E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 29, No. 27 - July 2, 2015
“It’s Not Greece Which Has Failed, but Merkel, Schäuble and the EU”
After the European Union again outrightly rejected the proposals put forth by the Greek government, and demanded more crushing austerity, PM Alexis Tsipras announced that a referendum would be held on July 5, to ask the population whether or not they would accept the new EU package.
These new developments were covered by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in a June 28 statement, titled “We are all Greeks”. “It’s not Greece which has failed, but rather Merkel, Schäuble, the EU Commission, the ECB and the IMF,” she wrote. “Why should the Greek government have stuck to an austerity policy imposed by the European Union, which has already reduced the Greek economy by one third, lowered the birth rate, raised the mortality rate and caused youth employment to rise to 65%? A policy, which even the IMF had to admit was totally incompetent, and which the UN had condemned as a clear violation of human rights. The decision by PM Tsipras not to capitulate to the ‘shock and awe’ of the Eurogroup Shylocks is not only correct, it also offers the chance for all of Europe to break with the insane ‘casino economy’, which only serves the interests of the banks and speculators, provided, of course, that there are enough forces in Germany and other countries who can mobilize the moral and intellectual courage to do so.
“If panic now breaks out on the financial markets and the European economy collapses, Greece will not be to blame, but rather the fact that the entire trans-Atlantic system is hopelessly bankrupt. Instead of using the Sept. 2008 threatened meltdown around the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and AIG to regulate the banking system and to ban speculative excesses, a gigantic redistribution took place, under private gambling debts were transformed into public debts and the taxpayers had to pay for the ‘bailouts’. In the case of Greece, only 3% of the bailout funds stayed in the country, and the rest flowed back into the European banks, allowing the speculators to dance even more wildly around the Golden Calf. The reality is, that the trans-Atlantic banks, which are supposedly to big to fail, are 40% bigger today than in 2008 and the total amount of derivatives amounts to something approaching 2 quadrillion dollars. And that is exactly what could evaporate in an uncontrollable crash, in the event of a ‘Grexit’.”
That, Zepp-LaRouche continues, explains why “the proposal of the Greek government for a debt conference – not only for Greece, but for all of Europe -- is absolutely on the mark.” She called for a drastic debt reduction, bank separation as per Glass-Steagall, and a credit system to finance the real economy. “Absent such a basic reorganization of the financial system, and with a continuation of the ‘bailout’ and ‘bail-in’... the savings of all people in Europe and the United States will be much, much worse off than that of the Greek population today. Solidarity with Greece is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your own future!”
EU-China Summit: Another Missed Chance
The June 29 EU-China Summit offers a stunning example of why the European Union is an unviable institution. While the EU should welcome the opportunity to cooperate with China on the “One Road, One Belt” project, the nature of the European system makes participation impossible, even if its member states wish to.
China has expressed its interest in generous investments in European infrastructure projects, but all the EU has to offer, is to sell the Chinese junk bonds of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), which is supposed to finance the so-called Juncker Plan.
Not only is the target of stocking the Fund with 315 billion euros hardly feasible, but the policy behind the plan is exactly the opposite of the Road and Belt approach. The latter, in fact, aims at building modern infrastructure in underdeveloped areas to make them productive, with an anti-free-market approach. The profitability of such investments is measured in the long term.
The Juncker Plan has no strategic vision: money from the bond sales are supposed to finance projects according to profitability criteria. There will be no unified concept, only a “pipeline” of projects which will be rated. On top of the scale will be investments in already developed areas, which offer a high return for investors, with underdeveloped areas at the bottom.
Even worse, the EU is pushing China to accept “decarbonization” targets which actually aim to slow down and ultimately stop economic growth there.
Thus, although the idea of extending the New Silk Road to all of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as to Central Europe, is on the table, the opportunity is not taken up. In fact, Europe’s cooperation with China cannot be left to EU institutions, whose approach is dictated by the hedge funds.
Greek Prime Minister Tsipras has, with his recent trips to Russia and China, already had extensive conversations about how Greece, which has had long historical and deep cultural ties with both nations, could cooperate with the New Silk Road and
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the BRICS countries and become part of the new dynamic. This is certainly a more promising perspective than austerity.
