E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 28, No. 31 - July 31, 2014
Strategic shift in Washington: the Congress
Votes up Resolution 105
On July 25, the Obama presidency was dealt a blow from which
it may never recover. The United States House of Representatives
overwhelmingly passed House Concurrent Resolution
105 -- a resolution sponsored by Democrats Jim McGovern
and Barbara Lee, and Republican Walter Jones, re-asserting
that the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive power to
authorize and declare war. It was prompted, most immediately,
by the situation in Iraq. The resolution declares: “The President
shall not deploy or maintain United States Armed Forces in a
sustained combat role in Iraq without specific statutory authorization
by Congress.”
After an hour-long debate on the floor, the resolution passed
by an overwhelming majority of 370 to 40. Of the 370, 180
reps were Republicans and 190 were Democrats. As Jim McGovern
pointed out: “With this resolution, the Congress has begun
to re-establish its rightful role under Article I of the Constitution.
This is not a partisan issue, this is an institutional issue.”
Beyond Iraq as such, or the War Powers Act, this represents
a complete break with the policy of the “Unitary Presidency”
launched by the Bush/Cheney administration and continued by
Barack Obama. On strategic as well as economic matters, institutional
support for the White House agenda is in a free-fall.
“It is obvious that there is a break in resources on the part of
the trans-Atlantic community which has not been made obvious
yet”, commented Lyndon LaRouche in a discussion with associates
on July 26. More and more voices have warned of the
similarities between the current situation and the eve of World
War One. The Anglo-American policy of strategic confrontation
with Russia, to conquer Lebensraum for the disintegrating financial
system, is leading the world towards nuclear confrontation.
At the same time, the financial assault on Argentina and
sanctions against Moscow could blow up the bankrupt system
for good.
LaRouche insisted that the “international fraud of government
has reached the point where there is no way you can
cover it up anymore. Therefore, what we are headed for is a
clean policy of how we define our financial system. Therefore,
we have to have a complete change in these policies. We’re just
going to have to cancel a lot of junk, which is pure junk”, he
said, in reference to the urgency of pushing for a Glass-Steagall
reform right now (cf. below).
Indeed, a look at the strategic picture shows the intentional
disasters created by the foreign and national security policies of
both Bush and Obama: from Syria to Ukraine, from Iraq to Libya,
radical forces financed and armed by the Anglo-Saudi complex,
and backed by the U.S. administration, have destroyed
nations and established chaos and destruction.
In addition, the Obama White House has continued to cover
up the Benghazi attacks (cf. SAS 27/14) and the classified 28
pages of the Congressional 9/11 Report, which would expose
the Anglo-Saudi operation, both of which could lead to Obama’s
impeachment.
This crisis can be solved only by going to the root of the
problem: exposing and neutralizing the Anglo-Saudi operation,
and even more importantly, imposing the ultimate sanctions
against the City of London and Wall Street: mass destruction
of the speculative financial system through a Glass-Steagall reform.
The United States, LaRouche said, must lead the trans-
Atlantic world back to a path of growth and stability, in cooperation
with the just launched BRICS system.
However, the Obama Presidency, as an appendix of the City
of London/Wall Street operation, will never do it. That is the
reason why Obama must go, LaRouche insisted.
Ukraine: the West Churns out
War Propaganda
There is only one way to characterize the nature of Western
media coverage of the Ukraine events, particularly around the
MH17 crash: war propaganda. Whereas the Russian side has
published some technical evidence, nothing has come out of
the West, despite the fact that the conflict area in Ukraine is
covered by countless space, air and ground-based monitoring
systems. The only evidence produced by the Pentagon came
from “social media”!
A strategist and former Swiss general staff source told EIR
that the satellite images presented by Lt. General Andrey Kartopov
in Moscow July 22, showing both Ukrainian rockets and
aircraft in the war region, are “meaningful down to the last
detail.” The Americans are “hiding evidence”, he said, and the
British are clearly pushing war propaganda similar to what happened
prior to the Iraq war. The British government has the
flight recorder in its hands now, and will make sure that no
elements useful for establishing the truth will be released.
However, they cannot manipulate the evidence, because the
Russians would demand to see it. So, they will simply withhold
evidence.
