From Volume 4, Issue Number 33 of EIR Online, Published Aug. 16, 2005
Russia and the CIS News Digest

Russian Website Showcases Zepp-LaRouche 'Hit Man' Review

The widely read Russian online magazine Polyarnaya Zvezda (The Pole Star; www.zvezda.ru) on Aug. 10 added as its lead item, a Russian translation of Helga Zepp-LaRouche's "The Secret War of the Economic Hit Men." This article appeared in English in EIR of Dec. 10, 2004. In her review of John Perkins' book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Zepp-LaRouche explored the assassinations of Alfred Herrhausen and Detlev Rohwedder, as key to the wrong turn in German, European, and world policies, which dashed hopes—for that moment—of a world of sovereign nation-states emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet empire in 1989-1991.

SCO Is Model for Infrastructure and Energy Cooperation

In a commentary published in the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, and further circulated by RIA Novosti on Aug. 11, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Yakovenko emphasized the importance of cooperation in energy, transport, and other infrastructure projects among the nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, with Mongolia, India, Pakistan, and Iran having observer status. He wrote that SCO members are discussing cooperation on energy projects, a "common transportation space," education, science, and other fields. "An alliance including two global powers, China and Russia, which entered the 21st Century as strategic partners, is being built in the center of Eurasia, the heart of the planet, embracing countries with vast, mutually complementary potentials," said Yakovenko.

"Cooperation in fuel, energy, and transport may bring great benefits. Potentially, SCO members can pool their efforts in geological prospecting, and jointly develop Central Asia's vast resources," the article continued. In addition to pipelines being built from Central Asia to China, the "construction of a pipeline from Russia to China may be one of the projects of the century"—which "Russia's American partners are following ... closely."

The Russian official referred to the Eurasian transportation corridors: "The strategic significance of new transport corridors that can create totally new possibilities in regional economies is obvious. There are reasons to believe that before long, they will exert a beneficial influence not only in Central Asia but also in adjacent countries.... Eventually, this avenue of development will be the most reliable and effective instrument for overcoming current problems that have engendered, and will engender for a long time to come, inter-cultural suspicion and mistrust, extremism, separatism, and terrorism."

Yakovenko wrote that, in this context, the SCO "is a unique political opportunity, and a fundamentally new model of geopolitical integration. It embraces almost two-thirds of mainland Eurasia, uniting countries with different civilizational backgrounds. Its magnitude and diversity of interests, its trans-regional status that bring many civilizations together, are unprecedented. This new approach guarantees the future of the SCO."

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