NATO Escalates Provocations Against Russia
United States Defense Secretary Ashton Carter used the occasion of the June 20-21 NATO Defense Ministers meeting, followed by a trip the next day to Germany, to escalate the rhetoric against Russia. While claiming the Obama Administration is against a cold war, “let alone a hot war”, he stressed that the U.S. will provide intelligence and surveillance capabilities, special operations forces, logistics, transport aircraft, and a range of weapons support that could include bombers, fighters, and ship-based missiles to Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands, which had reportedly agreed to provide the initial troops for a NATO rapid reaction force.
He stated defiantly that “We will stand up to Russia’s actions and their attempts to re-establish a Soviet-era sphere of influence,” but had nothing to say about NATO expanding its own sphere of influence.
The anti-Russia push was supported, as usual, by Economist Senior Editor Edward Lucas, who is now a senior vice president of the Center for European Policy Analysis and director of its Baltic Sea Security initiative. On June 26, Lucas released a report, entitled The Coming Storm, which argues that the so-called 9 front line states (5 Nordic countries, 3 Baltic countries and Poland, called the NBP9), need to overcome the differences and mistrust among them -- their “strategic incoherence” – and cooperate ever more closely against the Russian threat. To solve the supposed problem, America simply has to tell them to “drop their treasured taboos and shibboleths.”
The Economist has also been promoting the U.S. “Third Offset Strategy,” aimed specifically at winning the US a new technological edge for warfare against Russia and/or China. Under this strategy, America would develop stealth drone fighters, mini-submarines and other advanced offensive and defensive weapons for waging war against the two major power adversaries. However, The Economist does warn that there is a major obstacle to the offset strategy: what if the losing side decides to resort to nuclear weapons?
The drumbeat for war against Russia has, fortunately, not gone without push-back. On June 28, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Welt Am Sonntag that some of the most dangerous crises around the globe can only be solved through cooperation with Russia. While noting the conflict with Western Europe and the United States over Ukraine, Steinmeier insisted that Russia has remained an important collaborator on the P5+1 talks with Iran, warning that “Germany can neither give up on nor isolate Russia. Russia is still one of EU’s and Germany’s largest neighbors, and will have a say in Europe’s future, for better or for worse.”
Queen Elisabeth II in Germany: The British Empire Über Alles
During the June visit of Queen Elisabeth to Germany (June 24-26), mainstream media subjected the population to a non-stop, obscene avalanche of praise for Her Majesty, the British monarchy and Great Britain more generally.
That, although the oligarchical ideology which served as the foundation of the British Empire, is still an integral part of British geopolitics on the European continent today. At the State Banquet on June 24, the Queen said: “The United Kingdom has always been closely involved in its Continent. Even when our main focus was elsewhere in the world, our people played a key part in Europe. In our lives, we have seen the worst but also the best of our Continent.”
She went on to make the point that Englishmen even helped build cities in Eastern Europe, such as Donetsk and Kaliningrad, which are part of Europe. Indirectly, her line fully converges with the ongoing NATO and EU expansionism to the east and their geopolitical posture against Russia.
Unsurprisingly, however, Queen Elisabeth failed to mention the obvious fact that the United Kingdom has always only become involved in “continental affairs”, when it fits London’s specific geopolitical interests, opting out of a common European position when not, such as over the most recent migrant problem.
Gauck urged the British Prime Minister Cameron to do everything he could to secure a “yes” vote in the upcoming referendum on remaining in the EU, gushing that “the European Union needs Britain”.
The Queen’s visit must be seen in the context of Cameron’s intent to begin renegotiating more favorable terms for Britain’s EU membership. In that, he has the blessing of European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, who, as the Daily Telegraph leaked, has given “the job of negotiating with the UK to a British official regarded as sympathetic to the need to protect the City of London, ” namely Jonathan Faull, the European Commission’s director-general for internal market and services.
For those who still claim that the Queen is only a figurehead, with no real power, it should be recalled that her state visits and her speeches are always coordinated with the government.
