E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 29, No. 52-53 - December 24, 2015
Syria Ceasefire Plan Moves Forward,  in Spite of Obstacles US Secretary of State John Kerry, to his credit, has distanced himself from President Barack Obama’s policy of Syria regime change and promotion of the jihadists, and has allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an effort to end the Syrian war and forge a new cooperation among the world’s two greatest nuclear weapons superpowers. Kerry’s carefully crafted diplomatic collaboration with Moscow, in pushing the realization of the original Geneva formula for ending the war and holding the country together under a coalition transitional government, infuriated President Obama and his closest White House advisors, Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett, but there was little that they could do, publicly, when Kerry announced to the world that the US had abandoned the policy of “regime change” in Syria, which was met with an immediate worldwide sigh of relief. Shortly after Kerry’s meeting in Moscow with Putin and Lavrov, the Vienna Group of 17 nations met at the UN in New York City, and the UN Security Council passed a resolution, spelling out the 18 month Syrian peace process, worked out in Vienna within hours of the Paris attacks of Nov. 13. That resolution makes no specific mention of the status of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and subsequent statements by Kerry, Putin and others made clear that the decision about his future fate was to be determined exclusively by the Syrian people -- with no foreign interference. Now, the extremely difficult task lies immediately ahead:  Kerry must convince ostensible U.S. coalition allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar to enforce a ceasefire by groups they have been arming and funding for the past five years.  Jordan has submitted a proposed list of rebel factions to be admitted to the negotiations with the Syrian government, and Kerry has emphasized that any group participating in the negotiations must fully join in the ceasefire, which is supposed to begin right after the first of the new year.  Russia has objected to the fact that some Saudi-backed groups, non-ISIS and non-Nusra Front, are radical Salafists and are part of the Islamist terror apparatus. Regime Change Lobby Suffers a Setback The challenge to achieve a verifiable cease-fire as the first step towards ending the Syrian war has been boosted in the past days by a series of dramatic revelations, that put the enemies of the settlement on the defensive.
First, noted investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a new story in the London Review of Books , revealing that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other leading military institutions in the United States had moved forcefully against President Obama’s Syrian regime change schemes in the summer of 2013.  At that time, according to the new Hersh revelations, an allsource top secret intelligence assessment was produced, indicating that the ouster of the Assad government would lead to a jihadist takeover of Syria. Despite the fact that Obama maintained the committment to overthrowing Assad, and approved the Anglo-American smuggling of weapons into Syrian opposition forces, even after the Pentagon warned that they were dominated by jihadists, the top military brass, led by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with DIA head Gen. Michael Flynn, began funneling military intelligence on the jihadists to Germany and Russia, knowing that they would share it with Assad’s Syrian Army. Hersh attributed the fact that there has not been an outbreak of general war or an outright jihadist victory in Syria to the Dempsey-led efforts, but warned that with Gen. Flynn’s firing in Aug. 2014, and Dempsey’s retirement three months ago, the opposition to Obama’s mad war drive is limited. Given the weakness of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and the new JCS Chairman Gen. Dunford, who is new on the job, more of the burden now resides on the shoulders of Secretary of State Kerry. Two other exposes, however, have bolstered the latter’s position. Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel came out last week with a devastating attack on Susan Rice and President Obama for attempting to destroy him because he dared warn about the folly of their support for jihadists against Assad.  And a wide array of international institutions have come out with detailed evidence of the oil smuggling operations run by the Erdogan government in Turkey, in partnership with the Islamic State.  The Russian and Norwegian governments have issued damning new evidence of the Turkish perfidy, and even US Treasury Department officials have confirmed that the Turkish regime is partnered with ISIS in a lucrative black market oil smuggling operation, that feeds the Islamic State’s control over northern Syria and Iraq. In addition, IS is now an active player in the smuggling of Afghan heroin and opium into Russia and Europe, which brings it an estimated $1 billion in annual revenue.