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German politician Willy Wimmer, a leading opponent of the
war drive, in an article for the Lars Schall independent news
site, attacked the blatant anti-Putin coverage in the current issue
of Newsweek as a disgusting piece of black propaganda,
comparable to the Allied propaganda against the “Huns” in
WWI. London’s Fleet Street media join in, Wimmer notes.
“Whoever takes such an approach to the elected President of
a State, who sits on the Security Council of the United Nations,
does not need a declaration of war. Newsweek and the British
sensationalist press are quite enough.”
Wimmer was a CDU member of the German parliament, the
Bundestag, for 33 years, and a leader of German reunification
under then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1989.
Gerd Krumeich, professor at the Dusseldorf University and
honorary chairman of the Military History Working Group,
drew the parallels between the current strategic situation
and the events that led to World War I, in an interview with
Deutschlandfunk radio on July 27. It is like 1914 but with
nuclear weapons, he said: “The Steinmeiers of all countries
know exactly what is at stake. And, of course, we also have
the threat, much more massive than at that time, that any war
can become a nuclear war and an extinction war. They knew
this a little bit also at that time, but they had no nuclear bombs,
and we do have them. This is the qualitative difference.”
Importantly, Prof. Krumeich identifies a key element in the
dynamic for war in 1914, which also fully applies today to the
European Union: the push to become bigger in order to face
global competition. “In Germany, but in other countries as well
at that time, they had the view that a large state must become
an Empire. You can survive in the competition among the Big
Ones, only if you are very big. Therefore a getting-bigger-idea
is always connected with a decline-idea. As they said: World
Power or Decline.”
Economic Sanctions Will Hurt Europe More
Than Russia
EU Foreign Ministers, meeting in Brussels July 24, approved a
new catalogue of sanctions against Russia, to be published in
full on July 29. Russian Ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizov
has repeatedly warned that the new EU measures will backfire
massively against the West. This is also the opinion of competent
experts in the West.
Looking at trade figures, Larry Elliott noted in the Guardian
how dependent EU economies are on exports to Russia. Trade
with Russia in 2013 amounted to €66 billion for Germany,
with the Netherlands at 37 billion, Italy at 30 billion, Poland
at 26.7 billion, France at 18 billion and the UK at 12.6 billion.
Before the sanctions, the German Chamber of Commerce had
already projected a 10% drop of trade with Russia and a loss
of 4 billion for 2014.
The new sanctions will “prohibit any EU subject from investing
in debt, equity and similar financial instruments with
a maturity higher than 90 days issued by state-owned Russian
financial institutions after the entry into force of the restrictive
measure anywhere in the world,” states the EU draft document.
This will prevent Russia from re-financing its government
debt with long-term bonds, and jeopardizes all long-term
deals, in particular because Sberbank, the main partner of German
banks extending loans to German middle-sized companies,
has been put on the sanctions list.
Informed of the new catalogue of expanded sanctions, the
German Association for Small and Medium-sized Businesses
expressed its opposition. Its chairman, Mario Ohoven, told
Handelsblatt that “whoever demands sanctions against Russia
is putting 300,000 jobs in Germany at stake, in the last
instance.” Russia, on the contrary, can replace Europe with
China, he said.
Ohoven, like French Foreign minister Laurent Fabius, exposed
the “hypocrisy” of the British government which pushed for a
tough stance against Moscow, but has not cancelled a single of
its 250 military-related deals with Russia. The French managed
to get their sale of Mistral helicopter carriers exempted
from the sanctions list, but Italy apparently gave in to British
pressures and suspended the cooperation on the S-1000 submarine,
although giving bureaucratic grounds.
Putin’s Fight against Russian Oligarchs Made
Him the Enemy of the West
While the German government and most leading politicians are
lining up behind the Anglo-American sanctions policy toward
Russia, professional diplomats and businessmen who deal with
the Russians oppose punitive measures against President Putin
and his entourage, knowing that the real motive for sanctions
is not the Ukraine crisis.
A former senior German diplomat told this news service in
a background discussion that the main reason for the ongoing,
escalating campaign against Vladimir Putin is the moves
he made, from the moment he took power in 1999, to end
the special relationship between Russian oligarchs and the Wall
Street and other Western banks, which had developed over the
Yeltsin years (1991-1999).
