British Stooge Gorbachov Says Russia Will Crack

Feb. 23 (EIRNS)—Mikhail Gorbachov, the man vetted as incoming Soviet leader in 1984, by British PM Margaret Thatcher and the Queen of England, and now preparing to mark his 80th birthday with a gala at St. Albert's Hall in London, has gone on a rampage against the current leadership of Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in particular. At a Feb. 21 press conference in Moscow, Gorbachov attacked the United Russia political party, formally headed by Putin, as a "bad copy" of the late Soviet Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He called the present Russian political system a sham, saying, "We have everything—a parliament, courts, a president, and a prime minister, but these all are to a great extent just an imitation." In an interview, Gorbachov warned: "If things continue the way they are, I think the probability of the Egyptian scenario will grow. But it could end far worse."

People from the post-Soviet Anglophile coterie that followed in Gorbachov's wake have also been harping on the theme that without "democratization," Russia will collapse. The INSOR think-tank of Igor Yurgens, which is formally headed by President Dmitri Medvedev, has issued reports arguing such a scenario. At the just-ended Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, Sub-Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin suggested that Russia will never get the foreign investment it is looking for, without more "democratization."

Medvedev himself showed the Kremlin's extreme sensitivity to potential destabilization, in the presentation he made yesterday to his National Anti-Terrorism Committee, convened in Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia, in Russia's North Caucasus region. The agenda was supposed to be the recent Domodedovo Airport bombing, but Medvedev spoke in broad terms. "Look at the current situation in the Middle East and the Arab world," he said. "It is extremely difficult and great problems still lie ahead. In some cases it may even come to the disintegration of large, heavily populated states, their break-up into smaller fragments.... It may come to very difficult events, including the arrival of fanatics into power. This will mean decades of fires and further spread of extremism."

He added, darkly but without specifics, "In the past, such a scenario was harbored for us, and now attempts to implement it are even more likely. In any case, this plot will not work. But everything that happens there will have a direct impact on our domestic situation in the long term, as long as decades."

Nowhere in Medvedev's presentation was any glimmer of awareness expressed, of the economic crisis driving the Southwest Asia events, nor the disastrous consequences of his own adherence to the economic policies of Gorbachov's Anglophile heirs in Russia.

Rumsfeld Slanders Russian General, Lies about LaRouche, SDI

Feb. 26 (EIRNS)—Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a chapter of his recently published 800-page memoir, Known and Unknown, manages to smear one of Russia's most respected military officers, while lying about Lyndon LaRouche's leadership in forging the Strategic Defense Initiative of President Ronald Reagan. The chapter titled "Bears in the Woods" is drawing attention in the Russian media.

According to a report on the Russian web TV service Infox.ru today, the only Russian to receive a warm word in the chapter is Sergei Ivanov, the former Russian defense minister and current deputy prime minister, for his sense of humor and good English.

"And that's the end of any pleasant reminiscences about Russia," reported Infox.ru. "Rumsfeld describes his meeting with Vladimir Putin in August 2001 in more neutral tones, and is quite negative about [the Deputy Chief of the General Staff] General Yuri Baluyevsky. 'I realized how far Russia and the USA still have to go before they understand each other. During lunch with Ivanov and high-ranking officers, Gen. Baluyevsky regaled us with a startling fact I suspect he had gotten from the Internet. The author of the U.S. antimissile defense program, he said as if revealing a dirty secret, was the economist Lyndon LaRouche,' relates Rumsfeld. According to him, LaRouche is known in the USA as a political extremist and conspiracy theorist. 'As far as I know, he had zero influence on U.S. antimissile defense,' stresses Rumsfeld." (Quotations from the book have been back-translated from Russian.)

In 2001, General Baluyevsky, who would later serve as chief of the Armed Forces General Staff (2004-08), was in charge of Russia's missile defense negotiations with NATO. Naturally, he was well-informed about U.S. missile defense policies and their history, including LaRouche's role as known to the Soviet intelligence officers who handled discussion with the Reagan Administration in 1981-83, through LaRouche, of potential Soviet-American cooperation on strategic missile defense. Thus, Rumsfeld has not only lied about LaRouche's crucial strategic role, but he also slandered Baluyevsky.

Russian Blogger Posts Angelides Report, Says LaRouche Was Right

Feb. 22 (EIRNS)—The popular Russian blogger Alexsword today posted a link to the FCIC report, with translation of some excerpts from the introduction. (Until now, the report has been almost totally blacked out in Russian media, with only a couple of mentions on websites catering to Forex traders.)

