Copenhagen:
They Tried Nazis At Nuremberg, Didn't They?
by Nancy Spannaus
Dec. 14As the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change (COP15) enters its decisive second week, the depopulation policies of Britain's Prince Philip, who, in his own words, wants to be reborn as a deadly virus in order to better assist in reducing the world's population by 80%, have now virtually been placed on the agenda in Copenhagen. One official after the other, including U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson, is putting forward the thesis that it is population growth which is causing the alleged threat of global warmingleaving one to draw the conclusion that it is by reducing population, that the problem could be resolved.
The argument itself is a fraud, just as much as that of Britain's Parson Thomas Malthus was two centuries ago, and as is the now-exposed pseudo-science behind so-called anthropogenic global warming. But the organizers behind the COP15 are determined to ram it through, by getting agreements for a de facto global dictatorship to police and reduce carbon emissions, until they reach the level of the ``pre-industrial'' age. At a pre-industrial level of technology, mankind's population must be reduced by billionsgenocide! ...
This Week's News
U.S. Economic/Financial News
Dec. 9 (EIRNS)At a conference in Sussex, England, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker stunned an audience of bankers by challenging them to come up with one example of a positive effect of derivatives. At the conference "Future of Finance Initiative," organized by the Wall Street Journal, Volcker noted ironically that the "single most important" contribution of the financial sector in the last 25 years has been automatic teller machines, which, he said, had at least proved "useful." He said that credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations had taken the economy "right to the brink of disaster" and added that the economy had grown "at greater rates of speed" during the 1960s without such products.
When one banker suggested that Volcker did not really mean that bond markets and securitizations had contributed "nothing at all," he replied: "You can innovate as much as you like, but do it within a structure that doesn't put the whole economy at risk."
Volcker said that banks do have a vital role to play as holders of deposits and providers of credit. This meant that they should be "regulated on one side and protected on the other." He said that riskier financial activities should be limited to hedge funds, to which society can say: "If you fail, fail. I'm not going to help you. Your stock is gone, creditors are at risk, but no one else is affected."
Volcker challenged the audience: "I would like one of you to give me the example of one single so-called innovative financial product that has produced benefits for economic development. I am sorry, but the answers you offered seem to me inadequate."
Dec. 11 (EIRNS)Thirty-one Senators, 13 of them Democrats, have signed on to Sen. Kent Conrad's Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action bill (S. 2853), the vehicle being promoted for cutting the deficit, especially entitlements. Should this bill be enacted, it will do nothing at all to solve the fiscal crisis of the United States, but would be a declaration of intent for a Schachtian dictatorship.
The whole concept of the bill is fraudulent, because the reality is, the international financial-monetary system is bankrupt. The answer is very simply: Under our Constitution, we put the U.S. components of this international system into financial reorganization, and we apply Glass-Steagall standards for commercial banks, to the reorganization of the system. The effect of this will be to wipe out many essentially fictitious claims, so the Congress will no longer have to worry about paying fictitious claims, and, with a credit system in place, we'll be back to generating wealth.
Instead, Conrad et al.who are trying to hold the rise in the debt ceiling hostage to their billcall for establishing an 18-member commission with super-audit powers over the government, with the mandate to complete a report on conclusions and recommendations for legislative action, by the period of Nov. 3-9, 2010. The report is then to be submitted to the Houses by Nov. 15, and voted onunder strict rules prohibiting points of order, substitutions, filibusters, amendments, and likely by no later than Dec. 23, 2010. A 60% majority of what, it will be noted, is a lameduck Congress, is required for passage.
Global Economic News
Dec. 12 (EIRNS)Writing in the Italian daily Il Giornale yesterday, "Lisbon-Skeptic" anthropologist Ida Magli, called for nationalizing the Bank of Italy. Magli states that "sovereignty belongs to the people" as established by the Constitution, and therefore governments should regain control over monetary sovereignty. "Since bankers tell us that state debt is too high and must be reduced, this is not possible without increasing taxes or eliminating some of the most precious social protections; since banks are starting to fail again (but in reality had never ceased to fail) and lead us to disaster; since it is evident that such an obviously pathological system has come to its extreme consequences, we must put an end to it. It will not difficult to convince Italian rulers, as they have already manifested a dissatisfaction for the situation which is almost equal to ours."
Dec. 9 (EIRNS)The Federal Statistics Office of Germany reports today that industrial output dropped 1.8% in October from September, with construction down 2.4%, energy production at -3.4%, and machine-building slipping 7.6%.
The Dubai crisis will hit companies in construction and construction equipment especially hard. For example, DEMAG, Germany's leading producer of cranes, already had a drop in sales by 50%, and in new orders by 40%, for the period September 2008 to September 2009. The firm's net profit fell from EU81 million to EU1.2 million, and the management said yesterday that the Dubai crisis will scare off even more buyers of DEMAG equipment.
Also, the port of Bremerhaven, the world's biggest for import-export of cars, reports a drop in shipments by 40%. Nearly all exports of cars made by Daimler, BMW, and a larger share of cars made by Volkswagen, are handled in Bremerhaven. Net profit of the port is expected to be between EU10-15 million only, at the end of 2009, as compared to EU84 million at the end of 2008.