The current crisis, this diplomat said, is a side aspect of this
fierce power struggle, though a very dangerous one because it
could lead directly to military conflict between NATO and Russia
which, as Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized, could rapidly
escalate into a thermonuclear confrontation.
At the very beginning of the Obama presidency in 2009, it
looked as though a reset of U.S.-Russian relations without the
oligarchs were possible, our source went on. But soon, the confrontationists
came up with a new pretext for demanding economic
and financial sanctions against Putin’s Russia, over the
death in a Moscow prison of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The current sanctions are a continuation of the same policy.
As far as the war danger is concerned, this ex-diplomat
agreed with the parallels to the situation pre-1914, when politicians
and military were like “sleepwalkers” stumbling into a
major war with no clue of what it would turn into. However, he
said he is somewhat optimistic because of the general anti-war
mood in Germany, as reflected in the latest opinion polls: 93%
in favor of dialogue with Russia, only 19% supporting NATO’s
approach of escalation, while 69% say they can imagine a non-
NATO future for Germany.
In this diplomat’s view, while the Merkel government has
little maneuvering room to openly resist the confrontationists
on the Ukraine issue as such, they do have a tool in hand with
the NSA scandal to contain the Obama Administration and slow
down the NATO drive to the east.
Massive Opposition to Trans-Atlantic
Free Trade Agreement in Europe
The sixth round of negotiations between the United States and
the European Union on the trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement
took place during the third week of July, as usual in a total lack
of transparency. One week later, the European Commission
closed its online public consultation on the agreement, formally
known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP), which it had launched in March, in the face of huge
protests.
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Reflecting that opposition to the takedown of regulations
on trade in the various countries, a record number of people
responded – nearly 150,000. The breakdown country by country
was: United Kingdom (52 008), Austria (33,753), Germany
(32,513), France (9,791) Belgium (9,397), Netherlands
(4,906) and Spain (2,537). An analysis of the responses will
not come for several months.
The stated purpose of the TTIP is to “protect investors”, as
opposed to citizens. Since tariffs are already very low between
the EU and the U.S., trade is supposed to be increased by doing
away with protective measures and standards.
The most controversial part of the TTIP is the investor-state
dispute settlement (ISDS) clause, which would allow EU and
U.S. corporations to directly sue governments at international
tribunals, claiming that a given national policy results in a
“potential” loss of their earnings. In other words, the vulture
funds and corporations could seek compensation if a government
decides to implement policies to protect its population,
such as introducing new public services, raising corporate taxes
or increasing the minimum wage.
Almost all European trade unions have come out against the
TTIP, and numerous organizations as well. The new provisions
could also make it impossible to reverse privatizations in the
EU, as corporations could claim it harmed their future profits.
British trade unions are worried that the National Health NHS
will not be exempted from the takedown of regulations, contrary
to what the Cameron government claims. They fear it
could be sold to American vulture corporations, which already
bought up facilities in the United States.
This is good reason to worry, According to secret documents
that were leaked to the European Federation of Public Services,
which published them in June, public services will not be
excluded from the TTIP.
Note that Washington categorically refuses to include regulatory
cooperation on financial services in the agreement.
To overcome the overall opposition, the Eurocrats are now
fantasizing that under the free-trade agreement, Europe would
automatically have access to the oil and gas in the United States,
and could thus slap harsh sanctions on Russia without fear of
losing energy resources.
Just as for the ultra-secret Trade in Services Agreement
(TISA), it is specified that the TTIP documents will be held in
confidence “for five years after entry into force of the TTIP
Agreement, or if no agreement enters into force, for five years
after the last round of negotiations.” Just what do they fear?
President Fernández de Kirchner:
The BRICS Created a New Global Order
and Argentina is Part of It!
On July 22, the infamous judge Thomas Griesa rejected a stay
on his original ruling ordering Argentina to pay the vulture
funds. The next day, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de
Kirchner said that they will negotiate with the funds, but they
will not capitulate. In a speech July 23 in the province of Buenos
Aires, Kirchner made clear that Argentine feels strengthened
by the support that emerged from the BRICS meeting and
especially by the new global reality being outlined, which has
stricken panic in the heart of the “British Empire” crowd and
the murderous vulture funds they control.
