Your STRATEGIC ALERT 02/15/2023STRATEGIC ALERT Service μέσω sendingservice.net |
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STRATEGIC ALERT NEWSLETTER
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| | | The United States Embassy in Moscow issued a new travel advisory on Feb. 13, warning American tourists and residents to leave Russia immediately. While this is not the first such warning over the past year, it included, this time, the Embassy’s assessment that “terrorist groups, both transnational and local” are planning attacks. Shortly thereafter, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov reported that Russian intelligence services have advised that “the United States is planning to send militants into Russia” to carry out attacks. They are to be trained in making and using improvised explosive devices, sabotage, etc.
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This represents a very dangerous escalation of the U.S.-Russia confrontation, whatever the details of the operation may be. It comes on top of the potential delivery to Ukraine of the most advanced weapons, as well as increased talk of the deployment of nuclear bombs in Russia’s planned offensive.
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Simultaneously, Washington is escalating its hostile moves against China. Since the U.S. Air Force shot out of the skies a Chinese “weather balloon” that had strayed off-path on Feb. 4, three other “flying objects” have been taken down over American or Canadian territory. A great deal of mystery continues to surround these incidents and where the objects came from, but that has not prevented the hysteria against China from growing. Chinese authorities have denied any ownership of these objects, much less their alleged “spy” functions. They have, however, pointed out that the United States has the largest spy and surveillance apparatus in the world, and has no qualms about using it.
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For these and other reasons, support for the policy run from Washington and London is crumbling throughout the world. The brutal refusal to lift the murderous sanctions against in Syria in the wake of the tragic earthquake, has shocked even the most hardened supporters of the “unipolar world” in the Global South.
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| The most effective way for citizens in Europe and elsewhere to express their rejection of this policy is to join the antiwar movement that is finally growing, including by participating in the rallies planned this month (cf. below). And by demanding that their respective governments support a new security and development architecture, as proposed by the Schiller Institute. |
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| | | "We have a 1930’s style deflationary depression, which is what happens if we keep raising interest rates. Or, a Weimar Germany kind of hyperinflation, which is what happens if we try to inflate our way out of our current debt problems. And that’s it. This is not something on the distant horizon anymore. It’s something right here staring us in the face."
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This quote does not come from the late Lyndon LaRouche – as some subscribers might guess – but from financial analyst John Rubino. It does not date from years back, but from Feb. 11, 2023.
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Last week, we wrote that “monetary tightening has opened deep cracks in the bankrupt financial system“. As if on cue, Credit Suisse, the second largest Swiss bank and a “systemically relevant” institution, reported a CHF7.3 billion loss in 2022 and especially, CHF111 billion pulled out by investors in Q4. Without a capital injection, CS, whose stock value has plunged 90% since 2008, will go bust soon.
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Credit Suisse is not alone. Also “Barclays (U.K.), Deutsche Bank (Germany) and Citigroup (U.S.) have lost the bulk of their market value since January 1, 2007 -- or prior to the financial crisis of 2008. And all of these banks are also G-SIBs and interconnected to one another through derivatives, loan relationships and the like," Pam and Russ Martens wrote in Wall Street On Parade.
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What LaRouche had additionally forecast, is that Western liberal elites would implement Schachtian economic measures, including rearmament and war, in the attempt to save the bankrupt system. The following is the assessment of another financial analyst given to EIR last week: behind the talk of "postwar reconstruction“ in Ukraine lurks the idea of wartime reflation. They don’t really intend to end the war, but to continue it. The war spending should pump money into certain sectors of the economy, which should create some jobs and give governments some funds to do certain things. But it would be combined with the Green bubble and a new quantitative easing once inflation has supposedly been ended, in order to cover the unpayable debt owed by insolvent corporations.
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But, according to this analyst, there’s no way they can cover $2 quadrillion worth of derivative contracts, or the corporate debt or government debt. The U.S. has hit a debt ceiling, Ukraine is essentially bankrupt, and there are about 40 other countries that are incapable of paying their existing level of debt service. The only option other than spending for war that they have, he warned, is massive austerity, including cutting so-called “entitlements" such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the United States. In Great Britain, the National Health Service is already in a nosedive.
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| We would add to that that without LaRouche’s complete policy, the wars will continue and spread. And even if they don’t cross the nuclear threshold, depopulation will occur as a result of the economic policies. |
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| | | Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, issued the following statement on Feb. 8, in response to the revelations on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines published by Seymour Hersh (cf. the next item).
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An article just published by the well-known U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh describes with meticulous accuracy how U.S. President Joe Biden had the gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 blown up in the Baltic Sea. This article must leave every normal person stunned in view of the complete lawlessness of the American government towards its “partners.” If the German government fails to act in the face of this utterly scandalous revelation, it will no longer have any justification to remain in office.
