EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR MONDAY JULY 25, 2022

Africa Welcomes the ‘Black Sea Grain Initiative,’ as Lavrov Takes on ‘Illegitimate Sanctions’ Blocking Russian Grain Exports

July 24, 2022 (EIRNS)—The African Union Commission issued a statement late July 22, welcoming the “Black Sea Grain Initiative” signed that day by representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN. This year’s AU Chairman Mackey Sall, President of Senegal, said he had gone to Sochi to meet with President Putin June 3, with this very same appeal for opening grain shipments, and for a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine. Sall thanked all heads of state and the UN for their involvement in this new agreement on foods and fertilizers.

Now Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is on a tour in Africa, beginning today in Cairo, and proceeding on to Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Speaking to media in Cairo, (in Russian) he denounced “those illegitimate sanctions that were imposed [against Russia] and that prevented operations with Russian grain, including insurance, including the calling of our ships at foreign ports and foreign ships at Russian ports,” reported TASS. He described the context of this as “connected with geopolitics, which is connected with the West’s policy to ensure its dominance in international affairs.” He said Russia’s “Egyptian colleagues” understand all this, and he spoke of what is required to build “a sustainable European security architecture on a fair basis,” based on “taking into account the fundamental, legitimate interests of all participants” in a peaceful settlement.

Lavrov met one-on-one with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and presented him with a message direct from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lavrov also addressed the permanent representatives of the 22 member nations of the League of Arab States, 10 of which are in Africa. A delegation of the Arab League had gone to Moscow in April, headed up by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who also met today with Lavrov, after which their respective delegations met in a working session.

The content in all these meetings, among various strategic matters, included basic mutual interests concerning oil, gas, nuclear power, food, and health care. For example, earlier this month, Russian construction started on Egypt’s long-awaited nuclear power project at Al Dabaa.

The continuing U.S., U.K., EU, and Five Eyes foreign policy of sanctions is more and more conspicuous as the geopolitical killer intervention it always was. For example, impoverished Afghanistan, as it moves to restore its agriculture functioning, has tried to resume its legendary specialty exports (nuts, dried fruit) to China, and traditional markets in other neighboring countries. But Afghan shipments to Iran have had their Iranian payments back to Afghanistan blocked, because of the U.S. sanctions. Multiply this by thousands of cases.

The U.S. sanctions against Cuba have been in place since 1958! Washington calls this a foreign policy “tool”? It is an attack.

The same economic attacks on nations’ sovereignty have been done systematically for decades, even without being rationalized and codified as official sanctions. The cartel commodities wing of the City of London/Wall Street system has intervened in various ways—from finance conditionalities, to “intellectual property” patent rights, to death threats—to determine and dominate what gets produced where, what is exported and imported, and so on, from food to metals to manufactured goods. Now this crowd is using global warming to try to dictate production cuts and depopulation. This, too, is now being conspicuously exposed. This destructive system is failing and ready for replacement by a new world economic framework, as the Schiller Institute is mobilizing for.

Look at a singular trans-Atlantic initiative in this direction. The leadership of the largest U.S. independent cattlemen’s action group R-CALF USA, on July 21 announced support for the Dutch farmers protesting the government/cartel/green mandates to cut their food production drastically by 2023, in order to meet crazy anti-nitrous emissions and run-off targets. This was not a pro forma farmer-to-farmer support statement, as R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard even referred to. Bullard said that his organization has in the past strongly opposed Holland, and its push to export its beef into the U.S. Plus, the Netherlands is “ground zero” in the world of green World Wildlife Fund networks. But, R-CALF USA states, the Dutch farmers’ fight is critical for food production everywhere. “We urge all Americans to join with us in admonishing the Dutch government’s action and to stand in support of Dutch farmers.”

The Netherlands at present is the second biggest foodstuffs exporter after the U.S.—in money terms, which came about because the Anglo-Dutch cartels concentrated high productivity agriculture here, under their control, and kept it away from Africa, Asia and the Americas. Now the cartels want to shut it down. Farmers, with international support, say, No. We need more food. More farmers. Double food production!

Thus, reality and new initiatives, despite the intense danger of nuclear annihilation, are ever more favorable to a new world economic and security architecture.