June 5—The official Russian news agency TASS  published two articles which extensively quoted Schiller Institute chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, as an expert view on the drive by NATO for world war and the geostrategic shifts created by the rise of the Global South. In one article, “Striking Russia with NATO Weapons To Escalate to Global War—Expert,” TASS writes the following:“The use of Western weapons to strike Russian territory is fraught with an escalation of the conflict, which may acquire a global level, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of Germany’s Schiller Institute, told TASS.“Commenting on the U.S. administration lifting a ban on the use of American weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, Zepp-LaRouche wondered whether this is how U.S. President Joe Biden tries ‘to avoid World War III.’ Following a change in the position of the U.S., the German authorities also allowed the use of German-made weapons to defend the Kharkov Region from the Russian offensive, ‘shamefully again capitulating to U.S. pressure.’ Zepp-LaRouche pointed out that ‘Russia announced asymmetric responses to this escalation.’“‘The biggest danger is that the Western establishments have talked themselves into believing that Russia is only bluffing, while they think they can continue to “boil the Russian frog.” Meanwhile, Prime Minister Victor Orban said on Radio Kossuth today, that Europe is preparing for war against Russia. If this insane trajectory is not stopped, we will have Armageddon shortly. The alarm bells must ring loudly for everyone to hear,’ she emphasized.”Another article, “Global South Turns Away from Harmful Neoliberal Model, Builds Own Mechanisms—Expert:“The Global Majority countries have turned away from the neoliberal model that is harmful to them, and they are working on their own financial mechanisms in beneficial cooperation with BRICS member states, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, told TASS.“‘We are experiencing right now the end of a period of 600 years of colonialism. The Global Majority, which represents more than 80% of the world population and 70% of the world’s GDP, is moving to build a new economic system based on a win-win cooperation and the Five Principles of Peaceful Cooperation,’ she said. Those principles include mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.“The Global Majority countries ‘are working on their own financial mechanisms, which allow them access to credit for development to build up their own industrialized economies,’ the expert said. ‘If the countries of Europe and even the U.S. would be reasonable they would open to cooperate with these countries as growing future markets, and all problems could be solved easily,’ Zepp-LaRouche noted. Meanwhile ‘the pro-Atlanticist elites are completely unwilling to accept the fact that the disarray of the world order is the blow-back of their own policy,’ she stressed.“‘The reason why the Global South has turned away from the neoliberal model is that it is harmful to them and they have now a much more advantageous option in cooperating with China and the BRICS in their effort to overcome underdevelopment and become middle level income countries in the near future. These establishments demonize Russia and increasingly also China. They are presently in a full delusion about the world and have talked themselves into believing their own narrative,’ she concluded.” 

June 5—Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat,  was interviewed on Judge Andrew Napolitano's "Judging Freedom podcast June 3 on  “How the West Must Change”  discussinf the current threat of a nuclear war. Crooke spent nearly 30 years in the British Foreign Office, working on Mideast problems.Crooke pointed out the absurdity of U.S. President "Sleepy Joe" Biden’s statement that he had authorized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to deploy U.S. missiles against Russian territory only for short-term purposes, since the U.S. had been allowing the Ukrainians to use U.S. missiles for short-term targets for a year already: “Now for the moment, just to be clear what the Russian position is. They’ve said, ‘Okay, we’re engaged in a conflict just over the border with Kharkov … and there will be cross-border fire.’ In fact, this [cross-border fire] has been going on. Again, this is another piece of show—this great statement from NATO and from the President of the United States, that: ‘we’re going to allow non-long-range missiles to be used by the Ukrainians to defend themselves from attacks that are coming from just over the Russian border.’ [The Ukrainians] have been doing this for a year. They have been using Storm Shadow and HIMARS and firing them into Russia on the border area.”Crooke then reported on what President Vladimir Putin is actually saying, and how, were NATO to continue not to listen to Putin, and mis-deploy missiles, there will be nuclear war. He stated: “What is so important that Putin has said, and must be understood, is that: ’we can probably assimilate that [short-term missiles], and can live with that. But, if you use long-range missiles, cruise missiles, to attack deep inside Russia, and against strategic targets of ours, then there will be a strong response against it, and that response will not be confined to Ukraine, but can take place in any other part of the world, from which we determine that that attack originated, i.e., the missile attack. And he made it clear that this is not just where someone actually pushed the button, and sent the missile off, but the whole panoply of support for missile attacks into Russia, i.e.., the engineers, the NATO technicians that set up the missile, the NATO infrastructure of satellites, of AWACS planes that provide the data and do the targeting and send the coordinates, and that the whole process is done by NATO.“And then [Putin] says: ‘you can’t say that you’re not party to this war. I mean, you are deeply, deeply involved with it.’ And the warning is: ‘you do this, and there may be a response.’ Let me translate this. He is saying, we are prepared to risk, if you like, an Article 5. If you do this, we might for example—he has not threatened this, I’m not saying this will happen, but it’s talked about—there is this big Western logistics base just over the border in Poland. Huge logistics, that’s where a lot of the logistics and a lot of the training is. Something, for example, something like that might be hit with conventional forces. And then [Putin] poses the question: ‘what then does the United States do?’ Does it escalate further? And that’s when we get to the point of people worrying about tactical nuclear weapons. Because then Russia or someone, certainly one Russian official who is not part of the government, but has high standing, has suggested that that’s the point—and the West will be warned—that if they want to take the next step up the ladder, then it will risk the use of tactical nuclear weapons against them.“This is a very serious moment in our relationship with Russia. And people don’t seem to notice it.”