Dec. 9 (EIRNS)Behind downgrading of the Greece's sovereign debt by Fitch, and the lowering of Standard and Poor's outlook for Spain to "negative," announced today, is the bankruptcy of the euro system, including the European Central Bank and the entire European banking system. In fact, the euro system has been kept afloat so far by sovereign states, which have provided every bank with collateral to obtain liquidity at the ECB. Not only have EU member states bailed out large banks, loading those banks' debt onto their budgets, but the very notes issued by those states have been purchased by banks and used as collateral to get ECB loans!
The euro financial system is an empty shell which can break apart at any moment if a sovereign debt, such as that of Greece, Ireland, or Spain, is forced into default. However, if a state defaults, it can start again the next moment. Not so a private or even a central bank.
On Dec. 8, Fitch downgraded Greece's debt from A- to BBB+, which means that, if the ECB keeps its promise to tighten collateral rules at the end of 2010, those government bonds will no longer be accepted as collateral. In reaction to the Fitch action, the stock exchange in Athens dropped 6.1% on Dec. 8, with the National Bank of Greece, the country's biggest lender, losing as much as 10%. Greece has about EU700 billion of combined foreign and state debt outstanding, of which EU47 billion is currently used as collateral at the ECB, according to the Royal Bank of Scotland. EU officials are increasing pressure on the Greek government to take draconian measures in order to reduce the deficit, which stands at about 13% of GDP. Greece "must take courageous decisions," ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet told the European Parliament in Brussels on Dec. 7.
Both the New York Times and Spiegel Online ran articles Dec. 8 warning of a default in the eurozone as a concrete possibility, mooting that to avoid economic meltdown, a member country could opt out of the European Monetary Union.
The British spin on the threat of sovereign defaults is, of course, to look at it from the standpoint of the monetary system, i.e., as if states were bankrupt and as if the private monetary system, the source of money creation, were the only agency that could bail them outon condition of total national surrender and economic destruction. In this context, for the first time, Moody's dared to question the "resiliency" of the U.S. sovereign debt rating, raising the specter of a downgrading in the not-too-distant future.
United States News Digest
Dec. 11 (EIRNS)The latest Senate version of "Obamacare" is supposed to be completely sealed from the public on Senate Leader Harry Reid's orders; but nevertheless, some incredibly filthy things are leaking out.
First, in the section entitled "No Annual or Lifetime Limits," HMOs are now authorized precisely to put annual limits on their coverage for serious, chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. This makes a liar, yet again, out of President Obama, who has promised just the opposite in every speech he has given on health care since last Spring. "Obama lied again, and yet again, and again!" Lyndon LaRouche exclaimed.
In another part of the latest Obamacare deal, an insurance source reported that the Medicare premiums for people who may be allowed to "buy in to Medicare" at 55-64 years of age, may be set as high as five to six times the premiums paid by 65-and-over seniors; and the benefits are likely to be less than seniors receive. Although the number of people who "buy in" might be only a few million, these higher premiums and lesser benefits could be used to exert a downward pull to restrict costs on Medicare as a whole.
Dec. 9 (EIRNS)The frustration erupting now against President Barack Obama within the Congressional Black Caucus is not just about mass unemployment and Wall Street bailouts, but also against the tsunami of foreclosures devastating urban and suburban neighborhoods, and Obama's failure to stop them. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) recently warned that "the basic elements of civilizationwork, food, shelterare being lost" in the inner cities; other members of the Caucus have boycotted financial legislation of the White House and of "Bailout Barney" Frank, to protest the depression toll.
The President, immediately after taking office, rejected foreclosure moratoria and bankruptcy reorganization of banks, as economist Lyndon LaRouche had proposed, and many city and state governments had supported. The "Make Home Affordable" plan Obama went with on Feb. 17 instead, a banks-and-lenders-approved set of baby steps, has failed in the face of 1.2 million home repossessions this year. Not quite as badly Frank's Hope for Homeowners legislation, which helped a total of 49 households during all of 2008but failed nonetheless.
"This program is not working," reported Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, chair of a Congressional review panel which examined it. It has failed to dent the still-rising foreclosure wave, which will hit 3.6 million homes in 2009. Only about 10,000 homeowners received permanent loan modifications under the Obama plan.
About 250,000 homeowners have gotten trial modifications, lasting only five months, and supposed to reduce mortgage payments to 31% of the household's income. But two-thirds of those have been unable to produce the voluminous paperwork needed to satisfy the bank and the government that they "deserve" a permanent modification; and worse, 25% of them have already defaulted again on the mortgage during the short trial period. With mass unemployment, people can't afford 31% of their income on a mortgage, or their income has fallen further again since the modification.
Dec. 8 (EIRNS)The State of California plans on cutting 52,000 low-income women, or 16.4%, from a program that provides free mammograms, beginning Jan. 1, 2010. The State's Cancer Detection Program, "Every Woman Counts," released plans for the cutbacks due to "unprecedented fiscal challenges." Details of the plan include a temporary freeze in new enrollees until July 1, 2010, when a new age requirement of 50 years will be implemented. Women who have had a problem detected will continue to receive services until a final diagnosis and any needed treatment has begun. The Jan. 1 cut-off date has created a scramble for health staff at clinics across the state to schedule screenings for as many women possible, for the remaining days of 2009.
The decision to deny mammogram screenings to women 50 and younger comes after a recent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force report concluded that most women in their 40s don't need to be screened. The stark similarity between the Obama Administration and a Schwarzenneger-led California, confirms that what Lyndon LaRouche identified as the Nazi, "lives not worthy of life" policy, in dealing with the financial crisis, is well underway across the United States.
