STRATEGIC ALERT Newsletter
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| | | Following a shocking warning by Russian Major General Apti Alaudinov on Aug. 19, the International Peace Coalition (IPC) issued an emergency statement, which has been endorsed by the Schiller Institute. It notes that World War Three may have begun on the day Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into the Kursk region of Russia (cf. SAS 34/24). In fact, it was NATO, and not Ukraine, that devised this operation, as even mainstream media have reported.
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To quote General Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces, the invasion of Kursk “was prepared directly under the American leadership. These forces invaded the territory of the Kursk region…. The initial task was to take control of the nuclear power plant, as well as the Kursk and possibly Belgorod regions. We have quite credible information about these intentions. After this, they intended to put Russia to the negotiation table with ultimatum conditions.”
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| He went on to deliver a direct appeal to the people of America and Europe: |
| | | “You probably do not see or hear that your leadership is doing all it can to launch a nuclear war ... as you’ve been trying with all means to make Russia cross the red line and start protecting itself using all these nuclear weapons. I don’t think this is something you really want. If you don’t want this to happen, speak out! Go to the streets and stop your government!” |
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| | | “In any case, if you want Russia to lose the war, you have to understand: the Russian nuclear state will not lose the war. After all, why do we need the world if there is no Russia? That’s why I’m saying: you either wake up and go to the streets to stop your government, or you all (will) appear … in the Third World War zone. This is the issue of the nearest future!” |
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The statement by the Coalition (IPC) notes that some voices around the world have denounced NATO’s war drive, but counters that “this is not enough”. “The people have to be heard and seen. Demonstrations and rallies, yes - but also interventions at public meetings, banners on highways and other public displays, petitions and letters are needed. Hundreds of public officials, clergy, doctors, etc. must make statements and call for no more funding of the war; denunciation of NATO’s war with Russia; admission of the truth of the Nord Stream bombing; and negotiations for a new security and development architecture worldwide. Out of these actions can come a Council of Reason that can move the world away from the precipice of self-destruction.
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“There is still time to act, but this is no time to run, to flinch, or to ‘choke’. All of human civilization that has been, and will be, may hinge on what we - what you - choose to do in these next hours, days and weeks.” (For the full statement, click here https://schillerinstitute.com/international-peace-coalition)
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This issue will be taken up at the next IPC meeting on Aug. 30, starting 17 o’clock CET,
which we would urge you to participate in per Zoom. To register,
and receive access to translation options, please go to the website immediately above. |
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| | | According to an article in the Aug. 20 New York Times, President Joe Biden approved last March a nuclear strategic plan for the United States that is so highly classified that only a few printed copies of it exist. Entitled Nuclear Employment Guidance, it reorients, for the first time, America’s strategy of deterrence to focus on the rapid expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, and not only Russia’s capabilities.
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The article by David Sanger reports that two Biden Administration officials have alluded to the secret document in public speeches. In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, said the new strategy emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the P.R.C. and North Korea simultaneously”. The Guidance, according to Sanger, examines “whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons”.
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The article also quotes Vipin Narang, an MIT nuclear strategist who served in the Pentagon until recently. He said earlier this month that President Biden “recently issued updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries”, taking in particular into account “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal.
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Beijing responded immediately to the information, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning telling reporters they were “gravely concerned” about it. She pointed out that Washington uses the alleged “nuclear threat” coming from China to “expand its own nuclear arsenal and seek absolute strategic predominance”. However, China’s nuclear arsenal is nowhere near as large as that of America’s, and contrary to the U.S., China adheres to a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons.
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“In contrast, the U.S. sits on the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world. Even so, it clings to a first-use nuclear deterrence policy, and has invested heavily to upgrade its nuclear triad and blatantly devised nuclear deterrence strategies against others,” Mao explained.
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| Another aspect of this highly secret document has been raised by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, namely that it sheds a new light on the NATO summit that was held in Washington, just a few months later, in July. At the time, Chancellor Scholz wholly endorsed the Biden Administration’s decision to install long-range missiles in Germany, evidently in the framework of this new strategy. |
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| | | With ten weeks until election day, the U.S. presidential campaign remains both unprecedented and unpredictable. With Vice-President Kamala Harris anointed as the presidential candidate for the Democrats, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a former Democratic Party candidate now running as an Independent, partially suspended his campaign, while endorsing Donald Trump.
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Events at the Democratic Party national convention confirmed our assessment that Kamala Harris was installed as the candidate in a "soft coup" orchestrated by donor billionaires fearful that an incapacitated Joe Biden would lose to Trump. Given Trump's position against the Ukraine war and his populist anti-establishment bent, Biden was forced out in order to save the policies he has supported, especially regarding the Ukraine war and an overall defense of the U.S. as the controller and beneficiary of the collapsing Unipolar Order.