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Seymour Hersh’s article, using both public and private sources, demonstrates that President Biden, through his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, had reviewed the proposed destruction of the pipelines as early as 2021 and later gave the green light for the operation. Also implicated were members of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the U.S. Departments of State and Treasury, and the governments of Norway and Denmark.
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The explosives were placed in June 2022 during the BALTOPS 22 military exercise via a special diving team and were then detonated remotely by signal on September 26, 2022. Germany’s purchase of cheap natural gas from Russia had long been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government, Hersh said.
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This confirms the suspicion already circulating and at the same time adds minute details to it. Hersh demonstrates that the architects of this act of destruction knew it was an “act of war” and therefore demanded absolute secrecy.
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In light of this monstrosity, Germany must act immediately! I demand that there be a full investigation into Seymour Hersh’s revelations in the Bundestag! At the same time, I call on the German government to demand accountability from the U.S. government. The German government has a constitutional duty to prevent harm to the German people. The destruction of energy infrastructure strikes at the very foundation of our standard of living and economic stability.
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| The federal government cannot be indifferent to the fact that Germany and its people are the victims of the geopolitics of an obsessive war faction that not only accepts the destruction of its “allies,” but even a third world war and the potential extinction of humanity. |
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| | | The “story” of the Nord Stream explosion exposed by authoritative investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, although largely pooh-poohed by the transatlantic Establishment, is explosive and will not go away (cf. above). The destruction of such a vital infrastructure constitutes, by all international standards, an act of war. And yet, over four months later, the German government has still not disclosed any substantive information on the attack, nor have the Danish or Swedish authorities, but only claim that “the Russians did it”, as if they would have had the possibility of maneuvering in a space so tightly surveilled by NATO, assuming they were stupid enough to destroy their own pipelines.
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Nonetheless, a parliamentary debate of sorts – limited to one hour -- did take place in the Bundestag on Feb. 10, at the request of the Alternative for Germany party. MP Marcus Frohnmaier said that while he could not rule out a U.S. hand or a Russian hand behind the sabotage, the government owes the nation a serious commitment to shed light on this attack on German interests. An MP from the Left Party also called for a thorough investigation. But the main parties simply refused to discuss the controversy. There, as well as in virtually all the mainstream media, there has been an attempt to discredit Seymour Hersh and his source.
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(On that note, it is worth recalling a few examples of how he has exposed the lies and crimes of the U.S. establishment: In 1969, he broke the story about the massacre of civilians in My Lai, Vietnam; in 1998, he revealed that the alleged arms factory bombed in Sudan was actually a pharmaceutical company; in 2003, he blew open the lie about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; in 2004, he revealed the torture of Iraqi soldiers by the U.S. army at the Abu Ghraib prison.)
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The Biden Administration, as to be expected, denied any involvement in the sabotage. However, it is no secret that the notorious Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland stated on Jan. 26 at a Senate hearing: “I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now … a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.” President Biden, with an obedient Olaf Scholz standing next to him, had threatened back in Feb. 2022, that "If Russia invades, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it."
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| An important angle to the Russian reading of the incident was given by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a Feb. 12 interview posted on his ministry’s website, namely Washington’s determination to blow up the cooperation that had been built up between Germany and Russia “over the past 20 or 30 years”. That “powerful alliance”, based on Russian energy resources and German technology “began to threaten the monopoly position of many American corporations.” Attacking the pipelines was therefore one way of destroying that alliance. |
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| | | The efforts to build a grass roots anti-war movement in the transatlantic world are gaining momentum in the run-up to the mass demonstrations and rallies that are planned for the weekends of Feb. 18 and 25 (cf. SAS 6/23). The revelations on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, combined with Global NATO’s push to supply more and more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine while refusing to pursue a diplomatic settlement, have further eroded confidence in the Western “elites”. As a result, the “war party” is fully mobilized to undermine the growing movement with typical “divide and conquer” tactics and personal slanders.
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In Germany, a key country for the war effort, a new manifesto against war and for peace talks on Ukraine has just been initiated by Sahra Wagenknecht, the leading voice on the left, and Alice Schwarzer, the leading political feminist and publisher of the magazine EMMA. They warn that “if the fighting continues like this, Ukraine will soon be a depopulated, destroyed country. And many people throughout Europe are also afraid of an expansion of the war. They fear for their future and that of their children.” They express their solidarity with the Ukrainian people, but question a Western policy whose sole war goal is “defeat Russia across the board”, at the risk of “heading inexorably down a slippery slope toward world war and nuclear war? It would not be the first major war that has started this way. But it might be the last.”
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The manifesto, released Feb. 10, stresses that “negotiating does not mean surrendering. Negotiating means making compromises, on both sides. With the goal of preventing further hundreds of thousands of deaths and worse. That's what we think too, that's what half of the German population thinks. It is time to listen to us!”