TPP Free-Trade Agreement: Very Hazardous for Your Health
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, after weeks of browbeating and arm-twisting by the White House, appear about to approve the trans-Pacific free-trade agreement (TPP) with a few cosmetic changes, despite massive opposition from trade unions and from the bases of both parties.
There is also substantial opposition to the agreement in a number of the other 11 Pacific Rim countries that are slated to be signatories, including Peru, Chile, and Mexico in the Americas.
One less remarked, but devastating argument against the TPP, which would also apply to the Trans-Atlantic Treaty, is that it will cut off access to vital medicines for at least a half a billion people, including in the United States itself. That is because its provisions would force countries to extend the monopolies on high-priced brand name drugs of the major pharmaceutical companies for a longer period of time, making it much harder for generic companies to produce cheaper drugs.
This aspect has been underscored since January by Doctors Without Borders, which received leaks from the super-secret working documents at the time. “TPP is a looming disaster for people who rely on access to affordable generic medicines, both internationally and in the United States,” stated the MSF release at the time. “Despite this outcry, the US continues to work behind closed doors, without any input from the public, experts or elected officials, to aggressively push for intellectual property provisions that put the profits of pharmaceutical companies ahead of people’s health.’’
The spokesman for Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, Rohit Malpani, warned, “The intellectual property provisions of the TPP completely undermine the Administration’s stated public health goals, including its own goal to achieve an AIDS-free generation. While President Obama speaks of expanding health care and tackling issues of income inequality at home, he is actively promoting a trade agreement that will exacerbate economic disparities and endanger people’s health care worldwide.’’
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While groups like Doctors Without Borders have been excluded from the negotiations, representatives of major pharmaceutical companies, Wall Street banks, and other vested interests have been fully brought in on the negotiations. In fact, Doctors Without Borders noted that they are relying on leaked copies of the working documents. Malpani concluded: “The TPP is the most damaging trade agreement we have ever seen in terms of access to medicines for poor people.”
Swiss Franc Mortgages: Another Trigger for Financial Crisis
At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, there were no less than 360 billion euros loans denominated in Swiss francs, outside of Switzerland. One third of them (122 billion), mostly home mortgages, went into non Eurozone countries, especially Eastern Europe.
These mortgages were a criminal fraud from the start, as they were nothing more than foreign exchange contracts. Such contracts are future operations, in which the purchaser underwrites a commitment to buy or sell a specified amount of foreign currency on a given date and at a given rate of exchange. By their very nature, such contracts should be short term, but instead, they were turned into 20 to 30 year maturities (mortgages). By 2015, the Swiss franc had appreciated by 50% against the euro, and even higher in other currencies, in particular East European ones. That left millions of mortgage holders with enormous obligations on mortgages, driving many into personal bankruptcy and even suicide.
A conference to discuss this issue was held in Athens June 8-10, which SAS co-editor Dean Andromidas, on behalf of the Schiller Institute, was invited to address. The conference, organized by the European Legal Committee for Consumer Rights, brought together lawyers and activists from over a dozen European countries, both East and West, who gave presentations on the status of the legal fight to gain restitution for the obvious fraud perpetrated against millions of mortgage holders. The victims of this scam have been forced to take their cases to the civil courts because no state attorney in any of these countries seems to dare to open single criminal case.
One among the many speakers was Arpád Kásler, a Hungarian activist and leader of the No Home for Sale party, who has won his case before the European Court of Justice, thus setting an important and invaluable precedent that will help the other cases.
Andromidas, in his intervention, demonstrated that the entire Western financial system operates on the bases of criminal fraud, which is intensifying because it is bankrupt, showing that the Swiss francs mortgages are part of the derivatives fraud which is at the center of the system. He then went on to explain how a new banking and credit system should be set up.
Double Agendas Threaten Fight Against Islamic State Terrorism
The spread of terrorist acts from Iraq and Syria to Kuwait, Tunisia and even France over the past week are signs of an uncontrollable situation. The reason there is no victory in sight against so-called Islamic terrorism, to put it in a nutshell, is that certain powers, such as the allies of the U.S., Britain and France in the region consider some of these terrorists as useful tools in the regime-change process that has targetted many countries since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
This Frankenstein monster can only be dealt with in the region and the world generally, if such double agendas and double standards are replaced by a common goal, within a new alliance that includes what are today rival regional and global powers.