June 5—The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) will convene June 5-8, under the theme of “The Formation of New Centers of Growth as the Cornerstone of a Multipolar World.” It is expected to draw nearly 17,000 participants from 136 countries and territories in the proceedings, and more than 3,000 companies will be represented and join in the seminars.The SPIEF, has held conferences annually since its founding in 1997, and since 2005, the Forum has been held under the auspices and with the participationof the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. It is also one of the organizations whose intent and activity melds in with the direction and purpose of the BRICS, and the creation of a new, world development-based order.Special Eurasia Geopolitical Intelligence and Risk Assessment intelligence group reports June 3 that guests will be attending from “Abkhazia, Azerbaijan, Africa, Venezuela, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, EAEU and ASEAN member states (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Lao P.D.R., Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam).” In previous conferences, the guests from the United States, Germany and other European countries had participated prominently, but this year there is no indication about their current attendance.The SPIEF business program (B20) will hold meetings and workshops on four sub-themes, “1. Transition to a multipolar model of the world economy; 2.The Russian economy: goals and objectives of a new cycle; 3.Technologies providing leadership; and 4.Healthy society, traditional values, and social development—priorities of the state.”Kazakhstan, a long-time and active SPIEF participant, indicates the long-term development that is taking place. At last year’s forum, Kazakhstan and Russia extended intergovernmental agreements on the transit of Russian oil, increasing volume to 10 million tons until the end of 2033. Russia-Kazakhstan trade grew to $28 billion in 2023. Currently, businesses from both countries are executing 135 projects valued at $26.5 billion, with projects being developed in key sectors such as mechanical engineering, metallurgy, and the chemical industry. These joint projects are expected to create 11,000 jobs. Furthermore, the Eurasian railway project, which links Russia, Kazakhstan, and China, will improve Asian transport infrastructure. In addition, the Astana government announced on June 4 that China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction (NFC) will construct a copper smelter in Kazakhstan. To be constructed near the village of Aktogay, the proposed smelter will entail a preliminary cost of $1.5 billion. It will lift Kazakhstan out of the status of being solely raw materials exporter, to be able to process its own ore.Russian Putin will give the keynote address, and his greeting is posted to the homepage. Several top Russian ministers, including Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov, will attend. Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s senior aide, said that Putin “will address national, industrial, and technological projects, digitalization issues, private business, stimulation of scientific and technological progress. Of course, as he fields questions, the President will answer, I think, numerous questions on international issues, including those related to Ukraine,” said Ushakov. 