Dec. 8 (EIRNS)Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) is preparing a letter of criticism for President Barack Obama that is "so serious," that the President has to reply in writing, Conyers told the Washington insider newspaper, The Hill, in an interview published today. Conyers says, "[Obama] called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn't anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues. And he said, 'Well, lets talk about it.' " But, after Obama's speech announcing the sending of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, Conyers said that he is in no mood to "chat."
Conyers bashed Obama's policies on health care and the Afghanistan War, stating, "I'm getting tired of saving Obama's can in the White House," when he appeared on the Bill Press radio talk show. Conyers not only defended his previous statements, but went beyond them, further angering the White House.
"I've been saying I don't agree with him on Afghanistan, I think he screwed up on health-care reform, on Guantanamo and kicking Greg [Craig, the White House counsel] off....
About Afghanistan, Conyers said: "[Obama's] calling in generals and admirals to discuss troop strength is like me taking my youngest to McDonald's to ask if he likes french fries."
Conyers, head of the Judiciary Committee, is also opposing the White House over the extension of the Bush/Cheney Patriot Act, and recently "sent around a Dear Colleague letter" to a bipartisan list of lawmakers, asking them to join his "newly formed Peace and Progress in Afghanistan Caucus." Conyers also told the Detroit Free Press that Obama is getting "bad advice from ... clowns" on Afghanistan.
Dec. 8 (EIRNS)It's not just Wall Street having a meltdown: So is Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). He can't take criticism any better than Barack Obama can, and he's in for some tough times as the mass strike ferment against Wall Street grows. In a Dec. 4 Newsweek story headlined "Why Is Barney Frank So Effing Mad?", reporter Michael Hirsch writes how Barney went nuts against him, and eventually threw him out with an "Interview's over!" half way through. Frank was paranoid from the start. Hirsh writes, " 'How dare you!" [he] says. 'How dare you accuse me of lying!' I am up on Capitol Hill ... and Frank is growing agitated as I ask about the influence of the banking lobby on the House Financial Services Committee...."
Later, another explosion: " 'Are you trying to catch me in some lie?' Frank retorts. 'You think I put [the committee vote on his reform bill] off for the big banks?' " Hirsch says, "Actually, I hadn't said anything about the big banks...." Finally, when Hirsch questions "how tough he's going to be on Wall Street's cash cow, derivatives trading, he's had enough. 'This interview is over,' Frank says, as if banging down a gavel."
Ibero-American News Digest
Dec. 11 (EIRNS)One day after drug cartel hit-squads launched simultaneous attacks on a half-dozen sites in three cities of the Mexican state of Sonora, including throwing fragmentation grenades at the headquarters of the state attorney general, the statewide newspaper, Diario de Yaqui, published on Dec. 10 a declaration issued by the Permanent Rural Producers Forum, which identified the narcoterrorism hitting Mexico as a weapon of British imperial strategy to force "full capitulation" upon the nation.
Today, the statement by the Forum, well-known as being led by associates of Lyndon LaRouche, was also covered by the Sonoran daily Expreso.
What is happening to Mexico is like the British Empire's 19th-Century opium wars against China, the Forum stated. The drug trade is "nothing but an extension of, and front for, an irregular war against the sovereignty of nation-states," with "the British Empire's financial agent, George Soros," as point man.
The Forum charged that Mexican President Felipe Calderón and the majority of the members of Congress have capitulated to the enemy, adding that "the majority of Mexico's political forces has given up on defending the nation and its sovereignty, in the face of this criminal deployment by imperial financial interests which uses the drug trade."
The drug cartels "are only the shadow of an imperial strategy which uses the drug trade as an instrument for the moral and economic destruction of the nation," they point out. Therefore, any battle against the cartels must be accompanied by an economic policy based on great infrastructure projects such as the PLHINO, to rebuild the nation's physical capability for economic growth, restore hope, and thus create the conditions for peace.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)In an action that benefits the British Empire's agenda of polarizing Ibero-America around orchestrated "left-right" conflicts, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez sponsored the founding on Dec. 7-9 of the Continental Bolivarian Movement (MCB), a collection of leftist and terrorist groups from around Ibero-America, explicitly backed by Colombia's narcoterrorist FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).
This group's creation is a deliberate provocation to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, the only Ibero-American President to seriously battle the drug cartels. The FARC's top leader Alfonso Cano sent a video to Caracas welcoming the MCB's founding as an "unpostponable duty" to combat "U.S. imperialism" in the region. Immediately afterward, he was named to the MCB's "collective presidency."
On Dec. 11, MCB executive member Narciso Isa Conde justified the FARC's inclusion in the group's leadership by stating that the MCB decided "not to discriminate against any form of struggle" in Ibero-America, thereby demonstrating respect for "diversity"! Peru's terrorist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) has also joined the MCB.
Uribe responded to Chávez's Caracas show by ordering an investigation of MCB members in Colombia, and their possible detention on grounds of being "accomplices to terrorism." He demanded that Venezuela state its position vis-à-vis the MCB, since support for the FARC means defending the atrocities it has committed against the Colombian people, and democracy.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)Bolivia is one of the poorest nations in Ibero-America, and its embrace of the climate change swindle will ensure it stays that way. President Evo Morales, who will attend the UN's climate conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 17-18, will propose to the summit that April 22 be declared an international "Mother Earth Day."