The meeting of the BRICS nations with the Union of South
American Nations, she said, “and the coming forward of those
nations that are best-situated among the emerging nations to
confront the present situation, means the reformulation of a
new global order, and Argentina will be, and is, present in it....
There are new actors who don’t want to smash your head in,
but rather want to cooperate with you to see if, together, we
can get this huge car that is the world today moving.”
President Kirchner stated how proud she was to have signed
a comprehensive strategic agreement with China, during President
Xi Jinping’s visit July 18-19, giving details of the agreements
signed. Chinese investments will be forthcoming in infrastructure,
nuclear energy, transportation, and much more.
Both Presidents stressed during the visit that they share similar
views on such crucial issues as reforming the global financial
system.
She particularly underscored the importance of the $11 billion
swap agreement signed with China’s Central Bank, emphasizing
that it will help bolster reserves and counter speculative
attacks, such as those from the vultures. The relationship
with China, she said, will help to maintain the current economic
model, which is focused on developing the internal market, industry,
and jobs.
Argentina will not default, she insisted, but we will negotiate
with the funds “on our terms, which are absolutely not capricious.”
The Argentinian President made it clear that the real aim of
the current offensive by the vulture funds is to seize Argentina’s
strategic assets and natural resources, such as the giant Vaca
Muerta shale oil and gas reserve. She quoted an unnamed foreign
president who had warned her that the vultures weren’t
interested in collecting a mere $2 or $3 billion, but “wanted to
overturn the restructuring to force a return to that Argentina
that paid in natural resources when it didn’t have money.”
Vaca Muerta is the second-largest deposit of shale gas in the
world, and the fourth-largest of shale oil, she said. Its development
means energy self-sufficiency, which is key for the 21st
century; but there are really three keys for the 21st century,
she added: energy, food, and research and development in science
and technology. “And in all three,” she said, “we’re doing
fine.”
LaRouche Demands All-out Fight for
Glass-Steagall Now
Lyndon LaRouche on July 22 forcefully urged Senator Elizabeth
Warren and other sponsors of the “21st Century Glass-
Steagall Act” to act immediately to have a Congressional debate
and vote on the issue of bank separation. Some proponents of
the Act reportedly believe that the debate should not come up
until they are ensured of passage in the Senate.
“Don’t wait until the perfect moment when you think you
have the votes lined up. You have to campaign to win. You fight
to get it through because it has to be done.”
Indeed, not only is passage of Glass-Steagall urgent at this
very moment, as major European banks and Wall Street unravel
over their mountain of unpayable debt, but there is also
a building groundswell for implementation. According to one
Washington source, there is now a clear majority in support of
re-enacting Glass-Steagall or neutral. This is the perfect time
to strike.
The immense speculative debt created by Wall Street and the
City of London must not be paid, and Glass-Steagall is the way
to do it. “It is their crap, let them eat it”, LaRouche said.
Two Damning Developments on Euthanasia
in Europe
In Great Britain, a controversial bill has been introduced that
would legalize assisted suicide for the terminally ill, which has
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been endorsed by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, while
in Belgium, that country’s leading euthanasia “enthusiast” is
planning a tour of the Auschwitz death camp as a “motivational
experience” in support of euthanasia.
On July 12, House of Lords member George Carey, who held
the highest position in the Church of England from 1991 to
2002, shook up Great Britain with an article in the Daily Mail
endorsing the proposed legislation. It had been submitted by
Labor Party peer, Lord Falconer, a well known crony of former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Carey used the usual time-worn arguments to justify his
support, claiming it would prevent “needless suffering”, that
it would not be “anti-Christian”, and most evil of all, that the
issue is not the sanctity of life but the “quality of life”.
Carey was strongly rebutted by his successor, current Archbishop
of Canterbury Justin Welby, who authored a commentary
in the Times unequivocally denouncing the bill and warning that
if it passed, “elderly people and others would be put under pressure
to end their lives if assisted suicide were permitted by law”.
Note that Archbishop Welby has been very outspoken on banking
reform and sat on the House of Lords Commission that called for
banking separation similar to that of the Glass-Steagall Act.