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Sanctions, Refugees, Bail-ins:  the EU Continues to Self-Destruct With President Obama and his failed policies under increasing attack in the United States itself, EU leaders now have a unique window of opportunity to adopt a policy which serves the interests of Europeans. But judging from the EU summit of Dec. 18, they are not yet ready to break with the monetarist, Cityof-London dominated paradigm. Although the sanctions against Russia have emphatically not forced Vladimir Putin to back down, they were extended for another six months. As many have pointed out, since the punitive measures were first imposed, European trade with Russia has dropped by some 20%, while trade between the United States and Russia, has risen by 7%!  Just prior to the summit, the German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations again warned that German exports to Russia had decreased by EU6.5 billion in 2014, with another EU8 billion expected for 2015. The French and Italian governments, in particular, have voiced opposition to the sanctions, pointing to the need to cooperate with Moscow on the fight against ISIS. Nonetheless, geopolitical scheming carried the day. On the refugee crisis, the moral bankruptcy of the EU is even more flagrant. Given the inadequacies of Frontex, the current border control agency, the European Commission has proposed a new plan which comes down to militarizing the external borders of the Union. The new organization, which could be set up within six months, would have with greater manpower, greater transportation capacities and more funding. Its agents would be authorized to deport refugees and to send back to sea those arriving over the Mediterranean, even if that means certain death. The most controversial measure, however, is that Brussels could decide to deploy the organization in member countries, even if the respective governments refuse! That represents the greatest transfer of national sovereignty to Brussels since the introduction of the euro itself, and yet another blatant move against representative democracy. Indeed, the organization would apparently enjoy judicial immunity. Moreover, the EU pledge to give Turkey EU3 billion to deal with the refugees is hypocritical (cf. below). Ankara continues to use EU money to support jihadist organizations  and to launch attacks both against the Kurds and the Syrian forces of Assad, while launching a crackdown on the opposition internally. Moreover, according to Bild , the figures Jean-Claude Juncker supplied just before the summit, on the number of refugees coming from Turkey, were deliberately reduced by two thirds in order to justify financial aid to Turkey! At the same time, Brussels is intent on implementing the ominous “bail-in” policy which comes into force on Jan. 1, 2016 (cf. SAS 51/15 and below). In sum, the EU will not defend the citizens in Europe any more than it will the refugees, since that would run counter to the interests of the financial oligarchy and its bloated bureaucracy. The “Sunni Alliance Against Terrorism”,  Absurd and Dangerous The irony of the “Islamic military alliance” against ISIS/ISIL, announced by Saudi Arabia on Dec. 14, is that it brings together the same Sunni countries that are responsible for the creation of the Islamic State and other mercenary forces that have been trying to overthrow the governments of both Syria and Iraq and to isolate Shia Iran, by fanning the flames of “religious” warfare. The inclusion of NATO member Turkey as an official mem
ber brings the Western military alliance into an adventure that could lead to a wider regional war, if not a global war. Two days after the Saudi announcement, Turkey announced it would establish a military base with over 1,000 Turkish troops in Qatar as part of a defense agreement made between the two countries in 2014. Turkish Ambassador to Qatar Ahmet Demirok said the two countries were “rediscovering historic and brotherly ties”. This a reference to the Ottoman Empire and fits with Turkish President Erdogan’s obsession of becoming the Sultan of such a resurrected empire. (He has already built his new 1,000 room presidential residence in the style of an Ottoman palace complete with a palace guard dressed up in uniforms and armor of Ottoman times across the centuries.) It did not go unnoticed that Turkey and Qatar are the key supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and of the rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Commenting on the “Sunni alliance”, Murat Yetkin of Hurri yet Daily News warned that what the Middle East does not need “is any new emphasis on the sectarian dimension of the existing turmoil. Why on earth does the U.S. feel obliged to take sides in the sectarian divide within