U.S. Complicit in Afghan Opium-Linked Deaths

Since 2001, some 400,000 deaths globally can be linked to U.S./Coalition-complicit Afghan opium production. A report titled "U.S. Coalition-Linked Global Drug Deaths" has been sent to virtually all Federal Australian Parliamentarians and numerous state parliamentarians, the Arab TV station Al Jazeera said Oct. 26. The report was prepared by Dr. Gideon Polya, an academic based in Melbourne.

According to Al Jazeera, under the Coalition, by 2004, the Afghan opium-poppy acreage had jumped to 67% of the world total, and Afghan production was 86% of the world total. The U.S. and its Coalition allies (notably the U.K. and Australia) have a clear complicity in the rapid restoration of the Afghan opium industry, which had almost been eradicated by the Taliban. The report claims the objective of the Afghan opium industry is to dominate the world opium and heroin markets.

The report concluded that the "war on terror" involved gross violations of the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

China Promises Help To Crush Indian Maoists

Speaking to the Indian media on Oct. 26, Chinese envoy to India Sun Yuxi said if there is any assistance India expects from China in ridding India of homegrown Maoists, "We will try to do our best." He said Beijing does not even know why the Maoist guerrillas in India call themselves followers of the man who led the communists to victory in China in 1949. "We are also wondering why they call themselves Maoists. We do not like that. We do not like that at home. We do not have any connection with them at home...."

Ambassador Sun said that it is likely that many of the Maoists possess Chinese weapons, as reported in the Indian media over the years. He explained that China had supplied a lot of weapons to the anti-Soviet Mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan during the 1980s, in cooperation with Pakistan and the United States. "A lot of them were lost in the black market, and they spread everywhere. Even some Chinese terrorists were trained in Afghanistan. They went back with the Chinese weapons and they waged terrorist activities inside China. So, we are very sorry to see that. If there is anything that we can help to stop them [Indian Maoists], we would do it."

Indonesian Banks for Sale Cheap

The Oct. 31 issue of Business Week gloats over the fact that Indonesia is facing bankruptcy, especially due to the oil price spike, and must finish the sell-off of its private banking sector to the synarchists. Business Week begins by asking: "Want to buy a stake in an Indonesian bank? You're in luck. Over the next few weeks financial officials in Jakarta say they will move swiftly to sell off the government's majority shares in three of the country's largest banks, all nationalized in the late 1990s." This refers, of course, to the aftermath of the 1997-98 destruction of the Indonesian economy by the hedge-fund speculators, and the conditions imposed by the IMF, which demanded that the Indonesian government cough up $44 billion to bail out the banking system, nearly all of which went to paying off dollar-denominated debts. The re-privatization will go almost entirely to foreigners, netting the government about $4 billion, which will not even pay one year's deficit—about $5 billion, due mainly to the oil price. Business Week adds: "The government's motive for the sell-off is simple. It desperately needs the money."

Nearly every major Indonesian bank is already majority foreign- owned. The three now on the block will remain 51% government-owned—for now.

Rift Between China and Japan Over Koizumi Shrine Visit

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei Said it's "very difficult" for China's head of state, President Jiang Zemin, to meet Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, even in a third country, at global summits, as the nations have done in recent years, due to Koizumi's recent repeat visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, around which are buried some of Japan's principal war criminals from the Second World War, including Tojo. China, of course, was one of the chief victims of Japanese imperialist attack in World War II.

Wu said it was unlikely that a summit would be held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea next month or the East Asia Summit in Malaysia in December. This would be the first such breach between the leaders of the two nations since the annual group summits began.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is now "unlikely" to visit Japan as scheduled in December and may cancel his other summit with Koizumi, set for the East Asia Summit, Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura in Tokyo Oct. 27. Koizumi's Oct. 17 visit to the war shrine "trampled on the feelings of the Korean people," Ban said. "A visit to Yasukuni Shrine is unthinkable if [Japan has] the right perception of history." China has already cancelled the China-Japan leaders' summit for December.

LaRouche Economic Proposals Quoted by Korean Website

Under the headline "Don't Ask About the Dollar," with the kicker "Asian Governments must have the courage to stand up in public and say that a new global system is urgently necessary," South Korea's new "Peacemaking" Internet magazine cites Lyndon LaRouche's Oct. 5 advice to a Korean finance ministry official, in their English and Korean-language editions. Excerpts follow:

"Do not ask 'What shall we do about the dollar?'" LaRouche said Oct. 5. Asian governments must understand: There is "no 'business as usual.' You can't defend your currency, or ... dollar assets, using the usual technical methods." This appears under a photo of Alan Greenspan with Koizumi in Tokyo Oct. 17.

"Money markets have been in a drunken party for two decades, but the party is over," LaRouche said. "The 'usual monetary and foreign exchange methods' are what the drunks discussed at the party. But, it's over," he stated. "The derivatives markets are bankrupt.... Ignore what monetary economists say; forget explanations based on 'money.'"

America will undergo the same kind of collapse as the Soviet Union, very soon, if we don't force it to change policy, LaRouche said. "We're going into the worst crash in all modern history, worse than 1929, because we repeated the 1929 crash, in 1987," LaRouche said. "Since 1987 ... we have been spending our way with imaginary money and now the U.S.A. is totally bankrupt. Every major bank in the world, essentially, in Europe and the Americas, is bankrupt right now.

"We are facing a worse hyperinflation of the dollar than the German mark had in Weimar Germany of the 1920s. This is based on the huge dollar-volume speculation in derivatives by hedge funds and others, which is causing further speculation in oil, copper, and other raw materials across the world. It will echo in every part of the global economy."

"We could save the system," LaRouche said, "but only the way Franklin D. Roosevelt did in 1932. The only way to solve the U.S. dollar crisis, is not to discuss the dollar, deficits, or money—but to get to the root of the problem. We must fix the long-term disaster in the underlying physical economy and infrastructure of the USA—which is falling apart.

"We must have bankruptcy reorganization and re-regulation to accomplish a reverse shift of the 'post-industrial' paradigm. We must put the Federal Reserve System into bankruptcy reorganization by the government, and force the private banks to keep their doors open and rebuild.

"Asian governments should call for an international conference to create a New Bretton Woods system. In addition, we must have a clear, publicly stated shift away from the 'post-industrial paradigm,'" he said.

America's allies in Korea, Japan and China have the right to ask for this. Without a major "New Deal" in the USA, the dollar will head down soon—leaving Japan, China, and Korea to pay all the bills.

"No 'Asian Currency Unit,' no regional system will work," LaRouche also insisted—as shown by the collapse of the Euro. The European Union and the Euro are already a terrible failure, because you can't solve a global problem, on a local basis."