Morales also backs a proposal to set up an international criminal court which would try governments that commit "ecological crimes."
During a Dec. 9 press conference in Copenhagen, members of the Bolivian delegation declared that "the Earth has rights too." It must be freed "from slavery," which indigenous leader Rafael Quispe defined as "contaminating and life-destroying capitalism." Quispe warned that global warming has already produced "climate refugees"people who've been forced to flee their homes due to the disasters that global warming has alledgedly caused. Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solón, warned that the capitalist system "has broken with nature's harmony."
To demonstrate the need to respect "the rights of nature," members of the delegation opened up a package of coca leaves and began to chew.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)"The United Kingdom has led a small group of countries, including Mexico, Norway, and Australia, to try to find a compromise on funding emissions cuts in poor countries," boasted the City of London's Financial Times today. "Their proposal, which originated with Mexico, would see all countries, including big emerging economies such as China, and excluding only the world's poorest nations, pay into a fund that would be disbursed to the most needy," the paper wrote.
Lyndon LaRouche charged that Mexico was being used by the British to split the developing nations at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Mexico has "sold its soul," LaRouche stated.
The proposal was initially made by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the recent Commonwealth meeting in Trinidad and Tobago. Other developing-sector nations, led by China and India, have demanded that if developed nations want the developing nations to cut carbon emissions, they will have to provide technology and funding. In the tradition of Austrian monarch Maximilian von Hapsburg, who was imposed as Emperor of Mexico (1864-67) by Napoleon III, this proposal aligns Mexico with the genocidal Prince Philip and the shriveling Queen Elizabeth against the rest of the developing-sector nations.
Western European News Digest
Dec. 15 (EIRNS)Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was severely injured on Dec. 13, in an attack by an individual who, at close range, threw a heavy metal statuette in his face. The Prime Minister was greeting a crowd after a political rally in Milan; he suffered a broken nose, broken teeth, and other injuries to his face, and was immediately hospitalized.
The perpetrator, Massimo Tartaglia, is a deranged individual with a ten-year history of psychiatric problems. Tartaglia is also an unpaid activist of the WWF, the genocidal "environmentalist" hitmen created by Nazi Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Britain's Prince Philip. Tartaglia had participated in a WWF chapter meeting the evening before the attack, his father told journalists.
Lyndon LaRouche demanded to know: "Who pulled Berlusconi's security? A Prime Minister of a major nation, and he does not have the security to protect him from a known threat? ... My personal question on this is, where was the Prime Minister's security on this incident? Was his security withdrawn in order to set him up? It sounds like a dirty trick by somebody. I'm not an admirer of Berlusconi, but after all, he is a Prime Minister. And you don't subject a Prime Minister to a withdrawal of security, in present times, unless you are a dirty guy behind the scenes. Did some British influence set up Berlusconi to be hit by this guy, a known freak?"
LaRouche suggested that the assault "sounds like a British attack on the Papacy," and may be related to the threats and blackmail that the British and the Nazi WWF are using at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, to try to impose their depopulation policies globally.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)The EU dictatorial institutions, scared by the threat of a Greek default, are increasing their pressures on the Greek government for Schachtian austerity measures. Such measures, however, are incompatible with democratic regimes. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou stated, yesterday, that "The financial crisis threatens the sovereignty of the country" for the first time since 1974, when the military dictatorship was overthrown.
Does Papandreou mean that in order to avoid a Greek default, the EU could promote a military coup? At the moment, the EU is putting a knife in the back of the Greeks, but the Greeks have their knives at the EU's throat, with the threat of defaulting. In an interview with Le Figaro, Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, who will meet with his French counterpart, Christine Lagarde, on Dec. 15 in Paris, attacked the behavior of rating agencies and made it clear that the government budget plan, which will be ritually presented at the EU in January for approval, cannot be too hard. The plan is to freeze new hirings in the public sphere, and to replace only one out of five employees who retire, Papaconstantinou said. "We are also considering reforming the pension system, but we will not abandon our efforts to improve spending on health and social security." Otherwise, "we will do all everything necessary to avoid assistance from the IMF."
Bundesbank president and European Central Bank governing council member Axel Weber warned yesterday in Frankfurt that if Greece does not make the necessary structural "reforms" within this year, the ECB might decide to no longer accept Greek state bonds as collateral at the end of 2010. Weber's threat is a complete bluff. If the ECB rejects Greek bonds as collateral, the euro system will collapse. It has been reported that French and German banks alone own about EU200 billion in Greek bonds. In reality, Eurocrats are worried that a Greek default could leave those banks, and the entire system, belly up. Some economists close to Financial Stability Board (FSB) head Mario Draghi therefore propose to create a "protection belt"not for Greece, but for banks. "It would be opportune to build now, already, a protective belt for Greek banks, as concerns liquidity needs," writes Angelo De Mattia in Milano Finanza today.
Dec. 12 (EIRNS)The budget cuts now being implemented by the Irish government could lead to mass strike action in what promises to be a Winter of discontent. Strikes could take place by police, teachers, and civil servants who have suffered deep salary cuts.