On top of that debate, Belgian Dr. Wim Distelmans, who has
been dubbed “Dr. Death” for his repeated lethal injections, has
sparked outrage for organizing a “study tour” to Auschwitz on
Oct. 9. Distelmans, who coordinates legalized killings from his
Brussels clinic, has circulated a brochure advertising the threeday
tour for a cost of €600, including visits to the gas chambers
and a “seminar” on issues including euthanasia. , which is
legal in Belgium – including for children.
He wrote that Auschwitz, where a million people were put
to death, was “the pre-eminent symbol of a degrading end of
life,” adding “This site is an inspiring venue for organizing a
seminar and reflecting on these issues so that we can consider
and clarify confusions.”
Both in Belgium and Great Britain, his initiative has been met
with shock, including by people in favor of assisted suicide.
Labor Party Member of Parliament Sir Gerald Kaufman said:
“To make the notorious Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz
the center for a congenial study-trip is preposterous, if not
obscene... Whatever one’s views on euthanasia -- and I am
against -- it is abominable to describe Auschwitz as an ‘inspiring
venue.’”
The case of Belgium is a good example of the proverbial
“slippery slope”. In 2003, when euthanasia was legalized, the
number of such deaths was 235. Ten years later, in 2013, it
was 1807 – and the “right” to be euthanized was recognized
for children.
WTO: India Refuses to Limit Food Subsidies
As the World Trade Organization opened its a two-day meeting
in Geneva July 24, the Indian government made the final
decision not to sign the trade protocol which would give the
WTO dictatorial powers to limit grain subsidies to a country’s
farmers and food supplies to the poor. Since the WTO works
on consensus, the program is essentially dead.
India currently runs a $12 billion annual food subsidy program,
including a grain stockpile, to feed its hundreds of millions
of poor. The WTO agreement would give India an “exception”
until 2017, but would in principle ban the practice, in the
name of free trade. India refuses to trust the WTO to come up
with a solution -- and therefore will not sign, unless the trade
facilitation agreement is changed.
As it now stands, the limit to subsidies is set at 10% of the
value of food grain production, but that value is calculated on
the basis of prices in 1986-88, which are about one-sixth of
current prices.
One Indian government official quoted by Reuters pointed
out that Indian subsidies “are just a fraction of what the developed
countries are giving to their rich farmers.” Indeed, agricultural
subsidies in the U.S. are about $120 billion per year,
compared to India’s $12 billion.
The fact that the government of Prime Minister Modi has remained
firm on this issue of vital national interest is consistent
with the new dynamic in international relations introduced by
the decisions taken at the recent BRICS summit.
Moon and Mars Rovers Push Back the
Frontiers of Space Exploration
Ending its seventh bout with a very cold two-week lunar night,
China’s Yutu rover is still able to communicate with Earth
through the Chang’e-3 orbiter, but has been unable to move
since January. Engineers believe the rover was damaged when
a cover to protect it from the cold of night did not close properly.
Now, scientists also think the rover was “wounded” when
it knocked against rocks on the surface. Although the rover
was tested in Beijing, Shanghai, and in the northwestern desert
before launch, the lunar surface turned out to be more rugged
than expected.
An article posted July 21 by Xinhua quotes mission deputy
chief designer, Zhang Yuhua, that Yutu’s immediate neighborhood
“is almost like a gravel field,” and that both the quantity
and size of the stones the rover encountered was beyond what
was designed for. He also explained that the Chinese had used
data gathered by other nations’ previous lunar missions to map
out the terrain beforehand. The mission goal was for the rover
to survive for 90 days, so it has more than met its design requirements,
and “has worked miracles,” he said. Earlier this
month, Jia Yang, who led the team that designed Yutu, told
Xinhua that he hopes a more advanced version of the lunar
rover will be sent, in the future, to Mars.
In parallel, NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has also encountered
a terrain more punishing than it was designed for, and
is similarly “wounded.” On July 16, the chief scientist for Curiosity’s
mission, John Grotzinger, told an audience at Caltech,
that in December, photos sent back by the rover showed more
wear and tear on its wheels than engineers expected. “When
you have a metal wheel and you can see the planet through it,
that’s not a good thing,” he said. Since then, the condition of
the wheels rapidly deteriorated. To try to minimize the damage
and protect Curiosity’s mission to drive to Mount Sharp over
the next few months, engineers have been driving it backwards
over sharp rocks, which lessens the load on the wheels.
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