Islam? And why does it praise the leading role of Saudi Arabia, which is currently ISIL’s main human resources pool, and from which many radical movements - from the Wahhabis to al-Qaeda - have emerged?” While the Turkish government claims be against and above sectarian differences, Yetkin concludes that the new alliance “is unlikely to help calm the rising regional tension.” Confirming Yetkin’s fears, the Daily Telegraph reports that the British government is preparing to lend full support to the “ground army” of this Sunni front  with Great Britain, the United States and other NATO allies providing command and control, intelligence and air support to these forces. Potentially even more dangerous is the announcement, made Dec. 18, that NATO would take over the defense of Turkey’s airspace on its border with Syria, that is, where the Turks just shot down the Russian SU-24. This new alliance will presumably have to take on Russia’s determination to destroy the IS and other jihadi groups fighting in Syria, including the thousands recruited from the Caucasus and Central Asia whose entry into Syria has been facilitated by Erdogan’s Turkey. “OK, everybody, I gotta get to Star Wars” With these eloquent words, President Obama abruptly ended his last press conference of 2015, leaving a stunned press corps with unanswered questions about the war on terror, Turkey’s role in ISIS oil sales, and the plunge of stock markets.  He had opened his remarks by announcing that this briefing “is not the most important event that’s taking place at the White House today.” What was more important, in the President’s view, was the screening of the movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens ! This foolishness was compounded by his spokesman Josh Earnest, who appeared shortly after at his daily press briefing accompanied by characters from the movie. These stunts continue a visible pattern of degeneration, which has been the subject of commentary by many former Obama enthusiasts, such as Richard Cohen and Dana Milbank, writers for the Washing ton Post , who noted a recent, continuing pattern of disjointed and confusing appearances by the President. It also occurrs at a moment when visible cracks are appearing within the President’s inner circle, as in the support, announced by Secretary of State Kerry, for UN Security Council resolution 2254, which affirms the Vienna process for ending the civil war in Syria (cf. above) . While the resolution does not
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 3N ° 52-53/ 2015
call for regime change in Syria, Obama again asserted at the above-mentioned press conference, that Assad must leave for the civil war to end! Another blow to Obama’s image as a trustworthy leader is the publication of the book Power Wars , by New York Times reporter Charlie Savage.  It destroys the narrative that Obama, once elected, intended to reverse George W. Bush’s creation of a lawless national security state, but was thwarted by Republican opposition. Savage documents that Obama had no intention of overturning the existing policies, such as warrantless surveillance, unlimited detention of suspected terrorists, or drone killings.  Instead, the Obama team drafted new legal authorizations to justify those same unconstitutional policies.  Savage’s meticulous analysis confirms that Obama, from the beginning, was committed to the doctrines adopted in the phony “war on terror” of the Bush-Cheney regime. As to his competence as a military leader, Obama’s assertion that “We’re going to defeat ISIS” was challenged by Lt. General Michael Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).  Flynn told Fox News on Dec. 18 that Obama has repeatedly lied to the American people about the threat posed by ISIS, as it did not conform to his “political narrative,” of having terrorists “on the run.” No wonder the President, instead of facing tough questioning, preferred to slip out into the fictional world of Luke Skywalker and R2D2. LaRouche: Shut Down Wall Street  Before It Kills You The entire trans-Atlantic financial system is on the very edge of collapse. It could happen any hour, any day now, as a growing number of financial experts have warned, and will be much worse than in 2008. Just in the past days, four major hedge funds in the United States have gone bankrupt, all of them involved in the speculative financial bubble which now exceeds $2 quadrillion by conservative estimates. The fourth to fall, Avenue Capital Group, had to stop withdrawals from one of its larger funds on Dec. 15, after a sudden loss of $1 billion. As we explained last week, the junk bond market is not an isolated segment of the financial system, but the high-yield, high-risk market which produces “value” for the entire system. As the real economy