Policemen have had a EU200 a month cut in their salaries and are now deciding whether to launch a strike, which would be illegal. Teachers' salaries have been cut by 20% since last March, and another 6.5% cut was announced this week. Deep cuts have been implemented in the social welfare system, especially for the disabled. Britain's Guardian reports that the discontent could lead to the collapse of the coalition government between Fianna Fail and the Green Party led by Brian Cowen.
Dec. 11 (EIRNS)Many more of Her Majesty's subjects will be dying over the next five years, as the British government prepares major cuts in the National Health Services (NHS). The Independent writes that "slash and burn" budget cuts are being disguised in the Department of Health's new "vision" for the NHS over the next five years, under the Orwellian title of going from "good to great." While the talk is of increasing the NHS budget by £3.7 billion over the next three year, the plan would require the creation of "efficiency" savings of £15-20 billion in order to maintain the current quality of services. This includes only a 1% increase in general salaries, but a pay freeze for doctors and senior staff. The "vision" calls for a 30% cut in administrative costs.
The Independent writes that these "efficiency" cuts will "cause unavoidable pain." This "vision" also calls for freezing the hospital "tariff," which is the money the hospital trust receives for taking care of patients under the Primary Care Trust. This appears insane, since the PCT is the base of the health system, and presumably draws on the Hospital Trusts when necessary, paying for that service out of the PCT budget.
The NHS cuts are part of a projected 13% cut in the public sector over the next two years.
Dec. 6 (EIRNS)When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown went to pay respects to injured Afghan War soldiers being treated at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, England, more than half closed the curtains around their beds and refused to speak to him.
The Dec. 6 Sunday Telegraph reports: "Furious about equipment shortages and poor compensation for their injuries, one soldier said, 'It is almost as if we are the product of an unwanted affair.... He has done nothing for us.' "
Dec. 7 (EIRNS)Lyndon LaRouche's video address to the Dec. 3-4 Moscow conference, "Let the Earth Live! From the Clash of Civilizations to Their Cooperation," is making waves in Russian political circles; hundreds of people are watching his speech and that of Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche on RuTube. The event was co-sponsored by the Russian Anti-Globalist Resistance and the Academy for Geopolitical Studies, which is headed by former Russian Defense Ministry international department head Gen. Leonid Ivashov (ret.).
An Anti-Globalist Resistance press release highlighted Lyndon LaRouche's presentation, demonstrating his fame within Russia as the person who forecast the current crisis. After reporting that the conference was opened by Sergei Baburin, former vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma and now rector of the Russian State University of Commerce and Economics, the release continued: "The well-known American economist Lyndon LaRouche, famous for having forecast the economic crisis over 30 years ago, addressed the conference by video, and he not only identified the main causes of the crisis and the pathway out of it, through creating a new financial system with participation from the strongest groups in the world. He also once again provided a long-range forecast: the shift of the center of world relations from the Atlantic zone to the Pacific, and even flights to Mars as a possible common goal for the Earth's inhabitants." (LaRouche's and Zepp-LaRouche's speeches appeared in EIR of Dec. 11.)
Speaking next, General Ivashov discussed the erosion of national sovereignty in today's world. He also reportedly traced the history of imperialism, including the rise of the British and Dutch financial centers out of Venice. Ukrainian Progressive Socialist Party leader Natalia Vitrenko addressed the afternoon session, which began with the playing of Zepp-LaRouche's videotaped remarks.
A resolution adopted at the conference called for "radical measures to change the financial system in the world," through a "New Bretton Woods" which would determine new exchange rates. Unlike the current Schiller Institute appeal to "Place the LaRouche Plan on the World Agenda" (which the Russian Anti-Globalist Resistance has publicized), the conference resolution failed to distinguish between a monetary system and a credit system, or to identify physical economic development projects for implementation. It named China, Russia, India, and the U.S.A.the same four powers whose action LaRouche identifies as crucialas countries which should convene such a conference, but added Brazil to the list.
The conference press release has been reprinted on several Russian websites, including the blog of Maxim Kalashnikov, an advocate of high-tech reindustrialization of Russia, whose blog President Medvedev recently instructed his chief of staff to study. The website of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation reported on the conference, including the fact that the LaRouches had addressed it. Zepp-LaRouche's assertion, "As long as the European countries are stuck in the corset of the European Union, Europe has no chance to overcome this crisis," has been picked up on Russian-language Internet discussion forums based in the Baltic countries, which are EU members.
Some Russian leftists were destabilized by LaRouche's optimistic call for Mars colonization as a shared mission of mankind. Darya Mitina, a 36-year-old Russian Communist Youth League figure, flipped her wig over LaRouche's speech in her blog, ranting against both the Mars perspective and LaRouche's differentiation of the American "not monetarist" system from the system of British imperialism. Mitina is coming under fire for this, as one reader demanded: "If you're going to attack LaRouche like that, why don't you report what he said?"
Dec. 8 (EIRNS)India and Russia emphasized strategic relations, especially "in the Asia Pacific region," in their Joint Declaration, signed in Moscow Dec. 7 by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Singh was in Moscow for the two nations' annual summit Dec. 6-8.
In addition to their breakthrough agreement on civilian nuclear energy development, in "an unanticipated development, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intensive engagement in the Russian capital with President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led to understandings of immediate and long-term nature to access the vast Russian resources in eastern Siberia and far eastern Russia," The Hindu reported. The immediate focus is on oil and gas development. The two sides will also expand cooperation in infrastructure development and in advanced medical technologies and nanotechnology, areas set by Medvedev as key for breaking Russia out of its dependence upon oil and other exports.
