EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY JULY 19, 2022

Dutch Farmers Call for a World Action Day July 23, for Science, Food and the Future

July 18, 2022 (EIRNS)—The Dutch farmers who have been in the streets with their tractors in recent weeks, protesting the Green Reset anti-science shut down of food production, have called for support demonstrations from others around the world this coming Saturday July 23. “The World Is Going Dutch” is the title of one video posting on the call, which has the theme of non-violent action, and plays excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr., showing current protests of farmers, fishermen, truckers and others, and past scenes from the early 20th century. Farmers have held protests this summer in Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Canada, and elsewhere.

The spreading self-activation is wide open to propel action toward the new system needed as spelled out in the statement/petition circulating since June for an “Ad Hoc Committee for a New Bretton Woods System.”

In other formal venues there is profound resistance against the Green anti-science economic shutdown and its geopolitical madness threatening nuclear war.

That was seen clearly at the last two ministerial meetings of the Group of 20, leading to the G20 Summit of heads of state in November, hosted by Indonesia. At the July 15-16 meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) in Bali, hostess Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati planned for discussion on financial concerns addressing the crises of food supplies, pandemic and poverty, and instead the U.S., Canadian and Australian finance officials insisted on focussing against Russia. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Canadian Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (Ukrainian origin), demanded that Russia should not be allowed to attend G20 meetings. As a result, there was no G20 joint finance ministers statement. But Indonesia and other countries would not cave in. Minister Sri Mulyani issued her own Chair’s Summary, focussing on food security and other priority problems.

Schiller Institute leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche made the point today that the current Western leaders, rather than working on policies to end the famine and other crises, instead they react to everything with “a new blame game.”

Look at their insistence on sanctions, she said. If the sanctions were lifted, we could work out the ways to solve the shortages and problems of food, power, fuel, water, medicines, health care and all the rest.

There are significant, concrete moves in the direction of a new economic system to supersede the destructive London/Wall Street system. Russia is well on the way to establishing a new “National Oil Benchmark” price mechanism, to serve purposes of long term contracts and trade, outside pricing based on the well-known prices for “Brent Crude” or “West Texas Intermediate Crude,” subject to wild fluctuations from speculation. They serve only short-term contracts and manipulation. A Russian oil trade platform is projected to be set up by October 2022; and the new Russian oil benchmark will go into operation in March 2023.

These new Russian arrangements for oil parallel what has been newly arranged for the wheat trade, where the Russian benchmark price, in rubles, has been set for wheat—called the NAMEX Wheat Index (National Mercantile Exchange), based on the price of a metric ton of wheat for sale from the port of Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea. No more dependence on the price at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, notorious for thousands of trades a day in “shadow” bushels of grain and other commodities, allowing traders and cartels huge gambling winnings.

China has made certain critical proposals regarding capability to fight famine, as well as fighting COVID-19, and providing for overall anti-poverty success. At the G20 foreign ministers meeting July 7-8, where the clash of attacks on Russia were so extreme, it wasn’t worth Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov even staying in Bali, and given the U.S. and cohorts’ attacks on Russia, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave an extensive presentation on food security July 8. He announced that China is prepared to provide an additional warehouse and hub, based in China, for the UN World Food Programme, to be able to expand the UN response to emergency food and humanitarian needs. The WFP currently has six warehouse hubs worldwide, and handles all the logistics for the UN, from its air fleet, and truck fleet, to staff training facilities, to delivering medicines and personnel. China’s offer will vastly expand the WFP capacity, and China is proposing other concrete measures.

The point made by Zepp-LaRouche that the sanctions must be lifted, and we should get on with new initiatives to solve the crises, was underscored in remarks made today on an Indian TV program on hunger, by the Acting President of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe. He took the gloves off about the Western anti-Russia sanctions. “Do you think sanctions will help? It will only drag the prices up. ... Let us look at the sanctions that are being imposed and ask ourselves if this is necessary. The sanctions won’t bring Russia to its knees, but it will bring the rest of the third world to its knees.”