slows down, and oil and commodities prices collapse, lending and securities based on those prices are also plunging. Such vulture investors as Wilbur Ross and Carl Icahn fear that the collapse could spread to the much larger investment-grade corporate credit market -- possibly bringing down the entire Western financial system. Whatever the case, the system cannot be saved. As Lyndon LaRouche has stated repeatedly, all the so-called money on Wall Street is nominal, speculative paper not worth a nickel, and must be written off in the same way Franklin Roosevelt did upon coming into office in 1933. President Roosevelt was then able to put people to work, and to return dignity to a population which had been driven nearly to death. But the situation is far worse today, LaRouche said, especially since the mechanisms for confiscating people’s savings are ready to be implemented. He pointed to the Italian citizen who committed suicide after his life’s savings were “bailed-in” (cf. SAS 51/15). In Canada as well, suicide rates have spiked among oil field workers, whose companies have been hit by the drop in oil prices. “We cannot have more suicides”, LaRouche said in a statement which has been distributed worldwide. “We cannot allow
it to continue.” Wall Street and the City of London have to be shut down, to protect the people, their income, their employment, their food supply, and even their lives. Alarming Increase in Suicide Rate  in the Oil Sector The collapse in the price of oil and the blowout of the oil frackhe collapse in the price of oil and the blowout of the oil fracking bubble has decimated entire communities, whose economy is dependent on them. In the oil fields of Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces in western Canada, suicide rates among laid-off workers increased by 30% in the first six months of 2015, as compared to the first six months of 2014. The Alberta province is the world’s second largest exporter of natural gas and the fourth largest producer. As oil and commodities prices were soaring over the past years, massive exploitation of shale oil and gas was started, making inhabitants the richest per capita in the world after Qatar. Now the entire sector is being shut down, with massive layoffs including the downstream sector (refineries and polymers). Unemployment has soared over 100% in one year. Alberta lost 63,500 jobs in the first eight months of this year, according to government data. The losses were the largest since the global economic crisis in 2009. In Alberta, 75% of all suicides are male, and the vast majority of victims are under 55. Many of the them are believed to be young male workers living high-risk lifestyles in work camps, where they “fly in/fly out” for up to 24 days at a time. Italy: More Calls for Glass-Steagall While the Renzi government made clear its intention to stick to the EU financial policy, more calls for bank separation as the only solution to prevent further plundering of people’s savings have come from the parliamentary opposition and a few economists. Glass-Steagall was put on record in the parliamentary debate on the no-confidence vote against the government on Dec. 18 by Alessandro Di Battista, speaker for the M5S group. The crisis of the four bailed-in banks, he said, “will not be solved and new cases will be possible unless commercial banks are separated from investment banks and unless the Bank of Italy is again a bank controlled by the citizens, by the public and the Italian nation.” The previous day in the Senate, Lega Nord senator Stefano Candiani requested from the floor that the chairmanship finally schedule a discussion on Glass-Steagall. Candiani has filed one of the six draft bills for banking separation currently waiting to be processed in the Senate. Also, in a morning talk show on Raitre national TV on Dec. 16, former Italian Minister Fabio Mussi called for re-introducing bank separation. “We have been living under the domain of finance capital and, in contrast to the 1929 crisis, when a strong plan of reforms was implemented first in the United States and eventually in Europe, after eight years of crisis nothing has been done!” Mussi said. “There are EU920 trillions— EU220 of which are primary finance (shares, stocks, etc.) and EU700 trillions in derivatives, running around the world. This is 12 times the world’s GDP. Nothing has been touched!” Last but not least, economist Fabrizio Pezzani, professor of Business Administration at the prestigious Bocconi University in Milan, published an article on the online daily L’Opinione, explaining that the process behind the bail-in of the Italian banks began with the takedown of the “wall that Roosevelt had labored to build, to separate activities of investment banks from traditional credit institutions.”