The sides note the "growing efficacy of close multilateral cooperation in the Asia Pacific region in the 21st Century," the Joint Declaration states. They welcomed the enhanced Russia-India-China trilateral discussion, as well as the BRIC group, which includes Brazil. Russia called for India's full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and India welcomed its own increased involvement, with other SCO Observer states, in that organization.
"This is breaking the Commonwealth," Lyndon LaRouche responded today.
Russia also called for Indian membership in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), and for India to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
The Declaration states that, no matter what "stakeholders" and other international organizations globalization has thrown up, "a modern state is the main tool for reconciling public interest with securing the rights, freedoms and interests of individual citizens, and continues to be the basic building block of international relations, amidst the radical changes in the world." Medvedev and Singh traced the relations between the two nations back to 1947, after India became a republic.
The nations will expand cooperation against terrorism and the "illegal narcotics infrastructure in Afghanistan."
Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told the press, on the return flight to New Delhi, that the visit had been "extremely successful and very, very productive by any definition," emphasizing the civilian nuclear agreement and three defense pacts.
The Russian press greeted Singh's visit with enthusiasm. Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote that the Russian-Indian nuclear deal "does not contain such limitations as a similar U.S. agreement. In fact, it holds a possibility of Russia becoming the most important supplier of fuel for Indian nuclear plants." Although no details of the agreement have been released, and there has been no confirmation from the Indian side, Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Rosatom, the state nuclear corporation, told Vedomosti daily that "Russia could build up 20 reactors for nuclear power plants. It is not just billions, it is tens of billions of dollars." Vedomosti added that "India is becoming the largest foreign partner for Rosatom," Russia's nuclear power agency.
Dmitri Orlov, general director of the Agency of Political and Economic Communications, told actualcomment.ru, that the agreement "will work for the development of Russian technologies. The agreements with India in the civilian nuclear sphere demonstrate that our technologies have found a market abroad. This interest stimulates scientific developments in the country and makes concrete profit for a federal budget."
Dec. 9 (EIRNS)Despite repeated warnings by Russia and Iran to Washington over the years, about the havoc caused by post-U.S.-invasion opium production in Afghanistan, President Obama's speech at West Point carefully avoided the drug issue. Subsequently, in hearings in the House and Senate, neither the questioners nor the administration witnesses paid even scant attention to this menace.
On Dec. 8, Russia's Director of Federal Drug Control, Victor Ivanov, told CNN that his country is bearing the brunt of this trade, and that more must be done to crack down on poppy cultivation within Afghanistan. He has called on the United States to use its troop surge into Afghanistan to help stem the flow of drugs crossing the border to Russia, as heroin addiction reaches epidemic levels. Ivanov suggested that the U.S. use herbicides to defoliate opium crops from the air, pointing out how successful this had been with coca in Colombia. "According to UN data, in the past year 75% of coca plants have been destroyed," he said. "This can be attributed to the defoliation method. It is the most effective method, and I'm surprised that we are not using it in Afghanistan."
In June, Richard Holbrooke, Washington's top envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a crony of drug legalization advocate George Soros, told reporters at a meeting of G8 nations in Trieste, Italy: "The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work." "We are not going to support crop eradication. We're going to phase it out," he added. Holbrooke's statement was an explicit rejection of an offer made by Ivanov at the end of January, that the U.S. and Russia make the joint war against drugs a central aspect of their collaboration.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)This is the title of an article published in the influential Saudi economic daily Al-Eqtesadiya on Dec. 9, by columnist Mohammad ben Fahad Alomran. His answer is "Yes!" He discusses the history of the Glass-Steagall legislation (without mention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt), and how indispensable was this "most important legislation regulating the banking sector for not only the United States but for most other countries in the world." Alomran laments its repeal in 1999, due to "pressure on Congress practiced by investment banks in order to allow them to compete with commercial banks in trading with derivatives and other types of speculative financial transactions that led to the worsening crisis we live through today and [will] for years to come."
He writes: "What we are interested in here in the Kingdom is to outline a clear separation between commercial banks' activities and those of the investment banks, which unfortunately today are allowed to deal with derivatives and securitizing financial paper for the purpose of hedging and speculation." He concludes: "This means we are in dire need for something similar to Glass-Steagall to reduce the risks for the depositors and to remove the commercial banks away from the competition of the investment banks."
This article was republished in other Arabic media and on Internet sites, including on the site of Al-Arabiya TV, a Saudi-financed satellite channel in Dubai.
The context for this type of article, although it is not stated explicitly, is the British pressure on the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates to bail out British banks that have been exposed in the Dubai bubble, and covering Saudi banks that have been speculating in this bubble. The Saudis seem to be split over whether to comply with British demands or to try to save their own skins. However, intelligent discussion of this type can help certain factions to get a clear picture.
Dec. 7 (EIRNS)Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan parted ways with his U.S. hosts during his meetings today in Washington, on the question of Iran's nuclear weapons. While saying that nuclear weapons should not be developed in a region as volatile as the Middle East, he also underlined that if "we say 'no nukes,' other countries must also do the same," referring to Israel's nuclear weapons. He also countered the falsehoods that had been circulated regarding his recent visit with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, saying that the accusation that Turkey was now "turning East," was simply not true, but that Turkey's foreign policy has always been "multi-directional."