The failure to do so until now is evident in Syria and Iraq where, as our newsletter warned (cf. SAS 23/15), the all-against-all fighting is intensifying and threatens to ignite an open regional war.
In Syria, U.S.-British-French trained and armed groups did launch a massive attack on the Daraa province across the border from Jordan and occupied a major air base last week, but internal disagreements and fighting between different factions prevented the taking of the city of Daraa. The most embarassing factor was that these western-backed groups were joined by Al-Qaeda’s Jabhat Al-Nusra, which demanded a share of the arms and strategic gains on the ground. That conflict reportedly forced the Jordan-based Military Operation Command (MOC) center to modify its operation, stopping short of taking Daraa, where the Syrian army and popular militias are fiercly resisting.
Some factions of the Western-backed Syrian “moderate rebels” insist on including Al-Nusra with whom they joined hands in the north to take Idlib and other towns north east of Aleppo recently.
In the Qunaitra province, which is adjacent to Daraa and the Israeli-occupied Golan Height, another scandal highlighted the nature of this dirty operation. Druz villagers in the Golan discovered that two Israeli army ambulances were carrying wounded “Syrian rebels” fighting against the Syrian army. For months now, wounded Al-Nusra militants have reportedly been treated in Israeli hospitals.
Another complicating factor is Iran. If the Islamic Republic does formally send troops to Syria and Iraq to fight the jihadists, the Israeli and Saudi reactions are hard to predict. That could be compounded by a possible agreement later this week between Iran and the 5+1 group on Iran’s nuclear program and the sanctions. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel have vowed to sabotage such an agreement.
Paris COP 21, How the British Royal Family Hooked France into the Climate Change Hoax
From November 30 to December 11, 2015, France will host the UN Conference of the Parties (COP21) on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This conference, together with the process leading into it, will be the largest official international event ever organized in France!
The purported aim is to get the entire world on board to fight an alleged global warming by ending the use of fossil fuels and moving completely into renewable energies.
However, what is not being said, is that if the world moves into renewable energies, with are much less energy dense than fossil fuels, and if eliminates nuclear energy as well, as Germany has done, the world economy will not be able to sustain more than 1 billion human beings. And there we have it : the real motivation behind the entire swindle that man is the cause of global warming, rather than galactic, solar and terrestrial cycles, is a Malthusian drive to massively reduce the world population (cf. SAS 17, 22, 26/15).
Thus, it is not surprising to find that the British Royal family is playing a key role in the Paris extravaganza. The website of Martin Palmer, secretary general of the ARC (Alliance of Religions and Conservation), recently disclosed that it was in discussions between Palmer and Nicolas Hulot, the man in charge of COP 21 for the French government, that “a project was born, which will have as its focus this groundbreaking Summit of Conscience for the Climate”. That summit will take place in Paris on July 21, hosted by the French government. Now, the ARC was founded in 1995 by none other than Prince Philip, in a deliberate effort to manipulate the main religions into the global warming swindle.
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This is the same Prince Philip, who has stated that he wished to be reincarnated as a mortal virus, in order to reduce world population, and who, in Dec. 1981, in People Magazine, attacked the UN program to eliminate malaria in Sri Lanka in the 40’s, blaming it for the doubling of the population there in 20 years. “We have no option”, he said. If population growth “isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase of disease, starvation and war”!
The extent of this Royal collaboration was further revealed by French Environment Minister Sιgolθne Royal, who travelled to London May 28 on behalf of Franηois Hollande, to hand-deliver to Prince Charles, his invitation to attend the COP 21 Summit. Charles’ commitment is a “long one and therefore precious”, stated Royal, adding that “he could play a very important role throughout the countries of the Commonwealth”!
Another key player in the climate swindle is Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the master minds of another major event leading to COP 21, a four day conference at UNESCO (July 7-0), called “Our common future under climate change”, featuring more than 70 high level worldwide experts, among them Prince Charles, and 2000 participants! It was Schellnhuber, a commander of the British Empire (CBE), who convinced Pope Francis to scrap the traditional anti-malthusian stance of the Catholic Church and to adopt the climate agenda (cf. below). He calls for the total decarbonization of the world economy.