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Harris herself was firm in support of Biden's wars. "I will ensure that America always has the strongest. most lethal fighting force in the world”, she stated. As for the growing dangers in Southwest Asia, Harris hypocritically proclaims concern over the suffering of Palestinians, while supporting the delivery of weapons and money to Israel, to kill more of them.
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Amid the “Kamala-mania” promoted by the media, polls now show a narrow lead for the Democratic candidate nationally and extremely close results in key "battleground" states. But Kennedy's courageous decision adds to the uncertainty of the outcome. At one point, he was polling at 25% as a third party candidate, after being excluded from the Democratic Party primaries, but was bombarded with attacks and slanders in the media.
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At a joint appearance with Donald Trump in Arizona, RFK Jr. said he had decided to withdraw his name from appearing on the ballot in battleground states, out of fear that he might take votes away from Trump and hand the election to Harris in those states. He also spoke with passion about ending U.S. support for the war in Ukraine, which he warned is leading toward nuclear war with Russia. He also forcefully condemned media censorship and narrative creation, which stifle open debate. Trump has asked Kennedy to look into the assassination attempt against him in July, and also intends to open the files on past assassinations, including those of RFK Jr.’s uncle John Kennedy and father Robert Kennedy. That explains why a Trump presidency so frightens the establishment.
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In another blow for the Harris campaign, former Democratic Party Congresswomen and former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard endorsed Trump at a rally in Michigan on Aug. 26. We are close to nuclear war, she said; "that's why I'm backing Donald Trump. He will walk us back from war."
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| Thus far, neither RFK, Jr., Gabbard nor Trump have broken with Biden's support for Netanyahu, which has the backing of the billionaires of the Military-Industrial Complex they claim to oppose. However, these two endorsements, which raise the issue of who benefits from the imperial wars, may have the effect of allowing Trump to regain his footing, as a "populist" anti-establishment figure. |
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| | | Keynoting the annual central bank symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Aug. 23, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced that “the time has come” for the Fed to cut interest rates. While some commented that his announcement “came in time” to favor the Democratic Party candidate, in reality it came almost too late.
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As Lyndon LaRouche often insisted, central banks have no choice within their unsustainable system but to print money. That is why he expected that of the two possible deaths of the system – of bankruptcy or of hyperinflation -- the latter was more likely.
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Consider what happened when the Bank of Japan raised the interest rate from 0% (zero!) to 0.25% a few weeks ago. The collapse of the global stock market showed that the bankrupt system cannot even sustain an interest rate increase of one-quarter of 1%! Only after the Bank of Japan rushed to announce on Aug. 7 that the central bank would not raise rates further in conditions of market volatility, did the markets calm down.
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True, Jerome Powell might have speculated that, by waiting until the proverbial last minute to lower rates, the consequences in terms of inflation would come after the Presidential elections on Nov. 5. The shift in monetary policy will not help the real economy, but it will feed the Wall Street bubble. For the physical economy to recover, the Wall Street gambling casino would have to be shut down. This could be done by reviving the Glass-Steagall Act, that separated commercial banks from investment banks, and denied the latter access to central bank money.
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Economists Pam and Russ Martens, who run the Wall Street On Parade website, have regularly made the case for restoration of that law, including in an Aug. 20 article titled “All The Devils Of 2008 Are Back At The Megabanks”. The extreme leverage exposed in the report of the Congressional Inquiry Committee in 2010, as the cause of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, has not decreased, but has increased since then.
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In addition, four US megabanks hold 87% of the derivatives exposure of the entire U.S. banking sector. And they have as many derivatives bets off their books as on their balance sheet. Take the example of JP Morgan. According to financial data at the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), as of Dec. 31, 2023, JPMorgan Chase held $3.227 trillion in its off-balance sheet, while it reported to the SEC total assets on its balance sheet of $3.875 trillion.
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| Regulators insist that megabanks should increase their capital ratio, but the megabanks have so far successfully resisted, including with blackmail. Therefore, the Martens call on Congress to “restore the Glass-Steagall Act, which would permanently separate federally-insured banks from the trading casinos on Wall Street”. |
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| | | The Swiss government (Federal Council) formally approved on Aug. 21, the country’s participation in two projects of the European Union’s military pact called the Permanent Structured Cooperation project (PESCO for short). The Military Mobility program aims to facilitate cross border transport and deployments of the various armed forces in all the participating countries, which would simply Swiss operations abroad.