Alexsword wrote that the findings are not news to his readers, but the news is that they are now officially recognized. He links to an LPAC release which was issued in Russian, announcing that the Angelides Report shows LaRouche was right and Glass-Steagall must be restored, and he calls this "a great victory for the LaRouche movement," since the principles that were overturned through deregulation in recent decades are the principles LaRouche has fought for.

So far, Alexsword says, U.S. officials are not prepared to come out and say openly that "LaRouche was right." Then he adds: "Unlike the head of our Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin"—quoting from Yakunin's Autumn 2008 interview, in which he said he knew about the crisis several years in advance, because LaRouche told him. (Recent WikiLeaks publications of U.S. Moscow Embassy wires have included a profile of Yakunin that cites the latter's interest in LaRouche; these leaks have been widely published in Russia.)

Russian Journal Publishes Interview with LaRouche

Feb. 21 (EIRNS)—The following responses given by Lyndon LaRouche to a series of questions posed by Russian Journal on Jan. 31, were published today, under the title "There's Nothing Innocent About Social Networking." LaRouche's comments were introduced as "the unusual opinion of Lyndon LaRouche."

Russky Zhurnal has come out weekly since 1997, making it one of the oldest Russian online publications. Its founder and editor-in-chief is Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Effective Policy Foundation. RJ is widely read across the Russian political spectrum, including, according to RJ's own promotionals, in the corridors of power. LaRouche's commentary was given Feb. 1 in response to questions from an RJ editor, in the midst of the Tunisia uprising but before the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Here are quotes:

"The 'social networks' operating in and from the United States are often used for conduct of special operations in the international field, They operate, predominantly, in the Anglo-American financial orbit, often serving within the trans-Atlantic financier circles centered in London and Wall Street. In my experience, there is nothing innocent in the top-down direction of the operations run in the name of the set of such groups currently typified by Facebook.

"Facebook et al., are, in respect to such international political operations, merely tools of the network of trans-Atlantic financial groups behind the presently hyperinflationary phase of the current world financial-monetarist crisis.

"The objectives of these trans-Atlantic-centered financial interests are very well known to me as centered in the networks founded by Lord Jacob Rothschild in 1971 as what became the Inter-Alpha Group. That group is presently veering upon a threatened chain-reaction of bankruptcy throughout the trans-Atlantic system. That entire financial system is presently doomed to extinction were it to continue operations in their present form.

"The system which is centered in the present Inter-Alpha Group, is estimated by some as representing about 70% of the financial operations in international markets, and is presently caught in a financial bubble modelled upon, but one vaster and more deadly than the more limited hyperinflationary breakdown which occurred during the Spring through Autumn of 1923 Weimar Germany....

"It is the merchant banking interests of, chiefly, the trans-Atlantic group, which control the operations within which 'social networking' organizations are deployed. The motivation is that of a contemporary form of the same kind of operations run by the British Foreign Office, such as the case of Alexander Helphand and the London 'Young Turk' operations of the 1890s preparations for the Anglo-Japan alliance of the 1894-1914 against the targets of China, Korea, and Russia.

"Although there have been genuine revolutions in modern European history, such as the alliance which enabled the United States of America to achieve its independence, the pattern of major warfare since the formation of the Roman Empire, all European warfare has been monetarist interest engaged in struggles to control an imperialist form of domination of an international monetarist system.

"'Social networking' operations are generally nasty, and frequently even fairly described as involved in dirty behavior, but their role in history has never risen above the role of auxiliaries."

Kazakstan To Get China's New High-Speed Rail

Feb. 23 (EIRNS)—China and Kazakstan will jointly build a high-speed railway connecting the central Asian nation's cities of Astana and Almaty. The project is to be completed in 2015, Askar Mamin, the president of Kazakhstan Railways, said yesterday in Beijing. Trains on the 650-mile (1,050-km) double-track planned line connecting Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, with its biggest city, Almaty, will run at a maximum speed of 220 mph (350 kph). The line will use the most advanced Chinese technology and new-generation locomotives and cars.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev arrived in Beijing Feb. 21, for a three-day state visit, where he met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, among others. The two nations also signed a contract worth several billion dollars for long-term supply of uranium from Kazakstan to China.