The British Empire Has Captured the Papacy
The issue of the new Papal encyclical Laudato sì was at the center of several public discussions with Lyndon LaRouche last week (cf. SAS 26/15). On June 22, he was very clear. “The British Empire has captured, actually, the Pope”, he said.
LaRouche was referring to the fraudulent man-made climate change assumption, which is presented as scientific truth in the encyclical, and to the role played by “John” Schellnhuber, whom LaRouche called, in the original sense of the word, “satanic”, i.e., the enemy of humanity.
The theory of man-made climate change and its corollary, “decarbonization” of the economy, were invented by the British ruling faction represented by Tony Blair and Prince Philip, the latter being the founder of the global environmental movement, notably the World Wildlife Fund.
What I’ve seen, LaRouche said, “is the discrediting of the Papacy by this process, which has been imposed on the Papacy, by the British Empire. And so, Satan has taken charge of the Papacy for the moment. Not as a permanent arrangement, but certainly as a temporary arrangement which is being presented by Her Majesty the Queen.”
“So it’s a very filthy situation.... I don’t think he [the Pope] will necessarily keep that, because I don’t think he wants to be an outright Satanist....But he’s put in a position, somehow, where the British Empire has now decided to determine the future of mankind. And the British Empire has decided that the population of planet shall be greatly reduced.”
Migrants: Africa Demands Justice, Not “Generosity”
While the European Union concentrates on physical, repressive means to prevent more migrants from reaching European shores after a perilous crossing of the Mediterranean at the mercy of human smugglers, the same leaders refuse to address the causes of the problem.
As we have stressed (cf. SAS 18, 22/15), one of the main reasons there are so many refugees from Africa and the Middle East, is because of the conflicts, wars and chaos in their countries deliberately instigated and/or supported by the Western countries themselves.
Outright financial looting is another reason. While the EU prides itself on the amount of “aid” it generously grants to Africa, the fact of the matter is that the amount of profits foreign multinationals take out of Africa every year far exceeds, some say by six times, the total development aid extended to the continent by the Western countries, that are home to those same companies.
That was made shockingly clear at the Schiller Institute conference in Paris on June 14, in a presentation by Diogène Senny, Secretary General of the Pan-African League-UMOJA. His organization is campaigning for a civic audit of the African debt, to determine exactly how and why, and to whose benefit the debts have been contracted, and that since the nominal independence granted to African countries in the 1960s.
Senny showed that it was a deliberate policy of the trans-Atlantic world, from at the latest the 1970s on, to force African countries, acting through their despots, to take on overindebtedness, as a new, less visible, form of colonialization.
A few figures he gave speak volumes. In 1960, the combined total of African debt was basically zero. By 1980, private debt, bilateral debt and multilateral debt “was staggering under the weight of $89 billion of debt. The continent had no viable health system, no decent infrastructure, no educational system, and the misery was still increasing. What had happened with the $89 billion borrowed by our governments? Where was the human development?”
Answer, there was none. And when the African countries were unable to repay their debts, the international institutions and banks granted them new loans, just to cover the old debts, and keep the relevant banks alive. The height of cynicism, Senny said, is that the African populations have to repay not only the debts which served to enrich the unscrupulous dictators, but also the weapons purchases, which “have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths” on the continent.
According to UNCTAD, between 1970 and 2002, Africa received $540 billion in loans. $550 billion were repaid, but the outstanding debt today is $295 billion.
The Commission on Third World Debt (CADTM) found that, for sub-Saharan Africa, “the outflow of money through debt service and the repatriation of profits from transnational companies, is almost equivalent to the inflow of money related to development assistance and to the money sent home by workers abroad. The outflow is even $1 billion greater than the inflow. In 2012, the profits repatriated from Africa, the poorest region in the world, amounted to 5% of its GDP, while development assistance amounted to only 1% of its GDP.”
Thus, the African countries are in reality subsidizing the developed countries, and not the contrary. Hence, the cry for a true, civic audit of the African debt, such as was just recently carried out for Greece.
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Verantwortl. f. d. Inhalt: Dean Andromidas, Claudio Celani
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n°27/ 2015