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Since the break-up of the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange rate system, Pezzani went on, “Investment finance and market culture have disrupted the American system and have eventually invaded other countries like a tsunami... Brussels bureaucrats did not understand, or did not want to understand, the oncoming tsunami...” Ukraine: Europe’s Most Impoverished Country Just two years ago, the Maidan demonstrations in Kiev went into full gear for what would soon become a coup and a civil war in Ukraine. Elected President Victor Yanukovych was ousted Feb. 22, 2014, amid bloodshed that presaged far more bloodshed to come. Provocations by neo-Nazi ideologues, who had played a decisive role in the putsch, led to the secession of Crimea and armed resistance in the eastern Donbas industrial region, while the government of Arseni Yatsenyuk, a puppet of Washington, imposed vicious austerity on the population and opened the country to free-trade looting by commercial interests in the European Union. There is an uneasy truce in the Donbas now, under the Minsk accords, but no one looking closely at the situation doubts that the country could readily explode again. Yatsenyuk is mired in factional strife with President Petro Poroshenko, including in the Supreme Rada, reflecting business clan warfare behind the scenes. Although the IMF, in an exceptional move, granted new credit to Kiev despite its sovereign debt to Russia (cf. SAS 51/15), the government had to acquiesce, in exchange, to more demands for austerity and price-gouging of the population. Note that the negotiations with the IMF are handled by U.S.-born Minister of Finance Natalie Jaresko, a former State Department employee and hedge fund operator. The economic devastation of Ukraine’s population has been documented in recent web-posted videos by economist Natalia Vitrenko, the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) and a former MP. She shows that the promises of Constitutional reform with greater autonomy for Ukraine’s regions have turned into an system of imperial rule through proconsuls with overriding authority and that new laws, framed as wiping out Ukraine’s Soviet past, in reality savage freedom of expression. Vitrenko charges that the USA and others in the West care about Ukraine solely as a torpedo aimed against Russia. A few figures, recently given by the Left Opposition, summarize the escalation of economic collapse: * GDP fell by 6.8 per cent in 2014, and by 16 per cent in the first half of 2015, * Industrial output dropped by 10.1 per cent in 2014, and 20.5 per cent in the first half of 2015, * Exports to Russia fell by 33.7 per cent in 2014, and by 59 per cent in the first half of 2015. What of the promises that the EU would make up for the loss of markets in Russia? There was a mere increase of 1.2% of Ukrainian exports in 2014, “followed by a 34% decline in the first half of 2015.” Although Ukraine “has been recognized as the most impoverished nation in Europe,” the Left Opposition writes, “the regime has dared to impose new fee increases for gas, electricity, heat, and water!” The group also warns that Ukraine’s political institutions and legislative changes are not only in violation of “European norms,” but are leading towards a full-fledged fascist state.
COP21, or the Iceberg  That Brought Forth a Mouse Fortunately, the Paris COP21 extravaganza did not end with any legally-binding treaty on reducing carbon emissions worldwide, and developing countries insisted on including a provision that a reduction in greenhouse gases “must not threaten agricultural production”. But unfortunately, it did not reject outright the preposterous assertion that human activity is driving climate change and that carbon dioxide should somehow be considered a pollutant. As it now stands, if the agreement is ratified in 2020 by at least 55 countries comprising at least 55% of the world’s carbon emissions, verifications will begin as of 2025. But after three years, any country that so wishes can withdraw from it upon simple notification. In anticipation of the lack of coercitive measures, Prince Charles and the British Royal Family had already come up with another scheme to force deindustrialization of the world economy, in pursuit of the (unnamed) goal of population reduction. At the Commonwealth Summit in Malta on Nov. 27, Charles announced the so-called “Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative” (CCLI), which will develop laws under which companies and their directors can be sued for violating restrictions on carbon emissions, for contributing to “global warming”, for failing to report comply with legal reporting requirements, etc. Such laws would first apply to major Commonwealth countries such as the UK, Australia, South Africa, and Canada. The idea, of course, is to achieve deindustrialization (“decarbonization”), while maintaining the financial system of the City of London and Wall Street. In that context, Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept site reported on Dec. 9 that in recent months the giant speculative banks (BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, ING Bank, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.) have pledged to cut off funding for coal power plants, coal mines, and companies involved in coal. Even from within the ranks of the “climate change” lobby, cold water was thrown, albeit unintentionally, on the summit’s proceedings. Indeed, the Global Carbon Project released a study on Dec. 7 at Le Bourget, which stated that global CO2 emissions have been constant or even declined slightly since 2013, with a definite decline from 2013-14. The study was also published in the journal Nature Climate Change . The researchers found that both the United States and China have falling CO2 emissions levels. etc. In China, which still has a large volume of annual economic growth, emissions appear to be falling 2% in 2015, as an obsolete coal-power sector is being replaced as quickly as possible, including with nuclear power, which is the most “environment-friendly” source. Seasons Greetings Best wishes to our subscribers for the holiday period. The next issue of your Strategic Alert will be dated January 7, 2016.