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“We citizens of Germany cannot directly influence America and Russia or our European neighbors. But we can and must hold our government and the Chancellor to account and remind him of his oath to ‘avert harm from the German people’. We call on the Chancellor to stop the escalation of arms deliveries. Now! He should lead a strong alliance for a ceasefire and for peace negotiations on the German as well as on the European level. Now! Because every lost day costs up to 1,000 more lives - and brings us closer to a 3rd world war.”
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This manifesto is different from the various Open Letters of 2022, in that there are prominent signers from across party lines, including Rudolf Dressler, former State Secretary (SPD), Peter Gauweiler (CSU), and Tino Chrupalla (co-chairman of the AfD). It has also been signed by Angelika Claußen, IPPNW Vice-President Europe, Gen. (ret.) Erich Vad, former adviser to Chancellor Merkel, and Justus Frantz, a well known musical festival organizer.
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| The manifesto, which aims to build support for a rally in Berlin on Feb. 25, was signed by 350,000 people within the first three days. The most hysterical reaction from the government side came from its leading warmonger, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens. “A dictatorial peace, as some are now calling for, is not peace. Rather, it would be the subjugation of Ukraine to Russia.“ |
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| | | A “surprise” visit to Europe by a well-rehearsed Volodymyr Zelenskyy was staged last week to step up the war drive. It began in great pomp in the place which has done the most to keep the war on Russia going, namely London, where the Ukrainian President met King Charles III at Buckingham Palace, gave a speech before a joint session of Parliament; met Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street before holding a joint press conference with him; visited Dorset army base, and more.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered his lines as expected, praising Britain, thanking former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in particular (cf. below), and then demanding that the Kyiv government be given advanced fighter jets (not just pilot training) to better serve NATO’s provocations. According to The Spectator, “hundreds of MPs and peers packed into Westminster Hall to hear Zelenskyy speak to rapturous applause”.
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From London, Zelenskyy was flown to Paris, where he met Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, before heading to Brussels to address EU leaders and a just as enraptured European Parliament. The message was the same everywhere. Ukraine is fighting on NATO’s behalf (and will presumably do so down to the last Ukrainian), and “we need artillery guns, ammunition, modern tanks, long-range missiles and modern fighter jets”.
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A great deal of equipment was effectively promised, but how much will actually be delivered is an open question. As many military experts have pointed out, the UK, France, Germany and others don’t have that many fighter planes and tanks in working order and ammunition, to begin with, not to mention the lack of effective armed forces in Ukraine. They certainly won’t be available before the expected Spring offensive by the Russians.
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| Of course, weapons are not enough to win a war, but their production is apparently considered as a means to bolster the transatlantic economies (cf. above). |
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| | | During President Zelenskyy’s speech to the British parliament, he gave special praise to “Boris” for organizing support for Kyiv “from day one” (he was still Prime Minister at the time). Johnson responded by calling for delivery of all the “extra equipment they need to defeat Putin”. “That means longer range missiles and artillery. It means more tanks. It means planes. We have more than 100 Typhoon jets. We have more than 100 Challenger 2 tanks. The best single use for any of these items is to deploy them now for the protection of the Ukrainians—not least because that is how we guarantee our own long-term security.”
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It is certainly true that Boris Johnson, in the service of the British Empire, has done his best to prevent a negotiated settlement to the conflict. Last April, after a tentative agreement had been reached between Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy, he immediately flew to Kyiv to persuade the Ukrainians to cut off the talks with Russia. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett just recently revealed that he, too, had brokered an agreement between Kyiv and Moscow in March, which Johnson also nixed, as he “advocated more radical measures”.
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In the past few weeks, the former Tory Prime Minister has engaged in frenzied activity to try and prevent a solution. On Jan. 19, he was in Davos, at a breakfast event of the World Economic Forum, where he demanded more arms and more finance for Ukraine. Three days later, he was again in Kyiv, to be filmed strolling around the capital with Zelenskyy.
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On Feb. 1, Bojo was deployed to Washington to try and whip up more support for the war among conservative circles, including in Congress and at the Atlantic Council. He insisted that Ukraine will win, provided it receives enough weaponry.
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Back in London, he gave an interview to TalkTV, where he discussed a possible nuclear war with astounding nonchalance. He stated that it is highly unlikely that Vladimir Putin would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and that “in practical terms, it wouldn’t make that much difference on the battlefield” anyway. Note that this is a narrative increasingly used by the war party.