He used the occasion to also lambaste Israel for its bloody attack on Gaza early this year, and criticized the EU's efforts to keep Turkey out of its ranks.
Erdogan met with President Obama and Obama's security team, where all of these questions were undoubtedly discussed. The Obama Administration wants to keep the support of Turkey, the only Muslim power in its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations in Afghanistan. Turkey took over the lead in the NATO ISAF operations last month, but its 1,750 troops are not to take part in combat, as Erdogan does not believe Muslims should be fighting Muslims. Obama has "upgraded" the U.S.-Turkish relationship from a "strategic relationship" to a "model relationship," a new category of created precisely for this particular circumstance.
Dec. 9 (EIRNS)A terrorist attack killed seven Turkish soldiers on Dec. 7. Turkey has been attempting to resolve regional conflicts orchestrated by the British, and investigators should look for a British hand pulling the strings of the terrorists who committed this act.
The Turkish government has also continued its crackdown on the Ergenekon terrorist gang which had penetrated the Turkish military and security apparatus. This British-controlled network is on trial for planning more than one coup against the state, running terrorist groups, and being involved in the drug trade.
The attack occurred in the province of Tokat in north-central Turkey. No group took responsibility, but it is believed to have been the work of the far-left Revolutionary People's Party/Front, the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist, and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).
Dec. 14 (EIRNS)American neoconservatives are rejoicing over President Barack Obama's two recent speechesat West Point and in Oslo, Norwayin which he announced a 30,000 troop increase in Afghanistan and defended his decision as a "just war." Obama's concept of "just war," as spelled out in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, embraced the idea of humanitarian interventionism and preventive war. The neocons and their British allies are wasting no time, demanding that the President prepare the way for military action against Iran.
The call for war on Iran was spelled out by William Kristol, in the Dec. 21 issue of the Weekly Standard, under the title, "A Nobel War Speech? Did Obama Lay the Groundwork for an Eventual Strike Against Iran?" After praising Obama's Oslo performance as an endorsement of the "Bush Doctrine," Kristol wrote: "Reading Obama's speech could lead one to wonder whether this president, who had been committed to engagement with Iran, has decided that engagement has failed and is moving toward pressure and sanctionsand that he has in the back of his mind the possibility that the United States, 'acting individually,' might have to use force to stop the Iranian nuclear program."
The same call to arms against Iran was issued by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who penned a Los Angeles Times op-ed today, titled "Hit Iran Where It Hurts." She called on the Administration to cut off all funding of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until it suspends Iran. She demanded that Congress pass the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which she co-sponsored, imposing sanctions on any countries or agencies that provide refined petroleum to Iran. She demanded that President Obama sign the bill into law before the end of the year.
For their part, the British are now claiming to have discovered documents about an Iranian "trigger program" for a nuclear bomb. Today's London Times, under the banner headline, "Secret Document Exposes Iran's Nuclear Trigger," reported, "Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb. The notes, from Iran's most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons program." The story quoted Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London: "The most shattering conclusion is that, if this was an effort that began in 2007, it could be a casus belli. If Iran is working on weapons, it means there is no diplomatic solution.... Is this the smoking gun? That's the question people should be asking. It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium."
The article gloated: "The latest leaks in a long series of allegations against Iran will also be seized on by hawks in Israel and the U.S., who support a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities before the country can build its first warhead."
Dec. 12 (EIRNS)Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has finally admitted what was obvious all along: The invasion of Iraq was about regime change. In a BBC interview to be broadcast on Dec. 13, interviewer Fern Britton asked Blair: "If you had known that there were no WMDs [weapons of mass destruction], would you still have gone on?" Blair replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove" Saddam Hussein. He explained the threat represented by Saddam "was obviously the thing uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region. Also the fact of how the region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way."
The Guardian speculates that Blair is changing his tune because of his scheduled appearance next month before the investigating team of Privy Counsellors known as the Chilcot Inquiry. The Inquiry has already heard testimony that Blair was more interested in regime change than WMDs, from former members of his Cabinet. Lord Goldsmith, who was then Attorney General, warned Blair in July 2002 that "the desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action." Others have testified that Blair told George W. Bush during an April 2002 meeting that the British would support military action to bring about regime change.
Dec. 8 (EIRNS)Gen. Barry McCaffrey (USA-ret.) delivered a blunt assessment of the Afghan policy just announced by President Barack Obama, in a widely circulating "After Action Report" on his Nov. 10-18 visit to Kuwait and Afghanistan, where he met with scores of American military officers, Afghan government officials, and U.S. diplomats. McCaffrey's Dec. 5 report, available on his website, www.mccaffreyassociates.com, and delivered to the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, began by dismissing any notion that the U.S. will withdraw from Afghanistan beginning in 18 months. "This will," he warned, "inevitably become a three- to ten-year strategy to build a viable Afghan state with their own security force that can allow us to withdraw. It may well cost us an additional $300 billion and we are likely to suffer thousands more U.S. casualties."