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The decision was strongly denounced by the Swiss People’s Party as a violation of Switzerland’s neutrality. In statement posted on its website the same day, the SPP charges that the Federal Council “is thereby carelessly giving up our country’s neutrality and sovereignty. By participating in the EU military pact, the Federal Council is also negligently putting the security of the Swiss population at risk. The SPP demands that the Federal Council submit this matter to Parliament.”
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According to this statement,“the EU requires the participating states in PESCO projects to agree with the EU’s foreign and security policy objectives. However, Switzerland’s goals as a neutral and sovereign state are in no way identical to those of the EU. This is especially true as the EU sees itself as a geopolitical player and has a clear expansionist policy with regard to Ukraine, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova. Switzerland’s participation in the EU military pact is incompatible with our state’s neutrality and is extremely dangerous for the Swiss population. In addition, Switzerland would lose its sovereignty in national defense.”
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| The government has denied the charges, of course, claiming that participation in the project would have no impact on decision-making procedures. However, to prepare the population for dwindling neutrality, the government has raised the specter of a possible invasion by Russia of a neighboring country, or Switzerland itself! |
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| | | The state-owned German railway company (Deutsche Bahn, DB) has been in steady decline for the past 30 years now, with the top management either unable or unwilling to finally begin modernizing or replacing all the bridges, tracks and signals in disrepair. The Swiss, for example, have often complained about Germany’s lack of investment in the needed upgrade for the north-south rail route for freight in Europe, the Germans have not done their part.
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German trains are more often late than not, when they’re not outright cancelled, sometimes with no forewarning, as any regular user has certainly experienced. For the city of Hamburg, a recent report documents that whereas in 2023, “only” 14% of all high-speed trains leaving the main station were several minutes late, that figure is now up to 21%. In addition, due to urgent repair work being carried out on the tracks between Hamburg and Berlin, all high-speed trains between Germany's two largest cities are forced to take a detour, one section of which has only single-track service.
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In any case, just a few weeks ago,DB launched started a crash project of upgrading 41 rail routes. In all cases, rail transit will be replaced for weeks or even months by bus service. After so many years of neglect, this effort will bring even more chaos to the German railway system over the coming years.
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Insiders have pointed out that the sudden hectic activity of DB is likely connected to the government’s decision to make the country's infrastructure “ready for war”. That includes the capacity to transport up to 800,000 (!) NATO soldiers to the borders of the alliance with Russia. Indeed, according to a secret document leaked by Der Spiegel six weeks ago, the Berlin government estimates that that many German and allied troops will need to use the country’s ports, highways and railways to move eastward, in the case of a NATO war with Russia.
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| And if that were not enough, DB past week announced plans to lay off 30,000 of its staff in the coming years. Given the incompetence and the lack of planning and engineering capacities that are systemic at DB, this could have far worse consequences than just delays or cancellations in rail traffic. The case of Greece, for one, comes to mind: on Feb. 28, 2023, at least 70 passengers died in a train crash, which was clearly the result of the brutal disinvestment plan imposed on the Greek railway system by the infamous “Troika” (European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) of creditors. Greece was forced to implement brutal austerity measures from 2012 on, including the slashing of the number of railway employees from 6,000 to 800, of which the signals department was reduced from 300 technicians to 30. This was done in collaboration with the neo-liberal Mitsotakis government, which had no objection to cutting the Greek public sector by one third, while at the same time spending billions of euros for doubtful debt-reducing and military programs. By 2014, the Greek railway system as it was able to function before 2012, had ceased to exist, and major catastrophes, such as that of Feb. 2023, were pre-programmed. |
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| | | The recent attacks by Ukrainian/NATO forces on nuclear power plants in Russia and in Zaporizhia have exposed to the entire world the hypocrisy of the anti-nuclear ecologist movements in Europe, in particular in Germany. While many such movements have campaigned for decades against the use of civilian nuclear power on the pretext that any military attack against the plants would lead to a “mega-catastrophe”, to consequences worse than at Chernobyl or Fukushima, etc., we have yet to hear any denunciations of Kyiv’s strategy.
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Not to speak of their total support for NATO and the war against Russia. In Germany, where the Greens are part of the coalition in power, they have become the staunchest “war party”. Their opposition to nuclear energy is a fraud.
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| One Italian scientist consulted by our news service fears that the German Greens may even want a nuclear accident to occur in Kursk, “because they would use it to counter the resurging pro-nuclear wave in Europe”. |
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| | | European and American leaders love to praise democracy, free speech, and “Western values”. But in times of war against virtually the rest of the world compounded by access to social media, they’re having upholding such principles at home. So it’s back to reliable, old police state measures, as these examples show:
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France arrests founder of Telegram app. On Aug. 24, French authorities arrested the Russian founder of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, when he arrived at Le Bourget airport outside Paris. He is accused of complicity in committing crimes related to fraud, drug trafficking, pedophilia, cyber-harassment, and the defense of terrorism, because he failed to “moderate” the contents of messages on Telegram, and to cooperate with the police.