June 4—Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who on June 3 was taken off his scheduled flight to Istanbul, en route to St. Petersburg, Russia, by Customs and Border Patrol agents, on orders of the State Department who seized his passport without explanation, called a special broadcast of  his “Ask the Inspector with Scott Ritter,” Episode 65 to inform his tens of thousands of supporters of the strategic import of the outrage. Ritter made immediately clear that the attempt to silence him will backfire, as he seized the opportunity of the injustice to brief his audience of the importance of BRICS and of the State Department’s complicity in setting up opponents of war to be hit.(Mistaken reports were circulated yesterday that Judge Andrew Napolitano was also removed from the airplane along with Ritter. That has turned out not to be true: Napolitano was on a different flight and canceled his trip for different reasons.)He announced the special broadcast on his site: “The seizure of Scott Ritter’s passport is just the latest tactic employed by the U.S. State Department designed to muzzle him about Russia. The State Department organized and funded the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, which has labeled him an ‘information terrorist,’ and remains silent while he and other U.S. citizens are marked for death by Ukrainian intelligence.”Ritter reported that he had been scheduled to speak at the June 5-8 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) and at the Moscow Conference on International Security in August, as part of a longer trip whose purpose was to help stop a war, possibly a nuclear war. The State Department is targeting the BRICS, he exclaimed. He explained that he was one of several Americans invited to participate in SPIEF, which, with its thousands of participants, will be a precursor, a “launching pad,” for the BRICS conferences taking place this year in Russia. He was going to speak against “the rules-based order” and speak of the transition to a multipolar world through the BRICS. The State Department is desperate to stop that, he said. The U.S. and NATO are “losing the whole world—everyone wants to join the BRICS!” The only thing the U.S. offers nations is “to lick the feet of the G7,” and who wants to do that?Ritter located the decision to stop his trip as an extension of the U.S. State Department’s financing of the Zelenskyy regime’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), which issues “kill lists” against opponents inside and outside of Ukraine. He was a number over and over again on the CCD’s list, he said, and is also on the Ukrainian kill list, Myrotvorets. Diane Sare, Helga Zepp-LaRouche of the Schiller Institute, Ray McGovern, and others are also on them. Ritter was specific: The accusation that those on the lists are Russian “information terrorists” who should be treated the same as any other “terrorists,” is a serious threat. Ritter noted that the U.S. regularly assassinates “terrorists,” and named several Russians and Ukrainians who had been assassinated by Ukrainian government operatives after being placed on the lists. He said he had challenged the State Department to a debate, “but they don’t want to debate—they want to kill you,” for using freedom of speech.Ritter asserted that he will continue to do whatever necessary to carry out his plans to visit Russia with a message from the American people to the Russian people that we can have peace instead of war. He did just that on the June 4 podcast "Judging Freedom," with Judge Napolitano: “The command centers that Russia uses were conceptualized and constructed during the Soviet Union, when Ukraine was part of the Union, and, from a Russian perspective, they were deep in the Russian rear, protected. But if Ukraine now is carved out and made part of NATO, and you insert American missiles there, all of these places that were thought to be safe in the rear are now reachable. And if America allows Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles to strike these facilities, Russia will nuke NATO! Not Ukraine—NATO!… The Ukrainians are complaining that the United States will only allow them to use the HIMARS, that they won’t be allowed to use the ATACMS to strike Russia yet. But, just so everybody in your audience understands, we are one ATACMS launch away from everybody dying. We are one ATACMS launch away from everybody dying. The Russians aren’t playing games here.”

June 3—On June 2, China’s Chang’e-6 spacecraft landed on the Moon’s far side for a second time, and, for the first time, will soon start collecting rock samples from the oldest lunar basin to bring back to Earth.The Chang’e-6 lander successfully touched down in the northeastern part of the South Pole-Aitken basin at 06:23 China Standard Time on June 2 (22:23 UTC, June 1; 18:23 EDT, June 1), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced. The lander will soon go through initial checks and begin using its robotic arm to drill and scoop up materials from the lunar surface, which are expected to weigh up to 2 kg.Once returned, they will become the first samples ever retrieved from the Moon’s mysterious far side, which always faces away from the Earth.Entering lunar orbit on May 8, four days after its May 3 launch, the 8.35-ton spacecraft—which consists of a lander, ascender, orbiter, and return capsule—had been circling the Moon since then, looking for the best spot and time to land.On May 30, the lander and ascender separated from the orbiter and return capsule. The lander then fired its 7,500-Newton-thrust engine to slow down and began to descend from about 15 km above the lunar surface.In this process, the cameras on the lander snapped photos of the landing area and transmitted them to computers on the lander to identify possible hazards on the surface, such as large rocks, so that the craft could maneuver to avoid them.At about 100 meters above the lunar surface, the combined vehicle suspended its descent and hovered for a moment to conduct accurate detection of smaller obstacles and determine the final landing spot before continuing to descend at a slower, steady speed.As the craft came to just several meters above the surface, it shut off its engine and touched down on the lunar surface, making China now the only country to have soft landed on the far side for a second time.While the mission has been getting scant attention from the Western press, on May 3 hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens lined the beaches of Hainan to view the launch. The return material will be a major scientific boon, with researchers having a look at matter that has been continually bombarded from the surrounding cosmos, and perhaps giving us a greater clue to the development of the Earth itself.The sampling will occur over the next two days, after which Chang’e-6 mission will begin the journey back. It should reach the Earth by the end of June.