General McCaffrey's report, while supporting the need for a sustained U.S. and NATO presence, painted a very stark picture of the challenges facing the occupation forces. He made one crucial point that has been otherwise missing from the entire Afghan "policy review" and Congressional debate, so far: You cannot succeed in Afghanistan without eradication of the opium crop. "The $3.4 billion opium crop of 7,700 metric tons (2008)," he wrote, "produces weapons and supplies for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, corrupts the police and civil authorities, diverts land from food (2 million drug workers), and has addicted a significant percentage of the population. Left unaddressedthe heroin menace will defeat our strategic goals in this campaign. Afghanistan is now the most damaged narco-state on the face of the earth. There are at least 920,000 drug users.... A new UN study will soon suggest there may be as many as two million drug users." McCaffrey concludes: You must destroy the opium crop. "Without [that], nothing will work. Other nations have successfully addressed the drug issue: Thailand, Pakistan, Bolivia (until Morales), Peru, and to some extent Colombia (the traffic moved south to non-government controlled areas.)."
From 1996-2001, McCaffrey was President Bill Clinton's Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, from which position he pressed for an aggressive war on drugs, and publicly opposed the efforts of dope legalizer George Soros.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)China's railways yesterday ran a successful test of the new 1,000-km Wuhan to Guangzhou high-speed rail line, the longest and fastest, at close to 400/km per hour, in the world.
This is more than a technological breakthrough for China: It could become a breakthrough also for the U.S., Russia, and India. "A successful operation of the high-speed railway of more than 1,000 km will help demonstrate China's technological strength ... and appeal to countries like Russia, India and the United States, which also have broad territories and a plan for building high-speed railways," Yang Hao, professor in railway transport at Beijing Jiaotong University, was quoted by China Daily today.
China Daily also cited a railway technology expert saying that the railway is more demanding on train manufacturing technologies than China's first, 120-km, high-speed rail link between Beijing and Tianjin.
Japan, which, after China, has the longest high-speed network, has some 2,500 km of line altogether. China plans to build 13,000 km by 2012, of which 8,000 km will run at average of 350 km/hour. By 2020, China will have 16,000 km of high-speed rail lines. The network will link 70% of China's cities.
Already, airlines are growing worried that they will not be able to compete with the more convenient, city-centered, and less expensive rail lines, although Prof. Zhang Ning of Beijing University told Global Times that the two transport sectors will, in the longer term, integrate planning to optimize national transport in China.
During the test run, the trip from Wuhan, through three cities which are the industrial and technology capital of central China, and to Guangzhou on the southeast coast, took only three hours, down from over ten. It should open to the public before the end of December.
Not only has China signed an agreement to build high-speed rail lines in Russia, but from the United States, GE signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Rail Ministry on Nov. 18, for the two sides to jointly develop technology to build high-speed rail lines in the United States. This would enable the U.S. to become competitive with both Japan and Europe.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)China and India are coordinating policy on the Copenhagen climate-change lunacy, in the closest international cooperation on a major issue that these two nations have achieved in 45 years. As pressure from the advanced sector and the British Commonwealth increase, the two nations, representing 2.4 billion people, have stepped up their cooperation.
Today, after a public fight in Copenhagen between Obama's representative Todd Stern, and chief Chinese negotiator Yu Qingtai, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao telephoned Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and, separately, Brazilian President Lula da Silva. "The three leaders all expressed willingness to enhance coordination and cooperation to deal with climate change," Xinhua reported.
The Indian press was more direct. "Amidst talks of divisions in the G-77, over demands from the small island nations, India and China today closed ranks," the Hindustan Times reported. "The two leaders will press ahead with a joint strategy." The Indian Prime Minister's Office (PMO) announced that "the two leaders agreed that the two sides would keep in touch with each other." A PMO source told The Hindu, referring to the Danish text of the proposed agreement: "The host seems to be playing some game as it is reflected in the draft text that they have prepared. The two leaders discussed strategies to strengthen cooperation among developing nations on the eve of the meet."
The Hindustan Times added that "members of the two negotiating teams hold bilateral meetings at regular intervals to work out a joint strategy."
Dec. 12 (EIRNS)Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Kazakstan today, and joined by Kazakstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, symbolically pushed the start button of the Kazakstan section of a pipeline that will deliver Turkmen natural gas to China's western Xinjiang province. "This pipeline will be beneficial for all of our countries. It is a promising, strategic project," Nazarbayev said at the ceremony. "With the launch of this pipeline, the ancient Silk Road has been restored," he added. On Dec. 14, Hu, Nazarbayev, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, and Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov will attend the official opening of the 7,000-km pipeline in Turkmenistan.
Dec. 10 (EIRNS)Asia's two most populous nations continue to lead the way in Asian collaboration with Africa. India and Sudan signed an agreement in New Delhi Dec. 8 to pave the way for increased oil production and exploration and infrastructure development in Sudan. Speaking at a conference on Delhi's pursuit of energy resources in Africa, Dr. Shashi Tharoor, India's Minister of State for External Affairs, said "India is your long-term partner for energy cooperation.... We guarantee demand in the buyer-seller equation." Murli Deora, India's Oil Minister, said: "We are particularly keen to participate in upcoming exploration and production opportunities in Angola, Ghana, Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, and Cote d'Ivoire. We offer ... expertise in several fields."
Sudan has been collaborating with China in development of its oil production since 1996. India and Malaysia have been cooperating in this sector since Sudan began exporting oil in 1999. In 2004, Sudan became China's biggest overseas project.
China is also now negotiating a $50 billion oil deal with Nigeria, in addition to many other joint venture projects in Africa.
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