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As social media expert Fabrice Ebelboin pointed out, Telegram has nearly one billion users, and since the use is free of cost, does not have anywhere near the staff or the financial means to carry out moderation. Facebook, he notes, which does make considerable profits, still cannot check the contents of its users. Larry Johnson, a co-founder of the VIPS, said that “Telegram is one of the few channels that actually allows information that’s critical of Western policy to go on. I think that’s really at the root of this.”
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We note that Durov already left Russia back in 2014 to escape control of his company by the state.
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Britain’s Double Standards in Law. Former British Ambassador Craig Murray has denounced the government’s push to transform the country into a police state. His article reports that an independent journalist, Richard Medhurst, was arrested Aug. 15 and held for almost 24 hours in the framework of a terrorist investigation. For Murray, “It is legal in U.K. law to support Israel’s genocidal and illegal acts of colonial occupation, but illegal in U.K. law to support Palestine’s legal acts of armed resistance to colonial and racist occupation.”
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Murray notes that British law has now totally diverted from international law, since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has officially ruled that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is a criminal act, which all nations must oppose. "Yet it is perfectly legal in U.K. domestic law for zionists to state that they support the Israeli Defence Force and they hope that the IDF kill every Palestinian in Gaza. Indeed zionists state this all the time, supporting an action that is entirely illegal in international law, and no action is ever taken against these zionists by the U.K. state.”
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U.S. Justice Department Announces Witch Hunt against “Kremlin Propagandists”. Following the recent FBI raids against the homes of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and Russian-American policy analyst Dmitri Simes, the New York Times reported Aug. 24 that “more searches are expected soon”, with possible “criminal charges” filed. “The Department of Justice has begun a broad criminal investigation into Americans who have worked with Russia’s state television networks, signaling an aggressive effort to combat the Kremlin’s influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November.”
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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has warned, according to this article, that there are “witting and unwitting Americans” whom the Kremlin uses to “create and spread narratives” that are favorable to President Putin, on social media, websites and other media. But not to worry. This does not apply to all people affected by Russian propaganda, only those “intentionally spreading disinformation”. The big question, of course, is: who decides what is disinformation, and what is justified criticism?
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Ukraine bans freedom of religion. The West’s heroic puppet, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed a law barring religious groups with ties to Russia on Aug. 24. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially broke away from the Moscow patriarchy in 2022, but is now given nine months to sever all ties with the Russian Orthodox Church or be banned completely.
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| As justification for the move, Zelenskyy explained that "Ukrainian orthodoxy today is taking a step toward liberation from the devils of Moscow". Pope Francis objected to the decision, saying "Please, let no Christian Church be abolished directly or indirectly. Churches are not to be touched!" |
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| | | The UN’s top humanitarian official for the Palestinian territories, Muhannad Hadi, confirmed Aug. 22 that some 90% of 2.1 million residents of Gaza have been displaced, many of them several times, since Oct. 7. They are forced to flee into ever smaller areas, that are crowded and unsafe, where they are usually deprived of medical care, shelter, water wells and humanitarian supplies. The UN now estimates that some 20% of the population is facing hunger and starvation. And yet, Hamas has not been destroyed and the hostages it took have not been released, causing increasing anger and frustration in Israel itself.
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In the West Bank as well, the Palestinian population has been subjected to increased violence and repression, from the Israeli security forces and the fanatics in the settler movement. The situation has reached the point where the head of Israel’s internal security force Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, sent a letter of protest to Prime Minister Netanyahu, reprinted Aug. 22 by Channel 12 News, denouncing the extremist settler movement and its chief sponsor, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as posing an extreme danger to Israel. Their riots and violence, he writes, amount to terrorism.
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The damage to the State of Israel, Bar explains, “is indescribable: global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies; spreading thin the IDF’s personnel … which wasn’t intended to deal with this; vengeful attacks that are sparking another front in the multi-front war we are in; putting more players into the cycle of terror; a slippery slope to the feeling of a lack of governance … a massive stain on Judaism and us all.”
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| Minister Ben-Givr immediately responded by demanding that Ronen Bar be fired, and later even blamed him for the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. But Bar received the backing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who wrote on his X account, that given the danger to national security and to national unity of “Ben-Gvir’s irresponsible actions”, the head of the domestic intelligence service has the duty to warn of “the grave consequences of these acts”. |
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