilians, as well as for an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
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Among the leaders of the 50 countries attending, were the presidents of Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Gabon, Malawi, South Africa and Mauritania, the prime ministers of Morocco, Ethiopia and Niger, and the foreign ministers of Mali and Egypt, as well as the Speaker of the Transitional National Assembly of Burkina Faso.
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Economically, Prince bin Salman said the King had committed to invest more than a billion dollars in development projects in Africa over ten years. Saudi Arabia is already deeply involved in 54 African nations, having invested more than $45 billion. In addition, as part of its Vision 2030 plan to overhaul the economy, the Kingdom plans to invest some $25 billion in the continent by the end of this decade. Saudi exports to Africa, worth $10 billion, will be financed and insured through 2030, while the Saudi Fund for Development will finance development projects worth about $5 billion, according to SPA. During the summit, over 50 deals and preliminary agreements were signed in various fields, including tourism, energy, finance, mining and logistics.
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| The participants also decided to set up four working groups aimed at improving and consolidating cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Africa. The first will be dedicated to political, security, and military issues, and the fight against extremism and terrorism; the second to economic issues, development, trade, and investment; the third to cultural exchanges, education, and civilizational communication; and the fourth to the human element and health. |
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