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| Finally, we note the confirmation by Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvechuk in a Jan. 26 interview to RT, that the UK has a much greater influence on President Zelenskyy’s action than any other country, including the United States. “It’s the UK that pulls the strings in Ukraine”, he added. |
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| | | One section of the Schiller Institute conference of Feb. 4 was dedicated to the development of Africa, and more especially to cooperation with China (see https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2023/02/03/). One of the speakers was Ugandan Attorney Elison Karuhanga, an expert in energy law, who gave a very polemical presentation on “Uganda’s Oil Project and Energy Independence”. His country has discovered oil fields having altogether some 6.5 billion barrels of oil, he pointed out, which it fully intends to exploit and develop, in spite of the pressure exerted by the West in the name of fighting “climate change”.
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Of course Ugandans are concerned about the climate, he explained, “but we are also concerned, and deeply concerned, about the effects of poverty today”. The argument they are hearing is that the world needs to phase out of fossil fuels, by stopping new investments in oil and gas, which will make them very expensive. Then, the argument goes, “the world will be forced to transition to renewables, once the fossils have been completely out-priced by all methods available to human ingenuity.
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“That all sounds very nice when you think about it as an activist, when you think about it from a European capital, when you think about it from a rich, developed country. But what does that mean when broken down in real terms? ... We have now learned, that a high oil price does not hurt oil companies. 2022 saw a rise in oil prices, and record profits from oil giants. The only people who pay for this transition will be poor people. And in this side of the world -- in Africa and in Uganda-- we have paid enough. **** OP CUT We have sacrificed enough. We have been guinea pigs for way too long. We cannot continue paying for these transitions. We cannot, on our end, continue to transition from darkness to deeper darkness in a night already devoid of stars, to quote one great American .” ****
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If no new oil projects are allowed, it would mean that Norway continues to produce 2 million barrels of oil, Saudi Arabia to produce 10 million barrels of oil, and the United States to consume 20 million barrels of oil, while countries like Uganda and Mozambique are prevented from producing. In his view, and that of Africans, until viable alternatives are available, “we must look to fossil fuels to power our world. And in Africa, we are tired of not being powered.”
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That is why, Uganda has decided, “come hell or high water, that we are going to develop our energy projects” to achieve energy independence. The recently finalized project includes building a crude oil export pipeline and a refinery. As Elison Karuhanga stressed, “we must both preserve the environment and defeat poverty”.
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| “And those who are living in the comfort of wonderful palaces, those who are living in the comfort of heated swimming pools and wonderful houses, those who are flying on private jets to moralize and lecture us, we are happy to receive their ideas, but frankly, at this time and on this occasion, we are not willing to follow through with them. We have listened far too long. We have a copious supply of people telling us to follow the lead of the West, and of people who are transitioning. But now, I think it's becoming ridiculous for us to start taking lectures about our 200,000 barrels of oil, from people who are consuming 20 million barrels of oil; for us to start paying for this transition, when we only contribute 0.003% to global greenhouse gas emissions.” |
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| | | Several days before Seymour Hersh's article appeared (cf. above), the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review ran a 24,000 word article by former New York Times (NYT) reporter Jeff Gerth, which eviscerates the coverage of "Russiagate" in the U.S mainstream media. Titled simply "The press versus the president", the article focuses especially on the NYT and Washington Post (WaPo), which shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for "groundbreaking journalism that was proven true and true again." As Gerth shows, that award was just as phony as the reporting they did, beginning in 2016 and continuing until today.
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His study offers a richness of details into several key chapters of the fraud surrounding “Russiagate”, i.e., the alleged collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin. Gerth points out that, outside of the NYT's "own bubble", revelations of the corrupt inter-relationship between its reporters, the FBI and the Democratic Party have done "damage to the credibility of the Times and its peers", which he says persists. Their coverage included "serious flaws", such as the credibility given at the outset to Fusion GPS and the Christopher Steele dossier; the line put out by Paul Krugman that Trump was the "Siberian candidate", or Jeffrey Goldberg's claim that Trump was a "de facto agent" of Putin; and the failure to investigate claims of the Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian systematic interference in the 2016 election.
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Gerth reports on repeated instances where charges were made by "anonymous" sources, which were used to hype both the media and the FBI. One example: former NYT public editor, Liz Spayd told him after the election, that the NYT had produced a "steady stream of stories" about Trump conspiring with the Russians "without knowing whether the allegations were actually true". And even as FBI internal documents rejected the Trump-Russia collusion, FBI Director James Comey continued to assert that investigations were still ongoing, and the same charges are still reported today as "fact".
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While readers of our newsletter have been informed of much of the evidence Gerth meticulously details, most of the public has been shielded from it. It is not surprising that, like the Hersh story, mainstream media is not covering it.
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| Jeff Gerth, who was once a central figure in the media universe he is condemning, explains that he undertook the study, because he was “worried about journalism's declining credibility and society's increasing polarization”. He usefully asserts that real journalists need to report on facts "that run counter to the prevailing narrative". This article, along with Seymour Hersh's revelations, are a step toward fulfilling that obligation. |
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