From Volume 8, Issue 10 of EIR Online, Published Mar. 10, 2009
Russia and the CIS News Digest

Clinton, Lavrov Off to a Good Start

March 7 (EIRNS)—While much of the news coverage focussed on a translation gaffe, the March 6 meeting in Geneva between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appears to have been a start towards "pushing the reset button" on U.S.-Russia relations. Clinton said afterwards, "It was a very productive meeting of the minds," centered on common interests, as well as "frank exchanges" over issues disputed between the two countries. Lavrov said he had a "wonderful relationship" with Clinton, and added, "We did not agree on everything, of course, but we agreed to work on every issue."

U.S. officials gave an account of the two-hour dinner meeting that was very different from then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's first meeting with Lavrov in 2005, in which Lavrov presented a long list of complaints. Instead, according to these officials, Lavrov came in saying he wanted to search for ways to work together with the United States.

Yakunin Again Quotes LaRouche Prediction Of World Crisis

March 4 (EIRNS)—Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin again named Lyndon LaRouche as the "very rare" economist who predicted the collapse of the world financial bubble. The remark came in a Feb. 17 address Yakunin made at the London School of Economics. Last Fall, Yakunin told Kommersant business daily that he had known of the coming crisis years in advance, because of the warning he received from LaRouche.

Yakunin's presentation was on "Russian Railways as the Locomotive for the Russian Economy," but he focussed on the economic crisis and its national and international effects. His approach was to examine the flaws of economic science, and LaRouche was the only economist he named, in describing how "very rare" it was that anyone predicted the crisis coming. Denouncing the inability of professors and politicians to account for the crisis, or even what the impact of current anti-crisis measures will be, Yakunin said that the "origin of the crisis and instability of markets is being explained only post facto. Only very rarely was it predicted."

Later, Yakunin said: "We should try to understand what is happening now: and I quote: 'The economy of the soap bubble type has been formed, and will burst sooner or later, if the needle touches the bubble. A destructive explosion will happen.' These are the words of the American Professor LaRouche, ... an alternative professor, some may know him here. He is a very controversial figure, but he was right to say this fact."

Yakunin also criticized George Soros's geopolitical analysis of the "conflict" between Russia and the United States, in Soros's Vedomosti articles in February.

LaRouche responded that Yakunin's remarks were of interest, but that they also showed that leading Russians do not understand the American System of political economy. They are operating on a different track, including a belief that economic processes involve cycles which are "objective" and not subject to policy intervention.

'American System' Videos Appear in Russian

March 2 (EIRNS)—A LaRouche page recently set up on RuTube, the Russian version of YouTube, is now featuring Russian-dubbed segments of LaRouche's January webcasts, which are being viewed by scores of people daily, and copied to other locations. An additional feature is a Russian voiceover of an October 2008 LPAC-TV short on "Roosevelt vs. Keynes," which efficiently demonstrates that when London says "New Bretton Woods," it's a monetarist scheme that doesn't mean what FDR did. Its appearance is timely, since it highlights British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's phony financial reform antics.

This is the first of a series of Russian voiceovers which will be made available on RuTube and the LaRouche movement's Russian site, www.larouchepub.com/russian, to bring to life the suppressed concepts of American System economics, which were well known to leading Russian thinkers like Dmitri Mendeleyev and Sergei Witte a century ago, but are kept out of the picture today.

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